Vagalume 0.8 with Last.fm API v2.0

Personal, , ,

Over the weekend I got an update alert on my n810 for Vagalume, the Last.fm player I’ve been using. Without checking the changes I went ahead and updated, unfortunately it caused the player to stop working. At first I thought it was a configuration issue but after some research today l ran across this thread which spelled things out. Though I’m not to sure I want to get an API key knowing it could be disabled at any time for violating the terms of service. So the free ride was good for a while and there are still players out there that use the old API, which will work until it’s shut down. It is a great site and three dollars a month is not that much when you think about the library you have access to. Honestly if you haven’t been there head over and take a look.

When the time comes I’ll get a subscription, until then I’ll have to roll back.

G1 Contact Sync

Technology, , ,

Just after updating my G1 to 1.6 I was struck again with problems syncing contacts. Mind you it’s not a huge deal, I don’t meet 20 people a day and need there digits. It has been a common problem and was well documented based on the posts I found. The consistent fix from the Google Mobile Help forum was clearing contact data on the G1 and then sync. That worked and syncing is back.

This might be a good argument for turning on synchronization but that tends to limit battery life. If all else fails I can fall back to this but I’m hoping if I sync more often, and not make changes in both places then sync, the problem will go away. We’ll see.

SSH Public Key Authenication

Technology, ,

Last week I had an occasion to test public key authentication from OpenVMS to Linux. With the dayjob we have an implementation where data will be sent in batch via sftp to a Linux box. To get a better idea of “the entire process” thought I should take my Debian box and test authenticating to it. Once I got through all the quirks it wasn’t that difficult.

The biggest challenge has been getting past access violations when executing ssh commands on some OpenVMS servers. What I found on HP’s ITRC forum referenced UIC in RIGHTSLIST needing to match what’s in SYSUAF, for a user executing SSH commands. Even though OpenVMS TCPIP version 5.6 ECO 1 release notes comment about this as being fixed we have experienced it with ECO 2. None the less updating the RIGHTSLIST resolves the problem.

As for set up it wasn’t to bad. Here’s the steps (summary) I used.

OpenVMS

  1. Enable the SSH Client in TCPIP$CONFIG.
  2. Create a sub folder for the user of [.SSH2], making sure your logged in as the account in question.
  3. Set default to that directory and create a key using ssh_keygen. (In order to use ssh_keygen you must first execute sys$manager:tcpip$define_commands.com.)
  4. Create an IDENTIFICATION. file with a line of. 
    KeyID <private key name>
  5. Push the public key (.PUB) to the Linux box.

Linux

  1. Log in as the user you’ll be connecting with, create a .ssh subfolder if it does not already exist.
  2. Take the public key (.PUB) from the OpenVMS box and put it in the authorized_keys file.
    $ ssh-keygen -i -f openvms.pub >> authorized_keys

note:  keep in mind where default is in relation to .ssh/authorized_keys the above would assume
your in ~/.ssh when executing ssh-keygen.

This was with the default config for sshd on Debian GNU/Linux 5.0 (lenny). Something to also keep in mind is from a security perspective ensuring access to the key files is limited to the user would be a good practice on both systems.