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mcabber and OTR

Fri, 23 May 2008 21:56:52 +0200

Today I wanted to try out off-the-record messaging (OTR) using mcabber. I did not really find any documentation or web sites saying anything else than "It works!" so I decided to write this Nano How-To for other people having the same problem.

Get a usable mcabber version

mcabber started supporting OTR from version 0.9.4 onwards. E.g. the version in Debian "Etch" 4.0 is way too old (0.8.3), so you have to make do somehow different (back-port, source compile, magic, etc.).

I created a .deb of mcabber 0.9.7 using the current testing version as a template (for ARM only, so no downloads). To do this I had to recompile the libotr2 package, too, as 3.0 apparently is too old.

Set up mcabber for OTR

mcabber stores its configuration in ~/.mcabber, and its OTR keys in ~/.mcabber/otr, so mkdir ~/.mcabber/otr.

You also have to append/uncomment set otr = 1 in ~/.mcabber/mcabberrc. AFAIK this has to be done in the configuration file and a running mcabber has to be restarted for key generation.

Key generation takes time (roughly seven minutes on my NSLU2, mere fractions of seconds on your shiny new 256-core CPU) and will be started as soon as you restart mcabber. The key will be deposited in ~/.mcabber/otr/<JID>.key

Now set up your buddies for OTR

Of course you have to talk them into using a OTR capable client but that is beyond the scope of this document ;). What I mean is that you have to enable OTR for your buddies in mcabber by issuing /otrpolicy <JID> opportunistic or /otrpolicy <JID> always. The value of <JID> can be an actual JID (e.g. foo@bar.baz or . which is the currently selected buddy. You can (and should) save this in your ~/.mcabber/mcabberrc like this:

otrpolicy <JID> opportunistic

(Or always instead of opportunistic, of course.)

If you now talk to your buddy a OTR channel will be established (the first thing you say will be unencrypted so you probably want to say something inconspicuous like "Hi!", and not directly "Care to overthrow the government of $COUNTRY?"). mcabber will print these messages:

*** OTR: new fingerprint: NNNNNNNN NNNNNNNN NNNNNNNN NNNNNNNN NNNNNNNN
*** OTR: channel established

where NNNNNNNN NNNNNNNN NNNNNNNN NNNNNNNN NNNNNNNN is the fingerprint of your counterpart. Verify this via a secure channel (which of course is not the OTR channel as long as the fingerprint is not verified... use a signed and trusted email for that).

If you have verified your counterpart's key issue /otr fingerprint <JID> "NNNNNNNN NNNNNNNN NNNNNNNN NNNNNNNN NNNNNNNN" (spaces are important!) to trust the key. This will be saved in ~/.mcabber/otr/<YourJID>.fpr automatically so no need to change your ~/.mcabber/mcabberrc for this.

Now you and OTR should be all set (up). Have fun and don't overthrow too many poor governments! And Kathrin, thanks for your help :).

Night of the Living Dead

Fri, 09 May 2008 23:22:17 +0200

Kathrin, with whom I will visit Ireland Real Soon Now™ (i.e. late September), asked me if I am letting this blog die. No, I don't. I dutifully pay my Fellowship fees, as I believe I am supporting a greater and better cause through it. I just never was this big blogger, as I am a very private person. Also I kind of feel inadequate using my Fellowship blog for personal stuff, whereass ‘all’ the other Fellows blog about important stuff. But as I do not intend to create another blog, you just have to accept that. Which is nice for ‘suck it!’ ;)

To at least say something about free software, I may add how lucky the people are which never once in their lifes touch any Microsoft Windows platform whatsoever. A little example: For my company I am coordinating the introduction in Germany of a company-wide VPN solution. This solution is a nice program (in the confines of proprietary software that is) and is generally hassle free and easy to use. But installing it on ‘patient zero's’ laptop first took the better part of a week. Then one had to package it for our software deployment solution, which taught me the value of the .deb-Package format and apt &c. (as if I did not already knew that), even though I did not do the actual packaging.

The software (really an assembly of different components) came ‘packaged’ in a folder structure using a VB script ‘installer’… which works surprisingly well. My colleague decided to use this script instead of starting from scratch. Of course the script tried to do the right thing by uninstalling other VPN solutions. Now this is not a problem at all, as this new VPN solution is scheduled to replacy any existing solution at my company.

The only thing I have a problem with is the ‘why?’. Why in the name of the universe does one have to uninstall other VPN solutions? Oh, alright, it says in the accompanying documentation that this VPN solution is incompatible with other VPN solutions. Well then: why? Apart from making sure that the routing table is in order no one ever has to uninstall $VPN[0] just to be able to install $VPN[1] (or indeed $VPN[$i]) on any Unixy system I encountered. And why should one need to? Virtual interfaces are all perfectly compatible with one another, and if you do not connect to different networks with the same IP address range everything is just dandy. I just don't get it…

To me this can only mean one thing: spread free software. Completely free systems. Free infrastructure. Stable, reliable, working, compatible systems. I cannot understand how otherwise sophisticated people accept the occasional blue screen (yes, this still happens) or computer that stopped responding and happily reboot (okay, in light of the reboot actually taking up to ten minutes on older machines this forced coffee break may actually appear a nice distraction). But I deeply loathe problems I cannot get to the bottom of and so will never accept this kind of computer ‘experience’, and will never shed a tear looking back to my Windows days.

And the title of this blog entry? Well, last time I blogged I was ‘not dead yet’, but you can consider me dead from now on (dead and zombified, shambling around the streets, slowly decomposing, looking for the living to devour, that is ;)).

I am not dead yet...

Mon, 17 Dec 2007 13:49:00 +0100

...though sometimes i wish I were.

On a more fun note I visited a discussion about privacy last Friday and it was very interesting though JJ was disappointed by the visitor turnout (I suspected it would be even fewer).

Study and religion

Fri, 22 Jun 2007 09:34:43 +0200

Two things constituted yesterday for me:

The End — The last theoretical part of the last semester at the Berufsakademie. The last examination. The last lecture (in that order). Fittingly the last two both were “Linux für Fortgeschrittene” (“Advanced Linux”). But as Martin put it (thanks for the kudos btw!) there was not much new to be learned in the main study. After the official part Kathrin, Florian, Timm and I went home to Timm to watch a movie (Bill Murray and Geena Davis in “Quick Change” which I can recommend to everyone), play cards and generally have a good time.
A nice woman accosted me in the train after I gave a paper she was holding a hard look: “Folge dem Christus”(“Follow the Christ”). She offered me an invitation to a three day event. I politely declined and after being asked why I answered that I am a staunch atheist. She then went on to tell me how she thinks that the universe fits so well together that it must be created by someone and I said that I have no problem with everything being fundamentally meaningless and that I give meaning to my life myself, i.e. bettering myself and the whole of humanity. We discussed a little bit more, but after only two stations I had to get off the train, and to my surprise said something to the effect that I really like to continue the discussion (which I did) but that my station was coming up.

Well, what do you know? There are other christians who want to persuade you than the “Partei der bibeltreuen Christen” (“Party of bible-adhering Christs”) or the man standing at times at Mannheim Paradeplatz or Bahnhof shouting that Christ will save you if you live your life according to his teachings. And apparently not all want to persuade you to live a life which picks certain parts of the christian bible (and ignores others completely… selling your daughters into slavery, anyone?) and interpret them according to their anyhow settled beliefs which is the worst kind of hypocrisy to me.

And even though I wrote a lot more about my “religious” encounter, concerning my study I still want to say: Booooyah!

Drei Jahre Berufsakademie Mannheim

Tue, 15 May 2007 15:12:08 +0200

Dinge die ich in drei Jahren an der Berufsakademie gelernt habe:

„Kein Raum frei“ heißt nicht, dass kein Raum mehr frei ist sondern „Ich als verantwortliche Sekretärin habe keine Kenntnis davon, dass noch einer von meinen fünf normalerweise vergebenen Räumen frei ist.“ Das ist wie in folgender Situation: Sie „Kannst du mir bitte mal die Butter aus dem Kühlschrank geben?“ Er „Es ist keine Butter da“, wobei er eigentlich nur meint „Ich kann keine Butter sehen“ und die Butter hinter der Marmelade steht. Männer sind halt so. Und BA-Sekretärinnen auch.
Es macht Spaß (und zwar tierisch) über vollkommen blödsinnige Sachen zu diskutieren, z.B. warum es schöner ist wenn es draußen grau ist und nicht die Sonne scheint oder warum Marty McFly in „Zurück in die Zukunft“ sich am Ende nur zehn Minuten Extrazeit gönnt obwohl er genau weiß, dass der DeLorean Anlassschwierigkeiten hat und er im Stadtzentrum und nicht auf dem Parkplatz der Twin Pine Mall/Lone Pine Mall rematerialisieren wird. Solide Unterhaltung über gar nichts, aber wirklich lustig.
Linux ist Windows überlegen. Nicht nur dass sie nicht in der selben Liga spielen, sie spielen nicht mal die selbe Sportart. Erster Windows-Go-Kart-Verein vs. Formel Eins Team Linux.
Debian ist Ubuntu überlegen. Okay, Ubuntu ist klickibunti, aber Debian ist allgemein… Auf meiner NSLU2 läuft das genau so wie auf meinem Laptop. Nimm das, Ubuntu
Debian ist DSL überlegen. So viel ist klar.
Nicht aufpassen ist okay, so lange man für die Klausuren lernt.
Die Motivationskurve sinkt gegen Ende der Studienzeit beständig, und hat am Anfang des sechsten Semesters schon Null erreicht.
Amerikanische Sitcoms sind wirklich klasse. Besonders hervorzuheben ist „Scrubs“, „My Name is Earl“, „Two and a half Men“ und „How I met your Mother“. Und ich hätte mich beinahe selbst von Scrubs ausgeschlossen weil die deutsche Synchro so überhaupt nicht lustig ist… :/
Wenn alle aus den höheren Jahrgängen sagen „Die Klausur bei <zensiert> wird einfach“ heißt das noch lange nicht, dass sie es auch ist.
Wenn die selben Leute sagen, dass „Die Klausur bei <wieder.zensiert> schwer wird“, dann wird sie das meist auch.
Der Burger King in Mannheim nimmt auch Gutscheine wo zwar klein aber klar erkenntlich drauf steht, dass sie nur für Darmstadt und Umgebung gelten. Danke Niedriglohnjobs für die anscheinend nur Merkbefreite qualifiziert sind.
ACSler sind viel cooler als TAIler, oder auch NullTAIler genannt (Applied Computer Science vs. Angewandte Informatik… das T in TAI steht für n00bs und ich weiß nicht warum… nur bei Sascha und Dennis steht das T für „Voll korrekt“ ;) ).
„Alle Vorlesungen auf Englisch“ heißt „30% der Vorlesungen auf Englisch, viele davon auf mittelmäßig bis schlechtem Englisch“. Ich habe Lang kein so schlechtes Englisch gehört… davor das letzte mal bei einer ehemaligen Kurskameradin die Fremdsprachensekretärin(!) werden wollte…
Meine Linuxkenntnisse sind weit über dem Durchschnitt. Keine Selbstbeweihräucherung, einfach Fakt.
Vorlesungen die freiwillig an einem Freitag und dem direkt darauffolgenden Samstag stattfinden und die einzigen an diesen Tagen sind, werden genau zwei von 24 möglichen Partizipanten haben. Ein zwölftel ist eigentlich gar nicht mal schlecht.
Zettelchen schreiben ist out, Instant Messaging ist in. Auch flüstern ist von gestern, d.h. IM selbst dann, wenn die Diskussionsteilnehmer nur eine halbe Armlänge trennt.
Jabber kann recht komplex sein.
Python ist optisch schön anzusehen, aber Doku ist nicht die Stärke der Sprache.
Port 443 ist das goldene Firewall-Loch.
Ich bin völlig lernresistent gegenüber Physik und konsequenterweise Elektrotechnik.
Es gibt gute Menschen an der BA. Hallo Tina, Kathrin, Ruth, Timm, Reuben, Florian, Martin, Stephan, Thomas, Fabian und Simon.
Alle dumm außer uns.
IBAler (International Business Administration) lernen „der Sand im Getriebe“ zu sein. Und darin sind sie richtig gut.
Nein, der Raum ist nicht „euer“ Raum.
Niemand mag die „Menschen“ von SAP, obwohl diese selbst so von sich überzeugt sind, dass sie Macs benutzen.
Selbst BWLer sehen teilweise (danke Simon) ihre Studienrichtung nicht als brauchbar an.
BWLer und richtige Studiengänge müssen räumlich getrennt werden um Blutvergießen zu vermeiden. Deswegen haben wir ein eigenes Gebäude und die BWLer auch. Am anderen Ende der Stadt.
Summer School (einwöchiger Aufenthalt in Bristol, UK) r0x0rt! Aber die BWLer wurden sicherheitshalber auch hier auf Abstand in Oxford gehalten. Anscheinend liegt eine als akzeptabel angesehene Ausfallquote nicht bei mehr als 0%.
London r0x0rt auch.
Britisches Essen ist richtig gut, aber was dort zum Frühstück gegessen wird ist hier ein vollwertiges Mittagessen. Die Käseauswahl im Tesco (≅Edeka) war vorzüglich. Nur das Brot ist eine Katastrophe.
Wenn Harrods in London ein Konsumtempel ist, dann ist das KDW in Berlin ein Konsumautobahnkreuz. Scheuklappen sind in den Food Halls zu empfehlen.
Drei Spanischdozentinnen in vier Semestern geht schon in Ordnung.
Ich kann Spanisch ohne Spanisch zu können.
Ein Semester mal 500€ Studiengebühren mal 1.400 Studenten macht 700.000€. Anscheinend nicht genug um Putzen zu bezahlen. Die Böden sind dreckig
Beamer gehen auch ohne Fernbedienungen, auf die Tische steigen ist erstens völlig hygienisch und zweitens sicherheitstechnisch völlig unbedenklich. Filter reinigen brauch auch niemand.
WLAN ist so teuer, dass man mehr als zwei APs kaum bezahlen kann.
Meine WLAN-Antenne ist wesentlich stärker als die aller anderen. Ergo sind alle anderen Loser.
Den ganzen Tag sitzen ist nicht gut für den Rücken.
Ich bin zu faul etwas anderes zu tun als den ganzen Tag sitzen.
…und noch viel mehr.

Nach acht Monaten...

Tue, 15 May 2007 15:07:15 +0200

Ja, na und?

Petition gegen Wahlcomputer

Fri, 20 Oct 2006 15:42:37 +0200

Nach einer langen Zeit mal wieder etwas in meinem Blog... :)

Habe grade folgendes im heise.de-Newsticker gefunden und gleich unterzeichnet: Petition: Wahlrecht: Stimmabgabe mit Wählgeräten.

Jeder dem die Demokratie am Herzen liegt sollte diese Petition meiner Meinung nach unbedingt unterschreiben. Wahlcomputer haben in einer wirklichen Demokratie einfach nichts verloren!

How you know that I should be learning...

Tue, 02 May 2006 22:50:40 +0200

I write blog entries instead :-)

I have to answer questions concerning DBMS for my lecture tomorrow and I cherrypicked the questions concerning MySQL. Kathrin, I know you read this: three down, only one to go!

windowmaker.org is down, for a week or so now... I like Window Maker, I really do. But I think I will be looking at FVWM a little closer now.

And, for a little bragging: I will pin that medal to my chest! Thanks, Emperor! (An obscure Star Trek reference which you are not supposed to get ;-))

What do you know...

Mon, 10 Apr 2006 16:35:30 +0200

...people actually do read these blogs (hi Kathrin ;-)). I had a discussion with jj on Saturday where he mentioned not being sure if this blogs ever get read by anyone to which I replied that I have the answers to the questions about the EU patent consultation which his current blog entry is all about lying in my home directory because of his blog entry :-)

Oh and yes, I have sent them to given email address. I suggest you do the same (i.e. answering the questionnaire).

I am stupid, am I not?

Mon, 20 Feb 2006 12:39:10 +0100

I do not see it. How do I change the text of a folder? Following this forum thread works for my "root" directory (and is btw most ugly imho ... it is so damn nonobvious). But this does not work for any subdirectory. I have (will have :-)) created a thread in the smoothers forum so as not to rely on the CMS gods actually finding this.

And then there is poldi:

Guess what I will be doing the instance I get home today :-).

New images and card reader

Sun, 19 Feb 2006 21:49:01 +0100

Once in a while I get bored. This time I got bored right after cleaning up a little bit (and by "little bit" I mean "three hours non-stop"). I found an Abalone board game I got as I was a little child. It always fascinated me. Not because of the game itself (I rarely played it) but because of the marbles: plain white and black. This is what resulted from my finding:

Also my Omnikey Cardman 4040 arrived... I doubt I know all the possibilities of my fsfe cryptocard just yet :-).

Metalglass Plussy

Wed, 28 Dec 2005 22:37:53 +0100

Behold the Metalglass Plussy! :-) I made this after some very encouraging correspondence with Georg Greve.

Right now I am tired so just the interesting stuff:

You can get the "source" xcf.gz from here, because fsfe.org's CMS will not accept a file at that size (2741 kilobytes). It is licensed under the same license as the JPEGs.
The JPEGs are available in 1024x768, 1280x800, 1280x960 and 1600x1200. Well, appearantly the CMS resizes the images at will (BOO! HISS!) so you might as well get them here: 1024x768, 1280x800, 1280x960 and 1600x1200

I hope you enjoy them as much as I enjoyed making them!

Artwork

Thu, 08 Dec 2005 15:06:36 +0100

With all the fuzz going on about the Vienna manipulations (go Georg, kick some b*tt :-)) it really feels a little bit out of proportions, but in the artwork section there is something entitled "Fellowship Logo" by me. Of course it is the logo, or Plussy. But it was meant as a Firefox throbber. I did not talk about it in my blog because this "Fellowship Logo" is only the moving part which is displayed while a page is loading, and because I did not test it with FF 1.5.

The still part gets corrupted on upload an is useless that way. Originally I wanted to wait until this is fixed, but as the other part has already been published you can get the still part here.

Put them both in your "chrome" directory (on my Debian Etch it is ~/.mozilla/firefox/7jsf8tgk.default/chrome) and append

toolbar #navigator-throbber { list-style-image: url("fsfe-still.gif") !important; }
toolbar #navigator-throbber[busy="true"] { list-style-image: url("fellowship_logo_imagelarge.gif") !important; }

to your userChrome.css in the same directory (if you have to create it first, use the userChrome-example.css and keep the @namespace intact).

New wallpapers and a re-creation of Georg's Fellow me button

Sat, 03 Dec 2005 00:04:29 +0100

Okay, about a month ago my name was (surprisingly at least to me) mentioned in the Fellowship Bulletin No. 1 because I created a Fellowship of FSFE wallpaper. I did do another one (XCF and SVG "sources", 800x600, 1024x768, 1152x864, 1280x800, 1280x960 and 1280x1024) but have not found the time to upload it until now (examinations looming ahead... to paraphrase a friend of mine: "Christmas? What is a 'Christmas'?"). It is dedicated to the first year of the Fellowship and to the darker sides in us (we all have them, right? ;-))

I also (re-)created the "Fellow me: Say NO! to Vienna Manipulations" button Georg Greve created. There are two versions: one with sharp edges for the logo and one with blurry ones... by the way, does the logo have a name?!?

Finally a plea to the fsfe.org CMS demigods: please make webdav or (S)FTP possible! It is _really_ annoying to upload 10 files at once... and with really I actually mean REALLY!

Oh how I hate thee!

Sun, 30 Oct 2005 19:32:38 +0100

Linux 2.6.14 is out. Very fine, indeed. I downloaded the patch-2.6.14.bz2 (4.2 megabytes over a 5-30 kilobyte/s wireless connection...), applied it, compiled it (into a .deb), installed it and suspended my laptop because my lecture was over. I did not boot into 2.6.14 anymore.

Instead of heading home I went to visit my cousin, who also owns a Toshiba M30-951. As his weekend did start some hours earlier he already had time to play with 2.6.14. He greeted me with "Suspend doesn't work with the new kernel."

With my last breath, I spit at thee; For hate’s sake, I stab at thee!

Damn NVidia! Damn friggin' proprietary nvidia kernel module! The instance the nvidia kernel module is loaded, the laptop does not suspend anymore! It does not have to be used at all! If I use nv as the X.org driver suspending works. But if the nvidia kernel module is loaded, e.g. as a leftover of earlier nvidia-X.org-experiments, suspending does not work...