nion's blog

I just installed a munin-node on my linksys wrt54g running OpenWRT kamikaze 7.07 for general monitoring purposes to monitor my router (OpenWRT) from the file server (Debian) running munin and of course also a node. The installation and configuration is pretty straight forward.

1. Install microperl and xinetd:
$ ipkg install microperl xinetd

2. Get the munin-node package and install it:
$ wget http://home.ifi.uio.no/~espebra/munin-node/munin-node_1.2.5-1_mipsel.ipk
$ ipkg install munin-node_1.2.5-1_mipsel.ipk

3. Add the munin TCP port to /etc/services to start munin via xinetd:
$ echo "munin 4949/tcp" >> /etc/services

4. Set the hostname of the node in /etc/munin/munin-node.conf and configure xinetd to allow connections on port 4949 from your munin server in /etc/xinet.d/munin-node:
service munin
{
 port = 4949
 socket_type = stream
 wait = no
 server = /usr/bin/munin-node
 user = root
 group = root
 only_from = <YOURMUNINSERVER-IP>
}

5. Start and enable xinetd on boot:
$ /etc/init.d/xinetd start && /etc/init.d/xinetd enable

You may want to also adjust your iptables rule set.

6. Try if you can connect from <YOURMUNINSERVER> to the munin-node client running on the router by:
$ echo quit | netcat eris 4949
This should result in # munin node at foo.bar

And finally you have to add the munin-node client to the configuration on the server side via /etc/munin/munin.conf:
[foo.bar]
    address <CLIENT-IP>
    use_node_name yes

That's it. Now your server should collect data from the client and display it on its webserver (check /var/log/munin/munin-graph.log).
On the client side you can configure what data to collect by deleting or adding files in /etc/munin/plugins. You can also easily create your own plugins.

If you don't know how the whole stuff looks, have a look on public munin data graph examples on: http://munin.ping.uio.no. If you encounter problems the debugging munin plugins document is really helpful (apart from munin-run which is not available on OpenWRT).

Reading this and the AdiumX wiki it seems like MSN is censoring IM on the server-side.

However trying with ak who is actually using Adium X this seem to be bullshit^WFUD since our little .info test conversation worked flawlessly.

"According to communications director of MSN Sweden, Jessica Börjel, this is being done to protect users against exploits and worms spreading through the MSN Messenger service."

According to what I know about big companies they make official statements, not just some foobar in a private mail. So can someone please enlighten me?

Anyway, stop crying guys, there are better alternatives.

UPDATE: They really censor!
It seems to be no FUD, it seems to be true. But it's not just the .info keyword but the whole URL. So if you send http://test.info/download.php?foo=bar this will be blocked. At least you get an error message in AdiumX, in centericq/im you don't get one
Shame on Microsoft yet another time, especially for this lame approach of muddling security with obscurity, but as said there are better alternatives

Nearly two years passed and there are still people out there who don't know 'ControlMaster' which was introduced in OpenSSH 4.0.

ControlMaster is set to no by default.
To quote man 5 ssh_config:

Enables the sharing of multiple sessions over a single network
connection. When set to ``yes'' ssh will listen for connections
on a control socket specified using the ControlPath argument.
Additional sessions can connect to this socket using the same
ControlPath with ControlMaster set to ``no'' (the default).
These sessions will try to reuse the master instance's network
connection rather than initiating new ones, but will fall back to
connecting normally if the control socket does not exist, or is
not listening.

Setting this to ``ask'' will cause ssh to listen for control con-
nections, but require confirmation using the SSH_ASKPASS program
before they are accepted (see ssh-add(1) for details). If the
ControlPath can not be opened, ssh will continue without connecting
to a master instance.

This is pretty useful. Set ControlMaster to 'auto' (or autoask) if you want to use an existing socket, create a new one if you can't connect to an existing socket or there is none existing.

This has the nice (depends on how paranoit you are) side effect that you gain speed and if you login via password
on a server, you don't have to type your password every while you login because you can use
an already authenticated socket.

cat >> ~/.ssh/config << EOF
Host *
ControlPath ~/.ssh/master-%r@%h:%p
ControlMaster auto
EOF

Be sure to check the permissions of the ControlPath so noone else can use your existing socket.