Password Managers

We all have a large number of passwords to look after- web sites, email accounts, user accounts. How to remember them? Password managers in web browsers help a lot, but they don't remember everything, and we still need to record email and user account passwords- either for other users we've set up or for ourselves on other computers. One option is to simply write them down- perfectly safe in a private place. I have a lot of usernames and passwords scribbled down in an old notebook. Trying to be more organised recently, I started typing them into a text file in my user directory. No bad people have access to my computer, so not really a problem. But just in case, I wondered whether I should encrypt the passwords file in some way. A recent thread on the Debian forum discussed password managers, so I thought I'd give some a try- all available in the Debian repositories.

The first I tried (it seems to be the most popular on the Debian forum thread) was KeePassX. It's a cross platform application and uses Qt4, and at first the GUI didn't fit into my desktop, but using qtconfig-qt4, I was able to get the GUI to use GTK+, like the rest of my desktop GUI's.
A useful feature is AutoType, which will automatically enter username and password details on web pages.

Then I tried Password Gorilla, another cross-platform application. This one required the installation of some cryptographic libraries as dependencies. (I haven't looked into the relative security of encryption methods or library used.) The GUI on this program is seriously old fashioned, and glitchy too- the right click menu disappears before you can select an action. The GUI also locked up for me a couple of times.


I also tried a couple of native Gnome applications. GPass is a simple password manager for Gnome.


Revelation is another.

Both are pretty basic (if competent) applications, although lacking the more advanced features of KeePassX like auto type.

Blue Boot

Here's a Plymouth theme I knocked up using the Moreblue Orbit wallpaper (which is in the Debian desktop-base folder), and the Debian Vizta Plymouth theme.
I've added the Moreblue Orbit wallpaper as a background image to the theme, as described here, changed the Debian logo used to the standard logo, and changed the position the logo swarm appears by editing the Plymouth script.
The GDM splash screen is just the Moreblue Orbit wallpaper minus the Debian logo.
In contrast to my dark Plymouth theme, the lack of integration between Plymouth and the GDM greeter is obvious- the screen turns black for several seconds and the Gnome cursor timer appears. Plymouth themes in Fedora go straight from the Plymouth theme to the GDM splash- without a black screen appearing, so I imagine better integration will arrive at some point in Debian.

Internet Explorer destroyed

Here's a report from Pwn2Own, where hackers try to pwn various browsers for prizes.

Internet Explorer 8 was utterly destroyed by the security researcher Stephen Fewer who used three various techniques crack through the IE 8′s security parts such as ASLR/DEP. He also managed to escape the protected mood of the IE 8 and that was a quite a mesmerizing feat by a independent researcher. Here is what Aarion Portnoy, the organizer of Pwn2Own said about the amazing feat -

“He used three vulnerabilities to bypass ASLR and DEP, but also escape Protected Mode. That’s something we’ve not seen at Pwn2Own before,” Aarion Portnoy

A good excuse to post the wallpaper above by Joshua Holbrook.

File permissions

I've been having some problems sharing files between users on my computer. So have others, it seems. But I don't think the problem was a bug- rather my failure to use the GUI properly. Now possible the GUI is not very intuitive, but that's another question.
I'd copied some files from my external hard drive into my home directory, and was trying to give permission to another user to read all the files in the directory, but the "Apply Permissions to Enclosed Files" button didn't seem to be working.
I think I worked out what I was doing wrong. Copying the file from the external disk meant that group access was set to none on files.


Trying to set file permissions for other users to read the file would fail without setting Group>File access to Read-only in the drop down menu in the folder permissions menu, as well as setting file access to other users to Read and write, before hitting the Apply Permissions to Enclosed Files button.


The behaviour of the drop down boxes is a little perplexing. Upon opening the folder permissions menu, the drop down boxes show "---". If an action selected from the box will not change any attribute of an enclosed file (for example, all the files are already Read-only for the named group). Once Apply Permissions to Enclosed Files is clicked, the drop down boxes will again show "---". It would be useful to get a message saying No attributes will change or File attributes have been changed.


Finally, I noticed that moving files from one users account to another's would leave the owner of the files set as the first user's name, and also the group, making it impossible to change file permissions. Copying the files over means the new files are owned by the user to whose account they have been transferred. To change the owner if necessary, use the chown command. The command below will set owner and group of a directory and file contents to the new user name.

$ chown -R username:username somedir

It seems that Gnome is behaving logically in the way permissions are handled by the GUI, but that that logic is not always intuitive to the user, hence the confusion here. Bruno Girin's post attempts to explain, and hopefully this post will prove useful to somebody in similar confusion to mine. Maybe the Gnome developers could also make the permissions menu a little more intuitive to users.

Nautilus location bar

It used to be possible to switch between button and text-mode in the Nautilus location bar, but this function was removed some time ago. It's sometimes useful to switch. Rebel Zero describes how to switch permanently, or temporarily from the now default setting of buttons to text.

Skype in Debian

A friend recommended Skype as an alternative to MSN for video chat- so I thought I'd give it a go. Of course I also have to persuade the people I want to chat with to install it, but that will come later.
I'd already bookmarked the Debian Skype Wiki, intending to install Skype at some point. Checking the page again, I found that installation is easy for i386 platforms at least. There is a Skype repository, although there doesn't seem to be a key, so installing brings up a security warning. I used Synaptic to add the repository, update sources and install, rather than edit the sources file and use the command line to update and install- both methods work.
Registering with Skype was easy, but my webcam didn't work. Skype recognised the camera, and the blue light on the camera would flash briefly after hitting the Test button, but no image.
The solution turned out to be the same one I'd used for my webcam not working in Meebo (the web-based chat program that allows me to use MSN on Linux).
It seems that Skype has problems using the latest webcam interface libraries on Linux (not just Debian) and the solution is to tell it to use older libraries.
Simply start Skype from a terminal with this command:

LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib/libv4l/v4l2convert.so skype

[Update: Ray in a comment says that the above command didn't work for him, but a similar command did:

LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib/libv4l/v4l1compat.so skype

By coincidence, I came across an explanation on the Arch Linux Wiki webcam page today of what the two commands do and when to use them. It is a little technical, but it's not a problem just to try both and see which works- actually both do for me.]

For convenience, save the command as a script: create a new document on the desktop, in Preferences make it executable, add the following to the file and save.

#!/bin/sh
LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib/libv4l/v4l2convert.so skype

(The first line tells the computer that this is a script.) Double click on the file and select Run to launch Skype with working web cam.
Skype may of course fix their program to work with newer webcam libraries in the future- so check after any updates- maybe Skype will work with webcams when launched normally at some point in the future.

Quod Libet

Rhythmbox (the music player that comes with Debian) is pretty good. Fine most of the time. But it does have a problem with compilation albums. Investigating the issue before, I'd found that Banshee will play compilation albums correctly, but in the process of installing it on Squeeze I noticed it has an obsolete dependency bug, so I gave it a miss. On a whim I tried Quod Libet again. Lenny came with version 1 which didn't impress me too much, but Squeeze has version 2 which is a big improvement. It recognised my compilation albums correctly- and what's more its excellent tag editor allowed me to fix some tagging errors I hadn't noticed before.
The default GUI is pretty basic, can be customised to show a paned browser, album covers, a search feature, playlists etc. (These features are also available in a separate window.)

The basic GUI:


Album cover view:


The Tag Editor:


The download album art plugin:


Quod Libet comes with many plugins that can be enabled if desired. I really liked the album cover search feature which works really well- no more Google searches and file saving- it's all automatic.
I also used the notify plugin to get new track notifications, and the tray icon plugin to put the music player in the notification area rather than close it completely. (I like to keep the bottom panel for documents and keep my music player separate.) This is probably the weakest feature of the player (although it is only a plugin.) Hovering over the Quod Libet icon only gives track information- not album art and track progress like other players. The panel icon is also indistinct when paused (a bug?)
[Update: not a bug. The plugin superimposes the Gnome paused icon (which depends on the theme selected) over the Quod Libet icon. Unfortunately in a dark panel, the Quod Libet icon does not display well, as it is black with a white border (so only the border shows. Editing the Quod Libet icon to white helps.]
Other plugins worth a look would be the MusicBrainz and CDDB lookup plugins for identifying audio tracks. (I looked previously at other programs using MusicBrianz and CDDB.)
Despite the minor gripe about the tray icon plugin, I'll give Quod Libet five stars for handling compilation albums, having one of the best tag editors around, a brilliant album cover finder and an elegant and customisable GUI. And I haven't looked at all the features yet- for example, Quod Libet claims to be better able to handle large music libraries than other players.