mralexgray's questions

According to my ssh_config file...

Configuration data is parsed as follows:

1. command line options
2. user-specific file
3. system-wide file

With that said, (and yes, I know, I could scour man ssh_config AND man ssh, and (hope) for documented defaults).. how can I "print out" the active configuration, for ALL current settings. For example, something like...

ssh -o Tunnel=ethernet servername -p 2210 --print-config

SSH-2.0-OpenSSH_7.0
 Command Line Options
   Port 2210
   Host servername
 Command Line Configurations
   Tunnel Ethernet
 Config File
   ...
 SSH Defaults
   ...
   AddressFamily any (???)
   BatchMode no
   ...

This would let you know explicitly exactly what is set, and why. I called out AddressFamily specifically, as it is a perfect example of a configuration option with NO documented default value. From man ssh_config...

Specifies which address family to use when connecting. Valid arguments are any, inet (use IPv4 only), or inet6 (use IPv6 only).

Ugh! Thanks for any constructive suggestions (not just a bunch of RTFM's). ?

For years I've used the strong-armed-duo of these two suckers...

sudo chmod +a "localadmin allow read,write,append,execute,\
 delete,readattr,writeattr,readextattr,writeextattr,\
 readsecurity,writesecurity,chown"

sudo chmod +a "localadmin allow list,search,add_file,add_subdirectory,\
 delete_child,readattr,writeattr,readextattr,\
 writeextattr,readsecurity,writesecurity,chown"

to, for what I figured was a recursive, and all-encompassing, whole-volume-go-ahead for each and every privilege available (for a user, localadmin). Nice when I, localadmin, want to "do something" without a lot of whining about permissions, etc.

The beauty is, this method obviates the necessity to change ownership / group membership, or executable bit on anything. But is it recursive? I am beginning to think, it's not. If so, how do I do THAT? And how can one check something like this? Adding this single-user to the ACL doesn't show up in the Finder, so… Alright, cheers.

I've seen plenty of robot.txt stuff, and some mod-rewrite solutions that looked promising… but haven't been able to find a simple solution to block Spiders / Scrapers / whoever the hell I want to block… I'd rather do this by hostname / domain, as it seems simpler than relying on user-agents, etc…

For example, say I were to see this in Apache logs..

msnbot-207-46-192-48.search.msn.com - - [07/Dec/2011:23:01:41 -0500] "GET /%3f/$/bluebox/blog/2011/iphoto/ HTTP/1.1" 404 366

ok… I want to prevent *.search.msn.com from ever coming here, or any of my sites - in any of my folders - VHOST or otherwise…

Typically, I have MANY <VirtualHost *.80>'s setup, and DO NOT want to have to repeat the config for each host.. In that same vein, I have many DocumentRoot's… and putting some file in each of them, aka .htaccess really isn't an option..

I had been using something in httpd.conf that resembled…

RewriteEngine on

RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^BadBot [OR]

RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://go.away/`

How can i use the hostnames provided by UseCanonicalName On to blanket-Deny all any domain I so desired?

I know this is possible with a botched unTAR, although I can't recall the exact command.... but is it possible to "undo" a recent "unzip" command, in this case, using the mac terminal?

This is using /usr/bin/unzip on 10.7, with UnZip 5.52.

Lets say I started with a folder structure like this....

admin$ pwd
    /usr/local/src
admin$ ls
    pots            pans           scrubbers.zip
admin$ unzip scrubbers.zip
admin$ ls
    pots               pans           scrubbers.zip
    zebraturd.doc      README.md      morestuffididntmeantoputhere.py      cleanme.junkmail                 
    surfraw.2.html     scrubbers.explaination

how can i just "rezip" or parse the zip file in reverse?

there is a section in the zip file that sorta lists the files in the archive, although quite seriously mangled.. for example..

 0L'†C  0L'†C  !∏V≤B PK&Å‘:√@`¢îF3$ Lmacos/lib/libexiv2.2.1.0.dylib

without manually sifting through that list, is there a magic bullet for this?

I tend to prefix oft-used files and folders with the "accent grave" character (non-shift tilde, the back-tick, or plain-old accent, whathaveyou..), as it is easy to get at, and let's me sort things alphabetically, while letting me choose to show a few items on the top. It works nicely, except when I go to access these files via the CLI or SSH/SCP.

If I try to run a command, calling the file unescaped ↝ it kicks me into an interactive session.. for example ↯

# scp -r dns.local:/`Downloads/CrazyRussianCars/ ~/
↩
>

Yet if I try the logical solution ↯

# scp -r dns.local:/\`Downloads/CrazyRussianCars/ ~/
↩
bash: -c: line 0: unexpected EOF while looking for matching ``'
bash: -c: line 1: syntax error: unexpected end of file

I know the "new" rule is to use a syntax like export NOW=$(date) vs export NOW= `date` (in fact, I had a bear of a time even writing the latter in SE MD syntax...) but this is unrelated to the ENV or any script...

Note: This is a Mac OS X environment, but that said, the GUI has never had a problem dealing with this character on a day-to-day basis, and usually, if there's going to be a syntax problem in the Terminal, Apple does a pretty good job of disabling the behavior in the GUI... Not sure if this is a bug, or if the technique for dealing with such paths is simply obscure.. but so far, I have been un-able to find a way "to escape it"?

It's really great letting DNSMasq take care of DHCP / DNS, as it "just knows" everything... as it should, considering it dished out the addresses to the hosts...

However, it seems (to me) - impossible to separate the "routing logic" from the DHCP portion of the program for most SoHo routers..

For example -

1. A location's router cannot run DNSMasq.
2. The LAN is served by a single IP / connection with NAT routing handled by WAN gateway router...

3. Internal DNS and DNS forwarding is provided by an Internal host, possibly with ports 53 forwarded to it, etc.

4. I've been too sure it would't work to ever try, but can you hand off the DHCP addressing responsibilities to the internal DNSMasq server (on a private IP), while still allowing a dedicated hardware router to serve as the external gateway..?

It seems like the address allocation is inextricably connected to the address allocation process, but that just seems so primitive..... Would a router be able to figure out the port-mapping and create the routing tables, if it had not allocated the addresses itself, possibly ARPing the whole thing as it goes along, or something?

It's nice and all that one can "go crazy" adding and subtracting ACL's from files/folders till the cows come home... but when doing it from the command line, say for example..

$ chmod +a# 1 "admin deny delete" foo 
$ ls -lde foo 
 drwxr-xr-x + 2 apl apl 68 Jul 19 18:32 foo 
 0: group:admin allow delete 
 1: group:admin deny delete 
 2: user:tony allow delete

Is there an "easier" syntax that allows for "ALL" type scenarios? Since there are a total of 2^13 * 12 = 98,304 different access rights you can define it would be great if you could for example state...

$ chmod +a "staff allow all" foo 

But as far as I can tell, it ain't possible. Any extended-attribute gurus out there know of any tricks?

I use a nice (free) process manager called ATMonitor for Mac OS X that has a lot of cool hidden features... one of which is being able to click on a running process.. and set the "renice" from +20 (less priority) to -20 (highest priority).

The best part.... it sticks between restarts... SO you want XYZ to get full attention all the time.. you set it once and it's done...

I want to do the same thing (renice a process) on an iPad running a particular daemon.. But it might as well be a Debian Server, if that retards any flames for posting this question here... and I don't know how to set a renice permanently.

I can do it once, and it works fine... But the setting is lost on a reboot. I read somewhere..

Now, as for permanently resetting the priority of a process, this can't be done directly. You can fake it, however, with a shell script that starts the app and then immediately renice's it. Give that script a ".command" extension and it will be double-clickable in the GUI. Not very elegant, but it gets the job done.

But as it says.. not very elegant, and I dont think this is how ATMonitor does it....

How do I set a permanent renice level, per executable binary, independent of it's PID, when, how or why it was launched?

I've been using Macs for 25 years, and "UNIX" since OS X 10.0.. but I've never really thought much about chroot, nor have I ever really needed or wanted to...

It's a simple question, but... under what circumstances would one opt to use "chroot" on a Mac? It is indeed a built-in function from the BSD days, but I've never heard of it being used... Is the functionality part of another command-line or system-level tool that obviate the need to chroot? If so, what is the equivalent function? If not, why does it seem to never be used, referenced, or needed?

All Mac Pros / XServes have 2 gigabit wired NICs. It has always annoyed me that a: there is no way to bridge them (no BRCTL, et al. for Mac), and b: there is no way to "use" the second port, even internally, without a physically connected ethernet cable AND an active link at the other end!!

I would like to be able to use that "port" for internal DNS servers, VMWare guests, or whatever I damn well please.. without having to 1: find an ethernet cord, 2: a powered ethernet jack to plug the cord into, and 3: a powered jack that belongs to a device that won't be flooding the line with packets unrelated to what I'm trying to do.

• No combination of "sudo ifconfig en1 up" gets it done.
• I have looked through all the PMSET rules, and nothing applies to the ethernet power besides WOLP or whatever the wake-on-lan thing is called...
• I have slogged through the labryntine, and poorly documented SYSCTL options, with no apparent solution there.
• I have tried tricking it with various static IP assignments /VLAN configurations /duplicate adapters, to no avail.
• Googled it extensively. Plenty of ways to turn off ethernet when switching to airport, etc, but not this.

This is either a case of the hardware driver attempting to save power, or Apple willfully discouraging any creative uses of the hardware (which is why they virtually prohibit bridging at the kernel level (to maintain their router sales)), and I don't like it. Any idea how to force that sucker on?