Vargolino

Chroma subsampling 4:4:4 test

I use a TV as a monitor on my PC so every now and then it powers on with a few settings changed (probable due to nvidia driver updates or something like it) and it normally changes the Output color format, from RGB to YCbCr444 or YCbCr420. I’m not going to pretend I understand it, I just want it to look good (to me) so I usually look for this forum post:

https://hardforum.com/threads/chroma-subsampling-where-it-is.2002403

Looking for this image:

I also found this other one

https://testufo.com/chroma#

That show it in motion also trying to show more subsampling nuances.

Apt sources.list for old Debian Versions

https://debiansupport.com/mirrors is the original source of this information.

Not infrequently I need to install a new package in an older Debian instalation and it often takes me two or three clicks into the search to find the information I need, so here they are:

Depending on how old is the distribution, you may need to update the debian archive mirror keyrings (currently to the 2021.1.1+dev11u1 version):

curl -O http://archive.debian.org/debian/pool/main/d/debian-archive-keyring/debian-archive-keyring_2021.1.1+deb11u1_all.deb
dpkg -i debian-archive-keyring_2021.1.1+deb11u1_all.deb

Also if you need to access the internet over a proxy you can try this:

echo 'Acquire::http::proxy "socks5h://localhost:1080";' > /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/010proxy

Debian 14 (Forky) – Unreleased

deb https://deb.debian.org/debian forky main
deb https://deb.debian.org/debian-security forky-security main
deb https://deb.debian.org/debian/ forky-updates main

Caution: Forky does not yet have security support.

Debian 13 (Trixie) – Current Stable

Active mirrors:

deb https://deb.debian.org/debian trixie main
deb https://deb.debian.org/debian-security trixie-security main
deb https://deb.debian.org/debian/ trixie-updates main

Debian 12 (Bookworm)

Active mirrors:

deb http://deb.debian.org/debian bookworm main contrib non-free-firmware non-free
deb http://deb.debian.org/debian bookworm-updates main contrib non-free-firmware non-free
deb http://security.debian.org/debian-security bookworm-security main contrib non-free-firmware non-free

Debian 11 (Bullseye)

Active mirrors:

deb http://deb.debian.org/debian bullseye main contrib non-free
deb http://deb.debian.org/debian bullseye-updates main contrib non-free
deb http://security.debian.org/debian-security bullseye-security main contrib non-free

Debian 10 (Buster)

Archive mirrors:

deb http://archive.debian.org/debian/ buster main contrib non-free
deb http://archive.debian.org/debian/ buster-proposed-updates main contrib non-free
deb http://archive.debian.org/debian-security buster/updates main contrib non-free

Debian 9 (Stretch)

Archive mirrors:

deb http://archive.debian.org/debian/ stretch main contrib non-free
deb http://archive.debian.org/debian/ stretch-proposed-updates main contrib non-free
deb http://archive.debian.org/debian-security stretch/updates main contrib non-free

Debian 8 (Jessie)

Archive mirrors:

deb http://archive.debian.org/debian/ jessie main contrib non-free
deb http://archive.debian.org/debian-security jessie/updates main contrib non-free

Debian 7 (Wheezy)

Archive mirrors:

deb http://archive.debian.org/debian/ wheezy main contrib non-free
deb http://archive.debian.org/debian-security wheezy/updates main contrib non-free

Change “Decode as…” of a port range in Wireshark

When analyzing a network capture it is common to need to change how a stream is being treated by Wireshark, either because the port assignment is dynamic or is not supported, or both.

It is possible to change this, one stream at a time, and each time the whole capture needs to be rescanned. This time can add up.

This is an example of how to change the internal dissector of a UDP port range (30000-60000) to RTP.

Open the menu, Tools > Lua Console

Paste this code:

local udp_port = DissectorTable.get("udp.port")
local rtp = Dissector.get("rtp")
udp_port:add("30000-60000", rtp)
reload_lua_plugins()
print("Done")

Click Evaluate

It will rescan the file and all UDP streams in the range will be interpreted as an RTP stream.

This was based on the example available here:
https://wiki.wireshark.org/Lua/Examples#using-lua-to-register-protocols-to-more-ports

Proxy internet access trough SSH

In a scenario where one machine has access to the internet, and a remote machine does not (due to firewall restrictions), but is accessible via a VPN or something. There is a way to provide internet access for this remote machine.

One way this can be achieved with dynamic port forwarding in SSH, at least for HTTP requests.

Suppose hostA is the local machine, which can access the internet; and hostB is the machine that is accessible from hostA but its access do the internet is blocked by a firewall.

From hostA, connect to hostB:

ssh -R localhost:1080 user@hostB

If already connected, try the escape code ~C (after an <ENTER>) and enter the command and <ENTER>

-R localhost:1080

This will open a socks proxy in hostB in port 9000, that will forward connections through the SSH connection to be coming out of hostA.

Next step is to setup this proxy to be used by hostB. For several terminal applications its possible to set this up by exporting a few environment variables.

export http_proxy="socks5h://localhost:1080"
export https_proxy="socks5h://localhost:1080"

This way, the HTTP (and HTTPS) requests should be redirected via our new proxy. Using "socks5h" will also resolve the DNS for these requests via proxy, "socks5" will try to resolve DNS locally and then make the request to the proxy. This should work for most applications that uses HTTP requests through cURL (older wget versions do no support socks proxies).

Git will use the environment variables (as it uses libcurl for HTTP requests) but you can configure so that only git uses the proxy, or maybe only some repositories:

# configure for this repository only
git config http.proxy socks5h://localhost:1080
# configure for all repositories
git config --global http.proxy socks5h://localhost:1080

Of course circumventing firewall restrictions with this can be a security hazard and can be against company security rules.

How to override DNS for private networks with BIND RPZ

In our private network we have services that are served to the internet and should also be used by the users sitting inside the network (physically or via VPN). We have a main DNS servers in a cloud provider and it is serving service.example.com pointing to our firewall internet facing address and an internal DNS server with all the same records duplicated except service.example.com that is pointing to its address reachable in the private network.

This arrangement causes some maintenance trouble because every time we add a new domain to the main DNS, we need to duplicate this entry in the internal server.

Some time ago I looked up how to solve this a little more elegantly and found out about response-policy-zone feature in BIND. With this set up we can have our internal server configured to only have entries for the domains that need to have different responses in our private network without the need to duplicate all other entries.

Step-by-step

Configure a response-policy in the options:

options {
  [...]
  response-policy { zone "rpz"; };
}

Create the zone you referenced in the response-policy ("rpz")

zone "rpz" {
  type master;
  file "rpz.db";
};

Then populate the zone file referenced ("rpz.db")

$TTL 300
@    IN SOA localhost. root.localhost. (
          2023091201  ; serial
          86400       ; refresh, seconds
          7200        ; retry, seconds
          3600000     ; expire, seconds
          86400       ; minimum, seconds
)

@        IN NS dns.google.

; you need the full domain here, without ending with a period
production.example.com   IN A 192.168.0.10
dev.example.com          IN A 192.168.0.10

bad.ads.example.com      IN A 127.0.0.1
evil.domain.example.com  IN A 127.0.0.1

reload the configs and you should be good to go.

References:
https://www.redpill-linpro.com/sysadvent/2015/12/08/dns-rpz.html

https://dnsrpz.info/

Quick Profiling Python Code

The cProfile is my go-to Python profiler as it is part of the default installation, no extra modules needed. When profilig with cProfile it will generate an output with the call count and spent times for each called fuction. The main way I use it is specifying an output file for later inspection:

python3 -m cProfile -o output_file myscript.py

This will generate a file named output_file to be opened and sorted and analysed later. This file can be read with the pstats module (which is also a default module) by using:

python3 -m pstats output_file

You can call sort without arguments to see the options, but sort time and sort cumulative are the first ones I usually try and then stats will show the ordered data.

There is also snakeviz which is a visualizer for the cProfile output file format. But this one you will need to install with:

python3 -m pip install snakeviz

References:

Accessing corporate GIT repositories without a VPN

I usually just write here so I can remember these things later, but this time is something to be found by others.

So, it is normal to have our git repositories accessible in the public internet (access controlled or not), but it is possible that your repositories are only accessible within your corporate network, and you would need to be inside the company or use a VPN to be able to use it.

One of the ways that this can be circumvented is to use a port forward with an SSH connection, when updating some web app in an outside development environment, for example.

Port forward is straightforward:

ssh user@remote_host -R 10443:git.company.com:443

this will listen for local requests to port 10443 inside remote_host and redirect them trough the SSH connection to git.company.com:443.

This way it should be easy to clone, pull and push directly to the centralized repository

git clone https://localhost:10443/path_to/repository.git

And that’s it.

Of course you will need to be using a computer that is able to access the repository, either from inside or using a VPN, but the development environment does not need to.

In time, maybe check with the company’s IT department if it’s OK to do this! 😉

Hope this is useful for someone!

Check if certificate and key matches

The easiest way is probably to check if the modulus of the public key embedded in the certificate / private key / CSR request.

certificate: openssl x509 –noout –modulus –in <filename>

private key: openssl rsa –noout –modulus –in <filename>

request: openssl req -noout -modulus -in <filename>

Change keyboard Compose behavior

For some time I’ve been wanting to change the default behavior of my keyboard (on an Ubuntu 18.04 machine) when using the composition keys (dead-keys).
The default behavior for the double quote key (") to be a compose key, in order to be able to input charaters like ä ("+a)and ö ("+o), so if I wanted a ", I would need to press "+spacebar. I was used to just double tap the " key and get the " (from the Windows days, I think), so I wanted that, but the default is the daeresis sign (¨).

Don’t know if it’s the setup I have (a default american english keyboard with a PT-BR locale)
So my input source is: “English (US, intl., with dead keys)”
And formats are defined as: “Brasil”

After several searches and a few dead ends (ibus and ibus-tables), I finally ended up with a solution, for my use case anyway. It turns out that the compose sequences were controlled by the files in

/usr/share/X11/locale

And the file I needed to change was this one:

/usr/share/X11/locale/pt_BR.UTF-8/Compose

The files are quote self explanatory and they seem to function in a hierarchical way, with the more specialized layouts including the more generic ones and overriding where needed. The pt_BR file included the en_US one, and the values I needed overriding were in the english one. Copying the relevant section and changing the end result was easy and I just added this to the end of the file.

<dead_diaeresis> <dead_diaeresis>   : "\""   diaeresis # DIAERESIS
<Multi_key> <quotedbl> <quotedbl>   : "\""   diaeresis # DIAERESIS
<dead_acute> <dead_acute>           : "'"   acute # ACUTE ACCENT
<Multi_key> <apostrophe> <apostrophe>   : "'"   acute # ACUTE ACCENT

As I could not find an easy way to reload this, restarting the X server solved the rest.

MariaDB replication not auto reconnecting

A few weeks ago I’ve migrated some services to a new server and this new server was running Debian 9. One of the changes from version 8 to 9 was that the default mysql-server package installed MariaDB instead of MySQL. This should be OK as MariaDB is supposed to be compatible with MySQL.

This service needed to be a replication slave with another instance which is not directly accessible to the internet, and is running an old version of MySQL. The setup as straightforward: setup the ssh tunnel; imported the current data with the master settings; configured table name translation, issued the set master to ... and start slave; commands and voilà. All is well.

In the next few weeks I kept receiving alerts that the replication had stopped. I was always blaming the ssh tunnel that kept going down. But the tunnel was being automatically brought back up and MariaDB was not reconnecting back automatically, needing me to manually issue stop slave; start slave; in order to bring replication back.

I’ve tried to change the ssh scripts to use autossh (very nice, by the way), but the only thing it changed is that my checked never needed to bring the tunnel back up.

After a bit of search, I’ve found this article in MariaDB Knowledge Base: https://mariadb.com/kb/en/library/replication-slave-loses-connection-and-does-not-recover/. Changing the default character set from utf8mb4 to utf8 in the slave (the master does not support the new utf8mb4 charset), basically search and replace all utf8mb4 to utf8. The replication issue stopped happening.

utf8m4 is the “new” UTF-8 character set that was added to MySQL in version 5.5.3 to address the issue that not all UTF-8 codepoints could be stored in 3-bytes, as explained in this article from Thomas Shay.

I just wished that MariaDB had given me nicer error messages explaining why the connection was broken and why it was not trying to reconnect back. All the search for maximum-retries, master_retry_count and global variables were no help at all.