Re: [gentoo-user] Re: OT: SeAndroid build on a Gentoo System?

2012-02-10 Thread Hinnerk van Bruinehsen
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On 08.02.2012 16:23, James wrote:
 Hinnerk van Bruinehsen h.v.bruinehsen at fu-berlin.de writes:
 
 
 I own a Galaxy Nexus - up to now I encountered a bug in finding
 the tools.jar of JDK (Google helped here) and a problem due to
 the fact that I use hardened for building (TEXTREL, I think).
 I'll try a stage 3 non hardened chroot later...
 
 How do you like the G. Nexus so far? Who is your (cell) service
 provider?
 
 I'm not sure I posted this link: 
 http://marc.info/?l=selinuxr=1b=201201w=4
 
 Note. Russell Coker (dev for SElinux and SEandroid) is very cool
 and has his up and running on Debian (Wheezy). If you get stuck,
 you can search him out for help. In my experiences with Russell, he
 is very friendly and helpful, particularly on the last thingy he
 is focused on, like SEandroid.
 
 thanks for keeping me posted, James
 
It seems as if I'm not able to setup a proper build-environment with
hardened (due to chroot hardening the chroot isn't an option, either).
I'll try to find time to test it on a non-hardened host or in a vm
(which seems like a bad option, too, due to hardened restrictions).


If I get any further, I'll try to post some updates.

Concerning the phone: I'm very happy with it, as it is. It's a big
upgrade from my old Wildfire.
My cell service provider is Vodafone (Germany).

With kind regards,
Hinnerk

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Re: [gentoo-user] (s)mplayer problems

2012-02-10 Thread Helmut Jarausch
On 02/08/2012 03:04:50 PM, Carlos Hendson wrote:
 On Wed, 2012-02-08 at 14:40 +0100, Helmut Jarausch wrote:
  On 02/08/2012 02:07:55 PM, Nilesh Govindrajan wrote:
   On Wed 08 Feb 2012 06:31:19 PM IST, Helmut Jarausch wrote:
Hi,
   
I need some advice.
   
Since a short time I have tremendous problems with mplayer /
   smplayer 
and I don't know why.
   
First, vlc works just fine, i.e. video and audio
   
Second, mplayer produces a segment fault within fglrx (ati-
drivers-12.1-r1 with gentoo-sources-3.2.x)
   
Third, smplayer does show the video (without a segment fault)
 but 
doesn't play audio.
   
How can I isolate the problem?
   
Many thanks for a hint,
Helmut.
   
   
   
   Run mplayer on the command line and see what error it throws.
 Paste 
   it
   
   here.
  
  Unfortunately, that's impossible.
  
  mplayer starts, opens a window and then segfaults, i.e. kills Xorg
 and 
  forces me to reboot the machine.
  
  Xorg.0.log.old shows
  
  
  Backtrace:
  [  1669.886] 0: /usr/bin/X (xorg_backtrace+0x26) [0x564f86]
  [  1669.886] 1: /usr/bin/X (0x40+0x168bc9) [0x568bc9]
  [  1669.886] 2: /lib64/libpthread.so.0 (0x7fa7aa5f4000+0x10ff0) 
  [0x7fa7aa604ff0]
  [  1669.887] 3: /usr/lib64/xorg/modules/drivers/fglrx_drv.so 
  (xs111LookupPrivate+0x22) [0x7fa7a778c372]
  [  1669.887] 4: /usr/lib64/xorg/modules/drivers/fglrx_drv.so 
  (xclLookupPrivate+0xd) [0x7fa7a7167cdd]
  [  1669.887] 5: /usr/lib64/xorg/modules/amdxmm.so (X740XvPutImage
  +0x12e) [0x7fa7a441f81e]
  [  1669.887] 6: /usr/bin/X (0x40+0x8a84e) [0x48a84e]
  [  1669.888] 7: /usr/lib64/xorg/modules/extensions/libextmod.so 
  (0x7fa7a83f8000+0xf53e) [0x7fa7a840753e]
  [  1669.888] 8: /usr/bin/X (0x40+0x36979) [0x436979]
  [  1669.888] 9: /usr/bin/X (0x40+0x2613a) [0x42613a]
  [  1669.888] 10: /lib64/libc.so.6 (__libc_start_main+0xed) 
  [0x7fa7a952b3cd]
  [  1669.888] 11: /usr/bin/X (0x40+0x2645d) [0x42645d]
  [  1669.888] Segmentation fault at address 0x20
  
  Thanks,
  Helmut.
  
 Did you read this and follow the advice to work around Xv as 
 mentioned
 in the elog?
 
 This release of ati-drivers has a crashing bug when using Xv video.
 To avoid this problem, configure your video playback software for
 OpenGL output. See https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=391193
 

Many thanks, the workaround mentioned in this link fixes the segment 
fault.
Still, audio doesn't work, yet.

Helmut.



Re: [gentoo-user] (s)mplayer problems

2012-02-10 Thread Carlos Hendson
On Fri, 2012-02-10 at 09:31 +0100, Helmut Jarausch wrote:
 Many thanks, the workaround mentioned in this link fixes the segment 
 fault.
 Still, audio doesn't work, yet. 

It seems mplayer doesn't have the codec required for the WMV format.
You should check mplayer has the win32codecs use flag enabled.  You can
do this with equery or eix (or other equivalent tools).

equery uses mplayer
eix mplayer

Use the information from the the wiki to help you pick the right flags
and required packages:
http://en.gentoo-wiki.com/wiki/MPlayer


For example, the mplayer output posted in another message has the text:

Xlib:  extension NV-GLX missing on display :0.
[vdpau] Error when calling vdp_device_create_x11: 1

The use flag description for vdpau says:

+ + vdpau   : Enables experimental VDPAU support (requires
nVidia video cards) to offload MPEG2/MPEG4/VC1/WMV CPU processing to
video card

Since you have an ATI graphics card in this machine, you can safely
disable the vdpau use flag.


Hope that helps.

Regards,
Carlos









Re: [gentoo-user] KMail

2012-02-10 Thread Mick
On Friday 10 Feb 2012 03:23:11 Frank Steinmetzger wrote:
 On Thu, Feb 09, 2012 at 06:33:12PM -0500, Daniel D Jones wrote:
  I was one of those bitten by the upgrade to KMail back in October.  After
  spending nearly two days without access to email while trying to get the
  upgrade and migration to work, I gave up and pinned KMail to version
  4.4.11.1.
  
  With the recent upgrade to KDE, I'm curious if anyone knows whether the
  bugs have been worked out and the KMail upgrade will go smoother now?
 
 I tried it as soon as the 4.8 upgrade was done. After I added an IMAP
 resource, it didn't show up in the folder pane, although its folders were
 listed in the dialog where one can select folder subscriptions (right click
 in folder pane→Manage local subscriptions).
 
 I have no interest right now to bother with it, I became fairly happy with
 mutt. ^^

Does anyone know if this fork is offering a KDEPIM that actually works?

http://www.trinitydesktop.org/
-- 
Regards,
Mick


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Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Recommended VPN Tunnel client?

2012-02-10 Thread Mick
On Friday 10 Feb 2012 04:42:51 Pandu Poluan wrote:
 On Fri, Feb 10, 2012 at 10:48, Pandu Poluan pa...@poluan.info wrote:
  Scenario: I have a server in the cloud that needs to connect to an
  internal server in the office. There are 2 incoming connections into my
  office, ISP A and ISP B. The primary connection is A, but if A goes
  down, we can use B. The app running on the cloud server has no automatic
  failover ability (i.e., if A goes down, someone must change the app's
  conf to point to B).
  
  My thought: If I can make a tunnel from the server to the FortiGate
  firewall currently guarding the HQ, the cloud app can simply be
  configured to connect to the internal IP address of the internal server.
  No need to manually change the app's conf.
  
  The need: a VPN client that:
  + can selectively send packets fulfilling a criteria (in this case, dest=
  IP address of internal server)*

As far as I know typical VPNs require the IP address (or FQDN) of the VPN 
gateway.  If yours changes because ISP A goes down then the tunnel will fail 
and be torn down.


  + has automatic failover and failback ability

Right, I don't know if one exists with this functionality - because this is 
not a typical VPN function but one offered by load balancers/fall back servers 
or routers.


  *solutions involving iptables and iproute2 are also acceptable

I am convinced that you can do that by clever enough routing on a linux box, 
but cannot recall where I last read about it.


  Can anyone point me to the right direction re: what package and the
  relevant howto?
  
  Thanks in advance.
 
 I have been doing some research, and...
 
 Do you think I can do that using HAProxy running in tcp mode?
 
 My thought goes like this: Have the cloud app connect the IP:port of
 HAProxy, and let HAProxy perform a TCP proxy (NAT?) to connect to the
 internal server via A or B according to the server checks.

I haven't used HAProxy, but would consider setting up a fallback route at the 
HQ router end.  This is also called a failover configuration.  The router 
pings one address, say ISP A and if that fails more than x times over y pings 
then it switches over the connection to ISP B.

This keeps it at a lower level in the OSI model, which is less complicated and 
therefore easier to manage.
-- 
Regards,
Mick


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Re: [gentoo-user] Recommended VPN Tunnel client?

2012-02-10 Thread Michael Mol
On Thu, Feb 9, 2012 at 10:48 PM, Pandu Poluan pa...@poluan.info wrote:
 Scenario: I have a server in the cloud that needs to connect to an internal
 server in the office. There are 2 incoming connections into my office, ISP
 A and ISP B. The primary connection is A, but if A goes down, we can use
 B. The app running on the cloud server has no automatic failover ability
 (i.e., if A goes down, someone must change the app's conf to point to B).

 My thought: If I can make a tunnel from the server to the FortiGate firewall
 currently guarding the HQ, the cloud app can simply be configured to connect
 to the internal IP address of the internal server. No need to manually
 change the app's conf.

 The need: a VPN client that:
 + can selectively send packets fulfilling a criteria (in this case, dest= IP
 address of internal server)*
 + has automatic failover and failback ability

 *solutions involving iptables and iproute2 are also acceptable

 Can anyone point me to the right direction re: what package and the relevant
 howto?

 Thanks in advance.

 Rgds,

Not exactly what you're looking for, but this might help:

http://www.ntop.org/products/n2n/

That would set up reliable visibility on layer 2. You probably want to
employ something like 802.1x on top of it.
-- 
:wq



Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Recommended VPN Tunnel client?

2012-02-10 Thread Pandu Poluan
On Feb 10, 2012 10:08 PM, Mick michaelkintz...@gmail.com wrote:

 On Friday 10 Feb 2012 04:42:51 Pandu Poluan wrote:
  On Fri, Feb 10, 2012 at 10:48, Pandu Poluan pa...@poluan.info wrote:
   Scenario: I have a server in the cloud that needs to connect to an
   internal server in the office. There are 2 incoming connections into
my
   office, ISP A and ISP B. The primary connection is A, but if A
goes
   down, we can use B. The app running on the cloud server has no
automatic
   failover ability (i.e., if A goes down, someone must change the app's
   conf to point to B).
  
   My thought: If I can make a tunnel from the server to the FortiGate
   firewall currently guarding the HQ, the cloud app can simply be
   configured to connect to the internal IP address of the internal
server.
   No need to manually change the app's conf.
  
   The need: a VPN client that:
   + can selectively send packets fulfilling a criteria (in this case,
dest=
   IP address of internal server)*

 As far as I know typical VPNs require the IP address (or FQDN) of the VPN
 gateway.  If yours changes because ISP A goes down then the tunnel will
fail
 and be torn down.


   + has automatic failover and failback ability

 Right, I don't know if one exists with this functionality - because this
is
 not a typical VPN function but one offered by load balancers/fall back
servers
 or routers.


   *solutions involving iptables and iproute2 are also acceptable

 I am convinced that you can do that by clever enough routing on a linux
box,
 but cannot recall where I last read about it.


   Can anyone point me to the right direction re: what package and the
   relevant howto?
  
   Thanks in advance.
 
  I have been doing some research, and...
 
  Do you think I can do that using HAProxy running in tcp mode?
 
  My thought goes like this: Have the cloud app connect the IP:port of
  HAProxy, and let HAProxy perform a TCP proxy (NAT?) to connect to the
  internal server via A or B according to the server checks.

 I haven't used HAProxy, but would consider setting up a fallback route at
the
 HQ router end.  This is also called a failover configuration.  The router
 pings one address, say ISP A and if that fails more than x times over y
pings
 then it switches over the connection to ISP B.


HAproxy seems to be able to do that. It can check for A's status, and
failover to B if A is down, but still keep checking for A to come up; and
if A indeed comes back up, perform a failback to A.

(I haven't actually tested this, just some informed guess based on its
documentation)

 This keeps it at a lower level in the OSI model, which is less
complicated and
 therefore easier to manage.

HAproxy seems to work using double NAT technique (i.e., apps connect to
HAproxy, and HAproxy connects to the actual destination)

It's decidedly more complex than a route change, but according to its
developer, more reliable (plus it employs some TCP tricks to optimize the
connection)

I'll post more info when I actually have done experience with it.

Rgds,


Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Recommended VPN Tunnel client?

2012-02-10 Thread Michael Orlitzky
On 02/10/12 11:46, Pandu Poluan wrote:
 
 On Feb 10, 2012 10:08 PM, Mick michaelkintz...@gmail.com
 mailto:michaelkintz...@gmail.com wrote:

  
   The need: a VPN client that:
   + can selectively send packets fulfilling a criteria (in this
 case, dest=
   IP address of internal server)*

 As far as I know typical VPNs require the IP address (or FQDN) of the VPN
 gateway.  If yours changes because ISP A goes down then the tunnel
 will fail
 and be torn down.

I must have missed the original message. OpenVPN can do this. Just
specify multiple remote vpn.example.com lines in your client configs,
one for each VPN server.

It also handles updating the routing table for you. Rather than match
IP address of internal server, it will match IP address on internal
network and route through the VPN automatically.



Re: [gentoo-user] Re: OT: SeAndroid build on a Gentoo System?

2012-02-10 Thread Pandu Poluan
On Feb 10, 2012 3:13 PM, Hinnerk van Bruinehsen 
h.v.bruineh...@fu-berlin.de wrote:

 -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
 Hash: SHA1

 On 08.02.2012 16:23, James wrote:
  Hinnerk van Bruinehsen h.v.bruinehsen at fu-berlin.de writes:
 
 
  I own a Galaxy Nexus - up to now I encountered a bug in finding
  the tools.jar of JDK (Google helped here) and a problem due to
  the fact that I use hardened for building (TEXTREL, I think).
  I'll try a stage 3 non hardened chroot later...
 
  How do you like the G. Nexus so far? Who is your (cell) service
  provider?
 
  I'm not sure I posted this link:
  http://marc.info/?l=selinuxr=1b=201201w=4
 
  Note. Russell Coker (dev for SElinux and SEandroid) is very cool
  and has his up and running on Debian (Wheezy). If you get stuck,
  you can search him out for help. In my experiences with Russell, he
  is very friendly and helpful, particularly on the last thingy he
  is focused on, like SEandroid.
 
  thanks for keeping me posted, James
 
 It seems as if I'm not able to setup a proper build-environment with
 hardened (due to chroot hardening the chroot isn't an option, either).
 I'll try to find time to test it on a non-hardened host or in a vm
 (which seems like a bad option, too, due to hardened restrictions).


 If I get any further, I'll try to post some updates.

 Concerning the phone: I'm very happy with it, as it is. It's a big
 upgrade from my old Wildfire.
 My cell service provider is Vodafone (Germany).

 With kind regards,
 Hinnerk


There are grsec knobs in sysctl that you can temporarily disable to
weaken chroot for awhile. aW simple reboot will return these knobs to its
default secure settings.

(There's a thread I started when I have trouble doing things in a chroot,
and the solution was to temporarily stable done grkernelsec features before
going into chroot)

Rgds,


Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Recommended VPN Tunnel client?

2012-02-10 Thread Pandu Poluan
On Feb 11, 2012 12:16 AM, Michael Orlitzky mich...@orlitzky.com wrote:

 On 02/10/12 11:46, Pandu Poluan wrote:
 
  On Feb 10, 2012 10:08 PM, Mick michaelkintz...@gmail.com
  mailto:michaelkintz...@gmail.com wrote:
 
   
The need: a VPN client that:
+ can selectively send packets fulfilling a criteria (in this
  case, dest=
IP address of internal server)*
 
  As far as I know typical VPNs require the IP address (or FQDN) of the
VPN
  gateway.  If yours changes because ISP A goes down then the tunnel
  will fail
  and be torn down.

 I must have missed the original message. OpenVPN can do this. Just
 specify multiple remote vpn.example.com lines in your client configs,
 one for each VPN server.

 It also handles updating the routing table for you. Rather than match
 IP address of internal server, it will match IP address on internal
 network and route through the VPN automatically.


I'm still torn between OpenVPN and HAproxy. The former works with both TCP
and UDP, while the latter is lighter and simpler but works with TCP only*.

*The traffic will be pure TCP, but who knows I might need a UDP tunnel in
the future.

Any experience with either?

Do note that I don't actually need a strong security (e.g. IPsec); I just
need automatic failover *and* fallback.

Rgds,


Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Recommended VPN Tunnel client?

2012-02-10 Thread Michael Mol
On Fri, Feb 10, 2012 at 12:29 PM, Pandu Poluan pa...@poluan.info wrote:

 On Feb 11, 2012 12:16 AM, Michael Orlitzky mich...@orlitzky.com wrote:

 On 02/10/12 11:46, Pandu Poluan wrote:
 
  On Feb 10, 2012 10:08 PM, Mick michaelkintz...@gmail.com
  mailto:michaelkintz...@gmail.com wrote:
 
   
The need: a VPN client that:
+ can selectively send packets fulfilling a criteria (in this
  case, dest=
IP address of internal server)*
 
  As far as I know typical VPNs require the IP address (or FQDN) of the
  VPN
  gateway.  If yours changes because ISP A goes down then the tunnel
  will fail
  and be torn down.

 I must have missed the original message. OpenVPN can do this. Just
 specify multiple remote vpn.example.com lines in your client configs,
 one for each VPN server.

 It also handles updating the routing table for you. Rather than match
 IP address of internal server, it will match IP address on internal
 network and route through the VPN automatically.


 I'm still torn between OpenVPN and HAproxy. The former works with both TCP
 and UDP, while the latter is lighter and simpler but works with TCP only*.

 *The traffic will be pure TCP, but who knows I might need a UDP tunnel in
 the future.

 Any experience with either?

 Do note that I don't actually need a strong security (e.g. IPsec); I just
 need automatic failover *and* fallback.

We're not using multiple internet connections to the same network
where I work, but we do use UDP-based OpenVPN to connect a few
networks.

TCP OpenVPN connections are very, very bad, IMO. With a TCP VPN, you
easily break systems' TCP stacks' link bandwidth estimation. I once
had a 30s ping time, because the pipe was hogged and backlogged from a
mail client synchronizing.

-- 
:wq



[gentoo-user] Re: OT: SeAndroid build on a Gentoo System?

2012-02-10 Thread James
Hinnerk van Bruinehsen h.v.bruinehsen at fu-berlin.de writes:



 If I get any further, I'll try to post some updates.

Very cool!

thanks for the feedback.


James







Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Recommended VPN Tunnel client?

2012-02-10 Thread Pandu Poluan
On Feb 11, 2012 12:42 AM, Michael Mol mike...@gmail.com wrote:

 On Fri, Feb 10, 2012 at 12:29 PM, Pandu Poluan pa...@poluan.info wrote:
 
  On Feb 11, 2012 12:16 AM, Michael Orlitzky mich...@orlitzky.com
wrote:
 
  On 02/10/12 11:46, Pandu Poluan wrote:
  
   On Feb 10, 2012 10:08 PM, Mick michaelkintz...@gmail.com
   mailto:michaelkintz...@gmail.com wrote:
  

 The need: a VPN client that:
 + can selectively send packets fulfilling a criteria (in this
   case, dest=
 IP address of internal server)*
  
   As far as I know typical VPNs require the IP address (or FQDN) of
the
   VPN
   gateway.  If yours changes because ISP A goes down then the tunnel
   will fail
   and be torn down.
 
  I must have missed the original message. OpenVPN can do this. Just
  specify multiple remote vpn.example.com lines in your client configs,
  one for each VPN server.
 
  It also handles updating the routing table for you. Rather than match
  IP address of internal server, it will match IP address on internal
  network and route through the VPN automatically.
 
 
  I'm still torn between OpenVPN and HAproxy. The former works with both
TCP
  and UDP, while the latter is lighter and simpler but works with TCP
only*.
 
  *The traffic will be pure TCP, but who knows I might need a UDP tunnel
in
  the future.
 
  Any experience with either?
 
  Do note that I don't actually need a strong security (e.g. IPsec); I
just
  need automatic failover *and* fallback.

 We're not using multiple internet connections to the same network
 where I work, but we do use UDP-based OpenVPN to connect a few
 networks.

 TCP OpenVPN connections are very, very bad, IMO. With a TCP VPN, you
 easily break systems' TCP stacks' link bandwidth estimation. I once
 had a 30s ping time, because the pipe was hogged and backlogged from a
 mail client synchronizing.


No, no, no. What I meant was running TCP and UDP *on top of* OpenVPN (which
uses UDP).

HAproxy seems to be able to perform its magic with TCP connections.

Rgds,


Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Recommended VPN Tunnel client?

2012-02-10 Thread Michael Mol
On Fri, Feb 10, 2012 at 1:05 PM, Pandu Poluan pa...@poluan.info wrote:

 On Feb 11, 2012 12:42 AM, Michael Mol mike...@gmail.com wrote:

 On Fri, Feb 10, 2012 at 12:29 PM, Pandu Poluan pa...@poluan.info wrote:
 
  On Feb 11, 2012 12:16 AM, Michael Orlitzky mich...@orlitzky.com
  wrote:
 
  On 02/10/12 11:46, Pandu Poluan wrote:
  
   On Feb 10, 2012 10:08 PM, Mick michaelkintz...@gmail.com
   mailto:michaelkintz...@gmail.com wrote:
  

 The need: a VPN client that:
 + can selectively send packets fulfilling a criteria (in this
   case, dest=
 IP address of internal server)*
  
   As far as I know typical VPNs require the IP address (or FQDN) of
   the
   VPN
   gateway.  If yours changes because ISP A goes down then the tunnel
   will fail
   and be torn down.
 
  I must have missed the original message. OpenVPN can do this. Just
  specify multiple remote vpn.example.com lines in your client configs,
  one for each VPN server.
 
  It also handles updating the routing table for you. Rather than match
  IP address of internal server, it will match IP address on internal
  network and route through the VPN automatically.
 
 
  I'm still torn between OpenVPN and HAproxy. The former works with both
  TCP
  and UDP, while the latter is lighter and simpler but works with TCP
  only*.
 
  *The traffic will be pure TCP, but who knows I might need a UDP tunnel
  in
  the future.
 
  Any experience with either?
 
  Do note that I don't actually need a strong security (e.g. IPsec); I
  just
  need automatic failover *and* fallback.

 We're not using multiple internet connections to the same network
 where I work, but we do use UDP-based OpenVPN to connect a few
 networks.

 TCP OpenVPN connections are very, very bad, IMO. With a TCP VPN, you
 easily break systems' TCP stacks' link bandwidth estimation. I once
 had a 30s ping time, because the pipe was hogged and backlogged from a
 mail client synchronizing.


 No, no, no. What I meant was running TCP and UDP *on top of* OpenVPN (which
 uses UDP).

 HAproxy seems to be able to perform its magic with TCP connections.

That's what I was talking about. Where I work, we use OpenVPN,
operating in UDP mode. This is after several bad experiences using it
in TCP mode.

By UDP mode and TCP mode, I mean OpenVPN's connections to other
OpenVPN nodes were in UDP or TCP, respectively. When OpenVPN's
connections operate over TCP (and thus it gets guarantee'd delivery),
you can create a situation where a tunneled TCP connection attempts to
push data faster than your Internet connection can allow because it
never gets any congestion feedback; OpenVPN was accepting packets
faster than it could shove them through, and was buffering the rest.

In the situation I encountered, I was syncing my email over the vpn,
but I couldn't quickly reach any internal services; their response
time got slower and slower until I bounced my openvpn daemon (breaking
any outstanding tunneled TCP connections), but then they rapidly
degraded again. Towards the end, I discovered I had a non-tunneled
ping time of 100 ms, but a tunneled ping time of 30m.

If HAProxy is smart about congestion management, you shouldn't see
this behavior. If not, you may.

-- 
:wq



Re: [gentoo-user] wireless newbee needs help

2012-02-10 Thread James Broadhead
On 9 February 2012 17:00, Helmut Jarausch jarau...@igpm.rwth-aachen.de wrote:
 Hi,

 it's the first time I have to set up a wireless network on a notebook.

Save yourself some hassle and use either wicd or NetworkManager - both
wrap wpa_supplicant, and make for a much smoother mobile experience.



Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Recommended VPN Tunnel client?

2012-02-10 Thread Michael Orlitzky
On 02/10/12 13:05, Pandu Poluan wrote:
 
 No, no, no. What I meant was running TCP and UDP *on top of* OpenVPN
 (which uses UDP).
 
 HAproxy seems to be able to perform its magic with TCP connections.
 

I was about to say that we use it over UDP, but... we don't. We have a
small number of clients, maybe ten(?) that use the VPN for remote
administration.

UDP is recommended, references[1] are easy to google. Why we're running
it over TCP I don't know. I must have had a good reason =)

It performs fine anyway, but now I'm considering flipping it to UDP to
see what happens. At least I'll be in the office when it breaks.



[1] http://sites.inka.de/sites/bigred/devel/tcp-tcp.html



Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Recommended VPN Tunnel client?

2012-02-10 Thread Todd Goodman
* Michael Mol mike...@gmail.com [120210 12:51]:
[..]
 That's what I was talking about. Where I work, we use OpenVPN,
 operating in UDP mode. This is after several bad experiences using it
 in TCP mode.
 
 By UDP mode and TCP mode, I mean OpenVPN's connections to other
 OpenVPN nodes were in UDP or TCP, respectively. When OpenVPN's
 connections operate over TCP (and thus it gets guarantee'd delivery),
 you can create a situation where a tunneled TCP connection attempts to
 push data faster than your Internet connection can allow because it
 never gets any congestion feedback; OpenVPN was accepting packets
 faster than it could shove them through, and was buffering the rest.

So obviously OpenVPN wasn't handling congestion appropriately and should
have been using some queueing discipline to discard instead of letting
transmit queues grow unbounded.

But switching to UDP from TCP just pushes the problem off your OpenVPN
gateway and onto the outside network.

If you're really receiving more traffic than can be sent over the
outside network, now you're relying on intermediate routers to do the
right thing with your excess UDP traffic and most likely impacting TCP
traffic through the same router.

Todd



Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Recommended VPN Tunnel client?

2012-02-10 Thread Michael Mol
On Fri, Feb 10, 2012 at 1:22 PM, Todd Goodman t...@bonedaddy.net wrote:
 * Michael Mol mike...@gmail.com [120210 12:51]:
 [..]
 That's what I was talking about. Where I work, we use OpenVPN,
 operating in UDP mode. This is after several bad experiences using it
 in TCP mode.

 By UDP mode and TCP mode, I mean OpenVPN's connections to other
 OpenVPN nodes were in UDP or TCP, respectively. When OpenVPN's
 connections operate over TCP (and thus it gets guarantee'd delivery),
 you can create a situation where a tunneled TCP connection attempts to
 push data faster than your Internet connection can allow because it
 never gets any congestion feedback; OpenVPN was accepting packets
 faster than it could shove them through, and was buffering the rest.

 So obviously OpenVPN wasn't handling congestion appropriately and should
 have been using some queueing discipline to discard instead of letting
 transmit queues grow unbounded.

Sure, that contributed to the problem, and may qualify as a bug. On
the flip side, by operating OpenVPN in TCP mode, you're saying you
want guaranteed delivery across the link.


 But switching to UDP from TCP just pushes the problem off your OpenVPN
 gateway and onto the outside network.

 If you're really receiving more traffic than can be sent over the
 outside network, now you're relying on intermediate routers to do the
 right thing with your excess UDP traffic and most likely impacting TCP
 traffic through the same router.

OpenVPN was running on the router on both ends. The sending side was
on the lean side of an ADSL modem, plugged directly into the same, so
the entire issue was handled locally.

Even if OpenVPN wasn't running on the router itself, there'd wouldn't
*be* excess UDP traffic when running OpenVPN in UDP mode, as
congestion management would be behaving properly. so other traffic
would not be unduly impacted.

-- 
:wq



Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Recommended VPN Tunnel client?

2012-02-10 Thread Todd Goodman
* Michael Mol mike...@gmail.com [120210 13:36]:
 On Fri, Feb 10, 2012 at 1:22 PM, Todd Goodman t...@bonedaddy.net wrote:
  * Michael Mol mike...@gmail.com [120210 12:51]:
  [..]
  That's what I was talking about. Where I work, we use OpenVPN,
  operating in UDP mode. This is after several bad experiences using it
  in TCP mode.
 
  By UDP mode and TCP mode, I mean OpenVPN's connections to other
  OpenVPN nodes were in UDP or TCP, respectively. When OpenVPN's
  connections operate over TCP (and thus it gets guarantee'd delivery),
  you can create a situation where a tunneled TCP connection attempts to
  push data faster than your Internet connection can allow because it
  never gets any congestion feedback; OpenVPN was accepting packets
  faster than it could shove them through, and was buffering the rest.
 
  So obviously OpenVPN wasn't handling congestion appropriately and should
  have been using some queueing discipline to discard instead of letting
  transmit queues grow unbounded.
 
 Sure, that contributed to the problem, and may qualify as a bug. On
 the flip side, by operating OpenVPN in TCP mode, you're saying you
 want guaranteed delivery across the link.

Yes, certainly.  And certainly TCP has far more resource requirements on the
sending side.  However, it also has congestion avoidance built in to it,
which UDP does not.

 
 
  But switching to UDP from TCP just pushes the problem off your OpenVPN
  gateway and onto the outside network.
 
  If you're really receiving more traffic than can be sent over the
  outside network, now you're relying on intermediate routers to do the
  right thing with your excess UDP traffic and most likely impacting TCP
  traffic through the same router.
 
 OpenVPN was running on the router on both ends. The sending side was
 on the lean side of an ADSL modem, plugged directly into the same, so
 the entire issue was handled locally.

There was no infrastructure between the two routers?  They had a direct
connection between them?  It would be slightly strange to go through the
hassle of running OpenVPN in that case...

 
 Even if OpenVPN wasn't running on the router itself, there'd wouldn't
 *be* excess UDP traffic when running OpenVPN in UDP mode, as
 congestion management would be behaving properly. so other traffic
 would not be unduly impacted.

Why do you think congestion management would be behaving properly?  What
congestion management are you referring to for UDP traffic?

The only thing intermediate routers can do in the case of congestion due
to UDP traffic is to drop.  And depending on the queueing implementation
they may end up dropping TCP traffic as well.

Almost certainly they'll signal congestion to TCP endpoints with traffic
through them, hence impacting TCP traffic as well.

Todd



Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Recommended VPN Tunnel client?

2012-02-10 Thread Michael Mol
On Fri, Feb 10, 2012 at 2:21 PM, Todd Goodman t...@bonedaddy.net wrote:
 * Michael Mol mike...@gmail.com [120210 13:36]:
 On Fri, Feb 10, 2012 at 1:22 PM, Todd Goodman t...@bonedaddy.net wrote:
  * Michael Mol mike...@gmail.com [120210 12:51]:
  [..]
  That's what I was talking about. Where I work, we use OpenVPN,
  operating in UDP mode. This is after several bad experiences using it
  in TCP mode.
 
  By UDP mode and TCP mode, I mean OpenVPN's connections to other
  OpenVPN nodes were in UDP or TCP, respectively. When OpenVPN's
  connections operate over TCP (and thus it gets guarantee'd delivery),
  you can create a situation where a tunneled TCP connection attempts to
  push data faster than your Internet connection can allow because it
  never gets any congestion feedback; OpenVPN was accepting packets
  faster than it could shove them through, and was buffering the rest.
 
  So obviously OpenVPN wasn't handling congestion appropriately and should
  have been using some queueing discipline to discard instead of letting
  transmit queues grow unbounded.

 Sure, that contributed to the problem, and may qualify as a bug. On
 the flip side, by operating OpenVPN in TCP mode, you're saying you
 want guaranteed delivery across the link.

 Yes, certainly.  And certainly TCP has far more resource requirements on the
 sending side.  However, it also has congestion avoidance built in to it,
 which UDP does not.

And that's perfectly fine, when you're going to be tunneling an entire
IP stack inside OpenVPN. If a tunneled application needs low latency,
low guarantee of delivery, it can use UDP. If a tunneled application
needs guarantee of delivery, it can use TCP. But if the OpenVPN tunnel
is itself using TCP, you lose low latency opportunities, and you deny
your tunneled applications' ability to respond to congestion.



 
  But switching to UDP from TCP just pushes the problem off your OpenVPN
  gateway and onto the outside network.
 
  If you're really receiving more traffic than can be sent over the
  outside network, now you're relying on intermediate routers to do the
  right thing with your excess UDP traffic and most likely impacting TCP
  traffic through the same router.

 OpenVPN was running on the router on both ends. The sending side was
 on the lean side of an ADSL modem, plugged directly into the same, so
 the entire issue was handled locally.

 There was no infrastructure between the two routers?  They had a direct
 connection between them?  It would be slightly strange to go through the
 hassle of running OpenVPN in that case...

workstation - ovpn - ADSL 6Mbs/512Kbs - ATT - ADSL(6Mbs/512Kbs) - ovpn - server

Both sides would be pushing up the weak end of ADSL, and both sides'
local routers would be discarding layer 3 packets that won't fit. ATT
wouldn't even have seen the excess traffic.



 Even if OpenVPN wasn't running on the router itself, there'd wouldn't
 *be* excess UDP traffic when running OpenVPN in UDP mode, as
 congestion management would be behaving properly. so other traffic
 would not be unduly impacted.

 Why do you think congestion management would be behaving properly?  What
 congestion management are you referring to for UDP traffic?

The fact that the tunneled TCP packets and fragments would be dropped,
causing the tunneled connections' relevant TCP stacks to scale back.


 The only thing intermediate routers can do in the case of congestion due
 to UDP traffic is to drop.  And depending on the queueing implementation
 they may end up dropping TCP traffic as well.

Which is *fine*, as long as the TCP packets are encapsulated inside
the tunnel, and the tunnel itself is UDP; the connection owners for
the encapsulated tunnels would scale back their throughput
automatically. If the TCP packet dropped is what's carrying the tunnel
itself, then one of the openvpn instances will resend, and the
encapsulated connection's packet will still ultimately reach its
destination.


 Almost certainly they'll signal congestion to TCP endpoints with traffic
 through them, hence impacting TCP traffic as well.

Not sure what you mean here.

Michael Orlitsky had a decent, relevant link:
http://sites.inka.de/sites/bigred/devel/tcp-tcp.html

Though instead of stacking TCP/IP/PPP on top of SSH/TCP/IP, I was
packing IMAP/TCP/IP on top of OpenVPN/TCP/IP.

-- 
:wq



Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Recommended VPN Tunnel client?

2012-02-10 Thread Michael Orlitzky
On 02/10/12 13:36, Michael Orlitzky wrote:
 
 UDP is recommended, references[1] are easy to google. Why we're running
 it over TCP I don't know. I must have had a good reason =)

Oh my school blocks outgoing UDP. Running on TCP/443 allows me to
connect from their network.



Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Recommended VPN Tunnel client?

2012-02-10 Thread wdk@moriah
Congestion isn't the only reason to use TCP and a VPN.

3G smartphone network (Optus in Oz) has a large number of duplicate and dropped 
packets - openvpn performance over TCP is much better.  Similar case with a 
cheap French network while on holiday there.  This was an extreme case though 
with non VPN traffic very poor as well.

Otherwise use openvpn with fqdn's and not IP numbers then use ospf across them 
with suitable route metrics to either share or prefer a route.  Works well with 
dynamic IP's from my ISP so should be ok in your scenario.  You could also use 
openvpns route push if you dont need complex dynamic routing - this works 
better than ospf on bad links anyway.

BillK

On 11/02/2012, at 2:36, Michael Orlitzky mich...@orlitzky.com wrote:

 On 02/10/12 13:05, Pandu Poluan wrote:
 
 No, no, no. What I meant was running TCP and UDP *on top of* OpenVPN
 (which uses UDP).
 
 HAproxy seems to be able to perform its magic with TCP connections.
 
 
 I was about to say that we use it over UDP, but... we don't. We have a
 small number of clients, maybe ten(?) that use the VPN for remote
 administration.
 
 UDP is recommended, references[1] are easy to google. Why we're running
 it over TCP I don't know. I must have had a good reason =)
 
 It performs fine anyway, but now I'm considering flipping it to UDP to
 see what happens. At least I'll be in the office when it breaks.
 
 
 
 [1] http://sites.inka.de/sites/bigred/devel/tcp-tcp.html
 



[gentoo-user] Amazon Streaming broken, need hal-0.5.14-gentoo-patches-5.tar.bz2

2012-02-10 Thread Grant
Amazon Streaming is broken and installing hal fixes it according to
the following thread:

http://www.amazon.com/forum/amazon%20video%20on%20demand?_encoding=UTF8cdForum=Fx3EQAX98ED5WQ3cdPage=1cdSort=newestcdThread=TxFTGOK5LRL3JM

I added the layman overlays multilib and kde-sunset in order to
install hal, but the emerge fails because it can't download
hal-0.5.14-gentoo-patches-5.tar.bz2.  The following thread provides a
few links to this file but they no longer work, and I tried
downloading hal-0.5.14-gentoo-patches-4.tar.bz2, extracting, adding
the missing file as indicated, and recreating the bz2 tar archive, but
there is a checksum failure with that file:

http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-906838-start-0.html

Does anyone have advice for navigating this?

- Grant



Re: [gentoo-user] Amazon Streaming broken, need hal-0.5.14-gentoo-patches-5.tar.bz2

2012-02-10 Thread Dale
Grant wrote:
 Amazon Streaming is broken and installing hal fixes it according to
 the following thread:
 
 http://www.amazon.com/forum/amazon%20video%20on%20demand?_encoding=UTF8cdForum=Fx3EQAX98ED5WQ3cdPage=1cdSort=newestcdThread=TxFTGOK5LRL3JM
 
 I added the layman overlays multilib and kde-sunset in order to
 install hal, but the emerge fails because it can't download
 hal-0.5.14-gentoo-patches-5.tar.bz2.  The following thread provides a
 few links to this file but they no longer work, and I tried
 downloading hal-0.5.14-gentoo-patches-4.tar.bz2, extracting, adding
 the missing file as indicated, and recreating the bz2 tar archive, but
 there is a checksum failure with that file:
 
 http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-906838-start-0.html
 
 Does anyone have advice for navigating this?
 
 - Grant
 
 


You may want to ask on -desktop too.  The gurus that keep KDE3 and
friends going are on there but it may take a day for them to reply.

I did some searching, I found the same thing you did.

Me, I would try commenting the patch out of the ebuild and see if it
works.  Maybe, just maybe, hal will work well enough for what you are
doing.   Then again, it might not compile either.

Dale

:-)  :-)

-- 
I am only responsible for what I said ... Not for what you understood or
how you interpreted my words!

Miss the compile output?  Hint:
EMERGE_DEFAULT_OPTS=--quiet-build=n



Re: [gentoo-user] KMail

2012-02-10 Thread Volker Armin Hemmann
Am Donnerstag, 9. Februar 2012, 18:33:12 schrieb Daniel D Jones:
 I was one of those bitten by the upgrade to KMail back in October.  After
 spending nearly two days without access to email while trying to get the
 upgrade and migration to work, I gave up and pinned KMail to version
 4.4.11.1.
 
 With the recent upgrade to KDE, I'm curious if anyone knows whether the bugs
 have been worked out and the KMail upgrade will go smoother now?

I switched a long time ago, so I can't say anything about 'smoother' but it 
does work, as long as you remove all mail ressources and add them back one 
after another.
-- 
#163933