Eric-B.net

Updated to a custom IOS 4.0 for my iPhone 3GS

I finally got around to creating a custom IOS version 4.0. I had to be able to jailbreak the phone again if for nothing other than free tethering and SBSettings, which allows me to kill processes and turn off features in seconds.

From what I understand, this wouldn’t have went too smoothly if I had updated to any official firmwares since 3.1 or so. Lucky for me, I treat this phone as a production environment, not some geeky fanboy’s toy. No early adoption methods here.

It did take a while to get free tethering working though, and the method is rather lame. I have just convinced the phone that something is not expiring. AT&T’s tethering fees are crazy, and its not something I commonly use. I just want the option when I go on vacation, if I can even get a data signal up there.

Anyway, I like the folders better than the JB apps, and I like how it keeps things open. It actually seems faster than it was on 3.1.2.

Vpnc w/ Hybrid on Ubuntu Karmic Koala

A while ago, I gave up on Cisco’s VPN for linux. Well, it appears my company did anyway. Nothing was ever available to work on a current kernel, and finding patches is hard. Especially with my system not being 64-bit capable.

Then I had someone tell me that they got it to work with the NetworkManager Applet. I installed all the packages that they gave me, but it did not work. With the packages installed already, I looked at my default.conf and entered what was needed.

IPSec ID xxxxxxxx
IPSec gateway xxxxxxxx
IPSec secret xxxxxxxx
IKE Authmode hybrid
Application version Cisco Systems VPN Client 4.8.00 (0490) Linux
CA-File /etc/vpnc/xxxxxxxx
Script /etc/vpnc/vpnc-script
Xauth username xxxxxxxx

After setting up the configuration files, I noticed I would get this error:

vpnc was built without openssl: Can’t do hybrid or cert mode.

So I had to compile it with openssl myself.

These two lines need to be uncommented in the makefile

OPENSSL_GPL_VIOLATION = DOPENSSL_GPL_VIOLATION
OPENSSLLIBS = -lcrypto

Now I was getting somewhere, sort of. Any attempt to connect would yield this while telling me that I was connected:

resolvconf: Error: /etc/resolv.conf must be a symlink

I found a lot of faulty info on how to fix this. If I created my own symlink it would get overwritten. Here is how I have resolved it.

I was able to connect without any errors.

Running XFCE on my Ubuntu 9.10 X60

So, I decided that I hate the fact that I cannot pick 2 different wallpapers for my dual monitor set up at work. As trivial as it may seem to most people, I get pissed when I cannot fully customize software the way I want to. This is also the reason my Jailbroken iPhone.

Well, I have an Intel 945 chipset, a wide screen LCD, and I use my laptop LCD at the same time. I want two independent screens because mirroring is quite pointless. I like to use every last bit of screen real estate as possible. The XFCE desktop seems to provide no simple way to do this, like there was in Gnome. I used to just go into a settings manager, and tell it what I wanted it to do. Now I have to use some commands that I have not seen in a while. These commands are for XRandR.

To get it to do what I wanted it to do, I first ran this to see what the screens were capable of, and which what XRandR names them.

Now I see that the display labeled VGA is my wide screen LCD, and LVDS is my laptop’s LCD with its rather poor resolutions.

I picked the highest ones for each and make my dual display to stop mirroring by putting my laptop’s display to the right. You can do this to the left, top, or bottom if you prefer, so long as your card supports the total of the 2 combined resolutions.

Next, it is time for a little script to get this XRandR config to run using conditional statements for my wide screen LCD. This way, it will only run this config when I have it plugged in. I put the config file in /etc/X11/Xsession.d/

That should do it… and it saved me from using the KDE desktop!

UPDATE: It works correctly now. My scripting was a little off.

Posting From iPhone

I can finally post from my iPhone app. The new version gave me a different error, but I found out it had to do with mod_security. A little .htaccess editing, and I am good to go. No more parse error, and no more 403.

iPhone Update

Updating my jailbroken iPhone did not work. It failed to install the custom firmware. I had to install the latest official one, and jailbreak it again. The plus side is the ease of the new jailbreak app. The downside is that it will not restore my back up, and I have to manually put everything back on there, but at least I didn’t brick it. I will think twice before putting any new firmware on there, as the improvements are usually too minor to bother.