Decryption of Weblogic 8 3DES passwords in config.xml…

So, yesterday I couldn’t find the password that is used to connect to one of the Oracle DBs for an application…

The password is saved in config.xml for this weblogic domain, but it’s encrypted…

I can see the hash “{3DES}vx1VMjDei4ur7Ews12m4zQ==” in the config.xml file…

I’ve read a few threads that mentioned that the decryption key is in SerializedSystemIni.dat located in the domain folder…

I tried to use OpenSSL to do the work, but couldn’t get it working, and BEA’s dev2dev portal is no longer working so that I can check anything out…

I should have done it while I could…

Tonight, I’ve just finished watching this movie, it’s called He’s just not that into you, it was a really nice movie, I like it….

For a moment, actually lots of moments, I felt that I can see my life being displayed on that silver screen !!!!

I mean, that is just me, that what did happen to me, I was in shock, part of that movie was telling some part of my life, and I walked out of it speechless, not the movie was “WOW” it’s just a nice movie, but it made me think over about things…

Lots of things, choices I’ve made, things I just passed either because someone didn’t like, or things I accepted because someone would be happy with…

Why on earth did I do this??

Also I had that chance, golden chance; to set things right for me once again, and yet I just didn’t take it, why? because it would have made someone sad, and now it too late…

I mean, what about me? what did I get in return? Am I really that demanding?

I’m just lost…I really should have done it while I could…

Install Linux on a machine running Windows – Remotly, no CD-ROM, no PXE…

One day, I got stuck with that server running windows, and I wanted to install Linux on it…

It was connected to an IP-KVM, so I thought I’m in control, and I can just boot it up with PXE, but there was my surprise, no PXE support in the BIOS !!!!

And the machine has no CD-ROM, the IP-KVM doesn’t provide virtual media capabilities…

A little googeling around, I was mainly looking for a way to install grub on this machine, and there is was; Grub4Dos, as well as this wiki page…

I used method 5, placed grldr and grld.mbr from grub4dos package, created folders C:\boot and C:\boot\grub…

I grabbed the kernel and Ram disk from CentOS mirrors in the PXE folder…

Embedded the kick start file into initrd.img using the the method described in this post.

Transferred the kernel and the modified ram disk to the windows machine and placed them under C:\boot…

And created C:\boot\grub\menu.lst with the following content:

title My Linux installer of choice
kernel   (hd0,0)/boot/vmlinuz  vnc vncpassword=password ip=dhcp ks=file:/ks.cfg
initrd   (hd0,0)/boot/initrd.img

Now one last thing to do before rebooting, added the following line into boot.ini (as described in method 5…

Now it looks like this:

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Windows Server 2003, Standard" /noexecute=optout /fastdetect
C:\grldr="Start GRUB"

Rebooting the machine, and choosing “Start GRUB” in the boot up menu instantly brought the beloved grub menu…

Now the setup started up, and I get to watch it by connecting using VNC to <ip>:1…

Installation done, reboot done; bye bye Windows, welcome Linux… 🙂

Modifying initrd.img

Sometimes you might want to alter the content inside initrd.img for many reasons…

Using mkinitrd might sound like the obvious solution, but it doesn’t do much except for boot time drivers…

But assume you want to embed a kick start file inside the installer’s initrd.img, let’s take this for example…

Pangolin, a problem with the SIP stack…Solved…

In a previous post, I’ve talked about a large scale VoIP system, so the client decided to use a customized version of Pangolin from PortSIP, but it had a slight problem…

If the user won’t use STUN, he can login to the SBC, but when making a call, it’s one way audio…

If the user uses STUN, he can’t login at all…

However, using the same configuration on eyeBeam, everything works well, registration as well as two-way audio…

So it was clear that there’s something that doesn’t work well with Pangolin, However, working closely with them, we were able to solve the problem…

This is how it’s done…

Asterisk IP authentication…

Thinking about making your own termination service ?? need to make IP-based authentication for asterisk ??

This took me quite some time to figure out how to do it properly…

In Trixbox, or any similar distribution that uses FreePBX interface, trying to add an extension won’t help in this at all…

Thanks to the guys here, I got a clue on how to do it…

Go to the Trunks page, and create a new SIP trunk, give your trunk some meaningful name (VMWare for example), clear all the text in Outgoing Settings PEER details…

In Incoming Settings, give it anyother different name (VMWare-in for this example)…

In USER Details

context=from-internal
host=xx.yy.zz.97
type=peer
disallow=all
allow=ulaw&alaw&gsm&g729
insecure=port,invite
nat=yes

Now /etc/asterisk/sip_additional.conf would show something similar to this

[VMWare]
[VMWare-in]
disallow=all
context=from-internal
host=xx.yy.zz.97
type=peer
allow=ulaw
allow=alaw
allow=gsm
allow=g729
insecure=port,invite
nat=yes

If not using FreePBX, just add lines similar to these in /etc/asterisk/sip.conf…

Applying the context from-internal will cause asterisk to process the calls from that peer using the usual dial-plan, just as if the call came from an internal extension…

Apply the changes, and you’re done…

Asterisk and CTI, what’s that all about??

Asterisk is a wonderful piece of software, doing all the magical stuff you can imagine with VoIP, including –but not limited to– IVR, call queues, routing, billing, trans-coding, registrar, and much more…

One of the most advanced features in asterisk and is generally overlooked, and taken for granted, is the asterisk manager interface (AMI for short), this gives rise to a whole new dimension for applications to integrate with Asterisk, using CTI…

CTI is just a terminology, it stands for Computer Telephony Integration, there’s no special piece of software you can call CTI, any application that can integrate with a VoIP system, this integration can be called CTI…

However, CTI usually refers to call management from within the application, adding extensions to queues, removing them, initiate calls, transfer calls…

You might think and say “any SIP phone can do this”, I’m not talking about making a call, and receiving it, I’m taking about application integration…

Asterisk provides an interface called manager interface, upon connecting and authenticating to it, asterisk would send you about events, and you can send commands to it…

Examples always explain better than just talking…

Problems with my HTC Touch HD…

Hey there,

Yesterday I decided to test the new TouchFlo 3D on my HTC Touch HD, I saw its demo on youtube and it seems to offer better usability features and deeper integration within windows…

The only way I could get it installed is by flashing a “cooked” ROM, the guys on XDA-Developers are more than great…

But 1st I’ve some housekeeping to do…

Backing up contacts, settings, favorites, documents, call logs, and most important SMS messages…

I used to install Sprit Backup the HTC version, it’s available for free from HTC’s Touch Pro software downloads page, and I used to make backups with it, so I just make a fresh backup and went ahead installing this ROM, and the latest Radio…

Everything seems OK and dandy, until I wanted to restore the backups…

Thinking Green…Vertical Axis Wind Turbine…

Green energy, free power, it’s all concepts we dream of, and some of us may have thought about it deeply, esp. with all oil prices rising sky-high (it used to reach over 100$), now it’s relatively low, but eventually it will rise again…

Also not to mention the amount of carbon-dioxide produced from burning the oil…

As if that isn’t enough, the efficiency of oil-based generators is very very low, as low as 30%, which basically means, if an amount of gasoline burns producing 100 watts worth of power, at the generator output you only get 30 watts of electric power, the remaining (70 watts) are simple wasted…

So if you pay 100$ for gasoline in a generator, you’re wasting 70$, and only making use of 30$ !!!!

So, green energy to rescue…

The forgotten ASCII art…

It’s really cool, logging on a server and see its name shown using an amazing yet simple text symbols like this one:

    ____   _____ ______________     ____    ____  ______
   / _  | / ___// ____/  _/  _/    / _  |  / __ \/_  __/
  / /_| | \__ \/ /    / / / /     / /_| | / /_/ / / /   
 / /__| | __/ / /___ / / / /     / /__| |/ / / / / /
/_/   |_/____/\____/___/___/    /_/   |_/_/ |_| /_/

and this one:

       ,--(_)         |              | 
     _/ ;-._\    |  | |,-. |  |,--. -+- |  | 
    (_)(   ) )   |  | |  | |  ||  |  |  |  | 
      \ ;-'_/    `--' `--' `--''  '  `- `--' 
       `--(_)

The possibilities are unlimited, you can put this in your /etc/motd to have a nice welcome every time you login with SSH to a machine, like this one:

            /;
           / |'-,.
          /  '    `"---,.__
         /  '    ,'     ,  '"--,"|
        /  '    ,     ,'     ,"::|
       /  '   ,'    ,      ,"::::|
      /  '   ,    ,'     ,"::::::L
     /  '  ,'   ,'     ,"::::::::L
    /  '  ,    ,     ,":::::::::J
    k-,._    ,'   _.":::::::::::J
     \.  `"----'"".J::::::::::::|
      \.    .-,    .L:::::::::::|
       \.  (       .J:::::::::::!
        \.  `--     .L:::::::::/
         \.   .-.   .|::::::::/
          \. (   )  .J:::::::/
           \. `-'    .L:::::/
            \.  L    .|::::/
             \. !__  .J:::/
              \.  __  .L:/
               \. L_) .|/
                `-,__,-'

The 1st person to introduce this neat art to me is Tamer Embaby, my team leader in ITWorx…

Here are some sites that provide huge galleries to pick ascii art from, and probably contribute to it, googling around will give you more results:

http://www.ascii-art.de/ascii/

http://www.chris.com/ASCII/

And the page on Wikipedia.