Archive for the ‘*nix-tools’ Category
Posted by jpluimers on 2026/07/27
This is way easier than I thought (but you need Raspberry Pi 5 or it will be dead slow on earlier models): [Wayback/Archive] GitHub – Botspot/bvm: Windows 11 Virtual Machine on ARM Linux
And yes, there are other write-ups for doing this, but this repository is so much easier and reliable than the others.
Did not test it outside of Raspbian yet, so not sure on which other distributions it runs. It will likely run on more plainDebian, but my guess is that Fedora, Ubuntu, OpenSuSE and others will be out.
Oh: better use NVMe instead of MicroSD for speed too.
Via:
--jeroen
Posted in *nix, *nix-tools, bash, CommandLine, Development, Power User, PowerShell, Scripting, sh, Sh Shell, Windows, Windows 11 | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2026/07/09
[Wayback/Archive] A bit of perl trickery shows a great example why you should only code you understand.
It explains the innards of a classic trap luring people into execute some obfuscated code, in this case Perl based.
Which makes it yet another testament to not blindly download and execute stuff from the internet.
So be aware when you see obfuscated scripts and things luring you into:
Be even more alert when these require elevated access (like running under sudo).
Via: [Wayback/Archive] Leo Bicknell on Twitter: “@jpluimers @IanColdwater Executes “rm -rf /”. This is ancient Perl monks way of teaching people not to run programs they don’t understand as root. … But hey, these days people “curl -o – url | bash”. It’s surprising that isn’t exploited more.”
Which was response to me asking what the below code did that was fully misunderstood by ChatGPT (which is Large Language Model based on a large corpus of natural language, not a small corpus of evil red-team programming language code snippets) to a series of Tweets by Ian Coldwater.
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Posted in *nix, *nix-tools, ash/dash, bash, bash, CommandLine, Development, Perl, Power User, PowerShell, PowerShell, Python, RegEx, Scripting, sh, Software Development | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2026/06/15
I wrote about Raspberry Pi And The Story Of SD Card Corruption | Hackaday before, quoting my tweet
[Wayback/Archive] @hackaday I’m have been running a few Raspberry Pi systems with 8-32Gb micro-SD cards as web-dashboard with refreshes every few minutes or so: much write access. When using Sandisk (no matter the type) they last about a year, Samsung (no matter the type) cards last multiple years.
That post got scheduled when I was recovering from my rectum cancer treatments and coping with bad LAR-syndrome. The good news when writing is that I survived and LAR-syndrome is more manageable. The bad news is that at the time you read this some 75% of my peer group didn’t, including some good friends .
I write this post at time around 50% of the peer group have passed away. A kind of tribute to them: let them be remembered.
This time I am trying to see if a microSD card causing the boot to hang on starting with “A start job is running for File System Check on /dev/disk/by-id mmc” then containing some time elapsed followed by “/ no limit”.
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Posted in *nix, *nix-tools, Flash-memory, Linux, openSuSE, Power User, SD/miniSD/microSD/MMC, Storage, SuSE Linux, Tumbleweed | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2026/05/05
Back when I wanted a more universal solution [Wayback/Archive] bash script for $* loop accept command line with spaces in wildcard file names at DuckDuckGo I got into a mess of tips that either did not work at all, or were very convoluted.
As back then I only needed a one-time solution, I just listed the filenames with ls into a text file, did some sed and editing steps, then had each file execute in a separate step. Low tech, non-repeatable when new files appeared, but good enough.
In case I want to go for a more universal solution, below are some links to investigate further. Will likely take me hours, so most of the time this is not worth it. Maybe the subshell plus $IFS (Input Field Separators) is a good start, though it gives me a feeling that in the future it will break something else that was expecting a default $IFS value, as is using while read loop. Both types of solutions feel too convoluted. Same for the array solution below.
I might have just been spoiled with PowerShell piping objects instead of strings having made life so much easier.
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Posted in *nix, *nix-tools, ash/dash, bash, bash, Development, Power User, Scripting, Software Development | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2026/04/17
More than 10 years ago, I needed a MIME decode for Windows as I was developing some software which implemented S/MIME could sign automatically generated emails and verify incoming ones.
I wrote more about the latter part in Some notes on OpenSSL, S/MIME, email, various RFC standards and their relations.
Now finally the post about what I wanted to schedule for posting back then as well: my question looking for a [Wayback/Archive] MIME decoder for Windows – Super User:
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Posted in *nix, *nix-tools, base64, Development, Encoding, Linux, MIME, Power User, Software Development, Windows, WSL Windows Subsystem for Linux | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2026/03/26
There is no official Ring API. But there are libraries and tools around that can talk to a Ring ecosystem, mostly written in JavaScript or Python.
Some links I found:
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Posted in *nix, *nix-tools, cURL, Development, Hardware, IoT Internet of Things, JavaScript/ECMAScript, Network-and-equipment, Power User, Python, Ring Doorbell/Chime (Amazon), Scripting, Software Development | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2026/03/11
I had to remove all text files including a -bar.txt from the current directory using bash, so I automatically typed rm *txt resulting in this nice error:
rm: illegal option -- b
usage: rm [-f | -i] [-dPRrvW] file ...
unlink file
When there was just a file named -foo.txt in the directory, the error became more interesting:
rm: illegal option -- o
usage: rm [-f | -i] [-dPRrvW] file ...
unlink file
Then it struck me: rm is one of those old tools where you can smack all options together. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in *nix, *nix-tools, Apple, bash, Mac OS X / OS X / MacOS, Power User | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2026/03/04
Dit is net zo nalatig als de Odildo hack waar alle klantgegevens mee op straat kwamen te liggen: [Wayback/Archive] Odido-router verzamelt analytics van je huishouden
Bevindingen in het kort
- De Odido-router haalt bij een nieuwe WAN-verbinding een bash-script op over een onversleutelde HTTP-verbinding.
- Je kan dit script manipuleren om een root shell op je router te krijgen.
- Als je TLS-verkeer mitm’t zie je analytics-data over de lijn gaan; de scripters hebben TLS-validatie uitgezet (`curl -k`) dus je kan dit ‘versleutelde’ analytics-verkeer inzien.
- Je router stuurt namen en MAC-adressen van devices in je huis door naar Lifemote. Verder deelt het ding de SSID’s en MAC-adressen van WiFi-netwerken in de buurt. En wat analytics-stats over je dataverbruik. Lifemote adverteert met “AI-Powered Home Wi-Fi Solutions for ISPs”. Het voelt wat vies dat zij AI’s gaan trainen met data uit mijn huishouden. Daar vind ik wat van.
--jeroen
Posted in *nix, *nix-tools, bash, bash, Development, ISP, Odido (ex Dutch T-Mobile), Power User, Python, Scripting, Software Development | Leave a Comment »
The Wiert Corner - irregular stream of stuff 