[blog.rayfoo] » APT

Doing geolocation lookups in command line

ray — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 09:41:40 +0000

Did you know that it's possible to do your own geoip lookups from the linux command line?

You need to install the geoip-bin package in Ubuntu/Debian's APT system:

sudo apt-get install geoip-bin

Then after which, lookups can be done as simply as:

$ geoiplookup 8.8.8.8
GeoIP Country Edition: US, United States

Note that the lookups are based on the GeoLite Country database. For more detailed geoip lookups you will need to buy the better databases.

Converting IDNs in Ubuntu

ray — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 15:56:06 +0000

With the start of Internationalized domain names (IDNs) it sparked my interest since it requires conversion to punycode in order to continue working with existing DNS systems/applications, which work with ASCII.

Taking a search through Ubuntu's APT system, to see whether any IDN related tools are available...

$ apt-cache search punycode

libidn11 - GNU Libidn library, implementation of IETF IDN specifications
libidn11-dev - Development files for GNU Libidn, an IDN library
idn - Command line and Emacs interface to GNU Libidn
libidn11-java - Java port of the GNU Libidn library, an IDN implementation
libidna-punycode-perl - encodes Unicode string in Punycode

There's the idn package! Which allows encoding of IDNs in punycode in the command line...

Doing an install...

$ sudo apt-get install idn -y

And trying it out!

$ idn правительство.рф

libidn 1.15
Copyright 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009 Simon Josefsson.
GNU Libidn comes with NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.
You may redistribute copies of GNU Libidn under the terms of
the GNU Lesser General Public License.  For more information
about these matters, see the file named COPYING.LIB.
xn--80aealotwbjpid2k.xn--p1ai

And resolving the domain...

$ nslookup xn--80aealotwbjpid2k.xn--p1ai

Non-authoritative answer:
Name:	xn--80aealotwbjpid2k.xn--p1ai
Address: 95.173.135.62

Note that resolving the domain directly results in rubbish!

$ nslookup правительство.рф

Non-authoritative answer:
Name:	\208\191\209\128\208\176\208\178\208\184\209\130\208\181\208\187\209\140\209\129\209\130\208\178\208\190.\209\128\209\132
Address: 67.215.65.132

So, basically from this we understand that applications will need to use the punycode encoded version of the IDN, NOT the original IDN, when resolving. And there're tools out there already can do that for us.

Since Ubuntu has these packages, Debian would also have the corresponding packages available too.

(Terminal) Easter Eggs

ray — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 09:07:57 +0000

Friend of mine showed me a link to this video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b-OhjAD937s) showing some easter eggs that can be done within Ubuntu's terminal.

Apparently it can be done on any linux terminal, as long as you have the correct version of apt or aptitude installed, so give it a try and enjoy!

The commands that can be run are:

apt-get moo
aptitude moo
aptitude moo -v
aptitude moo -vv
aptitude moo -vvv
aptitude moo -vvvv
aptitude moo -vvvvv
aptitude moo -vvvvvv

Updating APT’s trusted keys

ray — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 14:16:37 +0000

If you're running an

apt-get install

aptitude install

command, and you get

WARNING: The following packages cannot be authenticated!

running

sudo aptitude reinstall ubuntu-keyring

might do the trick~

[via Fool's Wisdom]