Debugging SSH Digest Login.

I recently when through some issue trying to find out why my SSH digest login did not work. I would like to share this experience. (Assuming that you have root access.)

Before we start off, there are generally 2 kind of ssh daemon, those based on openSSH and based on ssh.com. The difference is in the way these 2 differentiate the public key and the private key.
Hence it is important to know which is which to prevent a headache in troubleshooting it.
(You can use puttygen to find out the difference. Basically they are the same except for the formating.)

I normally use a mixture of putty and Ubuntu ssh (aka openssh ) to navigate around my work servers and my home servers. So I am pretty comfortable with both. To start off, check your sshd.config which is located in /etc/ssh/ in ubuntu. Turn the log level to debug or verbose. If you do not know, do a man on the sshd. It should tell you what sort of values you can put. Then restart your sshd daemon. Otherwise restart your server.

On your own server execute the ssh-keygen and generate your private and public key. Then cat the which is offen in the file of id_rsa.pub into the authorized_keys files within the .ssh directory.
Assuming everything is correct, you can ssh localhost and bypass the login prompt. If it cannot then execute ssh -v localhost to show more information. Still cannot, ssh -vvv localhost. Using the -v, -vv or -vvv options will throw out information with regards to the key exchange between the ssh client and ssh server. From there you will find it easier to debug your ssh digest login failure.

Common Problem:
Usually it is due to permission issue that caused the login to fail. The permission on the home folder also plays a part not just the .ssh directory. It needs to be at least a drwxr-xr-x for the ssh transaction to be successful.

Drop me comments if you want more details.

Triple Same Letter phrase.

I have started putting my msn with message starting with the same letter. Just for the sake of fun.
Today is J. My msn message for the day is James Jolly Jet.

A:
B:
C:
D:
E:
F:
G: Great Good God
H: Holy Holly Hole
I: Ideas initially innocent
J: James Jolly Jet
K: Kermit Kick Kelvin
L: Lame Loose Line
M: Mary Make Money
N: Never November Night
O: Open On October
P: Pink Panther Palm
.
.
to be continued....... (AKAN DATANG)

To Be or not To Be? That is the Question.

Severity 1 or Not Severity 1, that is the question. How can there be a breach when there is no border in place?

Over the weekend in my company mail box bounced a few mails from the management. Someone breach an imaginary line and caused a severity 1 situation. (I did not see someone dying ? ). So the top people sent not 1 but 2 warning email to all the middle management. The email brush the incident by and concentrate on just the warning.

This is a case where by the decision making criteria is not made known. The top and the operation people do not see eye to eye in how the decision should be made. Hence when things happen on the ground, the ground people make the decision. The top felt the pain and feedback the pain in the form of procedures, red tape and warning.

The more I see how things are being run, the more I feel that I cannot stay long.
Kent Ridge Park Car Park.


Big and alot of cars. Too bad the view of the sea is block by Pasir Panjang Port.
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Something about VirtualBox

I would like to share something which I observed on my VirtualBox. Each virtual machine you have can have up to 4 network interface card. These 4 cards are not really related. What I meant is that you can have VM1 using network adapter 0 and VM2 using network adapter0 too.

This has caused quite a confusion for me before today. But then trial and error finally get me to know.

Resouce No Enough

The title is one which only a Singaporean will comprehend. Not to long ago, a few colleagues and I were discussing about natural resources and the world economy and right now we know that the price of crude oil is poking out through the roof and growing taller by the day.

Capitalism, although it is driven us to our current state may not be able to push us further on the track of evolution. The rich and poor divide will drive the society apart. Capitalism basic is greed. The more you have, the more you want.

I see that demand has far exceed the supply. The demand for oil and energy. The demand for food. These demand has far exceed the supply for them. Some people are facing famine and blackout on a daily basis. Just yesterday night, the news reported that due to the current situation with the growing fuel prices, Japan ministers now need to cut back on the subsidy given the countries. Malaysia has announce the ending of cheap oil. All this will always translate into a rise in living cost. Looks like another round of price increase.

Which come down to and back to my heading "Resource No Enough". Conservation it is the way to go. How about the other way? Cut back on demand? Can we do that?

I say we can. We cannot depend on capitalism or the economy any more if we are going to do that. Economy or the growth in the economy is the current indicator used by government world wide to gauge how well they did. However with this, it also indicate that the demand for every thing increase too. How do we control the demand? We reduce the source of the demands. We need to reduce the population on earth. (Unless we can start to colonize other planet, we need to stop the growth)

I see that some countries had started to adopt policies towards this goal and also develop beneficial technologies in this area. Like China had adopted the "1 Child policy" in the last 30 years and they are slowly seeing the effect. Japan has developed technologies that would greatly enhance the lives of those in the graying days. Robotics and exo-skeleton technologies are just a few of that examples.

Although reducing the population will increase the work load for the adults, but on the whole it is sustainable. With improvement in technologies, people can contribute more efficiently and for a longer period of their live time. Hence reducing the dependency on society. This however will result in economy shrinking. Lesser population will mean lesser demand and will eventually translate into a shrinking economy. Our current mentally is that shrinking economy is not good. (Heh even our minister peg their pay to the growth our economy. ) Do you think people can accept it? A shrinking economy? Some of the financial institution and financial products on the market now depend on this growth. Some of our savings depend on it too. What will they do? What will you do?

I applause the actions of some and appalled at the actions of the other. The top 2 most populated countries in the world currently listed in Wikipedia is China and India. 1 has taken action to control its population. The other is shipping its citizens out in an effort to reduce the demand on their country land.

My stance is the earth is like a pie. Now how your look at it, cut it, the surface area is the same. Yes, there can be innovative ways to cut it but it is still the same. Furthermore, we share the same pie as the rest of the animal kingdom.

I hate to be around with the earth is like a can of sardines. 6 millions on a little red dot?! Hey wake you your idea!!

View from the Study Room




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Better Looking Shelf

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Changes.

It been a while since I put any entries or even try to put in any character in this space of mine. Since, I was awake at 4:40am in the morning and I still have a few more hours to go before needing to go to work, I decided that now is a good time to write something.

Since early this year, things has started to change. My darling wife has decided to call it quits after teaching for close to 15 years. Me, if she quits how can I? So she decided that to try to become a sales person. Selling properties. Hence if you are in need of a property agent, let me know.

So I am where I am and was loving it until yesterday. I went to the my client place for a meeting. The meeting was successful and things go well. Jobs was assigned to the correct party. I even had lunch with them and things was well. But then after I came back to office and boss tell me this, "Please get the SQP ready by Monday."

WTF?!!!

The Pen is mightier than the sword no doubt, but ultimately, you still need the sword to do the work. In Office context, although the manager is important (especially a good manager), you still need to the employee or subordinate to get the work done. A manager is only as good as his team. Doing is my forte. Getting things done and not writing report is what I do best. Should I learn to like it? Writing report that is. Is this the only to move up?

What have I agree to?

What up with my personal life? Well after moving in, it was a few months of packing and unpacking, customizing out furniture. I had an sudden interest in making my house green.

I had a Rosemary plant and a Citronella on my service balcony. I am also trying out to compost my used tea leaves. I like moss alot. My place is also now a host to 2 species of carnivorous plants, namely the Venus Fly Trap and the Pitcher Plant.

Announcement : I offical moved in!

Finally after months of anguish and hard work, I finally moved in.

CNN vs BBC

I noticed that there is a fashion gap between the English and American newscaster. This is very much in evident in the dress and coat they wear on screen.

I think the BBC are or will be conservative as compared to the CNN counterpart.

No offense or perhaps it is just the time which I chose to turn on my cable.

Hosptial

Never really like being in a hospital. The waiting for your loved one to come out from the surgery room is really long even if it is only a few minutes.

Apart from the NHG project and AMS days where I need to go to work in TTSH, this is the only time I am in a hospital during the day for so long.

I would not like to die in the hospital.

My Passion: Java

Since my days in part-timing days in RMIT where I flung my Java Implementing module once, I have gotten to know Java much better. From the days of Java 1.1 to the current Java 5, I have been diligently following its progress and development.

Recently (not really since it was a year ago), due to my work environment, I was not able to follow and do reading up. In fact for a while I felt uninterested. So on a bored and tired day, I pop into java.sun.com and read up the development for Java 6 and was really impressed. Again.

A few thing caught my eye, the ability for Java to utilize the native scripting language and the out of beta monitoring abilities. I think Sun site is really filled with good information and should be what a good corporate site should be. Unlike some other companies sites (Internet or Intranet pages like wise)

So pop on by to java.sun.com to do some reading.