LDAP with TOMCAT and ECLIPSE Development Environment

In my continuing work to find a decent and scalable web deployment system.  I've been drawn to the "dark side" of using Java where everyone else seems to be gravitating toward javascript...what?!! really!!?  I see javascript as a UI tool but for serious back end? really? V8?  node.js? are you serious? Let's get serious now, Java will rule in the web-verse back end even with every US government agency attempting to boost Apple's share value by attempting to cast the same dispersion on Java that it did on Flash.  Where did that leave the advertising industry?  It is left with an HTML5 specification that is still not complete and a toolset that is reminiscent of the capabilities of Visual Basic back in the 1990's.  Well, they can afford to pay Homeland Security and all the other government agencies off (sorry the conspiriacy guy needs to come out to play as usual), but java still rules in my books and they won't be able to buy me out because I'm not really for sale, regardless.  If we want to step back to the 90's level of coding technology we can use javascript, the tools for quality and debugging are back there, we have Google's tools in their chrome browser and Firefox with firebug, I'll admit there are a couple of good tools but none that cross platform boundaries like Java does nor has the scope and depth of Java libraries.  There's no ECLIPSE IDE for javascript for example, but I diverge..

I wanted to simply list a few pages to remember regarding the development using LDAP for a java back end web system.  Simply, here are a couple of pages that describe the LDAP authentication and user management powerhouse capabilities.  LDAP will scale in a serious way, everything you can imagine for a user management system and then some can be accomplished with LDAP and , by the way, you only have to do your user management once if you want to attach other systems to it, go right ahead, even Windows or Linux OS can authenticate against your LDAP. I mean how many user databases do you need?. I say you only need one! So what are you waiting for?  Figure out what LDAP is.

Here's some tips on how to build LDAP into your tomcat server.  Oh, what's a Tomcat server?  Well, I'll leave that for you to discover for yourself as well if you don't already know, every bad thing about Java runtime configuration was made solid with OSGI, ohh you don't understand what OSGI is?  Ohhh.. you must be programming an Iphone, of course you wouldn't understand, well the number one phone platform for Apps is Google's Android, and it's open source!  By the way, OSGI is the underpinning of how an Android works, and it is a standard developed for Java!  Ohhh you see the connection between my previous statement about Apple paying off the US government to discredit Java, can you connect the dots?  But I diverge again...


Just in case you thought that Java was dead and the Feds came and killed it after peeing on it, I'll remind you that every possible thing you can imagine for web back end is available through Apache, I mean seriously, Javascript?! really!?  HTML5? .. ugggg ... JSON?? These are play toys kiddies!! good for doodling on a canvas or passing naughty JSON message on IM back and forth but fail very short of being able to make a secure,stable and scalable web back end let alone a serious framework for a web application.

Here's TOMCAT

here's a great page on how to LDAP enable a TOMCAT:

Web Container Authentication Via LDAP

OK so on to the serious front end for your Eclipse development environment so you can control the massively scalable LDAP back end you've created.

directory.apache.org studio installation in eclipse

I also added the LDIF and Schema editor because I have my own schema and LDIF helps to create your LDAP structure, ohh you don't know what these are?  Well you shouldn't be reading this then because it's painful if you are only interested in JSON and Javascript seriously , go home, don't bother to make a system ready for a bazillion users, you can service a couple hundred with your JSON and javascript app.

Now you can use the Apache Directory but I chose to use SLAPD that is available through OPENLDAP which is available on just about every linux package manager and Unix flavour out there, but why listen to me?  Go ahead and create a YAOUMs (yet another obscure user manager system).

Do I sound bitter? My apologies to all who I've offended, if you use LDAP it is extremely complicated and involved, your Javascript and JSON may be perfectly well suited for the small project you may have to do quickly here and there but once you get up and running on the LDAP platform the things one can do with user management are quite astounding and beyond enterprise level thinking.

Sagemcom f@st 2864 BRIDGE with dd-wrt

Hi Folks,

If you are lucky enough to have FTTN service via VDSL as we are you likely have a BELL Connection hub or otherwise know to those in the know as a

Sagemcom fast 2864 

Listen... do yourself a favour and put this sucker in bridge mode and use your own internal router.  I had no end of trouble trying to do VPN networking with this device, trust me it doesn't work!  Furthermore they have watered down the administration panels so you basically can't get at any advanced settings.  They don't even give their technical resellers and information how to get into more advanced administrative functions.  Don't even bother.  To put this into bridge mode go into the resets page of the administration  panel and do a hard reset.  Make sure you know what your PPoE username and password is and jot down any port forwarding settings you may have set up.

you then connect to the device in factory settings (192.168.2.1) admin, admin

do another factory reset, then connect port LAN1 to you WAN port on your own router.  Make sure that your PPPoE settings are entered correctly and you have set up your lan and gateway settings on your own internal router.

you will then be in bridged mode and hopefully you will have more control over your Internet connection and data.  Honestly I think it is a commercial plot for these companies to restrict your access and not allow you to do things like VPN where you can encrypt your traffic....but that's just the conspiracy guy talking ...

happy hacking!!

Free University courses - eye tracking initiative - image processing

I signed up for a course in image processing at duke university, the course is free and begins january 14th 2013 https://www.coursera.org/course/images

Eye tracking Initiative

In my search for more modern eye tracking libraries, open source candidates for inclusion in the eye tracking project I've uncovered a gem from turkey

http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/26897/TrackEye-Real-Time-Tracking-Of-Human-Eyes-Using-a

this uses openCV

http://opencv.org/

This is under evaluation, I have started a private project on github.  I am using rawmaterials software (JUCE) as the application framework, we want to be cross platform and open source

http://www.rawmaterialsoftware.com/

D-LINK and other arm linux based Wifi routers

In efforts to customize a D-Link DIR-615 with dd-wrt and enable an ipv6 stack protocol for global ipv6 address resolution device I had to first hack the D-Link and flash with the dd-wrt binary image.  Next, I have to modify the firmware image with various packages and alter the linux configuration to enable ipv6 functionality.

There are tools to extract and modify the firmware image here:

http://bitsum.com/firmware_mod_kit.htm

dd-wrt and openwrt have cross compatible packages that can be added in and taken away from the linux image.  A compressed file system is used in the image given that flash space for the root file system is very limited.

Following other instructions from others who are working on enabling this functionality in routers and learning how to hack arm linux devices.  Obviously these basic skills will lead to other possibilities to employ custom wifi routers for other applications, or other arm based linux devices

dd-wrt bridge router

I have had some problems because of bell installing my wireless router at the top floor of our house and our builders did not leave any pull through that would allow extra wiring to be added, I thought of an idea to use a bridge router, I had an old linksys wrt54g version 5 router kicking around.  The idea is that this would bridge my wired lan in my office in the basement of the house with the top floor of the house without having to run wires, essentially the linksys would bridge between the two lan segments wirelessly.

In fact it works quite well although the process was a long drawn our procedure of hacking the linksys with an open source firmware version known as dd-wrt.  Here's the link to the bridging instructions

http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Wireless_Bridge

The DD-WRT system is really quite sophisticated  I am now looking for a later version of the WRT Linksys in order to test IPV6 capabilities (see my IPV6 post)

DD-WRT is quite amazing, very impressive community software.  I'm sure there will be more notes on this system in the future as I'm just beginning to learn of the possibilities with a hacked router, plus it exposes a lot of the settings and concepts that are dumbed down and glossed over in commercial routers, lots of learning yet to do for me.

IPV6 Free6

This is my first entry in my hack log, I have decided to keep better records of the things that I try in case it may be of use to anyone, but moreso for a recorded history of hacks for the purpose of getting better at making things work and trying new things.

I've decided that ipv6 is a major networking project theme for me this year, this is the new and improved internet that will provide benefits for promoting music and media. I decided to test our free6, it was fairly simple to set up and I was able to get the client running on my Macbook pro (snow leopard). The client built , I also was required to build and install tunX/TapX device adapter here's the client http://www.gogo6.com/profile/gogoCLIENT

the tun/tap adapter for mac kernel extensions is here:

these need to be installed before you can run up the client, it's also wise to edit the config file that comes with the source for gogocleint

Here's the tuntap adapter

http://tuntaposx.sourceforge.net/


status of this hack not yet complete