Zendlab - Death and Rebirth

HOWTO: Mount Windows Share in Linux

Fri, 11 Nov 2011 06:56:00 GMT

Install samba and smbfs
Make folder /mnt/share
Make file /etc/cifspw and fill it with username= and password=
$ sudo chmod 600 /etc/cifspw
Edit /etc/fstab: //ip/share /mnt/share cifs exec,credentials=/etc/cifspw 0 0
$ sudo mount -a

HOWTO: Restore GRUB after installing windows

Tue, 10 May 2011 19:14:28 GMT

Yesterday my notebook (which came with Windows 7) simply went to a boot loop unless I change to OS to Linux o_O. Since reinstalling Windows 7 messes the whole MBR, a GRUB restore is required to get the multiboot back to work. These are the steps to get it working again:

Boot with a LiveCD and in places, click the original grub partition get it mounted.
Open the terminal.
Verify if it's the right partition $ mount | tail -1. Something like /dev/sda5 on /media/0d104aff-ec8c-44c8-b811-92b993823444 type ext4 (rw,nosuid,nodev,uhelper=devkit) will be returned.
To make sure this is indeed the Ubuntu boot partition, run $ ls /media/0d104aff-ec8c-44c8-b811-92b993823444/boot
To restore the grub type $ sudo grub-install --root-directory=/media/0d104aff-ec8c-44c8-b811-92b993823444 /dev/sda --recheck
Reboot and enjoy!

HOWTO: Remove a parsers from ctags

Thu, 31 Mar 2011 21:20:21 GMT

Sometimes it's useful to remove a language parser from the ctags binary. Specially if you are extending it via ctags.conf file. You will need to remove the language bindings at parsers.h (one line here) and source.mak (two lines here), then just recompile the code to get the parsers away.

HOWTO: Recover IUSR and IWAN

Fri, 25 Mar 2011 15:53:00 GMT

Today I faced a very interesting problem: How to set back a site, in Windows 2003, to anonymous access once its password has been accidentally changed in the Directory Security?

Besides the very intriguing fact of "How could someone do that?!", it's equally fascinating that just clicking "Enable anonymous access" and leaving the password field empty won't bring your site back. Neither using "guest" nor "anonymous".

What's going on here is that some Windows account passwords are set automatically and are never known. Once you have them out of sync you have a "Oh, man!" kind of big problem since your customer is calling all the time asking: "Why my password is asking for user and password?! WHY WHY WHY?!".

Fixing this is easy but a little tricky. Here are the steps:

1 -- Open C:InetpubAdminScriptsadsutil.vbs and search for the function IsSecureProperty. It should be something like:

Function IsSecureProperty(ObjectParameter,MachineName)

On Error Resume Next
Dim PropObj,Attribute
Set PropObj = GetObject("IIS://" & MachineName & "/schema/" & ObjectParameter)
If (Err.Number <> 0) Then
ReportError ()
WScript.Echo "Error trying to get the property: " & err.number
WScript.Quit (Err.Number)
End If
Attribute = PropObj.Secure
If (Attribute = True) Then
IsSecureProperty = True
Else
IsSecureProperty = False
End If

End Function

2 -- Edit it TEMPORARILY to always return false:

Function IsSecureProperty(ObjectParameter,MachineName)

' On Error Resume Next
' Dim PropObj,Attribute
' Set PropObj = GetObject("IIS://" & MachineName & "/schema/" & ObjectParameter)
' If (Err.Number <> 0) Then
' ReportError ()
' WScript.Echo "Error trying to get the property: " & err.number
' WScript.Quit (Err.Number)
' End If
' Attribute = PropObj.Secure
' If (Attribute = True) Then
' IsSecureProperty = True
' Else
' IsSecureProperty = False
' End If
IsSecureProperty = False

End Function

3 -- Now your are ready to retrieve the built-in anonymous password by using the following command:

cscript adsutil.vbs get w3svc/anonymoususerpass

4 -- or the IWAN password by using:

cscript adsutil.vbs get w3svc/wamuserpass

5 -- Remove the adsutil.vbs modifications and set the password in the Directory Security.

Note: If instead of using get to retrieve the built-in password, you think it's better to set a new password, you may use the set command and after that you should run cscript synciwam.vbs -v to sync up the new password in all the services.

That's it! And... yeah, the blog is not dead xD

Installing gedit with autocomplete 0.11.0 in windows 7

Tue, 01 Feb 2011 01:12:00 GMT

Many developers that use the GNOME desktop environment already know how powerful, yet lightweight, it's official text editor gedit is. Unlike Windows notepad, GNOME gedit comes with a lot of little customizable options and a very flexible plugins system which really makes the programmers day by day a lot better.

But what most of the users don't know is that both Mac and Windows can run gedit using the packages made by it's own core developers. This means that no matter what OS you are running, you have in gedit a good choice of text editor to work with.

What is gedit

According to the project page:

gedit is the official text editor of the GNOME desktop environment.

While aiming at simplicity and ease of use, gedit is a powerful general purpose text editor. Currently it features:

Full support for internationalized text (UTF-8)

Configurable syntax highlighting for various languages (C, C++, Java, HTML, XML, Python, Perl and many others)

Undo/Redo

Editing files from remote locations

File reverting

Print and print preview support

Clipboard support (cut/copy/paste)

Search and replace

Go to specific line

Auto indentation

Text wrapping

Line numbers

Right margin

Current line highlighting

Bracket matching

Backup files

Configurable fonts and colors

A complete online user manual

gedit features also a flexible plugin system which can be used to dynamically add new advanced features to gedit itself.

The following table lists the plugins distributed with the gedit package:

Change case: Changes the case of the selected text.

Document statistics: Counts the number of lines, words, characters with spaces, characters without spaces, and bytes in the current file. The plugin displays the results in a Document Statistics dialog.

External tools: Run external programs and displays the resulting output.

File browser pane: Browse and open files directly from the gedit side pane.

Indent lines: Indents the selected lines, or removes the indentation from the selected lines.

Insert date/time: Inserts the current date and time into a file.

Snippets: Expands customizable macros to commonly used code blocks.

Sort: Sorts the selected text.

Spell checker: Checks the spelling in the selected text. You can configure gedit to check the spelling automatically, or you can check the spelling manually, in the specified language.

Tag list: Displays in the sidepane a list of common tags to insert into a file.

User name: Inserts the name of the current user into the file.

But the windows package also includes the official gedit-plugins:

Session Saver: Save and restore your working sessions

Smart Spaces: Forget you're not using tabulations.

Embedded Terminal: Embed a terminal in the bottom pane.

Code comment: Comment out or uncomment a selected block of code.

Bracket Completion: Automatically adds closing brackets.

Show/Hide Tabbar: Add a menu entry to show/hide the tabbar.

Color Picker: Pick a color from a dialog and insert its hexadecimal representation.

Draw Spaces: Draw Spaces and Tabs

Join/Split Lines: Join several lines or split long ones

Character Map: Insert special characters just by clicking on them.

Ok, that said, I'm going to write this small guide below:

How to install gedit with autocomplete for Windows 7

Download: gedit for windows, ActiveState Python x86 and gedit-plugin-autocomplete
Install both gedit and ActiveState Python.
Because autocomplete plugin requires a json interpreter and the python which comes with gedit doesn't features the json package, we need to copy the json package from the activestate install to the gedit install. In a command prompt, type:
Copy C:\Python27\Lib\json "C:\Program Files (x86)\gedit\bin\Lib\".
Extract the gedit-plugin-autocomplete
Move autocomplete folder and autocomplete.gedit-plugin file to C:\Program Files (x86)\gedit\lib\gedit-2\plugins\
Open gedit, go Edit > Preferences and click Plugins tab.
Check everything XD
Plugins should be alright, but you can also modify additional stuff in the other tabs (View, Editor and Font & Colors)

Testing

To check if the autocomplete is running, create a new document, set the language to ASP and type:

<%

dim Parser : set Parser = new Markdown
Response.write( Parser. )

Now, set the prompt at the end of the word Parser., erase the dot and type it again. A pop-up with the following contents should appear:

That's it, enjoy!

JSON to XML

Sun, 22 Aug 2010 07:20:00 GMT

Today I'm officially augmenting my JSON2.ASP class with a toXML method which takes a Javascript object with JSON notation and returns it's XML version. My algorithm is a very fast implementation of the prof. Stefan Gössner bijective transformation between JSON and XML exposed in this article.

Example

This javascript:

var nagaozen = {
full_name:"Fabio Zendhi Nagao",
nickname: "nagaozen",
gender: "male",
age: 27,
title: "Founder & CTO - Evolved",
education: {
"@active": true,
technical: {
location: "Federal Technique School of Sao Paulo",
degree: "Technical data processing",
final_work: "E-commerce framework"
},
undergraduate: {
location: "University of Sao Paulo",
degree: "BSc. Applied and Computational Mathematician",
thesis: "Mathematical Modeling of Collective Intelligence"
},
graduate: {
location: "University of Sao Paulo",
degree: "MSc. Computing Science",
thesis: "unknown"
}
},
likes: ["Manoela", "Family (dogs included)", "Internet", "Programming", "Design", "Philosophy"],
dislikes: [],
a_few_aliens_i_know: {},
contact: "nagaozen[at]evolved.com.br"
};

is converted into this XML:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<human>
<full_name>Fabio Zendhi Nagao</full_name>
<nickname>nagaozen</nickname>
<gender>male</gender>
<age>27</age>
<title>Founder & CTO - Evolved</title>
<education active="true">
<technical>
<location>Federal Technique School of Sao Paulo</location>
<degree>Technical data processing</degree>
<final_work>E-commerce framework</final_work>
</technical>
<undergraduate>
<location>University of Sao Paulo</location>
<degree>BSc. Applied and Computational Mathematician</degree>
<thesis>Mathematical Modeling of Collective Intelligence</thesis>
</undergraduate>
<graduate>
<location>University of Sao Paulo</location>
<degree>MSc. Computing Science</degree>
<thesis>unknown</thesis>
</graduate>
</education>
<likes>Manoela</likes>
<likes>Family (dogs included)</likes>
<likes>Internet</likes>
<likes>Programming</likes>
<likes>Design</likes>
<likes>Philosophy</likes>
<dislikes/>
<a_few_aliens_i_know/>
<contact>nagaozen[at]evolved.com.br</contact>
</human>

Download

Get JSON2.ASP from inside the ASP Xtreme Evolution repository.

Fixing Classic ASP Request.QueryString Unicode (UTF-16) bypass

Wed, 18 Aug 2010 09:10:00 GMT

Thanks for the great power of Twitter and TweetDeck, yesterday I was pointed to a terrifying bug in Request.QueryString method in the standard Classic ASP installation. THIS BUG DOES NOT EXISTS IN MY AXE FRAMEWORK (see the tests in the end).

Only God knows why for some mystical reason and under certain conditions Request.QueryString method do some automatic homoglyph (like α→a, τ→t) and homophone (like π→p) transformations in the incoming Unicode (UTF-16) QueryString helping unoccupied folks to XSS and SQLI your beloved application. Basically this stupid transformation implies that there are a lot of potential Unicode characters that can be used as '<' and ''' making the life of exploiters easier. For more information about this bug, read NoScript New Bypass Method by Unicode in ASP and Lost in Translation (ASP’s HomoXSSuality).

Since Microsoft isn't very active in supporting ASP nowadays, I've no clue if they will move a finger to fix this (usually they still release security patches). So I'm giving you Classic ASP developers the chance and the knowledge to fix this issue. Create a file named base.asp in your project and put the following code inside:

Add this file to your application library (hope you made a request mapper):

And replace all your Request.QueryString calls to AXE_GET:

dim name : name = Request.QueryString("name")' from this
dim name : name = AXE_GET("name")' to this

That's it, you are safer than before :D

Demo

Classic ASP Orderly compiler

Fri, 13 Aug 2010 23:57:00 GMT

I believe that with today's release the ASP Xtreme Evolution Framework reaches a real maturity to handle JSON. ORDERLY.ASP leverages the power of the Orderly descriptors to your Classic ASP application. Although it's bundled with the AXE, it's modularized enough to work alone for the Orderly.parse method, which returns the JSONSchema subset, or in ensemble with JSON2.ASP which enables Orderly.compile to stringify the JSONSchema representation.

The name behind this release is Zach Carter which made Orderly.js some months ago and keep updating the project since then. The only effort from my part was to document it in the AXE way and write some examples.

Here are some examples of how to use it:

Retriving the JSONSchema subset from an orderly source

prints:

JScriptTypeInfo

Checking the JSONSchema stringified representation

prints:

{
"type": "object",
"properties": {
"name": {
"type": "string"
},
"description": {
"type": "string",
"optional": true
},
"homepage": {
"type": "string",
"pattern": "^http:"
},
"invented": {
"type": "integer",
"minimum": 1500,
"maximum": 3000
}
},
"additionalProperties": true
}

Download & Source

Download/Source ORDERLY.ASP
Check the tests: http://labs.evolved.com.br/unittests/orderly.unit.test.asp

Enable IIS6 gzip compression to maximum AXE performance

Thu, 12 Aug 2010 02:26:00 GMT

I've recently configured a lot of Windows 2003 servers to run our e-commerce system and remembered that both the built-in configuration of IIS6 and the IIS6 GUI aren't friendly for a proper gzip/deflate compression of our modern file extensions. That's why I'm writing this tutorial which will make your box compress css, js, json, xml and aspx files the way you probably want it. This will also helpeful if a new type of file happen to appear in the future.

Changing the W2K3 interface for best performance

This guide gives a very straight forward step-by-step approach for W2K3 servers running with Classic Start Menu interface. Because I consider that "My Computer" icon incredible useful in a lot of single machine managing scenarios. To enable it, just right-click the Taskbar, click Properties, click Start Menu tab, select Classic Start menu radio button and click OK.

Set up the IIS Compress Service

Starting from a clean Desktop (WIN+D), right-click My Computer, click Manage
Expand Services and Applications, expand Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager, right-click Web Sites, click Properties
Click Service tab, select both Compress application files and Compress static files, select Limited to (in megabytes), set it's input text to 1024 and click OK.

Set up the metabase.xml

Open an console (WIN+R, type cmd and click OK)
Execute in the console the commands below:

iisreset /stop
notepad c:\windows\system32\inetsrv\metabase.xml

Search for "IIsCompression"
Set both deflate and gzip sections with the following properties:

HcDoDynamicCompression="TRUE"
HcDoOnDemandCompression="TRUE"
HcDoStaticCompression="TRUE"
HcDynamicCompressionLevel="9"
HcFileExtensions="htm
html
xml
xslt
js
json
css
txt"
HcScriptFileExtensions="asp
aspx
dll
exe"

Execute in the console the commands below:

iisreset /start

That's it, your server should be compressing the files now! Enjoy the performance!

Classic ASP JSON Revisited

Fri, 06 Aug 2010 15:43:00 GMT

Hi everybody! I'm currently working on three projects using AXE (ASP Xtreme Evolution) Framework and because of their high dependency on JSON I've revisited the topic Classic ASP JSON support. The great news about it is that I found Troy Forster JSON2.ASP a really promising way to work with it. Despite the work being incomplete in terms of functionality, it used a really elegant way to READ the JSON in a fancy native looking way. Plus, the library was based on the Douglas Crockford json2.js meaning it's engine is really strict to the standards.

Because of the AXE philosophy of embrace and use the great ideas born around the world in a real collaboration environment of all languages, I felt really tempted to adopt the original work of the JSON author himself and augment the AXE Framework functionality with this little piece of gold. But I couldn't replace, also it wasn't a smart move in terms of compatibility, my old full featured JSON.ASP class with other that would restrict the freedom to manipulate the Javascript object by my own will.

And that's why I coded my own version of JSON2.ASP which instantly became an integrated piece of AXE. It provides all the functionalities from the Troy Forster work but goes beyond enabling developers to augment the object with booleans, numbers, strings, arrays (using ASP safeArrays notation) and even another objects. Plus I implemented a keys method in the Object.prototype which allows the enumeration of the object keys (this modification is fine and it's also standard in ECMAScript 5) which means that it doesn't matter in which language you are programming (Ruby, Python, VBScript etc) you can use the for each loop in same way that it's available for the language in ASP.

Here are some examples of how to use it:

Reading data from JSON

Building a JSON

Download & Source

Download/Source JSON2.ASP.
Check the tests: http://labs.evolved.com.br/unittests/json2.unit.test.asp