Preface: legal stuff
Depending on where you live, use of random open wifi networks might be considered illegal. Although I know of no law in my country against doing this, where you live, things may be different, so educate yourself before following my example.
Wifi roaming on the move
For the past year I have used my Eee PC on the metro transit bus, as it is the perfect size for this. When I can, I take advantage of open networks to connect back home. In this article I will show how you can actually use such access, will recommend which software works best and will explain how to set it up.
So, what can I really do with the net while in motion?
How about irc? No kidding! This shell one-liner does the job:
while ! ssh -t 10.9.8.7 'screen -UDr' 2>/dev/null ; do echo -n "." ; sleep .1 ; done
We’re concerned about privacy and security on other people’s networks, so we use ssh. Inside that screen session, keep irssi running for a continuous irc presence. Every 10th of a second, the script tries to resume your session. Once a the net passes by, typing “[Enter]~.” drops you back out to retry again. The row of dots serves as a progress bar. If you want to get fancy, you could replace that with an
ASCII ‘spinner’. I leave that as an exercise for the reader. :)
Come on, is that really usable?
Certainly. As the good folks on #eeepc at irc.freenode.net and #debian-eeepc at irc.oftc.net can attest, even a half dozen brief connections can be enough to provide tech support, rough out some development ideas, or just carry on some friendly chat. If your spouse or housemate is online too, it can even help you make some last-minute grocery-list changes. :) While the script is working, enjoy some offline things such as blogging, reading a cached Planet Debian feed or a
PDF book.
OK, so what else do I need to make it work?
Well, you’ve seen so far we need on a server:
- openssh-server
- screen
- irssi
On the Eee, you should also have:
- openssh-client
- wpasupplicant
- gnome-terminal
But what do I need wpasupplicant for if I only use open networks?
Well, wpasupplicant is really handy for fast control of networks in Roaming Mode (as per /usr/share/doc/wpasupplicant/README.modes.gz).
A GUI is just too slow. For example, you may need to filter out ‘junk’ open wifi nets: pay-per-use hotspots or nets that hide their name. You’ll not only want a “catch-all” stanza for any open network, but also a number of the most commonly found default network names, e.g.
# Catch-all; associates with any open network:
network=
key_mgmt=NONE
# Commonly found default network names:
network=
ssid="default"
key_mgmt=NONE
network=
ssid="linksys"
key_mgmt=NONE
# etc. by watching scan_results closely you'll find several more
While the connect script is running, keep a separate tab open in gnome-terminal for wpa_cli. Use ‘disable_network 0’ to drop the catch-all and let the other stanzas kick in and ‘enable_network 0’ after filtering is no longer needed.
Isn’t it really slow to get connected?
Without some tweaks, yes. But here are a few things I have found by trial and error that help.
One issue is that dhclient takes too long to retry, so you drop the delay between retries back to 1 second in /etc/dhcp3/dhclient.conf:
backoff-cutoff 1;
initial-interval 1;
If the signal is very weak, you’ll want the transmit power turned up to the maximum value for your hardware. For the Eee
PC 4G this is 50mW, so you set this in /etc/network/interfaces for ath0, your wireless interface:
wireless-txpower 50mW
Finally, while you’re in motion you are constantly leaving no-longer-usable access points behind. The driver needs to discard them as quickly as possible and scan for new ones. So again in /etc/network/interfaces for ath0, you bring the default scanvalid 60 seconds down to 10 with:
pre-up /sbin/iwpriv ath0 scanvalid 10
Conclusion
The netbook has changed how we use the net. Now that we can take it everywhere, we either pay through the nose for expensive cell network access or else use the patchy wifi coverage blanketing most urban areas. A few lucky cities have such things as municipal wifi nets, but the rest of us have to scrape what access we can wherever we go. You are now equipped to try this out on the bus. If you find any other tips that can help, I’d love to hear from you.
One of the main UK computer security websites (Get Safe Online, GSO, a public/private partnership) has recently changed to using a website for security alerts, instead of sending emails that contained a “secret” word. Of course, a non-SSL website is not really safer or easier to verify than the emails, so I asked them: why don’t you use OpenPGP or GPG, like debian’s excellent security advisories?
The reply essentially boils down to “our target audience doesn’t use encryption software and we’re not going to educate them and other countries don’t either.” The encryption instructions on their site consists of an extremely vague explanation and links to a dozen or so other websites, along with insulting open source programs (which is disappointingly usual for GSO). The site is a little better than it was last year, but not much.
I think it’s a terrible shame that the gov.uk-supported site is failing to encourage encryption software use. Do you think this stems from a fear of strong encryption making it harder for the public sector to snoop on us?
So I guess this falls to the common/civil sector to promote personal security. How could we spread encryption software to the masses? GnuPG and as many mail client plugins as you can find? Icedove/Thunderbird and Enigmail?
)
I wish everyone a happy Diwali and nothing but good fortune and prosperity in the new Gujarati year called Sharvari (V.S. 2065)
This year the local mandirs got wise and lobbied the city for permission to hold a firework display however we had horrible weather today so we didn't go. I had already prepared my own stash of fireworks anyway so we enjoyed them at home.
On the presents front, I got a much needed woollen hat, another tulasi plant (lets see how long before I kill this one.) and a gift certificate for audiobooks which I used to get "Slaughterhouse 5" by Kurt Vonnegut, "Naked Lunch" by William S. Burroughs, and "A Clockwork Orange' by Anthony Burgess. And of course all the sweets I could eat.
Once again I crushed all beneath my booted toe at Hungry Hungry Hippos.
I could argue and make reasonable points - but instead I'm going to be childish/annoying/ignorant/confrontational/blunt:
After my 
Following Ganneff’s post to debian-devel-announce, several discussions have again started on the topic of Debian’s membership and several proposals have been made. Unfortunately none of these proposals try to resolve the underlying trust problem that has been growing over the years. Despite the NM process (or maybe due to it), we managed to give DD status to people who are motivated but whose technical skills are doubtful (at that point people ask for an example, and as much as I hate fingerpointing, here’s an example with 
...of my friends, workmates and colleagues, when I will have to try to
explain them that, no, I have no bloody idea of when Debian will
release. Mostly because:
now that ps3-utils is 
For one, I think it might be a good idea to pause this proposal now. (Reason: lenny) 
While I don’t really have a strong opinion on the suggestions in 