This is a solution to the issue that I faced today while installing a javascript file from userscripts.org as an extension into google chrome (Yes, Chrome supports installing greasemonkey javascripts as extensions). I had already installed this script once into my browser earlier but when I tried installing it again today, it started giving me a weird error “Could not read source file”. I tried all possible means, like putting it on a different server, installing from local disk, changing versions, deleting all cache, etc but still the issue persisted.

Finally looking into the source code of the chromium browser svn repository, I got a clue. What google chrome does when you install a script as installation is that it first downloads the script, then it calls a function ConvertUserScriptToExtension to convert the script into a google chrome compatible script and then installs it. Now, since I had already installed this script once, I found that the script was already existing in my downloads directory, so while downloading chrome renames it to <file>(1).js (i.e., appends a number to it to distinguish from the original file). But it seems like that the path sent to the conversion function still uses the original name/path and it somehow finds that the older file is not the downloaded one but also doesn’t know which is the current downloaded one and hence fails with an error “Could not read source file”.

Solution: Pretty simple. Just delete the original file present in your download directory and then try installing the script and it will install fine

© Shantanu Goel | This article, titled Chrome Script/Extension installation error: Could not read source file, was originally published on Shantanu's Technophilic Musings

This post is about my open source remote bandwidth usage stats logger project.

I’ve been wanting to log the internet bandwidth usage at my home for quite some time since I don’t really find the stats put out by my ISP to be completely accurate. But I have multiple devices at home that access the internet so it is not feasible to install a bandwidth monitor individually on all these devices as I’d still need to add up all logs and many of such devices don’t even have a way to install a monitoring software installed (e.g. my PS3, my TV, my media players, etc). So, I thought of monitoring the usage at my router. It is a smart one (Asus wl-500w) and I can install various linux software on it but then it requires a hard disk to run most of them which I don’t turn on all the time. Moreover, even if I could run the software directly from router flash, it doesn’t have enough space to store the logs (neither is it a good idea to keep writing to the flash often).

Hence I came up with the idea of a light weight remote bandwidth usage logger where in the router has to do the bare minimum possible (here, it just has to make a GET call to a webpage with current status of received and transmitted bytes, accomplished by a single line of wget command). The system is completely open source and is intelligent enough to keep track of things even if router reboots or the bytes count wraps around the 4 GB limit (because of 32 bit data structures used). The logging and parsing is all done on server side and provides various useful things.

Few of the features of the system:

• Very lightweight in CPU/RAM resource usage on host as well as server
• Outputs easy to browse html and graphs
• User defined directory structure to decide the granularity that is wanted
• yearly, monthly, daily stats and graphs
• Provides quick access to extra stats like last time the host connected, last known host IP etc
• Provides total download/upload numbers as well as detailed
• Estimates uptime of remote host
• Can use a DNS name or IP to avoid (or call out) spurious amounts of usage logged by a spurious IP

Remote Bandwidth Stats Yearly Stats

Remote Bandwidth Stats Monthly Stats

Remote Bandwidth Stats Daily Stats

© Shantanu Goel | This article, titled Remote Bandwidth Stats, was originally published on Shantanu's Technophilic Musings

Google just launched an encrypted search portal which is a Godsend for people on public networks since there is a lot that can be gleaned from your search queries. For doing your protected searches, however, you have to go to a different portal which I linked to above. Now, the omnibar (the address bar in Google Chrome) also serves as a search box but searches on the normal google portal by default. Here is a simple, few seconds process to switch it over to encrypted search.

1. Click on the wrench/tool icon at the top of Google Chrome and go to Options.

2. On the “Basics” tab, go to the “Search” item and click on “Manage Search Engines”

3. Go to the very bottom of the new page that opens and you will see three empty boxes.

4. For the first box (leftmost), give any nickname for the engine. I gave “EncryptedGoogle”

5. For second box, give a keyword that invokes the new search engine. I gave “encrypted.google.com”

6. For last box, give the url for the search engine. This should be

https://encrypted.google.com/search?{google:RLZ}{google:acceptedSuggestion}{google:originalQueryForSuggestion}sourceid=chrome&ie={inputEncoding}&q=%s

7. Press Enter and the engine will be added to the list. Then hover over the engine row and click on “Make as default”. And you are done.

Happy safe searching

© Shantanu Goel | This article, titled Use Encrypted Google Search As Default in Chrome, was originally published on Shantanu's Technophilic Musings

Update: I did some more digging and the email and the links actually seem to be legitimate. Good news for many, but bad for those who actually got this email.

BEWARE!! In wake of the recent announcement of a potential Playstation Network ban wave by Sony for the people who are hacking it’s gaming console PS3, some nefarious elements seem to be using this as an opportunity to pry on your PSN passwords. Many folks are receiving emails like below:

Notice: Unauthorized circumvention devices for the PlayStation®3 system have been recently released by hackers for the PlayStation®3 system. These devices permit the use of unauthorized or pirated software. Use of such devices or software violates the terms of your “System Software License Agreement for the PlayStation®3 System” and the “Terms of Services and User Agreement” for the PlayStation®Network/Qriocity and its Community Code of Conduct provisions.  In addition, copying or playing pirated software is a violation of International Copyright Laws. A circumvention device and/or unauthorized or pirated software currently resides on your PlayStation®3 system. Immediately cease use and remove all circumvention devices and delete all unauthorized or pirated software from your PlayStation®3 system. Failure to do so will result in termination of your access to the PlayStation®Network and access to Qriocity services through your

PlayStation®3 system.

This email has been delivered from a send-only address.  Please do not reply to this message. If you have any questions, contact Consumer Services using the following link: http://playstation.i…HvEHWTPlTnHqJPH

LEGAL

“PlayStation”, “PLAYSTATION”, and the “PS” Family logo are registered trademarks of Sony Computer Entertainment LLC.

© 2011 Sony Computer Entertainment America LLC.

919 E. Hillsdale Blvd., Foster City, CA 94404

I have intentionally removed the complete link in the email to save anyone else from falling into the trap. Basically this email (and it’s many variations) take you to a site which looks like Sony US site but it is not. So, do not put your password into it. If you have already clicked on the link, then change your psn password and remove any credit card info linked to it, immediately.

© Shantanu Goel | This article, titled PSN Ban-Wave Phishing Scam, was originally published on Shantanu's Technophilic Musings

This is just a short post to to document how I got JDownloader to integrate with Flashgot. JDownloader doesn’t have an installer but a zip file that you just download and extract somewhere on your PC and start using it. Somehow, the Flashgot extension of Firefox is not able to detect it automatically and I didn’t know what parameters to use to add it manually to its list. Latest versions of JDownloader ask you whether you want to install Flashgot or not. I didn’t install it because I already had Flashgot. Turns out that this is the missing step. You should allow JDownloader to install Flashgot in your browser, even if it is already installed(If you have already run JDownloader once and didn’t say yes to installing flashgot, then you can do it by going to Settings->Plugins 7 Addons->Extensions->Flashgot for Firefox in JDownloader and clicking Install). And then, you will see that the JDownloader option is not grayed out anymore. If you see the version of Flashgot that JDownloader is installs is older than the official version, don’t fret. Now, you can re-update the flashgot addon (Tools->Addons->Find Updates in firefox) and the JDownloader integration will still stay intact. Hope that helps someone

© Shantanu Goel | This article, titled Integrate JDownloader with Flashgot, was originally published on Shantanu's Technophilic Musings

This article will tell you a simple way to login automatically to beam cable (Beam-Telecom) internet connection instead of using the web login manually. Not only that, I’ll also tell you how to do this auto-login through your router if you have one with a custom linux firmware. I took a beam cable connection a few days ago. The price is excellent and speeds are good but the only thing that bothered me was the web based login. You need to open up a browser and login through their online portal before you can access the internet. Now, if you don’t log off, then the login may persist even across PC/router reboots but many times it doesn’t. But in these times, it becomes a pain in the wrong place when I am just looking to play online on my PS3 or one of my various net-capable devices, scattered around the house, are trying to pull data and this forces me to open up my laptop just to login. Even for people who use the internet only on their PC, they might not be using the browser all the time and find it a hassle, minor one but still a hassle, to open a browser and login. Hence, I set out to find a way to do this automatically. (BTW, I’ll also be listing out how I came onto the solution in case you are in interested. If you are not, feel free to skip some paragraphs below to move to the solution)

First off, I came to know that Beam cable supports PPPoE logins, but for the life of me, I (and any of my friends) couldn’t get it working. So, I thought of an alternative approach. Since, this was just a login through a web page, there was a good chance that I could automate it through perl/wget/curl etc. I immediately opened up their portal and took a look at the source code in the hopes of finding out the login form, which I could use to find the POST data that they want and submit it through wget. But what I found was that they are using javascript to do the login process, so no direct way of finding this out. And on top of that, the functions are not embedded in the page but loaded through an external script.

Hmm, a setback but a minor one. Javascript is still a client-side executed environment so all hope wasn’t lost. I could have waded through the browser cache to find the js files loaded by the portal and went through the functions to reconstruct the data that I need but I chose an easier way. There is this excellent addon for firefox called “Live Headers”. It shows you all the transactions happening between your browser and the server. So, I just fired it up, filled in my login details in the portal and hit “Login”. On seeing the live headers log, I found out the exact url as well as the POST data that they were sending to do the actual login and from there it was a piece of cake. With “wget”, it is as simple as executing

wget <url> –post-data=<data>

So, by substituting the information that I got, this is the command that you need to execute on your PC (For linux/mac it is already installed generally and for windows, you will need to download from here)

wget http://123.176.37.2/newportal/Ajax.php –post-data="function=ExecuteLogin&user=YOURBEAMUSERNAME&pwd=YOURBEAMPASSWORD&remember=false&timestamp=1271186686298"

Please remember to replace YOURBEAMUSERNAME and YOURBEAMPASSWORD with your actual username and password respectively. Also, please note that the above command is all one single line (it might appear in multiple lines in your browser).

So, everytime you need to login just run this command. Now, how to do this automatically? For linux, just put it inside a shell script for linux and set it to run automatically on bootup. For windows, paste the command in a text file, and save it as beam_login.bat and put it in your start up folder so that it runs everytime on boot. (You might want to put some delays in there as it might take some time to get connected to the network or you can query the network interface to run it when the network is up. Let me know if you want to know how to do this for your platform and I can help you).

So, this is for the PC, now how about if I need to use non-browser capable devices. This is easy if you have a router with a custom linux firmware (because they generally have wget installed or allow you to install it). I have an Asus wl-500w with oleg’s custom firmware installed and it was a piece of cake with it. I just created the following shell script

#!/bin/sh

if [ -e Ajax.php ]
then
  rm Ajax.php
fi

#Limit the number of retries to prevent the router from going into continuous loop
num_retries=10

while [ $num_retries -gt 0 ]
do
wget http://123.176.37.2/newportal/Ajax.php –post-data="function=ExecuteLogin&user=YOURBEAMUSERNAME&pwd=YOURBEAMPASSWORD&remember=false&timestamp=1271186686298"
if [ -e Ajax.php ]
then
  rm Ajax.php
  break
else
  sleep 2s
  num_retries=`expr $num_retries – 1`
fi
done

Then I set it to run on boot and voila!! A tip for other users of any of the asus routers with oleg’s firmware (like wl-500g, wl-520gu, wl-500gp etc). The firmware has some scripts in the /local/sbin folder that are run at various times. I suggest you put the above code inside the post-firewall script. (Do not forget to run “flashfs save && flasfs commit && flashfs enable” to save your changes). Now, every time my router reboots, it automatically logs in to the connection

Hope I have been clear in the isntructions. If you are unclear about anything or need any help in implementing it for your specific platform, do let me know.

© Shantanu Goel | This article, titled Automatic Login For Beam Cable, was originally published on Shantanu's Technophilic Musings

Today, the whole word is going gaga over "Opera Unite", the new technology in Opera 10 which will make your web browser a web server as well (and not just that, it will make a whole lot of “sharing” options available). Well, I’m not so excited about it. Technology wise, it is really cool but what they don’t realize is that this is like giving motorized chain-saw or a swiss army knife in the hands of a two-year old. Seriously, majority of the people around the world who get themselves into all sorts of shit while just plain surfing the net, now got a whole new array of avenues where they can be exploited upon. For people who do need a webserver, there are plenty of straight-forward point and click options available. I hope they atleast have options to completely turn it off and even better, keep it turned off by default.

© Shantanu Goel | This article, titled Opera Web Server In A Browser: Bad Idea, was originally published on Shantanu's Technophilic Musings

Figlet is a brilliant tool to convert text to amazing ASCII Art that I have used for many years. This weekend I thought of creating an online version of it, so that anyone can use it even if they can’t install it on their systems. It is pretty easy to use. The drill is just to choose the font you want (and there is a very extensive collection of more than 250 to choose from), input the text that you want to be ASCII’fied, press a button and you are done.

Here is the homepage of my FIGLET Online tool. Please use it and let me know your feedback, what you feel about it, if you think I can add something to it, or if you find any issues. Meanwhile, here is a “brief” sample of the various kind of outputs you can get from it. I’ve used my name “Shantanu” as the input for these examples.

             #            #              #             #            #              #             #               #
             #            #              #             #            #              #             #               #
  .--.--.    #  ,---,     #              #             #    ___     #              #             #               #
 /  /    '.  #,--.' |     #              #             #  ,--.'|_   #              #             #               #
|  :  /`. /  #|  |  :     #              #      ,---,  #  |  | :,'  #              #      ,---,  #         ,--,  #
;  |  |--`   #:  :  :     #              #  ,-+-. /  | #  :  : ' :  #              #  ,-+-. /  | #       ,'_ /|  #
|  :  ;_     #:  |  |,--. #   ,--.--.    # ,--.'|'   | #.;__,'  /   #   ,--.--.    # ,--.'|'   | #  .--. |  | :  #
 \  \    `.  #|  :  '   | #  /       \   #|   |  ,"' | #|  |   |    #  /       \   #|   |  ,"' | #,'_ /| :  . |  #
  `----.   \ #|  |   /' : # .--.  .-. |  #|   | /  | | #:__,'| :    # .--.  .-. |  #|   | /  | | #|  ' | |  . .  #
  __ \  \  | #'  :  | | | #  \__\/: . .  #|   | |  | | #  '  : |__  #  \__\/: . .  #|   | |  | | #|  | ' |  | |  #
 /  /`--'  / #|  |  ' | : #  ," .--.; |  #|   | |  |/  #  |  | '.'| #  ," .--.; |  #|   | |  |/  #:  | : ;  ; |  #
'--'.     /  #|  :  :_:,' # /  /  ,.  |  #|   | |--'   #  ;  :    ; # /  /  ,.  |  #|   | |--'   #'  :  `--'   \ #
  `--'---'   #|  | ,'     #;  :   .'   \ #|   |/       #  |  ,   /  #;  :   .'   \ #|   |/       #:  ,      .-./ #
             #`--''       #|  ,     .-./ #'---'        #   ---`-'   #|  ,     .-./ #'---'        # `--`----'     #
             #            # `--`---'     #             #            # `--`---'     #             #               #
             ##            ##              ##             ##            ##              ##             ##               ##

  ******** **                           **
 **////// /**                          /**
/**       /**       ******   *******  ******  ******   *******  **   **
/*********/******  //////** //**///**///**/  //////** //**///**/**  /**
////////**/**///**  *******  /**  /**  /**    *******  /**  /**/**  /**
       /**/**  /** **////**  /**  /**  /**   **////**  /**  /**/**  /**
 ******** /**  /**//******** ***  /**  //** //******** ***  /**//******
////////  //   //  //////// ///   //    //   //////// ///   //  ////// 

    o__ __o      o                                   o
   /v     v\    <|>                                 <|>
  />       <\   / >                                 < >
 _\o____        \o__ __o       o__ __o/  \o__ __o    |         o__ __o/  \o__ __o    o       o
      \_\__o__   |     v\     /v     |    |     |>   o__/_    /v     |    |     |>  <|>     <|>
            \   / \     <\   />     / \  / \   / \   |       />     / \  / \   / \  < >     < >
  \         /   \o/     o/   \      \o/  \o/   \o/   |       \      \o/  \o/   \o/   |       |
   o       o     |     <|     o      |    |     |    o        o      |    |     |    o       o
   <\__ __/>    / \    / \    <\__  / \  / \   / \   <\__     <\__  / \  / \   / \   <\__ __/>  

          _____                    _____                    _____                    _____                _____                    _____                    _____                    _____
         /\    \                  /\    \                  /\    \                  /\    \              /\    \                  /\    \                  /\    \                  /\    \
        /::\    \                /::\____\                /::\    \                /::\____\            /::\    \                /::\    \                /::\____\                /::\____\
       /::::\    \              /:::/    /               /::::\    \              /::::|   |            \:::\    \              /::::\    \              /::::|   |               /:::/    /
      /::::::\    \            /:::/    /               /::::::\    \            /:::::|   |             \:::\    \            /::::::\    \            /:::::|   |              /:::/    /
     /:::/\:::\    \          /:::/    /               /:::/\:::\    \          /::::::|   |              \:::\    \          /:::/\:::\    \          /::::::|   |             /:::/    /
    /:::/__\:::\    \        /:::/____/               /:::/__\:::\    \        /:::/|::|   |               \:::\    \        /:::/__\:::\    \        /:::/|::|   |            /:::/    /
    \:::\   \:::\    \      /::::\    \              /::::\   \:::\    \      /:::/ |::|   |               /::::\    \      /::::\   \:::\    \      /:::/ |::|   |           /:::/    /
  ___\:::\   \:::\    \    /::::::\    \   _____    /::::::\   \:::\    \    /:::/  |::|   | _____        /::::::\    \    /::::::\   \:::\    \    /:::/  |::|   | _____    /:::/    /      _____
 /\   \:::\   \:::\    \  /:::/\:::\    \ /\    \  /:::/\:::\   \:::\    \  /:::/   |::|   |/\    \      /:::/\:::\    \  /:::/\:::\   \:::\    \  /:::/   |::|   |/\    \  /:::/____/      /\    \
/::\   \:::\   \:::\____\/:::/  \:::\    /::\____\/:::/  \:::\   \:::\____\/:: /    |::|   /::\____\    /:::/  \:::\____\/:::/  \:::\   \:::\____\/:: /    |::|   /::\____\|:::|    /      /::\____\
\:::\   \:::\   \::/    /\::/    \:::\  /:::/    /\::/    \:::\  /:::/    /\::/    /|::|  /:::/    /   /:::/    \::/    /\::/    \:::\  /:::/    /\::/    /|::|  /:::/    /|:::|____\     /:::/    /
 \:::\   \:::\   \/____/  \/____/ \:::\/:::/    /  \/____/ \:::\/:::/    /  \/____/ |::| /:::/    /   /:::/    / \/____/  \/____/ \:::\/:::/    /  \/____/ |::| /:::/    /  \:::\    \   /:::/    /
  \:::\   \:::\    \               \::::::/    /            \::::::/    /           |::|/:::/    /   /:::/    /                    \::::::/    /           |::|/:::/    /    \:::\    \ /:::/    /
   \:::\   \:::\____\               \::::/    /              \::::/    /            |::::::/    /   /:::/    /                      \::::/    /            |::::::/    /      \:::\    /:::/    /
    \:::\  /:::/    /               /:::/    /               /:::/    /             |:::::/    /    \::/    /                       /:::/    /             |:::::/    /        \:::\__/:::/    /
     \:::\/:::/    /               /:::/    /               /:::/    /              |::::/    /      \/____/                       /:::/    /              |::::/    /          \::::::::/    /
      \::::::/    /               /:::/    /               /:::/    /               /:::/    /                                    /:::/    /               /:::/    /            \::::::/    /
       \::::/    /               /:::/    /               /:::/    /               /:::/    /                                    /:::/    /               /:::/    /              \::::/    /
        \::/    /                \::/    /                \::/    /                \::/    /                                     \::/    /                \::/    /                \::/____/
         \/____/                  \/____/                  \/____/                  \/____/                                       \/____/                  \/____/                  ~~              

 __..         ,
(__ |_  _.._ -+- _.._ . .
.__)[ )(_][ ) | (_][ )(_|

© Shantanu Goel | This article, titled Project: Figlet Online – Text To ASCII Converter Tool, was originally published on Shantanu's Technophilic Musings

Since quite some time, Google Reader has included the feature to share interesting items with your friends who also use Google Reader. Some time back they also added the option to "Share with a Note" to add your take to the shared piece. But I always thought there was no way to share back by comments (or see my friends’ take) about that particular article. One way could have been to post the comments on the original site of the article but that had the drawbacks that:

• Others might not even go to the original site to check these comments
• We might not want to make this discussion public outside of our social group
• The original site might not even allow comments

Another way was to keep sharing the item again and again with your own notes, but that would really become a pain (as you can imagine where).

So, google listened to my unspoken thoughts and from this morning onwards, we have a new commenting feature on shared items. Click on the pic below to see it. So, they have given an alternate commenting system that you can use in your friend circle to discuss any item. Really cool, I’d say. What do you think?

(PS: The people who were "predicting" a couple of months ago that Google is going to shut down Google Reader, well, I don’t think so. I think they are workign full steam on it to make it an essential part in their grand scheme of things to create an ecosystem, along with Google Friend Connect)

© Shantanu Goel | This article, titled Comments In Google Reader Shared Items Are Here, was originally published on Shantanu's Technophilic Musings

I have one of those crappy DSL modems that all these ISPs give to you with the connection. My ISP is Airtel and the modem that I have is Beetel 110–BXi (They also have other models like 220–BX and 220 BXi). One thing common among all these modems is that they do not provide secure access like Secure Shell (ssh) as all they provide is ftp/telnet/http etc which are all clear text protocols. Hence, it is a huge security risk to expose these interfaces to the internet and then access them from outside. So, I (and most others) don’t allow these services to be accessed from WAN. But I do have the need some time to access it. So, what do I do? I follow a simple process to allow myself a pseudo-ssh or telnet picggy-backed over ssh connection. How is that?

Well, I have an excellent wi-fi router (Asus WL-500W) that does have ssh (which I have configured to listen on, say, port XXXX). Now all I do is:

1. Disable telnet access to modem from WAN but enable from LAN. 
2. Forward this particular port XXXX in modem’s configuration to the router’s IP.
3. Optional: Register for a dynamic dns account (e.g. dyndns.org) and update the same in modem’s config so I can access my modem through a domain name since I have a dynamic IP which changes all the time.
4. Now, ssh to my external (WAN) IP from outside (say from work). Since, the port is forwarded to my router, it the router that answers my ssh request.
5. After logging in to my router, simply telnet to the modem using its LAN IP and configure away.

Simple, isn’t it? I would advise you all to make a similar setup for yourself as well, if possible, rather than taking risks of unsecure access.[tags]Airtel, DSL Modem, ssh dsl modem, Asus WL-500W, WL-500W, telnet[/tags]

© Shantanu Goel | This article, titled Secure Access To Your DSL Modem’s Telnet (telnet / ssh), was originally published on Shantanu's Technophilic Musings