wastesorting

Split lossless audio (ape, flac, wv, wav) by cue file in Ubuntu

2011-08-06T17:23:00.001+02:00

https://aidanjm.wordpress.com/2007/02/15/split-lossless-audio-ape-flac-wv-wav-by-cue-file/

Apache PDFBox - Java PDF Library

2011-06-21T14:59:00.000+02:00

Apache PDFBox™ is an open source Java PDF library for working with PDF documents. This project allows creation of new PDF documents, manipulation of existing documents and the ability to extract content from documents.

NeoTextureEdit

2011-02-11T08:35:00.002+01:00

NeoTextureEdit is an open source (GNU LGPL v. 3) easy to use graph-based procedural seamless texture editor. Using continuous basis functions it can generate arbitrary resolution images without quality degradation. Its main purpose is to produce high quality textures for real time rendering applications that can be stored in a few kB and synthesized on application startup. But it can also be used to generate off-line images.

3DMagix and IllusionMage, scam or open source leeches?

2011-02-07T11:02:00.000+01:00

the pros and cons of open software: 3DMagix, 3DMagixPro, IllusionMage, scam

Async Http Client

2010-09-08T11:30:00.000+02:00

Async Http Client is an asynchronous HTTP Client library, which allow applications to execute HTTP requests and asynchronously process the HTTP response .

Wt

2010-05-31T09:32:00.002+02:00

Wt (wit-ty) is a Web Toolkit. It provides a C++ or Java library for building a web application, with an API that resembles existing desktop application GUI APIs.

Securing Grails with Spring Security, Part 2

2010-04-27T14:18:00.000+02:00

Welcome back to part 2 of Securing Grails with Spring Security.
In part 1 we made the basic configuration to connect Spring Security and Grails.

In this second part we will write a tag library which we will later use to show and hide parts of a page, determine wether the client is authenticated and display the name and roles of the logged in user.

This second part is heavily inspired by the Grails Security plugin by Tsuyoshi Yamamoto et al. Most of the sourcecode is in fact copied from their plugin.

Setup

We will need a couple of files and directories, so let's create them right away.

grails create-controller com.acme.Secure

The index method of this controller is sufficient. But we need an index.gsp in grails-app/views/secure.

<html>
  <head>
    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
    <meta name="layout" content="main" />
    <title>Secure</title>
  </head>
  <body>
    <h1>This page is secured</h1>
    --- we'll add our payload here ---
  </body>
</html>

grails create-tag-lib com.acme.Security

The taglib should provide the following functions:

Output the body of the tag if the user is authenticated/not authenticated
Output the authenticated principal (if any)
Output the roles of the authenticated principal (if any)
Output the body of the tag if the user has all, none or any roles of a specified set of roles

We'll write some helper methods which we will reuse later.

Foundations

The most important object in Spring Security is the SecurityContextHolder. By default this is a ThreadLocal which stores the security context of the application, which will be our entry point to all security related information we need. (I suggest reading the great documentation for Spring Security if you want to know the gory details.)
To save us some typing we'll declare a shortcut (thanx Groovy)

import org.springframework.security.core.context.SecurityContextHolder as SCH

and a helper method

private boolean isAuthenticated() {
   def authPrincipal = SCH?.context?.authentication?.principal
   return authPrincipal != null && authPrincipal != 'anonymousUser'
}

The safe navigation operator (?.) makes sure that authPrincipal is null if one of SCH, context, authentication or principal is null. This means that we are not authenticated. The user may still be not authenticated if the authPrincipal is 'anonymousUser'. (See Spring Security docs for Anonymous Authentication)

isAuthenticated/isNotAuthenticated

Now our first two tags are easy to write:

def ifAuthenticated = { attrs, body ->
   if (isAuthenticated()) {
      out << body()
   }
}

def ifNotAuthenticated = { attrs, body ->
   if (!isAuthenticated()) {
      out << body()
   }
}

Using the taglib is similarly easy (in the payload section of index.gsp):

ifAuthenticated: <g:ifAuthenticated>** authenticated **</g:ifAuthenticated><br/>
ifNotAuthenticated: <g:ifNotAuthenticated>** not authenticated **</g:ifNotAuthenticated><br/>

When you reload this page it'll tell you wether you are logged in or not.
Play around with a couple of pages and different interception urls (Part 1) and see how the pages behave.

What's next

It may not seems so, but we covered a lot of ground so far. You should now have a basic orientation how to work with Spring Security at the taglib level.
In the next post of this series we'll talk about roles and the user principal.

eXaro

2010-04-15T14:34:00.000+02:00

eXaro it's a free reporting solution for Qt (>=4.4) released under GPL (v3)/LGPL (v3) license.

SmartGit

2010-04-10T13:45:00.000+02:00

SmartGit is a graphical front-end for the distributed version control system Git and runs on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux.

SmartGit helps Git beginners getting started quickly and makes advanced users more productive with its efficient user interface to Git — the most powerful DVCS today.

SmartGit can be used free of charge for non-commercial purposes.

Securing Grails with Spring Security, Part 1

2010-04-08T15:04:00.002+02:00

What?

In part one of this series I want to show how easy it is to secure your Grails apps with a current version of Spring Security. It deals with the now current version of Grails (1.2.2) and Spring Security (3.0.2).

Why?

Grails as well as Spring are highly agile environments. Sometimes so agile that it is difficult to find plugins for current versions.
Although there are several approaches to securing Grails apps using plugins I wanted to stick to Spring Security. I have been very happy with it since the ancient days when it was called Acegi Security.
Unfortunatelly the plugins available either use a very different approach (eg Stark Security) or provide rather old versions of Spring Security (eg Spring Security Plugin 0.5.2 which uses Spring Security 2.0.4 under the hood).
This posting should show you how easy it is to expand Grails functionality if you cannot or don't want to use plugins.
This first installment slightly updates Mattias Hellborg Arthursson's posting Spring Security For Real with Grails.

How?

As it turns out it is quite easy to integrate Spring Security in Grails. I'm going to show you how in some easy to follow steps.

1. Download

Get Grails 1.2.2 and Spring Security 3.0.2 from the corresponding website, install Grails and unpack Spring Security to a location of your liking.

2. Create a Grails project and test it

lugaru> grails create-app GSecurity
Welcome to Grails 1.2.2 - http://grails.org/
Licensed under Apache Standard License 2.0
Grails home is set to: /opt/grails

Base Directory: /home/lugaru
Resolving dependencies...
[...]
Created Grails Application at /home/lugaru/GSecurity

Now you can test it with

cd GSecurity
grails run-app

and browse to http://localhost:8080/GSecurity.

3. Install the web.xml template

Spring Security is based on an HTTP filter. These are normally configured in the web.xml, which we don't have in our Grails project, yet.

grails install-templates

creates some files and directories under src/templates. We only need src/templates/war/web.xml. You can safely delete src/templates/artifacts and src/templates/scaffolding.

Now edit src/templates/war/web.xml and add this after the last filter definition

<filter>
    <filter-name>springSecurityFilterChain</filter-name>
    <filter-class>org.springframework.web.filter.DelegatingFilterProxy</filter-class>
</filter>

and

<filter-mapping>
    <filter-name>springSecurityFilterChain</filter-name>
    <url-pattern>/*</url-pattern>
</filter-mapping>

after the last filter mapping. (Question: Is there a more grails-ish way?)

4. Install the libraries

Copy spring-security-config-3.0.2.RELEASE.jar, spring-security-core-3.0.2.RELEASE.jar and spring-security-web-3.0.2.RELEASE.jar from Spring Security to your Grails lib directory.

5. Configure the security filter

There are two ways to configure the security filter. Either you can declare your Spring beans in grails-app/conf/spring/resources.groovy or in grails-app/conf/spring/resources.xml (which you have to create first).
The following snipped uses the later option. It will password protect your whole application using basic authentication (the infamous password box). You can log in using one of the four users (user1, user2, user3, admin) with their corresponding password. We do not use their authorities/roles yet, but I'll need them in one of the later parts of this series.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<beans:beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/security"
    xmlns:beans="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
    xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
    xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans-3.0.xsd
                        http://www.springframework.org/schema/security http://www.springframework.org/schema/security/spring-security-3.0.xsd">
    <http auto-config="true" use-expressions="true">
        <http-basic/>
        <intercept-url pattern="/**" access="isAuthenticated()" />
    </http>

    <authentication-manager alias="authenticationManager">
        <authentication-provider>
            <user-service>
                <user name="admin" password="admin" authorities="ROLE_ADMIN"/>
                <user name="user1" password="user1" authorities="ROLE_GROUP1"/>
                <user name="user2" password="user2" authorities="ROLE_GROUP1,ROLE_GROUP2"/>
                <user name="user3" password="user3" authorities=""/>
            </user-service>
        </authentication-provider>
    </authentication-manager>
</beans:beans>

As you can see this is a standard Spring Security configuration.
Congratulations! You have done it.

But wait! This is not production ready at all. I have all my users and roles in an LDAP server. Can I use that, too?
Certainly!

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<beans:beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/security"
             xmlns:beans="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
             xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
             xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans-3.0.xsd
             http://www.springframework.org/schema/security http://www.springframework.org/schema/security/spring-security-3.0.xsd">
    <http auto-config="true" use-expressions="true">
        <http-basic/>
        <intercept-url pattern="/**" access="isAuthenticated()" />
    </http>

    <ldap-server url="ldap://localhost:389/dc=acme,dc=com" />
    <authentication-manager alias="authenticationManager">
        <ldap-authentication-provider user-search-base="ou=users"
                                      user-search-filter="(cn={0})"
                                      group-search-base="ou=groups"
                                      group-search-filter="(uniqueMember={0})"/>
    </authentication-manager>
</beans:beans>

Update: You'll also need to copy spring-ldap-1.3.0.RELEASE-all.jar and spring-security-ldap-3.0.2.RELEASE.jar to Grails lib directory.
The security namespace of Spring Security is very concise, this is the reason why I did not create the beans in resources.groovy. (Although I have to admit that I'm pretty new to Groovy and Grails and might have missed something which would have made it even more concise.)

What's next

From this point on it is almost trivial to expand the configuration to use remember-me, form-based authentication, session hijacking-protection and all the other fine things Spring Security has to offer. I strongly recommend to read the great documentation which comes with Spring Security.

In the next part of this series we will create a tag library which will allow you to show and hide information depending on user roles.

Disclaimer

This post would not have been possible without Mattias Hellborg Arthursson's Spring Security For Real with Grails which demonstrated that at least it is do-able.
I'm in no way an experienced Groovy or Grails developer. So all errors are mine.
The same goes for every funny phrase or wrong spelling. English is not my mother's tongue. I'm sure you've noticed that already. ;-)

Java Decompiler

2010-02-22T10:01:00.002+01:00

Written in C++, also available as Eclipse plugin: http://java.decompiler.free.fr

Lossless concatenation of mp3 files

2010-01-20T08:10:00.001+01:00

cat file list... | ffmpeg -f mp3 -i - -acodec copy outfile.mp3 Source: http://lyncd.com/2009/02/how-to-merge-mp3-files/

Easy GIT

2010-01-03T12:54:00.001+01:00

Easy GIT is a single-file wrapper script for git, designed to make git easy to learn and use.

Buttons in Eclipse not working correctly with GTK+ 2.18.1-1

2009-11-16T10:22:00.000+01:00

https://bugs.launchpad.net/gtk/+bug/442078

Lazy Linux: 10 essential tricks for admins

2009-11-05T11:21:00.001+01:00

How to be a more productive Linux systems administrator

XMind

2009-10-29T09:35:00.001+01:00

XMind is now royalty-free and open source software. This means when you want to use an XMind fishbone in a spreadsheet, put your photos and media files into a mind map, or reuse your Freemind/MindManager files, you're free to use XMind without charge. You can even add XMind or XMind Pro as plug-ins into your Eclipse-based enterprise environment.

Robocode

2009-10-11T11:10:00.003+02:00

http://robocode.sourceforge.net/

2009-10-11T11:07:00.000+02:00

UFO: Alien Invasion is a strategy game featuring tactical combat against hostile alien forces which are about to infiltrate earth at this very moment. You are in command of a small special unit which has been founded to face the alien strike force. To be successful on the long run, you will also have to have a research team study the aliens and their technologies in order to learn as much as possible about their technology, their goals and the aliens themselves.

Spring Engine

2009-10-11T11:05:00.001+02:00

Spring is a project aiming to create a new and versatile RTS Engine.

PEiD

2009-09-20T21:24:00.001+02:00

PEiD detects most common packers, cryptors and compilers for PE files. It can currently detect more than 600 different signatures in PE files.

OllyDbg

2009-09-20T21:21:00.001+02:00

OllyDbg is a 32-bit assembler level analysing debugger for Microsoft^® Windows^®. Emphasis on binary code analysis makes it particularly useful in cases where source is unavailable.

haXe

2009-09-13T17:36:00.001+02:00

haXe (pronounced as hex) is an open source programming language.

While most other languages are bound to their own platform (Java to the JVM, C# to .Net, ActionScript to the Flash Player), haXe is a multiplatform language.

Hemisphere Games

2009-08-30T16:57:00.001+02:00

Enter the ambient world of Osmos: elegant, physics-based gameplay, dreamlike visuals, and a minimalist, electronic soundtrack. Your objective is to grow by absorbing other motes. Propel yourself by ejecting matter behind you. But be wise: ejecting matter also shrinks you. Relax… good things come to those who wait. Progress from serenely ambient levels into varied and more challenging worlds. Confront attractors, repulsors and intelligent motes with similar abilities and goals as you.

netboot.me

2009-08-29T21:26:00.000+02:00

netboot.me is a service that allows you to boot nearly any operating system or utility on any computer with a wired internet connection - without having to know ahead of time what you'll want to boot. Once you can netboot.me, you never need to update your boot disk again!

DivFix++

2009-08-29T15:07:00.001+02:00

DivFix++ repairs AVI files which other programs couldn't...

Browser Security Handbook

2009-08-19T13:15:00.000+02:00

Browser Security Handbook is meant to provide web application developers, browser engineers, and information security researchers with a one-stop reference to key security properties of contemporary web browsers. Insufficient understanding of these often poorly-documented characteristics is a major contributing factor to the prevalence of several classes of security vulnerabilities.

Split wave by cue file

2009-08-16T16:46:00.003+02:00

cuebreakpoints audio.cue | shnsplit -o wav audio.wav

2009-08-10T09:22:00.000+02:00

SmillaEnlarger is a small graphical tool ( based on Qt ) to resize, especially magnify bitmaps in high quality.

Freeware Windows Disk Defragmentation

2009-08-07T11:08:00.003+02:00

http://www.mydefrag.com MyDefrag is a disk defragmenter and optimizer (a maintenance utility to make your harddisk faster) for Windows 2000, 2003, XP, Vista, 2008, and for X64. It is freeware, no time limit, fully functional, no advertisements. Fast, low overhead, with many optimization strategies, can handle floppies, USB disks, memory sticks, and anything else that looks like a disk to Windows. Included are a set of easy to use scripts for endusers, a scripting engine for demanding users, a screensaver, and a combined Windows plus commandline version that can be scheduled by the Windows task scheduler or for use from administrator scripts.

Unofficial class for European curricula vitae

2009-08-05T09:40:00.000+02:00

http://texcatalogue.sarovar.org/entries/europecv.html

GUI for NetBeans Startup Settings

2009-08-02T09:49:00.002+02:00

http://plugins.netbeans.org/PluginPortal/faces/PluginDetailPage.jsp?pluginid=6829

Running Blender with a broken OpenGL driver

2009-07-18T12:50:00.002+02:00

LIBGL_ALWAYS_SOFTWARE=1 blender this fixes the broken screen updates, but is (naturally) slower than hardware OpenGL

UNetbootin

2009-07-10T17:57:00.002+02:00

UNetbootin allows you to create bootable Live USB drives for a variety of Linux distributions from Windows or Linux, without requiring you to burn a CD. http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net