Luke Sheldrick's Blog » iPhone

Unsecured Call?

Luke Sheldrick — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 15:04:10 +0000

“The Cellular network you are using is not encrypted. This call can be intercepted by unauthorized listeners”

Running the first iOS 5 beta on my iPhone 4. Got this come up when I received a call this afternoon.

Apple looking to put in end-to-end encryption of calls?

My ‘cloud’ IM setup

Luke Sheldrick — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 23:00:19 +0000

For a long time now, I’ve had a number of different applications I use to connect to various different IM (instant messaging) mediums, such as Irssi for IRC, Pidgin for Jabber/MSN/etc on my desktops/laptops and usually BeeJive on my iPhone when I’m out and about.

This has all ‘kinda’ worked, it hasn’t been the most elegant of solutions, but it did do what I need it to. Until you add something like the iPad to the mix.

The problem I had, was I’d be signed on to say MSN on my MacBook, and then decide I’ve worked enough for the day, so sign off. Then whilst watching TV in the evening, want to send a message to someone, who only uses MSN, so grab my iPad and sign on via BeeJive. Well that kind of works, except, if I forget to sign off BeeJive, it keeps me online on their ‘cloud’, so I can connect back at any time via the iPad, only the iPad though.

If someone was to send me a message when the client is closed on the iPad, sure it sends a push message to it, but no other device. If I go out, and I know someone has sent me a message, I can’t connect to it via BeeJive on the iPhone, as it doesn’t keep them in sync. Same as if I wanted to log in with the MacBook, I can’t see what that message was.

So I decided this doesn’t work how I want and need it to. So I set about designing my own solution. The aim was to set something up running on my infrastructure, at little or no cost (not always easy when you add any iOS devices in the mix), and reliable.

What I came up with, works really well for me, so thought I’d document what I put together.

The server components run on a machine that is always on, the is the core of the solution. The underlying OS I used is a Fedora 14 box (so Fedora rawhide – the development branch). The packages I’ve used are widely available on pretty much every Linux distribution, ports (OS X, *BSD), so the OS here, really doesn’t make much of a difference.

Server side:
Irssi – a cross platform IRC client.
ZNC – a cross platform IRC bouncer.
BitlBee – a cross platform IM gateway for IRC.

Client side:
Colloquy Mobile – iOS IRC client – use this on the iPad and iPhone.
Adium (Beta) – OS X IM client – use the beta version as it supports IRC.
Pidgin – a cross platform IM client – use this on any Windows or Linux machines i happen to be on.

Again the client side really doesn’t matter, just as long as you have something you can connect to an IRC server with, it should be all good.

The setup uses BitlBee to connect to MSN, G-Talk, Jabber, Facebook chat, and pretty much any other IM network you’d want to connect into. BitlBee presents it’s self as a IRC server, and you contact list is all shown as a room. When you chat to someone you do so as you would traditionally. That part worked a treat.

At first I just had Irssi running with the proxy module enabled, this allows you to reconnect into your Irssi session, with a local client, and ‘pose’ as remote session. This worked well, so I just left Irssi running in a remote screen session, then when I wanted to connect in and chat, I would just open say Pidgin locally, and it would connect to all the rooms the Irssi session had.

This was fine, however, Irssi on it’s own doesn’t support playback. What I mean here is, if someone had sent me a DM, Irssi would have it, but when I logged in with Pidgin, Irssi wouldn’t send me a copy of that message, it only forwards new messages. For these kind of features, I’d need to employ a bouncer, not the thuggish type that stand outside nightclubs, but an IRC bouncer.

I tried a few, but settled with ZNC. I should point out here, that when using ZNC, there isn’t really any need to use Irssi in the equation any more, I just kept it as have a few custom scripts, and all my historic logs are there, so decided to keep it.

ZNC will connect to all your favourite IRC networks, keep you online, and when you connect to it with your client, it will replay all the conversations and DMs you missed since you last connected in. this was exactly the functionality I was looking for.

There are also a host of other cool things you can do with ZNC, so I have mine configured to set me away everywhere 5 minutes after my client disconnects. Also if you team colloquy mobile up with ZNC, you can have it push message your iPhone or iPad if you’re mentioned in a chat, or if someone sends you a DM, I have mine set to only do this if there are no other clients connected, else when I’m at computer having a conversation, both my iPhone and iPad have a bit of a push message spasm. This push message function was exactly what I was looking for to replace BeeJive, except this pushes it to all my devices, not just the one that has my account singed in.. neat I thought.

This my no means is the simplest way to set up your MSN, but for if you want all the prerequisites I did, it really works.

The server topology may be a bit complex so have (for my sins) put together a diagram of how it’s set out, along with a few screenshots.

Any questions, please feel free to ask.

New year & a new toy

Luke Sheldrick — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 06:33:31 +0000

Tuesday, 6th Jan, saw me breaking my third new years resolution, to watch what I spend my money on. For a while I’ve been thinking about getting into the world of DSLR’s, so after much thinking about it, I ventured to the sales, and got myself a Nikon D60.

I’d read lots of reviews, and actually thought about buying it, rather than on a whim, which is usually the route I would take. Managed to get a reasonably good deal, and so far been having quiet a lot of fun reading up on the world photography. I went for the D60, as it has many of the features seen on the more expensive DSLR, but aimed at the entry level photographer, me.

I’ve taken a few pics, and will eventually upload to flickr, just take even longer now, as they’re much high res, and my home upload speed is terrible at best. Also need to master some photo editing wares, not sure what one I prefer yet.

I was however interested to see, how my new shiny camera would compare to my compact. Whilst I was out strolling around the other day, I took the same picture of the coast, with the two cameras.

Nikon D60:

Olympus FE330:

The thumbnails can be quite deciving, but the bigger photo’s on flickr reveal all. Both pictures were taken at the same point, faceing roughly the same point, and using the fully auto function on both.

I also had my iPhone and TyTN on me, so thought I’d take a photo with those too.

Apple iPhone:

HTC TyTN:

Surprisingly here, the iPhone, with it’s lower Mega Pixel lens, actually took a better photo. The colours on the TyTN were terrible. Out of all four, the D60 showed the closest match, the other three, make the day look quite dark, where it was actually quite a light day.

I need to see if I can get my iPhone to properly GPS log, have been using instamapper, but can’t seem to get HoulahGeo to geotag the photos using the files, but once that’s all working, will be able to geotag the photos too, which will be rather useful Then a few more lens, filters… oh dear this could all be expensive, very expensive.

No doubt I’ll snap some more in the coming future. Below are a few of snaps from the “Playing with my D60″ album, from when I’d just got the camera out the box:

Where am I?

Luke Sheldrick — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 01:56:40 +0000

Have been playing with my iPhone this evening, looking at what’s new, and I must say am really quiet impressed with some of the software coming out. VLC Remote, is especially well welcomed, simple but effective.

I was thinking of getting a GPS plotter / tracker, as carrying a PDA + Bluetooth Receiver, is slightly annoying. Cue, iPhone, which does more for me everyday.

There is a cool app called InstaMapper which will plot / track where you are, and even though I have a first gen iPhone, does very well considering, it doesn’t have GPS. Then using their API’s can add it to facebook / here should I wish. Example below…

Also found (via jailbroken / cydia) an app called Backgrounder, so you can run processes, in standby, which the nice folk at Apple don’t like. Very impressed.

iPhone firmware 2.2 jailbroken

Luke Sheldrick — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 19:05:23 +0000

Didn’t take the dev team long to update their pwnagetool for use with 2.2. It’s always a pleasure to re-install all your apps, and set your phone up how you like it

Although this time, I was quite looking forward to it, as my phone had got a serious bloated gut from all the apps, so time to start a fresh

No network unlock for the 3G iPhone as yet, although they do tease that it’s coming very soon

http://blog.iphone-dev.org/post/61060174/the-man-from-delmonte-he-say-yes

Wait is almost over?

Luke Sheldrick — Tue, 27 May 2008 17:12:56 +0000

Was out shopping today, and noticed that the Carphone Warehouse had a new poster. Stating that the wait is almost over, for the iPhone, and the date being Friday 9th (June?) hmm around the same time as the WDDC.

The HP laptop was a sticker on the wall, for carphone warehouse, touting their free laptop / broadband office.

Do I love apple?

Luke Sheldrick — Mon, 19 May 2008 06:42:28 +0000

I must say I am a bit of a technology fan boy, and loooooove most things electrical, especially if they come under the gadget category.

However I am constantly in two minds when it comes to the argument over apple, I have an iPhone, and a Macbook, which when I sit down and use think they’re brillient, and how could I dream of using anything else..

Until I go back to a non apple product, say my HTC TyTN. I was rummanging through my bag a minute ago and remembered I had it in there, and GPRS was driving me nuts on my iPhone, EDGE hardly ever seems to work. As I am using it however I remembered how nice it is to have full keyboard, and push mail…etc

Then I have my Dell D420, running the new FC9, which I’ve luckily got the inbuilt 3G modem working now. Another thing I love, I can be anywherèopen my tiny laptop, and have the net, no messing with dongles, bluetooth or anything like that…

But then I’ll go back to my mac and blissully forget all that.

Never seems to happen with Windows these days though, to think I used to detest *nix.

My question is, will I ever be satisified? And also where is the bacon roll shop?

_________________
Luke Sheldrick
e: luke@sheldrick.co.uk

sent from my mobile device

iPhone default shell

Luke Sheldrick — Sun, 18 May 2008 12:54:56 +0000

Apparently, not a good idea to change to bash.

I’ve been playing with my iPhone today, flashing to different firmwares..etc and everytime I SSH in, the first thing I type is bash, to get into the bash shell.

So thought I would change the shell in /etc/master.passwd

Well as per every other change, the iPhone didn’t like that and threw all it’s toys out of the pram. SSH’ing in using mobile stopped working, if I logged in with root, I could execute anything, as it would just kill the SSH session.

Using terminal on the phone it’s self didn’t play either.

Never mind, lesson learnt.

iPhone passwd continued

Luke Sheldrick — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 13:25:50 +0000

If you do want to change your iPhone password I can confirm on 1.1.3/1.1.4 it does work using the below guide

Linky

iPhone

Luke Sheldrick — Sun, 02 Mar 2008 21:19:23 +0000

So I gave in and got an iPhone this week.. so far am pretty impressed so far. Love the fact that I have my music and films on me all the time, saves being bored on the train

Didn’t opt to go for the likes of o2, and it was far too easy to unlock it, using the ziPhone one click activates, unlocks and activates, it was too easy.

Then I started to play about with it, enabling SSH and the like. Then made the mistake of changing the password. Well apparently using firmware 1.1.3/4 this is a big no no. This means that when you reboot the phone, it constant reboots its gui, i.e. springboard. To fix this it’s quite simple, restore master.passwd and passwd both in /etc however this assumes you made a backup. I didn’t and couldn’t find a copy on the net. Tried decompile the ipsw files, but gave up as couldn’t get the dmg’s to mount on the windows box I was using at the time.

Anyways restored to 1.1.4 this time, and ran ziphone.

I now have a backup of master.passwd and passwd if anyone needs a copy give me a shout.

Luke Sheldrick's Blog » iPhone

Unsecured Call?

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