I’ve just read ‘The Linux Security Circus: On GUI isolation’
It struck me that a linux keylogger is perfectly easy to write – I had previously (naïvely) thought such a program would only work given root permissions.
Alas! It’s stupidly easy.
see result of 30 minutes of hacking
The code simply calls xinput test [id of keyboard device] and parses out the keycodes. The id of your keyboard device can be found from the device listing given by xinput list.
Just a python script, to print the name of the current desktop. Could be useful to pipe to conky or something.
#!/usr/bin/env python
from Xlib import display, Xatom
dsp = display.Display()
rootwin = dsp.screen().root
DESKTOP_NAMES = dsp.intern_atom("_NET_DESKTOP_NAMES")
CURRENT_DESKTOP = dsp.intern_atom("_NET_CURRENT_DESKTOP")
def get_names():
names = rootwin.get_full_property(DESKTOP_NAMES, 0)
names = names.value.split("\x00")
return names
def current_desktop():
return rootwin.get_full_property(CURRENT_DESKTOP,
Xatom.CARDINAL
).value[0]
try:
print get_names()[current_desktop()]
except:
print "error getting name"
Requires the python bindings for xlib
Set the _NET_WM_WINDOW_OPACITY property to an integer between 0x0 and 0xffffffff
An example function to set the opacity of a window using Xlib and python:
from Xlib import Xatom
def setOpacity(self, display, window, opacity):
if 0.0 < = opacity <= 1.0:
real_opacity = int(opacity * 0xffffffff)
window.change_property(
display.get_atom('_NET_WM_WINDOW_OPACITY'),
Xatom.CARDINAL,
32,
[real_opacity,],
)
else:
return
[/sourcecode]
For this to work however, a composite manager of some kind must be running, but
For some reason, every time I tried to print CUPS was asking me for my username/password. This is fine when using applications which support this, and wasn’t enough of a hassle for me to bother with. Some applications however don’t have the capability to authenticate, and so it became an issue.
The solution is, however, trivial.
Open /etc/cups/printers.conf as root and comment out the line starting AuthInfoRequired like so:
<DefaultPrinter Canon>
#AuthInfoRequired username,password
Info This
Location Yes
...
then restart cups for the change to take effect.
On archlinux:
# /etc/rc.d/cups restart
After the upgrade to xorg1.5, my beloved keyboard map was once again rewritten, luckily I could salvage it from emacs’ backup files, but in the future I may not be so lucky, so thought I’d post here.
Keymap is fairly standard dvorak, with a few changes
– @ and ” placed in the ‘american’ places – I learnt with them there, so it’s strange to have ” on the 2 key now.
– added umlauts dead key and Eszett: ü ß…
– added thorn þ and mu µ for fun
partial alphanumeric_keys
xkb_symbols "dvorak" {
include "us(dvorak-intl)"
name[Group1]="United Kingdom - Dvorak";
key { [ numbersign, asciitilde ] };
key { [ 2, at, twosuperior, NoSymbol ] };
key { [ 3, sterling, threesuperior, NoSymbol ] };
key { [ backslash, bar ] };
key { [ apostrophe, quotedbl, dead_diaeresis, NoSymbol ] };
key { [ comma, less, acute, NoSymbol] };
key { [ period, more, grave, NoSymbol] };
key { [ s, S, ssharp, NoSymbol] };
key { [ t, T, thorn, THORN] };
key { [ m, M, mu, NoSymbol ] };
};
I can move to an empty tag, launch openoffice, go back to browser while it’s loading, and it’ll load on the tab I launched it on. Magic!
Add the following somewhere (pretty much anywhere, but after the inclusion of awful, and before the hook_manage function)
spawn = awful.util.spawn
move_to = {}
awful.util.spawn = function (spawnwhat, screen)
screen = screen or mouse.screen
local current_tag = awful.tag.selected(screen)
move_to[#move_to+1] = {tag=current_tag, screen=screen}
spawn(spawnwhat, screen)
end
Now add to hook_manage
if #move_to then c.screen = move_to[#move_to].screen awful.client.movetotag(move_to[#move_to].tag, c) move_to.remove() end
I give you Sorbi – a program I’ve written for generating newton fractals.
These have been generated using Sorbi.
Newton Fractals are a type of iterated fractal, created when performing the Newton-Raphson iteration on the complex plane.
The resulting fractals can be coloured by root reached, or by the number of iterations required to reach the root (or various other methods, such as the value of 
git pull git://github.com/bavardage/sorbi.git
sorbi/gui.py
Quite a change colour-wise, little change function wise (only a bit to randomly change active tag colour).
Obligatory screenshot:
This is what I added:
Added focus_choices to the bg table
bg = {normal = "#e7e7e7", focus = "#d97600", focus_choices = {"#669bcb", "#d97600", "#6eb22c"}, urgent = "#ffaa88"}
Changed taglist.label
function taglist.label(t)
local bg_color
local fg_color
local background = ''
if t.selected then
local choice = math.random(1,3)
bg_color = bg['focus_choices'][choice]
fg_color = fg['focus']
end
...function continues
As always, the latest version of my config can be found here.
Why bother opening a term, running screen and then running irssi, when it can all be automated.
#!/bin/bash if [ `screen -ls | grep irssi | wc -l` -ne 0 ] then urxvt -title irssi -name irssi -e sh -c "screen -dr `screen -ls | grep irssi | sed -e 's/(\(Attached\|Detached\))//'`" else urxvt -title irssi -name irssi -e sh -c "screen -S irssi irssi" fi
If there is no exisiting screen session running irssi this script opens a new terminal and runs irssi within screen, otherwise it reconnects to the existing session.
The terminal it opens (urxvt) is named irssi, so that it can be themed separately in .Xdefaults and handled by your wm – e.g. awesome sends the irssi terminal to my ‘IM’ tag.
The config here now works with awesome3-rc4
Screenshot of my desktop using the config:
Ardoris 