mblog

Lets assume you own a Mac Mini late 2011 or 2012 with OS X 10.7 Lion or 10.8 Mountain Lion and you want to exchange the slow HDD which came with your Mac in favor of a SSD. You will need the following for the whole process:

Prerequisites:
- an Apple ID
- a downloaded, not yet installed version of OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion
- 8GB or larger USB flash drive
- a screwdriver set
- 45 additional minutes

Now simply follow the instructions:
- Do not (!) format your SSD with any partition before plugging it in.
- Exchange the drive: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBongunj4pc
- Plug in the USB flash drive created as illustrated here: http://arstechnica.com/apple/2012/07/how-to-create-a-bootable-backup-mountain-lion-install-disk/

Have fun!

Link: http://events.ccc.de/congress/2012/Fahrplan/events/5274.en.html

As every year the Chaos Computer Club e.V. held it's annual conference from 27th to 30th of December and - as every year - I unfortunately couldn't make it (promise to try harder this year). Anyway, all lectures and talks have been streamed and are now available as audio (mp3/ogg) or video (h264 low and high quality) at various mirrors.

Many of the talks and lectures are definitely interesting, but a special one caught my attention: "THE GRAND EU DATA PROTECTION REFORM - A latest battle report by some key actors from Brussels". The speakers Jan Philipp Albrecht (MEP), Katarzyna Szymielewicz (Panoptykon) and Kirsten Fiedler (EDRI) lightened up the overall situation in Brussels and elaborated key elements of the upcoming EU data protection legislation such as:

• Definition of Personal Data and Consent
• "Legitimate Interest"
• Concept Data Portability
• Right to be Forgotten
• Data Protection by Default and by Design
• Breach Notifications

Due to time constraints of course not everything could be covered in detail but they managed to raise the important questions. For example if "personal data" is not properly defined no data protection law will apply at all and if it's unclear what exactly can be considered as "consent" it's up to to courts to define (which takes time). Furthermore they shaped out the importance of and raised awareness for concepts such as data portability and privacy by design principles which is important for designing software and services in a data protection compliant way from scratch.

This upcoming EU legislation will shape the future of our digital life and ultimately our future as society. Take a look (mirrors below), participate and get active. There is a reasonable chance of history repeating itself and european law will be carbon copied around the world.

• Ilmenau/DE official mirror: (.mp4) / (.sha1)
• Montreal/CA inofficial mirror: (.mp4) / (.sha1)

That was exactly what I was looking for, an easy to use command line tool for managing multiple ssh sessions at once. No, not Jellyfissh only managing your credentials. Something more complex, managing multiple connections at once like PAC, but w/o the GUI and easy to install Mac OS X systems, was needed.

The tool of choice for anyone managing multiple servers at once while using a Mac OS X 10.5, 10.6 or 10.7 operating system is: csshX - a Cluster SSH tool for Mac OS X Termial.app! Simply download, extract and copy it to /usr/local/bin - works! You may then start scripting your connection groups pretty easy!

You may get v0.74 of csshX directly from it's author Gavin Brock or here (in case of a 404 on that previous one).

That really is a great piece of software, have fun!

Many of you hand over personal data to huge corporations. That is particularly true for messaging services like mail, chat or calendars. Those services are on first sight free of charge, you purchase those services with your personal data and that's a great deal for the majority of users. So using third party messaging services is basically a decision of whom to trust.

For that you may in exchange expect an easy to use and always available service which is in accordance to state of technology, especially with regard to security.

In my opinion you shouldn't expect that (anymore). Just remember the most recent LinkedIn or Last.fm password leaks or - that truly is another field - just monitor new approaches to lawful interception of your personal data, e.g. upcoming legislation in Great Britain.

Those could be reasons for a decision to regain control over your personal data, starting with a virtual mail server which resides completely within an encrypted FreeBSD Jail. The following guides and HowTo's have proven very helpful but everyone has different needs. And since you need to administer your server in the future yourself, you should be aware of what you're doing, instead of setting up a service blindly following an HowTo. So this basically is a small collection of ideas:

Purplehat on a Postfix+MySQL+SpamAssassin+Maia Setup

FreeBSD Forum on a jailed PostgreSQL+Postfix+Dovecot+ SpamAssassin Setup

bsdwiki on a jailed Postfix+Dovecot-Mysql Setup

Before investigating any particular error with postfix and dovecot, make sure that your jailed postfix instance really listens on the desired port at your host (e.g. like this) and be sure to have your DNS settings straight. Check and overview your MX records with mxtoolbox which has proven to be very helpful.

Have fun!