random neuron misfires

This question has been asked many dozens of times for the last several years, and to-date, has not been solved in the core project itself. There were many attempts, hacks and workarounds, but nothing really supportable.

Let’s say you have two devices, a Personal phone and a Work phone, each running Signal. You want to be able to load one app and have conversations that span both devices. That is, converse with work colleagues and also converse with personal colleagues, from one desktop.

Today, you can’t. Well, not without some additional setup to do so.

To make this work, you’ll need to create a separate data directory for each “profile” you intend to use, and then configure Signal to refer to it when launching them. You can then tie these to a launcher or icon if you wish, in your favorite OS of choice (Linux and macOS are mine, macOS and Windows for others).

Your normal Signal data resides in a directory under your $HOME named ~/.config/Signal by default. Let’s make another to use for testing with your second device. Intuitively, you can name them by the device they are used with, so ~/.config/Signal-iPhone and ~/.config/Signal-Android for example on a POSIX based OS like Linux or macOS. On Windows, this will be stored in C:\Users\You\AppData\Roaming\Signal.

If you’re already using Signal on your desktop, your profile data will just be in the ~/.config/Signal directory, and you don’t need to change it. In fact, renaming it will likely break things until we create these additional profiles. Create a second directory at the same level as the existing one, for use with that second profile.

Now we need to launch Signal from the shell (Terminal in macOS, Command Prompt in Windows), and run it as follows:

/Applications/Signal.app/Contents/MacOS/Signal --user-data-dir=$HOME/.config/Signal-iPhone

This should prompt you to scan a QR code with your phone, to link the two devices, similar to the following:

On your mobile device, go to Settings ? Linked Devices, and scan that QR code. It will now pair your phone with this instance of Signal Desktop.

So far, so good. Now while that is synchronizing your data, launch the other instance of Signal with the standard launcher. You should now get two instances of Signal Desktop running, one linked with your original mobile device, and this new instance linked with your second mobile device.

Ta-da! You did it.

Now let’s codify these changes into their own respective launchers/icons, so you don’t have to use the shell/Terminal/Command Prompt to do this each time.

On Linux, just create a launcher using your window manager that sets those commandline args as the default.

On macOS, you can create a new launcher for Signal with Automator, by choosing “Run Shell Script” from the Workflow menu. Double-click that, and a window will open to the right, allowing you to type in your shell commands. Mine is as follows, just like we ran from Terminal:

Click “Run” in the upper-right, to ensure it does indeed run Signal Desktop with your second (new) profile correctly. If it does, you can save it as a “Workflow” or an “Application”. I chose the latter, which looks like this:

Now you have your intended commands tied to an application launcher, which can be put into your Dock or other launcher location.

On Windows, you’ll need to create a new desktop shortcut by going to Preferences, and change the target to: C:\Users\You\AppData\Local\Programs\signal-desktop\Signal.exe --user-data-dir=C:\Users\You\AppData\Roaming\Signal-iPhone. You can choose any icon you wish to adorn this shortcut with.

That’s it! You now have a multi-Signal Desktop solution (that is, until the upstream project adds profile support to a newer release).

Have fun, and keep those messages secure!

If you’re anything like me, you take security seriously. With all the recent news about the NSA and Prism and over-reach of surveillance, you’ll take this very seriously. I run several layers of nested firewalls, VPNs and other layers of security at my office.

One of the things I run in a virtualized environment (VMware ESXi), is pfSense. pfSense ibs an Open Source firewall distribution based on FreeBSD. It’s very full-featured, has a web-management console, and lots of add-on packages to enhance it’s capabilities.

“pfSense is a free, open source customized distribution of FreeBSD tailored for use as a firewall and router. In addition to being a powerful, flexible firewalling and routing platform, it includes a long list of related features and a package system allowing further expandability without adding bloat and potential security vulnerabilities to the base distribution. pfSense is a popular project with more than 1 million downloads since its inception, and proven in countless installations ranging from small home networks protecting a single computer to large corporations, universities and other organizations protecting thousands of network devices.”

pfSense is currently using FreeBSD 8.1, which has been EOL’d by the BSD team last July. The pfSense team is diligently working on new versions, but they’re not out yet. For now, you can continue to use FreeBSD 8.1.

If you run pfSense inside a VM, you’ll want and need to get the base VMware tools installed within it, but that process isn’t straightforward. You want to make sure you install the VMware Tools dependencies and core modules before installing anything else, so you don’t get into package conflicts and other troubles.

I’ve been writing a lot of posts about VMware lately, because I’m finding myself using it more and more, and I’m teaching myself how to use it in a higher-volume capacity.

Here’s how to install pfSense and immedaitely get the correct version of VMware Tools (from VMware itself, not the Open Source ‘open-vm-toolbox‘ or ‘vmfs-tools’) installed within it.

Let’s get started (click any images below to view them full-size):

1. First, create a new VM and attach your pfSense ISO to it, using whatever mechanism your hypervisor of choice provides. Boot it, and install pfSense into your VM. This part is easy and straightforward.
2. Once fully installed, shut down (power off) your VM, and detach the CD, so it no longer boots, but keep the CD/DVD device configured for your VM, you’ll use that again in a moment.
3. Boot your pfSense VM back up, configure networking (in my case the NIC was em0), and you’ll get to a screen that looks something like this:
   (click image to view full size)

   

4. From here, the first thing you want to do, is change your root password! Hit (8) to drop to a shell, and use the standard passwd(1) utility. Once changed, hit ^D (Control-D) to exit and return to the pfSense main menu.
5. Next, we’re going to start SSHD, so we can log into the VM remotely, and manage it using a normal Windows, Mac or Linux terminal, vs. interacting with it using the VMware ESXi console (as in this example). Hit (14) to enable the SSH shell.
6. In the previous screenshot, directly to the left of the (DHCP) part, was the IP of the pfSense server. SSH over to that now, as the root user, using whatever native terminal you prefer.

   $ ssh root@192.168.1.50

7. Once SSH’d into pfSense remotely, you’ll need to set the PACKAGESITE environment variable, to make sure all core packging tools refer to the 8.1-release tag from the FreeBSD archive site, and not the 8.1-release-p13 that it will try to use by default from the primary site, which will fail, because FreeBSD 8.1 is EOL as I write this.

8. [2.0.3-RELEASE][root@pfSense.localdomain]/root(1): setenv \
   PACKAGESITE \
   http://ftp-archive.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD-Archive/ports/amd64/packages-8.1-release/Latest/

   Here’s what will happen if you do not set this variable:

   [2.0.3-RELEASE][root@pfSense.localdomain]/root(3): pkg_add -rv wget
   looking up ftp.freebsd.org
   connecting to ftp.freebsd.org:21
   Error: Unable to get ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/ports/amd64/packages-8.1-release/Latest/wget.tbz: 
   File unavailable (e.g., file not found, no access)
   pkg_add: unable to fetch 'ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/ports/amd64/packages-8.1-release/Latest/wget.tbz' by URL
   pkg_add: 1 package addition(s) failed

   Once you set the variable to refer to the archive site, you’ll have success here:

   [2.0.3-RELEASE][root@pfSense.localdomain]/root(5): pkg_add -rv wget
   looking up ftp-archive.freebsd.org
   connecting to ftp-archive.freebsd.org:80
   requesting http://ftp-archive.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD-Archive/ports/amd64/packages-8.1-release/Latest/wget.tbz
   Fetching http://ftp-archive.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD-Archive/ports/amd64/packages-8.1-release/Latest/wget.tbz...x +CONTENTS
   x +COMMENT
   x +DESC
   x +MTREE_DIRS
   x man/man1/wget.1.gz
   x bin/wget
   ...

9. Now we know we can get to the backup/archive site that holds the 8.1 RELEASE packages, let’s get the ones we need to get VMware Tools up and running. We’re going to need two core packages: compat6x-amd64 and perl to be able to run the script and dynamically load the VMware modules at kernel boot.

   [2.0.3-RELEASE][root@pfSense.localdomain]/root(6): pkg_add -r compat6x-amd64 perl 
   Fetching http://ftp-archive.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD-Archive/ports/amd64/packages-8.1-release/Latest/compat6x-amd64.tbz... Done.
   
   *******************************************************************************
   *                                                                             *
   * Do not forget to add COMPAT_FREEBSD6 into                                   *
   * your kernel configuration (enabled by default).                             *
   *                                                                             *
   * To configure and recompile your kernel see:                                 *
   * http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/kernelconfig.html *
   *                                                                             *
   *******************************************************************************
   
   Fetching http://ftp-archive.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD-Archive/ports/amd64/packages-8.1-release/Latest/perl.tbz... Done.
   Removing stale symlinks from /usr/bin...
       Skipping /usr/bin/perl
       Skipping /usr/bin/perl5
   Done.
   Creating various symlinks in /usr/bin...
       Symlinking /usr/local/bin/perl5.10.1 to /usr/bin/perl
       Symlinking /usr/local/bin/perl5.10.1 to /usr/bin/perl5
   Done.
   cd: can't cd to /usr/include
   Cleaning up /etc/make.conf... Done.
   Spamming /etc/make.conf... Done.
   Cleaning up /etc/manpath.config... Done.
   Spamming /etc/manpath.config... Done.
   

10. Now we need to mount the CD ISO for VMware Tools for FreeBSD. This is the step I mentioned earlier and why we needed to keep the CD/DVD device configured for this VM. In ESXi, you’ll need to do that from the console, by right-clicking on the VM, go to Guest and then to “Install VMware Tools”, as shown here:
    

    

11. Now the drive is mapped to the VM, we need to mount it and access the vmware tarball within:

    [2.0.3-RELEASE][root@pfSense.localdomain]/root(8): mkdir /tmp/cdrom/
    [2.0.3-RELEASE][root@pfSense.localdomain]/root(9): mount_cd9660 /dev/acd0 /tmp/cdrom/
    [2.0.3-RELEASE][root@pfSense.localdomain]/root(10): cd /tmp/cdrom/
    [2.0.3-RELEASE][root@pfSense.localdomain]/tmp/cdrom(11): ls -l
    total 15030
    -r--r--r--  1 root  wheel        29 Mar 23 15:02 manifest.txt
    -r--r--r--  1 root  wheel  15390306 Mar 23 15:02 vmware-freebsd-tools.tar.gz
    [2.0.3-RELEASE][root@pfSense.localdomain]/tmp/cdrom(12): tar zxvf vmware-freebsd-tools.tar.gz -C /tmp/ 
    

12. Now we can go into /tmp/vmware-tools-distrib and build the required interfaces for FreeBSD. For the most part, you’ll just accept the defaults to most of the questions. Read them carefully if you think you want something custom for your needs.

    [2.0.3-RELEASE][root@pfSense.localdomain]/tmp/vmware-tools-distrib(14): ./vmware-install.pl --clobber-kernel-modules=vmci    \
                      --clobber-kernel-modules=vsock   \
                      --clobber-kernel-modules=vmxnet3 \
                      --clobber-kernel-modules=pvscsi  \
                      --clobber-kernel-modules=vmmemctl
    Creating a new VMware Tools installer database using the tar4 format.
    
    Installing VMware Tools.
    
    In which directory do you want to install the binary files? 
    [/usr/local/bin] 
    
    In which directory do you want to install the startup script? 
    [/usr/local/etc/rc.d] 
    
    In which directory do you want to install the daemon files? 
    [/usr/local/sbin] 
    
    In which directory do you want to install the library files? 
    [/usr/local/lib/vmware-tools] 
    
    The path "/usr/local/lib/vmware-tools" does not exist currently. This program 
    is going to create it, including needed parent directories. Is this what you 
    want? [yes] 
    
    In which directory do you want to install the documentation files? 
    [/usr/local/share/doc/vmware-tools] 
    
    The path "/usr/local/share/doc/vmware-tools" does not exist currently. This 
    program is going to create it, including needed parent directories. Is this 
    what you want? [yes] 
    
    The installation of VMware Tools 9.0.5 build-1065307 for FreeBSD completed 
    successfully. You can decide to remove this software from your system at any 
    time by invoking the following command: 
    "/usr/local/bin/vmware-uninstall-tools.pl".
    
    Before running VMware Tools for the first time, you need to configure it by 
    invoking the following command: "/usr/local/bin/vmware-config-tools.pl". Do you
    want this program to invoke the command for you now? [yes] 
    
    Initializing...
    
    
    Making sure services for VMware Tools are stopped.
    
    Stopping VMware Tools services in the virtual machine:
       Guest operating system daemon:                                      done
    
    
    The vmblock enables dragging or copying files between host and guest in a 
    Fusion or Workstation virtual environment.  Do you wish to enable this feature?
    [no] 
    
    No X install found.
    
    Starting VMware Tools services in the virtual machine:
       Switching to guest configuration:                                   done
       Guest memory manager:                                               done
       Guest operating system daemon:                                      done
    The configuration of VMware Tools 9.0.5 build-1065307 for FreeBSD for this 
    running kernel completed successfully.
    
    You must restart your X session before any mouse or graphics changes take 
    effect.
    
    You can now run VMware Tools by invoking "/usr/local/bin/vmware-toolbox-cmd" 
    from the command line.
    
    Please remember to configure your network by adding:
    ifconfig_vxn0="dhcp"
    to the /etc/rc.conf file and start the network with:
    /etc/netstart
    to use the vmxnet interface using DHCP.
    
    Enjoy,
    
    --the VMware team

That’s it. You’ve now got a working VMware Tools install using the native, VMware-provided kit, inside your VM. If you’re running ESXi, you’ll now notice that it correctly reports its version, status and IP back to the console, which was missing before we started.

Good luck!

As per my end-of-month processing, I update and rotate/change the passwords and login credentials for the hundreds of websites and logins I own and use on a regular basis.

I reached my domain registrar, DomainSite, and successfully changed my password to something nice and secure, and their system happily accepted it.

I logged out, and attempted to log in with that new password to verify that it was a successful change, and was denied. I tried again, denied again, and then I received this message from their system:

“For security reasons, if you enter an incorrect password for this account more than 10 times, you will be blocked from this website and will be required to pay a fee to regain access.”

Not only is this an unhelpful message, but it also puts the burden on the owner of the account to pay up if someone else decides to try to lock out their account.

In other words, I can attempt to log into DomainSite as another user more than 10 times, and now that user will have to pay Domainsite to restore their password.

Seriously, who thought this up? In my multi-decade experience of using the Web, I’ve never heard of a single case of someone attempting to charge the owner of a valid login credential, for an account that was locked out and had to be reset or restored.

DomainSite, tsk, tsk! You should know better!

If you’re going to permit someone to change their password legitimately, verify the password or at least describe the password policy so we can decide how complex we can make our passwords, before we lock ourselves out, because your system fails to clarify this on both sides.