(( meatspace ))

If you’re googling for this, you already know the problems, but just as a refresher:

1. it’s a java applet.
2. The java applet asks for permission to write to your filesystem, then asks for your root password, then dumps a setuid program in your ~/.juniper_networks directory. (Side note: I usually mount my home directory nosuid,nodev. Guess that won’t work here…)
3. It then tries to run another java program that uses a 32 bit shared library. Guess how well that works on a 64 bit jvm?

If you’re not doing two factor auth, just give up on the java/browser UI now and go into ~/.juniper-networks/network_connect, dump the SSL cert for your https server into a .der encoded file (there are instructions elsewhere on the internet on how to do this, I’m not going to copy and paste ‘em), and run the command line client. It’ll just hang (technically, ‘read from stdin’) if you don’t pass any args, so run ./ncsvc -h and figure it out).

If you are using two factor auth… bad news. Not supported via the command line at all currently.. And if you know me, you know how sad that makes me. So, you’re stuck with trying to get a 32 bit jvm running. Easiest way to do that?

1. Download 32 bit Opera for your flavor of linux, but as a .tgz.
2. Install util-linux (or whatever your flavor of linux bundles the setarch command in) and ia32-libs (or again your flavor may vary).
3. Install a 32 bit jvm (ia32-sun-java6-bin on Ubuntu).
4. Run linux32 ./opera from the opera directory and point java preferences (tools – preferences – advanced – content) to that jvm (again, /usr/lib/jvm/ia32-jvaa-6-sun/jre/lib/i386 un Ubuntu), and make sure you enable java on that page.
5. If all of that works, you should go to this test applet and see that your platform is i386. If it is, it’ll probably work.

You know, unless you mount your homedir nosuid.

Enjoy!

I don’t seem to have time to write my own thoughts here, so we’ll use everybody’s favorite substitute, someone else’s thoughts:

• Grab the nearest book.
• Open the book to page 56.
• Find the fifth sentence.
• Post the text of the next few sentences in your journal.
• Don’t dig for your favorite book, the cool book, or the intellectual one: pick the CLOSEST.

How did they survive?

In his history of Plymouth colony, Governor Bradford himself provides one answer: robbing Indian houses and graves. The Mayflower hove to first at Cape Cod. An Armed company of Pilgrims staggered out. Eventually they found a deserted Indian habitation The newcomers—hungry, cold, sick—dug open burial sites and ransacked homes, looking for underground stashes of food. After two days of nervous work the company hauled ten bushels of maize back to the Mayflower, carrying much of the booty in a big metal kettle the men had also stolen. “And sure it was God’s good providence that we found this corn,” Winslow wrote, “for else we know not how we should have done.”

– 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus (11th ed, paperback), Charles C. Mann.

(Concept via)

I’m officially a customer of a failed bank.

Whoo hoo