My life et al. » random rants

VPN Problems with Mac OS X

ffeldhaus — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 20:11:25 +0000

From time to time the VPN client integrated in Mac OS X keeps on failing to connect to our university VPN server. I searched for a long time and today I found the solution to restart the service without restarting my Mac (origin of the solution is here):

Open a Terminal and search for the racoon process

Florian-Feldhauss-MacBook-Pro:~ ffeldhaus$ ps aux | grep racoon
root     10495   0,0  0,0  2447088    672   ??  Ss   So11am    0:02.27 /usr/sbin/racoon

Now kill the racoon process

Florian-Feldhauss-MacBook-Pro:~ ffeldhaus$ sudo kill 10495

At last, restart racoon

Florian-Feldhauss-MacBook-Pro:~ ffeldhaus$ sudo /usr/sbin/racoon

VPN Problems with Mac OS X

ffeldhaus — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 20:11:25 +0000

Open a Terminal and search for the racoon process

Florian-Feldhauss-MacBook-Pro:~ ffeldhaus$ ps aux | grep racoon
root     10495   0,0  0,0  2447088    672   ??  Ss   So11am    0:02.27 /usr/sbin/racoon

Now kill the racoon process

Florian-Feldhauss-MacBook-Pro:~ ffeldhaus$ sudo kill 10495

At last, restart racoon

Florian-Feldhauss-MacBook-Pro:~ ffeldhaus$ sudo /usr/sbin/racoon

Debugging an SSL connection

ffeldhaus — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 11:22:09 +0000

Debugging the SSL handshake can be lots of pain, especially if the SSL commands are done by components not under your control. Fortunately there is a tool called ssldump which lets you monitor the complete SSL handshake. The following command prints out detailed information about the SSL handshake (on interface eth0):

ssldump -a -A -H -i eth0

If you want to sneak at the encrypted traffic you need to tell ssldump where to find the hostkey (e.g. hostkey.pem or similar) of the machine

ssldump -N -d -k $PATH_TO_HOSTKEY/hostkey.pem -A -H -i eth0

Replace $PATH_TO_HOSTKEY and hostkey.pem accordingly.

More information can be found here or in the manpage of ssldump.

Lecture hint: The operation of the LHC accelerator complex

ffeldhaus — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 16:51:57 +0000

Dr. Stefano Redaelli from CERN will hold two lectures on an overview of what happens when the LHC is in running mode. The lectures should be suitable for everyone with a bachelor or Vordiplom in physics or electrical engineering.They will take place in the CERN main auditorium at

April 7, 10am-11am
April 9, 10am-11am

More information can be found in the official announcement. If you happen to not be at CERN during that time, there will be also a webcast! As additional information on the webcast becomes available, I will post it here!

Cisco-VPN with Mac OS X 10.6

ffeldhaus — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 12:13:31 +0000

I needed to remotely log into our university network. Until now I was using the Cisco VPN Client, but after an upgrade to Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) I couldn’t start the Cisco Client anymore. As Mac OS X 10.6 now natively supports Cisco VPN connections, I wanted to try it out. Here is a simple HowTo for the TU Dortmund VPN:

If you have the Cisco VPN Client installed, uninstall it by executing the following command in the terminal:
```
sudo /usr/local/bin/vpn_uninstall
```
Open System Preferences and go to Network
Add a new entry with Interface VPN and Type Cisco IPSec
Enter the access information e.g. Account Name (Accountname) and password (Kennwort). For the TU Dortmund it is your UniMail or MyITMC username / password.
Click on Authentication Settings (Identifizierungseinstellungen) and insert the information which can be found here for the TU Dortmund.
Click on Connect (Verbinden)

LHC restart 2009

ffeldhaus — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 21:29:56 +0000

It’s not that easy to find the schedule for the LHC restart. If you also would like to know, when the first injection tests are made and when the first beam will be circling in the LHC, you can find up to date information here:

http://lhc-injection-test.web.cern.ch/lhc-injection-test/2009/injection-tests-2009.htm

As of today, the first injection test is planned for the 24th to 25th october. The first beam circulating in the LHC is expected for 19th November.

CERN at Google Streetview

ffeldhaus — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 16:35:50 +0000

Since today Google Streetview is available for Switzerland. It covers quite a few streets and among them is the road to CERN.

Here you can see the main entrance:
CERN Main Entrance

And here you can see the ATLAS building

ATLAS building

… the CERN Globe:

CERN Globe

LHCb Experiment:

LHCb Experiment

Fonts in LaTeX

ffeldhaus — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 06:23:55 +0000

Ever searched for the right font in LaTeX? Then have a look at The LaTeX Font Catalogue! It lists several fonts with a preview and instructions how to include them into your document.

I really like the TeX Gyre Pagella font which is based on the Palatino font. Even if you need some handwritten or caligraphic fonts for LaTeX, have a look at the Font Catalogue!

LHC in The Daily Show

ffeldhaus — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 07:51:15 +0000

A bit late, but still a few people haven’t seen the funny report on the LHC and the end of the world in The Daily Show. Go ahead, watch it! Extra points for finding the reference to the Grid!

Changing the keyboard layout for Scientific Linux on a MacBook

ffeldhaus — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 13:38:00 +0000

I recently installed Scientific Linux in a virtual Machine on my MacBook and ended up with the Standard PC keyboard layout. As the keyboard layout of my MacBook has quite some differences, I tried to figure out how to get all the keys I’m used to.

Here’s what I did (following the advices given here):

open the file /etc/sysconfig/keyboard and change it (for a german keyboard) as following
```
KEYBOARDTYPE="mac"
KEYTABLE="mac-de-latin1-nodeadkeys"
```
for other layouts than the german one have a look at /lib/kbd/keymaps/mac/all/ and choose one of the keytables listed there