ReteLIM project presentation - network problems

Here you can find the link to a presentation of mine of the ReteLIM project.
The main goal of the project is to enable hospitalized children to keep in contact with his classmates and teachers; I explained a bit in a previous post of mine.

The main big problem in Italy is the lack of good network connections in the schools AND in the hospitals.

Unfortunately hospitals are not build with a 2.0 conception. People often risk to spend lot of lifetime in an hospital and there should be the availability of a free guest network connection, isolated from the internal hospital network, so that citizen either sick or relatives can have a view of the world and a means to keep in touch with the outside.
This is place where free internet has an additional meaning.

Unfortunately in Italy we are much in late with the free internet access.

Maybe in the context of the "Agenda Digitale" there could be means to address also this problems:

- Bandwitdh for schools and hospitals
- Public cloud where PA (and schools obviously) can procure computing power for services

These are themes that have to be centrally solved.

JBoss 7.1.1 + GeoServer 2.2.2

I'm deploying GeoServer 2.2.2 into JBoss 7.1.1 and there are not many hint around on how to solve some issues.

If you download the WAR version of GeoServer and just deploy it into the standalone/deployments folders you get the following errors:

14:47:26,944 ERROR [stderr] (MSC service thread 1-5) java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: com/sun/imageio/plugins/common/BogusColorSpace

14:47:26,944 ERROR [stderr] (MSC service thread 1-5)     at it.geosolutions.imageioimpl.plugins.tiff.TIFFImageReaderSpi.onRegistration(TIFFImageReaderSpi.java:168)

14:47:26,944 ERROR [stderr] (MSC service thread 1-5)     at javax.imageio.spi.SubRegistry.registerServiceProvider(ServiceRegistry.java:698)

14:47:26,944 ERROR [stderr] (MSC service thread 1-5)     at javax.imageio.spi.ServiceRegistry.registerServiceProvider(ServiceRegistry.java:285)

14:47:26,959 ERROR [stderr] (MSC service thread 1-5)     at javax.imageio.spi.IIORegistry.registerApplicationClasspathSpis(IIORegistry.java:191)

14:47:26,959 ERROR [stderr] (MSC service thread 1-5)     at javax.imageio.spi.IIORegistry.(IIORegistry.java:121)

14:47:26,959 ERROR [stderr] (MSC service thread 1-5)     at javax.imageio.spi.IIORegistry.getDefaultInstance(IIORegistry.java:142)

14:47:26,959 ERROR [stderr] (MSC service thread 1-5)     at org.geoserver.GeoserverInitStartupListener.contextDestroyed(GeoserverInitStartupListener.java:236)

14:47:26,959 ERROR [stderr] (MSC service thread 1-5)     at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardContext.listenerStop(StandardContext.java:3489)

14:47:26,959 ERROR [stderr] (MSC service thread 1-5)     at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardContext.stop(StandardContext.java:3999)

14:47:26,959 ERROR [stderr] (MSC service thread 1-5)     at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardContext.start(StandardContext.java:3917)

14:47:26,975 ERROR [stderr] (MSC service thread 1-5)     at org.jboss.as.web.deployment.WebDeploymentService.start(WebDeploymentService.java:90)

14:47:26,975 ERROR [stderr] (MSC service thread 1-5)     at org.jboss.msc.service.ServiceControllerImpl$StartTask.startService(ServiceControllerImpl.java:1811)

14:47:26,975 ERROR [stderr] (MSC service thread 1-5)     at org.jboss.msc.service.ServiceControllerImpl$StartTask.run(ServiceControllerImpl.java:1746)

14:47:26,975 ERROR [stderr] (MSC service thread 1-5)     at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.runTask(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:886)

14:47:26,975 ERROR [stderr] (MSC service thread 1-5)     at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:908)

14:47:26,975 ERROR [stderr] (MSC service thread 1-5)     at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:662)

14:47:26,975 ERROR [stderr] (MSC service thread 1-5) Caused by: java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: com.sun.imageio.plugins.common.BogusColorSpace from [Module "deployment.geoserver.war:main" from Service Module Loader]

14:47:26,990 ERROR [stderr] (MSC service thread 1-5)     at org.jboss.modules.ModuleClassLoader.findClass(ModuleClassLoader.java:190)

14:47:26,990 ERROR [stderr] (MSC service thread 1-5)     at org.jboss.modules.ConcurrentClassLoader.performLoadClassUnchecked(ConcurrentClassLoader.java:468)

14:47:26,990 ERROR [stderr] (MSC service thread 1-5)     at org.jboss.modules.ConcurrentClassLoader.performLoadClassChecked(ConcurrentClassLoader.java:456)

14:47:26,990 ERROR [stderr] (MSC service thread 1-5)     at org.jboss.modules.ConcurrentClassLoader.performLoadClassChecked(ConcurrentClassLoader.java:423)

14:47:26,990 ERROR [stderr] (MSC service thread 1-5)     at org.jboss.modules.ConcurrentClassLoader.performLoadClass(ConcurrentClassLoader.java:398)

14:47:26,990 ERROR [stderr] (MSC service thread 1-5)     at org.jboss.modules.ConcurrentClassLoader.loadClass(ConcurrentClassLoader.java:120)

14:47:26,990 ERROR [stderr] (MSC service thread 1-5)     ... 16 more

14:47:27,006 ERROR [org.jboss.msc.service.fail] (MSC service thread 1-5) MSC00001: Failed to start service jboss.web.deployment.default-host./geoserver: org.jboss.msc.service.StartException in service jboss.web.deployment.default-host./geoserver: JBAS018040: Failed to start context
    at org.jboss.as.web.deployment.WebDeploymentService.start(WebDeploymentService.java:95)
    at org.jboss.msc.service.ServiceControllerImpl$StartTask.startService(ServiceControllerImpl.java:1811) [jboss-msc-1.0.2.GA.jar:1.0.2.GA]
    at org.jboss.msc.service.ServiceControllerImpl$StartTask.run(ServiceControllerImpl.java:1746) [jboss-msc-1.0.2.GA.jar:1.0.2.GA]
    at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.runTask(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:886) [rt.jar:1.6.0_35]
    at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:908) [rt.jar:1.6.0_35]
    at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:662) [rt.jar:1.6.0_35]

To solve the problem you have to  create two files:
jboss-classloading.xml

<classloading xmlns="urn:jboss:classloading:1.0"
name="geoserver.war"
domain="GeoServerDomain"
export-all="NON_EMPTY"
import-all="true">
</classloading>

jboss-deployment-structure.xml

<jboss-deployment-structure xmlns="urn:jboss:deployment-structure:1.1">
    <deployment>
        <dependencies>
            <system>
                <paths>
                    <path name="com/sun/imageio/spi"/>
                    <path name="com/sun/imageio/plugins/common"/>
                </paths>
            </system>
        </dependencies>
    </deployment>
</jboss-deployment-structure>

These files have to be added inside the WAR in the \WEB-INF\

This solves the problem and you get a nice and working GeoServer inside the JBoss application server.

WebRTC mozilla implementation

Here is a great demonstration of the next WebRTC implementation that Mozilla is developing for Firefox 18.
This is going to put in the trash all the web conference solutions. or at least rising the minimum feature offering. The power to send the currend browser to the other participant is amazing and powerful.

This could have a big impact on eLearning tools, adding new communication tools directly within the platform (I'm thinking at a Moodle on steroids).
The interesting aspect is the fact that the WebRTC technology enable a new world of integrated applications on the web, just a few click away.

I hope that projects like OpenMeetings will soon be able to leverage on this standard.

New cloudstack' VMs security and password management

I happen to work with cloud infrastructure and use to create lots of virtual machines to test and develop new puppet modules.

Since the target is to finalize cloud templates and correct installation of the modules often these VMs stay up a few days to allow refining and so on.

I start from a very basic template, and all is installed by puppet, security has to be managed by the cloud and these machines are destined to stay in the internal private network exposing just the services they offer (whether they are a moodle machine or a JBoss server or whatever).

So no particular attention has been made in securing the host, but to be able to work with ease I just opened the 22 port of SSH server to connect and to the configurations.

Unfortunately the password was a simple one and since the work sometimes take more than a couple of days some machine were compromised; brute force attack to SSH server.

This to learn to use a good password: so since using a different password for each VM in the cloud could be difficult to remember (especially if you want to use non simple ones) I decided to use a nice feature of keepass: the ability to execute PUTTY as a URL action; in this way I do not have to bother to remember or type complex passwords anymore.

Here the code to insert in keepass:

cmd://PuTTY.exe -ssh {USERNAME}@{URL:HOST} {URL:PORT} -pw {PASSWORD}

cmd://WinSCP.exe scp://{USERNAME}:{PASSWORD}@{URL}

The first is for opening ssh URL the second to create a "scp" URL.  Mind that there is already an "ssh" URL scheme, but if you have SSH on another port you have to follow the command above to manage to connect.  This command works with the latest keepass 2.x version

To add it go to Tools -> Options...    press "URL Scheme Overrides"

Keepass options dialog

Create a new Scheme pressing "Add..."

URL Override

Adding "ssh" to scheme and the command above in the URL Override.

This way you can start PUTTY from keepass using secure complex passwords with ease.

To solve the problem of unsecure new machines I also added the installation of fail2ban to the puppet node description: no more brute force attack allowed.

Will work on automatically changing the root password and creating a CSV file to send to administrator to add info to central keepass DB.