Lau Jun Wei 8 October 2006
Posted by Maulvi Bakar in : Society , add a commentI first saw this news article on News Straits Times last Friday (6th October 2006).
Simply put, I was very much disturbed by this event. It really affects me deeply as I went through two days thinking about Lau Jun Wei. Looking at his picture, I can hear his cries vividly. It seems very real, as I have to only imagine my nephew or niece whom are about the same age to imagine the poor child, alone and abused.
Whoever’s responsible, I sincerely hoped that they’ll be punished to the maximum extent of the law.
Sexually-abused child dies, couple held
06 Oct 2006
Jassmine Shadiqe
JOHOR BARU: He must have gone through hell before he died. And he was just three.
Lau Jun Wei is believed to have been tied up for hours and sexually abused until his private parts turned blue and his anus was bleeding.
There were also signs on his buttocks that he had been repeatedly whipped.
The abrasions on his little body were unbelievable: He even had bruises on his head.
A private doctor took one look at the dead child and the extent of injuries on Wednesday, and called in the police.
A 29-year-old relative and her 23-year-old boyfriend, who had brought Jun Wei’s battered body to the clinic about 3.50pm, were detained.
Their explanation to the doctor that the child had become unconscious after a fall won’t stand up to scrutiny as a post-mortem in a day or two will reveal the sordid truth.
What is sure is this: Jun Wei died after being methodically abused in the two rooms that his relative and her boyfriend had rented at a house in Jalan Kebudayaan, Taman University, here.
It is learnt Jun Wei’s parents are separated and that his father’s whereabouts are unknown.
Hours after the couple was detained, it emerged from their housemates that although they appeared normal, there had been signs that something was amiss.
A housemate, a primary school teacher who only wanted to be identified as Theen, said he sometimes heard thumping noises from the couple’s rooms after midnight.
“They maintained a quiet profile and there was nothing openly suspicious about them, except for the thumping noises,” said Theen, 26, who lived downstairs.
He said when he saw the couple about 3.30pm on Wednesday, “the boy’s relative was looking very pale and in a state of panic”.
“The boyfriend was waiting outside in a taxi. There was no sign of the boy.”
Theen said the boy seldom left his room, having been seen only about three times in the living room since his relative and her boyfriend moved in three months ago.
He said another strange thing was that the couple sometimes left Jun Wei alone in his room when they went out.
“I used to hear him weeping inside his room. People just don’t leave their three-year-old alone at home.”
Another housemate, who wanted to be known only as Tan, 29, said although her room was next to the couple’s, she seldom saw or heard the child. Jun Wei was unusually quiet for a boy of his age, she said.
It is learnt that the boyfriend works in a handphone shop at the housing estate and is related to the house owner.
Skudai district police chief Assistant Commissioner Johari Yahya, who confirmed the incident, said the case was being investigated as murder.
Apache vs SELinux 25 September 2006
Posted by Maulvi Bakar in : Linux, Work , add a commentTowards the end of the working week, I receive a request from a colleague to have access to the ftp account folder via http. The guy is on site in a foreign country and it seems that his net access is being regulated (read – no ftp).
Now that seems reasonable, considering I was not in the office for the whole week due to an extended training/seminar that I am attending. Luckily I thought, since the training premises gave me access to wifi internet -whee!!
Here I am thinking I can solve it in the next few minutes!
I have a folder in the /home directory – “/home/thefolder“. I thought a simple settings as below in httpd.conf is enough -
Alias /thefolder "/home/thefolder/"
<directory /home/thefolder>
Options MultiViews Indexes Includes FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride AuthConfig
Order allow,deny
Allow from all
AuthType Basic
AuthName "The Folder Authentication"
AuthUserFile /the/passwd/folder/thepasswdfile
Require user theaccount
</directory>
Apparently not!
I keep getting 403 – Forbidden errors. Checked the permissions, double-checked it, even making it 777 – world-readable! FAIL!
I felt like screaming!
/var/log/httpd/error_log shows access is denied, even with 777 – world readable!
I felt some suspicions, the SELinux thingy began to smell fishy. Cursory examinations of the /var/log/messages logs shows some clues – Bleagh!
The analogy is like this -
Someone who does not have permission to a certain facility but has been given one, will still not be given access. That is what SELinux is all about.
Basically, it is Linux’s Last Line of Defence.
Read all about it and it’s relations to Apache here!
Enjoy!
OpenBSD – Reloading pf.conf 18 September 2006
Posted by Maulvi Bakar in : Unix, Work , add a commentOpenBSD, world most secure OS. Also one of the most User-Hostile ones. Now, I needed to reload the firewall rules. Modified some settings in the /etc/pf.conf and this is how did it to reload the ruleset -
$ pfctl -f /etc/pf.conf
This will reload the ruleset plainly from the file specified. The -R flag only loads the filtering rules. -N only loads the NAT rules. Should there be need to reload just the filtering and/or NAT rules, just use the appropriate options.
Enjoy!
Ubuntu Linux – Root Account 17 September 2006
Posted by Maulvi Bakar in : Home, Linux , 1 comment so farI like Ubuntu Linux, always have. Nice features, fairly comprehensive repositories for softwares. The only thing that bugs the hell out of me is the non-existance of the root account. Anytime you want to do something, it’s sudo this, and sudo that…
Well, this is how I did it -
sudo passwd root
voila!
I can now either use su to change to root, or even login as root..
Enjoy!
Detached process with wget 8 September 2006
Posted by Maulvi Bakar in : Linux, Work , add a commentNow, this is the umpteenth time I tried to post this. Problem with my webhoster’s security settings. It’s the infamous 406 Not Acceptable error!
Anyway, I need to download a fairly large file on my server which I accessed it remotely via ssh. Problem is that I can’t wait while it finishes the download. I need to close the session and get some real work done somewhere else 
(Hey the laptop battery might expire on me)
This is how I do it -
# (wget -o logfile http://www.example.com/dl_file.gz &)
The “wget -o logfile” parameter will allow you to monitor the download progress in real time. Just tail the logfile -
# tail -f ./logfile
You can also monitor the process thus -
# ps -ef | grep wget
This one will show you all the wget processes that you have detached, including information of what file is currently being downloaded complete with the url and logfiles.
Probably you’ll want to assign a different log file name for each of the detached process
Enjoy!
-ps Much appreciation to Alexander B. of my WebHost for assisting in that pesky 406 error.
IBM DB2 Certification 5 September 2006
Posted by Maulvi Bakar in : Work , add a commentWe need to deploy an IBM Websphere Portal. One of the requirements is a database backend. It was decided to install IBM DB2. While I’m whittling away the time awating the completion of the installation, I come across this particular info. It is just a basic paper, but.. Since it is quite affordable at RM228 at Thomson Prometric, well..
DB2 UDB V8.1 Family Fundamentals
DB2 V8 Family Fundamentals certification prep tutorials
enjoy!
Passive FTP and IPTables 4 September 2006
Posted by Maulvi Bakar in : Linux, Work , add a commentHad to configure an FTP server at work. For reasons best left for discussion in a later undetermined future date, we put the FTP server outside the firewall. Therefore, the machine in question needs to be protected by it own built-in firewall.
IPTables to the rescue.
There’s a snag. The default IP connection tracking doesn’t seem to work properly. IPTables rules below suggest that stateful inspection would do IP connection tracking as well, apparently not-
-A RH-Firewall-1-INPUT -m state –state ESTABLISHED,RELATED -j ACCEPT
-A RH-Firewall-1-INPUT -m state –state NEW -m tcp -p tcp –dport 21 -j ACCEPT
Seems that the “ip_conntrack_ftp” needed to be loaded separately in order to enable it.
# /sbin/modprobe/ip_conntrack_ftp
That should do the trick… but to have IPTables load it automatically, edit the file “/etc/sysconfig/iptables-config”
Add the following into it -
IPTABLES_MODULES=”ip_conntrack_ftp”
New Internet Connection 16 August 2006
Posted by Maulvi Bakar in : Home , add a commentAfter several weeks of waiting and indecision, I’ve finally decided to go for a local telco’s Broadband Service. Got tired of waiting for the Satellite Broadband Service. Now I’m connected again! Actually ordered for it early last week, with the phone as well, but.. the local telco’s usual inefficiency, it was delayed for almost a week. I am amazed that I managed to restrain myself from actually killing somebody 
Oh well, they did give me a cheap broadband modem for RM60. It’s a router modem with a bridging capability – means I can configure it as an ordinary ethernet-modem. That’s what I’m gonna do.. Have it connected to my own Linux-based Router.
Blog Migration 31 July 2006
Posted by Maulvi Bakar in : System , add a commentI’ve always liked WordPress. It seems very customizable, full-featured and lotsa plugins for me to play around with.
Actually, I installed WordPress on Maulvi.Net a few days ago, but delayed the Data Migration from http://deunan.wordpress.com till earlier today. Everything works perfectly! All I did was a simple export from the old one to the new one.
Data Migration is Evil.. 1 May 2006
Posted by Maulvi Bakar in : Work , add a commentWell, I say that the hard part is almost done. Duplicates eliminated, hanging records purged. Now, I only need to create new 'Registration No', since the new system requires on 16 characters, instead of 25++ in the original.
What else? Oh yeah, remove all hyphens ("-") characters in the Identity Card Number column (This one needs a bit thinking). Seperate all I/C #s from old to new (This one's peanuts). Remove all instances of the apostrophe ("'" – heh!) and ampersand ("&") from Names and Addresses Fields (Ought to be fun!). Yeah, don't forget to split the addresses field by 35 characters (More to remind myself than just a simple blogging )
Umm.. Hope I can finish by midnight!