Troubleshooting SSH Connections and Using syslog

digitaleagle ssh, Uncategorized 1 Comment

I have been struggling with ssh connections.  So, I thought I would write down some of the different troubleshooting tips that I found.

Permissions

Make sure that your permissions are correct on your home directory and your key files.  Here are the permissions that you need.

Check with this:

ls -ld $HOME $HOME/.ssh $HOME/.ssh/authorized_keys $HOME/.ssh/id_rsa

Note: make sure that you check this on your local computer and your remote computer.  The permissions should be:

chmod go-w $HOME
chmod 700 $HOME/.ssh
chmod 600 $HOME/.ssh/authorized_keys
chmod 600 $HOME/.ssh/id_rsa

SELinux

Another thing I found was that SE Linux was stopped the private keys from working.  Using dmesg, I found lines like this:


type=1400 audit(1332520527.110:51337): avc: denied { read } for pid=25240 comm="sshd" name="authorized_keys" dev=dm-5 ino=167 scontext=unconfined_u:system_r:sshd_t:s0-s0:c0.c1023 tcontext=unconfined_u:object_r:home_root_t:s0 tclass=file

I checked the status with sestatus, and found that SELinux was enforcing.  Then, I used the following command to turn it to permissive mode:

setenforce 0

Checking again, you’ll see it is in permissive mode now:


$ sestatus
SELinux status: enabled
SELinuxfs mount: /selinux
Current mode: permissive
Mode from config file: permissive
Policy version: 24
Policy from config file: targeted

Then, when I tried connecting, I found that the key authentication and X11 forwarding worked.  Just a note: the key authentication worked with policy version 23 but not 24.

Logging on the Client

Use the “-v” parameter to ssh will provide some output as to what is wrong.  In fact, you can maximize the debugging messages with “-vvv”.  So, you can see what’s going on, you can do something like this:

ssh -vvv remoteuser@remotecomputer

Writing messages to dmesg

I read that the messages go to dmesg.  I had trouble telling if dmesg was changing.  So, I decided to see if I could add something to the log.  Then, I would know that anything after that message was new.

Here’s the command that did the trick:

sudo bash -c "echo hello world > /dev/kmsg "

Configuring Logging for SSH on the remote machine

At first, I couldn’t get any log messages out of the remote machine.  I found that I had to adjust the configuration for both syslog and sshd.

First, I change syslog to create a separate log file for sshd.  You can make this change in /etc/rsyslog.conf.  The local7.* already existed in my configuration.  I added the local6.debug line:


# Save boot messages also to boot.log
local7.* /var/log/boot.log

# SSH specific (Added by Stephen)
local6.debug /var/log/sshd.log

Then, I had to change the sshd configuration.  You can make this change in /etc/ssh/sshd_config.  I set the SysLogFacility to “LOCAL6” to make the separate log file setting work from above.  Then, I changed the LogLevel to “DEBUG”.  I think there is also a “DEBUG3” that might provide even more.


# Logging
# obsoletes QuietMode and FascistLogging
#SyslogFacility AUTH
#SyslogFacility AUTHPRIV
#LogLevel INFO
SyslogFacility LOCAL6
LogLevel DEBUG

Finally, restart both sshd and rsyslog to make the changes take effect.

sudo service sshd restart && sudo service rsyslog restart

This is a cool trick.  If you open a shell to monitor the log, you can use the tail command to print messages to the screen as they are written:

tail -f /var/log/sshd.log

This is what helped me find my problem.

End Result/My Problem

I finally found that my problem was the permissions of the home directory.  I found this in the log file:

Authentication refused: bad ownership or modes for directory /home/remoteuser

After I changed ownership of the home directory, my key authentication worked great.

Resources

VMWare Updated to 4.0.2 on Ubuntu 11.10

digitaleagle Uncategorized, Virtualization Leave a comment

Today, my VMWare just offered to update!  Now, I have the new 4.0.2 version:

The update was great.  I wish other software vendors could make their updates this easy!  I just stepped through the Wizard, and before too long, I have the latest and greatest installed.

You can read the changes in the new version here: VMware Player 4.0.2 Release Notes.

I have been having trouble with the VMWare Tools update hanging.  It would download and install forever, and I couldn’t close the window.  With the new version, it finished and installed–no problem.

Another new feature that I just noticed was the Shared Folders.  I am not sure if this is new to this version or not.  I had been looking for Shared Folders, but I hadn’t been able to find them.  Now, they are an option in the machine settings:

Voice Recognition in Ubuntu

digitaleagle Speech Recognition, Uncategorized 7 Comments

Someone asked me about voice recognition the other day, so I thought it sounded like a fun little project to master.  Here’s my go at it.

Unfortunately, I didn’t have much luck with it.  Please post a comment if you get more working than I did.

Which Package to Install

I did a little research, and found that Wikipedia has a nice list of open source speech recognition programs.  While it’s not huge, it was a good place to start.  I chose Julius because it looked the most promising.

Installing Julius

Since Julius is in the repositories, installing it was easy!  I just installed it from the Software Center.

Installing Julius with the Software Center

I went a step further and installed the voxforge accoustic files from the “More Info” screen.

From what I can tell, there is no gui for julius (although, the project Simon might be a frontend for it).  You should find it installed on the command-line though:

$ which julius
/usr/bin/julius
$ julius -help

Running Julius

Looking at the options, my first attempt was:

$ julius -input mic
ERROR: m_chkparam: you should specify at least one LM to run Julius!

The next thing I found was the VoxForge quickstart.  I downloaded the tarball, and extracted it:

$tar -xzvf julius-3.5.2-quickstart-linux.tgz
$cd julius-3.5.2-quickstart-linux/
$ julius -input mic -C julian.jconf

That was closer, but it gave me this message at the end of all the output:


------
### read waveform input
Stat: adin_oss: device name = /dev/dsp (application default)
Error: adin_oss: failed to open /dev/dsp
failed to begin input stream

Adding padsp in front of the command fixed that problem:

$ padsp julius -input mic -C julian.jconf

I still got warnings though…


### read waveform input
Stat: adin_oss: device name = /dev/dsp (application default)
Stat: adin_oss: sampling rate = 16000Hz
Stat: adin_oss: going to set latency to 50 msec
Stat: adin_oss: audio I/O Latency = 32 msec (fragment size = 512 samples)
STAT: AD-in thread created
<<< please speak >>>Warning: adin_oss: no data fragment after 300 msec?
Warning: adin_oss: no data fragment after 300 msec?
Warning: adin_oss: no data fragment after 300 msec?

If you open the Sound Settings, the warnings go away.  I thought was kind of flakey, but it worked.  Unfortunately, the output was a little cryptic, and didn’t give me the feedback that I needed.  This is what I get when I said, “Hello”:


pass1_best: <s> DIAL EIGHT
pass1_best_wordseq: 0 3 5
pass1_best_phonemeseq: sil | d ay ax l | ey t
pass1_best_score: -3177.784424
### Recognition: 2nd pass (RL heuristic best-first)
STAT: 00 _default: 13 generated, 13 pushed, 5 nodes popped in 109
sentence1: <s> DIAL OH </s>
wseq1: 0 3 5 1
phseq1: sil | d ay ax l | ow | sil
cmscore1: 1.000 1.000 0.997 1.000
score1: -3393.694580

Running from a Recording

I probably could have used audacity much more easily, but since I was already on the command line, I decided to keep it there with the arecord program.  I used this line to record:

$ arecord -r 16000 > test.wav

I played it back and it sounded kind of rough, but we’ll try it —

$ mplayer test.wav

Next, I ran it through julius:


$ ls test.wav > test.txt
$ julius -input rawfile -filelist test.txt -C julian.jconf

Unfortunately, mplayer could play the file, but julius could not open it for some reason.


### read waveform input
Error: adin_file: bytes per second != 32000 (16000)
Error: adin_file: error in parsing wav header at test.wav
Error: adin_file: failed to read speech data: "test.wav"
0 files processed

So, I found an example that used sox to convert it.  I had to install sox with apt-get …

sudo apt-get install sox

Then, I converted the file and ran it like this:

$ sox test.wav -r 16000 -b 32 -c 1 test.s32
$ ls test.s32 > test.txt
$ julius -input rawfile -filelist test.txt -C julian.jconf

Still, this is the only output that I got:


### Recognition: 1st pass (LR beam)
...........................................................................................................................pass1_best: <s>
pass1_best_wordseq: 0
pass1_best_phonemeseq: sil
pass1_best_score: -2712.263916
### Recognition: 2nd pass (RL heuristic best-first)
WARNING: IW-triphone for word head "l-ow+t" not found, fallback to pseudo {ow+t}
WARNING: IW-triphone for word head "ow-ow+t" not found, fallback to pseudo {ow+t}
WARNING: IW-triphone for word head "t-ow+t" not found, fallback to pseudo {ow+t}
WARNING: IW-triphone for word head "uw-ow+t" not found, fallback to pseudo {ow+t}
WARNING: 00 _default: hypothesis stack exhausted, terminate search now
STAT: 00 _default: 0 sentences have been found
WARNING: 00 _default: got no candidates, search failed
STAT: 00 _default: 147 generated, 147 pushed, 147 nodes popped in 123
<search failed>
------
### read waveform input
1 files processed

I used audacity to cleanup the file.  The Noise Removal improved it somewhat, but it still wasn’t good quality.  Here’s the output after that:


### read waveform input
Stat: adin_file: input speechfile: test.wav
STAT: 30000 samples (1.88 sec.)
STAT: ### speech analysis (waveform -> MFCC)
### Recognition: 1st pass (LR beam)
..........................................................................................................................................................................................pass1_best: <s> DIAL OH </s>
pass1_best_wordseq: 0 3 5 1
pass1_best_phonemeseq: sil | d ay ax l | ow | sil
pass1_best_score: -5237.150391
### Recognition: 2nd pass (RL heuristic best-first)
STAT: 00 _default: 27 generated, 27 pushed, 5 nodes popped in 186
sentence1: <s> DIAL OH </s>
wseq1: 0 3 5 1
phseq1: sil | d ay ax l | ow | sil
cmscore1: 1.000 0.978 0.987 1.000
score1: -5225.757324
------
### read waveform input
1 files processed

I also tried creating a file from scratch in audacity, and I still couldn’t get it:


### read waveform input
Stat: adin_file: input speechfile: test.wav
STAT: 21176 samples (1.32 sec.)
STAT: ### speech analysis (waveform -> MFCC)
### Recognition: 1st pass (LR beam)
..................................................................................................................................pass1_best: <s> DIAL OH
pass1_best_wordseq: 0 3 5
pass1_best_phonemeseq: sil | d ay ax l | ow
pass1_best_score: -3417.226318
### Recognition: 2nd pass (RL heuristic best-first)
STAT: 00 _default: 23 generated, 23 pushed, 5 nodes popped in 130
sentence1: <s> DIAL OH </s>
wseq1: 0 3 5 1
phseq1: sil | d ay ax l | ow | sil
cmscore1: 1.000 0.911 1.000 1.000
score1: -3453.692871
------
### read waveform input
1 files processed

Running on YouTube Videos

My next task that I wanted to attempt was to try to capture something on a good recording.  So, let’s find a good YouTube video to run through julius.

I tried clive, but it failed for some reason:

$sudo apt-get install clive

$ clive -cnrf best http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dePLd9HAYjQ
fetch http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dePLd9HAYjQ ...done.
error: no match: `(?-xism:url_encoded_fmt_stream_map=(.*?)&)'

So, I went back to my tried and true Video Downloader Firefox extension.  Here is the first video that I tried:

For God So Loved The World (song and hymn history) 

I converted the flv file to a wav like this:

ffmpeg -i youtube.flv -vn -acodec pcm_s16le -ar 16000 -ac 1 -f wav test.wav

And, I ran it through Julius like this:

$ ls test.wav > test.txt
$ julius -input rawfile -filelist test.txt -C julian.jconf

The end result was a segmentation fault!

I tried another one: Psalm 119 King James Holy Bible 

This one also have me a segmentation fault.

Another: Job 41 (King James Holy Bible) 

This one gave me this message:
....trace_backptr: sentence length exceeded ( > 150)

VoxForge Example

If you want to play with the VoxForge addon package, you can look at the readme file that should be located here:

/usr/share/doc/julius-voxforge/examples/README

 Here are all the files installed with it:
$ dpkg -L julius-voxforge
/.
/usr
/usr/share
/usr/share/doc
/usr/share/doc/julius-voxforge
/usr/share/doc/julius-voxforge/copyright
/usr/share/doc/julius-voxforge/examples
/usr/share/doc/julius-voxforge/examples/controlapp
/usr/share/doc/julius-voxforge/examples/controlapp/mediaplayer.grammar
/usr/share/doc/julius-voxforge/examples/controlapp/command.py
/usr/share/doc/julius-voxforge/examples/controlapp/mediaplayer.voca
/usr/share/doc/julius-voxforge/examples/controlapp/README.controlapp
/usr/share/doc/julius-voxforge/examples/README
/usr/share/doc/julius-voxforge/examples/sample.grammar
/usr/share/doc/julius-voxforge/examples/sample.voca
/usr/share/doc/julius-voxforge/examples/julian.jconf.gz
/usr/share/doc/julius-voxforge/dict.gz
/usr/share/doc/julius-voxforge/changelog.Debian.gz
/usr/share/julius-voxforge
/usr/share/julius-voxforge/acoustic
/usr/share/julius-voxforge/acoustic/hmmdefs
/usr/share/julius-voxforge/acoustic/macros
/usr/share/julius-voxforge/acoustic/tiedlist

Resources

ICS ROM Update for HD2

digitaleagle Google Phone, HTC HD2, Uncategorized Leave a comment
My HD2 Phone
I decided it was time for a whole new post listing the latest Android 4.0/Ice Cream Sandwich ROMS for the HD2 phone.  A few new ones have popped up since my last list.Currently, I have been following Tytung’s ROMs.  I am on his NexusHD2-ICS-CM9 v1.2.  So, here is a list of links relating to his ROMs:

Here are a few more other ROMs out there:

Note: SportsStar89’s ROM is discontinued.  According to this post, he doesn’t have a working HD2 anymore.  Apparently, he dropped it, cracked the digitizer, and broke it more trying to repair it.
I have picked up a number of source sites from these links that would be handy for creating a ROM.

I can’t forget to mention the HD2 ROM site that lists all of the ROMs out there: HTC HD2 Android Roms/Builds.