Based on the disk image I chose, VMWare Workstation already knew I was installing Ubuntu. It prompted me for my full name, desired username, and password. Next thing I know VMWare Workstation is blowing past any of the usual prompts during the bootup process of a Ubuntu install and formatting the partition.

Wait… what just happened? Easy Install makes a new installation almost too easy, so far!

Next I’m feasting my eyes on the new 9.10 installer. It’s been so long since I’ve installed Ubuntu, so the installer overhaul is a very welcome addition. I see that there’s been a lot of work done to make things easier on the eyes, as well as streamline the install process.

No more than 10 minutes after, VMWare is done with the initial install and reboot. I’m impressed! Equally impressive is that it pops up immediately with an prompt for my username and password to install VMWare tools… it would have been nice if the login was automated so that I wouldn’t need to login with credentials I setup 5 minutes ago.

After sitting for awhile doing it’s installation proceedure with no progress indicator, it boots me to a command prompt. There’s an X Server error on the screen so I figure there’s gonna be some configuration that I need to do, so no problem. I start typing sudo dpkg-reconf… and then zap! It’s gone.

A quick shimmy of the screen while the VM changes video modes and poof! I’m at the improved login prompt for Karmic. I login and instantly I’m looking at a fresh new install of Ubuntu.

Took about 15 minutes when it was all said and done, including the reboot and mostly automated VMWare Tools install. Very nice. Very similar to how the last time I used VMWare Fusion to run Windows XP it asked for username, password, CD-Key, etc and automated the entire thing.

Now, all I’ve gotta do is install 107 updates for Karmic Koala… perhaps the installer team could have integrated a quick update during the install.

Overall, very impressed. Could have used more bacon.

The easiest to use tool I’ve found so far is a plugin for Mozilla’s Thunderbird called WebMail. This extension is so slick, it sets up a local POP3, IMAP, and SMTP server that proxies requests from the mail client to the web interface for a ton of different webmail sites, like Yahoo, Hotmail, AOL, and more.

So I had several thousand emails loaded into both an old Yahoo mail account, as well as an MSN.com email address I’ve been wanting to get rid of forever. The problem with both of these services is that you have to pay around $20 apeice to get POP3 or Office Outlook Connector access, respectively.

I’m not willing to pay money for something that their biggest competetor (GMail) provides for free. This is MY email, MY correspondance, and MY time invested. Similar to the problem Robert Scoble had with Facebook and a beta version of Plaxo, I did get temporarily banned from Yahoo for accessing their webmail with a third party program, and got a nasty error 999 message, and absolutely ZERO support from Yahoo until it cleared itself up – took a few hours and the IP-address-ban was gone.

The most upsetting part is that they provide a “free” service to switch to Yahoo! Mail, including importing all your contacts, mail, etc and pulling it all into a walled garden that you’re not allowed to remove anything from after it’s in there. Vendor lock-in is a crutch, and thanks to the WebMail extension for Thunderbird, it’s a weak crutch now.

How well does it work? Let’s just say that as of today I’ve got some emails in my Gmail account that go back to 1998!!! Hot damn!

The method is pretty easy. Install Thunderbird, then pickup the WebMail Extension plus add-ons for each webmail service you’ll use, configure the plugin to use whatever ports you like, then add your webmail accounts into Thunderbird.

The WebMail extension works as a proxy between your email client and the website that has your email on it. When you click “Get Mail” in Thunderbird, the addon actually goes to www.yahoo.com (as an example), logs in as you, and clicks on Inbox, then reports back to Thunderbird what it sees in the language Thunderbird understands, IMAP, POP3, or SMTP.

It’s really non-techie friendly too, there’s no major configuration needed or anything really technical to figure out.

The best part is once you have the email inside Thunderbird, you can drag and drop or cut and paste emails from one account into another at will. I was able to move several thousand emails from my Yahoo! and MSN accounts into my Google Apps account very quickly. Sometimes it chokes on emails without a subject or very large (10MB+) emails, but those are easily forwarded manually.

Big thumbs up to the WebMail folks, this extension is hot and works like a charm! So what’s stopping you from importing email from your old accounts? You could be find some pictures from Argentina that your friend Rick sent you two years ago.

For those of you who aren’t into the whole Valentine’s Day thing, if I don’t see you until tomorrow, Happy Ubuntu Bug Hug Day!

If you haven’t seen it yet, imagine a letterboxed web browser – all you see is the content. There is nothing else showing in the window – back/forward navigation buttons, location bar, status bar, all gone.

I’ve found a dozen uses for it, but I think my two favorites are embedded videos (like Chris Pirillo) and Google Reader.

Prism is available for all major platforms – Linux, Mac and Windows. It’s really simple, just install it (or unzip it) and open up the Prism progam, and fill out the information it asks for, like URL or Name.

Prism does not share cookies or any other settings with Firefox, Internet Explorer, or Safari. This is nice if you have separate accounts and don’t want to mix things up.

In Ubuntu 7.10, I setup a Widget Layer rule in Advanced Desktop Effects Settings (ccsm) to match all windows set to be “Always On Top” using the following rule: state=above This setting lets me easily toggle windows to be set as a widget (or not) by simply setting the window as “Always On Top” after right clicking the title bar. Really simple to setup, then just F9 by default to view the widget layer.

Here’s a screenshot of my current setup:

Do you use Prism or Widget Layer rules in a creative way? Let me know in the comments.

Unfortunately, Comcast has decided to use Sandvine (some say illegally) to impersonate us and send a reset packet (known as an RST flag), which is exactly like the Chinese goverment filters the internet!  (PDF)

TorrentFreak hinted on August 22nd, is that someone was working on a fix for Comcast users.

“…we know that at least two BitTorrent client developers are including this fix in their next update.” -TorrentFreak 

It’s two weeks later, where is the fix!?  And just exactly how do you find out if you’re being throttled by Comcast?  And how can we figure out how to avoid this traffic shaping?The Fix(es):

There are three ways to fix this:

1.   Paying for and setting up SSH or some other nefarious means (lol).
   • SSH access is not free, and if it is, it’s slow, and if you steal WiFi you might as well just switch ISPs.
2. Use iptables or ipfw, this has been posted many times around the web, but here it is just for posterity:
   iptables -A INPUT -p tcp –dport $YOURTORRENTPORT –tcp-flags RST RST -j DROP
   ipfw add deny tcp from any to any YOURTORRENTPORT in tcpflags rst
   • Unfortunately, this only works if you have a *nix-based computer, or have a Linux Firewall around somewhere. I suggest Smoothwall if you’re looking to go that route. 
3. Use the latest version of Azureus’ nightly CVS snapshot which includes the fixed mentioned by TorrentFreak.

Obviously we are going to be using the third option.  The latest version of Azureus can be downloaded as a nightly CVS snapshot.

NOTE: Several readers have pointed out that this does not fix the issue for them. Your Mileage May Vary!

Jog dial back a little bit, picture me surfing the Azureus wiki and finding the following article entitled “Avoid Traffic Shaping.”  The juicy bits are as follows:

Level 5 (encryption) is specifically intended for people who have problems with a specific traffic shaping method used by Sandvine traffic shaping hardware, see Bad ISPs if this applies to you.  [...]  Note: This is level is available from Azureus 3.0.2.3_B05 onwards.  [...]  The premise of this method is to minimize the amount of unencrypted information leaked.

Bingo! This is what TorrentFreak was talking about!

Here are the steps to fix it:

1. Download and install the regular version of Azureus which has been rebranded as Vuse
2. Click here to visit their CVS download page.
3. Grab the .jar file from that page
4. Rename it to Azureus2.jar and copy it into the Azureus folder, overwriting the old one.
5. If you need very detailed instructions, here you go.
6. Once you’ve got the new CVS version installed, enable these settings:
   1. Tools -> Options -> Connection -> Transport Encryption
      Enable require encryption
      Select RC4
      Disable both fallback checkboxes
   2. Tools -> Options -> Tracker -> Client
      Enable Do not announce the listening port to the tracker
      Set the peer limit to a low figure, start with 1 or 2
      Set the Minimum time between tracker announces to 900 for example
   3. Adjust DHT settings (2 mutually exclusive alternatives):
      Disable the DHT:
      Go to Tools -> Options -> Plugins -> Distributed DB
      Uncheck Enable the distributed database
   4. Try to get more peers via DHT:
      Go to Tools -> Options -> Plugins -> Distributed Tracker
      Uncheck Only track normal torrents
7. Now try to seed a torrent you haven’t seeded within the last few hours or so before applying these settings.
8. You should see a huge increase in seeding speed.

I’m still waiting to see conclusive results at this time. This works!  I have personally seen better total upload rates in 5 minutes than in 5 hours. I’m no longer capped at 0.1 kbps upload during a seed… I’m seeing more like what I should be – 70+ kbps.

By using these settings we only allow ourselves to connect to other clients that have enabled communication to encrypted clients. Also, when Comcast gets word that people are using this way to avoid leaking more information than needed, they can simply reconfigure Sandvine to be even more restrictive towards Internet-bound traffic and break it all over again.

How to Determine If You Are Blocked By Comcast:

The first indication that you are being throttled back is that when you finish downloading a torrent, your upload speed will absolutely STINK. I see around 0.1 kbps up. That’s a really good indicator, as my speedtest shows I can download at near 25mbit/sec and upload at around 1.5mbit/sec.

What if you REALLY want to know for SURE? I know I did. Thanks to funchords on the DSLReports forum, we have an easy way. I’ve modified it a little bit, but original credit goes to him.

In Windows, the following command will save a file onto your desktop. Click Start, then Run, and copy and paste this bit into the box and press OK.

netstat -s | find “Reset Connections” >> “%userprofile%\Desktop\reset_connections.txt”

For Linux, use this command:

netstat -s | grep -i “resets received” > ~/reset_connections.txt

Open up the reset_connections.txt file that showed up on your desktop (or Linux home directory) and record the number on a piece of paper.

This is your baseline number, it starts from here and can only go upwards. Now, start seeding ONE torrent for an hour. Many people have reported they they receive upwards of 1 RST flag per second when monitoring using a program called Wireshark (or Etheral). After one hour, record your new number by running the above command again and opening up the reset.txt file again. If the number is more than around 5000 than your first number, you are being throttled about as bad as I am.

Things to keep in mind:

Once you have torrent upload speeds working the way that it should to begin with, Comcast does terminate service for downloading more than ~200gb in a single month. I personally had ~150gb aggregate upload and download totals for several months in a row with no complaint from Comcast.

I believe that when more people are using this method, it can only get better.