Category Archives: virtual networking

Unicos CD-ROM’s found!

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Okay, so it’s old news. But it was news to me!

So over on Modular Circuits, Andras had posted a promising ‘UNICOS Update‘ which had detailed that 2 CD-ROM’s of Unicos had surfaced on archive.org cray-cd1 & cray-cd2. Along with posting the updated source to github, so I had no choice to replicate the experiment!

First the install is INSANELY slow. It requires you to setup a Linux (or unix) machine with rsh. Surprisingly there is a rsh-server package for Ubuntu 22.04. Basically it boils down to following the instructions. Although with WSLv2 I ended up making the bridge manually with:

brctl addbr craybr
ip tuntap add mode tap tap1
ifconfig tap1 up
brctl addif craybr tap1
ifconfig craybr 172.16.0.1 netmask 255.255.255.0

It’s coded in the example configs to use tap1, but there you go. It’s a pretty straightfoward install but the decompression on the cray side takes the installation hours. As an experiment I changed the commands from rcp to remsh to gzip -dc the files locally on my PC, which had the benefit of of being much faster, and not taking up space.

I went ahead and uploaded both of my installs for anyone wanting to play OS tourist enough to check out UNICOS but not wanting to sit through the install.

The C compiler is.. ancient. and very touchy. You’ll need to add /usr/gen/bin to the path, and explicitly add the path for the linker like this:

/usr/gen/bin/cc zap.c -L/usr/gen/lib

Although the breakage is.. pretty epic. I had pretty much no luck bringing over any of my favorites. There should be a much better / modernish C compiler and Fortran compiler, although I’m not sure if it’s on these CD-ROM’s or I’m just massively ignorant of UNICOS, because I never got a chance to be anywhere near a legit supercomputer.

So yeah, pretty exciting stuff!

pptp always ignoring localip on Ubuntu

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I don’t know how the other various linux distros handle this but I found this by accident:

Nov 17 12:04:25 ukweb pppd[4943]: Using interface ppp0
Nov 17 12:04:25 ukweb pppd[4943]: Connect: ppp0 <--> /dev/pts/0
Nov 17 12:04:25 ukweb pptpd[4942]: GRE: Bad checksum from pppd.
Nov 17 12:04:25 ukweb systemd-udevd[4944]: Using default interface naming scheme 'v249'.
Nov 17 12:04:25 ukweb pppd[4943]: peer from calling number 1.1.1.1.1 authorized
Nov 17 12:04:25 ukweb pppd[4943]: MPPE 128-bit stateless compression enabled
Nov 17 12:04:27 ukweb systemd-networkd[592]: ppp0: Link UP
Nov 17 12:04:27 ukweb systemd-networkd[592]: ppp0: Gained carrier
Nov 17 12:04:27 ukweb pppd[4943]: found interface br0 for proxy arp
Nov 17 12:04:27 ukweb pppd[4943]: local  IP address 192.168.0.1
Nov 17 12:04:27 ukweb pppd[4943]: remote IP address 192.168.23.10
Nov 17 12:05:28 ukweb systemd[1]: Stopping PoPToP Point to Point Tunneling Server...
Nov 17 12:05:28 ukweb pppd[4943]: Terminating on signal 15
Nov 17 12:05:28 ukweb pppd[4943]: Connect time 1.1 minutes.
Nov 17 12:05:28 ukweb pppd[4943]: Sent 0 bytes, received 6937 bytes.
Nov 17 12:05:28 ukweb systemd-networkd[592]: ppp0: Link DOWN
Nov 17 12:05:28 ukweb systemd-networkd[592]: ppp0: Lost carrier

With the emphasis on “local IP address 192.168.0.1”. Which is *NOT* in my config. I went as far as adding a bridge to satisfy the proxy arp! Netplan is some yaml thing and yeah not a big fan.

    ethernets:
        eth0:
            addresses:
            - PUBLICIP/24
            gateway4: GATEWAY
            match:
                macaddress: AA:BB:CC:00:00:01
            nameservers:
                addresses:
                - 1.1.1.1
                - 8.8.8.8
    bridges:
      br0:
        dhcp4: no
        addresses: [192.168.23.1/24]
    version: 2

my /etc/ppp/pptpd.conf had the options set, but no matter what it *ALWAYS* went to 192.168.0.1

option /etc/ppp/pptpd-options
logwtmp
localip 192.168.24.1
remoteip 192.168.23.30-250

And then I found it after doing what i should have done, and grep around to find out that pptpd.conf should actually live in /etc

Yeah that’s right, there is 2 of them although they should be the same. A symlink and a restart later, and now I get this:

Nov 17 12:19:56 ukweb kernel: [  112.718861] PPP MPPE Compression module registered
Nov 17 12:19:56 ukweb pppd[1002]: MPPE 128-bit stateless compression enabled
Nov 17 12:19:58 ukweb systemd-networkd[599]: ppp0: Link UP
Nov 17 12:19:58 ukweb systemd-networkd[599]: ppp0: Gained carrier
Nov 17 12:19:58 ukweb pppd[1002]: found interface br0 for proxy arp
Nov 17 12:19:58 ukweb pppd[1002]: local  IP address 192.168.23.1
Nov 17 12:19:58 ukweb pppd[1002]: remote IP address 192.168.23.10

MUCH much better. I don’t know if this is anything worth wriging about, but if I can save someone else an hour of wondering why the config isn’t working and why their pptp is always defaulting to 192.168.0.1 and why it’s wreaking havoc with any default home router, where here it is.

Networking on AIX 4.3

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Well oslevel says 4.3.3.0, but you get the idea.

You’ll need to have the ethernet driver handy, or better loaded. Since I had disabled the NIC on install it’s not loaded. And since I’m still using a cellphone for internet I extracted the file somewhere else and copied in some patches. I’ve managed to reproduce this twice now, so I guess it’s good to go. Apparently, this just works in later versions, but this is very touchy.

To start how I’m running qemu:

./qemu-build/ppc-softmmu/qemu-system-ppc -M 40p -bios q40pofw-serial.rom -serial telnet::4441,server -hda disk0.vmdk-post-install -vga none -nographic -net none -device pcnet,netdev=ne -netdev user,id=ne,hostfwd=tcp::42323-:23 -cdrom /mnt/c/temp/pcnet-aix.iso

With aix booted, extract the tar file from the cdrom:

mount /cdrom
mkdir /pcnet
cd pcnet
tar -xvf /cdrom/pci.tar

Fix your terminal up… if needed (it probably is)

export TERM=vt100
stty erase ^?
export LIBPATH=$LIBPATH:/usr/lib
export PATH=/usr/local/bin:$PATH

Now run smitty -> devices -> after ipl

Change the directory to /pcnet , and let it run It will give errors but thats okay. All being well it won’t crash AIX, otherwise you’ll want to restore your hardisk. You did make a backup beforehand right?!

I don’t think it matters but I run this afterwards:

odmchange -o CuAt -q "name=ent0 and attribute=busio" /cdrom/lance_ch.asc
odmget -q "name=ent0 and attribute=busio" CuAt
shutdown -h now
halting does take forever

As tempting as it is to kill the emulator, wait for it to complete. Otherwise you may have to do the whole thing agian.

For me the value attribute was never preserved, so we get to do it again on reboot/restart:

odmget -q "name=ent0 and attribute=busio" CuAt
mount /cdrom
odmchange -o CuAt -q "name=ent0 and attribute=busio" /cdrom/lance_ch.asc
rmdev -l ent0
mkdev -l ent0
ifconfig en0 10.0.2.15
ping -c 1 10.0.2.2

If everything went well this time you should get a ping reply! Great! Now to configure the system for real.

smitty -> communication -> tcpip -> minimum -> en0

simple slirp

As always I configure my system for slirp. We’re almost there! Now to pad the DNS records for slirp:

cat >> /etc/hosts
10.0.2.2 slirp
10.0.2.3 slirpdns
^D

And now you can reboot!

If everything goes well, you will have a patched up pcnet driver that works (well mine does)

It works!

The big test is to of course reboot. Then you’ll know for sure.

I have tried this a few times, and yeah it can crash when adding the drivers, so I had to restore a few times. I would say 1/3 times worked flawlessly. So be patient. And backup!

Re-visiting the SUN-2 emulator: Adding SLiRP!

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While I’ve covered Brad Parker (lisper)’s ‘emulator-sun-2‘ before, booting into SunOS isn’t anything that new.

However, with the latest updates, from github, adding in a prior botched attempt, and some messing around, and finally, I got it to ping at first, then it was a matter of where to place the ‘slirp tick’. I first though putting it on the interface poll was a good spot, but for some reason the machine causes a deadlock/stall on boot before the PROM can even initialize. I’m not sure why. Searching further I found a good timer portion and injected the code. And sure enough I was greeted with the login banner:

I’ve been able to paste in about 100kb of a uuencoded tar file, and it didn’t lock the VM, and I was able to uudecode it, and actually build the source (Infotaskforce ’87 if anyone cares). So I’m at the point I think it’s stable enough to shove into the world, although I guess until I revisit it again.

You can download it on sourceforge: sun2.zip

Web Rendering Proxy – Full Page Scrolling

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(This is a guest post by Antoni Sawicki aka Tenox)

Due to a popular demand I have added an option of generating full page height screenshot and allowing client browser to do the scrolling.

This makes the browsing experience much smoother, you have resources for it. Beware, a full page screenshot can be several MB in size encoded as gif/png and much more as a decoded raw bitmap on the client. I managed to crash Mosaic and OmniWeb a few times. Fortunately typical Wikipedia page is under 1 MB so for most part is should be fine. To activate just put 0 in page Height.

I have drafted a pre-release on github for testing. Please let me know any feedback. I’m also thinking whether enable this by default, or not.

WRP 4.0 Preview

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(This is a guest post from Antoni Sawicki aka Tenox)

Welcome a completely new and absolutely insane mode of Web Rendering Proxy. ISMAP on steroids!

While v3.0 was largely just a port from Python/Webkit to GoLang/Chromedp, the new version is a whole new game. Previously WRP worked by walking the DOM and making a clickable imagemap out of <A HREF> nodes. Version 4.0 works by using x,y coordinates obtained from ISMAP to perform a simulated mouse click in Chrome browser. This way you can click on any element of the page. From annoying cookie warnings, to various drop down menus and even play some online games. Also pagination has been replaced with a clickable scroll bar.

Enough talking, you can watch this video:

Or download the new version and try it yourself!

Please report bugs on github.com. Thank you!

WRP 3.0 Beta ready for testing

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(This is a guest post from Antoni Sawicki aka Tenox)

I have released WRP 3.0 for testing. It’s currently a browser-in-browser server rather than a true proxy, but that’s in the works. Please try it out and let me know. Usage instructions are on the main github project page.

Today using trickery I was able to login to my reddit account from Mosaic:

Update: just added the missing image quantizer so that the color number input box actually does something useful. Now you can browse porn even with 16 colors:

WRP Runs on Windows

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(This is a guest post by Antoni Sawicki aka Tenox)

Thats right, the new beta version of Web Rendering Proxy runs natively on Windows. Single EXE, no libraries or dependencies required. Only Chrome Browser.

I took a Internet Explorer 1.5 for a spin today while WRP was running on my Windows 10 PC. Worked just fine.

I have added Prev/Next buttons so that you can easily “scroll” through long pages.

ISMAP support has been added, proof:

You can download a preview build on github.

Web Rendering Proxy – Overdue Status Update

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(This is a guest post from Antoni Sawicki aka Tenox)

There hasn’t been a major update to WRP (Web Rendering Proxy) in 5 years or so. Some new features have been added thanks to efforts of Claunia but the whole project was mostly impeded with mass migration of the whole Internet to SSL/TLS/https. It does semi work somehow thanks to sslstrip but the whole stack is an unmaintainable pile of crap which I’m not going to update any more.

A new rewrite from scratch is well under way. This time written in GoLang and using Chrome DevTools Protocol. Things should be much more stable and future proof.

Far from complete but I have a fully functional prototype now working in just under 100 lines of code:

UPDATE 1: You can play with it if you want. Please do not submit any bug reports just yet, as this is just a development version. Note that WRP is currently not a true HTTP proxy but rather browser-in-browser. Proxy may be supported later.

UPDATE 2: As of today online setting of size, scaling and scrolling is supported. I’m specifically happy about the scrolling feature albeit it probably needs a better user input, like prev/next page.

Windows version still doesn’t work due to an upstream bug, which is probably easy to fix.

ISMAP is currently in development.