- <div class="title"><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Simpler_recipe_on_how_to_make_a_simple__7_IMSI_Catcher_using_Debian.html">Simpler recipe on how to make a simple $7 IMSI Catcher using Debian</a></div>
- <div class="date"> 9th August 2017</div>
- <div class="body"><p>On friday, I came across an interesting article in the Norwegian
-web based ICT news magazine digi.no on
-<a href="https://www.digi.no/artikler/sikkerhetsforsker-lagde-enkel-imsi-catcher-for-60-kroner-na-kan-mobiler-kartlegges-av-alle/398588">how
-to collect the IMSI numbers of nearby cell phones</a> using the cheap
-DVB-T software defined radios. The article refered to instructions
-and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjwgNd_as30">a recipe by
-Keld Norman on Youtube on how to make a simple $7 IMSI Catcher</a>, and I decided to test them out.</p>
-
-<p>The instructions said to use Ubuntu, install pip using apt (to
-bypass apt), use pip to install pybombs (to bypass both apt and pip),
-and the ask pybombs to fetch and build everything you need from
-scratch. I wanted to see if I could do the same on the most recent
-Debian packages, but this did not work because pybombs tried to build
-stuff that no longer build with the most recent openssl library or
-some other version skew problem. While trying to get this recipe
-working, I learned that the apt->pip->pybombs route was a long detour,
-and the only piece of software dependency missing in Debian was the
-gr-gsm package. I also found out that the lead upstream developer of
-gr-gsm (the name stand for GNU Radio GSM) project already had a set of
-Debian packages provided in an Ubuntu PPA repository. All I needed to
-do was to dget the Debian source package and built it.</p>
-
-<p>The IMSI collector is a python script listening for packages on the
-loopback network device and printing to the terminal some specific GSM
-packages with IMSI numbers in them. The code is fairly short and easy
-to understand. The reason this work is because gr-gsm include a tool
-to read GSM data from a software defined radio like a DVB-T USB stick
-and other software defined radios, decode them and inject them into a
-network device on your Linux machine (using the loopback device by
-default). This proved to work just fine, and I've been testing the
-collector for a few days now.</p>
-
-<p>The updated and simpler recipe is thus to</p>
-
-<ol>
-
-<li>start with a Debian machine running Stretch or newer,</li>
-
-<li>build and install the gr-gsm package available from
-<a href="http://ppa.launchpad.net/ptrkrysik/gr-gsm/ubuntu/pool/main/g/gr-gsm/">http://ppa.launchpad.net/ptrkrysik/gr-gsm/ubuntu/pool/main/g/gr-gsm/</a>,</li>
-
-<li>clone the git repostory from <a href="https://github.com/Oros42/IMSI-catcher">https://github.com/Oros42/IMSI-catcher</a>,</li>
-
-<li>run grgsm_livemon and adjust the frequency until the terminal
-where it was started is filled with a stream of text (meaning you
-found a GSM station).</li>
-
-<li>go into the IMSI-catcher directory and run 'sudo python simple_IMSI-catcher.py' to extract the IMSI numbers.</li>
-
-</ol>
-
-<p>To make it even easier in the future to get this sniffer up and
-running, I decided to package
-<a href="https://github.com/ptrkrysik/gr-gsm/">the gr-gsm project</a>
-for Debian (<a href="https://bugs.debian.org/871055">WNPP
-#871055</a>), and the package was uploaded into the NEW queue today.
-Luckily the gnuradio maintainer has promised to help me, as I do not
-know much about gnuradio stuff yet.</p>
-
-<p>I doubt this "IMSI cacher" is anywhere near as powerfull as
-commercial tools like
-<a href="https://www.thespyphone.com/portable-imsi-imei-catcher/">The
-Spy Phone Portable IMSI / IMEI Catcher</a> or the
-<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stingray_phone_tracker">Harris
-Stingray</a>, but I hope the existance of cheap alternatives can make
-more people realise how their whereabouts when carrying a cell phone
-is easily tracked. Seeing the data flow on the screen, realizing that
-I live close to a police station and knowing that the police is also
-wearing cell phones, I wonder how hard it would be for criminals to
-track the position of the police officers to discover when there are
-police near by, or for foreign military forces to track the location
-of the Norwegian military forces, or for anyone to track the location
-of government officials...</p>
-
-<p>It is worth noting that the data reported by the IMSI-catcher
-script mentioned above is only a fraction of the data broadcasted on
-the GSM network. It will only collect one frequency at the time,
-while a typical phone will be using several frequencies, and not all
-phones will be using the frequencies tracked by the grgsm_livemod
-program. Also, there is a lot of radio chatter being ignored by the
-simple_IMSI-catcher script, which would be collected by extending the
-parser code. I wonder if gr-gsm can be set up to listen to more than
-one frequency?</p>
+ <div class="title"><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_APT_upgrade_without_enough_free_space_on_the_disk___.html">Debian APT upgrade without enough free space on the disk...</a></div>
+ <div class="date"> 8th July 2018</div>
+ <div class="body"><p>Quite regularly, I let my Debian Sid/Unstable chroot stay untouch
+for a while, and when I need to update it there is not enough free
+space on the disk for apt to do a normal 'apt upgrade'. I normally
+would resolve the issue by doing 'apt install <somepackages>' to
+upgrade only some of the packages in one batch, until the amount of
+packages to download fall below the amount of free space available.
+Today, I had about 500 packages to upgrade, and after a while I got
+tired of trying to install chunks of packages manually. I concluded
+that I did not have the spare hours required to complete the task, and
+decided to see if I could automate it. I came up with this small
+script which I call 'apt-in-chunks':</p>
+
+<p><blockquote><pre>
+#!/bin/sh
+#
+# Upgrade packages when the disk is too full to upgrade every
+# upgradable package in one lump. Fetching packages to upgrade using
+# apt, and then installing using dpkg, to avoid changing the package
+# flag for manual/automatic.
+
+set -e
+
+ignore() {
+ if [ "$1" ]; then
+ grep -v "$1"
+ else
+ cat
+ fi
+}
+
+for p in $(apt list --upgradable | ignore "$@" |cut -d/ -f1 | grep -v '^Listing...'); do
+ echo "Upgrading $p"
+ apt clean
+ apt install --download-only -y $p
+ for f in /var/cache/apt/archives/*.deb; do
+ if [ -e "$f" ]; then
+ dpkg -i /var/cache/apt/archives/*.deb
+ break
+ fi
+ done
+done
+</pre></blockquote></p>
+
+<p>The script will extract the list of packages to upgrade, try to
+download the packages needed to upgrade one package, install the
+downloaded packages using dpkg. The idea is to upgrade packages
+without changing the APT mark for the package (ie the one recording of
+the package was manually requested or pulled in as a dependency). To
+use it, simply run it as root from the command line. If it fail, try
+'apt install -f' to clean up the mess and run the script again. This
+might happen if the new packages conflict with one of the old
+packages. dpkg is unable to remove, while apt can do this.</p>
+
+<p>It take one option, a package to ignore in the list of packages to
+upgrade. The option to ignore a package is there to be able to skip
+the packages that are simply too large to unpack. Today this was
+'ghc', but I have run into other large packages causing similar
+problems earlier (like TeX).</p>
+
+<p>Update 2018-07-08: Thanks to Paul Wise, I am aware of two
+alternative ways to handle this. The "unattended-upgrades
+--minimal-upgrade-steps" option will try to calculate upgrade sets for
+each package to upgrade, and then upgrade them in order, smallest set
+first. It might be a better option than my above mentioned script.
+Also, "aptutude upgrade" can upgrade single packages, thus avoiding
+the need for using "dpkg -i" in the script above.</p>
+
+<p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
+activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
+<b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
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