Blog on Walter Rudametkin

DrawnApart: telling identical GPUs apart from a web page

Sun, 24 Apr 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Two computers bought on the same day, same model, same software. Can a web page tell them apart? With DrawnApart, yes — by timing how their graphics cards draw.

Don't count me out: IP addresses still matter for tracking

Mon, 20 Apr 2020 00:00:00 +0000

The IP address is the most basic identifier on the Internet, and the one everybody assumes is too volatile to track people with. We checked. It isn’t.

Does this commit change behaviour? Generating the test that tells you

Thu, 05 Mar 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Every commit in a continuous-integration pipeline raises the same question: did this change what the program does? Our Empirical Software Engineering article answers it by generating the unit test that exposes the difference.

FP-Scanner: when anti-fingerprinting tools make you more unique

Wed, 15 Aug 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Install an extension that lies about your browser and you should be harder to fingerprint. We tested the popular defences. Most of them do the opposite.

FP-Stalker: how long can a browser fingerprint follow you?

Mon, 21 May 2018 00:00:00 +0000

A fingerprint that is unique today is not necessarily useful to a tracker tomorrow: browsers update, fonts get installed, screens change. FP-Stalker asks the question that matters — can the same device be recognised again after its fingerprint has changed?

Beauty and the Beast: how modern browsers give themselves away

Mon, 23 May 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Two years of fingerprints collected on Am I Unique, one question: how unique is your browser? The answer became our IEEE S&P 2016 paper — and, two years later, the CNIL–Inria Privacy Protection Award.

Dynamic monitoring to find and diagnose software bugs in cloud applications

Thu, 15 Jan 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Open Ph.D. Position

Dynamic monitoring to find and diagnose software bugs in cloud applications

Summary

Cloud applications are composed of a myriad of software components distributed across heterogeneous physical and virtual systems. These systems are inherently difficult to debug, diagnose and repair.

This Ph.D thesis will focus on (i) designing dynamic instrumentation techniques and developing a monitoring infrastructure to introspect distributed applications, and (ii) creating algorithms to detect, locate, diagnose and repair software bugs. Machine learning algorithms will be used to tackle the massive amounts of information generated from the monitoring systems.

Static analysis and runtime monitoring to ensure the consistency of dynamic applications

Thu, 15 Jan 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Open Ph.D. Position

Static analysis and runtime monitoring to ensure the consistency of dynamic applications

Summary

Modern software engineering techniques allow building applications that change at runtime, without stopping. We call these applications Dynamic Applications. However, changing applications at runtime to cause inconsistencies that lead to failure. This Ph.D thesis will focus on state-of-the-art tools to analyse and verify that applications remain consistent and function properly despite dynamic change.

Gestion et Optimisation d’Applications dans le Cloud

Fri, 24 Oct 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Supervision

Walter Rudametkin (Maître de conférences - Spirals)
Lionel Seinturier (Professeur - Spirals)

Lieu

Spirals Research Group
Inria Lille - Nord Europe
Parc Scientifique de la Haute Borne
40, avenue Halley - Bat. B, Park Plaza
59650 Villeneuve d’Ascq – FRANCE

Contexte

Dans l’informatique en nuage (Cloud Computing) l’environnement d’exécution est en changement continu pour pouvoir s’adapter à la charge des clients, pour pouvoir ajouter de nouvelles fonctionnalités dans les applications, pour réaliser des mises à jour, … Ces applications dans le cloud sont composés de noeuds et de composants logiciels pouvant être ajoutés ou supprimés pendant l’exécution, ce qui permet à un logiciel de s’adapter et de s’ajuster à l’évolution de l’environnement, et également de tenir compte de l’évolution du logiciel même.

Applications Dynamiques pour le Cloud Computing

Thu, 11 Sep 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Supervision

Walter Rudametkin (Maître de conférences - Spirals)
Lionel Seinturier (Professeur - Spirals)

Lieu

Spirals Research Group
Inria Lille - Nord Europe
Parc Scientifique de la Haute Borne
40, avenue Halley - Bat. B, Park Plaza
59650 Villeneuve d’Ascq – FRANCE

Contexte

Les domaines de recherche actuels, tels que l’informatique ubiquitaire [1] et l’informatique en nuage (Cloud Computing), considèrent que ces environnements d’exécution sont en changement continu. Les applications dynamiques, où les composants peuvent être ajoutés ou supprimés pendant l’exécution, permettent à un logiciel de s’adapter et de s’ajuster à l’évolution des environnements, et de tenir compte de l’évolution du logiciel. Malheureusement, les applications dynamiques soulèvent des questions de conception et de développement qui n’ont pas encore été pleinement explorées.

Open positions

Thu, 11 Sep 2014 00:00:00 +0000

We are currently looking for highly motivated candidates for any of the following subjects:

Master’s degree research projects 4-6 months (stage master recherche)

Optimisation d’Applications dans le Cloud

Master’s or Engineering students (PFE ou Stage)

Managing Dynamic Applications for Cloud Computing

Ph.D. proposals

Static analysis and runtime monitoring to ensure the consistency of dynamic applications

Dynamic monitoring to find and diagnose software bugs in cloud applications

Not enough threads or processes : "thread create failed"

Thu, 10 Apr 2014 00:00:00 +0000

I started running into a weird problem that I didn’t immediately identify. Some programs just started failing: libreoffice, chrome, chromium, firefox, eclipse, …

It was quite undeterministic and depended on the system ressources being fairly well used. I thought it was a RAM issue, not having enough memory would cause programs to fail. I have somewhat agressive ram settings, but, I also have 16 GB of RAM on my computer. Well, it wasn’t a memory issue, I was able to reproduce the issue with loads of memory still left over.

Here’s some of the messages I was getting.

Libreoffice: (similar bug here)

osl::Thread::create failed

Java:

java.lang.OutOfMemoryError: unable to create new native thread.

Chrome and Chromium:

pthread_create error: Resource temporarily unavailable

Make chromium faster with video acceleration

Mon, 07 Apr 2014 00:00:00 +0000

I tried this on my Dell e6530 and it seems to work pretty good.

http://www.borfast.com/blog/how-enable-webgl-google-chrome-linux-blacklisted-graphics-card

For video acceleration : Go to chrome://flags → Override software rendering list → Set to Enable

This works for both Chrome and Chromium.

Add Chrome PDF Viewer to Chromium on Fedora 20 x86_64

Wed, 02 Apr 2014 00:00:00 +0000

I really would like a PDF reader that saves the open pdf files in tabs, like a browser does. It would let me get back to reading whatever I was reading after a restart. Currently, I try to restart as little as possible, usually between 20 and 40 days in order to save all my open stuff. I would use Mendeley except the open tabs feature request has been open since 2009 and not implemented yet!!! http://feedback.mendeley.com/forums/4941-general/suggestions/263198-remember-open-tabs-and-position-within-pdfs.

My answer for PDFs is to use my browser to store my open files. It might be a little overkill but it does the job decent enough. I mainly use Firefox + mozplugger + evince, but I also use the Chrome and Chromium browsers for different things including reading PDFs. Chrome has a simple PDF plugin that I like and its pretty fast, but Chromium doesn’t have it because of licensing issues.

Reduce touchpad sensitivity on a Dell e6430

Sun, 23 Mar 2014 00:00:00 +0000

I find the touchpad on my laptop way to sensitive by default. To change it, I’ve found the following settings comfortable:

xinput set-prop "AlpsPS/2 ALPS DualPoint TouchPad" "Synaptics Finger" 18 18 18

I also have a wireless mouse that I sometimes use. It’s way to sensitive. The following command makes it useable:

xinput set-prop "HP Wireless Optical Mobile Mouse" "Device Accel Adaptive Deceleration" 1.5

Acrobat reader cannot find libEGL.so.1 : Fedora 20

Wed, 19 Mar 2014 00:00:00 +0000

I use acrobat reader sometimes, like when people send me an annotated pdf or if Evince doesn’t print it properly. My main pdf reader is Evince, but it’s a bit buggy. Also, I use okular to annotate pdfs, which it does a fine job at.

Anyhow, I was getting the following error after applying some updates:

acroread: error while loading shared libraries: libEGL.so.1: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

It took me a while to track down the problem, which has a simple solution, just find the missing symbolic link. I ran into this page that describes the issue but nobody had provided the proper command http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=297151.

Fr alternative keyboard layout bug (fr-oss): right ctrl key not working

Wed, 12 Mar 2014 00:00:00 +0000

I really like the ‘alternative’ french keyboard layout on my computer, a.k.a fr-oss. I like to use the deadkeys for accents in french and spanish, and I really like the alt-gr + ctrl# for doing arrows and stuff like that.

Earlier this year on my Fedora laptop (F20) for work the right ctrl key stopped working. It sucked because ctrl-arrows no longer jump through words in text documents. VLC right ctrl+Up/Down no longer changed the volume either, making me have to use both hands just for that. I figured it was a bug in Fedora so I found a neat command to fix the mapping while I waited for the problem to be fixed. However, some time later it happened to my wife’s Ubuntu laptop and looking into it I found that the problem is comes from higher up the chain.

Someone decided to map right ctrl to something “new” instead of letting it be the same as the left ctrl key. Sure, if programs used the “new right control” it might be great and super useful. But they don’t, so the key does nothing. Kind of beats the purpose, huh?

https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=15804#c44

To fix the problem, here’s the command you can run.

xmodmap -e 'keycode 105 = Control_R' -e 'clear Control' -e 'add Control = Control_L Control_R'

However…

My father tortures me with beautiful, sunny pictures while I'm stuck in the rain

Fri, 07 Mar 2014 00:00:00 +0000

My Dad is a wonderful person and loves his children a lot, but as of late, he’s decided to torture me with pictures from the beautiful Pacific coast of Mexico. Anybody who’s been to California knows just how much sun there is. All. Year. Round.

Baja California is no different from California in that respect (well, it’s even better IMHO).

That’s all nice and all but I haven’t seen the sun since fall started, back in October 2013 (wooooo, so long ago). In Rennes, France−the region of Brittany−we get the same shitty weather that the english get, give or take a less-cloudy day or two. So, how do you think I feel when Dad sends me these beautiful pictures? It makes me wanna cry. I feel nostalgic thinking of all of our fishing trips. I miss the food. I miss the sun. I miss the people. I miss a whole lot of things.

For example, here’s a picture from last December.

Thunderbird bug: leading spaces are removed when character set is automatically converted

Wed, 05 Mar 2014 00:00:00 +0000

I ran into a weird bug that took me about 50 test emails to understand. Thunderbird appears to automatically convert your plain-text emails from one character set to another automatically if it detects that there is an incompatible character.

However, the conversion isn’t as smooth as it should be. In fact, in my case, all leading spaces in my neatly formatted plain-text format=flowed emails disappear.

Testing different markup options

Thu, 06 Feb 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post is a test for markdown and Jekyll. I basically have all kinds of examples of how to do stuff in markdown, but it’s not tidy at all.

First post using jekyll

Tue, 04 Feb 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This is the my first post after configuring my site to use github pages, and more specifically, after I started using Jekyll.

Mount your Box.Net account using WebDAV

Sat, 17 Sep 2011 00:00:00 +0000

It’s pretty easy to setup box.net with webdav and to have your files automatically saved to box.net. I got 50gb of storage space on box.net when I bought an HP Touchpad 32gb on firesale.

However, because it’s not a paid or professional account, I can’t really do anything with it.

UPDATE: I don’t use this setup because box.net is just too slow and some people have been complaining that they don’t implement webdav properly. I really wish they’d come up with a client for Linux like Dropbox has.

Originally posted on Ubuntu Forums: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=202761&page=4

NSLU2 Linux Gateway

Thu, 29 Jul 2010 00:00:00 +0000

It’s easy to setup additional IP addresses on Debian Linux. This is particularly useful for the NSLU which doesn’t have a display so you need to remotely connect to it.

Having more than one virtual network interface allows us to have both a DHCP address and a static IP address, making the NSLU2 accessible pretty much always.