Archive for the ‘Firefox’ Category

Play Midis on Linux / Make Linux MIDI Ready for the Future – Enable embedded MIDI music to play in a Browser, Play MIDIs with VLC and howto enjoy Midis in Text Console

Wednesday, October 4th, 2017

how-to-play-midi-on-gnu-linux-in-graphic-environment-console-and-browser-midi-synthesizer-and-linux-tux-together

 

Play Midis on Linux or Make Linux MIDI Ready for the Future – Enable embedded MIDI music to play in a Browser, Play MIDIs with VLC and howto enjoy Midis in Text Console HOWTO

 

Playing MIDI has been quite a lot of fun historically,

if you grow up in the days when personal computers were still young and the Sound Blaster was a luxury, before the raise of Mp3 music format, you have certainly enjoyed the beeping of PC Speaker and later on during 386 and 486 / 586 computers the enjoyment of playing tracked music such as S3M and MOD,

in that good days playing MIDI music was the only alternative for PC maniacs who doesn't own a CD Drive (which itself) was another luxury and even thouse who had a CD ROM device, were mainly playing music in CD audio format (.CDA).
Anyhow MIDI was a cheap and a CPU unintensive way to listen to equivalent of favourite popular Audio Songs and for those who still remember many of the songs were recreated in MIDI format, just with a number of synthesized instruments without any voice (as MIDI is usually).

The same was true also for the good old days of raise of Mobile Phones, when polyphonic was a standard as CPU power was low MIDI was a perfect substitute for the CPU heavy Encoded MP3s / OGG and other formats that required a modern for that time Intel CPU running in 50+ Mhz usually 100 / 166Mhz was perfect for the days to play Mp3 but still even on that PCs we listened to Midi songs.

Therefore if you're one of those people like me who still enjoy to play some Midi Music in the year 2017 and feel a bit like Back into the Future movie and a Free Software fan and user, especially if you're a novice GNU  / Linux Free Software user, you will be unpleasently surprised that most today's default Linux distributions doesn't have an easy way to play Midi music format out of the box right after install.

Hence below article aims to give you an understanding on

How you can play Midi Music on GNU / Linux Operating System

First, lets Prepare to load necessery Linux kernel modules to make sure MIDI can be played by soundcard:

In /etc/modules make sure you have the following list of modules loaded:
 

linux-desktop:~# cat /etc/modules
3c59x
snd-emu10k1
snd-pcm-oss
snd-mixer-oss
snd-seq-oss

!Note the modules are working as of time of writting and in time can change to some other modules, depending on how the development of ALSA (Advanced Linux Sound Architecture) goes, and if the developers decide to rename the upmentioned modules

If you just have added the modules to /etc/modules with vim / nano to reload modules into the Linux kernel run:

 

linux-desktop:~# modprobe -a


Secondly, Installing a whole bunch of MIDI music related program tools can be achieved in Debian by installing the multimedia-midi package, e.g.:

 

linux-desktop:~# apt-get install –yes multimedia-midi

 

1. Playing Midi in Graphical environment with a double click using VLC


How to make MIDI easy listanable in Linux graphical environment like GNOME / KDE / XFCE desktop ?

 

If you want to make Midi music execution sa easy as  just clicking on the .MIDI file format on Linux you can do that with a midi extension available for VLC (Video Lan Client) Universal Multi Platform Media Player player

To install it on Debian Ubuntu GNU / Linux
 

# apt-get install –yes vlc-plugin-fluidsynth

 

Необходимо е да се изтеглят 6754 B архиви.
След тази операция ще бъде използвано 35,8 kB допълнително дисково пространство.
Изт:1 http://deb.debian.org/debian stretch/main amd64 vlc-plugin-fluidsynth amd64 2.2.6-1~deb9u1 [6754 B]
Изтеглени 6754 B за 0с (33,6 kB/сек)           
Selecting previously unselected package vlc-plugin-fluidsynth:amd64.
(Reading database … 382976 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to unpack …/vlc-plugin-fluidsynth_2.2.6-1~deb9u1_amd64.deb …
Unpacking vlc-plugin-fluidsynth:amd64 (2.2.6-1~deb9u1) …
Setting up vlc-plugin-fluidsynth:amd64 (2.2.6-1~deb9u1) …
Processing triggers for libvlc-bin:amd64 (2.2.6-1~deb9u1) …


Besides making your MIDI play on the GUI environment easy as a a point and click VLC will also be able to play MIDIs on GNU / Linux from your favourite browser (nomatter Firefox / Chrome or Opera), even though the player would play in a new PopUP Window it is easy to select once MIDI file from a random website for example – here is a directory listing of Webserver with Doom II Soundtrack in MIDI format , click over any file from list and Choose option for VLC to always remember that MIDI files has to be opened with VLC player.
 


2. Enable Firefox / IceWeasel browser to Support Website embedded MIDI files

 

 

So VLC could make you listen the downloadable MIDIs from Web pages but,
 

What if you have stumbled on an old website which was configured with very OLD HTML Code to play some nice music (or even different MIDI songs) for each part of the website (for each webpage) and you want to have the Websites created with embedded MIDIs to automatically play on Linux oncce you visit the site?


Sadly default support in Browser for MIDI across all GNU / Linux, I've used so far never worked out of the box, not that still anyone is developing modern websites with MIDIs, but still for the sake of backward compitability and for sake of interactivity it is worthy to enable embedded MIDI support in Linux

But with a couple of tunings as usual GNU / Linux can do almost everything, so here is how to enable embedded browser support for Midi on Linux (That should work with minor modifications not only on Debian / Ubuntu / ArchLinux but also on Fedoras, CentOS etc.
If you try it on any of this distributions, please drop a short comment and tell me in few lines how you made embedded midi worked on that distros.

 

apt-get install –yes timidity mozplugger

Next do restart firefox

Sometimes in order to work you might need to delete /home/[YOUR_USERNAME]/.mozilla/pluginreg.dat and restart firefox again, e.g. make a backup and give it a try:

 

cp -rpf /home/hipo/.mozilla/pluginreg.dat /home/hipo/.mozilla/pluginreg.dat.bak
rm -f /home/hipo/.mozilla/pluginreg.dat

 

Another good tip as talking for embedding MIDI support is to embed XPDF to render PDF pages inside the Browser, by default this is done by GNOME's Evince PDF reader but as it is sometimes buggy and might crash it is generally a good idea to switch to xpdf instead, if for some reason PDF is not directly displaying in browser or suddenly stopped working after some distro uipgrade, you might want to do below as well:
 

apt-get install xpdf

vim /etc/mozpluggerrc

Fin d and Comment out the line starting with:

It should look like this afterwards:

 Repeat Swallow ….
 

text/x-pdf: pdf: PDF file
#      repeat swallow(documentShell) fill: acroread -geometry +9000+9000 +useFrontEndProgram "$file"
        repeat noisy swallow(Xpdf) fill: xpdf -g +9000+9000 "$file"
        repeat noisy swallow(gv) fill: gv –safer –quiet –antialias -geometry +9000+9000 "$file"


 

3. Play Midi music in Linux text console / terminal


There is a console tool that historically has been like the Linux standard for playing midis over the years as I remember, its called timidity

 


To install timidity on .Deb based Linux:
 

linux-desktop:~$ su root
Password:
linux-desktop:~# apt-get install –yes timidity

Необходимо е да се изтеглят 0 B/580 kB архиви.
След тази операция ще бъде използвано 0 B допълнително дисково пространство.
(Reading database … 382981 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to unpack …/timidity_2.13.2-40.5_amd64.deb …
Unpacking timidity (2.13.2-40.5) over (2.13.2-40.5) …
Processing triggers for menu (2.1.47+b1) …
Processing triggers for man-db (2.7.6.1-2) …
Setting up timidity (2.13.2-40.5) …
Processing triggers for menu (2.1.47+b1) …

 

To test your new MIDI Synthesizer tool and make the enjoyment full you can download Doom 2 extracted MIDI Soundtrack from here
 

Once you have downloaded above Metal MIDI DOOM old school arcade soundtrack and untarred it into your home directory be it ~/doom-midis

A remark to make here is timidity is quite CPU intensive, but on modern Dual and Quad-Core PC Notebooks, the CPU load is not of a big concern.

To test and play with timidity:
 

linux-desktop~$ timidity ~/mp3/midis/*


timidity-playing-doom-midi-bunny-song-on-debian-stretch-gnome-terminal-screenshot
 

hipo@jericho:~/mp3/midis$ aplaymidi -l
 Port    Client name                      Port name
 14:0    Midi Through                     Midi Through Port-0
128:0    TiMidity                         TiMidity port 0
128:1    TiMidity                         TiMidity port 1
128:2    TiMidity                         TiMidity port 2
128:3    TiMidity                         TiMidity port 3

 


We have also the playmidi  (simple midi text console terminal player), which historically was working quite decent and I use it to in the past on my RedHat 6.0 and RedHat 7.0 to listen to my .MID format files but unfortunately as of time of writting something is wrong with it, so when I try to play MIDIs with it instead of timidity I get this erro:

 

$ playmidi *.mid
Playmidi 2.4 Copyright (C) 1994-1997 Nathan I. Laredo, AWE32 by Takashi Iwai
This is free software with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY.
For details please see the file COPYING.
open /dev/sequencer: No such file or directory

Even though I tried hard to resolve that error by loading various midi related MIDI modules and following a lot of the suggestions online on how to  make /dev/sequencer work again it was all no luck.
 

Some people back in the distant year 2005, reported the problem was solved by simply loading snd-seq

But as of time of writting:

 

# modprobe snd-seq

 

Some people said in archlinux's Forum

/dev/sequencer sequencer: No such file or directory

 

is solved by loading snd-seq-oss kernel module, but on my Debian Linux 9.1 Stretch, this ain't work as well :

 

root@jericho:/home/hipo/mp3/midis# modprobe snd-seq-oss
modprobe: FATAL: Module snd-seq-oss not found in directory /lib/modules/4.9.0-3-amd64
root@jericho:/home/hipo/mp3/midis# uname -a;
Linux jericho 4.9.0-3-amd64 #1 SMP Debian 4.9.30-2+deb9u5 (2017-09-19) x86_64 GNU/Linux


Another invention of mine was to try to also link /dev/snd/seq to /dev/sequencer but this produced no positive result either:

 

# ln -sf /dev/snd/seq /dev/sequencer
# ls -al /dev/sequencer
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 12 окт  4 16:48 /dev/sequencer -> /dev/snd/seq


Note that after lining in that way I got following error with my attempt to play MIDIs with playmidi

# playmidi *.mid
Playmidi 2.4 Copyright (C) 1994-1997 Nathan I. Laredo, AWE32 by Takashi Iwai
This is free software with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY.
For details please see the file COPYING.
there is no soundcard


Anyhow on some other Linux distributions (especially with Older Kernel versions), some of the above 3 suggested Fix might work perfectly fine so if you have some time give it a try please and drop me  a comment on how it went, you will help the GNU / Linux community out there that way.

Well never mind the bollocks, so

Now back to where I started timidity even though it will play fine it will not give any indication on the lenght of the midi song (precious information such as how much time is left until the end is over).

Hence if you prefer a player that gives you an indicator on how much is left towards the end length of each of the played MIDI file you can give a try to wildmidi:

 

linux-desktop:~$ apt-cache show wildmidi|grep -i description -A 2

Description-en: software MIDI player
 Minimal MIDI player implementation based on the wildmidi library that
 can either dump to WAV or playback over ALSA. It is intended to

Description-md5: b4b34070ae88e73e3289b751230cfc89
Homepage: http://www.mindwerks.net/projects/wildmidi/
Tag: implemented-in::c, role::program, sound::midi, sound::player,

Description: software MIDI player
Description-md5: 4673a7051f104675c73eb344bb045607
Homepage: http://wildmidi.sourceforge.net/
Bugs: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+filebug


If yet not installed install it after becoming admin user:

 

linux-desktop:~$ su root
Password:

linux-desktop:~# apt-get install –yes wildmidi


wildmidi is much less CPU intensive (it uses gstreamer to play (Gstreamer – open source multimedia framework)

And next give it a try by running:

 

linux-desktop:~$ wildmidi ~/mp3/midis/*

 

wildmidi-midi-lenght-status-text-console-player-for-linux-ubuntu-debian-fedora-suse

 

 

4. Editting MIDI files with Free Software and Proprietary MIDI Editor Programs

 


If you want a professional software that can play Midi in a fuzzy interactive GUI way and have some extra possibilities to edit MIDIs and other format give a try to Muse Sequencer:
 

 

linux-desktop:~$ sudo apt-get install –yes muse

The following NEW packages will be installed:
  muse
0 upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 to remove and 38 not upgraded.
Need to get 5814 kB of archives.
After this operation, 21.0 MB of additional disk space will be used.
Get:1 http://deb.debian.org/debian stretch/main amd64 muse amd64 2.1.2-3+b1 [5814 kB]
Fetched 5814 kB in 2s (2205 kB/s)                             
    are supported and installed on your system.
Preconfiguring packages …
Selecting previously unselected package muse.
(Reading database … 382981 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to unpack …/muse_2.1.2-3+b1_amd64.deb …
Unpacking muse (2.1.2-3+b1) …
Processing triggers for mime-support (3.60) …
Processing triggers for desktop-file-utils (0.23-1) …
Processing triggers for doc-base (0.10.7) …
Processing 1 added doc-base file…
Registering documents with scrollkeeper…
Processing triggers for man-db (2.7.6.1-2) …
Processing triggers for shared-mime-info (1.8-1) …
Unknown media type in type 'all/all'
Unknown media type in type 'all/allfiles'
Processing triggers for gnome-menus (3.13.3-9) …
Setting up muse (2.1.2-3+b1) …
Processing triggers for hicolor-icon-theme (0.15-1) …


 

Below is short description what Muse can do for you:

 

MusE is a MIDI/audio sequencer with recording and editing capabilities.
 Some Highlights:
 

  * Standard midifile (smf) import-/export.
  * Organizes songs in tracks and parts which you can arrange with
    the part editor.
  * MIDI editors: pianoroll, drum, list, controller.
  * Score editor with high quality postscript printer output.
  * Realtime: editing while playing.
  * Unlimited number of open editors.
  * Unlimited undo/redo.
  * Realtime and step-recording.
  * Multiple MIDI devices.
  * Unlimited number of tracks.
  * Sync to external devices: MTC/MMC, Midi Clock, Master/Slave.
  * Audio tracks, LADSPA host for master effects.
  * Multithreaded.
  * Uses raw MIDI devices.
  * XML project file.
  * Project file contains complete app state (session data).
  * Application spanning Cut/Paste Drag/Drop.

 

linux-desktop~:$ muse

muse-advanced-midi-editor-free-software-for-linux

 

Below is another non-free program that you might, try if MusE doesn't fit your needs (is not rich enough for editting capabilities is bitwig (though I don't recommend since it is not free software)

bitwig – Bitwig Studio is a multi-platform music-creation system for production, performance and DJing, with a focus on flexible editing tools and a super-fast workflow.
 


bitwig-midi-and-audio-non-free-software-advanced-useful-sound-editor-for-linx


 

5. Some examples for Text editing and MIDI Conversion to CSV and ABC file formats There is pretty much more

For the MIDI Extremists who or people that create MIDIs and want to learn how a MIDI is made (the content of it etc.), I suggest you take a look at these 3 command line MIDI editing / conversion tools
 

  • midi2abc – A little tool to create MIDI formats to ABC format
  • midi2csv – Conver tour Favourite MIDI files to CSV for educational purposes so see what Channels, Tracks and Time Intervals is a MIDI song mad
  • midicopy – Copy selected, track, channel, time interval of MIDI file to another MIDI file3

 

Well, that's all folks now enjoy your MIDIs and don't forget to donate, as I'm jobless at the moment and the only profit I make is just a few bucks out of advertisement on this blog.
 

Thursday, July 14th, 2016

use-remote-dns-on-mozilla-firefox-howto-windows-linux-logo.svg

If you're using Mozilla Firefox browser to browse the Web with Traffic Tunneling via SSH Tunnel to your own Linux server like I do in order to prevent yourself traffic to be sniffed from your Work corporate computer (as most of the corporations such as IBM / Hewlett Packard / Concentrix etc. are forcing all employee PC traffic to be  to be transported via default set Windows Corporate Proxy active for all browsers.

Then you will certainly also want to prevent the DNS requests to be not logged somewhere in your Corporate IT department thus the question arises:

How to force DNS requests to be made through the Proxy server (SSH host)?

Nomatter where you're using Firefox browser with advanced proxying plugin such as FoxyProxy FF add-on or the default Proxy FF features the DNS lookups might end up in Corporate set DNS servers often forced for the computer / notebook and impossible to be changed to a custom ones as many of the Corporation internal Sharepoints and domains are only visible from their internal networks.

Thanksfully in newer versions there is an easy way to do it directly from Visual menus via:

Tools -> Options -> Advanced -> Network -> Settings

You will get a screen like below:
 

firefox-use-proxy-remote-dns-howto-screenshot

Just tick the Remote DNS and that will force Firefox to query remote Proxy server proxy DNS

 

If you happen to be running older Firefox which doesn't have the Remote DNS tick you can also try to set the setting manually:

 

  1. In firefox type this in your address bar:

    about:config

  2. Click I'll be careful I  promise.

  3. In the filter textbox, type: proxy

  4. Find the preference name called *network.proxy.socks_remote_dns*. Double click it to set it to true.

    i-will-be-careful-i-promise-firefox-windows-screenshot-warranty


network-proxy-socks-remote_dns-firefox-screenshot

Enjoy ! 🙂

How to Remove Firefox TABS all time Moving Backward / Forward (Waiting) Wheel cursor – Browser and OS Wheel Ring cursor might affect hypnotically

Monday, September 7th, 2015

remove-firefox-tabs-all-time-annoying-moving-back-forward-waiting-wheel-cursor-browser-and-ring-cursor-might-affect-you-hypnotically

I've been annoying for quite a long time by the the Clockwise moving backward and Forward Wheel (Ring) on Top of browser Tabs everytime I navigate to a new Internet domain or request a resource on the Net.

I'm aware that seeing the wheel all the time move back and forward is a very bad manipulation technique that is often used in advertisements in old movies and some advertisements in the start of the video . I'm talking about the infamous backward counting technique in a Circle (it was moer commonly used in the dawn of Television) aiming to induce watchers mind into hypnotic state …

back-counting-10-9-8-7-manipulation-technique-to-make-your-mind-susceptible

Those who have a degree in psychology or have been into marketing or human resources fields or any field involved where you have to influence the masses are already aware of the backward counting methology which has been practiced heavily by hypnosis practisioners such as Sigmund Freud, to induce any kind of hypnotic state the hypnotist always asks the object of hypnotism to watch closely into a moving back and forwards clock, often accompanied by counting backwards …

Well my Theory here is that the same techniques is well aware of those who planned Windows OS in which if you remember the Sand Clock has been substituted in Windows 7 / 8 and Windows 10 with the rotating back and foward Wheel for the reason that this aims to influence people mind to go into Alpha state from Beta state and thus make them feel more relaxed while doing stuff on the PC.

One thing to mention here is Back and Forward wheel is not only into OS level it has been heavily adopted by leading Software as a Service (SAS) UIs such as Google's and probably more importantly Youtube (have you noticed the Cycling Wheel when waiting for a Youtube movie to Load), the Wheel is also heavily incoruprated in most if not all biggest Websites on the Net. Even If you have noticed these days Google's Cycling (Waiting) Wheel is not only Cycling but has the colorful programming incorporated.

google-wheel-color-programming-example

Well probably many people who use computers daily did not really realize that the Computer OS and Programs GUI Interface they're using is influencing their mind and some famous psychological methods such as color programming and hypnotic tricks could be used more or less.

In that regard as a Firefox user I decided to change tne Back and Forward Wheel with another one which will not trigger my subconsciousness / mind all the time while browing on the Net into Alpha State. As I'm not a Firefox expert and my quick research on search Engines on how to achieve changing or removing the Browser Tabs all time turning wheel did not led me to nothing positive, I've consulted the experts in irc.freenode.net #firefox.

As always the guys were helpful and pointed me out to UserStyles.org website's Static-Throbbler CSS. I've mirrored the CSS script under a name remove-firefox-tab-wheel-script.css in case if UserSpace.org disappears in future, below is also a paste of the script:

@namespace url(https://www.mozilla.org/keymaster/gatekeeper/there.is.only.xul); @-moz-document url(chrome://browser/content/browser.xul) { .tab-throbber { list-style-image: url('data:image/png;base64,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') !important; animation-name: none !important; } .tab-throbber[progress] { list-style-image: url('data:image/png;base64,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') !important; } }

To use the script you will first need to install the Stylish FF plugin, then:

Stylish-FireFox-plugin-screenshot-Windows-7-OS
 

1. Enable Stylish plugin and Restart firefox when prompted
2. Click on Write New Style
3. Paste above CSS script and click on Save button

 

stylish-static-throbbler-css-script-change-back-forward-rotating-tab-wheel-on-Firefox-howto

Now instead of the moving wheel you will get just a circle appearing as a static image while the page is loading.

If you want to absolutely remove any circles or images and show nothing when loading, e.g. not have any mean to monitor whether page is loaded or not, but also make it easier for the eye I even finally decided to completely remove the all time moving Wheel from Firefox Tabs even the static picture out using below CSS script with Stylish:
 

@namespace url(https://www.mozilla.org/keymaster/gatekeeper/there.is.only.xul); @-moz-document url(chrome://browser/content/browser.xul) { .tab-throbber { list-style-image: none !important; animation-name: none !important; } .tab-throbber[progress] { list-style-image: none !important; } }

After all even after removing the FF Tabs wheel, there is the Status being printed down the webpage, showing text based the connection status. I find this kind of page loading status much less agressive and preferrable, than the current verions Firefox 4 onwards ..

One other thing I do to prevent the annoying Windows OS default Theme wheel is to change it to the old fashioned sand clock as well as bring back the theme of Windows 7 / 8 to Classic Theme of Win 2000, as I believe this reduced the level of zoombification the PC imposes on self 🙂

Enjoy!

Secure your work PC internet traffic using SSH Dynamic Tunnel as Proxy to get around Corporate Spy Proxy and Site Filtering

Friday, March 20th, 2015

use-ssh-dynamic-tunnel-as-socks5-proxy-to-get-around-corporate-website-filtering-restrictions

If you work for some huge corporations such as IBM / Sony / Toshiba / Concentrix / HP etc. and you're using a Windows Work Computer (notebook), pre-installed with a custom Company software which is by default configured to use a Proxy Server for all your Browsing activities and at a certain point you start being filtered some of the websites you love to visit so much because of some Corporate policies (limitations) at some filtered sites you will start getting empty pages or some   nasty filtering messages.

Even if you don't get a filtering message but you know all your Company Internal Network traffic is proxified for the sake of keeping your personal (privacy) high stop browsing using company's default proxy, because all your access requests (passwords) and queries to the internet are probably logged for later (review) in case if you enter the company's paragraph of "non-compliant employee".
If you fail on time to get around the default set "Corporate Proxy", sooner or later you will start getting filtering messages to some of the regular websites you use daily, as I did today while trying to open my personal blog (to check if there are new user comments):

Your request was denied because of its content categorization: "Hacking;Malicious Sources/Malnets;Religion"
For assistance, contact your network support team.

Screenshot of above message from today here

You see this guys or automated Proxy filter became so prudent that my site was filtered because it contains some Proof of Concept (PoC) security tools and content related to Christian (Faith) Religion. I guess its the time to think seriously is there a censorship in large corporations and how far could censorship go and if such censorship so easily adopted in large companies wouldn't same happen also on a backbone ISP level in short future??
If today my site is being filtered out to be unable to open from a corporation network because it contains "Religious" contain I would not be surprised if tomorrow, I've been prohibited to confess publicly my faith in salvation power of the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ or even already in a blacklist because I'm trying to be a dedicated Orthodox Christian …
The fact that Religion is already perceived in same light as Hacking and Malicious Source or Malnet bots is also very eloquent and shows how very big part of people nowdays (including the person that added my site to this proxy filtering rules) think of religion and in what bad state our society and understanding of freedom and respect for others went.

Obviously it is time to react to this censorship and stop the evil corporation from spying on your traffic and logging all that matches there "kilometer long" prohibited sites filter lists. There are few ways to do that and the most straight forward is to set-up and use a Own Proxy server such as Privoxy / Polipo or Squid Proxy, however the proxy method requires that your company local network doesn't have too strick (restrictive) firewall rules (e.g. you need some port opened to the Internet such as 8080, 3128, 8118, 1080 standard port for (socks) etc.

As many companies are too restrictive in their outbound firewall rules and you might be in situation like with me where Browsers such as Internet Explorer / Opera / Firefox and Chrome are configured to use by default company proxy host (autocache.proxy-ur-company.hp.com:80) (with a custom Proxy PAC file filtering out a whole ranges of useful domains and IPs) and only allowed firewall access outside of local corporate network in on port 22 (for outside ssh session purposes) only.

Then your best way to get across such restrictive network configuration is to run your own home Linux / BSD / Windows server with opensshd installed and use OpenSSH protocol Dynamic Tunneling (Proxy socks5 like) capabilities to tunnel all your favourite Web Browser Traffic (lets say Firefox's) through your remote-home-host.com:22.

 


In short once you have installed plink.exe on your PC run manually from command line (cmd.exe)

 

plink.exe -ssh UserName@remote-home-host.com -P 22 -pw Secret_Password -D 127.0.0.1:8080 -N


For people who use MobaXTerm it is even easier as there is an integrated SSH tunneling input interface which can be used to create the SSH tunnel.

To have a quick way to Enable SSH Dynamic Tunnel button on your Desktop make a SymLink to Plink with Target below command line:

web-tunnel-maker-with-plink-win-ssh-connection-tool-screenshot-on-ms-windows-7

  • If from Linux / *BSD / Mac OS host to create Dynamic SSH Tunnel to your remote home SSH server host run in a Terminal
     

ssh -D 8080 Username@remote-home-host.com


To start tunneling all your Web traffic via just created Dynamic SSH Tunnel to host remote-home-host.com, just set in browser's proxy options to use as proxy socks5 – localhost:8080

Secure-your-work-PC-notebook-internet-traffic-using-SSH-Dynamic-Tunnel-as-Proxy

To test whether your traffic is going to the Internet from remote-home-host.com open in just set proxy browser www.myip.ru .
You should see your home SSH server IP as IP which made the request to www.myip.ru.

Your Firefox profile cannot be loaded. It may be missing or inaccessible – Fix

Tuesday, May 27th, 2014


your-firefox-profile-cannot-be-loaded-it-may-be-missing-or-inaccessible

When I opened firefox I was offered that firefox cleans some data. Pressing on it took a long so I killed firefox process from Windows taskmanager (taskmgr).  . Next time Firefox was started I got the error (warning):
 

Your Firefox profile cannot be loaded. It may be missing or inaccessible"

Firefox version is 29.0.1.

Once the dialog, Firefox fails to further open. To fix Your Firefox profile cannot be loaded. It may be missing or inaccessible press windows-key+R to invoke <Open program prompt and type in:

%appdata%Mozilla

In explorer Window that will pop=up rename the folder labelled "Firefox" to something like old-Firefox.
On next start of firefox, you will be offered to recrate "the missiong profile and it will force Firefox to re-create profile.

If you want to import some of your old data into the new profile afterwards: Recovering important data from an old profile check Recovering important data from an old profile Another approach is to to go to Firefox profile folder and delete profiles.ini, this will also make firefox recreate the file on its next start. Enjoy ! 🙂