If you’ve used and built packages from source, chances are you’ve run into some derivation of this dreadful message:

libtool: link: `/usr/lib/libgnomevfs-2.la' is not a valid libtool archive

Unfortunately, there are a few potential causes ranging from broken packages to missing packages, but in general, they are the result of broken dependencies (missing packages are broken dependencies, after all!). Read on about some potential workarounds and solutions!

I used to use FreeBSD to exclusion of most other *nixes (even other BSDs). So far, I’ve been pretty impressed with the changes and progress the project has made. It’s an incredible leap forward from the BSD I used to know back in the 5.x branch.

I’ve released a beta of Watcher v0.1. This script monitors a specified message log for connection activities, and if these activities exceed a configurable threshold, Watcher will add the source IP address(es) to iptables. This is great for SSH probes, DNS reflector DDoS, and more! Rule set matches are fully configurable and include an option to write custom regular expressions to assist in matching log entries the pattern language cannot. The default rule sets should work just fine, however.

Currently, Watcher only works with a fairly modern Linux distro. FreeBSD ipfw and OpenBSD pf support is forthcoming. There are some other requirements. Keep reading to find out what these requirements are, how to obtain this script, install it, and use it!