Written by Radovan Garabík For new versions, look at http://kassiopeia.juls.savba.sk/~garabik/software/posttheft/ About ----- This program works only on Asus EEE. Moreover, it has been tested only on 701. I wrote the first (crude) script to send pictures to a predefined e-mail account after a friend of mine managed to have his newly bought Asus EEE stolen. After his _second_ newly bought EEE had been stolen two weeks later, I re-wrote the script, packaged it in a nicely installable debian package and renamed to posttheft. (Just FYI, nothing ever came from the stolen notebook :-)) Idea: after the notebook is plugged into a working internet connection, it tests the existence of a certain URL. If the URL exists, it takes several pictures in succession and sends them to a given e-mail address, together with some additional information (IP, traceroute) that might help in identifying the network. Unfortunately, there are some limitations - we rely on DHCP working, on the thieves to plug it into ethernet or manually activate wi-fi, and since the program cannot possibly know the SMTP server on the local network, it uses predefined incoming SMTP server of your mail account. That means in turn that your mail server should not use greylisting, because there is no spooling done and you might have just one chance to get the pictures. Well, gmail does not use greylisting and works well (though the mails might get marked as spam), I did not find a way to automatically set the correct brightness, therefore the webcam brightness is varied randomly, with the hope that some pictures will come up readable. GIMP and image levels adjustments are your friends :-) Installation ------------ You need fswebcam, http://www.firestorm.cx/fswebcam/ (the i386 deb), and fswebcam in turn depends on libgd2-noxpm (or libgd2-xpm), found in xandros repositories. For your convenience, I put all the packages at http://kassiopeia.juls.savba.sk/~garabik/software/posttheft/ - Download and install all the *.deb files (preferrably libgd2-noxpm first, then fswebcam, then posttheft). - edit /etc/posttheft.conf (sudo nano /etc/posttheft.conf), put your e-mail and (important!) your incoming SMTP server there, and edit the URL to point to an existing webpage. - test by connecting the EEE to internet. You should see the camera light blink each few seconds, and the mails should start coming. - edit /etc/posttheft.conf and put an URL of a webpage that does not exist, but that you can create if needed. - if your EEE gets stolen, create the webpage and wait :-) Future ideas ------------ I might or might not implement them. - automatically turn on wi-fi, try to connect to first free network - optional FTP or SCP uploading - optional XMPP (Jabber) message sending