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10368 discussions

New computer.
by Torben Stones 04 Sep '08

04 Sep '08

Well last week my hard disk gave up the ghost. This is the first disk I've had that has actually died, the other two just started to produce loads of bad sectors and the SMART monitor gave me warning. But there was nothing with this drive, lucky I just backup most of the important stuff. Anyway enough of my rambling. I could just buy a new hard disk and get every thing up and running, but I just might use this as an excus to update my computer (It's 6-7 years old), and get something more up-to-date and hopefully more efficient. Finally my question. Has anyone got any experiance of the EffcientPC.co.uk guys? I was looking at the Flexible range that they do, and was wondering if I should go with the Camulus or Isis systems. The only difference is one is Intel/nVidia and the other is AMD/ATI (respectively) any thoughts? And finaly has AMD open sourced the ATI graphics drivers yet? I am right in thinking that they committed to that when the bought ATI, am I not? Anyway thanks for any thoughts. Torb -- You've got a lot of choices in your life. If getting out of bed in the morning is a chore and you're not smiling on a regular basis, try another choice.

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How to get USB mass storage devices to mount/unmount automatically?
by Chris G 03 Sep '08

03 Sep '08

I've been faffing around for a while trying to work out how to do this, without much success. Part of the trouble is that looking for USB and automount on Google comes up with lots of stuff about automount and that's a different beast altogether. I have fathomed out that it's something to do with HAL and udev. If I need to go and edit new entries into /etc/udev/rules.d then so be it but I suspect there's simpler, higher level ways of doing it. What I want is to be able to plug in my USB Mass Storage camera and get to see the pictures without any further hassle. At the moment I have to do a manual mount command (and in addition I regularly forget to umount it). I'm sure modern Linux systems should be able to automate this but I can't find out how at the moment. Can anyone point me at a good tutorial or tell me what I need to do? ..., Fedora 8, kernel 2.6.24 -- Chris Green

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I'm worried ...
by Ted.Harding＠manchester.ac.uk 03 Sep '08

03 Sep '08

Hi Folks, I just bought a couple of 1GB SODIMM DDR2 chips as a RAM upgrade. The product label states: Windows Vista Ready I'm worried now. Maybe it won't work with Linux :)! Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding(a)manchester.ac.uk> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 03-Sep-08 Time: 14:39:54 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

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SSH - something I don't understand.
by Barry Samuels 02 Sep '08

02 Sep '08

My SSH is set up to work via a key only i.e. no logins. I can use SSH from my laptop to connect to my desktop over my home network with no problems however if I try it via the Internet, when away from home, I get 'access denied (Publickey)'. Would there be a known reason for that? -- Barry Samuels http://www.beenthere-donethat.org.uk The Unofficial Guide to Great Britain

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Re: [ALUG] SSH - something I don't understand.
by Barry Samuels 01 Sep '08

01 Sep '08

I have only just realised that the last two posts I had intended for the list were actually sent to Brett Parker by mistake. I wondered why they didn't appear in the list. :-)) The problem is now solved. There was a 'Host' section in the /etc/ssh/ ssh_config file on the laptop which started 'Host desktophostname' and changing that to 'Host desktophostname 192.168.0.1 123.234.345.456' cured the problem. 123.234.345.456 would be the IP address I use to connect, via the Internet, to my desktop at home when I'm away. I discovered that because if I changed the SSH command to use an IP address, even from my home network, instead of a host name I had the same problem. Brett suggested looking in the ssh_config file 'Host' section. I'd like to thank everyone who tried to help including ChrisG with his remarkable vocal powers (if Brett is to be believed). -- Barry Samuels http://www.beenthere-donethat.org.uk The Unofficial Guide to Great Britain

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Re: [ALUG] What to do after being hacked?
by Sagr 01 Sep '08

01 Sep '08

Thanks to MJR, Wayne, Adrian, Dan and others who offered advice. We have now finished rebuilding my friend’s server and now the dust has settled and the anger and frustration has died down we have to admit it has not been a totally bad experience. It provided us with a good excuse, and opportunity, to reinstall everything from the ground up and made us realise what an enormous collection of no-longer-used scripts he had collected on his old machine; they were very handy at the time he installed them but he had forgotten to remove them once the need had passed. I guess it has taught us, through experience, that just because my friend updated his operating system nightly we should not assume that EVERYTHING is updated and safe as old, no longer unused, no longer supported, scripts installed for a particular one-off task and then forgotten about can easily be overlooked but become an easy target for hackers. I have a separate question about our experience but I had better start a new thread for that. Thanks to all for your wise advice, Sagr.

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What to do after being hacked?
by Sagr 31 Aug '08

31 Aug '08

A friend of mine recently had a visit from "The Audisoft Hacker Team of Chilean Defacers" who, apart from replacing his website with graffiti, placed a c99shell backdoor in an obscure directory. His visitors were kind enough to display their hacker alias names on the graffiti and, looking at log files, we have discovered the time the attack occurred and the IP Address from which it came also, after having a poke around his backup files, think we know the application they hacked to gain entry. So what do we do now? I suppose theoretically he should report it to some authority but neither of us knows to whom, nor do we suspect they would show the slightest interest even if we did. The backdoor has been placed in an obscure location which would only be known by the original hackers and associates they have told. It would be impossible to guess or stumble upon accidentally. We are therefore confident that anyone who visits this backdoor has illegal intentions. So what would ALUGers suggest we do? Being in mind anyone who tries to accesses the backdoor has illegal intentions, and from log files we notice most are using Microsoft Internet Explorer, we have had all kinds of evil thoughts about replacing the backdoor with some kind of infected software... but this would bring us down to their level and possibly also be illegal. It would however be interesting to replace the backdoor webpage with some software which is capable of more detailed logging of visitors. What would more experienced ALUGers do if they were in our situation? Is there any specific piece of logging (or other) software ALUGers would suggest we replace the backdoor with as it is still receiving visitors? Sagr. PS: The application the hackers used to gain entry was an old piece of software he had forgotten was still on his website and so we haven't bothered to put it back on.

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Nokia N810 - any experience?
by Chris G 31 Aug '08

31 Aug '08

I'm looking for some sort of GPS/PDA set up for logging walking/cycling and to provide directions for when I'm riding my motorbike. One suggestion is the Nokia 810 which is Linux based so that's an extra plus. Does anyone here have any experience of this device? For a start how big is it, I can't see this information in any of the adverts. -- Chris Green

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How to automatically check for changes to a website
by Sagr 29 Aug '08

29 Aug '08

As ALUGers may be aware; a friend of mine recently had his website defaced by hackers. This has made me realise how seldomly I, myself, actually check my own website to see if it is still as it should be. Bearing in mind my own website is quite static, only being updated once a month or so, checking it would seem an ideal task for automation. I would guess I am not the only person on the planet who doesn’t have time to regularly check their website for defacement and was wondering if any experienced ALUGers could recommend a ready made script which I could run on my home server which would enable me to compare my live website (on a remote commercial webhost) with a stored image of it (on my local server) a couple of times a day. Do other ALUGers bother to check their own websites for defacement regularly? If so what tools do you use? Sagr.

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IPTables and Me - they don't mix.
by Barry Samuels 29 Aug '08

29 Aug '08

My setup: Debian Testing (up to date) Kernel 2.6.24 My router has a firewall with the SSH port open. I run a FireStarter software firewall, which blocks SSH access, on my computer together with Knockd. Knockd runs a script which adds or deletes an IPTables rule to allow SSH access. The knockd script part works insamuch as it adds the required rule. The problem is that the firewall on my computer still blocks SSH access. This is so that I can access my computer when away from home and that's the only time I can test or try it consequently it's all rather long winded. SSH access is by key only and login is prohibited. First I added a rule to allow SSH access using the FireStarter GUI interface then I had a look at an IPTables listing to see what it had generated. I used that rule in my knockd script. The next time I went away I found that it didn't work - I still couldn't get access. The last rule I tried I had modified myself after reading the man pages and that didn't work either. So I'm now stumped. This is my last effort: iptables -A INPUT -p tcp --dport 22:22 -m state --state NEW,RELATED,ESTABLISHED -j ACCEPT iptables -A INPUT -p udp --dport 22:22 -m state --state NEW,RELATED,ESTABLISHED -j ACCEPT I don't know whether the UDP rule is required but I thought it wouldn't do any harm. If anyone can point out what I'm doing wrong I'd be most grateful. -- Barry Samuels http://www.beenthere-donethat.org.uk The Unofficial Guide to Great Britain

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