Fuente: espaciolinux

SystemRescueCd 1.3.2 es la nueva versión estable de esta distribución que está enfocada a recuperar y administrar el sistema. Cuenta con varias actualizaciones de herramientas y los kernels, pero añade una importante herramienta para la restauración del GRUB: Super Grub Disk 1.21.

La página principal de este software es http://www.sysresccd.org

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François Dupoux ha annunciato il rilascio di SystemRescueCd 1.1.7, un live CD derivato Gentoo per la gestione di hard disk e recupero dati. in questa release cosa troviamo di nuovo? “Aggiornati i kernels (standard e alternative) a Linux 2.6.27.21; aggiornato NTFS-3G alla versione 2009.3.8; FSArchiver alla 0.4.7 (file systems backup); aggiunto gPXE 0.9.6 (immagini Etherboot per l’avvio da network usando una immagine sul CD-ROM); aggiornati i drivers di rete Intel Gigabit e1000 e e1000e nel kernel standard; aggiustato il boot su dispositivi dmraid ed LSI; corretto un problema relativo alle immagini bootdisk in sysresccd-custom; aggiornato GParted a 0.4.4.” Leggete il changelog del progetto per approfondire.
Download: systemrescuecd-x86-1.1.7.iso (235MB, MD5).

cc photo by Mirko Macari

A friend of mine brought me his brother’s laptop. His brother just got home from the hospital after a stroke and couldn’t remember the password. I never tried retrieving a forgotten password before, so I jumped at the opportunity.

The laptop was a Dell Latitude D630 running Windows XP. I used Google to do a little research on Windows XP password recovery, and a method using Ophcrack was popular.

I downloaded the open source Ophcrack live CD from here…
http://ophcrack.sourceforge.net/download.php?type=livecd

I burned the live CD to a disc, and booted the laptop from it. Ophcrack started up, and there was a display error. No text was showing up in the desktop environment.

During startup, there was an option to choose “Ophcrack Graphic VESA mode”. I restarted using that option instead, and everything looked fine this time. The thing that I thought was really cool is that I didn’t have to press anything for Ophcrack to start cracking the Windows XP password. It just started doing it automatically, and after 9 minutes, I had the password for the administrator account. Also, it told me two other limited accounts on there had no passwords.

So, I tried logging in to the Windows XP administrator account using the password Ophcrack gave me, and it worked! Then, I was able to change my friend’s bro’s limited account to an administrator one.

Needless to say, I’ve added Ophcrack to my arsenal of live CD’s which also include SystemRescueCD and BackTrack.

—

- Alpha Mesh

cc photo by Nils Geylen

I was contacted yesterday by a friend who needed urgent help. He said that his work computer had been infected by a virus after clicking a link to a Manga site. Several warning messages popped up saying there were all kinds of viruses on his computer, so he turned off the computer and unplugged the network cable.

His work computer is owned by the company he works for which has their own IT staff. However, he didn’t want them knowing he was browsing non-business related websites, so he came to me.

The first thing I did was boot up the computer to see what was going on. After starting up, it asked for a password to log into Windows Vista. However, he didn’t want to put in his password for fear of a keylogger recording the buttons being pressed.

So instead, I rebooted the computer and used the handy SystemRescueCd to bypass Windows. SystemRescueCD comes with the open source anti virus program called Clam AV. I plugged the network cable back in and updated Clam AV’s virus database. Then, I did a virus scan which took awhile. When the scan was done, Clam AV said 0 files were infected. This was odd because he told me the pop up warning messages said he had around 40 something viruses infecting his computer.

I felt pretty confident in Clam AV’s results, so I unplugged the network cable and logged into Vista. Sure enough, there were several warning messages popping up saying his computer was severely infected. One of the messages said the anti virus program had expired and that he should purchase a new registration to get rid of all the viruses. The program giving the messages was called Anti-Virus-1.

A simple Google search for “Anti-Virus-1″ yielded several results stating that Anti-Virus-1 was a rouge anti-spyware program. Basically, it’s a program that gives you fake warning messages about non-existent viruses to scare you into giving them money to remove them. This was my first experience with such a convincing rogue program. Here’s more info on it and how to get rid of this particular rogue…

http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/forums/topic204619.html

My friend’s goal was to get rid of the virus without his company finding out he was visiting non-business related sites, so I showed him how to delete individual items in Internet Explorer’s history. Then, I advised him to just contact his IT department and tell them about this rogue program and that he didn’t know how it got installed. Hopefully, they’ll just take care of it with no questions asked. I’d offer to do a clean install for him instead of contacting IT, however, I don’t have a copy of the proprietary programs his company uses.

For future reference, I told him to just bring his own laptop to work for browsing personal sites. I’m mostly on a Linux or Mac computer, so I don’t deal with viruses very often. Anyone know a better way I could have handled the situation? I think we were overly paranoid about the keylogging since we already unplugged the network. Also, I could have saved some time by just deleting his browsing history instead of trying to get rid of the virus which his company’s IT staff should be able to handle fine.

Anyways, here are some tips to prevent malware from reeking havoc…

• Use a firewall.
• Use a more secure browser like Firefox
• Use a real time anti virus program like Avast! that auto updates its virus database.
• Don’t run programs or open files from untrusted sources.

Anyone know any other helpful tips?

—

- Alpha Mesh

Per maggiori informazioni su quel sistema guardate questo link, mentre qui trovate la guida completa per metterlo su hard disk.

L’ho appena messa sul netbook perchè visto che ogni tanto smanetto sui script di boot potrebbe tornarmi utile senza star li a formattare pennine (il netbook non ha un lettore cd..), e farò la stessa cosa sul fisso anche se ha il lettore, cosi quella volta che serve me l’ha trovo bella e pronta sul grub, senza perdere tempo a cercare il cd.

L’installazione è semplicissima (e occupa pochissimo, sui 230 mb): dopo aver scaricato la iso, la montiamo:

sudo mount -t iso9660 -o loop systemrescuecd-x86-1.1.5.iso /media/temp/

creiamo la directory /sysrcd nella partizione di root, e ci mettiamo dentro questi file che sono o nella root della iso o nella directory isolinux:

[~] ls /sysrcd/
altker32 altker64 initram.igz rescue64 rescuecd sysrcd.dat sysrcd.md5
[~]

infine modifichiamo grub:

[~] tail /boot/grub/menu.lst
......
title SystemRescueCd
root (hd0,4)
kernel /sysrcd/rescuecd subdir=sysrcd setkmap=it docache
# kernel /sysrcd/rescue64 subdir=sysrcd setkmap=it docache #per 64 bit
initrd /sysrcd/initram.igz


Nella giornata di ieri è stato rilasciato SystemRescueCd 1.1.5, una distribuzione basata su gentoo indirizzata al recupero dati e gestione delle funzioni dell’hard disk. Direttamente dal changelog (elenco degli aggiornamenti): aggiornati i kernels di Linux 2.6.27.14 con Resier4FS e ext4; ext4 aggiornato al più recente kernel importato da Linux 2.6.29-rc; FSArchiver aggiornato alla versione 0.4.1 (backup di file di sistema e strumento di distribuzione); aggiornato GRUB alla versione 0.97-r9 (boot manager); aggiornato il supporto ai file di sistema Btrfs (utility e moduli di kernel); NTFS-3G aggiornato alla versione 2009.1.1 (pieno supporto alla lettura-scrittura di NTFS); e2fsprogs alla 1.41.4 (una fiximportante di ext4); GParted aggiornato alla versione 0.4.2 (aggiunto il supporto per gli ext4, per l’individuazione di LVM); patchato tar per aggiungere il supporto per xattr, ACL and SELinux (patch di Fedora); sistemato il file di autorun sulla cartella principale del CD ke non era settato come eseguibile; creato un database di “ke cosa è” e “dove” (utile x trovare un file + velocemente). Download: systemrescuecd-x86-1.1.5.iso (245MB, MD5).

SystemRescueCD è un live Cd basato su Gentoo progettato per il recupero dati e compiti di gestione. Di seguito gli upgrade fatti con la nuova versione: aggiornato il kernel standard a Linux 2.6.27.10 con Reiser4fs; FSArchiver aggiornato alla versione 0.2.3 (backup di file di sistema e strumento di distribuzione); aggiornato il memtest86+ (programma di immagine per floppy disk) alla versione 2.11; nuovo script per aiutare l’installazione di SystemRescueCD su una chiavetta USB: sysresccd-usbstick; aggiornato GRUB alla versione 0.97-R8 (boot manager); Portage aggiornato alla versione 2.2_rc20; Mozilla Firefox aggiornato alla versione 3.0.5; aggiunto atop 1.21 per monitorare i processi e aggiunto il supporto per floppy disk nel kernel. Consulta l’intero changelog per ulteriori informazioni. Download (MD5): systemrescuecd-x86-1.1.4.iso (245MB).

Ieri è stata rilasciata una versione aggiornata di SystemRescueCd, di seguito gli aggiornamenti apportati: aggiornati i kernel standard a Linux 2.6.27.7 con Reiser4; aggiornati i Kernel alternativi a Linux 2.6.27.7 con Reiser4; SquashFS aggiornato con il supporto a LZMA (driver e tools di Kernel) alla versione 3.4; GParted aggiornato alla versione 0.4.1; aggiornato il memtest86 alla versione 2.10; aggiornato NTFS-3G alla versione 1.5130; FSArchiver alla versione 0.1.6 (strumento per il backup dei file di sistema di Linux);  supporto ai file di sistema backported ext4 da Linux 2.6.28-rc; aggiunti ISCSITarget e Core-iSCSI-tools alla versione 3.5; sistemati i bug  delle autorizzazioni che impedivano a  thttpd di funzionare correttamente; e infine sistemato il bug del network boot di PXE per ottenere indirizzi dinamici. Potete trovare qui il changelog completo. Download (MD5):  systemrescuecd-x86-1.1.3.iso (241MB).

SystemRescueCd 1.1.0 Packed with New Utilities – Features advanced customization and the backing-store filesystem – Softpedia

The SystemRescueCd team has announced today the latest version of their Linux system. This new release brings important new features, such as advanced customization and kernel recompilation, as well as updates to some of the already present applications.

Another one I am gonna have to download. Looks like it’s a major update.

photo by WhiskeyTangoFoxtrot

This is to be the first post in a series about data backups. I’ll be typing away a bit here about where the series should be going, but the main message today is: if you haven’t already, make a backup right now. And just to avoid disappointment: I’m not including a “now click this button, now click that button” kind of tutorial here – but you might always prod me into writing that

Why write this series?

The whole “backup thing” (just to be clear: I’m referring to PC data here) has been on-and-off my mind a lot lately. I guess this is true for many of us – simply because we’re storing precious information and memories on disk (and in the cloud) in ever larger quantities. Maybe it’s a bit of a geeky topic to kick off a new blog with, but hey, this is intended to be my personal blog… and I’m a bit of a geeky person. Now, a lot has been written about doing backups, and you could find all that through Google. In fact, chances are you already did. I did, ages ago… but I never really followed up on the reading with the required action.

This, then, will be the purpose of this series on my fresh new blog: taking me (and you?) through a number of manageable steps towards proper Data care – I know, that sounds funny, but I had to come up with a blog category and I think there’s more to the story than just backing up. Instead of following this series, you could go and use Google and get all the information at once. For me that didn’t work. You probably have more on your mind than backing up your data, and doing everything that’s required to become a real master will take more time than you have available tonight. Instead, what I hope to provide are manageable steps – manageable on a late evening after work, that is.

We’ll be going at my pace here; if it takes me a lot of time to figure out the next step, I’ll just have to be keeping you waiting too. I hope that’s ok, and I’d appreciate your leaving a comment now and then so I’ll know you haven’t left… and, of course, your comments are much needed to help me find the “ultimate methods” of data care.

Today’s action

I think there are two truths about data backup that are applicable right away: there’s no use just thinking about it, and, if you don’t know what to back up yet, you’re best off backing up everything. In other words, until we’ve figured out a more flexible, customised, automated, and generally cooler solution, I’ll just be dumping whole partitions to a USB drive.

This may not seem like an efficient solution, but storage is rather inexpensive these days. And that fat USB or Firewire drive you’ll perhaps be buying to do this is an essential geek utility anyway. It won’t end up unused. And while it isn’t space-efficient to back up whole partitions, it is time-efficient for us right now. We won’t need to read a million pages about backups and what we could be doing. We’ll just have a backup of everything, right now (but read on to the end for the disclaimer).

Simple as it may sound, it did take me a long evening the first time. If you’re on a GNU/Linux operating system like me, you can read what I did on my older blog (yes, that’s a year old – I really should move on to the next step).

If (more likely) you’re on a Windows machine, I’m afraid I don’t have anything written up, but I might soon when I start backing up my girlfriend’s machine. For now, some interesting pointers can be found at thefreecountry (that site’s design looks outdated, which probably scares one away, but the content seems of good quality to me). I’ll probably opt for the systemRescueCd which provides standard free software tools to back up your system (which is A Good Thing – gee, I should write a post on that!). An almost applicable tutorial may be found on lifehacker – but it doesn’t do exactly what we’re aiming for. Please comment below if you want to see a tutorial here, or should you know of a good tutorial, please do add a comment about that, too.

What’s next?

Many people are already doing something like the above. I have been doing that for the last year. Either you’ve been copying whole partitions, or you’ve been copying just your important documents to a USB drive. Perhaps you’re a fancy user, having a Mac, and you’re using this thing called Time Machine with your USB drive. In the next post I’m working on, I want to convince you that none of these methods are good methods of backup – which is why I want to move on to a better method.

Besides that, I don’t really have a good overview anymore of what’s on my disks – the incoming stream of new photos, emails and what not is just too broad to keep track. This is why the series is labelled “Data care”: it’s not just about backing up, but also about organising. The first thing I need to do here is outcome visioning: what do we want our eventual solution to solve? That may take more than one post, and I really hope for your feedback on the topic.

Clonezilla-SysRescCD is something we have been looking for since months. In our Linux Page (in Spanish) we have posted a brief (full of links) review about this rescue Cd in its 1.3.0 version. Clonezilla-SysRescCD is a very interesting merge (multi boot CD) between Clonezilla and SystemRescueCD which allows you to solve many (better quite all, for what we read) “disasters”; that can be made by everyday pc users like us. Just to sum up the features contained in Clonezilla-SysRescCD we add some brief notes about the two different “parts”; contained in it. Clonezilla is a fast and reliable OpenSource clone system (OCS) which supports ext2, ext3, reiserfs, xfs, jfs, fat and ntfs partitions. On the other hand SystemRescueCD, based on a bootable Linux OS, allows you to repair your system and/or recover your data after a crash. We simulated some “disasters”; on an old Pentium4 (running Windows XP) and the results we obtained were substantially very positive.

Möchte ich nur kurz drauf hinweisen! Denn dieses Tool auf dieser CD hat mir schon so oft den Ar%$! gerettet, wenn wieder mal NICHTS mehr ging auf der Festplatte.

Es hat einfach die besten Features die man sich zur Partitionierung wünschen kann, und das auch noch gratis! Die Benutzung ist übelst simpel: Man entpackt das Archiv und brennt die *.iso Datei z.B mit ImgBurn.

Man hat dann eine Boot-CD, mit der man fast sämtliche Datenträger schnell und unkompliziert zerstückeln kann. Das Tool macht vor keinem Dateisystem halt, alle Features können hier nachgelesen werden.

Doch das, was viele Tools dieser Klasse nicht können ist folgendes: Man kann problemlos an den USB-Port angeschlossene Festplatten, Speicherkarten etc. bearbeiten. Das ist z.B mit Partition Magic in der Version 8 nicht möglich.

Das geht übrigens so:

Man steckt die Festplatte an und sagt Gparted, es soll die Ansicht aktualisieren, bzw. die Geräte neu einlesen. Dann klickt ihr oben Rechts in das Auswahlfeld, dort wo im Screenshot */hda5 steht. In dem Menü sollte nun auch Eure Festplatte, der USB-Stick oder was auch immer aufgeführt sein. */hda (meistens */sda).

Viel Spaß mit dem Tool. Es gehört einfach in JEDE “Reperaturmappe”!

Edit: Natürlich möchte ich Euch auch nicht die System Rescue CD vorenthalten. Auf dieser Boot-CD sind noch einige andere Tools zur Systemrettung vorhanden. Wer z.B ein nicht mehr bootendes Sytem platt machen will, aber unbedingt noch Daten sichern muss, dem wird die DVD+RW-Brennmöglichkeit der Boot-CD sehr hilfreich zur Seite stehen. Ein bisschen rumgefrickel und “gehacke” ist das natürlich schon. Aber was tut man nicht alles für jahrelang gepflegte Daten!