Archive for February, 2005


phpBB.com gets hacked

2/10/2005

A long-time running forum software web site, phpBB got hacked on Sunday according to their site (screen cap). They state it was an exploit in the AWSTATS software that allowed the breach to occur.

Evidently this sent some shockwaves through the web hosting community as several providers pulled phpBB right off their site as soon as this happened, according to phpBB themselves.

phpBB states bluntly that “..we do not believe, nor do we have any reason to believe, that our system was compromised due to any fault in phpBB 2.0.11.” Whether or not this is true is left for you to decide, but in defense of phpBB, the last major exploit was a problem with PHP itself, not phpBB. Personally speaking, if phpBB immediately releases a new patch when the site goes back up, this would confirm there was a problem with the existing software. If they don’t, then their claim of “it wasn’t our softwares fault” will be true - but that’s just my opinion.

We’ll see how this one fares out I guess.

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A horse is a horse of course of course

2/10/2005

ZIP_YAWN.jpg

This is either a really laid back horse or it’s saying something like “get the hell away from me”.

Either way, I thought it was funny. Got it from here originally. Thanks to Mark for sending me the link.

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Damn Small Linux booting on the Sandisk Cruzer Mini

2/11/2005

Today was not a good day. My vehicle decided to blip up a “Check Engine” light so I had to take the darn thing to the dealership. I was there forever…

When I got home it was pointless to go into werk because there would have been only a couple of hours left in my workday so I stayed home.

So anyway, over this past week I’ve been trying to get Damn Small Linux (a.k.a. “DSL”) to boot from a Sandisk Cruzer Mini 256MB pendrive. “You can boot a whole Linux OS on a 256MB pendrive?” Yes you can. I’m writing this article from it right now. (grin)

You’ll note that I said “over this past week” I’ve been attempting to do this. Each day I would spend some time trying to get it to work, said “..to hell with it, I’ll try again tomorrow.” Today was the day I got it to work.

Here’s how I did it:

Before continuing, I should note that..

- I have a Shuttle AN35/N Ultra motherboard.

- I downloaded and burnt a DSL CD-ROM, which you need.

- Your internet connection when in DSL should be live. Without it, this tutorial won’t work.

- If you screw up your computer or pendrive by following anything listed here, that’s your fault - not mine. (grin) Don’t ever follow my advice. ;-)

1) First I had to make sure I could actually boot from the Cruzer.

The easiest way to do this was to use a format utility by HP that allows you to write DOS boot partitions to a pendrive.

I needed a 3.5″ floppy so I could copy the DOS boot files from a floppy to the pendrive.

In Windows XP, I grabbed a floppy, right-clicked on it from “My Computer”, formatted it as “FAT” and ticked the option to “Create an MS-DOS startup disk”. Done deal.

Then I launched the HP Format Utility. I formatted my Cruzer as FAT and ticked the option to copy files from the floppy drive. This partitions the Cruzer, copies the appropriate bootup files and makes it bootable.

In my motherboard settings, I set the first boot device as USB-HDD. USB-FDD and USB-ZIP did not work, but the HDD one did.

Then I rebooted. The pendrive did boot on its own and I got a DOS prompt. I then knew that a) the pendrive would boot and b) it would boot and operating system.

2) Getting DSL on the pendrive and making it boot on its own.

Copying DSL to the pendrive is easy. Making it bootable was the hard part. Here’s what I did step by step:

Edit: The striked-out stuff below is the old previous (and incorrect) method. Below the striked stuff is the proper way.

a) I formatted/paritioned the Cruzer like I said above, using FAT and copying over MS-DOS boot files - then left it as is (I later found out this was the only way to get this to work right). Edit: Scratch that remark. Just format pendrive as FAT with no boot files.

b) I booted into DSL using the CD-ROM. Once in DSL, I right-clicked the desktop, chose “Apps” then “Tools” then “Install to USB Pendrive”. A window comes up, grabs ONE file from ibiblio.org and then asks if you want to continue. I did not continue, I just wanted that one file it grabs, which is frugal_usb.tar.gz.

c) I right-clicked the desktop, chose “XShells” then “Root Access”. This puts you in /home/dsl, which is where you want to be.

d) I typed the following commands:

mydsl-load frugal_usb.tar.gz
echo “mtools_skip_check=1″> .mtoolsrc
frugal_usb.sh

The installation of DSL to the pendrive begins, and shortly ends there after. What it does is that it first goes out to ibiblio.org and grabs the USB boot image. Then it goes to the DSL CD-ROM and copies the KNOPPIX image to the pendrive, along with setting up some other directories.

Are we done yet? Nope. There’s a few more things to do.

3) Finalizing the DSL installation on the pendrive.

Once the DSL install to the pendrive was completed, I shut down DSL properly (right-click, choose “Power Down” then “Reboot”), and once the system rebooted and started to load Windows XP I put the pendrive back in.

In XP, I did the following:

a) I used a software called WinImage to “extract” all the files from dsl-0.9.3.iso (including all subdirectories) to the pendrive.

b) I navigated to the “boot/isolinux” directory of the iso file in WinImage and then copied all the files in that directory to the root of the pendrive.

DONE!

I rebooted, and everything worked.

a) Format the pendrive using the HP Format utility. Format as FAT with no boot files. Then I used SYSLINUX (windows version) to put an ldlinux.sys on the drive (necessary to boot) by running the command syslinux.exe g:. Drive G is my pendrive’s drive letter in Windows. Note on SYSLINUX, you have to type syslinux.exe, else it will fail. You also have to make sure you have the right drive letter or your entire Windows installation could get really screwed up.

b) Boot the computer with the DSL CD-ROM and get into DSL. Once inside, right-click the desktop, click “XShells” then “Root Access”. I know that my pendrive is labeled as /dev/sda (on other computers it may be different). I launched the command fdisk /dev/sda. Note that I did not type sda1, which would be wrong. Just sda. I changed over the partition ID to FAT16 by doing commands t then 6. Then I press p to view the current partition state. If I don’t see an asterisk for “bootable”, I press a then p again. If I see the asterisk, I’m good. Then I press w to write the partition to the pendrive.

c) Back into Windows I go. I use WinImage to open up the dsl-0.9.3.iso image. I copy everything from /boot/isolinux to the root of the pendrive. the /KNOPPIX and /lost+found directories I extract as-is.

d) I reboot with the pendrive inserted. Worked.

—

A few more notes:

I use a Sony SDM-S73 LCD monitor. From prior KNOPPIX booting, the only way to get native resolution on DSL boot was to type fb1280×1024 when DSL first loads (before fluxbox and all that) and choose the “development” X driver. Then I was able to get native resolution for this monitor and everything looked okay.

On my other PC, which is a Dell Dimension 4400, the pendrive will not boot. I don’t know why. The BIOS does “see” it, yet it won’t boot it. I’ll have to mess around with that to see if I can actually get that to work or not. On my Shuttle board however, it does work.

Yeah, I know.. this was a huge long post - but bear in mind I’ve been trying to get this to work all week.

For those who would ask “Why bother, who cares?”, here’s why:

The fact that you can boot and entire operating system with NO hard drive and NO cd-rom is positively cool. I now have an entire “backup” OS that never touches my hard drive unless I want it to. As a matter of fact, I will be able to take this to OTHER computers and load my whole OS without rebuilding anything (which takes hours!!)

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Poker sucks

2/12/2005

A sure sign your blog is getting more popular is that it starts getting spammed a lot.

Right at the start of ‘05 I started getting lots of trackback spam and comment spam. Actually it was getting pretty darn annoying. Fortunately I have these two awesome plugins called sCode and Blacklist. They’ve been working very well, I like them a lot.

For some reason, all the spam seems to include “poker” or a reference to it. Why I don’t know, but it’s always there. The real game of poker doesn’t suck at all, obviously. It’s the spam that sucks.

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Yes, Macs still suck

2/13/2005

Let the truth be heard:

http://www.oneeleven.tv/mac.html

One of the best Mac parodies I’ve ever seen. Completely awesome.

This one’s good too:

http://www.fury.com/assets/weblog/bait_and_switch.mov

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Ah, screw it

2/13/2005

– edit –

Was going to do a major change on this site, then thought better of it. Never mind. (grin)

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gAIM is my new best friend

2/14/2005

I remember gAIM being just a “linux-only” thing which I did use off and on in the past. When I tried it before, it was okay at best. It didn’t really work on Yahoo that much and the interface was a bit on the large side (icons were freakin’ huge).

I tried it again today. Everything’s fixed now. Icons are proper size, interface is easy, tabbed windows are a dream to work with (truly), and it’s just plain cool. I have officially switched from Trillian to gAIM. It’s small, clean, works with ICQ, AIM, Yahoo, MSN and several other clients really, really easily. Cool beans.

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Empty promises?

2/16/2005

I’m supposedly going to get a call from some dude in Maine concerning web work. I have been hearing this for almost 2 weeks now.

Odd things that have happened so far concerning promises of contact:

a) No one seems to know what this guy does for a living (not good).

b) He said this week (to my friend) “..be sure to tell him I will call this week either today (yesterday) or tomorrow (today)”. Why would he call someone else to tell them to call me and inform me of that? Sounds really fishy. He should’ve just contacted me directly and scheduled something. He does have my number so there’s no excuse there.

c) I have heard that I have not been contacted yet because he is “really busy”. Last week I believed that. This week I don’t. There is no one so busy that they can’t spare 10 minutes to make a phone call. No one.

At this point, this is how I feel about it, summed up in two words: No expectations. If he calls, great. If not, oh well. Today is supposed to be the day he’s supposed to call… maybe. Guess we’ll see. If I don’t get a call today I’m just going to forget it.

(my hopes are not too high on this one..)

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Okay, dial-uppers, you win :-)

2/16/2005

Site design changed again. Reason: Some of my dial-up visitors were yapping that the site took too long to load. So.. here’s a “lean” design.. and I’m not changing it again, dammit. (grin)

To normal visitors: if the site looks screwed up, hit “F5″ to reload. Should look fine then.

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No dice

2/17/2005

– edit –

As a favor to a friend I’m removing this post. Personally speaking I didn’t want to remove it.. but we’ll just consider this one a favor that can be returned later. ;-)

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