Tech Blog

Well, my system's hard drive failed. Pretty sad really.
So I had an Ultra Light PC lying around and decided it was time to become an Openbox ArchLinux purist.

Things are going well...

I want to lighten the kernel as much as possible.
I have a series of things I'd like to do to make my own Arch Based distro.

Oh, yes, Windows (Microsoft actually), I hate Windows 7.
It looks like KDE 4.2
See it?
You can google KDE 4.2 and see other shots.

Microsoft steals everything.
Vista was an attempt of theirs to do Compiz/Beryl/CompizFusion and Mac's 3D effects. Microsoft wasn't ready for that, so now they make things more "Simple".
Simple?
Isn't that the cry of a lot of linux heads?

Thanks for listening to us guys :]
Really, immitation is the sincerest form of flattery, right?

The GNU sisters (GNU, Linux, BSD) must be slowly starting to put a hit on the "economically challenged". Apparently if OSx is now going for around 30-40$ and Win7 is right there in the same range.
Free OSes becoming so scary when our economy sucks?
They should.

We need this time where people are looking for cheaper alternatives.
Hopefully this will spark an Open Source revolution.

Cheers.
~Pikles

I always find myself coming back to Arch for some reason or another. I tried out Debian for a while again, and I liked it. It was very stable. I'd use it as a server or workstation. Thing is, my notebook isn't a server or a workstation. It's my everything. I use it for media, I use it to test coding projects in PHP and other web languages. I use it to learn databases. I use it for network security and wireless scanning. It's useful for testing application security. I try out new operating systems on it. I also use it to do multimedia and graphic design. This thing really is my work horse. I like it to be on the bleeding edge of software. Hence, I usually find myself installing Arch Linux once again.

This time is no different. Debian worked, but it just lacked certain things. Now I'm back in Arch and Flash or Pulseaudio broke with Firefox. I downloaded and installed Opera and all is working, so I'm happy again.

Opera Unite is pretty damn impressive btw. If you're not using it, I suggest you try it out. It has made me a happy camper.

Also, I wanted to note, a friend and I are working on a new website, I will be posting a link up when we have it completed. I'm working on it as a type this and look for it to be done very soon.

Well, that's about it for now.

Pikles

So today I decided I'd like to do a system-wide backup (all important files).
Why?
Well, it's always better to have a one or two gig backup file stored somewhere just in case something goes wrong...
So before I do my backups I like to have a look at how much space one will take up.
Using bzip as my compression and tar as the main archiver, I usually can achive a compression rate of 1/2 the original size. Meaning, that if my system is roughly 8 gigs, a backup should be roughly 4 gigs.

Well, when I opened up the disk usage analyzer, it showed almost 18 gigs in use. Eight of those were completed torrents in my downloads folder, (Vmware, and OS X) and the rest was being used by the system (approximately 10 gigs of space). That's way too much. A 5 gig backup will never fit on a dvd, especially not when you include the fact that I'm going to put on a minimal Arch LiveCD as well, so I can just pop in the cd, reformat the disk, and unarchive my file, then with minimal editing to the fstab file, I'll have my system working again. (My friend was sitting next to me, watching) He asked me a very simple question "If your DVD is only 4.7 gigs, and your backup is going to be 5 gigs, and you have more stuff to put on the dvd other than just the backup, how do you do it?"

In reality, a DVD isn't really 4.7 gigs. It's actually closer to 4.4 gigs... (4698656768 bytes) you can calculate that out if you'd like... divide by 1024 to get kbytes, and again to get mbytes, and one last time to get gbytes. I'm not too fond of doing math though, so I avoid it whenever possible.

After his question I gave a rather bland response "You trim the fat." He had a bit of a puzzled look on his face, at which point I explained that your Operating System, and your entire computer for that matter does not actually have fat, like animals, but that they do contain "bloat" software you don't use, libs that are never accessed, backup files made by programs like gedit, etc. I told him that in order to fit the backup onto a single DVD, including an environment from which I can extract it, I needed to remove things that are not used, or not needed.

So I set out...

In another post, I'll be writing about what exactly was trimmed and how much space was saved

Well, I have a fully working desktop, a full Operating System I guess I should say. I have Pidgin, AMSN, and Gyachi for Instant Messaging, and Skype is also installed and working. Splash screen when booting is working great, and so is Compiz and the fglrx driver. Boot time is down to ~20 seconds, which has me extremely happy. I have a working firewall up and running thanks to Firewall Builder and Iptables.

Honestly, things can't get much better.

There are minor tweaks here and there that I'm still working on, but other than that, I'm totally happy with this distro as a whole. My backup script from Ubuntu works perfectly on Arch, although, I did have to make some minor adaptations to it. The last really big thing I'd like to do, is take the entire OS back it up, and reinstall it to a new disk, just to be sure it will actually work the way it is designed to.

One minor thing I'm working on is getting Solaris's gdm theme snatched from their disk and putting it on my Arch system.

Seriously, if you haven't tried out this distro yet, you should. It's quite an amazing piece of work. My kudos to the developers, maintainers, and the community who all support Arch Linux. :]

On a side note about security, I believe I've mentioned this before, although I don't feel like searching through my posts to find it. There is a "feature" of firewire that allows persons to dump the ram of your machine and even bypass locked screens. Have a look at the link below:
http://www.hermann-uwe.de/taxonomy/term/1972

This page offers advice on how to prevent the attack under the "Mitigation" section of the article. Please read it.
If you're on Linux, please follow the advice to prevent this type of attack on your box, especially laptop users.

PiklesOnFire

I've picked my distro from all my testing, as I've already stated. I've decided to go with Gentoo. From using it, and working with it, I've noticed how amazingly easy it is. I'm actually writing this post from links while I'm compiling my xserver.

Read more...

For information on File Carving, please see the wiki article below.
http://www.forensicswiki.org/wiki/Carving

So, you deleted a file, and can't seem to find it now. What do you do?
On Linux systems, you may have checked the "Trash", and searched for the file, etc, etc.
On Windows systems, you hopefully checked the "Recycle Bin", and may have searched for the file as well.

Nothing turns up. What are you to do?

Well, thankfully, that file isn't gone yet. At least, hopefully.

Before I get into the recovery of the file, I find it to be best if I explain what exactly happens when you delete that file.

For Linux users, you may have actually deleted it, rather than "Move to Trash".
Same for Windows users, only difference being that you send it to a "Recycle Bin" not a Trash folder.
Yes, Windows users, you can add a context menu to delete the file, rather than move it to the "Recycle Bin".

So, what exactly happens if you do one of those first two, moving it to the "Recycle Bin" or "Trash"?
Well, on your computer's hard disk is what is called a filesystem. The filesystem is responsible for taking your hard disk and dividing it up for file storage. The filesystem is also responsible for keeping track of where files are on the disk.
When you move the file to the "Recycle Bin" or "Trash" you're basically just copying the file from "Folder X" to "Folder Y". Folder X being the original location, Folder Y being the holding place for trash items.
All this does is tell the filesystem to now point to a new folder, not to actually remove the file.

Ah, okay, so the file is still there. Easy enough to recover (not diving into that).

Now, what happens if you were to say, empty the "Recycle Bin" or "Trash"?
Well, what you've essentially done is told the filesystem, "Okay, I'm done with this file, remove it from your database of files".
So, it's now removed from the database of files that all filesystems keep, but wait, I never said it's actually erased.
That's because it's not. By removing from the database you now allow the filesystem to use the space that the file had occupied. It doesn't mean it's actually being used yet, or that the file's information is gone.

Regardless of your Operating System, all computers use some filesystem to manage the files and directories on a hard disk. Due to that fact, the methods listed below should suffice for data recovery on a multitude of Operating Systems. I personally have only tested it on Linux (Fedora, Ubuntu, Gentoo) and Windows (XP, Vista, and 2000).



Now that, that's out of the way, how do we get our file back?
Below is a step-by-step guide on how to accomplish this task, broken down into sections, Section Seven is a step-by-step example. Hopefully this will help at least one person out.

In the event your hard disk is encrypted these steps will not be of assistance for recovering your file.
I am currently working on a way to hopefully accomplish this seemingly impossible task though as well.
See my note at the bottom of the post for how to carve data from an encrypted drive.

[Please note - Once you have completed sections one through three you can use a faster way to obtain the files. Some Linux distros do not come with a pre-compiled version of the tools you may use and building software on a LiveCD will take quite a bit of time. If you are interested in recovering the data as quickly as possible, please have a look at the link below:
http://www.ubuntugeek.com/recover-deleted-files-with-foremostscalpel-in-ubuntu.html

Also, worth mentioning, the instructions are for Ubuntu based systems, but the same tools should be available on other LiveCD distros as well, esp those for data recovery/forensics/security.]


Section One - Preserving the Data
The very first thing we need to do, is shutdown your PC.
Why? Well, if you accidentally erased that file, it could now be overwritten by anything you do. Yes, by reading this article you could overwrite the file with your temporary internet files. So shutdown your system and use a LiveCD distro to continue on. Windows users, you will need to use the LiveCD method even for external media, Linux users you don't have to if it's an external medium, but you will if it is the disk your system is running on.


Section Two - File Recon
In order to carve a file from an image, we first need to know a few key things about the file.
What kind of file was it?
Was this an image, a text file, a music or video file, or something else all together?
Of those, do we know what the extension was?
Assuming it was an image: Was it a jpg? png? gif? tiff? bmp?

[Please note - If you are using the faster method mentioned above, you can skip everything below this, and follow the directions mentioned on the link provided.]

Hopefully these are things you can remember about the file. If not, the carving process may take you much longer than anticipated.
Once we know what kind of file it was, and the extension, have a look at the website below about file signatures:
http://www.garykessler.net/library/file_sigs.html

On this page we want to locate our file's format/extension if they have it listed.
If not, you may want to use google to see if you can find it on there. A good place to begin is by searching for

"File Signature" "EXTENSION"

Where EXTENSION is the extension of the file you're looking for. eg: PNG, GIF, etc... You'll want to do the search exactly as I have it listed, only changing the extension, if this search does not yield any results for your file's signature in a hex format, try some other searches.

Once you have your files hex signature, keep it handy, you will need it later. Also take note of the Trailers if they have one listed. This will make recreating the file that much easier.


Section Three - Selecting a Method

The safe method (recommended but takes longer):
Use the Linux command "dd" to take an image of your hard disk.
In order to do this you'll need to have a backup medium that is either the exact same size as your original disk, or one that is larger. Larger is recommended.
I could go into detail on how to image the disk using dd, but there's a lot of info on Google about that topic.

The unsafe method (faster)
The unsafe method involves you directly accessing you original disk.
This is called the unsafe method because it can cause data corruption beyond the loss of the original file.
It is a good way to quickly recover a file that has to be recovered immediately, but if you have a couple of days to do the image, imaging is recommended.

Either way you go, you should either now have an image of the disk to work with, or you should have the disk itself.

WARNING!!! If you use the unsafe method, I take no responsibility for a corrupted or damaged disk! You have been warned of the dangers!


Section Four - Picking an Editor
This isn't the most important step, it's not even a required step, it's one that makes the recovery job a little more custom to suit your needs and preferences.
Then why is this important? Well, I don't like to tell people what they HAVE to use to do a job.
It's like my boss coming up to me and telling me I have to use a stapler when a paper clip gets the job done just as well.

My personal preference is Hexedit, a terminal based program which has an excellent way of working with files. See the link below for information on working with files in Hexedit.
http://prigaux.chez.com/hexedit.html
(for my example I will be using Hexedit to do the data recovery.)

Another choice is GHex2, which is a Gnome Hex Editor.

There are several other editors out there, pick one you like.
Again, this is all personal preference


Section Five - Locating the Data
Here is where the real fun begins. We now need to recover the file from the drive.
If you had a lot of files of the same format you're searching for, you'll probably have a lot of results when you're searching for your file's signature. This can heavily impact the amount of time it will take for us to recover your specific file or set of files.

In order to carve the file from our hard disk or image we open up our medium in our hex editor.
If you're using the hard disk, it will be something like /dev/hda1 or /dev/sda1.
If you're using the disk image, it will be the image name you created. Example: /media/disk-1/myimage.img

Now, to find the files that relate to our particular type of file we are searching for.
We'll want to use your hex editors search function to find the file signature you noted earlier.
Now that we have located that, take note of where this specific set of information is.
In Hexedit you'll find it at the bottom of the terminal as 0x6B34161/0x8EDC400 where the first number is the offset you are currently at, and the last number is the total offsets in the file. GHex2 also notes the offset at the bottom of the window.
Next we will want to search for the trailer signature that you had noted down earlier.
Again, we want to note down it's offset. (Noting it down is a good idea so that you don't use the same offset twice if we have multiple files of the same type)


Section Six - Extracting the Data
Now to actually take that information that was once our file, and recover it to a new file.
We now want to copy all the information that is between the two offsets you just noted down, including the two offsets themselves.
Once we have that copied, we want to extract it into a new file, with the same extension that our original file had.


Section Seven - An Example Case Study
Now that you know how to recover the data, let's prove it works.
[Please note - I'm running all the commands below as the root user.]

For this, I'm using my 512Mb USB Drive.
First, I create the partition using CFdisk:

cfdisk /dev/sde

I'm using a 150Mb Partition, because it is easiest to work with for me. Nice and small, but still provides enough space to actually place a file or a couple of files on the disk.

I want to zero out the partition to ensure that there is no previous data left on the disk.

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sde1 conv=sync

Next I create a filesystem on the newly formed disk (I use XFS you can use ext2, ext3, or any filesystem you like.)

mkfs.xfs -f -d agcount 4 /dev/sde1

The "-f" option should be used to force the creation of the filesystem. The "-d agcount=4" is totally optional.

Now we have a fresh partition, hopefully free of any information.
Well, that's not actually the case, just doing a low level format will still leave at least trace amounts of information from files on your old system. That's not the case though here, because I zeroed out the blank platter before hand.

Following the creation of the filesystem, I want to copy over a file, so that there is something on the disk.

cp /home/user/myimage.jpg

And we want to sync the disks to be sure that the information was written to the filesystem.

sync

And now I want to "delete" the file"

rm -f /media/disk-3/myimage.jpg

the "-f" option here tells us to force it to remove the file, preventing it from asking me if I'd like to.

And we want to sync the disks again to be sure that the information was written to the filesystem.

sync

Next step, is to unmount the filesystem so that the information on the disk does not get overwritten blindly.

umount /dev/sde1

Following the unmount, we now need to image the disk. Since there is no information I care about on the disk, I COULD do a direct disk carving, but to show an example of how to do this step-by-step I'm going to take an image.

dd if=/dev/sde1 of=/home/user/149.8Mb.img conv=fdatasync,fsync,sync

Now that we have our image, we want to carve our file from it to make sure the carving process works correctly.

hexedit /home/user/149.8Mb.img

To locate the file's signature I use Hexedit's search feature

CTRL+S

Here, CTRL+S is a keypress, not a command to be typed in the terminal.

We get promted for what to search for, since my file was a JPG file, I use that files type's signature:

FFD8FF

There are actually two for JPG file formats: FF D8 FF E0 and FF D8 FF E8, to make searching simpler and hopefully faster, I just shortened it. It may lead you to a non image-format string though. To be sure look for JFIF somewhere close by on the text side of your hex editor.
For my particular example, the string was found, and it is an image. The offset is 0x6B34000

Now that we have that part of the file (the beginning) I want to search down and look for the trailer of the file. For this I search for the JPG trailer of FFD9

CTRL+S

FFD9

In this example my offset is 0x6B44AE7.

With the two offsets known, we now need to copy the information.

CTRL+SPACE

Sets the marker to the active offset.

Once you have used the page up key to select the contents back up to the beginning offset, you'll want to actually copy the information.

ESC+W

And Paste it into a new file.

ESC+Y

You will be prompted for a place to put the information, I used /home/user/recovered.jpg

Upon opening the file you will see that it is the exact image that you had deleted before. Actually, if you have thumbnails, you'll notice it before you even open the file.
Amazing isn't it?
As a small side note, I'd like to mention, this is by no means the only ways to recover a file. This is simply the method I use as it's tried and proven.

This example is me carving data from a running system. I didn't actually use a LiveCD, and you don't have to if it's an external medium. LiveCDs are used for disks that your system is running on.

I'll be uploading screenshots of this in a bit and adding them to this post, as well as posting the test results from my distro testing.
(Yes, I've actually finished typing up the white-paper, now I just need to put it on here)

^{Note 1: Update - I have found a way to carve files from an encrypted disk. It requires you to actually mount the disk though. As an example, I have an LVM on a Luks encrypted section of my hard disk. In order for me to carve the file from that particular disk, I would use /dev/mapper/VolGroup00-LogVol00 as the input file for dd.
If you have any issues or questions about this, please post a comment and I'll assist you as best I can.}

As always,
Happy Hacking
PiklesOnFire

This is just a tiny personal update, but it does deal with technology, and GNU, Linux, Unix (BSD), and Solaris, so I figured I'd just post it up here.

I was discussing with my mom how my associate and I are working on forking a distro from an already existing one. I sat her down at my PC, let her play with what I've come up with so far. To be totally honest, I never expected her to actually enjoy using a computer, but this distro made it very much so. She usually checks her e-mail, maybe visits a site or two, or prints some directions. Today was different though, she sat on my laptop for hours. I actually had to beg the woman to let me have my laptop back so I could continue the testing of the distros.

Then came the big question. "Mom, can I put Linux on your laptop too?"

She seemed stunned, almost apalled that I would even ask her this. So we had a conversation. She explained to me that she has several Windows applications she has to use for work (VPN). I tried to show her how she could connect to the VPN using Linux software, and exactly how easy it was. Still, she refused to budge from her Window's corner. I thought to myself that there had to be something, some tiny reason that she was so afraid to make the change. Maybe it's just that, the fear of change, the idea of something new, something she's never really used before, something that goes so against the mainstream. I'm still not sure. I asked her why she was afraid to make the change, and she abruptly changed the subject to my sister's newborn son. I had even tried to switch her to BSD, assuring her we could set it up just like my Linux box, only it's supposed to be more stable (after all, Unix is known for it's server-grade stability). It was still a failed attempt to switch my mom from a proprietary prison to a totally free OpenSource world.

I'm sort of saddened by the whole experience, only because the distro I'm working on is one that...
Well, I can't divulge any secrets about it quite yet, but my mom made a remark about just how hard it will be to move people from their windows perch. I guess it sits so high, that they can't see the world around them and all the fun that can be had when you aren't as worried about viruses, spyware, and the likes.


Happy Hacking
PiklesOnFire

Tech News-
I currently have 24 ISO's, not including the ones I had already had. I want to make sure I make this very clear in my blog: I am by no means a "Linux Fanboy". I am if anything, an OpenSource fanboy. I'm going to be testing a wide variety of kernels, including Solaris, BSD, and Linux. I'm doing this to see what fits me best. I love the linux kernel, don't get me wrong, but I also love the idea of adaptability. I'll adapt to what fits my PC and my needs the most.

I'd also like to note, I was originally only doing stable testing, several dists had long out dated stables, so I'm also testing alpha and beta and rc's.

Also, I'm going to pick a distro, and from there, I'm going to be working with one of my associates to come up with a new distro. It's release date, and schedule have not been set, but a framework for what we'd like it to look like and do has been. This distro is not going to be publicly available, but you might start seeing it around. More on this to come.

So it seems I should have probably named this on going endevure the "Month of the Distros" since it seems that's about how long it's going to be for testing and everything else. Oh well, I'm enjoying the experience I'm gaining from this, it simply gives me a broader understanding of GNU applications, and several different kernels.

- As always -
Happy Hacking,
PiklesOnFire

Tech News -
1) Well, after a rousing spat with Arch in the Virtual Machines to get the encrypted lvm containing my /home and swap partitons, I've decided that having JUST these two partitions encrypted is a PITA, I can't find anyone who has successfully set it up. Not a single post ANYWHERE. Everything I've read makes it seem virtually impossible, and from my experience it is.

2) The thing about #1, is that I don't feel I NEED to have the whole system encrypted, just having my /home and swap should be secure enough, since that is where all the information about myself is stored. Encrypting the full system affects system performance when running games and other apps in general.

3) Well, as much as I'm honestly terrified of it, I'm ready to install Lunar Linux. I hope my experience in Arch and previous experience with Gentoo will assist me with it.

4) Speaking of Gentoo, a reader recently messaged me asking why I'm not including it in the day of the distros. Well, I'd like to say it's mainly because Gentoo has a lot of fame and popularity, a lot of users are out there using it, and it's all over the media and forums as it is. I started out wanting to do the Day of the Distros to try out some less common ones, and to test one in Beta.

5) I have actually decided to continue extending the Day of the Distros, so I can test out a few more, Gentoo will be included, a final list will be posted as well as the results, so look there for a more in depth comparisson of distros.

6) I've recently been consulting with another computer geek friend of mine, and he seems interested in learning linux from a network security aspect. I feel as though I may start writing some guides on this subject very shortly.

7) I haven't actually posted a new guide in a few days, I'll probably write a short guide about Arch, possibly for Lunar as well. For the time being, I need to save my Arch install disk, and test out Lunar Linux on my box, so look back for a post on that within the next day or so.

8) In my searches for how to get the LVM encrypted I stumbled upon this site:
http://citp.princeton.edu/memory/
which is really informative about breaking drive encryption. I was really surprised by the results, and I myself may end up testing that out as well. For laptop users, this word of warning, even having drive encryption won't save you with what these guys have found (Thank goodness for dell hard drive passwords).

9) Speaking of Dell Hard Drive passwords, (no not a BIOS password, not a password for drive encryption, and not a Login password, a true Disk Password) it seems as though they are impossible to remove, and on some laptops, even removing the disk, and replacing it with one not protected, will ADD the password to the disk. Pretty scary stuff. I'm wondering though, if Dell, or someone somewhere has a reset tool. I'm sure one has to exist. Dell can't jus let the forgetful go without a hard drive. If it's out there, I'm wondering also if it's on the net. I mean, everything ends up in cyberspace, even tools to program your cell phone, to clone it, everything. All those tools are manufacturer tools, or are the tools of retailers, so if something like that existed for Dell's Hard Drive passwords, could even having those passwords set be virtually useless?

10) Answering the question in #9, I don't feel any password is useless. I mean, that's why I have my drive password, plus disk encryption, plus the login password. That's three layers of security. If someone manages to steal my laptop, and get past all three of those, then they deserve to have any information they want off of here (which wouldn't be much considering how often I wipe the drives ;p).

11) Speaking of wiping the drives, I'd like to touch on the subject of securely erasing files. Please, under no circumstances EVER use a piece of software called "Evidence Eraser" or "Windows Washer" both of these have been known to actually log every event the perform, keeping tabs of what you're erasing. In the case of Evidence Eraser, I've read that they don't even delete the files for you, it just makes it appear that way. Linux users, using a journaled filesystem virtually defeats having a file "securely" wiped, the best thing I can advise us to do, is backup our files that we need, boot a livecd, and use /dev/urandom 7 times to securely wipe the disk. 7 is a standard, I know people who use 25-100 I feel safe at 45. You can write a simple bash script, or find one online to do this for you even.

12) Now to touch a little more on secure file deltion, sorry this is getting so out of hand and turning into a ramble, but I keep thinking of new topics as I go, and I don't want to post a thousand Blogs about different topics, especially such short ones, but I will post more in depth Blogs about each one of these, I promise. Back to the subject, this link:
http://isandtcolloq.gsfc.nasa.gov/fall2008/presentations/pederson.pdf : pdf file
outlines details of how information was recovered from a hard drive on board the space shuttle after it crashed.

Another good link about security of information and wiping drives:
http://ultraparanoid.wordpress.com/2007/09/12/securely-erase-hard-drives/

Yet another good Link:
http://www.fsckin.com/2008/01/09/using-shred-to-wipe-hard-drives-dod-uses-it-you-should-too/
In this one, if you search for "off-track" you'll see why more is always better for secure data removal.

13) I think I'm going to write a good, general security guide for data on laptops, but that's to come in the future. It will probably include, like the last link in #12, a guide for how to encrypt your drive using pgp.


As always guys and ladies
Happy Hacking
~ PiklesOnFire

Tech News -
1) I booted into the OpenSolaris livecd, that was about as far as I had gotten. No support for my particular network card, only wifi. Which, usually, it's the opposite. Oh Well.

2) Scraping OpenSolaris I've installed OpenSuse 11.1 (still in testing). There are a few bugs, and a few "gotchas" that will keep me from using this Distro as well.

3) FGLRX is supported, but you have to install it manually, which means every time you update the kernel, you HAVE to rebuild the module manually. Not fun for me.

4) There is a bug, that when a new CD or USB Drive (any media, I'm sure) causes the open-folder to fail and the bug reporting app to come up, and the desktop to flicker.

5) Webcam does not work out of the box, neither does Compiz.

6) Touchpad scrolling does work out of the box.

7) I get an overall good feeling about this distro, but for the time being, I'm not fond of it, then again, I've never really liked Suse.

8) I've decided I'm going to be working with Lunar Linux (a build as you go system) last during the testing, because it is the one that will take longest to install.

9) Up next for testing is Fedora Core 10, followed by Arch Linux, and then Lunar Linux.


Happy Hacking
PiklesOnFire

Tech News -
1) I've started testing on the "Day of the Distros". I started out trying a compile from source distro in a Virtual Environment to get used to being in total control of the OS (more on that later) while I had other ones downloading. I decided Foresight Linux would be first up for a real test run though.

2) Install went fairly smooth. A few issues though included that it couldn't start the Xserver using my ATI card (ATI Mobility Radeon X1400). Hmmm?

3) I think they should call this distro Hindsight Linux, because it still lacking in the partitioning of the disk. I couldn't set up an LVM (despite there being an option for one as a partition type).

4) I also couldn't set up an encrypted home and/or swap. In an age where security matters, this is a major deal to me. Maybe not to some home desktop users, but then again, maybe.

5) Updates on this particular disto are slower than on Ubuntu or on Fedora. This is another set back for them.

6) A major plus, boot time was absolutely amazing. I had a full desktop in UNDER 30 SECONDS (thats from power on to full desktop in 30 seconds). This may make it worth the very slow update speeds. If it's taking so long because it is actually optimizing the packages or something like that, I would be ok with it taking a little longer to update, if not, I see no reason for it being so slow.

7) Also noted - This distro isn't able to use compiz out of the box like some others. This isn't a huge set back, but it is still a set back in my book.

8) Another minor annoyance is that it doesn't recognize the scrolling ability on my touchpad out of the box. I like to use the touchpad to scroll pages in firefox and opera and well, everywhere I need to scroll. I'm a speed freak, and this is something that slows me down.

9) Yet another plus for them, it did get my video resolution right out of the box, and that's always a plus, but incorrect resolution on my hardware is becoming a thing of the past.

10) Another downfall for them comes in the package manager they chose, Packagekit, it doesn't list the software in categories like most distros do, and it doesn't even display the full list of packages like synaptic. Very sad to see.

11) I hate to keep focusing on the negative, but I just don't see enough positive in this distro, yet another fault is that suspend 100% does not work, neither does hibernation.

12) A positive for them - Scrolling in firefox and opera (even though I had to use keys until I configured Xorg myself for the touchpad scrolling) is amazingly smooth. Not jerky at all like in some other distros out there. Kudos for that at the very least.

13) Also worth mentioning, is the fact that I haven't (yet) run into any dependency updates, which some distros are infamous for.

14) Another plus for Foresight, is that flash works on websites without any issues.

15) Yet again, a negative for Foresight, is that my sound under PulseAudio is not currently working. Again. And I know it's not the hardware, because it was working in certain applications on Ubuntu, just not the majority of the time.

So this is just the start to the testing of Foresight Linux. You'll probably hear back from me this evening after I've had a few hours to play with it and see what it's all about. I can tell you now though, it's not the Desktop system for me.

On a side note, I went through yesterday and updated the tags on all my other posts. This should make finding them (and me) on google a lot easier.

A second side note, I did discover a quite promising looking Desktop/Workstation OS called X/OS based on Fedora while I was searching. I may look into that as a "Professional Operating System" BUT more on that and other distro tests later.


...
Happy Hacking
PiklesOnFire

Alright, another day, another update. I have my 160 Gig USB Drive connected to Intrepid, and it works great, I don't even get prompted for a password anymore when I plug it in (Luks Encrypted drive). Problem is, if I want to add a file to an archive (ie i want to tar and bzip it) it takes forever and a day. Today alone, I had about 6 files I wanted to do this with. I wrote a simple bash script to take care of doing them one at a time for me, because I know all at once with two of the files being over 3.0 Gigs and the other 3.4 Gigs it would take even longer. The script was simple, it cd's to my /media/disk directory (the USB Drive) and into the /ISOs folder, which is what I was zipping up, was a few ISOs. The next thing the script does is find all the ISOs in that directory and it's subdirectories. Next it starts one by one tarring the files, bzippiping them as it goes. After it finishes one file, it erases the starting ISO, and moves on to the next. Simple enough, right? Not really. The script has been running for almost an hour now, and it's still got the large 3.4 Gig file to go.

Lesson learned from all this is exactly what the title states. USB Drive + Encryption + Trying to archive a file = Slowness.
I mean, my system is running fine while it's compressing, so I guess I shouldn't complain, but still. I wish I knew a faster way.


As always,
Happy Hacking
PiklesOnFire

So, this is my second time trying to write this article. I'm sad to say the issue I thought was the cause was not the only culprit. I am happy to report now though that everything is stable, and I'm pretty pleased witht the overall progress of my Desktop coming together. I should probably explain that there is a pretty major issue with the clocksource Ubuntu is using, hpet. This particular clocksource was the cause of my system freezing every ten minutes or so. To be totally honest, it could have been the issue in Core 10 as well, but I was less tolerant with Core 10 and did not check the logs, so there is no way for me to be sure. To see if the clocksource is the cause of the issue on your system is simple. Navigate your way to [menu] -> System -> Administration -> System Log. If you look at the messages or kern.log sections and search for "hpet" (no quotes) and see results like this filling the page:

Dec  6 15:47:13 P0F kernel: [  163.857342] CE: hpet increasing min_delta_ns to 15000 nsec
Dec  6 15:47:14 P0F kernel: [  164.653250] CE: hpet increasing min_delta_ns to 22500 nsec
Dec  6 15:50:18 P0F kernel: [  348.432089] CE: hpet increasing min_delta_ns to 33750 nsec
Dec  6 15:52:04 P0F kernel: [  454.148092] CE: hpet increasing min_delta_ns to 50624 nsec
Dec  6 15:52:59 P0F kernel: [  509.009124] CE: hpet increasing min_delta_ns to 75936 nsec
Dec  6 15:53:45 P0F kernel: [  555.721382] CE: hpet increasing min_delta_ns to 113904 nsec

That's a good indicator that hpet is the cause of the issue, or at least a factor.

Now then, for a short guide and an explanation ;]

So how do we get our system stable? Or hopefully bring it a step closer to stability? Well, it's a pretty simple process.

WARNING: I can not stress this enough, you will be modifying critical system files. If something goes wrong, I take no responsibility. Again, if your system gets hosed because you followed this guide, I am not responsible

With that warning out of the way, I'd like to say, that no matter what, unless your system freezes in the midst of us updating the bootloader or something catastrophic like that happpens, your system should be fine.

On to the solution.
The first thing we need to do, is become root. Run the following command:

sudo -i

Enter in your password. Now you should see something similar to the following:

root@localhost:~#

^{see note 1}

Now that we're root we'll start applying the fix. We first need to modify the bootloader, grub. To do this, run the following command:

gedit /boot/grub/menu.lst

^{see note 2}

Locate these two lines:

# defoptions=quiet splash

# altoptions=(recovery mode) single

^{see note 3}

And modify them so that they look like this:

# defoptions=quiet splash hpet=disable

# altoptions=(recovery mode) single hpet=disable

Now save and close the file and issue the following command to update the bootloader with the changes:

update-grub

Lastly, issue the following command:

rm /boot/grub/menu.lst~

^{see note 4}

Type

exit

to drop from root, and restart your system.


If all went well, your system should no longer hang. If it still does, read my next post about FGLRX and how it may save the day.

I'd like to explain what exactly the "hpet=disable" option does. It tells the kernel to disable the HPET timer source and tell the kernel to use the PIT timer source instead. - That is according to this document Kernel Boot Command-Line Parameter Reference : pdf document

I'd like to also mention, that I had Googled this issue, and did see a resolution on one of the bug tracking websites, it was to use the option "clocksource=jiffies" however, this option caused my Xorg to unexplainably stop loading.

<sub>Notes:
Note 1: The important part here is that we see "root" this indicates that you have sucessfully become the administrator on your system.

Note 2: I issue the command gedit because I'm on the default Ubuntu install. If you were on Kubuntu it would be kate, and Xubuntu mousepad, respectively. Also, the command line tools vim or nano are always good options if you feel comfortable working in them.

Note 3: Your lines may not match exactly to mine. Again, just look for the key parts here, "# defoptions" and "# altoptions".

Note 4: This command is actually an optional "clean up" command, it removes the temporary file that was created while we were working in gedit. I mention to run it last in case you system hangs in the process of working on these files, if something goes terribly wrong, hopefully you'll have this backup copy until we no longer need it.</sub>


Goodluck and Happy Hacking ~
PiklesOnFire

So, a few minor bugs have managed to keep me from using Core 10 full time, at least until they have had a chance to get some updates out. My screensaver seems to freeze after being active for too long, suspend and hibernate both epically fail, fglrx support is non-existent at the moment, and my webcam BARELY works.

So after fiddling with Leo4All for about two hours today, I got a copy of that installed to a USB drive. All is ok, except, no webcam AND it doesn't have the proper display resolution for my video card. Leo4All is just not for me.

Now I'm back to searching distrowatch and a few other linux distro update sites looking for something that will really amaze me. As I've used Parsix before, I may look into it again as well, but I'm not terribly sure. I had several issues with it as well last time I tested it.

So here I am, in a sea of opensource looking for the next great distro to try out. I wonder which one will catch my eye ;]


Look back for more
and as always,
Happy Hacking -

PiklesOnFire

I was Googling, because I had some trouble with the FGLRX driver after installing via the guide mentioned in the post before this. It may not have been the directions about FGLRX, I may have made a mistake. Whatever the case may be, When I searched for "Fedora.Core.10" "FGLRX"¹ there was my post at the very top. Interestingly enough, my post does not actually explain how to get the FGLRX driver up and running², however, it was really nice to see my blog sitting at the top of not just one, but two Google queries³. Sadly, I have yet to see my Blog reach the top of a Yahoo search using the same query, but, I'm sure eventually, my blog will make it to the top of all the major search engines. So, thank you to anyone who has read this, and thank you Google for making me number one

<sub>Note 1: On Google, the "." when your query is encapsulated with quotes, means that google doesn't care what the words are seperated by. Ie- it could have a space, underscore, period, etc.

Note 2: I do plan to post an article explaining in detail how to get the FGLRX driver up and running asap.

Note 3: The second query I found myself as number one was ""Fedora.Core 10" "FGLRX" (Note the small difference)</sub>


Happy Hacking =
PiklesOnFire

So I have been reading a lot about Fedora Core 10 recently and have decided to give Fedora and Red Hat in general another shot. I've only decided to give it another try because Debian is slowly lagging behind it's counterpart Ubuntu (they haven't implemented the new linux kernel 2.6.27). Considering the kernels is on revision seven, I find it perturbing that Debian hasn't included it in at least it's testing release, Lenny. Fedora and Ubuntu on the other hand have both included the new kernel, which adds a lot of support for FGLRX, as well as KVM, and a lot of other much needed improvements. Fedora has always been buggy with package management, and other issues have always been a major road block keeping me from ever using it for more than a half an hour. I'm hoping I won't be disappointed again. If Core 10 manages to keep me appeased, I may find myself using a new Linux distro as my desktop, if not, I'll be reverting back to Ubuntu. Either way, I'll be posting back about the new Core 10 and my personal experiences.

Happy Hacking ~
PiklesOnFire