Welcome to 2006

Another year gone past, makes you think what did you achive last year and what can you do this year!

Family, Health and my company WTL Plc are my priorities this year.

Family, Spend more time at home and just to be around for my wife and kids.

Health, this has been my biggest achievement in 2005, Lost 10Kg and regularly do "Circuit Training". And I have never ever been fitter!

WTL Plc, 2005 has been my busiest and most stressful year in 16 years at the company. But look forward to forging a better future for WTL and especially its employees in 2006. Big focus on technical advancement.

Protect your PDF

I often send document to customers document created from OpenOffice in PDF format. To protect your hardwork add a PDF password.

PDFTK from Stewart Sid is excellent and has many functions as detailed on the website but I use it for protecting PDF documents. Windows and Linux versions available.

Windows Install.
Download PDFTK and copy pdftk.exe into

c:/windows/system32

To password protect and allow printing (unable to change or copy/paste document)

pdftk inputfile.pdf output output.pdf owner_pw password allow printing

Best Ever Freeware

Your missingout on some quality software thats FREE. Check outs TechSupportAlert's "Best 46 Freeware software"

I use on Windows
OpenOffice, GiMP, Vim, Firefox, Thunderbird, Eraser, Notepad2, Cygwin, Clamwin, Keynote, Putty, WinSCP, TightVNC.

apaton

Feel need to blog something, with this time saving tip.

Do you like me want all the power for that windows application, latest game or LC5. So you kill all those services in the toolbar.

Download PSKill from Sysinternals and save in the system path.

Create a batch file (.bat) with your favourite editor (I use VIM).
This is mine below.

c: type pskill-all.bat
rem Kill batch File
rem option -t needed when process has children!

pskill.exe -t GoogleDesktop.e
pskill.exe nettime.exe
pskill.exe eraser.exe
pskill.exe pageant.exe
pskill.exe firefox.exe
pskill.exe soffice.exe
pskill.exe ClamTray.exe
pskill.exe justshed.exe
pskill.exe realsched.exe
pskill.exe PccNTMon.exe

Illusions

Illusions,

Excellent and mind boggling, at least look at the Charlie Chaplin's mask in Richard Gregory's site.



http://www.richardgregory.org/experiments/index.htm

http://www.scientificpsychic.com/graphics/

http://www.exploratorium.edu/seeing/exhibits/index.html

Picture Blog

Truck-Donnington-2000
Originally uploaded by apaton.

Found Flickr, free picture hosting worth looking at.


This picture was taken in 2000 at Donnington, UK.

Check out more pictures at this link
http://www.flickr.com/photos/apaton/

First Unix

Question was asked of me the otherday, "How long have you been using Unix"

Answer, 18 years since September 1986.

My first Unix system was a PDP 11/44 running AT&T Version 7 Unix. Used for witting COBOL using ed and unipad editors. I was particularly good with "ed" which if I remember was also in early versions of MS DOS. You couldn't get me off the system which held about 24 VT100 terminals. Many a late night waiting over vt100 terminal for compilation and waiting at the line printer for that COBOL program to print.

Picture of PDP11-44

One of those moments.

I was watching Celebrity Fit Club with the wife and my son age 10. Just after Andy Fordham weigh in, my son turned round to me and said,”Dad I want you to loose weight”, Its not how he said it but the worried look in his young eyes and obvious concern.

First of all, I'm 14 Stone 8lb (94.15Kg) so not in Andy Fordham's league, but I do feel compelled to loose weight. I've have given up smoking for 7 years because of the kids so this should be easy :-)

The plan

• Stop the late night snacks
• Take the dog twice a day for a walk (currently only once)
• Only three cups of tea a day (two sugars)

Not a big change, but a nice slow start. Not sure at this point what my end target is, but hope to loose a few pounds a week.

New Sections

I've created some new sections for people who are interested.

Andy's.....

• Unix Shell Scripts
• Mini How to's
• Presentations - flash format

None of these files are going to win any awards for "best in class", but I did enjoy creating them.

Andy

2005 reading list

Books not read,

I always have best intentions, but never the time to read books.

List of currently unread books on my shelf, in no particular order.

IT List

• Stealing the network "How to own a Continent"
• The Art of Deception - Kevin Mitnik
  
• Security Assessment
  
• Hackers - Steven Levy
• Security Warrior
• Redhat Linux Firewalls
• Teach yourself game programming
• Linix, LPI Certification
  

Non - IT

• Digital Fortress - Dan Brown
• The Blue Nowhere - Jefffery Deaver
• Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrrell - Susanna Clarke

Books I have read in 2004, that I can remember!

• Masters of Deception, The gang that ruled cyberspace
• Stealing the network "How to own the box"
• SSH, The definitive guide
• The Code book, Simon Singh
• The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown

Andy

New Year Resolutions

HAPPY NEWYEAR EVERYONE

Heres comes 2005,
As you do in the new year Ive set my self some goals. IT related of course!

• Linux Certification, LPI exams
• Solaris 10 Certification, I've done in the past 2.4,2.5,2.6 & 8
• Learn the basics of CISCO IOS.
• Windows Security, some piratical harding and policies setup.
  
• Move to a Linux desktop, I've started this one with Gentoo on my HP NX9010 laptop.
• Read all the books I've bought in 2004.
  

Non IT

• Start my Aikido again, stopped a year ago and I dearly miss the training.
• Fitness & loose weight (the usual ones again!)

Andy

Hylafax Gentoo way

I'm still running a Lotus Notes LFS Fax server on Windows Workgroup 3.1. I've hoped Year 2000 would kill it, I hoped the p75 32Mb IBM PC would have died by now. But yet its still working! Dam!

Well the time has come to decommission it. Of course open source alternative can be found in Hylafax.

I've built my test server on a Gentoo distribution (2.6.8 kernel) on a Eversham Voyager, Celeron 800Mhz & 128Mb Memory. Modem is a 3Com Courier V.Everything 56K.

Will do the move over Christmas, pending a security risk assessment.

Expect the micro "how-to" section soon.

GPU FAN

I've been having a few graphics related problems, which turned out to be an intermittent GPU fan on my Nvidia TI-4200 Gainward card. Its out of warranty and no amount of cleaning would make it the fan reliable.

I was about to give up when found The Coolingshop, Vantec Iceberq 4 Pro VGA Cooling Kit. Its a direct replacement for my fan and heatsink. (Even has a blue light).

Ordered with free delivery and resurrected my TI-4200 within two days!

Install of Gentoo AMD64 on a Sun Java Workstation W1100z

Install of Gentoo AMD64 on a Sun Java Workstation W1100z


http://uk.sunsolve.sun.com/handbook_pub/Systems/W1100z/W1100z.html

Install of Gentoo 2004.2 AMD64 Universal CDROM, with a stage 3 install and KDE. Due to time limits I was unable to a Stage 1 or test audio and NVIDIA drivers.


Boot from Live CD Gentoo 2004.2 AMD64.


livecd root # lspci



0000:00:06.0 PCI bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] AMD-8111 PCI (rev 07)

0000:00:07.0 ISA bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] AMD-8111 LPC (rev 05)
0000:00:07.1 IDE interface: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] AMD-8111 IDE (rev 03)
0000:00:07.2 SMBus: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] AMD-8111 SMBus 2.0 (rev 02)
0000:00:07.3 Bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] AMD-8111 ACPI (rev 05)
0000:00:07.5 Multimedia audio controller: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] AMD-8111 AC97 Audio (rev 03)
0000:00:0a.0 PCI bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] AMD-8131 PCI-X Bridge (rev 12)
0000:00:0a.1 PIC: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] AMD-8131 PCI-X APIC (rev 01)
0000:00:0b.0 PCI bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] AMD-8131 PCI-X Bridge (rev 12)
0000:00:0b.1 PIC: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] AMD-8131 PCI-X APIC (rev 01)
0000:00:18.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 NorthBridge
0000:00:18.1 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 NorthBridge
0000:00:18.2 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 NorthBridge
0000:00:18.3 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 NorthBridge
0000:01:00.0 USB Controller: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] AMD-8111 USB (rev 0b)
0000:01:00.1 USB Controller: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] AMD-8111 USB (rev 0b)
0000:01:03.0 USB Controller: NEC Corporation USB (rev 43)
0000:01:03.1 USB Controller: NEC Corporation USB (rev 43)
0000:01:03.2 USB Controller: NEC Corporation USB 2.0 (rev 04)
0000:01:04.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Texas Instruments TSB43AB22/A IEEE-1394a-2000 Controller (PHY/Link)
0000:03:02.0 Ethernet controller: Broadcom Corporation NetXtreme BCM5703X Gigabit Ethernet (rev 02)
0000:08:00.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] AMD-8151 System Controller (rev 14)
0000:08:01.0 PCI bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] AMD-8151 AGP Bridge (rev 14)
0000:08:03.0 PCI bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] AMD-8131 PCI-X Bridge (rev 12)
0000:08:03.1 PIC: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] AMD-8131 PCI-X APIC (rev 01)
0000:08:04.0 PCI bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] AMD-8131 PCI-X Bridge (rev 12)
0000:08:04.1 PIC: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] AMD-8131 PCI-X APIC (rev 01)
0000:09:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation NV34GL [Quadro FX 500] (rev a1)
0000:13:04.0 SCSI storage controller: Adaptec AIC-7902B U320 (rev 10)
0000:13:04.1 SCSI storage controller: Adaptec AIC-7902B U320 (rev 10)

Network
To enable network, with no DHCP available.
The Broadcom NetXtreme BCM5703X uses the TG3 (Tigon3) driver.

livecd root # modprobe tg3

livecd root # /etc/init.d/net.eth0 stop

livecd root # /etc/init.d/net.eth0 start

livecd root # ifconfig eth0 192.168.1.12 up

livecd root # route add default gw 192.168.1.254

livecd root # vi /etc/resolov.conf
nameserver 192.168.1.254

Disk
Although the Java Workstation has an Adaptec AIC-7902 Controller, the internal drive was IDE ATA. Surprising to me that only the LiteOn Combi CDROM was found, thus manually required to load IDE drivers.

livecd root # modprobe ide-disk


livecd root # lsmod
Module Size Used by
tg3 78084 0
ide_disk 18112 0
sbp2 22664 0
ohci1394 30404 0
ieee1394 98392 2 sbp2,ohci1394
usb_storage 66880 0
ehci_hcd 26820 0

Carry on install as normal.
Remember to add support for the Adaptec AIC7902 when building the kernel. And add the Tigon3 NIC support . I've used gentoo-dev-sources Kernel AMD64 v2.6.9-r1.



Benchmarking with John the Ripper 1.6
Quick and dirty benchmark against a Sun V610 Xeon 2.8 Gentoo 2.6.5 & the SunW1100z Gentoo 2.6.9.

Johntheripper is a masked package for AMD64, so needed to bye pass keywords.

tux# vi /etc/portage/package.keywords

app-crypt/johntheripper *

tux# CFLAGS="-march=athlon64 -O6 -pipe -fomit-frame-pointer" emerge johhntheripper

Results overview from "john -t"

CPU	2.8 Xeon	AMD 150
DES	196706	720659
BSDI DES	6762	24906
MD5	4294	4741
Blowfish	425	372
Kerberos	148487	339303
NTLM	1567952	2948532

DES results are excellent, but poor for MD5 and Blowfish.

I got a virus/tojan in dnsSys.exe

Sunday 2nd October, just surfed the web and closed down Firefox, and noticed that my network activity lights are still going. Now, I'm paranoid when it comes to my computer.

Sygate firewall is installed on the W2K box, so checked its logs and c:\winnt\system32\drives\npt.sys was sending constant requests to the network (port 53 DNS). npt.sys was described as “NPF Driver – Time Extensions”, I doubled checking with Google, npt.sys looked a valid W2K program.

Out comes Ethereal network sniffer, simultaneously I logging into my IPCOP firewall and run tcpdump (filtering out ssh traffic). Both programs identify that my PC is sending out DNS requests for “urx.your-getting-rapped.co.uk”.(unresolvable)

I do not like this and reboot, just in case it will go away on its own. It doesn't!
I run free AVG AV, I download the latest virus definitions and scan the windows directory. No virus found!

The DNS requests are happening every second, so I decide to shut down all non-essential W2K services, with no result. I look next at the process table and spot “dnsSys.exe” (c:\winnt\system32\dnsSys.exe). I stop the program and YES the DNS request stop. Found you, you little bugger. But what is dnsSys.exe?

Transfered dnssys.exe to my Gentoo Linux machine and ran clamav id it as, Trojan.Mybot.gen-152.

fett apaton # md5deep dnsSys.exe
d30251e8502a7cf657e64922ea082ae9 /home/apaton/dnsSys.exe

fett apaton # /usr/bin/clamscan dnsSys.exe
dnsSys.exe: Trojan.Mybot.gen-152 FOUND

Now to clean it.
I deleted the file c:\winnt\system32\dnsSys.exe
removed registry entries in for dnsSys.exe
hkey_local_machine\software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run
hkey_local_machine\software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\RunServices


Hope this may help any one else as a Google for dnsSys.exe doesn't find much!
I now run ClamAV from www.clamwin.com and TREND.

apaton

Install of Gentoo 2004.1 on Sun V60x

A micro howto on installing Gentoo 2004.1 on the Sun Microsystems V60x. First of all follow the Installation Handbook at the Gentoo site, its an absolute must. I came along problems after booting from the Gentoo CDROM and not been able to see SCSI Controller and NIC devices.

Booted from the Gentoo 2004.1 2004.1 Universal x86 cdrom.

Using the default boot Gentoo did not find the SCSI controller and NIC devices.

Using “lspci” command I identified the Adaptec AIC-7902 SCSI controller and Intel Corp. 82546EB Gigabit Ethernet Controller (1000baseT).

livecd # lspci
0000:00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corp. E7501 Memory Controller Hub (rev 01)
0000:00:00.1 Class ff00: Intel Corp. E7000 Series Host RASUM Controller (rev 01)
0000:00:03.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corp. E7000 Series Hub Interface C PCI-to-PCI Bridge (rev 01)
0000:00:03.1 Class ff00: Intel Corp. E7000 Series Hub Interface C RASUM Controller (rev 01)
0000:00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corp. 82801CA/CAM USB (Hub #1) (rev 02)
0000:00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corp. 82801CA/CAM USB (Hub #2) (rev 02)
0000:00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corp. 82801BA/CA/DB/EB/ER Hub interface to PCI Bridge (rev 42)
0000:00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corp. 82801CA LPC Interface Controller (rev 02)
0000:00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corp. 82801CA Ultra ATA Storage Controller (rev 02)
0000:00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corp. 82801CA/CAM SMBus Controller (rev 02)
0000:01:0c.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc Rage XL (rev 27)
0000:02:1c.0 PIC: Intel Corp. 82870P2 P64H2 I/OxAPIC (rev 04)
0000:02:1d.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corp. 82870P2 P64H2 Hub PCI Bridge (rev 04)
0000:02:1e.0 PIC: Intel Corp. 82870P2 P64H2 I/OxAPIC (rev 04)
0000:02:1f.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corp. 82870P2 P64H2 Hub PCI Bridge (rev 04)
0000:03:07.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corp. 82546EB Gigabit Ethernet Controller (Copper) (rev 01)
0000:03:07.1 Ethernet controller: Intel Corp. 82546EB Gigabit Ethernet Controller (Copper) (rev 01)
0000:04:07.0 SCSI storage controller: Adaptec AIC-7902 U320 (rev 03)
0000:04:07.1 SCSI storage controller: Adaptec AIC-7902 U320 (rev 03)

I tried the following boot options from the 2004.1 Universal x86 cdrom with no success.

gentoo doscsi
gentoo doscsi noapic

So to loading the modules manually, I successfully used.

livecd # modprobe aic79xx
scsi0 : Adaptec AIC79XX PCI-X SCSI HBA DRIVER, Rev 1.3.11

aic7902: Ultra320 Wide Channel A, SCSI Id=7, PCI-X 67-100Mhz, 512 SCBs

scsi1 : Adaptec AIC79XX PCI-X SCSI HBA DRIVER, Rev 1.3.11

aic7902: Ultra320 Wide Channel B, SCSI Id=7, PCI-X 67-100Mhz, 512 SCBs

(scsi1:A:0): 320.000MB/s transfers (160.000MHz DT|IU|QAS, 16bit)
(scsi1:A:1): 320.000MB/s transfers (160.000MHz DT|IU|QAS, 16bit)
Vendor: SEAGATE Model: ST336607LSUN36G Rev: 0307
Type: Direct-Access ANSI SCSI revision: 03
scsi1:A:0:0: Tagged Queuing enabled. Depth 32
Vendor: SEAGATE Model: ST336607LSUN36G Rev: 0307
Type: Direct-Access ANSI SCSI revision: 03
scsi1:A:1:0: Tagged Queuing enabled. Depth 32
Vendor: ESG-SHV Model: SCA HSBP M18 Rev: 0.07
Type: Processor ANSI SCSI revision: 02

livecd # modprobe e1000

Now continue from the Installation Handbook.
Remember to add support for the Adaptec AIC7902 when building the kernel. And add Intel NIC support with “emerge e1000”. I've used gentoo-dev-sources Kernel SMP v2.6.5. with out problems.