Monday, January 28, 2008

Mission Five and Sleepy

Hack This Site really rocks! It challenges you to think. Be resourceful and you'll find tips on how to go about the missions.

It's nine minutes to midnight and I'm sleepy. It was fun doing the first five basic missions in one sitting. I'd still give it a go if my eyes weren't trying to shut.

It was really fun! So what are you waiting for? Try it! If you can, go contribute or advertise!

Now this is an online "game" that I can actually and would really like to play.

Security Forum

Here's a security forum that you might like to join:

http://www.governmentsecurity.org/forum/index.php

For related articles and resources, please check this out:

http://www.governmentsecurity.org/

Happy reading!

Hacking Fun!

Okay, okay, so I used the H word. Anyway, here's a training site for hackers that's free, safe, and legal:

http://www.hackthissite.org/

What you do with what you learn here is up to you. Don't blame me if you get into trouble for your wrongdoing.

Be good.

Bypass Compulsory Registration

If you get annoyed by yet another Web site that forces you to login or register,
here's a quick fix:

http://www.bugmenot.com/

Have fun!

Friday, January 25, 2008

Scripting Guides

My interest in Linux was sparked by a very attractive female colleague named Eleanor sometime in 1997, when she casually mentioned that her friend was into it. We had Internet access at the workplace because it was essential to our work, so I lost no time searching AltaVista and Lycos for information about the operating system.

I downloaded a bunch of HOW-TOs, printed them out, and proceeded to read at a leisurely pace. I'd read a few pages each time, usually as a replacement for Reader's Digest, while performing my daily excretory routine (in the bathroom, of course). Needless to say, ASCII file printouts done with a dot matrix Epson aren't exactly the prettiest sight to behold, but my interest convinced me that I was looking at a work of art.

Now, about decade and a year later, Linux has become so user friendly that installation is peanuts compared to the way it was done back then. I remember installing my first Slackware distro on a native ext2 partition while clutching continuous form printouts of the installation guide.

Playing with Linux has been an on-and-off thing for me because most of my applications were Microsoft based, and most of the apps I had for Linux were meant for scanning, cracking, and security in general. Well, that's the way it was, so it seemed like a natural progression for a Linux enthusiast to learn networking and the like. I really don't want to use the word "hacking" because it doesn't sound nice to certain ears; and besides, I've somehow matured to the point that using that word makes me feel like I've entered my second childhood stage.

So, Linux introduced me to the world of scripting. Well, I do know a bit, but I do check out resources once in a while to bring me closer to proficiency. Fortunately and much to my delight, a forum mainstay posted some links to help members with scripting.

Without further ado, here are three guides that I'd like to share with you:
  1. http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Bash-Prog-Intro-HOWTO.html
  2. http://tldp.org/LDP/abs/html/
  3. http://www.usd.edu/~sweidner/lsst/
It's really handy to know something about scripting. Who knows? Maybe someone will ask you to run a script that was meant to screw up your system. It pays to know what you are doing.

Thursday, January 24, 2008

WTF? Low on Disk Space?

It was unbelievable. Windows XP told me that I was running out of disk space. True enough, the drive showed that it had a couple hundred thousand bytes left, so I went to check each of the folders in my system partition. I used to have difficulty filling up my 10 Gb partition because of my mean-and-lean philosophy. Now this. I found out that

C:\Documents and Settings\xxx\Application Data\NCH Swift Sound\Scribe\Current

used up 338 Mb of my drive space but was cleared on exit, and

C:\Documents and Settings\xxx\Application Data\NCH Swift Sound\Scribe\Done

had accumulated all the previous temporary files and by now had used up 5.13 Gb. WTF?

Apparently, Express Scribe uses *.ra and other audio files to create temporary *.wav, *.txt, and *.dat files. So this means that it bloated the 7.08 Mb files to 300+ Mb. When I clicked the Done icon, the said files were moved to the Done directory. Those files stay there until you delete them. Well, it's like having a backup, but if you don't know this, you'll find yourself without any disk space left.

Sunday, January 20, 2008

Better Torrent Share Ratios


After leaving my computer online overnight to seed a number of BitTorrent downloads, I couldn't believe it. I was staring at my pathetic share ratio of 0.7-something through my Azureus client.

Of course I wanted to seed rather than leech. I don't want to cheat the system. It's only fair to give back what you took. So where's the problem?

In my humble opinion, there are files that more people are willing to seed than there are people who are willing to download. So what does it do? It gives you an unfavorable share ratio and it makes you want to leave your computer online forever.

If I could, I would, but considering the high cost of electricity here (which is about one-fourth of the average employee's take-home pay), I'd rather use ratio cheating software. I've found two such programs, but I'm not keen on trying them out, as I'm not really that desperate to up my share ratio. I can live without those downloads anyway. Besides, my sons would rather buy a DVD for 50 pesos than go through all the trouble.

Bram Cohen, inventor of the BitTorrent protocol, has a suggestion that may very well be the right way to calculate share ratios.

Saturday, January 19, 2008

Damn Small Linux: Made Me Say, "Damn It!"

It's not as bad as my title suggests. Damn Small Linux (DSL) is, in fact, pretty good. I guess it works pretty well on other people's systems -- but not mine.

I have this 250Mb flash drive that's actually a non-functional MP3 player that died out on me. Luckily, it managed to retain its memory storage capability, so I decided to try installing dsl-4.2.4, which I got from www.damnsmalllinux.org's download page here using instructions I found here.

I followed directions to the letter, rebooted, failed a couple of times, then voila! It worked! By the way, I had to format my flash drive with "format h: /fs:fat" rather than use the /fs:fat32 switch because I couldn't boot with the latter option on my previous attempts.

I was all smiles until my problems began:
  • I configured our home LAN to use static IP addresses. DSL is configured by default to run with DHCP, so I had to reconfigure it. For some reason, the configuration was recognized only after I changed my IP address from 192.168.1.100 to 192.168.1.104. It took like 10 attempts. Maybe I should've rebooted, but it suddenly worked, and I don't know how it happened. I just found myself being able to surf the net. It would've been better if, at the beginning, I was given a choice to configure my Internet connection. I read later on that there were cheatcodes to do that.
  • The default window manager looked fine except that, because the only theme installed was mostly black and I usually set my monitor's brightness really low to reduce eye strain, it felt like I was trying to find my way in the dark. I finally installed a few desktop backgrounds and JWM themes, and then switched to FluxBox, which brought me back to the days when I used BlackBox with my Slackware distro. Doing all that tweaking gave me this really cool feeling, knowing that I was running a Linux distro from that tiny device in front of me.
  • After restarting, I found out that I could no longer boot into DSL, maybe because:
  1. I unchecked the option to back up. Because of the terse info in the message box, I didn't know what was being backed up. Well, I guess I didn't read enough, so it could've been my fault. I thought it meant backing up my session, so I thought that if I didn't do that, nothing bad would happen because I've tried not backing up my session in various Linux distros and nothing went wrong; I could still boot into the system.
  2. I installed various themes and desktop backgrounds. Maybe it could've filled my flash drive.
  3. I reconfigured my IP address, so maybe DSL tried to look for the configuration files that I failed to save.
  4. I could've overwritten or deleted the default configuration files.
  5. I played around with the swap file, creating a 60Mb and then later changing it to 128Mb. The window just closed, and when I went back to it, I saw that my swap file was 74Mb.
Well, I tried installing DSL to my flash drive several times, but I was able to boot only on two occasions; I was never able to reboot back into it. The first time, I got a boot error message, and the second time, the screen scrolled endlessly and rapidly with error messages I couldn't quite read.

I installed DSL for the third time just about an hour ago, and it refused to boot. I don't know what went wrong. Is it because flash drives aren't standard?

I sure would like to try burning a CD or installing from Linux, but I guess I'll do that some other time. Well, it was a short-live but fun experience that was frustrating for the most part. Based on my experience, it seems like DSL doesn't want me to go back. It would've been better if everything was intuitive and a simple reboot would bring me back to the system.

Oh, well, maybe it's better to buy their bootable USB drives. Yes, it's pre-installed with DSL, so you won't go through the difficulties I did. It's also 2 Gig and USB 2.0!

Friday, January 18, 2008

Yipee! Wubi!


I don't understand why I always end up with a Linux distro installed in my machine. The last time I said goodbye to Feisty was when my son asked if he could get back his hard drive. You see, I had to borrow his when my drive failed after about 3+ years of continuous use and frequent formatting. After I'd gotten a replacement, I decided to keep my son's drive and put it to good use since it had been dumped for one with 10x more capacity. Anyway, that Feisty installation, replete with bells and whistles to my satisfaction, was pretty much up to date before the drive reunited with its owner. So I finally said goodbye, trying to convince myself I don't need Linux anyway.

Then I stumbled upon Wubi.
Wubi is an unofficial Ubuntu installer for Windows users that will bring you into the Linux world with a single click. Wubi allows you to install and uninstall Ubuntu as any other application. If you heard about Linux and Ubuntu, if you wanted to try them but you were afraid, this is for you.
Before anything else, here's the WubiGuide. Now back to where I was.

I installed it, and now I have a triple-boot setup: XP for work, XP for music, and Ubuntu. I could've repartitioned my drive, but I really wanted to try Wubi because the skeptic in me always seems to surface with anything new. Yes, Wubi is the easiest way to Linux indeed.

This is the way to go for newbies, and if you're one, I must caution you to learn the command-line interface and, most importantly, the commands. I read in a forum about pranksters giving advice to unsuspecting users, telling them to type in cryptic text that will delete files, create files, or some other action that will cause a hard drive crash. Pardon my sick sense of humor, but I found such ruse somewhat amusing. Well, it may not be as bad as it seems, especially if you don't have important data stored in your drive, but it's still a waste of time for you to start from ground up.

The installation itself doesn't take too much time; it's the *.iso download that makes you wait. Well, you could get lucky if you get connected to a fast server like I did. From what I experienced, the .fr sites were slow. I got 100+ Kbps from my connection to a *.de (yeah!), and it took me about two to three hours to install Feisty.

There's an alternative to this. You could first download the *.iso, place it in the same directory as the Wubi installer, and click away. Now, if you see that the installer wants to connect to a server, then your *.iso is corrupted. I experienced this with the Feisty *.iso I downloaded from a torrent site. So, be careful where you download your *.iso from.

I remember the time when I had DosLinux; I eventually created a native Linux partition. With Wubi, I don't really feel a pronounced sluggishness in my installation, but I guess I'm going for a dedicated partition in the not-so-distant future with LVPM. I don't know. Maybe it's just me.

At any rate, it won't be long before many of you out there will be making Wubi. Pardon the pun --- or the malapropism -- whatever.