Archive for August 2006
Plain sailing updating Ubuntu
My updates have gone smoothly so far although there seems to be just one issue. This issue
is about overwriting my GRUB menu. This happened during my first update but now what I do is
before the update I save a copy of my GRUB file and then after the update I just restore it
back and doing it this way saves me five minutes.
delicious
digg
Detecting rootkit with Sophos
Basically rootkits are a set of programs used to hack into a system and gain administrative-level access and once access is gained it can be used to monitor traffic and keystrokes and capture passwords and also create a backdoor into the system or the hacker's use. Anti-virus software don't normally detect rootkits which is why the Sophos tool came in handy for me.
I like the fact you get the option to scan running processes, Windows registry or local hard drives either independently or together. If you select all the three options then be sure to allow a bit of time if you have a lot of applications and files on your system. After the scan is complete the tool informs you of the suspect files and you either choose to keep them or remove them altogether. If are not so sure about the detected files and would like to know more about them then you can try and check with the Sophos website.
For the record the rootkit detection tool found nothing on my system which is good.
VMware server installation on Ubuntu
1- Howtoforge : How To Install VMware Server On Ubuntu
2- Ubuntu forums how to
One of the first steps I had to do was to increase the size of my Ubuntu partition because I wanted to allocate 8G to the virtual server. Having done that it was a question of downloading VMware server and getting the free licence code.
The installation was smooth sailing until I got the message:
None of the pre-built vmmon modules for VMware Server is suitable for your running kernel. Do you want this program to try to build the vmmon module for your system (you need to have a C compiler installed on your system)?
To get around this I had to get the headers of my install using the command:
uname -r
in the terminal and then installed the headers using:
sudo apt-get install linux-headers-2.6.15-26-386
2.6.15-26-386 is the header in my case.
After installing the headers I was then able to conclude my VMWare server installation without any more hitches.
The Ubuntu Forum article has got some useful pointers on how to install Windows XP in the virtual environment. The XP installation itself went surprisingly fast and over the next few days I will be installing some software in the virtual environment.
Sorting out Bookmarks
With the AM-DeadLink I managed to root out all the duplicate bookmarks and also removed some bookmarks that referred to sites that no longer existed for one reason or another.
One little feature that I just like is the one that downloads and updates the favicon. For those sites with favicons, when the favicons appear on the bookmark it makes it easier to identify the site especially in a folder where there are a number of bookmarks.
I quickly managed to sort out the bookmarks on Firefox, Mozilla and Opera and if I used IE
the program would have sorted out the favourites for me as well.
In search of an Ubuntu firewall
I have been trying to install a firewall and now I think I have what suits my needs. Ubuntu comes with an in-built firewall called iptables but I needed a GUI interface to be able to configure it. My first attempt was with the Firestarter firewall but for some reason when I tried to install it, it gave some errors and so I had to abandon that.
I then tried the Lokkit firewall and while this installed properly when I tried to run it came with with some text with a green foreground and I just couldn't read it and I had no choice but to close it and uninstall it.
I then decided to install guarddog and this installed properly and I think I will settle for it. I liked the idea that by default all protocols are disabled including HTTP and POP3 and therefore you can select the protocols you wish to allow. So after installing guarddog and configuring it I had to check to see that everything that I normally use still worked. I enabled logging so that once in a while I can check the log for any interesting traffic or issues.
I should mention the the setup of Apache, PHP and MySql. I used the Synaptic Manager and the default settings worked straight away and I had to change a few things like doc_root. For PHP I am using the Bluefish IDE. I wanted something similar to PHP Designer which I use in Windows and Bluefish meets my needs comfortably.
Next on the line to install is the VMware server.
