I recently tried to install Slackware 4.2 64-bit (Linux) onto a new mini PC I just bought. The new PC only supports UEFI so I had major issues getting the darn setup on the install cd to actually run. I never DID actually get the install cd to boot properly on the system, so I used an alternative. While the slack install usb key was in, I also added and loaded up an ubuntu live cd usb key. The following is what I used to run the slackware setup in Ubuntu.
#Login as root
#sudo su
#Settings
InstallDVDName=SlackDVD #This is whatever you named your slackware usb key
#/mnt will contain the new file system for running the setup
cd /mnt
#Extract the initrd.img from the slackware dvd into /mnt
cat /media/ubuntu/$InstallDVDName/isolinux/initrd.img | gzip -d | cpio -i
#Bind special linux directories into the /mnt folder
for i in proc sys dev tmp; do mount -o bind /$i ./$i; done
#Mount the cdrom folder into /mnt/cdrom
rm cdrom
mount -o bind /media/ubuntu/$InstallDVDName/ ./cdrom
#Set /mnt as our actaul (ch)root
chroot .
#Run the slackware setup
usr/lib/setup/setup
#NOTE: When installing, your package source directory is at /cdrom/slackware64
It took me days to get a Windows 7 install back up when I lost a drive with the MBR record that booted to my GPT drive. The windows booting and install processes are just REALLY finicky and temperamental. One of my largest problems was that I couldn’t find certain required files online, so the only way to acquire them was to unhook all but 1 GPT partitioned drive from the computer and install Windows to it.
Here are the files needed to boot Windows 7 x64 from a GPT drive, assuming your mother board supports EFI. The first step is creating a system partition anywhere on the drive (you may have to shrink another partition) and extract these files to that partition. This blog post has good instructions on the entire process, however, instead of using bcdboot, I recommend using “bootrec /ScanOS” followed by “bootrec /RebuildBCD”. You MAY also need a “bootrec /FixMBR”.
These files were obtained from a Windows 7 x64 Ultimate install, so it should work if your install type matches. I expect it will work for any Windows version of an x64 install.
“EFI\Microsoft\Boot\BCD” is not included because it is computer dependent and is created with the bootrec command.
“EFI\Microsoft\Boot\BCD.LOG*” are not included for obvious reasons.
Following is some C++ source code for a Windows kernel-driver service loader. It could be used to load other service types too by changing the dwServiceType flag on the CreateService call. I threw this together for another project I am currently working on. It is also used in the following post (posting soon).
It works in the following way:
It is a command line utility which takes 3 arguments:
The service name. Hereby referred to as SERVICE_NAME
The service display name. Hereby referred to as DISPLAY_NAME
The driver path (to the .sys file). Hereby referred to as DRIVER_PATH
This program (most likely) requires administrative access. There are also some caveats regarding driver code signing requirements that are thoroughly explored elsewhere.
It first checks to see if a service already exists with the given SERVICE_NAME. If it does:
If the DISPLAY_NAME matches, the service is kept as is.
If the DISPLAY_NAME does not match, the user is prompted on if they want to delete the current service. If they do not, the program exits.
If the service needs to be created (it did not already exist or was deleted), it creates the service with the given SERVICE_NAME, DISPLAY_NAME, and DRIVER_PATH. If the service is not created during this run, the DRIVER_PATH is ignored. Note: The DRIVER_PATH must be to a direct local file system file. I have found that network links and symbolic links do not work.
The service is started up:
If it is already running, the user is prompted on if they want to stop the currently running service. If they say no, the program exits.
The program then waits for a final user input on if they want to close the service before exiting the program.
If there was an error, the program reports the error, otherwise, it reports “Success”.
The program pauses at the end until the user presses any key to exit.
The program returns 0 on success, and 1 if an error occurred.
//Compiler flags
#define WIN32_LEAN_AND_MEAN //Include minimum amount of windows stuff
#ifndef _UNICODE //Everything in this script is unicode
#define _UNICODE
#endif
#include <windows.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <conio.h>
#include <memory>
//Smart pointers
typedef std::unique_ptr<WCHAR, void(*)(WCHAR*)> SmartWinAlloc;
typedef std::unique_ptr<SC_HANDLE, void(*)(SC_HANDLE*)> SmartCloseService;
void Delete_SmartWinAlloc(WCHAR *p) { if(p) LocalFree(p); }
void Delete_SmartCloseService(SC_HANDLE *h) { if(h && *h) CloseServiceHandle(*h); }
//Function declarations
WCHAR* InitDriver(int argc, WCHAR *argv[]);
WCHAR* FormatError(WCHAR* Format, ...);
SmartWinAlloc GetLastErrorStr();
BOOLEAN AskQuestion(WCHAR* Question); //Returns if user answered yes
int wmain(int argc, WCHAR *argv[])
{
//Run the init routine
WCHAR* Ret=InitDriver(argc, argv);
//If there is an error, report it, or otherwise, report success
wprintf(L"%s\n", Ret ? Ret : L"Success");
wprintf(L"%s\n", L"Press any key to exit");
_getch();
//Return if successful
return (Ret ? 1 : 0);
}
WCHAR* InitDriver(int argc, WCHAR *argv[])
{
//Confirm arguments
if(argc<4)
return FormatError(L"%s", L"3 arguments are required: Service Name, Display Name, Driver Path");
const WCHAR* Param_ServiceName=argv[1];
const WCHAR* Param_DisplayName=argv[2];
const WCHAR* Param_DriverPath =argv[3];
//Open the service manager
wprintf(L"%s\n", L"Opening the service manager");
SC_HANDLE HSCManager=OpenSCManager(nullptr, nullptr, SC_MANAGER_CREATE_SERVICE);
if(!HSCManager)
return FormatError(L"%s: %s", L"Error opening service manager", GetLastErrorStr());
SmartCloseService FreeHSCManager(&HSCManager, Delete_SmartCloseService);
//Check if the service already exists
wprintf(L"%s\n", L"Checking previously existing service state");
BOOL ServiceExists=false;
{
//Get the service name
const DWORD NameBufferSize=255;
WCHAR NameBuffer[NameBufferSize];
WCHAR *NamePointer=NameBuffer;
DWORD NamePointerSize=NameBufferSize;
std::unique_ptr<WCHAR> Buf(nullptr); //May be swapped with a real pointer later
for(INT_PTR i=0;i<2;i++)
{
//If we found the service, exit the lookup here
if(GetServiceDisplayName(HSCManager, Param_ServiceName, NamePointer, &NamePointerSize))
{
ServiceExists=true;
break;
}
//If the service does not exist, we can exit the lookup here
if(GetLastError()==ERROR_SERVICE_DOES_NOT_EXIST)
break;
//If error is not insufficient buffer size, return the error
if(GetLastError()!=ERROR_INSUFFICIENT_BUFFER)
return FormatError(L"%s: %s", L"Could not query service information", GetLastErrorStr());
//If second pass, error out
if(i==1)
return FormatError(L"%s: %s", L"Could not query service information", L"Second buffer pass failed");
//Create a buffer of appropriate size (and make sure it will later be released)
NamePointer=new WCHAR[++NamePointerSize];
std::unique_ptr<WCHAR> Buf2(NamePointer);
Buf.swap(Buf2);
}
//If the service already exists, confirm the service name matches, and if not, ask if user wants to delete the current service
if(ServiceExists)
{
wprintf(L"%s\n", L"The service already exists");
if(wcsncmp(NamePointer, Param_DisplayName, NamePointerSize+1))
{
//If the server names do not match, ask the user what to do
wprintf(L"%s:\nCurrent: %s\nRequested: %s\n", L"The service names do not match", NamePointer, Param_DisplayName);
//Make the request
if(!AskQuestion(L"Would you like to replace the service? (y/n)")) //If user does not wish to replace the service
return FormatError(L"%s", L"Cannot continue if service names do not match");
//Delete the service
wprintf(L"%s\n", L"Deleting the old service");
ServiceExists=false;
SC_HANDLE TheService=OpenService(HSCManager, Param_ServiceName, DELETE);
if(!TheService)
return FormatError(L"%s: %s", L"Could not open the service to delete it", GetLastErrorStr());
SmartCloseService CloseTheService(&TheService, Delete_SmartCloseService); //Close the service handle
if(!DeleteService(TheService))
return FormatError(L"%s: %s", L"Could not delete the service", GetLastErrorStr());
wprintf(L"%s\n", L"The service has been deleted");
}
}
}
//Create the service
SC_HANDLE TheService;
if(!ServiceExists)
{
//Confirm the driver path exists
wprintf(L"%s\n", L"Checking the driver file");
DWORD FileAttrs=GetFileAttributes(Param_DriverPath);
if(FileAttrs==INVALID_FILE_ATTRIBUTES)
return FormatError(L"%s: %s", L"Given path is invalid", GetLastErrorStr());
if(FileAttrs&FILE_ATTRIBUTE_DIRECTORY)
return FormatError(L"%s: %s", L"Given path is invalid", L"Path is a folder");
//Create the service
wprintf(L"%s\n", L"Creating the service");
TheService=CreateService(
HSCManager, Param_ServiceName, Param_DisplayName,
SERVICE_START|SERVICE_STOP,
SERVICE_KERNEL_DRIVER, SERVICE_DEMAND_START, SERVICE_ERROR_IGNORE,
Param_DriverPath, nullptr, nullptr, nullptr, nullptr, nullptr);
if(!TheService)
return FormatError(L"%s: %s", L"Could not create the service", GetLastErrorStr());
//Open the service if not creating
} else {
TheService=OpenService(HSCManager, Param_ServiceName, SERVICE_START|SERVICE_STOP);
if(!TheService)
return FormatError(L"%s: %s", L"Could not open the service", GetLastErrorStr());
}
SmartCloseService CloseTheService(&TheService, Delete_SmartCloseService); //Close the service on exit
//Start the service
wprintf(L"%s\n", L"Starting the service");
for(INT_PTR i=0;i<2;i++)
{
if(StartService(TheService, 0, nullptr))
break;
//If not "service already running" error, or user does not want to stop the current service
if(i==1 || GetLastError()!=ERROR_SERVICE_ALREADY_RUNNING || !AskQuestion(L"The service is already running. Would you like to stop it? (y/n)"))
return FormatError(L"%s: %s", L"Could not start the service", GetLastErrorStr());
//Stop the service
SERVICE_STATUS ss;
wprintf(L"%s\n", L"Stopping the current service");
if(!ControlService(TheService, SERVICE_CONTROL_STOP, &ss))
return FormatError(L"%s: %s", L"Could not stop the current service", GetLastErrorStr());
}
wprintf(L"%s\n", L"Started the service");
//Ask if the user wants to close the service
if(!AskQuestion(L"Would you like to stop the service before exit? (y/n)"))
return nullptr;
//Stop the service
SERVICE_STATUS ss;
if(!ControlService(TheService, SERVICE_CONTROL_STOP, &ss))
return FormatError(L"%s: %s", L"Could not stop the service", GetLastErrorStr());
if(ss.dwCurrentState!=SERVICE_STOP_PENDING && ss.dwCurrentState!=SERVICE_STOPPED)
return FormatError(L"%s", L"The service does not appear to be closing");
wprintf(L"%s\n", L"The service has been stopped");
//Return success
return nullptr;
}
WCHAR* FormatError(WCHAR* Format, ...)
{
static WCHAR Err[255];
va_list VAList;
va_start(VAList, Format);
vswprintf(Err, sizeof(Err)/sizeof(Err[0]), Format, VAList);
return Err;
}
SmartWinAlloc GetLastErrorStr()
{
LPWSTR MessageBuffer=nullptr;
FormatMessage(
FORMAT_MESSAGE_ALLOCATE_BUFFER|FORMAT_MESSAGE_FROM_SYSTEM|FORMAT_MESSAGE_IGNORE_INSERTS|FORMAT_MESSAGE_MAX_WIDTH_MASK,
nullptr, GetLastError(), MAKELANGID(LANG_NEUTRAL, SUBLANG_DEFAULT), (LPWSTR)&MessageBuffer, 0, nullptr);
return SmartWinAlloc(MessageBuffer, Delete_SmartWinAlloc);
}
BOOLEAN AskQuestion(WCHAR* Question)
{
//Make the request and wait for an input character
while(1)
{
//Ask the question and get the answer
wprintf(L"%s:", Question);
fflush(stdout);
char InputChar=_getch();
printf("\n");
//Check for a valid answer
if(InputChar=='n' || InputChar=='N')
return FALSE;
if(InputChar=='y' || InputChar=='Y')
return TRUE;
}
}
One of the main selling points for me for the Android platform was that, as I understood it, the system was supposed to be very “open” in nature. It would allow a programmer to create virtually any application imaginable that they wanted to for users, as long as the user’s security is maintained. This is, of course, the antithesis of Apple’s philosophy with the iPhone/iPod Touch. However, I find this much spouted openness to not be the case at all. Security permissions are way too tight across the board, especially regarding interfacing with the hardware, making many things next to impossible to accomplish. This is especially true when interfacing with the phone functionality. While a programmer is free to do what they want within the scope of their own application(s) and their GUIs, working with the rest of the system can be a major PITA, or even impossible.
Some of this functionality can be gained back with rooted (jail broken) phones, but it is not always easy (or completely safe) to get one’s phone to such a state. It was simple with the Android 2.0 platform, which I originally had on my Motorola Droid, but not so much with the v2.1 software. Version 2.1 is (currently) a major PITA to root, as it entails having to restore the phone to its original state first, losing everything on it (which can, of course, be restored manually). I also, at this point, do not consider it worth it putting in the time to build things for rooted-only phones as the market is much smaller, and I myself haven’t even bothered rooting my phone on the current Android version.
Anyone can also compile their own version of the Android platform as it is open source. This would be worth it, for example, if an organization wanted to distribute their own compilation with modifications internally. However, it doesn’t much help application programmers like myself that want to reach a wide audience. I am also under the impression that putting your own flavor of the Android platform on your phone would lose certain functionalities/things included by the image provided by the provider of the phone (usually cell phone network carriers).
I really like how they did one section of the security system, which is, allowing an application to request special permissions from the operating system. A user is informed of the requested permissions before they install an application from the market place. The main problem is, though, that so many permissions are unavailable that should be possible. Another major downside is that way too many applications request permissions that they shouldn’t be requesting. This leaves users high and dry with applications they consider critical only available if they accept things they don’t want to. For example, many programs request full internet access with no need for it. It would be great to be able to selectively turn off these permissions, but I doubt the option for this is going to happen. I’m going to do more research myself on if an application can be written to do this, but I am not going to get even the slightest hope up on this possibility.
There are at least 3 applications ATM I wanted to create but could not due to permissions:
Call recording: I have written on this previously, but this functionality is unavailable, and Google is not commenting as to why. There are also countless other applications that could use the ability to access a call’s audio. This functionality was available on some older versions of the Android platform (and there are applications out there that take advantage of this), but it seems unavailable on newer versions for 1 of 3 reasons:
Legal reasons: It’s illegal to record calls in some areas (which would be dumb to revoke accessing call audio because of this because it’s legal in so many other places, including where I live in Texas).
Technological reasons: Some phone manufacturers might have it so the audio never even makes it to the operating system (it’s kept on the phone’s radio stack).
Google reasons: They decided it was a feature they no longer wanted to support. The fact of the matter is the interface is provided by the platform to do this, but bugs have been introduced into it and it no longer seems to work.
Automated call menu: I would love to make an application that created an automated call menu on the phone, which could include leaving messages. I would personally use this so I could keep my phone on when sleeping, allowing the phone to direct the caller to either my [local or remote] voice mail or to wake me up if it’s an emergency. This is not possible due to the inability to access a call’s audio, as is explained in the above unimplementable application, but I am betting that there would be many more permissions that would make this not possible.
Global Key interception: I have somewhat solved this problem, as I will be explaining in a post most likely coming tomorrow.
I have been a proponent and user of pre-boot authentication volume (hard drive) encryption for quite a while now, but there is one security hole in it that always bugged me. This is the fact that the boot loader (the code at the beginning [sector 0] of the hard drive that starts the computer [usually loads the operating system]) is unencrypted itself and can be tampered with. Even though the encrypted data is completely safe from reading without a password, the password itself could be hijacked from someone modifying the boot loader and having it record your password when you type it. This hack could also be made hard to detect because the original boot loader could be restored from the hijacked one after the damage is done.
I decided this was a moot point for a long time, until I saw it got slashdotted. This prompted me to finally change my security model slightly so I was no longer vulnerable to this problem. The appropriate method is to always use a known secure TrueCrypt rescue disk, which contains its own boot loader, to boot the hard drive. Unfortunately, CDs are a bit cumbersome to always keep around. The workaround for me was to use a bootable USB Flash Drive instead, as I keep it on my keychain which is always with me. Getting the TrueCrypt boot loader to work from the flash drive was not easy at all due to how bootable flash drives work (they take the hard drive #0 slot in BIOS, which Windows doesn’t like). It took some GRUB4DOS magic to get things going, but it all ended up working out :-).
I removed the TrueCrypt boot loader from my hard drive so I would not be tempted to use it, and would always use the flash drive. This left the boring message of “Error loading operating system” upon booting without the flash drive, which I just couldn’t stand, so I decided to have some fun writing my own “Operating System Not Found” boot loader :-).
Video Notes:
It’s a lot harder to spot the hidden text string from the video than from the actual thing x.x;
The boot loader was ran through a virtual machine (VMWare) so I could easily record it.
Do not attempt to replace the boot loader on your hard drive without knowing what you are doing, as this is a very dangerous operation that can make your computer unbootable. Always back up your boot loader before making modifications to it so you can easily restore it. Also, when writing a boot loader, do not overwrite bytes 0x1BE-0x1FD of your boot sector as they contain important partition information.
I am still, very unfortunately, looking into the problem I talked about way back here :-( [not a lot, but it still persists]. This time I decided to try and boot the OS into a “Safe Mode” with nothing running that could hinder performance tests (like hundreds of HTTP and MySQL sessions). Fortunately, my friend whom is a Linux server admin for a tech firm was able to point me in the right direction after researching the topic was proving frustratingly fruitless.
Linux has “runlevels” it can run at, which are listed in “/etc/inittab” as follows:
# Default runlevel. The runlevels used by RHS are:
# 0 - halt (Do NOT set initdefault to this)
# 1 - Single user mode
# 2 - Multiuser, without NFS (The same as 3, if you do not have networking)
# 3 - Full multiuser mode
# 4 - unused
# 5 - X11
# 6 - reboot (Do NOT set initdefault to this)
So I needed to get into “Single user mode” to run the tests, which could be done two ways. Before I tell you how though, it is important to note that if you are trying to do something like this remotely, normal SSH/Telnet will not be accessible, so you will need either physical access to the computer, or something like a serial console connection, which can be routed through networks.
So the two ways are:
Through the “init” command. Running “init #” at the console, where # is the runlevel number, will bring you into that runlevel. However, this might not kill all currently unneeded running processes when going to a lower level, but it should get the majority of them, I believe.
Append “s” (for single user mode) to the grub configuration file (/boot/grub/grub.conf on my system) at the end of the line starting with “kernel”, then reboot. I am told appending a runlevel number may also work.
Yesterday I wrote a bit about the DNS system being rather fussy, so I thought today I’d go a bit more into how DNS works, and some good tools for problem solving in this area.
First, some technical background on the subject is required.
A network is simply a group of computers hooked together to communicate with each other. In the old days, all networking was done through physical wires (called the medium), but nowadays much of it is done through wireless connections. Wired networking is still required for the fastest communications, and is especially important for major backbones (the super highly utilized lines that connect networks together across the world).
A LAN is a local network of all computers connected together in one physical location, whether it be a single room, a building, or a city. Technically, a LAN doesn’t have to be localized in one area, but it is preferred, and we will just assume it is so for arguments sake :-).
A WAN is a Wide (Area) Network that connects multiple LANs together. This is what the Internet is.
The way one computer finds another computer on a network is through its IP Address [hereby referred to as IPs in this post only]. There are other protocols, but this (TCP/IP) is by far the most widely utilized and is the true backbone of the Internet. IPs are like a house’s address (123 Fake Street, Theoretical City, Made Up Country). To explain it in a very simplified manner (this isn’t even remotely accurate, as networking is a complicated topic, but this is a good generalization), IPs have 4 sections of numbers ranging from 0-255 (1 byte). For example, 67.45.32.28 is a (class 4) IP. Each number in that address is a broader location, so the “28” is like a street address, “32” is the street, “45” is the city, and “67” is the country. When you send a packet from your computer, it goes to your local (street) router which then passes it to the city router and so on until it reaches its destination. If you are in the same city as the final destination of the packet, then it wouldn’t have to go to the country level.
The final important part of networking (for this post) is the domain system (DNS) itself. A domain is a label for an IP Address, like calling “1600 Pennsylvania Avenue” as “The White House”. As an example, “www.castledragmire.com” just maps to my web server at “209.85.115.128” (this is the current IP, it will change if the site is ever moved to a new server).
Next is a brief lesson on how DNS itself works:
The root DNS servers (a.root-servers.net through m.root-servers.net) point to the servers that hold top-level-domain information (.com, .org., .net, .jp, etc)
Examples of these servers are as follows:
au
ns1.audns.net.au
biz
E.GTLD.biz
ca
CA04.CIRA.ca
cn
A.DNS.cn
com&net
A.GTLD-SERVERS.NET
de
Z.NIC.de
eu
U.NIC.eu
info
B9.INFO.AFILIAS-NST.ORG
org
TLD1.ULTRADNS.NET
tv
C5.NSTLD.COM
Next, these root name servers (like A.GTLD-SERVERS.NET through M.GTLD-SERVERS.NET for .com) hold two main pieces of information for ALL domains under their top-level-domain jurisdiction:
The registrar where the domain was registered
The name server(s) that are responsible for the domain
Only registrars can talk to these root servers, so you have to go through the registrar to change the name server information.
The final lowest rung in the DNS hierarchy is name servers. Name servers hold all the actual addressing information for a domain and can be run by anyone. The 2 most important (or maybe relevant is a better word...) types of DNS records are:
A: There should be many of these, each pointing a domain or subdomain (castledragmire.com, www.castledragmire.com, info.castledragmire.com, ...) to a specific IP address (version 4)
SOA: Start of Authority - There is only one of these records per domain, and it specifies authoritative information including the primary name server, the domain administrator’s email, the domain serial number, and several timeout values relating to refreshing domain information.
Now that we have all the basics down, on to the actual reason for this post. It’s really a nuisance trying to explain to people why their domain isn’t working, or is pointing to the wrong place. So here’s why it happens!
Back in the old days, it often took days for DNS propagation to happen after you made changes at your registrar or elsewhere, but fortunately, this problem is of the past. The reason for this is that ISPs and/or routers cached domain lookups and only refreshed them according to the metrics in the SOA record mentioned above, as they were supposed to. This was done for network speed reasons, as I believe older OSs might not have cached domains (wild speculation), and ISPs didn’t want to look up the address for a domain every time it was requested. Now, though, I rarely see caching on any level except at the local computer; not only on the OS level, but even some programs cache domains, like FireFox.
So the answer for when a person is getting the wrong address for a domain, and you know it is set correctly, is usually to just reboot. Clearing the DNS cache works too (for the OS level), but explaining how to do that is harder than saying “just reboot” ^_^;.
To clear the DNS cache in XP, enter the following into your “run” menu or in the command prompt: “ipconfig /flushdns”. This does not ALWAYS work, but it should work.
If your domain is still resolving to the wrong address when you ping it after your DNS cache is cleared, the next step is to see what name servers are being used for the information. You can do a whois on your domain to get the information directly form the registrar who controls the domain, but be careful where you do this as you never know what people are doing with the information. For a quick and secure whois, you can use “whois” from your linux command line, which I have patched through to a web script here. This script gives both normal and extended information, FYI.
Whois just tells you the name servers that you SHOULD be contacting, it doesn’t mean these are the ones you are asking, as the root DNS servers may not have updated the information yet. This is where our command line programs come into play.
In XP, you can use “nslookup -query=hinfo DOMAINNAME” and “nslookup -query=soa DOMAINNAME” to get a domain’s name servers, and then “nslookup NAMESERVERDOMAINNAME” to get the IP the name server points too. For example: (Important information in the following examples are bolded and in white)
Nslookup is also available in Linux, but Linux has a better tool for this, as nslookup itself doesn’t always seem to give the correct answers, for some reason. So I recommend you use dig if you have it or Linux available to you. So with dig, we just start at the root name servers and work our way up to the SOA name server to get the real information of where the domain is resolving to and why.
root@www [~]# dig @a.root-servers.net castledragmire.com
; <<>> DiG 9.2.4 <<>> @a.root-servers.net castledragmire.com
; (2 servers found)
;; global options: printcmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 5587
;; flags: qr rd; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 0, AUTHORITY: 13, ADDITIONAL: 14
;; QUESTION SECTION:
;castledragmire.com. IN A
;; AUTHORITY SECTION:
com. 172800 IN NS H.GTLD-SERVERS.NET.
com. 172800 IN NS I.GTLD-SERVERS.NET.
com. 172800 IN NS J.GTLD-SERVERS.NET.
com. 172800 IN NS K.GTLD-SERVERS.NET.
com. 172800 IN NS L.GTLD-SERVERS.NET.
com. 172800 IN NS M.GTLD-SERVERS.NET.
com. 172800 IN NS A.GTLD-SERVERS.NET.
com. 172800 IN NS B.GTLD-SERVERS.NET.
com. 172800 IN NS C.GTLD-SERVERS.NET.
com. 172800 IN NS D.GTLD-SERVERS.NET.
com. 172800 IN NS E.GTLD-SERVERS.NET.
com. 172800 IN NS F.GTLD-SERVERS.NET.
com. 172800 IN NS G.GTLD-SERVERS.NET.
;; ADDITIONAL SECTION:
A.GTLD-SERVERS.NET. 172800 IN A 192.5.6.30
A.GTLD-SERVERS.NET. 172800 IN AAAA 2001:503:a83e::2:30
B.GTLD-SERVERS.NET. 172800 IN A 192.33.14.30
B.GTLD-SERVERS.NET. 172800 IN AAAA 2001:503:231d::2:30
C.GTLD-SERVERS.NET. 172800 IN A 192.26.92.30
D.GTLD-SERVERS.NET. 172800 IN A 192.31.80.30
E.GTLD-SERVERS.NET. 172800 IN A 192.12.94.30
F.GTLD-SERVERS.NET. 172800 IN A 192.35.51.30
G.GTLD-SERVERS.NET. 172800 IN A 192.42.93.30
H.GTLD-SERVERS.NET. 172800 IN A 192.54.112.30
I.GTLD-SERVERS.NET. 172800 IN A 192.43.172.30
J.GTLD-SERVERS.NET. 172800 IN A 192.48.79.30
K.GTLD-SERVERS.NET. 172800 IN A 192.52.178.30
L.GTLD-SERVERS.NET. 172800 IN A 192.41.162.30
;; Query time: 240 msec
;; SERVER: 198.41.0.4#53(198.41.0.4)
;; WHEN: Sat Aug 23 04:15:28 2008
;; MSG SIZE rcvd: 508
root@www [~]# dig @a.gtld-servers.net castledragmire.com
; <<>> DiG 9.2.4 <<>> @a.gtld-servers.net castledragmire.com
; (2 servers found)
;; global options: printcmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 35586
;; flags: qr rd; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 0, AUTHORITY: 2, ADDITIONAL: 2
;; QUESTION SECTION:
;castledragmire.com. IN A
;; AUTHORITY SECTION:
castledragmire.com. 172800 IN NS ns3.deltaarc.com.
castledragmire.com. 172800 IN NS ns4.deltaarc.com.
;; ADDITIONAL SECTION:
ns3.deltaarc.com. 172800 IN A 216.127.92.71
ns4.deltaarc.com. 172800 IN A 209.85.115.181
;; Query time: 58 msec
;; SERVER: 192.5.6.30#53(192.5.6.30)
;; WHEN: Sat Aug 23 04:15:42 2008
;; MSG SIZE rcvd: 113
root@www [~]# dig @ns3.deltaarc.com castledragmire.com
; <<>> DiG 9.2.4 <<>> @ns3.deltaarc.com castledragmire.com
; (1 server found)
;; global options: printcmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 26198
;; flags: qr aa rd; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 1, AUTHORITY: 2, ADDITIONAL: 0
;; QUESTION SECTION:
;castledragmire.com. IN A
;; ANSWER SECTION:
castledragmire.com. 14400 IN A 209.85.115.128
;; AUTHORITY SECTION:
castledragmire.com. 14400 IN NS ns4.deltaarc.com.
castledragmire.com. 14400 IN NS ns3.deltaarc.com.
;; Query time: 1 msec
;; SERVER: 216.127.92.71#53(216.127.92.71)
;; WHEN: Sat Aug 23 04:15:52 2008
;; MSG SIZE rcvd: 97
Linux also has the “host” command, but I prefer and recommend “dig”.
And that’s how you diagnose DNS problems! :-). For reference, two common DNS configuration problems are not having your SOA and NS records properly set for the domain on your name server.
All of the Windows lines of OSs from XP through Windows Server 2003 (or 2005 or 2007?) are, to my knowledge and IMO, basically the exact same thing, with just some minor tweaks and extra software for the more expensive versions. My version of XP Professional even comes with IIS (Internet Information Services - Microsoft’s web/ftp/mail server suite). One of my favorite XP hacks adds on a desperately needed functionality found only in Windows Server editions, which is allowing multiple user sessions on a machine at once. This basically means allowing multiple people to log onto a machine at the same time through Remote Desktop (Microsoft’s internal Windows VNC client). I find the most useful function by far of this is the “Remote Control” feature, which allows a second logged in user to see exactly what is on the screen of another session, and if permissions are given, to take control of it. This is perfect for those people whom you often have to trouble shoot computer problems for, eliminating the need for a trip to their location or 3rd party software to view their computer.
This hack requires a few registry modifications, a group policy modification, and a DLL replacement. The DLL replacement was provided by Microsoft in early versions of XPSP2 when they were tinkering with allowing this feature in XP. I found the information for all this here a number of years ago and it has provided itself invaluable since. Unfortunately, this does not work on XP Home edition, just XP Professional. I tried adapting it once and wasted a lot of time :-\. The following is the text from where I gotthis hack.
Concurrent Remote Desktop Sessions in Windows XP SP2
I mentioned before that Windows XP does not allow concurrent sessions for its Remote Desktop feature. What this means is that if a user is logged on at the local console, a remote user has to kick him off (and ironically, this can be done even without his permission) before starting work on the box. This is irritating and removes much of the productivity that Remote Desktop brings to Windows. Read on to learn how to remove that limitation in Windows XP SP2
A much touted feature in SP2 (Service Pack 2) since then removed was the ability to do just this, have a user logged on locally while another connects to the terminal remotely. Microsoft however removed the feature in the final build. The reason probably is that the EULA (End User License Agreement) allows only a single user to use a computer at a time. This is (IMHO) a silly reason to curtail Remote Desktop’s functionality, so we’ll have a workaround.
Microsoft did try out the feature in earlier builds of Service Pack 2 and it is this that we’re going to exploit here. We’re going to replace termsrv.dll (The Terminal Server) with one from an earlier build (2055).
To get Concurrent Sessions in Remote Desktop working, follow the steps below exactly:
Download the termsrv.zip file and extract it somewhere.
Reboot into Safe Mode. This is necessary to remove Windows File Protection. [Dakusan: I use unlocker for this, which I install on all my machines as it always proves itself useful, and then usually have to do a “shutdown -a” from command line when XP notices the DLL changed.]
Copy the termsrv.dll in the zip to %windir%\System32 and %windir%\ServicePackFiles\i386. If the second folder doesn’t exist, don’t copy it there. Delete termsrv.dll from the dllcache folder: %windir%\system32\dllcache
Merge the contents of Concurrent Sessions SP2.reg file into the registry. [Dakusan: Just run the .reg file and tell XP to allow the action.]
Make sure Fast User Switching is turned on. Go Control Panel -> User Accounts -> Change the way users log on or off and turn on Fast User Switching.
Open up the Group Policy Editor: Start Menu > Run > ‘gpedit.msc’. Navigate to Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Terminal Services. Enable ‘Limit Number of Connections’ and set the number of connections to 3 (or more). This enables you to have more than one person remotely logged on.
Now reboot back into normal Windows and try out whether Concurrent Sessions in Remote Desktop works. It should!
If anything goes wrong, the termsrv_sp2.dll is the original file you replaced. Just rename it to termsrv.dll, reboot into safe mode and copy it back.
The termsrv.dl_ file is provided in the zip is for you slipstreamers out there. Just replace that file with the corresponding file in the Windows installation disks.
I have included an old copy of the above web page, from when I first started distributing this, with the information in the hack’s zip file I provide.
If you want to Remote Control another session, I think the user needs to be part of the “Administrators” group, and don’t forget to add any users that you want to be able to remotely log on to the “Remote Desktop Users” group.
This is all actually part of an “Enhanced Windows XP Install” document I made years ago that I never ended up releasing because I hadn’t finished cleaning it up. :-\ One of these days I’ll get it up here. Some of the information pertaining to this hack from that document is as follows:
Any computer techy out there that has tried to troubleshoot over the phone knows how much of a problem/pain in the anatomy it is, and for this reason, I install this hack which makes it painless to automatically connect to a users computer through remote desktop, which can then be remotely viewed or controlled via their displayed console session.
I often use this hack myself when I am running computers without keyboards/mice, like my entertainment computer. For a permanent solution for something like this though, I recommend a KM (Keyboard/Mouse) solution like synergy, which allows manipulating one computer via a keyboard and mouse on another.
Your user account password must also not be blank. Blank passwords often cause problems with remote services.
The security risk for this is a port is opened for someone to connect to like telnet or SSH on Unix, which is a minimal risk unless someone has your username+password.
You have to have a second username to log into, which can be done under Control Panel > User Accounts, or Control panel > Administrative Tools > Computer Management > System Tools > Local users and Groups.
If you want the second user to be able to log in remotely, make sure to add them under Control Panel > System > Remote > Select Remote users, and also check “allow users to connect remotely to this computer”.
You also need to know the IP address of the user’s computer you want to connect to, and unfortunately, they are not always static. If you run into this, you may want to use a DDNS service like mine.
You may also run into the unfortunate circumstance of NAT/Firewalled networks, which is beyond the scope of this document. Long story short, you need to open up port 3389 in the firewall and forward it through the router/NAT (this is the port for both remote desktop and remote assistance).
You may also want to change the port number to something else so a port scanner will not pick it up. To connect to a different port, on the client computer, in remote desktop, you connect to COMPUTERIP:PORT like www.mycomputer.com:5050.
Registry Key: HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\TerminalServer\WinStations\RDP-Tcp\PortNumber - Set as your new port number
This requires a reboot to work.
Make sure you don’t provide a port that’s already used on the computer, and you probably shouldn’t make it a standard port either [21 [ftp], 25 [smtp], 80 [http], etc])
You can also log into their current console session by going to the task manager (ctrl+shift+esc in full screen, or right click taskbar and go to “task manager”) > Users > Right click username > Remote control
This will ask the user at the computer if they want to accept this. To have it NOT ask them, do the following:
Start > Run > gpedit.msc [enter] > computer configuration > administrative templates > windows components > terminal services
Double click the option “Sets rules for remote control of terminal services user sessions”
Enable it, and for the “Options” setting, set “Full control without users permission”
If the ability for you to access a client’s computer without their immediate permission or knowledge is too “dangerous” for their taste, you may suggest/use Remote Assistance, which is more troublesome, but much more “secure” sounding.
I recently had to install Windows 98 through VMWare for some quick tests, and there were a few minor problems after the install that needed to be resolved. I thought I’d share them here if anyone ever needed them.
First, VMWare Tools needs to be installed to get video and some other drivers working.
Second, Windows 98 was really before the time when network cards were used to connect to the internet, as broadband technology was rare and modems were the commonplace solution, so it doesn’t make this process easy. To connect through your VMWARE bridge or NAT to the Internet (to use IE - FireFox [newer versions of?] doesn’t work on Windows 98), the following must be done through the MSN Connection Wizard (this is mostly from memory).
Open "Connect to the internet" from the desktop
Click Next
Select Modem Manually [next]
Select any of the normal modems in the list on the right, like a generic 56,000 modem [OK]
Click Next
Click lan/manual
Connect using my local area network (LAN) [next]
Click Next
"No" to email [next]
Click Finish
Lastly, the default sound driver does not work, so you need to do the following [Information found here by googling]
First, to find out more about any bash command, use
man COMMAND
Now, a primer on the three most useful bash commands: (IMO) find:
Find will search through a directory and its subdirectories for objects (files, directories, links, etc) satisfying its parameters.
Parameters are written like a math query, with parenthesis for order of operations (make sure to escape them with a “\”!), -a for boolean “and”, -o for boolean “or”, and ! for “not”. If neither -a or -o is specified, -a is assumed.
For example, to find all files that contain “conf” but do not contain “.bak” as the extension, OR are greater than 5MB:
-maxdepth & -mindepth: only look through certain levels of subdirectories
-name: name of the object (-iname for case insensitive)
-regex: name of object matches regular expression
-size: size of object
-type: type of object (block special, character special, directory, named pipe, regular file, symbolic link, socket, etc)
-user & -group: object is owned by user/group
-exec: exec a command on found objects
-print0: output each object separated by a null terminator (great so other programs don’t get confused from white space characters)
-printf: output specified information on each found object (see man file)
For any number operations, use:
+n
for greater than n
-n
for less than n
n
for exactly than n
For a complete reference, see your find’s man page.
xargs:
xargs passes piped arguments to another command as trailing arguments.
For example, to list information on all files in a directory greater than 1MB: (Note this will not work with paths with spaces in them, use “find -print0” and “xargs -0” to fix this)
find -size +1024k | xargs ls -l
Some useful parameters include:
-0: piped arguments are separated by null terminators
-n: max arguments passed to each command
-i: replaces “{}” with the piped argument(s)
So, for example, if you had 2 mirrored directories, and wanted to sync their modification timestamps:
GREP is used to search through data for plain text, regular expression, or other pattern matches. You can use it to search through both pipes and files.
For example, to get your number of CPUs and their speeds:
cat /proc/cpuinfo | grep MHz
Some useful parameters include:
-E: use extended regular expressions
-P: use perl regular expression
-l: output files with at least one match (-L for no matches)
-o: show only the matching part of the line
-r: recursively search through directories
-v: invert to only output non-matching lines
-Z: separates matches with null terminator
So, for example, to list all files under your current directory that contain “foo1”, “foo2”, or “bar”, you would use:
grep -rlE "foo(1|2)|bar"
For a complete reference, see your grep’s man page.
And now some useful commands and scripts: List size of subdirectories:
du --max-depth=1
The --max-depth parameter specifies how many sub levels to list.
-h can be added for more human readable sizes.
List number of files in each subdirectory*:
#!/bin/bash
export IFS=$'\n' #Forces only newlines to be considered argument separators
for dir in `find -type d -maxdepth 1`
do
a=`find $dir -type f | wc -l`;
if [ $a != "0" ]
then
echo $dir $a
fi
done
and to sort those results
SCRIPTNAME | sort -n -k2
List number of different file extensions in current directory and subdirectories:
If you want to make pre-edit backups, include an extension after “-i” like “-i.orig”
Perform operations in directories with too many files to pass as arguments: (in this example, remove all files from a directory 100 at a time instead of using “rm -f *”)
find -type f | xargs -n100 rm -f
Force kill all processes containing a string:
killall -9 STRING
Transfer MySQL databases between servers: (Works in Windows too)
Some lesser known commands that are useful: screen: This opens up a virtual console session that can be disconnected and reconnected from without stopping the session. This is great when connecting to console through SSH so you don’t lose your progress if disconnected. htop: An updated version of top, which is a process information viewer. iotop: A process I/O (input/output - hard drive access) information viewer. Requires Python ? 2.5 and I/O accounting support compiled into the Linux kernel. dig: Domain information retrieval. See “Diagnosing DNS Problems” Post for more information.
More to come later...
*Anything staring with “#!/bin/bash” is intended to be put into a script.
So I just plopped in an old Win98 CD (in this case SP2) to grab the QBasic files off of it for the Languages and Libraries page. I started browsing through the CD, and thought to myself “OMG... win98!”, heh. So I installed it, and wow, am I ever in super nostalgia mode.
Things I now take for granted that were major Pains in the pre-XP days (well, pre NT kernel....):
Getting non-modem LAN connections on the internet: Win98 expected people to connect to the internet via phone modems, as broadband was still unheard of then. The “Windows Connection Wizard” was a pain in the butt and you had to know just the right place to go to get it to recognize a NIC as a valid connection to the internet.
Shutting down windows improperly: If you failed to turn off the computer through the proper “Shut Down” method, the FAT file systems did not have certain type of safe-guards that NTFS does, and the computer was be forced to do a ScanDisk on startup. A ScanDisk is also run the first time windows starts after install, and seeing this old piece of software really gave me a warm fuzzy feeling... or was it a feeling of utter nausea?
RAM allocation: The DOS-line-kernel of windows never properly kept track of memory from applications, and memory leaks in applications STAYED memory leaks after the program shut down, so RAM could very quickly get eaten up. Programs called “RAM Scrubbers” were around to fix these detected memory leaks and free them.
Themes: Most people don’t know that windows themes actually originated with Microsoft Plus! for Windows 95 (I could have sworn it was originally called Windows Plus!... need to find my original CD) software package, which also first introduced the ever-popular and addicting Space Cadet Pinball (check the games folder that comes installed in XP). Most Plus! options were usually integrated straight into later Windows versions or updates. I have included below all the Themes that came with Windows 98 SE for nostalgic value :-). Enjoy!
Speaking of games, it seems 98SE also included FreeCell... I wasn’t aware it was that old. I think the “Best of Windows Entertainment Pack” (with “Chips Challenge”, “Golf”, “Rodent’s Revenge”, “Tetris”, “SkiFree”, and some other fun games) also originally came on the Plus! CDs, but am not sure of this. I believe the Best Pack also came with the CD packs that came with new computer from Packard Bell and maybe some other manufacturer for like 2 or 3 years in the mid 90s that also included the first game of one of my most favorite game series ever, Journey Man, as well as Microsoft Encarta, Britannica, a Cook Book CD and a Do-It-Yourself Book CD. Good times!!!
The first question asked during install was “You have a drive over 512mb in size, would you like to enable large disk support?”
All the 3d screensavers were OpenGL. Though DirectX was out at that point, it was still in a state of sheer-crappiness so Microsoft still used OpenGL, which it wouldn’t be caught dead using nowadays ^_^.
During install, there were lots of messages touting the operating systems features, including “By converging real-time 2d and 3d graphics ... *MMX is a trademark of Intel Corporation”. It just made me smile knowing that MMX was once so new Microsoft had to put a trademark warning like that.
Internet Explorer (5.0) started up at MSN.com already... which immediately crashed the browser! hehe
The windows update website informed me as follows: “Important: End of Support for Windows 98 and Windows ME
Effective July 11, 2006, support for Windows 98, Windows 98 Second Edition and Windows ME (and their related components) will end. Updates for Windows 98 and Windows ME will be limited to those updates that currently appear on the Windows Update website.”
Things that I miss:
The emotion behind the OS. For some reason, Windows 98 and 95 always had... a warmness to them that 2K/XP never had. I’m not sure why... but the newer operating systems always had such a stiff and corporate feeling to them.
Winipcfg! Now I am forced to go to the darn command prompt to do it via ipconfig (which was available then also), which is a pain when you have too many NICs and it scrolls the console window or when trying to help someone get their IP Address or MAC address.
Restart in MS-DOS mode! Man do I ever miss that. Especially for playing original DOOM. Good ’ol 640k ^_^. The 3.x/95/98 kernels were really based upon DOS so it was valid to have a DOS only mode, but there’s nothing stopping them from including it on newer computers... well, except that DOS didn’t support NTFS, I guess... so it would be confusing. Ah well.
FAST load time. If I recall, Win98 always loaded bounds faster than XP... probably has to do with drivers.
