I Got A Virus In Ubuntu Linux

I was using Ubuntu Gutsy to surf the internet when suddenly this pop up appeared.

















Oh My Gawd! I got me a virus because the XP Antivirus Online Scanner said so.
It says I have several trojans including a backdoor password stealing trojan and several serious spyware components. They are in my System32 folder.
It says to click on the Remove All button to clean up my system but when I click on it, nothing happens!
What am I gonna do!??????

Oh! Wait! I said I was using Ubuntu, not XPee.
I don't have a System32 folder. I can't execute exe files natively and because of how Linux configures user accounts, crap like this can't install itself without my permission and a password.

Ah, the stuff I don't miss using Linux.
No spyware, virus, trojans, hijackers or all that other crap that comes with Windowz OS's.

But what really scares me is that the above pop up looks like an official Windowz security alert window and that poor sap that believes it is real is gonna be royally screwed.
He won't be ''Fixing his system. He will be installing a form of the Winfixer virus.

I've had my bouts with this scourge of the internet.
When it first appeared the antivirus companies were about 3 days behind in releasing new database signatures to prevent being infected with this crap.
I lost over 100 Gigs of files because it downloaded another previously unknown virus which permanently infected many of my files.

I still get the occasional repair call for this crap.
Usually it is because the kids were on the internet, go to an infected web page or to a web page that is using an infected ad server and see the pop up.
They get scared thinking they did something that infected the computer.
They don't want their parents to get mad so they click on it thinking it will be fixed and the parents will be none the wiser.

Seems that is how much of this stuff spreads. Either by ignorance, fear or gullibility.
The fact that it looks like an official Windowz security window leads people to believe it is legit.

My all time favorite in terms of cleverness was the SULFNBK.EXE email scam.
It told users to check their system for that file. If they had it they needed to delete it because it was a virus. It wasn't a virus. It was a legit Windowz file.
People deleted it and were no longer able to use long file names.

A few days later another email appeared with a ''fix'
That fix was a virus.
Complete misdirection and confusion were used to distribute that virus.

So when you are tired of fighting and wasting time with spyware and viruses do yourself a favor and change over to Linux.
You will never regret it!

TaZMAn

Create A Custom Linux Distro With NimbleX

I usually don't promote a distro especially when it's based on a non-Debian platform.
But NimbleX caught my attention for numerous reasons.
Based on Slackware, it seems to have a lot going for it.
RC 2008 has just been released and waiting on you to download and install it.
For those of you that don't want to change from what you are using you can install this on a virtual system such as Virtual Box or VmWare. Or you can run it Live or over a network.

What caught my attention was the multiple versions that are available.
You have the RC 2008 version that weighs in at a whopping 200 Megs.
Then there is the Sub-100 which is a shade under 100 megs and the NimbleX 69Meg edition.
The Sub-100 retains plenty of features for the average user whereas the 69Meg edition does not support multimedia or GTK. I will only recommend the 69Meg version for the true minimalist.

But it gets better! On the home page is a link to make your own custom version.
Right now it is based on the older 2007 version but once the final version of 2008 is released the customized version will also be 2008.

Did I mention install options? No? Well hold on because the author has given us plenty of choices.
First off you can run it as a live Cd. If you want to install it, there is an installer that allows you to install it to a hard drive, USB flash drive or even run or install it over a network.

System requirements are very minimal so this would be a great candidate for an older system. The requirements to use a GUI version are as follows;
Minimum Requirements.... CPU P2, Ram 128 MB
Recommended....... CPU P3, Ram 512 MB

I applaud the author for all the hard work he has put into this project.
Not only did he bring together a very functional and stable system, he packed it into not one but 3 different sized versions plus a customizable Cd to suit your personal taste.

That is a very refreshing view of trying to reach all types of users.
We could use a bit more of this.

So if your interested in checking it out or trying it go to his web site found here;

NimbleX Linux



And while your at it, see about throwing a few bucks his way.
He is having a fund raising drive to help him pay for his web hosting bill.
It's expensive to have the amount of bandwidth needed to provide users with high speed downloads.

Enjoy this refreshing compact Linux distro.

TaZMAn

Organic Foods Price Gouging At Giant Markets

I know this isn't Linux related but as my blog says....My opinions. And this is more then an opinion.
It's a full blown rant and finger pointing post against the Giant Food Markets Corporation.

They are gouging prices on organic foods. And they are freakin' blatant!!!
They SUX!!!!

Here's the scenario.
Went shopping. Needed a bottle of maple syrup. No! Not Aunt Jo' Mammy. The real stuff. Pure syrup from the tree.

So I'm in the aisle where the syrups are. My wife says the only bottle they have is the 12 ounce bottle and it's $7.95
She doesn't want that large of a bottle or wants to pay that much.

I tell her I saw that same brand in the organic food aisle because it is a pure, chemical free food.
So I take a trip down to the organic aisle and look for the maple syrup I remember seeing earlier.

There it is! And it's the smaller 8 ounce bottle.
Let's see what the price is.....
WHAT!!!
No F#%@in' way!
$8.95 for that 8 ounce bottle yet that same syrup made by the same producer, in the same glass bottle with the same label except for contents size is a buck less and you get 4 more ounces or 50% more because it's not in the organic aisle!!!

So that's the big scam game that the Giant Food Stores are playing. And I'm sure it's happening at other stores also.
But I caught Giant Food Market red handed.
Say organic and we can raise the price through the roof.
Gouge the consumer for trying to eat healthy.
Scam him for all we can. Rake him over the coals because he doesn't want to eat that pesticide laden, hormone junkie, antibiotic drug addicted cow you try passing off as meat.

Giant Food Market. You should be publicly tarred, feathered and flogged.

And NO!
I will not remove this post no matter how much your liars er, I mean lawyers throw out their meaningless threats.

It's called free speech with an opinion.
That's my right and I will express my right every chance I get.

And if need be, I have world wide mirror access. So this post will never die.

P.S. Also, their seafood department has a horrible fishy smell. Anyone who knows about a seafood department or store will tell you that a clean facility with quality seafood will never stink!
Theirs does so I won't buy.

TaZMAn

Remove Old Kernels In Ubuntu

I was asked to do a tutorial on how to remove older kernels from your system to save space.
I'm going to do it but before I go any further I have to post this;

Disclaimer and Warning!!!!
I will not be responsible for any damages incurred to your system by following this tutorial.
It is YOUR responsibility to carefully read and follow the instructions in this tutorial. It is also your responsibility to make intelligent decisions when deciding what kernels you will remove. Removing the wrong kernel version will render your system inoperable.

There! That legal nonsense is done.

The first thing you need to do is find out what kernel version you are using at the moment.
So open up your terminal and type in the following command;
uname -r

You will get a result that looks like this;
2.6.22-15-generic

You can see that I am running version 2.6.22-15-generic

Write that down. Don't depend on your cranium memory because depending on how many versions you have installed, you can become easily confused on what version you are using and may end up deleting the wrong version.

Close your terminal and open up your Synaptic package manager.
Click on Search and type in Linux-Image
Your results will show you all the versions available and the versions you have installed will have a green box in front of those.

Carefully scroll all the way to the end as they are not all grouped together.

Now find your version and make note where it is in the list.
Look through the list for the kernel that is one version previous to the one you have installed now.
You also want to keep that previous version in case something goes wrong with your current version like during an update. That way you can boot into the previous version and try to get things fixed.

Now make note of the remaining versions. Careful! Don't mistake a version like 2.6.22-15.52 as an older version of 2.6.22-14.54

Once you have identified any other older versions in your list you can mark them for removal.
I do want to make a notation here about the packages in the list.
You will see at least one file that looks like the following;
Linux-Image-Generic and to the right under the Installed Version column you will see something like 2.6.22.15.22
If you highlight it, right click and check the Properties you will see it is about 56k in size.
Do NOT delete that file!
It is the header used by the 2.6.22.15 kernel.
Deleting that will damage your system.

Once you are finished removing your old kernels it may be a good idea to reboot the system and make sure everything is working correctly.

Good luck and hopefully you had no problems during the removal of your old kernels.
I fulfilled a request and hope it helps many others.

TaZMAn

wajig A Must Have Utility

I was looking through some websites for some info on cleaning up my Gutsy installation.
Read a few different pages about a program called deborphan. Even though Ubuntu's Synaptic Package Manager and apt-get remove do a good job of removing a software package and any dependencies that were required there are times that some files are left behind.
Thus you acquire orphan files.

Now deborphan does a great job of removing these left over files and I did install it.
But then I came across a utility that not only removes orphan files but does plenty more.
It's called wajig and it is a great all in one utility.

Here is a screenshot of what it looks like;






















You can install it by doing a search for wajig in your Synaptic Package Manager.
I usually use the terminal with the apt-get install command but with this utility it may cause a problem installing it that way.

There are some dependencies that are required to use all the options.
The following list is not complete as many are already installed by default.
But if you want to have all the options make sure you either have or install the following packages;

python
python-apt
dselect
fping
reportbug
apt-move
dpkg-repack
alien
gkdebconf
python-gtk2
python-glade2
python-gnome2
locales
gnome-tasksel
deborphan
vrms
apt-show-versions

Once you install everything you can start the utility by opening a terminal and typing in gjig
That's g-j-i-g

gjig is the included GUI for wajig so you don't have to run all the commands via the terminal.

If you want to see the complete list of commands for wajig type the following in the terminal;
wajig list-commands

For more info on wajig you can check out their web page here;
Wajig Web Page

So what started out as a mundane search for a utility to clean up some files turned into a gold mine of an administrator quality utility program.

Hope you enjoy this utility as much as I do and it helps keep your system clean and running at peak performance.

TaZMAn

Use Any Desktop Manager In Ubuntu

So many people say the want to install Kubuntu or Xubuntu because they don't like the Gnome interface in Ubuntu.
So they go and download the iso, burn it and reinstall the O.S.
Whoa!!!
No need to do that.

You can install the KDE or XFCE desktop manager from within Ubuntu.
Then during boot up you click on Session and choose which desktop you want to use.
When you make the choice, the boot manager will ask if you want to make this your default manager.
Say yes and you will always boot into the desktop manager of choice.

So how do I download these manager's?
Easy. Open up the Synaptic Package Manager and do a search for KDE if you want the Kubuntu style of desktop or search for XFCE to grab the Xubuntu version.
Hey! Grab both and you will now have all 3 Ubuntu versions all on one computer!

You can check out how they look by going to their web sites.

KDE Screenshots Link

XFCE Screenshots Link

And if you want a bonus desktop manager you might want to take a look at Sun's Looking Glass project. Has many features similar to Compiz pertaining to the 3d manipulation of files.

You can find it here;
Looking Glass Link

You can view their video showing it's features. But be forewarned! It's Sun Boring Corporate idea of a video. It doesn't get good until 2:05.
Or you can view the embedded video I provided below from Xtreme Tech.
Near the end of the video they say that Looking Glass is not available at this time.
That's due to the age of this video. It is available from Sun's site.



So there you go!
You can now have 1, 2, 3 or even 4 different desktop managers all in one package.
Something a certain software company could only wish they could do.
LOL!!

TaZMAn

Editing the Grub Loader Menu

You have your computer set up as a dual boot system and the list of menu items keep growing every time there's a kernel update.

You know that annoying look. That screen shows your Microsoft OS, Memtest and several kernel entries along with their recovery mode images.

Here's how to pare down that list.

WARNING!
Not properly following the directions below may cause your system to not boot.
Proceed at your own risk. I will not be responsible for any damages incurred by your inability to follow directions.

We first need to open up the menu list for emitting. To do that open up a terminal window and type in the following;

sudo gedit /boot/grub/menu.lst

Type in your pasword when prompted.

Now your menu list will open with the permissions needed to edit it.

Look for entries in your menu list that look similar to this;

## ## End Default Options ##

title Ubuntu 7.10, kernel 2.6.22-15-generic
root (hd0,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.22-15-generic root=UUID=15024b26-e9da-497b-8744-ccfd6170eb84 ro quiet splash
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.22-15-generic
quiet

title Ubuntu 7.10, kernel 2.6.22-15-generic (recovery mode)
root (hd0,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.22-15-generic root=UUID=15024b26-e9da-497b-8744-ccfd6170eb84 ro single
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.22-15-generic

title Ubuntu 7.10, kernel 2.6.22-14-generic
root (hd0,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.22-14-generic root=UUID=15024b26-e9da-497b-8744-ccfd6170eb84 ro quiet splash
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.22-14-generic
quiet

title Ubuntu 7.10, kernel 2.6.22-14-generic (recovery mode)
root (hd0,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.22-14-generic root=UUID=15024b26-e9da-497b-8744-ccfd6170eb84 ro single
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.22-14-generic

title Ubuntu 7.10, kernel 2.6.22-13-generic
root (hd0,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.22-13-generic root=UUID=15024b26-e9da-497b-8744-ccfd6170eb84 ro quiet splash
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.22-13-generic
quiet

title Ubuntu 7.10, kernel 2.6.22-13-generic (recovery mode)
root (hd0,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.22-13-generic root=UUID=15024b26-e9da-497b-8744-ccfd6170eb84 ro single
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.22-13-generic

title Ubuntu 7.10, memtest86+
root (hd0,0)
kernel /boot/memtest86+.bin
quiet

### END DEBIAN AUTOMAGIC KERNELS LIST

What we need to do is comment out all the older kernels and their recovery mode entries.
I strongly suggest that you keep the 2 newest entries and their recovery mode entries.
Here's how;

In the above example we can see there are 3 kernel entries.
The newest being 2.6.22-15-generic and the oldest being 2.6.22-13-generic
We want to get rid of the 2.6.22-13-generic and the 2.6.22-13-generic (recovery mode) entries from the boot menu.

So we will comment those entries out. To do that we will use the ## characters to do the commenting.

When it's done it should look like this;


## ## End Default Options ##

title Ubuntu 7.10, kernel 2.6.22-15-generic
root (hd0,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.22-15-generic root=UUID=15024b26-e9da-497b-8744-ccfd6170eb84 ro quiet splash
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.22-15-generic
quiet

title Ubuntu 7.10, kernel 2.6.22-15-generic (recovery mode)
root (hd0,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.22-15-generic root=UUID=15024b26-e9da-497b-8744-ccfd6170eb84 ro single
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.22-15-generic

title Ubuntu 7.10, kernel 2.6.22-14-generic
root (hd0,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.22-14-generic root=UUID=15024b26-e9da-497b-8744-ccfd6170eb84 ro quiet splash
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.22-14-generic
quiet

title Ubuntu 7.10, kernel 2.6.22-14-generic (recovery mode)
root (hd0,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.22-14-generic root=UUID=15024b26-e9da-497b-8744-ccfd6170eb84 ro single
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.22-14-generic

##title Ubuntu 7.10, kernel 2.6.22-13-generic
##root (hd0,0)
##kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.22-13-generic ##root=UUID=15024b26-e9da-497b-8744-ccfd6170eb84 ro quiet splash
##initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.22-13-generic
##quiet

##title Ubuntu 7.10, kernel 2.6.22-13-generic (recovery mode)
##root (hd0,0)
##kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.22-13-generic ##root=UUID=15024b26-e9da-497b-8744-ccfd6170eb84 ro single
##initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.22-13-generic

title Ubuntu 7.10, memtest86+
root (hd0,0)
kernel /boot/memtest86+.bin
quiet

### END DEBIAN AUTOMAGIC KERNELS LIST


As you can see, we put a ## in front of all the entries for the 2.6.22-13-generic kernel.
You need to do this to all the kernel entries older then the newest 2.
That way, should you have a problem with the newest kernel, you can boot into the next oldest one and fix the problem.

Now that we have that cleaned up, let's set the menu so that it doesn't keep adding new kernels to the list that we just cleaned up.

Here's what you need to do.
Look for an entry similar to this in the menu list;

## controls how many kernels should be put into the menu.lst
## only counts the first occurence of a kernel, not the
## alternative kernel options
## e.g. howmany=all
## howmany=7
# howmany=all

We need to edit the last entry that says # howmany=all
Change the =all to =2

It should look something like this;

## controls how many kernels should be put into the menu.lst
## only counts the first occurence of a kernel, not the
## alternative kernel options
## e.g. howmany=all
## howmany=7
# howmany=2

Now your list should never display more then 2 kernel versions along with the recovery mode links.

Close the menu list and select the option to save the changes.

Now for the moment of truth.
Reboot your computer.
If you did everything properly you should only see the 2 newest kernels listed in the grub menu and it will boot up properly when you select the kernel to boot to.

Good luck and enjoy!!!

TaZMAn