Clutter Learns Linux

[striker]

but it runs and runs, and that's what counts !

[Urmas]

Hey, Clutter:Does your "main" Ubuntu box also have a nVidia card?

[Cluttermagnet]

Hey, Clutter:Does your "main" Ubuntu box also have a nVidia card?

No-Looks like I have an ATI RV280 (Radeon 9200SE) in my 'real' Linux box. Edited April 13, 2007 by Cluttermagnet

[Cluttermagnet]

I have a Netgear WG111NA wireless USB dongle which I know will work under 98SE through XP. (Actually, they say also under Vista) Just wondering if those sort of appliances can play under a Linux OS, and if so, how do you go about 'hooking it up'? Under Windows, you must install the Netgear drivers on the computer prior to the first time you plug it into a USB jack. Any chance I'm going to get such an item working with Ubuntu?

[Bruno]

Hi CluttterNot using wireless or USB for the net myself, but we have a write-up from Julia on Configuring Wireless USB . . . maybe that sets you in the right direction ? Bruno

[Urmas]

Any chance I'm going to get such an item working with Ubuntu?

Yes... but since you are using Dapper it's gonna need a wee tweak [NOTE: THIS IS A "PARTY LINE" HOWTO; CHECK OUT THE OTHER LINKS, TOO, BEFORE JUMPING IN]:---------- ----------

Ubuntu 6.10 Edgy Eft supports the WG111v2 (rtl8187 chipset) with a native driver straight out of the box. Just plug and play.

Edgy. Bummer. So:https://help.ubuntu.com/community/WifiDocs/...ce/NetgearWG111Scroll down to "WG111 HowTo (Part 2: DAPPER DRAKE)"- I wouldn't worry 'bout "Undertake a clean install of Ubuntu 6.06 LTS" bit (Of course, you can do this with "Cluttermaster 2007")- "find the Netgear WG111 driver" means the Windoze drivers... either in the Netgear disk or here:http://kbserver.netgear.com/release_notes/d102869.asp [Choose "drivers for MA111 v1" but works for v2 also.]Let's see if this works first... in order to be able to manage/"browse" available connections, you'll need "network-manager" installed... it'll add a "Network Manager Applet" in the "notification area" [where the updates available/printing/etc. icons appear].---------- -----------THEM "OTHER LINKS":I haven't configured wireless devices myself, so I'm just consulting here. But if the above method seems too complicated, there is a GUI interface for "ndiswrapper" called "ndisgtk" that could make things easier:Here is a good "HOWTO" link: http://thelinuxnewbie.blogspot.com/2006/08...5577896146.htmlIt's for Kubuntu, so wherever it says "adept", you'll read it as "synaptic", wherever it says "kdesu", you'll read it as "gksudo"... and wherever it says "kate", you'll read it as "gedit".And read also this: How Do You Set Up A Netgear WG111T USB Dongle In Ubuntu? Edited April 14, 2007 by Urmas

[Cluttermagnet]

Oh, my...You know, networking isn't one of my strong suits. In fact, my experience is minimal, and on others' machines. I've always been a dialup type for nearly 11 years now.It probably wouldn't hurt to download Edgy and try it. Next question- can a live CD session of Edgy then be expected to recognize my WG111NA out of the box with a native driver?

Ubuntu 6.10 Edgy Eft supports the WG111v2 (rtl8187 chipset) with a native driver straight out of the box. Just plug and play.

WG111v2 is exactly what it says on the side of my unit.My main Linux box has on board Ethernet and Ubuntu 6.06 had no trouble at all finding it. It would be nice to try Edgy first from the live CD before I uninstall Dapper. Other than this wireless dongle, I've not really had any reason to look at 6.10 so far. But maybe I should? Despite the less long term support than Dapper gets? Edited April 14, 2007 by Cluttermagnet

[Urmas]

My main Linux box has on board Ethernet and Ubuntu 6.06 had no trouble at all finding it. It would be nice to try Edgy first from the live CD before I uninstall Dapper.

Just burn the disk and try it! Also note that Feisty (Edgy+1) is due within a week or two.

can a live CD session of Edgy then be expected to recognize my WG111NA out of the box with a native driver?

Yes, probably... no guaranties, though.

Other than this wireless dongle, I've not really had any reason to look at 6.10 so far. But maybe I should?

Define "reason" . Dapper works just great. However, Edgy has newer versions for Gnome, Nautilus, Firefox, Open Office... list is endless. It also has better hardware support. It boots significantly faster. And so on. So... it's more up-do-date. And Feisty will be even more so... I hope.

Despite the less long term support than Dapper gets?

Again, it's just me, but I think "LTS" is... overrated, when it comes to [many] home users. The support cycle for normal, "non LTS", Ubuntu versions is 18 months. And the way [=speed] the "core components" - Firefox, Xorg, Gnome/KDE etc. - develop... I don't think there is any point for a home (fun/tweak/learn) user in NOT using the latest (stable) version for a distro... "LTS" and "extreme stability" [with the flip side of "old", albeit security patched software] are essential for running "serious" production machines/networks/servers... not so for a "lemme-see-if-it-self-destructs-if-I-tweak-it-little-more" kind of home user. Plus, Edgy has been solid as a rock... and it's supported (read: it will get security updates... that's what "support" means in this context) until April 2008. Good enough for me... especially since I'm gonna move on to Feisty within a month or so [not gonna install it the first day it's out... haste makes waste and all that]. Edited April 14, 2007 by Urmas

[Cluttermagnet]

OK! Sounds good. I will burn a copy of Edgy today, if possible. I agree with your go slow approach on Feisty, but I bet a month would indeed be sufficient. I don't need to put a lot of emphasis on 'latest, greatest'. But, then, 'latest' often implies better hardware support, as we've seen here. Even Dapper has been simply outstanding at recognizing hardware. That nVidia FX5200 card in the Cluttermaster 2007 has been a notorious problem, getting 98SE to recognize it- even though I easily found the right drivers package online for it. Ubuntu just woke up, grabbed it, and started running it. Nice! 98SE is often a bit squirrelly about finding and installing video card drivers, but this particular card has been worse than average. On two machines, I believe, I simply couldn't get past the drivers install. The card has been kicking around as a spare- until now, that is.

Edited April 14, 2007 by Cluttermagnet

[striker]

OK! Sounds good. I will burn a copy of Edgy today, if possible. I agree with your go slow approach on Feisty, but I bet a month would indeed be sufficient. I don't need to put a lot of emphasis on 'latest, greatest'. But, then, 'latest' often implies better hardware support, as we've seen here. Even Dapper has been simply outstanding at recognizing hardware. That nVidia FX5200 card in the Cluttermaster 2007 has been a notorious problem, getting 98SE to recognize it- even though I easily found the right drivers package online for it. Ubuntu just woke up, grabbed it, and started running it. Nice! 98SE is often a bit squirrelly about finding and installing video card drivers, but this particular card has been worse than average. On two machines, I believe, I simply couldn't get past the drivers install. The card has been kicking around as a spare- until now, that is.

Clutter, a little question : that FX5200 card, on the picture in your link of the ClutterMaster 2007 it looks almost identical to what I have in the rig here, mine is an Asus V9520TD:It runs A OK ar all distros I have installed ( see my profile) and way back then on XP Home+Pro. Albeit I changed that crap fan on it for a massive eagle passive cooler block. Your FX5200, is that an Asus too ?

[Cluttermagnet]

Clutter, a little question : that FX5200 card, on the picture in your link of the ClutterMaster 2007 it looks almost identical to what I have in the rig here, mine is an Asus V9520TD:It runs A OK ar all distros I have installed ( see my profile) and way back then on XP Home+Pro. Albeit I changed that crap fan on it for a massive eagle passive cooler block. Your FX5200, is that an Asus too ?

Well, the card has a UPC sticker that gives model number and description as follows:MVGA-NVG34AL DVI 128MB W/TV. The maker seems to be shy about putting their company name on the card. Let me check my file of invoices for stuff bought online- that may give the manufacturer...

[Urmas]

Prolink? (Mr. & Mrs. Google seem to think so.)

[Cluttermagnet]

Yes indeed-nVidia is listed as Manufacturer, Prolink as OEM Manufacturer (or something like that) in Ubuntu Device Manager.

[striker]

... but this particular card has been worse than average. On two machines, I believe, I simply couldn't get past the drivers install.

In linux it should be an absolute no brainer to detect and install.

[Cluttermagnet]

I have a small hard drive which I bought used, in a batch of drives, a while ago. This particular drive, running as a 2nd drive in a 98SE computer, caused AVG to alarm when it was first hooked up. AVG said it had a boot virus on it, and offered to remove it. Trouble was, I needed, and did not have, a rescue diskette for AVG for that computer. So I just unhooked the drive at that time and let it go unused and unrepaired. BTW I looked up the virus type and it sounded like a pretty mild, 'nuisance' sort of virus, but it likes to replicate onto any other disks if it can. I can't remember the virus name, it's been over a year now. My question: is it possible to rewrite the MBR while in Linux, so as to cause that area of the drive to be overwritten, and thus destroy the virus in there. This would be done once again with the suspect drive operating as a second drive. Suggestions, anyone? Or would it be preferable to have the suspect drive be the only drive present and run some utility on a Linux live Cd to do the job?

Edited April 16, 2007 by Cluttermagnet

[V.T. Eric Layton]

Just use gparted and wipe the entire drive. That'll fix it.

[Cluttermagnet]

Just use gparted and wipe the entire drive. That'll fix it.

What I'm not quite understanding here is the concept that formatting is going to fix this when it's a boot sector virus. Partitioning flattens absolutely everything? Including the contents of the boot sector? And then when I create a new partition, a new MBR gets made? And that will definitely overwrite the present MBR and thus destroy the virus?Oh, BTW, two things-I wrote on the drive that AVG sez it has WelcomB.This is a tiny 1.6G drive. Bought it at a weekend swapfest real cheap. It's definitely still working. Whatever is on it, I don't care about, temmu. So if I use an editor and actually overwrite a few blocks, I don't care, so long as the drive remains useable. I figure this one can go in my one 3.5in, portable USB case I have. It's one of those notoriously unreliable WD Caviar 2xxxx series drives, a 21600. July 97 manufacture date. Heh! Edited April 16, 2007 by Cluttermagnet

[V.T. Eric Layton]

Removing partitions and reformatting a drive wipes ABSOLUTELY everything! Nothing survives.If what Adam says is true... nevermind.

Edited April 16, 2007 by V.T. Eric Layton

[ross549]

# dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda bs=512 count=1

This should do the trick, but I am typing this from memory. Could someone else verify before Cluttermagnet tries it?Adam

Removing partitions and reformatting a drive wipes ABSOLUTELY everything! Nothing survives.

The boot sector would still be untouched, if not specifically wiped.

[V.T. Eric Layton]

The boot sector would still be untouched, if not specifically wiped.

You're saying that an fdisk of a drive won't clean out the boot sector? Hmm... that's news to me. I always thought that removing partitions and reformatting using fdisk (or a graphical frontend that does same) was a complete nuke of a drive. I guess I'm never too old to learn.

[ross549]

The MBR of a drive is not touched, as far as I know. I could be wrong too. Anyone know for sure?I know doing fdisk /mbr in windows will wipe and reinstall the windows MBR to the drive....Adam

[Cluttermagnet]

Just the other night, I read about Linux fdisk. That's right, it's a completely different one from the Windows version. Command line operated, does about everything. Maybe I could install (or find) it and use that utility to do the litle task. But remember, it will be live CD Linux environment, whatever I end up doing. At least, that's the plan of the moment.

[ross549]

Just about all liveCDs will have fdisk on them already. No need to install. In any case, I am about 98% sure the command I posted above will do the trick.Adam

[Cluttermagnet]

Just about all liveCDs will have fdisk on them already. No need to install. In any case, I am about 98% sure the command I posted above will do the trick.Adam

Do I have to sudo? My terminal gives the prompt "ubuntu@ubuntu:~$"In your command above, I see it starting with "#" Does the command above asume I'm running as root or sudo? Not clear to me the exact command I'd type...I assume if I get that far, I'd be looking at that fdisk menu, then there is just a list of commands- I'm asuming that there is a line item which obviously and self-evidently would be the right one to erase the MBR. I'll have to reboot into 98SE and go look for that bookmark I stored about fdisk. It was a pretty good brief tutorial on using it...I'm not sure Clutter should be let loose in root or sudo with a 2 percent chance of screwing up. Edited April 16, 2007 by Cluttermagnet

[rolanaj]

I'm pretty sure ubuntu uses sudo, its one of the things some people dont like about it.

[V.T. Eric Layton]

Didn't you set up your root account in Ubuntu, Clutter? If so, use it for the command that Adam posted above.By the way, HERE is a complete tutorial on the dd command. Read and learn.

Edited April 16, 2007 by V.T. Eric Layton

[Cluttermagnet]

OK, let's back up. I thought I'd want to do this in a safer environment, so naturally, I thought of doing it within a live CD session of Ubuntu. From what I've heard about this non-dangerous but annoying boot sector virus, it just loves to replicate, cloning itself to any disk type media it can get its hands on- hard drive, floppy, etc. But I don't remember any specifics as to how, exactly, it replicates. I just don't want to unleash it to run all through my systems using floppies or zip disks as a vector, or perhaps, even USB flash drives as a sort of pseudo-disk medium. So my game plan was to try to work on the drive so as to minimize the chances the virus could copy itself to other drives, and that's why I thought of a live CD session. Yes, of course I do have two copies of Ubuntu 6.06 installed on two separate machines at the moment. But my thought was to boot up with just the infected drive connected, then to somehow sanitize the boot sector of this drive using the live CD.BTW I'm redoing my search about this type of virus. It's been about a year since I last looked at this issue, and it's only a little 1.6G HD in question here, after all, so it really wasn't all that important at the time. BTW AVG quickly recognized this little beastie the minute I booted up with 2 drives, and offered to remove it, but needed the AVG boot disk. But I didn't have the disk at the time. It is safe to believe the virus didn't propagate at that time because AVG tipped me off so quickly. I shut down and removed that drive. Subsequent runs of AVG did not turn up the virus on that computer. BTW all of this happened about a year ago, under 98SE.

NAME: WelcombALIAS: Welcomeb, Buptboot, BeijingTYPE: Resident Boot sectors MBRORIGIN: ChinaThis is a typical boot sector virus. It contains the following text: Welcome to BUPT 9146,Beijing!The only special thing about this virus is that it does NOT store a copy of the original, clean partition sector elsewhere on the disk, so this virus is disinfected by overwriting it with clean code.Welcomb does nothing except spreads. It's very common everywhere in the world.

(from F-Secure)Also, McAffee

Since the WelcomB virus does not keep a copy of the original Master Boot Record, and overwrites where DOS expects the disk partitioning information to be, the DOS FDisk program with the /MBR option cannot be used to replace this information and disinfect this virus.

Patricia Thompson's VSUM

Most boot sector viruses are passed on infected floppies. If you are getting a "virus" error during the install itself, disable virus protection in the BIOS, do the install and run a proper scan afterwards.

Tech Support Guy thread Edited April 16, 2007 by Cluttermagnet

[Bruno]

Goodmorning to all >>> Please first read some important text about the MBR and the partition table: MBR / Hard Disk LayoutClutter, maybe first have a look if clearing the first 446 bytes of the MBR takes care of the virus . . . that way your data and partitions ( partition-table ) are saved. ( the command is for hda ! )

# dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda bs=446 count=1

If that does not work and AGV still reports the virus, wipe the partition table as well: delete all the 512 bytes of the MBR. This will mean all your partitions will be gone, the data still will be there but you can not ( or very difficult ) recover them.

# dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda bs=512 count=1

And if even that does not help wipe the full drive ( hda !! ):

# dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda bs=1024 count=10

. . . . and if even then AGV reports the virus: Give AGV the boot Bruno

[Cluttermagnet]

Hi, Bruno-Can I do these # dd commands from a live CD copy of Ubuntu as a user, not root?Regarding AVG, it is out of the picture entirely. AVG is the a/v utility I was using last year. Presently, I use Avast on 98SE.Everybody in this thread is assuming I am using an installed copy of Ubuntu and can become Root. What I'm asking about is- can I eradicate this boot sector virus on this HD running only as user from a live CD session of Ubuntu?Oh, BTW- I don't know what is on the drive, including any partitions. I don't care if I lose all the data. All I care about is that I remove the boot sector virus but still have a drive that can be reused. I intend to reformat the drive anyway.

Edited April 16, 2007 by Cluttermagnet

[Cluttermagnet]

OK! Sounds good. I will burn a copy of Edgy today, if possible. I agree with your go slow approach on Feisty, but I bet a month would indeed be sufficient. I don't need to put a lot of emphasis on 'latest, greatest'. But, then, 'latest' often implies better hardware support, as we've seen here. Even Dapper has been simply outstanding at recognizing hardware.

I downloaded Edgy and ran it on one of my other Win boxes as a live CD session. It did indeed recognize the Netgear WG111v2 wireless dongle. I was able to input a fake password and group ID or whatever that other choice was. Anyway, it accepted that input, cranked for a while (reconfiguring), and then showed both Ethernet and wireless as enabled in the Networking window. Looks very encouraging so far. BTW whatever changes were made caused it to become impossible to set up Dialup and set to active. Yet it allows two simultaneous broadband links to be active. Is this a little strange? It seems strange to me. Anyway, I'm happy about this newest development, and plan eventually to have a box with Edgy installed. I'll start learning how to actually do this networking stuff and sniff around a little to see what the device is picking up locally. BTW I put a copy of airsnort on my Ubuntu 6.06 box recently, just for grins. Heh!