How To install BackTrack3

Anyway, I decided to install BackTrack on my hard disk instead of running it from the Live CD and since it didn’t end up being a straight-forward procedure I am writing this post to document how I did it. I have to give credit to this guy whose own documentation I actually followed and helped me greatly to avoid all the trouble he went into. However I felt the need to write my own HowTo since some of the things he described did not work for me (because my case was somehow different from his, more explanations later) so I had to come up with other solutions. Therefore my aim is to describe the whole process as it worked for me to keep in order to keep it as future reference for myself. If it so happens to help anyone else then that’s great however I cannot guarantee it, even if someone has an identical setup on his PC to mine. I hope I don’t need to mention that you if you follow these instructions you are doing so at your OWN RISK and you take FULL RESPONSIBILITY of what happens to your system. Installing a Linux distribution by hand is never an easy task and a whole lot of things can go wrong in the process.

I got to mention here that I have created in the past a partition for testing purposes of any linux distribution that I find interesting so this time I did not have to create the partitions from scratch, instead I used the ones I already had to replace another Linux distribution with Backtrack. In order to create the partitions you need you can either check the original document or look somewhere else on how to do it. I will suppose you have the necessary partitions ready from here on. Let me note also that apart from the ‘dummy’ linux partition used for testing purposes, I also have an Ubuntu Linux partition running which I use as my main system as well as a FAT32 partition with Windows XP. As a result, I have already installed GRUB on the Master Boot Record and I get something like the following screen when I boot my machine:

1.Ubuntu 7.10

2.Dummy Linux Distro

3.WindowsXP

Therefore when I finish this document I will not describe how to set your boot loader from windows but I will describe what to add on the GRUB menu list to allow you to boot BackTrack. For a WindowsXP based solution look here.

########################################################

Ok so, enough talking, time for action!

1. I logged in with the Live CD as root and I went to /mnt/sda6 (which is the partition where my old linux distro was sitting idle, it can be anything for you) and I deleted the whole system by typing:

$ rm -fr *

2. then I created the necessary folders by typing

$ cp –preserve -R /{bin,dev,etc,home,lib,root,sbin,usr,var,opt,pentest} .

(notice the dot (.) at the end to indicate the current directory (/mnt/sda6)). This process takes quite some time, so go have a coffee or read a book or wait patiently ( and I mean really! patiently).

3. When this finished I typed:

$ mkdir /mnt/sda6/{boot,mnt,proc,sys,tmp}

4. Then I typed:

$cp /boot/vmlinuz boot/ (note I was already in /mnt/sda6 so I didn’t have to give the full path to /boot)

Here I am copying ‘vmlinuz’ from the Live CD’s /boot folder to the harddisk’s /mnt/sda6/boot folder where my Backtrack system resides. Until here I the instructions are almost identical to the original author’s HowTo which I myself followed. However after this step I stumbled upon some things that I had to do differently. I will only described my actions and will not talk about what I did instead of what the other HowTo said because it is unnecessary.

5. Then I also copied the “initrd.gz” to the /boot folder by typing

$ cp /boot/initrd.gz /boot

6. The next step is to either install grub or as in my case to edit the current grub list to reflect the new system. Currently my grub installation resides in my Ubuntu partition so I moved there to edit the “menu.lst”

$ cd /mnt/sda3/boot/grub

7. Then I typed

$ vi menu.lst

which is the file where grub loads the initial screen that you see when power on your PC.

8. Then I added the following lines to the menu.lst file:

title Slax
root (hd0,5)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz max_loop=255 root=/dev/sda6 vga=791 ro
initrd /boot/initrd.gz

I saved the file and exited.

At this point I restarted the machine but it failed booting with the message

“BT3 Data not found. This should not happen, press ctrl+alt+del to reboot”

It also gave me a hint about copying the BT3 folder to my windows drive in order to hopefully solve the problem.

So I went back into the LiveCD and started looking for this BT3 folder. If you boot from the Live CD the folder seems hidden under /mnt/live/dos/, but if you read the CD as a normal cd from wither windows or another linux distribution you will find it at the root directory. Then you need to copy it under the windows c:/ directory or /mnt/sda2 in my case (since i was doing it from the live cd environment) and then reboot. After this it all worked fine for me and I am actually writting this post from my newly installed Backtrack system!

As I said this document is mainly for my own future reference so I don’t intend to write down all the possible ways of doing this installation, but only document my own way of doing it. Check with the original document for further help and especially if you are a windows only user or don’t already have two Linux partitions on your system as I did.

G1 Android rocks!

Last week I decided to renew my contract with T-Mobile uk, and what I got was a free Google Android phone, the G1! First few days I got playing around with it to see how it feels, and get used to the interface. I must say the team behind the UI design have done an amazing job. It’s really easy and intuitive to work with and you feel just like home very soon after you get your hands on it.

However I wanted the Android phone so I can play around with it,and when I say “play around” I don’t mean simply browsing the Internet and listening to music! I want to program the damn thing. One interesting thing I found out pretty soon while reading the forums was that there is a so called ‘root bug’ which allows anyone to get root access to the phone and do whatever he wants with it. “This is good news” I thought but a little while later I found out that Google had patched this bug with its latest updates!

No worries though! Apparently some people have done an amazing job of providing all the tools and programs to overcome the Google updates, get root access to the phone and still keep the phone updated with whatever new features Google ships in the future with its Over The Air (OTA) updates. The process of rooting your phone is not very long and difficult but it should certainly be avoided by people who don’t know exactly what thery are doing.

Anyway I rooted my phone yesterday and I am now able to do anything I want with it.
I hear some people murmuring..”well not anything, you still don’t have multitouch like the iPhone right?”

WRONG! Actually the latest rooted update out there by JesusFreke and with the help of lukehutch, zinx and ryebrye has added multitouch support for the browser and some other applications!.It turns out that the Android kernel DOES support multitouch and generates such events, but thos are being dropped by the Android Java Stack higher in the hierarchy.

I can testify that multitouch on the Browser works just fine and the future of Android looks bright and shiny! Oh, by the way the Android Market has a wealth of applications that do literaly anything you can imagine!It’s worth having a look even if you don’t own an Android, just to see what you are missing ! (I do sound excited don’t I?).

Anyway, that’s all for now, but I am sure I will be back with more Android fun.

Next station: developer.android.com !!

P.S: Did you know you can actually install a complete Debian distribution side by side with the Android OS???? I love Freedom Software!

A Frakked up finish…

So Battlestar Galactica is over. It has been my favorite series over the last years, but to be honest, the last 10 episodes that ended the series were a huge disappointment to me.And although I was hoping for the series finale to compensate for some of the previous epsiodes, unfortunately that didn’t happen either. I mean it wasn’t THAT bad, but I had so much higher expectations that it felt really poor after all. Scanning over some comments on Slashdot I see that most people focus on the stupidity of Lee’s idea of abandoning all their technology for -essentially- a caveman lifestyle. I didn’t really mind that to be honest, thinking that after living some extreme situations in the super high-tech society of theirs for over 5 years, it might make some (I am stressing SOME here) sense to want to abandon it altogether and make a completely new start.

What dissapointed me the most was that it all seemed to be put together 10 minutes before starting the shooting of the scenes. So many questions and interesting notions went unanswered.  What the hell was Starbuck anyway? I mean she did find here own body on Earth1, so that needed some wrapping up if you ask me. We were kept being told by the hybrids that she would be the “harbinger of death” for humanity and instead we see her leading them to Earth2!

And what was all the fuss with the Opera house scene? This had been building up for so long that you would expect to mean something important, instead all that happens is that Baltar and Six take Herra and walk down a couple of steps before putting her down before! And then “God’s plan for Gaius Baltar” is revealed to us as a lecture by Baltar himself to Cavil regarding some vague religious notions and the angels that he sees!

One other thing that was completely lame was the way the Cylon Colony was destroyed. This dead Raptor pilot is being hit by a rock and her hand hits the launch missile button which shoots directly to the colony and destroys it!

Not to mention that all the scenes on Earth2 were like some kind of an ecological documentary about the beauties of our planet and how we should be taking care of it and how all our technology and our small robots are going to destroy it and blah blah! This is a series guys, for once, stop being politically correct and taking the predefined/safe path of endings and be creative for FRAK’S SAKE!

There is so much else to talk about but I’ll wrap things up for now.  I am looking forward to any comments and impressions by any visitors/BSG fans.

Battlestar Galactica, you will be missed, that’s for sure! It’s been a nice trip with its ups and downs.

So long, and thanks for all the fish!

A Christmas gift for me … from me :)

It happened yesterday. I was taking a walk in downtown Lancaster (for those familiar, this is a REALLY small town to walk around in), and I saw it outside the display window of HMV. It was beautiful and I had to get it. I went in and I got a hold of it at first. Price at £22 it didn’t look awfuly expensive either. I knew that I would probably find it at a better deal if I was patient enough to look around the internet and order it online. But my consumerism kicked in (which is rarely the case for me) and I couldn’t wait that long. I went to the cashier and I am now a happy owner of the Blade Runner: Final Cut: 5 DVD Ultimate Collectors Edition!

I did find it at a cheaper price in HMV website after all but what the hell, the ‘consumer’ inside me was worth the £7 difference for this chrismas gift to myself! It is  trully an amazing collection! Now all I have to do is find the time to rot myself to endless hours of Blade Runner scenery!!!!

Here’s what it contains (copied from HMV’s website):

Limited Edition 5DVD Box Set – Contains:

• Metal Tin Packaging
• Five-Disc Ultimate Collector’s Edition Version Of Blade Runner: Final Cut
• Lenticular Image
• Art Cards
• A Letter From Ridley Scott

Disc One Contains:

• Ridley Scott’s All-New ‘Final Cut’ Version Of The Film
• Audio Commentary By Director Ridley Scott
• Audio Commentary By Executive Producer/ Co-Screenwriter Hampton Fancher and Co-Screenwriter David Peoples; Producer Michael Deely and production executive Katherine Haber
• Audio Commentary By Commentaries by visual futurist Syd Mead; production designer Lawrence G. Paull, art director David L. Snyder and special photographic effects supervisors Douglas Trumbull, Richard Yuricich and David Dryer

Disc Two Contains:

• Dangerous Days: Making Blade Runner – A feature-length authoritative documentary revealing all the elements that shaped this hugely influential cinema landmark

Disc Three Contains:

• 1982 Theatrical Version – This is the version that introduced U.S. movie-going audiences to a revolutionary film with a new and excitingly provocative vision of the near-future. It contains Deckard/Harrison Ford’s character narration and the happy ending
• 1982 International Version – Also used on U.S. home video, laserdisc and cable releases up to 1992. This version is not rated, and contains some extended action scenes in contrast to the Theatrical Version.
• 1992 Director’s Cut – The Director’s Cut omits Deckard’s voiceover narration and removes the “happy ending” finale. It adds the famously-controversial “unicorn” sequence, a vision that Deckard has which suggests that he, too, may be a replicant.

Disc Four Contains:

Bonus Disc – “Enhancement Archive”

• The Electric Dreamer: Remembering Philip K. Dick
• Sacrificial Sheep: The Novel vs. The Film
• Signs of the Times: Graphic Design
• Fashion Forward: Wardrobe & Styling
• The Light That Burns: Remembering Jordan Cronenweth
• Promoting Dystopia: Rendering the Poster Art
• Deck-A-Rep: The True Nature of Rick Deckard
• Nexus Generation: Fans & Filmmakers
• Philip K. Dick: The Blade Runner Interviews (Audio)
• Screen Tests: Rachel & Pris
• Deleted & Alternate Scenes
• 1982 Promotional Featurettes
• Trailers & TV Spots

Disc Five Contains:

• Workprint Version Of Blade Runner – This rare version of the film is considered by some to be the most radically different of all the Blade Runner cuts. It includes an altered opening scene, no Deckard narration until the final scenes and much more…
• Introduction by Ridley Scott
• Audio Commentary by Paul M. Sammon, author of Future Noir: The Making of Blade Runner
• All Our Variant Futures: From Workprint to Final Cut – Featurette

A 16 year old boy is murdered in Athens by a police officer…

It’s not the first time either. I just hope it’s the last…

T-Mobile G1 Google Android review

A great in depth review of the first Google Android phone can be found on this blog entry by Matthew Miller on Zdnet. A lot of videos and photos as well as a detailed description of all the features and limitations of the device. A must read for any mobile phone enthusiast!

How to create your own home SVN repository with Xampp/Apache

I am not going to talk about the benefits of version control in your projects, those you can search and read about elsewhere. In this HowTo I am simply going to describe the steps necessary to setup your own svn repository accessible from anywhere in the world using the apache server. This will assume you are using apache installed with xampp the all-in-one installer of your WAMP (Windows Apache,MySQL,PHP) setup.

• First of all download and install Xampp, Subversion and ToirtoiseSVN

• After installing Xampp, point your browser at http://localhost to make sure that your server is running.

• Copy the files mod_authz_svn.so and mod_dav_svn.so found under your subversion bin directory (e.g. C:/Program Files/Subversion/bin/) to the C:\xampp\apache\modules directory,

• Now edit your Apache httpd.conf found under C:\xampp\apache\conf (keep a backup for peace of mind) and enable the lines

LoadModule dav_svn_module modules/mod_dav_svn.so

LoadModule authz_svn_module modules/mod_authz_svn.so

If you can’t see these lines copy-paste them from here. Then go at the end of the file and add the following lines:

# Configure Subversion repository
<Location /svn>
DAV svn
SVNPath “C:\svn”
AuthType Basic
AuthName “Subversion repository”
AuthUserFile “c:\svn_conf\passwd”
Require valid-user
</Location>

• Save and close the httpd.conf file, then restart Apache.

NOTE: In case apache does not start this means that there is something wrong in the httpd.conf file. Go to the xampp/apache/bin folder in your drive and run apache from the command line to see exactly at which line the problem is. In my Vista box for example I had to remove the quotes on the above lines to get it to work. So you need to experiment until apache gets up and running correctly.

Also note that If you have Skype running you might not be able to start any of the Xampp service due to some strange conflict. Close skype, start the xampp services you want and then start skype again. This should solve it.

• Now create two folders in your C:\ drive, one called svn and the other called svn_conf.

• In order to password protect your repository fire up a command prompt and browse into the apache/bin folder C:\xampp\apache\bin and then type htpasswd -c C:\svn_conf\passwd yourname

• Now it’s time to create your first repository. Go in the C:\svn folder just created and right-click in it. From the drop-down menu choose ToirtoiseSVN ->Create repository here. If all goes fine ToirtoiseSVN will inform you that the repository was created sucessfuly.

• Finally in order to import the directory where you keep your source code into your repository right-click on the source code directory and choose ToirtoiseSVN->Import. In the window that shows up type the path to your svn repository, that is file:///C:/svn.

Test your setup by pointing your browser to http://localhost/svn and entering the username/password combination that you have defined.

inspiration & credits:lifehacker

A really cool idea!

source

Getting the most out of Firefox 3

The most valuable webpage you can see in FIrefox is the about:config page. This is the place where all (well almost all) the internals of FIrefox are revealed to you and you can edit your browser’s behavior. I found a blog entry revealing a couple of tweaks for Firefox 3 which are good to know and I wanted to keep a reference of them,so I am copying them here in case the link ends up dead in the future. Although I found non of them very important at the moment, it’s good to keep track of tweaks like this for future situations. Please note, all the credits of these tweaks go to the original author of the post. Exploring the about:config page will reveal many more tweaks to your browser’s behaviror. If you have any to suggest feel free to do so in the comments section.
————————————————————————————

1. Auto complete in the address bar as you type an address.
   Majority
   of the people out their seems to have a love-hate relationship with the
   Firefox3’s new address bar (that Mozilla likes to call as the awsome
   bar). In a humble attempt to tame this address bar we give you some
   hacks that can reform the smart bar to become the real smart bar.
   
   • Enter about:config into the address bar and hit enter.
   • Click on “I’ll be careful, I promise!” button.
   • Enter browser.urlbar.autoFill into the Filter text box. Double click on that preference value and change the value to true to enable autofill.

   Now, as you type in an address, you can see that not only the drop down
   list is shown, but the address bar itself is auto completed for you.

2. Enabling spell check in text-fields
   By
   default Firefox does spell checking only in multi-line text boxes. If
   you want the Firefox to spell check the single line text entry fields
   too, this hack is for you:
   • Enter about:config into the address bar and hit enter.
   • Click on “I’ll be careful, I promise!” button.
   • Enter layout.spellcheckDefault into the Filter text box. Double click on that preference value and change the value to 2.
3. Tweaking the full screen mode
   By
   default Firefox 3 hides the location bar and tab bar when you enter the
   full screen mode. Here is how to disable this behavior.
   • Enter about:config into the address bar and hit enter.
   • Click on “I’ll be careful, I promise!” button.
   • Enter browser.fullscreen.autohide into the Filter text box. Double click on that preference value and change the value to false to disable hiding of location and tab bar.
   • If you just want to disable the hiding animation, set browser.fullscreen.animateUp to 0.
4. Turn On Color Profile Support
   
   The
   Good news is that (unlike Firefox2) Firefox3 contains a built-in
   advanced color profile support, which makes Firefox 3 compete easily
   with any desktop image viewers/editors in terms of color support. The
   bad news is that this mode is disabled by default. This is what you
   should do to enable the color profile support.
   • Enter about:config into the address bar and hit enter.
   • Click on “I’ll be careful, I promise!” button.
   • Enter gfx.color_management.enabled into the Filter text box. Double click on that preference value and change the value to true to enable color profile support.
5. Always display the go button
   By
   default Firefox 3 displays the Go button only when you are editing the
   address in the location bar. This is how you can display it always.
   • Open userChrome.css file in your profile directory using notepad.
   • Add the following line to the end of the file: #go-button { visibility: visible !important; }
   • Restart Firefox.

   If you don’t want to tamper with the userChrome.css file, here is an extension that does the same for you.

6. Make the location bar display only typed addresses
   Dont want the location bar to show entries in your bookmark or history? Here is what you should do.
   • Enter about:config into the address bar and hit enter.
   • Click on “I’ll be careful, I promise!” button
   • Enter browser.urlbar.matchOnlyTyped into the Filter text box. Double click on that preference value and change the value to true.
7. Change the number of suggestions displayed in the Location bar menu
   By
   default Firefox 3 displays upto 12 results in the drop down list as you
   type an address. Here is how to change this number.
   • Enter about:config into the address bar and hit enter.
   • Click on “I’ll be careful, I promise!” button.
   • Enter browser.urlbar.maxRichResults into the Filter text box. Double click on that preference value and change the value to any positive number.
8. Hide RSS feed icon from the location bar
   If you feel that little rss icon is taking up your precious screen real estate, you can easily disable it.
   • Open userChrome.css file in your profile directory using notepad.
   • Add the following line to the end of the file: #feed-button[feeds] { display: none !important; }
   • Restart Firefox.
9. Hide the star icon from the location bar
   You
   may be a keyboard junkie or you may be too used up to the old ways that
   you’ll never use the star icon sitting up in the location bar. If you
   never use it, why let it be there? Here is how to remove the star icon
   from location bar.
   • Open userChrome.css file in your profile directory using notepad.
   • Add the following line to the end of the file: #star-button {display: none !important;}
   • Restart Firefox.
10. Disable single-click-select-all in the location bar.
    One
    of the real pain in the neck feature of Firefox is that it
    automatically selects the entire address in the location bar if you
    click anywhere near it. You just wanted to correct a typo in the
    address, but instead of putting the cursor at the clicked location,
    Firefox selected the entire address. Without looking into the screen,
    you corrected the typo and now the entire address is gone. Now buddy,
    start typing again, says Firefox. Here is how to make the behavior more
    ‘humane’.
    • Enter about:config into the address bar and hit enter.
    • Click on “I’ll be careful, I promise!” button.
    • Enter browser.urlbar.clickSelectsAll into the Filter text box. Double click on that preference value and change the value to false.
11. Reduce the size of the back button
    
    This
    may not be that evident at first, but will soon reveal to be a
    no-brainier once you know it. This is all you have to do: Right-click
    on Firefox’s toolbar, and choose Customize. In the dialog box, select
    “Use small icons.”
12. Disable blinking text
    Sorry, Mr. Blinking Text, you are not welcome. Here is how to stop all blinking text:
    • Enter about:config into the address bar and hit enter.
    • Click on “I’ll be careful, I promise!” button.
    • Enter browser.blink_allowed into the Filter text box. Double click on that preference value and change the value to false.

A dying professor’s last lecture

UPDATE: Randy Pausch died from complications of pancreatic cancer on 25th July 2008.

“Carnegie Mellon Professor Randy Pausch, who is dying from pancreatic cancer, gave his last lecture at the university Sept. 18, 2007, before a packed McConomy Auditorium. In his moving talk, “Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams,” Pausch talked about his lessons learned and gave advice to students on how to achieve their own career and personal goals. For more, visit www.cmu.edu/randyslecture.” [youtube]

Watch this video. It really is worth your time irrespective if you are into computing or not. It goes way beyond the area of computers and anyone watching it will have something to gain from this lecture.