Fed Up (rant)

Okay, I've had it - I am fed up. Debian Linux is crap - pure, unadulterated crap. Furhermore, it is crap like Debian that is giving Linux such a bad name. Nothing works on this distro. Nothing. These are not hardware problems, since most of the stuff work under e.g. WINDOWS or fraking SUSE Linux 9.1 - NINE POINT ONE, fer godx sake - that's what, 4 years old now, 5? SuSE 9.1 still uses the 2.4.x kernel, fer fux sake. Yet SuSE 9.1 has some functionality - it "just works".

Since installing this Debiian crap, nothing on this machine works - from the USB drive (won't mount - Debian records in /var/log/messages that the drive has been plugged in and all is well, but all attempts to use the mount command fail with a "Special File /dev/sdXX not found" error. It's true, they're not there (the /dev/ files). Where did they go? They were there yesterday (at least for a little while); they were there about 20 minutes ago when this same machine was running KNOPPIX from a LiveCD image (same source from which I so unfortunately installed this alleged OS called "Debian" - I will refer to it henceforth as "Debian-piece-of-crap" or "Debian POS" for short - [note that this is a run-on sentence which refers back to the "- from the USB dirve ..."] - to the freaking spell-checker in this stupid IceWeasel browser. As I type this, every word in the text input area is flagged as a misspelling - EVEN the ones that I specifically told StoopidWeasel to "Add to Dictionary" - simple shit like "for" and "to" and "an" and "the" and so on. WtF? "Check-as-you-type" spelling? Konqueror has had it for several versions/years now. Freaking MS WORD has it. AND IT WORKS [sort of, in word, but still].

I've heard for years now how Debian such a l33t "engineers" distro - I fought with obsolescent Debian versions in the lab, at work, thinking to myself "there has to be a good reason they chose this lame bullshi over [fill-in-the-blank-distro] that works" - I've [sort of] followe the FOSS debates where all the acolytes sing hoseanah to the great Debian-ness and how "at Debian they are really committed to FOSS."

I call bullshit. Debian is crap, and anyone who doesn't realize it is jst sucking up to the emporer, every bit as the tailors who pretended to make a suit. Linux is the emporer, Debian are the tailors, and the emporer has no clothes. Deal with it.

Now please excuse me while I go find and install a distro that actually works with some of this hardware that apparenlty is just to newfangled a gee-whiz-bang for Debian to have gotten around to - stuff that everybody else was supporting out-of-the-box 8 or 10 years ago - okay, maybe 5 or 6 years, but still...

And finally, I want to make as clear as possible the information that the Debian Package management tools [such as they are] a clearly sub-standard, inferior, user-unfriendly, and just generally suck ass compared to any other modern computing system standard of which I am aware.

I will never again reccomend Debian to anyone [except perhaps to enemies], and will not bother with the excuciating downloads of this Debian crapware. And KNOPPIX - well, you have mislead us all, KNOPPIX - all your fiddling and fixing to make this Debian bullshit run half-assed normal from a LiveCD - it really shows thru what crap Debian is when the KNOPPIX tweaks have are no there.

One final point - I installed the Debian-piece of crap to /dev/hda4 but that process somehow hosed the saved KNOPPIX LiveCD configuration on /dev/hda1 - there is no apparent way to get it back or to copy it over to the Debian-piece-of-crap partition, so not only does the Debian-piece-of-crap not work, it trashed the most stable configuration this machine has had since WinXP was removed, and didn't bother to either a) warn me it was about to trash my working config, or b) tell me that it had done so once it had hosed both the saved config and the new install.

So knoppix myconfig=/dev/hda1 doesn't work anymore - which I suppose is part of the greater plan by the Debian-piece-of-crtap manufacturers to eliminate Linux as a functional alternative OS.

Konqueror Crash

Konqueror is :

1. Hanging while waiting for blogger.com to "Publish" a blog post.
2. Crashing; Konqueror will crash if - while the "publish" operation is in its infinite refresh loop, loading and reloading the "Please wait while your page is published" message page - the user
   1. opens another Konqueror window
   2. goes to view the blog in the new window [note that the post which initiated the publish operation has been posted - the post has uploaded and the blog has been updated, despite the braindead infinite loop the first window of Kongqueror is stuck in]
   3. goes back to the first window [where the ininfinite refresh loop is going on]
   4. clicks on the Blogger Dashboard link there, in the first window, while the infinite refresh loop is going on

Other info from the Crash Handler:

• Konqueror [crashed and] threw SIGILL.
• "The application was asked to save its documents"

Default browser indentification string for this version of Konqueror [note that I have broken the line below at the backslash]:

Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Konqueror/3.5; Linux 2.6.17; X11; i686; en_US)\
 KHTML/3.5.2 (like Gecko) (Debian package 4:3.5.2-2+b1)

Here is the backtrace data from the crash handler:

(no debugging symbols found)
Using host libthread_db library "/lib/tls/libthread_db.so.1".
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
[Thread debugging using libthread_db enabled]
[New Thread -1231935808 (LWP 4267)]
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
[KCrash handler]
#5  0x08f95edc in ?? ()
#6  0xb62d57ae in DOM::checkChild () from /usr/lib/libkhtml.so.4
#7  0xb629e96c in DOM::XMLAttributeReader::~XMLAttributeReader ()
   from /usr/lib/libkhtml.so.4
#8  0xb6268f9e in KHTMLPart::saveState () from /usr/lib/libkhtml.so.4
#9  0xb62289fe in KHTMLPartBrowserExtension::saveState ()
   from /usr/lib/libkhtml.so.4
#10 0xb6875b5f in KonqView::updateHistoryEntry ()
   from /usr/lib/libkdeinit_konqueror.so
#11 0xb6893a11 in KonqView::slotCompleted ()
   from /usr/lib/libkdeinit_konqueror.so
#12 0xb6893c23 in KonqView::slotCompleted ()
   from /usr/lib/libkdeinit_konqueror.so
#13 0xb689987d in KonqView::qt_invoke () from /usr/lib/libkdeinit_konqueror.so
#14 0xb72b8678 in QObject::activate_signal () from /usr/lib/libqt-mt.so.3
#15 0xb72b8fdc in QObject::activate_signal () from /usr/lib/libqt-mt.so.3
#16 0xb7f85e0a in KParts::ReadOnlyPart::completed ()
   from /usr/lib/libkparts.so.2
#17 0xb62581c0 in KHTMLView::timerEvent () from /usr/lib/libkhtml.so.4
#18 0xb72b5786 in QObject::event () from /usr/lib/libqt-mt.so.3
#19 0xb72f2b9a in QWidget::event () from /usr/lib/libqt-mt.so.3
#20 0xb724e87a in QApplication::internalNotify () from /usr/lib/libqt-mt.so.3
#21 0xb724f5f5 in QApplication::notify () from /usr/lib/libqt-mt.so.3
#22 0xb792502e in KApplication::notify () from /usr/lib/libkdecore.so.4
#23 0xb71e0001 in QApplication::sendEvent () from /usr/lib/libqt-mt.so.3
#24 0xb7240305 in QEventLoop::activateTimers () from /usr/lib/libqt-mt.so.3
#25 0xb71f3d2a in QEventLoop::processEvents () from /usr/lib/libqt-mt.so.3
#26 0xb7267255 in QEventLoop::enterLoop () from /usr/lib/libqt-mt.so.3
#27 0xb726717a in QEventLoop::exec () from /usr/lib/libqt-mt.so.3
#28 0xb724d38d in QApplication::exec () from /usr/lib/libqt-mt.so.3
#29 0xb68be17c in kdemain () from /usr/lib/libkdeinit_konqueror.so
#30 0xb7fb1524 in kdeinitmain () from /usr/lib/kde3/konqueror.so
#31 0x0804e1d6 in ?? ()
#32 0x00000004 in ?? ()
#33 0x080cff68 in ?? ()
#34 0x00000001 in ?? ()
#35 0x00000000 in ?? ()

More about KNOPPIX and the HP a220n

The X log file on the HP Pavilion a220n running KNOPPIX:

uploads/Xorg.0.log.TXT

This file is found at /var/log/Xorg.0.log on the system while the system is running.

Getting 'sudo' Working

There is a simple bit of information that has finally penetrated the fog of insanity that surrounds computers and related equipment that information is this:

When using the sudo command under Linux [don't know about other systems, yet] it is the case that users who are listed in the /etc/sudoers file actually use their own account password to execute the sudo command, not [as some of use might have once thought] the root account password as is used when accessing the root account with the su command.

This information has now been shown to be true under systems that include, but are not limited to:

• KNOPPIX (with passwords and user accounts enabled
• Debian
• CentOS

Full dmesg Output for a220n under KNOPPIX

Capture of the output of the command dmesg performed under KNOPPIX on the HP Pavilion a220n:

• uploads/a220n-KNOPPIX-dmesg-output.txt

Here is the output of uname -a for this same system:

Linux Knoppix 2.6.17 #4 SMP PREEMPT Wed May 10 13:53:45 CEST 2006 i686 GNU/Linux

Audio Problems on HP Pavilian a220n under Debian Linux

This is an excerpt from the output of the lsmod command run under KNOPPIX on an HP Pavilion a220n desktop computer:

snd_intel8x0           31260  3
snd_ac97_codec         88352  1 snd_intel8x0
8250_pnp               12288  0
snd_ac97_bus            6016  1 snd_ac97_codec
snd_pcm_oss            38176  0
snd_mixer_oss          17536  1 snd_pcm_oss
snd_pcm                73220  4 snd_intel8x0,snd_ac97_codec,snd_pcm_oss
snd_timer              22148  2 snd_pcm
shpchp                 37032  0
i2c_nforce2             9856  0
snd                    44768  10 snd_intel8x0,snd_ac97_codec,snd_pcm_oss,snd_mixer_oss,snd_pcm,snd_timer

For some reason neither KNOPPIX 5.0.1 nor the Debian install to the hard disk [provided by the KNOPPIX LiveCD via the knoppix-installer command] seem to be able to get the audio input functionality of the sound card working.

Audio output works okay when the Sound System is enabled via the KNOPPIX control panel, but does not appear to work under the Debian instantiation of KDE.

No version numbers captured yet from the Debian kernel, or the versions of KDE involved (which are different between the Debian install (with updates) and the KNOPPIX distro.

MSN Proprietary Wink Protocol?

Has anyone put a protocol sniffer on the MSN protocol lately? I'd like to have the protocol definition for the proprietary winks [shown in photo as rendered in Pidgin IM client v2.0.2 ] - or maybe they're filtering on the server? Can I spoof the IM client ID to the MSN server?

Zoom the screenshot to read the text ad sent by MSN servers to my IM client when the person I was chatting with sent a [apparently proprietary to MSN] "wink"

Note that Pidgin IM client is the former Gaim IM client for windows, AND that Pidgin's domain is the first instance I've seen of a working .im TLD [it is pidgin.im]

[And: props to my new sweetheart for sending that wink which highlighted this issue for me - apparently no one else talks [types] to me quite like that, kittykitty]

Parking a Domain

Message from cPanel when domain is successfully parked:

Parked Domain Additions

Using nameservers with the following IPs: 67.43.9.227,67.43.9.226 Bind reconfiguring on host using rndc
Created DNS entry for americanwifi.us
americanwifi.us was successfully parked on top of weedllc.net 

This went pretty smoothly:

• On the first try, the cPanel utility came back with an "number of parked domains allowed exceeded" message - had to go back and add domain parking to the account using Web Host Manager (WHM).
• … on the second try, the cPanel utility to Park a Domain" failed with an error indicating that the americanwifi.us domain was using name servers that were not on the weedllc.net domain, and so the domain could not be parked there;
• … went to the godaddy.com control panel interface (GoDaddy is the registrar for americanwifi.us) and set the name servers for the domain
• … the parking maneuver was accomplished on the third try, after setting the number of parked domains allowed for weedllc.net and the DNS server records for americanwifi.us
• There was not real waiting for any of these steeps - the longest wait time was for godaddy.com to update the domain domain records for americanwifi.us
• Also, had to "unlock" the domain record for americanwifi.us before changing the name server record(s). Not sure if it can be re-locked now that the name servers are off godaddy.com
• New name servers of record for americanwifi.us are ns1.weedllc.net and ns2.weedllc.net
• The DNS changes for americanwifi.us seem to have already propagated at this time: 2007-06-16 13:39 EST

Customize a Device Icon in WinXP

This information is quoted from the page at Microsoft.com:

Including Icons in Device Driver Packages

Note: The following information will be included in a future 
version of the Windows DDK.

Once you have created a custom icon for a device, you can include
the icon in the device driver package by referencing it in the INF
file. The DDInstall.HW section is used to set driver-independent
information that is device-specific.

In the sample INF sections that follow, the DDInstall.HW section 
points to a separate AddReg section, which specifies the personalized 
icons.

[DDInstall.NT.HW]
AddReg = IconInformation
[IconInformation]
HKR, , Icons, 0x10000, "<name of icon file>"
HKR, , NoMediaIcons, 0x10000, "<name of no media icon file>"

The AddReg section in this example defines two separate registry values and
corresponding icon files, one for the custom icon to display when media is 
present, and a second, "NoMediaIcons," which specifies an icon to be used to 
indicate the same device when no media is inserted.

The following example shows the registry entries for a Vid_0000&Pid_0000 
device and the dynamic-link library (DLL) files that contain the 
"media inserted" and "no media" versions of the icon.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Enum\USB\ 
 ** remove line break before using! ** 
  Vid_0000&Pid_0000\059B003112010E93\Device Parameters
Icons [REG_MULTI_SZ]= %SystemRoot%\system32\icon.ico
NoMediaIcons [REG_MULTI_SZ]= %SystemRoot%\system32\noicon.ico

In the INF file, icon files must be listed in the [SourceDisksFiles] 
section within the INF file, and copied to the user's system by either a 
CopyFiles directive or a CopyFiles section.

During driver installation, the INF entries listed in the example 
will be stored in the Device Parameters subkey within 
HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Enum.

Drivers or other code should never access or modify this registry key 
directly; instead, use one of the following APIs:

* From user-mode, use SetupDiCreateDevRegKey and SetupDiOpenDevRegKey.
 
( From kernel-mode, use IoOpenDeviceRegistryKey.
 

For information about the INF entries cited here, see the Device 
Installation Reference in the current Windows DDK.

interesting utilities for NTFS - TimeStomp

The article Slashdot | New Anti-Forensic Tools Thwart Police pointed to a couple interesting things:

TimeStomp is a program for viewing and setting file system object date/timestamps on the NTFS file system.

Quick TimeStomp How-To from the Security Articles section at DataStronghold.com.