This is for Windows (XP or Vista) dual boot with Fedora Core (any version)
Boot the Fedora cd disk #1 (installation disk). At the installation menu, type in linux rescue (hit the enter key)
Now system will try to find your linux installation and all goes fine it will mount your root filesystem under /mnt/sysimage directory.
At the terminal prompt, Type in chroot /mnt/sysimage then type: cd /boot/grub this is where your grub files are. Type cat grub.conf and note which hd it is referring to.
If this does not work for some reason, type in df or rdev and this will show you where the root drive is, usually the first entry (line).
Then type; (I am installing grub on the MBR of first hardisk)
grub-install –recheck/dev/hda
This may take a minute or so and should just return a command prompt with no errors. Once it does, type in reboot and see if grub comes up normally.
Open up a terminal and switch to root user. Suppose : xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx = new mac address you wan to assign to you box example: 1a:2b:3c:4d:5e:6f Characters allowed in mac address: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 a b c d e f enter the following:
# ifconfig eth0 down # ifconfig eth0 hw ether 1a:2b:3c:4d:5e:6f # ifconfig etho up
Check the new MAC address by using following command
Perhaps the ultimate definition of computer security is the effectiveness of your antivirus. Antivirus software keeps the most problematic forms of malware from corrupting your computer.
Clam AntiVirus – Extremely popular antivirus solution for UNIX based machines. Includes real time virus scanning and a virus definition database updated multiple times per day.
Avast Home Edition – Complete antivirus suite including real time scanning, email protection, internet traffic filtering, a firewall and more.
Housecall – Web based scanner that detects and removes viruses, worms, trojans and spyware. Also points out system vulnerabilities and offers advice on obtaining security patches.
Symantec Security Check – Simple antivirus solution that searches your computer for various forms of malware and deletes them. Offers a secondary scan to measure the vulnerability of your computer.
Rootkit
Rootkits are about the nastiest forms of malware around. To keep your computer (and your privacy) safe, you’ll need an app to scan for rootkits.
chkrootkit – The definitive solution for finding and removing rootkits from Linux machines.
Firewall
A well regarded firewall with a strict rule set is the first line of defense against intruders. Keep hackers from sneaking malware onto your system in the first place with these freebie firewall solutions.
Firestarter – Real time firewall that monitors all of the open ports and active network connections on your computer. Allows you to specify a very strict rule set.
Firewall Builder – Useful tool for assembling a firewall rule set or policy for popular UNIX based firewalls including iptables, ipfilter, etc.
TuxGuardian – Verifies the integrity of applications trying to gain access to the network. Useful for preventing viruses, trojans, spyware, etc. from spreading throughout the network.
HardWall Firewall – Iptables based script that performs detailed packet inspection and filtering to keep your computer free from malicious traffic.
PeerGuardian – Blocks IPs from accessing your network. Especially useful for protecting your privacy when using peer to peer software.
Email Security
Thunderbird – Highly customizable secure email client. Comes equipped with spam email filters, phishing protection and encryption capabilities.
Smart sendmail filters – A collection of tools to block and filter sendmail spam as well as scan attachments for viruses.
Sagator – An interface for the postfix, sendmail and other smtpd gateways that run popular antivirus and antispam solutions.
Tiger Envelopes – Encrypts email messages. Integrates into Outlook, Thunderbird, Mac Mail and KMail.
Web Utility
Malware infestation is probably the most annoying aspect of surfing the internet. It starts by accidentally downloading a toolbar here, failing to read a EULA there, and eventually your whole computer is one big slow piece of junk. To prevent this from happening (again) try using these apps when surfing.
Tor – Uses a network of virtual tunnels to provide anonymity for surfing the internet and transferring files over a network.
Firefox – A fan favorite browser for it’s secure architecture and available add-ons. Uses SSL browsing by default.
WebCleaner – Allows you to control the type of data your proxy parses. Useful for eliminating dangerous malware and removing annoying popup ads.
McAfee Site Advisor – Rates websites by their ability to infect your computer with malware. Advises you if a site is safe or not.
Network
With an insecure network not only will you be vulnerable to the perils of the internet, everyone connected to your network will too. Meaning instead of having one computer down due to a nasty virus, you could have hundreds. These freebie apps will help you manage the challenge of keeping your network safe.
SmoothWall – Firewall, IDS and VPN system for home users and networks.
Nagios – Comprehensive web based tool equipped with virtually every imaginable feature for knowing exactly what’s going on in your network.
Nessus – Industry leading open source network vulnerability scanner. Highly scalable and very thorough.
Wireshark – Powerful tool for capturing network protocol data for analysis. Contains more than 25 methods for reading packets making it useful for a wide array of networks.
Intrusion Detection System
Implementing an effective intrusion detection system is a surefire step to improving the security of your network and personal computer. Here are several popular solutions.
Snort – The premier free IDS solution. Detects a wide variety of attacks including buffer overflows, OS fingerprinting, CGI scans and more. Uses real time traffic analysis and packet logging on IP networks
Prelude – Detects system anomalies and reports findings to the user. Also analyzes logs for anomalies.
Virtual Private Network
VPN usage has exploded the past few years due to its new found ease of use and high level of security.
SSL-Explorer – Highly scalable VPN that integrates directly into your browser. Requires only a single open port to work.
OpenVPN – Popular VPN solution specializing in remote access.
strongSwan – IPsec based VPN using multiple encryption methods.
Encryption
Encryption is a must for the most sensitive types of data. After all, we all know what happens when a password or credit card number winds up in the wrong persons hands. That’s why we recommend you check out a few of the following encryption apps.
GNU Privacy Guard – A command line based encryption tool using multiple encryption algorithms including OpenPGP, AES, SHA-1, and more.
Regular KDE 4 Packages and an openSUSE-based KDE Four Live CD have been available throughout the whole cycle, and final versions of them are also available now. On openSUSE 10.3 you can use 1-click-install to get the KDE 4.0 desktop environment -- Here
Or you can choose to install a more basic KDE 4 desktop. Developers can also optionally install the KDE 4 build dependencies: all the packages you need to have installed for compiling KDE 4.0 from source (experts only).
badblocks is a Linux utility to check for bad sectors on a disk drive (A bad sector is a sector on a computer's disk drive or flash memory that cannot be used due to permanent damage or an OS inability to successfully access it.). It creates a list of these sectors that can be used with other programs, like mkfs, so that they are not used in the future and thus do not cause corruption of data. It is part of the e2fsprogs project.
It can be a good idea to periodically check for bad blocks. This is done with the badblocks command. It outputs a list of the numbers of all bad blocks it can find. This list can be fed to fsck to be recorded in the filesystem data structures so that the operating system won’t try to use the bad blocks for storing data. The following example will show how this could be done.
From the terminal, type following command:
$ sudo badblocks -v /dev/hda1 > bad-blocks
The above command will generate the file bad-blocks in the current directory from where you are running this command.
Now, you can pass this file to the fsck command to record these bad blocks
If badblocks reports a block that was already used, e2fsck will try to move the block to another place. If the block was really bad, not just marginal, the contents of the file may be corrupted.
Looks at badblocks man pages for more command line options.
If you wish to be even more aggressive with your spam filtering, you can configure Sendmail to completely ignore senders that have bad reputations. With this step, Sendmail won’t even talk to them.
Editing the file /etc/mail/sendmail.mc, insert the following lines anywhere in the FEATURE section of the file:
Apply the changes by saving the file and running the following commands:
cd /etc/mail make all /sbin/service sendmail restart
From this point on, every time an SMTP client connects to Sendmail, Sendmail will refer to the blacklist authorities you added to verify the client’s reputation. If the client is reported to have a shady reputation, Sendmail will hang up on him.
System Activity Information: sar To use sar, sadc (system activity data collector) needs to be running. Check its status or start it with rcsysstat {start|status}. sar can generate extensive reports on almost all important system activities, among them CPU, memory, IRQ usage, IO, or networking. With its many options, it is too complex to explain further here. Refer to the man page for extensive documentation with examples.
Memory Usage: free The utility free examines RAM usage. Details of both free and used memory and swap areas are shown: poison:~ # free total used free shared buffers cached Mem: 450128 398428 51700 0 10280 141204 -/+ buffers/cache: 246944 203184 Swap: 514040 182656 331384
The options -b,-k,-m,-g show output in bytes, KB, MB, or GB, respectively
User Accessing Files: fuser It can be useful to determine what processes or users are currently accessing certain files. Suppose, for example, you want to unmount a file system mounted at /mnt. umount returns “device is busy.” The command fuser can then be used to determine what processes are accessing the device:
poison:~ # fuser -v /home/nikesh/
USER PID ACCESS COMMAND /home/nikesh/: nikesh 5476 ..c.. su
List of Open Files: lsof. To view a list of all the files open for the process with process ID PID, use -p. For example, to view all the files used by the current shell, enter:
poison:~ # lsof -p $$ COMMAND PID USER FD TYPE DEVICE SIZE NODE NAME bash 4700 root cwd DIR 3,6 4096 1811521 /root bash 4700 root rtd DIR 3,6 4096 2 / bash 4700 root txt REG 3,6 557704 913931 /bin/bash bash 4700 root mem REG 3,6 131115 2139537 /lib/ld-2.5.so bash 4700 root mem REG 0,0 0 [heap] (stat: No such file or directory) bash 4700 root mem REG 3,6 42546 2137956 /lib/libnss_files-2.5.so bash 4700 root mem REG 3,6 238464 344723 /usr/lib/locale/en_US.utf8/LC_CTYPE bash 4700 root mem REG 3,6 1494633 2140298 /lib/libc-2.5.so bash 4700 root mem REG 3,6 16082 2140299 /lib/libdl-2.5.so bash 4700 root mem REG 3,6 294652 2140313 /lib/libncurses.so.5.5 bash 4700 root mem REG 3,6 28088 2140319 /lib/libhistory.so.5.1 bash 4700 root mem REG 3,6 192840 2140316 /lib/libreadline.so.5.1 bash 4700 root mem REG 3,6 42325 2137960 /lib/libnss_nis-2.5.so bash 4700 root mem REG 3,6 95913 2140304 /lib/libnsl-2.5.so bash 4700 root mem REG 3,6 32135 2137952 /lib/libnss_compat-2.5.so bash 4700 root mem REG 3,6 25460 329733 /usr/lib/gconv/gconv-modules.cache bash 4700 root 0u CHR 136,4 6 /dev/pts/4 bash 4700 root 1u CHR 136,4 6 /dev/pts/4 bash 4700 root 2u CHR 136,4 6 /dev/pts/4 bash 4700 root 255u CHR 136,4 6 /dev/pts/4
Interprocess Communication: ipcs The command ipcs produces a list of the IPC resources currently in use: poison:~ # ipcs —— Shared Memory Segments ——– key shmid owner perms bytes nattch status 0×00000000 98304 root 600 33554432 7 dest 0×00000000 32769 root 666 66136 2 dest 0×00000000 524290 root 600 393216 2 dest 0×00000000 557059 root 600 393216 2 dest 0×00000000 589828 root 600 393216 2 dest 0×00000000 622597 root 600 393216 2 dest 0×00000000 786438 root 666 131040 1 dest
Process Tree: pstree The command pstree produces a list of processes in the form of a tree:
Processes: top The command top, which stands for “table of processes,” displays a list of processes that is refreshed every two seconds. To terminate the program, press Q. The parameter -n 1 terminates the program after a single display of the process list. The following is an example output of the command top -n 1:
Who Is Doing What: w With the command w, find out who is logged onto the system and what each user is doing. For example:
Safer, Faster, and Smarter internet access by using OpenDNS
If you are not aware of OpenDNS, please do look here first.
OpenDNS protects you from phishing — bad websites trying to steal your personal information. When you try to go to a phishing site, Opendns let you know. Let's try to configure and use this on Linux.
1) Make sure named is installed on your system.
2) Edit your /etc/resolv.conf file and add following entry nameserver 127.0.0.1
3) Now edit your /etc/named.conf file, you should have similar to this... in your "options" section of named.conf file
Q I’m thinking of trying out Linux, but I can’t seem to find any information on anti-spyware programs for that operating system. Do you know where I can find such software?
I am prepared to pay for them as it’s not worth the risk otherwise, based on my experience with Windows.
A You’ll be pleased to hear that there’s a good reason why it’s so hard to find an anti-spyware program for Linux: the threat from spyware is far smaller when using Linux than when using Windows.
Because of the way Linux works, it’s far harder to create spyware that can get at your personal information. Also, because the number of Linux users is still relatively small, it makes more sense for spyware creators to concentrate on spyware for Windows, where they are likely to get a bigger response. The same goes for viruses on Linux – no-one has yet seen a true virus for it.
That’s not to say it can’t happen, and in future it’s perfectly possible that both viruses and spyware will start to appear. For now, however, it’s safe to go without anti-spyware protection when using Linux. Anti-virus software is available for Linux such as the free version of AVG.
There are two good reasons for installing this. The first is that you will be prepared in case someone does release a virus for Linux, and the second is that it will prevent you from inadvertently sending a virus to a friend using Windows.
One thing you shouldn’t go without is a firewall, however. Most Linux distributions will include one as standard, but make sure it is switched on and active before using the internet. This will provide an excellent line of defence against all kinds of online threats.
It is also very important to update Linux just as you would run Windows Update. Most distributions come with a way of doing this automatically.