Migrating Windows to New Hardware
May 27th, 2010
Have you ever used your computer and thought to yourself, “man this thing is slow, I need an upgrade”. Chances are you have. I believe that I am on my sixth computer, and surprisingly my current machine has lasted me about five years.
It’s true that the pace of computer development has slowed greatly, and an older machine will get you by just fine, so long as you don’t play the latest computer games. But, the disposable nature of consumer electronics ensures that at some point you are going to want to upgrade your hardware.
Note, I said upgrade your hardware not software. In my case, after using my computer for 5 years I’ve developed a large amount of photos, music files, documents, power-points, and customized settings. I’ve installed many software packages and have written custom bash scripts and aliases to make my life easier (I’m a linux user). The last thing I want to do is start over again from scratch on a new computer. I’m sure windows users feel exactly the same way.
Case in point, a few weekends ago, my father received a hardware upgrade. He needed it badly, as his previous machine was still in the sub-ghz range with 384 meg of ram. Naturally, he wanted his installation of Windows XP with all of his files and settings to be transferred to his new machine. He wasn’t interested in reconfiguring a new computer when he already had things set up the way he wanted.
You would think that a good operating system would anticipate the need to upgrade hardware, and facilitate the transfer. But windows doesn’t. In the linux world, there is a simple tool to do this called dd. So I thought why not give it a shot on my Dad’s windows box.
There are a few ways you could have set up the hardware to do this. In my case, I run a dedicated linux server with plenty of spare space in my father’s home (I don’t live with my parents any more, just my server does). So I simply set up an nfs share point on the server, and dumped the hard drive image there. I then setup the new hardware and restored the hard drive image from the network. If you don’t have a similar setup at home, you will likely want to remove the hard drive from your original box and install it into the new hardware so you can copy from your old hard drive to the new one.
The first step was to download a linux live cd that I could run on the WinXP box. You want to run off of a linux cd so you are not accessing the hard drives you want to copy, and because all the tools you need are available in linux for free. I chose Knoppix as my live linux cd for no particular reason. You simply go to their website, download the cd image and burn it to a cd. Put the new cd into the the cd drive and boot the computer off of the cd into a live linux environment.
Once the Adriane Screen Reader starts, you select shell to get to a command prompt. In my case, I turned off the computer speakers at this time to silence the annoying Adriane Screen Reader.
Now that you are at the command prompt, you will want to find out which hard drive is the new one, and which is the original. In linux, hard drives are set up in the directory structure as /dev/sda /dev/sdb /dev/sdc etc. Each drive will then have partitions labeled numerically such as /dev/sda1 /dev/sda2 /dev/sda3 and so on. Older versions of linux, used hd to replace sd for pata connections. In this case you would have /dev/hda /dev/hdb /dev/hdc and /dev/hda1 /dev/hda2 /dev/hda3 etc.
To find out what device points your hard disks are at do the following:
# ls /dev/hd* # ls /dev/sd*
The result will show what hard drives your system has detected. Here’s an example output from my server to give you an idea of what to look for.
mike@mikeradio:~$ ls /dev/hd* /dev/hda /dev/hda1 /dev/hda2 /dev/hdc /dev/hdc1 /dev/hdc2 mike@mikeradio:~$ ls /dev/sd* /dev/sda /dev/sda2 /dev/sda6 /dev/sdb /dev/sdb2 /dev/sdb6 /dev/sda1 /dev/sda5 /dev/sda7 /dev/sdb1 /dev/sdb5 /dev/sdb7
as you can see I have 4 hard drives, and a lot of partitions. Now you will want to check the geometry of each drive to verify which is your old drive and which is your new drive. Hopefully they are a different size to make this step easy. For each drive found with the previous command do the following.
fdisk -l /dev/sda
Again I’m showing output from my server.
mikeradio:/home/mike# fdisk -l /dev/hda Disk /dev/hda: 200.0 GB, 200049647616 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 24321 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes Disk identifier: 0xb576c039 Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/hda1 * 1 16 128488+ 83 Linux /dev/hda2 17 24321 195229912+ 5 Extended mikeradio:/home/mike# fdisk -l /dev/sda Disk /dev/sda: 1000.2 GB, 1000204886016 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 121601 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes Disk identifier: 0x52e7014a Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sda1 * 1 16 128488+ fd Linux raid autodetect /dev/sda2 17 121601 976631512+ 5 Extended /dev/sda5 17 624 4883728+ fd Linux raid autodetect /dev/sda6 625 746 979933+ fd Linux raid autodetect /dev/sda7 747 121601 970767787 fd Linux raid autodetect mikeradio:/home/mike#
The output should be enough to tell which is your old hard drive and which is the new one. In my case, /dev/hda is a 200gb drive while /dev/sda has a 1000gb drive. To follow what I’m going to show you below you will want your new hard drive to be equal or larger in size to your old drive to ensure everything fits.
Now for the copy command to transfer all your data from your old disk to your new disk. To hopefully prevent confusion I’m going to call your old drive /dev/old and your new drive /dev/new. Please replace old and new with the proper sd or hd scheme as determined from the above commands. It is important to get this correct or you could completely obliterate all the data on your old drive.
# dd if=/dev/old of=/dev/new bs=4096
You’ll have to wait a while for this command to finish. Depending on how much data your are copying it could be several hours.
Once it’s done, shutdown your computer
# halt
Remove the cd and probably the old hard drive unless you wish to continue using it in your new computer. When you turn the computer back on, if you are very lucky it should boot into Windows. I was not very lucky, and Windows did not start. Don’t worry, even if it did start you would not get far as Windows would detect that you have moved the operating system onto new hardware and would quit working anyways.
It turns out that Windows not only does not provide the tools needed to migrate your software to a new computer, but actively tries to prevent it. There is a way around this.
You have to put your WindowsXP install disk into your cd drive and boot from the cd. You want to do what’s called a repair install. This will re-install all the core parts of windows, and the boot loader, and give you a chance to re-activate your copy of windows.
This link explains how to do it.
Now windows should boot, but your larger hard drive is only showing up as the same size your old hard drive used to be. That’s not what you want. You want to unleash the full size of your new drive right? Again, windows offers no tools to do this. So, back to the linux live cd.
At this point, I’m going to assume your new hard drive is located at /dev/sda. This is where it should be if you are using knoppix and you only have one drive in your machine. I explain above how to find out where it is located if you have more than one hard drive, or are using an older version of linux on a live cd.
Again, you will want to get to the shell or command prompt. From here use fdisk to re-size the partition table on the hard drive. First enter fdisk.
# fdisk /dev/sda
now change units by typing ‘u’ and pressing enter.
Command (m for help): u Changing display/entry units to sectors
Type ‘p’ to get list your current partition. You want to write down the start sector. For me, it was 63.
Next delete the partition by typing ‘d’ and enter.
Now we create a new partition by typing ‘n’. Follow the prompts to make it a primary partition located at partition 1. Make sure the starting sector is the same as you wrote down earlier, and accept the default last sector to fill the entire disk.
Type ‘t’ to change the partition type to 7 otherwise known as ntfs
Type ‘a’ to make the partition bootable
Finally type ‘w’ to save your changes and exit fdisk
Now we have to resize the ntfs file system to fill the partition. Again Windows dose not give you a tool to do this, so we use linux. Simply use the ntfsresize command as follows.
# ntfsresize /dev/sda1
Note that I referred ntfsresize to /dev/sda1 the 1 indicates that I am looking at the first partition on the first hard drive. ntfsresize should resize the file system to fill the newly expanded partition, and thus your hard drive. Reboot into windows and you should have full use of your new hard drive.
# reboot
The end.
Tags: linux
Posted in linux | No Comments »
Canadian Foreign Policy I Agree With?
April 21st, 2010
It’s not very often these days that I read something in the news about Canada’s Foreign Policy that I agree with. For an example, here’s some of the stuff I tend to disagree with and read about most often:
- Government of Canada refuses to petition the US government for the return of child soldier being held at the Guantanamo Prison.
- Government of Canada may have known their prisoners were subject to torture in Afghanistan
- Government of Canada will not request that the USA return a Canadian Citizen on death row to Canada for imprisonment.
- Government of Canada will not open discussion on family planning while promoting maternal health at the G8 summit.
- Government of Canada leads the charge against a moratorium on hunting and fishing Polar Bears and Bluefin Tuna.
- Government of Canada does not want a legally binding climate change agreement at the Copenhagen summit.
Then today, I find this gem:
“And some nations, including Canada, oppose any new bank taxes.”
It came out of this article http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/8633455.stm. Surprisingly enough, in this rare case, I can actually say that I agree with the Government of Canada. The idea of taxing banks to put money away for the next round of bailouts is in my opinion a very poor solution to this problem. First, having this tax will give international banks a feeling that they are insured. Instead of forcing them to operate more soundly and conservatively, they will instinctively feel that they can afford to take extra risks. If things go bad, they will just get their tax dollars back in the form of a bailout, and it will be business as usual. If things go well, they will be making huge profits, and realizing their past extraneously large bonuses.
Second, as long as one country refuses to adopt this tax, there will be a quick move of headquarters of major banks to this new tax free haven. The implications of this could be far reaching, especially if this tax free haven also has lax regulations, allowing banks all the freedom they need to bring about the next global financial crisis.
The way I would deal with this problem is through regulation. By forcing banks to keep a certain portion of their assets in low-risk, cash like investments, regulating risky debt based investment hedging and derivatives, and ensuring the lending criteria on loans are significantly stringent enough to ensure that those likely to default are not eligible for loans in the first place.
All in all, Canada seems to have a good track record of strong banks capable of surviving the economic crisis. Our regulation system should be the standard the world looks to emulate. Or more specifically the actions of our banks should be emulated. Adopting a new, untested tax regime is not the answer.
Tags: news, politics
Posted in politics | 5 Comments »
Gogol Bordello and Darke Hall
April 4th, 2010
Gogol Bordello
Heard these guys for the first time as I was leaving the Hawksley Workman concert at Darke Hall on March 19th. I didn’t get a good listen to it, as I was part of the steady stream of traffic headed to the main exit. The lyrics were catchy, and a quick youtube search after I got home was all I needed to find this video. I thought I would pass it on.
I also wanted to pass on my support for the continued use of Darke Hall as a concert venue. It is easily my favourite concert venue in Regina, followed by the Conexus Arts Centre, and then the Exchange. The hall is booked through the Conservatory of Performing arts at the University of Regina.
Here’s their description of the venue from their website.
Darke Hall offers the warm character only a classic property can deliver, plus the seating capacity of up to 610 persons (Main Floor 550, Balcony 60). The stage has an acting area of 24 ft by 24 ft. Details for rental must be finalized at least two weeks prior to your event.
No external food or beverage may be brought in; however, Aramark Food Services may be used as they are the University of Regina’s licensed caterers. Unfortunately the hall is not wheelchair accessible.
Rental rates are dependant on the type of group. All rates include 4 hours of technician services, basement lobby, kitchen facilities, backstage lighting and sound.
That description hardly does the place justice. It’s a large brick building full of atmosphere. At the front is a sizable stage silhouetted with huge pipes from a pipe organ. The building is tall and long, much like a classic church, complete with wood floors, and a balcony at the back. The seating is aged but comfortable folding theatre seats. The roof is lined with acoustic tile. In short, it’s full of atmosphere and more importantly, it has amazing acoustics. The hall easily handles loud rocky tunes keeping the notes clean and crisp just as easily as it handles completely acoustic vocals, guitar, and piano without any electrical amplification whatsoever. Even the wood flooring contributes to an audible foot tapping, a very unique form of crowd interactivity.
You’re probably wondering why I’m giving this hall such a great review and I didn’t spend a lot of time on the concert itself. That’s a good question, for those wondering how the concert was I can say that this was the 3rd time I’ve seen Hawksely Workman live, the second time in this same venue. As always the concert was amazing. If you have not seen Hawksley live I highly recommend it, if you don’t know who he is, go buy some of his albums, they are all great.
Now back to the hall, I want to see more concerts play in Darke Hall. At the Hawksley concert, a comment was made on stage about the hall being difficult to book. They suggested that we inform the Conservatory of Performing Arts how much us concert goers appreciate the venue, so that they keep it available for future public performances.
After a bit of searching on their website, I came across this email address: conserva@uregina.ca. I’m going to send them a quick email expressing my support for keeping the venue available for public concerts in the future. If you have similar feelings, please follow my lead.
Tags: music, reviews
Posted in music | No Comments »
Country of Origin – Olympics
March 27th, 2010
I know I’m a bit late in writing this, as the 2010 Winter Olympics are over. But there’s still time for the 2012 Summer Olympics, and the 2014 Winter Olympics, and the 2016 Summer Olympics, and the … you get the point.
In a nutshell, I’m wondering why do we make such a big deal about the nation vs nation aspect of the Olympics. I’m thinking it should be more about athlete vs athlete.
Sure, on the surface it seems like a good idea, people come together to cheer on their home country, instilling a wave of patriotism in every competing nation across the globe. And it settles the age old question of which nation is the best without need for a world domination style war. Yes, it appears to be a, nation vs nation, who’s better then who competition and that’s what everyone from politicians to the working class alike want. And, I can see how that appeals.
There’s of course the obvious dark side in this, confusing nation vs nation with race vs race, but so far I think the Olympics have done a reasonably good job in avoiding this. It also helps that multi-cultural or multi-racial countries such as the USA, and Canada tend to do quite well at the games without a defining majority race.
But, does it get to the age old question of which athlete is the best?
The big downfall of this system that I’m complaining about is the country cap system. This system sets the maximum number of any athletes that can compete for a single country in any one event. The problem is that it is quite possible for 5 or 6 of the top 20 athletes in any one event to have citizenship in the same nation. The cap would force some of them to stay home, while athletes who perform worse during qualifications from other countries who have not filled their cap are allowed to compete. Not really getting to the best of the best are we?
Another problem is citizenship. Some countries give out citizenship like candy to athletes just so they will compete for them at the Olympics. This works to get past the country cap system, but cheapens the nation vs nation experience. Can we really consider someone who was born in the USA, who’s parents were also born in the USA, who plays professional level basketball in the USA to be a German just because they offered him some money and a citizenship?
There’s inequalities here too, different countries have different rules on who can compete for them. Some require birth in the country, for others citizenship is good enough, maybe having a grandparent who was a citizen will work, or maybe there is no need to have had a previous relationship of any sort with the country you compete for. It’s all a hodgepodge, further advantaging or disadvantaging one nation over the other.
Finally, citizenship is generally based on where you were born, unless you have citizenship to more than one country. Is this what is important, or is it the place your currently live, train, and prepare for the Olympics that is important? For me, I don’t care where you were born, so long as you live and train in Canada, you should be competing for them. That’s good enough for me.
In summary, let’s play down the country of origin labeling forced on our athletes, and make it more about who’s the best of the best. Here are two simple changes to improve the next games:
- Remove the country cap system, and make it a world wide cap per event
- Don’t base the nation of an athlete on which country granted the citizenship, but on which country they have lived and trained in the longest over the past 4 years. It should be more of a sub-note about the athlete than the main label.
What would you prefer to see at the Olympic games? A competition to test the best of the best, or a forum for trumping up nations and international rivalries?
Tags: philosophy
Posted in ramblings | No Comments »
Did The Red Cross Employ Slave Labour?
March 20th, 2010
CBC Radio - The CurrentJust passing on an interesting story I picked up on while driving from Saskatoon to Qu’Appelle the other day. The above link will play the radio episode that I heard, while the link below will take you to a written article. Both sourced by the CBC and, as I understand, originating from an investigation done by the French Radio-Canada.
My opinion of all this is not great for the Canadian Red Cross. As a past, and potentially future, donator to the Red Cross I’m a little upset at they way the Red Cross seems to be treating these allegations. Their initial approach to the whole thing seems okay to me. After hearing a report from one of their field agents, they began with a high level internal investigation to determine if there was any truth to these allegations. They decided there was, then hired an external third party investigator to bring in the details. Seems reasonable so far.
The part that I’m upset with is what they did after that. I’m just going to sum it up with what they seem to be doing, vs what I want to be hearing from them.
This is an isolated case, of 40 or so workers and it has been fully dealt with
vs
Thank you for bringing to our attention this potentially wide spread problem. We will be sending our own field agents to Java to conduct a full review, and will compensate workers that were under compensated for their efforts in rebuilding after the Tsunami. Expect a report on our findings in the next 6 months.
We have a code of ethics that we make all contractors sign to prevent anything like this from happening.
vs
We realize that without proper inspection and follow up, we can not be certain that contractors are following our code of ethics. In the future we will be performing regular inspections at job sites using a rotation of our own field staff. We will take the lead from other NGOs and cancel contracts with employers who are found to be non-compliant.
We are not directly responsible for any abuse given to workers as this is the responsibility of our contractors
vs
As owner’s of the project, we take full responsibility for any worker abuse.
You get the idea.
http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2010/03/17/mtl-red-cross-tsunami-enquete.html
http://www.redcross.ca/article.asp?id=34473&tid=001
Tags: charity, news
Posted in charity | 3 Comments »
I’ve Been Stuck in a Car Wash
March 14th, 2010
Not sure if this has ever happened to anyone else, but I was stuck in a car wash the other night. It happened at the Petro-Canada on the corner of Victoria and Fleet Street in Regina.
Pretty snappy picture eh? Thanks Google.
Back to my story, I was driving my company truck at the time. It’s a reasonably large 2008 Chevy Silverado. I’d taken it through this same car wash before, usually once a week, so I wasn’t worried about it not fitting.
After plugging in my payment card, the equipment fires up and away I go, everything seems normal. I go past the high pressure spray nozzles, and through the multi-colour foam machine. Everything is fine. Next come the spinning scrubbing cylinders on either side, and the overhead strips of cloth that drape over my windshield blinding me from the mechanical scrubbing frenzy taking place outside.
Just then, while I’m blind to everything around me, the steering wheel jerks hard to the right, the truck bounces a bit, stops moving, starts moving, bounces again, then stops moving for good. I would like to point out and emphasize at this point that I neither turned the steering wheel nor touched the breaks at any point.
Eventually the equipment stops spinning, the water stops spraying, and the whole machine grinds to a halt. I get out of the truck to examine the situation while I’m waiting for the attendant to come out. What I find is that some of the same cloth that was covering my windshield had been caught between the front driver side tire, and the metal rail that keeps your vehicle pointed in the correct direction. Seems to me that this was enough to cause the side wall of the tire to bind to the rail and cause the tires to turn and jam.
The attendant comes out, and quickly breaks into a lecture on how I should not have stepped on the break or turned the wheel while I was in the car wash. I explain that I didn’t, and point out the cloth wedged between the tire and the rail.
“Oh,” she says, “that’s not the problem, your truck must be too big.”
Of course I’m skeptical, given the regular frequency in which I take this same vehicle through this same car wash, but I didn’t really feel like arguing.
“I don’t know what to do, I’ll need to get the manager” With that she leaves, and I’m back to waiting. After a few minuets, I’m greeted by the manager and another lecture on not using the breaks or turning the steering wheel. Again I explain that I did neither, though I’m certain he did not believe me.
The manager says, “You’ll have to start your truck and drive out once I open the door. Then come through again and remember not to touch your breaks or steering wheel.” Yeah, a double dose of lecture. Oh well, I just want to get on the road again, so I don’t bother arguing with him.
I hop into the truck, put in the key, turn it, and nothing. That’s right, nothing. Somehow during the brief time I spent in the car wash the battery had died. I always turn the truck off when going through the car wash to save gas, this time it didn’t pan out. The in-dash meter was reading just over 9 volts, enough to make a clicking sound and run the radio, but not much else.
This is where things got fun. I, along with the manager and his attendant, had to push the truck out of the car wash. I had to turn the wheel and clear the fabric before it would move, but that did little to dissuade either of them to thinking that I had not deliberately caused my truck to stop in the car wash, and was now faking a battery problem.
We all got wet and waxy pushing that truck through all the fabric scrubbers, my jacket was soaked, my gloves were soaked, my pants were soaked, and I was none to happy. Once outside I quickly managed to find someone at the pumps in a Kramer company vehicle to give me a boost. The truck started right away, and thus ended my car was adventure for the evening.
Tags: humour
Posted in humour | No Comments »
I’m a loser
March 7th, 2010
The title just oozes self deprecation doesn’t it? I’m actually not referring to my social inadequacies, but to my political ones. There’s nothing I’ve disliked more about my time in politics than when I’m on the loosing side of a vote. Contrary to what some may think, this doesn’t happen very often, at least not on town council.
The council system functions much like the Cuban system, or a company boardroom. There is no official opposition, we are all elected to be on the same team, and work together in collaboration. The vast majority of resolutions are made with unanimous support.
The votes that are not unanimous are the ones I became a politician for. You see, several things have to come together for a vote not to be passed unanimously. First, either outcome of the vote has to be acceptable. Otherwise you couldn’t have people both support and not support the same motion. The difference in opinion then comes down to vision.
For me, vision is the whole reason I took up politics in the first place. I felt that I could make a difference for the better. My political vision is best categorized as, neo-liberalism but let’s not use that term as it’s poorly understood and even detested in some circles.
A better description is this:
Always strive to make decisions which will have the greatest long term benefit to all parties involved. Base decisions on fact, avoid group think, gut feelings, party ideologies, and political games. Remember that you are making decisions as a representative of your constituents not as your constituents would make decisions. Your job is to have a deeper understanding of the issues, and to make an informed decision, not a popular one.
So, when one of these rare opportunities to vote on an issue where I get to apply my vision comes up, understandably I get quite excited. Then, I quickly become disappointed as I realize that I am on the loosing side.
It’s made all the worse for me, when I hear the following statements during the usually brief discussions the precede the vote. “I just have a gut feeling, and my gut is usually right”; “We all met before hand and decided without you, so it doesn’t matter what you have to say”; “Your wrong, I can’t give you any examples as to why but your still wrong”.
As you can see, these statements are directly opposed to my own vision or reason for getting into politics in the first place. Very disheartening. I usually don’t sleep well that night, often thinking that I should send in my resignation, as I’m not of “like mind” with my counterparts. I feel that I’ve not made any difference, and I’m wasting my time and worse tax payer dollars by taking up space on council.
Eventually I spin it around and come to realize that you can’t win them all, and things would have been all the worse if my vision was not even at the table. At least it gives others a reason to pause and reflect and maybe, just maybe it will slowly rub off on them. And one day I will be on the winning side of a principled vote, and I will make a positive difference.
Of course this process is made all the more easy by venting to my wife, friends, and family and now for the first time, my blog.
Tags: philosophy, politics
Posted in politics | No Comments »
Paddock Wood Loki IPA
February 26th, 2010
I had the opportunity to taste this specialty brew by Saskatoon’s Paddock Wood Brewery. It’s good, very good even. Assuming of course you like beer, and more specifically the super bitter and hoppy India Pale Ale Style of brews. If you put together that IPA stood for India Pale Ale, and thought to your self “mmm, I do like Alexander Keith’s” this beer is not for you. This beer is a real IPA, for the indoctrinated hop head.
What I liked about it:
- Hoppie – I love the taste of hop flowers in my beer. This one does not dissapoint. I would consider it a double IPA or Imperial IPA myself based on the intense flavour.
- Bitter – 1 and 2 kind of go together here. It’s a pleasant and strong bitterness. It hits hard, and fades nice and slow leaving you with a sensation as close as a man can get to the female orgasm. Well, done.
- Smells like fowers – I like that.
- Sweet – has a caramel or toffee sweetness to it, everything seems to be in a good balance making this strong hoppie beer very palatable.
To sum up for those that have had the odd blast of other local IPA’s, I’d say it is on par with Regina Bushwakker’s brew Trephination Double and Winnipeg Half Pint’s Humulus Ludicrous. If that dosen’t mean anything to you, check them out when you get a chance. All the beer I’ve mentioned so far are seasonal, so you should drink them when you can find them.
That brings me to my next point, where did I have such a great beer. I managed to get some off the tap at Beer Bros 1821 Scarth Street, Regina. No telling how long they’ll have it in stock, but today is probably a good day for you to head down and give it a try.
Update May 27th, 2010
I took Tim Kramer’s advice left in the guest book, and went to the fainting goat restaurant last night. Loki was indeed on tap. I had it with the Duck Kabobs, an unbelievable pairing for this beer. I’ve had fantastic wine pairings before, but I’ve always found beer pairings a bit of a joke. Not so in this case, the beer and duck really played off each other, and there was definitely a flavor synergy.
Tags: beverages, reviews
Posted in reviews | No Comments »
Postfix Sending Spam From User www-data
February 22nd, 2010
Recently I discovered that Postfix had been busy sending spam emails to people all over the web. Several entries like this started showing up in my /var/log/mail.log
Jan 24 09:05:50 li51-89 postfix/qmgr[2971]: 278C6C499: from=<www-data@####.members.linode.com>, size=600, nrcpt=1 (queue active) 278C6C499: to=<luke.debett####@law.com>, relay=none, delay=185184, delays=185184/0/0.05/0, dsn=4.4.1, status=deferred (connect to law.com[12.170.132.211]:25: Connection refused)
I also found many rejected emails that had bounced back to my server in the /var/mail/www-data file. These gave me an idea of what kind of emails my server was busy sending out.
Here’s and example, I removed the link address from the email, parts of my server’s domain name, and the recipient’s email address.
--3432BC4CA.1262789678/####.members.linode.com Content-Description: Undelivered Message Content-Type: message/rfc822 Received: by ####.members.linode.com (Postfix, from userid 33) id 3432BC4CA; Wed, 6 Jan 2010 08:54:36 -0600 (CST) To: runner####@hotmail.com Subject: Biggest result ever MIME-Version: 1.0 ^M Content-type: text/html; charset="utf-8" ^M X-Mailer: eComm Php^M From: mail@shop.subdomain.org ^M Message-Id: <20100106145437.3432BC4CA@####.members.linode.com> Date: Wed, 6 Jan 2010 08:54:36 -0600 (CST) Only here you can get it. <a href="CENSORED"><font size=3 color="orange">Get now</font></a><style>}3;m@7~w(;9j]8T_3FB|}IP9b5X][H;Np5nlEn</style> --3432BC4CA.1262789678/####.members.linode.com--
From the “From” line in the above returned email, I could find the source of the problem. My website located a shop.subdomain.org was being hijacked to send spam. This particular website was running osCommerce v2.2 Rc 2a last released in 2008. There were no updates available to OsCommerce that fixed this problem.
I suppose at this point I could have tried to find the component at fault and bugfix it myself, but I took the lazy way out, and completely shut down the site.
Result: problem fixed.
Hope this helps someone with a similar problem. For those that must know, I started using Joomla 1.5 and Virtuemart for the same website. Haven’t had any problems yet… fingers still crossed.
Tags: linux
Posted in linux | 2 Comments »
Human Bed Warmers Now at the Holiday Inn
February 15th, 2010
This has been written about in a few other blogs and news sites, so I’m just going to pass on a link rather than re-write the same stuff.
I first heard about this on CBC Radio 1, and a quick google search will show a half dozen “credible” sources. It’s not a hoax, but given the thoughts posted on most blogs, I can’t see it staying around for long.
Tags: humour, news
Posted in humour | No Comments »