Archive for the ‘English’ Category

Novell April 1st (1992) press releases finally found…

Thursday, September 1st, 2011

I recently found Novell’s April 1st press releases – from 1992, soon a decade old -, which I think must stay accessible forever…

By the time we got them, we did what we usually did with press releases… Copied and sent them without reading… to twenty-some journalists… Then one of them [only one!] called us several days later, with “What is this hillarious nonsense?”… Then we’ve read them too…

So here they are, in text format [to feed google] and of course the scans of the originals at the bottom.


Novell Announces “WORN Disk Technology”

Düsseldorf, 1.4.1992 – Novell, Inc., developer of NetWare systems software products, today announced WORN technology. WORN is a result of Novell’s close cooperation with major disk manufacturers and implements the most recent and straightforward concepts of data storage on harddisks.

WORN technology is an ideal alternative to the high capacity CD WORM (Write Once Read Maybe) disks developed during the recent years. WORN (Write Once Read Never) is an easy to use and simple technology to store data of any kind of media. WORN has been field tested effectively in combination with Novell’s backup utilities and drivers for 3 years. Many customers reported the successful implementation of Novell’s new WORN resources.

Without data compression an effectively unlimited amount of data can be stored even on smaller disk systems. The current release allows standard hard disks and disk controllers to be used with WORN drivers supplied by Novell. Internal tests performed in the Novell labs showed that more than 200TB (terabytes) could be stored on simple 40MB harddisks.

Due to the fact that the process of storing data currently runs much faster than data retrieval, WORN disks is be especially useful for storing large amounts of data that do not have to be accessed very often. As a side effect of the new WORN technology Novell can guarantee that applications stored on WORN drives can never be infected by computer viruses.

The next WORN release will implement additional features: it will allow floppy drives on a NetWare file server to serve as WORN devices. In combination with Intel, one of the most prominent manufacturer of microchips, there will be a co-development of WOMs (Write Only Memory) that will replace standard RAMs and ROMs in most file servers. WORN and WOM technology will revolutionize data storage and data processing of the future and post another milestone of networking technology.
As network computing expands into the enterprise, there is a great need for data security and high speed data transmission. Many distributors and national reseller organizations are sponsoring Novell’s new IPX/CE seminars for resellers and end users who need this information.

“We believe in the direction Novell is taking in the security market,” said A.E.Neumann. “Their products are so strong and this promotion is such a great opportunity that we’re creating a whole new division to support it.”

Novell, Inc., (NASDAQ: NOVL) is an operating system software company and the developer of network services, specialized and general purpose operating system software products, including NetWare, DR DOS, DR Multiuser DOS and FlexOS. Novell’s NetWare networking computer products manage and control the sharing of services, data and applications among computer workgroups, departmental networks and business-wide information systems.

Contact:
Claudia Kornacker
Novell GmbH
Willstatter Str. 13
4000 Düsseldorf 11

Tel.: +49 – 211 – 5973 – 0
Fax.: +49 – 211 – 5973 -250

[NOVELL GMBH • WILLSTATTER STRASSE 13 • 4000 DUSSELDORF 11 • TELEFON: (02 11) 59 73-0 • TELEX: 8 587 570 • TELEFAX: (02 11) 5 97 32 50]


Novell Announces “IPX Compression And Encryption Technology”

Düsseldorf, 1.4.1992 — Novell, Inc., developer of NetWare© systems software products, today announced an enhanced version of Novell’s proprietary network protocol “IPX”. The new IPX/CE protocol allows NetWare file servers and workstations to compress and encrypt data packets before sending them to the network. The current release encrypts and compresses data packets of up to 1024 bytes into 1 byte packets.

Due to the innovative, high-performance technology it is impossible for any unauthorized receiver on the network to decrypt any information sent on the wire. The high compression ratio allows the use of the of the transmission media’s full bandwidth and increases the effective speed of data transfer by approximately 300-2000%.

Contact:
Claudia Kornacker
Novell GmbH
Willstatter Str. 13
4000 Düsseldorf 11

Tel.: +49 – 211 – 5973 – 0
Fax.: +49 – 211 – 5973 -250

[NOVELL GMBH • WILLSTATTER STRASSE 13 • 4000 DUSSELDORF 11 • TELEFON: (02 11) 59 73-0 • TELEX: 8 587 570 • TELEFAX: (02 11) 5 97 32 50]


Scans:
WORN – Page 1 of 2 • WORN – Page 2 of 2IPX Compression

PayPal – “the new batch”

Monday, December 6th, 2010

Surely, I must be stupid, but I don’t understand…

So you got rooted by SHV4 / SHV5 rootkit…

Wednesday, November 17th, 2010

Best symptom that you have SHV4/5 is that you start getting “Unknown HZ value! (#) Assume 100.” messages from top/ps.

More on this at:
http://www.bigismore.com/web-server-security/unknown-hz-value-assume-100-youve-been-hacked/

rkhunter can help you “confirm” such situation too. Additionally run “chkrootkit” as well.

Now, the question, how you get rid of those.
Many forum/article/etc. on the web will likely say that you do a clean install. Meanwhile undoubtly that’s the best, you might be in a situation where that cannot be accomplished (easily), and/or you need fast (maybe temporary) remedy.

“Best” information I found was at:
http://www.linuxforums.org/forum/security/47606-shv4-shv5-rootkit-installed.html

So, the rootkit REPLACES – at least, but not limited to – the following commands at their appropriate location (/bin, /sbin, /usr/bin, etc): find, ifconfig, ls, md5sum, netstat, ps, pstree, top, dir, slocate, lsof […]

It also installs and runs /sbin/ttymon and /sbin/ttyload.
Since “ps” is replaced, you won’t be able to list them, though they would likely be running.
You can blindly issue a “killall ttymon” and “killall ttyload” to try to get rid of those process, but anyway you would need a “proper” ps to get information whether they’re killed and if not, try killing by process ID [kill -9 #].

You can get a “ps” from an identical or at least close linux system, or check /usr/lib/libsh/.backup – as the “decent” rootkit makes backups of the “clean” commands there.

After getting rid of the running process[es], lsattr -i -a the suspicious files (if you have the .backup directory, start with the named those), then replace them from either the .backup or from another identical system.

Move/backup/delete the following directories/files:
/usr/lib/libsh
/usr/lib/lidps1.so
/lib/libsh.so
/sbin/ttymon
/sbin/ttyload
/dev/devx
/etc/sh.conf

Check and delete “new”/unneeded entries from:
/etc/passwd and /etc/shadow [like psadmin, default, userx, sysadmin – also delete/move home directories of those, some might have .ssh/authorized.keys]
/root/.ssh/authorized.keys and known_hosts

Change administrator account’s passwords… [And anything you suspect to be leaked and important…]

And of course try to find the cause/way how you got hacked and make sure it won’t happen again.
Based on the creaton time of the directories, you might get a clue when the rooting happened, and check syslog, daemon.log, auth.log, etc. for clues.

Recent hacks could be related to proftpd exploit:
http://www.zerodayinitiative.com/advisories/ZDI-10-229/
This is/was supposely fixed in version 1.3.3c of proptfp [Fixed Telnet IAC stack overflow vulnerability (ZDI-CAN-925 ] – and likely backported to earlier version in your distribution, check changelog for package.
Debian changelog for reference:
http://packages.debian.org/changelogs/pool/main/p/proftpd-dfsg/proftpd-dfsg_1.3.3a-5/changelog

In case of vulnerable profptd, stop the daemon – and kill all process containing the word proftpd, there will be some…
Download and install the new package.

You might check proftp’s log “just for the fun”, you should see such mix of entries like:
“client sent too-long command, ignoring”, then
“ProFTPD terminating (signal 11)”, then
“FTP session closed.”.
Likely more of these. Then repeated open/closes.

If you see such messages in your log – and not yet hacked -, then update proftpd ASAP to avoid getting SHV4/SHV5 or anything else…

Far Manager – how to ruin a site

Monday, September 21st, 2009

I like Far Manager a lot (and Midnight Commander as well on linux boxes, if we’re here), as I grew up on Norton Commander. Once someone knows the keyboard shortcuts, he can work with that lightning fast.

Now, it happened, that I got a freshly installed notebook and one of the first things was to get Far Manager installed.
I visited the site, and found that the latest versions only available in .7z format.
Since I didn’t want to install 7-zip first, I downloaded an early install package in the good-old (erm…) .exe format.

Then, I thought I let them know, that maybe it is not the best idea to host the newest versions in .7z format, or at least provide an .exe version, but I couldn’t find a contact link on the site.

Then, I saw the forum!
Easypie – so I though -, I just register and drop a comment.
However, on the registration page, I faced an Impossible Mission!
A dreadful captcha, which was not just hard to read, but was impossible to read!
I tried to guess, but wasn’t successful, then I got another one, “Impossible Mission II” captcha.
To demonstrate what I am talking about, here are the two images I got (and no, I don’t have 16 color EGA mode selected on my computer). Anyone goes to the registration page can get similar ones.

(and no, “30M92” wasn’t a good answer…)

No wonder there are no activity on the forum!

Finally, I found a contact address at the “If you are visually impaired or cannot otherwise read this code please contact the Board Administrator.” section, I sent a mail on this “captcha” and 7z issues, but so far I didn’t get any answer…

I believe I did all I could – even wrote a blog entry! :-)

Ne kicsinyeskedjünk…

Tuesday, March 24th, 2009

Ez is egy régebbi anyag – na jó, baromi régi, 1991-ből a Novell NSE adatbázisából -, de az ilyeneknek egyszerűen fenn kell maradnia örökre!
Ez a hozzáállás kéremszépen, én is szeretnék sok sok ilyen “user”-t…

This is an old material too -well, extremely old, from Novell’s NSE database, 1991 -, but articles like these must be kept public forever.
This is the real attitude, I’d like to have many many users like this…

 

FYI:  “Mirror Copies of Volume Dir Dont Match” – Ontrack

DISCLAIMER 

 The origin of this information may be internal or external to Novell.  Novell makes every effort within its means to verify this information.  However, the information provided in this document is FOR YOUR INFORMATION only.  Novell makes no explicit or implied claims to the validity of this information.

 

TITLE:                                            “Mirror Copies of Volume Dir Dont Match” – Ontrack

DOCUMENT ID#:                         FYI.P.4291

DATE:                                             09OCT91

PRODUCT:                                   NetWare

PRODUCT VERSION:                v3.11

SUPERSEDES:                           NA

SYMPTOM:                                   

The user had extremely sensitive data stored on a file server in Kuwait. Thinking something was wrong, the user turned off the power to the server.  After powering the machine back up, the system displayed the following error message:

┌───────────────────────────────────────┐
│Mirror copies of volume dir dont match │
└───────────────────────────────────────┘

ISSUEPROBLEM

The Novell technician told the user to run VREPAIR because it fixes this problem 99 percent of the time.  The user did not want take the 1 percent risk of running VREPAIR.

SOLUTION

The user flew a team from Ontrack to Kuwait and they successfully recovered 100 percent of the data.

Ontracks data recovery phone numbers are the following:

      USA                   1-800-872-2599

      International  1-612-937-5161

      FAX                    1-612-937-5750

Ontrack has two offices in the U.S. and one in Europe.

      Ontrack London office

      Phone: 44-81-549-3444

            Fax:   44-81-546-6642

Logikus kismókus

Tuesday, November 11th, 2008

Apa, kész vagyok! Most adjál valami bonyolultat…
Dad, I am ready! Now give me something difficult…

Boldog születésnapot Mókuska!
Happy birthday little squirrel!

08-07-06

Sunday, July 6th, 2008

Happy Birthday / Boldog születésnapot Balázs!

Born at 00:10 with 3710 grams (8.18 lb), 56 cm (1,9 ft) – All systems running…

00:11

00:16

17:17

Összehasonlítandó / to compare with:

(Gáborka, 2005 november 10.)

SMARTy

Thursday, June 26th, 2008

HDD manufacturers invented S.M.A.R.T. some years ago.
So we should be happy, though I am not.

For one thing, there are no default error rates for attributes/thresholds, but manufacturer’s define (see also) when a drive is bad, and when it is good. Then of course they define it “to the extremities” so a drive in some cases can never go to bad SMART state even if it has constant problems. See more on this at: http://www.hdsentinel.com/smart/, from section “#1 Incorrect thresholds”.

I understand that current technology – in the microns – needs different approach than 10-15 years ago, but I fail to understand for example how a “197/C5” (Current Pending Sector Count) attribute can exist and increase without big red warnings. This means that the sector was successfully written once, but later on it was couldn’t be read (equals data loss). And this doesn’t count as an error (according to harddisk manufacturers), only an increase of an attribute (which can decrease too!). My point of view is that this is sort of the equivalent of the “old day’s” dreadful “bad sector” term. Though that time this things usually happened at write time, so you could immediately notice.

This is a picture of one of my (brand new) Samsung HD501LJ harddisks after 2 days of operation.

The second one followed it’s “path” some days later.

They were mirrored, but swap got corrupted, then ssh and console got swapped out and couldn’t make it back to the memory. So eventually I had to power off the server and since the mirror broke, I didn’t have a fully readable, “mirrorable” array or disk, so I had to do a file by file copy to new disks. Of course off peak, so it was like from 01:00 to 04:00. Was fun… [not].

I also installed a server with 8 Samsung 500 drives, eventually we had to replace all (Hitachis seem to work fine).
If you format/rewrite a harddisk with a bunch of these “read errors”, then voila: the errors go away. Then manufacturer  refuses to replace the harddrive – because of “no errors”. So we stopped selling Samsung harddisks.

I consulted my friend who recovers data from damaged disks, and he confirmed that Samsung is “experiencing problems” with the PMR technology and recommended Hitachi and Seagate drives to use. I then used then a pair consisting of a Hitachi and a Seagate drives to avoid simultaneous failure because of same technology/same time manufacturing.

“Hitachi drives use quite special own technology to park HDD heads outside of magnetic disks area to a special parking ramp. This causes HDD heads not to suffer from parking – they’re NEVER land on disk surface during parking. So, actually, Hitachi HDDs can handle a LOTS of starts/stops without any real problems.” [quoted from here] – [original hitachi article / same in html, from google cache]
Parking _on_ the platter can be seen here (picture 1 and 2).

Even if your server runs 24/7 in a server room with proper power and climate, it can happen that you stop your server and it’s harddisk[s] would never spin up again – because of the contact with the drive’s surface it can get stuck in the dirt (then might even fell off at a restart).

Additionally meanwhile most manufacturers (Hitachi/IBM, Seagate and even Samsung) use embedded servo on all platters nowadays, some models have only one servo information for all platters (“Format Disk with Servo Tracks Once, Use Servo Information with Many Heads“) which makes an occasional recovery less possible because even when a professional disassembles a faulty drive, the platters can move, then chances to recover anything from those platters without servo information is near to impossible.

So kids, avoid Samsung drives for the time being…

Idiots of the day (month?)

Monday, February 4th, 2008

Imagine that you want to report a spamvertized link to its support/abuse team on a site that’s main purpose is to serve links. Would you imagine that your report gets rejected because they use URI spam filtering, and their site happens to be listed there?
Well, get started…

    SMTP error from remote mail server after end of data:
    host 2url.org [72.34.37.221]: 550-Blacklisted URL in message. (2url.org) in [black]. See
    550 http://lookup.uribl.com.

Relevant URIBL screenshot

ROTFL or cry?

Excel Sudoku solver – non-macro version

Wednesday, January 30th, 2008

Régebben ígértem egy sudoku megoldó Excel táblázatot, mely makrók nélkül, csak a beépített funkciókkal oldja meg a feladatot. Hát itt lenne. Át akartam tenni OpenOffice.org alá is, de ez a különbségek miatt most nem jött össze, esetleg valaki vállalkozó szellemű majd megteszi helyettem…
A táblázat jelenleg csak az alap sor/oszlop/3×3 alapú kizárással dolgozik, nem csinál dupla (tripla, stb.) számpár alapú kizárást, de ez elég a feladványok nagyrészének megoldásához. Szerintem a számpár alapú kizárás is megoldható, de egyenlőre ezt a feladatot is a kedves olvasóra hagyom. A táblázat működésének tanulmányozása (például az eredmény pirossal történő megjelenítése és hasonló nyalánkságok) is az olvasó épülésére szolgálhat.

Some time ago, I promised you a proof-of-concept Sudoku solver in Excel, WITHOUT using macros.
So here it is, a Sudoku solver, using Excel functions only.
I was to adopt it to OpenOffice.org too, but due to differences, I gave it up after some time. Maybe someone will take some time to do that…
The spreadsheet currently doesn’t solve “double (triple, etc.) naked pairs”, only “standard” row/column/3×3 rule outs, but that’s enough for most of the basic/middle level puzzles. I believe that the “naked pairs” rule out could be implemented too, without using macros too. Check out used methods/functions in this spreadsheet to learn “quirks” (like show results in red) you might be able to implement somewhere in your spreadsheet sometime, to make others happy…

Download sudoku.xls  /  sudoku.xls letöltése

Screenshot / képernyőkép