Recent Projects

Hello everyone!
A bit of an update here since I've been abnormally quiet over the summer. Due to a general lack of anything exciting to report, I've been away from here for awhile. However, there's a bunch of stuff going on right now that may produce some interesting results for my development efforts!

First, I'll be attending the University of Alaska in Fairbanks as a Computer Engineering student, where I hope to major in CE and minor in Computer Science so that I can do my own programming for the open-source world.
Second, I have a new development platform, AKA laptop, for working on. It's a Lenovo Y560 with a quad-core i7 Q720, 8GB ram, 500GB HDD, ATi Radeon 5730 graphics, full HD screen and on and on. I was able to score it for a VERY decent price with my student discount, and so far it's complete overkill for everything I've thrown at it. I currently dual-boot with Win7 x64 and Linux Mint x64, with first the Gnome desktop and now KDE. I've been using Virtualbox to run several different distro's: Back|Track for some XP hacking and security testing, Puppy Linux 4.3.1 where I'm compiling a couple programs for the lightweight distro, and the most important: a homebrew version of Debian. The main article today will be about that last distro, but I have a few things to get out of the way first.

Windows Security....sucks
Well, I've had to deal with Windows security issues twice recently. The first was a single piece of spyware that completely infected a family friend's computer, as seen in the screenshot below:

The virus, who's name I've since forgotten, creates a slew of fake 'infected' files, then mimics an antivirus program and tries to have you delete them. This is accomplished apparently by either paying them to have it removed or downloading more software (read:bugs) and crippling your computer. It's easily transferable to another windows computer through email, too.

The second encounter was with my own tinkering: long story short, it took me 5 minutes to copy over/decrypt hashes/crack the hash keys into plaintext of the passwords for all users and the administrator of my local XP test machine. This was accomplished by copying over the SAM and system files, then using samdump2 and John the Ripper to decrypt and crack the hashes. Quite simple. However, switching to mixed letters/numbers nonstandard passwords upped security greatly--I sent JtR against the new hashes and after 10 hours, they still weren't cracked. Of course, rainbow tables would take care of that, but I don't have several gigs of bandwidth available to me (thank you my satellite service provider).

Puppy Linux
Yes, you all have probably heard of my love for Puppy. I use Linux Mint on my own computer (since it's got the sheer numbers of packages of Debian but the simple, elegant layout and programs of Mint), BackTrack in a few special cases and Puppy Linux on anyone else's computer. I have a 512MB usb stick that had nothing better to do, so therein lies my copy of Puppy 4.3.1 with the developer's dev_431.sfs. It's worked on every computer I've used it on (that could boot from USB) at lightening speeds, from old P3's to my i7 here, and I couldn't be more impressed. It has every program the average user could want or need preinstalled, with several more available in one-click from the repo's. Plus, it's extremely easy to compile in puppy too! So, use it on your old 500mHz machine with a couple hundred MB of ram and watch it perform tasks literally instantaneously! Also stay tuned for when I start downloading Puppy 5.0.x releases in college.

Finally, the main article...
Debian Homebrew linux for anyone!
Yes, that's right: I'm advertising to you that you can build a custom Debian-based distro with little hassle on your part. As long as you're comfortable with the command line (most of it is stuff like "apt-get install something"), it's a breeze. Just head on over to the Debian Netinstall ISO's and download the netinstall for your platform (if you're unsure, it's probably an i386). Burn it to cd or use unetbootin to put it on a USB. Put it in the tray and get started!

Now, one major step will be left out here: you may have to manually set up partitions if the installer doesn't do it for you. If it does, great! If not, I suggest you either research how to do it from the command line or get a liveCD distro to partition it with (using a GUI). My install, however, didn't need that.

Now, just proceed through the not-very-eye-pleasing install until it asks you to choose a download mirror. Select back, it will prompt you asking if you're sure you want to do a minimal install (or something), select yes. Install the minimal, command line system and reboot.

Now! We have........nothing. Right now it's quite useless. However, we're going to change that quick. First, enter the following command in the ROOT terminal (make sure you're on the root account):

nano /etc/apt/sources.list

scroll down and enter the following lines, changing the names to match your distro (the link I gave you is to the following lines exactly):

deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian lenny main contrib non-free
deb-src http://ftp.debian.org/debian lenny main contrib non-free

then run "apt-get update". This will update the package list and get us ready for installing things!

Now, the first and only mandatory package for this build is Xorg. It's the backbone for your graphical environment of choosing, and can be installed with the following command:

apt-get install xserver-xorg-core xorg

Now, you get to make some decisions. First, the window manager, or WM. This is what you will see when you boot linux into an Xorg environment. Check here for a list of WM's and their command-line entries.

Next, the login manager. What do you want the login screen to look like? Check here for some common ones and their entries.

Third up on the list is a web browser. Definitely needed in today's world, see here for the list. NOTE: this specific list is only for ideas. Debian 5.0.x does not have Dillo, and Firefox is called Iceweasel. I suggest looking online for browsers you may want to use.

Next, you need to install Synaptic. Simple command: "apt-get install synaptic".

Finally, you need a file manager. This is used for moving files around the system, see here for a list.

And there you go! You should be all set. Now, some recommendations:
If you want a fully functioning desktop environment that looks and feels nice, install the following packages:
WM: Gnome or KDE, recommend Gnome
Login: GDM or KDM
Browser: Iceweasel (Firefox)
FM: Nautilus

If you want a very lightweight DE, try my experimental setup:
WM: Fluxbox--lightweight and customizable!
Login: SLiM--Simple Log-in Manager. Very lightweight and has many nice themes.
Browser: If you want to compile, get Dillo. Otherwise, Iceweasel is good enough for this.
FM: Thunar--lightweight and efficient, though not as pretty as, say, Konqueror or Nautilus.

By the way, I recommend Konqueror on any non-Gnome desktop, because it doubles as a web browser and a file manager. I only use Thunar because I'm trying to make my testbed into an ultraportable distro, and it's that much smaller.

Now, happy linuxing!