The Internet Home of Kevin L. Collins
Computers
Posts dealing with computers.
It’s Friday, have you cleaned malware from a PC this week?
1Yesterday around 9 A.M., one of my co-workers called to inform me that they had a “popup” message on their computer while browsing the web. First thought through my head was: “Here we go again…”. Before I even connected to the remote machine I knew what I was going to see. Another fake virus/malware/infection warning. I was right. As soon as I connected, I saw the warning: “You’re running unprotected, please click here to subscribe and removed the following infections.”
GAH! I’m am sick and tired of wasting my time cleaning this garbage up! Why can’t this stuff be stopped?
So, after spending 3 hours on the machine via PCAnywhere, I came to the conclusion that remote cleaning wasn’t going to work. I dispatched a person from each office to meet half-way to deliver the machine back to me. Around 2:30 yesterday afternoon I finally got a few moments to look at it.
Problem is, once the machine booted Windows, the keyboard and mouse became non-responsive. Either Windows had locked up, or the malware didn’t like being disconnected from the Internet (because I refuse to plug the NIC up until it is clean or temporarily running some other operating system). Either case, as it stood the machine was useless.
This morning I’m sitting in front of it watching it run a ‘dd’ from the Ubuntu Live CD, duplicating its hard drive onto another for further analysis. I don’t know how successful I’ll be, but I’m going to try to bring this machine back from “windows death”.
I know I may end up blowing the hard drive away and re-loading the system, but I want to at least try to find out what this malware did and how the machine got infected. I’m tired of not knowing and simply formatting and reloading. I want to get to the bottom of this.
Scratch that; reverse it.
0After a night of thought (a most unsettling night of nausea to be honest) I’ve thought better of loading Windows 7 onto my laptop. While my laptop doesn’t have the guts to run a virtual machine for any *real* work, it should have enough to run two browsers for checking my layouts. So I’m pushing forward with Ubuntu and probably Virtualbox.
During the wee hours of the morning when I couldn’t sleep I ran across a few things that might help me make the layout process quick and (hopefully) cross-browser compliant.
The first is the “1KB Grid System” by Tyler Tate. With it, I’m hoping to take the Intranet from a confusing mess of content and layout to a complete dream of separation. Goal: Making cosmetic updates in the future easier.
I also found “The Design Shack” website. With the information in there I’m hoping to use recent techniques to make the Intranet page quicker and easier to look at.
One thing that really chaps me though is this: If you design something according to standards, why should you have to test it to make sure it works? It should just work. So why is it then that every browser on this planet that “conforms to standards” does not present the design in the same way? HMMM? Microsoft? Apple? Mozilla? Google? Anybody?
UPDATE: I just found this on “Coding Smashing Magazine“, which is a very detailed look at what I’m complaining about – cross platform testing. I don’t know that I’ll go all the way and use 15-20 different browsers, but a setup with IE8, IE9 and Safari (and probably Chrome, because I like it) will get me started.
Changes to the Laptop
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Image via CrunchBase
So I started to layout the changes required for the new NEI Intranet this morning. A couple of things came to mind and were quickly shot down.
During this planning and organizing session one thing came to the top: The new site would need to be compatible with both Internet Explorer 8+ and Safari (because of the widespread use of iPhones and iPads at the office).
This brought me the realization that my laptop, which is currently running Ubuntu Linux, really couldn’t be used to test the new code because I can’t use IE or Safari on Linux.
So, very shortly now, I’m going to back up my work to date and load Windows 7 on my laptop. That way I can load both IE and Safari along with my favorite Windows editor (notepad++) and use Putty to access the code on the development server. (I’m toying with the idea of using WAMP on the laptop instead, but that’ll come later.)
I know, I could use VMware or VirtualBox. But this machine barely has enough resources to run Ubuntu or Windows 7 alone. I think having even a small virtual machine for just testing would be enough to break its back.
NEI Intranet v3
0So now that I have my laptop setup for development, I’ve duplicated the NEI Intranet. In looking at the existing code, the changes in PHP and the some of the APIs that I used back in 2005, and the requirements put in front of me for the new version, it has become apparent that a complete rewrite is in order.
The first question on my plate is whether or not I should create a new MySQL database and re-organize things there too. There really isn’t a need to keep any historical information, but I could probably copy the data from the old database into a new one without too much trouble.
I need to think about this for a while before I move forward.
Recent Happenings
0For the past few days, I’ve been trying to get setup to do some serious coding again. I’ve been setting up a virtual development server (thanks to VMware), trying things with NFS, implementing a Subversion version control system, setting this laptop up on Ubuntu and getting used to all of this stuff again.
I find it odd, that almost none of this brought me enjoyment though. Two years ago, when I wrote my company’s Intranet site, I was thrilled to be creating something. But it’s different this time. It feels less like hacking and more like drudgery.
But, there is some good that has come out of this. First, I’ve been using the newest Ubuntu – 11.04, the Natty Narwhal – for my laptop and I have to say, I’m impressed. The “Unity” desktop is growing on me. Overall the installation on the laptop was a breeze – drop the CD, boot and go. Bluetooth, WiFi, Webcam, Sound – everything worked without a fuss. Definitely an improvement over my last experience with a laptop and Ubuntu.
Second, I’ve been able to upgrade and consolidate my entire virtual infrastructure from a mix of various VMware softwares and 5 physical server to VMware ESXi 4.1 on three hosts.
Next, I’ve also been using Ubuntu 10.04 LTS for several new servers along the way. The NFS host for my VMware servers and my development server are just two examples. I like its clean, quick install. I’m a bit confused as to why dash has replaced bash and why the developers have chosen not to install a full vi implementation, but those issues are easily worked around.
Finally, I’ve been learning along the way. Most of this learning focused on the changes that have happened between 2009 and now, but still I’ve learned and used a few more tricks.
