FreeBSD

Respect!

I thought I would like to learn an other Unix-based system in addition to Linux. I chose FreeBSD.

There are three main BSDs: FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD. I chose FreeBSD because a lot people use it so its user camp is bigger than the others. There are BSDs based on FreeBSD such as GhostBSD and PC-BSD but I wanted to build a BSD-from-scratch :)

The system is great! I love it! I wouldn't like to partition my main HDD so I used my "new" 200GB IDE drive and I plugged off my main HDD's cable :)

The package management is similar to Gentoo's pkg-management. There is a system called ports in BSD, which allows you to customize each package you want to install, and ports can handle dependencies. It has a very great advantage: All the packages are compiled on your system, so the packages will be fully optimized to your system, which means performance increase.

I installed xorg, gnome, firefox, sudo in approximately 3 hours. There were problems with my graphical card, because there are no drivers from AMD to FreeBSD and compiz was not working with the original xorg drivers. I tried everything I could, with no success.

So I formatted the drive and installed it to my home-server :) (this will be the next article)

If you are an advanced Linux user, try BSDs, they are great! :)

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Arch Linux - No graphical acceleration after kernel upgrade

Hi!

I wanted to try my own kernel with BFS scheduler but after loading my kernel there was no graphical acceleration. I couldn't use compiz, and the emerald window decorator was not working.

I found a package in AUR named Catalyst-hook and that package solved my problem. 

AUR: Arch User Repository. You have to download a file called PKGBUILD and that file will do all the jobs you need (compiles the package on your computer, so you cannot download pkg-s from AUR). 

This stuff re-created the fglrx module on my computer, and all the things are working like a charm!

When I wanted to compile the new module, the PKGBUILD file was wrong. It was pointing to a link I could never reach, so there were problems during the compiling. Fortunately I had an older version of Catalyst and I modified the PKGBUILD file, but there is an md5 checksum check in the compiling process and the new and the old file's checksum is (as we know) not equal. I created a new md5 value, pasted it to the PKGBUILD file and it worked!

Then I got a package with .pkg.tar.xz extension, I installed it with sudo pacman -U mypackage.pkg.tar.xz and that's it! Reboot, and we are happy!

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Protect yourself from computerized crimes

Hello!

I watched an interesting movie on NatGeo about credit card stoling and I thought I write some lines about protecting yourself from computerized crimes.

First of all, protect your wireless network if you have. We cannot speak only about internet connection stolen (and if you have a fast internet connection you cannot recognize if someone steals your net) but the crackeris also in your internal private network and can do an nmap scan to indentify live host and can steal, modify, destroy your data with a help of an exploit. Also can see with your webcamera, do a screenshot, listen to your microphone, execute commands and programs, and last but not least can set up a backdoor for future hacking. Set up firewalls and install a good antivirus to avoid these things. It's 2 minutes to scan a network and hack a Windows XP machine without any protection.

Don't use your Windows computer in network without protection. I highlighted Windows, because Linux, BSD, MacOSX systems don't have much virus. But on these systems you have to set up a firewall. There are so good firewalls included in these systems, but on Windows I suggest a 3rd party firewall.

Keep your system up to date! It's very important, because with a system update the creators can close backdoors and reduce vulnerabilities. The cracker could enter your system before the system update, but after the vulnerability is not present, so the cracker cannot crack.

Try to be invisible! If you have a good router, or you are using DD-WRT you can set that your router don't reply to ICMP echo (ping) requests. So you are invisible to a simple ping scan.

Be paranoid! I give an example: The MSN virus. You received a message from your MSN partner infected by an MSN virus. He/she gave a link to watch or download, and your are infected, too. Maybe with this thing you are a part of a botnet. Don't open a message came from unknown source. Delete it! Maybe it can contain a virus.

Don't follow links saying: There is a good job in XY or buy cheap viagra. These are hoax advertisements. 

Don't get your passwords remembered at public places for ex. internet café, or McDonalds. Start a private browsing.

I said it before, but use strong passwords. A good password is long,  contains uppercase, lowercase, numbers and special characters. The dictionary words or well-known combinations are wrong ( for ex. asdasd asdf, cat, dog, etcetera).

When I got new ideas, I will extend my article :)

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A little ALSA configuration in Arch Linux

 Hi!

I got a task at school that I had to make some benchmark about my computer's MIPS and FLOPS values. I thought I make it on my 64bit Arch Linux. When I searched for applications for benchmarking I listened to music.

Few days ago I set up the ALSA sound system's parameters because the music was scratching and it was very annoying. The solution was: Reduce the output volume in the alsamixer menu. I did the job, but at the next system startup (now) the values went back to the previous. I did some search, and got the solution (thanks to Arch Linux Wiki page):

sudo alsactl -f /var/lib/alsa/asound.state store

After the command execution I opened the /etc/rc.conf file and wrote alsa to the startup daemons, after crond. We are happy now, the values are stored. 

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