Thursday, September 30, 2010

UBUNTU 10.04 HOW TO CUSTOMIZE YOUR DESKTOP WITH CAIRO-DOCK




UBUNTU 10.04 DESKTOP CUSTOMIZATION

HEY GUYS, THIS IS OFFICIALLY MY FIRST "HOW TO" GUIDE. I'M GOING TO SHOW YOU , HOW TO CUSTOMIZE YOUR DESKTOP WITH CAIRO-DOCK For Ubuntu 10.04. BELOW IS THE DEFAULT DESKTOP FOR UBUNTU 10.04

    now we are going to install Cairo-Dock with the Apt command, go to applications – Accessories and then Terminal which is the command line for Linux then you type sudo apt-get install Cairo-dock Cairo-dock-plug-ins you are going to get a prompt for your administrator password 
      type your password wait for the downloading process to finish!!! just relax for a couple minutes ... Once the package is downloaded go to applications, then accessories, there is going to be two options Cairo dock (no open GL) and GLX- Dock( Open GL) basically no open is a regular desktop environment and Open GL has 3D capabilities (Requires Graphic card) Once you choose your option just click on it at the Accessories tab bar.


After you open Cairo-DOCK you should get the 3d plane some how similar to this one you can configure Cairo-dock anytime by right clicking in it.

How to Manage new themes??? Cairo-dock provides you with a variety of themes, that you can access by right clicking the plane  go to Cairo-dock then Manage themes. Choose the one that you prefer the most. Today my choice would be Mac OSX just click on it and then click apply . Mac OSX is the default desktop theme for MAC OS.



Cairo-dock configuration: to configure Cairo-dock just right click the slide go to Cairo dock then configure, click on it you should get a window like this one below..


 Here you  can configure the behavior, Appearance,  Add-ons, and themes of your Cairo-dock..

If you have any questions or suggestion just leave a comment, and I'll get back to you thanks..

Tuesday, September 28, 2010

Backtrack Forensic Tools

Backtrack 4 Forensics Capabilities

When you first boot up the new Backtrack 4, you may have noticed something slightly different. So what is this “Start BackTrack Forensics” option about?

Live CDs and Forensics

For a long time now, Linux Live CDs have been very useful for forensic acquisition purposes in instances where for one reason or another you can’t utilize a hardware write blocker. When configured not to automount drives, and a little bit of know how, a Linux Live CD can be a wonderful software write blocker. For a Linux live CD to be considered for this purpose however, it is of the utmost importance that the use of the live CD in no way alters any data in any manner. In the past, this ruled out the use of Backtrack for forensic purposes. Backtrack would automount available drives and utilize swap partitions where available. This could cause all sorts of havoc, changing last mount times, altering data on disk, and so on. Well, no longer! The Backtrack 4 Live CD has incorporated changes to allow a boot mode which is forensically clean. This is great news, as with Backtrack being such a popular live CD, a copy can often be found close at hand.

How?

So, lets have the scoop. Forensic people are often detail oriented and very conservative, so how do we know it is safe to use? Well, first off the Backtrack 4 Live CD is based off of Casper, and contains no filesystem automount scripts at all. The system initialization scripts have been altered in the forensic boot mode so that Backtrack 4 will not look for or make use of any swap partitions which are contained on the system. All those scripts have been removed from the system.

Verification

To test this functionality, we have tested this boot mode with multiple hardware configurations. For each test, we took a before MD5 snapshot of the system disks, booted BT4 in forensic boot mode, verified no file systems were mounted and swap was not in use, did a number of activities on the system, then shut the system back down and took an after MD5 snapshot. In comparing the two MD5 snapshots, in every case they were a match, demonstrating no changes on the disks has been made. So, can you trust Backtrack 4 for your forensic purposes? Well, not until you verify it as well! Just like any forensic tool, its negligent to just take someone else’s word that any tool works properly. Its up to you to independently verify the tool before you use it. We expect your results will match ours, and you will find Backtrack 4 is a great addition to you tool set. (And, if your results find a problem, please let us know ASAP and include details as to how you conducted your testing. As, that would be a real problem.)

Usage

When you utilize Backtrack for forensics purposes, be sure you don’t let it go through an unattended boot. Default boot for Backtrack is standard boot mode, which will use swap partitions if they are present. There is a nice long delay however, so you will have plenty of time to select the proper boot mode. Also, please remember, this is a Linux distribution. It is highly suggested that you become familiar with Linux before use this, or any other Linux Live CD for any forensic purpose. Also, be sure to check out the additional forensic tools added to Backtrack 4. We have concentrated on the addition of imaging and triage tools, but if you find that one of your favorite utilities is not in place please let us know so we can look into having it added.

www.backtrack-linux.org

Sunday, September 26, 2010

BackTrack Dual Boot Install with WindowsXP and Windows 7

This method of installation is the simplest available. The assumption is that the you have a Windows installation taking up all the space on your drive, and you would like to resize and repartition your drive to allow a BackTrack install alongside your Windows. BACK UP YOUR WINDOWS INSTALLATION FIRST.
  1. Boot BackTrack on the machine to be installed. Once booted, type in “startx” to get to the KDE graphical interface.
  2. Double click the “install.sh” script on the desktop, or run the command “ubiquity” in console.
  3. Select your geographical location and click “forward”. Same for the Keyboard layout.
  4. The next screen allows you to configure the partitioning layout. The assumption is that we are resizing the Windows 7 partition and installing BackTrack on the newly made space.
  5. Accept the installation summary and client “Install”. Allow the installation to run and complete. Restart when done.
  6. Grub should allow you to boot both into BackTrack and Windows.
  7. Log into BackTrack with the default username and password root / toor. Change root password.
  8. Fix the framebuffer splash by typing “fix-splash” ( or “fix-splash800″ if you wish a 800×600 framebuffer), reboot.
www.Bactrack-linux.org