My main problem with Linux OS'es

[Shaftatplanetquake]

I don't know what to do with any software that I find. I've downloaded a hard disk imaging utility and I want to use it.

From what I've gathered after hours of reading up on the subject is that if you have a makefile, you open the command line and type make, and its done. This doesn't seem to get me anywhere with this particular package or any other packages. I always get some kind of an error in the command line, and I still can't run the software (unless I'm just going about it the wrong way...)

Heres the software

I'm running Suse 10.1.

Thanks

 

[Nothinman]

Most software has a README that tells you what needs to be done to compile it and run it. But you need to be careful doing this because most installations by compilation (i.e. ./configure;make;make install) don't come with a way to uninstall them. There are things to deal with that like checkinstall, but it's usually just better to stick with what's packaged for your distribution.

With this particular piece of software, did you notice that it's labeled pre-alpha and the last release was in 2001? I did get it to compile with one minor change to one of the C files, but I wouldn't trust it at all. If you want imaging software for Linux you should look at partimage, development on it is pretty slow but at least it's maintained and known to work in a lot of circumstances.

 

[drag]

Ah, so you want to compile a peice of software from source code.

Well I wouldn't try out this program for anything.. It sounds nice, but it's last release was in 2001 and it was a Alpha release, which means it's basicly for developers only.

So it's probably not what you want.

Well the generic way to install software from code is you go like this...
tar xfz filename-version-stuff.tar.gz
(or if it's a bzip2)
tar xfj filename-version-stuff.tar.bz2

Then change directory to that..
cd filename

Then run configure, if aviable..
./configure

Then run make and make install
make
make install

Most common errors for production software happen when you run the configure script. Usually it's missing dependancies. With packaged distros like Suse usually you have libpackagename-dev packages to go along with "libpackagename" libraries and such that you need in order to compile software.

However this is 'generic' way of doing stuff. Many developers don't have a configure script and have the defaults in the makefile. You need to read the README file or other information provided by the software developer to figure out exactly what you need to do. Better programs have better instructions, preferably provided in the tarball, but also online, and will outline exactly what dependancies you need to compile the software. It's a mark of good quality.

When looking for software check out Freshmeat. But for imaging harddrives the best thing that I know of is g4u (ghost for unix).

http://fbim.fh-regensburg.de/~feyrer/g4u/

It comes in ISO image or floppy image format and is programs and scripts based on netbsd.

(edit: or partimage 🙂 )

 

[magomago]

Not to jack the thread (and hopefully keep it slightly off topic) but while we are on the topic of free imaging programs...is there one that will allow imaging (from any way possible...whether within the enviornment or though a boot up disk) and writing directly to the DVD? Now that would be very useful...

 

[SleepWalkerX]

Originally posted by: Shaftatplanetquake
I don't know what to do with any software that I find. I've downloaded a hard disk imaging utility and I want to use it.

From what I've gathered after hours of reading up on the subject is that if you have a makefile, you open the command line and type make, and its done. This doesn't seem to get me anywhere with this particular package or any other packages. I always get some kind of an error in the command line, and I still can't run the software (unless I'm just going about it the wrong way...)

Heres the software

I'm running Suse 10.1.

Thanks

Ok you need to have kernel-sources, make, and gcc installed to compile software. An easy way to get these files (and not run into any dependency issues) is to install them from a package manager and I'll recommend installing Smart cause I'm not sure if you've installed the fixes for the default broken package manager.

Install Smart from here. Install the corresponding version (32 bit or 64 bit). Get smart-0.41-28 and smart-gui-0.41-28. Once you've downloaded the rpms use the rpm command (as root) to install them from the terminal. Its like "rpm -Uhv smart-version.rpm" replacing version with whichever you download. Do that for the smart-gui too. (If it tells you that you need rpm-python, grab that here)

Now launch smart (it gets put in System --> Configuration from the start menu) and it should already load the correct repositories. Now just do an update and search for kernel-sources (install the kernel-sources package that matches the same version as kernel-default), make, and gcc. Select those and install them.

Now you're ready to follow those steps to compile the software.

 

[Nothinman]

Ok you need to have kernel-sources, make, and gcc installed to compile software

Not true. You only need kernel-sources if you want to recompile your kernel and you only need kernel-headers (a subset of kernel-sources) if you want to compile kernel modules.

 

[SleepWalkerX]

Originally posted by: Nothinman

Ok you need to have kernel-sources, make, and gcc installed to compile software

Not true. You only need kernel-sources if you want to recompile your kernel and you only need kernel-headers (a subset of kernel-sources) if you want to compile kernel modules.

Eh? I'm confused. When recompiling your kernel, you need to use the make command and you need a compiler to do any compiling, thus gcc..

 

[DasFox]

Ghost For Linux:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/g4l

Partimage:

http://www.partimage.org/Main_Page

ALOHA

 

[tyanni]

Originally posted by: SleepWalkerX

Originally posted by: Nothinman

Ok you need to have kernel-sources, make, and gcc installed to compile software

Not true. You only need kernel-sources if you want to recompile your kernel and you only need kernel-headers (a subset of kernel-sources) if you want to compile kernel modules.

Eh? I'm confused. When recompiling your kernel, you need to use the make command and you need a compiler to do any compiling, thus gcc..

GCC is almost surely included already, and why would he need to recompile his kernel just to install software? Software installation definitely doesn't require a kernel recompile.

 

[SleepWalkerX]

Originally posted by: tyanni

Originally posted by: SleepWalkerX

Originally posted by: Nothinman

Ok you need to have kernel-sources, make, and gcc installed to compile software

Not true. You only need kernel-sources if you want to recompile your kernel and you only need kernel-headers (a subset of kernel-sources) if you want to compile kernel modules.

Eh? I'm confused. When recompiling your kernel, you need to use the make command and you need a compiler to do any compiling, thus gcc..

GCC is almost surely included already, and why would he need to recompile his kernel just to install software? Software installation definitely doesn't require a kernel recompile.

No, Nothinman brought up something about not needing all those to recompile your kernel after I said you need those items to compile software.. Not sure why..

Anywho, GCC is sometimes installed by default. It depends. With Suse, I think you had to have choosen the Development package group when installing Suse or it probably wouldn't have installed gcc. And I know Ubuntu doesn't install gcc by default. Since most of these distros are trying to cater to a corporate environment, having gcc installed by default is just a security risk.

 

[RebateMonger]

<==== Sending his grandmother to this thread so she can see how easy it is to use Linux. 😛

(Please don't take this as more than a little nudge...not intended to start an argument!)

 

[Nothinman]

GCC is almost surely included already,

Not true, I believe Ubuntu doesn't include a compiler by default any more.

Eh? I'm confused. When recompiling your kernel, you need to use the make command and you need a compiler to do any compiling, thus gcc..

True, but where did the OP mention anything about compiling a kernel?

No, Nothinman brought up something about not needing all those to recompile your kernel after I said you need those items to compile software.. Not sure why..

Because you don't need kernel-sources to compile software.

not intended to start an argument!)

If you don't want any replies, don't post.

 

[SleepWalkerX]

Originally posted by: Nothinman

Eh? I'm confused. When recompiling your kernel, you need to use the make command and you need a compiler to do any compiling, thus gcc..

True, but where did the OP mention anything about compiling a kernel?

Sorry I misunderstood your post.

Originally posted by: Nothinman

No, Nothinman brought up something about not needing all those to recompile your kernel after I said you need those items to compile software.. Not sure why..

Because you don't need kernel-sources to compile software.

Ok yeah, he doesn't need kernel-sources, you're right. I keep thinking I'm compiling modules.

Originally posted by: RebateMonger
<==== Sending his grandmother to this thread so she can see how easy it is to use Linux.

If you were serious, you would send her an ubuntu disc.

 

[kamper]

Originally posted by: RebateMonger
<==== Sending his grandmother to this thread so she can see how easy it is to use Linux. 😛

(Please don't take this as more than a little nudge...not intended to start an argument!)

Yeah, I know my grandmother compiles old, unmaintained disk imagers on windows all the time with no trouble at all :roll:

 

[n0cmonkey]

Originally posted by: SleepWalkerX
Since most of these distros are trying to cater to a corporate environment, having gcc installed by default is just a security risk.

What vulnerabilities exist in gcc?

 

[SleepWalkerX]

Originally posted by: n0cmonkey

Originally posted by: SleepWalkerX
Since most of these distros are trying to cater to a corporate environment, having gcc installed by default is just a security risk.

What vulnerabilities exist in gcc?

Not vulnerability, but ability to compile any code on that machine.

 

[nweaver]

Originally posted by: SleepWalkerX

Originally posted by: n0cmonkey

Originally posted by: SleepWalkerX
Since most of these distros are trying to cater to a corporate environment, having gcc installed by default is just a security risk.

What vulnerabilities exist in gcc?

Not vulnerability, but ability to compile any code on that machine.

by the time someone owns your machine enough to run GCC, uploading GCC is a small step to take.

 

[n0cmonkey]

Originally posted by: SleepWalkerX

Originally posted by: n0cmonkey

Originally posted by: SleepWalkerX
Since most of these distros are trying to cater to a corporate environment, having gcc installed by default is just a security risk.

What vulnerabilities exist in gcc?

Not vulnerability, but ability to compile any code on that machine.

How does that help them get into the machine exactly? You remove perl and python and ruby and all other major scripting languages too, right?

 

[Nothinman]

by the time someone owns your machine enough to run GCC, uploading GCC is a small step to take.

And if they don't have root yet but do have a shell they can compile their local exploit to get root. That's why all of those daemons run as normal users, so finding a bug in apache doesn't automatically result in a root shell.

 

[n0cmonkey]

Originally posted by: Nothinman

by the time someone owns your machine enough to run GCC, uploading GCC is a small step to take.

And if they don't have root yet but do have a shell they can compile their local exploit to get root. That's why all of those daemons run as normal users, so finding a bug in apache doesn't automatically result in a root shell.

You don't need to be root to install/use gcc.

 

[Nothinman]

You don't need to be root to install/use gcc.

No, but it's a good bit more work and will most likely break any prewritten scripts the script kiddies would have.

 

[n0cmonkey]

Originally posted by: Nothinman

You don't need to be root to install/use gcc.

No, but it's a good bit more work and will most likely break any prewritten scripts the script kiddies would have.

Maybe you should keep them off the system in the first place...

 

[Nothinman]

Maybe you should keep them off the system in the first place...

Duh. But you can never be 100% sure they won't find a way in, so you should take all steps to make it as hard as possible on them.

 

[n0cmonkey]

Originally posted by: Nothinman

Maybe you should keep them off the system in the first place...

Duh. But you can never be 100% sure they won't find a way in, so you should take all steps to make it as hard as possible on them.

But it doesn't make anything harder. Chances are most of them are using pre-compiled binaries anyhow.

 

[Shaftatplanetquake]

Wow. I forgot to check for replies.

I happened to find G4L the next day and actually ran it and imaged the disk to the network. This took around 5 hours. I turned around and tried to image it back to the other machine (identical laptop) but all efforts failed to get data to start streaming down. Then I switched to a software called updcd which was downloaded in .iso format. This tool was much nicer, it sent the data from one machine to the other on the fly and was running at 96 Mb/sec (their plugged into a 10/100 switch, pretty good speed!) and once it was finished everything was perfect.

But in between all of this happening a friend of mine looked at the gcc compiler errors (produced by the make script using the original 2001 software, Kasper) and cross referenced the source code to check which lines the shell had said were having problems. Looking at the code showed a few lines of broken syntax which were corrected by fixing the indenting, or adding a curly brace, or deleting a messed up comment line, so on so forth. Then it compiled. The program itself ran oddly and I didn't trust it, nor could I get it to do anything so I moved on and did the stuff I pointed out in the last paragraph. But it was strange that it wouldn't compile because of syntax errors. I think the guys on sourceforge often post the downloads with easy to fix holes in them on purpose so that noobs won't be able to do anything with it; because I think I had the same problem with G4L, and I fixed it, But im a little hazy on this part.