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Unix Edition
Feb. 15th, 2000.... ._ .__. .__. _.__ .... ._ _._. _._ . ._. _.. .. __. . ... _
See the Happy Hacker web site at http://www.happyhacker.org
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*** Editor's Comments
***********************************************************************Well, this is the 10th issue for me, and I've been rethinking some things.
Someone wrote to me about putting more content into these newsletters. I'm
going to try and do my best, but I need your help. If anyone wants to help
out by contributing an article, I'd be really appreciative. Newbie Perlers
will be glad to know the Perl 101 is back, don't ask what happened the last
few weeks. I'm also including the transcript of a conversation I had with a
real clueless ev1l haxor wannabe on AOL Instant Messenger... I've fubared
the names, and while it's not quite as funny as the now famous <>< (that
means phish, as in fishing for passwords by impersonating AOL personnel)
reversal, it's still quite humorous (I think so, at least). Finally, I'm not
sure what happened to mail volume this week... very few emails. Hmmm.As a followup to last weeks KAK worm warning, I've been in contact with the
individual who sent me the virus, and he assures me that it was an
accidental infection. I believe him, at least since he forwarded two other
emails from people who he also infected... and if he went to the trouble of
writing two fake letters (as well as answering my emails... a real evil
individual would've forged a reply address, if it _was_ deliberate...
well... for that much effort, he practically deserves my trust. I think next
week I might post parts of it... I don't think there's any techniques that
any aspiring evil virus coder couldn't think of after about 2 minutes of
directed thought.And finally, if anyone is wondering what those funky lines are, they're
morse code for "happy hacker digest".***********************************************************************
*** Readers' Submissions
***********************************************************************Alexei <alexei@germany.gelitten.org> asks:
Where would be the best place to search for answer to this strange
problem. I scouered the net already and asked a whole bunch of people on
IRC. No one has even heard of it and on the web several posts exist with
most of them involving badly configured ISDN cards.I am using kernel 2.2.5-15 on RH6. On, the first reboot after install I
get the msg::Code 89 50 04 b8 01 00 00 00 eb 03 90 31 c0 c7 41 04 00 00 00 00
Aiee, killing interrupt handler.
Kernel panic: Attempted to kill the idle task!
In interrupt handler - not syncing.Then it freezes. There is no ISDN card in the box and the memory seems to
be good. The board shows no noticable problems.Do you know where I could go to find a solution to this problem?
[Editor: Of course, the happyhacker list is the best place <g>. Seriously,
you said the memory seems to be good... did you test it and the motherboard
under another OS? I'm not a kernel hacker... is there anyone out there who
might know what "Code 89 50 04 b8 01 00 00 00 eb 03 90 31 c0 c7 41 04 00 00 00 00" means?]-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Brendan Cullen <ts_psycho@primus.com.au>:
Hi Ms Meinel,
I just want to start off by saying YOUR MY HERO! If it wasn't for you and
the team at Happy Hacker I wouldn't have the great passion for
hacking/computer security I do nowadays. I'm fifteen and live in
Queensland, Australia and have a dream to become and OS programmer and i'm
teaching myself to program in C. It's such a pain trying to teach myself
but i did manage to track down and buy K&R as well as finding other free
online C tutorials. But i'm shocked that i cannot find any courses anywhere
at all in the Rockhampton (central queensland area). I've tried searching
at TAFE and looked in the newspaper for advertisements about computer
courses but to no avail. I'm making very slow progress but i'm getting
there.I'm sure i'm boring you right now but before i finish up i must ask you for
help.
I found myself a book and a copy of Red Hat 6.0 linux and installed it no
problems. I luved linux......in fact my friends started to whinge because i
was never on ICQ talking to them......i was always on linux craving for more
information. This is not my problem. My problem was that i went to work
one afternoon and left my linux box running connected to the internet. My
sister was having a sleepover with numerous friends watching scary movies so
as a joke i went to the power box at the side of the house and turned the
power off.......i forgot all about my computer running........anyway i
restarted my computer a short time later only to find that i recieved an
error message when trying to connect to the internet stating that my kernel
did not have kppp ability or something similar......i tried re installing
the kernel and upgrading and everything. I eventually uninstalled my linux
and deleted my partion using FDISK......however something is no wrong
because when i try to re install Red Hat it comes up with kernel panic at
8:32 (i think that's it) so i thought oh no what have i done.....i tried to
install Caldera OpenLinux 2.2 and found the same proplem.........can i fix
this or will i have to format my whole computer and try again...please
please help me......i've tried linux newsgroups and everything....no one is
offering any help and i'm stuck with gay Windows 98 until i either re format
or fix it somehow.......i really hope i don't have to as i have my files
such as mp3's etc i wish not lose......but if it's what it takes to get
linux back then i'll do anything.Oh yeah..my grandfather wants me to set up a web server for him too. That's
another reason i want linux back as wellI will thank you very much in advance for any help you can give me.
Your fan always
@x3m@n
[Editor: Good for you. Or better yet, great for you (in studying, at least).
Just out of curiousity, are you near Melbourne? I have a good friend out
there... if you're nearby, let me know, and I can put you guys in touch. I
guess the first important lesson you should have learned is not to try and
scare your sister. Then again, having done that myself, maybe I should
talk... anyway... as I'm sure you're aware, powering off a Linux (or any
Unix) system is a big, BIG, no-no. The reason is that open files are often
not written to disk until later, so your files might not be saved. You might
(and it's a little late), set up a cron job to sync files periodically...
maybe every two minutes. Now, however, I'm not sure what you can do. If you
FDISK'ed your drive, you know everything is gone... I'm not sure why
reinstalling still gave you an error. Do any of the diagnostic utilities
under Win98 tell you if any hardware was damaged? As far as software goes,
there's no reason why a reformat shouldn't have provided a clean slate. It's
always possible, however unlikely, that your little power stunt somehow
damaged some hardware... Linux is much more sensitive to things like a tiny
problem in memory, for example, than Windows is. I guess next time you might
want to resort to less dramatic forms of torture... good luck.]-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Pat Lawrence <gwen@antionline.org> wonders:
I've tried reading several Linux sites - can't find anything about system
tuning in Linux. I'm sure there must be shared memory, semaphore
structures, buffer configurations, TCP/IP connection timeouts and the like,
but how do I change it and check the results ?? I've needed to do this for
SCO enterprise stuff that I've put together, and now need to try using Linux
in a similar way.
Anybody out there able to point me to some good documentation ??
Any information would be appreciated !![Editor: Hmmm. I really don't know... well... I know shared memory is pretty
bad, but other than the general rule of thumb for swap file size, I know
very little about tweaking Linux. Excellent question... and it would
probabaly be a great topic for an feature... *cough* *ahem*]-----------------------------------------------------------------------
***********************************************************************
*** Perl 101 Lesson 4
***********************************************************************I ought to note one thing before I begin. The structure for these articles
is taken from the O'Reilly Book _Learning Perl_. I've actually been
following their outline pretty closely, using my own explanations, but
following their orders. I highly recommend anyone serious about buy this
book. Actually, buy all the O'Reilly books :).Anyway... onto Scalar Data. Scalar Data, like the mathematic definition of
scalar, contains one thing (as opposed to an array/vector). Unlike a
mathematical scalar, a scalar variable can contain either a number or a
string. Basically, a scalar variable is what non-programmers (who aren't
familiar with arrays) would usually think of when they think of a variable.
The first way to use a scalar is by using it as a constant. This is known as
hard coding the variable. The source code contains the value of the
variable. You can declare floating points (numbers with a decimal place) or
integars (whole numbers), but be aware that perl does not (by default)
differenciate between integars and floating points. In other words, all ints
(integars) are stored as floats. So unlike C, where you would try to
optimize by using the least data necessary, that's usually not worthwhile in
perl. You may be familiar with the difference between 50, 050, and 0x50...
if not, the first is decimal (base 10... normal), the second is octal (base
eight... numbers 0-7, so you count by going
01,02,03,04,05,06,07,010,011,012...020...076,077,0100... the convention is a
leading zero to indicate octal), and the last is base 16 (hex...
0-9,A,B,C,D,E,F,10,etc.). Ox is the prefix for a hex number. In declaring a
constant, perl will interpert 0 and 0x to mean octal and hexidecimal,
respectively.The next type of scalar is a string. A string is collection of characters
(the entire ASCII range). While normally a string would be human readable
(in the ASCII 33-127 range), but you can actually handle _any_ set of data,
and _Learning Perl_ notes that you can patch your OS by treating as a giant
string.There are two ways to declare a string: double quoted and single quotes. A
single quoted string is defined by all characters between two single quotes
(the one below the double quotes... not the one below the tilde, which does
something different, so it 'string', not `string`.), and a double quoted
just has double quotes (") bracketing the string. What's the difference?
Well, the single quote string is much more literal. This means that "escape
codes" like \n (newline... see Lesson 2) are not processed. All chacters are
taken literally, except for a backslash, which can have two meanings. A
backslash followed by a single quote will put a real single quote inside the
string. Two backslashes will put in a literal backslash. Other than that,
there are no escape codes.The double quoted string has much more expansion. Inside a double quoted
string, the backslash can declare a lot of codes. The following list was
stolen:
Code: Meaning:
================
\n Newline
\r Return
\t Tab
\f Formfeed
\b Backspace
\a Bell
\e Escape
\007 Any octal ASCII value (here, 007 = bell)
\x7f Any hex ASCII value (here, 7f = delete)
\cC Any "control" character (here, CTRL-C)
\\ Backslash
\" Double quote
\l Lowercase next letter
\L Lowercase all following letters until \E
\u Uppercase next letter
\U Uppercase all following letters until \E
\Q Backslash-quote all nonalphanumerics until \E
\E Terminate \L , \U, or \QI think this is pretty self explanatory. We saw in Digest #4 the following
statementprint("Hello $planetname\n");
This string being passed to print is "Hello $planetname\n". First, if this
would have been a single quote string ('Hello $planetname\n'), the \n
(newline) would not have been expanded. But more importantly, remember that
$planetname is a variable. In the double quotes, the variable name will be
replaced with the vale of that variable. If it were a single quote, it would
have actually displayed: Hello $planetname\n. Now it displays (for Mars,
say): Hello Mars^M (I used ^M to represent the newline). I think that'll do
it for this week, next week we'll discuss how to handle scalar variables.