Re: [CGUYS] STRANGE VIRUS? AGAIN
I think the old BIOS is deleted from memory before the new one installs. db katan wrote: On Fri, 25 Dec 2009 01:38:36 -0800, db wrote: If you disconnect the hard drive while you do that it has no place to hide... Except in the BIOS. WHat I'm wondering is, if a BIOS virus can intercept a BIOS update and re-infect the BIOS being updated. I don't know, it seems like maybe it would require more code than would fit in the BIOS (then again, I'm not a programmer, so I don't know). -- R:\katan - SOYLENT GREEN IS PEOPLE!!! * ** List info, subscription management, list rules, archives, privacy ** ** policy, calmness, a member map, and more at http://www.cguys.org/ ** * * ** List info, subscription management, list rules, archives, privacy ** ** policy, calmness, a member map, and more at http://www.cguys.org/ ** *
Re: [CGUYS] STRANGE VIRUS? AGAIN
One talks of formatting, but one needs to remove all of the partitions as well, so that the disk is clean. Then it would be a good idea to wipe the disk if you have such a utility -- boot from floppy or CD, plugged into a USB port. Make sure the disk is really like-new. If the manufacturer was a good guy, then there should be an installation disc from which a clean install can be made, and it's an OS installer that installs only the OS, and not any junkware that is usually in a manufacturer's as-shipped OS installation. It's quite possible that the installed OS and even the restore partition are infected. They even come that way occasionally. I don't know about the newer Windows OS's, but with the older ones, it's a good idea to do the entire installation disconnected from the Internet, and then first install the Zone Alarm Free firewall (downloaded on another machine and the installer put on a thumb drive), and set it to Ask on everything. as the machine is being set up. Fred Holmes At 12:37 PM 12/23/2009, Tony B wrote: There's no need to send it back; it's not a hardware problem. Now I forget - has he tried formatting the disk and reinstalling the OS? What disks, if any, did he get with the machine (or make himself)? * ** List info, subscription management, list rules, archives, privacy ** ** policy, calmness, a member map, and more at http://www.cguys.org/ ** *
Re: [CGUYS] STRANGE VIRUS? AGAIN
At 11:50 AM 12/24/2009, Reid Katan wrote: Absolutely. What I don't understand is, if you're trying to infect as many computers as possible, why would you write a virus that so screws up a computer that the victim is *sure* to take action. . .and quickly, as in the case of Gail and her son. I'd think you'd want to be more subtle. Coder doesn't know what he is doing? Coder is testing code? If the user leaves his machine turned on, then the bad guy has a high-efficiency spam producer for the duration? * ** List info, subscription management, list rules, archives, privacy ** ** policy, calmness, a member map, and more at http://www.cguys.org/ ** *
Re: [CGUYS] RAID Revisited
What do you do when uptime is important? Do today's drives never fail? With a RAID mirroring system, you generally will have the system stay up on single drive failure, and the bad drive can perhaps be swapped hot (although I would still wait until 2 a.m. to do it so that the rebuild process wouldn't affect system performance). RAID is not a backup process/system. Back up separately, in addition to RAID. Yes, RAID controllers fail, just as any circuitry can fail, from the motherboard to the circuit board that is part of the hard drive itself. 100% uptime isn't possible without a whole lot more redundancy than just RAID. Do today's RAID systems have S.M.A.R.T monitoring such that preliminary warning is (sometimes) provided in time to do something about it? Fred Holmes At 08:02 PM 12/24/2009, t.piwowar wrote: On Dec 24, 2009, at 4:50 PM, mike wrote: spreading FUD though is childish. Your faith in this old, worn out technology is touching, but handing out bad advice is reprehensible. We used RAID back long ago when we had to. In the old days when drives were slow and small. It was never a reliable technology, but we put up with it because we had to. Today when I can get a 2TB drive for little more than $100, using RAID is just silly. * ** List info, subscription management, list rules, archives, privacy ** ** policy, calmness, a member map, and more at http://www.cguys.org/ ** *
Re: [CGUYS] STRANGE VIRUS? AGAIN
At 10:17 PM 12/24/2009, Tony B wrote: Spoken like someone that has never heard of Windows XP, or all subsequent versions of Windows. Do you still have a floppy drive in your computer? :) No but I do have an external USB-attached floppy drive, which works as well as a motherboard-attached one, on modern (last few years) computers. It allows the use of writable media for various utilities that run on the separate OS of the bootable media (bootable floppy disk). And a lot of my legacy utilities are still useful. CMOSSAVE is one of them, although I haven't had CMOS information blown away by some program installation recently. Still, CMOS can still potentially be corrupted. Can one today make a writable utility boot CD, that loads it's own OS and write program? So that one can really move everything to CD discs? What is the program for it? I want writable media so I can easily add additional utilities, and update virus definitions. Thumb drives seem to be doing it, but not all emergency utility discs seem to be able to make a bootable thumb drive. It's getting there. Most machines still seem to reliably boot from the external USB-attached floppy drive without doing anything (e.g., remembering the keystroke to bring up the boot menu, or going into CMOS to change the boot device ordering). Not so simple with thumb drives in my experience. What is the best generic recovery utility boot device and program these days?? Mine, at the moment, in addition to CMOSSAVE, is a floppy boot disc that will reload a saved disc (partition) image from backup. First thing you do with a new computer is to make a partition image of the as-installed system. Then, immediately, one of the junkware-removed system. Then, immediately, one with all of the basic essential software (that wasn't bundled) installed. Fred Holmes * ** List info, subscription management, list rules, archives, privacy ** ** policy, calmness, a member map, and more at http://www.cguys.org/ ** *
Re: [CGUYS] STRANGE VIRUS? AGAIN
I haven't done a BIOS flash update in a long time, but it used to be that one booted to a boot floppy (some version of DOS or similar OS), and executed a utility on the floppy that wrote the revised code to the BIOS. Presumably today, one downloads a Windows Program that creates/makes a CD disc, instead of a floppy disk, that does the same thing??? The belt and suspenders folks should download this BIOS flash program and data for their current BIOS version, and have it at the ready, if one is afraid of BIOS corruption by a virus. Fred Holmes At 10:39 PM 12/25/2009, katan wrote: Except in the BIOS. WHat I'm wondering is, if a BIOS virus can intercept a BIOS update and re-infect the BIOS being updated. I don't know, it seems like maybe it would require more code than would fit in the BIOS (then again, I'm not a programmer, so I don't know). -- R:\katan * ** List info, subscription management, list rules, archives, privacy ** ** policy, calmness, a member map, and more at http://www.cguys.org/ ** *
Re: [CGUYS] AAAHH, the old days
Yes, in 1965-66 as an undergraduate I took a computer course at NYU which comprised learned to program (entry level, PL-1) and my assigned project was writing a routine to alphabetize a list of names including all variants (multiple first, middle names, hyphenated, with degrees, etc.) ...which took a whole semester and didn't actually function for all variants in the end. The horrible input was standing around waiting to sit at a punch card machine (do you hear hangin'chads?) and then wait months for an opening to run the thing with your stack of cards (a shoebox-full) at 2am when you were called to do it. Yes, it occupied an entire floor of the building with a/c trailers outside as well. I seem to recall the model IBM 360/30 and there were disk drives and all kinds of stuff in there (a clean room, remember bugs ??) Once upon a time there was a tavern Where we used to raise a glass or two Remember how we laughed away the hours And think of all the great things we would do Those were the days, my friend We thought they'd never end We'd sing and dance forever and a day We'd live the life we choose We'd fight and never lose For we were young and sure to have our way La la la la la la La la la la la la Then the busy years went rushing by us We lost our starry notions on the way If by chance I'd see you in the tavern We'd smile at one another and we'd say Those were the days, my friend We thought they'd never end We'd sing and dance forever and a day We'd live the life we choose We'd fight and never lose Those were the days Oh, yes, those were the days La la la la la la La la la la la la Just tonight I stood before the tavern Nothing seemed the way it used to be In the glass I saw a strange reflection Was that lonely woman really me? Those were the days, my friend We thought they'd never end We'd sing and dance forever and a day We'd live the life we choose We'd fight and never lose Those were the days Oh, yes, those were the days La la la la la la La la la la la la Through the door there came familiar laughter I saw your face and heard you call my name Oh, my friend, we're older but no wiser For in our hearts the dreams are still the same... Those were the days, my friend We thought they'd never end We'd sing and dance forever and a day We'd live the life we choose We'd fight and never lose Those were the days Oh, yes, those were the days La la la la la la La la la la la la Mary Hopkins -Original Message- From: Rosenberg, Alan [USA] [mailto:rosenberg_a...@bah.com] Sent: Thursday, December 24, 2009 10:16 AM Subject: Re: AAAHH, the old days The old days?? The old days were when an IBM 7094 (the powerhouse of its day) filled a room with a raised floor, dedicated air conditioning, and a crew of operators, cost megabucks to buy (or lease) and maintain, had a cycle time measured in microseconds, and a maximum memory capacity equivalent to 32KB. Alan * ** List info, subscription management, list rules, archives, privacy ** ** policy, calmness, a member map, and more at http://www.cguys.org/ ** *
Re: [CGUYS] AAAHH, the old days
On Dec 26, 2009, at 12:04 PM, rleesimon wrote: Yes, in 1965-66 as an undergraduate I took a computer course at NYU which comprised learned to program (entry level, PL-1)... PL1, wow that was my programming language of choice for may years. The horrible input was standing around waiting to sit at a punch card machine (do you hear hangin'chads?) and then wait months for an opening to run the thing with your stack of cards (a shoebox-full) at 2am when you were called to do it. Computing back then was more social. People got to know each other while standing around the card reader and output bins. It fostered a kind of camaraderie that vanished when everyone started computing at a desk. The Internet brought some of that back, but it was not the same. * ** List info, subscription management, list rules, archives, privacy ** ** policy, calmness, a member map, and more at http://www.cguys.org/ ** *
Re: [CGUYS] STRANGE VIRUS? AGAIN
On Dec 25, 2009, at 10:39 PM, katan wrote: Except in the BIOS. WHat I'm wondering is, if a BIOS virus can intercept a BIOS update and re-infect the BIOS being updated. Here's a scary story from Tom's Hardware... http://www.tomshardware.com/news/bios-virus-rootkit-security-backdoor,7400.html In many worst case scenarios, a hard drive wipe is the final solution to ridding a system of an infection. But the absolute worst case scenario is if a virus attacks the BIOS, making detection and cleaning an incredible challenge. Anibal L. Sacco and Alfredo A. Ortego of Core Security Technologies released a presentation detailing the exploit of this “persistent BIOS infection.” Through the use of a 100-line piece of code written in Python, a rootkit could be flashed into the BIOS and be run completely independent of the operating system. Flashing a system’s BIOS requires administrative control, but that could first be obtained through a more ‘innocent’ virus that could reside on the hard disk drive. You would need to reflash the Bios with a system that you know has not been tampered with, he said. But if the rootkit is sophisticated enough it may be necessary to physically remove and replace the Bios chip. There is defense against such an attack, however, as the researchers say that a password or physical lock against BIOS flashes could block the install of the rootkit. If I may. let me point out that to flash the BIOS on a Mac you have to shutdown the computer, then start it up by holding down the start button for several seconds until you hear a tone. I'm surprised that PCs will let any random program flash their BIOS. On second thought, I'm not surprised at all. So typical. * ** List info, subscription management, list rules, archives, privacy ** ** policy, calmness, a member map, and more at http://www.cguys.org/ ** *
[CGUYS] recovery boot device
We're really beginning to stray here with all this talk of rare BIOS and boot sector viruses. And now a question about backups. Disk imaging is the way to go, with some level of compression to save space. Ghost, Acronis, and many freeware apps will do this. They all have basic Windows PE cds that will boot enough of an OS to reinstall the images (Windows Preinstallation Environment). Some of these are further based around BartPE (http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/). Anyway, probably the most important thing about system backups is that you keep your C (system) drive backed up daily, preferably without intervention. Make it a smaller partition than the others so you can just image it to a second physical drive. Do full monthly images also, and swap at least two backup drives so that one is off-premises at all times. What is the best generic recovery utility boot device and program these days?? * ** List info, subscription management, list rules, archives, privacy ** ** policy, calmness, a member map, and more at http://www.cguys.org/ ** *
Re: [CGUYS] STRANGE VIRUS? AGAIN
Actually, if we ignore the old time BIOS viruses that were targeted to specific hardware, the modern (but still only theoretical I think) BIOS virus will likely simply render the machine *dead*. Replacing the BIOS chip would bring it back to life, but realistically nobody would go to all that trouble and instead would simply declare the motherboard dead and replace it. It has been shown in theory that someone could put working code into a BIOS. But AFAIK this has never been done in the wild. Send linkage if you know otherwise. On Sat, Dec 26, 2009 at 9:37 AM, Fred Holmes f...@his.com wrote: I haven't done a BIOS flash update in a long time, but it used to be that one booted to a boot floppy (some version of DOS or similar OS), and executed a utility on the floppy that wrote the revised code to the BIOS. Presumably today, one downloads a Windows Program that creates/makes a CD disc, instead of a floppy disk, that does the same thing??? The belt and suspenders folks should download this BIOS flash program and data for their current BIOS version, and have it at the ready, if one is afraid of BIOS corruption by a virus. * ** List info, subscription management, list rules, archives, privacy ** ** policy, calmness, a member map, and more at http://www.cguys.org/ ** *
Re: [CGUYS] STRANGE VIRUS? AGAIN
Huh? So a mac-based Windows machine has this lock? That's nice. Many other companies have various schemes to prevent BIOS flashing as well. I'm sure if this ever becomes a real problem many more will join in. On Sat, Dec 26, 2009 at 12:52 PM, tjpa t...@tjpa.com wrote: If I may. let me point out that to flash the BIOS on a Mac you have to shutdown the computer, then start it up by holding down the start button for several seconds until you hear a tone. I'm surprised that PCs will let any random program flash their BIOS. On second thought, I'm not surprised at all. So typical. * ** List info, subscription management, list rules, archives, privacy ** ** policy, calmness, a member map, and more at http://www.cguys.org/ ** *
Re: [CGUYS] AAAHH, the old days
It always struck me that any attempt to alphabetize names, especially ones that were written full (so that the machine had to determine what part of the seven-word name was the last (family) name, and what part was the middle name, etc.) would be doomed to failure. I just used an extra column in the spreadsheet (field in the database) to enter a faux string that would be used for alphabetization. If the alphabetization string failed to perform as expected, it was simply modified. The column / field would usually be non-printing in any printout of the list. Fred Holmes At 12:04 PM 12/26/2009, rleesimon wrote: Yes, in 1965-66 as an undergraduate I took a computer course at NYU which comprised learned to program (entry level, PL-1) and my assigned project was writing a routine to alphabetize a list of names including all variants (multiple first, middle names, hyphenated, with degrees, etc.) ...which took a whole semester and didn't actually function for all variants in the end. The horrible input was standing around waiting to sit at a punch card machine (do you hear hangin'chads?) and then wait months for an opening to run the thing with your stack of cards (a shoebox-full) at 2am when you were called to do it. Yes, it occupied an entire floor of the building with a/c trailers outside as well. I seem to recall the model IBM 360/30 and there were disk drives and all kinds of stuff in there (a clean room, remember bugs ??) * ** List info, subscription management, list rules, archives, privacy ** ** policy, calmness, a member map, and more at http://www.cguys.org/ ** *
Re: [CGUYS] RAID Revisited
On Dec 26, 2009, at 8:43 AM, Fred Holmes wrote: What do you do when uptime is important? Do today's drives never fail? When is uptime important? Was uptime important when M$ lost all the files used to run the Sidekick cell phone system? That was running on a storage array and I'm pretty sure that RAID would be one of the features of such a system. Did it help? It took them a week to get their fancy-pants system back in operation. If uptime is so important should you be using a mechanical hard drive? Would SSD be better? What components of an uptime critical system are most likely to fail? Drives are much more reliable than they used to be. What is the reliability of the RAID controller? Of the power supply? Fans? The mobo? Do you have multiple spares for everything? Does reliability increase or decrease as the complexity of the hardware/software increases? Does complex hardware/software increase or decrease the time it takes to restore service? I believe that the best strategy for maintaining uptime and reliability is to keep it simple and to have competent help administering the system. Is there really anybody on this list who needs that kind of guaranteed uptime? Would a momentary hiccup really be so traumatic? Or is it just playing computer macho? * ** List info, subscription management, list rules, archives, privacy ** ** policy, calmness, a member map, and more at http://www.cguys.org/ ** *
Re: [CGUYS] recovery boot device
On Dec 26, 2009, at 12:54 PM, Tony B wrote: Disk imaging is the way to go, with some level of compression to save space. Backups should never be compressed. You can find yourself locked out of your data. Disk imaging is a possibility, but I prefer to focus on protecting the data. If you image the drive you can find you have two identical non- functioning drives. Or you may find that you have to switch to different hardware and the image won't run there. I find it is best to have a system that can be quickly installed on any hardware I have available (so installing Windows is out of the question). Then copy over the data and go online. * ** List info, subscription management, list rules, archives, privacy ** ** policy, calmness, a member map, and more at http://www.cguys.org/ ** *
Re: [CGUYS] Verizon SMS
On Dec 25, 2009, at 11:20 PM, Tony B wrote: Except that, as his tech person, it's my responsibility to see to it that he's made aware of all the latest tech whether he likes it or not. OMG, we all know what the looks like and have great sympathy for your boss. * ** List info, subscription management, list rules, archives, privacy ** ** policy, calmness, a member map, and more at http://www.cguys.org/ ** *
Re: [CGUYS] STRANGE VIRUS? AGAIN
I had a couple PC motherboards that could do this, they had a secondary ROM chip I believe...you could flash the BIOS from these back to default. On Sat, Dec 26, 2009 at 10:52 AM, tjpa t...@tjpa.com wrote: If I may. let me point out that to flash the BIOS on a Mac you have to shutdown the computer, then start it up by holding down the start button for several seconds until you hear a tone. I'm surprised that PCs will let any random program flash their BIOS. On second thought, I'm not surprised at all. So typical. * ** List info, subscription management, list rules, archives, privacy ** ** policy, calmness, a member map, and more at http://www.cguys.org/ ** * * ** List info, subscription management, list rules, archives, privacy ** ** policy, calmness, a member map, and more at http://www.cguys.org/ ** *
Re: [CGUYS] STRANGE VIRUS? AGAIN
In point of fact, I don't think Apple systems have BIOS any longer, they switched to EFI when they went to intel. On Sat, Dec 26, 2009 at 10:52 AM, tjpa t...@tjpa.com wrote: If I may. let me point out that to flash the BIOS on a Mac you have to shutdown the computer, then start it up by holding down the start button for several seconds until you hear a tone. I'm surprised that PCs will let any random program flash their BIOS. On second thought, I'm not surprised at all. So typical. * ** List info, subscription management, list rules, archives, privacy ** ** policy, calmness, a member map, and more at http://www.cguys.org/ ** * * ** List info, subscription management, list rules, archives, privacy ** ** policy, calmness, a member map, and more at http://www.cguys.org/ ** *
Re: [CGUYS] RAID Revisited
Changing the subject again and not answering the questions. To most home users uptime isn't critical. I don't use RAID at home, my main system if I had a hard drive failure of my boot drive would be back up in about 20 minutes from an acronis image I keep updated on an external drive. Uptime is important though to many businesses as the one I mentioned. An hour of downtime equaled thousands of dollars if not more of loss where I was working, and this wasn't a huge shop. I'm still looking forward to seeing benchmarks regarding single drives being able to keep up with hundreds of users accessing the same database compared to RAID. On Sat, Dec 26, 2009 at 11:16 AM, tjpa t...@tjpa.com wrote: On Dec 26, 2009, at 8:43 AM, Fred Holmes wrote: What do you do when uptime is important? Do today's drives never fail? When is uptime important? Was uptime important when M$ lost all the files used to run the Sidekick cell phone system? That was running on a storage array and I'm pretty sure that RAID would be one of the features of such a system. Did it help? It took them a week to get their fancy-pants system back in operation. If uptime is so important should you be using a mechanical hard drive? Would SSD be better? What components of an uptime critical system are most likely to fail? Drives are much more reliable than they used to be. What is the reliability of the RAID controller? Of the power supply? Fans? The mobo? Do you have multiple spares for everything? Does reliability increase or decrease as the complexity of the hardware/software increases? Does complex hardware/software increase or decrease the time it takes to restore service? I believe that the best strategy for maintaining uptime and reliability is to keep it simple and to have competent help administering the system. Is there really anybody on this list who needs that kind of guaranteed uptime? Would a momentary hiccup really be so traumatic? Or is it just playing computer macho? * ** List info, subscription management, list rules, archives, privacy ** ** policy, calmness, a member map, and more at http://www.cguys.org/ ** * * ** List info, subscription management, list rules, archives, privacy ** ** policy, calmness, a member map, and more at http://www.cguys.org/ ** *
Re: [CGUYS] recovery boot device
So you are installing linux then? On Sat, Dec 26, 2009 at 11:27 AM, tjpa t...@tjpa.com wrote: I find it is best to have a system that can be quickly installed on any hardware I have available (so installing Windows is out of the question). Then copy over the data and go online. * ** List info, subscription management, list rules, archives, privacy ** ** policy, calmness, a member map, and more at http://www.cguys.org/ ** * * ** List info, subscription management, list rules, archives, privacy ** ** policy, calmness, a member map, and more at http://www.cguys.org/ ** *
Re: [CGUYS] rain in the Cloud
On Dec 25, 2009, at 10:31 PM, chad evans wyatt wrote: http://www.technologyreview.com/web/24166/ The writer interviewed a lot of people, but did not or could not go beyond a bunch of anecdotes and quotes. No analysis here. Most useful was the quote from Google: clouds are more secure than whatever you're using now. That may be all we need to know. * ** List info, subscription management, list rules, archives, privacy ** ** policy, calmness, a member map, and more at http://www.cguys.org/ ** *
Re: [CGUYS] STRANGE VIRUS? AGAIN
On Dec 26, 2009, at 1:39 PM, mike wrote: In point of fact, I don't think Apple systems have BIOS any longer, they switched to EFI when they went to intel. A BIOS by any other name... And W7 eliminated the BSOD (by eliminating the blue background). Ah progress! * ** List info, subscription management, list rules, archives, privacy ** ** policy, calmness, a member map, and more at http://www.cguys.org/ ** *
Re: [CGUYS] RAID Revisited
On Dec 26, 2009, at 1:43 PM, mike wrote: Uptime is important though to many businesses as the one I mentioned. The thought of Mike being in charge of a nuclear reactor is really scary. I should also mention that RAID has not kept up with the data robustness features built into modern drives. When a modern drive detects a read error it will go back to retry the read again and again and is often able to recover the data. Data recovery has to be disabled when drives are used in a RAID because RAID won't allow enough time for the data recovery to occur and fails the drive before the read problem can be resolved. RAID is less reliable than no RAID. Of course RAID is mucho macho and a great way to impress dumb bosses. * ** List info, subscription management, list rules, archives, privacy ** ** policy, calmness, a member map, and more at http://www.cguys.org/ ** *
Re: [CGUYS] recovery boot device
On Dec 26, 2009, at 1:46 PM, mike wrote: So you are installing linux then? BSD UNIX. * ** List info, subscription management, list rules, archives, privacy ** ** policy, calmness, a member map, and more at http://www.cguys.org/ ** *
Re: [CGUYS] STRANGE VIRUS? AGAIN
Not really, but whatever. On Sat, Dec 26, 2009 at 12:26 PM, tjpa t...@tjpa.com wrote: On Dec 26, 2009, at 1:39 PM, mike wrote: In point of fact, I don't think Apple systems have BIOS any longer, they switched to EFI when they went to intel. A BIOS by any other name... * ** List info, subscription management, list rules, archives, privacy ** ** policy, calmness, a member map, and more at http://www.cguys.org/ ** * * ** List info, subscription management, list rules, archives, privacy ** ** policy, calmness, a member map, and more at http://www.cguys.org/ ** *
Re: [CGUYS] recovery boot device
Awesome, it will install on more systems than if you just used os x at least. On Sat, Dec 26, 2009 at 12:38 PM, tjpa t...@tjpa.com wrote: On Dec 26, 2009, at 1:46 PM, mike wrote: So you are installing linux then? BSD UNIX. * ** List info, subscription management, list rules, archives, privacy ** ** policy, calmness, a member map, and more at http://www.cguys.org/ ** * * ** List info, subscription management, list rules, archives, privacy ** ** policy, calmness, a member map, and more at http://www.cguys.org/ ** *
Re: [CGUYS] RAID Revisited
As I said, you've clearly had zero experience in any kid of elevated environment where more than just a couple of macs were needed. On Sat, Dec 26, 2009 at 12:38 PM, tjpa t...@tjpa.com wrote: On Dec 26, 2009, at 1:43 PM, mike wrote: Uptime is important though to many businesses as the one I mentioned. The thought of Mike being in charge of a nuclear reactor is really scary. * ** List info, subscription management, list rules, archives, privacy ** ** policy, calmness, a member map, and more at http://www.cguys.org/ ** * * ** List info, subscription management, list rules, archives, privacy ** ** policy, calmness, a member map, and more at http://www.cguys.org/ ** *
Re: [CGUYS] RAID Revisited
Any evidence here? You just posted a story where you complained about anecdotal evidence being it...now that's all you got. Please, I've asked now twice for the benchmarks...anyone? I never said RAID was the only answer, that is Tom's job to be black and white, for cost, uptime, I/O...? On Sat, Dec 26, 2009 at 12:38 PM, tjpa t...@tjpa.com wrote: On Dec 26, 2009, at 1:43 PM, mike wrote: Uptime is important though to many businesses as the one I mentioned. The thought of Mike being in charge of a nuclear reactor is really scary. I should also mention that RAID has not kept up with the data robustness features built into modern drives. When a modern drive detects a read error it will go back to retry the read again and again and is often able to recover the data. Data recovery has to be disabled when drives are used in a RAID because RAID won't allow enough time for the data recovery to occur and fails the drive before the read problem can be resolved. RAID is less reliable than no RAID. Of course RAID is mucho macho and a great way to impress dumb bosses. * ** List info, subscription management, list rules, archives, privacy ** ** policy, calmness, a member map, and more at http://www.cguys.org/ ** * * ** List info, subscription management, list rules, archives, privacy ** ** policy, calmness, a member map, and more at http://www.cguys.org/ ** *
Re: [CGUYS] rain in the Cloud
At 02:23 PM 12/26/2009, tjpa wrote: Most useful was the quote from Google: clouds are more secure than whatever you're using now. Depends upon your security model. Maybe tjpa's quotation is what your government wants you to believe. Fred Holmes * ** List info, subscription management, list rules, archives, privacy ** ** policy, calmness, a member map, and more at http://www.cguys.org/ ** *
Re: [CGUYS] rain in the Cloud
And it doesn't jive with what Tom said about Danger's problem with the sidekick. And recent outages with BB. On Sat, Dec 26, 2009 at 1:03 PM, Fred Holmes f...@his.com wrote: At 02:23 PM 12/26/2009, tjpa wrote: Most useful was the quote from Google: clouds are more secure than whatever you're using now. Depends upon your security model. Maybe tjpa's quotation is what your government wants you to believe. Fred Holmes * ** List info, subscription management, list rules, archives, privacy ** ** policy, calmness, a member map, and more at http://www.cguys.org/ ** * * ** List info, subscription management, list rules, archives, privacy ** ** policy, calmness, a member map, and more at http://www.cguys.org/ ** *
Re: [CGUYS] STRANGE VIRUS? AGAIN
The EFI physically resides in a ROM (chip) on the motherboard. If the chip is flashable (writable), then it's vulnerable, n'est ce pas? And EFI extensions are written to the hard/boot drive? So that's vulnerable also. Fred Holmes At 02:54 PM 12/26/2009, mike wrote: Not really, but whatever. On Sat, Dec 26, 2009 at 12:26 PM, tjpa t...@tjpa.com wrote: On Dec 26, 2009, at 1:39 PM, mike wrote: In point of fact, I don't think Apple systems have BIOS any longer, they switched to EFI when they went to intel. A BIOS by any other name... * ** List info, subscription management, list rules, archives, privacy ** ** policy, calmness, a member map, and more at http://www.cguys.org/ ** *
Re: [CGUYS] recovery boot device
If my machine had the symptoms this one has, I would do the works: BIOS flash turn on BIOS virus protection, Boot sector cleaning, partitions removal/ format, Free Zone Alarm firewall w. ask turned on ...all done while keeping the machine off the net. ... and the presently existing data would worry me to no end... db Tony B wrote: We're really beginning to stray here with all this talk of rare BIOS and boot sector viruses. And now a question about backups. Disk imaging is the way to go, with some level of compression to save space. Ghost, Acronis, and many freeware apps will do this. They all have basic Windows PE cds that will boot enough of an OS to reinstall the images (Windows Preinstallation Environment). Some of these are further based around BartPE (http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/). Anyway, probably the most important thing about system backups is that you keep your C (system) drive backed up daily, preferably without intervention. Make it a smaller partition than the others so you can just image it to a second physical drive. Do full monthly images also, and swap at least two backup drives so that one is off-premises at all times. What is the best generic recovery utility boot device and program these days?? * ** List info, subscription management, list rules, archives, privacy ** ** policy, calmness, a member map, and more at http://www.cguys.org/ ** * * ** List info, subscription management, list rules, archives, privacy ** ** policy, calmness, a member map, and more at http://www.cguys.org/ ** *
Re: [CGUYS] Docks and information Re: [CGUYS] Dock placement: [Was: Re: [CGUYS] Consternation over Computer Constipation]
That's as good an explanation as I have heard. It makes sense. Too bad Jobs doesn't have a wife with GUI design skills to give him a boot in the butt occasionally ... a little personal democracy :) db mike wrote: Well Apple is not a democracy, which is it's greatest strength and weakness. It comes down to the single vision of one man and sometimes that will have a bad effect, luckily for Apple it usually has a very good effect, but does make change hard if weaknesses are found and Jobs doesn't see them as weaknesses. The original iPhone far out paced any competitor on the market for a couple years and now with android coming in with similiar interfaces, building on the good and getting rid of some of the weaknesses, Apple has some competition to look at. A huge factor for most people I know would be if Apple allowed multitasking, that would be huge, it's clear from windows phones and android phones it's not a battery issue, so we shall see if Apple addresses this. The iPhone has largely remained unchanged since it came out, with it's strong app base this may not matter to some or most users, time will tell. On Wed, Dec 23, 2009 at 12:03 PM, db db...@att.net wrote: Or they might just stick with their home screen like they have stuck with OSX's surprisingly limited functionality finder/dock system for such a long time ... Like Apple computers there is more to the iPhone then their Home screen. The collective good will make particular weaknesses bearable for most. But it begs the question ... why not fix the weaknesses? ... which is where this string started. db mike wrote: I found it annoying to hide the dock myself, although I found it worked just fine at the bottom. I always made it as small as I could and still see it and let it grow rather large when I wanted it. It's interesting to note about showing you information in the dock, this is one of the complaints on the iphone that you have to open an app to find out just about anything. On Androids home screen you can find out weather, the content of a new sms, an IM, stock quotes, full calender etc Almost everything can be found out from the home screen of an android phone without opening any apps...I'm anxious to see where Apple takes the iPhone OS since it's first iteration was so simple and groundbreaking. Will they [ever] overhaul it and bring more functionality to the home screen? If it was MS I'd say they are just going to copy someone who does it better...but being Apple they might look at the better on Android and scratch it and go some other direction that just ups the ante. On Tue, Dec 22, 2009 at 8:00 PM, tjpa t...@tjpa.com wrote: On Dec 22, 2009, at 11:29 AM, Allen Firstenberg wrote: When I first started using OSX, I tried moving the dock around and trying different hide settings and never quite liked it. Lots of my windows put stuff on the left, and having the dock there would cover it. Setting it to auto hide would have it slow to return when I did want it. I suspect that hiding the Dock may be the reason some hate the Dock. It does not work as well when hidden. On my screen the dock is just 1/2 inch wide and holds 46 icons. I don't see any problem with giving up that space. I slide all the program windows over by that half inch and most apps remember that position. The dock is not just a program launcher, but also provides information about the state of the computer. The iCal icon even changes to show me the date. When I want to email a file I drag it into the Mail icon. To edit a file I drag it into the icon of the app I want to use, which will vary with what I'm doing. Hiding the Dock would deprive me of much functionality and slow me down. I would first have to drag a file to the edge to display the Dock, then scan for the app's icon, and then make another trip to the icon's location. With the Dock always visible I can scan for the icon at the same time as I drag the file over to the Dock. It is one seamless motion. Very fast. * ** List info, subscription management, list rules, archives, privacy ** ** policy, calmness, a member map, and more at http://www.cguys.org/ ** * * ** List info, subscription management, list rules, archives, privacy ** ** policy, calmness, a member map, and more at http://www.cguys.org/ ** * * ** List info, subscription management, list rules, archives, privacy ** ** policy, calmness, a member map, and more at http://www.cguys.org/ ** *
Re: [CGUYS] recovery boot device
On Dec 26, 2009, at 4:26 PM, db wrote: If my machine had the symptoms this one has, I would do the works: BIOS flash turn on BIOS virus protection, Since the machine is new enough to be returnable I would skip the tough stuff. Keep the computer disconnected from the LAN and WiFi off. Use the Ultimate Boot Disk to delete all the partitions on the hard drive. Then install the OS. At that point you should be able to tell if the computer is clean. Then proceed step by step and check the machine at each step. If suddenly you find yourself polluted you'll know what step caused it. * ** List info, subscription management, list rules, archives, privacy ** ** policy, calmness, a member map, and more at http://www.cguys.org/ ** *
Re: [CGUYS] recovery boot device
WTF are you talking about? Compressed data isn't any harder to recover than non-compressed; just the opposite, since it resides in a smaller area and often contains recovery info. As for your system that can be quickly installed on any hardware I have available, I have no idea what you're talking about. You certainly can't install a Mac OS on any hardware. Please elaborate. On Sat, Dec 26, 2009 at 1:27 PM, tjpa t...@tjpa.com wrote: On Dec 26, 2009, at 12:54 PM, Tony B wrote: Disk imaging is the way to go, with some level of compression to save space. Backups should never be compressed. You can find yourself locked out of your data. Disk imaging is a possibility, but I prefer to focus on protecting the data. If you image the drive you can find you have two identical non-functioning drives. Or you may find that you have to switch to different hardware and the image won't run there. I find it is best to have a system that can be quickly installed on any hardware I have available (so installing Windows is out of the question). Then copy over the data and go online. * ** List info, subscription management, list rules, archives, privacy ** ** policy, calmness, a member map, and more at http://www.cguys.org/ ** *
