Lawrence "The Dreamer" Chen's Blog

Well, before I posted on this subject a few days ago, I had submitted a support request using Norton Antivirus 2009. Shortly after the the blog posting, I got an Email for Symantec's PR company....sent to my work address. Not via the blog (or the associated email address).

Of course, that doesn't matter, my employer banned Symantec and Norton Antivirus on PCs a couple years ago. In fact, they would actively scan computers connected to its network to detect, and block access to, computers that continued to use the software. We have a site license for Trend Micro, and policy that requires it to be installed on all PCs connected to our network (including personally owned ones). The site license extends to allow (current) students and employees to use the software on their home computers, even if they are connecting via a 3rd party ISP.

Of course, TrendMicro doesn't support Mac or Linux users, but the use of Antivirus software is still required. A bulk license for software for the Mac exists, with a periodic review of how many are being used...and ClamAV is the recommended solution for Linux users, and I thought Bradford checked for it (along with being current on patches) in the dorms.

Anyhoo....I eventually got a response for Symantec Technical support. It was try to disable a feature of Norton Antivirus and see if the problem continues. If it does, then it isn't their fault.

Lucky for them, it is their fault. I disabled Auto-Protects Advanced Protection feature...to resolve the issue.

Then things continued to be less than helpful. Vague response on how they want me to be protected so make sure I keep running LiveUpdate....though are they saying they'll turn it back on when remotely when they think it'll be resolved or will LiveUpdate tell me that it has finally resolved this issue.

It did a provide a link suggesting that I submit information about the false positive to. But, it was for false positive phishing urls. And, submitting the false positives from "Advanced Protection" yielded the response that the submission does not appear to be URLs so, therefore, "We have concluded our research
of your submission and will take no further action.". Even though I included reference to the support incident ticket that led me to the form.

I emailed back, and was provided with yet another form. With the note that "Incomplete submissions and requests that are not deemed to be genuine will not be processed.". The form instructions say that it must be submitted by the software vendor of the false positive.

In other words, they don't care about its users.

Category: Resolved Security Risks
10/19/2008 16:51  High  prepare_dpf4_9.51_windows_intelx86.exe detected by SONAR        Removed
10/17/2008 19:11  High  prepare_receptor4_9.51_windows_intelx86.exe detected by SONAR   Removed
10/19/2008 16:52  High  prepare_dpf4_9.51_windows_intelx86.exe detected by SONAR        Removed
10/19/2008 16:51  High  prepare_dpf4_9.51_windows_intelx86.exe detected by SONAR        Removed
10/17/2008 19:12  High  prepare_receptor4_9.51_windows_intelx86.exe detected by SONAR   Removed
10/19/2008 17:08  High  summarize_results4_9.51_windows_intelx86.exe detected by SONAR  Removed

Category: Quarantine
10/19/2008 16:51  High  prepare_dpf4_9.51_windows_intelx86.exe detected by SONAR        Removed
10/17/2008 19:11  High  prepare_receptor4_9.51_windows_intelx86.exe detected by SONAR   Removed
10/19/2008 16:51  High  prepare_dpf4_9.51_windows_intelx86.exe detected by SONAR        Removed
10/19/2008 17:08  High  summarize_results4_9.51_windows_intelx86.exe detected by SONAR  Removed

So, now I'm going to ask them on how to remove this crapware.

A few days ago, I got a LiveUpdate Notice that I could upgrade to the latest version of Norton Antivirus for free as part of my annual subscription.

This was new. In the past, I just kept renewing the subscription of Norton Antivirus...until they decide that the version is too old and force me to buy the latest version. That's happened a couple of times on this computer (the other computer died earlier this year, but I wasn't planning to renew its subscription for this reason....it had become a dedicated BOINC machine)

Well, upgrading proved to be a mistake. The advanced auto-protect feature, which "Provides real-time protection against threats and proactively detects unknown security risks on your computer." Keeps reporting that certain BOINC processes as high risk and removing them.

Of course, it nags annoyingly if I turn the feature off....but running BOINC is more important to continuing to be a Symantec customer. So, I guess I'll be looking to replace NAV2009 with something else before my subscription expires in 90 days....

That's my Satellite 5105-S701, which has the host name 'sidrat'.

The machine is like 6 years old...there was a plan to upgrade in 3, and then 4...and then 5....and perhaps someday I will upgrade. Though what I've been thinking of getting...I'm not sure it would be called an upgrade. Been looking at Netbooks (don't know if I'll get one with XP or not, more interested in the idea of running Linux....but might get the XP so I can dual boot....or because the Windows version is the more powerful unit)

IE: HP MiniNote 2133 is either a 1.0 or 1.2GHz with Linux....but with Vista it comes as 1.2GHz or 1.6GHz. Guess they hate Linux users. Though I'll likely get something Atom based.

Anyways. The old laptop pretty much has been tethered to its powercord for some time. Not sure if I can get batteries for it. Though battery life was pretty poor new, now almost non-existent. But, a while back....while my brother, and his wife, were in Ghana....getting knocked down with Malaria. I had the laptop running 24x7 doing BOINC....malariacontrol.net

Over the last few days...I would come often find the laptop hung. I'd reboot it and forget about it.

Well, it was that way just a moment ago....I rebooted it, and almost immediately it hung again. It is summer now....and I can't remember when I started doing the full-time BOINC'ng...but it would've been late fall last year. So, I suppose it might not be happy about the warmer temps. Though I may have cooked it to death.

But, this wake time...and evening....so it is a cool time in my condo. And, if it is finding that too warm to stay up. There's probably something else wrong. Perhaps the CPU fan has stopped working. Since it was over $100 for a RFE fan for the desktop, I'm sure it would be pretty hefty to get parts for the laptop and probably not an easy self-repair project.

Guess its time to write off the old laptop.... Only problem is...I think its too late to buy a laptop with Windows XP now.

Hmmm...

Of course, I'm talking about my Ubuntu server (well, maybe not obvious....except that I'm not known for doing upgrades).

I had debated waiting for Hardy Heron's release before building this Linux server. Except that I had bought the box back in December, and delaying was preventing was delaying all that BOINC work that I've been doing.

There's other stuff I want to or have thought of doing with this server, but don't know where I actually stand on doing those sorts of things. If I had it to do over again, I don't think I would've gotten this box (it was knee-jerk response to replacing a dead server, which I was later able to resurrect...negating the ordeal of recreating things). OTOH, I probably would've continued on with buying something else....and I'm not sure if I would've been that happy with that purchase. Of course, it has delayed that purchase....and it may become too late to get it. Though perhaps Windows XP will continue to still be available after June 30th, and I'll make that one last upgrade in that department.

Anyways...other than taking much longer than expected to upgrade....either the upgrade servers are still badly hammered, or Cox is throttling me. Cox seems to be sluggish in general today. The download speed was dismal. And, then hidden in the terminal you don't see my default, it was asking if I wanted to proceed with the upgrade after everything had been downloaded.

Annoying enough when doing 'sudo apt-get upgrade', even more so here....because I wasn't expecting that I had to wait and interact (with a hidden screen) in the upgrade. Later there were dialogs that popped up on stuff that wanted input, mainly to decide if stuff I had configured in Gutsy could be unconfigured in the resulting upgrade to Hardy. Umm, I configured those services so that I could use them....

Finally it was done....it took forever to boot while it did fs checks on /home and /MMCVideo, but then everything looked fine.

Well, not totally. lm-sensors was changed, so I had to reconfigure that, and I'm not sure but the core temperatures seem to be higher now. The default is FireFox 3.0 beta....and all my extensions and themes got disabled. I've been avoiding upgrading to FireFox 3.0 on my other machines for this reason. Though people say that the new version is faster, and the memory leak is fixed, and some of the hanging/crashing problems on Mac OS X seem to be gone. But, I want it to work the way I've customized it....

So, I changed my shortcut to launch firefox-2 instead and reverted things.

Now other than network lag, which I hope will clear up on its own....the only main thing that doesn't seem to work in the update is vmware. Which probably just means I need to rebuild the kernel stuff again (or see if there's some hardy specific details to making that work). Not really a big deal though, since I never got around to running anything in vmware. It was on my list of things to try, but now I need more disk on this box.

I heard 8.04 was going to have support for PM SATA, wonder if that's true and if the PCIe PM SATA card that is in the box will now work, etc.

The new ST3500641AS-RK that I ordered from Amazon.com arrived by UPS (Free 2nd Day -- Amazon Prime) this morning...it was cold, so I left the drive to acclimate and went off to work.

I got home late

Due to a bad BOINC project, I found the machine (orac) cool....fixing that, it started to warm up again...but I shut it down to remove the failed drive and install this new one.

Found out that the drive inside is the same as the previous OEM drives....ST3500630AS. Some minor differences though. This time I removed the limit 1.5Gbps jumpers from the drives while I was putting it together.

Then I booted up the system and set out to recover. Only it occurred to me that it isn't going to rebuild it as slickly as Veritas does (and did, when I resurrected a dead server early this morning for work). First question was how to do I (easily) get the partitioning the same. Quick search....found the command to be:

sudo sfsdisk -d /dev/sda | sudo sfsdisk /dev/sdb -O hdd-partition-sectors.save

Checked that things looked right with fdisk, and added the new partitions in to make RAID1 again.

sudo mdadm --add /dev/md0 /dev/sdb1
sudo mdadm --add /dev/md1 /dev/sdb2

Then I checked logs and watched /proc/mdstat of things come back.....ETA 131 minutes for the /dev/md1....guess I'll go to bed and check it in the morning.

As I may have mentioned, I finally turned on this computer on Saturday.

I had first tried installed OpenSolaris, but it choked on the motherboard's SATA controller. Though maybe I gave up too soon, but I had pretty decided a couple weeks ago that I would ultimately be running some Linux distro....largely for its better support for BOINC and feeling that I would go with running VMware, rather than see what the state of Xen for Open Solaris is. Plus there other software considerations.

I had settled on first trying Ubuntu 7.10 Server 64-bit....it didn't go well. Since I had gone to the trouble of getting a pair of drives for RAID 1, I wanted to do this. Though I was ready to try Storage Foundation with the OpenSolaris attempt. I opted not go this route for Ubuntu.

After numerous installs and going by various community docs...I was about to give up and seek out some other distro of Linux. Until I went back and checked my notes on how I had gotten RAID to work on a Linux box at work. Following that, I was able to get it to work.

Once done, I added ubuntu-desktop so that I could do more than just the mail(satellite)/samba/ssh services that I installed. I had previously installed other services, but decided that wasn't what I was going to be using this box for.

Final step on Sunday was to install BOINC and attach to all the projects I participate in. And, let it loose.

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....or something

Today, for no real good reason....I decided to reboot my Linux server (lhaven). And, make it check its filesystems.

It took longer than I expected, because since I swapped the motherboard...it comes up in PIO mode, which makes things painfully slow, etc. I had set /etc/sysconfig/harddisks to have USE_DMA=1, but I didn't realize that it did the fsck step before it does the hdparm stuff.

I bounced it a few times trying to figure out why it wouldn't use DMA, eventually resulting in the filesytems as uncleanly unmounted...and therefore requiring the fsck now. I ended up hacking the rc.sysinit script to apply DMA before the fsck. Ideally, the machine should run 24x7 to the end of time. Though there might be a UPS swap or two between now and then.

During all this, there was the annoyance where the keyboard stops responding....so I decided it was a good time as any to replace its KVM.

Now I had a 4-port KVM, but I hadn't come across the 4th set of cables during my various expeditions through my boxes....so I had purchased a new 4-port KVM after deciding this was how I would connect the new Core2Quad box that I've been assembling.

When I first realized that I might not have the 4th set of cables, I thought about getting a new monitor....except that if I were in the market for a new monitor, I'd rather upgrade one that I stare at all the time than just get a cheapie for this computer. Which meant DVI. Though the Core2Quad box doesn't have DVI card in it. And, not sure a DVI monitor would have a place on the KVM. So, this would mean buying a DVI card for it....as well as a new monitor....which as far as I was concerned had to have DVI whether it was really necessary or not....so if I didn't get a DVI card for this new computer, I would still want DVI in a new monitor. And, the cheapest ones available that could be shipped to me quickly weren't quite in my budget (especially with all the recent budget creeps). Though the way I've been dragging my heals on getting this machine going...time wasn't really of the essence on a new monitor.

Though if I did go with new monitor, it then raised the question of where was I going to put this new monitor (and the computer bits around it). This meant furniture would need to be acquired....and possibly other stuff. So, more budget creep.

There will be the question of getting a UPS for this computer, though there is a plan to shuffle in a new UPS elsewhere, which would direct a UPS to this. Though it occurs to me that another project is likely going to need a UPS for that (well there's a UPS there that has the VA's to handle more load, though runtime will then be an issue.) Though I do need to find a UPS that'll better fit the stand. A UPS that is currently there has feet on it, that don't line up with wire mesh of the shelf.

Perhaps the spot will require two UPSs to shuffle in to displace the one that is here now. Though hard to say what the timing of everything is.

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Link: http://www.ambry.com/page/search.asp?partnumber=M35105-58

Also among today's UPS deliveries...was the RFE'd CPU fan for my Dell Dimension XPS (Gen 2) named "TARDIS". (my Windows laptop was named "SIDRAT")....though I been reusing the names on other devices lately.

Namely, the Time Machine partition at work is called "LKC SIDRAT" (the Mac is named "LKC"), and the Time Machine partition at home is called "LKC TARDIS". Not sure the naming is as accurate. The work drive is a 2.5" 100GB 7200rpm drive, while the home drive is a 2.5" 160GB 5400rpm drive.

Anyways...CPU fan installed, and the computer is back up and running. While without the CPU fan...the other CPU fan was running ~2400rpm (up from its normal <900rpm) and the CPU temperature in the upper 60's....Celsius. Now I have BOINC running full out and the CPU temperature is reading 52.... the new fan is showing ~2500rpm and the remaining original fan is ~1700rpm.

Put BOINC back to preferences....things should gradually drop back. Not sure if the old fan will go under 1000rpm again. It had always been a bit weird on what speed it would run at....seems unless it breaks 1000, it stay below...leaving the Fan 1 to do most of the work.

Though it is strange that the lower CPU fan is the one that works harder than the higher CPU fan. There's probably something about the fan shroud that makes most of the air over the CPU heatsink pull down across it.

Apple is rebooting my Windows computer almost as much as Microsoft is now.

Today's reboot was brought to me by Apple...and my computer wouldn't come up after it.

Seems strange that the CPU fan died during this cycle...but eventually that's what it complained about.

But, seeing as it was down, I decided this was the excuse to open it up and replace the CMOS battery....and blow out some dust

It didn't help resurrect the CPU fan fault.

It seems to limp, guess I have to disable BOINC for a while.... And, see about getting a replacement fan for it.

Darn Dell seems to use some special, odd ball fan that is hard to find...doesn't even seem to be available from Dell. Good did identify some sites that carried pulls of the fan. So, I bought one. Kind of expensive...$119...though $58.33 is for next day shipping...which will hopefully put it on Monday (along with a few other items I'm expecting UPS to bring me that day).

Guess I need to see about getting a new computer, and not try to stretch any more life out of this one.

I suppose I might consider getting an iMac and VMWare to run the one Windows application that I know isn't available on the Mac, which I use daily (and have yet to find an easy way to convert from it...guess Microsoft needs to hold some of its users hostage.) Though I also have a few other Windows only things, that I may also have trouble giving up.

Of course, I do have that Gateway GT5636E.....

Though I'll probably want to buy different bits for it then....like a dual DVI video card. Though I guess I can scrounge the SCSI card....wonder if the other bits that I did get for it will still have a place in it then.

While, it isn't set in stone....I started leaning towards the idea of going with Linux as the OS to install on this system. Pretty sure it'll work, while Solaris might not. And, it isn't like I'll be playing around with ZFS/raidz in the immediate future.

But, then today I took a peek inside the machine to see what kind of expandability options I might have. I was mainly looking to see how the internal drives were setup and how many additional drives I could mount in it. And, what kind of slots it had.

Well, looks like there two PCI, PCI-e x1, and a PCI-e x16. Not sure what I'll stick into the slots, but have some ideas. The internal harddrive bay...is just room for one more, no SATA cable for it...so I'll need to buy one. Though lots of extra power connectors. There's an open 5.25" bay which I could adapt...and there's that portable drive bay which I'll probably never use.

But, what threw me is that there are 6 SATA connectors on the motherboard....that's just screaming for me to eventually try raidz. Plus today at work I tried plugging my flashdrive into my sun workstation, and it worked....so maybe Solaris might get along with whatever personal stuff I want to do with it. Used to be BOINC would've been a deciding factor....since there are only two projects (SETI@home and BOINCsimap) that run on Solaris x86, and both require work. I don't remember how I managed to build the BOINC client, but haven't been able to upgrade....because I haven't been able to successfully build anything since. But, with BrandZ zones....I'm running other BOINC projects at work....and could do the same at home (though not sure how many more months before I get the machine up).

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