Knowledge is Power
Sabayon Forensics
events dealing with Sabayon Forensics
Sabayon and Google Drive
190 days
I spent a few hours looking for a solution to getting google drive on my sabayon system much like dropbox, but found out that there really is no official way. Google seems to be slow on getting a linux client out or something.
Dropbox is nice, but at only 2GB of space and costs above that limit are lame compared to google drive. I use google for everything else so why not the drive. Once I log into my computer, the next thing I do is log into google to access all my stuff. I’m just surprised they don’t have linux support for their drive yet.
So looking around it seems Insync is popular, but it seems to favor gnome/kde/cinnamon which I don’t use. They say it’s free during beta, but I didn’t see any price as to what it will cost. So that is not for me.
gdrive-cli exists, but not what I am looking for. I want something like dropbox for my desktop environment.
I than ran across grive and this caught my eye and it’s open source! I had a fresh install of Sabayon Forensics and decided to install it and it was a snap to install and it works like a charm. You can follow my how-to here. Basically you grab the git, build it, and than run it. It’s not dropbox, but very close to it. With a cron job set up, I’m good to go. I know it goes against the religion of doing things outside of the package manager, but this is totally safe as you are doing all of this in your home directory and not messing with anything else.
I have moved the original Sabayon Forensics site over to Sabayon Forensics new home. I plan to house my personal how-to’s over there also.
Sabayon with a dash of Cinnamon
194 days
It’s been a while since I have taken some time to look at the development of Cinnamon the gnome-shell fork by Mint Linux. What inspired me to look at it again was confusion from users. Many people don’t seem to understand that cinnamon is not a stand alone desktop environment. Cinnamon depends on gnome as it’s a fork of gnome-shell, which belongs to Gnome 3. I would see users complain that they installed cinnamon, but it didn’t work. I found out many did not install gnome for it to work properly. So to test things out, I booted up Sabayon Forensics live USB and ran:
equo update && equo install cinnamon
Keep in mind Sabayon Forensics is a XFCE desktop environment. So once I issued that command, cinnamon pulled like 47 packages and many related to gnome of course. Cinnamon should pull the necessary gnome packages, so let it pull em.
Once that is done, log out and in your session you can choose cinnamon and watch cinnamon come to life as you log in.
Sabayon with Cinnamon
Note the images here are not the default cinnamon settings/looks upon install. I changed stuff all around for looks and settings. This was a good test for me to explore the abilities of cinnamon and I was very happy to see how much cinnamon has progress. They made promises and are delivering.
Sabayon with Cinnamon
Sabayon with Cinnamon
Sabayon with Cinnamon
Pretty slick I say. Yay for people out there fixing the default Gnome 3 GUI. Mint Linux even has forked nautilus and call it nemo after calling current nautilus a disaster. It’s sad to see what is happening in the Gnome world, but I don’t want to start a flame war so I will leave it at that.
So as you can see, installing cinnamon on sabayon should be no problem. Now if you’re using an ATI card, you may have issues with gnome-shell stuff. So please check the log files if you are having issues. I have no problems with nvidia or intel graphics.
Cheers to the cinnamon crew!
Live USB Creation = Frustration
274 days
I’ve seem to hit a bump in the road when it comes to creating a live USB stick. Normally I create and test once a week an ISO file from our Daily folder to make sure it’s working properly. I’ve never had an issue till like a week ago when unetbootin would no longer make a bootable USB stick. So than I tried Linux Live USB Creator and it was telling me the ISO file was corrupt, which it wasn’t as I was able to mount it with VirtualBox and boot it. Others were testing and were able to create bootable USB sticks and I thought for sure I was loosing my mind for a while till someone else posted the same issue. Yay I wasn’t loosing my mind after all.
So I started googling and vibes were pointing to try win32diskimager. So I downloaded the binary, extracted, ran the exe file and had a bootable USB stick in a short period of time. Yay! Why win32diskimager works where others won’t is beyond me.
If you are on a windows machine and need to create a USB stick of your favorite Sabayon iso, here is the steps
1. Download Win32DiskImager, grab the binary, extract it, run the win32diskimager.exe file and you will see the window below. I had my flash drive plugged in already and it properly detected it. Use the drop down box to make change if needed.
2. By default it looks for a .img file and what we have is an .iso file. So you need to click on the Save as File type and select *.* than you will be able to see and select your .iso file.
3. After you have done that, all you have to now do is click on write and sit back for a bit while it does it’s thing.
4. Once it completes, reboot your computer and boot up the live USB stick.
I still need to test if I can do this with dd yet, but my main machine is in a bit of a mess and need to get a hard drive swapped out, so this is why I needed to get this working from a windows machine. Hopefully this will save someone the major headache I got from all this, sheesh.
Happy Leap Day!
445 days
Time flies when having fun, seems like I haven’t blogged about anything in forever. I hope everyone knows Sabayon 8 is released and I haven’t seen much for issues being reported. I’m seeing the typical installer stuff, anaconda is a fussy beast. I’ve battled in the past also, so your not alone. For the few issues reported, I’d say success. Oh yea, after all the hype of new xorg and legacy hardware not working, last minute decision was to keep old xorg for now.
Speaking of reporting issues, I’m still seeing people post on forum and bugzilla invalid stuff. Stating things like, “I did a fresh install than did the updates and now the desktop won’t load”. There isn’t anyone in this universe that is going to be able to help you. Developers will simple click invalid and move on. You need to provide as much info as possible, hardware, logs, errors, how to reproduce, things like that. Many people will say they don’t know how to get logs, check out this forum topic to help, How to Gather Log Files Easily. Most of the time you are gonna need to get friendly with your terminal, especially if your X isn’t loading. Starting applications from terminal can also provide valuable information. So please provide something, the tools are there, use them to help yourself or for someone to help you.
So have you heard of Rigo Application Browser that Fabio is working on? Check it out and if your ambitious and an advanced user, you can clone the entropy git and give it a whirl. I believe Fabio said it’s a month out yet for the general public, so watch for updates.
Oh yea, been seeing questions as to where the Sabayon Experimental 8 spins are. There just hasn’t been much discussion on that, so what I would recommend for now is to grab one from the Daily folder on the mirrors and than you will have a current build of your favorite experimental spin. People worry about the Daily builds, but I run them all the time and find them stable.
Sabayon Forensics spin has gotten a couple new packages added to it by request. I added net-misc/dropbox which I just added to the spec file today and net-wireless/aircrack-ng which is already on the current build. The next build of ISO is this coming Sunday so dropbox will be on that ISO.
A quick question for all, when would be a good time to drop x86 branch? 1 to 2 years or more? x86_64 is every where now a days, can’t remember last time I used a x86 operating system.
Happy New Year from Sabayon Land
502 days
Happy New Year to all! Now that the holidays are over it’s time to get back to work or unless you were like me and got to work through the holidays, so is life.
So I am continuously testing the Sabayon Forensics XFCE x86-64 edition and happy to see that things are nice and stable for me. I haven’t heard any complaints from anyone either, so all good it seems.
I’ve been looking at this ARM stuff and slowly trying to grasp all of it. Fabio has been busy with the ARMv7 stuff on his beagleboard. A wiki page is even been dedicated to it. If you are interested in it, be sure to see those links to learn more. I’ve been eyeing up the Pandaboard lately as it seems to offer plenty. If you’re interested in testing and developing, give a shout to our mail list and let us know.
Fabio is gonna take a much needed short holiday and than the plans will be set in motion to get a Sabayon 8 out the door. The daily iso is working so well that I’m not seeing much effort needed to push this one out. A new artwork package was talked about so will see where that ends up at. I myself would like to see something new and refreshing. My current desktop looks something like this:
current xfce desktop
Regardless, if you’re keeping your system up to date, you are rolling right along with the changes. Keep up to date and keep reporting any bugs. Please see this bug for the Sabayon 8 release stuff, just append to it. We kinda want to get Sabayon 8 out the door by end of February, sooner the better.
2012 is looking good for Sabayon. We have more people helping with the server stuff. We got the ARM project in motion. I’m still seeing the flow of Ubuntu refugees arriving and loving Sabayon. It’s good to have yas onboard btw. The recent reviews I have read have all been very positive. Also, it sounds like Fabio will be rewritting a new Sulfur from scratch for Sabayon 9 release later this year, hopefully mid-year. So good news for the Sulfur or Entropy Store users. So stick around and invite a friend or two.
To Install or Not?
573 days
To install or not is the question I’ve been asking myself. My laptop has windows 7 installed and works fine and I use it for business usage while doing photography as I can use it to trigger my camera and view images with Lightroom. I really don’t need linux on it and as long as I have a USB stick, I can boot it up to linux anytime I want to. I thought I would give a test and see what would happen if I just leave it run and drag it around with me to work and home with just a live USB. I popped Sabayon Forensics amd64 XFCE on to the USB stick and I’m over 3 days now and it’s working flawlessly. I’ve even used entropy to install some applications I wanted. So the only advantage I would get if I installed it is the ability to save. I’m not gonna be using my laptop and linux where I need to save tho. I have a desktop for my main productive work and I’ve even been sshing in from the laptop to do some of that work.
An eight dollar USB drive and you can make a computer come to life. The performance over a dvd drive is 100xs better. The wonderful tool molecule, which is available in entropy, can help you make a custom Sabayon for your needs. So if you are interested, check out the Sabayon wiki for a molecule howto.
I’m gonna continue to let this run an and see what happens.
Sabayon Forensics XFCE Available
578 days
by wolfden
in Sabayon Forensics
The first release of the Sabayon Forensics XFCE edition is available on the mirrors for download. I am dropping the Gnome 3 desktop and KDE for a much lighter desktop environment that will work better across the computer land. This edition is built off the Sabayon Daily XFCE edition and is released weekly, so every Monday you can get an updated version. I highly recommend to learn and use rsync to keep your iso updated instead of downloading a new iso each time. As easily as something like:
rsync -avP rsync://ftp.SURFnet.nl/sabayonlinux/iso/daily/Sabayon_Linux_DAILY_amd64_ForensicsXfce.iso /home/wolfden/isos/amd64/
There is a x86 and a x86_64 version of this edition. Before I only had the x86 versions available, so now the best of both worlds. I have all the information where to get the isos on the website and even added another page of Other Tools, which is information on some basic commandline stuff.
There is an issue with the current theme and the OSD notification as it ends up being black on black, argh! I have fixed this so this coming Monday it will get implemented. There is other themes you can simply change to also.
Another issue and I forgot to look into this, but Autopsy is failing to start. I’ll work on getting that sorted. I’m not even sure when it broke.
So what is Sabayon Forensics you ask? I shall point you to the About page where you can learn more. What about a package list you ask? I shall point you to the FAQ page and at the bottom you can get the package list. Can I install it you may ask, yes you can install and use it as a rolling system with entropy just like any normal Sabayon release.
Ophcrack was dropped and I filed a bug with gentoo about ophcracktables being a dependent of ophcrack. It would be nice to include ophcrack and the users download and store the tables on USB or DVD discs. The ophcracktables package doesn’t even include all the tables nor has any effect on ophcrack running. Ophcracktables is 1GB in size and with people on slow internet, it’s a pain. Of course gentoo closed the bug and won’t fix it. So you can install ophcrack program on the live system by doing equo install ophcrack –nodeps and than you can load the tables from a usb or disc. I don’t get gentoo devs at times, it would be like making flash a dependent of every browser.
I’m open to forensic tools too add to it, just give me a holler. I don’t want to increase the file size too badly tho, but if a program is worth while, than yes. Screenshots and usage can be found on the Using Sabayon Forensic page. I do not help people with hacking and cracking, that is not what it’s about so don’t even ask.
I’m sure I probably forgot to mention something, but if you look it over you’ll see it’s pretty self explanatory.
New to Me
588 days
One of the benefits of testing different isos is that once in a while you run across a new to me program. A new to me program is a program that has been around for a while, but you never knew about it. That makes sense right? So testing the Sabayon XFCE edition and I run across Geany and it’s an instant hit with me. It even has plugins you can add to it. The packages are in entropy as dev-util/geany and dev-util/geany-plugins if you are interested in trying it.
Geany on Sabayon Forensics XFCE
How about that for timing on the screenshot, looks like I have an update from entropy to install. So Sabayon Forensics amd64 is pretty much a go now. It successfully installs and works great. I’m building the x86 shortly to test and once Sabayon 7 is out the door, will work on availability to the public.
Packages added:
sys-apps/mlocate,
media-fonts/droid,
app-misc/screen,
app-forensics/cmospwd,
app-forensics/rkhunter,
app-forensics/sleuthkit,
app-antivirus/clamav,
app-antivirus/clamtk,
app-forensics/autopsy,
app-forensics/mac-robber,
app-forensics/aide,
app-forensics/rdd,
app-crypt/chntpw,
media-video/vlc,
x11-wm/awesome,
net-libs/libnet,
net-libs/netwib,
net-analyzer/traceroute,
media-gfx/picasa,
app-admin/testdisk,
app-crypt/fcrackzip,
app-crypt/johntheripper,
sys-fs/extundelete,
app-forensics/magicrescue,
net-analyzer/nmap,
net-analyzer/netcat6,
net-irc/irssi,
net-analyzer/wireshark,
net-analyzer/tcpdump,
gnome-extra/nm-applet,
net-misc/knock,
www-client/chromium,
x11-terms/terminator,
xfce-extra/tumbler,
app-crypt/gifshuffle,
app-crypt/pdfcrack,
dev-util/geany,
dev-util/geany-plugins,
x11-misc/pcmanfm
Packages Removed:
app-dicts/aspell-de,
app-dicts/aspell-fr,
app-dicts/aspell-it,
app-dicts/aspell-nl,
app-dicts/aspell-pl,
app-dicts/myspell-de,
app-dicts/myspell-es,
app-dicts/myspell-fr,
app-dicts/myspell-it,
app-dicts/myspell-nl,
app-misc/sabayon-music,
mail-client/mailx,
mail-client/mailx-support,
net-p2p/transmission-base,
net-p2p/transmission-gtk+,
www-client/midori,
x11-wm/fluxbox,
x11-terms/xterm,
media-gfx/shotwell,
net-firewall/ufw,
net-firewall/ufw-frontends,
games-misc/cowsay,
app-editors/gedit
Custom skel files of course. Someone asked about Stegnography stuff, but I’m not seeing a lot of programs on this, especially in entropy. I’m open to suggestions for programs on this, but they need to be at least in portage for a package request. I’ve left ophcrack off in this edition. It keeps the file size down so I suggest to those that do want it, you can still have it. You can install ophcrack from entropy to the live session with the command equo install ophcrack –nodeps and than I would keep the ophcrack tables on disk or usb device and than just point ophcrack to those files. I have more luck with chntpw than ophcrack so that is another reason I don’t want to include it. I’m open to suggestions for packages, leave me a message here or email me at wolfden@sabayon.org. Oh yea, remember on the wireshark to add your username to the wireshark group with command like gpasswd -a myawesomenamehere wireshark and you will need to restart your session.
I can smell the Sabayon 7 isos cooking in Italy…..
Testing, XFCE to the Rescue
591 days
What a busy week it has been with testing, finding bugs, confirming and submitting. Generally I test Gnome and KDE isos, but this time went off the wall as my frustrations grow with both Gnome and KDE and decided to test XFCE 64 bit edition. Last time I looked at XFCE was like version 4.0, so to my surprise 4.8 will knock your socks off compared to that.
So I have decided that with my Sabayon Forensic spins, I will go with xfce instead. I’ve been up to my ears in the skel files learning the xfce ways, adding and removing packages and been testing local isos via the wonderful tool molecule. My computer is feeling the pains tho, molecule will really give those cpus a work out. So drop the KDE and Gnome editions and just go with XFCE to make this simpler and more universal for working with various computers. Gnome-shell is kinda of a nightmare right now on various hardware. KDE has it’s issues too, but works better than gnome-shell.
Fabio would like to get the final bugs in so he can fix and release in a few days. So grab a daily ISO file from sabayon mirrors and either submit issues to the dev mailing list or our bugzilla. If you file a bug, you can block bug 2581 so Fabio will for sure see it. The more people testing the better, so it’s not too late to test for Sabayon 7. Gnome and KDE testing is critical as I haven’t seen much testing on those, but there is also e-17, lxde, etc.
Sneak Peek and Coming Soon:
Sabayon Forensics XFCE x86_64
Sabayon KForensics Available
832 days
by wolfden
in Sabayon Forensics
As of February 7th 2011, the KDE edition of Sabayon Forensics is available, see link for info and mirrors. Same tools as the GForensic, but in the KDE desktop environment. The forensic spins are based on the Daily KDE and Gnome x86 editions. Kpkglist can be viewed to see the packages on the Kforensics iso. Just some of the highlights:
- KDE 4.6.0
- Skel file fixes
- 2.6.37-sabayon Kernel
- clamav
- wireshark
- google chrome default browser
- rootkit hunter
- fcrackzip
- John the Ripper
- chtpw
- tcpdump
Since the Forensic spins are daily they are released every Sunday and Wednesday. You can install them to your hard drive even. I like to keep them on a USB flash drive and carry it around with me. It comes in handy when needing to repair another computer. Questions or feedback, feel free to email me at wolfden@sabayon.org and I will try to answer them.
