Archive for September, 2013

How to fix Skype no (built in) web camera on MacBook Air with (Mac OS X 10.8.5) resolve Skype issue of Aug 2013

Sunday, September 29th, 2013

Resolve fix issue with no camera in MacBookAir

My dear fiance girlfriend Svetlana, has a MacBookAir from 2013 since a month time. We speak quite regularly in Skype since right now she is in Belarus and I'm in Bulgaria. So it was a big surprise for me today her brand new shiny MacBookAir camera stopped working. She is completely new to Mac OS X so she didn't have idea if something automatically updated on the notebook, probably some update poped up and she proceeded to update. Well no matter how the issue happened … I instructed her how to install TeamViewer (for Mac OS X – just download the .DMG double click it and install) and logged in to the PC to check what's happening. In FaceTime video was showing fine so obviously on OS level webcamera was detected. I saw some threads suggesting sometimes built in webcam is not working due to some other application which uses the camera (Safari instrance using flash to open webcam, FacePalm or whatever) …
I checked the version release of Mac OS X and it showed Mac OS X 10.8.5. I checked whether some updates are available but there were none. After browsing a bit figured out the web camera not detected Skype error is experienced by hundreds of MacBook air users online. Thanksfully there is a quick and simple fix by just substituting a file called AppleCamera.plugin.

Below are instructions on how to fix I followed from Skype's Community Website: 
———————

This is a very simple fix that works! There are lots of ways to do it, but to put it very simply ,

Download  the AppleCamera.plugin provided.
 

Click on go in the finder menu, select go to golder and paste in  /Library/CoreMediaIO/Plug-Ins/DAL/ ,

 

move that item, AppleCamera.plugin, to the trash

 

Go to your downloads folder and copy the new  AppleCamera.plugin, then paste it in the folder where the old one was. 

 

It works

After following literally instructions Skype camera worked out like a charm 😉

Happy Birthday GNU – Celebrating 30 years of Free Software and Computer Freedom!

Friday, September 27th, 2013

GNU GNU is not UNIX project logo - Happy Birthday GNU

On 27 of September this year (2013) Richard Stallman's GNU Project celebrates its 30 years Anniversary! Richard started the GNU Project and devoted his last 30 years of his life and thanks to him now we have free software. His work is remarkable. Million of GNU / Linux System Administrators and Programmers (including me in this number) round the world today has a daily income thanks to RMS. Interestingly the GNU Project was started in year I was born in the distant 1983. In fact the GNU Project is older than me with a couple of days (I'm born on 8-th of October 1983! :). Probably it is not a coincidence that I got so interested in Free Software GNU and Software freedom as the project was started so near my birthdate 🙂

Here is how RMS Announced the existence of GNU project and the general philosophy behind it:
 

I consider that the golden rule requires that if I like a program I must share it with other people who like it. I cannot in good conscience sign a nondisclosure agreement or a software license agreement.

So that I can continue to use computers without violating my principles, I have decided to put together a sufficient body of free software so that I will be able to get along without any software that is not free.

You can read whole original Stallman announcement here

Stallman's GNU Project is a good example how a single man who believes in something can change the world, by sticking to his believes. We all know Stallman is a true hacker legend, besides that as a friend used to say RMS is one of the greatest philosophers of our times.  Stallman doesn't have kids but according to his words for him the GNU Project is like his Child. His Virtual Child gave chance to millions of people around the world to study source codes and develop in their career. Even his child gave birth to thousands of hundred other "hacker" childs 🙂

Again, Happy Birthday GNU!!!
I wish Stallman another 30 years of work in field of protection of Human Liberty and Software Rights!
 

Resolving messed up console / terminal on GNU Linux / A tiny old school hack ;)

Thursday, September 26th, 2013

Resolve fix messed up unreadable gnu linux console terminal screenshot

Its probably not so common problem among new-comer Linux users / admins but sooner or later even those who haven't will cat by mistake (or on purpose) some binary file end result will be physical console / terminal / SSH Client (lets say PuTTY) will display some non-sense characters and whether typing you will type in some "alien language" characters this continues until you close up console and re-login. Of course its not such a big problem to re-login or (kill active SSH session).

fix terminal after showing displaying binary file by mistake catting wrong file incident

But there is no sense to do that and loose time and most importantly loose your logged in session (especially if you have hopped to 4 ssh sessions and you forgot to run GNU / screen). Thus its handy to know about
 

# reset

command. Once issued in most cases TTY messed up characters gets fixed up. However if even reset doesn't fix it, there is another "hack" to resolve it with no need for relogin. This is an old hack from my old Linux days and not so popular among admins, here is how:

Type

cat

press Enter

and then press

Ctrl + O (Ctrl ^ O)

 

then press Enter

and then again press

Ctrl + D (Ctrl ^ D)

Nice hack isn't it ? 🙂

Umounting Linux drive if it doesn’t want to unmount “umount: /media/cdrom: device is busy”

Thursday, September 26th, 2013

If you use Linux as Desktop or even on some servers you might end up in situation where mounted filesystem is refusing to unmount with an error:
 

umount: /media/cdrom: device is busy

That's pretty annoying and many people (especially) desktop users would force a system reboot in order to have the fs unmounted.

If this happened to you, there is no need for that anymore. umount cmd has a handy option – (Lazy Unmount) for situations like this. Here is -l description from umount manual:

 -l     Lazy unmount. Detach the filesystem from the filesystem hierarchy now, and cleanup all references to the filesystem as soon
              as it is not busy anymore.  (Requires kernel 2.4.11 or later.)

So next time you hit "umount device is busy" do:

# umount -l /media/cdrom

Enjoy 😉

Configure GNOME 3 to support dual / multiple monitors / Fix broken workspaces

Sunday, September 22nd, 2013

gnome3 dual 2 monitors not showing right workspace display issue how to fix

If you're using some GNU / Linux distribution with GNOME 3 and you would like to show output of screen in two connected Monitors to the machine you will stumble upon really unusual behavior. For some unknown reason GNOME environment developers make second monitor to keep fixed on on First Workspace, so whether you try changing Desktops to second / third etc. Virtual Desktop you end up with your secondary monitor focused on Workspace 1. Logically the use of Dual monitor configuration is to show all GUI output identically on both monitors so this behavior is "wrong" ….

Fortunately there is setting that control this weird behavior in GNOME through gconf-editor and simply changing that switches monitors to show properly.

To fix it:

Start Run Command or Press Alt + F2 to invoke GNOME Run menu

Navigate to registry path Desktop -> Gnome -> Shell -> Windows and Uncheck selection on workspaces_only_on_primary 

gconf-editor-gnome3-fix-dual-monitor-improperly-showing-workspaces

To make new changes take effect its necessary to Log Off or Restart PC.

There is another easier way for command line oriented people to apply changes without using / having installed gconf-editor by issuing:

gsettings set org.gnome.shell.overrides workspaces-only-on-primary false 

Mount ISO Image file in Windows 7 and Windows Vista ( Virtual Clone Drive )

Saturday, September 21st, 2013

Virtual Clone drive logo open iso files Microsoft Windows

In Microsoft Windows 8, there is embedded way to mount ISO files. However in Windows 7 still there is no way to mount ISO image files. I just installed a new Windows 7 on my office work notebook given by Hewlett Packard and had to mount an ISO with Microsoft Visio. Normally all know the two standard programs to mount ISO images in Windows;

1. DaemonTools Lite
2. MagicISO
3. Virtual CD-ROM (Microsoft program)

After consulting my colleague I was recommended to rather install Virtual Clone Drive, for the reason Daemontool's latest versions install Spyware on Computer. On the other hand MagicISO is nice one but a bit obsolete already.
Launching installation prompts opens below install Window;

Virtual Clonedrive 2 on microsoft windows 7 screenshot great program to mount iso files
As you can see from installation Virtual Clone Drive supports ISO / IMG / UDF / BIN and CCD images. Once installation complete to Mount an ISO into separate drive quickest way is to Double click on Image. Also it can be done from program by navigating to:

Virtual Clone Drive Windows 7 mount drive open iso files

From my little experience so far with Virtual Clone Drive I would recommend Windows users to better install it instead of freeware alternatives. VCD feels more robust.

Change default browser to Internet Explorer

Wednesday, September 18th, 2013

Almost no sane person and security aware person uses Internet Explorer still. However still in huge American companies it is heavily used. If you install Firefox or Google Chrome and by mistake you change default browser to one of them then it is worthy revert back default browser to Internet Explorer.

Here is how to do it;
Open Internet Explorer and navigate to:

Tools -> Interent Options -> Programs -> click on (Make Default)

Internet-Explorer-Internet-Options-screenshot-on-Windows-7

change-default-browser-to-internet-explorer-make-default-button-screenshot

Done
 

Trip to Borovetz resort Bulgaria and How to drive like a man ;)

Monday, September 16th, 2013

Borovetz first bulgarian resort for ski and lifting cool place in Bulgaria

Yesterday, we were on Borovetz with my best friend Mitko. Great experience, great place! Its pure happiness to live in a city like Sofia as in weekends you can travel nearby to the many beautiful mountain places. Rila is amazing mountain, its full of beautiful places to Enjoy. Also the mountain outlook whether just travel in Sofia is a joyous experience ! 🙂

I drive car to Borovetz and Mitko (Nomen) was instructing me on how to drive like a man! 🙂 I drived his Honda Civic ('97).

Mitkos Honda Civic picture 3-Door Sofia Bulgaria

I'm not having an own car yet and I don't have the opportunity to drive regularly. Driving a car is a pure art, the more I drive the more I'm convinced.

Mitko explain me a lot about how to drive in a manly fashion, I started realizing and seeing how most of people that drive are far from real driving and are taught to drive in a very (benzin / gas) inefficient way. The essence of my driving lesson was that I should drive as much as I can without holding the brake pedal. Until now I used to reduce the speed by pushing the break pedal before every sharp turn. The right thing to do it is to reduce the speed by just removing your leg from speed pedal. Also I was teached to hold back speed pedal before sharp turns and in the middle of the turn (if not in extremely sharp one) to pump up speed. Driving to Borovetz is a good driving test as the distance to it is full of sharp turns.

Distance to Borovetz from Sofia is quite near about 72 kilometers. Borovetz Winter Resort is the oldest Winter resort in Bulgaria, created 1896. Though in mountain Borovetz has a moderate climate and it doesn't feel too cold. Borovetz is located in 1350 meters high in mountain.

Borovets Bulgaria in summer and autumn time

The best thing of Borovetz is that prices are really cheap for such a beautiful mountain located resort. We drink 3 coffes and 2 sodas for the amazingly low 6 lv (3 euro).  Its really nice as there are also horses to rent and ride in the mountain. The biggest and most known lift in Borovetz is 'Gondola – Yastrebetz'.

Lift over Borovetz ski resort Bulgaria best-place to go in winter

I haven't been in Borovetz in Winter but I'm planning to go there in Winter, I guess it will be an amazing experience. Here is a pic I found how Borovetz looks in Winter

Borovets-Sofia-in-winter-time

Quitting my job as IT Manager and moving to Further Horizons in Hewlett Packard

Friday, September 13th, 2013

International University College Logo IUC

I haven't blogged for a while for a plenty of reasons, I'm going through a change period in my life and as any change it is not easy.
This post will be not informative and will not teach any of my dear readers, anything on Computers its pretty personal but still for my friends it might cause interest.
Here is my personal life story over the last few months …

For a while I worked in a International University College situated in my hometown Dobrich. I was hired on position of IT Manager, and actually was doing a bit of E-Marketing to try to boost traffic to College's website – www.vumk.eu and mostly helping the old school hacker ad college system administrator over the last 10 yrs – Ertan to fix a bunch of Linux Mail / SQL and Webservers and some Windows machines. In college I learned from Ertan how to install and backups of restaurants software called BARBEQUE as well as how to fix problems with billing terminals situated in College Restaurant (3rd floor of building). Other of my work time I had to  fix infested Windows computers with viruses re-install Windowses and fix various printing and network problems of College's teachers, accountants, cash desk, marketing and rest of college  employees.

Talking about Ertan I should express my sincere tremendous Thanks (Thanks Ertan) to it for recommending me for this job position. Right before I started work in the college I was jobless for a while starting to get desperate that its impossible find work. Current IUC sysadmin – Mr. Ertan Geldiev is a remarkable man and one of the people that made great impression in my mind. Something I found interesting I can learn from Ertan was to get from his cheerful "admin" attitude. As a true hacker Ertan had this hacker attitude of playfulness I myself has for a while lost over the years. So seeing someone like this near my life make me a good favor and had a positive influence on myself.

I have learned a lot from Ertan during the 3 months and 3 days in International University College. Just for a bit of historic information earlier IUC was known as International College – Albena, also among Dobrich citizens known as The Dutch College – as earlier IUC had good relations with Dutch Universities and was issuing double degrees both Bulgarian and Dutch. Nowadays I'm not sure if still Double-degrees partnership between IUC and Dutch Universities exist, what I know for sure is college is issuing European Double Degrees in partnership with Cardiff Metropolitan University. I myself have earlier studied in the college and already know the place well thus will use this post to say a few words on my impressions on it …

International University College - one of top prestigious colleges in Eastern Europe

The college is a great place to be as you have chance to meet plenty of people both lecturers (professors), participate in the various events organized by College's as well as get involved in the many European Projects which are being handled by a European Projects department special department situated on the back of the College Building. Other positive about College is it is small and located on a peaceful town of Dobrich. This gives the bright people a lot of space for personal development, anyways on the other hand it can make you also a bad as Dobrich as a small city is a bit boring. The studies in College are good for students who want personal freedom as there is not too strict requirements for professors on how to teach.

Though college had help me grow, especially in my knowledge in Windows 7 and 8 (Ertan had a really good Windows background), I couldn't have the chance to develop myself too further in the long term. So my job offer to work in HP as Web and Middleware Implementation Engineer opened much broader opportunities for my long term IT career. Other reason I quit the College IT job was simply because I needed more money I had the vision to make a family with a girl from Belarus – Svetlana and in order to take care for her I need to earn good money. My official salary in the college was the funny for the position – 640 lv (though after a few months I was promised to have a raise and earn 400 EUR :)) . Such low sallary was for the reason I had the idea to continue studying in College and complete my Bachelor Business degree and we had agreed with the College CEO Mr. Todor Radev to extract part of my salary monthly and with that to pay my 1 semester tuition fee (2200 EUR) – necessary for my graduation assignment. Though completing the Bachelor is important phase to close in my life for a long time, I found for the moment more valuable to work for HP and earn normal living salary with which to possibly finance myself and create family with woman of my life (hopefully) in the short term.

In this post I want express my sincere thanks to all people in International College (Elena Urchenko, Krasimir – for helping me in my job duties), Pavel and Silvia for being a colleague for a while I worked partly in the Marketing Department.

Talking about Marketing Department what I did there is some Twitter Marketing (building some twitter followers) and wrote a tiny document with recommendation on how to optimize College website – vumk.eu (future version) – for better SEO ranking. This included complete analysis from user outlook to Indexing bots and site current code. 

Mr Docent Phd Todor Radev

I have to do a big underline on how great person the College President and UNI Rector – Docent Todor Radev is. I have already bitter experience studying for a while in a government universities when younger and I know from experience usually Rectors and Universities management of state universities is pure "Hell". Thanks to Mr. Todor Radev for he did me a big favor letting me quit  job just a week later (instead of 1 month as it is officially set by Bulgarian Dismissal Law and explicitly stated in my Work Contract. Also as a person my experience from Docent Radev is wonderful too. He is extremely intelligent, brilliant gentleman and  most importantly open minded and always open for innovation.
 

As a close up I would like to say Big Thanks to everyone which I worked with or met in International University College! Thanks guys for all your support and help, thanks for being work mates and friends for the time.

Installation and Configuration of Clamav antivirus on Debian GNU / Linux

Monday, September 9th, 2013

Clamav logo installing Clamav antivirus to scan periodically Debian server websites for viruses

Clamav Antivirus is one of must have packages installed on a new Debian Linux server. It is not only necessary whether configuring a new Mail server be it Qmail or Postfix but is good to have to always check files on a Webserver. Until few years infecting of Sites with Viruses / Installing WebShells or Backdooring for further access using Perl or PHP vulnerable PHP code was not so common, However nowadays with increase of complexity of languages and increase of not security minded programmers this possibility dramatically increaed. Thus nowadays, whether I configure a new Apache + PHP + CGI support server I always install Clamav AV. Some might argue that Clamav Virus definitions are still too little compared to proprietary solutions like BitDefender / AVG or Avast but since my experience with this under Linux is not so bright as well as Clamav captures essential Viruses and Backdoors I still prefer to keep on with Clamav.  Even on home Desktops with Linux clamav is of use as there are plenty of free-ware software for Linux which come only distributed only in a binary form and hence its good to check them with clamav before use whether they don't contain some well known Rootkit or Virus. Over the years Clamav has done great job for me whether I had to clean up "hacked" hosts containing  script kiddie exploit scanners or Virus infected ELF binaries
.
1. Installing ClamAV in Debian Wheezy Linux

Before time there was a separate Debian repository called Volatille providing latest version release of Clamav, since Debian Squeeze Volatille project is discontinued, thus installing on Wheezy as a deb package is only available via standard Debian repositories.

apt-get update && apt-get --yes upgrade
...

apt-get install --yes clamav clamav-daemon

As package dependencies you get installed:

clamav clamav-base clamav-freshclam libbz2-1.0 libclamav1 libcurl3 libidn11 ucf

Clamav-Daemon will launch immediately after packages are installed and is available as process name /usr/sbin/clamd

# ps ax |grep -i clam
 2641 ?        Ssl    6:39 /usr/sbin/clamd
 2791 ?        Ss    12:04 /usr/bin/freshclam -d --quiet
12300 pts/0    S+     0:00 grep -i clam

2. Updating Clamav Antivirus Definitions

Its worthy say few words on clamav-freshclam as it is part of ClamAV which is used to update Clamav Virus definitions. Update of ClamAV vir definitions are updating automatically through /usr/bin/freshclam daemon which is started automatically by Debian postconfiguration scripts right after Clamav install.

Manual update of AV definitions can be done also with freshclam.

# freshclam
ClamAV update process started at Sun Sep  8 17:48:36 2013
main.cvd is up to date (version: 54, sigs: 1044387, f-level: 60, builder: sven)
daily.cvd is up to date (version: 17830, sigs: 1696886, f-level: 63, builder: neo)
bytecode.cld is up to date (version: 225, sigs: 42, f-level: 63, builder: dgoddard)


To keep an eye on definition auto-updates (useful to check where something fails), check out in /var/log/clamav/freshclam.log

A sure indication that Anvirus updates are conducting fine should be log records like:
 

Sun Sep  8 16:27:44 2013 -> ————————————–
Sun Sep  8 17:27:44 2013 -> Received signal: wake up
Sun Sep  8 17:27:44 2013 -> ClamAV update process started at Sun Sep  8 17:27:44 2013
Sun Sep  8 17:27:44 2013 -> main.cvd is up to date (version: 54, sigs: 1044387, f-level: 60, builder: sven)
Sun Sep  8 17:27:44 2013 -> daily.cld is up to date (version: 17830, sigs: 1696886, f-level: 63, builder: neo)
Sun Sep  8 17:27:44 2013 -> bytecode.cld is up to date (version: 225, sigs: 42, f-level: 63, builder: dgoddard)
Sun Sep  8 17:27:47 2013 -> ————————————–



3. Configuring ClamAV

For Desktop use clamav default config is pretty good. However for servers its good to raise  2 up MaxThreads:

By default MaxThreads is 12

MaxThreads 12

Change to from 30 to 80 depending on how powerful machine ClamAV runs, even on some servers more Clamav threads might be necessary

MaxThreads 30

Other value I like changing is SelfCheck 3600 is too long time for clamav Virus definitions integrity I prefer to set it to 600, i.e.

SelfCheck 600

By default ClamAV is also configured to scan archive files as well. However for this to work you will have to have previously installed unzip and unrar on system. If still you don't have them installed run:

# apt-get install --yes unrar unzip
...

Note that you will need to have non-free part of Debian deb repositories to /etc/apt/sources.list

Here is one of my sources.list
 

deb http://ftp.uk.debian.org/debian squeeze main contrib non-free
deb http://security.debian.org/ squeeze/updates main contrib non-free
deb-src http://security.debian.org/ squeeze/updates main contrib non-free

deb http://ftp.debian.skynet.be/ftp/debian/ squeeze main contrib non-free
deb-src http://ftp.debian.skynet.be/ftp/debian/ stable main contrib non-free

deb http://security.debian.org squeeze/updates main contrib non-free
deb-src http://security.debian.org/ squeeze/updates main contrib non-free

3. Scanning with ClamAV

# clamscan -r /tmp/
./dos-58.160.208.43: OK
./dos-108.18.38.140: OK
./dos-188.194.80.100: OK
./dos-91.224.160.135: OK
./dos-128.253.117.70: OK
./dos-128.172.143.110: OK
./dos-77.92.102.34: OK
./dos-195.230.5.12: OK
...

....
----------- SCAN SUMMARY -----------
Known viruses: 2735887
Engine version: 0.97.8
Scanned directories: 1
Scanned files: 129
Infected files: 0
Data scanned: 0.00 MB
Data read: 0.00 MB (ratio 0.00:1)
Time: 4.769 sec (0 m 4 s)


-r flag stands for recursive scan – e.g. scan all sub-directories in directory and its content

To not flood your console / ssh connection one very useful option is -i (print only whetherinfected files are matched). Here is one more sample case:

# clamscan -r -i /var/tmp/
----------- SCAN SUMMARY -----------
Known viruses: 2735887
Engine version: 0.97.8
Scanned directories: 1
Scanned files: 2
Infected files: 0
Data scanned: 0.26 MB
Data read: 0.13 MB (ratio 1.97:1)
Time: 4.824 sec (0 m 4 s)


Whether you're on a physical server console and it has pc speaker or sound blaster use –bell option to ring a bell every time a Virus infection is found, for exmpl.

# clamscan -r -i --bell /var/www/

4. Scanning periodically and reporting with ClamAV directories with websites

A very common use of ClamAV is to just setup a scheduled cronjob once a month to scan, whether server folder containing a bunch of websites in separate Virtualhosts contain some viruses or malicious stuff. Then as administrator check those logs once a month to make sure server site or group of sites does not become banned in search engine (blocked by Google Chrome and Firefox as Virus hotbed) …
# crontab -u root -e
00 02 01 * * clamscan -r /var/www -l /var/log/websites-scan.log

Then once a month check out /var/log/websites-scan.log