Anant Shrivastava : Techno Enthusiast

Protect your PC by executing a program on Sandboxie

If you execute a dangerous program which can have an virus or visit a site which can install a spy ware into your machine, use Sandboxie!

Programs (including browser) which is executed through Sandboxie reads data from hard disk.
But when programs write something on hard disk (or register), it is written on transient storage of Sandboxie. And the written data will be removed when Sandboxie is terminated.
(i.e. Sandboxie intercepts read operation and directs data to its temporary storage)

See the following figures, you can understand its mechanism.

* existing way *

* Sandbox’s way to protect your PC *

Sandboxie has simple user interface. You can launch any programs as below,

Sandboxie monitors processors which are crated through it. And “[#]” is added after/before the original caption of an application which is executed by Sandboxie. see as below,

It’s free and you can download it here.

I also think that it will be very useful
- when you test your application (e.g. windows application, FireFox extension, etc) for testing.
- when you get rid of all of your trace on a PC of your friend.

the blog originally posted on http://alonesworld.blogspot.com/2007/09/protect-your-pc-by-executing-program-on.html

My views on this topic besides the above :

From the users point of view , small footprint makes it a good choice.

it install a startup application and then everything could be done write from it.

also right click menu has a new entry for application “RUN sandboxed”

This will bring security to new level. it could easily be implemented on cafe’s and other public place to avoid system hassles.

also its feature to start apps fro start menu opens a new menu containing a list of items available at desktop and all programs menu.

over all its a nice piece of application that should be installed prior to any other application in order to avoid any tension.

You finally got your Linux environment to crash. Ctrl+Alt+Backspace does nothing, nor do the F-keys. You know you shouldn’t have installed that bad driver, but you did it anyway. So you reach for the power button. Stop. Mashing in the power button to reboot could cause a problem if your hard drive is still being written to, and usually causes more problems than it solves. The Linux kernel includes a secret method of restarting your PC should it ever stop doing its job. 1. Hold down the Alt and SysRq (Print Screen) keys. 2. While holding those down, type the following in order. Nothing will appear to happen until the last letter is pressed: REISUB 3. Watch your computer reboot magically. What the individual keys do in that sequence are not as important as what it does as a whole: stops all programs, unmounts all drives, and reboots. A lot safer than just cutting the power. Here it is again: REISUB. Remember that, as it will save you a lot of time when you are configuring a system and something gets messed up. Need a mnemonic? Try Raising Elephants Is So Utterly Boring. As an aside, don’t try this if you just want to reboot. A normal reboot, if it can be done, should always be used instead of the REISUB keys. R-E-I-S-U-B. Source & Author: Jacob from FOSSwire

For complete list of commands that can be used head to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_SysRq_key

This is one of the problem faced by many person’s

“what if i lost the root password”

FOR DEBIAN

First thing that comes in mind is “use single user mode” but the answer is NO.
coz debian takes the system security to one more level up and by default ask’s for the root password.

so the BIG QUESTION IS HOW TO proceed further

follow these steps

1) on grub-boot prompt.
press “e” to enter edit mode

2) then press downarrow to reach the line that starts with “kernel ”
press “e” again

3) at the end of this line type in “init=/bin/sh” or “/bin/bash”

4) then press enter to make that change and press “b” to boot

in a few seconds you will be on your “#” prompt

5) only one step left
“mount -o remount rw /”

this step is necessary coz in this case root file system is mounted as read only.

6) finally type “passwd” and you get the screen to change the password

and then type in “init 6″ or “reboot”

NOTE FOR TECHNICAL USERS
those who are looking for the technical details, the main work is the init command that we passed as an argument to kernel, it told kernel to specifically run the command specified in parameter instead of working on normal routine.

TRICK = if you have any program you wish to run instead of this then you can do that too using init command only.

FOR REDHAT

use single user mode and change the password.

but that’s a potential pitfall. coz any person can start system in single user mode and get the password changed.

Tired of watching screens full of hardware releated info scrolling past during Startup and shutdown.

Welcome to the world of Splash Screen, Screenshots Here

In earlier stage bootsplash screen was configured throught a lot of kernel hacking and using it has a hell lot of hardwork including recompilling of kernel.

But the newest form SPLASHY in a userspace implementation of kernel so that it provides all the necessary features right at userspace.

In debian installing splashy is just a matter of few commands

1) IF you don’t have unstable repo’s in your source list then follow it otherwise skip to step 3

echo "deb http://http.us.debian.org/debian unstable main contrib non-free" >> /etc/apt/sources.list
echo "deb-src http://http.us.debian.org/debian unstable main contrib non-free" >> /etc/apt/sources.list

2) then apt-get update

3) last apt-get install splashy splashy-themes

After this what you need to is just one thing

open your menu.lst (/boot/grub/menu.lst)
and in the line with kernel value add these words at the end of that line

"vga=791 splash quiet"

Ex : - kernel /boot/vmlinuz ro root=/dev/hda8 ro vga=791 splash quiet

4)THIS STEP IS OPTIONAL
To run Splashy from initramfs you need to create a new initramfs image. An initramfs image is a little system that is

launched during the kernel’s initalization, before the system starts.

During Splashy’s installation Splashy sets everything up so you can get it integrated into initramfs whenever you wish by

just running a single command.

But first you must edit /etc/default/splashy and set ENABLE_INITRAMFS=1 so that Splashy will integrate itself into future initramfs images.

update-initramfs -u -t -k `uname -r`

then reboot and you will have a slashy desktop

ADVANCE SETTINGS

All the themes are by defaults installed in /etc/splashy/themes

configuration for splashy is in/etc/splashy/config.xml

and configuration for respective themes is available in /etc/splash/themes/ in XML file format

some of the configuration’s that can be done include changing the colour theme as well as the progress bar size color

direction and image shown.

TO CHANGE THEME

Once the theme is installed, just run splashy_config -s where name is the name of the theme

To get the complete list of all the splashy themes installed just type in

splashy_config --info


I hope this article will help you all.

splashy

ONE MORE THING I WISH TO SHARE TODAY.

while looking for webhosting either shared or dedicated hosting solution and web hosting providers i came across two sites which i wish to share with everyone. this web marketing association, they actually look at the possibility of business opportunity as well as seo on your website. while the second one is web marketing association award for linux hosted sites which made me feel proud about my decision (made 8 yrs ago) to start working in linux field…….

I finally was able to successful run compiz on debian based PC.

A lot of work has to be done on Debian to make it stand up in front of REDHAT. but even without those enhancements, It is a lot more better then redhat and other rpm based ones in terms of its support on packages both online and off line.

In order to configure COMPIZ Help taken from http://lunapark6.com/debian-40-etch.html

Befor starting to act on the below listed steps, you should know about the basic requirement of the compiz manager, The bare minimum is 3D capable Graphic’s card and atleast 512 MB of ram.

The simple procedure is as follows

Install Compiz using apt-get

#apt-get install compiz

this will install compiz along with its dependencies

now you need to manually perform some steps in the file : /etc/X11/xorg.conf

then added these two lines under the “Screen” section :

Option “XAANoOffscreenPixmaps”
Option “AddARGBGLXVisuals” “true”

then added these lines under “Device” :

Option “AllowGLXWithComposite” “true”
Option “RenderAccel” “true”

added one line under “Server Layout” :

Option “AIGLX” “on”

Finally at the end of the file I added these lines :

Section “Extensions”
Option “Composite” “Enable”
EndSection

After making the following chages with your fav. text editor

Add “compiz –replace” to “Desktop -> Preferences -> Sessions -> Startup Programs”.

Now restart the Xserver, Better is to restart the whole system.

After you login you will directly be in a compizified environment.

compiz