Thursday, November 5, 2009
Virusscan: what works and what not
A quick update on TRK's virusscan, the antivirus program wrapper in TRK.
-Grisoft AVG is broken ever since they upgraded to a newer version. The usage has completely changed and virusscan is not adapted for it. In the next version of TRK, AVG will be thrown out because version 8.5 for Linux has no more cleaning capabilities. For now it has been marked as a "dead feature" and will refuse to work in TRK
-Work is in progress for a new version of TRK and I'm adding Avast as a virusscanner.
-Clamav, although at an obsolete version, still works
-F-prot works
-Vexira works AGAIN! I previously announced it had become defunct since it didn't receive any more recent updates, but apparently they have a new version of the scanner. Luckily the internals and usage haven't changed, so I was able to adapt the download url to the new version and it seems to work alright.
Keep you eyes open for a new version of TRK in the near future.
-Grisoft AVG is broken ever since they upgraded to a newer version. The usage has completely changed and virusscan is not adapted for it. In the next version of TRK, AVG will be thrown out because version 8.5 for Linux has no more cleaning capabilities. For now it has been marked as a "dead feature" and will refuse to work in TRK
-Work is in progress for a new version of TRK and I'm adding Avast as a virusscanner.
-Clamav, although at an obsolete version, still works
-F-prot works
-Vexira works AGAIN! I previously announced it had become defunct since it didn't receive any more recent updates, but apparently they have a new version of the scanner. Luckily the internals and usage haven't changed, so I was able to adapt the download url to the new version and it seems to work alright.
Keep you eyes open for a new version of TRK in the near future.
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
Build 334: network boot bug fixed
Just a minor change but with big impact to network booting TRK users.
As I stated before I was unable to test everything and as it turned out, network booting had some errors.
So a kind user pointed out this bug + solution in the TRK forum. I immediately made the changes and tested it this time.
So now 3.3 build 334 is available for download instead of 333
As I stated before I was unable to test everything and as it turned out, network booting had some errors.
So a kind user pointed out this bug + solution in the TRK forum. I immediately made the changes and tested it this time.
So now 3.3 build 334 is available for download instead of 333
Monday, June 29, 2009
Build 333: read/write support
It's been a while again, but here 's another intermediate version of TRK. I don't have much time to work on it, so this is unfinished but usable.
Main reason to release this is that people are asking me for newer driver support. So there's a pretty recent kernel 2.6.29.3 in it. But the biggest feature is the rpm support which allows you to install packages of your own.
Below is a description of the new features
-mclone version 1.1: this version of mclone supports network compression during transfer. This option adds more cpu load but saves on network bandwidth. Use only on powerful machines. This version of mclone is different from the old one so I changed the ports on which it connects so both can 't get mixed up. Version 1.0 is still available as /bin/mclone1.0
Oh yes: I used mclone at work between IBM Bladecenters hooked to fibrechannel SANs and transferred 25Gb of data in 5 minutes with an average of about 700mbit. The bladecenters booted fine afterwards, so there 's an option for a site move or disaster recovery.
-newer kernel 2.6.29.3: although in the meantime kernel 2.6.30 is out, I have to freeze the TRK kernel somewhere. This TRK also uses a custom Qlogic driver for ql2xxx based cards since the stock driver behaved unreliably on my jobs IBM Bladecenters under heavy i/o.
So a newer kernel should mean newer drivers. I always enable drivers that are out of the experimental phase. If your driver isn't loaded, it must mean he's either unavailable or still in experimental phase.
-read/write support in all areas of TRK: TRK now uses aufs over squashfs which incorporates a cowloop (Copy On Write). In human terms it means that you can write to read-only media by actually making the writes in a temporary, writable location. Cramfs was replaced by squashfs because of numerous reasons. This also means better compression, so the TRK iso has become relatively smaller (119Mb, fits on 128Mb sticks again).
-RPM support: since TRK is now completely writable, I squeezed in RPM support. This means you can install any binary 32-bit rpm. Beware that TRK's RPM database is emtpy, so dependencies will almost always fail. Installing an RPM thus requires the option --nodeps and YOU to test whether the program works. Please don't mail me about an RPM that might not work (except when some file is missing after running updatetrk). Post it on the forum and try to figure it out yourself, otherwise I'm too busy solving custom stuff. On the other hand, a donation might work wonders on that ;-). The only RPM I tested so far -but it's a big one- is the IBM Tivoli SM 5.5 backup client and that seems to work fine.
-because of the above features, there are significant changes in the internals of TRK and not everything got thouroughly tested. Especially the bootscripts were heavily modified. CD booting and USB disk booting were tested and debugged, so this should be ok. Network booting was untested, so please report me any problems with that.
-updatetrk: again, because of all of the above, updatetrk was modified so any changes made can be saved for later use. If you install an rpm, you need to run updatetrk. I've now added the option to skip all updates like antivirus and such. Run 'updatetrk -s all' to just write back whatever has changed without any online added features. It will also rebuild the big trkramfs file which holds most of TRK.
-added screen and now all local consoles run under their own screen session. This allows you to remotely take over a local console over ssh by invoking f.i. screen -x tty1, which will duplicate the output to the local console as well as your ssh session. Handy for admins who need to cooperate with remote hands.
-fixed broken grub by adding missing /usr/bin/cmp
-added script, a utility that allows you to record all console commands and save it in a textfile.
Please note that I haven 't got to work on the antivirus support in TRK, which is largely broken because the vendors changed their version and internals. This will be the next big thing todo.
Main reason to release this is that people are asking me for newer driver support. So there's a pretty recent kernel 2.6.29.3 in it. But the biggest feature is the rpm support which allows you to install packages of your own.
Below is a description of the new features
-mclone version 1.1: this version of mclone supports network compression during transfer. This option adds more cpu load but saves on network bandwidth. Use only on powerful machines. This version of mclone is different from the old one so I changed the ports on which it connects so both can 't get mixed up. Version 1.0 is still available as /bin/mclone1.0
Oh yes: I used mclone at work between IBM Bladecenters hooked to fibrechannel SANs and transferred 25Gb of data in 5 minutes with an average of about 700mbit. The bladecenters booted fine afterwards, so there 's an option for a site move or disaster recovery.
-newer kernel 2.6.29.3: although in the meantime kernel 2.6.30 is out, I have to freeze the TRK kernel somewhere. This TRK also uses a custom Qlogic driver for ql2xxx based cards since the stock driver behaved unreliably on my jobs IBM Bladecenters under heavy i/o.
So a newer kernel should mean newer drivers. I always enable drivers that are out of the experimental phase. If your driver isn't loaded, it must mean he's either unavailable or still in experimental phase.
-read/write support in all areas of TRK: TRK now uses aufs over squashfs which incorporates a cowloop (Copy On Write). In human terms it means that you can write to read-only media by actually making the writes in a temporary, writable location. Cramfs was replaced by squashfs because of numerous reasons. This also means better compression, so the TRK iso has become relatively smaller (119Mb, fits on 128Mb sticks again).
-RPM support: since TRK is now completely writable, I squeezed in RPM support. This means you can install any binary 32-bit rpm. Beware that TRK's RPM database is emtpy, so dependencies will almost always fail. Installing an RPM thus requires the option --nodeps and YOU to test whether the program works. Please don't mail me about an RPM that might not work (except when some file is missing after running updatetrk). Post it on the forum and try to figure it out yourself, otherwise I'm too busy solving custom stuff. On the other hand, a donation might work wonders on that ;-). The only RPM I tested so far -but it's a big one- is the IBM Tivoli SM 5.5 backup client and that seems to work fine.
-because of the above features, there are significant changes in the internals of TRK and not everything got thouroughly tested. Especially the bootscripts were heavily modified. CD booting and USB disk booting were tested and debugged, so this should be ok. Network booting was untested, so please report me any problems with that.
-updatetrk: again, because of all of the above, updatetrk was modified so any changes made can be saved for later use. If you install an rpm, you need to run updatetrk. I've now added the option to skip all updates like antivirus and such. Run 'updatetrk -s all' to just write back whatever has changed without any online added features. It will also rebuild the big trkramfs file which holds most of TRK.
-added screen and now all local consoles run under their own screen session. This allows you to remotely take over a local console over ssh by invoking f.i. screen -x tty1, which will duplicate the output to the local console as well as your ssh session. Handy for admins who need to cooperate with remote hands.
-fixed broken grub by adding missing /usr/bin/cmp
-added script, a utility that allows you to record all console commands and save it in a textfile.
Please note that I haven 't got to work on the antivirus support in TRK, which is largely broken because the vendors changed their version and internals. This will be the next big thing todo.
Sunday, February 1, 2009
Virusscan: F-prot and Bitdefender fixed
There are new versions for both BitDefender and F-prot and they point to a different download url now.
I have adapted these URLs on my webserver.
The new F-prot seems to work ok.
The new Bitdefender has install problems because the install path has changed and tries to install itself to /usr (which is read-only on CD in TRK). Luckilly, the old Bitdefender is still available, just the download path has changed. So that one works too.
If it hadn't, I had to release a new version of TRK and people had to upgrade (i.e. download and burn new CD)
Now, you will just receive a warning that the download URLs have changed but it will still work (just answer 'y').
AVG, Clam (although reported out-of-date for the engine) and Vexira still seemed to work.
I have adapted these URLs on my webserver.
The new F-prot seems to work ok.
The new Bitdefender has install problems because the install path has changed and tries to install itself to /usr (which is read-only on CD in TRK). Luckilly, the old Bitdefender is still available, just the download path has changed. So that one works too.
If it hadn't, I had to release a new version of TRK and people had to upgrade (i.e. download and burn new CD)
Now, you will just receive a warning that the download URLs have changed but it will still work (just answer 'y').
AVG, Clam (although reported out-of-date for the engine) and Vexira still seemed to work.
Thursday, November 13, 2008
Repairing your PC from the AVG disaster with TRK
No doubt millions of people will have the problem with the Grisoft Antivirus (AVG) that had a false positive on the windows user32.dll file.
I had some PCs coming in too. Luckily not too many because ever since AVG 8 came out, I 've been replacing it with Avast.
Nevertheless, some of my 'customers' still had an AVG and now had BSOD's.
Here 's a way you can fix it with TRK.
If you 're lucky, the computer you 're working on has lots of $Uninstall directories from patches and such where you will find older copies from user32.dll. Even better is where you have a folder called c:\windows\system32\dllcache where you will find even more DLLs.
Whatever version of user32.dll you find on the affected computer, always look for the newest and in general, biggest one.
Here 's how I got it fixed:
-An easy way to find your way around is to boot with TRK connected to your LAN.
-run 'fileserver -g' for ease of use when you 're on your own trusted home network. It will report you on which address you can find your PC back.
-browse with a (working) Windows PC to the ip address of the affected PC. F.i. do Start => Run => \\192.168.0.60
-go to the share where the windows system is located, f.i. \\192.168.0.60\hda1
-browse to the windows folder
-right click on it and search (different in Vista, but you 'lll know what I mean).
-search for 'user32.dll' and make sure it shows you the file size and date in the search results.
-look for the newest, generally biggest version of user32.dll
-copy it back to \windows\system32
-reboot the PC
-If this doesn 't fix it yet, it might be possible other files are missing or bad versions are in place. In my case, I had this with gdi32.dll.
-To figure out on what your PC is still crashing, hit F8 before it starts booting Windows and select the option where it says not to auto-reboot after a critical failure -With gdi32.dll, it said it was missing an entry point at some address. This generally is caused because some older version is in place.
-Do the same as with user32.dll: search for the newest, biggest version of this file and put it back.
-Reboot and rerun procedure on other possible files until successfull.
It 's always a good thing too to run the command 'ntfsfix /dev/hda1' (after or before fileserver is running): this will invoke a chkdsk at Windows boot time.
After success, AVG will normally update itself with a decent av signature database, but I recommend to uninstall it and put avast on it since AVG 7.5 will be out of support soon and AVG 8 is as slow and heavy as Windows Vista itself.
Also recommended: clean up the PC by removing all $Uninstall$ folders, clear dllcache folder, clear %temp% (commandline: cd %temp%, cd .., rd /s /q temp),clear temporary internet files (rd /s /q "temporary internet files"), empty recycle bin, uninstall any unneccessary apps and for those who really want to digg in deep: get Hijackthis from trendmicro and remove any stupid programs from startup like Adobe quicklaunch f.i. Also browser helper objects that don 't ring a bell with me always get removed by me.
Never a bad idea is to install SP3 (just be carefull with some wireless cards, activate restore point if unsure).
hope this helps
I had some PCs coming in too. Luckily not too many because ever since AVG 8 came out, I 've been replacing it with Avast.
Nevertheless, some of my 'customers' still had an AVG and now had BSOD's.
Here 's a way you can fix it with TRK.
If you 're lucky, the computer you 're working on has lots of $Uninstall directories from patches and such where you will find older copies from user32.dll. Even better is where you have a folder called c:\windows\system32\dllcache where you will find even more DLLs.
Whatever version of user32.dll you find on the affected computer, always look for the newest and in general, biggest one.
Here 's how I got it fixed:
-An easy way to find your way around is to boot with TRK connected to your LAN.
-run 'fileserver -g' for ease of use when you 're on your own trusted home network. It will report you on which address you can find your PC back.
-browse with a (working) Windows PC to the ip address of the affected PC. F.i. do Start => Run => \\192.168.0.60
-go to the share where the windows system is located, f.i. \\192.168.0.60\hda1
-browse to the windows folder
-right click on it and search (different in Vista, but you 'lll know what I mean).
-search for 'user32.dll' and make sure it shows you the file size and date in the search results.
-look for the newest, generally biggest version of user32.dll
-copy it back to \windows\system32
-reboot the PC
-If this doesn 't fix it yet, it might be possible other files are missing or bad versions are in place. In my case, I had this with gdi32.dll.
-To figure out on what your PC is still crashing, hit F8 before it starts booting Windows and select the option where it says not to auto-reboot after a critical failure -With gdi32.dll, it said it was missing an entry point at some address. This generally is caused because some older version is in place.
-Do the same as with user32.dll: search for the newest, biggest version of this file and put it back.
-Reboot and rerun procedure on other possible files until successfull.
It 's always a good thing too to run the command 'ntfsfix /dev/hda1' (after or before fileserver is running): this will invoke a chkdsk at Windows boot time.
After success, AVG will normally update itself with a decent av signature database, but I recommend to uninstall it and put avast on it since AVG 7.5 will be out of support soon and AVG 8 is as slow and heavy as Windows Vista itself.
Also recommended: clean up the PC by removing all $Uninstall$ folders, clear dllcache folder, clear %temp% (commandline: cd %temp%, cd .., rd /s /q temp),clear temporary internet files (rd /s /q "temporary internet files"), empty recycle bin, uninstall any unneccessary apps and for those who really want to digg in deep: get Hijackthis from trendmicro and remove any stupid programs from startup like Adobe quicklaunch f.i. Also browser helper objects that don 't ring a bell with me always get removed by me.
Never a bad idea is to install SP3 (just be carefull with some wireless cards, activate restore point if unsure).
hope this helps
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
Mass clone: powerful, flexible and fast multicast disk cloning in TRK 3.3 build 321
Yet another version of TRK 3.3, now at build 321.
This is a release candidate for the final TRK 3.3. After that, work should start for TRK 4.0 and probably a long period of radio silenc
New stuff in this version:
-kernel 2.6.26. Hope this kernel is more stable on different hardware. I also eliminated a serious disk performance flaw: it seems that since some kernel around 2.6.23, the generic and slow IDE driver had become the default, resulting on really slow I/O performance on normally fast sata controllers. This "bug" has been present since build 310 and is now fixed. Generic IDE is only available as a modules anymore and so the "good" driver for your controller is now detected. Examples for this were machines with certain ICH8 controllers (and there 's lots of them).
-latest NTFS Tools and Library (2.0.0). Watch out with Windows Vista and earlier version of TRK. It could ruin your NTFS when f.e. trying to resize your volume. I will know, I messed up my own Vista. Luckily tesdisk got my partitions back, but I had to go through a lot of trouble afterwards to get my Vista back online.
-relocntfs: a patched version of ntfsreloc which does great things with the NTFS bootsector.
-mclone: haaa, now this is the finest new feature on TRK. Forget about the old clonexp in TRK, mclone or mass clone is a utility that allows you to clone an unlimited number of computers over multicast at the maximum speed of your hardware.
The main features are:
-make exact copies of any operating system
-optimized for Windows XP and Vista imaging using ntfsclone. Other filesystems are copied with dd
-fast and scalable
-save to image and restore from image (to multicast) with optional 3 compression algorythms (gzip, bzip2 and 7-zip)
-restore original bootsector/ntfs c/h/s values. An old bug in many BIOS' sometimes gave wrong values for Cylinders/Heads/Sectors count. Although CHS is an old method for assigning disk geometry (LBA should be used), Windows XP and family still use it to assign addressing of their bootcode. Recent Linux kernels discard wrong C/H/S values and set it to the LBA values. This resulted on sometimes unbootable cloned Windows machines (the blinking cursor nightmare). Recently a patched version of relocntfs appeared (now called ntfsreloc) which is able to "force" original C/H/S values in your NTFS. Mclone does it automatically for you. Major feature over other cloning tools.
-run up to 50 different sessions separately over your LAN
-optional speed limitation. Just so your LAN doesn't get saturated.
-option to specify disks/partitions instead of just everything automatically
-option to skip bootsector
-option to skip C/H/S check
If you 're an IT guy and you need to install many workstations, or you just like to take an exact backup copy of your computer, then give mclone a try.
This is a release candidate for the final TRK 3.3. After that, work should start for TRK 4.0 and probably a long period of radio silenc
New stuff in this version:
-kernel 2.6.26. Hope this kernel is more stable on different hardware. I also eliminated a serious disk performance flaw: it seems that since some kernel around 2.6.23, the generic and slow IDE driver had become the default, resulting on really slow I/O performance on normally fast sata controllers. This "bug" has been present since build 310 and is now fixed. Generic IDE is only available as a modules anymore and so the "good" driver for your controller is now detected. Examples for this were machines with certain ICH8 controllers (and there 's lots of them).
-latest NTFS Tools and Library (2.0.0). Watch out with Windows Vista and earlier version of TRK. It could ruin your NTFS when f.e. trying to resize your volume. I will know, I messed up my own Vista. Luckily tesdisk got my partitions back, but I had to go through a lot of trouble afterwards to get my Vista back online.
-relocntfs: a patched version of ntfsreloc which does great things with the NTFS bootsector.
-mclone: haaa, now this is the finest new feature on TRK. Forget about the old clonexp in TRK, mclone or mass clone is a utility that allows you to clone an unlimited number of computers over multicast at the maximum speed of your hardware.
The main features are:
-make exact copies of any operating system
-optimized for Windows XP and Vista imaging using ntfsclone. Other filesystems are copied with dd
-fast and scalable
-save to image and restore from image (to multicast) with optional 3 compression algorythms (gzip, bzip2 and 7-zip)
-restore original bootsector/ntfs c/h/s values. An old bug in many BIOS' sometimes gave wrong values for Cylinders/Heads/Sectors count. Although CHS is an old method for assigning disk geometry (LBA should be used), Windows XP and family still use it to assign addressing of their bootcode. Recent Linux kernels discard wrong C/H/S values and set it to the LBA values. This resulted on sometimes unbootable cloned Windows machines (the blinking cursor nightmare). Recently a patched version of relocntfs appeared (now called ntfsreloc) which is able to "force" original C/H/S values in your NTFS. Mclone does it automatically for you. Major feature over other cloning tools.
-run up to 50 different sessions separately over your LAN
-optional speed limitation. Just so your LAN doesn't get saturated.
-option to specify disks/partitions instead of just everything automatically
-option to skip bootsector
-option to skip C/H/S check
If you 're an IT guy and you need to install many workstations, or you just like to take an exact backup copy of your computer, then give mclone a try.
Thursday, July 24, 2008
Hunted!
Good news for me: my search for a job has ended and guess what.
I found the Linux job I 've been looking for all these years! As of the 1st of August I 'm starting for the company GFDI/CPC as a Linux system engineer. It will be a very technical job, so finally a real challenge for me.
Thanks to everyone that responded to my previous post!
Harakiri
I found the Linux job I 've been looking for all these years! As of the 1st of August I 'm starting for the company GFDI/CPC as a Linux system engineer. It will be a very technical job, so finally a real challenge for me.
Thanks to everyone that responded to my previous post!
Harakiri
Thursday, June 19, 2008
On the hunt for a job
Since more than 2 years I 've been working as an external IT consultant for a company in the DIY industry.
Budget problems and global company politics are now putting an end to this mission. The employer I work for is currently looking for another assignment, but as summer holidays are arriving this might become a challenging endeavour.
Therefore, I 'm about to open all registers into finding the appropriate job opportunity.
And where else better than on the website where my skills are best displayed in the form of Trinity Rescue Kit and other projects?
So, if you happen to be an employer or you know your company is hiring a network/system administrator and it 's in the neighbourhood between Brussels and Antwerp, Belgium, please take a look at my CV.
You can download it in pdf or word (zipped) format.
My contract with the customer ends on the 15th of July, so I can be available as of that date.
Budget problems and global company politics are now putting an end to this mission. The employer I work for is currently looking for another assignment, but as summer holidays are arriving this might become a challenging endeavour.
Therefore, I 'm about to open all registers into finding the appropriate job opportunity.
And where else better than on the website where my skills are best displayed in the form of Trinity Rescue Kit and other projects?
So, if you happen to be an employer or you know your company is hiring a network/system administrator and it 's in the neighbourhood between Brussels and Antwerp, Belgium, please take a look at my CV.
You can download it in pdf or word (zipped) format.
My contract with the customer ends on the 15th of July, so I can be available as of that date.
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
New beta 3.3 build 318 - Commercial support available for TRK
As of now, Trinity Rescue Kit has official commercial support. Trinity has agreed in a partnership with the consultancy company Open Computing to give live and offline commercial support.
For years, people have been asking me whether they could be helped by phone or online chat. Since I have my daytime job and already a lot of work as it is, I could not provide this.
Well, now you can contact Open Computing who will help you with any Linux problem you might have. Also Windows is supported to a certain degree: sometimes after TRK has done the necessary repairs on your dead or inaccessible Windows, it might be appropriate to perform some after-maintenance, like removing malware and cleaning up the registry.
The latest version of TRK is equipped with a script called trinisup that allows remote management of a computer running TRK. It should work with almost any internet connection, including those behind a natted firewall. For aftersupport on Windows, the Trinity Remote Support Pack or TRSP is included. TRSP is a collection of tools (putty and vnc) and scripts for Windows that allow a remote control session of your Windows desktop, pretty much in the same manner as the TRK trinisup script. Read more about the mechanics behind this method here..
Pricing for commercial assistance is very reasonable. I couldn't do it for less myself! Follow this link to the website of Open Computing and read more about it.
Of course, Trinity Rescue Kit itself and the help forum still remain completely free!
Together with this announcement, a new beta version Trinity Rescue Kit 3.3 is available.
At build 318, several bugfixes have been attacked and a few features added. Biggest bugfix is in winpass, which is the most significant feature of TRK ever since TRK 1.1.
-Well, winpass has been for 80% rewritten, using better, more flexible code. Especially, the biggest bug was the case-sensitivity, which is inherent for Unix systems and has been completely circumvented. This time winpass should never announce anymore that it can 't find any windows installations (unless your disks are unknown or corrupted).
I 've also added a feature that it makes a backup of your original registry hive, allowing you to reset a password, do your thing in windows and put back the old password without ever having to know it; 'winpass -r' restores your password file (SAM).
Another bugfix again in winpass was the problem with usernames that had spaces in them. I ‘ve worked around this problem now. All you have to do is specify the –u flag at the commandline and the username between double quotes. E.g. winpass –u “Test User”
-Another new feature is not Linux based and is stupidly simple but effective: when you insert the TRK CD while running Windows and autorun is active (which is Microsoft's default in any version of Windows since 95), you will be prompted that TRK is not usable from Windows but also that it is unsafe to have autorun active because of the high rate of virus infections being exchanged with USB keys (for which autorun is also active). Clicking "Yes" on the warning message will deactivate autorun completely, lowering the chance of a virus infection by at least 10% (which is the statistic percentage of virus infection sources today).
-Added upd-sender/udp-receiver, utilities to perform multicast sessions across your network like imaging. Scripts are not yet implemented for this, but contributions are welcome.
-Kernel is now multi-cpu capable. It might be that some older systems are now unable to boot TRK anymore, but I expect these to be really old ones. For those I recommend to use TRK 3.2 (or earlier)
-TRK is now volume label independent: you can put any volume label you like on your CD/USB stick. You just have to pass the volume label in your syslinux.cfg/isolinux.cfg by adding vollabel=YOURLABEL to the command line. Interesting for people making multiboot CDs.
-Trinity Remote Support packages added to the medium. Can be used for remote support from a running Windows machine, in case problems cannot be completely fixed from TRK.
-Other updates/bugfixes:
*latest kernel 2.6.25
*Intel E1000 driver v7.6.15.5 (8.01 appears not to work)
*ntfs-3g 1.2412
*coreutils 6.9 (all included utils now available on TRK)
*testdisk + photorec 6.9
*syslinux 3.62: some newer PCs like the HP DC7800 hung on startup when booting from USB. This new syslinux bootloader fixes that problem
*ddrescue 1.8
*dd_rescue 1.1.4
*chkrootkit 0.48
*hdparm 8.6
*memtest86+ 2.01
*prime95 v.2414 (type mprime): a utility that does number crunching and is a real stress test for your CPU’s floating point capabilities.
*f-prot fixed: bugs in proxy parameters and failed to run once it was already installed
*clamav-0.93-2
*lspci and lsusb did not point to their pci/usb database so no info about manufacturer was given. Fixed it.
*UTF-8 was missing some files, gave warnings with ntfs-3g, fixed
For years, people have been asking me whether they could be helped by phone or online chat. Since I have my daytime job and already a lot of work as it is, I could not provide this.
Well, now you can contact Open Computing who will help you with any Linux problem you might have. Also Windows is supported to a certain degree: sometimes after TRK has done the necessary repairs on your dead or inaccessible Windows, it might be appropriate to perform some after-maintenance, like removing malware and cleaning up the registry.
The latest version of TRK is equipped with a script called trinisup that allows remote management of a computer running TRK. It should work with almost any internet connection, including those behind a natted firewall. For aftersupport on Windows, the Trinity Remote Support Pack or TRSP is included. TRSP is a collection of tools (putty and vnc) and scripts for Windows that allow a remote control session of your Windows desktop, pretty much in the same manner as the TRK trinisup script. Read more about the mechanics behind this method here..
Pricing for commercial assistance is very reasonable. I couldn't do it for less myself! Follow this link to the website of Open Computing and read more about it.
Of course, Trinity Rescue Kit itself and the help forum still remain completely free!
Together with this announcement, a new beta version Trinity Rescue Kit 3.3 is available.
At build 318, several bugfixes have been attacked and a few features added. Biggest bugfix is in winpass, which is the most significant feature of TRK ever since TRK 1.1.
-Well, winpass has been for 80% rewritten, using better, more flexible code. Especially, the biggest bug was the case-sensitivity, which is inherent for Unix systems and has been completely circumvented. This time winpass should never announce anymore that it can 't find any windows installations (unless your disks are unknown or corrupted).
I 've also added a feature that it makes a backup of your original registry hive, allowing you to reset a password, do your thing in windows and put back the old password without ever having to know it; 'winpass -r' restores your password file (SAM).
Another bugfix again in winpass was the problem with usernames that had spaces in them. I ‘ve worked around this problem now. All you have to do is specify the –u flag at the commandline and the username between double quotes. E.g. winpass –u “Test User”
-Another new feature is not Linux based and is stupidly simple but effective: when you insert the TRK CD while running Windows and autorun is active (which is Microsoft's default in any version of Windows since 95), you will be prompted that TRK is not usable from Windows but also that it is unsafe to have autorun active because of the high rate of virus infections being exchanged with USB keys (for which autorun is also active). Clicking "Yes" on the warning message will deactivate autorun completely, lowering the chance of a virus infection by at least 10% (which is the statistic percentage of virus infection sources today).
-Added upd-sender/udp-receiver, utilities to perform multicast sessions across your network like imaging. Scripts are not yet implemented for this, but contributions are welcome.
-Kernel is now multi-cpu capable. It might be that some older systems are now unable to boot TRK anymore, but I expect these to be really old ones. For those I recommend to use TRK 3.2 (or earlier)
-TRK is now volume label independent: you can put any volume label you like on your CD/USB stick. You just have to pass the volume label in your syslinux.cfg/isolinux.cfg by adding vollabel=YOURLABEL to the command line. Interesting for people making multiboot CDs.
-Trinity Remote Support packages added to the medium. Can be used for remote support from a running Windows machine, in case problems cannot be completely fixed from TRK.
-Other updates/bugfixes:
*latest kernel 2.6.25
*Intel E1000 driver v7.6.15.5 (8.01 appears not to work)
*ntfs-3g 1.2412
*coreutils 6.9 (all included utils now available on TRK)
*testdisk + photorec 6.9
*syslinux 3.62: some newer PCs like the HP DC7800 hung on startup when booting from USB. This new syslinux bootloader fixes that problem
*ddrescue 1.8
*dd_rescue 1.1.4
*chkrootkit 0.48
*hdparm 8.6
*memtest86+ 2.01
*prime95 v.2414 (type mprime): a utility that does number crunching and is a real stress test for your CPU’s floating point capabilities.
*f-prot fixed: bugs in proxy parameters and failed to run once it was already installed
*clamav-0.93-2
*lspci and lsusb did not point to their pci/usb database so no info about manufacturer was given. Fixed it.
*UTF-8 was missing some files, gave warnings with ntfs-3g, fixed
Friday, April 4, 2008
Coming soon
.. a new version of Trinity Rescue Kit 3.3 (still beta)
For all new visitors to this site: if you want to use TRK to reset winpass, it might not work with version 3.3 build 310. A newer version of winpass is ready and will be shipped with a new release of TRK 3.3.
In the mean I recommend to try the stable TRK 3.2 first. It might not support your hardware, but if it does, use that one for password resets.
Expected release date should be around the 3rd week of april 2008.
For all new visitors to this site: if you want to use TRK to reset winpass, it might not work with version 3.3 build 310. A newer version of winpass is ready and will be shipped with a new release of TRK 3.3.
In the mean I recommend to try the stable TRK 3.2 first. It might not support your hardware, but if it does, use that one for password resets.
Expected release date should be around the 3rd week of april 2008.