On home systems, like Ubuntu, you can find a great free system called ClamAV through the package manager, however on more stable systems for servers (such as Centos 5) this option is not available.
This does not mean you should forgo the effort to add one – modern viruses are sophisticated vermin that can exploit a users systems and use them to access and propagate on a web server. Script exploits could bring your server to a crawl as they feed viruses to your customers. A good antivirus is a necessity in this modern age.

Thankfully there is an answer – Dag Wieërs maintains an RPM repository supporting several pieces of software, and ClamAV is one of them. There are three steps to making your system secure – first you need to install the ClamAV packages, second you need a custom script to update and scan the system, and thirdly you need to run the script with cron to automate the process. What follows is a step-by-step tutorial for setting this up on a CentOS 5.5 server, however it should work relatively the same for any RedHat Enterprise based distribution.

Part One : Installing ClamAV from Dag’s RPM Repository

The first step is to add the repository entry:

sudo nano /etc/yum.repos.d/rpmforge.repo

In this file add the following code and save the file, then exit the editor:

[rpmforge]
name = Dag Wieers RPM Repository (rpmforge)
mirrorlist = http://apt.sw.be/redhat/el5/en/mirrors-rpmforge
gpgcheck = 1
gpgkey = file:///etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY.rpmforge
enabled=0

Next, get the GPG key to ensure you are getting officially signed packages:

sudo wget http://dag.wieers.com/rpm/packages/RPM-GPG-KEY.dag.txt -P /etc/pki/rpm-gpg/ -O RPM-GPG-KEY.rpmforge

You should now be ready to install the initial package:

sudo yum --enablerepo=rpmforge install clamd -y

The previous command should also install the ‘clamav‘ and ‘clamav-db‘ dependency packages. If all went well, move on to the next step.

Part Two : Creating a Script to Automate ClamAV

First, lets create a new bash script:

sudo nano /usr/local/bin/clamav-cron

The script should look roughly like the one below, change the notification and alert emails as needed:

#!/bin/bash
#============================================
# Update clam av and initiate a full system
# scan excluding virtual directories
# written by Brian Cantin, 2009-2010
#============================================
# User configuration section
#--------------------------------------------

# Notification e-mail sender (could be fake):
CAV_MAILFROM="support@example.com"

# Notification & Alert e-mail recipients:
CAV_NOTIFY_TO="notify@example.com"
CAV_ALERT_TO="alerts@example.com"

# Log file name and its path:
CAV_LOGFILE="/var/log/clamav-cron"

# Scan target
CAV_TARGET='/'

# Directories to exclude from the scan
CAV_EXCLUDE='/proc|/dev|/sys|/mnt'

#===========================================
# script revision
CAV_VERSION='0.4'

# if the log file already exists - delete it
if [ -e $CAV_LOGFILE ]
then
        /bin/rm $CAV_LOGFILE
fi

# printed on the command line:
echo -e `basename $0` "v"$CAV_VERSION

# to be written to the log file:
echo -e $HOSTNAME - $(date) >> $CAV_LOGFILE
echo -e ------------------------ >> $CAV_LOGFILE
echo -e Script : `basename $0` v$CAV_VERSION  >> $CAV_LOGFILE
echo -e Target : $CAV_TARGET on $HOSTNAME >> $CAV_LOGFILE
echo -e Exclude: $CAV_EXCLUDE >> $CAV_LOGFILE
echo -e ------------------------ >> $CAV_LOGFILE

# update the detection database
echo -e "Update (/usr/bin/freshclam):" >> $CAV_LOGFILE
/usr/bin/freshclam >> $CAV_LOGFILE
echo -e ------------------------ >> $CAV_LOGFILE

# run the scan
echo -e "Scan (/usr/bin/clamscan):" >> $CAV_LOGFILE
/usr/bin/clamscan --infected --recursive $CAV_TARGET --exclude $CAV_EXCLUDE >> $CAV_LOGFILE
CLAMSCAN=$?

# if an error or virus is encountered then send an email to alert address
# otherwise send one to the notify
if [ "$CLAMSCAN" -eq "1" ]
then
        CAV_SUBJECT="[VIRUS] ClamAV ("$HOSTNAME") $(date)"
        /bin/mail -s "$CAV_SUBJECT" $CAV_ALERT_TO -- -f $CAV_MAILFROM < $CAV_LOGFILE
elif [ "$CLAMSCAN" -gt "1" ]
then
        CAV_SUBJECT="[ERROR] ClamAV ("$HOSTNAME") $(date)"
	/bin/mail -s "$CAV_SUBJECT" $CAV_ALERT_TO -- -f $CAV_MAILFROM < $CAV_LOGFILE
else
	CAV_SUBJECT="ClamAV ("$HOSTNAME") $(date)"
	/bin/mail -s "$CAV_SUBJECT" $CAV_NOTIFY_TO -- -f $CAV_MAILFROM < $CAV_LOGFILE
fi

I think this shell script is fairly self explanatory and to the point – it will update the ClamAV software and database, run a full system scan (excluding virtual directories) and email the results to the notification address. To accentuate problems it adds [VIRUS] or [ERROR] to the email subject and sends the email instead to the alert address. You can configure these addresses to be the same, depending on your preferences. Please note you must have /bin/mail configured correctly for the email functionality to work but that is outside the scope of this article.

After creating and saving this new script, make it executable:

sudo chmod +x /usr/local/bin/clamav-cron

You should complete a test-run of your script at this point:

sudo /usr/local/bin/clamav-cron

If all goes well it should complete within a few minutes to a few hours (depending on the size of your file system) and send you an email of the results. If there where any errors, go back and correct them before moving on to part three.

Part Three : Automation

Once everything is working to your satisfaction you can edit the crontab file for a daily activation of the script:

sudo nano /etc/crontab

I added the following line to make the script run daily at 2:30am as root:

30 2 * * * root /usr/local/bin/clamav-cron

Congratulations! Your server is now configured to automatically update your antivirus, scan for threats and notify you in a timely manner, every day.

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What it does: If you do not have a fishing rod equipped, clicking the button will equip one. If a fishing rod is equipped, it will cast. If you hold down any modifier key it will re-equip your weapons.

Code (insert your object names where indicated in italics):

/equip [noequipped:Fishing Poles, nomodifier] fishing rod name;
/equip [modifier] main weapon name;
/cast [equipped:Fishing Poles, nomodifier] Fishing;


For example:

/equip [noequipped:Fishing Poles, nomodifier] Nat Pagle's Extreme Angler FC-5000;
/equip [modifier] Staff of Dark Mending;
/cast [equipped:Fishing Poles, nomodifier] Fishing;


If you are not using two handed weapons, you will need to enter an equip command for your offhand weapon as well:


/equip [noequipped:Fishing Poles, nomodifier] fishing rod name;
/equip [modifier] main weapon name;
/equip [modifier] offhand weapon name;
/cast [equipped:Fishing Poles, nomodifier] Fishing;


Happy fishing!

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This version will work until June 2010 at which point it will no longer boot, also it will have some other restrictions starting in March 2010. That still provides many months to try it out. I have done just that and would like to relate my experiences, and solutions for particular problems that have arisen.

For more details on the promotion, or to register for your own copy visit windows.microsoft.com.

Items of Note

• I am NOT responsible if anything described here damages your PC or causes data loss. The software is ‘use at your own risk’ and so is this article.
• Back up your data. Microsoft will remind you of this, and so do I. Not backing up data before an operating system install is asking for trouble.

My Setup

Here is my configuration:
Motherboard: nVidia GeForce based
CPU: Intel Pentium 2.8Ghz Dual Core (64bit)
RAM: 4GB
Storage: 2x1TB SATA II drives on a RAID 1 (mirror)
Optical Media: SATA DVD-RW
Current System: XP Home / Ubuntu

Where to Start

Firstly, I assume you have succesfully run the Windows 7 Advisor with no issues and have made a working copy of the Windows 7 install disk.

If you are running Windows XP you cannot do an upgrade. Period. Clean install is the only option. This means you either need to start without an OS, or have an empty NTFS formatted partition prior to attempting the install.
If you do not have a blank NTFS partition the installer will stall after the language setting screen.

Once this is ready, reboot your PC with the Windows 7 DVD in the drive – make sure your BIOS is set to boot from it.

If all goes well you should be now installing Windows 7. I wasn’t this lucky.

The Windows 7 Installer Stalls after Loading Windows…

If you get a pretty blue screen with some leaves and a mouse cursor but nothing else after several minutes you may have the problem I had.
There are several reports online of problems installing from a SATA DVD drive. I presume in my case it is because of the way nVidia handles the DVD in relation to the RAID but I’m not certain.

Solution: Create a USB flash drive version of the installer disk (you’ll need 4gb) and boot from that, or (what I did) install an IDE DVD drive temporarily while installing.

Safely Unloading Linux First

Perhaps this should be higher up, but if you have a dual-boot XP/Linux environment and intend on removing the Linux installation to try out Windows 7 be very careful when you delete the Linux partitions from within Windows. Keep in mind that the boot loader (likely GRUB) resides there as well. Deleting the Linux partition will cause your PC to not boot!
With this in mind, I first booted from the XP install disk (after installing a floppy drive for the nVidia RAID drivers) and from the recovery console I ran fixmbr and rebooted. This puts the boot loader back to the original Windows one allowing you to safely remove the Linux partition. (you did back everything up, right?)

Initial Impressions

Once resolving the SATA optical drive issues and creating the NTFS partition (Windows 7 RC 1 does not appear to have a formatting tool like the XP installer) things went smoothly. In fact, the first have of this article was typed up on another PC nearby while I watched the Windows setup run fully automated. The setup will reboot your computer several times during installation.

My computer scores an average 5.9 for the user experience rating, and things are working mostly as they should. My Belkin wireless adapter does not have working drivers (Belkin hasn’t made them for Vista yet either – no fault to Microsoft for this one). I was able to use another USB wireless adapter sucessfully.
My WinTV-GO (analog PCI tv tuner card) does not appear to have working drivers at the moment either, which is frustrating since I wanted to try the Windows Media Player tv functions and the Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor said they would be available via Windows Update.

Overall, it works fairly well. I found switching between World of Warcraft and the desktop to be agonizingly slower than the same task on XP. I am intending to do a reinstallation of the game (rather than a program folder copy) on Windows 7 to see if it perhaps will install a more compatible version of the programs and perform better.
Actual game play has no noticeable differences.

I’ll try to keep an updated set of entries here over the next few months detailing more tests of this new system. Overall, I would say that I’m not about to run out and buy it yet, but it’s more promising than Vista.

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After placing the jquery.js (obtained from jQuery.com) file in your website’s path (ex. yoursite.com/include/) you simply need to add two javascript references in your page header:

<script src='include/jquery.js'></script>
<script src='include/scripts.js'></script>

The scripts.js file is where all the custom functionality code goes. Here’s an example, where links clicked in a div named #nav will load the new content into the #content div without refreshing the whole page:

$(document).ready(function() {           // after page is loaded, this is called automagically $('#nav li a').click(function() {     var query = $(this).attr('href');                  // this is what appears in the href tag     $('#content').hide('slow',loadContent);            // hides the div, calls loadContent()

     function loadContent() {         $('#content').load(query,'',showNewContent()); // pull the request into the div     }                                                  // calls showNewContent()

     function showNewContent() {         $('#content').show('fast');                    // show the new page content     }     return false; // returning false indicates the event was processed });});

No change to the actual page markup was required to make this happen at all. A small hurdle I encountered working with jQuery was that having an event bound to content inside the div #content would cease to function once new content was brought in. The reason for this is that jQuery loads the event binding based on what is on the page at first load. The easy way to solve this is to add the Live Query plugin for jQuery. Put it in your include directory with the other two scripts, and reference the script after jQuery but before your site’s script:

<script src='include/jquery.js'></script>
<script src='include/jquery.livequery.js'></script>
<script src='include/scripts.js'></script>

You will need to perform the related event binding to use Live Query slightly different from a normal jQuery binding:

$(document).ready(function() {    // after page is loaded, this is called automagically $('#content a').livequery('click', function() {        // livequery auto-binds when tags change     var query = $(this).attr('href');                  // this is what appears in the href tag     alert('You clicked this link: ' + query);     return false; // returning false indicates the event was processed });});

Yup, it’s just that easy – and once again, no change was made to the page markup. There is no end to the applications of jQuery and it’s related plugins. Happy coding, and welcome to Web 2.0!

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I look through the menus and control panels and cannot find an entry for it. Next step, I check to see if the drive has an ‘Eject’ option. It doesn’t. Only two things I can do – pull the drive and hope it’s all written, or shutdown the PC and pull it out then. Since I was short on time, I yanked the USB drive and everything went OK – but where did that icon go?

Rebooting did not resolve the issue. I searched Google and there wasn’t too much help there at all – although I did find numerous sites with the following tip:

Create a new shortcut on your desktop – right click and slide down to “New” then click on “Shortcut”.

Copy this “%windir%\system32\RunDll32.exe shell32.dll,Control_RunDLL hotplug.dll” (excluding the quotes) and paste it in the field that comes up in the next dialog box, under where it says “Type the location of the item:”, then click “Next >”.

The screen that follows prompts you to give the shortcut a name and is already pre-filled with “rundll32.exe” which is not helpful at all. Name it something obvious, such as “Safely Remove Hardare” and click “Finish”.

Double clicking the shortcut should launch the Safetly Remove Hardware window with your list of devices.

A nice touch is to edit the shortcut’s properties and change the icon to the usual one by using the icon browser. The icon can be found in “c:\windows\system32\hotplug.dll”.

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You can download it at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=75078.

The screenshot I’ve included shows the theme after installation on my system. The background is not included with the theme, I found that one at http://wallpapers.jurko.net/pic/9005/. I’ve got a calculator window open as well as the start menu with a hilighted item and tooltip showing the general color scheme of things.

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Sadly, I slipped up and started smoking again so it looks like I’m going to have to start that process all over again.

Also of note, I’ve started a new job working the help desk at a local software company this week. For those of you that are googling me from there – /wave

I have had some random hardware issues here and there with this PC that I suspect are related to over heating. I might post some pictures of my modifications at some point. I moved it to a more ventilated case and reconfigured the fan locations to pull more heat away from the components that get the hottest.

My hard drive crashed over the summer. Prior to getting the above mentioned configuration working well, my drive started to make the dreaded “click-click-whirr” sound and the BIOS couldn’t see it. I did manage to get it to boot a few times afterward, but it inevitably would lock up at some point so I stopped.

My girlfriend, the sweetie she is, gave me 250gb drive to replace it with and I successfully transferred all of my data. I still have the odd problem with the computer, but that’s mostly related to the wireless device and network.

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In other words, I have been very careful to jump through all of Microsoft’s little hoops to legally use their software. During my recent adventures in Linux I accidentally turfed my NTFS partition – it was readable from Linux but no longer recognized by Windows even in safe mode or from the recovery console.

This past weekend I set aside some time to clean up that mess, and reinstall everything. I loathe doing it because my XP disc is an original release so I have to download many gigabytes of updates to get current. Big snag – likely due to all of my hardware changes over the years, my license key appears to have been flagged as invalid.

This is quite annoying since as I have previously stated – to the best of my knowledge I have done everything Microsoft asks of me in the license. I have been putting off calling their tech support out of fear of being on the phone for a long time and (since their servers seem to think I’m a software pirate) being told I am out of luck.

Here is the shocking part: This was one of the fastest, easiest and most pleasant support experiences I have ever had! After going through their voice activated phone system, I was promptly transferred to a human being – I had to wait at most 30 seconds for this to occur. I have made some overseas calls before, and the time it took to connect was comparable.

I have no doubt that I was speaking to someone over in India or the surrounding area since that’s the support trend, and the representative had an Eastern accent. She asked me a few basic questions – what is the first group of numbers on the screen, did the software come with my PC, is it installed on any other PCs and is this the first time I have tried to activate it. (######, no, no but it has been and since removed and of course no again)
She then had me enter a sequence of numbers into the boxes on the screen, which she relayed very clearly and voila! Everything is up and running.

On the whole, I do not like Microsoft’s registration system – but I give them grudging kudos for making the telephone activation painless and efficient. Then again, maybe I just got an experienced agent – I wish I had recorded her name so I could sing her praise via an email to Microsoft.

Now, if only they could make their operating systems as efficient…

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It’s no secret to anyone who has read the privacy policy that Facebook is not just a social networking tool, but a method of collecting consumer data which is used for marketing purposes. That’s why it’s important not to put anything on their site that you wouldn’t want shared in this manner such as phone numbers, business email addresses and the like. Otherwise, it seems fairly benign, or at least it was until now.

Bought a product on a Beacon partner’s website? They tell Facebook, who adds a notification onto your feed. Sure, you can opt-out and delete the message – but Facebook still knows, and have been unresponsive to questions as to what happens to that data after you delete it from your feed. Is it really deleted, or merely hidden?
The plot thickens – not all of the Beacon partner sites are collecting just purchase information. Some are collecting information on your interests based on your browsing activities on their websites.

What all of this means is that Facebook is collecting personalized data on you that you didn’t explicitly give them. They are using it to aim targeted ads at you and your social circle – and quite likely they’re selling this marketing data to their partners.

A further questionable move on their part is that this new initiative is enabled by default for all users – you must edit your privacy configuration to opt-out of the program. The motivation behind this is fairly obvious – not too many people would likely go out of their way to add Beacon to their profile since it has no appeal to the end-user, only the advertisers.

Apparently some of the initial partners (such as Coke) are cooling to the idea and taking a wait-and-see-what-happens approach to Beacon. They claim they where led to believe it would be an opt-in program – but the cynic in me thinks that’s just PR spin to distance themselves from Facebook in case it crashes and burns.

All and all, I can honestly say – shame on you Mark Zuckerberg.

Edit: It's come to my attention that Facebook has partially reversed it's policy and allowed for a global opt-out, instead of a site-by-site opt-out... However you are in fact automatically added to Beacon services unless you ask to be removed.
To do that: Go to Privacy > External Websites and put a check in the box.


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After a poking around the xml template for my site, and playing around with the Digg code, I’ve figured out how to add a Digg button to my posts.
Listed below is a quick how-to for adding this functionality to your website too.

1. Make sure your blog is set to enable Post Pages and you are using the new Blogger, not the classic version
2. Go to the customization section of your blog, on the Template tab select Edit HTML
3. Make sure to click Download Full Template and save a backup copy to disk – just in case.
4. Put a check in Expand Widget Templates.
5. Search for <p><data:post.body/></p>
   Update: November 5th, 2008

   It has come to my attention that some templates use a slightly different formatting. If you cannot find the text listed above – try searching for <data:post.body/> and follow the rest of the instructions.

6. Paste this on the line directly before it:
   <div style='float:right; margin-left:10px;'>
<script type='text/javascript'>
digg_url=&quot;<data:post.url/>&quot;;</script>
<script src='http://digg.com/tools/diggthis.js' type='text/javascript'/>
</div>
7. Preview your template to make sure it looks right – the Digg icon should appear at the top right of all your posts. Hover your cursor over it and make sure the link URL matches your post URL.
8. If all looks well, click Save Template and then View your blog

Happy DIGGing!

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