WinAmp Not Playing Some Wav Files

A family member was unable to play some WAV files on two Windows XP systems using Winamp, though other WAV files played without problem in Winamp and the ones that would not play in Winamp would play in Windows Media Player (WMP). When I checked the codec used in those that would not play, I found that it was MPEG Layer-3 (MP3), while the ones that would play were encoded with PCM. I was able to resolve the problem by associating Winamp's DirectShow codec with WAV files.

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[/os/windows/software/audio/winamp] permanent link

Backing Up Exchange Information Store

Microsoft Exchange stores users' email in an "Information Store". You can use the Backup Utility that comes with Microsoft Windows systems to backup the data in the Information Store. The utility can be run by clicking on Start, Run, and then typing ntbackup and hitting enter.

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[/network/email/exchange] permanent link

Malware Zoo

I've created a database to track information about files associated with malware I've found while scanning systems. The information includes the filename, the SHA-1 and MD5 checksums for the file, the file size, and the designation given it by various antivirus and antispyware programs. The malware includes adware, spyware, viruses, trojans, and worms.

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[/security/zoo] permanent link

Locating QuarkXPress 4.1 Serial Number

You can find the serial number for your Windows copy of QuarkXPress in QuarkXPress 4.1 by clicking on Help then selecting About QuarkXPress while holding down the Ctrl key. A QuarkXPress (tm) Environment window will be displayed that lists the serial number and other information listed below:

XPress Version
Patch Level
Serial Number
Processor Type
Windows Version
ATM Version
TrueType Enabled
Free memory
Language
Keyboard Type
Number of Colors
Display Driver
Display Driver Version
Default Printer
Printer Driver
Network

Note: The serial number shown has been altered

[/os/windows/software/quarkxpress] permanent link

Exchange Store Database Size Exceeded

I've had to restart the Microsoft Exchange Information Store service on a Windows Small Business Server (SBS) 2003 on a couple of occasions over the last few days due to the .edb file that holds email for Exchange users reaching its 18 GB maximum size.

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[/network/email/exchange] permanent link

htdig Not Indexing Site

I installed ht://Dig 3.2.0b5 on one of my Solaris 10 servers. When I ran htdig on the server, it did not appear to be indexing my website. I used /usr/localbin/rundig -s -c /usr/local/conf/htdig_support.conf to see statistics on what it was doing. It was only opening one connect and making just two HTTP requests rather than indexing the whole site. When I ran htdig -vvv, I could see that it was stopping after reading robots.txt. When I looked at robots.txt, it appeared to be configured to allow any robot to index all files on the website. It had only the two lines below:

User-agent: *
Disallow:

After experimentation, I found that if I specifed some value for "Disallow", I could get htdig to index the site. I put in a dummy value, i.e. Disallow: /abcde12345, a directory I would never actually use on the site to resolve the problem.

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[/os/unix/solaris] permanent link

Finding Hard Links and Symbolic Links

On a Unix or Linux system, you can find symbolic links by utilizing options with the find command. To find symbolic links, aka symlinks, use find <path> -type l. E.g. find / -type l will find every symbolic link on the system. To find hard links, you can use find <path> -type f -links +1. The -links +1 option tells find to look for files with more than one link to them. E.g. find / -type f -links +1 would search for every hard link on the system.

If you just want to find all symbolic links pointing to a particular file, e.g. search.html, you can use the find command with the -lname option.

# find / -lname 'search.html' 2>/dev/null
/usr/share/htdig/index.html

In the above example, the -lname option tells find to look only for symbolic links to a file named search.html. Using 2>/dev/null discards error messages by sending them to /dev/null. Otherwise, you could a lot of " No such file or directory" messages as well as the symbolic link information for which you are looking.

If you wish to see full details returned regarding the file, you can use the -ls option.

# find / -lname 'search.html' -ls 2>/dev/null
146567    0 lrwxrwxrwx   1 root     root           11 Nov  8  2003 /usr/share/htdig/index.html -> search.html

References:

1. Using find to locate files
   Mo Budlong's UNIX 101 Sunworld column
2. Ln - LQWiki
   May 26, 2006

[/os/unix/commands] permanent link

Calculating an MD5 Checksum Using digest on Solaris

If you need to calculate an MD5 checksum for a file under Solaris, you can use the digest command.

usage: digest -l | [-v] -a [file...]

You specify the algorith you wish to use to generate the digest or checksum with the -a option. One of the algorithms is md5. You can see a list of available algorithms with digest -l.

# digest -l
sha1
md5
sha256
sha384
sha512

Use all lower case letters for the selected algorithm as they are case sensitive.

Example:

# digest -a md5 htdig-3.2.0b5-sol9-intel-local.gz
12834a33e31135131bd5c5f0083860b1

You can have the file name and the algorithm used included in the output by using the -v option.

# digest -a md5 -v *
md5 (idea-c.html) = 3f9f5e884189acec870c8044de11e044
md5 (idea.c.gz) = 374536bb2cdd68f5c0dce961ace26959

[/os/unix/solaris] permanent link

F-Secure Anti-Virus for DOS

F-Secure offers a free antivirus program for DOS. This can be run from a command line within windows or you can boot the system from a DOS floppy or CD when you can't get Windows to start properly or want to run an antivirus program from outside of Windows. The program is available from F-Secure at Free Virus Removal Tools, which provides a link for downloading the software from F-Secure's FTP site at ftp://ftp.f-secure.com/anti-virus/free/.

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[/security/antivirus/f-secure] permanent link

Clamav Detected Trojan.Dropper.Small-8

When I ran a scan on a system with ClamWin, which provides a version of clamav for Windows, it reported that it found Trojan.Dropper.Small-8 in 42odhr0b.exe.

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[/security/trojans] permanent link

Steps to Add a Printer Under Solaris 7

The steps below will allow you to add a printer on a Solaris 7 system running the Common Desktop Environment (CDE).

1. Right-click on the desktop.
2. Select "Tools".
3. Select "Admintool".
4. Click on "Browse".
5. Select "Printers".
6. Click on "Edit".
7. Select "Add".
8. Select "Access to Printer".
9. In the "Admintool: Add Access to Printer" window fill in the fields. For "Printer Name" type some name by which you wish to designate the printer. For "Print Server" you can enter the Fully Qualified Domain Name (FQDN) of the printer, e.g. hp-printer.mycompany.com. For description, you can put in whatever descriptive information you wish for the printer, e.g. "HP LaserJet 5". If you wish the printer to be your default printer, check the "Default Printer" checkbox.
10. Click on "OK"
11. Click on "File" then "Exit" to exit from the Admintool.

If you don't make the printer the default printer, i.e. the one Solaris will use by default when you select "File" and "Print" in an application, but later wish to make it the default printer, you can do so by the following steps:

1. Open the Admintool as above.
2. Click on "browse" and select "printers"
3. Select the printer.
4. Click on "Edit" and select "Modify".
5. Check the default printer checkbox and click on "OK.
6. Click on "File" then "Exit" to exit from the Admintool

[/os/unix/solaris] permanent link