Drazha's corner of small home magic

tty GNU/Linux is a live distribution based on Debian 4.0 (Etch)

It is designed as an all-in-one live CD for administration and servicing of computers and network. As such, it does not have an X environment, and all the work is done through the terminal.

This is a multiboot CD containing memtest86, memtest86+, GeexBox and GParted. A list of all installed packages, programs and services can be found in the root of the CD in the PACKAGES file.

* (OPTIONAL) Generate random user and password for the /etc/rsyncd.secrets
* (OPTIONAL) Scramble the default /etc/rsyncd.secrets into something more customized in order to scramble potential attacks
* Copy enabled /etc/xinetd.d/rsync to Sigma from the Epsilon archiving script repository.
[20:25]#epsilon#/root/work>scp scripts/EtcXinetdDRSync root@sigma.maildrome.com:/etc/xinetd.d/rsync
root@sigma.maildrome.com's password:
EtcXinetdDRSync 100% 158 0.2KB/s 00:00

The rsync daemon is an alternative to SSH for remote backups. Although more difficult to configure, it does provide some benefits. For example, using SSH to make a remote backup of an entire system requires that the SSH daemon allow root login, which is considered a security risk. Using the rsync daemon allows for root login via SSH to be disabled.

Configuration of the rsync Daemon
1. Edit the file /etc/default/rsync to start rsync as daemon using xinetd. The entry listed below, should be changed from false to inetd.

RSYNC_ENABLE=inetd

The following steps will help you reconfigure the hostname of your Ubuntu 8.04 LTS installation:

vi /etc/hostname

Replace the old hostname with the new one. Do not try to comment out the old one and add a new one in the next line: it will not work.

vi /etc/hosts

Either replace the old hostname with the new one, or add the new hostname behind the old one. In any case, make sure that the new hostname corresponds to the IP address of the host you are reconfiguring.

/etc/init.d/hostname.sh stop

/etc/initd.hostname.sh start

AppArmor ("Application Armor") is security software for Linux, released under the GNU General Public License. From 2005 through September 2007, AppArmor was maintained by Novell. AppArmor allows the system administrator to associate with each program a security profile that restricts the capabilities of that program. It supplements the traditional Unix discretionary access control (DAC) model by providing mandatory access control (MAC)1.

The following commands can be used to disable the AppArmor on Ubuntu 8.04 LTS installation:

sudo invoke-rc.d apparmor stop

This will stop the apparmor application/subsystem on your system, and clear the way for the following steps.

sudo update-rc.d apparmor remove

Running the above command, the symbolic link from the init.d and appropriate rc.d is removed, and the AppArmor is effectively rendered inoperative on your Ubuntu 8.04 LTS installation: when you reboot, AppArmor will not run again.

sudo aptitude remove apparmor apparmor-utils

Finally, the above commands will completely remove the AppArmor feature from your Ubuntu 8.04 installation.

1. Material taken over from WikiPedia AppArmor article.

As the title dramatically explains, this project was inspired by a catastrophic failure of a RAID5 system that was acting as our family's central digital repository where all of our documents, pictures, moves and other data was stored.

In reality, after the RAID5 catastrophe, and a hectic effort to rebuild, retrieve and pull out as much as possible of the lost and endangered information, another disk accidentally got reinstalled with a brand new Windows 7, causing even more stress and mental disorder.

I guess that after these events transpired, the stage was set for a radically different approach to data storage, backup and security of that precious personal data. After a little research, I have discovered a world of people that were in my identical position, and had gone down that same path many times before.