A Taste Of Reality

Yesterday was quite tiring and fun at the same time. I have tried to install and experiment with a myriad of softwares/packages to get my Desktop look something like below:


Here's the list:

Conky: This is a free lightweight system performance and activity display utility running right on your desktop.
Compiz Fusion Icon and Emerald: Compiz was installed to add 3D Desktop Effects to Linux and also allow me to install Emerald Themes.

I downloaded a couple of fonts, widgets, wallpapers besides the above.

It was time to put all of this together and get my desired Desktop Look!

Now here come's the problem:

The installation of the above softwares is not easy.

Compiz for example won't run on Nvidia Graphics Card with drivers that don't support 3D Acceleration.

So, lspci -vv | grep VGA, tells me that I have the NV34 driver installed.

There's a good utility which tells you whether or not compiz is going to work on your System and also what is the problem, it can be used for troubleshooting:

wget http://blogage.de/files/4359/download -O compiz-check

Make this script executable

chmod +x compiz-check

run it: ./compiz-check

It tells me that NV drivers are not good and cannot be used to run Compiz. I need to get the restricted drivers.

Also, by looking at the xorg.conf file in /etc/X11, I noticed that the Screen section quite basic. It doesn't list the graphics adapter information.

Next step, was to go ahead and get the right driver from Nvidia Website. For my GPU which is Nvidia Geforce FX 5200, the linux driver is: http://www.nvidia.com/object/linux_display_ia32_173.14.12.html

Here's the thing now, before you install this Nvidia Driver, you need to close the KDE or GNOME session and install it from console:

Press Ctrl + Alt + Backspace to go to console mode.

type in the commands as shown below to install the necessary and required packages:

apt-get install linux-headers-$(uname -a)

uname -a is used to pass the kernel version to apt-get in order to download and install the appropriate linux headers.

My kernel version is 2.6.34, this is what is used in BackTrack 4 Final R1.

apt-get is not able to find this linux header.

So, I try a workaround:

apt-get update
apt-cache search linux-headers (It doesn't list the linux header for my kernel version 2.6.34)
apt-get install linux-headers-`uname -a`

Now here's a bit of insight into linux headers: They are backward compatible. With that being said, if you have a piece of software compiled with older linux headers, it will run on a newer kernel just about fine. However, if you compile that software against newer linux headers, it may not run on an Older Kernel.

And so, I am stuck at this point. I have been trying to locate the linux headers for Kernel version 2.6.34. No success at that yet.

I may have to compile the Kernel to a newer version probably.

After intense research, I have decided to set up a MetaSploit Lab on Backtrack 4 for using the Metasploit Framework v3

The first exploit that I want to practise on is, Microsoft RPC DCOM Interface Overflow, which is a well known stack buffer overflow vulnerability in Win NT and Win XP Operating Systems. Gotta test the different payloads like adding a new user to Win XP. This is gonna be fun! :)

At present, I am downloading the massive VHD Images of Win XP SP2 by FDCC from NIST website. As they are in VHD format which is compatible with Microsoft Virtual PC but not with third party Virtualization Softwares like VMWare Workstation or VMPlayer, there is a need to convert it to VMDK format. Will be looking into that later

Listening Now: 009 Sound System - Dreamscape