Text 7048, 55 rader
Skriven 2006-08-13 01:17:26 av Maurice Kinal (1:140/13.1)
   Kommentar till text 7035 av Paul Rogers (1:105/360.0)
Ärende: You gotta smile
=======================
Hey Paul!

Aug 12 09:24 06, Paul Rogers wrote to Maurice Kinal:

 PR> The problem with dd is it will certainly write everywhere
 PR> it thinks is permissible and read it back, but that may not
 PR> be everywhere some malware may find is writable.  What we
 PR> need to test is writing zeroes with dd, and then have some
 PR> program at a very low, hardware level get the controller to
 PR> read sectors by raw sector number and check for anything not
 PR> zero.

And that would be what?  I have been basing the dd write/read on the reported
hardware sectors and sizes (always 512 bytes).  For zeroes just writing
straight to the device using a blocksize of 512 bytes with a count of the total
number of hardware sectors and then summing the entire device produces zero
which is what is supposed to happen.  Furthermore if fdisking and then
individually summing up each partition created still produces zero.  It is only
after formatting that a nonzero sum shows up for that partition which is to be
expected.  The only plus I can see to checking each hardware sector
individually is if one suspects bad sectors which will show up if at least two
checks with different patterns are done, but usually one write/read cycle
catches it (never seen one cycle fail yet).  Four cycles is overkill methinks
but ...

As for malware finding anywhere else other then the reported hardware sectors
of the drive or device in question I'd like to know where that information can
be found so that a simple read of that/those sector(s) can be compared to the
expected configuration for that drive or device.  I am not sure if one can
write to those it is wise to zero them but if it can be compared to a known
configuration for that drive or device that sounds like a good idea.

 PR> My BIL had it too easy with his chemo last winter.  The
 PR> Hodgkins lymphoma apparently was not killed.

Ouch!  He has my sympathy for sure.

 PR> There's one
 PR> more, different cocktail they can try, and if that doesn't
 PR> do the job, then it's harvesting stem cells and going for
 PR> broke.  Though since this seems to be a hard sucker to kill,
 PR> how likely is that.  And we're permitted to know SO much
 PR> about stem cell therapies these days!

I don't know much about it to be honest.  I've only met one person in my life
who suffered from Hodgkins and that was roughly 30 years ago.  If I remember
correctly the medical treatment back then had a decent success rate.

Keep the faith.

Life is good,
Maurice

--- Msged/LNX 6.2.0
 * Origin: The Pointy Stick Society XXII - A two bit outfit (1:140/13.1)