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Thursday, September 20, 2007

New (beta) TRK 3.3 build 299: forced bugfix release

Here 's a sumup of what 's new since TRK 3.2 build 279:

-added a fifth antivirus engine to "virusscan". Vexira is the name of the fine product from Central Command , which quite recently released a Linux version of their scanner.
-new and fixed F-Prot from Frisk Software.The binaries and the syntax have completely changed, for which reason 'virusscan -fprot' in TRK 3.2 is as good as broken. The new engine should detect about 40% more viri and even malware. I 've only had the opportunity to test it on an Eicar testvirus, so I 'd like some reports from users about this one (performance, hit ratio, cleaning capabilities etc.)
-2 rootkit detection utilities: rkhunter and chkrootkit. Looks like promising utilities. Both have online update capabilities. However, they only seem to be looking for Unix-like rootkits. Feedback on this is very welcome.
-kernel 2.6.22.1: another reason why I 'm releasing this unfinished version of TRK. I 've had many reports on the forum of people with new disk controller chipsets that are not yet recognised in TRK 3.2 build 279. I 've distributed some private betas of TRK with this newer kernel and most reports are positive.
-New utilities via updatetrk:
* Novell Zenworks Imaging, a wonderful tool to replicate PCs over multicast (=an infinite number of replicas in just one run!). The tool is free but not quite GPL, so it 's not included by default into TRK. Use updatetrk to have it integrated. The syntax for it (skipping all antiviri) is 'updatetrk -s clam,fprot,avg,bde -z -b /hda1/temp' <= where "-b /hda1/temp" is the specific buildlocation on the computer 's local harddrive, since it needs quite some space to get built. Once booted from your updated TRK, type 'zimrun' to get Zenworks Imaging. It 's a menu based tool and self explanatory.
* Seagate/Maxtor Seatools harddrive testing. This is a tool completely outside of TRK that runs under FreeDos. I 've added this to updatetrk. Add the "-t" flag to get it downloaded from the Seagate website and have it integrated. When booting an updated TRK, you will see an extra option from the initial TRK bootsplash menu.
-fix for well known bug: booting from USB CD drives gave problems because they are slow to get detected by the kernel and startup procedure would just race past them. This should now be fixed.
-an updated TRK will not unpack its virusscanners on startup anymore (except when running completely from RAM), but rather on execution of the intended AV engine. This results in faster startup times and makes it a bit lighter for machines with little RAM.
-additional startup options for PCs with strange ACPI, like the HP 7700 series.
-manpages for standard linux utilities now all included. People asked me to have this included, so I did it. Beware that TRK specific utils and procedures don 't have manpages. They are still (and always will be) available via trkhelp (-l)
-testdisk and photorec 6.7-WIP: testdisk now does a much better job at repairing NTFS bootsectors.
-ntfs-3g 1.710: not the latest version but still newer than since TRK 3.2
-fileserver: new option to run as READ-ONLY server (option -r)
-new script: tryscsi. This small script tries all scsi drivers that are not already in the kernel. Use this when you have a SCSI controller and your disks didn 't get detected.
-other newly added utilities:
at: schedule commands
dd_rescue: alternative to ddrescue (note the underscore)
e2image: part of e2fsprogs, make images of ext2 and ext3 filesystems
e2label: part of e2fsprogs, label and ext2/3 filesystem
fsck.vfat: check fat filesystems
groff: advanced text editor
less: alternative to more
split: cut files in pieces
watch: repeat commands every n seconds