Hi! I'm new to BT and Linux and I have some questions

[Zeroknight]

Okay, so it turns out that the ISO CD that I thought I had was just a normal cd, not a boot one. Now, I've been scouring the depths of the internet in search of a program that can do this for me for free. Yes, I do have Nero, BUT the option 'create bootable disk' only works for floppies. Does anyone have any idea on anything I could use to do this?

Okay, now that that's done with, on to the questions:

1.) After downloading the ISO, how will I be able to update it?

2.) If Linux is so secure, then what's with the safety precautions like snort?
2a.) Can people create accounts on your Linux, and use them as proxies?
2b.) What are some good security tools (antivirus,etc) for this distro of Linux?
2c.) Lets say (hypothetically now) that I got a virus for a porn site with Windows, if I go to the same site with BT, will I get it?

3.) Where's the best place to learn Linux?


Thank you in advance for answering, and even while you are reading this, I am looking through various posts and such looking for answers and if I see anything already posted,I will delete it from my post. I'm sorry if any questions that I ask are already posted.

[imported_Deathray]

Okay, so it turns out that the ISO CD that I thought I had was just a normal cd, not a boot one.

In nero, select burn from image and select the bt3 iso. The default settings will make it bootable. Just remember to burn at lowest speed possible.

1.) After downloading the ISO, how will I be able to update it?

Depends on what you want to update. Look into: Fast-track, slapt-get. This link should help you well.
http://www.google.com/coop/cse?cx=00...%3Avpdhc1qej9k

2.) If Linux is so secure, then what's with the safety precautions like snort?

Snort is an IDS. It is normally set up passively in a network to detect attack's on all of the hosts. Not the system it is running on. But I myself have not that much experience in the whole IDS topic.

2a.) Can people create accounts on your Linux, and use them as proxies?

Yes, they can. But not remotely without hacking into your system.

2b.) What are some good security tools (antivirus,etc) for this distro of Linux?

There are anti viruses made for Linux, but how necessary they are is a whole different question.... Read this
IPTables is a firewall built into the Linux kernel that you way want to look into.

2c.) Lets say (hypothetically now) that I got a virus for a porn site with Windows, if I go to the same site with BT, will I get it?

The virus will most likely not work as 99,9% of the time it will be written for Windows, but the website may be attacking a vulnerability in for example flash, that your browser in Linux will most likely also be using.

3.) Where's the best place to learn Linux?

A very hard way to learn Linux would probably be by using BackTrack. I would recommend starting out with Ubuntu and learning how to operate Linux. After that try Slackware (: . Try reading this thread: http://forums.remote-exploit.org/showthread.php?t=7180

[ninjarobot]

2b.) What are some good security tools (antivirus,etc) for this distro of Linux?

You could take a look at clamav and chkrootkit.

ClamAV is a free antivirus software toolkit for Windows and Unix-like operating systems. One of its main uses is with mail exchange servers as a server-side email virus scanner. And chkrootkit (Check Rootkit) is a common Unix-based program intended to help system administrators check their system for known rootkits.

[Zeroknight]

Wow. You guys answered evey single one of my question, thanks. There are just a few more, however...

The virus will most likely not work as 99,9% of the time it will be written for Windows, but the website may be attacking a vulnerability in for example flash, that your browser in Linux will most likely also be using.

So can that virus infect my Linux?

Okay, so I got an ISO running, but its kinda weird because it runs on both of my computers, but:

on the faster one:
It loads fine, but when I select KDE, it doesn't even give me gui at all, even when I start Windows X.

on the slower one:
The gui works fine after I select KDE, but when it gets to the login screen, it goes blank, shows an X in the middle, then a mouse, and then one of these in the top NW corner: _

Halp? Do I need to redownload b/c of corruption? Thanks in advance.

[Revelati]

You have to think of your browser and your operating system as two separate entities.

There are viruses for windows
There are viruses for linux
There are viruses for internet explorer/firefox/whatever
There are viruses for combinations of the three.

Most viruses are for windows and/or internet explorer, probably in the 85-90% range.

There are a few for linux but not many and a few (but growing number) for firefox.

As for your startup problem I can recommend these steps:

Check the MD5 to see if your download is corrupt and if so redownload. (Google MD5 checksum if you dont know how)

Make a new copy of your CD at the LOWEST SPEED POSSIBLE! This will help with data corruption.

Use a usb bootdisk instead. They are faster and more reliable and with this:
http://lubi.sourceforge.net/unetbootin.html
It is ridiculously easy to do.

[Zeroknight]

Thanks, Revelati. Okay it turns out that my computer does load, it just does it extrrrrrrrrrrreeeeeeeeemly slowly (266MHz @ 128 Ram :'-( i need an upgrade) and I'm currently trying to repartition disk drives with qtparted. I hope it works...

Hi guys sorry to double post, but I can't edit posts yt and they are both Important, I think. Anyway, when I try to copy the files on the iso cd to the hd, and type cp --preserve -R /, it gives me an error. I can't recall excatly, but I think it was like, 'this value doesn't exist or something like that.' Halp??

Vid I'm using:
www.offensive-security.com/movies/dualboot/dualboot.html

Alright I'm almost done, I'm just stuck at the part where I need to copy directories. 'cp --preserve -R /' doesn't work.

(Yes, this is a bump, cause iirc, I didn't see anything against them in the tou).

Okay, now I have some more info about this. As I speak, it is copying the files to the hd, BUT (of course) the it won't load the root files. For example, it says:
cp: cannot open '/root/.kde/socket-bt' for reading: Input/output error. Did I do something wrong? Do I need those fiiles? Halp!!!

PS: Sorry for the double post, but I'm hoping that the nice mod who joined my previous posts and fixed my link can do the same here. Thanks!

[Zeroknight]

Okay so I tried copying cp --preserve -R /{usr} and it says the same thing. So I guess I'm good then, right?

(note, I copied the whole thing again and it didnt give me the same root fail message).

EDIT: OMG, I don't have to wait to post, this is awsum

So now I'm trying to mount but appearently:
'cp /boot/boot/vmlinuz /mnt/backtrack/boot/'
does not exist

EDIT: I just realized it does not exist cause I don't remember creating it. Is is as simple as:
'mkdir /boot/boot/vmlinuz' ?
i not, how do I do it?

Again the vid I'm using:
offensive-security(dot)com/movies/dualboot/dualboot(dot)html
@9.00 mins

[Revelati]

Follow the directions for formatting and creating disk partitions here:
http://www.offensive-security.com/do...hd-install.pdf
(DONT FORGET TO MAKE FILESYSTEMS! mkfs.ext3 /dev/blah)

When you get to the point where they tell you to install BackTrack using the installer do this instead:

bt~#mkdir /mnt/backtrack
bt~#mount /dev/sda3 /mnt/backtrack/
bt~#mkdir /mnt/backtrack/boot/
bt~#mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/backtrack/boot/ (note: If you only have one partiton to install backtrack to simply omit this step)
bt~#cp --preserve -R /{bin,dev,home,pentest,root,usr,etc,lib,opt,sbin,va r} /mnt/backtrack/ <<< note: there is no space in var. Seems to be a glitch in the matrix
bt~#mkdir /mnt/backtrack/{mnt,proc,sys,tmp}
bt~#mount --bind /dev/ /mnt/backtrack/dev/
bt~#mount -t proc proc /mnt/backtrack/proc/
bt~#cp /boot/vmlinuz /mnt/backtrack/boot/

This is an excerpt from PureH@tes installation guide, if you are dual booting refer to the rest of the guide here to append your lilo.conf
http://forums.remote-exploit.org/showthread.php?t=14751

Remember that when you mount a drive you need to give it a file system and a place to load to.

mount mkfs.ext2 /dev/sda2 /boot This will put the the sda2 partition in a temp folder called /boot just incase you need to mess with your lilo and need to #lilo -v. Hope this helps.

[Zeroknight]

Yes that helped so much, thanks. Now one more newbie question, how do I save lilo configurations?

[Barry]

Yes that helped so much, thanks. Now one more newbie question, how do I save lilo configurations?

http://linux.die.net/man/8/lilo