Just a warning to fellow geeks (and so this gets into google), but please please please don't buy microSD media from ebay that claims to be Kingston 32GB Micro SDHC, they are about to release them, but as of yet all the ones available are fake, put simply, if it seems too good to be true, it is :)

If it has a press-close front loading packet from china, its a fake plain and simple.

Seems like basic stuff, but just getting into the more nitty gritty data recovery work and this has been an invaluable guide.

> Another hack you can try is use to use '--offset' option of
> 'losetup'. First figure out from which byte, NTFS partition starts in
> disk image, and then you create a loopback back device for that image
> and the starting offset using 'losetup' and finally 'mount' the
> loopback as NTFS partition :) .

Here's more detail on how to do that

# losetup /dev/loop0 /path/to/diskimage
# fdisk -l /dev/loop0
(example)
Disk /dev/sdb: 160.0 GB, 160041885696 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19457 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

      Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sdb1 * 1 1044 8385898+ c W95 FAT32 (LBA) /dev/sdb2 1045 19457 147902422+ 83 Linux

suppose you want to mount the partition on sdb2, the offset for that
would be 8225280 * 1045 = 8595417600.

detach the disk image
# losetup -d /dev/loop0
and setup the loop for the partiion
# losetup -o8595417600 /dev/loop0 /path/to/diskimage
and mount it
# mount -t fstype /dev/loop0 /path/to/mountdir

> Please do post your results, if you're successful :)

I second that, I'm curious to know if it works

oh, and make a backup just in case :)
--

Re: "loopback mount" hard-drive image created with dd?

by Remy Blank-2 :: Rate this Message:

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Yahya Mohammad wrote:

> # losetup /dev/loop0 /path/to/diskimage
> # fdisk -l /dev/loop0
> (example)
> Disk /dev/sdb: 160.0 GB, 160041885696 bytes
> 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19457 cylinders
> Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
>
> Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
> /dev/sdb1 * 1 1044 8385898+ c W95 FAT32 (LBA)
> /dev/sdb2 1045 19457 147902422+ 83 Linux
Thanks for the tip! I didn't know you could mount a whole disk image as
loopback, and see the partition table with fdisk. I always printed the
partition table before making the disk image.

> I second that, I'm curious to know if it works

It does, I have done it before, but there's a special case for the first
partition of the disk. According to your output of fdisk, it is supposed
to start at cylinder 1. However, if you run fdisk with the -u option
(giving the positions and sizes in sectors), you get the following:

(example)
# fdisk -lu /dev/loop0

Disk /dev/loop0: 10.0 GB, 10056130560 bytes
240 heads, 63 sectors/track, 1299 cylinders, total 19640880 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xc1afc1af

              Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/loop0p1 * 63 4097519 2048728+ b W95 FAT32 /dev/loop0p2 4097520 8195039 2048760 5 Extended /dev/loop0p5 4097583 8195039 2048728+ b W95 FAT32

That is, the first partition starts at sector 63, i.e. at an offset
value of 63 * 512 = 32256.

> oh, and make a backup just in case :)

And mount the filesystem read-only with the "ro" mount option.

-- Remy

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Re: Re: "loopback mount" hard-drive image created with dd?

by Tom FÃrster :: Rate this Message:

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Remy Blank wrote:

> Yahya Mohammad wrote:
>> # losetup /dev/loop0 /path/to/diskimage
>> # fdisk -l /dev/loop0
>> (example)
>> Disk /dev/sdb: 160.0 GB, 160041885696 bytes
>> 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19457 cylinders
>> Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
>>
>> Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
>> /dev/sdb1 * 1 1044 8385898+ c W95 FAT32 (LBA)
>> /dev/sdb2 1045 19457 147902422+ 83 Linux
>
> Thanks for the tip! I didn't know you could mount a whole disk image as
> loopback, and see the partition table with fdisk. I always printed the
> partition table before making the disk image.
>
>> I second that, I'm curious to know if it works
>
> It does, I have done it before, but there's a special case for the first
> partition of the disk. According to your output of fdisk, it is supposed
> to start at cylinder 1. However, if you run fdisk with the -u option
> (giving the positions and sizes in sectors), you get the following:
>
> (example)
> # fdisk -lu /dev/loop0
>
> Disk /dev/loop0: 10.0 GB, 10056130560 bytes
> 240 heads, 63 sectors/track, 1299 cylinders, total 19640880 sectors
> Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
> Disk identifier: 0xc1afc1af
>
> Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
> /dev/loop0p1 * 63 4097519 2048728+ b W95 FAT32
> /dev/loop0p2 4097520 8195039 2048760 5 Extended
> /dev/loop0p5 4097583 8195039 2048728+ b W95 FAT32
>
> That is, the first partition starts at sector 63, i.e. at an offset
> value of 63 * 512 = 32256.
>
>> oh, and make a backup just in case :)
>
> And mount the filesystem read-only with the "ro" mount option.
>
> -- Remy
>

Some time ago, I wrote a little script to automate that process, maybe
it will help you also. (And yes, I know that the code isn't that pretty)

Direct copy & paste:

#!/bin/bash
INFILE="$1"
PARTITION="$2"
MOUNTPOINT="$3"
OPT="$4"

if [ "$INFILE" = "" ] ; then echo "Usage: $0 infile partition mountpoint
" ; exit ; fi
if [ "$PARTITION" = "" ] ; then echo "Usage: $0 infile partition
mountpoint " ; exit ; fi
if [ "$MOUNTPOINT" = "" ] ; then echo "Usage: $0 infile partition
mountpoint " ; exit ; fi

if [ "$OPT" != "" ] ; then OPT2=",${OPT}" ; fi

PSTARTB=`sfdisk -d "$INFILE" | grep "start=" | head -n"$PARTITION" |
tail -n1 | sed 's/.*start=[ ]*//' | sed 's/,.*//'`
PSTART=$[ $PSTARTB * 512 ]
#PSIZEB=`sfdisk -d "$INFILE" | grep "size=" | head -n4 | tail -n1 | sed
's/.*size=[ ]*//' | sed 's/,.*//'`
#PSIZE=`echo "$PSIZEB * 512" | bc`
mount "$INFILE" "$MOUNTPOINT" -o loop,offset="$PSTART""$OPT2"
#,sizelimit="$PSIZE""$OPT2"

- Tom
--

Reproduced from "old nabble" a gentoo user group support page

Ok, seriously, what is up with games requireing my router to support potential security exploits to connect?

No fallback to a fixed port layout (for those of us who are willing to open ports) or a better peer-to-peer based game hosting method.

Fail COD:MW2, fail indeed.

Arggg, Microsoft can kiss my arse over this one.

Cannot find the fricking OEM 30day product keys anywhere, call MS and they tell me that is an OEM problem and only the OEM team can help me, and they have no phone contact.

Eventually track down the keys (extracted in an interesting way) here

Windows Vista:

        * Ultimate - VMCB9-FDRV6-6CDQM-RV23K-RP8F7
        * Business - 4D2XH-PRBMM-8Q22B-K8BM3-MRW4W
        * Home Premium - X9HTF-MKJQQ-XK376-TJ7T4-76PKF
        * Home Basic - RCG7P-TX42D-HM8FM-TCFCW-3V4VD
        * Starter - X9PYV-YBQRV-9BXWV-TQDMK-QDWK4

Windows 7:

        * Ultimate - D4F6K-QK3RD-TMVMJ-BBMRX-3MBMV
        * Professional - HYF8J-CVRMY-CM74G-RPHKF-PW487
        * Home Premium - RHPQ2-RMFJH-74XYM-BH4JX-XM76F
        * Home Basic - YGFVB-QTFXQ-3H233-PTWTJ-YRYRV
        * Starter - 7Q28W-FT9PC-CMMYT-WHMY2-89M6G

Note these are not illegal, these are the publicly available (albeit hard to $#^$*% find) supplied by MS.

In a move set to bring their implied quality back to the rest of the market, Seagate are dropping warranties on all new internal 3.5" and 2.5" drives from five years to three years on jan 3rd.

http://forums.seagate.com/stx/board/message?board.id=ata_drives&thread.id=2879&view=by_date_ascending&page=21

This is an official Seagate announcement.



Seagate 1.5TB Customers,
Some Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 1.5TB hard drives may show uncharacteristic operation when used with Mac and Linux operating systems in multi-drive configurations. Users may experiences pauses in video streaming applications or a dropped drive from RAID arrays. Customers seeing these symptoms should contact Seagate Technical Support directly by phone or by email for a firmware upgrade.

In order to assure the proper application of the new firmware, please communicate/have ready a description of the issues you're seeing when you contact Seagate Technical Support. Please include the following disk drive information:


* model number (see here for help determining the model number)
* serial number (see here for help determining the serial number)
* current firmware revision (Seatools for DOS can tell you, and it should also be listed on the drive label)


Also, please describe

* your system
* your operating system, and
* the application in use when the issue arose.


You will receive a prompt response with appropriate instructions.

Just had a very odd thing happen while browsing a forum site with Chrome.

Doing normal kinds of things, posting, moderating, etc. Then I logged in as an admin, preceded to the "modify site settings" section of SMF management, adjusted the forum title, saved and Voom! (this forum is no more, it has ceased to be)

Site now reports it can't find its DB.

Hopefully chrome just threw in some "usual" values in some paths that are in the same entry screen, but it may have spidered its way through the admin area, yet to see the nitty gritty till I can ssh into it later on.