Hacked 1.0.3 download from Hugh Chow mirror? (Solved?)

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wetterau

Hacked 1.0.3 download from Hugh Chow mirror? (Solved?)

#1 Post by wetterau »

Hi all, I downloaded 1.0.3 Mozilla from the Hugh Chow site suggested on the download page. Be careful! The download was fine. I burned a CD, fine. Booted (on a Windows 2000 Ath 1200 box with NTFS file system and 256 mb ram. The program took over in an eastern European language, changed my keyboard mapping and froze. I could reboot but I couldn't change the language defaults cuz I don't read Bulgarian or Serbo-Croatian or whatever it is. I don't have a system disk handy to restore W2K. I've lost my main machine. Does anyone have any ideas how I can get it back. I've been following puppy for ages and finally got a chance (after traveling) to try it. Very disappointing. I've been using DSL, Feather, Simply MEPIS, etc. on my laptop with no trouble (IBM thinkpad 600) cuz they accommodate frame buffer display. I want to run puppy on my desktop on top of W2K (which I need for a lot of old publishing software). Any clues?
Barry, you are doing a terrific job. I hope you check out this download. It may save hassles for others. I never had a machine hijacked like this. Unbelievable. The software never asked or anything. Just changed everything to suit itself.

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#2 Post by Lobster »

I have never heard of this Eastern European Puppy. Sounds very interesting.
These are the Puppy Download sites:

Puppy Download
http://www.goosee.com/puppy/download/downpage.htm

Wiki download
http://www.goosee.com/puppy/wikka/PupInBoots

========== This is the Hugh Chow mirror

Thanks to Hugh Chow who has provided hosting space for Puppy. Hugh is currently hosting almost all the versions of Puppy, that is, Firefox, Opera, special 128M, and Unleashed releases: http://mymirrors.homelinux.org/puppy/


Only use if you are an experienced user on a spare machine - until we sort this out
============

I would be very interested in any such modified Puppys. Perhaps someone has translated Puppy into Latvian (Austrumi uses Latvian)

If this is indeed a Puppy ISO, delete the file Pup001 and boot from an ISO downloaded from the iblio site.

Has anyone else downloaded this file and had problems?


Good luck
Last edited by Lobster on Wed 06 Jul 2005, 03:33, edited 3 times in total.
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Flash
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#3 Post by Flash »

Lobster, if I read him right, wetterau says it hijacked his Windows 2000.

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#4 Post by Lobster »

Thanks Flash - I am trying to understand what is going on.

Can you boot up with option 2 - which does not effect your HD?
What hardware are you using? In particular what BIOS?

Can you boot the CD on another machine - it could be the CD is a faulty download?

This is quite serious because Puppy does not effect or reconfigure the machine in any way. All that happens with an option 2 boot is Puppy goes in Ram and your machine is uneefected when rebooted.

With option 1 a single file called pup001 is created on the hard disk and this is where files and config is saved.
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#5 Post by GuestToo »

i just downloaded puppy-1.0.3-mozilla.iso from
http://mymirrors.homelinux.org/puppy/

took about 3 minutes at 310 MBs

i checked puppy-1.0.3-mozilla.iso.txt on the same site ... it has the same md5sum as ibiblio

i checked the md5sum of the iso ... it matches the md5sum in the md5sum txt file, and ibilio's md5sum, and the md5sum of the iso that i used to install the version of Puppy i'm using at this moment

it's possible to change a file so that it will give the same md5sum ... but rather unlikely

the file i downloaded has exactly the same number of bytes as the iso i downloaded from ibiblio and installed and have been running since 1.0.3 came out

in other words, i see nothing wrong with the iso on Hugh Chow's mirror

i always check the md5sum of iso's i download ... i never assume it downloaded properly ... sometimes things do not download properly ... that's why i have my dotpups automatically check the md5sums of the files in the dotpup

wetterau seems to be saying that he burned and booted Puppy, it didn't boot properly, and his Win 2000 didn't work right after

if Puppy booted normally, i don't think it should have touched his hard drive at all, if it was ntfs

if the iso was corrupted, or if the cd did not burn properly, something strange might have happened ... but that would not be the fault of the software, whether it was Puppy or RedHat or Windows ... because whatever you are running, it is not Puppy or RedHat or Windows ... it's whatever instructions exist on the corrupted cd

it sounds like:

1) he booted a corrupted cd, which may have changed the data on the hard drive (a corrupt cd could do anything ... by definition, a corrupt cd is not running the programs that are supposed to be on the cd)

2) the file system on the Windows drive was already screwed up (in my experience, very common) and needed scandisking ... all Puppy should do is write to 1 file, but any writing by any program can be enough to cause problems if the file system is already damaged

3) Puppy could have created a pup001 file on an ntfs drive when it was not supposed to ... but he said Puppy did not boot properly and froze ... which sounds more like a corrupt cd to me

4) a virus or trojan attacked the Windows os ... i suspect this is more likely than anything Puppy would have done

Puppy only makes use of 1 file on a computer's hard drive ... sometimes it doesn't even do that ... it certainly does not touch any other part of Windows ... eg., it does not touch Windows registry

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#6 Post by Ian »

You will need the Win CD that you installed Win2K from or if it came preinstalled, the recovery image that was supplied with the machine.

You should be able to do an upgrade if you have the full version otherwise you will have to get in touch with the people you purchased it from.

There is a simple way to find out if your Puppy disk is corrupt, take the hard drive out of your machine and boot from the Puppy CD again and see what happens.

If it works ok you could try booting the CD with the hard drive installed again and see the results.

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Kennels secure

#7 Post by Lobster »

OK kennels are secure 8)

Many thanks to wetterau, Flash, Ian and GuestToo

I think we have to be careful that our mirrors are reliable - good to know they are. Let us know how you get on wetterau :)

In my official capacity (Lobster places a saucepan on his head to give himself an air of authority) I now declare this emergency over.

Phew - back to being frisky . . . and chasing butterflies . . .

:)
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stokey

#8 Post by stokey »

You say "The program took over in an eastern European language"

Do I understand that to mean when you ran the Puppy CD it straight away spewed out garbage When Puppy boots normally a lot of preliminary info is displayed on the screen Did you see any of that info?
Did you run the Puppy CD immediately after you burned it or did you or anybody else use the Computer in question before if so doing what?
I know this may sound stupid but it WAS the Puppy CD you to tried to boot from
It happens so often that people burn a CD forget to label it then then stick in some other CD they have burned and you know the saying "It worked fine the other day"
Whatever you do don't destroy the Puppy CD you burned it is absolutely essential to find out if the CD is bad or not
Puppy experts on this Forum have and will no doubt give you more info on fixing your problem

Finaly on a lighter note you didn't by any chance travel to Eastern Europe when you were away !!!

wetterau

hijacking

#9 Post by wetterau »

Thanks to all for your suggestions. Much appreciated. Still working on the problem. I was able to run the puppy 1.0.3 Moz iso on my thinkpad. The display was barely readable (cuz no frame buffer), but I was able to ascertain that puppy was working fine. I did notice that there is a keyboard choice that begins with AZ? When I ran the CD on the Windows box, the display was very poor (probably because of a 17 inch LCD with Nvidia card) and I may have inadvertently entered through the keyboard choice, taking the az default. That might explain the problem, although I don't know why rebooting from the hd doesn't solve it. Puppy doesn't, shouldn't affect any settings permanently. It is possible that in the confusion, I further messed up some files on the windows hd. I don't know. At the moment, it won't boot windows. It begins with the usual memory check start up displays in the strange language, and I can't change anything. Nor will it boot puppy 1.0.3; it just keeps trying to load windows and freezes. I may have picked up a virus but it seems unlikely. The system was working perfectly until I loaded pup, and I have zonealarm pro and macafee virus protection. Will continue trying to sort this out and report back. My present hunch is that the trouble began with a strange monitor on the windows box and a puppy default keyboard choice in a different language. I know I chose not to write to hd when I ran pup the first time. I was being extra careful. Thanks again for your help.

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#10 Post by nduanetesh »

Hi,

When you say, "It begins with the usual memory check start up displays in the strange language, and I can't change anything. Nor will it boot puppy 1.0.3; it just keeps trying to load windows and freezes." are you referring to the memory check that occurs *right* after you turn your computer on? As in, you hit your power button, your computer beeps, the display comes on, and you're looking at a memory check which counts a number up really fast (to check your ram)? Is is the text around that memory check that is in some crazy foreign language? Or is it only when windows starts to boot that the crazy foreign language starts?

If the problem is right at the very instant you start your computer, then it seems this issue is not a hard drive/windows problem. i would guess that your CMOS battery failed (very coincidentally) at the time you were trying to boot puppy...and now some of your bios settings have changed or maybe all of them are at their defaults. This confuses W2K (which is trying to load drivers for new/different hardware settings at boot) so badly that it can't boot and it freezes.

So, before I keep blathering on about how to fix this, let me know if I'm right. Do you see crazy other-language text immediately after you turn the computer on, or not until you actually start to boot into windows?

ND

wetterau

hijacked

#11 Post by wetterau »

Immediately on power up. Other language from the first moment. I hadn't thought of the cmos battery. That's a good idea. I'm thinking about disconnecting the hd and seeing if pup will boot, but probably I should try and replace the battery first. Couldn't hurt (if I can find one locally). Thanks.

wetterau

hijacked machine

#12 Post by wetterau »

Hi, still struggling with hijacked machine. My cmos battery tested fine. Immediately on power up, a beep, and then the memory check in Czech or whatever the language is (iec = yes, ni = no). If I get into the setup routine, everything is in the mystery language and the keyboard has been remapped in various ways that are hard to figure out--pressing one key causes other keys to behave differently. If I put in a CD like Simply Mepis, the system bypasses booting from the CD and tries to boot up W2K from the hd and freezes part way. If I unplug the hd, I can get Simply Mepis to load; it has a choice F3 for English and it recognizes my nvidia driven monitor. But I don't know how to reset the language choice in the system. If I logout of Simply Mepis, I get put right back into CzechLand. So, any suggestions to this strange condition? I'm fairly sure it happened when puppy was not able to display on my monitor but was running and I chose a wrong language by mistake, in the dark as it were. I've never been in Eastern Europe. Maybe this is telling me something. Any ideas, anyone? How can I get my machine back? I even tried installing a W98 system, and it came up Czech. I have a Toms Rootboot floppy, but no floppy drive on this box. There must be some way to get it back to English.

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#13 Post by peppyy »

Can you get to your bios setup screen? from what I have been able to google your keyboard layput can cause problems like this. If these settings are changed it can depending on the machine change the display.

Did you change the boot order in the bios just before this happened?

Is there a chance that you might have changed another setting while navigating through the menus to change the boot order?

If it is not a setting in the bios then puppy should boot in english.
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#14 Post by nduanetesh »

Can you give us some info on what BIOS you're using (or the specific make and model of the machine, or the motherboard). Someone with similar bios might be able to help you through the process of resetting your language. From what you've described, this is almost certainly a bios setting problem. Although how yours got changed, I don't know. As far as I know, it's impossible for puppy to change a setting in your bios...

ND

wetterau

hijacked solved

#15 Post by wetterau »

Thank you all for your suggestions. I was completely full of sh*t (not unusual) about the cause of this strange problem. Puppy is innocent! Somehow, at the moment I was trying Puppy (and not getting any display cuz of Nvidia card), the Nvidia card went weird in a manner that made all the displays look as though they were in Czech or Turkish. I couldn't find Iec for yes and ni for no in any dictionary! No one could identify the language cuz it only existed on my machine. I was about to buy a floppy drive so I could flash the BIOS when I remembered another simpler video card in a box in the cellar. Swapped video cards and everything worked perfectly. The strange thing is that the keyboard swappings were consistent. I don't know what happened but it wasn't Puppy's fault. Thanks again. John

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#16 Post by Flash »

Thank you for taking the trouble to finish off this thread. :)

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boost the amount of ram in a machine

#17 Post by Lobster »

wetterau wrote:. Puppy is innocent! Somehow, at the moment I was trying Puppy (and not getting any display cuz of Nvidia card), the Nvidia card went weird in a manner that made all the displays look as though they were in Czech or Turkish.
Fascinating.
The video Bios boots up before the computers main bios (you have to display the bios)

Glad we sorted out this whole situation. I was wondering (might need a new thread) if using a cheap graphic card with 64 to 128 meg of video ram (are second hand cheopo 256 ram cards available as PCI or AGP yet?) can boost the amount of ram in a machine?

In other words doing the reverse of some machines which take video ram from the main ram. Could we make use of the ram in a video card?

If so a dedicated Puppy hardware machine might have some PAWltry[sic] amount of Ram but super fast ram in the graphic section . . .

Maybe someone will Czech (check)?
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Re: boost the amount of ram in a machine

#18 Post by ezeze5000 »

Fascinating.
The video Bios boots up before the computers main bios (you have to display the bios)

Glad we sorted out this whole situation. I was wondering (might need a new thread) if using a cheap graphic card with 64 to 128 meg of video ram (are second hand cheopo 256 ram cards available as PCI or AGP yet?) can boost the amount of ram in a machine?

In other words doing the reverse of some machines which take video ram from the main ram. Could we make use of the ram in a video card?

If so a dedicated Puppy hardware machine might have some PAWltry[sic] amount of Ram but super fast ram in the graphic section . . .

Maybe someone will Czech (check)?[/quote]

Man this is a radical idea!
Think how much faster puppy could run, and boot?
possably 2 to 3 times faster.
think of the possibilities for small intigrated single board puppys, using
the very fast video ram :D

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What can you compile in your graphics card?

#19 Post by Lobster »

http://gamma.cs.unc.edu/GPUSORT/

The sub $100 PC will be rather efficient
that means fast and reliable and therefore of use
in more places than the intended market

Another possibility is the playstation 3 from Sony which will be available with Linux on a seperate HD. Anyone know which Linux?

Maybe Sony are still looking for that Puppy?

:)
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