Efinditnow

One of the things I’ve always liked about using Linux is the feeling that my input is actually important. Either by way of giving input to the developers directly or (more importantly) reporting bugs that inevitably appear on a system. It’s the latter of the two that help Linux (as a whole) to take great strides forward. Without a community of users and developers to report problems, the operating system would stagnate.

But to the new user, these bugs are nothing more than a nuisance, getting in the way of things “just working”. Those new users need help in understanding that bugs in Linux should be reported to the developers. But how do you do it? A new user isn’t going to be savvy enough to run a backtrace on a segfaulting piece of software.  In this article I am going to attempt to help the new user to see how easy it can be to report bugs as well as how and/or where to report them.

What is a “bug”?

I would venture a guess that most everyone viewing this site knows what a “bug” is, in reference to computer software. But just in case you don’t…

When referring to a “bug” on a computer, it is always referring to a software bug. This means that somewhere, within the code, there is a problem that can only be resolved by fixing the code (there are, of course, exceptions.) In Linux you will find bugs will show up in strange ways. Sometimes a program simply won’t start. Or some times a program will start but give you an error (sometimes a rather saucy error).

It’s when a program doesn’t launch that bugs become really problematic. Why? How do you know what is going on? The first, and best, way to figure this out is by launching the program from the command line (instead of the menu).  This will often give you some indication as to what is going on. From this “indication” you can often google the error and find a resolution. But what happens if you find no resolution? That is when tools come in to play.

Linux bug tools

The first tool many developers will want you to use is strace. This application is a way to run a buggy piece of software and get returned a log file that is very helpful to developers. So when you have a piece of software that will not start (say it exits with a segmentation fault) you can start the application using strace like so:

strace -o OUTPUT_FILE /PATH/TO/EXECUTABLE

Where OUTPUT_FILE is the file you want to output the debug info to and /PATH/TO/EXECUTABLE is the explicit path to the executable file. NOTE: You MUST use the complete (explicit) path to the executable or the program will not execute.

The file containing the debug info is precious manna for developers trying to squash bugs in software. Attaching it to bug reports is more helpful than anything.

Most distributions have specific web sites dedicated to reporting bugs. For example: Ubuntu uses Launchpad for bug reporting. Red Hat uses Bugzilla for bug reporting. OpenSuSE has their own bug reporting site. If you are interested in helping make your favorite distribution better, make sure you know the site for reporting bugs.

There are also tools, like BugBuddy, that are useful for reporting bugs (which I will address in a later article).

Final thoughts

The single most important issue with reporting bugs is to make sure you collect as much information about the bug as possible. Armed with that information, you will be a big help to the developers of the application and that bug will get squashed.

By Jack Wallen

If you are a very observant – or cautious – PayPal user you might have noticed that several connection requests are made that are to other domains that are not paypal.com. This can be extremely worrying to users considering that malicious software and attackers also use these kinds of connections for their evil doings.

If you analyze the connections that PayPal makes you notice that the site makes two connections to elements on the domain paypal.112.2o7.net which looks on first glance like a phishing website. The two elements are the smallest in size (both are 43 Bytes) but seem to take the longest to transfer.

The very long url of these requests seems to transfer data about the computer system. It contains the screen resolution and browser plugins among other data which might be even more cause for concern. If you open paypal.112.2o7.net directly you are greeted with an almost blank page.

Not found does not sound good as well. Omniture on the other hand will give many webmasters a clue. It is a service that analyses traffic and it seems that PayPal is one of their customers which is confirmed by a press release on the Omniture website.

The way the data is handled, especially the cryptic url paypal.112.2o7.net can cause concern by users. PayPal should consider changing that url so that the request will come from a PayPal server and not that url.

By Martin

Backups should be an important part of every computer user’s disaster recovery strategy so that important data can be recovered after hardware crashes, virus attacks or accidentally deletions. Backup tools can be divided into general backup software that backup all files and folders that a user wants to backup and specialized backup programs that backup specific software or files.

Opera Backup is a specific tool as it can be used to backup the Opera 10 web browser.  The program interface is in English but the help file and developer website is not which makes it a bit complicated to configure. From what we could gather the backup process is driven by a file called backup.ini which defines what will be backed up and what will be excluded from the backup.

Besides the option to edit the backup.ini directly the different elements can also be selected by clicking in the Items button.

Both the backup and restore backup option are available in the same interface with backup being selected by default. A click on Restore backup will open a file browser to restore a previously created Opera backup.

All installed Opera versions can be selected in the second step. The installed widgets can also be selected for backup. Users with portable Opera browsers can use the define folders option to pick and backup these browsers as well.

Backups are compressed by default as ob, zip or 7z files. The compression ratio can be changed in the file menu at the top of the backup software.

Opera Backup can be downloaded from the developer’s website. It is compatible with Opera 10 only and can be installed on Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7 computer systems.

An alternative to Opera Backup is the multi-browser backup software FavBackup which can also be used to backup Opera as well as other browsers.

By Martin

Whenever I’m thinking of building a new PC I’m starting the selection process months earlier. I begin with an analysis of the needs, something that is often forgotten by users. What will the computer be used for? Will it be a gaming PC, office, photo manipulation, server or all purpose PC? What connectors do I need? Someone with a digital camera that connects via Firewire for instance should make sure that the PC has Firewire. The same is true for other elements like USB or eSATA.

The PC that I want to build for instance has to be an all purpose PC. It should be able to run the latest games but it will mostly be used for work. The PC should be as silent as possible without running to hot. The operating system will be Windows 7 64-bit. It should support USB 3.0 which has been released some time ago and will become the new standard to connect USB devices.

I have decided to divide the article into different parts to be able to concentrate on specific hardware and why I have chosen them. We begin with the selection of the CPU, motherboard and RAM, the core components of a computer.

Build Your Own PC: CPU

PC users have a wide selection of CPUs. It basically comes down to the two manufacturers AMD and Intel who both produce processors for lots of different purposes. We are looking for a desktop cpu which means that we will concentrate our search on those. Top of the line CPUs are usually to expensive for their performance gain over the rest of the CPU lineup (unless you have the cash lying around).

This basically leaves two options: An Intel Core-i7, Core-i5 or an AMD Phenom II X4. It is now time to use the Internet or computer magazines to find benchmarks and reviews of those CPUs. You can use many hardware shops like Newegg, CPU Benchmarks or Tomshardware as well as many other sites for that.

You will end up with a few CPUs that would make a good selection: Intel Core i7-860, Intel Core i7-920, Intel Core i5-750 or AMD Phenom II X4 965 BE. The final selection now is not only determined by the performance but also the price and quality of the CPU. The AMD CPU is cheaper than all Intel CPUs. It’s performance is lower than the Intel CPU performance but it should be sufficient for all computing tasks.

The Intel Core i7-860 is the fastest Intel CPU in this field but also the most expensive one, we are talking about a difference of €100 here.

• My Selection: Intel Core i7-860
• Alternative: AMD Phenom II X4 965 BE

Build Your Own PC: Motherboard

The selected CPU leads directly to the motherboard that we need. The Intel Core i7-860 needs an LGA-1156 CPU socket type  motherboard. We use our needs and wishes that we came up with earlier in this step. The motherboard needs to offer all the connectors that we need, e.g. Firewire, which makes the selection process easier for us as we need to find and evaluate only those motherboards that support all the features that we need.

What should the motherboard offer?

• Minimum number of memory slots: 4
• CPU: At least Intel Core i7-860
• Memory: At least DDR3 1600
• USB 3.0
• Onboard Lan: 1000/100/10
• Onboard Sounds: Indifferent
• Onboard Video: No
• SLI: No
• SATA 3 GB/s: At least six
• Raid: No
• Other Connectors: Not needed

This may obviously look different when you build your own PC. It is again important to make an initial selection of 2-3 motherboards that offer what you are looking for. The next step is very important. Perform a search for that motherboard on the Internet and add keywords like problem, error, or help to it. Take a look at those posts and the number of them to see how likely it is that you might run into troubles.

The Gigabyte GA-P55-USB3 is one of the few motherboards that support USB 3.0 right now. It is not as expensive as many other  motherboards that offer USB 3.0 (costs $120).  The other motherboards that I have taken a look at are the  MSI P55-GD85 which retails for about $220 which has a surprisingly similar configuration to the Gigabyte motherboard and the ASUS P7H57D-V EVO for $200 which is the only one of the three with an HDMI port.

The Gigabyte GA-P55-USB3 offers everything that I need plus it is roughly $100 cheaper than the rest of the motherboards. That’s enough to make it my pick in the motherboard category.

My Selection:

• GIGABYTE GA-P55-USB3

Build Your Own PC: RAM

The selection of the motherboard determines the RAM – or computer memory – that we can use. We also need to determine at this point if we want more than 4 Gigabytes of RAM. We would need a 64-bit operating system if we do.

We do need DDR3 RAM (to be precise 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM)  as this is the computer memory supported by our motherboard. We also need dual-channel or quad-channel and not triple-channel RAM as we have selected the Core i7-860 cpu. This means that we either need to shop for 4 Gigabytes of RAM or a factor of that (8, 12 or 16 which is the maximum supported by the motherboard).

It does not really make sense to buy less than 4 Gigabytes as it would limit the PC’’s performance. Avid gamers or those that run applications that need as fast RAM as they can get might want to take a look at overclocked RAM or RAM that can be overclocked nicely. I usually stay away from that RAM though as the performance gains usually do not justify the price increase. The motherboard supports up to DDR3-2200.

My Selection

• CORSAIR XMS3 8GB (4 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 ($270)
• G.SKILL Trident 8GB (4 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 2000 (if you want faster) ($290)

This was the first part of the Build your own PC February edition. I hope you enjoyed this as much as I do. Leave a comment if you have questions or suggestions.

By Martin