hardware monitoring at the most basic level …
 

On Wed 22 Aug 2012 at 15:18:31 -0400, Albretch Mueller wrote:

> How do you get periodic snapshots of your running hardware?

I don't usually bother, but a reboot and a glance at dmesg can be enough.

> My box started to shutdown by itself and I doubt it is related to
> overheating (in a random and plain physical way) so I changed it for
> another one because I didn’t have time for troubleshooting/fixing at
> this moment but then the same thing started to happen to the other box

Have you got time now? Or will you move on to a third machine?

> What I notice is that for no obvious apparent reason the CPU taxes to
> the max and the box starts revving wildly

Is overheating complelely ruled out?

> I use different live CDs based on linux debian and I am very careful
> in order to avoid the regular bs out there

bs?

> I would like to periodically test the underlying hardware as low as
> possible to the bare metal, because if something is messing with your
> OS it will be harder for you to notice anything

Nothing messes with Debian.

> Any best practices and tips you would share?

Install Debian.


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hardware monitoring at the most basic level …
 

>> How do you get periodic snapshots of your running hardware?

>I don't usually bother, but a reboot and a glance at dmesg can be enough.

Sometimes they aren't, at least in my case most times they aren't ;-)

>> My box started to shutdown by itself and I doubt it is related to
>> overheating (in a random and plain physical way) so I changed it for
>> another one because I didn’t have time for troubleshooting/fixing at
>> this moment but then the same thing started to happen to the other box

>Have you got time now? Or will you move on to a third machine?

This is the third machine that just dies -exactly the same- in less
than two weeks. All of a sudden they stop booting up. I can not
entertain the illusion of moving on to a new box, because I may have
to spend money on a server + other matters ... So I must have
time/make sense instead of dealing with it with "money" ;-)

>> What I notice is that for no obvious apparent reason the CPU taxes to
>> the max and the box starts revving wildly

>Is overheating complelely ruled out?

Well, the "physics" of it is easy. I:

1) disconnected the machine from the Internet
2) took apart the CPU/heat sink to clean it thoroughly (scrubbed off
the old and glued them together with new thermal paste)
3) checked the mobo for anything abnormal, resetting the memory modules, ...
4) reset the CMOS (I had to because I was getting 5-beep CPU/memory
errors, even though everything seemed to be fine)

the box then booted nicely (almost totally silently)

5) I ran then memtest for hours (6 passes) and no memory errors were
detected whatsoever
6) SMART says disks are just fine and I don't hear any abnormal noises ...

but then once you connect your box to the Internet you start "having
problems" even if you use a live CD and do not mount any drives while
connected to the Internet

>> I use different live CDs based on linux debian and I am very careful
>> in order to avoid the regular bs out there

>bs?

with "regular bs" I meant script kiddies and such. I even run my
browser without javascript enabled, nor do I waste my time on "social
networking" places ... Basically all I do is my own research and
coding, but then I have constant arguments with my ISP because my
connection to the Internet is very slow or, like right now, I have
been without access to the Internet (my own I pay for) for 3 weeks!!!
and also the same thing "happens" with my telephone line, when I go to
use public Internet access in public libraries ... ;-)

I show to my ISP tcpdump logs which timing and protocol negotiation,
which unless you are God you can't possibly make up, as evidence that
it is not a hw or sw problem on my side ... but they start giving you
sh!t and things don't get solved

>> I would like to periodically test the underlying hardware as low as
>> possible to the bare metal, because if something is messing with your
>> OS it will be harder for you to notice anything

>Nothing messes with Debian.

Nothing, really? Well, the US has quietly become a police state and
they are monitoring pretty much everyone's movement (from a technical
point of view almost literally (most people don't know their cell
phones are tracking their geo locations with centimetric precision,
what they talk about, with whom ... and that what they talk/write
about is being staged in all encompassing snitching corpora real time
...))

Now if they think you need to get "normed" because you are saying
something they don't like, even if written as a poem,

http://hsymbolicus.wordpress.com/category/poems/ (lies ...)

mapping and tracking you is not enough (let alone knowing you are not
some criminal by any standard), they create a virtual prison around
you and start harassing you non-stop, without charges or anything (and
that includes sending letters to employers telling them you are some
bad nigger that has been black listed by the FBI).

A la Orson Wells 1984 you are not complying with newstalk so you need
to get "normed" ;-) ... It is not enough for them controlling/dumbing
down the masses with media cr@p. They want to actually play God and
control everything down to eveyone of us on an individual level ...

Now, how does all that cr@p relate to debian?

I have been thinking about developing a version of Debian live that
would make very easy for people to monitor on their own and document
when their telephones are being messed with, when the police is
creating noises in your apartment (including nasty high frequency ones
based on magnetic lobes) to sleep deprive you (which is a form of
torture) ... it is a "Quis-custodiet-ipsos-custodes?" thing

>> Any best practices and tips you would share?

>Install Debian.

In the version of Debian live I am fancying about, it would, as part
of booting, make sure that the BIOS hasn't been changed, it would boot
and configure itself to certain hardware profiles only (of machines
you have decided, otherwise it would warn you ...), it would have some
internal, vertical monitoring of processes with timing so that stack
sequences are kept in some Bayesian network, it would only mount
devices you own ...

the reason why I talk about this here (even though I know you may
find quite off-topic all of this and may feel foreign to "political"
issue (I do, too! but still ...)) is because that should be a cultured
development, not just something someone does for him/herself

thanks
lbrtcthx


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hardware monitoring at the most basic level …
 

OK, I got inquisitor 3.1beta2 and I will try it on my boxes, but
honestly I think there has been quite of "paradigm shift" and I
couldn't see how it covers the kinds of "use cases" (let's call it
that ;-)) that I mentioned. BTW, have you thought of including DTrace?

The assumptions that initially justified, say, knoppix' functional
niche have changed nowadays. How could you protect yourself (at least
being conscious of it to the point of being able to easily
gauge/sense/prove it to some extent and manage those kinds of (as NYPD
Commissioner Raymond Kelly calls them)) "lawful efforts" without going
mad? (which is what they want) How could you, for example, protect
yourself from a black bag job inside your apartment to reset the BIOS
in your boxes and routers to then remotely own them or not even that
but doing it through your ISP? (which in the US, like any other
business, must all submit to snitching)

Of course, my work-hose box is not connected to the Internet at all
but I was using a KVM box to just share the monitor and "things"
started happening real soon and the KVM box started to malfunction ...
there is not a box I have own that I remember that hasn't had sound
card problems ... Once I watched a youtube feed in which some dude
showed how you can monitor "noise" in your telephone lines using Linux
... those are the kinds of things I have in mind

Say you go to a public library and each time you try to
unsuccessfully connect to the Internet for more than one minute you
get kicked off, then you switch to WEP hacking spoofing your MAC
address as a way to prove that "it is about you". There are provisions
in the law that address cases in which the only way you have to prove
a greater wrong is doing something "illegal" as long as there is no
criminal intention and no harmful consequences whatsoever and you
obviously and visibly do it to prove your point in front of their own
clerks, who have told me "support" would not take their calls if other
people are online just fine ...

>> A la Orson Wells 1984
> You mean George Orwell

I actually did

lbrtchx


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