Mi sarebbe tanto piaciuto intitolare l’articolo “Riparare i danni causati da Aruba”, ma alla fine ho deciso di non addossare la colpa a loro ma alle “intrusioni”, anche se probabilmente non è proprio così. Ma non voglio iniziare a criticare nessuno all’interno di questo post, mi sono già lamentato abbastanza nei giorni passati. Oggi voglio invece aiutare tutti i clienti Aruba, che come me, si sono ritrovati con il proprio sito Web infettato o ancora peggio ritenuto dannoso per gli internauti.

I passi da seguire per ripristinare il proprio portale sono pochi e molto semplici, applicabili da chiunque abbia un pò di praticità informatica. Le operazioni da eseguire sono:

• Eliminare il codice malevole dal proprio sito Web.
• Effettuare una scansione del proprio computer con un software antivirus.
• Richiedere una nuova analisi del proprio portale da parte di Google.
• Effettuare un cambio password del proprio account FTP.

Come primo punto è fondamentale iniziare a rimuovere il codice malevole dal proprio sito Web. Per fare ciò generalmente basta scaricare all’interno del proprio computer tutto il contenuto del proprio CMS caricato all’interno dello spazio Ftp e procedere ad una scansione Antivirus. Generalmente la stringa da eliminare è la seguente:

Se volete fare un lavoro pulito vi consiglio di installare nuovamente da capo il vostro sistema CMS. Effettuata questa prima operazione è importante effettuare una scansione del proprio computer, poichè molto probabilmente vi si sarà installato un malware che tenterà di intercettare i vostri dati di accesso Ftp, per poi successivamente infettare anche i vostri siti Web con lo stesso codice.

Vediamo adesso come richiedere una nuova analisi del proprio sito da parte di Google. Recatevi all’interno della sezione “Centro Webmaster Google” e, nel caso in cui non lo abbiate già fatto, procedete alla verifica dell’autore del vostro sito Web, operazione che vi permetterà di identificarvi come proprietario e di accedere alla funzione che in questo momento ci intaressa, ovvero “Diagnostica”.

Una volta entrati nella scheda della diagnostica procedete in “Malware” e dopodichè premete su “Richiedi nuova analisi da parte di Google”. Entro 24 ore Google passerà nuovamente a controllare il vostro sito Web e se ritenuto “pulito” verrà eliminato dalla lista dei siti Web considerati come pericolosi.

Da: Riparare ai danni causati dalle intrusioni Aruba – Luca Mercatanti.

There are many reasons why working on Linux has advantages, but for web developers, it should be a no-brainer, but just in case you really need reasons here are just a few of the main ones.
The main feature Linux boasts that makes it better suited for web development over any other Operating System is the fact your local apache server has the same setup as your live hosting. Even without this, the benefits of using Linux over Windows or Mac OS are massive. I’ll go through the main advantages with you in this article.

Spending less time worrying about problems

As Web Developers spend a lot of time on the Internet, whether its checking emails, working on twitter or downloading the latest patches for software you use. It’s nice to know your pc, and all the important work on it is save. When using Windows and even a Mac to an extent you can install Antivirus, anti-spyware and anti adware on your computer to have any chance of making sure its safe from the threats that come with using the internet these days. And even then, that is a lot of trust to be putting in the hands of a 3rd party company.

A real life, proper server to test on

When working on a site, many web developers work on a local development server before transferring it over to their live site. This enables them to test everything before it goes live. Any computer with a browser can view locally stored html files, although if you work with php in any form, you’ll need a server with php supported (guess what you can do that locally on the Linux box as well!).

Both Windows and Mac can be setup to run as a local server, although these have totally different setups from over 70% of all online servers, which run on Linux Machines.

When running Linux on your PC you can have a fully functioning web server on your computer with the exact same setup as your live site.
How to install Lamp on Ubuntu

Save Money

You don’t need to spend big bucks to have the latest and best Linux running on your computer. Licencing is non-existent as Linux is Open Source.You’ll be able to easily find a linux distro that will run on nearly any PC made within the last 10 years, possibly more if you really want to.

Instead of spending money on the applications you use, you can get something suitable for free, which can be installed in minutes without any hassle once you get past the relatively easy learning curve. And as Linux is open source it means that anyone who is interested can help out with the code, just like what happens with WordPress!

It’s Yours: Web Developers love Open Source Software

It’s a fact that a majority of our community love Open Source software. Most of US believe that software should not be under proprietary license. So why use a software which is not open source. Linux is open source and you are free to do anything with the code. Change it, rip it, sell it whatever you want to do with it. Just keep it open source. 🙂

5 great free Linux Web Development Applications

Gedit

Comes as default with most Linux distributions, is a great simple no frills text editor which its quite popular for coding. Has syntax and tab support.
jEdit

Another text editor, though more advanced. This truly is a programmers text editors.
KompoZer

Kompozer is a great free wysiwyg web editor. Another similar software is Amaya which is a great free Web editor started by the WC3.

Aptana

Offers a full web development environment producing html, css and JavaScript.

Despite what some people believe browsing on the web using Linux is the exact same (apart from being allot safer). You can use all the big browsers apart from Safari, and I’ll also point out that all the addons work as they should no matter what Operating system you are running.

Lamp (Linux, Apache, MySql & PHP )

One I’ve already mentioned: The package LAMP, an anagram of Linux, Apache, MySql and PHP provides a fully working server which is the same package 90% of all websites run on. Great for offline development too!

Note: I haven’t linked to the above few programmes a I recommend you download them with your system installer.

For a great sized list showing some brilliant Linux Applications head over to 101 Most Useful Open-Source Apps for Small Business.

Designing on Linux

Designing on Linux is also a lot better than what people seem to think. By default many distributions include the programme Gimp, which although not exactly as detailed as Photoshop, it defiantly does pack a punch.

Other programmes that are great for designing are:

Inkscape

An Open Source vector graphics editor, with capabilities similar to Illustrator, CorelDraw, or Xara X, using the W3C standard Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) file format.

OpenOffice Draw
From the OpenOffice package offers the ability to draw anything from a quick simple design to detailed complex designs

It’s also possible if you don’t want to use any of the great Linux alternatives  to get Photoshop working on Linux using Wine.

Photoshop CS2 on Linux with Wine

And if there is a Windows programme that you can find for Linux then you can more than likely get it installed on Linux using Wine (Free) or Crossover (from €37.00 ) though crossover is more aimed at playing Windows games on Linux.

As an alternative if you do have a reasonably fast PC with sufficient ram you could use a virtual machine  (VIRTUAL BOX) and have a couple of flavours of Windows on it (licensing is the issue here, but you are just testing) and then check if IE7 and 8 (and IE6 for about 20% of the web users) can access your site. More importantly you can then see how badly these will mangle your code and what fixes you have to make.

Linux is suitable for everyone

A common misconception is that you need to be a big tech person or geek to use Linux, although this is true with some distributions such as Arch Linux, with the dawn of new distro’s like Ubuntu, you can have a fully working Computer with a few clicks and 15 – 20 mins of your time.

You can even use Wubi: the Ubuntu installer to install Ubuntu with a single click from Windows.

Helpful Readings:

• Offical Ubuntu Installation Guide
• Dual Boot Windows 7 and Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx
• Ubuntu 10.04 Post-Install Guide: What to do and try after installing Lucid Lynx!
• Installing Apps in Ubuntu

Because of licensing issues, Ubuntu is unable to play MP3s out of the box. We’ll show you how to play MP3s and other restricted file formats in about four mouse clicks.

The philosophy behind Ubuntu is that software should be free and accessible to all. Whether MP3 and other file formats are free is unclear in many countries, so Ubuntu does not include software to read these file formats by default.

Fortunately, it does include a package that installs the most commonly used file formats all at once, including a Flash plugin for Firefox.

Note: These instructions are for Ubuntu 10.04. There are small differences for earlier versions of Ubuntu. Continue reading →

Ubuntu adopted the new version of the Grub boot manager in version 9.10, getting rid of the old problematic menu.lst. Today we look at how to change the boot menu options in Grub2.

Grub2 is a step forward in a lot of ways, and most of the annoying menu.lst issues from the past are gone. Still, if you’re not vigilant with removing old versions of the kernel, the boot list can still end up being longer than it needs to be. Continue reading →

Users who are new to Ubuntu might find it somewhat difficult to configure. Today we take a look at using Ubuntu Control Center which makes managing different aspects of the system easier.

About Ubuntu Control Center

A lot of utilities and software has been written to work with Ubuntu. Ubuntu Control Center is one such cool utility which makes it easy for configuring Ubuntu. The following is a brief description of Ubuntu Control Center:

Ubuntu Control Center or UCC is an application inspired by Mandriva Control Center and aims to centralize and organize in a simple and intuitive form the main configuration tools for Ubuntu distribution. UCC uses all the native applications already bundled with Ubuntu, but it also utilize some third-party apps like “Hardinfo”, “Boot-up Manager”, “GuFW” and “Font-Manager”.

Ubuntu Control Center

Here we look at installation and use of Ubuntu Control Center in Ubuntu 10.04.

First we have to satisfy some dependencies. You will need to install Font-Manager and jstest-gtk (link below)…before installing Ubuntu Control Center (UCC). Click the Install Package button. Continue reading →

If you’re a Windows Home Server user, there may be times when you need to access it from an Ubuntu machine on your network. Today we take a look at the process of accessing files on your home server from Ubuntu.

Note: In this example we’re using Windows Home Server with PowerPack 3, and Ubuntu 10.04 running on a home network.

Access WHS from Ubuntu

To access files on your home server from Ubuntu, click on Places then select Network.

You should now see your home server listed in the Network folder as well as other Windows machines…double-click the server to access it. Continue reading →

Cloning a hard drive is useful, but what if you have to make several copies, or you just want to make a complete backup of a hard drive? Drive images let you put everything, and we mean everything, from your hard drive in one big file.

With an Ubuntu Live CD, this is a simple process – the versatile tool dd can do this for us right out of the box.

Continue reading →