Setting up a Non-Root User on Backtrack 4

Traditionally one of the most dangerous practices surrounding UNIX is using the root account as your normal user account. This is the default under Backtrack and here's how to fix it so you only use Root when you need to:

1. Open a Konsole session.

2. Type: adduser username.

3. You will be asked a series of questions along with setting your password.

4. Once the account is created, type: cp -rf /root/.kde* /home/username.

6. Type: chown -R username:username /home/username to overwrite any of root's perms that may have copied over.

5. Edit the /etc/group file with your editor of choice and add username to the admin and audio groups.

6. Logout and back in with the new account and you should be good to go.

Step #4 will copy all of the application menu's that have links to the Backtrack programs so you don't loose them. Enjoy.

Turbo Mode SSH Logins

If your like me and have to logon to multiple Linux/UNIX systems by means of SSH, manually entering a password for each logon session can be a pain. The procedure below will enable you to run all of your SSH sessions password free.

We will use what is termed as public-key SSH authentication and the first thing that we need to do is to generate our public/private keypair. Open a shell prompt and type in the command:

$ ssh-keygen -t rsa

This will produce the output of:

Generating public/private rsa key pair.
Enter file in which to save the key (/home/monk/.ssh/id_rsa):

Just press through all of the prompts. This creates two files, ~/.ssh/id_rsa and ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub. To use this keypair on a server try this:

$ ssh server "mkdir .ssh; chmod 0700 .ssh"
$ scp .ssh/id_rsa.pub server:.ssh/authorized_keys2

You will be prompted for your password after each command and you'll need to substitute "server" with the actual hostname of the system that you want to connect to. After running these two commands you will not be prompted for a password.

There have been security concerns raised over the safety of this, but you have the same problem with passwords. Someone would have to compromise your account and gain access to your private key. I would also recommend incorporating a mandatory access control system on the private key such as Apparmor or SELinux, but that will be the subject of another post.

Holy Meditations

My eyes stay open through the watches of the night, that I may meditate on your promises. (Ps 119:148)


Perhaps one of the most neglected disciplines in the Christian life these days is that of Meditation. I believe that very few Christians have been taught how important it is to pay close attention to what they think about.
Consider the following:


Watch your thoughts; they become words.
Watch your words; they become actions.
Watch your actions; they become habits.
Watch your habits; they become character.
Watch your character; it becomes your destiny.

Death is not Natural

City of God - Book 13 - Part 6

Of the evil of death in general, considered as the separation of soul and body

Wherefore, as regards bodily death, that is, the separation of the soul from the body, it is good unto none while it is being endured by those who we say are in the article of death. For the very violence with which body and soul are wrenched asunder, which in the living had been conjoined and closely intertwined, brings with it a harsh experience, jarring horridly on nature so long as it continues, till there comes a total loss of sensation, which arose from the very inter-penetration of spirit and flesh.

And all this anguish is sometimes forestalled by one stroke of the body or sudden flitting of the soul, the swiftness of dying which with violently painful sensation robs of all sensation, yet, when it is piously and faiithfully borne, it increases the merit of patience, but does not make the name of punishment inapplicable. Death, proceeding by ordinary generation from the first man, is the punishment of all who are born of him, yet, if it be endured for righteousness' sake, it becomes the glory of those who are born again; and though death be the award of sin, it sometimes secures that nothing be awarded to sin.

I frequently hear non-Christians say something to the effect of death, "Death is the natural process of life. We are born, we live, and then we die. That is just how the cycle of life works." What I hope to show by the apologetic of Augustine who is using the foundation of the Scriptures, is that there is nothing natural in relation to death, but is the result of the curse of the fall of our first parents(Gen 3:17-19). We can see by the exposition above provided by the great church father Augustine, that he describes the various pains involved in the strokes of death that will afflict us both. By both I mean both the elect and the reprobate. Notice the union between body and soul that is destroyed at the onslaught of death. Before they were knit together like a fish in water, similar to the union between man and life, apart from being grafted into Christ all is lost.

The second paragraph to Augustine's exposition is the hope that all those redeemed by Christ have and there can even be peace in the midst of the bonds of death for the Christian. For only for the Christian has our eternal mediator destroyed him who had the power over death(Heb 2:14).

Westminster Shorter Catechism Flash Cards

Here is a nice PDF that has flash cards that you can print out to memorize the Westminster Shorter Catechism, which I'm currently memorizing.

Facebook Privacy - Not Really

Spylogic has a pretty disturbing article on Facebook's use of a new API to share users public information with other websites such as Pandora and Microsoft Docs among many others to join I'm sure.

What this makes this even more scary is that developers can hold onto your data forever whereas before it was limited to 24 hours. George Orwell's 1984 does not sound too crazy after all even in 2010. Take the example below; if you copy and paste the URL into your web browser and replace the string, 'jandrusk' with the first part of your Facebook ID you will see some general information about your Facebook account. Not a big deal until you realize you don't even need to be logged onto Facebook to acquire this information! That means anyone on the trustworthy Internet can pull this information.

Evil Facebook Query

So the bottom line is if your concerned about privacy on the Internet you better off just going to be communicating on stones or papyrus paper. Let the reader beware.

Does God Exist?

One of the best defenses on the Christian faith that I have ever heard was this one by Dr. Greg Bahnsen.