GettingStarted

From OpenDiagnostics

So you think you can repair computers better than that guy down the street? Maybe, we will see.

At least you are looking in the right place. Here's the deal, you have this file. You don't know what to do with it. It's just sitting there on your Desktop, or that new-fangled Downloads folder mocking you.

But not for long, because I am going to tell you that all you need to do is burn that file to a CD in a very special way. All you need is a program that burns ISO images to CDs (such as IsoRecorder). Once this is installed, all you need to do is right click on that file called OpenDiagnostics-live.iso (you can get it here) and write it to a blank CD-R.

You can even use the USB Disk Creator that comes with Ubuntu now to load it onto your favorite USB thumb drive!

Anyway, so off to the amazing world of...

FixingOtherPeoplesMistakesopolis

Your hot cousin has a virus because she downloaded the wrong copy of If You Seek Amy. Her computer won't boot and there is no way to scan the hard drive because there is no other computer in the house. Her paper is due tomorrow and she needs it working. What do you do? 10, 9, 8...

Grab that copy of the OpenDiagnostics Live CD and follow me.

Turns out she has a nasty infection of the Zer0Cool type. That's ok though, just stay calm. Take the CD and calmly put it in the CD drive. Make sure the computer is set up to boot to the CD drive before the hard drive in the BIOS. As the computer boots up, let it reach the boot prompt. You can type 'opend', or just hit enter twice:

boot: opend<enter>

You should now be booting into the OpenDiagnostics Interactive Environment (ODIE).

This will take a minute or two depending on the speed of your computer at hand.

As soon as it is done, you will get a prompt that looks like this:

ubuntu@ubuntu:~$

Awesome, let's flex our fingers and get started with mounting her drive so we can scan it. Let's find out what drive we need to scan first though.

ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 107.4 GB, 107374182400 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 13054 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x000a7287

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *           1       12680   101852068+  83  HPFS/NTFS
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ 

Your output should look similar to this. It looks a bit confusing at first, but I assure you there is not much you really need here.

In the list, look for the line with the asterisk in the Boot column. The device to the left is what you want. It is /dev/sda1 for my box here.

We need to mount that device in order to rid your hot cousin of this virus as soon as possible, so whenever you are ready, type:

ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ cd
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ mkdir mnt
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo mount /dev/sda1 mnt
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ 

Remember, with goods imported from Linuxland, no news is good news.

Sweet, let's scan this guy so we can get out of here and hit up that matinee with your cousin's friends. This is probably gonna take about an hour to finish, depending on the hard drive size, how much data there is, etc...

WARNING --remove removes files that are infected. Not viruses from files. Back up or pack up.

ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo clamscan -irv --remove mnt
..all the files are scanned with a neat summary at the end...
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$

Tune in next time to see if your hot cousin's computer is fixed or if we have to learn more about this CD than we had originally hypothesised... Gasp! (plus we have to finish the ODIE/GarFIELD joke)