Tux Training

Not quite sure what to backup from a computer I am currently fixing I decided to turn a virus laden XP install into a VirtualBox image on my desktop machine at home.

Enter dd, ssh, and VirtualBox.

After a little reading I came up with this single line to extract the live image from the disk, move it to my desktop machine, and convert it to a 20G VirtualBox image.  First I booted from a live disc, mounted the drive I wanted and ran the following:

sudo dd if=/dev/hda | ssh user@xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx vboxmanage convertdd stdin virusxp.vdi 21474836480

Now upon return if they find I’ve missed anything I can just boot it up and retrieve it for them, and after a month or so after they’ve verified they’re happy with it, just easily delete the machine.

I posted a tutorial on deleting files with wipe. But since ext3 is a journaling file system that wipe isn’t enough to securely delete files from people that have the tools/hardware to recover files, today I will show you how to delete a file that is unrecoverable to the best of my knowledge.. Read on if you like

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