Preview of Meinel's
latest book, Überhacker! continued...
What You Need to Know Already
If you have never telnetted or used a Unix-type operating
system, you really should first read my book The Happy Hacker
or study the tutorials at my web site, http://happyhacker.org.
If you run into problems, you also can get answers to your questions
by joining our discussion email lists or using the Happy Hacker
chat channels at http://happyhacker.org. Many people who were
total beginners with computers have written me saying that they
were doing amazing things within days of picking up The Happy
Hacker book.
Conventions Used
in this Book
· A constant width bold font denotes commands you type
into a computer, for example:
arp -a
If it is a command you must give at the MS-DOS prompt of a Windows
computer, the command will be shown as:
C:\>arp -a
We assume the C drive is the root of the MS-DOS file system,
which it will be for most readers. If you are using another drive,
substitute that drive letter for C. OK, OK, I know the überelite
would say %systemroot%, but I hate to do all the extra typing.
If it is a Unix-type computer, for example Linux or OpenBSD,
the command will be shown as:
~> arp -a
where ~> represents the command prompt.
· Constant width italic denotes variables (often inside
brackets) that the reader will choose. For example,
C:\>arp -a <hostname>
On your network you might have a computer that you gave the IP
address of 10.0.0.2 and the hostname in human-speak of guesswho.
Since hostname could be either one, you could type either:
C:\>arp -a 10.0.0.2
C:\>arp -a guesswho
The response you should get is shown in constant width font:
C:\>arp -a 10.0.0.2
Interface: 10.0.0.1 on Interface 2
Internet address Physical Address Type
10.0.0.2 00-20-78-16-fa-56 dynamic
In case you were wondering, the above example reveals how to
get the physical address of an Ethernet network interface card
on host 10.0.0.2.
· Italic is used within normal text to denote file names,
file and directory paths, user account names and group names
when placed inside normal text. For example, if you have broken
into an Apache webserver and wonder where the heck did they hide
the web page files, you can find that information in the file
httpd.conf.
· We also use constant width within ordinary text to denote
the contents of files. For example, on an Apache webserver, within
the file httpd.conf, the portion of the text that determines
the root of the webserver (the location of the opening web page)
is DocumentRoot <directory>.
For example, at one time the Happyhacker.org web site was configured
as DocumentRoot /var/www/htdocs.
· Combinations of keystrokes that must all be held down
in "seriam" meaning hold down one, keep it down while
pressing and holding down the next, and so on, are linked by
dashes, for example:
CONTROL-ALT-X
Which in most cases will gracefully shut down a Linux computer,
or
STOP-A
This second command may look odd, but it refers to the keyboard
of a Sun computer. In order to break into a Sun from the console,
at boot time you hold down the "stop" key and the letter
"a" to get a prompt that lets you boot from a disk
of your choice, heh, heh.
· A-> B-> C->
denotes a series of items that must be selected in that order
to get to a certain menu (usually used in explaining Windows
hacks). For example,
Start-> Programs-> Administrative
Tools (Common) -> User Manager
This means click Start, then menu item Programs, then click Administrative
Tools (Common) on the next menu that comes up, and on the third
menu that comes up, click User Manager. (There, renaming it can
make it harder for people to break in, by highlighting Administrator, then User->
Rename.)
· Bold constant width is used within normal text to denote
a literal command you would give. For example, suppose you have
a hard time finding the home page of one out of many users on
a webserver that hosts large numbers of domains. You can pick
out a word that is likely to only occur on your target's web
site, get into a portion of the directory structure that you
are certain holds all the web sites, and give the command find . name print|xargs grep httpd.conf >/tmp/myfindfile.
More --->>
