command for downloading a package to save

[Mark Greenwood]

Hi Steven,

OK.. the point is that in your original email you have made a statement that a virus has infected you. You say this but you have no evidence to back up that assumption. This is what I mean by jumping to conclusions. You have seen a problem and have just decided that it must be a virus. Now I don't mean to offend, but you know as well as I do that your computer knowledge is not all that good. I don't have a problem with that, and I'll help - but to help you I need accurate descriptions of problems, not baseless conclusions made without supporting evidence. The fact that you are having email problems does not mean you have a virus. It *might* mean that, but if it were me it would be the last thing I would check. The way to solve a computer problem is:

1. First, accurately describe the problem without making *any* assumptions. 
2. Try to establish what the most obvious offending item is in that description and start from there.

This email is the first one you've sent that actually gives a detailed description on exactly what the problem is. So now, finally, we are getting somewhere.

The first thing I would do is to examine very, very, closely every single part of my email client (which I am guessing for you is KMail) - check every single bit of configuration and look for the word 'Yeshua' or any options related to 'hostname' or 'domain' or 'localhost' and just try changing them to see if makes any difference. I would change *one thing at a time*, and make sure I noted down what it was originally set to. After trying each setting change, I would revert it back to its original setting before trying the next. This is what I would do if, like you, I didn't fully understand what all the settings mean.

For your benefit, here is how you could install Klamav:
On your working laptop, do
sudo apt-get install klamav.
This may install more than one package. It will tell you their names. Make a note of them.
Once it has finished. Look in /var/cache/apt/archives
In that folder you will find the packages that have just been installed. Copy them to a USB stick and copy them onto your other computer in /home/steven
Now do
cd /home/steven
and
sudo dpkg -i <name of package>
where you should replace <name of package> with the filename of the package to install.
You should install them in the same order as they were installed on your other computer.

This should work for you. If it finds a virus I will post a picture of myself eating my own hat.

Mark

On Sunday 14 Jun 2009 19:05:18 Steven Vollom wrote:
> On Saturday 13 June 2009 05:51:22 pm Mark Greenwood wrote:
> > On Saturday 13 Jun 2009 22:05:57 Steven Vollom wrote:
> > > A virus has blocked me from sending emails, from communicating with my
> > > ISP, and now from downloading an application that may fix the problem. 
> > > How can I download Klamov to a file, so I can copy it on a thumb drive
> > > and install it on my infected computer?  Thanks!
> > >
> > > Steven
> >
> > Steven,
> >
> > You automatically assume that a Virus is the cause of every computer
> > problem you have. Since you're using Linux this is very, very, unlikely.
> > Indeed the symptoms you're describing are not the sort of thing I'd expect
> > a virus to cause. A more likely explanation is that your ISP is having
> > temporary problems. You may just need to wait a while and see if things
> > start working again. Also, try to think of anything you might have changed
> > - is the router switched on for instance, or have you changed any settings?
> > Ask yourself logical questions, don't automatically blame a Virus, I very
> > much doubt that's anything to do with your problems.
> >
> > Mark
> b
> Please give me a break.  If it isn't a virus, contribute a solution.  I have 
> repeated what has happened fifty times about now.  If you read the description 
> of how the system went down, and can explain what could have happened other 
> than your same 'it couldn't happen on Linux' well it did.  No one including 
> you gives me any advice of how to correct the problem, and this isn't the first 
> time you sent this answer.  I have heard it from others too.  I may be wrong, 
> but just saying Linux rarely gets virus' or it isn't common doesn't work.
> 
> Here goes read and give your explanation then.
> 
> I was monitoring the list a couple days ago with a question.  No one answered.  
> I was waiting about 10 hours with no response.  Every couple of minuted I 
> requested get mail with nothing on the server.  Very unusual.  Then Luis puts 
> his request on the board.  It looked like something I might be able to help 
> with, but Myriam has suggested I not make recommendations unless I am sure 
> that my help is correct.  So I wrote Luis an email requesting more specifics 
> like was his OS jaunty, did he use KDE so I would know if my knowledge might 
> help.  No one was on the List at the time, and I thought how much I would just 
> like someone to answer when waiting a long time.
> 
> His response was threatening by its wording an I concluded he was not a 
> friend, so I immediately deleted his email.  I also removed every email that 
> came from him and went about my business.  An hour or so later, I tried to 
> write my daughter.  When the email did not send, I checked to see that I put 
> the correct address on her email.  When I looked at it, it said:
> 
> dawn at Yeshua@emiaphotography.com.  The @Yeshua was included and should not be 
> there; Yeshua is the name of my computer.  So I deleted the @Yeshua and tried 
> to resend.  This time it was refused too, so I checked again.  This time the 
> email was addressed like this:
> 
> dawn at emiaphotography--dot--com.
> 
> Recapitulation:
> 
> correct address:  dawn at emiaphotography.com
> First sent as:       dawn at Yeshua@emiaphotographylcom
> Next sent as:       dawn at emiaphotography--dot--com
> 
> The next time I corrected the mailing address, the server responded that the 
> senders name was wrong and to correct it,  It would hold the email in the 
> outbox until sent or the problem corrected.
> 
> I checked to see if the configuration had been changed; it had not.  So this 
> was an unfixable problem.  I called the ISP and they could not help with the 
> problem.  I could not afford their Linux support, so I was stopped there.  The 
> fee was $100+.
> 
> Next I got a warning that my router was improperly connected.  It was 
> connected properly, so I connected the incoming line directly to the DSL 
> modem.  When I tried to connect that way it did not succeed, but I still had 
> the Internet connected, so I remembered a rarely used gmail account I had set 
> up to receive mail and directly move it to my kmail client.  I opened and sent 
> an email to the List and was told I had to be a member.  The other account 
> used a pseudonym for my name so I wrote the administrator, trying to get hold 
> of Myriam.  I again was told to join the list, so I joined the list as 
> Shabakthanai which is my pseudonym.  I got an email through to administration 
> and was sent in return chastisement for what sounded like hijacking a post.  
> Since my email was not a post but an inquiry for help from Myriam, I tried but 
> in-affectively couldn't handle the bruhaha that followed that email. 
> 
> The next step in the problem was to not be able to connect to the Internet at 
> all.  With no way to get help, I found an old laptop that was broken and 
> proceeded to try to get it working again.  After a long while, I got a screen, 
> hooked up Internet and contacted the List.  So far no one gives the problem 
> any serious thought, because it is very rare to have Linus affected by a virus.  
> And rather than even consider that I have a virus, no one even attempts to 
> help.  I do not get advice of commands that might reveal anything or methods 
> of repairing internal problems.  I tried kdesudo dpkg --configure -a and sudo 
> dpkg --configure -a; I tried renaming .kdeold and booting to a new desktop; 
> then I formatted the boot partition and reinstalled Jaunty kde.
> 
> Nothing changed.
> 
> This would perhaps indicate there is no virus, however, I recently established 
> new mount points for my partitions designed to make them invulnerable to 
> system crashes and application crashes that required reinstallation.
> 
> I named them as follows:
> 
> 80gb HDD
> 
> 20gb /
> 
> 2gb swap
> 
> 58gb /home/steven/svprivate
> 
> 200gb HDD
> 
> 100gb   /home
> 99gb    /home/steven/backup
> 
> Now all partitions are home partitions separate from the boot drive OS and 
> applications.  This works excellent, by the way, excepting if you get a virus.
> 
> Anyway after reinstalling, (if I had a virus) the virus immediately went from 
> the home drive back into the OS or wherever it went, because the problem 
> persists.
> 
> I am going to save this for the next person that says I don't have a virus and 
> to forget it.  And by forgetting it what do you suggest, scrap the computer.  
> Format all HDDs and start over.  I will if I have to, but some of the data is 
> very important to me, and it is on a separate partition but still vulnerable 
> to a virus, I suspect, so I just write it off to additional experience.
> 
> I frankly don't care if virus attacks on Linux only happen to one in a 
> million.  If I have one, should I just ignore it.  What explains the behavior 
> of my computer is not a virus.  I am open to just about anything.
> 
> Thanks!
> 
> Steven
>