Dominoes in my text files

[figleaf]

There are dominoes (rectangles with circles) in my text files that I created, revised and saved using gedit and leafpad. The dominoes replace some of the dashes in my text files - but not all of the dashes. Are they embedded web bugs or rootkits? I have been manually removing them but this is time consuming. Anyway to quickly scan for dominoes inside of text files?

Though I never save my text files as encoded, some of them become encoded. I open them, copy my text into a new text file and delete the encoded text. Sometimes, the new text file becomes encoded. How to prevent these executables? I fear that they are rootkits. I switched from LibreOffice to text editors because my word documents were becoming infected with macros. Yet, executable text files are more of a threat.

How to scan for these encoded text files? They do not have an icon that is different from a plain text file. Are they supposed to in Fedora? How to make encoded text files a different recognizable icon?

When I boot to Parted Magic live CD, the encoded text files have a blue diamond shaped icon. However, opening up numerous folders to search for blue diamonds is time consuming. How to quickly search in the search bar for encoded text?

[PatMcLJr]

gezzz, dunno
can you post up a link to some sample files?
might be interesting to see one of the macro infected LibreOffice files too

I'll have to dl them into a VM in case there have an executable macro or rk

I was was kinda thinking some kind of UTF problem or font issue. I get this on my debian squeeze VM with the roxterm.

[Dutchy]

Those "dominos" are unrecognized symbols.
This probably happens because of discrepancies between the charset with which the file is encoded and the charset with which you are looking at it (eg.: iso8859-1 vs iso8895-14).

[Skull One]

I although think that the problem is the encoding.
For instance:

echo $'\u2014' - > test

create a text file 'test' in utf8 encoding. You can check it with the command 'file test'.

If you open the file using the wrong encoding, you will see those 'dominos':

leafpad --codeset=ASCII test

But with the good encoding, you can see the em-dash and the dash:

leafpad --codeset=utf8 test

So, could you check what is the current encoding of your file (output of 'file <your file>' for instance)?

[figleaf]

PatMcLJr requested that I post up a link to some sample files? This forum does not offer the option to attach files. How do I post a link?

Skull requested that I check the text file with the command 'file test'. How do I do this? I typed file test and then the name of a file on my desktop. Error message: "bash: test: too many arguments"

[Skull One]

I typed file test and then the name of a file on my desktop. Error message: "bash: test: too many arguments"

No, it is 'file <the file to check>'.
In the example above, a file named 'test' was created.

[Dan]

Hmmmm.

Probably best to use fully copy-&-paste code examples here, folks.

[figleaf]

I created a text file titled "test" on my desktop and saved it as UTF-8 which is the default setting for gedit.

03:01] user@pc ~ $ file test
test: ERROR: cannot open `test' (No such file or directory)

I then put parentheses around the name of the file.

[03:01] user@pc ~ $ file <test>
bash: syntax error near unexpected token `newline'

How to correctly enter the command?

[Dan]

lala4yaya: One more post like that and you'll be sent to your room without supper. <....>

[Skull One]

Originally Posted by figleaf

I created a text file titled "test" on my desktop and saved it as UTF-8 which is the default setting for gedit.

03:01] user@pc ~ $ file test
test: ERROR: cannot open `test' (No such file or directory)

I then put parentheses around the name of the file.

[03:01] user@pc ~ $ file <test>
bash: syntax error near unexpected token `newline'

How to correctly enter the command?

You have to write the location of your file.
I think it will be a good idea to add an extension .txt to the name to avoid confusion.
If it is on your desktop:

file ~/Desktop/test.txt

If it is in your home, it is easier:

file ~/test.txt

Edit: another way is to change to the directory containing the file, for instance for the desktop

cd ~/Desktop
file test.txt

[figleaf]

I have Fedora 17 GNOME installed on my Asus 1015PX. *On October 8, 2012, I copied my medical files from my HP flashdrive to my 8 GB Mcro SD card. The next day, I opened the files on my micro SD card. My text files and PDF files inside of five folders did not get copied.

Instead, the five folders have numerous encoded text files with dominoes, numbers, letters and wierd characters next to the encoded text files. When I click on one of the encoded text files, the whole string of characters come up. Properties is unknown (application/octet-stream).

The Doctors 2012 folder also has one blue folder. Properties of the one blue folder:

Type: folder (inode/directory)
Contents: 215 items, totalling 58.1 GB

Inside of the one blue folder are three blue folders, numerous text files with dominoes and four brown folders. Property of brown folders is Type: AR archive (application/x-archive). One brown folder has size 6.6 MB The brown folders are labelled: d.a., e.a., n.a. and q.a.

d.a. is 2.4 MB
e.a. is 1.7 GB (extremely large!)
n.a. is 41.4 MB
q.a. Is 6.6. MB.

Properties of the first blue folder inside the one blue folder:
Type: folder (inode/directory)
Content: four items totalling 7.5 GB

Properties of the second blue folder inside the one blue folder:
Type: folder (inode/directory)
Content: four items totalling 7.5 GB

Properties of the third blue folder inside the one blue folder:
Type: folder (inode/directory)
Content: four items totalling 7.5 GB

I cannot copy the folders onto my desktop. I copied and pasted the Doctors 2012 folder into the terminal. Only the title of the folder was copied: “ file:///run/media/user/76D7-366D/Documents%20Oct%2011,%202012/Medical%20&%20Dental%20Records/Doctors%202012”

I tried copying Doctors 2011 folder into my Documents on my harddrive. Error message:
Error when getting information for file '/run/media/user/76D7-366D/Documents Oct 11, 2012/Medical & Dental Records/Doctors 2011/#####0j#': Input/output error.”
The error message contained six dominoes. When I copied the error message into this word document the dominoes turned into #.

I copied and pasted Doctors 2011 folder into the terminal: file:///run/media/user/76D7-366D/Documents%20Oct%2011,%202012/Medical%20&%20Dental%20Records/Doctors%202011

Properties of Doctors 2011 folder:
Type: folder (inode/directory)
Content: 106 items, totalling 48.5 GB

Properties of Doctors 2010 folder:
Type: folder (inode/directory)
Content: 56 items, totalling 31.2 GB

Properties of Doctors 2009 folder:
Type: folder (inode/directory)
Content: 105 items, totalling 49.5 GB

Properties of Doctors 2008 folder:
Type: folder (inode/directory)
112 items, totalling 50.8 GB
(some contents unreadable)

The 8 GB micro SD card is inside a SD card reader. The write protection switch is on. After I clicked on some of these infected files, I typed DMESG into the terminal. The DMESG log contains numerous:

[ 2285.197394] FAT-fs (sdb1): error, invalid access to FAT (entry 0x030f0600)
[ 2285.197409] attempt to access beyond end of device
[ 2285.197418] sdb1: rw=0, want=410560088, limit=15521792
[ 2293.473925] FAT-fs (sdb1): error, fat_get_cluster: invalid cluster chain (i_pos 0)

(sdb1) is the one partition on my micro SD card. The partition is FAT32.

How can I upload some of these files?

[figleaf]

[03:02] user@pc ~ $ file ~/test.txt
/home/user/test.txt: empty

[glennzo]

If your computer has been rooted you don't want to be copying files anywhere.

[Skull One]

Originally Posted by figleaf

[03:02] user@pc ~ $ file ~/test.txt
/home/user/test.txt: empty

Good! At least you know now how to use this command.
Remember that this test file is just for example.
Write something in the file and retry, or use the example above.

Do the same with _your_ file to check its encodage.

Edit: here the em-dash and dash for the example: — -

[PatMcLJr]

for links to your sample files, I think you have to host them yourself, dropbox, spideoak, your web hosting, your server, google docs (maybe? dunno), something like that

wow, file ? didn't even know that was out there, lets see
man file
wow wow, that command could be very handy, seems to work on raster graphics files too, cool

Thanks Skull One