Hard disk problem ... or a worm?

[asearle]

My trusty laptop which has been running Knoppix 3.4 for over a year now has suddenly lost speed and I am not sure whether it is a problem with the hard disk (which seems to be making some noises) or whether I have caught a 'worm'.

I go on the internet a lot (ADSL) but always through a firewall and there doesn't seem to be any extra network traffic not initiated by me (i.e. spyware). The hard disk seems to thrash a lot (quite extreme) when the system is starting and when programs are loading but once the programs are in memory the disk calms down.

This makes me think that I have a disk problem (and need to get a new one) but can anyone tell me how I check for these things in a more thorough/systematic way?

What is the best tool for scanning a disk for errors/problems? And are there Worm/Spyware dangers for Linux? Maybe you can point me to any web sites which explain these issues?

Any tips would be very gratefully received.

Many thanks,
Alan Searle.

[chris-harry]

i'm not saying what you have, but i am helping you limit your search...

well, if you want to check using free virus scanners, www.f-prot.com... thats a virus scanner...

fsck will do a scan disk... but remember the more junk you have on it, the slower it'll go... even little bugs can slow your system down....

[Markus]

Do top to see how much memory is used.
There is not much spyware or virii for linux but check for rootkits. chkrootkit should come with knoppix but often gives false positives. I prefer http://www.rootkit.nl/projects/rootkit_hunter.html
Have you upgraded lately and got some services started up on bootup under /etc/rc*?

[guyr]

Check if dma is on:
hdparm /dev/hda
guy