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January Linux Gazette
Josh Baugher wrote in
to tell us that the January 1999 Issue of the
Linux Gazette
is now out. Articles on Samba, booting Linux with the NT Boot Loader,
printing and more.
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Linux with NT bootloader - fantastic!
Boss's declaration "you can linux it, we'll even give you half the partition, but you have to promise only to boot it with floppies."
yeah, like that's fun. Not touching Lilo in case it chews NT - but this is just perfect.
Like, when I compile a new kernel, I usually have a linux_good or linux_old entry in my lilo.conf but I could do with something like the NT bootloader!
Is there anything like this available for Linux?
I mean... the only time I really use more than one entry in my lilo is when I compile a new kernel, but for newcomers to Linux, that'd be a definite plus, IMHO. (what's the second most popular system on a home PC besides Linux? I'd bet for 95/98 rather than NT... so there would be a demand for this)
Hmm I have been doing that for almost a year now and have had these problems:
/dev/hda1 is NT /dev/hdb1 is Linux. (I am using the NT fat filesystem NOT NTFS)
/bootsect.lnx to /ntfat (where I have mounted NT /dev/hda1) I then have to do a lilo -U other wise I cannot boot to linux. This was not in the HOWTO. This may not be how it works on your system but it is how it works on mine and I am using kernel 2.0.36
1)
after I dd if=/dev/hdb1 of=/bootsect.lnx bs=512 count=1 I then cp
2) If I install lilo on a floppy I then cannot boot from the NT boot loader I get li and it stops.. I then have to redo lilo or continue to boot from a floppy.. this is not a big deal as I have set NT to default to Linux as my boot OS, but it does happen....
this is just an FYI and more of a things to look out for when using NT to boot Linux from my experience.. and I have been doing this for about a year....
Linux Gazette has gotten a lot better now that they got an Answer Guy with a clue and without a chip on his shoulder.
Does anyone have a list of boot utils other than NT loader and lilo?
Hi-
I'm the author of that article. I'll tell you why I suggested doing it the way that I did:
Why not just:
1. Run your ppp-on script via cron as proposed
2. ifconfig |grep addr|mail {some easy to access mailbox (Yahoo works if you can't do the POP your ISP likely provides from your office)}
3. telnet the inet addr listed under the ppp interface when you get the mail
That's what I was doing for a while, but what if someone else wants to use it. For example, sometimes my wife wants to use the machine from her office or from somewhere else entirely. Plus, if I decide I want to give accounts to other people, I don't have to maintain a mailing list to let them know what the IP number is. The idea here is that you want a stable domain address even though your IP number is constantly changing.
Bottom line, I suppose is just to make things easier. If coming up with the cash for the domain name and the service is a problem, then I'd definitely go with your method.
Second, the author said it's not possible to use RedHat's ppp configurator because of its graphical nature. Actually, as long as you tell the configurator, any user can bring the interface up, and the ifup and down scripts work just fine provided you have them in your path somewhere. I'd guess other Linuxes are like that, too, right?
But can you use the graphical configurator in a script to have the machine dial in automatically via a cron job? If you can, I'd be interested to know what the command line would be.
Funny that I read that article today, considering this morning I fired up ppp, grepped ifconfig for inet addr, piped it into mail, drove to work, read my mail, telnetted to my box, fired up the free MIXserver I downloaded, checked my local IP (which is also dynamic) and set DISPLAY to that via telnet. Didn't use cron, just because I wanted to troubleshoot everything without the variable of a script run on a machine I couldn't look at if I screwed up.
That's well and good, but I don't want to tie up my phone line all day, and I don't want to leave the box logged in longer than necessary. Basically, I have it up for an hour in the morning, and an hour in the afternoon. This gives me a chance to check mail, and to do anything I think up during the day.
Basically, I was going for ease of use, simplicity and portability (in the geographic sense).
Anyway, I'm glad you found the article interesting. I'm sure there are better ways to do things, I'm just reporting what's worked for me.
-Joe Merlino
joe@negia.net
also system commander and select-it
NO. Government bad. bad bad bad. Must keep away. Yes keep away from open source. Keep away from Microsoft too. Microsoft good food for penguin unless DOJ sours meat.
-- Lord of the Token Rings?
One of the NewsBytes refers to a petition that Americans here would probably want to sign...
Mind the Gap
(Hint: this isn't news. On the other hand, Mentioning something about one of the particular articles and opening up discussion about it, as is typically done with other periodicals here, would have been worthwhile.)
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
I should put openBSD on my firewall some year.
Finially somebody who had a root hack to was prepared. I should do the same for my system. Dad keeps asking why I want a tape drive when anouther harddrive is so cheep. Backups that aren't in a computer can't be compromised though.
There's a ton of good stuff in this issue. The Answer Guy has a lot of really good networking info - perfect for home lans/gateways, Linux firewalls and a neato article on subnetting - something that I completly forget if I don't reread a good explanation at least once a week - what can I say, I'm number-challenged, heh. The Dec 1998 Linux Journal also has a good article on subnetting.
Anyway, good job LG folks!
"shop smart:shop s-mart" ash
The only thing I could find about printing was a question to the answer guy. I have an Epson Stylus photo 700 printer that I can only get to print text. Post script comes out garbled and wants to eat about 100 pages. I'm running redhat 5.1 with a bunch of updates including ghost script 5.5 if anyone cares to answer. Thanks.
In Republican America phones tap you.
Just use the folling in lilo.conf to skip the dd step.
boot=/dosc/bootsect.lin
Not sure if lilo can create a file like this. It has been over a year since I messed with the NT boot loader.
Lilo has been around forever, and everyone uses it. Why can't it be called 1.0 already?
Why not just:
1. Run your ppp-on script via cron as proposed
2. ifconfig |grep addr|mail {some easy to access mailbox (Yahoo works if you can't do the POP your ISP likely provides from your office)}
3. telnet the inet addr listed under the ppp interface when you get the mail
Is that insanely insecure? Or any more insecure than the method the author proposed? It's certainly cheaper. Or am I way off because I didn't have a modem when I had Slack and there is no ifconfig command on any other Linux but RedHat. Just a newbie, here.
Second, the author said it's not possible to use RedHat's ppp configurator because of its graphical nature. Actually, as long as you tell the configurator, any user can bring the interface up, and the ifup and down scripts work just fine provided you have them in your path somewhere. I'd guess other Linuxes are like that, too, right?
Funny that I read that article today, considering this morning I fired up ppp, grepped ifconfig for inet addr, piped it into mail, drove to work, read my mail, telnetted to my box, fired up the free MIXserver I downloaded, checked my local IP (which is also dynamic) and set DISPLAY to that via telnet. Didn't use cron, just because I wanted to troubleshoot everything without the variable of a script run on a machine I couldn't look at if I screwed up.
Anyhow, $.02. And the dyndns service would sure be the deluxe way to go.
Hey everybody! I have my own domain... between 8 and 11, 1 and 3, and from 12 to six!
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pudding_yeti@yahoo.com
"Give me $20 worth of pudding, or kill me."
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mphall@cstone.nospam.net
"A horse laugh is worth a thousand syllogisms"
I get your point about access for others/maintaining a mailing list. Point taken. There's no one around me I'd trust on my machine because I'm not always sure what's going on with it and barely clean up after myself. :)
As for the RedHat net configurator and use outside of a graphical environment...
Barring that I'm missing your point, the way to launch a RedHat configured network interface is to exec /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/if{up/down} ppp0 (or whatever the interface is.) That's all that the RedHat configurator does, it just has the script tied to a button. I finally figured that out after getting sick of having to fire up X every time I wanted to do anything on the net, and continually screwing up my chat scripts.
As for tying up my phone line all day... agreed. Cron is better, and I intend to do it that way. Today I didn't because it was the first time I tried to log in to my box from somewhere besides in front of it (or beside it, if you want to count that time I ran an ADM3a into the serial port) and (is the self-deprecation thick enough here, yet?) didn't trust myself to set up at or cron correctly the first time.
Anyhow, thanks for a cool article... thanks for expanding on the things you took under consideration when setting your system up, and thanks for your restraint with the snotty newbie. :)
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pudding_yeti@yahoo.com
"Give me $20 worth of pudding, or kill me."
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mphall@cstone.nospam.net
"A horse laugh is worth a thousand syllogisms"