Posts by kc0arf

Intro

In one of the Forums, the question was asked on how to setup a RedHat 9 server so that it manages network connectivity within the home, and provide services to Windoze clients.

This tutorial will address how to setup a RedHat 9 Server that will Firewall and provide services to a variety of clients. I'll also talk about Webmin and other services available in the RedHat / Fedora domain. I will also use Linux terms... a daemon serves the function of a Windoze Service.

This tutorial will assume you have worked with computers before, and have some exposure to Linux. The beginner should not attempt this, as much greater detail would be required to explain all of these steps. A Beginner would be much better off with a book... I suggest the Yellow/Black Wiley books in the Unlimited series for RedHat 9, or Fedora Core.

Preparation

Decide what your computer is going to do. If it is strictly a firewall / DNS server, then the computer can be lightweight -- 128 MB RAM, 5 GB hard disk, 2 network cards. If you would like the box to do more, then plan accordingly. If it is going to be a network server, plus be used for workstation functions, then go for 512 MB RAM and 20 GB hard drive space. Plan with some room to grow.

(My particular box is 512 MB Ram Pentium III 550 MHz with 300 GB Hard drive).

Hello,

I have set many of these things up. Be happy to help you here.

First, a couple of clarifications.

A HUB / SWITCH is a network device that connects computers and other network devices (shared scanners, printers, maybe a fax machine/copier) with each other. Hubs share all traffic; Switches isolate traffic among the nodes by building small routing tables with in them.

You are asking the RedHat linux box to be a ROUTER. You want all of the traffic inside the house to go through the RH box to the internet. While you did not specify if you are attached to a cable/dsl modem, or a POTS line, what you are asking to be done is rather easy.

You will want to consider a firewall, either having the linux box behave as one, or having another firewall further "upstream".

ICS, or Internet Connection Sharing, is handled internally by linux by passing the command:

echo "1" > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_forward

This statement must be set every restart, as it is in /proc which is a dynamic directory that is virtual and re-created at boottime. I have this command line in my linux firewall.

Linux's DNS server is called BIND, and you can set it up by hand, or using webmin. I suggest learning webmin, as it is a nice interface, web driven, and quite complete. Unfortunately, the docs on how to use it are not the best, but give it a few minutes, …

Hello,

What is Aquisition?

Christian

Hello,

You are welcome. In this particular instance, it reminds me of a Microsloth solution. I would rather see a control panel on the subject, as it is clearly a CONTROL issue. Hmm. Maybe I will write Apple on it.

Christian

Hello,

In OS X, the Grey Apple has taken the place of the Happy Mac. Do you see a small little circle below the apple moving around while the computer is loading? I am wondering if you are giving up on the install disks.

Give it another shot. If not, you might have a bad CD-ROM.

Christian

Hello,

Interestingly enough, web browsing settings on OS X are controlled in Safari. I think you need to go into the menus of Safari, and tell it not to open, and have Opera open up instead. I would walk you through it, but at the moment, my Mac is not available to me.

Christian

Hello,

I am not sure what is driving your Safari problems. Have you gone into Page Setup / Print setup, and set the options there first? Does a printer show up for you to properly format for?

For a short term fix, you might consider www.mozilla.org and grabbing the Firefox browser. While it won't fix your Safari problem, it will give you an alternative in the meantime.

Also, I would try printing to a file, a .pdf specifically. See if the print engine handles that correctly.

Christian

[img]http://www.daniweb.com/certificates/badge4268.jpg[/img]

Narue, I liked this one. Amazing insight into Operating Systems. I found it refreshing.

Thank you,

Christian

Hello,

Welcome to DaniWeb. For the best help, it is best to find the proper forum for your subject (C++) and then post some code that you are having troubles with, and the community will look at it and help you out. They will ask you to show your work... so no posting of the homework assignment and asking for an answer.

If you do not know the code, post psuedo code:

Begin
Ask for name
Ask for phone number
Store record
Print it out
Write to File
End

And then we can go from there.

Christian

Play nice people. Attitude, name calling, grumpy behavior, or posting without having your Wheaties in the morning will not help us become better coders. And we all should admit that sometimes the documentation / examples that are in the book, or online resource, do not jump out and click.

Locking thread to encourage better use of our time.

Christian

Hello,

I really enjoyed Algebra... it was the trig based calculus that got me. That and discrete math... how many colored marbles in a jar, probability of picking so many of this color or that color.

I loved calculating things that do not exist.

Christian

Hello,

It sounds to me that the computer is stuck sleeping. Disconnect the power, and all the batteries. Let it sit "dead" for a minute or two. Then try to power it back up.

Hope that helps,

Christian

Hello,

Do you have any USB hubs in the circuit? USB has a power sensitivity issue... each device can only draw so much power, and then you overload the bus. I have not seen this problem, but then again, if I have more than 2 USB devices up and running, I have a hub in there to supply more power to the bus to keep it happy.

Your Keyboard might be suffering from a brown out.

Christian

Hello,

Ah, debuggers. I liked the kind we had on VAX/VMS that we could use. As an intern, I got a head of the game a little bit and found out ways to customize the debugger so that it would leave certain parts of the screen alone, so that the debugger would not interfere with the display. Just by changing the way the debugger displayed things, I could get a lot more work done. My mentor was so impressed that he made me present to the entire team how I customized the debugger, and we developed templates for later use.

Enjoy your coding,

Christian

Hello,

What version of Mac OS X are you working with? USB or network?

I would do a disk permissions repair, and a disk scan.

Christian

Hello,

Are you logged in as a user with administrator permissions? If so, you might need to do two things: enable the root user (and use it to change the permissions) and/or run a permissions repair on the volume.

I would first open up the Disk Utility, and repair permissions on all drives. Reboot. Then try it again.

If that doesn't work, you may need to enable the root user under Mac OS X. Search out on www.apple.com how to do this.

Christian

Hello,

If your BIOS will not detect your drives, Windoze certainly won't. Might have to zap the bios and/or reload it in order to have things function properly. May also have the IDE channels turned off. You can also try resetting the BIOS to the default values. When you make a switch, save the BIOS settings, and power off the machine. Let it rest for a mintue before turning back on. Clears the chips that way.

Only when the BIOS reports that your drive is on IDE this, and your CD is on IDE that, can you proceed with Windoze installation.

Christian

Hello Donna,

I am not aware of any, probably because I have not looked. A number of Windoze IE faults are not available (thank god!) on the Macintosh because of the differences in hardware and software.

It is very true that the spyware is not considered a virus, so traditional virus utilities will not recognize it as such.

Is there anything happening on your computer that is causing you to look for such a utility?

Thanks,

Christian

Hello,

Are you referring to the viewer program, or the server program?

The server program is called Terminal Services, and it can be found on NT Server, 2000 Server, 2003 Server, and XP Professional. Not sure if it is on XP Home or not. When run in administrative mode, it can support up to 2 connections from viewers.

The viewer program may be found a variety of places. For Windows XP/2000, go to Microsoft's website, and search for Remote Desktop, and you should find it. If you have a Mac or Linux box, you can find free viewers out there on the internet, too. Beware that the Linux version requires Xwindows, and a command line command to fire off the remote session.

I use RDC and the various viewers on Mac and Linux all the time to keep the Windoze farm in line.

Christian

Hello,

I think you have the wrong license for what you are trying to do. If your disks do say "for sale with a new computer only" it implies that you got a PC with it, and you want to restore it to the specs of that computer release. The place you purchased the disks from could get in trouble for selling to you that license.

As your present computer has Win98 on it, are you sure that it will handle XP? Computers made in the days of 98 had smaller memory and hard drive spaces. If your computer was designed for 98, it might be horribly slow under XP.

To answer your question, you are after the Upgrade CD's... if they exist to go from 98 --> XP. I have not looked.

But... the question also needs to be asked... is this the only set of files? Do you keep backups on CD-ROM or maybe floppies? If this set of files are your only copies, you have much greater issues to be thinking about than merely changing OS from one level to another.

Never wait for the day you need your backups. Protect what you have now.

Christian

Hello,

Not a direct answer for you, but wondering if Squirrelmail will do what you are looking for. Either that, or try eGroupWare. I have run both of them under linux before, and setup was average difficulty.

Enjoy,

Christian

Hello,

Sure can. Actually a good programming procedure. main() is a function, just like factorial(), or maybe openfile() or fillarray(). The thing that makes main special is that it is "called" first.

What you want to do is just fine. Local variables are the way to go!

Christian

Hello,

I do not remember the exact syntax, but you need to loop until you reach the end of file. Otherwise your program just makes one iteration.

Christian

Hello,

First, please spell out the words. We say "because" here, not bcoz. Think of it as training for the professional world. Most of us here speak / write American English, although a few good folk come from overseas, and you will see British spellings. You get the point. :)

I am thinking two possibilities: bad ram, or problems with the swap partition.

Turn your computer off, and remove the RAM sticks. Make sure there is no dust in there. Lightly clean the gold/silver fingers with a soft cloth. Re-insert. Try it again. Maybe in a different order (unless you have one big DIMM).

You might also have a bad installation CD. Have you used this set of 8.0 somewhere else before? Might need to burn another set of disks.

Christian

Hello there,

It will always return no match, because the two pointers do not equal each other.

Think about it for a quick moment.... what is an array? An array is a pointer to a data structure with elements inside it.

For example:

stringa = pickle

stringa[1] == p
stringa[2] == i
stringa[3] == c

and so on

What you are trying to tell the computer is to "compare all of the elements from string a and see if they are the same in string b". The == operator is going to balk at this, as it is seeing your array name, and not the elements within.

You have two ways to do this...

METHOD 1:
* Write a FOR LOOP
---> count the amount of elements in string a

* Write another FOR LOOP
---> count the amount of elements in string b

* Do a quick compare....
---> if elements(a) <> elements(b) you know that they are not the same.
---> note that if someone puts a space after the last character before hitting return, it will garble up your code doing this. Remember, computers are precise! And they will make precisely the wrong decision that you expect.

* Write another FOR loop (remember that both strings are the same length)
--> compare stringa(n) == stringb(n) and break loop if they diverge

METHOD 2

Check out …

Hello,

I too would go with a dynamic (pointer) linked list to achieve your desire of the "infinite calculator". The only other way around it would be to declare that your program can process x amount of digits, and if the array fills up, send an error message to the user.

That is what my calculator does, at least.

From the pure curious viewpoint, you might also want to put in how long the computer took computing this information, and how many digits were involved.

Christian

Hello,

I am a big believer in the re-install of a new operating system, not "applying the upgrade". Reason? It is a great time to haul out the trash! And you run into the built package that works great in release C, and dies out in release D. Also forces you to keep track of your software installations, and inventory. It also prods the lazy to make a backup.

Now, had you partitioned the hard drives, your data would be safe on one of those partitions outside the OS sphere. I cannot fathom why you need a 500 GB volume... are you having some live database living on your box?

Each computer I build, unless the hard drive is absurdly small ( < 10 GB) is partitioned into 3 partitions: System, Applications, Data. That way, I can format System as many times as I might have to, and still have the other two partitions isolated. Granted, this will not save me from a physical hardware failure, but it gives me a lot of options of having a startup volume on each of those volumes. I can also very easily tell backup programs to "hit this whole volume" and know that my data is all in once place (I have also trained myself, and my programs, to save in this data area).

I think it is high time that you think about what you want your machine to do, and where you can place your data in …

Hello,

Check to make sure that the Everyone group can print to the printer. Go to your XP machine, and look at the permissions of the printer object.

You might also need to hammer out the UNC path of the printer explicity.

\\DanisFondXPBox\printername

I also fully agree to let one place manage the printers... and I think that Samba is your best choice on this, as you are dealing with two platforms. While you might like the intellectual exercise of all these little pockets of installation and management, it is not smart business. Keep the printers in central administration pockets.

Christian

Hello,

I prefer Firefox as it is clean and efficient, and cross platform. Firefox tends to render the same across the OS's, from what I can tell. I also adore the popup blocker.

Christian

Hello,

I have not found one for the Mac OS X, and to be honest, do not trust partition magic on Windoze either. I feel that anything that works the filesystem at this level is just an accident waiting to happen.

Christian

Hello,

You can go to the local Apple place, and get a copy of OS X 10.3 and install it from the CD-ROM drive. There is an option there to format the disk fresh and clean. You can also go into the Disk tools and before you install, partition the disk. the re-partition will force a format.

Enjoy your new Macintosh! :)

Christian

Hello,

I am a guy, and I find it acceptable. I find "acceptable" if I would not have a problem standing up in church and telling it. If there was sex, or hateful remarks in it, the person would be banned.

There are a lot of jokes out there abound... things like this, or the Girlfriend Software one, or the Darwin awards.

But there are a lot of overly sensitive people out there too. I think there are times that society is just overly sensitive. I wonder if we are turning into cultural weenies that need to take everything to court.

I get offended when the driver in front of my car tosses his cigarette butt out the window and I drive into it because I am behind him. That driver, at least in Wisconsin, is liable for $200 for littering. But I don't call on the cell with the license plate information. I have accepted this act against my property... likewise I hope others accept various 'acts' and get over it.

Christian

MikeandIke22,

Installation via FTP is actually alive in my house! One thing that I look for in a distro is the ability to download the files locally, and then install via ftp internally. This allows me to setup all sorts of computers (Redhat/fedora in particular) that do not have CD-ROM, such as older laptops, and very quickly and efficiently. With the FTP selection, you also have the ability to use the options to configure on the fly.

I also like the idea of starting an installation via FTP, and walking away from it. I do not need to return to insert the next CD, either. Just start and walk away.

I did 7 laptops at once on an internal ethernet network, and well, it just looked great and felt good.

Christian

Hello,

Welcome to Linux! There are some things to learn, and you are in for a small challenge, but it is very well worth it, and you will be a happier fella for taking this step.

A FIRST MAJOR STEP you have already made -- you have realized that you should not be running around as the root user for normal day-to-day tasks. Only use Root when you need it. There are weeks that can go by that I have not used the root user operation... if you setup your system properly, and assign the rights correctly, you too can have a peaceful life.

If you are going to really migrate to Linux, you need to learn how to work in the Terminal, the Command Line Interface (CLI).

Look into the launcher bar there for the System Tools --> Terminal. If you are logged in as a normal user, here you can use the "su -" command to promote yourself to being a super-user. Security note: If you want only certain people to have this functionality on your public boxes, you can change the perms so that only a certain group of users can use this command. I have done this for 2+ years with no hiccups.

Ok, so you are in the terminal window. Time for a few commands:

cd Changes the directory
pwd Prints the path of the current directory
chmod Changes the permissions on a file
chown Changes …

Hello,

If the link above does not help you, I would definately find a DOS startup floppy, and load that in the A: then run some chkdsk/scandisk utilities to see what is up. It is also possible that the hard disk volume is full.

Christian

Hello,

It is possible that the password was fat-fingered, or possible that the home directory of that user doesn't exist, or permissions are mangled within it.

Login as the root user, and use the passwd "username" command again to set the proper password. Remember that Linux passwords are case sensitive. Also, look at /var/log/messages and see if the system is telling you what is wrong.

There is a dedicated Linux forum here on DaniWeb. If you need further help, just ask, and we can move this thread over there for examination. Not everyone visits the lounge here.

Christian

EIDE is Expanded IDE, Expanded Integrated Drive Electronics.

IDE could only handle hard drive sizes to 528 MB or so. EIDE got around that barrier.

You may use an EIDE drive inside a IDE Motherboard.

Check out: http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/E/EIDE.html

Christian

Hello,

Are you trying to copy a PURE DOS hard drive to another drive? Then XCOPY will work just fine. And Windows 3.1. If there is *any* form of Windows involved from 95 onwards, the XCOPY command will not move the registry along, and you will not achieve the expected results. Now, if you are just concerned about data, then it would work, but the "New C" will not boot without the registry.

If you are trying to duplicate everything, you need a program like GHOST to copy the whole partition. You might be able to do this with Microsoft Backup too.

Christian

Hello,

Do you know what caused this? What Windoze OS are you running? Is this DOS?

If the drive is coming up that you can see it, I doubt it would be the IDE interface. SOmething else is at work, and probably not a good thing.

I would be surprised if Windows will even boot, because it likes to write temp files out to the drive, and because of the swapfile needing to be initialized.

If you have DOS around, see if you can access it (assuming it is not an NTFS Drive). You can also try loading up in Safe Mode. Check to see if the drive is full. Check the system logs to see if it is reporting system errors.

Christian

Hello,

I use twm for my VNC linux sessions, and GNOME otherwise. I like KDE, but do not need all the Calendaring and so forth running on it at one time. Now, if the RH9 server was my primary box, I think I would KDE it full time.

Christian

Hello,

I am locking this thread before it gets out of hand.

There is no way anyone here can know if it is for homework, or for pleasure, or for work/job reasons. With the amount of students out there, the assumption is made that it is homework related.

What we do know is that no matter how the bytes fall, they are intellectual property. It is DaniWeb policy to be a source of information, but not to do the whole project for the requestor. It is a touchy balance that has to be respected.

When we ask for "show work", that implies that you made an effort to understand the problem. This means code out some stuff... it doesn't necessairly have to work, just put your ideas down as to how the program should flow. Coming from a VB background, you shold have some idea of program flow and control. Perhaps write it in VB, and then ask how to convert it to C++. Porting is a skill in itself.

Community members should also not make assumptions on what the poster is asking. If you as a member feel that the poster is "getting away with something" then don't post... let the thread sit empty. A silent non-action speaks profoundly.

Christian

Hello,

I would trigger something that could write to the event log. That way, you could examine it and see remotely what is going on.

You could also comeup with a crontab that checks every minute for the exe running. Have that code write a log entry when that program is running.

Be aware, however, that you will not be able to tell if it is minimized or not based on the pure process examination. Not trying to stand up for her, but there is a chance she can run the game, and then have a call comein, and minimize it to do the work, and then return to it later.

Christian

Hello,

I am thankful for my laptop, with just one fan that every once in a while turns on.

The server has 4 large 3" fans for the case, and a set of CPU fans. They are thermo-statically controlled, so that they only go faster as they are needed. Sometimes, they don't even run.

I think that it is neat that the latest G5 chips on the Macs are equiped with water cooling. Nice and quiet. Way to go. Radiator. You Intel guys should be able to heat your room with such a device.

Just be sure to keep in mind that your fans always blow a particular direction. Having fans blowing ---> and others blowing <---- make an air-collison that does little for cooling.

And you can get obnoxious with fans... Apple had one of their G4 models nicknamed "windtunnel" by the users due to sound.

Christian

Hello,

My guess is that the OS recognizes your unit as a read-only device, and that at the OS level, it doesn't want to enable writing. The system Profiler is a pure read tool... it will not make settings changes for you.

I purchased a Sony CD-DVD RW external USB / Firewire device, and OS X will allow me to read DVD's, and write CD-R's at the finder level, but I need to use Toast in order to do DVD-R or DVD-RW with it.

My guess is that you will need to get Toast in order to have this work properly.

Christian

Hello,

I am guessing that your permissions are out of whack. Boot with the CD-ROM System Disk, and when you get to the Welcome! screen, go to the Blue apple in the upper left corner, and click down on it. YOu should see the option to run the Disk Utility. Do a repair permissions on your main system volume. It would not hurt you to also check the disk for normal file structure issues too.

Let us know if it works.

Christian

Hello,

Have you tried dragging the disk / cd-rom to the trash, and seeing the trash turn into an "eject button" ? Does that work?

The emergency open technique described above should only be done as a last resort. If you do need to do it, be sure to save your work and restart... otherwise the Mac might start looking for the volume that was unmounted properly.

Christian

Hello,

For that high-level question, let's see if we can give you a high-level answer...

* Become familiar with linux commands. df and fsck are good ones to know about.
* Make friends with the /etc directory where the configuration information is stored.
* Know how to edit /etc/fstab
* If a RAID is involved, know how to insert the modules or prepare the kernel
* Know how to read and access /var/log
* If you have to rescue data, know how tar works. If you have to move it to a network volume, know how NFS and the like work.
* If there is a custom kernel being used, copy that too.
* Know how to use remote-control tools like VNC to investigate
* Know about dmesg and /proc
* Know the cat command
* Know how to bring up in single-user mode
* Build your own linux box and get your hands dirty.

I am sure there are others, but that is off the top of my head.

Christian

Hello,

According to INTERNIC, the domain cherryos.com is registered to a company out in Hawaii, and is only good for one year. Makes me feel uncomfortable that they would only bring out the domain name for only one year. Sink or Swim comes to mind.

I think the best Mac OS emulator out there is an environment called Linux. Granted, they are not the same, but getting closer. When people give me Intel hardware, it quickly becomes Linux or FreeBSD.

I cannot imagine with all the graphical demands of the Mac OS that the emulator would be able to achieve 80 percent of full speed. The Mac excels in artistic visual beauty... at a cost of performance.

It just doesn't feel right...

Christian

Hello,

This can be solved using either /usr/bin/Xconfigurator, or by working the System Preferences --> Display program. Xconfigurator might be phased out... cannot remember.

Don't give up on it... There is an answer. And Welcome to Linux. If you are just starting out with it though, you might want to be working with Fedora Core 3. Redhat is no longer maintained; the work that was done to RedHat is now being done on Fedora. The business model changed, so they changed the name.

Christian