Posts by kc0arf

Hello,

This is a loaded question. Some people will answer with cost estimates, others with hardware requirements, and still others with the religious war between the two.

Novell is quite stable, and built upon Linux. Novell's email system, Groupwise, can be a pain in the rump to restore an account, but other parts of Novell, particularly the web-based management of the server, are quite cool and pleasent to work with.

Windows Server 2003 is also a quality contender. (Did I just say that?) Yep. I am studying for my certification in it as we speak. A number of nice features are included with the software, including IIS, a simple email handler (SMTP / POP3), and remote control software.

Your question will not be answered in a simple fashion. I would look at licensing costs for clients to connect to the servers. I would look at applications that might need one environment over the other. The simple stuff will be easy: printers are supported by both, Macintosh and Unix are supported by both, both have remote control, and both have backup solutions.

You can also obtain sample evaluation environments for both network operating systems. Try them out. Not for a day. 2 weeks within each. See what you like and what you don't like.

Now, if all you are looking for is a simple file and print server, let's start talking Linux....

Christian

Hello,

Dell is usually VERY GOOD and EASY to get the right driver for the right box. Be sure to use your service tag number information to get the correct driver.

Christian

Hello,

WAN means that your connection goes through the router's firewall / routing scheme, whereas the LAN ports imply that you are on the same subnet. In English, this means that if you wire your computers with the WAN port, you will need to configure the firewall and routing on the website, and if they all use the LAN port, the additional routing / layering will be bypassed.

I use the LAN ports all the time, except for the SINGLE connection to the cable modem / dsl line. And since I have Linux servers serving as my firewall points, I don't use the WAN ports period.

I am betting that you need a crossover cable between one LAN port and the other. Some hubs and switches have an UPLINK port; the latest generation of devices self-detect this particular condition.

Either case, as I am a visual fella... if you have access to a digital camera or a scanner, please draw a picture of what your network looks like, and lable it accordingly. Let's look and be sure we know what we are talking about.

Christian

Hello,

To be honest, I would return that computer to Windows 98. With only 64 MB of memory, you are really going to suffer in performance, perhaps to the point that drivers will not load properly, and I would be really surprised if you get anything to work on that computer.

Upgrade the RAM first, and then let's go forward from there.

Christian

Hello,

The newer Compaq Presarios that are coming out "feature" a hidden hard drive partition to restore the machine to factory settings. As an advanced user, it annoyed the hell out of me that I could not partition the computer and install a bare-bones system as desired.

The computer had a program hanging off of the Start menu to burn a set of recovery CD's or DVD's.

I made them, and then proceeded to re-format the drive only to find out that Compaq does not support the creation of partitions in the recovery process. The online help fella was not able to provide me a way around this, and actually suggested that I bring the machine in for repair.

Christian

Hello,

If you are able to get into the system, the FIRST thing I would do is backup your data. Most people do not know how important that step is, but it is crucial to your data to get it backed up properly.

Next, if your KLGC (Known Last Good Configuration) is working, there could be a new driver (such as video or network) that is messing up the load. See if you can get into the Logs, and perhaps there it will tell you what is conflicting.

I would also turn off XP Restore. I have seen that restore too many viruses. If you make good backups, and test things regularly, you don't need that extra grief.

You can also try to re-apply the update. Perhaps that will clean up any mis-firing programs.

To be honest, I think you are on the path to a re-install.

Christian

Hello,

Ghosting will work fine for you on the same hardware, but RIS / Slipstreaming will save you a lot of time and grief concerning hardware detection, and if you are in a Domain, will keep your SIDs straight. Working more complexly, in the corporate environment, you can also pre-name the machine accounts, and generate scripts, and really make it a quick, quality installation.

Not as simple as Linux Kickstart though.

Christian

Hello,

mspx means "Microsoft Shall Prosecute eXhaustively"

I dunno what it really means. But looking at the link, I am that much more motivated to convert systems to Linux and/or Macintosh, and leave this bunch behind.

Christian

Hello,

This brings up a very important question, and I am researching it. If others have some thoughts, feel free to post.

Looking historically, the new chips should support the older operating systems, but this is a much larger shift than Apple successfully worked in the past. More to follow.

Christian

Hello,

It is my understanding that Macro code in Windows will work just fine in Macintosh. Matter of fact, it is one of the areas on a Mac that are prone to "infection" -- a windows macro virus can knock down a mac's office environment.

I'd give it a try, and see how well it works.

Christian

Hello,

Anyone who feels that Windows offers a great user experience should check out our Virus & Nasties forum, and see all the hell that is floating around in there. Such user experiences are why I do not have any Windows computers running on my home network, and why I do my development on a completely separate subnet -- so that it will not try to infect the rest of my network.

As for me, I will remain a happy Linux / Mac user for some time. Yes, I realize there are no perfect Operating Systems, but do know that these systems are much easier to maintain, and I spend most of my time on them doing useful work, instead of repairs.

Christian

Hello,

Open IE, and type this in:

http://63.240.140.119

and let me know if you resolve The Milwaukee Journal.

If you do, and you see a newspaper web-page, this means that your DNS is messed up, and we have to take a look at your DNS server. If you do not see the web page, this implies other problems.

Christian

Hi,

On my Macs, it has always been Apple-Shift-3 to make the picture. I do wish OS X would leave the picture in .pict format instead of converting it to .pdf though.

Christian

Hello,

I work daily with Fedora Core 3, and am tempted to switch to SuSE to learn more about that desktop and work with it. I have not had a problem with Fedora / RedHat, and admit that I have not explored GenToo, Mandrake, etc.

I tried Debian, and quickly lost interest with the mammoth install issues. I also want the ability to install from local FTP sites... and Fedora / RedHat allowed me to do that.

I have not had a desktop issue yet... GIMP worked fine for me for photo edits, Evolution for email, kPalm works with the Palm, etc. I am not a gamer, although I have a few of them on my Mac for when time slows down a bit, and I like to get inspired.

You do not need a 10 year old computer as JWenting suggests. You can do linux today, and have a quite pleasent experience. Just be sure to think about backups, and how you are going to manage things if your hard drive goes bad. Linux supports burning of CD-ROMS, DVD's, and even the thumb drives.

You can live without Microsoft.

Christian

Hello,

If the hard drive is making a clicking noise as described, then your drive's life is critically short. It will not matter if it is wired inside the computer, or inside the corresponding enclosure... if the disk is not turning, then no data is accessable.

You might be able to place the drive in a freezer, and once cold, then take it out and fire it up, and maybe get a few minutes worth of life out of it. This is a drastic measure though.

This is why backups are vital.

Christian

Hello,

This might work for you. If you know where your data is, and hopefully, you made partitions besides the / partition, you should be able to isolate the data, and re-install Fedora 3. Then, edit /etc/fstab to bring your data partitions back online.

For example, here is my partition layout:

[christian@frodo ~]$ df
Filesystem           1K-blocks      Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/hda1               497829    269544    202583  58% /
none                    257808         0    257808   0% /dev/shm
/dev/hda5              3020140    254392   2612332   9% /home
/dev/hda3              4032124   1334764   2492532  35% /store
/dev/hda6              1510032     35468   1397856   3% /tmp
/dev/hda2              8870804   4104600   4315584  49% /usr
/dev/hda7              1004024    147588    805432  16% /var
/dev/hdc               8285408   8285408         0 100% /media/cdrom

In my case, I could re-install, just as long as I leave /home alone.

I am not aware of any ways to install lilo unless you are in the environment.

I am curious, if you were using your HDD for booting the system, why you had a floppy disk involved.

Christian

Hello,

You might wish to expand a little bit more on what you are trying to do here, and a bit more on the Strong dc++ protocol. From what I see, it is a peer-to-peer network scheme.

Christian

Hello,

You might also wish to look up and how to write makefiles. Unfortunately, I do not remember the exact sequence anymore, as I have moved on to system administration instead of programming, but makefiles can really make your life easier.

Christian

Hi.

This is not possible. You need a hub or a switch to connect 3 or more computers. Or, you can have one computer with two NIC cards, and a crossover cable, and then turn on packet forwarding.

Do not deviate from standards. Design your network right the first time.

Christian

Hello,

AOL, in my opinion, is a virus. It installs entries into your registry that cannot be yanked easily when un-install time comes around. I have seen the client cause problems on an otherwise stable machine. I have heard of people unable to get AOL to stop billing them, and hassles getting out of the contract.

Friends don't let friends use AOL.

Christian

Hello,

Just some thoughts --

* If your computer came installed with Windows 98, unless you upgraded the RAM significantly, I doubt that you will get XP to run on it. Take DLH's advice and ensure the system is recent enough to run XP.

* STOP! Get the data off of the hard drive. You are quickly going down the path of losing it all. I certainly hope you backed it up before you started this quest

* 8 GB is fine for a C: partition. It might feel tight at home, but there are a lot of computers out there in the business world that need about 4 - 6 GB for their programs, and the rest of the data sits on a server.

Christian

Hello,

Well, I have some ideas, but it depends on how well/poorly you designed your system.

Some questions --

* What did you use for backup software?
* Is your data also on your C:

I am hoping that your data is somewhere besides C. You can then format the C, restore the programs necessary, and re-connect them with your data. If you did not partition, I bet you will consider that during this re-build phase.

Let us know,

Christian

Hi,

I am very curious on why the software doesn't use DNS to translate the named address to an IP number. The use of hosts files is discouraged, because it is a manual update if any of the ip numbers changes.

Do not get host file happy and start programming shortcuts -- that will cause problems down the road as IP numbers for companies change.

Also be aware that not all devices respond to pings -- it is very possible to firewall the responses out, or firewall out the PING completely. With all of the network attacks running amok on the internet, many administrators have shut down ICMP responses from their devices.

Christian

Hello,

A more complete network diagram would be useful. Feel free to draw something, and make it an attachment to your question.

Macs will understand TCP/IP just like Unix and Windoze. It is a universal standard on how the protocol is designed and implemented. If your Dell computer will use the internet via DHCP (perhaps), the Mac can be told to use the same system, and it will work.

Christian

Hello,

My guess is that your routers are not port forwarding properly. It is possible to program internet devices (firewalls) to ignore ping and trace requests. They are controlled by a different sort of packet type called ICMP packets, and you can discard them.

You may need to hardcode your router to accept the packets of the game, and forward them to the internal IP number of your game computer.

For example, if the game is playing on port 3000, you will need to tell your router to forward packets from port 3000 onto the address 192.168.1.15 which is the game box. Your configuration is going to be unique, and you will need to research exactly what needs to be done.

Hope that you now understand what is going on.

Christian

Hello,

You can also try booting an alternative OS. For example, if your computer was a Windows 2000 Server, try loading Knoppix on it, and use linux to access the hard drive. You can also try a floppy disk with DOS on it, and some network drivers, and an NTFS Read module. You will need to move the data off the drive, and then likely re-format it.

Now, if the fella who built your box was a good administrator, he would have partitioned the drive into a few partitions to isolate areas on the disk, and prevent the C: from filling and collapsing the device. It is possible that the other partition is available and functioning.

Dunno though.

Christian

Hi,

Depends on what OS you are working with. Processes belong to the Operating System, not to the C++ environment.

For example, I could look at my linux processes by making a system call to the OS, and asking it to execute the PS command.

Christian

Hi,

Just a couple of guesses here:

* It is possible that your computer is too old to recognize the hard drives as installed. You did not mention on your questions if the BIOS reported detecting the IDE drives. Load up your BIOS first, and see if it sees the drives. If it does not see the drives, they will not get the chance to start booting.

* It is also possible that the Dell cannot use the drives even if detecting them. They are larger (greater than 2 GB), and in the old days, especially if there are no PCI slots on the computer, it is possible that the BIOS cannot deal with the larger hard drive size

* You mentioned having either 2000 or XP. If the OS was getting to a point of loading, but windows had a problem, you would see NTLDR Missing or some similar message. You didn't mention that, so I doubt windows is even getting the signal to load

* The hard drive might be physically dead. You should feel it humming in your hand. If you hear loud clicking noises, or tapping like a hammer tapping a nailhead, that hints problems.

And if you do get Windows to load, since the hardware has radically changed, it is going to go through and re-detect a whole bundle of hardware, and you risk really getting into some trouble. I would go find your friend and get the data …

Hello,

In this case, it is best that you go to a class or two, and study up on where you are going. You have learned how to do programming, perhaps C++, perhaps SQL, and I bet that you are very good at it, and your company is going places.

Programming and Network Administration are VERY DIFFERENT. It is my experience that programmers try to give the world, and administrators have to perform reality checks to the programmers.

Please UNDERSTAND the following:

* You are going to be networking these computers. You want security. You will have help installing them, but then they are your responsibility. An improper configuration will be pure hell. Viruses. Licensing issues. Support. Maintenance. You won't be able to ever go home you are going to be so busy. Computers that are down are not going to earn your company any money.

* You are going to be placing your data on the internet. This means worldwide exposure. This means your company secrets, data, codesets and the like are now accessable to the world. This means firewalls. This means your core corporate jewels (assets) are exposed.

* Any breach of security could close your company down. Let's say your accounting department looses all their records. You don't know who owes you money, or where you need to pay your bills. This is a very troublesome position to be in.

I would STRONGLY encourage you to either take some classes …

Hello,

Let's work a bit further here...

Dear Moderator

So am I right to say that firewalls can only be down when there are bugs in the software? What about hardware firewalls? They also do have bugs in them??

They can have bugs, but I would rather call them "threats". Firewalls are driven by software, and either a poorly configured firewall, or a new threat that exploits your firewall design, could cause a leak. All firewalls are a mixture of hardware and software. There is no such thing as a pure hardware firewall. Why? Because new threats are discovered, and new attacks are developed, and the manufacturer will want to allow you to update your device to respond to these threats in short order.

I should also mention that firewalls will not stop a virus attack if you "tell" the firewall to let the problem though... for example, you can download an email attachment that is a virus through the firewall. In this particular example, we are talking about two different attacks, and I do not want to distract you from the firewall topic. Firewalls will also not stop known services from being compromised. For example, a firewall on a webserver will not prevent malicious code from attacking the webserver.

Apart from bugs, can firewalls(software and hardware) be MOST of time reliable.

Firewalls are much better than having nothing running at all, unless you happen to have a device on the internet that …

Hello,

You said that you just reformatted your computer... I assume you put back on Windows 95 / 98 / ME on the box. Did you happen to upgrade IE and apply all of the OS patches afterwards?

If not, you need to do that first. Or try running some other browser besides IE, such as firefox. Out of the box, you are running an ancient web browser that might not know how to deal with today's protocols and dynamic pages and additions to the HTML library.

Go get your patches first.

Christian

Hello,

Windows first, then Linux. Microsoft has a view that it is the only thing on a computer, and it will try to use the whole drive, and not much else. Note how many systems have a C: and that's it...

Linux is designed to work with many partitions, and be flexible.

Christian

Hi,

If you had an older G3, did it ship with OS X, or OS 9? If you wanted to zap it, reformat the drive for OS 9 and away you go.

Or, if it came with OS X on it, boot with the X disk, and re-format the drive, and set it up then.

Christian

Hi,

IE has not been updated for Macintosh for several years. It is a dead product.

People beyond 10.2 (Jaguar) are running Safari as a default browser. Or Firefox.

I know you want to be clean and good with your code, but I would concentrate on live products.

Christian

Hello,

It is not illegal to make the media. It is illegal to use that serial number on the sticker on a second machine, however. That is why DLH closed this thread.

BTW, what Frenemy suggested above, making the files all visible, and then copying them off, will only work if your machine has the SAME IDENTICAL HARDWARE. If there is other hardware on the two boxes, then the new one will try to recognize the new hardware, but if it needs a driver, you will not have the CAB files necessary to finish the process.

To do it properly, you need that I386 directory and run setup on the box.

Christian

Hello,

I am inclined to believe that this is something particular to your iMac. Moving it around, or putting it in the center of a room should have eliminated a lot of the fields in the walls.

Incidentially, moving electrical currents cause magnetic fields. They are 90 degrees out of phase with the electrical current, meaning if the electricity is travelling up a wall, the magnetic field is travelling 90 degrees out of the wall, such as if you were to put a nail into the wall to hang your coat on. Because current is always flowing (alternating current changes direction 60 times a second, 60 Hz) the magnetic field is also pulsing back and forth, thus the "wobble" you see on a monitor.

To test for magnetic fields, you can use a compass. You can also use an AM radio, tuned to "static" and hover that around a device, and listen to the warbling and distortion the fields make.

Christian

Hi,

I will move this post to the Storage area where it might have better service.

As for using your DVD drive... it is mounted internally, meaning that it is either SCSI, IDE, or perhaps FireWire. Guessing it is IDE.

If so, you may be able to get an external case that has USB / Firewire on one side of it (external), and has the logics inside to get them to work.

For example, my external SCSI case has SCSI on the outside, and SCSI on the inside. I can take any internal SCSI device, and install it into the box, and have it work properly.

We can start, once you let us know what kind of device you have.

Christian

Hello,

SCSI is an older bus technology, and was often used in Macintosh computers, along with many internal forms of file servers. SCSI devices have ID numbers assigned to them (usually by jumper or a dial selector switch), and you also have to keep in mind termination factors.

Most standard PC's do not include a SCSI interface on the motherboard, so you will need to install an adapter card into your computer. Adaptec makes a lot of these devices: check out their website for more information.

You will hear the word Terminator with SCSI. A SCSI bus has to be terminated, or it will not function properly. Think of a SCSI bus as a string of Christmas lights. The ending light-bulbs need to have terminators if they have more than one device in the bus.

So, if you are going to have two devices inside your machine (such as a CD-ROM and a tape drive), then the furthest one physically connected on the cable has to be terminated (usually a jumper setting).

Each SCSI device, including the adapter, needs to have a unique ID. ID's that are set by jumpers are counted in BINARY. You will often see 3 jumpers. Think of three binary bits 111 or
101 or 010 and the like (a 1 is a connected jumper). Make sure they are all unique.

Enjoy,

Christian

Hello,

It is possible that some of the folders are named so that the Mac is having a hard time seeing it. Are there any spaces or illegal characters in the Windows folder names that the Mac is rejecting? For directory names, stay away from Special characters like !*&^#*&!^ inside them. Also note that you may have excessivly long folder names, and that could cause a problem too.

Other than that, you could try to network the computers together with Ethernet. In that case, the PC would have your large external drive, and your Mac would see the files through the share management.

Christian

Hello,

On the old computer: install a single network card, and configure it with a static IP on the same subnet as the new computer. Use the hub to connect the computers together.

On the new computer: install the second ethernet card. Setup one card to work with the internet connection (ASDL) and the other card to connect with your old computer. On this computer, check out what Internet Connection Sharing is all about, and set it up so that the old computer can see the internet through this box. Also setup firewalling and protections. Realize too that the new computer has to be on in order for the old one to see the network.

Alternative:

Convert the old computer to Linux, which has a very robust internal routing scheme available to it. Install both network cards onto this Linux computer. Setup a firewall. Away you go.

Christian

Hello,

I do not have a killbox, so I will leave that one alone.

Keep the $ directories from Windows updates. You do not want to mess around with that information. Especially if you have plenty of drive space. Just leave it alone.

Christian

Hello,

Windows 2000 is the desktop version of the operating system, geared to have hooks into all sorts of media and the like.

The server products are designed for network and storage performance. You do not want to use a server product for day-to-day workstation activities. The code is different enough that it could cause you problems.

Advanced server is geared to work with more memory and utilize multiple processors.

Christian

Hello,

It is my *guess* that your video settings are set too high for your monitor to deal with. Go into safe mode, and specifiy something simple like 800x600 @ 16 bit color, and reboot.

It is quite possible that your video card can do something huge, but your monitor is just not able to deal with it.

Christian

Hello,

GIMP has a limitation of 256 colors, the last time I checked. Photoshop works with 32 (millions + an alpha channel). Photoshop also allows you to batch operations for unattended operation, among other things.

GIMP is a nice foot in the door, or for simple picture cropping, but it is not geared for the serious photo folk.

Christian

Hello,

The honest thing to do would be to purchase the software. You are trying to illegally bypass the license agreement, and while I am not going to get into a lecture here, I will lock the post as strong encouragement that you follow the software license agreement.

Christian

Hello,

OS X will not work with 8.6 as the Classic agent. Sorry about that. You need to be running 9.x to have it function properly.

Now, the larger question that I have is what version of 9 are you working with? In the day I was working with OS 9.x I would rarely have a problem. Make sure you are running with the latest 9.1 or later if you can. I do not remember what the last, final 9 version was. I do know that you do not want 9.0

Now, there is nothing wrong with working with 8.6 for the rest of your days. Granted it will not work on the latest hardware, but if you can keep an older Mac working, go for it. There is nothing wrong using two machines if you have a solid investment in a legacy solution.

Christian

Hello,

If you are trying to restart and install in Safemode, that implies that you are not booting from the setup media.

Check your BIOS to see if it has booting from the CD-ROM enabled or not. If that doesn't work, you can try to startup from floppy disk (W2K supports it, not sure if XP/ME does or not). You should be booting into the setup program directly.

Christian

Hello,

Well, how do you convert decimal numbers to hex?

10 = A
11 = B
12 = C
13 = D
14 = E
15 = F

You should be able to do it out of division, or you can convert it to binary first and then go from binary to hex.

Work out how you would do it by hand, and then code it.

Christian

Hello,

Linux startups can vary on how long they take based upon what services you are loading, along with how many devices are surrounding the system.

For example, sendmail may be doing some tests for network connectivity, or DNS connectivity. If your network is not defined properly, sendmail may be waiting for things to timeout before allowing the computer to continue booting up.

As the root user, you can control the way things startup on your machine. As an advanced root user, you can get in there and change the order of booting.

As for your mouse, you can try running kudzu to re-detect it.

Christian

Hello,

I would try the computer on a second monitor. It is possible that the first monitor might be losing the detection / sync signal that yanks it out of sleep mode.

It is also possible that your BIOS has put the computer in a very deep sleep. You may want to check your computer BIOS, and disable all BIOS forms of power management and the like, and let Windows manage all of the power options.

Christian