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Build A Cross-Platform Test Network With Samba & GRUB 97

Posted by Hemos from the test-it-out dept.
An anonymous reader writes "This tutorial shows how to combine Samba and GRUB to build a compact, highly adaptable, cross-platform test network, capable of booting and networking a large number of operating systems on a small number of machines. Though Samba and GRUB can manage many different operating systems, this tutorial focuses on Linux and Windows." Reg required on the story.
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Build A Cross-Platform Test Network With Samba & GRUB More

Build A Cross-Platform Test Network With Samba & GRUB

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  • Ways to do this (Score:5, Informative)

    by GC ( 19160 ) on Monday May 26, 2003 @11:12AM (#6040384)
    With Grub you still can only really have as many machines up and running concurrently as, well, as you have physical machines.

    VMware allows you to run multiple systems on the same network, with relative ease - although granted it isn't free, but it does run under Linux (and runs Linux as a guest OS)

    I actually have only one dual-boot system on my network, the others are all on their own dedicated operating systems.

    The dual-boot system is capable of running quite a few virtual machines at the same time - Great for testing, and it's possible to transfer virtual disks across the network, or use real partitions.
    • ...haven't we been doing this for years now? What's the big deal? I found nothing new in this article. It reminded me of one of those uber tech power point presentations you're forced to sit through every month at work... yeah, you know the ones I'm talking about. I think the fact that she admits to having a segway in her office speaks volumes to her apparent lack of anything better to do(r).

  • Stupid Reg (Score:1, Flamebait)

    by nich37ways ( 553075 )
    Meh, you need an IBM Login to access it, anyone want to paste the contents, I have so had enough of signing up to junk all the time.

  • Ooooooo... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 26, 2003 @11:12AM (#6040386)
    Can I use TCP too? Man, that would kick ass. Imagine using TCP to connect machines on different platforms. Shit, we could even develop a WORLD WIDE NETWORK!

  • user/pass for those who don't WANT to register (Score:4, Informative)

    by gatesh8r ( 182908 ) on Monday May 26, 2003 @11:16AM (#6040396)
    username: slashdot1
    password: slash1


    Simple enough.

  • Cross-platform via networking (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Turing Machine ( 144300 ) on Monday May 26, 2003 @11:24AM (#6040423)
    Interesting stuff, with some good humor (I especially liked "Windows NT/2000/XP are not possessed of such tender sensibilities; still, we'll deceive them too, as they have their own little quirks. Besides, it's easy and fun.").

    Personally, I hate rebooting and I also need to test my Java code on Mac OS X, so how I handle this problem is by keeping my source code in a directory on my Linux machine mountable via Samba and NFS. Compiling and testing on Windows 2000 or OS X is just a matter of hitting a button on the KVM switch. You could probably do it via VNC if you don't want to invest in a KVM (or, of course, if you don't mind having multiple monitors and keyboards, you could just have independent machines).

  • Wow, a really clear grub tutorial (Score:5, Informative)

    by nich37ways ( 553075 ) <slashdot@37ways.org> on Monday May 26, 2003 @11:28AM (#6040437) Homepage
    For all the good information this tutorial has in it, I am still reading it, the greatest part would have to be the incredibly clear and nicely laid out set of instructions on how to use Grub with different operating systems. Normally I find this information scattered across half a dozen different pages.

    Anyone who actually reads it and finds it useful look hard as there is a pdf link for the entire document, as it is only 72k its a lot easier than waiting for IBM's servers to load each page. A nice touch from IBM I think. Makes life over a slow connection a little easier.

    Cheers gatesh8r for the l/p

    • Re:Wow, a really clear grub tutorial (Score:5, Funny)

      by Malc ( 1751 ) on Monday May 26, 2003 @11:51AM (#6040523)
      What, you don't like the GRUB Info pages? I couldn't imagine why as it does seem to follow the general rules of Info pages: excessively verbose with a pre-ponderance for discussing product history rather than getting down to the nitty-gritty and describing how to use it. What with it being disorganised, poorly written and suffer from the crappy Info UI, it's classic example of why it needs a man page pointing to. Why are so many GNU programmes documented in Info rather than man these days? I hate it.

      Yes, you guessed it. I've had to suffer the GRUB Info pages in the past.
      • Damn it now I really want to be able to post and moderate..

        Very funny.

        I refuse to use info, I wont read anything in there as I have never seen a single info page which wasn't either a direct copy of the man pages or a load of freaking gibberish.
      • info is definitely one of those applications which deserves the GNU/ prepend. Buh.
      • The info format does suck. I've been using the lilo boot loader because of that. At least with man pages, you could print them out if they became too verbose. You can't print out info docs, at least I think you can't because of course info is documented in info.

        • Re:Wow, a really clear grub tutorial (Score:2, Informative)

          by Anonymous Coward
          Funny :)

          But, actually, the very reason texinfo exists in the first place is so documentation can be printed as well as read on-line (I guess someone decided manpages didn't look good when printed). Thus, when dealing with texinfo, you have 2 options: convert them to info or HTML (on-line format), or convert them to PostScript or PDF (printable format).

          My guess is the reason texinfo documents have so much front and back matter is that when printed out, they're meant to look like actual user manuals, with

          • you have 2 options: convert them to info or HTML (on-line format)

            So, I have to use my web browser to print info files. Have you noticed that HTML isn't exactly designed for printing?

            or convert them to PostScript or PDF (printable format).

            Uh, OK, but I don't have a PostScript printer. So I have to use Ghostscript.

            Web browswer or Ghostscript; either way, I have to use an intermediate (filter) program. After I've converted (filtered) the info file to some other format. So to print info files it's a two-ste

      • I rarely even look at the info pages anymore. It pisses me off when the man page says the actual manual is in info and then I run info to get a carbon copy of the man page.

        Plus the info keys don't seem to correspond to any application I've used before.

        • Re:Wow, a really clear grub tutorial (Score:4, Informative)

          by V. Mole ( 9567 ) on Monday May 26, 2003 @03:08PM (#6041427) Homepage

          It pisses me off when the man page says the actual manual is in info and then I run info to get a carbon copy of the man page.

          Install the doc package, or there's something wrong with your info search path. What's happening is that info is looking for the "real" documentation, not finding it, and then "helpfully" loading the man page.

          None of which is to say that info can't be irritating, but when the man page references info doc, there does exist, somewhere, a real info doc that isn't just copy of the man page.

        • I guess you're a VI user. ;) Then again, I'm a Emacs user and I find the interface poor.
      • I think info is obsolete. For simple, formatted documentation, there's man pages. For hyperlinked documentation, there's HTML (perhaps generated from some other source upon product installation). Why anyone would use info with these two alternatives available is beyond me.
    • Clicking around found me here:

      http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/

      They have a lot of stuff there. I always found IBM docs more clear and complete than Windows docs. But that may have simply been due to the fact that Windows never came with printed docs to my memory (oo, wait, I do seem to remember something with my win3.1 machine. Yeah, lost it as soon as I found OS/2...)

      Anyways, if all you want are tutorials by IBM:

      http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/views/lin u x/ tutorials.jsp
    • Did you notice the typo in the code under the adding Windows section?
      I think there is one mistake though. On the second slide of the adding windows you have "root (hd0,0)" but shouldn't that be "root (hd0,2)"? I am not all that familar with GRUB, but I pieced that together when you displayed the final boot menu file.

  • Wow, that's...really not worth reading. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by FiloEleven ( 602040 ) on Monday May 26, 2003 @11:30AM (#6040448)
    The article focuses mainly on installing multiple OSs with Grub as the boot loader. This information is widely available (and without registration). The section I was interested in was on Samba. Which it doesn't talk about except to say "here's a tutorial, because I don't feel like writing about this stuff."

    Waste of time.
    • If you're after info on Samba then perhaps my instructions on configuring Samba as a primary domain controller for a Windows 2000 roaming user environment will be of use to you: http://www.thegoldenear.connectfree.co.uk/gg/toolb ox/gnu-linux/samba/samba-setup.html [connectfree.co.uk]

    • Re:Wow, that's...really not worth reading. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Blkdeath ( 530393 ) on Monday May 26, 2003 @11:52AM (#6040526) Homepage
      The article focuses mainly on installing multiple OSs with Grub as the boot loader. This information is widely available (and without registration). The section I was interested in was on Samba. Which it doesn't talk about except to say "here's a tutorial, because I don't feel like writing about this stuff."

      I found it mostly a vanity piece, really. Much of the advice she gave was quite frankly wrong, silly, or unclear (ie; could have used context).

      Examples;

      • Hiding Linux partitions from Win'98? Why?
      • How is it "tricky" to create a Windows partition with Linux's fdisk? (It's no more/less complicated than creating a Linux Swap partition, FYI).
      • Debian is the only Linux with a package management system? ("Everyone except Debian users must unpack the tarball")
      • zcat and pipe a tar.gz through tar?
      • GRUB can only be installed from floppy?!?
      • Disable encrypted network passwords in Windows?
      • Explicitly set all NICs to 100TX?

      Advice given by self-ascribed "gurus" should be taken with a suitable quantity of NaCL, in my humble opinion.

      • How is it "tricky" to create a Windows partition with Linux's fdisk

        With the Redhat 5 installer, I opted to truncate my FAT32 partition and make an ext2fs in the resulting free space with Linux fdisk. It DIDN'T tell me that it would truncate it regardless of whether or not there was data there! I lost 50 Megabytes of mp3s on my FAT32 partition. I have a God damn MS in Computing so I'm both embarassed and angry simultaneously, whoa feels weird.

        I use PartitionMagic now, I like linux and fdisk, but quite fran

  • Thin on details, good primer for newbies (Score:5, Informative)

    by gravis_23 ( 602248 ) on Monday May 26, 2003 @11:33AM (#6040461) Homepage Journal
    Better documentation on accomplishing dual booting is available at The Linux Documentation Project's [tldp.org] site. Kudos to IBM tho for making an effort. :)
  • Carla Schroder wrote a good little tutorial but the writing style put me off a little. She sprinkled little biblical phrases throught out the artical. It was a little jarring to have Grub being hailed as the promised land. Not exactly what I was expecting from an IBM site but then maybe IBM has really caught the Linux religion. ;-)
  • What this tutorial covers
    page 1 of 4

    This tutorial shows how to combine Samba and GRUB to build a compact, highly adaptable, cross-platform test network, capable of booting and networking a large number of operating systems on a small number of machines. Though Samba and GRUB can manage many different operating systems, this tutorial focuses on Linux and Windows.
    Who should take this tutorial
    page 2 of 4

    This is neither a networking tutorial, nor a Linux system administration tutorial. Basic knowledge o
  • Why post articles that require a registration?

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