Copy No.________ Defence Research and Development Canada Recherche et développement pour la défense Canada Final report on the installation of Linux and other software on a Windows NT system David R. Chang Evans Computer Applications Ltd. 6424 Norwood St.
Final report on the installation of Linux and other software on a Windows NT system David R. Chang Evans Computer Applications Ltd. 6424 Norwood St.
Abstract This report describes how the Red Hat Linux 6.0 operating system was installed on a Windows NT desktop computer. The subsequent installation of application software for NT and Linux (including IDL for Linux) is also outlined. Résumé Vous trouverez dans ce rapport la description de l'installation de Red Hat Linux 6.0 sur un poste de travail Windows NT, ainsi que les grandes lignes de l'installation de logiciels d'application fonctionnant sous NT et Linux (y compris IDL pour Linux).
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Executive summary Introduction Over the past several years, open source software architectures have come into vogue, enabling the support base of programmers and engineers to greatly increase at little or no cost to the end user. Among UNIX operating systems, Linux has become the de facto standard open system, with a huge support base.
Sommaire Introduction Depuis quelques années, les architectures logicielles ouvertes ont la cote et permettent d'élargir considérablement la base des programmeurs et des ingénieurs qui en font le soutien, et cela sans frais ou presque pour les utilisateurs finals. Un des systèmes Unix est devenu la norme de fait pour les systèmes ouverts et possède une base de soutien gigantesque, il s'agit de LINUX.
Table of contents Abstract .............................................................................................................................................. i Résumé............................................................................................................................................... i Executive summary ......................................................................................................................... iii Sommaire ...................................
3.12 Selecting Services for Start on Reboot (pp. 95-96)....................... 9 3.13 Configuring a Printer (p. 96 of guide) ........................................ 10 3.14 Authentication Configuration (pp. 103-104 of guide)................. 10 3.15 Creating a Boot Diskette (pp. 104-105 of guide) ........................ 10 3.16 Installing LILO (pp. 105-106 of guide) ...................................... 10 3.17 Adding Options to LILO Boot Command Line (pp. 107-108) .... 10 3.
VI. PROBLEMS............................................................................................................................. 20 References....................................................................................................................................... 21 List of tables Table 1. Proposed partition table for the EIDE Drive..................................................................... 5 Table 2. Proposed partition table for the SCSI Drive. ............................
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I. INTRODUCTION The object of this contract was to install Linux and some application software on a Dell OptiPlex GX1 desktop computer with the following hardware: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. Pentium III processor, 450 MHz. 256 MB ECC memory. 512 KB level 2 cache. ATI 3D RAGE PRO TURBO, AGP 2X, video controller with 8 MB SGRAM. Sound Blaster Pro compatible card (Crystal Ware audio driver CS32BA11). Iomega ZIP 100 MB internal drive.
II. INSTALLING THE SCSI CARD SOFTWARE Installing the EZ-SCSI software is straightforward. One only has to insert the CD-ROM in the drive and follow the on-screen instructions. Installation of the SCSI driver software takes more work: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. Log in as administrator. Click on "Start/Settings/Control Panel". Double click on the "SCSI Adapters" folder. Click on the "Drivers" tab. Click the "Add" button. A drivers list appears.
III. INSTALLING RED HAT LINUX 6.0 The "Official Red Hat Linux Installation Guide" is primarily geared for simple installations on Windows 95 machines. It is not an ideal reference for more complicated operations, such as the dual-boot Windows NT/Linux installation that was carried out under this contract. Additional Linux documentation should be obtained: 1. Print a copy of the file \doc\Howto\mini\Linux_NT-Loader from the Red Hat Linux CD-ROM #1. 2.
As it turned out, the installation program was able to automatically identify most of the hardware. The information that we had to provide was: 1. The mouse's type and number of buttons (generic PS/2 with two buttons). 2. Whether or not the disk drives were accessed in LBA (linear block addressing) mode, sometimes referred to as "large disk" mode. We were unable to determine if the disk drives used LBA mode. It was presumed that they did use LBA mode since they were new, large drives. 3.
(OS'es), provision was made to create some FAT partitions whose files could be read/written by either OS. It was decided to also create an NTFS partition to take advantage of NTFS's security features and better handling (vs. FAT) of large partitions. There is a Linux driver for reading NTFS partitions, but it is only in alpha release. The Installation Guide glosses over the subject of the number and size of Linux partitions that are required (pages 29 to 30).
The size of the /usr partition was chosen based on the statement in the Installation Guide (page 30) that a 1 GB partition would allow one to install every Red Hat package. The final partition on the SCSI drive was designated /u1 in accordance with a naming scheme used by Penguin Computing, a Linux workstation and server provider. The Linux swap partitions were placed on a separate drive from the Linux system software since this reportedly provides better performance.
749 to 751 of the "Microsoft Windows NT Workstation Resource Kit"). 3. Installing Linux The installation process is generally straightforward, following the procedure starting on page 33 of the Installation Guide. Special steps for our particular installation are mentioned in the following paragraphs. 3.1 Booting the Installation Program (p. 36 of the guide) We used the floppy boot disk supplied with the Red Linux distribution, after ensuring that the disk was write protected. 3.2 Installation Class (p.
Table 3. Actual partition table for EIDE drive. Mount Device Boot Start End System Point —————————————————————————————————— /tmp/hda1 * 1 261 DOS 16-bit >= 32M /fat1 /tmp/hda2 262 325 DOS 16-bit >= 32M / /tmp/hda3 326 357 Linux native /tmp/hda4 358 1244 Extended /usr /tmp/hda5 358 485 Linux native /home /tmp/hda6 486 1244 Linux native —————————————————————————————————— Table 4. Actual partition table for SCSI drive.
bad blocks. Note that the formatting process does not happen immediately. 3.7 Selecting components (p. 61 of guide) We chose components, rather than individual packages. In addition to the default components, we included the following: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.
management, whereas nfs is a file protocol for file sharing across TCP/IP networks. 3.13 Configuring a Printer (p. 96 of guide) We did not ask to configure a printer. 3.14 Authentication Configuration (pp. 103-104 of guide) We unchecked "Enable NIS". We checked "Use Shadow Passwords" and "Enable MD5 Passwords". 3.15 Creating a Boot Diskette (pp. 104-105 of guide) We created a boot disk. 3.16 Installing LILO (pp. 105-106 of guide) We installed LILO in the first sector of the root partition (/dev/hda3).
Guide"). 3.19 Preparing the Computer for Dual Booting This consists of following the instructions given in the "NT OS Loader + Linux miniHOWTO" (see section III. above). In brief, the procedure is: 1. Boot Linux using the Linux boot disk prepared during the installation procedure. 2. Copy the Linux boot sector (on /dev/hda3 in our case) to a DOScompatible file on a floppy disk. We used "mcopy" to do this.
IV. SYSTEM CONFIGURATION 1. WINDOWS NT CONFIGURATION 1.1 Installing Service Packs At the request of a user, we upgraded the Windows NT system with Service Pack 4 and the associated Year 2000 Service Pack. The Service Pack files had been downloaded into the folder c:\Service Pack4. Instructions regarding the installation of Service Pack 4 were in the file Readme.txt in the c:\Service Pack4\I386 directory.
1.3 Installing Application Software At the users' request, we installed some acoustic data manipulation software (Chang, 1999). This simply involved copying the program executables from another Windows NT workstation (kingfisher). To use the programs on the saturn workstation, follow the instructions in the afore-mentioned report, replacing the kingfisher directory "D:\Chang\..." with the corresponding saturn directory "H:\users\chang\...".
2.6 Installing Fortran Installation of Gnu Fortran (egcs-g77) was done by running GnoRPM. GnoRPM is described on pages 183 to 194 of the "Red Hat Linux Installation Guide". When logged in as root, we entered: mount /mnt/cdrom gnorpm & umount /mnt/cdrom 2.7 Installing IDL IDL 5.2 was installed from CD-ROM by following the instructions in the IDL Installation Guide for UNIX.
Once we had installed the update, the IDL demos ran successfully. We then sent an e-mail to register@rsinc.com to obtain an IDL license file, and eventually received an e-mail reply which contained the license file. We extracted the license file from the e-mail, and copied it to the file /usr/local/rsi/license/license.dat. In order to run IDL as a licensed user, it was necessary to start the "license manager daemon". To simplify matters, we decided to start the daemon automatically at boot time.
V. USING LINUX 1. BOOTING LINUX One selects "Linux" from the OS Loader list. The prompt "LILO boot:" will appear. One does not have to enter anything at this point; Linux will boot by default after a few seconds. If there is a disk present in the Zip drive, this slows down the boot process considerably. 2. LOGGING IN AND LOGGING OUT When logging in, one should be aware that an "auto-repeat" feature for keyboard input has been enabled.
4. LINUX DEVICE NAMES Some of this information can be obtained by examining the file /etc/fstab. Standard device names are listed in table 5. Table 5. Linux Device Names.
5. TRANSFERRING FILES BETWEEN NT AND LINUX Although Windows NT cannot use files in Linux ext2 disk partitions, Linux can read/write data in Windows NT vfat partitions. Thus data files on the Windows NT drives E:, F: and G: (/fat1, /fat2, /fat3 under Linux) can be read/written by either operating system. Data files on the floppy disk (drive A: or /dev/fd0) can be used by both NT and Linux, provided the floppy disk is in vfat format.
mtools refers to MS-DOS-like disk drive letters which are defined in the file /etc/mtools.conf. These settings can be modified via the local file ~/.mtoolsrc. Following are the contents of a sample.mtoolsrc file: # Floppy disk drive drive a: file="/dev/fd0" exclusive 1.44m # # EIDE disk partition(s) drive e: file="/dev/hda2" # # SCSI disk partition(s) drive f: file="/dev/sda1" drive g: file="/dev/sda2" N.B.
VI. PROBLEMS Due to lack of time, we were unable to resolve the following issues: 20 1. We were unable to determine how one uses the Zip drive under Linux. During boot up, Linux does recognize the Zip drive however. 2. When Linux is booted, the following message appears after "Enabling swap space [OK]": "can't locate module st". We do not know what the significance of this message is.
References 1. Chang, David, "Final Report and User's Manual for Changes and Updates to Acoustic Data Manipulation Software", DREA Contractor Report, Draft, September 1999. 2. Danesh, Arman, "Mastering Linux", SYBEX Inc., Alameda, California, 1999. 3. Dell Computer Corporation, "Dell Model UltraScan P990 Color Monitor User's Guide", January 1999. 4. Microsoft Corporation, "Microsoft Windows NT Workstation Resource Kit", Microsoft Press, Redmond, Washington, 1996. 5. Red Hat Software Inc.
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DOCUMENT CONTROL DATA (Security classification of title, body of abstract and indexing annotation must be entered when the overall document is classified) 1. ORIGINATOR (the name and address of the organization preparing the document. Organizations for whom the document was prepared, e.g. Centre sponsoring a contractor's report, or tasking agency, are entered in section 8.) Evans Computer Applications Ltd 6424 Norwood St Halifax NS B3H 2L3 3. 2.
13. ABSTRACT (a brief and factual summary of the document. It may also appear elsewhere in the body of the document itself. It is highly desirable that the abstract of classified documents be unclassified. Each paragraph of the abstract shall begin with an indication of the security classification of the information in the paragraph (unless the document itself is unclassified) represented as (S), (C), (R), or (U).
