KCLUG September 2004

63 participants
117 discussions

Re: Which distro can anyone recommend for low end hardware ?
by Brian Kelsay 27 Sep '04

27 Sep '04

That would work, BUT they may not want the complexity or expense of networking hardware and all the wires running around. Not to mention having to set up a server, although they could concentrate their upgrade expenses on that box. He did not say how many total boxes they expected to have. He did say that they would network only for printer sharing. If that is a requirement and you don't have too many nodes, you could get hubs or cheap Linksys 10/100 switches. Make sure to check linuxprinting.org for Linux printer compatibility before buying. Cups or samba for printing should do the trick. Brian Kelsay >>> Jason Clinton <> 09/27/04 08:45AM >>> On Sun, 2004-09-26 at 17:28 -0500, Oren Beck wrote: > Ok folks- This one is not the usual "could have googled for it " question . > > A day care center worker wants to buy cheap used hardware and have me or > someone else make it work . They need to use http://www.ltsp.org/

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RE: Which distro can anyone recommend for low end hardware ?
by Brian Kelsay 27 Sep '04

27 Sep '04

IceWM or fluxbox go well on old stuff. You right about the ram. DSL doesn't have any extra services on boot, but Knoppix starts quite a few. I think Knoppix could even be considered for an intro server out of the box. DSL has a few things like monkey webserver, an FTP server and ssh that can be easily activated, but are off by default. There is a nice little DSL control panel that you can start and stop the avail. services from. Brian Kelsay >>> "Rob Becker" <> 09/27/04 08:09AM >>> This doesn't answer your question regarding a specific distro, but whatever distro you use, carefully audit all services that run at start. With a machine that is not connected to a network, many of your network services can be disabled. Also look at running a light desktop manager like ICEWM. If there is any budget at all for adding RAM and or a newer HD, it may be well worth your time to do so. A P2/200 will be sufficient for the duties you suggest, but a faster HD and more RAM will make things much speedier. Good luck with it. Rob

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Re: Which distro can anyone recommend for low end hardware ?
by Brian Kelsay 27 Sep '04

27 Sep '04

DamnSmall works on as little as 16MB of ram, BUT if you want to use Open Office you better bump that up to 128 or higher. When using DamnSmall from CD, they recommend 384MB, but I've used 128 just barely. Brian Kelsay >>> docv <> 09/27/04 06:11AM >>> Oren, I have some old PI (both 133 and 166 respectively) systems that have 1.2 and 2.0 Gig HD's in them that could be taken out and used in their current box. I'd be happy to donate them to the center (and my wife would be happy to get rid of another one of the 10 or so boxes in the garage!). As for the OS, I have installed Red Hat 8.0 on one of the 166 boxes and it ran rather sluggishly, but these boxes only have 16 Meg of RAM, if memory servers me correctly. I have since switched to using Debian or Knoppix as an OS for most all my boxes. I find that these have been the most stable and secure of the flavors I have tried. Knoppix really was designed for older boxes and is really a very sweet install especially for GUI interfaced boxes. The debian auto configuration does tend to take a few extra seconds to boot the system, but becomes a breeze when the older hardware fails and different hardware is installed as no manual reconfiguration is necessary. With the 64 Meg of RAM they currently have, they should not run into the same trouble with the X-windows. Since the knoppix runs with an on-the-fly compression system, a 2 Gig HD would be more than enough, especially if one of the 1.2 Gig drives was added for data storage. Knoppix also comes with Open Office pre installed to satisfy the need for MS Office compatible Office Suite. Either way you go, let me know about the drive(s), I'd be happy to help out! -- Steve Vaitl, D.C.

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Re: Which distro can anyone recommend for low end hardware ?
by Brian Kelsay 27 Sep '04

27 Sep '04

I've said it before, DamnSmall Linux. Now also known as DSL and the boot menus reflect this for the clean crowd. Flux box is the default on DSL and it is easily customizable. If you want, I can make a custom DSL with Open Office, it would take about 5 minutes as I already have all the pieces. If you want to install to the HDD, there are decent instructions on damnsmalllinux.org and on the index.html page that comes up when you boot DSL. It is a bit harder than Knoppix to get set up, but for older hardware, it can't be beat. Installing DSL to HDD will make it much faster and you will have plenty of room on a 1.2GB or 2GB HDD. Knoppix may not quite fit on a 2GB drive. It decompresses to around 2.2GB when installed. You would have to do the poorman's or frugal install to HDD. This involves leaving the compressed filesystem from the CD, which is about 700MB. This would work for the 1-2GB drive, but you will still have tons of stuff they will never need. After installing DSL to HDD you will need to do a "dpkg restore" or enable apt-get from the menu and then "apt-get install openoffice-en", I think. Since it is for a daycare, you may also want to "apt-get install gcompris." That is a package of kids learning games. Gcompris could also beincluded on the CD as there is a DSL package for it. If you were dead set on using full Knoppix, I would install to HDD, if room permits. Then you will want to set lilo, or grub if the current one uses it, to start in fluxbox. Then you would want to "apt-get remove kdevelop" and any other pkgs that might save you space, that are unneeded. You could remove some 3d games that won't even play on old hardware, koffice, palm pilot apps, email, extra browsers, irc clients, ftp clients, lots of stuff. Hope this helps. Brian Kelsay >>> Oren Beck <> 09/26/04 05:28PM >>> Ok folks- This one is not the usual "could have googled for it " question . A day care center worker wants to buy cheap used hardware and have me or someone else make it work . This center is a not-for-profit so Surplus Exchange is a viable hardware source . Here's where KCLUG can come in . Showing that Open Source is truly viable for this person's need . What is needed ? Single user single desktop maybe not even networked or if so only at the printer share level Compatibility with Msword and Excel in both directions , Printing flyers . Archiving all flyers etc . Likely this system may never be internet connected ! So from that outline- What distro is suggested, And more importantly why ? Presently owned system is a P2/200 with 64 meg ram and 840 meg HD . Suggestions for what to use on this would be appreciated from anyone having had experience with the suggested distro.

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Re: In the UK windows will now control thermo-nuclear ICBM's
by Brian Kelsay 27 Sep '04

27 Sep '04

Where's the option to nuke Redmond, WA? Brian Kelsay >>> "Monty J. Harder" <lists(a)kc.rr.com> 09/24/04 06:57PM >>> "jeffslists" <jeffslists(a)nexus99.net> wrote: > OSS torpedoed: Royal Navy will run on Windows for Warships > http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/09/06/ams_goes_windows_for_warships/ Clippy: It looks like you want to launch a nuclear missile. Would you like to target: * Buckingham Palace * Parliament * 10 Downing Street * New Scotland Yard

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RE: LARGE scale email
by Phoenician 26 Sep '04

26 Sep '04

<snip> 1) I am migrating email from a Win32 environment to a *nix based environment. :) I am working with people that I have to remind that Linux is not a singular all-encompassing distro (ie: that Linux does means Linux but rather SuSe, Redhat, Mandrake etc..) 2) It must be ultra-secure. 3) Large scale means over 1,500 mail boxes and approx 350 to 400 domains. <snip> Thank you to everyone that took the time to reply. I have a lot of reading ahead of me but I can at least say that so far I have chosen to go with OpenBSD. I have installed the OS on a test computer and I'm tinkering as much as possible right now. - Michienne

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Secuirty trivia on Linux
by hanasaki 26 Sep '04

26 Sep '04

Security Linux? Trivia but not Trivial! Anyone care to share their experiences with the below? does it work? which is better for what and why? which should be used together are complimentary vs overlapping Please do separate experience vs. opinion. Oh.. Anything important missing in the below list? ==== other stuff === kerberos ===== Application security tools === jail and chroot ========= kernel security tools ==== PAX Adamantix http://www.trustedlinux.org/ http://www.trusteddebian.org/ http://www.grsecurity.net/ http://www.nsa.gov/selinux/index.cfm http://www.rsbac.org/ http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~jcg8f/GrsecuritySELinuxCaseStudy.pdf http://www.nsa.gov/selinux/list-archive/0308/4941.cfm

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Bridge connection on SBC
by Bennett, Joe 25 Sep '04

25 Sep '04

It was mentioned on a reply to one of my questions to the group that SBC will let you drop PPPOE and goto a straight bridge connection on thier DSL product. I posed this to SBC and attached is their response. Hopefully this might be of some assistance to those of you that have friends, family or clients using SBC DSL...???? -Joe ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ {Solution Details: We have received your e-mail and understand that you wish to change your DSL connection mode to "Bridge". We share your concern and apologize for the previous response. Joe, if you are using SpeedStream 5100 B modem, there is an option to change to ?Bridge? mode; however, this option is not available with other modems. If you do not have SpeedStream 5100 B modem, we suggest that you contact our Customer Premises Equipment Department at 1-877-SBC-DSL5 to check the possibility of replacing the old modem with SpeedStream 5100 B modem. They will be happy to assist you. If you have SpeedStream 5100 B modem, you may change it to ?Bridge? mode by using the following steps: 1. In your web browser browse to ?http://192.168.0.1?. This address will be located on a yellow sticker on the bottom of your modem. 2. The first screen will ask you for your ?Modem Access Code?. This also will be located on the same yellow sticker. 3. Select ?Advanced? from the blue buttons on the left. 4. Click on the ?PPP locations? button. 5. The modem may ask your for the ?Modem Access Code? again. If so then type it in again and click on ?Continue?. 6. Select the radio button labeled, "Bridged Mode (PPPoE is not used)". 7. Click on ?Save Changes?. 8. A "PPP Location Warning" page will come up. Click on "Change PPP Location?. 9. A "Restart Needed" page will come up. Click on "Restart". 10. Once the modem has restarted, go to the PC and configure the Ethernet NIC for either DHCP or Static IP service. 11.Once the Ethernet NIC has been configured for the appropriate service, attempt to surf the Internet. a) If that fails, check the Ethernet NIC configuration and verify it has been configured correctly. b) If everything is in good working condition and the Ethernet card has been configured correctly, try resetting the modem back to defaults by pressing on the reset button located on the bottom of the modem. c) Once you do this, go back to step 4 to put the modem back into bridge mode.

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routing / firewall question
by hanasaki 24 Sep '04

24 Sep '04

the network is Internet <=> firewall Linux with two NICs firewall <=> internal network The internal network has hosts with the following: hostA - one NIC smtp hostB - one NIC http/https hostC - one NIC dhcp server hostD - one NIC squid http proxy : port 8080 privoxity http proxy filter : port 8081 privocity forwards to squid squid sends to the outside world should the order be swapped? why? why not? The dhcp server tells clients to route via hostD how can hostD be setup so that it is a transparent proxy? Currently all clients set their http proxy to hostD on the privocity port. I know some IPtables rules will be needed on hostD but dont know what to set. Will routing rules need to be set on hostD? what are they? thanks

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ITEC
by Chris Bier 24 Sep '04

24 Sep '04

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Hi All, ~ I talked with the ITEC people, and unless we can come up with $1,900 or a sponsor who will fund it, we won't be able to get a booth at ITEC. ~ That's for a 10x10 booth with carpet and basic electricity. They only have 4 booths left, and all the free ones are gone already. Chris - -- I digitally sign my emails. If you see an attachment with .asc, then that means your email client doesn't support PGP digital signatures. http://www.gnupg.org/(en)/documentation/faqs.html#q1.1 -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.4 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFBVFIpE5xXU3JS1mQRAtl4AKDRnHHOB4B/+EGY1lCGhIrVO0m3TwCfdITf phIsMdJ4vEl+nchztzJq+6k= =7qYS -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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KCLUG September 2004