Category: Linux

Categories
Linux Misc. Technology

Creating your own bootable Linux CD

There’s a great article on linuxdevcenter on how to create your own bootable Linux CD based on Knoppix.

Using and Customizing Knoppix by Robert Bernier — Several Linux distributions boot directly from CD-ROMs. How many are usable in that state? How many are customizable in that state? Klaus Knopper’s Knoppix is perhaps the best known of these distributions. Robert Bernier explains how to use Knoppix and how to customize your own self-booting distribution CD.

The Linux Journal also has a great article on how to create your own bootable Linux CD based on any distribution of your choice.

I’m going to try creating one based on Fedora Core 2 as soon as I can finish downloading it. I’ll post the details of my endeavor.

Categories
Linux Technology

SuSE 9.0 Live-CD

Working out of a different office today, I was extremely apprehensive about being forced to use Windows and Outlook. I decided to download the SuSE 9.0 Live-Eval CD and bring it to the office.

Once I got here, I popped in the CD, rebooted the PC and went through the config – very short. It basically asked me the location and language and that’s it.

It took less than 5 minutes for SuSE Linux to be up and running connected to the network via DHCP. I was quickly and easily able to ssh over to my Fedora Core 1 machine at the other office, run emacs, firefox, and evolution. My biggest problem was that no matter what I did, I could not set up a local printer. Turns out that /etc/cups is mounted from the CD and no configs can be changed. Not the end of the world but annoying. Wound up saving the PDF to a thumbdrive, rebooting into Windows, and printing the PDF from there, then rebooting into SuSE.

A few annoyances with this otherwise fantastic OS-on-the-go:

  • No NTFS Read/Write support
  • Most of the settings/customizations I had made were lost at reboot. Would be nice to be able to save customizations to a floppy, hidden directory on another fixed disk, or thumbdrive
  • Not being able to setup a printer and YaST sucking up CPU trying to do it

Other than that, I think I’m going to carry a SuSE Live-CD with me everywhere!

Categories
Linux Technology

Linux at the Bank?

Click on the title above to read a case study about how Redhat is being deployed at the Central Bank of India, a bank with over 3000 branches all over India.

Over 1100 branches have already been brought online. The Central Bank of India found a total savings of $1 million over two years in licenses, training and maintenance. Over $500,000 a year in savings…can anyone really argue why NOT to use Linux anymore?

I should get our IT infrastructure folks to read this, especially after the fact that most of them were running around installing patches on those pesky Windoze machines after a Sasser worm attack…

Categories
India Linux Technology

Linux Projects in India

I was doing some poking around the web to look for Linux projects in India and came up with the links below. Some interesting stuff.

Categories
Linux Technology

Novell GPL’s Ximian Connector

Looks like Novell GPL’ed the Ximian Connector for hooking Evolution up to Exchange 2000/2003. Panu Matilainen was nice enough to start working on a spec for building RPMs from the Source. See his posting to the Fedora Test Archives Below.

http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-test-list/2004-May/msg01336.html

I’ve successfully built the RPM but unfortunately, I don’t have an Exchange 2000/2003 Server to test against yet. I’ll let you know when I can get an account on an Exchange 2003 server.