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EXT2IFS : linux files on windows…..

Many of us who are dual booting their PCs have a pain when it comes to sharing resources between windows and Linux.

Let’s see what options do we have when it comes to data sharing between two o.s.

1) keep a separate partition as FAT32 for complete interoperability and then keep common data in that partition.

2) second solutions comes easy when we need to access files from windows partition in Linux,
we have native support for FAT32 as well as native read only support for NTFS (extendable to full RW (read Write) support using ntfs-3g) more on this later.

But lets today focus on the other side of the sharing…..

WHAT if you wish to access files from Linux partition while running a windows partition.

AT THIS POINT I WOULD like to introduce you to EXT2IFS which stands for EXT2 Installable File System for windows.


ifsdrive


From the official site

It installs a pure kernel mode file system driver Ext2fs.sys, which actually extends the Windows NT/2000/XP/2003/Vista operating system to include the Ext2 file system. Since it is executed on the same software layer at the Windows NT operating system core like all of the native file system drivers of Windows (for instance NTFS, FASTFAT, or CDFS for Joliet/ISO CD-ROMs), all applications can access directly to Ext2 volumes. Ext2 volumes get drive letters (for instance O:). Files, and directories of an Ext2 volume appear in file dialogs of all applications. There is no need to copy files from or to Ext2 volumes in order to work with them.

details can be seen at http://www.fs-driver.org/index.html

download EXT2IFS

although there remains some issues,

  1. file system gets case insensitive (due to inherent limitation of windows.)
  2. files with starting “.” which symbolizes hidden files are all available for public access.
  3. security and user group permission becomes invalid because windows is unable to understand and hence all the files are accessible in windows (including /root to /home folder for all person’s using the system while on windows.

Instead of providing screen shots of my own i would like to redirect you all to the official screenshots

ALSO this is not an open source product this is a freeware.
Open source product that is under development is EXT2FSD.

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virtualization a new approach (repost)

To look at the options to provide a virtual machine to run windows on Linux.

i had multiple options

Complete virtualization (virtual machine)

1) Bochs (I have used it a few years back and found it good, but it only lacked a graphical configuration manager)

2) VMWARE (one of the best in terms of ease of use but i have to reject it in due to its licensing)

3) XEN (text on net says a lot about it but till now i am unable to establish a xen server what i want to do is to set a windows guest but i have not found an option for it till now.)

then a site came into view the screen shots seems quite impressive and so came the fourth option in my mind

4) innotek virtualbox (although its proprietary in its fullest, but a limited version is also released in GPL, and both versions are free for educational and not for commercial use.)

See more about the latest version of virtualbox here

 

Emulation

5) Wine – a nice piece of software, till now i have been able to succesfully run

i) macromedia dreamweaver 8.0

ii) adobe photoshop cs2 tryout

iii) winzip, winrar and other compression tools

iv) AVR studio 4

v) WinAVR

vi) Boson Netsimulator

vii) need for speed II SE

viii) AVRlibs

6) DOSBOX

Well i have been dieing to try my hands on those nice games available to me during the good old days of dos, which includes jazz jackrabbit and others which i was unable to on XP, even under compatibility mode.

This nifty utility is now installed on both my windows and Linux box and is helping me run those old applications which worked on dos only (or at most win98) environment.

NOTE : this article was publized on eulogik blog on 20th sep 2007, posting here, to collect at one place.

Technorati: virtualization linux debian

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How to recover from a hang linux PC

You finally got your Linux environment to crash. Ctrl+Alt+Backspace does nothing, nor do the F-keys. You know you shouldn’t have installed that bad driver, but you did it anyway. So you reach for the power button. Stop. Mashing in the power button to reboot could cause a problem if your hard drive is still being written to, and usually causes more problems than it solves. The Linux kernel includes a secret method of restarting your PC should it ever stop doing its job. 1. Hold down the Alt and SysRq (Print Screen) keys. 2. While holding those down, type the following in order. Nothing will appear to happen until the last letter is pressed: REISUB 3. Watch your computer reboot magically. What the individual keys do in that sequence are not as important as what it does as a whole: stops all programs, unmounts all drives, and reboots. A lot safer than just cutting the power. Here it is again: REISUB. Remember that, as it will save you a lot of time when you are configuring a system and something gets messed up. Need a mnemonic? Try Raising Elephants Is So Utterly Boring. As an aside, don’t try this if you just want to reboot. A normal reboot, if it can be done, should always be used instead of the REISUB keys. R-E-I-S-U-B. Source & Author: Jacob from FOSSwire

For complete list of commands that can be used head to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_SysRq_key

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how to change root password in debian

This is one of the problem faced by many person’s

“what if i lost the root password”

FOR DEBIAN

First thing that comes in mind is “use single user mode” but the answer is NO.
coz debian takes the system security to one more level up and by default ask’s for the root password.

so the BIG QUESTION IS HOW TO proceed further

follow these steps

1) on grub-boot prompt.
press “e” to enter edit mode

2) then press downarrow to reach the line that starts with “kernel ”
press “e” again

3) at the end of this line type in “init=/bin/sh” or “/bin/bash”

4) then press enter to make that change and press “b” to boot

in a few seconds you will be on your “#” prompt

5) only one step left
“mount -o remount rw /”

this step is necessary coz in this case root file system is mounted as read only.

6) finally type “passwd” and you get the screen to change the password

and then type in “init 6” or “reboot”

NOTE FOR TECHNICAL USERS
those who are looking for the technical details, the main work is the init command that we passed as an argument to kernel, it told kernel to specifically run the command specified in parameter instead of working on normal routine.

TRICK = if you have any program you wish to run instead of this then you can do that too using init command only.

FOR REDHAT

use single user mode and change the password.

but that’s a potential pitfall. coz any person can start system in single user mode and get the password changed.

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bootsplash a.k.a. Splashy on Debian

Tired of watching screens full of hardware releated info scrolling past during Startup and shutdown.

Welcome to the world of Splash Screen, Screenshots Here

In earlier stage bootsplash screen was configured throught a lot of kernel hacking and using it has a hell lot of hardwork including recompilling of kernel.

But the newest form SPLASHY in a userspace implementation of kernel so that it provides all the necessary features right at userspace.

In debian installing splashy is just a matter of few commands

1) IF you don’t have unstable repo’s in your source list then follow it otherwise skip to step 3

echo "deb http://http.us.debian.org/debian unstable main contrib non-free" >> /etc/apt/sources.list
echo "deb-src http://http.us.debian.org/debian unstable main contrib non-free" >> /etc/apt/sources.list

2) then apt-get update

3) last apt-get install splashy splashy-themes

After this what you need to is just one thing

open your menu.lst (/boot/grub/menu.lst)
and in the line with kernel value add these words at the end of that line

"vga=791 splash quiet"

Ex : – kernel /boot/vmlinuz ro root=/dev/hda8 ro vga=791 splash quiet

4)THIS STEP IS OPTIONAL
To run Splashy from initramfs you need to create a new initramfs image. An initramfs image is a little system that is

launched during the kernel’s initalization, before the system starts.

During Splashy’s installation Splashy sets everything up so you can get it integrated into initramfs whenever you wish by

just running a single command.

But first you must edit /etc/default/splashy and set ENABLE_INITRAMFS=1 so that Splashy will integrate itself into future initramfs images.

update-initramfs -u -t -k `uname -r`

then reboot and you will have a slashy desktop

ADVANCE SETTINGS

All the themes are by defaults installed in /etc/splashy/themes

configuration for splashy is in/etc/splashy/config.xml

and configuration for respective themes is available in /etc/splash/themes/ in XML file format

some of the configuration’s that can be done include changing the colour theme as well as the progress bar size color

direction and image shown.

TO CHANGE THEME

Once the theme is installed, just run splashy_config -s where name is the name of the theme

To get the complete list of all the splashy themes installed just type in

splashy_config --info

I hope this article will help you all.

splashy

ONE MORE THING I WISH TO SHARE TODAY.

while looking for webhosting either shared or dedicated hosting solution and web hosting providers i came across two sites which i wish to share with everyone. this web marketing association, they actually look at the possibility of business opportunity as well as seo on your website. while the second one is web marketing association award for linux hosted sites which made me feel proud about my decision (made 8 yrs ago) to start working in linux field…….

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WHY GNU/LINUX and not LINUX

Well this question is a long lasting question but a simple answer to this question is that the word LINUX doesn’t represent the whole operating system but it just describes a part of it [though a vital part] that is the kernel sub-system. most of the show that goes on over this kernel is through the GNU softwares and so the name GNU/LINUX in order to give proper credit to them also.

This is my humble request that those who favor me kindly start using the word GNU/LINUX instead of LINUX when talking about the whole operating system but use only and only LINUX when talking about the kernel.

© Copyright 2007, Anant Shrivastava.
Verbatim copying and distribution of the entire article is permitted in any medium, provided this notice is preserved.

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Compiz Up and running in Debian

I finally was able to successful run compiz on debian based PC.

A lot of work has to be done on Debian to make it stand up in front of REDHAT. but even without those enhancements, It is a lot more better then redhat and other rpm based ones in terms of its support on packages both online and off line.

In order to configure COMPIZ Help taken from http://lunapark6.com/debian-40-etch.html

Befor starting to act on the below listed steps, you should know about the basic requirement of the compiz manager, The bare minimum is 3D capable Graphic’s card and atleast 512 MB of ram.

The simple procedure is as follows

Install Compiz using apt-get

#apt-get install compiz

this will install compiz along with its dependencies

now you need to manually perform some steps in the file : /etc/X11/xorg.conf

then added these two lines under the “Screen” section :

Option “XAANoOffscreenPixmaps”
Option “AddARGBGLXVisuals” “true”

then added these lines under “Device” :

Option “AllowGLXWithComposite” “true”
Option “RenderAccel” “true”

added one line under “Server Layout” :

Option “AIGLX” “on”

Finally at the end of the file I added these lines :

Section “Extensions”
Option “Composite” “Enable”
EndSection

After making the following chages with your fav. text editor

Add “compiz –replace” to “Desktop -> Preferences -> Sessions -> Startup Programs”.

Now restart the Xserver, Better is to restart the whole system.

After you login you will directly be in a compizified environment.

compiz

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