Saturday, October 18, 2008

Installing Linux on DELL Inspiron 1525





Installing a new OS on any system is a big headache and when it comes to your new laptop you are very scared too.

Just one day after i got my laptop ( DELL INSPIRON 1525) i sat for partioining and installing linux on it.
It had Vista pre-installed on it(Microsoft's Monopoly).
I had plans to use Vmware but i also wanted to have seperate OS.
For first time i had such a huge HDD(160GB), much than my 40GB on my old pc, so wanted to fulfill my dreams of having 4-5 OS :) :)

But here comes the problem, Vista didn't allow me to compress the C drive to less then 80GB.
I was not ready to give C drive that much huge space at any cost, so decided to partition from a live ubuntu cd.

I booted ubuntu 7.04 , started gparted("weapon of mass destruction"- as they say).
This weapon really did a mass destruction, it stopped at middle of resizing my c drive and said that error occured.
Now i was sure my Vista is gone.
Vista cried with thousands of error and refused to boot even in safe mode(mass distruction was done, how could it boot ).

So i decided to restore the system using the CD's i got with the laptop.
I reinstalled Vista, but the problem of partitioning was not solved.
I had one option of partitioning first and then reinstalling Vista or Linux, but that way Dell Media Direct was not installing.

So i decided to go by what they say RTFM.

I finally got the solution.
Here it is:

Dell gives a dvd labeled Media Direct, first boot from it,it has a good user interface and asks for partition size of C drive, i gave 30GB.
Then boot from the Vista DVD and install Vista on it, and then do whatever you like with the remaining partition.

Then i installed Fedora and Ubuntu seperately and Xp,solaris and others on Vmware ( I had 3GB of RAM :) )

All's Well That Ends Well


Wednesday, February 6, 2008

SSH Port Forwarding

SSH (Secure SHell) is well known to Linux administrators as a method for connecting to other systems.
SSH strongly encrypts the connection between the hosts, ensuring that passwords and any transmitted data are safe.


SSH port forwarding, essentially, is the art of causing a port from one host to appear on another, using a connection through SSH. Port forwarding can accomplish several goals at once, but one of the most compelling reasons to use the technique is that traffic to the forwarded port is encrypted.


Local Port Forwarding

When you forward a port locally, you make a port from the SSH server available on your local machine.
A port on the remote machine which would otherwise be unavailable to you can be used just as if it was your local machine’s port. This port is also then available to other programs on your local host, outside the SSH session.

Imagine a situation where you need to conceal your web browsing traffic
Certainly many nefarious reasons for doing this come to mind immediately, but how about a legitimate one?
Perhaps you need to solve a difficult problem for which you need googling but you don't ant that your boss gets to know that you googled the problem and all your activities are logged.

If you have a remote host in your home that uses a squid web proxy, and is reachable by SSH then, you can easily use local port forwarding to augment SSH with a secure proxy channel.
Assume your remote host in the home is home.com and your web proxy is proxy at port 3128 and your office host is office.com.

To set up port forwarding in this case, issue this command :

ssh -L 3128:proxy:3128 username@home.com

At this point, you can set your web browser to use the proxy, using the host office.com (or localhost) and port 3128.

Your web browser connects to your local machine’s port 3128, but the connection is forwarded over the SSH session to home.com in your home office, which connects to proxy to make HTTP requests. Anyone at office.com watching traffic will see only SSH traffic between office.com and home.com.

Hurray you have now forwarded your ports at home to your office!!!!

You can get more from
http://www.redhatmagazine.com/2007/11/06/ssh-port-forwarding/

Thursday, January 10, 2008

ssh with Putty on Windows

Unix machines have been able to run software on a remote machine and display the GUI locally.
Linux and Mac OS support X forwarding without any software .
Any terminal on Linux will do it.

But windows is also not behind.
Here you need two piece of software:

1. secure shell program (ssh) to establish the remote connection with PuTTY.
2. X Server to handle the local display with XWin32 or XMing with Portable PuTTY


Configuring PuTTY

1. Give the host name or ip address
2. Switch protocol to ssh
3. Give any name to session in saved sessions and click on save
4. Choose 'Tunnels' from 'Category' list
5. Check 'Enable X11 Forwarding'
6. Choose 'Session' from 'Category' list and click save

Starting the X Server on Windows

Configuring XWin-32

1. Start XWin-32
2. Click 'Security' tab and Click 'Add...'
3. Enter 'localhost' without quotes and click 'OK'

Configuring Xming

Just run "All Programs -> Xming -> Xming" and it should work if you've got PuTTY configured.


Connecting

1. Start XWin32 or XMing
2. Start PuTTY
3. Double click on the saved session and enter the username and password
4. It's done now .
Now you can access the full system with X applications

Enjoy !!!!!

Wednesday, January 9, 2008

Windows Vs Linux

I always wanted write on this topic as this is a very hot topic of discussion in my class.

There are some ( i won't name them !!) who are totally ANTI-WINDOWS and i am anti to them.

I don't say linux is bad but i would say linux is better than windows in some aspects but windows is NOT BAD.

I am NOT anti-linux . I like linux and even use it primarily .
I find linux better than windows in many aspects. I am able to do many thing in linux that i can never think of doing in windows as windows is not made with a programmer in mind.

"Windows is for the end user and Linux is for the programmer."
This is the point that i always want to point out but there are some who don't listen.
For them working for windows is totally downgrading themselves.


I ask them if linux is so good then why is it not in every home. It is windows that is used in majority of systems worldwide (Thanks to microsoft).

So i would like to end by saying both LINUX and WINDOWS go hand in hand .
Both have their advantages and disadvantages !!.

Tuesday, January 8, 2008

First One

Finally I wrote my first blog.

From past many days or i should say weeks my friends always used to ask me when will i start blogging. So i finally started .

I am blogging for the sake of blogging as you can see in the heading !!!
May be i start getting used to blogging very soon ( i hope soon comes sooner)

As this is my first blog so i will keep it short !!!
Thats it.