OSIS Lab

Spring 2005 Multi Boot Setup
Prabhaker Mateti

 

This term (Spring 2005) we are trying three different variations on the Linux Live CD setup, in addition to the default hard disk installed Debian.  As before, the PCs can also be booted from removable media.  Among the many available (visit http://www.frozentech.com/content/ livecd.php for a list), I chose Knoppix and Auditor.  Below are a few more details, and tips.

The Grub boot menu looks like this:

For ALL classes: Default OS (Linux-Debian-HDD-install-NFS-home-dirs)
For ALL classes: Linux-Debian-Knoppix-3.8CeBiT-CD-Image-no-NFS
Only-for-CEG429: Linux-Debian-Knoppix-CD-Image-nodhcp
Only-for-CEG429: Linux-Debian-Auditor-CD-Image-nodhcp
Windows-XP-SP2
  1. For ALL classes: Default OS (Linux-Debian-HDD-install-NFS-home-dirs).  This is the default OS.  This is a full scale installation of Debian on the hard disk.  Many web browsers.  Open office, Koffice, AbiWord, ... Mix of stable + unstable + experimental. About 4.5 GB.  Network is set up with static addresses, etc. Your home directories are mounted from the NFS server 192.168.17.111.
  2. For ALL classes: Linux-Debian-Knoppix-3.8CeBiT-CD-Image-no-NFS.  Knoppix Live CD (http://www.knoppix.org/)  is credited with making the Linux Live CDs popular.  I installed 3.8 CeBIT image ("simulating a CD") on the hard disk -- it is not a hard disk install, in the usual sense.  This does dhcp to obtain its IP addresses, and sets the network up.  Home directories are NFS-mounted. You are expected to use a USB thumb drive, or floppy, or sftp your files elsewhere.
  3. Only-for-CEG429: Linux-Debian-Knoppix-CD-Image-nodhcp.  This is meant for CEG 429/629 students.  No dhcp.  No network setup.  Students of this course know how to do these.  Each student will typically disconnect/re-connect the Ethernet cables of  three to four machines to form an isolated tiny network to perform the lab experiments of CEG 429.
  4. Only-for-CEG429: Linux-Debian-Auditor-CD-Image-nodhcp.  This is also meant for CEG 429/629 students.  All the above applies.  The Auditor CD is based on Kanotix (forum.kanotix.net/) which improves upon Knoppix.  Auditor (http://www.remote-exploit.org/ ) is a large and excellent collection of security tools.
  5. Windows-XP-SP2.  Windows is provided because some of you still prefer to use MS Word, etc.  When we cloned this OS image last term, after the updates to SP2 and other hot fixes, it got broken on some machines.  We did not so far have the time to figure out what went wrong.

Tuesday, March 29, 2005