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PCQLinux 2007: A Snapshot Review

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PCQ Bureau
New Update

Shiva, Moderator,

https://forums.pcquest.com

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I used an assembled machine with Celeron-D processor, 256 MB RAM, 40 GB HDD,

Chipset 845 motherboard with 10/100 LAN card, wireless keyboard and wireless

optical mouse, Samsung 15” TFT, and Samsung DVD ROM. The idea was to test

hardware detection capability of PCQLinux 2007. It passed out with flying

colors! All the connected hardware were flawlessly detected by the Distro and

got configured automatically.

Though, there was a small hitch during the installation. The media got stuck

at 28%. I rebooted the machine and gave a second try and the installation went

smooth. I then applied the basic configuration tweaks, I had already explained

at

http://forums.pcquest.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=5729
and PCQLinux 2007 got

into action.

Printing was the first office function, I tested and there was no problem. I

used a shared HP laser printer through the CUPS IPP protocol. The printer was

shared on a PCQLinux 2006 machine. PCQLinux 2007 sent out a crisp CUPS test page

soon after the configuration, clearing all my doubts about the distro's

interoperability with its predecessor. Then, I checked out LAN browsing through

smb:// protocol and found it seamlessly browsing through the shared resources of

Windows and Linux peers. Till that time, PCQLinux was configured with DHCP,

which is the default option during installation.

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Broadband Internet configuration was again very simple. I used the

System>Administration>Network menu and entered the information about gateway and

DNS and the distro started to surf the Net.

Setting up static IP



When I wanted to set up the machine with a static IP, neither the graphical tool
for network configuration nor the command line worked properly. The distro

switched back to DHCP each time it booted and the contents of the file '/etc/resolv.conf'

got erased automatically and the machine was not able to connect to the Net. To

fix this issue, I shut down the network with 'service network stop' command.

Next I went to System>Network and set the static address, subnet, gateway and

DNS. Then, Quit. Further, I opened the file /etc/resolv.conf and added the

nameservers as:

nameserver xxx.xx.xxx.x

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Saved and closed the file. Started the network with commands 'ifconfig eth0

up' and 'service network start'. Restarted. Next, I wanted to mount a shared

resource from a Linux file server on my PCQLinux 2007 client. Samba 3.0.1 was

running on my Debian file server and it authenticated my PCQLinux 2007 client. I

could browse the contents of the shared directory but I just could not mount it.

All the normal mounting procedures at command line or with /etc/fstab failed.

The worst part was, there was no error reported by the distro while mounting the

share but the mount point was always empty. Finally, this is how we (Shekhar

Govindarajan and myself) fixed it.

Mounting a network drive



This has always been an issue with many Linux distributions that samba shares
get broken, especially when shared from a Linux server. The command

mount -t cifs -o username=xxxx,password=yyyy

//192.9.204.101/SHARED /home/user/mountpoint

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will get executed without any error but, the mount-point will be empty and

non-browse-able.

But the above mounting method would work fine if the shared resource is from

a windows machine.

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Solution: set up an NFS server



Use an NFS share instead of a samba share. For this, you have to set up NFS
share on the Linux server. I have used a Debian server for this illustration.

(Note that I have run both samba and NFS concurrently on the same server for the

same directory. There were other Win XP clients and PCQLinux 2006 clients

mounting the samba share and one PCQLinux 2007 client mounting the NFS share of

the same directory!)



Check if you have the file /etc/exports. If not, create the file with a text
editor and put this line:

/mnt/hda3/misgen 192.9.204.243(ro)

It means that the folder '/mnt/hda3/misgen' is now mountable on client

192.9.204.243 with read only access.

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Now start the NFS service on the server by issuing the following commands:

# /etc/init.d/nfs-common restart



# /etc/init.d/nfs-kernel-server restart

On a Debian server, to start NFS service each time you boot the machine,

append following lines to the /etc/init.d/bootmisc.sh



file:

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/etc/init.d/nfs-common start



/etc/init.d/nfs-kernel-server start

Next you have to mount the share on PCQLinux 2007 box. For this, create the

desired mount-point. Say, /home/vkk/mis.

Start the service portmap by issuing

# service portmap start

Go to the terminal and issue the command:

# mount -t nfs 192.9.204.101:/mnt/hda3/misgen

/home/vkk/mis

where 192.9.204.101 is the IP address of the NFS server and /mnt/hda3/misgen

is the shared directory.

To have the share mounted automatically each time you boot your client (PCQLinux

2007), enable portmap in the services to be started at boot time and put the

line mount -t nfs 192.9.204.101:/mnt/hda3/misgen /home/vkk/mis in the /etc/rc.local

file.

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