Shiva, Moderator,
https://forums.pcquest.com
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.
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
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
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.
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.
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:
/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.