[HOWTO]: Dual-boot Knoppix with Windows NT/2000/XP

[A. Jorge Garcia]

paul: Thanx for your thoughtful comments! Sorry, I guess I wasn't clear as I already have boot floppies up the kazoo! I'm trying to set up my LAN without boot floppies - not even gag floppies....

Thanx again!

[A. Jorge Garcia]

j.drake: OOO, I like your thinking. This is what I wanted anyway. I don't need my students to boot locally. I was going to try to have xdm (xserver) access the server from each user's PC so they login directly to the server remotely (did that make sense?). Anyway, your idea sounds interesting - I wouldn't even have to knx-hdinstall on the students PCs, right! That saves me work....

Regards,

[j.drake]

I don't need my students to boot locally anyway.

Well, if that's true, then perhaps you set up the default boot order in each workstation's BIOS to be floppy -> CD -> NIC -> HDD, and use the F12 on the rare occasions in which you have to boot to XP.

[j.drake]

I wouldn't even have to knx-hdinstall on the students PCs, right! That saves me work....

Well, that's kind of what *nix was designed for, IIRC.

Actually, though, you could still repartition the individual HDs, and install Linux locally if you ran into performance issues hanging everyone off a common server. Essentially, it would still be a poor man's install, with the server substituting for the floppy disk. Also, installing locally would carry some other advantages, such as giving you the option of teaching your students about configuration and administration options without putting your entire network at risk, or giving you the capability to still limp along with the remaining machines if someone hoses one of the configurations (not that a precocious student would ever attempt such a thing, of course ) IOW, what you lose in time by installing locally may be offset by better performance, more teaching options, and greater security and reliability. OTOH, there's the time issue, plus the work of keeping all individual configurations identical. Either way you go, sounds like you need to impose some user limits.

I dunno. I don't know enough about running numerous clients off a Linux server to evaluate the options. You may be right that it would be better not to install locally. Is enough of the OS held in RAM to make its location unimportant from a performance standpoint? Maybe someone else here knows the answer. Also, I'm not all that clear on what you're trying to acheive.

[A. Jorge Garcia]

j.drake:

Well, several years ago, pre KNOPPIX, I had an hdinstall of Slackware 3.5 running just this way. IE: when my kids booted their linux boxes, their X windows were set-up as clients of the X-server on a remote machine. So they would get the log-in screen from the server and not really use anything local after boot-up asside from intranet networking and printing (no internet access in class in those days).

Now this was in the days of Pentium MMX 166Mhz and KDE 1.0! In those days, I needed one server for every 4 students or network performance was way too slow. That was ok as we didn't need a dedicated server (a student could be logged-in "remotely" from the same PC). So I had 4 X-clients to every X-server and I ran 6 such servers for a class of 24 students.

So, in the olden days I used an x-client/server paradigm to accomplish what I need. Now its xdm or kdm that I need to look into to accomplish this same task, right?

TIA,

[A. Jorge Garcia]

I don't need my students to boot locally anyway.

Well, if that's true, then perhaps you set up the default boot order in each workstation's BIOS to be floppy -> CD -> NIC -> HDD, and use the F12 on the rare occasions in which you have to boot to XP.

Well, unfortunately, the students PCs have to boot to XP a lot (not in my class - over my dead body). So I need those to boot XP by default but have a way for my students to reboot into linux. I'll be leaving the server running Linux (Debian or Knoppix?) 24x7. Maybe I can figure out how to give my students remote access from home too!

BTW, on my Dell Optiplex GX270s I get the F2 and F12 option you mention. Of course I need the supervisor password for F2 (changing BIOS settings) so forget that. However, the F12 option doesn't seem to have anything for booting remotely....?

Anyway, I'm still just experimenting here. There's nothing urgent about this as my students have been using the "poor man's dual boot" and "fast dosboot floppy" for almost 2 years. So I set them up that way for now in my new lab until I can figure out how to do this a bit more fancy (ie: no boot disks, no disks for saving work, no CDs - just a native linux network).

Regards,

[j.drake]

However, the F12 option doesn't seem to have anything for booting remotely....?

Maybe you need the F2 to set up booting from NIC as an option. It's in my list of boot options in BIOS. All of the boot options which are available to me in F2 are available to me in F12.

Alas, if you can't get into BIOS, there's not much you can do with my idea. Still, depending upon how adventurous you are, these are still PCs, so I can't understand why you wouldn't be able to get into BIOS before the OS and netwoking stuff loads - what happens if you disco the ethernet cable before you restart, and then poke the F2 at the splash screen?? Is this a motherboard password? If so, http://docs.us.dell.com/docs/systems...at.htm#1128421

[j.drake]

AJG, check out the PXE option from the setup section of the GX 270 System Users Guide:

http://docs.us.dell.com/docs/systems...at.htm#1128164

It's about 3 screens down in the boot sequence options.

Note also a little further down that there's a boot from USB option, which might be interesting

[A. Jorge Garcia]

OK, I'm going have to raise hell at work and beat up some Klingons for that BIOS password and play with PXE. I'm sick of trying to work around all their security!!!!

Take a look at:
http://www.linux-mag.com/2002-10/netbooting_01.html

Regards,

[A. Jorge Garcia]

OK, that linuxmag article makes this process seem way too complex. I'm going back to x-clients and x-servers....

What about ClusterKnoppix. It implements LTS, right?

Regards,