newbie q.: how to browse the LAN?

[axeff]

i'm a usual windows user who tries linux for the first time...
the way to search and browse a local network in windows is much easy, so is there something like this in knoppix-linux?

after all, i want to format a hdd on another system with the linux file system and can't boot linux locally. is it possible to format a hdd via network?

[mmaki]

Yes there is, though I don't believe it is on the KNOPPIX CD. It is called LinNeighborhood. There is a stable Debian package. Here is the description from the man page:

LinNeighborhood is a browser for SMB (Microsoft Windows) networks. It allows you to browse the available SMB shares and mount/unmount them via the smbfs filesystem, similarly to Network Neighborhood on Microsoft platforms. In order to mount or unmount SMB shares, you must have smbfs filesystem support compiled into your kernel, or available as a module.

I don't know about formatting a remote disk, though maybe someone else can answer.

Good Luck!

Mike

[RockMumbles]

The only way I would know of being able to format a disk is to be running linux on that system or use a file system utility that supports linux filesystems. One thing you might look into, Knoppix supports remote-terminal-session (I think that's the correct terminology, remote booting) I'm not running knoppix now so I can't tell you exactly what you need to do ... do a search here for more info.

Anyway one way to approach your problem, for the 'remote' box you would make a PXE or network boot floppy and boot to it, you need to have knoppix running on another box on your network, you will boot into the running knoppix system, once booted in you should be able to fdisk, format and whatever else you need to do. There are also several mini-distros (floppy based) that would allow you to format the disk.

AS far as viewing files on samba shares, xfsamba is included in knoppix and it allows you to view and get files on windows systems, you can put files onto vfat windows partitions (ntfs is read-only). There is a login as menu selection that you will probably need to use if you need passwords access to you windows machines.

HTH

rock

[mabhatter]

If it's completly configured correctly, I don't know...I'm still learning.

The LinNeighborhood looks really cool, I'll have to look into it. The one thing I've run into is that you have to have a properly configured Windows network with Wins and Net Bios support pointing to a specific server--or so I think, I may be wrong...I still can't seem to get into the PC accross the room even though I can talk to the server??

My shop is primarily Win 98 [sad but true]. We're pointed at an AS/400 for all the networking, but primarily use shared PC printers rather that network--so I think that the Win98 Network Neighborhood is a little smarter that the Samba in finding other windows computers without being told where they are. I know the several Win XP boxes are even more agressive about finding network shares - even inactive shares on the Win 98 boxes.

One question I have for someone smarter: Can I install Koppix programs to a Fat32 network share? [i.e. samba mounted] I have them mounted in the .sh startup script. Basicly, I want to do this because you can't save to the CD, and it would be twice as cool to keep the stuff on the network. [downloaded programs, document files, etc...]