HEP System Administration

We have a computer running linux that we’d like to make dual-boot. Normally when I do this, I install windows first and then linux, so the grub works on the master boot record. By installing windows second, it’s going to screw up our mbr and we won’t be able to boot to linux without some changes.

We have a second problem, in that, I could not get the windows installation disk to run with the linux disk connected. (My initial plan was to keep linux on the first sata disk and install windows on a second sata disk.) This was solved by disconnecting the linux disk and hooking up a blank disk to use for windows. With just the new setup, the windows install proceeded as it normally does.

Ok, windows is installed and I’m booting into rescue mode on an RHEL 5 disk. First problem, it doesn’t like the disk I’m using. Solution is to not say the disk is local, but to use a network image from our RHEL Satellite Server. This means that I have to set up networking now too. Small delay…

It took a while to boot, but it finally came up. First problem was that it didn’t like any of my other disks, one of which, is where I installed windows. So I had to say ‘No’ to initializing all these disks because it would erase my windows installation. Now at sh-3.2# prompt, need to do:

sh-3.2# chroot /mnt/sysimage

In my /etc/fstab, the / and /boot filesystems are mounted using their label, so I don’t need to change anything there. Fdisk -l /dev/sda, shows that this is the windows disk. So, I want to install grub on /dev/sda. First edit /etc/grub.conf and add WinXP section.

title WindowsXP
  rootnoverify (hd0,0)
  chainloader +1

and change all the root(hd0,0) in the linux sections to root(hd1,0) because I switched the order of the drives in the computer.

Then, install:

sh-3.2# grub-install /dev/sda

Got an error that /dev/sdb1 does not have any corresponding bios drive. So need to edit /boot/grub/device.map.

# this device map was generated by anaconda
(hd0) /dev/sda
(hd1) /dev/sdb

Rerun grub-install:

sh-3.2# grub-install /dev/sda
Installation finished. No error reported.
This is the contents of the device map /boot/grub/device.map.
Check if this is correct or not.  If any of the lines is incorrect,
fix it and re-run the script `grub-install'.

# this device map was generated by anaconda
(hd0) /dev/sda
(hd1) /dev/sdb

Reboot and grub starts. WindowsXP is a selection. First, check if linux will boot. Worked ok. Check Windows, works ok too. Now can go in and install drivers and everything else required for Windows.

We currently use WinEDT and MiKTeX to allow users to edit latex files in windows. APS provides the revtex4 package for their authors.

authors.aps.org/revtex4

To get this package to work with MiKTeX, make the following directory structure under your localtexmf tree.

mkdir /tex/latex/revtex4/

Then run,

Start -> All Programs -> MiKTeX -> MiKTeX Options and click the “Refresh Now” button in the “File name database” section. That’s it.

The APS website above has a sample file that can be used to test things out.

Open the virusscan console. Double-click on Access Protection. Highlight the rule “Prevent mass mailing worms from sending mail” and click “Edit”. Add alpine.exe to the “Processes to exclude:” box. Ok and Apply and alpine should be able to send mail on either 25 or 587.

The command that brings up the window where one can change which startup items to run automatically is:

msconfig

Had a user with a windows xp laptop, that would not show any dialog boxes. The computer was pretty slow, but you could open word, click save and nothing would happen. Then, you’d click the X in the upper left and would be prompted if you wanted to save the file. If you said yes, nothing would happen. And any program that would normally bring up a dialog box would do the same thing. Another symptom was the acrobat was exceptionally slow to open.

The problem was that there were over 33,000 files in the TEMP/TMP directory. After deleting all these files, everything worked fine. The majority of these files were named AcrXXXX.tmp, so there must have been a renegade acrobat process that didn’t close properly.

Sometimes the installation wizards in windows don’t install all the drivers that you want. In these cases, you have to force the installation of the driver. Mark found out how to do that. Go to the inf file that you want to install, right-click it and choose INSTALL. This will avoid the installation wizard and install the driver.