HEP System Administration

alias chop="tr -d '\r\n'"

We’re running Scientific Linux 4 on most of our computers. The latest version of the flash plugin is 10, which does not run on this version of linux. We need to put flash player 9 in the /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins directory on all the nodes. The plugin itself is in /system/software/linux/flash/install_flash_player_9_linux/libflashplayer.so.

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.