Mounting FAT or VFAT on Linux

Most Linux Distro should be able to detect and mount any FAT or VFAT very easily.

# mount -t vfat /dev/hda1 /mnt/MS_Windows

Accessing Linux Ext2 and Ext3 from Windows

Explore2fs is a GUI explorer tool for accessing ext2 and ext3 filesystems. It can read ext2 and ext3 filesystem

Using CentOS GUI Package Manager

If you wish to X forward the CentOS GUI Package Manager to your Windows Terminal ot Linux Box, you may wish to do the following first....

Step 1: Establish the Remote Connection

1. Using Putty, Xming to forward X11 (For Windows Terminal)
2. Speeding and Compressing X forwarding Traffic (For Linux Box)

Step 2: Install pirut

1. Using yum effectively (Part 2)

Installing xrdp on Fedora 11

What is xrdp? According to the xrdp project website, xrdp is an open source remote desktop protocol(rdp) server. Xrdp uses Xvnc or X11rdp to manage the X session and will display X window desktop to the user via Remote Desktop Protocol.

To install manually, you may want to look at my blog entry Supporting Windows Terminal Clients from LINUX with xrdp

However if you are using Fedora 11, it is a breeze,

Step 1: Install xrdp

# yum install xrdp

 Step 2: Create soft link to startup xrdp automatically in case of reboot
# ln -s ../init.d/xrdp s99xrdp
# service xrdp restart


Step 3: Configure the firewall via System > Administration > Firewall
Allow port 3389 (TCP) in as shown below 

Step 4: Use Remote Desktop Protocol to connect to the Linux Box

Manually Changing FAT permission on USB

FAT32 does not support file permission and ownerships. In order to support permission and ownership, you have to use umask for permission and uid/gid for user and group permission. Basically umask=000 will results in rwxrwxrwx.

# mkdir -p /media/usb
# mount -t vfat -o umask=000,uid=youruserid,gid=users /dev/sdb1 /media/usb

The results will be
drwxrwxr-x 3 youruserid users 12288 1970-01-01 07:30 usb

If you want to mount the usb and only allows yourself and users in the group to view it, you can use umask=007

# mount -t vfat -o umask=007,uid=youruserid,gid=users /dev/sdb1 /media/usb


Notes on umask:

To calculate permissions which will result from specific UMASK values, subtract the UMASK from 666 for files and from 777 for directories.

If you want all files created with permissions of 666, set your UMASK to 000. Alternatively, if you want all files created with permissions of 000, set your UMASK to 666.

NTFSProgs to fix NTFS Issues (Part 3)

This is Part 3 of the the 2 Series of NTFSprogs

1. NTFSProgs to fix NTFS Issues (Part 1)
2. NTFSProgs to fix NTFS Issues (Part 2)

Note 1: To Clone Partition, you can use the commands
# ntfsclone --save-image /dev/sdc1 -output ntfs-image-file.img

Note 2: To overwrite the Partition, you can use the commands
# ntfsclone --save-image /dev/sdc1 --0verwrite ntfs-image-file.img

Note 3: To create an uncompress image with the option to mount using loopback
# ntfsclone /dev/sdc1 --output ntfs-image-file.img
(without the --save-image)
# mkdir /mnt/nfs-mount-point
# mount -0 rw,loop -t ntfs-image-file.img /mnt/nfs-mount-point
(You can edit, delete, move files)

NTFSProgs to fix NTFS Issues (Part 2)

This is a continuation of NTFSProgs to fix NTFS Issues (Part 1)

Note 1: Command line copying using ntfscp
# ntfscp /dev/sdc1 /home/user/new_test.ini test.ini
(Copy the new_test.ini from /home/user as test.ini to the root of /dev/sdc1 NTFS Volume


Note 2: Undeleting files at NTFS Volume

First do a scan for the deleted files
# ntfsundelete --scan /dev/sdc1 (where /dev/sdc1 is the NTFS volume)

Take note of the the number of recoverable files and inode number of the file you wish to recover
# ntfsundelete --undelete --inode 25 --output Documents/deleted.pdf /dev/sdc1
(The command undelete inode number of the file (25) and recovered to Documents directory at NTFS Volume /dev/sdc1)

NTFSprogs to fix NTFS Issues (Part 1)

For most LINUX Distro, NTFS-3G driver is for reading and writing NTFS Partition. For more information on NTFS-3G, you can look at the NTFS-3G Stable Read and Write Driver for Linux Entry for more information.

NTFS-3G has been stable and popular, the utility is basically to do mounting NTFS file system, reading, writing but it you require create, resize, and clone Partition, you have to use ntfsprogs.

To install ntfsprogs on CentOS, RHEL derivative

# yum install ntfsprogs

To install ntfsprogs on Linux Mint,

# apt-get install ntfsprogs

Look forward for NTFSprogs to fix NTFS Issues (Part 2) for how to use ntfsprogs


For more reading information:

1. Linux-NTFS Project

NTFS-3G Stable Read and Write Driver for Linux

The NTFS-3G driver is a freely available and supported read/write NTFS driver for Linux. NTFS-3G supports all Windows 2000 and later NTFS

To install on Linux Mint

#apt-get install ntfs-3g

To install on RHEL and Derivatives

# yum install ntfs-3g

(Make sure you include the RPMForge Respository. See Installing RPMForge)


Note: To use NTFS-3g

# mount -t ntfs-3g /dev/sda1 /mnt/windows

Installing Likewise - Joining Linux to MS Active Directory

Continuing from Open Source Tools to integrate with MS Active Directory.


Step 1: Changing Your Hostname from localhost to domain name

• Read Changing the hostname on CentOS

Step 2: Download and Install Likewise

• Go to http://www.likewise.com/community/index.php/download/ register and download the essential packages and GUI (optional)
• # ./LikewiseIdentityServiceOpen-5.2.0.7111-linux-x86_64-rpm.sh
• Ensure that you register your computer name at your Microsoft Active Directory if your AD require registration
• # /opt/likewise/bin/domainjoin-cli join Active-Directory-Domain-Name Administrator
• Log-out from your current session and Log-In with your AD credential

Step 3: Verify that you have join the Domain

• # /opt/likewise/bin/domainjoin-cli query.
• You should see Name = ......... Domain = ......... Distinguished Name = CN= ..................

Note: If you are unable to logon, try using the Full Active Directory Name rather than the Short ones, unless you make the Linux Box aware of your WINS Server.

Further Readings:

1. See Likewise Documentation Library
   

Open Source Tools to integrate with MS Active Directory

MS Active Directory is very widely deployed in many industries. To take the pain out of integration with MS Active Directory with your Linux Box, take a look at Likewise Open. Some of the key features are

1. Joins non-Windows systems to Active Directory domains in a single step from the command line or from a GUI
2. Authenticates users with a single user name and password on both Windows and non-Windows
3. Enforces the same password policies for non-Windows users and Windows users
4. Caches credentials in case your domain controller goes down
5. Provides single sign-on for SSH and Putty
6. No schema changes to Active Directory required

Cooperative Linux - Linux on Windows

Cooperative Linux is the first working free and open source method for optimally running Linux on Microsoft Windows natively. More generally, Cooperative Linux (short-named coLinux) is a port of the Linux kernel that allows it to run cooperatively alongside another operating system on a single machine. For instance, it allows one to freely run Linux on Windows 2000/XP, without using a commercial PC virtualization software such as VMware, in a way which is much more optimal than using any general purpose PC virtualization software.

Colinux Website

Supporting Windows Terminal Clients from LINUX with xrdp

The goal of this project is to provide a fully functional Linux terminal server, capable of accepting connections from rdesktop and Microsoft's own terminal server / remote desktop clients. The Website of xrdp (http://xrdp.sourceforge.net/)

Steps to Install
Step 1:
# tar -zxvf xrdp-0.4.1.tar.gz
Step 2:
# cd xrdp-0.4.1
Step 3:
# make
Step 4:
# make install
Step 5:
# cd /usr/local/xrdp
# cp xrdp_control.sh /etc/init.d/xrdp_control
# chkconfig --add xrdp_control
# chkconfig xrdp_control on
# service xrdp_control start

Step 6:
# groupadd rdpusers
# usermod -G rdpusers kittycool