Hallo friends,
I am a beginner of Linux.
I am about to shift my Novell netware platform to Linux. We are having one PIII 733 64 MB Ram, 20 GB HDD server and 10 diskless nodes. Please help me to sort out the problems.
1. Can I install Linux in the server and configure the diskless nodes under linux. Or all diskless nodes must have hard disk and I have to install work station in it.
2. Can I run the existing clipper programs in Linux. Or what is the alterations I have to make in Clipper programs to run under Linux.
3. What is the other alternative for Clipper, if I can't run clipper programs under Linux.
4. What is the minmum configuration required for server and workstations (Our nodes are Pentium 100s with 16 MB RAM)
5. Can the X windows can be accessed through diskless nodes.
6. Can I share the Internet/email using a Proxy server and diskless nodes. We are having one unlimited Satyam dailup connection, which is dailed through ordinary BSNL Line.
If any body can help me to sort out the above problems, I am thankful to them.
Regards,
Vinod.
Sometime Today, vinbh@vsnl.com assembled some asciibets to say:
Hallo friends, I am a beginner of Linux.
Hello, welcome. Could you fix your line length to about 72 characters?
I am about to shift my Novell netware platform to Linux. We are having one PIII 733 64 MB Ram, 20 GB HDD server and 10 diskless nodes. Please help me to sort out the problems.
I'd suggest you get more RAM on your PIII. Since this is going to serve 10 diskless nodes, it will help. Get about 256MB.
- Can I install Linux in the server and configure the diskless
nodes under linux. Or all diskless nodes must have hard disk and I
Ok, first off, a server is a process. You want to install linux on a host, not a server. Yes, you can install linux on the PIII, and install all applications there. You'd also want to set it up as a dhcp and bootp server. On your diskless nodes, you'd either boot with a floppy, or through your network card using bootp. You should read the Diskless-HOWTO for more information on this. Linux can also act as a netware server, so you may want to look at that first. Hint: mars-nwe
- Can I run the existing clipper programs in Linux. Or what is
the alterations I have to make in Clipper programs to run under
If you can get your hands on a Clipper compiler/interpreter for linux, then yes, you can use your existing clipper programs. Any changes that you need to make will depend on whether clipper programs use any platform dependent stuff or not. I think not. What I doubt though, is whether clipper is available for linux. You'll have to pester your clipper vendor about that.
- What is the other alternative for Clipper, if I can't run
clipper programs under Linux.
Well, for one, if you want to do databases, get a real database server. Oracle is available for linux, but if you want open and free alternatives, get postgresql or mysql. Your code can be written in any language including perl, php, c, java, and anything else that has a driver for it. Most languages have the drivers.
- What is the minmum configuration required for server and
workstations (Our nodes are Pentium 100s with 16 MB RAM)
It depends on what you want to run. Typically the server host would be powerful. PIII is fine, but like I said, get more RAM. Your workstations can be anything from a 386 @33MHz with 4MB RAM and up.
- Can the X windows can be accessed through diskless nodes.
Yes. Read the diskless-Howto. And it's the X Windowing system.
- Can I share the Internet/email using a Proxy server and diskless
nodes. We are having one unlimited Satyam dailup connection, which is dailed through ordinary BSNL Line.
Yes. Configure your PIII as a gateway/proxy. Check squid.
Philip
Some more input -
--- Philip S Tellis philip.tellis@iname.com wrote:
Sometime Today, vinbh@vsnl.com assembled some asciibets to say:
Hallo friends, I am a beginner of Linux.
Hello, welcome. Could you fix your line length to about 72 characters?
I am about to shift my Novell netware platform to
Linux. We are
having one PIII 733 64 MB Ram, 20 GB HDD server
and 10 diskless
nodes. Please help me to sort out the problems.
Have you considered the issue of client software? If you want to use the Linux server as a file/ print server, fine, you can do so without major issues. If you've been running Netware, I guess your client PCs are running either DOS <= ver. 6.22, or Windows 3.x. In this case, you can run Samba on your Linux server, and have it function as a LAN Manager based file and print server for the existing diskless clients.
If on the other hand you are running diskless Windows 95 nodes, that is a diferent kettle of fish. You can't boot a diskless Win 95 machine off a Linux server, since Win9x boots in real mode (16 bit x86 mode) and so will not support the IP protocol stack, which requires 32 bit protected mode to operate.
However, you can run a Netware emulation on your Linux server, using a package called Mars-NWE (NWE = NetWare Emulator). If you desire to keep your existing Netware server, you can mount Netware volumes on a Linux box using ncpfs, which provides a network filesystem that allows you to natively mount Netware volumes. If you then enable SMB using Samba, these volumes can be transparently accessed by non-IPX Windows clients on the network.
I'd suggest you get more RAM on your PIII. Since this is going to serve 10 diskless nodes, it will help. Get about 256MB.
I think this is a direct function of the applications the backend server will perform. For example, I have successfully run a file/ print/ email/ intranet web server supporting 20+ Win9x clients and mounting Netware volumes off a legacy Netware 3.12 server using a PII/400 with 64 MB of RAM. However, RAM is so cheap at this time, that you could probably add more without too much pain.
- Can I install Linux in the server and
configure the diskless
nodes under linux. Or all diskless nodes must
have hard disk and I
Ok, first off, a server is a process. You want to install linux on a host, not a server. Yes, you can install linux on the PIII, and install all applications there. You'd also want to set it up as a dhcp and bootp server. On your diskless nodes, you'd either boot with a floppy, or through your network card using bootp. You should read the Diskless-HOWTO for more information on this. Linux can also act as a netware server, so you may want to look at that first. Hint: mars-nwe
I believe that this is not the arena to discuss the semantics of server machines and processes. Back end hosts which export disk shares and printer access shares and/ or other services such as database access have traditionally been referred to as servers by the industry. The term "server" has been used here in this context, and IMHO is not inappropriate in these circumstances. That said, if you want to run Linux clients, remember that present office app support on Linux is still not as good as on Windows (unless you count Star Office, which I have no knowledge of).
- Can I run the existing clipper programs in
Linux. Or what is
the alterations I have to make in Clipper programs
to run under
If you can get your hands on a Clipper compiler/interpreter for linux, then yes, you can use your existing clipper programs. Any changes that you need to make will depend on whether clipper programs use any platform dependent stuff or not. I think not. What I doubt though, is whether clipper is available for linux. You'll have to pester your clipper vendor about that.
There is an excellent commercial compiler called FLagship for Linux, which you will find at http://www.fship.com. It is expensive, though.
An alternative open source product is Harbour, available at http://www.harbour-project.org. It is still a work in progess though, and is at release 0.37. Check it out though, since I believe that the core functionality is already in place.
- What is the other alternative for Clipper, if
I can't run
clipper programs under Linux.
Well, for one, if you want to do databases, get a real database server. Oracle is available for linux, but if you want open and free alternatives, get postgresql or mysql. Your code can be written in any language including perl, php, c, java, and anything else that has a driver for it. Most languages have the drivers.
Both PostgreSQL and MySQL support ODBC access using any client language such as VB, Java, etc. If you can translate your Clipper code to SQL, go for PostgreSQL, which is a really good full featured transaction-oriented object-relational DBMS. Don't know very much about MySQL, though.
- What is the minmum configuration required
for
server and
workstations (Our nodes are Pentium 100s with 16
MB RAM)
It depends on what you want to run. Typically the server host would be powerful. PIII is fine, but like I said, get more RAM. Your workstations can be anything from a 386 @33MHz with 4MB RAM and up.
You will need 16 MB to run X though, since any figure below this will not be practical.
- Can the X windows can be accessed through
diskless nodes.
Yes. Read the diskless-Howto. And it's the X Windowing system.
- Can I share the Internet/email using a Proxy
server and diskless
nodes. We are having one unlimited Satyam dailup
connection, which
is dailed through ordinary BSNL Line.
Yes. Configure your PIII as a gateway/proxy. Check squid.
You will need to use Fetchmail as a mail pickup to access your Satyam POP3 account. Check "man fetchmail" and the fetchmail documentation on your system, as well as all the mail-related HOWTOs on you local machine or on http://linuxdoc.org//HOWTO.
HTH,
Krishnan
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Philip S Tellis -
S. Krishnan -
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