BackTrack 3

I installed BackTrack 3 on my PC at work. Installing it in a dual boot configuration along with XP proved to be a nightmare. Messed up my XP partition once and was unable to get dual boot working properly. It'd work fine for 2-3 days and then mess up.  At first it was LILO giving crazy errors and garbled text, so I  followed instructions posted by GoodGirl in Remote Exploit forums and installed GRUB.I don't know if it really worked for people who posted there thanking her, but that tutorial has many errors.
 Using BackTrack 3 hasn't proved to be a good experience either. It has quite a few bugs, or maybe its just the under powered PC I have here (256MB RAM only). My list of annoyances:
1) Linux is fast. Much faster than Windows with little lag times and programs almost never  hanging up. But BT 3 is an exception. Its very slow, running 2-3 programs simultaneously is sure way to slow down or crash everything. I've installed this OS 2 times with different images. (USB one)
2)  We have a proxy here.  I tried my best but was unable to get any program except browsers and chat clients to use the proxy for accessing external networks. Updating doesn't work either. I'm unable to find a  proxy setting for system like there is one for Windows services.  Wise guys at RE forums had their own ethicaly White Hat views on this.
3) Compiz Fusion is a complete dud. Themes don't work properly. Not to mention you can't download new themes due to proxy restriction. Maybe its due to low RAM.
4) Mouse has gone crazy. It cannot differentiate between single and double clicks. I tried almost everything in Mouse settings, increasing/decreasing sentivity, lag time, changing themes. But its stuck. Sometimes my clicks get recognised as single at other times they are double. You can guess the results. Same mouse works fine in XP.
5) GUI installation has been removed. Now its back to command line installation. You can copy the installation script,  bt3.kmdr file from older distros for graphical intall though. Here is the file. Some senior members say that they prefer people to use thumbdrives for running BT 3. Why'd anybody use thumbdrives if they can install on HDD except in rare cases?
BT 3 Beta and even XP are a lot better than this (except for proxy). I'm still using BT 3 Beta on my home PC. No use taking chances with all that data there.

Solaris

Just for sake of experiment, I tried installing Solaris x86 version. Sun people are giving away the Developer Edition free of charge. I requested for a DVD and got one within 2-3 weeks
Link : http://developers.sun.com/sxde
  I've removed my 20GB disk and got an old 40GB. Kept XP and BT on 160GB disk. This meant I had to edit my current partitions. Needed to delete the BT and Games partition. After backing up my data went through the process. Kept 40GB disk unformatted and created necessary partitions on 160GB
Installation of Soalaris was quite easy, though it took 60-70 minutes to finish all the steps. I like the way most Linux and this Solaris get installed. You fill up all the options early in installation and rest of the process goes by itself without any need to supervise unlike Windows. Damned thing needs date time setting, license key, usernames, passwords etc. in the middle of installation. That means, you need to stay in front of the PC all the time while in Solaris, Linux you are free to do anything else, get coffee, read, anything.
    Once the instalation was done, LILO boot menu of BT was replaced by GRUB. In addition to Solaris it showed 3 Windows partitions. Solaris booted fine but windows needed some tweaking to get  working.
 Solaris had some other surprises. At first it has no GUI. Just command line. I was sure I selected the proper GUI installation option and had right system specifications (512+ MB RAM, 12GB + free HDD space). So started playing around,
Tried some Unix commands and after sometime finally got into Solaris Desktop.Its GNOME and behaves pretty much like it does on Linux installations, though looks different.  Default Solaris installstion is pretty much like Windows, barely enough to start working, but considering the fact that it occupies 11GB+ space, its kind of odd. Installing Linux software didnt work . There are separate packages for Solaris.
There isnt much to write about it now. I tried playing around, it isnt difficult to operate, no more than most Linux/Unix installations in market, but is of no use at home. Place where am working has 8 Sparc servres, 4 running RedHat, one Windows Server and rest Solaris. I guess I'll conduct all my experiments there only. ;)
Installed BackTrack3 again. It gave more problems than I anticipated. But managed somehow. Deleted Solaris and now PC is back to older config. If I feel like it, I'll use VMware or some other virtualisation software to run Solaris. Permanent install on HDD isn't worth it (at home)

BackTrack Installed

Finally managed to install BackTrack 3 on my PC today. it was really hard work..but did it somehow. Don't know if this text  is going to make sense to anybody or not.Anyhow..here are the details:

Configuration of my PC:

Intel Pentium 2.66Ghz
Asus P5RDVM Motherboard with X900 Chipset
XFX's NVidia 6200TC Card
(But using 8400 currently)
512MB RAM
One 100MB NIC on PCI slot (Motherboard has another onboard but its faulty.)
Western Digital 160GB SATA
Seagate 20GB PATA

4 Windows partitions on WD dsik with WIndows XP Pro installed on 1st partition

Now I wanted to install BT3 without messing up my XP installation. Still a newbie to Linux and can't just migrate to Linux as yet.

I installed Acronis disk director and made 3 more partitions. One 1Gb for Linux swap , one 12GB ReiserFS for BT3 and made one 6GB empty space

I also installed Acronis boot loader, just to be safe
Now my previous attempts to successfuly make my PC dualbootable failed with BT. So I thought of installing Ubuntu Linux too. First I booted from an Ubuntu CD and installed it on HDD. In installation process I selected use the largest available free space.
It used that 6GB free space to install itself. After installation I rebooted the PC and was promptly greeted with a GRUB menu with booting options for both XP and Ubuntu.

Now its time for BT3.
Booted using Backtrack 3 DVD. Since I had already made partitions I didnt need to make new using fdiask command.
Just used "Install BT to HD " option from its start menu.

The 12Gb ReiserFS partition was /dev/sda5. Used that for installing BT and /dev/sda for installing MBR. Used full install and unchecked "remove from MBR" option. It took like 10-15 minutes for install.

Rebooted and bumped into LILO boot loader of BT.

Ubuntu and Windows nowhere visible.
:)


:)


Booted into BT and logged in using default password.
type "liloconfig" and selected new LILO installatiion
In next menu selected Add Windows Installation and added /dev/sda1
For Ubuntu added /dev/sda8 and "dev/sda5" for BT 
Note that these sda will differ for different PCs. Could be hda if you have PATA disk or sda 1,2,3 etc may differ.


Saved and rebooted

This time I got Acronis boot loader menu
:D
But with only 2 choices
One Windows XP and other Linux
Selected Linux and got LILO of BT3 . But this time with 3 options. Windows, Ubuntu and backTrack3
ALl working perfectly
:)

Well except for one small part
can't access net from both linux distros. Actually, can't even ping my gateway. I have a Sify connection. An ethernet cable plugging directly to ethernet card. Then I have to run a cleint program to login using my username and password.
A friend of mine who has installed Slackware faces the same problem
But thats for another day.

Tomorrow I'm going to fix that

Links 

BACKTRACK

http://www.remote-exploit.org/backtrack.html

DOWNLOAD

http://www.remote-exploit.org/backtrack_download.html

BACKTRACK Forums

http://forums.remote-exploit.org

UBUNTU

www.ubuntu.com

UBUNTU Download

http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/download

ACRONIS

http://www.acronis.com/