Windows Server 2003 on Sun Fire X4100 Server

There was something interesting to do in office this week. They needed to install Windows Server 2003 on a Sun Fire X4100 server so that it could be used for running an anti-virus solution. It had RedHat installed previously but they didn't have license for Linux version of Symantac anti-virus.
  One'd think how difficult it could be..installing Windows...point, click, voila. It is actually like that in most of cases..but not in this one. Earlier it was Linux which needed  loads of tweaking, needed specialised drivers, dependencies and what not. But now, positions have changed. Linux supports most hardware out of the box unlike Windows.
 This became clear when we staretd the installation. It turned out that Windows didn't have drivers for SCSI hard disc of the X4100.  We needed to provide drivers during the installation from an  external source..a floppy of all the things. Considering that the server had no support for floppy drive, it could be a USB floppy drive only, but owing to certain "politics"it was not an option.  Then I tried Sun Integrated Lights Out Manager. 
Logged in using console, used every command possible, changed IP address, but that didn't work out either. This guide here  shows some of the steps used.
Then I adviced slipstreaming drivers inside the Server 2003 cd. I was told that they already did that. I asked the procedure and promptly banged my head on table. Their idea of slipstreaming was just copying the driver files on the cd and hoping that installer picks up drivers all by itself. No modifying other files to provide path of drivers or anything like that.
After I finishing damaging the table with my head, I downloaded another pdf  from Sun website and made them read the correct procedure. Its quite long for them..so there is a software called nLite  that can do all the dirty work in 4-5 point-click kind of steps.
No fun at all :|
All that ne needs to do is copying the Windows CD on hard disc. Give nLite the path of CD dump, drivers, chose option to make it bootable, unattended installation and what not...and click finish. It'll make an ISO that you burn on a CD. That CD will work perfectly.
Mission accomplished.
I had same problem with my older motherboard that didnt support SATA disks. Same procedure worked in that case too.

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)

Experience with BackTrack 3(Linux)

Using linux (BackTrack) is proving to be a real learning expereince. I always wanted to use Linux instead of Windows as my  primary OS. I tried shifting to linux many times in the past. tried using Xandros, Ubuntu, Red Hat and some more flavours. but couldnt get anything done with them. Not that they were particularly bad. Main reason was lack of a relable internet connection.
Nowadas with a good net connection, anytime am stuck with something I just search it on any search engine (Google mostly) and more often than not I have the solution within miniutes.
I was unable to do so earlier without internet.
Nowadays almost every Linux distro based on ny platform supports almost every hardware straight out of the box, but still many times you need to dowload some file  to make something work.
In my case, I havent been able to use my RTL8139 chpset NIC work :-|
Not that I particularly need it. Onboard card works well without a hitch..but still I'd like  it to work,. Just for the sake of challange

:D

I've downloaded and successfully installed many good software,
list includes
VMware (server and player , both free)
Opera Browser
Some misc system software including Wine, sqlite3, postgres and many more.
Currently downloading OpenOffice. I hope it'll install fine without  givingmuch trouble now
Finally learnt to use multiple desktop option.
Still some stuff proves o be quite difficult

Games for one. No windows game will work  here.
Sometimes, some games seem to  work with Wine, but they crash soon. Updating the software to a newer version was of  no help.

Then  tried installing Cedega, but waas put off by their ridiculous  5 Euro per month subscription fee. Thats too much to pay  in any case.
Then I tried installing the free version, Cedega CVS. After going through numerous guides, installing dozens of packages am still unable to run any game.

To top that, BackTrack lacks support for multi-channel sound.

Enquiring about these issues in BT forum gives response, "This is a pen-testing distro. Not meant for games, music etc" :|
Well., I can understand that, but even with a pen test distro, a person sometimes will really like to use it as his/her primary OS.  This point aparently escaped the notice of the BT people.
Not much use of complaiing. They'vce made and released this excellent OS for free afterall.

My windows installation still stays..for games only.  :\

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/