Come and help a Linux dood with Windows 3.11

[Doogee]

ok recently i got and old i486 SX computer for free.

What i want to do is connect it to my ADSL Router so i can use the internet and share files with my other computers.

The Computers i need to use to share files with are 2 win98se boxes and a Red Hat box (mine).

I cant use super large files because this i486 has NO CD-ROM just a floppy drive and a 40 meg hard drive (will get a new one soon though - whats the max i can get to work with win 3.11)


The reason im using win 3.11 is i personally think its one of the better versions of windows and because my first computer was a win 3.11 computer (i386 i think) so its kinda a sentimental thing.

Anyone wanna help me with my little project???


edit: by the way its win 3.11 for workgroups.

[ December 12, 2002: Message edited by: Got Doogee? ]

[ December 12, 2002: Message edited by: Got Doogee? ]

[Calum]

i just tried a similar thing and i FAILED to get windows to network AT ALL. my strong urging to you is to get basiclinux and use it instead. In 40MB, you can probably get X installed and a lot of other stuff, and still have room for files and so on, and also it has a lot of networking stuff installed as standard.

I know you just said you wanted to use windows, but windows for workgroups 3.11 really let me down when i tried it for a couple of weeks there and i would recommend this linux instead.

[ December 12, 2002: Message edited by: Calum ]

[Doogee]

MY DAD JUST FUCKING DROPPED MY FUCKING 486!

[Doogee]

k if my computer still works at all im gonna do a hard drive install of basic linux...

my first question is how will i get DHCP to work? i need it for my ethernet adsl router thing...

basic linux is my way to go i think. it would be cool. would i be able to cram GCC and a decent text editor (sorry not VIm - need to learn that) maybe emacs, im pretty familiar with emacs.

basically what i want to be able to do is send emails browse the web a bit and do some c programming. Is ThIs PoSsIbLe On 40 megs with lots of bad clusters? (i did a DOS ScanDisc something like 80 or more bad clusters)

I should be able to get a new HD though, ive been helping the admin at my school and am going to be for the next (last) week of school. tomorrows scavanger day! ill have all kindsa shit.

Lets just hope this bitch 486 works aye...

[choasforages]

A,) my dad for the most part doesn't touch any of my computers cuase even over non-issues i antaginize people for things they did months ago

B,)floppy linux?

[Doogee]

nah basiclinux looks real good im gonna try and get it goin on the old thing.

[Doogee]

holy fuck that thing is sturdy, its all working fine. lets get to work, first things first, move this to the linux forum.

[Calum]

use the dhcp file from the basiclinux page, (i would just install everything from that page if i were you) and do a hard drive install of basiclinux. to do this you must install it on your dos partition in a folder, making sure you have a linux partition ready, then run it and then follow the instructions to run the bas2hdd thing to install it to your hard drive. DO NOT RUN THE bas2hdd THING USING A FLOPPY VERSION OF BASICLINUX. It will work, but it will work WRONG! You must then get rid of your DOS partition or you'll be really strapped for space, and then of course you'll have to edit it so it knows it's on /dev/hda1 instead of /dev/hda2.

Basiclinux is tricky. i had very little trouble with it but that's because i read LITERALLY all the documentation, including the 20 page or so FAQ, AND the magazine review of it (all available through the basiclinux front page) BEFORE i started. Do do this. If you don't, basiclinux's installation idiosyncracies will have you gnashing your teeth in minutes!

good luck!

[Doogee]

Question 1 of an inevitble multitude of questions:
How the fuck am i going to get this file to my 486 its a 2mb zip file. im lost already lol. i can only really use floppys and unless pkunzip is included with win 3.11 then i can unzip it? any sugestions? unzip it on my linux box then use two floppys?

[Calum]

you'll need a stack of floppies for this sort of thing.

void main told me two different ways to do what you are asking.

the first way is to use 'split' to split up your original file on your 'big' machine, then use 'cat' to concatenate the file back together again on your 'little' machine. This won't be any use if you are using DOS though. what you need to do is create c:/baslinux on your little machine, then unzip your 2MB file on your big machine and stick the files onto two floppies. the largest file will take up one floppy, and the other files will all go on another one. copy all those files into c:/baslinux on the little machine and away you go. You now cd into the baslinux directory, execute 'boot.bat' and you are running linux. You then need to mount a floppy that contains bas2hd.tgz, then unzip the bas2hd file somewhere, then mount /dev/hda2 onto /hd (and you will already have used linux fdisk in basiclinux to make partition on /dev/hda2, and then you will have done 'mke2fs /dev/hda2' as well, it's all in the readmes!), now  cd into the directory where bas2hd is and run 'Go' to install to your hard drive.

[voidmain]

You can get a split command for DOS. I actually wrote one myself about 10 years ago (before I found the GNU file utilies were already ported to DOS). A quick search should find many different "split" commands for DOS.

[Calum]

yeah, but he needs to put the stuff back together in DOS, not split it. anyway, the files will fit on 2 floppies if you unzip the file on your big machine. also, DOS is only going to be there long enough to get basiclinux installed. Actually, i think that there is a bit in the basiclinux FAQ about how to install basiclinux without using DOS.

[ December 12, 2002: Message edited by: Calum ]

[voidmain]

C:\> COPY /B FILE1.DAT+FILE2.DAT+FILE3.DAT ORIGFILE.ZIP

[ December 12, 2002: Message edited by: void main ]

[KernelPanic]

Right I'm planning on installing Basic Linux on one of my partitions, I havn't used it in a while.

What I need to know is, how does it bootstrap?
Does it touch the MBR?
Basically I don't want it to kill my GRUB.

[Calum]

if you install it to hd it does not touch the MBR (as it says in the FAQ, the first link at the bottom of the basiclinux page) and if you want to add it to GRUB, you'd just perform whatever hocuspocusery you do in GRUB to add another bootable partition. Once you install it to a hard drive partition, you then copy your kernel (zImage) from your DOS baslinux folder into your new /boot directory on your new ext2 basiclinux partition, and then you point your bootloader at that.

There's instructions somewhere (i think in the baslinux FAQ) for how to add it to lilo, and i am sure they would be useful to you.

This 'copying the kernel' business is the exact reason why it won't work if you run basiclinux and bas2hd from the floppy based version. if you copy the floppy kernel to /boot, it doesn't appear to work. It needs to be the DOS kernel that you use.