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Using Linux in a Corporate Environment
by Rob Kenney rob@ext2.org Many of us work in corporate environments where it's tough to have your work PC booted into Linux without having to boot into Windows half the day for one reason or another. At my work. I still needed Windows because we use Lotus Notes for email (they won't let us pop it) and various databases. There are also a couple machines I need to connect to via Net-ware (this is no problem in Linux). Anyhow, now that Lotus Notes works fairly well in Wine, I decided to try it out and see how long I could go without booting back into Windows. For those of you who don't work in a corporate environment, I hope you find this interesting, and maybe get some ideas for other projects. Ok, First I'll explain the setup on my PC at work. It is a p75 w/ 16 mb ram and a 3 gig drive (that I brought in from home). I have 1 gig set aside for Windows (/dev/hda1). Then I have /dev/hda2 as 128mb swap for Linux, and I have the rest of the drive partitioned out with about 100mb for /, 50mb for /var, 300mb for /opt, gig for /usr, and about 550mb for /home. I have RedHat 5.1 setup for my Linux system there. I have LILO handling the boot on the MBR. WARNING: I am not a technical writer. This is how I set up my PC at work, and I figured that this may help some others, or give some ideas for other people. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law, do not remove this mattress tag under penalty of law. First thing you want to do is make sure that you have a good setup, and a connection to the LAN. My PC connects via DHCP at work. This means that when I boot up my machine, it looks for the DHCP server so the server can hand it a dynamic ip address (This is how I see it working). Anyhow, make sure you can ping or connect to remote hosts with your Linux setup. For help on this... check the "Linux Ethernet-Howto." Next, If you need to connect to a Net-ware server to access some items, this can be done as well. I read through the "Linux IPX-Howto" and was connected to the Net-ware server in about 10 minutes. If you are running RedHat Linux, then you are probably already setup to connect. You just need to type in the magical command. I haven't tried it under Slackware, or any other distribution yet, so I can just tell you that if the command does not work, then go and do some configuring explained in the IPX-Howto. We are going to be connecting to the Net-ware server using 'ncpfs'. Here is the first magical command you need to type:
# ipx_configure --auto_interface=on --auto_primary=on (the # just shows you that you are at a root prompt, do not type it :)This will configure the IPX networking software. If you get an error, then print out the IPX-Howto, and get reading. I'm just pulling out the commands from it that will setup the system if you have everything installed, which RH 5.1 has auto-magically. Now, you should be able to list all the servers that are connected via IPX. Use the "slist" command to view all the servers.
# slist(If this returns an error message like "ncp_connect: Invalid argument", then you probably do not have IPX configured correctly in your kernel. Touch base with the ever familiar "Linux Kernel-Howto" if you need assistance with configuring your kernel.) Now you can login to any of those servers there, and mount them on your system. Use the following command to accomplish this:
# ncpmount -S ACCT_FS01 /mnt/Accounts -U guest -P secretThe -U would be your user name, and the -P would be your password. I have this command setup in a file called netware.login. I then just run ./netware.login whenever I want to connect to the server, and mount it. If you leave off the -P secret, it will prompt you for a password. This is how I have it setup since I didn't want to put my password in the little script. There are a number of other options you can use as well. Check out the IPX-Howto for those. Ok.. now cd to /mnt/Accounts (or wherever you mounted your Netware stuff) and do an 'ls'. See how much cool stuff you can now get to? :) Notes Setup: Now that that is all setup, we can setup Lotus Notes. I had Notes setup already in Windows, and I am using Notes v4.61. There is a 4.62 version out now.. but this is what I use. :p First off... go to http://winehq.com/ and download the latest Wine install. I decided to get the RPM file since I use RedHat at work and all. RPMs are nice sometimes. I wouldn't use an RPM'd kernel, but that's me.. I like RPMs especially on slow machines because you don't have to wait around all day for something to compile. Anyhow, they have the latest release available in RPM format if you want it, or you can get the latest as a tar.gz, unpack it, and compile it yourself. After you install the latest Wine, then check the wine.conf file and edit it to your liking. I usually take out the cdrom, and floppy stuff since I won't be using those much in Notes, also you can point stuff to different drives. I have my Windows98 drive mounted at /dos, so all i had to do was point c: to /dos. If you have any questions setting up Wine on your system, then look around on winehq.com. There is plenty of helpful information available there. Last time I used Wine, I had a hard time configuring the pointer to c:\windows\system. I don't remember what the problem was, but this time I decided to just try what pointers they had setup by default, and hoped it worked. Here goes.. try to start notes and see what happens:
# /usr/local/bin/wine /dos/notes/notes.exe &(The & puts it in the background.. but you still see some errors in the xterm you start in within.) Whoohooo! It worked right? :) Sure, on mine, it looks kinda funky, but I can access Mail, and the databases within Linux using Notes through Wine. I needed the Netware drive because that is where we keep a lot of files that we access each day. These files are .doc, and .xls files however, and this computer being so slow, i'm not sure if I want to brave the mighty download of Star Office (70 mb), or if I should give Applix a try, or if I should just go to linuxapps.com, or freshmeat.net and look around for Linux apps that can open/write to Office95 type .doc, and .xls files. I'll add on an ending to this article when I try that this week sometime. I hope this helped out a little. Best thing to do would be to read through the Howtos mentioned here, and then give it a try. Below you will find links to some helpful sites/pages that may be of interest. Also there is a little glossary of some of the terms to help you understand more (if you need to.. most likely most of you could write some better definitions, but it's the general understanding that counts for this project). :) -Rob (rob@ext2.org) Links: http://linux-howto.com - Where you can find all the Linux Howtos, and other info. http://www.winehq.com - The Wine project home page.. tons of info http://linux-howto.com/LDP/HOWTO/IPX-HOWTO.html - IPX-Howto http://linux-howto.com/LDP/HOWTO/Ethernet-HOWTO.html - Ethernet-Howto http://linux-howto.com/LDP/HOWTO/Kernel-HOWTO.html - Kernel-Howto http://linux-howto.com/LDP/HOWTO/mini/DHCP.html - DHCP-mini-Howto http://linux-howto.com/LDP/HOWTO/Quake-HOWTO.html - Quake-Howto (um.. for when you are having a hard time setting up IPX or something) :) Glossary: LILO: Linux Loader - Linux's "boot manager" type of thing.. loads different operating systems that you configure into it. MBR: Master Boot Record - The first part of your hard drive. DHCP: Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol
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