[LI] ILUG-Cochin Minutes

[Shanker Balan <shanu@xxxxxxxx>]

Hello,
	Every time PCQ releases Linux on its cover, there is an increase in the
Linux user base all over. This is evident from the recent spike in
traffic of the LI mailing list and more locally, the increase in
attendance of the local chapters, especially Cochin. The attendance
which was hovering around 10-12, shot up to 28 this month, leaving us a
little unprepared as the seating arrangements were made for 16. As Linux
requires very minimal hardware for functioning, the same can be said of
it's users and we all managed to squeeze in :-)

Agenda: 1) Triple booting - Win95 + PCQ RHL 6.1 + Debian GNU/Linux 2.1
	2) Network stress testing with Quake :-)

Duration: 3 Hours, 14:30 - 17:30

Attendance: 28 Heads

			--------- M i n u t e S ----------

	The meeting began with a formal introduction by all present after which
Harshavardhan proceeded on to talk about the upcoming Linux Fest in
December at Cochin University. I thought it was a good time to talk
about my adventures at the Linux Pavilion and bore all present with a
larger than life description of the event. Ragu and Anoop, then took
control and spoke about Proff. Richard M Stallman and the Free Software
Foundation highlighting the importance of open source software in todays
world. The Q&A session was up next and as usual the notorious SIS
(AARGHHH!) display card figured at the top. We breaked before taking up
the agenda.

	The machine used for the triple boot was a Cyrix/300 MHz with 16 MB RAM
and a 4 GB hard disk. It was already pre loaded with Win$ and PCQ RHL
6.1. The partition table was as follows...

	/dev/hda1	800 MB		vfat (Win$)
	/dev/hda2	800 MB  	ext2 (RHL 6.1)
	/dev/hda3	64 MB		swap 
	/dev/hda4	2.3 GB (Approx) extended
	*freespace*

	The PC booted off the Slink CD without a hitch and i quickly blazed
thru the setup menus creating an extended partition (hda5) of 200MB and
activated the swap partition (hda4) which was to be shared between RHL
and Debian. I chose to do a base install (24MB) as the other packages
were not needed for the demo. In under 5 minutes, the install was
completed and i had to choose where to install lilo. Since i already had
lilo installed on hda2, i skipped the lilo part and rebooted the system
to RHL.

The following steps were done to add the Debian vmlinuz image to lilo
under RHL -

1. Do a temporary mount of /dev/hda5 (Debian root partition) under
/mnt/cdrom.
2. Edit /etc/lilo.conf and add the following lines at the end -

image=/mnt/cdrom/boot/vmlinuz-2.0.36 	# Path to Debian kernel image
	root=/dev/hda5			# Debian root partition
	label=debian			# Sets the label
	read-only
	
3. Run lilo -v 
4. Reboot the PC and key in "debian" at the lilo prompt & Voila, a
triple boot b/w win+rhl+debian.

*Notes*
- /mnt/cdrom was used only as a temporary mount point. A new directory
/mnt/debian would be preferred as a permanent mount point.
- U can also copy the Debian vmlinuz file and place it under /boot in
RHL's root directory.
	
	It was Quake time now! We did not have access to the Quake 2 for Linux
CD and had to make do with the Win$ version. The Quake 2 Debian wrapper
program was installed on the system first and all the data files were
manually copied from the CD to their appropriate locations on the hard
disk (/usr/lib/games/quake2/baseq2). Sony, our resident Quake "guru"
stepped in to explain about the objective of the game and how to start
and play multi-player "Death match" over the LAN. Most of the common
console commands like "connect", "reconnect", "disconnect", "god", "give
all" was explained. A special mention was made of the "timerefresh"
command which could be used to benchmark the performance of the video
card.

	As per the suggestions of the members, it was decided to set a local
mailing list and Manoj Victor Mathew would start work on the much
delayed home page. On this note, the LUG split by 17:30.

	This is Shanu doing a back flip on behalf of ILUG-Cochin.

-- Shanu

--------------------------------------------------------------------
The Linux India Mailing List Archives are now available.  Please search
the archive at http://lists.linux-india.org/ before posting your question
to avoid repetition and save bandwidth.