My company supplies me with a very nice HP nc2400. Much faster, more memory, etc than my old HP nc4010. Problem is the drive is not swappable, and they encrypt the drive (the OS is XP). The nc2400 has a DVD/CDRW and 2 USB 2.0 ports so I was thinking..... Make a Live DVD with everything I need but map /etc /root /home and /var/log (and what else?) to a USB flash drive (16Gb are available and I was just sent a PR on a 32Gb, maybe I can get an eval device :) ). So first I would want a bootable DVD that would have everything I want to have running on the cd2400. And of course, everytime one of the components get updated, I will have to build a new DVD. Then I would like to run within XEN my company's XP image on that encrypted drive. Is this possible. If I could do this, I can move the nc2400 as my 'workhorse', downgrade my nc4010 to my test box, and reallocate the Toshiba 3490 to the family.... And more importantly one less box to carry when traveling! I guess one thing in this whole equation will I be able to repartition the USB flash drive with a swap partition (will probably never use, as there is 1.5Gb memory in the nc2400. Twice as much as the nc4010), and an ext3 data partition? Or should I use LVM on it?
Not to pitch another distro, but knoppix and dsl do pretty much what are looking for ,minus the xen. What I would propose though is to run vmware P2V (now called converter) on your XP machine. It will export a vmware image of that drive, then just format that sucker, install centos and vmware and run your corp image inside of that. It's what I do at work and it has always worked splendidly. On 1/5/08, Robert Moskowitz <rgm at htt-consult.com> wrote:> > My company supplies me with a very nice HP nc2400. Much faster, more > memory, etc than my old HP nc4010. > > Problem is the drive is not swappable, and they encrypt the drive (the > OS is XP). > > The nc2400 has a DVD/CDRW and 2 USB 2.0 ports so I was thinking..... > > Make a Live DVD with everything I need but map > > /etc /root /home and /var/log (and what else?) to a USB flash drive > (16Gb are available and I was just sent a PR on a 32Gb, maybe I can get > an eval device :) ). > > So first I would want a bootable DVD that would have everything I want > to have running on the cd2400. And of course, everytime one of the > components get updated, I will have to build a new DVD. > > Then I would like to run within XEN my company's XP image on that > encrypted drive. Is this possible. If I could do this, I can move the > nc2400 as my 'workhorse', downgrade my nc4010 to my test box, and > reallocate the Toshiba 3490 to the family.... And more importantly one > less box to carry when traveling! > > I guess one thing in this whole equation will I be able to repartition > the USB flash drive with a swap partition (will probably never use, as > there is 1.5Gb memory in the nc2400. Twice as much as the nc4010), and > an ext3 data partition? Or should I use LVM on it? > > > _______________________________________________ > CentOS mailing list > CentOS at centos.org > http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos >-- Jason Luck favors the prepared. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://lists.centos.org/pipermail/centos/attachments/20080105/204dcb82/attachment-0003.html>
Jason Clark wrote:> Not to pitch another distro, but knoppix and dsl do pretty much what > are looking for ,minus the xen.I am using DSL 4.2 on a Libretto, so I will first be testing booting the nc2400 off a DSL live CD.> What I would propose though is to run vmware P2V (now called > converter) on your XP machine. It will export a vmware image of that > drive, then just format that sucker, install centos and vmware and run > your corp image inside of that. It's what I do at work and it has > always worked splendidly.I CANNOT touch the drive. I have to leave it and its encrypted XP alone. In fact I think it will be rather hard to get the encyrption off the drive without blowing the MSB and partition tables. And they force XP updates down to me that I have no choice to 'install later'. Rather my only choice once they pop up on the box is when to reboot... It would be nice, but question about how much work Live CD is. Perhaps I should pull the current one down and boot it for kicks...> > On 1/5/08, *Robert Moskowitz* <rgm at htt-consult.com > <mailto:rgm at htt-consult.com>> wrote: > > My company supplies me with a very nice HP nc2400. Much faster, more > memory, etc than my old HP nc4010. > > Problem is the drive is not swappable, and they encrypt the drive (the > OS is XP). > > The nc2400 has a DVD/CDRW and 2 USB 2.0 ports so I was thinking..... > > Make a Live DVD with everything I need but map > > /etc /root /home and /var/log (and what else?) to a USB flash drive > (16Gb are available and I was just sent a PR on a 32Gb, maybe I > can get > an eval device :) ). > > So first I would want a bootable DVD that would have everything I want > to have running on the cd2400. And of course, everytime one of the > components get updated, I will have to build a new DVD. > > Then I would like to run within XEN my company's XP image on that > encrypted drive. Is this possible. If I could do this, I can > move the > nc2400 as my 'workhorse', downgrade my nc4010 to my test box, and > reallocate the Toshiba 3490 to the family.... And more > importantly one > less box to carry when traveling! > > I guess one thing in this whole equation will I be able to repartition > the USB flash drive with a swap partition (will probably never > use, as > there is 1.5Gb memory in the nc2400. Twice as much as the nc4010), and > an ext3 data partition? Or should I use LVM on it? > > > _______________________________________________ > CentOS mailing list > CentOS at centos.org <mailto:CentOS at centos.org> > http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos > > > > > -- > Jason > Luck favors the prepared. > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > > _______________________________________________ > CentOS mailing list > CentOS at centos.org > http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos >
Robert Moskowitz wrote:> My company supplies me with a very nice HP nc2400. Much faster, more > memory, etc than my old HP nc4010. > > Problem is the drive is not swappable, and they encrypt the drive (the > OS is XP). > > The nc2400 has a DVD/CDRW and 2 USB 2.0 ports so I was thinking..... > > Make a Live DVD with everything I need but map > > /etc /root /home and /var/log (and what else?) to a USB flash drive > (16Gb are available and I was just sent a PR on a 32Gb, maybe I can get > an eval device :) ).If you can boot from USB, why not get one of the laptop-drive based external units that are available up to 250 gigs now and do a full install on it? -- Les Mikesell lesmikesell at gmail.com
Les Mikesell wrote:> Robert Moskowitz wrote: >> My company supplies me with a very nice HP nc2400. Much faster, more >> memory, etc than my old HP nc4010. >> >> Problem is the drive is not swappable, and they encrypt the drive >> (the OS is XP). >> >> The nc2400 has a DVD/CDRW and 2 USB 2.0 ports so I was thinking..... >> >> Make a Live DVD with everything I need but map >> >> /etc /root /home and /var/log (and what else?) to a USB flash drive >> (16Gb are available and I was just sent a PR on a 32Gb, maybe I can >> get an eval device :) ). > > If you can boot from USB, why not get one of the laptop-drive based > external units that are available up to 250 gigs now and do a full > install on it?Duh...... I would have to get one that can be powered from that one USB port (fairly rare, the few that I have require external power or the power from a 2nd USB port). I would also have to be able to strap it to the bottom of the unit for easy management on a plane. Though if I can get that 32Gb USB flash drive that might almost be enough.... And too bad not a larger Compact Flash MicroDrive. Hey, wait. I run my Libretto's DSL off of one.... I can put one in a PCMCIA holder and map the swap drive to it and.... Now I am cooking. Maybe. But still down to can XEN run the content of the encrypted drive. How do I find out?
Just to let you all know (and the reason for top posting).... The install of Centos with XEN went with no problems. Just had to be VERY careful and NOT touch hda1. Booting was taking 10min or more. Timeouts. On study, it was USB related and the drive I am using is .7A (3.5W ie more than USB spec...). So I have to look for a .5A drive! BTW, I have some internal IDE 3.5:2.5 converters and these are ONLY booting .5A laptop drives. Won't even spin up .7A drives. But the big looser with my dreams is running XP inside of XEN. You have to set up an LVM partition then install XP into it withing XEN. And I cannot touch that drive. Sigh. Back to other projects. Scott Silva wrote:> on 1/7/2008 1:46 AM John R Pierce spake the following: >> John Bowden wrote: >>> I have a external USB HD enclosure that takes its power from the one >>> USB socket. Its only failed to do so on one oldish tower that a >>> friend of mine has, on that machine it needed the second "power" >>> connection. Got it from Ebay >> >> >> thts also out of spec, as USB is speced for 2.5 watts, 500mA at 5V, >> per port. Typlical laptop HD is like 5 watts, more when spinning up. >> >> >> yes, I know it usually works. just saying... > Sometimes you can find small 4 to 6 gig closeout drives with lower > power requirements. And you can look around for 1.8 inch drives and > enclosures. That should run on a single port. > >