Assignment 2

Arch Linux was an intimidating assignment with unforeseen problems but with the help of many YouTube videos and Wikipedia pages it was not such an insurmountable task. The first thing you need to do when installing Arch Linux is prepare the hard drive you will be using to store the OS on. To see what the name of your hdd is you use the command "fdisk -l". This shows the storage devices and there partitions. Once you know the name you use the "cfdisk" command to access the hdd (or ssd, in my case it is a virtual machine so it is a virtual hard drive too). You then create your boot, root, and swap partitions. You can have other partitions as well such as home and var but i am doing a simple installation. You start by selecting "New" then select "Primary" for the partition type. This will be the boot partition so select "Bootable" after you have designated the size of the partition. The boot partition should be around 512 MB. Then the root partition is the next you want to set up. Follow the same steps for boot but the size should be whatever won't be given to the swap partition. The swap partition should be given at least however much RAM you have. If you have 1 GB of RAM then you should leave 1024 MB of space for the swap partition. After the size of the root partition is set do not make it bootable. Then to set up your swap partition go through the same steps but after you designate the size go to the "Type" option and select the default option, which should be 82 Linux Swap/ Solaris. Once these are set go to the "Write" to save your partitions then quit cfdisk.

You then set up your swap partition with the commands "mkswap /dev/sd3" and "swapon /dev/sda3".

You then format the rest of your partitions with the ext4 filesystem with the "mkfs.ext4 /dev/sda#" for each device.

You then want to mount the root drive to /mnt and make directories and mount the rest.

Then install the base Arch Linux system with the command "pacstrap /mnt base". It will then begin to install the base system.

You then want to install a bootloader. I chose syslinux.

You then want to configure the files by first making an fstab.

You then change root into your new system with the "arch-chroot /mnt" command.Then creat your ramdisk filesystem with "mkinitcpio -p linux".

Then run the command "syslinux-install_update -iam". Then configure the files with "nano /boot/syslinux/syslinux.cfg" and make sure the arch portion is set to your root partition.

Then finish up by setting the password for root with the "passwd" command then exit root with the "exit" command.. Then unmount your files with "umount /mnt/{boot} /mnt". You can then reboot your system and launch your newly made Linux OS. After you reboot it will ask you to log in with the password you set. From here you can install a Windows manager. You first have to install the X Window System with the command "pacman -S xorg-server xorg-server-utils xorg-xinit". Afterwards install 3d support with "pacman -S mesa". You can then select the GUI you want to use and install. This covers the basic installation of Arch Linux.

Assignment 3

I started by launching the iso i had downloaded of Windows Server 2008.

I chose the full standard version for installation and chose the hard drive i wanted it to be installed on.

Once it finished installing it asks for you to set the password. Once you have set the new password, it takes you to a screen where you must do some basic configuring before anything else.

When you set your roles this decided what function your server will have. For this project Acitve Directory is what we will be using this for.

Then you should run dcpromo.exe to set up the DNS server.

It will then restart, once is does you should be connected via your domain server.

 Afterwards you can access Active Directory by right clicking on computer and selecting the "Manage" option. Then under "Roles" you will find AD.Here you will find all the users and groups on the domain and can move users to different group and see what permissions are set to each group.

The current user "Administrator" is set within groups already.

After setting this up i began the installation of Windows 7.

Once installed you will have to name your computer and set your connection.

You will then be greeted with your Windows 7 desktop.

Ubuntu : The beginning

I started by downloading both virtual machine software and Ubuntu for this assignment. I chose Oracle's VM virtualbox because we had used it in class and I was most familiar with it, although their are alternatives.  (http://lifehacker.com/5714966/five-best-virtual-machine-applications)

Once they were installed I set up the virtual machine by setting the amount of virtual RAM and hard drive space i would give it. I chose 2 GB of RAM just to make sure everything ran smoothly and 15 GB. I then selected Ubuntu as the operating system and launched Oracle.