Partition already existing single drive in Windows XP

Most of the vendor shipped desktop/Laptops comes with a single partition drive named C, which is a great bottleneck to have dual boot.

Partitioning an existing drive can be possible through different commercially available Partition Magic software but for that one needs to shell out some bucks.

We can achieve this sort of partition using some reliable and easily available open source tools.

Knoppix which is a bootable Linux Live CD which contains most of the GNU/Linux tools can provide a handy approach to achieve the partition.

* Get Knoppix iso and burn it to a CD.

* Boot from Knoppix on the machine which needs partition.

* Run QTParted, that will open a window showing the existing partition.

* Right click on the windows partition, choose RESIZE

* In the text box labeled FREE SIZE AFTER, specify the size of which one want the new partition. This will create free space of specified size.

* Right click on the free space created, click create.

* Select partition type, click OK.

* From file menu, select commit. This will make the partition change persistent.

* Restart the computer.

* Boot into the existing windows.

The above steps will eventually make another partition of specified size.

cheers...
make world open.

Apache CGI Scripts on windows.

CGI scripts on apache installed on windows didn't work. It is because of the first line of the .cgi files.

Normally first line of .cgi file reads as #!/usr/bin/perl and on windows apache uses this first line to find the appropriate perl exe to run the script. This default behavior can be overridden by using ScriptInterpreterSource directive of apache.
Adding "ScriptInterpreterSource Registry-String" directive to apache httpd.conf file, we are telling apache to ignore the first line #!..... and instead look in to the registry for the perl exe to run the script.

If moving #!/usr/bin/perl to C:\Perl\bin\perl.exe [Correct perl.exe installation path.] works fine which conclude that ScriptInterpreterSource directive is not working properly.

Solution to the failure of apache .cgi scripts on windows is:

Edit httpd.conf file and add the line:
ScriptInterpreterSource Registry-String

Add the following key in the
registry.

\HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.cgi\Shell\ExecCGI\Command.

Default value should be the location of your Perl executable.
[ex. C:\Perl\bin\perl.exe -T].




cheers, make world open...

Gentoo on VMware in Fedora Core 6

Successfully installed Gentoo on real hardware and then thought of trying same installation on VMware server 1.0.1.
Religiously followed the Gentoo Handbook page for both the installation.
All went well for real hardware installation but on VMware it failed to boot from hard disk after installation with an error message saying that /dev/sda3 is not a valid block device.

Gentoo HOWTO wiki page helped me to identify the problem and gave solution as well.
VMware seems to be using different driver for scsi devices and so /dev/sda3 is not able to mount as root partition hence stopping kernel from booting successfully.

I recompiled the kernel with some more addition to the kernel configuration
$ genkernel --menuconfig --no-mrproper --no-clean all
above command will allow you to keep all your existing configuration and add some more configuration parameters.

Earlier my kernel on VMware gentoo had Modular support for scsi_generic and Kernel support for scsi_disk. Modified the kernel configuration and added these two modules as a built in Kernel support. Made sure that the menuconfig windows has <*> before SCSI disk support and SCSI generic support.
These options can be found here at menuconfig windows...
Device Drivers -->
SCSI device support -->
<*> SCSI disk support
....
....
<*> SCSI generic support

This re-compiled kernel did the magic for me. Gentoo on VMware boots great from hard disk.

Network also had an issue as VMware needs AMD PCnet32 PCI support. Solution is to either build kernel with AMD PCnet32 PCI support OR load the kernel module pcnet32 by default at boot time.

cheer, make world open...