Ubuntu/Linux help needed please...

Chuffy

I'm trying to use an old PC as Network Attached Storage at work just to store a few common files on. I have tried to use FreeNAS but I could never mount the disk so I gave up. I went through the forums but it seems to be a common problem - perhaps hardware related.

I have found another product that's free called NASLite but it works from a compressed floppy disk (1.722 MB on a 1.44MB). This can't be created from windows, but on the NASLite website it states that a bootable floppy can be created from Linux using:

gunzip NASLite.img.gz
fdformat /dev/fd0u1722
dd if=NASLite.img of=dev/fd0u1722

I don't actually know how to do this. I am currently running this laptop on a live CD version of Ubuntu to see if I can work it out - I can't.

Any help greatly appreciated.

Skint1

Hi join the Ubuntu Forums and ask there. They are quite friendly and you're more likely to get the help you need.

http://www.ubuntuforums.org/

albertross_2

Don't know if this helps, but you can run freenas under vmware using the free vwplayer, so you can play with it on an xp machine, without it affecting a real disk.

http://www.freenas.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=20&Itemid=32

This video might help..

http://www.hak5.org/wiki/index.php?title=Episode_2x02

re naslite, you can unzip the img file in windows, then format and create the floppy using the 2 commands you mentioned, or you may be able to use winimage to do it all in windows

http://www.winimage.com/

or rawrite..haven't used it, but it might help..

http://freshmeat.net/projects/rawwriteforwindows/

wolfman

Hmmm

Download the zip to your desktop in Ubuntu.

Then go to Applications at the top of the screen. Then Accessories, then Terminal.

In Terminal, type (replace <% path %> with the path to the file and <% filename %> with the filename:

gunzip <% path %>/<% filename %> example,
gunzip /home/robert/myzip.img.gz

Then you'll need to find the name of your floppy device. Try something like:

fdisk -l

It should list all of the devices attached, you'll need to identify which one is your floppy. I've never used a floppy so can't really say. Typically though hard drives may be named something like sda1, sdb1 etc...

Then type:

fdformat /dev/<% NameOfFloppy %>
dd if=/home/robert/myzip.img of=dev/<% NameOfFloppy %>

Obviously switch out my example and the NameOfFloppy with whatever it is on your system.

Sorry I can't be of much more help. Am sat at a Windows machine so it's all off the top of my head, and my Linux skills are still are only getting near to intermediate.