28 January, 2008

I've Been IT'd

Once again I've been IT'd, that is "Information Technology"'d. I have recently began using it as a verb, synonymous with screwed, broken, f**cked...

Is it just me, or is it just our IT department? For the past 3 years, IT has managed to break our systems fairly regularly on a monthly schedule. The past 6 months, they've broken our network a total of 4...count 'em....four times! I'm convinced that 100 monkeys with 100 keyboards couldn't cause any more mayhem and quite possible provide better support.

While they lack competence, they thrive in lack of dedication. Come 3-4 o'clock you'd be hard pressed to fit a sheet of paper between any given meathead that makes up the steady stream of those heading for the door. Jetta after Jetta, off to screw up someone else's machine...or perhaps a marathon session of World of Warcraft (tee hee).

03 January, 2008

I See Windows FS

Ok, sure...it sounded better in my head; a pun on "I see dead people". But once down, I have to admit, it is pretty lame. Too bad! Besides, if you are a reader of this blog you're already aware that I'm humor-impaired.

Being a long-time Linux user I've encountered the daunting decision during an installation....should I make the Windows partition visible from Linux? Most of the time, the answer to this question is a 'hard' _no_. My current computer has Debian installed, and the question was again presented during the installation and I chose, once again, no. Unfortunately, I've recently found a desire to make the partition available for file transfers and manually updated my system to make the partition available. I decided to document the steps of this effort, just for fun.

- Step 1 -- determine the file system identifier for the Windows partition

$ cat /boot/grub/menu.lst
.
.
.
# This entry automatically added by the Debian installer for a non-linux OS
# on /dev/hda1
title Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition
root (hd0,0)
savedefault
makeactive
chainloader +1
.
.
.


Note: a more appropriate means to get the same information would be:

# /sbin/fdisk -l


- Step 2 -- update your fstab


$ cat /etc/fstab
# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
#
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
/dev/hdb1 / ext3 defaults,errors=remount-ro 0 1
/dev/hdb5 none swap sw 0 0
/dev/hdd /media/cdrom0 udf,iso9660 user,noauto 0 0
/dev/hdc /media/cdrom1 udf,iso9660 user,noauto 0 0
/dev/scd0 /media/cdrom2 udf,iso9660 user,noauto 0 0
/dev/fd0 /media/floppy0 auto rw,user,noauto 0 0
/dev/hda1 /mnt/winXp/ ntfs uid=1000,gid=100,umask=0022 0 0


- Step 3 -- create the mount point

# mkdir /mnt/winXp


- Step 4 -- mount the file system

# mount /mnt/winXp


- Step 5 -- pat yourself on the back
(pat, pat)