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[Trinux-talk] Newbie Blues take 2
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From: windham l. <mst...@ho...> - 2002-01-09 03:42:54
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-= Trinux FAQ =- vers. 0.1
12.02.01
compiled by Lance Windham
Table of Content
1. Introduction and General Information
1.1. What Is Trinux?
1.2. Trinux, huh? What is it good for?
1.3. What Hardware is Supported?
1.4. What Software does Trinux Support?
1.5. What happened to my finger, find and other common UNIX utilities?
2. Trinux Installation and Configuration.
2.1. Download, where and how?
2.2. Bootdisks: ide, iso, and the like.
2.3. Selecting Packages.
2.4. Network Package Loading
2.5. Fixed Disk Package Loading
2.6. Floppy Package Loading
2.7. Building package disks
2.8. Current Package List.
3. Optimizing Trinux
3.1. Loading Kernel modules
3.2. how can I use my mouse and gpm?
3.3. Using swap space, swap-on ?
3.4. Building your own initrd!
4. Misc. questions
4.1. Why a few applications complain about the missing libncurses.so.5?
4.2. How can I set up a NFS client on the Trinux box?
4.3. How can I set up a PPP client/server daemon on my Trinux box?
4.4. How can I set up SSH on my Trinux box?
4.5. How can I clone a hard drive?
4.6. How can I build an initrd?
-=/\/\/\/\/\/\/\=-
1. Introduction and General Information
1.1. What is Trinux?
Trinux is a ramdisk-based Linux distribution that boots from a single
floppy or CD-ROM, loads it packages from an HTTP/FTP server, a FAT/NTFS/
ISO filesystem, or additional floppies.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
1.2. Trinux, huh, What is it good for?
Trinux contains the latest versions of popular Open Source network
security tools for port scanning, packet sniffing, vulnerability
scanning, sniffer detection, packet construction, active/passive OS
fingerprinting, network monitoring, session-hijacking, backup/recovery,
computer forensics, intrusion detection, and more. Trinux also provides
support for Perl, PHP, and Python scripting languages. Remote Trinux
boxes can be managed securely with OpenSSH.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
1.3. What Hardware Is Supported?
Trinux will boot on any i486 or better with at least 12-16 megabytes of
RAM, depending on how many packages are loaded. Hardware support for many
common Ethernet cards is provided in the default kernel and additional
NICs are supported via Linux kernel modules.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
1.4. What Software does Trinux Support?
Trinux 0.7x/0.8x is/was developed using Slackware 7.1 and supports the
latest 2.2.x kernels and glibc 2.1.x. Trinux 0.8x supports Linux kernel
2.4.x.
Trinux was first released in April 1998. Versions up through 0.51
were based on Debian 1.31 binaries linked against libc5. Version 0.6x was
built using RedHat Linux 5.2.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
1.5. What happened to my finger, find and other common UNIX utilities.
Trinux utilizes Busybox to replace many common UNIX utilities.
http://busybox.lineo.com
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
2. Trinux Installation and Configuration.
2.1. Download, where and how?
Trinux can be obtained at the following locations:
http://trinux.sourceforge.net
http://www.io.com/~mdfranz/trinux
http://gd.tuwien.ac.at/opsys/linux/trinux/
http://the.wiretapped.net/security/operating-systems/trinux/
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2.2. Bootdisks: ide, iso, and the like.
Since Trinux is a floppy-based distribution, it is only available in the
form of raw disk images, which must be copied to floppies after they
have
been downloaded. Trinux requires a boot disk whose purpose is to load
the
linux kernel, mount the initrd (initial ramdisk), create additional
ramdisks, configure networking, and load packages from additional
floppies or from other sources.
Floppy Images
1.4MB boot floppy images will need to be written using rawrite (a DOS
program) or better yet Rawrite for Windows. On UNIX systems, you can use
the dd command to do a low-level image copy. Be sure to check the size
of
the file that you downloaded. It should be 1474560 bytes.
As of version 0.81pre0-2.4.5 , there are four possible boot images to
choose from:
* Network - contains a stripped down kernel with support for common
Ethernet NiCs, but no integrated support for IDE devices or filesystems
(except for FAT and minix).
* PCMCIA - contains the smallest kernel (no built-in ISA/PCI NIC support)
and PCMCIA kernel-module packages for 3Com, Xircom, and a few more
PCMCIA
NICs. Other PCMCIA modules are available. Best for network package
loading. See pcmcia-cs project for a list of supported cards
* IDE - nearly identical to the standard image except that the kernel has
support for IDE hard drives and CD-ROMs and FAT, NTFS (read only), and
minix filesystems.
* ISO - test release based on 0.81 linuxrc/initrd but still with 2.4.5
kernel primarily useful for laptop (pcmcia) users.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
2.3. Selecting Packages.
Only a bare minimum of Trinux's functionality is provided on the initial
boot floppy: basically enough to boot the kernel, build the ramdisks,
extract a minumum number of necessary utilities, and configure the
network.
As as a result, it is necessary for users to decide what applications
they
want to include.
2.4. Network Package Loading
For me, this is the preferred method of loading Trinux. Packages are
maintained on a centralized HTTP/HTTP server and after obtaining an IP
address a selection of packages are automatically loaded and installed
via snarf. This saves the trouble of building and updating floppies.
On a fast network (close to the web server) a Trinux box can be up and
running in around a minute. As of 0.80rc2, use the "net" boot image if
you are going to use network booting, although all version of Trinux can
use this feature once the network is properly configured, or (if you are
a laptop user) use the "pcmcia/laptop" boot disk.
If I forgot to load a package (or if I want to test a new one) I just
use the getpkg command to retrieve and install it. For now, getpkg does
not initialize the package, so you need to check /etc/init.d for a
package initialization script that would install kernel modules or start
background processes. As of the final release of 0.80 (which will
probably be in August '01) getpkg will automically initialize the
package
and install the kernel modules vi the scripts in /etc/init.m.
Network package loading will be used unless packages are found on a
fixed
disk partition (see below). If Trinux is unable to contact the default
HTTP url due to network problems (interface, routing, DNS,
configuration,
etc.), it will resort to floppy loading. Laptop users will have to use
multiple floppies, because the PCMCIA packages will not fit on the boot
disk.
Assuming your network is properly configured or you use DHCP, the
following steps are necessary to configure network package loading:
1. Select an HTTP/FTP server than has trinux packages. This value is set
by /tux/config/server on the boot floppy (a:\tux\config\server) which
contains a list of servers that Trinux will attempt to contact to
load
packages. See the mirror page for a mirror close to you.
2. Modify /tux/config/pkglist on the boot floppy (a:\tux\config\pkglist)
to add any new package names that you want Trinux to load
automatically. All of these configuration files are in ASCII text so
it best to use an editor such as notepad (or the DOS editor) or vi
that does not add formatting characters. See below for which packages
you might want to add or delete.
2.5. Fixed Disk Package Loading
Fixed Disk Package Loading (including CD-ROM booting and package loading)
For users who cannot (or do not want to) use network package loading,
this
is the best option. It is also the fastest. This is also the option
laptop
should choose because the pcmcia package does not fit on the boot disk.
1. Download the "ide" boot floppy that has support for IDE hard
drives,
CD-ROMs, and minix, VFAT, NTFS, ISO9660 filesystems.
2. Visit the packages page to see what packages you need.
3. Create a trinux directory at the root (C:\ D:\ /, .etc ) of a FAT,
Minix, NTFS, or ISO9660 filesytem. This is where you should
download
any and all packages you want to load.
4. If you are using a Windows FAT16/32 filesystem, the boot kernel
already supports this filesystem, if you are using an NTFS or EXT2
(Linux) filesystem, you need to download the kernel module (ntfs.o
or ext2.o) and copy it to the boot floppy.
5. Download packages from ibiblio (what used to be MetaLab) or one of
the mirror and save them to the directory you created in step 2.
Trinux will automatically use the first filesytem it finds with a
trinux directory to load packages.
6. Modify /tux/config/pkglist on the boot floppy
(a:\tux\config\pkglist
to add any new package names that you want Trinux to load
automatically. All of these configuration files are in ASCII text
so it best to use an editor such as notepad (or the DOS editor) or
vi that does not add formatting characters.
2.6. Floppy Package Loading
This method of loading packages is the slowest and most cumbersome,
and Trinux only chooses this if it cannot find a package server or
a local filesystem to load packages from.
2.7. Building package disks
Building package disks is fairly straightforward and involves the
following steps:
1. Get a bunch of floppy disks. Actually, 2-3 disks should do.
2. Visit the packages page to see what packages you need.
3. Download packages from ibiblio (what used to be MetaLab) or one
of the mirrors.
-=/\/\/\/\/\/=-
3. Optimizing Trinux
3.1. Loading Kernel modules
There are two ways to load Kernel modules in
Trinux. At boot-time or after login.
boot-time: add modulename.o to your bootdisk
as well as modulename.o to your
/tux/config/modules file.
after: use insmod to insert the module file.
i.e.-> # insmod modulename.o
To verify if the module was loaded you can then
do a -># lsmod to list loaded modules.
3.2. How can I use my mouse with gpm?
pkgadd modmice.tgz <- unpack mouse modules
insmod mousedev.o <- insert/load module
insmod input.o <- needed for mouse support
ln -sf /dev/psaux /dev/mouse <- link for gpm
gpm -t ps2 <- gpm -t (type of mouse)
3.3. How can I customize initrd.gz?
To customize your initrd.gz file which is basically
just a compressed minix filesystem all you have to
do is:
mount -o loop initrd /mnt
then just cd to the /mnt directory and modify the files
inside this directory. After you are done modifiying
the files in this dir just unmount the dir and gzip it
back up and place it onto your bootdisk and bahm! your done.
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