UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Hi everyone

Firstly I apologise for my total lack of knowledge about UNIX. Its unfortunately something I have never had any exposure to (Until Now).

I administer a smallish Windows 2000 network with all the usual bits and pieces that involves, and have been given the task of joining a Unix server running SCO OpenServer Release 5.0 to it. The server contains some quite sensitive data and access needs to be limited to four users and myself.

To be honest I don't have a clue where to start! If someone could please point me in the right direction it would be hugely appreciated.

Thanks

Hmmm.... unless you need to worry about actually joining the Windows Active Directory "domain", you should be able to just include the server on the network just as you would with a Windows box - i.e. assign the appropriate hostname, IP address, etc, patch it in and away you go.

If you need to join the domain, authenticate Windows users, run heterogenous applications, etc, you may need to investigate (a lot) further.

Otherwise, just run an ssh daemon on the SCO box, and use a Windows based ssh client such as PuTTY to log in and access the data on the SCO server.

We have an HP-UX server at work integrated into a Win2K network and there are no real special considerations, except the Unix box is more secure

Cheers
ZB

Thanks ZB

I have patched the server into the Network, but unfortunately fallen at the first hurdle. Although the machine has an Ethernet card in it I have no idea if it is configured or not.

I logged in as root and ran netconfig, which gives hardware / protocol options, but as I'm not sure what the card is, I was wary about messing with the existing configuration. Is there any way of checking without pulling the case apart and yanking the card out? Also once the card is identified how do you insure that is correctly configured and has the right IP address?

Sorry - I know this is all simple stuff, but I don't have a clue.

Thanks a million!

The easiest way to see if the IP address, etc, is configured is via ifconfig.

Type
man ifconfig
to read the manual page for ifconfig, as each *nix has its own command variation.

The actual interface device name also varies wildly between unix flavours. You can run

ifconfig <device>

Linux uses eth0 for the first ethernet device
HP-UX uses lan0
And SCO (I believe) uses net0

On SCO, ifconfig -a will show you information about all configured devices

*something like*
ifconfig net0 192.168.0.1 netmask 255.255.255.0 up
should bring the interface up if it already isn't.

You'll then need
route add default 192.168.0.100

to specify the default gateway
(Linux uses "route add default gw <address>")

All this will need to be added to startup scripts to make the changes persistent after everything is tested and working.

You'll also need to think about DNS, or if your network only has a few hosts on it, just edit the /etc/hosts file and add the hosts in.

There's quite a lot to do, and there is some good documentation on www.sco.com

Cheers
ZB