Janina and Others, Thanks for the good suggestions. We will probably go with a server eventually. The problem right now is money for a sufficiently powerful computer and a bunch of disk drives. I might use Linux on my personal machine, whatever the rest of the office uses, as long as I still have access to Windows when needed. John Computers to Help People, Inc. http://www.chpi.org 825 East Johnson; Madison, WI 53703 ----- Original Message ----- From: "Janina Sajka" <janina@afb.net> To: <blinux-list@redhat.com> Sent: Wednesday, September 19, 2001 10:27 Subject: Re: Running a Linux Office > I think the advice to start with a linux server and run samba to serve > Windows clients is the right approach. It lets your staff keep what they > know how to use, while providing you substantial protection against the > kind of problems you've just been wrestling with. Several points I'd like > to recommend: > > 1.) Insist that your clients write their data files on the linux > server. Do not allow, or strongly discourage writing files on C:>, in > other words; > > 2.) Get several large hard disks--as needed--on the server, and keep a > dd image of each workstation's C:> drive on the server. That way, should > your clients ever become infected again, you simply need to dd the image > back from the server to recreate a pristine Win client--and you lose no > data because that's all on the server. > In my ejxperience, it's far easier, and far quicker to simply restore a > pristine computer than to sleuth around file by infected file. But the key > to this strategy is the data. If that's on the workstation, you won't want > to blow it away. That's why point 1 is so critical. > > The time to restore a workstation will be quite short, actually. If you do > it over the net from the server, it will depend on your net connection > speed. If you get some kind of hich-capacity media--like a scsi orb drive, > for example, and the local cards to support this, you could go around to > each workstation and restore more quickly. I think you could easily put > back five client systems within an hour. > > I have been using this very strategy recently in building a new Win 98 > installation. I back it up, from time to time, using dd. Then, if my next > software installas run me into trouble, i.e., start negatively affecting > already installed software, I just step back using my dd image and take a > different course toward my goal. This strategy gets me robust Win > installations in the long run, that are relatively impervious to the kinds > of problems you're experiencing, because they're not intended to be > permanent. > > On Wed, 19 Sep 2001, Rafael > Skodlar wrote: > > > On Wed, Sep 19, 2001 at 01:51:36AM -0400, John J. Boyer wrote: > > > Hello, > > > As it happens, we just got infected with the new worm. It propagated over > > > our network to four different computers. I've been steadily getting sick of > > > Windows, so now i'm wondering how hard it would be to convert a five-person > > > office from Windows to Linux. We must also be able to use DOS in native > > > mode. > > > > This is not an easy question because we don't know what kind of > > applications you need to run the business. I would start with a server and > > Samba to have stable environment for printing, email, backup, or anything > > else. > > > > The most difficult part is the applications. Depending on what you do it > > might be difficult to find the right software for the right price. For > > general office work StarOffice is good enough and it will be even better > > when 6.0 comes out. There are other similar office tools coming out in the > > near future. > > > > Another important issue is learning new tools to do the job. For example, > > learning Gimp for graphics manipulation, etc. > > > > You would need to install dosemu to run DOS programs in Linux. That is > > critical since there is no guarantee it will work. There are still some > > programs that might not work. Alternative would be VMWARE to run windows > > programs inside Linux. The good thing about it is that you can roll back > > to before the virus attack I believe. > > > > > Thanks. > > > John > > > > > > Computers to Help People, Inc. > > > http://www.chpi.org > > > 825 East Johnson; Madison, WI 53703 > > > > > > > -- > > Rafael > > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > > > Blinux-list@redhat.com > > https://listman.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/blinux-list > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > Blinux-list@redhat.com > https://listman.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/blinux-list >