Services for UNIX 3.5

[Glaanieboy]

Hmm, looks like a unix shell emulator. It's slow (when I type really fast, the text comes slow), it doesn't support ssh (one of the reasons I installed it) and it's too large for me, because I only really want to have some kind of native support for ssh. Too bad.

NetRyder, you said ssh was built-in, yet I can't find it. Can you guide me?

 

[NetRyder]

I need help. Upon installing, it's asking this: (attachment). I use seperate useraccounts on Windows and FreeBSD, so usernames and passwords must be manually synchronized (by me). So I guess I have to choose the second and third option, but then it's asking me for the location of the NIS server. What's that? Please help me Net!

Since I wasn't going to use this for any kind of remote sharing, I just chose the "Local User Name Mapping" option with NIS, and left the fields on the next screen blank. I'm not sure what the procedure would be if you actually wanted to use NFS/NIS etc.

 

[Glaanieboy]

Oh wait, now I get it. It's a unix emulator for Windows! Cool! Now I have to find out how to install software, I am spoiled with the make install clean commands in FreeBSD ports collection, so it might be a challenge.

 

[NetRyder]

Hmm, looks like a unix shell emulator. It's slow (when I type really fast, the text comes slow), it doesn't support ssh (one of the reasons I installed it) and it's too large for me, because I only really want to have some kind of native support for ssh. Too bad.

NetRyder, you said ssh was built-in, yet I can't find it. Can you guide me?

That's very strange...bash actually runs as fast as cmd for me. No typing delays whatsoever. gcc takes a few seconds longer to compile as compared to a native *nix machine, but that's not a big delay either. That's one of the reasons why I've decided to leave this installed. It's awesome. I never really liked cygwin, so I got rid of it a week after I installed it.
In any case, maybe vern can share his experience with us as far as speed is concerned once he's installed it too.

Regarding ssh: You need to install the OpenSSH package (this also includes sshd, the ssh daemon) from the Interop Systems site. First thing is to bootstrap the package manager, as per the instructions on this page:
http://www.interopsystems.com/tools/pkg_install.htm

That's a one step process that you need to do just once in order to be able to install any extra packages in the future. Once that's done, head over to this page:
http://www.interopsystems.com/tools/warehouse.htm
You can either manually download the OpenSSH package to a directory and run "pkg_add openssh-current-bin.tgz" or install it directly using "pkg_add ftp://ftp.interopsystems.com/pkgs/3.5/openssh-current-bin.tgz" which will download and install the package. The second method tends to be a little slower (since the server is pretty slow in itself) and there's no progress meter to tell you how much is done, so it might seem like it's frozen, but it's not. I prefer to use the first method to download first, and then install, unless I need the dependency-checking (which I believe isn't required for OpenSSH).

Let me know how it works out.

P.S. If you're using this only for the ssh client, it might be more prudent to just use something like Putty or Terraterm Pro, considering the amount of disk space SFU takes up.

 

[Glaanieboy]

Hmmm,, k. I installed the bash package and pkg_info says it's installed, but I can't find it. Not in /bin, not in /usr/bin. *continues the search*

 

[NetRyder]

/usr/local/bin/bash

If you want to create a shortcut to a bash prompt, use this as the target:

C:\WINDOWS\system32\POSIX.EXE /u /c /usr/local/bin/bash -l

 

[Glaanieboy]

Ah, I forgot the 'local'. I thought it was only used in BSD, but it seems that Unix works like that too.

 

[Glaanieboy]

Oh wait, this is based off OpenBSD :lol: :doh:

 

[Glaanieboy]

Ah, now I get the hang of adding and deleting packages. It really looks cool, but I am wondering, can I add Windows useraccounts in the shell too using the useradd or pw useradd utility?

 

[Glaanieboy]

Alright, this was fun, but you're right, Net, I only use this for the ssh thingy. Putty can do that too and is less than 1 mb in size. Though I must say I've have never seen an Unix emulator under Windows and maybe I don't understand it's potential. I think this is more of a 'fun' way to play around with Unix commands in Windows, nothing more. You can't really do something with this, only in it's own emulated environment.

 

[NetRyder]

Alright, this was fun, but you're right, Net, I only use this for the ssh thingy. Putty can do that too and is less than 1 mb in size. Though I must say I've have never seen an Unix emulator under Windows and maybe I don't understand it's potential. I think this is more of a 'fun' way to play around with Unix commands in Windows, nothing more. You can't really do something with this, only in it's own emulated environment.

Yeah, it largely depends on what you're going to do with it. If it's only ssh, the whole SFU installation is probably just a waste.
I dual boot XP with Slackware 9.1, but I'm most productive/comfortable with my Windows apps. SFU gives me the best of both worlds, in a sense - all the GUI-software available for Windows that I'm familiar with, and an extremely powerful UNIX command-line shell to work natively with all my files.

If you really get serious about it, you can combine SFU with a product called Desktop-X from Interop Systems (this is commercial software, though) that gives you access to the X server, so that you can run your *nix-only apps within Windows. The advantage of this is that you could keep something like Photoshop or Excel running as a native Windows app, and have some *nix X-based app running simultaneously. You can then use the X app just like any other Windows app, being able to copy/paste to and from it etc.

It's a very neat system, but for now, I'm quite happy with just the terminal.

 

[Glaanieboy]

Yes, but, you can't access the Windows drive, only the files within the C:\SFU (default install) directory. So in reality, it's only for fun, you can't do a thing with it, except bashing in unixcommands and edit the startup files or sump.

 

[NetRyder]

Yes, but, you can't access the Windows drive, only the files within the C:\SFU (default install) directory. So in reality, it's only for fun, you can't do a thing with it, except bashing in unixcommands and edit the startup files or sump.

If only you had asked...hehe.

You can access each and every file on your drive! That's what I've been saying all along...that's what makes this so exciting. Your drives are located in /dev/fs. So for example, to access C:\WINDOWS files, you'd just use "cd /dev/fs/C/WINDOWS" and you have access to everything in your Windows folder. You can then use any of the available command-line *nix tools to manipulate any of those files.
Same with any other drive/folder...D:\Documents would show up under /dev/fs/D/Documents!

 

[Glaanieboy]

Sheeeeeet! Cool! *tries it out* It works! But can you add Windows users with it? Just with useradd? Or pw?

 

[NetRyder]

Sheeeeeet! Cool! *tries it out* It works! But can you add Windows users with it? Just with useradd? Or pw?

What do you need to add the users for? Incoming ssh connections? Network sharing?

 

[NetRyder]

@Glaanie: This might be a useful guide for what you're looking to do.

 

[Glaanieboy]

Nah, just curious. Since Microsoft released it, maybe they added some very special functions to it. Thanks for the guide though.

 

[NetRyder]

Not a problem.

I haven't bothered with users and password synchronization stuff, as I said. Have you decided to uninstall SFU then?