A new overclocker's Linux!

[Arkaine23]

I just finished the first official version of Overclockix, which is a customized Knoppix 3.2 CD. It runs from a cd-rom and in ramdisk, but there is an install script to stick it on a HDD. The procedure is realtively painless and takes about 30 minutes if you follow the instrcutions on www.knoppix.net/docs

Once installed to a HDD, it is Debain. So you can see that using any variety of knoppix is a quick and easy way to get Debain installed. Mmmmmm, apt-get......

But it works just fine running from CD, though is naturally a little slow to load things.

Anyway, its got a lot of packages, except for games. Its geared toward desktop use, but also has a lot of burning applications, DC clients, network tools, and filesystem tools. So its a good system recovery disk, and also an instant way to burn-in a new machine without having to install an operating system. I find that knoppix auto-detection scripts really help you out if you have linux on your HDD, because they can generate config files for you if there is a problem on your system. Just boot the CD, mount the hdd partition and cp the file over.

It has KDE3.1, Fluxbox, Icewm, and twm for window managers.

Opera
xchat
gaim
gimp
xmms
xine
karamba
openoffice
ncftp
Apache
VNC
mozilla
dbench
cpuid
folding@home
seti@home
prime95
memtest86
and thousands more...

Normal knoppix doesn't support nforce2 nic's or some broadcom kt400 nics, but overclockix DOES. It doesn't support the 10/100/1000 NIC's though, not yet...

I also wrote a bunch of scripts to make using the distributed computing clients, samba, and vnc very easy.

Pics-

KDE

KDE

KDE

KDE

IceWM

 

[engjohn]

Cool!

Sooo..... where is the .iso ???

*edit*
Oh yea, Looks great...

 

[Arkaine23]

Iso is uploading to 3 ftp servers now. I'll post the links in the AM as the uploads finish. Its 686mb.

 

[engjohn]

sweet!

 

[macky]

This sounds quite cool. I will have to download it when I get the chance.

One question, since this runs off the cdrom, it won't mess with any preinstalled OS's will it?

 

[Titan386]

Nope, its completly independent of any OSes on the hard drive.
It does, however, mount the partitions on the hard drive, so you can access your data.

I've used an earlier version of Overclockix, and it's very cool. I look forward to giving the new version a try as well

 

[Arkaine23]

The wait is almost over...

Once again I'll plug Opera as my preferred method to get large files since it can resume a broken download, and Nero for burning the .iso into a bootable CD.

Links

Read the info here, as there may be more than 1 iso available

 

[Arkaine23]

This sounds quite cool. I will have to download it when I get the chance.

One question, since this runs off the cdrom, it won't mess with any preinstalled OS's will it?

You can make a swap file for it on a hdd if you want to. And as Titan said, you can give it read/write access to hdd partitions and the data contained therein, just no NTFS write access.

 

[macky]

One more quick question.....

What is the connection type and speed on those ftp's?


You guys are probably the most helpful people around here. Fairly quick and thorough. I appreciate it guys.

 

[Arkaine23]

That's a good question. I'm not sure about the first server, the second is a partial T1.

 

[rogerdugans]

The first one is a commercial webhost- not sure what they restrict the bandwidth too but I downloaded the iso in just a couple of hours.

And I'm online with Overclockix now

 

[macky]

I got it in just over an hour from the second host. I am online with it right now thanks to Arkaine for helping me out over aim. Apparently we have an issue with the onboard NIC's on the A7N8X deluxe . So I popped in a PCI card and whammo, online.

 

[Arkaine23]

Since this is the Alt OS thread about Overclockix, I'll focus less on the DC clients in this one. So here's some technical stuff that will make it in the next release:

F-prot is a virus scanner that can be used to find virii on windows filesystems. I have scripts that download and install it to ramdisk or a persistent home on floppy, hdd, or pen dirve, but I didn't write these. So you will get the most current version and current definitions.

getantivirus
virusscan

are the scripts to get it and use it in overclockix. I'm not sure if the current version can scan the boot sector or not... the guys who wrote it are planning to include that feature last I heard. It mounts and unmounts partitions from fstab automatically in order to run the scan. So its a way to scan for virii on NTFS filesystems without being booted in Windows. And on a FAT32 filesystem you could mount the drive and delete the virii without being booted in Windows.


Also included:

cpuburn - a cpu stress tester. Burns for several types of CPU and also for memory. Instructions for use included in the ~/Desktop/Info/Useful_Commands file of Overclockix.

 

[Arkaine23]

Sorry all. I had to remove the links to the snapshots because it was loading my ftp server too much and causing problems. I may upload some new snapshots to another server later on...

 

[Arkaine23]

News about the savewu feature- if you create a persistent home directory on a usb pen drive or local hard drive- then reboot with the appropriate cheatcode: home=scan (in addition to any other cheatcodes you use)

Your crunching/folding will automatically be done on that medium and therefore powerloss or rebooting will not affect them.


All that's left is to get samba working again and tinker on my script that will back-up a work unit to a netowrk shared hard drive on another computer....

 

[cmcquistion]

So, does this current version include antivirus software?

I a little confused. I downloaded it, and I'm running it, but I can't find the getantivirus scripts or anything like that.

Keep in mind, I'm a total Linux noob, so bear with me

What I would love to find, is a Virus scanning software that I could boot from and scan disks, without booting into their OS.

I can boot from Norton Antivirus' CD and run antivirus scans from it, but if you've ever done this, you know that it is SLOW... I like the Knoppix/bootable Linux approach, because I now have an OS that sees all my memory and can use all my CPU cycles, to run such scans. Also, I would like to have the ability to update virus definitions, before running scans, something you can't do with Norton's disc.

 

[XWRed1]

There aren't many virus scanners for Linux. I guess you wanted to try this as something to use for scanning other machines? I know of one antivirus for Linux that I heard was good, RAV Antivirus, but Microsoft bought it a couple months ago.

 

[cmcquistion]

Yeah, what I would like is a bootable emergency virus scanning disc (to be used on Windows PC's) that could update it's virus definitions, scan the local hard drives, and clean off viruses. The kicker is that I would like to be able to do this, utilizing the real CPU and memory horsepower. Running Norton Antivirus off the CD is an exercise in extreme patience. Sometimes, it can take 8 hrs to scan a drive (and there is no way to update it's virus definitions.) The same drive can be scanned, from within Windows, in 30 minutes. I assume the difference is because the bootable CD is running in some kind of DOS mode, where it can't use the real CPU speed, or access all the real memory.

Really, I don't even need a GUI. A command line Linux utility would be fine. All I would need to be able to do is: update virus definitions (assume NIC and Internet access exist, no dial-up or anything) and then scan the local hard drives for viruses.

 

[XWRed1]

Well maybe you should try and track down the RAV antivirus. All the antivirus solutions for Linux that I've heard of have been for scanning email or fileservers for Windows viruses. I haven't heard of a standalone generic one like Norton AV though, but I don't really follow them. But I've heard good things about the RAV one.

Whats that one company... Trend Micro? There is some company with a name similar to that that has had a free av tool for a while, maybe they have a Linux version of it.

 

[fiji]

i really like the built-in folding/seti

nice touch


also im kinda wondering who collaborated w/you making this?

or did you do it by yourself?