syntel20 — Tue, 26 May 2009 23:27:07 +0000

Windows XP can be installed from the hard drive much like Windows 98 could. This is useful in certain circumstances, such as OEM distribution.

Preparation

To start, you will need a Windows XP CD, and the hard drive pulled that you want to install from and onto. The hard drive needs to be formatted as FAT or FAT32 so that DOS can access it. Please note that drives over 32GB can not be partitioned 100% as FAT/FAT32 using Windows 2000 or higher. In these cases, patrition the drive to 30GB and we will convert and expand the size after installation.

Hard Drive

To partition and format the drive, we use USB to IDE/SATA adapters. Connect it to a working machine running 2000, XP, or Vista. You will find the disk manager under “Control Panel”, “Administrative Tools”, “Computer Management” and then “Disk Manager”. Delete all partitions off the drive you are going to use. Create a new partition, no greater than 32GB, and format it using FAT32. Copy the “i386″ and “$OEM$” folders to the root of the hard drive. When you boot to the DOS disk, it will be “C:\i386″ and “C:\$OEM$”.

Some OEM’s or computer manufactures customize the installation and process. This process can be used to assist those customizations.

Floppy Drive

Next you will need a DOS boot disk. Look for a “Windows 98 SE Boot Disk” image for this purpose. You will also want to copy “SMARTDRV.EXE” to this disk. Once that is complete, you are ready to start the install.

Target Machine

Most machine do not come with floppy drives, some don’t support PS2 devices anymore, and most are using SATA. In these cases, you will need to make the required BIOS changes. Set the SATA hard drive to “PATA”or “IDE”mode. Turn on USB emulation for keyboard and mouse if necessary. Some BIOS require you enable USB drives and floppy drives. These will be required to maintain DOS compatibility.

Installation

Installing from the HD is very similar to installing from a CD. The major difference is the initial stage, a “DOS portion”. Boot to the floppy drive and start without CD support to expedite the boot process. Once at a command prompt, run “SMARTDRV.EXE”. While this is not required, it is strongly recommended as one of the purposes of installing this way is it’s faster.

After smart drive, change to the “i386″ folder of the installation source, and run “winnt”. This will start the installation, but might look a little funny. The installation should automatically detect the installation source file location. Once the DOS portion is done, the computer will reboot. It should automatically boot into the “Windows Installation/Upgrade” boot menu option. At some point in the installation you will be where to install to. Choose the “C” drive, and leave it intact. Do not format or convert to NTFS. This will be done later in the process.

Post-Installation

Once windows is installed, you may convert to partition to NTFS by going to the command prompt and running “CONVERT C: /FS:NTFS”. It will require a reboot. After the dive has been converted to NTFS, you can go into “Disk Manager” again and extend the partition to use all the drive.

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Shawn Zernik

You may use this document, but must preserve the copyright and the link to Internetwork Consulting <www.internetworkconsulting.net>.

SMTP error: 451 4.1.8 Domain of sender address does not resolve

syntel20 — Thu, 14 May 2009 07:07:06 +0000

Email stopped flowing after making network changes. After looking into “/var/log/maillog” the following error were being produced:

fetchmail[619]: SMTP error: 451 4.1.8 Domain of sender address
does not resolve
sm-mta[722]: n4E5DclK000722: from=
, size=313470, class=0, nrcpts=0, proto=ESMTP, daemon=Daemon0, relay=localhost [127.0.0.1]

I verified that DNS was working by doing some NS look ups and pointed the DNS directly to my ISP. Didn’t fix the problem. I ultimately resolved this by turning off the domain name look up on received mail for sendmail. This is less that ideal if mail was being delivered directly to my server, but since my email goes through my ISP’s SMTP server, I figure their checks should be sufficient.

I ultimatly added “FEATURE(accept_unresolvable_domains)” to my “/etc/mail/freebsd.mc“. This stops sendmail from looking up the domain. Next is to recompile the config. This is done by issueing “make install” from “/etc/mail“. Next is to restart sendmail with “/etc/rc.d/sendmail restart“.