Hello, I am a Windows 2000/2003 admin who has found himself a RHEL4 admin over night. Our company just purchased a Linux cluster and I am now responsible for it. Luckily I have a small understanding of Linux because I maintain a proxy server running Squid, on top of Fedora (Core 2). I know enough to be able to log into the system, edit a ban list file and an allow list file and restart the service. Not quite the same as maintaining a Linux cluster.

The cluster is going to be used for crunching numbers and not running any server related tasks.

I would like the one or two people who will be running the number crunching program to be able to interact with the system in a GUI, remotely. Is there anyway that RHEL4 will accept a terminal services connection? I noticed that there was a terminal server client installed on the system, but did not notice a terminal server service available. If I am unable to connect to the system with terminal services, what is the recommended way of remotely connecting to the system and interacting with it using a GUI. The remote connection will be initiated from a Windows XP computer.

I am under the impression that a Linux system can join a Windows 2000/2003 domain if it is running the latest version of SOMBA. Is this correct? Is this advisable to do? If I join this Linux cluster to my Windows 2000 domain, can I use my domain to authenticate the users who are connecting remotely to the system (A terminal services style connection.)?

On a slightly different topic, I have a network card question. At the command prompt In Windows I can type “ipconfig /renew” to force the computer to try and renew its IP lease from a DHCP server. I know Linux has the command ifconfig that allows you to view much of the same information as Windows ipconfig, but I could not find a way to renew the IP address lease. Does anyone know how I might do this?

Thank you very much for your time,

Ryan

You might be better off in the long run to at least download and read the manuals for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4;

http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/enterprise/
http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/csgfs/

But to answer your questions in general *yes* all can be accomplished. The choice to join a Windows 2000/2003 domain is yours keeping in mind the needs of the users and security. If you want a GUI interface (non-terminal services wise) look into using vnc. Dhcp leases work really well under Linux, 99.999% of the time they are renewed automatically. The manuals actually explain everything you asked about in much better detail then can be presented in this type of atmosphere.

Thank you for taking the time to reply to my post.

I’ve been doing some research since I made my post, specifically regarding the X window system. Are you of the opinion that it would be better to use a VNC client rather than an X windows server? I’ve been looking at an X window offering from a company called Starnet called X-Win32. The program is not free by any means, costing $225.00 per license, but it looks like the company has the right things in mind. High performance, ease of use and management, and customer support.

Should I look into a VNC client instead of an X window server?

Ryan

Yes, it's far cheaper for one ($50 per seat /w discounts on multiple licenses), and you can try it for free; http://www.realvnc.com/

Lots of companies use RealVNC for remote management, comes in server (enterprise $$, personal $ and free) and client versions.

For 10 enterprise licenses it runs $39 each (have to contact for mix and match licensing).

Also take a look at FreeNX. It's apparently faster in response than VNC. I blogged on it sometime back.

If you are using gnome then you should have vino installed which is basically vnc. There is an option in the menu items somewhere to turn on desktop sharing. Of course, with vino/vnc they will be seeing what is on the screen which is different from a Terminal Services environment where you get your own session.

If you want to release and renew your ip in RHEL you can type service network restart or /etc/init.d/network restart . Both do the same thing.