coLinux is described through a summary excerpt taken from coLinux.org – “Cooperative Linux is the first method for optimally running Linux on Windows and other operating systems natively. It is a port of the Linux kernel and support code that allows it to run cooperatively without emulation along with another operating system.”

coLinux supports multiple Linux cores and derivatives, and comes standard with many built-in network architectures. coLinux can also be configured to run the daemon as a native Windows 7 service, or as a standalone / TSR application. As noted in the documentation, coLinux is intended to be used as a sandbox test environment and may cause stability issues on the Windows host. It is highly recommended that you do not use this in a production environment.

This article will focus specifically on installing coLinux v0.75 as a TSR, using a SLIRP network config, with an Ubuntu Jaunty Jackelope 9.04 image, in a Windows 7 environment. This will produce an Ubuntu environment offering 512mb of RAM with 490mb free, 1GB root filesystem with 375mb free, and no swap. However, all of this can be tweaked to suit your specific needs through the documentation supplied with the downloads.

From the SourceForge site, download the Ubuntu-9.04-1gb.7z file (or later) to a temp directory that you have READ / WRITE / EXECUTE permissions on your Windows 7 filesystem – i.e.; C:\Users\<yourLoginID>\Downloads\coLinux\. This file is an archive which contains the Ubuntu “image” or environment and must be extracted with a 7z-decompression utility like WinRAR for example. Extract the image into the same download directory you used to save the archive itself. You will move it to a permanent location in later steps.

Also from the SourceForge site, download the coLinux-0.7.5.exe file to the same download directory as the previous files. Run this installer with elevated rights in Windows 7.

While installing the coLinux executables, you will be prompted for an installation directory, also known as the Destination Folder. Personally, I used the default value of “C:\Program Files\coLinux\” because I like a clean root directory in my filesystems. But be wary of the fact that the default configuration files for coLinux have absolute paths declared with the value of “C:\coLinux\” for some reason. You can either set your Destination Folder to reflect this value, or edit your text-based configuration files to reflect the default Destination Folder above. I did not need to edit my files even though my Destination Folder is “C:\Program Files\coLinux\” because I supply all my configuration options through CLI-based arguments as you will see below.

If you do not presently have the Windows Packet Capture Library (WinPcap) installed, you will be prompted and given an opportunity to install it using the hyperlinks supplied by the coLinux installation dialog. It is highly recommended you configure WinPcap to automatically start at boot. WinPcap services critical network components in coLinux. Once the WinPcap installation process is complete, you will be returned to the coLinux installation dialog.

You will prompted to choose a version of Linux to install in addition to the coLinux Windows executables. Since I have already downloaded the environment in the steps above, I chose NO DOWNLOAD. If you select NO DOWNLOAD as well, you can ignore the remainder of this paragraph. Otherwise, you can choose to download an alternate environment at this point. Bear in mind that this does not automatically configure coLinux to work with that distro however. You will still need to edit your configuration files, or supply command line arguments regardless. The installation README has some great information on how to either edit the example.conf file or how to use it to build your own custom version. There are very few options to configure and is fairly straight forward in my opinion. Be sure to double check your absolute installation paths as mentioned above, and be sure to include the extension of “.fs” when declaring the cobd0 variable’s file name.

Now move the file Ubuntu-9.04.ext3.1gb.fs from your download directory to your new “C:\Program Files\coLinux\” directory. You may want to COPY instead of MOVE if you intend to make custom changes to your FS file, giving you something to fall back on. I personally chose to move it since it is over 1GB in size, and I can always extract a virgin copy from the 7Z file I downloaded at the beginning of this article if needed. Either way, at this point you should have everything you need to execute coLinux.

Open a cmd.exe command shell as Administrator or with elevated rights, and navigate to the coLinux installation directory above. Once there, run the following command and you should be all set. The password for root is “root”:
X:\Program Files\coLinux>colinux-daemon kernel=vmlinux initrd=initrd.gz cobd0=Ubuntu-9.04.ext3.1gb.fs eth0=slirp root=/dev/cobd0

Again be sure to check the supplied documentation for additional execution and configuration options that may offer you more value than what I have supplied in this article.

- Perform a bad-blocks scan:
$ sudo badblocks -c 10240 -s -w -t random -v /dev/sda

- Write random data over entire surface of media:
$ sudo dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/sda

*** Be sure to substitute the “sda” device with your own as needed.

Install a loopback adapter in Windows:

• Click START / CONTROL PANEL / DEVICE MANAGER
• Click ACTIONS / ADD LEGACY HARDWARE [NEXT]
• Select “INSTALL THE HARDWARE THAT MANUALLY SELECT FROM A LIST” [NEXT]
• Select “NETWORK ADAPTERS” [NEXT]
• Select “MICROSOFT” and “MICROSOFT LOOPBACK ADAPTER” [NEXT]
• Close DEVICE MANAGER

Configure the new loopback adapter:

• START / CONTROL PANEL / NETWORK AND SHARING CENTER
• Select UNIDENTIFIED NETWORK / LOCAL AREA CONNECTION / PROPERTIES
• Make sure CONNECT USING is set to “Microsoft Loopback Adapter”
• Uncheck ALL connection types EXCEPT TCP/IPv4
• Highlight TCP/IPv4 and select PROPERTIES
• Enter IP ADDRESS: 192.168.3.1 (for example)
• Enter SUBNET MASK: 255.255.255.0 (for example)

Install PUTTY.exe on the Windows machine:

• Download Putty.exe
• Copy the stand-alone executable Putty.exe to a folder in your Windows path

Set authentication level for Windows LAN Manager:

• Click START
• Enter “secpol.msc” to start the Local Security Policy console
• Navigate to SECURITY SETTINGS / LOCAL POLICIES / SECURITY OPTIONS / NETWORK SECURITY
• Set “LAN Manager Authentication Level” to “Send LM & NTLM – Use NTLMv2 if negotiated”
• Click APPLY and OK where appropriate
• Windows reboot is required

On the Windows client:

• Determine the IP address of the Linux machine that will be hosting the folder to which you want to map your network drive. In this example I will use an IP address of 192.168.0.101.
• Be sure your SSH-server daemon is running on the Linux machine as well. For example “$ sudo /etc/init.d/ssh start“

On the Ubuntu host:

• Run the following command to establish the SSH tunnel – “x:\> putty.exe -ssh -L 192.168.3.1:139:192.168.0.101:139 -l -pw “
• Now map your network drive from Windows – net use * \\192.168.3.1\ \ /user:”192.168.3.1\” “ “

* Note, this also works to establish network mapped drives over SSH between two Windows machines as long as the host Windows machine is running an SSH server.

Personalize funny videos and birthday eCards at JibJab!

• Right-click empty space on your desktop to create NEW SHORTCUT
• Enter “%SystemRoot%\explorer.exe shell:RecycleBinFolder” in the LOCATION field and click NEXT
• Name the new shortcut “Recycle Bin” and click FINISH
• Right-click the new shortcut and select PROPERTIES
• In the SHORTCUT tab, click CHANGE ICON
• You can use the opaque Recycle Bin icon shown here, or find the transparent one in “%SystemRoot%\system32\imageres.dll“
• Click APPLY and OK where appropriate
• You can now pin (drag-n-drop) a copy of this new Recycle Bin shortcut to your Task Bar
• You can safely delete the Desktop copy of the new shortcut without affecting the pinned copy

You can optionally remove the default Recycle Bin icon from your Desktop as well:

• Right-click empty space on your Desktop, and select PERSONALIZE
• Click the CHANGE DESKTOP ICONS link
• In the DESKTOP ICONS tab, uncheck any icons you don’t want to appear on your Desktop
• Click APPLY and OK where appropriate

If UAC is enabled in Vista or 7, use a command shell with elevated rights before proceeding. Once you have the appropriate command shell available:

• X:\>netstat -a | Display connections and ports
• X:\>netstat -n | Display IP addresses in numeric form
• X:\>netstat -f | Display FQDNs
• X:\>netstat -b | Display binary associated with connection
• X:\>netstat -o | Display PID associated with connection
• X:\>netstat -r | Display local route tables
• X:\>netstat -es | Display ethernet and protocol statistics
• X:\>netstat -h | Display HELP and optional hooks

If you require elevated rights to execute binaries in a Windows Vista or 7 command shell:

• Click START
• Type “cmd” but do not press [ENTER] key
• Right-click the “cmd.exe” icon in the Search Results list
• Select “RUN AS ADMINISTRATOR” and satisfy any UAC prompts you may have
• You should now have an open command shell with elevated rights
• When finished using the shell, you can execute the “exit” command to close it

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On the Ubuntu workstation or server, it is assumed you have already setup a folder, partition or filesystem that contains the files you’d like to add to the Windows Media Center collection. On the same Ubuntu machine, install the necessary libraries by running the following commands. You may want to visit the SoundForge Webmin website to determine whether or not a newer version of Webmin exists. As of the date this article was written, Webmin was revved at 1.500.
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If you haven’t previously created or installed a PGP key on the client machine, you can do so by performing the following steps:

• APPLICATIONS -> ACCESSORIES -> PASSWORDS AND ENCRYPTION KEYS
• Click FILE -> NEW -> PGP KEY -> [CONTINUE]
• Enter your name and the email address you’d like the key bound to. Comments are optional but recommended if you plan to submit this key to a public keyserver in the future.
• Under ADVANCED OPTIONS, choose the encryption type. You can choose Elgamal (recommended). Digital-signing-only key types will not allow you to encrypt files.
• Also under ADVANCED OPTIONS, you can choose larger key strength bit sizes which are more secure, but also increase CPU overhead.
• You can also choose to make the key permanent, or choose to have the key auto-expire after a certain date & time.
• Click [CREATE] and set a passphrase for your key. This passphrase is primarily used to authenticate you as the legitimate owner of the private key when decrypting a file. It is not the key itself.
• Depending on how much detectable entropy is occuring on your client machine, the keygen process may take a few minutes. Believe it or not, the more external activity your machine has to perform, the faster the key will be generated.
• Once the keygen process has completed, you should see your new key located under the MY PERSONAL KEYS tab in the PASSWORDS AND ENCRYPTION KEYS application.
• Alternately, you can publish your public keys to keyservers such as hkp://keyserver.ubuntu.com:11371 using the REMOTE -> SYNC AND PUBLISH KEYS. This is not required for using local encryption however.

You can now use NAUTILUS to encrypt / decrypt individual files or multiple files in folders or drives on the fly with the RIGHT-CLICK -> ENCRYPT or DECRYPT context menus.

Please note, this does not encrypt folders or drives themselves, merely each file located in a folder or drive individually. For complete drive encryption, please [read this article here].