[UFO Chicago] Remote Access Now Available To The Shachter Computer Labs

[Jay F Shachter]

The readers of this mailing list may recall being welcomed to the
Shachter Computer Labs, a collection of computers and computer-related
hardware in my basement, where all of you are welcome to come and
practice your system administrator skills on a wide variety of free
and proprietary operating systems.  Some of you have donated equipment
or time to the labs, and you may wish to know how it has been faring.
I recently added a second Ethernet card to my home computer, which has
allowed me to connect the lab computers together into a private
network, and to offer remote access to the public.

Currently there are 3 donated computers in the Shachter Computer Labs
(actually, there are more than 3, but the others lack monitors and
keyboards).  One boots into Microsoft Windows 2000, and the others are
set up as multi-boot machines; they boot into a GRUB menu from which
you can select Debian Linux, Fedora Linux, Solaris 9, FreeBSD, and
Plan 9 From Outer Space.  These are all Intel-based machines; there
are a couple of Sparc-based computers that are currently unused
because they lack peripherals.  Specifically:


Name                      landru            val            norman

Private IP Address        172.16.1.2        172.16.1.3     172.16.1.4

Operating Systems         Debian            Fedora         Windows 2000
                          Solaris 9         FreeBSD
                                            Plan 9

I have set up passwordless logins on my home computer, each of which
connects to a guest account (which is not passwordless; the password
is "guest") on landru or val (norman is currently inaccessible, but
only because I ran out of Ethernet cables; there is room for it on the
hub).  Thus, if you want to look something up on a Solaris 9 system,
you can login to my home computer as the user "solaris9", thus:

    ssh -l solaris9 m5.chicago.il.us

and you will be transported to the "guest" login on landru, if landru
is currently running Solaris 9; after typing in the password ("guest")
you can investigate the Solaris 9 system.  Similarly with the
usernames "debian", "fedora", "freebsd", and "plan9".  Of course, you
cannot login as "fedora", if val is currently running FreeBSD, and
vice versa; these are multiboot machines, but they only run one
operating system at a time.

You are still welcome, as before, to come to the basement of my house
and work on the computers directly.  With physical access to the
computers, you will be able to reboot them into the system of your
choice, and then set up whatever heterogeneous networking you wish to
experiment with; you will also be able to take them apart, and
experiment with installing new cards, or whatever else you wish to
experiment with.


			Jay F. ("Yaakov") Shachter
			6424 N Whipple St
			Chicago IL  60645-4111
				(1-773)7613784
				jay at m5.chicago.il.us
				http://m5.chicago.il.us

			"Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur"