Client on a floppy?

[KifArU]

At work, my computer is locked in about every possible way. Not even the floppy drive is working under windows. And about everything is being monitored. But I still want to run a client. So I figured, I need a floppy disk with an OS, restart the computer at night with the boot disk and return to windows during the day. But this computer also doesn't have an internet-connection, so I have to take the disk home and fetch and flush. This could be done with an MS-dos disk with a client. But I believe the dos-client is much slower then other clients. Is it possible to have a linux floppy that can be read by a win2000 computer? (I don't know anything about linux, does it even use FAT?)
And can anyone make this for me in a way I can adjust the ini-file and fetch and flush the buffer?

Thanks,
Thijs

 

[BurntKooshie]

This doesn't exactly answer your question, but I have successfully, on numerous occassions, copied a file from a mac, to a floppy, and from that floppy to a PC....I don't know if it'll work that way from linux to win2k....

 

[divide by zero]

I know that under Win98 you can make a Win98 boot floppy. When you boot from such a floppy it obviously gives you the command line interface but says Win98. Can this be done under W2K? Is this DOS? Does the client that would run in such a state much slower than W2K or Linux?

If it is not much slower then you might be able to put the client and buffers on the W2K boot disk and just copy them to your home computer.

 

[Sloth]

The floppy could be disabled in the bios. If it is then rebooting the machine will not let you access the floppy. With the security they have under windows I would expect that they have also set a password on the bios so turning on the controller there will not work.


S.

 

[dennilfloss]

"At work, my computer is locked in about every possible way. Not even the floppy drive is working under windows. And about everything is being monitored. But I still want to run a client."

Am I being paranoid or are you asking us for advice on how to surrepticiously install the client without permission on your machine? If the latter is the case, and it sure looks like it, I have a short answer: don't. If you do have permission, you should confirm it to this group before expecting an answer that might get the team disqualified.

 

[jinsonxu]

Yep, if they have such security on that ah heck, consider forgetting it.

This might even get you in trouble.

 

[Fardringle]

One of the conditions for participating in the SETI@Home program is that you must have permission to use the client on any business computer. Spoken permission is OK, but if you were to get this permission, then they would probably also allow you to run it directly under Win2K which would make things a lot easier, although you would still need to transfer the work unit files on a floppy since you don't have an Internet connection...


Edit: In reading your post again, I notice that by your terminology you are probably running RC5, so just replace SETI@Home with RC5 and pretend that I was right the first time..

 

[KifArU]

Don't worry. I have permission to run the client on the system I work on, but I don't have permission to install anything in windows. (That's monitored) So it has to be of a floppy. It's only locked in windows, not in the bios.

 

[mindless]

This might be considered installing it but you could boot the machine off a boot disk and copy the dnet files to the hard drive. Then you could just run it from there.

 

[JHutch]

The DOS client is close in speed, but if you'd rather go with Linux, I think Klinux (from our own Kilowatt) would do the trick. Boots linux from a floppy disk and runs in memory with a ram disk, so it can be run over night...

JHutch

 

[divide by zero]

Klinux is all about network connectivity. I don't think you can have anything but the Klinux image on the first floppy. I'm not sure if you could mount the floppy drive to provide an ini and a buff-in and buff-out.

The DOS client is very close in speed to the Win98 client, at least for an Athlon. At home make a boot disk, download the DOS client zip to your home machine, unzip it and copy the dnetc.com to your boot disk. Reboot your home machine with the boot disk, configure the client and down load some blocks. Take it to work and fire it up! When at work you may have to tell it that it is not to fetch from a keyserver, just to make sure it doesn't get hung up trying.

Bring the floppy home, boot from the floppy, re-enable keyserver access, run dnetc -update from the floppy and it should fetch and flush, all ready for the next night! You'd have to run two of these disks in rotation, one cracking at work and the other to take home and flush.

It could work!

OR

Since "installing" RC5 is nothing more than expanding the zip in a directory, no modifications are made to your registry, you could just copy the client and ini onto a floppy, run it from there on your home machine to fetch blocks. Take the floppy to work, fire up windows and run the client from the floppy. Take the floppy home, boot in windows, run the client from the floppy long enough to update your buff-in and buff-out to ready it for the next night. Again, two disks are needed.
This way you are running under windows but nothing has been copied to your secure machine.

Good Luck!

 

[KifArU]

That answered my questions. Thanks guys!

Thijs