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Linux Gazette... making Linux just a little more fun!
Copyright © 1996 Specialized Systems Consultants, Inc. linux@ssc.com
_________________________________________________________________
Welcome to Linux Gazette! (tm)
Linux Gazette, a member of the Linux Documentation Project, is an
on-line WWW publication that is dedicated to two simple ideas:
* Making Linux just a little more fun
* Sharing ideas and discoveries
The basic idea behind these two concepts is that Linux is one cool OS,
whose price for admission is a willingness to read, learn, tinker
(aka, hack!), and then share your experiences. The Gazette is a
compilation of basic tips, tricks, suggestions, ideas and short
articles about Linux designed to make using Linux fun and easy. LG
began as a personal project of John M. Fisk, and grew to include
contributions freely provided by a growing number of authors. Linux
Journal is now publishing the Gazette using material contributed by
outside authors (note to potential authors). Without these authors
there would not be a Gazette, and I thank them all. Drop a note to the
author of anything that you find helpful or instructive--the author's
e-mail address is included for this very purpose.
Linux Gazette is a non-commercial publication and will remain that
way. A tar, gzip file containing all issues of Linux Gazette and one
containing the current issue can be found at ftp://ftp.ssc.com/pub/lg/
Thanks to Matt Welsh, coordinator of the Linux Documentation Project,
for graciously bringing the Linux Gazette under the auspices of the
LDP. The material included in these documents is covered by a
designedly liberal copyright: as long as you are using the material
for non-commercial purposes, you may do with them as you please. For
information regarding copying and distribution of this material read
the Copying License.
A new table of contents will appear with each issue that will allow
you to easily find articles of interest. A search engine is also
provided to allow you to search all issues for items relating to a
particular subject.
Have fun!
_________________________________________________________________
* Table of Contents Issue #12
* Table of Contents Issue #11
* Table of Contents Issue #10
* Table of Contents Issue #9
* Table of Contents Issues #1-#8
* Index of All Issues
_________________________________________________________________
Search In: [Linux Gazette (TM).......]
Search For: ______________________________ ______
_________________________________________________________________
Linux Gazette WWW & FTP Mirror Sites
For those readers who are accessing Linux Gazette from outside the
U.S. or are having problems with slow connections at a particular
site, mirror sites are available worldwide. Thanks to all of the
people who have kindly offered the use of their WWW and FTP sites in
order to make this possible!
_________________________________________________________________
Linux Journal's latest
HOT LINUX NEWS!
_________________________________________________________________
LINUX INFORMATION
Two SSC links that you might find useful. The first is to Linux
Journal 's "Hot Linux News" page, and the second is to SSC's Linux
Resources page.
_________________________________________________________________
LINUX GAZETTE IS PUBLISHED BY:
SSC - Publishers of Linux Journal (tm)
_________________________________________________________________
Got any great ideas for improvements! Send your comments, criticisms,
suggestions and ideas.
Linux Gazette, http://www.ssc.com/lg/
This page written and maintained by the Editor of Linux Gazette,
gazette@ssc.com
LINUX GAZETTE
Copyright © 1996 Specialized Systems Consultants, Inc.
For information regarding copying and distribution of this material see
the Copying License.
_________________________________________________________________
TABLE OF CONTENTS ISSUE #12
_________________________________________________________________
* The Front Page
* The MailBag
* More 2 Cent Tips
+ Boot Information Display
+ Console Tricks
+ Firewalling / Masquerading with 2.0.xx
+ FTP and /etc/shells
+ How to Truncate /var/adm/messages
+ HTML, Use of BODY Attributes
+ lowerit Shell Script
+ Removing Users
+ Root and Passwords
+ Talk Daemon and Dynamic Addresses
+ tar Tricks
* News Bytes
+ News in General
+ Software Announcements
* The Adventure of Upgrading to Redhat 4.0, by Randy Appleton
* Features of TCSH Shell, by Jesper Kj<4B>r Pedersen
* FEddi HOWTO (English version), by Manuel Soriano
* Graphics Muse, by Michael J. Hammel
* InfoZIP Archive Utilities, by Robert G. "Doc" Savage
* New Release Reviews, by Larry Ayers
+ Slang Applications for Linux
+ Updates to My Previous Reviews
+ The Yard Rescue Disk Package
* Recent Linux Conferences
+ Unix Expo 1996, by Lydia Kinata
+ DECUS in Anaheim, by Phil Hughes
+ Open Systems World/Fed/UNIX, by Gary Moore
* Setting Up the Apache Web Server, by Andy Kahn
* Weekend Mechanic, by John M. Fisk
* The Back Page
+ About This Month's Authors
+ Not Linux
Graphics Muse
Weekend Mechanic
_________________________________________________________________
TWDT 1 (text)
TWDT 2 (HTML)
are files containing the entire issue: one in text format, one in
HTML. They are provided strictly as a way to save the contents as one
file for later printing in the format of your choice; there is no
guarantee of working links in the HTML version. Our thanks go to
Tushar Teredesai for pasting together the HTML version.
_________________________________________________________________
Got any great ideas for improvements! Send your comments, criticisms,
suggestions and ideas.
_________________________________________________________________
This page written and maintained by the Editor of Linux Gazette,
gazette@ssc.com
"Linux Gazette...making Linux just a little more fun!"
_________________________________________________________________
The Mailbag!
Write the Gazette at gazette@ssc.com
_________________________________________________________________
Date: Thu, 31 Oct 1996 20:11:37 -0500 (EST)
Subject: Re: Linux Gazette Issue 11
From: Elliot Lee, sopwith@cuc.edu
Nice job, as always! :-)
-- Elliot, webmaster@redhat.com
(Thanks! --Editor)
_________________________________________________________________
Date: Fri, 1 Nov 1996 10:49:21 -0600 (CST)
Subject: Search Engine
From: "Dan Crowson" dcrowson@cms.cmsc.com
Organization: CMS Communications, Inc.
Hello:
what kind of search engine are you using for the Linux Gazette www
server? Is this a linux-based engine?
Thanks,
Dan
(Nope. It just builds on Linux --Editor)
_________________________________________________________________
Date: Mon, 4 Nov 1996 17:24:30 -0500
Subject: Comments on Issue #11
From: "R. Frank Louden" flouden@fairfield.home.sweet.net
I am always glad to see another issue of LG. Thank you for taking the
time to compose it. One comment I'd like to make is the most recent
issue (#11) is difficult for me to read on the spiral binding
background. For me, the text lies over close enough to the left edge
of the page, and it is almost hidden in some parts of the page.
I may be one of a dying breed but I choose to use Mosaic and wish
others would consider that MS and Netscape do NOT adhere to the HTML
specs and are fragmenting the standards. I note that NCSA is working
on a new version that will provide support that is not currently found
in the version I use. I am at this moment using an unsupported version
2.7b5 (it's kinda buggy) but when it works it allows me to see the
background you have used.
While whirly-gigs and gewgaws are nice, some of us are still not able
to upgrade hardware at the whim of the industry and need to have some
consideration from those who sponsor WWW HTML documents. I have
accessed pages that are completely illegible (with my old Mosaic) and
others (with a more up-to-date browser) that take prohibitively long
times to download. There IS something to be said for standards.
Thanks again for the Gazette! It is great!!!
(There may be more than one problem here. First off, if you are
using a mirror site, the problem is my fault. Somehow, when
building the tar file for the mirror sites, a gif that was integral
to the notebook motif -- it moved the print away from the spiral --
was left out. I am in the process of notifying the mirror site
where the missing file can be downloaded.
The notebook spiral was put in using "tables" which is an HTML
standard. Here at SSC we too believe in following HTML standards.
In fact the program that we use to push things to the web checks
that the HTML conforms.
I have worried that by adding more graphics we might be causing
problems with download times. However, we also would like to keep
LG looking good, so thought we'd add away and see what kind of
comments we get. So far it's tied. One who likes the spiral and
yours against. BTW, if you are accessing LG through a mirror site,
try the main site and see if it does better for you
(http://www.ssc.com/lg).
Glad you like LG, I certainly have fun putting it together.
--Editor)
_________________________________________________________________
Date: Fri, 01 Nov 1996 13:32:44 +1100
Subject: http://www.redhat.com/linux-info/lg/issue11/wkndmech.html
From: Ken Yap ken@syd.dit.csiro.au
Hi, Like your Linux Gazette, but some GIFs on the page are not
displaying. Path problem?
Thanks,
Ken
(John Fisk forwarded your mail to me. In building the tar file for
the mirror sites some files got left out. I have furnished and
updated file. Sorry about that. --Editor)
Date: Mon, 04 Nov 1996 12:09:22 -0700
Subject: XDM Replacement link incorrect
From: "Kevin J. Butler" butler@byu.edu
Organization: Novell, Inc.
In Issue 11 there is an incorrect link.
On the page: http://www.ssc.com/lg/issue11/lg_tips11.html#xdm
The link currently is:
http://www.ssc.com/lg/issue11/alienor.fr/~pierre/index_us.html
But should be:
http://alienor.fr/~pierre/index_us.html
Thanks for a great 'zine! :-)
kb
(Got it fixed. Thanks for letting me know. --Editor)
_________________________________________________________________
Date: Mon, 4 Nov 1996 22:35:04 +0200 (EET)
Subject: Re: Linux Gazette Issue 11
From: Lialios Dionysios ancient@eexi.gr
Hello, this is Dennis from Greece.
Well this time I managed to download the whole thing so now I have a
full mirror. The only problem is that I didn't get (or I don't have)
the searchbtn.gif and the htsearch.cgi that are used for the search
engine.
Did I make something wrong or should I have something I don't?
Thank you in advance.
Dennis
(No, you did nothing wrong. I was so excited to have the search
engine, I forgot that the mirrors wouldn't have the proper data
bases. Since these data bases are very big and are for all of the
SSC site, we have changed the links for the data base so that it
always refers back to the SSC site rather than a relative address
pointing to the mirror site. The updated front page file is in the
update tar file along with the missing files. Let me know if it
works for you. --Editor)
_________________________________________________________________
Date: Tue, 5 Nov 1996 09:01:44 -0800 (PST)
Subject: Request
From: ivan.m@ieee.udistrital.edu.co (Ivan Mauricio Montenegro)
It's the first time I hear about Linux Gazette, I'd want to have all
the issues, but at the FTP addresses that appear on www.ssc.com have
the horrible message "Login Error". What could I do?
Thanks!
Ivan Mauricio Montenegro
IEEE Student Branch, Vice-Chairperson
Distrital University, "Francisco Jos de Caldas", Bogota, Colombia
(Not sure why you are having a problem. I can tell that others are
able to download from that address without problem. Are you using
your browser to point to that address or logging on with anonymous
ftp?
I would suggest using a ftp mirror site that is closer to you.
Unfortunately, Linux Gazette does not have a mirror site in South
America at this time. There is one in Mexico which is somewhat
closer to you than Seattle.
At any rate if you go to the Mirror Site page
(http://www.ssc.com/lg/mirrors.html) in Linux Gazette, and use the
links there to go to one of the ftp sites (ours or one of the
mirrors), you shouldn't be asked for a login. (I never have been
and that's why I am a little confused by the message you are
getting.) Let me know if you continue to have problems, and thanks
for writing. --Editor)
_________________________________________________________________
Date: Wed, 06 Nov 1996 21:21:59 -0500
Subject: Great new look
From: "Alan L. Waller" alwaller@shore.intercom.net
Classy !!!
Al
(Thanks! Glad you like it. --Editor)
_________________________________________________________________
Date: Sat, 09 Nov 1996 11:03:26 -0800
Subject: Thank you
From: Innocent Bystander innocent@dopey.4dcomm.com
Thank you very, very much for providing LG to people such as I, who
haven't become Unix gods yet. After reading my first issue, I am now a
dedicated reader. What can *I* do to assist LG?
Innocent Bystander, innocent@dopey.4dcomm.com
San Diego, CA
(Send us your favorite tips and tricks. We love new contributors.
Other than that tell all your friends about us and promote Linux
where ever you are. --Editor)
_________________________________________________________________
Date: Mon, 11 Nov 1996 08:08:08 -0600 (CST)
Subject: Re: Great Writing
To: "Lowe, Jimmy, D MSGT LGMPD" LOWEJ@SSG.GUNTER.AF.MIL
From: "John M. Fisk" fiskjm@ctrvax.Vanderbilt.Edu
Hello Jimmy!
Thanks so much for taking the time to write! I appreciate it. I
honestly can't take the credit for this -- the kind folks at SSC (and
the Linux Journal) offered to take over the management of the LG when
its administrative upkeep just got to be too much. Marjorie Richardson
is its capable new Editor.
I've taken the liberty of cc'ing a copy of this to her -- definitely
deserves a pat on the back.
Thanks again and Best Wishes,
John
---------------------------
On Thu, 7 Nov 1996, Lowe, Jimmy, D MSGT LGMPD wrote:
> Hello John,
>
> I just wanted to say how glad I am to see the LG is being carried on
> in such a fine manner -- during the summer I began to worry a small
but
> inspiring story was coming to an end. I think your writing is very
> entertaining and informative! I really appreciate your work and that
of
> all the others in the Linux community and others (e.g. FSF).
>
> I hope to give back to this wonderful community of dedicated
> hobbiest/computer wizards once I get a little more up-to-speed.
>
> Hope you and your family are well,
>
> Jim Lowe, Montgomery AL
(I think John was being a little modest on this one. Jim was
obviously glad to see John's new Weekend Mechanic column in Linux
Gazette. I certainly was. Thanks a lot John. --Editor)
_________________________________________________________________
Date: Sat, 09 Nov 1996 11:30:32 -0500
Subject: Bravo!
From: "J.M. Paden" jmpaden@mnsinc.com
"TWDT" is most appreciated. Thanks for the response to
your readers requests.
Regards,
(You're welcome. We do aim to please. --Editor.)
_________________________________________________________________
Date: Wed, 20 Nov 1996 13:41:36 -0800
Subject: Link to other Linux pages
From: "J. Hunter Heinlen" dracus@third-wave.com
Greetings....
I've gone through your title page for the Linux Gazette, and could not
find a link to other Linux pages. Please put a link to page with links
to other, commonly used Linux pages just below the Mirror sites link,
and ask those that you give links for to provide links to you. This
will make finding information much easier. Thank you for your time.
(I'm not sure which are the commonly used Linux pages you'd like to
have a link for on the LG front page. I have added a link to SSC's
Linux Resources page at http://www.ssc.com/linux/. Why don't you
look at that page and see if it has the links you are wanting. Let
me know what you think. Thanks for writing. --Editor)
_________________________________________________________________
Date: Tue, 19 Nov 1996 08:59:14 -0500br Subject: LG width
From: Gerr gerr@lag.cts.du.edu
Hi there. Just a suggestion about the page (which looks ... wow ...
compared to before). If you could, however, try to keep it inside of
one page wide, it would be wonderful. I find myself having to use the
arrows to see what's on the end of lines on the right hand side of the
page.. --
gerr@weaveworld
(Thank you for writing. I didn't realize it was running over. I use
a rather large window for viewing it myself. The problem seems to
be a combination of the spiral and the width of the text inside the
<PRE> tags. Not sure what can be done, but we'll look into it.
--Editor)
_________________________________________________________________
[ TABLE OF CONTENTS ] [ FRONT PAGE ] Next
This page written and maintained by the Editor of Linux Gazette,
gazette@ssc.com
Copyright &copy; 1996 Specialized Systems Consultants, Inc.
"Linux Gazette...making Linux just a little more fun! "
_________________________________________________________________
MORE 2<> TIPS!
Send Linux Tips and Tricks to gazette@ssc.com
_________________________________________________________________
CONTENTS:
* Boot Information Display
* Console Tricks
* Firewalling / Masquerading with 2.0.xx
* FTP and /etc/shells
* How to Truncate /var/adm/messages
* HTML, Use of BODY Attributes
* lowerit Shell Script
* Removing Users
* Root and Passwords
* Talk Daemon and Dynamic Addresses
* tar Tricks
_________________________________________________________________
BOOT INFORMATION DISPLAY
Date: Fri, 1 Nov 1996 09:58:52 -0800 (PST)
From: Laurie Lynne Tucker
dmesg | more -- Forget (or couldn't look fast enough) at boot time?
This command will display your boot information (a.k.a., the "kernel
ring buffer"). For more info, see the man page.
_________________________________________________________________
A 2 CENT CONSOLE TRICK
Date: Fri, 08 Nov 1996 03:42:27 -0800
From: Igor Markov imarkov@math.ucla.edu
Organization: UCLA, Department of Mathematics
Hi,
Here's my 2c console trick:
I put the following line into my ~/.xsession file:
nxterm -ls -geometry 80x5+45+705 -rv -sb -name "System mesages" -fn 5x7
-T "System messages" -e tail -f /var/log/messages &
and this one into my .fvwm:
Style "System messages" NoTitle, Sticky, WindowListSkip
When I login, I have a small 5-line (but scrollable) window near the
left bottom corner (you may need to change numbers in -geometry) where
system messages appear in tiny font as soon as they are produced. This
lets me see when my dial-up script succeeds, when someone logs into my
computer via TCP/IP, when some system error happen etc.
The .fvwm setup strips the title bar and does other useful things, but
is not necessary.
Caveat: if you leave this window for long time, a cron job which trims
/var/log/messages will change the inode # for the file and tail -f is
bound to freeze. In 99% this cron job wakes up 2-3am, so tail freeze
may freeze only overnight. Login/logout and everything will be OK. Any
other ideas?
Igor
_________________________________________________________________
FIREWALLING / MASQUERADING WITH 2.0.XX
Date: Sat, 2 Nov 1996 10:57:30 -0500 (EST)
From: Preston Brown pbrown@econ.yale.edu
Regarding the recent message about not being able to get IP
masquerading working with 2.0.xx kernels:
First, I *believe* that IP forwarding may have to be enabled for
firewall support, but I can't say for sure. Suffice to say that I have
forwarding, firewalling, and masquerading all compiled into my kernel.
I have a PPP link set up to the outside world, and my local ethernet
subnet (192.168.2.x) is masquerades so it can talk to the outside
world as well.
ipfwadm is used to set up the information (I call it from
/etc/rc.d/rc.local at boot time):
# ip forwarding policies
ipfwadm -F -p deny ; default policy is to deny
; forwarding to all hosts.
ipfwadm -F -a m -S 192.168.2.0/24 ; add an entry for masquerading of
; my local subnet
modprobe ip_masq_ftp ; load ftp support module
a 'ipfwadm -F -l' (i.e. list all forwarding policies) yields:
IP firewall forward rules, default policy: deny
type prot source destination ports
acc/m all 192.168.2.0/24 anywhere n/a
Indicating that all is fine. Your local subnet now should be set up to
talk to the outside world just fine.
---
-Preston Brown, preston.brown@yale.edu
_________________________________________________________________
FTP AND /ETC/SHELLS
Date: Fri, 1 Nov 1996 09:58:52 -0800 (PST)
From: Laurie Lynne Tucker
A user's shell must be included in the list at /etc/shells for ftp to
work!!!!! (by default, you get only /bin/sh and /bin/bash!)
--
laurie
_________________________________________________________________
HOW TO TRUNCATE /VAR/ADM/MESSAGES
Date: Fri, 1 Nov 1996 09:58:52 -0800 (PST)
From: Alex
In answer to the question:
What is the proper way to close and reopen a new /var/adm/messages
file from a running system?
Step one: rename the file. Syslog will still be writing in it after
renaming so you don't lose messages. Step two: create a new one. After
re-initializing syslogd it will be used. Step three: Make syslog use
the new file. Do not restart it, just re-initialize.
1. mv /var/adm/messages /var/adm/messages.prev
2. touch /var/adm/messages
3. kill -1 pid-of-syslogd
This should work on a decent Unix(like) system, and I know Linux is
one of them.
_________________________________________________________________
HTML, USE OF BODY ATTRIBUTES
Date: Thu, 14 Nov 1996 12:55:15 -0500
From: "Michael O'Keefe", michael.okeefe@lmc.ericsson.se
Organization: Ericsson Research Canada
G'day,
If you are going to use any of the attributes to the tag, then you
should supply all of the attributes, even if you supply just the
default values.
The default tag for Netscape, Mosaic and MSIE is
If you wish to slip the BACKGROUND attribute in there, by all means
continue to do so, but for completeness (and good HTML designing) you
should supply the other attributes as well.
The reason? You don't know what colors the user has set, and whether
just setting a BACKGROUND image, or just a few of the colors will
render the page viewable or not. By supplying all of the values, even
at their defaults, you ensure that everything contrasts accordingly
--
Michael O'Keefe |Michael.OKeefe@lmc.ericsson.se_
Lived on and Rode a Honda CBR1000F-H |okeefe@odyssee.net / |
"It can't rain all the time" |Work:+1 514 345 7900 X5030 / |
- The Crow - R.I.P. Brandon |Fax :+1 514 345 7980 /_p_|
My views are MINE ALONE, blah blah, |Home:+1 514 684 8674 \`O'|
yackety yack - don't come back |Fax :+1 514 684 8674(PCon?)_/_\|_,
_________________________________________________________________
"LOWERIT" SHELL SCRIPT
Date: Fri, 1 Nov 1996 09:58:52 -0800 (PST)
From: Phil Hughes, phil@ssc.com
Here is a handy-dandy little shell script. It takes all the plain
files (not directories) in the current directory and changes their
names to lower case. Very handy when you unzip a bunch of MS-DOS
files. If a name change would result in overwriting an existing file
the script asks you before doing the overwrite.
--------------------------- cut here -----------------------------------
#!/bin/sh
# lowerit
# convert all file names in the current directory to lower case
# only operates on plain files--does not change the name of directories
# will ask for verification before overwriting an existing file
for x in `ls`
do
if [ ! -f $x ]; then
continue
fi
lc=`echo $x | tr '[A-Z]' '[a-z]'`
if [ $lc != $x ]; then
mv -i $x $lc
fi
done
_________________________________________________________________
REMOVING USERS
Date: 11 Nov 1996 18:54:02 GMT
From: Geoff Short, grs100@york.ac.uk
To remove users do the following:
Simple setups:
* Delete password entry for user from /etc/passwd
* Remove user's files using rm -r /home/user
* Reboot (if any processes still running)
More complex setups:
* http://kipper.york.ac.uk/rmuser.html
Geoff
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ever sit and watch ants? They're always busy with grs100@york.ac.uk
something, never stop for a moment. I just geoff@kipper.york.ac.uk
can't identify with that kind of work ethic. http://kipper.york.ac.uk/~geoff
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
_________________________________________________________________
ROOT AND PASSWORDS
Date: Fri, 1 Nov 1996 09:58:52 -0800 (PST)
From: Steve Mann smann@ultrix.ramapo.edu
Subject: Re: Root and passwords
If you have forgotten your root password:
1. Use a boot disk.
2. Login as root.
3. Mount the partition with your Linux.
4. Edit the second field, which is the encrypted password, of
/etc/passwd to show nothing. It would look something like this:
root::0:0:root,,,:/:/bin/zsh
instead of something like this:
wimpy:GoqTFXl3f:0:0:Steve:/root:/bin/zsh
You should then be able to login as root with no password at all.
Steve
==================================================================
/ Steve M Insignificant message goes here \
| CCIS: 529-7500 x7922 \|||/ |
| Home: 722-1632 0 * |
| Beeper: 1-800-502-2775 or 201-909-1575 oo0 ^ 0oo |
| Email: smann@ultrix.ramapo.edu ~~~~~~~~~ |
| Ramapo College Apartments (Cypress Q): 934-9357
\ This line left blank for no reason /
=================================================================
_________________________________________________________________
TALK DAEMON AND DYNAMIC ADDRESSES
Date: 11 Nov 1996 16:33:02 GMT
From: Adam Jenkins, ajenkins@kalgoorlie.cs.umass.edu
Organization: CMPSCI Department, UMass Amherst
Having problems sending a talk request to an IP-address other than
your own?
The solution is to reset your host name to your new dynamic address.
You need to figure out what dynamic address you've been assigned. Then
you can use the "host" command to find the symbolic name for it, and
then use the "hostname" command to reset your machine's hostname. Like
this:
host 128.119.220.0a
Prints out a name. Use it in:
hostname name.domain.edu
That's it. You need to be root to run the "hostname" command with an
argument. If you're using pppd to get your connection, you can put all
of this into your /etc/ppp/ip-up script -- read the pppd man page for
more info -- so that it will get done automatically when you log in.
The reason you need to do this is because when talk sends a talk
request, it also sends along what it thinks is the return address so
that the remote talk can respond. So if your local machine has a fake
address, the remote talk will get that as the return address and
you'll never see the response.
I also saw a patched version of talk on sunsite somewhere, where he
made some hack to talk to get it to find your real address. But I like
the "hostname" solution better because I've found at least one other
program with the same problem, and the "hostname" solution fixes it
too.
_________________________________________________________________
TAR TRICKS
Date: Tue, 12 Nov 1996 15:01:58 +0000
From: Dominic Binks dominic.binks@aethos.co.uk
Organization: AEthos Communication Systems Ltd.
A couple of things that interested me about the article on tar. I'm
sure that the idea is to introduce pipes, and some of the lesser known
unix utilities (tr, cut), but
tar -tfvz file.tar.gz | tr -s ' ' | cut -d ' ' -f8 | less
can be written more concisely
tar tfz file.tar.gz | less
Also you can use wild cards so
tar tfz file.tar.gz *README*
will list all readmes in the file.
Finally two last pieces of useful Unix magic.
tar cfv - dir
will tar the directory dir and send the output to standard output. One
piece of magic liked by Unix gurus is
tar cfv - dir | (cd dir2; tar xf -)
which copies one directory hierarchy to another location.
Another piece of tar that might be really useful is that taring up a
dos file system and moving it somewhere else will preserve
*everything*. This means you can move your main DOS partition around,
something that is very difficult to do with DOS.
One final tip for all UNIX newbies: you got a file which unix will not
allow you to delete.
rm -- 'file'
will get rid of it. In general -- terminates argument processing so
that everything following is passed directly to the executable.
Have fun
Dominic Binks
_________________________________________________________________
[ TABLE OF CONTENTS ] [ FRONT PAGE ] Back Next
_________________________________________________________________
This page maintained by the Editor of Linux Gazette, gazette@ssc.com
Copyright &copy; 1996 Specialized Systems Consultants, Inc.
"Linux Gazette...making Linux just a little more fun!"
_________________________________________________________________
News Bytes
CONTENTS:
* News in General
* Software Announcements
_________________________________________________________________
NEWS IN GENERAL
_________________________________________________________________
AUTHORS WANTED FOR LINUX JOURNAL
Are you interested in Perl, the Internet or Linux? Would you love to
see your name in print?
Well, then today is your day! Linux Journal is seeking authors for our
upcoming issues. We are particularly interested in authors willing to
write about Perl, the Web and Linux. We have some general topics we
are soliciting articles for listed on our web site at
http://www.linuxjournal.com/wanted.html. Please don't let these
ideas limit you - if you have a great article idea we'd love to hear
about it.
For additional information:
Gary Moore, Editor Linux Journal, ljeditor@ssc.com
http://www.ssc.com/LJ/
Debian Linux
SSC is also looking for an author to write a chapter on the
installation of Debian Linux for the book Linux Installation and
Getting Started by Matt Welsh. If you are interested, please send
e-mail to ligs@ssc.com.
_________________________________________________________________
CEASE FIRE!
Date: Wed 13 Nov 1996
Bill Machrone, vice president of technology for Ziff-Davis Publishing
Co, recently wrote in an article about Linux that Netscape 3.0 and
Java were not yet available for Linux. He was wrong. Such things
happen. Big deal. Even magazines of the highest quality sometimes
print things that are wrong. You tell them about it, and they print a
correction in the next issue. That's the way professionals handle
things.
That's not what some Linux people did, however. Instead, they flamed
him, in private and in public. That's stupid. They urged others to
also send flames to Machrone, which is worse.
Things wouldn't be so bad, but now we have the Internet. The Internet
allows just a few idiots completely ruin the reputation of Linux.
Please, if you want to advocate Linux, be civil.
Lars Wirzenius, Moderator, comp.os.linux.announce
Bruce Perens, Project Leader, Debian GNU/Linux Distribution
Alan Cox, Linux Networking Project, Linux International Technical
Board
_________________________________________________________________
LINUX IN THE NEWS
For the latest article about Linux by Bill Machrone, see the November
11 issue of PC Week, "Up Periscope". This is a good article in which
he requests feedback from Linux users.
"The Linux Software Map" Unix Review, January, 1997, discusses the
need for Linux documentation and the Linux Software Map (LSM).
From Martin Michlmayr of Linux International we learn:
According to a survey among a partial readership of iX, a German
magazine devoted to Unix and networking, Linux is used at work by 45%
of the readers. Solaris 1 and 2 taken together come second with 36%,
followed by HP-UX with 27%. 56% of companies with less than 50
employees use Linux whereas it is used by 38% of firms with more than
1,000 employees. In addition, 60% of the readers use Linux on their
computers at home. Linux International, bod@li.org
_________________________________________________________________
LINUX APPLICATIONS AND UTILITIES LIST
Date: 30 Oct 1996
The October 22, 1996 edition of the
***** LINUX APPLICATION AND UTILITIES LIST *****
is now available at it's home site and mirrors.
The "Linux Applications and Utilities List" is an organized collection
of pointers to the WWW home pages of almost 600 different Linux
compatible application programs, system administration tools,
utilities, device drivers, games, servers, programming tools, file,
disk and desktop managers, Internet applications, and more.
The "Linux Applications and Utilities List" and mirrors can be found
at:
Home Site U.S.A. (IL):
URL:http://www.xnet.com/~blatura/linapps.shtml
Bill Latura blatura@xnet.com
Runtime Systems
_________________________________________________________________
MAN PAGES TO HTML
Marc Perkel, marc@ctyme.com, of Computer Tyme Software Lab,
http://www.ctype.com/, has written a program to convert Man pages to
HTML. Check out this web site with fully indexed man pages:
http://www.ctyme.com/linuxdoc.htm
This is a popular idea. There is an article coming out in the February
issue of Linux Journal by Michael Hamilton, another guy who did this
very same type of conversion. Michael's program is called vh-man2html
and can be seen at http://www.caldera.com/cgi-bin/man2html. And he
tells us of yet another page,
http://wsinwp01.win.tue.nl:1234/maninfo.html, where converters can
be found.
_________________________________________________________________
MISSION CRITICAL LINUX PROJECT
The "Mission Critical Linux Project" was created to document
successful existing Linux systems which have a large load and 24 hour
a day use. The survey will last until February 1, 1997.
If you could access our web site, please visit one of following:
* Japan
* United States
* Italy
* The Netherlands
* United States
* Romania
* Japan
You can also see brief summary of answers.
For additional information:
Motoharu Kubo, mkubo@st.rim.or.jp
http://www.st.rim.or.jp/~mkubo/ (English page under construction)
_________________________________________________________________
NEW LINUX RESOURCE SITES
A couple of new Linux Resources sites:
Russ Spooner, russl@rmplc.co.uk
http://www.pssltd.co.uk/kontagx/linux/index.html
Joe Hohertz, support@golden.net
http://www.golden.net/~jhohertz
_________________________________________________________________
SLOVENIAN HOWTO 1.0
Date: Thu, 07 Nov 1996
The first ever version of Slovenian HOWTO is released. The document
addresses Linux localization issues specific to Slovenian users and is
written in Slovene.
It can be accessed either on its "locus classicus":
http://sizif.mf.uni-lj.si/linux/cee/Slovenian-HOWTO.html
or the official Linux Documentation Project Site:
http://sunsite.unc.edu/mdw/HOWTO/Slovenian-HOWTO.html
or any of the numerous mirrors of the latter.
For additional information:
Primoz Peterlin, peterlin@biofiz.mf.uni-lj.si
Institut za biofiziko MF, Lipiceva 2, SLO-1105 Ljubljana, Slovenija,
http://sizif.mf.uni-lj.si/~peterlin/
_________________________________________________________________
SOFTWARE ANNOUNCEMENTS
_________________________________________________________________
AMIGA DEVELOPMENT ENVIRONMENT
Date: Mon, 18 Nov 1996
Tempe, Arizona - Cronus has announced the release of the long awaited
Geek Gadgets CD-ROM. Geek Gadgets contains the Amiga Developers
Environment (ADE) which is a project conceived and managed by Cronus
to produce and support Amiga ports of dozens of the most popular
development tools and utilities from the Free Software Foundation, BSD
and other sources. This CD contains all the tools necessary to get
started programming on the Amiga including advanced C, C++, Fortran
and ADA compilers, assembler, linker, EMACS editor, "make", source
code control systems (rcs&cvs), text and file utilities, GNU debugger,
text formatters (groff & TEX) and more. Geek Gadgets is the perfect
companion to the AT Developers CD which contains documentation and
utilities but no development tools. Released quarterly, Geek Gadgets
provides a quick and cost effective way to obtain the latest ADE for
those with slow and/or expensive Internet connections. As a bonus, all
the tools can be run directly from the CD-ROM without the need to
install any files on your hard drive.
Available from your local Amiga dealer or directly from Cronus. SRP $
24.95
For additional information:
Michelle Fish, mic@ninemoons.com
_________________________________________________________________
OBJECTIVE-C 4.3.4 FOR LINUX
Date: 30 Oct 1996
Release "4.3.4" of the Stepstone Objective C compiler is now available
from System Essentials Limited for Linux versions 1.2.13 and higher.
See: http://www.nai.net/~lerman
Both Linux and OSF/1 Objective C 4.3.4 releases include:
* compiler-chain driver script (objcc)
* executable of the Objective C compiler (objcc.exe)
* source of the original Objective C runtime library
* sources of the ICpak101 Objective C foundation classes
* man pages for both objcc and objcc.exe
* tutorial program
For additional information:
Kenneth Lerman, Kenneth.Lerman@lerman.nai.net
Systems Essentials Limited
_________________________________________________________________
C++ MATRIX MATH LIBRARY
Date: Sun, 03 Nov 1996
MathTools Ltd. is pleased to announce MAT<LIB>, a Matlab Compatible
C++ Matrix Class Library, designed for development of advanced
scientific high-level C++ code. Evaluation version of the MAT<LIB> can
be downloaded from our home page, http://www.mathtools.com.
The library includes over 300 mathematical functions covering Complex
math, Binary and unary operators, Powerful indexing capabilities,
Signal processing, File I/O, Linear algebra, String operations and
Graphics.
For additional information:
MathTools Ltd., http://www.mathtools.com
info@mathtools.com
_________________________________________________________________
FIDOGATE 4.1.1 - FIDO-INTERNET GATEWAY
Date: Wed, 13 Nov 1996 04:30:07 GMT FIDOGATE 4.1.1, an update to
version 4 of the FIDOGATE package is available.
FIDOGATE Version 4
-----------------------
* Fido-Internet Gateway
* Fido FTN-FTN Gateway
* Fido Mail Processor
* Fido File Processor
* Fido Areafix/Filefix
-----------------------
Internet:
- ---------
http://www.fido.de/fidogate/
ftp://ftp.fido.de/pub/fidogate/
ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/system/Fido/
fidogate-4.1.1.tar.gz 657 Kbyte
For additional information:
Martin Junius, mj@fido.de
_________________________________________________________________
FXVOLUME 0.1, A SIMPLE XFORMS VOLUME CONTROL.
Date: Wed, 13 Nov 1996
Fxvolume is a simple, no frills volume control designed to sit at the
side of your screen and not get in the way. You simply run it, and
then ignore it until you need to use it.
It controls the level of the master sound device under Linux, using a
slider created from the Xforms library.
http://www.ee.mu.oz.au/staff/pbd/linux/fxvolume/
Use at your own risk - it has not been widely tested, but seems to
work well enough... ;)
For additional information:
Paul Dwerryhouse, paul@mura.its.unimelb.edu.au
University of Melbourne, Australia
_________________________________________________________________
THE JAZZ MIDI SEQUENCER VERSION 2.6
Date: Tue, 05 Nov 1996
Announce: The free JAZZ midi sequencer version 2.6
JAZZ is a full size midi sequencer allowing record/play and many edit
functions as quantize, copy, transpose ..., multiple undo; two main
windows operating on whole tracks and single events; graphic pitch
editing, GS sound editing functions and much more ...
JAZZ is copyright (C) by Andreas Voss and Per Sigmond, and is
distributed under the terms of the GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE (Gnu
GPL).
Web site: http://rokke.grm.hia.no/per/jazz.html
Linux binary distribution:
ftp://rokke.grm.hia.no/pub/midi/jazz/linux-bin/
Files: jazz-bin-v26b-xview.tar.gz, jazz-help-v26b-xview.tar.gz
Source code distribution: ftp://rokke.grm.hia.no/pub/midi/jazz/
File: jazz-src-v26b.tar.gz
For additional information:
Andreas Voss. andreas@avix.rhein-neckar.de
Per Sigmond, Per.Sigmond@hia.no
Ericsson AS, ETO, etopesi@eto.ericsson.se
_________________________________________________________________
UTIL-LINUX 2.6
Date: Wed, 13 Nov 1996 util-linux-2.6.tar.gz (source only
distribution)
Util-linux is a suite of essential utilities for any Linux system.
It's primary audience is system integrators (like the people at Red
Hat) and DIY Linux hackers. The rest of you will get a digested
version of util-linux installed with no risk to your sanity.
Util-linux is attempting to be portable, but the only platform it has
been tested much on is Linux/Intel. There have however been integrated
several patches for Arm, m68k, and Alpha linux versions. The present
version is known to compile on at least Linux 1.2/libc 4.7.5 and Linux
2.0.22/Libc 5.3.12 (the Linux versions I run :-). People are
encouraged to make _nice_ patches to util-linux and submit them to
util-linux@math.uio.no.
Util-Linux 2.6 is immediately available from
ftp.math.uio.no:/pub/linux/util-linux-2.6
NOTE: Before installing util-linux. READ the README or risk nuking
your system. Thank you.
For additional information:
Nicolai Langfeldt, janl@ifi.uio.no
The popular front against MWM
_________________________________________________________________
LYX-0.10.7 - LYX IS A WYSIWYG
Date: 30 Oct 1996
LyX-0.10.7 has been uploaded to sunsite. It is also available from
ftp://ftp.via.ecp.fr/pub/lyx and from my home page:
http://www.lehigh.edu/~dlj0/LyriX.html
LyX is a WYSIWYG front-end to LaTeX. It is used much like a
word-processor, but LaTeX produces the final document. Figures,
tables, mathematical formulas, fonts, headers, etc., are all drawn
on-screen essentially as they appear on the final document. Figures
(postscript) are placed in the document using a simple menu, as are
tables. General text formatting is accomplished by high-level menu
choices that automatically set fonts, indentation, spacing, etc.,
according to general LaTeX rules, and display (essentially) these
settings on the screen.
None of the power of LaTeX is lost, since you can embed any LaTeX
command within a LyX document.
Primary-site: sunsite.unc.edu /pub/Linux/apps/editors
501577 lyx-0.10.7-ELF-bin.tar.gz (binary release)
612839 lyx-0.10.7.tar.gz (original source)
Copying-policy: GPL
For additional information:
David L. Johnson, dlj0@lehigh.edu
Lehigh University, http://www.lehigh.edu/~dlj0/dlj0.html
_________________________________________________________________
MPEGTV PLAYER
Date: Tue, 05 Nov 1996
Announcing a new release of MpegTV, the real-time software MPEG Player
for Linux (x86 ELF) and FreeBSD.
A free version of the MpegTV player can be downloaded from the MpegTV
web site at:
http://www.mpegtv.com/
Main features:
* Nice GUI with slide-bars and buttons (implemented with Xforms).
* Plays MPEG-1 SIF bitstreams (352x240 pels) at 30 frames/sec on a
P-200.
* When the CPU resources are not sufficient, player skips some
frames to achieve graceful degradation.
* Can be installed as a Web Browser helper application to play MPEG.
For additional information:
Tristan Savatier, tristan@mpeg.org
http://www.mpeg.org
_________________________________________________________________
SPELLCASTER ISDN4LINUX ISDN DRIVER BETA
Date: Wed, 13 Nov 1996
This message is to announce the public Beta release of the ISDN4Linux
driver for SpellCaster ISA ISDN adapters. This beta program is open to
anyone who prefers the bleeding edge and just can't wait for MP
support. The beta driver currently supports the SpellCaster
DataCommute/BRI and TeleCommute/BRI adapters and will also include
support for the DataCommute/PRI adapter before the end of the Beta
program.
You can download the beta driver from:
ftp://ftp.spellcast.com/pub/drivers/isdn4linux
You require kernel revision. 2.0. You will also need the isdn4k-utils
package also available the above mentioned FTP site or ftp.franken.de
For additional information:
Erik Petersen, erik@spellcast.com
_________________________________________________________________
PUBLIC AVAILABILITY OF THE SECOND BETA OF STAROFFICE 3.1 FOR LINUX
Date: 30 Oct 1996
Star Division announces the public availability of the second beta
version of its office productivity suite, StarOffice 3.1, for
Linux/x86.
StarOffice 3.1 consists of:
* StarWriter 3.1 -- word processor
* StarCalc 3.1 -- spreadsheet
* StarDraw 3.1 -- drawing and presentation tool
* StarImage 3.1 -- image manipulation
* StarChart 3.1 -- bar-, pie- and other charts
* StarMath 3.1 -- graphical formula editor
You will need an ELF system, X11R6 and Motif 2.0 libraries.
This beta version expires at January, 1st, 1997. We will make newer
beta versions available by then. The final version will be free of
charge for private use. The price for commercial use is not yet
decided.
StarOffice 3.1 can be downloaded from the directory:
ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/apps/staroffice
For additional information:
Star Division GmbH, http://www.stardivision.de/
Matthias Kalle Dalheimer, mda@stardivision.de
Marc Sewtz, mse@stardivision.de
_________________________________________________________________
WGET, A WEB MIRRORING TOOL
Date: Wed, 13 Nov 1996
Wget 1.4.0 [formerly known as Geturl] is an extensive rewrite of
Geturl. Wget should now be easier to debug, maintain and most
importantly, use.
Wget is a freely available network utility to download files from the
World Wide Web using HTTP and FTP. It works non-interactively, thus
enabling work in the background, after having logged off.
Wget works under almost all modern Unix variants and, unlike many
other similar utilities, is written entirely in C, thus requiring no
additional software (like Perl). As Wget uses the GNU Autoconf, it is
easily built on and ported to other Unix's. Installation procedure is
described in the INSTALL file.
You can get the latest version of wget at:
ftp://gnjilux.cc.fer.hr/pub/unix/util/wget/wget.tar.gz
For additional information:
Hrvoje Niksic, hniksic@srce.hr
SRCE Zagreb, Croatia
_________________________________________________________________
WOVEN GOODS FOR LINUX VERSION 1.0
Date: Tue, 05 Nov 1996
Woven Goods for LINUX Version 1.0
Version 1.0 of Woven Goods for LINUX is a collection of World-Wide Web
(WWW) Applications and Hypertext-based Information about LINUX. It is
ready configured for the Slackware Distribution and currently tested
with Version 3.1 (ELF). The Power Linux LST Distribution contains this
collection as an integral part with some changes.
The five Parts of Woven Goods for LINUX are:
* Part 1 -- World-wide Web Browser from Netscape for X11 and Lynx
for ASCII terminals.
* Part 2 -- LINUX Documents
* Part 3 -- Apache World-wide Web Server and documentation, Glimpse
Search Engine and more.
* Part 4 -- Hypertext Markup Language Editor asWedit
* Part 5 -- External Viewers
Woven Goods for LINUX is available via anonymous FTP from:
ftp://ftp.fokus.gmd.de/pub/Linux/woven
The HTML Pages of Woven Goods for LINUX are snap shots of the LINUX
Pages at FOKUS - Research Institute of Open Communication Systems and
are available from: http://www.fokus.gmd.de/linux For additional
information:
Lutz Henckel, lutz.henckel@fokus.gmd.de
GMD FOKUS, http://www.fokus.gmd.de/usr/hel/
_________________________________________________________________
XLDLAS V0.30 NOW AVAILABLE
Date: 30 Oct 1996
Announcing xldlas v0.40 in sunsite's incoming directory:
ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/incoming/xldlas-0.40-srcbin.tgz
Soon to be moved to:
ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/apps/math/xldlas-0.40-srcbin.tgz
xldlas is for doing statistics.
* Based on the xforms library (i.e. looks pretty slick)
* Point and click interface to statistical summaries, OLS
regression, plotting, correlation analysis, etc.
* Experimental curve fitting routine that uses genetic algorithms
with some nice visual feedback.
* Very handy automatic generating of .tex format log files,
including tables and plots.
* Online help
For additional information:
Thor Sigvaldason, thor@netcom.ca
http://www.a42.com/~thor/xldlas/
http://sunsite.math.klte.hu/mirrors/xldlas/
_________________________________________________________________
[ TABLE OF CONTENTS ] [ FRONT PAGE ] Back Next
_________________________________________________________________
This page written and maintained by the Editor of Linux Gazette,
gazette@ssc.com
Copyright &copy; 1996 Specialized Systems Consultants, Inc.
"Linux Gazette...making Linux just a little more fun! "
_________________________________________________________________
THE ADVENTURE OF UPGRADING TO REDHAT 4.0
(WITH ADVICE FOR OTHERS)
By Randy Appleton, randy@EUCLID.ACS.nmu.edu
_________________________________________________________________
Here at Northern Michigan University, we run a Linux lab with 14
workstations. Upgrading from Redhat 3.0 to Redhat 4.0 has been quite
an adventure. This article describes the upgrading of one workstation.
TIME
The first thing to do when upgrading is to free up a significant block
of time. We used a day and a night to upgrade one machine. That
included downloading the software, making floppy disks, and fixing our
errors along the way. In fact, if you're a busy person, and Redhat 3.0
is working fine for you, then you might choose to delay the upgrade,
or even avoid it. However, at the Linux Lab at Northern Michigan, we
try and stay near the cutting edge, so the upgrade was a must for us.
METHOD
The next step is to decide your upgrade method. The choices are the
same ones from Redhat 3.0:
* Upgrade from an NFS mounted directory of files.
* Upgrade from a CD-ROM disk.
* Upgrade from a spare partition containing the needed files.
* Upgrade directly from an FTP site.
The quickest and easiest way is to use the CD-ROM drive. This is the
only way if you don't have a direct Internet connection, since you
cannot download the necessary amount of data through a modem in any
reasonable amount of time Since our workstations don't have CD-ROM
drives, and do have an excellent Internet connection, we chose to do
an FTP install.
DOWNLOAD BOOT DISKS
Before an FTP install can begin, two disks named boot.img and supp.img
must be downloaded from
ftp://ftp.redhat.com/pub/redhat/current/i386/images/ . They can be
written to the floppy disks with the commands
dd if=boot.img of=/dev/fd0 (switch disks)
dd if=supp.img of=/dev/fd0
The second disk is only needed for an FTP install. Redhat 3.0 required
three disks for all install types, so this change makes a significant
savings in user effort. However, we had used the Redhat 3.0 disks as
emergency boot disks to correct problems like forgetting the root
password (yes, this does happen). The Redhat 4.0 boot disks are
missing several important utilities (i.e. tar and vi) so cannot be
used for this purpose.
Also, notice that these two disks work for any supported hardware
configuration. The older Redhat 3.0 required that the user search
through a list of boot disks for the correct choice based on his
hardware. This search often took more time than the download itself.
Redhat 4.0 is much improved in this regard (our favorite new feature).
BOOTUP AND HARDWARE CONFIGURATION
The first thing you'll see after inserting the boot.img disk and
rebooting the computer is a LILO prompt. Just the words:
boot:
We would have liked more explanation of our choices here. Redhat 3.0
offered a very nice menu of help text that explained the possible
parameters and their effects. However, if you just wait in a perplexed
fashion long enough, the system will become impatient and boot Linux
for you.
The first difference you'll notice is that Redhat 4.0 prompts you to
describe your hardware. It asks about SCSI controllers and network
adapters, showing you a list of possible choices. Behind the scenes
the Redhat 4.0 install script loads kernel modules to access your
hardware.
While this is happening is a good time to switch to virtual console #3
(press <ALT>F3). This console shows what's happening in more technical
detail, describing things like the mounting and unmounting of file
systems, and the downloading of files. The older Redhat 3.0 did not
have this feature, which we often use to debug problems. You can
switch back to the main action by pressing <ALT>F1.
The install scripts also query the user for network information. You
should know your IP number, netmask, gateway, hostname, domain name,
and name server before starting the install. We notice that Redhat 4.0
creates a default gateway and name server entry based upon your IP
number and netmask, but that these defaults are rarely right. Better
in our opinion would be to have no default at all than a misleading
one.
CHOOSING YOUR SOFTWARE
Redhat 4.0 will show you a menu of possible software upgrades and
additions. This list is essentially the same as Redhat 3.0, except
that most packages have increased in version number.
The biggest problem we had involved the remote login software (rlogin,
in.rlogind, in.rshd and in.telnetd). These have been upgraded to use
the P.A.M. library and kerberos. However, we often login into our
Linux workstations from older Sun Sparcs that do not run this software
suite. For some unexplained reason, the SunOS clients could not access
the Linux servers. We solved the problem by simply re-installing the
older software.
In general, we suggest letting Redhat upgrade everything you might
ever use. You should avoid downloading any software you are sure you
will not need. Avoiding unneeded software will decreases the total
time needed and the probability of network errors during the download.
THE LONG LONG DOWNLOAD
Step one of the download process is to pick an FTP site. There are
many listed here. We started by choosing a site with a fast 'ping
time' from us, since ping time is a reasonable approximation of
FTP throughput and is quite quick to gather. To find out the ping tome
to a site like www.redhat.com, just type:
ping www.redhat.com
After ping runs for several packets, kill it with <CNTL>C. The average
ping time will be shown at the bottom. We saw ping times from 80 - 300
milliseconds. Downloads are four times faster from the best site
compared to the worst. It is well worth your time to explore sing ping
before picking a site at random. The fastest was the aptly named
ftp://ftp.real-time.com/pub/redhat . Unfortunately, they were not
accepting FTP connections, so we used
ftp://uicarhive.cso.uiuc.edu/pub/systems/linux/distributions/redhat
. We could FTP to that site, but the download failed. It seems that
the download scripts also want to know the version and architecture of
the packages you are trying to download. Therefore, the correct URL is
ftp://uicarhive.cso.uiuc.edu/pub/systems/linux/distributions/redhat/cu
rrent/i386. That was not obvious from the directions. We suggest that
the Redhat folks either change their script to add these
subdirectories or make their directions more clear.
For us, upgrading required downloading over 300 megabytes. I must say
the status screen during the download is quite nice. The biggest
problem with it is that it does not show the progress of downloading
each package. Since the download was so long, we left it running
overnight. Unfortunately, it failed on the download of LILO. The
download script then waited for us to press a key acknowledging the
error, which meant it stopped downloading some time during the night.
Better would be to continue downloading while informing the user of
this error.
Once the download is finished, and you answer a few simple questions,
you get to reboot your computer into Redhat 4.0 (yea!!).
THE UPGRADED SYSTEM
The first thing we noticed is that the kernel has been upgraded to
Linux 2.0.19. Some problems we had before, like our tape drive not
working, were fixed with this upgrade. Also, our Adaptec 2740 SCSI
controller was accessible for the first time. Java support is included
in the upgraded kernel.
We discovered the auto-mounter daemon (amd) was running, and had
created a directory named /proc. Inside /proc is every computer
mountable by your workstation. For example, /proc/foo is the root
directory of the host foo, assuming foo will allow outside access.
Nice feature!!
The ps command has been changed. Formerly, we used 'ps -augx' to see
all processes on our system. That command will no longer work. The new
equivalent is 'ps -ax'.
The passwd command has been changed. In fact, my former password is
now considered ill advised, and I've had to pick a new password.
The window manager fvwm95 has been included in the upgraded Redhat.
Surprisingly, workman, the musical CD player, was not. See
http://www.redhat.com/linux-info/pkglist/rh40_i386/all-packages.html
for the complete list.
Happily, the Redhat 4.0 upgrade left much of our custom configuration
intact. For example, we run a custom X server that Redhat left in
place, and our NFS mounts as described in /etc/fstab were retained,
even though the upgrade did change /etc/fstab to add other entries
(like the /net file system). We did have to re-edit /etc/rc.d/rc.local
to set our NIS domain.
THE ERRATA AND OTHER UPGRADES
The errata can be found at
http://www.redhat.com/support/docs/rhl/rh40-errata-general.html . It
is actually quite long. Basically, the errata is a list of package
upgrades to Redhat 4.0, along with a description of applicability. We
counted up to 40 packages to download and install, depending on your
configuration. That just too many!! Why does not Redhat make these
improved packages a part of the latest redhat release, possibly called
Redhat 4.0.1?
Luckily, the process is quite mechanical, and requires little thought.
Just download the needed files, and run rpm -U on them.
Netscape has upgraded since we did our original install.
Unfortunately, Redhat does not include Netscape, so Netscape must be
updated separately. Perhaps there are legal reasons Redhat does not
include Netscape, but Redhat does include other non-free software,
such as xv.
During the upgrade, the install scripts creates backup copies of
certain files in /etc/rc.d/rc*.d with the extension ".rpmsave". Once
everything is set up correctly, you can delete any files in
/etc/rc.d/rc*.d/*.rpmsave.
THE FINISHED PRODUCT
Overall, the Redhat package is well done. The installation is easier
for Redhat than any other Unix we know of. Redhat 4.0 is a collection
of small upgrades of many packages from Redhat 3.0. There are only a
few new packages (i.e.: fvwm95, TheNextLevel). Overall, our system is
much as it was before, but with many small improvements. Unless you
have some need to upgrade, or just feel like messing around with your
system, we suggest the results may not be worth the effort. Even so,
we like Redhat 4.0 very much.
_________________________________________________________________
HOT LINKS
* The Redhat home page
* The author
_________________________________________________________________
If you have comments or suggestions, email me at randy@euclid.nmu.edu
_________________________________________________________________
Copyright &copy; 1996, Randy Appleton
Published in Issue 12 of the Linux Gazette
_________________________________________________________________
[ TABLE OF CONTENTS ] [ FRONT PAGE ] Back Next
_________________________________________________________________
"Linux Gazette...making Linux just a little more fun! "
_________________________________________________________________
Features of the TCSH Shell
By Jesper Kj<4B>r Pedersen, blackie@imada.ou.dk
_________________________________________________________________
Abstract
In this article, I will describe some of the main features of TCSH,
which I believe makes it worth using as the primary login shell.
This article is not meant to persuade bash users to change! I've
never used bash, and by that reason I know very little about it.
As some of you surely know, I've created a configuration tool called
The Dotfile Generator, which can configure TCSH. I believe that this
tool is very handy when one wants to get the most out of TCSH
(without reading the manual page a couple of times.) Because of that
I'll refer to this tool several times throughout this article to
show how it can be used to set up TCSH.
_________________________________________________________________
Why is the shell so important?
The shell is your interface to executing program, managing files and
directories etc. Though very few people are aware of it, one uses the
shell very much in the daily work. E.g. completing file names, using
history substitution and aliases. The TCSH shell offers all of these
features and a few more, which the average user very seldom takes
advantages of.
With a high knowledge of your shell's power, you may decrease the time
you need to spend in the shell, and increase the time spent on the
original tasks
_________________________________________________________________
Command line completions
An important feature that is used by almost all users of a shell is
the command line completion. With this feature you don't need to type
all the letters of a filename, but only the ambiguous ones. This means
that if you wish to edit a file called file.txt, you may only need to
type fi and hit the TAB key, then the shell will type the rest of the
filename for you.
Basically one can complete on files and directories. This means that
you can not complete on host names, process id's, options for a given
program etc. Another thing you can not do with this type of completion
is to complete on directory names only, when typing the argument for
the command cd
In TCSH, the completion mechanism is enhanced so that it is possible
to tell TCSH which list to complete from for each command. This means
that you can tell TCSH to complete from a list of host names when
completing on the commands rlogin and ping. An alternative is to tell
it to complete only on directories when the command is cd.
To configure user defined completion with The Dotfile Generator (from
now on called TDG) go to the page completion -> userdefined, this will
bring up a page which looks like this:
[IMAGE]
As the command name, you tell TDG which command you wish to define a
completion for. In this example it is rm. Next you have to tell TDG
which arguments to the command, this completion should apply to. To do
this, press the button labeled Position definition. This will bring up
a page, which is split in two parts:
[IMAGE] In the first part, you tell TDG, that the position definition,
should be defined from the index of the argument, which is trying to
be completed (the one, where the tab key is pressed.) Here you can
tell it that you wish to complete on the first argument, all the
arguments except the first one etc.
[IMAGE] The alternative to position dependent completion is pattern
dependent completion. This means that you can tell TDG, that this
completion should only apply if the current word, the previous word or
the word before the previous word conform with a given pattern. Now
you have to tell the TDG which list to complete from. To do this press
the button labeled List. This will bring up a page, where you can
select from a lot of different lists. E.g. aliases, user names, or
directories.
FILES AND DIRECTORIES
Four of the lists you can select from are Commands, Directories, File
names and Text files. If you give the optional directory to any of
these, only elements from this directory is used.
PREDEFINED LISTS
There are two ways to let completion be from a predefined list. One is
to mark the option predefined list, and type all the options in this
list.
This solution is a bad idea if the list is used several places (e.g. a
list of host names) in that case, one should select the list to be
located in a variable, and then set this variable in the .tcshrc file.
OUTPUT FROM COMMAND
In many cases the list should be calculated when the completion takes
place. This could e.g. be a list of users located at a given host, or
targets in a makefile.
To set up such a completion, first develop the command, which return
the list to complete from. The command must return the completion list
on standard output as a space separated list. When this is done,
insert this command in the entry saying Output From Command.
Here's a little Perl command, which find the targets in a makefile:
perl -ne 'if (/^([^.#][^:]+):/) {print "$1 "}' Makefile
If this is inserted in the Entry, one can complete on targets from the
file called Makefile, in the current working directory.
If someone should think that its only to promote TDG, that I describe
TCSH through it, (s)he should take a look at the following line, which
is the generated code for the make completion:
complete make 'p@*@`perl -ne '"'"'if (/^([^.#][^:]+):/) {print "$1"}'"'"'Makef
ile`@'
RESTRICT TO PATTERN
With user defined completion, you can restrict the files, which are
matched, for each command. Here are some very useful examples:
Restrict latex to *.{tex,dtx,ins}
The latex command will only complete on files ending in .tex,
.dtx or .ins
Restrict rm to ^*.{tex,html,c,h}
This means that you can not complete rm to a .tex, .html, .c or
.h file!
I've done that a few times, when I e.g. wanted to delete a file
called important.c~. Since the file important.c existed tcsh
only completed to that name, and.. I deleted the wrong file,
because I was to quick :-(
ADDITIONAL EXAMPLES
Additional examples can be obtained from TDG, if you load the export
file distributed with TDG. Please note that if you wish to keep the
other pages, you have to tell TDG only to import the page
completion/userdefined. This is done on the Details page, which is
accessible from the reload page.
_________________________________________________________________
Configuring the prompt
Configuring the prompt is very easy with TDG. Just enter the menu
called prompt. On this page you can configure three prompts:
prompt
This is the usual prompt, which you see on the command line,
where you are about to enter a command.
prompt2
This prompt is used in foreach, and while loops, and at lines
continuing lines ended with a slash.
prompt3
This prompt is used when TCSH tries to help you, when it meet
commands it doesn't know (called spell checking.)
The prompts are mixed with tokens and ordinary text. The tokens are
inserted by clicking on them in the menu below the scrollbar, and the
ordinary text is simply typed in. When a token is inserted an
indication will be shown in the entry. Here's an example of how this
may look:
[IMAGE]
[IMAGE] As has been discussed in issue6 of the Gazette, some of the
prompt may be located in the xterm title bar instead of on the command
line. To do this, choose font change and select Xterm.
_________________________________________________________________
History
The history mechanism of the shell is a valuable thing, which makes it
easier to type similar commands after each other.
To see a list of the previously executed commands, type history.
The following table lists the event specifiers:
!nThis refers to the history event, with index n !-nThis refers to the
history event, which was executed, n times ago: !-1 for the previous
command, !-2 for the one before the previous command etc. !!This
refers to the previous command !#This refers to the current command
!sThis refers to the most recent command, whose first word begins with
the string s !?s?This refers to the most recent command, which contain
the sting s
With these commands, you can re-execute a command. E.g. just type !!,
to re-execute the previous command. This is however often not what you
want to do. What you really wants is to re-execute some part of a
previous command, with some new elements added. To do this, you can
use one of the following word designators, which is appended to the
event specifier, with a colon.
0The first word (i.e. the command name) nThe nth word $The last
argument %The word matched by an ?s? search x-yArgument range from x
to y *All the arguments to the command (equal to ^-$)
Now it's possible to get the last argument from the previous command,
by typing !!:$. You'll however often see that you very often refer to
the previous command, so if no event specifier is given, the previous
command is used. This means that instead of writing !!:$, you may only
write !$.
More words designators exists, and it's even possible to edit the
words with different commands. For more information about this and for
more examples, please take a look into the tcsh manual
[IMAGE] It is possible to expand the history references on the command
line before you evaluate them by pressing ESC-SPC or ESC-! (This is:
first the escape key, and next the space key or the ! key). On some
keyboards you may use the meta key instead of the escape key. I.e.
M-SPC (One keystroke!)
_________________________________________________________________
Patterns
Many operations in the shell often works on many files, e.g. all files
ending with .tex or starting with test-. Tcsh has the opportunity to
type all these files for you, with file patterns. The following list
shows which possibilities there exists:
*Match any number of characters ?Match a single character [...]Match
any single character in the list [x-y]Match any character within the
range of characters from x to y [^...]Match elements, which does not
match the list {...}This expands to all the words listed. There's no
need that they match. ^...^ in the beginning of a pattern negates the
pattern.
EXAMPLES
match all files ending with .tex
*.tex
match all files which does not end with .tex
^*.tex
match xxxabyy xxxcdeyy and xxxhifjyy
xxx{ab,cde,hifj}yy
match all .c and .h files
*.[ch] or *.{c,h}
THE SHELL EXPAND PATTERNS
An important thing to be aware of is that it is the shell, which
expand the patterns, and not the programs, which is executed with the
pattern.
An example of this is the program mcopy which copy files from disk. To
copy all files, you may wish to use a star as in: mcopy a:* /tmp. This
does however not work since the shell will try to expand the star, and
since it can not find any files, which starts with a:, it will signal
an error. So if you wish to send a star to the program, you have to
escape the star: mcopy a:\* .
[IMAGE] There exists two very useful key bindings, which can be used
with patterns: The first is C-xg, which list all the files matching
the pattern, without executing the command. The other is C-x*, which
expand the star on the command line. This is especially useful if you
e.g. wishes to delete all files ending in .c except important.c,
stable.c and another.c. To create a pattern for this, might be very
hard, so just use the pattern *.c. Then type C-x*, which will expand
*.c to all you .c files. Now it's easy to remove the three files from
the list
_________________________________________________________________
Aliases
When using the shell one will soon recognize that certain commands are
typed again and again. The one at top ten is surly ls -la, which list
all files in a directory in long form.
TCSH has a mechanism to create aliases for commands. This means that
you can create an alias for ls -la just called la.
Aliases may refer to the arguments of the command line. This means
that you can create a command called pack, which take a directory name
and pack the directory with tar and gz. etc. Aliases can often be a
bit hard to create since one often wants history/variable references
expanded at time of use, and not at the definition time. This has been
done easier with TDG, so go to the page aliases, to define aliases. If
you end up with an alias you can not define on this page, but in tcsh,
please send me an email. For more information about aliases, see the
tcsh manual
_________________________________________________________________
Timing programs
Have you ever needed to know how long a program took to run, how much
CPU it used etc?. If so, you may recognize the output from the tcsh
built-in time command:
0.020u 0.040s 0:00.11 54.5% 0+0k 0+0io 21pf+0w
Informative? Yes but... The gnu time command is a bit more
understandable:
0.01user 0.08system 0:00.32elapsed 28%CPU (0avgtext+0avgdata 0maxresident)k
0inputs+0outputs (0major+0minor)pagefaults 0swaps
But still...
In TDG you can configure the output from the time command on the page
called jobs. It looks like this:
[IMAGE]
As for the prompt, here's an entry once again for mixed tokens and and
ordinary text. Remember, if there is something in TDG that you do not
understand, help is available by pressing the right mouse button over
the given widget.
_________________________________________________________________
References
As you may have guessed, TDG and this article will help you a lot of
the way to use TCSH, BUT you may need to read a bit more to get more
out of TCSH, here's a few references:
* The Tcsh manual page
* The O'Reilly book on tcsh
* The Tcsh mailing list (send mail to listserv@mx.gw.com with body
text SUBscribe TCSH your name)
_________________________________________________________________
Jesper Kj<4B>r Pedersen <blackie@imada.ou.dk>
_________________________________________________________________
Copyright &copy; 1996, Jesper Kj<4B>r Pedersen
Published in Issue 12 of the Linux Gazette
_________________________________________________________________
[ TABLE OF CONTENTS ] [ FRONT PAGE ] Back Next
_________________________________________________________________
"Linux Gazette...making Linux just a little more fun! "
_________________________________________________________________
Previous Next Table of Contents
_________________________________________________________________
FEDDI-COMO
Manuel Soriano manu@ctv.es
June 29, 1996 v0.5
_________________________________________________________________
The present document derives from the famous feddi.como which comes
with the FEddi+bt packages; this paper is based upon version 0.5.
_________________________________________________________________
1. Credits
2. Introduction
3. Installing FEddi
* 3.1 User installation fido.
* 3.2 Necessary packages
* 3.3 mailer installation/configuration.
* 3.4 Check and usage.
4. Installation of Binkley.
* 4.1 Configuration/Installation of the caller
* 4.2 Problems
* 4.3 ``Templates''.
5. Messages, collaborations, tricks
* 5.1 futility
* 5.2 File request (FREQ).
* 5.3 Frequent addresses.
* 5.4 Scripts and tools.
* 5.5 Automation: The personal area.
* 5.6 A few `tricks' for those that don't agree with RTFM.
* 5.7 Grouping by tens Binkley's appearance:
6. Good bye and conclusion.
_________________________________________________________________
Previous Next Table of Contents
_________________________________________________________________
Copyright &copy; 1996, Manuel Soriano
Published in Issue 12 of the Linux Gazette
_________________________________________________________________
[ TABLE OF CONTENTS ] [ FRONT PAGE ] Back Next
_________________________________________________________________
Previous Next Table of Contents
_________________________________________________________________
1. Credits
The original author of the packages FEddi is Oliver Graf,
2:2454/130.69, the original port to bt a *nix is copyright (c) 1992,
1993 by Ben Stuyts, the adaptation to LINUX is copyright (c) 1993
Louis Lagendijk, and the person who made both versions usable is
Manuel Soriano, manu@ctv.es.
_________________________________________________________________
Previous Next Table of Contents Previous Next Table of Contents
_________________________________________________________________
2. Introduction
Welcome as a future fellow of feddi and bt :-)
Congratulations for your decision to install this package. It's not
too complicated, the only troubles you may run in are some
permissions. The sources included in this package have already been
patched to grant a smoother working.
As well fmbedit as bt show some minor problems, so don't flame as much
and think that you didn't pay anything for it. You may contribute
correcting bugs. Don't hold them for yourself, share them. Send me
patches and will make this software improve. A hint: don't run it
under X, the terminal data base doesn't work smoothly, I'm up to fix
this. Surely, some day I'll be able to path this :-) (I used to say
this would be the next :-DDDDDDDDDDD)
I'm in due with:
* Alfonso Belloso : 2:344/17.2 (if I remember well)
* Jose Luis Sanchez : 2:346/207.17 (for sure)
* Pablo Gomez : 2:341/43.12 (fixes for this file and the scripts for
the automation of the personal area)
* Javier Ruberte : 2:346/401.50
* Jose Carlos Gutierrez : 2:341/45.17 (scripts to compile the
nodelist)
* Carlos Terron : 2:345/402.23 (patch so ftoss recognizes
upper/lower
* Francisco Jose Montilla : 2:345/402.22 pacopepe@nova.es(sgml
format)
* CICCIO C. Simon : ciccio@arrakis.es (english version)
At the end of this file you'll find messages with hints, all sent by
feddi
_________________________________________________________________
Previous Next Table of Contents Previous Next Table of Contents
_________________________________________________________________
3. Installing FEddi
3.1 User installation fido.
We'll install fido as a mail user, but you can give it another name.
If you see ~/ in this document, we refer to the user's home directory.
* file /etc/passwd Include the following line:
fido::2004:300::/home/fido:/bin/bash
* file /etc/group Include the following line:
fido::300:uucp,fido,root
3.2 Necessary packages
You'll need:
* perl, do
ls /usr/bin/perl
If not found, install it from disk-set D (Slackware)
* ncurses, do
ls /usr/lib/libncurses.a
If not found, install it from disk-set D (Slackware)
3.3 mailer installation/configuration.
Change to the directory /FEddi-0.9pl5
1. Edit the file Makefile, put for variable SRCDIR your fonts' path,
e.g.:
SRCDIR=/root/trabajo/mailer/FEddi-dev
2. Add to the beginning of the line NODEPRG =: nlfunct.o else it
won't compile.
3. make
4. If you get the following error:
ncurses.h: No such file or directory
Do:
ln -s /usr/include/ncurses/curses.h /usr/include/ncurses/ncurses.h
5.
su root
make install
exit
6. It seems that the install utility doesn't copy all of the
utilities; do the following:
cp utils/* ~/fnet/utility
7. A few files need modification:
+ File printmsg
#!/bin/sh
cat | $HOME/fnet/utility/formatmsg | lpr
+ File exportmsg
#!/bin/sh
if test $1 = "new"
then
cat | $HOME/fnet/utility/formatmsg > "$2"
else
cat | $HOME/fnet/utility/formatmsg >> "$2"
fi
8. The fnet directory has the following contents:
./outbound
./msgbase
./copy
./log
./inbound
./utility
./nodelist
Create these directories and do the following:
chown -R fido.fido fnet
9. Configuration file ~/.feddirc:
+ Permissions 644
+ User/group fido.uucp
;
; This .feddirc was automatically created with config.user
;
; Profile Section
;
PROFILE Manuel Soriano
2:346/207.punto net_name the_passwd outbound 2:*
25:946/100.punto other_net_name the_passwd outbound 25:*
93:346/101.punto other_net_name the_passwd outbound 93:*
END
; The first line is your main address, the following are subnets, the routing
; fro 25: to 93: is done by means of 2:
;
;
;
; Paths
;
MsgBasePath ~/fnet/msgbase/
InboundPath ~/fnet/inbound/
OutboundPath ~/fnet/
UtilityPath ~/fnet/utility
Log ~/fnet/log/feddi.log 200
CopyPath ~/fnet/copy/
NodelistPath ~/fnet/nodelist/
;
; Misc
;
Packer /usr/bin/zip -q -m -k -j %s %s
; Editor /usr/bin/vi %s
Beep Yes
AutoDelEmpty Yes
KeepPKT No
KeepNL Yes
KeepBackups No
ShowAllAddr Yes
MaxMsgLength 64k
QuoteLength 70
ReplySubject No
AskForOrigName Yes
AutoNextFolder Yes
;
; End of .feddirc
;
You may base your configuration on this file, as it works for me
without troubles.
10. File ~/fnet/nodelist/fnlcrc
dial 34-6- 3
dial 34-6
dial *
pointlist ptlstr34
pointlist eu_point
nodelist region34
nodelist eu_nodes
dial : According to your zone 34-6 (Valencia), 34-1 (Madrid), 34-3
(Barcelona), etc... As pointlist, the different lists of points,
you may use the point lists that come from the bbs, without
modification. As nodelist, the different lists of nodes, you may
use the node lists that come from the bbs, without modification.
That's it.
11. Compiling the nodelist/pointlist I'm using the following scripts.
They are simple and work.
+ file ~/fnet/nodelist/compila0 permissions 777
#!/bin/bash
unzip lista.zip
mv EU_NODOS* eu_nodos
mv EU_PUNTO* eu_punto
mv PTLSTR34* ptlstr34
mv REGION34* region34
mv SNETLIST* snetlist
mv SUBPTLST* subptlst
+ file ~/fnet/nodelist/compila1 permissions 777
#!/bin/bash
rm fnlc.*
fnlc
This will compile the lists. If you run into troubles, certainly it's
about permissions. Check four files, normally the binaries go to
/usr/bin
3.4 Check and usage.
Check your mail. Look for a mail package you might have for MS/DOS.
Put it into the directory ~/fnet/inbound and do
ftoss ; futility pack ; futility link
This will always be the way to handle your incoming mail. ftoss will
create automatically the folder according to your areas.
fmbedit
If everything went well you'll see the mail of that package on your
screen :-)
The editor is quite simple and well documented. It looks somewhat like
the fmail's editor.
Create a message in an area or two and do the following:
fscan
This will always be the way to handle your outgoing mail.
_________________________________________________________________
Previous Next Table of Contents Previous Next Table of Contents
_________________________________________________________________
4. Installation of Binkley.
4.1 Configuration/Installation of the caller
1. The first thing to do is: change directory to /bt do
make
su root
make install
you should get in /usr/bin:
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root fido 238983 Sep 15 18:04 /usr/bin/bt
and in /usr/lib/binkley:
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 742 Sep 16 10:04 binkley.cfg
-rw-r--r-- 1 uucp root 108 Sep 16 10:10 binkley.day
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 12332 Sep 15 16:20 binkley.lng
-rw-r--r-- 1 uucp root 124 Mar 20 2029 binkley.scd
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 14423 Sep 15 16:20 btctl
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 13813 Sep 15 16:20 btlng
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 15649 Sep 15 16:20 english.txt
-rwsr-xr-x 1 uucp fido 1603 Sep 15 16:20 fido-toconv
2. File /usr/lib/binkley/binkley.cfg
FEddiNodelist
(1)Port 2
(2)baud 38400
LockBaud 38400
(3)Init ATZ0|~AT&K6|~
(4)Prefix ATDP
PreDial ~
PreInit |v``^``
LogLevel 5
LineUpdate
Gong
AutoBaud
PollTries 10
PollDelay 600
Unattended
BoxType 0
NiceOutBound
ReadHoldTime 1
(5)System seudonimo_fido
(6)Sysop tu_nombre
StatusLog /home/fido/fnet/log/binkley.log 200
Downloads /home/fido/fnet/inbound/
CaptureFile /home/fido/fnet/log/session.log
NetFile /home/fido/fnet/inbound/
Hold /home/fido/fnet/outbound/
Nodelist /home/fido/fnet/nodelist/
(7)Address 2:346/207.XX@FidoNet.org 5207 tel_del_boss
(8)Key !the_passwd 2:346/207
(9)Domain FidoNet.org outbound
Address 25:946/100.XX@EuroNet.org
Key !the_passwd 25:946/100
Domain EuroNet.org outbound
Address 93:346/101.XX@SubNet.org
Key !the_passwd 93:346/101
Domain SubNet.org outbound
You may start with this file. Just change what you need and take away
the numbers in parenthesis.
+ (1), serial port you're going to use 1 COM1, 2 COM2, etc...
(*)
+ (2), port speed, 19200 if it's a 16450
+ (3), the modem's initialization string
+ (4), the prefix for your bbs, e.g.: ATDP (pulses) o ATDT
(tones)
+ (5), your nickname as it appears on the pointlist, w/o the _
+ (6), your name as it appears on the pointlist, w/o the _
+ (7), your main fido address fakenet bbs_telefone_number
+ (8), your password and the boss, don't forget to put an ``!''
as a prefix to your password.
+ (9), Subdomains, if you have some, handle them following the
same rules as your main domain.
+ (*) You may use 5, which will open /dev/modem. Normally
/dev/modem is a symlink to /dev/cua0 or /dev/cua1, (ln -s
/dev/cua1 /dev/modem). At least I have it this way...
3. Include the following line in your ~/.profile
export BINKLEY=/usr/lib/binkley
do
. ~/.profile
(you need to do this just now. The next time you enter as fido you'll
already have BINKLEY initialized)
4. Execute
bt
4.2 Problems
If you run into troubles, for sure it's about permissions or a badly
defined path. Check them out.
1. The most common error is:
cannot re-open logfile
The owner is usually: usuario.uucp. The permissions: 664
2. Another rather common error: Here it might be that the assigned
tty doesn't have the appropriate permissions. Specially if this
had been used by getty, normally it should get permissions to read
and write for everybody. The message was:
tty port can not be initialized
Solution:
chmod 666 /dev/ttyS0
or ttyS1; (COM1: or COM2:).
3. For RedHat users:
ln -s /var/spool /usr
If you get a screen similar to frodo you could do the following:
ALT-Y, call your bbs, it'll leave your mail there and fetch what you
got. Then you just need to execute the commands mentioned for mail
handling.
If it appears to have fallen asleep during the FIRST file
transmission, hit the ESC key to wake it up.
4.3 ``Templates''.
This is my templates file $FNET/msgbase/template:
#if to (AreaMgr|FileScan)
#;
#; ********** Handling of AreaMgr- and FileScan-Mails **********
#;
#else
#if group (--InterNet--)
#;
#; ********** Handling of Internet-Mails **********
#;
How are you #1E!
#if mode (reply)
In <#a> #f wrote:
#.
#quote
#else
#.
#endif
Greetings,
Manu
#|insertfortune
#else
#;
#; ********** Handling of other Mails **********
#;
Hi #1E!
#if mode (reply|forward)
#if mode (netreply)
That happy day #d, #f said to #e
in #a concerning "#s":
#.
#quote
#endif
#if mode (^reply)
On #d, #f would write to #e
concerning "#s":
#.
#quote
#endif
#if mode (forward)
Even if it doesn't look like, it's a forward
* Message from #f to #e
* on #d to #t
* concerning "#s"
* in #a
,,,
(o o)
---------------------------------oOO--(_)--OOo------------------------------
#text
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
#endif
#else
#.
#endif
#if group (--Intern--|^$)
#if from Manuel Soriano
Bye,
Manu
#|insertfortune
#else
Bye,
#1F
#endif
#else
Bye,
#1F
#endif
#endif
#endif
\|/
0-0 dpsys10@dapsys.ch
*****---oOo-(_)-oOo---**********************************************
* Manuel Soriano * El Perello/Valencia/Spain *
Once created your area directories, you can create an origin file in
each of them, and insert one or several lines (but not more than 70
chars) referring to your message's origin.
_________________________________________________________________
Previous Next Table of Contents Previous Next Table of Contents
_________________________________________________________________
5. Messages, collaborations, tricks
>From here on I'll state things I received from fido users.
5.1 futility
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Message Number 1 from area R34.LINUX
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: Jesus Gambero (2:345/201.3)
From: All
Subj: FEddi
Send: 25 Nov 95 15:43:57
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hi.
For now, FEddi hasn't got too much documentation, so after a couple of
tests, finally I'm able to maintain the message base.
futility tool delete "age+15&&protect-&&new-" R34.LINUX
futility pack
This will delete the messages older than 15 days which are not protected
and which have been read.
If you don't specify the area name, it'll refer to all. It happens that
I leave some areas more days than others, so I have to specify a line for
each area, but my customize it at will.
Bye.
--- FEddi 0.9pl5 via BinkleyTerm
* Origin: Message written and send by Linux, of course!!
(2:345/201.3)
5.2 File request (FREQ).
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Message Number 4 from area R34.LINUX
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: Javier Hernandez (2:346/207.48)
From: ALL
Subj: FILE REQUEST
Send: 07 Dec 95 06:15:45
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hi!
I have been trying to find out how to do the RE: with the Linux software,
and I already fetched my first file. I'll explain how I did it, just if
anybody is interested, or knows about a more correct manner.
First I write a Net, usually to my sysop. After finishing I exit with
(Alt+x). Having the message activated, I hit (Alt+g) to open a small
window which displays some data. Once seeing it, I pulse `Inc' and type
the name of the file I wish to download. Finally I push `Esc'.
This should be enough. Next time you call you'll receive the file. At
least this is how it worked for me.
Any comments?
Bye,
Javier
fjherna@ibm.net _\|/_
***********************************************-----(O)---****
* Javi(Canary) * Valencia/Spain *
--- FEddi 0.9pl5 via BinkleyTerm
* Origin: RAMERA: persona que comercia con su RAM. (2:346/207.48)
5.3 Frequent addresses.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Message Number 6 from area R34.LINUX
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: Javier Hernandez (2:346/207.48)
From: Manuel Soriano
Subj: Testing send.
Send: 11 Dec 95 23:58:55
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hi Manuel!
As of 07 Dec 95, Manuel Soriano wrote to Javier Hernandez
concerning "Testing send.":
MS> I've received it correctly, in the write area, just tell us how you
MS> did it. Hope you'll write us a feddi.howto :-)
See, I put a file called "names" into /home/fido/fnet/msgbase which might
be similar for you. The file's contents:
-------------------------start here-------------------------------------
*fj,Javier Hernandez,2:346/207.48
*fm,Francisco Moreno,2:346/207.1
*ap,Alfonso Perez-Almazan,2:346/207.2
*vk,Viktor Martinez,2:346/207.4
*sz,Salvador Zarzo,2:346/207.6
*el,Eduardo Lluna Gil,2:346/207.8
*bs,Bernardino Soldan,2:346/207.10
*ms,Manuel Soriano,2:346/207.14
*js,Jose Luis Sanchez,2:346/207.17
*jv,Jose Villanueva,2:346/207.28
*am,Alberto Mendoza,2:346/207.44
*pe,pepsales@portables.com,2:342/3
*am,areamgr,2:346/207
*rt,rtorres@gimn.upv.es,2:342/3
----------------------------stop here-----------------------------------
This causes that, inserting a net instead of writing a To:, push PgUp or
PgDown, you can see the different names. As you see, I've even added some
Internet addresses which I'm using sometimes. The first field, I think, is
some kind of short keys to make a call directly to this line. I don't remember
right now how is this done, but it's easy and you'll find it in the man page
for feddi.
I don't know if I missed something. If you agree, just add it to feddi.como.
Let me know if you think there is missing something, I'll send it to you.
See ya.
Bye,
Javier
fjherna@ibm.net
fj.chicha@p48.europa3.encomix.com _\|/_
***********************************************-----(O)---****
* Javi(Canary) * Valencia/Spain *
--- FEddi 0.9pl5 via BinkleyTerm
* Origin: RAMERA: person dealing with his RAM. (2:346/207.48)
5.4 Scripts and tools.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Message Number 11 from area R34.LINUX
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: Jose Carlos Gutierrez (2:341/45.17)
From: all
Subj: Feddi-como, Scripts
Send: 26 Dec 95 11:42:31
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hi
These are the files I'm using to automate mail.
file /usr/local/bin/fido
#!/bin/bash
pushd ~/fnet/inbound
.minusculas
if [ -f snetlist.a* ] ||
[ -f subptlst.a* ] || [ -f region34.l* ] || [ -f ptlstr34.l* ]; then
~/fnet/nodelist/compilar
fi
ftoss
futility link
fmbedit
fscan
futility pack
popd
|------------|
file ~/fnet/inbound/.minusculas
(the dot is to avoid that it converts itself to lower case)
#!/usr/bin/perl
while ($nombre = <*>) {
$nuevo_nombre = $nombre;
$nuevo_nombre=~ tr/A-Z,<2C>/a-z,<2C>/;
print "$nombre -> $nuevo_nombre \n";
rename($nombre,"$nuevo_nombre"); }
|------------|
file ~/fnet/nodelist/compilar
#!/bin/bash
# file to compile the nodelist
pushd ~/fnet/nodelist
if [ -f ~/fnet/inbound/ptlstr34.l* ]; then
rm ptlstr34*
unpack ~/fnet/inbound/ptlstr34.l*
fi
if [ -f ~/fnet/inbound/region34.l* ]; then
rm region34*
unpack ~/fnet/inbound/region34.l*
fi
if [ -f ~/fnet/inbound/snetlist.a* ]; then
rm snetlist*
unpack ~/fnet/inbound/snetlist.a*
fi
if [ -f ~/fnet/inbound/subptlst.a* ]; then
rm subptlst*
unpack ~/fnet/inbound/subptlst.a*
fi
# what I'm doing here is insert the line of my Boss for him to call the bt
# with ctrl + y (this is probably the most difficult way to do it, by I know
# of no other).
grep -i -B 4000 'Boss,2:341/45' ptlstr34.* > /tmp/file1
grep -i -A 4000 'Boss,2:341/45' ptlstr34.* > /tmp/file2
grep -v 'Boss,2:341/45' /tmp/file2 > /tmp/file3
rm ptlstr34.*
cat /tmp/file1 > ptlstr34
# you'll have to adapt this line to your system
echo ",0,Ma~ana_Remoto,Madrid,Rafa,34-1-6463023,9600,CM,V34,VFC" >> ptlstr34
cat /tmp/file3 >> ptlstr34
rm /tmp/file1
rm /tmp/file2
rm /tmp/file3
#
rm -f ~/fnet/inbound/ptlstr34*
rm -f ~/fnet/inbound/region34*
rm -f ~/fnet/inbound/snetlist*
rm -f ~/fnet/inbound/subptlst*
rm fnlc.*
fnlc
popd
Bye,
Guti.
--- FEddi 0.9pl5 via BinkleyTerm
* Origin: THE GANG TM (2:341/45.17)
5.5 Automation: The personal area.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Message Number 1358 from area R34.LINUX
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: Pablo Gomez (2:341/43.40)
From: All
Subj: The personal area in FEDDI, a fine(ally) version ;-)
Send: 24 Jun 96 00:35:31
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hi!
Will since some time we have been trying to find out a possibility to provide
in FEDDI a personal area allowing the reception of mail directed to us
from any area, and, over all, (as the former isn't difficult) reply them
in a comfortable way, sending them back to the original areas.
The following scripts at least allowed Francisco Jose Montilla and the author
of this message to do the trick.
The first step is creating an area which will later serve as PERSONAL.
We can do it like:
(As user fido)
$ cd ~/msgbase
$ mkdir +PERSONAL
$ cp +R34.LINUX/* +PERSONAL/
(PERSONAL is the name you want to give the personal area) Check if the
permissions and the owner of this new directory are the same as those
you have in other areas. If not, correct them.
Next, to clean the messages, do:
$ futility "+delete" "all+" PERSONAL
$ futility pack PERSONAL
If you invoke fmbedit again, you'll the the new area, called PERSONAL!
:-) magic? :-)
Now we've got the base. Next part: Copy the new messages that are arriving
to the system to our name. This is done (almost) automatically.
If we create a file like:
,,,
(o o) File: ~/msgbase/tosspath
---*reiss*------*schnippel*------oOO--(_)--OOo-------*knabber*-----*fetz*---
copy t"Pablo Gomez" PERSONAL
---*reiss*------*schnippel*--------------------------*knabber*-----*fetz*---
that's it. Obviously you'll have to replace my name (Pable Gomez) with yours,
and PERSONAL with the name of your personal area. Each time we run ftoss,
this will copy to the personal area the messages directed to us.
This point deserves a comment. In fact, this will copy also the messages
directed to us and received in NETMAIL. In my opinion, this is somewhat
brain-dead, as the NETMAIL area is already our personal area. I don't know
of no modification to avoid this copy. So a little later we'll have to
make a certain adjustment.
This is a piece (the important one ;-)) of the script I run to receive the
mail.
,,,
(o o) File: ~/bin/mimport
---*reiss*------*schnippel*------oOO--(_)--OOo-------*knabber*-----*fetz*---
#!/bin/sh
# To manage the personal area
PERSAREA=PERSONAL
# Mail import
ftoss
#
# Feeding personal area
# We just have delivered the messages, generating the necessary duplicates in
# PERSONAL. But we'd liked to delete the messages which we just copied to
# the PERSONAL area, and which come from the NETMAIL area
#
futility tool "+delete" \
"new+&&text+\*\*\* ftoss: copied from NETMAIL" $PERSAREA
# reconstruct threads
futility pack
futility link
#[...]
---*reiss*------*schnippel*--------------------------*knabber*-----*fetz*---
Be careful: the lines `futility tool ...' and `new ..." are just one. The
aim is to delete this redundant messages from NETMAIL.
Going on with message handling. The messages in the PERSONAL area contain
lines like:
*** ftoss: copied from R34.LINUX
(for instance) :-)
I reply (just in the PERSONAL area) the message, and don't care for anything,
_EXCEPT_ to not delete this line, which will serve later as a `witness' to
allow the message be replied in the correct area.
Then, exporting the mail, I run the following script:
,,,
(o o) File: ~/bin/mexport
---*reiss*------*schnippel*------oOO--(_)--OOo-------*knabber*-----*fetz*---
#!/bin/sh
USER_BIN_DIR=/home/fido/bin
LOCAL_BIN_DIR=/usr/local/bin
# Name of personal area
PERSAREA=PERSONAL
# user name
USERNOM="Pablo Gomez"
# temp output file name
OUTFILE=/tmp/persanswr
# Extraction of the messages in the personal area which are due for process
# and which will then be marked as `sent'
#
futility tool "display" "attribute-se&&from+Pablo Gomez" $PERSAREA > $OUTFILE
futility tool "+se" "attribute-se&&from+Pablo Gomez" $PERSAREA
# distribution to the new areas...
awk -f $USER_BIN_DIR/persreply.awk < $OUTFILE
# scan the message base
#
$LOCAL_BIN_DIR/fscan
---*reiss*------*schnippel*--------------------------*knabber*-----*fetz*---
And the `awk' line included in the file persreply.awk reads:
,,,
(o o) File: ~/bin/persreply.awk
---*reiss*------*schnippel*------oOO--(_)--OOo-------*knabber*-----*fetz*---
BEGIN {
#
# Touch this if necessary
# ATTENTION: Watch also for instruction blocks marked with "####":
# these too will need adjustment.
#
outputfile="/tmp/tmpreply"
#
#
# down here I suppose only the blocks marked with `###' my need changes
#
borracmd=sprintf("rm -f %s", outputfile)
replyarea=""
estado=1
system(borracmd)
}
# It's only valid the first time found in each message.
# Avoid copying, so it won't reach another system which is using the same
# system
/\*\*\* ftoss: copied from /{
if (estado==1) {
viejoestado=2
estado=3
replyarea=$NF
### Modify:
print "*** pers_area: Copiado desde area PERSONAL" >> "/tmp/tmpreply"
}
}
/^#To: / {
user=""
for (n=2; n <= NF; n++) {
user=sprintf("%s %s ",user,$n)
}
}
# Avoid writing the following lines:
/^#Area: / {
viejoestado=estado
estado=3
}
/^#@To: / {
viejoestado=estado
estado=3
}
# always but in the before mentioned cases...
estado != 3{
#####
#
# ATTENTION!: Modify as above.
# Sorry for the hack, but I couldn't make it work otherwise.
#
print $0 >> "/tmp/tmpreply"
}
# Restore the previous state
estado==3 { estado=viejoestado }
/^###MESSAGE_END###/{
if (estado==2) {
close (outputfile)
comando=sprintf("cat %s | futility addmsg %s",outputfile,
replyarea)
system(comando)
system(borracmd)
estado=1
replyarea=""
}
}
END {
system(borracmd)
}
---*reiss*------*schnippel*--------------------------*knabber*-----*fetz*---
Be careful: there are cut off lines (visibly), and there is a double hack
which I wasn't able to resolve better. Instead of defining all of the above
variables, there is one, `outputfile' which I had to redefine half way of
the script as a constant, because I didn't know how to do it better. I tried
to pass the variable quoted in different styles, but I couldn't achieve it.
Maybe one of you could give me a hint.
This was tested with several simultaneous messages, but I think I never
failed to destroy the line with ***ftoss...
Regards until the next time. I hope you'll find it useful. I'll be pleased
to get comments, improvements, etc.
Bye,
Pablo GOMEZ
pgomez@p12.laereas.encomix.com
--- FEddi 0.9pl5 via BinkleyTerm
* Origin: Puntomatico Remoto. Linux en Hoyo de Manzanares (2:341/43.40)
5.6 A few `tricks' for those that don't agree with RTFM.
REPLYING MAIL.
* To reply -in the normal way- the From: in the same area, Alt+r
* To reply the To: in the same area as the message: Ctrl+r.
* To reply -via net- the message's From: Alt+n
* To reply -via net- the message's To: Ctrl+n
To be able to do the latter, the addressee must be in the
pointlist, otherwise just nothing happens.
``NAVIGATING'' AROUND THE MESSAGE BASE.
* To get a list of the areas messages, pulse Alt+l; using then the
cursor right key, you'll be changing to the list of areas.
* To follow the conversation's thread upon it's Re:, you'll need to
hit the Tab key, and see a list similar to that which appears in
the previous item. If you continue using this key you'll change
the references to the linked messages.
You will know that there multiple linked messages (this is what
futility link does) by one and the same Re: and by some yellow
codes which appear in the right upper corner of the screen, in the
zone dedicated to the message's header.
FILE OPERATIONS
* To do a File Attach, or sending a file ``attached'' to a message,
netmail, -once the addressee has been typed- push Alt+y,
followed by f; then Alt+j and finally Tab; you'll be able to
``navigate'' up to the file.
The latter Tab applies to all operations related to files(insert
file, export message to file, etc...)
5.7 Grouping by tens Binkley's appearance:
* Create the following file and execute it in place of the bt:
File /usr/bin/bbs
echo -e "\033(U"
/usr/bin/bt
echo -e "\033(B"
* Type the command:
chmod 755 /usr/bin/bbs
* Edit /usr/lib/binkley/binkley.cfg changing the value of the line
BoxType to 3:
[...]
BoxType 3
[...]
_________________________________________________________________
Previous Next Table of Contents Previous Next Table of Contents
_________________________________________________________________
6. Good bye and conclusion.
Well, that's all, have fun, and we'll read about us via fido.
Don't forget:
Send me comments, modifications you have to this soft, but send flames
to /dev/null :-)
Bye,
Manu
_________________________________________________________________
Previous Next Table of Contents
"Linux Gazette...making Linux just a little more fun! "
_________________________________________________________________
Welcome to the Graphics Muse Set your browser to the width of the line
below for best viewing.
Copyright &copy 1996 by mjh
_________________________________________________________________
Button Bar muse:
1. v; to become absorbed in thought
2. n; [ fr. Any of the nine sister goddesses of learning and the arts
in Greek Mythology ]: a source of inspiration
W elcome to the Graphics Muse! Why a "muse"? Well, except for the
sisters aspect, the above definitions are pretty much the way I'd
describe my own interest in computer graphics: it keeps me deep in
thought and it is a daily source of inspiration.
[Graphics Mews] [Musings] [Resources] indent T his column is dedicated
to the use, creation, distribution, and discussion of computer
graphics tools for Linux systems. My first column, in the November
issue of Linux Gazette, left something to be desired in both content
and graphics. As one reader pointed out, I didn't even follow my own
guideline for making background images. Well, it looked good on my
system at home. The problem was one of poor time management on my
part. I finished up the chapters of a web server book I'm co-authoring
at the end of September, so I had more time to work on this months
column. Hopefully the format is cleaner and the content more
informative.
indent And, in the future, I'll try to follow my own guidelines.
vertical space Graphics Mews
Disclaimer: Before I get too far into this I should note that any of
the news items I post in this section are just that - news. Either I
happened to run across them via some mailing list I was on, via some
Usenet newsgroup, or via email from someone. I'm not necessarily
endorsing these products (some of which may be commercial), I'm just
letting you know I'd heard about them in the past month. indent
New version of Pro MovieStudio driver available on Sunsite archives
indent Wolfgang Koehler has released the 3.0 version of his
PMS-grabber package to the sunsite archives. This package provides a
driver and X application for grabbing frames from the Pro MovieStudio
(aka PMS) adapter by Mediavision. Depending on when it is migrated to
its final resting place, the package can be obtained either from
ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/incoming or
ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/apps/video. indent indent
ImageMagick Library updated
indent A New revision of the ImageMagick Library, version 3.7.7, was
released this past month. indent
Netscape Tcl Plugin released
indent The Tcl Plugin 1.0 was also released this past month. This is
a Netscape plugin that allows web page authors to write Tcl based
applets for your web pages. indent indent
Digigami looking for testers for MovieScreamer tool
indent There is now a conversion tool for creating Quicktime videos.
Digigami is looking for Unix Webmasters to be Beta testers for its
MovieScreamer multi-platform, 'Fast-Start' publishing and conversion
tool for QuickTime(tm) movies. 'Fast-Start' QuickTime movies are
standard 'flattened' movie files that have been 're-organized' for
playback over the Internet (or corporate Intranets). indent indent
indent
Did you know?
indent indent There is a font archive, complete with sample
renderings of the fonts, available at
http://www.ora.com/homepages/comp.fonts/ifa/os2cdrom/index.htm? The
ftp site for the fonts is at ftp://ftp.cdrom.com/pub/os2/fonts/.
indent A large list of general graphics information is available at
ftp://x2ftp.oulu.fi/pub/msdos/programming/. Look under /theory,
/math, /faq and a host of other subdirectories. There is a lot to wade
through, but just about all of it has some value, including
information on shading and object sorting.
indent The Bare Bones Guide to HTML is a useful resource for people
who need to find the correct HTML syntax for HTML 3.0 or Netscape
based web pages. indent indent indent
Musings
O'Reilly releases The Linux Multimedia Guide.
indent I recently picked up my copy of The Linux Multimedia Guide by
Jeff Tranter. This text covers a wide range of material related to the
creation and use of multimedia files with respect to the Linux
operating system. The text is approximately 350 pages, including
source code listings for a number of sample multimedia applications
which are discussed in one chapter of the book. As usual, O'Reilly
provides copies of the source from their ftp site.
indent When I first found out about this book I thought "Rats, Jeff
beat me too it." Much of what Jeff covers is listed in my own Linux
Graphics mini-Howto. However, there are quite a number of items not
covered by the LGH (as I call it), such as audio, a bit more detail
about video formats and tools, and programming considerations for
various hardware (CD-ROMs, joysticks, and sound devices), which make
the Linux Multimedia Guide a good addition to the O'Reilly family of
Unix books.
indent The text is divided into 5 sections:
1. Introduction to Multimedia
2. User's Guide
3. A Survey of Multimedia Applications
4. Multimedia Programmer's Guide
5. Appendices
The first section introduces the reader to the various concepts
involved with multimedia such as the CD-ROMs, image file formats, and
sound files. The chapters here are generally brief but the one on
audio is quite informative. There is a discussion on audio file
formats as well as a comparison of a few of the popular sound cards
available for Linux.
indent Section two opens with a discussion on hardware requirements
for doing multimedia on Linux systems. Most of this section centers on
either the CD-ROM driver or the Linux Sound Driver (now known as OSS).
There is also a short chapter on the joystick driver.
indent The second longest section, A Survey of Multimedia
Applications, covers applications for the various forms of multimedia.
There are chapters on sound and music applications, graphics and
animations applications, hypermedia applications, and games. The last
chapter, on games, seems a bit out of place. There are games
implemented as network applications using Java, JavaScript and the new
Tcl/Tk plug-in for Netscape but this chapter doesn't cover these. This
section is very similar to the LGH in that the chapters provide the
program names and URLs associated with them (if any). The number of
items covered is less than the LGH, but there are better descriptions
of the applications in the book.
indent Chapter fourteen opens the fourth section, the Multimedia
Programmer's Guide. This section is the longest in the book and covers
all the devices discussed earlier. Other chapters in this section
cover some of the available toolkits available to multimedia
developers. There is one chapter which contains three sample
applications.
indent In general I find the Linux Multimedia Guide a good reference
text with a moderate degree of developer tutorials. Unlike many of the
books available for Linux this text provides detailed explanation on
the various programming interfaces, a useful tool beyond the simple
"what is this and where do I get it" that many of the Howto's provide.
The only drawback that I can see is that, like most of other Linux
texts, this text does not provide a users perspective on any of the
tools listed. If Linux is to ever go beyond a developer's-only
platform there will need to be detailed users guides for the various
well known applications. indent indent indent
More Musings...
* Creating GIF Animations
indent indent indent
Textural Creations
indent N ot long ago I got email from a reader of my Unix Graphics
Utilities page asking this:
I am just getting into the graphics scene and I have POV-Ray (for
linux) and a few other programs. I know how to create an image with
a modeller but how do apply texture and color to it?
My answer was simple enough: It depends on what modeller you use and
what renderer you use. POV-Ray for Linux doesn't have a modeller. You
have to feed it a text file which contains both shapes and textures
and POV-Ray will render (draw) it. There are 4 modellers that I know
of for Linux: AC3D, AMAPI, SCED, and Midnight Modeller. SCED allows
you to preview your image using various renderers. AC3D has a built in
renderer, as does AMAPI. All three will output files that can be used
by a number of renderers (such as POV-Ray, Radiance, PolyRay, RIB
formats, etc). Modellers create shapes that are independent of the
tools used to render the image.
indent Modellers are great for creating shapes, but the textures
applied to those shapes depend on what renderer you use. POV-Ray has
its own set of commands that it uses for determining how a texture
will look on an object in a scene. Commands for creating textures are
different for other systems, like the procedural language (an actual
programming language) used by BMRT (which conforms to the Renderman
specification - i.e. the formats used by Pixar and their tools).
indent So, the answer to the question is: it depends on what renderer
you use. For POV-Ray you need to learn the command syntax for
describing textures. If you can find a copy, pick up "Ray Tracing
Creations" 2nd edition by Chris Young and Drew Wells. It may be out of
print. This text has a good reference for the 2.2 version of POV-Ray.
Although the texture commands were expanded for the 3.0 version, you
can still create 2.2 based textures by providing the "#version 2.2"
command in your POV-Ray source file. In this way you have a handy
reference for learning how to create textures in POV-Ray. You still
have to do this by hand, though. I've heard rumors that there may be a
3.0 text eventually, but I don't have any word if that is true or not.
indent As far as setting the textures from within the modeller, well,
I don't think any of the modellers do that for you. You still have to
manually set the textures (SCED allows you to do so from within the
modeller, but I'm not sure the others do) using the command language
of the particular renderer you're using. The reason for this goes back
to what I said earlier: the format of the texture commands depends on
what renderer you use.
indent Its best to think of modelling and rendering as two separate
tasks. If you want to preview your models you still need to run the
renderers separately (except for SCED which will launch the renderer
for you, but its still a separate program - the renderer is not part
of the modeller).
indent I know this is confusing. It was for me too. In fact, I gave up
on modellers and now create my images by hand (I use vi to edit the
.pov and .inc input files for POV-Ray). I've only recently started to
look seriously again at modellers.
Resources
The following links are just starting points for finding more
information about computer graphics and multimedia in general for
Linux systems. If you have some application specific information for
me, I'll add them to my other pages or you can contact the maintainer
of some other web site. I'll consider adding other general references
here, but application or site specific information needs to go into
one of the following general references and not listed here.
Linux Graphics mini-Howto
Unix Graphics Utilities
Linux Multimedia Page
Future Directions
Next month:
* What I use the Gimp for - a users story
* The IRTC - A raytracing competition for the fun of it
* Review: The AC3D Modeller
* Book Review: Jim Blinn's Corner - A Trip Down the Graphics
Pipeline
* ...and lots more!
Let me know what you'd like to hear about!
_________________________________________________________________
Copyright &copy; 1996, Michael J. Hammel
Published in Issue 12 of the Linux Gazette
_________________________________________________________________
[ TABLE OF CONTENTS ] [ FRONT PAGE ] Back Next
_________________________________________________________________
More...
Musings
* Creating GIF Animations
indent
Creating GIF Animations
indent Recently, while working on a text on Unix web servers, I was
tasked with writing about multimedia applications. During my research
on this subject I discovered a little known fact about the GIF image
file format: it supports multiple images in a single file which can be
used to create animations. Creating GIF images is fairly simple. There
a number of tools available for Linux systems that can either create
new GIF images or convert image files in other formats to the GIF
format. Tools such as the Gimp or XPaint can be used to create images
while xv or the NetPBM tools can be used to convert images from other
formats.
indent In order to create a GIF animation you must first create a
series of GIF images. These images make up the frames of the
animation, much like cell animations make up a cartoon (although there
is no reason why your GIF files can't be converted from 3D images such
as those created with POV-Ray or BMRT). The animation only plays as
fast the the host machines ability to read, decode and display the
individual frames. On older 486 systems this might be a problem so its
wise to keep your images small. For GIF images this means keeping the
dimensions (height and width) of the animation small. You should also
consider how jumpy you want the animation to be. Small amounts of
movement of objects from frame to frame will reduce the jumpiness of
the overall animation, but it also can significantly increase the
overall size of the GIF file. Since Netscape (the only browser that I
know of that currently supports this type of animation) tries to load
the entire GIF file before it begins playing the animation it would be
wise to consider keeping the file size small.
indent Once you have the individual frames created, you'll need to put
them all into a single GIF file. You can use a nifty little tool
called WhirlGIF to do this. WhirlGIF is a command line tool (no GUI)
that concatenates the series of GIF images into a single GIF image and
configures the GIF header so that Netscape will know how to play the
animation. The GIF header allows for a number of options, including
some that are Netscape specific (Netscape didn't create their own
format - the GIF format allows for application specific extensions).
You can provide the number of times to loop the animation and the
delay time to use between frames (which can be used to slow down and
animation if so desired).
indent There is a terrific page devoted to GIF animations at
http://members.aol.com/royalef/gifanim.htm. This page is not Linux
(or Unix) specific, but it does include pointers to WhirlGIF and the
information in a number of the pages there are very applicable to
creating GIF animations on Linux systems.
indent
_________________________________________________________________
Copyright &copy; 1996, Michael J. Hammel
Published in Issue 12 of the Linux Gazette
_________________________________________________________________
"Linux Gazette...making Linux just a little more fun! "
_________________________________________________________________
InfoZIP Archive Utilities
By Robert G. "Doc" Savage, dsavage@accessus.net
_________________________________________________________________
I'm a big fan of utilities. When I saw that CND/RHS were distributed
with older versions of the InfoZIP zip/unzip suite of archive
utilities, I made upgrading them my first Linux project. It turned out
to be a little bit more complicated than I thought it would be.
I especially wanted to add in the DES encryption modules to zip/unzip
so they would be 100% file compatible with PKWare's archivers for
MS-DOS. U.S. State Department rules make it difficult to implement
this as an RPM, so I decided to do it as a classic shell script. The
end user will have to ftp the source code (especially the DES code
module) from the site specified in the script.
_________________________________________________________________
Script #1:
#!/bin/sh
#
# undatezip reverses updatezip and restores a Caldera Network Desktop v1.0 or
# Red Hat Software v2.1/v3.0.3 InfoZIP suite installation to its original zip
# v2.01 and unzip v5.12 configuration. This should only be necessary if you
# need to upgrade from a pristine as-installed configuration.
#
# original versions >>updatezip >>> new versions
# without encryption
__________________________________________________________________________
Script #2:
#!/bin/sh
#
# updatezip is a shell script for Caldera Network Desktop v1.0 or Red Hat
# Software's v2.1/v3.0.3 distributions to upgrade the InfoZIP utilities unzip
# from v5.12 to v5.2, and zip from v2.01 to v2.1. It also adds the zcrypt DES
# encryption module not provided in the RHS (or any other) distribution.
#
# To undo this upgrade and restore a CND v1.0 or RHS v2.1/v3.0.3 installation
# to its original zip/unzip configuration, run the companion file undatezip.
#
# original versions >>updatezip >>> new versions
# without encryption :
#
# unzip52.zip
# zcrypt26.zip
# zip21.zip
#
# Copy them and updatezip to a safe directory (suggest root's home directory
# /root). Use 'chmod 700 updatezip' to make it executable, then run it.
# Execution time is slightly over four minutes on a DX4/100 system with 28M
# of RAM, a 32-bit EISA host adapter, and an older SCSI-1(CCS) hard drive.
#
# IMPORTANT
# ---------
# Caldera Network Desktop 1.0, when first installed, is missing an important
# file required to compile certain programs. The following lines create (or
# recreate) this missing file. This script will fail without it.
#
cd /usr/src/linux
make include/linux/version.h
cd
#
# Section 1. Create the working directory and extract all required files.
#
mkdir /scratch
cp unzip52.zip /scratch
cp zcrypt26.zip /scratch
cp zip21.zip /scratch
cd /scratch
#
# Section 2. Compile unzip first, then zip
#
unzip unzip52
unzip -o zcrypt26 # -o forces overwrite of stub files
cp -f ./unix/Makefile .
make generic
rm -f *.o # clean-up before next compile round
unzip -o zip21
unzip -o zcrypt26
cp -f ./unix/Makefile .
make generic_gcc
#
# Section 3. Install new versions of the zip/unzip suite. Preserve the
# existing executables and man files first. Use soft links to point
# to the new versions.
#
cd /usr/bin
mv funzip funzip383.export
mv unzip unzip512.export
mv unzipsfx unzipsfx512.export
mv zip zip201.export
mv zipcloak zipcloak201.export
mv zipinfo zipinfo202.export
mv zipnote zipnote201.export
mv zipsplit zipsplit201.export
#
cd /usr/man/man1
mv funzip.1 funzip383.1
mv unzip.1 unzip512.1
mv unzipsfx.1 unzipsfx512.1
mv zip.1 zip201.1
# note there is no zipgrep.1 in this distribution
mv zipinfo.1 zipinfo202.1
#
cd /usr/bin
mv /scratch/funzip funzip39.encrypt
mv /scratch/unzip unzip52.encrypt
mv /scratch/unzipsfx unzipsfx52.encrypt
mv /scratch/zip zip21.encrypt
mv /scratch/zipcloak zipcloak21.encrypt
mv /scratch/unix/zipgrep zipgrep21.encrypt
mv /scratch/zipnote zipnote21.encrypt
mv /scratch/zipsplit zipsplit21.encrypt
#
cd /usr/man/man1
mv /scratch/unix/funzip.1 funzip39.1
mv /scratch/unix/unzip.1 unzip52.1
mv /scratch/unix/unzipsfx.1 unzipsfx52.1
mv /scratch/man/zip.1 zip21.1
mv /scratch/man/zipgrep.1 zipgrep21.1
mv /scratch/unix/zipinfo.1 zipinfo21.1
#
# Now establish the soft links
#
ln -s funzip39.1 funzip.1
ln -s unzip52.1 unzip.1
ln -s unzipsfx52.1 unzipsfx.1
ln -s zip21.1 zip.1
ln -s zip.1 zipcloak.1 # remember, zip.1 is
ln -s zipgrep21.1 zipgrep.1
ln -s zipinfo21.1 zipinfo.1
ln -s zip.1 zipnote.1 # already soft-linked
ln -s zip.1 zipsplit.1 # to zip21.1
#
cd /usr/bin
ln -s funzip39.encrypt funzip
ln -s unzip52.encrypt unzip
ln -s unzipsfx52.encrypt unzipsfx
ln -s zip21.encrypt zip
ln -s zipcloak21.encrypt zipcloak
ln -s zipgrep21.encrypt zipgrep
ln -s unzip52.encrypt zipinfo # a special link
ln -s zipnote21.encrypt zipnote
ln -s zipsplit21.encrypt zipsplit
#
# Section 4. Clean up the leftovers.
#
cd # go to your home directory
rm -rf /scratch # nothing worth saving in the scratch directory
hash -r # re-sync the paths
#
# That's it...
__________________________________________________________________________
--Doc Savage, Sr. Network Engineer, I-NET, Inc.
__________________________________________________________________________
Copyright &copy; 1996, Robert G. Savage
Published in Issue 12 of the Linux Gazette
__________________________________________________________________________
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[ FRONT PAGE ]
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__________________________________________________________________________
"Linux Gazette...making Linux just a little more fun! "
__________________________________________________________________________
SLANG APPLICATIONS FOR LINUX
by Larry Ayers
Copyright (c) 1996
Published in Issue 12 of the Linux Gazette
__________________________________________________________________________
INTRODUCTION
John E. Davis of the Center for Space Research at MIT has written an
interpreted programming language called Slang, which has a C-like syntax. He
has written several programs using this language, including the slrn
newsreader and the emacs-like Jed editor. Lately a few other programmers have
begun to make use of Slang; one reason for this is that Slang allows the use
of color in a text-mode program which will display equally well in an rxvt
window under X.
Applications which are linked with the Slang library always seem to be
text-mode programs. Typically Linux text-mode applications use the ncurses
library to handle screen display. Ncurses enables the use of menus, a certain
amount of color, and a more complex screen layout. These traits don't always
translate well into an X-Windows environment; i.e. running in an xterm or rxvt
window. If an application is linked with the Slang library instead its
behavior is more consistent between the console and X sessions, especially
when started from an rxvt window.
__________________________________________________________________________
AN ASIDE CONCERNING RXVT AND XTERM
I get the impression that the xterm terminal emulator is used more commonly
than rxvt, though this may be due more to tradition than innate
superiority. Rxvt has been revised several times recently and in its current
form (version 2.19) has much to recommend it. One feature which I appreciate
is that it's memory usage is much lower than that of xterm. Rxvt handles
color requests well, both background/foreground specifications and
extension-specific colorization such as "color-ls". The most recent version
even allows the use of Xpm images as background, similar to a web-page, though
as with a web-page a background image would have to be carefully chosen so as
not to obscure the text.
Some xterm variants make use of color, but some don't. I find the
plenitude of xterms and color-xterms rather confusing; it's hard to tell just
which ones you have, and they vary from distribution to distribution. Then
there is xterm's Tektronix compatibility, which I've never seen a use for.
Reading the xterm man page I get the impression that xterm was developed for
older mainframe-and-terminal systems.
__________________________________________________________________________
APPLICATIONS WHICH USE SLANG
1. Slrn is a fast, high quality news-reader which supports threading
of messages, decoding of MIME attachments, and has the ability to
tell a web-browser to load a URL contained within a message. It
has many other features and options; it is one of John Davis's
programs and he actively supports it in the newsgroup
news.software.readers.
2. Lynx, the text-mode web-browser, looks less archaic when compiled
with Slang support. If you can't see the images on a page, at
least the text elements and background can be nicely colored!
3. Jed, John Davis's emacs-like editor, is surprisingly capable
considering it is a fraction of the size of any real emacs. If
you've ever hesitated to start up Gnu Emacs or Xemacs just to read
an info page, try Jed; it reads them just as well and is quicker
to invoke. Jed has syntax-highlighting for a variety of file
types.
4. The Midnight Commander, the exemplary text-mode file-manager, now
includes enough of the Slang files in its source distribution to
compile with Slang screen management without Slang libraries on
your system. Slang is the default in recent versions of MC and the
two are well-matched.
5. Minicom is available in a binary, Slang-enabled version at
ftp://sunsite.unc.edu. Color really makes this classic comm
program more usable, especially in an rxvt window.
6. The Mutt mail program is an interesting offshoot of Elm
development which is well on its way toward becoming an
alternative to Pine and Elm. Slang is listed as an alternative to
ncurses in the pre-compilation configure script options, but I
can't say how well it works as it will only successfully compile
with ncurses on my system.
7. Dosemu, though still dubbed an alpha version by the development
team, is remarkably stable and useful. Recently I compiled the
latest version (I had been using an old RPM version) and was
surprised to see that the configure script looks for the Slang
library. After the compilation I ran ldd against the dos binary
and found that it is dynamically linked with the Slang library.
Interesting! I looked through the source code and docs to see if
there was any information on Dosemu's use of Slang, but finally
gave up. You could spend days wandering around the Byzantine
directory hierarchy of Dosemu!
__________________________________________________________________________
I'm sure as the benefits of Slang become more widely known we shall see
more text-mode applications with Slang support included. There very well be
others than the above-listed out there; these are just the ones I've run
across.
__________________________________________________________________________
AVAILABILITY
Precompiled binaries for slrn, lynx, and the Jed editor (with Slang
statically linked, I assume) are available at ftp://sunsite.unc.edu and its
mirrors . I used these for some time, but recently I obtained the source for
Slang and compiled a shared library. The advantage of this approach is that
you can compile binaries which dynamically link the Slang library at runtime.
Your executables will be smaller, and one shared library can service any
number of Slang-using applications. Another advantage to obtaining the source
distributions is that you'll end up with more documentation.
John E. Davis's creations (slrn, Jed, and the Slang sources) are available
at their MIT home site. The most
recent versions, as well as beta versions, can be found there.
This Mexican site is
the source for the most recent versions of the Midnight Commander, as well as
rxvt.
Beta versions (which seem stable to me) of Michael Elkins' Mutt mail
program are available from this FTP
site. Maybe you can get it to compile with Slang!
Lynx binaries with Slang support can be found at sunsite and its mirrors.
The source for the latest and greatest of the Dosemu releases can be found
at the tsx-11 FTP
site. (Version 0.64.1 was released in November).
__________________________________________________________________________
If you're like me and work at the console often, you'll find it's nice to
have applications available which work well (and look good!) in an X session
too. I think you will be pleased with the high quality and low memory
usage of the above-listed apps.
__________________________________________________________________________
Larry Ayers<layers@vax2.rain.gen.mo.us>
Last modified: Thu Nov 21 13:43:51 CST 1996
__________________________________________________________________________
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__________________________________________________________________________
"Linux Gazette...making Linux just a little more fun! "
__________________________________________________________________________
UPDATES TO MY PAST REVIEWS
by Larry Ayers
Copyright (c) 1996
Published in Issue 12 of the Linux Gazette
I've been writing these short reviews and other articles for the Gazette
since issue number seven. Even with the short lead time inherent in a
WWW-based publication it seems like new releases and URL changes often happen
right after I submit an article. The status of several of the programs has
changed since I wrote of them, so I thought I'd take this opportunity to list
some of these changes.
By the way, I appreciate all of the email I've received in response to my
articles; feel free to write if you have any comments or criticism.
* Moxfm hasn't been updated since version 1.00 was released several
months ago, but it's working well in the current version. I've
included it here because I've received several e-mail messages
stating that the URL in the article wasn't working. The current
URL of the Moxfm home page is http://sugra.desy.de/user/mai/moxfm.
The source and binaries are in uuencoded form; just let them
display on the screen of a web-browser, save them to a file, then
run "uudecode filename.uue".
* TkDesk has been through several versions since I wrote of it; the
current one is 1.0b3, released on Sept.25, 1996. There are many
new features; one which I use often is a file pop-up menu-item
which hands the file over to a running Xemacs on another desktop.
There is a similar capability involving HTML files and Netscape
(or another browser). Check out the TkDesk web-page for the latest
news.
* FileRunner has been developing rapidly in the past few months.
It's current version is 2.1.1, and many refinements have been
made. It's FTP capabilities have been greatly improved; FTP
downloads can now run as a background process, and directories can
be displayed date-ordered. Remote FTP directories can be saved as
bookmarks (accessible from a menu). Many configuration options
have been added as well. The built-in shell windows which follow
you from directory to directory are very handy. They allow you to
see the output of non-interactive commands (such as compilation)
and can be dismissed when not needed. There is a FileRunner
web-page from which the source can be obtained, as well as from
the Sunsite archive..
* Elvis has finally made it to a major release; version 2.00 was
announced recently. It's available from its official site. Elvis
is remarkable for the small size of the compiled binary,
considering how powerful an editor it is. Elvis's ability to
display HTML in a readable form meshes well with the HTML format
of the extensive help files.
* Vile has a new official maintainer; Paul Fox has handed over the
reins to another of the primary Vile developers, Thomas Dickey.
Version 6.2 was released recently. For some reason Vile doesn't
seem to be as popular as Vim and Elvis (judging by news-group
postings). I urge anyone who favors vi-style editors to give it a
try; it really grows on you. Vile's new official release site is
ftp://ftp.clark.net/pub/dickey/vile
* XaoS in its current release (1.2) has a new feature which
increases its usability for those running X with more than 256
colors: it'll run! Previous releases only worked on 8-bit
displays.
* Yodl version 1.08 has been released; it's mainly a "small-bug-fix"
release, i.e. if a previous version does what you want, you
probably don't need it. It's at sunsite.
* Procmeter has been updated to version 2.2; changes include a
choice of solid or bar-type graphing, and refinement of network
packet transfer display.
* Xmosaic development has slowed since my review. The powers-that-be
at the University of Illinois have decided that Xmosaic will be
the second, rather than the first, GTK (Graphics ToolKit) client
to be developed.The GTK is a programming toolkit which will take
the place of Motif in Xmosaic. Scott Powers, Xmosaic's project
leader, stated in a message to the mailing list that development
will resume in a couple of months. The up side to this news is
that the GTK is the "hard part", so that once work resumes on
Xmosaic development progress should be rapid.
__________________________________________________________________________
Larry Ayers<layers@vax2.rain.gen.mo.us>
Last modified: Wed Nov 20 17:41:22 CST 1996
__________________________________________________________________________
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__________________________________________________________________________
"Linux Gazette...making Linux just a little more fun! "
__________________________________________________________________________
THE YARD RESCUE DISK PACKAGE
by Larry Ayers
Copyright (c) 1996
Published in Issue 12 of the Linux Gazette
__________________________________________________________________________
INTRODUCTION
It is a common practice to use the rescue/boot disks supplied with a Linux
distribution if filesystem problems occur and you need to boot from a floppy.
Typically these disks consist of a bootable compressed kernel on disk 1, with
the second disk containing basic maintenance tools such as fsck.
On the few occasions I've had to boot from such disks the transition from
my familiar Linux environment to the bare-essentials, limited boot-disk system
(constrained by the size of a floppy disk) has been disconcerting, to say the
least. Typically if an editor is available it's a small one with which I've
never worked, and many of the tools I'm used to having around aren't there.
Recently Tom Fawcett has been
refining a suite of customizable Perl scripts which make the creation of
boot-disks from scratch easier. YARD (for Yet Another Rescue Disk) makes use
of (and requires) the optional Linux kernel compressed ramdisk option, which
allows you to load a compressed disk image into memory at boot-up. Paul
Gortmaker has written a lucid explanation of the new ramdisk options in the
file "ramdisk.txt", which is in the Documentation subdirectory of recent
kernel source releases.
INSTALLATION AND USAGE
The Yard distribution contains two files which need to be edited as a first
step. Config.pl is a Perl script which sets such preferences as the
type of floppy you're using and whether you are making a single boot-disk or a
double. The Bootdisk_Contents file contains a list of all of the files
and utilities you would like on your disk(s). This file needs to be edited
heavily, as it includes much more than will fit on even two disks. Anything
you like can be included in this file.
The next step is to run the Perl script make_root_fs. This script
gathers up all of the files you've specified (as well as all libraries upon
which they depend) and constructs a root filesystem upon whichever device was
specified in the Config.pl script. A ramdisk works well. The new
filesystem is then compressed with gzip into a single file in your /tmp
directory. Once this process is complete yet another Perl script,
check_root_fs is run, which makes sure that all needed
libraries,etc. are present.
After all of this preparation you're ready to actually write the rescue
disks; here's where you find out if you've attempted to cram too much into
them. The write_rescue_disk script first copies your compressed kernel
(vmlinuz) onto the disk (the first disk if it's a two-disk set) and then
copies the compressed filesystem image you've constructed onto whatever is
left. It took me several tries to pare down what I wanted Initially on the
disks to what would actually fit. The virtue of the Yard system is that all
you need to do to try again is re-edit the Bootdisk_Contents file and
re-make the filesystem. Yard also writes log-files which can be helpful in
diagnosing problems.
Modular kernels are great, but if you boot a kernel image and a capability
you need is a demand-loaded module you're out of luck. Yard sidesteps this
potential problem by including your modules directory in the compressed
filesystem, as well as making sure that the kernel-daemon /sbin/kerneld is
started at boot-up.
The result of this process is a customized miniature Linux system. It's a
nice feeling to know that if your filesystem is in shambles due to a power
outage or a beta program run amuck that you at least have familiar tools
available.
Once you've managed to edit a set of Yard configuration files which will
successfully write working rescue disks, consider saving copies of these files
in case the disks become corrupted. I just replaced the supplied files with
my edited copies, then tarred and gzipped the Yard distribution and saved it
to floppy.
CAVEATS
Yard gives you the option of using or not using Lilo to boot your disks. I
first tried Yard with Lilo, as Lilo has always worked well for me. It
wouldn't work with my Yard disks, so I disabled that option. I'm using an old
version of Lilo, left over from my original Slackware 3.00 Linux installation,
which may explain this failure. Yard works fine without it. Lilo might be
necessary if you need to include parameters in order to boot your system, such
as those required for some SCSI hard disks.
AVAILABILITY
Yard is available from the Yard
home-page, as well as from the sunsite archive and its mirrors. It's well
worth trying if you want the ultimate in control over just what is included on
your rescue disks.
__________________________________________________________________________
Larry Ayers<layers@vax2.rain.gen.mo.us>
Last modified: Wed Nov 20 09:21:50 CST 1996
__________________________________________________________________________
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__________________________________________________________________________
"Linux Gazette...making Linux just a little more fun! "
__________________________________________________________________________
RECENT LINUX CONFERENCES
__________________________________________________________________________
CONTENTS:
* Unix Expo 1996, by Lydia Kinata
* DECUS in Anaheim, by Phil Hughes
* Open Systems World/FedUNIX, by Gary Moore
__________________________________________________________________________
Unix Expo 1996, October 8-10 in New York
By Lydia Kinata, linux@ssc.com
__________________________________________________________________________
This show was actually billed as Unix Expo Plus I^2--a nod to the
increasing interest in all things NT and Internet. In fact, in
1997 the show will no longer be called Unix Expo at all, it
will be billed as IT Forum 97, Internet and Technology Forum.
Despite a preponderance of Internet and NT related vendors and
seminars, (and the ubiquitous presence of Bill Gates), the show
went very well for Linux Journal and SSC. Various
disasters struck, notably the loss of half of our booth display
by UPS, but all in all it was quite successful. With the
exception of Caldera, all of us Linux-types were stuck off
in the corner of the show room, but we were still
swamped by happy Linux and Unix users who had specifically
made the trek in support of their favorite OS. The show in general
had a lower attendance than was expected by show management,
but the Linux contingent were doing quite nicely anyway.
2,500 Linux Journal and 1,600 WEBsmith magazines
were given away. Many people subscribed right there at the show,
many others went away clutching their SSC Unix References or books
with dazed-but-happy expressions. Those of us working the booth
made lots of contacts, and I must say it was a great experience
meeting subscribers and customers who share such enthusiasm
for Unix and Linux. Those NT developers should take note:
Unix users are a dedicated bunch.
New York was a blast, although I had to laugh when the locals
got panicky when a 'Nor-Easter' blew through. I had to say,
"Come on, guys. It's just raining." They should come to Seattle
some time.
--Lydia Kinata, SSC Products Specialist
__________________________________________________________________________
Copyright &copy; 1996, Lydia Kinata
Published in Issue 12 of the Linux Gazette
__________________________________________________________________________
DECUS IN ANAHEIM
by Phil Hughes, phil@ssc.com
__________________________________________________________________________
On November 11 through 13, Carlie Fairchild and I attended the
DECUS show in Anaheim, California. While DECUS has generally been a
good show for SSC, this show was small and we were the only Linux
vendor attending. The best guess why is with UseLinux coming up in
the same place in January, it was an easy show for people--vendors as
well as Linux-heads--to skip.
There was a series of talks on Linux presented by Jon
"maddog" Hall and myself. Attendance was between 20 and
50, and I think we managed to make some converts.
Carlie had also arranged for to speak to the local Linux user's
group on Wednesday night. About 25 attended (including
"maddog"). I presented a talk called Looking at
Linux. Much of this talk focused on the commercial viability of
Linux, which was an issue many of the group's members had been
attempting to address on their own. In the talk I stressed four
criteria for commercial viability:
* reliability,
* interoperability,
* support
* and capabilities.
The talk was well received and the meeting turned into a informal
discussion of Linux in general. I look forward to talking with these
people again during the UseLinux show.
--Phil Hughes, Publisher Linux Journal
__________________________________________________________________________
Copyright &copy; 1996, Phil Hughes
Published in Issue 12 of the Linux Gazette
__________________________________________________________________________
OPEN SYSTEMS WORLD/FEDUNIX
by Gary Moore, ljeditor@ssc.com
__________________________________________________________________________
The first week of November, I went to Washington, D.C. to attend Open
Systems World/FedUNIX. While several dedicated Linux fans came by the
booth, most of the people I talked to knew very little about Linux. Some
were just cruising the booths, collecting whatever anyone was giving away,
but we don't mind--the literature they picked up may spark some real
interest later on. (One show attendee, in addition to taking a few of
whatever we had also took the neat twirly thing we'd acquired from another
exhibitor's booth.)
Linux vendors in attendance were Yggdrasil Computing, InfoMagic,
and Red Hat Software, giving me a chance to meet Adam Richter of
Yggdrasil, Bob Young and Lisa Sullivan of Red Hat, and Henry Pierce
and Greg Deeds of InfoMagic.
Adding credence to Linux's worth in the minds of those with no free
software experience was Digital Equipment's display of a DEC Alpha
running Linux and Maddog's enthusiasm for the operating system. (By
the time I got over to actually see the machine, someone was
demonstrating Quake on it. I sat down and showed him a couple things I
remembered from playing Doom--it was kind of surreal to be
sitting amidst all the professional frumpery of the show while
virtually running around swinging a very large and lethal axe.)
Jeff Leyland of Wolfram Research, the makers of Mathematica, spoke
about Wolfram switching to Linux as their development platform. There
were other speakers I should have made time to hear, but I got caught up
talking to people coming by our booth and asking about Linux. I know
that after a few talks, the Linux booths would get flooded with people
excited to check it out.
I also heard Ernst & Young--well known for their accounting
services among other things--apparently use Red Hat Linux
in-house and asked IBM, with whom they contract for computer services,
to support their Linux machines. (If you're from Ernst & Young,
please send me some mail. We'd like to hear about how you're
using Linux.)
Adam Richter predicted a new version of Yggdrasil's Plug-and-Play
Linux in the first quarter of 1997. At OSW they had pressings of their
new 8-CD Internet Archives set, which includes several distributions,
including a couple I hadn't heard of before.
I would've felt cutoff from the world (yes, even in D.C. on
election night) if it hadn't been for David Lescher, who set me up
with some dial-in PPP access for my laptop, and David Niemi, who made
some necessary tweaks to my chat script. I'm also grateful to Mark
Komarinski, who put together a Linux talk on very short notice when I
found I was dangerously close to having no time whatsoever to prepare
one myself.
The Santa Cruz Operation was there giving away copies of their Free
SCO OpenServer. Someone who'd just acquired one of those gems asked me
why she'd be interested in Linux if she had OpenServer; I noted its
limitations and handed her a copy of Linux Journal, hoping to plant a
seed. Some attendees were being less subtle, affixing prominently to
their big blue IBM literature boxes the Linux bumper stickers we were
giving away.
--Gary Moore, Editor of Linux Journal
__________________________________________________________________________
Copyright &copy; 1996, Gary Moore
Published in Issue 12 of the Linux Gazette
__________________________________________________________________________
[ TABLE OF CONTENTS ]
[ FRONT PAGE ]
Back
Next
__________________________________________________________________________
"Linux Gazette...making Linux just a little more fun! "
__________________________________________________________________________
SETTING UP THE APACHE WEB SERVER UNDER LINUX
by Andy Kahn, kahn@cs.ucla.edu
______________________________________________________________________
This article is basically a summary of my experiences of setting up a web
server under Linux. I will start with where/how to obtain Apache, then move
on to installation, configuration, and finally how to get things running.
This article is written from the point of view of my system, which is a Red
Hat 4.0 system with v2.0.25 of the kernel. However, a "generic"
installation or a similar setup should apply as well.
* Where To Get Apache
* Installation
* Configuration
* Starting/Running the Web Server
* What's Next
* About the Author
______________________________________________________________________
WHERE TO GET APACHE
The obvious place to get the latest version of Apache is off of the
Apache web site: http://www.apache.org.
The source distribution file is apache_1.1.1.tar.gz
while the Linux ELF binaries is apache_1.1-linux-ELF.tar.gz.
Grab what you find is necessary...
If you are running Red Hat Linux 4.0 like I am, during the installation
process you are allowed to select whether or not you want to install a
web server. If you do, Red Hat 4.0 includes the latest Apache and installs
everything automatically with a default configuration. This default configurati
on
even RUNS correctly without any modifications! However, even in
this case, please read my notes and preferences regarding installation
in the next section.
Typically, unless you need to add special modules or features, the binary
distribution or the default Red Hat installation should be fine. However,
let's say you wanted to run Apache as a proxy server. In this case, you
would need the source so you can compile the proxy module as part of the
binary.
(Note: I have heard rumors that the binary included with Red Hat 4.0
has some bugs. I have yet to encounter any myself, so take that rumor with
a big grain of salt.)
__________________________________________________________________________
INSTALLATION
I'm not going to cover compiling Apache since it's actually a fairly
painless process and pretty well documented. Given that, let's move on
to actual installation...
Personally, I like to group all the web server files together in a centralized
location. If you are installing this manually, then this is something you
can do from the outset, and I highly suggest doing this since it will reduce
administration headaches.
If you had Apache installed automatically as part of the Red Hat installation
procedure, then things will NOT be centralized! In fact, I thought the
file placement scheme was one of the most confusing I've ever encountered.
Here's what the Red Hat installation does:
web server binaries
/usr/sbin/httpd
/usr/sbin/httpd_monitor
config files
/etc/httpd/conf/*
log files
/etc/httpd/logs/*
web server root
(contains cgi, icons/images, and html files)
/home/httpd/*
I found this to be really disorganized, so I ended up putting mostly
everything under one directory (I left the binaries in /usr/sbin):
mkdir /httpd
mv /etc/httpd/conf /etc/httpd/logs /home/httpd/* /httpd
rmdir /home/httpd
You should end up with:
/httpd/
/cgi-bin
/cgi-src
/conf
/html
/icons
/logs
And then to preserve the original Redhat file locations:
ln -s /httpd /home/httpd
ln -s /httpd/conf /etc/httpd/conf
ln -s /httpd/logs /etc/httpd/logs
Finally, I added this link since I felt that it made more sense:
ln -s /httpd/logs /var/log/httpd
If you are installing and compiling Apache manually, you may want to
have the original source files also located under /httpd (or whichever
directory you have).
__________________________________________________________________________
CONFIGURATION
Apache has three main configuration files: access.conf,
httpd.conf, and srm.conf. If you are running
Red Hat 4.0, these files will already be set with the correct directory
paths. If you centralized the locations of all these files, but made those
symbolic links as I mentioned above, things will still be fine since the
symbolic links preserves where Red Hat installed everything.
If you are doing a "generic" installation or have some other
setup, then you will need to do the following:
In access.conf, change/update these directory entries:
<Directory /httpd/html>
<Directory /httpd/cgi-bin>
In httpd.conf:
ServerRoot /httpd
In srm.conf:
DocumentRoot /httpd/html
Alias /icons/ /httpd/icons/
ScriptAlias /cgi-bin/ /httpd/cgi-bin/
Essentially, these are the necessary directives in the config files that
need to be updated with the new "centralized" organization.
For further configuration options, I will have to give the standard
statement, "Please refer to the docs." :)
__________________________________________________________________________
STARTING/RUNNING THE WEB SERVER
To make a long story short, you simply to need to execute the binary
"httpd". Typically, this is done when the system starts up, in
one of the rc files.
In Red Hat 4.0, it has more of a System V'ish startup style. In
/etc/rc.d/init.d
resides httpd.init, which is the script used
to start and stop httpd.
You can also execute this by hand if you find the need.
For other systems (or a manual install), I suggest starting httpd after
most other services have started (i.e.: put it in rc.local).
A simple line such as
/usr/sbin/httpd &
will suffice.
Obviously, it must start after tcp/ip networking has been started. :)
__________________________________________________________________________
WHAT'S NEXT
Needless to say, I didn't cover actual configuration options
and how to manage your web server. The configuration options
I leave to the Apache manual. Managing the web server itself
depends on what kind of web site you want to run. My own system
does not run a "real" web site; in other words, I don't advertise
it for anything because it serves no real purpose other than for
my own experimentation. However, you are more than welcome to
take a look at it since it does have a bunch of Linux related
links to it. The URL can be found at the end of this article.
Other than that, I would love to hear any comments and/or
criticisms you may have about what I wrote. Originally, my
plan was to write a monthly article about running/managing a
web server under Linux. However, short of actually writing a
manual on configuring Apache (which the Apache documentation
is good enough as a reference), I don't know what else to
write about since there may not be all that much to write
about.
However, one idea for a monthly thing that might be good is
to collect hints, tricks, and other useful information related
to running a web server under Linux. Think of it more as a
"2 cent tips for a linux web server." If anyone is interested
in this, please drop me a note!
* Email: kahn@cs.ucla.edu
* Home page: http://www.cs.ucla.edu/~kahn
* His machine: http://vivian.cs.ucla.edu
__________________________________________________________________________
Copyright &copy; 1996, Andy Kahn
Published in Issue 12 of the Linux Gazette
__________________________________________________________________________
[ TABLE OF CONTENTS ]
[ FRONT PAGE ]
Back
Next
__________________________________________________________________________
"Linux Gazette...making Linux just a little more fun! "
__________________________________________________________________________
[IMAGE]
WELCOME TO THE LINUX WEEKEND MECHANIC!
Published in the December 1996 Edition of the Linux Gazette
Copyright (c) 1996 John M. Fisk <fiskjm@ctrvax.vanderbilt.edu>
The Linux Gazette is Copyright(c) 1996
Specialized Systems Consultants Inc.
__________________________________________________________________________
Time To Become... The Linux Weekend Mechanic!
[IMAGE]
You've made it to the weekend and things have finally slowed down. You
crawl outa bed, bag the shave 'n shower 'cause it's Saturday, grab that
much needed cup of caffeine (your favorite alkaloid), and shuffle down
the hall to the den. It's time to fire up the Linux box, break out the
trusty 'ol Snap-On's, pop the hood, jack 'er up, and do a bit of
overhauling!
__________________________________________________________________________
Table of Contents
* Welcome to the December Weekend Mechanic!
* The Mailbox
* A Tcl/Tk Tar Viewer
* (Tcl/Tk Tar Viewer Source)
* Closing Up Shop...
__________________________________________________________________________
[IMAGE] Welcome to the December Weekend Mechanic!
Well, I'm afraid that the 'ol Weekend Mechanic is going to be a short one this
month. I've got six classes this fall and have finally reached the point in
the semester where I guess they think we're smart enough to start actually
doing things! And so, we're all doing things... LOTS of things, as a
matter of fact. That hallowed barometer of academic industriousness,
Euclid's Little Known "Shave-To-Face" Ratio, is falling
predictably and the No-Doze blood titers are reaching therapeutic levels.
As they say in Tennessee, we're all starting to look like a bunch of rugs...
"...walked all over, drug outside, and beat with a stick!"
Anyway, we're all surviving. All of you out there in Academia Land
know what I'm talking about; all of you who've run the gauntlet already and
have achieved "A Real Life" will smile knowingly. (And will smile
to yourselves, knowing that there is no such thing as "A Real Life")
I've been eating a generous portion of Humble Pie here recently after
last month's Tar Tricks and Find faux pas. I sincerely apologize for
any mis-information and want to gratefully thank all of you who took the time
to drop a note and provide more accurate information. I've gotten permission
from a number of writers to include their letters which can be read below.
They add a good deal more light to the subject!
Thanks guys!
Also, I did manage to eke out a bit of "recreational programming"
time and hacked together a prototype tar archive viewer. This is still
pretty alpha stuff, but it appears to be relatively stable and I've actually
been using it. Any of you who are interested in Tcl/Tk might enjoy
hacking away at this. I'll continue to tinker around with this and, by
January or so, just might have a reasonably working version for all of you to
play around with. If you're interested, have a look at it below.
Anyway, hope you enjoy!
John
Saturday, 23 November 1996
__________________________________________________________________________
[IMAGE] The Mailbox
As I mentioned above, I've been eating a good deal of Humble Pie in the past
couple weeks after last month's articles on using tar and find. Actually,
everyone who wrote was very gracious AND took the time to provide more
accurate information. I was impressed by the spirit in which this was done:
no one was vindictive, no one was demeaning (although there were a few
"raised eyebrow" type letters :-).
Anyway, I owe a great debt to all of you who took the time to write. I REALLY
appreciate it. And to the school teacher from Des Moines, I'm almost
done...
I will always RTFM
I will always RTFM
I will always RTFM
I will always RTFM
I will always RTFM
I will always RTFM...
Thanks folks. Here's the letters...
__________________________________________________________________________
Date: Fri, 01 Nov 1996 15:32:09 +1100
From: Paul Russell <prussell@sydney.trl.telstra.com.au>
To: fiskjm@ctrvax.Vanderbilt.Edu
Subject: Linux Weekend Mechanic: November Edition of the Linux Gazette (#11)
Hi John,
Just reading Linux gazette for the first time, and stumbled
upon your Weekend Mechanic page. I'm sure you're going to get more
mail about this, but I read with some astonishment your "More tar
tricks" section.
My Linux box is currently about 1000kms away, but I believe that
the "tar -tvzf file.tar.gz |tr -s ' ' |cut -d ' ' -f8 |less" can be
replaced with "tar tzf file.tar.gz |less".
I liked it though. If you want a useful pipes example, how about a
"Oops! I untarred in the wrong place and I want to clean up!"
example:
tar tzf file.tar.gz | xargs rm -f 2>/dev/null
tar tzf file.tar.gz | sed 's:[^/]*$::' | sort -ru | xargs rmdir 2>/dev/null
Analysis and improvement is left as an exercise for the reader. 8-)
Enjoy,
Paul.
--
Paul.Russell@RustCorp.com.au "Engineer? So you drive trains?"
Lies, damned lies, and out-of-date documentation.
Currently contracted to Telstra, Sydney.
__________________________________________________________________________
Date: Tue, 05 Nov 1996 11:19:09 -0500
From: "James V. Di Toro III" <karrde@gats.hampton.va.us>
To: fiskjm@ctrvax.Vanderbilt.Edu
Subject: LG #11 Weekend Mech.
Just a few nits on a couple of the things in this piece.
tar ...
Well it sure showed off some neat features of some utilities, but what
you did with that first line can be solved by omitting one character from
the tar options.
tar -tzf | less == tar -tvzf |tr -s ' ' |cut -d ' ' -f8 |less
which vs. type ...
which will also give you similar results on aliases and built-ins:
which ls
ls: aliased to /bin/ls $LS_OPTIONS
which complete
complete: shell built-in command.
This is with tcsh 6.05, YMMV.
--
================================================================ /| |\
James V. Di Toro III | "I've got a bad feeling / |_| \/\
System Administrator, GATS, Inc.| about This" |()\ / ||
karrde@gats.hampton.va.us | |---0---_|
W: (757) 865 - 7491 | -various \ / \ /
^:::^
(Just a quick note about this: James is right, 'which' works as he wrote
above if you're using tcsh [because it is a shell built-in??]. Those of you
running BASH and using the 'which' executable will find that the executable
does not return information on aliases, shell functions, and shell built-in's.
I wrote James back after trying this and he concurred.)
__________________________________________________________________________
Date: Wed, 06 Nov 1996 11:14:51 +1100
From: Keith Owens <kaos@edison.dialix.com.au>
To: fiskjm@ctrvax.Vanderbilt.Edu
Subject: More on locate and update
Saw your note on locate/find in LJ #11. According to my manual page,
"locate lynx" is equivalent to "locate '*lynx*'", locate does automatic
insertion of leading and trailing '*' if the pattern contains no
metacharacters. "locate 'lynx*'" will only find files that start with
lynx (i.e. no leading directory or /).
I find the locate command and its associated updatedb command to be very
useful for indexing ftp lists and cdroms. Most sites and cdroms have a
list of the files in one form or another but they are not easily
searched. Some are in find format (directory included in file name),
others in ls -lR (directory is separate). I created updatedb.gen (from
updatedb) to read a file list and build a locate style database,
locate.gen then searches that database.
For example, go to sunsite, /pub/Linux, download 00-find.Linux.gz, then
run
updatedb.gen sunsite 00-find.Linux.gz
which builds /var/spool/locate/locatedb.sunsite. "locate.gen sunsite
file" does an instant search of sunsite for the file, obviously you have
to fetch a fresh copy of the listing occasionally.
Instead of searching several InfoMagic cdroms for a file, mount the
first one and
updatedb.gen im /cdrom/00-find
"locate.gen im file" then does a very fast search of the entire set of
InfoMagic cdroms and can be done without mounting any cdroms.
updatedb.gen and locate.gen are attached. updatedb.gen works out which
format the input file is in and selects the field(s) containing the
filename.
--
*** O . C. Software -- Consulting Services for Storage Management, ***
*** Disaster Recovery, Security, TCP/IP, Intranets and Internet ***
*** for mainframes (IBM, Fujitsu, Hitachi) and Unix. ***
(The idea of using 'locate' on a CD collection sounds like a GREAT idea. I've
not yet had the time to try it, but plan to give this little gem a whirl!)
__________________________________________________________________________
Date: Fri, 08 Nov 1996 09:21:52 -0600 (CST)
From: John Benavides <benavide@mailhost.rsn.hp.com>
To: fiskjm@ctrvax.Vanderbilt.Edu
Subject: How to use "-name" option on find command
In your column, Weekend Mechanic, in the "Linux Gazette" (Oct
1996 issue) on your Web page at:
http://www.ssc.com/lg/issue11/wkndmech.html
You say:
> The way that it should work is that you give locate a filename pattern
> which it searches for. Such as:
>
> locate lynx*
>
> However, when I tried this on my system, it simply returned nothing.
> Using locate lynx worked like a charm.
>
> Got me.
Whenever you use any command with arguments that need to contain wild
card characters, don't forget to quote those wild card characters from the
shell. I teach this to my students in my introductory UNIX class.
Remember the shell gets first crack at the wild card. So the
shell will try to match "lynx*" with any file names in your local
directory.
Use the echo command to see what the shell expands your command line to for the
buggy command:
echo locate lynx*
This will give you an idea of what the "locate" command is really
searching for.
Any one of the three commands below will prevent the shell
from processing your wild card pattern.
locate "lynx*"
locate 'lynx*'
locate lynx\*
The same is true for your other example with find:
find / -name "lynx*" -print
find / -name 'lynx*' -print
find / -name lynx\* -print
Regards,
John
--
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
+ John Benavides | Hewlett Packard - CxD +
+ 3000 Waterview Parkway | e-mail:benavide@rsn.hp.com +
+ Richardson, TX 75080 | (972) 497-4771 Fax: (972) 497-4245 +
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
__________________________________________________________________________
Date: Fri, 08 Nov 1996 16:34:23 +0100
From: Robert Budzynski <Robert.Budzynski@fuw.edu.pl>
To: fiskjm@ctrvax.Vanderbilt.Edu
Subject: why locate didn't work as expected...
Hi John,
Why didn't 'locate lynx*' work for you ? Well, here's what happens when
you issue that command: first, bash (or any standard shell) attempts to
match the pattern 'lynx*' against names of files present in the
_current_ directory. If it finds any that match, they are _all_
substituted into the command line and passed on as arguments to locate.
This sure isn't what you want... If (as was apparently the case) none
are found, the pattern is left unexpanded... so why didn't it work?
Well, to quote the man page:
If a pattern is a plain string -- it contains no metachar- acters --
locate displays all file names in the database that contain that
string anywhere. If a pattern does con- tain metacharacters, locate
only displays file names that match the pattern exactly. As a
result, patterns that contain metacharacters should usually begin
with a `*', and will most often end with one as well. The exceptions
are patterns that are intended to explicitly match the beginning or
end of a file name.
So, there's your answer! 'Match the pattern exactly' means here that
the fully qualified pathname (starting with a /) must match.
The other lesson here may be summarized with another quote from
the locate(1) man page:
Patterns that contain metacharacters should be quoted to protect
them from expansion by the shell.
This applies as well to patterns passed to 'find', i.e.
$ find /usr/local -name 'lynx*' -print
is the 'politically correct' command line to use.
Merry Linuxing!
--
######################################################################
Robert J. Budzynski
Institute of Theoretical Physics
Warsaw University
Warsaw, Poland
######################################################################
__________________________________________________________________________
Date: Sat, 09 Nov 1996 02:11:00 +0000
From: Phil Bevan <philb@innotts.co.uk>
To: fiskjm@ctrvax.Vanderbilt.Edu
Subject: LG issue 11 - find
Hello John,
Glad to see you've not abandoned the Gazette totally. One thing though
on your article about 'find'. I've noticed in the past when using the
find command, it has not found all the files when using wild card
characters such as '*' (as in your example find /usr/local -name lynx*
-print). I discovered from one of the linux newsgroups, that the shell
tries to expand lynx* first, and it is possible that find will not
search all the directories. To stop bash from expanding the filename
enclose it in single quotes, as below:
find /usr/local -name 'lynx*' -print
Bet you I'm not the first to point his out :)
Regards
Phil
--
This Sig intentionally left blank
__________________________________________________________________________
Again, thanks to EVERYONE that took the time to write! I know that y'all are
busy and I appreciate corrections, clarifications, and suggestions.
John
__________________________________________________________________________
[IMAGE] A Tcl/Tk Tar Viewer
I'm going to apologize at the outset -- it's Saturday and I've still got a
small mountain of work to do for the upcoming week and so I just don't have
the time to write an awful lot about this. I'll try to summarize the
highlights of what I was attempting to do and what actually worked.
To recap from last month, I'd been trying to find a way to get a simple
listing of all the files in a tar archive. As was pointed out, this can be
done using:
tar -tf file.tar
tar -tzf file.tar.gz
depending on whether the file is a tar or tar+gzip file. (I'm assuming that
you're using GNU tar, BTW, not all implementations of tar support the '-z'
option which uses 'gzip' to either compress or uncompress an archive.)
The purpose for doing this was to allow you to get a tar listing and then use
this as an argument to tar to print that file to standard output. For
example, if your tar archive looked like:
xtoolwait-1.0/
xtoolwait-1.0/xtoolwait.c
xtoolwait-1.0/Imakefile
xtoolwait-1.0/COPYING-2.0
xtoolwait-1.0/xtoolplaces.diff
xtoolwait-1.0/CHANGES
xtoolwait-1.0/README
xtoolwait-1.0/xtoolwait.man
xtoolwait-1.0/xtoolwait-1.0.lsm
then using a command like:
tar -tzOf xtoolwait-1.0.tar.gz xtoolwait-1.0/README |less
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
would allow you to view the file 'README' by piping it to 'less'. That was
the reason for needing to get a listing of just the filenames in the archive
-- to be able to invoke tar with the '-O' option so that it would output the
results to standard output.
Now, the thing is that tcl/tk will allow you to capture the output of a file
using 'open'. Coupled with 'fileevent', this allows you to direct the output
of a command to a text widget for viewing and editing. So this was the
direction I was going.
I've actually got this working now. It's definitely NOT a showpiece of tcl/tk
coding: this 'ol thing wouldn't win any programming contests. Still, as a
quick prototype (I hacked it out in two days...), it gave me some ideas about
how to put together something a bit more sturdy. Basically, as it stand right
now, its features include:
* a directory browser that allows you to select files and navigate
around your file system easily
* a tar archive viewer which lists the files contained within the
archive
* a File Viewer which can be invoked by double-clicking on a file;
it allows you to edit, save, and print the file
* a Save As dialog box which allows you to save (or append) a file
in the tar archive to disk
* a small Print Dialog which prompts you to input a file print
command (defaults to 'lpr') and print the file
As I said, it is actually working right now and I've used it several times
over the past couple weeks.
Parenthetically, I've been using Tcl 7.5 and Tk 4.1 for development. I
don't know if any of you have tried compiling this from sources. Using the
supplied makefile, I was unable to get the shared libraries to compile. It's
been a while since I did this but, if memory serves me correctly, it fails on
some system test and thus refuses to compile the shared libs. I did find,
however, that by adding '-fPIC' to the CFLAGS, copying the *.o files to a
separate directory, and then using something like:
gcc -shared -Wl,-soname,libtcl.so.0.7 -o libtcl.so.0.7.5 *.o
that I was able to compile a working shared library. I'd be interested in
hearing from anyone else who's tried to compile tcl or tk from sources. I'll
quickly admit that I'm still a neophyte when it come to C and UNIX/Linux
programming. The above works, but if it is "Not The Right Way" then
please drop a note.
That said, let's take the penny tour...
Directory Browser
To begin, when you start the tarvu program, it displays this directory
browser. The path is displayed at the top along with the name of the file (if
any) which has been selected. You navigate to a new directory by either:
* clicking on the 'Up..' button to go to the parent directory
* double clicking on a directory within the listbox
* entering a valid directory name in the 'Path:' entry box
If you single click on a file, then its name is displayed after the 'File:'
label. Single clicking on a directory has no effect. If you click on a tar
or tar+gzip file, then you can use the 'View/Edit...' button to view a listing
of the contents of the file. Double clicking on the file has the same effect.
Tar Listing
Browser
After a tar or tar+gzip file has been selected, the 'Tar Browser' allows you
view the contents of the tar archive. Now, you can use the full set of
operation buttons to either view/edit, save, or print a specific file within
the tar archive. Single click on a file within the listing and then click on
any of the operation buttons. If you double-click on a file, then it defaults
to the file viewer:
Directory Browser
The viewer allows you to view, edit, save, or print the contents of a file
within the archive. The name of the file is displayed in the upper left hand
corner. To either widen or lengthen the edit window, click on 'Widen Window'
or 'Lengthen Window'. Now, you can manually resize the window, but doing so
does not automatically resize the text widget. I've not been successful in
figuring out how to do this, although I suspect that it can be done. Until
then, use the buttons... :-)
If you edit the file and want to save it to disk (NOT back to the archive),
then click on the 'Save As...' button. This brings up a directory browser
which allows you to save the contents of the editing buffer:
Directory Browser
This allows you to save or append the contents of the editing buffer to a
file. The directory browser features work in a fashion similar to what was
previously described. Because this was a quick hack, I simply coded another
proc to provide the save/append feature for a FILE within the archive. So, if
you go back to the tar archive list, select a file, and then click on the
'Save...' button, you'll see a directory browser which looks similar to the
one above.
Finally, if you click on the 'Print...' button, a small dialog box is
displayed:
Directory Browser
You simply input the command to print to your printer and click on the 'Print'
button.
Pretty simple, eh?
As I mentioned before, this is no paragon of programming brilliance. This was
a rather quick hack, but it does show what can be VERY EASILY done with even
the basic tools of Tcl/Tk. If anyone is interested in this, you can get the
tcl script here:
TCL TAR ARCHIVE VIEWER SOURCE
For those of you using Netscape, hold down the Shift button and single click
with the left mouse button on this link to save the file to disk. Call it
whatever you'd like, and then set the permissions to something like:
% chmod 755 tclvu.tcl
I've got mine symlinked to 'tclvu' to make it easier to remember.
In all honesty, there are LOTS of things that could be done to make this more
useful or efficient. Just a couple TODO's that come to mind include:
* Allow viewing of regular files in a directory
* Allow unarchiving a tar archive to a selected directory
* Allow archiving of selected files to an archive
* Add online help
The thing is, there are all kinds of fun things that can be done. This simple
tcl/tk wrapper for tar just lets you view, edit, and print files at the
moment. The tar manual page can give you further ideas about what could be
done.
For those of you needing a "real" tar utility, I'd strongly suggest
using Miguel de Icaza's GREAT program Midnight Commander. You
can pick up the sources at any ftp site which mirrors the GNU utilities such
as:
GA TECH'S FTP SERVER
Also, there's a program called xtar which is found at the
ftp.x.org ftp site. I've honestly not seen this mentioned anywhere and
yet it's a VERY handy little program that allows you to browse and view the
contents of a tar archive. You'll need the Motif development libraries to
compile this, however.
Well, as I said, this was a pretty quick tour. Please feel free to hack away
at this and enjoy it. I tried to comment the code, so you should have some
idea about my mental state when the thing was written.
Hope you enjoy!
John
Saturday 23 November 1996
__________________________________________________________________________
[IMAGE] Closing Up Shop...
Well, I'd hoped to include a lot more stuff in this month's WM column, but
time has completely gotten away from me and it's already almost dinner time
(and no homework done yet... :-). I must admit that I enjoy doing this a LOT
more than Linear Algebra (...sorry Dr. Powell, it's still a GREAT course :-)
So, what are the rest of you guys working on out there...?
I upgraded my home system over this past summer to a Cyrix P-166+ machine with
a Triton II MB, 32 MB EDO RAM, Diamond Stealth Video VRAM graphics card,
Toshiba 8X CDROM, and CTX 1765GME monitor. I dropped in the old Maxtor 1.6
Gig drive from my previous machine and have just gotten a second Maxtor 2.0
drive (so Linux can finally have its own drive!). I'll be installing this and
reinstalling much of the system over Christmas Break. If this sounds like a
brewing "mail brown-out", you're probably right... :-)
I've also gotten pretty enamoured with Tcl/Tk as you might have noticed. This
is a seriously fun programming environment. Now, I know that this isn't for
everyone and there are folks who've tried tcl that just frankly didn't like
the language. Still, there are a growing number of truly impressive add on's
including tclX, BLT, Tix, and [incr tcl] that add a lot of nice
features. I'd especially commend to the Tix extension. It provides a
set of meta-widgets such as directory browsers, tabbed windows, and the
like. It precludes your having to code these types of windows and gives you
a higher level widget to work with. If you're interested in this, then
definitely run the demo program as it give you a IMPRESSIVE tour of the widget
set.
Finally, I've just gotten a microphone for my sound card (SB Vibra 16 PnP) and
have been messing around with creating sound files.
Pretty cool :-)
I'm still not completely facile with all the basics, but I've gotten a few
snippets recorded, including a "Happy Birthday" rendition (my wife
and me) to our sister-in-law. It'd curl 'ol Lawrence Welk's toes, I suspect,
but it was fun to send this rascal out via email. You know... "reach out
and touch someone..."
Well, here's wishing you Happy Linux'ing!
Since I didn't have time this month do to a "Christmas Shopping
List" of Linux goodies, I'll try to get this in next month so that after
you return all those bottles of aftershave and the argyle socks, you'll know
what to do with the money... :-)
From our household to yours,
Wishing you a Merry and Joyous Christmas Season!
John
Saturday 23 November 1996
__________________________________________________________________________
[IMAGE] If you'd like,
drop me a note at:
John M. Fisk <fiskjm@ctrvax.vanderbilt.edu>
Version Information:
$Id: issue12.txt,v 1.1.1.1 2002/08/14 22:26:56 dan Exp $
__________________________________________________________________________
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__________________________________________________________________________
[IMAGE]
LINUX GAZETTE BACK PAGE
Copyright &copy; 1996 Specialized Systems Consultants, Inc.
For information regarding copying and distribution of this material see
the Copying License.
__________________________________________________________________________
CONTENTS:
* About This Month's Authors
* Not Linux
[IMAGE]
__________________________________________________________________________
ABOUT THIS MONTH'S AUTHORS
__________________________________________________________________________
Randy Appleton
Randy Appleton is a professor of Computer Science at Northern Michigan
University. Randy got his Ph.D. at the University of Kentucky. He has
been involved with Linux since before version 0.9. Current research
includes high performance pre-fetching file systems, with a coming port to
the 2.X version of Linux. Other interests include airplanes, especially
home-built ones.
Larry Ayers
Larry Ayers lives on a small farm
in northern Missouri, where he is currently engaged in building a
timber-frame house for his family. He operates a portable band-saw mill,
does general woodworking, plays the fiddle and searches for rare
prairie plants, as well as growing shiitake mushrooms. He is also
struggling with configuring a Usenet news server for his local ISP.
John M. Fisk
John Fisk is most noteworthy as the former editor of the
Linux Gazette.
After three years as a General Surgery resident and
Research Fellow at the Vanderbilt University Medical Center,
John decided to "hang up the stethoscope", and pursue a
career in Medical Information Management. He's currently a full
time student at the Middle Tennessee State University and hopes
to complete a graduate degree in Computer Science before
entering a Medical Informatics Fellowship. In his dwindling
free time he and his wife Faith enjoy hiking and camping in
Tennessee's beautiful Great Smoky Mountains. He has been an avid Linux fan,
since his first Slackware 2.0.0 installation a year and a half
ago.
Michael J. Hammel
Michael J. Hammel,
is a transient software engineer with a background in
everything from data communications to GUI development to Interactive Cable
systems--all based in Unix. His interests outside of computers
include 5K/10K races, skiing, Thai food and gardening. He suggests if you
have any serious interest in finding out more about him, you visit his home
pages at http://www.csn.net/~mjhammel. You'll find out more
there than you really wanted to know.
Andy Kahn
Andy Kahn is currently a graduate student in Computer Science at
UCLA, praying to finish his Masters degree sometime in the foreseeable
near future. His primary research area is in parallel I/O. On
the side, Andy also does Unix System Administration at Activision,
a well-known computer games company. He also has had previous jobs,
including system administration and programming by masquerading
as a Software Engineer. Andy has been an on and off Linux
enthusiast since his first SLS v1.02 installation over 3 years ago.
Jesper Pedersen
Jesper Pedersen lives in Odense, Denmark, where he has studied computer
science
at Odense University since 1990. He expects to obtain his degree in a year
and
a half. He has a great job as a system manager at the
university, and also teaches computer science two hours a week. He is very
proud of his "child," The Dotfile Generator, which he wrote as part of his
job at the university. The idea for it came a year and a half ago, when he
had
to learn how to configure Emacs by reading about 700 pages of the lisp
manual.
It started small, but as time went by, it expanded into a huge project.
In his spare time, he does Yiu-Yitsu, listens to music, drinks beer and has
fun with
his girl friend. He loves pets, and has a 200 litre aquarium and two very
cute
rabbits.
Robert G. Savage
Robert G. "Doc" Savage received his BSE(EE) at Arizona State University in
1974 and is now a senior networking engineer working for a
telecommunications consulting firm near St. Louis. An Internet veteran
since the earliest days of the Arpanet, he has designed, engineered,
installed, administered and consulted for a wide range of UNIX, Novell and
Microsoft network systems. He enjoys listening to Garrison Keelor's radio
broadcasts, reading Tom Clancy's books, acting in community theater,
cruising in his 300ZX twin turbo, tinkering with a tower server in his
living room (the hood is always up), and relaxing at the end of the day
with his two Siamese cats and a pint of Guinness.
Manuel Soriano
Manual Soriano lives in El Perello, Valencia, Spain. He works for a Swiss
based company called Dapsys S. A. that provides the Information Retrieval
Imaging System called IRIS. His job calls for quite of bit of traveling.
He's
been in Swizterland, France, and most recently, Prince George, Canada.
His FEddi-HOWTO article is the English translation of his article
FEddi-COMO that appeared in the October issue.
[IMAGE]
__________________________________________________________________________
NOT LINUX
__________________________________________________________________________
Thanks to all our authors, not just the ones above, but also those who wrote
giving us their tips and tricks and making suggestions. Thanks also to our
new mirror sites.
Major "Not Linux" projects on my plate these days are the repair of a quilt
and Thanksgiving.
The "Sunbonnet Sue" quilt was
made for my sister Gaynell when she about 5, and is turning into more work than
I expected. But when I am finished, it will be beautiful again and
will make a good Christmas present for her.
Thanksgiving feels like an even
bigger project than the quilt repair--I get to host this year, which means
I do the major part of the cooking. I will be serving traditional Southern
fare, since I was raised in Texas. I feel like I should already be cooking
to be ready on time. At any rate, I am looking forward to visiting with
family, and eating too much. :-) I am also looking forward to the long
weekend--four days off from work feels like a vacation!
Have fun!
__________________________________________________________________________
Marjorie L. Richardson
Editor, Linux Gazette gazette@ssc.com
__________________________________________________________________________
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