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<!--=================================================================-->
<H1 align="center">Table of Contents <BR>May 1998 Issue #28</H1>
<P> <HR> <P>
<table><tr>
<td rowspan=4>
<UL>
<LI><A HREF="../index.html">The Front Page</A>
<LI><A HREF="./lg_mail28.html">The MailBag</A>
<ul>
<li><a HREF="./lg_mail28.html#help">Help Wanted</a>
<li><a HREF="./lg_mail28.html#gen">General Mail</a>
</ul>
<LI><A HREF="./lg_tips28.html">More 2 Cent Tips</A>
<ul>
<li><a HREF="./lg_tips28.html#shut">Re: Shutdown and Root</a>
<li><a HREF="./lg_tips28.html#core">Re: Core Dumps</a>
<li><a HREF="./lg_tips28.html#easter">Easter Egg in Netscape</a>
<li><a HREF="./lg_tips28.html#host">Host Name Completion</a>
<li><a HREF="./lg_tips28.html#login">Running Without Logging In</a>
<li><a HREF="./lg_tips28.html#eggs">Animation Easter Eggs in Netscape</a>
<li><a HREF="./lg_tips28.html#user">Re: Usershell on Console Without Logging In</a>
<li><a HREF="./lg_tips28.html#win95">Backing Up Win95 Files</a>
<li><a HREF="./lg_tips28.html#xterm">Re: X-term for MS-Windows</a>
<li><a HREF="./lg_tips28.html#shut2">Re: Shutdown and Root Again</a>
<li><a HREF="./lg_tips28.html#atapi">Running an ATAPI Zip Drive</a>
<li><a HREF="./lg_tips28.html#binary">New Binaries Script</a>
<li><a HREF="./lg_tips28.html#script">Script Contributions</a>
<li><a HREF="./lg_tips28.html#macker">Re: Core Dumps Again</a>
</ul>
<LI><A HREF="./lg_bytes28.html">News Bytes</A>
<ul>
<li><a HREF="./lg_bytes28.html#general">News in General</a>
<li><a HREF="./lg_bytes28.html#software">Software Announcements</a>
</ul>
<LI><A HREF="./lg_answer28.html">The Answer Guy</A>, by James T. Dennis
<LI><A HREF="./pizzi.html">BigBen: Network Monitor Utility</a>, by Cesare
Pizzi
<LI><A HREF="./hamilton.html">Building an Audio CD Player, Part 1</a>, by
Michel Hamilton
<LI><A HREF="./hall.html">COMDEX/Spring 1998</a>, by Jon "maddog" Hall
<LI><A HREF="./journeay.html">Home Networking With Linux</a>, by Glen
Journeay
<LI><A HREF="./nielsen.html">IPmasquerading with Roadrunner or Second
Ethernet Card</a>, by Mark Nielsen
<LI><A HREF="./winer.html">Keep Your Eye On The Prize</a>, by Dave Winer
<LI><A HREF="./vermeer1.html">Linux Fax for Dummies</a>, by Martin Vermeer
<LI><A HREF="./schweizer.html">Marketing Linux</a>, by Jim Schweizer
<LI><A HREF="./poel.html">Product Review: Music Publisher</a>,
by Bob van der Poel
<LI><A HREF="./celestino.html">Book Review: Netscape IFC In a Nutshell</a>,
by R. J. Celestino
<LI>New Release Reviews, by Larry Ayers
<ul>
<li><A HREF="./ayers1.html">The Xfstt True-Type Font Server</a>
<li><A HREF="./ayers2.html">Updates to Past Reviews</a>
</ul>
<LI>Open Source Summit
<ul>
<li><A HREF="./raymond.html">Open Source Summit</a>, by Eric Raymond
<li><A HREF="./rossum.html">Open Source Summit Trip Report</a>, by Guido
van Rossum
<li><A HREF="./oreilly.html">Open Source Summit Press Release</a>, from
O'Reilly & Associates
</ul>
<LI><A HREF="./vermeer2.html">A Tale in Writing</a>, by Martin Vermeer
<li><A HREF="./gonnerman.html">Where Nothing Else Will Do</A>, by Chris
Gonnerman
<LI><A HREF="./lg_backpage28.html">The Back Page</A>
<ul>
<li><a HREF="./lg_backpage28.html#authors">About This Month's Authors</a>
<li><a HREF="./lg_backpage28.html#notlinux">Not Linux</a>
</UL>
</UL>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align=center>
<A HREF="./linuxexpo.html">
<img src="../gx/linuxexpo.gif" border=0 alt="">
</a>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align=center>
<A HREF="lg_answer28.html">
<img src="../gx/dennis/answerwiz-255.gif" border=0 alt="">
</a><P>
<A HREF="lg_answer28.html"><i>The Answer Guy</i></a>
</td>
</tr><tr>
<td align=center>
<!-- <A HREF="gm.html"> -->
<IMG SRC="../gx/hammel/banner-3.gif" border=0 alt="">
<P><font color="maroon"><I>The Graphics Muse Will Return</I></font>
<!-- </a> -->
</td>
</tr>
</table>
<P> <HR><P>
<!--=============================================================-->
<A HREF="./issue28.txt">TWDT 1 (text)</A><BR>
<A HREF="./issue28.html">TWDT 2 (HTML)</A><BR>
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.
<!--=============================================================-->
<P> <HR><P>
Got any <I>great</I> ideas for improvements? Send your
<A HREF="mailto:gazette@ssc.com">comments, criticisms, suggestions
and ideas.</A>
<P><hr><p>
This page written and maintained by the Editor of <I>Linux Gazette</I>,
<A HREF="mailto: gazette@ssc.com">gazette@ssc.com</A>
<H4>"Linux Gazette...<I>making Linux just a little more fun!</I>"</H4>
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<H2><a NAME="mail"><IMG SRC="../gx/mailbox.gif" ALIGN=MIDDLE ALT=" ">
The Mailbag!</a> </H2>
Write the Gazette at <A HREF="mailto:gazette@ssc.com"> gazette@ssc.com</A>
</td><td>
<H3>Contents:</H3>
<ul>
<li><a HREF="./lg_mail28.html#help">Help Wanted -- Article Ideas</a>
<li><a HREF="./lg_mail28.html#gen">General Mail</a>
</ul>
</td></tr></table>
</center>
<a name="help"></a>
<p><hr><p>
<!-- =================================================================== -->
<center><H3><font color="maroon">Help Wanted -- Article Ideas</font></H3></center>
<P> <HR> <P>
<!--====================================================================-->
<IMG ALT=" " SRC="../gx/envelope.gif">
Date: Wed, 1 Apr 1998 23:13:13 +0200<BR>
From: Tomas Valusek, <A
HREF="mailto:tvalusek@vs.inext.cz">tvalusek@vs.inext.cz </A> <BR>
Subject: MIDI on Linux
<P>
I'm trying to understand how is MIDI supported on Linux. Can you write a
detailed article about it?
<P>
Tomas Valusek
<P> <HR> <P>
<!--====================================================================-->
<IMG ALT=" " SRC="../gx/envelope.gif">
Date: Thu, 02 Apr 1998 15:59:18 +0800<BR>
From: Kevin Ng, <A HREF="mailto:kng@HK.Super.NET">kng@HK.Super.NET</A> <BR>
Subject: <B>Patch troubleshooting</B>
<P>
It is common nowadays for s/w to be delivered in form of patches, which
makes sense in terms of saving network bandwidth and time.
However, as a end user, when somehow a patch fails, I don't know what do
do, except email to the original author.
<P>
I'd therefore like to see an article describing patches, i.e.,
<ul>
<li>what are they for ?
<li>How to apply one ?
<li>How to create one ?
<li>How to check integrity of s/w patch
<li>what to do if the patch gives you errors ?
</ul>
Kevin (from Hong Kong)
<P> <HR> <P>
<!--====================================================================-->
<IMG ALT=" " SRC="../gx/envelope.gif">
Date: Mon, 30 Mar 1998 16:51:09 -0800<BR>
From: Nate Daiger, <A HREF="mailto:daiger@newdream.net">daiger@newdream.net</A> <BR>
Subject: <B>HELP--Utility for changing NTFS partition sizes</B>
<P>
I want to dynamically change my NTFS partition to install Linux, but can
only find resizing utilities for FAT. If no such utility exists, is there a
way to install Linux on an NTFS partition?
<P>
Nate Daiger
<P> <HR> <P>
<!--====================================================================-->
<IMG ALT=" " SRC="../gx/envelope.gif">
Date: Tue, 31 Mar 1998 22:33:39 -0500<BR>
From: Ahmad Faiz, <A
HREF="mailto:AFAIZ@cstp.umkc.edu">AFAIZ@cstp.umkc.edu </A> <BR>
Subject: <B>Printing with Linux</B>
<P>
I'm running Red Hat 5.0 on my machine, and I've just bought a HP DeskJet
722C printer, but I couldn't get it to work. I asked around on the IRC
channels, and so far everyone has answered that Linux does not support
it - is it a windows-only printer?
<P>
If so, is it possible to write a driver for it? or does anyone know of
where I can get my hands on the driver (if it's already been written, of
course). I would love to try and write one, but unfortunately I'm new to
Linux and to programming.
<P>
any help would be appreciated...thanks!
<P>
Faiz
<P> <HR> <P>
<!--====================================================================-->
<IMG ALT=" " SRC="../gx/envelope.gif">
Date: Wed, 1 Apr 1998 16:00:19 -0500 (EST)<BR>
From: Nordic Boy, <A
HREF="mailto:jklaas@cs.albany.edu">jklaas@cs.albany.edu </A> <BR>
Subject: <B>SysV init for Slackware</B>
<P>
I am wondering if someone out there knows of a package to change
Slackware's BSDish inittab (and rc.d/rc.*) files to a SysV type structure
with separate rc.d.0, rc.d.1, etc inits. I am asking because I recently
installed KDE and I really like it and I was thinking of using the SysV
init editor that comes with it, but it would be nice to have something to
start with rather than starting from scratch.
<P>
Thanks,
<P>
James Klaas
<P> <HR> <P>
<!--====================================================================-->
<IMG ALT=" " SRC="../gx/envelope.gif">
Date: Thu, 02 Apr 1998 16:03:00 +0800<BR>
From: Kevin Ng, <A HREF="mailto:kng@HK.Super.NET">kng@HK.Super.NET </A>
<BR>
Subject: <B>How to enable swapping</B>
<P>
My machine, which is a Pentium Pro with 64MB memory, reports no swap
space being used. In procinfo, it always report 0K swap space.
<P>
I did a fdisk on /dev/hda and verified that a 64MB partition of type
Linux swap (83) is actually there.
<P>
So why is the swap never being used ?
<P>
Kevin
<P> <HR> <P>
<!--====================================================================-->
<IMG ALT=" " SRC="../gx/envelope.gif">
Date: Fri, 3 Apr 1998 09:35:37 +0200 (CEST)<BR>
From: K. Nikolaj Berntsen, <A
HREF="mailto:berntsen@bkm.dtu.dk">berntsen@bkm.dtu.dk </A> <BR>
Subject: <B>finite elements programs for Linux</B>
<P>
At the department where I am sitting they are planning to buy a PC-bar,
and they intend to put NT on the machines. I would benefit from them
putting Linux on them, since I could then use them for simulations
overnight.
<P>
I started talking to the ones buying it and my arguments stopped, when
they said that one reason for using NT was that they should be running
finite elements programs on them and that the frontier for those programs
was now on the windows platform. I don't know s... about that, so I am
looking for info; should I accept their arguments or is it that he just
does not know what can be gotten for Linux? Commercial Finite Element
Method (FEM) programs are also in the searchlight!
<P>
Happy Computing, Nikolaj
<P> <HR> <P>
<!--====================================================================-->
<IMG ALT=" " SRC="../gx/envelope.gif">
Date: Mon, 06 Apr 1998 13:42:35 -0700<BR>
From: Peter D'Souza, <A HREF="mailto:dsouza@panix.com">dsouza@panix.com</A>
<BR>
Subject: <B>Btrieve Port?</B>
<P>
Our company runs two major apps using a Btrieve database. I was
wondering if anybody has ported either Btrieve server or client to
Linux. It is an extremely fast database (and highly underrated too)
which would be excellent if ported to Linux. I'm not too sure if the
developers of our Btrieve applications would move to Linux, but if I
could test a Linux-based solution with sample datasets, perhaps they'd
be more amenable to the idea of moving to a Linux platform (as an
alternative, at least).
<P>
Peter D'Souza
<P> <HR> <P>
<!--====================================================================-->
<IMG ALT=" " SRC="../gx/envelope.gif">
Date: Wed, 08 Apr 1998 11:12:53 +0200<BR>
From: Denny &Aring;berg, <A HREF="mailto:Denny@ele.kth.se">Denny@ele.kth.se</A>
<BR>
<P>
Hi, I'm tired of starting my X-session with 'startx -- -bpp 16'
to get 16 biplanes instead of the default 8. How do I get xdm
to run with 16 bpp? If I use it now, it starts X with 8bpp on my
Red Hat 5 installation.
<P>
cheers,<BR>
Denny &Aring;berg, Sweden
<P> <HR> <P>
<!--====================================================================-->
<IMG ALT=" " SRC="../gx/envelope.gif">
Date: Sat, 11 Apr 1998 17:18:11 +0000<BR>
From: pheret, <A HREF="mailto:pheret@linex.com">pheret@linex.com</A>
<BR>
Subject: <B>floppy problems</B>
<P>
Hi there. Okay, i don't know if this is a floppy problem, or what,
but here goes.
<P>
I am able to mount my diskette, but when I try to copy something from
the disk to my hard drive I get this error:
<PRE>
floppy0: disk absent or changed during operation
end_request: I/O error, dev 02:00, sector 1
bread in fat_access failed
cp: &lt;file name&gt;: I/O error
</PRE>
Is this because it is mounted umsdos? Should I mount it something
else?
<P>
I am running Linux 2.0.0 on an AST ascentia950n. I only have my basic
system right now because I can't get my floppies to copy! arrgh.
<P>
anyhow, if you can help me, could you please send suggestions to
pheret@linex.com? Thanks!
<P> <HR> <P>
<!--====================================================================-->
<IMG ALT=" " SRC="../gx/envelope.gif">
Date: Sun, 19 Apr 1998 17:53:47 +0200<BR>
From: <A HREF="mailto:letromb@tin.it">letromb@tin.it</A> <BR>
Subject: <B>cd rom</B>
<P>
Hello.I have the Linux Slackware 2.0.30 Walnut Creek.I installed it on a
Pentium 200 MMX
with a 24x CD-ROM.
During the installation I had to write "ramdisk hdd=cdrom" for reading the
CD-ROM, but after
the installation Linux doesn't see the CD-ROM.
I have an atapi CD-ROM, and when I tried to compile my kernel another time,
I saw that atapi
is the default !!! So I don't understand where is the problem .
What can I do ?
<P>
Thank you for your reply,<BR>
Leonardo
<P> <HR> <P>
<!--====================================================================-->
<IMG ALT=" " SRC="../gx/envelope.gif">
Date: Sun, 19 Apr 1998 13:45:54 +0000<BR>
From: Jason Powell, <A
HREF="mailto:jay@Lauren.dyn.ml.org">jay@Lauren.dyn.ml.org </A> <BR>
Subject: <B>Red Hat Linux 5</B>
<P>
Anyone know when Red Hat Linux 5.1 is coming out? I'm running a severely
modified version of 5.0 now, and needless to say it stinks. I can't
compile anything that uses sockets because of broken headers. Suffice to
say, I find it to be quite an annoyance.
<P> <HR> <P>
<!--====================================================================-->
<IMG ALT=" " SRC="../gx/envelope.gif">
Date: Fri, 24 Apr 1998 16:02:09 +0200<BR>
From: Lambert van Eijck, <A
HREF="mailto:eijck@iri.tudelft.nl">eijck@iri.tudelft.nl </A> <BR>
<P>
I'm having a problem with my menus in X.
I can access all menus (by mouse), but the items of those menus which
are WITHIN a "X-box" are not selectable, somehow.
The menus I'm talking about are menus like the 'vt fonts', 'main
options' and 'vt options' in the Xterm.
Or the 'file' and 'page' menu of Ghostscript.
<P>
If anyone has a suggestion on why I can select the menu but not menu
item, please send me a mail.
I'm using Debian 1.3.
<P>
Lambert van Eijck
<P> <HR> <P>
<!--====================================================================-->
<IMG ALT=" " SRC="../gx/envelope.gif">
Date: Sat, 18 Apr 1998 13:12:53 +0800<BR>
From: Guan Yang, <A HREF="mailto:guan@wk.dk">guan@wk.dk</A> <BR>
Subject: <B>How do I set up XDM?</B>
<P>
I have heard that one can login to Linux via XDM. How is this done?
Also, I have also heard that you can get a Linux penguin at boottime or
something like that. Tell!
<P> <HR> <P>
<!--====================================================================-->
<IMG ALT=" " SRC="../gx/envelope.gif">
Date: Sun, 26 Apr 1998 14:42:28 +0200<BR>
From: Ola Ekdahl, <A HREF="mailto:ola.ekdahl@swipnet.se">
ola.ekdahl@swipnet.se</A> <BR>
Subject: <B>Modem</B>
<P>
I am a real Linux newbie and I wonder how do I configure my modem. It's
a sportster flash modem.
<P> <HR> <P>
<!--====================================================================-->
<IMG ALT=" " SRC="../gx/envelope.gif">
Date: Sat, 18 Apr 1998 17:01:59 -0700 <BR>
From: tng, <A HREF="mailto:tng@sosweb.com">tng@sosweb.com</A> <BR>
Subject: <B>getting ppp-2.3.3 to work</B>
<P>
Anyway I finally decided to migrate to linux kernel 2.1.94 mainly
because of the .94 indicates that they are almost ready for the next
stable release...
<P>
The problem I have is ppp 2.3.3 I downloaded is read the README
compiled the required parts and installed flawlessly...Now I CANNOT
conect to my ISP.. They are running a linux network with redhat 5 for
web hosting and slakeware controling the raid and passwords. I'm
running slackware. (redhat would crash every couple days wipeing out my
harddisk...got tired of rebuilding my system...got real good at backups
: ) )
<P>
the ppp-2.2 I was using I had to use the +ua &lt;file&gt; switch where file
contained the username and password for upap auth. after upgrading this
swich was no longer available so I simply added it to my
/etc/ppp/pap-secretes file:
<PRE>
username * password
</PRE>
this didn't work. So, I tried the following:
<PRE>
localhost * username:password
* * username:password
</PRE>
My ISP hangs up on me. I changed the order of the fields every which
way I could thing of but nothing worked. I would like to get my linux
box back on the net because of better transfer times and a more stable
environment. (linux connected at 33.6 and windoz connects and 24.# with
the same serial settings modem init etc.)
<P>
Please help...I hate to downgrade after houres of work upgrading.
<P> <HR> <P>
<!--====================================================================-->
<IMG ALT=" " SRC="../gx/envelope.gif">
Date: Tue, 28 Apr 1998 10:31:14 +0800<BR>
From: Stephen Lee, <A
HREF="mailto:sljm@pobox.org.sg">sljm@pobox.org.sg</A><BR>
Subject: <B>Help Slackware</B>
<P>
I am running Slackware 3.2 and I want my machine to have a name like
stephen.merlin.com when people dial into my machine using PPP or Slip
(My idea is to run some sort of a intranet BBS with poeple dialing in
using Dial-up networking and people can telnet in) but apart from
setting /etc/hostname do I need to run "named" perhaps you can have a
article on how to set up this type of service.
<a name="gen"></a>
<P> <hr> <P>
<!-- =================================================================== -->
<center><H3><font color="maroon">General Mail</font></H3></center>
<P> <HR> <P>
<!--====================================================================-->
<IMG ALT=" " SRC="../gx/envelope.gif">
Date: Wed, 01 Apr 1998 09:45:11 -0600<BR>
From: Mike Hammel, <A
HREF="mailto:mjhammel@graphics-muse.org">mjhammel@graphics-muse.org </A> <BR>
To: STunney@ahcpr.gov <BR>
Subject: <B>grammer sites?</B>
<P>
You recently wrote to the Linux Gazette to express your aggravation
about the use of apostrophes and the world "alot" in many articles and
letters. You are correct - both of these are misused often in email,
even more so in general email not destined for an online magazine.
I often find myself trying to reword a sentence to not use "alot", and
am aggravated with myself for having used it so often I can't think of
more proper wording! You also mentioned that there were online
dictionaries available. My only problem with your letter was you didn't
mention where these could be found. If you have a few references, a
follow up letter to the Gazette would be grealy appreciated. I know I
often have need for a dictionary and a theasaurus in my own writings.
Although I have one of each, they are pocket editions and somewhat
limited. I realize I could look for references via Yahoo or other
online search engines, but I thought since you had mentioned their
existance you might already have the references.
<P>
Thanks. <BR>
Michael J. Hammel, The Graphics Muse
<P> <HR> <P>
<!--====================================================================-->
<IMG ALT=" " SRC="../gx/envelope.gif">
Date: Wed, 01 Apr 1998 11:55:05 +0100<BR>
From: John Hartnup, <A HREF="mailto:slim@ladle.demon.co.uk">
slim@ladle.demon.co.uk</A> <BR>
Subject: <B>Regular Expressions</B>
<P>
Great April issue. Thanks.
<P>
The further reading section for the Regular Expressions in C++ section
misses out the *excellent* O'Reilly book <I>Mastering Regular
Expressions</I>.
<P>
I suspect that most people, like me before I read the book, don't
realise the sheer power behind regexs. It's revloutionised my coding
methods (especially in Perl!).
<P>
John
<P> <HR> <P>
<!--====================================================================-->
<IMG ALT=" " SRC="../gx/envelope.gif">
Date: Thu, 2 Apr 1998 19:51:30 -0500 (EST)<BR>
From: Casimer P. Zakrzewski, <A HREF="mailto:zak@acadia.net">
zak@acadia.net</A> <BR>
Subject: <B>IBM 8514 Monitor and X</B>
<P>
I hope you have the space to publish all of this letter. I would certainly
appreciate it if you did.
Back in the Feb 98 issue of LG, my request for help with installing X on the
old IBM monitor I have was published, and I received a number of replies,
from all over the world as you'll see. I wish to thank:
<PRE>
Corey G. &lt;chds652@BOTCC.COM&gt;;
Todd Jamison &lt;jamison@littonos.com&gt;;
"War Hound" &lt;warhound@worldnet.att.net&gt;;
Justin Dossey &lt;dossey@ou.edu&gt;;
Martin Vermeer &lt;mv@fgi.fi&gt;;
Alexy Yurchenko &lt;ayurchen@bell.aispbu.spb.su&gt;;
Robert Reid &lt;reid@astro.utoronto.ca&gt;; and,
Miss Valarie Frizzle
</PRE>
Many advised using 'xvidtune' to get the proper settings, and a couple
advised me to get RH5.0. I only got around to trying out anything about two
weeks ago.
<P>
Now this may come in handy for anyone else with a monitor like mine. It was
so simple it was foolish. First, I couldn't find 'xvidtune' after
reinstalling RH4.2, so I figured I'd play around with the X configuration.
If I blew the monitor, well.....
<P>
In the RH installation, when I got to the selection of monitors, I bit the
bullet and selected 'custom'. A new menu came up, and guess what? In it
was a listing for an 'IBM 8514 or compatible'. (As the younger people say
today, I said "Duh?") I kind of figured my monitor was as compatible as it
could get!
<P>
After I clicked on that and popped in what freqs I knew, X worked perfectly.
Which is a nice end to the tale, but doesn't address the problem.
The problem was that I was afraid to (as Ms. Frizzle says) 'Take chances;
get messy.' I was too happy webbing along in the Win95 world. To newbies
like me out there, all I can say is: do just that. I advise having a
notebook and pen handy at all times, though, to write down anything you
change and where you changed it.
<P>
Does RTFM sound familiar? Do that, too. A lot. Linux can be confusing,
especially when you're trying to do something supposedly simple like
installing PPP (I'm *still* working on that) and at different web sites you
find three or four different ways to do that, and none seem to work in your
case.
<P>
That's when you take chances and get messy. And you may well (as I've had
to do), hit the big RESET button when it's a total SNAFU, and maybe have to
reinstall. Breaks of the game. And that's where the notebook you've been
writing all your changes comes in very handy. If you try to keep it all in
your head, the kumpewter will win every time.
<P>
In addition, there is a lot of help from off-line sources, like library book
sales. Last year, for example, I picked up an 'outdated' SAMS book
entitled, "X Window System Programming". That was before I even thought
about putting together another 'puter - over eight years from touching a
keyboard. I may never use it; but it only cost $.50.
Local gurus; if you're lucky enough to have them, be subtle in your approach
to them. Like, 'Uh, gee, you can really get your (whatever it is) really
whipping up a storm. Mine kinda...', and let it drag out. Ten years ago
when I was a supposed 'guru', that *always* got me going. And I learned
from a guy who had a really modern system back in the '80s, so I got one
just like it.
<P>
When you say, "TRASH-80", you better smile, pardner! Mod-1, no less. 4K RAM.
It could do just about anything.
<P>
Your ISP may or may not be a help, but try it. Where I am, when I walked in
to sign up and the word Linux passed my lips, I thought they'd hang balls of
garlic around their necks.
<P>
But if you want to do it, you will. I still don't have PPP on Linux, for
example, so under Win95, if I find something tempting on the web, I still
download it. It can always be put on a disk, if necessary - say you don't
have a dos mount - and then tarred to your Linux partitiion.
<P>
But write it down; write it all down.
<P>
That's all I have to say, except I again all those who sent me help.
That's what Linux is all about anyway, isn't it.
<P>
PS: I hope I was correct in the above to please the English purists. If
not: mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maximum culpa.
<P>
Zak
<P> <HR> <P>
<!--====================================================================-->
<IMG ALT=" " SRC="../gx/envelope.gif">
Date: Mon, 6 Apr 1998 14:30:29 -0600 (MDT)<BR>
From: Dale K. Hawkins, <A HREF="mailto:dhawkins@teton.Mines.EDU">
dhawkins@teton.Mines.EDU </A> <BR>
Subject: <B>Bazaar ISP...</B>
<P>
Hello, I was wondering if anyone has ever considered the idea of a bazaar
model for running an ISP. By a Bazaar model, I of caurse refer to the
infamous Cathedral vs. Bazaar model for software development. So what do
I really mean. I mean an ISP by the people for the people. I have found
that most ISP's are very restrictive in how things are run, i.e., many of
the interesting utilities are strictly off limits. For example, I was
recently trying to setup cvs to work as a server. The normal way to do
this is by adding a line to inetd.conf. However, being only a "user" on
my ISP, I had no way to accomplish this. So I though of a more complex
way to set this up, but that method require the use of crontab. Again
this service is not available to Joe User.
<P>
I am very aware of the obvious security issues, but surely there must be a
way to improve the situation in someway. I cannot but think about rms
(Richard Stallman) and some of his lestures on the evils of a sysadmin and
thinking, "how true". But how can one deal with the open system issue,
while still maintain a certain level of system security. I would be very
pleased to see this erupt into a deep and lengthy thread somewhere. Just
my 2 cents.
<P>
-Dale
<P> <HR> <P>
<!--====================================================================-->
<IMG ALT=" " SRC="../gx/envelope.gif">
Date: Sun, 5 Apr 1998 21:12:00 +0100<BR>
From: William Chesters, <A HREF="mailto:williamc@dai.ed.ac.uk">
williamc@dai.ed.ac.uk</A> <BR>
Subject: <B>Linux is not ready for the desktop</B>
<P>
David Wagle ("Evangelism: A Unix Bigot and Linux Advocate's Spewings",
Linux Gazette #27) points out some good reasons why converting people
to Linux can be harder than we expect.
<P>
But he seems to shy away from the natural conclusion. It is not
currently possible to put together a setup which makes it possible for
people to do normal day-to-day work and simple admin without serious
trouble---whether or not they care about abandoning their existing
Windows software. Ergo, Linux is simply not, in all conscience, a
suitable platform for unsupported users who just want to get their
jobs done.
<P>
It very nearly is. I run the maximally friendly Linux installation
with Red Hat, linuxconf, KDE, Netscape and Word Perfect; my experience
is that intelligent non-Unix users can manage fine 90% of the time.
The remaining problems are very obvious, but here there are anyway
spelt out in order of seriousness:
<UL>
<LI> Few of the heavyweight GUI apps and tools mentioned above work
reliably: they suffer at least as many bugs and crashes as
their Windows equivalents (KDE, of course, is still in beta).
While on the other hand ...
<LI> ... The classic Unix applications (emacs, tex <I>etc.</I>) are
rock steady; but they are not wonderful enough, outside certain
narrow (generally academic) domains, to offset the difficulty
and crankiness which everyone freely admits they exhibit.
<LI> The GUI tools cannot handle all day-to-day tasks; and
to achieve the best coverage, you have to use
tools from several different stables, which is
confusing---especially when they interact poorly with each
other.
<LI> Some classes of desktop application simply do not exist for
Linux at any price, or are far inferior to their Windows
counterparts. Try getting something to typeset music.
<LI> Nothing even attempts to achieve the kind of effortless
networking which Windows users take for granted. (Don't
flame me---go and try Windows.)
<LI> The underlying OS does have a few bugs, minor perhaps, but
nevertheless showstoppers for unsupported users. "Just stop
lpd, remove the lp kernel module, modprobe it again and restart
lpd" is not what they want to hear.
</UL>
Yes, progress over the last year or two has been breathtaking. The
developer community has shown itself capable of coming up with really
lovely utilities and tools for non-initiates, and it no longer seems
implausible that Linux will soon develop into something that rivals NT
for ease of use. But in the mean time, proposing Linux to anyone not
already conversant with Unix is tantamount to suggesting a new hobby:
one with tangible rewards, to be sure, but let's admit that's what it
is. Linux is <B>not</B> ready for the desktop.
<P> <hr> <P>
<!--================================================================-->
<center>Published in <i>Linux Gazette</i> Issue 28, May 1998</center>
<!--====================================================================-->
<P> <hr> <P>
<A HREF="./index.html"><IMG SRC="../gx/indexnew.gif" ALT="[ TABLE OF
CONTENTS ]"></A>
<A HREF="../index.html"><IMG SRC="../gx/homenew.gif" ALT="[ FRONT
PAGE ]"></A>
<A HREF="./lg_tips28.html"><IMG SRC="../gx/fwd.gif" ALT=" Next "></A>
<P>
<h5>This page written and maintained by the Editor of <I>Linux Gazette</I>,
<A HREF="mailto: gazette@ssc.com">gazette@ssc.com</A><BR>
Copyright &copy; 1998 Specialized Systems Consultants, Inc. </H5>
<P>
<H4>"Linux Gazette...<I>making Linux just a little more fun!</I>"
</H4>
<P> <hr> <P>
<!-- QUICK TIPS SECTION ================================================== -->
<center>
<H1><A NAME="tips"><IMG ALIGN=MIDDLE ALT="" SRC="../gx/twocent.gif">
More 2&#162; Tips!</A></H1> <BR>
Send Linux Tips and Tricks to <A HREF="mailto:gazette@ssc.com">
gazette@ssc.com
</A></center>
<p><hr><p>
<H3>Contents:</H3>
<ul>
<li><a HREF="./lg_tips28.html#shut">Re: Shutdown and Root</a>
<li><a HREF="./lg_tips28.html#core">Re: Core Dumps</a>
<li><a HREF="./lg_tips28.html#easter">Easter Egg in Netscape</a>
<li><a HREF="./lg_tips28.html#host">Host Name Completion</a>
<li><a HREF="./lg_tips28.html#login">Running Without Logging In</a>
<li><a HREF="./lg_tips28.html#eggs">Animation Easter Eggs in Netscape</a>
<li><a HREF="./lg_tips28.html#user">Re: Usershell on Console Without Logging In</a>
<li><a HREF="./lg_tips28.html#win95">Backing Up Win95 Files</a>
<li><a HREF="./lg_tips28.html#xterm">Re: X-term for MS-Windows</a>
<li><a HREF="./lg_tips28.html#shut2">Re: Shutdown and Root Again</a>
<li><a HREF="./lg_tips28.html#atapi">Running an ATAPI Zip Drive</a>
<li><a HREF="./lg_tips28.html#binary">New Binaries Script</a>
<li><a HREF="./lg_tips28.html#script">Script Contributions</a>
<li><a HREF="./lg_tips28.html#macker">Re: Core Dumps Again</a>
</ul>
<P> <hr> <P>
<!--================================================================-->
<a name="shut"></a>
<H3><IMG ALIGN=BOTTOM ALT="" SRC="../gx/lil2cent.gif">
Re: Shutdown and Root
</H3>
<P>
Date: Wed, 1 Apr 1998 06:31:04 -0500<BR>
From: Buz Cory, <A
HREF="mailto:adm@bzsys.dyn.ml.org">adm@bzsys.dyn.ml.org </A>
<P>
From the Linux Gazette, #27
<blockquote> <font color="navy">
Guido Socher, eedgus@eed.ericsson.se wrote:<BR>
I noticed that many people still login as root before they power down
their system in order to run the command 'shutdown -h now'. This is
really not necessary and it may cause problems if everybody working on a
machine knows the root password.
</font></blockquote>
Very true.
<blockquote> <font color="navy">
Most Linux distributions are configured to reboot if ctrl-alt-delete is
pressed, but this can be changed to run 'shutdown -h now'. Edit your
/etc/inittab ...
</font><PRE>
[snip inittab]
</PRE> <font color="navy">
Now you can just press crtl-alt-delete as normal user and your system
comes down clean and halts.
</font></blockquote>
Not necessarily the best solution.
<P>
It is perfectly safe to simply do a "Three-finger salute", allow a
normal shutdown, and then power down the machine anytime after you get
the message "unmounting filesystems" until you get the message during
reboot saying "mounting all filesystems". Probably the easiest time
would be at the LILO boot prompt (assuming you are using LILO).
<P>
An alternative I used once on a system that did *not* have
&lt;ctrl-alt-del&gt; enabled was to provide a special login that *just* did a
shutdown. There is such a line in my /etc/passwd now that I didn't put
there, so I guess it's from RedHat two years ago.
<P>
Regards,
==Buz :)
<P> <hr> <P>
<!--================================================================-->
<a name="core"></a>
<H3><IMG ALIGN=BOTTOM ALT="" SRC="../gx/lil2cent.gif">
Re: Core Dumps
</H3>
<P>
Date: Wed, 1 Apr 1998 14:31:24 -0500 (EST)<BR>
From: Claude Morin, <A HREF="mailto:klode@isgtec.com">klode@isgtec.com</A>
<P>
Neat idea!
<blockquote> <font color="navy">
Christoph Spiel says:
I'd like to paste some sample output here, but neither can I find a
core dump on my machine, nor do I know a program that generates one.
</font></blockquote>
How to generate a core dump in one easy lesson:
<ul>
<li>run something that reads stdin, like: <tt>cat</tt>
<li>press ^\
</ul>
You've just generated a core dump by sending SIGQUIT to cat.
<P>
If this doesn't work, you probably have core dumps disabled. To check:<BR>
within bash: <tt>ulimit -a</tt><BR>
within tcsh: <tt>limit</tt>
<P>
Lastly, you can <tt>kill -QUIT</tt> various running processes; if they don't
handle the signal, they'll dump core. Remember kids: don't try this as
root :-)
<P>
Claude
<P> <hr> <P>
<!--================================================================-->
<a name="easter"></a>
<H3><IMG ALIGN=BOTTOM ALT="" SRC="../gx/lil2cent.gif">
Easter Egg in Netscape
</H3>
<P>
Date: Thu, 2 Apr 1998 11:25:56 +0800 (HKT)<BR>
From: Romel Flores, <A HREF="mailto:rom@elsi.i-manila.com.ph">
rom@elsi.i-manila.com.ph</A>
<P>
Remember the "about:mozilla" egg? Try it again and the usuall egg
appears. Now, click on the "N" logo. This will open Netscape's home page
as usuall but the meteor shower on the "N" logo is replaced with
Godzilla.
<P>
--Romel Flores
<P> <hr> <P>
<!--================================================================-->
<a name="host"></a>
<H3><IMG ALIGN=BOTTOM ALT="" SRC="../gx/lil2cent.gif">
Host Name Completion
</H3>
<P>
Date: Fri, 3 Apr 1998 01:57:43 -0500 (EST)<BR>
From: John Taylor, <A
HREF="mailto:john@pollux.cs.uga.edu">john@pollux.cs.uga.edu</A> <BR>
<P>
Host name completion with BASH.
<P>
Synopsis : This is how you can use host name completion, which is similar to
file name completion.
<P>
Put your favorite telnet,ftp,rlogin hosts into $HOME/.hosts, in
/etc/hosts format.
<P>
example :
<PRE>
206.184.214.34 linux.kernel.org
</PRE>
then put into .bashrc :
<P>
------ cut here ------
<PRE>
export HOSTFILE="$HOME/.hosts"
# see HOSTFILE in bash man page
UseHosts()
{
for i in $* ; do
eval `echo "$i() { local IFS=\"@\\$IFS\"; set -- \\$1; eval command $i \\\\\\${\\$#} ; }"`
done
}
UseHosts telnet rlogin ftp
</PRE>
------ cut here ------
<P>
Now do a . .bashrc, to re-source the rc file.
You should have new 3 shell functions defined...telnet,rlogin,ftp
do a "set | less" to verify this
<P>
now try this [notice the @]:<BR>
<tt>ftp @lin&lt;tab-key&gt;</tt> which completes to linux.kernel.org
<P>
Well, this breaks doing just a "ftp", but this can be fixed by doing a
"command ftp", (maybe alias this??) which will give you the ftp> prompt.
Rlogin will also break if you have to use the -l switch. This could be
incorporated into UseHosts(), I just haven't had time to do it.
<P>
If you change the .hosts file, you have to logout and login again to use the
new hosts ... don't ask me why.x>
<P>
John Taylor
<P> <hr> <P>
<!--================================================================-->
<a name="login"></a>
<H3><IMG ALIGN=BOTTOM ALT="" SRC="../gx/lil2cent.gif">
Running Without Logging In
</H3>
<P>
Date: Thu, 2 Apr 1998 22:50:26 -0800 (PST)<BR>
From: Jakob Kaivo, <A HREF="mailto:jkaivo@nodomainname.net">
jkaivo@nodomainname.net</A>
<P>
I notice a lot of discussion in Issue 27 of running shells on vt's without
logging in. I'm sure that there are some great solutions, but I would like
to add my 1/50 of a dollar to the heap. A while ago I had a need to keep a
telnet session open on a vt, so I hacked mingetty to do it. Then I
figured, "Hey, why stop there?" So I hacked a little more and came up with
rungetty, which can run any program on a vt. It also (in the newest
release) can run as any user, so a login is no problem, but you can also
tell it to, say, keep a top session running on another vt. It is available
from ftp://ftp.nodomainname.net/pub/rungetty/current (home site),
ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/system/serial/getty, and should find it's
way into ftp://ftp.redhat.com/pub/contrib soon. It is available in
tarball, source RPM, and binary RPM for alpha (glibc2) and i386 (libc5 and
glibc2) on nodomainname, and tarball on sunsite.
<P>
Jakob Kaivo
<P> <hr> <P>
<!--================================================================-->
<a name="eggs"></a>
<H3><IMG ALIGN=BOTTOM ALT="" SRC="../gx/lil2cent.gif">
Animation Easter Eggs in Netscape
</H3>
<P>
Date: Mon, 06 Apr 1998 12:03:41 +0100 (IST)<BR>
From: Caolan McNamara, <A HREF="mailto:Caolan.McNamara@ul.ie">
Caolan.McNamara@ul.ie</A>
<P>
with the release of the netscape source the most important
fact is now known, if your web page is not under<BR>
http://home.netscape.com/people/<BR>
http://www.netscape.com/people/<BR>
http://people.netscape.com/
<P>
then you cant have a mozilla as the animation with the X version of
netscape like http://people.netscape.com/briano and 20 others have
and only jamie zawinski under that tree gets the compass
http://people.netscape.com/jwz
<P>
sigh, and i really hoped that i could have one too, :-(
<P>
resource for this is lines 292-319 in ns/cmd/xfe/src/Logo.cpp
list of names with possible animations easters follows
akkana briano bstell converse djw dora dp francis kin jwz lwei mcafee radha
ramiro rhess rodt slamm spence tao toshok zjanbay
<P>
list of urls under which animation can take place.<BR>
http://home.netscape.com/people/<BR>
http://www.netscape.com/people/<BR>
http://people.netscape.com/
<P>
and usual format is<BR>
http://people.netscape.com/username<BR>
<P>
Caolan McNamara
<P> <hr> <P>
<!--================================================================-->
<a name="user"></a>
<H3><IMG ALIGN=BOTTOM ALT="" SRC="../gx/lil2cent.gif">
Re: Usershell on Console Without Logging In
</H3>
<P>
Date: Wed, 08 Apr 1998 20:21:42 +0200<BR>
From: Soenke J. Peters, <A HREF="mailto:soenke@pc1.sjp.de">
soenke@pc1.sjp.de </A>
<P>
In LG 27, Kragen@pobox.com announced some utilities to do an automatic
login.
Besides the fact that this might be a security risk, I use his program
"own-tty" to have my dosemu running on a tty.
Add the following line (or something adequate) to "/etc/inittab":
<PRE>
6:23:respawn:/sbin/own-tty /dev/tty6 /usr/bin/dos dos
</PRE>
From inside X, CTRL-ALT-F6 beams you into dosemu, from the console ALT-F6
does the same. Press CTRL-ALT-Fx from inside dosemu to go back to ttyx.
But be warned: Doing this causes a pretty high cpu-load because dosemu is
_always_ runnning.
To solve this problem, I inserted a "getchar();" into the source "own-tty.c"
right before the "execv()" is done. This makes "own-tty" wait for a key
beeing pressed before firing up dosemu.
<P>
Soenke J. Peters, Hamburg, Germany
<P> <hr> <P>
<!--================================================================-->
<a name="win95"></a>
<H3><IMG ALIGN=BOTTOM ALT="" SRC="../gx/lil2cent.gif">
Backing Up Win95 Files
</H3>
<P>
Date: Fri, 10 Apr 1998 07:51:38 -0400<BR>
From: Donald Harter Jr., <A HREF="mailto:harter@mufn.org">
harter@mufn.org </A>
<P>
Here is a shell script that will back up some of the windows 95 registry
files on your vfat partition.
You may not want to backup all the files in the script since the *.da0
files are backups themselves. There may
others that I do not know about. You can use cron to run this script on
a regular basis.
<P>
Donald Harter Jr.
<PRE>
#!/bin/sh
#
# This script will backup your windows 95 registry.
# If you ever have problems with windows95, restoring the registry
# might fix the problem.
# By using this script you might not have to reinstall all your
software.
# BASE_DIR is the directory where you want the tar.gz archive to be
written.
# WIN_PATH is the base path of your windows 95 partition in the
/etc/fstab file.
# Change these to suit your own needs.
# written by Donald Harter Jr.
#
BASE_DIR=$HOME
WIN_PATH=/dosc
#
#
REGISTRY_STEM=registry_`date +%m_%d_%Y`
tar -c -f /tmp/$REGISTRY_STEM.tar --files-from=/dev/null
# some of these files may not needed
#tar -rPf /tmp/$REGISTRY_STEM.tar file_to_backup
tar -rPf /tmp/$REGISTRY_STEM.tar $WIN_PATH/windows/system.dat
tar -rPf /tmp/$REGISTRY_STEM.tar $WIN_PATH/windows/*.da0
tar -rPf /tmp/$REGISTRY_STEM.tar $WIN_PATH/windows/user.dat
tar -rPf /tmp/$REGISTRY_STEM.tar $WIN_PATH/windows/*.ini
tar -rPf /tmp/$REGISTRY_STEM.tar $WIN_PATH/autoexec.bat
tar -rPf /tmp/$REGISTRY_STEM.tar $WIN_PATH/*.sys
tar -rPf /tmp/$REGISTRY_STEM.tar $WIN_PATH/windows/command.com
tar -rPf /tmp/$REGISTRY_STEM.tar $WIN_PATH/Program\
Files/Netscape/Users/harter/bookmark.htm
gzip /tmp/$REGISTRY_STEM.tar
mv /tmp/$REGISTRY_STEM.tar.gz $BASE_DIR/$REGISTRY_STEM.tar.gz
echo "To restore your win95 registry type:"
echo "tar -zPxvf $BASE_DIR/$REGISTRY_STEM.tar.gz "
</PRE>
<P> <hr> <P>
<!--================================================================-->
<a name="xterm"></a>
<H3><IMG ALIGN=BOTTOM ALT="" SRC="../gx/lil2cent.gif">
Re: X-term for MS-Windows
</H3>
<P>
Date: Fri, 10 Apr 1998 23:47:44 +0000<BR>
From: Milton L. Hankins, <A HREF="mailto:mlh@swl.msd.ray.com">
mlh@swl.msd.ray.com</A>
<P>
What it is sounds like you want is an X *server*.
<P>
You have several options. There are a few commercial X servers out
there: Hummingbird eXceed and LAN Workplace are two I know of.
There's also a free X server (with much fewer features) called MI/X.
You should be able to find these on the web.
<P>
You may also opt to use something like VNC, the virtual network
computer. You can also find that on the web.
<P>
Milton L. Hankins
<P> <hr> <P>
<!--================================================================-->
<a name="shut2"></a>
<H3><IMG ALIGN=BOTTOM ALT="" SRC="../gx/lil2cent.gif">
Re: Shutdown and Root Again
</H3>
<P>
Date: Wed, 15 Apr 1998 19:16:23 -0600<BR>
From: Bob van der Poel, <A HREF="mailto:bvdpoel@kootenay.com">
bvdpoel@kootenay.com</A>
<P>
In last months 2 cent tips:
<P>
------------
<blockquote> <font color="navy">
In the March issue, you have a tip on using X programs when you've run
su to root. By far the easiest method is
to simply
</font><PRE>
setenv XAUTHORITY ~khera/.Xauthority
</PRE> <font color="navy">
for your own user name, of course... No need to run any other programs
or cut and paste anything. </font>
<P> <font color="navy">
Vivek Khera, Ph.D.
</font></blockquote>
----------
<P>
Just adding the needed commands took me more than a few minutes. Part of
the problem is that I'm using bash, not csh as Dr. Khera is. My solution
was:
<ol>
<li>Add the following to the .bashrc script for root:
<PRE>
eval OLDHOME=~$USER
RCFILE=$OLDHOME/.rootrc
if [ -e $RCFILE ]
then source $RCFILE
fi
</PRE>
<li>Create a file in each user's home directory called .rootrc. In this
have the following line:
<PRE>
export XAUTHORITY=$OLDHOME/.Xauthority
</PRE>
</ol>
Hope this helps someone.
<P>
Bob van der Poel, bvdpoel@kootenay.com
<P> <hr> <P>
<!--================================================================-->
<a name="atapi"></a>
<H3><IMG ALIGN=BOTTOM ALT="" SRC="../gx/lil2cent.gif">
Running an ATAPI Zip Drive
</H3>
<P>
Date: Sun, 19 Apr 1998 01:41:34 +0000<BR>
From: Steve Beach, <A HREF="mailto:asb4@psu.edu">asb4@psu.edu</A>
<P>
I just bought an IDE ATAPI iomega Zip drive, and I couldn't find any
help at all on how to use it. So, I slogged through, got a great hint
from Jeff Tranter (maintainer of the 'eject' utility), and managed to
get it working. In the spirit of giving back to the community, here's
my (maybe even) five cent tip.
<P>
Here's how to use an IDE ATAPI zip drive on Linux.
<P>
First, the kernel:
Do _not_ use the "IDE FLOPPY" option (officially the name is
CONFIG_BLK_DEV_IDEFLOPPY ). This will work perfectly for reading and
writing,
but it will not work for ejecting. What you need to do is say yes to
the
option CONFIG_BLK_DEV_IDESCSI. When this is set, you will treat the IDE
ATAPI
drive just like a SCSI drive, except without the SCSI card and all that
other
garbage.
<P>
After making your kernel, you should get these messages in your startup
messages (type dmesg at the prompt if they go by too fast to read):
<PRE>
hda: WDC AC34000L, 3815MB w/256kB Cache, CHS=969/128/63
hdb: WDC AC34000L, 3815MB w/256kB Cache, CHS=969/128/63
hdc: TOSHIBA CD-ROM XM-6102B, ATAPI CDROM drive
hdd: IOMEGA ZIP 100 ATAPI, ATAPI FLOPPY drive - enabling SCSI emulation
ide2: ports already in use, skipping probe
ide0 at 0x1f0-0x1f7,0x3f6 on irq 14
ide1 at 0x170-0x177,0x376 on irq 15
Floppy drive(s): fd0 is 1.44M
FDC 0 is a post-1991 82077
scsi0 : SCSI host adapter emulation for IDE ATAPI devices
scsi : 1 host.
Vendor: IOMEGA Model: ZIP 100 Rev: 24.D
Type: Direct-Access ANSI SCSI revision: 00
Detected scsi removable disk sda at scsi0, channel 0, id 0, lun 0
scsi : detected 1 SCSI disk total.
SCSI device sda: hdwr sector= 512 bytes. Sectors= 196608 [96 MB] [0.1
GB]
sda: Write Protect is off
.
.
.
Partition check:
sda: sda4
hda: hda1 hda2 hda3 hda4
hdb: hdb1 hdb2 hdb3
</PRE>
The key is that SCSI simulation will be used only if the native ATAPI
driver
for that device isn't found. So, since the ATAPI CD driver was compiled
into
the kernel, it used it. Since the ATAPI removable disk driver wasn't,
SCSI emulation was used.
<P>
Second, the device:
If you want to have non-root users be able to mount, unmount, and eject
the
Zip disks, you've got to make a couple of changes to the default
configuration.
First thing to do is to change the permissions on the device. As root,
type the following:
<PRE>
chmod a+rw /dev/sda4
</PRE>
The next thing to do is set a shortcut (eject is easier). Again, as
root,
type the following:
<PRE>
ln -s /dev/sda4 /dev/zip
</PRE>
Third, the mount point:
Create a mount point for your drive. I like /mnt/zip, so I just do a
mkdir /mnt/zip. For ease, you now want to put this into your
/etc/fstab.
Put a line in that file that looks like
<PRE>
/dev/sda4 /mnt/zip auto user,noauto 0
0
</PRE>
The first column is the device, followed by the mount point. The first
'auto'
means that it will check to see the file system type when it is mounted.
(Hence, you can read not only ext2fs, but also FAT, VFAT, etc.) The
'user'
keyword allows average users to mount the disk, and the 'noauto' means
that it will not be mounted at startup. I don't know what the two
zero's mean,
but it works for me.
<P>
Now, at this point, any user should be able to mount the Zip disk by
typing
<PRE>
mount /mnt/zip
</PRE>
Unmounting would just be <tt>umount /mnt/zip</tt>.
<P>
Fourth, formatting the disks:
The Zip disks you buy at your corner computer store are formatted for
MSDOS.
Personally, I prefer to have ext2fs formatted disks, so I don't have to
worry
about file name conflicts. Hence, I have to reformat them. There are
two other oddities. First, the writable partition will be number 4.
This
is a Macintosh-ism, which you might as well leave. You can run fdisk
and
change the partition, but it will be much easier to just leave all your
disks the same, and that way you won't have to change the line in
/etc/fstab
for each disk. Second, the initial permissions are not set to be
writeable
by the user.
<P>
To handle all this, I do the following, as root (new disk, initially
unmounted): (WARNING: This will erase all data on the disk!)
<PRE>
/sbin/mke2fs -m 0 /dev/sda4
mount /mnt/zip
chmod a+w /mnt/zip
umount /mnt/zip
</PRE>
Now, whenever the user mounts that disk, she will be able to write to
it.
<P>
Fifth, ejecting:
The entire reason for using SCSI emulation is to make it easy to eject
the
disk. It's easy now:
<PRE>
eject zip
</PRE>
You can also say 'eject /dev/sda4', but since you created the symbolic
link
'/dev/zip', eject knows what you mean when you just say 'zip'.
<P>
One thing about eject is that the average user does not have permission
to
use it. So, change the permission via setuid:
<PRE>
chmod a+s /usr/bin/eject
</PRE>
That should allow any user to eject any disk.
<P>
Sixth, zip tools:
Jarrod A. Smith (jsmith@scripps.edu) has written a really nifty little
program
to make mounting, unmounting, ejecting, documenting, and write
protecting Zip
disks really easy. The name is jaZip, and it is available as an RPM
package
(jaZip-0.22-3.i386.rpm) from the usual download sites, including
ftp://ftp.redhat.com. Go ahead and download it -- it's only 24 K!
<P>
I hope that covers everything -- if anybody has any questions, please
let me know!
<P>
Steve Beach
<P> <hr> <P>
<!--================================================================-->
<a name="binary"></a>
<H3><IMG ALIGN=BOTTOM ALT="" SRC="../gx/lil2cent.gif">
New Binaries Script
</H3>
<P>
Date: Sat, 25 Apr 1998 01:06:03 -0700<BR>
From: Keith Humphreys, <A HREF="mailto:keith@SpeakerKits.com">
keith@SpeakerKits.com</A>
<P>
A friend installed linux and was mystified with the abundance of new binaries.
This little script was written to help introduce him to the family members.
May need bash >= 2.
<PRE>
#!/bin/bash
###########################################################################
#
# mkcontents.b (c) 1998 Keith Humphreys (keith@SpeakerKits.com) GNUed
#
# 1988.04.22
#
# This little script will create a list of descriptions for your main bins.
# It depends on whatis which appeals to the binaries man pages.
# Intended as a learning aid for newbies and as a memory crutch (for oldbies.)
#
###########################################################################
# These are the directories to scan:
checkhere='/sbin /bin /usr/sbin /usr/bin'
###########################################################################
if ! [ -f /usr/bin/whatis ]
then
echo '
You appear to be missing the /usr/bin/whatis program.
Sorry charlie,
only the finest tuna get to be Chicken of the Sea.
'
exit 1
fi
for dir in $checkhere
do
outFile=contents${dir//\//.}
echo '------------------------------------------------------'
if [ -f $outFile ]
then
rm $outFile
echo "Removing old $outFile"
fi
echo "Scanning $dir and creating $outFile"
echo '------------------------------------------------------'
sleep 1 #To see message.
for file in $(ls $dir)
do
echo $file #For entertainment
whatis $file >> $outFile
done
done
exit 0
</PRE>
<P> <hr> <P>
<!--================================================================-->
<a name="script"></a>
<H3><IMG ALIGN=BOTTOM ALT="" SRC="../gx/lil2cent.gif">
Script Contributions
</H3>
<P>
Date: Sat, 18 Apr 1998 20:52:07 +0200 (SAT)<BR>
From: Stefan van der Walt, <A HREF="mailto:trax@the-force.ml.org">
trax@the-force.ml.org</A>
<P>
In the last few months, I wrote these simple scripts to enhance my
Linux environment. I believe some other users might find them useful too,
so I send you a copy.
<P>
Here are the 4 scripts provided in tar files with a README.
<ul>
<li><A HREF="./MP3-PlayList-1.0.0.tar.gz">MP3-PlayLister</A>:
Program which searches for all the MP3s in the current directory,
recursively, and then plays them.
<li><A HREF="./mountcd-1.0.0.tar.gz">mountcd</A>:
Semi-intelligent CD-mounting program to shorten the command line for
mounting CDs. Does simple checking to see if CD-ROM is already mounted or
unmounted.
<li><A HREF="./nookie.txt">nookie</A>:
A primer on notifying the user of incoming nukes, or how to react on
receiving them.
<li><A HREF="./sysmail-1.0.0.tar.gz">SysMail</A>:
A script to mail a message containing tokens to all system users.
</ul>
Thanx a mil! <BR>
BTW Keep up the great work with the Gazette. You rule :)
<P>
Stefan
<P> <hr> <P>
<!--================================================================-->
<a name="macker"></a>
<H3><IMG ALIGN=BOTTOM ALT="" SRC="../gx/lil2cent.gif">
Re: Core Dumps Again
</H3>
<P>
Date: Sun, 26 Apr 1998 21:21:50 -0700 (PDT)<BR>
From: macker, <A HREF="mailto:macker@netmagic.net">macker@netmagic.net</A>
<P>
In issue #26, Marty was saying "I was annoyed on Linux that file(1)
couldn't tell what file dumped core if a core dump was seen.", and
mentioned size(1). gdb(1) will also do the job...
<P>
<tt>gdb -c core</tt> will show the program and calling arguments, as well as the
signal generated when it died, usually signal 11 (segmentation fault).
<tt>quit</tt> will exit the debugger.
<P>
-macker
<P> <hr> <P>
<!--================================================================-->
<center>Published in <I>Linux Gazette</I> Issue 28, May 1998</center>
<P> <hr> <P>
<!--================================================================-->
<A HREF="./index.html"><IMG SRC="../gx/indexnew.gif" ALT="[ TABLE OF
CONTENTS ]"></A> <A HREF="../index.html"><IMG SRC="../gx/homenew.gif"
ALT="[ FRONT PAGE ]"></A> <A HREF="./lg_mail28.html"><IMG SRC="../gx/back2.gif" ALT=" Back "></A>
<A HREF="./lg_bytes28.html"><IMG SRC="../gx/fwd.gif" ALT=" Next "></A>
<P> <hr> <P>
<h5>This page maintained by the Editor of <I>Linux Gazette</I>,
<A HREF="mailto: gazette@ssc.com">gazette@ssc.com</A><BR>
Copyright &copy; 1998 Specialized Systems Consultants, Inc. </H5>
<P>
<H4>"Linux Gazette...<I>making Linux just a little more fun!</I>"</H4>
<HR>
<center>
<table cellpadding=7><tr><td>
<IMG SRC="../gx/bytes.gif" border=1 ALT="News Bytes">
</td><td>
<H3>Contents:</H3>
<ul>
<li><a HREF="./lg_bytes28.html#general">News in General</a>
<li><a HREF="./lg_bytes28.html#software">Software Announcements</a>
</ul>
</td></tr></table>
</center>
<a name="general"></a>
<p><hr><p>
<!-- =================================================================== -->
<center><H3><font color="green">News in General</font></H3></center>
<P> <hr> <P>
<!-- =================================================================== -->
<center><IMG ALT=" " SRC="./gx/cover50.gif"></center>
<H3><IMG ALT=" " SRC="../gx/bolt.gif">
June <I>Linux Journal</I>
</H3>
<P>
The June issue of <A HREF="http://www.linuxjournal.com/"><I>Linux
Journal</I></A> will be hitting the newsstands May 8.
The focus of this issue is Connectivity with
articles on setting up PLIP, NFS and NIS, using Linux with the PalmPilot,
a user-friendly GUI for PPP and much more. Check out the
<A HREF="http://www.linuxjournal.com/issue50/index.html">Table of Contents</A>.
To subscribe to <I>Linux Journal</I>, click <A
HREF="http://www.linuxjournal.com/ljsubsorder.html">here</A>.
<P> <hr> <P>
<!-- =================================================================== -->
<H3><IMG ALT=" " SRC="../gx/bolt.gif">
Linux in the News
</H3>
<ul>
<li>The <A HREF="http://www.linuxresources.com/news/npr.html">transcript</A> of the
April 8 "All Things Considered" interview on National Public radio can be found on
the <A HREF="http://www.linuxresources.com/">Linux Resources</A> web site.
<li>On April 17 NPR's "Science Friday" did a <A
HREF="http://www.sciencefriday.com/pages/1998/Apr/hour2b_041798.html">
story</A> on free software featuring Richard Stallman and Eric S. Raymond.
<li>Here's an article about Linux worth having a look at:
<A HREF="http://www.gihyo.co.jp/SD/pacific/index.html">
http://www.gihyo.co.jp/SD/pacific/index.html</A>
<li><A HREF="./xfree.html">XFree86 Postion Statement on X11R6.4 Licensing</A>
<li>Check out <A HREF="http://www.pcquest.com/apr98/">PC Quest's April
issue</A>, especially
the editorial. This is a curtain raiser for their May issue which will
focus on Linux.
<li>Linux is being used by the Post Office to sort the mail. Read John Taves'
<A HREF="http://members.aa.net/~jtaves/linux.htm">article</A>.
</ul>
<P> <hr> <P>
<!-- =================================================================== -->
<H3><IMG ALT=" " SRC="../gx/bolt.gif">
Scientific Software Packaging Feedback
</H3>
<P>
Date: Fri, 3 Apr 1998 07:19:12 -0700 (MST)
<P>
<B>Purpose?</B>
<P>
We at Kachina Technologies, Inc. are very excited about the tremendously
increasing popularity of our SAL (Scientific Application on Linux) web site.
Based on encouraging user feedbacks, we want to go the extra mile to provide
more services to the Linux and the Scientific and Engineering communities.
<P>
<B>What is SAL?</B>
<P>
SAL (Scientific Applications on Linux) web sites collect thousands of
software links for scientists, engineers, and Linux ethusiasts. There is no
doubt that SAL has become one of the most important, popular, and exciting
software resources for the Linux and UNIX community. SAL was developed by
Dr. Herng-Jeng Jou, along with many others at Kachina Technologies, Inc.
<P>
While most system/network level applications are packaged by Linux
distributors and provided on their CD-ROM distributions, most commonly used
free scientific packages are still provided in source code format. Although
many users contributed packages which are often found in /contrib directories
on Linux distributors' FTP sites, lack of version tracking and centralized
control hinder the appreciation of these individual efforts. We are facinated
by the team work and coordination of GNU/Debian Linux people and want to
pursue the same goal in software packaging for the Scientific and Engineering
community.
<P>
Our initial goal is to archive Debian (.deb), RedHat (.rpm), and simple
binary tree (.tgz) used by many distributions including the popular Slackware
distribution. At the same time, SAL's website will function as a repository
and users can download the packages and install them on their systems
immediately.
<P>
However, we'd like to listen to your opinions on the best policies and
procedures to get this job done correctly.
<P>
Please tell us what scientific and engineering software (those with free
source codes that are available of course) you would like to see packaged.
<P>
Please email us at sal@kachinatech.com and simply include:
<ol>
<li>Software name(s)
<li>Preferred packaging format (RPM, DEB, or others)
</ol>
Although this is just a survey, we are quite serious and excited about
doing this. The established packages will be available through SAL.
<P>
Currently, there are 14 SAL sites installed worldwide, and their URLs are:
<PRE>
Austria http://nswt.tuwien.ac.at/scicomp/sal/
Finland http://sal.jyu.fi/
Germany http://ftp.llp.fu-berlin.de/lsoft/
Italy http://chpc06.ch.unito.it/linux/
Japan http://ec.tmit.ac.jp/koyama/linux/SAL/
Poland http://www.tuniv.szczecin.pl/linux/doc/other/SAL
Portugal http://www.idite-minho.pt/SAL/
Russia http://www.sai.msu.su/sal/
South Africa http://web.ee.up.ac.za/sal/
South Korea http://infosite.kordic.re.kr/sal
Spain http://ceu.fi.udc.es/SAL/
Turkey http://sal.raksnet.com.tr
United Kingdom http://www.ch.qub.ac.uk/SAL/
USA http://SAL.KachinaTech.COM
</PRE>
We welcome your feedback, comments, and suggestions. Please send your
messages (including mirroring requests) to sal@kachinatech.com
<P>
For more information: <BR>
Herng-Jeng Jou, <A
HREF="mailto:hjjou@KachinaTech.COM">hjjou@KachinaTech.COM</A><BR>
Team SAL, Kachina Technologies, Inc.
<P> <hr> <P>
<!-- =================================================================== -->
<H3><IMG ALT=" " SRC="../gx/bolt.gif">
MAILING-LIST: Linux Speech Recognition
</H3>
<P>
Date: Fri, 3 Apr 1998 07:19:12 -0700 (MST)<BR>
All interested in speech recognition software under Linux are invited to
join this new mailing list. The emphasis is on (though discussion is not
limited to) finding a means of porting preexisting applications
(especially DragonDictate-style ones, or possibly NaturallySpeaking-style)
to Linux, rather than developing one from scratch.
<P>
To subscribe, remove the spaces from the following address and send mail
to:
<P>
ddlinux-request @ arborius.net
<P>
For more information: <BR>
Shore.Net/Eco Software, Inc; <A
HREF="mailto:info@shore.net">info@shore.net</A>
<P> <hr> <P>
<!-- =================================================================== -->
<H3><IMG ALT=" " SRC="../gx/bolt.gif">
SAS for Linux
</H3>
<P>
Date: Fri, 3 Apr 1998 07:19:12 -0700 (MST)<BR>
<A HREF="http://www.sas.com/">SAS</A> is a powerful and popular reporting, analysis,
and application development system. The <A
HREF="http://pw1.netcom.com/~kmself/SAS/SAS4Linux.html">SAS for Linux</A> site
is dedicated to the
support of SAS on the Linux operating system. Tune in there for
information, news, to voice your opinion, and contribute to the cause.
Of particular interest is the SAS User Linux Interest Profile, a survey
to measure the amount of interest (or not) for SAS on Linux. Stop on
by!
<P>
For more information: <BR>
Karsten M. Self, <A HREF="mailto:kmself@ix.netcom.com">kmself@ix.netcom.com</A>
<P> <hr> <P>
<!-- =================================================================== -->
<H3><IMG ALT=" " SRC="../gx/bolt.gif">
New Pages for Linux Users
</H3>
<P>
Date: Fri, 3 Apr 1998 07:19:12 -0700 (MST)<BR>
Here's a page that could prove worthwhile for newbies:
<A HREF="http://home1.gte.net/henryw/basic/index.html">
"Basic Linux Training"</A>
<P>
Here's another new site site dedicated to Lunix. Find links to RPMS,
X windows managers, HOWTOS and more. Check it out at:<BR>
<A HREF="http://vdpower.gamesmania.com/demoreviews/linux/linux.html">
http://vdpower.gamesmania.com/demoreviews/linux/linux.html</A>
<P> <hr> <P>
<!-- =================================================================== -->
<H3><IMG ALT=" " SRC="../gx/bolt.gif">
The KDE Free Qt Foundation
</H3>
<P>
Date: Wed, 15 Apr 1998 14:50:59 GMT<BR>
The KDE project and Troll Tech AS, the creators of Qt, are pleased
to announce the founding of the "KDE Free Qt Foundation".
The purpose of this foundation is to guarantee the availability of
Qt for free software development now and in the future.
<P>
The foundation will control the rights to the Qt Free Edition and
ensure that current and future releases of Qt will be available for
free software development at all times.
released under the BSD license.
<P>
We believe the founding of the KDE Free Qt Foundation to be an
ground-breaking step, helping to usher in a new era of software
development, allowing the KDE project, the free software community,
all free software developers as well as commercial software
developers to prosper in a mutually supportive fashion.
<P>
For more information:<BR>
Bernd Johannes Wuebben, The KDE Project, <A
HREF="mailto:wuebben@kde.org">wuebben@kde.org</A><BR>
Eirik Eng, Troll Tech CEO, <A HREF="mailto:Eirik.Eng@troll.no">
Eirik.Eng@troll.no </A>
<P> <hr> <P>
<!-- =================================================================== -->
<H3><IMG ALT=" " SRC="../gx/bolt.gif">
Linux Resources -- we need your help
</H3>
<P>
Date: Thu, 16 Apr 1998 19:06:04 GMT<BR>
Linux Resources is a community effort brought together by Specialized
Systems Consultants (SSC), publishers of <I>Linux Journal</I>, to
promote the Linux operating system.
<P>
We strive to produce the most informative one-stop Linux resource. We do
that with the help of many enthusiastic individuals and companies who
produce selected content for Linux Resources. If you or your company
would like to contribute content or maintain a page within Linux Resources
please e-mail us at <A
HREF="mailto:webmaster@ssc.com">webmaster@ssc.com</A>.
<P>
After browsing through <A HREF="http://www.linuxresources.com/">
http://www.linuxresources.com/</A> please e-mail us
and let us know if it addresses your needs and if not, tell what we
can add or do differently. For example, perhaps there are other exisiting
sites that you feel we should incorporate into Linux Resources -- e-mail
us!
<P>
Last, Linux Resources is advertising free. Let us know if this
is an important factor for you. Again, we want Linux Resources to be
*your* Linux resource. Please let us know how we can be of assistance.
<P>
For more information:<BR>
Carlie Fairchild, <A HREF="mailto:mktg@ssc.com">mktg@ssc.com</A>,
Linux Journal Sales and Marketing
<P> <hr> <P>
<!-- =================================================================== -->
<H3><IMG ALT=" " SRC="../gx/bolt.gif">
Open Source Journal, the Magazine for Free Software
</H3>
<P>
Date: Mon, 20 Apr 1998 13:19:03 GMT<BR>
The Free Software Union is proud to announce the release of the premiere
issue of the 'Open Source Journal, the Magazine for Free Software'.
<P>
The Journal is volunteer written and produced, and available free from
the Web at:<BR>
<P>
<A HREF="http://osj.fslu.org/">http://osj.fslu.org/</A><BR>
<P>
The Free Software Union ("Free Software Lovers Unite!" = FSLU) is a
democratic, non-profit group dedicated to the Free Software/Open-Source
community.
<P>
For more information:<BR>
Braddock Gaskill, <A
HREF="mailto:braddock@braddock.com">braddock@braddock.com</A>
<P> <hr> <P>
<!-- =================================================================== -->
<H3><IMG ALT=" " SRC="../gx/bolt.gif">
Linux Conference Announcement
</H3>
<P>
Date: Tue, 28 Apr 1998 09:24:54 +0200<BR>
The first Linux conference in Denmark will be held by Denmark's
<A HREF="http://www.dkuug.dk/">Unix User Group</A> and
<A HREF="http://sslug.imm.dtu.dk/">Sk&aring;ne/Sj&aelig;lland Linux User Group
</A> May 16, 1998. Among the main speakers are
Jesper Pedersen, the creator of the Dotfile Generator, and Image
Scandiavia, a large ISP in Denmark using Linux as their main platform.
Moreover, experienced Linux users will help novice users by installing
Linux on their computers.
<P>
The conference has a homepage is at <A
HREF="http://sslug.imm.dtu.dk/konference.html">http://sslug.imm.dtu.dk/konference.html</A>,
where you can find the programme and more information. Official
languages are Swedish and Danish.
<P>
For more information: <BR>
Kenneth Geisshirt, <A HREF="mailto:kge@kb.dk">kge@kb.dk</A>, The Royal Library<BR>
Linux konference i K&oslash;benhavn den 16. maj 1998
<a name="software"></a>
<P> <hr> <P>
<!-- =================================================================== -->
<center><H3><font color="green">Software Announcements</font></H3></center>
<P> <hr> <P>
<!-- =================================================================== -->
<H3><IMG ALT=" " SRC="../gx/bolt.gif">
JCam - Digital Camera Software for Linux (with Java)!
</H3>
<P>
Date: Wed, 15 Apr 1998 14:52:50 GMT<BR>
JCam - a single software program for (almost) all OSes and
(almost) all Digital Cameras ...
<P>
The first public release of JCam is now available from "www.jcam.com",
featuring support for Digital Still Cameras from Epsom, Casio, Kodak and
coming soon, Fuji, Samsung and Olympus.
<P>
JCam is currently available for Win95, WinNT and Linux 2.0 ... future
versions will offer - subject to demand - support for Mac, OS-2, PPC
and a range of other Unices. JCam requires Java 1.1 to be installed
on the host machine; later versions will be available bundled with the
JRE, simplifying installation for non-Java users.
<P>
For more information: <BR>
<A HREF="mailto:info@jcam.com">info@jcam.com</A>,
<A HREF="http://www.jcam.com/">http://www.jcam.com/</A>
<P> <hr> <P>
<!-- =================================================================== -->
<H3><IMG ALT=" " SRC="../gx/bolt.gif">
GTK+ 1.0.0 GUI Library Released!
</H3>
<P>
Date: Thu, 16 Apr 1998 19:03:14 GMT<BR>
The GTK+ Team is proud to announce the release of GTK+ 1.0.0. GTK+,
which stands for the GIMP Toolkit, is a library for creating graphical
user interfaces for the X Window System. It is designed to be small,
efficient, and flexible. GTK+ is written in C with a very object-oriented
approach.
<P>
The official ftp site is:
ftp://ftp.gtk.org/pub/gtk
<P>
The official web site is:
http://www.gtk.org/
<P>
A mailing list is located at:
gtk-list@redhat.com
<P>
To subscribe: mail -s subscribe gtk-list-request@redhat.com < /dev/null
(Send mail to gtk-list-request@redhat.com with the subject "subscribe")
<P>
GTK+ was written by Peter Mattis, Spencer Kimball, and Josh MacDonald.
Many enhancements and bug fixes have been made by the GTK+ Team. See
the AUTHORS file in the distribution for more information.
<P>
For more information: <BR>
The GTK+ Team, <A HREF="mailto:gtk-list@redhat.com">gtk-list@redhat.com</A>
<P> <hr> <P>
<!-- =================================================================== -->
<H3><IMG ALT=" " SRC="../gx/bolt.gif">
Poppy 1.3 - Simple POP3 mail program to view/delete/save messages
</H3>
<P>
Date: Thu, 16 Apr 1998 18:51:59 GMT<BR>
This is the announcement for Version 1.3 of Poppy. It is a simple Perl
script that allows you to view only the headers of messages from a POP3
server and then allows you to selectively view, save, or delete each
message. It is ideal for limited resource systems.
<P>
A simple perl script to retrieve mail headers from a POP3
server and individually view, save or delete them. Requires
perl. Simple mail reader which relies on the POP3 server
to do most the work. A good use is to delete or to skip
over huge emails on a POP3 server when on a slow link.
You may also view only a specified number of lines from
a message to see if you would like to download the whole
message.
<P>
To download:<BR>
<A HREF="http://home.sprynet.com/sprynet/cbagwell/projects.html">
http://home.sprynet.com/sprynet/cbagwell/projects.html</A>
<P>
For more information: <BR>
Chris Bagwell, Fujitsu Network Communications,
<A HREF="mailto:cbagwell@fujitsu-fnc.com">cbagwell@fujitsu-fnc.com</A>
<P> <hr> <P>
<!-- =================================================================== -->
<H3><IMG ALT=" " SRC="../gx/bolt.gif">
juju/juen - uu/xx/Base64/BinHex-Decoder/Encoder
</H3>
<P>
Date: Thu, 16 Apr 1998 18:48:53 GMT<BR>
The first release of juju has been announced. IT is yet another
uu- and Base64-decoder, which also decodes xxencoded and BinHexed data, and
includes the following features:
<ul>
<li>Autodetection of Encoding.
<li>Merging of multiple parts.
<li>Piping data or filenames (to be decoded) towards juju is supported.
<li>It also scans complete directories for anything useful to decode.
</ul>
It sould work with MIME data as well.
<P>
Also included is juen, a similar powerful encoder, which supports
uuencoding, Base64-encoding, xxencoding and MIME.
It supports automated mailing and posting if sendmail and inews are present.
<P>
Current Version is 0.2.0, which is the first public release.
The Program is available as sourcecode only, but should compile on any
Unix platform, at least Linux ;-).
It is GPL'ed.
<P>
The Homepage of juju is: <A
HREF="http://hottemax.uni-muenster.de/~grover/juju.html">
http://hottemax.uni-muenster.de/~grover/juju.html</A>
<P>
For more information: <BR>
Christoph Gr&ouml;ver, <A
HREF="mailto:grover@hottemax.uni-muenster.de">grover@hottemax.uni-muenster.de</A>
<P> <hr> <P>
<!-- =================================================================== -->
<H3><IMG ALT=" " SRC="../gx/bolt.gif">
mon-0.37i - Service Monitoring Daemon
</H3>
<P>
<P>
Date: Thu, 16 Apr 1998 18:45:18 GMT<BR>
mon-037i is an extensible service monitoring daemon which can be used to monitor
network or non-network resources. Written in Perl 5, this code should
be able to run out-of-the-box on many platforms. It supports a flexible
configuration file, and can send out email, alphanumeric pages, or any
other type of alert when it detects the failure of a service. Service
monitors that come with the distribution can test ping, telnet, ftp,
smtp, http, nntp, pop3, imap, disk space, SNMP queries, and arbitrary
TCP services.
<P>
<A
HREF="http://ftp.kernel.org/software/mon/">http://ftp.kernel.org/software/mon/</A>
<A HREF="ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/software/admin/mon/mon-0.37i.tar.gz">
ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/software/admin/mon/mon-0.37i.tar.gz</A>
<P>
For more information: <BR>
Jim Trocki, <A
HREF="mailto:trockij@transmeta.com">trockij@transmeta.com</A>
<P> <hr> <P>
<!-- =================================================================== -->
<H3><IMG ALT=" " SRC="../gx/bolt.gif">
newsfetch-1.2 - pull news via NNTP to a mailbox
</H3>
<P>
<P>
Date: Thu, 16 Apr 1998 18:54:53 GMT<BR>
newsfetch: Most Compact and Powerful Utility to download the news from
an NNTP server, filter and stores in the mailbox format.
<P>
Available from
http://ulf.wep.net/newsfetch.html
<P>
New version of newsfetch (1.2) is uploaded to sunsite.unc.edu
<P>
newsfetch-1.2.tar.gz
newsfetch-1.2-1.i386.rpm
newsfetch-1.2-1.src.rpm
<P>
available in <A HREF="ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/Incoming/">
ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/Incoming/</A>
and in proper place (/pub/Linux/system/news/readers) when they move the
files. New version is available in .tar.gz and .rpm format.
<P>
For more information: <BR>
<A HREF="mailto:ymotiwala@hss.hns.com">ymotiwala@hss.hns.com</A>
<P> <hr> <P>
<!-- =================================================================== -->
<H3><IMG ALT=" " SRC="../gx/bolt.gif">
Mesa/Vista Project Collaboration Intranet for Linux
</H3>
<P>
Warwick, RI -- April 14, 1998 -- Mesa Systems Guild, Inc. announced
today the immediate availability of Mesa/Vista for the Linux operating
system. Mesa's flagship product line, Mesa/Vista provides web-enabled
project management automation for development teams who need to
collaborate with access to all data related to their project.
<P>
Mesa/Vista provides a way to tie all of the project management and
product development tools already in use together on the web so that the
information can be accessed using a web browser on any platform, from
any location. This enables project managers to make better, faster
decisions based on the most up-to-date information and increases the
productivity of development engineers by providing immediate access to
information they need to complete their tasks.
<P>
For more information: <BR>
<A HREF="http://www.mesasys.com/">http://www.mesasys.com/</A> <BR>
Maribeth McNair, Mesa Systems Guild, Inc.
<A HREF="mailto:mbm@mesasys.com">mbm@mesasys.com</A>
<P> <hr> <P>
<!-- =================================================================== -->
<H3><IMG ALT=" " SRC="../gx/bolt.gif">
Blender 3d beta release
</H3>
<P>
Date: Thu, 16 Apr 1998 19:20:29 GMT<BR>
NeoGeo is happy to announce the Beta release of a Linux and FreeBSD
version of Blender.
We expect the first Beta users to help us complete testing and evaluating,
especially for the various PC configurations.
An official version will be released 4 to 6 weeks later.
<P>
Blender is the freeware 3D package - up until now only available for SGI -
that has become very popular with students, artists and at universities.
Being the in-house software of a high quality animation studio, it has
proven to be an extremely fast and versatile design instrument.
Use Blender to create TV commercials, to make technical visualizations,
business graphics, to do some morphing, or design user interfaces. You can
easily build and manage complex environments.
The renderer is reliable and extremely fast. All basic animation principles
are well implemented.
<P>
For more information: <BR>
<A HREF="http://www.neogeo.nl/">http://www.neogeo.nl/</A>,
<A HREF="mailto:blender@neogeo.nl">blender@neogeo.nl</A>
<P> <hr> <P>
<!-- =================================================================== -->
<H3><IMG ALT=" " SRC="../gx/bolt.gif">
consd 1.0: virtual console management daemon
</H3>
<P>
Date: Fri, 17 Apr 1998 07:48:06 GMT<BR>
<P>
consd manages virtual consoles silently in the background. It starts and
kills gettys there depending on how many gettys are just sitting around
and waiting (and wasting ressources). Usually, consd ensures there's always
one (and only one) getty waiting for someone to login. The virtual consoles
with lower numbers are preferred.
<P>
consd does not interfere with gettys started by init.
<P>
As always - if you can't find it on the ftp servers listed below, try the
'incoming' directories.
<A
HREF="http://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/utils/">http://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/utils/</A>
in the file called consd-1.0.tgz (12KB).
<P>
For more information: <BR>
Frank Gockel, <A HREF="mailto:gockel@etecs4.uni-duisburg.de">
gockel@etecs4.uni-duisburg.de</A>
<P> <hr> <P>
<!-- =================================================================== -->
<H3><IMG ALT=" " SRC="../gx/bolt.gif">
dancing_linux - a rendered 3D-Linux-animation / eyecatcher
</H3>
<P>
Date: Fri, 17 Apr 1998 08:06:23 GMT<BR>
The animation shows a nice linux-logo, consisting of the
five letters and additional artwork. Everything is in motion and
is twisting around (glass-, metal-, and light-effects!).
It has a black background and is VERY suitable as an eyecatcher
for shopwindows or your own linux-box.
<PRE>
=================================================
Format: *.flc movie
Resolution: 320*200, 8bit color
120 frames (about 20 fps)
Renderplatform: Linux-Povray 3.01 (of course)
Rendertime: 15 min/frame on a P133
=================================================
</PRE>
The movie may also be viewed with xanim, but it looks _much_ better
fullscreen! I included John Remyn's SVGA-Player "flip" (binary).
<P>
The animation is available at:<BR>
http://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/logos/raytraced/dancing_linux.lsm
http://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/logos/raytraced/dancing_linux.tar.gz
(1.07 MB) and mirrors...
<P>
For more information: <BR>
Roland Berger robe@cip.e-technik.uni-erlangen.de
<P> <hr> <P>
<!-- =================================================================== -->
<H3><IMG ALT=" " SRC="../gx/bolt.gif">
Port of InterBase Database to Linux
</H3>
<P>
Date: Wed, 15 Apr 1998 15:03:18 GMT<BR>
InterBase Software Corp has ported InterBase 4.0 to the Linux
platform. We plan to allow this database software to be
downloaded for free use as of April 29, 1998.
<P>
The primary download site will be <A HREF="http://www.interbase.com/">
http://www.interbase.com/</A>
<P>
In the July timeframe, we expect to release a commercial
version of InterBase 5 for Linux.
<P>
There is a monitored news group borland.public.interbase.com
available for the users of InterBase.
<P>
For more information: <BR>
Wyliam Holder, <A
HREF="mailto:wholder@interbase.com">wholder@interbase.com</A>
<P> <hr> <P>
<!-- =================================================================== -->
<H3><IMG ALT=" " SRC="../gx/bolt.gif">
SECURITY: procps 1.2.7 fixes security hole
</H3>
<P>
Date: Mon, 20 Apr 1998 13:18:42 GMT<BR>
A file creation and corruption bug in XConsole included in procps-X11
versions 1.2.6 and earlier has been found. To fix it, you can either
remove the XConsole program or upgrade to procps-1.2.7, available from
<A
HREF="ftp://tsx-11.mit.edu/pub/linux/sources/usr.bin/procps-1.2.7.tar.gz">
ftp://tsx-11.mit.edu/pub/linux/sources/usr.bin/procps-1.2.7.tar.gz</A>
<P>
Thanks to Alan Iwi for finding the bug.
<P>
A few other bugs have been fixed in this version. Read the NEWS file
for details.
<P>
If you have Red Hat Linux or another RPM-based distribution, libc5-based
RPM packages are available from
ftp://ftp.redhat.com/updates/4.2/
and glibc-based RPM packages are available from
ftp://ftp.redhat.com/updates/5.0/
<P>
Fuller upgrade instructions for Red Hat Linux users have been given in
a separate post to redhat-announce-list@redhat.com
<P>
For more information: <BR>
Michael K. Johnson, <A
HREF="mailto:johnsonm@redhat.com">johnsonm@redhat.com</A>
<P> <hr> <P>
<!--================================================================-->
<center>Published in <i>Linux Gazette</i> Issue 28, May 1998</center>
<P> <HR> <P>
<!-- =================================================================== -->
<A HREF="./index.html"><IMG SRC="../gx/indexnew.gif" ALT="[ TABLE OF
CONTENTS ]"></A>
<A HREF="../index.html"><IMG SRC="../gx/homenew.gif" ALT="[ FRONT
PAGE ]"></A>
<A HREF="./lg_tips28.html"><IMG SRC="../gx/back2.gif" ALT=" Back "></A>
<A HREF="./lg_answer28.html"><IMG SRC="../gx/fwd.gif" ALT=" Next "></A>
<P><HR><P>
<h5>This page written and maintained by the Editor of <I>Linux Gazette</I>,
<A HREF="mailto: gazette@ssc.com">gazette@ssc.com</A><BR>
Copyright &copy; 1998 Specialized Systems Consultants, Inc. </H5>
<P>
<H4>"Linux Gazette...<I>making Linux just a little more fun!</I>"
</H4>
<P> <hr> <P>
<!-- =============================================================== -->
<center>
<H1><A NAME="answer">
<img src="../gx/dennis/qbubble.gif" alt="" border="0" align="middle">
The Answer Guy
<img src="../gx/dennis/bbubble.gif" alt="" border="0" align="middle">
</A></H1> <BR>
<H4>By James T. Dennis,
<a href="mailto:linux-questions-only@ssc.com">linux-questions-only@ssc.com</a><BR>
Starshine Technical Services,
<A HREF="http://www.starshine.org/">http://www.starshine.org/</A> </H4>
</center>
<p><hr><p>
<H3>Contents:</H3>
<p><strong><A HREF="#tag_greeting"><img
src="../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" height="28" width="50" alt="(!)"
hspace="10" border="0">Greetings from Jim Dennis</a></strong></p>
<dl>
<!-- index_text begins -->
<dt><A HREF="#tag_audiocd"><img src="../gx/dennis/qbub.gif" height="28" width="50"
alt="(?)" hspace="10" border="0"></a>
Problems with SCSI-CDROM and Audio CDs --or--
<dd><A HREF="#tag_audiocd"><STRONG>Sinister 'xmcd' Permanently Disables
Right Speaker Channel</STRONG></A>
<dt><A HREF="#tag_paging"><img src="../gx/dennis/qbub.gif" height="28" width="50"
alt="(?)" hspace="10" border="0"><STRONG>Email
Alpha-Paging software</STRONG></A>
<dt><A HREF="#tag_xdmbpp"><img src="../gx/dennis/qbub.gif" height="28" width="50"
alt="(?)" hspace="10" border="0"><STRONG><tt>xdm</tt>
in 16bpp Mode</STRONG></A>
<dt><A HREF="#tag_cluster"><img src="../gx/dennis/qbub.gif" height="28" width="50"
alt="(?)" hspace="10" border="0"><STRONG>Bad
cluster in HDD</STRONG></A>
<dt><A HREF="#tag_netbios"><img src="../gx/dennis/qbub.gif" height="28" width="50"
alt="(?)" hspace="10" border="0"><STRONG>Complex
network and NetBIOS</STRONG></A>
<dt><A HREF="#tag_century"><img src="../gx/dennis/qbub.gif" height="28" width="50"
alt="(?)" hspace="10" border="0"></a>
Lets vote for Linus --or--
<dd><A HREF="#tag_century"><STRONG>Some Thoughts on "The Man of
the Century"</STRONG></A>
<dt><A HREF="#tag_gateway"><img src="../gx/dennis/qbub.gif" height="28" width="50"
alt="(?)" hspace="10" border="0"></a>
How do I setup gateway server? --or--
<dd><A HREF="#tag_gateway"><STRONG>Linux as a General Purpose SOHO to
Internet Gateway</STRONG></A>
<dt><A HREF="#tag_winmodem"><img src="../gx/dennis/qbub.gif" height="28" width="50"
alt="(?)" hspace="10" border="0"></a>
Linux.bat -or--
<dd><A HREF="#tag_winmodem"><STRONG> LOADLIN.EXE, Plug &amp; "Pray"
and "Win(Lose)Modems" </STRONG></A>
<dt><A HREF="#tag_mailmasq"><img src="../gx/dennis/qbub.gif" height="28" width="50"
alt="(?)" hspace="10" border="0"><STRONG>'<tt>sendmail</tt>'
Masquerading: What and Why</STRONG></A>
<dt><A HREF="#tag_x2java"><img src="../gx/dennis/qbub.gif" height="28" width="50"
alt="(?)" hspace="10" border="0"><STRONG>Tools for converting X output
to java</STRONG></A>
<dt><A HREF="#tag_hoax"><img src="../gx/dennis/qbub.gif" height="28" width="50"
alt="(?)" hspace="10" border="0"></a>
Fwd: Please Be Careful --or--
<dd><A HREF="#tag_hoax"><STRONG>"Good Times"
Are Here Again? NOT!</STRONG></A>
<dt><A HREF="#tag_xdmthread"><img src="../gx/dennis/qbub.gif" height="28" width="50"
alt="(?)" hspace="10" border="0"></a> LinuxGazette Mar 1998:
<A HREF="#tag_xdmthread"><STRONG><tt>xdm</tt> Login
doesn't!</STRONG></A>
<!-- index_text ends -->
</dl>
<!-- *** -->
<a name="tag_greeting"><p><hr><p></a>
<h2>Linux Gazette: The Answer Guy for May, 1998</h2>
<p>Well, plenty has happened in the world of Linux this month:</p>
<ul><li>
The kernel team is getting much closer to the next stable version,
<li>
Linux has been discussed favorably on <a href="http://www.npr.org/"
>NPR</a> (National Public Radio)...twice.
<ul>
<li>Once on em>All Things Considered</em>
(<a href="http://www.linuxresources.com/news/npr.html">transcript</a>
available with a link a RealAudio file of the whole thing and
<li><a
href="http://www.sciencefriday.com/pages/1998/Apr/hour2b_041798.html">again</a>
on "Science Fridays"
</ul>
<li>
Linus is the proud father of <em>another</em> baby girl.
<li>
I've completely changed the look of this column.
<li>
I'm signing a book contract to do a book on "<em>Advanced
Linux Systems Administration</em>"
</ul>
<p>My wife has decided to take responsibility for marking up the mail
that I do as "<em>The Answer Guy</em>" (I didn't pick the name,
honest!). Traditionally I've just answered the e-mail that was
forwarded to me by the <em>Linux Gazette</em> editors and copied them
on it. Marjorie and her husband have normally done the rest.</p>
<p>This has been O.K. since we've focused on content rather than form.
However, I've wanted to improve it a little bit ever since I first
found out that the answers I was giving were being included in LG.
(Mainly I want the URL references I make to other various web sites to
be rendered as links so you don't have to cut and paste those into
your "Go" or "Open Location" prompt).</p>
<p>Obviously I've procrastinated on that for over a year. Yes, I fiddle
with Hypermail and MHOnArc. Finally, Heather took matters into her
own hands and modified a copy of
'<tt>babymail</tt>'
(a Perl script) to do most of the work. Unfortunately it appears that this
still requires quite a bit of hand tweaking. Oh well. [24-Aug-2000: Hyperlink
removed because file is gone. -Ed.]</p>
<p>So, I hope everyone likes the new look.
<em>[Me too! -- <a href="mailto:star@starshine.org">Heather</a>]</em>
To any of you that have written to me and been ignored or never received
your responses I'd like to apologize. Sometimes I procrastinate on more
than just the cosmetics and I certainly hope you eventually got your answers
from other venues like <a href="news:comp.os.linux">comp.os.linux.*</a> or the
<a href="http://www.ch4549.org/lust/lusthome.html">L.U.S.T.</a>
(Linux Users Support Team) mailing list, or even (horrors!)
from one of the <a href="http://www.linuxresources.com/LDP/index.html">LDP</a>
(Linux Documentation Project) mirrors.</p>
<p>Another, budding new source of support info for Linux users will hopefully
be the "self-service" <a href="http://search.linux.lrf.gr/">Linux Search
Engine</a> which hopefully will eventually be a complete replacement for
<a href="http://www.yahoo.com">Yahoo!</a> (the source for most of the
answers I've ever given here).</p>
<p>Well, enough of my rambling and onto my usual collection of questions
and answers. As usual I've also included a couple of items which are my
responses to posts in newsgroups or mailing lists --- items that I personally
think are important enough to be restated here.</p>
<hr align="left" width="10%">
<address><a href="mailto:jimd@starshine.org">Jim Dennis</a>
</address>
<!-- Created: Mon Apr 27 02:07:13 PDT 1998 -->
<!-- *** ---------------------------------------------------------- *** -->
<a name="tag_audiocd"><p><hr><p></a>
<H3><img src="../gx/dennis/qbub.gif" alt="(?)" width="50" height="28"
align="left" border="0">Sinister 'xmcd' Permanently Disables
Right Speaker Channel</H3>
<p><strong>From Birger Koblitz on Fri, 24 Apr 1998</strong></p>
<p><strong>
Hi,
<br>I'v got a strange problem with my Toshiba 12X-SCSI-CDRom and
<tt>xmcd</tt>. Since I started to use this program, music from audio CDs
is only played through the left speaker, the right speaker is dead. The
strange thing is, all this worked well on Windoze before. Now even the
windoze player uses only the left channel. This doesend seem to be a
hardware problem allthough there now is only one channel available out of
the Headphone connector on the front of the device,too, since I tried the
progam also at a friend with a Sanyo SCSI-CDRom resulting in the same
problem (but both channels available from the front plug there). My friend
is now quite angry since evrything worked fine under windoze for him before...
It seems that xmcd turns of one of the channels of the CDRom. Sadly
using the balance control within <tt>xmcd</tt> doesnt turn it on any more. Is
there a way to get things working again?
<br><br>
Yours, Birger.
</strong></p>
<blockquote><img src="../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" alt="(!)" width="50" height="28"
align="left" border="0">That's
very odd. I've never heard of any CD's or
sound cards with NVRAM in them. I presume you've
powered off the affected systems, let them sit for
a minute or two and tried again (under the formerly
"known working" configuration).
<br><br>
I suppose it would give offense to suggest that you
actually check the wires that lead to that speaker?
<br><br>
Traditionally I've been a curmudgeon about "toys" like
CD players and sound cards (never used them under DOS,
Windows or Linux). My traditional opinion has been that
CD-ROM's are for data --- and that there are perfectly
good, inexpensive, devices for playing audio CD's ---
devices that require no special drivers and have no
opportunity to conflict with your other equipment and
software. (You don't want to know how I feel about those
loathsome bandwidth robbers with their "Internet Telephone"
and "Cyber Video Phone" toys either. That's <em>our</em> bandwidth
they're hogging).
<br><br>
However, yesterday (by coincidence) I bit the bullet and
spent a little time compiling a new kernel with sound support.
Then I went into the CMOS and re-enabled the sound support that's
on the motherboard of that machine I bought from VAResearch.
<br><br>
So, I slipped in a copy of Aaron Copeland's Greatest Hits,
logged into to my virtual console, (I still prefer text consoles
for most of my work, especially for e-mail), fired up <tt>xmcd</tt>
(X Motif CD Player) and let it loose.
<br><br>
Strains of "<em>Celebration</em>" are streaming out of both
speakers as I type this. (Yes, I [Ctrl]+[Alt]+[F1]'d
back to my text console after starting <tt>xmcd</tt>).
<br><br>
So, it's not inherently a problem with <tt>xmcd</tt> under Linux.
This particular installation is a S.u.S.E. 5.1 running
under a 2.1.97 kernel that I just grabbed off of
<a href="http://www.kernel.org/">kernel.org</a> yesterday.
<br><br>
So, that leave us with other questions.
<br><br>
Do you have a sound card or are you playing this through a
headphone jack on the front of your CD player? (I'm not
familiar with the specific CD drives to which you refer, but
many of them have built in head phone jacks. Mine is a
Toshiba 3801 which I gather is sold as a 15x drive).
<br><br>
Are there any configuration or diagnostic utilities for your
CD drive and/or sound card? (Presumably they would be DOS
or Win '95 utilities that shipped with the device or that you
might get from their web site, ftp site, or BBS).
<br><br>
Have you called your CD-ROM or sound card vendors (or
BCC'd their support on this e-mail)?
<br><br>
Did you do an Alta Vista or Yahoo! search? (I used
"<tt>+xmcd +sound +problem</tt>") or check out the
<tt>xmcd</tt> home page:
<br><blockquote>
<a href="http://sunsite.unc.edu/~cddb/xmcd/"
>http://sunsite.unc.edu/~cddb/xmcd/</a>
</blockquote><br>
... which has links to their FAQ (and other useful) info.
<br><br>
There was an FAQ entry about
<a href="http://sunsite.unc.edu/~cddb/xmcd/faq.html#19"
>Toshiba drives and "sometimes" getting "no sound."</a>
Although it doesn't sound like it matches your symptoms exactly
you might read that and try the suggestions they list.
<br><br>
Just off hand I don't know of any newsgroups or mailing
lists that are particularly good venues for this questions
(which I suspect it why you sent it to me).
<a href="news:comp.os.linux.hardware"
>news:comp.os.linux.hardware</a>
might be one. Another might be
<a HREF="news:comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.cd-rom"
>news:comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.cd-rom</a>
or <a HREF="news:alt.cd-rom">alt.cd-rom</a>.
<br><br>
Hope that helps. However, it's still hard to imagine
any problem that would match these symptoms and persist
through a power cycle (<em>not</em> just a reboot -- a power cycle).
</blockquote>
<a name="tag_paging"><p><hr><p></a>
<H3><img src="../gx/dennis/qbub.gif" alt="(?)" width="50" height="28"
align="left" border="0">Email Alpha-Paging software </H3>
<h4>How to build a mail to pager gateway</h4>
<p><strong>From John DiSpirito on Sat, 18 Apr 1998 </strong></p>
<p><strong>Hello Answerguy,
<br><br>
I was wondering if you could help me with something?
I was looking for a package that sits on my linux machine
and will do email alpha-paging.
Im sure you know what this is, but just in case:
<br><br>
A person emails an account: <em>johndoe_page@somemail.com</em>, and
it pages them...
<br><br>
I know they are out there, but I dont know where they are.
Could you lend some assistance?
<br><br>Thanks.
</strong></p>
<blockquote><img src="../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" alt="(!)" width="50" height="28"
align="left" border="0">John,
<br><br>
There are several ways to do this, as you suspected.
<br><br>
First you could just use the TAP (telephony acces protocol)
script that was published in Frank de la Cruz' book on
<a href="http://www.columbia.edu/kermit/">C-Kermit</a>.
(The paging can be done as a kermit script and the mail gateway
would be a quick
<a href="http://www.ling.helsinki.fi/~reriksso/procmail/mini-faq.html"i
><tt>procmail</tt></a> script to call it).
<br><br>
That approach requires a little bit of coding but uses
tools you hopefully already have around. You can get
out of the kermit coding/typing by looking at:
<br><blockquote>
<A HREF="http://fohnix.metronet.com/~tye/textpage.html"
>http://fohnix.metronet.com/~tye/textpage.html</A>
</blockquote><br>
For more specialized tools to do this, I just went to the
Linux Software Map search engine at:
<A HREF="http://www.boutell.com/lsm/">http://www.boutell.com/lsm/</A>
... selected the search by "keyword" options and typed in "pager"
<br><br>
I expected this to hit dozens of entries for '<tt>more</tt>'
'<tt>less</tt>' '<tt>most</tt>' and other Unix "pagers" (that is,
programs for "paging" through a file). However, only Xless showed
up under that false hit category.
<br><br>
The first "real" hit was a program by a Joshua Koplik. The
LSM entry for it has some typos (or is just out-of-date from
some directory restructuring at sunsite) so I had to chase
down the real URL with a few judicious clicks:
<br><blockquote>
<A HREF="http://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/system/mail/mailhandlers/!INDEX.html"
>http://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/system/mail/mailhandlers/!INDEX.html</A>
</blockquote><br>
... gets you to the right directory.
<br><br>
The other few links returned on this search were for '<tt>man</tt>'
pagers.
<br><br>
Now I'm also sure I recently saw another news article somewhere
about telecom/paging software for Linux so I decided to hunt
further.
<br><br>
So, I hit my old standby, <a href="http://www.yahoo.com/">Yahoo!</a>
(most of the answers I give are researched through Yahoo!). I used
the string:
<br><blockquote>
"<tt>+Linux +pager +alpha</tt>"
</blockquote><br>
... and rapidly found a mini-HOWTO on this very topic at:
<br><blockquote>
<A HREF="http://ir.parks.lv/li/Resources/HOWTO/mini/Pager"
>http://ir.parks.lv/li/Resources/HOWTO/mini/Pager</A>
</blockquote><br>
... by Chris Snell.
<br><br>
Despite, Chris' "disclaimer" (first line of the HOWTO reads
"This document sucks.") the directions are very clear and seem
to be very complete. I gather that it used to be listed on
the LDP mini-HOWTO's and I'd like to see it re-appear there.
(There are old, out-of-date mirrors of the LDP pages that
have it and the current ones at:
<br><blockquote>
<A HREF="http://sunsite.unc.edu/LDP/">http://sunsite.unc.edu/LDP/</A>
</blockquote><br>
... and at:
<br><blockquote>
<A HREF="http://www.linuxresources.com/LDP/"
>http://www.linuxresources.com/LDP/</A>
</blockquote><br>
don't show it.
<br><br>
In this mini-HOWTO Chris refers to a package called "<tt>sendpage</tt>"
(with URL's).
<br><br>
If you get this, I'd suggest that there are easier ways to
configuring '<tt>sendmail</tt>' You really don't need to do any of
that (writing custom rulesets) with a modern sendmail.
Something similar can be done via m4 configuration macros
and built-in features (or easily handled with a simple one
line procmail script).
<br><br>
Another great set of links is on Celeste Stokely's
widely acclaimed "Serial Ports Resources" for Unix:
<br><blockquote>
<A HREF="http://www.stokely.com/unix.serial.port.resources/fax.pager.html#pager.unix.link"
>http://www.stokely.com/unix.serial.port.resources/fax.pager.html#pager.unix.link</A>
</blockquote><br>
(which suggests that HylaFax supports pagers in some way!)
<br><br>
It turns out that there is apparently a mailing list devoted
to this topic at
<A HREF="mailto:ixo-request@plts.org">ixo-request@plts.org</A>.
(IXO is one of the
other protocols that modems use to talk to alpha pagers --
I don't know the details).
<br><br>
In retrospect I think the recent posting I saw on the
subject may have been at the "Linux Weekly News" site
(<A HREF="http://www.eklektix.com/lwn">http://www.eklektix.com/lwn</A>/). Hitting their search
engine revealed links to:
<br><blockquote>
QuickPage (<a href="ftp://ftp.it.mit.edu/pub/QuickPage"
>ftp.it.mtu.edu:/pub/QuickPage</a>)
(in a comment to their staff)
</blockquote><br>
... but, oddly, didn't find the paragraph in their
previous issue. It turns out that they didn't
know about any of the links I've discussed above and
were referring readers to a commercial package (of which
there are several --- the most well-known being at
<A HREF="http://www.spatch.com/">http://www.spatch.com/</A>).
<br><br>
[I've copied the <a href="http://www.eklektix.com/lwn/">LWN</a>
staff as well. This really
wasn't meant to "scoop" them, since I think that
LWN is the best thing since Linux Gazette --- and
it comes out four times as often! Every LG reader
should also check it out! I just can't figure out
where they get all the time to work on it.]
<br><br>
Finally the oldest freely available package for this that I know of
is a perl scripts called '<tt>tpage</tt>' (Tom's Pager) a.k.a. ixobeeper.gz at:
<br><br>
<A HREF="http://www.oasis.leo.org/perl/exts/date-time/scripts/comm/ixobeeper.dsc.html"
>http://www.oasis.leo.org/perl/exts/date-time/scripts/comm/ixobeeper.dsc.html</A>
<br><br>
Anyway I hope that helps. Obviously you have plenty of
options (which is the PERL motto).
</blockquote>
<a name="tag_xdmbpp"><p><hr><p></a>
<H3><img src="../gx/dennis/qbub.gif" alt="(?)" width="50" height="28"
align="left" border="0"><tt>xdm</tt> in 16bpp Mode</H3>
<p><strong>From Aubrey Pic on Wed, 15 Apr 1998 </strong></p>
<p><strong>
How do you get <tt>XDM</tt> to run in 16 bpp???? I belive it runs 8bpp by
default. I have a <tt>.xserverrc</tt> file that forces 16 bpp.
Whenever I ran <tt>XBANNER</tt>, it would default to 8 bpp.
Thank you.</strong></p>
<blockquote><img src="../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" alt="(!)" width="50" height="28"
align="left" border="0">Did
you try putting it into your XConfig file?
That seems to work for me. I presume this is an XFree86
installation (rather than Xig or X-insides or MetroX).
<br><br>
Does it work when you use <tt>startx -- 16bpp</tt> from a shell
command line?
</blockquote>
<a name="tag_cluster"><p><hr><p></a>
<H3><img src="../gx/dennis/qbub.gif" alt="(?)" width="50" height="28"
align="left" border="0">Bad cluster in HDD </H3>
<p><strong>From Thomas Vavra on Wed, 15 Apr 1998 </strong></p>
<p><strong>
Hi there!
<br><br>
I got a neat, fast 1,6GB HDD (WD IDE) with one "bad cluster" as DOS
calls it. Is there any way in using it for linux(marking the cluster as
bad or something like that?)</strong></p>
<blockquote><img src="../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" alt="(!)" width="50" height="28"
align="left" border="0">No
problem. Linux distributions come with a program named '<tt>badblocks</tt>'
it handles this for you. The best way to do it is to let '<tt>mkfs</tt>'
call badblocks using its internally supported switches.
<br><br>
For ext2 filesystems you'd use <tt>mke2fs</tt> or <tt>mkfs.ext2</tt>
(usually links to the same file). Just add the <tt>-c</tt> switch to
the command when you invoke it (and read the man page for details).
<br><br>
If you already have an ext2fs on a drive and you suspect that new bad
blocks have developed (for example you've dropped the drive or the
machine's been through an earthquake) you can run <tt>e2fsck</tt> (or
<tt>fsck.ext2</tt> as it may be linked) with the <tt>-c</tt> switch.
<br><br>
Like I said, easy!
<br><br>
(Naturally I suggest you do these from single user mode, and do
proper backups).
</blockquote>
<a name="tag_netbios"><p><hr><p></a>
<H3><img src="../gx/dennis/qbub.gif" alt="(?)" width="50" height="28"
align="left" border="0">Complex network and NetBIOS </H3>
<p><strong>From Kate Stecenko on Tue, 14 Apr 1998 </strong></p>
<p><strong>
Hi !
<br><br>
I have some problem, can you help me?
<br><br>
Our network has 2 segments.
Each segment have a lot of stations Win 95 & Win NT OS.
Segments are connected via router.
Router is Linux box with Mars NWE for IPX routing & internal kernel
IP routing.
<br><br>
I need that all computers from all segments will be visible by each
other by NetBIOS (in Network Neibourhood/Microsoft Windows Network).
Not all computers in out network have TCP/IP stack (it's impossible
by important reasons), so I cannot use NetBIOS over TCP/IP.
If there are any way to make my Linux box and Samba work with NetBEUI
or run NetBIOS over IPX?
</strong></p>
<blockquote><img src="../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" alt="(!)" width="50" height="28"
align="left" border="0">Last
I heard NetBEUI is not routable. Novell's IPX/SPX is
routable to about 16 hops --- and a properly configured
Netware system should automatically route IPX. I don't
know about IPX routing through the Linux kernel (it
might require some static tweaking).
<br><br>
I don't know of any way to tunnel NetBIOS traffic over
IP or IPX.
<br><br>Other Options:
<dl>
<dt>Bridging
<dd>I think you can configure Linux to do ethernet <em>bridging</em>
(seems that an experimental config option for this has
crept into the recent 2.0.x kernels). Bridging is a
process where ethernet frames are copied from one interface
(segment) to another. This is different from routing in
that the router works at a higher level in the OSI reference
model (it's at the transport layer while bridging occurs at
the network layer and normal ethernet hubs work at the
physical layer).
<br><br>
One cost of this is that the bandwidth from one segment is
usually no longer isolated from the other (meaning that
your utilization may become unacceptable high). Some
bridges are more "intelligent" than others --- and they
"learn" which ethernet cards are on which segment (by
promiscuously watching the MAC --- media access control ---
addresses on all ethernet frames on each interface).
<br><br>
The smart switches or bridges then selectively forward
frames between the segments. (I use the term frames to
refer to ethernet data structures or transmission units
and "packets" to discuss those from the upper layers).
<br><br>
Some switching hubs (like the Kalpana) are quite expensive
but perform all of this in hardware/firmware. The advantage
is that traffic that's local to a segment won't be copied
to the other --- which should reduce the overall bandwidth
utilization of this approach.
<br><br>
The disadvantages involve NetBIOS and Netware/IPX. NetBIOS
is a "chatty" protocol involving <em>lots</em> of broadcasts,
particularly by servers (which in '95, NT, and WfW is
<em>every</em> machine with any "shares"). IPX is better, for
the most part, but most of the servers and services utilized by
Netware require SAP's (service advertising packets). These are
broadcasts as well.
<br><br>
(SAP's are why you don't have to configure a Netware client
system with information about default routers, DNS servers,
and things like that. The client listens to the wire for
some period of time and hears a list of these periodic SAP's.
The disadvantage in large networks with lots of servers,
print servers, and other services is that the SAP's can chew
up a sizable portion of your bandwidth --- and they <em>are</em>
routed).
<dt>Gateways:
<dd>Rather than trying to get this to work at a layer <em>below</em>
the transport (NetBIOS, TCP/IP, IPX/SPX) you could try to
get above it, into the presentation, session or application
layers. These approaches are generically called "gateways."
<br><br>
However. I don't know of any gateways that are appropriate
to SMB servers.
<dt>Warning:
<dd>
The rumors I've been hearing are that Microsoft will be phasing
NetBEUI out in favor of TCP/IP. So your organization's
constraint may not be feasibly in the long run (the next year
or two).
</dl>
</blockquote>
<p><strong><img src="../gx/dennis/qbub.gif" alt="(?)" width="50" height="28"
align="left" border="0">Please tell me what to do.</strong></p>
<blockquote><img src="../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" alt="(!)" width="50" height="28"
align="left" border="0">Conclusion:
<br><br>
Question your management's constraint about TCP/IP.
NT and '95 both include it (so it can't be a cost issue).
<br><br>
TCP/IP is the most widely used and deployed set of networking
protocols in the world --- and has been around longer than
anything else in current use. It is clearly scaleable
(despite the naysayers and doomsdayers -- "the Death of
the Internet" is not imminent). It doesn't suffer from
the limitations of IPX and NetBIOS.
<br><br>
I suspect that your management's proscription is based
on ignorance. They probably think they know just enough
about TCP/IP to worry about security and not enough to
know that protocol selection has little to do with system's
security. I've seen this discussed several times on the
<a href="news:comp.unix.security">comp.unix.security</a> and
<a href="http://www.geek-girl.com/bugtraq/">BugTraq</a>
mailing lists.
<br><br>
If they are concerned about where to get IP addresses it's
simply a non-issue. They should read <a
href="http://www.cis.ohio-state.edu/htbin/rfc/rfc1918.html"
>RFC 1918</a>. This RFC establishes several sets of IP
addresses to be used by "disconnected" networks. In this case
"disconnected" means "behind a firewall" or "not connected to
the Internet" (your choice).
<br><br>
You can use any of these that you want --- you don't have
to ask anyone's permission. It is your responsibility to
prevent any such packets from being routed to the Internet
(which is where we get all the discussion of "IP Masquerading"
"NAT: network address translation" and "applications proxies"
(a form of "gateway").
<br><br>
If their concern is about preventing propagation of "forbidden"
protocols (applications layer) or "sensitive" information across
the their routers --- there are well established ways of doing
that (built right into the Linux kernel, among other
places). It's much easier to prevent <em>all</em> propagation than it
is to selectively allow access to specific protocols like
HTTP (web), SMTP (e-mail) and especially to FTP (which is an
ugly protocol for firewall designers to support --- but just
as easy as any other to block).
<br><br>
So, I have to question their "important" reasons and suggest
that <em>if</em> these reasons are that important and bridging
is not feasible than the probably have an unresolvable
conflict in their requirements.
<br><br>
(They might consider running polling processes on the
Linux Samba/NWE server to replication/mirror all of the
data that must be accessible between the segments. This
would be a big win in a couple of ways --- if feasible
given their usage patterns. It cuts down traffic <em>across</em>
the routers (speed/latency benefits for all) and ensures
that an extra "backup" of all the relevant data is available.
The obvious problems involve concurrency if you allow
write access on both sides of the fence. However, if the
data is of a type that can be "maintained" on one side and
published across in a read-only fashion it is worth a look).
<br><br>
In many ways I'd even question their requirement to share
these as files. If you have a few-well managed servers
it may be reasonable to make them all "dual homed" (put
two ethernet cards in every server and let them all straddle
the segments). If they are requiring the propagation of
shares created and maintained by desktop users than they
probably have a major management problem already.
</blockquote>
<p><strong><img src="../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" alt="(!)" width="50" height="28"
align="left" border="0">TIA, Kate Stecenko.</strong></p>
<blockquote><img src="../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" alt="(!)" width="50" height="28"
align="left" border="0">I
hope the explanation helps. Just off hand it sounds like
you've been saddled with a poorly considered set of
constraints and requirements.
<br><br>
It happens to alot of sysadmins and netadmins. While it
exercises are creativity and encourages us to socialize
(in our mailing lists and newsgroups) --- it also leads
to premature graying (or baldness in my case).
<br><br>
Sorry there's no magic bullet for this one.
</blockquote>
<a name="tag_century"><p><hr><p></a>
<H3><img src="../gx/dennis/qbub.gif" alt="(?)" width="50" height="28"
align="left" border="0">Some Thoughts on "The Man of the Century"</H3>
<p><strong>From Brian Schramm on Sat, 11 Apr 1998 on the Linux Users Support
Team (<a href="http://www.unixzone.dk/lust/lustf1.html">L.U.S.T</a>)
Mailing List</strong></p>
<p><strong>Hello,
<br><br>
I think this might interest... It arrived to me without the original
sender ID.
<hr width="10%">
The DALnet #Linux has started a movement to get Linus Torvalds voted as
Man of the Century. Their idea is to get a massive number of votes for
Linus, which would at least get the attention of Linux if nothing else.
They estimate that they need about 1 million votes to pull it off.
<br><br>
They've requested everybody to vote for Linus and to pass it along. The
category in which Linus is being placed also has a mention of Bill
Gates, so we've got some competition. If you would like more
information, see the URLs below.
<br><dl>
<dt>Vote for Linus Torvalds:
<dd><A HREF="http://www.pathfinder.com/time/time100/time100poll.html"
>http://www.pathfinder.com/time/time100/time100poll.html</A>
<dt>Linus as Man of the Century Mailing List:
<dd><A HREF="mailto:linusmotc-request@merconline.com"
>linusmotc-request@merconline.com</A>
</dl>
<hr width="10%">
When you vote the system gives you the present ratings. The category
where Linus shows now: </strong></p>
<blockquote><img src="../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" alt="(!)" width="50" height="28"
align="left" border="0">While
I have the utmost respect for Linus and feel greatly
indebted to him for Linux. I have reservations about this
suggestion.
<br><br>
First I have to say that the computer has not, in my opinion, been
the dominate development of this century. Although microcomputers
are the basis for my career and the principle tool in my hobbies
(writing and participating in newsgroups and mailing lists) --- I
have to step back and try to achieve a more objective view.
<br><br>
I'd rate the development of the telephone and our world wide
telecommunications infrastructure as roughly an order of magnitude
more important worldwide. Granted that modern telephony would be
impossible without the computer. The underlying importance of the
telephone has driven computers in large part (specifically in the
development of Unix --- at AT&T Bell Labs!). However, my sense of
history suggests that the impact of telephony was already evident
before that (when the vast majority of it was run by mechanical
relays and even by human switchboard operators).
<br><br>
Despite this I wouldn't even say that telephony is the most
important development of our century. I think that broadcast
media (radio and television) have at least twice as much impact
as the phone. The reason is that telephones primarily extend
our ability to communicate and shrink our time scales --- but they
are still mostly localised geographically and socially. The fact
that the technology allows me to call someone in Japan as easily as
I could call the local Pizza parlor doesn't matter much when I have
no acquaintances in Japan. The telephone doesn't most of us to really
connect with a significantly broader or larger set of associates
than were possible with old-fashioned postal correspondence.
<br><br>
Broadcast television has had quite a bit of effect on this country
and on most of the rest of the world. The results are fundamentally
different than anything that could be have been accomplished by
correspondence or other forms of individual association. Prior to
radio and television we didn't even have a word "broadcast."
<br><br>
I'd put publishing in the same league as broadcast media for potential.
However it is several centuries old. Also its potential has never been
as widely realized as broadcast media due to the simple hurdle of
<em>literacy</em>. This is not so simple as functional literacy. Many people
have sufficient academic skills to participate in our (or their) culture
--- but are not affected enough by any publications to really move
society. I personally consider television to have had a greater
effect on our culture based largely on the sheer number of hours that
people spend absorbing its emanations.
<br><br>
It doesn't matter how trite most of the "content" has been --- the
fact is that a largely percentage of the world's population has been
pacified for an astounding number of hours by TV's and movies (silver
screen). I'm not nearly so concerned by what television has caused
people to do as how much it may have prevented by its diversion.
<br><br>
Despite the its greater importance I still wouldn't say that television,
movies and other broadcast media is the <em>most</em> important development
in our century. There is one thing that's had even more effect over more
of the world that those.
<br><br>
I think I'd have to give the award to Henry Ford. Not only is the
automobile one of the most important and ubiquitous developments of
<em>this</em> century, but the manufacturing techniques and organisational
structures associated with Ford dominate the world's economy and literally
shape our cities.
<br><br>
So, despite the fact that Ford appears to have been anti-semitic and
to have held elitist views that would disgust many people today --- I'd
have to vote for him for <em>this</em> century.
<br><br>
That brings me back to Linus. I think we just might see the real effects
of the FSF and Linux later. It may be that people in 2098 will look back
and remark on how the spirit of co-operation that was fostered by
Richard Stallman and Linus Torvalds (among many others) in the field of
microcomputer software fundamentally changed our culture's ethic and
economy. We might see radical changes to the publishing industry as
more content moves more unto the 'web' (by which I don't just mean HTML
carried over HTTP --- but in a broader sense I mean to include the
multi-cast communications we see in netnews and on these mailing lists).
<br><br>
This would have to be accompanied by radical solutions to the <em>real</em>
problems we face in the world today. We cannot continue to allow our
population and resource utilization to grow through another century.
In addition the current allocation of natural resources must be rationalized
before we can have a better world. If we continue to have less than
5% of the population accounting for 80% of the world's resource consumption
and continue to allow individual to rape the land that they "own" and
discard it when they've extracted the value from it then most of the
world's population will remain poor and miserable (and most of the
"developed" nations will see large parts of their own populations
degenerate into "third world" conditions). This is not "doom and
gloom" prophecy --- it's a simple matter of arithmetic. The question
is not "if" but "when" and I think the argument is over decades
rather than centuries.
<br><br>
So, if we're still in a position to concern ourselves about a
"person of the century" contest ten decades from now, I hope that
the standard of living for the rest of the world has improved
to the point where we can get more than a .05% participation
in the selection process. (There were less than 3 million votes
listed in the table that Paul quoted, and that's only 1% of
<em>just</em> the U.S. population --- which is about 5% of the world
population last I heard).
<br><br>
Who knows, we might then see a bit of national, racial, or even
gender diversity in the candidates! (Unfortunately that might
take way more than a century).
<br><br>
It's not very likely --- but I'd like to on the next century and be
astounded by the spread of altruistic collaboration from software into
other endeavors.
<br><br>
While I can't vote for Linus Torvalds as the man of this century I can
mark his accomplishment as one of the most amazing things I've ever
seen. He might leave a legacy that makes him the man of the next century!
</blockquote>
<a name="tag_gateway"><p><hr><p></a>
<H3><img src="../gx/dennis/qbub.gif" alt="(?)" width="50" height="28"
align="left" border="0">Linux as a General Purpose SOHO to
Internet Gateway</H3>
<p><strong>From Ron Smith on Sat, 11 Apr 1998 on a newsgroup</strong></p>
<p><strong>
I looked thriugh the FAQ and didn't find any answers to this question.
I hope this is the right forum.</strong></p>
<blockquote><img src="../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" alt="(!)" width="50" height="28"
align="left" border="0">"The"
FAQ. There are a huge number of Linux FAQ and
HOW-TO documents. I haven't read them all and I'm
"<em>The Answer Guy</em>."
</blockquote>
<p><strong>
I am a fairly experienced UNIX developer but I usually leave the
difficult administrative stuff the the SysAdmins. I have been running a
small LAN for my business using Slakware LINUX (currently version 3.2)
for some time now. What I really want to do is use the LINUX server as
a gateway to the internet for the rest of my LAN. I can connect via PPP
to my ISP from the LINUX box with no problems but what I haven't found
any good books or documentation on is:
<br><br>
How do I setup the LINUX server to bridge between my local LAN and the
internet?</strong></p>
<blockquote><img src="../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" alt="(!)" width="50" height="28"
align="left" border="0">
You probably want to read up on IP Masquerading.
In it's simplest form you use the ipfw (kernel
packet filtering features) and configure them with
a command like:
<blockquote><code>
ipfwadm -F -a accept -m -S 192.168.1.0/24 -D any
</code></blockquote>
... which says:
<blockquote>
add a rule to accept packets for forwarding from
the <tt>192.168.1.*</tt> range of addresses, and masquerade
the to wherever they are going.
</blockquote>
This assumes you have all your internal systems already
configured with
<a href="http://www.cis.ohio-state.edu/htbin/rfc/rfc1918.html">RFC
1918</a> IP addresses like <tt>192.168.1.*</tt>
or <tt>172.16.*.*</tt> or <tt>10.*.*.*</tt>, and that you have
them all configured to use the Linux system as their default router.
It also assumes that you are running a reasonably recent
kernel with the ipfw options enabled.
<br><br>
There's quite a bit more to it than that --- but that is the core
command that makes it work. Note that some protocols --- ftp in
particular --- don't work reliably through masquerading. It is often
better to get a copy of the
<a href="http://www.tis.com/prodserv/fwtk/readme.html">TIS FWTK</a>
or <a href="http://www.socks.nec.com/whatissocks.html">SOCKS</a>
(application layer proxies) to support these
(<a href="#tag_gw_footnote">*</a>).
<br><br>
Suggestions: run a caching nameserver and a good caching
web proxy (like
<a href="http://squid.nlanr.net/Squid/"><tt>squid</tt></a>)
on the router (the Linux box).
Make a "best effort" to "harden" the router's configuration
and contract to have a thorough security audit performed
on it. If at all possible isolate the gateway on the
"outside" of an interior perimeter router (which can be
another Linux box running <em>no</em> services, not even inetd).
<br><br>
Adding the caching for DNS and other protocols can
greatly reduce the traffic over the network link and
only costs a tiny investment in configuration time, RAM,
and disk space. Any traffic that's handled by the cache is
a bit less contention for everyone else using the link and
everyone between you and the servers that you're accessing
(i.e. the whole 'net benefits).
</blockquote>
<p><strong><img src="../gx/dennis/qbub.gif" alt="(?)" width="50" height="28"
align="left" border="0">I
would appreciate any help that you can give...I will check back here
periodically or, if possible, email me directly. Thanks in advance.
</strong></p>
<blockquote><img src="../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" alt="(!)" width="50" height="28"
align="left" border="0">
Feh! I'll try to remember to spool off a copy via e-mail.
Find a good consultant in your area. A good one will
show you how to do all of this and will be able to explain
quite a bit more because he or she will ask quite a bit
more about your requirements. I've glossed over quite a bit
here -- in particular regarding the security issues.
<hr width="40%"">
<ul><li><a name="tag_gw_footnote">Shortly</a> after writing this, but prior
to "going to press" I hunted around for an alternative to FWTK
and found <a href="http://wall.etl.go.jp/ysato/DeleGate/">DeleGate</a>,
which can be used as a SOCKS proxy (semi-transparent but requiring
client software support) and as a user-driven proxy. Thus it can be
used in place if SOCKS and FWTK and seems to be simpler to set up
than either. It hasn't been around as long, or used as widely, so
we can't be as confident in its security and feature set. But,
it's well worth a look and has a more BSDish license.
</ul>
</blockquote>
<a name="tag_winmodem"><p><hr><p></a>
<H3><img src="../gx/dennis/qbub.gif" alt="(?)" width="50" height="28"
align="left" border="0">LOADLIN.EXE, Plug &amp; "Pray" and
"Win(Lose)Modems"</H3>
<p><strong>From Allen R Gunnerson on Sat, 11 Apr 1998 </strong></p>
<p><strong>I was told be several people that I can configure my loadlin so
that my plug n play stuff in Win95 would be detected by Linux. Right now,
if I use dos mode, I lose all my hardware. I have tried to configure my
LTWin modem for Linux with no luck....... </strong></p>
<blockquote><img src="../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" alt="(!)" width="50" height="28"
align="left" border="0">I
think you have two different issues embedded in here.
Plug -n- Play (hardware) is a fairly lame attempt in recent
years to create PC hardware that autoconfigures itself.
When talking about ISA cards this is mostly just marketing
fluff that fails in many configurations -- and is widely
called "Plug -n- Pray" by many of the support reps that
I know.
<br><br>
"WinModems" are another issue.
<br><br>
Let's start with the first issue:
<br><br>
A typical PC has two (or three(*)) buses. System "bus" is
a hardware interface, with slots or connectors to multiple
devices. The original IBM PC (and XT) had 65 pin (8-bit)
slots. With the introduction of the AT IBM placed another
connector "end-to-end" with the original 65 pin slots
-- which allowed many old "8-bit" cards to be used in
AT and even in modern systems. These are called "16-bit
ISA slots." (The term ISA or "industry standard architecture"
was coined after the fact -- near the introduction of
MCA (micro-channel architecture) and EISA (Extended ISA).
These hardware specifications have almost completely
disappeared).
<br><ul>
<li>(Technically a SCSI host adapter is a
hardware bridge between your system bus
and its own SCSI bus. This is actually a
subsystem -- so that doesn't really count
as a "system bus").
</ul><br>
As the industry fought over MCA vs. EISA (largely resulting
in the markets rejection of <em>both</em> of them -- due to the
crass attempts at exploiting proprietary designs by major
vendors of each) the clone manufacturers -- particularly the
motherboard and video engineers -- created a high speed
32 bit bus called "VESA local bus" or 'VLB' for short.
VESA is the "video electronics standards association" although
there were eventually a variety of disk and network controllers
that plugged into VLB slots.
<br><br>
These were the rule for late 386 and throughout most of the
486 era (if a period of only 5 years can be called an "era").
<br><br>
With the introduction of the Pentium, Intel also created a
number of chipsets and introduced a new bus/interface called
"PCI" (sorry I don't remember what the abbreviation stands
for -- something like "peripheral to CPU interconnect").
<br><br>
I don't know alot of the low level details about PCI vs.
VLB. I've heard that there were very good technical reasons
why VLB couldn't be used in Pentium systems. I've also
heard that Intel rammed their spec down everyone's throats
in a way that has resulted in their clear domination of
the chipset market <em>as well as</em> the CPU market.
<br><br>
Prior to this there were a number of companies selling
chipsets (all the support circuitry that connects the CPU,
the memory, the bus(es), and other interfaces to the motherboard
(like the keyboard connector). Now there are practically
no other companies selling chipsets. It seems that all of the
motherboard manufacturers have been forced to use various
Intel chipsets (Neptune, Triton, etc). I've heard that some
of these have had bugs as notorious as some of their CPU's.
<br><br>
One problem that has persisted through all of this is that
a typical PC owner has had to manually keep track of how
each device on the system was integrated with the others.
Any individual card might require an IRQ (interupt request),
some I/O port addresses, a DMA channel, and/or some
"reserved address space" (for memory mapped I/O between the
0xA0000 and the 0xFFFFF regions).
<br><br>
There are only a pitifully limited number of each of these
resources. The original PC only had 8 IRQ lines on a
single PIC (programmable interrupt controller). A modern
PC still only has 15 -- accomplished by "cascading" one
PIC off of the IRQ 2 of the other.
<br><br>
Of these the system timer, keyboard, the real-time clock
and the FPU (floating point unit) are already taken up --
as well as two serial ports, a hard disk controller (IDE,
SCSI, or any other). Usually there is also one associated
with each LPT port and one for any bus mouse interface that
we have. That leaves nine to be distributed between each of
our SCSI, ethernet, sound and other cards. Sound cards often
take up <em>two</em> of these incredibly scarce resources.
<br><br>
As if the scarcity weren't enough of a problem, complexity --
the fact that every user has to keep track of these for every
system -- was a major kicker. This has been a major failing
of the PC architecture. The priority of "backward compatibility"
as left us with a "backwards architecture."
<br><br>
Plug and Pray was an attempt to relieve some of that complexity
(though it does nothing to resolve the underlying problems of
scarcity -- which are deeply ingrained design limitations).
It has helped somewhat -- but it requires that all of the
components of the systems (hardware and OS) conform to the
same spec. A PnP system can work with some old ISA cards,
some of the time. The real problem comes when you use
multi-boot configuration (as you're doing between DOS and
Linux) -- since each of these may try to "tune" the
configuration to itself.
<br><br>
The "universal serial bus" (USB) and the
"<a href="http://devworld.apple.com/dev/FireWire/">Firewire</a>"
specifications offer some hope of relieving the issue of scarcity.
Like SCSI these provide an adapter to a semi-intelligent "bus" of
external peripherals. In effect the adapter uses one PC
IRQ and I/O port range -- and negotiates/arbitrates among
many devices on it's own bus using it's own discrimination
logic.
<br><br>
However, it looks like it will take some time for practical
devices to become widely available in USB form. So far there
are a few digital cameras and scanners that support it --- and
no modems, ISDN TA's, terminals (or null modem adapters), X-10
powerhouse, or other toys. Ideally someone would make a
couple of models of parallel-USB and RS232-USB bridges so I could
use existing devices (like parallel port Zip drives and flatbed
scanners) with my new USB equipment. It looks like the
hardware companies would much rather force us to all buy all new
peripherals --- and to get peripherals that aren't usable on any
platform other than a PC.
<br><br>
Naturally we can see that Microsoft will benefit from these and
any form of "WinModem" or proprietary software drivers for
peripherals. I can't think of anything that will perpetuate the
status quo of this market more effectively than that short-sighted
attitude among hardware vendors.
</blockquote>
<a name="tag_mailmasq"><p><hr><p></a>
<H3><img src="../gx/dennis/qbub.gif" alt="(?)" width="50" height="28"
align="left" border="0">'<tt>sendmail</tt>' Masquerading:
What and Why</H3>
<p><strong>From Stephen Oberther on Tue, 07 Apr 1998 </strong></p>
<P><strong>First of all let me say that I love the magazine and your
column. This problem has been bothering me for quite
some time now and I can't seem to figure out how to
remedy it. I have a dial-up internet account but use my
local sendmail for email distribution.
<br><br>
My question is this: Is there a way to have my actual
email address stampled onto my email so that the
recipient can just reply to the email normally and have
the reply go to my account with my ISP? Currently, with
the exception of this message if netscape works properly,
the from field is posted with my username and my local
machine name, as it should be. Is this possible at all
or is it just a lost cause?</strong></p>
<blockquote><img src="../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" width="50" height="28" alt="(!)"
align="left" border="0">Yes,
there is a way to have your system "masquerade" as
some other system or domain. In fact this is what most
organizations do.
<br><br>
Note: this '<tt>sendmail</tt>' masquerading feature should
<em>not</em> be
confused with "IP Masquerading" (which is a form of
TCP/IP network address translation -- or NAT). In the
contest of mail the term refers purely to how the headers
of each piece of mail are constructed. (IP masquerading is
at the transport layer of the OSI reference model while
'<tt>sendmail</tt>' masquerading is at the applications layer).
<br><br>
Now the fact that you mention Netscape (presumably NS
Navigator or Communicator) raises a different issue.
Some MUA's --- particularly those that have been ported
from or significantly influenced by non-Unix code ---
will bypass the normal conventions for mail handling under
Unix and deliver their own mail directly to the apparent
recipient (by doing the appropriate DNS query for MX
records and engaging in a direct TCP dialog with that
host's SMTP port. In many cases you can configure these
to relay mail through some other system --- such as
'localhost' which will allow your '<tt>sendmail</tt>' (or qmail,
or vmail, or other local MTA (mail transport agent) to
apply your local policies (like header rewrites) to the
mail).
<br><br>
Host "hiding" via '<tt>sendmail</tt>' masquerading is such a local
policy. Assuming you're using '<tt>sendmail</tt>' you can enable
it with the following lines to your '<tt>mc</tt>' (Macro Config)
file:
<blockquote><code>
FEATURE(always_add_domain)dnl<br>
FEATURE(allmasquerade)dnl<br>
FEATURE(always_add_domain)dnl<br>
FEATURE(masquerade_envelope)dnl<br>
MASQUERADE_AS($YOURHOST)dnl
</code></blockquote>
Naturally you probably need other lines in there
and you need to run this through the M4 macro preprocessor
to generate your <tt>/etc/sendmail.cf</tt> file. (I do not
recommend hand hacking the cf files as this is
more error prone and harder to document and review later).
<br><br>
You might not need all of these features --- but I use them.
<br><br>
Note: this doesn't "hide" your internal host names and/or
IP address in the "<tt>Received:</tt>" headers --- which is an FAQ
in security (via obscurity) features. I merely affects the
<tt>Reply-Path:</tt> and <tt>From:</tt> addresses.
<br><br>
The part about "masquerade_envelope" is one I've added
more recently. It prevents some potentially alarming headers
from appearing in my mail when a recieving or relaying mailhost's
sendmail (or other MTA) can't do a proper "double reverse"
lookup of my address. (Yes, my DNS and reverse DNS are out
of sync --- and no, I haven't fought it out with my ISP
nor have I assumed control of my own DNS. Let's not
talk about the footwear on the cobbler's kids!).
</blockquote>
<P><strong><img src="../gx/dennis/qbub.gif" width="50" height="28" alt="(?)"
align="left" border="0">Oh
and just in case the from address is wrong on this email it should be ...
<br><br>
Thanks in advance, Stephen Oberther </strong></p>
<blockquote><img src="../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" width="50" height="28" alt="(!)"
align="left" border="0">The
first test I would make in your situation is to
pass a message straight to sendmail with a command like:
<blockquote><code>
/usr/lib/sendmail -t -v -oe &lt; $TESTMAIL
</code></blockquote>
... where $TESTMAIL is the name of a file that has a
reasonably formatted piece of mail (at least a <tt>To:</tt> and
a <tt>Subject:</tt> line for a header, a blank line and a few
lines of text for the body).
<br><br>
point the <tt>To:</tt> line at one of your other accounts to
a friend or through some autoresponder (pick one that
doesn't remove the headers). Then you can see
what sort of rewriting is occuring. It may be that
you system's MTA is already properly configured and
you can focus on the MUA (mail user agent).
</blockquote>
<a name="tag_x2java"><p><hr><p></a>
<H3><img src="../gx/dennis/qbub.gif" alt="(?)" width="50" height="28"
align="left" border="0">Tools for converting X output to java</H3>
<p><strong>From Sheldon E. Newhouse on Tue, 31 Mar 1998 on the [linuxprog]
<a href="http://linux-lists.home.ml.org">mailing list</a></strong></p>
<P><strong>Are there any tools available to convert
standard C code with X displays to java displays? Basically, we have a
long program which is written in C and does low level X output. We would
like to port it so that the number crunching part works on a back-end
server and users can view output on java clients. The part of the program
that does the display is fairly short, but intimately connected with the
X libraires. Any ideas or references would be appreciated.
<br><br>
TIA,
<br>-sen</strong></p>
<blockquote><img src="../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" width="50" height="28" alt="(!)"
align="left" border="0">I'm not sure about a "Java X Server" per
se. However there has been some work done on execution of remote X
applications through a web browser interface.
<br><br>
I have yet to use any of this stuff (I barely use X) --- so I can only
rely on hearsay and a bit of web searching.
<br><br>
The first technology to consider is the latest release of X Windows
itself. There was an initiative by the X Consortium (*)
called "Broadway" --- this eventually became the widely accepted
code name (possibly widely excepted as well -- but we won't get into that)
for the entire X11R6.3 release.
<br>
<ul><li>(Formerly at <A HREF="http://www.x.org">http://www.x.org</A>
this now appears to be part of The Open Group at
<A HREF="http://www.opengroup.org/">http://www.opengroup.org/</A>)
</ul>
<br>
Since I don't know most of the details it's probably best for me to
just refer you to some online articles that discuss it:
<br>
<dl>
<dt>Broadway/Xweb FAQ
<dd><A HREF="http://www.broadwayinfo.com/bwfaq.htm"
>http://www.broadwayinfo.com/bwfaq.htm</A>
<dt>Can X Survive on the Internet? By Brad Weinert
<dd><A HREF="http://www.sigs.com/publications/docs/xspot/9609/xspot9609.d.execbrief.html">http://www.sigs.com/publications/docs/xspot/9609/xspot9609.d.execbrief.html</A>
<dt>X Is Dead, Long Live X
<dd><A HREF="http://www.sigs.com/publications/docs/xspot/9603i/xspot9603.d.edit.html">http://www.sigs.com/publications/docs/xspot/9603/xspot9603.d.edit.html</A>
</dl>
<ul>
<li>Both of these articles at sigs.com seem to be
a bit out of date, now that ``Broadway'' has been
released. However they offer a pretty quick
preview of what X Web is supposed to be.
</ul>
<br>
Note that the constraint of this approach is that it seems to require
that you actually have an X Server on the clients. This is great if
you have just about any sort of Linux/Unix clients --- but may be
prohibitive if you intend for Windows (NT, '95, or 3.x) or MacOS
clients to access your applications.
<br><br>
You might be able to deploy the MI/X server (a freely available X Server
for Windows and MacOS) but I don't know if it supports the X11R6.x
"Broadway" features. You can find out more about MI/X at
<A HREF="http://tnt.microimages.com/freestuf/mix/"
>http://tnt.microimages.com/freestuf/mix/</A> and read MicroImages
Inc.'s FAQ at <A HREF="http://tnt.microimages.com/freestuf/mix/mix-faq.htm"
>http://tnt.microimages.com/freestuf/mix/mix-faq.htm</A>.
<br><br>
A quick perusal of that suggests that it won't support the Broadway
set of extensions (since the FAQ says that it doesn't support LBX --
the "low bandwidth X" which is apparently a key part of Broadway).
<br><br>
I don't know what commercial X Servers for Windows or the Mac will
help --- but I needn't spend any more space on that issue since I
you don't specify that as a requirement. Hummingbird's Exceed
(<A HREF="http://www.unipres.com/hbird/exceed/"
>http://www.unipres.com/hbird/exceed/</A>) is a likely candidate.
<br><br>
Another approach might be to provide your clients with VNC ---
which was listed in Linux Weekly News
(<A HREF="http://www.eklektix.com/lwn/">http://www.eklektix.com/lwn/</A>)
a few weeks ago. This has nothing to do with Java and almost nothing
to do with X Windows. However it does allow you to view X Windows
displays from Windows and Mac clients and vice versa --- using an
alternative to the X communications protocols.
<br><br>
The potential advantage is that it sounds much easier to install and
configure than a Windows or MacOS X server. Take a look at at the
"Olivetti and Oracle Research Laboratories"
(<A HREF="http://www.orl.co.uk/vnc/">http://www.orl.co.uk/vnc/</A>)
for more on that. Another advantage of this over MI/X would be that it
is open source available under the GPL --- MI/X is free to use but the
sources are not available.
<br><br>
The two approaches that are more directly suggested by your
question are:
<br><blockquote>
An Xlib to Java awt cross compiler (or class or library)
</blockquote><br>
... or:
<br><blockquote>
An X Server for the Java virtual machine (a class that implements
Xlib).
</blockquote><br>
I suspect that both of these are feasible --- though the performance
costs of the latter may not make it palatable and I'm sure that the
portability issues in each would be significant.
<br><br>
Despite my search engine efforts I was unable to find any information
on any work being done on either approach. However, I'm not an expert
in Java and I don't keep up on it much. So, maybe someone else here
will help us out.
<br><br>
I did look in several likely places at
<A HREF="http://www.developer.com/directories/"
>http://www.developer.com/directories/</A>
(formerly the Gamelan archives). The closest I found is a JXTerm ---
allegedly an 'xterm' in Java. This includes telnet and cut and paste
features. There are several Java terminal emulators including VT100,
VT220, ANSI-BBS, TN3270 and TN5250 applets.
<br><br>
Meanwhile I've been hearing snippets of SCO's
(<A HREF="http://www.sco.com/">http://www.sco.com/</A>)
"Tarantella" for the last year or so. This apparently does act as
an X Windows to Java gateway, providing a sort of "web desktop" or
"webtop" as their marketing copy refers to it. It appears that you'd
have to install a SCO OpenServer system to either run your application
or to act as a gateway between your applications server and your clients.
(I doubt sincerely that SCO will make Tarantella available for Linux
--- and it doesn't seem to be written <em>in</em> Java). I'm really curious
as to how this works.
<br><br>
(While I was writing this I installed a new copy of the Netscape
RPM from my Red Hat CD -- this is a new system that I just built
from parts, it's running S.u.S.E. -- started an X session, started
Navigator, pointed my browswer at
<A HREF="http://tarantella.sco.com/">http://tarantella.sco.com/</A> and
tried to access their demo. It gets to some point before showing
my anything like X or it's "webtop" with some complaint about a
Java Security violation in some class or another. Exiting and
retrying got me further along. Hint: don't try 'Tarantella'
during your first Navigator session. Eventually I was able to
get it running ...err... walking ...err... limping along.
It might be faster over a T1 or an ethernet -- I happen to be
using the 28.8 PPP connection at the moment).
<br><br>
If you're curious, go try the demo yourself. You can also find a
set of slides from a presentation by Andy Bovington (?) on:
<br><dl>
<dt>Controlling X/Motif apps from Java and Javascript.
<dd><A HREF="http://www.sco.com/forum97/tarantella/presentations/bov/"
>http://www.sco.com/forum97/tarantella/presentations/bov/</A>
</dl><br>
In typical "big company" fashion SCO doesn't tell you how much this
product costs. They expect you to fill out a survey and have their
sales critters call you.
<br><br>
I suspect that this circumlocution may result in more converts to
open source software than all of the other "freedom" arguments we can
muster.
<br><br>
Meanwhile, my wife, Heather, found a couple of promising links
(she's the <em>real</em> search engine wiz in the family).
<br><br>
Here's the most promising:
<br><dl>
<dt>Eugene O'Neil's XTC, the X Tool Collection
<dd><A HREF="http://www.cs.umb.edu/~eugene/XTC/"
>http://www.cs.umb.edu/~eugene/XTC/</A>
</dl><br>
... which appears to be at the early alpha stages but, in his own
words:
<br><blockquote>
... is an implementation of the X Window Protocol, written in pure
Java. It does not require any native C libraries, such as Xlib:
instead, it is intended as a complete replacement for Xlib, written
from the ground up to be flexible, object-oriented, and
multi-threaded.
</blockquote><br>
(Wow!)
<br><br>
There was also some work done by a Mr. Igor Boukanov at:
<br><dl>
<dt>Pure Java X client
<dd><A HREF="http://asfys3.fi.uib.no/~boukanov/java.doc/lib.x.html"
>http://asfys3.fi.uib.no/~boukanov/java.doc/lib.x.html</A>
</dl><br>
By far the best technical information I found on X Windows in my
search was:
<br>
<dl>
<dt>Kenton Lee's: Technical X Window System and Motif WWW Sites
<dd><A HREF="http://www.rahul.net/kenton/xsites.html"
>http://www.rahul.net/kenton/xsites.html</A>
</dl><br>
Kenton has the best set of links on the subject, and apparently has
written articles for 'X Advisor Magazine' and several others.
</blockquote>
<a name="tag_hoax"><p><hr><p></a>
<H3><img src="../gx/dennis/qbub.gif" alt="(?)" width="50" height="28"
align="left" border="0">"Good Times" are Here
Again? NOT!</H3>
<h4>E-mail and Internet Hoaxes Exposed</h4>
<p><strong>From steve wornham on Mon, 30 Mar 1998 on the
[linuxprog]
<a href="http://linux-list.home.ml.org/">mailing list</a></strong></p>
<p><strong>I am not sure if this will help anyone but I recently came across
it.</strong> (forwarded message <a href="#below">below</a>)</p>
<blockquote><img src="../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" width="50" height="28" alt="(!)"
align="left" border="0">I hope that I'll be the only one to
respond to this and I hope that
no one, on any Linux mailing list, will forward this drivel anywhere!
<br><br>
This appears to be yet another variation of the "Good Times" virus
hoax. Hopefully my response will help everyone. Please do NOT forward
this message (or any message) to "everyone in your address book."
Any mail that you receive that makes this plea should be viewed with
extreme suspicion --- they are almost always hoaxes, spams, scams, or
Ponzi schemes.
<br><br>
Most are illegal in <em>many</em> jurisdictions (internationally and
domestically). Even the cases that aren't illegal are obvious abuses
of our shared networking resources (bandwidth).
<br><br>
I won't dignify this particular hoax with an analysis. Suffice it
to say that it doesn't specify platform, agent, mechanism, or effect
(symptoms nor "payload").
<br><br>
For the record it <em>is</em> possible for e-mail to carry some forms of
computer virus to <em>some</em> users. Any WinWord .DOC file can contain
macro virus code --- and can be attached to any e-mail (via MIME).
However, this "virus" is only "data" to the vast majority of Linux
users. Even most Windows users won't be affected most of the time
--- and all can protect themselves (simply configure your mail user
agent to disable any "automatic document viewing" features, <em>and</em>
disable the "auto-executing macros" of all your MS Office packages).
<br><br>
Lest you think that MS Windows is the only platform affected by
malicious macros that can be embedded in documents --- consider that
some versions of the venerable '<tt>vi</tt>' and '<tt>emacs</tt>' editors
for Unix have
historically contained similar features (modern implementations
either lack them or have them disabled by default).
<br><br>
In any event some of us in the professional virus fighting community (*)
consider these "Good Times" messages to <em>be</em> a "social virus"
--- one
that is transmitted via the gullibility and lapses in judgement by the
human recipients. If you have ever forwarded copies of any such
warning to anyone else then <em>you</em> have been a carrier of that virus.
<br><ul>
<li>(I used to be a senior QA analyst at McAfee, before I was
their senior Unix sysadmin --- one of my former roommates
is still the head of their virus research department ---
and I've been on the support team at Norton/Symantec where
I was their lead online support rep and BBS SysOp).
</ul><br>
Innoculate yourself! Don't perpetuate these hoaxes! When in doubt
ask! (Ask <em>one</em> or <em>two</em> <strong>trusted</strong> associates).
Don't do forward
any message to "everyone in your address book." Most importantly,
don't delete unread mail simply because you think it might contain
such a virus. (*)
<br><ul>
<li>(If you're really worried, use a simple, text viewer to
look through the suspect message, or switch to an old
fashioned mail reader that just <em>reads mail</em> (without
all the auto-execution, dynamic content flim flam)).
</ul><br>
Incidentally, document macro content isn't the only risk of running
some of the modern mail user agents. A number of GUI, MIME enhanced,
HTML extended MUA's will default to running JavaScript, or fetching
and executing byte-compiled Java code. These should be disabled
or limited to "trusted" domains and hosts wherever possible. When that's
not possible --- use a different mail reader. Another, risk involves
the automated fetching of HTML images. While there is no known mechanism
for this to execute hostile code --- it is possible for the server
containing such images to perform traffic analysis (finding out what
IP address your mail gets forwarded to, and that sort of thing). This is
a subtle risk which is more related to privacy than to "virus.'"
<br><br>
As a final note regarding the "Good Times" class of hoaxes --- if
a virulent, cross-platform, e-mail transmitted, <em>computer</em> virus
ever is created --- it is very unlikely that it would always relay with
the same subject. If such a virus were created it almost certainly
could not be detected by any feature of the message headers (there is no
concievable reason to write such a program with any such constraint).
<br><br>
For those who like to follow links, here's some web info about
"Good Times" and similar hoaxes:
<br><dl>
<dt>anti-Good Times virus page
<dd><A HREF="http://www-students.biola.edu/~dougw/GoodTimes/virus.html"
>http://www-students.biola.edu/~dougw/GoodTimes/virus.html</A>
<dt>Good Times Virus Hoax FAQ (over 50K)
<dd><A HREF="http://users.aol.com/macfaq/goodtimes.html"
>http://users.aol.com/macfaq/goodtimes.html</A>
<br><A HREF="http://www.public.usit.net/lesjones/goodtimes.html"
>http://www.public.usit.net/lesjones/goodtimes.html</A>
<dt>CIAC Internet Hoaxes (about 48K)
<dd><A HREF="http://ciac.llnl.gov/ciac/CIACHoaxes.html"
>http://ciac.llnl.gov/ciac/CIACHoaxes.html</A>
<dt>Don't Spread that Hoax!
<dd><A HREF="http://www.nonprofit.net/hoax/hoax.html"
>http://www.nonprofit.net/hoax/hoax.html</A>
<ul><li>This one covers many other types of Internet and
e-mail hoax.
</ul>
<dt>The AFU & Urban Legends Archive
<dd><A HREF="http://www.urbanlegends.com/">http://www.urbanlegends.com/</A>
<ul><li>The alt.folklore.urban-legends newsgroup home page</ul>
</dl>
</blockquote>
<PRE>
<a name="below">&gt;&gt;</a> Hi all,
&gt;&gt; This was forwarded to me. Please feel free to pass this along.
&gt;&gt; Sherry
&gt;&gt;
&gt;&gt;======== Original Message ======
&gt;&gt;
&gt;&gt; Please be careful!!
&gt;&gt; If you receive an e-mail titled "WIN A Holiday" Do Not open it, it
&gt;&gt; will erase everything on your hard drive. Forward this letter out
&gt;&gt; to as many people as you can. This is a new, very malicious virus
&gt;&gt; and not many people know about it. This information was
&gt;&gt; announced yesterday morning from Microsoft, please share it with
&gt;&gt; everyone in your address book. Also, do not open or even look at
&gt;&gt; any mail that says "Returned or unable to Deliver" this virus will
&gt;&gt; attach itself to your computer components and render them useless.
&gt;&gt; AOL has said that this is a very dangerous virus and that there is
&gt;&gt; NO remedy for it at this time.
</PRE>
<a name="tag_xdmthread"><p><hr><p></a>
<p>The <a href="../issue26/lg_answer26.html#login">original message</a>
referred to in this thread was sent by Cesar Augusto Kant Grossmann.</p>
<hr width="40%" align="center">
<H3><img src="../gx/dennis/qbub.gif" alt="(?)" width="50" height="28"
align="left" border="0">LinuxGazette Mar 1998: xdm Login doesn't! </H3>
<p><strong>From Milton L. Hankins on Mon, 30 Mar 1998 </strong></p>
<p><strong>
Actually, it sounds like Cesar's <tt>.xsession</tt> script is exiting before he
performs his usual "logout" action.</strong></p>
<p><strong>Cesar, does the user account have a <tt>.xsession</tt> file in the
home directory? If not, create one. The simplest one would contain the
line "<tt>fvwm</tt>" or "<tt>xterm</tt>".</strong></p>
<blockquote><img src="../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" width="50" height="28" alt="(!)"
align="left" border="0">Milton,
<br><br>
Wouldn't this show up as a problem when he ran '<tt>startx</tt>' as well?
<br><br>
As I've said before my practical grasp of X is pretty weak -- but
I do understand the concept of a '<em>session manager</em>.' Most X clients
in your start up script are started in the background (with trailing
ampersand in shell script syntax). However one (usually the last
item executed by the script) must be started in the "foreground."
This client, whether it is a window managers, an '<tt>xterm</tt>' or even
'<tt>xclock</tt>'
will be the "session manager." When you exit or kill the session manager
the X server takes that as a hint to close down (returning you to a shell
prompt if you used '<tt>startx</tt>' or to an <tt>xdm</tt> login screen
if you started the session graphically.
<br><br>
Can you clarify the differences between <tt>~/.xsession</tt> and
<tt>~/.Xclients</tt> (mine are just symlinked together)?
</blockquote>
<hr width="40%" align="center">
<H3><img src="../gx/dennis/qbub.gif" alt="(?)" width="50" height="28"
align="left" border="0">Milton Replied...</H3>
<p><strong>From Jim Dennis on Mon, Mar 30, 1998</strong></p>
<p><strong>Wouldn't this show up as a problem when he ran '<tt>startx</tt>'
as well?</strong></p>
<blockquote><img src="../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" width="50" height="28" alt="(!)"
align="left" border="0">Not necessarily, Jim. It all depends on the
system scripts. Traditionally, <tt>startx</tt> uses "<tt>~/.xinitrc</tt>"
and <tt>xdm</tt> uses "<tt>~./xsession</tt>".
<br><br>
It sounded like he was only having problems as a "normal user" -- that
root was OK. You obviously know a lot more about <tt>xdmi</tt> than I do,
but I went on a hunch that his <tt>xdm</tt> setup was fine.
</blockquote>
<p><strong><img src="../gx/dennis/qbub.gif" width="50" height="28" alt="(?)"
align="left" border="0">As I've said before my practical grasp of
X is pretty weak -- but I do understand the concept of a '<em>session
manager</em>.' Most X clients in your start up script are started in the
background (with trailing ampersand in shell script syntax). However one
(usually the last item executed by the script) must be started in the
"foreground." </strong></p>
<blockquote><img src="../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" width="50" height="28" alt="(!)"
align="left" border="0">Right. (The very fact that you know the
difference between an X client and an X server means you know something.)
<font color="#008F00">:)</font> That's what I meant by "usual `logout'
action." Most people either logout of a special xterm or exit the window
manager. </blockquote>
<p><strong><img src="../gx/dennis/qbub.gif" width="50" height="28" alt="(?)"
align="left" border="0">Can you clarify the differences between
<tt>~/.xsession</tt> and <tt>~/.Xclients</tt> (mine are just symlinked
together)?</strong></p>
<blockquote><img src="../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" width="50" height="28" alt="(!)"
align="left" border="0">I honestly have no idea. That's pretty
strange. Usually, I link <tt>.xsession</tt> and <tt>.xinitrc</tt> together.
That way, X looks the same whether I use <tt>xdm</tt> or <tt>startx</tt>.
</blockquote>
<!--================================================================-->
<P> <hr> <P>
<H5 align="center"><a href="http://www.linuxgazette.com/copying.html"
>Copyright &copy;</a> 1998, James T. Dennis <BR>
Published in <I>Linux Gazette</I> Issue 28 May 1998</H5>
<P> <hr> <P>
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<center>
<H1><font color="maroon">BigBen: Network Monitor Utility</font></H1>
<H4>By <a href="mailto:cpizzi@bigfoot.com">Cesare Pizzi</a></H4>
</center>
<P> <HR> <P>
BigBen is a collection of three Perl scripts useful to monitor a Unix
network. The development is not completed, and there are a lot of things
to add and improve, but I think that the skeleton of the application is
working quite fine.
The program was built on a Linux box, but I think it will run fine also
on other UNIX environment, with a perl interpreter
<P>
BigBen is made of three scripts:
<ul>
<li>LittleBen:
Client program. This program collect the info on a system and
send all the data to the server
<li>BigBen:
Server program. Accept the connections from the clients and save
the data in the proper place/format
<li>Weber:
Output formatter. This script collect the data files saved by the
server, and creates an HTML output, so you can check your network
on a WEB browser
</ul>
As you can see, the use of this application is quite simple. All the three
scripts run as daemons. BigBen and Weber run on the same system, and the
LittleBen client can be installed on several systems (all the systems you
need to check).
<P>
The check logic of Weber is the following:
<ul>
<li>when it starts for the first time, it checks for data file sent by the
clients. The data file will be unavailable, because it's easy that the
clients start at the same time, so Weber set an initial Warning message
<li>if at the second check, it does not find a data file, not it set an
error flag (may be that the client is not started, or has some problems)
<li>after each pause, it checks the file and display the infos in them. An
error is set if it does not find the data file
</ul>
To avoid problem due to the timings between the client and the server
(both wait for a while before check), it's better to start the client before.
<P>
Now, we can analyze the scripts in detail.
<P> <HR> <P>
<H3>LittleBen</H3>
<P> <HR> <P>
LittleBen is the client application: it runs as a daemon, and it is
configurable through the configuration file (see the LittleBen.conf sample
file). In this file you can put the processes you want to monitor, and the
Min and Max values you want for these processes; if these values are out
of the border you set, the client send an ERROR or a WARNING to the server.
See the README file to have a detailed description and an example of this file.
<P> <HR> <P>
<H3>BigBen</H3>
<P> <HR> <P>
This is the server script. Once installed, it listens on a port (default 4455)
for the data sent out by the clients.
When the packet is received, it saves the data in the proper directory, where
the Weber will get the data.
See the README file to have a detailed description of the options available.
<P> <HR> <P>
<H3>Weber</H3>
<P> <HR> <P>
The Weber gets the data saved by the BigBen, and creates a couple of HTML
pages, so you can check the data with your HTML browser.
The HTML file created, is able to auto-reload itself, so you will get the
last date in each moment.
The Weber and the BigBen will run on the same system.
<P>
Weber needs a configuration file. See the README file to have more info about
the command line options and the configuration file. The scripts and README
are in a <A HREF="./pizzi.tgz">gzipped tar file </A>for download
purposes.
<P>
*** Please report any bug, enhancement request, comment to the author:<BR>
*** Cesare Pizzi <BR>
*** cpizzi@bigfoot.com <BR>
*** www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Pines/8305 <BR>
<!--===================================================================-->
<P> <hr> <P>
<center><H5>Copyright &copy; 1998, Casare Pizzi <BR>
Published in Issue 28 of <i>Linux Gazette</i>, May 1998</H5></center>
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<center>
<h1><font color="maroon">Building an Audio CD Player, Part 1</font></h1>
<H4>By <a href="mailto:michael@actrix.gen.nz">Michael Hamilton</a></H4>
</center>
<P> <HR> <P>
This article outlines my recent experiences writing Jcd, a Java CD
player. It is aimed at people who have browsed through an
introductory Java or C++ text and feel they know their way around
either language. While reading the article, I think it
would be a good idea to have a Java textbook on hand to fill in any items
I might gloss over.
<p>
I have been experimenting with Java in order to evaluate its
usefulness as a general purpose language. One of the things I've written
is a GUI CD player with a track-title database. I chose to write a
CD player because it requires the use of a large part of the language
and its associated libraries: graphical user interfaces, threads,
file I/O sockets, text parsing, image manipulation, data entry forms
and native C calls to interface to the kernel's CD drivers. Since
this is one of my initial attempts at using Java, you shouldn't
assume everything you read below is authoritative or definitive--I'm
just reporting what worked for me.
<p><HR> <P>
<h3>Features of Jcd</h3>
<p><HR> <P>
Jcd has the following features:
<p>
<ul>
<li> Play/Stop/Pause/Previous/Next/Eject/Volume control panel
<li> Track/Index direct access
<li> Track, index, number-of-tracks, track-time, track-remaining,
disc-remaining displays
<li> Program play, continuous/single play, shuffle play
<li> Xmcd CDDB artist, disc, track title look up and display
<li> Xmcd CDDB database format and protocols courtesy of Ti Kan and
Steve Scherf (<A
HREF="http://sunsite.unc.edu/~cddb/xmcd/">http://sunsite.unc.edu/~cddb/xmcd/</A>)
<li> Optional remote CDDB server look up
<li> Autosave of remote look ups to local cache
<li> GUI window for creating/editing artist/title/track local cache entries
<li> Icon button widgets, e.g., play button, pause button light up when active
<li> Penguin button (a built-in plug for Linux)
<li> Multi-threaded, e.g., the controls and display run in a
separate thread to the database look ups to prevent remote database
look ups from blocking other activities
</ul>
The finished system is shown here:
<p> <center>
<img src="./gx/hamilton/figure1.gif"></center>
<p><HR> <P>
<h3>Java Application Programming on Linux</h3>
<P> <HR> <P>
Jcd is a Java application, not a Java applet. That is, it
can't be run in the secure sand box of a Web browser. This is because
Jcd reads and writes files in your local file system, and because
it requires a native-machine-language driver specific to your
operating system and processor architecture. In the future it
may be possible to make Jcd an Applet, as Sun is working on standards
for controlled accessed to local files and for portable
access to hardware such as CD audio drives. Until then, Jcd must be
run in a Java run-time environment, such as that provided by Sun's
Java Development Kit. I developed Jcd using the
Linux Java Porting Project's port of the Java Development Kit 1.0.2
and 1.1.1. You can find out how to obtain the JDK for Linux by
pointing your browser at <A
HREF="http://java.blackdown.org/">http://java.blackdown.org/</A>.
<p>
This article will lead you through the code of a cut-down version of
Jcd, much as it appeared in the early stages of its development. At the
end of the article, we will have a working command-line-driven player
that can be built upon to create a GUI player such as Jcd.
<p>
Linux supports a set of Sun <b>ioctl</b> commands--device I/O
control calls to the
kernel, for controlling audio CD operations. The kernel's CD-ROM
ioctl interface is defined in the /usr/include/linux/cdrom.h file. This
interface provides a set of calls for functions such as play, stop,
pause, cd-info and others. The Java interface described below
closely parallels the functions the kernel provides.
<p>
<A HREF="./hamilton1.html">Listing 1</A>
shows a test rig for testing my Java interface.
Ignoring the details for the moment, you can see in lines 26
through 71 that I have a loop reading from <b>cmd_stream</b>. On lines 31
through 65, I check the command read for a keyword. If I match a
keyword, I call the appropriate <b>cd_drive</b> operation.
<p>
At line 1 I declare that Jcd.java is
part of the package Jcd; that is, all classes
defined in Jcd.java are part of the package Jcd. This serves to
keep the Jcd classes together and grants them
mutual access to each other's data and methods, except where the data
and methods are explicitly declared private. All classes outside the
package can only access the data and methods that are explicitly
declared public. The Java run-time environment locates the Jcd
package by looking for a Jcd subdirectory in the directories listed in
the CLASSPATH environment variable. While developing Jcd, I put my
working directory . (dot) in the CLASSPATH and created a dummy Jcd
subdirectory by using a symbolic link pointing back to my working
directory:
<p>
<pre>
ln -s . Jcd
</pre>
Later, when I installed the finished Jcd, I put the Jcd package
in the /usr/local/lib/jcd/Jcd directory and added that directory
to my CLASSPATH.
<p>
On lines 8 and 10 of
<A HREF="./hamilton1.html">Listing 1</A>,
I import the standard Java I/O
classes--a wild card is used to get them all--and I import the
Jcd.Drive class that calls the kernel interface. When referring to
the Drive class I have used the package qualifier Jcd, as well
as the class name Drive.
<p>
At line 14 I declare the <b>main</b> method. The main method is static,
which makes it a class method, so it doesn't belong to any
particular Jcd instance; instead, it belongs to the class as a whole. This is
the method that will be invoked when I run Jcd by typing:
<p>
<pre>
java Jcd.Jcd
</pre>
The Java loader looks for a static method called main in the
class you tell it to run. One implication of this, is that every
class you write can have its own test rig by including a static main
method in its implementation.
<p>
At lines 16 through 18, I declare cd_drive and assign it to a new
instance of the Drive object. I pass both the drive device name,
/dev/cdrom, and the location of the compiled C shared object module,
Jcd_Drive.so, to the object constructor so that the object can
initialize itself appropriately.
<p>
At line 19 I wrap a DataInputStream object around the System.in
standard input object. DataInputStream is a filter that allows
me to read a byte stream as strings terminated by newlines. The
idea of layering filters over data streams to add new processing
functionality is very prominent in the Java I/O classes.
<p>
The only remaining unexplained pieces of code in
<A HREF="./hamilton1.html">Listing 1</A> are the
<i>try-catch</i> statements that surround most of the code. In Java, errors
are signalled by throwing exceptions which, if un-caught, cause the
program to issue a diagnostic error. These ``Thowables'' are divided
into two sub-classes: Errors, major problems that will probably
result in a program crash (such as running out of memory); and
Exceptions, problems that you are expected to be able to
handle inside the program (such as reading past end-of-file). Any
action that can result in an Exception has to be handled in one of two
ways: the method in which it can occur must either have a try-catch
statement that handles the exception, or the method must declare that
it can cause the exception, which passes the buck to callers of the
method. Because this is enforced by the compiler, it's a very nice
mechanism for ensuring that exceptions do not go unconsidered by the
programmer.
<p>
In
<A HREF="./hamilton1.html">Listing 1</A>,
the System.in class can throw an IOException, such as
end-of-file. The Jcd main() method either has to catch each
IOException or pass it on. In this case, my empty catch body will
effectively ignore I/O errors. After catching an exception, execution
continues from the catch statement. The cd_drive object that the main
method uses to control the CD-ROM can also return a DriveException. The main
method has to catch these too--I just print the reason for the
exception and let the program continue.
<p><HR> <P>
<h3>Jcd Design Details</h3>
<p><HR> <P>
Now look at Drive.java <A HREF="./hamilton2.html">Listing 2</A>. This file declares the Java
to C interface as a set of body-less native methods on lines 69
through 138. These native methods are implemented in the
Jcd_Drive_ix86-Linux.c C module (<A HREF="./hamilton4.html">Listing 4</A>). The native methods in
<A HREF="./hamilton2.html">Listing 2</A>
are augmented by some Java methods that add additional
operations to make life simpler for the users of the class--for
example on lines 139 to 152, there are several variations of the
<b>play()</b> method to simplify the most common types of requests.
<p>
On lines 13 through 35 of <A HREF="./hamilton2.html">Listing 2</A> the Drive class defines static
class constants for all the instances of the Drive object to share.
The keyword <i>final</i> means a value is constant. There seems to be a
convention amongst Java programmers for representing constants in
uppercase. All the constants in the Drive class are related to the
kernel interface. For example, the frames per second defines the
address unit used by CD-ROM drives; the lead out track number defined
on line 18 is a dummy track that contains info on the total playing
time of the CD.
<p>
Lines 35 through 51 define data unique to each Drive object that is
created. The C module that carries out the kernel calls will access and
update some of this data.
<p>
Most of the methods can throw a DriveException. DriveException is
defined on line 157, and below it a series of sub-classes
define the full range of exceptions that a DriveException may
actually represent. The bodies of these exception classes are almost
empty because the actual processing is passed on to the super
(parent) class to handle which is ultimately the standard Java
library's Exception class. The super-class constructors accept calls
with and without an explanation string, so I've defined both. It
would be nice if the official Java language supported default values
for arguments, so that the excessive repetition of nearly identical
constructors could be avoided (one of the features of the Python
language that I miss the most).
<p>
All of my native methods are declared to be ``synchronized''. Making the
methods synchronized gives each method exclusive access to the Drive when
it is called. This prevents a multi-threaded application from issuing
multiple conflicting (or overlapping) calls to the kernel. Synchronized
methods carry more overhead than non-synchronized ones, but in this
case we are unlikely to request more than a few CD operations per second,
so we needn't worry about the overhead.
<p>
Having defined the interface, I used the <b>javah</b> utility from Sun's Java
Development Kit to help me generate the code for the C module. I used
javah to generate the C header file, Jcd_Drive.h, and the C stubs file,
Jcd_Drive.c.
<p>
<pre>
javah Jcd.Drive
javah -stubs Jcd.Drive
</pre>
@lay:Place 2397l3 around here
<p>
The Jcd_Drive.h file contains data definitions and function prototypes
that define the native C interface. The generated header
file is a little messy, so a more readable version of it is presented in
<A HREF="./hamilton3.html">Listing 3</A>.
It contains a define for each of the final static data
items in the Drive class. Note that javah has used the package name
(Jcd) and class name (Drive) to form the Jcd_Drive prefix for the
native data and function names.
<p>
The Jcd_Drive.c that javah generates provides code that handles the
messy details of taking the data Java passes and making it more palatable
before passing it on to the actual C routines. Aside from compiling
this file and including its object with my own code, I pretty much
ignore its existence. All I have to do is implement the interface
defined in Jcd_Drive.h, I don't need to know which part Jcd_Drive.c
plays in the process.
<p><HR> <P>
<h3>Integrating Java with C</h3>
<p><HR> <P>
For me, the ease with which Java and C can be integrated is one of
Java's biggest selling points. I know there's much talk about
sticking to pure Java, but I'm interested in using Java as a general
purpose language. I'm sure I'll still need to fall back on C both
for reasons of performance, and in order to integrate Java into existing
systems.
If I can write 90% of my systems code in Java and 10% in a well-defined
C module, that may still make for good portability. For example, after
writing a CD-ROM module in C for Linux, it only took me a few hours to
create another C module for SGI IRIX. The Java code in my final
player interrogates its environment to find out which operating system and
architecture it's running on and then dynamically loads the
appropriate native shared object module.
<p>
On line 16 of <A HREF="./hamilton3.html">Listing 3</A>, the Jcd_Drive.h file defines the
ClassJcd_Drive structure that the C run-time environment and Java
run-time environments can use to gain mutual access to data belonging
to Drive objects. The raw data structure has to be augmented with
some Java-environment bookkeeping by the
<tt>HandleTo(Jcd_Drive)</tt> macro
call which creates a new structure called HJcd_Drive on line 26. The C
functions that make up the native interface are always passed
HJcd_Drive as their first argument. The prototypes for these
functions are listed on lines 28 through 45.
<p>
<A HREF="./hamilton4.html">Listing 4</A>
details Jcd_Drive_ix86-Linux.c, the Linux Intel
version of the C module. I've used a methodical architecture/OS naming
convention based on properties I can retrieve from the Java runtime
environment. This allows Jcd to select and locate the appropriate
native module for each platform at runtime--for the cut down
version of Jcd, I've just hard-coded the module (see line 17 of
<A HREF="./hamilton1.html">Listing 1</A>).
<p>
Most of the code in
<A HREF="./hamilton4.html">Listing 4</A>
is concerned with making the kernel
ioctl calls. Before discussing these calls, I'll get the Java to C native
call side of the equation squared away. Looking at a simple case
first: on lines 181 through 189 of
<A HREF="./hamilton4.html">Listing 4</A>,
the Jcd_Drive_status()
C function implements the Jcd native <b>status()</b> method (from
<A HREF="./hamilton2.html">Listing 2</A>
line 122). When called, the status() function is passed the
HJcd_Drive struct and can access the ClassJcd_Drive it contains by
using the <b>unhand()</b> function. It first checks a C file descriptor to
see if the drive has previously been opened successfully. If the file
descriptor is <tt>-1</tt>, the drive isn't currently
assigned, so the
function just returns the last known status (which was
stored in the ClassJcd_Drive structure). Otherwise, if the file
descriptor is valid, the new_status() function is called to retrieve a
new status value into the ClassJcd_Drive structure.
<p>
A slightly more complex case is seen on lines 217
to 234, where the <b>Jcd_Drive_trackAddress()</b> function implements the Jcd
native <b>trackAddress()</b> method. The trackAddress() method returns the
address of a track as the number of 75ths of a second from the start
of the CD. The function is passed two parameters: the HJcd_Drive
structure that contains the Java object's data and the track number
in the form of a long integer. The integer is declared as Java_Int,
but as you can see on line 39, this is just my way of getting around
the differences between the Kaffe and Sun Java compilers--looks like
native call implementations can vary a bit between compilers--
hopefully this is something that will be standardized. In fact
under JDK 1.1.1, my Java_Int should be defined as <tt>int32_t</tt>.
<p>
The trackAddress function sets up a <tt>cdrom_tocentry</tt> structure (defined
in /usr/include/linux/cdrom.h) for passing to a kernel ioctl program. In
Unix/Linux, ioctl calls provide access to a variety of kernel services
related to devices. The device the ioctl is to work on is determined
by the file descriptor passed as its first parameter--in Unix all
devices can usually be accessed as special files resident in /dev.
The kind of service an ioctl performs is determined by its second
parameter. In our case we are doing a <tt>CDROMREADTOCENTRY</tt>, i.e., CD-ROM read
table of contents entry. The third parameter to an ioctl is usually
the address of some structure specific to that particular ioctl call.
In this case the third parameter, the <tt>cdrom_tocentry</tt>
structure, is initialized to contain the track number, and the kernel
will copy the result into fields within the same structure.
<p>
If an ioctl call goes wrong, perhaps due to a drive fault or
to the drive being empty, the ioctl call returns <tt>-1</tt>. If
this happens, we need to raise a Java exception in the calling Java
module. Line 228 accomplishes this by calling SignalError and
passing it the text name of the exception as the second parameter--in
this case, one of the exceptions declared in
<A HREF="./hamilton2.html">Listing 2</A>.
The
first parameter to SignalError is used to control the environment in
which the error handling will occur (I left it to default). The last
parameter is any extra text explanation that we may wish to provide--in
this case I'm simply translating the C error number to a text
string. It's important to note that SignalError sets up an exception
that will be processed when the C error routine returns. On returning
to the calling Java routine, only the last of any SignalError calls
will have any effect, i.e., you can't communicate multiple errors via
multiple SignalError calls in one C call.
<p>
If the ioctl call succeeds, we take the address the kernel returned in
<tt>tocentry.cdte_addr.msf</tt> and translate it from minute-second frame to
an integer number of 75ths of a second. This value is returned as
the result of the native method call on line 231.
<p>
As we have seen above, passing numerical data backward and forward
between Java and C is pretty easy. Character strings are almost
as easy, but do require conversion. These two functions do the
necessary conversions:
<p>
<pre>
Hjava_lang_String *makeJavaString(char *from,
int len);
char *javaString2CString(Hjava_lang_String *from, char *to, int max_len);
</pre>
The function <b>Jcd_Drive_cddbID()</b> on lines 263 to 279 computes the
CDDB ID for a CD-ROM and uses <b>makeJavaString()</b> to convert it to a Java
string before returning it (CDDB is the database format used by the
Xmcd CD player). On lines 64 and 65 the <b>take_player()</b> function uses
<b>javaString2CString()</b> to make a C version of the Java string containing
the device name of the CD-ROM.
<p><HR> <P>
<h3>Practical Design Issues</h3>
<p><HR> <P>
If you look at almost any C routine in
<A HREF="./hamilton4.html">Listing 4</A>, you will see that the
C code is constantly checking things like whether the drive is open or
not. I'm trying to avoid monopolizing the drive. This is especially
important on ejecting the drive tray. When the user uses Jcd to eject
the tray, I relinquish the the drive by closing it and won't access it
again until the user issues another Jcd request. This allows
the user to use the drive for other purposes without leaving Jcd. It
also prevents a problem on my system--if I keep polling the
drive status after an eject, the drive will immediately close again.
There's quite a bit of code that attempts to tip-toe around issues
such as this one.
<p>
I also found that with my particular CD-ROM, if I issue an
inappropriate pause or resume (for example, pause when the drive
isn't playing anything), the kernel driver may become confused, and
further ioctl calls to the drive will hang indefinitely. Once this
happens the only way to get the drive to respond is to reboot. The
pause/resume code on Lines 359 to 386 is careful to check before
proceeding.
<p>
I also found that some kernel CD-ROM drivers won't respond to a play
command while they are already playing. That's why the STOP_PLAY
flag is defined on line 34 in
<A HREF="./hamilton2.html">Listing 2</A>.
<p>
You would think that CDs would include an ID unique to the album's
artist and title, and perhaps even artist and track information--well,
apparently, this isn't so. As a result, the writers of CD-players
such as Xcd and my own Jcd use a hash-key ID computed from the
lengths of the CDs and the lengths of their tracks. The hash key is
used to look up a database of CD artists, titles and track-titles.
There is a problem with using track lengths to create an ID. For an
artist/title album there may be many pressings (if that's the right
word) manufactured in different counties and states, and the different
pressings may have slightly different lead-in/lead-out times and
time intervals between tracks. The
ID is constructed so that all approximate matches can be identified--
if there isn't a unique match, the GUI interface of Jcd will present a
list of possibilities.
<p><HR> <P>
<h3>Making the Makefile</h3>
<p><HR> <P>
The final thing I'd like to discuss is the Makefile that builds this
lite version of Jcd. Inter-module/inter-class dependencies in Java
tend to depend more on whether a class has changed its interface.
Just because a source file has been modified, it does not necessarily
follow that defined interfaces within it have changed. If you
construct a Makefile using file based inter-dependencies, you are going
to do a lot of needless re-compiles. I don't have a solution to
this problem--maybe a new kind of Java-aware build tool is necessary.
This aside, the Makefile in
<A HREF="./hamilton5.html">Listing 5</A> does the job.
The CFLAGS option
<tt>-fPIC</tt> is very important; it makes the gcc compiler
generate position-independent code suitable for loading as a shared library. The
LDFLAGS option <tt>-shared</tt> is obvious enough--it tells the loader to
create a shared object. The LDFLAGS options <tt>-Wl,-soname,Jcd_Drive</tt>
passes the <tt>-soname</tt> option to the linker so that the shared object will
be named Jcd_Drive. Otherwise, the linker will include its path
in its name, and we may get a mismatch on loading a module called
Jcd_Drive. The Makefile adds a new default rule--a <i>.class</i> file
depends on a corresponding <i>.java</i> file. The Makefile installs the
native shared library in an appropriate directory structure to support
multiple architectures and operating systems.
<p>
That's about all you need to know to create a simple CD player. My
next article will examine the Abstract Windowing Toolkit in order to
add a GUI and multi-threading in order to add programmed play.
<p><HR> <P>
<h3>Resources</h3>
<p><HR> <P>
ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/apps/sound/cdrom/:
The sunsite directory where the latest Jcd can be found.
Currently this would be jcd-1.1.tar.gz
<p>
<A
HREF="http://www.actrix.gen.nz/users/michael/">http://www.actrix.gen.nz/users/michael/</A>:
Patches or news concerning Jcd can be found on my home page.
<p>
<A HREF="http://www.blackdown.org/">http://www.blackdown.org/</A>: The Linux Java site.
<p>
<i>Java in a Nutshell</i>, David Flanagan,
O'Reilly & Associates, 1996.
Very nice introduction, with enough detail to build things like Jcd if
you team it up with Sun's on-line documentation. By the time you read
this article, the second edition will be out--you can use O'Reilly's
web page, <A HREF="http://www.ora.com/">http://www.ora.com/</A>, to check on its status.
<p>
<i>The Java Language Specification</i>, Gosling, Joy, Steele,
Addison-Wesley 1996.
Good reference on the language and class libraries but doesn't cover
the Abstract Windowing Toolkit.
<p>
InfoMagic Java CD-ROM, Spring 1996:
I used this CD-ROM to gain access to Sun's HTML documentation via my
browser. This was my main source of AWT documentation.
You can't use the JDK on this CD, as it is out of date--but
the documentation was still useful.
<p>
<i>The Java Class Libraries</i>, Chan and Lee, Addison-Wesley, 1997.
This book covers the AWT, but also repeats much of what I found in
the previous two. This is the heaviest book I own--I think I
would prefer a lighter
AWT only reference. On brief inspection, <i>Java AWT Reference</i>,
John Zukowski, O'Reilly & Associates, 1997, looks like a good
possibility, and it covers the latest AWT too.
<p>
<i>Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment</i>, W. Richard Stevens.
Great general reference on Unix programming and provides a good background for
ioctl basics and other stuff.
<p>
<A
HREF="http://sunsite.unc.edu/~cddb/xmcd/">http://sunsite.unc.edu/~cddb/xmcd/ </A>:
The Xmcd and CDDB home page.
Ti Kan and Steve Scherf developed a Motif CD player, and its
CDDB database format has become a popular standard for free and
shareware CD players. They've defined a protocol for remote
look ups via TCP sockets.
<p>
All listings referred to in this article are available by
anonymous download in the file
<A HREF="./hamilton.tgz">hamilton.tgz</A>.
<p>
<p>
<!--===================================================================-->
<P> <hr> <P>
<center><H5>Copyright &copy; 1998, Michael Hamilton <BR>
Published in Issue 28 of <i>Linux Gazette</i>, May 1998</H5></center>
<!--===================================================================-->
<P> <hr> <P>
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ALT="[ TABLE OF CONTENTS ]"></A>
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<H4>
"Linux Gazette...<I>making Linux just a little more fun!</I>"
</H4>
<P> <HR> <P>
<!--===================================================================-->
<center>
<H1><font color="maroon">COMDEX/Spring 1998</font></H1>
<H4>By <a href="mailto:">Jon "maddog" Hall</a></H4>
</center>
<P> <HR> <P>
<A HREF="./photos.html">COMDEX/Spring 1998 Photo Album</A>
<P> <HR> <P>
COMDEX in Chicago (April 20-23) was a titanic Linux hit. Vendors around us were astonished
by the attention and business we drew to our booths.
<p>
The Linux Pavilion had a huge sign overhead (thanks to Carlie Fairchild of
<i>Linux Journal</i> and Andy Wahtera, our new ZD/COMDEX representative), and
multiple large floor signs guided people entering COMDEX to the Linux
International Pavilion. We had a page on the COMDEX Web site, mention in
the Show Daily and other marketing ``aids''.
<p>
Linux International vendors with booths in the Pavilion were Caldera, S.u.S.E., InfoMagic
Inc., <i>Linux Journal</i> and Red Hat Software, Inc., a small number of vendors,
but big in heart.
<p>
While smaller in attendance than its Las Vegas cousin, COMDEX in Chicago
seemed to have a lot more end-user customers than the Las Vegas
show--not
really surprising when you consider Chicago is a cultural, economic and
manufacturing center. While Mr. Bill was still trying to boot Windows 98 and
have it stay up, the Linux International Pavilion was singing a sweet song.
Some people thought we had set a new world's record for ``longest line at
COMDEX''--the line where people waited to pick up a free Linux CD-ROM.
<p>
I accompanied Red Hat's ``booth gang'', Anna, Terry and
Mike, to visit the Argonne National Laboratory and Western Suburban Chicago
Linux Users Group (which thankfully is abbreviated AALUG and has its web site
at http://hydra.pns.anl.gov/lug/lug-main.html). The meeting was actually held
at the Fermi National Lab, which recently announced that Linux will be
officially supported at their laboratory and with their applications. Donnie
Barnes flew in from Durham, North Carolina to give a talk on Red Hat 5.0, and
to help give out Red Hat ``souvenirs''. I gave a brief talk at the end of
Donnie's epic speech.
<p>
After the meeting ended, Dr. G. P. Yeh, a physicist in the computing division,
invited us on a tour to see a particle-collider detector. Fermi is expanding
their collider, and the new one is expected to produce more than 20 times the
data of its predecessor. To expand the computing power to analyze and
store this data in real time with traditional methods would have been very
costly, so now Fermi is building a 1000-node Beowulf system to detect quarks
(and other little things). Dr. Yeh
told us that without Linux and the concept of Beowulf systems, the costs of supplying computer power for the next
generation of collider would be many times what they are now forecasting.
<p>
Our sincere thanks to Dan Yocum for setting up the meeting at Fermi and
advertising it, and to Dr. Yeh for showing us the collider.
<p>
On Wednesday S.u.S.E. gave a talk at the Chicagoland Linux Users Group, and
on Thursday I gave a two-hour ``ramble'' to the same group after COMDEX
was over. Then, tired and thirsty, most people retired to the Goose Island
Brewpub.
<p>
The Chicagoland Linux Users Group (http://clug.cc.uic.edu/) helped to staff
the Linux International booth, hand out flyers and line up user group
meetings. So ``thank you'' to Clyde Reichie, Don Weimann, Simon Epsteyn,
William Golembo, Gennagy ``Ugean'' Polishchuk, Long Huynh, Perry Mages, Viktorie
Navratilova, Ben Galliart, Richard Hinton, and especially to Dave Blondell,
the president, who organized the group and the schedules.
<p>
Linux International would like to encourage other Linux vendors to join us in
the next Linux Pavilion at COMDEX, whether it be in Las Vegas or Chicago. We
are definitely looking forward to the next COMDEX in the windy city. For
information on membership or other information about Linux International,
visit our web site, http://www.li.org/.
<!--===================================================================-->
<P> <hr> <P>
<center><H5>Copyright &copy; 1998, Jon "maddog" Hall <BR>
Published in Issue 28 of <i>Linux Gazette</i>, May 1998</H5></center>
<!--===================================================================-->
<P> <hr> <P>
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<H4>
"Linux Gazette...<I>making Linux just a little more fun!</I>"
</H4>
<P> <HR> <P>
<!--===================================================================-->
<center>
<H1><font color="maroon">Home Networking With Linux</font></H1>
<H4>By <a href="mailto:glen@silver-182.silverlink.net">Glen Journeay</a></H4>
</center>
<P> <HR> <P>
<ol>
<li><A HREF="./journeay.html#home">Home Networking Arrives</A>
<ul>
<li>Progress on the Home Front
<li>Advantages of Networks
<li>Problems With Networks
</ul>
<li><A HREF="./journeay.html#pick">Picking a Network Solution</A>
<ul>
<li>Networking Choices
<li>Advantages of Unix
<li>Linux, the Unix for the GNU generation
</ul>
<li><A HREF="./journeay.html#linux">Linux Networking in Action</A>
<ul>
<li>GNU General Public License - Cant Beat the Price
<li>Support - More Than You Paid For
<li>Supported Hardware, Supported Software
<li>Networking Support
<li>IP Masquerade (Yes, You Can Eat That Cake!)
<li>What Linux Isn't
</ul>
<li><A HREF="./journeay.html#catch">So, What's the Catch</A>
<li><A HREF="./journeay.html#just">Just Do It!</A>
<li><A HREF="./journeay.html#future">The Future</A>
</ol>
<P><HR> <P>
<A name="home"></A>
<H3>Home Networking Arrives</H3>
<P> <HR> <P>
It seems it's inevitable that the norm of home PCs becomes not
just having one, but a few. Often, we acquire more than one computer at
home when we upgrade from our existing system, or we get one for the kids to
use, or the spouse brings one home for work. Somehow, we end up with
a bunch.
<P>
Dealing with the problems that arise with two or more computers is
our first exposure to being a network administrator. Let's face it, as
soon as you have more than one, you're trying to move or share information
between them. The kids want to download a game from the Internet from one
PC and install it on another. You brought home a file from work, only to
realize that you don't have compatible software at home. You're
constantly moving files on disk over the sneaker net to the PC downstairs
with the good printer.
<P>
The best solution to these problems, a network, is generally
staring us in the face out a work, we just don't consider this solution to
be economical or practical for home use. But, like the idea of having
more than one TV twenty years ago, the day when home networks and multiple
computers in the household will be common place is rapidly approaching.
Even now, those among us with more money (lots more sometimes) are
exploring totally networked and interactive houses. In new houses RJ-45
jacks for 10BaseT , and the 100 MHz 100BaseT Ethernet will be become as
common as the phone jacks they look like.
<P>
There are drawbacks to having a network at home. First off, we
don't have a whole Information Systems (IS) department at home to support
us. Also, the networking hardware and software can be expensive. So the
advantages of networking have to out weigh the disadvantages of setup and
maintenance costs.
<P> <HR> <P>
<A name="pick"></A>
<H3>Picking A Network Solution</H3>
<P> <HR> <P>
Let's examine some of the networking solutions available that are
appropriate for home networks. It turns out that as the PC industry has
matured, the variety of networking options has increased. These range
from simple plug-n-go printer sharing networks all the way to firewall
protected, server supported intranets. Normally, the cost and
administration complexity rise as the power and functionality of the
network rise, and as always, the proper way to choose the network you need
is to determine the functions that you require. Here's a matrix listing
normal network functions and solutions among the common operating home
operating systems and two non-common networking solutions - Linux and
Microsoft NT:
<pre>
Linux Unix NT Win95 Mac OS/2
Printer services x x x x x x
File server/sharing x * * * * *
Mail server x * * * - -
Domain Name Server x x * * * *
Web Server x x * * * *
Firewall x * * * - -
Routing x x x - - -
Gateway x x x - - -
Internet x x x x x x
Ethernet x x x x x x
Token Ring x * * * * *
Arcnet x * * * * *
Framerelay x * * - - -
ISDN x * * * - -
PPP x x x x x x
SLIP x x x x x x
TCP/IP x x x x x x
X.25 x * * * * *
IPX (Novell Netware) x x x x * *
SMB (Windows network) x x x x * *
Appletalk x * * * x *
NFS x x * * * *
</pre>
<P> <HR> <P>
<pre>
x Support in system as supplied
* Support available as extra
- Support not available
</pre>
Several home operating systems have been left off of the features
comparison chart, most of those have been superceeded by their
manufacturers. If your favorite is missing, our apology, but discuss this
with the OEM since even they are urging you to switch. Also, several
flavors of Unix have been covered under just the Unix heading with one
Unix variety, Linux, set aside.
<P>
Linux since it's inception in 1991, has been different than the
other Unixes in several important ways. Linux is a Unix clone written
from scratch by Linus Torvalds with assistance from a loosely-knit team of
developers on the Internet. Linux is (and always will be), with very few
restrictions (see the GNU General Public License), free and has evolved
into a full fledged, high performance Unix originally based on the Intel
386, now available on more different computer architectures than any other
single operating system in the world. It should be noted that Linux is
not the only freely distributed Unix variety, it just seems to be the best
supported one at this time. It has good support available from the team
of developers on the Internet and very extensive documentation in the form
of HOWTO instructions, FAQs and Unix man pages, also available freely over
the Internet. Linux distributions, the operating system and all required
other software to have a fully functional system, are available for less
than $30 on a CDROM and for free when downloaded from FTP sites on the
Internet. Linux network servers for home use actually require no more
than an old 386 in order to provide excellent performance for file
servers, print servers, mail servers and network gateways and routers.
Linux is very robust. Many Linux boxes around the world have not crashed
or been rebooted for over a year. I do not think any Windows or Macintosh
product can make this claim.
<P>
Windows NT, the networking oriented operating system offered by
Microsoft, has been available since 1991 too. It has all of the above
features available for a price. This system can easily cost over $1000 to
get almost all of the features listed above. It has good support
available and as it begins to replace Unix as a major operating system on
the Internet it will mature into a powerful operating system available on
many different computer architectures. It currently cannot perform all of
the networking functions that Unix or Linux can offer, but it will soon.
Undoubtedly, NT with the continued support of Microsoft has a bright
future.
<P>
Unix, of course, is a well established networking power house. In
fact, Unix is the workhorse of the Internet. All of the protocols and
services that the Internet were originally based on were developed on
Unix. Because of the maturity of Unix, it has already gone through the
growing pains that are now plaguing NT, such as security and crash
problems. Despite predictions for years that Unix use will decline, Unix
use continues to increase. Until the advent of Linux, there was no
inexpensive, powerful Unix available for the home. Unix operating systems
generally cost over $2000 for an operating system with the features listed
above. And even now the relative complexity of Unix to most other
operating systems discourages wide use except at colleges and large
businesses.
<P>
Windows 95, the Macintosh OS and OS/2 also provide limited
networking out of the box, and with additional software can perform as
printer servers, file servers, mail servers, name servers, firewalls, and
web servers. None of these operating systems were designed originally to
support intensive networking services, but can do a good job for small
networks with the right software and hardware. These operating systems
can be outfitted to perform almost all of the above features for about
$500, and the basic operating system is generally supplied with the PC.
Also these systems are very easy to setup and configure.
<P>
Picking a home networking solution at the present time is largely
dependent upon your networking requirements and budget. Obviously, most
of us cannot afford to spend large amounts of money unless a home business
is involved. Luckily at this time one of most powerful is also the
cheapest. Linux offers all of the power of Unix and as software
installation programs become more sophisticated, it's also becoming easier
(almost painless) to install and administer. Indeed, if you have the
time, patience, disk space and an Internet link, you can download Linux
from several FTP sites located around the world. With all this to offer,
you wonder why Linux is not being used more often, well, it is. Linux is
now being used on over 8 million computers around the world, in over 40%
of the Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in the world, by large
corporations, and US government agencies including NASA which recently put
an experiment on the Space Shuttle run by a Linux computer.
<P> <HR> <P>
<A name="linux"></A>
<H3>Linux Networking in Action</H3>
<P> <HR> <P>
Assuming that you do decide to set up a home network server using
Linux, the first step is to find PC hardware that can be used to run the
server. This should not present a problem since Linux supports just about
any PC configuration made within the last five years, and as stated above,
an older 386 PC can easily support a home network of five or more PCs.
Linux runs on any 386/486/586/Pentium class processor (including AMD,
Cyrix), Dec Alpha, PowerPC (MkLinux for Apple), M68xxx (Amiga, Atari), Sun
SPARC and MIPS. A minimum system based on a 386 requires 4 Meg of RAM
(more is better) and 50 Meg of disk space (200 Meg is better). While
Linux can be run on a 386/4MB/20MB system, this system will be very slow.
Eight MB of memory and 50 MB of disk space is a more realistic minimum for
a useful system. If this describes the PC you've been using as a door
stop for the last few years, then dust it off, because it'll work fine.
Many for the more popular Linux distributions along with manuals are now
available at bookstores.
<P>
Don't worry if you have both Macintoshs and IBM PCs to support at
home. Linux happily coexists with all of the most popular home operating
systems. Linux knows the networking protocols and file systems native to
a multitude of different operating systems on a network: MS DOS, Windows
for Workgroups, Win95, Win NT, Mac OS, OS/2, Novell, Amiga, VAX and Unix.
Details to implement support for these network support is provided by
step-by-step instructions written in HOWTO documents available on the
Internet.
<P>
You will need to decide on the hardware link to use at home.
Ethernet is probably the least expensive and even slow Ethernet (10Mbps)
provides performance that exceeds most home requirements. Fast Ethernet
(100Mbps) is rapidly becoming the business Ethernet standard and is still
reasonable affordable for home use. Ethernet interface cards range in
price from $20 for an 8-bit ISA bus 10MHz card to $100 for a 100MHz card.
10Base2 seems to be the home user Ethernet cable choice, but 10BaseT isn't
far behind. With 10Base2 there is simply a coaxial cable "daisy chained"
between computers on the network. The cable must not ever be discontinuous
and 50 ohm terminators are required at both ends of the daisy chain. If
you're having a home built, getting a 10BaseT cable network installed is
easily done and by choosing Category 5 cable you can ensure an easy
upgrade path to Fast Ethernet. Also the 50 ohm terminators are not
required. A 10BaseT system of more than two interface cards will require
an Ethernet hub, and be warned that Category 5 cable is not cheap
($0.40/foot), so you'll pay more for a 10BaseT installation, but this a
system will last longer, and is more convenient than 10base2. Linux
supports almost any network interface card, so your networking
requirements will probably depend more on the PCs at the other end of the
Ethernet cable.
<P>
The Linux server could be the gateway to the Internet for all of
the rest of the PCs (or whatever) on your home network. This will require
a connection to a local or national ISP which can provide an IP address
(preferably a static IP address) for the Linux gateway. The Internet link
can be over a modem, ISDN, frame relay or ATM connection. Linux will also
provide firewall services so that no one will be able to invade your home
network from the Internet connection. Using a process called IP
masquerading, Linux will provide Internet access to all of the PCs on your
home network even with only one valid IP address and fully qualified
domain name. This is done by making it appear that all of the TCP/IP
traffic coming from your home network is coming from the Linux PC. When
traffic comes back for the other machines, the Linux PC will act like the
post office and sort all the network traffic back to the proper PC. A
Linux machine can easily support two to five PCs surfing the Internet on a
28.8 modem link. A Linux computer can provide mail server services
allowing you to create as many e-mail addresses as you require at home.
All of the following can be done with ONLY ONE NORMAL PPP or SLIP link to
an Internet Service Provider. There would be no extra charges for
additional e-mail services or subnetworks since all of these functions
would be performed at home by your Linux server. Are you tired of having
only one PC on the Internet at home or paying for multiple Internet
accounts? Then Linux is the answer.
<P>
The Linux PC will provide printer and file server functions.
Samba, a free software package, supports the SMB protocol used by Win95
and WFW. Samba is used by many large companies on large company networks.
Once configured, it interfaces into the Windows operating system and works
flawlessly allowing all of the network users to have individual and shared
disk space, plus allowing the user specify and use any printer on the
Linux server (or network printer for that matter). Here again, as for all
of Linux, the software is available for free over the Internet, complete
with installation instructions and source code, and the software is being
actively developed and maintained by the original developer. Linux has a
similar software package called Netatalk which provides similar support
for the Apple Localtalk protocol. A tape backup system can be installed
in the Linux server to automatically back up your server.
<P>
Linux provides all of the network services traditionally
associated with Unix. Mail server service can be accomplished using using
sendmail or smail. Any user on the Linux system can then have an e-mail
address. The e-mail account can be accessed from the network PCs using an
e-mail client with the POP3 protocol, such as Eudora or Pegasus. If your
network needs Domain Name Service, the named program can provide it. If
you support more than on type of network or several small networks, the
Linux server can act as a gateway to tie all of the subnets together.
Kernel routing rules can also be used to allow the server to act as a
firewall and control access to the internal network. NFS, which stands
for Network File System, allows computers to mount disk drives on remote
machines. NFS is also available with any Linux distribution, although
most other operating systems will require additional software to use NFS.
The other network standard applications used on TCP/IP networks are always
available: FTP, telnet, remote shells, ping, etc.
<P>
A Linux server also provides a state-of-the-art web server and
Java development system. Several web servers are available for running on
Linux with the Apache web server being the most popular. Apache is now
the most popular web server on the Internet with over 45% of all web
servers running it. The Java Development Kit is being ported from Sun
Microsystems and provides a Java compiler for developing Java
applications. In fact support for Java can be complied into the Linux
operating system allowing the server to run native Java code. This
feature is still being discussed for most operating systems.
<P> <HR> <P>
<A name="catch"></A>
<H3>So, What's the Catch?</H3>
<P> <HR> <P>
By now most of you are wondering what the catch is with running
Linux. There's no real catch. Linux has been developing and maturing at
a rate that far exceeds that of such well supported systems as Windows NT.
For example, Windows NT just announced support for up to eight CPUs in a
multiprocessor system. Linux now supports the Intel SMP multiprocessor
specification which provides support for up to twenty CPUs in a single
system.
<P>
With this power comes the complexity of the installation and
support. In fact, installation and maintenance have been the subject of
many recent articles. However, recent Linux distributions have made the
installation process much easier and provide tools to make system
administration easier. Also helping the situation is that, unlike Windows
NT which is a relatively new operating system, Unix has been around for
decades, so there exists a larger base of trained system personnel for
Unix systems than there are for Windows NT. The traditional support
market was with large installations at large companies in a workstation
environment, but it's now shifting to support the use of Unix in smaller
businesses. Since UNIX is such a strait forward operating system to
develop software in, many young and eager software developers and
hobbiests are turning to Linux for an inexpensive development platform.
These young people are an excellent source of system administration
knowledge, and most of them can be contacted for free advise on news
groups on the Internet.
<P>
Linux, like other Unixes, has not previously been an operating
system commonly used at home. Many of the applications developed for Unix
systems are available on Linux. This was traditionally the scientific
workstation area, and the quality of the applications reflects this.
Unfortunately, Linux suffers from a shortage of applications oriented
towards the average computer consumer. So, even though a Linux makes for
an excellent server,and it is also an excellent workstation, running the
latest release of the free graphical environment, X windows, it cannot run
the latest version of Office 97 (although many Windows applications can be
run using the WABI Windows emulator available from Caldera software or the
Wine windows emulator). There are several software companies (and others)
now developing and selling consumer applications to fill this gap.
<P> <HR> <P>
<A name="just"></A>
<H3>Just Do It</H3>
<P> <HR> <P>
Linux is an operating system with minimal initial cost, yet
powerful enough to easily handle a home network or small business.
Especially nice is that the older PC hardware which is normally retired
can be very effectively used as a network server for a small network.
Local Linux users groups and computer stores provide excellent Linux
support. The support available from the Internet is also excellent. It's
always comforting to receive an e-mail from the original developer of some
Linux software acknowledging that the bug you've reported has been fixed.
<P> <HR> <P>
<A name="future"></A>
<H3>The Future</H3>
<P> <HR> <P>
In many ways, the advent and growth of Linux has gone hand-in-hand
with the growth of the Internet, and the work of Linus Torvalds and many
hard working developers. Presently, Linux is an extremely capable
operating system available at an unbelievable price. Development of the
operating system to incorporate the latest hardware and software
developments is continuing at a rapid pace. Although the future of the
Internet, the Personal Computer, and the Network Computer is unknowable,
it would seem that Linux will be part of that future.
<!--===================================================================-->
<P> <hr> <P>
<center><H5>Copyright &copy; 1998, Glen Journeay <BR>
Published in Issue 28 of <i>Linux Gazette</i>, May 1998</H5></center>
<!--===================================================================-->
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<center>
<h1><font color="maroon">IPmasquerading with Roadrunner or Second Ethernet
Card </font></H1>
<H4>By <a href="mailto:men2@auto.med.ohio-state.edu">Mark Nielsen</a></H4>
</center>
<P> <HR> <P>
This is for Red Hat 5.0 systems. You can probably do a similar thing
for other linux systems. It is specifically configured for roadrunner in
Columbus, Ohio. If you live somewhere else, you will have to change
anything with "columbus" in the configuration to something else. So far,
the only thing I see you have change is in /etc/resolv.conf, but I believe
that gets changed everytime you start rrhdcpcd.
<p>
If you manage to pull this off, you are almost one step away from being
able to install a real network to the internet. Think about it, the
only difference between what we are doing here and a real network
connected
to the internet is that fact that your local intranet doesn't have real
valid ip addresses. If you had real valid ip addresses and your gateway
addressed stayed the same (it changes everytime you log into roadrunner)
then you would have a real fixed network connected to the internet.
Do this, and you can actually say you have real networking experience.
This involves ethernet, DNS, ip forwarding, ip masquerading, ethernet
configuration, and a lot of other stuff. Good luck!
<p>
I also wish to thank a bunch of people at The Ohio State University for
their suggestions. I hope I was able to implement them correctly!
<p>
<ol>
<li> <A href="#ref">References</a>
<li>Install roadrunner first on a windows95
computer and get the configuration files. You will need them.
<li> <a href="#short"> Short way</a>, if you have 2 3com 3c509 cards
aet at irq=10, address 300, and irq=11,address=310. If this works,
great, but otherwise do all the steps.
<li> <a href="#first"> Setup your ethernet cards.</a>
<li> <A href="#dns">Setup your DNS</a> on the server.
Just use my examples. I have it setup for 9 computers
if you need that many. Also, you must have the DNS
rpm installed. Here is a
<a
href="ftp://linux.med.ohio-state.edu/cdrom/RedHat/RPMS/caching-nameserver-1.1-4.noarch.rpm">
dns caching server</a> from my cheapbytes Redhat 5.0 cdrom.
<li> <a href="#client">Setup your clients</a>.
<li> <a href="#mas"> Compile kernel
</a> for ip masquerading and ethernet card driver.
<li> <a href="#change"> Change various configuration</a> files.
<li> <A href="#hook">Hook up your</a> hub,
gateway computer, and roadrunner.
<li><a href="#connect"> Connect your gateway computer</a> to the internet
with roadrunner.
<li> <a href="#service"> Setting roadrunner</a> up as a service and
making the first ethernet card use rrdhcpcd.
<li><a href="#stopstart"> Starting and stopping</a> the roadrunner service
and rrdhpcd.
<li> <a href="#other">Other things</a>.
<li><a href="#index"> Index </a> of files.
You should not have blank lines at the beginning of the files!
</ol>
<hr>
<a name="ref"></a>
<h2>References </h2>
<ol>
<li><a href="ftp://ftp.fammed.ohio-state.edu/pub/rr/">
RoadRunner Columbus, OH Infosite</a>. You can get roadrunner stuff
from here.
<li> <a
href="http://www.ssc.com/linux/LDP/HOWTO/mini/IP-Masquerade-3.html">
HOWTO -- Compiling the Kernel for IP Masquerade Support</a>
<li> <a href="http://www.tor.shaw.wave.ca/~ambrose/">
Linux IP Masquerade Resource</a>
<li><a href="http://www.indyramp.com/masq/">
Linux IP Masquerading Web Site</a>
<li><a href="http://www.vortech.net/rrlinux/linux.htm">
RoadRunner </a> help webpage. This is where I got my rrclientd
program.
<li><a href="http://www.ssc.com/linux/LDP/HOWTO/DNS-HOWTO.html">
DNS</a>. You almost don't need this if you use
/etc/hosts file for your linux computers. For Windoze95
and other operating systems you will have to.
<li><a
href="http://www.ssc.com/linux/LDP/HOWTO/Ethernet-HOWTO.html">
Ethernet</a>. Howto set up your ethernet cards.
<li> <a
href="http://www.ssc.com/linux/LDP/HOWTO/Firewall-HOWTO.html">
Firewall</a>. If you want to setup your firewall, it is
trivial with this setup.
<li> <a
href="http://www.ssc.com/linux/LDP/HOWTO/NET-3-HOWTO.html">Networking-3</a>.
How to do networking in general.
<li> <a
href="http://www.ssc.com/linux/LDP/HOWTO/BootPrompt-HOWTO.html">
Bootprompt</a>. Howto modify what the kernel does at
boottime.
<li> <a
href="http://www.ssc.com/linux/LDP/HOWTO/Kernel-HOWTO.html">
Linux kernel </a>
<li><a href="http://www.ssc.com/linux/LDP/HOWTO/mini/DHCPcd.html">
DHCPcd mini howto</a>. I found this useful in answering
some questions.
</ol>
<hr>
<a name="short"></a>
<h2>Short way </h2>
THIS SHORT SECTION ONLY WORKS IF YOU MANAGE to get both ethernet cards
detected with modules. It will probably not work for most people.
<p>
This will probably only work with RedHat 5.0.
These steps you must not deviate from. For some reason, the installation
of redhat detected both ethernet cards properly and also the kernel
has ip forwarding in the kernel. It just needs to be enabled. Thus,
Installing your own network is just a bunch of file copying and a couple
of commands and you are done. Be sure to install roadrunner with
Windows95 first to get a configuration file.
<p>
1. Install both ethernet cards before you install RedHat 5.0
The two ethernet cards I used were 3com 3c509.
The first had values of, irq=10, address=300 and the second had
irq=11, address=310.
Also, when you install RedHat 5.0, go ahead and install it for a LAN
and have it autoprobe the ethernet cards. I cannot figure it out, but
when I installed redhat after installing these two ethernet cards, it
gets them both everytime, when before it wouldn't. When it comes close to
the end of the RedHat 5.0 installation, it will ask to to select which
services you want started on bootup. I turn off
sendmail and smb. I do this because it hanged on me at boot time.
When you install RedHat 5.0, install everything. I did. You also shouldn't
have to change /etc/lilo.conf.
<p>
2. You don't need to recompile the kernel. Just add this file to yours.
<br><a href="#index_lilo"> /etc/rc.d/rc.local</a>
<br> Also, add the krb5.ini file in C:\NETMANAG for Windows95 to
<br> /etc/krb5.conf
<br> Also, make a file called "/etc/rrpasswd" which only has one line on
it which is the password for your roadrunner username.
<p>
3. Execute the commands
<br> mkdir /etc/dhcpc
<br> unset noglob
<p>
4. Copy these files to their exact location
<br><a href="#index_network"> /etc/sysconfig/network</a>
<br><a href="#index_eth0"> /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0</a>
<br><a href="#index_eth1"> /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth1</a>
<br><a href="#index_roadrunner"> /etc/rc.d/init.d/roadrunner</a>
<br><a href="#index_resolv"> /etc/dhcpc/resolv.conf</a>
<br>
<br><a href="#index_named"> /etc/named.conf</a>
<br><a href="#index_0"> /var/named/10.0.0</a>
<br><a href="#index_mark"> /var/named/mark.local</a>
<br><a href="#index_nlocal"> /var/named/named.local</a>
<br>
<br><a href="#index_hname"> /etc/HOSTNAME</a>
<br><a href="#index_hosts"> /etc/hosts</a>
<br>
<br><a href="#index_login2"> /root/Login2.bat</a>
<br><a href="#index_email"> /root/email.pl</a>
<br><a href="#index_cron2"> /root/cron2</a>
<p>
5. Downlaod <a href="http://www.vortech.net/rrlinux/linux.htm">
rrclientd-1.3</a>, untar and ungzip it, and
copy all the files in rrclientd-1.3/bin to /sbin. For example, if you
are in rrclientd-1.3/bin, execute "cp * /sbin". I had the binaries
when I got mine, so hopefully you won't have to compile them.
Compiling with the new libraries Red Hat
has had has been tricky at times.
<p> You may have to alter the /etc/services file as it says in the
README file for rrclientd-1.3.
<p>
6. Execute the commands
<br> mv /etc/resolv.conf /etc/resolv.conf_old
<br> ln -s /etc/dhcpc/resolv.conf /etc/resolv.conf
<br> mv /sbin/dhcpcd /sbin/dhcpcd_old
<br> mv /usr/sbin/dhcpcd /usr/sbin/dhcpcd_old
<br> mv /usr/bin/rdate /usr/bin/rdate_old
<br>
<br> ln -s /sbin/rdate /usr/bin/rdate
<br> ln -s /sbin/rrdhcpcd /sbin/dhcpcd
<br> ln -s /sbin/rrdhcpcd /usr/sbin/dhcpcd
<br> ln -s /sbin/rrclientd /usr/sbin/rrclientd
<br>
<br> cp /root/roadrunner /etc/rc.d/init.d ## adding roadrunner
service
<br> chkconfig --add roadrunner
<br>
<br> crontab /root/RR/cron2 ### resetting connection in a cron
job
<br>
<br> ## Making it so we can execute the scripts with cron2
<br> chmod 755 /root/Login2.bat /root/email.pl /etc/rc.d/init.d/roadrunner
<br>
<br> ### We only want root to see the password!
<br> chmod 700 /etc/rrpasswd
<p>
7. In /etc/rc.d/init.d/roadrunner, make sure you change the username to
your username that you got for roadrunner.
<p>
8. Follow the steps in <a href="#hook"> Hook up your hub, gateway
computer, and roadrunner</a> and if you have clients, follow the
steps in <a href="#client">Setup your clients </a>.
<p>
9. Now we need to attach dhpc to your first ethernet card. Follow
the instructions on part b of <a href="#partb"> Setting roadrunner up as a
service</a>.
<p>
10. Reboot your computer and you are done!
<p>
11. If you have any problems whatsoever, all I can say is, make sure your
timezone is correct and that your time is not ahead of the current time
by one second or behind it by more than 5 minutes, and if that doesn't
help, use the rest of the instructions I have.
<p>
<hr>
<a name="first"></a>
<h2> First ethernet card </h2>
Install your first ethernet card as normal when you install the operating
system. Give it a phony ip address you will not use on your network.
For some reason, this ethernet card has to be the one connected to the
outside in order to get everything to work right with xwindows
forwarding. Now, let me state, I had to do this for only people coming
in. Going out, you should have no problem with the second ethernet card
being the one hooked up to roadrunner. However, I could never telnet in
from work to my house and get an xwindows program to work when
roadrunner was using the second ethernet card.
The second ethernet card will be for the intranet. <p>
<p>
Also, setup your second ethernet card to NOT use the same irq and
address of your first ethernet card. Traditionally, I use lower
irq and address for my first ethernet card compared to the second. Often
I use a dos computer using a dos program to set the values for the
ethernet cards. You will probably have to do this as well.
<p>
Don't do anything yet with roadrunner or your rrdhcpcd program yet.
Also, don't worry about the network configurations yet, we will take
care of it later. Also don't worry about the fact Linux probably
won't see the second ethernet card, we will take care of this later.
Just make sure the ethernet cards don't use the same hardware values.
Also, if your second ethernet card has a lower irq and address than the
first, the computer might think it is the first, so I believe there
really is a reason why I make the first ethernet card with the lower
values. I ain't gonna test if I am wrong. You should just make sure
at least one ethernet card is detected.
<p>
<hr>
<a name="dns"></a>
<h3> Setup your DNS server on your server connected to the
internet.</h3> If you know what you are doing, you can
change the configurations. Because I am silly, I choose
the domain "mark.local". If "mark.local" every becomes an
official
domain, then you will have to change every occurance of
"mark.local"
to something else in the files below.
<ol>
<li> Copy the following files to your server
<ol>
<li> <a href="#index_named">/etc/named.boot</a>
<li> <a href="#index_resolv">
/etc/resolv.conf</a>
<li> <a href="#index_mark">
/var/named/mark.local</a>
<li> <a href="#index_0">
/var/named/10.0.0</a>
<li> <a href="#index_nlocal">/var/named/named.local</a>
<li> <a href="#index_hosts"> /etc/hosts</a> is a file
I would use, but don't need. Just in case your dns server
fails, this is handy for a backup.
</ol>
<li> Leave /var/named/named.ca and named.local the same
<li> Restart named with this command
<br> /etc/rc.d/init.d/named restart
</ol>
<p>
There are a couple of things you could change for your own
personal needs. In
/var/named/mark.local, I disabled localhost definition.
<p>
Now at least your clients computers can find each other. I assume you
know how to setup ip addresses, gateways, and other stuff for your
clients. I will give some pointers on this anyways. Setup clients
to use DNS server.
<hr>
<a name="client"></a>
<h3> Setup your client computers</h3>
In your computer that is acting like the DNS server, I have upto
eight additional entries in the dns server so that you can have upto
eight computers using the dns server. I am assuming you know a little
bit about ethernet cards. Here are the following configurations I
did for a computer of mine.
<ol>
<li> ip address = 10.0.0.21
<li> name address = c1.mark.local
<li> gateway address = 10.0.0.10
<-- second ethernet card on server computer
<li> netmask = 255.255.255.0
<li> As for the file /etc/resolv.conf,
<a href="#index_resolv_client"> use this one</a>
for the clients.
<li> I didn't have to fuss with the kernel on the client
computers. As far as the clients are concerened, your
server is just a normal gateway.
<li> <a href="#index_hosts"> /etc/hosts</a> is a file
I would use, but don't need. Just in case your dns server
fails, this is handy for a backup.
</ol>
<p>
The only thing you should have to change to each additional computer
is the ip address and the name address. c2.mark.local and 10.0.0.22 would
be used for the next computer. Get the idea?
<p>
Also, if you are using pc or mac clients or other stuff, check out the
<a
href="http://www.ssc.com/linux/LDP/HOWTO/mini/IP-Masquerade-3.html#ss3.3">
masquerading mini-howto</a>.
<hr>
<a name="mas"></a>
<h3> Setup masquerading on the server</h3>
<p>
If you were able to get your module(s) to detect both ethernet cards,
then this section doesn't apply. But if you could not get the modules
to recognize both ethernet cards, which will be the case for most people,
you MUST COMPILE THE DRIVER of the ethernet card into your
kernel and also compile in the masquerading bit. I have had problems
getting modules to work with 2 ethernet cards of the same type.
Somehow, when I installed RedHat 5.0 from scratch, it got both of
my ethernet cards, but it was probably an unusal case.
<p>
Read the
<a
href="http://www.ssc.com/linux/LDP/HOWTO/mini/IP-Masquerade-3.html#ss3.1">
ip masquerading HOWTO</a>. Follow its steps
on compiling the kernel for masquerading.
NOTE -- VERY DANGEROUS if you screw this up. About,
installing the kernel, RedHat did something
silly when they configured the /etc/lilo.conf file.
Change this line "image=/boot/vmlinuz-2.0.32" to
"image=/boot/vmlinuz" and make sure you run "lilo"
at some point before you reboot your computer. Do it
now to be safe.
<p>
1. And also, these are the steps I use to compile the kernel, first
configure it like the howto says
<br> cd /usr/src/linux
<br> make config
<p>
2. and when that is done, compile it
<br> make dep
<br> make clean
<br> make zImage
<p>3. and if it worked, compile and install the modules
<br> make modules
<br> make modules_install
<p>
4. After you created your kernel,
do the following steps to install your new kernel.
<p>
cp /usr/src/linux arch/i386/boot/zImage /boot/vmlinuz_NEW
<br> rm /boot/vmlinuz
<bR> ln -s /boot/vmlinuz_NEW /boot/vmlinuz
<br> lilo
<p>
That should install your kernel if you compiled it.
Here is an example of my
<a href="#index_lilo">/etc/lilo.conf</a> file.
<p> YOUR /etc/lilo.conf WILL NOT BE THE SAME AS MINE. Change <a
href="#index_lilo">/etc/lilo.conf</a> for your specific needs
and please
read about append in the BOOTPROMPT howto before you use it.
You will have to modify this file yourself.
Add the append statement like I did for two ethernet cards.
<hr>
<a name="change"></a>
<h3> Change some configuration files</h3>
Use these files.
<ol>
<li> Change <a href="#index_rc.local"> /etc/rc.d/rc.local</a>
which will start the ip masquerading. Actually, ADD THIS
to your rc.local file and do not overwite it.
<li> Change <a href="#index_network">/etc/sysconfig/network</a>
and remember that these values
don't me anything and will get changed once you log into
the internet.
<li>Change <a href="#index_eth0">
/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0</a> and also
change
<a href="#index_eth1">
/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0</a>.
</ol>
<hr>
<a name="hook"></a>
<h2>Hook up the network. </h2>
<ol>
<li> Put your gateway server computer between the roadrunner
box and the hub.
<li> Reboot the computer.
<li> Hook up all your other computers to the hub.
<li> See if you can ping or connect from a client computer
to your gateway computer. If so good.
<li>See if your internal computers can see each other. You don't
need the gateway computer to do this, this is just
to check to see if your hub is working. Telnet, ping,
ftp, or others should work. For example, "ping c1"
would ping your c1.mark.local computer. If you used
/etc/hosts like I told you to, you don't need the
gateway server to resolve the ip address. Or you could
just do "ping 10.0.0.21" to do the same thing.
</ol>
Specifically, you should hook up the first ethernet card to the roadrunner
modem thing and the second ethernet card to the hub.
<p>
Now we need to get your gateway computer connected to the internet.
<hr>
<a name="connect"></a>
<h2>Connect your gateway to the internet. </h2>
Did you remember to first install roadrunner on a Windows95
computer to get the configuration files? If so, you better.
<p>
Download the <a href="http://www.vortech.net/rrlinux/linux.htm">
rrclientd-1.3.tar.gz and rrdhcpcd-1.02.tar.gz</a> files.
You don't need rrdhcpcd-1.02.tar.gz unless you want to compile as
it has a binary contained in rrclientd-1.3.tar.gz.
Here are the briefs instructions on what to do, but read the
README file that comes with rrclientd-1.3.tar.gz. It tells you
in better detail what to do next. Use rrdhcpcd instead of dhcpcd.
It works better and seems to initiate faster.
<ol>
<li> Create a /etc/rrpasswd file that contains the password
for your account. A "chmod 700 /etc/rrpasswd"
command if you only want root to be able to read it.
<li> Link your /etc/resolv.conf file to /etc/dhcpc/resolv.conf
with the commands
<br>mkdir /etc/dhcpc
<br>cp /etc/resolv.conf /etc/dhcpc/resolv.conf
<br> rm /etc/resolv.conf
<br>ln -s /etc/dhcpc/resolv.conf /etc/resolv.conf
<li> Copy a file from your windows95 installation
to /etc/krb5.conf
<li>Make changes to your /etc/services file as said in the readme
file from rrclientd-1.3.tar.gz.
<li> Copy the binaries you need for rrclientd into
/sbin, or at least, that is what I did. The rest
of this document will assume you put your
binaries in /sbin.
<li> Make sure the time on your computer is not ahead of the
current time and not behind by more than 5 minutes.
Also, make sure your timezone is correct.
<li> I am going to assume you are using rrdhcpcd. If you don't
have a binary of it, you will have to compile it.
Execute these commands to make sure you have the correct
links to use the new programs you copied to /sbin.
<br> mv /sbin/dhcpcd /sbin/dhcpcd_old
<br> mv /usr/sbin/dhcpcd /usr/sbin/dhcpcd_old
<br> mv /usr/bin/rdate /usr/bin/rdate_old
<br>
<br> ln -s /sbin/rdate /usr/bin/rdate
<br> ln -s /sbin/rrdhcpcd /sbin/dhcpcd
<br> ln -s /sbin/rrdhcpcd /usr/sbin/dhcpcd
<br> ln -s /sbin/rrclientd /usr/sbin/rrclientd
</ol>
<p>
Once you have installed rrclientd-1.3.tar.gz properly,
use this file <a href="#index_login"> /root/Login.bat</a> to
start your login session with "source /root/Login.bat". Remember to
change USERNAME in the file to whatever username it is that you have.
In my script, I stop and start rrdhcpcd, which is unecessary. Once
rrdhcpcd is started, it tries to renew the ip address every 3 hours.
Thus, you should never have to stop rrdhcpcd, but I do it anyways.
<p>
<hr>
<a name="service"></a>
<h2>Setting roadrunner up as a service. </h2>
You need to set your ethernet card to use the dhcp protocol and to have
roadrunner as an activated service in order for it to start when
your computer is turned on. This worked for me. I read the dhcpcd program
(and probably rrdhcpcd does the same thing) tries to renew the ip
address every 3 hours. This is good. This means users don't have to start
and stop it.
<p>
A. First, install roadrunner as a service.
<ol>
<li> <a href="http://www.vortech.net/rrlinux/rhrrclientd.htm">
This webpage</a> is the guide I used.
<li> <a href="#index_roadrunner"> /root/roadruner</a> is
the file you need. I downloaded this April 7th, 1998.
It looks pretty straightforward, so I doubt it will
change.
<li> Change your username in the file like it says to.
<li> Copy it to the /etc/rc.d/init.d directory like
<br> cp /root/roadrunner /etc/rc.d/init.d
<li> Issue the command
<br> chkconfig --list | grep roadrunner
<br> and you should see
<br> roadrunner 0:off 1:off 2:off 3:off 4:off 5:off 6:off
<li> Activate the service by
<br>chkconfig --add roadrunner
<li>Issue the command
<br> chkconfig --list | grep roadrunner
<br> and you should see
<br> roadrunner 0:off 1:off 2:on 3:on 4:on 5:on 6:off
</ol>
<p>
<a name="partb"></a>
B. Now use the control panel. Log in as root and use xwindows. "startx"
will start xwindows at the prompt if you don't have xdm running.
The control-panel should be there. This next step will set the first
ethernet card to use dhcp which we replaced with rrdhcp (the computer
doesn't know any better).
<p>
<ol>
<li> Click on the "Network Configuration" icon in the
control panel.
<li> Click on "Interfaces".
<li> Click on "eth0"
<li> Click on "edit"
<li> OPTIONAL: Click on "Allow user to (de)active interface".
<li> Choose "dhcp" for Interface configuration protocol.
<li> Click somewhere to save the changes.
</ol>
<p>
Okay, we got rrdhcpcd running by setting the first ethernet card to use
the protocl dhcp and we installed the roadrunner service which uses rrclientd.
<h3> Reboot your computer and see what happens!</h3>
You should be connected to the internet when your server boots up as
well as all your clients.
If you use a web browser, you might have to set it to use the
"proxy-server" on port 8080. Programs like telnet, ssh, nslookup, ftp,
and ping should work. Actually, ping might work with just rrdhcpcd being
activated.
<hr>
<a name="stopstart"></a>
<h2>Starting and stopping the roadrunner service and rrdhpcd. </h2>
Well, to stop everything down and start everything up, you would do
<pre>
/etc/rc.d/init.d/roadrunner stop
/etc/rc.d/init.d/network stop
/etc/rc.d/init.d/network start
/etc/rc.d/init.d/roadrunner start
</pre>
<p>
But of course, that is a little drastic. Rrdhpcd supposedly tries to
renew the ip address every 3 hours, so you should never have to start
and stop it. That is good because it takes a while to initiate and
stalls the network.
<p>
Why would you want to stop and start the roadrunner service?
Well, in theory, rrdhpcd should get the same ip address 99% of the time
if you leave it on all the time. If it doesn't, you are screwed and you
will have to restart the roadrunner service. Thus, instead of using my
/root/Login.bat script, just put into the cron for the roadrunner service
to be stopped and started at specific times. Use the files
<a href="#index_login2"> /root/Login2.bat</a> and
<a href="#index_cron2"> /root/cron2</a> and
<a href="#index_email"> /root/email.pl</a>.
Make sure you do a "chmod 755 /root/Login2.bat /root/email.pl".
And also do a "crontab /root/cron2". Oh, uh, if you had other stuff
cronned as root, I would "add the cron stuff" or otherwise you are
going to blow away your previous cron jobs.
<p>
Also, a quote from Joshua Jackson when I e-mailed him about what
problems you might have being logged in all the time.
<pre>
If for some reason you lose your IP address (this SHOULD NOT happen under
normal circumstances), you Kerberos tickets and GSS auth info would become
invalid. If this happens, rrclientd will exit and you will need to log
back in.
The only reason that you would lose your IP address would either be a
hardware/software malfunction at either the client or server end or a
reset of the dhcp servers at RR.
Joshua Jackson
</pre>
<hr>
<a name="other"></a>
<h2>Other things </h2>
<b>Use this section at your own risk. </b>
This stuff I plan to elaborate more on given that some people have
made good suggestions about them. For updates to this webpage, look
at <a href="http://linux.med.ohio-state.edu/nielsen/rr.html">
http://linux.med.ohio-state.edu/nielsen/rr.html</a>, but that might even
change someday. NONE OF THIS STUFF in this section is explained well.
Modifications are probably in order at some point. This is just what
I would do.
<ol>
<li> If you don't setup the roadrunner service and bind rrdhcpcd
to the ethernet card but you want to stay connected
almost 24 hours a day,
you could do something like send yourself
e-mail once an hour use a
<a href="#index_email">perl script</a> and
and <a href="#index_cron">cron</a> job on your
gateway
server and issue the
command "crontab cron" to get it started.
The /root/cron file uses
<a href="#index_login"> /root/Login.bat</a> file, so you need it also.
Also
the <a href="#index_kill"> /root/Kill.bat</a>
file to kill it at 1 a.m. You don't have to, I do.
Do a "chmod 755 /root/email.pl /root/Kill.bat
/root/Login.bat". Modify the stuff as you see fit. Also, add this to your
/etc/rc.d/rc.local file and replace USERNAME with the
username you use for roadrunner. This will start the
stuff at boot time if you didn't set it up to do so
with the roadrunner service and control panel.
<pre>
echo starting rrdhcpcd
/sbin/rrdhcpcd eth0
echo sleeping for 5 seconds
sleep 5
echo Starting rrclientd
/sbin/rrclientd -u USERNAME /etc/rrpasswd dce-server
echo finished
echo sleeping 20 more seconds
sleep 20
</pre>
<li> If you are interested in what programs you can use,
telnet, ssh, ftp, ping, nslookup, and xwindows programs
seem to work. I have heard other ones do as well.
Some of resources in "References" above mention other
things like ircs and other stuff.
<li> In /etc/inet.d, I would comment out ftp, telnet, rsh,
pop3, pop2, imap, and gopher for security reasons.
Compile and install <a
href="http://www.cs.hut.fi/ssh/"> ssh</a>.
<li> If you are interested in fixing /etc/resolv.conf so that it
doesn't change, do a "chmod 444 /etc/dhcpc/resolv.conf"
after you configure it. I recommend you only add
information like nameservers and domains, like mine is
<pre>
domain columbus.rr.com
search mark.local columbus.rr.com
nameserver 10.0.0.10 ### this is our DNS
nameserver 204.210.252.18 ### this is the roadrunner dns
nameserver 128.146.1.7 ### ONLY FOR OSU PEOPLE IN COLUMBUS OHIO!
</pre>
</ol>
<hr>
<a name="index"></a>
<h2>Index of files</h2>
<h3> You should not have blank lines at the beginning of the files!</h3>
<hr>
<a name="index_named"></a>
/etc/named.boot for server
<hr><pre>
;
; a caching only nameserver config
;
directory /var/named
cache . named.ca
primary 0.0.127.in-addr.arpa named.local
primary mark.local mark.local
primary 0.0.10.in-addr.arpa 10.0.0
</pre>
<hr>
<a name="index_resolv"></a>
/etc/resolv.conf for server and clients
<hr><pre>
domain columbus.rr.com
search mark.local columbus.rr.com
nameserver 10.0.0.10 ### this is our DNS
nameserver 204.210.252.18 ### this is the roadrunner dns
nameserver 128.146.1.7 ### ONLY FOR OSU PEOPLE IN COLUMBUS OHIO!
### You can probably use our dns first if you want. Actually, I would.
</pre><hr>
<hr>
<a name="index_named_mark"></a>
/var/named/mark.local for server
<hr><pre>
mark.local. IN SOA main.mark.local. root.main.mark.local. (
1997022700 ; Serial
28800 ; Refresh
14400 ; Retry
3600000 ; Expire
86400 ) ; Minimum
mark.local. IN NS main.mark.local.
;localhost IN A 127.0.0.1
main.mark.local. IN A 10.0.0.10
c1.mark.local. IN A 10.0.0.21
c2.mark.local. IN A 10.0.0.22
c3.mark.local. IN A 10.0.0.23
c4.mark.local. IN A 10.0.0.24
c5.mark.local. IN A 10.0.0.25
c6.mark.local. IN A 10.0.0.26
c7.mark.local. IN A 10.0.0.27
c8.mark.local. IN A 10.0.0.28
</pre><hr>
<hr>
<a name="index_0"></a>
/var/named/10.0.0 for server
<hr><pre>
0.0.10.in-addr.arpa. IN SOA main.mark.local. root.main.mark.local. (
1997022700 ; Serial
28800 ; Refresh
14400 ; Retry
3600000 ; Expire
86400 ) ; Minimum
IN NS main.mark.local.
10.0.0.10.in-addr.arpa. IN PTR main.mark.local.
21.0.0.10.in-addr.arpa. IN PTR c1.mark.local.
22.0.0.10.in-addr.arpa. IN PTR c2.mark.local.
23.0.0.10.in-addr.arpa. IN PTR c3.mark.local.
24.0.0.10.in-addr.arpa. IN PTR c4.mark.local.
25.0.0.10.in-addr.arpa. IN PTR c5.mark.local.
26.0.0.10.in-addr.arpa. IN PTR c6.mark.local.
27.0.0.10.in-addr.arpa. IN PTR c7.mark.local.
28.0.0.10.in-addr.arpa. IN PTR c8.mark.local.
</pre><hr>
<hr>
<a name="index_nlocal"></a>
/var/named/named.local for server
<hr><pre>
@ IN SOA localhost. root.localhost. (
1997022700 ; Serial
28800 ; Refresh
14400 ; Retry
3600000 ; Expire
86400 ) ; Minimum
IN NS localhost.
1 IN PTR localhost.
</pre>
<hr>
<hr>
<a name="index_hosts"></a>
/etc/hosts for server and clients
<hr><pre>
127.0.0.1 localhost localhost.localdomain
10.0.0.21 c1.mark.local c1
10.0.0.10 main.mark.local main
10.0.0.22 c2.mark.local c2
10.0.0.23 c3.mark.local c3
10.0.0.24 c4.mark.local c4
10.0.0.25 c5.mark.local c5
10.0.0.26 c6.mark.local c6
10.0.0.27 c7.mark.local c7
10.0.0.28 c8.mark.local c8
</pre><hr>
<hr>
<a name="index_resolv_client"></a>
/etc/resolv.conf for the client computers
<hr><pre>
search mark.local
nameserver 10.0.0.10
</pre><hr>
<hr>
<a name="index_lilo"></a>
/etc/lilo.conf
<hr><pre>
boot=/dev/hda
map=/boot/map
install=/boot/boot.b
prompt
timeout=50
### WARNING!!! THE APPEND STATEMENT IS FOR MY COMPUTER ONLY!!!!!
image=/boot/vmlinuz
label=linux
root=/dev/hda1
append="ether10,0x300,eth0 ether=11,0x310,eth1"
read-only
</pre><hr>
<hr>
<a name="index_rc.local"></a>
/etc/rc.d/rc.local for server
<hr><pre>
## Add this file to /etc/rc.d/rc.local
echo "setting up ip masquerde"
/sbin/depmod -a
/sbin/modprobe ip_masq_ftp
/sbin/modprobe ip_masq_raudio
/sbin/modprobe ip_masq_irc
echo "setting up permissions for 10.0.0.0 domain for mas"
ipfwadm -F -p deny
ipfwadm -F -a m -S 10.0.0.0/24 -D 0.0.0.0/0
</pre><hr>
<hr>
<a name="index_network"></a>
/etc/sysconfig/network for server
<hr><pre>
NETWORKING=yes
FORWARD_IPV4=true
HOSTNAME=main.mark.local
DOMAINNAME=mark.local
GATEWAY=
GATEWAYDEV=eth0
</pre><hr>
<hr>
<a name="index_eth0"></a>
/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0
<hr><pre>
DEVICE=eth0
IPADDR=10.0.1.10
NETMASK=255.255.255.0
NETWORK=10.0.1.0
BROADCAST=10.0.1.255
ONBOOT=yes
</pre><hr>
<hr>
<a name="index_eth1"></a>
/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth1
<hr><pre>
DEVICE=eth1
IPADDR=10.0.0.10
NETMASK=255.255.255.0
NETWORK=10.0.0.0
BROADCAST=10.0.0.255
ONBOOT=yes
</pre><hr>
<hr>
<a name="index_login"></a>
/root/Login.bat
<hr><pre>
## This is a drastic solution to stop and start your roadrunner stuff
## Personally, you should only have to start and stop the roadunner
## service every once in a while, and you shouldn't mess with the network
date
echo killing rrclientd
/sbin/rrclientd -k
sleep 5
echo killing rrdhcpcd
/sbin/rrdhcpcd -k eth0
echo sleeping 2 seconds
sleep 2
### uncomment the next 5 lines if you wish, you probably don't have to
##echo stopping and starting the network
##/etc/rc.d/init.d/network stop
##echo sleeping 5 seconds
##sleep 5
##/etc/rc.d/init.d/network start
echo starting rrdhcpcd
/sbin/rrdhcpcd eth0
echo sleeping for 5 seconds
sleep 5
echo Starting rrclientd
/sbin/rrclientd -u USERNAME /etc/rrpasswd dce-server
echo finished
echo sleeping 20 more seconds
sleep 20
</pre><hr>
<hr>
<a name="index_roadrunner"></a>
/root/roadrunner for server
<hr><pre>
#!/bin/sh
#
# roadrunner This shell script takes care of starting and stopping
# rrclientd.
#
# chkconfig: 2345 11 30
# description: Logs the system into TWC Road Runner Internet Service
#
# Author: Joshua Jackson jjackson@neo.lrun.com
# 1/6/98
#
# Source function library.
. /etc/rc.d/init.d/functions
# Source networking configuration.
. /etc/sysconfig/network
# Check that networking is up.
[ ${NETWORKING} = "no" ] && exit 0
[ -f /usr/sbin/rrclientd ] || exit 0
RRUSER="Your Username Goes here!"
# See how we were called.
case "$1" in
start)
# Start daemons.
echo -n "Logging into Road Runner: "
daemon rrclientd -u ${RRUSER} /etc/rrpasswd dce-server
echo
;;
stop)
# Stop daemons.
echo -n "Logging out of Road Runner "
killproc rrclientd
echo
;;
status)
status rrclientd
;;
restart)
$0 stop
$0 start
;;
*)
echo "Usage: roadrunner start|stop|restart"
exit 1
esac
exit 0
</pre><hr>
<hr>
<a name="index_email"></a>
/root/email.pl for server
<hr><pre>
!/usr/bin/perl
$EMAIL = "USERNAME\@somewhere.foo.edu";
open(EMAIL,"| /bin/mail -s RR $EMAIL");
$date = `date`;
chop $date;
print EMAIL "DATE AND TIME: $date\n";
print EMAIL "--------------------------------------------------\n";
print EMAIL "test\n";
close(EMAIL);
</pre><hr>
<hr>
<a name="index_cron"></a>
/root/cron for server
<hr><pre>
# Let us restart dhcpd and rrclient 7 a.m., 2 p.m., and 10 p.m.
# and kill it at 1 a.m.
# and e-mail once an hour 5 minutes after the hour
0 7,14,22 * * * /root/Login.bat >> /root/Login.log
0 1 * * * /root/Kill.bat >> /root/Kill.log
5 * * * * /root/mail.pl
</pre><hr>
<hr>
<a name="index_kill"></a>
/root/Kill.bat for server
<hr><pre>
date
/sbin/rrclientd -k
sleep 5
/sbin/rrdhcpcd -k eth0
sleep 5
</pre><hr>
<hr>
<a name="index_login2"></a>
/root/Login2.bat
<hr><pre>
### We just need to quickly stop and start roadrunner
/etc/rc.d/init.d/roadrunner stop
sleep 5
/etc/rc.d/init.d/roadrunner start
</pre><hr>
<hr>
<a name="index_cron2"></a>
/root/cron2
<hr><pre>
# Let us restart roadrunner 7 a.m., 2 p.m., and 10 p.m.
# and e-mail once an hour 5 minutes after the hour
0 7,14,22 * * * /root/Login2.bat >> /root/Login2.log
5 * * * * /root/mail.pl
</pre><hr>
<hr>
<a name="index_hname"></a>
/etc/HOSTNAME
<hr><pre>
main.mark.local
</pre><hr>
<!--===================================================================-->
<P> <hr> <P>
<center><H5>Copyright &copy; 1998, Mark Nielsen <BR>
Published in Issue 28 of <i>Linux Gazette</i>, May 1998</H5></center>
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<H4>By <a href="mailto:dave@scripting.com">Dave Winer</a></H4>
</center>
<blockquote>
<FONT SIZE="+2"><b>T</b></FONT>o people who think that open source is a panacea, think again. I have a bunch of experience here, predating the current euphoria. A few bullet points follow.<p>
Our SDK, first released in 1992, and often updated, was totally open source. Some parts of it gained traction, but most of it was ignored. We did the vast majority of the work on the toolkit, with paid employees. <p>
In January 1995 we released the source to MacBird Runtime, hoping to ignite a move towards real user interfaces on the web. Nothing happened. It was never ported, and no bug fixes were ever supplied.<p>
In 1997, I looked on the web for base64 code that worked with handles, not files. Finding none, I adapted existing implementations and released the source. This one worked, sort of. It was ported to HyperCard. Has anyone else used the code? I don't know.<p>
<b>Why didn't these things work?</b><p>
First, I have to tell you, I don't know why they didn't work. I can only guess.<p>
I certainly was excited about the idea of releasing the source and having other people do the work for me. Did I underhype these source releases? I did the best I could with what I had at the time.<p>
The Frontier community tends to group where we are active. So if I back off updating something, they focus their attention where we are working. I find this frustrating, but I think it's just human nature at work. <p>
We aren't updating MacBird (or DocServer or a bunch of other things) but no one is clamoring for the source for those things. We are actively updating Frontier and the website framework and workflow facilities, and every day I get an email or two saying that it would all work much better if I just gave them the source, implying that the people would know what to do with it, or would keep up their interest in the code after they got it.<p>
I have mixed experiences with this. I have given away code, sometimes with good results, but really, most of the time the projects get started with some enthusiasm, and wither on the vine. I've learned that if I want something to take root, I have to make a financial commitment to that happening.<p>
<b>Chuck's sig</b><p>
My friend Chuck Shotton uses a great signature on his email. He says "Shut up and eat your vegetables!" I can't be that direct, I wish I could, but I'd like to tell the people who want to replace my team, you haven't got a clue how hard it is to maintain a source code base like Frontier. If you want me to trust you, get started working on fixing the problems in the code we have released, and then we'll take a look at trusting you with our family jewels.<p>
Further, having invested several million dollars in this source code base, why do you think I should give it to you? If you want to know how this feels to me, imagine a stranger arriving at your front door and demanding food and a warm bed. You let them in. Sure! You can sleep here. It would be stupid to think that it would all come out for the best. Love at first sight? Nahh. I prefer to be romanced.<p>
No other creative or engineering art works this way. Art and money are closely related. Try sitting down with a group of artists and ask them what's on their mind. Very quickly the topic shifts to money. And it can be very hard to get them off that subject.<p>
Think about art yourself. When you look at a piece of art does it cross your mind how much it's worth? If you meet someone who's an artist, do you ask how much money they make from their art? Be honest. Try some experiments. Tell people you're an artist. See how often the conversation turns to how much money you make. What about all the actors who are waiters and taxi drivers? Do you take them seriously before they "make it"? What does making it mean? What's it? Does money have anything to do with it?<p>
The open source message is all about money, by the way, paid versus unpaid programmers, and in that sense it diflects us from where the most good can be done. Open source is a tactic. It's a zig to the commercial industry's zag. It can gain a market presence. Good tactics. But it's not right in every situation, far from it, nor can you make the world revolve around free source. It certainly has a place. But in itself it is not the revolution. I'm sure of this.<p>
<b>Netscape Netscape Netscape</b><p>
I think Netscape has not done a service to the software world, users and developers, by going so strong on open source. If they want to please their shareholders, it's going to be complex and potentially very political. Like O'Reilly, who ships a mixture of open and closed source, so must Netscape, or the shareholders will throw out current management and replace them with people who are focused on making money. You can be sure of one thing, shareholders are not going to pay for what's right, they pay for what provides a good return on investment.<p>
The focus is on Netscape. They're going to have to do an unprecedented political balancing act as developers feed them new features and bug-fixes, expecting that open source means open access to Netscape's distribution. There are indications, no clear statements, that this is *not* the way it will work. There's no commitment on Netscape's part to ship the work you do, nor would it be reasonable for them to make that commitment. Sometimes it's easier and more cost-effective to do the work yourself than to evaluate all the possible (sometimes conflicting!) submitted implementations.<p>
We go thru this all the time. Developers, paid or not, make mistakes, or see things thru a narrower perspective than you can support. You have to read the code carefully before giving it to your users. I've learned this the hard way. Software has to have goals. And if Navigator fragments into fifteen incompatible browsers, they play right into Microsoft's strength. MSIE will become the market share leader, and content will be coded for their browser, not the various flavors of Navigator.<p>
Think it thru. Even if Netscape hasn't said how it will work, how *must* it work? Netscape has bitten off a huge political task. Do they have the mature wisdom and global perspective needed to pull it off? Even if they were King Solomon, could they do it?<p>
<b>Philosophers</b><p>
At age 42, I hear much of the philosophy of open source coming from people who are younger. It truly is a generational thing. I've said before, if I were in my early 20s I would probably be part of the open source thing, but I'm not in my early 20s, I'm in my early 40s.<p>
As all middle-aged people seem to believe, I think the younger people have a lot to learn. I look at them and I see myself at their age. I'm sure some part of this is real, but most of it is projection. They aren't me, they are them. They're throwing out some of our lessons and beliefs. That's inevitable, and therefore good. <p>
My advantage is deep experience. Their advantage is lack of experience. I really mean that. When I was young we threw out the ways of mainframes and discovered the power of minis and then micros. The older folk sniffed. "We did that years ago!" they said. But the seeds of their demise were already in the ground and we were the sprouts. The people of my generation, the two Steves at Apple, Bill Gates at Microsoft, and others, really did kick the legs out from under IBM, Sperry, DEC, etc. We know how it turned out.<p>
But Compaq and Lotus had Ben Rosen and Apple had Mike Markkula. They were the adult supervision, the teachers, they gave us the inside scoop on the opposition. They told us how the world worked, and we worked around that. They were our surrogate fathers, caring about our success, enjoying it vicariously. I had my own angel, a man named Bill Jordan. When I was in my 20s and 30s, he was in his 50s and 60s. He taught me a lot. I owe much of my success to Bill. <p>
The best revolutions embrace all that was learned in past revolutions. Keep your eyes open, understand how the system you're trying to undermine really works. Bill Gates never said publicly that he was going to take IBM out of its strategic place in the software business. For all I know, he didn't even intend to do it. Looking at it from my insider perspective, while all this was going on, I know they had doubts about their ability to lead the industry as late as 1990.<p>
That's why I say it isn't about open source, it's about open minds. Drawing lines alienates people to you. Attacking Microsoft verbally causes Windows users to tune out. You can't undermine by trying to dictate the terms, you have to do it by invading at night, slipping in the back door unnoticed. Then when the old folks wake up, it's too late.<p>
So, speaking as an old geezer to a bunch of young whippersnappers, let's really cause some trouble, keep your eyes and ears open and stop attacking so openly. <p>
A new slogan. It goes right along with the old slogans, Dig We Must, Let's Have Fun, Namaste Y'all.<p>
Keep Your Eye on the Prize.<p>
Know what you want, and get it.<p>
Dave Winer
</blockquote>
<!--===================================================================-->
<P> <hr> <P>
<center><H5>Copyright &copy; 1998, Dave Winer <BR>
Published in Issue 28 of <i>Linux Gazette</i>, May 1998</H5></center>
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<center>
<H1>Linux Fax for Dummies :-)</H1>
<H4>By <a href="mailto:mv@fgi.fi">Martin Vermeer</a></H4>
</center>
<P> <HR> <P>
<I>If you are like me, you may be all the time on the lookout for nifty
little utilities and the like, that might make life easier and more pleasant
for end users. I came into Linux rather late in the process, February 1997,
and although I know how to program (and have written a few handy little
things too, using this great new language<B> tcl/tk</B></I>)<I>, due to
time constraints, I have felt no strong inclination to join ranks with
the hacker community. Heck, I never even compiled my own kernel!</I>
<BR>
<HR WIDTH="100%">
<BR>For someone as ancient as me (vintage 1953) it is probably better to
concentrate on things that I am good at, without requiring a substantial
investment in time. So, I have been looking around, learning <B>tcl/tk</B>,
and writting little things that make life easier especially for people
that are not very computer literate. Because, what is happening now to
Linux, is that it is gaining a technically less sophisticated user base.
We should adapt to this. Part of this adaptation is taking place; the new,
gorgeous-looking desktop environments such as KDE and Gnome are soon becoming
standard stuff on the Linux desktop, and more and more software is acquiring
a graphical user interface.<B> tcl/tk</B>, <B>perl/tk</B>, <B>gtk</B>,
and <B>java</B>, are among the tools that make this possible. <B>tcl/tk</B>
especially is ideal for "glueing" already existing command-line oriented
utilities together into great-looking desktop thingies.
<P>A recommended fax package for Linux is <FONT FACE="Courier New,Courier">fax/efax/efix</FONT>
by Ed Casas.<FONT FACE="Courier New,Courier"> fax</FONT> is an ordinary
shell script, containing calls to the binary modules <FONT FACE="Courier New,Courier">efax</FONT>
(taking care of the difficult, low-level faxing stuff) and <FONT FACE="Courier New,Courier">efix</FONT>
(taking care of some file format conversions needed). They work, but are
command-line stuff; not for dummies.
<P>For sending faxes using <FONT FACE="Courier New,Courier">efax</FONT>
you can use <FONT FACE="Courier New,Courier">LyX</FONT>, the graphical
word processor running on top of <FONT FACE="Courier New,Courier">LaTeX</FONT>.
I can really recommend this word processor: especially the new release
0.12&nbsp; is great, with lots of new features including on-the-fly localization.
See the <A HREF="../issue27/ayers5.html">review by Larry Ayers</A> in the last issue of Linux Gazette, and a
picture (I couldn't resist) below.
<P><IMG SRC="./gx/vermeer/lyx.jpeg" ALT="[lyx picture]" HEIGHT=393 WIDTH=569>
<P>For receiving faxes, it is possible to install <FONT FACE="Courier New,Courier">efax</FONT>
as a daemon through the bootup script (see man page), so it continually
waits for faxes to come in. It is even possible to do this in such a way,
that it does not get in the way of outgoing traffic, e.g. an Internet connection.
Then, when this connection closes, the deamon starts again listening to
the serial port.
<P>Any faxes received will be stored into a spool directory, typically
(Red Hat)<FONT FACE="Courier New,Courier"> /var/spool/fax/</FONT>. You
can make <FONT FACE="Courier New,Courier">xbiff</FONT> or <FONT FACE="Courier New,Courier">xmailbox</FONT>
look if faxes have arrived into the spool directory, and signal it to the
user. I haven't tried this, though. There are various ways to read messages
from the spool directory. Ed Casas' script <FONT FACE="Courier New,Courier">fax</FONT>
can be used, but is <I>so</I> unbecoming. I really would love it if there
was a graphical client to do this!
<P>So... I decided to do a search, an extensive one, using Alta Vista.
No luck.&nbsp; Following links, I found a number of&nbsp; listings of fax
and communication software, including Hylafax, which is a fax server application
for network use, undoubtedly good, but not what I was looking for. Then
I decided, OK, it cannot be too hard to write a thing like this myself.
I started coding, and after three hours or so, I had the skeleton of a
working graphical fax client running.
<P>I wanted my skeleton script to use the existing utility <FONT FACE="Courier New,Courier">viewfax</FONT>
(a GNU product) to display fax pages on the screen. The program -- found
in the RPM package <FONT FACE="Courier New,Courier">mgetty-viewfax</FONT>
--&nbsp; is very fast and very convenient, but with a slightly "emacsish"
user interface. Well, what the heck. I read the man page and found there
a reference to <FONT FACE="Courier New,Courier">faxview.tcl</FONT>, a <B>tcl/tk</B>
"graphical front end" to viewfax. Precisely what I was trying to write!
<BR>.
<CENTER><IMG SRC="./gx/vermeer/faxview.jpeg" ALT="[faxview GUI]" HEIGHT=479 WIDTH=444></CENTER>
<P>I downloaded the <FONT FACE="Courier New,Courier">faxview-1.0</FONT>
tarball from the ftp server at <FONT FACE="Courier New,Courier"><A HREF="ftp://ftp.UL.BaWue.DE/pub/purple/fax">ftp://ftp.UL.BaWue.DE/pub/purple/fax</A></FONT>,
extracted the files <FONT FACE="Courier New,Courier">faxview</FONT> (the
<B>tcl/tk</B> script) and <FONT FACE="Courier New,Courier">faxview.1</FONT>
(the man page) from it. It worked great (see picture)! The author of this
software is Ralph Schleicher from Ulm, Germany. So much for reinventing
the wheel... this really raises some questions:
<UL>
<LI>
Do we really <I>know</I> all the Linux software that is out there?</LI>
<LI>
Are many authors too modest about their products, in other words, do they
rather keep their software -- even just "scripts" -- to themselves, where
a professional Windows programmer would have happily marketed commercially
a Visual Basic script of the same quality?</LI>
<LI>
Is it really easy enough to post announcements and even source code for
new software, for people that have not been part of the "circuit", and
is the infrastructure in place to make people find the information that
they need on the existence of such software?&nbsp; Referring to my above
negative Alta Vista and software list experience.</LI>
</UL>
If anyone has any useful software to refer me to, found by accident against
the slings and arrows of poor posting... let me know! What is your favourite
"under-advertised" Linux software?
<BR>&nbsp;
<P>Martin Vermeer
<BR><FONT FACE="Courier New,Courier"><A HREF="mailto:mv@fgi.fi">mv@fgi.fi</A></FONT>
<BR>&nbsp;
<!--===================================================================-->
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<center><H5>Copyright &copy; 1998, Martin Vermeer <BR>
Published in Issue 28 of <i>Linux Gazette</i>, May 1998</H5></center>
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<H1><font color="maroon">Marketing Linux</font></H1>
<H4>By Jim Schweizer</H4>
</center>
<P> <HR> <P>
I was just reading <I>Crossing the Chasm: Marketing and Selling
High-Tech Products to Mainstream Customers</I> by Geoffry Moore and
sat back for a few minutes to muse on how Linux could benefit
from its strategies.
<P>
Mr Moore suggests that there is a bell curve that describes how a new
technology is adapted by a market. At the front of the curve is a small
section of Innovators and next to it a slightly larger Early Adapter
section. After that there are two large sections at the middle of the curve,
the Early Majority and then the Late Majority. Finally, there is a Laggards
section.
<P>
The hypothisis is there is a 'chasm' between the way one markets to
the Innovators/Early Adapters and a completely different strategy for the
Early Majority. It's my belief that Linux now has one foot out over the
chasm, and companies that plan to market Linux or Linux related products
should examine their marketng strategies closely.
<P>
For Linux to be successful it must adopt a marketing strategy designed to
'cross the chasm' between selling to Innovators/early adapters and an
early majority of users.
<P>
Visionaries and early adapters are already singing the praises of Linux
and of the Free Software movement. But there are big differences between
them and the people in mainstream corporate environments who make the
buying decisions.
<P>
The early adapters differ greatly from the early majority in their
buying habits - early majority buyers are pragmatists. They want to
buy from market leaders with proven track records and from companies
that adhere to industry standards. They want a high degree of customer
support, etc.
<P>
In the words of my brother, Paul, "This is just my opinion but, when
I look at Linux from the standpoint of an MIS director, I see a cost
nightmare. I have no single source that is accountable for support
issues. I see a limited supply of qualified support engineers and
technicians. I see a limited supply of drivers for new hardware.
And the list goes on...." email Fri. Feb. 28, 1997
<P>
Pragmatists may not trust the visionaries in the inovator/early
adapter market. They want references from within their own group -
references that come from companies already using the product.
<P>
If you are in a start-up period, where do the references come from?
One possible strategy is the 'Storming the Beach' approach. The
visionaries have given you the base of operations (an island off the coast),
and you have the goal of market domination (liberation of the continent.)
What you do is establish yourself firmly in a market niche
(The Beach) then throw all your marketing/sales efforts into
expanding the market (moving off the beaches and into the country side.)
<P>
Where within the purchasing departments of large corporations is Linux's
Beach? Is it in the web server loaded with RedHat/Apache quietly
counting up hits day after day, week after week without any down time?
Is it in the old Slackware box hiding in the corner providing print spooling
services without a large maintenance overhead? Is it in the new TurboLinux
box running Samba?
<P>
"Reduction in scope is key to the chasm crossing strategy." If you want to
dominate a market, you must first dominate one section of it. Does being
a web server utilize all of Linux's strenghts? No way! But it does get
Linux noticed.
<P>
IMHO the talk about Linux needing an Office Suite is misguided. M$ Word and
Excel are solidly entrenched. Linux jumping up and down shouting, "Me too!"
is not going to get it noticed.
<P>
What Linux needs is a well designed application profile. One thing
that Linux can focus on and use as a landing point. People use toasters,
coffee makers and refrigerators in the kitchen, but they don't combine
them into one product and try to get Housing Inc. to sell it.
<P>
This one application needs to be a must-have, something that provides a
dramatic competitive advantage and improved productivity in an area
already well-understood by corporate America. To find this must-have
product companies can use traditional macro- and microlevel market research.
<P>
Innovators and early adapters are interested in how all parts of
Linux works. Mainstream customers aren't going to be. For them it's
going to be more like buying a Christmas tree - as long as the good part
is showing, they're happy.
<P>
So, as the troops mass in the ports of our small island, have the Chiefs of
Staff found a landing point yet?
<!--===================================================================-->
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<center><H5>Copyright &copy; 1998, Jim Schweizer <BR>
Published in Issue 28 of <i>Linux Gazette</i>, May 1998</H5></center>
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<H1><font color="maroon">Product Review: Music Publisher</font></H1>
<H4>By <a href="mailto:bvdpoel@kootenay.com">Bob van der Poel</a></H4>
</center>
<P> <HR> <P>
<P>If you are a musician, you can only cry about the lack of music programs
which run under Linux. Yes, there are many CD players, sound editors, etc.
But, when it comes to notation programs your choices are severely limited.
My search for notation editors (a program which will produce printed sheet
music) has turned up three choices: </P>
<OL>
<LI>The graphical program Rosegarden (http://www.bath.ac.uk/~masjpf/rose.html).
This is a very interesting program which tries its best to be all things.
It has a notation editor which handles most of the normal editing functions,
a midi sequencer which will play music from the notation editor as well
as record data from a midi keyboard, and the ability to import midi files
and convert them to notation. Sounds wonderful...but, unfortunately, Rosegarden
is a work in progress and simply doesn't do all it is supposed to, or does
them awkwardly. I have been unable to get the sequencer to work using my
Gravis Ultra soundcard; and I find that the notation editor is tedious
to use since there are no keyboard accelerators for entering note data.
In addition there is no easy way to print music. Rosegarden does have a
option to export files in MusicTex, OpusTex and PMX (a preprocessor for
MusiXTex). I tired some of the combinations, but was not really all that
impressed by the output. However, the biggest problem I have with Rosegarden
(and a lot of other music editors) is that they work on the music as if
it were a long string. This means changes to the start of the music work
there way to the end of the chart. For example, if in bar one of a piece
you have four quarter notes and you wish to change to the first quarter
to two eights, you first change the first quarter to an eighth, then insert
an eighth. When the first change is done, everything to the right of the
edit point is reformatted with the result that none of the music is now
in the correct measure. Of course, inserting the second eighth fixes this.
But, if you have several staves of music and you do a few edits, it is
really easy to mess the entire piece up.<BR>
<BR>
</LI>
<LI>The various TeX music systems. I must admit that I did not spend a
lot of time with any of the variants. I can handle LaTeX for word processing,
but the music variants seemed to be pretty complicated to use, all in a
state of beta, and none seem to produce what looks like a finished work.
<BR>
<BR>
</LI>
<LI>MUP. This, at first look, would probably be the last program to pick.
But after a fair bit of testing I have decided to use it. So far, I'm happy
with my choice. </LI>
</OL>
<P>Quoting from the user's manual: &quot;The music publisher program called
'Mup' takes a text file describing music as input, and generates PostScript
output for printing that music. The input file can be created using your
favorite text editor, or generated from any other source, such as another
program. The input must be written in a special language designed especially
for describing music.&quot;</P>
<P>Unlike Rosegarden (and the Windows offerings) MUP does not operate in
a WYSIWYG environment. As a matter of fact, the MUP distribution doesn't
even have a means of editing music. MUP uses plain text files which look
much like source code for a program as its input. Use vi, emacs or whatever
your flavor of editor is. Then, process the file with MUP to create postscript;
and finally print the postscript file. If you don't have a postscript printer
you'll need ghostscript to print things out. And ghostview is handy for
screen previews. MUP uses lines of text to describe a piece of music. </P>
<P>For example, here are the first few bars of Bye Bye Blackbird: </P>
<UL>
<LI>1: 8g;c+;e+;g+;g;b&amp;;c#+;g+; </LI>
<LI>bar </LI>
<LI>1: 8g;b;d+;f+;4g+;g+;</LI>
<LI>bar </LI>
<LI>1: 8g;c+;e+;g+;g;b&amp;;c#+;e+; </LI>
<LI>bar </LI>
<LI>1: 4g+;b;c+;c#+; </LI>
<LI>bar</LI>
<LI>1: 4d+;c+;a;f;</LI>
<LI>bar</LI>
</UL>
<P>The &quot;1:&quot; at the start of each line is the staff/voice indicator
(in this example it refers to staff 1 and, since there is no additional
argument, voice 1). Following the staff/voice are the notes for the measure.
The first measure has an eighth note g, eight note c, etc. The next measure
has several eight notes as well as two quarter notes. At first this might
seem to be a bit difficult to follow, but in no time at all it does make
sense. </P>
<P>A MUP score can contain up to 32 staves of music, each with two voices.
Each voice can have multiple notes (or chords)...so complex arrangements
are quite possible. In addition to the actual staves, you can also include
lyrics, musical symbols, etc. </P>
<P>I started to use MUP when I started to play saxophone in a small combo.
We all play from fake-type music (chords, lyrics and the melody line).
But I'm not the greatest sax player in the world and find it pretty hard
to transpose from C to B flat while sight reading. So, I started to rewrite
the C charts in to B flat by hand. I find anything which needs a pen to
be tedious, which is what led me to try MUP. After a few practice charts,
I can enter a page of one line music with lyrics in about an hour. And
since MUP can produce MIDI files as well as doing transpositions, it really
works well for what I needed. I can print the music in different keys for
everyone in the combo, and I can create a midi file in the right key for
practicing at home. </P>
<P>I have included the actual mup file I created for <A HREF="blackbird.mup">Bye
Bye Blackbird</A> and a <A HREF="./gx/poel/blackbird.jpg">printed music</A> image.</P>
<P>Flushed with the success of doing these simple charts, I decided to
try a more complex task. I also play in a fifteen piece dance band. Most
of the music we play is arranged by our leader, but recently some of the
members have doing them as well. So, I decided to give it a try. My first
arrangement of the old standard <A HREF="fever.mup">Fever</A> took the
better part of two days to complete. It is arranged for 11 voices on 6
staves. We played it the other night and I was pleased--not only was everyone
impressed by the appearance of the charts, it didn't sound to bad either.
I have printed out the first page of the <A HREF="./gx/poel/fever.jpg">conductor's
score</A> .</P>
<P>If you would like to see some of my other arrangements, I have posted
them along with a copy of this review from <A HREF="http://www.kootenay.com/~bvdpoel">http://www.kootenay.com/~bvdpoel</A>.</P>
<P>I certainly don't have room in this short review to cover all the features
of a complex program like MUP. Just a few of the more useful items I've
been using are if/else statements to produce charts for different instruments,
file includes to read in my own &quot;boiler plate&quot;, and macros to
make my input files easier to create, read and revise. </P>
<P>MUP comes complete with well written, 99 page users manual in postscript
(you'll have to print it out), as well as the the same information in HTML
format. Equally impressive is the customer support available via email.
I've sent a number of queries to the authors and have received courteous,
timely replies to each and every one. </P>
<P>MUP is not free. You can download a working copy of the program, the
source code if you want it, and the manual from <A HREF="http://www.Arkkra.com/">http://www.Arkkra.com</A>.
The program is a complete working copy--however it prints a &quot;this
is an unregistered copy&quot; watermark on all pages of the score. MUP
registration is only $29.00, after which you get a license which turns
off the marks. This is a pretty low price to pay for such a well thought
out program. </P>
<!--===================================================================-->
<P> <hr> <P>
<center><H5>Copyright &copy; 1998, Bob van der Poel <BR>
Published in Issue 28 of <i>Linux Gazette</i>, May 1998</H5></center>
<!--===================================================================-->
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<center>
<h1><font color="maroon">Book Review: Netscape IFC In a Nutshell</font></h1>
<H4>By <a href="mailto:celestinor@acm.org">R. J. Celestino</a></H4>
</center>
<P> <HR> <P>
<ul>
<li>Authors: Dean Petrich and David Flanagan
<li>Publisher: O'Reilly and Associates
<li>E-mail: <A HREF="mailto:info@oreilly.com">info@oreilly.com</A>
<li>URL: <A HREF="http://www.oreilly.com/">http://www.oreilly.com/</A>
<li>Price: $19.95 US
<li>ISBN: 1-56592-343-X
</ul>
Netscape quietly released its Internet Foundation Classes (IFC) in the
spring of 1996. This free Java class library offers developers a welcome
alternative to the lifeless GUI widgets and basic graphics provided in
Sun's Abstract Windowing Toolkit (AWT). However, the IFC can be
intimidating even for experienced Java developers. To effectively use the IFC, you must
learn its event model and its container model, both of which differ
from standard Java. Additionally, learning the IFL's
classes and API is no small endeavor. <i>Netscape IFC in a Nutshell</i>
helps, with good explanations, examples and a handy quick reference guide.
<p>
<i>Netscape IFC in a Nutshell</i> is written by Dan Petrich and
David Flanangan. In the Nutshell tradition, it is not too big or
intimidating. The cover graphic will surely lead IFC geeks to refer to
it as ``the fish book''. It weighs in at around 350 pages, approximately
140 pages of which are the quick reference section. This same reference
information is available in HTML format from Netscape. I think it is
helpful to complement on-line documentation with a compact hard copy
reference, and I'm sure we all agree that making notes in the margin of
an HTML page can be a bit difficult.
<p>
The book is far more than an API reference. It
takes you through the IFC classes in a logical and matter-of-fact
manner. Numerous examples cover most of the important aspects of the
IFC. The examples are typically small but effective. They are well focused
on the topics at hand and help immensely with understanding.
The book does not include a CD-ROM, which is too bad as it would make a
nice addition to the book. As an alternative, O'Reilly and Associates could
have provided space on their web site for on-line examples and running
applets. Unfortunately, they didn't do that either, so be prepared to
type in each example and code fragment by hand.
<p>
The authors begin with a high-level introduction to the IFC. They discuss
its capabilities including the sophisticated GUI widgets, persistence
mechanism and the visual construction tool <i>Constructor</i>. If you
are not sure what the IFC is all about or if it's right for you, this
section is very helpful.
<p>
The next topic is an introduction to the most basic class in the IFC,
the Application Class. As an IFC user, I have noticed that the IFC often
departs from traditional Java vernacular. The Application class is one
example of many you will come across. Seasoned Java developers typically
understand <i>application</i> to mean a stand-alone Java program,
and <i>applet</i> to mean a restricted Java program that runs in a
browser. Forget all that when using the IFC. Every running IFC program,
be it stand-alone or applet, is an application. Don't worry though;
it's all explained very simply in this chapter using the power of the
venerable <b>Hello World</b> program.
<p>
Having straightened out what an application is, the book takes you
through a good explanation of the IFC's View classes. View classes in
the IFC are akin to the Container classes in standard Java, but with
differences in both architecture and capabilities. The authors devote
three chapters to a discussion of these classes. They make good use of
examples to show you many of the important features, from tiling a
bitmap on the background to drawing.
<p>
Users interact with GUIs using a mouse and keyboard. In Java, these
devices make themselves known by generating <i>events</i>. The mechanism
by which these events are made available to your program is known as the
event model. The Java standard event model has evolved over its short
lifetime. It began as an inheritance-based model, eventually maturing to
the more powerful delegation-based model used today. The IFC uses a hybrid
model. The chapter on mouse and keyboard events covers the inheritance-based model. The chapter on targets covers the IFCs implementation of
delegation-style event handling. The details of using each type of event
are discussed in reasonable detail. Numerous examples show how to code
your own event processing. However, I felt that the authors should have
contrasted the two styles better. In addition, it would be helpful if
they offered some guidelines on when to use each model.
<p>
The book moves on to cover each widget in considerable detail. Remember
that the IFC provides a replacement for every standard widget, so even
items as simple as a push-button or text field have a new API. These
chapters really drive home the power of these IFC widgets, making the
traditional widgets from Sun look absolutely bland.
<p>
I found their treatment of scrolling particularly useful. The IFC
provides a framework to support scrolling of text and graphics. While
very powerful, understanding the details can be daunting. The authors
present scrolling clearly and offer good illustrative examples. With
the details in this chapter, you will be able to add scrolling to any
application with ease.
<p>
Another excellent section is the one on layout managers. Layout managers
are classes that help View classes decide upon the size and position of
the widgets they contain. The IFC includes a powerful new layout manager,
the PackLayout. The book covers this complex layout manager in excellent
detail. Outside of this book, there is virtually no useful documentation
on the true behavior of the pack layout.
<p>
Anyone who has ever written an applet that displays images will
eventually reach the conclusion ``why don't they handle all of this mess
for me?'' Netscape's engineers felt the same way, and they did something
about it. In the chapters on images and animation, you will learn how
simply your application can read and display image files (both GIFs and
JPEGs). Creating animation is a simple matter as
well. The book explains how the IFC handles threading, sequencing and
double buffering. If you are interested in images and animation,
these chapters will get you going quickly and painlessly.
<p>
In the <i>Advanced Topics</i> section, the authors cover the details of
the TextView class, archives, and the free GUI builder Constructor.
<p>
The authors rightly spend a considerable amount of time discussing the TextView
class. They show how to use TextView to display
HTML documents, handle hyperlinks, open a mini editor and more. With all
this versatility from a single component, it is a comfort to have clear
explanations and examples to lead you.
<p>
The authors next discuss archives. Archives provide object
persistence. Every class in the IFC can be archived to disk so that it
can outlive the process that created it. The authors detail how to use
IFC archives to read and write objects in a number of situations. They
also discuss how to archive existing IFC classes and explain how
to archive classes that you have created.
<p>
Finally, you will learn how to use Netscape Constructor. Unlike the rest
of the IFC, Constructor is an application not a component. Perhaps
this is why the chapter is so skimpy. Considering this chapter is
in the ``Advanced Topics'' section, I would have expected more detailed
information. Nonetheless, the chapter does provide some good information
on few aspects of the elusive Constructor.
<p>
The GUIs that are created using the IFC are truly a pleasure to
behold. The widgets, in stark contrast to their plain Java brethren, have
a polished look and feel. Some of the components, such as TextView,
are so powerful that they could be marketed on their own. Learning such
a comprehensive class library can be downright scary.
<i>Netscape IFC in a Nutshell</i> provides numerous easy to follow examples,
detailed explanations and a quick reference guide.
<p>
Eventually, the IFC will be subsumed by the Java Foundation Classes (JFC),
a joint venture between Sun and Netscape. But if you want beautiful
user interfaces today, the IFC is the way to go, and <i>Netscape IFC in a
Nutshell</i> is a great way to get you there.
<!--===================================================================-->
<P> <hr> <P>
<center><H5>Copyright &copy; 1998, R. J. Celestino <BR>
Published in Issue 28 of <i>Linux Gazette</i>, May 1998</H5></center>
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<center><h1>The Xfstt True-Type Font Server</h1></center>
<center>
<h4>By <a href="mailto:layers@marktwain.net">Larry Ayers</a></h4>
</center>
<P> <hr><P>
<center><h3>Introduction</h3></center>
<p>After using Linux for some time I had developed a less-than-favorable
attitude towards TrueType fonts, partly because of their close association
with Microsoft products and partly because of the high-quality printed output
which Postscript fonts typically yield. I had become accustomed to the
poor-quality of the X windows screen display when using scaled (rather than
bit-mapped) PS fonts, only occasionally finding the un-aliased jagginess of
certain font sizes jarring. This is particularly noticeable in Netscape when
large fonts are displayed (titles, etc).
<p>It was with some bemusement that I read various announcements of TrueType
font-renderers and libraries for Linux in the past year. "Why", I wondered,
"are people expending so much energy developing TTF support for Linux when
Postscript fonts are supposed to be superior in so many ways?". I supposed
these packages were for people who had bought TrueType fonts and wanted them
available under Linux.
<p>Last month I was idly scanning messages posted to the XEmacs-beta mailing
list. I happened across a passing reference to the use of something called
xfstt to provide TrueType fonts for XEmacs. The writer of the message stated
that these fonts display well under X windows. This intrigued me, and later I
happened to be discussing various Linux matters with Chris Gonnerman, who runs
a small computer business in a nearby small town here in northern Missouri.
He showed me a Linux machine running a TT font-server, which piqued my
interest further.
<p>A few days later I saw an announcement posted on the
<a href="http://freshmeat.net">freshmeat</a> web-site stating that xfstt-0.9.8
had just been released. Something about a new release irrationally induces me
to try it out, so I got the package from
<a href="ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/X11/fonts/Xfstt-0.9.8.tgz">Sunsite</a>
and compiled it.
<center><h3>Getting Xfstt to Work</h3></center>
<p>Xfstt is being developed by Herbert Duerr, and as far as I can tell it
seems to be a one-man project. The documentation is rather scanty, but the
FAQ file in the distribution provides enough information to get started.
Xfstt is a font server similar to X's native xfs. Once the server has been
compiled and installed, all that needs to be done is to populate the
directory&nbsp; <kbd>/usr/ttfonts</kbd>&nbsp; with *.ttf files (this directory
should have been created for you during the installation process), run
&nbsp;<kbd>xfstt -sync</kbd> (which lets the server know about the fonts),
then add the following line to your XF86Config file, near the end of the
font-path section:<br>
<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;<kbd>Fontpath "unix/:7100"</kbd>
<p>I'm guessing that the "path" above is actually the port at which xfstt
listens for font-requests from applications.
<p>Once these tasks have been completed, shut down X and execute the
backgrounded command &nbsp;<kbd>xfstt &</kbd>, wait a few seconds, then
restart X. The easiest way to try it out is to start Netscape, and in the
Options-&gt;General Preferences-&gt;Fonts dialog scroll through your installed
fonts and select one with (Ttf) appended to the font-name. Netscape showcases
xfstt's capabilities due to the variety of font-sizes in many web-pages. The
larger fonts in particular are much improved, without the jagginess they
usually exhibit.
<p>A little experimentation is needed to determine which of your applications
can make use of these fonts. The Gimp will use them, but it already does a
good job smoothing Postscript fonts, and I didn't see any great improvement
using TrueType fonts. XEmacs will display scalable fonts, but I'd never used
it for long with Postscript fonts due to X-induced scaling and rendering
problems. The new TT fonts will be available from the Options menu and the
improvement is remarkable.
<p>Another use for this font server is as a supplier of window-manager title
and menu fonts. A well-chosen font can really enhance the appearance of a
desktop; I've tried this with fvwm2 and icewm, and I'm sure it would work with
others. Lines such as these:<br>
<p><pre>MenuStyle gold darkslateblue bisque3 -ttf-americana-bold-r-*-*-12-*-*-*-*-*-*-* mwm
WindowFont&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;-ttf-americana-bold-r-*-*-14-*-*-*-*-*-*-*
</pre><br>
<p>(for fvwm2)should work. The <em>-ttf-</em> prefix of the font-specifier is
the usual location of the font foundry name, such as Adobe or Bitstream.
<p>According to the xfstt FAQ the StarOffice suite, the Xcoral editor, and
Java can use these fonts, but I haven't tried them. The distribution includes
a sample <kbd>font.properties</kbd> file for use with Java.
<center><h3>Possible Problems</h3></center>
<p>The xfstt FAQ lists several problems people have had, mostly due to
misconfiguration. The only one I've seen is not serious, but deserves
mention. Once your XF86Config file has been modified (with the new Fontpath
added) the xfstt server will need to be running first before X is started. If
it's not running, X will fail to start, generating one of those classicly
cryptic error messages X is so fond of:<br><pre>
&nbsp;&nbsp;<kbd>_FontTransSocketUNIXConnect: Can't connect: errno = 111</kbd>
&nbsp;&nbsp;<kbd>_X11TransSocketUNIXConnect: Can't connect: errno = 111</kbd>
</pre>
<p>Either xfstt will have to be started from the rc.init scripts (and thus
be running constantly) or it can be manually started just before starting an
X session. A shell script or alias could also be used to first start xfstt
followed by X.
<center><h3>Other Implementations</h3></center>
<p>Xfstt isn't the only way to use TT fonts in a Linux X session. Another
project consists of a series of patches to the XFree86 source which will
enable X's native font-server to provide TT fonts. Confusingly, the name of
the project is <em>xfsft</em>. The home page of this effort is a good
central site for other information on the web concerning TrueType fonts and
Linux. It can be accessed
<a href="http://www.dcs.ed.ac.uk/home/jec/programs/xfsft/">here</a>. A link
on the page will take you to the FTP site where the patches can be found.
The site also contains links to screen-shots of Netscape displaying TT fonts.
<p>The <em>Freetype</em> project is yet another approach. It isn't an
end-user application or server, but a library intended for use by programmers
desiring to embed TT support in their applications; the project home-page is
<a href="http://www.physiol.med.tu-muenchen.de/~robert/freetype.htm">here</a>.
<center><h3>Conclusions</h3></center>
<p>According to Herbert Duerr (in the FAQ) TT fonts are particularly suited
for display on low-resolution devices such as a computer monitor. Even though
xfstt doesn't do any anti-aliasing of the fonts (since there's no support for
this in X) nonetheless the fonts are displayed very clearly in all sizes.
Unix traditionalists will stick with their tried-and-true fixed-width fonts,
but users familiar with the font display properties of the various mswindows
OS's might want to give xfstt a try. It sure works well for me!
<hr>
<!-- hhmts start -->
Last modified: Wed 29 Apr 1998
<!-- hhmts end -->
<!--===================================================================-->
<P> <hr> <P>
<center><H5>Copyright &copy; 1998, Larry Ayers <BR>
Published in Issue 28 of <i>Linux Gazette</i>, May 1998</H5></center>
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<!--===================================================================-->
<center><h1>Updates to Past Reviews</h1></center>
<center>
<h4>By <a href="mailto:layers@marktwain.net">Larry Ayers</a></h4>
</center>
<P> <hr>
<p>The Linux software world has been extraordinarily fecund lately. I could
write all day every day and still not adequately describe and evaluate the
many new software packages released in the past couple of months. But I need
to backtrack a bit and bring up-to-date some of the reviews from past issues
of the Gazette (otherwise I'll be spending much time answering e-mail
concerning broken links, etc.).
<P> <hr>
<p>
<center><h3>Icewm</h3></center>
<p>I LG #21 I wrote a short piece about the first public beta of Marco Macek's
window-manager <strong>icewm</strong>; afterwards I continued to use it from
time to time until it began crashing at random intervals, which discouraged
me. Lately I'd noticed several new icewm releases mentioned on various Linux
web-sites, so I thought I'd try the most recent one (as I write this, the
current version is 0.8.16; they have been incrementing rapidly, so there is
probably a newer one by the time you read this).
<p>I've probably tried just about every window-manager out there; perhaps I'm
becoming a trifle jaded, but the prospect of spending hours, if not days,
learning to configure a WM to my liking isn't too appealing. I did just that
with fvwm2 a couple of years ago and just don't have the time or inclination
to repeat the process. I've tried Enlightenment, Afterstep and WindowMaker,
and though I appreciate their features and configurability, I haven't yet
devoted the time needed to effectively use them. Icewm is by design not as
complex and feature-laden as the above-mentioned managers, therefore
developing a pleasing and usable configuration can be done in a fairly short
time.
<p>Memory usage is another factor to consider. Most window-managers tend to
use about one megabyte of memory, but the various modules (such as fvwm2's
pager and Afterstep's numerous add-ons) add significant amounts. Although
minimalist managers such as wmx are available, they seem to use nearly the
same amount of memory as fvwm2 (in wmx's case, possibly because of the use of
the shaped window X-extension). Icewm uses a remarkably small amount of
memory (averaging about 600-800 kb. on my system), considering that it does
90% of what the others do.
<p>I asked Marco Macek what his original motivations were when he started
coding icewm, and this was his response:<br>
<blockquote>Well, I was using fvwm and while it was quite configurable, there
were lots of little things that I could never get right, even if by hacking
the source. I wanted the wm that would feel right to users used to CUA-style
GUIs (windows, os2, motif). fvwm95 was an improvement (I contributed a few
things to it), but since I wanted a more configurable look, I quickly realized
that writing it from scratch was the right thing to do. The result seems to be
a leaner WM that feels good to use. At least to me (and it seems quite a few
other people). For me, the feel is more important than look. People get much
more used to feel (keystrokes, behaviour) than look. That is the reason for
configurable look but not feel. Changing the look occasionally makes things
interesting while the feel should really stay the same.
</blockquote>
<p>Icewm isn't difficult or time-consuming to set up. Several pre-defined
themes are included, and the configuration variables are split into several
files, making it easy to edit, say, just the colors or menus without having to
wade through a long config file looking for particular sections. The icons
can take some time, as they need to have particular sizes and filenames in
order for icewm to be able to make use of them. Any item in the root menu can
have a mini-icon displayed next to its menu-entry, with the same icon used as
the leftmost titlebar icon. John Bradley's excellent xv graphics program can
be used to resize an *.xpm file to 16x16 and 32x32 pixels, which are the two
sizes needed. The icon files then need to be renamed to
<em>[name]_16x16.xpm</em> and <em>[name]_32x32.xpm</em> and put in the
window-manager's icon directory, which defaults to
<kbd>/usr/local/lib/X11/icewm/icons</kbd>.
<p>The menu configuration file, located in&nbsp;
<kbd>/usr/local/lib/X11/icewm/menu</kbd> has entries in this format:<br>
<p><kbd>prog Xvile edit xvile</kbd><br>
<p>The first word after "prog" is the name as you want it shown in the menu,
the second word is the prefix of the xpm icon-file (that is, the part before
the underscore), and the third word is the command which actually starts the
program. If there are no icon-files named <kbd>edit_16x16.xpm</kbd>
and <kbd>edit_32x32.xpm</kbd> error messages will be displayed on the console
from which X was started but they are harmless and default icons will be used
in the titlebar, while there won't be one at all next to the corresponding
menu-entry.
<p>If you happen to try editing any of the theme configuration files (where
the various frame and title-bar colors are set) you will notice that the
colors are specified in hex format (such as "rgb:E0/E0/E0"), which isn't too
intuitive. After configuring various X windows programs for a while, you
probably will be able to remember several favorite color-names from the rgb.txt
color-database file, such as darkslateblue and navajowhite. This isn't
mentioned in the icewm docs, but I've found that these easily-remembered
color-names can be substituted for the hex names and will work just as well.
Just remember to put the names within double quotes.
<p>One feature of fvwm which I've grown accustomed to, and which icewm can
also do, is displaying certain windows without a titlebar and/or appearing on
all desktops. The icewm docs explain these settings. A pager isn't included,
but the Afterstep-like "workspaces" icewm provides perform a similar
function. The win95-like taskbar, complete with a start-menu, is a help while
gaining familiarity with the window-manager, but its functions are available
using either the keyboard or the root-menu, and it can be turned off by
setting <kbd>ShowTaskBar=0</kbd> in the preferences config file.
<p>Admittedly, this sort of desktop configuration is much easier with KDE
beta4, but you pay for the ease of using and configuring KDE; it uses a
quite a bit of memory and takes an awfully long time to start up. Of
all the window-managers I've used, icewm and Chris Cannam's wmx seem to be the
quickest to start.
<p>I think that with the release of version 0.8.16 icewm is stable enough for
heavy use and deserves wider exposure. Marco Macek is currently adapting icewm
to the GNOME desktop, and further enhancements are likely.
<center><h3>Maxwell</h3></center>
<p>Naturally, as soon as LG #27 appeared, the link I had provided for the
binary Maxwell word-processor distribution was no longer valid. The Sunsite
incoming directory was cleaned up for the first time in many months and the
file was moved. Here are two links which hopefully will work for a while:
<ul>
<li><a
href="ftp://ftp.demon.co.uk/pub/linux/apps/maxwell/maxwell-0.5.2.tar.gz">British site</a>
<li><a
href="ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/apps/wp/maxwell-0.5.2.tar.gz">US site</a>
</ul>
<p>Still no news on whether Maxwell's source will be made available or not.
<center><h3>NEdit</h3></center>
<p>NEdit version 5.02 was released recently. It's available from the home
<a href="ftp://ftp.fnal.gov/KITS/pub/nedit/v5_0_2">site</a>. This Motif-based
editor has become increasingly popular due to its easy-to-learn interface and
intuitive mouse support. Its CUA-style menus and keystrokes are easy to learn
for users coming from a windows or mac background, and it's a good choice for
people desiring a powerful, syntax-highlighting editor complete with a native
macro language. If the prospect of learning Emacs or VI is daunting, NEdit is
ideal.
<center><h3>XaoS</h3></center>
<p>Version 3.00 of the fast interactive fractal zoomer XaoS was released
recently by its maintainer Jan Hubicka of Czechoslovakia. Xaos is now
officially a part of the GNU project; I'm not sure just what this means beyond
receiving Richard Stallman's blessing and new availability from the
<a href="ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu">GNU</a> FTP site.
<p>This version has many new features, though the interface to them is still a
series of text-based information panels. An interesting animated tutorial is
now included which can be accessed by typing <b>h</b> twice. There are
now so many new options and filters that the tutorial is very helpful in
gaining an overview of XaoS's powers. Check out the "motion blur" filter,
which really makes you feel like you are plunging headlong into the fractal
depths. Here's a small screenshot:<br>
<p><img alt="motion blur screenshot" src="./gx/ayers/motion.gif">
<p>Another nice effect is gray-scale embossed fractal zooming, which looks
like this:<br>
<p><img alt="embossed fractal" src="./gx/ayers/emboss.gif">
<p>XaoS has really come a long way since the first version I tried. Keep up
the good work, Jan!
<center><h3>Tcd</h3></center>A non-beta 2.1 release of Tcd and its GTK version
Gtcd is now available from the home
<a href="http://flow.ml.org/tcd">site</a>. This has become one the nicest
CD-players available, with theme support using pixmap backgrounds. Several
sample themes are included, several of which were contributed by users. The
bug which caused the GTK version to crash at the end of a CD has been fixed,
and the CDDB support has been enhanced.
<center><h3>XEphem</h3></center>
<p>Version 3.1 of XEphem, Elwood Downey's astronomical program which I wrote
about in LG #25, has been released. Noteworthy is the announcement on the
XEphem <a href="http://iraf.noao.edu/~ecdowney/xephem.html">home</a> page of
recent successes compiling XEphem with Lesstif rather than Motif. Here are
some of the other new features:<br>
<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;Sky View:
<ul>
<li>improved grid
<li>improved DSS FITS networking code
<li>improved layout and drawing
<li>separate limiting magnitudes for deep sky and stars
</ul>
<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;General:
<ul>
<li>brighter color scheme is now the default
<li>printing includes Mars, Moon and Sky View images
<li>support for network Proxies, SOCKS and firewalls
<li>support for Delta T
<li>simpler installation
<li>many small but welcome changes
</ul>
<center><h3>Lout</h3></center>
Jeffrey H. Kingston has released the source for version 3.12 of <b>Lout</b>,
an upstart TeX/LaTeX competitor. New in this release is an option to output
PDF documents rather than Postscript. As usual, the GPL-ed source can be
obtained from this <a href="ftp://ftp.cs.usyd.edu.au/jeff/lout/">FTP</a>
site.
<center><h3>WordNet</h3></center>
<p>In my review of the WordNet dictionary/thesaurus package last issue I
mentioned that it would be useful to be able to compile the source, and that
success had eluded me. <a href="mailto:rdn@tara.n.eunet.de">Christopher
Richardson</a> e-mailed me a suggestion which enabled the WordNet files to
build here; it's worth trying this if you have installed the package. The
change is small, just a couple of lines in the top-level Makefile.
<p>Try commenting out line number 101 (<kbd>LOCAL_LDFLAGS = -static</kbd>),
then change line 135 from<br>
<p><kbd>#WNB_LIBS = -ltk4.2 -ltcl7.6 -lX11 -lm -ldl -lsocket -lnsl</kbd><br>
<p>to<br>
<p><kbd>WNB_LIBS = -ltk4.2 -ltcl7.6 -lX11 -lm -ldl # -lsocket -lnsl</kbd>
<p>The other changes needed in the Makefile are explained well in the
comments. A natively compiled WordNet wish interpreter is only 61 kb.,
whereas the included statically-linked interpreter is 1.39 mb.
<center><h3>S-lang</h3></center>
<p>John Davis, developer of the S-Lang programming language and a collection
of excellent programs which make use of it, has released a new version of the
S-Lang library package, along with new versions of the <b>slrn</b> newsreader,
the <b>jed</b> emacs-like editor, and the <b>most</b> pager. One of the most
interesting changes is the inclusion of exhaustive and readable documentation
in a variety of formats for the S-lang language. If you install the new
S-lang library and header files any applications which use S-lang will have to
be recompiled.
<center><h3>Bomb</h3></center>
<p>Scott Draves has released a new version of his Bomb interactive visual
stimulus package, which I reviewed in LG #18. The svgalib and X programs have
been merged into one executable, and it now works in X windows on 8, 16, and
32 bpp displays. An interesting new feature is the addition of Scheme-based
scripting. GNU Guile is the Scheme-variant which Bomb needs, and a compiled
libguile and other necessary files are included in the archive along with a
script which is supposed to run Bomb with these files loaded rather than with
any Guile version which might happen to be installed elsewhere. I couldn't
get it to work, though it looks to be an interesting development. Several
sample Scheme scripts are included as examples. Rather than needing separate
executables for console use (using svgalib) and X, this new version will
detect the current display-type and adapt itself accordingly. Bomb in an X
session is no longer limited to 8-bit (256 color) displays; I've been using it
in 16-bit X sessions and it works well, though it runs somewhat slower than in
in a full-screen console display. Perhaps when Guile development stabilizes
and a new official release is available (1.2 is the current release),
scripting Bomb's behaviour will be possible for Linux users. Perhaps my Guile
problems with bomb are due to my particular set-up; if it worked for you, let
me know!
<p>Version 1.18 of Bomb is available from this WWW
<a href="http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~spot/bomb.html">site</a>.
<hr>
<!-- hhmts start -->
Last modified: Wed 29 Apr 1998
<!-- hhmts end -->
<!--===================================================================-->
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<center><H5>Copyright &copy; 1998, Larry Ayers <BR>
Published in Issue 28 of <i>Linux Gazette</i>, May 1998</H5></center>
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<center>
<h1><font color="maroon">Open Source Summit</font></h1>
<H4>By <a href="mailto:esr@thyrsus.com">Eric Raymond</a></H4>
</center>
<P> <HR> <P>
On April 7th, 1998, a select group of the most influential people in the
Open Source community gathered in Palo Alto to meet each other, consider the
implications of Netscape's browser source release, and discuss where the
Open Source movement is headed (and, especially how it can work with the market
rather than against it, for the benefit of both).
<p>
The summit was hosted by O'Reilly & Associates, a company that has been
symbiotic with the Open Source movement for many years. Linux's own Linus
Torvalds attended. The inventors of all three major scripting
languages were present: Larry Wall (Perl), John Ousterhout (Tcl) and
Guido Van Rossum (Python). Eric Allman (Sendmail) and Paul Vixie
(BIND/DNS) were present, representing their own projects and the BSD
community. Phil Zimmerman, the author of PGP, was there too, as was
John Gilmore, a co-founder of Cygnus and the Electronic Frontier
Foundation. Brian Behlendorf spoke for the maintainers of
Apache. Jamie Zawinski and Tom Paquin represented Netscape and
mozilla.org. For my semi-accidental role in motivating the Netscape
source release with ``The Cathedral and the Bazaar'', I also had the
honor to be among those invited.
<p>
We met from 8:30AM to 5PM, following up with a well-attended press
briefing. It was invigorating just to be around the amount of
intelligence and accomplishment there, and a bit sobering to realize
how absolutely critical their work has become--not just to the
hacker culture but to the world expecting the Internet
to become the vital communications medium of the next century.
<p>
One of the most important purposes of the meeting was simply to permit
everyone to meet face to face, shake hands, look in each others' eyes and
hear each others' voices. Many of us had never actually met each
other before, despite having been in e-mail conversations for
many years. Tim O'Reilly felt (correctly, I think) that Net contact
has not been quite enough as a community builder; that the
opportunities and challenges we face now require an attempt to build
more personal trust among the chieftains of the major Open Source
tribes.
<p>
In that, I think, the meeting was very successful. But it also
certainly dealt with substance as well. We discussed different
perspectives on the Open source/free software phenomenon and different
definitions of it. One of the meeting's important results was a general
agreement that, in all the variant definitions, <i>public access to
source</i> was the most important and only absolutely critical common
element.
<p>
We discussed the vexing issue of labels, considering the implications
of ``freeware'', ``sourceware'', ``open source'', and ``freed software''.
After a vote, we agreed to use ``Open Source'' as our label. The
implication of this label is that we intend to convince the corporate
world to adopt our way for economic, self-interested, non-ideological
reasons. (This is the line of attack I've been pursuing though
<A HREF="http://www.opensource.org">www.opensource.org</A> and many recent interviews with the national press.)
<p>
We talked about business models. Several people in the room are facing
questions about how to ride the interface between the market and the
hacker culture. Netscape is approaching this from one side; Scriptics
(John Ousterhout's Tcl company) and Eric Allman's commercial Sendmail
launch are approaching it from the other. No one is certain yet what will
work, but we were able to identify common problems and some possible
strategies for attacking them.
<p>
We talked about development models--the various ways in which
projects are organized, the strengths and weaknesses of each model, and
what our individual experiences have been.
There were no magic insights, but again it seemed helpful to
recognize common problems.
<p>
We all understood this meeting could be only a beginning. Late in the
day we developed a tentative agenda for a larger follow-up conference
which O'Reilly may host later in the year. We hope to bring other
key people from the Open Source community in on that follow-up--one of
the last things Tim asked us to think about
was who should have been with us, but was not.
<p>
The day ended with a well-attended press briefing at which all of us
answered questions from Bay Area and national reporters--some got the
message, some didn't. For every one that genuinely wanted to
understand the logic of the Open Source approach, there was another
who repeated ``lets-you-and-him-fight'' questions about Microsoft.
Still, the first burst of publicity about our gathering (it is two days later
as I write) has been very positive.
<p>
We are entering a very exciting time. In the wake of the Netscape
release, the Open Source community, has achieved a visibility it never
had before. We're making friends in new places and meeting new
challenges. The larger world we're now trying to persuade to adopt
our way doesn't care about our factional differences; it wants to know
what we can do for it that is valuable enough to motivate a major
change in the ground rules of the software industry.
<p>
To do that persuading, we'll need to pull together as one community
more than we have in the past. We--not just the Linux community but
the BSD people, the Perl, Python and Tcl hackers, the
Internet infrastructure people and the Free Software
Foundation--will need to present one face and speak one language
and tell one story to that larger world.
<p>
That is, ultimately, why this meeting was so important. All of us came
away with a better sense of what that story is and how each of the
major tribes fits into it. Just the fact that we faced the reporters
(and, by extension, the rest of the world) together was a very
powerful statement. The summit was a good beginning--one to build
on in the coming months.
<!--===================================================================-->
<P> <hr> <P>
<center><H5>Copyright &copy; 1998, Eric Raymond <BR>
Published in Issue 28 of <i>Linux Gazette</i>, May 1998</H5></center>
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<H1><font color="maroon">Open Source Summit Trip Report</font></H1>
<H4>By <a href="mailto:guido@CNRI.Reston.Va.US">Guido van Rossum</a></H4>
</center>
<P> <HR> <P>
Date: Fri, 10 Apr 1998 <BR>
This last Tuesday was the date for O'Reilly's Freeware Open Source
summit and press conference. I promised a few people a trip report,
and decided I might as well post it to the Python newsgroup. Warning:
this is biased and may occasionally be mistaken where facts are
concerned -- read at your own risk! It's also longer than I planned
-- we did cover a lot...
<P>
<H4>Background</H4>
<P>
Tim O'Reilly realized that freely available software is much more
important for the Internet than most people, especially many of the
higher level decision makers and their informers (e.g. the press)
think. The common perception is that the Internet is mostly built on
proprietary software, e.g. Solaris, Netscape, and Microsoft products.
But in fact, many crucial pieces of software are in fact not
proprietary: sendmail delivers 80% of all email mail, BIND (the
Berkeley Internet Name Daemon) does most of the name-to-IP-address
translations, Apache is the #1 web server, the most popular encryption
software is PGP, the three most commonly used scripting languages are
Perl, Tcl and Python, and so on.
<P>
All these great pieces of software are freely available in source
form! What's going on here? Of course, we all know why this is --
this is a great software development model. But corporate America is
slow to discover this. The release of the Mozilla sources by Netscape
was the first hint that this may be changing -- and once this was
announced, O'Reilly started to receive calls from the press about this
mysterious "freeware", and realized there was an opportunity to
increase the press's awareness of open source software.
<P>
The meeting had two distinct parts: first, the invited software
developers discussed the merits and problems of open source software,
their plans, and so on. Second, at the end of the day we held a press
conference. I'll report on both events separately.
<P>
<H4>The Summit</H4>
<P>
Basically, the gathered software developers talked amongst themselves
from 9 till 5. It would have lasted all week if it weren't for Tim
O'Reilly's talent as a moderator! Most participants were from the Bay
Area; I flew in from Washington DC, and John Ousterhout (who normally
also lives there) interrupted his vacation in Hawaii for a day.
<P>
We started off by a round where everyone was asked to mention their
motivation and positive experiences: why did make source available,
what worked well, what do you like about the process. In the end we
agreed on two main reasons why the open source development model works
so well. Most other reasons can be reduced to a special case of
either of these.
<P>
One, from the developer's point of view, there's the advantage of
*massive peer review* (also formulated as "debugging is
parallellizable"). There is no other methodology for software
development that yields software that is as reliable and robust as
open source.
<P>
Two, from the user's point of view, the big advantage of open source
flexibility. Linus Torvalds emphasized this with the following
example: he is generally quite happy with Netscape's browser, but he
has one wish: to disable animated GIFs, which are used almost
exclusively for advertising. Without source, he couldn't do this!
(Jamie Zawinski of Netscape called this "scratching itches." :-)
<P>
Other advantages of open source software development that were
mentioned included low cost technology transfer, and the use of a
reference implementation to help develop a standard.
<P>
As far as the initial motivation for making source available, a
(surprising, to me!) large number of developers said their initial or
ulterior motivation was moral/ethical: they believe that it is "the
right thing to do" to make source available.
<P>
In the next round, we discussed our negative experiences -- what
doesn't work, what are your biggest problems, and so on. Apart from
some joke entries like "our biggest problem are stupid people",
two problems were common.
<P>
One, as a package becomes more popular, the developer spends more time
on helping users than on developing software. While there are ways to
avoid this (e.g., don't answer email), it remains a problem -- without
a support organization, you're it! This can be summarized as "you're
crushed by your own success."
<P>
Two, it's often a problem to get the people who want to contribute to
do so in a meaningful manner. The darkest picture was painted by John
Ousterhout, who claims that a contributed patch saves him only 50% of
the development time compared to writing it himself from scratch.
Some agreed; others (like me) rebutted that it's a sliding scale --
yes, for the core of the package, this may be true -- but there are
many peripheral items where much contributed code can be accepted "as
is" -- even if it doesn't work -- since the massive peer review /
debugging once it is released will eventually fix it. Linus has an
extreme but clear point of view: the *interfaces* need to be designed
carefully by the main developer; the implementations may be buggy.
For example, Linus doesn't mind at all if there are some buggy device
drivers -- that only affects a small number of people, and only until
they get fixed -- while a bad design will haunt you until the end of
times. (This matches my own experience, but Linus said it clearer.)
<P>
This boils down to a matter of control. It was noted that almost all
systems represented have a core that's kept under (relatively) tight
control by the main developer, and a well-defined and flexible
extension mechanism which is used by most contributors, where control
is less important.
<P>
Other problems that were mentioned included the current intellectual
property laws and the way the legal system is abused to enforce them
in strange ways, and unfair "badmouthing" of open source software by
competitors trying to peddle proprietary solutions. Also, the
distribution model (revenue model) isn't ideal -- you can't buy most
freeware packages at your local neighborhood software supermarket,
even in Palo Alto. (You can buy Red Hat Linux there, though!) Code
bloat was also mentioned (but the Netscape boys pointed out that this
is not a unique problem of open source software :-).
<P>
After lunch, we discussed what to do about the problems.
<P>
We didn't say much more about the control issues, except to note that
managing a distributed development team like the contributors to the
average open source package is a bit like herding cats. (The first
time this came up I heard "hurting cats", which I found a bit strange
-- luckily Tim or other O'Reilly people made copious notes on a
flip board. :-) The best contribution (for me) came from Eric Raymond
and Cygnus' John Gilmore, who noted that it's possible to train your
contributors, (e.g. through style guides, coding standards etc.), and
that this is actually an effective way to improve the quality of the
contributions. One way to go at it is simply saving scraps of
"internal documentation" as you are producing them, e.g., in response
to email questions from other developers, and in a couple of years,
voila, an internals manual!
<P>
The rest of the time (and also interspersed throughout the rest of the
day) we discussed various business models that may make open source a
sustainable activity, rather than a hobby or a questionable skunkworks
activity.
<P>
It turns out that almost everyone present was involved in an attempt
to commercialize their software -- and *everyone* wanted to do so
without making the sources proprietary. Everybody's situation is a
little different though -- sometimes because of the user base of their
software, sometimes because of the competition, sometimes for legal
reasons, and sometimes simply because they have different motivation.
<P>
For example, John Gilmore told us how Cygnus is successful selling GCC
ports to the embedded systems industry -- a small niche market that,
before Cygnus came in, was monopolized by a small number of compiler
companies who'd charge a million to retarget an existing compiler to a
slightly different chip.
<P>
Another success story was told by Sameer Parekh of C2Net, who are
selling Stronghold, a commercial, secure version of Apache. Because
of the patent situation on encryption software, there is no free
encryption code that can be used for commercial purposes, so companies
in need of a web server with encryption have to pay *some* vendor.
Note that C2Net provides their customers with the source for their
version of Apache, but only with binaries of their encryption library.
<P>
Yet another story was told by Paul Vixie of the Internet Software
Consortium, a non-profit that's maintaining BIND. Some big computer
vendors paid the ISC a lot of money for Paul to further develop BIND,
and didn't mind that Paul would make the sources available for free to
others, as long as the work got done.
<P>
There were also those for whom it was too early to declare success (or
failure): Larry Wall and Linus Torvalds aren't making any money
directly off selling copies of Perl and Linux. Others are though, and
of course O'Reilly makes a lot of money on the Perl books -- as are
other publishers. Linus has an exciting non-Linux related job at
Transmeta, and has no plans to personally commercialize Linux; Larry
however is working for O'Reilly and there are some plans to
commercialize at least the Windows port (which is done by an outside
company with some kind of license agreement from O'Reilly).
<P>
John Ousterhout has just made the jump to the commercial world for
Tcl/Tk with his new company Scriptics, formed after Sun canceled its
plans for producing Tcl/Tk products. John is planning on a mixture of
open source and proprietary software: Tcl and Tk themselves will
remain open source forever, but Scriptics plans to make money off
proprietary tools like a debugger and a source analyzer. One reason
to keep Tcl/Tk free is to ensure that nobody has an incentive to "fork
off" an incompatible version.
<P>
Eric Allman of Senmail, Inc told a similar story -- he had first hoped
to create a consortium but found all doors closed, so in order to
remain in control he quit his job and formed Sendmail, Inc. with Greg
Olson. He promises that a free version will remain available, but
seems to aim at licensing it to the big computer vendors.
<P>
While everybody's story is different, there's one common line:
everybody is working on a *sustainable* business model that produces a
sufficient revenue stream to pay for developers and a support
organization, without giving up the advantages of open source
software. As Netscape's freeing of the Mozilla source shows, this
idea is even getting some attention amongst traditional proprietary
software vendors!
<P>
<H4>Freeware, Open Source or Sourceware?</H4>
<P>
We spent some time discussing the terminology of choice. Tim took a
straw poll. Free software or freeware got almost no positive votes
the cutesy "freed software" even got many negative votes). The winner
was a tie between open source software (favored by Eric Raymond) and
sourceware (which has been used by Cygnus).
<P>
I've had some reservations about "open source", but I like it better
than the too-cute sourceware, and I agree with the perception that
freeware has a bad reputation -- and of course, much "freeware" comes
without source, while the common factor of the software represented at
the summit is the availability of source code.
<P>
Eric Raymond has trademarked the term "Open Source" (capitalized) and
has a somewhat precise definition of what is or isn't Open Source on
his web site (see below). I sometimes worry that this can become a
limitation: what if I call my software Open Source, with his approval,
and later I change the terms and conditions, or Eric changes his
definition -- I could be sued by someone who says I have to stick to
the Open Source rules. Eric believes that this won't happen, and
besides says that everyone is free to use the "open source"
(lowercase) without sticking to his definition. We'll see -- for now,
I'm favorable to the concept, but we won't put "Open Source" on the
Python web site yet. (Note that we don't use "freeware" either.)
<P>
<H4>Where next?</H4>
<P>
We briefly discussed how to approach the press and possible follow-up
meetings. The general conclusion seems to be that the time is ripe to
try and get the message to the next level of managers in companies
that are already using the products of open source software
development -- the CIOs who don't even know that their developers are
using Perl or Python, and only listen to their peer CIOs, the Wall
Street Journal, and the expensive consulting and market analysis firms
that haven't discovered open source software yet either. How we're
going to do that? Clearly the press conference is a step in the right
direction, and O'Reilly will be following up to the press. Eric
Raymond is very active in talking to corporate people. Sarah Daniels
of Scriptics has some big ideas for a joint ad campaign (we'll
see...).
<P>
What I got out of it? Lots -- more clarity about why open source
software works so well, and how to make it work even better, as well
as motivation to try and find a revenue stream.
<P>
<H4>The press conference</H4>
<P>
The press conference started around 5.30 and lasted until 7.30 or 8.00
PM. All developers sat behind a long table behind name tags, with Tim
O'Reilly in the middle. There were about 20-30 reporters; the first
hour we had our pictures taken about twice a second. Tim O'Reilly
gave a short introduction (see URLs below) and then let the press go
loose. They mostly picked the better-known names, so I didn't get to
say much (of course, much attention went to the two guys from
Netscape).
<P>
As predicted, it was at times difficult to divert the subject away
from "how are you taking on Microsoft" or "clearly this can't work".
With some journalists, you can give a perfectly clear answer to the
question, and all they do is give you a blank stare and ask the same
question again with slightly different words. But most of them were
really trying to understand the message (and some clearly had already
gotten it before they came). Once the formal part of the press
conference was over, everyone stuck around and many one-on-one or
two-on-two interviews were carried out.
<P>
All in all it was an interesting and useful event; see below for the
first results. Of course, we'll have to see if we really change the
perception of the open source software development model as a fringe
freak issue...
<P>
<H4>References</H4>
<P>
(These predate the summit.)
<ul>
<li><A HREF="http://www.oreilly.com/oreilly/press/freeware.html">
O'Reilly's original press release</A>, listing some key participants.
<li><A HREF="http://www.oreilly.com/oreilly/news/freeware.html">Tim
O'Reilly's opinion of freeware</A>.
<li><A HREF="http://www.earthspace.net/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/">
Eric Raymond's paper</A> <I>The Cathedral and the Bazaar</I>.
<li><A HREF="http://www.opensource.org/">Eric Raymond's Open Source web
site</A>.
</ul>
<H4>Press coverage</H4>
<P>
(As forwarded to my by O'Reilly's PR team.)
<P>
Before the summit, Tom Abate wrote a column in the SF Chronicle,
<A HREF="http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/1998/04/02/BU71924.DTL">
"The Brains Behind Freeware to Meet."</A>
<P>
<A
HREF="http://www.news.com/News/Item/0,4,20913,00.html?st.ne.fd.mdh">"Open
source gurus convene"</A>
<P>
Wednesday's San Francisco Chronicle had a full page piece by Tom Abate
on the Open Source story, containing interviews with (and pictures of)
Larry Wall, Linus Torvalds, Paul Vixie, and Tom Paquin. The
<A
HREF="http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/1998/04/09/BU94387.DTL">
on-line version</A>, sans pictures.
<P>
Also, NPR ran a long piece on Linux Wednesday evening. There's a
<A HREF="http://www.npr.org/programs/atc/archives/1998/980408.atc.html">
RealAudio version</A>
<P>
<A HREF="http://www.internetnews.com/bus-news/1998/04/0802-netscape.html">
Judy DeMocker's piece in Meckler's internetnews.com</A>.
<P>
John Markoff is planning on running his piece on the summit in next
Monday's New York Times.
<P>
For even more information on this topic, see <A
HREF="http://webreview.com/wr/pub/98/04/10">webreview</A>.
<P>
--Guido van Rossum (<A HREF="http://www.python.org/~guido/">home page</A>)
<!--===================================================================-->
<P> <hr> <P>
<center><H5>Copyright &copy; 1998, Guido van Rossum <BR>
Published in Issue 28 of <i>Linux Gazette</i>, May 1998</H5></center>
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<P> <HR> <P>
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: April 15, 1998<BR>
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT<BR>
http://www.oreilly.com/, http://www.webreview.com/
<P> <HR> <P>
<center>
<H2><font color="maroon">OPEN SOURCE PIONEERS MEET IN HISTORIC
SUMMIT</font></H2> </center>
<P>
Developers of key Internet technologies confirm advantages of open
source development process and agree to cooperate in spreading the word
<P>
Sebastopol, CA--Heavyweights of the Internet software community met in
an historic summit in Palo Alto on April 7 to explore ways of expanding
the use and acceptance of open source software development, which
relies on wide distribution of program source code to spur innovation
and increase software quality. Organized by Tim O'Reilly, CEO of
O'Reilly & Associates, the attendees included creators of underlying
Internet services such as the Domain Name System and email routing, as
well as web servers and browsers, scripting languages, and even whole
operating systems.
<P>
The meeting's purpose was to facilitate a high-level discussion of the
successes and challenges facing the developers. While this type of
software has often been called "freeware" or "free software" in the
past, the developers agreed that commercial development of the software
is part of the picture, and that the terms "open source" or
"sourceware" best describe the development method they support.
<P>
Open source software, or sourceware, was defined at the summit as
"software whose source code is available, so that users can customize
or extend it." This is in contrast to most software, whose source code
is not available to the public. Sourceware may be available for free or
in commercial packages.
<P>
Summit attendees also agreed on the most important aspects of open
source software:
<ol>
<li>Flexibility. Because the source code is freely available, any given
program may have hundreds or thousands of developers. Each open source
community has tremendous flexibility in modifying the program.
Developers can modify the software to suit their needs, or the needs of
their companies, customers or communities. Stability and consistency
for open source software is typically maintained by the creator or a
development team who controls the core release of the software.
Commercial entities generally can't afford to spend the resources on
niche markets, of which there may be thousands. But developers working
on their own can easily do so, then make their work available to others
for further modification and improvement.
<li>Innovation. The development model encourages tremendous innovation.
When developers can see and modify source code, they receive rapid
feedback and a constant flow of ideas from other developers. Innovation
is also taking place with many companies creating new approaches to
business, successfully integrating sourceware and commercial efforts.
Many of the companies present at the summit freely distribute source
code, and earn revenue through offering services, support,
documentation, customization, or additional software products to their
customers.
<li>Reliability. With hundreds or thousands of developers testing,
inspecting, and fixing bugs for a given program, the quality assurance
program for open source software is far more reliable and efficient
than any commercial effort can afford to be. Massive, independent peer
review, similar to what takes place in the scientific community but on
a much larger scale thanks to the Internet, is a major strength.
<li>Faster development time. With so many more testers, development
cycles can go much faster than in typical commercial efforts.
</ol>
The group identified numerous ways that sourceware is already
mission-critical throughout industry, academia, and government. The
myth is that IT managers won't rely on free or open source software. As
Tim O'Reilly pointed out at the press conference following the event,
at least two of the open source programs whose developers attended the
summit, Bind and Sendmail, form the backbone of the Internet
infrastructure that all Internet-connected companies rely on.
Languages such as Perl, Tcl and Python are intimately involved in the
operation of virtually all major web sites, and Apache is the server of
choice for more than half of all web sites.
<P>
The attendees agreed that future collaboration would take place in
coming months, including workshops on open source business models,
project management and source code licensing issues, and coordinated
public relations efforts involving open source programs. There are tens
of thousands of developers worldwide who were not at the summit, but
who are integral to the development of open source software. Followup
meetings will focus on bringing together larger groups.
<P>
Spreading the word about the importance and value of open source
software was seen as vital to the group's efforts. O'Reilly noted,
"Until Netscape announced that they would release the source code to
Communicator, open source software received little attention in the
press. Now everyone wants to know about it. It's important to realize
just how successful and widespread open source development is. Much of
today's most innovative and important software has been built using
this model."
<P>
<H4>OPEN SOURCE SUMMIT ATTENDEES & AFFILIATIONS</H4>
Attendees included:<BR>
* Tim O'Reilly, CEO of O'Reilly & Associates, publisher of books on
Linux, Perl, Apache, DNS & Bind, sendmail, Tcl, PGP, and other open
source software, and presenters of the Perl Conference.
* Linus Torvalds, creator of the Linux operating system, considered by
many to be the only real competitor to Microsoft's hold on the desktop;
* Tom Paquin and Jamie Zawinski of mozilla.org, Netscape
Communications;
* Larry Wall, creator of the Perl language, which is used even more
widely than Java to create active content and manage web sites;
* Brian Behlendorf, one of the founders of the Apache Group, whose
Apache web server runs more than 50% of all Web sites;
* Sameer Parekh, President of C2Net Software, Inc. and member of the
Apache Group;
* Eric Allman, CTO of Sendmail, Inc.; author of sendmail, the mail
transport agent which routes over 75% of mail on the Internet today;
* Greg Olson, CEO of Sendmail, Inc.;
* Paul Vixie, maintainer of the Bind program, which manages the
Internet's Domain Naming System;
* John Ousterhout, CEO, Scriptics Corp. and creator of the popular Tcl
scripting language which is widely used for rapid GUI development, web
content generation and extensible applications;
* Guido van Rossum, creator of the fast-growing Python language;
* Phil Zimmermann, creator of the well-known PGP (Pretty Good Privacy)
cryptography program;
* John Gilmore, co-founder of Cygnus Solutions, commercial supporters
of open sourceware programming tools like the ubiquitous GNU C
compiler; and
* Eric Raymond, independent developer active in the Linux community and
author of the influential paper, "The Cathedral and the Bazaar."
<P>
<H4>RELATED WEB SITES</H4>
<P>
Apache: http://www.apache.org/
Bind: http://www.isc.org/
C2Net/Stronghold: http://www.c2.net/
Cygnus Solutions: http://www.cygnus.com/
Free Software Foundation: http://www.fsf.org
Linux: http://www.svlug.org/
Mozilla: http://www.mozilla.org/
Netscape: http://www.netscape.com/
Open Source: http://www.opensource.org/
O'Reilly: http://www.oreilly.com/
Perl: http://www.perl.com / also http://www.perl.org/
PGP: http://www.nai.com/products/security/freeware.asp
Prime Time Freeware: http://www.ptf.com/
Python: http://www.python.org/
Scriptics/Tcl: http://www.scriptics.com/
Sendmail: http://www.sendmail.com/
WebReview: http://www.webreview.com/
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<H4>
"Linux Gazette...<I>making Linux just a little more fun!</I>"
</H4>
<P> <HR> <P>
<!--===================================================================-->
<center>
<H1>A Tale in Writing</H1>
<H4>By <a href="mailto:mv@fgi.fi">Martin Vermeer</a></H4>
</center>
<P> <HR> <P>
<H1>
A tale in writing</H1>
I suppose most of you are like me, every evening watching the tv, and on
friday going out and renting the latest DV's from the corner store. Everybody
does that; after work, you want some fun and don't want to think too much,
and those stories are quite good, actually. Of course they all look the
same, after a while; I suppose that's what you get when one company is
controlling all production. But at least it's safe for the kids to watch.
You know what to expect for your money.
<P>Now the other day, a couple years ago, a funny thing happened to me.
A friend -- I won't tell you his name -- put this thing into my hands.
A small rectangular thing, you could put it into your pocket. No power
chord; funny. And you could open it, just like that. Inside, sheets and
sheets of white paper bound together; and on those sheets, small black
marks, thousands of them. You could open the thing -- a <I>book</I>, they
call it -- at any point; it is random-access, just like a video disk, if
you know what I mean. Not like those oldfashioned video tapes that you
have to reel to get to the point you want.
<P>Now the most fascinating thing about this <I>book</I>, and those black
markings: they <I>mean</I> something! Some people actually look at them
and get the meaning straightaway, turning page after page, taking in a
complete story as if they were watching it from the DV screen. I looked
at it with amazement. It was really baffling -- there were just these black
signs on the paper, rows and rows of them, <I>letters</I> and <I>words</I>
and <I>sentences</I> -- and as dead as doornails. But the moment someone
capable of taking them in, looked at them, they turned into a living story,
with really living people talking back to the person looking at the book!
You know, I got all worked up about it, when the reality of the thing was
finally penetrating. Some of those words even referred to <I>non-existing</I>
things. Boy, this was <I>wild</I> stuff!
<P>I wanted to learn this too. I told my friend, and he said "you want
to learn to read? Sure!". That's how I started learning to read books.
It wasn't easy, mind you. It was a lot of hard work, and took me many months
before I would be able to understand the meaning even of simple <I>text
</I>(sorry for the jargon). Several times, I would quit in desperation.
But suddenly it started to make sense, and things would miraculously come
to life before my mind's eyes -- without any television screen, just me
and my mind. A new universe opened itself to me!
<P>Through my friend, I met other people who had gone through the same
experience. What struck me was, how friendly and helpful -- and <I>civilized</I>
-- they all were. They didn't look down on me for only recently having
joined their ranks; no, they helped me, provided me with books to read,
and gradually I became versed in the ways of this new culture, and made
a habit of reading books all the time. If only I could explain the experience,
of real people from near and far, coming to life just from dead marks on
paper, no electricity, no display screen involved, no nothing... just the
miraculous working of the unaided human mind...
<P>My family was worried about me; they witnessed with growing concern
how my previous voracious appetite for digital video cartridges all but
disappeared -- those are really, and I mean <I>really</I>, mediocre and
devoid of imagination once you get to know books -- and I would withdraw
with these weird, archaic-looking rectangular paper objects, spiritualistic
stuff that sane people would not have anything to do with... I tried, with
little luck, to explain to them what had happened to me.
<P>Now, reading has become a way of life for me; I sometimes withdraw to
remote places, with just books as company. On one occasion I climbed a
tree to read a book while sitting up there; very uncomfortable, but I
just wanted to show to myself&nbsp; that <I>it could be done</I>, as books
have no power cord etc. Since I've found out that this is rather typical
behaviour for newbie reading geeks. Or, I go out and meet my reading friends,
and discuss at length all the things of common interest. There is no end
to it really.
<P>A funny thing about the reading subculture is that you can get a discussion
going about the most far-out and irrelevant subjects. I remember a heated
debate going on over many evenings on <I>where the page numbers</I> (the
sequence numbers added to the pages in a book to more easily refer to them)<I>
should be put</I>: bottom right, bottom middle or top right! One would
imagine that better uses for one's time could be found... and then there
are books containing, in addition to text, pictures. These are a sort of
hybrid between "real" books and digital video's. I have been told that
they may help to spread the reading art to a broader audience... others,
however, especially the veteran reading subculture members, are disgusted
by this, saying that it contaminates the true and noble art and is a concession
to commercialism -- meaning, of course, Universal Digital Video Inc.
<P>One thing I also learned, was that books, or texts,&nbsp; are something
you can produce yourself. You can put black marks on paper -- <I>writing</I>,
they call it -- until you got the equivalent of a book made all by you.
Then, when people read your book, <I>you</I> spring to life before <I>their</I>
eyes, and you can tell them whatever you want -- without even appearing
before a camera! Imagine.
<P>Not that producing <I>text</I> is easy! I know, because I tried it.
I still do it to keep a record of my experiences, for later (I have since
learned that many people do this). But the things I have tried to <I>write</I>
for others turned out rather awful. It takes skill and training, lots of
training, to produce something worthwhile! That's what experienced writers
have told me. They also kindly offered to help me develop my skills. Perhaps
someday...
<P>All this has been now several years past. You may have noticed, from
the above, how helpful people in the reading subculture are towards newcomers;
they really go to great lengths to help you, <I>if you are prepared to
learn</I>. They have little patience with intellectual laziness. And you
know something: I too, quite automatically and selfevidently adopted the
rules of the subculture, and I too find myself instructing newcomers in
the noble art and its cultural premises. And I <I>am</I> writing texts
that are read by people, about things existing and non-existing, about
people living and dead and imaginary, in the comforting knowledge that,
by my writing, all this <I>does</I> exist, and all these people <I>do</I>
live, in a very real sense. Figure that. It is indeed better to give than
to receive!
<P>As a final word, I have referred to the community of reading people
-- literates, they call themselves -- as a subculture. Numerically this
is true, but I find it unfortunate. They should be the mainstrain culture!
Think, however, of the effort required to teach the <I>whole population</I>
the art of reading! This would be obviously quite unthinkable. Imagine,
a fully literate population! Bullshit. So, a subculture it will undoubtedly
remain, and I have been fortunate and privileged to have been able to join
it. You can too -- you only have to <I>want</I> it hard enough.
<P>Welcome to my world!
<BR>&nbsp;
<ADDRESS>
Martin Vermeer</ADDRESS>
<ADDRESS>
mv@liisa.pp.fi</ADDRESS>
<P>Any similarity to real circumstances in the real world is wholly and
fully intentional.
<!--===================================================================-->
<P> <hr> <P>
<center><H5>Copyright &copy; 1998, Martin Vermeer <BR>
Published in Issue 28 of <i>Linux Gazette</i>, May 1998</H5></center>
<!--===================================================================-->
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<center>
<H1><font color="maroon">Where Nothing Else Will Do</font></H1>
<H4>By <A HREF="mailto:chris.gonnerman@usa.net">Chris Gonnerman</A></H4>
</center>
<P> <HR> <P>
<H3>Introduction</H3>
<P>
Long, long ago I was hired for my first paying job, working on a Tandy 16B running XENIX.
It had about a meg of RAM (if I remember right), a total of 30 Mb of hard drive
(two 15 Mb SCSI-1 external drives), and it actually served three users at the same time!
<P>
Some years later I joined the Air Force, and because I knew Unix (and liked it),
I was assigned to program and administer a pair of Unix-based Motorola computers.
Wow! Four meg of RAM, 60 Mb of hard disk, and 32 serial ports each,
running Unix System V Release 3. I thought I was in heaven!
(Note, Windows 3.0 was just about to be released...)
<P>
Well, to make a long story short, several years later I have my own company,
New Century Computers, selling and servicing Intel and compatible PC equipment.
Most of these computers run Windows 95, and while I
have always liked the interface, I have always missed Unix.
The Motorola's I worked with were shut down every six months
(whether they needed it or not) and cleaned and serviced.
Crashes? Only in the early stages, when we were debugging the vendor's tape drivers.
<P>
I don't remember when I first heard of Linux, but after browsing the book section at WaldenBooks
I bought "Linux SECRETS" by Naba Barkakati (printed by IDG Books).
I installed Linux on a spare 486 and played around with it.
Still, my customers want Windows, so I sell them Windows.
<P>
But sometimes, Linux is the only choice. Nothing else will do.
<P>
<HR>
<H3>Evil DOS Programs</H3>
<P>
One of my oldest customers is the Juvenile Office in Adair County, Missouri.
When the chief Juvenile Officer called me one day and said he needed to run
Lotus Notes on his network, I started sweating bullets.
<P>
A few years ago (before I started doing business with them),
the JO purchased a custom written DOS program called "Juvenile Court Records."
The programmer wrote it using the Clarion database manager, and he was not much of a programmer.
They ran it on a LANtastic network.
<P>
This "evil DOS program" <EM>requires</EM> 615Kb of conventional memory.
It actually only runs right in 620 or more Kb. They did this under DOS using a QEMM
(the Quarterdeck Expanded Memory Manager) feature called VIDRAM.
VIDRAM remaps the color text screen to the monochrome address range,
and adds the color text memory region to the conventional memory pool,
resulting in 784 Kb of total conventional RAM.
After DOS boots and the LANtastic TSR's load, they still had 630 Kb or so.
<P>
Anyway, this program <EM>will not</EM> run under Windows 95.
No way, no how.
Windows 95 will never allow enough conventional RAM, and VIDRAM won't work there
(blows up very nicely). I knew this, and so I began to sweat bullets.
What Mike (the chief Juvenile Officer) expected to see was a Windows 95 window with JCR
in it on the same screen as a Lotus Notes window.
<P>
Why is keeping JCR running so important?
First, because all of their records regarding the disposition of juvenile cases
for the last five or six years are in it.
We can't get the Clarion source code; the programmer has evaporated.
We could probably rewrite the program from scratch, but the State of Missouri
(Office of State Courts Administrator, or OSCA) has stated that they will be providing
a case-management program "in about two years."
Spending to rewrite the program would cost more than keeping it running (at this point),
and would be wasted money when OSCA delivers their solution.
So, they are stuck with this boat-anchor program.
<P>
Enter Linux.
I had been searching for an answer for most of a month when I remembered
<a href="http://www.dosemu.org">DOSEMU</a>.
I fired up XDOS on my Linux box and looked at the conventional RAM total.
<P>
627Kb free. Hallelujah!
<P>
We sold them a new file server, a Pentium 166 with 16 Mb RAM, running Debian Linux.
I installed DOSEMU 0.66.7, straight from the CD, and then configured it with Windows 95 DOS.
While OpenDOS is supposed to get an extra K free (628 Kb),
since Windows 95 comes with a new system, I just used it.
After SYSing the diskimage with Win95, I basically installed the minimum DOS commands
needed to run the JCR program and work with the filesystem.
I copied the EXITEMU command to the names LOGOUT and LOGOFF.
I also set up "conventional" file sharing via
<a href="http://samba.anu.edu.au/samba">Samba</a>.
Then the work began.
<P>
First, several DOS machines had to be upgraded to Windows 95,
which of course required RAM for most, hard drives for some,
and new mainboards for a few.
To access the server from these Windows 95 machines,
we elected to use
<a href="http://www.ncd.com">NCD</a> <a href="http://www.ncd.com/ppcx/ppcx.html">PC-Xware</a>.
Of all the commercial X Servers for Windows 95, it is the simplest (and cheapest) I have found.
It makes "shortcut" icons for connections automatically
after you go through the Connection Wizard, and it works well with XDM.
<P>
As an aside, telnet would have worked, but getting a usable color telnet is hard.
The JCR program is written like many DOS programs, using a broad range of colors.
XDOS over PC-Xware also makes all the function keys work.
<P>
Now, Mike (and the other JO employees) can see Lotus Notes and the JCR program at the same time,
on the same system. No rebooting.
The total price tag for PC-Xware was higher than the cost of the equipment,
but the customer is happy.
<P><HR>
<H3>Unexpected ISP Problems</H3>
<P>
The Paris R-II School District (in Paris, Missouri; I'm not international yet)
is another regular customer.
In the High School, they have a well-stocked lab of Windows 95 computers
with a Windows NT 3.51 server.
<a href="http://www.more.net">MORENet</a>,
a state contractor, provides them Internet service at a subsidized rate,
and the High School and Elementary are connected via fiberoptics.
The whole Internet connection setup was a bargain (as these things go)
since the school district received a lot of donated labor and discounted materials.
<P>
Unfortunately, the Junior High is across town.
After looking into leasing a line between the two locations,
and considering even radio frequency networking,
the Superintendent hit upon a better idea.
He approached several ISP's in neighboring towns (Paris had no ISP at that time)
and offered them co-location on school district property.
One of them,
<a href="http://www.mcmsys.com">MCM Systems</a> in Moberly, Missouri agreed:
In return for unlimited free rent of a closet,
the Junior High would receive unlimited free Internet access.
MCM Systems installed a dial-up router in the closet of the Band Room
and we ran Ethernet cable from there to the Computer Lab.
MCM is providing Internet access in the Paris area
for the cost of the leased line and equipment only,
and they are happy (as far as I can tell).
<P>
So, I arrived one day to set up the Computer Lab.
After installing all the net cards and connecting everything,
I called MCM Systems to get the IP address range we were to use.
<P>
The tech I spoke to informed me that we had a range of ten IP addresses available.
Oops. In the Junior High they already had about 25 computers to connect to the Internet.
We had a problem.
<P>
This time it took me only a few minutes to decide on Linux.
My mandate was to "make it work," and outside of the costs
already bid the district didn't have a lot of money to spend to do it.
I selected a computer in the Junior High lab with a Pentium 75 mainboard,
transferred a larger (1.6 Gb) hard drive from another computer,
and started installing Slackware Linux.
I copied a full install set from the Internet to a DOS partition on the 1.6 Gb drive,
created and booted from the boot/root set, and got to work setting everything up.
<P>
Naturally the whole purpose of this exercise was to use IP Masquerade,
and this was my first time using this feature.
I installed a second NE2000 compatible,
set up a private network address (10.0.0.1) on the "inside" network adapter,
and the first assigned Internet address on the "outside" adapter.
So far, so good.
I tested the installation from a Windows 95 computer using 10.0.0.2
(assigned through the network control panel), and it worked great!
<P>
The problem started when I installed
<a href="http://www.isc.org">ISC (Internet Software Consortium)</a>
dhcpd and tried to set it up.
It configured and compiled fine, and I set the broadcast route as described in the README,
but when I tried to start it I got an error message:
<p>
<table border=0>
<tr><td width=30>&nbsp;</td>
<td>
<table>
<tr>
<td>
<samp>
The standard socket API can only support hosts<br>
with a single network interface. If you must run<br>
dhcpd on a host with multiple interfaces, you must<br>
compile in BPF or NIT support. If neither option<br>
is supported on your system, please let us know.<br>
</samp>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
</td></tr>
</table>
<P>
I did some research, and learned that in this version of dhcpd,
any system lacking Berkley Packet Filter and Network Interface Tap technology
(such as Linux) can't run dhcpd with more than one network interface (PPP and SLIP excepted).
I examined the program closely,
and hacked it to hard-code the interface name I wanted to support.
After all, I didn't <STRONG>want</STRONG> to support both interfaces;
the outside interface doesn't need DHCP.
<P>
Later, in the privacy of my office, I tore apart another copy of dhcpd.
Instead of hard-coding the interface name, I added a command to the dhcpd.conf file.
I also refined the lease-time format. Here is a sample:
<p>
<table border=0>
<tr><td width=30>&nbsp;</td>
<td>
<table>
<tr>
<td>
<U><STRONG>dhcpd.conf</STRONG></U>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<samp>
server-identifier 10.0.0.10;<br>
interface "eth0";<br>
<br>
subnet 10.0.0.0 netmask 255.0.0.0 {<br>
option domain-name "paris.mcmsys.com";<br>
default-lease-time 3 days 12 hours;<br>
max-lease-time 7 days;<br>
option subnet-mask 255.0.0.0;<br>
range 10.0.1.20 10.0.1.250;<br>
}</samp>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
</td></tr>
</table>
<P>
Previously, the *-lease-time commands used a single number, as seconds, as in:
<p>
<table border=0>
<tr><td width=30>&nbsp;</td>
<td>
<table>
<tr>
<td>
<samp>
default-lease-time 302400;
</samp>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
</td></tr>
</table>
<P>
I think my way is more readable.
<P>
Later still I took this code to the school and implemented it.
It worked fine, so I called the installation done.
For the cost of labor and one extra net card,
we converted a workstation into a capable server and solved an Internet connection problem.
<P>
We are running <a href="http://www.apache.org">Apache</a>
on that system now, not so much for web services as for its web proxy.
Twenty-five students on a single 56Kbps line is kind of slow,
but with the proxy the performance is acceptable.
It is also used as a file server via Samba.
<P>
I submitted my dhcpd patches to ISC,
and received an email back from Ted Lemon telling me that my patch
doesn't do what I think it does.
Hmm.
So I studied his explanation and concluded that my patch is not a good all-around solution.
However, the BPF/NIT problem with Linux has apparently been fixed somewhere along the line,
and ISC's version 2.0 dhcpd (now in final beta) handles it.
I highly recommend ISC's dhcpd; it seems solid (even the pre-1.0.0 beta I originally used).
<P>
I have also uploaded my patches to Sunsite, as dhcpdpatch-1.0.0.tar.gz,
in case someone would like to try the *-lease-time feature.
<P><HR>
<H3>When Linux is the Best Choice</H3>
<P>
I love Linux.
I am addicted to the features, the power, and the configurability.
I especially like that I can work directly with the source for almost any program,
fixing bugs and adding features as I need or want to.
<P>
The power of Linux is flexibility, stability, and economy...
the ability to run a <STRONG>real</STRONG> OS on older or inexpensive hardware.
<P>
For my average customer (home users and small businesses with a single computer),
Linux is not presently the best choice.
These users don't have the depth of understanding to work with Linux as we do.
(Frankly, few of them have any real understanding of Windows 95 either).
The average user expects to be able to purchase <STRONG>anything</STRONG>
off the shelf at Wal-Mart and have it work for them.
Someday, maybe, Linux will be a good choice for these users,
if we (the entire Linux community) keep supporting and improving it.
<!--===================================================================-->
<P> <hr> <P>
<center><H5>Copyright &copy; 1998, Chris Gonnerman <BR>
Published in Issue 28 of <i>Linux Gazette</i>, May 1998</H5></center>
<!--===================================================================-->
<P> <hr> <P>
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ALT="[ TABLE OF CONTENTS ]"></A>
<A HREF="../index.html"><IMG ALIGN=BOTTOM SRC="../gx/homenew.gif"
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<A HREF="./vermeer2.html"><IMG SRC="../gx/back2.gif"
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<center>
<H1><IMG SRC="../gx/backpage.gif" alt="Linux Gazette Back Page"></H1>
<H5>Copyright &copy; 1998 Specialized Systems Consultants, Inc.<br>
For information regarding copying and distribution of this material see the
<A HREF="../copying.html">Copying License</A>.</H5>
</center>
<P> <hr> <P>
<H3>Contents:</H3>
<ul>
<li><a HREF="./lg_backpage28.html#authors">About This Month's Authors</a>
<li><a HREF="./lg_backpage28.html#notlinux">Not Linux</a>
</ul>
<a name="authors"></a>
<P> <HR> <P>
<!--======================================================================-->
<center><H3><font color="maroon">About This Month's Authors</font></H3></center>
<P> <HR> <P>
<!--======================================================================-->
<P>
<H4><IMG ALIGN=BOTTOM ALT="" SRC="../gx/note.gif">Larry Ayers</H4>
Larry 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.
<P>
<H4><IMG ALIGN=BOTTOM ALT="" SRC="../gx/note.gif">R. J. Celestino</H4>
Bob Celestino holds an undergradutate degree in Mechanical
Engineering and advanced degrees in Electrical and Computer Engineering. He
has been a Linux devotee for more than four years. When not recompiling his
kernel or pushing Java to its limits, he enjoys spending time with his
wife and three kids. He pays the bills by posing as a software engineer at
Harris Corp. in sunny Florida.
<P>
<H4><IMG ALIGN=BOTTOM ALT="" SRC="../gx/note.gif">Jim Dennis</H4>
Jim is the proprietor of <A href="http://www.starshine.org">
Starshine Technical Services</A>.
His professional experience includes work in the technical
support, quality assurance, and information services (MIS)
departments of software companies like
<A href="http://www.quarterdeck.com"> Quarterdeck</A>,
<A href="http://www.symantec.com"> Symantec/
Peter Norton Group</A>, and
<A href="http://www.mcafee.com"> McAfee Associates</A> -- as well as
positions (field service rep) with smaller VAR's.
He's been using Linux since version 0.99p10 and is an active
participant on an ever-changing list of mailing lists and
newsgroups. He's just started collaborating on the 2nd Edition
for a book on Unix systems administration.
Jim is an avid science fiction fan -- and was
married at the World Science Fiction Convention in Anaheim.
<P>
<H4><IMG ALIGN=BOTTOM ALT="" SRC="../gx/note.gif">Chris Gonnerman</H4>
Chris lives and works in the small northeast Missouri town of LaBelle,
running New Century Computers. His wife, Tracy, works with him in his
business, and he also employs two full time technicians.
<P>
<H4><IMG ALIGN=BOTTOM ALT="" SRC="../gx/note.gif">Michael Hamilton</H4>
Michael has been working as a freelance Unix C/C++ developer
since 1989. More recently he's been working on web applications and
Unix server administration. Michael tripped over one of Linus's
postings back at the beginning of 1992 and has been hooked ever
since.
<P>
<H4><IMG ALIGN=BOTTOM ALT="" SRC="../gx/note.gif">Glen Journeay</H4>
Glen is a mechanical engineer with a background in automated test and
real-time control using a variety of
computer systems. He's designed, built and maintained automated test
systems for Boeing and the U.S. Navy, since
graduating from University of California, Davis in 1983.
Glen, his wife and two children live in Poulsbo where they
like to ski, hike, sail, and ride. He's been using a Linux-based
home network since 1996.
<P>
<H4><IMG ALIGN=BOTTOM ALT="" SRC="../gx/note.gif">Mike List </H4>
Mike is a father of four teenagers, musician,
and recently reformed technophobe, who has been into computers
since April,1996, and Linux since July, 1997.
<P>
<H4><IMG ALIGN=BOTTOM ALT="" SRC="../gx/note.gif">Mark Nielsen</H4>
Mark is a Systems Specialist at The Ohio State University managing
a linux users group. His main goal is to try and help the downfall
of the evil empire or to help split the evil empire into a company with
the operating system and a company with the applications. He loves
Perl, Apache, Linux, and PostgreSQL as free and open software for the
people by the people to counteract the meaningless purchase of terrible
software based on ignorance. With knowledge comes power. Spread
the word.
<P>
<H4><IMG ALIGN=BOTTOM ALT="" SRC="../gx/note.gif">Cesare Pizzi</H4>
Cesare started to play with computers when he was 10 years old; his first box was
a Commodore VIC20. During the years he changed several systems, and a couple
of years ago met Linux.
After the first impact, he started to develop software, little kernel patches,
and so on.
In the real life, he works in a support team in HP as a contractor. He
likes music, movies, travels and red wines.
<P>
<H4><IMG ALIGN=BOTTOM ALT="" SRC="../gx/note.gif">Bob van der Poel</H4>
Bob started using computers in 1982 when he purchased
a Radio Shack Color Computer complete with 32K of memory and a cassette
tape recorder for storing programs and data. He has written many programs,
and marketed many for the OS9 operating system. He lives with his wife, two
cats and Tora (the wonder dog) on a small acreage in S.E. British Columbia,
Canada. You can reach him via email: bvdpoel@kootenay.com. If he's not too
busy gardening, practicing sax or just having fun he'll probably send a
prompt reply.
<P>
<H4><IMG ALIGN=BOTTOM ALT="" SRC="../gx/note.gif">Eric S. Raymond</H4>
Eric is a semi-regular contributor to <i>Linux Journal</i>. You
can find more of his writings, including his paper ``The Cathedral and
the Bazaar'', at http://www.ccil.org/~esr/.
<P>
<H4><IMG ALIGN=BOTTOM ALT="" SRC="../gx/note.gif">Guido van Rossum</H4>
Guido is the father of the Python programming language and a leader in
the Open Source community.
<P>
<H4><IMG ALIGN=BOTTOM ALT="" SRC="../gx/note.gif">Jim Schweizer</H4>
Jim is currently a Consultant in web site
administration and design. He is the author of an on-line
textbook about Computer and Internet use and is an Instructor of
English at several universities in Western Japan. His main hobby
is being the Webmaster for the Tokyo Linux Users Group.
<P>
<H4><IMG ALIGN=BOTTOM ALT="" SRC="../gx/note.gif">Martin Vermeer</H4>
Martin is a European citizen born in The Netherlands in 1953
and living with his wife in Helsinki, Finland, since 1981, where he is
employed as a research professor at the Finnish Geodetic Institute.
His first UNIX experience was in 1984 with OS-9, running on a Dragon
MC6809E home computer (64k memory, 720k disk!). He is a relative newcomer
to Linux, installing RH4.0 February 1997 on his home PC and, encouraged,
only a week later on his job PC. Now he runs 5.0 at home, job soon to
follow.
Special Linux interests: LyX, Pascal (p2c), tcl/tk.
<a name="notlinux"></a>
<P> <hr> <P>
<!--====================================================================-->
<center><H3><font color="maroon">Not Linux</font></H3></center>
<P> <HR> <P>
<!--======================================================================-->
<P>
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.
<P>
I've been slightly ill the past week, and as a result, I have been
more than slightly grumpy. My fellow employees are avoiding me like the
plague, and I don't blame them. Illness should be declared illegal, so this
sort of alienation doesn't go on. :-)
<P>
I went to see <I>Titanic</I> for the second time--this time with my
husband Riley. We saw it at the local Cinerama--that big curved screen is
just awesome for "larger than life" films such as this one. It was fun
seeing the February cover of <I>Linux Journal</I> sail by.
<P>
I'm planning to set up a page for translations of <I>LG</I> into languages
other than English. If you have such a site or know of one, please let me
know.
<P>
Have fun!
<P> <hr> <P>
<A HREF="http://www.ssc.com/ssc/Employees/Margie/margie.html">
Marjorie L. Richardson</A> <br>
Editor, <A HREF="http://www.linuxgazette.com/"><i>Linux Gazette</i></A>, <A
HREF="mailto:gazette@ssc.com">gazette@ssc.com</a>
<P> <HR> <P>
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<p><hr><p>
<I>Linux Gazette</I> Issue 28, May 1998,
<A HREF="http://www.linuxgazette.com/">http://www.linuxgazette.com</A><BR>
This page written and maintained by the Editor of <I>Linux Gazette</I>,
<A HREF="mailto:gazette@ssc.com"> gazette@ssc.com</A>
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