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<TITLE> Linux Gazette Table of Contents LG #80</TITLE>
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<H2>July 2002, Issue 80 &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
Published by <I>Linux Journal</I></H2>
<A HREF="../index.html">Front Page</A> &nbsp;|&nbsp;
<A HREF="../index.html">Back Issues</A> &nbsp;|&nbsp;
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<!-- H1><font color="#BB0000">Table of Contents:</font></H1 -->
<!-- *** BEGIN toc *** -->
<UL>
<LI> <a HREF="lg_mail.html">The MailBag</A>
<LI> <a HREF="lg_tips.html">More 2-Cent Tips</A>
<LI> <a HREF="lg_answer.html">The Answer Gang</A>
<LI> <a HREF="lg_bytes.html">News Bytes</A>
<LI> <a HREF="nielsen.html">Pl/Python and Cursors in Pl/Pgsql for PostgreSQL</A> , <EM>by Mark Nielsen</EM>
<LI> <a HREF="nielsen2.html">Red Hat and USB devices</A> , <EM>by Mark Nielsen</EM>
<LI> <a HREF="nielsen3.html">Configuring GDM 2.2</A> , <EM>by Mark Nielsen</EM>
<LI> <a HREF="orr.html">The Foolish Things We Do With Our Computers</A> , <EM>by Mike Orr</EM>
<LI> <a HREF="qubism.html">Qubism</A> , <EM>by Jon "Sir Flakey" Harsem</EM>
<LI> <a HREF="taneja.html">Wine: Raising a toast to your Windows Apps on Linux</A> , <EM>by Gaurav Taneja</EM>
<LI> <a HREF="tougher.html">My Guide To Linux Security</A> , <EM>by Rob Tougher</EM>
<LI> <a HREF="lg_backpage.html">The Back Page</A>
</UL>
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<!--=================================================================-->
<H3 ALIGN="center"><EM>Linux Gazette</EM> Staff and The Answer Gang</H3>
<BLOCKQUOTE>
<STRONG>Editor:</STRONG> Michael Orr<BR>
<STRONG>Technical Editor:</STRONG> Heather Stern<BR>
<STRONG>Senior Contributing Editor:</STRONG> Jim Dennis<BR>
<STRONG>Contributing Editors:</STRONG>
Ben Okopnik, Dan Wilder, Don Marti
</BLOCKQUOTE>
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<A HREF="TWDT.txt.gz">TWDT 1 (gzipped text file)</A><BR>
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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.
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<center>
<I>Linux Gazette</I><img alt="[tm]" src="../gx/tm.gif">,
<A HREF="http://www.linuxgazette.com/">http://www.linuxgazette.com/</A><BR>
This page maintained by the Editor of <I>Linux Gazette</I>,
<A HREF="mailto: gazette@ssc.com"> gazette@ssc.com</A>
<P>
<H5>Copyright &copy; 1996-2002 Specialized Systems Consultants, Inc.</H5>
</center>
<HR NOSHADE>
<!--=================================================================-->
<center>
<H1><A NAME="wanted"><IMG ALIGN=MIDDLE ALT="" SRC="../gx/mailbox.gif">
The Mailbag</A></H1> <BR>
<!-- BEGIN wanted -->
</center>
<P> <hr> <P>
<!-- =================================================================== -->
<center><H3><font color="maroon">HELP WANTED : Article Ideas</font></H3></center>
<P>
<P> Send tech-support questions, Tips, answers and article ideas to The Answer Gang
&lt;<A HREF="mailto:linux-questions-only@ssc.com"
>linux-questions-only@ssc.com</A>&gt;. Other mail (including
questions or comments about the <EM>Gazette</EM> itself) should go to
&lt;<A HREF="mailto:gazette@ssc.com">gazette@ssc.com</A>&gt;. All material
sent to either of these addresses will be considered for publication in the
next issue. <EM>Please send answers to the original querent too, so that s/he
can get the answer without waiting for the next issue.</EM>
<P> Unanswered questions might appear here. Questions with
answers--or answers only--appear in The Answer Gang, 2-Cent Tips, or here,
depending on their content. There is no guarantee that questions will
<em>ever</em> be answered, especially if not related to Linux.
<P> <STRONG>Before asking a question, please check the
<A HREF="../faq/index.html"><I>Linux Gazette</I> FAQ</A> (for questions about the
Gazette) or <A HREF="../tag/kb.html">The Answer Gang Knowledge Base</A> (for
questions about Linux) to see if it has been
answered there.</STRONG>
<P> <HR> <P>
<!--====================================================================-->
<!-- BEGIN HELP WANTED : Article Ideas -->
<UL>
<!-- index_text begins -->
<li><A HREF="#wanted/1"
><strong>Kylix</strong></a>
<li><A HREF="#wanted/2"
><strong>netbooting Linux from network by using pppoe</strong></a>
<li><A HREF="#wanted/3"
><strong>Tools for altering installed kernel</strong></a>
<li><A HREF="#wanted/3"
><strong>usb pegasus driver vend/prod id</strong></a>
<!-- index_text ends -->
</UL>
<!-- .~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~. -->
<P> <A NAME="wanted/1"><HR WIDTH="75%" ALIGN="center"></A> <P>
<H3><IMG ALIGN=BOTTOM ALT="" SRC="../gx/envelope.gif">
<FONT COLOR="navy">Kylix</FONT></H3>
Fri, 21 Jun 2002 14:37:51 -0400
<BR>Octavio Aguilar (<a href="mailto:linux-questions-only@ssc.com?cc=oam@mail.cosett.com.bo&subject=%20Re%3A%20%5BLG%2080%5D%20help%20wanted%20%231">oam from mail.cosett.com.bo</a>)
<BR>translated by Mike Orr, except for one part by Heather Stern.
<P>
Hola amigos :
</P>
<P><BLOCKQuote>
Alguien sabe como Podria ejecutar un programa compilado en Kylix, fuera
del entorno de Kylix?
</BLOCKQuote></P>
<blockquote><font color="#001F3F">Hi, friends. Does anybody know how to run a program that's compiled in Kylix,
but without having the Kylix environment around at runtime?
</font></blockquote>
<P>
!ah! Un comentario demonio (daemon )siguifica Dinamic access memory,
estoy equivocado?
</P>
<blockquote><font color="#001F3F">Ah! A daemon commentary means dynamic access memory, or am I mistaken?
</font></blockquote>
<P>
Gracias por su tiempo.
Octavio.
</P>
<blockquote><font color="#001F3F">Thanks for your time.
-- Octavio</font></blockquote>
<P>
Octavio--
Sorry, I've never used Kylix. I just ran a demo once.
I don't understand your second question. Memory is hardware; a daemon is
software. And what's a "daemon commentary"?
</P>
<P>
Octavio--
Lo siento, no he usado Kylix. Ejecute' un demo de e'l una vez, no ma's.
No entiendo la segunda pregunta. La memoria es hardware, un demonio es
software. Que' significa un "comentario demonio"?
</P>
<P>
-- Mike Orr
</P>
<HR width="10%" align="center"><P>
Hola amigos :
</P>
<P>
Espero que puedan ayudarme, resulta que en mi maquina instal&eacute; firebird, y
luego cree una base de daatos, luego desde Kylix me conecte sin problemas.
</P>
<P>
De la misma forma quise hacer en otras m&aacute;quinas que tienen redhat 7.2,
copie el instalador firebirdCC....rpm, pero resulta que me sale un error :
</P>
<blockquote><font color="#001F3F">Hi friends, I hope you can help me. I installed Firebird on my computer, and then
created a database, which I can connect to from Kylix without problem.
</font></blockquote>
<blockquote><font color="#001F3F">I wanted to install it the same way on other Red Hat 7.2 machines. I copied the
installer FirebirdCC RPM, but got the following error:
</font></blockquote>
<blockquote><pre>--------------------------------------------------------------------------
warning : Expected size : 2676232=lead(96)+sigs(68)+pad(4)data(2676064)
warning : actual size : 2676232
warning : Expected size : 2676232=lead(96)+sigs(68)+pad(4)data(2676064)
warning : actual size : 2259998
error : unpacking of archive failed on file /opt/interbase/lib/libgds.so.0
;3 d021bc6 ; cpio:need
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
</pre></blockquote>
<P>
Intente bajar de internet el mismo paquete pero el resultado para
instalarlo es el mismo error.
</P>
<blockquote><font color="#000066">(Heather: oboy, my spanish is rustier than Mike's, but I'll try.) <br>I intend to go under the internet to packets (maybe: download the package?) but the result
of installing is an error.
</font></blockquote>
<P>
Como puedo solucionar este problema ?
</P>
<P>
Gracias por su tiempo
Octavio
</P>
<blockquote><font color="#001F3F">What's the solution to this problem? Thanks for your time. Octavio.
</font></blockquote>
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<P> <A NAME="wanted/2"><HR WIDTH="75%" ALIGN="center"></A> <P>
<H3><IMG ALIGN=BOTTOM ALT="" SRC="../gx/envelope.gif">
<FONT COLOR="navy">netbooting Linux from network by using pppoe</FONT></H3>
Sun, 2 Jun 2002 20:51:18 +0200
<BR>Wlm (<a href="mailto:linux-questions-only@ssc.com?cc=wscheerl@pi.be&cc=robos@geekmail.de&subject=%20Re%3A%20%5BLG%2080%5D%20help%20wanted%20%232">wscheerl from pi.be</a>)
<br>comment from Robos (The Answer Gang)
<P><STRONG>
Hello,
</STRONG></P>
<P>
Hi!
</P>
<P><STRONG>
I want to install a Linux on my PC. This PC has a Ethernet connection
towards a DSL modem. Across this Ethernet I had to use PPPOE. Is their an
image available with PPPOE support? The standard netboot.img has no support
for PPPOE. This image recognize my Ethernet but thus not allow me to
activate PPPOE across it.
</STRONG></P>
<P><STRONG>
I want to install Redhat 7.3 across the net.
Thanks in advance for your answer.
</STRONG></P>
<P><STRONG>
Grt
</STRONG></P>
<P><STRONG>
Wim
</STRONG></P>
<blockquote>
I'm <EM>pretty</EM> certain that most, if not all rather new images include
that, exactly why you ask - to get dsl up and running.
<br>Robos
</blockquote>
<blockquote><font color="#000066">So if someone knows the hint Wlm needs, let us know, and we'll publish
your Two Cent Tip.
-- Heather</font></blockquote>
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<P> <A NAME="wanted/3"><HR WIDTH="75%" ALIGN="center"></A> <P>
<H3><IMG ALIGN=BOTTOM ALT="" SRC="../gx/envelope.gif">
<FONT COLOR="navy">Tools for altering installed kernel</FONT></H3>
Wed, 12 Jun 2002 18:05:21 +0100 (BST)
<BR>Mike Martin (<a href="mailto:linux-questions-only@ssc.com?cc=redtuxxx@yahoo.co.uk&subject=%20Re%3A%20%5BLG%2080%5D%20help%20wanted%20%233">redtuxxx from yahoo.co.uk</a>)
<P>
I am helping someone out on another list I am on and a have a query.
</P>
<P>
Does anyone know of a reliable utility to alter parameters on an
installed kernel other than rdev.
</P>
<P>
In particular whether there is anything that will get rid of
debugging in the kernel?
</P>
<P>
I would just recompile personally but if anyone knows of a tool that
would be useful.
</P>
<!-- end 3 -->
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<P> <A NAME="wanted/4"><HR WIDTH="75%" ALIGN="center"></A> <P>
<H3><IMG ALIGN=BOTTOM ALT="" SRC="../gx/envelope.gif">
<FONT COLOR="navy">usb pegasus driver vend/prod id</FONT></H3>
Tue, 11 Jun 2002 20:05:22 -0000
<BR>Ebo Bentil (<a href="mailto:linux-questions-only@ssc.com?cc=bentil@usa.net&subject=%20Re%3A%20%5BLG%2080%5D%20help%20wanted%20%233">bentil from usa.net</a>)
<P>
Hi,
</P>
<P>
I have a USB ethernet adapter based on the Pegasus/Pegasus-II chipset. I tried to use
the pegasus driver with a 2.4.3 kernel but the driver is not claiming the vend/prod id
of the USB adapter. Unfortunately I am unable to recompile a more recent kernel for
my system. I would like to know if there is a way to spoof the vend/prod id somehow
(without flashing the USB adapter) so the pegasus driver claims the device. I am
thinking there is perhaps some kernel mechanism to increase the set of devices claimed
by a particular driver at runtime. I think a more recent kernel version would solve
my problems but a recompile is not an option for me because of my particular setup.
Any ideas?
</P>
<P>
Ebo
</P>
<blockquote><font color="#000066">Don't use quoted printable with no fancy characters to defend.
</font></blockquote>
<blockquote><font color="#000066">Maybe one of our readers can suggest the right tricks for compiling
modules that are only major-version dependent instead of minor version
dependent. I think some people who use linmodems might know a Tip or
two.
</font></blockquote>
<blockquote><font color="#000066">Note you still have to have the right symbols present in your kernel.
If they aren't, you won't be able to use the module safely, even with <tt>insmod -f</tt>.
-- Heather</font></blockquote>
<!-- end 4 -->
<P> <hr> </p>
<a name="mailbag"></a>
<!-- =================================================================== -->
<center><H3><font color="maroon">GENERAL MAIL</font></H3></center>
<P> <HR> <P>
<!--====================================================================-->
<!-- BEGIN GENERAL MAIL -->
<UL>
<!-- index_text begins -->
<li><A HREF="#mailbag/1"
><strong>Mistake in December 99 Linux Gazette</strong></a>
<li><A HREF="#mailbag/2"
><strong>Re: Making executables smaller</strong></a>
<li><A HREF="#mailbag/3"
><strong>Is it possible to have a latest issue link?</strong></a>
<li><A HREF="#mailbag/4"
><strong>Linux gazette 79 article improvement</strong></a>
<li><A HREF="#mailbag/5"
><strong>Kudos</strong></a>
<li><A HREF="#mailbag/6"
><strong>Difference between LJ and LG</strong></a>
<li><A HREF="#mailbag/7"
><strong>Etiquette Wars</strong></a> -- the final salvo.
<li><A HREF="#mailbag/8"
><strong>re : The Complaint Department: Typos and Grammatical Errors</strong></a>
<li><A HREF="#mailbag/9"
><strong>Did you see that Fabor gets famous?</strong></a>
<!-- index_text ends -->
</UL>
<!-- .~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~. -->
<P> <A NAME="mailbag/1"><HR WIDTH="75%" ALIGN="center"></A> <P>
<H3><IMG ALIGN=BOTTOM ALT="" SRC="../gx/envelope.gif">
<FONT COLOR="navy">Mistake in December 99 Linux Gazette</FONT></H3>
Wed, 30 Jan 2002 08:49:28 +0100
<BR>Imad TALHA (<a href="mailto:gazette@ssc.com?subject=%20Re%3A%20%5BLG%2080%5D%20mailbag%20%231">imad_talha from hotmail.com</a>)
<P>
Hi,
</P>
<P>
I'm a French student and I tried to compile a little program I found in
your magazine in your "Linuxthreads programming" section of December 99
magazine. The programm is not working and I didn't find why. Could you
help me please to make it work.
</P>
<P>
Thanks
</P>
<blockquote><font color="#001F3F">Your best bet is to contact the author, Matteo Dell'Omodarme.
His address is at the top of the article. But you'll need to say
something more specific than "not working". See
<A HREF="../tag/ask-the-gang.html"
>http://www.linuxgazette.com/tag/ask-the-gang.html</A>
and scroll down to "doesn't work". How exactly did it fail?
-- Mike</font></blockquote>
<!-- end 1 -->
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<P> <A NAME="mailbag/2"><HR WIDTH="75%" ALIGN="center"></A> <P>
<H3><IMG ALIGN=BOTTOM ALT="" SRC="../gx/envelope.gif">
<FONT COLOR="navy">Re: Making executables smaller</FONT></H3>
Tue, 04 Jun 2002 08:19:20 -0400
<BR>John M. Fisk (<a href="mailto:gazette@ssc.com?subject=%20Re%3A%20%5BLG%2080%5D%20mailbag%20%233">John.Fisk from yale.edu</a>)
<BR>in reply to Jim Dennis (<a href="mailto:gazette@ssc.com?subject=%20Re%3A%20%5BLG%2080%5D%20mailbag%20%233">the <em>Linux Gazette</em> Answer Guy</a>)
<blockquote><font color="#000066">John sent us a 2 Cent Tip, so the Answer Guy wondered...
</font></blockquote>
<P><STRONG>
Are you the same John Fisk that originally started the Linux Gazette? -- JimD
</STRONG></P>
<!-- sig -->
<P>
Hello Jim,
</P>
<P>
Thanks so much for the note. And yes, it's me. Since the last submission
(now a couple years ago) I've been rather busy finishing up medical
training (Pathology and Medical Informatics at Yale) and my wife and I have
adopted a little girl from China (with another one on the way). Thomas
Adam (the new maintainer of the Weekend Mechanic column) and I just started
corresponding and I took the opportunity to look over the latest edition of
the LG. The folks at SSC have done a commendable job of keeping the LG
alive and very active. I really appreciate the great job they've done.
</P>
<P>
cheers,
<br>John
</P>
<!-- end 2 -->
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<P> <A NAME="mailbag/3"><HR WIDTH="75%" ALIGN="center"></A> <P>
<H3><IMG ALIGN=BOTTOM ALT="" SRC="../gx/envelope.gif">
<FONT COLOR="navy">Is it possible to have a latest issue link?</FONT></H3>
Tue, 4 Jun 2002 01:04:59 +0100
<BR>Yuting Kuo (<a href="mailto:gazette@ssc.com?subject=%20Re%3A%20%5BLG%2080%5D%20mailbag%20%234">yuting.kuo from ic.ac.uk</a>)
<P>
Can we have something like a www.linuxgazette.com/latest link?
</P>
<blockquote><font color="#001F3F"><A HREF="../current"
>http://www.linuxgazette.com/current</A>
-- Mike</font></blockquote>
<!-- end 3 -->
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<P> <A NAME="mailbag/4"><HR WIDTH="75%" ALIGN="center"></A> <P>
<H3><IMG ALIGN=BOTTOM ALT="" SRC="../gx/envelope.gif">
<FONT COLOR="navy">linux gazette 79 article improvement</FONT></H3>
Wed, 05 Jun 2002 22:36:36 -0300
<BR>Silvio Santana (<a href="mailto:gazette@ssc.com?subject=%20Re%3A%20%5BLG%2080%5D%20mailbag%20%235">lunixs from ieg.com.br</a>)
<BR>comment to krishnakumar_r (<a href="mailto:gazette@ssc.com?subject=%20Re%3A%20%5BLG%2080%5D%20mailbag%20%235">krishnakumar_r from bharatmail.com</a>)
<P>
Hi Krishnakumar R.
</P>
<P>
Your series of articles "Writing Your Own Toy OS" on Linux Gazette is
the best ever.
</P>
<blockQuote><ol><li><A HREF="../issue77/krishnakumar.html"
>http://www.linuxgazette.com/issue77/krishnakumar.html</A> Part I
<li> <A HREF="../issue79/krishnakumar.html"
>http://www.linuxgazette.com/issue79/krishnakumar.html</A> Part II
</ol></blockQuote>
<P>
I am enjoying it very much and I'm eager to learn
something about the 80x86 protected mode.
</P>
<P>
I also have a suggestion. In part II, I think the code for write.c can
be improved a little.
</P>
<P>
When reading sect2 with
</P>
<blockquote><pre> file_desc = open("./sect2", O_RDONLY);
read(file_desc, boot_buf, 510);
close(file_desc);
</pre></blockquote>
<P>
instead of reading only 510, you can actually read 512 bytes with no
harm.
</P>
<P>
It doesn't hurt to be 510, but I think it would be more easy to
understand it's 512,
so that learners won't be thinking that the second sector also have to
finish with the magic numbers x55 xAA, just like the first sector does.
</P>
<P>
I'd like to know what do you think about it and if you agree.
</P>
<P>
See you and thanks a lot, man!
</P>
<P>
Silvio Luis Leite Santana
</P>
<BLOCKQUOTE><EM>
[The article was changed at the author's request. -Iron.]
</EM></BLOCKQUOTE>
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<P> <A NAME="mailbag/5"><HR WIDTH="75%" ALIGN="center"></A> <P>
<H3><IMG ALIGN=BOTTOM ALT="" SRC="../gx/envelope.gif">
<FONT COLOR="navy">Kudos</FONT></H3>
Wed, 26 Jun 2002 23:27:51 -0400
<BR>Rob Tougher (<a href="mailto:gazette@ssc.com?subject=%20Re%3A%20%5BLG%2080%5D%20mailbag%20%236">robt from robtougher.com</a>)
<P>
Guess what - I got a job
<IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/smily.gif" ALT=":)"
height="24" width="20" align="middle">. A guy I worked with a few years back was
reading the Linux Gazette, and saw my article.
</P>
<blockquote><font color="#000066">In May's issue, <A HREF="../issue78/tougher.html"
>http://www.linuxgazette.com/issue78/tougher.html</A>
-- Heather</font></blockquote>
<P>
He emailed me, and one lunch and two meetings later I was employed again. You
definitely get the assist on that one.
</P>
<P>
I also credit your magazine for keeping me sane the last 8 months - writing
for you has been a great outlet. I'll keep the articles coming.
</P>
<!-- end 5 -->
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<P> <A NAME="mailbag/6"><HR WIDTH="75%" ALIGN="center"></A> <P>
<H3><IMG ALIGN=BOTTOM ALT="" SRC="../gx/envelope.gif">
<FONT COLOR="navy">Difference between LJ and LG</FONT></H3>
Tue, 04 Jun 2002 07:34:15 -0500
<BR>Wyman Griffin (<a href="mailto:gazette@ssc.com?subject=%20Re%3A%20%5BLG%2080%5D%20mailbag%20%237">wgriffin from fedex.com</a>)
<P><STRONG>
At our company there has been some discussion as to the differences of the Journal
and the Gazette. Would you please respond with SSC's definitive description
of the difference and is both being published at this time. Thereby we can
put to rest any further discussion at our work place.
</STRONG></P>
<P><STRONG>
Regards,
<br>Wyman Griffin
</STRONG></P>
<P>
Linux Journal is a commercial print magazine. Linux Gazette is a free e-zine
that SSC donates some employee time to. LG was started by an individual, John
Fisk, then SSC took over responsibility for it when John no longer could.
</P>
<P>
LJ pays authors for their work. It has a stricter standard for what it will
accept, does professional proofreading and technical editing, won't publish
anything that's been published elsewhere (with occasional exceptions), and doesn't
allow republishing without permission. Each LJ issue has a theme, and articles
are solicited for that theme (although any issue will have lots of non-theme
articles too). Space issues determine the number of articles and their length.
(Because the printer prints on 32-page sheets, you have to add
pages in groups of eight.) LJ also publishes several series of publicly-accessible
web articles at <A HREF="http://www.linuxjournal.com"
>http://www.linuxjournal.com</A>, for which we pay the authors just
like magazine articles. (The magazine articles are also available to the public
after three months.) For specific questions about LJ, contact the Linux Journal
Editor, <A HREF="mailto:ljeditor@ssc.com"
>ljeditor@ssc.com</A>.
</P>
<P>
LG does not pay authors, does less time-consuming proofreading, and publishes
pretty much anything we have permission to publish that's about Linux, contains
some significant content of a more or less permanent nature ("new information"
or reference material), doesn't unfairly slam/slander anybody, and isn't a
mindless advocacy rant. But we don't go looking for content, we let it come
to us. LG issues do not have a theme, we just publish articles whenever
they arrive. There is no particular number of pages to fill, so we don't pay
attention to article count or article length, although we do try to keep the issue
size to less than 2 MB compressed (occasionally 4 MB). LG does not accept
advertisements, although we do have a sponsorship program that gets your logo
on the home page. LG is published under the Open Publication License, so
readers may copy and redistribute it (for free or profit) as much as they wish.
</P>
<!-- end 6 -->
<!-- .~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~. -->
<P> <A NAME="mailbag/7"><HR WIDTH="75%" ALIGN="center"></A> <P>
<H3><IMG ALIGN=BOTTOM ALT="" SRC="../gx/envelope.gif">
<FONT COLOR="navy">Etiquette Wars</FONT></H3>
<h4 align="center">the final salvo</h4>
Wed, 5 Jun 2002 05:32:18 -0700 (PDT)
<BR>Marko Cehaja (<a href="mailto:gazette@ssc.com?subject=%20Re%3A%20%5BLG%2080%5D%20mailbag%20%238">thetaworld from yahoo.com</a>)
<blockquote><font color="#000066">Once upon issue 64 or so in the Mailbag,
we pubbed a note from a cheeky
fellow who decided to tell us off about our bad attitude. He also took
the tack that we were a single person and that it was somehow our
"fault" if a bunch of sensitive souls ever saw it. Obviously there are
others in the world who think he was right, but Marko took umbrage with us for
being cheeky enough ourselves, to post <EM>his</EM> message when we replied.
</font></blockquote>
<blockquote><font color="#000066">Scofflaws may enjoy reading the offending note
and its reply together:
<A HREF="../issue64/lg_mail64.html#mailbag/1"
>http://www.linuxgazette.com/issue64/lg_mail64.html#mailbag/1</A>
and a number of the Gang replying to Marko in issue 78:
<a href="../issue78/lg_mail.html#mailbag/4"
>http://www.linuxgazette.com/issue78/lg_mail.html#mailbag/4</A>
-- Heather</font></blockquote>
<P>
Dear Ben,
</P>
<P>
thanks for your reply, however I mastered etiquette
course (sorry for misspellings) and know very well the
difference between vulgar and etiquette.
</P>
<font color="#000066">
<blockquote>
Much nattering back and forth between Ben and Marko about the
ture nature of etiquette (which requires a social context) and the words
of gentle society, snipped, because there was not a word about Linux
in the lot of it. The closest to a comment about the readership at large
were these two tidbits.
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
from Marko:</blockquote></font>
<p>
<em>Gazette</em> is distributed under
free licence and so when people reading it in a
computer club (from 8 to 88) they should get a good
viewpoint of gazette or bad view point?
</p>
<font color="#000066">
<blockquote>No special effort was made to suggest what we should do
instead, except to simply never post such things at all. The original
reader-by-chance, albeit brash, asked a fair question and we answered
him cheerfully, with our policy and the note that if he ever has a Linux
question, feel free to ask it. However, there I noted that if you seek
formal and professional standards, subscribe to Linux Journal. See the
email above and the differenece will be more clear.
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
and from Ben:
</blockquote></font>
<Blockquote>And "vulgar" is a compliment when it comes
to the Linux Gazette; we are indeed "of the common
people".</blockquote>
<font color="#000066">
<blockquote>The world of the <em>Gazette</em> is that of ordinary people during
an ordinary day. Sometimes ordinary people feel like telling us off. For some
reason the flames take longer to put out when gentlefolk tell us off instead
<IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/smily.gif" ALT=":)"
height="24" width="20" align="middle">
We reserve the right to leave a reader's commentary intact for context.
I'm sure that someone out there thinks that one bad word, ever, will disimprove
<em>LG</em>, and we should never publish such things. That someone is welcome
to stop using all the free software that has brutal things to say in its comment
blocks, too. Not, mind you, that I can guarantee any proprietary software is
written by only pure and soft-spoken souls, either. That may be beyond even
Marko's gentle senses, though I certainly can't be sure.
</blockquote>
<blockquote>If Marko is upset about it being pubbed first in issue 64's Mailbag,
I can assure you it won't happen again... since I will no longer publish
grammar nor morality flames without Linux content. We have enough of them now
that unless our policy changes, we can simply point to these past issues.
</blockquote>
<blockquote>I remind readers that this magazine is all about <em>Making Linux
A Little More Fun</em>, not ragging on your imperfect neighbors.
There are so many languages on this planet that any given puddle of letters
could be past tasteless all the way to downright rude in more than one of
them. But this magazine is about Linux, not about becoming the international
edition of <em>Emily Post</em>. It is quite enough censorship already that I
cannot publish all the good stuff that is written by The Answer Gang.
</blockquote>
<blockquote>To everyone who has a thought towards correcting our past issues,
the license is open, and any copies of <em>LG</em> are free to modify:
</blockquote>
<blockquote><ul>
<li>You may make a more pleasant copy of your own
<li>If you make it publicly available let us know and we will advise the
world via our mirrors page.
<li>If you have specific corrections to apply, send them to us, and we
might apply them. In which case all the direct mirrors will see it at
their next update. At some months delay, this will also include the
major distributions.
<li>If you're holding a round piece of anodized metal-foil and plastic in your
hand, we cannot change what it contains. You'll have to burn a new CD.
If you want to disagree with us, consider taking a refresher course in
physics... or use one of Linux' many free word processors or layout languages
to write up your thesis on matter transformation at a distant location.
I recommend LaTeX -- I hear that a lot of scientific journals favor it.
</ul>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>I'm all for making the world a better place; but people have to
help each other to do it. -- Heather</blockquote>
</font>
<!-- end 7 -->
<!-- .~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~. -->
<P> <A NAME="mailbag/8"><HR WIDTH="75%" ALIGN="center"></A> <P>
<H3><IMG ALIGN=BOTTOM ALT="" SRC="../gx/envelope.gif">
<FONT COLOR="navy">re : The Complaint Department: Typos and Grammatical Errors</FONT></H3>
Wed, 19 Jun 2002 22:35:11 -0600 (MDT)
<BR>Matthew.Austin (<a href="mailto:gazette@ssc.com?subject=%20Re%3A%20%5BLG%2080%5D%20mailbag%20%239">Matthew.Austin from Colorado.EDU</a>)
<blockquote><font color="#000066">Boy, this topic is from the dusty shelf;
<A HREF="../issue37/tag/23.html"
>http://www.linuxgazette.com/issue37/tag/23.html</A> and
<A HREF="../issue36/tag/67.html"
>http://www.linuxgazette.com/issue36/tag/67.html</A>
-- Heather</font></blockquote>
<P>
With all of that guy's complaints, I'm reminded of an old advertisement for
learning shorthand:
</P>
<strong><p>
"f u cn rd ths msg..."
</p></strong>
<blockquote>
u cn us unx.
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
Cheers,
-- Jay R. Ashworth
</blockquote>
<P>
Point being, that the informational difference between their/they're, or more
appropriately, between "kernel core team has soundly reject suggestions that
Linux adopt..." and "kernel core team has soundly rejected suggestions that
Linux adopt..." as quoted the information content difference is nil, for a
native English speaker. Don't let him get too down on you -- we just are
pampered by having a MLA in the first place to standardize these issues.
</P>
<!-- end 8 -->
<!-- .~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~. -->
<P> <A NAME="mailbag/9"><HR WIDTH="75%" ALIGN="center"></A> <P>
<H3><IMG ALIGN=BOTTOM ALT="" SRC="../gx/envelope.gif">
<FONT COLOR="navy">Did you see that Fabor gets famous?</FONT></H3>
Wed, 26 Jun 2002 21:40:06 +0200
<BR>Robos (<a href="mailto:gazette@ssc.com?subject=%20Re%3A%20%5BLG%2080%5D%20mailbag%20%239">robos from muon.de</a>)
<BR>with comments by Faber Fedor
<blockquote>
Famous? Obviously not famous enough for my name to get spelled
correctly!
<IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/smily.gif" ALT=":-)"
height="24" width="20" align="middle">
</blockquote>
<P><STRONG>
Hi all!
Well, there is this "Is linux dead?" comment on <TT>/.</TT> and in the MSNBC
article (<A HREF="http://www.msnbc.com/news/772215.asp"
>http://www.msnbc.com/news/772215.asp</A>) Fabor is quoted rather
extensively. The <TT>/.</TT> news comment is really bad (doesn't fit at all)
but Fabor comes along really nice.
</STRONG></P>
<blockquote>
Thansk for the compliment. When I first read the article, I was
sounding like Chandler Bing's ex-girlfriend on "Friends"
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
&lt;Janice&gt;Oh - my - gawd!&lt;/Janice&gt;
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
The article was, IMO, a back-handed compliment.
</blockquote>
<P><STRONG>
He should have mentioned TAG though
<IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/smily.gif" ALT=";-)"
height="24" width="20" align="middle">
</STRONG></P>
<blockquote>
I think I did.
<IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/smily.gif" ALT=":-)"
height="24" width="20" align="middle">
</blockquote>
<P><STRONG>
As a question to fabor: Why do you say (as the article quotes) "It's
for geeks"?
I mean, we're mostly geeks (ok, all) but those people who
write us with questions are most certainly not geeks (most of them)
since then they would probably figured out the thing themselves. These
lusers might have some probs with "linux" but only because when they
buy some win crap they wine to the support stuff of that firm, in
GNU/linux they get all the tools at once and don't have such a
technical support (suse and redhat for a short time at the beginning,
ok..) to ask questions. So they come to us and thats what TAG is
for. Bit I think that most luser get along with GNU/Linux pretty well
given the fact that GNU/Linux is <em>far</em> more powerful and
customizable. With most questions they come to either us or debianhelp
for example, they wouldn't even ask those questions on win since there
they wouldn't get the fix idea to run their own webserver just-for-fun
since there it isn't that much free (as in beer) software to play with
(that sentence is rather crap, granted, but I hope you get my general
drift) -- Robos
</STRONG></P>
<blockquote><font color="#000066">
I'll disagree to the extent that there is plenty of free-as-in-beer
or shareware available for Windows, but to a certain degree you have to be
geeky to know where to go looking for it. Been there, showing people cool
stuff like virtual desktops and icon managers and replacement command shells.
-- Heather</font></blockquote>
<blockquote>
Well, you really need to hear the question I was asked! I was asked
"Why is Linux popular in the enterprise and with upper management but
not popular on home PCs?"
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
"It's for geeks and they thrive in the enterprise where the power of
Linux is appreciated." Then I went on to mention about MS licensing
practices taht forbid other OSes or changing of the boot sequesnce. I
said THAT was why Linux isn't popular on the desktop. I even mention BeOS
and Hitachi.
</blockquote>
<P><STRONG>
So, to make it clear: I think with a little help (about as much as you
need in the beginning with windoze) and some distro like suse or
mandrake a pretty normal user can now easily use linux and the
accompained software (as long as they can and are willing to read).
</STRONG></P>
<blockquote>
I agree. And while my student/attendee, Dave Potter, did say those
things, he came off alot different than the article sounds.
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
Anybody know of a course in "how to answer a journalists' questions without
being misrepresented?"
<IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/smily.gif" ALT=":-)"
height="24" width="20" align="middle">
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
--
Regards,
Faber
</blockquote>
<blockquote><font color="#000066">What Robos had to say only works if you know what
parts they are likely to misrepresent. Make them repeat it back. Squeeze 'em if
they can't get it right. Unfortunately the cultural gap is likely to foster
addiitonal assumptions based on whatever you say or do to try and keep
matters straight.
</font></blockquote>
<blockquote><font color="#000066">If people don't <EM>want</EM> to understand, we
can't make it happen. That's the real nature of freedom, folks. But we can say
things our way in our own venue, and when they come looking for us, it'll still be here.
</font></blockquote>
<blockquote><font color="#000066">Remind me to ask Faber's question in the press room at LWE though...
-- Heather</font></blockquote>
<!-- end 9 -->
<a name="gaz"></a>
<P> <hr> <P>
<!-- =================================================================== -->
<center><H3><font color="maroon">GAZETTE MATTERS</font></H3></center>
<P> <HR> <P>
<!--====================================================================-->
<!-- BEGIN GAZETTE MATTERS -->
<UL>
<!-- index_text begins -->
<li><A HREF="#gaz/1"
><strong>ask-the-gang</strong></a>
<!-- index_text ends -->
</UL>
<!-- .~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~. -->
<P> <A NAME="gaz/1"><HR WIDTH="75%" ALIGN="center"></A> <P>
<H3><IMG ALIGN=BOTTOM ALT="" SRC="../gx/envelope.gif">
<FONT COLOR="navy">ask-the-gang</FONT></H3>
Fri, 31 May 2002 09:11:39 -0700
<BR>Mike Orr (<a href="mailto:gazette@ssc.com?subject=%20Re%3A%20%5BLG%2080%5D%20gazette%20matters%20%230"><em>Linux Gazette</em> Editor</a>)
<P><STRONG>
Compliments to Ben for continuing to make
<a href="../tag/ask-the-gang.html">tag/ask-the-gang.html</a>
better and better.
</STRONG></P>
<P>
Thanks much! I treat it as a serious resource, and try my best.
</P>
<P><STRONG>
Gosh, this is twice I've complimented Ben in one week. I promise it
won't happen again.
</STRONG></P>
<P>
"I guess his heart just couldn't stand the shock - we've got syncope and
V-fib. All right, lets give him the whole 200j. ... Sync off... CLEAR!"
&lt;BZZZZT!&gt;
</P>
<P>
"OK, got paced rhythm and pulse. He'll prob'ly pull through if he
doesn't get any more of those compliments..."
</P>
<P>
<IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/smily.gif" ALT=":)"
height="24" width="20" align="middle"> -- Ben
</P>
<blockquote><font color="#000066">Too many compliments?
Just stack them over there next to the groceries, and I'll add them to the
virtual beer and munchies in the Answer Gang fridge. (See
<a href="../tag/members-faq.html">tag/members-faq.html</a>
for more about the fridge.) No fuzzybears were harmed in the writing
of this document
-- Heather</font></blockquote>
<!-- end 0 -->
<P> <hr> </p>
<!-- *** BEGIN copyright *** -->
<H5 align="center">This page edited and maintained by the Editors
of <I>Linux Gazette</I>
<a href="http://www.linuxgazette.com/copying.html"
>Copyright &copy;</a> 2002
<BR>Published in issue 80 of <I>Linux Gazette</I> July 2002</H5>
<H6 ALIGN="center">HTML script maintained by
<A HREF="mailto:star@starshine.org">Heather Stern</a> of
Starshine Technical Services,
<A HREF="http://www.starshine.org/">http://www.starshine.org/</A>
</H6>
<!-- *** END copyright *** -->
<center>
<H1><A NAME="tips"><IMG ALIGN=MIDDLE ALT="" SRC="../gx/twocent.jpg">
More 2&cent; Tips!</A></H1> <BR>
<!-- BEGIN tips -->
Send Linux Tips and Tricks to <A HREF="mailto:linux-questions-only@ssc.com">linux-questions-only@ssc.com</A></center>
</center>
<UL>
<!-- index_text begins -->
<li><A HREF="#tips/1"
><strong>Fvwm Buttons</strong></a>
<li><A HREF="#tips/2"
><strong>Creating WAN "LAN' with one IP Address</strong></a>
<li><A HREF="#tips/3"
><strong>customized linux install cd?</strong></a>
<li><A HREF="#tips/4"
><strong>Ghostscript fails after printer driver install</strong></a>
<li><A HREF="#tips/5"
><strong>quick disaster recovery</strong></a>
<li><A HREF="#tips/6"
><strong>question</strong></a>
<li><A HREF="#tips/7"
><strong>checkinstall</strong></a>
<li><A HREF="#tips/8"
><strong>'crypt' error !!</strong></a>
<li><A HREF="#tips/9"
><strong>demand dialing</strong></a>
<li><A HREF="#tips/10"
><strong>Modem speed and diald</strong></a>
<li><A HREF="#tips/11"
><strong>Exchange with Linux</strong></a>
<li><A HREF="#tips/12"
><strong>Grub vs LILO</strong></a>
<li><A HREF="#tips/13"
><strong>Email Linux To Windows - a simple solution for reference</strong></a>
<li><A HREF="#tips/14"
><strong>linuxconf setup</strong></a>
<li><A HREF="#tips/15"
><strong>Kernel Message: VM: Killing resource foo (bar)....</strong></a>
<li><A HREF="#tips/16"
><strong>Parsing Strings To Equations</strong></a>
<li><A HREF="#tips/17"
><strong>lpd/lpr problems with serial printer</strong></a>
<li><A HREF="#tips/18"
><strong>Getting files out of a .rpm file without installing it</strong></a>
<li><A HREF="#tips/19"
><strong>ramdisk and initrd fundamentals?</strong></a>
<li><A HREF="#tips/20"
><strong>Re: Making executables smaller</strong></a>
<li><I>Linux Journal's</I> Weekly News Notes
<a href="#tips/lj">Tech Tips</a>
<ul>
<LI>sending Microsoft Word documents
<LI>Keeping a persistent session as you log in and out from different terminals
<LI>Outlook to Evolution
<LI>Mozilla port paranoia
<LI>Renaming a file that has a special character in the name
<LI>Have Ethernet cables, will travel
<li><A HREF="http://noframes.linuxjournal.com/subscribe/lja-sub.html"
>subscribe</A> to LJWNN
</ul>
<!-- index_text ends -->
</UL>
<!-- .~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~. -->
<P> <A NAME="tips/1"><HR WIDTH="75%" ALIGN="center"></A> <P>
<H3><IMG ALIGN=BOTTOM ALT="" SRC="../gx/lil2cent.gif">
<FONT COLOR="navy">Fvwm Buttons</FONT></H3>
Tue, 18 Jun 2002 15:11:23 +0100 (BST)
<BR>Thomas Adam (<a href="mailto:linux-questions-only@ssc.com?cc=Hans.Borg@Physics.umu.se&subject=%20Re%3A%20%5BLG%2080%5D%202c%20Tips%20%231">The <em>LG</em> Weekend Mechanic</a>)
<BR>Question by Hans Borg
<blockquote><font color="#000066">This is in reply to
<a href="http://www.linuxgazette.com/lg_mail.html#wanted/5">Help Wanted #5, in issue 79.</a>
Thomas replied via the FVWM mailing list.
More details about that can be found at:
<A HREF="http://www.fvwm.org/mailinglist.html"
>http://www.fvwm.org/mailinglist.html</A>
-- Heather</font></blockquote>
<P>
Hello,
</P>
<P>
In answer to your question as to why when you press a
button on your panel, it stays depessed is to do with
the way in which FVWM handles <TT> exec()</TT> a program via the
$SHELL of the $USER.
</P>
<P>
If command is an fvwm Exec command, then the button
will remain pushed in until a window whose name or
class matches the quoted portion of the command is
encountered. This is intended to provide visual
feedback to the user that the action he has requested
will be performed. If the quoted portion contains no
characters, then the button will pop out immediately.
</P>
<P>
Note that users can continue pressing the button, and
re-executing the command, even when it looks "pressed
in."
</P>
<P>
There is a way around this, and I have found that if
you append a "&amp;" character at the end of your command
that is bound to the button, then that <EM>sometimes</EM>
solves your problem -- but not always.
</P>
<P>
Hope I have helped,
Kind Regards,
</P>
<P>
Thomas Adam
</P>
<P>
-- "The Linux Weekend Mechanic" -- www.linuxgazette.com
</P>
<HR width="10%" align="center"><P>
Hi,
</P>
<P>
Thanks a lot for taking the time to answer my Q.
I actually managed to sort it out some time ago, but
you are right. I had some fiddle with the window name.
</P>
<P>
Best regards
<BR>Hans Borg.
</P>
<!-- end 1 -->
<!-- .~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~. -->
<P> <A NAME="tips/2"><HR WIDTH="75%" ALIGN="center"></A> <P>
<H3><IMG ALIGN=BOTTOM ALT="" SRC="../gx/lil2cent.gif">
<FONT COLOR="navy">Creating WAN "LAN' with one IP Address</FONT></H3>
Mon, 17 Jun 2002 13:11:03 -0700
<BR>Heather Stern (<a href="mailto:linux-questions-only@ssc.com?cc=kanegelo@webmail.co.za&subject=%20Re%3A%20%5BLG%2080%5D%202c%20Tips%20%232"><em>LG</em> Technical Editor</a>)
<P><STRONG>
If I'm given a network address 192.168.7 (Class C) and have to create
a WAN with 5 routers, how do I do it?
</STRONG></P>
<P><STRONG>
I can Subnett but the 3rd router keep saying the Network address is
already used, when i try to put the subnet address there.
</STRONG></P>
<P><STRONG>
How do i do it.
<br>RURI!!
</STRONG></P>
<P>
We have a very good piece on that sort of thing in the back issues.
It's called "Routing and Subnetting 101" and is one of the longest
postings ever written by Jim Dennis. Several professors have used it in
their coursework and even though Linux was much younger then the
principles are still valid.
</P>
<P>
It's in issue 36. A professor asked about it in issue 37's mailbag, and
some followups appeared in issues 51 and 59. Of course you could have
learned this by typing "Routing and Subnetting" into the <EM>Linux Gazette</EM>
search page:
<A HREF="../search.html"
>http://www.linuxgazette.com/search.html</A>
</P>
<P>
...and you can easily get to those articles by visiting the Answer Gang
Knowledge Base:
<A HREF="../tag/kb.html"
>http://www.linuxgazette.com/tag/kb.html</A>
</P>
<!-- end 2 -->
<!-- .~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~. -->
<P> <A NAME="tips/3"><HR WIDTH="75%" ALIGN="center"></A> <P>
<H3><IMG ALIGN=BOTTOM ALT="" SRC="../gx/lil2cent.gif">
<FONT COLOR="navy">customized linux install cd?</FONT></H3>
Wed, 5 Jun 2002 14:01:28 +0000
<BR>linus gasser (<a href="mailto:linux-questions-only@ssc.com?cc=simkin1@hotmail.com&cc=ineiti@linusetviviane.ch&subject=%20Re%3A%20%5BLG%2080%5D%202c%20Tips%20%233">ineiti from linusetviviane.ch</a>)
<BR>Question by simkin1
<blockquote><font color="#000066">These are in reply to
<a href="http://www.linuxgazette.com/lg_mail.html#wanted/1">Help Wanted #1, Issue 79.</a>
-- Heather</font></blockquote>
<P>
Hi,
I did about this on a RH7.2 but I don't think it'll change this drastically
under RH 7.3. You can point your browser to
</P>
<P>
<A HREF="http://lcmpc10.epfl.ch:8080/Menu/Docus/RedHat%20CD"
>http://lcmpc10.epfl.ch:8080/Menu/Docus/RedHat%20CD</A>
</P>
<P>
(sorry for the space in the url...) it even describes how you can add a
kernel on your own and get it to run...
</P>
<P>
Ineiti
</P>
<!-- end 3 -->
<!-- . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . -->
<HR WIDTH="40%" ALIGN="center">
<H3><IMG ALIGN=BOTTOM ALT="" SRC="../gx/lil2cent.gif">
<FONT COLOR="navy"></FONT></H3>
Sun, 9 Jun 2002 23:23:44 -0700
<BR>Peter Tootill (<a href="mailto:linux-questions-only@ssc.com?cc=ptootill@abilitec.com&subject=%20Re%3A%20%5BLG%2080%5D%202c%20Tips%20%233">ptootill from abilitec.com</a>)
<P>
The easiest way to customise the install is with Kickstart. We have done it
(and learned a few things on the way).
</P>
<P>
Haven't time for a comprehensive reply at present but, if kicksatart hasn't
been covered, I could put something together.
</P>
<P>
Rgrds
</P>
<P>
Peter
</P>
<!-- end 3 -->
<!-- .~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~. -->
<P> <A NAME="tips/4"><HR WIDTH="75%" ALIGN="center"></A> <P>
<H3><IMG ALIGN=BOTTOM ALT="" SRC="../gx/lil2cent.gif">
<FONT COLOR="navy">Ghostscript fails after printer driver install</FONT></H3>
Tue, 11 Jun 2002 20:16:54 -0700
<BR>Matthew Easton (<a href="mailto:linux-questions-only@ssc.com?cc=matthew@sublunar.com&subject=%20Re%3A%20%5BLG%2080%5D%202c%20Tips%20%234">matthew from sublunar.com</a>)
<!-- sig -->
<!-- sig -->
<blockquote><font color="#000066">This is in reply to
<a href="http://www.linuxgazette.com/issue79/lg_tips.html#tips/4">LG 79, Two Cent Tip #4.</a>
-- Heather</font></blockquote>
<P>
Hello,
</P>
<P>
Rich Price may want to try a Laserjet 4 driver instead of trying to figure
out the Xt dependency.
</P>
<P>
I have the Samsung ML-1450 and it's quite happy pretending to be an HP
Laserjet 4.
</P>
<P>
Matt Easton
</P>
<!-- end 4 -->
<!-- .~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~. -->
<P> <A NAME="tips/5"><HR WIDTH="75%" ALIGN="center"></A> <P>
<H3><IMG ALIGN=BOTTOM ALT="" SRC="../gx/lil2cent.gif">
<FONT COLOR="navy">quick disaster recovery</FONT></H3>
Fri, 7 Jun 2002 17:43:22 +0100 (BST)
<BR>Mike Martin (<a href="mailto:linux-questions-only@ssc.com?subject=%20Re%3A%20%5BLG%2080%5D%202c%20Tips%20%235">the <em>LG</em> Answer Gang</a>)
<!-- sig -->
<P>
I may expand this into an article, but for the very common scenario
of "no init found" "unable to open an initial console" (usually after
hard crash) a couple of possible causes which I have not seen
anywhere else
</P>
<P>
There is a fair chance that files on <TT>/</TT> have been corrupted wiped
including <TT>/dev.</TT>
</P>
<P>
Solution (very Rpm specific)
</P>
<P>
So mount rescue media, check for files on /
</P>
<P>
if missing mount cdrom from install and do:
</P>
<P><CODE>
rpm -Uvh dev-&lt;version&gt;-rpm
</CODE></P>
<P>
to re-instate dev files
</P>
<P>
then progressively force re-install rpms until you can boot
</P>
<P>
Then when you have managed to boot do this:
</P>
<P><CODE>
rpm -Va|grep missing&gt;filename
</CODE></P>
<P>
This will print to a file all the files that are missing from your
system according to your rpm database.
</P>
<P>
Then for all the files given do rpm -qf &lt;filename&gt; which will give
you the name of the rpm
</P>
<P>
Then re-install the rpms in turn.
</P>
<P>
This is best done manually so you can check whats missing.
</P>
<P>
Should only take around an hour in total at most.
</P>
<P>
Certainly preferable to doing a re-install.
</P>
<P>
I came across this on my own box a while ago after multiple power
cuts in succession (I'm poor so no UPS)
</P>
<P>
The advantage is that your modifications are far less likely to be
hosed as in a re-install.
</P>
<!-- end 5 -->
<!-- .~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~. -->
<P> <A NAME="tips/6"><HR WIDTH="75%" ALIGN="center"></A> <P>
<H3><IMG ALIGN=BOTTOM ALT="" SRC="../gx/lil2cent.gif">
<FONT COLOR="navy">question</FONT></H3>
Thu, 30 May 2002 20:12:00 +0200
<BR>Robos (<a href="mailto:linux-questions-only@ssc.com?cc=RosePetal103@aol.com&subject=%20Re%3A%20%5BLG%2080%5D%202c%20Tips%20%236">the <em>LG</em> Answer Gang</a>)
<BR>Question by RosePetal103
<!-- sig -->
<!-- sig -->
<P><STRONG>
To Whom It May Concern:
</STRONG></P>
<P><STRONG><BLOCKQuote>
I went to ebay and found all these used laptops/notebook puters, but I
</BLOCKQuote></STRONG></P>
<P><STRONG>
have no clue which one to select. For example, "Intel Pentium II=AE 366Mhz
290MB RAM
6.1GB HDD
CDROM
Sound
Windows 98
Office 2000 ..."
</STRONG></P>
<P><STRONG>
What does all that mean? And how I go about finding a good, used laptop, like
what trait(s) do I search for?
</STRONG></P>
<P><STRONG>
-Thanks ,
<BR>Desperately needing laptop
</STRONG></P>
<P>
If your question aims at running linux on that thing, compare what
<A HREF="http://www.linux-laptop.net"
>http://www.linux-laptop.net</A> has to say to the model you like.
</P>
<!-- end 6 -->
<!-- .~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~. -->
<P> <A NAME="tips/7"><HR WIDTH="75%" ALIGN="center"></A> <P>
<H3><IMG ALIGN=BOTTOM ALT="" SRC="../gx/lil2cent.gif">
<FONT COLOR="navy">checkinstall</FONT></H3>
Thu, 30 May 2002 13:48:04 +0100 (BST)
<BR>Mike Martin (<a href="mailto:linux-questions-only@ssc.com?subject=%20Re%3A%20%5BLG%2080%5D%202c%20Tips%20%237">the <em>LG</em> Answer Gang</a>)
<P><STRONG>
I dont know whether anyone else on the list has used the utility
checkinstall available at:
</STRONG></P>
<P><STRONG><BLOCKQuote>
<A HREF="http://asic-linux.com.mx/~izto/checkinstall"
>http://asic-linux.com.mx/~izto/checkinstall</A>
</BLOCKQuote></STRONG></P>
<P><STRONG>
What it is the solution to the problem of maintaining a rpm/deb based
system with compiling programs from source
</STRONG></P>
<P><STRONG>
Basically what it does is runs make install and then makes a
functional rpm and installs it.
</STRONG></P>
<P><STRONG>
It is not perfect but certainly works well enough to continued use
</STRONG></P>
<P><STRONG>
I regard it now as pretty much indispensible when | am following a
project (eg: gnome2)
</STRONG></P>
<P><STRONG>
My feeling is that it ives the flexibilty of using source packages
without losing package management
</STRONG></P>
<P>
Hi!
</P>
<P>
Well, there was some coverage of that utility here in germany in the
magazine (print) "linux-user". Seems to be quite nice, I've used it
several times and it worked most of the times. Not always, but when it
doesn't work you can still fall back to
</P>
<blockquote><pre>./configure
make
make install
</pre></blockquote>
<P>
Robos
</P>
<!-- end 7 -->
<!-- .~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~. -->
<P> <A NAME="tips/8"><HR WIDTH="75%" ALIGN="center"></A> <P>
<H3><IMG ALIGN=BOTTOM ALT="" SRC="../gx/lil2cent.gif">
<FONT COLOR="navy">'crypt' error !!</FONT></H3>
Wed, 05 Jun 2002 18:16:40 +0530 (IST)
<BR>Karl-Heinz Herrman (<a href="mailto:linux-questions-only@ssc.com?cc=siba_das2001@yahoo.co.in&cc=karl@igcar.ernet.in&subject=%20Re%3A%20%5BLG%2080%5D%202c%20Tips%20%238">the <em>LG</em> Answer Gang</a>)
<BR>Question by sibabrata
<P><STRONG>
I have got a peculiar problem in hand.
Got this code compiled properly in red hat Linux 6.1(g++ compiler
version 2.91.66 ) but giving error in red hat 7.1(g++ compiler version
2.96).But if compiled with red hat 7.1(gcc compiler version 2.96) , it
is doing perfectly fine.
</STRONG></P>
<P><STRONG>
why this in-consistency ?
</STRONG></P>
<P><STRONG>
Source code:
Server.c
</STRONG></P>
<P><STRONG>
Command:
</STRONG></P>
<P><STRONG><CODE>
g++ -lcrypt server.c
</CODE></STRONG></P>
<P><STRONG>
Error:
'crypt' undeclared
</STRONG></P>
<P>
Since it seems nobody tried an answer yet I try to add some cents:
</P>
<blockQuote><ul>
<LI>first thing coming to my mind is probably a typo in the mail -- but server.c and
Server.c might be different files....
</ul></blockQuote>
<P>
You <EM>do</EM> the right includes (whatever they are, crypt.h problaby), do you?
There might be a difference where crypt is stored for gcc and for g++ -- so gcc
and g++ might behave differently. Also g++ might might have changed in default
location or default behaviour of including C headers. Try to locate crypt.h (or
wherever crypt is defined). Is there a g++ version of it? What happens if you put
-I ad -L explicitly to the gcc crypt path?
</P>
<P>
Then crypt is probably compiled by gcc -- this has a different routine name
mangling then g++, so you might have to call not crypt but '_crypt' or 'crypt_' or
something like that (speaking from very little experience with how to use fortran
subroutines in C -- and a peculiar problem lately: if I compiled a subroutine with
gcc I got a "..." undefined from the linker. If I compile it with g++ everzthing
works.
</P>
<P>
I would have expected "better" integration with gnu c and c++ -- but there you go.
</P>
<P>
K.-H.
</P>
<!-- end 8 -->
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<P> <A NAME="tips/9"><HR WIDTH="75%" ALIGN="center"></A> <P>
<H3><IMG ALIGN=BOTTOM ALT="" SRC="../gx/lil2cent.gif">
<FONT COLOR="navy">demand dialing</FONT></H3>
Sun, 02 Jun 2002 21:30:51 -0500
<BR>Jim Bradley (<a href="mailto:linux-questions-only@ssc.com?cc=jebradl@attglobal.net&subject=%20Re%3A%20%5BLG%2080%5D%202c%20Tips%20%239">jebradl from attglobal.net</a>)
<blockquote><font color="#000066">This is in reply to
<a href="http://www.linuxgazette.com/issue79/lg_mail#wanted/7">LG 79, help wanted #7.</a>
-- Heather</font></blockquote>
<P>
There are two linux versions that I've used as a server for demand dialout for internet access, and both worked well. One is Coyote linux, which is a floppy disk boot
version, and can be run on a 386 with numeric coprocessor or a true 486 (or 486sx with numeric coprocessor). I don't recall it's memory requirements. The other version
that is good is the mitel (formerly e-smith) at www.e-smith.org. It requires a 586 class processor, but also setsup DNS, and other server functions.
</P>
<!-- end 9 -->
<!-- .~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~. -->
<P> <A NAME="tips/10"><HR WIDTH="75%" ALIGN="center"></A> <P>
<H3><IMG ALIGN=BOTTOM ALT="" SRC="../gx/lil2cent.gif">
<FONT COLOR="navy">Modem speed and diald</FONT></H3>
Sun, 9 Jun 2002 17:54:10 -0400
<BR>Ben Okopnik (<a href="mailto:linux-questions-only@ssc.com?cc=n.youngman@ntlworld.com&subject=%20Re%3A%20%5BLG%2080%5D%202c%20Tips%20%2310">the <em>LG</em> Answer Gang</a>)
<BR>Question by Neil Youngman
<P><STRONG>
I've mainly been connecting to the internet using diald, but I've noticed
that I'm only getting about 3.5 KBps , whereas on W98 I get about 5KBps. A
little experimentation shows that dialling with kppp gives about 5KBps as
well.
</STRONG></P>
<P><STRONG>
kppp seems to use an initialisation string of ATM1L1, but changing MODEM_INIT
to "ATM1L1" in <TT>/etc/diald/connect</TT>, didn't improve the performance.
</STRONG></P>
<P><STRONG>
MODEM_INIT started out as "ATZ&amp;C1&amp;D2%C0". I changed "%C0" to "%C3" to ensure
that compression was enabled, but this made no difference. I can't find an
option in diald to log exactly what's sent to the modem and I can't see any
conflicting options in the configuration for pppd.
</STRONG></P>
<P><STRONG>
Any suggestions for how to track down why kppp gets better performance than
diald would be appreciated.
</STRONG></P>
<P><STRONG>
The modem is an MRI 56K internal modem.
</STRONG></P>
<P>
I'm not sure how you would test this, but I suspect that it's not your
PPP connection that's slowing you down - "diald" uses SLIP as a "fake
interface" that's always up, which is why you don't get error messages
from Netscape and such when you try to connect. It listens for requests,
then makes the PPP connection "behind your back". It's been a long time
since I've used it, and I'm rather fuzzy on the details, but ISTR that
"diald" let you play around with SLIP settings... sorry I can't be of
any more help, but that's pretty much the extent of what I remember. I
also STR that "diald" had a good set of documents with it which I found
very helpful in working around a problem that I had with it. Good luck.
</P>
<!-- sig -->
<!-- sig -->
<!-- end 10 -->
<!-- .~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~. -->
<P> <A NAME="tips/11"><HR WIDTH="75%" ALIGN="center"></A> <P>
<H3><IMG ALIGN=BOTTOM ALT="" SRC="../gx/lil2cent.gif">
<FONT COLOR="navy">Exchange with Linux</FONT></H3>
Tue, 4 Jun 2002 11:11:44 -0700
<BR>John Helms (<a href="mailto:linux-questions-only@ssc.com?cc=jhelms@cvch.org&subject=%20Re%3A%20%5BLG%2080%5D%202c%20Tips%20%2311">jhelms from cvch.org</a>)
<P>
Hope this is the right address for answers as well as questions.
Regarding Linux Exchange
In my quest to use Linux without having to use Windows in our network I
discovered a couple of simple solutions.
</P>
<P>
1. Most any email client will work with a default install of exchange if you
enter your login as in the following:
</P>
<P><BLOCKQuote>
domain/username
</BLOCKQuote></P>
<P>
Of course all the group features will not work with this solution but simple
email is no problem.
</P>
<P>
2. You can use a browser with a default install of exchange since it also
installs IIS as a webserver. Various browsers will have different degrees of
success since of course IE is the "prefered" browser.
Type the following in your browser substituting your exchange servers correct
IP address:
</P>
<P><BLOCKQuote>
<A HREF="http://ipaddress/exchange"
>http://ipaddress/exchange</A>
</BLOCKQuote></P>
<P>
This will give you access to all the group features if your browser will
render the Microsoft proprietary technology.
Thanks for reading
</P>
<P>
John Helms
</P>
<!-- sig -->
<!-- end 11 -->
<!-- .~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~. -->
<P> <A NAME="tips/12"><HR WIDTH="75%" ALIGN="center"></A> <P>
<H3><IMG ALIGN=BOTTOM ALT="" SRC="../gx/lil2cent.gif">
<FONT COLOR="navy">Grub vs LILO</FONT></H3>
Wed, 12 Jun 2002 12:55:23 -0500 (COT)
<BR>John Karns (<a href="mailto:linux-questions-only@ssc.com?cc=bill@cc.usu.edu&subject=%20Re%3A%20%5BLG%2080%5D%202c%20Tips%20%2312">the <em>LG</em> Answer Gang</a>)
<BR>Question by William J. Terry
<P><STRONG>
Does anyone know what the Grub command is that replaces the LILO command
append="hdb=ide-scsi"
</STRONG></P>
<P>
It would be the same syntax, minus the "append=".
</P>
<P>
The append="" stuff is part of the Lilo syntax. Your grub.conf file
should look something like:
</P>
<blockquote><pre>default=1
timeout=10
splashimage=(hd0,0)/grub/splash.xpm.gz
title Example
root (hd0,0)
kernel /vmlinuz ro root=/dev/hda3 hdc=ide-scsi vga=1 console=/dev/tty2 CONSOLE=/dev/tty2
initrd /initrd-2.4.18-whatever
</pre></blockquote>
<P>
where you are allowed to use "\" and the end of a line, to mean line continuation.
</P>
<!-- end 12 -->
<!-- .~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~. -->
<P> <A NAME="tips/13"><HR WIDTH="75%" ALIGN="center"></A> <P>
<H3><IMG ALIGN=BOTTOM ALT="" SRC="../gx/lil2cent.gif">
<FONT COLOR="navy">Email Linux To Windows - a simple solution for reference</FONT></H3>
Wed, 5 Jun 2002 14:59:05 +0100 (BST)
<BR>Mike Martin (<a href="mailto:linux-questions-only@ssc.com?subject=%20Re%3A%20%5BLG%2080%5D%202c%20Tips%20%2313">the <em>LG</em> Answer Gang</a>)
<blockQuote><ol>
<LI>Set up mail server on Linux with user ids as applicable (exim
reads userids from linux box)
<LI>Set up fetchmail to poll server at isp
<LI>install and activate pop3 server on linux box
<LI>poll for mail by pop3 to the linux box account
</ol></blockQuote>
<P>
a more detailed example is at:
</P>
<P><BLOCKQuote>
<A HREF="../issue43/stumpel.html"
>http://www.linuxgazette.com/issue43/stumpel.html</A>
</BLOCKQuote></P>
<!-- end 13 -->
<!-- .~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~. -->
<P> <A NAME="tips/14"><HR WIDTH="75%" ALIGN="center"></A> <P>
<H3><IMG ALIGN=BOTTOM ALT="" SRC="../gx/lil2cent.gif">
<FONT COLOR="navy">linuxconf setup</FONT></H3>
Sat, 22 Jun 2002 02:37:33 +1000
<BR>Serkan Akdag (<a href="mailto:linux-questions-only@ssc.com?cc=serkanakdag@optushome.com.au&subject=%20Re%3A%20%5BLG%2080%5D%202c%20Tips%20%2314">serkanakdag from optushome.com.au</a>)
<blockquote><font color="#000066">This is in reply to
<a href="http://www.linuxgazette.com/issue79/lg_mail.html#wanted/3">LG 79 help wanted #3.</a>
Our reader wondered about setting up ACLs so he could access
his Linuxconf remotely without letting everyone else in.
-- Heather</font></blockquote>
<P>
<A HREF="http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/linux/RHL-7.1-Manual/custom-guide/linuxconf-lcinterfaces.html"
>http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/linux/RHL-7.1-Manual/custom-guide/linuxconf-lcinterfaces.html</A>
</P>
<P>
That should help you
<IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/smily.gif" ALT=":)"
height="24" width="20" align="middle"> Good luck
</P>
<!-- end 14 -->
<!-- .~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~. -->
<P> <A NAME="tips/15"><HR WIDTH="75%" ALIGN="center"></A> <P>
<H3><IMG ALIGN=BOTTOM ALT="" SRC="../gx/lil2cent.gif">
<FONT COLOR="navy">Kernel Message: VM: Killing resource foo (bar)....</FONT></H3>
Sat, 08 Jun 2002 17:57:13 +0200
<BR>Didier Heyden (<a href="mailto:linux-questions-only@ssc.com?subject=%20Re%3A%20%5BLG%2080%5D%202c%20Tips%20%2315">the <em>LG</em> Answer Gang</a>)
<BR>Question by Thomas Adams, the <em>LG</em> Weekend Mechanic
<!-- sig -->
<P><STRONG>
Hi Gang,
</STRONG></P>
<P>
Hello Thomas!
</P>
<P><STRONG>
I am wondering if someone would be so kind as to expain to me why I
get the following error messgae:
</STRONG></P>
<P><STRONG><BLOCKQuote>
Grangedairy: kernel: VM: killing resource acroread
</BLOCKQuote></STRONG></P>
<P><CODE>
[ quickly find-grepping that in the kernel source tree ]
</CODE></P>
<P>
Ok, it's in "arch/i386/mm/fault.c". (Actually for 2.4.17 it's "killing
process xxx" but I presume it doesn't really matter). It seems to occur
whenever a process tries to read something from a memory page which is
not accessible because of an out-of-memory condition.
</P>
<P><STRONG>
The above message is brought about, by an abnormal exit of the adobe
acrobat reader. For some reason, my computer will slow down to a
snails pace when I am reading a pdf document,
</STRONG></P>
<P>
That's when the system starts swapping out madly. Does it happen with
<EM>any</EM> PDF document, or only really big ones? What if you disable "Use
Page Cache" and/or "Allow Background Download of Entire File" in your
Acroread preferences (assuming those are currently turned on)?
</P>
<P><STRONG>
and then X will kill acroread without any warning.
</STRONG></P>
<P>
X itself has nothing to do with the actual killing. It's the way the
kernel preserves your system from a total crash. What amount of RAM
do you have?
</P>
<P><STRONG>
When I check my <TT>/var/log/messages</TT> file, I get the above message.
</STRONG></P>
<P><STRONG>
What causes this, and what does it mean???
</STRONG></P>
<P>
OOM.
<IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/smily.gif" ALT=":)"
height="24" width="20" align="middle"> Virtual memory exhausted.
</P>
<P><STRONG>
I tried running "strace" on the "acroread" process, but the file ended
up being 38.2MB, despite me telling it only to display a certain
number of lines
<IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/unsmily.gif" ALT=":-("
height="24" width="20" align="middle">
</STRONG></P>
<P>
So maybe your PDF document is a resource hog. Or there is some
incompatibility between the version of Acrobat Reader installed on your
system and your current set of libraries (even Acrobat 5 is
<EM>dynamically</EM> linked, mmph... this has obvious advantages but since
their reader is only distributed in binary form...) or some bug in
Adobe's product turns it into an self-destructing madsoft.
</P>
<P><STRONG>
It yeilded nothing useful, anyway from what I could see.
</STRONG></P>
<P>
The kernel's divine intervention in such cases is kinda brutal. Expect
the same sort of things as those resulting from a SIGKILL: perhaps the
process was "innocently" trying to <TT> read()</TT> something then it just
vaporized into limbo.
</P>
<P><STRONG>
Thanks,
</STRONG></P>
<P>
Well I hope this'll help you somewhat.
<IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/smily.gif" ALT=":)"
height="24" width="20" align="middle">
</P>
<P>
--
Didier Heyden.
</P>
<!-- end 15 -->
<!-- .~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~. -->
<P> <A NAME="tips/16"><HR WIDTH="75%" ALIGN="center"></A> <P>
<H3><IMG ALIGN=BOTTOM ALT="" SRC="../gx/lil2cent.gif">
<FONT COLOR="navy">Parsing Strings To Equations</FONT></H3>
Fri, 14 Jun 2002 11:19:13 +0200
<BR>Didier Heyden (<a href="mailto:linux-questions-only@ssc.com?cc=sree707@yahoo.com&subject=%20Re%3A%20%5BLG%2080%5D%202c%20Tips%20%2316">the <em>LG</em> Answer Gang</a>)
<BR>Question by V Sreejith
<P><STRONG>
Can anybody in this list suggest a method
to parse a string into a mathematical equation
and then compute the values according to the
equation.I have to do this in C in Linux.
Is there any such code available in C.
</STRONG></P>
<P><STRONG>
Is there a similar command in Linux.
</STRONG></P>
<P><STRONG>
I have tried myself a lot.It is getting more and more complex.This
is going to the level of a compiler design.ie,the task is similar to
"how a compiler reads the source code and manipulates it", i also
have to do a somewhat similar task.
</STRONG></P>
<P>
Yes. Maybe not as complex as a C parser, because the corresponding
grammar will probably be <EM>much</EM> cleaner; but the part of the
program which will be dedicated to the symbolic computation won't be
easy to write. But if you try with tools such as `flex' and `yacc'
(or `bison') the parser itself can be implemented in a relatively short
time, at least once you have read enough documentation about those
development tools, and thoroughly understood the basic concepts.
The related `info' pages are most useful, and finding tutorials and
likewise on the net is fairly trivial.
</P>
<P>
What's interesting with `bison'-based parsers is that one can more
easily split such tasks into smaller, independent parts, i.e. separate
completely the syntactical analysis of the source code from the rest.
For the parser itself, the work essentially consists in writing a
correct grammar for the corresponding developed language.
</P>
<P><STRONG>
Then I tried google search but
didn't find any useful links in C.I haven't done an extensive search.
</STRONG></P>
<P>
For symbolic computation LISP-like languages may prove more adequate
than C.
</P>
<P><STRONG>
Then I contacted you,the answer gang. I thought if somebody here has
previously done a similar task..it would be helpful for me if they
share it.. or just give me some links to some resources on the net
having information about this...
</STRONG></P>
<P>
Well, what I'm saying here is nothing more than <EM>one</EM> possibility among
others. Keep in mind that whatever solution you choose, you'll have to
invest a good deal of time to fully work it out.
</P>
<P><STRONG>
regards sree
</STRONG></P>
<P>
HTH,
</P>
<P>
-- Didier Heyden.
</P>
<!-- end 16 -->
<!-- .~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~. -->
<P> <A NAME="tips/17"><HR WIDTH="75%" ALIGN="center"></A> <P>
<H3><IMG ALIGN=BOTTOM ALT="" SRC="../gx/lil2cent.gif">
<FONT COLOR="navy">lpd/lpr problems with serial printer</FONT></H3>
Tue, 4 Jun 2002 03:25:56 EDT
<BR>Doug (<a href="mailto:linux-questions-only@ssc.com?cc=markgorat@cox.net&cc=Grohne@aol.com&subject=%20Re%3A%20%5BLG%2080%5D%202c%20Tips%20%2317">Grohne from aol.com</a>)
<BR>Question by Mark Gorat
<blockquote><font color="#000066">This is in reply to
<a href="http://www.linuxgazette.com/issue79/lg_mail.html#wanted/6">LG 79, help wanted #6.</a>
Rather than solving the problem as asked, Doug suggests a different
approach.
-- Heather</font></blockquote>
<P>
I have only used lpr over a TCP/IP network. Would it be possible to connect
the printer to a serial to ethernet print server (Intel and HP work with
Linux)? Then network to the Linux box. And then have all devices/terminals
use lpr/lpd.
</P>
<P>
Doug
</P>
<!-- end 17 -->
<!-- . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . -->
<HR WIDTH="40%" ALIGN="center">
<H3><IMG ALIGN=BOTTOM ALT="" SRC="../gx/lil2cent.gif">
<FONT COLOR="navy"></FONT></H3>
Mon, 24 Jun 2002 12:20:26 -0300
<BR>Raul Dias (<a href="mailto:linux-questions-only@ssc.com?cc=raul@dias.com.br&subject=%20Re%3A%20%5BLG%2080%5D%202c%20Tips%20%2317">raul from dias.com.br</a>)
<blockquote><font color="#000066">Raul knows which software he should be using instead.
-- Heather</font></blockquote>
<P>
Hi,
</P>
<P>
From the article:
</P>
<P><STRONG><BLOCKQuote>
I am using Mandrake 8.2. I have recently installed a serial printer using a Digi Classic-8
ISA card. . . . I can print to this printer by using 'cat {filename} &gt; <TT>/dev/ttyS11</TT>' and
this works just fine, however I cannot get lpr to print to this printer.
</BLOCKQuote></STRONG></P>
<P>
AFAIK, lpd does not come with mdk 8.2.
IIRC, no up to date distribution ships lpd anymore. At
least they have replaced it with LPRng or CUPS.
</P>
<P>
I don't use MDK, but I do use Cups which is the default
printer system in MDK.
</P>
<P>
I have two serial printers (ttyS0 and ttyS1) working fine.
</P>
<P>
All you got to do is to log into <A HREF="http://localhost:631"
>http://localhost:631</A> and
add a new printer.
Select the proper Serial Port and the most important,
set the correct values to the printer.
My printers works at 9600 and 4800 only.
</P>
<P>
This should be more than fine to live test.
</P>
<P>
If you will keep with lpd, the <TT>/etc/printcap</TT> is the place to go.
The man page for printcap will provide the right arguments
for setting the ttyS printer.
</P>
<P>
Regards,
</P>
<P>
Raul Dias
</P>
<!-- end 17 -->
<!-- .~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~. -->
<P> <A NAME="tips/18"><HR WIDTH="75%" ALIGN="center"></A> <P>
<H3><IMG ALIGN=BOTTOM ALT="" SRC="../gx/lil2cent.gif">
<FONT COLOR="navy">Getting files out of a .rpm file without installing it</FONT></H3>
Sat, 8 Jun 2002 20:54:01 -0400
<BR>Ashwin N (<a href="mailto:linux-questions-only@ssc.com?cc=ashwin_n@gmx.net&subject=%20Re%3A%20%5BLG%2080%5D%202c%20Tips%20%2318">ashwin_n from gmx.net</a>)
<P>
Ever wanted to get those files out of a .rpm without installing it?
Ofcourse it's easier to just install it, but sometimes it is not
possible because a newer version may already be present on the system.
</P>
<P>
In such cases, the utility "rpm2cpio" can be used to extract the files
of the RPM into a cpio archive.
</P>
<P>
For example:
</P>
<P><BLOCKQuote>
$ rpm2cpio &lt; xmms-2.4.rpm &gt; xmms.cpio
</BLOCKQuote></P>
<P>
The files can then be extracted from the cpio file using the "cpio"
command.
For example:
</P>
<P><CODE>
$ cpio -i -d &lt; xmms.cpio
</CODE></P>
<P>
In this case the files will be extracted with absolute paths into the
present directory.
</P>
<!-- end 18 -->
<!-- . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . -->
<HR WIDTH="40%" ALIGN="center">
<H3><IMG ALIGN=BOTTOM ALT="" SRC="../gx/lil2cent.gif">
<FONT COLOR="navy"></FONT></H3>
<BR>Ben Okopnik (<a href="mailto:linux-questions-only@ssc.com?subject=%20Re%3A%20%5BLG%2080%5D%202c%20Tips%20%2318">the <em>LG</em> Answer Gang</a>)
<P>
A good 2-cents' worth, Ashwin. However, you can do this even easier by
selecting the RPM and pressing 'Enter' in Midnight Commander; all the
files are under "CONTENTS.cpio", and you can explore the rest of the RPM
structure at will. There are also two executable metafiles called
"INSTALL" and "UPGRADE"; if you're viewing the file as root, you can do
either one simply by scrolling down to them and pressing 'Enter'. The
above functionality also applies to <A HREF="http://www.debian.org/">Debian</A>'s DEB files.
</P>
<!-- end 18 -->
<!-- .~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~. -->
<P> <A NAME="tips/19"><HR WIDTH="75%" ALIGN="center"></A> <P>
<H3><IMG ALIGN=BOTTOM ALT="" SRC="../gx/lil2cent.gif">
<FONT COLOR="navy">ramdisk and initrd fundamentals?</FONT></H3>
Wed, 5 Jun 2002 00:59:06 -0700 (PDT)
<BR>James Stewart (<a href="mailto:linux-questions-only@ssc.com?cc=Steven.J.Hathaway@state.or.us&cc=wartstew@yahoo.com&subject=%20Re%3A%20%5BLG%2080%5D%202c%20Tips%20%2319">wartstew from yahoo.com</a>)
<BR>Question by Steven J. Hathaway
<blockquote><font color="#000066">This is in reply to
<a href="http://www.linuxgazette.com/issue79/lg_mail.html#wanted/4">Issue 79, Help Wanted #4</a>
-- Heather</font></blockquote>
<P>
{1st time at this, let's see what happens}
</P>
<P><STRONG>
What documentation is available for ramdisk and initrd
fundamentals?
</STRONG></P>
<P><STRONG>
When "initrd" is specified in "lilo.conf" and the
Linux kernel is configured for ramdisk support, and
the system is booted, what ramdisk image is loaded
first or at all?
</STRONG></P>
<P>
You also need to configure the kernel to do an
"initrd" as well as a "Ramdisk" if this is what you
wish to do.
</P>
<P><STRONG>
The "initrd" image or the kernel ramdisk image?
</STRONG></P>
<P>
"initrd" loads first. It loads from the bootloader
(LiLo, Loadlin, etc.) while still in "real" mode using
the PC's BIOS calls, and loads before the kernel
loads. The purpose of the initrd is to provide what
ever support files that the kernel might need to find
its root file system. Typically people wishing to
have a generic boot disk that will boot just about
anything can put disk controller drivers, various
filesystems, PC-Card drivers and even networking
drivers in here. Then the kernel is set to attempt to
load all of them, but of course only the ones that
match existing hardware will actually load. After this
process, the initrd can be destroyed to free up the
memory (but I don't know how this is done) as the boot
process continues to find the real root filesystem to
boot from. This file system can reside on anything the
kernel has a driver loaded for, which includes a
"ramdisk". I'm not sure if something in initrd may be
needed to set up the "ramdisk". After the kernel
finishes booting, control is handed off to <TT>/sbin/init</TT>
which then begins executing things in <TT>/linuxrc.</TT>
</P>
<P>
In summery: the initrd is loaded using only BIOS and
simply saves you from having to compile all these
drivers into the kernel, only to have many of them
unused and take up memory in the running system. It
also the only way to deal with PC-Card devices that
might be needed to boot that are only availble as
external modules
</P>
<P><STRONG>
What programs are responsible for the loading the
"initrd" and "ramdisk" root images (kernel or LILO
boot.d).
</STRONG></P>
<P>
"initrd": is loaded with the bootloader. For the
ramdisk, I'm not sure if the kernel can do this
automatically, I expect you have to wait until an
"init" "rc" script residing in initrd can do it
</P>
<P><STRONG>
Note that the Linux kernel does not need LILO in order
to load a ramdisk from a second floppy using the same
drive.
</STRONG></P>
<P>
Right, LiLo is completely out of the picture by this
time.
</P>
<P><STRONG>
When is "pivot_root" an implicit process, and when
must it be explicitly invoked?
</STRONG></P>
<P>
Don't know
</P>
<P><STRONG>
What is the difference between a LILO specified
"initrd" and the kernel specified ramdisk loaded as
root?
</STRONG></P>
<P>
See the above lengthy paragraph
</P>
<P><STRONG>
I have a fundamental problem understanding the
relationships between an "initrd" image, ramdisk root
image, and the use of <TT>/initrd</TT>, <TT>/linuxrc</TT>, and
swap-root.
</STRONG></P>
<P>
Sorry that I don't have all the answers. In fact I
may be wrong in places since I have never really done
this sort of thing before.
</P>
<P>
James
</P>
<blockquote><code><font color="#000033"><br>Linux is the one competitor Microsoft
<br>can't buy,
<br>can't intimidate, and
<br>can't stop.
</font></code></blockquote>
<blockquote><font color="#000066">If Linux were an "it" I might agree with the "one" part, but
if you just take Linux as the kernel, it's like saying rotary engines
(the natural competitor to the cylinder style) are competing with Ford,
and if you don't, then there are a lot of different brand name Linuxen
(Linuces?) out here to choose from. Plus I don't think it's fair to
forget all the freely usable BSD variants out there. They could make
something with a BSD core but they can't force "customer lock-in".
</font></blockquote>
<blockquote><font color="#000066">They <EM>could</EM> "buy" Linux - in the sense of using it commercially -
but they wouldn't pay the price we charge (freedom for derivitive
works).
</font></blockquote>
<blockquote><font color="#000066">Of course since we have so many varieties - and any effort to mention
how un-glitzy and unready that Linux thingy is just causes more people
to notice it as a possibility - plus the fact that many Linux distros
are non commercial and all the parts and then some are easier to get
than your average blinkylight at Radio Shack, I have to agree with the
last. Look out for that "Palladium" chip trick they're trying to pull
though. It sounds just like the Clipper Chip of yesteryear.
-- Heather</font></blockquote>
<!-- end 19 -->
<!-- . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . -->
<HR WIDTH="40%" ALIGN="center">
<H3><IMG ALIGN=BOTTOM ALT="" SRC="../gx/lil2cent.gif">
<FONT COLOR="navy"></FONT></H3>
Mon, 3 Jun 2002 21:10:50 +0200
<BR>Lennart Benschop (<a href="mailto:linux-questions-only@ssc.com?cc=l.benschop2@chello.nl&subject=%20Re%3A%20%5BLG%2080%5D%202c%20Tips%20%2319">l.benschop2 from chello.nl</a>)
<P>
Did you look at the files ramdisk.txt and initrd.txt in the Documentation
subdirectory of the kernel source itself? It may be obvious, but many of your
questions seem to be answered here.
</P>
<P>
The <A HREF="http://www.slackware.org/">Slackware</A>-style ramdisk at startup (see file ramdisk.txt) is loaded by the
kernel from a device (almost always a floppy) where the offset can be
specified. This ramdisk remains the root file system throughout the lifetime
of the kernel. You can boot the kernel directly from a floppy (just dd the
image to <TT>/dev/fd0</TT>) without a boot loader and still use this type of ramdisk.
</P>
<P>
The initrd ramdisk is much more flexible, but you do need a real boot loader
to use it. It is loaded into memory by a boot loader. All Linux boot loaders
(LILO, LOADLIN, SYSLINUX and GRUB) can use this type of ramdisk. The file
<TT>/linuxrc</TT> inside the initrd ramdisk is the first program to be executed.
Linuxrc can do any of the following things:
</P>
<blockQuote><ul>
<LI>load additional modules (e.g. scsi host adapter drivers that the kernel
needs to access the hard disk)
<LI>prepare other file systems, e.g. on the hard disk or on different ram disk
devices (/dev/ram2)
<LI>temporarily mount other file systems (e.g to retrieve extra programs).
<LI>set the real root device (by writing to /proc/sys/kernel/real-root-dev)
</ul></blockQuote>
<P>
When linuxrc terminates, the real root device (possibly a different ramdisk on
<TT>/dev/ram2</TT>) will be mounted as root and <TT>/sbin/init</TT> will be run as usual. So
the initrd ramdisk will be the root file system only as long as <TT>/linuxrc</TT> is
running. Using this approach you can forget about the older type of startup
ramdisk.
</P>
<P>
Because it is loaded by the boot loader, an initrd ramdisk can be loaded from
the floppy image on an El Torrito bootable CD-ROM, while the older type of
startup ramdisk can't.
</P>
<P>
The kernel command line is passed to the kernel by the boot loader (e.g. LILO)
as a pointer to a string in memory. The kernel parses various arguments on
that command line for itself and can pass the rest as a command line to init.
</P>
<P>
Just some minor additions:
</P>
<blockQuote><ul>
<LI>I don't think that the boot loader passes the pernel command line as a
pointer (I think it's at a fixed location), but it _is_ a string in memory
that the kernel processes later.
<LI>The boot loader loads any initrd ramdisk into RAM using the BIOS disk device
(therefore it works from a disk image on a bootable CD-ROM) and places
the command line also in RAM. Next it jumps to the setup.S part of the
kernel From then on the boot loader's work is over.
<LI>The kernel moves itself, the command line and the initrd disk image around
in RAM, decompresses itself and initializes a lot of things.
<LI>If there is an initrd ramdisk, the kernel can gunzip it (if it is
compressed) and copies it to /dev/ram (internal ramdisk device). Next it
does the temporary root device trick that I have already explained.
</ul></blockQuote>
<P>
Further reading: kernel source tree:
</P>
<blockQuote><ul>
<LI>arch/i386/boot/bootsect.S (is only used when the kernel is booted directly
from a floppy, is skipped by LILO and other boot loaders).
<LI>arch/i386/boot/setup.S (real-mode initialization, entry point for LILO).
<LI>arch/i386/kernel/head.S (protected mode initialization).
<LI>anything in arch/i386/boot/compressed (see how the kernel decompresses
itself).
<LI>init/main.c initialization flow, including temporary initrd mount and
starting of init.
<LI>drivers/block/rd.c (ramdisk driver, also for initrd ramdisk, decompression
etc). Almost all code (including initialization) is shared between the
initrd and normal ramdisk.
</ul></blockQuote>
<P>
-- Lennart
</P>
<!-- end 19 -->
<!-- .~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~. -->
<P> <A NAME="tips/20"><HR WIDTH="75%" ALIGN="center"></A> <P>
<H3><IMG ALIGN=BOTTOM ALT="" SRC="../gx/lil2cent.gif">
<FONT COLOR="navy">Re: Making executables smaller</FONT></H3>
Mon, 3 Jun 2002 15:31:16 -0700
<BR>John M. Fisk (<a href="mailto:linux-questions-only@ssc.com?cc=&cc=John.Fisk@yale.edu&subject=%20Re%3A%20%5BLG%2080%5D%202c%20Tips%20%231">John.Fisk from yale.edu</a>)
<P>
Hello Gals and Guys,
</P>
<P>
I enjoyed reading the latest batch of 2 cent tips and thought I'd pass
along one more small bit of information:
</P>
<P><BLOCKQuote>
Besides using &quot;strip&quot; to reduce the size of an executable, if you're into
compiling from source you can use the "-Os" optimization, which will
optimize for size (should work with an respectably recent version of
GCC). For the ultimate in downsizing, you can also link your apps against
any of a number of libc derivatives. Check <A HREF="http://freshmeat.net"
>http://freshmeat.net</A> for the
latest versions of:
</BLOCKQuote></P>
<blockQuote><ul>
<LI>diet libc: <A HREF="http://www.fefe.de/dietlibc"
>http://www.fefe.de/dietlibc</A>
<br>this site also provides documentation and helpful links
<LI>uClibc: <A HREF="http://www.uclibc.org"
>http://www.uclibc.org</A>
<br>designed specifically for embedded systems; additional links avail.
</ul></blockQuote>
<P>
Several other similar projects are out there; these were the first to come
to mind. Thanks so much.
</P>
<P>
cheers,
<br>John
</P>
<!-- .~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~. -->
<P> <A NAME="tips/lj"><HR WIDTH="75%" ALIGN="center"></A> <P>
<H3><IMG ALIGN=BOTTOM ALT="" SRC="../gx/lil2cent.gif">
<FONT COLOR="navy">Linux Journal Weekly News Notes Tech Tips</FONT></H3>
<h4 align="center"><br>sending Microsoft Word documents
</h4>
<P>
If someone asks you for a file in Microsoft Word format, don't panic
or start to do something dumb, like dual-booting. Just convert the
file to HTML, do a cp file.html file.doc and send the ".doc" file.
Microsoft Word will automatically import it.
</P>
<HR width="10%" align="center">
<h4 align="center"><br>Keeping a persistent session as you log in and out from different terminals
</h4>
<P>
Here's the Ten-Second Guide to screen for people who just don't want
to type stuff over when they lose their net connection.
</P>
<blockQuote><ol>
<LI>ssh to the server you need to work on.
<LI>Type screen.
<LI>Do what you need to do. It will be inside a screen session.
</ol></blockQuote>
<P>
When your connection fails:
</P>
<blockQuote><ol>
<LI>ssh to the server.
<LI>Run screen -r to resume your session where you got cut off.
</ol></blockQuote>
<P>
Joy!
</P>
<HR width="10%" align="center">
<h4 align="center"><br>Outlook to Evolution
</h4>
<P>
Upgrading from Microsoft Outlook to Evolution? To free your address
book from Microsoft's proprietary format, just sync it to a Palm Pilot
then sync it back into Evolution. (If you have to borrow a friend's
Palm Pilot to do this, back it up first with pilot-xfer, then restore
when you're done.)
</P>
<P>
Source: Ari Jort, New York Linux Users Group
</P>
<HR width="10%" align="center">
<h4 align="center"><br>Mozilla port paranoia
</h4>
<P>
You've just hooked up a cool web-administered device; you type in the
device's IP address and port number, and Mozilla says, "Access to the
port number given has been disabled for security reasons." What?
</P>
<P>
Fix it in Mozilla's all.js configuration file, which probably lives in
usr/lib/mozilla/defaults/pref/all.js or somewhere like that. If the
banned devices are on ports 1080 and 31337, add the line:
</P>
<P><BLOCKQuote>
pref("network.security.ports.banned.override", "1080,31337");
</BLOCKQuote></P>
<P>
to the all.js file.
</P>
<HR width="10%" align="center">
<h4 align="center"><br>Renaming a file that has a special character in the name
</h4>
<P>
Help! I can't rename a file with a special character in its name!
</P>
<P>
If you have a file called important?file, and the ? is really some
character you can't figure out how to type, try this:
</P>
<P><CODE>
ls | grep important?file
</CODE></P>
<P>
Make the pattern after grep long enough that it matches only one file.
Then, when the above command matches only one file, go back up and
edit the command:
</P>
<P><CODE>
mv `ls | grep important?file` important-file
</CODE></P>
<P>
And you've renamed the file without ever figuring out its true name.
</P>
<HR width="10%" align="center">
<h4 align="center"><br>Have Ethernet cables, will travel
</h4>
<P>
The lightest, most compact way to be prepared to hook up to whatever
Ethernet connection you find is to carry one regular cable, one
crossover adapter and one RJ45 coupler.
</P>
<blockquote><pre> Plug Jack
Straight none, or coupler + straight cable
straight cable
Crossover coupler + crossover adapter +
crossover adapter + straight cable
straight cable
</pre></blockquote>
<!-- end 20 -->
<P> <hr> </p>
<!-- *** BEGIN copyright *** -->
<H5 align="center">This page edited and maintained by the Editors
of <I>Linux Gazette</I>
<a href="http://www.linuxgazette.com/copying.html"
>Copyright &copy;</a> 2002
<BR>Published in issue 80 of <I>Linux Gazette</I> July 2002</H5>
<H6 ALIGN="center">HTML script maintained by
<A HREF="mailto:star@starshine.org">Heather Stern</a> of
Starshine Technical Services,
<A HREF="http://www.starshine.org/">http://www.starshine.org/</A>
</H6>
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<P> <hr> <P>
<!-- ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: -->
<center>
<H1><A NAME="answer">
<img src="../gx/dennis/qbubble.gif" alt="(?)"
border="0" align="middle">
<font color="#B03060">The Answer Gang</font>
<img src="../gx/dennis/bbubble.gif" alt="(!)"
border="0" align="middle">
</A></H1>
<BR>
<H4>By Jim Dennis, Ben Okopnik, Dan Wilder, Breen, Chris, and...
(<a href="tag/bios.html">meet the Gang</a>) ...
the Editors of Linux Gazette...
and You!
<br>Send questions (or interesting answers) to
The Answer Gang
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</H4>
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<!-- ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: -->
<p><hr><p>
<H3>Contents:</H3>
<dl>
<dt><a href="#tag/greeting"
><strong>&para;: Greetings From Heather Stern</strong></A></dl>
<DL>
<!-- index_text begins -->
<dt><A HREF="#tag/1"
><img src="../gx/dennis/qbub.gif" height="28" width="50"
alt="(?)" border="0"
><strong>How to Investigate a System Lockup</strong></a>
<dt><A HREF="#tag/2"
><img src="../gx/dennis/qbub.gif" height="28" width="50"
alt="(?)" border="0"
><strong>How to send email without a DNS server?</strong></a>
<dt><A HREF="#tag/3"
><img src="../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" height="28" width="50"
alt="(!)" border="0"
><strong>Starting many X sessions</strong></a>
<dt><A HREF="#tag/4"
><img src="../gx/dennis/qbub.gif" height="28" width="50"
alt="(?)" border="0"
><strong>Playing CD Music Digital Output</strong></a>
<dt><A HREF="#tag/5"
><img src="../gx/dennis/qbub.gif" height="28" width="50"
alt="(?)" border="0"
><strong>need help! Mandrake 8.1 fd0 unknown device, and downloading pictures from a digital camera</strong></a>
<dt><A HREF="#tag/6"
><img src="../gx/dennis/qbub.gif" height="28" width="50"
alt="(?)" border="0"
><strong>How to optimize space usage for multiple files on multiple CDs</strong></a>
<dt><A HREF="#tag/7"
><img src="../gx/dennis/qbub.gif" height="28" width="50"
alt="(?)" border="0"
><strong>/dev/scd0 is not a valid block device?</strong></a>
<!-- index_text ends -->
</DL>
<!-- .~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~. -->
<A NAME="tag/greeting"><HR WIDTH="75%" ALIGN="center"></A>
<H3 align="left"><img src="../gx/dennis/hbubble.gif"
height="50" width="60" alt="(&para;) " border="0"
>Greetings from Heather Stern</H3>
<!-- begin hgreeting -->
<p><strong>The Answer Gang's Editor Gal
</strong></p>
<blockQuote>
Hello all, and welcome once more to the lively world of The Answer Gang.
I'd like to hand out a special thank you to all the readers who
definitely read the posting guidelines before asking the Gang their
question. It's helped my work a lot.
</blockQuote>
<blockQuote>
Almost the only spam that escapes Dan's traps anymore are those dratted
conman scams telling me about how their late uncle <TT>/</TT> business partner
<TT>/</TT> revered general or whatever left them a quadzillion dollars <TT>/</TT> francs
or whatever and they can't get at any of it unless you as a friend /
distant relative <TT>/</TT> confidant <TT>/</TT> conveniently uninvolved sucker open your
bank account to help them launder it. Whereupon I presume they take you
to the laundry, raid all your spare quarters and leave you in the giant
tumble-dryer with no socks. So that's the Peeve of the month. Although
I suppose I should mention that the useless use of HTML attachments
fought really hard for second place. The Klez worm gets a distant third
since infected people usually figure it out and fix themselves.
</blockQuote>
<blockQuote>
So I didn't get very far in my personal project of the month this time.
After a foray into the space for some clients of mine, I'm starting to
seriously look into decent IMAP setups.
<A HREF="http://www.washington.edu/imap"
>UW IMAP</A>
is easy to install,
sort of like saying a tricycle is easy to drive. Any kid can do it but
it just was never designed for anything beyond being the reference
implementation for IMAP as far as I can tell. Beyond that it's somewhat
well known for being full of bugs, and their attitude towards client
side problems in the FAQ feels laced with a lot of "your client sucks,
use pine."
<A HREF="http://asg.web.cmu.edu/cyrus"
>Cyrus</A>
I glanced at and it seems sturdy enough, I guess. But the clients asked
after <A HREF="http://www.inter7.com/courierimap"
>Courier-IMAP</A>. Hmmm,
nice.
<IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/smily.gif" ALT=":)"
height="24" width="20" align="middle"> About ten times as fast as UW. Just don't use the MTA that
comes with it. Ugh, whatta mess. Maybe in a year or two you'll be
reading this and it will have grown up. We went back to sendmail.
If there are any other IMAP daemons
to speak of I couldn't find them all that quickly. Courier is
sufficiently cool and maildir delivery makes people happy for other
reasons.
</blockQuote>
<blockQuote>
Did I remember to say IMAP is cool? As I've been going to more
conferences with less techie features available, the idea of having my
mail on the server be willing to deal with two workstations and a laptop
carrying the same mail around doesn't sound half bad at all. And
most people can't take the other tactic that I've done, which is to get
involved with setting up internet lounge space
<IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/smily.gif" ALT=":)"
height="24" width="20" align="middle">
</blockQuote>
<blockQuote>
Which reminds me, the
<A HREF="http://www.conjose.org"
>ConJos&eacute;</A>, the 60th World Science Fiction Convention
is coming up at the end of August, in my area, and I expect it'll be a
lot of fun. I can tell you there's gonna be some Linux around.
<IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/smily.gif" ALT=";P"
height="24" width="20" align="middle">
</blockQuote>
<blockQuote>
<A HREF="http://www.linuxworldexpo.com"
>Linux World Expo</A> will be in my area
in August also. WIth any luck I'll get to meet some more members of
the Answer Gang. Group photo, anyone?
</blockQuote>
<blockQuote>
Anyways, back to IMAP. It turns out there are email specific
appliances out there running Linux and Cyrus under the hood.
Not only nice but I don't have to tinker?
Oboy! To be fair I'm good friends with the folks over at
<A HREF="http://www.imap-partners.net"
>IMAP Partners</A>
and the people who make
the appliances they use host the system for my local sysadmins group,
<A HREF="http://www.baylisa.org"
>BayLISA</A>.
</blockQuote>
<blockQuote>
But I didn't get as far along as I wanted in my great project to
determine which IMAP clients suck the least. Our loyal readers may
recall that I have a rather cynical opinion about the usefulness of
so-called "productivity' software and and regardless of my deep
dependence on email, MUAs (mail user agents) are no exception. So
I will probably have an article about that next month. Contributions
welcome, of course.
</blockQuote>
<blockQuote>
With that, it's time for a picnic. This year's Independence Day issue
is full of some juicy bits just waiting for you to throw some CDs on
the roaster. Me, I'll be spending a happy 4th of July hanging out with
my family down in L.A.
</blockQuote>
<!-- end hgreeting -->
<!-- .~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~. -->
<A NAME="tag/1"><HR WIDTH="75%" ALIGN="center"></A>
<!-- begin 1 -->
<H3 align="left"><img src="../gx/dennis/qbubble.gif"
height="50" width="60" alt="(?) " border="0"
>How to Investigate a System Lockup</H3>
<p><strong>From Chris Gianakopoulos
</strong></p>
<p align="right"><strong>Answered By Didier Heyden, Breen Mullins, Ben Okopnik, Jim Dennis, John Karns
<br>with tidbits by Robos, Heather Stern
</strong></p>
<P><STRONG>
Hi Gang,
</STRONG></P>
<blockQuote>
<IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" ALT="(!)"
HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
> [Didier]
Hello, Chris!
</blockQuote>
<blockQuote>
<IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" ALT="(!)"
HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
> [Robos]
Hi
</blockQuote>
<P><STRONG>
<IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/qbub.gif" ALT="(?)"
HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
>
I was running X tonight (with the ICEWM window manager), I had a couple of
xterms running (one with kermit running), and I was using Acrobat Reader
Version 4.0.
</STRONG></P>
<P><STRONG>
As I was making a mouse movement, the my console locked up.
</STRONG></P>
<blockQuote>
<IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" ALT="(!)"
HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
> [Robos]
Don't you have to reboot when you make a mouse-movement? Oh, wait,
that's that other thing that claims to be an os...
<IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/smily.gif" ALT=";-)"
height="24" width="20" align="middle">
</blockQuote>
<blockquote><em><font color="#000066">No less than 4 other gang members chimed in with some version of a
sigblock fortune cookie about this.
-- Heather</font></em></blockquote>
<P><STRONG>
<IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/qbub.gif" ALT="(?)"
HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
>
I could not even
get a response, via the Ethernet, when trying to ping my crippled Linux
system.
</STRONG></P>
<P><STRONG>
Which log files could I look at to try to determine what the impending
disaster could have been? I have included the tail portion of
<TT>/var/log/messages.</TT> I have included extra stuff, I suspect. I'm curious
what those entries that say "MARK" mean. Could that be related to my
lockup?
</STRONG></P>
<blockQuote>
<IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" ALT="(!)"
HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
> [Didier]
Nope. From the `syslogd' man page:
</blockQuote>
<blockquote><pre> -m interval
The syslogd logs a mark timestamp regularly. The
default interval between two -- MARK -- lines is 20
minutes. This can be changed with this option.
</pre></blockquote>
<blockQuote>
(However it seems that this feature is disabled in some versions of the
syslog daemon -- maybe through a compile-time option?).
</blockQuote>
<P><STRONG>
<IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/qbub.gif" ALT="(?)"
HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
>
Okay. I'll investigate other stuff.
</STRONG></P>
<blockQuote>
<IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" ALT="(!)"
HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
> [Breen]
At least on <A HREF="http://www.redhat.com/">Red Hat</A> it's through a run-time argument.
</blockQuote>
<blockQuote>
The init script for syslogd reads <TT>/etc/sysconfig/syslog</TT> for its
arguments:
</blockQuote>
<blockquote><pre># Options to syslogd
# -m 0 disables 'MARK' messages.
# -r enables logging from remote machines
# -x disables DNS lookups on messages recieved with -r
# See syslogd(8) for more details
SYSLOGD_OPTIONS="-m 0 -r -x"
</pre></blockquote>
<blockQuote>
"-m 0"
is the default; I added
"-r -x"
on this machine.
</blockQuote>
<blockQuote>
<IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" ALT="(!)"
HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
> [Didier]
Fairly redhat-ish, indeed. My own system is based on an antediluvian
RH 5.2 distro. I'm usually not too impatient to upgrade with a full new
distro install (preferring recompiling packages from source -- RPM'ed
or not -- iff I can't no longer avoid it). Believe it or not, I haven't
drowned yet in the resulting mess
<IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/smily.gif" ALT=":)"
height="24" width="20" align="middle">
</blockQuote>
<blockQuote>
By that time they just had no such configuration file, and the syslog
daemon was run without <EM>any</EM> argument by default. But somehow the `--
MARK --' feature was... erm, is still in my case... <EM>totally</EM> disabled:
whatever -m xx option I try no timestamp appears in the logs.
</blockQuote>
<blockQuote>
<IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" ALT="(!)"
HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
> [JimD]
Actually I think this was a bug. I reported it to the upstream
maintainer a few years ago (when I was running RH5.2) and he pointed
me to the updated version that worked.
</blockQuote>
<blockQuote>
Naturally I'd advise that you simply fetch the latest version
(in source form if you don't want to get trapped in RPM dependency
upgrade hell) and build/install that.
</blockQuote>
<blockQuote>
<IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" ALT="(!)"
HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
> [Didier]
Thank you very much for your suggestions, Jim. Now I know what package
to download next.
</blockQuote>
<blockQuote>
Regarding the RPM dependency hell, IIRC I once experienced core dumps
from the `rpm' program itself after having fiddled with the `--nodeps'
option (I was supposed to know what I was doing
<IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/smily.gif" ALT=":)"
height="24" width="20" align="middle"> The problem was
(hopefully) fixed with this simple command:
</blockQuote>
<blockQuote><CODE>
rpm --rebuilddb
</CODE></blockQuote>
<blockQuote>
I'm not sure it would have worked in all situations, though. And
unfortunately I don't remember the exact version that was then installed
on my system. In fact this has most probably been fixed <EM>ages</EM> ago...
</blockQuote>
<blockQuote>
<IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" ALT="(!)"
HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
> [Didier]
Note that I also have a couple of problems with the associated `klogd'
daemon, as indicated by the last two lines of the following excerpt:
</blockQuote>
<blockquote><pre>Jun 4 14:13:56 wallace kernel: klogd 1.3-3, log source = /proc/kmsg started.
Jun 4 14:13:57 wallace kernel: Loaded 15309 symbols from /boot/System.map.
Jun 4 14:13:57 wallace kernel: Symbols match kernel version 2.4.17.
Jun 4 14:13:57 wallace kernel: Error seeking in /dev/kmem
Jun 4 14:13:57 wallace kernel: Error adding kernel module table entry.
</pre></blockquote>
<blockQuote>
The other weird thing is that that ancient kernel log daemon cannot be
stopped by anything but a plain SIGKILL. Doesn't prevent me from having
nice dreams, however.
</blockQuote>
<blockQuote>
<IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" ALT="(!)"
HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
> [Didier]
Unfortunately, when one experiences such brutal lockups, the logs are
often not of much use: the whole system freezes before the daemon is
given a chance to write anything in them -- even if some kernel oops
actually occurred. The only way to see this happening would be to have
the kernel writing directly to the console (assuming you're currently
viewing the console output, but it won't do in a X session unless,
maybe, console output has been redirected to a serial port at boot
time?)
</blockQuote>
<blockQuote>
Upgrading your kernel might help, provided the lockup was not caused
by some hardware (RAM?) failure.
</blockQuote>
<blockQuote>
<IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" ALT="(!)"
HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
> [Ben]
That's pretty much what I would suspect - hardware. The only times I've
seen Linux hang has been hardware-related stuff. In one very annoying
case, my laptop would hang for a number of seconds, several times per
day - and I had to live with it, because the PCMCIA card causing it was
my wireless modem which was on 24x7. AFAICT, it took a huge chunk of CPU
when it switched channels (sometimes the CPU load meter would actually
catch the spike before everything froze); fortunately, it didn't do that
very often.
</blockQuote>
<blockQuote>
<IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" ALT="(!)"
HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
> [Didier]
Another example is an IDE cd-rom or cd-writer device buggy enough to
suck up every possible CPU clock cycle whenever it fails to read or
burn the medium, the system thus becoming almost unusable -- especially
in the case where the application which makes use of it is run with a
static real-time priority (cf. `cdrecord'). Actually I've never figured
out whether some ill-written code in the IDE <TT>/</TT> IDE-SCSI driver could be
held responsible for such a misbehavior or if it was simply inevitable
on this kind of architecture.
</blockQuote>
<blockQuote>
Real-time constraints in a multi-tasking operating system are often
very difficult to deal with anyway.
</blockQuote>
<blockQuote>
<IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" ALT="(!)"
HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
> [Ben]
&lt;sigh&gt; Hardware stuff like PCMCIA has root-level access -
has to, to access privileged ports, etc. - and unfortunately I know of
no way to mitigate that. I wish there was a "nice" utility for
hardware...
</blockQuote>
<blockquote><IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" ALT="(!)"
HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
> [Heather] ACPI might like to be that, someday.
</blockquote>
<blockQuote>
<IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" ALT="(!)"
HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
> [Didier]
I once read that running a shell with a posix real-time scheduling
policy could help in some situations. Unfortunately I've never heard
either of a `nice'-like utility which could be used to launch `bash',
`csh', etc. this way. I assume that in fact you must have a special
version of your favorite shell, containing direct calls to
<TT>sched_setscheduler()</TT>, in order to do that -- but I'm not sure.
</blockQuote>
<P><STRONG>
<IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/qbub.gif" ALT="(?)"
HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
>
RAM is always a possibility. The system seems awful reliable, though.
Maybe it IS time to upgrade to a new distro just for the fun of it.
I say distro rather than kernel so that I can use XFree86 version 4.x. My
friends at work keep offering <A HREF="http://www.suse.com/">SuSE</A> 8.0. I believe that the S3 Trio64v+ is
supported, so nothing is really stopping me from going to the new distro.
</STRONG></P>
<P><STRONG>
I am guessing that it is related to whatever applications might have been
running under X in combination with Acrobat (if not a hardware problem).
Dynamic systems are always the most difficult to troubleshoot.
</STRONG></P>
<p align="center">See attached <tt><a href="misc/tag/chrisg.logfile.txt">chrisg.logfile.txt</a></tt></p>
<blockQuote>
<IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" ALT="(!)"
HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
> [John]
Continuing on the kernel side of the issue, a thread on a related subject
just came up on a LUG list I'm on:
</blockQuote>
<TABLE WIDTH="95%" BORDER="1" BGCOLOR="#FFFFCC"><TR><TD>
<p align="center">...............</p>
<blockQuote><BLOCKQuote>
Various applications find System.map themselves, based on a standardized
search path and name scheme. The non-specific name version "System.map"
is the last taken, first it tries to find it as:
System.map-${uname -r}
</BLOCKQuote></blockQuote>
<blockQuote>
Now if you have "System.map", and multiple kernels, without specifically
named System.map files, then only one boot kernel will find the right
System.map. Not everything needs kernel symbols to work right, but some
do, those are the ones that will have problems. Perhaps even with
different kernels, the symbol search scheme will still find the right
place for the symbol it needs (I'm not sure what scheme it uses, e.g.,
it might be a simple offset). Lilo itself does not have any knowledge of
System.map, as far as I know (I'm not 100% certain, but probably about
90% certain). Now one place that is searched is the standard kernel
build source location, <TT>/usr/src/linux/</TT> (or maybe <TT>/usr/src/linux-2.4/</TT> in
some cases), and so if you install from that, and do not alter
System.map in that directory, then you symbols should be resolved until
you build a new kernel and overwrite the old one.
</blockQuote><p align="center">...............</p>
</TD></TR></TABLE>
<P><STRONG>
<IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/qbub.gif" ALT="(?)"
HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
>
Thank you all (there are so many names to list!) for your quick responses
to my question. I'm gonna do some detective work. My perception was that
the system locked up. The only thing that I really know is that the console
and the network did not respond. I got two serial ports on my system. I
dedicate one to the modem, and I use the other for kermitting around. I
think that I am going to use my nonmodem serial port for a login session.
Would it not be funny if the system was still running and only my network
stuff failed as a result of an X lockup?
</STRONG></P>
<P><STRONG>
That would seem odd, though. Since I was running X via my local console
(you know -- with the keyboard and display), I would expect Unix domain
sockets to be used, thus, bypassing TCP (the network stream stuff).
</STRONG></P>
<P><STRONG>
You all gave me lots of good ideas, and thanks much again. This email
response is like a broadcast thanks to all of you!
</STRONG></P>
<!-- end 1 -->
<!-- .~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~. -->
<A NAME="tag/2"><HR WIDTH="75%" ALIGN="center"></A>
<!-- begin 2 -->
<H3 align="left"><img src="../gx/dennis/qbubble.gif"
height="50" width="60" alt="(?) " border="0"
>How to send email without a DNS server?</H3>
<p><strong>From Faber Fedor
</strong></p>
<p align="right"><strong>Answered By John Karns, Mike "Iron" Orr, Mike Martin, Heather Stern, Ben Okopnik
</strong></p>
<P><STRONG>
Hi Gang!
</STRONG></P>
<P><STRONG>
A client of mine is discovering the Joy That Is Linux. He recently
asked me if it was possible to send email from applications (written in
JBASE, a PICK shell that runs on Linux). I mentioned that you could do
this:
</STRONG></P>
<P><STRONG><CODE>
mail -s "Some Subject" user1@domain.com &lt; output_from_app
</CODE></STRONG></P>
<P><STRONG>
and he was impressed. He has since come up with several time- and
resource-savings applications of that simple redirection to the mail
command.
</STRONG></P>
<P><STRONG>
He has raised an intersting (to me) question and although I can come up
with two solutions, I'm looking for a better one. Also, it's generated
a question that I can't answer, hence this posting.
</STRONG></P>
<P><STRONG>
The question is: How do you send mail between two linux boxen if there
is no DNS server from which to query for an MX record?
</STRONG></P>
<P><STRONG>
Now, I'm not asking for the impossible here. The two boxen run
sendmail/postfix and they are on the same internal network (the sender
is 10.10.10.1 and the receiver is 10.10.10.2).
</STRONG></P>
<P><STRONG>
I could tell him to install a DNS server, which he would do (I love
clients that listen to me
<IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/smily.gif" ALT=":-)"
height="24" width="20" align="middle"> but there should be a simpler solution.
We could send the email to a local user on .1 and fetchmail the mail
from .2, but that's too much of a kludge for my taste.
</STRONG></P>
<P><STRONG>
I've been through the HOWTOS and google and didn't find anything
applicable (at this point Ben walks in, donning his mirrored
sunglasses, executes a google search using 1.5 words (without quotes),
finds The Canonical Page that answers this question and makes me look
like a fool (again
<IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/smily.gif" ALT=":-)"
height="24" width="20" align="middle">).
</STRONG></P>
<P><STRONG>
Ideas?
</STRONG></P>
<blockQuote>
<IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" ALT="(!)"
HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
> [Ben]
&lt;mock growl&gt; Don't <EM>do</EM> that, Faber; the fact that one of us has the
answer <em> _does not</em> make the rest of us look like fools. Unproductive
attitude there, sir. Me, I'm always happy when I see one of the other
Gangsters come up with an answer to something I don't know (how d'you
think I <EM>got</EM> this smart?
<IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/smily.gif" ALT=":)"
height="24" width="20" align="middle"> - I get to learn stuff, which is a very
good thing indeed.
</blockQuote>
<blockquote><IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" ALT="(!)"
HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
> [Heather] half a search word?
<IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/smily.gif" ALT=":)"
height="24" width="20" align="middle">
</blockquote>
<blockQuote>
<IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" ALT="(!)"
HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
> [Iron]
mail remote_user@10.10.10.2
</blockQuote>
<blockQuote>
Some mail transfer agents may balk at it, but I've found it to work
most of the time.
</blockQuote>
<blockquote><IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" ALT="(!)"
HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
> [Heather] Works even better if the IP address is in brackets:
remote_user@[10.10.10.2]
</blockquote>
<blockQuote>
<IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" ALT="(!)"
HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
> [Mike]
Also, you can put the domain names in the poor man's DNS: <TT>/etc/hosts.</TT>
</blockQuote>
<blockQuote>
<IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" ALT="(!)"
HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
> [Mike Martin]
Assuming that the network is small with no server (as implied)
<TT>/etc/hosts</TT> is the right idea
</blockQuote>
<blockQuote>
If you are sending externally you would need a DNS either locally or
via the isp anyway
</blockQuote>
<blockQuote>
<IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" ALT="(!)"
HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
> [Ben]
"<TT>/etc/hosts</TT>", or maybe even a lightweight local (caching?) DNS. I'm
coming to really like PDNSD; painless to install, dirt-simple to set up.
Or, you could always use "ssmtp" to rotate the mail off the local hosts
to the actual MTA, since it's local; that's my solution (farm the job
out to the guy who's good at it.)
</blockQuote>
<blockquote><IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" ALT="(!)"
HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
> [Heather] Yes, you can use /etc/hosts, but it can't do an MX record lookup. Your
smtp daemon will need some
tweaking. In sendmail you can tell it that transport for a given named host
will go through an explicit IP address host, and
then it would never try an MX lookup, just use the burned in route.
</blockquote>
<blockQuote>
<IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" ALT="(!)"
HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
> [John]
Depending on the distro, distro version, and MTA you're using ...
</blockQuote>
<blockQuote>
Using <A HREF="http://www.suse.com/">SuSE</A> 7.x &amp; sendmail, and a psuedodomain I use, I've come up with the
following solution to that problem:
</blockQuote>
<blockQuote><CODE>
edit /etc/mailertable to add entries like the following
</CODE></blockQuote>
<blockquote><pre>mylinuxServer1.my.domain smtp:mylinuxServer1.my.domain
mylinuxServer2.my.domain smtp:mylinuxServer2.my.domain
</pre></blockquote>
<blockQuote>
I don't have DNS setup, as the servers are isolated, but sendmail via
dialup. I do have the hostnames listed in the hosts file on each server
though. In this way, any mail addressed to user@mylinuxServer1.my.domain
only goes out when connected to that server.
</blockQuote>
<blockquote><IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" ALT="(!)"
HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
> [Heather] The postfix equivalent to that is /etc/postfix/transports, although
that's actually mentioned in /etc/postfix/main.cf to activate it, so you
could name the file anything you like.
</blockquote>
<blockquote>You can't use nullmailer for these even if it's only two boxes, because
that won't accept mail for local deliveries. You could keep all the mail
on only one of 'em and use nullmailer on the rest of the machines though.
At that point the machine becomes a very tiny server and also needs to run
a pop or IMAP daemon to allow mail pickup. At which point you may as well
also set up a dummy local DNS, maybe for a silly domain name that won't be
used by the outside world because there are no root servers for it, like
fabershouse.local -- which would serve A and MX records for say...
livingroom.fabershouse.local, den.fabershouse.local, etc.
</blockquote>
<blockquote>You could skip mail and drop notes in a samba share at each other, or
ssh in and share a kibitz session using your favorite text editor. Which
means somebody becomes a server but may bother people a lot less.
</blockquote>
<!-- end 2 -->
<!-- .~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~. -->
<A NAME="tag/3"><HR WIDTH="75%" ALIGN="center"></A>
<!-- begin 3 -->
<H3 align="left"><img src="../gx/dennis/bbubble.gif"
height="50" width="60" alt="(!) " border="0"
>Starting many X sessions</H3>
<p align="right"><strong>Answered By Ashwin M, Heather Stern, Jay R. Ashworth, Chris Gianakopoulos, Robos
</strong></p>
<blockQuote>
<IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" ALT="(!)"
HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
> [Ashwin]
Hi,
</blockQuote>
<blockQuote>
I am a relative newbie to Linux, hence this tip may be common or may
have been already published.
</blockQuote>
<blockquote><IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" ALT="(!)"
HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
> [Heather] This is a particularly clear description of it, and the thread turned
a curious direction as well. Welcome to the pages of The Answer Gang,
Ashwin.
</blockquote>
<blockQuote>
<IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" ALT="(!)"
HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
> [Ashwin]
Yes! You can have more than one X session running at the <em> _same</em> time! By
default your X session will be running on virtual terminal 7 (that is
why you use Ctrl-Alt-F7 to get to it).
</blockQuote>
<blockQuote>
To start a new X session get to a terminal session (F1 - F6) and type
"startx -- :1". A new X session starts up. Now to go back to the older X
session, use Ctrl-Alt-F7. For the new X session use Ctrl-Alt-F8.
</blockQuote>
<blockQuote>
(For more X sessions use the next numbers after 1 like 2,3 and so on.
They don't have to be in order like 1 next 2 and so on. No matter what
number you use here the Ctrl-Alt-Fx number will be assigned the next
available number after 7)
</blockQuote>
<blockquote><IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" ALT="(!)"
HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
> [Heather] Strictly speaking, the first available open terminal; on most major
distro setups that's 7, after your 6th text console, but if you're an
oddball like me who uses enough text consoles that you set up, say, 10,
then it would show up on console 11 instead.
</blockquote>
<blockquote>Of course if you do that too, make sure Xdm or its cousins don't think they
are supposed to take a console used by a text getty.
</blockquote>
<blockQuote>
<IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" ALT="(!)"
HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
> [Ashwin]
Now, why would anyone need another X session? Some reasons could be -
</blockQuote>
<blockQuote><ul>
<!-- *) To use different window managers at the same time like -->
<LI>To use different window managers at the same time like
<!-- KDE and GNOME. -->
KDE and GNOME.
<!-- *) To run X sessions logged in as different users. -->
<LI>To run X sessions logged in as different users.
<!-- *) To try out things with the XFree86 system (like fonts and such) -->
<LI>To try out things with the XFree86 system (like fonts and such)
</ul></blockQuote>
<blockQuote>
You may think "why would I need this?". But, once you know this trick
you will find new ways to use it for your work
<IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/smily.gif" ALT=":-)"
height="24" width="20" align="middle">
</blockQuote>
<blockQuote>
Note:
I found this not to work on some (very few) systems with old video cards
and less VRAM.
</blockQuote>
<blockQuote>
thanks,
Ashwin
</blockQuote>
<blockQuote>
<IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" ALT="(!)"
HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
> [Chris G]
That's a cool tip. I just tried it out, and it works with Version 3.3.6 of
X.
</blockQuote>
<blockQuote>
<IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" ALT="(!)"
HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
> [Heather]
My favorite reasons to run multiple X sessions on the same machine are:
</blockQuote>
<blockQuote><ul>
<!-- *) Jim and I are both using the machine... so we want our own X session -->
<LI>Jim and I are both using the machine... so we want our own X session
<!-- each. Since we're running in different chroot spaces (for an -->
each. Since we're running in different chroot spaces (for an
<!-- experiment) on one of the machines around here that's kind of handy. -->
experiment) on one of the machines around here that's kind of handy.
<!-- *) to have different native bit depths, also for experiment. Happily -->
<LI>to have different native bit depths, also for experiment. Happily
<!-- getting to be rare, but there is occasionally software that is -->
getting to be rare, but there is occasionally software that is
<!-- happiest only at one color depth. If you're designing graphics -->
happiest only at one color depth. If you're designing graphics
<!-- for use at multiple color depths I swear this is the fastest way to -->
for use at multiple color depths I swear this is the fastest way to
<!-- tell which colors will wash out. -->
tell which colors will wash out.
</ul></blockQuote>
<blockQuote>
In the modern era you <EM>could</EM> also
use Xnest to provide the reduced depth to the stupid app, but it's
less confusing to do the above than to make sure you're running
something inside the nest.
</blockQuote>
<blockQuote>
Not that it's hard mind you - make the nest's first client an xterm with
a custom color fg and bg, then launch things you want in the nest from
the special xterm.
</blockQuote>
<P><STRONG>
<IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/qbub.gif" ALT="(?)"
HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
> [Robos]
Well, I knew this, but did you know that the keyboard and mouse are
bound to one? Meaning you can't - like I tried - run two xsessions on
two grafik cards and share the keyboard between them. This is only
possible if you use a ps/s keyboard and a usb version. I want to do
that, but I haven't got the usb keyboard yet that I would like: small
form factor (84 keys), english layout (I'm in germany) and usb...
</STRONG></P>
<blockQuote>
<IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" ALT="(!)"
HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
> [Jay]
You are <EM>supposed</EM> to be able to do that.
</blockQuote>
<blockQuote>
And indeed, a quick test proves that you can.
</blockQuote>
<blockQuote>
RH 7.1, and whichever X ships with that. I did Ctrl-Alt-F1 to a text
login, logged in as root, did 'startx -- :1', and was whisked over to
tty8, where I got a <A HREF="http://www.kde.org/">KDE</A> desktop as root (that being the default choice
on my laptop).
</blockQuote>
<blockQuote>
Ctrl-Alt-F7 switched me right back to the desktop I'm on (KDE under
KDM, logged in as myself), and I could C-A-F8 right back to the other
one; mouse and keyboard worked in both.
</blockQuote>
<blockQuote>
And indeed they should: X switches to a free vt before it binds the
hardware, and what it <EM>gets</EM> is the virtualization of the hardware that
it produced by the multi-console driver. It doesn't bind directly to
the hardware.
</blockQuote>
<P><STRONG>
<IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/qbub.gif" ALT="(?)"
HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
> [Robos]
Well, a misunderstanding and a wrong memory on my part (I run
memtest86 later on me, it always takes so long...). I meant that I
wanted to run two xservers on two graphic cards and have two keyboards
too. My motivation: Running quake3 and chatting with my pals in irc at
the same time. Thought about either two xservers or one xserver and
one mga framebuffer. But, as said, no usb keyboard yet.
</STRONG></P>
<blockQuote>
<IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" ALT="(!)"
HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
> [Jay]
What is <EM>hard</EM> is having two X servers on different physical display
adapters <EM>with separate keyboards</EM>. Hard, but often very useful.
</blockQuote>
<P><STRONG>
<IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/qbub.gif" ALT="(?)"
HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
> [Robos]
And cheaper than two computers, not to mention the noise reduction.
</STRONG></P>
<blockquote><IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" ALT="(!)"
HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
> [Heather] While I had interpreted this confusion as wanting both X servers to
listen to the keystrokes in tandem, implying that they'd both be
grabbing keyboard events from the same pool. Which given his usage
example, of course is not what you'd want
<IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/smily.gif" ALT=";)"
height="24" width="20" align="middle"> I could see some
vague reason why somebody might want to do it (test the same app on two
video cards at once) and I can certainly imagine the USB model of how
devices work being much better for handling it.
</blockquote>
<blockquote>X 4 lets you designate entirely different screen layouts to be stored
in its config file, and you can specify which one to use by passing
-layout "layout[1]" (or whatever ID you named it) down to X. Of
course your usual methods of starting X may try to protect you from
doing this, but with startx it's pretty easy:
startx -- -layout secondhead :2
</blockquote>
<blockquote>With X 3.3.x you probably have to just keep seperate config files.
</blockquote>
<blockquote>If anyone out there is crazy enough to be trying this, let us know
how it works out for you. And then there's always the Linux
Terminal Server Project:
<A HREF="http://www.ltsp.org"
>http://www.ltsp.org</A>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>Or better yet the K-12 Linux Terminal Server Project:
<A HREF="http://k12ltsp.org/contents.html"
>http://k12ltsp.org/contents.html</A>
</blockquote>
<!-- end 3 -->
<!-- .~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~. -->
<A NAME="tag/4"><HR WIDTH="75%" ALIGN="center"></A>
<!-- begin 4 -->
<H3 align="left"><img src="../gx/dennis/qbubble.gif"
height="50" width="60" alt="(?) " border="0"
>Playing CD Music Digital Output</H3>
<p><strong>Questions From Bill Parks, Mithra
</strong></p>
<p align="right"><strong>Answered By Lennart Benschop, Dave Maxwell, Serkan Akdag, Rob McMeekin, Robos
</strong></p>
<blockquote><em><font color="#000066">This thread is in response to
<a href="../issue79/lg_mail.html#wanted/2">Issue 79, Help Wanted #2</a>
and all of these people sent in Tips. I'm sure there's really at least
a quarter's worth here; that'd be Two Bits instead of Two Cents
<IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/smily.gif" ALT=":)"
height="24" width="20" align="middle">
-- Heather</font></em></blockquote>
<P><STRONG>
<IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/qbub.gif" ALT="(?)"
HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
>
I purchased an eMachine to run Linux on. It came with (sorry) XP which I
used to check out the hardware. It plays music CD's fine but uses digital
data over the IDE buss rather than a cable from the CD drive to the sound
input.
</STRONG></P>
<P><STRONG>
Loaded <A HREF="http://www.redhat.com/">Red Hat</A> 7.3 and it plays sounds fine but it won't play music
CD's...the player just runs and the CD spins along.
</STRONG></P>
<P><STRONG>
How do I configure the CD/sound system to pick up the digital sound data on
the IDE buss to play the music?
</STRONG></P>
<P><STRONG>
Thank You,
Bill Parks
</STRONG></P>
<blockQuote>
<IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" ALT="(!)"
HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
> [Lennart]
Linux does have a program that can play a CD by reading the digital data over
the IDE bus, it's cdda2wav, included with most Linux distributions.
</blockQuote>
<blockQuote><CODE>
cdda2wav -D /dev/cdrom -t 1 -eN
</CODE></blockQuote>
<blockQuote>
will play track 1, if the <A HREF="http://www.kde.org/">KDE</A> sound system isn't keeping <TT>/dev/dsp</TT> busy. The
-eN options cause cdda2wav to echo the data to the soundcard and not write
the ridded data to a file.
</blockQuote>
<blockQuote>
You can also try to connect an analog cable between the CD-ROM drive and the
sound cards, as most PC's have.
</blockQuote>
<blockQuote>
<IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" ALT="(!)"
HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
> [Dave]
There is a plugin for XMMS that does this. It can be downloaded at
</blockQuote>
<blockQuote>
<A HREF="ftp://mud.stack.nl/pub/OuterSpace/willem"
>ftp://mud.stack.nl/pub/OuterSpace/willem</A>
</blockQuote>
<blockQuote>
The version numbers are a little confusing. The latest version is:
</blockQuote>
<blockQuote><BLOCKQuote>
xmms-cdread-0.14a.tar.gz
</BLOCKQuote></blockQuote>
<blockQuote>
The one labeled 0.9a is not it. XMMS comes with a cd player plugin that is
supposed to do this but it didn't work for me. To play a cd, start XMMS and
open your <TT>/dev/cdrom</TT> device or whichever device the cdrom drive actually is.
I'm currently playing a cd from a drive without it's audio cable so I suppose
that means it works
<IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/smily.gif" ALT=";-)"
height="24" width="20" align="middle">. Come to think of it, if you add an audio cable from
your cd to your sound card then the player you attempted to use will work as
well. The audio from this plugin will be cleaner as it passes through one
less analog stage.
</blockQuote>
<blockQuote>
Another nice thing about this plugin is it will pull title data from Freedb
and let you play individual tracks by name. The stock plugin won't do this.
</blockQuote>
<blockQuote>
Oh yeah! Be sure to disable the stock plugin before attempting to use this
one. Right click on XMMS and choose Preferences.
</blockQuote>
<blockQuote>
<IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" ALT="(!)"
HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
> [Serkan]
Hello, You will need to enable the "Enable Digital Sound" from one of
the configuration options of KDE and/or Gnome. There is an option like
that somewhere but I can't remember but I am sure its in X and not the
console. Also, you could type audio:/ at the KDE browser to view your
CD-Player contents and open a multimedia player like XMMS and drag the
files in the browser to the playlist of XMMS and play that way. It
should work.
</blockQuote>
<blockQuote>
<IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" ALT="(!)"
HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
> [Rob]
Hello. I have an IDE CD-ROM drive and an IDE CD-RW
drive. The CD-ROM has audio cables attatched to the
Sound Card while the CD-RW does not. The CD-RW would
not play compact discs until I configured it for
writing (enable SCSI-Emulation). I'm not an expert. I
don't know if this is supposed to be the case. It
could just be a fluke, but it worked for me.
</blockQuote>
<HR width="10%" align="left">
<blockquote><em><font color="#000066">And, since someone may also want to play other sorts of
fun noise with their player, and most easily find this thread
instead...
-- Heather</font></em></blockquote>
<P><STRONG>
<IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/qbub.gif" ALT="(?)"
HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
> [Mithra]
</STRONG></P>
<P><STRONG>
Hai,
</STRONG></P>
<P><STRONG>
I use <A HREF="http://www.caldera.com/">Caldera</A> Linux . i Would like to watch movies in my syatem.
But There is no s/w that would play .Dat file for me.
Can any one suggest me a downloadable s/w that can Play
.dat files.
</STRONG></P>
<blockQuote>
<IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" ALT="(!)"
HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
> [Robos]
Try mplayer, it can do this. Url is <A HREF="http://www.mplayerhq.hu"
>http://www.mplayerhq.hu</A>.
</blockQuote>
<!-- end 4 -->
<!-- .~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~. -->
<A NAME="tag/5"><HR WIDTH="75%" ALIGN="center"></A>
<!-- begin 5 -->
<H3 align="left"><img src="../gx/dennis/qbubble.gif"
height="50" width="60" alt="(?) " border="0"
>Mandrake 8.1 fd0 unknown device, and downloading pictures from a digital camera</H3>
<p><strong>Questions From F F, Mike "Iron" Orr
</strong></p>
<p align="right"><strong>Answered By Chris Gianakopoulos, Ben Okopnik, Mike "Iron" Orr, Heather Stern
</strong></p>
<P><STRONG>
I can't read the FLoPPY disk! both cd roms works properly, but there's no
way to access the flp!
(Yeah, it is! in the drive)
</STRONG></P>
<P><STRONG>
Does someone have the solution?
</STRONG></P>
<blockQuote>
<IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" ALT="(!)"
HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
> [Chris G]
I know that this question might sound silly, but, is your floppy drive one
of those LS-120 drives? If the answer is yes, then, it looks like an IDE
hard drive, and you mount it like a hard drive.
</blockQuote>
<blockQuote>
If it is a regular floppy, and you know that the floppy works, I would
check the bios settings on your computer and see if the floppy controller is
enabled.
</blockQuote>
<blockQuote>
Also type "dmesg" and see if a floppy controller has been detected. If the
floppy controller was detected, I would check the cables to the floppy drive
and its power connector.
</blockQuote>
<blockQuote>
The last resort -- swap the floppy drive with another known good drive.
</blockQuote>
<blockQuote>
I hope that this helps.
</blockQuote>
<blockQuote>
<IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" ALT="(!)"
HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
> [Ben]
I guess it depends on whether the querent is running Linux, Chris; if
so, he hasn't mentioned it. In case he is, a simple "mount" command
might help.
</blockQuote>
<blockQuote>
Hmm. I'm going to try something that might be useful here. The idea
behind this is "how would I phrase the querent's question if I was
having this kind of a problem?" The question, when properly phrased,
should contain the solution - as they very often do. Perhaps modeling
clueful behavior may be a useful thing...
</blockQuote>
<TABLE WIDTH="95%" BORDER="1" BGCOLOR="#FFFFCC"><TR><TD>
<p align="center">...............</p>
<blockQuote>
Dear Answer Gang,
</blockQuote>
<blockQuote>
I am having a problem reading a floppy that I made under Wind*ws; I'm
running Mandrake 8.1.
</blockQuote>
<blockQuote>
I can see the files on that same floppy under Wind*ws, using the same
machine and drive, so I know the hardware itself is OK.
</blockQuote>
<blockQuote>
I've issued a "mount -t vfat <TT>/dev/fd0</TT> <TT>/floppy</TT>" command to mount it
(there were no errors when I did), have made sure that I do have a
"<TT>/floppy</TT>" directory, and am using "ls -l <TT>/floppy</TT>" to check it;
</blockQuote>
<blockQuote>
(A reference to exactly which command coughed up the complaint
"fd0 unknown device" would fit here nicely.)
</blockQuote>
<blockQuote>
I get no output other than "total 0" (an empty directory). I've made sure
that the drive light comes on when I try to read it, so it seems like
the drive is being accessed - but I still can't see any of the files.
</blockQuote>
<blockQuote>
Any help would be appreciated.
</blockQuote><p align="center">...............</p>
</TD></TR></TABLE>
<blockquote><IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" ALT="(!)"
HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
> [Heather] Of course, if they knew enough to say all this, they probably wouldn't
ask us anything... and it's much easier for an utter newbie to assume
we will somehow know what he's talking about, since we've seen so much
before. Bravo for answering in true Answer Guy style - if need be, use
your own sense of autocompletion to upgrade an interesting question to
readability, then answer the result. At least <EM>somebody</EM> will get a
good answer from it
<IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/smily.gif" ALT=":)"
height="24" width="20" align="middle">
</blockquote>
<blockquote>I have to remind the Answer Gang to read subjects as well as
messages. though. It usually isn't much but every clue is something.
<IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/smily.gif" ALT=":)"
height="24" width="20" align="middle">
</blockquote>
<blockquote>I note that if you have a bad /etc/mtab then just running 'mount' to ask
the system what is mounted can provide strange and wrong results. To be
sure you're getting the real info, ask the proc filesystem:
cat /proc/mounts
</blockquote>
<blockQuote>
<IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" ALT="(!)"
HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
> [Chirs G]
Right you are, Ben! I have not answered any Answer Gang questions for a
while, and, it would seem that I forgot how!! I don't know what was up in
my mind. For some reason, I must have been looking at a previous Linux
question, and I connected "F F"'s email with that question.
</blockQuote>
<blockQuote>
Thanks for that constructive input, Ben.
</blockQuote>
<blockquote><em>Congrats to Ben for an excellent answer. And maybe one that belongs in
ask-the-gang.html somewhere.
-- Mike</em></blockquote>
<blockQuote>
<IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" ALT="(!)"
HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
> [Ben]
Thanks. I thought it might be a good way to model something useful; I
don't know that there's a good way of adding it to "ATG", but I'll try
doing it that way a few more times (I don't think we're going to run
short of poorly-phrased queries anytime soon), and maybe the idea will
get propagated just due to its exposure to the LG-reading crowd. I
<EM>like</EM> the idea of folks being effective at asking questions; if I can
contribute to even a small increase in cluefulness in the general
population, I'm happy.
</blockQuote>
<blockquote><em>It's easy to assume the querent is having the same problem you've had before.
And since I have used Linux exclusively for several years ... I forget what kind of
assumptions Windows users make. So you are not the only one who answers an
ambiguous question with a Linux answer and doesn't even realize it.
-- Mike</em></blockquote>
<blockQuote>
<IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" ALT="(!)"
HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
> [Chris G]
It's gotten automatic now. I used to use Microsoft Outlook for reading my
email. Once I set up Sendmail and Mutt, I use Windows for playing network
Doom with my kids. I remember, though, if the question is ambiguous,
answer with a Linux solution. I like Ben's example, though.
</blockQuote>
<blockQuote>
I also forgot to suggest to the querent to try booting off of the
floppy using a dos-based disk. I had a similar problem when helping a
coworker install a <A HREF="http://www.suse.com/">SuSE</A> distribution on a Compaq DeskPro computer. I
noticed that the system would not boot from the floppy drive, and, upon
closer inspection, I realized that the floppy drive was an LS-120 drive.
As a result, the mtools stuff did not work. We went ahead and looked at
<TT>/etc/fstab</TT> and saw an entry that corresponded to the LS-120 drive.
</blockQuote>
<blockQuote>
<IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" ALT="(!)"
HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
> [Ben]
Hmm, that's odd. I've got an LS-120 in my desktop PC, and it boots just
fine. However, you're right about "mtools" freaking out about it: that
120MB capacity fries its little brain... I was never able to find a
combination of switches for "superformat" that would let me do anything
with it, even to the extent of creating a 1.7MB floppy.
<IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/unsmily.gif" ALT=":("
height="24" width="20" align="middle"> Kinda sucky.
</blockQuote>
<blockQuote>
<IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" ALT="(!)"
HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
> [Chris G]
Maybe there was something about the bios settings of the Compaq computer.
I recall that we could not do anything with the bios setup because we did
not have the password to the thing. Soooo..., you can boot off of an
LS-120. Cool.
</blockQuote>
<blockquote><IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" ALT="(!)"
HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
> [Heather] I have found that I could boot from LS-120s and as I recall I could
work with 1.44 disks. What I don't remember, because it was a pain, is
whether I could format them after some setup tweaks, or if I could dd
them. I recall I could only do one and not the other, and I couldn't
make 1.722 disks using the tomsrtbt setup. Very annoying, but possibly
also the victim of Tom using an older floppy formatting program because
it was smaller. I considered the whole thing fitful and use my trusty
laptop to cough floppies. Except that it can't mount floppies directly
very well, so I 'dd' images of the floppy off, and loopback mount them.
Raw access works fine, it just seems to be a timing thing. But I'm not
complaining, because the loopback mounted images are much faster than a
floppy, anyway, and the diskette is safe from being scrambled unless I
<EM>deliberately</EM> copy the image back out.
</blockquote>
<!-- end 5 -->
<!-- ........................... -->
<HR WIDTH="40%" ALIGN="center">
<!-- begin 6 -->
<H3 align="left"><img src="../gx/dennis/qbubble.gif"
height="50" width="60" alt="(?) " border="0"
>Mandrake 8.1 fd0 unknown device, and digital camera</H3>
<p><strong>From Mike 'Iron' Orr
</strong></p>
<p></strong></p>
<p align="right"><strong>Answered By Ben Okopnik
</strong></p>
<P><STRONG>
And since I have used Linux exclusively for several years
(except a few times a year to download pics from my digital camera), ...
</STRONG></P>
<blockQuote>
<IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" ALT="(!)"
HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
> [Ben]
I got myself a FlashPath "floppy" to bypass all that. Stick the
SmartCard into the gadget, use the modified version of "mtools" to read
it (standard "mtools" functionality plus FlashPath capability), and all
is good. Besides, the various camera interface utils (GPhoto, etc.) are
getting pretty darn hot these days.
</blockQuote>
<P><STRONG>
<IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/qbub.gif" ALT="(?)"
HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
>
The camera is a Canon Elf S100, which uses compact flash memory. It was
working with gphoto2 command-line mode at one point. Then the USB
device entry disappeared in the middle of a download. Usually that
meant the battery went dead and I try it again with a recharged battery.
But the last time, it wouldn't acknowledge the device at all. Then in
Windows it stopped recognizing the device too, so I figured the camera's
USB interface was defective, because the card works fine in the camera.
</STRONG></P>
<P><STRONG>
So I bought one of those little USB card readers. Not only do you not
have to worry about batteries, but supposedly the card shows up like
a removable disk drive, with ordinary files, bypassing the
ideosyncracies of each camera driver. But Windows wouldn't mount the
card, it just said "invalid filesystem format" or something like that.
</STRONG></P>
<blockQuote>
<IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" ALT="(!)"
HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
> [Ben]
Right - despite the "ordinary files", etc. advertisements, it does <EM>not</EM>
look like a standard floppy even to Wind*ws - a special driver is
required (at least this is true for SmartDisk FlashPath 'floppies'.) The
same is true for Linux; hence the special version of "mtools" (it's a
binary-only driver - there is a source tarball, but I was unable to
compile it, and the author himself says to use the RPM with the binary.)
</blockQuote>
<P><STRONG>
<IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/qbub.gif" ALT="(?)"
HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
>
So I hooked up the camera to
Windows again, and this time it recognized the camera. For software I
had the Kodak Imaging program that came with the camera, and Photoshop.
Photoshop's "import..." menu option was disabled for some unknown reason
even though I had used it before. So I tried the Imaging program. But
that program is too horrible to use. It takes a lot of clicks to
download each picture, and I had 150 of them. And it kept trying to
save in TIFF format, taking forever to save one image and insisting on
using TIFF format, which is big, and somehow it used all 100 MB of free
disk space and I had to kill the program, and every time I tried to save
it did something similar. So that was useless.
</STRONG></P>
<P><STRONG>
So I downloaded kernel 2.4.18 and was delighted to see there's a USB
driver for my card reader. I'm hoping when I try it out it will work,
and that it will recognize the card's filesystem.
</STRONG></P>
<blockQuote>
<IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" ALT="(!)"
HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
> [Ben]
I suspect that it won't.
<IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/unsmily.gif" ALT=":("
height="24" width="20" align="middle"> The "tweaked mtools" author is a guy name of
Jason McMullan (<A HREF="mailto:jmcmullan@linuxcare.com"
>jmcmullan@linuxcare.com</A>) (Jim, Heather - somebody you
know?); the version that I have is "mtools-3.9.7-7fp.i386.rpm". I
renamed it to "mtools-9.9.7-7fp.i386.rpm" before running alien; that
way, the version info shows a high number and updating <A HREF="http://www.debian.org/">Debian</A> doesn't
overwrite my version.
</blockQuote>
<P><STRONG>
<IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/qbub.gif" ALT="(?)"
HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
>
Is there a floppy reader for compact flash?
</STRONG></P>
<blockQuote>
<IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" ALT="(!)"
HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
> [Ben]
ISTR that SmartDisk makes one, but I'm not 100% certain. Worth looking
into, though; I like my little gadget.
</blockQuote>
<P><STRONG>
<IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/qbub.gif" ALT="(?)"
HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
>
I found gphoto and gphoto2 to be a total pain. My camera was only
in gphoto2, which was an unreleased development version at the time
so there was no Debian package. Of course, the usage instructions
I had were for the old version, and the GUI front end had been
replaced by something else that I think was missing something.
Maybe it's better now. But having the images appear as files is
really what I want to do anyway.
</STRONG></P>
<H4>Update some time later</H4>
<P><STRONG>
I finally got my pictures out. I compiled a new kernel with the basic
USB stuff in, and used Debian's gphoto 2.0 final. To download all photos:
<PRE>
gphoto2 --camera "Canon PowerShot S100" --port usb --get-pictures
</PRE>
Or to download certain pictures by index number (starting at 1):
<PRE>
gphoto2 --camera "Canon PowerShot S100" --port usb --list-files >files
gphoto2 --camera "Canon PowerShot S100" --port usb --get-picture 5-10
</PRE>
Deiconifying the xconsole window helped too because it showed that the
USB system was sending syslog messages. Often there was a timeout error
but it would recover. But not infrequently it wouldn't recover, and I'd
press the camera power switch a couple times but not get the message I get
when it's successful. Then I'd have to reboot the computer and try again.
(Perhaps if I'd compiled the USB as modules, I could have unloaded and
reloaded the modules.)
</STRONG></P>
<P><STRONG>
I had less luck with the Lexar card reader although it did download some
images. For this, you need not only the kernel USB support but also SCSI
"generic device" support (not just SCSI disk support). You also need the
USB Storage module. With all this in place, when you stick the Compact
Flash card in the reader, it shows up as a SCSI disk, /dev/sda1, which you
can mount as an msdos filesystem or use (the ordinary) mtools on. (The
mtools configuration line is, 'drive c: file="/dev/sda1"'.) But the problem
with this is that after twenty-five pictures at the beginning (or after three
or even one picture later), the light on the card reader would go off and it
would play dead. This isn't a battery problem because the reader gets its
power from the USB bus. The processes would be in "D" state ("uninterruptable
sleep" in the ps listing) so they can't be killed. Also, they make the
system unable to shut down cleanly: 'halt', 'reboot' and the vulcan nerve
pinch just hang at "Sending processes the TERM signal" until you ctrl-C and
continue. So I have to do a cold boot with the power switch. To prevent
disk corruption, I upgraded my ext2 partitions to ext3 (journalled):
<PRE>
tune2fs -j /dev/hdc10
</PRE>
then changing "ext2" to "ext3" in /etc/fstab. This hang, reboot, restart
cycle went several times before I gave up on the card reader. Defective
reader? Buggy USB drivers? I don't know.
</STRONG></P>
<P><STRONG>But it was satisfying seeing my card reader <EM>more</EM> compatible
with Linux than with Windows 2000/XP. Windows would try to mount the card
reader and give up silently or say "invalid filesystem format". Take that,
Windows!
</STRONG></P>
<!-- end 6 -->
<!-- .~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~. -->
<A NAME="tag/6"><HR WIDTH="75%" ALIGN="center"></A>
<!-- begin 7 -->
<H3 align="left"><img src="../gx/dennis/qbubble.gif"
height="50" width="60" alt="(?) " border="0"
>How to optimize space usage for multiple files on multiple CDs</H3>
<p><strong>From Michiel van Leening
</strong></p>
<p align="right"><strong>Answered By Thomas Adam (The LG Weekend Mechanic), Ben Okopnik, Karl-Heinz Herrmann
</strong></p>
<blockquote><em><font color="#000066">With our kind thanks to Michiel for granting publication permission
<IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/smily.gif" ALT=":)"
height="24" width="20" align="middle">
-- Heather</font></em></blockquote>
<P><STRONG>
Hi Gang,
</STRONG></P>
<P><STRONG>
I've got a bunch of files which will roughly fill up 12 CDR's. My question
is, how can i best optimize the space used for these files, so as to use as
little CD's as possible?
</STRONG></P>
<blockQuote>
<IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" ALT="(!)"
HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
> [Thomas]
Assumming that you are not fussed as to which files
appear on which CDR, and assuming that these files
reside in a single common directory, then you could
write a script that will take the largest files.
</blockQuote>
<blockQuote>
<IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" ALT="(!)"
HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
> [Ben]
Actually, that's an NP-Complete problem, i.e. you can't get an actual
solution before the Universe ends.
<IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/smily.gif" ALT="&lt;grin&gt;"
height="24" width="20" align="middle"> Sad but true. However, there
are a number of "close enough" approximations you can do. I've never
heard of anyone scripting this kind of a thing, although I would imagine
every CS student out there has played with the concept.
</blockQuote>
<blockQuote>
Here's a reasonable one: sort your files. Grab the largest one, subtract
that from MAX_SIZE; now, find the largest file that will fit in the
remaining space. Iterate until the remaining space is smaller than your
smallest file. Repeat the above process for every one of your CDs.
You're done - and in linear time, too.
<IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/smily.gif" ALT=":)"
height="24" width="20" align="middle">
</blockQuote>
<P><STRONG>
<IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/qbub.gif" ALT="(?)"
HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
>
I've tried just looping through all the files and as long as the sum of the
already seen files stays below the CD size limit, the file is added to a list.
</STRONG></P>
<blockQuote>
<IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" ALT="(!)"
HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
> [Ben]
Erm... a 20MB file followed by a 631MB file, and you've got a CD with
20MB on it. Not a reasonable compromise. Even if you sort them first,
326+325, and you've wasted half a CD.
</blockQuote>
<P><STRONG>
<IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/qbub.gif" ALT="(?)"
HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
>
As soon as a file goes above the size limit, it starts a new list with
filenames. These list are then used to burn the CD's with either mkisofs or
Gcombust.
</STRONG></P>
<blockQuote>
<IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" ALT="(!)"
HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
> [Thomas]
Is the limit 650 MB, in which case:
</blockQuote>
<p align="center">See attached <tt><a href="misc/tag/fill-it-up.bash.txt">fill-it-up.bash.txt</a></tt></p>
<P><STRONG>
<IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/qbub.gif" ALT="(?)"
HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
>
I'd actually like a program to figure out the best spread of files over the
CD's (eg. CD1 has files 3,5,8 and CD2 has files 1,2,4 and CD3 has files 6,7,9)
so as to minimize wasted space. What i've programmed myself has the
disadvantage that if the next file in line is big enough to cross the size
limit, it is put on the next CD, thereby wasting space on the current CD.
</STRONG></P>
<blockQuote>
<IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" ALT="(!)"
HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
> [Thomas]
I'll work on this at home
<IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/smily.gif" ALT=":-)"
height="24" width="20" align="middle"> Might even put it in my
LWM article next month
<IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/smily.gif" ALT=":-)"
height="24" width="20" align="middle">
</blockQuote>
<P><STRONG>
<IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/qbub.gif" ALT="(?)"
HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
>
Now i could go and program such a thing, find out afterwards that something
like this exists and tear my hairs out in frustration. So, does a program
exist that can do this? Maybe someone has a script lying around. Ofcourse
intensive Googling for a week hasn't turned up anything.
</STRONG></P>
<P><STRONG>
Thanks for any input on the matter.
</STRONG></P>
<blockQuote>
<IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" ALT="(!)"
HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
> [Ben]
As I've mentioned, I haven't heard of anything (although any CompSci
department has seen thousands of attempts), but it shouldn't be all
<em>that</em> hard to script an approximation. The algorithm I suggested would
only take a few lines of Perl, and even a shell script wouldn't be all
that bad.
</blockQuote>
<blockQuote>
<IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" ALT="(!)"
HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
> [Thomas]
Hey Ben....you and I could work on this one
<IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/smily.gif" ALT=":-)"
height="24" width="20" align="middle">
Whadaya reckon -- I'm sticking to bash !!
</blockQuote>
<blockQuote>
<IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" ALT="(!)"
HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
> [Ben]
&lt;dryly&gt; The actual scripting is left as an excercise to the student.
Gotta let folks do <em> _something</em> on their own, dude!
<IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/smily.gif" ALT=":)"
height="24" width="20" align="middle">
</blockQuote>
<blockQuote>
Now, all I've got to do is figure out the purpose of your script,
above... what it does is obvious, <EM>why</EM> you'd care about the result
(if there <em> _was</em> any) isn't.
</blockQuote>
<blockQuote>
<IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" ALT="(!)"
HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
> [K.-H.]
Actually there is already a script which served me quite nicely. It's
already tied in with cdrekord and mkisofs and seems to handle special files
correctly (i.e. uisng cpio or something to dump them).
</blockQuote>
<blockQuote>
see:
</blockQuote>
<blockQuote><BLOCKQuote>
<A HREF="http://www.joat.ca/software/cddump.html"
>http://www.joat.ca/software/cddump.html</A>
</BLOCKQuote></blockQuote>
<P><STRONG>
<IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/qbub.gif" ALT="(?)"
HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
>
That's excatly what i was looking for. Thanks a lot.
</STRONG></P>
<blockQuote>
<IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" ALT="(!)"
HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
> [Ben]
Cool; I figured somebody somewhere did it. Interestingly enough, he uses
pretty much the algorithm I suggested:
</blockQuote>
<blockquote><pre> @todo = sort { ${$b}[2] &lt;=&gt; ${$a}[2] } @todo;
...
foreach $file (@todo) {
if ($thissize + ${$file}[2] &lt; $remaining) {
$thissize += ${$file}[2];
push(@{$thisdo[${$file}[0]]}, ${$file}[1]);
</pre></blockquote>
<blockQuote>
It's not a bad approximation; the only degenerate case is where you have
no-to-few small files and lots of large ( &gt; MAX_SIZE/2 ) ones. If you
have an average file spread, it works well.
</blockQuote>
<!-- end 7 -->
<!-- .~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~. -->
<A NAME="tag/7"><HR WIDTH="75%" ALIGN="center"></A>
<!-- begin 8 -->
<H3 align="left"><img src="../gx/dennis/qbubble.gif"
height="50" width="60" alt="(?) " border="0"
>/dev/scd0 is not a valid block device?</H3>
<p><strong>From Simeon Nevel
</strong></p>
<p align="right"><strong>Answered By Mike Martin, Neil Youngman, Heather Stern
</strong></p>
<blockquote><em><font color="#000066">With our kind thanks for publication permission.
-- Heather</font></em></blockquote>
<P><STRONG>
Dear Answer Gang,
</STRONG></P>
<P><STRONG>
I'm trying to get my cd and cdrw working in RH7.3. I've read through
both articles on CD Writing in issue 57 and looked at the CD-Rom HOWTO
as well.
</STRONG></P>
<P><STRONG>
I've got to proper invocation in grub:
</STRONG></P>
<pre><strong>title Red Hat Linux (2.4.18-3)
root (hd1,0)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.4.18-3 ro root=/dev/hdb7 hdc=ide-scsi hdd=ide-scsi
initrd /initrd-2.4.18-3.img
</strong></pre>
<P><STRONG><CODE>
lsmod shows that the various ide-scsi modules are loaded:
</CODE></STRONG></P>
<pre><strong> Module Size Used by Not tainted
[other modules snipped for brevity]
sr_mod 16920 0 (autoclean) (unused)
autofs 12164 0 (autoclean) (unused)
ide-scsi 9664 0
scsi_mod 108608 2 [sr_mod ide-scsi]
ide-cd 30272 1
cdrom 32192 0 [sr_mod ide-cd]
</strong></pre>
<blockQuote>
<IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" ALT="(!)"
HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
> [Mike M.]
not sure whether ide-cd should be getting loaded
you may want to experiment by unloading the scsi modules and
reloading in turn (sg and sd may be an idea)
</blockQuote>
<blockQuote>
<IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" ALT="(!)"
HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
> [Neil Youngman]
Is this bit from the CD-Writing HOWTO relevant?
</blockQuote>
<blockQuote><DL><DT>
Example configuration for <TT>/etc/modules.conf</TT> from
<DD><A HREF="http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/CD-Writing-HOWTO-2.html"
>http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/CD-Writing-HOWTO-2.html</A>
</DL></blockQuote>
<TABLE WIDTH="95%" BORDER="1" BGCOLOR="#FFFFCC"><TR><TD>
<p align="center">...............</p>
<blockQuote>
make sure you include the
options-line from the next listing. The last three lines of that listing
are generally suggested to further automate the loading of the required
modules.
</blockQuote>
<blockquote><pre>options ide-cd ignore=hdb # tell the ide-cd module to ignore hdb
alias scd0 sr_mod # load sr_mod upon access of scd0
#pre-install ide-scsi modprobe imm # uncomment for some ZIP drives only
pre-install sg modprobe ide-scsi # load ide-scsi before sg
pre-install sr_mod modprobe ide-scsi # load ide-scsi before sr_mod
pre-install ide-scsi modprobe ide-cd # load ide-cd before ide-scsi Listing:
</pre></blockquote>
<p align="center">...............</p>
</TD></TR></TABLE><blockQuote>
If that doesn't help then have a look at the output from dmesg and see if it
offers any clues.
</blockQuote>
<blockQuote>
<IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" ALT="(!)"
HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
> [Heather]
autofs is unrelated. Unless you also have another ATAPI CD which is not
supposed to be handled by scsi, you definitely have too many modules loaded.
</blockQuote>
<blockQuote>
The kernel support notes (very easy to read in "make menuconfig", a
little plainer in <TT>/usr/src/linux/Documentation/Configure.help</TT>) make it
clear that:
</blockQuote>
<TABLE WIDTH="95%" BORDER="1" BGCOLOR="#FFFFCC"><TR><TD>
<p align="center">...............</p>
<blockQuote><BLOCKQuote>
If both ATAPI and generic scsi support is provided, the
native services will be used.
</BLOCKQuote></blockQuote><p align="center">...............</p>
</TD></TR></TABLE>
<blockQuote>
For my IDE/ATAPI cd-recorder, I don't have any of these loaded automatically.
I do have the append line (in my case, 'hdd=ide-scsi'). When I:
</blockQuote>
<blockquote><pre> modprobe ide-scsi
</pre></blockquote>
<blockQuote>
then I run:
</blockQuote>
<blockquote><pre> cdrecord -scanbus
</pre></blockquote>
<blockQuote>
it says (sorry if hascii, Joerg has his name spelled properly here):
</blockQuote>
<blockquote><pre>Cdrecord 1.11a05 (i686-suse-linux) Copyright (C) 1995-2001 J<>rg Schilling
Linux sg driver version: 3.1.22
Using libscg version 'schily-0.5'
scsibus0:
0,0,0 0) 'SAF ' 'CD-RW2224 ' '2.06' Removable CD-ROM
0,1,0 1) *
0,2,0 2) *
0,3,0 3) *
0,4,0 4) *
0,5,0 5) *
0,6,0 6) *
0,7,0 7) *
</pre></blockquote>
<blockQuote>
And the drive becomes addressable as scd0, recordable <EM>in theory</EM> as sr0
but in practice I give the dev by host and lun number:
</blockQuote>
<blockquote><pre> cdrecord dev=0,0 speed=4 some-random.iso
</pre></blockquote>
<blockQuote>
At least I hope speed 4 works, because it takes <EM>ages</EM> to make them at lesser
speeds. I do have to wonder if something in my setup is slowing it all down
horribly, but hey, I'm not a big CD pressing house, I just wanna burn a CD
once in a while ... and that's what I get for having had a cd writer for so
long, the newer ones are faster.
<IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/smily.gif" ALT=":)"
height="24" width="20" align="middle">
</blockQuote>
<P><STRONG>
<IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/qbub.gif" ALT="(?)"
HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
>
Looking at that list again, maybe I've got too many modules involved.
Maybe I've got some sort of conflict?
</STRONG></P>
<P><STRONG>
I've changed the links in <TT>/dev:</TT>
</STRONG></P>
<pre><strong>lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 9 May 29 21:39 /dev/cdrom0 -&gt; /dev/scd0
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 9 May 29 21:44 /dev/cdrom1 -&gt; /dev/scd1
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 11, 0 Apr 11 07:25 /dev/scd0
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 11, 1 Apr 11 07:25 /dev/scd1
</strong></pre>
<P><STRONG>
I've got the mount points defined in <TT>/mnt:</TT>
</STRONG></P>
<pre><strong> drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 May 12 04:39 cdrom
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 May 29 21:47 cdrom0
dr-xr-xr-x 1 root root 2048 Nov 20 1999 cdrom1
</strong></pre>
<P><STRONG>
but whenever I try to mount either of the cd-rom devices like so:
</STRONG></P>
<pre><strong> mount -t iso9660 /dev/scd0 /mnt/cdrom0
</strong></pre>
<P><STRONG>
or
</STRONG></P>
<pre><strong> mount -t iso9660 /dev/cdrom0 /mnt/cdrom0
</strong></pre>
<P><STRONG>
I get:
</STRONG></P>
<pre><strong> mount: /dev/scd0 is not a valid block device
</strong></pre>
<P><STRONG><CODE>
also, "cdrecord -scanbus" doesn't seem to find anything.
</CODE></STRONG></P>
<blockQuote>
<IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" ALT="(!)"
HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
> [Heather]
Then it's right, ide-scsi did not turn them into SCSI hosts. ATAPI cdrom
support is being favored, and the IDE stuff doesn't directly lead to writing
under Linux. (cdrecord doesn't speak ATAPI. It only speaks SCSI.)
</blockQuote>
<blockQuote>
Although in theory if your CD writer is really DVD capable too, you may be
able to write UDF filesystems to the disc (as hdc and hdd). I've never tried
that, and only UDF support on another machine would let them read the disc.
So it probably wouldn't be useful unless all your friends have DVD bays.
</blockQuote>
<P><STRONG>
<IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/qbub.gif" ALT="(?)"
HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
>
What am I doing wrong? I'm sure it's probably something really stupid,
but I just can't see it.
</STRONG></P>
<P><STRONG>
A clue would be vastly appreciated.
</STRONG></P>
<P><STRONG>
adTHANKSvance!
</STRONG></P>
<P><STRONG>
Simeon
</STRONG></P>
<blockQuote>
<IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" ALT="(!)"
HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
> [Mike M.]
this is seriously from memeory but try
</blockQuote>
<blockQuote>
first cat <TT>/proc/devices</TT> (I think)
</blockQuote>
<blockQuote>
<IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" ALT="(!)"
HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
> [Heather]
It may be interesting to see this, but a fresh boot where you didn't try
to load the ide cdrom support would be more useful. Approximately -
</blockQuote>
<blockQuote><ul>
<!-- *) You need the IDE interface itself, because that handles the IDE controller. -->
<LI>You need the IDE interface itself, because that handles the IDE controller.
<!-- *) You -probably- need IDE standard hard disk support for your main drives -->
<LI>You -probably- need IDE standard hard disk support for your main drives
<!-- so you can boot. Unrelated to the cd bays, except for being on the IDE -->
so you can boot. Unrelated to the cd bays, except for being on the IDE
<!-- controllers too. -->
controllers too.
<!-- *) You -do not- want IDE cdrom services. -->
<LI>You -do not- want IDE cdrom services.
<!-- *) IDE floppy services (those would be for LS-120 bays) or IDE tape services -->
<LI>IDE floppy services (those would be for LS-120 bays) or IDE tape services
<!-- have no effect either way on ATAPI CD-RW's. -->
have no effect either way on ATAPI CD-RW's.
<!-- *) You -do- need ide-scsi, and from the scsi subsection you need sg (scsi -->
<LI>You -do- need ide-scsi, and from the scsi subsection you need sg (scsi
<!-- generic) support. sg gets autoloaded when ide-scsi behaves correctly -->
generic) support. sg gets autoloaded when ide-scsi behaves correctly
<!-- and cdrecord is asked to scan the bus. At least from my setup it doesn't -->
and cdrecord is asked to scan the bus. At least from my setup it doesn't
<!-- appear that SCSI-cdrom is used at all either. -->
appear that SCSI-cdrom is used at all either.
</ul></blockQuote>
<blockquote><pre>-=: gemini :=- ~ # mount /dev/scd0 /mnt/cd
mount: block device /dev/scd0 is write-protected, mounting read-only
-=: gemini :=- ~ # lsmod
Module Size Used by
sg 28352 0 (autoclean)
ide-scsi 7312 1
</pre></blockquote>
<blockQuote>
(and a whole bunch of sound card modules. working, as far as my dings and
talking-computer noises can tell
<IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/smily.gif" ALT=":D"
height="24" width="20" align="middle"> )
</blockQuote>
<blockQuote>
<IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" ALT="(!)"
HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
> [Mike M.]
mount <TT>/dev/sd0</TT> <TT>/mnt/cdrom0</TT>
</blockQuote>
<blockQuote>
<IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" ALT="(!)"
HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
> [Heather]
sd0 would be a scsi hard drive; compact discs would be scd0 so after his
symlink the request is correct. He just needs to untangle that mess of
modules.
</blockQuote>
<blockQuote>
For the record the system this is on is <A HREF="http://www.suse.com/">SuSE</A> 7.3, but I'm using a locally
built kernel - this answer is totally distro independent.
</blockQuote>
<blockQuote>
<IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" ALT="(!)"
HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
> [Mike M.]
I remember I had to do a bit of fiddling around when I did it a while
ago
</blockQuote>
<P><STRONG>
<IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/qbub.gif" ALT="(?)"
HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
>
[sig block] If you're not outraged, you're not paying attention
</STRONG></P>
<blockQuote>
<IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" ALT="(!)"
HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
> [Heather]
Hmm, well tell your congressmen and representatives that supporting the
overly extended copyrights of MPAA and numerous corporations is against
the principle that the entire country is supposed to eventually benefit
from all of these works... great or otherwise... and a heavy infringement
on the right of individuals to make (and copy, and change, and redistribute)
works of our own invention.
</blockQuote>
<blockQuote>
(But, this isn't a politics thread. Don't get me started. If this bothers
you too go help the EFF, <A HREF="http://www.eff.org"
>http://www.eff.org</A>.)
</blockQuote>
<!-- end 8 -->
<!-- . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . -->
<HR WIDTH="40%" ALIGN="center">
<!-- begin 8 -->
<H3 align="left"><img src="../gx/dennis/qbubble.gif"
height="50" width="60" alt="(?) " border="0"
>/dev/scd0 is not a valid block device?</H3>
<p><strong>From Simeon ben Nevel
</strong></p>
<p align="right"><strong>Answered By Mike Martin
</strong></p>
<P><STRONG><IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/qbub.gif" ALT="(?)"
HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
>
Hmm,
</STRONG></P>
<pre><strong>&gt; &gt; options ide-cd ignore=hdb # tell the ide-cd module to ignore hdb
</strong></pre>
<P><STRONG>
I thought the Grub/lilo incantation of hdc=ide-scsi &amp; hdd=ide-scsi
would take care of this?
</STRONG></P>
<pre><strong>&gt; &gt; alias scd0 sr_mod # load sr_mod upon access of scd0
</strong></pre>
<P><STRONG>
Would I also have to to "alias scd1 sr_mod" ?
</STRONG></P>
<P><STRONG>
I've read on several occasions that if you have 2 cd-rom devices on
the same ide interface, you really have to set them <EM>both</EM> up with the
ide-scsi modules.
</STRONG></P>
<pre><strong>&gt; &gt; pre-install sg modprobe ide-scsi # load ide-scsi before sg
&gt; &gt; pre-install sr_mod modprobe ide-scsi # load ide-scsi before sr_mod
&gt; &gt; pre-install ide-scsi modprobe ide-cd # load ide-cd before ide-scsi
</strong></pre>
<P><STRONG>
I did, indeed forget the modules.conf magic but I want to let you
know that my problem vanished when I rebooted my machine even without having
made the suggested changes.
</STRONG></P>
<blockQuote><IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" ALT="(!)"
HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
> [Mike M.]
Out of curiousity - could you post the output of lsmod
</blockQuote>
<blockQuote>
I have a strong suspicion that on reboot the module loading was
corrected.
</blockQuote>
<blockQuote>
Just that if anyone searches for the same problem you had it is nice
to see the solution as well as the problem
</blockQuote>
<P><STRONG><IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/qbub.gif" ALT="(?)"
HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
>
&lt;sigh&gt;
</STRONG></P>
<P><STRONG>
As much as I enjoy learning more about my linux system, it often
seems
that the solution to various problems involves magical spells of
one sort
or another.
</STRONG></P>
<P><STRONG>
Anyway, thanks again for taking the time to lend me a hand.
</STRONG></P>
<P><STRONG>
Sincerely,
</STRONG></P>
<P><STRONG>
Simeon ben Nevel
</STRONG></P>
<!-- end 8 -->
<P> <hr> </p>
<!-- *** BEGIN copyright *** -->
<H5 align="center">This page edited and maintained by the Editors
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>Copyright &copy;</a> 2002
<BR>Published in issue 80 of <I>Linux Gazette</I> July 2002</H5>
<H6 ALIGN="center">HTML script maintained by
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<H4 ALIGN="center">"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="#leg">Legislation and More Legislation</a>
<li><a HREF="#links">Linux Links</a>
<li><a HREF="#conferences">Conferences and Events</a>
<li><a HREF="#general">News in General</a>
<li><a HREF="#distro">Distro News</A>
<li><a HREF="#commercial">Software and Product News</a>
</ul>
</td></tr></table>
<STRONG>Selected and formatted by <A HREF="mailto:michael.conry@softhome.net">Michael Conry</A></STRONG>
</center>
<P> Submitters, send your News Bytes items in
<FONT SIZE="+2"><STRONG>PLAIN TEXT</STRONG></FONT>
format. Other formats may be rejected without reading. You have been
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<A HREF="mailto:gazette@ssc.com">gazette@ssc.com</A>
<P> <hr> <P>
<!-- =================================================================== -->
<H3><IMG ALT=" " SRC="../gx/bolt.gif">
<font color="green">
July 2002 <I>Linux Journal</I>
</font>
</H3>
<IMG ALT="[issue 99 cover image]" SRC="misc/bytes/lj-cover99.png" WIDTH=200 HEIGHT=268
ALIGN="left" HSPACE="20">
The July issue of <A HREF="http://www.linuxjournal.com/"><I>Linux
Journal</I></A> is on newsstands now.
This issue focuses on interoperability. Click
<A HREF="http://www.linuxjournal.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=NS-lj-issues/issue99&file=index">here</A>
to view the table of contents, or
<A HREF="http://www.linuxjournal.com/subscribe/">here</A>
to subscribe.
<P>
<FONT COLOR="green">All articles through February 2002 are available for
public reading at
<A HREF="http://www.linuxjournal.com/magazine.php">http://www.linuxjournal.com/magazine.php</A></FONT>.
Recent articles are available on-line for subscribers only at
<A HREF="http://interactive.linuxjournal.com">http://interactive.linuxjournal.com/</A>.
<BR CLEAR="all">
<a name="leg"></a>
<p><hr><p>
<!-- =================================================================== -->
<center><H3><font color="green">Legislation and More Legislation</font></H3></center>
<P> <hr> <P>
<!-- =================================================================== -->
<H3><IMG ALT=" " SRC="../gx/bolt.gif">
<FONT COLOR="green">Palladium
</FONT>
</H3>
<P>
Back in January,
<a href="../issue74/lg_bytes.html">
we mentioned</a> that Microsoft had been granted a patent claim
for a `Digital rights management operating system'. It appears their plans
are developing further. A recent
<a href="http://www.msnbc.com/news/770511.asp?cp1=1">
article</a> at MSNBC/Newsweek provides an "exclusive first look" at the new
technology. It begins:
<blockquote>
"An exclusive first look at
Microsoft's ambitious-and risky-plan to remake the personal computer to
ensure security, privacy and intellectual property rights. Will you buy it?"
</blockquote>
Frankly, I don't buy it!
The article is almost entirely uncritical and does not raise any of the
many legitimate concerns surrounding such a technology.
<P>
The Register has published a some excellent articles on Palladium, by
<a href="http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/25852.html">
John Lettice</a>,
<a href="http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/25843.html">
Richard Forno</a> and
<a href="http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/25891.html">
Thomas C Greene</a>. The
<a href="http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/25891.html">
third of these</a> focuses specifically on what effect Palladium could have
on the Linux community, and the indications are not good (unsurprisingly,
given that it would mean a large part of the hardware industry could end up
dancing almost exclusively to Microsoft's tune). Indeed, as Robert Cringely
<a href="http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20020627.html">
has written</a>, Palladium could be bad news for the entire infrastructure
of the internet.
<P>
If you want more information on Palladium, and DRM (digital rights
management) technology in general,
<a href="http://www.cryptome.org">cryptome</a> has
<a href="http://cryptome.org/ms-drm-os.htm">
some useful links</a> along with the text of the original MS DRM OS patent.
Of particular interest is Ross Anderson's
<a href="http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/users/rja14/tcpa-faq.html">
TCPA / Palladium Frequently Asked Questions</a>
(TCPA=Trusted Computing Platform Alliance).
<P> <hr> <P>
<!-- =================================================================== -->
<H3><IMG ALT=" " SRC="../gx/bolt.gif">
<FONT COLOR="green">Governments and Linux
</FONT>
</H3>
<P>
The
<a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/">BBC</a> has
<a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/business/newsid_2023000/2023127.stm">
reported</a> that Germany has signed a contract with IBM and SuSE for a large
public sector Linux-based computer contract. Among the reasons for the
decision given by German representatives were cost and security. The BBC
article gives quite a nice background to the story also, which is worth
reading. Also of interest is
<a href="http://www.suse.de/en/press/press_releases/archive02/schily_ibm.html">
SuSE's press release</a>, and other reports of this news
<a href="http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/25565.html">
at The Register</a> and
<a href="http://slashdot.org/articles/02/06/03/1414239.shtml?tid%106">
at Slashdot</a>.
<P>
In other good news, it has
<a href="http://www.desktoplinux.com/news/NS9061559934.html">
been reported by DesktopLinux.com</a> and
<a href="http://linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=2002-06-17-011-26-NW-DP-PB">
by LinuxToday</a>
that Finnish MP's have signed a bill requesting national and local agencies
to migrate their IT systems to the Linux operating system. This could be
part of a trend. Slashdot has
<a href="http://slashdot.org/articles/02/06/04/0259234.shtml?tid%117">
reported</a>
a similar development in Taiwan, which "...will start a national plan to
jump-start the development and use of Free (libre) Software".
IDG.net has published
<a href="http://www.idg.net/ic_874686_1794_9-10000.html">
a survey</a>
of countries which making moves toward open-source software and attempting
to reduce dependence on Microsoft.
<P> <hr> <P>
<!-- =================================================================== -->
</p><center><h3><font color="green">Linux Links</font></h3></center>
<p>
<IMG ALT="Linux Focus" SRC="../gx/linuxfocus.jpg" WIDTH="143" HEIGHT="45">
<BR CLEAR="all">
The following articles are in the July/August issue of the E-zine
<A HREF="http://www.linuxfocus.org/">LinuxFocus</A>:
<ul>
<li><a href="http://linuxfocus.org/English/July2002/article239.shtml">A Hardware watchdog and shutdown button</a><br></li>
<li><a href="http://linuxfocus.org/English/July2002/article245.shtml">Securing a heterogeneous network with free software tools</a><br></li>
<li><a href="http://linuxfocus.org/English/July2002/article248.shtml">Plugins and Mozilla 1.0</a><br></li>
<li><a href="http://linuxfocus.org/English/July2002/article249.shtml">Receiving faxes with efax.</a><br></li>
<li><a href="http://linuxfocus.org/English/July2002/article250.shtml">Bookreview: Beginning Databases with MySQL</a><br></li>
<li><a href="http://linuxfocus.org/English/July2002/article252.shtml">Compile your own Linux kernel</a><br></li>
<li><a href="http://linuxfocus.org/English/July2002/article254.shtml">Light, Camera, Action... Kino!</a><br></li>
</ul>
<p>
Article at IBM.com on
<a href="http://www7b.software.ibm.com/wsdd/library/techarticles/0205_yu/yu.html?open&amp;l=335,t=gr">
installing and configuring CVS for Linux</a>.
</p><p>
<a href="http://www.ofb.biz/modules.php?name=News&amp;file=article&amp;sid=125">
Interview with RMS</a>. Among other topics, this deals with UnitedLinux.
</p><p>
Salon
<a href="http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2002/06/07/broadband/index.html">
describes</a>
how FCC decisions are allowing a few big ISPs (the ones owned by the cable
companies and telcos) to squeeze out all the little ones. Gives an
analysis of what this will mean for the market.
</p><p>
Some stories from the <a href="http://www.theregister.co.uk/">The
Register</a> related to the Linux world:
</p><ul>
<li>
<a href="http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/25746.html">
A look at</a>
NSA and SELinux
</li>
<li>
Apache admins ambushed by
<a href="http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/55/25766.html">
premature vuln report</a>.
</li>
<li>
Ralph Nader recommends US Federal Government should develop
<a href="http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/25586.html">
software alternatives</a>.
</li>
<li>
NY Times
<a href="http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/25574.html">
sicks FBI on MSNBC journalists</a>
in hacking investigation, neglects press freedoms.
</li>
<li>
<a href="http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/54/25568.html">
How to read Xbox security key</a>,
legally apparently, and maybe even get Linux in there.
</li>
<li>
<a href="http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/25535.html">
US courts</a> rule against library net censorship filters.
</li>
<li>
Ruling on BT hyperlink patent
<a href="http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/25837.html">
expected soon</a>.
</li>
<li>
MS Passport as
<a href="http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/35/25867.html">
arbiter of public decency</a>
</li>
<li>
EasyGroup
<a href="http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/25881.html">
uses heavy handed tactics</a>
to acquire domain names.
</li>
</ul>
<p>
Links from the O'Reilly stable of websites
</p><ul>
<li>
<a href="http://linux.oreillynet.com/pub/a/linux/2002/06/03/insecurities.html">
Trojaned networking tools</a>,
and other security information.
</li>
<li>
Getting the most out of one computer by
<a href="http://linux.oreillynet.com/pub/a/linux/2002/05/30/enterprise.html">
running multiple operating systems on it</a>. Looks at WINE, DOSEMU,
Bochs and User-Mode Linux.
</li>
<li>
<a href="http://opensource.oreilly.com/news/biblio_0502.html">
Open Source Bibliography</a>.
</li>
<li>
<a href="http://linux.oreillynet.com/pub/a/linux/2002/06/13/cvs.html">
Tracking changes in CVS</a>, a look at the functions and commands used
in CVS.
</li>
<li>
A <a href="http://oreillynet.com/pub/a/linux/2002/05/23/zaurus.html">
look at</a> the new GNU/Linux based Sharp Zaurus SL-5500 palmtop computer
</li>
</ul>
<p>
Some <em>Linux Journal</em> web article that might be of interest:
</p><ul>
<li>
<a href="http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=4879">
Learning to Use X11</a>: A simple example program with a line-by-line
walk through that explains key concepts for programming with X11.
</li>
<li>
Doc Searls on GeekPAC and its
<a href="http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=6033">
mission to save the Net from Hollywood</a> and other corporate
interests.
</li>
<li>
An <a href="http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=5928">
introduction</a> to the arch Version Control System.
</li>
<li>
<a href="http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=5669">
Review of four open-source accounting packages</a>:
Emma, GnuCash, jGnash and QHacc.
</li>
<li>
Maddog
<a href="http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=6136">
visits the 20th anniversary of the Swiss Open Systems Group</a>
in Zurick, gives a talk, takes pictures, drinks the water (it's fresh).
</li>
</ul>
<p>
<a href="http://www.linuxjournal.com/bg">
The Linux Buyer's Guide</a>
is a service provided by Linux Journal; it lists
software (both commercial and free), hardware, distributions, books, etc.
There are ten major categories and dozens of subcategories, and a search
page for searching names, descriptions and price ranges. The service is
always free to users, and vendors likewise can list their products for free.
(Vendors can also sign up for paid premium services; e.g., banner ads.)
Entries are added by the vendor through the web, so they reflect which vendors
have visited the site and chosen to list their products.
Free software developers are invited to register as "vendors" and list their
software, so that the public can comparison shop between free and commercial
items. Just designate one person to be the Buyer's Guide contact, who will
update the product listing as the product changes. (All listings must be
updated or verified at least once a year or they will be dropped; this prevents
stale listings from remaining.)
</p><p>
Some links from <a href="http://slashdot.org/">Slashdot</a> that should
appeal to you:
</p><ul>
<li>
Ransom Love
<a href="http://interviews.slashdot.org/interviews/02/06/24/1556244.shtml?tid%163">
answers questions from Slashdot readers</a>
about UnitedLinux. Love was Caldera's CEO at the time of the interview,
but now he's full time with UnitedLinux.
</li>
<li>
A Fictional
<a href="http://www.popsci.com/popsci/science/article/0,12543,260388,00.html">
story</a>
in <em>Popular Science</em> magazine about how much information an
average Joe leaves about himself during the course of a day.
</li>
<li>
European commission
<a href="http://slashdot.org/articles/02/05/28/1723200.shtml?tid%106">
sponsors Linux audio distribution</a>
</li>
<li>
<a href="http://www.cluelessmailers.org/spamdemic/mapfullsize.html">
A map of spam</a>.
Who sends it, who advertises through whom, and how the bulk of them
interrelate.
</li>
<li>
<a href="http://www.msnbc.com/news/761972.asp?0pup">
Broadband by the bootstraps</a>:
How a group of neighbours built their own high-speed network
</li>
</ul>
<p>
Joel Spolsky has written a well thought out
<a href="http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/StrategyLetterV.html">
article</a> outlining his theories on the economics underlying open source
software. This was
<a href="http://slashdot.org/articles/02/06/17/0435227.shtml?tid%106">
discussed on Slashdot</a>. While on the theme of economics, <em>Linux
Journal</em> have an article entitled
<a href="http://www.linuxjournal.com//article.php?sid=6149">
A Successful Linux/Open-Source Business Model</a> which might be worth
looking through.
</p><p> </p><hr> <p>
<!-- =================================================================== -->
</p><h3><img alt=" " src="lg_bytes2_files/bolt">
<font color="green">LWN
</font>
</h3>
<p>
<a href="http://lwn.net/">
Linux Weekly News</a>
has
<a href="http://lwn.net/Articles/978/">
a new look</a>,
"making light use of style sheets", which you should take a look at. There
are further changes and enhancements including a more dynamic front page,
login-preferences, and article talkbacks (which you will see at the bottom
of the
<a href="http://lwn.net/Articles/978/">
announcement</a>
of the new look). The old LWN site and content is available as
<a href="http://old.lwn.net">old.lwn.net</a>.
<P>
Of course, not only does LWN have a new and attractive style, it also has
lots of good content! The following are some highlights of the past month
that might interest you:
<ul>
<li>
Jon Corbet's
<a href="http://lwn.net/Articles/3022/">
report from the 2002 Kernel Developers' Summit</a>. Has lots of
information on where the Linux Kernel project actually is, and where it
is heading.
</li>
<li>
<a href="http://lwn.net/Articles/2483/">
Commentary</a> on
the contradictions in how Disney's policies and aims interact with
Linux.
</li>
</ul>
<a name="conferences"></a>
<p><hr><p>
<!-- =================================================================== -->
<center><H3><font color="green">Upcoming conferences and events</font></H3></center>
<P> Listings courtesy <EM>Linux Journal</EM>. See <EM>LJ</EM>'s
<A HREF="http://www.linuxjournal.com/events.php">Events</A> page for the
latest goings-on.
<!-- *** BEGIN events table [this line needed by Linux Gazette events.py *** -->
<table cellpadding=5 border=0 width=100%>
<tr><td colspan=2><HR size=5 width=100% noshade align=center></td></tr>
<tr><td valign=top>
<b>O'Reilly Open Source Convention (O'Reilly)</b><BR>
<td valign=top>July 22-26, 2002<BR>San Diego, CA<BR>
<a href="http://conferences.oreilly.com/" target="_blank">
http://conferences.oreilly.com/</A><BR>
<tr><td colspan=2><HR size=5 width=100% noshade align=center></td></tr>
<tr><td valign=top>
<b>USENIX Securty Symposium (USENIX)</b><BR>
<td valign=top>August 5-9, 2002<BR>San Francisco, CA<BR>
<a href="http://www.usenix.org/events/sec02/" target="_blank">
http://www.usenix.org/events/sec02/</A><BR>
<tr><td colspan=2><HR size=5 width=100% noshade align=center></td></tr>
<tr><td valign=top>
<b>LinuxWorld Conference & Expo (IDG)</b><BR>
<td valign=top>August 12-15, 2002<BR>San Francisco, CA<BR>
<a href="http://www.linuxworldexpo.com" target="_blank">
http://www.linuxworldexpo.com</A><BR>
<tr><td colspan=2><HR size=5 width=100% noshade align=center></td></tr>
<tr><td valign=top>
<b>LinuxWorld Conference & Expo Australia (IDG)</b><BR>
<td valign=top>August 14 - 16, 2002<BR>Australia<BR>
<a href="http://www.idgexpoasia.com/" target="_blank">
http://www.idgexpoasia.com/</A><BR>
<tr><td colspan=2><HR size=5 width=100% noshade align=center></td></tr>
<tr><td valign=top>
<b>Communications Design Conference (CMP)</b><BR>
<td valign=top>September 23-26, 2002<BR>San Jose, California<BR>
<a href="http://www.commdesignconference.com/" target="_blank">
http://www.commdesignconference.com/</A><BR>
<tr><td colspan=2><HR size=5 width=100% noshade align=center></td></tr>
<tr><td valign=top>
<b>IBM eServer pSeries (RS/6000) and Linux Technical University</b><BR>
<td valign=top>October 14-18, 2002<BR>Dallas, TX<BR>
<a href="http://www-3.ibm.com/services/learning/conf/us/pseries/" target="_blank">
http://www-3.ibm.com/services/learning/conf/us/pseries/</A><BR>
<tr><td colspan=2><HR size=5 width=100% noshade align=center></td></tr>
<tr><td valign=top>
<b>Software Development Conference & Expo, East (CMP)</b><BR>
<td valign=top>November 18-22, 2002<BR>Boston, MA<BR>
<a href="http://www.sdexpo.com/" target="_blank">
http://www.sdexpo.com/</A><BR>
<tr><td colspan=2><HR size=5 width=100% noshade align=center></td></tr>
</table>
<!-- *** END events table [this line needed by Linux Gazette events.py *** -->
<a name="general"></a>
<p><hr><p>
<!-- =================================================================== -->
<center><H3><font color="green">News in General</font></H3></center>
<P> <hr> <P>
<!-- =================================================================== -->
<H3><IMG ALT=" " SRC="../gx/bolt.gif">
<FONT COLOR="green">Simile.D
</FONT>
</H3>
LinuxSecurity.com have
<a href="http://www.linuxsecurity.com/articles/server_security_article-5066.html">
reported on a virus</a>
that can affect both Windows and Linux. Called Simile.D, it is only a
serious risk to a Linux user if she reads email attachments as root.
Security risk is therefore relatively small.
If you want more information, you can see further details
<a href="http://www.vnunet.com/News/1132372">
on Vnunet's website</a>, and also
<a href="http://securityresponse.symantec.com/avcenter/venc/data/linux.simile.html">
on Symantec's website</a>
<P>
A better bet is to read Robin "Roblimo" Miller's
<a href="http://newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=2002/06/07/0121241&mode=thread&tid=16">
article</a>
at NewsForge:
"One of the great defects in Linux
compared to Windows is that it is not infected by cool viruses."
<P> <hr> <P>
<!-- =================================================================== -->
<H3><IMG ALT=" " SRC="../gx/bolt.gif">
<FONT COLOR="green">HP, Oracle and Red Hat Combine Engineering Expertise to
Further Develop Linux Solutions for the Enterprise
</FONT>
</H3>
<P>
<a href="http://www.hp.com/">HP</a> have announced that it has
combined engineering resources with software company
<a href="http://www.oracle.com/">Oracle</a>, and
<a href="http://www.redhat.com/">Red Hat</a>,
to certify and deliver Red Hat Linux Advanced Server on an 8-Node
Oracle9i Real Application Clusters environment running on ProLiant DL580
servers from the new HP.
<P> More information on HP's Linux initiatives is available at
<a href="http://www.hp.com/linux">
www.hp.com/linux</a>
<p>
This move has had some press coverage.
Siliconvalley internet.com
<a href="http://siliconvalley.internet.com/news/article.php/1276851">
has interpreted it</a> as a move to unseat IBM as the dominant Linux
vendor.
IDG has characterised the development as
<a href="http://www.idg.net/crd_idgsearch_2.html?url=http://www.infoworld.com/articles/hn/xml/02/05/28/020528hnunbreakable.xml">
a reaction to the UnitedLinux development</a>. Don Marti has also
<a href="http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=6123">
commented</a> on the role Oracle's favouring of RedHat will have on the
distribution market.
<P> <hr> <P>
<!-- =================================================================== -->
<H3><IMG ALT=" " SRC="../gx/bolt.gif">
<FONT COLOR="green">United Linux
</FONT>
</H3>
<P>
One of the biggest earthquakes in the Linux Distribution landscape in a
long time was the announcement by Caldera, SuSE, Turbolinux and Conectiva
that they were going to team up to form
<a href="http://www.unitedlinux.com/">UnitedLinux</a>.
<a href="http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/7/25503.html">
Speculation</a> about
what exactly this
<a href="http://newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=02/05/29/138258">
development</a>
will mean for Linux began even before the
announcement was formally made.
<a href="http://www.redhat.com">
RedHat</a>,
which would be an obvious target of the newly formed UnitedLinux, has made
little comment on the development and is reported to be
<a href="http://linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=2002-05-30-019-26-NW-BZ-RH">
cautiously optimistic</a>.
However Dennis Powell, writing at Linux and Main, sees this as the
<a href="http://www.linuxandmain.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=91">
beginning of a larger battle</a>
between UnitedLinux on one side and Dell Red Hat and Oracle on the other.
<P>
Among the features of UnitedLinux which have attracted
attention are
<a href="http://newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=02/05/31/228254">
the refusal to distribute free binaries</a>, and talk of
<a href="http://www.linuxandmain.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=83">
per seat licensing</a>. It would appear that not all details in these areas have
<a href="http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/25587.html">
yet been worked out</a>.
<P> <hr> <P>
<!-- =================================================================== -->
<H3><IMG ALT=" " SRC="../gx/bolt.gif">
<FONT COLOR="green">Alexis de Tocqueville Institution
</FONT>
</H3>
<P>
One of the most contentious happenings of the past month was
<a href="http://www.adti.net/html_files/defense/opensource_pressrelease_05_30_2002.html">
the release</a>
by the
<a href="http://www.adti.net/">Alexis de Tocqueville Institution</a>
of a whitepaper entitled Opening the Open Source Debate. Among the points
made in this document was that
<blockquote>
Terrorists trying to hack or disrupt U.S. computer networks might find it
easier if the federal government attempts to switch to "open source" as
some groups propose.'
</blockquote>
Unsurprisingly, this led to an outcry among many associated with open
source software.
<P>
Happily, for those of us who believe free and open software is a good
thing, it appears that these contentions are not being blindly accepted.
Indeed there have been some very well considered rebuttals of the
whitepaper's theories. David F. Skoll at the Sydney Morning Herald has
made
<a href="http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2002/06/11/1022982836568.html">
detailed arguments</a>
(also
<a href="http://www.roaringpenguin.com/adti2.php3">at Roaring
Penguin</a>)
against the specific points raised as has
<a href="http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/25656.html">
Thomas C. Greene at The Register</a> and
<a href="http://newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=02/06/14/1948201&mode=thread&tid=11">
Karl O. Pinc at NewsForge</a>,
<P>
Some commentators such as Michelle Delio at Wired have
<a href="http://www.wired.com/news/linux/0,1411,52973,00.html">
suggested</a>
that Microsoft may have paid to have the paper written. Whoever were the
original funders of the paper, if <em>you</em> want to read it, you will
have to stump up $5.29,
<a href="http://newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=02/06/20/1755215&mode=thread&tid=11">
as reported by NewsForge</a>.
It is possible to download the original version
<a href="http://x.emdx.org/Slashdot/old_opensource_whitepaper.pdf">
from a non-ADTI server</a>, which was linked from the
<a href="http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/06/10/1737258&tid=99">
Slashdot report</a> on this story.
Apparently, the main
differences
between the different versions of the document are in spelling and grammar
(Anthony Awtrey at Linux and Main
<a href="http://linuxandmain.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=97">
goes through them in detail</a>).
<P>
For a more positive analysis of the role of open/free software in
government and military applications, you could look at
<a href="http://www.mitre.org/support/papers/tech_papers_01/kenwood_software/index.shtml">
the MITRE paper</a> on the subject. Finally, for the ultimate irony,
NewsForge had the
<a href="http://newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=02/06/05/1721223">
pleasure of reporting</a> that the ADTI's own website runs
<a href="http://www.apache.org">Apache</a>.
<P> <hr> <P>
<!-- =================================================================== -->
<H3><IMG ALT=" " SRC="../gx/bolt.gif">
<FONT COLOR="green">MobiliX wins Against Obelix
</FONT>
</H3>
<P>
In a recent court hearing in Germany, the owners of the name
<a href="http://www.mobilix.org">Mobilix</a> have
defeated a challenge
brought against them by
<a href="http://www.editions-albert-rene.com">
Les &#201ditions Albert Ren&#233</a>, owners of the popular Asterix comic
book series. The Asterix comic features a character named Obelix, and it
was the contention of lawyers representing
<a href="http://www.editions-albert-rene.com">
Les &#201ditions Albert Ren&#233</a> that the name Mobilix was a violation
of their trademarks. Mobilix is a website devoted to
<b>Mobil</b>e Un<b>ix</b>
(in particular Linux and BSD on laptops, PDA's, cell phones, etc.,).
The court eventually ruled that there was little chance of the names being
mixed up, especially given the very different markets they are aimed at.
<p>
The documentation of the case is available
<a href="http://mobilix.org/mobilix_asterix.html">
online</a> (also
<a href="http://mobilix.org/de/mobilix_asterix.html">
in German</a>),
and includes letters from MobiliX lawyers
<a href="http://www.jbb.de">
Jaschinski Biere Brexl</a>.
<a name="distro"></a>
<p><hr><p>
<!-- =================================================================== -->
<center><H3><font color="green">Distro News</font></H3></center>
<P> <hr> <P>
<!-- =================================================================== -->
<H3><IMG ALT=" " SRC="../gx/bolt.gif">
<FONT COLOR="green">Debian
</FONT>
</H3>
<P>
<a href="http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/">
Debian Weekly News</a>
have
<a href="http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2002/24/">
reported</a>
the availability of
preliminary XFree86 4.2.0 Packages.
Branden Robinson and
Ishikawa Mutsumi's announcement is available
<a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-x-0206/msg00029.html">
here</a>.
Werner Heuser has set up a
<a href="http://mobilix.org/debian_xfree42.html">
Mini HOWTO about Debian-XFree86 v4.2</a>. Download from
<a href="http://raw.no/x4.2/">
a mirror</a>
if possible.
<P>
<HR NOSHADE WIDTH="20%">
<P>
Also
<a href="http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2002/23/">
reported</a> by DWN was the
<a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-cd-0206/msg00046.html">
availability of</a> updated Woody
<a href="http://www.phy.olemiss.edu/debian-minicd/">
MiniCD images</a> for alpha, i386, m68k, and PowerPC.
<P> <hr> <P>
<!-- =================================================================== -->
<H3><IMG ALT=" " SRC="../gx/bolt.gif">
<FONT COLOR="green">Gentoo
</FONT>
</H3>
<P> Gentoo Linux 1.2 was
<a href="http://www.gentoo.org/news/20020610-gentoo.html">
released June 10</a>.
<P> <hr> <P>
<!-- =================================================================== -->
<H3><IMG ALT=" " SRC="../gx/bolt.gif">
<FONT COLOR="green">Phat
</FONT>
</H3>
<P>
The fourth release of
<a href="http://www.phatlinux.com">
Phat Linux</a>
has arrived on FTP servers. It includes updates such as Ximian GNOME and a
2.4.18 kernel. Phat aims to be installable on a Windows computer without
repartitioning.
<P> <hr> <P>
<!-- =================================================================== -->
<H3><IMG ALT=" " SRC="../gx/bolt.gif">
<FONT COLOR="green">Slackware
</FONT>
</H3>
<P>
Slackware</a> has announced the release of Slackware 8.1.
Highlights of this
release include KDE 3.0.1, GNOME 1.4.1 (with new additions like Evolution),
the long-awaited Mozilla 1.0 browser, support for many new filesystems like
ext3, ReiserFS, JFS, and XFS, and support for several new SCSI and ATA RAID
controllers. You can buy it at
<a href="http://store.slackware.com">
store.slackware.com</a>, or download it from one of
<a href="http://slackware.com/getslack/">
many mirrors</a>.
The new release has been
<a href="http://www.linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet/reviews/4241/2/">
reviewed by Linux Planet</a>,
and also
<a href="http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/06/19/0330205&mode=nested&tid=106">
reported by Slashdot</a>.
<P> <hr> <P>
<!-- =================================================================== -->
<H3><IMG ALT=" " SRC="../gx/bolt.gif">
<FONT COLOR="green">SuSE
</FONT>
</H3>
<P>
<a href="http://linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=2002-06-03-015-26-NW-BZ-SS">
SuSE plans a developers' release</a>
of UnitedLinux, and won't have a per-seat license. This does not directly
affect the other distributions participating in UnitedLinux.
<P>
<HR NOSHADE WIDTH="20%">
<P>
<a href="http://www.suse.de/en">SuSE Linux</a>
have announced the mid-June availability of SuSE Linux
Pro-Office CD with Sun Microsystems' StarOffice 6.0. Additionally,
the Pro-Office CD for SuSE Linux 8.0 features the latest edition
of the ultimate desktop environment KDE 3.0.1, as well as
important patches for the SuSE Linux 8.0 operating system. With
the Pro-Office CD, SuSE Linux users can equip their home computers
with state-of-the-art Linux desktop technology.
<P>
<HR NOSHADE WIDTH="20%">
<P>
SuSE Linux have also announced the release of an updated version of the
<a href="http://www.suse.de/en/groupware">
SuSE Linux Groupware Server</a>.
The interweaving of the Linux operating system with the newly released
Lotus Application Server 5.0.10 makes the SuSE Linux Groupware Server a
powerful Lotus solution for Intel and AMD 32-bit processors.
<a name="commercial"></a>
<p><hr><p>
<!-- =================================================================== -->
<center><H3><font color="green">Software and Product News</font></H3></center>
<P> <hr> <P>
<!-- =================================================================== -->
<H3><IMG ALT=" " SRC="../gx/bolt.gif">
<FONT COLOR="green">Mozilla 1.0
</FONT>
</H3>
<P>
Few can have missed this particular piece of news, but just in case you
have been living under a rock all June,
<a href="http://www.mozilla.org/">Mozilla 1.0</a>
has been
<a href="http://www.mozilla.org/releases/mozilla1.0/">
released</a>.
<P>
Note that there are
<a href="http://mozilla.org/MPL/missing.html">
a few contributors</a> to the project
who still need to be contacted before Mozilla can be made 100% GPL. Maybe
you can help track them down.
<P> <hr> <P>
<!-- =================================================================== -->
<H3><IMG ALT=" " SRC="../gx/bolt.gif">
<FONT COLOR="green">Linux Game Publishing: Majesty
</FONT>
</H3>
<P>
<a href="http://www.linuxgamepublishing.com/">
Linux Game Publishing</a> have released
the first
<a href="http://www.linuxgamepublishing.com/screenshots.php?id=8">screenshot</a>
from the Linux version of
<a href="http://www.linuxgamepublishing.com/info.php?id=8">Majesty</a>.
Majesty is a real-time strategy game currently in development at LGP.
<P> <hr> <P>
<!-- =================================================================== -->
<H3><IMG ALT=" " SRC="../gx/bolt.gif">
<FONT COLOR="green">Faximum Announces New Fax Software for Linux and Windows
</FONT>
</H3>
<P>
<a href="http://www.faximum.com/">
Faximum Software</a>,
a developer of fax server software, has announced a major new release of
its
<a href="http://www.faximum.com/fms">
Fax Messaging Server (FMS)</a>
product. FMS 2 runs on Linux, integrates with an organisation's existing
email server, and enables Windows, Mac, and Linux users to send and receive
faxes as easily as (and using the same tools as) email. It is possible to
try out the software running on one of Faximum's servers at
<a href="http://www.faximum.com/demo">
www.faximum.com/demo</a>.
<P> <hr> <P>
<!-- =================================================================== -->
<H3><IMG ALT=" " SRC="../gx/bolt.gif">
<FONT COLOR="green">Mammoth PostgreSQL Free Evaluation Now Available
</FONT>
</H3>
<P>
<a href="http://www.commandprompt.com">
Command Prompt, Inc.</a>
is pleased to announce the immediate availability of
an evaluation version of Mammoth PostgreSQL for RedHat Linux 7.2/7.3. The release
contains a 5 connection Mammoth PostgreSQL, LXP the XML application server
for PostgreSQL and Mammoth Browser a GUI based data management application.
<P>
The product is available for immediate electronic distribution by visiting
the Command Prompt, Inc. website at
<a href="http://www.commandprompt.com">
www.commandprompt.com</a>.
<P> <hr> <P>
<!-- =================================================================== -->
<H3><IMG ALT=" " SRC="../gx/bolt.gif">
<FONT COLOR="green">Cylant IDS Upgrade Announced
</FONT>
</H3>
<P>
<a href="http://www.cylant.com/">
Cylant</a>,
a provider of host-based intrusion detection and rejection systems for the
Linux and FreeBSD server platforms, have announced the release of version
1.2.3 of
<a href="http://www.cylant.com/products/cylantsecure.html">
CylantSecure</a>.
CylantSecure applies a preventative, behavioural approach to security,
utilising kernel monitoring to detect attacks without needing continual
signature or rule-set updates.
<P>
Benefits of CylantSecure's new version 1.2.3 include:
<ul>
<li>
Improved instrumentation for better kernel level behavioural
measurement.
</li>
<li>
More flexible IP profiling for superior recognition of port scans and
connection hijacking attempts.
</li>
<li>
Watcher performs faster over previous versions.
</li>
<li>
Includes new self-training mandatory access control system.
</li>
</ul>
<P> <hr> <P>
<!-- =================================================================== -->
<H3><IMG ALT=" " SRC="../gx/bolt.gif">
<FONT COLOR="green">Reliaty Announces New Data Protection Product
</FONT>
</H3>
<P>
<a href="http://www.reliaty.com">
Reliaty</a>,
a provider of advanced data protection,
have introduced Reliaty Backup, a data protection software developed
on a Network Data Management Protocol (NDMP) foundation. This allows backup and
recovery of data from any point within a storage environment to any device,
regardless of the server and storage platforms or location of the
connections. Reliaty Backup offers this seamless methodology for
multiplatform environments, creating a new level of cost savings,
ease-of-use, and faster data recovery.
This standards-based software can be
used with Network Attached Storage (NAS) devices, and also with UNIX, Linux,
and Windows systems even if NAS is not present.
<P>
Pricing for Reliaty Backup starts at $2500. The software will be available in
July.
<P> <hr> <P>
<!-- =================================================================== -->
<H3><IMG ALT=" " SRC="../gx/bolt.gif">
<FONT COLOR="green">IBM Linux Center
</FONT>
</H3>
<P>
In response to growing customer demand for Linux solutions,
<a href="http://www.ibm.com">
IBM</a> have
announced the opening of the first center in New York City to help the
financial services industry deploy Linux.
The Linux center, which will be based in Manhattan, will include hardware,
software and services from IBM as well as its partners, designed to help
financial services customers evaluate and plan Linux implementations.
SunGard, JD Edwards,Veritas, and Sybase are among the premier partners whose
technologies will be available in the IBM Linux Center.
<P> <hr> <P>
<!-- =================================================================== -->
<H3><IMG ALT=" " SRC="../gx/bolt.gif">
<FONT COLOR="green">Arkeia Announces Plasmon Tape Library Certification
</FONT>
</H3>
<P>
<a href="http://www.arkeia.com">
Arkeia Corporation</a>, a Southern California-based supplier of the Arkeia
network backup software, has completed compatibility tests with Plasmon
automated data storage libraries. Arkeia 4.2 tested compatible with Plasmon
V-Series devices, as did the Beta version of the soon-to-be-released Arkeia
5. Philippe Roussel, CEO of Arkeia Corp. said that this
"...brings to Plasmon libraries new perspectives in the Linux and Unix
environments."
<P> <hr> <P>
<!-- =================================================================== -->
<H3><IMG ALT=" " SRC="../gx/bolt.gif">
<FONT COLOR="green">Plug `n' Play Security Blade Appliance
</FONT>
</H3>
<P>
Developed by
<a href="http://www.omnicluster.com">
OmniCluster Technologies</a>
of Boca Raton, Florida (an IBM spinoff), the SlotShield 1000 and SlotShield
3000 blade servers are redefining the security appliance market.
OmniCluster has partnered with Check Point Software Technologies, to
develop a security appliance integrating Check Point's VPN-1/FireWall-1
with OmniCluster's SlotShield appliance blade technology. Both products
are plug n play security solutions that are PCI compatible and can be
installed within minutes inside any industry standard server system. The
SlotShield 3000's plug-n-play capabilities enable installation as easily as
replacing a server's Network Interface Card. The SlotShield 3000 supports
any server running Windows NT service pack 6, Windows 2000, Windows XP and
Linux kernel 2.2x and 2.4x.
<P>
OmniCluster currently offers three variations
in its blade security appliances. They include:
<ul>
<li>
Single-server firewalls
</li>
<li>
High availability firewalls (HAFW) for server "farms
</li>
<li>
Multiple applications for URL, virus screening, email screening,
intrusion detection
</li>
</ul>
<P> <hr> <P>
<!-- =================================================================== -->
<H3><IMG ALT=" " SRC="../gx/bolt.gif">
<FONT COLOR="green">New PXI Systems from MEN Micro
</FONT>
</H3>
<P>
<a href="http://www.men.de">MEN Micro</a>; a company that
designs, manufactures and sells board-level industrial real-time
and embedded computer products;
has announced the release of two new PXI systems.
MEN's new PXI systems come in two sizes, a 19-in. 7U rack with as many
as 21 PXI slots and a 4U high rack with seven PXI
slots. Pentium-based 6U and 3U MEN F7 PXI
controllers are at the heart of the processing platform for these
PXI systems. By the end of 2002, MEN plans to release a Pentium IV-based
PXI system controller.
The MEN product lines support the most widely used
operating systems, including Windows NT, VxWorks, OS-9, QNX and Linux.
<P> <hr> <P>
<!-- =================================================================== -->
<H3><IMG ALT=" " SRC="../gx/bolt.gif">
<FONT COLOR="green">Wolfram Research Announces Release of Mathematica 4.2
</FONT>
</H3>
<P>
<a href="http://www.wolfram.com">
Wolfram Research</a>, have released
<a href="http://www.wolfram.com/mathematica/newin42">
Mathematica 4.2</a>. New packages, XML functionality, and
Java connectivity have been added in this release.
<P> <hr> <P>
<!-- =================================================================== -->
<H3><IMG ALT=" " SRC="../gx/bolt.gif">
<FONT COLOR="green">Other software
</FONT>
</H3>
<P>
The
<a href="http://www.samba.org/">Samba</a>
Team is proud to
<a href="http://linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn02-06-20-008-26-NW-SV-SW">
announce</a>
the release of Samba
2.2.5, the latest stable release of Samba
<P><HR WIDTH="20%" NOSHADE><P>
<a href="http://galeon.sourceforge.net/news/index.php#43">
Galeon 2.5 was released</a> on June 8. Features Mozilla 1.0 compatibility.
<!-- *** BEGIN copyright *** -->
<P> <hr> <P>
<H5 ALIGN=center>
Copyright &copy; 2002, Michael Conry and
the Editors of <A HREF="mailto:gazette@ssc.com"><I>Linux Gazette</I></A>.<BR>
Copying license <A HREF="../copying.html">http://www.linuxgazette.com/copying.html</A><BR>
Published in Issue 80 of <i>Linux Gazette</i>, July 2002</H5>
<!-- *** END copyright *** -->
<H4 ALIGN="center">
"Linux Gazette...<I>making Linux just a little more fun!</I>"
</H4>
<P> <HR> <P>
<!--===================================================================-->
<center>
<H1><font color="maroon">Pl/Python and Cursors in Pl/Pgsql for PostgreSQL</font></H1>
<H4>By <a href="mailto:articles@gnujobs.com">Mark Nielsen</a></H4>
</center>
<P> <HR> <P>
<!-- END header -->
<ol>
<li><a href="#Purpose">Purpose</a></li>
<li><a href="#compile">Compiling PostgreSQL</a></li>
<li><a href="#executing">Executing Pl/Python and Pl/PgSQL with Cursors</a></li>
<li><a href="#suggestions">Suggestions for Future</a></li>
<li><a href="#conclusions">Conclusion</a></li>
<li><a href="#REF">References</a></li>
</ol>
<h3><a NAME="Purpose"></a>Purpose</h3>
The purpose of this article is to get people more familiar with some new
programming techniques with procedural languages in PostgreSQL 7.2.
I am really a big fan of procedural languages, and overall, PostgreSQL
rocks when it comes to stored procedures. You can create many different
types of functions like : SQL, Pl/PgSQL, Pl/Perl, and Pl/Tcl. Recently in
7.2, you also have Pl/Perlu and Pl/Python --- unrestricted Perl and
Python. The ability to use other programming languages inside a database
server makes life a lot easier for a programmer (even if there is some
inefficiency with Perl and Python). For a few years, I was irritated by the
fact procedural languages couldn't return more than one item. That has sort
of been taken care of, but not perfectly. One of the last areas to make my
life ten times easier is to have procedural languages return more than item.
We will see we can sort of do this, but I have suggestions to make it better.
<p>
NOTE: I am using Red Hat 7.2 as a base for this article. Things will be
different with your version of Linux.
<h3><a NAME="compile"></a>Compiling PostgreSQL</h3>
There are three things you need to know when compiling PostgreSQL:
<ol>
<li>Edit src/pl/plperl/Makefile.PL and comment out lines 14 through 34.</li>
<li> Edit src/include/pg_config.h.in and change
<br>#define INDEX_MAX_KEYS 16
<br>to
<br>#define INDEX_MAX_KEYS 512
</li>
<li> Use this command to compile PostgreSQL:
<br>adduser postgres
<br>mkdir /usr/local/pg72
<br>
./configure --prefix=/usr/local/pg72 --with-libraries=/usr/lib/perl5/5.6.0/i386-linux/CORE/libperl.a --with-perl --with-python
<br>make
<br>make install
<br>chown -R postgres /usr/local/pg72
<br>mkdir /home/postgres
<br>chown postgres /home/postgres
<br>su -l postgres
</li>
</ol>
You can also add odbc, tcl, and other languages, but I am just using Perl
and Python as examples for now. After you execute "make" and "make install",
follow these commands as the user postgres.
<ol>
<li>
<br>PATH=/usr/local/pg72/bin:$PATH
<br>export PATH
<br>LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/local/pg72/lib
<br>export LD_LIBRARY_PATH
<br>export PGDATA=/usr/local/pg72/data
<br>export PGLIB=/usr/local/pg72/lib
</li>
<li>initdb</li>
<li>/usr/local/pg72/bin/pg_ctl -D /usr/local/pg72/data -l /tmp/pg_logfile start</li>
<li>createlang plperl template1</li>
<li>createlang plpython template1</li>
<li>createlang plpgsql template1</li>
<li>createdb postgres</li>
</ol>
<h3><a NAME="executing"></a>Executing Pl/Python and Pl/PgSQL with Cursors</h3>
Here are a list of commands you can execute using the command "psql template1".
This assumes the database "postgres" has been created.
<p>
Execute these commands:
<pre>
\c postgres
drop table contact;
create table contact (
first text, last text, phone text, address text,
city text,state text, zip text
);
drop function replace_e_to_a(text);
CREATE FUNCTION replace_e_to_a(text) RETURNS text AS
'
import re
Text1 = re.sub(''e'', ''a'',args[0])
return Text1
'
LANGUAGE 'plpython';
drop function replace_numbers_to_z(text);
CREATE FUNCTION replace_numbers_to_z(text) RETURNS text AS
'
import re
Text1 = re.sub(''[0-9]'', ''z'',args[0])
return Text1
'
LANGUAGE 'plpython';
insert into contact values ('Mark','Nielsen','123-123-1234',
'1234 Somewhere St.', 'Some City 123', 'TX','12345-1234');
insert into contact values ('Mark','Nielsen2','123-123-1234',
'3456 Somewhere St.', 'Some City 444', 'MI','12345-1234');
insert into contact values ('Mark','Nielsen3','123-123-1234',
'5678 Somewhere St.', 'Some City 654', 'AX','12345-1234');
select first, last, address from contact;
drop function select_contact();
CREATE FUNCTION select_contact () RETURNS refcursor AS '
DECLARE
cursor1 CURSOR FOR select replace_e_to_a(first)as first,
replace_e_to_a(last) as last,
replace_numbers_to_z(address) as address
from contact;
BEGIN
open cursor1;
return (cursor1);
END;
' LANGUAGE 'plpgsql';
begin;
select select_contact();
FETCH cursor1; FETCH cursor1;FETCH cursor1;
end;
</pre>
and the output should look like:
<pre>
DROP
CREATE
DROP
CREATE
DROP
CREATE
INSERT 255188 1
INSERT 255189 1
INSERT 255190 1
first | last | address
-------+----------+--------------------
Mark | Nielsen | 1234 Somewhere St.
Mark | Nielsen2 | 3456 Somewhere St.
Mark | Nielsen3 | 5678 Somewhere St.
(3 rows)
DROP
CREATE
BEGIN
select_contact
----------------
cursor1
(1 row)
first | last | address
-------+---------+--------------------
Mark | Nialsan | zzzz Somewhere St.
(1 row)
first | last | address
-------+----------+--------------------
Mark | Nialsan2 | zzzz Somewhere St.
(1 row)
first | last | address
-------+----------+--------------------
Mark | Nialsan3 | zzzz Somewhere St.
(1 row)
COMMIT
</pre>
From this example, you can see how the Pl/pgSQL executes the Python
procedures (the Pl/Python procedures). You don't need Pl/pgSQL to execute
Pl/Python procedures, I just did it that way. You can only use
Perl and Python to manipulate data, not change data in the tables.
Perl and Python just input and output data, they don't do anything to
the database directly.
Also, pl/perlu gets installed
when you compile Perl into PostgreSQL, which is nice.
<h3><a NAME="suggestions"></a>Suggestions for Future</h3>
I still have three big complaints/suggestions:
<ol>
<li>Procedures seem to be able to only return one "item'. It can't return
two items. For me, I would like to be able to return at least two items --
a cursor and a flag saying if the cursor is good or not. Cursors DO NOT
make procedures return more than one value, they return the cursor which
you can consider to be a reference to many items, not the items themselves.
The way I compile my procedures is that they can take upto 512 variables
of input, but they can only return one "item". I am dumbstruck as to why
that is. I tried to read of the discussions on the mailing lists and docs,
but I got lost.
</li>
<li> There doesn't seem to be very many things you can do to cursors, like
see how many entries there are, if there are any entries left, if there
are any entries at all, if it executed correctly, etc. Cursors need to be
advanced some more. Perhaps I just don't have enough experience with
cursors to comment on them.</li>
<li>Procedures can't return rows of data. Besides the fact it can only
return one item, it can't return rows of one items or rows which contain
multiple items. Being able to return multiple rows with multiple fields
would be cool. Even if we only want to return one row of data, it would
be nice to return a cursor as one item, and then its status (good, bad,
how many, etc) as well. If you can return more than one item, you might
as well make it unlimited or limited by a compile-time number (like inputs
are).</li>
</ol>
I like the progression of procedural languages in PostgreSQL. It seems
to be way ahead of a lot of the other free database servers and even
most of the commercial ones. Taking it to the next step would really make
it more of a kick-butt database server. I try to help out by writing
up articles, perhaps you can try to help out by adding features?
<p>
This isn't really a complaint of cursors, but of DBD:Pg for Perl, and
possibly other interfaces to PostgreSQL -- cursors really aren't supported,
as far as I can tell. Thus, if Pl/PgSQL could return multiple rows
of multiple items, it would take care of this problem.
<p>
The only other way I know to store data from a procedure is into a temporary
table which can be accessed after the procedure has finished.
To me, that is a bit extreme for 99% of the data I want to get. It is
extreme because usually I just want one row of data and creating a table
just for one row of data isn't worth the effort.
<h3><a NAME="conclusions"></a>Conclusions.</h3>
Pl/Python will finally let me let go of Perl once and for all (I have
converted myself to Python). Pl/PgSQL is getting closer to something
that makes it easy for me to program and create complicated procedures
-- I just wish it could actually return multiple items and not
just a reference to a cursor or other single item.
<p>
The sad thing is, my version of DBD::Pg for Perl and my Python interface
don't support cursors, and so, it is useless for me to the most part, but
at least it is getting better. I found some things at
<a href="http://developer.postgresql.org/todo.php">
http://developer.postgresql.org/todo.php</a> which look promising. Since
cursors really aren't supported in the programming languages I use, if
I truly need to store lots of data, I will probably have to use
temporary tables. I still don't understand why a procedural language
can't return data like you can in a normal sql command. Whatever the
limitation is, it would be nice to overcome.
<h3>
<a NAME="REF"></a>References</h3>
<ol>
<li>
<a href="http://www.gnujobs.com/Articles/24/nielsen.html">
Standard Database Setup with Perl and PostgreSQL: Part 3
</a></li>
<li>
<a href="http://www.gnujobs.com/Articles/22/Perl_PostgreSQL2.html">
Part 2: PostgreSQL: Perl procedures with PL/pgSQL</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.gnujobs.com/Articles/20/Perl_PostgreSQL.html">
Part 1: PostgreSQL: Perl procedures with PL/pgSQL</a>.</li>
<li>An older article
<a href="http://linuxgazette.com/issue57/nielsen2.html">setting of Web and Database Servers.</a>
<li><a href="http://www.brw.net/php/whitepapers.php">
Branden Williams articles</a> on PostgreSQL. </li>
<li><a href="http://techdocs.postgresql.org/oresources.php">
http://techdocs.postgresql.org/oresources.php</a></li>
<li><a href="http://techdocs.postgresql.org/">
http://techdocs.postgresql.org/</a></li>
<li> Some links which have nothing to do with this article, but I am
considering for future articles.
<ul>
<li><a href="http://authpg.sourceforge.net/">
http://authpg.sourceforge.net/</a>. </li>
<li><a href="http://www.digitalstratum.com/pglogd/">
http://www.digitalstratum.com/pglogd/</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.giuseppetanzilli.it/mod_auth_pgsql/">
http://www.giuseppetanzilli.it/mod_auth_pgsql/</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.zort.ca/postgresql/">
http://www.zort.ca/postgresql/</a> -- very nice and I will use this. I tried
it, and it grouped all my tables together, so I had to ungroup it
and separate out the tables.
<li><a href="http://www.brasileiro.net/postgres/cookbook/">
http://www.brasileiro.net/postgres/cookbook/</a></li>
</ul>
<li>
If this article
changes, it will be available at
<a href="http://www.gnujobs.com/Articles/26/nielsen.html">
http://www.gnujobs.com/Articles/26/nielsen.html</a></li>
</ol>
<!-- *** BEGIN bio *** -->
<SPACER TYPE="vertical" SIZE="30">
<p>
<h4><img align=bottom alt="" src="../gx/note.gif">Mark Nielsen</h4>
<EM>Mark works at
<a href="http://www.audioboomerang.com/">AudioBoomerang.com</a>
which creates, delivers, and tracks personalized multimedia email, web,
and newsletter campaigns. He works as a consultant delivering end products
to AudioBoomerang.com clients, such as advanced customized statistical
reports used for demographic or pyschological profiles for future campaigns.
In his spare time, he writes articles relating to Free Software (GPL) or
Free Literature (FDL) and is involved with the non-profit learning center
<a href="http://www.eastmont.net">eastmont.net</a>.</EM>
<!-- *** END bio *** -->
<!-- *** BEGIN copyright *** -->
<P> <hr> <!-- P -->
<H5 ALIGN=center>
Copyright &copy; 2002, Mark Nielsen.<BR>
Copying license <A HREF="../copying.html">http://www.linuxgazette.com/copying.html</A><BR>
Published in Issue 80 of <i>Linux Gazette</i>, July 2002</H5>
<!-- *** END copyright *** -->
<H4 ALIGN="center">
"Linux Gazette...<I>making Linux just a little more fun!</I>"
</H4>
<P> <HR> <P>
<!--===================================================================-->
<center>
<H1><font color="maroon">Red Hat and USB devices</font></H1>
<H4>By <a href="mailto:articles@gnujobs.com">Mark Nielsen</a></H4>
</center>
<P> <HR> <P>
<!-- END header -->
<ol>
<li><a href="#Purpose">Purpose</a></li>
<li><a href="#computer">The Emperor Linux Computer I have and USB</a></li>
<li><a href="#mouse">The USB Optical Mouse</a></li>
<li><a href="#camera">USB HP PhotoSmart 318 camera</a></li>
<li><a href="#drive">BUSLink 40G USB external hard drive</a></li>
<li><a href="#suggestions">Suggestions for Future</a></li>
<li><a href="#conclusions">Conclusion</a></li>
<li><a href="#REF">References</a></li>
</ol>
<h3><a NAME="Purpose"></a>Purpose</h3>
The Purpose of this article is to get my USB mouse, USB camera, and
USB hard drive to work with Linux.
<h3><a NAME="computer"></a>The Emperor Linux Computer I have and USB</h3>
I started to use Red Hat 7.3. Although it has come a long way and I really
like how all the Linux Distributions are turning out, Red Hat 7.3 makes me
mad for only a few reasons:
<ol>
<li>OpenOffice doesn't appear to be in the distribution. Whatever the reason
is, it needs to be overcome. KDE Office and Gnome Office are cool, but not
including OpenOffice is a big big big mistake. OpenOffice is one of the key
suites to convert people to Linux. Having the choice of 3 office suites,
Gnome Office,
KDE Office, and OpenOffice (along with lots of other cool software like
GIMP. Mozilla, Evolution, PovRay, etc) can really convert people over.
</li>
<li> The kernel under /usr/src/linux for Red Hat 7.3 doesn't seem to be
configured the way they installed the kernels onto your system. I tried
searching on Red Hat's website, but I didn't anywhere. Isn't it a little
stupid that that don't supply (or make it easy to find) the configs
files they used to compile the kernels? Perhaps I am blind, but it wasn't
obvious to me where their custom config file was. It makes me mad because
whenever I try to compile the kernel,
I can never get all the features I want without
it being too large (even though I try to modularize everything).</li>
<li>The kernel installed apparently won't let you add modules that you
create yourself. At least, when I tried to compile the usbide module
outside the source tree of the kernel, it was giving some weird error saying
it wasn't allowed to do it. However, on the computer I bought from
Emperor Linux (Red Hat 7.2),
I didn't have that problem (the kernel was compiled by the company and I was
able to compile the usbide module without recompling the kernel).
</li>
</ol>
<p>
Even though my USB camera and mouse works in Red Hat 7.3, because I couldn't
use the usb hard drive with it (without compiling a new kernel from scratch
which I always screw up), I decided to use the usb hard drive and camera
with the Linux laptop I got from Emperor Linux.
<h3><a NAME="mouse"></a>The USB Optical Mouse</h3>
I have 3 USB optical mice (different brands) and they all worked with
Red Hat 7.3, Red Hat 7.2, and my Emperor Linux computer. I don't know if the
default kernel in Red Hat 7.2 works with the optical mice because I compiled
different kernels (to get my wireless network cards to work right).
<p>
NOTE: Whoever likes to use trackball mice compared to optical mice has to be
an idiot. The optical usb/ps2 mice are very cheap these days and the balls
on the standard mice always get cluttered with junk and wear out. Go out
and replace the stupid trackball mice with an optical mouse today.
<h3><a NAME="camera"></a>The USB HP PhotoSmart 318 camera</h3>
My HP PhotoSmart 318 camera really rocks. Here is a help page I found.
<br>
<p><a href="http://lhd.datapower.com/db/dispproduct.php3?DISP=3101">
http://lhd.datapower.com/db/dispproduct.php3?DISP=3101</a>
<p>
It rocks because on a price/performance ratio, it was the best camera
out there for $179. All the other cameras that could do the same (or even less)
were easily two or three times more expensive. I think the market changed
and a lot of older models haven't dropped in price yet. For my needs it
was perfect. It had enough resolution, it saved jpg images, and I could
get memory expansion if I needed it (8 megs is fine so I will never
need to get the expansion).
<p>
Bottom line, in Red Hat 7.3 and my Emperor Linux computer, just as the
article said:
<ol>
<li>Changed the camera to hard drive mode.</li>
<li>usb-uhci worked fine (in the article it didn't).</li>
<li> In my /etc/fstab,
<pre>
### for my camera.
/dev/sda1 /mnt/camera vfat noauto,sync,nosuid,user,unhide 0 0
</pre>
</li>
<li> mkdir -p /mnt/camera</li>
<li>mount /mnt/camera</li>
</ol>
And then the images where at "/mnt/camera/dcim/100hp318/". I didn't test
deleting the images. I will just delete them when I use the camera, but
I copied them over just fine. I am able to get about 14 images without
additional memory expansion.
<p>
I think ultimately most people will be using digital cameras within 5 years
and the standard camera industry will be dead except for photographers
and the little cameras you buy for one-time events. Digital cameras will be
able to contain so much memory in the next few years, hopefully
within 5 years you can store hundreds of images on a simple small camera.
Why would you want a film camera?
<h3><a NAME="drive"></a>BUSLink 40G USB external hard drive</h3>
My USB external hard drive was a pain in the butt. It was easy once
I found this webpage,
<a href="http://bravin.home.cern.ch/bravin/usbide/usbide.html">
http://bravin.home.cern.ch/bravin/usbide/usbide.html</a>. It was a pain
because I kept on trying and trying to figure what to do to get it to work.
<p>
<ol>
<li> Downloaded usbide-1.2.2-b.tgz </li>
<li>tar -zxvf usbide-1.2.2-b.tgz</li>
<li>cd usbide</li>
<li> make</li>
<li>make install</li>
</ol>
There were a few problems,
<ol>
<li> I had to make a symbolic link from /usr/src/linux pointing to my copy of the Linux
kernel source.</li>
<li> The hard drive can only have one partition because it won't save changes
if you try to change the heads/sectors/cylinders.</li>
<li>When I stress-tested the hard drive by copying lots of data over,
after 1 gig, it froze on me and gave me a weird error. I haven't
had a problem since.</li>
<li> For whatever reason, the standard Red Hat 7.3 wasn't configured
right to let me compile my own module and add it to the modules
under /lib/modules. Personally, I think that is stupid.</li>
<li>For whatever reason, I couldn't find a config file for kernel compiling
to get the exact same kernel Red Hat has installed on my system. If I had
to compile a new kernel, I would want the exact same one with just a
few of my changes. Maybe you can do it and their config file exists
somewhere, as I didn't try that hard, but it
wasn't obvious (which it should be). Thus I just used the computer I got
from Emperor Linux.</li>
</ol>
<h3><a NAME="suggestions"></a>Suggestions for Future</h3>
I have a webcam I was interested in trying out.
Look at <a href="http://webcam-osx.sourceforge.net/cameras.html">
http://webcam-osx.sourceforge.net/cameras.html</a>. My IBM NetCam is not
supported on that list, bummer. They are cheap enough. I will just consider
buying a new webcam.
<h3><a NAME="conclusions"></a>Conclusions.</h3>
Using USB devices is really cool. I used to hate USB devices, but now that
I can have tons of stuff attached to my Linux boxes without them using
up all the resources, I like it. I just wish more companies would help create
Linux drivers for their products. I would never use a USB hard drive
for anything except backups and I wouldn't rely on USB for stuff that
requires a lot of cpu power. Firewire is good for heavy stuff.
All the other USB devices (mice, keyboards,
printers, webcam, camera, etc) are a good match for USB because they require
low overhead.
<p>
I copied over 3 gigs of data to my hard drive and I got seek errors. I thought
there could have been bad sectors, so I ran mkfs with the "-c" option, and
it took all day. Eventually, mkfs bombed, so I am going to wait a little
longer before I use the external hard drive with Linux. Most likely, I will
check hardware compatibility and go out and buy a new external hard drive
(maybe firewire instead of USB).
<h3>
<a NAME="REF"></a>References</h3>
<ol>
<li><a href="http://lhd.datapower.com/db/dispproduct.php3?DISP?3101">
http://lhd.datapower.com/db/dispproduct.php3?DISP?3101</a></li>
<li><a href="http://bravin.home.cern.ch/bravin/usbide/usbide.html">
http://bravin.home.cern.ch/bravin/usbide/usbide.html</a></li>
</ol>
<!-- *** BEGIN bio *** -->
<SPACER TYPE="vertical" SIZE="30">
<p>
<h4><img align=bottom alt="" src="../gx/note.gif">Mark Nielsen</h4>
<EM>Mark works at
<a href="http://www.audioboomerang.com/">AudioBoomerang.com</a>
which creates, delivers, and tracks personalized multimedia email, web,
and newsletter campaigns. He works as a consultant delivering end products
to AudioBoomerang.com clients, such as advanced customized statistical
reports used for demographic or pyschological profiles for future campaigns.
In his spare time, he writes articles relating to Free Software (GPL) or
Free Literature (FDL) and is involved with the non-profit learning center
<a href="http://www.eastmont.net">eastmont.net</a>.</EM>
<!-- *** END bio *** -->
<!-- *** BEGIN copyright *** -->
<P> <hr> <!-- P -->
<H5 ALIGN=center>
Copyright &copy; 2002, Mark Nielsen.<BR>
Copying license <A HREF="../copying.html">http://www.linuxgazette.com/copying.html</A><BR>
Published in Issue 80 of <i>Linux Gazette</i>, July 2002</H5>
<!-- *** END copyright *** -->
<H4 ALIGN="center">
"Linux Gazette...<I>making Linux just a little more fun!</I>"
</H4>
<P> <HR> <P>
<!--===================================================================-->
<center>
<H1><font color="maroon">Configuring GDM 2.2</font></H1>
<H4>By <a href="mailto:articles@gnujobs.com">Mark Nielsen</a></H4>
</center>
<P> <HR> <P>
<!-- END header -->
<ol>
<li>
<a href="#Introduction">Introduction</a></li>
<li><a href="#config">Configuring GDM naughtily</a></li>
<li><a href="#Conclusion">Conclusion</a></li>
<li><a href="#REF">References</a></li>
</ol>
<h3>
<a NAME="Introduction"></a>Introduction</h3>
GDM, or GNOME Display Manager, is a graphical login service for your
computer when it boots up. Basically, it makes a nice pretty screen to look
at before you log in. With the standard
installation of RedHat, and I assume other distributions, GDM is really
cool. As a user, you can run the program "gdmphotosetup" to set the picture
of you that will show up in GDM when your computer starts. As the "root"
user, you can configure GDM with "gdmconfig" which lets you set a lot of
cool options. So why am I writing this article when you can do all this
yourself? I will show you some bad things you are not suppose to do.
<h3>
<a NAME="config"></a>Configuring GDM naughtily.</h3>
In the gdm.conf file, I changed these options (which you can also
probably do in the gui setup program).
<pre>
TitleBar=true
Browser=true
LockPosition=false
SetPosition=true
PositionX=0
PositionY=700
</pre>
<p>
Here is my /etc/X11/gdm/Init/Default script.
<pre>
#!/bin/sh
/usr/X11R6/bin/xsetroot -solid "#363047"
### This next item is a huge security risk.
### It basically sets up an xterm with the user "mark".
xterm -r -fn 6x12 -geometry +0+25 -e '/etc/X11/gdm/mark.sh' &
#xterm -r -fn 6x12 -geometry +0+25 -e '/etc/X11/gdm/dummy.sh' &
### This puts a picture on the background.
/usr/bin/xsri -geometry 500x500+600+300 /etc/X11/gdm/im000048.jpg
### This puts xeyes on the screen to watch your mouse pointer.
xeyes -geometry +800+650 -bg white -fg green -outline blue &
### Christmas all year round.
xsnow -santaspeed 10 -santa 2 -snowflakes 1000 -whirl 4 -windtimer 30 &
### A clock down to the second.
xclock -digital -geometry +600+650 -update 1 &
### The popular mine game. Sorry, doesn't seem like you can position it.
### it just pops up in the middle of the screen.
gnomine &
### Maelstrom is pretty cool.
Maelstrom &
## xboard pops up behind GDM, so we can't use it.
#xboard &
### Chromium is a cool arcade-like old fashioned game.
chromium-setup &
### Look at the light shining on the earth.
kworldclock -geometry +750+0 &
### A silly creature for your desktop.
amor &
</pre>
<p>Now the contents of '/etc/X11/gdm/mark.sh'.
<pre>
#!/bin/bash
trap "" HUP
trap "" INT
trap "" QUIT
trap "" KILL
trap "" TSTP
su -l mark
exit
exit
</pre>
Why is the above script dangerous? Well, people can do stuff without
logging in. That is why I put a bunch of traps in the script and made
it exit as soon as someone quits as the user 'mark'. I don't want
anyone to execute root commands, so you have to make it so root exits as
soon as the user 'mark' quits and you have to trap the script so that
someone doesn't cancel the quit -- which would leave them logged in as root.
Still, the whole thing is bad and you shouldn't do it, even though I do.
As an alternative to my xterm session, you could use "chroot", which I
did successfully. It can be a little tricky to setup a chroot environment,
but you can do it. Here is a sample of an account I calld "dummy".
Remember, the /chroot/named environment has to look like the root directory
with a /bin, /sbin, /lib, and all the other directories if you want the
user to be able to do anything at all, and of course /etc/passwd.
<p>Now the contents of '/etc/X11/gdm/dummy.sh'.
<pre>
#!/bin/bash
trap "" HUP
trap "" INT
trap "" QUIT
trap "" KILL
trap "" TSTP
chroot /chroot/dummy su -l dummy
exit
exit
</pre>
<h3>
<a NAME="Conclusion"></a>Conclusion</h3>
GDM is really cool, and I assume KDM is just a cool. I just like to
configure GDM to be nice to look at when I or someone else sits down at
them.
<p>
You might want to have other games playing in the background of your gdm
session. I tested various games, some work and some don't. Remember, every
program you run is a potential security hole if someone can somehow execute
commands through the program or know how to screw it up causing your
computer to get messed up. Obviously, doing something like this on a client
computer should get you fired.
<h3>
<a NAME="REF"></a>References</h3>
<ol>
<li><a href="http://www.tcu-inc.com/Articles/19/GDM.html">
Configuring GDM 2.2</a>
<li><a href="http://www.socsci.auc.dk/~mkp/gdm/">Gnome Display Manager</a>
<li> 6-24-1999 <a href="http://www.tcu-inc.com/mark/articles/Xdm.html">Setting up xdm.</a>
<li>
If this article
changes, it will be available
<a href="http://www.gnujobs.com/Articles/19/GDM.html">
http://www.gnujobs.com/Articles/19/GDM.html</a></li>
</ol>
<!-- *** BEGIN bio *** -->
<SPACER TYPE="vertical" SIZE="30">
<p>
<h4><img align=bottom alt="" src="../gx/note.gif">Mark Nielsen</h4>
<EM>Mark works at
<a href="http://www.audioboomerang.com/">AudioBoomerang.com</a>
which creates, delivers, and tracks personalized multimedia email, web,
and newsletter campaigns. He works as a consultant delivering end products
to AudioBoomerang.com clients, such as advanced customized statistical
reports used for demographic or pyschological profiles for future campaigns.
In his spare time, he writes articles relating to Free Software (GPL) or
Free Literature (FDL) and is involved with the non-profit learning center
<a href="http://www.eastmont.net">eastmont.net</a>.</EM>
<!-- *** END bio *** -->
<!-- *** BEGIN copyright *** -->
<P> <hr> <!-- P -->
<H5 ALIGN=center>
Copyright &copy; 2002, Mark Nielsen.<BR>
Copying license <A HREF="../copying.html">http://www.linuxgazette.com/copying.html</A><BR>
Published in Issue 80 of <i>Linux Gazette</i>, July 2002</H5>
<!-- *** END copyright *** -->
<H4 ALIGN="center">
"Linux Gazette...<I>making Linux just a little more fun!</I>"
</H4>
<P> <HR> <P>
<!--===================================================================-->
<center>
<H1><font color="maroon">The Foolish Things We Do With Our Computers</font></H1>
<H4>By <a href="mailto:gazette@ssc.com">Mike Orr</a></H4>
</center>
<P> <HR> <P>
<!-- END header -->
<H2>Here, Mousie....</H2>
By <A HREF="mailto:H.Drummond@wlv.ac.uk">Harry Drummond</A>
<P> If you're reading this, you're probably well at ease with your mouse by
now. Some of us got the idea fairly easily, while others had to struggle.
One of the roots of failure, I've observed, is that beginners often hold
the mouse from above, like a cat that's just pounced on it and is
determined that it isn't going to get away from <EM>them</EM>. Then they punch the
button ferociously, and the mouse sheers wildly off target in terror.
<P> I've persuaded several such people to relax their death-grip; to let their
hand lie on the surface behind the mouse, just guiding it quietly with
thumb and little finger, and gently clicking the buttons when necessary.
And if their hand-eye co-ordination was shakey, then to work in L-shapes
(e.g. down then across), and allow direct movement to creep in in its own
time. These people have all come back a week later, pleased to report that
they've got much better.
<P> But in earlier days of computer mice, when they were still alien objects to
many people, it was not uncommon for me to watch students put a mouse on
its back and twiddle the mouse ball with their finger tips. The screen
behaviour was wonderfully erratic, and as a method of selection it had
distinct problems with clicking buttons, too.
<P> On one occasion I watched two girls doing this and in friendly fashion
showed them the proper way of using a mouse. They smiled, said thank you,
and a few minutes later the mouse was on its back again. Not foolish - just
their way of working. Or maybe I was seeing the birth of the trackerball...
<HR NOSHADE WIDTH="80%%"> <!--*********************** -->
<BLOCKQUOTE><EM>
[If you have a story about something foolish or ingenious you
did to your computer, send it to
<A HREF="mailto:gazette@ssc.com">gazette@ssc.com</A>-Iron.]
</EM></BLOCKQUOTE>
<!-- *** BEGIN bio *** -->
<SPACER TYPE="vertical" SIZE="30">
<P>
<H4><IMG ALIGN=BOTTOM ALT="" SRC="../gx/note.gif">Mike Orr</H4>
<EM>Mike ("Iron") is the Editor of <I>Linux Gazette</I>. You can read what he has
to say in the Back Page column in this issue. He has been a Linux enthusiast
since 1991 and a Debian user since 1995. He is SSC's web technical
coordinator, which means he gets to write a lot of Python scripts.
Non-computer interests include Ska/Oi! music and the international language
Esperanto. The nickname Iron was given to him in college--short for Iron Orr,
hahaha.</EM>
<!-- *** END bio *** -->
<!-- *** BEGIN copyright *** -->
<P> <hr> <!-- P -->
<H5 ALIGN=center>
Copyright &copy; 2002, Mike Orr.<BR>
Copying license <A HREF="../copying.html">http://www.linuxgazette.com/copying.html</A><BR>
Published in Issue 80 of <i>Linux Gazette</i>, July 2002</H5>
<!-- *** END copyright *** -->
<H4 ALIGN="center">
"Linux Gazette...<I>making Linux just a little more fun!</I>"
</H4>
<P> <HR> <P>
<!--===================================================================-->
<center>
<H1><font color="maroon">Qubism</font></H1>
<H4>By <a href="mailto:sirflakey@core.org.au">Jon "Sir Flakey" Harsem</a></H4>
</center>
<P> <HR> <P>
<!-- END header -->
<BLOCKQUOTE><EM>
[These cartoons are scaled down to fit into LG.
To see a panel in all its clarity, click on it. -Editor (Iron).]
</EM></BLOCKQUOTE>
<P>
<A HREF="misc/qubism/qb-lightsnoop.jpg">
<IMG ALT="[cartoon]" SRC="misc/qubism/qb-lightsnoop.jpg"
WIDTH="640" HEIGHT="240"></A>
<BR CLEAR="all">
<A HREF="misc/qubism/qb-ps2linux.jpg">
<IMG ALT="[cartoon]" SRC="misc/qubism/qb-ps2linux.jpg"
WIDTH="640" HEIGHT="240"></A>
<BR CLEAR="all">
<P> All Qubism cartoons are
<A HREF="http://www.core.org.au/modules.php?name=Cartoons">here</A>
at the CORE web site.
<!-- *** BEGIN bio *** -->
<SPACER TYPE="vertical" SIZE="30">
<P>
<H4><IMG ALIGN=BOTTOM ALT="" SRC="../gx/note.gif">Jon "SirFlakey" Harsem</H4>
<EM>Jon is the creator of the Qubism cartoon strip and current
Editor-in-Chief of the
<A HREF="http://www.core.org.au/">CORE</A> News Site.
Somewhere along the early stages of
his life he picked up a pencil and started drawing on the wallpaper. Now
his cartoons appear 5 days a week on-line, go figure. He confesses to
owning a Mac but swears it is for "personal use".</EM>
<!-- *** END bio *** -->
<!-- *** BEGIN copyright *** -->
<P> <hr> <!-- P -->
<H5 ALIGN=center>
Copyright &copy; 2002, Jon "Sir Flakey" Harsem.<BR>
Copying license <A HREF="../copying.html">http://www.linuxgazette.com/copying.html</A><BR>
Published in Issue 80 of <i>Linux Gazette</i>, July 2002</H5>
<!-- *** END copyright *** -->
<H4 ALIGN="center">
"Linux Gazette...<I>making Linux just a little more fun!</I>"
</H4>
<P> <HR> <P>
<!--===================================================================-->
<center>
<H1><font color="maroon">Wine: Raising a toast to your Windows Apps on Linux</font></H1>
<H4>By <a href="mailto:tech@gauravtaneja.com">Gaurav Taneja</a></H4>
</center>
<P> <HR> <P>
<!-- END header -->
<P STYLE="font-weight: medium"><FONT SIZE=3>When I first started
working on Linux some years back I did rely on a standby Windows OS
installed in another partition in case something would fail. But soon
I realized that this Open Source OS had everything to offer without
my spending a penny. However, there are still times when I feel the
need to fire up some application that's written exclusively for Windows. What
do you do in such a situation? The answer is Wine.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT SIZE=4><B>Wine has nothing to do with liquor !</B></FONT></P>
<P><SPAN STYLE="font-weight: medium"><FONT SIZE=3>There are products
like VMWare &amp; Win4Lin that will let you run another OS (usually
Windows) on a running</FONT></SPAN> Linux machine so that you can run
your Windows programs. You could also go in for a more traditional
approach of having another partition with Windows installed on
it.However, these alternatives are more of an overhead on your system
than a solution.</P>
<P>Wine stands apart from all these options, Wine, which stands for
&#147;WINE Is Not an Emulator&#148;, doesn't require you to buy a
Windows licensed copy. It it accomplishes this by rewriting the
complete Win32 APIs which differs from the Microsoft Code.</P>
<P><FONT SIZE=4><B>Let's Raise a Toast</B></FONT></P>
<P><SPAN STYLE="font-weight: medium"><FONT SIZE=3>If you would like
to try WINE, you can get the latest sources from the WINE
headquarters at <A HREF="http://www.winehq.com/">http://www.winehq.com</A>.
Building from source may not be necessary. The site has links to
daily builds in many different formats. Should you wish to obtain the
source and build for yourself, you&#146;ll find that it is pretty
straightforward.</FONT></SPAN></P>
<P STYLE="font-weight: medium"><FONT SIZE=3>The following steps can
be taken to accomplish your task:</FONT></P>
<PRE><I>gunzip Wine-20020411.tar.gz</I>
<I>tar -xvf Wine-20020411.tar</I>
<I>cd wine-20020411</I>
<I>./configure</I>
<I>make depend</I>
<I>make</I>
<I>make install</I>
</PRE>
If you are interested in the bleeding-edge version of Wine and as a matter of fact any major software you should
follow the path of CVS.The latest source in the CVS tree might prove to be more efficient in terms of raw performance.
The following procedure can be followed to grab the latest source:
<PRE>
<I>export CVSROOT=:pserver:cvs@cvs.winehq.com:/home/wine</I>
<I>cvnpres login</I>
</PRE>
When asked for password, provide 'cvs':
<pre>
<I>cvs -z 3 checkout wine</I></PRE><P>
You will see a steady stream of files coming into a directory called
&#147;<I>wine</I>&#148; relative to your current directory. After the
whole process is complete you can follow the same procedure of
compilation as above.</P>
<P><FONT SIZE=4><B>Wine Configuration</B></FONT></P>
<P>We will need a configuration file called &#147;config&#148; in the
&#147;<I>~/.wine/&#148; directory. You</I> can copy the a sample of
the same from the source directory:</P>
<PRE STYLE="margin-bottom: 0.2in"><I>cp documentation/samples/config ~/.wine/config</I></PRE><P>
The &#147;config&#148; file might appear daunting at a first glance
but you better stick to the defaults and change only the critical
parts that relate to your system.You will encounter a section
something like this:</P>
<P><I>[Drive A]<BR>&quot;Path&quot; = &quot;/mnt/fd0&quot;<BR>&quot;Type&quot;
= &quot;floppy&quot;<BR>&quot;Label&quot; = &quot;Floppy&quot;<BR>&quot;Serial&quot;
= &quot;87654321&quot;<BR>&quot;Device&quot; = &quot;/dev/fd0&quot;</I></P>
<P><I>[Drive C]<BR>&quot;Path&quot; = &quot;/c&quot;<BR>&quot;Type&quot;
= &quot;hd&quot;<BR>&quot;Label&quot; = &quot;MS-DOS&quot;<BR>&quot;Filesystem&quot;
= &quot;win95&quot;</I></P>
<P><I>[Drive D]<BR>&quot;Path&quot; = &quot;/cdrom&quot;<BR>&quot;Type&quot;
= &quot;cdrom&quot;<BR>&quot;Label&quot; = &quot;CD-Rom&quot;<BR>&quot;Filesystem&quot;
= &quot;win95&quot;<BR>; make sure that device is correct and has
proper permissions !<BR>&quot;Device&quot; = &quot;/dev/cdrom&quot;</I></P>
<P>Wine actually tries to emulate a DOS-like drive and folder
structure so the section which starts with &#147;<I>[Drive C]&#148;</I>
indicates the mapping of a hypothetical drive C: to your linux
directory which in our case is &#147;/c<I>&#148;</I>.</P>
<P>Next, some system folders like &#147;windows<I>&#148;</I> and
&#147;system<I>&#148;</I> are also mapped like this in the &#147;[wine]<I>&#148;</I>
section:</P>
<P><I>&quot;Windows&quot; = &quot;c:\\windows&quot;<BR>&quot;System&quot;
= &quot;c:\\windows\\system&quot;<BR>&quot;Temp&quot; = &quot;e:\\&quot;<BR>&quot;Path&quot;
= &quot;c:\\windows;c:\\windows\\system;e:\\;e:\\test;f:\\&quot;<BR>&quot;Profile&quot;
= &quot;c:\\windows\\Profiles\\Administrator&quot;<BR>&quot;GraphicsDriver&quot;
= &quot;x11drv&quot;<BR>; Wine doesn't pass directory symlinks to
Windows programs by default.<BR>; Enabling this may crash some
programs that do recursive lookups of a whole<BR>; subdir tree in
case of a symlink pointing back to itself.<BR>;&quot;ShowDirSymlinks&quot;
= &quot;1&quot;<BR>&quot;ShellLinker&quot; = &quot;wineshelllink&quot;</I></P>
<P><I><BR></I>We will have to create some the basic Windows directory
structure (&#147;windows<I>&#148;</I> , &#147;system<I>&#148;</I>
directories as mentioned in the &#147;<I>[wine]&#148;</I> section in
the &#147;config<I>&#148;</I> file:
</P>
<PRE><I>cd /c</I>
<I>mkdir -p windows/system</I>
<I>mkdir -p windows/Start\ Menu/Programs</I></PRE><P STYLE="font-weight: medium">
<FONT FACE="Times New Roman, serif"><FONT SIZE=3>The &#147;<I>[DllOverrides]&#148;</I>
section of the config file handles the DLLs that are supplied with
Wine to be used in place of their Windows counterpart and some native
Windows DLLs that you might want to use: </FONT></FONT>
</P>
<P STYLE="font-weight: medium"><FONT SIZE=3><I>; Be careful here,
wrong DllOverrides settings have the potential<BR>; to pretty much
kill your setup.<BR>[DllOverrides]<BR>&quot;commdlg&quot; = &quot;builtin,
native&quot;<BR>&quot;comdlg32&quot; = &quot;builtin, native&quot;<BR>&quot;ver&quot;
= &quot;builtin, native&quot;<BR>&quot;version&quot; = &quot;builtin,
native&quot;<BR>&quot;shell&quot; = &quot;builtin, native&quot;<BR>&quot;shell32&quot;
= &quot;builtin, native&quot;<BR>&quot;shfolder&quot; = &quot;builtin,
native&quot;<BR>&quot;shlwapi&quot; = &quot;builtin,
native&quot;<BR>&quot;shdocvw&quot; = &quot;builtin,
native&quot;<BR>&quot;lzexpand&quot; = &quot;builtin, native&quot;<BR>&quot;lz32&quot;
= &quot;builtin, native&quot;<BR>&quot;comctl32&quot; = &quot;builtin,
native&quot;<BR>&quot;commctrl&quot; = &quot;builtin,
native&quot;<BR>&quot;advapi32&quot; = &quot;builtin,
native&quot;<BR>&quot;crtdll&quot; = &quot;builtin, native&quot;<BR>&quot;mpr&quot;
= &quot;builtin, native&quot;........</I></FONT></P>
<P>Various Ports and devices also can be configured in the
<SPAN STYLE="font-weight: medium"><FONT SIZE=3><FONT FACE="Times New Roman, serif">&#147;</FONT></FONT></SPAN><I>[serialports]<SPAN STYLE="font-weight: medium"><FONT SIZE=3><FONT FACE="Times New Roman, serif">&#148;</FONT></FONT></SPAN></I>
section:</P>
<PRE><I>Com1=/dev/ttyS0</I>
<I>Com2=/dev/ttyS1</I>
<I>Com3=/dev/modem,38400</I>
<I>Com4=/dev/modem</I></PRE><P STYLE="margin-bottom: 0in; font-style: normal">
The general appearance of the windows can be changed in the
<SPAN STYLE="font-weight: medium"><FONT SIZE=3><FONT FACE="Times New Roman, serif">&#147;</FONT></FONT></SPAN><I>[Tweak.Layout]<SPAN STYLE="font-weight: medium"><FONT SIZE=3><FONT FACE="Times New Roman, serif">&#148;
</FONT></FONT></SPAN></I>section.</P>
<P STYLE="margin-bottom: 0in"><BR>
</P>
<P STYLE="margin-bottom: 0in"><I>;; supported styles are
'Win31'(default), 'Win95', 'Win98'<BR>;; this has *nothing* to do
with the windows version Wine returns:<BR>;; use cmdline option
--winver if you want that.<BR>&quot;WineLook&quot; = &quot;Win98&quot;</I></P>
<P STYLE="margin-bottom: 0in"><BR>
</P>
<PRE STYLE="margin-bottom: 0.2in; font-style: normal"><FONT FACE="Times New Roman, serif"><FONT SIZE=4><B>Remember the Windows Registry ? </B></FONT></FONT></PRE><P>
Next, we need to install a default registry which will exactly match
the way registry exists on a Windows Box.But before you do this we
need to make minor changes to <SPAN STYLE="font-weight: medium"><SPAN STYLE="font-style: normal"><FONT SIZE=3><FONT FACE="Times New Roman, serif">&#147;</FONT></FONT></SPAN></SPAN><I>/etc/ld.so.conf<SPAN STYLE="font-weight: medium"><FONT SIZE=3><FONT FACE="Times New Roman, serif">&#148;
</FONT></FONT></SPAN></I>. We'll add a line <SPAN STYLE="font-weight: medium"><SPAN STYLE="font-style: normal"><FONT SIZE=3><FONT FACE="Times New Roman, serif">&#147;</FONT></FONT></SPAN></SPAN><I>/usr/local/lib/wine<SPAN STYLE="font-weight: medium"><FONT SIZE=3><FONT FACE="Times New Roman, serif">&#148;</FONT></FONT></SPAN></I>,
which relates to all the libraries used by the software to mimic a
Windows atmosphere.</P>
<P>Don't forget to run <SPAN STYLE="font-weight: medium"><SPAN STYLE="font-style: normal"><FONT SIZE=3><FONT FACE="Times New Roman, serif">&#147;</FONT></FONT></SPAN></SPAN><I>/sbin/ldconfig<SPAN STYLE="font-weight: medium"><FONT SIZE=3><FONT FACE="Times New Roman, serif">&#148;</FONT></FONT></SPAN></I>
after this step.</P>
<P>Next, we will use <B>regapi</B> to install a default registry.
From the Wine source directory issue the following command:
</P>
<PRE STYLE="margin-bottom: 0.2in"><I>programs/regapi/regapi setValue &lt; winedefault.reg</I></PRE><P>
<FONT SIZE=4><B>Let's Fire it up!!</B></FONT></P>
<P STYLE="font-weight: medium">Without waiting any further let's try
our hands on our Wine installation to run a simple Windows App.We
will try to run the standard Calculator which comes with Windows
(<SPAN STYLE="font-style: normal"><FONT SIZE=3><FONT FACE="Times New Roman, serif">&#147;</FONT></FONT></SPAN>calc.exe<I><FONT SIZE=3><FONT FACE="Times New Roman, serif">&#148;</FONT></FONT></I>).</P>
<P STYLE="font-weight: medium">You can mount your windows partition
or copy the file <SPAN STYLE="font-style: normal"><FONT SIZE=3><FONT FACE="Times New Roman, serif">&#147;</FONT></FONT></SPAN><I>calc.exe<FONT SIZE=3><FONT FACE="Times New Roman, serif">&#148;</FONT></FONT></I>
with a floppy to your system in the folder <SPAN STYLE="font-style: normal"><FONT SIZE=3><FONT FACE="Times New Roman, serif">&#147;</FONT></FONT></SPAN>/c/windows<I><FONT SIZE=3><FONT FACE="Times New Roman, serif">&#148;</FONT></FONT></I>
and use any one of the ways to start it up:</P>
<P STYLE="font-weight: medium"><I>cd /c/windows; wine calc.exe<BR>wine
/c/windows/calc.exe<BR>wine &quot;c:\windows\calc.exe&quot;</I></P>
<P STYLE="font-weight: medium">This is the way it appears on my Linux
box. Pretty amazing isn't it!
</P>
<P><BR><BR>
</P>
<P><IMG SRC="misc/taneja/calc.png" NAME="Graphic1" ALT="Calculator Screenshot" ALIGN=LEFT WIDTH=702 HEIGHT=426 BORDER=0><BR CLEAR=LEFT><BR><BR>
</P>
<P><BR><BR>
</P>
<P><B>Bye Bye for now!</B></P>
<P STYLE="font-weight: medium">Wine is pretty indispensable when you
have to run Windows executables on your Linux box but one thing to
note here is that not all of your Applications will work on Wine, you
will have to figure out ways and tweaks to make your favorite App.
work fine. But for many cases Wine proves to be of a great help.</P>
<!-- *** BEGIN bio *** -->
<SPACER TYPE="vertical" SIZE="30">
<P>
<H4><IMG ALIGN=BOTTOM ALT="" SRC="../gx/note.gif">Gaurav Taneja</H4>
<EM>I work as a Technical Consultant in New Delhi,India in Linux/Java/XML/C++.
I'm actively involved in open-source projects, with some hosted on
SourceForge. My favorite leisure activities include long drives, tennis,
watching movies and partying. I also run my own software consulting company
named <A HREF="http://www.broadstrike.com">BroadStrike Technologies</A>.</EM>
<!-- *** END bio *** -->
<!-- *** BEGIN copyright *** -->
<P> <hr> <!-- P -->
<H5 ALIGN=center>
Copyright &copy; 2002, Gaurav Taneja.<BR>
Copying license <A HREF="../copying.html">http://www.linuxgazette.com/copying.html</A><BR>
Published in Issue 80 of <i>Linux Gazette</i>, July 2002</H5>
<!-- *** END copyright *** -->
<H4 ALIGN="center">
"Linux Gazette...<I>making Linux just a little more fun!</I>"
</H4>
<P> <HR> <P>
<!--===================================================================-->
<center>
<H1><font color="maroon">My Guide To Linux Security</font></H1>
<H4>By <a href="mailto:robt@robtougher.com">Rob Tougher</a></H4>
</center>
<P> <HR> <P>
<!-- END header -->
<dl>
<dt><a href=#1>1. Introduction</a>
<dt><a href=#2>2. Securing My Linux Box</a>
<dd><a href=#2.1>2.1 Installation</a>
<dd><a href=#2.2>2.2 Post-installation</a>
<dd><a href=#2.3>2.3 Post-compromise forensics (nobody's perfect)</a>
<dt><a href=#3>3. Secure Transmissions</a>
<dt><a href=#4>4. Conclusion</a>
<dt><a href=#a>a. References</a>
</dl>
<a name=1></a>
<h2>1. Introduction</h2>
<p>
This article explains the steps I
take to secure my home computer and data
communications.
If you are an active proponent of computer
security, this article will be a review.
If you do not have any security practices
currently, you should read on to get a
general idea of how to secure a Linux box.
This obviously isn't a complete security
reference - I take security seriously,
but I'm not as vigilant as I could be with
my computer.
You will have to see for yourself
whether or not the items in this article
provide enough security for your needs.
</p>
<a name=2></a>
<h2>2. Securing My Linux Box</h2>
<p>
I run a Debian Linux box here at home. I keep it powered
up and connected to the Internet at all times.
There are two reasons I want to keep this computer secure -
to hide my data from those who shouldn't see it,
and to protect my computer resources from those
who shouldn't be using them. I keep important stuff
on my machine - data that shouldn't be read (and
certainly not modified) by anyone but me. And I don't
want an intruder to be able to use my machine as a
staging ground for attacks on other targets. I'd be pretty
pissed if I found out someone was using my machine to
try to break into other systems.
</p>
<a name=2.1></a>
<h3>2.1 Installation</h3>
<p>
After a fresh install, the first thing I do right off the bat is
<a href="http://www.netfilter.org/"><b>configure iptables</b></a>
in my kernel. Iptables
allows me to block any packets entering or leaving my
computer. This is important because I am constantly
connected to the net, which leaves my computer open for an
attack. Configuring iptables isn't for the faint of heart - it
requires downloading the kernel source code, configuring it correctly,
and installing it without screwing anything up. If you
have never done this before, you should check out the
<a href="http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Kernel-HOWTO.html">
Linux Kernel HOWTO</a>, and practice compiling your kernel
a few times before trying to configure iptables.
</p>
<p>
Next is <a href="http://www.lids.org"><b>LIDS</b></a> - the
Linux Intrusion Detection System. LIDS consists of a patch
for the kernel, and two userspace utilities - lidsconf and
lidsadm. The purpose of this system is to increase the
level of security of your computer by restricting access to files and
processes, and alerting you when attempts to break these restrictions
occur.
The great part about LIDS
is that you can even restrict the root account's permissions. This
reduces the power of the root account, and limits the damage that
can be done if an intruder gets root privileges.
I use LIDS to protect my system binaries, my log files in /var/log,
and my configuration files in /etc. The binaries I mark as READONLY
so that no user, including root, can modify or delete them.
The log files I mark as APPEND so that programs can write data to files in
this directory, but cannot delete or change existing data.
</p>
<p>
The next thing I do is
minimize the number of services running
on the computer. The less services I run, the less
chance there is for someone to be able to break into my
machine. Distributions tend to let a lot of daemons run by
default, which is a bad thing in my opinion. I turn off telnet,
FTP, named, and all of the R* daemons, to name a few. I basically
turn everything off so that I don't have to worry about keeping
them updated with security fixes and such. For the services that
I do run, I install any security patches that are created
as soon as possible. And if a situation occurs where there is
a vulnerability made public without the proper fix, I will
turn off the service.
</p>
<p>
After reducing the number of services running on my computer,
I type "netstat -l" to see what sockets are listening for connections.
I do this just to make sure I haven't missed any services that
I don't need. Every once in a while I'll miss something important,
and catch it later on with netstat.
</p>
<a name=2.2></a>
<h3>2.2 Post-installation</h3>
<p>
After an installation, I run
<a href="http://www.chkrootkit.org"><b>chkrootkit</b></a> about
every week or so. This program will alert me to the presence
of any rootkits on my computer. A rootkit is a set of tools that a cracker
can use to hide his tracks - the kit contains trojaned(altered)
versions of various utilities like ps, ifconfig, and
others. If an intruder broke into my machine and installed
a rootkit, he could basically use my computer resources for
whatever he wanted, and I could only detect him if
I was paying <i>very</i> close attention to my system.
You can download and analyze various rootkits (for educational
use only!) at
<a href="http://packetstorm.decepticons.org/UNIX/penetration/rootkits/">
packetstorm
</a>. The one I've seen mentioned the most is LRK5, which is listed
about half way down the page.
</p>
<p>
When downloading files off of the Internet, I generate checksums
for them using <a href="http://www.gnu.org/software/textutils/textutils.html">
<b>md5sum</b></a>. Most sites that provide downloadable files
also list their checksums, so that I can check to see that the files
I download match the files they are providing. This is a simple
check, and reassures me that I am getting the right bits.
There is of course the possibility that both the files and the
checksums have been tampered with, but in this situation the
web site will probably figure it out quickly, and fix the problem.
</p>
<a name=2.3></a>
<h3>2.3 Post-compromise forensics (nobody's perfect)</h3>
<p>
All of the security in the world cannot <i>guarantee</i> that
your machine will be safe from crackers. I can honestly say
that I don't think my computer has ever been compromised,
but I'm not 100% sure. For the first couple of months that I
used Linux, I didn't give a squat about security - I was just
trying to get the operating system working. I was more
interested in learning the basic userspace commands, and
didn't want to be bothered by anything else.
I was <b>wide open for an attack</b>.
I had a VA Linux machine with a stock Redhat system they put on
there. I probably was running many servers, and didn't even know it.
Poor guy.
</p>
<p>
Well, If my machine ever becomes compromised in the future, I will
first head over to the main site for
<a href="http://www.porcupine.org/forensics/tct.html">
<b>The Coroner's Toolkit</b></a>. TCT is a set of tools
that allow you to figure out what happened on a
compromised machine. You run them, and sit back and relax
while they collect data from your hard drive. I haven't
personally used these tools, but from what the web site says,
they do a pretty decent job. Another impression I get from the web
site is that the tools are extremely difficult to use for novices,
so you are in for a lot of reading and learning if you don't have any
experience with TCT. On
the bottom of the main page they have a couple of links to HOWTO
documents, so your best bet is to start there.
</p>
<p>
I would also check out the
<a href="http://www.honeynet.org/"><b>Honeynet Project</b></a>.
The purpose of this project is to perform research in forensics
analysis, and present this research to the public in the hopes of
raising awareness about security. They have a monthly
forensics contest, where they present information about
a real compromise on their network, and ask for write-ups
on how to investigate the intrusion. The archive for this
contest has a lot of great submissions by security professionals -
I actually learned about The Coroner's Toolkit by seeing
it mentioned in a handful of these investigations. Anyone
interested in computer forensics should go to this site
and read as much information as they can find - there's
enough to keep you busy for a while.
</p>
<a name=3></a>
<h2>3. Secure Transmissions</h2>
<p>
Transmissions by default are insecure. Your
data just flies across the Internet for everyone
to see, and you can't do anything about it. You can use
the traceroute program to see an example of this in
action. Type "traceroute www.google.com" at your command
prompt, and you'll
see every machine that gets to look at the data you
send google during a web search.
</p>
<p>
I make sure that whenever I am logging in to a site,
I use the secure page - https. HTTPS uses SSL, which
encrypts your data while in transit. If I didn't do
this, my password could be sniffed by a compromised machine.
For example, Yahoo! provides a method of secure login
when submitting my username and password for their
various web services. I have a Yahoo! email account, and
use this secure login whenever I am checking my mail.
</p>
<p>
For remote administration, I use
<a href="http://www.openssh.com/"><b>ssh and scp</b></a>.
These two programs are replacements for telnet and FTP.
They are easy to install, and work just as well
as the programs they replace. Once installed, I
open up the corresponding ports in my iptables
configuration so that I can connect to the machine from outside.
</p>
<p>
For email, I use
<a href="http://www.gnupg.org"><b>GnuPG</b></a> to encrypt data that
I don't want anyone reading. When I am sending sensitive
information to someone, I use their public key to encrypt it.
I ask the same of people sending sensitive information to me.
My public key is downloadable from my
<a href="http://www.robtougher.com/">web site</a>,
and also available on various
<a href="http://www.openpgp.net/pgpsrv.html">public key servers</a>.
These steps assure me that I'm the only one reading the email
destined for my inbox.
</p>
<a name=4></a>
<h2>4. Conclusion</h2>
<p>
I hope you enjoyed this article - I tried to explain,
as clearly as possible,
the steps I take to secure my computer and data communications.
If you feel there are any glaring
errors or omissions, by all means
<a href="mailto:robt@robtougher.com">
let me know</a>. My security policy is far from perfect,
and I'm very eager to hear about your practices
and experiences.
</p>
<a name=a></a>
<h2>a. References</h2>
<p>
The following is a list of sites I visit regularly to get
information on various security topics:
</p>
<ul>
<li><b>Advisories</b>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://www.cert.org/">CERT</a>
<li><a href="http://online.securityfocus.com/">
SecurityFocus Online</a>
</ul>
<li><b>Exploits</b> (for educational use only!)
<ul>
<li><a href="http://packetstorm.decepticons.org/Exploit_Code_Archive/">
packetstorm</a>
<li><a href="http://www.securiteam.com/exploits/">
SecuriTeam</a>
<li><a href="http://www.insecure.org/sploits.html">
Fyodor's Exploit World</a>
</ul>
<li><b>Forensics</b>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://www.porcupine.org/forensics/tct.html">
The Coroner's Toolkit</a>
<li><a href="http://www.honeynet.org/">The Honeynet Project</a>
</ul>
<li><b>General</b>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://www.linuxsecurity.com/">Linux Security</a>
<li><a href="http://packetstorm.decepticons.org/">packetstorm</a>
<li><a href="http://www.startplaza.nu/">www.startplaza.nu</a>
</ul>
<li><b>Tools</b>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://www.gnupg.org">GnuPG</a>
<li><a href="http://www.insecure.org/tools.html">
Insecure.org Top 50</a>
<li><a href="http://www.lids.org/">LIDS Project - Secure Linux System</a>
<li><a href="http://www.insecure.org/">NMAP Port Scanner</a>
<li><a href="http://www.snort.org/">SNORT Intrusion Detection System</a>
</ul>
</ul>
<!-- *** BEGIN bio *** -->
<SPACER TYPE="vertical" SIZE="30">
<P>
<H4><IMG ALIGN=BOTTOM ALT="" SRC="../gx/note.gif">Rob Tougher</H4>
<EM>Rob is a C++ software engineer in the NYC area.
When not coding on his favorite platform, you can
find Rob strolling on the beach with his girlfriend, Nicole,
and their dog, Halley. </EM>
<!-- *** END bio *** -->
<!-- *** BEGIN copyright *** -->
<P> <hr> <!-- P -->
<H5 ALIGN=center>
Copyright &copy; 2002, Rob Tougher.<BR>
Copying license <A HREF="../copying.html">http://www.linuxgazette.com/copying.html</A><BR>
Published in Issue 80 of <i>Linux Gazette</i>, July 2002</H5>
<!-- *** END copyright *** -->
<H4 ALIGN="center">
"Linux Gazette...<I>making Linux just a little more fun!</I>"
</H4>
<P> <hr> <P>
<H1><font color="maroon">The Back Page</font></H1>
<ul>
<li><a HREF="#wacko">Wacko Topic of the Month</a>
<li><a HREF="#spam">World of Spam</a>
</ul>
<a name="wacko"></a>
<P> <hr> <P>
<!--====================================================================-->
<center><H3><font color="maroon">Wacko Topic of the Month</font></H3></center>
<P> <HR> <P>
<!--======================================================================-->
<P>
<H3 ALIGN="center"><FONT COLOR="green">SpamAssassin</FONT></H3>
<p align="right"><FONT COLOR="#000000"><strong>
</strong></FONT></p>
<P> I installed <A HREF="http://www.spamassassin.org/">SpamAssassin</A> (SA)
and instantly developed a new pastime. Even funnier than reading spam is
reading what SA has to say about it. SA is a filter daemon (or standalone
program) that reads an e-mail message and analyzes it for spam, adding a
couple headers to give its verdict. If it thinks the message is spam, it also
puts a "***SPAM***" prefix in the Subject: and adds some structured comments to
the body saying what's suspicious about the message. Those comments in the
body are where the funny parts are. SA is so amusing that I've given up my
two other recent pastimes: collecting Klez worms and Nigeria scams. I just
/dev/null the Klez worms now.
<PRE>
SPAM: -------------------- Start SpamAssassin results ----------------------
SPAM: This mail is probably spam. The original message has been altered
SPAM: so you can recognise or block similar unwanted mail in future.
SPAM: See http://spamassassin.org/tag/ for more details.
SPAM:
SPAM: Content analysis details: (16.2 hits, 5 required)
SPAM: Hit! (2.2 points) BODY: As seen on national TV!
SPAM: Hit! (1.5 points) BODY: Asks you to click below
SPAM: Hit! (0.2 points) BODY: No such thing as a free lunch (1)
SPAM: Hit! (-0.1 points) BODY: Claims you can be removed from the list
SPAM: Hit! (2.1 points) BODY: Talks about opting in
SPAM: Hit! (3.0 points) URI: Uses a dotted-decimal IP address in URL
SPAM: Hit! (0.1 points) URI: Uses non-standard port number for HTTP
SPAM: Hit! (3.5 points) URI: URL of page called "remove"
SPAM: Hit! (-0.8 points) BODY: JavaScript code which can easily be executed
SPAM: Hit! (-0.5 points) BODY: HTML mail with non-white background
SPAM: Hit! (1.8 points) BODY: Tells you to click on a URL
SPAM: Hit! (3.2 points) HTML-only mail, with no text version
SPAM:
SPAM: -------------------- End of SpamAssassin results ---------------------
</PRE>
<HR NOSHADE WIDTH="80%"> <!--*********************** -->
<PRE>
SPAM: Hit! (0.6 points) Invalid Date: header (wierd month)
SPAM: Hit! (0.5 points) BODY: A WHOLE LINE OF YELLING DETECTED
SPAM: Hit! (3.0 points) URI: Uses a dotted-decimal IP address in URL
SPAM: Hit! (-0.8 points) BODY: Image tag with an ID code to identify you
SPAM: Hit! (-0.4 points) BODY: Contains a line >=199 characters long
SPAM: Hit! (1.8 points) BODY: Tells you to click on a URL
SPAM: Hit! (3.2 points) HTML-only mail, with no text version
SPAM: Hit! (2.0 points) Received via a relay in relays.osirusoft.com
SPAM: [RBL check: found 148.167.27.64.relays.osirusoft.com., type: 127.0.0.4]
SPAM: Hit! (3.0 points) DNSBL: sender is Confirmed Spam Source
</PRE>
<HR NOSHADE WIDTH="80%"> <!--*********************** -->
<PRE>
SPAM: Hit! (1.0 point) From: ends in numbers
SPAM: Hit! (0.5 points) Subject has an exclamation mark
SPAM: Hit! (0.4 points) Subject has lots of exclamation marks
SPAM: Hit! (-0.5 points) BODY: Contains 'Dear Somebody'
SPAM: Hit! (2.7 points) BODY: Nigerian scam key phrase ($NN,NNN,NNN.NN)
SPAM: Hit! (2.4 points) BODY: Nigerian scam key phrase
SPAM: Hit! (4.3 points) BODY: Nigerian Bank or Petroleum scam, cf http://www.snopes2.com/inboxer/scams/nigeria.htm
SPAM: Hit! (2.2 points) BODY: Risk free. Suuurreeee....
SPAM: Hit! (-0.4 points) BODY: Contains a line >=199 characters long
</PRE>
<HR NOSHADE WIDTH="80%"> <!--*********************** -->
<PRE>
SPAM: Hit! (4.3 points) Reply-To: is empty
SPAM: Hit! (2.4 points) 'Message-Id' was added by a relay (2)
SPAM: Hit! (2.2 points) From: has a malformed address
SPAM: Hit! (1.5 points) Message-Id is not valid, according to RFC-2822
SPAM: Hit! (1.3 points) Message-Id has no @ sign
SPAM: Hit! (0.5 points) Possibly-forged 'Received:' header found
SPAM: Hit! (2.1 points) BODY: FONT Size +2 and up or 3 and up
SPAM: Hit! (3.2 points) HTML-only mail, with no text version
</PRE>
<HR NOSHADE WIDTH="80%"> <!--*********************** -->
<PRE>
SPAM: Hit! (1.0 point) From: ends in numbers
SPAM: Hit! (0.5 points) Subject has an exclamation mark
SPAM: Hit! (0.4 points) Subject has lots of exclamation marks
SPAM: Hit! (0.9 points) URI: Filename is just a '\#'; probably a JS trick
SPAM: Hit! (-0.8 points) BODY: JavaScript code which can easily be executed
SPAM: Hit! (0.0 points) BODY: Includes a URL link to send an email
SPAM: Hit! (3.2 points) HTML-only mail, with no text version
SPAM: Hit! (1.9 points) Subject is all capitals
</PRE>
<HR NOSHADE WIDTH="80%"> <!--*********************** -->
<PRE>
SPAM: Content analysis details: (6.2 hits, 5 required)
SPAM: Hit! (1.1 points) BODY: Contains a large block of hexadecimal code
SPAM: Hit! (-0.6 points) BODY: Frame wanted to load outside URL
SPAM: Hit! (1.8 points) No MX records for the From: domain
SPAM: Hit! (1.9 points) Subject is all capitals
SPAM: Hit! (2.0 points) Subject contains a unique ID number
</PRE>
<HR NOSHADE WIDTH="80%"> <!--*********************** -->
<PRE>
SPAM: Content analysis details: (10.1 hits, 5 required)
SPAM: Hit! (1.2 points) Valid-looking To "undisclosed-recipients"
SPAM: Hit! (0.5 points) Subject has an exclamation mark
SPAM: Hit! (0.4 points) Subject has lots of exclamation marks
SPAM: Hit! (0.2 points) BODY: Contains at least 3 dollar signs in a row
SPAM: Hit! (0.2 points) BODY: No such thing as a free lunch (1)
SPAM: Hit! (2.3 points) BODY: List removal information
SPAM: Hit! (1.9 points) BODY: List removal information
SPAM: Hit! (1.0 point) BODY: No such thing as a free lunch (3)
SPAM: Hit! (0.5 points) Forged hotmail.com 'Received:' header found
SPAM: Hit! (1.9 points) Subject is all capitals
</PRE>
<HR NOSHADE WIDTH="80%"> <!--*********************** -->
<PRE>
SPAM: Content analysis details: (12.6 hits, 5 required)
SPAM: Hit! (2.0 points) From: contains numbers mixed in with letters
SPAM: Hit! (1.0 point) From: ends in numbers
SPAM: Hit! (0.6 points) From: does not include a real name
SPAM: Hit! (2.7 points) BODY: Claims you can be removed from the list
SPAM: Hit! (1.9 points) BODY: List removal information
SPAM: Hit! (0.1 points) BODY: List removal information
SPAM: Hit! (1.3 points) URI: Includes a link to a likely spammer email address
SPAM: Hit! (-0.4 points) BODY: Contains a line >=199 characters long
SPAM: Hit! (0.5 points) Forged hotmail.com 'Received:' header found
SPAM: Hit! (1.0 point) Received via a relay in orbs.dorkslayers.com
SPAM: [RBL check: found 17.98.187.210.orbs.dorkslayers.com.]
SPAM: Hit! (1.9 points) Subject is all capitals
</PRE>
<a name="spam"></a>
<P> <hr> <P>
<!--====================================================================-->
<center><H3><font color="maroon">World of Spam</font></H3></center>
<P> <HR> <P>
<!--======================================================================-->
<P>
Well well well well well, I <EM>do</EM> declare. What's the most interesting
piece of spam this month? Tsk, tsk. (For background info about this company,
see the News Bytes column in LG #71-76.)
<PRE>
From: "ElcomSoft, Inc" <elcomsoft@filedistributor.com>
To: Webmaster <gazette@ssc.com.SMTP.gazette@ssc.com>
Date: Thu, 16 May 2002 20:24:52 +0800
Subject: Request Review for Advanced PDF Password Recovery Pro 2.0
Dear Webmaster
Our company, ElcomSoft Co. Ltd., would like to announce the release of Advanced
PDF Password Recovery Pro 2.0 for Windows 95/98/ME/NT/2000/XP. We hope you will
consider reviewing Advanced PDF Password Recovery Pro (APDFPR) for Linux Gazette.
Should you need a full version for<6F>review, please contact me at info@elcomsoft.com.
Please find the press release of Advanced PDF Password Recovery Pro below for
your information.
Warmest Regards,
Dmitry Harchenko
Marketing Manager
ElcomSoft Co. Ltd.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE - May 17, 2002
ElcomSoft Releases Advanced PDF Password Recovery Pro 2.0 for Windows 9x/ME/NT/2000/XP
Gain Control of PDF Files
Moscow, Russia - ElcomSoft Co. Ltd. has released Advanced PDF Password Recovery
(Professional) 2.0 for Windows ME/98/95/NT4/2000/XP. This program makes it easy
to remove both password encryption and usage restrictions from Adobe Acrobat
PDF files. APDFPR now comes with multiprocessor support, guaranteed recovery
and state-of-the-art optimization for modern processors.
With the increasing popularity of PDF formatted file, comes increasing number
of problems which occur when authors forget the passwords to their source documents.
ElcomSoft has revised version 2.0 of its Advanced PDF Password Recovery (Professional)
software to allow the seemingly impossible recovery of password for these documents.
This software package handles both owner and user passwords used to protect PDF
documents. The latest addition to ElcomSoft's family of password recovery software
allows business managers to recover lost and destroyed passwords. It also helps
in dealing with employees who, intentionally or unintentionally, are unable to
edit and print password-protected PDF files.<2E>
Finally, APDFPR is also a state-of-the-art computer forensics tool that could
be used by law enforcement, military and intelligence agencies to open secure
documents. PDF documents protected with access restrictions password can be decrypted
instantly, allowing full access to the document. For documents with "user" passwords
(that could not be opened without that password), the program blazes through
brute-force password attempts at a rate of a few hundred thousand passwords per
seconds! The code has been effectively optimized for most CPUs such as Celeron,
Pentium II, Pentium III, Duron and Athlon. More sophisticated methods are available,
such as applying all words from a dictionary. ElcomSoft's website has dictionaries
for more than 20 different languages, from English to African.
Even if the above methods fail because the password is too long and complex,
the program runs a special key search attack which gives a 100% success rate
on files with 40-bit encryption (used in all Adobe Acrobat 4 and most Acrobat
5 files). This may take some time to run, but is well worth the time if your
document is very important. If you have a dual processor system, APDFPR takes
advantage of it to double the performance of this software. On modern systems
with Athlon MP CPUs, the document can be recovered in maximum 4 days, regardless
of the password length and complexity!
System Requirements
Win 95/98/Me/NT/2000/XP, 600K free on Hard Disk.
Price
Standard Edition costs $30, Professional Edition costs $60; free trial version
is available.<2E>
About the Company
Established in 1990, ElcomSoft Co.Ltd. provides state-of-the-art computer forensics
tool development, computer forensics training and computer evidence consulting;
not only to individuals, but also to law enforcement, military and intelligence
agencies worldwide since 1997. ElcomSoft tools are also used by most of Fortune
500 corporations, many branches of the military departments all over the world,
foreign governments and all major accounting firms.
ElcomSoft Co.Ltd. and its officers are members of the Association of Shareware
Professionals (ASP), the Russian Cryptology Association, and the Microsoft Business
Connection program.
More Information
Please visit the program's homepage at
<A HREF="http://pdf.elcomsoft.com">http://pdf.elcomsoft.com</A>.
</PRE>
<HR> <!-- ************************************************************** -->
<P> Happy Linuxing!
<P> Mike ("Iron") Orr<br>
Editor, <A HREF="http://www.linuxgazette.com/"><i>Linux Gazette</i></A>, <A
HREF="mailto:gazette@ssc.com">gazette@ssc.com</a>
<BR CLEAR="all">
<!-- *** END Not Linux *** -->
<!-- *** BEGIN copyright *** -->
<P> <hr> <P>
<H5 ALIGN=center>
Copyright &copy; 2002, the Editors of <I>Linux Gazette</I>.<BR>
Copying license <A HREF="../copying.html">http://www.linuxgazette.com/copying.html</A><BR>
Published in Issue 80 of <i>Linux Gazette</i>, July 2002</H5>
<!-- *** END copyright *** -->
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