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Contents: |
We're back in business after a one month gap--no November issue--and we need articles from you.
So, all you budding authors and Linux users out there, send me your material. Don't depend on our regular authors to fill the gap. We want to hear about all the neat tips and tricks you've found, as well as all the neat applications you are writing or working with. We also like to hear how you are using Linux as a workplace solution. --Editor
Date: Mon, 06 Oct 1997 01:40:46 +0100
From: Emmet Caulfield emmet@indigo.ie
Subject: Newbie Stuff
Hi,
I've noticed recently that there's an increasing volume of questions on fairly elementary topics to your help page.
There's probably a fairly large volume of readers, like myself, who correspond with the querants offering help, pointers, and suggestions in the hope that they may be useful. I'm NOT an expert, by any stretch of the imagination, being a recent "convert" of only 10 months vintage.
I think that there is an argument for the Gazette running a series of articles outlining a step-by-step setup procedure specifically targetted at people setting up Linux on home machines connected over the POTS in spite of the fact that this would be duplicating efforts elsewhere (in HOWTOs and such).
Just a suggestion.
I love the Gazette, you have struck a fine balance well - there is something for everyone. I read 22 "cover to cover".
Keep up the good work,
Emmet
Date: Wed, 15 Oct 1997 18:28:05 -0700
From: Todd Martin zombie@ted.org
Subject: System Back up
I would love to see an article on backing up a Red Hat 4.2 system onto a SCSI Tape drive.
I'm having trouble with it, and am finding information on it rare if not impossible to find.
If anyone could point me in the right direction I would appreciate it.
Or contact me direct if its easy enough to explain.
Thanx
Date: Mon, 13 Oct 1997 21:13:24 -0500
From: "Cochran" scochran@shoalsnet.com
Subject: Article Idea
Hello, I'm a Linux newbie so please forgive any inaccuracies. :) I think someone should report on the Linux game scene. Different projects that are dealing with game projects like GGI and the Linux GDK. Keep the good work up everyone.
Micah
Date: Tue, 14 Oct 1997 18:54:41 -0500
From: Glenn Meuth manderflawaxe@Dynasty.Net
Subject: LJ Howto get TECH Info for NEWBIES
I have been reading LJ recently, and I would like to request that an article be written. I have recently had (2) problems which I researched, and only seemed to find dead ends for. I purchased a new computer recently :-) and, as is probably common with such, had some unsupported hardware. This did not surprise me, having worked with computers for some time. So I proceeded to search hardware listings, currently active projects, etc in order to find an answer, and found nothing. (My problem was with my UDMA harddrive controller card from Promise.) I began to email news groups and Promise trying to get the information I needed to write the code for the controller card myself. I could not seem to dig up any help on the subject of support for new hardware. My question: Could you please address an article on how to go about attaining the information necessary to code this? Q(2) Could you also address how to get involved in the linux project?
I have tried to get involved with projects (I am a relatively new C++ programmer (2 years)), in college, and there is little for me to do in my area of the USA in order to exercise my C & C++ skills. If you could help me out here I would appreciate it!
Glenn Meuth
Date: Wed, 5 Nov 1997 04:11:55 -0800 (PST)
From: Ron Culver ronc@earthlink.net
Subject: COMMENTS/SUGGESTION
Hi Folks,
First want to say I'm really glad the Gazette is on line... what a great source for finding out new things! Keep up the great work - it's a real winner. Next, want to suggest some needs on this end you might find useful as an idea for a feature. I run a real tiny ISP biz in NM (my hometown, but live in CA) - and have LOTS of questions related to running the system (do sysadmin via telnet) - primarily system security issues, keeping the email system running right, HTTPD (actually run Apache) questions, and DNS issues. What has most plagued me is the lack of a fresh source of info to keep the system on the 'cutting edge' of new developements in software. One example is Java, something that came along shortly after the server was first installed, which I can not seem to get to run properly - and to date no one can tell me why. What I would like to see you try is a column that addresses the questions/concerns of small POP's or ISP's - actually anyone who is running Linux as a server on line would have similar questions/concerns.
Have a nice....
Date: Sun, 12 Oct 1997 02:34:26 +0200
From: Guillermo S. Romero famrom@ran.es
Subject: Clipboard Ideas
Hello:
I am a bit new to Linux and my programming skills are poor (time solves everything), but I have brain (well, 2 overclocked neurons) and I think that Linux (and Unix) have a problem with "cut & paste", aka clipboard. GPM is fine, xclipboard too, some other systems also work, but its hard to move from one system to another, and not all data can be copied.
I want to start a team to implement a clipboard in Unix, maybe using files stored under something like /tmp/clip/ (or another /dev/foo?). :]
The main thing is that it should be able to work with text, graphics and binary (archives, ie), like other OS do. I think that if we use a system based in /dev/ , the system will support old apps (you only have to save to the correct place emulating an app behaviour, and a demon will convert non standard files to the ones supported by the clipboard). We can even made the new clipboard a multiuser one. Or one with multiple buffers per user (like Emacs, doesn't it?).
If someone is interested, just write. I have a draft so we can start the discussion now. I must admit that my idea maybe look mad or too simple, but that only demonstrates that I believe that usefullnes is directionaly proportional to simplicity. :]
GSR
Date: Tue, 18 Nov 1997 11:10:08 -0500
From: Dan E. Collis dcollis@marine.usf.edu
Subject: Adaptec 2940 UW adapter
I am drowning! Have called Adaptec to no avail. They say they're not supporting Linux. Have tried all the loc's on redhat.com that I can find and have had no luck.
Is there a driver available for an Adaptec 2940UW that's good for RedHat 4.2? I'd sure appreciate some help on this one.
Many thanks,
dcollis@marine.usf.edu
Date: Mon, 10 Nov 1997 12:23:45 -0700
From: Chad Peyton chadly@cs.WNMU.EDU
Subject: PPP
I'm trying to configure a ppp connection. So far the program mgetty has got most things working. I don't know much about Linux, but this is what I think I need to do: get the shell to run the following command.
Puser - - /usr/sbin/pppd auth -chap +pap login kdebug 7 debug
But notice the message I get below when I call in:
Red Hat Linux release 4.2 (Biltmore) Kernel 2.0.27 on an i486
login: chad
Password:
Last login: Fri Nov 7 15:36:54 on ttyS0
Warning: no access to tty (Not a typewriter).
Thus no job control in this shell. It says that the shell isn't working or something. Do I need to get tty working or what? How do I do that?
Also, after I logout the program quits on me. Is there a way to make mgetty keep working after someone hangs up? Also is there a way to make mgetty load at boot time?
Can you help me PLEASE,
Chad
Date: Sun, 09 Nov 1997 00:46:33 -0200 (br>
From: Javier Salem bbscom@totalnet.com.ar
Subject: I need some help
I'm new using Linux but I learn so quicky. I just downloaded Communicator for Linux tar version and did all the installation steps, but I don't understand how to set the environment variable setenv. I think that it's my problem because I can't see Netscape when I open xwin, so I can't use it yet
My name is Javier from Argentina. I 'll be pleased if somebody could give me a hand. Really thanks.
Date: Sat, 08 Nov 1997 09:37:44 -0800
From: Ted Rolle ted.rolle@usa.net
Subject: Accessing Win95 vfat drive
I've compiled vfat support into my 2.0.31 kernel. How do I mount the drives so Linux can "see" the Win95 partition?
Date: Wed, 08 Oct 1997 13:47:17 PDT
From: "HoonChul Shin" hoonchul@hotmail.com
Subject: Video woes
Greetings to every Linux lover!
When I run XFree86 ver. 3.2 with resolutions more than 640x340, and open menus and move windows around, I see white lines or streaks in my screen. It's very annoying. And when I exit Xwindows, and return to text mode, screen becomes impossible to read. Fonts just become nasty. Is there anyone out there with same problems that I am having now? Video Card= Trident TGUI 9682 with 2 mb.
Thanks!
Hoon Chul
Date: Tue, 11 Nov 1997 12:51:25 +0200
From: Ihab Khoury ikhoury@jrol.com
Subject: NetFlex driver..
Greetings,
I am trying to install RH4.2 on a compaq Proliant 2500. I have a NetFlex card built in and unable to read it..I saw that few poeple have posted this before ..I was not able to find the driver. Please e-mail me at ikhoury@jrol.com if you have any solutions. Thank you in advance.
Date: Tue, 11 Nov 1997 11:52:48 +0100
From: Sven Goersmann goersman@student.uni-kassel.de
Subject: scanner driver or scanner codes for RELISYS Infinty/Scorpio VM3550
Hi everybody there!
I just want to ask you if you know there's a Linux scanner driver for the RELISYS Scanner Scorpio VM3550 from the Infinity series, and if so where can I get it.
Thanks in advance, Sven.
Date: Tue, 11 Nov 1997 13:32:34 -0000
From: Roger Farrell rogerf@icon.co.za
Subject: Emulators
Hi,
I am looking for emulators that support the 8088 and 80188 chips.
lf you can help please reply.
Regards Roger Farrell
Date: Fri, 10 Oct 1997 02:08:44 PDT
From: Gilberto Persico g_persico@hotmail.com
Subject: Transaction Processing
Have you ever heard of Transaction Processing systems (such as CICS or Encina or Tuxedo) available (free or commercial) for Linux ???
Date: Mon, 03 Nov 1997 19:06:53 +0100
From: Fabrizio fabrizio@euro2001.com
Subject: chat
HI!
I am looking for a chat program for Unix. Can you send to me some tips about this?
Thank you and best regards.
Fabrizio Piccini
Date: Sun, 2 Nov 1997 02:04:28 +1100 (EST)
From: Shao Ying Zhang s2193893@cse.unsw.edu.au
Subject: Sorry! - RE: SB16 and MIDI
I am sorry for this second mail; I forgot to tell you what the problem is. OK, the problem is that it plays without returning any errors, but simply no sound comes out.
Thanks very much!
I am using Sound Blaster 16 for my system. My Linux version is Redhat 4.2 with the kernel 2.0.30.
I recompiled the kernel properly (I think) to make my SB16 work. It now can play wave, mod, CD but NOT MIDI.
I can only use timidity to convert them into wave and then play. This means that /dev/sequencer does not work properly.
I have also noticed that a couple of other friends have the same problem.
Could you help me PLEASE???
Thanks in advance!
Shao Zhang
2/896 Anzac PDE
Maroubra 2035
Australia
Date: Wed, 29 Oct 1997 19:51:44 +0900
From: "Chun, Sung Jin" ninja@aerohel.snu.ac.kr
Subject: [Q] PCMCIA IBM CD-400 Help me.
I want to access cd-rom using my IBM cd-400 PCMCIA CDROM. But I don't know how can I do this. Please help me.
Date: Mon, 27 Oct 1997 14:07:47 -0800
From: "Possanza, Christopher" norvien@halcyon.com
Subject: HELP! Possible to use parallel port tape drives with linux?
Does anyone know if it's possible to use parallel port tape drives to backup a Linux system? I've got the HP Colorado T1000e drive, and I'd love to be able to use it... Any suggestions?
Date: Mon, 06 Oct 1997 18:24:12 GMT
From: Harry Baecker hbaecker@island.net
Subject: Word Processing & Text Processing
In his article in Issue 22, subject as above, Larry Ayers indulges in the requisite Unixworld denigration of word processor software and its users, as contrasted with the virtues of software "which allows the writer to focus on content rather than appearance". I suggest that there are some errors in this ritual obeisance to received wisdom.
The first is that all who yearn for the services of a word processor lust to inflict another Gibbon, "The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire", or Russell & Whitehead "Principia Mathematica" upon the world. Were that so then the world would be more than hip deep in rejected typescripts already. Rather, I, and I am sure most others, wish to prepare snailmail with some attention to personalised format and typography, which is exactly what a reasonable word processor provides. I certainly do not look for the archetypal offense in Ayers' universe of discourse, Microsoft Word for Windows. I have borrowed, used, and rejected that, and I have owned, and given away AmiPro (WordPro) and abhorred Word Perfect since its inception. What I would like to use in Linux is some clone of Wordpad, of MS-Write, or of the word processors included with MS-Works or ClarisWorks, wherein I can govern not only the content but also the appearance of my message.
It is true that Lyx seems to be a reasonable compromise, unless you find, as I do, that the assumptions built into its templates are displeasing to the eye.
The second error is to assume as gospel the correctness of Unix conventions for ASCII text. The ASCII encoding was officially adopted by ISO in 1964. That included provision for the CR/LF pair, and a functional backspace (not left-erase). Anyone familiar with hardcopy terminals of the time, such as Flexowriters, will also remember the joys of "line reconstruction" procedures, to encode, say, lines of Algol 60 program text, in a useful internal representation. Tortuous, but that's what we expect computers to do for us.
The text representation conventions of Unix were born together with the limited representational capabilities of video terminals, character generators with limited repertoires, no "backspace and overtstrike" abilities, hence no way of effecting backspace or CR. By the time proper graphic facilities, and hence font choices, became available the Unix conventions for ASCII text had ossified, and the flexibility actually made available by the original ASCII conventions were treated with disdain. Had Unix embraced the full flexibility offered by the ASCII encoding then things might have been otherwise.
Harry Baecker
Date: Tue, 14 Oct 1997 14:26:20 -0400 (EDT)
From: Paul Lussier plussier@baynetworks.com
Subject: Thanks!
Hi,
I've been reading the LG since issue 1 when I first stumbled upon John Fisk's web page from an Alta Vista search for Linux info. All of you at SSC have done an unbelievably outstanding job with both LJ and LG, and I just wanted to say thanks. I look forward to the first week of every month when there is a new LG to grab off the net, and a new LJ waiting in my mailbox. I read them both cover to cover each and every month.
I do Unix sysadmin for a living and still benefit from so much of what is originally written with Linux in mind and am able to reuse it on other "Unices" as well.
Also, I just checked out CANLUG On-line magazine. It's not bad. Maybe you people (and the rest of us too) who have done such a terrific job with LG, can give them a hand getting their's off the ground. After all, the whole spirit of the Linux community is helping one another :) And we can all benefit from another on-line, enjoyable source of Linux news and info :)
Thanks again!
Happy Linuxing,
Seeya,
Paul
Date: Fri, 07 Nov 1997 21:05:22 -0800
From: Andrew T. Young aty@mintaka.sdsu.edu
Subject: word vs. text processing
While reading Larry Ayres's comments (mostly quite sound) about TeX, LOUT, groff, etc., I noticed he was sort of behind the curve on *roff.
First, there are several *good* books on this family of text processors. I have troff Typesetting for UNIX Systems by Sandra L. Emerson and Karen Paulsell (Prentice-Hall, 1987), as well as UNIX Text Processing by Dale Dougherty and Tim O'Reilly (Hayden Books, 1987). In addition there is a rather specialized book on the tbl pre-processor called something like "setting tables with tbl" -- I don't seem to be able to lay hands on it right now. (I might add that I consider tbl to be considerably superior to LaTeX's clumsy handling of tabular material.)
After you read these books, it's easy to make up a set of formatting macros that do for the *roff family exactly what LaTeX does for TeX. You can then invoke these very much the way the LaTeX macros are invoked; indeed translation from the *roff to the *TeX markup is pretty easy at that point (though there are a few subtleties that cause problems). LaTeX has a very few advantages for very esoteric mathematical equations; apart from that, the systems are very similar.
Yes, the underlying engine is opaque as hell to figure out; nevertheless, it's powerful and effective. I still prefer *roff to LaTeX, but have been forced to live with *TeX because the journals I use all employ it.
One more historical item: Larry called nroff "newer" than troff, but it's the other way around. Originally, there was some formatter called roff (short for runoff); then came nroff for "new runoff" and then *later* came troff for typesetting. -- Andrew T. Young
Date: Mon, 3 Nov 1997 09:17:40 -0500
From: Jack Chaney jac14@chrysler.com
Subject: new_user_setup
Hi,
I too am a relative newbie (again) to Linux but am sold on a lot of the conceptual aspects of the system (shareware, GNU, free downloads, world wide support, etc.) I am also quite comfortable with the stability and security of the OS. I'm not, however, satisfied with the quality of support for new users or "non-experts."
My argument is this, if you are trying to compete in the world market with the IBM's and Microsoft's you need to study what it is that made them so popular in the first place. Availability of applications, which Linux is doing a much better job addressing, is one of the pieces that make them so prominent, but it's only one of the pieces. The popularity of WIN95 in particular is due to the ease of installation of the wanted systems and applications, and the focus on the end user.
In the world of computer users the highest percentage of computers are set up as single user systems linked to a network, or some central server and/or ISP. The majority of documentation material for Linux has done an excellent job of describing how to create and maintain the system as a central server, but very little copy is devoted to running Linux as a client station. Red Hat and others have made great strides toward making the install process as painless as possible (my first install attempt was back in the 0.98 days). I am able to get most of the systems up and running but any time I have questions about a particular package, the files it accesses, and where the files reside, is always viewed as a fishing expedition.
Also a great deal of software gets installed by the standard install process with descriptive text about what the application is during the install (I can't read that fast), with a memo at the end of installation that a list of what was installed can be found in the log directory. When I went to look at the log what I found was a listing of the package titles that were installed (little more than the filename of the RPM file) and no description about what the package does. I found the HOWTO information, but I tend to work better when I can read the instructions from hard copy while I work with the application on the screen. I could (and do) print out the docs I am working with but the expense of this one-of printing is tedious since I spent extra money to get the documentation. It is also particularly annoying because the documentation has highly detailed chapters on how to recompile the kernel (which isn't broken and works just fine) and little more than a paragraph making reference to creating a dial-up client connection to an ISP (which is what most people want).
I am a computer professional who is quite familiar with OS systems and embedded coding and would like to convince management that a Linux-based development environment would be a good new direction for our teams, but it is a hard sell when the response to on-line queries tends to come off as the respondents turning up their nose saying "that information is in the docs" and no clue as to which docs or where. If the respondents know the answer but are tired of answering this question "again" either reprint the old answer, point out where the old answer can be looked up, or answer the question "again," not blow the person off because the question isn't interesting enough. Microsoft and IBM got where they are by taking special interest in always answering the "elementary" questions. I realise the nature of Linux precludes focusing any resources since it doesn't really have any. But if the general Linux public would take a better attitude toward people wanting to join up, and lend a helping hand when possible, Linux could become a major force in the computer industry.
Jack Chaney
Date: Fri, 24 Oct 1997 17:16:04 -0700
From: Felix Liebau fliebau@metronet.de
Subject: e mail subscribe?
Hi,
Thanks for that great journal, Linux Gazette, which I really like to read. Can I subscribe to have new issues mailed to me?
Felix Liebau
(No, it is impractical to use e-mail to send such large files as those that make up LG--1 to 2 MB total for each issue. However, check out the Front Page for information about our new notification mail list. --Editor)
Date: Wed, 12 Nov 1997 23:36:43 +0000
From: I.P. Robson
p.wyrd@netcomuk.co.uk
Subject: More Praise
You probably get enough of it. But here's more praise. I've just come accross this magazine and its the most useful and interesting thing I've come across since Linux itself.
Sorry to hear about the November issue but this magazine must be so fundamental to everything that isn't Gatesian that you have to keep on going.
I wish I had a huge bundle of cash to send you, but you'll have to make do with this E-mail instead.
You should have a logo ready to go on every Linux web page everywhere.
I don't often gush with praise and I'd be embarassed if any of my gum chewing friends read this. But you deserve it.
I.P. Robson
--
The goal of Computer Science is to build something that will last at
least until we've finished building it.
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More 2¢ Tips!
Spinning Down Unused HDs
Date: Sat, 8 Nov 1997 18:34:07 +0100 (MET)
From: Philipp Braunbeck 100.182763@germany.net
I guess there's no more need to emphasize how much we all like LG. Here's just my humble-newbie-one-and-a-half.
If You're like me and You've been upgrading for a couple of years now You're likely to have several HD's on Your IDE- or SCSI-Interfaces. Now there's probably some GNU-Linux-partition and one or more other partitions with M$-stuff on a separate disk. I've got a 120MB Conner (with actually nothing on it, I use it as a backup-device; it used to be win3.1, but I don't need it anymore :-) which is horribly loud. In the old days of DOS one friend of mine wrote a little Pascal-program which would stop the disk after a period of time, and it would only restart on some (hardware?)-interrupt. Some modern BIOSes can do that job for You, but people told me, that either it doesn't work on Linux (because the BIOS is only used on bootup in order to get some basic configuration) or it is not recommended to do so anyway.
When I was on some adventure-trip through /usr/sbin, I discovered some new species called "hdparm", which should be included on any major distribution. The manual page says that you can use it to spin down any drive on Your system! All You need to do now is putting a line like "hdparm -S1 /dev/hdb" in some boot-startup-script (I guess the filenames differ in different distributions) and You're done. What a silence!
However, You shouldn't do it with Your working /-partition, as it syncs the disk every now and then and the disk will keep starting and stopping, and this is definitely not good for any HD.
If You like my 2-cent just go ahead and publish it. If not, there will certainly be a good reason for this. As I am a newbie, i.e. I've been using GNU/Linux for about one year now, I'm humble enough to admit that this hint seems more than obvious to any experienced user. But if You decide to publish it, I'd prefer that I can stay anonymous, not because I got anything to hide, but because I don't want to pretend to be someone I'm not, like a sysadmin or I dunno. I've got too much respect for them guys who are lots more intelligent than I am, but would they ever consider to mail something as primitive as I suggest to LG? It really is a matter of getting started for unexperienced users, finding that GNU/Linux gets even more powerful while sorting it all out. So just put it in "Clueless at the prompt" or where You like. Sign with Your name, You knew the trick anyway, didn't You?
Finding What You Want with find
Date: Wed, 12 Nov 1997 16:14:43 +0000 (GMT)
From: Jon Rabone jkr@camcon.co.uk
In the October 97 issue, Dave Nelson suggests using
The Mailbag!find . -type f -exec grep "string" /dev/null {} \;
to persuade grep to print the filenames that it finds the search
expression in. This starts up a grep for each file, however. A shorter and
more efficient way of doing it uses backticks:
grep "string" `find . -type f`
Note however, that if the find matches a large number of files you may exceed a command line buffer in the shell and cause it to complain.
Cutting and Pasting without a Mouse
From: fk5a005@rrz.uni-hamburg.de
Date: Wed, 5 Nov 1997 18:58:41 +0100
It is possible, I did think there was no way but there is a way to cut and paste without any mouse. Just use screen-3.6x to achieve what you may have wanted for a long time. you use screen already but did you know how to use this cut-and-paste tool?
This was pasting without leaving your keyboard for a while!
Control-a can be any key to achieve a screen-3.6 command. There are many more very useful features with screen but i guess that like me there are people out there who may not know this very useful feature. Another hint: It is really worth printing the Manual. If like me you are going by train you can read the Manual x. I found out there are so many important features in so many programs I did not know and that did help me a lot after discovering.
About vim and completion: there is a feature that lets you complete words which you did write before which is very, very useful. press control-n in Insert-mode and vim will complete your word if you typed it before. It is even better: You can get vim to complete words that are in a different file. Just tell vim what the name of the file is with :set dictionary=file Then complete the word with control-x-control-k. Now imagine how much easier it may be to get a list of words with a grep command than to write down all kinds of abbreviations and put them into a file. This is a Killer-feature IMO!
About emacs and completion:
Emacs was first with completion or at least this kind of completion mentioned for vim goes back to 1992. What you need is hippie-exp.el which can perform all kinds of completion.
About atchange
There is a very nice script out there written in perl. I like it very much because it lets you perform an action whenever you change the date of a file. The action can be almost anything like calling another program and executing things or whatever you want. The idea came from Tom Schneider who has a page about atchange out there: http://www-lmmb.ncifcrf.gov/~toms/atchange.html
I strongly encourage you to read it, this is an idea, that can really save your time. The perl-script itself is only 68 lines of code. almost one half is explanation, the most important thing is the idea itself but Tom has a good page. So I don't tell you more right now :)
Slow Modem
Date: Mon, 3 Nov 1997 17:45:13 -0600 (CST)
From:Michael J. Hammelmjhammel@long.emass.com
To: Larry E Scheib scheib@tenet.edu
In a previous message, Larry E Scheib says:
When I access a remote site with Linux my screens paint painfully slowly; a problem I don't experience with Windows95. When my modem connects under Linux it replys "Connected at 38,400", the actual speed of my modem. The modem runs off of cua1, IRQ 3.
I'm not very good at debugging modem connections. I've never really had any problems with my dial-ups except when the network itself is bogged down. To be honest, I have no idea how fast my modem connections are actually running. I just know they're tolerable (they actually seem to run quite fast - I have a 33.6 modem).
Things that might affect this would be:
Finding Strings with find
Date: Tue, 28 Oct 1997 16:31:47 +0100
From: Gordon Walker hellcat@easynet.fr
Being new to Linux I find the Tips section very useful in general and the tip about searching for a string with find inspired me to write my first conditional Bash script. It finds a string in the current or given directory
#!/bin/sh
## Recursively finds all strings in given or current directory
## Usage string_search <dir> <string> (dir is optional)
## For example: "string_search fish " finds string "fish" in current
directory
## and "string_search /water fish " finds string "fish" in directory
/water
if [ "$2" = "" ]; then
find . -type f -exec grep "$1" /dev/null {} \;
else
find $1 -type f -exec grep "$2" /dev/null {} \;
fi
Another Calculator Tip
From: Frank Damgaard frank@diku.dk
Date: Thu, 23 Oct 1997 22:05:14 +0200 (METDST)
In issue 21 there was a smart perl based command line calculator, here is another one.
I have for some years used a simple alias for the calculator command. The alias only requires awk, and that tcsh (or csh) is the running shell. This alias will not work with bash/sh/ksh since these shells do not allow arguments in aliases.
Just place the following line in your ~/.tcshrc or type at the prompt:
alias calc 'awk "BEGIN{ print \!* }" '
# When calling calc do not escape "*":
# Example: calc (3+5)*4/5
Upgrading a Laptop Hard Disk
Date: Fri, 24 Oct 1997 14:38:58 -0400
From: Peter Teuben teuben@astro.umd.edu
I wanted to upgrade the harddisk of my laptop, which had gotten a bit tight with 800Mb and maintaining both linux and W95 (don't ask).
I got a new 2Gb drive, and of course wanted to install W95 as well as linux. I decided, despite my die-hard Slackware, to try RedHat4.2 for linux and basically "copying" W95. Since the laptop is on a local ethernet at home, I could make a backup of W95 on the desktop, and after linux was braught up, restore W95 back over the network. Indeed this worked quite nice, but you have to remember a few tricks. Here were my basic steps:
umount /DOS
insmod vfat
mount -t vfat /dev/hda1 /DOS
Caveat: For FAT32 versions of W95 (from OSR2 or W98) you may need to patch the 2.1.x kernels to include this.
Wallpaper
Date: Mon, 27 Oct 1997 14:38:35 +0100
From: Roger Irwin irwin@mail.com
Use netscape, got xv?
Try running this script in your home directory:
rm -f XVbaa for foo in .netscape/cache/* do for baa in $foo/*.gif do echo $baa >>XVbaa done done xv -root -quit -random -flist XVbaa
This will make you a custom wallpaper on the fly by fishing in netscapes cache.
I mapped this to my fvwm2 button bar by using the following lines in .fvwm2rc95:
*FvwmButtons(Title Mood, Icon exit.xpm, \
Action 'Exec XVchange ')
This goes in the FVWM buttons section in the middle of the other lines that define the other buttons.... When I hit the Mood button, the wallpaper changes. I suppose a lazier person might use crontab....
PostScript
Date: Sun, 9 Nov 1997 22:00:31 +0000 (GMT)
From: Ivan Griffin ivan.griffin@ul.ie
Counting the Number of Pages in a file
To count the number of pages in a PostScript file, you are relying on the creator of the file to have been a sociable application and to have followed the Adobe Document Structuring Conventions (ADSC). These conventions entail the automatic placement of comments (%%) in the PostScript source so that additional applications will find it easier (and indeed, possible!) to post-process the PostScript without having to interpret it. They are generally ignored by PostScript interpreters and printers. The comment '%%Page:' delimits each new page. So to count the number of pages in a DSC compliant PostScript file, all you have to do is grep for the number of '%%Page:' markers:
grep -c '%%Page:' filename.psI generally tend to alias this to pspage in my .cshrc
alias pspage 'grep -c %%Page:'
Printing 2up
The utility pstops, part of the psutils package, allows you to process a PostScript file to enable 2up printing. I find the following works for A4 (European) paper -- the measurements will need to be tweaked for US Letter:
alias psdouble 'pstops "2:0L@.7(21cm,0)+1L@.7(21cm,14.85cm)"'
To use it, it is as simple as:
psdouble < 1up.ps > 2up.ps
Microsoft Ugly PostScript
Quite often in PostScript generated by the Microsoft Windows driver, it requires the interpreter to have 30MB of memory, and refuses to print otherwise!! This is quite incredible, and I have found that it always seems to print perfectly well if this artifical limit is removed. The PostScript in question is:
/VM? {vmstatus exch sub exch pop gt { [ (This job requires more memory than is available in this printer.) 100 500 (Try one or more of the following, and then print again:) 100 485 (In the PostScript dialog box, click Optimize For Portability.) 115 470 (In the Device Options dialog box, make sure the Available Printer Memory is accurate.) 115 455 (Reduce the number of fonts in the document.) 115 440 (Print the document in parts.) 115 425 12 /Times-Roman showpage (%%[ PrinterError: Low Printer VM ]%%) = true FatalErrorIf}if} bind def 30000 VM?
The line "30000 VM?" checks that (roughly) 30MB of memory is available in the printer. Deleting this line is sufficient to ensure that the check is not performed, and that the job will now print (or be interpreted successfully in ghostview for example).
Linux Virtual Console Key Sequences
Date: Sun, 9 Nov 1997 22:00:31 +0000 (GMT)
From: Ivan Griffin ivan.griffin@ul.ie
Pressing these key sequences on a VC will dump information to the screen.
Displaying task information:
Ctrl-Scroll Lock gives:
free sibling task PC stack pid father child younger older swapper 0 R current 4096 0 0 1 init 1 S FFFFFFFF 2676 1 0 706 kflushd 2 S 00000000 3984 2 1 3 kswapd 3 S 00000000 3976 3 1 4 2 nfsiod 4 S 00000000 3520 4 1 5 3 nfsiod 5 S 00000000 3520 5 1 6 4 nfsiod 6 S 00000000 3520 6 1 7 5 nfsiod 7 S 00000000 3520 7 1 21 6 bash 8 S 00000000 3012 172 164 711 login 9 S 00000000 2820 164 1 172 166 135 kerneld 10 S 00000000 3224 21 1 76 7 login 11 S 00000000 3012 706 1 712 571 syslogd 12 S FFFFFFFF 3192 76 1 85 21 klogd 13 R 00000000 3404 85 1 96 76 crond 14 S 00000000 3480 96 1 108 85 inetd 15 S FFFFFFFF 3464 108 1 119 96 lpd 16 S FFFFFFFF 3376 119 1 135 108 gpm 17 S 000B206C 3368 135 1 164 119 vi 18 S FFFFFFFF 3012 711 172 mingetty 19 S FFFFFFFF 3012 166 1 167 164 bash 20 S 00000000 3012 712 706 724 httpd 21 S 00000000 3460 573 571 574 httpd 22 S 00000000 3600 574 571 575 573 httpd 23 S 00000000 3308 571 1 579 706 171 httpd 24 S 00000000 3600 575 571 576 574 mingetty 25 S FFFFFFFF 3012 167 1 168 166 mingetty 26 S FFFFFFFF 3012 168 1 169 167 mingetty 27 S FFFFFFFF 3012 169 1 171 168 httpd 28 S 00000000 3600 576 571 577 575 update 29 S 00000000 3460 171 1 571 169 httpd 30 S 00000000 3600 577 571 579 576 vi 31 S FFFFFFFF 3012 724 712 httpd 32 S 00000000 3600 579 571 577
Displaying Memory Information
Shift-Scroll Lock gives:
Mem-info: Free pages: 3136kB ( 4*4kB 0*8kB 1*16kB 1*32kB 0*64kB 24*128kB = 3136kB) Swap cache: add 0/0, delete 231912/0, find 0/0 Free swap: 16596kB 5120 pages of RAM 789 free pages 449 reserved pages 2572 pages shared Buffer memory: 2324kB Buffer heads: 2340 Buffer blocks: 2324 Buffer[0] mem: 1953 buffers, 10 used (last=1953), 0 locked, 0 protected, 0 dirty 0 shrd Buffer[2] mem: 337 buffers, 25 used (last=337), 0 locked, 0 protected, 0 dirty 0 shrd Buffer[4] mem: 3 buffers, 3 used (last=3), 0 locked, 0 protected, 3 dirty 0 shrdSize [LAV] Free Clean Unshar Lck Lck1 Dirty Shared 512 [ 0]: 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1024 [ 186]: 31 1953 0 337 0 3 0 2048 [ 0]: 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 4096 [ 0]: 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 8192 [ 0]: 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Netscape Hidden "Easter Eggs"
Date: Sun, 9 Nov 1997 22:00:31 +0000 (GMT)
From: Ivan Griffin ivan.griffin@ul.ie
These special URLs do interesting things in Netscape Navigator and Communicator.
about:cache gives details on your cache about:global gives details about global history about:memory-cache about:image-cache about:document about:hype about:plugins about:editfilenew view-source:URL opens source window of the URL
Ctrl-Alt-F take you to an interesting site :-)
|
Contents: |
New URL for LG
Linux Gazette now has its own domain name! Check out http://www.linuxgazette.com/ as another way to get to LG.
Other LG News While we do not mail issues of LG to our readers--it's just too big--we do have an announcement service. Write lg-announce-request@ssc.com with the wordsubscribe in the body, and each month you will receive an e-mail notice when we post Linux Gazette.
Our ftp site will now contain each issue after Issue 9 in its own gzipped tar file. Issues 1 through 8 will be together in one gzipped tar file.
Cool Linux Sites of December!
Check out the two cool Linux sites of the month!
The Rat Pack Underground Network is a must-see. This URL has some practical stories about using Linux to solve "real-life" problems and much more.
The Eyes on the Skies Robotic Solar Obsevatory and BBS page contains an internet-accessable robotic solar telescope and BBS system built by Mike Rushford. You can actually control your view of the sun by controlling a telescope from your browser! The telescope control pages are served by a Linux system that is called Eyes on the Skies.
Stand Up and Be Counted
The Linux Counter is a serious attempt to count users in the Linux universe. At the moment, more than 53.000 people are registered with the counter, coming from more than 130 different countries. The counter has been recently updated and given a new Web interface and forms design, and is now able to give you the ultimate Linux counter gimmick: The Linux REGISTRATION CERTIFICATE! This little GIF image, with your personal registration number on it, ready for insertion in your Web page, is available for you at the price of filling out the registration form. Older, registered users can go to http://counter.li.org/update.html, enter their registration key, and get it there.
Come on folks--STAND UP AND BE COUNTED!!!!
Virtual Services HOWTO
Check out the new HOWTO on virtual services which includes a section on virtual mail services as a whole. Go to http://sunsite.unc.edu/mdw/HOWTO/Virtual-Services-HOWTO.html The author would like your comments on the HOWTO in order to keep it on track, you can reach him at brian@nycrc.net
Eiffel Special
In celebration of the 200,000th Eiffel Professional license, ISE is making available special limited time offers for new purchases of the Eiffel Professional Licence and upgrades from Personal Eiffel.
FREE Upgrade to Eiffel Professional license with NEW Java Interface (see offer for full details)
Eiffel Professional Suite $495
Eiffel Client-Server Suite $795
Eiffel Cross-Platform Suite $895
Eiffel Enterprise Suite $1195
A special bonus runs with each of the above which includes a free upgrade to the next release, a free O-O book and 15% off any ISE training session up to June 1998. The Enterprise Suite also includes a free year of maintenance and support from the date of purchase.
O'Reilly "Animal Book" Contest
Readers of the "Animal Books" by O'Reilly now have a chance to see some wild animals close up, courtesy of computer book publisher O'Reilly & Associates. O'Reilly has launched the In a Nutshell contest, with the prize being a trip for two to the San Diego Zoo and Wild Animal Park. Readers of O'Reilly's bestselling In a Nutshell quick-reference books can find entry forms at their favorite bookstores. Completed entry forms must be received by December 31, 1997, and the winner will be chosen on January 30, 1998.
Official In a Nutshell Contest Rules:
Help with JWP
There is a Windows application, called JWP -- a Japanese Word Processor. This package was written by Stephen Chung, and as a GNU product it is freely distributable. JWP comes with its own fonts and its own Front End Processor (FEP) which means it is useful on English-only computing systems. It is also integrated with Jim Breen's EDICT Japanese-English dictionary. Unfortunately, JWP is only available for Windows right now, which is locking out a lot of people under other platforms who might benefit from it. As Stephen is quite busy with full-time work and maintaining the Windows versions (he's developing version 2.00 now), there is an attempt being made to go ahead and port to X-Windows.
This project will never get off the ground without volunteers. any interested X-Windows developer who wants to make a contribution both to the GNU and Japanese-speaking communities is invited lend a hand with this exciting project.
The JWP-Port Project home page contains more information on the JWP package as well as the JWP-Port project itself. If you are interested, please visit the page at http://qlink.queensu.ca/~3srf/jwp-port.
Perfect Backup+ Personal Edition
Unisource Systems, Inc. announced today the release of the famous PerfectBACKUP+ Personal Edition, a fully functional version of their best-selling PerfectBACKUP+ V5.5. Having received continued and tremendous support from the LINUX community, and in recognition of LINUX becoming our #1 best-selling platform we are giving something back. The PerfectBACKUP+ Personal Edition is unrestricted and free to anyone. Its freely redistributable and can be use for either private or commercial use.
Information about, and the program itself can be obtained from http://www.unisrc.com.
86Open Project
A group which includes some of the key developers of Unix operating systems on Intel architecture computers have agreed to work on a common programming and binary interface. At a meeting held mid-August at the head office of SCO, participants achieved consensus on a way to create software applications which would run, without modification or emulation, on the Intel-based versions of:
The goal of this effort is to encourage software developers to port to the Unix-Intel platform by reducing the effort needed to support the diverse mix of operating systems of this kind currently available. The specification, called "86open", will be published and freely available to any environment wishing compliance. It involves the use of a standardized 'libc' shared library of basic functions to be provided on all systems. This library will provide a consistent interface to programmers, hiding the differences between the various operating systems and allowing the resulting binary programs to run unaltered on any compliant system. Whenever possible, it will be consistent with The Open Group's Single Unix Specification.
Each participating operating system will be free to implement the 86open library specification on its own. However, the reference implementation will be based upon GNU's 'glibc' version 2, ensuring that it will remain open and freely available. The actual list and behavior of the 86open functions is presently being determined.
Participants in the meeting, who will be involved with the ongoing evolution of the 86open specification, include people deeply involved with the operating systems mentioned in this project. The 86open steering committee, a core of this group which will assemble the work and produce the final specification, comprises: Marc Ewing, Dion Johnson, Evan Leibovitch, Bruce Perens, Andrew Roach, Bryan Sparks and Linus Torvalds
For more information, contact 86open@telly.org or check http://www.telly.org/86open.
Clobberd 3.2
Clobberd 3.2 (Clobberd-3.2-RELEASED.tgz) has been released on to the following sites:
Clobberd is a user/resource regulator that allows Operators to monitor and track users Total Time, Daily Time, Expiration time, Total network usage and Daily network usage (to name a few) in an effort to limit or cost resources that the user uses. Clobberd effectively "meters" resources, and compares them to any limits/conditions you impose. The third version now has the ability to monitor users on a network rather than a single host.
Corel Video Network Computer News
When Corel Computer Corp. formally unveils its Video Network Computer later this month, the machine will be running Linux, an operating system that is becoming an increasingly prominent force in workstations linked to corporate intranets.
Linux is a compact, efficient, easier-to-use and free version of Unix. A growing number of corporate MIS groups, as well as software developers and systems integrators, are choosing Linux over 32-bit Windows platforms, especially for Internet applications. At some sites, Linux actually is displacing Windows.
That is what happened at Unique Systems, Inc., a software developer in Sylvania, Ohio. The company, which puts together accounting systems for small and midsize companies, was using Microsoft Corp.'s Office 95 internally but was plagued by software crashes and other problems. "It really irked me," Unique President Glenn Jackson said.
The company tested Applix, Inc.'s ApplixWare office suite on Intel Corp. computers running Linux. Users got nearly all the functionality of Microsoft Office and were able to import all Office files easily into ApplixWare - at much lower cost and with far greater reliability than with Office, Jackson said.
"Linux is the true competitor to Windows NT in the long term," said Dave Madden, senior product manager at Corel Computer, a subsidiary of Corel Corp., based here.
Linux has a number of key features NT lacks. For example, Linux is a multiuser system and runs on a wide range of processors _ from Intel 386 to 64-bit Reduced Instruction Set Computing chips _ and on multiprocessor computers. The Linux kernel is less than 2M bytes.
Linux has other key attractions, according to Jon Hall, executive director of Linux International, a trade group that promotes the software. Linux is free, and users have access to all the Linux source code, which means they can make whatever changes they need. Commercial Linux versions from companies such as Caldera, Inc., of Provo, Utah, and Red Hat Software, Inc., of Research Triangle Park, N.C., range from $49.95 to $399 and usually come with additional software and technical support.
The free version of Linux is crammed with utilities and connectivity software. "One of the things that makes Linux so attractive is how much software you get with it," said Dave Parker, a senior software engineer at Frontier Information Technologies, a division of Frontier Corp., a Rochester, N.Y., telecommunications company. "Linux will connect to anything."
Much of the free software is available under the "GNU public license," which is administered by the Free Software Foundation.
For example, TCP/IP and a Web server are built in, and Linux can run DOS applications. It includes X.11 support, so it can host or access Unix applications.
Linux supports the Microsoft Server Message Block protocol, so it can serve Windows files.
It also supports AppleTalk for Macintoshes. Using optional software, it can even run Windows applications. Cal-dera's commercial OpenLinux adds Novell, Inc. NetWare connectivity.
Frontier Information Technologies' Green Bay, Wis., site is using several Caldera Open- Linux servers as specialized gateways, directory or naming servers and firewalls.
This seems to be an increasingly common practice at big corporate sites, said Dan Kusnetzky, director of operating system research at International Data Corp. in Framingham, Mass.
Unknown to senior MIS executives, operations staff are deploying Linux servers in a range of intranet applications, he said.
The Answer Guy
Running Multiple Instances of X on One Video/Monitor (VCs)
From: Guillermo S. Romero famrom@ran.es
Hello,
I have tried to run multiple X servers with only one card and one monitor.
Is this possible, or is it normal that the second X server does not
run?
I used startx display :0 the first time, and :1 the second.
I have a 1024K video board (#9GXE64 PCI, S3 864), and normal config is 8
bpp, 1024*768 virtual desktop, running on a remix of RedHat 4.0, 4.1 and
4.2, with XFree86 as server.
Maybe I did not understand the man page (English is not my first languaje).
Any suggestion?
The normal way this is done is using the form:
startx -- :0 & startx -- :1 &
... The -- is used by startx and xinit to separate an optional set of client parameters from the set of display/server options and parameters.
If you ran the command:
startx xterm -e myprog -- :1 &
... it would start X Windows with a copy of xterm which would be running 'myprog' (whatever that might be). The remainder of the line informs the X server to use display number one (which would be VC -- virtual console -- number eight on most Linux systems).
(On my systems it would start on VC#14 -- accessed with the {Right Alt}+{F2} key combination. I routinely configure mine with 24 VC's -- the first twelve of which have "getty's" (login prompts) and the next eleven of which are available for X (xdm's or otherwise), using 'open' commands, or for dumping status output from a process (like 'make' or 'tail -f').
Read the man pages for startx and xinit one more time. I'm pretty sure that the man pages have all been translated into Spanish -- so you might want to hunt those down.
Thanks!!!
Read the man pages for startx and xinit one more time.
Sure, and with a dictonary. ;]
I'm pretty sure that the man pages have all been translated
into Spanish -- so you might want to hunt those down.
Try:
man-pages-es-0.2-1.src.rpm: ftp://ftp.redhat.com/pub/contrib/SRPMS/man-pages-es-0.2-1.src.rpm
The Spanish Howto is small, too global, sure it does not cover that.
And I still have problems with my ntilde chars and acents, Spanish is not
supported a lot (Linux or another OS, always late and bad)... The system
explained in that howto does not work (but thats another question, whose
solution maybe... magic? real support?).
GSR
I'm afraid I'm completely ignorant of internationalization
issues with Linux. I do know that there is quite a bit of
work done on Linux boxes in Japan, Germany, Italy and,
naturally enough, Finland (where Linus comes from).
As bad as it seems -- Linux' support for other languages is probably the best in the world. Unfortunately I don't have the skill or resources to point you to the support and resources you need.
Since your English is clearly adequate to discuss these issues with me -- you might consider contributing some of your time to a translation effort (get the LIGS, NAG, and SAG portions of the Linux Documentation project translated, and "beef up" (improve) the Spanish-HOWTO.
I highly recommend that you find or start a Linux user's group in your area. This is the best way to help yourself and to improve the situation for all of your compatriots.
-- Jim
VC Madness
From: frees@technologist.com
Hi
I have an application that uses its own .cshrc and .bashrc to fire up
and this is done by using its own login account.
Now what I would really like is for this to say select VC8 to run on
and then have my normal X on VC7 as usual.
Can this be done? and if so how?
--Phil
open -c 8 -- su - $PSUEDOUSER
... where PSUEDOUSER is the psuedo users whose .*shrc you want to run. Naturally you can convert the .*shrc into a normal shell script and do whatever you like with it. You have to run this as root -- (so 'su' doesn't prompt for a password) though there are ways to get around that 'runas' is available at the sunsite.unc.edu archive site and its mirrors). If launch this from another UID you'll need to ensure that this users (the launching user, not necessarily the psuedo-user) has write access to /dev/tty8 (group +w should be sufficient).
If you want to have the console visually switch to this application's VC you can just add the -s switch like so:
open -c 8 -s -- ....
... where the "--" marks the end of 'open's' arguments so that the command that follows it can unambigously get its own arguments.
Without the -c switch the 'open' command will select the next available VC. Any subsequent 'startx' commands or other 'open' commands would then pick later ones (unless the others were freed back up).
You can have two or more copies of X running on different VC's as well. For example the command:
startx -- :1
... will create a second X session on the localhost:1 display (the first one is addressed as localhost:0 or simply :0). These X sessions can be run under different UID's and have completely different client configurations (colors, window managers, etc). There is also an 'Xnest' command that works similarly -- allowing one X session to run "within" (as through a window on) one of your existing X sessions.
You can also set the terminal settings and colors using normal redirection of the form:
stty erase ^? > /dev/tty8
... and:
setterm -background blue -foreground yellow -bold on -store \ > /dev/tty8
This last command would set and store a new set of default screen colors for the VC. The setterm command can also be used to control the Linux VC screen blanker's timeout (a value of 0 means "never blank").
Naturally you may want to read the man pages for all of these.
If you want to ensure that a given process will *always* be running (and will automatically be respawned when it dies) you can add it to your /etc/inittab -- so that the init process will watch over it. This is how new 'getty' processes are spawned on your first six (or so) VC's when you boot and are respawned when you logout. Likewise if you use 'xdm' to keep a graphical (X based) login prompt on one or more of your VC's.
As you can see, its possible to do quite a bit with Linux VC's. I run 12 VC's with getty (as login consoles), have one 'xdm', one devoted to syslog, and ten more available for other purposes (such as 'startx' and 'open' commands and to to use for 'tail -f' commands when need to monitor the end of a status or log file -- from a 'make' or whatever.
The second set of 12 VC's is accessed with the *right* {Alt} key. (In case you'd never noticed, the default keyboard settings of Linux only allow you to use the *left* {Alt} key for switching VC's). I set syslog to use VC number 24 with an entry in the /etc/syslog.conf file that reads:
*.* /dev/tty24
This puts a copy of *every* syslog message on to that VC -- which is what I switch to for a quick glance and try to switch to when I leave any of my systems unattended. (That way when one does lock -- as rare as that is -- I have some idea of what the last throes of the system were).
I set that to bright red on black with the following command in my rc.local file:
setterm -foreground red -bold on -store > /dev/tty24
(I also do the same to /dev/tty12 which I customarily use only for root login's).
Hope all of that helps.
-- Jim
Linux and OSPF
From: Jose Manuel Cordova-Villanueva jcordova@amoxcalli.leon.uia.mx
Dear Sr.
Recenty I had my first contact with the Linux G. and is a big source of
information, can you inform me if there are a program that can talk ospf
because our ISP, is changing from RIP to OSPF and we have a linux box
in one of our links, for our cisco no problem but for our Linux box??
The software you want is called 'gated' (for "gateway daemon").
This is a Unix multi-protocol router package for Linux which
includes support for OSPF and other routing protocols (BGP4,
IGRP, etc).
Here's a link to the top level 'gated' pages Cornell Gated Consortium Information
I've heard that compiling 'gated' for Linux is not quite trivial so here is some other links that might help: Here's a link to a source RPM in the Red Hat contrib directory: gated-R3_6Alpha_2-1.src.rpm
Here's a threaded archive of the 'gated' users mailing list: Gated-People Archive Here's an odd note about an alternative routing software package/project: Route Servers -- RA.net: routing arbiter project
Hope that helps.
-- Jim
Security Problems with pop3 of Linux 2.1.29
From: Sam Hillman hillman@easyway.net
Well I hope I'm posting to the right person. I have two questions, which I hope you can answer. 1. How do I setup my linux machine as a POP3 server? I can't find any FAQs or Howtos.
Usually you don't have to do anything extra to allow access
to POP services. Most Linux distributions include a pop server
pre-installed and appearing in the /etc/inetd.conf and /etc/services
files.
A quick test is to login to the system in question and type the command:
telnet localhost pop-3... it should respond with something like:
+OK your.hostname .... (some copyright info)... and you can type QUIT to get out of that.
If that doesn't work you'll want to make sure that the appropriate lines appear in your /etc/services and /etc/inetd.conf files like so:
/etc/services: pop-3 110/tcp # PostOffice V.3 pop 110/tcp # PostOffice V.3 /etc/inetd.conf: pop-3 stream tcp nowait root /usr/sbin/tcpd ipop3d
If they appear commented out -- remove the leading hash sign(s) (or paste these samples in) and restart your inetd with a command like:
kill -HUP `cat /var/run/inetd.pid`
2. When I log on to my ISP, I download my mail and it gets dumped to the
sendmail, this creates a situation where the mail is bounced back and
forth until it passes the hop limit and is dumped as an error message in
the postmaster box, and a nasty letter is send to the originator from
MAILER-DEMON... I think this maybe because I'm running a local area
network between my two machines, the IP address of the local net is
162.blah.blah... But I also have the IP address the ISP gave me in the
host file.
If the ISP's IP address is the problem can I remove it from the host
file, and just get a duynamic IP when I connect?
Thanks in advance!
This is a bigger problem. First the 162.*.*.* is probably
not what you want to use for you disconnected LAN. There is
an RFC 1918 (originally RFC 1597) which describes and reserves
a set of addresses for "non-Internet" use. These are guaranteed
not to collide with any valid (routable) hosts on the 'net.
Here's the list of those addresses:
192.168.*.* (255 class C address blocks) 172.16.*.* through 172.31.*.* (15 class B address blocks) 10.*.*.* (one class A address block)... use those however you like. Be sure to keep them behind your own routers (make any hosts with those go through an IP masquerading or NAT -- network address translation -- router, or through a SOCKS or other proxy server).
The next problem is configuring sendmail for use on a disconnected system. You probably need to define your hostname (or an alias to your hostname) to match what your ISP has named you. Each ISP seems to use a different way to manage these "disconnected sendmail subdomains" -- with no standardization in site (which is why I use UUCP). I gather that some people use a scheme where they only run sendmail when they are connected. The rest of the time their MUA (mail user agents like elm, pine, mh-e, exmh, etc) just drop outgoing mail into the mqueue directory where 'sendmail' will get to it later. One problem I have with these configurations is that sendmail wants to look up these remote hosts. This seems to cause various problems for users of "disconnected" or "periodically connected" (dial-up) systems. So far the only solutions I've found are: recompile sendmail without DNS support (there used to be a sendmail.cf switch that disabled DNS and reverse DNS activity in sendmail -- but that doesn't seem to work any more) use UUCP. UUCP was designed for disconnected (dial-up) and polling systems. It's what I use. The disadvantage to UUCP is that it's a bit hard to set up the first time -- and you have to find a provider that's willing to be your MX/SMTP to UUCP gateway. There are still some people out there where will do this for free or at only a nominal fee. But they are increasingly hard to find. I use a2i Communications in San Jose. You could use a non-local provider if you want to use UUCP over TCP as the transport mechanism (UUCP is pretty flexible about the underlying transports -- you could probably use tin cans and string as far as its concerned).
There are several HOWTO's that try to cover this topic. Try browsing through some of these:
-- Jim
Thanks so much for the detailed suggestions. We have installed a newer version of pop3 on our server for now and we will look into the feasibility of implementing some of your suggestions for a final cure.
Thanks again, James, we really appreciate it.
-Sam Hillman, Service Manager, Easyway Communications.
Cryptographic System
From:Emil Laurentiu emil@interlog.com
Hello Jim,
Sorry for bothering you but I would apreciate a lot an answer even a short one like 'no' :) I am (desperately) searching a crypographic system for my Linux box. I am already using TCFS but I'm not very happy with it for several reasons: it is slow, I experienced some data loss, must use the login password, cannot share encypted files with other users, NFS - increses security riscs. And the people in Italy seemed to have stoped work on this project (latest version is dated february).
February doesn't seem that old.
Are you sure you're using the latest TCFS (v 2.0.1)? You can find that at: http://pegaso.globenet.it (which is a web form leading to an HTTPS page -- so use and SSL capable browser to get there).
If you find it slow than any other decent encryption is also likely to be too slow for you.
You could look at http://www.replay.com (in the Netherlands). This has the best collection of cryptography software I've seen anywhere.
The two fs level alternatives to TCFS are CFS (Matt Blaze's work, on which TCFS was based) and userfs (which support a few different user-level filesystem types including an experimental cryptographic one.
I am wondering if you know anything about an encryption at the
file system level. Something like SecureDrive (from DOS :) which
did IDEA encryption on the fly at sector level for a partition and
was very fast.
Are you sure SecureDrive is using IDEA? I rather doubt
that.
As an (almost) single user on my linux machine something like this
would be more apropriate.
Of course if I would not find one I'll finish by writing it by myself.
My only concern is that I've been a Linux user only for half a year
and I did not get the chance to study the kernel to well (this will
be a good opportunity :)
Why not pick up on the TCFS or CFS work? Why not
build on the userfs work (plugging in whatever encryption
you like)?
Why write it "by yourself" when you can collaborate with other members of the Linux community as they have done to bring you Linux itself, and as the FSF and others have done to bring you the GNU packages which turn Linux into a full OS?
What you asking for doesn't need any support at the kernel level. userfs and CFS already have shown that. The Linux kernel already support a robust and open filesystems interface (which support more different filesystem types than any other -- with read-only support for HPFS, NTFS, BSD and Sun UFS/FFS, and support for HFS (Mac), ext2fs, xiafs, Minix, and many others.
If you're a competant programmer (which I am not, BTW) you should be able to trivially take the sources for any of the existing filesystem modules and hack together your own with the encryption support of your choice. How secure the result will be will be a matter of your skills -- and should be greatly improved by peer review (by publishing your work for all to see).
Naturally if you are in a free country you can share your work on cryptography with the world. However the USA doesn't appear to currently be free in this particular respect -- please find a congress critter to vote out of office if this oppresses you.
-- Jim
An Interesting De-Referencing Problem
From: Kevbo simitar@lvnworth.com
Here's the brain teaser I read about and promptly forgot the solution (because I thought it would never happen to me). How does one delete a FILE named ".." I have the following at the root directory.
How this happened I don't know. How to remove this not-bothering-me file has me stumped. Got an answer?
I suspect that this file is actually named something
like: "/.. " (note the trailing space!).
In any event you can remove this with a command like
find / -type f -maxdepth 1 -name '..*' -print0 | xargs -0 rm -i
Note: you must use the GNU versions of find, xargs, and rm to ensure that these features (-print0, -0, and -i) are available. (They may be available in other implmentations -- but you must check first).
The find parameters here specify files (not directories, symlinks, device nodes, sockets, or FIFO's) and force it to only search the named directory (or directories if you list more than just /). The -print0 force it to be written as a null-terminated strings (thus the receive process on the other end of the pipe must be able to properly interpret null-terminated arguments -- which is what the -0 to xargs accomplishes).
As far as I know there is no way to legally get a NUL character into a Unix filename. (Using a hex editor might get one in there -- but fsck would probably complain on its next pass).
The -i on rm is just a little extra protection to prevent any other unexpected side effects. It forces rm to interactively inquire about each argument before removing it.
-- Jim
Reminder!
From: George Read gread-berkeley@worldnet.att.net
I am a subscriber to caldera-users, but as a rank newbie, 99% of what gets posted is irrelevant to my situation and over my head. In fact, I'm looking for some real basic, preliminary information:
Perhaps you should consider some avenue of paid support.
there are a number of consultants and even a 900 support
line.
Also, if you have access to IRC there are a few #Linux "channels." (If you've never heard of IRC -- or Internet Relay Chat -- then think of it as an online CB system -- similar to the "chatboards" and "chat lines" on various BBS' and online services (like CompuServe and AOL)). Granted IRC is a bear to figure out -- and 99.9% of what's written there is even less relevant or comprehensible than the traffic on this list. However the feedback is immediate and there are some people who will take time out from their usual chat aggenda to help.
There's also that pesky "Answer Guy" from Linux Gazette ;) (but he's too ornery and doesn't help with X Windows stuff at all).
1. A way to create a primary Linux partition on a drive that is entirely
occupied by a dos active and a dos extended partition. The extended
partition has 400MB available that does not have any data on it, but LISA
2.3 does not wish to give it a primary partition.
You have three choices here. You can repartition the drive
using traditional methods (backup your data, reformat, re-install
DOS and all applications, restore data). You can repartition
using FIPS (a non-destructives partitioning program for DOS --
written by Linux or FreeBSD users from what I gather). If you
use FIPS the process goes something like: do a backup, verify
your backup, unfragment you DOS partitions, run CHKDSK and/or
Norton Disk Doctor and/or SCANDISK, then run FIPS.
Another approach -- and the only one I know of that doesn't involve repartitioning -- is to use MiniLinux or DOSLinux or XDenu. These distributions (of which DOSLinux is the most recent and must up-to-date) are designed to run on a UMSDOS partition (an MSDOS partition mounted under Linux with support for some Unix semantics). You would be running COL -- but you would be running Linux.
You can find information about DOSLinux at Kent Robotti's home page: ftp://wauug.erols.com/pub/people/kent-robotti/doslinux/index.html (Kent is the creator and maintainer of DOSLinux).
2. a workaround to a problem with RAWRITE3: I can't see my COL Base cdrom
on a Nakamichi MDR7 jukebox that is controlled by a BusLogic 946C, because
Autoprobe can't find anything and I can't get RAWRITE3 to write MODULES.IMG
to a floppy on A:.
Have you tried supplying the "max_scsi_luns=7" parameter
to the kernel during the bootup sequence (at the LILO prompt).
Normal SCSI controllers support up to 7 devices. It is possible for these controllers to refer to "Logical Units" on any/all of these devices. These "logical unit numbers" or LUN's aren't very common -- but are used by CD changers (which is why most of them are limited to 6 or 7 CD's) and some tape changes (though those usually use a different mechanism to control tape changes and ejections) and some RAID subsystems and CD-ROM "towers."
I have a NEC 7 platter CD changer which requires this parameter. This suggestion assumes that the problem is isolated to the CD drive -- and that your kernel (LISA's) is seeing the BusLogic card. If the problem is that you can't even see the SCSI controller -- then you probably want to look for an alternative boot/root diskette set and boot from that.
One of the nice things about user's groups is that you can often have the phone numbers of some local Linux users that will cut you a custom kernel on request and let you pick up the floppy. I'd highly recommend finding (or starting) a local LUG. I've occasionally had people come over to my place where we could plug them onto my ethernet and suck all the free software they want across from one of my systems.
(Which reminds me -- I've been meaning to get PLIP working
for a couple of years now -- I should really get around to
that).
At first blush it doesn't look like Caldera's COL is the
best Linux distribution for your needs. If you're intent
on using COL -- and particularly if you have a business
need for Linux -- I'd recommend going out and buying an
additional drive. For a couple hundred bucks (US) you can
get a 2Gig external SCSI drive (www.corpsys.com if you don't
have a suitable vendor handy).
Even if you're just experimenting with Linux and don't want
to "commit" to it -- an extra external SCSI drive with
a couple of Gig of space is a handy investment for just about
ANY operating system. It's pretty convenient to connect
the extra drive, and just make a copy of everything from your
main system.
If your time is worth more than $20/hr you can easily make
the case for buying a $200 to $300 hard drive. Doing full
system and data backups, and verifying them prior to
repartitioning can be pretty time consuming. Even if you
already have a scheduled backup habit (let's face it --
most don't) and even if you have a regular recovery test
plan (which almost nobody bothers with -- often to their
detriment!) -- doing a major system change (like repartitioning)
almost requires an extra "full" backup and test cycle.
(I have customers who've run the cost vs. time numbers
for their situations and justified buying a full system and
hired me to do the configuration on the same basis. The
"extra" system becomes part of the recovery plan for major
system disasters).
--
Jim
From: Alan C. Sklar CS266446@wcupa.edu
I am trying to install a pcmcia drive through a kit I purchased.. I got
the drive all ready I formatted it with a desktop machine and bot my win
95 and linux partitions are defiend... But now when I go and boot linux
I send the commad ide2=0x170 and it loads it identifies the right drive
but I get all sort of errors... Can you help?
Do you have PCMCIA support installed and built into the
kernel? What modules do you have loaded? What does your
/etc/pcmcia/config.opts file look like? What type of
hard drive is this (make and model)?
--
Jim
From: Eric Wood eric@interplas.com
This should be the most handy tip known to man!
If a certain application (I don't care what it is) complains about
missing a library and you know that
the library it's wanting is in a certain directory THEN:
That's it. What is does is it tells Linux to search the directories
specified in /etc/ld.so.conf
for library files. Forget about the stupid LD_LIBRARY_PATH variable.
Everyone: Please read the
ld.so man page for further knowledge.
Post that to your tech support archives:
System hangs on boot -- even with -b and
single switches -- or it gives messages
like "unable to open ls.so.cache" in a
seemingly endless stream:
--
Jim
From: Cygnus caldera-users@rim.caldera.com
Anyone know of any programs for linux that decompress multi-part
(multi-disk) .zip archives? I can't find a one.
"Copyright (C) 1990-1996 Mark Adler, Richard B. Wales, Jean-loup Gailly
Onno van der Linden and Kai Uwe Rommel. Type 'zip -L' for the software License.
Permission is granted to any individual or institution to use, copy, or
redistribute this executable so long as it is not modified and that it is
not sold for profit."
I think there's a source package for "Info-zip" also floating
around. I don't know if this is Info-zip or an independent
version -- looking in /usr/doc/unzip*/COPYING I find Mr. Rommel
listed -- and that document is definitely about Info-zip.
For the future you might try the 'locate' command -- which is
fairly common among Linux distributions. The command:
... will quickly find every file with "zip" in the name or path
that was on your system during the last "updatedb" run
(which is typically a cron job that's run nightly).
--
Jim
From: Scott Williamsscott@gyst.net
Answer guy,
To run LOADLIN I need to have a copy of the LINUX kernel on one of my
dos partitions, and an initial swap space. No where can I find an
actual explaination on how to do this correctly.
... in particular you want to read the mkswap(1) and the
swapon(8). The man pages there are accessed via a
CGI script so you have to post data to a form to access
the individual pages. Thus I can't give URL's directly
to the pages in question. That's an unfortunate design
decision by the web master at SSC -- it would be more
convenient to access (and cause less server load and
latency) if they used a cron job to periodically update
a tree of static HTML pages and saved the CGI just for
searching them.
Kent Robotti has been working on this distribution for
awhile. It takes about 32Mb of space on a DOS partition
-- and comes as a set of six 1.44Mb files (so if fits on a
half dozen diskettes). You then add a kernel for SCSI or
IDE use.
Basically DOSLinux works like this. You get all the
RAR files (RAR is a Russian Archiving Program like
PKZIP, SEA ARC, ARJ, LHARC, ZOO, or whatever). The first
image is a self-extracting file (an archive which is linked
with a DOS binary of the decompression program -- a common
DOS technique among archiving programs). You put these
all in a given directory and run the self-extractor
(DOSLNX49.EXE as I write this -- it was at "48" a couple
weeks ago) from C:\. It thenn extracts all of these images
to C:\LINUX directory.
This provides a complete (though minimal) Linux distribution.
It also shows how to configure a system to use LOADLIN with
a UMSDOS root partition.
I realize that you may be intending on use something like
Red Hat, Slackware, or Debian on a third hard drive, or a
removable drive or some other device that LILO just can't
see (because you BIOS can't "see" it). You can do that --
and I've done in many times (I first used LOADLIN in about
1994 for exactly that purpose -- with the magneto optical
drive I still use). However, if the README's and examples
that come out of the LOADLIN package aren't helping you
use if for that purpose -- than installing DOSLinux may
help get you rolling and serve as a vang DOSLinux may
help get you rolling and serve as a valuable example.
--
Jim
From: Falko Braeutigam falko@softwarebuero.de
Hi,
in Linux Gazette Issue 22 there was a question about the WipeOut IDE.
Your answer was that you never heard about WipeOut :-( Please check
ShortBytes of Issue #19 - there is an announcement of WipeOut.
WipeOut has nothing to do with xwpe. It _is_ an IDE for C++ and Java.
There is just a new release ->
http://www.softwarebuero.de/index-eng.html.
--
Jim
Well since Michael Hammel was our featured speaker for the evening we had
our obligatory snow storm (grin). It is amazing that every time he
attends one of our meetings this happens. Nevertheless, we still had 24
people in attendance.
For those of you who don't know Michael, he writes the Graphic Muse column
for Linux Gazette, maintains the Linux Graphics mini-HowTO, helps
administer the internet Ray Tracing Competition,
coauthored the UNIX Web Server book, designed the magazine cover for the
November issue of Linux Journal, and is also the author of a four part
article "The Quick Start Guide to the GIMP" now running in Linux
Journal.
His presentation started out with a demo of the GNU Image Manipulation
Program (GIMP) showcasing many of its features, and perhaps more
importantly giving us all an idea of what it could do. The discussion
then turned to GUI builders. The group discussed their experiences,
likes, dislikes, advantages, disadvantages, and general opinions of many
different GUI design software packages. Supporting this discussion,
Michael showed us examples of GUI building using XForms (I hope I've got
this right) and Visual TCL.
After this discussion, Michael showed a 10 minute video tape of Toy Story
animated shorts done by Pixar. I think that everyone got a few good
laughs from this. We then held a drawing for two CD's from the Internet
Ray Tracing competition, and a copy of the November Linux Journal.
As usual, we wrapped up the evening with a general discussion
of Linux related topics.
Since Michael is moving to Dallas next week, I particularly want to thank
him for his support of our group!!! I have appreciated him taking the
time to talk to us, and have always enjoyed his presentations. I want to
wish him the best of luck at his new job. It might be a good idea to warn
the North Texas Linux User's Group of an impending change in their weather
though (very big grin). Perhaps he can continue to participate in our
discussions on the mailing list?
.bashrc and .bash_profile
Well, I found out why the bash dotfiles I talked about last month didn't work, and
there were a couple things I did wrong. First I didn't recognize the difference
between instances of bash and how they differ.
Besides aliases you can do also change the color of your console screen
with your .bashrc or .bash_profile, by using commands like:
Installing Software
One very tricky procedure for new linuxers is installing software. Several months ago I
touched on this subject, apparently not in enough depth, so I'm going to give it another go this
time with a little more experience under my belt.
The best advice I can give you if you are using debian, redhat, or caldera distributions is to
look for the software you would like in a compatible package format, ie. RPM for redhat-caldera,
and deb for debian. These are most commonly binaries and don't require much to get
running.Slackware has packages in tgz format, but this can be misleading, as some source
packages are inexplicably given a .tgz extension. If you get your software from the CDROM you
should be set, with packages for a given distribution on that CD. Ifg you got your distribution
from an ftp site, try using the most appropriate software found on that site, to see if it fits
your needs. If not, you should check out the Linux Software Map, to see what kind of
alternatives there are for the kind of applications you want. if you have disk space, I
recommend that you choose a couple that seem to be close to what you are looking for, install
them and use them for a short period to see which is more suitable for your uses. Sad but true,
some software compiles easily, but you will probably find that many others take some hacking,
and some doesn't seem to compile at all. You are at a distinct advantage if your Linux
distribution conforms to the Linux FSSTND, which tends to assure that paths to libraries are the
same in your distribution as they were in the distribution that they were written for/in.
With enough hacking however, all of the software that has been compiled on one distribution can
be compiled on any other. I'm not really a Linux guru, and I'm starting to get into more
advanced (??) stuff, and my intent was and still is to present information
that a new user can implement now and research at his/her convenience, I'm
not trying to be the Weekend Mechanic OR the Answer Guy, although I aspire
to their level of Linux prowess. Briefly put, although it's a little late
to be brief, I may not be appearing monthly after this issue, since I
don't want to write just to hear myself type, I'll likely post a column
when I can nail down a column's worth of information.
I still invite questions, suggestions, reasonable criticism and just
plain e-mail:
Don't M$ out, try Linux!!
Las Vegas, Nevada is host each year to one of the
largest technology trade shows in the U.S.--COMDEX/Fall.
This year nearly 220,000 industry
professionals lined up to find, test and research the latest
technologies from the leading industry vendors.
Earlier in the year the staff of Linux Journal volunteered to
coordinate the COMDEX/Fall
Linux Pavilion. Coordinating the event turned out to mean hours of
preparation,
and, luckily, vendors were quick to lend a hand. Kit Cosper of Linux
Hardware Solutions managed to talk the spirit of Linux into
Softbank, the sponsor of the COMDEX show. As a result, COMDEX personnel
were very cooperative and worked with us to ensure that the floor space
for the pavilion was in the best possible site; that is, we weren't hidden
away in a back corner.
Attendees seemed pleased to find many of their favorite
Linux vendors in one convenient and easy-to-find area.
Vendors present
included Caldera, Linux Hardware Solutions, Enhanced Software Technologies,
S.u.S.E., Red Hat Software, Hard Data, Quant-X, Infomagic, LinuxMall, Linux
International and, of course, Linux Journal.
Jon "maddog" Hall barely held his own against the hordes of Linux
enthusiasts visiting the Linux International booth. Several
members of the Linux community kindly volunteered their time to
staff the Linux International booth, answering questions and
spreading the word about Linux. Volunteers included Marc Merlin,
Ira Abramov, Dan Peri and Richard Demanowski.
Red Hat Software announced the December 1 release of Red Hat Linux 5.0.
To mark the event, Red Hat balloons filled the Linux Pavilion area of
the convention center. The Linux mascot, Tux the penguin, was carried away
in all of the excitement (see photo).
S.u.S.E., a popular European Linux vendor, also announced the latest
release of their Linux distribution, S.u.S.E. 5.1. This was S.u.S.E.'s
first appearance at COMDEX, and considering their rapid growth in the
U.S. market,
it will most likely not be their last. Their distribution demonstrations
proved to be great crowd pleasers, compliments of Bodo, Rolf, Michael and
James Gray, the President of S.u.S.E. U.S. (See review of S.u.S.E. in this
issue.)
Clarica Grove, Britta Kuybus and I staffed the Linux Journal booth.
We were quite pleased with the turnout of this year's show.
During last year's COMDEX, we were kept busy explaining what Linux is
to all comers.
We were pleased to find that this year's COMDEX attendees had remembered
and done their
homework from last year. Not only did most people we
spoke with know about Linux, but many of them are using it and very
excited with their results.
It goes to show that the popularity of Linux is indeed growing.
Linux is being looked at more than ever as a cost-effective, viable
operating system. Thanks to years of dedicated work by all of the Linux
vendors, Linux International and the Linux community, we are now able to
begin enjoying the success of Linux. This year's COMDEX Linux Pavilion
was a showcase of this success.
Linux Journal would like to thank everyone involved with this year's
show--look forward to seeing you there next year.
Figure 1 Figure 2
The first category of backup is to back up all incoming mail. The code, which
must be generated to the procmailrc file for this, will be written as the
very first line. This is to avoid that
For these reasons, I ask: Is there any way to ask caldera-user users for
some help on these two questions, sent to my own email address, and not have
to read 20 or 30 messages that I can't profit from, at least until I get COL
up and running. I had hoped from the name that Post-Only might be such an
address, but I see that it is something very different.
Caldera has some support options. I think some of them are
extra cost items. Have you called them about your Caldera
specific questions?
pcmcia ide Drives
C. Alan Sklar
I don't have enough information to help with this one.
Is this a laptop or a desktop with a PCMCIA adapter
installed? In either event what is the make/model
of the system?
KDE BETA 1
Eric Wood
I recently trashed my /etc/ld.so.cache file and
had forgotten how to fix it (since the last time
I'd had a damaged ld.so.cache was on an old Sun
a couple of years ago -- and I've never had one on
a Linux box before.
Run /sbin/ldconfig!
Compression Program
-Cygnus
Most Linux distributions come with the free zip/unzip
package. Here's the -L (license) notice from my Red Hat
4.2
locate zip
loadlin
You don't need an initial swap space to run LOADLIN or
to load the kernel. If you have 8Mb or more of RAM you
don't "need" to have a swap space at all -- but you'll
probably want one.
You can swap to a file or a partition -- or even several
of each. Assuming that you don't have Linux installed
yet you can view man pages for most Linux/GNU commands,
functions, packages, and configuration files at:
http://www.ssc.com/linux/man.html
Every time I try to copy the kernel to a dos diskette, Linux overwrites
the formatting. DOS then cannot recognize the file from the LOADLIN
command.
It sounds like you're using 'dd' or RAWRITE.EXE to prepare
these diskettes. That's fine for transferring boot/root images
-- but has nothing to do with LOADLIN. To use LOADLIN.EXE
you copy the kernel image to a plain old DOS file.
I haven't even gotten far enough to think about creating an initial swap
space...
Any advice on the subject?
Scott
I'd consider getting a copy of DOSLinux from
ftp://ftp.waaug.erols.com/pub/people/kent-robotti/doslinux.html
(Yes there are still some people out there serving HTML
pages via FTP -- nothing in the HTML spec *requires* that
HTTP be used as the transport mechanism).
WipeOut
Regards,
Falko
This definitely counts as my biggest flub in the
10 months that I've been writing this column. I've
gotten about 10 messages correcting me on this point.
Copyright © 1997, James T. Dennis
Published in Issue 23 of the Linux Gazette December 1997
"Linux Gazette...making Linux just a little more fun!"
Boulder Linux Users Group -- Best of Luck to Michael Hammel
By Wayde Allen
Copyright © 1997, Wayde Allen
Published in Issue 23 of Linux Gazette, December 1997
"Linux Gazette...making Linux just a little more fun!"
CLUELESS at the Prompt: A Column for New Users
By
Mike List
Welcome to installment 8 of Clueless at the Prompt:
a column for new users.
alias xx=whatever -options.
notice that there is no white space between the alias name, the equal
sign, and the command that the alias represents
"/dev/tty1") setterm -background green -foreground black -store;;
By the way
I found this out by reading back issues of the Linux Gazette, and you might find
some other little gems, just by digging into past issues.
tar -zxvf filename
to unpack it, since sometimes the untarring doesn't create a
separate directory and if you just unpack it in an existing directory you could get a real
ugly situation when you get a bunch of disjointed files cluttering up your directory. you can
also use tar -cxvf or similar combination to get a listing of the files that would be unleashed
when you use the -z option. This will tell you if the files have a designated pathname which
means that it will create its own directories and subdirectories that will keep the parent
directory nice and tidy.
cat README |pr -l 56 >/dev/lp0
(or lp1, or whatever). Using the -l 56 option should paginate the file so
that page breaks occur where they should.
Copyright © 1997, Mike List
Published in Issue 23 of Linux Gazette, December 1997
"Linux Gazette...making Linux just a little more fun!"
COMDEX/Fall '97
By Carlie Fairchild
Copyright © 1997, Carlie Fairchild
Published in Issue 23 of the Linux Gazette, December 1997
"Linux Gazette...making Linux just a little more fun!"
Configuring procmail with The Dotfile Generator
By Jesper Pedersen
In this article, I'll describe how to configure procmail using The Dotfile
Generator (TDG for short). This will include:
It might be a good idea to download the program. To do that, please go to
the home page of
TDG, to find the nearest mirror. You might also be interesting in
reading the
article I've written about TDG for Linux
Journal.
Starting TDG
On this page there are four things, to configure:
Avoiding lost mail
figure 3