• The MailBag
• More 2-Cent Tips
• The Answer Gang
• News Bytes
• Saving Users From Themselves -or- Dealing with User Input in Python , by Paul Evans
• Creating Makefiles: A Mini Tutorial , by Tedi Heriyanto
• Multi-Account E-mail with Mutt , by Kamil Klimkiewicz
• Replicating a Linux System - Yet Another Method , by Ben Okopnik
• Exploring Perl Modules - Part2: Creating Charts with GD::Graph , by Pradeep Padala
• Handling Power Status Using snmptrapd , by A B Prasad
• Qubism , by Jon "Sir Flakey" Harsem
• Programming in Ruby, part 2 , by Hiran Ramankutty
• Process Tracing Using Ptrace, part 2 , by Sandeep S
• DVD Authoring , by Chris Stoddard
• Risk-Free Resource Allocation for I/O Memory-Mapped Device Drivers , by Dr B Thangaraju
• Apache Log Analysis Using Python , by Rob Tougher
• Subnetting your local network with DHCP , by Alan Ward
• The Back Page , by Mike ("Iron") Orr

Linux Gazette Staff and The Answer Gang

Editor: Michael Orr
Technical Editor: Heather Stern
Senior Contributing Editor: Jim Dennis
Contributing Editors: Ben Okopnik, Dan Wilder, Don Marti

Linux Gazette, http://www.linuxgazette.com/
This page maintained by the Editor of Linux Gazette, gazette@ssc.com

Copyright © 1996-2002 Specialized Systems Consultants, Inc.

...making Linux just a little more fun!

The Mailbag From The Readers of Linux Gazette

• An idea to the Linux Project. Make a complete new Help System/manuals :-)
• PC-MOS
• Minimal Linux (Redhat 7.2) Installation
• U of Phoenix

An idea to the Linux Project. Make a complete new Help System/manuals :-)

As I initially planned to go after this with the Editors' Scissors I couldn't decide quite what to snip without having to put my own nickel's worth in at multiple places. Leaving it intact is a better example of the sort of ordinary soul who wants a simple set of instructions.

I'll suffice to say that I favor his attitude, but fear the sort of people who already have even heard of Linux Gazette might be above his "level 1" threshold, and he is not in the least bit clear where to draw dividers for his other 4 levels. He also shows a bit of intelligence and may be beyond "level 1" himself, too.

Many commercial distros come with "quick start" guides geared for the discs in the package. If you need that, I urge you, it's worth spending the money.

Beyond a fairly minimum start, what's a spreadsheet if you won't put numbers in it, an email program if you can't decide who to send mail to ... do we know any mail programs that will tell you why not to spam before letting you use them? There is more to life than simply being told, step by step, which button to push.

On the other hand, the big name distros at this point have so many applications in them that a "level 1" manual covering each would get so huge no level 1 personality would dare crack it, or the set of them, open. We used to have it as a cartoon on the wall back when I was in tech support: "I can tell I'm getting to this guy. I heard him open the shrink wrap on the manual."

But we will cheerfully point a News Byte entry at resources that make some effort to divide up the world of Linux info along the lines of how much experience you have. And yes, Mr. Larsen, that will require us to point you at a website somewhere. The weapon, should it come to exist, is no good if we truly keep it a secret. -- Heather

This mail is about making an even better manual -and help system, which ordinary endusers can understand, and read and USE. smile - positive - friendly - but not clever

I am sorry, that I try to pass my idea around to various people by e-mail, but I have not yet found out the perfect way to do do.

I hope, that my ideas would saw an even better idea, because I am not that clever.

I am running my private "war" laugh to make Linux user friendly.

And this is my contribution to the Linux Project, I mean this idea.

If you don't like me, just scrap this letter

There is sitting so many ordinary people out there, surfing the internet, using windows, and having lots of problems. So it is for me. I have worked with win3.11, 95 and now win 98. The screen freeze, programs cannot work together and so on. You probably know?

Therefore I now find that "D-day" has come, to attack. joking

It is time to make the millions og people, surfing the Internet, shift from windows to Linux.

But in order to accomplish this, it is needed with a campagn called: "Now Linux has become really userfriendly to install, use and surf the internet with", or maybe a better name ?

Therefore my idea goes towards making e.g. 5 levels of help manuals. The total easy manual could be level 1. The levels for the professionals 2 - 5 hi

Keep -and continue developing Linux and its help -and manualsystem as is.

This level 1 manual should be made, by letting a completely newbie sit next to an Linux expert. Then they together shall install -and use Linux, and the necessary programs. Then let's say, a journalist shall write alle the stupid questions down into a manual. Just like the conversation goes on. It must be completely simple, only ordinary words.

E.g. "You take the Linux cd called binary 1, and put it into the cd box" and so on !! The whole way, like this.

Then the same thing with all the important everyday programs. I mention: Start and log into Linux Connection to the internet - set up same -browser - mail program - news program - text editor - spread sheet - zip program - backup program - pgp program - wine - direct cable - real player - scandisk - webcopier (wget) - how to install a new program - and to remove it - and probably some more. Those are my minimum windows programs. I just mention those I use. I mean just the minimum number of programs. All above programs shall have this minimum level 1 manual, so people can start using Linux and more important open the individual program and immediately start using it. Only the minimum points, so you do not have to read pages and pages, to make it work. And please lots and LOTS OF EXAMPLET. That is the simplest way.

Keep all the existing (man - info - howto etc) as is. They belong to level 2 - 5 !! They shall be used as cross reference. But here also is needed a complete Linux reference book, covering about everyting, because Linux now is so extensive.

I know, because I was at one point working with the High Pack surveying program. It came with huge manuals. Nobody was able to read it, og had the time. Then I made a manual of some a4 pages. I just wrote down just what I did, which buttons I pressed.

If you do not change attitude towards the paedagogic principles, concerning using computer programs, one do not move much towards getting people using Linux.

Only the minimum programs and their level 1 manuals, so people can begin using Linux. Then they later can fiddle into the more extensive matters, if they want to, or are able to.

Also, tell the programmers, to make their user programs simpler, and not having so many possibilities. Because it confuses normally people.

I say, make it SIMPLE and "talking" normally language, Do not call things devices, but floppy, cd, etc. because people do not understand it, and they then just stick to windows, because they have been brainwashed to use this!

Hope you get my message???

I repeat, keep the existing as is, but make this simple manual, as the secret weapon of Linux. I shall here in the end just mention, that I gave above idea to Bill Gates. But he just told me to approach him with a lawyer. He was afraid to be sued by me. But that is not my idea. Just giving a suggestion.

Maybe you can get just a tiny new thinking from this letter.

I am an old pensioner, and I can only give this idea, as my contribution to the Linux Project, which I find fantastic. But I still have difficulties in getting my Linux work. I cannot remember all I read. And please also free us from this phrase: "just go to this and this website". It is ok on level 2 - 5.

I am wondering, that now data programs has existed for so long, but still one is using this ridiculous complex manuals. I think programmers has been brainwashed by windows manuals/help system, which really is no good.

I think that the closest way to get enduser using Linux in buried in the help system, which has been neclected, I think ! I think this clever programmers are buried in the very programming, and are missing the link to the end-user

An example of what I mean: Word Perfect is a program, which main purpose is to be used to write a letter: In order to use the program do the following: 1. To open the program do so and so.... 2. To write a letter do so and so.... 3. When you have written the letter you should save it to both a harddisk and a floppy disk. Do so and so.... 4. To print the letter do so and so...... 5. And so on...... All the smart gadgets with the program is not necessary to show.

I mean, that the important thing is, to be able to use the various programs immediately.

Then if you want to do the more complex things with the program, use level 2, 3, 4 or 5. smile a lot ( I think, that even my older sister would be able to understand!)

If you can get lots of people going surfing the Internet and writing letters, as a minimum, using Linux, maybe a part of them slowly will begin digging into other parts of Linux. And that would be good, at least I think so! Maybe, even that was your ultimate goal?

Sorry, if I repeat something, but I am old. Kind regards A grass root, who hope to saw just a tiny seed still -laughing - positive - friendly
September 2002.

Please do not reply, thank you

PC-MOS

This is a multi-part message in MIME format.

[argh. stop that, it's a serious waste of bits. For a oneliner question you just sent 3 extra email header lines, and a stack of HTML.]

Where can i find myself a copy of PC-MOS?

We don't know. The fact that the Answer Guy, Jim Dennis, took a best shot at poking around the internet a number of years ago, to answer a question about it, is the best we've got. PC-MOS itself appears to have disappeared and all that remains may well be all the search engine entries that point to our dusty little tidbits on the topic.

But if you've got a Linux question, or you got a thing you were trying to do with PC-MOS and wonder if some flavor or other of Linux is up to doing that for you... please, feel free to ask in more detail!

Minimal Linux (Redhat 7.2) Installation

I have a 40 GB hard disk. I have Redhat 7.2 installed with all the features on the hard disk taking about 2GB. I used the grub boot loader.

Now I have done a minimal redhat(7.2) installation on my hard disk.I could not go below 275 mb though. I edited my old grub.conf that is with the first installation and added this new redhat minimum installation paths.

During the boot when i select minimum version i got an error saying bios wasn't able to reach my new installation because of the cylinder limit. So I made a work around by specifying the boot of the old installation( both of them are same versions) and changed the root to my new installation. This worked and i was able to boot into my new installation.

Now after booting into my new minimum installation i deleted all the docs and man pages and further reduced my installation size from 250 mb to about 135 mb. After this i used the dd command to image the new installation to another linux partition which i created and having a size of only 200mb. I copied only the first 135 mb from the source partition to the target partition.

I added another label in grub.conf to point to this partition and tried to boot. But after some initialisation messages it stopped after showing the message kernel panic. I saw a message stating that "attempt to access block beyond reach" and showed the block limit on the partition and the block which was tried to access. Obviously the block it was trying to access was beyond the limit.

I am doubting whether this is some kind of fragmentation problems.Whether the first 135 mb of the source disk doesn't contain all the installed data. Could it be that this data is scattered all over this partition and i cannot image it directly into another partition. If that is the case what can i do about this? Is there any defragmentation tools available under linux?

My aim is to reduce the linux installation size and to make an image of this reduced installation on a seperate 200 mb disk and to be able to boot and work on it.

I actually don't know whether this method works.This is a sort of experimentation.

Are there any other way of achieving this aim?

thanx

sree

U of Phoenix

Tue, 13 Feb 2001 10:00:12 -0500
K.Woodward (kwoodwar from mindspring.com)

Hi,

I have a problem trying to setup Linux to access the servers at the University of Phoenix. The servers (Microsoft IIS) require a "log on using Secure Password Authentication" under Microsoft Outlook Express. I understand that this requires a email and news reader to authenticate using the WindowsNT Challenge/Response (NTCR) protocol [a really bad use of the http protocol]. The school does have a website to get to the email and news groups but it is timed and is very particular and seems to like rejecting Netscape Navigator access. The UOP Tech group's pat answer is that they only support Outlook Express under Windows, I want a Linux answer.

Is there any program or daemon that I could run to allow me to authenticate using this protocol so I could use Linux based email and news readers? I have tried using pine, staroffice, and leafnode and several others which are common under KDE/RedHat 6.2.

Thanks,

K. Woodward

I am using linux to try to connect to UOP now and have not found an answer to the problem that you had did you ever find a solution that worked if you did could you outline it for me.

Thank you,
Pat Norton

nortonpc@email.uophx.edu

nortonpc1@cvol.net

• [LG 82] 2c Tips #2 completion
• How about Jed?
• Penguins, Lizards, and Pandas?
• Thank you!

[LG 82] 2c Tips #2 completion

Adam,

The site for this Tip doesn't appear to be up any more. Do you have an alternate source or can send me the rpm or the source rpm?

Thanks,

Bill Thompson

I (the LG editor) was unable to reach that link when I was proofreading 2-Cent Tips ("connection timed out"), but I was hoping it was a temporary error. We at LG do not have any alternate sources or RPMs. Maybe Adam who submitted the tip does. -- Mike

I usually go poking around for them on rpmfind.net if I know some file they contain, or on freshmeat.net if I know the name of the project, in the hopes of finding whatever upstream source tree might remain. Sometimes I can find out why there's not an rpm anymore, but that's pretty rare. -- Heather

How about Jed?

First of all: LG is great! One of the best newsletters (?) I've ever read. Easy to browse webpage, understandable language, various topics. Great, just great.

There's just one thing I'm missing: there was a column for Emacs - fans, a nmber of articles about vim, even nano was mentioned. And what about jed? It's as powerful and customizable as emacs, but much lighter and easier to use. Will there be a few lines about this great tool?

regards,
Lukasz Grabun

We'd be happy to publish an article on jed if somebody volunteers to write it. Would you? The Author Information at http://www.linuxgazette.com/faq/author.html shows the desired HTML format.

Penguins, Lizards, and Pandas?

I'm proud to say that I've been a Linux user since July 2002 and I've enjoyed my new found computing freedom very much. I've also learned a lot, too.

I began my Linux experience with my purchase of Mandrake 8.2, a great distro. for a beginner, like myself. I also started out using KDE as my desktop manager, but have now found new liberties with the use of Window Maker. Which brings me to my submission to you today.

Linux itself has the wonderful Tux as its representative. KDE has a dragon-like lizard, and Gnome has a footprint of a gnome, I'm assuming. After reading from the Window Maker web site, I learned that Window Maker has chosen a Panda as it's mascot. So, I decided to make a contribution to the line up of cute and cuddly cartoon PR "toons" with this drawing of Amanda, the Window Maker panda:

Oh, that's soooo cute! A panda with an attitude. /me likes. -- Ben

Now, don't you just want to start using Window Maker? :o)

Nope. But then, I'm an "icewm" junkie from way back.

I think I'll have to lobby Marko Macek for a mascot now. -- Ben

Keep the very informative issues of Linux Gazette coming! I enjoy them very much.

David Bouley

Glad you like'em, David! Stick around; there's always more good stuff in the works. -- Ben

An explanation sidebar might be inline about what a PNG is, why GIF, and now JPEG, are Bad Ideas, and why Internet Exploiter 5 doesn't know how to deal with PNG's. At least not as URLs; maybe it gets them right as inlines... -- jra

The only problem I've seen with PNG is that Netscape 4 displays a solid filled rectangle instead of the image if the image contains any transparency.

As for JPG, I've heard conflicting information on whether any patent applies to it, but the last I heard was that there wasn't a problem. Have you heard differently? -- Nike

JPEG is fine. The so-called JPEG patent is bogus, and if Forgent tries to use it, they will lose it (like BT and the hyperlink patent) (This is from the leading defender of software patents, Greg Aharonian: http://www.aful.org/wws/arc/patents/2002-07/msg00029.html)

PNG support in browsers (inluding MSIE) is "quite good":

http://www.libpng.org/pub/png/pngstatus.html#browsers

(Linux Journal has been using PNG instead of GIF since our redesign last year, and there have been no complaints.) -- Don

And of course, Don ought to know, since he cheerfully burns all GIFs. (http://www.burnallgifs.org) It's a good site to check on why a number of patents out there are really quite foolish. -- Heather

In any case, PNG and JPG have quite different uses. PNG is good at compressing line art but bad at compressing things with lots of colors (e.g., photographs), whereas for JPG it's the reverse. Whenever somebody sends a GIF to LG, I convert it to both PNG and JPG, and take whichever one has the best compromise of small size and color brilliance. It's not always one or always the other. Sometimes the sizes are hugely different, as in one being four times the size of the other. -- Mike

Thank you!

I read your article "Routing & Subnetting 101", and... wow! I listened to my teacher ramble on for almost 3 hours and I didn't absorb a darn thing. By reading your article I think I know enough to really get my hands dirty.

Thanks, Again.
Bryan Lord

• Questions to linux-questions-only@ssc.com and linux-questions-only@ssc.com
• bridging and routing
• (no subject)
• Pl give solution
• Letter of inquiry
• ssc subscription
• How to Ask a Question

Questions to linux-questions-only@ssc.com and linux-questions-only@ssc.com

This is a reminder that although the aliases:

linux-questions-only@ssc.com

and:

linux-questions-only@ssc.com

work, the real address of the Linux Gazette Answer Gang is:

linux-questions-only@ssc.com

We're working towards getting all sites that mention us to give the correct address, and to get them to not mention us if they suggest we cover anything that's not about computers.

Please spread the word!

bridging and routing

Please do not publish my email address; I will read the Gazette for any responses.

Email address will not be published. It shows up in this correspondence, but there's no public archive of this list.

We do publish addresses for Mailbag items and 2-Cent Tips, but not for Answer Gang questions. That's Heather's choice as the TAG Editor Gal. If I were doing it I'd publish addresses in the Answer Gang column too, because why should that column be different? In any case, you don't know which of the three columns your letter might appear in. A lot of it has to do with whether it produces one or two short replies or a long discussion.

So the only way a reader can guarantee his/her address won't be published is to specifically ask us not to.

-- Mike

Originally, the Answer Guy column was purely the answers of Jim, but as it changed, The Answer Gang column is now about matters which have pretty much been solved, or discussed to death in some fascinating way. Therefore unless the original querent's problem remains unsolved -- a real stumper -- there's little need to provide his or her email address, but we do mention the name.

In the case of Tips other people may have useful comments, so the address is offered.

Unless, of course, they'd like to be anonymous.

People do not get selected for Help Wanted if they wish to be anonymous. You can't beg a few thousand readers for help that way. They just have to have a complete and interesting enough description to tantalize one of the Gang to answer them. -- Heather

(no subject)

[ An 8 line sig block claiming confidentiality, erased per its instructions. ]

Must be confidential indeed; it didn't say anything but this!

This mailing list (The Linux Gazette Answer Gang, which makes its home at linux-questions-only@ssc.com) is not a confidential location. It is a mailing list filled with a medium sized handful of Linux folk, who expect as their main pay a bunch of warm fuzzies and the knowledge that a really juicy answer can be published for the readers of our monthly magazine. Opinions are likely to run rampant, conclusions may or may not occur (we guarantee nothing) and attachments in HTML are often ignored or grumbled about unless you're defending a foreign character set (yes, we have translators). It's a good idea to actually dust off your sense of humor because we definitely use ours.

If you need an answer in some business-like fashion, you'll have to consider a consultant instead. LinuxPorts has a good list of them.

If you want an answer in a "Making Linux a Little More Fun" fashion you'll at least need to provide us a real question, and if this sig block of yours is automatic, a disclaimer that supercedes it and grants publishing permission. We have examples in our "Ask The Gang" FAQ; see http://www.linuxgazette.com for more. Lots more

Your HTML attachment has been sent to the shredder; it wanted a snack and we won't be passing out candy for almost a month !

Pl give solution

Hi choudhary,

Dear sir, Pl give sol these problem 1 Write a shell script to print end of a glossary file, in reverse order . using array (Hint use awk ,tail )

Q-2 Modify call command to accept more than one month? Q-3 Write a shell script to print file names one per line has directory showing serial number of file

I see schools have started again...

While we're perfectly willing to help you with any questions you have about Linux, we will NOT help you with your homework.

I am sure you will find all the info to solve the problems in the textbook(s) your professor gave you (or had you buy). It (they) might be a very interesting read - just try it.

Grtz,

Frank

Letter of inquiry

Dear Sir,

I am writing this letter to inquire about your product Red Hat Linux. I saw Red Hat Software's advertisement . . .

Red Hat is a company of its own; you should follow contact information provided in the advertisement. -- Heather

Try
http://www.redhat.com -- Dan Wilder

We don't make Linux, we just blather about it.

See
http://www.redhat.com as well as
http://www.linux.org and probably
http://www.li.org not to mention
http://www.tldp.org

-- jra

. . . for version 5.1 of Linux in the issue of Linux Journal.

That's an interesting case of time travel you have there; you've reached the Linux Gazette, which is a related pubication in that we're hosted by the same publishing company.

Red Hat 5.1 is quite ancient... -- Heather

RedHat is up to 7.3 in production release, and there's a beta 7.4 out there somewhere, I think, rotting people's cats' teeth. -- jra

They [Red Hat] are mirrored in a number of countries so it should be possible to find an instance of the 7.2 "GPL edition" disc on servers nearer to you. Beware that downloading 650 MB can take a while, though. -- Heather

I was quite impressed with the capabilities as listed in the advertisement, and I would like to learn some more about the product. I am a student and we are studying about Linux and this is the reason why I want to learn more about the product.

Running older versions of Linux for experimental purposes, or studying what was claimed of Linux a few years ago to see how it has grown, are both valid student projects. -- Heather

another thing is I want to subscribe a magazine about linux operating system.

In that case you came to the right place, almost :D

I cheerfully direct you to the website for Linux Journal, http://www.linuxjournal.com where you can use a secure connection to subscribe, or find more information about having it sent to you monthly.

Linux Gazette is only available as a webzine although that leads to some unusual "subscription" models in the form of Sitescooper, debian packages (lg-subscription), and services that can tell you when a website changes. These features are not provided by staff of the Gazette but rather, by volunteers elsewhere. -- Heather

Hope you could reply me as soon as possible.

Sincerely yours,

Dang

Hope you found this useful!

Thank you, and enjoy Linux. -- Heather

ssc subscription

I subscribe to various linux/dos/security/pascal/xbase lists, so knowing what "ssc" is is somewhat difficult. Once a month you send me a reminder to make sure I still want to subscribe. Please consider describing the various subscriptions, including other ones that might be of interest.

SSC is Specialized Systems Consultants, Inc, the company that publishes Linux Gazette, the print magazine Linux Journal (http://www.linuxjournal.com), and books and reference cards about Linux/Unix. The message you get once a month is from our mailing-list server, reminding you how to unsubscribe or change your settings. Other mailing lists we run are are at http://www.ssc.com/mailman/listinfo and in the top right corner of http://www.linuxjournal.com . A few are discussion lists, but most are announcement-only lists (newsletters).

-- Mike

How to Ask a Question

How can I ask a question to the answer gang?

Naresh

Send your note to the address: linux-questions-only@ssc.com

Make your subject a useful one.

Make your description of what you're trying to do, and what is going wrong, sufficiently detailed and interesting that some of the gang can answer it.

We might answer in a big burst, or after a long time, or not at all. A small portion of the "not at all" get pubbed as Help Wanted and readers from all over the world may give those a shot - but for that the description does have to be pretty clear.

We've more details in the Linux Gazette FAQs.

Good luck! -- Heather

...making Linux just a little more fun!

More 2-Cent Tips By

• Canon BJC 250
• sendmail and Courier
• Postfix hates Outlook
• ping with ipmasq
• multilink
• power management
• Adding Win98 to a second HD
• MDaemon Warning - Virus Found --or--
  If You're Not Part of the Solution, You're Part of the Precipitate
• autocad on linux
• ringing a bell when compilation is finished
• RedHat 7.3 on Dell Inspiron 8100 Laptop --or--
  Configuring the GUI, the GUI way
• Diald problems again
• dual boot with XP
• Hiding SAMBA shares
• recompiling the kernel with a X11 keymap
• Linux multilanguage
• Re: exe to iso files
• Linux Journal's Weekly News Notes Tech Tips
  • Keeping NAT connections alive
  • subscribe to LJWNN

Canon BJC 250

Regarding Bessie's problem in the sept. 2002 issue of LG (Help Wanted #1): http://www.linuxgazette.com/issue82/lg_mail.html#wanted/1

I also have one of these printers, and it has worked nicely, at least for monochrome. I have done limited color testing - early on, it would print in color if I selected a different printer driver at that time (bj 200 is only capable of doing monochrome). Colors were somewhat washed out, and i never got around to really testing things like gamma correction. Besides, that was some time ago, before cups et al.

I sent bessie an email asking if she were using cups. There is a little difference in the revs of cups at least with Mandrake 8.1 which is what I'm currently running. If I use printerdrake, i am able to select a bj200 driver, which is perfect for doing monochrome printing, and the test page prints just fine. If i use another printer configuration tool, there is no corresponding entry for my printer. However, selecting a similar model driver is doable if the exact model is not listed -- and seemingly in (how?) recent cups it is not. And seemingly, there are different printer databases. (i built cups 1.1.10 I think sometime ago from source).

sendmail and Courier

This is in regards to September's help wanted #2: http://www.linuxgazette.com/issue82/lg_mail.html#wanted/2 -- Heather

Hi,

First, you'll have a problem using sendmail and maildir, since, sendmail does not support maildir, only qmail and postfix support this. If you've a

However, consider using procmail as the local delivery agent. I believe sendmail will support this, though I should mention I haven't used sendmail for quite a few years. Anyway, procmail supports maildir delivery.

-- Dan Wilder

A different reader seemed to believe that sendmail cannot, only postfix and qmail -- but yet another reader chimed in that it's the default on his distro for sendmail to use procmail as its local delivery, after which it's of course no problem. Sadly they had confidentiality notes on their mails, so no juicy details. Sorry. -- Heather

Postfix hates Outlook

This is for help wanted #3 in September's issue: http://www.linuxgazette.com/issue82/lg_mail.html#wanted/3 -- Heather

Determine if the mail server is trying to perform reverse resolution for your IP address. This can lead to odd time-out problems with various services. A quick test is to add a mapping for your IP address to the mail server's /etc/hosts and see if the problem goes away.

Regards, Dustin

From: SnT_BaBS <babs@sntteam.org>

I think that u can't access root account with pop3 server for security reason ...

Maybe i'm wrong ... but it can be ...

Regards

Babs here has to at least be partly right. Postfix doesn't speak POP3 -- it speaks SMTP! Common pop3 servers include qpopper, solidpop, or ipop3d. -- Heather

ping with ipmasq

This is in reply to the September 2002 help wanted #4: http://www.linuxgazette.com/issue82/lg_mail.html#wanted/4 -- Heather

Hello Matt and LG,

My name is David Ranch and I am the author of the IP Masquerade HOWTO as well as the TrinityOS documentation project.

Anyway, regarding your eth0/eth1 issue, have you checked the DUPLEX setting on the Ethernet switch? The tell-tale signature of this is the "carrier" transitions in your "ifconfig' output. Since you have a switch and not a dual-speed hub, make sure it's set to FULL DUPLEX for that port connected to eth1. You also might want to force the speed on that port to 100 as well. Ethernet auto-negotiation has always been a problem.

If that doesn't fix things, do you have a different Ethernet card to try? Personally, I think all LNX* network cards are pretty crappy though they do work. I've had great luck with any Tulip-based network card (Netgear FA310 [not the 311, etc]), Intel EtherExpress, etc.

Ps. The comment from Heather at the bottom of

http://www.linuxgazette.com/issue82/lg_mail.html#wanted/4

is plain wrong. The IPMASQ code has supported ICMP MASQ since the Linus kernel 1.2 days (possibly earlier).

--David

In fact, I did see some references to it behaving correctly - later - but never have figured out why it wouldn't work in real life while I was dealing with it. Which means that while it's surely supported, if I'm in a situation on a 2.2.x kernel where ICMP is not working past NAT, I have no idea how to convince it to start working.

Oh well, we all have our specialties; I'll go back to tweaking X displays and tuning up laptops, now.

I absolutely agree that the Tulip chipset is the good stuff. Never leave home without it. -- Heather

multilink

Hello John, LG,

My name is David Ranch and I am the author of the IP Masqeurade HOWTO as well as the TrinityOS guide.

Anyway, I saw your LG question:

http://www.linuxgazette.com/issue82/lg_mail.html#wanted/5

First off, one of the posters mention that EQL is the solution. This is incorrect as EQL is rarely supported any other terminal servers than possibly older Livingston Portmaster. Like you mentioned, you want MultiLink PPP.

Oops, I thought they were one and the same. Thanks for pointing out my misconception. -- John Karns -- Heather

Before you start looking into setting this up, you should call your ISP and see if they allow ML-PPP? Many don't and the few that do usually only support it for ISDN users.

Good point, one which I forgot to make. -- John -- Heather

Anyway, here are some URLs that should help you in your MLPPP quest if your ISP does infact support ML-PPP for dialup users.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&;ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=setting+up+multilink+ppp+on+linux&btnG=Google+Search

--David

And thanks for the URL's. -- John -- Heather

power management

Hello.

My new PC running Linux has the new Intel motherboard that supports only ACPI, not APM. I understand from the vendor that Linux does not support ACPI as yet. Hence, I can't put my machine in stand-by or sleep mode. The only solutions are to keep it running (room temperature gets high during day time ~80 degrees) or power off.

Is Linux planning to support ACPI any time soon? Are there other alternatives to power off? After all, one of the best advantages of Linux is that you don't need to boot it every time you want to use the machine. It can run for a long time without crashing.

Thanks.
SG

[Ashwin N] Linux has support for ACPI in 2.4.x kernels. I suppose it wasn't there in the older kernels.

You'll need to install/upgrade your Linux distribution/kernel.

Hello. Thanks for the prompt reply. I guess the vendor knows less about Linux than I do. He installed RH 7.3 with kernel 2.4.18-3 on the PC, which as you say supports ACPI. Unfortunately, it is not activated. In the directory /etc/rc.d/init.d I can find apmd but not acpid. Do I have to reconfigure/recompile the kernel to get it working. I checked up all the Linux How-Tos and FAQs and can't find any information about getting ACPI to work.

Thanks.
SG

[Rick Moen] Googling found this unofficial HOWTO: http://www.columbia.edu/~ariel/acpi/acpi_howto.txt

It's linked from this summary page:

http://mobilix.org/apm_linux.html

And perhaps you've already come across the ACPI 4 Linux Project:

http://acpi.sourceforge.net

Adding Win98 to a second HD

O.K. I know this is a lame one but I don't want to mess up!

My children are now of the age that they are fighting over whose turn it is on the (old) computer - it has Windows 95 and (unfortunately) they like some of the silly games that children love - namely Mario (no I haven't found one to run under Linux).

So now I am under pressure to use my Linux box as a second Windows machine to satisfy the children (no funds for even a second hand 'puter).

On my Linux box I have two hd's, one 20 GB - the main one and a second one of 6 GB. I want to put Windows 98 on the second hd. How do I make sure that Windows uses the second hd and not wipe out my Linux one? Also how do I rescue the mbr from Windows after the install? - I'm using Mandrake 8.2 with Lilo.

Nigel Ridley

[JimD] Take out the Linux drive. Make it a slave. Install the smaller drive (as standalone at first). Install Win '9x. Change the smaller drive to be the master (if necessary) and re-install the big drive. (Leave a small non-DOS partition near the front of it if you can).

Now boot from a rescue CD or floppy specifying root=/dev/hdbX (as appropriate) and add the appropriate entries for an "other" stanza to your /etc/lilo.conf. Then run /sbin/lilo to install a new MBR on the little drive.

(The MBR on the big drive will be preserved, irrelevant until it's put back into a system as a master or standalone).

You might not need to use that small non-DOS partition that you created --- but I'd reserve it anyway (if the Win '9x installer will let you). You can boot from a Linux rescue disc or diskette to run Linux fdisk and mark the small partition as OS/2 or with some sort of hibernation volume type --- anything but Linux, since I hear that newer Microsoft releases with eradicate Linux partitions with extreme prejudice .

There are undoubtedly a multitude of alternative approaches. You could use GRUB and it's notion of "hidden" drives (to swap the identities of the two drives during the boot process, in memory). You might be able to install it (standalone) and then make it the slave (LILO) but I think MS Windows would get unhappy about not having a C drive.

[John K.] If one is resigned to using sharing the system with the rogue OS, then the above is another good reason to keep MSW straight-jacketed in an environment such as a virtual machine where it can't do any damage to things it has no business touching.

[JimD] I think John is thrying to suggest that you could use VMWare (or Plex86 if you're daring, or WINE) to run Win '9x as a process under Linux.

This works pretty well --- but has a few downsides that might apply to you're needs:

1. VMWare needs lots of memory and plenty of CPU horsepower. If you machine is older (less than about a 650Mhz Pentium II or so) or doesn't have lots of memory (128Mb minimum, 512Mb won't be wasted) then you may find this approach acceptable.
2. You might have relatively limited support for sound, USB joysticks, etc. You said you're kids are fighting over games (IIRC) and Windows' rehosted under a virtual machine and running a game is likely to be unpleasantly slow.
3. VMWare is pretty good as a product. However it's not free -- purchasing it will more than double your cost over buying the requisite copy of Win '98. Plex86 (FreeMWare) is free but many not be up to the task of running the software you need nor supporting your hardware. It will certainly be more work (learning curve) on your part.
4. You're kids may have to learn a little Linux/UNIX in order to get the VMWare (or other) virtual machine running and booted, possibly switching it to full screen mode and sometimes (perhaps) get back to it or out of it and back to the Linux host under various possible situations. You might make this all pretty transparent (they log in via xdm/gdm/kdm etc, it starts the VM session and then the just choose shutdown and they log back out).

However, it might be just what you're looking for. Take a look at these websites:

VMWare:

http://www.vmware.com

WINE:

http://www.winehq.com

CodeWeavers (WINE related):

http://www.codeweavers.com

TransGaming (WINEX):

http://www.transgaming.com

Plex86 (FreeMWare):

http://www.plex86.org

[Heather] They might enjoy TuxRacer, which I've actually seen in stores. Linux can also emulate Nintendos, Game Boys, and some other gaming systems -- you have lots of options.

If You're Not Part of the Solution, You're Part of the Precipitate

Quoting Dan Wilder:

Another spate of Klez worm reports to the victim, whose email address is forged in the "From: " header of the virus-bearing mail.

I've started letting people whose autoresponders send me these misdirected advisories that they have one day to turn it off or disable it, after which they'll be permanently killfiled after the next offence.

Dear readers: If you don't know how to (or buy) an autoresponder that does competent SMTP header analysis, so you're sure it's sending virus advisories to the correct party, then you honestly have no business running one, and will end up causing large numbers of people to classify you as, in effect, a spammer and to act accordingly.

Trust me, you don't want to put yourself in that category -- and nobody's going to care about your protestations of meaning well.

autocad on linux

Saw your not yet. I am a mechanical engineer. I run autocad daily on linux using vmware. (Running SuSE 8.0 or 7.3, AMD 1.4 with 768 Mg) Works beautifully. Frequently I had 10 or 15 sessions of autocad running at the same time. Never a problem. Nice also when want to reload or update as from 7.3 to 8.0 simply copy the back the windows 2000 file. To me it is the preferrable way to run autocad.

-richard

ringing a bell when compilation is finished

Hi:

I wanted to share a little bash function I put together to check for the status code returned by a process (typically "make"). After using IDEs which generate audio feedback after successful compilation, I realized that this could be done by a bash function, which I call "ok".

I typically run the function right after a long build like this:


make -f Makefile ; ok

It then returns a pleasant note if all went well, and something less pleasant if not. Here is the source:

[zorro@box84 build]$ cat /etc/profile.d/check_return_value.sh
#!/bin/sh

ok() {
    if [ $? -eq 0 ]; then
        play /usr/share/sounds/chord.au
        echo "   SUCCESS   "
    else
        play /usr/share/sounds/warning.wav
        echo "   *ERROR*   "
    fi
}

Works every time (so far).

Configuring the GUI, the GUI way

Heather Stern wrote:

(In response to q querent having trouble with mice)

The section you are looking for in your /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 file (well, it might be in just plain /etc, but anyway) is "Pointer" for the mice declarations themselves and "ServerLayout" for the list of gadgets it will honor.

[Ben] You could also use "xf86cfg" if you like graphical tools. I've found that it takes a little getting used to, but is well done, and - once you understand the basic idea behind the layout - nicely intuitive.

[Heather] Ben presumes you use Debian. If you use RedHat, you'd want "Xconfigurator". If you use SuSE, the correct beastie is "SaX" and can also be found in the YaST menus.

On older distros there was a TCL/tk app called "XF86Setup" but it does nothing to help guess your video card or monitor characteristics. If you need this, a brief glance at the results of "lspci" is worth your while, and check your notes about what the maximum resolution is for your monitor, before you run the app. It's not very happy when you switch away from its task and back again.

The XF86Setup program, at least, has keyboard commands for everything, so it will work that way until you finally pick the right mouse protocol and can start clicking on things.

If you're afraid of jumping to graphical mode until you've got something like a useful config file created, "xf86config" is a totally text mode program, which asks you questions from the database of X gadgetry. But do make sure that it creates an XFree86 version 4.x file, and not a version 3.x file ... they are very different. The section "ServerLayout" mentioned above didn't exist in version 3.

Diald problems again

I've got Debian 3.0 almost set up to my liking, but one thing I can't get to work is diald.

I installed Debian from scratch and pppd configuration was quite easy. "pon ntlworld" works, similarly kppp only required me to change auth to noauth in ppp.options and it worked. Diald OTOH has me puzzled.

Debian 3.0 has a completely new diald configuration. All the stuff that used to appear in /etc/diald has gone. The only configuration file it uses seems to be in /var/cache.

"ps aux" shows that diald starts up OK. "route" shows that it has set up sl0 as the default interface, but when I try to access anything on the internet I get an immediate DNS lookup failure. There are none of the usual messages in /var/log/messages indicating that it's trying to dial out and do a DNS lookup.

What have I tried?

• I've reconfigured it half a dozen times.
• I've tried "grep diald /var/log/*"
• I've copied my old /etc/diald from potato and selected "old-config" in "dpkg-reconfigure diald".
• I've copied the dialup rules from old standard.filters into /etc/diald.options
• I've read everything I could find about the new configuration in /usr/share/doc/diald
• I've google searched for "debian woody diald problem"
• I've searched the debian-user archives

Now I'm stumped. I could throw away the new /etc/init.d/diald script and import the old one potato, together with all the rest of the configuration for potato, but even if that works, I would prefer not to rely on an "obsolete" configuration.

But, about a week later, Neil solved it... -- Heather

I've got this working. It still doesn't work with the Debian 3.0 configuration, but I noticed that one difference from 2.2 was that there was no named running on 3.0. I installed bind and this together with the 2.2 configuration seems to have got it working.

Neil

I know that a few apps want to look up the local machine by hostname; I usually deal with this by adding /etc/hosts entries. But there are a handful of other advantages to using a local caching name daemon. If you need the cache to persist through reboots (bad power lines, maybe?) consider pdnsd. -- Heather

dual boot with XP

HalloMy name is Debojit Acharya and i am from india. It will be highly apperciated if you kindly answer the questions furnished below :-1. I have a 10 GB hard disk with Win 98 installed on it. Now i want to Install Win XP and Red Hat Linux 7.2 on to a new 80 GB hard drive.

I have seen this succeed; it depends a little bit on whether your BIOS likes such large drives, but once you can get the OS' to see them they deal with the rest of the details pretty well.

I want to have multibooting feature with Win 98 (on the old 10GB HDD), Win XP and Linux (on the new 80 GB HDD) as OSs.

I don't know if mswin will let you boot XP from a second drive.

The easiest way by far for Linux, would be to have LOADLIN.EXE and a copy of your favored linux kernel sitting on the old win98 C: ... then just offer Linux as one of the mswin boot menu choices.

A floppy would work (for Linux at least; possibly for winxp but don't believe me ... check their knowledgebase).

How to go about it? 2. I had Mandrake Linux 8.2 installed on one of old HDD's partitions. Later i had tried to delete the partition by booting from the Mandrake bootable CD. Though the partition got deleted but had not been uninstalled properly because even now, at the system startup screen, the default OS is shown as Linux with Win 98 as the second choice. But after logging into Linux it gets hanged.

You still have the old LILO master boot record from the time when you had Mandrake on /dev/hda, however since Mandrake itself ... or more correctly speaking, that kernel ... is no longer there, the menu option goes to an explicit location on disk -- which no longer has a kernel!

If you store at least one Linux kernel on your /dev/hda drive -- for example, in C:\LINUX -- then you will be able to install a fresh LILO boot record which points at it, and knows about you wanting to mount a /dev/hdbN partition as your root volume when you select Linux. You must re-run /sbin/lilo, after editing /etc/lilo.conf to meet your new setup. Unfortunately, the kernel and bootloader really do have to be on the same disk.

If you switch to GRUB a different story follows, but it's still probably a good idea to keep a kernel on your first hard drive.

Pls help me get out of this.
Thanks. Bye,Debojit.

Hiding SAMBA shares

Take a look at this link it may help:

http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/samba/chapter/ch05.html

Look down the page to the section on Preventing Browsing (5.1.1)

O'Reilly's books are really great references for technical materials.

Hope this helps.

recompiling the kernel with a X11 keymap

Hello Answers Gang,

Is there a way to recompile the kernel so as to get the X11 keymap in the console?

See


linux/drivers/char/defkeymap.c
linux/drivers/char/consolemap.c

paying special attention to the comments at the beginning of defkeymap.c

However, it is not necessary to recompile the kernel. Your initialization scripts (in /etc/rc.d, /etc/rc.d/init.d, or /etc/init.d depending on your distribution) very likely have a call to "loadkeys" someplace in them. This loads a keymap at boot time. If not, you can easily add such. See


man loadkeys

Linux multilanguage

Hey Jim,

I was reading over some of your responses to people's problems and it seems you are pretty knowledgable of the linux os.

[Ben] These days, Jim sits by the fire in his slippers and points with his pipe to stuff he wants done... or something like that. The Answer Guy is now The Answer Gang, and we all share the load.

With quite a shell collection on the mantelpiece, I'd add. (Jim is our resident shell-script expert. He has no problem constructing shell pipelines several apps deep.) -- Heather

I was wondering if you could point me in the correct direction with an issue i am facing. I am looking to write a C program that will use some sort of API call to detect what language is installed on a linux box and then launch a correct web page. Does linux have an API? How do you find out these environment variables? I have been researching for hours and have come up empty. Any help would be very appreciated.

[Dan] No doubt Jim or somebody else has more info, but for starters, try


apropos locale

and the related manpages, for example


man 7 locale

A system's locale is set during installation, and controls among other things the multilanguage support built into many GNU programs using the "gettext" utilities. See also


man gettext

[Ben] Take a look at the LANG variable. It's somewhat odd (e.g., the default value for English is 'C' (???))

[Heather] I think the default value is 'C' and if you have a basically English distro that's the language you'll, ahem, C. You can specify one or another of the English variants but I've seen it cause some things to act weird - I assume the exact same weirdness they'd offer if I picked an international variant they dunno how to handle.

[Ben] ...but mostly it follows the ISO3166 standard for naming, e.g. "de", "fr", "kr", etc. It's also far from certain that everyone will have it set on their system. For example, I read a lot of Russian stuff, but leave my LANG at the default setting and execute specific programs with a local LANG definition:

LANG=ru_RU rxvt -n Muttley -e mutt -y

In my opinion, though, LANG is as close as you'll come to what you're looking for as is possible in the wild wooly world of Unix.

Re: exe to iso files

And if you're trying to write a Linux or otherwise generated ISO under Windows, you can see "Best of ISO Burning Under Windows" - Issue 68, 11th TAG article: http://www.linuxgazette.com/issue68/tag/11.html -- Heather

Interestingly enough, I discovered, apparently El Torito bootability is a feature of the image -- I burned those Linux BBC's from a bare ISO, no command switches to tell the Windows burner to make it bootable, and it Just Worked.

I hadn't realized that it was (in Linux terms) mkisofs, not cdrecord, that did that work.

[JimD] Yes, it's the -b option to mkisofs that does the trick (and it's obviously not necessary at record time --- though most other OS have software that integrate the mkisofs with the burn. I prefer the modularity of he Linux approach.

In retrospect it ought to be obvious, but I don't even want to admit to the amount of time I spent looking for that switch in my (by which I mean "my sister's") Windows burner software.

LJWNN Tech Tips

Keeping NAT connections alive

When you ssh from a NAT network, do your connections mysteriously drop after a few minutes of activity?

Keep ssh connections up by adding

ProtocolKeepAlives 30

to your ~/.ssh/config file.

See man ssh_config.

...making Linux just a little more fun!

The Answer Gang By Jim Dennis, Ben Okopnik, Dan Wilder, Breen, Chris, and... (meet the Gang) ... the Editors of Linux Gazette... and You!

Contents:

¶: Greetings From Heather Stern

Issue 80 - The Mailbag -> Kylix - observations

starting services in "/etc/init.d"

A LAN Question

Homework question: defining subnets

thx for ur ncurses, u have networking howto?

How to kill a process in uninterruptible sleep state?

Greetings from Heather Stern

Dear readers, welcome to October in the world of The Answer Gang.

Statistics: About 680 messages this month. I say "about" because I can't count spam that hit the filters, and I'm not counting admin notes that I spotted and put aside early. That's just the total I had to split.

Peeves of the month --or-- how not to get an answer:

1. ask a question about printers, and don't bother to look at http://www.linuxprinting.org first. A lot of our answers are gentle pointers to HOWTOs, as we assume real newbies don't know about The Linux Documentation Project (http://www.tldp.org) yet, either.
    
   If you have already looked at a a HOWTO, for a pumpkin's sake do not say "I looked at all the HOWTOs and it made no sense." That just makes us sad and worried that our own answers won't help you any either.
    
   Tell us whatever phrases confused you, and tell us what sort of sense you expected of it. We may be inspired to "translate" the techie bits into English, or point you at the pre-requisite HOWTO that goes before it, which already does. Probably we'd copy the maintainer so that the clearer answer gets to help a lot more people. If so you could feel proud you'd helped the LDP by making it more readable
2. gosh, it's my first week of school, maybe those Answer Guys will do my homework for me. I dunno what the prof is talking about anyway, so I won't even rephrase he question.
    
   "sure, give us your professor, we'll advise him on a few pointers to give you." Here's the first hint; try the class textbook. The second: if you don't understand the question ask the professor about it. It's his or her job to explain it to you; you pay the school good money for that.
    
   Especially distressing were the ones who want us to pick their masters thesis for them. Research and new insights are the basis for handing out such a degree, right? So I'd think it needs a bit more research than firing a note off to a batch of linux gurus on some mailing list somewhere. You need some background, you need a topic, you need some actually interesting new theory, you need some ways to test or explore that theory, and then you need to make the paper presentable at an academic level. I suggest typing the keywords "linux" and "proceedings" into the nearest search engine, and following their examples for style, reading them for content, and considering whether they are aiming for the same academic audience or if you need a slightly different tone. Simmer with new ideas, garnish lightly with a conclusion, publish to taste. Keep notes throughout and have a complete bibliography so people can follow how you came to think of it all.

Not really a peeve at all, but rather interesting: Crossover questions with Microsoft OS' are up. On the other tentacle, awareness that they're talking to Linux people here is too. For the record two Knowledgebases might come in handy:

• ours -- http://www.linuxgazette.com/tag/kb.html
• theirs -- http://support.microsoft.com

No, we have no idea whether any MS varieties can boot off a second drive. We suggest swapping the disks. Linux will boot fine as long as the bootloader has a kernel on the same media. Even if that's a floppy with SYSLINUX, or a Windows install with LOADLIN.EXE lying around.

Here's a touch of what The Answer Guy himself (Jim Dennis) and I have been up to. We visited Portland, Oregon this weekend - meeting some old friends - and got a tip about this great recycling project, http://www.FreeGeek.Com. We swung by their offices and it's just the coolest thing... assuming that you find big boxes piles of discarded cards and monitors and so on fascinating, of course. We sure did

Anyways, they get people in the community involved in putting these old bits back together into wimpy little machines that Linux can still make usable. The stuff that's hopeless, they snip the heavy metals and chips out of for recycling. Meanwhile some folks who previously knew nothing about computers, except maybe "where's the on switch" are learning how to tell an ethernet card from a modem, and so on. There are probably other projects like this out there, too. I'd like to hear from a few of them.

Now on to some All Hallow's Eve fun.

We really had to start coughing while cleaning out the cobwebs this time. Not one, but two questions about copies of Red Hat so old the moths are stuffed and buzzing around with beards and canes. The answers weren't very tasty, so you'll be spared them.

For slimy worms we've been pestered by the Klez worm all month. See the Two Cent Tips for more on that. Ugh.

We do have some candy though.

Ghoulies and monsters, we've got a definition of the term daemon that might be particularly useful this month. Plus how to get 'em started. LAN stuff got you spooked? We've got some great notes to chew on. if you find uninterruptiple sleep bothers you, we'll tell you how to kill that ghost... probably! Mwa ha ha ha, ha ha! See you next month!

Issue 80 - The Mailbag -> Kylix - observations

Translation (c) 2002 Santy

Answered By Faber Fedor, Ben Okopnik, John Karns, Mike Orr, Heather Stern

Hello!, I suppose that somebody already will have clarified this to you, but just in case...

(I am Spanish, and my English is not very good, I hope that it is sufficient to explain to me well...)


Kylix
Fri, 21 Jun 2002 14:37:51 -0400
Octavio Aguilar (oam from mail.cosett.com.bo)
translated by Mike Orr, except for one part by Heather Stern.

!ah! Un comentario demonio (daemon )siguifica Dinamic access memory, estoy equivocado?

Ah! A daemon commentary means dynamic access memory, or am I mistaken?

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"?

[Santy] Here Octavio asks if daemon (demon is "demonio" in spanish) means "dynamic access memory" I believe that he thinks that daemon is an acronym ->"D-ynamic A-ccess EM-memory ON-???) or so, of course this mistaken, it cames from Day Monitor ¿yes?.

I believe that this clarifies your doubt, I hope...

Intente bajar de internet el mismo paquete pero el resultado para instalarlo es el mismo error. (Heather: oboy, my spanish is rustier than Mike's, but I'll try.) I intend to go under the internet to packets (maybe: download the package ?) but the result of installing is an error.

[Santy] I intend to download the package from internet but the result of installing is the same error.

Bye!

Santy writes:

of course this mistaken, it cames from Day Monitor ¿yes?.

[Faber] I've heard that daemon stands for Disk And Execution MONitor. Whether that's true or not is, I suspect, lost in the mists of history.

[Ben] In The Jargon File:

:daemon: /day'mn/ or /dee'mn/ /n./ [from the mythological

meaning, later rationalized as the acronym `Disk And Execution MONitor'] A program that is not invoked explicitly, but lies dormant waiting for some condition(s) to occur. ....

[John K.] According to my first edition copy of "UNIX System Administration Handbook", Nemeth, Synder & Seebass, pp 403-404,

"Many people equate the word 'daemon' with the word 'demon' implying some kind of Satanic connection between UNIX and the underworld. This is an egregious misunderstanding. 'Daemon' is actually a much older form of 'demon'; daemons have no particular bias towards good or evil, but rather serve to help define a person's character or personality.

[Mike Orr] Similar to the Russian word "chyort", which means "earth spirit", but Christian theology and writers (e.g., Tolstoy) tended to redefine as "devil".

There's an anecdote about a priest who's conducting a funeral service. As the casket is about to be buried, an earthquake erupts, pushing the casket into the earth. "Chyort voz'mi!" ("The devil take it!") mutters the priest and continues the service, not realizing the literal meaning of that common expression.

[John K.] The ancient Greeks' concept of a "personal daemon" was similar to the modern concept of a "guardian angel" -- "eudaemonia" is the state of being helped or protected by a kindly spirit. As a rule, UNIX systems seem to be infested with both daemons and demons. [ :-^) as it were, hehe! - jk]

The word daemon was first used as a computer term by Mick Bailey, a British gentleman who was working on the CTSS programming staff at MIT during the early 1960's. (footnoted: This bit of history comes from Jerry Saltzer at MIT, via Dennis Ritchie, via Kirk McKusick.) Mick quoted the Oxford Dictionary in support of both the meaning and spelling of the word. Daemons made their way from CTSS to Multics to UNIX, where they are so popular they need a superdaemon to manage them. Daemons are featured on the cover of the BSD UNIX manuals.

[Heather] I've been told that the little trident in the BSD Daemon's hands is not a weapon, simply his implementation of the fork() system call... but I couldn't find a canonical reference to say so.

[John K.] ... cyber-history class dismissed

These figures [defining the personality] also appear prominently in Tibeten (and Hindu if I'm not mistaken) drawings called mandalas. Many of the mandalas have these figures painted in a circular or horse shoe pattern surrounding a central figure. At the moment I forget the term that they use to name the entities, but they are representative of universal characteristics of the subconscious, which every person who follows "the path" must master / transcend.

starting services in "/etc/init.d"

From Benjamin A. Okopnik

Answered By Jay R. Ashworth, Mike "Iron" Orr, John Karns, Jim Dennis

There are a number of services available in "/etc/init.d" that I use only occasionally - "pdnsd" and "ntpdate", for example - and so they're not auto-started in my "/etc/rc*.d". In order to save myself repeatedly typing


su -c '/etc/init.d/pdnsd start'

"stop", etc., I decided to make the command line a bit clearer via the following script:

See attached okopnik.usr-local-bin-start.bash.txt

After creating it, I made a number of symlinks to it:

cd /usr/local/bin
for n in stop reload restart force-reload; do ln -s start $n; done

Now, all I have to do is type an action followed by the service name, like

reload pdnsd
start fetchmail
stop mysql

etc., as root (or invoke it via "su"). More obvious, less typing.

[jra] Except that they're a bit too generic in the global unix namespace, IMHO. I did something similar, with a script called svc, about a release or two before RedHat did something almost identical (though a bit spiffier) called service.

<shrug> It's easy enough to modify for other "rc.d" variants. The important thing here was the idea, and the, erm, "source" is available.

[Iron] For a simpler (and more simplistic way), you can throw these shell functions into .zshrc.

function start () { /etc/init.d/$1 start ; }
function stop () { /etc/init.d/$1 stop ; }
function reload () { /etc/init.d/$1 reload ; }
function restart () { /etc/init.d/$1 restart ; }
function ctest () { /etc/init.d/$1 ctest ; }

Also easier to type than 'service start'....

(I assume bash works the same way?)

You need to have semicolons on the ends...

which I added. -- Heather

[Iron] That may be a bashism; it works in zsh without the semicolon. And why would you need a semicolon? You normally only need a semicolon between statements, in "for WORDS ;do", and in the case statement.

[JimD] Actually this was fixed in bash 2.x. The fact that bash 1.x allowed { WORDS } (with no semicolon) is considered a bug in its parser. That's because } is NOT a command separator --- and the command echo } should simply echo a closing brace. That leads to an ambiguity in the following:

{ echo }

... is that a complete command group (in the braces) or is it a fragment including the beginning of a command group (the opening brace) followed by an echo command (which will print out a close brace character, and a newline)?

Alternatively the command line:

{ echo ; }

... is unambiguous.

It's an "sh"-ism, too. You need one because it terminates a group command. From the "bash" man page:

 { list; }
        list  is  simply  executed  in  the current shell environment.
        list must be terminated with a newline or semicolon.  This  is
        known  as a group command.

It doesn't work in .bashrc. Remember that you have to "su" to run them:

Baldur:~$ ztart() { /etc/init.d/$1 start; }
Baldur:~$ su -c 'ztart pdnsd'
Password:
bash: ztart: command not found
Baldur:~$ typeset +f | grep -A3 ztart
ztart ()
{
    /etc/init.d/$1 start
}

[Iron] I rarely use the "su -c" syntax. By the time you get done typing the convoluted syntax with quotes around the command, you can already be done with an interactive su session.

The point here is that doing it the way you suggest makes it more complex (dependent on whether you did "su" or "su -", for example) and more fragile. I suppose you could always put it in "/etc/profile"... uh, nope, that would break for "csh", "tcsh", etc. users. This is one of those cases where a script is simply better.

No idea what you mean by "convoluted syntax", but the same reasoning applies.

[JimD] In the case of zsh it appears to treat the close brace as a special case delimiter. This leads to inconsistencies like this:

  zsh$ echo {}
  {}
  zsh$ echo {
  {
  zsh$ echo }
  zsh: parse error near `}'

(or something like that). This is probably a bug in zsh (with regards to Bourne and Korn shell compatibility. As I say, it was considered to be a bug in bash that was noted in a change log for 2.x.

All of that hairsplitting aside I must say that this is one of the most annoying changes in bash 2.x. Like many other shell scripters I'd gotten into the habit of using constructs like { ...; foo } and I still get bitten by it occasionally. (Note that in this example foo is being called with an argument of } (closing brace) and the group is incomplete. We must insert a semicolon or a newline (command separators) for it to parse correctly.

I'd simply learned it as "this is the way it's done"; I guess I came to it fairly late. One thing that I remember annoyed the hell out of me early on: trying to launch two progs and background the first one; seemed like an obvious thing to do

prog1 &; prog2

- right? Wrong! Only later did I realize that '&' was a valid

terminator, just like ';' and newline. Oh, and trying to explain the order in

prog > /dev/log 2>&1 &

to my students involves removing their brains and installing them upside down...

[JimD] Consistency is the hobgoblin of a small mind. Computers have "small minds" indeed!

<snort> Indeed.

[John K.] Interesting, as I did virtually the same thing a while back:

See attached karns.usr-local-sbin-start.sh.txt

but I put it all in /usr/local/sbin, since it has to run as root

lrwxrwxrwx    1 root     root            9 Dec  7  2001
/usr/local/sbin/start -> initScrpt*

This should chop off 5 fields worth of text, delimited by slashes. Any time you see fixed numbers while doing string handling, you should beware that it won't work for the general case. -- JimD

Yikes! Highly breakable (try invoking it from its own directory, one level above it, etc.) How about just "${0##*/}" instead? That'll work every time.

This offers to chop everything up to the last slash, and leave the last part, whatever it is. Also it's a built-in. But that may be true only for bash... and probably ksh. The rest is left as an exercise in shell debugging, but those of you who prefer working code should just skip to the end. -- JimD

Has this ever worked for you? I'd be very surprised if so; $0 will never equal just "stop" (it'll be "./stop" at the very least.)

[John K.] Yes.

jkInsp8000:~ # stop nscd
Shutting down Name Service Cache Daemon

Doesn't work for me. Obviously, something in your script is tripping off "stop", but I see no way that it can be the above "if" statement.

See attached okopnik.testing-karns.sh-transcript.txt

[John K.] As a test I truncated the script as:

CMD=`echo $0 | cut -f5 -d/`
echo "CMD = $CMD"
exit 0

... then ran the tests

..from root's home dir:

jkInsp8000:~ # stop nscd
CMD = stop

..from the scripts own dir:

jkInsp8000:~ # cd /usr/local/sbin/
jkInsp8000:/usr/local/sbin # stop nscd
CMD = stop

..and from one level above:

jkInsp8000:/usr/local # stop nscd
CMD = stop

Mine acts completely differently

Baldur:~$ cat << ! > /usr/local/bin/tst1
> CMD=`echo $0 | cut -f5 -d/`
> echo "CMD = $CMD"
> exit 0
> Baldur:~$ chmod +x /usr/local/bin/tst1
Baldur:~$ tst1
CMD =
Baldur:~$ cd /usr/local/bin
Baldur:/usr/local/bin$ tst1
CMD =

Doesn't work for me, John. I can't see how it would work for you. If one of the other Gangsters wants to try it out, cool, but I don't see how it's even possible (unless you have another script, alias, or function called "stop".) Here is a simple test:

echo "./foo" | cut -f5 -d/

If you get "foo" out of that, then your "cut" is doing something magical. Or maybe it's "echo". Of course it could always be gremlins.

Just out of curiosity - you are copying and pasting (NOT retyping) the code, yes?

[John K.] I'm too lazy to type it! At this point I'm tempted to say that I personally modified the bash code to suite my misguided purpose (ah, the joy of open source), but I didn't.

I didn't think you had, but I was wondering about your gremlins. You just never know.

jkarns@jkInsp8000:~ > grep gremlin /etc/passwd
gremlin:x:0:666:i_gotz_r00t:/proc/bus/pci/...:/bin/bash

[John K.] That's the only script - as I said I modified it for the test, and it responded according to my mod, so it's the one being called. Bash version is:

GNU bash, version 2.04.0(1)-release (i386-suse-linux)
Copyright 1999 Free Software Foundation, Inc.

Running your test:

jkarns@jkInsp8000:~ > echo "./foo" | cut -f5 -d/

jkarns@jkInsp8000:~ >

OK, in that case, here's a guaranteed way to break it:

cd /wherever/the/script/is
./stop

I can promise you that it's going to fail. Same story if you ever move it into a directory that's "deeper" or "shallower" than the current one (*there's* a hell of a problem to troubleshoot!) If you use "${0##*/}", or even "echo $0|sed 's#.*/##'", that fragility goes away.

Or get really lazy and just use "basename" which is designed for this. -- JimD

See attached debugged.usr-local-sbin-start.sh.txt

A LAN Question

From santyx

Answered By Ben Okopnik, Karl-Heinz Herrman, John Karns, Jim Dennis, Matthias Posseldt

Hello Gang!!! Thanks and congratulations for your good work!!!

I'm Santiago (santyx), from San Rafael-Mendoza-Argentina. I don't speak English very well, but I hope you understand my question. I'm working in a LAN in my University and I've installed a Red Hat Linux 7.1 in my work station (puesto17). The LAN looks like this:

See attached map-university-network.txt

Where SANRAFAEL is a WINDOWS NT server for the 192.168.2.X subnet and CHARLY

is a SuSE LINUX server for the 192.168.1.X subnet. SANRAFAEL is connected to the Internet, and allowing all the work stations in the network to connect to the Internet too, with a proxy software. As you see, I don't have a direct connection to the Internet from puesto17. I can do "ping" to 192.168.1.X or 192.168.2.X, but I can't do "ping", for example, to http://www.argentina.com if I want. I can do "traceroute" to 192.168.1.X or 192.168.2.X, but I can't do "traceroute", for example, to http://www.hotmail.com if I want. I can do "ftp" to 192.168.1.X or 192.168.2.X, but I can't do "ftp", for example, to my ISP to upload web pages if I want. I can't connect to the News Servers in the Internet and I can't use my pop3 mail server from my work station. I can't go out of my network!!!

Which is the best way to change this? Can I change this from my Linux box? Or the only way is changing the things in the SANRAFAEL Server?

I really need a solution, specially for the FTP, since I'm working in a web site for my University.

Thanks in advance!!!. Santyx.

[Ben] Hi, Santyx -

It sounds like SANRAFAEL is running a firewall that's blocking (at least) ports 7 (echo), 21 (ftp), 110 (pop), and 119 (nntp). Your system administrator would have to open those for you.

Another possibility, depending on how your proxy is set up, is that you might also be able to get out through that proxy. To do that, you'd have to define some environment variables:

# Most programs want this in lowercase, but there are some that want it
# capitalized!
export http_proxy=http://x.x.x.x:y
export HTTP_PROXY=http://x.x.x.x:y
export ftp_proxy=http://x.x.x.x:y
export FTP_PROXY=http://x.x.x.x:y

'x.x.x.x' is the IP address of the proxy; 'y' is the proxy port.

Note that the "http://" part of the proxy location stays the same even when you're defining an FTP proxy. Strange, but that's how it works.

Again, this is only a possibility; you'd have to discuss the setup with your system administrator to be sure.

[K.-H.] If that NT box is only running a proxy service for http that's all you get. If on the other hand machines off sanrafael (IP probably 192.168.2.X ) have full access (including ping, outside pop accounts, ftp,...) the NT box seems to run a port-forwarding firewall ... or maybe merely ip masquerading... and you should basically be able to do the same -- IF the NT box is offering the service for 192.168.1.X.

What happens if you do all your tests from Charly? Charly probably also has no internet connection (besides the http proxy).

Also for ftp through firewall make sure you run ftp in "passive" mode. For ftp originally the server was opening a connection back to your client on a different port -- which usually fails for through firewalls (so might not fail with recent firewall port masquerading). On a "recent" *nix ftp client typing "passive" before trying to "ls" or get/put will do.

But I guess (like Ben) that the NT box is blocking you.

[John K.] Do you have DNS referencing (i.e., etc/resolve.conf) setup on CHARLY? As K-H mentioned, it would seem that IP masquerading should be set up on CHARLY if it isn't already. You need to have the packets from the 192.168.2 subnet appear as 192.168.1 subnet packets to get the same treatment from the NT server for the .2 subnet as it gives to the .1 subnet.

Hello Gang!!! Santyx again. Thanks for your answers about "A LAN Question" The net admin of my University made the changes in the sanrafael server, and now I can do telnet from my work station, but I can't do FTP. When I connect to sanrafael doing FTP from Linux the proxy answer well, the connection is done. But the commands don't answer and I got to kill the connection from another console. It doesn't happens from windows.

[JimD] Try the same FTP connection using a web browser (even lynx, the venerable text-mode curses or w3m, a newer curses mode browser).

If that works than you probably have a problem with your firewall (or packet filters) that rejects "active" mode FTP connections.

In FTP the session you establish is a control channel, it's used to send your FTP client's commands (you say "get" and your client changes that to RETR, you say "ls" and your client sends 'LIST' or 'NLIST', or whatever). The response codes (numeric and text) are also returned on this control channel (which is on destination port 21 on the server from some unprivileged port on your client host).

In active FTP the FTP server attempts to create a data connection for each stream of data that you get. That includes each file that you fetch, of course. However it also includes connections for directory listings. The problem is that most firewalls and packet filters block inbound connections (from the FTP server back towards your client) on low numbered (privileged) ports.

With passive FTP the client specifies a non-privileged port (greater than 1024) for the data channels. The back channel is still inbound from the server back to the client. The difference is that the client specificies an available port (by sending a PORT command over the control connection). That works with most packet filter configurations and firewalls. However, it won't necessarily work with all of them.

In most FTP clients you can set passive mode by typing a command like "quote pasv" (in ncftp you can use the command "set passive").

If a web browser works using an ftp://.... url, then passive mode from your FTP client should work as well. Most web browsers default to passive mode. If passive mode doesn't work, then you may need to use a proxy system. I won't go into details on those --- you'd be best checking with your local system/network administrator if you think you need that.

Occasionally I've found other causes for the situation you describe. However, they are much less likely. In one case I found that it was related to MTU (maximum transmission units). Web and other traffic would work, but FTP data connections would fail (apparently because it was more likely to use maximum sized packets --- due to its socket options).

I doubt you'll encounter this sort of problem.

I got another question. It's about GNU Grub. I've installed the 0.92 version to load win98 and Red Hat Linux 7.1 Everithing goes O.K, but I want to make a graphic menu and I can't. I put the following line in the menu.lst to show a graphic file

splashimage=3D(hd0,1)/boot/grub/fun.xpm.gz

Where (hd0,1) is the Linux partition and /boot/grub/fun.xpm.gz is the path of the graphic file. The image is 640x480, 4 colors.

But nothig happens. How can I make my own menu for Grub?

Thanks again. santyx

[Matthias] RedHat'S GRUB version has a splashimage patch applied. It can read XPM's and display them. The patch and a vga-16 patch are available on the net for GRUB 0.91, but not part of the standard GRUB package. So you have to hunt down a patch for 0.92, apply and rebuild.

Homework question: defining subnets

From Darren Collins

Answered By Faber Fedor, Frank Rodolf, Jim Dennis

How do you specify the first 6 & last 2 available subnets defined by the IP address and subnet mask (155.25.0.0/23) Any help on this would be greatly appreciated.

Sincerly, Darren

[Faber] How do I? Very well, actually. I usually use a calculator, but using an abacus is much more challenging!

[Frank] But doing it by hand is more fun!

[Faber] Have you looked here http://www.learntosubnet.com ?

BTW, we don't do homework assignments around here, except for our own, of course.

[JimD] The reason we know it's a homework assignment is because no one uses this scheme in the real world. This would define 126 subnets of 510 hosts each (or 128 subnets --- with modern equipment). The first subnets would be 155.25.0.* AND 155.25.1.*; the next would be .2.* and .3.*; etc.

This is a bit-aggregation (supernetting) over the traditional "class C" sized network. Normally people would go for a 4-bit aggregation --- giving them 16 networks of about 4000 hosts each (and possibly fanning those into class C sized networks through another hierarchical layer of routers).

[Frank] Actually, there are real world exceptions to the 4-bit aggregation. The multinational I am working at nowadays uses a 21-bit mask on a lot of sites. (And it still has me confused at times.)

thx for ur ncurses, u have networking howto?

From deepak a.l

Answered By Pradeep Padala, Heather Stern

The original subject had been:

hi mr pradeep padala need help free source code for a networking project under linux topics like ppp -- Heather

hi pradeep padala

im deepak from bangalore , a very good lover of linux and its extra features ,me and my batch mate are doing a project on "networking using linux as a platform"" plese help me out regarding this regard,ur howto ncurses programming helped us a lot for building up the editor,thanks for the ncurses programming ,it was helpful ,

so i wanted to ask u whether u have "Networking Howto"

[Pradeep] A wealth of information is available regarding networking on Linux. If you want a generic introduction to networking, TLDP (The LinuxDoc Project) has following howtos

Net-Howto:

http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Net-HOWTO/index.html

Networking-Howto: