The Compaq Deskpro 6000 is a fairly new
system out, though Compaq has been building Deskpro's for many years. The
only problem I have had with them is their proprietary hardware. This is
usually either their Network cards or their Hard drive controllers
(usually RAID controllers). Other than that, it's pretty standard.
Please reply to my email address : afarnsworth@s1.drc.com for I don't have
the ability to check the gazette often. Thanks.
-We were running Windows NT server(4.0) in the lab for some time
Then we realised we had only 10 client access licenses and so were
forced tp SWITCH to Linux.
-I had the CONFIG.POL working perfectly with the NT network.
-But when I switched to Linux I lost that control. No longer are the
clients able to access the CONFIG.POL file even though I have kept it in
the NETLOGON share.
-Now whosoever uses the PC's(most are novices) play around with the
settings( of client) and is giving me nightmares, since I cannot lock
them out.
-Is there a way out? How can I make the clients read the system
policies from the CONFIG.POL using Linux server?
Hi. I love linux but most of the projects I work on preclude it because
of a lack of dbms connectivity. None of the major dbms players (Oracle,
Sybase, Informix, etc.) or 3rd party developers (Intersolv, Visigenic,
etc.) offer access from a linux client. I've tried a middleware
solution from Openlink and I guess you could run SCO drivers with
emulation, assuming you can get your hands on the low-level libraries.
This seems to be the only thing standing in the way of Linux getting
business worthy respect. Could you put together a piece on this issue
and explore the future availability of dbms connectivity from linux?
Thanks.
Mike
Hi there! I just got Linux from RedHat and I have been wondering how to do
Animations in XWindows. I would like a little picture box on the lower
right hand corner of the screen on startup to start an animation. Is this
possible? If it is, please email me back with instructions!!! Thanks for
the help.
General Mail
Date: Fri, 24 Jan 1997 15:24:16 -0700
Subject: Update web link in my article
From: Henry Lu, honglu@rt66.com
I have changed my web page (email is unchanged). Can you update my web
page in the #10 issue, article "setting up a Dynamic web server"?
http://www.tc.umn.edu/nlhome/g625/luxx0024/
I got couple of email inquiry about the bad link.
Henry
(Be happy to fix it up. We like to stay up to date. --Editor)
Date: Tue, 21 Jan 1997 13:20:49 -0700
Subject: C++ Programming w/ Linux
From: James Cannon, cannonj@jads.kirtland.af.mil
Hi,
About a month ago I asked about help with C++ programming on Linux. I
am currently using the Walnut Creek Slackware, kernel 1.3.20. I had a
hard time getting a simple "Hello World" program to compile. "cc"
couldn't find the ".h" files like "stdio.h", which are normally in
/usr/include. I had to create a "$INCLUDE" variable in my ".profile".
So, when compiling, I used "g++ -I $INCLUDE -o hello hello.c" to
compile.
Well, I received help via e-mail pointing me to this page:
phttp://www.cuug.ab.ca:8001/~barkers/slackware-fixes/3.0-fixes.html
Look for the section titled: Problem Using G++.
Great mag!
James Cannon, http://www.jads.abq.com/
Date: Thu, 23 Jan 1997 20:36:39 -0800
Subject: Color Depths in X
From: Chris Spiegel, matrix@wolfenet.com
(RE: Color depths in X)
Well, I know this isn't really a fix, and it's not that great, but I
have 2 scripts. startx which starts me in 16 bit color and start8,
which starts in 8 bit. As I said, not a solution, but a pretty painless
alternative...
Date: Fri, 3 Jan 1997 17:14:19 -0500 (EST)
Subject: Further note about the spiral notebook page design.
From: Ben Boule, bouleb@rpi.edu
Someone else noted that his web browser didn't correctly show the spiral
notebook background. I use Netscape, so that isn't a problem for me, but
I do have another problem with the background. It's very hard to look at
on an interlaced display. I can always switch to a non-interlaced mode
in XFree86, but I'd bet some people can't. I know that the interlaced
mode that I use looks fine on 99.99% of web pages, so it usually isn't a
problem for me.
Thanks,
Ben Boule
Date: Mon, 06 Jan 1997 13:42:25 -0600
Subject: RE: Linux networking problem with VINES
From: Jack N. Gallemore, jgallemore@okokc.ang.af.mil
To: Stephen, Tauche%fbm%mfh@mfhdvzis.mfh-iserlohn.de
Unfortunately, Banyan is a pretty tight (read: won't work with much) OS,
so you are pretty limited. There is a way for Linux to sign onto
Banyan, but you have to use DOSEMU.60.1. The later versions will not
work. (Disclaimer: I have not used the patch for dosemu.60.4). If you
have not used DOSEMU, the setup is fairly straightforward.
As for using Linux as a resource, you will have to use IP stuff (ftp,
telnet, etc) to do so. There are no ports for Linux<->Banyan stuff.
BTW, Jon is still doing Linux and Banyan. His site
(http://www.netmind.com) is running Linux! Check it out!
Jack N. Gallemore
jgallemore@okokc.ang.af.mil
Date: Mon, 20 Jan 97 16:12:00 PST
Subject: Vines IP and TCP/IP
From: Denis Dimick, ddimick@irvine.ddddf.com
Back on Dec 5, 1996 Stefan wrote wanting help with Vines.
**************************************************************
Stefan the problem you're having sounds like the Vines Servers are not passing
TCP/IP.. By default Banyan Vines doesn't pass route TCP/IP thru the servers.
You have to have the TCP/IP option installed on all the servers your going
to route thru. This option cost $$$ about $1200.00 US if I remember
correctly. So there's p[robally a good chance your school didn't buy this
option...
Vines doesn't have anything that will cause IP to tunnel via Vines IP.. So
your only chance might be to get access to the same segment that the
internet is running off of... But it sounds like your sysadmin is using the
Banyan Server as the gateway to the internet, if this is the case your out
of luck...
Since I've worked with Banyan Vines for the last 7 years, I'm sorry to say
you might not be able to set up the Linux Box on the internet routing thru
your Banyan Servers...
Denis, dgdimick@sure.net
Date: Sat, 11 Jan 1997 11:49:18 -0700
Subject: Linux Applications and Utilities Page
From: David Puryear,
dayear@market1.com
Hi,
I came across Linux Applications and Utilities Page while I was learning
about linux. It helped me get the feel for what is able in linux.
http://www.xnet.com/%7Eblatura/linapps.shtml
The guy that maintains it is Bill Latura. I hope people will get good
use out of it and maybe help it become even more complete:)
David
(We found it too; see News Bytes. --Editor)
Date: Tue, 14 Jan 1997 06:06:09 -0800
Subject: isssue 8 & ftp server
From: Rick Lim, rick_lim@bc.sympatico.ca
Hi there,
thanks for hosting the gazette.
Is there a way of just downloading the
text of each issue?
I have downloaded LinuxGazette_jan97.tar.gz
and it seems that issue8.txt is missing.
also I have tried to ftp LinuxGazette_dec96.tar.gz
but after 1770k of 2751k the server seemingly
goes into ignore mode, this has happened about
5 times.
Thanks again
rick
(Don't know why you are having trouble ftp'ing LinuxGazette_dec96.tar.gz,
but can tell you that you have LinuxGazette_jan97.tar.gz you have
everything that is in dec96. We took over LG for issue 9, so there is no
file issue8.txt or 1 to 7 either. We use Lynx to save the HTML as text.
Perhaps we'll do it for 1-8 one day when we have time. --Editor)
Date: Sun, 26 Jan 1997 17:00:35 -0600
Subject: suggestion
From: dave Stephens, ts@fuzzy4u.com
can you put some thing in each week for the new linux ueser
the newbe things
thank you
Dave
(LG is posted once a month not weekly. All the material in LG is contributed
to me by outside authors. I take whatever I get. A lot of it is geared
toward the newbee, and this month we have a new column called
"Clueless At the Prompt" by Mike List that is designed for the newbee.
Sounds like just what you are looking for. --Editor)
![[ TABLE OF
CONTENTS ]](../gx/indexnew.gif)
![[ FRONT
PAGE ]](../gx/homenew.gif)
This page written and maintained by the Editor of Linux Gazette,
gazette@ssc.com
Copyright © 1997 Specialized Systems Consultants, Inc.
"Linux Gazette...making Linux just a little more lovable!"
Send Linux Tips and Tricks to
gazette@ssc.com
Contents:
Backquotes Warning
Date: Tue, 14 Jan 1997 00:40:21 -0800
From: alan bailward
In the $0.02 tip for using the script 'swaplogs' the commands :
cp /var/adm/messages /var/adm/messages.'date +%d'
uses the wrong quotes.
The backquote not the forward quote has to be used here, to make
the *output* of the command part of the filename.
alan
(Actually, the backquote is in the html. It's just that some Browser
fonts wont print a backquote -- in fact, mine doesn't. I'm not sure
how to get around this other than to warn people who are reading online.
If you print LG out, the quotes will be in the right direction. --Editor)
WWW Background Tip
Date: Wed, 8 Jan 1997 12:23:03 -0500 (EST)
From: Kurt M. Hockenbury,
kmh@linux.stevens-tech.edu
I noticed people complaining about backgrounds making text unreadable.
Personally, I got tired of unreadable backgrounds, as well as large
image downloads, so I turned them off. I also turned off those annoying
blink tags.
How? Add these two lines to your ~/.Xdefaults file.
Netscape*documentColorsHavePriority: False
Netscape*blinkingEnabled: False
In LG #13, Eje Gustafsson, gne@ffa.se writes:
>> 1.mv /var/adm/messages /var/adm/messages.prev
>> 2.touch /var/adm/messages
>> 3.kill -1 pid-of-syslogd
>>
>> This should work on a decent Unix(like) system, and I know Linux
>>is one of them.
>
>This is NOT an proper way of truncate /var/adm/messages.
>
>It is better to do:
>
> 1.cp /var/adm/messages /var/adm/messages.prev
> 2.>/var/adm/messages or cp /dev/null /var/adm/messages (both of them makes
>the file empty).
> 3.No more.
I'm sorry, but (at least on Linux) this is flat out _wrong_.
The first method (mv & HUP) is the correct method of truncating syslog files
(such as /var/adm/messages).
Your method looses any messages that get syslog'd between steps 1 and 2;
anything that comes in after the first cp gets overwritten when the second
cp happens.
>The problem is that when you remove the /var/adm/messages syslogd gets
>confused and unhappy and you have to give syslogd a HUPSIG but if you
>just sets the file length to zero without removing the file syslogd
>don't complain. And if you are really unlucky your system will go down
>because you didn't create /var/adm/messages quick enough or forgot it.
Not so. mv'ing /var/adm/messages doesn't bother syslogd at all, as long
as you stay on the same partition. In fact, you can 'mv
/var/adm/messages /var/adm/fish', and until syslogd is HUP'd or
otherwise restarted, it will keep logging in the file fish. Try it if
you don't believe me - it's true! That is because once syslogd has
open()d the file, it will keep writing to that file until it close()s it
- and a file in the Unix world is an inode, not a filename. (As an
aside, this is how you can have the 100% full empty partition. Even
though you unlink or rm a file, the file doesn't actually go away until
all programs that have it open close it.)
syslogd doesn't get confused at all. You can even rm /var/adm/messages, and
syslogd won't crash your system, though eventually the partition may fill
up with syslog messages you can't easily read since there isn't a filename
associated with the log file anymore.
Kurt Hockenbury, Distributed Systems Administrator
Stevens Institute of Technology
Even Better Lowercasing of Filenames
Date: Sun, 5 Jan 1997 19:17:16 -0800 (PST)
From: Greg Badros,
gjb@cs.washington.edu
It's even easier with zsh (3.0.x) to convert filenames to all-lowercase:
for i in *(.); mv $i ${i:l}
The *(.) uses a modifier on the wildcard to mean "only regular files"
(i.e., not directories). And the ${i:l} converts the variable to
lowercase, so we don't have to use tr.
This is not only shorter to type, but doesn't exec multiple programs (test
+ mv + tr) for each file, and looks at fewer files since the shell
implicitly does the first test.
Greg
Filtering Advertisements from Web Pages using WebFilter
Date: Thu, 16 Jan 97 20:28:50 PST
From: Axel Boldt,
boldt@cardinal.math.ucsb.edu
Hi,
In last month's Gazette, David Rudder wrote an article about how to filter
advertisements from web pages using IPFWADM, the idea being that
many ads come from the same site and it is easy to configure a Linux
firewall to refuse all connections from such a site.
This approach has two disadvantages: you have to be root in order to
use the IPFWADM tool, and it allows you only to block entire sites.
Very often, you want to filter out only a specific ad residing on a
site, without blocking the rest of that site's material. Moreover,
different users of the Linux box might have different tastes when it
comes to ads.
I believe that my tool WebFilter a.k.a. NoShit addresses these issues
and is better suited for filtering ads from specific web sites. The
idea is the following: the user runs WebFilter as a personal filtering
proxy server, and the browser contacts this proxy whenever it wants to
fetch a web document. The proxy then actually goes out and downloads
the page, checks whether any filterscripts apply to this page, and if
yes, pipes it through those scripts and returns the output to the
browser. The mapping between URL and filterscript has to be provided
by the user in advance. A filterscript can be an arbitrary program
that reads the original document from standard input and produces the
filtered version on standard output. In practice, filterscripts are
most often short sed, awk, or perl scripts.
If you often use sites such as Yahoo or Infoseek, you can easily write
filterscripts that excise the ads from their pages. This saves time,
money, and bandwidth.
More information about WebFilter can be gotten from its homepage. There
you'll also find links to other programs implementing the same idea.
Have fun,
Axel
Getting less to View gzipped Files
Date: 09 Jan 1997 20:18:58 -0600
From: Alan Shutko,
ats@wydo125.wustl.edu
A little known ability of less is the ability to define filters when
it opens and closes files. This excerpt from the man page deserves
broader attention, since it can easily be extended to other types.
For example, on many Unix systems, these two scripts will
allow you to keep files in compressed format, but still
let less view them directly:
lessopen.sh:
#! /bin/sh
case "$1" in
*.Z) uncompress -c $1 >/tmp/less.$$ 2>/dev/null
if [ -s /tmp/less.$$ ]; then
echo /tmp/less.$$
else
rm -f /tmp/less.$$
fi
;;
Version 321: 18 Jul 96 16
esac
lessclose.sh:
#! /bin/sh
rm $2
To use these scripts, put them both where they can be exe-
cuted and set LESSOPEN="lessopen.sh %s", and
LESSCLOSE="lessclose.sh %s %s". More complex LESSOPEN and
LESSCLOSE scripts may be written to accept other types of
compressed files, and so on.
Alan Shutko
Help for Help on the Bash Shell
Date: Tue, 14 Jan 1997 15:36:50 +0100 (NFT)
From:
mailto:fk5a005@math.uni-hamburg.de
you did hear about help for the bash.
if you invoke help for
then you will get some help about for.
Okay, you know that one.
But did you know you can see all the helps at once?
I did not know it.
Then I tried
help "$*" and what happend was: every help was shown!
Of course too much for one screen.
so I piped it to less: help "$*" |less is quite good.
But then I thought about having a search command with less.
possible? yes, just do a less -p word file to see it.
So I put everything together and like I do often I created an alias:
alias helpall="help '$*' | less -p "
and tried it: beautiful, I might not need man bash all the times.
Try it yourself.
Perhaps try helpall " let " to see a result.
Have a nice and bright Linux-year!
Matthias
Lower Your CAPS
Date: Sat, 25 Jan 1997 20:44:42 -0800 (PST)
From: Peat Bakke, pb@europa.com
One of those little things that gets to me is unzipping DOS pkzipped
files. All of the filenames are in all caps. I'm not sure why it bugs me,
but it does. Anyhow, here's a quick script that I've found useful to convert
all the caps in a directory into lower case (rather nice when you've got one
of those big, 200 file zips):
#!/bin/tcsh
foreach i (*)
mv $1 `echo $1 | tr '[A-Z]' '[a-z]'`
A word to the wise -- this lowers ALL caps, so be careful with those
Makefiles and such.
-Peat
Making Linux Boot Floppies
Date: Sun, 5 Jan 1997 18:40:49 -0800 (PST)
From: Andy Kahn,
kahn@vivian.cs.ucla.edu
After reading Bill Duncan's excellent article in
issue #13
on using and managing floppies in Linux, I figured I'd
toss in a 2-cent tip.
Here is a script I use to make emergency boot floppies
on my system (kernel v2.0.27). The need arose when I
installed RedHat 4.0 for the first time and noticed
that the installation procedure doesn't automatically
prompt you to create boot floppies (Slackware does, and
chances are that RedHat will also in the next version).
#!/bin/csh -f
#
# makebootfloppy v0.2
#
# DESCRIPTION:
# User friendly script (with lots of verbose messages) used to make
# Linux boot floppies, using the 2.x kernels.
#
# Formats, creates the file system, mounts the floppy, installs the Linux
# kernel, installs LILO, umounts floppy, and cleans up.
#
stty intr
set PATH=(/usr/sbin /sbin /bin /usr/bin)
# the generic floppy device (usually auto-detected)
set GENFLOPPY=/dev/fd0
# the low-level floppy device, used with fdformat. this might be obsoleted
# on your system
set LLFLOPPY=/dev/fd0H1440
# a temporary mount point for your floppy. make sure it has enough space
# to copy the kernel into
set MOUNTPOINT=/tmp/floppy
# boot
set BOOT=/boot/boot.b
set KERNEL=/boot/vmlinuz
# LILO label
set LABEL=linux
# here we go!
#############
echo -n Insert a blank floppy into the drive and hit return...
set FOO=$<
# Low-level formatting the floppy...
fdformat $LLFLOPPY
# Making file system on floppy...
mke2fs -c $GENFLOPPY
# Mount the floppy
mkdir $MOUNTPOINT >& /dev/null
mount $GENFLOPPY $MOUNTPOINT
# Copy the kernel to the floppy
cp $BOOT $MOUNTPOINT
cp $KERNEL $MOUNTPOINT
# Install lilo
echo image=$MOUNTPOINT/`basename $KERNEL` label=$LABEL | \
lilo -C - -b $GENFLOPPY -i $MOUNTPOINT/boot.b -c -m $MOUNTPOINT/map
sync
# Unmount floppy
umount $MOUNTPOINT
# Deleting temporary mount point
rm -rf $MOUNTPOINT
echo All done.
There's currently no error handling, so if one
command fails, the remaining commands will fail as well.
Other than that, feel free to modify and use it as you
like. If you have suggestions on better ways to do
something, I'd love to hear them.
--Andy, kahn@cs.ucla.edu
More on Xterm Titlebar Tip
Date: Wed, 15 Jan 1997 23:33:34 -0700 (MST)
From: Michael J. Hammel,
mjhammel@csn.net
I got a lot of email about my tip, most confused by the use of
escape/control characters in the script. Here is my response.
> > Date: Sat, 21 Dec 1996 15:18:01 -0600
> > From: Roger Booth
> > To: Linux Journal Editor
> >
> > The Jan97 Issue 33 of Linux Journal contained the "Linux Gazette Two Cent Tips".
> > I was interested in the tip "X Term Titlebar Function". Although
> > the text of the tip stated that the tip would work in ksh-based
> > systems, I could not get it to work as shown. I think there are
> > three problems. First, I think there are a few transcription
> > errors in the script. Second, I believe the author is using
I don't think there were transcription problems. I'm pretty sure
it was the way I sent it, however....
> > embedded control characters and it was not obvious to me which
> > character sequences are representations of control characters
> > and which characters should be typed verbatim. Third, the
Yes, there were control and escape characters in the file.
This was a problem and many people wrote me to ask about it.
In the following lines:
ilabel () { echo -n "^[]1;$*^G"; }
label () { echo -n "^[]2;$*^G"; }
the characters "^[" are an escape character and the characters "^G" are a
CONTROL-G character. In order to add these to your file (when you type it
in by hand) using vi you would type:
^VESC - which means CTRL-SHIFT-V followed by the ESCAPE key
and
^V^G - which means CTRL-SHIFT-V followed by CTRL-SHIFT-G
Note that in *this* email I didn't actually include the control or escape
characters - I simply used their ASCII equivalents. Hopefully this isn't
too confusing.
> > author uses a command-line option to the echo command which
> > is not available on all Unix platforms.
This is also a problem. See below.
> > I finally used the following script:
> >
> > if [ ${SHELL##/*/} = "ksh" ] ; then
> > if [[ $TERM = x"term" ]] ; then
> > HOSTNAME=`uname -n`
> > label () { echo "\\033]2;$*\\007\\c"; }
> > alias stripe='label $LOGNAME on $HOSTNAME - ${PWD#$HOME/}'
> > cds () { "cd" $*; eval stripe; }
> > alias cd=cds
> > eval stripe
> > fi
> > fi
> > I don't use vi, so I left out that functionality.
I tried this and various similar responses that were mailed directly to me.
It should work using the octal versions of the escape sequences, but I
couldn't get it to work. My problem is that I use the label() function
from the command line at times to simply set the title bar to some
arbitrary value and using the octal sequences didn't seem to work for me.
I'm not sure why, however. I do believe that, sometime in the distant
past, I too used octal sequences to set the xterm title bar. I've long
forgotten why I switched.
> > The functional changes I made are all in the arguments to the
> > echo command. The changes are to use \\033 rather than what
> > was shown in the original tip as ^[, to use \\007 rather than
> > ^G, and to terminate the string with \\c rather than use the
> > option -n.
All of these should work just fine in ksh. Your observation that not all
shells accept "echo -n" is correct. I often have to check which works and
then manually set the echo line to either use "-n" or to print a \c. One
or the other will always work, depending on if the echo is a shell
builtin or an actual Unix command.
> > On AIX 4.1, the command "echo -n hi" echoes "-n hi"; in other
> > words, -n is not a portable command-line option to the echo
> > command. I tested the above script on AIX 3.2, AIX 4.1,
> > HPUX 9.0, HPUX 10.0, Solaris 2.4 and Solaris 2.5. I'm still
> > trying to get Linux and my Wintel box mutually configured,
> > so I haven't tested it on Linux.
I don't use X on the AIX or HPUX boxes at work. I just rlogin from my Sun
boxes. However, both Solaris and Linux should work with the -n option if
you're using the echo shell builtin. If not, the \c will probably be
required. On my Linux box I type
bash% type echo
which reports
echo is a shell builtin
so I know which one I'm using. Knowing this you can provide alternatives
within your .bashrc or .kshrc to determine which version of the echo line
to use. This is true of any Unix platform on which you use ksh or bash
(I believe).
> > I have noticed a problem with this script. I use the rlogin
> > command to log in to a remote box. When I exit from the
> > remote box, the caption is not updated, and still shows the
> > hostname and path that was valid just before I exited. I tried
> > adding
> >
> > exits () { "exit" $*; eval stripe; }
> > alias exit=exits
> >
> > and
> >
> > rlogins () { "rlogin" $*; eval stripe; }
> > alias rlogin=rlogins
> >
> > Neither addition updated the caption to the host/path
> > returned to. Any suggestions?
Add this right after the alias for cd in the original script:
rlogins () { "rlogin" $*; cds . }
alias rlogin=rlogins
Its a hack, but it works. You have to use "cds" instead of the alias "cd"
or else the real cd gets used and the title bar won't change. In case
anyone is wondering, the reason you enclose "rlogin" (or "cd" or "vi") in
double quotes in this script is so the function rlogins() will run the real
rlogin and not get stuck recursively calling itself. Neat, eh?
Boy, this stuff could get confusing fast. Maybe it wasn't such a good tip
after all.
Michael J. Hammel
Remind Tip
Date: Mon, 20 Jan 97 15:42:04 PST
From: jmy@gim.net
This is a nice little script wich I have made, it places reminders to
~/.tcshrc or whatever. I think it's very useful. To use it first place at
THE END OF ~/.tcshrc:
\echo
echo "--------------------( R E M I N D E R S )--------------------"
echo "-------------------------------------------------------------";\echo
Then use this script:
------------------------------c-u-t--h-e-r-e-------------------------------
#!/bin/tcsh
# Nice little scipt that places reminders to the end of ~/.tcshrc or
whatever.
# Made by jmy@gim.net email if you like it!
echo Remind 1.0 by jmy@gim.net
if ($#argv == 0) then
echo Use like \'remind \ \\'
echo Option is \'a\' for add , \'u\' for undo and \'r\' for remove, pretty
easy
huh..:\)
\echo
echo NOTE: IF YOU REMOVED A LINE YOU DIDN\'T MEAN TO REMOVE, USE UNDO\!
\echo
exit 666
endif
if ($argv[1] == a) then
cat ~/.tcshrc | awk '\!/-------\";\\echo/ { print }' >! /tmp/remind.$user
echo echo $argv[2-] >> /tmp/remind.$user
echo 'echo "-------------------------------------------------------------";\echo'
>> /tmp/remind.$user
cp ~/.tcshrc ~/.tcshrc.remind
rm -f ~/.tcshrc
mv /tmp/remind.$user ~/.tcshrc
echo Added reminder: $argv[2-]
else if ($argv[1] == r) then
cat ~/.tcshrc | grep -v "echo $argv[2-]" >! /tmp/remind.$user
cp ~/.tcshrc ~/.tcshrc.remind
rm -f ~/.tcshrc
mv /tmp/remind.$user ~/.tcshrc
echo Removed Reminders:
diff ~/.tcshrc ~/.tcshrc.remind | awk '$2 ~ /echo/ { print$3,$4,$5,$6,$7,$8,$9,
$10,$11,$12,$13,$14,$15,$16,$17,$18,$19,$20,$21,$22,$23,$24,$25 }'
else if ($argv[1] == u) then
if (-e ~/.tcshrc.remind) then
mv ~/.tcshrc ~/.tcshrc.remtemp
mv ~/.tcshrc.remind ~/.tcshrc
mv ~/.tcshrc.remtemp ~/.tcshrc.remind
echo Undo completed
else
echo No undo file was found \(~/.tcshrc\)
endif
else
echo Error: invalid argument\(s\) run it with no argument for a short help
\echo
exit 666
endif
\echo
---------------------c-u-t--h-e-r-e--a-l-s-o------------------------------
Dont forget to do a 'chmod a+x remind'
And NEVER place any new lines after the lines you placed in ~/.tcshrc
If you wan't to use it with some other shell it should just be like
changing the paths in the script. And yes, it maybe should have been alot
easier to put the reminders in a separat file, but i like this solution
i'ts alot cooler...and maybe it can show someone how awk works.
Script to Call Your Editor
Date: Thu, 16 Jan 97 15:21:34 PST
From: Gary Chambers, geecee@gwi.net
I just found the Linux Gazette... Thankfully! It has truly made using
Linux more fun.
I use the Linux version of Marko Macek's FTE editor. Since it is
comprised of a separate X and console version, I began to get
frustrated with having to manually specify a default editor. Now,
wherever I can specify it (e.g. Pine), I use my edit script. It also
provides similar functionality at the command line.
I'm new to Linux, so there may be better ways of doing this. I
submitted this for inclusion in your 2-cent tips (my favorite section).
#!/bin/bash
# Determine whether we're in X Windows and call the proper editor
#
if [ "$WINDOWID" = "" ]; then
fte $1 $2 $3 $4 $5
else
xfte $1 $2 $3 $4 $5
fi
GeeCee, Gary Chambers
Tip for Your Web Page
Date: Fri, 3 Jan 1997 17:26:14 -0500 (EST)
From: Ben Boule, bouleb@rpi.edu
One cool tip that I have found useful is the following.
If you are running your web page on your own machine or have the
directory on NFS, put the following in your .profile :
cp ~/.netscape/bookmarks.html ~/public_html/bookmarks.html
cp ~/lynx_bookmarks.html ~/public_html/bookmarks2.html
Change for different browsers and server setups.
Then you can link them on your web page, and they get updated every time
you log in, start a new xterm, etc...
Of course, this assumes you don't care about other people looking at your
bookmarks.
Later,
Ben Boule
Re: Titlebar Tip
Date: Mon, 20 Jan 1997 18:40:38 +0200 (SAT)
From: Christopher Gordon,
chris@bayes.agric.za
Roger Booth sent in a corrected version of the Titlebar script. I found that
in order to get this working on a Slackware distribution of Linux, using
the bash shell, further modifications were neccesary. The control characters
need one \ as opposed to \\. The "echo" command required an -e switch. The
"if" statement only needed one [] not two. Finally, the script needed to
check if "bash" was running or not. I also added a command to simplify the
prompt. Here is the corrected script. It can be run using the source command.
if [ ${SHELL##/*/} = "bash" ] ; then
if [ $TERM = x"term" ] ; then
HOSTNAME=`uname -n`
label () { echo -e "\033]2;$*\007\c"; }
alias stripe='label $LOGNAME on $HOSTNAME - ${PWD#$HOME/}'
cds () { "cd" $*; eval stripe; }
alias cd=cds
eval stripe
export PS1='\$ '
fi
fi
Standard disclaimers apply.
Regards,
Christopher Gordon,
Remote Sensing, Inst. for Soil, Climate and Water
Pretoria, South Africa
Two Bit Tip -- Heartbeat
Date: Wed, 22 Jan 1997 22:29:06 -0800 (PST)
From: Kragen Sittler, kragen@netcom.com
#!/bin/sh
# This is a shell archive (produced by GNU sharutils 4.1).
# To extract the files from this archive, save it to some FILE, remove
# everything before the `!/bin/sh' line above, then type `sh FILE'.
#
# Made on 1997-01-22 22:11 PST by .
# Source directory was `/usr/local/heartbeat'.
#
# Existing files will *not* be overwritten unless `-c' is specified.
#
# This shar contains:
# length mode name
# ------ ---------- ------------------------------------------
# 2222 -rw-r--r-- README
# 102 -rw-r--r-- crontab
# 371 -rwxr-xr-x heartbeat
# 142 -r-xr-xr-x rc.heartbeat
# 1045 -rwxr-xr-x update.sessionid
#
touch -am 1231235999 $$.touch >/dev/null 2>&1
if test ! -f 1231235999 && test -f $$.touch; then
shar_touch=touch
else
shar_touch=:
echo
echo 'WARNING: not restoring timestamps. Consider getting and'
echo "installing GNU \`touch', distributed in GNU File Utilities..."
echo
fi
rm -f 1231235999 $$.touch
#
# ============= README ==============
if test -f 'README' && test X"$1" != X"-c"; then
echo 'x - skipping README (file already exists)'
else
echo 'x - extracting README (text)'
sed 's/^X//' << 'SHAR_EOF' > 'README' &&
Heartbeat package
X
My computer seems to crash often -- about once every ten days. I've been
wanting to know when this happens, but since the computer is busily crashing,
it doesn't have time to tell me. (I suspect this happens because of power
outages.)
X
So I wrote a simple heartbeat package, which would keep a record in the
filesystem when it was alive. That way, I could look at this record when
the machine crashed and tell when and how long it had crashed.
X
So I wrote a few scripts and created a new user. I named the heartbeat user
'heartbeat'. (I know it's not really kosher to have a nine-letter username,
but the only thing that has problems with it so far is ls.)
X
heartbeat is the first script; it updates a file in /var/log/heartbeat.
X
Here's the meat of heartbeat.
X
X #!/bin/sh
X touch /var/log/heartbeat/"`cat /var/run/heartbeat.sid`"
X
/var/log/heartbeat should be writable and executable by the heartbeat user;
you may want to use root. heartbeat gets run once a minute on my
system, from the heartbeat's crontab:
X
* * * * * /usr/local/heartbeat/heartbeat
X
(For some reason, my crond does not like whitespace before crontab entries.)
X
The name of the file it updates is taken from /var/run/heartbeat.sid. (I'm
not sure /var/run is really an appropriate place to put this, but I couldn't
find a better place.) This file should be readable and writable by the
heartbeat user.
X
heartbeat.sid is updated at boot time by a Perl script called update.sessionid.
update.sessionid also puts some information in the file that heartbeat updates.
X
I run update.sessionid (as the heartbeat user) from /etc/rc.d/rc.M, just before
cron is started.
X
Here's the section from my rc.M:
X
X....
#
# Update heartbeat sessionid.
# This helps us find out when there was a crash.
[ -x /etc/rc.d/rc.heartbeat ] && /etc/rc.d/rc.heartbeat
X
# Start crond (Dillon's crond):
X....
X
and here's /etc/rc.d/rc.heartbeat:
X
#!/bin/sh
# Update the heartbeat sessionid.
# This should be done before starting cron.
su heartbeat -c /usr/local/heartbeat/update.sessionid
X
Now, when I want to know when the machine crashed, I can look in
/var/log/heartbeat for the times of system shutdowns -- planned or
otherwise.
SHAR_EOF
$shar_touch -am 0122221197 'README' &&
chmod 0644 'README' ||
echo 'restore of README failed'
shar_count="`wc -c < 'README'`"
test 2222 -eq "$shar_count" ||
echo "README: original size 2222, current size $shar_count"
fi
# ============= crontab ==============
if test -f 'crontab' && test X"$1" != X"-c"; then
echo 'x - skipping crontab (file already exists)'
else
echo 'x - extracting crontab (text)'
sed 's/^X//' << 'SHAR_EOF' > 'crontab' &&
# MIN HOUR DAY MONTH DAYOFWEEK COMMAND
* * * * * /usr/local/heartbeat/heartbeat
SHAR_EOF
$shar_touch -am 0122221197 'crontab' &&
chmod 0644 'crontab' ||
echo 'restore of crontab failed'
shar_count="`wc -c < 'crontab'`"
test 102 -eq "$shar_count" ||
echo "crontab: original size 102, current size $shar_count"
fi
# ============= heartbeat ==============
if test -f 'heartbeat' && test X"$1" != X"-c"; then
echo 'x - skipping heartbeat (file already exists)'
else
echo 'x - extracting heartbeat (text)'
sed 's/^X//' << 'SHAR_EOF' > 'heartbeat' &&
#!/bin/sh
# script to continually update a file's timestamp, except when the machine
# is down
#
# This should be put in a crontab to be run every minute, or five minutes,
# or whatever.
#
# /var/run/heartbeat.sid contains a sessionid that is incremented at each
# bootup, and is suitable for use as a filename.
X
touch /var/log/heartbeat/"`cat /var/run/heartbeat.sid`"
SHAR_EOF
$shar_touch -am 0122210097 'heartbeat' &&
chmod 0755 'heartbeat' ||
echo 'restore of heartbeat failed'
shar_count="`wc -c < 'heartbeat'`"
test 371 -eq "$shar_count" ||
echo "heartbeat: original size 371, current size $shar_count"
fi
# ============= rc.heartbeat ==============
if test -f 'rc.heartbeat' && test X"$1" != X"-c"; then
echo 'x - skipping rc.heartbeat (file already exists)'
else
echo 'x - extracting rc.heartbeat (text)'
sed 's/^X//' << 'SHAR_EOF' > 'rc.heartbeat' &&
#!/bin/sh
# Update the heartbeat sessionid.
# This should be done before starting cron.
su heartbeat -c /usr/local/heartbeat/update.sessionid
SHAR_EOF
$shar_touch -am 0122221197 'rc.heartbeat' &&
chmod 0555 'rc.heartbeat' ||
echo 'restore of rc.heartbeat failed'
shar_count="`wc -c < 'rc.heartbeat'`"
test 142 -eq "$shar_count" ||
echo "rc.heartbeat: original size 142, current size $shar_count"
fi
# ============= update.sessionid ==============
if test -f 'update.sessionid' && test X"$1" != X"-c"; then
echo 'x - skipping update.sessionid (file already exists)'
else
echo 'x - extracting update.sessionid (text)'
sed 's/^X//' << 'SHAR_EOF' > 'update.sessionid' &&
#!/usr/bin/perl
# Update sessionid for heartbeat, creating new sessionid file.
# This should be run at boot time.
X
my $sessionidfile = "/var/run/heartbeat.sid";
my $heartbeatdir = "/var/log/heartbeat";
X
open SESSIONIDFILE, $sessionidfile or
X die "Couldn't open <$sessionidfile> for read";
X
my $sessionid = ; close SESSIONIDFILE;
chomp $sessionid;
X
if ($sessionid !~ /^[a-zA-Z]*[0-9]{4,}$/) { $sessionid = "boot0000"; }
X
$sessionid ++;
X
open SESSIONIDFILE, ">$sessionidfile" or
X die "Couldn't open <$sessionidfile> for write";
X
print SESSIONIDFILE "$sessionid\n";
close SESSIONIDFILE;
X
my $heartbeatfile = "$heartbeatdir/$sessionid";
X
open HEARTBEATFILE, ">$heartbeatfile" or
X die "Couldn't open <$heartbeatfile> for write";
X
my $message = < failed after open; fs full? stopped";
X
close HEARTBEATFILE;
X
Xexit 0;
SHAR_EOF
$shar_touch -am 0122211997 'update.sessionid' &&
chmod 0755 'update.sessionid' ||
echo 'restore of update.sessionid failed'
shar_count="`wc -c < 'update.sessionid'`"
test 1045 -eq "$shar_count" ||
echo "update.sessionid: original size 1045, current size $shar_count"
fi
exit 0
2 Cent Tip for xdm
Date: Sun, 5 Jan 1997 21:28:02 -0600 (CST)
From: Andrew Dyer, adyer@Mcs.Net
here are several ways you can dress up an xdm login screen:
- use the 'Xbanner' program available on sunsite
- run a program like xearth or xfishtank that writes to
the X login screen background
- use a static image display program like 'xv' to put up a
simple bitmap
I use xv to put up an image - to do this add a line like the following to
the file /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/xdm/Xsetup_0 (at least that's where is is in
my system (Caldera)):
/usr/X11R6/bin/xv -rmode 1 -nc 64 -quit /home/adyer/pics/arcade.bmp
This line will run 'xv' to put the image file at the end of the command
line onto the background window in 'root tiled' mode, dithers the image to
only use 64 colors (to preserve colormap slots on my 256 color display),
and tells xv to exit after doing this.
Note that if you run a program like xearth it will continue to run
after you have started the session and will contiinue to run by default
until the session is exited. See the 'xdm' man page for more details.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!
!! WARNING !!
!!!!!!!!!!!!!
programs run by xdm are usually run as root, and so pose a potential
security risk if they are not specifically designed for this. You have
been warned :-)
Andrew M. Dyer
Two 2 Cent Tips -- syslog & X Color Depth
Date: 13 Jan 1997 10:33:29 +0100
From: Marco Melgazzi, marco@techie.com
Dear sirs
Here's two 2c tips for your wonderful Linux Gazette. Note that all
the lines ending with \ have to be joined on one line.
1. :::: Syslog fun (oh no, not again) :::::
Everybody seem to like to put a line like the following in their
syslog:
*.* /dev/ttyx
this way every message is printed on an unused tty and the curious ( or
worried ) user can switch to it and see what's going on.
This approach has a big advantage ( it doesn't use any system resource
) and a couple of disadvantages ( notably you have to switch to text mode
to read the messages and then you don't have scrollback ).
So I have this little workaround: in /etc/syslog.conf put something
like
*.* /var/adm/current_session_log
In rc.local or whatever file is called before starting syslog
/bin/cat /dev/null > /var/adm/current_session_log
In fvwm you can add something like this:
Style "tail" NoTitle, NoHandles, Sticky, WindowListSkip
Style "tail" StaysOnTop, CirculateSkip
*GoodStuff S-Log telnet-sm.xpm Exec "rxvt" \
rxvt -geometry 132x45-0+0 -sl 1200 -font fixed \
-e tail -n 1200 -f /var/adm/current_session_log &
So when you press the goodstuff button named 'S-log' you get a big rxvt
with a nice scrollback buffer that displays exactly what's going on in the
system. If your linux system stays up for weeks at a time you'll probably
have to set up a CRON entry that trims this file every once in a while but
this is left as an exercise for the reader ;-)
To pop down the rxvt a simple Ctrl-C is more than enough. By the way,
this approach will surely save a lot of stress to the monitor electronics:
in fact switching from text mode to hires a) takes time b) involves quite a
lot of non-trivial adjustments in the monitor circuitry so it could likely
acceelerate its ageing process.
2. ::::: How to use X with more than one color depth ::::::
I normally use X in 8bit ( since my board is not VRAM based 1152x864 at
70Hz slows down things considerably ) but, since when I hacked my XF86_S3
to let me use higher clocks in 16bit mode :), occasionally I need to switch
to the 16bits depth (notably when using the oh-so-amazing 'The Gimp').
Since leaving two servers up and running all the time via xdm seemed a
waste of memory, by tinkering with manual pages and articles from the net I
came up with a viable alternative.
Let me first tell you one thing: in this way, when the second server is
running, you get both :0 (in 8bit) that is managed by xdm and :1 that has
been started on-demand. Since I don't usually use :1 while I'm online I
didn't took the time to provide MIT-MAGIC-COOKIE authorization for it: this
is a thing you -should- do if you plan to use this on the net.
Here there are a couple of my scripts:
::: ----------------------------------------------------------------
:::/usr/local/bin/1open16
::: ----------------------------------------------------------------
xinit ~/.x_rc_for_1_16 -- /usr/X11/bin/X16 :1 vt8 &
::: ----------------------------------------------------------------
:::/usr/X11/bin/X16
::: ----------------------------------------------------------------
#!/bin/sh
exec XF86_S3.new -bpp 16 ${@+"$@"}
::: ----------------------------------------------------------------
:::~/.x_rc_for_1_16
::: ----------------------------------------------------------------
#!/bin/sh
# $XConsortium: xinitrc.cpp,v 1.4 91/08/22 11:41:34 rws Exp $
userresources=$HOME/.Xresources_for_1_16
usermodmap=$HOME/.Xmodmap
sysresources=/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/xinit/.Xresources
sysmodmap=/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/xinit/.Xmodmap
export PATH= .... path ....
# merge in defaults and keymaps
if [ -f $sysresources ]; then
xrdb -merge -display :1 $sysresources &
fi
if [ -f $sysmodmap ]; then
xmodmap -display :1 $sysmodmap &
fi
if [ -f $userresources ]; then
xrdb -merge -display :1 $userresources &
fi
if [ -f $usermodmap ]; then
xmodmap -display :1 $usermodmap &
fi
....
misc other variables
....
exec fvwm -f .fvwmrc_for_1_16
::: ----------------------------------------------------------------
::: in ~/.fvwmrc_for_1_16 I have this: I'm not sure this duplication
::: is necessary but in my configuration it is. YMMV
::: ----------------------------------------------------------------
Function "InitFunction"
Exec "I" xrdb -display :1 -merge ~/.Xresources &
Exec "I" xmodmap -display :1 ~/.Xmodmap &
Module "I" GoodStuff
Exec "I" emacs &
EndFunction
In this way when you execute the 1open16 script you will get a 16bit
screen on :1 at the default resolution you put in your system XF86Config
for 16bit depth.
Things get a little more hairy if you want to open the new screen with
a different set of resolutions: unluckily ( I guess for security reasons )
XFree lets you use a new XF86Config -only- if you are root. So to play
Quake on :1 you have to do the following...
::: ----------------------------------------------------------------
::: in ~/.fvwmrc ( this is nice for password requests, I use it all the
::: time, just put the word 'Password' in the rxvt that you need and use
::: the supplied style. I use it for going online, to access netscape &
::: other net stuff ( I'm paranoid so I created a user named -net- that
::: I use for all internet related stuff, I hate live-data trojans etc.)
::: you get the point.)
::: ----------------------------------------------------------------
Style "*Password" NoTitle, NoHandles, Sticky, WindowListSkip,StaysOnTop
::: in a menu entry
Exec "Quake (normal)" exec rxvt -fn \
"-b&h-lucidatypewriter-medium-r-*-*-*-180-75-75-*-*-*-*" \
-geometry 40x1+1-1 -T \"Quake Password" -e \
su root -c "/home/marco/bin/qk" &
::: ----------------------------------------------------------------
::: /home/marco/bin/qk. The redundant su is needed if you plan to launch
::: this file from the command line too.
::: ----------------------------------------------------------------
cd /home/marco/quake
su -c "xinit ./xf86quake -- /usr/X11/bin/X -bpp 8 :1 vt8 -xf86config \
/home/marco/lib/XF86Config.quake"
Of course /home/marco/lib/XF86Config.quake will contain only the
resolution that I usually play quake at ( that is 400x300 or 512x384 ). In
this way you can play quake without hassless even if you usually run at
1000-or-so x 800-or-so at whatever depth. Now if only Linus released the
updated 1.06 xf86quake ;-) (in 1.01 you can't use a custom heap, you
have the fixed 8mb one :( ).
Hope you'll like these tips!
Marco Melgazzi
X Windows Color Depth
Date: Fri, 17 Jan 1997 08:38:20 -0500 (EST)
From: Aaron B. Dossett,
aarond@ewl.uky.edu
>I have recently been messing with my x-server, and have managed
>to get a depth of 16, ie 2^16 colors. This works
>really nice with Netscape, but some programs (doom, abuse, and
>other games) wont work with this many colors. Do
>you know of a fix? I have tried to get X to support multiple
>depths--to no avail. The man-page suggests that some
>video cards support multiple depths and some don't. How do I know
>if mine does.
Well, if your video card has enough RAM and you've got enough modes defined
in your XF86Config file then you can specify the bit depth from the command
line. If you have a link called X to the server then the command
X -bpp 8 or X -bpp 16 or X -bpp 24
can be used. I like to alias the commands X8, X16, and X24 to the above.
For this to work best you should have your XF86Config file setup so that
each mode uses the maximum resolution possible.
Aaron Dossett, aarond@ewl.uky.edu
This page maintained by the Editor of Linux Gazette,
gazette@ssc.com
Copyright © 1997 Specialized Systems Consultants, Inc.
"Linux Gazette...making Linux just a little more lovable!"
Contents:
News in General
Linux Gazette Italian Edition
Date: Fri, 10 Jan 1997 14:42:52 +0100
The first issue of the Italian Edition of the Linux Gazette,
is now available on our site,
www.media.it/LUGBari/lgtp/index.html.
It is in the spirit of helping italian Linux users and, naturally,
this italian edition is under the copying license of your original Linux
Gazette.
Bye (and many many thanks!)
Francesco De Carlo,
fdecarlo@sole.media.it
CICCIO-X, LUGBari Coordinator
Date: Sat, 11 Jan 1997 11:53:19 +0100 (MET)
This is the Linux Advocacy HOWTO and is intended to provide guidelines
and ideas to assist with your Linux advocacy efforts.
-- authored by Paul L. Rogers,
Paul.L.Rogers@li.org
Related Links:
Lars Wirzenius also has some thoughts
about Linux
advocacy.
The Linux Advocacy Project's goal is to
encourage commercial application developers to provide native Linux
versions of their software.
Linux in the News
Linux was chosen by PC Week as part of its list
for the top ten products of 1996. See the December 16, 1996 issue.
The same issue has a related article about Linux and the Internet.
Linux Sites to Check Out
http://www.m-tech.ab.ca/linux-biz
This site contains anecdotal references about the
commercial applications of Linux. Example uses of Linux in various
industries, fulfulling various tasks are listed. Includes
form / CGI script that visitors can use to enter data about their own
commercial Linux sites.
-- Idan Shoham, idan@m-tech.ab.ca
http://www.xnet.com/~blatura/linapps.shtml
The Linux Applications and Utilities List is an organized collection of
pointers to the WWW home pages of over 600 different Linux compatible
application programs, system admin tools, utilities, device drivers,
games, servers, programming tools, file, disk and desktop managers,
internet apps, and more.
The January 8 edition has added links to over 80 new programs, as well as
corrections to numerous existing listings.
-- Bill Latura, blatura@xnet.com
http://www.linuxware.com
This site is a Linux Support, Information, and general
purpose Linuxer Hangout Site -- a
meeting place for people interested in learning more about Linux,
providing help to other Linuxers, and promoting Linux!!!
-- Peter Lazecky,
peter@linuxware.com
PNG Article (see issue13) Update
Apparently Netscape has finally committed to supporting PNG in
Navigator and actually made public statements to that effect at
its Internet Developers' Conference last October, although there's
no indication of it anywhere on their web site. The only question
is when: Navigator 4.0 has a fixed release date, and PNG support
may not be ready by then.
-- Greg Roelofs, newt@pobox.com
Rochester, Revised OS Seminar Series Schedule
Date: Sun, 12 Jan 1997 02:36:18 GMT
Computer Science House at Rochester Institute of Technology Presents: an
Operating System Seminar Series Wednesday evenings at 8:00PM.
Attendance is free of charge and is open to the public.
- February 5: The Inferno Operating System for Everything From
Embedded Systems To Network Operating Systems.
- David Bort (Student, RIT)
- February 12: Sun Microsystems new JAVA Based Network Computers
- Jeff Rice (Sun Microsystems)
- February 19: ShagOS -- An experimental Object Oriented Micro kernel.
- Frank Barrus (Xerox)
- February 26: Solaris - Geordie Klueber (Sun Microsystems)
For additional information, directions,
comments or if you would like to be a guest speaker, e-mail
tad@csh.rit.edu.
Computer Science House,
cshouse@csh.rit.edu,
http://www.csh.rit.edu/os-seminars
Linux CD Giveaway List
Date: Mon, 13 Jan 1997 05:16:52 GMT
If you have a spare Linux CD to give away, you can list your email
address at
http://emile.math.ucsb.edu:8000/giveaway.html
Interested parties will contact you, then send in a self-adressed
stamped envelope and you send them the CD.
If you would rather (or in addition) lend a Linux CD locally, you can
now specify that as well.
For additional information:
Axel Boldt, boldt@math.ucsb.edu,
http://www.math.ucsb.edu/%7Eboldt/
Univ of California at Santa Barbara, Dept of Mathematics
Linux Browser Project - A New WWW Browser for Linux
Date: Tue, 14 Jan 1997 06:34:56 GMT
Announcing the Linux Browser Project -- a group of developers developing a world
wide web browser for Linux and other platforms.
The goal of this project is to
develop a web browser which consists of a modular program architecture
based around a small, fast kernel which would load necessary modules on
demand.
The project is in its early stages, and we are announcing the project at
the moment to make ourselves known to the rest of the Linux community.
If
anyone would be interested in helping us out in any way, please feel
free
to join the mailing lists or visit the web site and let us know that you
are willing to help.
For additional information:
See the Linux Browser Project home page at
http://www.tjhsst.edu/LBP/.
Jason A. Miller, Project Coordinator,
jasonm@trib.com,
The Linux Browser Project Team
Software Announcements
Xfmail 1.0 - mail program for X
Date: Sun, 05 Jan 1997 00:59:12 GMT
Xfmail 1.0 is finally out!
XFMail is an X-Windows application for sending and receiving electronic
mail. It uses the XForms GUI library toolkit by T.C. Zhao and Mark
Overmars.
It has a user-friendly interface and online help to make it easy to use.
It implements most of the mail functionality in one program and it does not
require any additional tools.
You can ftp XFMail at:
ftp://ftp.x.org/contrib/applications/xfmail-1.0.tar.gz
ftp://Burka.NetVision.net.il/pub/xfmail/xfmail-1.0.tar.gz
For additional information:
http://Burka.NetVision.net.il/xfmail/xfmail.html
Jacek Bochenek,
jacek@coig.katowice.pl
Organization: COIG S.A.
ImageMagick 3.7.9 ELF binaries - general image manipulation tool
Date: Sun, 05 Jan 1997 00:59:19 GMT
ImageMagick (TM), version 3.7.9, is a package for display and
interactive manipulation of images for the X Window System.
ImageMagick supports also the Drag-and-Drop protocol form the
OffiX package and many of the more popular image formats including
JPEG, MPEG, PNG, TIFF, Photo CD, etc.
You will also need the package libIMPlugIn-1.0-elf to get it working.
Here are the locations you can get the packages from:
Site: sunsite.unc.edu /pub/Linux/X11/xapps/graphics
942k ImageMagick-3.7.9-elf.tgz
1k ImageMagick-3.7.9-elf.lsm
886k libIMPlugIn-1.0-elf.tgz
1k libIMPlugIn-1.0-elf.lsm
For additional information:
Alexander Zimmermann,
Alexander.Zimmermann@FMI.Uni-Passau.de,
http://www.uni-passau.de/~zimmerma
Organization: Universität Passau
Visual Tcl 1.07 Beta
Date: Sat, 11 Jan 1997 02:42:27 GMT
Visual Tcl 1.07b is a
quality application development environment for UNIX, Windows and Macintosh
platforms. Visual Tcl is written entirely in Tcl/Tk and covered by the GNU
General Public License.
Please choose the location nearest you since my connection can become
saturated at peak times.
Home Site: http://www.neuron.com/stewart/vtcl/
Australia: http://holmes.ccs.deakin.edu.au/vtcl/
United Kingdom: http://www.jessikat.demon.co.uk/vtcl/
Germany: http://www.ifconnection.de/~rjs/vtcl/
US East: http://www.ultra.net/~eugene/mirror/vtcl/
US Mid: http://chaos.uark.edu/vtcl/
For additional information:
Stewart Allen,
stewart@neuron.com
NExS 1.3-BETA X-Windows spreadsheet now available
Date: Mon, 13 Jan 1997 05:16:23 GMT
X Engineering Software Systems (XESS Corp.) announces the immediate
availability of the BETA version of the NExS 1.3 spreadsheet for
Linux and UNIX workstations.
NExS, the Network Extensible Spreadsheet, is a full-featured, graphical
spreadsheet developed specifically for UNIX and the X Window System.
NExS has more than 237 built-in business and scientific functions, allows
user-customized functions, displays data using 2 and 3 dimensional graphs,
and imports and exports data in a wide variety of formats (including HTML
tables).
Demonstration copies and additional conNExions plug-ins may be downloaded
from http://www.xess.com. NExS is priced at $149 for the Personal Edition,
and $249 if a floating license is desired.
For addtional information:
xess@vnet.net
Vnet Internet Access, Inc. - Charlotte, NC.
PHT Releases Red Hat 4.0
Date: Tue, 14 Jan 1997 06:35:52 GMT
Pacific HiTech is proud to announce the release of our newest Linux
product for the i386 architecture:
Turbo Linux: Red Hat 4.0
It features a modular 2.0.18 kernel, better networking, more packages,
and, of course, the floppy-less install. The second CD contains the
entire contrib/ directory from ftp.redhat.com (the Live Filesystem was
scrapped in order to put the contrib/ directory on, which we felt would
be more useful for more people).
The 2 CD set
is only $19.95 plus s/h. If you want more details on the product, visit
http://www.pht.com/linux.
For additional information:
Scott M. Stone, sstone@pht.com
Chief Linux Developer/UNIX SysAdmin for Pacific HiTech, Inc.
http://www.pht.com/
PHT Releases MkLinux DR2
Date: Tue, 14 Jan 1997 06:35:56 GMT
Pacific HiTech is proud to announce our newest Linux offering for the
PPC architecture:
MkLinux DR2 is the latest pre-release version of MkLinux, and it is MUCH MUCH
better than DR1 - more stable, more hardware support, and a much
smoother installation. It was uncompressed from the FTP distribution
and burned as a Macintosh HFS format CD - you don't need to decompress
the files onto your hard drive, you can just put in the CD and GO.
It's only $19.95 plus s/h. See http://www.pht.com for ordering
information, or email sales@pht.com.
For additional information:
Scott M. Stone, sstone@pht.com
Chief Linux Developer/UNIX SysAdmin for Pacific HiTech, Inc.
http://www.pht.com/
This page written and maintained by the Editor of Linux Gazette,
gazette@ssc.com
Copyright © 1997 Specialized Systems Consultants, Inc.
"Linux Gazette...making Linux just a little more lovable!"
Contents:
Netscape Mail Block
Date: Sun, 15 Dec 1996 23:16:10 -0800 (PST)
hi... mitch here in mobile, alabama...
i need to refuse to accept email from a particular person...
how can i configure netscape and/or cnd1.0 to bounce the
person's mail back to them?
I'd use procmail. CND uses procmail as your
"local delivery agent" (by default). This means
that sendmail passes any mail to a local account
to procmail and lets procmail due the final delivery
to your mail box (/var/spool/mail/$YOUR_LOGIN_NAME).
However, when procmail does this, it checks for a
.procmailrc file in your home directory (and does
some ownership and permissions checks on it for you).
procmail is a little programming language specifically
for processing mail.
Your .procmailrc file can have a variety of settings
and clauses (which are called "recipes" by the author).
You can also modularize this by using a variety of
INCLUDE directives. Here's a simple example that
should get you started.
:0 hr
* ^From.*spammer.you.despise@spamhaven.com
* !^FROM_MAILER
* !^FROM_DAEMON
* !^X-Loop: ${USERNAME}@`hostname`"
| (formail -r -A"X-Loop: ${USERNAME}@`hostname`" \
-A"Precedence: junk" ;\
echo "Your mail is not welcome here."
echo "Please don't mail me again."
echo
cat ~/your.signature.or.flame
)
The :0 marks this as a new recipe (so each new
recipe starts with a :0 line). The 'h' on that
line is one of several flags to procmail about what
parts of the message to hand to your action line
(which comes up later). 'h' says: give me the header
'r' says: treat the incoming data as "raw" (so his
failure to put a blank line at the end of his message
won't cause your response to fail).
The four "star" lines after that are conditions --
the first specifies that the header indicates that
the message be "from" your spammer (or unwanted
sender). This will actually match any "from" or
"From:" line that contains your targets e-mail address.
The next two lines try to ensure that you don't respond
to daemons and mailers (mailing lists). The next one
(which you should fill in with your username and hostname)
makes sure that your don't respond to your own response.
Those three conditions are to protect your script from
being tricked into doing bad things. Consider them to
be the minimum overhead on any autoresponders that you
write.
The next line (starting with a "|" pipe character) is
the action to take.
In procmail there are three types of actions. A
filename simply specifies an mbox (elm, pine, or mailx
compatible) folder to file this away in. A directory
name specifies an mh or mmdf folder to store the message
in (mh and mmdf use different naming schemes for the
messages in their folder directories -- you don't need
to worry about this unless you use on of these mail
user agents). A '!' (bang) line specifies an e-mail
address to which to bounce the message. A '|' (pipe)
line specifies that the message should be filtered
through a local program.
formail is a program that comes with the procmail package.
It "formats mail headers." This particular formail command
formats a "reply" (-r) header and adds two additional header
lines -- a standard "Precedence: junk" line and a personal
"X-" line (which the RFC822 spec allows you to use to embed
custom information into a header). This is where your
message adds the line that would prevent an attack by routing
your response back into your script (a mail loop).
The echo and cat statements after the formail line just
provide output that is appended after the mail header. This
becomes the body of your response. You can add additional
echo lines -- or you can create a file and just 'cat' it
here.
If you are new to procmail (which is almost certain given
your question -- autoresponders are some of the first things
procmail'ers learn) you may be nervous about 'breaking'
something and losing some of your mail. So -- to protect
yourself from that you might want start your .procmailrc
with the following simple recipe:
:0 c
fallback
Which (if it is the *first* recipe) simply appends a copy
of every incoming message to a file (in your ~/Mail directory
by default) named fallback. You can compare the contents of
that folder to your inbox until you're confident that things
are working as you expect.
Please read the procmail and procmailex
(examples) man pages for more details. The author
Stephen van der Berg, has also written an automated
mail list management package called SmartList -- which is
highly regarded among people who've tried it. I like
SmartList *much* more than majordomo.
--Jim
Dealing with e-mail on a pop3 server
Date: Tue, 28 Jan 1997 04:02:06 -0800 (PST)
From Moe Green:
Is there any way (or any program out there) which will not only get my
email from a pop3 server off of one account, then distribute it to
multiple users on my system by either the from: or subject: lines???
Example: Perhaps popclient could get the mail and save to temp, then is
there a program which would go through and say, hmmm...this mail is from
johndoe@linux.org and it goes to root...then the next message is from
mike@canoe.net and it goes to dave???
Thanks for your time, keep up the good work.
-Moe Green,
starved@ix.netcom.com
It is possible to write procmail scripts that can do
this sort of thing. However I don't recommend this
approach at all.
The current version of 'popclient' is called 'fetchmail'
(because it supports IMAP and some other mail store and
forward protocols).
It's default is to fetch the mail from your POP or IMAP
server and feed it to the smtpd (sendmail) on your
local host. This means that any special processing that
would be done by the aliases or .forward files (especially
any processing through procmail scripts) will be done
automatically.
It is possible to over-ride that feature and feed the
messages through a pipe or into a file. It is also
possible, using procmail or any scripting language,
to parse and dispatch the file. Using anything other
than procmail would require that you know *alot* about
RFC822 (the standard for internet mail headers) and
about e-mail in general.
I did write an article on procmail this month -- but
may have submitted it too late for inclusion into
this month's Linux Gazette. The gist of it is available
on my own mail server (send mail to info@starshine.org
with a subject of ``procmail'' or ``mailbot'').
The reason I don't recommend all of this is that it
violates the intentions and design of internet e-mail.
A better solution is to find a provider of UUCP services
(or at least SMTP/MX services). UUCP is the *right* way
to provide e-mail to disconnected (dial-up) hosts and
networks. It was designed and implemented over 25 years
ago and all of the mail systems on the Internet know how
to gateway to UUCP sites.
As for SMTP/MX services for disconnected hosts/networks.
Various ways of hacking sendmail and DNS configurations have
been developed in the last few years -- with a variety of
shell scripts and custom programs to support them. All of
these provide essentially the same services as mail via
UUCP over TCP -- but without conforming to any standard
(meaning that whatever you learn and configure with one
ISP probably won't work with the next one).
Glad I could help. I hope that article on procmail
helps.
--Jim
Security Problem
Date: Tue, 28 Jan 1997 04:02:06 -0800 (PST)
From Jay:
Recently a cracker got into my linux system on the internet.
He didn't do a lot of damage but he did turn off system logging.
I guess so I couldn't see what he'd done. Now I can't get it working
again....
- I've made sure that the syslogd program is running using 'ps'
- I've read the syslogd.conf file to make sure it's logging everything,
and where it's going to.
- I've checked permissions on the log file
- I did a 'kill -HUP' on the syslogd process and it writes 'restart' to
the log
- 'logger' does nothing when I run it (no log entry, no error)
- All my C programs that wrote to syslog don't anymore
Anyone have any good ideas what to do from here?
Thanks
--Jay, jay@shadow.ashpool.com
I do but they are rather too involved for me to type
up tonight.
I really recommend that you reinstall the OS and
all binaries from scratch whenever you think that
root has been compromised on a system. I realize that
this is a time-consuming proposition -- but it is the
only way to really be sure.
I also recommend tripwire (ftp.cs.perdue.edu
in the COAST archive -- and it's mirrors).
Please feel free to write me if you continue to have
system security problems.
jimd@starshine.org
Sorry to take so long to respond. I've been literally
swamped all month.
--Jim
More on Security Problem
Date: Tue, 28 Jan 1997 18:56:22 -0800 (PST)
From Jay:
>>> Recently a cracker got into my linux system on the internet.
>>
>> Did you restart the whole system?
>> I would consider replacing syslog from your CD's and
>> restarting your system.
>
I found that the cracker had replaced my syslogd with a packet
sniffer. I think he had copied the syslogd code and replaced parts
of it with his sniffer. It seemed to have some functionality but not
a lot...
I also found a SUID version of bash in my /tmp directory.
My thought is that this is how he originally got root access.
Not too surprising. He was probably using a 'rootkit.'
However he obviously didn't do a very good job of
covering his tracks.
You should consider all passwords for all of the systems
on the local net to be compromised. Force password
changes across the board and consider installing ssh
or stelnet (secure, encrypted replacements to rlogin/rsh
and telnet respectively).
He probably got in through the "Leshka" sendmail
bug (allowing any shell user to create a root
owned SUID shell in /tmp/ on any system with an
SUID root copy of sendmail (version ~8.6.x to 8.7.x
???) using a bug in sendmail's handling of ARGV[0]
and it's subsequent SIGHUP handling.
Everyone using earlier versions of sendmail should
upgrade to 8.8.3 or later
(www.sendmail.org
for details).
How important are this system and the other systems
on the same LAN segment to your business?
I'd seriously consider hiring a qualified consultant
for a full day risk assessment and audit. Unfortunately
you'll probably pay at least $125/hr for anyone that's
worth talking to and many of the "security consultants"
out there are snake oil salesmen.
I personally trust Peter Shipley (www.dis.org) and
Brent Chapman (www.greatcircle.com) (co-author of
the O'Reilly Firewalls book) Strat Rose (www.virtual.net)
and Dan Farmer (www.trouble.org)
(co-author of SATAN).
Most of them are live in the SF Bay Area (silicon valley)
and most of them aren't available most of the time
(Brent is working on a large project to integrate
the SGI and Cray WAN's; Strata has accepted a full-time
position at synopsis.com, etc).
I only consider myself to be a student, at best an
apprentice, at data security. I'm willing to help --
but I can offer a list of satisfied clients for RASA
services and I have no official "credentials."
--Jim
Dial-up Problem
Date: Tue, 28 Jan 1997 22:56:35 -0800 (PST)
From Seth Vidal:
I was reading your answer in LG(#13) to the individual who had slow rate
problems with ppp. Something which he did not mention that might be of
help is the MTU. Some isp's set the mtu or have ppp do the negotiation.
NOT all. Some of the newer ones have not quite figured out that a 14.4
or 28.8 is not going to get a packet size over 576 very often. If he
sets his mtu to 576 (or even 296 for a 14.4) he may be able to force the
provider's setting down. I have found that in a standard (slackware or
redhat) linux distribution that the mtu defaults to 1500 which will
result in slow downs and problems if your modem encounters errors
frequently. I know what ppp is "supposed to do" when set up correctly.
But he cannot control the ignorance of his ISP and therefore it would be
to his behest to give that a try. If you'd like to pass the information
along to the individual who wrote the message feel free.
I hope this helps him and any others.
cheers,
Seth Vidal,
skvidal@terminus.ehc.edu
X Window Problem
Date: Tue, 28 Jan 1997 04:02:06 -0800 (PST)
From: Chris Lee, techno@usa.net
1.) X Windows
I got a Cirrus 5434 1mb video card, whenin 640x480x8bit the video is
*fine* not great, I get little specs once in awhile on the screen, they
go away with a simple [refresh] but still... When in 800x600x8bit I get
lines, not specs anymore, alomst allways horizontial, and about 3pixels
high, and allways croos the entire screen, not the virtual screen
though, and they also go away with a simple [refresh] thses line occur
alot more then the specs did. My vid card works fine in DOS/Windows. Any
suggestions ?
You can look for the SuperProbe utility that comes with most
recent distributions. This will provide info that can be
autodetected about your video card.
Frankly XWindows configuration under XFree86 is black magic.
A few people are really good at it and mere mortals
(such as I) just plug along and hope for the best.
The new XFree86 3.1.2 release seems to be better about
this but I'm sure that I'm not getting the optimal
color and clock settings from my various X installations
either.
2.)Is there any Linux or X-Windows mailing-lists ? would help alot for
me.
There are many Linux mailing lists -- and some of them
and some independent ones cover XFree86 (which is used by
Linux, FreeBSD and the rest of the free BSD derivatives
(NetBSD and OpenBSD).
The three best web sites for information about
Linux seem to be:
I don't know much about X Windows and the XFree86 project
but I think they maintain a web site -- probably at
www.xfree86.org.
It's an often overlooked fact that there are competitors
to Linux in the field of freely available Unix for PC's.
You can look at
www.freebsd.org,
www.netbsd.org and
www.openbsd.org
for some of those.
Thanks for your time :)
Chris Lee, Computer Science
P.S. You Linux people are great, so much out there, so many people
helping you, nothing like this for DOS/Windows
DOS heralded the "sharing" of software (shareware)
while Linux and the GNU project has promoted a *giving*
of software -- and support.
I think one is largely and extension of the other.
Personally some of the best news I've heard for die hard
PC users in the last year is the announcement that
Caldera purchased DR-DOS and intends to release the sources
as soon as the clean up the code enough to compile cleanly
in a sane production environment. Look at
www.caldera.com
for details about that.
OpenDOS will be one of the final pieces in the puzzle of
how we (PC users, IS managers, and others) can truly
protect the investment we've made in our legacy software.
(Currently, with dosemu -- the BIOS emulator, you have to
install a copy of DOS unto your system in addition to installing
and configuring the Linux interface to your DOS programs
-- which is want dosemu provides).
-- Jim
Copyright © 1997, James T. Dennis
Published in Issue 14 of the Linux Gazette
"Linux Gazette...making Linux just a little more lovable!"
CLUELESS at the Prompt: A New Column for New Users
I'm sure you've heard it before, but Welcome to Linux! You've
heard the stories, your friends told you "Don't do it" but the allure of
an operating system with at least the power of NT that can run on 4 MB of
RAM on the same disk, even on the same partition with your DOS/Windows
installation, was too big to be ignored. So you went on a FTP spree
or bought a Red Hat or Slackware CD, installed it and you are confused,
things don't work the way you expected, the man pages seem to be written
in another language, and the people on the USENET keep telling you to RTFM
and belittling you.
That's why I decided to ask if I could write this column, it happened
to me. Actually, when I got into computers (less than a year ago,) my friend
Trippy told me to learn DOS before trying Windows. Thanks Trippy, you
saved me a lot of trouble. So when I read about Linux, I thought -WHOA
COOL!!, and downloaded the mini-linux distribution from Sunsite."HEY!Wait
a minute, how come the keyboard doesn't work right?" Turns out the
key table is Portuguese and requires file editing to be usable by us
Yanks. Thanks to SGK from the Debian group, I got that squared away, so
I decided to go with Debian, but with my small disk and no CD-ROM,
Debian's Compatibility/Conflict Resolution was too much for me. So I got a
second disk, 100 MB but it was still too small. So I decided to give
Slackware a try. That's what I'm running now.
The point is, I'm not a college educated computer expert but I still
ended up(for now) with a running linux box. You can too, if you are
willing to tinker (hack later, tinker now).I made every possible mistake,
I thought until I saw some of the questions in the news groups.
But enough about me, what do you think about me?;-)
The first things you need to know after you install Linux are the
most common commands. Here I'm going to assume that you have at least
some DOS background. The following list will attempt to correlate
Linux commands:
| Linux | DOS |
| ls /directory/name | cd\directory\name -- dir |
ls /directory | more
ls " " | less | dir | more |
| cat /file | type \file |
cat " " | more
less /file | " " | more |
| cp /file /file /to | copy \file \to |
| cd /directory | cd\directory |
| mkdir /directory | mkdir \directory |
rm /file | del \file |
This list is not nearly complete, there are many more commands in both OS
but these are very likely the most commonly used ones. For command help
in DOS type: help :in linux type: man (command, substitute the command
name): Both of these help utilities give options or switches that change
the nature of the command.
You can see that there are similarities in the command line operation of
both OS, historically they share a common ancestry. In fact, to use a
oversimplified view, at the command line linux could be thought of as
SUPERDOS. In fact this SUPERDOS can actually be used to run MS Windows -
check into WINE and WABI home pages on the Internet.(More on those later,
maybe.)
One of the next things you will need to do is find out how to write
or change file contents with an editor.I used to think elvis was the easiest
editor, until Konrad Rokicki told me about pico, which comes with the pine
mail server. If you used MS Write or Notepad, you'll find it very easy to
use. Save Emacs for another day unless you are a good typist, I found the
keyboard commands to be confusing for my two-fingered style. If you don't
have pico installed, try elvis in the input mode, by typing: input
filename, it's pretty easy too, except watch out for command mode and
input mode (type: man elvis :and read the page.If you have a CD
version of Linux, you either have pico installed or can have it if you
choose.
If you're like me one of your priority projects will be to to do is use
an Internet protocol to connect to your Internet Service Provider. My ISP
uses PPP so that's what I used, and the following descriptions are for
PPP.
The first thing you will need to confirm is that your kernel supports
PPP, either in the kernel or by loadable modules. Type: pppd :and hit
enter. If your kernel doesn't support PPP, you'll get a negative message,
if you get a prompt you can assume for now that it's supported.
Next you will need to type: ls /usr/sbin | more :and hit enter. Look
for files called ppp-on and ppp-off. Next, type: ls /etc | more : and hit
enter. Here you will be looking for a file called resolv.conf. Then type:
ls /etc/ppp : you can skip the: | more :this time, since it's a small
directory,and hit enter. You'll be looking for files called options and
ppp-on-dialer.
Edit your /etc/resolv.conf to look something like:
domain net-link.net
nameserver 205.207.6.2
nameserver 205.217.6.3
gateway 205.217.6.10
Naturally you will have to change the name and numeric to match that of
your ISP
.
Next, edit your /etc/ppp/options file to look something like this:
/dev/modem
38400 # at this line you could substitute 19200, 57600, 115200
defaultroute
noipdefault
debug
crtscts
lock
modem
These two files are necessary to either of the methods I am going to
describe.
Now you can use minicom to dial up your ISP. Type: minicom :, and when it
loads, type: ATDTYOURISPNUMBER :hit enter. When the remote modem answers
you will be prompted for your username and password. When you have
responded with this information, a string of garbage characters will run
across the screen. Type: ctrl(key)a :then: Q :which will let you out of
minicom without hanging up the modem. Then immediately type: pppd :then
hit enter. Type: ping YOURISP'SNUMERIC :you will get a message that will
inform you if you are connected. If you get a message that says in part
"network not reached" try again. If no luck after a couple more tries,
check to see that the files you edited have the correct information. Try
changing your connection speed in /etc/ppp/options to 19200 and try again.
If you connect this time, then one at a time try the faster speeds until
you can't connect, then drop back to the fastest speed that worked.
There is an easier method using the script /usr/sbin/ppp-on, that
involves editing that file to give your ISPdialup number, username, and
password and optionally your connection speed. It is commented to help you
figure out how to change those lines that you need to change. When that is
done correctly, you can dial up by typing: ppp-on : Pretty cool, huh?
If these methods don't work for you, start by reading the PPP_HOWTO in
your /usr/doc/faq/howto directory, then respond by e-mail to
troll@net-link.net, telling me any error messages, and I'll try to square
you away.
There is another method using the chat program, but I haven't had
much luck there, yet. Future installments, if any will fill you in on that
if it seems that it's wanted. Personally, ppp-on is just fine for me so
far.
you will want to get an e-mail program and a browser, if you don't
already. I recommend lynx. It's fast and you don't need X installed to use
it. There probably is a lynx binary in your distribution, but if not you
can get one from sunsite or other ftp.Pine is a good mail program, and it
includes the pico editor, as noted above.
NOTE TO LINUX EXPERTS- I would be glad to accept reasonable criticism
of this article and the information therein. I don't really want to put up
with heavy fire, if you can help the new user better than me, write an
article yourself, there are plenty of avenues where such information would
be of great service.
Next Time- e-mailtroll@net-link.net
me and ask, otherwise I'll just write about what gave me trouble and
how I got past it.
TTYL, Mike List
Copyright © 1997, Mike List
Published in Issue 14 of the Linux Gazette
"Linux Gazette...making Linux just a little more lovable!"
The Cracraft and Lijewski DIRED Programs
The directory navigator and program launcher called "DIRED"
in the original incarnations of EMACS has two stand-alone
Unix clones. Mike Lijewski's "dired" 2.2 is written in C++
(1996). The original "dired" was written in C by Stuart
Cracraft (1980), available as version 3.05 (1997).
Historically, shortly after emacs "dired" appeared in the
TECO implementation, a stand-alone version was written by
Stuart Cracraft (1980). The emacs version and the C version
have not kept up with one another.
Lijewski wrote "dired" in 1990, while at Cornell University
Theory Center, without any knowledge of Cracraft's "dired".
The Theory Center ran on IBM VM/CMS, under which there is a
utility call "file manager". This program manages the flat
VM/CMS file system and represents the main user interface
into files. The creation of "dired" eased the transition
from VM/CMS to Unix.
Lijewski's "dired" has the advantage of hindsight and C++
program development so it promises to be written in modern
syntax and very maintainable. Cracraft's "dired" was
rewritten in 1996 in ANSI C. It suffers with flaws in both
design and readability, but the features are there.
Common features of Cracraft's and Lijewski's "dired"
- Copy current file
- Hard link current file to another file.
- Symbolic link current file to another file.
- Unzip current file (gunzip).
- Zip current file (gzip).
- Rename current file.
- Display help.
- Cursor up one.
- Cursor down one.
- Back one page.
- Forward one page.
- Go to first file.
- Go to last file.
- Do shell command /w filename substitution.
- Search forward for file matching regular expression.
- Search reverse for file matching regular expression.
- Launch EDITOR on a file or DIRED on a directory.
- Recognize new window size and refresh screen.
- Delete current file
- Prompt for and edit a directory.
- Change the mode of the current file.
- Launch PAGER on this file.
- Sort the file list.
- Print file contents.
- Reload directory.
- Abort DIRED.
- Suspend DIRED.
- Exit immediately.
- Setup by command line, resource file or environment variable.
Minor differences exist in the implementation of these
features. Cracraft's dired supports split screen.
Lijewski's dired supports scrolling by half-page. Deletes
in Cracraft's dired are done in batch whereas Lijewski's
dired does them immediately.
Curiously, the common features of the two direds also
account for the most often used dired commands.
The differences between Lijewski's "dired" and Cracraft's
"dired" in 1997 appear below. Many features commonly exist
in both versions, so only the superficial differences are
discussed. Strengths and weaknesses of each are also
listed.
Unique features of Lijewski's "dired"
- Compress current file.
- Uncompress current file.
- Change the group of the current file.
- View only files matching a regular expression.
Strengths:
- Excellent for persons with minimal Unix knowledge.
- Has a full complement of basic commands for file maintenance.
- Key configuration in resource file "~/.diredrc".
Weaknesses:
- Does file maintenance one file at a time with prompts.
- Fixed full screen format.
- No ANSI colorization to match color-ls.
Unique features of Cracraft's Dired 3.05
- Manual page display, DIRED 3.05 in detail.
- Key Tutor. Describe key. Execute key.
- Tag files for later processing.
- Dynamic format setup for the screen and shell commands.
- Toggle colorization of file names (4 color tables).
- Undo search and page move.
- Bookmarks.
- Abort or suspend DIRED and PUSHD to the displayed directory.
- Groff current file as a manual page.
- Type current text or binary file on terminal with pause.
- Write the formatted file list to a unique file in /tmp.
- Aliased shell commands, interactive or in resource ~/.diredset.
- Setup for shell commands attached to internal variables.
Strengths:
- Favors use by seasoned Unix people.
- Configurable screen format.
- Keys are fixed to give uniformity across different hosts.
Weaknesses:
- Key configuration is compiled into "dired" and can't be changed.
Misfeatures of both versions of "dired"
The program tends to be used for browsing and deleting
files; users find the other features too obtuse for daily
use. Too many commands. Its hard to remember what key does
which command.
How to Get Dired
Find dired305.zip at
http://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/. Or email to
gustafson@math.utah.edu
for location of recent version.
Find Lijewski's c++ dired by sending email to
lijewski@mothra.lbl.gov
for location of the recent version. If you want to see it on sunsite,
then let Mike hear about it!
Copyright © 1997, Grant B. Gustafson
Published in Issue 14 of the Linux Gazette
"Linux Gazette...making Linux just a little more lovable!"
Directory Trees in Outline Format
Since I frequently post messages to various Unix and Linux
newsgroups and mailing lists I often get technical questions
mailed to me ``out of the blue.''
I recently received a request for a script to produce
the following sort of output:
dir/
file1
file2
file
dir/
dir/
file
(etc)
Here was my quick and dirty solution:
find . | awk -F/ '{for (x=1;x<NF;x++) { printf "\t"}; print $NF}'
... which only does about 80% of the job. The only problem is
that the directory entries don't end with the ``/'' to indicate their
file type. It was late -- so that's what I sent him.
Here's how that works:
find . just prints a list of full paths (using GNU find). Some
non-Linux users may have to using 'find . -print' to accomplish
this (or update to the GNU version on their systems).
awk is a text processing language/utility.
The -F (capital ``f'') sets a field separator to the '/'
(slash character). Awk defaults to parsing it's input into
records (lines) of fields (whitespace delimited). Using the
-F allows me to tell awk to treat each record (still just lines)
as a group of fields that are separated by slashes -- allowing
me to deal with each directory element as a separate element
very easily.
The next parameter to awk is a short program -- a for loop
(like the C for() construct). It iterates from 1 to NF.
NF in awk is the ``number of fields'' for each record.
This, among many other values, is preset by awk as it parses its
input.
Awk defaults to reading it's input from a pipe or from
each file listed after it's script on the command line. We're
supplying it with input through the pipe, of course.
In the body of my awk 'for' loop I simply print a tab for each
directory named in that line. This has the appearance of "wiping
out" all of the leading directory names and indenting my line as
desired.
Finally, after the end of the for loop I simply print the last
field ($NF). Note how the printf takes a string similar to
C's printf -- and it doesn't assume a newline. I could put
C-like format specifiers like %s and %f in there -- and I'd have
to supply additional parameters to the printf call if I did.
By contrast the awk print command (no trailing ``f'') does add
an ORS (output record separator) character to the end of its line
and doesn't treat its first argument as a format specification.
This evening I happened to be cleaning up my home directory (while
procrastinating on doing paying work and cleaning the house) I
happened across a copy of this and decided to fix it.
find . | { while read i ;
do
[ -d $i ] \
&& echo $i/ \
|| echo $i
done } \
| awk -F/ '
/\/$/ { for (x = 1; x < NF -1 ;x++) {
printf "\t" };
print $(NF-1) "/";
next;
}
{ for (x = 1; x < NF; x++) {
printf "\t" }
print $NF }'
Note that the original script: 'find ....| awk -F/ ...'
is mostly still there. But the script has gone from
one line to eleven -- all to get that silly little slash
character on the end of each directory name.
(If anyone as a shorter program -- I'd like to see it
-- there's probably a fairly quick way to do this using
perl and find2perl)
The main thing I've added is the while loop which works
like this:
find's output is piped into a group of commands
(that's what the braces are for).
That group of commands starts with a bash "while...
do" loop. The bash "while...do" loop works like this:
'while'
some command returns no error
'do'
some commands
'done'
Note that, unlike C or Pascal programming the
``condition'' for the while loop is actually any
command (or group of commands -- enclosed in
braces or parentheses). The fact that programs
return values (called errorlevels in DOS and
some Mainframe OS) makes all commands implicitly
``conditions.'' (Actually C allows a variety of
function calls within conditionals -- but we
won't go into that).
Note that some commands might not return values that
make any sense -- so those would not be suitable
for use with any of the conditional contexts in any
shell.
The command I'm using is bash' internal ``read''
command which just takes a variable name as an
argument. Note that I don't say ``read $i'' --
the shell would then fill the value of $i into
the command (i.e it would ``dereference'' it) and
the read command would have no arguments. If you
give the read command no argument it simply reads
a value and throws it away (no error).
When you set values in bash (or Bourne shell, or zsh
etc) you also don't ``dereference'' it. $i=foo would be
an error unless you actually wanted to set the
value of some variable -- whose name was currently stored
in $i to be set to foo.
Back to our script. When the find command stops printing
filenames into the pipe, the 'read i' command will fail
to get any value -- so the body of the do loop will be
skipped.
The 'do' keyword just marks the end of the list of
commands in the conditional section and the beginning
of the body of the loop (big surprise -- huh?).
The next three lines of the script are another common
shell construct --
- [ is really an alias for or link to the 'test'
command.
- -d is a parameter to 'test' that is true if
the next parameter ($i) is a directory.
- That line ends with a ``\'' (backslash) to mark
a continuation character. This causes the shell
to treat the next line as an extension of this
one.
I could certainly have put all of this one line.
However, for readability I broke it up and formatted
it with leading tabs -- otherwise *I* couldn't read
it, much less expect anyone else to do so.
The next line (continuation) starts with the '&&'
operator. In bash and related shells you have things
like the familiar ``|'' (pipe) and ``;'' semicolon which are
called operators. This operator means ``if that last command
was O.K. -- returned no error -- then ...''
You can think of the '&&' operator as do this ``and''
to that (in the *conditional* sense of the the word
and).
The next line uses the '||' operator -- which is,
as you might expect, similar to the '&&' operator except
it means -- ``if the last command executed returned an
error then ...'' This is roughly analogous to the English
``or'' (again, it the conditional sense).
Of course I could have wrapped this in an 'if ....;
then ....; else...' construct -- but I'm used to the '&&'
and '||' as are most shell programmers.
So far all we've done is added a ``/'' character to the end
of each directory.
Now I'm left with a print out of full paths with directories ending in
``/'' (slashes) and other files printed normally -- back to replacing all
but the last thing with tabs -- so we pipe the 'while' loop's output
into the same awk script we were using before.
Ooops! Well, almost the same script -- it turns out that awk -F is
happy to consider the trailing slash as a blank field on the end of a
line. Hmm. O.K. we add an extra condition to the awk script.
An awk script consists of condition-action pairs. The most
common awk ``conditions'' are patterns. That is so say that they
are regular expressions (like the things you use grep to search
for). A pattern is usually delimited by slashes (a mnemonic to
the users of ed, later upgraded ex, later upgraded to vi) although
you can also ``match'' against strings that are enclosed in quotes.
Actions in awk are enclosed in braces.
Awk is an extremely forgiving language. If you leave out the
``condition'' or ``pattern'' it will execute the action on that
line for every record (line) that it comes across. That's
what my first script did.
If you leave off the action (i.e. if you have a line that
consists just of a condition) then awk will simply print
the record. In other words the default action is {print}.
When I was a regular in the comp.lang.awk newsgroup (and
alt.lang.awk that preceded it) I used to enjoy pointing out
that the shorted awk programs in the work are:
1
and
.
(The first one just prints every line it sees since ``1'' is
a ``true'' condition; the second program (a dot) prints every
line that has at least one character -- since that is the
regular expression for ``any character''. The second program
actually does filter out blank lines since awk doesn't count
the record separator as part of the line).
So, the modification of my awk script for this purpose is
to add a condition that handles any record that *ends* with a
slash. In those cases I convert all *but* the next-to-last field
to a tab, and print that ``next-to-last'' field. I also have to
add the ``/'' character to the end of that since awk doesn't consider
the field separator to be part of any field.
Finally I add a 'next' command which tells awk not to look
for any more pattern-action pairs with *this* record. If I
didn't do that than awk would execute the action for each
``directory'' line -- and also execute the other action for it
(i.e. it would print a blank line after printing each directory
line).
Is the extra 10 lines of code worth it just to add a slash to the end
of the directory names in our outline? Depends on how much your customer
is willing to pay -- or how much grief it causes you, your boss or your
users.
Mostly I decided to work on this as a training example. I think there are
some neat constructs that every budding shell programmer might benefit
from learning.
The ``find .... | {while read i .... do ... done}'' construct is well worth
remember for other cases. It allows you to do complex operations on
large numbers of files without resorting to writing a temporary file and
having to clean up after it.
When you write scripts that explicitly create temporary files you suddenly
have a host of new concerns -- what do I name it? where do I put it?
don't forget to remove it! do I have enough space for it? what if my
script gets interrupted? etc.
To be sure there are answers to each of these. For example I
suggest ~/tmp/$0.`date +%Y%m%d`.$$ for a generic temporary filename
for any script -- it gives the name of your script, the date in
YYYYMMDD format and the process ID of the current instance of your
script as the filename. It puts that into the temporary directory
under your home (which no one else should have access to). There is
virtually no chance of a name collision using this scheme (particularly
if you change the date format to +%s which is the total number of seconds
since midnight on Jan. 1, 1970). You can use the 'trap' command to
ensure that your temp files are cleaned in all but the most extreme
cases etc.
However, as I've said, it's worth understanding how to avoid temporary
files -- and usually your scripts will execute faster as a result.
The [ ... ] && ... || ... construct is absolutely essential to
any Unix sysadmin. Many of legacy scripts (particularly those in
/etc/rc.d/ -- or it's local equivalent) rely on these operators and
the test or '[' command.
Finally there is 'awk'. I've heard it argued that awk is a dinosaur
and that we should convert all the awk code to perl (and presumably most
of the Bourne shell and sed code with it). I won't argue that point
here. Suffice it to say that anything you learn how to do in awk will
just make learning perl that much easier when you get to it. awk is a
much simpler language and is phenomenally easy to integrate into shell scripts
(as you can see here).
Jim Dennis, Starshine Technical Services
Copyright © 1997, James T. Dennis
Published in Issue 14 of the Linux Gazette
"Linux Gazette...making Linux just a little more lovable!"
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© 1996 by
mjh
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muse:
- v; to become absorbed in thought
- n; [ fr. Any of the nine sister goddesses of learning and the
arts in Greek Mythology ]: a source of inspiration
 elcome
to the Graphics Muse! Why a "muse"?
Well, except for the sisters aspect, the above definitions are
pretty much the way I'd describe my |
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