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Contents: |
The last couple of months have been rather light on articles. It's been helpful to have the new chapters for Linux Installation and Getting Starting to include. So all you budding authors and Linux users out there, send me your stuff. Don't depend on our regular authors to fill the gap. We want to hear about all the neat tips and tricks you've found, as well as all the neat applications your are writing or working with. --Editor
Date: Sat Apr 19 07:29:14 1997
Subject: Searching for Information On Newsgroups
From: Roman, Roman@pussycat.ping.de
Hi folks!
I'm installing a very small news- and email system at my local university (peolpe there are studying arts, so there's no one to help me with this). I set up one computer with Linux 2.0.29 which is permanently connected to the 'internet' via ethernet. Then I want to connect a second PC which is installed in the hallway via nullmodem-cable for all the students to write and receive eMail. But the problem now is, that the provider (another part of the university) doesn't give us access to the newsgroups, so I want to set up at least some local newsgroups on this Linux-station.
But I just can't seem to find any documentation explaining how to set up local newsgroups. smtpd and nntpd are running, but the manpages won't tell anything about how to set up ng's (forgive me if I'm just too blind or stupid to find the obvious source of information).
So I don't want to bother you explaining me how to accomplish this task, but perhaps someone can at least tell me where to find the desired information.
Best regards, Roman.
Date: Thu Apr 24 11:44:40 1997
Subject: VGA_16 Server
From: Javier Viscain
Congratulations for the aim and contents of the Gazette. Here is an issue I've never seen addressed: the VGA_16 server maintains two monitors (the second monochrome with an Hercules card) but what only works is the mouse movement, which moves out of left and right to the other monitor, and console switching. No window on the monochrome gets focus. Things that moreless appear on the monochrome but don't work:
I think that the hardware absolute addressing is the normal VGA one (0A0000 to 0AFFFF) and 64K for the Hercules (0B0000 to 0BFFFF), which is correct. In adition, this server and the mono server are very buggy when with only the Hercules.
Any easy solution, or is it that this configuration has not been debugged?
TIA, Javier Vizcaino, Madrid, Spain.
Date: Sun 6 Apr 1997 11:54:42 -0400
Subject: Initilation Files
From Karl Easterly bigtexan@mindspring.com
As an article Idea, I think an overview of the major boot scripts would =
be helpful. The overview could include an objective view of the =
locations, functions, and nifty "tips and tricks" or such. Also, links =
to how-toos for each script would future simplify the learning curve for =
new users.
Another idea would be to do a chronological installations and = customization series of articles. Granted, hardware diversity might be = a problem and could possibly be subverted by starting the series as = though a working installation of Linux has already been installed. It = would proceed as a rough idea like this.
These are just stabs at a scheme, the actual order would have to be = hammered out before the series started, but in general, would be helpful = to have a step by step issue oriented series of articles concerning the = setup and customization of any linux installation.
Date: Sat, 1 Mar 1997 15:39:10 -0500
Subject: Ideas for Beginners
From: stephen jarvis 106363.2642@compuserve.com
Hello
I am 'the' absolute beginner.I have had a copy of Linux Slackware and a copy of "Linux configuration and installation " by P Volkerding et al for about two weeks.Prior to this I had dabbled at dos and wondered(?) at windows.But when I heard about Linux in a magazine it occured to me that it might be fun to have a go.And indeed it has been.
The only problem I have had is with regard to the man pages. In general they are technical to a degree that while appropriate for those who can follow the argument from end to end,are pretty debilitating for the newbie like me.Indeed I don't always get to the end.
Perseverence will no doubt pay off and I have expanded my collection of books already,to take advantage of the possibility of learning something about programming on Linux.But then I have always had the kind of curiousity that,while not enough to kill the cat,is enough to keep me in the book shop.The point I think is that the man pages themselves are a bit of a barrier to the wider useage of Linux.
No doubt others would say the detail and technical clout of this source of information is needed for those who want to make serious use of Linux.But not everyone who wants to escape from the soporific influence of Microsoft is that demanding or that knowledgeable.I think someone needs to pitch things at the introductory level.In the realms of 'this will get it going'and 'try this out'.Merely a more chatty approach would help remove the shiney armour of incomprehensibilty some pages deploy.
If this sounds a little unfair to the many people who have compiled ,man pages it is most definitley not meant to be.There is a need for accurate and complete information especially as Linux is a cooperative venture and everyone needs to have a common root of information.The question is how can the benefits of Linux be made widely known to people outside the existing network.What will grab their attention and take the gleam off Windows 95?Something more open to a wider audience perhaps.
This does not have to be completely bland and overly simple just in the range of every day usage.An approach that does not assume that everyone reading knows the meaning of every term on the page.People need an introduction to the language of Linux in the way that you might learn French or English.Start with very basic things and build up in stages.Don't launch straight into 'How To Compile Your Kernal '.Ok thats important ,but I am sure most people still think a kernal is what you find inside a nut.I hope you are getting the general idea.
What us new people need is probably a collection of basic texts each about the length of a several page magazine article.Hopefully they would cover the things that a hardend Linux user would be embarrassed to ask about.'The kernal for beginners'.'Great now I can ask what it really is'.If this undertaking was started then I am sure that the end product of a few months could be published as a small book.Maybe you could publish it.I think there is a potential market.Many magazines recently covered the subject of Linux.That's how I got the bug.
Now it's true there are books already that cover Linux but there are not many on line man pages or magazine articles that give the beginner the feeling that they can actually get their system up and running easily.So if you really want to publish articles for absolute beginners bear in mind the kind of language that is used.
Regards Steve Jarvis
ps.. here's some ideas ' What is the kernal','The basic commands to get around bash','What are disk partitions and why bother',' To Umsdos or not. That's the question','Midnight Commander-an introduction','This is the easiest editor anybody ever used(insert your choice)','A glossary of general terms you'll find on a man page','These books are a good read(assorted titles)'.'How to get around an info text with less than 20 pages of instructions','Why the idea of a free and open o/s matters','X is not a horror film'.
Maybe these are a bit daft but they'd get my attention.They are the sort of things I'd like to know about.
Date: 04 Apr 97 19:02:21 EST
Subject: Technical Support
From: Dani Fricker 101550.3160@CompuServe.COM
first i wanna say thanx for the lj! great work and fun not even for linuxers! i need your help. for some reasons i have to identify a user on my webserver by his/her ip-address. fact is that users logon comes from different physical machines. that means that i have to assign something like a virtual ip-address to a users log name. something like a reversal masquerading. my ip-gateway connects my inner lan over two token ring network cards (sorry, not my idea!) with the internet (lan <-> tr0 <-> tr1 <-> internet). the masquerading forward roule of ipfwadm gives me the possibility to indicate a source and a destination address. do you see a possibility for an 'address assignment' between the two interfaces? if you do please let me know.
dani fricker
programmer
zurich-switzerland
Date: Mon, 07 Apr 1997 03:01:17 -0500
Subject:HELP with Man Pages
From: "Mauricio Naranjo N." davasgut@col2.telecom.com.co
Well, I have installed the linux toolkit / october 1996 and I have not been able to install the man pages for commonly used commands like cat, ls, and so on; instead I have installed the man pages for packages like, fvwm, midnight commander, ....
So, I installed man2.tgz, man3.tgz, manpgs.tgz, but I still have not been able to get installed the whole support for man; Can you tell me please, what's the matter???? Any kind of help would be great appreciated, and excuses for ignorance but I am new at this OS (finally I found a true one)
Mao
Date: Mon, 7 Apr 1997 15:43:21 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Port Mouse
From: Jose, notDefined@novagate.com
Hi, Maybe you can help me with this. (I hope) I switched motherboards, from a zeos pentium 90 that used a serial mouse to a asus p/i-p55tvp4 motherboard that uses a port mouse. And now I can't get x-windows to run. Any ideas?
Date: Tue, 01 Apr 1997 04:26:04 -0600
Subject: Linux
From: Tred Riggs tred@oak.sfasu.edu
I am a college student attending Stephen F. Austin State University. I work in a Geographic Information Systems Laboratory (GIS) and we have been just using AIX machines. Howerver we do have a full blown linux pc and it is great. {Since then I stripped DOS off my PC and made me a full blown linux box, which works wonderful. We were considering to upgrade to all linux PC's in out lab because they were cheaper and faster than the AIX boxes, but we ran into a problem. The Software we need to run to make our GIS maps is not supported by ESRI, so we gave them a call. This is what they told us:
"Linux will not be a supported platform. They told me that product ports are user driven and there is not enough users wanting this OS."
I could not figure out how they could even say this when all you have to do is get on the web and see millions of people using linux. So here is what I want to happen. I need linux users to E-mail ESRI at buspartners@esri.com and tell them that you use linux and that there are many more people using linux too. ESRI needs to get there head out of Microsofts world and see what is going on in the real world.
Thanks for your time Linux Gazette,
Tred Riggs
Date: Thu, 3 Apr 97 22:40:23 BST
Subject:http://www.ssc.com/lg/index.html
From: Duncan Simpson dps@duncan.telstar.net
Given Micro$oft's tag line of "Yet another Web server powered by NT" maybe we should collect a list of people doing this sort of stuff on Linux. I can add 3 items myself http://mail.telstar.net is powered by Linux The telstar mail service described there is also powered by the same linux box Astra has switch from NT to Linux for its radius server. (NT was just too expensive and no better than Linux (Un*x)---the price diffrernece was *1000s* of pounds, each about 1.5 $ US). Both astra (and telstar.net) DNS servers are linux.
If the stats show that Linux is more popular for comercial web servers than NT, this would be something nice to be able to point out...
Duncan (-:
P.S. Any bets when Truetype fonts can be used for proper typesetiing. At present they lack litagures (fl and various other items that are tradionally rendered as single characters)?
P.P.S. The use of the present tense (switch) is apt because the change is happening now. (Despite a bug that is now not being exercised due to an attempt to eradicate it mail.telstar.net is more reliable than any of various NT machines at handling mail).
Date: Fri, 04 Apr 1997 15:57:12 -0600
Subject: Re: How to ftp Back Home
From: James Stansell james.stansell@wcom.com
The ifconfig command works, and may be the most authoritative on the subject (except I believe the PPP log also contains your current IP), but the ifconfig command returns a ton more information than I want.
So I ask my machine at work who I am:
who am i stansell ttyp6 Apr 4 15:51 (206.125.79.118)
I've inserted your example IP address where my actual address showed up. If the DNS at work does happen to know a name for my address, then it shows up instead of the IP.
--james
Date: Thu, 10 Apr 1997 17:08:38 -0500
Subject: Re:GV article
From: Larry Ayers ayers@vax2.rainis.net
To: Geoffrey Leach geoffrey@iname.com
Sorry the URL didn't work for you; I recently got an email
message from Helmut Geyer, the maintainer of the Debian GV
version and he included a URL for a new GV home-page:
http://wwwthep.physik.uni-mainz.de/~plass/gv/
The Debian version is in the /text section of the /i386 binary directory of any Debian mirror. Shouldn't be too hard to find.
Good luck!
Larry Ayers
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More 2¢ Tips!
X Limitation to 8 Bit Color
From: Gary Masters gmasters@devcg.denver.co.us
I read your question in Linux Gazette regarding an X limitation to 8 bit color when the system has more than 14 megs of RAM. Where did you find that information? I ask because my system has 24 megs of RAM, and I run 16 bit color all the time. One difference between our systems is that I am using a Diamond Stealth 64 video card.
The place I tell X to run in 16 bit mode is in the file /usr/X11R6/bin/startx. There is a line in this file that begins with serverargs. I get 16 bit mode by giving "-bpp 16" as an argument in this line (e.g. serverargs="-bpp 16").
One problem I did have was that the OpenLook Window Manager (olwm) did not like 16 bpp mode. I solved this by switching to the OpenLook Virtual Window Manager (olvwm)[1]. I also had success using the Tab and FV Window Managers (twm & fvwm) in 16 bpp mode.
Coming from a SunOS background, I'm used to OpenLook.
Gary Masters
Screen Blanking Under X
From: Gary Masters gmasters@devcg.denver.co.us
I read your question in the Linux Gazette regarding unwanted screen blanking under X after upgrading to a newer distribution of Linux. I had the same frustration. Apparently the X servers included in the Xfree86 version distributed with current Linux distributions has screen blanking compiled as a default behavior.
This behavior can be controlled with the -s option to the server. Look in the startx script for a line that begins with serverargs and add "-s 0". This will disable the X screen blank.
Gary Masters
Doubleclick Internet User Profiles
From: Kragen Javier Sittler kragen@pobox.com
Check out the description of what doubleclick.net does at http://www.doubleclick.net/frames/adinfo/dartset.htm
Then decide whether you want to be added to their database of Internet user profiles. If not, you can use the script below; I run it in my
/etc/rc.d/rc.inet1. It prevents any DoubleClick banners from being displayed, prevents any cookies from being set, and prevents DoubleClick from collecting any data on you.
It also does the same thing with linkexchange.com, because I find their constant banners and requests for cookies annoying. If you'd prefer, you can take out the linkexchange lines.
However, this will also keep you from receiving *any* information from doubleclick or linkexchange directly... so you can't visit their web sites either.
On my machine, I put the script in
/etc/rc.d/rc.doubleclickand run it from
/etc/rc.d/rc.inet1at boot time, so I'm always protected from DoubleClick.
# Script begins below: #!/bin/sh # By Kragen Sitaker, 21 April 1997. # Prevent any packets from reaching doubleclick.net /sbin/route add -net 199.95.207.0 netmask 255.255.255.0 lo /sbin/route add -net 199.95.208.0 netmask 255.255.255.0 lo # And ad.linkexchange.com too! /sbin/route add -net 204.71.189.0 netmask 255.255.255.0 lo
How to Mount/Unmount For Users
From: Kidong Lee kidong@shinbiro.com
When I mount/umount file, I have to login as root. It's not convenient for me & other users. but, I found the solution that user who is not root can do mount/umount in mount man page.
Take a look at /etc/fstab.
#/dev/hdb /cdrom iso9660 ro,user 0 0
Note "user" in options field. In options field, if you add "user", users can do mount/umount.
File Transfer With the z Protocol
From: Gregor Gerstmann, gerstman@tfh-berlin.de
Regarding Linux Gazette issue16, April 1997, I have some remarks
regarding the article on file transfer with the z protocol:
'I type sz
From: Walter Harms, Walter.Harms@Informatik.Uni-Oldenburg.DE Working on several different networks means that you always
need to copy your data from net to net. Most ppl use rcp but like most SysOps
I found this to be a terrible security hole. So as I started this job my first
business was to rewrite several scripts that were using rsh,rcp etc.
I replaced them with an ftp based script ftp - <input> out 2> out.err.
It's easy to
see that this was not a good idea because ftp was not intended as shell-commando
like cp,mv and the other guys. So I was happy to find the ftplib on a
linux-CD. It's a nice lib that I used to build cmds like ftpmv, ftpcp, ftprm..
This made my scripts much slimmer and simpler. I have some terrible
copy-scripts running but no problems copying on different systems
like Ultrix or AIX.
Example using ftpget (from the ftplib Author Thomas Pfau)
Who needs ftplib? Why use ftplib? Any drawbacks?
-- walter
Here is something interesting which you might consider for publication.
It is a short program written in LEX and C, which takes ASCII-Artwork
and translates it into HTML 3.0 compliant table data.
It is a pretty interesting idea, and as far as I know, I'm the first
person to try something like this, or automate the process.
The translator (a2t) has a few options:
The program was completed just today, so it is very new. I've
released it under the GNU license agreement.
For some examples of the output generated by a2t, see:
http://wilkes.edu/~pkeane
Enjoy--
Patrick
From: Martin Michlmayrtbm@cyrius.com
An example:
You can make references to the figure with
PostScript is already supported and the developer version of SGML-Tools
(the successor of Linuxdoc-SGML) now supports HTML as well. You
can specify a PostScript and a GIF file and depending on the output
(TeX or HTML) the respective image will be included.
Date: Wed Apr 2 12:15:54 1997 If you get sufficiently tweaked by the X monitor config problems,
I
suggest X Inside's AcceleratedX package. Its much simpler to configure
than the XFree package for both cards and monitors. I used to work
for them, but haven't in over a year. I still use their package because
its the easiest to handle all the video card/monitor details.
BTW, the monitor setup is menu based. If your monitor is not listed
you can just use one of the multisync if single frequency generic
configs. No dot clocks, but you do need to no your monitors frequency
capabilities. These should be listed in the monitors cdocumetntation.
The package is a commercial distribution and runs about $100 (last time
I checked). They change their name to Xi Graphics recently and the domain
for xinside.com might not be working right now. Try http://www.xig.com.
--
Michael J. Hammel
Date: Wed Apr 2 13:38:08 1997 Setting up the software is probably fairly straight forward. I've
never used MetroX (I use AcceleratedX instead), however. Basically
you'll have two choices:
The second choice is the one you need if you want to move the mouse
between the two monitors - like when the mouse goes past the right edge
of the first monitor it shows up on the left edge of the second monitor.
You'll have to check with Metro to find out which of these options is
supported and how to configure for it.
The hardware problem is tougher. The problem lies in the fact that PC's
were not originally designed with the idea that multiple display
adapters would be installed. The BIOS looks for an adapter at certain
locations (IRQ, I/O address) and, unless the second card is configurable
to some other address, the system will find multiple cards. What
happens next is in-determinant. Some systems won't boot. Some do but
don't display to either monitor correctly.
The trick is to find video adapters that were designed to be used
in conjunction with other video adapters. Many are not. The easiest
way for you to find out is check with Metro about what combinations of
video adapters they know work together. Chances are good the ones you
have don't. I know X Inside had a list of cards they knew work
together. You could search their web site (http://www.xinside.com or
http://www.xig.com) and see if that info is still there.
Hope this helps.
--
Michael J. Hammel
Date: Wed Apr 2 13:27:40 1997 Horse hockeys. 16 bit color is a limitation of the video subsystem and
has nothing to do with the memory of your system. Linear addressing in
the XFree86 X servers might be tied to system memory amounts, but that
would be a limitation in the XFree86 server, not in X. X defines
"method without policy", so such limitations just aren't built into X.
A couple of things you should note: The number of colors available
under 16bit displays is actually *less* than the number available to
8bit displays. Why this is true has to do with the way 16bit display
hardware works. The actual color palette for 8 bit displays can have
millions of colors - it can only display 256 colors at a time, however.
Frugal use of colormaps can allow you to have nearly exactly the right
colors for any given application. 16 bit displays only have a palette
of 65k (roughly) colors. Once those are used up, you're outta luck.
I'm not completely clear on what makes this difference such a problem
but if you visit the Gimp User's mailing list (see the Linux Graphics
mini-howto: http://www.csn.net/~mjhammel/linux/lgh.html) and ask this
question you'll get similar replies. Its been discussed quite at length
on the developers list, and most of them read the User's list.
BTW, if you want to see if Linear Addressing is the real problem, try
the X Inside AcceleratedX demo server and see if it works in 16 bit
color for you. Generally, your video card needs at least 1M of on board
RAM (not system memory - this is video memory on the video card) to
run in 16Bit mode, but then you'll probably only be able to run in
640x480 or (at most) 800x600 resolution. To run at higher resolutions
you'll need more video memory.
Hope this helps.
--
Michael J. Hammel
Date: Fri, 04 Apr 1997 13:20:40 -0600 On my Red Hat 4.0 system, the /etc/rc.d directory tree is where
everything happens. There are a lot of shell scripts in this set of
directories that are run when the system boots. To give yourself a
little more info, add some echo statements to the files. For example:
Now when the system is booting you can see exactly when rc.sysinit is
run, and what programs it launches. Repeat the above process for all the
scripts you find.
Now if the system hangs or gives an error during bootup you have a
better idea of where to look. If you don't have any problems while
booting then at least you have more info about what Linux is doing.
David
Date: Thu, 3 Apr 1997 20:38:02 +0300 (EET DST) Just replace the ppp.* with whatever you want (if you have multiple
ppps running). The easiest thing would to be write a script called ftphome
(or similar) and make it first assign the address and then doing ftp or
ncftp $ADDRESS. The snippet is originally from a local firewall, at the part
where it needs to know what its' own address is. :-)
A friend of mine at
mstr@ntc.nokia.com wrote this for me.
--
Kaj J. Niemi
Linux Expo, Research Triangle Park, NC (April 4, 1997) -
Enhanced Software Technologies, Inc. announced today that Groups of Linux
Users Everywhere (GLUE) will provide a free copy of the new BRU 2000 backup
and restore utility to GLUE user groups.
Enhanced Software Technologies, Inc. has joined Linux International as a
corporate member and is also offering members of GLUE user groups a
10-percent discount on purchases of BRU 2000.
Enhanced Software Technologies, Inc., a privately held corporation based in
Tempe, Arizona, is a leading provider of high-reliability systems
Additional information on BRU Giveaway.
GLUE is a project of SSC
publishers of Linux Journal. GLUE was implemented
to provide a world-wide member group for Linux User Groups. GLUE member
groups receive a subscription, materials for promoting and developing
their group, a way of advertising their group in a global setting, list-serv
and Linux Group location services, and discounts and samples from SSC and
Linux Journal. Other vendors may also offer special services or
discounts to GLUE member groups.
Additional information on Glue.
Solid Information Technology Ltd today announced a campaign
targeted at the community of Linux developers. Between March
and September 1997 Linux enthusiasts will be presented with
a free personal version of the robust SQL database engine
SOLID Server.
SOLID Server is a unique product by Solid Information Technology
Ltd, a privately held innovator of database
technologies.
To download your own copy of SOLID Desktop for Linux, access
http://www.solidtech.com/linuxfre.htm to find a site near you.
Additional Information:
The Elsop Webmaster Resource Center Contains links and comprehensive
coverage of computer industry trade publications,
website development, HTML, servers, validators,
link checkers, and software for webmasters.
Major sections include:
Produced and Sponsored by the
Electronic Software Publishing Corporation
http://www.elsop.com/linkscan
Do you consider yourself witty? Do you want to show your fabulous sense of
humor to the world? NOW IS YOUR CHANCE!
For several years now Linux Journal has been considering adding a monthly cartoon to
our magazine. We know who we could have "draw" the cartoons, but we really
don't have any idea what the jokes should be.
Please contribute any ideas you have for "Linux related" cartoons. The type
of cartoon we are imagining are one panel cartoons akin to what they have in
magazines like the New Yorker.
So send us your
favorite Linux jokes (one liners are best), and we will turn them into
cartoons.
For a good time, check out this website!
http://www.lightlink.com/fors/press/net-history.txt
There is a new user's group for Linux in Knoxvill, TN
They are called the Knoxville's Linux Users Base. Check out the web page
at
http://klub.ml.org
Take a look at the AfterStep Themes
page! Trae Mc Combs has been devoting some time to creating themes for
http://www.mindspring.com/~xwindow/as.html
Software Development Corporation http://www.sdcorp.com is working on
releasing version 7 of Corel's WordPerfect for Linux. It's expected to
ship sometime in April, with beta testing currently taking place.
Their webpages seem to warn that only beta testers have access to the
software, but following the links takes you to the download area where
they're freely available.
Here is a URL that has some interesting data:
http://fampm201.tu-graz.ac.at/karl/timings30.html 8 of the 10 fastest machines are running the Mac OS! the first windows
machine doesn't make a showing until 11th place( a pentium pro 200Mhz
running Windows NT 4.0) Incidently this ppro 200 is beat by a Mac 7500
150 Mhz!
You might wonder how this can be when the SPECint95 for Pentium Pros and
for Power PC 604's are so close? Its the operating system dummy!
What do I mean?
The Intel machines and the Macs are pretty equal, its Windows that slows
things down. If you check out the URL you'll see that although 8 of the
top ten are Macs or Mac clones, 2 of them are Intel pentium Pro 200Mhz
machines. Sadly for the Mac, the number one spot is a Pentium Pro 200
with 64 Meg RAM and a 256kb L2 cache running LINUX 2.0.27.
This barely beats the number 2 machine, a 225Mhz Power Tower Pro from
Power Computing with 256 Meg RAM and a 1Meg L2 cache.
The other Intel in the top 10 is a Pentium Pro 200Mhz with 128Meg Ram and
256Kb L2 cache, running NeXT STEP 3.3.
I don't think that Mac owners should be ashamed of losing to a LINUX
machine. LINUX is the result of an amazing effort put forth by many
dedicated programmers to produce a state of the art 32bit operating
system that utilizes hardware to the fullest. Mac users should be happy
that they can go head to head with such an OS, and still maintain the
great human interface of the Mac!
The only other contender is a NeXT machine! Wait'll your windows friends
see redbox!
Oh, BTW the first Win '95 machine doesn't make a showing until 15th
place. its a Pentium pro 200, 64 MB, 256kb, OS: Win95 and is just below a
PowerMac 7600/120, 48MB, 256kb, MacOS!
So if a windows user tells you their machine is faster, tell them that
you know...if they switch to LINUX.
The development of 'wp', a word processor for the Linux environment has
recently been started. Although it's primary goal is a Linux-based word
processor, wp will eventually be available for many other platforms.
WP is an open system, object orientated, and object driven; written mainly
using C++, although little code has of yet been written. The current
objective is a full design specification/mission statement and determining
the current products that can be used to help the development of the
product further.
Because of this openness, it is proposed to have the user interface
seperate from the main program; the reason for this meaning that the user
can choose whichever interface suits them best, from a ncurses driven text
interface to an X-Windows display using different widget sets.
The web site for Wp is at http://sunsite.unc.edu/paulc/wp
If you wish to obtain the design specification notes for wp, they are also
available at the above site.
A FAQ is currently being prepared, if you have any questions or
suggestions, please send them to wp@squiznet.demon.co.uk
If you wish to contribute to the project in any form, please contact
paulc@sunsite.unc.edu and introduce yourself, a copy of which will be sent
to the wp-developers mailing list unless you specifically state that you
do not wish for this to happen.
Xcoral-3.0 has been released and now available on the Net.
Xcoral is a multiwindow mouse-based text editor for
the X Window System. It contains a built-in browser that enables you to
navigate through C functions, C++ classes, Java classes, methods and files.
It also contains a SMall Ansi C Interpreter (Smac) which is also built-in
to extend the editor's possibilities
(user functions, key bindings, modes etc).
Xcoral provides variable width fonts, menus, toolbar,
scrollbars, buttons, search, regions, kill-buffers, macros and
undo. An on-line manual box, with a table of contents
and an index, helps you to use and customize the editor.
Xcoral also offers facilities to write Latex documents
and Html pages.
Xcoral is a direct Xlib client and runs on color/bw
X Display.
OS: SunOS 4.1.x, Solaris 2.[45], LINUX, AIX, HPUX,
IRIX and OSF-1.
Changes from xcoral-2.5:
The Linux/Alpha team at Digital Equipment Corporation
today is releasing a developers' beta version of EM86, a Linux/x86
emulator for Linux/Alpha. Using components of the
DIGITAL FX!32 technology, EM86 is a software emulator that enables
Linux/Alpha systems to run Linux/x86 software without modification.
EM86 currently supports statically linked and dynamically linked x86
ELF32 binaries under Linux/Alpha. Future enhancements will include
support for iBCS-2 compliant executables, improved emulator performance,
and interoperation with native Alpha code. A release incorporating
these features is anticipated in July, 1997.
They are releasing a beta version of EM86 at this time to provide
Linux developers early access to the software, to aid in the
verification of software packages, and to provide feedback and bug
reports to the Linux/Alpha team.
The following Linux/x86 software packages run successfully on this
beta version of EM86, with some qualifications as described in the
README file included in the distribution:
EM86 may be obtained via anonymous ftp from:
ftp://ftp.digital.com/pub/DEC/Linux-Alpha/em86
XForms V0.86 is now available from:
XForms is a graphical user interface toolkit and builder based on Xlib
for X Window Systems. XForms is a portable and efficient C library
that can be used in both C and C++ programs.
The library works in all visuals and all depths (1-24) and comes
with a rich set of objects such as buttons (of many flavors, including color
XPMs as labels) , browsers, sliders, and menus integrated into an
elegant event/object callback execution model that allows fast and
easy construction of X-applications. It also has OpenGL (on SGI) and
Mesa support.
XForms comes bundled with
perl, ada95, python and fortran bindings to xforms are in alpha/beta.
Please visit the xforms' home page for more info.
Debian 1.3 is now in beta test. We are performing a month-long test
with an organized quality control team. If you'd like to be an official
beta tester, please contact Dale Scheetz dwarf@polaris.net .
The Debian 1.3 files are under the "frozen" directory on most of the
Debian mirror sites. There are now 73 Debian mirrors worldwide! You can
find the mirror list at
ftp://ftp.debian.org/debian/README.mirrors or
ftp://debian.crosslink.net/pub/debian/README.mirrors. Please consider
that this is beta-quality software and there will be bugs. If you have
any problem, please see the information on our bug-tracking system
at http://www.debian.org/support.html, or write to Dale at the above
address.
Announcing the public availability of the Freedom
Desktop Lite. Freedom Desktop Lite is a
desktop environment/GUI integrated to the Unix
environment. It
helps users interact with Unix quickly and efficiently. Freedom
Desktop runs transparently in a variety of Unix environments,
from Desktop computers (i.e. Linux) to enterprise workstations.
The Freedom Desktop Lite environment bundles the following
applications:
From: Aaron M. Lee aaron@shifty.adosea.com Howdy Jim,
My name's Aaron and I am sysadmin Cybercom Corp., an ISP in
College Station, TX. We run nothing but Linux, and have been involved w/
a lot of hacking and development on a number of projects. I have an
unusual problem and have exhausted my resources for finding an answer- so
I thought you might be able to help me out, if you've got the time.
Anyway, here goes...
I've got a scsi disk I was running under Sparclinux that has 3
partitions, 1 Sun wholedisk label, 2 ext2. That machine had a heart
attack, and we don't have any spare Hypersparcs around- but I _really_
need to be able to mount that drive to get some stuff off of it. I compiled
in UFS fs support w/ Sun disklabel support into the kernel of an i386 Linux
box, but the when I try to mount it, it complains that /dev/sd** isn't a
valid block device, w/ either the '-t ufs' or '-t ext2' options. Also,
fdisk thinks the fs is toast, and complains that the blocks don't end
in physical boundaries (which is probably the case for an fdisk that
doesn't know about Sun disklabels), and can't even tell that the
partitions are ext2 (it thinks one of them is AIX!). Any ideas?
However I'm going to step back from the that question
and ask the broader question:
"How do you recover the (important) data off of
that disk in a usable form?"
Then I'll step back even further and ask:
"How important is that data? (what is its
recovery worth to you)?"
... and If you are like most ISP's out there -- you have not
disaster or recovery plans, and little or no backup
strategy. Your boss essentially asks you to running
back and forth on the high wire at top speed -- without
a net.
As a professional sysadmin you must resist the pressure
to perform in this manner -- or at least you owe it to
yourself to carefully spell out the risks.
In this case you had a piece of equipment that was
unique the Sparc system -- so that any failure of
any of its components would result in the lack of
access to all data on that system.
Your question makes it clear that you didn't have
sufficiently recent backups of the data on that
system (otherwise the obvious solution would be
to restore the data to some other system and
reformat the drive in question).
My advice would be to rent (or even borrow) a
SPARC system for a couple of days (a week is a
common minimum rental period) -- and install
the disk into that.
Before going to the expense of renting a system
(or buying a used one) you might want to ensure
that the drive is readable at the lowest physical
level. Try the dd command on that device. Something
like:
... should let you know if the hardware is operational.
If that doesn't work -- double and triple-check all of the
cabling, SCSI ID settings, termination and other hardware
compatibility issues. (You may be having some weird problem
with a SCSI II differential drive connecting to an
incompatible controller -- if this is an Adaptec 1542B
-- be sure to break it in half before throwing it away
to save someone else the temptation (the 1542C series is
fine but the B series is *BAD*)).
Once you are reasonably confident that the hardware
is talking to your system I'd suggest doing a direct,
bitwise, dump of the disk to a tape drive. Just use a
command like:
... if you don't have a sufficiently large tape drive
(or at least a sufficiently large spare hard disk) *and
can't get one* than consider looking for a better
employer.
Once you have a tape backup you can always get back
to where you are now. This might not seem so great
(since you're clearly not where you'd like to be) but
it might be infinitely preferable to where you'll be
if you have a catastrophic failure on mounting/fsck'ing
that disk.
For the broader problem (the organizational ones rather
than the technical ones) -- you need to review
the requirements and expectations of your employer --
and match those against the resources that are being
provided.
If they require/expect reliable access to their data --
they must provide resources towards that end. The most
often overlooked resource (in this case) is sysadmin
time and training. You need the time to develop
disaster/recovery plans -- and the resources to test
them. (You'd be truly horrified at the number of sites
that religiously "do backups" but have an entire staff that
has never restored a single file from those).
Many organizations can't (or won't) afford a full spare
system -- particularly of their expensive Sparc stations.
They consider any system that's sitting on a shelf to be a
"waste." -- This is a perfectly valid point of view.
However -- if the production servers and systems are
contributing anything to the companies bottom line --
there should be a calculable cost for down time. If that's
the case then there is a basis for comparison to the costs of
rentals, and the costs of "spare" systems.
Organizations that have been informed of this risks and
costs (by there IS staff) and continue to be unwilling or
unable to provide the necessary resources will probably
fail.
From:Steven W., steven@gator.net Can you help me? Do you know of a Unix (preferably Linux) emulator
that runs under Windows95?
-- Steven.
Longer Answer:
This is a tough question because it really doesn't
*mean* anything. An emulator is a piece of software
that provide equivalent functionality to other software
or hardware. Hopefully this software is indistinguishable
from the "real" thing in all ways that count.
(Usually this isn't the case -- most VT100
terminal emulation packages have bugs in them
-- and that is one of the least complicated
and most widespread cases of emulation in the
world).
A Unix "emulator" that ran under Win '95 would probably not be
of much use. However I have to ask what set of features
you want emulated?
Do you want a Unix-like command shell (like
Korn or Bash)? This would give you some of the
"feel" of Unix.
Do you want a program that emulates one of the
GUI's that's common on Unix? There are X Windows
"display servers" (sort of like "emulators") that
run under NT and '95. Quarterdeck's eXpertise
would be the first I would try.
Do you want a program that allows you to run
some Unix programs under Win '95? There are
DOS, OS/2, and Windows (16 and 32 bit) ports of
many popular Unix programs -- including most of
the GNU utilities. Thus bash, perl, awk, sed,
vi, emacs, tar, and hundreds of other utilities
can be had -- most of them for free.
Do you want to run pre-compiled Unix binaries
under Win '95? This would be a very odd request
since there are dozens of implementations of
Unix for the PC platform and hundreds for other
architectures (ranging from Unicos on Cray super-
computers to Minix and Coherent on XT's and 286's).
Binary compatibility has playing only a tiny role
in the overall Unix picture. I suspect that
supporting iBCS (a standard for Unix binaries on
intel processors -- PC's) under Win '95 would be a
major technical challenge (and probably never
provide truly satisfying results).
*note*: One of the papers presented at Usenix in
Anaheim a couple of months ago discussed the
feasibility of implementing an improved Unix
subsystem under NT -- whose claim of POSIX support
as proven to be almost completely useless in the
real world. Please feel free to get a copy of
the Usenix proceeding if you want the gory details
on that. It might be construed as a "Unix emulation"
for Windows NT -- and it might even be applicable to
Win '95 -- with enough work.
If you're willing to run your Windows programs
under Unix there's hope. WABI currently supports
a variety of 16-bit Windows programs under Linux
(and a different version support them under Solaris).
Also work is continuing on the WINE project -- and
some people have reported some success in running
Windows 3.1 in "standard mode" under dosemu (the
Linux PC BIOS emulator). The next version of WABI
is expect to support (at least some) 32-bit Windows
programs.
My suggestion -- if this is of any real importance to you --
is that you either boot between Unix and DOS/Windows or that
you configure a separate machine as a Unix host -- put it in
a corner -- and using your Win '95 system as a terminal,
telnet/k95 client and/or an X Windows "terminal" (display
server).
By running any combination of these programs on your Windows
box and connecting to your Linux/Unix system you won't have
to settle for "emulation." You'll have the real thing --
from both sides. In fact one Linux system can serve as the
"Unix emulation adapter" for about as many DOS and Windows
systems as you care to connect to it.
(I have one system at a client site that has about 32Mb
of RAM and 3Gb -- it's shared by about 300 shell and
POP mail users. Granted only about 20 or 30 of them are
ever shelled at any given time but it's no where near it's
capacity).
I hope this gives you some idea why your question is
a little non-sensical. Operating systems can be viewed
from three sides -- user interface (UI), applications
programming interface (API), and supported hardware
(architecture).
Emulating one OS under another might refer to emulating
the UI, or the API or both. Usually emulation of the
hardware support is not feasible (i.e. we can't run DOS
device drivers to provide Linux hardware support).
If one implemented the full set of Unix system calls
in a Win '95 program that provided a set of "drivers"
to translate a set of Unix like hardware abstractions
into calls to the Windows device drivers -- and one
ported a reasonable selection of software to run under
this "WinUnix kernel" -- one could call that "Unix emulation."
However it would be more accurate to say that you had
implemented a new version of Unix on a virtual machine
which you hosted under Windows.
Oddly enough this is quite similar to what the Lucent
(Formerly Bell Labs?) Inferno package does. Inferno
seems to have evolved out of the Plan 9 research project
-- which apparently was Dennis Ritchie's pet project for
a number of years. I really don't know enough about
the background of this package -- but I have a CD
(distributed to attendees of the aforementioned Usenix
conference) which has demo copies of Inferno for several
"virtual machine" platforms (including Windows and Linux).
Inferno is also available as a "native" OS for a couple
of platforms (where it includes it's own device drivers
and is compiled as direct machine code for a machine's
platform).
One reason I mention Inferno is that I've heard that
it offers features and semantics that are very similar
to those that are common in Unix. I've heard it described
as a logical outgrowth of Unix that eschews some of the
accumulation of idiosyncrasies that has plagued Unix.
One of these days I'll have to learn more about that.
-- Steven.
There are basically three ways to deal with a lack of
XFree86 support for your video card:
Be sure to contact the manufacturer to ask for a
driver. Point out that they may be able to make
small changes to an existing XFree86 driver. You
can even offer to help them find a volunteer
(where you post to the comp.os.linux.dev...sys.
newsgroup and one or two of the developer's mailing
lists -- and offer some support). Just offering to
do some of the "legwork" maybe be a significant
contribution.
This is an opportunity to be a "Linux-Activist."
--
Jim
From:Charles A. Barrassocharles@blitz.com
In any event, the short answer is: You don't.
The PC architecture doesn't support using multiple
VGA/EGA cards concurrently. I don't think XFree86 can
work with CGA cards (and who'd want to!). You might
be able to get a Hercules compatible Monochrome Graphics
Adapter (MGA) to work concurrently with a VGA card (since
they don't use overlapping address spaces). I don't know
if this is the method that Metro-X supports.
There are specialized video adapters (typically very expensive
-- formerly in the $3000+ range) that can co-exist with
VGA cards. Two sets of initials that I vaguely recall are
TIGA and DGIS. Considering that you seem unwilling to
pay $100 (tops) for a copy of Metro-X I think these --
even if you can still find any of them -- are way out of
your price league.
Another, reasonable, alternative is to connect a whole
Xterminal or another whole system and run X on that. You
can then remotely display your windows on that about as
easily as you could set them to display on the local
server.
(I know -- you might not get some cool window manager
to let you drag windows from one display server to another
-- a trick which I've seen done with Macs under MacOS and
with Suns and SGI's. But I've never set one of those up
anyway -- so I couldn't begin to help you there).
You might double check with the Metro-X people to see
what specific hardware is required/supported by their
multiple display feature and then check with the XFree86.org
to see if anyone has any drivers for one of those supported
configurations.
As a snide note I find your phrase "that costs money :("
to be mildly offensive. First the cost of an additional
monitor has got to be at least 3 times the price of
a copy of Metro-X. Second "free" software is not about
"not having to pay money."
I'm not trying to sell you a copy of Metro-X here. I
don't use it -- and I specifically choose videos cards
that are supported by XFree86 when I buy my equipments.
Likewise I don't recommend Linux to my customers because
it "doesn't cost them anything." In fact it does cost
them the time it takes me to install, configure and maintain
it -- which goes for about $95/hr currently. I recommend
Linux because it is a better tool for many jobs -- and because
the benefits of it's being "free" -- in the GNU sense of the
term -- are an assurance that no one can "have them over a
barrel" for upgrades or additional "licensing" fees. They are
always *free* to deploy Linux on as many systems as they want,
have as many users and/or processes as they want on any system,
make their own modifications to the vast majority of tools
on the system or hire any consultants they want to make the
customizations they need.
I'm sorry to be so "political" here -- but complaining
that Metro-X "costs money" and asking me for a way to
get around that just cost me about $50 worth of my time.
Heck -- I'll go double or nothing -- send my your postal
address and I'll buy you a copy of RedHat 4.1. That comes
with a license for one installation of Metro-X and only
costs about $50. I'll even cover the shipping and handling.
(Please call them first to make sure that it really does
support your intended hardware configuration).
--
Jim
From: Wietse Venema wietse@szv.sin.tue.nl Wietse
Do you know where there are any working examples of this
and the twist option posted to the 'net? I fight with
some of these and don't seem to get the right results.
What I'd like is an example that drops someone into a
chroot'd jail as "nobody" or "guest" and running a
copy of lynx if they are from one address -- but
lets them log in a a normal user if they are from an
internal address. (We'll assume a good anti-spoofing
packet-filter on the router(s)).
Did you ever add the chrootuid functionality to tcpd?
How would you feel about an option to combine the
hosts.allow and hosts.deny into just tcpd.conf?
(I know I can already put all the ALLOW and DENY
directives in a single file -- and I'm not much of a
programmer but even *I* could patch my own copy to
change the filename -- I'm just talking about the
general case).
SERVER ENDPOINT PATTERNS (which is what he said one to me when I suggested merging
his chrootuid code with tcpd).
I've blind copied Wietse on this (Hi!). I doubt he has
time to read the Linux Gazette.
--
Jim
From:Wietse Venema, wietse@wzv.win.tue.nl
--
Weitse
From:Kenneth Ng, kenng@kpmg.com And that's it. Granted ssh is better. But sometimes you have to go
somewhere that
only supports ftp.
You can also use various Perl and Python libraries (or classes)
to open ftp sessions and control them. You could use 'expect'
to spawn and control the ftp program.
All of these methods are more flexible and much more robust
than using the standard ftp client with redirection ("here"
document or otherwise).
--
Jim
From: Stephen P. Smith, ischis@evergreen.com If I try an anonymous ftp session, the email password is rejected.
what are the possible sources of failure?
where should i be going for more help? :-)
Did you compile a different path for the ftpaccess file
(like /usr/local/etc/)?
What authentication libraries are you using (old
fashioned DES hashes in the /etc/passwd, shadow,
shadow with MD5 hashes -- like FreeBSD's default,
or the new PAM stuff)?
Is this invoked through inetd.conf with tcpd
(the TCP Wrappers)? If so, what does your /var/log/messages
say after a login failure? (Hint: use the command:
'tail -f /var/log/messages > /dev/tty7 &' to leave a continuously
updated copy of the messages file sitting on one of your
-- normally unused -- virtual consoles).
One trick I've used to debug inetd launched programs (like
ftpd and telnetd) is to wedge a copy of strace into the
loop. Change the reference to wu.ftpd to trace.ftpd --
create a shell or perl script named trace.ftpd that consists
of something like:
... and then inspect the strace file for clues about
what failed. (This is handy for finding out that the
program couldn't find a particular library or configuration
file -- or some weird permissions problems, etc).
--
Jim
From: Yash Khemani, khemani@plexstar.com i am guessing that the lilo floppy does not have on it the pcmcia
drivers. what is the solution at this point to run RedHat on this
machine?
There are a couple of ways to solve the problem.
I'd suggest LOADLIN.EXE.
LOADLIN.EXE is a DOS program (which you might have
guessed by the name) -- which can load a Linux kernel
(stored as a DOS file) and pass it parameters (like
LILO does). Basically LOADLIN loads a kernel (Linux or
FreeBSD -- possibly others) which then "kicks" DOS
"out from under it." In other words -- it's a one-way
trip. The only way back to DOS is to reboot (or
run dosemu ;-) .
LOADLIN is VCPI compatible -- meaning that it can run
from a DOS command prompt even when you have a memory
manager (like QEMM) loaded. You can also set LOADLIN
as your "shell" in the CONFIG.SYS. That's particularly
handy if you're using any of the later versions of DOS
that support a multi-boot CONFIG.SYS (or you're using the
MBOOT.SYS driver that provided multi-boot features in
older versions of DOS).
To use LOADLIN you may have to create a REALBIOS.INT
file (a map of the interrupt vectors that are set by
your hardware -- before any drivers are loaded).
To do this you use a program (REALBIOS.EXE) to create
a special boot floppy, then you boot off that floppy
(which records the interrupt vector table in a file)
-- reboot back off your DOS system and run the second
stage of the REALBIOS.EXE.
This little song and dance may be necessary for each
hardware configuration. (However you can save and
copy each of the REALBIOS.INT files if you have a
couple of configurations that you switch between --
say, with a docking station and without).
With LOADLIN you could create a DOS bootable floppy,
with a copy of LOADLIN.EXE and a kernel (and the
REALBIOS.INT -- if it exists). All of that will
just barely fit on a 1.44M floppy.
Another way to do this would be to create a
normal DOS directory on your laptop's IDE drive --
let's call it C:\LINUX (just to be creative).
Then you'd put your LOADLIN.EXE and as many different
kernels as you liked in that directory -- and maybe
a batch file (maybe it could be called LINUX.BAT) to
call LOADLIN with your preferred parameters. Here's a
typical LINUX.BAT:
(where LNX2029.KRN might be a copy of the Linux-2.0.29
kernel -- with a suitable DOS name).
I'd also recommend another batch file (SINGLE.BAT) that
loads Linux in single-user mode (for fixing things when
they are broken). That would replace the LOADLIN line
in the LINUX.BAT with a line like:
Another way to do all of this is to simply dd a
properly configured kernel to a floppy. You use the
rdev command to patch the root device flags in the
kernel and dump it to a floppy. This works because
a Linux kernel is designed to work as a boot image.
The only problem with this approach is that it doesn't
allow you to pass any parameters to your kernel (to
force single user mode, to select an alternate root
device/filesystem, or whatever).
For other people who have a DOS system and want to
try Linux -- but don't want to "commit" to it with
a "whole" hard drive -- I recommend DOSLINUX.
A while back there was a small distribution called
MiniLinux (and another called XDenu) which could
install entirely within a normal DOS partition --
using the UMSDOS filesystem. Unfortunately MiniLinux
has not been maintained -- so it's stuck with a 1.2
kernel and libraries.
There were several iterations of a distribution called
DILINUX (DI= "Drop In") -- which appears to have eventually
evolved into DOSLINUX. The most recent DOSLINUX seems was
uploaded to the Incoming at Sunsite within the last two
weeks -- it includes a 2.0.29 kernel.
The point MiniLinux and DOSLINUX is to allow one to install
a copy of Linux on a DOS system as though it were a DOS
program. DOSLINUX comes as about 10Mb of compressed
files -- and installs in about 20-30Mb of DOS file space.
It includes Lynx, Minicom, and a suite of other utilities
and applications.
All in all this is a quick and painless way to try Linux.
So, if you have a DOS using friend who's sitting on the fence,
give them a copy of DOSLINUX and show them how easy it is.
thanks!
--
Jim
The main points of my article are that C-Kermit is a
telnet and rlogin client as well as a serial communications
program -- and that it is a scripting language that's
available on just about every platform around.
I know about Telix' support for the kermit transfer protocol.
It sucks. On my main system I get about 1900 cps for
ZMODEM transfers -- about 2200 for kermit FAST (between
a copy of C-Kermit 5A(188) and 6.0.192 and about 70 cps
(yes -- seventy!) between a copy of C-Kermit and Telix'
internal kermit.
Other than that I've always liked Telix. Minicom has
nice ncurses and color -- but is not nearly as featureful
or stable as either Telix for DOS or any version of C-Kermit.
Your line hangups probably have to do with your settings for
carrier-watch. Try SET CARRIER-WATCH OFF or ON and see if
it still "hangs" your line. I suspect that its actually just
doing read() or write() calls in "blocking" mode. You might
have to SET FLOW-CONTROL NONE, too. There are lots of
C-Kermit settings. If you continue to have trouble -- post
a message to the comp.protocols.kermit.misc newsgroup
(preferred) or send a message to kermit-support@columbia.edu.
When I first started using C-Kermit (all of about two months
ago) my initial questions where answered by Frank da Cruz
himself (he's the creator of the Kermit protocol and the
technical lead of the Kermit project at Columbia University).
(That was before he knew that I'm a "journalist" -- O.K.
quit laughing!). Frank is also quite active in the newsgroup.
I think he provides about 70 or 80 per cent of the technical
support for the project.
Oh yeah! If you're using C-Kermit you should get the
_Using_C-Kermit_ book. It was written by Frank da Cruz and
Christine Gianone -- and is the principal source of funding
for the Kermit project. From what I gather a copy of the
book is your license to use the software.
--
Jim
From: Robert Rambo, robert.rambo@yale.edu
That is completely reasonable. If you have a 2Mb video
card and you run it in 1024x768x256 or 1024x768x16 --
then you try to run it with twice as many colors --
the video RAM has to come from somewhere. So it
bumps you down to 800x600 or 640x480. These are just
examples. I don't deal with graphics much so I'd have
to play with a calculator to figure the actual maximum
modes that various amounts of video RAM could support.
There are alot of settings in the XConfig file. You
may be able to tweak them to do much more with your
existing video card. As I've said before -- XConfig
files are still magic to me. They shifted from blackest
night to a sort of charcoal gray -- but I can't do them
justice in a little article hear. Pretty much I'd have
to lay hands on it -- and mess with it for a couple of
hours (and I'm definitely not the best one for that job).
If you haven't upgraded to a newer XFree86 (3.2?) then
this would be a good time to try that. The newer one
is much easier to configure and supports a better selection
of hardware -- to a better degree than the older versions.
I haven't heard of any serious bugs or problems with
the upgrades.
You may also want to consider one of the commercial servers.
Definitely check with them in advance to be absolutely certain
that your hardware is supported before you buy. Ask around in
the newsgroups for opinions about your combination of hardware.
It may be that the XFree86 supports you particular card better
than Metro-X or whatever.
You may also want to look at beefing up your video hardware.
As I've said -- I don't know the exact figures -- but I'd
say that you probably need a 4Mb card for anything like
16bpp at 1024x768. You should be able to look up the
supported modes in your card's documentation or on the
manufacturer's web site or BBS.
It doesn't matter whether you use xdm or not. If you
put the desired mode in the XConfig file. However --
since you don't you could just write your own wrapper
script, alias or shell function to call 'startx' with
the -- -bpp16 options. You could even re-write 'startx'
(it is just a shell script). That may seem like cheating --
but it may be easier than fighting your way through the
XConfig file (do you get the impression that I just don't
like that thing -- it is better than a WIN.INI or a
SYSTEM.INI -- but not be much).
--
Jim Dennis,
From: Brian Moore, bem@thorin.cmc.net
I heard that NS "Communicator" (the next release
Netscape's Navigator series is apparently going to
come with a name change) supports IMAP -- but it's
possible to implement this support as just a variant
of POP -- get all the message and immediately
expunge all of them from the server.
It seems that this is how Eric S. Raymond's 'fetchmail'
treating IMAP mail boxes -- as of about 2.5 (it seems
that he's up to 3.x now)
I personally avoid GUI's like the plague. I'm
typing this from my laptop, through a null modem link
to my machine in the other room.
I run emacs under screen -- so I can use mh-e for most
mail, Gnus for netnews and for some of my mailing lists
(it can show news folders as though they were threaded
news groups). screen allows me to detach my session from
my terminal so I can log out, take off with the laptop,
and re-attach to the same session later (via modem or when
I get back home).
Does that one also support APOP's authentication
mechanism (which I gather prevents disclosing your
password over an untrusted network by using something
like an MD5 hash of your password concatenated with
a date and time string -- or something like that)?
Does qpopper allow you to maintain a POP user account
file that's separate from your /etc/passwd file?
Do you know of an IMAP server that supports these
sorts of features (secure authentication and separate
user base)?
(I know this probably seems like a switch -- the
so called "Answer Guy" asking all the questions --
but hey -- I've got to get my answers from *somewhere*)
--
Jim
From: Graham Todd, gtodd@yorku.ca
The Netscape's Communicator 4.0b2 thing does too but there are so many
other ugly bits that I'm not gonna bite.
Jeez pretty soon with this fancy new IMAP stuff you'll be able to do
almost as much as you can right now with emacs and ange-ftp (which I
use regularly to access remote mail folders and boxes with out having
to login - it's all set up in .netrc).
Of course the answer is almost always "emacs" .... BTW Linux
makes a GREAT program loader for emacs ;-)
WARNING: In a week or so when I get time I'm gonna ask you a tricky
question about emacs and xemacs.
So -- the question comes up -- what permissions are set on
your /dev/tty* nodes. It seems that most Linux distributions
are set up to have the login process chown the these to to the
current user (and something seems to restore them during or after
logout).
I don't know enough about the internals of this process.
I did do a couple of experiments with the 'script' command
and 'strace' using commands like:
... and eyeballing the trace file. This shows how the
script command (which uses a psuedo tty -- or pty) searches
for an available device.
I then did a simple 'chown 600 /dev/ttyp*' as root
(this leaves a bunch of /dev/ttyq* and /dev/ttyr nodes
available). The 'script' command then reports that
the system is "out of pty's."
Obviously the script command on my system don't
do a very thorough search for pty's. It effectively
only looks at the first page of them.
The next test I ran was to add a new line to my
/etc/services file (which I called stracetel) -- and
a new line to me /etc/inetd.conf that referred to it.
This line looks like this:
... all on one line, of course.
Then I connected to that with the command:
This gives me an strace of how telnetd handles the
allocation and preparation of a pty. Here, as I suspected,
I saw chown() and chmod() calls after telnetd did it's
search through to list of pty's to find the first one.
Basically both programs (and probably most other
pty clients) attempt to open each pty until one returns
a valid file descriptor or handle. (It might be nice
if there was a system call or a daemon that would allow
programs to just say "give me a pty" -- rather than forcing
a flurry of failed open attempts -- but that's probably too
much to ask for.
There result of these experiments suggests that there
are many ways of handling pty's -- and some of them may
have to be set as compile time options for your system.
It may be that you just need to make all the pty's
mode 666 (which they are on my system) or you might
chgrp them to a group like tty or pty, make them mode
660 and make all the pty using programs on your system
SGID.
I've noticed that all of my pty's are 666 root.root
(my tty's root.tty and ttyS*'s are root.uucp all are
mode 660 and all programs that need to open them are
either root run (getty) or SGID as appropriate).
Some of the policies for ownership and permissions are
set my your distribution. Red Hat 2.x is *old* and
some of these policies may have changed in the 3.03 and
4.1 releases. Mine is a 3.03 with *lots* of patches,
updated RPM's and manually installed tarballs.
Frankly I don't know *all* of the security implications
of having your /dev/tty* set to mode 666. Obviously
normal attempt to open any of these while they're in
use return errors (due to the kernel locking mechanisms).
Other attempts to access them (through shell redirection,
for example) seem to block on I/O. I suspect that a
program that improperly opened it's tty (failed to
set the "exclusive" flag on the open call) would be
vulnerable.
Since you're an emacs fan -- maybe you can tell me --
is there an mh-e/Gnus IMAP client?
Yes it's called EFS - it preserves all the functionality but is more
tightly meshed with dired - supposedly it will be easier to use EFS in
other elisp packages (I don't know why or how this would be so).
--
Jim
From: David J. Weis, weisd3458@uni.edu
This would all be running on RedHat 4 over dialup uucp. The system in Des
Moines uses uucp over tcp because it has to share the line with
masquerading, etc.
Thanks for any advice or pointers you have.
My uucp mostly works but I haven't configured it to
run over TCP yet. I also haven't configured my
system to route to any uucp hosts within my domain.
You can address mail to a uucp host through a
DNS by using the '%' operator. For example I can
get my main mail system (antares.starshine.org) to
forward mail to my laptop using an address like:
... the DNS MX record for starshine.org routes
mail to my ISP. My ISP then spools it up in UUCP
until my machine (antares) picks it up. The
name antares is basically transparent to most of
this process.
When antares gets the mail it converts the
percent sign into a "bang" (!) and spools it
for mercury (which happens to be my laptop).
Obviously requiring all of your customers and
correspondents to use percent signs in their addressing
to your users is not going to work very well. It will
probably result in alot of lost mail, alot of complaints
and a constant barrage of support calls.
There are two ways to make your internal mail routing
transparent to the rest of world. You can create a
master aliases list on your mail hub (the easy way) or
you can create DNS and MX entries for each of the hosts.
If you'd like more help we could arrange to talk on
the phone. UUCP is difficult to set up for the first
time (nearly vertical initial learning curve). Once it's
set up it seems to be pretty low maintenance. However
my meta-carpus can't handle explaining the whole process
via e-mail (and I don't understand enough of it well to
be brief).
--
Jim
From: Barry, remenyi@hotmailcom I run Redhat 4.1 with mtools already installed, with it, I can copy a
file to or from a dos disk in A: with mcopy etc..
But if I change the disk & do mdir, it tells gives me the listing of
what was in the last disk. The only solution is to wait hours for the
cache to expire before I can look at another disk.
The problem occurs no matter how I access the floppy, I also tried using
dosemu, and mount, but I have the same problem. I can read and write
from the first disk that I put in with no problems, but if I change the
disk, the computer acts as if the first disk is still in the drive. It
also doesn't matter who I am loged in as eg. root has the same problem.
I also upgraded mtools to 3.3 but no change.
Is there some way to disable the disk cache (I assume thats the problem)
for the floppy drive?
There's a pretty good chance that you'd see the same thing
under DOS too.
Unfortunately I don't know of an easy way to solve this
problem. You could try replacing the floppy ($30 or so)
the controller ($20 -- to ???) and/or the cable.
If that's not feasible in your case you could try something
like a mount/sync/umount (on a temporary mount point).
This might force the system to detect the new floppy. It's
very important not to try to write anything to a floppy when the
system is confused about which floppy is in there.
DOS systems that I have used -- while they were afflicted
with this problem -- sometimes severely trash the directories
on a diskette in that situation.
It probably doesn't even matter if the mount, sync, umount
that I describe fails -- just so the system is forced to
"rethink" what's there. I'd consider writing a short script
to do this -- put a temporary mount point that's "user" accessible
to avoid having to be root to do this (and especially to avoid
having to create any SUID root perl scripts or write a C wrapper
or any of that jazz).
Here's a sample line for your /etc/fstab:
(according to my man pages the "user" options should
imply the nosuid, nodev etc. options -- which prevent
certain other security problems).
So your chdisk script might look somethi
first parameter - number of bytes
second - begin of output names, e.g. p1
third - name of file to be chopped
#!/bin/bash
echo "* Begin of procedure Chop *"
date
# rm alte Datei
if test -e /usr/TFH/EXAMPLE
then rm /usr/TFH/EXAMPLE
fi
# Test auf Parameter
if test $# -lt 3
then echo "Incorrect number of parameters !
Please repeat procedure call !"
echo "* End of procedure Chop (error) *"
exit 1
else echo "Call was ok"
fi
#
BY=$1
ANZZ=$[(($BY / 20480) + 1)]
quantity=$ANZZ
i=1
recs=0
while test "$i" -lt "$quantity"
do
echo dd if=$3 of=$2_$i bs=1024 skip=$recs count=20 >> /usr/TFH/EXAMPLE
echo sz $2_$i >> /usr/TFH/EXAMPLE
echo rm $2_$i >> /usr/TFH/EXAMPLE
i="`expr $i + 1`"
recs="`expr $recs + 20`"
done
echo dd if=$3 of=$2_$i bs=1024 skip=$recs >> /usr/TFH/EXAMPLE
echo sz $2_$i >> /usr/TFH/EXAMPLE
echo rm $2_$i >> /usr/TFH/EXAMPLE
#
echo "* End of procedure Chop (ok) *"
#
Using ftp Commands in Shellscript
Using FTP as a shell-command with ftplib
ftpget sunsite.unc.edu -r /pub/Linux ls-lR.gz
This command reads the file /pub/Linux/ls-lR.gz from sunsite.unc.edu
Likewise there are other commands with the lib: ftpdir ,ftpsend, ftprm
Everybody tired of typing ftp... every evening to
get the latest patches or whatever. Everyone who is regularly copying
with ftp the same Datafiles.
Of course you can add it to you own application but more experienced users don't
have to use these r-commands anymore. An ftpd is available for the
majority of systems so it is easier to access more of them.
Of course, for any ftp session you need a user/paswdr. I copy into
public area using anonymous/email@ others will need to surly a
password at login, what is not very useful for regular jobs or
you have to use some kind of public login but still I think it's
easier and better to use than the r-cmds.
ACSII-Artwork Translator
I think you'll find the results to be pretty amusing, and slightly
more interesting than the usual bag of HTML table-tricks.
%{
/* Ascii-to-Table version 2.0
**
** A conversion utility to convert gifscii type ASCII-Artwork into
** grayscale HTML 3.0 compliant html documents using tables.
**
** Copyright(C) 1997 by Patrick J.M. Keane -- All rights reserved.
** (pkeane@wilkes.edu)
**
** This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
** it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
** the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
** (at your option) any later version.
**
** This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
** but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
** MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
** GNU General Public License for more details.
**
** You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
** along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
** Foundation, Inc., 675 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.
**
*/
#include
",
((shade1set==0) ? value : shade1),
((shade2set==0) ? value : shade2),
((shade3set==0) ? value : shade3)) ;
printf(" ") ;
}
main(int argc, char *argv[]) {
int c;
extern int optind;
extern char *optarg;
extern int opterr;
while ((c = getopt(argc, argv, "w:r:g:b:xh")) != EOF) {
switch (c) {
case 'x':
reverse = 1 ;
break;
case 'h':
fprintf(stderr, "Usage:\n\tcat asciifile | a2t [-h] [-x] [-[rgb] value] [-w width] > document.html\n\n") ;
fprintf(stderr, "\t-h : This help screen\n") ;
fprintf(stderr, "\t-x : Reverse output\n") ;
fprintf(stderr, "\t-r value : Constant R ", width) ;
else
printf(">") ;
printf ("
\n") ;
yylex() ;
printf(" ") ;
printf(" \n") ; }
" " { maketd("00") ; }
. { fprintf(stderr, "Warning: Character %s is not recognized.\n",
yytext) ;
fprintf(stderr, "Choosing a medium color!\n") ;
maketd("97") ; }
%%
void yyerror(char *msg) {
fprintf(stderr, "^GError :\tLine %d: %s at '%s'\n", yylineno, msg, yytext) ;
}
int yywrap() {
return (1);
}
Including Graphics in Linuxdoc SGML
Date: Thu, Apr 17, 1997 at 07:48:19PM +0200
You can already include PostScript images in Linuxdoc-SGML which
will get included in TeX output (and consequently in DVI and
PostScript). Linuxdoc-SGML doesn't support images for HTML,
however.
X Configuration Issues
From: Michael J. Hammel, mjhammel@emass.com
Multiple X Displays
From: Michael J. Hammel mjhammel@emass.com
Color Depths with X
From: Michael J. Hammel mjhammel@emass.com
After fiddling with the xf86config file in a concerted effort to coax X
into displaying 16 bit color, I was dismayed to learn that with my
current hardware (16 megs RAM and a Cirrus Logic GL-5426) 16 bit color
is *impossible*...not because of any hardware in-capability, but because
of a certain limitation of X Windows itself...a problem with linear
addressing. Seems that to have 16 bit color under X, one must have
linear addressing enabled, which only works if the system has *no more
than 14 megs RAM*.
Figuring Out the Boot Process
From: David Ishee dmi1@ra.MsState.Edu
One of the things that is confusing about Linux at first is which files
Linux uses to load programs and get the system started at bootup. Once
you figure out which programs are run during the boot process, which
order are they run? Here is an easy solution.
edit /etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit and add the following lines at the beginning
echo " "
echo "**** Running /etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit ****
echo " "
ftping Home
From: Kaj J. Niemi, kajtzu@4u.net
I read your article about ftping home with dynamic IPs.. Here's
something you might need if you get tired of looking at the screen every
time you want to find out the IP.
ADDRESS=`/sbin/ifconfig | awk 'BEGIN { pppok = 0}
/ppp.*/ { pppok = 1; next }
{if (pppok == 1 ) {pppok = 0; print} }'\
| awk -F: '{print $2 }'| awk '{print $1 }'`
This page maintained by the Assistant Editor of Linux Gazette,
gazette@ssc.com
Copyright © 1997 Specialized Systems Consultants, Inc. "Linux Gazette...making Linux just a little more fun!"
Contents:
News in General
GLUE Announcement
Every GLUE User Group To Receive Free Copy of BRU 2000 Backup And Restore
Utility
SOLID desktop for Linux offered free of charge to developers
Solid Information Technology Ltd, http://www.solidtech.com.
The Elsop Webmaster Resource Center
http:www.elsop.com/wrc/
Linux Jokes Wanted
Too Good Not To Print
New User's Group in Knoxville
AfterStep Themes Page
or
http://www.mindspring.com/~xwindow
Version 7 of Corel's WordPerfect for Linux
Computer Comparison
This web site is maintained by Karl Unterkofler, and has comparisons of
various computers running the latest versions of Mathemetica. Karl and
others run a series of tests on the machines, that involve timing
mathematical problems.
Word Processor for the Linux Environment
Software Announcements
Xcoral 3.0
Beta Version of EM86
XForms V0.86
Debian 1.3 Available for Beta Test
Freedom Desktop Lite Announced (1.01)
For more information and the ftp site feel free to visit http://freedom.lm.com/desktop.html
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 fun!"
The Answer Guy
By James T. Dennis
jimd@starshine.org
Starshine Technical Services,
http://www.starshine.org/ Contents:
fs's
Consider the nascent state of Sparc support for Linux
I'm not terribly surprised that you're having problems.
You seem to be asking:
"How do I get Linux/Intel to see the fs on
this disk?"
"What were the disaster plans, and why
are those plans inadequate for this
situation?"
dd if=/dev/sda | od | less
dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/st0
Thanks in advance for any possible help,
--Aaron
It's often the case that I respond with things that
I suspect my customer don't want to hear.
The loss of this data (or the time lost to recovering
it) is an opportunity to learn and plan -- you may
prevent the loss of much more important information
down the road if you now start planning for the
inevitable hardware and system failures.
Linux/Unix Emulator
Short Answer:
I don't know of one.
I have Windows95 and Linux on my system, on separate partitions, I
can't afford special equipment for having them on separate machines.
I really like Linux, and Xwindows, mostly because of their great
security features. (I could let anybody use my computer without
worrying about them getting into my personal files). Windows95's
pseudo-multi-user system sucks really bad. So, mainly, this is why I
like Linux. I also like the way it looks. Anyways, I would just run
Linux but my problem is that Xwindows doesn't have advanced support
for my video card, so the best I can get is 640x480x16colors and I
just can't deal with that. Maybe I'm spoiled. The guy I wrote on
the Xwin development team told me that they were working on better
support for my card, though. (Aliance Pro-Motion). But, meanwhile,
I can't deal with that LOW resolution. The big top-it-off problem is
that I don't know of anyway to have Linux running _while_ Win95 is
running, if there even is a way. If there was, it would be great,
but as it is I have to constantly reboot and I don't' like it. So
this is how I came to the point of asking for an emulator. Maybe
that's not what I need after all. So what can I do? Or does the
means for what I want not exist yet?
If you prefer the existing Linux/X applications and
user interface -- and the crux of the problem is support
for your video hardware -- focus on that. It's a simpler
problem -- and probably offers a simpler solution.
Using X with 2 Monitors and 2 Video Cards
I was wondering how I would go about using X with 2 monitors and 2
video cards? I am currently using XFree86 window manager. I know you
can do this with the MetroX window manager but that costs money :(.
I'm sure I gave a lengthy answer to this fairly recently.
Maybe it will appear in this month's issue (or maybe
I answered it on a newsgroup somewhere).
Thanks for the time,
No problem. (I did say "mildly" didn't I).
Virtual Hosting
tcpd has supported virtual hosting for more than two years. Below
is a fragment from the hosts_access(5) manual page.
Thanks for the quick response. I'll have to play with
that. I suppose a custom "virtual finderd" would
be a good experiment.
In order to distinguish clients by the network address
that they connect to, use patterns of the form:
process_name@host_pattern : client_list ...
Response from Weitse Venema
Do you know where there are any working examples of this
and the twist option posted to the 'net? I fight with
some of these and don't seem to get the right results.
Use "twist" to run a service that depends on destination address:
fingerd@host1: ALL: twist /some/where/fingerd-for-host1
What I'd like is an example that drops someone into a
chroot'd jail as "nobody" or "guest" and running a
copy of lynx if they are from one address -- but
lets them log in a a normal user if they are from an
internal address. (We'll assume a good anti-spoofing
packet-filter on the router(s)).
I have a little program called chrootuid that you could use.
Did you ever add the chrootuid functionality to tcpd?
I would do that if there was a performance problem. Two small
programs really is more secure than a bigger one.
How would you feel about an option to combine the
hosts.allow and hosts.deny into just tcpd.conf?
What about compatibility with 1 million installations world-wide?
(I know I can already put all the ALLOW and DENY
directives in a single file -- and I'm not much of a
programmer but even *I* could patch my own copy to
change the filename -- I'm just talking about the
general case).
This is because the language evolved over time. Compatibility can
become a pain in the rear.
Automatic File Transfer
In Linux Gazette, there is a mention of how to transfer files
automatically using ftp.
Here is how:
#!/bin/csh
ftp -n remote.site << !
user joe blow
binary
put newfile
quit
!
That's one of several ways. Another is to use ncftp
-- which supports things like a "redial" option to keep
trying a busy server until it gets through. ncftp also has
a more advanced macro facility than the standard .netrc (FTP).
Installing wu-ftpd on a Linux Box
I just installed wu-ftpd on my linux box. I have version 2.4.
I can login under one of my accounts on the system and everything
works just fine.
Do you have a user named 'ftp' in the /etc/passwd file?
done.
wu-ftpd takes that as a hint to allow *anonymous* FTP.
If you do have one -- or need to create one -- be sure that
the password for it is "starred out." wu-ftpd will not
authenticate against the system password that's defined for a
a user named "ftp."
done.
You should also set the shell to something like /bin/false or
/bin/sync (make sure that /bin/false is really a binary and
*not* a shell script -- there are security problems -- involve
IFS (inter-field separators) if you use a shell script in the
/etc/passwd shell field).
done.
There is an FAQ for anonymous FTP (that's not Linux specific).
There is also a How-To for FTP -- that is more Linux oriented.
If you search Yahoo! on "wu-ftp" you'll find the web pages
at Washington University (where it was created) and at
academ.com -- a consulting service that's taken over development
of the current beta's.
Guess I will just have to do it the hard
way. Will tell you what I find (just in
case you want to know.
What does your /etc/ftpaccess file look like?
#! /bin/sh
exec strace -o /tmp/ftpd.strace /usr/sbin/wu.ftpd
Trying to Boot a Laptop
I've got a Toshiba satellite pro 415cs notebook computer on which I've
installed RedHat 4.1. RedHat 4.1 was installed on a jaz disk connected
via an Adaptec slimscsi pcmcia adapter. the installation went
successfully, i believe, up until the lilo boot disk creation. i
specified that i wanted lilo on a floppy - so that nothing would be
written to the internal ide drive and also so that i could take the
installation and run it at another such laptop. after rebooting, i
tried booting from the lilo floppy that was created, but i get nothing
but continuous streams of 0 1 0 1 0 1...
You've got the right idea.
The 1010101010101... from LILO is a dead giveaway that
your kernel is located on some device that cannot be
accessed via the BIOS.
@ECHO OFF
ECHO "About to load Linux -- this is a one-way trip!"
PAUSE
LOADLIN lnx2029.krn root=/dev/sda1 ro
LOADLIN lnx2029.krn single root=/dev/sda ro
yash
You're welcome.
(Oh -- you might want to get those shift keys fixed --
e.e. cummings might sue for "look and feel")
From: Donald Harter Jr., harter@mufn.org
zmodem Reply
I saw your post about zmodem in the Linux Gazette. I can't answer the
readers question, but maybe this will help. My access to the internet is a
dial in account(no slip, no ppp). I access the freenets. I can't use
zmodem to transfer files from the internet and freeenets to my pc. I can
use kermit though. It seems that there are some control characters involved
in zmodem that prevent it from being used with my type of connection. I saw
a some information about this on one of the freenets. They suggested using
telix and another related protocol. I tried that, but it didn't work
either. Kermit is set up to run slow. You can get kermit to go faster in
certain circumstances by executing its "FAST" macro. I can download data at
about 700cps with the "FAST" macro of kermit. Unfortunately kermit hangs up
the line for me so I have to "kill -9 kermitpid" to exit it. That problem
can probably be eliminated with the right compile options. In certain cases
I can't use the "FAST" macro when uploading.
I'm familiar with C-Kermit. In fact I may have an
article in the June issue of SysAdmin magazine on that very
topic.
StartX
Hi, I was wondering if you can help me out. When I use the command
'startx -- -bpp16' to change the color depth, the windows in X are much
bigger than the monitor display. So, nothing fits properly and
everything has become larger. But the color depth has changed
correctly. I use FVWM as my display manager. Is there some way to fix
this problem?
If using the 16 bit plan (16bpp) mode to increase
your color depth -- that suggests that selecting this
mode is causing the server to use a lower resolution.
Also, is there some way to change the color depth
setting to start X with a depth of 16 every time. I do not use the XDM
manager to initiate an X session.
Yes -- it's somewhere in that XConfig file. I don't
remember the exact line. I really wish a bona fide GUI
X wiz would sign up for some of this "Answer Guy" service.
IMAP and Linux
Being a big IMAP fan (and glad to see it finally getting recognition:
Netscrape 4 and IE4 will both support it), your answer left a lot out.
Will these support the real features (storing and
organizing folders on the server side)?
The easiest IMAP server to install is certainly the University of
Washington server. It works, handles nearly every mailbox format around
and is very stable. It's also written by the guy in charge of the IMAP
spec itself, Mark Crispin.
As for clients, there is always Pine, which knows how to do IMAP quite
well. This is part of most Linux distributions as well.
I did mention pine. However it's not my personal favorite.
Do you know of a way to integrate IMAP with emacs mh-e/Gnus
(or any mh compatible folder management system)?
For GUI clients there is ML, which is a nice client, but requires Motif
and can be slow as sin over a modem when you have a large mailbox.
That's available in source at
http://www-CAMIS.Stanford.EDU/projects/imap/ml
I thought I mentioned that one as well -- but it's
a blur to me.
Asking on the mailing list about static linked linux versions will get
you one (and enough nagging may get them to actually put one of the
current version up).
ML is really the nicest mail client I have ever used.
As for pop daemons with UIDL support, go for qpopper from qualcomm.
ftp.qualcomm.com somewhere. Has UIDL and works fine.
O.K. I'll at that to my list.
More IMAP
PINE - one of the easiest to use mail clients around - does IMAP just
fine. You can read mail from multiple servers and mailboxes and save
it locally or in remote folders on the servers - which is what IMAP is
all about: Internet Message Access Protocol = flexible and
configurable *access* to mail servers without having to pop and fetch
messages all over the place (but still having the ability save locally
if you want).
Seems kind of kludgey. Besides -- does that
give you the main feature that's driving the creation
of the IMAP/ACAP standards? Does it let you
store your mail on a server and replicate that to
a couple of different machines (say your desktop and
your laptop) so you can read and respond to mail "offline"
and from *either* system?
Yeah, more or less. If you save the mail on your server to local
folders or make a local folder be /me@other.mail.host:/usr/spool/me.
Using ange-ftp to me seem exactly like IMAP in Pine or Netscape
communicator 4.0b2. Though apparently IMAP will update folders across
hosts so that only that mail deleted locally (while offline) will get
deleted on the remote host on the next login etc. etc. I don't know
much about IMAP's technical standard either but find I get equal mail
management capability from ange-ftp/VM. (equal to Pine and
Communicator so far).
Feel free. Of course I do know a bit more about emacs
than I do about X -- so you may not like my answer much.
Heh heh OK...
(comp.emacs.xemacs is silent on this). Emacs running as emacs -nw in
a tty (i.e console or an xterm) runs fine and lets me use all the job
control commands (suspend/fg etc) but with Xemacs job control won't
work unless I'm running as root. That is if I'm running "xemacs" or
"xemacs -nw" in an xterm or at the console and do C-z and then once
I'm done in the shell I do "fg", xemacs comes back but the keyboard
seems to be bound to the tty/console settings (Ctrl-z Ctrl-s Ctrl-q
etc all respond as if I were in a dumb terminal). The only recourse
is to Ctrl-z back out and kill xemacs. This does not happen if I run
xemacs setuid root (impractical/scary) or as root (scary). Something
somewhere that requires root permission or suid to reset the tty
characteristics doesn't have it in xemacs - but does in emacs...
My only response so far has been that "you'll have to
rebuild/recompile your xemacs" - but surely this wrong. Does anything
more obvious occur to you? I feel it must be something simple in my
set up (RH Linux 2.0.29). Of course if I could get this fixed I'd
start feeling more comfortable not having GNU-Emacs on my machine ;-)
which may not be an outcome you would favour.
I once had a problem similar to this one -- suspending
minicom would suspend the task and lock me out of it.
It seemed that the ownership of the tty was being
changed.
strace -o /tmp/strace.script /usr/bin/script
stracetel stream tcp nowait root /usr/sbin/tcpd \
/usr/bin/strace -o /root/tmp/t.strace /usr/sbin/in.telnetd
telnet localhost stracetel
No Kyle Jones (VM maintainer/author) has said maybe IMAP4 for VM
version 7. I think his idea is to make VM do it what it does well and
rely on outside packages to get the mail to it ...
Also -- isn't there a new release of ange-ftp --
I forget the name -- but I'm sure it changed named too.
I'll have to play with those a bit.
Can VM handle mh style folders?
UUCP Questions
I had a couple minor questions on UUCP. If you have a few minutes, I'd
appreciate the help immensely. I'll tell you a little bit about what we're
doing.
Glancing ahead -- I'd guess that this would take quite a bit
more than a few minutes.
My company has a domain name registered (plconline.com) and two offices.
One is the branch office which is located in the city with the ISP. The
head office is kind of in the sticks in western Iowa. I've been
commissioned to find out how difficult it would be to set up the uucp so
the machine in Des Moines (the big city ;-) would grab all the domain mail
and then possibly make a subdomain like logan.plconline.com for all the
people in the main office to use email.
Unfortunately I this question is too broad to answer
via e-mail. O'Reilly has a whole book on uucp and
there are several HOW-TO's for Taylor UUCP and
sendmail under Linux.
jim%mercury@starshine.org
Using MS-DOS Floppies
Hi, I have a problem that I can't find the solution to:
You probably have a problem with the "change disk" detection
circuitry on your floppy.
# /etc/fstab
/dev/fd0 /mnt/tmp umsdos noauto,rw,user 0 0
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