Linux Gazette... making Linux just a little more fun! Copyright © 1996-98 Specialized Systems Consultants, Inc. _________________________________________________________________ Welcome to Linux Gazette! (tm) _________________________________________________________________ Published by: Linux Journal _________________________________________________________________ Sponsored by: InfoMagic S.u.S.E. Red Hat LinuxMall Linux Resources cyclades stalker LinuxToday Our sponsors make financial contributions toward the costs of publishing Linux Gazette. If you would like to become a sponsor of LG, e-mail us at sponsor@ssc.com. Linux Gazette is a non-commercial, freely available publication and will remain that way. Show your support by using the products of our sponsors and publisher. _________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________ Table of Contents March 1999 Issue #38 _________________________________________________________________ * The Front Page * The MailBag + Help Wanted -- Article Ideas + General Mail * News Bytes + News in General + Software Announcements * The Answer Guy, by James T. Dennis * More 2 Cent Tips * Adding a Second IDE Hard Drive, by Mendel Leo Cooper * Compiling Programs on Linux, by JC Pollman * Graphics Muse, by Michael J. Hammel * Introduction to IRQs, DMAs and Base Addresses, by Eugene Blanchard * Linux Dialin Server Setup Guide, by Josh Gentry * Linux Installation Primer, Part 7, by Ron Jenkins * PAP HOWTO, by Terry Martin * The Slashdot Effect, An Analysis of Three Internet P ublications, by Stephen Adler * The Standard C Library for Linux, Part Four, by James M. Rogers * Why you might want to use the Library GPL for your next library, by Eric Kidd * Windows/Linux Dual Boot, by Vince Veselosky * The Back Page + About This Month's Authors + Not Linux The Answer Guy _________________________________________________________________ TWDT 1 (text) TWDT 2 (HTML) are files containing the entire issue: one in text format, one in HTML. They are provided strictly as a way to save the contents as one file for later printing in the format of your choice; there is no guarantee of working links in the HTML version. _________________________________________________________________ Got any great ideas for improvements? Send your comments, criticisms, suggestions and ideas. _________________________________________________________________ This page written and maintained by the Editor of Linux Gazette, gazette@ssc.com "Linux Gazette...making Linux just a little more fun!" _________________________________________________________________ The Mailbag! Write the Gazette at gazette@ssc.com Contents: * Help Wanted -- Article Ideas * General Mail _________________________________________________________________ Help Wanted -- Article Ideas Answers to these questions should be sent directly to the e-mail address of the inquirer with or without a copy to gazette@ssc.com. Answers that are copied to LG will be printed in the next issue in the Tips column. _________________________________________________________________ Date: Wed, 3 Feb 1999 10:47:38 +0100 (MET) From: Jan-Hendrik Terstegge, jh.terstegge@gmx.net Subject: Korn Shell FAQ I'm looking for a good Korn Shell FAQ, because I dislike reading the Manpages. Does anyone know a good Internet Address of a FAQ? Thanks in advance -- Jan-Hendrik _________________________________________________________________ Date: Tue, 2 Feb 1999 15:13:18 -0500 From: "Jim Coleman", jecoleman@upsala.org Subject: Windows program replacements I'm making the move from Windows to Linux and am in the process of tracking down Linux programs to replace anything in Windows that I feel I cannot do without. It's a short but stubborn list. Presently, I'm trying to locate a Linux Family Tree program (I'm using Family Tree Maker in Windows) and also need a Linux program that can import the contents of several Cardfile databases. I've heard of and have downloaded the Unix based LifeLines program but have not yet tried it. Though it comes highly recommended, even the author admits that it's somewhat dated. I was hoping a more recent program was available. Not necessarily freeware, by the way. Suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks, Best Regards, -- Jim Coleman _________________________________________________________________ Date: Wed, 3 Feb 1999 14:45:12 -0800 From: "Michel A. Lim", support@whl-international.com Subject: RH5.2 and Intel EtherExpress Pro/10+ ISA NIC I am a Linux newbie, with some computer experience, trying to install my intel etherexpress pro/10+ isa card on my new Linux box (Macmillan RH 5.2, kernel 2.0.36-0.7). I have read several newsgroup postings regarding this network card, but I could really use a step-by-step guide. The card did work when the OS was win98. Linux is now the only OS on this computer. The Linux install was successful except that it did not recognize my network card. I disabled the plug and play function of the card using the intel configuration software (softset2), and then tried re-installing Linux and passing the IRQ and I/O settings (7 and 320-32Fh respectively) but that also did not work. I then tried to add the following lines to /etc/conf.modules: alias eth0 eepro options eth0 io=320-32Fh irq=7 this was also unsucessful. Furthermore, pnpdump returns "board not found," and even AFTER reading the HOWTO for isapnptools, I have no idea what to add to add to my isapnp.conf file. Any help would be very appreciated, just please be detailed as I am not a guru by any stretch of the imagination. thank you. -- michel a. lim _________________________________________________________________ Date: Mon, 8 Feb 1999 18:30:50 -0200 From: "Eliane Aureliana de Sousa", lili@martins.com.br Subject: We do not relay... Could you help me? I have Red Hat Linux installed and I have sendmail and a pop server running but when I try to send and receive mail via Netscape what I receive is this mensage: We do not relay..... and there is neve any msg in my mail box. I've read as many how-to as I could, but I couldn't find nothing about my problem. Send mail is already running, I need to know how to set the permissions to let my users send and receive mail. Thanks, Eliane Aureliana de Sousa Uberlandia - Brazil _________________________________________________________________ Date: Mon, 08 Feb 1999 16:28:52 +0100 From: Kristoffer Andersson, e7koffe@etek.chalmers.se Subject: Help wanted -- article ideas I'm having a sort of luxorius problem. In the building where I live we have a 24-7 ethernet connection two the Internet - so long every thing is fine - the problem is that this connection goes through a masquerading-server and as a result it is almost impossible to connect to your computer from a computer outside my building. To go around this limitation I have set up a small script that uses ssh to forward a few ports (21, 22 and 80) to a computer outside the building. This is fine as long as you and your friends now to wich computer the ports have been forwarded to. A more fancy solution would be to use ssh to tunnel ppp! The problem is that I dont now of an ISP that would let me to use PPP over the Internet instead of over their modem-pools. -- Kristoffer Andersson _________________________________________________________________ Date: Mon, 08 Feb 1999 10:35:02 -0200 From: Silvia, silvia@waytecnet.com.br Subject: DOS Emulations How does the DOS emulation through the serial ports works? What is the default terminal emulation? How can we change this? We need to use 25 lines 80 columns and the key combinations ALT+F1, ALT+F2, ..., ETC. Regards -- Silvia _________________________________________________________________ Date: Mon, 08 Feb 1999 04:52:35 +0100 From: JVA, vargaj@intrak.tuke.sk Subject: Sound card with radio on it I am intending to install Red Hat 5.0 to myP 166: PC and my question is that I have a ISA sound card (SF16-FMI) with radio on it, it's 100% SB compatible,and has a IDE connection on it and it's not PnP will it be able to work and in particular the radio please help I enjoy listening to radio. -- Jva _________________________________________________________________ Date: Wed, 10 Feb 1999 15:42:19 -0800 From: Jay Xia, xia@xlnt.com Subject: MS words to Postscript conversion From time to time, people e-mail me documents in Microsoft Words format. Do you know where I can find an utility to convert the MS Words documents into Postscript format so that I can view/print them in Linux? Thanks. -- jay _________________________________________________________________ Date: Sun, 14 Feb 1999 01:32:18 +0100 From: bonis, bonis@tin.it Subject: problema ciao, mi chiamo cris ho red hat 5.0 e devo collegarmi a internet... con netscape communicator.. ..non ci riesco :)..sono abbonato a tin...e ho un modem esterno da 33.6 ...ho provato di tutto..ma non riesco propio :) aiuto :) grazie. ps. ho installato Linux Red Hat da 3 giorni :)..e mai prima.. :) -- bonis _________________________________________________________________ Date: Sat, 13 Feb 1999 20:58:10 +0530 From: "Mukul Jain", jainmukul@usa.net Subject: Configuring Linux as mail server I want to configure Linux as my off-line mail server. What all I want is that I want it to aceept my mail and when I dial to my ISP it just sends the collected mail and then recieves the mail from my domain. and distributes according to Linux user accounts. I've done the following setting in sendmail.cw; I've added my domain entry. In sendmail.cf I've changed the DS to my ISP server DSgg.vsnl.net.in and at DM added my domain also changed OHoldExpensive=True Well and then changed settings for the mailers expensiver Now still I get an Error 'We do not relay mail' HELP! -- Mukul _________________________________________________________________ Date: Fri, 12 Feb 1999 11:06:49 +0100 (Ora solare Europa occidentale) From: Bruno Falconi, bruno@ifctr.mi.cnr.it Subject: primo approccio finalmente ho trovato un link interessante per chi vuole inoltrarsi in Linux. Ho cercato di installare Linux (Red Hat 5.2) sul mio pc che gia gira con windows 98. ho tre dischi (10gb, 2gb e 1.5gb). ho incontrato mille difficolta' e alla fine non sono riuscito ad installarlo, non solo, ma ho perso anche Windows 98. Ho ripristinato poi i dischi ed windows, ma prima di riprovarci gradirei qualche dritta per fare una cosa seria. grazie -- Bruno Falconi _________________________________________________________________ Date: Thu, 11 Feb 1999 12:35:03 -0500 From: "Jeff Moore", champnet@iisc.net Subject: Converting to Linux Was told that I can do lot more with this Linux, where it be with 286 or 386 so on, and to be able develop the full capabilities a Service provider to community, schools, business, residential. Would consider this task is a must see how it can be done. O f course now one would have to have a great deal old hardware, software all ready and surely this person would no just go out and buy old equipment with this intent in mind. Instead work with students with a great of old equipment that we are upgrading- Using what we have an looking for conversions that would act like they up-to-date? any suggestion ? -- Jeff Moore _________________________________________________________________ Date: Wed, 17 Feb 1999 01:05:56 +0800 (SGT) From: "Jayasuthan ......", suthan@eplx01.fairchildsemi.com Subject: Clear Up Corrupted Files I having problem with my filesystem lately. I believe it caused by Linux Kernel 2.2.0 with hdparm -m8 option on my hard disk. Lucky its not very serius. But now the problem is cleaning up those file which corrupted. I do have file in /lost+found folder and thats not an issue but files like this :- br-Sr-S--- 1 25449 28015 99, 105 Nov 26 2031 System.map br-srwS-wT 1 29813 23328 9, 10 Jan 19 2026 System.old drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 1024 Feb 15 23:07 beta/ drwxr-xr-x 2 root bin 2048 May 8 1994 bin/ Look at System.map and System.old file. This file can't just "rm -rf" away. I don't want to format my hard disk well it will be very hard for me. I do have good backup. I want to learn Linux file system and understand it. Please help me out here. Thank You, -- Jayasuthan _________________________________________________________________ Date: Thu, 18 Feb 1999 13:20:29 +0200 From: "yossi", yossi@sivan-north.co.il Subject: Linux & Win95/98/NT clients Well, I am system administrator in colleage (about 200 machines). Mostly they're running Win95/98 and some of them running NT4.0 Workstation. We don't use yet Linux as a server ( but I use it a lot for java-development). We use NT4.0. So my question is : I'd like to install Linux as a file-server & keep on him images of hard-disks from classrooms(i.e every classroom has own "master" with all the programmes installed on it). So if something goes wrong with one (or more) of a computers in the classroom I'd like to keep this "masters" on Linux server & connect to them somehow from this computer and take the "image" off to my win95/98/nt client. Somehow - I mean I have to have a boot-diskette that does the work. The second point is that I'm not sure in possibility that in-the-same-time I can use the "image" on Linux with multiple connections... Sometimes the "image" has to be requested by 20-25 clients(in the same time).=20 If somebody can help me it's really great coz' this way I can install first-Linux-server in our network ( I really like this OS.... but it doesn't depend on me :) ) Any information will be appreciated. Thanx. -- Daniel Mester _________________________________________________________________ Date: Wed, 17 Feb 1999 18:23:55 -0700 (MST) From: "Dale M. Snider", dsnider@nmia.com Subject: Re: Trap float divide-by-zero and NaN Can someone tell me how to turn on a gcc compile option to trap a divide by zero and NaN with type float or double. I can get the divide-by-zero trap with type int. Is this a trap that can be done on the kernal level? The signal SIGFPED only works on integers?? I am using Red Hat 5.2 installation. Trap on divide by zero: a=1., b=0., a/b=Inf Trap on overflow: a=3.4e38, b=3.4e38, a*b=Inf Trap on NaN: sqrt(-1) I have included a small test code to illustrate the problem (question).. To build sample code: cc -g tst.c -lm -o tst Test code: #include #include main() { float a,b,c,d; int ia,ib,ic; int i; a=1.; b=0.; c=a/b; d=(float)sqrt((double)-a); printf("Float: a=%f b=%f a/b=%f d=sqrt(-a)=%f\n",a,b,c,d); ia=1; ib=0; ic=ia/ib; printf("Integer: ia=%d ib=%d ia/ib=%d\n",ia,ib,ic); } Results: Float: a=1.000000 b=0.000000 a/b=Inf d=sqrt(-a)=NaN Floating point exception (core dumped) Note that the integer divide by zero is trapped but reported as " Floating point exception"?? Cheers -- Dale _________________________________________________________________ Date: Mon, 01 Feb 1999 03:39:39 +0200 From: Jussi Kallioniemi, jukal@teraflops.com Subject: business plan Just a quick question (worth printing to next issue?) Is there any (good) GNU licensed programs to help the creation of businessplans? -- Jussi Kallioniemi _________________________________________________________________ Date: Wed, 27 Jan 1999 23:50:54 -0800 From: "Snow Wolf", snowwolf@sprynet.com Subject: Letter to the Editor ... On the same day that I received my Linux Journal, I got a PC Connection periodical. It's a standard PC mail-order catalog, but it seems to assume that people are running Windows. Are there similar catalogs that cater to people running Linux/Unix. Like have non-PnP modems, cards that include drivers for other OSes besides Windows, etc., etc. -- Charles Wheeler _________________________________________________________________ Date: Tue, 23 Feb 1999 11:36:25 PST From: "Jaap Wolters", woltersj@hotmail.com Subject: problem Ik heb geprobeert jullie programma "LINUX" te downloaden, maar ik krijg geen toegang. hoe zou het toch kunnen? Op de t.v werd verteld dat het programma beter is dan Windows 98, Minder fouten en minder vastlopers. Is het programma windows compatible zodat ik mijn oude windows spellen kan doorspelen. Ik heb ZEER veel belang bij dit programma, maar aangezien me het niet lukt om het te downloaden zou ik graag uw advies willen. Met vriendelijke groeten -- J.Wolters _________________________________________________________________ Date: Tue, 23 Feb 1999 12:21:53 -0500 From: "Nick Wilkens", NWilkens@holnam.com Subject: Making a Red Hat 5.2 CD Hi, I downloaded the Red Hat/RPMS Red Hat/base directories from sunsite, along with the proper image files, etc... I also burn them to a CD in this same way under the Red Hat directory, is this proper? because when i try to do a CD install, it says invalid media no Red Hat tree found or something to that effect. Any suggestions? -- Nick _________________________________________________________________ Date: Sun, 21 Feb 1999 17:28:54 PST From: helicon123@hotmail.com Subject: Installation Question Since Linux was mostly used by x86, do you think it's OK if I install it on PII-300MHz computer? -- helicon123 _________________________________________________________________ Date: Mon, 01 Feb 1999 15:18:23 +0000 From: Austin, austinp@headland.co.uk Subject: Help wanted: Fax gateway I'm toying with the idea of setting up a FAX gateway on a Linux machine. The machine is currently on a LAN, and has no modem, so I'll be wanting to stick a 56Kbps in there. I'm just after pointers, personal experience, web pages, and general advice on this, because I have no idea where to start :) So far, I've discovered Hylafax. Is this what I should be using? Are there alternatives? How do you go about installing a modem? What models are recommended? Thanks for any help. -- Austin _________________________________________________________________ General Mail _________________________________________________________________ Date: Mon, 01 Feb 1999 16:03:26 +0000 From: Keith, kwhudson@ticnet.com Subject: Not Linux three oaths: 1 of marriage 1 of truth 1 of leadership 1st one Rendered invalid by actions 2nd one destroyed by testimony 3rd one ? lets not be lazy..lets not take a just get it over attitude...lets tell the Pop Press that we want news, not day to day hogwash... People are made to tire of a subject, because the press forces every conceivable amount of data real or not about a subject down to us. This is known. This is planned. No one has lost face. This is not a party issue. Let it continue. We need a answer. We need the Law. Whatever the outcome will be. -- Keith _________________________________________________________________ Date: Mon, 01 Feb 1999 18:24:34 +0100 From: Roger Irwin, irwin@trucco.it Subject: Closed software promotion Launching into issue 37, I go straight to Software Announcements. And the first item is "New circuit design software", which goes on to describe itself as a spice front-end. Well, I design electronic circuits, and immediately hit the link. What I found was that the spice front-end was a plug-in for the 'visio' package. No mention was made of Linux, but the announcement said it would work on any version of Visio. So, I would need the Linux version of visio. So then I followed the link to Visio, and looked to see 'platform requirements'. It said this: "We've thought long and hard about what you'll need from a business diagram program. That's why we've designed our software to work on most desktops. Chances are, the computer you already use will be fine for running Visio Standard." Great, another program designed to run on as many platforms as possible? Not quite, it will run on W95, W98 & Windows NT4.0. Period. Another company who thinks the only OS that should be run on a desktop is Windows, and Linux Gazette is helping to promote this. Well done, keep up the good work............... Bill will be so proud of you. -- Roger (Sorry to let that one slip by me. I tend to assume if they send the announcement to me, it works for Linux. And of course, I knew SPICE works for Linux. Wish I had time to chase every announcement down, but I don't. Anyway I removed it after getting a couple of letters telling me. --Editor) _________________________________________________________________ Date: Tue, 02 Feb 1999 10:24:33 -0800 From: jeff godden, jgodden@panlabs.com Subject: under software announcements, SpiceLink is not a Linux product As usual, Linux Gazette remains one of my favorite sources of net-gleaned Linux information. Thank you! Under software announcements of issue #37 there is a link to SpiceLink which i was very thrilled about to see such a graphical support for spice under Linux. But alas, even through it's linked from Linux Gazette this software cannot run under Linux. From the president of the SpiceLink following an inquiry: You're right about SpiceLink; it's for Visio and therefore Windows. (maybe when they get near 100% of the Windows market they'll think about Linux). Perhaps a note might be added that one better have WINE running and even then it's uncertain...? Many thanks! -- jeff (Always appreciate hearing when I lapse so I can get it corrected. Thanks for doing it in such a nice way. That announcement has been removed. -- Editor) _________________________________________________________________ Date: Tue, 02 Feb 1999 12:54:29 -0500 From: Darren, PCTech1018@netscape.net Subject: RE: What is a 'high crime' A "High crime" is not necessarily what could be called a 'heinous' act. A 'High crime' is simply a 'crime' committed by a 'High' official (such as a senator, federal judge, or president.) Because of their unique positions, what would not be considered crimes for us, may be considered crimes for 'High' officials, hence the term 'common criminal' versus 'high criminal'. For instance, accepting bribes would, for private citizens outside of public office, not be considered a crime (immoral perhaps, but not criminal.) For high officials, bribery is most definitely a 'high' crime. Some people feel that the questions that the president did not truthfully answer should not have been asked and were not relevant to governing. After all, even some of the framers of the constitution were known to have had 'improper relations'. But these same people seem to forget that we did not have laws relating to sexual harassment/discrimination back then. Also, the judgment by the courts pertaining directly to those 'irrelevant' questions was that the questions were relevant and proper at the time they were asked. As to using the principle of 'acts related to governing', it would seem that these same people feel that R. Nixon should have been impeached - even though his alleged acts and deceptions had nothing to do with 'governing'. Using the Nixon precedent, W. Clinton should be held accountable for lies and deception even if they had little bearing on the act of 'governing'. So then, we are left to ask, were the lies and deception in the courts by the president acceptable? I guess we all need to answer that for ourselves. If it is appropriate for the president to not tell the whole truth on those matters that the court has decided he should answer for and go unpunished for lying, then we should stop enforcing sexual discrimination cases altogether. Women should just accept their place as 2nd class citizens and let the rest of us get on with the job of making a living. Just think, if he had 'pleaded the fifth', we wouldn't be having this wonderful education on the constitutional process. This may not be the populist view, but the moral high ground usually isn't. Witness the popularity of Howard Stern and Larry Flynt. I am not perfect. When I get caught breaking 'minor' laws, I should fully expect some sort of punishment. But just because I am not perfect, does that mean I should give up any expectation of holding myself and others to standards of common decency? -- Darren _________________________________________________________________ Date: Wed, 03 Feb 1999 14:27:08 -0800 From: James Guilford, guilfoja@oplin.lib.oh.us Subject: Thanks! I've been experimenting with Linux (Red Hat flavor) but needed to remove it from a machine to install {gad} Windows. LILO wouldn't go away. I found the answer on your Web site. Thanks for saving me a lot of trouble! -- James Guilford _________________________________________________________________ Date: Wed, 3 Feb 1999 14:08:43 -0600 From: "John W. Burgoon", jwb@indiana.com Subject: J. W. Pennington's article about Doubt I read Pennington's article with considerable interest and look forward to more. As a web developer (trained in Physics and Chemistry) I have to point out the word that the hard sciences use in place of Mr. Pennington's "doubt": we call that "skepticism". Not cynicism, which many folks use as a way to protect their ego. (Failure is more common than success, so cynics just predict failure all the time to get their winning %age). Skepticism is a firm belief in empirical or deductive fact coupled with a firm disbelief in personal perception. The good engineer is a skeptic; he wants to know some empirical fact before he allows himself to believe his perceptions. He tests the girder design before it goes into a bridge, and even then he over builds that bridge by a factor of 2 or 3 just in case the wind blows, or any army drives across with tanks, or an earthquake hits. And when it fails anyway, he shows up and figures out why. Linux benefits from skepticism since we don't say "Ha, this is perfect" but rather we say, "weeellll, this works but so far we haven't looked at x/y/z". Kudos to the good author for pointing out a fine generality in which Linux developers can take pride. Healthy old-fashioned skepticism kicks ass. John W. Burgoon (Mr. Pennington will return with part 2 next month. --Editor) _________________________________________________________________ Date: Thu, 04 Feb 1999 04:37:32 -0800 From: Igor Markov, imarkov@CS.UCLA.EDU Subject: Re: The Beauty of Doubt It seems, you are really talking about *critical thinking*. *Doubt* is often caused by critical thinking, but shouldn't be explicitly cultivated, in my opinion. Many colleges offer classes on critical thinking, and the topic is not that new. It is true, of course, that commercial software developers are not as free to think critically about their work as FSC folks, hence the advantage of FSC. Regarding the other three terms: *cooperation* seems too weak, free software developers *collaborate*."Cooperation" is what Microsoft does when it gets sued for a breach of contract ;-) *Non-control (read: Freedom)* is vague. You probably mean *independent thinking* and, separately, *freedom to allocate personal resources*. For example, I may be interested in kernel hacking, just because I like the subject (not because I am paid for this) and may have new ideas, but not time/skill to implement them. Someone else, who has a month of vacation may pick them up and produce something useful. "Rebellion"... how about "enthusiasm" or, better, "improvement drive". I would actually agree that many developers may be driven by a rebellion, but not the ones who are responsible for most innovation. "Rebellion" does not go well with incremental development models somehow. Finally, the lack and, OTOH, the ease of several aspects of management is critical to the FSC as much as the above issues. This may need to be discussed as well. well... so much for a non-native speaker. I guess, you will correct me if I messed up connotaions/meanings etc. -- Igor _________________________________________________________________ Date: Sun, 07 Feb 1999 21:17:27 +0000 From: Kevin Atkinson, kevinatk@home.com Subject: Did you know about Aspell? I saw you article titled "ispell: Spelling Checker" in the Linux Gazette and was wondering if you knew of the existence of Aspell. From the manual: 1.1.1.1 Features that only Aspell has * Does a much better job with coming up with suggestions than Ispell does. * Can learn from users misspellings. * Is an actual library that others programs can link to instead of having to use it through a pipe. * Is multiprocess intelligent. When a personal dictionary (or replacement list) is saved it will now first update he list against the dictionary on disk in case another process modified it. 1.1.1.2 Things that only Aspell will have real soon * Support for detachable dictionaries so that more than one aspell class can use the same dictionary. * Support for multiple personal dictionaries as well as support for special auxiliary dictionaries. 1.1.1.3 Things that, currently, only Ispell have * Lower memory footprint * Support for affix compression * Support for spell checking Latex and Nroff files. Granted that when your article was first published Aspell didn't exist. More information can be found at http://metalab.unc.edu/kevina/aspell/. -- Kevin Atkinson _________________________________________________________________ Date: Mon, 22 Feb 1999 15:17:36 -0600 From: "Gray, Robert C", Robert.Gray@feist.com Subject: Not Linux No offense meant, but Three states list perjury as a "High crime or misdemeanor" in their state constitution they are California, Texas, and Alabama. Three others call perjury an infamous crime (same as "High crime..." ?) they are West Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Illinois. Three others list perjury as an offense serious enough for removal from office they are Wyoming, Missouri, and Colorado. All these states also list conviction of perjury as reason to preclude someone from ever holding public office. In all 50 states perjury is a crime! -- Robert Gray _________________________________________________________________ Date: Sat, 13 Feb 1999 17:43:22 -0300 From: Gustavo Larriera, gux@cs.com.uy Subject: Corrected version of my article NTloader+Linux I would be pleased if this letter goes to the Mail Bag section. I wish to thank the feedback I received for my article "Booting Linux with the NT Loader" (LG January 1999). Some readers pointed out my misinformation about the MBR-changed-means-NT-wiped-out affair :-) I've corrected the article, the revised version can be found at my home page [http://w3.cs.com.uy/u/gux/ntloadli2.htm]. Have a lot of fun, -- Gustavo Larriera _________________________________________________________________ Published in Linux Gazette Issue 38, March 1999 _________________________________________________________________ [ TABLE OF CONTENTS ] [ FRONT PAGE ] Next This page written and maintained by the Editor of Linux Gazette, gazette@ssc.com Copyright © 1999 Specialized Systems Consultants, Inc. "Linux Gazette...making Linux just a little more fun!" _________________________________________________________________ News Bytes Contents: * News in General * Software Announcements _________________________________________________________________ News in General _________________________________________________________________ April 1999 Linux Journal The April issue of Linux Journal will be hitting the newsstands March 12. This issue focuses on Network Computing with a review of Corel's Netwinder and articles on FlowNET a high-performance network solution, Network administration using AWK tools, and an interview with John Ousterhout, creator of Tcl/TK. Linux Journal now has articles that appear "Strictly On-Line". Check out the Table of Contents at http://www.linuxjournal.com/issue60/index.html for articles in this issue as well as links to the on-line articles. To subscribe to Linux Journal, go to http://www.linuxjournal.com/ljsubsorder.html. _________________________________________________________________ Debian Logo Contest Date: Wed, 03 Feb 1999 20:38:26 -0500 Debian Project, http://www.debian.org/ The Debian project is in the process of looking for a new logo. Currently Debian has a semi-official logo, which can be seen at http://www.debian.org/logos/debianlogo-2.jpg. As a majority of Debian developers are not happy with the current logo, we are searching for a new logo to replace the current one using a GIMP logo contest. Submission information and other details are available at http://contest.gimp.org/. Debian would like to have two logos: one logo with a very liberal license that everyone is free to use (for example on webpages, shirts, etc.), and a more official logo with a restricted license which can only be used on official Debian items (like CD's produced from the official ISO-images). Please note both license are not finished yet. The winning logo will be decided on by the Debian developers. Since there are a lot of active developers it may take as long as 3-4 weeks after the end of the contest to decide who the winner is. For further information, please send email to the Debian Press Contact press@debian.org or visit the Debian homepage at http://www.debian.org/ Nils Lohner _________________________________________________________________ Invitation to Join Freedom of Choice Project Date: Fri, 5 Feb 1999 05:20:52 -0500 The Freedom of Choice Project is a co-operative effort between IACT and James Capone, an IACT member as well as devoted user of Linux, who created the entire project at his own Linux website. In the project's first week, over 5000 people had participated in the Freedom of Choice consumer poll. With help from IACT, James Capone now is expanding the poll to reach users of _all_ platforms. As you know, all computer users certainly are affected by an ongoing problem in the computer market: Microsoft still maintains an exclusive distributorship with PC makers such as Compaq, Dell, Gateway etc.. Those companies pre-install or "bundle" MSFT software on the majority of new PCs we buy. Once the MSFT software is pre-installed, we may decide to delete it and then fight to get a refund, but that approach still won't get to the root of the problem. The Freedom of Choice project is our grass-roots, long-term solution. By using the Internet as it was designed-- to bring together small groups like ours into a larger, stronger and unique network-- we're going to defend the fundamental right of consumers everywhere to choose any and all software that is installed on the new computers they buy. We want to give users of all platforms the chance to _send a direct message_ to the PC makers, to demand that the companies fully respect every consumer's right to choose. For more information: James Capone, linuxos@iname.com The Freedom of Choice Poll, http://www.angelfire.com/biz2/Linux/company.html Diane Gartner dgwhiz@earthling.net IACT's Freedom of Choice page: http://pages.cthome.net/iact/iact-tell.html _________________________________________________________________ LinuxArchives.com Date: Fri, 05 Feb 1999 17:12:14 -0800 LinuxArchives.com has been launched at www.linuxarchives.com. It is a software archive dedicated strictly to Linux software. The site is organized into specific categories, and also features a search engine that makes finding programs fast and easy. Most of the software is submitted directly by the manufacturers and it updated frequently. The site should be a valuable resource for Linux users, and Aceweb Internet will be working to ensure that it grows at a pace that is in step with the ever changing needs of the Linux community. For more information: Tony Ferrara, tonyf@aceweb.net _________________________________________________________________ Debian based CUTE 2000 Server exhibited Date: Fri, 12 Feb 1999 10:08:29 -0500 CUTE 2000, an all-in-one Linux based server was exhibited at the NET & COM '99 show. It is based on Debian GNU/Linux, and includes software for functions such as DNS, WWW, SMTP, FTP, SAMBA, NETATALK, DHCP and others. For more information: http://www.NikkeiBP.AsiaBizTech.com/Database/1999_Feb/08/Mor.02.gwif.h tml Debian, http.//www.debian.org/ GLUE: Groups of Linux Users Everywhere GLUE has added a number of new benefits in recent months to attract new groups, and is working hard to give our current member groups an excellent level of service. New benefits include: special subscription rate to the TPJ and LJ for registered GLUE LUG members, a set of the LJ archive CD-ROMs, Red Hat Linux, and TCL Blast. GLUE also continues to very graciously sponsored by Caldera Systems, with their Open Linux distribution, and Enhanced Software Technologies, with their BRU Backup and Restore Utilities. I'm working with Linux user groups to find out what other ways GLUE can contribute, from web resources, to inviting other vendors to particpate. The glue-list@ssc.com mailing list is available for discussion among LUGs. Linux Users can find a user group with our Group Locator pages, or post to find or form one of their own. These listings pages are updated and confirmed frequently, and are very comprehensive. Listing are free to all groups, not just those registered for GLUE membership. GLUE is a project of SSC Inc, 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 also offer special benefits or discounts to GLUE's member groups. Any LUG can have a free listing in the Linux Group location section, and Linux users can post to the site to find and form new groups in their area. For more information: http://www.ssc.com/glue/ Clarica Grove, glue@ssc.com _________________________________________________________________ Linux Hardware Solutions to support Debian Project Date: Thu, 25 Feb 1999 12:51:21 -0500 Linux Hardware Solutions, Inc. a premier supplier of Linux systems and service announce support for the Debian Project of Software in the Public Interest, Inc. The support comes in the form of a Linux Hardware Solution PS350RR-100 RAID rackmount server with 256 MB RAM attached to a dedicated colocation connection at Mindspring Enterprises' data center in Atlanta, Georgia to act as the new ftp.debian.org server. For more information: Linux Hardware Solutions, Inc., http://www.linux-hw.com/ Debian GNU/Linux, http://www.debian.org/ _________________________________________________________________ Subject: Dan Quayle or Linus Torvalds for President Date: Fri, 26 Feb 1999 14:52:40 -0700 Even If you sat out the 60s, missed the March On Washington, or the Windows Refund Protest, you can still voice your vote for freedom--specifically, the freedom to use the Open Source computer operating system, Linux. As noted in this morning's Wall Street Journal, a young company called Linuxcare is holding a just-for-fun election for the new Leader of the Free World! Who would you choose: Bill Bradley, George Bush, Jr., Bill Gates, Al Gore, Dan Quayle, or Linus Torvalds? You can cast your vote at http://www.linuxcare.com, until "Super Tuesday," March 2, which also happens to be the opening day of LinuxWorld--the world's largest gathering of Linux users (http://www.linuxworldexpo.com/). The results will be published in the Wall Street Journal on March 2, the day Linuxcare goes live. Let the people decide -- in the democratic spirit that permeates Open Source --Get Out The Vote (GOTV) for the leader of the FREE WORLD. Linuxcare announced on March 2 that Linus had won with 73% of the vote. No other candidate received more than 9%. _________________________________________________________________ Linux Links Open Source MS Windoze 9x Petition: http://www.linuxresources.com/linuxreview/petition.html Brain Power, Jobs for Smart People: http://www.bpower.com/ LinuxODBC: http://www.codebydesign.com/LinuxODBC UNIX newbie site: http://www.dicamp.univ.trieste.it/du96/unix/TOC.html New Linux logos: http://www-mddsp.enel.ucalgary.ca/People/adilger/logo/ Compaq web page: http://www.unix.digital.com/linux/ The Linux Merchandsising FAQ for Germany: http://www.reichmann.de/alex/lmf/index.html Microsoft & new lawsuits: http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/filters/bursts/0,3422,2213093,00.html Vedova Linux, a new Linux distribution based on Debian GNU/Linux: http://www.vedovanet.bbk.org/linux/vedova CRN spot survey: http://www.techweb.com/se/directlink.cgi?CRN19990118S0023 http://www.linuxresources.com/linuxreview/petition.html Ramblings on Apple and Linux: http://www.osopinion.com/Opinions/EdMcKenna/EdMcKenna2.html IBM and Redhat: Red Hat Press Release _________________________________________________________________ Xpresso Ltd Needs Programmers Date: Mon, 22 Feb 1999 10:28:00 -0500 I have a small company named Xpresso Ltd. This will hopefully produce a new simple software system aimed at users of Windows. The idea is to sell the Linux OS with the installation and set-up completely automatic. It will use one or more choices of graphical user shells (KDE as first default choice). The latest Linux Kernel 2.0.xx will be used (and built specifically for each installation - with maths module if processor is without etc). The System will analyse the hardware and construct or select the correct X Windows drivers and install correct files ( /fstab etc). by examining the existing DOS/Windows OS files or running MSD.EXE or similar. I have very little finance and am hoping to find programmers who will help me on a percentage basis. I shall be selling the product world-wide and hope millions of units will be sold. Can you possibly help me with details of any sources of programmers for this work please? The main aims are simple, safe (stable) and visually attractive graphics. The user will do nothing except click GO. Star Office and other quality free programs (only the best) will be included. But only the best. To enable all Windows users to switch to Xpresso LINUX. A safe dual boot on start up will enable the migration from Windows to Linux to proceed slowly, at each person's pace. Can you help please? I can e-mail a four page outline of my further plans for Linux if you are interested. For more information: Stephen Jackson, Xpresso Ltd, xpresso@compuserve.com _________________________________________________________________ Software Announcements _________________________________________________________________ Vedova Linux Date: Thu, 4 Feb 1999 20:19:29 +0100 New Linux Distribution based on Debian GNU/Linux http://www.vedovanet.bbk.org/linux/vedova/ For more information: Emanuele Vedova, vedova@mail.omnitel.it Vedova Computing, Como, Italy _________________________________________________________________ Linux for Coldfire Friday, 28th February 1999 Greg Ungerer from Moreton Bay today announced the porting of the popular Linux operating system to the Motorola Coldfire family of processors. Source code for this Linux/Coldfire project is now available freely on the net at: http://www.moretonbay.com/coldfire/linux-coldfire.html The Linux/Coldfire project is a port of a recent Linux kernel and, as with all ports of Linux, this is free software under the GNU Public License. The code is based on the recent stable linux kernel version 2.0.33 and it includes the uC-linux patches applied. The libc, libm and user applications also come from the uC-linux work. What's a ColdFire? ColdFire is the newest family of microprocessors from Motorola. First released in 1994, ColdFire embodies a revolutionary variable-length RISC architecture that is designed to meet the requirements of the embedded consumer market. http://www.mot.com/SPS/HPESD/prod/coldfire/cf_roadmap.html For more information: Moreton Bay, http://www.moretonbay.com/ _________________________________________________________________ SFS SOFTWARE RELEASES DOCFATHER PROFESSIONAL 2.2 Schmalkalden Germany. February 1, 1999 SFS SOFTWARE announces the release of DocFather Professional 2.2, their fast, easy to navigate online and offline search engine for any web site or web-based documentation. DocFather provides webmasters, publishers and developers alike with an excellent utility to make their Web Sites, HTML documentation or internet/intranet contents searchable. DocFather is top-rated and able to run on any Java-supported operating system like Linux. The nextcoming DocFather Office Edition is capable to index Adobe PDF, Microsoft Word and Excel, HTML and all text-based files. Availability and Pricing There are several DocFather licenses available. The product can be ordered on-line at the SFS SOFTWARE web site, or through its US-based partner Proactive International: Internet License: $ 349.00 Intranet License: $ 990.00 CD-ROM Publishing License for 10,000 CD-ROM: $ 1,990.00 A fully-functional demo version of DocFather is available for free download at http://www.sfs-software.com/ For more information: SFS Software, info@sfs-software.com Proactive International, LLC, http://www.proactive-intl.com, info@proactive-intl.com _________________________________________________________________ Product Release of the MIMER DBMS for Linux Date: Wed, 03 Feb 1999 13:11:58 +0100 Sysdeco Mimer AB in Uppsala, Sweden, has now released its DBMS MIMER for Linux. A complete developer version of MIMER 8 for Linux is now available for free download from the company's Web site at http://www.mimer.com. Full support agreements are available for MIMER 8 on Linux. The release of MIMER for Linux is identical to that implemented across a wide range of platforms, including many other UNIX platforms (e.g. IBM, HP and Sun), Windows NT, Windows 95/98 and OpenVMS. In addition to offering MIMER 8 run-time licences for Linux on very competitive terms, Sysdeo Mimer also offers Linux customers the opportunity to sign a support agreement, which provides telephone support and free software updates. For more information: Sysdeco Mimer AB, info@mimer.se _________________________________________________________________ PartitionMagic 4.0 Date: Tue, 2 Feb 1999 22:14:27 GMT+2 Recently released in the United States, PartitionMagic 4.0 - touted as the easiest way to create, resize and move harddisk partitions on the fly without destroying data - is now available in South Africa through accredited PowerQuest software distributor, OS/2 Express SA. PartitionMagic 4.0 offers complete support for FAT16, FAT32, FAT32X, NTFS, HPFS and Linux ext2 partitions. PartitionMagic continues to convert from FAT16 to FAT32 and vice versa, and from FAT to NTFS and HPFS. PartitionMagic 4.0 is available from OS/2 Express SA for R459. An upgrade from earlier versions is available for R289 including VAT. Additionally graphics / boxshots may be found at : ftp://ftp.powerquest.com/pub/Intl/graphics/PartitionMagic/PM4.x/ For more information: os2express@icon.co.za http://www.os2.co.za/software/ _________________________________________________________________ LyX-1.0.0 released Date: Tue, 02 Feb 1999 21:58:22 +0200 LyX is an advanced open source document processor running on many Unix platforms. It is called a "document processor", because unlike standard word processors, LyX encourages an approach to writing based on the structure of your documents, not their appearance. LyX lets you concentrate on writing, leaving details of visual layout to the software. LyX automates formatting according to predefined rule sets, yielding consistency throughout even the most complex documents. LyX produces high quality, professional output -- using LaTeX, an open source, industrial strength typesetting engine, in the background. LyX has undergone a quantum leap in functionality over the past 18 months. This release offers extensive control over fonts, margins, headers/footers, spacing/indents, justification, bullet types in multilevel lists, a sophisticated table editor, a version control interface for collaborative projects -- the list goes on and on. LyX 1.0 includes many standard formats and templates such as for letters, articles, books, overheads, even Hollywood scripts. Work continues on a growing library of "plug-in" formats and templates, in the best open-source tradition. LyX runs on standard Unix platforms, including Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD, Solaris, IRIX, HP-UX, AIX, ... even OS/2 and Cygnus/Win32 (somewhat experimentally), and provides native support for PostScript(tm) fonts and figures. The main LyX site is ftp://ftp.lyx.org/pub/lyx/ For more information: LyX Home Page: http://www.lyx.org/ _________________________________________________________________ Raima's Velocis 2.1 Now Available on Linux Date: Tue, 9 Feb 1999 14:33:59 -0800 Raima Corporation has just released Velocis Database Server version 2.1 for the Linux platform. Velocis is an embedded client/server database engine which now provides robust new interfaces for several popular development environments. These include an interface to Rogue Wave Software's DBTools.h++, a JDBC driver, Delphi Data Aware Components and support for the Perl DBI standard. Velocis 2.1 extends its SQL support with scrollable cursors and customized comparison functions and introduces a powerful new database utility, dbrepair. Please see the following announcement to learn more about Velocis 2.1. A free trial download is available from http://www.raima.com/download/product_list.cfm Raima Corporation, http://www.raima.com _________________________________________________________________ SFS Software SITEFORUM Database Exchange Schmalkalden Germany. February 8, 1999 SITEFORUM Database Exchange is a "100% pure Java" solution, which is capable to import and export your existing data, stored in any JDBC/ODBC-compatible database into another JDBC-/ODBC- compatible database. (i.e. Sybase to Oracle). The software allows you to create, delete and modify tables and columns . In addition to that you are able to modify the content, field types and attributes. The integrated SQL interface enables you to make queries to the database using SQL commands The results will be displayed in a fine-designed grid component. SITEFORUM Database Exchange lets you import and export databases from any location on the internet, the built-in proxy support enables you to work even behind a proxy or firewall. The new product of SFS SOFTWARE offers an attractive, intuitive and easy-to-use interface. SITEFORUM Database Exchange runs on about 30 java-supporting operating systems like Linux. Availability and Pricing: A fully-functional evaluation version SITEFORUM Database Exchange can be downloaded from the SFS SOFTWARE web site at http://www.sfs-software.com/. The product is can be ordered using our secure online shop at http://www.sfs-software.com/shop/. SITEFORUM Database Exchange - Single User License - US$ 495.00 SITEFORUM Database Exchange - 5 User License - US$ 1,990.00 For more information: SFS Software, http://www.sfs-software.com/, info@sfs-software.com Proactive International, http://www.proactive-intl.com/, info@proactive-intl.com _________________________________________________________________ Linuxcare Supports Business 24x7 Date: 22 Feb 99 18:15:11 -0800 SAN FRANCISCO, February 22, 1999=97Linuxcare, Inc. (www. linuxcare.com), the first company to offer a complete solution for Linux technical support, consulting, education, and product certification to Fortune 1000 companies, announced today the launch of 24x7 enterprise- class support programs, including a state-of-the-art call center and business-oriented service level agreements. Linuxcare's state-of-the-art call center will feature advanced computer- telephony integration (CTI), so that all requests are received centrally and tracked, thus delivering speedier and more accurate customer responses. In addition, all Linuxcare technical support engineers can instantly access and update the largest shared database of worldwide Linux resources and expertise. The database includes all open and solved customer issues, all Linux documentation, articles, mailing lists and news group archives, Howtos, FAQs and more. Linuxcare supports all major distributions of Linux on all major platforms, allowing its customers the flexibility to choose options that best fit their needs. For more information: Linuxcare, Inc., http://www.linuxcare.com/ _________________________________________________________________ NetReality reads, understands, organizes, and presents the Web in virtual reality EDMONTON, ALBERTA--February 23, 1999-- Bittco Solutions today released the first downloadable exemplar of its powerful neural-net foundation technology. NetReality reads, understands, organizes, and presents Web content in VR. NetReality harnesses the vast amounts of information available on the World Wide Web. Unlike current technologies, which seem to increase the problem of information overload, NetReality automatically acquires, reads and organizes information, presenting web sites, documents, searches and bookmark files in an intuitive, personalized VR landscape. This unique and powerful form of presentation enables users to quickly locate, correlate, and apply information on the Web to tasks at hand. UNIQUE BUSINESS PROPOSITION - Bittco licenses its neuralVR technology to third parties for inclusion in products like web servers, browsers, search engines, document management solutions, news readers, and email. We have blown away all the traditional barriers to acquiring our technology, emphasizes Managing Partner, Terry Harrison, Our business approach supports low-cost/low risk acquisition vs. development. Interested software producers can embed this technology on a sizzling time-to-market schedule by licensing the Bittco advanced engineering, core and customization. PRE-RELEASE VERSIONS of NetReality (TM) for all common operating systems will be available for download from Bittco's Web site at http://www.bittco.com/ in the next few weeks beginning today with a version for all Linux users. For more information: Bittco Solutions Ltd., Dean Bittner, dean@bittco.com _________________________________________________________________ Linuxcare and DELL Systems SAN FRANCISCO, February 26, 1999-Linuxcare, Inc - the first company to provide a complete solution for Linux technical support to Fortune 1000 companies - announced today that it will provide comprehensive global support for selected Dell Precision(tm) WorkStations, PowerEdge=AE servers and OptiPlex business desktop PCs running any variant of the Linux operating system. Dell will include a free Linuxcare Silver Support Incident Coupon with every PowerEdge server that ships with Linux, starting March 1, 1999. Each coupon can be redeemed for Web or email-based technical support from Linuxcare. The Linuxcare Silver Service Level provides for resolution to, or a report on the customer's problem, within one business day. Linuxcare defines a technical support incident as a single identified customer issue or problem. Linuxcare, Inc., http://www.linuxcare.com/ Dell Computer Corporation, http://www.dell.com/ _________________________________________________________________ Spectra Logic SAN JOSE, Calif., Mar. 1, 1999 - Spectra Logic Corp. today announced that the company's Alexandria Backup and Archival Librarian(tm) software is the first major backup software to support "hot" backup of Oracle8 and Oracle Applications on the Linux operating system (OS). Alexandria 4.50 provides Linux users with extensive backup and recovery tools that until now have only been available in large corporate data centers. Alexandria 4.50 supports backup of Oracle databases without taking the database offline via its Comprehensive Online Backup and Restore Agent (COBRA), the industry's fastest and most reliable Oracle backup/restore engine. In Oracle production environments, COBRA automatically discovers Oracle databases, including new tablespaces and datafiles, and puts the tablespaces into backup mode. Once the tablespaces are in backup mode and the datafiles are backed up, the tablespaces are taken out of backup mode. Availability Alexandria 4.50 with support for Oracle on Linux is available today for Red Hat Linux, Version 5.2. Additional Oracle on Linux support is planned for Caldera, SuSE and Turbo Linux OSes. A single-user version of Alexandria is available free for 45 days and can be downloaded from http://www.spectralogic.com/. At the end of the 45-day trial period, the hot Oracle backup module can be purchased directly from Spectra Logic. For more information: Spectra Logic, alexandria@spectralogic.com _________________________________________________________________ Published in Linux Gazette Issue 38, March 1999 _________________________________________________________________ [ TABLE OF CONTENTS ] [ FRONT PAGE ] Back Next _________________________________________________________________ This page written and maintained by the Editor of Linux Gazette, gazette@ssc.com Copyright © 1999 Specialized Systems Consultants, Inc. "The Linux Gazette...making Linux just a little more fun!" _________________________________________________________________ (?) The Answer Guy (!) By James T. Dennis, linux-questions-only@ssc.com Starshine Technical Services, http://www.starshine.org/ _________________________________________________________________ Contents: (!) Greetings From Jim Dennis (?) hmm. --or-- FTP Only Access: Trickier than it Seems (?) Why can I only login as root? --or-- Another "No Login" Problem (!) A Reader Answers: What is the TCP/IP SACK feature? (?) Unable to Open Console: After "Custom" Install (?) "Integrating" Linux/sendmail with MS Exchange (?) Win 95 computer/NT server environment --or-- Shell Scripting: Getting Host and User Names (?) Bad Sectors in my HDD --or-- More on: Bad Sectors (?) Please upgrade your Internet Explorer --or-- The Presumption! (?) linux --or-- Mysterious Message: Subject: Linux (?) Diamond Multimedia Modems --or-- Reader Comments: Diamond WinModems: (?) About a OPL-3 ( Yamaha driver for sound) (sorry for bad english...) --or-- OPL-3 Sound Drivers (?) Question from an old friend. (?) [Q]: Winmodem under Linux (?) how to fix a bad cluster on hd --or-- More Bad Clusters (?) proxy & router combination --or-- Proxying over PPP (?) help with partitions --or-- Installing on a Big Drive: More on the 1023 Cylinder Limit (?) Linux 5.2 Loadlin.exe, where do I get it? --or-- Finding LOADLIN.EXE ... and Linux Loader for Win '9x (?) help with partitions --or-- Partitioning Mini-HOWTO (!) True modems (?) Is it possible to run Debian on 4 MB? --or-- Low Memory Installation (?) win95->wingate ; linux->? --or-- Drop-in Replacement for "WinGate" (?) Jim Dennis: Re: Gimp on RH5.1 (?) xntpd --or-- How 'ntpdate' finds IP addresses? (?) Sportys (?) souncards (?) Great Job !!! --or-- Linux as a Loghost (Syslog Server) (?) Telnetd and pausing ____________________________________________________ (!) Greetings from Jim Dennis I have some exciting news. I'm now working for Linuxcare (http://www.linuxcare.com) --- the Linux support company. What does this mean for Linux Gazette readers of "The Answer Guy?" I think it means some very good things. Of course you might be concerned. Does this mean that I'll be more "corporate?" Will Linuxcare come to own "The Answer Guy" column? Will I answer all the good questions with: "Hey, pay for that answer from ..." I don't think so! I've been running a quiet little sole proprietorship consulting service for the entire time that I've been writing for LG. My consulting service specialized in support and training of Linux sysadmins. I've generally avoided "selling" my services through this column --- and I won't start now. Linuxcare has no intention of exerting any editorial control over, and has no connection to the Linux Gazette "Answer Guy." I might put in a disclaimer to that effect in future issues. However, the "good things" in this are: I can focus on technical issues rather than worrying about billing and sales of my consulting services. (Avoiding those is what kept Starshine Technical Services "small" and "quiet"). Fellow techs at Linuxcare and the systems lab that we'll be setting up will allow me to learn all the latest and coolest stuff. My home network is pretty big, for a *home* network (four servers five desktop systems, and four laptops --- all on two or three ethernet segments (depending one what I'm doing at any given time). However, Linuxcare will be able to do *much* more. In the past I've "shooed off" some classes of questions --- particularly regarding X Windows configuration and similar items. I'm a self-admitted "curses curmudgeon" and prefer to stay out of X when I can. Surrounded by younger techs, many of whom are more enamored of the modern GUIs --- I'll soak up quite a bit of knowlege on these topics by osmosis. For those times when I'm actually on the phones --- I'll probably get quite a lot of LG done. I spent years in technical support at places like Quarterdeck and Symantec's Peter Norton Group. I can do phone support while reading netnews, and writing e-mail. So, for my loyal fans (I know there are a few of you -- I met one on the Caltrain the other day; "Hi, John"), Don't worry. Be happy. Another Linux hobbyist can do what he loves and support himself doing it. (BTW: Linuxcare is hiring. If you are in the SF Bay Area and have a couple years of extensive and technical Linux expertise --- check out their web site). What does this mean for my other projects? I'll be giving my tutorial on "Linux Security for System Administrators" at LinuxWorld Expo by the time you read this (9:00am Monday, March 1st). If that is successful I may be giving similar (and updated) talks at future Linux events. (LinuxWorld has already inquired about my availability for their next show). For any of you that are going to LinuxWorld Expo in San Jose, CA --- drop by Linuxcare's booth and meet me. I'm still working on my book ("Linux Systems Administration" --- though the work is going a bit slower than I, my publishers and my co-author would like. The goods news there is that my co-author, M, is really taking charge of the scheduling and development of the manuscript. Also the couple of hours a day that I spend on the train with my laptop (from Campbell up into SF city and back) will help keep me focused on this and stop me from drifting e-mail, netnews, and slashdot as I'm wont to do from home. I'm still teaching one class (weekly on Saturdays) at Mission College (Unix Shell Programming). I hope to continue doing that for the foreseeable future as well. My students were worried for the first couple of classes (as I was adjusting the level of discussion to their background). However, they seem to be catching on at this point and we have several more weeks to show them all the really cool things you can do with a Unix/Linux shell. (Yes, we've told them all about getting copies of Linux and/or FreeBSD to play with at home and at their offices. The school lab current runs on Sun Solaris systems --- though Linux is being installed in some of the college's new labs. I'm really surprised at how busy I've gotten this year. I was supposed to just work on the book and let Heather support me (mostly). (Incidentally, Heather has resigned from her full-time position and may be interested in quality, Bay Area offers in the near future). So, enough of all this "chaos manor" stuff. Let's go on to this month's selection of technical questions... ____________________________________________________ (?) FTP Only Access: Trickier than it Seems From chris on Fri, 29 Jan 1999 (?) i was recently reading your article in the december issue of linuxgazzette regarding setting up users for FTP access only. [titled "FTP Login as 'root' --- Don't! -- Heather] i ran into this problem about a month ago and putting a * in front of the password entry in the /etc/passwd file fixed the problem. no telnet/login access, but ftp access. is there something i dont know that prevents this from being a simple solution? chris. (!) "Starring out" the password field (the one between the second and third colons on that users line in /etc/passwd) should also prevent FTP access (unless your FTP daemon uses some other form of account management and authentication). Locking out the "shell" field (the last one) by setting it to /bin/false (if /bin/false is actually a compiled binary --- NOT the traditional shell script) or to a simple compiled program that does a 'printf()' or 'write()' and an 'exit()') will prevent telnet access. However it might not prevent 'rsh' and it certainly won't limit the user "just" to FTP. The clever user can post all sorts of .forward, .procmail and other files to his or her home directory (using FTP) and these "magic" files can be used to run arbitrary commands (generally under that user's ID) on behalf of the user. Thus I could post a .forward file that "forwarded" my mail through a program (using the piping feature that most installations of 'sendmail' are configured to support). My program can issue commands like 'chsh' (to change my shell to something that I can use). There are many "magic" files. I can use FTP to create a .ssh directory and put in the .ssh/authorized_keys which will then let me 'ssh' into the system (if you're running an ssh daemon). Not only are there many of these --- but more of them are added as we create new protocols and services. So, you really need to do more than just set their shell to '/usr/local/bin/noshell' or 'goaway' or '/bin/sync' That's why I suggest using a replacement to the standard old BSD FTP daemon. Go read the article again for that. ____________________________________________________ (?) Another "No Login" Problem From Spiros Alexiou on Fri, 29 Jan 1999 Thanks for your help. I am attaching a small file with more info. It looks to me like the root of the problem is that the RH graphical tool does NOT encrypt the user account passwords, though root for example is encrypted. So either I missed something in the RH documentation, it is missing, or there is a bug, if what I think is right(please let me know). If that is the case, I need to either run some additional tool that will encrypt the passwords or else remove the users and create the accounts by adduser Please let me know if this sheds some light Spiros Alexiou P.S. do you have IP for ssc.com? My other mailer does not know that address (!) It would be very unwise to attempt to mail your message to an IP address. Internet mail processing using a different sort of DNS resource record than other TCP/IP protocols --- is uses MX records. If your mailer can properly pass the mail to a "smarthost" and can't properly handle the requisite MX resolution then you just shouldn't use it (or you should get it "fixed"). (?) >I have RH 5.0 (2.0.32). Using their graphic tool, I created two >/home accounts, me and guest, assigned UID and GID's and set >passwords. The problem is, I can only log in as root. I looked for >.nologin files, there seem to be none. I am attaching my >/etc/fstab files. Thus, at the linux prompt If I try to login as >any of these two users, >I am denied entry(back to the prompt). This is not an issue of >case sensitive. >Any ideas of what I am doing wrong? >Sincerely, S.Alexiou (!) I have NO idea. I've gotten a rash of different reports of this sort. All involve Red Hat usually right after new installations --- no login from console, no login over telnet, no login as root, no login as anyone other than root. (?) Nice to know I'm not alone... (!) Unfortunately all of these cases, so far, are being reported to me incompletely. Only sparse details ahve been provided (as above). I've mailed off troubleshooting suggestions and recieved no followup to explain them. So, I don't get it. You said you used their graphical tool to create two new accounts. One was named "guest" and the other was some sort of user name for yourself. (?) Yes, since I use the PC as a workstation and do not care about having other users, using it as a web server etc, the second account was the shortest possible account I could think of, "me" (!) You also said you set the passwords for these two accounts. (?) Yes, I did (see below) (!) Let's try this: edit your passwd file. I personally prefer to use vipw for that --- but Red Hat 5.0 had a broken 'vipw' command (immediate segfault) and my fresh installation of 5.2 also has a broken 'vipw' command (needed to add a symlink from /bin/vi to /usr/bin/vi --- GRRR!). So, just use your favorite editor and keep a rescue floppy handy in case you reboot the system with a corrupt /etc/passwd file. (?) Wait, do I need a rescue disk? My hard disk are IDE, not SCSI and I am supposed to only need to RH boot diskette. right? If I do need a resue disk, can I create it without reinstalling? At any rate, I try to be very careful when I edit root stuff, but it's better to be safe.. Here is my /etc/passwd file > root:hASh-OMitTed:0:0:root:/root:/bin/bash > bin:*:1:1:bin:/bin: > daemon:*:2:2:daemon:/sbin: > postgres:!!:100:101:PostreSQL Server:/var/lib/pgsql:/bin/bash > me:notencrypted:500:500:Red Hat Linux User,,,,:/home/me:/bin/bash > guest:sanitized:501:501:Red Hat Linux User,,,,:/home/guest:/bin/bash (!) Incredible. It's amazing to think that this tool is that bad! (?) You will notice that the root password is encrypted , while the me and guest passwords are not. Actually the root and me have the same password But I do not recall any warnings about that in the RH graphic user creation. BTW, for the record, I did at one point reinstall and created the same guest and me accounts I had created originally, but I was unable to login as anything but root even with the original installation Also, for the record, I do have some problems with my XF86Config, but unless you believe this to be important( should not, as the graphic tool showed no problems), I may bother you another time :) Finally the UID and GID were assigned by the graphic tool, I just acepted what was there. Let me also add, that when I looked at the corresponding /etc/passwd file in a large AIX machine (I was just a user, not administrator) all I could see of course were ! for password field, but other than that the password file looks ok to me. (!) Try setting the account passwords to something simple like just "x" --- and use the /bin/passwd command, not any sort of curses or GUI front end. Consider removing 'linuxconf' (for troubleshooting). (?) Haven't done ths yet. I am not sure what troubleshooting I would do to remove linuxconf. (!) If you're using shadow passwords try running pwunconv and if you're not, try running pwconv (to convert your passwd file to or from shadow format). (?) Will try that. Just please let me know, if you also think that the problem is that the guest and me passwords are not encrypted. Please, let me know if you figure out what's doing it. (!) Umm! I don't know what sort of GUI user admin tool this is --- but don't use it to set initial passwords! Just go to a root shell prompt and issue the command: passwd me ... and set the initial password for that account using the traditional old terminal command for the purpose. Then do the same for your personal account. Then report the bug to whoever maintains the tool you were using. ____________________________________________________ (!) A Reader Answers: What is the TCP/IP SACK feature? From Tom Kludy on Thu, 04 Feb 1999 (?) What is the TCP/IP SACK feature? What does it do? (!) SACK = Selective ACKnowledgement. It is an extension to TCP/IP which allows you to acknowledge reception of specific packets. (read on) (?) Why do we need/want it? (!) When sending a group of packets across a network, you need the receiver to acknowledge those packets that are received. TCP without SACK simply acknowledges the last packet that was received. (Actually, the ACK has the number of the next packet requested, but that's neither here nor there). However, with TCP there are usually several packets in transit between the source and destination at any one time. That means that the source will not recognize that the destination has dropped a packet until it sees the same ACK several times (4, I think) or until a timeout has passed. It then resends the packet that has been dropped. Let's say that there is are 10 packets in route between the source and destination. Along the line, packets 1,2,3, and 4 are received, and ACKed. Packet 5 is dropped, but all other packets are delivered successfully (6,7,8,etc). The receiver will ACK 5 upon receiving 4, 6, 7, 8, etc. But since there are 10 packets in transit between source and destination, the receiver won't see the repeating ACKs until it has sent all packets up to about packet 25 (since, at the same time the receiver should be receiving packet 5, the sender is sending packet 15 (5+10), plus the 10 packet delay until the sender gets the ACK). At this point, the sender finally knows that packet 5 has been dropped, and resends it. But it doesn't know that the receiver has successfully received packets 6 through 25. So, it must wait until the receiver gets the new packet 5, and returns "ACK 26", before it knows where to restart. It will take 20 packet-transmission times to get this ACK (or, one whole round-trip-time). As you can guess, this slows things down considerably. SACK allows the receiver to say "I've missed packet 5, but I've received packets 6-25". This allows a much quicker transmission restart, since the source knows within a 1/2 round-trip-time where to resume transmission (instead of a whole round-trip-time). (?) It the Linux implementation any better or worse than others? (Or is it some feature where you pretty much either have it or you don't and there is no "better" or "worse")? (!) I think it falls under "there is no better or worse", except that if the underlying TCP implementation is more efficient, then SACK might help even more.. Hope I have answered the answer guy :) Please note that this is all from memory, as I haven't dealt with this in quite a while. -Tom Kludy (!) Yes. Your answer was perfect. I'm forwarding it to my editors as is. ____________________________________________________ (?) Unable to Open Console: After "Custom" Install From Bob Miller on Thu, 04 Feb 1999 (?) This sounds more like the kernel is being told to use the wrong partition for root than a package problem. (!) That would be in the category of "There's no /dev/ directory with the proper tty* nodes available." Either of these would cause the problem. As I recall I recommended booting from floppy, checking the filesystem that he was trying to mount as root. If that is inconsistent with his kernel's 'rdev' or his /etc/lilo.conf parameters --- it would explain the problem Another, more convoluted possibility is that he has a problem with his 'initrd' image (if he's using an initial RAMDisk to store and load some of his critical device drivers). Hopefully he's worked it out. I realize my response might not have been all that clear. Sometimes I have to beat it back and forth with a correspondent a couple of times before I "get it" --- sometimes that has more to do with sleep deprivation than with technical background or communications failures. ____________________________________________________ (?) "Integrating" Linux/sendmail with MS Exchange From Kevin Harrison on Fri, 05 Feb 1999 (?) jim; Kia Ora from Auckland , New Zealand I have inherited a box with Linux installed on it and we wish to integrate the linux email (using sendmail) with the dreaded ms-exchange which runs on NT....the main reason is so that LAN clients can receive email notifications from jobs that will run on the linux box. Are there any quick guides out there on this procedure.. thanks mate Kevin Harrison, Downunder (!) There should be no special work in this regard. Let's assume that your domain was "downunder.nz" and that you MS Exchange server is configured as the primary "MX" host for that domain (meaning that all outside mail to "foo@downunder.nz" gets directed to it). Let's say your Linux system is named penguin. So you can create an MX record for penguin.downunder.nz and mail to foo@penguin.downunder.nz will go to the Linux system rather than the MS Exchange server (which we'll call "msnail" --- for "MS Nt mAIL" ;) . Now mail coming from penguin, to foo@downunder.nz will go automatically to msnail.downunder.nz where MS Exchange will mangle it. A better approach is to point your primary MX record to penguin. Penguin can then have a large aliases file for all of the users and accounts that exist in your domain --- directing the mail to the more specific hosts on which those users get their mail. Thus all the MS Outlook and MS Mail users could get their mail from msnail, while your Linux users can get theirs directly from penguin (either via POP/IMAP or by logging in to their shell account and reading mail with 'elm', 'pine', 'mutt', or any mailer they like. You heavy volume mail users who are using MS Outlook can still get their mail directly from penguin (via POP). The main advantages to this approach: Your Linux system probably has a much higher stability and capacity than NT on comparable hardware. So your high volume mail users won't be bringing down the system for everyone else. (It's very hard to flood a modern Linux system with just e-mail). You have simple remote configuration and management of your mail routing (telnet in and edit your /etc/aliases file, then run 'newaliases'). You can easily create "magic accounts" like "info@downunder.nz" which feed into autoresponder scripts (presumably in the simple procmail scripting language). You have no licensing constraints, costs or restrictions. If you want to add a hundred new e-mail users, or a thousand --- you just create the accounts on penguin and have your account holders point their favorite mail readers (Netscape Communicator, Pegasus, Eudora, even MS Outlook) at it. You have relatively easy and free access to a number of evolving anti-spam systems (such as the RBL (real-time blackhole list). I haven't heard of any patches or modules for MS Exchange to enable RBL support --- and I suspect that MS would only provide such services on a fee-driven subscription basis (rather than as a community service, like Paul Vixie is doing with the RBL). The difference between these two approaches: In the first case we set up a different MX record for penguin. Anyone who needed to send mail to an account on that system needed to use the full name: foo@penguin.downunder.nz. Mail to foo@downunder.nz would go to the msnail host. You might have some options for autoforwarding from the MS box --- but you'd have to talk to your MS wizards on how to do it. It probably involves filling in some GUI dialog somewhere (requiring you to work at its console) and its probably subject to MS pricing and licensing --- i.e. you're paying extra for each account. In the second case we reverse that: Mail defaults to landing on penguin. The further routing from there is trivial (since sendmail, aliases and .forward files have been used by the majority of the Internet for over 20 years). In summary: MS Exchange can recieve SMTP (Internet mail) so there is no trick to "integrating" them with 'sendmail' 'qmail' or other Internet MTAs (mail transport agents). I've heard some people complain about MS Exchange's behavior (generating mail with "ugly" WINMAIL.DAT attachments that the rest of the net doesn't care for), compliance (subtle ways that it doesn't conform to the RFCs and implementation conventions of other systems --- but these might be argued as a "failure to be bug compatible" --- so those are moot), performance (more than 100 "normal" e-mail accounts, or 50 "heavy users" will probably require considerable hardware under NT --- while an old 386 or 486 can handle those loads under Linux), and robustness (my household POP server has been up for over a 125 days; I have no idea why I rebooted it 4 months ago but I know it wasn't for any real problem --- maybe it was when I was rewiring and cleaning out the server closet). So, what have you tried so far? What sorts of problems are you encountering? ____________________________________________________ (?) Shell Scripting: Getting Host and User Names From Darby Gilbert on Sat, 06 Feb 1999 (?) I am trying to write a batch file that will pick up the computer name for the naming convention. On NT 4.0 computers, it is no problem. Is there a way to write a batch file that will pick up the computer name and/or user name from the computer so that it will use it to name a file that is produced from the batch file? I have been trying all sorts of different things and also searching the web trying to find answers when I came accross your page. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you. Darby Gilbert (!) Under Linux these (simple interpreted text programs) are called shell scripts (they are technically not "batch files" though the concept is the same). To get the current "computer name" use the 'hostname' command. To assign that to a shell or environment variable use a command like: THISHOST=$(hostname) ... for the short version (in foo.example.org this command returns just "foo"). You can use: THISHOST=$(hostname -f) or: THISHOST=$(hostname --long) ... to get the "full" or "long" name (the host.domain string). To get information about the current user (the one running the script) we use the 'id' command. Now, if we just use the command with no options it gives us output like: uid=500(jimd) gid=100(users) groups=100(users),10(wheel),11(test),17(staff), 60(web),40(game) (except that it's all on one line). This is informative for interactive use --- but far too ugly for elegant script parsing. So we use options to get just what we want: USERNAME=$(id -un) UID=$(id -u) PRIMARYGROUP=$(id -gn) PRIMARYGID=$(id -g) GROUPLIST=$(id -Gn) GIDLIST=$(id -G) In other words '/usr/bin/id' takes options -u (user) -g (primary group), -G (list of groups) and -n (names, not numeric IDs). So you could construct a crude e-mail address for your user by using: MYEMAIL="`id -un`@`hostname -f`" ... here I've used "backticks" (accent characters) which are the more common form of the "command substitution operator." Normally I use the $() form which is easier to read and nestable. I use it here only to demonstrate that they are the same (under bash and recent Korn shells at any rate). Here's a simple shell script that takes your list of groups and walks through them one at a time: #!/bin/bash GLIST=$(/usr/bin/id -Gn) set -- $GLIST while [ "$1" ]; do echo $1 shift done In this case I use a special form of the 'set' built-in command: which resets my list of command line arguments to the value specified. I could do that with just: set $GLIST ... which sets $1 to the first string in $GLIST and $2 to the next one, etc. That would be pretty safe in this case (since I've never seen anyone create a group name starting with a dash). However it is better shell scripting practice to use the set's -- ("dash, dash") option which signifies the end of all options to the 'set' command forcing it to consider the rest of the command line items to be "arguments" (rather than options). This is probably a bit confusing if you don't know about the 'set' command. Under bash and Korn shell (at least) you can use command like set -o noclobber (or set -C) to prevent the overwriting of existing files with shell redirection operators and set -o noglob (set -f) to disable filename expansion (the conversion by the shell of *.txt into a list of files that match that pattern). There are many other features supported by the typical Unix shell (Bourne family). This discussion has focused entirely on Bourne shells. I don't use csh/tcsh much and don't recommend it for scripting (in which I'm in good company; see: Csh Programming Considered Harmful http://www.faqs.org/faqs/unix-faq/shell/csh-whynot/index.html ____________________________________________________ (?) More on: Bad Sectors From Fadel on Sat, 06 Feb 1999 (?) Dear sir, I have bad sectors in my HDD about 35 sectors, so I can't use it, how can I use it agine? Note: My HDD is 3.2 GB and I use windows 98 yours, Fadel (!) Too Bad. If Windows '98 can't work around the bad sectors you'll just after to repace the drive or replace your OS. If the first sector on your track zero is one of the bad ones then the drive is useless. Why are you sending this to me, anyway. Call your drive's manufacturer or your retailer! ____________________________________________________ (?) The Presumption! (Claiming to be) From Microsoft Internet Explorer Support on Sat, 06 Feb 1999 (?) Microsoft Corporation 1 Microsoft Way Redmond, WA 98052 USA Dear Sir/Madam As an user of the Microsoft Internet (!) ^^^^ --- some MS Word spell-checker or "Wizard" suggested this? In the literate world we use "a user --- since the term "user" is pronounced with a leading consonant sound "y" as in "yoozer" I'm not a "yoozer" of Microsoft Internet Explorer or any other MS product. (?) Explorer, Microsoft Corporation provides you with this upgrade for your web browser. (!) You're providing me with SPAM. My web browsers are Lynx and Netscape Navigator (for Linux). (?) It will fix some bugs found in your Internet Explorer. To install the upgrade, please save the attached file (ie0199.exe) in some folder and run it. (!) It might fix some bugs in YOUR Internet Explorer. My methods of exploring the Internet go way beyond web browsing and use a variety of tools and protcols. The Web is not the Internet and MS Internet Explorer isn't even a blip on my radar. (?) For more information, please visit our web site at www.microsoft.com/ie/ (!) To comply with California State Law please don't send any more unsolicited e-mail to this address. (There was a law recently enacted in my state of residence which requires advertising to display the "ADV:" tag on the subject line. I'm collecting violations of this law to forward to my state attorney general's office. I don't consider it to be an effective deterrent to SPAM --- but they should enforce it if they're going to pass it). ____________________________ Interestingly enough, this message (and another reply to it from our site) bounced. It can be reasonably suspected that the true originator of the message was not Microsoft, but someone trying to convince users of their products, to "upgrade" to an infected or malicious copy. As such, it's really much worse than "SPAM" although it ia similar, in that it preys on people who know less about their internet environment, and are willing to take unwise risks with their assets. These folks are also least likely to be able to take effective action to correct the problems that result. Don't get snookered -- nobody should be mailing you a binary without some sort of authentication so you can determine where it came from, and hat it has survived its ride through the mail. FTP is really better for anything of reasonable size anyway. ____________________________________________________ (?) Mysterious Message: Subject: Linux From THerbic on Sat, 06 Feb 1999 (?) integrated e-mail, messaging, voice mail, faxing capabilities (!) Yep. Linux has integrated mail, messaging, voice mail and faxing capabilities. They all work and you integrate them with shell, Perl, TCL/Tk and/or CGI scripts. ____________________________________________________ (?) Reader Comments: Diamond WinModems: From Joseph on Sat, 06 Feb 1999 (?) Greetings, O Guy of Many Answers! After buying a modem and not having any luck with it under Linux (a dual-boot Win98 and Debian 2.0 system), I checked around on the Diamond Multimedia Website. After searching for "linux," I was eventually referred to a nice FAQ on Traditional, Controllerless (WinModem), and Software Modems by Diamond. This brought to my attention that I had bought a WinModem by mistake. I was able to push my now-useless modem off on relatives who were buying a computer, and I instead followed the guide and bought a Diamond SupraExpress ISA (non-voice) modem. I set it up manually with the jumpers on the card as com3 and put it in. Windows kind of gawked at it at first, but using the CD to install it instead of Windows default drivers (as I can recall; this was a while ago), it was OK in Windows. I installed the new modem just before leaving the country (and my computer) behind for a semester, so I can't say exactly how well it worked, as I was unable to try it out. However, upon booting into Linux, I was greeted with a new detection: ttySx (where x is some number I've now long forgotten). By this, I believe that it is functioning and happy, however, as I said, I was unable to test it before leaving. As I have been scanning around, I have found people with problems with Diamond modems who were wondering if they are WinModems. As I found the Diamond guide rather helpful, I thought I'd pass it along to you, for review and further distribution. (!) For the curious, that's http://www.diamondmm.com/products/white-papers/communications/c-les s_paper.html (?) You can alternately find it under the "Support"->"FAQ" selection at the top of the main page. A word of warning, however. After reading the last issue of Linux Gazette, I have found that the PCI version of the Diamond SupraExpress modem does not work with Linux. I cannot verify this, but the quote was quoting Red Hat. (2-Cent Tips) Hope this clearifies things somewhat. -Joseph (!) I still say: GET EXTERNAL MODEMS! (That was always safe until recently since nobody and really messed up RS232C so bad that you couldn't get your modem to work with Linux. With the recent advent of USB and the impending release of USB modems this will not be true for much longer. However, Linux may support USB before there are any significant number of USB modems on the market --- so we might squeak in). Other than that, thanks for the pointer. I hope some of our readers find it and learn from it. WinModems: "JUST SAY NO!" (or "RMA" --- return merchandise authorization) ____________________________________________________ (?) OPL-3 Sound Drivers From Jeferson Oliveira Andeluz on Sat, 06 Feb 1999 (?) My name is Jeferson, I live in Sao Paulo, the biggest city of Brazil... I seek for all web sites for this driver and I can't find one to make a download for this driver... Please, if you know how can I give this driver, tell me, because my pc doesn't have any sound and it's very boring.... (!) Some OPL-3 sound drivers are included in the mainstream Linux kernel sources. You just select them at compile time (cd /usr/src/linux; make menuconfig) You can test your sound drives by finding a .wav, .mod, .au or other sound files and issuing the 'play' command on them. (The 'play' command is part of the 'sox' (sound exchange) package). This ships with most general distributions --- though you might not have installed it. Here's a command to find all of these sound files on a typical Linux system: locate / | egrep "\.(au|mod|wav)$" ... you can do a sanity check on those with a similar command: locate / | egrep "\.(au|mod|wav)$" | xargs file ... the 'file' command will identify them as some form of audio file if there contents match their filename extensions. Here's a sneaky little script I call 'ftype' that filters a list of filenames based on the type reported by the 'file' command: #!/bin/sh ## This uses the 'file' command to filter out filenames whose ## contents don't match our spec ## while read i ; do file "$i" | grep -q "$*" && echo "$i" done You'd call this with a command like: locate / | egrep "\.(au|mod|wav)$" | ftype audio ... so you could play every sound on your system with a command like: locate / | egrep "\.(au|mod|wav)$" | ftype audio | xargs -l play (scary!) I've talked about sound card support before: The Answer Guy 34: Finding Soundcard Support http://www.ssc.com/lg/issue34/tag/sound.html So, check those links and see if that helps. (?) Thanks for your hear me... I'll wait for your reply.... Jeferson ____________________________________________________ (?) Question from an old friend. From Gregg Q Reynante on Fri, 05 Feb 1999 Hi Jim, It's me, Regina's husband. Haven't had the opportunity to write 'til now. Here's my question? I'm trying to install RH 5.2 on a Pentium 133. Here's the catch. I have a WD SCSI 2.1 Gig HD using an Adaptec 1542CF (ISA) card. Because of the other hardware and/or motherboard of the system, I need to set the SCSI card to non-default settings. During the Linux install, it's fine until it asks for SCSI devices. When I send it to autoprobe the 1542, it tells me it's not there. In the past I've used the SCSI card & drive in default mode and successfully installed RH 5.1 This is an upgrade from my 486 machine, so I don't want to go back. Any suggestions? (!) First disable any BIOS/Setup "PnP" (plug and pray) features that your system is trying to foist on you. If autoprobing doesn't work try passing the kernel a hint. In the bootparam(7) man pages you'll find details on many supported parameters. Look for something like: aha1542=iobase[,buson,busoff[,dmaspeed]] and fill in the parameters. I might use: aha1542=0x320 ... for example. You might have to start your Red Hat installation in "expert" mode so that it will prompt you for these parameters. Another possibility is that you have to cut a custom kernel and put that on your RH installation/boot floppy. This isn't too tough and it is documented in their manual. The boot floppies used by Red Hat are just MS-DOS formatted floppies with an MS-DOS filesystem and a copy of the SYSLINUX boot loader. There is a SYSLINUX.CFG file which is a bit like a lilo.conf file on an installed system. You should have to touch that (if you just replace the VMLINUZ file with one of the same name). A Red Hat boot.img file that I have here as 24K available on it. That's not much room --- but it might be enough for a kernel with an extra SCSI driver built straight into it. (?) And yes, I've lowered the transfer rate to 5.0, enabled sync & parity checking on the card. I've even installed DOS, so I know it works (or at least runs). I'm ready to turn it into an MS machine if I can't get this up & running soon. TIA, Gregg (!) My first guess would be that there is some PCI/PnP sort of thing that's inteferring with your auto-detection. So we bypass that with "expert" mode and tell it precisely where our card is. We also disable PnP since that often doesn't play well with ISA cards (like the 1542CF). ____________________________________________________ (?) [Q]: Winmodem under Linux From urryk on Sun, 07 Feb 1999 Hi, James! Whether there is any possibility to use the US Robotics Winmodem in Linux? I know that this incompatible device, but it is possible to somebody it was possible it to win. Thank you for advice. Yury with best wishes. (!) You know that this device in incompatible with Linux but you're asking me if there is any possibility of using it with Linux. Yes, it is currently incompatible. This is largely because the manufacturer (of the chipset used by this modem) will not release the programming specifications to the public. So, yes there is a possibility of getting use out of it under Linux. First, convince Rockwell Peripherals International (or whatever their real corporate name is) to release the specs. Then find someone who is willing to write a driver to those specs. (You might even convince Rockwell of the value in writing their own Linux driver and releasing the sources to that). I'll admit that this is only a slim possibility. I'm sure that other Linux enthusiasts (and Mac users, and others) have requested similar support for other non-MS-Windows systems. My advice is threefold: DON'T BUY WINMODEMS, WINPRINTERS OR ANY OTHER OS-Specific Devices! (I wouldn't buy a piece of hardware that was supported exclusively under Linux either). DON'T BUY INTERNAL MODEMS! Get rid of the piece of junk you've already got. Get an RMA. Get on a phone and scorch the ears of everyone in the organizations that sold, manufactured and distributed this defective useless slag to you. Make it so expensive to deal with your complaints that they'll clearly understand the false economy in selling these things. (And be polite through the whole process). ____________________________________________________ (?) More Bad Clusters From Rik on Fri, 05 Feb 1999 (?) Hi, Do you know how to fix a bad cluster on my hard disk cause I have one and now I can't convert it to FAT32. I've got a Fujitsu U-DMA 1,7 GB HD I hope you can help me. Thanks in advance Greetingz (!) Is this some kind of joke? I keep getting questions about fixing bad clusters, marking them as bad, unmarking them from being bad and the like. Worse, these questions seem to come from MS Windows users who seem to have no interest in LINUX whatsoever. No! I don't know how to force your machine to let you install a FAT32 filesystem on it. I don't care how that's done --- I use ext2 filesystems and they can tolerate and manage bad sectors (or ignore them at your peril) with no problem (just remember to use the -c parameters to mke2fs and e2fsck). Please, go find a Windows Answer Guy. If you just sent me blind e-mail and don't understand why I'm babbling about this non-MS stuff go read some back issues of the Linux Gazette: http://www.linuxgazette.com (as you should see in my .sig) ____________________________ (?) how to fix a bad cluster on hd From Rik on Sun, 07 Feb 1999 Hi, I'm sorry but I looked at altavista for bad clusters on how to fix them and there was this message board with your e-mail adress. so that's why I sended my message to you. sorry it would not happen again. Greetingz (!) I don't object to getting question (on the topics that are relevant to Linux Gazette). However, it is irritating when those people who find my messages in Alta Vista don't read what I said. I've never said that I could "fix bad clusters" --- so anything you read that was by me didn't say that. Indeed it almost certainly said almost exactly the same thing I told you. Noting that this Alta Vista record made reference to linuxgazette.com you have to follow up and look at the "Linux Gazette's" web pages (where you'll find it's own search feature --- which should should have made it obvious who I am and what I do). I use Yahoo! and Alta Vista (and Deja News and Google and others) extensively. I occasionally even send messages to people who I find therein. However, I do that as a last resort. Also when contacting someone for the first time, courtesy demands that you introduce yourself. Nothing elaborate but something like: Answer Guy, I was searching Alta Vista looking for ways to solve the problems I'm having with bad blocks and Windows '98 on my new/old/whatever hard drive. I found the following message from you: ...[SHORT quote/excerpt]... ... and then you can go on to ask your question. That's only common courtesy --- which is unfortunately all too uncommon these days. So, if you ever have questions about Linux --- including questions about how to make it work with NT, '9x, MacOS, or other systems, feel free to send them to me. Please search through the appropriate newsgroups, mailing lists HOWTOs, FAQs, and try the search feature on http://www.linuxgazette.com to see if I've answered this question before (or especially if any of our other contributors have written feature articles or 2-cent tips or other material on the subject). For problems with a piece of equipment --- talk to your retailer or its manufacturer first. For problems which don't relate to Linux --- look for forums that focus on the one at hand. When dealing with Microsoft products remember the level of support you've been getting before purchasing any more of them. ____________________________________________________ (?) Proxying over PPP From prashant on Thu, 11 Feb 1999 (?) Hi Answerguy, I am using Red Hat Linux.And I want to install a proxy server. I have a modem can configure ppp over that. But i want that proxy to do the following functions: 1. It should optimize my ppp connection. (webproxy-1.3 does provides this) 2. As this webproxy doesn't handle cache.A cache manager 'Squid' must be installed. 3. Also it doesn't supports many protocols. So I want a router linked it I dont know how i am going to do this please help me. yours Prashant Deshpande. (!) Your list mixes needs with conclusions. I don't recommend that when doing "requirements analysis" as you'll probably end up with some inappropriate constraints. If I understand it correctly you want to "optimize" your PPP connection in the sense that you want to minimize the traffic flowing over it, and the latency between requests and responses. I'm not familiar with a package named "webproxy-1.3" --- but any caching/proxy will tend to lessen the traffic depending on your usage patterns and the co-operation of the sites that you access over these protocols. Squid is probably the most advanced caching proxying available --- and it's designed to peer with other ICP (Internet Caching Protocol) servers, (potentially minimizing traffic over other links, further out on the Internet, beyond your PPP link while also minimizing latency). I don't understand item three at all. What doesn't support many protcocols? Squid supports a number of protocols (all those that are amenable to caching, that I can think of). Also the conclusion: "So I want a router linked it" is completely bogus. A router does routing, a proxy does proxying and caching. These functions operate at different (though sometimes blurred) levels in the OSI reference model. If you use your Linux system as a "gateway" to the Internet for any systems other than itself (if it has an ethernet and a PPP link or any other combination of two or more non-loopback interfaces) than it probably is acting as a router. So, let's step back from the constraints implied by these extraneous comments and focus on what you want. You could do some protocol analysis on your PPP link to determine what protocols are consuming which percentages of the bandwidth; and to determine the average latency among various protocols. This would help you focus on which protocols are likely to benefit the most from caching. It's also possible you might find other ways to help improve your utilization. Without going into gory details of using 'tcpdump' and performing data analysis on that we can suggest that you start with the basics. Run a caching nameserver on your PPP/router. This should immediately improve response time and reduce bandwidth utilization by obviating the need to forward/route DNS queries across the link. Make sure to configure the /etc/resolv.conf (or its equivalent on your non-Unix systems) to actually use your caching nameserver. That includes the resolv.conf on the router/gateway itself! Install Squid and configure your web browsers and any gopher, WAIS, or other supported clients to use it. That should help with those web sites that don't egregiously prevent caching. Note that some sites use HTTP headers (Pragmas) to eliminate or minimize caching of their pages. This is often done by "advertising" supported sites as part of their "imprint" accounting and to support their high traffic claims (to their customers). That is BAD for the Internet as a whole (since it forces every link between those sites and all of their clients to carry redundant traffic). Oh well! There goes the neighborhood! After you've taken these two steps (and provided your caching proxy/router with LOTS of disk space and memory) you should monitor the line performance (informally) to see if that meets your needs. You've probably gained 80-90% of the potential efficiency gains already --- so additional work will have diminishing returns. You can install DeleGate for FTP proxying (I don't know how to make "normal" FTP clients talk to Squid's FTP proxying --- but they can be configured to use DeleGate as you'd use any SOCKS proxy, and you can "manually" traverse a DeleGate FTP or telnet proxy in a way that's conceptually similar to the old TIS FWTK (though completely different, and much cleaner, in syntax). That's probably about as far as you can go with simple proxying. From there you'll have to change the mixture of protocols you run, and/or optimize the way you work. For example if you have e-mail flowing over that PPP link you might reconfigure that to "Hold" (as "expensive") and queue it for delivery during off peak hours. You might even reconfigure your e-mail and any netnews traffic (both outgoing and incoming) to go through UUCP. UUCP allows you to "grade" your traffic, and to schedule the delivery and receipt. This can include file transfers as well as mail and news. Naturally you'd have to arrange for some ISP to provide your UUCP batching for you. There are still some ISPs that specialize in this, and there are still some co-operative arrangements available in some localities. These techniques have a very steep learning curve. No one has been providing WYSI new front ends to make the configuration of UUCP links as easy as common PPP scenarios are today. Also there are very few ISPs with the expertise and interest to provide these services. In addition the entire discussion is moot if you aren't carrying netnews, email, or file-transfer traffic over your link (if you don't read netnews, you've arranged ISP POP accounts on the other side of your link and your file transfers can't be scheduled and automated with UUCP). Another option is to look at your work and access patterns. If you know that you're going to want to read "Linux Weekly News" every Thursday morning when you come in, create a cron job to 'wget' or do a 'lynx -traversal' of http://www.lwn.net every Thursday morning at 3:00am (before you come in, but still in the "dead of the night). The LWN crew seems to consistently have that up by about midnight (U.S. Mountain time). You could have similar daily jobs for your "Dilbert" fix (http://www.unitedmedia.com/dilbert) etc. There are some tricks you can do to minimize the amount of your bandwidth you devote to downloading advertising and graphics. One method is to use Lynx (which doesn't download any graphics by default, and therefore filters out most banner ads). Another is to create your own "localhost" aliases for some sites like "click.net" --- sites which are used exclusively to serve banner ads that are embedded in the HTML of the sites you visit. Of course, the advertisers, web site maintainers (like Yahoo!) and click.net itself might complain that you are "depriving" them of revenue by viewing these advertiser supported pages while filtering out the advertsing. If a statistically significant number of users employ these strategies then we'll see a resulting "arms race" to force the advertisments down your throat. They'll increasingly "mix" the advertising and content as inextricably as possible --- meaning that text browsers and search engines will become useless. It's a pity that more of us don't consider the implications of advertiser supported media on our lives. Your broadcast news, TV, radio, newspapers and other periodical publications are all completely funded by advertising and therefore fundamentally suspect in regards to content and focus. Its not a "conspiracy" theory --- merely and economic fact. You get what was paid for. Since you didn't "pay for" the content that you're receiving through traditional media (and increasingly for Internet "content") --- you have little or no say in what's provided over them. You have obscure indirect effects by your selection of products and services and somewhat more by complaint (to government and regulatory bodies and to sponsors). It's all very "negative" (in a philosophical sense). It's a pity we haven't come up with a better way to do things --- though the Internet's netnews, mailing lists, and the personally and "activist" run and maintained web sites continue to be a "ray of hope." In any event: That's about all there is to caching and proxying for small sites over PPP and other low-bandwidth links. Larger internetwork sites might benefit from more elaborate ICP arrangments (peering among departmental Squid servers and creating a whole caching hierarchy). Remember that this is not a magic bullet. It's possible that your usage patterns actually won't benefit from caching or proxying. If everyone on your network is always visiting different sites, and they only visit sites that change frequently --- then the cache will be a waste of your systems memory and disk space. Best of luck! ____________________________________________________ (?) Installing on a Big Drive: More on the 1023 Cylinder Limit From ariel lh on Fri, 12 Feb 1999 (?) Hi!, i have a 6.4Gb Western Digital HDD partitioned with EZ-Drive (version 9.03w) into 4 partitions (3 of 1.95Gb and one 117Mb). The first one has MS-Windows and the other 3 partitions are empty. I've read lots of info about installing linux on large HDD, because it has to be installed below the 1024 cylinders.... i must tell you that i don't understand anything about this nor partitions. How would i know is i can install linux in any of the other partitions? Thanks (!) Linux doesn't have to be installed below the 1023 cylinder boundary. It doesn't have to be installed on the first or second hard drive. Linux can be installed in many different ways across all sorts of devices. (Indeed its possible to install Linux on a remote hard drive and to a boot over the network mounting the root filesystem via NFS). There are two rules regarding a Linux installation: 1. The kernel must get loaded (by a supported system into a sufficient block of memory) 2. The kernel must be able to access a root filesystem somewhere. The first requirement is generally thought to mean that you must install Linux where a typical PC BIOS can "find" it. Thus the commonly repeated "1024 cylinder" problem. Old BIOS' couldn't access beyond the 1024th cylinder (numbered 0 through 1023, naturally). This was a BIOS limitation and it applies to all operating systems. However, some of them (like NT and OS/2) get around that by using a "protected mode" (32-bit) boot loader. This generally requires that these systems create a small 1 or two Mb mini-partition. Linux doesn't require this. The most commonly used boot loader for Linux (LILO) is a small real mode program. It therefore must work with the BIOS to load a Linux kernel. Another common loader is Syslinux. This installs a suitable boot loader into an MS-DOS (FAT) formatted floppy. Yet another option is LOADLIN.EXE, a DOS program for loading Linux (from a common DOS batch file, or from the DOS CONFIG.SYS --- via a SHELL= or INSTALL= directive). LOADLIN.EXE is currently included with a newer package called Linux_Load95 --- which is a Win '9x loader. The easiest way to address the situation you've described is to use LOADLIN.EXE --- let it load your kernel. You can do your initial installation by booting off of a CD (assuming you get one of the distributions that's shipped on a bootable CD --- which would be approximately all of them within the last couple of years). After the installation is complete (most distributions don't offer direct LOADLIN.EXE support) --- you'd copy your Linux kernel to some directory under one of your DOS/Windows filesystems. Then you boot into MS-DOS (Win '9x "Safe Mode") and install LOADLIN. Please search back issues of Linux Gazette for more details on that. ____________________________________________________ (?) Finding LOADLIN.EXE ... and Linux Loader for Win '9x From Mstrmasn34 on Fri, 12 Feb 1999 (?) Hey Answer Guy! , alternatively, Dear Mr. Answer Guy: I have recently installed RedHat Linux 5.2. I boot Win 98, to which I am new. I am not comfortable with relying on a Linux boot disk to get to Linux. I intend to emphase Linux in my computer experience. Currently I rely on DOS/WIN for familiarity. Loadlin.exe did not come with the McMillan version of 5.2 I purchased. Where can I reliably download the latest version of Loadlin.exe (and related necessaries? Also, do I need LILO if I use Loadlin? (!) The package should be on those CDs somewhere. However, you should also be able to find it in the the Linux Loader for Win '95: Linux_Load95 http://metalab.unc.edu/pub/Linux/utils/dos/linux_load95.lsm ... The LSM (Linux software map) file for this package claims that it includes LOADLIN.EXE (version 1.6). That should work just fine. ____________________________________________________ (?) Partitioning Mini-HOWTO From ariel lh on Fri, 12 Feb 1999 (?) Sorry for bothering you again but it seems that the "boot failed" message was just a bad diskette. I accesed the setup main menu and it asked me to configure the keyboard and i did, then i goes to: "partition your HD", when i go to the partitioning menu i detects my HDD when i press enter i get the message: "fatal error: bad logical partition". What should i do?, in the installation howto it says the partitioning option is for when my disk is not partitioned and it also says that if i already created a linux native and one linux swap disk partition i can skip the partitioning process. In case i don't have to run the partitioning menu, how do i configure my existing partitions into linux native an linux swap partitions? (!) So, you're trying to install some distribution of Linux. You don't mention which distribution so I'll guess it might be Red Hat. You don't mention what source you're trying to install from so I'd guess CD-ROM. You don't specify which platform so I'll guess it's some sort of PC. Note: there are many distributions of Linux and many of them can be installed from any of many sources (from CD, floppy, MS-DOS hard drive partition, over FTP, NFS, or SMB/Samba -- from a copy stored on some Windows, OS/2 or other type of server). When posting questions to mailing lists and newsgroups you'll want to include a bit more detail. Remember that your readers don't know anything about your situation. Now, to your problem. The setup/installation program you're using is offering to launch a program to partition one of your hard drives --- to reserve one or more regions of the disk space for use by Linux and mark them as such. The exact dialogs and menus offered by this installation program depend completely on which distribution you're using. Normally they will launch a program called 'fdisk'. There are many programs called 'fdisk' --- including the FDISK.COM (or FDISK.EXE) from MS-DOS, and those from OS/2, NT, other versions of Unix, and just about any other operating system available for the platform). Under Linux there are several versions of 'fdisk' to choose from. Most distributions include the old "shell mode" 'fdisk' and some also give you options to run a "friendlier" full-screen (curses based) program called 'cfdisk'. Recent versions of Red Hat will offer to make many of the partitioning decisions for you --- using a program they call "Disk Druid." You supply it with the sizes and types of filesystems and swap spaces you want and it makes a corresponding set of partitions. It's a nice idea --- but I never use it personally (I've been working with micro-computers of one sort or another for almost 20 years). Given that I don't know anything about your system I really don't know what is giving this error message. I presume that there is some gibberish in your partition table (specifically it sounds like some bogus enty in one of the extents --- the "logical" partitions inside of one of the extended partition tables. Let's give a tiny bit of background here: The first first addressable sector on a PC hard drive is called the MBR. This is 512 bytes long and consists of two parts --- a boot loader (a small program) and the primary partition table. The primary partition table is 66 bytes long. This provides room for four partition table entries of 16 bytes each, and a two byte "signature" (magic number) that indicates that this MBR/partition table has been initialized. When any version of 'fdisk' first reads the MBR for a given drive it is supposed to look for the "signature" (0xAA55 hex, or is it 0x55AA, I never remember that). If the last couple of bytes in the MBR don't match the signature then fdisk is supposed to assume that the drive has completely unitialized --- so that it won't attempt to interpret whatever random noise it finds therein (left there by the manufacturer's testing and/or production processes) as any sort of existing partition table. Notice that there are only FOUR entries available on this table. So, if we are to have more than four filesystems/partitions on a drive we need some way to represent them. Thus there is a convention/standard that allows us to use ONE of those entries to point to an "extended" partition table. This essentially daisy chains from the boot sector to another sector. In the extended partition tables (there can be more than one --- since you can have about a dozen total) we have a whole sector, but only the last 66 bytes are used (the rest is normally "zero'd" out). Getting back to your error message. If you don't have anything else installed on that hard drive you can ignore the error message and use fdisk to create your new partitions. If it won't "let you in" there could be other problems. I'd just boot on a rescue floppy (there should be one included on whatever CD you have, some where --- or you can get Tom's RTBT from http://www.toms.net/rb), and "zero out" the MBR with a command like: dd if=/dev/hda of=/dev/zero count=1 bs=512 ... assuming that you're using your first IDE hard drive. Note: DON'T DO THIS IF YOU HAVE ANYTHING ELSE ON THIS DRIVE! (You'll render any MS-DOS, Windows or other data on the drive inaccessible!). If that still doesn't work, or if you have existing data on the drive that you want to keep --- then we'll have to work harder. First: if 'fdisk' won't let you access the drive, even after you've "zero'd out" the MBR then you probably have some sort of unsupported drive/controller. It may be that you have a very large HD and a version of the kernel and 'fdisk' that doesn't support the huge newer drives. There are some amazing convolutions that we've gone through in the design of PC peripherals over the years. These 10Gb hard disks that you can pick up for a couple hundred dollars are unimaginably expa