September 2002, Issue 82 Published by Linux Journal
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Editor: Michael Orr
Technical Editor: Heather Stern
Senior Contributing Editor: Jim Dennis
Contributing Editors: Ben Okopnik, Dan Wilder, Don Marti
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This is re canon printer Bjc 250Every time I want it to print using the canon printer bjc 250 it sends out a mostly blank piece of paper with some unreadable symbols at the topand then the second sheet it will print as directed I have shut my scanner off and it still does the same thing Thanks for your help in advance
bessie flanders
Bessie, I'd say at first glance that the init string for the printer is not quite right, but whatever it does between pages is, and needs to be applied. Unfortunately without knowing which Linux based print setup you're using, we can't go farther with that.
There's decent stuff out there for actually just getting the drivers in (The Printing Howto at http://www.linuxprinting.org/howto/how.html being canonical) - but they are a tiny bit technical, mentioning buzzwords and kernel parameters and so on. She seems to have gotten that far, anyway. If you have a lively tale of your adventures in printer setup and success, that you think would educate your fellow readers, especially the newbies among us, then we'd love to see your artIcle. -- Heather
Sendmail + Courier IMAPHi! Good day.
I've been looking for a good documentation on configuring Sendmail + Courier IMAP (with MailDir) but I can't find one. My server's specs:
Mandrake 8.2
Sendmail 8.12
Procmail 3.22
Currently, I'm using the IMAP and POP server distributed with Mandrake. Im using Postfix as my MTA before, but when I needed to use MailScanner (http://www.mailscanner.info) I have no choice but to use Sendmail. I want to switch to Courier IMAP and make use of their MailDir feature and MySQL auth, but I can't find a good tutorial or howto. I believe you can help me with this one.
Thanks and more power
Domingo Genaro P. Tamayo
Postfix ?Hi,
I have installed the Mandrake-Linux 8 and Postfix , all the thing run smoothly on Linux machine but whenever I try to get Email from my windows computer (Outlook Express) . I get ther error message
Your server has unexpectedly terminated the connection. Possible causes for this include server problems, network problems, or a long period of inactivity. Account: 'Root', Server: '192.0.0.2', Protocol: POP3, Port: 110, Secure(SSL): No, Error Number: 0x800CCC0F
The NIC both of PC is working and also ping to eachother.
Please help me in this regard how to collect email from my Linux machine in OutLook Express (win98 ) .
Thanks & best regards.
Shahid Ahmad.
Ethernet errors, possible conflict?I have been searching everywhere for a possible cause to this little problem. I have two LNE100tx Ethernet adapters in a Redhat Linux 7.1 machine with kernel version 2.4.9-34smp. Eth0 is hooked to a 100tx switch and Eth1 to a Toshiba cable modem, both using cat5e cable with very short runs. I use an iptables based firewall rule set to allow for ip-masquerading. The inside interface works perfectly, and so far as I've seen the outside interface actually works perfectly in spite of the fact that ifconfig shows that I have 0 tx packets on that interface and tons of errors. My real question is if these are true readings how can I still ping this machine and receive responses without it transmitting packets to the cable modem? I have included some relevant output from ifconfig, iptables -L as I'm not sure that it's not a conflict in my rule set, and ping output from another location. Any information on this problem (even if it's just that the output of ifconfig is wrong) would be greatly appreciated.
Ifconfig output:
See attached bradbury.ifconfig.txt
iptables -L output:
See attached bradbury.iptables.txt
ping output:
See attached bradbury.ping.txt
Thanks in advance,
Matt Bradbury
It used to be that you could be sure not to be able to ping from behind IP masquerades. There's some sign this has changed in 2.4. If anyone knows the gory details, let us know how you do it. -- Heather
Step by step multilink ppp dual modems?I have no problems finding references that multilink ppp dual modems are possible in linux but for the life of me I can't find a step by step guide how to set this up. I am a newbe using Mandrake 8.2 and would really appreciate info on how to actually set my computer up for multilink 56k modems. My ISP does provide this service.
You will most likely need to re-configure and compile your kernel - you will need to install the source pkg from your Mandrake installation CD's if it's not already installed. I don't believe that that most distro supplied kernels are configured for that. From the kernel confg help:
|
............... EQL (serial line load balancing) support CONFIG_EQUALIZER If you have two serial connections to some other computer (this usually requires two modems and two telephone lines) and you use SLIP (the protocol for sending Internet traffic over telephone lines) or PPP (a better SLIP) on them, you can make them behave like one double speed connection using this driver. Naturally, this has to be supported at the other end as well, either with a similar EQL Linux driver or with a Livingston Portmaster 2e. Say Y if you want this and read Documentation/networking/eql.txt. You may also want to read section 6.2 of the NET-3-HOWTO, available via FTP (user: anonymous) from ftp://metalab.unc.edu/pub/Linux/docs/HOWTO. ............... |
Good luck -- John Karns
Anyone who can write an article about bonding multiple lines for increased bandwidth - whether ethernet or modem lines are used -- is encouraged to send one in! -- Heather
Re: article idea - making the minidistroHow to make a minimal Linux system with uClibc and Busybox is described in an article on my home page "Getting Linux into Small Machines". See http://www.xs4all.nl/~lennartb/linux.html
Not a complete mini distro, but maybe a good starting point.
-- Lennart.
One of our Answer Gang members is also plotting to write a bit of an article about the LNX-BBC rescue minidisc. The rest of us are encouraging him, so maybe you'll see something on that one at some point too-- Heather
Nigeria scamPS. The Gazette mailbox is still getting 10-20 of those critters a day, often including several copies of the same e-mail.
Sweet...As a long time self-taught user of Linux/Unix/Ultrix (and several other flavours), I've become addicted to such handy tools as vi, grep, sed, awk, ctags, and the bazillion other little utilities that can be so artisticly chained together to produce the desired results. I've stumbled across your LG archives, and all I can say is "WOAH!" I'm going to have to find myself a text-to-speech translator so I can read/listen-to all of this good stuff whilst at work, because there's just so much in here. Thanks for such a fabulous (and fun!) resource...
Glad you're enjoying it, Tim. Given that you do have this broad range of experience, you might want to give a thought to joining The Answer Gang; as far as I'm concerned, it's the most fun part of LG. You don't have to have all the answers... as long as you have a few, you can contribute. Take a look at:
http://www.linuxgazette.com/tag/members-faq.html
Ben Okopnik
END OF BODY complaintOn Wed, Aug 21, 2002 at 08:19:40AM -0400, Mxxxxxxx Gxxxxx wrote: Please remove me from your list-----Original Message----- From: gazette [mailto:gazette@ssc.com] Sent: Tuesday, August 20, 2002 9:47 PM To: xxxxxxxxx@xxxxx.com Subject: END OF BODY
Mxxxxx@xxxxxxxx.com is not on any of our mailing lists.
The unusual Subject: line and From: line suggest you received a message from a Klez worm/virus. Klez operates by choosing a To: address and a From: address randomly from the user's Microsoft Outlook address book. In other words, it comes from someplace completely different than where it claims to have come from. If you know anybody who uses Outlook and has both your address and LG's in their addressbook, you can warn them. Or if you have the original message, you can tell from its Received: headers which domain it came from. If you want to send me the headers, I can show you how to verify whether it's Klez and what the originating domain is.
Usually Klez messages come with a binary attachment, but sometimes the program goofs and sends only a one-liner. Of course, you don't ever want to run -- or let your computer automatically run -- a binary attachment from somebody you don't know, because that's how viruses and worms spread. Klez in particular also tries to disguise the attachment so it looks like a different type than it is. For instance, it can disguise an executable program as a sound file, which tricks certain versions of Windows into executing it.
More information is at http://www.linuxgazette.com/issue78/lg_backpage.html#klez
Advertising in LGWe are looking to contact some Linux websites and The Linux Gazette was recommended to me. Pls fwd me your editorial contact name and phone number, so that we may speak with him/her about promotional vehicles via the Linux Gazette website.
I am the Editor. The LG site does not accept advertising or the usual "promotional vehicles". However, we do have a sponsorship program which can get your company logo on the home page. Contact sponsor@ssc.com if you're interested.
We publish announcements about Linux-related products and services in the News Bytes column. Send a short summary (1-2 paragraphs) in text format, along with a link to your site, to gazette@ssc.com. The information should be targeted to a consumer, not an investor.
mailbag question
In the 'mailbag' of the 'linux gazette' there was someone
(without e-mailadress) who had a question about running
a Linux server behind a w2k ICS server (Linux terminal
services server can't connect to internet via network)
Now I was wondering, should whoever reads this and
know a solution or more details then he/she does e-mail
to this adress so it'll come in the next mailbag? Is
that how this works? If so, I'd like to reply (very much)
I'm not entirely sure of that... but they're the same crew, (of people mangling the replies) so if you know something, I'd say shoot.
Cheers, -- jra
If you have an answer to someone who requested anonymity, you can always send your message to linux-questions-only@ssc.com with a subject indicating which issue and question it's for, and we'll publish it in 2 Cent Tips or The Answer Gang if appropriate. Probably we'll forward it, but it's possible we'd just let the reader find it in the next issue. -- Heather
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Linux 2.4.18 + via82cxxx_audio + uart401 = no midi?Hi Gang,
[Robos] Hi bgeer (not gbeer
I'm desperate. So far I've researched /usr/src/linux-2.4.18/Documentation/sound/*, HOWTO's, mini-HOWTO's, google, google groups, & posted 2 pleas for help to comp.os.linux.hardware. No help so far.
I recently installed 2.4.18. I've got 99% of the stuff I want/need working including sound, but no midi. wav's & au's play fine, mp3's play [but with a high freq. squeal].
... timidity 2.11.3 & playmidi 2.4 act like they play, but no sound.
[Robos] IIRC I had some probs playing stuff that wasn't the right sample-rate (not midi, mind you), meaning 48kHz did play and 44100 not or other way around. Maybe thats where the problem lies. If noone else here can help you I can recommend debianhelp.org, maybe your last chance
[Ben] That's very interesting - considering that they use completely different methods and even different devices. "Timidity" actually doesn't use the MIDI system (I don't remember whether it's "/dev/audio" or "/dev/dsp"). You can test these with
cat /etc/motd > /dev/audio cat /etc/motd > /dev/dsp
This should produce short bursts of noise for each device; if it doesn't, you need to look into why that device isn't working.
BTW, have you looked at your volume settings? Do realize that there are different ones for different devices, and the relevant ones for what you're doing may be turned way down.
lsmod shows:
via82cxxx_audio 18200 0 uart401 6340 0 [via82cxxx_audio] ac97_codec 9640 0 [via82cxxx_audio] sound 54764 0 [via82cxxx_audio uart401] soundcore 3556 5 [via82cxxx_audio sound]
are loaded & dmesg shows:
via686a.o version 2.6.3 (20020322) Via 686a audio driver 1.9.1 PCI: Found IRQ 5 for device 00:07.5 ac97_codec: AC97 Audio codec, id: 0x4943:0x4511 (ICE1232) via82cxxx: board #1 at 0xDC00, IRQ 5 Enabled Via MIDI
where "Enabled Via MIDI" comes from via82cxxx_audio.o after a successful call to probe_uart401() in uart401.o.
[Ben] How about "cat /dev/sndstat"? It's not an indicator of anything special if it says "No such device", but it can be a source of useful info otherwise.
My ma'boards are Epox 8kta2 & Asus K7V. The Asus successfully played a midi using Winblows, tho I hate admitting booting it. My Epox is so far unpoluted by such evil.
Much obliged for any help...Bob
stupid bash tricks #1977 -- programmable completionIf you use bash -- especially tab-completion -- you'll love this feature.
First, see (http://rpm.pbone.net/index.php3?idpa=317091&idpl=317091&stat=4&search=bash-completion). Tarballs and RPMs are available to power up programmable completion for your bash shell.
Once you install the software, try stuff like this ("<TAB>" literally means "hit the tab button"):
$ find -user <TAB><TAB> $ find -gid <TAB><TAB> $ rpm -e <TAB><TAB> $ killall <TAB><TAB> $ grep --<TAB><TAB> $ cvs <TAB><TAB> $ mount <TAB><TAB> $ kill -<TAB><TAB> $ kill -HUP <TAB><TAB> $ ssh adamm@<TAB><TAB>
This last one should work without installing software.
The concept is simple but handy. Completion functions define what arguments are useful to complete certain commands. Enjoy!
-Adam Monsen
I use "bash_completion" and love the thing - after one small fix.
See attached ping-complete.bash.txt
Now, life is good.
packetshi,
i came to know abt this site from a friend & i need some help of yours.
can u tell me how the data packets are sent from one pc to other in a LAN. in other words about the tcp ip in linux. lastly if u have any code in c or cpp to do this job.
waiting for yuour reply.
parth
[Pradeep] That's quite a broad question. Gurus like Richard Stevens, Douglas E Comer wrote atleast three volumes each on this topic. I suggest you read Richar Stevens' "UNIX Network Programming" book.
If you want to know about socket programming(I guess that's what you mean by c code), there are plenty of articles on web. Google.com is the best place to search. This is one of the articles I found:
http://www.scit.wlv.ac.uk/~jphb/comms/sockets.html
There's a TCP/IP resource list on faqs.org:
http://www.faqs.org/faqs/internet/tcp-ip/resource-list
If you want to learn how TCP/IP implementation in Linux, best way to do is to look through source which can be browsed online at http://lxr.linux.no. Apart from that, the following document can give you some info:
http://www.cs.unh.edu/cnrg/gherrin
[Ashok] You can look at these links (on Kernel Korner in LG) that I found very useful in tracing the journey of a packet in Linux:
http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=4852 http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=5617
Though the article mentiones packet filter it gives a very good overview of the networking code.
USB syncI found this on the web
[http://www.linuxgazette.com/issue76/lg_tips.html#tips/16] Today, the curiosity bug bit me again, so I poked my nose into the Linux Visor USB mailing list, and - lo and behold - there it was. Seems that the new version of "coldsync", at least the beta, now handles the m125! I downloaded it, configured it, compiled it, made a config file - and... ta-daa! Palm USB synchronization, under Linux.
Life is good.
I have an m130, and I can't get it to sync. Can you send me your config file and the version of coldsync you use?
I setup /dev/ttyUSB0 and /dev/ttyUSB1, and put this in my config file:
See attached jason.coldsync-config-that-does-not-work.txt
Which gives the following output:
See attached jason.coldsync-complaints.txt
Any ideas?
Thanks,
Jason
[Ben] I assume that you have "usbcore", "usb-uhci", "usbserial", and "visor" modules loaded, or the equivalent kernel options compiled in - yes? I'm running "coldsync" v2.2.5 my "~/.coldsyncrc" looks like this:
See attached ben.dot-coldsyncrc.txt
Obviously, you'll need to have the appropriate username and userid. Other than that, the only assumption that we're making here is that the 130 works the same way as a 125 - not an unreasonable assumption, but worth checking if things don't work out.
Ok, thanks, I should probably contact the coldsync crew at this point. If I'm doing something wrong then it is a problem with the documentation.
Thanks much,
Jason
Deleted force user account, now no accessWe had to get rid of the quoted printable effect, and I had to toss out the HTML attachment. So here's an extra Penny for the tips: http://expita.com/nomime.html lists instructions for turning some of that croft off so you don't waste bits while emailing. -- Heather
Have a public share account for 8 different Win machines connecting to a RH6.2 server.
The samba share for the [public] sectiion listed "force users =ftp"
The ftp account was mistakenly deleted, I recreated the ftp account, but when any user tries to access the executable files in the public share, they get access violations.
Is there something further that I need to setup for user ftp?
Mark Goede
[jra] No, but i'd bet you lunch that you didn't get it re-created with the right UID. Do an ls -l in the directory in question. If you get a bunch of files owned by "#14", that's your problem. I'd just change the number in the passwd file, myself.
My RedHat pw file entry is
ftp:x:14:50:FTP User:/home/ftp:
Cheers.
[Matthias] The UID of the new ftp account has to match the old one. So if you created a new user with useradd ftp and no '-u <nr>" parameter, you have to change either
- The UID of the account ftp
- The Linux owner of the files in the public share, for instance with "chown ftp.ftp -R /mnt/samba/public/*".
Ciao
AT&T BroadbandHaving an HTML attachment on this added an amazing 140 lines of text I had to snip. Ugh. While this reader originally referred to [LG 77] 2c Tips #8 dhcp (maybe they guessed that DHCP is part of the answer?)... there's really nothing back there specific to AT&T's cablemodems. -- Heather
I have RHL 7.2 on a dual-boot with Win2K running on AT&T Broadband. How do I set up internet connection in RH? I have search various forums and come up with no answer.
Please Help,
Christian
[Ashok] To configure the internet connection in RH...
[Faber] As with most (all?) things Linux, there are a couple of ways to do it. Linuxconf will do it, so will internet-druid. IIRC, there is something on the Control Panel that does that as well.
[Ashok] ...you just have to set the interface connected to your cable modem (say eth0) to use DHCP (AT&T has stopped giving static IP i think).
[Faber] Once you do that and type (as root) "ifdown eth0 ; ifup eth0" (or, since you're a Windows user, you can reboot the machine
[Ashok] I am using RH7.3 as I type this mail with the following config for my eth0 interface which is connected to the cable modem:
[nnashok@ashoknn-gw nnashok]$ cat /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0
See attached ashok.etc.sysconfig.network-scripts.ifcfg-eth0.txt
[nnashok@ashoknn-gw nnashok]$
But one thing I have not confirmed is if we can directly use Linux before installing the software given by AT&T on Windows. If you have already installed the software and are able to access the net, then above config should work.
[Faber] you then fire up a web broswer, type "http://www.linuzgazette.com" and start reading.
dialdShane is responding to [LG 81] 2c Tips #6 -- Heather
Two other things to check:
- make sure diald is changing the default route after diald starts up. If it's not, traffic is going through sl0 -- which can be, well, slow. ;-D
- check out pppd's built-in demand dialing. I've used it on Debian (a cinch to set up! :-D) and have used the same setup on a Gentoo system (don't ask me how I got all the distfiles AND use a dialup connection; I have my ways ;-D)
Fried MBRFor some reason I can't look at this message's subject without wondering whether a fried MBR needs special oil or tastes especially good with garlic. Oh well
Maybe it goes good with rhubarb. -- Iron
I am a novice linux enthusiast. i had a fried mbr some time back and read your article in linux gazzette. Clearing out the mbr worked fine. I only installed windows 2000 after clearing the mbr.
But i am running into a problem now, when i try to install linux again. I have used RedHat linux 7.2 the first time ( when i damaged the mbr)...
[Ben] The MBR isn't something you can really "damage"; it's just some bytes on the first sector of the HD. Clearing it out pretty much puts paid to the problem; there isn't anything that can be left over to cause later problems.
...and it installed without any problem. But this time, as i try to create the partitions, it is not able to create the partition and pops up a message asking if i want to clear every thing in the hard disk.
I am using a 20GB seagate hard disk. If this problem cant be rectified with the present hard disk, i am willing to install a fresh separate hard disk for linux. it appears that having both windows and linux on the same hard disk is always causing problems. please tell me how to go about installing a second hard disk and loading linux on it, assuming that i already have one hard disk that is currently running windows 2000.
Please advice. I hope i have made my problem clear.
Thanks again.
Vishal
[Ben] I can't really say what the current problem is, since you've given minimum detail here... could I get you to report the exact message that you see? I've never been a particular fan of DiskDruid (the partitioning software used by RedHat's install), and automatically jump to "fdisk" (or "cfdisk", for preference, if it's available) in case of any partitioning problems.
Out of curiosity, do you have any available partitions for your Linux installation? You can't just slap in another OS; if you only have one partition (the one where Wind*ws is installed), then I can see a situation where you would be asked to "clear the hard disk". If you need to shrink your Wind*ws partition to make room for Linux, take a look at FIPS (a quick Net search will bring it up.)
Or use a flavor of Linux that prefers to live in a FAT filesystem - either using UMSDOS or a giant file to be loopback mounted. I believe Phatlinux and BigSlack are likely candidates, but I've never used either, so I can't say more.
Note that FIPS can only tweak FAT filesystems and its author isn't updating it (since he's busy working on a Ph.D), while GNU parted can also tweak ext2, and reiser filesystems. I think it can do ext3, or you might have to turn off the journals first so it's ext2 again. Anyways there's a floppy rescue-disk that contains parted: http://paud.sourceforge.net -- Heather
Thanks Ben and TAG;
I have used fdisk this time for partitioning the free space on the disk and have been able to successfully make partitions and install the OS. Thanks a lot once again.
Vishal
[Ben] You're welcome - glad you found it helpful!
FTP questionHi, Matt here. I found your address online while researching a problem. We have had occasional problems with files being corrupted when we FTP them to our test server. The files being corrupted are web files(Cold Fusion). I know some people use the ASCII transfer option and others are usig the binary option. Could the ASCII be the problem? Thanks,
Matt
[Iron] FTP in binary mode transmits the file exaactly as is. FTP in ASCII mode changes the end-of-line characters to what the destination computer expects. (Unix uses the linefeed character, Macintosh uses carriage-return, and Windows uses both.) Use ASCII mode only for plain text files. Any other type of file (.gz, .tar, image, word processor file, etc) must be transferred in binary mode or it will be corrupted beyond usability.
HTML and XML are text-based formats, so ASCII mode should be fine. I don't know whether Cold Fusion uses HTML format or its own format.
If you've corrupted a binary file by transferring it in ASCII mode and there are no backup copies available, you may be able to recover the data by doing your steps exactly in reverse. Go to the computer you ran the FTP program at, start the exact same program, switch to ASCII mode, and do a PUT instead of a GET (or vice versa). That should reverse whatever changes it did.
However, it's not guaranteed, since there might have been stray carriage return or line feed characters which were not initially part of the conversion. You can also use the command line of infozip to pack and then unpack a file to the same effect - handy if you no longer have the originating system around, either. Infozip is the free 'zip' and 'unzip' found in most Linux distros. -- Heather
hmorous rantI just stumbled across a bit humor in the form of a not so scathing, ms rant, for those of us with too much time on our hands:
http://www.antipope.org/charlie/linux/shopper/165.html
Another one from the same author, but about Linux filesystems. I didn't realize there were quite so many choices:
http://www.antipope.org/charlie/linux/shopper/169.html
[Heather] The fellow whose site he's mentioning writes about Linux for the UK Computer Shopper. Here's his index of Linux articles. Note that he only puts them up after the paper edition goes out of print: http://www.antipope.org/charlie/linux/index.html
Of course the articles which are old enough...
[Pradeep] May be not exactly relevant.
The "Advanced filesystem implementor's guide" series at IBM developerworks has great information on filesystems. Part1 is at:
http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-fs.html?dwzone=linux
It's easy to find other parts from the sidebar.
Win2k and squidThis is in reply to (LG 81) Help Wanted #2, http://www.linuxgazette.com/issue81/lg_mail.html#wanted/2
Please note that you DO definitely want to have Access Control Lists (ACLs) enabled on your squid cache. Otherwise a world of web-kiddies will use your site to forcefeed their "get a nickelback when people click our ad on your site" habit, abusing your disk space and bandwidth, and making it look like your proxy is doing the surfing. Don't encourage them. -- Heather
Vikas, I've taken a look at the e-mail
that you sent in regarding
the problems that you were having when authenticating
windows 2000 users
via squid.
The errors that you are getting would seem to indicate that your ACL's have not been defined correctly (perhaps due to some syntactical error), or they do not exist. Now there could be a number of reasons for this, and it would be much more helpful to us if you could post us a copy of your "/etc/squid.conf" file, so that I can see exactly what is going on.
How have you configured Samba and WinBind?? I will hopefully be covering Samba in my WM article in the near future -- have you been able to authenticate Windows2000 users on the Linux box for anyother services besides Squid??
Just as a point of interest (and something which was not covered in my article), I see from the very last line of your error log, that you get:
2002/07/15 10:46:23| Squid is already running! Process ID 9957
Since you already have squid running, I would have suggested that if you had only changed the configuration file, that you simply ran:
squid -k reconfigure
furthermore, if you have to stop the Squid process at anytime, you should always do it via the "/etc/init.d/squid stop" command. To reload the PID, use: "/etc/init.d/squid restart" -- assuming that the squid process is already running. (sorry to digress from your main problem).
I'm sorry if the level of detail is sketchy, but I need more information before I can begin to understand your problem in a little more detail.
Kind Regards,
Thomas Adam
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 By Jim Dennis, Ben Okopnik, Dan Wilder, Breen, Chris, and... (meet the Gang) ... the Editors of Linux Gazette... and You! |
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df -k is confused
Greetings from Heather SternHello folks, and welcome once more to the world of The Answer Gang.
It's been a crazy month for me. Linux World Expo was a lot of fun. At first glance, the silliness had gone out of it... mo more colorful oddities delimiting the .Org Pavilion, people were wandering around muttering that there aren't as many toys as there used to be, and there was nobody in hot giant-character costumes.
On the flip side our friendly local .org folks, at least the ones who were present and manning their booths... a decent number... seemed to be being treated with the same respect that the businesses with small, ordinary kiosks were. Maybe at later shows we'll see some of the .Org groups with meta-booths for their variety the way the big comapnies do, funded by a corporate entity here and there that uses what they have under its hood, and is willing somehow to give up the glory of their own name at the center of the booth. Now that'd be cool.
And there were toys - in great abundance - for those who paid the respect to actually express a real curiosity about the products on display. Oh sure, there were a few grumpy sorts. I didn't get given an official Red Hat Baseball Cap because some girl at the booth gave me the brush-off: "At the end of our presentation". I glanced at the shiny paperwork, and decided I could visit 3 other booths in the time it would take their presentation to finish. I only had two half days at the show and didn't feel inclined to waste them for a hat, an oversized t-shirt, and a slideshow I can probably see online (if they're smart). Most of the toys were much better than that too. Glowing pens were everywhere, but to get a green one you had to go to AMD. Jim asked them quite a bit about the Opterons' dual processing improvements.
Best toys goes to Sun for having different toys at each mini-booth within their area. Of course they were also announcing that their new LX50 is coming with Linux preloaded - a Red Hat based distro with a perfectly tuned kernel and extra goodies related to behaving well in a Sun-oriented environment. Kudos for that too
One of IBM's mini-booths was announcing an educational service - for free - which roughly sounds like a great competitor to The Answer Gang. Unfortunately, IBM's website made no particular splash of it, and my mild thrashing around didn't find it. I applaud their ideas but usability and getting the word out is going to need better work than that. Perhaps we can cajole them into sending a note to News Bytes about it.
Linux seems to be under the hood of an awful lot of big storage devices lately.
I asked a few businessmen about what they thought of the show. They see the enthusiasm is up, the companies really trying to make the mark in the marketplace. And As I think back on it - they're right - I saw very few booths where people didn't seem to know which way is up, what Linux is, or anything like that. A particular booth had a really cool looking shaker table, but had nothing to do with embedded or even industrial computing. Nada, Zip, null pointer overflow. Duh. But the dot-com winter is almost over; companies with the wherewithal to not push too far into the glitz and glory, like Penguin Computing, are surving the boom-bust cycle and doing okay. "Mr. Gates, I'll be your server today" was just as popular as the first time it appeared, though of course, it wasn't the only poster there.
The fellow stuck in the Microsoft booth explained sheepishly that they begged and pleaded not to be put in the hatchery area. He and I are both guessing, but apparently some folks in charge of space allocation couldn't be convinced that embedded dev tools != linux dev tools ... it being a linux tradeshow and all. However, they do have a new attitude with WinCE - free for non-commercial use, including code so you can debug it. And commercial entities can debug with it too; you don't need royalty games until you start making derivitive works and trying to sell it ... although what else an embedded developer would do with it, I'm not clear. But that puts them no worse off than the original Troll Tech license, which satisfied some and annoyed others. And he says they want to understand how our dev community works a bit better. I'm reminded of a quote from Baylon 5
So who gets the prize for Making Linux A Little More Fun? Hmm, it's a toss up. http://www.affero.com Affero threw a great party for the http://www.fsf.org FSF and http://www.eff.org EFF folks; music, lots of pinball games, actually edible spread ... invited speakers included a comedian, and a legal eagle involved with the RIAA cases who is pleased to see so many "geektivists" but wants it made clear that just grousing isn't enough. Grouse enough instead of act, and it will be too little, too late, because we can't route around bad laws after the're established nearly as well as we can prevent them, any more than software can do more than an occasional workaround past true hardware issues. We have to keep the heat on so that large corporate pocketbooks can't make it criminal to do these things which we already do, day to day. While that message itself isn't entirely fun, any successes in that category will help keep things fun.
The other competitor is CrossOver Office from the http://www.codeweavers.com Codeweavers people. I've been saying for years now that somebody needs to package Wine so that normal folk can use it. When they do, I'm glad to buy it. As it is, now it's real, it's cheaper than an "upgrade" pack of the Beast from Redmond, and I've got a side bet that it's more stable, too. Maybe I can finally play my Starfleet games without resorting to a Borg invasion, or having to realign my phase injectors, uh, mountpoints first.
And speaking of Starfleet - I'm involved in a handful of local Linux User Groups, but most actively with the U.S.S. Augusta Ada. We're running the Internet Lounge for Worldcon this week. In fact, this blurb is taking a little while out of my busy life over there to get our 'zine published. But, regardless of the hassles of setup and keeping older systems happy under serious desktop-station use, we're getting thanks in abundance for our wireless and tireless efforts to keep people able to hit the email, chat online, and surf the web. It's a great feeling. Folks of all plaforms (their laptops, our stuff, the Macs next door in Pubs) are all sharing the 'net happily together. Now that ... is IDIC.
See you all next month!
exe to iso filesFrom Drakonian76
Answered By Mike Orr, Don Marti, Heather Stern, Jay R. Ashworth
sry to bother you but i stumbled upon your site while looking for this
answer
how can i change an exe file to an iso file? It is not for me my friend put the job on to me to find this answer and after hours of searching i decided to ask you. If you have any helpful information on this i would greatly appreciate it.
again thank you for your time
I assume your friend wants to burn his program onto a CD-ROM, since "ISO" is often used as an abbreviation for ISO-9660, the filesystem type used on CD-ROMs. (ISO (www.iso.ch) actually stands for International Standards Organization -- or "International Organization for Standardization" as they call themselves -- an organization that publishes specifications not only for CD-ROMs but also for film speeds and lots of other stuff.)
.exe is a file format, specifically the DOS/Windows executable format.
Under Linux, the "unzip" utility can extract the contents of the .exe file's PKZIP archive while ignoring the MS-DOS program. See man unzip.
If you don't have an unzip program on your Linux system, install your distribution's zip package or see: http://www.info-zip.org/pub/infozip
If your .exe is in fact a self-extracting archive, it would be convenient to extract the contents before turning them into an .iso file for burning to CDROM.
However, it is possible to put an entire ISO-9660 filesystem (or any filesystem) into a regular file. If you mount that file (using mount's "loop" option; see "man mount" and "man losetup"), you will see all the files and directories on it, just like if you'd mounted a CD-ROM. This ISO filesystem-in-a-file is sometimes called an "iso" file and may have the extension .iso . Certain Linux distributions use this convention to make ready-to-burn CD images available via FTP.
In fact, this creating an ISO-9660 filesystem is a necessary step before a data CD can be burned. Sometimes the program stores it temporarily in a regular file, and sometimes it uses other tricks to avoid creating the temporary file (which is up to 700 MB).
To write a CD under Linux, see the CD-Writing HOWTO at http://www.tldp.org . You can also use one of the GUI front ends such as KDE's KOnCD).
I hadn't realized that it was (in Linux terms) mkisofs, not cdrecord, that did that work.
df -k is confusedFrom Edgardo Achiardi
Answered By Jim Dennis, John Karns, Heather Stern, Jay R. Ashworth, Mike "Iron" Orr, Matthias Posseldt
Hi
I have a problem
I try to boot my disks with Linux, the secondary disk is a copy of primary disk. I can boot with the secondary, but when I execute 'df -k' show me the output of primary disk and not the secondary disk.
I need boot with primary and secondary disk, like a backup or in special case, because if the primary disk is in fault mode I can boot with the secondary boot, in this way my system to follows brinding service.
Thanks for all
Make sure that your /etc/mtab file is properly truncated during boot, and that it gets properly populated with your mount information by your rc scripts. (Obviously the startup (rc) scripts on all general purpose distributions already do this for you --- so this case only comes up when you've messed with them, rolled your own, or when you've replicated the system and/or booted it up in some odd way.
when backup is finished (from primary disk to secondary disk), i corrected
the configuration files and lilo.conf. but when i boot my secondary disk
startup, this process move the configuration files such as mtab. what can i
do for keep this files.
i compile lilo and was succesfully, what happens?
thanks
At this point our Answer Gang gleefully leapt upon the question. The actual answer deals with two files: /etc/fstab, and /etc/mtab. -- Heather
Snipping a bit of the discussion that led us into a maze of twisty passages, some incorrect ... the result is nonethless important... -- Heather
- the "options" column (see below)
- "noauto" entries (floppies, CD-ROMs, backup repositories), which may not be currently mounted
- swap partitions, which never show up in /proc/mounts
- comments, especially the one saying which column is what
Make /etc/mtab a symlink to /proc/mounts.
[Iron]
Why does "mount" even use mtab if /proc/mounts is more accurate? Whenever I
boot into single user mode, the "mount" listing shows the previous boot, not
the current one, because the root filesystem is read-only so it can't update
mtab. But if I remember about /proc/mounts, all is well.
Raising some other limb we could note that there are some cases where /proc is undesirable (particularly in embedded systems). Arguably these systems already need a different version of the procps suite (which provides the ps and top commands). If mount relied upon /proc/mounts then these embedded systems would need special versions of that.
Of course we could increase the cruft support factor. We could have the appropriate library calls check for /proc/mounts and use it preferentially. They'd then back off to using /etc/mtab if /proc/mounts where inaccessible. I can hear Linus retching into a brown paper bag somewhere --- undoubtedly intent on sticking that over my head to shut me up on this.
If we choose /proc/mounts uniformly then we have a few problems. First we have to write some parts of the format in stone --- to properly decouple future kernel implementation changes from userspace and library work. (I don't relish the prospect of the sorts of procfs changes that occured circa 1.3.x which caused older versions of ps to core dump under new kernels).
Personally I don't see a problem with that. However, we have to keep in mind that Linux' filesystem support is likely to change radically over the next couple of stable kernel versions. We know that Al Viro is working on implementing "stackable" (or union, or translucent, or overlay) filesystems and we see a bit more work on LVM and snapshot support on the horizon. It's not clear how much effect this will have on the format of /proc/mounts --- how much data we'll need to add to it to support sane userspace semantics.
So, for now, just consider it to be one of those legacy bugaboos of Linux. As Heather has said, replacing /etc/mtab with a symlink to /proc/mounts seems to mostly work "well enough." Unfortunately I can't think of examples of how it doesn't work, of things to look out for.
My first concept is it might list the devices by their e2labels if they have them, which proc never looks at.
"mount" could, for instance, read /proc/mounts if available and fall back to /etc/mtab if not. Likewise, it could write mtab out if it's a regular file but not if it's a symlink.
% cat /proc/mounts
See attached mike-orr.proc-mounts.txt
% cat /etc/mtab
See attached mike-orr.etc-mtab.txt
% cat /etc/fstab
See attached mike-orr.etc-fstab.txt
Also, since I have devfs in my kernel but it's not mounted, /proc/mounts has a funky line for the root partition.
None of these differences are significant to me, but any program that parses /etc/mtab would be affected. If there are any programs that parse /etc/mtab, besides the GUI mount dialogs.
/dev/hda5 /mnt/windows-data vfat user,uid=500,gid=500,umask=007 0 0
If mounted by a user who is in group 500 (windows) all members of the group and root himself can use the file system. But if it comes to unmounting there are problems if you use the /proc/mounts-linked-to-/etc/mtab approach and therefore are missing the options field: Now only root can unmount the file system while with a static /etc/mtab every member of group 500 can unmount the partition.
So you have either option: Use the link approach to not care about correct /etc/mtab in the case your system fails and miss some advanced (u)mount functionality or use the static approach and be able to use it.
Perhaps your system is different, or the vfat filesystem is underfeatured.
|
...making Linux just a little more fun! |
By Michael Conry |
|
Contents: |
Submitters, send your News Bytes items in PLAIN TEXT format. Other formats may be rejected without reading. You have been warned! A one- or two-paragraph summary plus URL gets you a better announcement than an entire press release. Submit items to gazette@ssc.com
September 2002 Linux Journal
![[issue 100 cover image]](misc/bytes/lj-cover101.png)
The September issue of Linux
Journal is on newsstands now.
This issue focuses on the Ultimate Linux Box. Click
here
to view the table of contents, or
here
to subscribe.
All articles older than three months are available for
public reading at
http://www.linuxjournal.com/magazine.php.
Recent articles are available on-line for subscribers only at
http://interactive.linuxjournal.com/.
Linux Kernel and Patents
Linux Weekly News has drawn attention to the growing awareness among Linux kernel developers that they may be routinely violating patents. The LWN report has links to the mails on the kernel mailing list (including contributions from Alan Cox and Linus Torvalds), along with reader comments. Further reader comments can be found with the Slashdot coverage of the story.
BT's Hyperlink Case Dismissed
In more encouraging patent news, BT (British Telecom) has lost its patent lawsuit against Prodigy over a patent BT claimed covered the hyperlink. You can read reaction to the story at Slashdot.
DMCA
Here are some links and news related to the DMCA which you might find of interest.
News.com has reported that some of the supporters who helped the DMCA pass are having second thoughts. This has emerged through a RIAA vs Silicon Valley debate sponsored by the Cato Institute. Wired also reported on the same debate, focusing on how the computing revolution of 1950-2000 wouldn't have happened under today's copyright regime (DMCA). This recalls George Monbiot's article describing historically how the absence of patents has produced strong economic growth.
Declan McCullagh of News.com has written that the DMCA is not so bad and the EFF is overreacting.
"The DMCA is both an egregious law and a brazen power grab by Hollywood, the music industry and software companies. It is probably unconstitutional. It creates unnecessary federal crimes, cedes too much authority to copyright holders, and should be unceremoniously tossed out by the courts... [However,] a careful look at the DMCA shows that, far from prohibiting all security research, the law does not regulate as many activities as people seem to believe. And if activists hope to assail a law like the DMCA, they'll be taken more seriously if they know what they're talking about."Slashdot readers generally reacted with scepticism, though there were some dissenting voices. LWN's coverage of these issues is interesting reading too. Also worth a look are Declan's photos of the DMCA's corporate sponsors hobnobbing with Congressmen during the DMCA's success party -- looks like it was a good night!
More Declan! Slashdot highlighted an interview by Declan McCullagh with Sarah Deutsch, a vice president and associate general counsel at Verizon. She is argues against the DMCA and explains how her company plans to stand against such developments.
The Register reported recently that HP made moves to use the DMCA to quash a Tru64 bug report. Later on, they appeared to see the public relations nightmare the tactic could turn into and abandoned the DMCA-fuelled madness. Maybe Alan Cox wasn't so far off the mark before when he began censoring his changelogs.
Slashdot highlighted an interview with Ben Edelman in The Chronicle of Higher Education. Ben Edelman is a Harvard law student and internet researcher who is bringing suit against the DMCA with the ACLU. He wishes to be free to publish research on the lists of sites blocked by internet filtering software.
EUCD
The Register recently reported on the proposed United Kingdom implementation of the European Union Copyright Directive (sometimes called "Europe's DMCA"). Comments are currently being taken by the UK Patent Office, and these could influence the final shape of the law. It could turn out badly, but if the UK government is encouraged to take advantage of all available opt-outs, it would be a help. Obviously this is primarily of interest to UK readers, but it has relevance to all EU readers.
DeCSS
The trial of Jon Johansen, creator of the controversial DeCSS software has been postoponed [The Register] until December. The delay is to facilitate the appointment of a suitably technically informed judge. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has further information on the case.
Thought-Provoking Reading
Cory Doctorow has written an in-depth analysis of how Hollywood's plans could interfere with the electronics industry, and the computer industry in particular. This was also discussed on slashdot
Another interesting article, on the subject of online music/media distribution , is The Internet Debacle - An Alternative View by Janis Ian. It highlights things that are wrong with the current situation, along with possible ways to change it. The fallout and follow up to the article has also been published.
A third article definitely worth reading is Lawrence Lessig's keynote speech from the O'Reilly Open Source Convention. You can read it in html, and if your connection/patience is up to it you can download the audio in mp3 format.
Finally, the Boston Review has an article entitled Reclaiming the Commons, which has a lot of relevance to the Open Source community. Further online comments and replies are also available.
Government
Microsoft and other players on the proprietary software scene have been sufficiently rattled by advances of open source software into government infrastructure to set up a lobby group [News.com] called The Initiative for Software Choice to convince governments in Europe and South America that legislation favoring open-source software is not in their best interest.
This is a reaction to developments such as California's proposed Digital Software Security Act, which would forbid the state from purchasing closed-source software. However, as LWN reports, the law is quite extreme and has little chance of actually being passed. None the less, it is good to see these ideas floating into the mainstream. In a similar vein, it has been reported that the Spanish Administration has been pleased with its initial experiences of Linux. Advogato have the full story.
The following articles are in the July/August issue of the E-zine
LinuxFocus:
A couple of links from Linux Journal
Some links from The Register:
And a few links from Linux Weekly News:
Michael Lucas at O'Reilly discusses how using groups minimizes the need to give users the root password, while still allowing them to accomplish their jobs.
Infoworld report that Bruce Perens has left HP to devote more time to activism
Linux and Main report on the release of GCC-3.2.
CNN and Money Magazine take a look at Linux.
Drew Daniels has written a report that describes methods of backing up a Debian system. The program cruft is used to find files that are not covered by properly installed packages. This complements the chapter in the sysadmin guide about making backups. ( From Debian Weekly News.)
Bruce Sterling's talk on Open Source, from the recent O'Reilly Open Source Convention.
Linux makes headlines in professional DJ circles with Final Scratch.
As a follow-up on the USB 2.0 announcement in last month's News Bytes, here's a FAQ from linux-usb.org for your further information. www.linux-usb.org is always good place to look if you have any problems with USB devices on Linux.
Rick Moen has written a FAQ on WordPerfect on Linux, which also covers some other topics of longer-term interest than the decline of WP. (The FAQ is also available in single page format.)
Some links from Slashdot
|
Communications Design Conference (CMP) | September 23-26, 2002 San Jose, California http://www.commdesignconference.com/ |
|
IBM eServer pSeries (RS/6000) and Linux Technical University | October 14-18, 2002 Dallas, TX http://www-3.ibm.com/services/learning/conf/us/pseries/ |
|
Software Development Conference & Expo, East (CMP) | November 18-22, 2002 Boston, MA http://www.sdexpo.com/ |
Listings courtesy Linux Journal. See LJ's Events page for the latest goings-on.
The Samba Team needs your help
The Samba Team has a number of significant expenses and so have decided to setup a donation system to allow users of Samba to make contributions to help cover the cost of running samba.org and developing Samba.
XBox Linux
The project to get Linux running on an XBox is proceeding quickly. In August the news emerged that the first functional version of XBox Linux had been released. At time of writing, the current release is 0.2, and features framebuffer support (screenshots here). ISO images are available for download from the project's Sourceforge site. The project has not run entirely smoothly, however, and it was recently reported that project founder Enrico Kern has left the development group due to differences with the current team leader.
OpenSSH Trojaned
OpenSSH was trojaned in early August. The LinuxSecurity.com advisory has details on how to tell if you are affected (basically, you should be worried if you downloaded the OpenSSH source between 30th July 2002 and 1st August 2002).
You can read news coverage of the vulnerability at The Register, and at Slashdot.
We Want Linux Survey
We Want Linux, a self-funded non-commercial group of IT professionals, would like to see the computing consumer have as many options in the marketplace as possible, and in particular would like to see those who have an interest in GNU/Linux be able to try out a demo machine in stores like CompUSA and Best Buy, the same way they can right now with Windows. The group also feels that the potential Linux desktop user ought to have the same opportunity as those who use Windows, that is, to buy a computer with Linux pre-loaded and thereby avoid the hassle of installing an operating system. To these ends the group have created a web site www.wewantlinux.org, for the purpose of surveying the computer-buying public and determining how much demand there is for off-the-shelf computers with GNU/Linux pre-loaded. You are invited to visit the site and participate in the survey. Once a significant amount of survey data has been gathered, the findings will be presented to the retailers in the hope of persuading them to demo Linux in their stores.
Debian
LinuxOrbit's tutorials on the Debian packaging tools and on the Debian way to install a kernel are probably of interest to most Debian users. Also likely to be of interest is Jay Salzman's Debian Jigdo mini-HOWTO which was recently added to the Linux Documentation Project. Jigdo has made retrieving Debian ISO images far easier and more convenient than it was in the past.
Knoppix
Knoppix 3.1, a Debian based distro run entirely from CD was released recently. Knoppix featured as project of the week on Linux and Main.
Slackware
Several security updates are now available for Slackware 8.1, including updated packages for Apache, glibc, mod_ssl, openssh, openssl, and php. The details are in the Slackware 8.1 ChangeLog.
SuSE
Telia Connect, a Danish subsidiary of Telia, a Scandinavian telecommunications and Internet service provider, executed a long-term agreement with the Nuremberg-based SuSE Linux AG for the maintenance of its IBM zSeries G7 mainframe systems. Telia Connect's positive experience with SuSE Linux Enterprise Server started in 2001, when the ISP consolidated a heterogeneous farm of 70 Unix servers on one IBM mainframe. Since then, the Internet pages and e-mail accounts of more than 400,000 customers continue to be processed on one single IBM S/390 mainframe.
MTU Aero Engines has decided to use a Linux cluster for its engine development. The Linux cluster consists of 64 Dell PowerEdge 1550 standard rack servers with two 1.13 GHz Intel Pentium III processors each, and a total main memory of 144 GB SDRAM for the implementation of additional computing capacities. SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 7 is used as the operating system. The computers are networked using Fast Ethernet and 2 GBit/s Myrinet.
UnitedLinux
United Linux participants Caldera (now The SCO Group), Conectiva, SuSE Linux and Turbolinux have announced that UnitedLinux will be available as a closed beta product by the end of August to partners of the four founding companies. It is expected to be publicly available in open beta by the end of Q3 2002.
To participate in the UnitedLinux closed beta, please visit www.unitedlinux.com or contact any of the four founding Linux companies.
ispell-gaeilge
Kevin Scannell has announced the release of a new version of his package ispell-gaeilge (Irish language support for International Ispell), and the launch of a completely new package aspell-gaeilge which uses the same word list plus a description of Irish phonetics to improve the suggestions when a misspelled word is encountered. This second version works with Kevin Atkinson's "aspell" program.
More information (in English) is available from http://borel.slu.edu/ispell/index-en.html
NSA Security Enhanced Linux
A new version of NSA's Security-Enhanced Linux has been released, dated August 23. It includes a 2.4.19-based kernel.
GMx Configuration File Management Tool for Linux and UNIX
GMx Solutions has announced the release of CM_SAFE version 1.5 with support for Linux on iSeries and disaster-recovery functionality. CM_SAFE provides configuration management and version control for configuration files on Open Systems servers. Systems administrators can save configurations to the configuration repository. When a configuration problem occurs, they can retrieve a known-working configuration with a single command.
The CM_SAFE server is available for Linux partitions on iSeries and zSeries, with agent support available for all major UNIX distributions and platforms.
SableVM 1.0.0 Released
SableVM is a portable bytecode interpreter written in C, and implementing the Java virtual machine specification, second edition. Its goals are to be reasonably small, fast, and efficient, as well as providing a well-designed and robust platform for conducting research.
SableVM implements many innovative techniques (bidirectional object layout, spinlock-free thin locks, sparse interface vtables, etc.) and is licensed under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License.
Manning Releases Extending and Embedding Perl Book
Manning's Extending and Embedding Perl aims to explain how to expand the functionality and usefulness of the Perl programming language and how to use Perl from C programs. The book spends a lot of time discussing how to write interfaces to C libraries (as well as C++ and Fortran libraries). It shows how to implement Perl callbacks for C libraries, how to pass Perl hashes and arrays between Perl and C, and how to use the Perl Data Language infrastructure to improve the speed of array operations.
The book is available both in 384pp softbound format ($44.95), and 2Mb PDF format ($13.50), from the publisher at www.manning.com/jenness. (Note, I have not reviewed this book - MC.)
Linux Compatible Christian Resources
Rev. Linda Richard is planning to expand her Christian Publications website into a resource for those seeking Linux Compatible Software which is religious/inspirational in its content. Currently the site features a collection of documents in relatively Linux-friendly formats (PDF), but there are plans to include further resources and links to resources.
Appligent Releases SecurSign 2.0
Appligent, a suburban-Philadelphia software developer and provider of PDF-related software applications is introducing SecurSign 2.0, a server-based solution that allows for the high-volume, on-demand application of security and digital signatures to PDF documents. SecurSign 2.0 also offers user and owner passwords and restrictions for printing, modifying, and copying text and graphics, as well as adding or changing notes and form fields.
SecurSign 2.0 is compatible with the Adobe Acrobat Digital Signature Mechanism found in Acrobat 4.0 and 5.0, and documents signed using SecurSign 2.0 can be verified using Adobe Acrobat. SecurSign 2.0 is available for Windows, Linux 7, AIX, Mac OS X, Solaris and HP-UX.
Other Software
RoadRunner has reached version 0.9. RoadRunner is an application toolkit library implementing BEEP (Blocks Extensible Exchange Protocol). (LG wonders if RoadRunner 1.0 will implement the BEEP-BEEP protocol ;-).
|
...making Linux just a little more fun! |
By Javier Malonda at escomposlinux.org |
Antonio from escomposlinux.org writes:
Hi. I am a member of escomposlinux.org, an organization supporting the es.comp.os.linux.* newsgroups. Some years ago, a fellow member had the wonderful idea of drawing a weekly comic strip based on linux.Here are a few of the best cartoons since the comic started in January 2001.Well, recently, the strip has been translated into English (ajem, we are doing our best ;-)
The Spanish (ogirinally the only one) version is at tira.escomposlinux.org, and the English translation at comic.escomposlinux.org.
|
...making Linux just a little more fun! |
By Jon "Sir Flakey" Harsem |
[These cartoons are scaled down to fit into LG. To see a panel in all its clarity, click on it. -Editor (Iron).]
![[cartoon]](misc/qubism/qb-refuse.jpg)
![[cartoon]](misc/qubism/qb-smallnsquishy.jpg)
All Qubism cartoons are
here
at the CORE web site.
In Parts I and II of this series, we examined the
process of using tools available with Linux to build a simple boot sector and
access the system BIOS. Our toy OS will be closely modelled after a `historic'
Linux kernel - so we have to switch to protected mode real soon! This part
shows you how it can be done.
The 80386+ provides many new features to overcome the
deficiencies of 8086 which has almost no support for memory
protection, virtual memory, multitasking, or memory above 640K -
and still remain compatible with the 8086 family. The 386 has all
the features of the 8086 and 286, with many more enhancements. As
in the earlier processors, there is the real mode. Like the 286,
the 386 can operate in protected mode. However, the protected
mode on 386 is vastly different internally. Protected mode on the
386 offers the programmer better protection and more memory than
on the 286. The purpose of protected mode is not to protect your
program. The purpose is to protect everyone else (including the
operating system) from your program. Superficially protected mode and real mode don't seem to be
very different. Both use memeory segmentation, interrupts and
device drivers to handle the hardware. But there are differences
which justify the existence of two separate modes. In real mode,
we can view memory as 64k segments atleast 16bytes apart.
Segmentation is handled through the use of an internal mechanism
in conjunction with segment registers. The contents of these
segment registers (CS,DS,SS...) form part of the physical address
that the CPU places on the addresss bus. The physical address is
generated by multiplying the segment register by 16 and then
adding a 16 bit offset. It is this 16 bit offset that limits us
to 64k segments. fig 1 : Real Mode Addressing In protected mode, segmentation is defined via a set of tables
called descriptor tables. The segment registers contain pointers
into these tables. There are two types of tables used to define
memory segmentation : The Global Descriptor Table and The Local
Descriptor Table. The GDT contains the basic descriptors that all
applications can access. In real mode one segment is 64k big
followed by the next in a 16 byte distance. In protected mode we
can have a segment as big as 4Gb and we can put it wherever we
want. The LDT contains segmentation information specific to a
task or program. An OS for instance could set up a GDT with its
system descriptors and for each task an LDT with appropriate
descriptors. Each descriptor is 8 bytes long. The format is given
below (fig 3). Each time a segment register is loaded, the base
address is fetched from the appropriate table entry. The contents
of the descriptor is stored in a programmer invisible register
called shadow registers so that future references to the same
segment can use this information instead of referencing the table
each time. The physical address is formed by adding the 16 or 32
bit offset to the base address in the shadow register.These
differences are made clear in figures 1 and 2. fig 2 : Protected Mode Addressing fig 3 : Segment Descriptor Format We have yet another table called the interrupt descriptor
table or the IDT
Jon is the creator of the Qubism cartoon strip and current
Editor-in-Chief of the
CORE News Site.
Somewhere along the early stages of
his life he picked up a pencil and started drawing on the wallpaper. Now
his cartoons appear 5 days a week on-line, go figure. He confesses to
owning a Mac but swears it is for "personal use".
Jon "SirFlakey" Harsem
Published in Issue 82 of Linux Gazette, September 2002
...making Linux just a little more fun!
By Raghu and Chitkala
[Krishnakumar is unable to continue this series himself due to other
commitments, so he has handed it over to his junior colleagues,
Raghu and Chitkala, who have written part III. -Editor.]
1. What is Protected Mode ?
1.1 Protected Mode vs Real Mode
