• The MailBag
• The Answer Gang
• News Bytes, by Michael Conry
• Laurel and Hardy Try to Write a C Program, by Stephen Bint
• HelpDex, by Shane Collinge
• Working with XSLT, by Daniel Guerrero
• Ecol, by Javier Malonda
• Security Administration with Debian GNU/Linux, by Jose Salvador Gonzalez Rivera
• Collaborative Community Linux Extranet for Improved Health, by Janine M Lodato
• Perl One-Liner of the Month: April is the Cruelest Month, by Ben Okopnik
• The Foolish Things We Do with Our Computers, by Mike ("Iron") Orr
• Exploring Message Queues, part 1, by Raghu J Menon
• Easter Eggs, by Vinayak Hegde
• The Linux Scheduler, by Vinayak Hegde
• Cloning workstations with Linux, by Alan Ward

Linux Gazette Staff and The Answer Gang

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

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

Copyright © 1996-2003 Specialized Systems Consultants, Inc.

...making Linux just a little more fun!

The Mailbag From The Readers of Linux Gazette

• How to host DNS for websites & for DSL connected satellite offices
• fetchmail ? sendmail ? or sender ?
• Router Question
• Help wanted - ps2 shutdown...
• Simulating RPM Tool.
• Internet providers in USA

How to host DNS for websites & for DSL connected satellite offices

Hi

I have tried lots and lots and lots of things to get DNS setup properly, but can only get it to work intermitently. What I am try to achieve is a fairly small, fairly simple, multi domain DNS host for a few domains that my company owns, and then a few that we are/will be hosting in the near(ish) future. I have some linux boxes RH62/RH7x configured for various tasks like email, database servers, apache, samba etc. Some of the DNS authorities are with register.com, some with various ISP's. I can modify the register.com ones once I have the thing working, and will ask the ISP's to "hand over" the SOA's as well, but first I have to get the confounded thing to work properly.

I shall describe what I would like, using thumbsuck names and ip's, and would be VERY happy and appreciative if you could tell me how the config files should look.

lets say I own/have howdoesdnswork.com as my main domain, and host some others like:

	whywontthiswork.net
	imconfused.co.za
	plshelp.org.za

I plan to run (i think i have it working, but can't test properly till DNS works) a virtual domain mailhost (qmail based) system. I have a fixed IP/permanent connection for my main(own) domain which is on ip subnet 99.8.77.0


DNS server (primary) is/will_be 99.8.77.13 (using BIND8)
DNS server (secondary) is/will_be 99.8.77.12 (also using BIND8)
Mail server for howdoesdnswork.com (and in fact all above) is 99.8.77.2
Web server (for all above using apache virtualhosting) is on 99.8.77.4

You're probably thinking "Why is someone so clueless even attempting something like this", but I've gotta start somewhere if I'm ever gonna learn. Pls pardon my ignorance (& I'll pardon your sniggering ).

By what I have read, and tried and struggled with, I need zone files for each domain, each of which contains host info etc. Here are my attempts, comments etc still included ..... followed by a desperate request (on my knees, tears running down my face etc) for assistance/guidance/criticism.

See attached Murgatroyd.dns-configuration-files.txt

I would also like to get some info on "mail server splitting" - as in having a local mail server (proxy) on a DSL connected LAN which forward internet emails to a main server (mailhost) on a permanent connection, but transmits local mail as local mail, and then which downloads mail from the "mailhost" to the local "mail proxy" on a polled interval, but I'm probably pushing my luck here, so I'll post this one another time..... unless of course...??? I have a working system using micro%$#* but would like to get rid of ALL M$ products as soon as humanly possible.

Thanx a stack Trent

For DNS questions there's a great resource called "Ask Mr.DNS" - but he won't answer generic requests, they'd have to be reachable from the net. Still, his archives are catalogued by category at http://www.acmebw.com/cats.htm

This certainly looks like a solvable problem; if your patience wears too thin with Micro[snip] and your time too short, you might want to dig into the Consultants Howto. While by title you'd think it was "Howto become a consultant" it's really "Howto find a consultant". There's lots of 'em, but you may recognize a few names in those pages... Check out http://www.tldp.org -- The Scissors

fetchmail ? sendmail ? or sender ?

Hi

I hope this is a legitimate question: At faked.org a person subscribes to Info@fake.nl with his e-mailadress special.person@faked.org Okay, fetchmail collects the e-mails and sendmail distributes them on a linuxserver. What is weird: the sender sends to himself . . . in pine one sees: From: Info@fake.nl To: Info@fake.nl

Now I would not deliver such an e-mail . . . . But linux is politer and sends it to the local person of last resort.

I cannot but forward the e-mail to special-person@faked.org I do not want to mess myself with the sendmail and fetchmail configurations as they do perfectly what they should do with normal e-mails.

For your information I have put here-under what Outlook Express shows One blames me for not delivering the e-mail in the normal way . . . (Help !)

In outlook express one sees:

See attached Chris-de-Boer.headers-oe.txt

Router Question

This is a multi-part message in MIME format. I had extra fun snipping the bulky HTML attachment into shreds small enough to wheelbarrow off in a tilted over greater-than symbol. Clipping the equals marks off the line ends was gravy. -- The Scissors

Hi,

Excellent material on this site !!!

I have a small problem. I have two subnets: 192.149.1.0/24 and 192.168.52.0/24. I want all the hosts on one to see the others on the other subnet. In other words, I want to have NO BLOCKING of any service from either side.

I have been able to make the 168 network hosts see and access the 149 hosts. From the 149 subnet I can ping a host on the other subnet, but I can't, for example, see a PC's shared directories. Security is not an issue as they are both internal networks.

I am running Coyote Linux on a floppy.

Any help will be greatly appreciated and thanks in advance.

Sesh

Help wanted - ps2 shutdown...

Hi...

I had simular problem, the other way around... The BIOS have a function for ps2 keyboard and mouse power-up, check that it is set for your needs... The problem is that it doesn't work with all os-shutdowns Don't know how that come...

Ruben Hansen alias GbyTe

I assume you mean for APM features in the BIOS. I wonder if perhaps, this is BIOS specific somehow. I know that almost all BIOS's are "standard" in terms of options, but you never know......

Thanks, Ruben!

Simulating RPM Tool.

Hi

Hello,

I got a lot of useful answers from this group for my previous question [TAG] RPM -Installing Packages.Thanks a lot to Thomas ,Ben,Breen,David and Rick.

<blushing>...you're welcome.

Actually i'm trying (to simulate the RPM Tool functionalities using C ) to develop a Java Packager Tool for handling *. rpm files in a Solaris Box. It should support packaging operations like Install , Query, Verify,Erase etc.

Sounds good.

As a first task , I'm tring to simulate the RPM Query option , to query installed packages.If we query an uninstalled package ,it should say it's uninstalled.It should generate package infos. as we get in : rpm -qi <file>. Also to query the listof files , pre & post installation scripts , list of dependencies, list of dependencies covered and not covered.I don't know how to use <rpmdb.h> file for generating these informations.

Hmmm, from my limited knowledge I think that you can just query the RPM database directly without going via <rpmdb.h>

Can anybody (in this group) help me in this regard?

Which part are you implementing in Java (I got 93/100 for that last semester ???

Any other suggestions that would help me to procede in this project?

Sounds like an interesting project. Readers, if any of you have done the same, or seen a project with this in progress, let us know! -- The Scissors

Internet providers in USA

Hi all,

I know that this list is called "linux-questions-only" and therefore I have to prove that it is indeed a linux question! So: I want to travel to the USA with my linux laptop and need some reliable internet access via modem or ISDN (is ISDN available there and which standard is used then).

In Germany we have something called "Internet by call" where you call a number and pay via telephone bill, you don't have to register and don't have to pay in advance.

What are the options to get a linux laptop on the net in the USA? Since some of you guys are living there, you may answer the question. A quick glance on google results has only shown me some Calling Card providers where you buy "points" and then use the web until they are empty. AOL (since it's not linux-compatible) and T-Online global access (since I'm not a customer) are no option.

"If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear."

George Orwell

Heh, normally I snip sig blocks, but this seems particularly apt to the BitKeeper related mail a little later on this page. -- The Scissors

[Tux] You can do what I do, since I travel a lot: use AT&T. It's $20/month, and they have dial-up numbers pretty much everywhere; AFAIK, more so than any other service. The only caveat is, no outgoing SMTP - you have to use their mail servers to push your stuff out. For most people, that's not a problem; I just find it to be an annoyance. Easy fix: set up one conffile for a smarthost and one for a local MTA and swap them as necessary. For extra ease of use, don't run in daemon mode - just invoke the MTA per-message (and an occasional cron job in case anything gets stuck in the pipe.)

[Swirl] You know, if I faced that situation, I'd rsync or scp my outgoing mail over to my own MTA. That's what Andrew Tridgell does. (For that matter, I usually just ssh over to my MTA box anyway, where I have mutt perpetually running under GNU screen, interacting directly with the local mail sppol.) They don't block port 22 (ssh), do they? That would be a deal-breaker.

[Tux] You know, I just got a shell account with <freeshell.org>; that is an excellent idea. I'd really like the ability to keep 'Fcc's on my laptop, but I can always pull down the files.

[Swirl] Entrusting outbound mail to AT&T's smarthost seems an unjustifiable compromise, in any event. Not acceptable.

[Tux] Parallels my own attitude; however, I didn't have the means to support it until now.

These are interesting thoughts, but quite untrue to their nature, the Gang didn't answer the question as offered. If you know of a purely by-the-call internet provider in the United States, or you happen to be one, chime in, and we'll see that you get noticed. At the moment the very closest I can think of is some internet coffee shops have taken to selling daypasses into their wireless hookup, or sell hourly time while you enjoy the coffee, and hotels in urban areas are starting to offer high speed access, also paid by the day. You'd need a wireless or ethernet card respectively. Europeans please note that the phone system in the US rarely offers direct-plug ISDN - that's considered a business class data line around here. -- The Scissors

• Escaping from BitKeeper...
• wordsmithing in Gibberish
• SCO Sues IBM
• Thanks

Escaping from BitKeeper...

I read your 'Greeting' in the latest LinuxGazette online and found it interesting, and correct. The last company I worked for actually switched from cvs, to BitKeeper, for all the cool features. Very long story short, after one year of us debugging their product, paying tens of thousands of $ for the privilege, and never having Larry McVoy stop being a pain in the ass, we dumped them and went back to cvs, and all was well (after they threatened to sue us, etc... at the time we definitely had superior lawyers, and they knew they had no case--but why even threaten? Leaves a bad taste.) Afterward, we missed changesets a bit, but not as much as you might think. And we got so much better performance for "simple things", that it made up for it, in our minds. Oh, and we could save the tens of 000s of $, which was in-line with our whole philosophy, anyhow.

My. I've no idea why large enough corporations think being a poor sport would keep them customers who are on the verge of flying the coop. One would think the other way happens more often - attempts to lure one back and all.

"Large enough corporations" I suppose -- BitMover is/was only a handful of folks. I felt they were very deceptive about the quality of their code (which did improve during the year we spent with it, but should have been that way to start with), and were obviously trying to exploit Linux (by convincing Linus to use BK), as a marketing tool. I don't believe LM has ever contributed to an opensource project, if that tells you something.

My own experiences of these systems have been with the bits only and not so much which the personailities that drive them. I'm all for people having pride in their work... but a little respect around the naighborhood here pays us all back best.

(Search Linux Gazette back archives on the title "The Coin of the Realm" for an interesting editorial on that. Issue 65, I think.)

It was issue 64 actually. OpenProjects has become http://www.freenode.net and if you enjoyed the concept, you might be interested in reading ESR's two papers that came after "The Cathedral and the Bazaar" ... "Homesteading the Neosphere" and "The Magic Cauldron" ... since he explores the anthropologic concepts of "gift culture" and other modes of economics in more academic detail. -- The Scissors

It's too bad BitMover (the company) isn't nearly as cool as well as BitKeeper, the product, is. I told Linus in email (not sure if he ever even read it) way back when that, be careful, Larry is not really a "plays well with others" kind of guy. (This is probably the understatement of the week, but I'm in a charitable mood.)

Heh. Linus has been known to declare himself "not a nice guy" on occasion too. I've always found him gentlemanly, but I wasn't toe to toe with him on the right or wrong ways to implement a deeply integral kernel function, either.

Your comments were right-on, and interesting to read. I don't usually visit the site but maybe I'll try to do so more in the future. (And if you're curious, my current shop is all-windows, that's what I inherited... trying to slowly turn things towards opensource solutions, but it's quite the effort. I thought switching from SourceSafe would be hard, but it turns out they don't even use that!! Wow. We're going to use cvs hosted on linux, with the excellent and free TortoiseCVS windows clients.)

Ben Margolin

I'm glad you enjoyed my mangled thoughts on it all. Your response goes to show that one of the lessons of open source remains the ability to vote with our feet, ultimately enforced by the right to just plain re-do it ourself.

Let us know if there's any good stuff you'd like to see in our pages!

wordsmithing in Gibberish

This is with reference to " Perl One-Liner of the Month: The Case of the Evil Spambots" which was published in th LG#86. I especially enjoyed you defination of Gibberish.

Here is something I found in my fortune files. I am pretty sure wordsmithing in the Marketroid language is done using this procedure.

I wouldn't be surprised at all... Of course now I've just got to turn it into a Perl script.

See attached gibberish.pl.txt

There's something to convince your boss that Perl is the language of choice...

Thanks for writing, Raj - hope you're enjoying the articles! -- Tux

Here's a related link

http://dack.com/web/bullshit.html

-- Jimmy O'Regan

Extra cool. I loved the reader's comments. -- Tux

SCO Sues IBM

This looked interesting enough to toss the clipping in. Maybe we should have stuffed it in News Bytes, but the air compressor wasn't in at press time. The "groups of linux users everywhere" is a list of LUGs and service also hosted at SSC. -- The Scissors

Some of you may have seen the recent story by ESR on NewsForge about SCO suing IBM for billions over IBM's "disclosure" of SCO intellectual property to the "free software" community.

In a nutshell, SCO bought the Unix source and related IP from Novell in 1995. Caldera (which was never much of an "open source" company) recently became SCO, and since then, they have been looking high and low for who they could sue over their IP. A rumour surfaced a while back that they had retained David Bois to sue people, which they promptly denied. Now, guess who's leading the charge against IBM? Yep. SCO has become openly hostile to the Open Source community, and this looks like the desperate effort of a dying company to grab money by suing people rather than making a better product. IBM has the deepest pockets, so they get sued first.

Anyway, the whole point of this is that I recently received a package of SCO Linux software for distribution to my LUG. You may have received such a package as well. If so, I would encourage you to send it back to SCO with a note explaining (lucidly) why. I don't know that it will ultimately do any good, but maybe it will get their attention.

Paul M. Foster
President
Suncoast Linux Users Group (SLUG)

Thanks

I am sorry if this message is in HTML format; Hotmail doesn't give a plain text option, so I don't know what it's doing.

I believe you need to see: http://expita.com/nomime.html#hotmail -- Swirl

I enjoyed reading the letters page. It reflected the range of responses I received quite well. Just for your information, over 500 of your readers downloaded my library during February.

Stephen

On behalf of our missing Editor Gal, thanks, Stephen! It's good to know we snipped it just right. Loyal readers, I've also snipped the ensuing fragmented discussion about the nature of languages that sprung up among TAG ... you'll probably see something of that in a later issue. -- The Scissors.

Contents:

¶: Greetings From The Editorial Scissors

Some juicy rants from the Answer Guy

which journaling fs for laptop? --or--

The Journey to Journaling
pack your fs' diary seperately

kpppconfig --or--

Networking in an Alternate Universe

Not Quite The Answer Gang - Bios

Greetings from The Editorial Scissors

What a week. I looked high and low and all over the offices. Those editors have gone and left me here to deal with everything on my own. Luckily I have quite a bit of practice at the grindstone and keeping my wits sharp.

I thought I was being a shear genius when it occurred to me to check the back room and see if the Answer Gang was in there. This is their column, after all. I'm sure they'd lend me a hand. I can snip right through this thing.

Imagine my surprise when there just aren't any people to be found around here at all. They must be off at a conference or something. I can't even find Ben's dark glasses.

Ok. fine. I can do it. I'm the Editor's Scissors and I've seen all of the good stuff that have ended up in /dev/cuttingroom as the great stuff makes it to print. I raided the loose bits on the desk (I made nice use of this old SCSI adaptor for that!) and I've rounded up a few buddies to make up for the missing Answer Gang. I do believe you'll recognize a few of these characters. To introduce any that you don't recognize, I've (as per the editing guidelines) included their bios.

For extra credit, if you can solve the mystery of who all these figures are standing in for, feel free to send our staff a note. I'm sure when they've stopped fooling around they'll see I've done a fair job.

Hoping to be back in the editor's hands next month... have a great one, readers!

Some juicy rants from The Answer Guy

Snippings Provided By The Wizard's Hat

From Billy a.k.a. CustomerMarket

Hi All

I am trying to configure my two computers With Linux and Windows 2000 into network. I am using DSL modem and router. I would really appreciate if somebody can spare a few ideas because I am on verge of breaking my head. (Not literally thou)

Thank you all
Billy

[Wizard Hat] Okay. You install and configure Linux and connect it to your network. Then you install MS Windows 2000 on the other computer and connect it to your network.

I'm going to make a wild ass guess that your DSL modem/router is doing IP Masquerading (a particular form of NAT, network address translation) and it problem offers DHCP services on it's "inner" (or LAN, local area network) interface --- leasing out a set of RFC1918 "reserved" addresses (192.168.x.*, 10.* or 172.16.*.* through 172.31.*.*). So, you can probably configure both computers to just get their networking information from the router dynamically (automatically).

The exact details of configuring your router, and W2K for this are beyond our purview. Talk to your ISP or refer to the router's documentation for the former. Call Microsoft or find a Microsoft-centric support forum for the latter.

The precise details of configuring Linux to use DHCP depend on which distribution you use. In general the installation programs for mainstream distributions will offer this option in some sort of dialog box or at some sort of prompt. That's the easiest way of doing it (easiest meanining: "requiring the least explanation in this e-mail"). You haven't said what distribution you're running, so I couldn't offer more specific suggestions without having to write a book.

This all seems pretty obvious. I suspect that you have some other needs in mind. However, we haven't installed the telepathy protocol daemons in our little brains yet. So we can't hazard a guess as to what you mean by 'configure.'

I might gues that you want to do file sharing between the two: read a book on Samba to let Linux export/share some of it's disk space (filesystems and directories) to the MS Win2K system and perhaps looks for a chapter or so on smbfs for Linux to "mount" (access) shares from the W2k system (i.e. to go the other way).

I might guess that you want to access your Linux system, particular it's command line interface from your Windows desktop system. In that case download and install Putty (the best free ssh client, I would say the best ssh client all around, for MS Windows). That will allow you to "ssh" into your Linux system (open command prompt windows to administer it and run programs there from. You might even want to remotely access graphical Linux programs from the Windows box (or vice versa). In that case you'd probably want to look into VNC (virtual network computing --- actually a rather silly name). VNC clients and servers run under Linux (and other forms of UNIX) and MS windows, and there is a Java client that can even run from a web browser.

There are numerous other ways to do each of these, BTW. You could install NFS clients on the Windows side for filesharing (those were all commercial last I heard). You could use the MS Windows telnet clients and install and configure the deprecated (as in "insecure, use at your own peril) telnet service (daemon) on the Linux side for character mode (terminal and command line) access. And you could get X servers for MS Windows --- most are commercial, and/or you could run rdesktop for Linux to access the MS Windows "Terminal Server" features (however the Terminal Services are an expensive add-on for Windows, as far as I know). In other words, Samba/smbfs, Putty/ssh, and VNC represent a set of services that provide file, command, and remote graphical support between the two systems using only free software and well known software at both ends.

I might provide more details on how these packages could be used. However, each of these is just a shot in the dark at what you might be looking for. So I've spend enough time on the question.

Here are a few URLs you can use to read more about these packages:

• Samba: http://www.samba.org/
• OpenSSH: http://www.openssh.org/ (Both of the preceding packages are included with every major mainstream Linux distribution by default. SSH is often installed and configured automatically these days --- just check the appropriate box during your Linux installation, Samba may require somewhat more manual configuration).
• Putty: http://people.nl.linux.org/~bjs/putty/download.html (SSH client for MS Windows can be installed by just dropping one .EXE file into any directory -- optionally on your PATH. --- other optional components are similarly easy to install)
• Cygwin: http://cygwin.com/ (Environment to support UNIX and Linux software, compiled and running natively under MS Windows. I mention it here primarily because they have a list of packages that have already been ported --- ssh clients and servers in particular. Note: the level of integration and interoperation between the Cygwin environment and the rest of MS Windows can be frustratingly rudimentary. It can be confusing and the Cygwin environment can feel like an isolated subsystem of the Windows box; almost like being on a different machine at times).
• VNC: http://www.realvnc.com/ (Included with many distributions, but usually not installed by default. You have to install and configure it manually).
• TightVNC: http://www.tightvnc.com/ (An enhanced version of VNC, also free under the GPL. Might be better on the MS Windows side as client and server for the Win2K box)
• rdesktop: http://www.rdesktop.org/ (A client for the MS Windows RDP (remote desktop protocol), which is apparently derived from the Citrix ICA protocol. The client runs on Linux or UNIX. Might require special MS Windows softare or licensing on the server side).

This was posted in the open forums attached to "Langa Letter" -- one of the InformationWeek regular columns. The Answer Guy's actual reply is what's sitting here in my clippings-box; the column which he is replying to was
   Fred Langa / Langa Letter: Linux Has Bugs: Get Over It / January 23, 2003

Fred's comment about "severity" is, as he points out, inherently subjective. His numerical analysis is also subject to more issues that he's simply ignoring.

For example the 157+ bug count for RH 7.2 or 7.3 includes fixes for many overlapping products and many which are rarely installed by Linux users -- RH simply includes a lot of optional stuff. Meanwhile the count for Micrsoft may still be artificially low, since MS is known to deliberately minimize the number and severity of their bug reports. Many of their 30+ reported patches might include multiple fixes and descriptions which downplay their signficance.

Fred also, inexcusably, argues that "first availability" of a fix (in source form, sometimes in focused, though public, mailing lists and venues) "doesn't count" as faster. That is simply jury rigging the semantics to support a prejudiced hypothesis.

Another approach to looking at the severity of bugs is to view the effect of exploits on the 'net as a whole.

Subjectively the impact of these were minimal. The aggregate traffic generated by them was imperceptable on the global Internet scale. Note that the number of Linux web, DNS and mail servers had already surpassed MS Windows servers by this time --- so the comparison is not numerically outrageous.

Compare these to Code Red, Nimba, and the most recent MS SQL injection worms. The number of hosts compromised, and the effect on the global Internet have been significant.

I simply don't have the raw data available to make any quantitative assertions about this. However, the qualitative evidence is obvious and irrefutable. The bugs in MS systems seem to be more severe than comparable bugs on Linux systems.

If a researcher were really interested in a rigorous comparison, one could gather the statistics from various perspectives --- concurrently trying to support and refute this hypothesis.

Fred is right, of course, that Linux has many bugs --- far too many. However, he then extends this argument too far. He uses some fairly shoddy anecdotal numbers, performs trivial arithmetic on them and tries to pass this off as analysis to conclude that there is no difference between MS XP security (and that of their other OSes) and Linux' (Red Hat).

I won't pass my comments off as anything but anecdotal. I won't look up some "Google" numbers to assign to them and try to pass them off as statistical analysis.

I will assert that Linux is different. That bugs in core Linux system components are fewer, less severe, fixed faster, and are (for the skilled professional) easier to apply across an enterprise (and more robust) than security issues in Microsoft based systems.

The fact that numerous differences in these to OSes make statistical comparison non-trivial doesn't justify the claim that there is no difference.

Further anecdotal observations show that the various Linux distributions and open source programming teams have done more than simply patch bugs as they were found. Many of the CERT advisories in Linux and elsewhere (on the LWN pages, for example: http://www.lwn.net/ ) are the result of proactive code auditing by Connectiva, Gentoo, S.u.S.E., IBM and The MetaL group at Stanford, among many others. In addition many of these projects are signficantly restructuring their code, their whole subsystems, in order to eliminate whole classes of bugs and to minimize the impact of many others. For instance the classic problems of BIND (named, the DNS server) running as root and having access to the server's whole filesystem used to be mitigated by gurus by patching and reconfiguring it to run "chroot" (locked into a subdirectory tree) and with root privileges dropped after initial TCP/port binding (before interacting with foreign data). These mitigations are now part of the default design and installation of BIND 9.x. Linux and other UNIX installations used to enable a large number of services (including rsh/rlogin and telnet) by default. These services are now deprecated, and mainstream distributions disable most or all network services by default and present dire warnings in their various enabling dialog boxes and UI! s). before allowing users to enable them.

These changes are not panacea. However, they are significant in that they hold out the promise of reducing the number and severity of future bugs, and they artificially inflate recent statistics (since the majority of this work as been over the last two or three years).

Fred will undoubtedly dismiss these comments as being more "rabid advocation" by a self-admitted Linux enthusiast. He may even point to MS' own widely touted "trustworthy computing" PR campaign as evidence of a parallel effort on "the other side of the Gates." However this message isn't really written to him.

It's written to those who want to make things better.

The real difference between security in MS and in Linux is qualitative rather than quantitative. With Linux every user and administrator is empowered to help themselves. Every one of us can, and many more of us should, accept a greater responsibility for our systems and their integrity and security. Linux users (including corporations, governments and other organizations) can find and fix bugs and can participate in a global community effort to eliminate them and improve these systems for everyone.

Let's not get wrapped up in blind enthusiasm and open source patriotism. But let us not fall prey the the claim that there is no difference. There is a difference and each one of us can be a part of making that difference.

The Journey to Journaling

pack your fs' diary seperately

From Licht Bülb

Answered By Dolavimus the platypus, Pretzel, Virtual Beer, Konqi, Tuxedo T. Herring, Swirl, corncob Pipe, the Scissors, Amanda the Panda

Hi Gang.

I'm fiddling on my laptop again (almost all things are working) trying to get s-video out working. In the course of this fiddling I'm raking wildly in the bios which sometimes screws up the display (and I am still able to login via ssh) or the machine freezes. Then I have to "push the button" and - since I was forced to use ext2 (ext3 accesses the hd every 5 secs -> spindown and therefore power saving impossible) I have to wait quite some time for the fsck to finish with my 10 GB root system (yeah, now I know why to have multiple partitions..). So,

does any of you know a jounaling fs which plays nice with laptops? I googled a bit, read stuff, but didn't find anything about it. I think I remember someone here in the TAG saying that reiserfs had some patch to play nice? Can someone confirm that?

Cheers and TIA

[Dolavimus] I've been using rfs on my laptop since new two yrs ago with good results. Although I haven't done anything in particular to address hd spin down for power economy.

[Amanda] I have actually used ext3 with a recently installed Debian "testing" distribution. The hdd access can be "reduced" by installing "noflushd".

noflushd doesn't work with any j-fs. It says so on the web page.

[Amanda] However, I confess that I haven't really had a chance to fully examine this issue. As regards partitioning the disk the following works well: /, /usr, /boot as ext2 mounted read-only. Of /tmp, /var and /home which need to be writable only /home really is usually large enough to require journalling ( and sometimes /var ).

I have tried several things over time: only one root and a small boot, full monty with all dirs on seperate partitions and some things in between. The prob with several partition: when you need some large space (naturally) none is there on a single partition. Across two or more there would be enough... Disadvantage of only one /: you can not unmount anything beforehand if you know you gonna crash the system now... And a crypto-fs is hard to make then too.

[Pretzel] I think the very idea of a journaling filesystem makes "play[ing] nice" impossible. Journaling filesystems have to access the hard drive on every write. More accurately, they have to access the journal device each filesystem write.

Well, it might be necessary for the j-fs to write to it's journal every fs access, but ext3 writes to hdd every 5 secs, regardless of fs access or not.

[Pretzel] I think most journaling filesystem in Linux have an option for journaling device which is normally on-disk but can be on any block device, at least with ext3 and reiserfs. Some non-volatile memory would do nicely, but on a laptop, I think the chances of being able to do this are almost nil.

I (as a not-knower) would have two ideas: a compact flash card in the pcmcia slot and - RAM! In case of the RAM the journal would then be written to hdd when also a normal hdd access takes place. True, this would be bad if a system outage would occur without the journal having been rewritten to disk but I would take these chances... In case of CF, dunno if you can plug them in straight away or if you need an adapter, but 16MB are really cheap anmd if you can save some power (-> time) with it...

[Pretzel] Doing it in RAM would effectivly make a journaling fs useless. What would be the point then? That's the same effect as using a non-journaled filesystem.

Well, the journal would get written to disk with the data. If you use noflushd then writes of the system (logging etc.) get postponed or get written to RAM and then get written to hdd if a normal write (user initiated) occurs. So, I dunno exactly how noflushd does this but when it redirects the writes to ram the journal entries (if they need to be made in that case) should be written to ram too.

[Scissors] This isn't so much "writtem to RAM" like scribbled in a ramdisk - it's more like being hidden in the RAM of a caching controller. That's all noflushd does, is allow some buffering at the filesystem-driver level. So if something really does have content for the disk - and yes, that includes its journals - it's either got to hit the disk eventually, or you get to bear the risk that something might fail before it does.

But the whole point of having a journal is to have it still be present after a reboot event made something which normally isn't volatile space, lose its cookies. Having a journal that isn't allowed to do its job just complicates matters. Ergo, it shouldn't be put on volatile RAM.

[Pretzel] Another possiblily compiling a kernel with magic sysrq support, if the machice isn't totally frozen, you could do an emergency Sync/Unmount/Reboot.

OK, now I have to admit it: HOW THE HECK DOES THIS WORK? I read the stuff in /usr/src/linux/docs/ but as much as I gathered Alt-Print d should do something? It doesn't in my case. I compiled this in (if it's only the Magic SysRq key in Kernel hacking) some time (not in my current kernel I see now) but then (I tested it) it didn't work.

[Pretzel] Worked for me. (I say worked because at the moment I don't have it compiled it.) Try Alt-Sysrq-<magic sysrq command> (all three at the same time.) I don't remember if it needed all three at once or not. sysrq probably only says "print screen" on some keyboards.

Yeah, the prob was all at the same time... Now it works.

[Scissors] At least part of the confusion is with SysRq - on some keyboards the SysRq lives as a subfunction on another key. Thus for such keyboards you'd also need the extra key that invokes the secondary keycode. Fn maybe.

When it works then you should be able to (for instance) press Z and get a little help list. In fact any character that doesn't do something is supposed to show the little list. What I'm not clear on is "get outta sysrq mode"...

I've sometimes seen a console get into a state where it would respond to Magic SysRq, but it couldn't get out of that mode anymore. So I hope you have some spare virtual consoles, if you are just using it to settle something simpler than "telinit 6 doesn't work".

[Pretzel] So, in summary: No.

A No? <shout> I DON'T ACCEPT NO "NO" ! </shout> (yes, I've been in the army..)

[Beer] Why not plug one of these USB memory sticks and keep the journals there? That way the immediate access is only required for the USB device and not for the actual HD.

Cool idea, hadn't thought of this one, although I recently bought one! <me stupid>

[Beer] Which one? I've seem that Sony ads -- but they tell a lot about some strange cruft with user mangerment and cryptosoftware which suggest custom WinXX drivers to my suspicious ears.

The cheapest one I could find. It was 49 Euro, super slim and works like a charm. I think I will use gpg to encrypt files on the thing and simply put a win gpg version on the stick too.

[Beer] If I ask for a drive give me drive and not an encryption device where I can't trust the encryption anyway....

True, true...

[Beer] Might still need patches, but if the journal keeping actually needs only access to the journmal file and is not accessing the HD where the data are finally going anyway -- It might even work with existing journal/kernel code.

Then on the other hand you want journaling for some testing period -- why is power saving durting that time so important? You could always switch back to unjournaled if power saving is important. ext2/3 in that case would be easiest as a cleanly unmounted ext3 is mountable as ext2 without problems. The switching between ext3 and ext2 might be done by boot options I guess. (can you ask in a init.d script for boot options ?)

Well, the case is pressing just now in this testing period. I just rebooted and had a full fsck (with Ctrd-d at the end) just now and I really need a j-fs NOW. But I like the idea of j-fs's generally so I would like to keep it after the fiddling too. You are right that ext2|3 would work now but I am a little bit burnt with that since I had ext3 in the very beginning, installed the system (a lot) and then wanted to switch to ext2 (with removing the journal) according to manual. But the ext-tools weren't current at that time in testing|sid so this broke (!) the fs with FULL reinstall (some bad things occured at the same time leading to this). But ext2|3 would be an option.

[Beer] I never tried to completely switch back to ext2 and delete the journals, but I did mount ext3 as ext2 and nothing bad happened. I made sure they are clean so.

On Laptop power save is only a real issue on battery -- then the sudden crashes should not be that frequent unless you insist of fiddling around in kernel space on the train.... So for some normal usage running on battery and ext2 might be sufficient, but when you are on mains power you can switch back to ext3. There must be a way to make this decission in lilo by some option which is evaluated in init.d/boot*

Or check if you are on battery and make the decision based on that. Frequent sleep/resume inbetween are then not that practical so.

[Konqi] For those living in Germany: Aldi has an 128 MB USB memory stick for 49.99 Euro next week, I read in an Heise announcement.

And for those who want to know something about mine: http://www.computer-cash-carry.de/ccc/index-ns.html see Festplatten IDE, there at the bottom (all german, just for the curious)

[Tux] Any of you guys want to write up an article on what it takes to get one working, or is it simple enough to describe in a 2-cent tip? I'd be very curious.

modprobe sd_mod
modprobe usb-storage
mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/usbstick

[Tux] Wow. Mondo cool. I love Linux.

I think that there's a USB memory stick in my near future...

[Swirl] I wonder if what I have on my website is sufficient for a 2-cent tip? I can re-write it, if it's considered too half-assed. Here's the relevant excerpt:

USB on Linux seems a bit... different, especially since I'm not really used to devfs-type things.

[Beer] The only thing I ever tried was a digital camera (Olympus C100 zoom) and it needed a kernel patch (usb-driver) to be properly recognised. Apart from that the camera works as a disk as expected. I mount /dev/sda1, it will be rw right on the first mount, no need for remounting.

So if you really have to go through all this remounting, you can't fdisk the thing into partitions, etc. It really seems strange.

I do remember that zip-drive "problem" -- the win programs to access it partition it to use sda4 instead of sda1. So this might all be very specific to the hardware and drivers used (or used the first time the disk was partitioned).

But basically these memory sticks seem to work, then I'll keep my eyes open for one.

[Swirl] I've been figuring out how best to deal with it on my laptop, since my wife gave me a 32 MB Easy Disk "memory stick", a cute little plastic thing on a keychain fob.

I'm still working it out, but it looks like I need the usb-uhci and usb-storage drivers (impliedly also usbcore), at which point I can do:


# mount -o rw,uid=1000,gid=1000 -t vfat /dev/sda /mnt/fob/

(where 1000 is my own login account's UID and GID).[1]

The bizarre thing is: That command (or anything like it) always returns:


mount: block device /dev/sda is write-protected, mounting read-only

[corncob Pipe] I believe that this error is more of a "fail-safe" than it is an annoyance...

[Swirl] I banged my head up against that problem for a couple of days, and "fdisk /dev/sda" kept insisting...

Um, my usb stick has a small switch on it's side to make it write-protected. You don't have by chance missed that one?

[Swirl] That was part of what I spent some part of a couple of days, looking for. No, there's no hardware switch. Moreover, doing a remount entirely via software _does succeed in making it writeable, following the initial mount. If the obstacle were a hardware switch, that would not have happened.


# fdisk /dev/sda
You will not be able to write the partition table.

...until it finally occurred to me to do...


# mount -o rw,remount /mnt/fob

[Pipe] Does it? To me, the mount command references "/mnt/fob" (unless of course, "/mnt/fob" points to "/dev/sda"???)

[Swirl] The point is that the _original mount command, which gets re-mounted here, uses /dev/sda, _not /dev/sda1. I'm trying to stress that at least _some memory sticks must be addressed as if they were SCSI-based floppy drives. No partition numbers, you see? This was non-obvious point #1.

[Pipe] What you have done here it to re-mount in in "rw" mode, yay!

[Swirl] Um, yes. That's exactly my point. The necessity to do so was non-obvious point #2.

[Swirl] Notice that the mount command references /dev/sda, instead of /dev/sda1. That's the other odd thing: I kept had no luck until I happened to try /dev/sda.

[Pipe] I think this is as a result of the way in which device files are referenced under Linux

[Swirl] Well, where were you when I was trying to mount the device, the first time?

I'm saying _the point is non-obvious_ because many other instructions one finds for mounting similar devices tell you otherwise, because intuition suggests that a memory stick ought to be addressed like a hard drive, such that it can have multiple partitions, and because it's the first time in a decade of addressing SCSI devices on Linux that I've not put a number after /dev/sda.

[Pipe] Oh, now I see what you meant. I mis-interpreted you the first time.

[Swirl] My guess is that the Easy Disk is being addressed as if it were a floppy disk instead of a hard drive partition, which is why it's sda instead of sda1.

[Pipe] Hmm, I don't quite follow you here. Why would a HD partition not utilise "sda1" if told to do so?

[Swirl] I'm not sure what's the nature of your confusion: Are you willing to simply take my word for it that addressing /dev/sda1 on the memory stick absolutely does not work, and that addressing /dev/sda does? That would make this conversation a great deal easier.

[Pipe] Oh, I'm not doubting you one bit, I just mis-read your sentence, I'm sorry, Rick.

[Swirl] And I believe you're missing my point: Because the Easy Disk is (it seems) classed as functionally the same as a floppy disk, there is no concept of partitioning, and thus no partition numbers.

[Pipe] And if Easy Disk were being addressed as a floppy then it ought to use "/dev/fdx" in this case, surely?

[Swirl] I beg your pardon, but no. That wouldn't be SCSI then, would it?

[Pipe] It would, it would.

[Scissors] I seem to recall that normal floppy disks used in an IDE-chain LS-120 bay are still accessed by the fdx mechanism. However the one around here lost a pin so I can't check.

[Swirl] I hope you're not under the impression that there aren't all Linux floppy disks must be addressed as /dev/fdx? SCSI ones are /dev/sdX, and parallel-port ones are /dev/pfN . Neither supports partitioning.

[Pipe] !

[Swirl] I have no idea why Linux always mounts it read-only, though.

[Pipe] Me neither.

I have no clue what it is recognised or attached like, but in my case I have to use /dev/sda1, else it will make trouble.

[Swirl] Yes, I've heard such reports. That is why I have concluded that some USB memory sticks are recognised as quasi-floppies, and some as quasi-hard disks.

I guess there are two (or more) controller producers and there comes this trouble.

[Swirl] If by "controller" you mean the USB chipset on the motherboard, I very much doubt that, because the difference seems specific to the add-on USB storage device, not the USB host.

No, I didn't mean the host, I meant the usb controller in the sticky. These need some controller too, don't they?

[Swirl] They need some sort of USB circuitry, and, to be sure, differences in such circuitry seem to have caused these differences in mode of operation between memory sticks. Whether it's common to call that circuitry a "USB controller", I am unsure, but such was not my impression.

Maybe there are even patents involved so that the other producer had to take a different approach (and maybe this also helped in case of "booting off floppy -> off usbstick). Anybody anything about the subject?

But there is a strange thing: sometimes there comes a error message saying that there is (can't rememeber what) wrong, then I try to mount /dev/sda, this will fail, and then I can mount /dev/sda1 - So much for deterministics.

[Pipe] Unless of course this is as a result of the Kernel's divine intervention??? Va savoir??

[Swirl] I'm ultimately less interested in kernel psychoanalysis than in making it do what I want, thanks.

Networking in an Alternate Universe

From Michael Havens

Answered By Feather, Tuxedo T. Herring, Wizard's Hat, Swirl, Digital Surfboard, and the Scissors

Could someone bring kpppconfig to bandersnatch? It won't unpack when I put Mandrake 9.0 back on my box. If someone would be willing to bring me every thing to do with kppp it would be even better. kpppconfig is what I know is missing (via Hans) but there may be more. It would be terrific if that someone could give me a call and I could getit before Bandersnatch but if noone is willining to do that then Bandersnatch will work for me

[Tux] Is it a message from Mars? Is it an attempt to mix Klingon with Medu Neter?

[Feather] Actually Mars is in San Francisco, the beer there is pretty good, the food edible and unlike the Bandersnatch below there is no connectivity.

[Scissors] Mars also has an alternate transport landing zone in New York. No connectivity there either, but pretty good food at an underground colony beneath the red sands.

[Tux] Is it a misdirected message?

[Feather] I can only think that Michael misaddressed this. He is a member of the Phoenix AZ lug and the bandersnatch is a local bar the part of the lug meets at monthly.

Not quite sure how he managed to get this so misaddressed.

[Tux] Tune in next time when our querent

1. turns off the weird MIME characters by reading the pointer to expita.com in our knowledgebase.
2. (possibly) explaining what the heck he needs in understandable terms,

(The only "Bandersnatch" I know of is a 58' ferrocement boat about 200 yards away from mine ...

[WizHat] A couple years ago there used to be a Bandersnatch Pub in Tempe Arizona, right near the University. It was a microbrewery with a free Internet drop. I used to go there frequently during the six months or so that I was "wastin' away in Motorolaville" (working on a Linuxcare contract at the Motorola Computer Products division helping them with their HA-Linux project).

Wow! Of all the gin joints in the world --- who'da thunk that three people on this list would all be aware of the same Bandersnatch pub in a place like Arizona! (BTW: Tempe and Phoenix are essentially one urban area --- I thought Bandersnatch was in Tempe, but that point is moot).

[Feather] Right you are Jim. It is in Tempe. The LUG here is known as PLUG (Phoenix LUG) but they really cover the metro area include Tempe, Scottsdale, Glendale, etc.

As a gin joint they have good beer, food is edible and the connectivity pretty good.

[Tux] ... (they've even got a cat named Frumious).

[Swirl] Does it get the bowsprit mixed with the rudder sometimes?

[Tux] <sadly> It wouldn't matter if it did. "the Man at the Helm shall speak to no one.", so remonstrance is impossible.

(To those of you who are confused, see Lewis Caroll's "The Hunting of the Snark" (An Agony, in Eight Fits.) Hint: you're _supposed to be confused.

[Surfboard] is that where "Fit the First" comes from. People look at me so weird...

[Tux] It was a bit startling to see someone talking about "bringing $X to Bandersnatch"; I got Norm converted to Linux a while back, and was wondering if he was asking for help here.

[Scissors] So in conclusion: Frumious had no problem teleporting a copy of kppp wherever it needed to go, the Mandrake was advised to avoid the jub jub bird while reconfiguring, and no boojums were harmed in the drawing up of this column. Lewis Carroll is welcome to join the Answer Gang at any time, provided he can get away from his mathemagical textbooks. Other ppp configurators include: xisp, wvdial, debian's "pppconfig" and a few dockapps. I believe gkrellm also has simple plugins for this feature.

Not Quite The Answer Gang Bios

These are some of the characters I rounded up to answer your TAG questions this month.

• Wizard's Hat
• corncob Pipe
• Digital Surfboard
• Virtual Beer
• Dolavimus, the platypus
• Swirl
• Tuxedo T. Herring
• Magic Wand
• Lightbulb
• The Scissors
• Pretzel
• Konqi the Dragonet
• Amanda the Panda
• Feather

The Wizard's Hat is part of the ensemble worn by the wizard cartoon adorning Linux Gazette's pages and representing this column up until around issue 56 or so.

The Robes and Orb have been enjoying their retirement since we got the new template for the site settled in, but the Hat has stayed pretty active, even if working in the background. You can bet he knows a lot of stuff - every time someone says "keep it under your hat" it's just another tidbit to file away for later.

Taking up the slack, the Pipe has long been a symbol of introspection and study. You'll most often find the Pipe indulging in detangling shell commands for less patient souls, and messing around under the hood of more complicated system scripts. During the off time, Pipes have been known to be taken with a bit of music...

The web surf has been up since ages ago, and this Surfboard has been here to enjoy it all. Once just considered a beach bum, now I get paid to roam the digital seas, design apps, tame the wild radio waves and dig the Suncoast.

When the scissors popped into the break room looking for everyone, this brewski was just enjoying some ginger snaps and some free time. Knowing that it'll just be a short while until everyone's returned and it's back to the case, the Beer eagerly chimed in to help out.

Beer turned on to Linux around the same time Tux got involved; they'd virtually been drinking buddies.

Dolavimus the platypus adorned t-shirts in the heyday of Linux 1.x, plugging "Guerilla Linux Development" and delving, or maybe dolaving, deep in the code. Overseeing the TCP/IP stack revamp and seeing a new view on the whole modular subsystem are among his finer programming efforts.

Tux's family resemblance can definitely be seen in the chin.

Inheriting a cheerful red scribble nature from Dolavimus, the Swirl is a dyed-in-it Debian advocate. (What a surprise.) He can be found at installfests just about anywhere, and knows quite enough about enough architectures, packages, and generally curious stuff about Linux to make you dizzy.

Tux was drawn by Larry Ewing using the GIMP. Satisfying himself with herring (pickled or otherwise) and sailing around the world to star in photo galleries (see Linux Weekly News' Penguin Gallery among others) have given him a broad perspective, lots of experience, and an amazing number of cousins. Tux has also been involved in a large number of menu setups... you just have to know where to start, and keep control in your corner. It's rumored he is quite popular with the lady penguins.

The Magic Wand has been using Linux since the days when it was considered magic to get Linux working. He took up with modern day distros in the age of Infomagic and is pretty well known these days by Mandrake users everywhere. As handy with the 'file' command as he ever was, nowadays the Wand prefers programming in an object oriented style.

I'd say I'm pretty bright. My name's a mouthful (Licht Bülb) so most folk just call me Idea which is easier to say. After I get my own darkness lit up, I enjoy passing the clue on to others. I've been known to pick up the laser once in a while to point something out, and of course I'm fond of movies.

The Scissors normally hang out around the Editor's desks trying to make sure the goodies that make it in aren't too snippy to Make Linux A Little More Fun. This time, they're cutting in on behalf of the readers. Scissors know that Linux is great stuff, but it's not always a software problem that really needs to be solved.

Pretzel perked up at the chance to escape the break room for a while, chime in which a few salty comments, and generally show a crisp new look on things. Not everyone understands his twisted point of view, but that's okay. Like Pretzel, linux itself comes in all shapes and sizes.

Konqi certainly knows his graphical environments. A genuinely helpful sort who is not inclined to waste words, he can usually be found when you need him to debug something.

Amanda the Panda enjoys a rather different look on the desktop, and a different take on life than most of us here in the Gang. It was another AMANDA that went to MIT, but she still agrees that it's important to keep good backups.

This Feather had mastered the ways of web servers before they really started painting up the graphics. Now there's a feather in every cap and the Feather has emigrated to the sunny lands of the southwest. In his spare time he has been known to write rather eloquently in the hands of the Answer Gang.

...making Linux just a little more fun!

News Bytes By Michael Conry

Contents: Legislation and More Legislation Linux Links Conferences and Events News in General Distro News Software and Product News

Selected and formatted by Michael Conry

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

April 2003 Linux Journal

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/.

Jon Johansen Will Return to Court

It has been reported [The Register] that Jon Johansen will have to return to court once more in connection with his involvement in the creation and distribution of the DeCSS computer code. As is well known, the DeCSS code is used to circumvent a primitive technique used by DVD producers to obstruct users in their enjoyment of the DVD movies they have purchased. Norwegian prosecutors argued that to play a DVD in this manner was a form of theft, similar to cracking somebody's web server. Though the ruling was in Johansen's favour, leave for an appeal has been granted, so the whole business will have to be repeated once more, probably in the summer.

Such is the duration of this case that one wonders if prosecutors are hoping that when Jon gets older he will lose public sympathy. As Jon is now 19, headlines like "Norwegian Teen Harassed by DVD STASI" have a limited shelf-life.

Lexmark and the DMCA

Lexmark's attempt to ban recycling of ink cartridges received an unsettling boost as an injunction has been issued against the company producing the environmentally beneficial products. SCC has hit back by bringing an anti-trust case against Lexmark. Though the case is far from over, it highlights some disturbing potential outcomes of the DMCA. Wired asked the question (and not rhetorically, this is a real possibility) how much more would it cost to maintain your car if manufacturers put computer chips in all the important components.

Don't mention it to anybody, but at Linux Gazette we have long suspected that some users print out articles from time to time: circumventing the CRT/LCD encryption we use to manage access to our content. Though our lawyers are still preparing the brief, it would appear Lexmark printers are often used in this circumvention scheme... lets get us some of those DMCA dollars.

Life's Not a Bed of Rosen

Hilary Rosen of the RIAA has been commenting on the issue of P2P networks again. It seems her son Tristram managed to track down a very rare recording of Edith Piaf singing Knees Up Mother Brown, a recording that Hilary had been hoping to find for a very long time. Though Hilary was initially ecstatic to hear the tune she had for so long sought, her ecstasy soon turned to agony as it emerged that Tristram had not taken care to clear up the thorny copyright issues before downloading and playing the track.

It was with a heavy heart that Hilary phoned the cops to have Tristram arrested.

"Though it hurts to see my son doing hard time, it is nothing compared to the pain he was causing through his criminal actions. I want to set an example for all the parents of America, and the world. What my son did was despicable. Even though I love him, he has to be made to pay for terrorising the music industry."

SCO and IBM

If you read any internet linux-news sites, you must be aware that SCO, the company formerly known as Caldera (more or less), have sued IBM. This followed several weeks of speculation regarding SCO's recent hiring of some top legal talent. There has been much analysis and discussion of this development, so I am not going to go through the details of the case. Linux Weekly News has a good overview and discussion of the substance of the claim. A major plank in their argument is that IBM used knowledge of UNIX technology it gained from intellectual property owned by SCO to benefit Linux development. This was allegedly an attempt by IBM to kill commercial UNIX and build-up Linux, though given that there is some debate about many of the "facts" on which these claims are based, a healthy dose of scepticism may be in order. Doc Searls at Linux Journal has also cogently analysed the story, and says that with this action SCO has finally made clear which side of the open-source/closed-source divide it truly stands. I have to say that this does not entirely surprise me having seen a "partners-presentation" given by staff from SCO a few months ago in Dublin. Further discussions can be read in the Slashdot thread.

Every Day's a Hollings-day

Senator Ernest "on the Fritz" Hollings has proposed an interesting new initiative to improve the working environment for his fellow politicians. In Fritz's vision, members of congress would have the opportunity to attend in any one of a range of Disney inspired costumes. Capitol buildings will also be re-worked to bring them more into line with the spirit-lifting aesthetic popularised at Disneyland. Hollings is unapologetically evangelical regarding the proposal:

"Nothing in the world is as magical as a holiday in Disneyland, it is the pinnacle of our great civilisation and must surely be the finest place to work. What we are doing is bringing that magic into the every day lives of our Senators and Congress-folk. Now, even a Senator can live every day in the joyous glow of Disney magic."

To facilitate the promotion and introduction of this measure, Ernest is sub-contracting his job to Michael Eisner, Disney CEO. Eisner declined to comment at length. "It will be business as usual", he purred.

This is seen as a very progressive manoeuvre by Hollings, and is typical of the visionary and principled leadership of the man who brought us the CBDTPA. Indeed, the CBDTPA itself had an origin rooted in Disney culture. Taking inspiration from the Disney slogan "Where the magic comes to you" this much-misunderstood act was intended to put a little bit of Disney "magic" into every commonly used electronic device.

Listings courtesy Linux Journal. See LJ's Events page for the latest goings-on.

Linux on Wall Street Show & Conference	April 7, 2003 New York, NY http://www.linuxonwallstreet.com
AIIM	April 7-9, 2003 New York, NY http://www.advanstar.com/
FOSE	April 8-10, 2003 Washington, DC http://www.fose.com/
MySQL Users Conference & Expo 2003	April 8-10, 2003 San Jose, CA http://www.mysql.com/events/uc2003/
LinuxFest Northwest 2003	April 26, 2003 Bellingham, WA http://www.linuxnorthwest.com/
Real World Linux Conference and Expo	April 28-30, 2003 Toronto, Ontario http://www.realworldlinux.com
USENIX First International Conference on Mobile Systems, Applications, and Services (MobiSys)	May 5-8, 2003 San Francisco, CA http://www.usenix.org/events/
USENIX Annual Technical Conference	June 9-14, 2003 San Antonio, TX http://www.usenix.org/events/
CeBIT America	June 18-20, 2003 New York, NY http://www.cebit-america.com/
ClusterWorld Conference and Expo	June 24-26, 2003 San Jose, CA http://www.linuxclustersinstitute.org/Linux-HPC-Revolution
O'Reilly Open Source Convention	July 7-11, 2003 Portland, OR http://conferences.oreilly.com/
12th USENIX Security Symposium	August 4-8, 2003 Washington, DC http://www.usenix.org/events/
LinuxWorld Conference & Expo	August 5-7, 2003 San Francisco, CA http://www.linuxworldexpo.com
LinuxWorld UK	September 3-4, 2003 Birmingham, United Kingdom http://www.linuxworld2003.co.uk
Linux Lunacy Brought to you by Linux Journal and Geek Cruises!	September 13-20, 2003 Alaska's Inside Passage http://www.geekcruises.com/home/ll3_home.html
Software Development Conference & Expo	September 15-19, 2003 Boston, MA http://www.sdexpo.com
PC Expo	September 16-18, 2003 New York, NY http://www.techxny.com/pcexpo_techxny.cfm
COMDEX Canada	September 16-18, 2003 Toronto, Ontario http://www.comdex.com/canada/
LISA (17th USENIX Systems Administration Conference)	October 26-30, 2003 San Diego, CA http://www.usenix.org/events/lisa03/
HiverCon 2003	November 6-7, 2003 Dublin, Ireland http://www.hivercon.com/
COMDEX Fall	November 17-21, 2003 Las Vegas, NV http://www.comdex.com/fall2003/

Sony, IBM and Butterfly.net Activate Linux-Based Computing Grid

Sony, IBM and Grid pioneer Butterfly.net announced the activation of a Linux-based computing grid that makes it easier and cheaper to run Sony PlayStation 2 games on the Internet. It is claimed that the massive "Butterfly Grid" can support millions of concurrent PlayStation-online users around the world, with no limit to the number of players who can be on the Grid at one time.

Film Gimp becomes Cinepaint

The Film Gimp team has changed the project name to Cinepaint. The decision was made during the recent Film Gimp panel discussion in Los Angeles during the Linux Movies conference track.

Appro HyperBlade

The Appro HyperBlade B221X cluster is designed for the High-Performance Computational (HPC) market and provides a fully integrated Linux cluster solution for large-scale complex computations. It achieves high-density architecture by using commodity x86 components in a single cluster. With support for up to 80 compute blades, Appro HyperBlade architecture doubles the current rack density using 1U servers.

CollegeLinux

DesktopLinux.com interviews Prof. David Costa, Dean of Robert Kennedy College in Switzerland about his school's recently released GNU/Linux offering: CollegeLinux.

Debian

The Debian project has announced new licencing terms. Beginning April 1, 2003, software upgrades will now be on a pay-as-you-go scheme. This will initially affect users of Debian mirrors who will have to buy prepaid blocks of access via the new Debian online store iDebian. Starting with the next stable release there will also be a pay-per-install scheme which is expected to be very well subscribed. Each installation will have an administrator program DebiWin which will continuously audit the system and make sure that the user has not innocently installed twice from a single installation medium. Uniquely in the default Debian install, DebiWin is a closed-source application. This is to maintain the "unique qualities" of the application.

Though initial reactions have been mixed, many users are non-plussed:

"...We already pay in blood, sweat and tears installing Debian, so what's a few dollars. You only install it once you know! What's that, you have to pay for upgrades... d'oh!"

A verbose guide to updating and compiling Debian kernels.

Anthony Towns is looking for volunteers to help with Release Manager work for the forthcoming release of Sarge.

Engarde

Guardian Digital has announced the availability of the Guardian Digital Secure Mail Suite, which is available with Guardian Digital's EnGarde Secure Linux v1.5, also released today.

SCO

SCO has announced the availability of a new education program, updated Linux, UnixWare and OpenServer courseware, and a new UnitedLinux certification program.

Slackware

In a surprise announcement, the Slackware project has announced the removal of any console-based install tools in the upcoming version 9.0. Daringly, installation will now be completed using installation tools running on the 3DWM platform. Minimum graphics requirements have not been announced yet, but if you were saving up for a new card to play Doom 3 with, you're on the right track.

The Slackware Linux Project has a brief anouncement on their site about their latest release Slackware 9.0-rc1.

SuSE

Ximian, Inc., a provider of desktop and server Linux solutions, and SuSE Linux have announced a partnership concerning SuSE's corporate business. As part of the agreement, SuSE will resell Red Carpet Enterprise from Ximian - enabling customers to centrally deploy and manage software on servers and desktops running SuSE Linux and SuSE Linux Enterprise Server. The companies will also offer Ximian Connector software to integrate the popular Ximian Evolution groupware suite for Linux with the SuSE Linux Openexchange server. In addition, the companies will pursue opportunities to collaborate on future Linux desktop offerings incorporating Ximian Desktop technology.

UnitedLinux

UnitedLinux has announced that it has completed certification of UnitedLinux Version 1.0 with both Oracle9i Database and its database clustering technology, Oracle9i Real Application Clusters.

Yoper

Yoper (Your Operating System) has released version 1.0 of their distribution.

XFree86

XFree86 version 4.3.0 has been released. The new release includes many new graphics card driver improvements, automatic PS2 mouse protocol detection, run-time root window resizing, support for alpha-blended and animated cursors, and an improved font server.

TextMaker

TextMaker for Linux beta now available. TextMaker for Linux is a a word processor that is claimed to read and write Microsoft Word 6/95/97/2000/XP files without losing formatting or content.

McObject - MontaVista partnership

McObject, developer of the eXtremeDB small footprint, in-memory database, has joined with MontaVista Software to offer a GNU/Linux-based technology combination for intelligent devices ranging from consumer electronics to carrier-grade communications gear.

With eXtremeDB, McObject offers a new type of database to meet the unique performance requirements and resource constraints of intelligent, connected devices. With a footprint of 100K or less, eXtremeDB spares RAM and CPU resources while delivering critical data management features. eXtremeDB's ultra-small footprint and exceptional performance enables device manufacturers to deploy less expensive hardware, providing a key economic benefit through reduction of BOM (Bill of Material) costs. Similarly, by choosing MontaVista Linux tools and platforms, companies gain significant savings over proprietary real-time operating systems (RTOSes). Together, McObject and MontaVista lower development and deployment costs, enhancing customers' positioning in the marketplace.

...making Linux just a little more fun!

Laurel and Hardy Try to Write a C Program By Stephen Bint

... featuring those Lovable Dolts, Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy.
(Official L&H site)    (UK tribute page)

This article is a follow-up to the author's The Ultimate Editor in January and the Mailbag letters (three of them) it received in February.

---

Ollie is sitting in front of a terminal. Stan enters, carrying a book.

Ollie: Where have you been?

Stan: I went to the bookstore to get a book like you said.

Ollie: Well, you took your sweet time. We have to get this CGI script finished by tomorrow morning. Let's see what you've got.

Stan hands Ollie the book.

Ollie: "A Guide to Programming in C". What is this?

Stan: It's a guide to programming in C, Ollie.

Ollie looks at camera - not amused.

Ollie: I can see that, you idiot. I thought I told you we were going to write it in Perl.

Stan: But Mr. Bint said...

Ollie: Mr. Bint?

Stan: The man at the bookstore. Mr. Bint.

Ollie: [Impatiently] What did "Mr. Bint" say?

Stan: He said he was all sold out of books about Perl, but he had a whole shelf full of books about C. He said I was lucky.

Ollie: How did he make that out?

Stan: He said C is a better choice for CGI programs. He said C is a professional programming language, but Perl is a toy language. He said Perl is a jumped up scripting language that's gotten ahead of itself.

Ollie: Oh, he did, did he?

Stan: [Nods] Mr. Bint says that though the learning curve with C is initially steeper, ultimately there is less to learn, because C has fewer rules. He said Perl does most things for you and you need to learn exactly what it does in every case, to understand what your program is doing. He said that's why books about C are so thin and books about Perl are so fat. He says the reason he is sold out is that Perl books are so fat he can only fit four on a shelf. Not only that, but the trucks that deliver them often fail to arrive because their tyres keep exploding.

Ollie: Is that a fact?

Stan: [Nods] That's what Mr. Bint says. He says that Perl has confusing syntax and fails to define function interfaces correctly, which invites sloppiness.

Ollie: And what else does he say?

Stan: He says that C is often made out to be full of danger and potential for disaster compared to Perl, but in fact, Perl is only proof against a couple of common bugs and its lack of readability makes other bugs more likely. He says the gcc compiler gives good warnings about badly written C, there are tools which can check for memory leaks and Lint to check for other common errors.

Ollie: Mmmph. Mr. Bint recommends Lint, does he?

Stan: Yes.

Ollie looks impatiently at the camera, then at Stan.

Ollie: Well, I suppose we will just have to write it in "C".... "Mr. Bint". Mmmpph!

Ollie faces keyboard and prepares to type.

Ollie: OK, you read the book out to me and I'll type in the program.

   while( ollie_waits ) {

      Stan_looks_at_book();
      Stan_looks_at_Ollie();
      Stan_looks_panic_stricken();

      if( ollie_looks_around() )
         ollie_waits = false;
      }

Ollie: Well, what is it now Stanley?

Stan: [Blubbering] I'm sorry Ollie... blubber... I don't think we can just start straight away... snivel...I think we have to read the book and learn the language first...

Ollie: Will you stop sniveling? How hard can it be? We'll simply learn the language, then we'll write the program.

Ollie turns to give Stan his full attention.

Ollie: OK, tell me what we need to learn about C before we can start.

Stan: According to this table of contents... variable types, user-defined types, typedefs, static variables, initialisation vs. assignment, constants, statements, binary operators, unary operators, arithmetic operators, logical operators, bitwise operators, operator precedence, if, for, switch, while, continue, break, arrays...

Ollie looks at camera - not amused.

Stan: multi-dimensional arrays, pointers, pointer arithmetic, function pointers, function declaration and definition, preprocessor directives and macros, printf formats, automatic and allocated memory, command-line arguments, recursion...

Ollie removes Stan's hat, slaps him round the chops with the mouse mat (both sides), carefully replaces hat. Stan stops reading.

Ollie: Well, congratulations Stanley. This is another fine mess you've gotten me into.

   while( camera_is_running() )
      Stan_blubbers();

Fin.

Stephen is a homeless Englishman who lives in a tent in the woods. He eats out of bins and smokes cigarette butts he finds on the road. Though he once worked for a short time as a C programmer, he prefers to describe himself as a "keen amateur".

...making Linux just a little more fun!

HelpDex By Shane Collinge

These cartoons are scaled down to minimize horizontal scrolling. To see a panel in all its clarity, click on it.

All HelpDex cartoons are at Shane's web site, www.shanecollinge.com.

Part computer programmer, part cartoonist, part Mars Bar. At night, he runs around in a pair of colorful tights fighting criminals. During the day... well, he just runs around. He eats when he's hungry and sleeps when he's sleepy.

...making Linux just a little more fun!

Working with XSLT By Daniel Guerrero

The eXtensible Stylesheet Language Transformations (XSLT) is used mostly to transform the XML data to HTML data, but with XSLT we could transform from XML (or anything which uses the xml namespaces, like RDF) to whatever thing we need, from xml to plain text.

The w3 defines that XSL (eXtensible Stylesheet Language) consists of three parts: XSLT, XPath (a expression language used by XSLT to access or refer to parts of an XML document), and the third part is XSL Formatting Objects, an XML vocabulary for specifying formatting semantics

Meeting XSLT

First of all, we need to specify that our XML document will be an XSL stylesheet, and import the XML NameSpace:

<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0"
                  xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">

.