November 2003, Issue 96
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Editor-in-Chief: Mike Orr ("Sluggo")
TAG Editors: Heather Stern, Thomas Adam
The Answer Guy: Jim Dennis
Linux Weekend Mechanic: Thomas Adam
News Bytes Editor: Michael Conry
Technical Editor: Ben Okopnik
Contributing Editor: Rick Moen
Sysadmin Gang: T. R. Fullhart (Kayos), Faber Fedor
...making Linux just a little more fun! |
By Ben Okopnik |
Nothing lasts. Favorite toys finally fall apart; old cars, the pride and joy of your high school days (and nights!) rust out, fade away, languish for lack of available parts. Relationships, business and personal, once so bright and exciting, wither like houseplants exposed to the desert sunlight and blow away like tumbleweeds.
During the past month, the Linux Gazette, as we and our readers have known it for a number of years, has come to an end. SSC, the company who had been hosting - and, to some degree, supporting - our efforts since shortly after the inception of the Gazette has decided that it somehow belongs to them, to change, adapt - or to destroy - at their pleasure. We - the people who have volunteered our efforts to write for it, assemble it, produce it, and publish it - disagree... and the wind of the desert howls over all, blowing away what once was, leaving nothing but the pure idea that still lives, independent of hardware, software, and corporate manipulation, and existing only in the minds of those who believe in it.
The smoke of the past rises in the air, dissipates... and is gone. But the spirit of things, if they are worthwhile, endures, and follows the original forms. "The King is dead - long live the King!" Mark Andreessen's Mosaic morphs into Netscape Navigator changes into the Communicator Suite mutates through (and survives!) The AOL Corporate Hellbeast emerges as Mozilla. The Linux Gazette, slated by SSC to slip off into a muddy swamp of CMS, obscurity, and the inevitably short slide into destruction, arises like the Phoenix from its intended pyre - purified, bright, and new.
Our mission, renewed and all the stronger for going through the fire, remains what it has been all along: "making Linux a little more fun." The core format of the Gazette will remain what it has been as well, static (and thus universally accessible and mirror-able) HTML and text and available for reading or download via the Web. (BONUS: For those of you who wish to read the text version on your Palm Pilots, or other handhelds that can read the Palmdoc format, I will be introducing our new PDB version as well.) Obviously, our URL and email addresses will change - we are now located at http://linuxgazette.net instead of the old ".com". The largest changes are going to be under the hood, where DNS, mirroring, site structure, author submission/input/feedback, and The Answer Gang lists live; all of these are intended to improve the process, making it easier for all of us to continue bringing - and hopefully improving - our content for you, our readers.
Welcome to the new Linux Gazette.
Most of the basic features of LG are in place. The following features, however, are changed:
Ben is a Contributing Editor for Linux Gazette and a member of The Answer Gang.
Ben's subsequent experiences include creating software in nearly a dozen
languages, network and database maintenance during the approach of a hurricane,
and writing articles for publications ranging from sailing magazines to
technological journals. Having recently completed a seven-year
Atlantic/Caribbean cruise under sail, he is currently docked in Baltimore, MD,
where he works as a technical instructor for Sun Microsystems.
Ben has been working with Linux since 1997, and credits it with his complete
loss of interest in waging nuclear warfare on parts of the Pacific Northwest.
Ben was born in Moscow, Russia in 1962. He became interested in
electricity at age six--promptly demonstrating it by sticking a fork into
a socket and starting a fire--and has been falling down technological mineshafts
ever since. He has been working with computers since the Elder Days, when
they had to be built by soldering parts onto printed circuit boards and
programs had to fit into 4k of memory. He would gladly pay good money to any
psychologist who can cure him of the resulting nightmares.
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...making Linux just a little more fun! |
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Memory is the second thing to go, what's the first?Dear and gentle readers. Those who enjoy finding out what stumps the mighty and shy among the Answer Gang. Children of all ages, ladies and... ahem.
I've just been through the troubleshooting time of my life, trying to learn exactly where all my memory leaks are going. Heck, I've even chased down a few. But what I'd like to know - among you out there who play in somewhat deeper magic than I do - is how you find out what within a kernel is using what memory? I mean, if there aren't many processes running, they don't look like they're using a lot, and I don't have a ramdisk open, how can I tell what's using it up?
Of course I am interested in the answer to this question - and to be a little more specific I'll not that I've spotted ext3fs journals and the USB subsystem leaking so far, mainly by trial and error and science; invoking different things while taking good notes. Yes, I'll be trying some 2.6 kernels - do read a few of the 2c Tips this time around if you're inclined to join me in that - but I just don't think I've found everything.
If anyone would like to write an article on a particular problem, how it stumped you, and how you worked your way past it to learn what really happened under the hood -- I think we'd enjoy reading it. See our see our author submission guidelines for details, and then send mail to articles@linuxgazette.net.
Simply good tips on troubleshooting tricks not found in the average toolbox? Send them to tag@linuxgazette.net. Thanks! -- Heather
Anybody want to be a columnist?Okay, it's been in the Mailbag for 3 months running now, with different voices out there. Obviously there is sincere interest in a Windows Defector column. Now what we need is an author who wants to become its regular columnist, and can keep to a schedule.
Send a note to articles@linuxgazette.net describing your views for the column, including some posible themes for your first two or 3 articles.
Benefits include full access to the snacks in the TAG fridge, some good-natured ribbing, and the respect of a bunch of readers planning their next move in the OS wars.
LG #95 mailbag "Windows Defectors"This is in reply to "Windows Defectors" which was published in issue95 here:
http://www.linuxgazette.com/issue95/lg_mail.html#wanted.1
And I don't want Linux to look like Windows. The advantage of a GUI is that it visually enumerates the possibilities. That's a mighty powerful advantage. (Too bad GUIs don't have anything else going for them.)
[Ben] Cute as that statement may be - and I'm definitely a CLI type of guy by preference, so it strikes a chord - it's inaccurate. The largest positive effect of GUIs, IMO, is their transfer of emphasis from remembering and understanding things (command-line options, program capabilities, etc.) to recognizing them visually. Note that this is not much of a value to me - and doesn't seem to be to you - but the population at large (read "non-technical users") have joyfully fallen at the feet of the Great God GUI and sobbed in relief.
[Jason] Doesn't the above paragraph simply say "GUIs visually enumerate the possiblities"?
I was not kidding when I said "That's a mighty powerful advantage". It is a mighty powerful advantage. I was being a bit sarcastic with the "Too bad GUIs don't have anything else going for them" line, but really, they don't.
I'm still trying to get my ideas about computers sorted out. I've been heavily influence by Chris Crawford's writings. His latest book, "The art of Interactive Design" is, IMHO, very good.
You can read many of his essays on his website, http://www.erasmatazz.com
[Ben] In short, GUIs have made computers usable by the majority - without forcing them to learn anything past a fairly basic interface (with extensions available for programs that require higher complexity), and Xerox PARC and Apple deserve all the recognition and kudos they can handle. Necessarily, there's a tradeoff: really complex (and thus, most interesting) functions that don't fit the model are often discarded. Thus, the dumbing-down of the available software base - at least in the Wind0ws world; thus, the love/hate relationship between us techies (who use computers because of the really interesting stuff at the sharp edges) and GUIs.
Note that I am a big believer in writing to the Lowest Common Denominator: that's how I design interfaces for all the programs I write, at least if they're going out into the world. Where I differ sharply from the average MS-flavored GUI is in what I consider the LCD to be: theirs is set at about the level of the average 5-year-old (as my gf in Baltimore expressed it upon seeing WinXP for the first time, "Fear not, little human; Wind0ws will not harm you!");
[Kapil] I think this sentiment is demeaning to the level of intelligence and more importantly the capacity for learning present within most 5-year olds. In fact the quote you give later applies to children much more than to (most) adults---they will do smarter things if we treat them as if they are smart.
My take on this is that the MS-flavoured GUI is aimed at todays computer illiterate adult who is in addition incapable of responding to such a "smart approach" having been treated like an "idiot" for a long time. (Think management and Parkinson's law).
(All this is based on a very small case study. My daughter at the age of 5 had less resistance to using GNU/Linux that my colleagues!).
[Ben] Good grief, Kapil. Not in the least, certainly not by intention; I'm a big-time fan of kids when it comes to learning ability, and am absolutely awed by their emotional/nuance radar at that age (from the start till a couple of years after, actually.) I don't see how saying that certain material is set at the level of a 5-year-old maps to 5-year-olds being stupid, etc.; I smell an ax being ground. OK, to be fair, I may have hit a hot button - sorry if so - but that's no reason to misconscrew my statement completely out of shape.
[Ben] I demand more intelligence and awareness from my users. "You must be at least this intelligent to use my programs" - nope, I don't mind being an elitist at all.I believe, strongly, that people respond to software at the level at which they've been trained to do so: treat them like they're stupid, and they will be; treat them like they're smart - as I believe my method does - and they will amaze you with just how smart they are.
(Why, yes, I am a fan of Marshall McLuhan. Why do you ask?
The effects of technology do not occur at the level of opinions or concepts, but alter sense ratios or patterns of perception steadily and without any resistance. -- Marshall McLuhan, "Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man"
[Jason] OTOH, I really don't want to have to open a file-manager, browse to the directory I want, select "remove", check "Force" and "Recursive", and then click "OK" when I can just type "rm -rf whatever"
[Ben] <grin> Poor choice of example. Midnight Commander - it may be a text-based GUI, but still a GUI - can do shell-based stuff like that just as quickly or quicker and more intuitively (F8 deletes files or directories - no need to remember "-r" or whatever.) However, in general, I agree with you emphatically: there are tasks best done (or that can only be done) in the shell. If my "Ten Feet Tall and Bullet-proof: Java under Linux" article, I did something rather nasty to all the Wind0ws-based programmers: showed a Perl one-liner that fixed several thousand broken links in about a thousand files (a real situation that I'd dealt with shortly before, BTW.) Try that in a GUI.
[Jason] alias rm='rm -r'
No need to remember F8 or whatever.
[Thomas] Hmm, not a recommended thing to do, as I am sure Jason was well aware. Aliasing command names in that manner to do something potentialy distructive such as a recursive approach (rm -r) is never a Good Thing (tm)
[Jason] Doesn't the above paragraph simply say "GUIs visually enumerate the possiblities"?
[Ben] Err... no. It says, and I quote,
Cute as that statement may be - and I'm definitely a CLI type of guy by preference, so it strikes a chord - it's inaccurate. The largest positive effect of GUIs, IMO, is their transfer of emphasis from remembering and understanding things (command-line options, program capabilities, etc.) to recognizing them visually.
That's completely different from enumeration of possibilities - which, incidentally, are not enumerated in a GUI but presented in menus and/or icons. Unless you're using some special meaning of "enumerate", that is.
[Jason]
What a GUI does very nicely, is listing (Like that word better?
[Ben] Yes, and. The GUI methodology is that the user's world is shrunk down to a small number of choices at all times: "File/Edit/Insert/Tools/Help" or whatever. Click on "File" and you get "New/Open/Save/Save As/Close/Quit", etc. No need to look up the manpage, right (although you can always click "Help", for whatever good that's going to do) - but also no need to memorize the manpage to know which functions are available in that piece of software.
[Thomas] One of the reasons why I migrated from Windows was that this so called "common set" routine whereby each menu had a common set of items actually didn't really exist in the Linux GUI. The diversity that each app had to offer, appealed to me much more.
[Ben] You can always find out with just a couple of clicks, because the world is subdivided into just a few choices. Spell-checking? Sure, that would be under "Tools". Paste an image? "Insert", obviously. Even if you guess wrong, it only takes another click or two to try again.
The point is that someone with no computer skills whatsoever can learn to operate a basic GUI in just a few minutes - and will be able to muddle his way through other GUI-based progs, ones he's had no experience with, on his own because the method of operation is similar as long as the interface is consistent. (The question of whether creating access to something as complex and potentially dangerous as computers for non-technically-sophisticated users will be discussed later in the Philosophy section of this course; bring your own earplugs and set your "adult content" filter on "stun".)
[Thomas] The problem with that is that many users may well rely solely on the use of the GUI, and if the GUI doesn't have the necessary options that the underlying CLI apps do, then you loose some of the functionality inherent with the CLI application.
New Contact InformationI suppose it should be obvious, but with the site move we also have new addresses for contact. We hope you will find them easier to use. Thanks for your continued support during our transition, and don't forget: we're <em>Making Linux Just A Little More Fun!</em>
Hints: don't send us HTML, we have scripts to do that. Use a real subject line. Tell us what you tried. Thanks.
If people have any News for the News Bytes editor:
bytes@linuxgazette.net Michael Conry is our current News Bytes editor.
Folks who want to be mirrors or confirm that they are still mirrors should contact:
mirrors@linuxgazette.net Ben Okopnik is our current Mirrors Coordinator.
To keep up on news about mirroring scripts and being a mirror, please subscribe to: lg-mirrors@linuxgazette.net
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...making Linux just a little more fun! |
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The Wonderful World of 2.6Of course a number change doesn't really mean all that much more than that Linus Torvalds might be trying to push 2.6 out the door a little faster than what happened with 2.4. Also, for what it's worth, Joe Pranevich has just put out a draft version of the Wonderful World of Linux 2.6, posting this to the kernel list:
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............... Hello, I've recently put together the first draft of a features document describing the changes in Linux 2.6. (I did similar documents for both Linux 2.2 and Linux 2.4.) It's based almost entirely on BitKeeper changelogs (with clarifying information pulled from the lists and the web), so there is a chance that I misunderstood something or that I missed something else entirely. Please give it a look over and if you see anything that needs a look-over, please let me know. As it stands now, I feel pretty good about how it turned out so I'm finally comfortable mailing what I have around. (There are still a couple areas that need expanding on, I think...) As of right now, you can find the latest versions of the document available online. Text version: http://www.kniggit.net/wwol26.txt Tersely formatted HTML: http://www.kniggit.net/wwol26.html Please let me know what you think. Thanks, Joe Pranevich jpranevich<at>kniggit.net ............... |
Using 2.6 kernels - get the right toolsYou need a new modutils variety entirely for 2.5x, and 2.6 kernels. Under Debian the package name to fetch is called module-init-tools
The upstream source can be gotten from
ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/rusty/modules As LG goes to press the current available is 0.9.15-pre2.
The nice thing is, it doesn't conflict with modutils.
2.6 kernel - use the latest or expect a leakThe current version of 2.6 (test 9) fixes some nasty memory leaks in the VFS layer for filesystem management. If you've been experimenting along in the 2.5.x/2.6 series, an upgrade is highly recommended.
[LG 92] 2c Tips #5 - PDF conversionIn issue 92 Mike Martin asked: Has anyone any ideas on converting PDF's to decent text. Several of the Gang answered with useful programs. -- Heather
A loyal reader, Walt R, has sent in:
The tool pdftotext works, but
all formatting disappears.
Yes, an unfortunate side-effect. You might have to edit it by hand, to re-instate formatting...
[LG 92] help wanted #1 - BiDi and SMARTDRAWIn issue 92, Daniel Carneiro do Nascimento's question was pubbed in the Mailbag's "Help Wanted" section. -- Heather
BiDi in Wine is still being actively worked on, and is nowhere near complete. You should resend your e-mail to wine-devel@winehq.com to get to the people who /really/ know Wine.
[LG 92] help wanted #2 - Squid and FTPTru IPcop. It is firewall router. EVERY connection from inside is working and You are stealth to outsiders. Not closed... stealth! http://www.ipcop.org
Try. It is the best I ever used. I have had proxy two months before... now never again
Bye!
[LG 95] help wanted #2 - webdialerMy solution may or may not be OK for you. I have a little P75 laptop that acts as a NAT for my local area network. It runs OpenBSD with user PPP. I am unsure whether user PPP is available for Linux. Maybe you can use pppd and ipchains (or whatever its called now).
User PPP is configured in "auto" mode such that a request makes it dial out if its not connected. So if my wife requests an html page, PPP dials out, connects, and she gets her page. She uses Windows and is NATed thru the P75.
No users are on the P75. I have had two windows boxes, one FreeBSD box, and the P75 (ntpd) all sharing the same internet connection concurrently.
Format of Binaries in Linux....Hi,
Could you please help me out to know the format of binaries in Linux. thanks in advance.
regards
Sarfraz
[Thomas] From last month's "Greetings from Heather Stern":
The same goes for you students out there with a take home light quiz. We can spot those a handful of kilometers away, give or take a mile. Maybe you should cc: your professor when you ask us the question, and he can give us the passing marks in your class. The point is to learn a few research skills - so for such questions, search google. Search our KnowedgeBase - it's part of what it's here for. Search TLDP.org and freshmeat if the problem is really about Linux.
To give you a hint, there's two types: ELF and a.out
[Jim O'Regan]
- There's a nice discussion in the FreeBSD handbook
- http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/binary-formats.html
[K.-H.]
try also:
http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=1059
as a starting point. Came up in google easily enough.
MS Research vs. open sourceI was looking at Dashboard (http://www.nat.org/dashboard), and noticed a link to a Microsoft Research project, MyLifeBits (http://research.microsoft.com/barc/mediapresence/MyLifeBits.aspx). I had a look around the site, and noticed that a lot of the projects have open source equivalents - some of them older than MS's version - and figured I'd make a list. (Before Dashboard there was the Remembrance Agent for Emacs, which I think outdates MyLifeBits).
* IntelliShrink (http://research.microsoft.com/~simonco/intellishrink.aspx) Shrinks e-mail to SMS abrv8tns. Free version: email2sms (http://adamspiers.org/computing/email2sms)
* World-Wide Media eXchange: (http://wwmx.org) Tools for stamping image files with their location, as well as tools for converting location information from GPS handsets to GPX. GPSBabel <http://gpsbabel.sourceforge.net/>; can write GPX files, you can use exiftags <http://johnst.org/sw/exiftags/>; to write this to an image.
* AutoDJ (http://research.microsoft.com/~jplatt/abstracts/autoDJ.html) Automatically generates music playlists. Cymbaline (http://silmarill.org/cymbaline.htm) does this.
* Media Computing (http://research.microsoft.com/mc) which has several subprojects, including Audio Content Analysis, which Maaate (http://www.cmis.csiro.au/maaate) does; Face Detection, Tracking and Recognition, which OpenCV (http://www.intel.com/research/mrl/research/opencv) does; Digital Album, which facilitates the annotation of photos, and searching based on these annotation - Gnome Storage (http://www.gnome.org/~seth/storage) can do this, among other things; Video Content Analysis, Representation and Access - VideoQuery (http://videoquery.sourceforge.net) can do this.
* Mobile IPv6 (http://research.microsoft.com/mobileipv6) Mobile IPv6 support is available for Linux - MIPL (http://www.mipl.mediapoli.com)
* Advanced Compiler Technology (http://research.microsoft.com/act) Optimising C# compilation. Mono (http://www.go-mono.net) follows Microsoft's research in this area, and generally implements it.
* Natural Language Processing (http://research.microsoft.com/nlp) There are several projects available for NLP, for example OpenNLP (http://opennlp.sourceforge.net)
* Camera Calibration (http://research.microsoft.com/~zhang/Calib) OpenCV does this too.
* Audio fingerprinting (http://research.microsoft.com/~cburges) Free Tantrum: (http://sourceforge.net/projects/freetantrum)
* Pastry (http://research.microsoft.com/~antr/Pastry) A peer to peer system - it's open source, and written in Java, so it should run on Linux.
* IceCube (http://research.microsoft.com/camdis/icecube.htm) IceCube allows for disconnected use by mobile clients... just like CODA (http://www.coda.cs.cmu.edu) does.
* .NET Generics (http://research.microsoft.com/projects/clrgen) Mono is working on this too.
* SML.NET (http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/Research/TSG/SMLNET) SML.NET is Open Source
* The Social Computing Group (http://research.microsoft.com/scg) has a few projects which have open source equivalents --
** Sapphire: is pretty similar to Gnome Storage
** Conversation clusters: is similar to the vfolders in Ximian's Evolution
** Smart Previews: looks almost exactly like the previews in KDE 3.1
** Shared browsing: You can do this in Mozilla with DerTandemBrowser (http://dertandembrowser.mozdev.org)
ssh -L 1234:localhost:22 remotehost -s sftpThe above command is supposed to tunnel all request on port 1234 to secure port 22 and allow a SFTP.
So.. on localhost I should be able to do: "ftp localhost 1234" and connect via ssh to remotehost ftp remote files. The problem is, it doesnt work. Is such a thing possible?
Thanks
Shaun.
[K.-H]
well -- I've no idea of sftp as such. according to the manpage this feature is SSH2 only. Are you sure your connection is protocoll level 2? Check with "-v".
To put localhost in there confused me for a moment, but it seems to be fine. You might want to out a real hostname to make it less confusing. Assuming your ssh is to the ftp-target "remotehost" would do fine.
I get the error: khh > ssh -L 1234:localhost:22 dachbox -s sftp usage: sftp [-vC1] [-b batchfile] [-o option] [-s subsystem|path] [-B buffer_size]
If I force level 2:
ssh -2 -L 1234:localhost:22 khhlap -s sftp
it just sits there. ftp localhost 1234 gets me a ftp interface which is unconnected. I don't have an ftpd running so I can't test further.
It would be a lot easier to answer anything if you would have sent the error message or what exactly does not work.
I'm not familiar with the ssh2 "-s" option. I've never used it. But I've successfully tunneled (using -L) http, smtp, ssl-imap and news ports through a firewall -- so basically it should work as long as ftp is in passive mode.
[LG #95] answer gang: "a linux solution for the office"Reading through the answer to this question I noticed that the hyperlink for http://ltsp.org was incorrect, included a >, as well as the link for SIAG office suite was completely wrong. He said http://www.siag.org when it should have been http://siag.nu. You guys are doing a great job, but... I think somebody should take the time to make sure the links are correct at least to avoid sending people off on snipe hunts.
[Thomas] OK, that "he" to which Dave refers was actually me. However, as this goes to press, I cannot help but feel malace towards the tone of this e-mail. As Ben rightly goes on to say, don't complain or expect anything to be resolved unless you yourself can do something about it. This is a volenteer effort afterall.
OK, I admit that I did guess the URL for siag office, but I'm sure that you, the gentle reader, know how to use google.com/linux? I certainly hope so...
[Ben] Cool idea - thanks for voluntering! We'd love to have a proofreader. I have to warn you, though, that the quantity of mail, submissions, etc. that we get can be fairly overwhelming, so I hope you're offering a significant chunk of your time.
HINT: we're all volunteers here. Complaining about someone not taking the time - when that is the specific resource we contribute (especially since a number of us are consultants and normally get paid for that very resource) - is ungracious at the very least.
Helpful suggestions are always welcome. Complaints that aren't coupled with an offer to help, well, our /dev/null stays hungry no matter how many pretzels we feed it...
[Thomas] I almost got my hand bitten off the other day when I tried to feed it all the MIME-encoded e-mails we get. It seems that /dev/null hates them even more than we do
LD_DEBUG coolnessHi,
I was reading comp.unix.programmer and came across a comment about setting the LD_DEBUG environmental varible to 'help' and running a dynamic executable. Okay, let's try it:
~$ export LD_DEBUG=help ~$ ls Valid options for the LD_DEBUG environment variable are: libs display library search paths reloc display relocation processing files display progress for input file symbols display symbol table processing bindings display information about symbol binding versions display version dependencies all all previous options combined statistics display relocation statistics help display this help message and exit To direct the debugging output into a file instead of standard output a filename can be specified using the LD_DEBUG_OUTPUT environment variable.
See attached ls_output.txt
Fun thing to play with. And who knows, I might actually have a use for it someday.
[Ben]
*Nice!*
Thanks, Jason - that's a really fine tidbit. It now reposes comfortably in my toolbox in the little niche by "strace" and keeps it from rolling around and rattling. I've spent the past week teaching people how to use the "grep" drill, the "awk" chopsaw, and the "sed" jackhammer, and can appreciate the finesse of a precision instrument all the more for that reason...
ximian email backupsCould someone let me know what files I need to pull from my current system (where I get my email) to a new system? I would like to backup all the data and restore it to a new system and get the email over there; yet, have all my email folders/emails restored to the new system.?
Thanks in Advance
EJ
[Raj Shekhar] If you are using evolution , then in your home directory you will find a folder called evolution which will have all the mails + contacts + other settings. If you want to just find your emails, you will find them in
~/evolution/local/Inbox .
A piece of advice, if you back up your mail to a CD and then restore it, you will have the files which are read-only. I would suggest that you tar and gunzip your evolution folder before burning it to the CD , that way your file-permissions will be preserved.
[Thomas] Actually, that is inaccurate -- one can preserve permissions on CD quite easily, if they're copied with "cp -p". Also, why put them on CD at all? You could easily move them to another partition, which would preserve file permissions as well.
[JimD]
More obviously you can simply create an archive (tar, cpio, dump, pax) which will preserve the ownership and permissions. That's what Unix archives do, archive data with meta-data.
Then burn the .tar (or whatever) file into your CDR. Basically you'll create an ISO containing just one or a few archive files.
(newbie) alsa module ?here is a confusing problem. I like to insert the alsa module in my woody. but the alsa-driver source has been located at */usr/src/modules/alsa-driver* & the kernel source at */usr/src/kernel-source-2.4.18*
make xconfig doesn't show the alsa option. do I need to move the alsa-driver at a particular directory (?) under the kernel-source to get the alsa option during make xconfig ??
Linux CD trialHi,
I am interested in Linux and open source in general.I am new to linux, I read more about it but till now havn`t tried it. I downloaded small distributions like ' small linux ' but didn`t work. Having only dial up connection to the Internet it is difficult to download those big distros over analog phone, so what I ask is can you send a free CD of a distro of linux to get my feet wet or point me out to some sources where to find this.
HTH Neil Youngman
For those in the US, Cheap Bytes seems to carry it also. And a few more distros, too, in case a particular one strikes your fancy. -- Heather
Sendmail 8.12.9 - recreating db filesjust finished installing Sendmail, but now if i run make all in /etc/mail after running /usr/bin/newaliases, i am getting the following error:
make: No rule to make target 'domaintable.db', needed
by 'all' . Stop
Info
rehat 7.2
Rather than DL'ing the pkg in parts via ftp, I think it would be much more striaght forward to DL the pkg as a tar or rpm and install from that.
plz help --- Rh9 connecting to ISA serverHello
I recently installed RH 9 and i have a LAN running on ISA server, tried to connect it but could't.
somebody told me configure samba so i did and now i could also see the computers on my network and even the PING to the server is OK
when i try to browse the network it gives me:
"HTTP 607 proxy Authentication required,
The ISA server requires authorization to fullfill
the request. Access to web proxy service denied (12209)"
it will be very helpful if anyone can plz suggest me a way out of this problem Excuse me being a Newbie
Weather i have to configure the ISA (a bit dificult to access for me) or is there any other way plz lemme know in either cases
Thanks
FAHAD
Burning ISO's under windowsHaving read the previous answers to this question I would like to recommend a software program taht I recieved with my Sony Recorder, ' B's Recorder Gold5 ' http://www.bhacorp.com . I found this program to be very easy, I just loaded the program, cancelled the wizard. Next I found the ISO file and dragged into the bottom layer, then from the file menu I selected record and that was it a perfict disk.
Having read mail to this address since before it was a list I would like to recommend that software recommendations to MS Windows and Mac OS (non-portable to other forms of UNIX) products be sent just to the querent and other interested parties.
This is linux-questions-only; the LINUX Gazette "Answer Gang." Naturally, we'd like to encourage a "Linux-answers-mostly" policy.
A quick search of http://www.freshmeat.net on "ISO CD burn":
http://freshmeat.net/search/?q=iso+cd+burn§ion=projects
... gives me a list of about 25 ISO CDR programs --- I'm sure there are more than that it's a popular programming and scripting exercise.
Almost all of them are simply GUI, command line or curses (text dialog) driven front ends to Joerg Schilling's cdrecord and mkisofs Some also support cdrdao, mkybrid, or related command line tools.
As for DVD-R/RW and DVD+R/RW drives, the support for them seems to be a bit sketchy. I think they're getting closer but I still haven't gotten my Ikebana DVD+R/RW drive working yet (except as a CD-R/RW). (I haven't tried it recently either).
See also the "Best of ISO Burning Under Windows" in our KnowledgeBase. -- Heather
mail files.Sorry if this is not a "pure" linux item, but I take the chance.
Am trying to convert (import) Eudora (version 3.0.5) .mbx files to the KDE Kmail. For this I have used the Eudora2Unix.py script. That seems to work. It reports eg. 529 messages found for a given "folder".
The problem: When having moved the converted .mbx to the appropriate Kmail folder, I only see the first mail. I can guess that it depends on
the fact that Kmail keeps each mail in a separate file, while my Eudora stacks them in a single file referred to as folder (thus not a real folder in normal terminology). It should not be too hard to split the messages into separate files, but then comes the file naming convention in Kmail. What I have seen, it looks like a fancy (many digits) running number.
So, have I missed something with Kmail (option to set) or are there any s/w available to fix eg. messages -> separate-files.
Hoping for some hints.
Have you tried kmailcvt?
Thanks for your answer. I have found out the problem. KMail have two folder modes, maildir and mbox. I happened to move the Eudora mbox folder into a KMail maildir folder.
What to choose? Mac or PC?Just use a repeat_type of raw, so that XFree86 sees exactly the same thing as it would see if there was no GPM. BTW, I use a mouse type of autops2, and GPM can recognize the middle button.
Hey, thanks, Hubert. That did the trick. Sometimes I wish tips like
this were a bit more clearly documented, but I digress...
ok, you said winmodems don't work right? - Quick and Dirty Kernel Compilewww.linmodem.org.
i downloaded the driver (most lucent winmodems that aren't AMR work, )
On the page you can load a binary driver, which means you dont have to recompile (check the versions tho)
now, i need help working with this beast. i'm using redhat 8.0. it says i have to recompile the kernel (i think) and since i am a complete newbie at working this stuff (the more i go into linux, the more i learn) could you give me some cut and dry instructions on how to install this driver as either a module or as a full part of the kernel. I have the kernel sources from kernel.org's website (i don't know if the headers come with it though, so i need help with this too). i'm an ultra newbie at linux, but in windows i am an advanced user.
Quick and dirty RH recompile
First dont use kernel.org sources - RH patch to high heaven. get kernel source rpm from ftp.redhat.com/pub/redhat/linux/updates/8.0/en/os/i386/ rpm -ivh <package> to install cp /usr/src/linux-2.4/configs/<your chosen arch config> /usr/src/linux-2.4/.config cd /usr/src/linux-2.4 make menuconfig then make any changes save then make dep&&make clean&&make bzImage&&make modules&&make modules_install then when this is all done cp boot/arch/i386/bzImage /boot/vmlinuz<your name for kernel here> cp System.map /boot/System.map<same version as above> rm -rf /boot System.map ln -s /boot/System.map etc //boot/System.map mkinitrd /boot/initrd-<version of kernel>.img version number then edit /boot/grub.conf to add these details as in the current entries.
Although RH normally add so many modules you may not need to recompile.
If this does not work you may not have the dev packages you need. you need at least
gcc make bison glibc-kernheaders glibc-devel ld cpp-devel libgcc-devel
(this is from memory so you could need a few more - rpm should tell you)
thank you for the support.
Cool toy of the week: rlcompleter2http://codespeak.net/rlcompleter2
Tab completion for Python. Cool stuff, now all I can think about is how to
implement this in Ruby.
I've been using the standard rlcompleter for years. What does rlcompleter2 add to the the standard module?
/me browses(*)
Ahhh, I see; it's sort of like Ian MacDonald's bash-completion package. It adds context sensitive completions and adds support for displaying the docstrings (.doc__ attributes for any function, module, or class) and apparently it displays the function signatures (argument list) as well.
I'll have to play with it.
/me downloads, plays, configures
Now my PYTHONSTARTUP for python2.2 and python2.3 are set to ~/.pythonrc.rlcompleter2
Thanks.
The startup for interactive sessions is a little slower. there is a noticeable hesitation during rlcompleter2 .setup() but it's not bad enough to worry about.
- /me is a IRCism --- traditional IRC clients have a /me command that highlights one's statement as an "action" --- a description rather than an utterence
Sendmail ProblemI getting this error : Connection failed to 192.168.0.1,25 Connection refused if i try to sent mail straight from the server using pine
192.168.*.* are unroutable on the Internet (as per RFC191
. It may
be that the server to which you are connecting is refusing you due to
some internal (anti-spam and/or anti-relaying) configuration rules.
If i try to from windows workstations, the client are failing to get a response from the server
I checked sendmail status and it is running
I also restarted sendmail and i can only use pine twice and the third time it will throw the same error
if i run ps -aux | grep sendmail , there is this process [ sendmail < defunc and at one time there was
sendmail rejected connections running , which i do not understand
I see you've tried to provide additional information but a careful perusal reveals that you don't give enough RELEVANT information to actually answer your question.
Try to formulate a better question after you read the following LDP (Linux Documentation Project) HOWTOs and Guide chapters:
... note: I've tried to arrange these roughly in the best order for you to read them. Basically the first one should explain the concepts and terminology a little better, then next one might just help you solve the problem, and the others may help if you're still fighting with it beyond that. In other words, I don't expect you to read all of those, just read enough to solve the problem (or at least to be able to better explain it).
Help needed - SimputerHi!
I'm in need of your help. I'm trying to flash some programs into
Simputer and tried using pfc. The configuration for serial communication is 115200/9600 baud and I get the following response on pfc's debug window.
Debug Messages are Displayed Here..
At first it wasn't clear how this is Linux-y...
> Using port /dev/ttyS0
> Please wait... Initializing....
> This will take about a minute..
> []
> []
> [This is a PicoPeta Simputer...you are assimilated]
:D
> Simputer booted
> Preparing...
> Sending [init 2]
At this time the progress bar stops and the application hangs forever. Similarly, when I tried using minicom(9600 8N1),I get response from simputer till the 'Simputer login' prompt and when I entered the login name, the getty process in Simputer doesn't respond with authetication validation or anyother message it is suppose to send. I saw the
Is it expecting a PPP connection? or does it have the wrong parity and databits setting?
rc.sysinit file which spawned a getty with 9600 baud... As in someother place where I was looking for the solution mentioned that we got to set the serial port for 115200 baud, I tried to change in the file even after providing write permission but couldn't write on to the file. So,
You almost certainly have to be root to write into /etc/inittab, and I cannot imagine any good reason that a regular user account should have writable access to it.
rc.stsinit itself might not be the right place to put this.
I killed the old getty process and spawned one with the new baud rate. Set the ispeed and ospeed to same... But,it doesn't work. One thing clean about the scenario is that from simputer the messages reach the PC which the other way it is not. It would be of great help if I can get it working. Thanks in Advance.
regards,
Mythili
The most popular program to run on Linux boxes to answer on their serial port, is called 'mgetty'. It has a man page which is amazingly enough, usually kind of useful, and the typical /etc/inittab has an example line about how to activate it, commented out. getty is good, but mgetty has some special features for dealing with serial lines.
115200 is a common max speed for old style serial ports. 9600 is the bits frequency if using common voice (300 baud or so) with a fairly popular old line discipline to get bits on different parts of the carrier wave. Compression tricks are most of what gives faster modems their claimed speed.
Hope that helps.
telnet prb in linux7.3hi every one, i have two systems one is windows2000 advanced server and another is linux7.3 iam unable to access it through telnet as superuser.
Access which one of those two?
Maybe you are trying to login as "root" directly at the telnet login. This is not allowed. You can login as an user and then change to root by using the "su" command.
WindowsDear Mr. Dennis,
Actually, the days when TAG was a one-man-band have long since diminished. You have actually reached a whole "gang" of us who try and answer questions based on what querents write in.
I know very little about Linux. I've ran it a few years ago on a 386. However at the time there weren't too many applications for it. I want a
reliable CAD station but, I have only Windows programs. Does Linux run Windows applications reliably?
Umm, I think reliably is the operative word. If it is stability you're after then I would recommend running that application in its native environment -- windows. However to answer your question, WINE is what you're after:
http://winehq.com
That does a pretty good job at running Windows apps. There is also the option of using VMWare if the computer you're connecting to is remote.
If you look through our back issues and also check the KB out:
http://www.linuxgazette.com/tag/kb.html
I remember there being a thread on CAD software for Linux.
True. In fact we have so many CAD and CASE programs that Freshmeat has to seperate sections for various types. And then there's modelling.. I understand that you can get very nice, if imprecise, 3D effects with these apps. -- Heather
LJWNN Tech TipsApologies, folks - I had published several large LJWNN Tech Tips in issue 93, but I must have been in too much of a hurry. A few of them were damaged there, thanks to a formatting mistake on my part. Sorry! Here are the repaired Tips, please enjoy them.
We will probably not republish Linux Journal Weekly News Notes tips in future issues of Linux Gazette. -- Heather
If your main home network is a wireless network, you don't want to wake up in the morning and find some joker has printed many pages of stuff to your networked printer. Put the printer on a wired, private network segment, and print to it with ssh.
To do this, install this script as lpr on your wirelessly connected laptop:
See attached lpr-ssh.bash.txt
(Thanks to the GAR project: http://www.lnx-bbc.org/README.html for the tip.)
If you have a lengthy command-line task, such as building complicated software, and need to catch an error that whizzes by in the middle, use script. It will run a shell and log all input and output to a file called "typescript" that you can then search or submit with a bug report.
The vacation program lets you send an automatic message when you'll be away from your e-mail. You can see who received your message with
vacation -l | cut -d ' ' -f 1 - > people_who_got_vacation_message
When you boot Linux, the kernel turns off Num Lock by default. This isn't a problem if, for you, the numeric keypad is the no-man's-land between the cursor keys and the mouse. But if you're an accountant, or setting up a system for an accountant, you probably don't want to turn it on every single time.
Here's the easy way, if you're using KDE. Go to K --> Preferences --> Peripherals --> Keyboard and select the Advanced tab. Select the radio button of your choice under NumLock on KDE startup and click OK.
If you only run KDE and want Num Lock on when you start a KDE session, you're done. Otherwise, read on.
To set Num Lock on in a virtual console, use:
setleds +num
If you choose to put this in a .bashrc file to set Num Lock when you log in, make it:
setleds +num &> /dev/null
...to suppress the error message you'll get if you try it in an xterm or over an SSH connection.
Finally, here's the way to hit this problem with a big hammer--make the numeric keypad always work as a numeric keypad in X, no matter what Num Lock says. This will make them never work as cursor keys, but you're fine with that because you have cursor keys, right? Create a file called .Xmodmap in your home directory, and insert these lines:
(from a Usenet post by Yvan Loranger: http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&selm=3BFD087F.2000300%40iquebec.com&rnum=3+)
See attached numpad.Xmodmap.txt
The last line takes the now-useless Num Lock key and makes it an extra Escape key. If your favorite accounting software uses one of the F keys frequently, you might prefer that.
The number to the left of the equals sign is an X "keycode", the key on the keyboard you pressed, and the number or name to the right is an X "keysym", the character or function X thinks it is. You don't have to look these up in some X manual. To find out the keycode and keysym for any key, run xev in an xterm, move the mouse to the small white xev window and watch the keycodes and keysyms scroll by in the xterm.
If you'd like to do SSH port forwarding with a passphrase, but require a passphrase to run commands, make a separate key for port forwarding only.
Dramatis personae
dmarti: example user name
bilbo: your desktop system
frodo: host running sshd
linuxjournal.com: some web site
Port forwarding also is called tunneling, so I'll call the key "tunnel". cd to your .ssh directory and create the key:
dmarti@bilbo:~/.ssh$ ssh-keygen -t dsa -f tunnel Generating public/private dsa key pair. Enter passphrase (empty for no passphrase): Enter same passphrase again: Your identification has been saved in tunnel. Your public key has been saved in tunnel.pub. The key fingerprint is: 77:b4:02:d9:32:c2:cc:18:58:c3:23:0a:13:46:a7:fa dmarti@capsicum
Now edit tunnel.pub and add the following options to the beginning of the line:
command="/bin/false",no-X11-forwarding,no-agent-forwarding,no-pty
That means this key is no longer any good for anything but port forwarding, because the only command it will run is /bin/false, and it won't forward X or agent commands.
sshd understands the options only when reading the key from authorized_keys, but if you put the options into the original .pub file, they'll stay with the key wherever it goes.
Now copy tunnel.pub to the end of your .ssh/authorized_keys at all the hosts to which you want to tunnel, and try it:
dmarti@bilbo:~$ ssh -i ~/.ssh/tunnel frodo Connection to zork.net closed.
No errors, nothing runs; that's what you want. If you get errors, you may have mangled the authorized_keys file on the server end; if you get a shell you need to check and fix the options.
Another possibility is that if you're running with ssh-agent and have the SSH_AUTH_SOCK environment variable set, you could be using a key provided by ssh-agent instead of the one on the command line. Put env -u in front of the command line to be sure not to use the agent.
Tunnel time! Let's use the long-suffering linuxjournal.com web server as a guinea pig and make a tunnel:
dmarti@bilbo:~$ ssh -i ~/.ssh/tunnel -N -L 8000:linuxjournal.com:80 frodo
To review that command line:
- -i ~/.ssh/tunnel to use our tunnel-only ssh key
- -N to not run a command (this is necessary, otherwise SSH will run only /bin/false and exit)
- -L 8000:linuxjournal.com:80 to forward local port 8000 to port 80 on linuxjournal.com.
- And finally, the hostname to which we're making the connection--it doesn't have to be the same as the host to which we're tunneling.
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mandrake linux v9.1 fresh install crashing on first bootup,
rm : command not found
Linux "read" issue
Kernel 2.6.0-test2 and qm_modules error
Greetings from Heather SternGreetings, everyone, and welcome once more to the world of The Answer Gang.
I suppose you would think it obvious what the Peeve Of The Month is. I'm actaully deeply saddened that this move became necessary, and in fact I resisted the need at every turn. I resisted the CMS idea too - I think it's a solution to a problem we don't actually have, and "yet another slashdot" is not a unique magazine on the scene. But I had hopes that a talented webmaster could bring a template engine out of its doldrums and make something amazing and new in a basically already filled niche of the web. In fact, they still might. But if it can't retain a regular release schedule, it wouldn't be a Gazette:
Gazette \Ga*zette"\, n. [F. gazette, It. gazzetta, perh. from gazetta a Venetian coin (see {Gazet}), said to have been the price of the first newspaper published at Venice; or perh. dim. of gazza magpie, a name perh. applied to the first newspaper; cf. OHG. agalstra magpie, G. elster.] A newspaper; a printed sheet published periodically; esp., the official journal published by the British government, and containing legal and state notices.
With a basis in official matters (okay, who's perfect) but most especially in a periodic nature, the only way for the Gazette to retain its true nature is to remain... a periodical.
But enough of that. 'Tis the time of All Hallow's Eve, and everyone is dressing up. Me, I'm dressing up my computer. There are some people doing some really crazy and fun things with new computers. The silliest that I've seen so far I have to say is the glowing sphere. That guy's great. His set top box makes it look like that thing is now a TARDIS or that the aliens who control "The Outer Limits" really have left their control module visible in your living room. There a bunch of toasters out there - really! I'm not kidding! Go visit Mini-ITX.com if you don't believe me. Cubes even. But the glowing sphere is a winner.
At a basically 7" square motherboard (170 mm, but who's counting) and about an inch, inch and a half clearance above it, you have anything from a 500 Mhz to 1 Ghz Cyrix or Eden chipset and most of the useful peripherals already on board. If you're willing to call it 2.5" clearance, get a riser card to let you put a PC card in sideways.
I don't know how it is out there with the rest of you but I can run down to my local computer store here in the Silicon Valley and have my pick of cases that have clear sections, glowing parts, mounting brackets for ultraviolet lighting, and ... well I wasn't ready for this at the time, so make sure you're sitting ... water cooled motherboards. With somewhat yellow water that glows under blacklight.
Spoooooky. But not half as spooky as the idea that killing a part of the cooling system isn't just a dead fan and maybe one of the hard disks will run a risk of much early MTBF - mean time between failures, the silicon lifeform's equivalent to risk of stroke and heart attack. Water splattered all over the inside of a 2.3 or 3 Ghz gaming monster sounds even spookier.
Okay. So maybe I just should stick with a normal case with sort of bubbly effects on the front. One popular model of this is called the "alien glow". Sounds like a GIMP filter. If I feel really inventive maybe I can paint a mural on the side of one of the cases whose sides pop off easily so techies can get at the parts.
And then, there's making my desktop a little more fun! In this I
have an unfair advantgae. The window manager I happen to favor is
Enlightenment (16 of course. Will 17 never release? Probably.) and
there is an uncountable community of goth kids out there who
Sound, light, Thunder, am I missing anything? Of course. I'll have to consider getting a remote mouse, or setting my computer up for LIRC - infrared remote control - so I can toggle the spooky effects without touching them. Maybe I should set my /etc/hosts file to recognize 127.0.0.1 as localghost. while I'm in here.
Well kids, it's time to wait at the door with the chocolates. For any of you who haven't run off to the parties, I suggest that a dessicated pumpkin will not make a good case. Try a big Millenium Falcon or Enterprise model instead. And... pleasant dreeeeeaams ... mwa hahahahah ha ha!
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...making Linux just a little more fun! |
By Michael Conry |
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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 bytes@linuxgazette.net
Mobilix
Werner Heuser, the owner of the Mobilix project (Now located at tuxmobil.org) still has not given up on securing the right to use the Mobilix name. He has been involved with Les Éditions Albert René the publishers of the Asterix comic books in a long running legal wrangle over the right to use the name. The book publishers claim that the name violates their trademark of the name Obelix (a character from the books, and Asterix's sidekick). Having lost his final appeal in the German courts, it looked like Heuser would have to admit defeat. However, it now appears that the Obelix trademark itself may be vulnerable to challenge, and Heuser is exploring this possibility with his lawyers. Given the nature of this dispute, it is likely that it will be quite some time before we know how this new counter-attack will pan out.
GPL
We in the GNU/Linux community are all surely aware of the GPL, a licence under which many of the developers behind the software tools we use daily have decided to release their work. Though opinions can vary on its merits, even in the worst BSD vs GPL flamewars some shred of sanity usually persists. In this light, it is very interesting to see how very very far from sanity a competent professional journalist, such as Daniel Lyons of Forbes, can go when dealing with the issue.
Daniel discussed the GPL in the context of a licencing dispute that is currently being worked out between the FSF and Cisco regarding GPLed networking code that has been incorporated illegally into some of Cisco's products. In fact, the situation is a little more complicated in that Linksys did the incorporation, but the company was subsequently bought by Cisco who now have to deal with the problem.
What is interesting, in a mostly bland article, is the lengths Daniel goes to in portraying the FSF's licence enforcement actions as some sort of bully boy tactics. The FSF are referred to as "Linux's Hit Men", who have "in secret ... been making threats", this "hired enforcer" wants you to "burn down your house, or at the very least share it with cloners". Granted, I am selectively quoting from his article, but the message comes through loud and clear even when you read it in its entirety -- he might as well have dropped the word "terrorist" in there. What he does not mention, is that the actions of any software creator could be portrayed in this way when they attempt to enforce the terms of their licences. Indeed, the entire article could be construed as an argument against software licences in general.
It is nice to contrast Lyons' empty and misleading rhetoric with the measured and nonconfrontational response of Bradley Kuhn of the FSF. Equally encouraging, is to read the comments posted on the Forbes website by readers. They were overwhelmingly at odds with the content of the article (probably due to the coverage the article got in the Linux press) but more importantly, the tone of the responses was both thoughtful and polite.
Patents
Following up on last month's news regarding a European victory on the software-patents front, NewsForge has published a very worthwhile article by Richard Stallman giving his thoughts on the news and on the current situation. It is encouraging to see that even the great RMS was a bit confused at first whether the news was good or bad (on balance it was good news).
As Stallman points out, the success in getting the legislation amended at Parliament is only a partial victory. It still needs to be approved at the Council of Ministers on November 10th. If such an approval is secured, it will be a very significant win.
Readers who are resident in the European Union, and who support the restriction of software patentability might like to take this opportunity to contact their elected representatives and make their opinions felt. This time it is probably best to focus on national parliamentary representatives, rather than the European Parliament members, since The Council of Ministers represents the member states' governments. That said, there is no harm in putting the message out as widely as possible!
SCO
They say the greatest trick the devil ever pulled off was to convince the world that he did not exist. Well, I'm beginning to come to the conclusion that the greatest success SCO has pulled off is to convince the world that they are worth wasting time on. Frankly, if they're not actually suing you (as opposed to huffing and puffing about it), and you don't feel like suing them, there really isn't much point in giving them your attention. Graham Lee, in a Slashdot comment, put it nicely:
Makes perfect sense to me.Where SCO press is concerned, Do Not Feed The Troll. SCO are undoubtedly revelling in the fact that every time their marketing droids put pen to paper, their output is mirrored on /., newsforge, linux.com and any number of similar sites. I expect they use this coverage to show their investors how seriously the community takes SCO's business, and how the Linux-using and Open Source Software communities are incredibly worried about the fact that 'they stole SCO IP and used it in their anti-competitive software'. In short, SCO profit from the coverage, and Darl McBride's worth increases with every SCO post on /..
...
In summary, as I said at the top, SCO are trolls. Please do not feed them in the future.
The E-zine
LinuxFocus:
has for November/December the following articles:
Some links found via LinuxToday
Some links from O'Reilly:
The Chinese Ministry of Education is launching a major Grid computing initiative making heavy use of GNU/Linux running on IBM hardware
Some links from NewsForge:
Putting together a Linux based router using Zebra
Mobile internet connectivity by satellite for travelling around Australia.
Listings courtesy Linux Journal. See LJ's Events page for the latest goings-on.
|
LinuxWorld Conference & Expo HK2003 |
November 4-5, 2003 Honk Kong http://www.linuxworld-hk.com/ |
|
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/ |
|
Southern California Linux Expo (SCALE) |
November 22, 2003 Los Angeles, CA http://socallinuxexpo.com/ |
|
Annual Computer Security Applications Conference (ACSAC) |
December 8-12, 2003 Las Vegas, NV http://www.acsac.org/ |
|
Linux Clusters Institute Workshops |
December 8-12, 2003 Albuquerque, NM http://www.linuxclustersinstitute.org |
|
Storage Expo 2003, co-located with Infosecurity 2003 |
December 9-11, 2003 New York, NY http://www.infosecurityevent.com/ |
|
Consumer Electronics Show |
January 8-11, 2004 Las Vegas, NV http://www.cesweb.org/ |
|
Linux.Conf.AU |
January 12-17, 2004 Australia http://conf.linux.org.au/ |
|
LinuxWorld Conference & Expo |
January 20-23, 2004 New York, NY http://linuxworldexpo.com/ |
|
O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference |
February 9-12, 2004 San Diego, CA http://conferences.oreillynet.com/etcon/ |
|
SXSW |
March 12-21, 2004 Austin, TX http://sxsw.com/ |
|
SD West |
March 15-19, 2004 Santa Clara, CA http://www.sdexpo.com |
|
Open Source Business Conference |
March 17-18, 2004 Park City, UT http://www.osbc2004.com |
|
CeBit Hannover |
March 18-24, 2004 Hannover, Germany http://www.cebit.de |
|
COMDEX Canada |
March 24-26, 2004 Toronto, Ontario http://www.comdex.com |
|
2004 USENIX/ACM Symposium on Networked Systems Design and
Implementation (NSDI) |
March 29-31, 2004 San Francisco, CA http://www.usenix.org/events/nsdi04/ |
|
RealWorld Linux |
April 13-15, 2004 Toronto, Ontario http://www.realworldlinux.com |
|
CeBit America |
May 25-27, 2004 New York, NY http://www.cebit-america.com/ |
|
Strictly Business Solutions Expo |
June 9-10, 2004 Minneapolis, MN http://www.strictlyebusiness.net/sb/mpls/index.po |
|
USENIX Annual Technical Conference |
June 27 - July 2, 2004 Boston, MA http://www.usenix.com/events/usenix04/ |
|
O'Reilly Open Source Convention |
July 26-30, 2004 Portland, OR http://conferences.oreillynet.com/ |
|
LinuxWorld Conference & Expo |
August 3-5, 2004 San Francisco, CA http://www.linuxworldexpo.com/ |
|
USENIX Security Symposium |
August 9-13, 2004 San Diego, CA http://www.usenix.com/events/sec04/ |
|
USENIX Systems Administration Conference (LISA) |
November 14-19, 2004 Atlanta, GA http://www.usenix.com/events/ |
NTL
The Register has reported that NTL, a cable company and ISP providing dial-up internet access in the UK, has introduced new dialer software that only runs on Windows and Mac. The new dialer software is the only way to make a connection with the NTL service and thus GNU/Linux (and other OS) based systems have been locked out.
PLoS
Though not specifically a Linux project, the Public Library of Science is an initiative that will be of interest to many in the Free Software community. In part formed as a reaction against the strangle-hold exerted by the large commercial publishers on scientific publication, the stated aim of PLoS is to
[make]... the world's scientific and medical literature a freely available public resourceCertainly an aspiration that many GNU/Linux users would share.
Though greeted with some initial scepticism by the larger publishing community, the first issue of PLoS Biology has been well received. This strong beginning looks like it will continue as the article "Learning to Control a Brain-Machine Interface for Reaching and Grasping by Primates"[3.3Mb pdf, synopsis] from the second issue of the journal has received extensive coverage in both the scientific and general press.
An important revenue stream for the journal is supplied by authors, who pay a $1500 fee to submit articles. This fee is intended to cover peer review costs. Though the presence of such a fee can be a barrier to publication, it is not uncommon for traditional peer-reviewed journals to also charge such a submission fee (in addition to charging readers for access to the published work).
ArchLinux
OSNews have published a review of of ArchLinux
Debian
LinuxForce has noted that 2003 has been a good year for Debian GNU/Linux. They have put together a list of the most significant news stories about Debian so far this year. [ Courtesy DWN]
LFS
The LFS Development Team has announced the release of LFS-5.0-PRE3, the third pre-release of the upcoming LFS-5.0 book which is available at http://www.linuxfromscratch.org
The BLFS Development Team has proudly announced the release of BLFS-5.0-PRE1, the first pre-release of the upcoming BLFS-5.0 book. You can read it online or you can download the book from to read it locally
LNX-BBC
There was an interesting recent report on Linux Planet regarding the GAR build system used by the LNX-BBC Project.
Mandrake
MandrakeSoft have announced the availability of a new version of its flagship operating system--Mandrake Linux 9.2 Unfortunately, the release has been the subject of one particularly unpleasant bug which can result in the permanent damage of LG CDROM drives. Various discussions on Slashdot and in newsgroups have followed this news. A preliminary list of affected/unaffected drives was posted in the alt.os.linux.mandrake newsgroup by Peter Breuer, though obviously no warranty can be supplied with the information. The most authoritative source of information on this bug is the Mandrake errata page.
The bug could have wider impact, since it appears to be associated with packet writing code added to the 2.4.22-rc2q5 kernel rather than being something that is uniquely confined to Mandrake.
PHLAK
PHLAK is a modular security-focussed GNU/Linux distribution, geared to be used as a live CD. PHLAK was created as a tool security professionals could use to perform security analysis, penetration testing, forensics, and security auditing. The distro is based on Morphix.
Sorcerer
OSNews has published a review of Sorcerer Linux, a from source GNU/Linux distribution.
Yellow Dog
NewsForge has published a review of Yellow Dog Linux 3.0.1. Yellow Dog is a GNU/Linux distribution intended for users of Apple Mac hardware.
Bogofilter