Linux Gazette... making Linux just a little more fun! Copyright © 1996-98 Specialized Systems Consultants, Inc. _________________________________________________________________ Welcome to Linux Gazette! (tm) _________________________________________________________________ Published by: Linux Journal _________________________________________________________________ Sponsored by: InfoMagic S.u.S.E. Red Hat LinuxMall Linux Resources Mozilla cyclades Our sponsors make financial contributions toward the costs of publishing Linux Gazette. If you would like to become a sponsor of LG, e-mail us at sponsor@ssc.com. Linux Gazette is a non-commercial, freely available publication and will remain that way. Show your support by using the products of our sponsors and publisher. _________________________________________________________________ Table of Contents September 1998 Issue #32 _________________________________________________________________ * The Front Page * The MailBag + Help Wanted + General Mail * More 2 Cent Tips + 2 Cent Tip from the 'Muse + Tips and Tricks: Keeping track of your config files + 2 cent tip: Cross platform text conversion. + XFree86 and the S3ViRGE GX2 chipset + Clearing the Screen + Re: Shell Scripting Resources Re: Recognising the AMD K5-PR166 Your atapi CDROM Tips: simulataneous kernel versions Creating man pages made easy! 2c Tip Re: Cross-platform Text Conversions Un-tar as you download megaraid drivers Re: simultaneous versions of Kernels + News Bytes o News in General o Software Announcements + The Answer Guy, by James T. Dennis + A Convenient and Practical Approach to Backing Up Your Data, by Vincent Stemen + Graphics Muse, by Michael J. Hammel + Installing StarOffice 4.0 on Red Hat 5.1, by William Henning + An Interview with Linus Torvalds, by Alessandro Rubini + It Takes Its Toll, by Martin Vermeer + Java and Linux, by Shay Rojansky + Linux Installation Primer, by Ron Jenkins + Linux Kernel Compilation Benchmark, by William Henning + Linux Kernel Installation, by David A. Bandel + New Release Reviews, by Larry Ayers o Patch For Beginners o A Simple Typing Tutor + Open Source Developer Day, by Phil Hughes + Paradigm Shift, by Joe Barr + Running Remote X Sessions on Windows 95/98/NT/Mac/PPC Clients, by Ron Jenkins + Searching a Web Site with Linux, by Branden Williams + The Standard C Library for Linux, Part 3, by James M. Rogers + The Back Page o About This Month's Authors o Not Linux The Answer Guy _________________________________________________________________ TWDT 1 (text) TWDT 2 (HTML) are files containing the entire issue: one in text format, one in HTML. They are provided strictly as a way to save the contents as one file for later printing in the format of your choice; there is no guarantee of working links in the HTML version. _________________________________________________________________ Got any great ideas for improvements? Send your comments, criticisms, suggestions and ideas. _________________________________________________________________ This page written and maintained by the Editor of Linux Gazette, gazette@ssc.com "Linux Gazette...making Linux just a little more fun!" _________________________________________________________________ The Mailbag! Write the Gazette at gazette@ssc.com Contents: * Help Wanted -- Article Ideas * General Mail _________________________________________________________________ Help Wanted -- Article Ideas _________________________________________________________________ Date: Sat, 1 Aug 1998 09:50:38 -0500 From: The Wonus House, wonus@w-link.net Subject: Accessing Microsoft SqlServer vi DB-lib or CT-lib Do you have additional information sources on connecting to MS SqlServer via the Sybase CT/DB libraries? I am most interseted in how this could be done from a Solaris client machine. Any info is greatly appreciated (thanks), Kevin Wonus _________________________________________________________________ Date: Sun, 2 Aug 1998 21:55:03 -0400 (EDT) From: Paul 'Tok' Kiela, tok@gemini.physics.mcmaster.ca Subject: R2000 Mips 2030 I just recently came into a used R2000 "Mips 2030" desktop slab. Aside from opening the box and finding that it is indeed running an R2000 CPU, I know nothing else about the computer -- literally. I have found absolutely zero information about any computer bearing the markings 'MIPS 2030'. To make matters worse, I don't have a proper BNC monitor to actually use the box yet, but I'm searching. My question, where can I find information about the R2000 port of Linux? I have visited the Linux/MIPS page, but the only mention of the R2000/3000 CPU port is an URL which points at SGI's statistics on the R3000 CPU. I was hoping I could pop Linux on on the box, and happily run it alongside the little army of Linux boxen I have now. Any help would be very appreciated. Thanks. Paul. _________________________________________________________________ Date: Thu, 06 Aug 1998 12:57:21 +0000 From: Gulf Resources Co, grc2000@kuwait.net Subject: Some Ideas Anyone there who is dreaming of running Delphi in Linux? _________________________________________________________________ Date: Wed, 12 Aug 1998 09:21:12 +0200 From: Jesus A. Muqoz, jesus.munozh@mad.sener.es Subject: LILO Problems I installed Linux in a secondary IDE hard disk booting from a floppy disk. Then I tried to install LILO in the MBR of the primary IDE hard disk and I did it. My idea was to maintain Windows 95 in the primary disk. I configured LILO to be able to start Windows 95, but after installing LILO the primary disk cannot be seen either by DOS nor by Linux. If I run msdos-fdisk it says that the disk is active but in the row where it should appear FAT16 puts unknown or something like that. Can I recover the information of the hard disk ? _________________________________________________________________ Date: Tue, 11 Aug 1998 09:17:54 +0300 From: Mehmet Mersinligil, memo@tr-net.net.tr Subject: Matrox Productiva G100 8M AGP !!??? Is there a way to configure my Matrox Productiva G100 8MB AGP under X? Except buying a a new accelerated X server for 125$ from http://www.xig.com ? What should I do? _________________________________________________________________ Date: Sat, 08 Aug 1998 18:21:54 +0000 From: Alexander I. Butenko, alexb@megastyle.com Subject: Some questions to be published 1. I wonder can I use the EPSON Stylus Color 400 printer with Linux... The interesting thing is that my buggy GIMP beta says to be supporting it but can't really print anything.... 2. Has anybody encountered such a bug? JavaICQ doesn't run properly under KDE (when I open the send or reply or even preferences window this window closes immediately). This problem is only under KDE... 3. I can't use this Real Player 5.0, because it reports the compression errors even with files obtained from www.real.com or that file that was installed with it on my hard drive... _________________________________________________________________ Date: Thu, 06 Aug 1998 15:33:37 -0400 From: Bob Brinkmann, Bob.Brinkmann@mindspring.com Subject: Being new to the Linux community I'm in the process of developing a secure, encrypted tunnel for access to my company's enterprise network. The clients on the outside dialing into the system will be of a Windows 95, 98, NT 4.0 and probably 5.0 when it decides to rear its ugly head. My question is this, are there solutions on the terminating server side written in Linux to handle clients' tunnel access and also provide for IPSEC level encryption? A while back I played with Red Hat's 2.0 release of the software and I just purchased Red Hat's 5.1 (Manhattan) version utilizing 2.0.34 kernel and find it to run quite nicely on both a desktop and several Toshiba portables. Thanks for any advice or information you can provide. Bob Brinkmann _________________________________________________________________ Date: Wed, 12 Aug 1998 13:07:22 -0500 From: Dennis Lambert, opk@worldnet.att.net Subject: Help Wanted : newbie I recently purchased Red Hat 5.1 and got it running. Evidently I was lucky in that I have a fairly full FAT 32 Win 98 drive and kind of stumbled through the defrag / fips / boot to CD / repartition / full install with LILO process. Everything worked, but I'm a little nonplussed. A few topics I'd absolutely love to get feedback on... * Turns out I have a lousy WinModem. I can see the feedback now, (Run it over with your car) * I have grown fat and lazy with Win 98 and find myself looking for "Display Properties" and such. I'm very familiar with C and such and am not afraid of hacking scripts or the like, but my problem is thus: Where is a (succinct) list of what gets run when, from where, and why. I'd love to tweak everything if only I could find it. * I have something called an "Ensoniq Audio PCI" sound card with "legacy emulation" I don't even know how to begin to get this thing working. What are the first steps in enabling hardware? * Where do I get information on mounting drives (FAT 32 especially) * I think my printer works (at least text does), but how do I print things (man pages) I'm not an idiot, not even a "dummy", but what is a good book to answer the basic questions? I have "Linux in a Nutshell" and it has a very good command reference and a few other things, but doesn't help in tweaking things. I don't really expect anyone to answer all of these concerns, but any little help would be greatly appreciated. Dennis Lambert _________________________________________________________________ Date: Mon, 17 Aug 1998 16:54:20 +0100 From: Fabrice_NORKA_-_SAPHIR@PECHINEY.COM Subject: Deb to RPM translator I changed from a Debian distribution to a Red Hat 5.0 lately and was wandering if there were a tool like 'alien' to convert Debian packages to Red Hat packages. My personal e-mail is NORKAF@AOL.com Thank you and God save Linux community :-) _________________________________________________________________ Date: Mon, 17 Aug 1998 13:18:31 -0400 From: Chris Bruner, cbruner@compulife.com Subject: Idea's for improvments and articals An idea for an article. (You may have already done this but I couldn't find a search engine to look up past articles). I have yet to get my Red Hat 5.1 to connect to the Internet. (Their support is GREATLY overstated.) I'm consquently using Win95 to do my Internet work. The reason for this is that my modem, network adapter and sound card are all Plug and Play (PnP). I would like to see an article detailing step by step, for a Linux beginner, how to install Tom Lee's PnP Package. This would involve recompiling the kernel which I'm not afraid of, but have no idea how to go about it. The more step by step the better. I'm from the DOS world and any assumed knowledge that I have might be wrong. Thanks for a great magazine. Chris Bruner _________________________________________________________________ Date: Tue, 18 Aug 1998 21:23:27 +1200 From: Andrew Gates, andrewga@fcf.co.nz Subject: Help wanted for a (Cheap) COBOL combiler for Linux I have a friend who is doing a refresher course in Cobol in a Unix environment. I have suggested that she run Linux, and pick up a cheap / shareware copy of a Cobol compiler for Linux from somewhere. Knowing absolutely nothing about either Linux or Cobol, am I dreaming, or is there a realistic alternative to the compilers I have seen retailing for ~$1,500 US? I'd really appreciate any help/advice anyone can offer. Andrew Gates _________________________________________________________________ Date: Wed, 19 Aug 1998 18:37:34 +0200 From: ppali@friko6.onet.pl Subject: RadioAktiv radio tuner I am one of those Linux users, who are not experts, even after a year or more of working with the OS. I like very much discovering by myself various aspects of Linux, trying out the many programs and help tips. What is important is that it works well and that I can use it for most of the common computer tasks (after a bit of tinkering). Now I have decided for the first time to post a following question: After trying many radio tuners available on the net and failing to make my RadioAktiv radio card work under Linux I am stuck. Maybe someone would give me a few tips (or one TIP)? _________________________________________________________________ Date: Tue, 25 Aug 1998 15:59:21 -0500 From: Hilton, Bradley D. (Brad), HiltonBD@bv.com Subject: Trident 985 AGP Is it possible to get X running on a Trident 985 AGP video card? What server would I use? Thanks, Brad Hilton _________________________________________________________________ Date: Mon, 24 Aug 1998 17:19:21 -0700 From: dk smith, dks@MediaWeb.com Subject: IDE disks If I could only find a definitive reference on setting up IDE disks, SCSI disks, and partitioning issue for running with Linux, NT, and LILO. I am new to this stuff. The docs at Red Hat, although extensive, were not enough for me. -dk _________________________________________________________________ Date: Thu, 27 Aug 1998 16:05:15 +1200 From: Mark Inder, mark@tts.co.nz Subject: Help Wanted: Looking for an Xwin Server software that runs under win95/nt We use a Red Hat 4.2 machine in our office as a communications server. This is running well with the facility of telnet connections for maintenance, diald for PPP dial up - internet and email, and uucp for incoming mail. I would like to run an X server on my windows PC to be able to use X client software on the Linux PC over the local Ethernet. Does anyone know of a shareware for freeware version which is available. TIA Mark _________________________________________________________________ Date: Thu, 27 Aug 1998 00:02:28 -0500 From: Todd Thalken, tdthalk@megavision.com Subject: Looking Into Linux For PPP Server I am interested in implementing Linux in our office network. Specifically, we would like to set up a Linux box as a dial-up PPP server so that remote users can access the office intranet. Could you explain what hardware (multiport controllers) works best with Linux, and explain the steps necessary to set the Linux box up as a PPP server. Most of our client computers will be using Windows 95/98 dial-up networking. We would like to have the server assign IP addresses dynamically. This seems like it would be a relatively common question, so if there is already good information available please let me know where I can find it. I have read a lot about Linux, but still consider myself a green "newbie". Thanks! Todd Thalken _________________________________________________________________ General Mail _________________________________________________________________ Date: Sun, 02 Aug 1998 18:25:16 +0000 From: Gulf Resources Co, grc2000@kuwait.net Subject: Delphi for Linux I am a Delphi Developer. I am also a big fan of Linux and GNU Softwares. Anybody there who wants to join me in knocking the doors of Inprise Corp (Borland ) to convince them to port C++ Builder and Delphi to X Window. If these things happen, Microsoft will be very upset. What Linux needs is an innovative company like Borland or Symantec. _________________________________________________________________ Date: Mon, 03 Aug 1998 02:16:54 +0100 (BST) From: Hugo Rabson, hugo@rabson.force9.co.uk Subject: response to Ruth Milne I tell you, ..... Are you familiar with Nietzsche's description of the ordinary man's journey from man to superman? ...how he "goes down" into the abyss and comes up the other side? Moving from Windows to Linux is a bit like that. ;) My adventure started in late April. I was sick and tired of Windows NT bluescreening. I read an article saying how stable Linux was in comparison. I looked into GUIs & found KDE to be to my liking. In the end, I vaped NT because I needed the hard disk space. ;-P It is now August. I have had ro reinstall almost a dozen times because I am still getting used to "The Linux Way". I have been using computers since i was 6; PCs since I was 16; Windows since I was 18. Linux is very stable indeed but it is eccentric & definitely not user-friendly, unless your definition of user differs wildly from mine. I have written a "HOWTO" so that I can recover quickly if I have to reinstall the entire OS and GUI. It is currently 3500 words long, and tells me how to install RedHat, compile a new kernel, compile&install KDE 1.0, install the BackUPS software, configure dial-up networking & autodial, install AutoRPM, and .. umm... that's it, so far. Don't get me wrong: Linux _is_ a wonderful thing. It's just ... It's _such_ a leap from Windows! I am convinced my primary client (with a dozen Windows machines) could function very well with Linux & Applixware instead of Windows & Office, just so long as they have someone competent to maintain their systems. Of course, they'll need much less maintenance under Linux than under Windows ;) Linux requires a lot of competence & intelligence (and downloads!) if you're going to set it up. Windows doesn't. On the other hand, it seems much less prone to these embarrassing GPFs. :) Hugo Rabson _________________________________________________________________ Date: Thu, 6 Aug 1998 13:01:42 +0200 (CEST) From: Hugo van der Kooij, hvdkooij@caiw.nl Subject: Linux Gazette should not use abusive language! This is my final note to you about this subject. I have not heard nor seen a single response in the past regarding this issue. I will however request mirror sites to stop mirroring unless you remove your abusive language from the Linux Gazette. The following text should be removed from ALL issue's: The Whole Damn Thing 1 (text) The Whole Damn Thing 2 (HTML) I presume I am not the only person that find this text not at all suited for a Linux publication. It is in effect offensive and could easily be removed Hugo van der Kooij Actually, I have answered you at least twice about this issue. I don't find the word Damn either abusive or offensive and have had no objections from anyone else. So, why don't we put it to a vote? Okay, you guys out there, let me know your feelings about this. Should I remove the "Damn" from "The Whole Damn Thing" or not? I will abide by the majority. --Editor) _________________________________________________________________ Date: Sun, 09 Aug 1998 15:48:34 -0600 From: Mark Bolzern, Mark@LinuxMall.com Subject: Some History and Other Things LG #31 http://www.linuxgazette.com/issue31/richardson.html Marjorie, Neat issue of the Gazette, thanks for all the hard work. I'm proud to be a sponsor, Just sent another $1K. One little teensie issue of fact though: First the quote: The first two issues of Linux Journal were published by Robert Young. After the second issue, Robert decided to start up Red Hat Software, and Specialized Systems Consultants took over as publisher. Also with the third issue, Michael Johnson took on the role of Editor and continued in that role through the September 1996 issue. I became Editor on February 1, 1997 and began work on the May issue. And the correction: Actually Bob (Robert) started a Linux catalog within the ACC Bookstores. It wasn't until quite a bit later when he met Marc Ewing that he folded ACC into Marc's Red Hat Software. I wuz there ;-> Thanks Mark _________________________________________________________________ Date: Sat, 8 Aug 1998 15:06:37 -0700 (PDT) From: Heather Stern, star@starshine.org Subject: Re: those crazy links On http://www.linuxgazette.com/issue31/tag_95slow.html, the link pointing back to the table of contents points to lg_toc30.html instead of lg_toc31.html. No, wait... all of the issue 31 answer guy pages seem to be mislinked (except the main one.) Also, the "previous section" button on the pages mentioned above seem to be mislinked as well... This isn't really important since most normal people like me use the back button like a religion, but it always helps to be consistent and have links pointing where they should, doesn't it? :) Yes, actually, it *is* important to me, and the base files are mostly generated by a script (making it hard to get wrong). But, I broke some stuff in the footer logic, so I did a proper footer by hand and propoagted it into the tag_ files myself. So, as I go look at the template I used... Dad-blammit, you're right!! All of the 30's in there should be 31's. (Although the copyright notice is correct.) Mea culpa! Thanks for your time... --Charles Ulrich. p.s. May be worth the effort to try one of those link checker bots that seem ever so popular on the web these days... Maybe, but it's being worked on in a private Linux network. Most of those "web bots" only access external sites properly. I should have run the command 'lynx -traversal' at the top of it, so I'd have a badlink report, but I was in a last-minute rush. I've done so now, and found another error that you missed. One of the beautiful things about the web, is that a minor misprint can actually be undone, unlike the world of print. I've submitted a corrected packet to our editor. Thanks for mentioning it. -*- Heather Stern -*- _________________________________________________________________ Date: Fri, 7 Aug 1998 11:13:47 +0000 From: kengu@credo.ie Subject: news from Irish LUG Hello, I'm involved with the Irish Linux Users Group website and was wondering if you would please mention that we are currently compiling a list of people in Ireland that would be interested in getting the 'Linux Journal' - details are available at our website http://www.linux.ie/. thanks Ken Guest _________________________________________________________________ Date: Thu, 06 Aug 1998 17:30:55 +0100 From: James Mitchell, james-t.mitchell@sbil.co.uk Subject: Re: The other side of the story (or, on the other, other hand) Just before I launch into the meat of this email, I'd like to say that the Linux Gazette is excellent. good articles, and good tips and comments. I'm writing about the mail in the August issue "The Other Side of the Story", in which Antony Chesser compares the Windows GUI to the shell prompt, especially the line "When Linux finishes installing, you're left with a # prompt. When WIN95 finishes installing, you've a fairly intuitive GUI that allows you to quickly and easily install and run programs, connect to the net, and **apply updates without re-compiling the kernel**" My quibble is with the underlying assumption that a GUI (and here I assume that includes Mac, and X, as well as Windows) is more intuitive then a command line. I argue that for a complete novice one is as bad as the other, neither a command line nor a screen full of little coloured icons and a START button are instantly comprehensible to a complete computer novice. (Before you write me off as insane - remember that a GUI is supposed to shorten the time it takes to learn how to operate the computer, they don't eliminate the time altogether.) Do you remember the scene in the Star Trek movie (the one with the whales...) where Scotty tries to use a Mac? He talks to it, and nothing happens... the operator says "You need to use this [the mouse]", so Scotty picks up the mouse and uses it like a microphone - "Good morning computer." Can you see where I'm going? Until someone teaches the "complete novice" the relationship between the pointer and the mouse, and what happens when you click, double-click, or drag with the mouse, they will be just as lost as a novice sitting in front of a command line. Actually, they may be worse off... we have had typewriters for a lot longer then mice, and people will grasp the concept of typing faster then clicking on pictures. So, in summary, I think that a complete novice will have a learning curve to cope with whether they use a GUI, or a command line; and the rest of us should remember that there is a difference between "ease of use", and "what I'm used to". Cheers, James _________________________________________________________________ Date: Thu, 06 Aug 1998 09:22:46 EDT From: Roger Dingledine, arma@seul.org Subject: Linux News Standardization/Distribution Project We've been making progress on our proposal to standardize the format and distribution of Linux news. Our design uses the NNTP protocol to create a network of servers that will quickly and robustly share news that is interesting to the Linux community. This will allow websites like Freshmeat and Slashdot, as well as lists like Threepoint's and linux-announce, to reduce duplication of effort while still customizing their presentation. In addition, this will provide a single easy method of submitting an item of news, whether it's an announcement about a new software release, or a description of the latest article in Forbes magazine. The end goal of organizing the Linux announcements and news articles is to encourage smaller ISVs to port to Linux, since they will see advertising their software to a wide audience as less of an obstacle. Other important benefits include greater robustness (from multiple news servers), less work for the moderators (messages will be presorted and people can specialize in their favorite type of news, resulting in faster throughput), and a uniform comprehensive archiving system allowing people to search old articles more effectively. We are currently at the point where we are designing the standard format for a news item. We want to make it rich enough that it provides all the information that each site wants, but simple enough that we can require submissions to include all fields. At the same time we're sorting out how the NNTP-based connections between the servers should work. We've got Freshmeat and Threepoint in on it, and other groups like Debian and LinuxMall are interested. We need more news sites to provide input and feedback, to make sure everybody will want to use the system once it's ready. If you're interested, please check out our webpage at http://linuxunited.org/projects/news/ and subscribe to the mailing list (send mail to majordomo@linuxunited.org with body 'subscribe lu-news'). Thanks for your time (this is the last mail I will send directly about this), Roger (SEUL sysarch) _________________________________________________________________ Date: Fri, 14 Aug 1998 23:49:36 +0200 From: Martin Møller, martin_moeller@technologist.com Subject: Linux Gazette to be featured on Alt Om Data's CD-ROM monthly. This is just to inform you that some of our readers have pointed out that we ought to distribute your magazine on our Cover CD, and after having read through the lisence, I believe this will be no problem. I have, just to be safe, saved a copy of the copy lisence together with the archives and plan on distributing the new issues as the show up. Keep up the good work! Martin Moeller. _________________________________________________________________ Date: Fri, 21 Aug 1998 20:52:14 -0400 (EDT) From: Timothy D. Gray, timgray@lambdanet.com Subject: Linux reality letter In LG#31 Michael Rasmusson wrote: "the majority of Linux users are IT professionals in some way" and alluded to the fact that Linux will be slow to be accepted due to this fact. This is very untrue. Most Linux users are in fact College and high school students. These forward thinking young minds aren't tied down by archaic IT department policy (many of which were penned in the 70's when IT was called the Processing/programming/systems/data-processing department) Linux will explode, it will do so violently. In fact it will explode so fast and vast that Microsoft will say "What happened?" The local Linux Users groups are all populated by 90% college and high school students. What do you think will happen when these students hit the computer departments at large corporations? They will install Linux, they will use Linux, and they will recommend Linux. The "explosion" has already started. Many large companies have already abandoned NOVELL and Microsoft for their servers. (The makers of the CG effects in the movie Titanic are far from small) _________________________________________________________________ Date: Wed, 26 Aug 1998 03:37:22 -0400 (EDT) From: Paul Anderson, paul@geeky1.ebtech.net Subject: Linux and new users I've been reading the LG mailbag... A lot of people think Linux should be made easier to use. I don't think that's quite right - the idea, IMHO, should be to make it so that Linux can be used by someone who's new to computers, BUT they should have to learn to use it's full power. With power, knowledge must come or disaster will follow instead. The goal, in the end, is that the person becomes a self-sufficient user, capable of sorting out most difficulties without needing help. TTYL! Paul Anderson _________________________________________________________________ Published in Linux Gazette Issue 32, September 1998 _________________________________________________________________ [ TABLE OF CONTENTS ] [ FRONT PAGE ] Next This page written and maintained by the Editor of Linux Gazette, gazette@ssc.com Copyright © 1998 Specialized Systems Consultants, Inc. _________________________________________________________________ "Linux Gazette...making Linux just a little more fun!" _________________________________________________________________ More 2¢ Tips! Send Linux Tips and Tricks to gazette@ssc.com _________________________________________________________________ Contents: * 2 Cent Tip from the 'Muse * Tips and Tricks: Keeping track of your config files * 2 cent tip: Cross platform text conversion. * XFree86 and the S3ViRGE GX2 chipset * Clearing the Screen * Re: Shell Scripting Resources Re: Recognising the AMD K5-PR166 Your atapi CDROM Tips: simulataneous kernel versions Creating man pages made easy! 2c Tip Re: Cross-platform Text Conversions Un-tar as you download megaraid drivers Re: simultaneous versions of Kernels _____________________________________________________________ 2 Cent Tip from the 'Muse Date: Fri, 28 Aug 1998 00:13:07 -0600 (MDT) From: Michael J. Hammel, mjhammel@fastlane.net You know, I don't think anyones mentioned it before in the Gazette, but there is this little program that is handy as all get out: units. You give it the units you have and specify what you want it converted to and Viola! It converts it for you! It won't do Celsius/Farenheit conversions, but handles Grams/Pounds conversions just fine. And for all those Linux cooks out there, it converts cups to quarts, teaspoons to tablespoons and cups to tablespoons. Its the units freaks Swiss Army Knife. No hacker forced to make his own Thai curries should be without it. Michael J. Hammel _____________________________________________________________ Tips and Tricks: Keeping track of your config files Date: Mon, 03 Aug 1998 11:00:16 +1200 From: Ryurick M. Hristev physrmh@phys.canterbury.ac.nz This is my trick for keeping track of the many config files you find on a Linux/Unix system. Most config files are in the /etc directory. However, particularly on a home machine you won't change them all and sometimes you want to save (e.g. on a floppy) only the files you have changed. Besides, you don't want to have to remember the exact location for every one. So here's what I do: + created a /root/config directory + Each changed config file for whatever program gets a symlink in the /root/config Then every time I want to change something I go directly to /root/config. If I want to backup my system configuration, I just copy the files by dereferencing the symlinks, etc. ... Cheers, Ryurick M. Hristev _____________________________________________________________ 2 cent tip: Cross platform text conversion. Date: Thu, 06 Aug 1998 13:07:59 -0400 From: Jim Hefferon, jim@joshua.smcvt.edu To convert to a DOS text file, mount a DOS floppy and copy the text file. $ su (you are prompted for a password) # mount /dev/fd0 -t msdos /mnt/floppy (the # says that you are root BE CAREFUL!) # cp myfile.tex /mnt/floppy # exit $ For instance, after these, I can use SAMBA to get myfile.tex to an NT network printer (Z:> copy \\mymachinename\mnt\floppy\myfile.tex lpt2). It makes sense if you do this often to have a DOS disk always mounted, but if you mount as above, remember to umount before you try, say, mounting a different floppy. I find this easier than a solution with the tr command, because I always forget how to do such solutions, but I can remember how to copy. Jim Hefferon _____________________________________________________________ XFree86 and the S3ViRGE GX2 chipset Date: Wed, 05 Aug 1998 16:51:53 -0500 From: Ti Leggett, tlegget@mailhost.tcs.tulane.edu At work, we just got in a whole slew of computers that use the S3ViRGE GX2 chipset. Upon trying to install X on these things, I found that the default Red Hat 5.0 XFree doesn't cut it. This is how I've been able to fix the XFree86 problems with the S3V GX/2 chipset. First, do not use the S3V server despite what Xconfigurator says. The GX/2 chipset is not supported for that server. You must use the SVGA server (besides, it's accelerated and supports DPMS). Currently, these are the modes supported as of XFree86-3.3.2pl3: 8bpp: 640x480 works 800x600 works 1024x768 works 1280x1024 works 15/16bpp: 640x480 works 800x600 works 1024x768 works 1280x1024 works 24 bpp: 640x480 works 800x600 works 1024x768 works 1280x1024 works (very picky about monitor modelines though) 32 bpp: 640x480 works 800x600 works 1024x768 does not work 1280x1024 does not work The card I'm using to test this is a #9 9FX Reality 334 w/8MB RAM. Also I cannot verify that this works on any version less than XFree86-3.3.2pl2. pl2 actually has less modes/depth combinations that work - such as, no 16 bit depths work and 1280x1024 doesn't work in almost all depths. I suggest upgrading to XFre86-3.3.2pl3. Now onto the fix. Step 1. Make sure you're using the SVGA server (ls -l /etc/X11/X for RH users, maybe the same on other distros). It should point to /usr/X11R6/bin/XF86_SVGA. If it's not, link it to it (ln -sf /usr/X11R6/bin/XF86_SVGA /etc/X11/X). Step 2. Open your /etc/X11/XF86Config file for editing. Step 3. Find the Graphics Device Section. Step 4. Find the device that is the Standard VGA Device (usually has the line - Identifier "Generic VGA" Step 5. Remove the line that says: Chipset "generic" Step 6. Uncomment the line that says: VideoRam "256" and change it to recognize the amount of RAM your card has in kilo VideoRam "8192" # 8MB RAM Step 7. Add the following line (*CRUCIAL*): Option "xaa_no_color_exp" This turns off one of the accelerated option that gives trouble. Step 8. Add whatever other options you want (for a list see the man pages on XF86Config, XF86_SVGA, and XF86_S3V) Step 9. Change the bit depth and resolution to whatever you want. Step 10. Save and close the file and (re)start X. Note: I do not claim this will work for all cards using the GX2 chipset. I can only verify for the video card I'm using. I'm interested to hear how other video cards handle it. Hope that helps everyone involved. I've heard from people on Usenet that it works perfectly, and from others it doesn't. Ti Leggett _____________________________________________________________ Clearing the Screen Date: Wed, 05 Aug 1998 12:59:13 -0400 From: Allan Peda, allan@interport.net A few days ago a classmate "accidentally" cat'ed a file to the screen. He asked asked me what he could do to reset his confused vt100, as "clear" wasn't sufficient. At first I figured he would need to close and re-open the connection, but then I realized that there are codes to reset a vt100. Here is some C code that resets, and clears the screen. Save it as vt.C, then run "make vt". Place the executable in your path, and when the screen looks like heiroglyphics, type (blindly at this point) "vt". That should clear it up. /* ** Small program to reset a confused vt100 after ** `cat'ing a binary file. */ #include int main(void) { printf("\033c"); // reset terminal printf("\033[2J"); // clear screeen return(0); } /* For more info, see the following URLs: www.mhri.edu.au/~pdb/dataformats/vt100.html www.sdsu.edu/doc/texi/screen_10.html www.cs.utk.edu/~shuford/terminal/ansi_x3.64.html They have more vt100 escape codes. ** */ _____________________________________________________________ Re: Shell Scripting Resources Date: Wed, 5 Aug 1998 17:34:50 +0100 (BST) From: Sean Kelly, S.Kelly@newcastle.ac.uk In issue 31 it was mentioned that someone had been looking for some shell scripting help. Take a look at http://www.oase-shareware.org/shell/ as I have heard many people mention this site in response to shell scripting queries. Sean. ________________________________________________________________________ Re: Recognising the AMD K5-PR166 Date: Wed, 05 Aug 1998 11:22:43 -0400 From: Shane Kerr, kerr@wizard.net I'm wondering whether any other readers have used the AMD K5-PR166 with Linux. It's just that my system seems to think it's a K5-PR133 and states that it's running at 100MHz. Also, the BogoMips value indicates that the processor is running at 100MHz. Anyone any advice? I'm running a K5 P133+ on one of my systems - it actually is running at 100 MHz, that's why it's a "P133+". It's like the Cyrix processors, the name is basically a lie for marketing. I wouldn't put too much stock in the BogoMips value - it is bogus after all! My system clocks in at an equivalent to a 112 MHz system when I run the distributed.net client - the reason AMD claims a higher clock value is probably because some instructions run faster, and those may just not happen to be the instructions used in to BogoMips loop. As for your system thinking your K5-PR166 is a K5-PR133, it's probably because you have the motherboard jumpered wrong and/or the BIOS configured wrong. Are you sure that your motherboard & BIOS support the chip? Shani ________________________________________________________________________ Your atapi CDROM Date: Thu, 06 Aug 1998 16:50:04 -0500 From: Ian and Iris, brooke@mail.jump.net Your /dev directory is the culprit. Current installs use: /dev/hda /dev/hdb /dev/hdc /dev/hdd (/dev/hde) (/dev/hdf) for the first, second, (and third) ide interfaces, m,s,m,s(,m,s). Older installs had the /dev directory written a little differently. You would have the old standard, which was /dev/hdnx where n was interface, and x was a/b for master/slave. The only difference is in the names of the files. If you rename them, you will be in compliance. Alternatively, you could run makedev from a recent kernel, though I do not pretend to know all the details of that. ________________________________________________________________________ Tips: simulataneous kernel versions Date: Fri, 14 Aug 1998 17:35:14 +0200 From: Frodo Looijaard, frodol@dds.nl From: Renato Weiner, reweiner@yahoo.com Recently I was looking at the Gazette and I think I have a good suggestion of an article that will be very useful for the Linux community. I have had some technical difficulties of having two simultaneous versions of Kernels in my system. I mean a stable one and a developing one. I searched the net looking for information of how to co-exist both but it's completely fragmented. If somebody more experienced could put all this information together, it will certainly help a lot of people from kernels developers to end-users. This may come a bit late, but I am in the process of writing a (mini)HOWTO on this subject. It is not quite trivial, especially with modules lying around, or if you want several kernels with the same version number. Check out http://huizen.dds.nl/~frodol/howto.html for now. I am still in the process of getting it approved as an official mini-HOWTO. Frodo ________________________________________________________________________ Creating man pages made easy!!! Date: Sun, 16 Aug 1998 16:14:34 +1000 From: Steven K.H. Siew, ksiew@tig.com.au Below is something I wrote to help lay people create their own man pages easily ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---- If you ever wrote a program using gcc in linux, you may have come across this problem. You have just finished your wonderful little program which is of great use to you and you need a man page for it. Of course, you have absolutely no idea how to write a man page. Don't you need to know how to use troff? Or is it nroff to write a man page? Luckily there is a much easier way to write a man page. Here I shall describe an easy and quick (and dirty) way of writing a man page without learning troff or nroff. In order to do so, you must have the Perl version 5.004 (or higher) installed on your Linux box. There is a man page in the various Perl man pages on the creation of a man page using the Perl util "pod2man". It is called "perlpod.1". Below is a step by step guide to finding the man page and the util. ksiew> su password: #|/root>locate perlpod.1 /usr/man/man1/perlpod.1 #|/root>locate pod2man /usr/bin/pod2man Now, to write your own man pages, you must first read the perlpod.1 man page. You can do this by "man perlpod". However, to read the pod2man man page, you must first create it by using pod2man itself. #|/root>pod2man /usr/bin/pod2man > pod2man.1 #|/root>ls -al pod2man.1 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 13444 Aug 16 12:12 pod2man.1 #|/root>mv pod2man.1 /usr/man/man1/pod2man.1 Okay, now you can read the pod2man man page you have just created by using the command "man pod2man". After reading it, you can now create your own man pages. As an example, I shall describe a simple man page for one of my own C programs called "addline". I first create a textfile called "addline.pod" and then turn it into a manpage using 'pod2man --center="Addline program manpage" addline.pod > addline.1'. Finally, I move the addline man page into its proper place using "mv addline.1 /usr/man/man1/addline.1". There; creating your own man page is simple, isn't it? Below is a sample addline.pod file -------------------Cut here and do not include this line--------------------- =head1 NAME addline - addline numbers to textfiles =head1 SYNOPSIS B [ B ] [ B ] [ B ] [ B ] I =head1 DESCRIPTION B inserts line numbers into textfiles. It was written to automate the insertion of numbers into a data file of results from a neural network program. =head1 OPTIONS =over 8 =item -c Ignores comments lines. A comment line is any line that starts with a '#'. This makes it easier to insert comments in the textfile without messing up the line numbers. =item -v Displays the version number of the addline. =item -3 Uses 3 digits for the line numbers even if the number requires less than 3 digits. For example, 013 instead of 13. The default is to use as few digits for the line number as possible. =item --colon Separates the line number from the rest of the line with a ':' character. =back =head1 EXAMPLES addline textfile addline -c textfile addline -c --colon textfile =head1 NOTES Addline is written in C and compiled using gcc version 2.7.8. It uses the standard C library and is designed to be fast and efficient. =head1 RESTRICTIONS Never ever use addline on a binary file. =head1 BUGS There are no bugs in addline, there are just some undocumented features. =head1 AUTHORS Original prototype by Steven Siew, but so massively hacked over by his sister such that Steven Siew probably doesn't recognize it anymore. -------------------Cut here and do not include this line--------------------- ________________________________________________________________________ 2c Tip Re: Cross-platform Text Conversions Date: Sun, 16 Aug 1998 07:52:17 -0500 (CDT) From: Peter Samuelson, psamuels@sampo.creighton.edu In LG31 you published a 2c tip for a unix2dos replacement written in Tcl. The author asserts that "It turned out to be really easy to do this in Tcl." Even easier in Perl, I say. Symlink the following code to the same names (d2u, u2d, m2d, m2u, u2m, d2m) Matt used. Make sure this file has execute permission, of course. Also, if you just want Perl to edit the input files in place, change the "perl -wp" to something like "perl -wpi.orig".... Peter Samuelson #!/usr/bin/perl -wp # # Simpler unix2dos2mac utility for 2-cent tip, mainly because Tcl is ugly. # No comments that Perl is ugly too, please. # # Usage: a standard Unix filter: # input: filename(s) or stdin # output: stdout # Buglet: u2m leaves lone CR at the end of file if it didn't end in LF # (Fixing it would use more memory.) BEGIN { $_=$0 =~ s|.*/||; $pcmd='s/$/\r/' if ($0 eq 'u2d'); $pcmd='s/\r$//' if ($0 eq 'd2u'); $pcmd='s/$/\r/;chop' if ($0 eq 'u2m'); $pcmd='s/\r/\n/g' if ($0 eq 'm2u'); $pcmd='chomp' if ($0 eq 'd2m'); $pcmd='s/\r/\r\n/g' if ($0 eq 'm2d'); unless($pcmd) { print STDERR "This script must be invoked under one of the names:\n", " u2d, d2u, u2m, m2u, d2m, m2d\n"; exit 1; } } eval $pcmd; ________________________________________________________________________ Un-tar as you download Date: Wed, 19 Aug 1998 13:08:52 -0500 From: scgmille@indiana.edu It's time for fun with pipes. Recently, when downloading the latest kernel over a ridiculously slow connection, I wanted to see where the download was by checking which file in the tarball was being received. After pondering the pipes and GNU utils, this thought came to mind. You can decompress and un-tar your files as they download, sort of a "streaming decompressor", if you will. Form the command line: tail -f --bytes=1m file-being-downloaded.tar.gz | tar -zxv Tail will display downloaded portion of the file, then remain open displaying bytes as they come. Make sure the 1m (1 megabyte in this case) is LARGER than what you have already downloaded. The piped output of tail goes to tar and the rest is history. Similarly for bz2 files: tail -f --bytes=1m file.tar.bz2 | bunzip2 - | tar -xv Enjoy! ________________________________________________________________________ megaraid drivers Date: Thu, 20 Aug 1998 18:34:32 -0400 From: "Michael Burns2, rburns@shaw.wave.ca Hi, It's been a long fight to get AMI to produce this patch and the install documentation. Mike Burns ________________________________________________________________________ Re: Suggestion for Article, simultaneous versions of Kernels Date: Sat, 29 Aug 1998 21:35:27 -0400 (EDT) From: R Garth Wood rgwood@itactics.itactics.com I think Hans-Georg is talking about having a stable linux kernel version X and a dev version X (ie not 2.0.34 and 2.1.101 but 2.0.34 and 2.0.34). I assume when you issue: # make modules_install it tromples your old stable modules and gives you errors when you use your stable version X. This is not as trivial a problem as it first seems. However there is a solution. Have a look at the make-kpkg docs (debian distro); specifically the "flavour" option. This will solv your problem. It won't be easy, though. Have a look at: /etc/conf.modules to see what I mean. R Garth Wood ________________________________________________________________________ Published in Linux Gazette Issue 32, September 1998 ________________________________________________________________________ [ TABLE OF CONTENTS ] [ FRONT PAGE ] Back Next ________________________________________________________________________ This page maintained by the Editor of Linux Gazette, gazette@ssc.com Copyright © 1998 Specialized Systems Consultants, Inc. (?) The Answer Guy (!) By James T. Dennis, linux-questions-only@ssc.com Starshine Technical Services, http://www.starshine.org/ ________________________________________________________________________ Contents: (!)Greetings From Jim Dennis (?)phreaking (?)ISP Abandons User in Move to NT (?)Driving Terminals w/Java --or-- Java Telnet/Terminal (?)Finding BBS Software for Linux (?)The Five Flaws of the Unix System (?)XFree86 Installation in DOSLinux (?)resume on AS/400 --or-- Resume Spam (?)Linux Port of SoftWindows (?)Connecting Linux to Win '95 via Null Modem --or-- A Convert! (?)MS FrontPage for Linux/Apache (?)Virtual System Emulator for Linux and Why NOT to Use Them (?)FoxPlus for Linux ? (?)More on Distribution Preferences (?)IP Masquerading/Proxy? (?)PPP --or-- The "Difficulty" is in Disabling the Services (?)How to read DVI files? (?)Bad Super-block on Filesystem (?)Mulitiple processes sharing one serial port --or-- Multiplexing the Computer -- ISDN Modem Connection (?)Permission to Set up a Linux Server (?)Detaching and Re-attaching to Interactive Background Processes (?)[announce] Cdrdao 1.0 - Disc-at-once writing of audio CD-Rs (?)High Speed Serial (RS422) under Linux (?)ANOTHER MODEM PROB Plus, More on Grammar (?)/usr/bin/open command not found (?)Tuning X to work with your Monitor (?)The last Linux C library version 5, 5.4.46, is released. --or-- The End of libc5: A Mini-Interview with H.J Lu (?)Linux System Administration. --or-- Where to put 'insmod' and 'modprobe' Commands for Start-up (?)The BIOS Clock, Y2K, Linux and Everything (?)Online Status Detector --or-- Failover and High Availability for Web Servers : Conditional Execution Based on Host Availability (?)SysAdmin: User Administration: Disabling Accounts (?)Thank you --or-- Articles on LILO Saves Life? (?)Netware NDS Client --or-- NDS (Netware Directory Services) for Linux: Clients and Servers (?)More 'Win '95 Hesitates After Box Has Run Linux?' (?)Bad Clusters on Hard Drive --or-- Another Non-Linux Question! (?)Help with C/C++ Environment Program --or-- Integrated Programming Environments for Linux (?)Web Server Clustering Project (?)wu-ftpd guest account on a Linux Box --or-- WU-FTP guestgroup problems ______________________________ (!)Greetings From Jim Dennis Linux as a Home Users System We're all getting used to the idea that Linux can attract corporate users, for deployment as web, ftp, file (SMB and NFS), print and even database servers; and we're getting used to seeing it used for routers, mail, and DNS. We're even getting used to the idea that corporate user put Linux on their desktops (in places where they might have spent a small fortune on a workstation). But, what about the home/personal user? Most of us consider this to be an impossible dream. Even those few enthusiasts in the Linux community who dare to hope for it --- have been saying that it will take years to gain any percentage of that market. However, I'm starting to wonder about that. I've seen a number of trade rag articles naysaying Linux on the desktop. Ironically, when a reporter or columnist explains why Linux isn't suitable for the desktop --- it actually raises the possibility that it is suitable for that role. A denial or refutation tells us that the question has come up! What prevents the average IT manager from deploying Linux on their desktop today? In most cases it's fear. The users are used to MS Word, MS Excel, and MS PowerPoint. Any user who uses any of these is forcing all of the rest to do so as well (since these applications all use proprietary, non-portable, file formats). Everyone who uses Office has to use a PC or a Mac (and many of them switched away from Macs due to lags in upgrades and subtle file compatibility problems between the Mac and PC versions of these applications). Why do Mac users run VirtualPC --- to deal with the occasional .DOC, .XLS, or .PPT file that they get --- or some other proprietary file format (like some of those irritating CD-ROM encyclopedia) which is only accessible through one application. However, these proprietary formats are not secret codes. Linux and other Open Source (tm) hackers will turn their attention to them and crack their formats wide open. This will allow us to have filters and converters. 'catdoc', LAOLA, and MSWordView are already showing some progress on this area (for one of these formats). Microsoft will undoubtedly counter by releasing a new version of their suite which will carefully break the latest third-party viewers and utilities (free or otherwise). They may even apply the most even perversion of intellectual property law yet devised: the software patent. However. I think that the public, after a decade of following along with this game, is finally starting to wise up. The next release that egregiously breaks file format compatibility may be the end of that ploy (for awhile at least). But what about the home user. How do home users choose their software? What is important to them? Most of them don't choose their software --- they use what came on the system and only add things later. When they go out to buy additional software, home users are the most price conscious of all buyers. Commercial, government, and other institutional buyers can make a business case to justify their purchases. Home users just look in their wallet. The other common influences on the novice home user include the retail store clerks and their kids. That's one reason why the school and University markets were always so crucial to Apple's success. I noticed that the Win '98 upgrade was going for $89. I couldn't find a "non-upgrade" box anywhere in that store (CompUSA). People are starting to hear that for half that price they can get this other OS that includes enough games and applications to fill a 2Gb hard drive. I think MS is actually starting to price itself out of the market. (It seems that my MS-DOS 5.0 upgrade was only about $35 or $40). If MS Office weren't bundled with so many new systems, there probably would be about a tenth the legal copies in home use. With a little more work on LyX and KLyX and a few of its bretheren --- and a bit more polishing on the installation/configuration scripts for the various distributions I think we'll see a much more rapid growth in the home market than anyone currently believes. I think we may be at 15 to 20 per cent of the home market by sometime in the year 2000. So, what home applications do we really need to make that happen. I like the "Linux Software Wishlist" (http://www.linuxresources.com/wish/) ... because it gives all of us a place to vote on what we would buy. One class of packages that remember used to be very popular was the "greeting card" and "banner/sign" packages: PrintShop, PrintMaster, and Bannermania. Those used to have the cheesiest clipart/graphics and a fairly limited range of layouts. Limited enough to make any TeXnician scream with frustration. However, they were incredibly popular precisely because of those constraints. Having a few dozen to a couple hundred choices to pick from is far less intimidating to home users than all the power and flexibility you get with TeX, LaTeX, and the GIMP. I would dearly love to see a set of pre-designed greeting cards, certificates ("John Doe has Successfully Completed the Yoyodyne Tiddly Winks Seminar" --- with the lacy border --- you know the kind!), etc. all done in TeX or PS or whatever. This and a front end chooser and forms dialog to fill in the text would be a really killer home app. (Bannermania was geared to creating large banners, either on fanfold paper or as multiple sheets to be cut and pasted together on to a backing board (piece of cardboard). I think that a new Linux implementation of this sort of app built over the existing software (TeX, GhostScript, etc) would end up being vastly better than anything that was possible under the old PrintShop --- and still be as simple. I'm sure most of us have that one old DOS, Windows, Mac, or other application or game that we'd like to see re-done for Linux. So, dig out the publisher's address or phone number (assuming they still exist) and let them know what you want. Then post your request to the wishlist. Even these trivial bits of action can make Linux the choice of home users. I say this because I think it's about time that they had a choice. _________________________________________________________ (?) phreaking From an00997 on 30 Jul 1998 Hi,I'm Dodo.I'm just finishing a course of computer operations and I would like to know about phreak,hacking... Can you tell me about it ??? Tips or news ??? Thanks... (!) My first thought is that this is some sort of troll (message intended to generate flames --- often forged to appear from an unsuspecting party so as to harass the apparent sender). That doesn't make sense in this case since getting one flame from "The Answer Guy" is hardly worth the trouble. There for I have to assume that you have chosen an unusually apt handle for yourself. So, you're finishing a course in computer operations. That's nice and productive. You should also considering taking a course in basic composition and grammar. (Hints: commas and periods are normally followed by spaces; question marks normally are used in sequences of one (the "triple question mark" is for emphasis); and you finish courses that are "in" or "on" topics, not "of" them). Normally I don't flame people on their spelling grammar, or punctuation. However, there doesn't seem to be much else to say to you. You want to know about phreaking and "hacking." The first think to know about phreaking (the study of practical phone fraud techniques) is that use of most of the techniques used by phreaks is illegal in just about any jurisdiction. In many places you can a) go to jail and b) insure that you can never work in the computer industry again by getting convicted of crimes involving telephone and computer fraud. The term "hacking" as applied to techniques for bypassing system security and gaining unauthorized access (or privileges on) them is highly controversial. It is accepted practice among computer enthusiasts to use the term "cracking" to discuss those activities and "hacking" to discuss the lawful and legitimate pursuit of their hobby. In this latter sense we call Linus, Alan Cox, and others "Kernel hackers." The media prefers to use the term "hacker" in the former sense. This is one of many reasons that "hackers" and "crackers" alike tend to be disgusted by the media. (As a regular contributor to LG I'm considered by some to be in "the media" and thus worthy of suspicion and disgust. Others have other opinions --- some of those are even less complimentary). I personally find the whole "phreak mystique" to be disgusting. There is a tendency to romanticize phreaks and crackers ---- to create a mythology of the "uberhacker" (a Nietsche-an reference that very few of them understand). That whole subculture is permeated with a smug "superiority" that tries to say: "we know something you don't." Of course, to them I'm a nobody. I've never cracked into anyone's system. I've never written any "warez" or "sploits" and I don't even know all the buzz words and jargon to participate in their conversations. I'm a "lam3r" that's not even good enough to be a "wannabe." In other words, I'm not an "3l33t d000d." It also tends to be quite juvenile. They seem to have an inordinate fondness for bad grammar and intentionally crazy spelling. I suppose it's part of the general affectation of 'tude --- the rebellious aversion to authority and convention, even the conventions of language itself. Trite! Now this is not to say that you have no business learning about phreaking and cracking. There's nothing wrong with learning about these things, nor even anything inherently wrong with experimentation and research. However, there is a major problem if you conduct your "research" on "subjects" without their informed consent. As a sysadmin's (and sometimes security) consultant I study these things as much as my time allows. Most of my information comes from mailing lists like bugtraq, and from web sites like rootshell and the l0pht. I'll let you find those on your own. You can also subscribe to 2600 and Phrack magazines (printed) to learn more. Phrack is also available online. All of the real "cracker" socializing seems to be done via IRC (Internet Relay Chat). This has tended to give the whole IRC system a bit of a bad rap. The popularity of IRC for this stems from at least two factors: it is immediate and interactive (instant gratification is very important in these circles), and it allows for direct client-to-client communications (DCC) which makes it easy for participants to exchange "warez" and other files. From what I gather the old-fashioned BBS is also still pretty popular in that crowd. These seem to be "by invitation only" --- so you'll have to curry favor and do some horse trading to get any phone numbers on any of them. Naturally it is important for these crackers and phreakers to maintain their elite status by locking out the lamers and wannabes. So anything published about them is wrong, or will be right after they read it. I suspect that this message by itself will probably get me flamed and possibly attract some cracks on my systems (d00dz, don't bother; it's not sporting --- I don't do anything special to protect my servers, honest! My web and ftp servers are just virtual hosts on some poor ISP, no challenge at all). Meanwhile my best advice to you, Dodo, is to cut your moniker in half and just "do" something constructive. If you want to make a serious study of "cracking" and "phreaking" than the Linux Gazette Answer Guy is a pretty lame place to start. In short: get a life! _________________________________________________________ (?) ISP Abandons User in Move to NT From Tsyplakov Maxim V. on 28 Jul 1998 Regard! Help to solve a problem: Beside my ISP installed by Windows NT. Can will Not be connected with him through dial-up from Linux. Scenario waits login: and password:, but from there does not come no lines. Links Linux-Linux, Linux-Free BSD, worked without any problems. Who known what is wrong? CCL: Invalid command (c). (!) It sounds like you should try talking to your ISP. If they won't co-operate or help, switch to another one. If there aren't any others in your area, find some friends and form your own -- either a co-op or a commercial. Welcome to the free market! They are probably using some proprietary MS RAS (remote access service) or they've done something weird with their terminal servers or PPP software --- though the fact that it connect and prompts for a login and password doesn't sound like a MS NT RAS or PPTP sort of symptom --- those are text and MS prefers to use proprietary binary in their protocols and document formats. In any event I don't have nearly enough information to help. _________________________________________________________ (?) Java Telnet/Terminal: From Spencer T. Kittelson on 28 Jul 1998 They're out there but not all there. We have some old code that runs on terminals that we would like to drive with a Java based server. We are looking for the reverse equivalent of a terminal emulator, i.e. a Java toolkit that multiplexes serial/network character streams and provides support for character based devices. In particular we are looking for the Java equiv. of the C curses library. Any ideas if and where such a thing exists? Spencer (!) The canonical resource for finding Java applets and applications on the web is at "developer.com" (formerly known as Gamelan). Here's URL that will provide you with a list of some telnet and terminal emulators writting in Java http://www-c.developer.com/directories/find.cgi?search=Java+Telnet& num=50&sp=sp (Be sure to cut and paste that without the linebreak, and the extraneous backslash that I use to indicate the line continuation). There are a number of these listed there and I haven't tried any of them (well, I tried WebTerm awhile back and I did look at the online demo of JXterm, and Crosstie). I've played with SCO's Tarantella --- which seems to be more of an X Windows in a Java frame --- and also provides support to access NT desktops through a Java frame. Alas, that seems to be a proprietary technology and it seems to require a SCO OpenServer to host part of it. (I suspect that means that it doesn't qualify as a "Pure Java" solution -- though the client side of it might be "pure Java"). WebTerm seems to be available for non-commercial use --- but doesn't define the term (do they mean you can't use it in your business environment or just that you can't sell copies of it). JXTerm and Crosstie seem to be commercial products. One limitation of most of the Java implementations in existing web browsers is that the Java applets can normally only open connections to the same address from which they were fetched. This means that your host would have to run a web server with some HTML pages that contained the required applet markup. You could also distribute these to your systems along with an installation of the JRE (Java Runtime Environment) and a copy of 'appletviewer' --- that would allow you to run these without the common browser restrictions. Another problem with these is that they are not trivial to install and run via the 'appletviewer' WebTerm 2.0 gave me grief about "missing resources" while the same copy of appletviewer was perfectly content to run the various other demos that I had laying around. I'm sure that it's some fussing with the CLASSPATH variable or some other thing that I don't have configured to it's liking. Frankly I haven't worried about it much. I presume that your clients are PC's or NC's rather than Linux boxes. Otherwise I presume you'd just configure your browswers with 'telnet' configured as a helper app and just embed URL's of the form: Telnet to our Application Server ... and be done with it. Naturally you can do that on your Windows boxes as well --- just install some sort of telnet utility and configure the browsers to use it. I personally like C-Kermit for telnet -- so you might consider using K'95 (the Win32 Kermit from Columbia University). That would give you a consistent scripting, telnet and file transfer environment across your systems. That approach (using helper apps) is likely to be much faster, more robust and probably and cheaper than trying to do this with Java applets. The usual telnet utilities have had years to mature and are written to the clients native API's --- so there's no fussing about that. _________________________________________________________ (?) Finding BBS Software for Linux From Li-cheng Hsu in the comp.os.linux.development.apps newsgroup on 29 Jul 1998 Greetings, I used to be a sysop of FidoNet using Maximus as my BBS system in DESQview environment. Now I have switched from DOS/Windows to Linux as my major working platform. The question is, is there any BBS system that is recommended to run in Unix ? It should be able to handle both dial-up & TCP/IP, of course. :) (!) There's a tree of directories at the master Linux archive: http://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/system/bbs There are several packages there --- including a number of utilities for ifmail (the Internet to FIDO gateway). Most of these are free or shareware. There are also Linux ports of MajorBBS and MMB Teammate (a couple of major commercial BBS packages --- which are pretty expensive). I haven't used any of them so I can't offer specific suggestions. However, I've crossposted the two newsgroups that are most likely to have interested and informed participants (alt.bbs.unixbbs and comp.bbs.misc). There are about 50 newsgroups devoted to BBS' (including various specific BBS packages like TBBS, MajorBBS, Citadel, etc). (I've been a sysop on two large corporate systems, for Symantec and for McAfee --- so, I used to subscribe to some of these. However I've never run a small hobbyist system so I just haven't kept up in the field). Thanks in advance. :) Linux can handle dial-up as well as console login and give a remote user normal shell. But you probably want to restrict access for BBS users. You can set them up with simple shell script (or perl, or tcl) which would emulate maximus as close as you wish, but I think that better approach is to use text-based web-browser lynx for their shell. These are likely to be severe security problems unless you are a phenomenally good (and careful) programmer. I'd did play with a configuration that ran lynx in a chroot jail. That was to prototype a "dial in kiosk" One sticking point for my application was that I wanted a replacement 'getty' that could auto-detect ANSI PC emulation (which many BBS' can do with some sort of magic escape code) and bypass the Unix login command --- I think I replaced /bin/login in the jail with an SUID "nobody" copy of lynx, and put a /etc/issue that just said: "Hit any key to ...." Thus you set up normal Web site instead of BBS, solving problem with TCP/IP instantly, and let dial-in users to view it in lynx. Lynx includes provisions to download/upload files using Z-Modem and Xmodem (by calling external programs sz and rz) and allows to restrict users almost as much as you wish. However, those various restrictions may not be foolproof. There have been exploits that bypassed lynx restrictions before. So, if security is an issue, you definetely want to lock this in a jail with no shell and take some other precautions. You are right that this is an interesting way to provide "kiosk" style dial-up using stock HTML/web pages and off the 'net freeware. That was the whole point of my prototype (which took all of about three hours one afternoon). _________________________________________________________ (?) The Five Flaws of the Unix System From Ashley G. on 29 Jul 1998 JIM, HI I WAS WONDERING IF YOU CAN SEND ME SOME INFO.ALL I NEED IS THE NAMES OF THE 5 FLAWS IN THE UNIX SYSTEM,JUST THE NAMES. IF YOU CAN SEND THEM TO ME I WOULD GREATLY APPRECIATE IT> (!) I think some flames are in order here: 1. This is not the "We do your homework for you" service. 2. I volunteer many hours per month answering questions about Linux. There are others out there who can answer your questions about other forms of Unix. I frequently answer questions about how to interoperate between Linux and other OS' including many forms of Unix. Most of what I say about Linux applies to most other forms of Unix. However the distinction is important. 3. You need to learn where your [Caps Lock] key is and keep it turned off if you plan to get any co-operation or respect from anybody on the 'net (in Usenet netnews or on any technical mailing lists). 4. There is no such thing as "the Unix System" there are many different versions of Unix --- and there have been for almost thirty years. 5. If someone told you that there were "five" specific "flaws" in Unix they were suffering from horrible misconceptions. 6. As likely it may be the case that you've critically misundertood someone. Now to answer your question: There is no list of generally held "flaws" in Unix or Linux that I know of. There are a number of problems with even postulating such a list. First there isn't any one Unix system. C-Kermit claims to support about 700 versions and implementations of Unix (and Unix-like operating systems). There is considerable ongoing academic debate about what precisely is Unix. I won't bother trying to provide my own definition --- it would just get me flame mail and perpetuate the debate. There are many people who will even deny that there's any doubt. They will say: Unix is any system that has been "branded" by The Open Group as conformant to the X/Open portability guidelines (XPG4 or XPG3). Others will pipe in and say that any thing that meets Spec1170 is Unix, while others will claim that POSIX is the one true standard. At that point we'll go through the whole debate as to whether Unix is limited to just those systems which are dubbed to be "Unix" by this or that standards body, or whether it applies to Unix like systems --- such as Linux. Indeed we could argue for days about what precisely is Linux. In the strict sense it is considered to be a set of kernel sources and the ancillary device drivers, and makefiles. In common usage Linux refers to any of a number of collections of software that run under a compilation of those (kernel) sources. Others, notably Richard Stallman, argue that the term Linux should be applied only to the kernel sources and that a different term should be applied to larger aggregations of software built around it. His argument is valid -- since most Linux distibutions are about 5% to 10% Linux kernel sources, and drivers and about 25% GNU software. Since RMS is the principle of the Free Software Foundation (the organization that owns the copyright over the GNU sources) he has a reasonable interest in seeing that people know where some of the major components of their Linux based GNU systems come from. Eventually the FSF will have a full operating system of it's own: the HURD. The GNU project was started to build such a system and the fact that they released a large number of vital components for public use is what made Linux possible. At the same time there are other bodies that have produced major software subsystems that are conventionally included in a Linux distribution. The computer science research group (CSRG) at University of California, Berkeley released a large number of packages and a large body of source code for public use (BSD). Many of the common utilities under Linux (most of the NetKit, I think) are from these sources. The X Window system comes from MIT's Athena project and the free implementation of that which we use under Linux is principally from the XFree86 Project. XFree86 is the X Window system that's used by a number of Unix implementations including FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD. So, if we were to try to fairly represent these parties in our nomenclature we'd have to refer to our systems as: Linux/GNU/BSD/XFree86/"MIT X Window System" Systems ... which is why a respectfully decline to comply with rms' desire for me to use the phrase Linux/GNU when I mean "Linux" (in the common broader sense). The other reason I choose not do to this most of the time is that I find it more difficult to read in that form. This is undoubtedly a horrible character flaw on my part but I find that I sometimes subvocalize (mentally "sound out") passages of technical text in my efforts to understand and proofread it. So, if rms likes he can simply say that my refusal to refer to this is symptom of my stupidity. I'll cop to that. So, I suppose we could say that the "first flaw" of Unix is that no one seems to know what Unix is. While it is tempting to try to follow this line of logic and devise four more for you --- I think it will be much quicker and more amusing for you to read The Unix-Haters Handbook by Simson Garfinkel, et al (IDG Books, (c) 1996). Conveniently this book is in four "Parts": Part 1: User Friendly? Part 2: Programmer's System? Part 3: Sysadmin's Nightmare Part 4: Et Cetera ... and I think that every serious student of Unix and Linux should read this book. For one thing it requires an advanced understanding of Unix to understand the complaints --- and a really advanced knowledge to see how many of these complaints don't apply to many "modern" Unix variants (Linux in particular). For the rest of it I found it amusing, frustrating and significant that the many contributors to Unix_Haters did not list modern available alternatives that exhibited the features they preferred in an OS and environment (or at least that lack the features that they hate). There were references to the ancient "Lisp Machines" but there was no clear endorsement nor were there any suggestions about how things "should be." So, as the title suggests this is a curmudgeonly book without constructive merit. However, the Unix and Linux enthusiast should be thoroughly familiar with the material for the same reason that a self-respecting agnostic should be thoroughly familiar with the major religious works of whatever society surrounds him or her. _________________________________________________________ (?) XFree86 Installation in DOSLinux From STEVEN SCHILLY on 20 Aug 1998 Hey sorry about 'council' sometimes my mind is wondering about in many green fields at once! Anyway I figured that out before I got your mail it was in the init and inittab (although I have no idea what was wrong!) I copied an init file from a working version of micro linux to mine and a new kernel of DOSLinux x.xx? (will have to look). I'd like to run X86Free; where is the best place or way to download this entire package. What will make installing it as easy as possible? I like to hack at the system level but don't have the time right now .. so I'd like the easy way out....Any sug.? ______________________________ (?) XFree86 Installation in DOSLinux From Rick, Aug 1998 I have doslinux on my PC b/c i wanted to keep Win95. I want to load Xwindows but i cannot figure out how to do it on DOSlinux... Could you please point me in the right direction like what files i need and how to install and run. thanks ... ______________________________ (!) Jim answers both...[His two messages weren't precise copies, but you, our web readers, only need to read the cut-and-pasted portions once. -- Heather] I think the easiest way would be to install the RPM utilities using the unRPM-Install package that's Available on the DOSLinux "Home Page." Then I'd fetch the XFree86 packages from a Red Hat mirror and just use the 'rpm -i' command. You could also consider one of the other "tiny" Linux distibutions like "Xdenu" or "Dragon" Here's a copy of another message that covers almost the same question: [copy omitted] The easy way out of manually installing XFree86 is to pick a distribution that includes it. I gather that you're running DOSLinux --- which is similar to "MiniLinux" in that you can install a functional Linux subsystem into an MS-DOS subdirectory in about 20Mb of disk space (maybe 30 or 40 these days). Oddly enough I just got another question on the same topic. I'll paste copies of my suggestions: There were a couple of predecessors to DOSLinux, including Mini-Linux and Xdenu. Xdenu is still available at sunsite: http://sunsite.anu.edu.au/archives/linux/distributions/xdenu/umsdos ... and it included the X windows subsystem. That apparently hasn't been updated in about 3 years. Just a couple of directories over from that you'll find tinyX at: http://sunsite.anu.edu.au/archives/linux/distributions/tinyX ... which is a set of implementations that each fit on a single floppy. (You pick the file that matches your video card type. Most of these are from '93 or '95). MiniLinux itself is still there: it fits on about four diskettes and includes X. It also dates back to '95. However, it's programs should probably still run on any more recent system (you might need a kernel with support for the old COFF/a.out format --- since I don't think MiniLinux was updated to ELF). Also on sunsite we find a page that links us to "Monkey-Linux" which does include X and was updated at least as recently as May of '97. The author notes: "English documentations is still not fine..." So you might feel more comfortable with this if Czechloslovakian is your native language. The web page is at: http://www.spsselib.hiedu.cz/monkey He does note that Monkey is compiled for ELF format. __________________________ (?) XFree86 Installation in DOSLinux From Rick on 20 Aug 1998 thanks for the help... i think i have learned from doslinux so i can go ahead and install redhat... i will still use this information to try to get dos linux working on my laptop. thank you. _________________________________________________ (?) Resume Spam From Prblnd on 24 Aug 1998 AnswerGuy I'm just a LittleGuy, out-of-work..Looking for AS/400 platform and somebody said I should tell you! (!) Who? Your assertion that "somebody said" you should tell me sounds very suspicious. If it is true that "somebody" said you should tell me about your plight --- that person is either stupid or cruel. I'm not a hiring manager. I'm not a recruiter. I have nothing whatsoever to do with AS/400's (no slight intended, they sound like nice enough systems). (?) Question: Can you assist me to find a new start? Answer: (!) I probably could. However, the fact that you blindly sent this to me without any evident research into who I am and what I do suggests that time spent on assisting you would be wasted. However, here's the assistance I will offer: Research: Don't waste your time or anyone else's by blindly spamming addresses out of the blue. Do your homework. Send messages to those who are looking for them and expecting them. Make it clear in your message how you selected them and why you hold an expectation that they have requested your message. Writing: You message's semantics are horrible. The spelling and punctuation are reasonable. However, the phrase "looking for AS/400 platform" doesn't make sense. I presume you are looking for work that is "related to the AS/400" or that "requires expertise with AS/400's." I understand the difficulties faced by people for whom English is not native; however, you want to find someone who is literate and fluent in English to help you edit your messages to potential employers. Tone: Desperation is repugnant to most well-balanced people. Are you really looking for a "new start?" I would suggest that you focus on just getting a new job. You don't want to throw suggestions about "other" problems into the faces of potential employers. The phrase "a new start" is idiomatic to Americans and suggests such unsavory failures as incarceration/ institutionalization, divorce, and/or drug treatment. These are the sorts of total failures that require someone to look for a "new start." Merely getting laid off or even fired is merely enough to look for a "new job." Also it is generally useless to appeal to a potential employer's sympathies. If I were a hiring manager I don't care if you are a "LittleGuy" or a major political, philosophical or intellectual figure. Hiring managers care if you can do the job they need for the price they are willing to pay. Given multiple applicants that meet their pre-requisites they are generally swayed by much more subjective criteria (such as whether you are related to them, whether you are previously aquainted, and whether they "like" you, etc). So, you want to maintain a "positively neutral" (and "upbeat") tone in your dealings with potential employers. With that in mind let's re-write your message to me: ------------------------ Begin Rewrite --------------------------- Dear Mr. Dennis, Sam Ockman told me that you have lots of contacts throughout the industry. When I mentioned to him that I'm looking for a new position (systems administration, preferably on AS/400) he suggested that I drop you a note. I've attached my resume. Please feel free to share it with any of your associates that might be interested. I'm in Sri Lanka, North Dakota --- but I'm happy to relocate. Also, any suggestions you have would be deeply appreciated. I've looked through some of the sites that are listed in Yahoo!'s "Employment" sections. There are so many of those that I'm not sure where to start. Thanks. ------------------------ End Rewrite --------------------------- Note: we use a real name here. We don't use an alias. You could have searched for "answerguy" on Yahoo! gives 242 references and apparently 222 of them point to me. (I'm not the one on CAGTV --- http://www.answerguy.com, and I'm not the one from Square One Tech (http://www.squareonetech.com) Nor am I listed on Global Online Electronic Services (http://www.goes.com)). My full name is published in every article. We start of by saying precisely who sent you to me, and why. If you were referred through some traffic on a newsgroup or mailing list --- say so! Next we state our purpose. Nothing fancy --- just ask as directly and simply as possible. If you expected that I would be hiring --- tell me why you thought so. In that case you'd also want to say way you think that you're a suitable candidate for the specific positions you think I might have open. For example: ... some participants on the comp.unix.security newsgroup suggested that you might have an opening for a new webmaster. I've been working in HTML for three years, and I'm experienced with the installation and configuration of a number of popular CGI packages (including several from Matt's script archive). I'm particularly interested in working for your consulting firm because I want to learn more about Unix and Internet security and I've heard that you're widely respected in this field. ... (note: this is all hypothetical --- Starshine Technical Services does do some security consulting --- but is not "widely" regarded in the field, yet). Lastly, when we ask for more general help we also give some idea of what we're already doing. We do this for two reasons --- first is allows are respondent to avoid redundant suggestions. More importantly, it shows that we are motivated and that we've done some homework. The point is that everything you say is relevant to the matter at hand. You cannot do that unless you do some research. Incidentally, people posing technical questions should take note of this advice. It applies as much for an "application for technical support" as it does for any other. At this point I get enough mail for the "Answer Guy" that I don't wonder where people heard of me (when they're talking about Linux). However, it would be nice if I knew a bit more about where some of these questions came from. If someone at a users group meeting says: "You should send mail to that guy from the Linux Gazette" --- I'd like to hear about which UG it was. (?) Question: WILL you assist me in finding the new career job? Answer... (!) No. (?) okay, two questions, only one right answer... thanks for your time.... resume attached............................ (!) ... (apparently in .DOC format) and deleted without a glance. ____________________________ (?) More on Resume Spam From Prblnd on 24 Aug 1998 you made me laugh thru your entire response .. thank you - Paul (!) Glad I could help! ____________________________________________________ (?) Linux Port of SoftWindows From The Answer Guy to Insignia Solutions on 25 Aug 1998 Dear Sir or Madam, You recently sent me a business reply card offering me SoftWindows '95 for any of three relatively popular RISC-based Unix platforms. This offer is useless to me since I use Linux on my PC's. As a long time user of Linux. I, my employees, and my customers occasionally need access to files in some proprietary document format (usually generated by Windows Office) and we are willing to pay a reasonable sum (I could probably buy 20 copies tomorrow). I am a member of a local users group (Silicon Valley LUG) with about 400 regular members. I can take a poll at our next meeting and give you the results if you'd like. Most of us are not choosing Linux because it's "free" (in the financial sense). The time and energy most of us have spent is far more valuable than a couple hundred bucks here or there. Also most of us have purchased new computers and recieved "free" copies of Win '95 or Win '98 with them. We've then gone out and purchased Red Hat (http://www.redhat.com) Linux ($50) to replace those. The need (among Linux users) to run 32-bit Windows applications without rebooting is perhaps a bit difficult for most Windows users to understand. We could, after all, simply reboot. MS Windows users are used to rebooting a couple times a day. However, for most Unix and Linux users this is the problem. We depend upon a much higher degree of stability. Most of my systems stay up for months at a time. These workstations are not "busy" --- they are mostly just "maintaining state" -- my editors, email programs, web browsers and newsreaders are all in different states. When I get blocked on one task (perhaps because I need to look something up) or interrupted (perhaps to go to lunch, as I did while writing this message) --- my cursors all stay where I put them. I don't have to remember each of these tasks that are "in process" and I don't have to resort to reams of "Post-It" notes (though I put the occasional XPost-It on my display). I can simply move to another window, another virtual desktop, another virtual console, even another user account concurrently running a whole different session of X. I can leave such processes running throughout my network running with confidence that nothing sort of a power outage or a major sysadmin error will disrupt my work. To us the notion of rebooting to get into MS Windows (usually just to read some .XLS, or PowerPoint e-mail attachment) is analogous to sweeping all of the paper work off of your desk, emptying all of the drawers, and turning the desk upside down. For me to just go though an find all my running processes and write down which files were open in which applications would probably take at least a fifteen. Later, to restart all of them and get back to "my place" (reposition my windows, cursors, etc) would take at least a half hour. That's 10% of a workday lost to just rebooting a system! Since I bill $100 per hour --- it doesn't take much of that to convince me to get a package like WABI, VirtualPC (if Connectix responds to my inquiries), or (if you make it available) SoftWindows for Linux. There were an estimated 5 to 10 million Linux users by the beginning of this year. IDC estimates that 2.2 million revenue generating workstation installations of Linux were installed during 1997. That beats their estimates of all non-PC based Unix' combined and outstrips the reported NT workstation installations almost two to one. The number one problem faced by most business Linux users is lack of access to 32-bit Windows applications (most of it for document sharing). StarOffice and Applixware are not yet mature enough and certainly don't have sufficiently robust document filters to be a solution for most of us. Corel's WordPerfect for Linux is "on its way" but it probably won't have quite the quality of document filters and translators that we require for reasonable interoperation with some companies. WABI will probably never run Win '95 or Win '98 apps. WINE is still not ready for broad use (only the most technically adroit Linux enthusiasts can use it --- and it has virtually no Win32S suppport). So, there is clearly a niche for your market. That niche is almost certainly bigger than the combined niches for HP-UX, Solaris/SPARC, and AIX. PS: I keep hearing this persistent rumor that Insignia can't release a version of SoftWindows for any PC based OS, allegedly due to some clandestine cross-licensing arrangement with Microsoft. That would certainly explain why you've been ignoring the larger PC/Unix markets. If this rumor ever makes its way to the DoJ it should make for some interesting reading. I also notice that MS has recently been "legitimizing" the non-Intel Unix platforms and has been making announcements to the affect that they are releasing native ports of MS Office, and Internet Explorer for a select few of these platforms (all non-Intel, naturally). I wonder what affect that will have on your market. ____________________________ (?) Re:Linux Port of SoftWindows From Insignia Solutions Unix Customer Service on 25 Aug 1998 Jim- Thanks for your interest in SoftWindows for Linux and in Insignia Solutions. Right now, we do not have a product for Linux or any Intel-based Unix. Unfortunately this is not a simple port of an existing SoftWindows for Unix on RISC product - a completely different design is required as the Intel cpu does not help as much as you might expect. Consequently, a large investment on our part would be required to produce this product. We are prepared to do this, but only given enough customer demand. To assess this demand we will be producing a web based survey, to determine what would constitute acceptable pricing, product functionality (in particular whether DOS/Windows would have to be included) and performance. Please check www.insignia.com periodically for further information. Thank You, Christopher Wood Insignia Customer Service 800-848-7677 option 5 ____________________Reply Separator____________________ [attached copy of original message omitted] ____________________________ [As of press time, they are not plugging a "market expansion survey" or anything similar directly on their home page. However, they are offering a "free UNIX Solutions kit" if you fill out the form at: http://www.insignia.com/banner/unixkit.html ...where they don't mention Linux, but will let you fill in an Other space for your platform. It doesn't mention price. If you have a serious interest in buying Softwindows should it come to pass, let them know, so they can't claim "there's no demand". But it should be legitimate demand... if you wouldn't be willing to talk to a sales rep about it, I'd say don't bother hitting the above link. -- Heather] ____________________________________________________ Chris Gushue's question about nullmodems was posted in July (Issue 30). ____________________________ (?) A Convert! From Chris Gushue on 29 Jul 1998 About a week after asking for help about connecting Linux and Windows 95 via null modem, I totally switched over to Linux (well, with a small Windows partition for the occasional game). I got fed up after numerous crashes while just installing it, plus my brand new Gravis GamePad Pro didn't work in 98 at the time. I can make my Linux system do pretty much anything I want, either in text mode or in X. Plus, I don't have to reboot at least once a day. To summarize, it's much better to run Linux than Windows (well, everyone knows that, of course!). Instead I think I'll work on setting up a LAN with my Linux system (on a cable modem) with two Windows 95 systems (my roommates-to-be systems). Shouldn't be too hard - except for maybe the Windows configuration (I expect no less than 3 reboots) :) Great column - keep up the great work! (!) Glad I could help. ____________________________________________________ (?) MS FrontPage for Linux/Apache: From Terry Singleton on 18 Aug 1998 Hi there, Being a newbie LINUX user I searched YAHOO and found your site. It is a relief to actually find a site which has some newbie material..thanks. I am hoping you can shed some light on this subject. I recently put up a LINUX server, I am hoping to use it for email and http purposes. However our users are not knowledgeable enough to be able to ftp html files into their directories and therefore we would like to use Front Page. I have downloaded and installed APACHE 1.3.1 and noticed that MS does have FP extensions that are supposed to run on LINUX and APACHE. (!) I think you are underestimating your users. You might want to find the WS_FTP and/or the "CuteFTP" package. These shareware Windows packages are pretty easy for Windows users --- and work pretty much like the old file manager. (As for e-mail, I suppose some/many of them will be use Netscape Communicator's POP client. You can also offer them Eudora and Pegasus Mail. These will work with any POP server --- including whichever one was almost certainly already installed with your distribution). The easiest way to allow your Windows users access to their files on your web server is to install and use Samba. Samba implements the SMB protocol --- which is the native file sharing system that's implemented in Windows for Workgroups, Windows '95, Windows '98, Windows NT, and OS/2 (LAN Manager and LAN Server). files. With Samba you'd give each user access to their home directory (possibly creating symlinks from their home directories to any shared directories). You users would simply drag and drop files using the same file manager and "Explorer" interfaces that they'd use with any other WfW or NT fileserver. You can also create group shares (on your Linux or other Unix system) which will automatically show up to the appropriate users in their browse lists. The last time one of my associates looked into using Microsoft's FrontPage server extensions the idea was abandoned without even attempting the installation. There were showstopper limitations and design features that obviated any need to look further at it. Her conclusion was also supported by a number of messages that I've read on the Bugtraq and NTSecurity mailing lists. So I recommend that you reconsider your options and avoid FrontPage if you have any choice in the matter. If you insist on using FP despite these limitations then you'll probably want to look at: The Unofficial FP Server Extensions Home Page http://compy.ww.tu-berlin.de/FP-Server_Extensions/default.htm http://www.bewley.net/httpd/frontpage.html Although I've never used it, I've read about another way to upload files to a web server using HTTP POST commands. It's described in the O'Reilly book on _CGI_Programming_ (one with a mouse on the cover) on page 414 (Appendix D). Basically you create a form that looks like so: File Upload Form

File Upload Form

Your Name: File to Upload:
At the time it was only supported in Netscape. This will show up as a form with a filename field, and a "Browse" button next to that. I don't know if any other browsers ever added support for it. (I just check with Lynx 2.7.2 --- it recognized the INPUT TYPE="file" and rendered it as "Not Implemented") Also you'll have to create/find a cgi script/program that implemented the file/MIME decoding portion of this (I just used "upload.pl" as a placeholder for this example). That same book listed some Perl 5 modules that might be useful for this sort of thing --- I think one of them was "BasePlus.pm" --- you'd want to search CPAN (the Comprehensive Perl Archive Network: http://www.cpan.org, http://www.perl.com/CPAN-local among many) for related work. I don't know for sure but you might start at: CPAN: By Category: WWW, HTML, HTTP and CGI http://www.perl.com/CPAN-local//modules/by-category/15_World_Wi de_Web_HTML_HTTP_CGI/ (?) Being new to LINUX I have no idea how to get started. Some of the questions I have: 1. How do install them,,do they run on 1.3.1? 2. After installation how are they configure? 3. How do we setup permissions? (!) I don't know the answers to any of these questions. However, I think you'll find some instructions at the two sites listed above. (?) 4. Virtual hosting would be nice but I think simply subdir will suffice for each user (using the ~username notation). (!) There are a couple of HOWTO's on this. The one you'll want to start with is: Linux WWW HOWTO http://sunsite.unc.edu/LDP/HOWTO/WWW-HOWTO.html (!) Any help or direction would help. thanks (!) This is a start. ____________________________ (?) Re: Linux Gazette From Terry Singleton on 20 Aug 1998 thanks...I would love some more information on getting SAMBA working. I have read alot about a NFS client. Will I still need the NFS client to connect when using SAMBA. (!) No. You won't need NFS to access your Samba systems. As for more info on Samba --- there's a whole book on the subject. There's also an SMB-HOWTO that's quite old but should still get you started; http://sunsite.unc.edu/LDP/HOWTO/SMB-HOWTO.html ... I gather that this hasn't been updated since '96! I know that Samba has been under constant, sometimes intense, development throughout that time. However, the basics still work that same. (?) Or if I implement SAMBA will the machine be accessible by \\linuxmachinename like other NT boxes...do I have to create a WINS entry for the LINUX box?? (!) Yes. You can use UNC naming and normal "Explorer" browsing to access your Linux box. It will look "just like" an NT box to those protocols. (Many sysadmin's have reported that they've replaced NT servers with Linux with increases in performance, capacity, reliability --- and no complaints or comments from their users). ____________________________ (?) Terry comments about Linux' Future From Terry Singleton on 20 Aug 1998 You really are the answer guy, thanks for your time. General Comments: Being new to LINUX I am very impressed with it. I initially bought a copy of RedHat to get started with UNIX. The college just bought this bohemith DEC ALPHA server which is to run DEC UNIX. Because I was now to learn this OS I thought it prudent to play with LINUX as it would install on my machine quite easily. After inserting my setup boot diskette and 20 minutes of answering quite simple questions I am up and running with LINUX and a GUI called CDE. Although I would not install the GUI on a server for a desktop environment it is quite nice. The RedHat install detected by 3COM905 NIC card, my ATI video card and used my DHCP server to set itself up on the network, I must say that even with NT or 95 most of the time I need to supply additional drivers for the install, not in LINUX's case. Now I must say that I am not sure that these drivers are optimized for the OS but they are functioning fine. After having great success with LINUX on the desktop and learning most of the basic shell commands I installed LINUX again, this time in a server environment(kind of a rogue operation). Configured sendmail, qpopper and dns; now this little LINUX box handles all our student email and DNS requirements. It replaced 2 NT servers and handles 2000 POP3 users and 1000's of emails per day. Future Directions: I am hoping LINUX can provide some much needed LDAP services for email address books and I may even consider using LINUX as our corporate web server OS, because LINUX also provides SAMBA file services we may even look to LINUX for our file and print services needs. The only thing holding me back in this arena is MS's ASP technology which is a great server side scripting language. Perhaps when SUN et al finalize JSP (JAVA Server Pages) and the JDK is released for LINUX I will re-examine this issue. To move this environment to the desktop for the masses I would say to COREL, keep up the good work(they ported Word Perfect to LINUX), to Triteal, keep working on the CDE environment. LINUX definetly is an OS with much greater potential than any other OS currently in development. ____________________________________________________ (?) Virtual System Emulator for Linux and Why NOT to Use Them From Jeff on the L.U.S.T List on 20 Aug 1998 Now that I have LINUX installed on a machine, the question becomes what can I do with it? I've heard there is an application that will allow me to run my standard windows programs (office, etc), anyone know anything about that? Jeff (!) There are several efforts to provide this sort of thing. Page down to the end to see some notes about those. Meanwhile here's a rambling rant: Installing Linux in the hopes of running your Windows/Office programs is certainly misguided if you intend to get any "normal" work done. What you do with any OS is run programs. When selecting which OS(es) to install and use your chief consideration is: what programs do I want to run? Thus, if you wanted to run WordPerfect, or Mathematica, or Applixware (an applications suite which is available on several forms of Unix, and in a Windows version as well) --- you'd then have choices. These applications are available under a few operating systems. However, with Microsoft Office you only have two (real) choices: MS Windows, or MacOS. As noted below many people have attempted to expand your choices (by allowing you to run Windows programs under various forms of emulation and capability interfaces). I personally think it's silly to install an OS and then ask "now what do I do with it?" It seems analagous to ripping the powertrain out of a car, fitting it with a "formula 1" engine, blowers, and a custom tranny and asking: "Now what do I do with it? Can I use this for my daily commute and grocery shopping?" (The answer, in this hypothetical case is, "Maybe, but why? A racing car is for racing, it makes a poor choice for more general use"). Of course my analogy breaks down at this point since Linux is not so specialized. I don't want to perpetuate the notion that Linux is a "server" OS. That's just where it's currently popular. There are general applications for Linux --- they just aren't the same brands that you're used to seeing for Windows software. There are more office applications suites for Linux than there are for Windows. This is nice from the point of view of the consumer that wants choices; but crippling from a "big business" perspective. Under Windows there is essentially one dominant office suite. (A couple of others exist, like Lotus Smartsuite, and Corel's Office, and Applixware --- but they get essentially no press coverage and have just about nil "mindshare"). It is almost certainly no accident that the company that controls this proprietary OS also dominates the applications that are available for it. That is a major point in this DoJ investigation of Microsoft's business practices. Other companies have dominated other fledgling industries in our nation's history. At least three of them were subject to "consent decrees" (agreements with our federal government regarding their responsibilities as recognized monopolies) --- I'm referring to IBM, Xerox, and AT&T. However this is not a history lesson --- which is good since I don't have textbook summaries of those cases handy. So, under Linux you can run Applixware, WordPerfect, StarOffice, Cliq (a character based suite) and various freeware packages like LyX, SIAG (Scheme in a Grid --- a spreadsheet package), and Maxwell (a word processor) and others (like 'sc' or 'slsc' the "spreadsheet calculator" and the "SLang version of 'sc'"). A more popular way for many Linux users to work is with text editors (rather than word processors) --- and using markup and typesetting languages. These are whole different approaches to the situation. Instead of using some proprietary word processor interface and document/file format I use simple text like: % Template for a LaTeX Letter \documentclass{letter} \begin{document} \begin{letter} {% \\ % full name and title \\ % address % city, state, zip-code \vfill \opening{Dear % Sir or Madam% ,} \vfill \closing{Sincerely,} \vspace{1in} \signature{Jim Dennis,} \vfill \end{letter} %% end letter (Repeat as necessary) \end{document} I can use this template for all of my personal letters and a similar one (with spacing set aside for a letterhead --- or even with letterhead macros --- etc) for business. With that I can simply run a command like: latex myletter.tex ... to typeset it and either print the resulting "dvi" file or run the 'dvips' command to convert it to PostScript and print that (even on non-PostScript printers). Note that the letters are typeset --- with kerning, leading, etc. I don't have to concern myself with the details about line length, pagination, etc. The \vfill commands (macros) are hints about how I want the portions the first and last pages filled (providing visual separation between the addressing and salutation, and between the text and the signature/closing). I can create my own "styles" and "document classes" and I can create my own abbreviations and macros for doing things my way. For example a friend of mine has a couple of macros for his resume (which can be easily rendered with a properly accented 'e' under LaTeX) which allow him to put in a line like: \job {Big Former Employer} {Chief Bottle Washer} {Feb, 29, 1931 --- May 1, 1942} ... and have each element of that (company, title, date range) typeset in a particular fashion (such as "Large bold" for the company, "large italics" for the title and "small caps" for the dates, with "\hfill" to fill these lines). If he decides that he doesn't like the look of one resume --- he can redefine his "job" macro and all of the jobs will be consistently rendered the new way. He and I don't have hand edit all of the jobs on the list --- just the definition of \job. As another example; there are many things that Windows users put in spreadsheets (Excel) that are more like databases or tables (that is tabular data without any computations involved). They use Excel (or other spreadsheets) for this because the things are already available and they know how to use them. In some cases this is a reasonable choice. In others they make more work for themselves than they would by using a database, or using a "big text file" (say, tab and line delimited). Under Unix it is more common to put these sorts of things in a text file and use the many text processing tools (sort, diff, cut, paste, join, grep, awk, perl, ... ) to work with them. As the Windows user continues to use a spreadsheet (especially for tracking lots of data and importing long tables) he or she hits the capacity limits imposed by their memory and applications. Spreadsheets programs typically have to load whole spreadsheets into RAM. I don't know of any of them that can "page through" a large spreadsheet effectively. The Unix user's capacity is typically limited by diskspace. In other words the text processing approaches usually scale well. Things like awk, grep, join, etc just filter through the file(s) and don't have to load any more than a small buffer's worth at any given time. Even 'sort' --- which necessarily must go through whole files --- scales pretty well (I've sorted files that were hundreds of megabytes --- it takes a while and plenty of temporary disk space --- but GNU sort will do it). As a side note most programs under Linux/Unix are "toolkits" or "little languages." For example you can simply "sort" a list by "ASCII collating sequence" by just using a command like: sort file > file.sorted ... which is the simple case. But you can also deal with more complex cases like this: let's say I have a list of appointments of the form: MMM, DD, YYYY Notes (three letter abbreviation for the month, on or two digit date, four digit year followed by some text). I can sort that with a command like: sort +2n +0M +1n ... note that I sort first, numerically by year (+2 columns from the start of each line), secondarily by the first column by "Month" (a special sorting key per your locale), and tertiarily by date (also numerically). It's the same sort utility --- and it has lots of other options (about things like "folding/ignoring the case" specifying field separators, using an offset within the column/field, counting consecutive blanks as singular or multiple field seperators, and things like that). Under Unix it's also easy to use programs with one another. This is obvious when by pipe the output of one filter into another (also available under DOS --- but much less widely used due to the relative obscurity/unavailability of good filters to use, and crippled by the implementation of pipes --- which is basically a set of "anonymous tempfiles" with "transparent redirection" --- as opposed to Unix pipes in which the processes are running concurrently). It is less well known but equally handy to see how the dominant Unix/Linux editors ('vi' and 'emacs') allow one to interface with "standard" Unix commands and filters. Under 'vi' I can mark a line in my text ("[Esc]ma" to set the "a" mark) search for an arbitrary regular expression ("/regex[Enter]") and then I can filter that block of text (from my cursor to the mark) through an arbitrary Unix command (such as 'sort') using just 3 or 4 keystrokes (plus the command's name). (In my example that would be "!'a" followed by "sort." All of the lines of text would be fed to the filter, and anything returned by the filter would replace them in my text). To read the output of some simple command under 'vi' I just type "[Esc]:r!" followed by the command. Any output from such a command is inserted into my text. There are similar features in 'emacs' (just use C-u, M-| [That's C for "ctrl" key, M for "Meta" usually meaning the Alt key, in case yo're not familiar with Emacs documentation -- Heather] to pipe a block through a filter, and C-u, M-! to read input from a command --- I have those bound to simpler commands like "[F3]!" in my startup files). Those examples are "power users tricks" --- but the point out something more important. Many Unix/Linux commands autommatically and transparently use other programs in their normal operation. Thus you can type the command: tar -tzf foo.tar.gz ... and the "tar" (tape archiver) will transparently decompress the .gz file using 'gzip -d' while it extracts the "table of contents" (-t) from it. Similarly I can type a command like: tar cf otherhost:/home/myhome/new.tar ./* ... to create a "new.tar" file on a different system (tar will transparently call the 'rsh' command to let me do that --- assuming that I have set up the permissions and security to allow it --- in other words, assuming that my security if very lax). More obvious examples show up in most mail programs and newsreaders under Unix. Most of them (elm, pine, tin, trn) don't implement text editing functions. They pass your replies, compositions, and other texts to your preferred editor. Under DOS/Windows every mail package, newsreader and many other applications implement some cheesy little "editing mode" (or screen/dialog) -- each with its own quirks and none with as much power or flexibility as the old 'ed' (Unix line editor). If you installed Linux to learn about it --- then get out there and learn about the commands you've installed. Try this series of commands: cd /usr/bin/; man * --- that will bring up most of the man pages for most of the commands on your system (one at a time --- hit "q" then "Ctrl-C" to break out). Many of them are little tools, intended to be use for a small part of your overall work. On a couple of my systems I have over 2200 commands available. (From bash you can quickly find out how many commands are on your PATH by just tapping on the [Tab] key a couple of quick times to get a warning message like: "Display all 2209 possibilities? (y or n)"). Some are as simple as 'cat' (concatenate one or more file streams into standard output) and 'echo' (print a bit of text on "stdout"). Others are as complex as Perl, C, and emacs. GNU emacs and Xemacs are complete programming and applications environments --- with hundreds of packages and about 1800 user accessible commands (a quick way to find this is to type "M-x" and then use the same double-tap on the [Tab] key, switch buffers and count the number of entries in the "Completions" buffer that pops up --- which is easier if you have your status line displaying the line count). I think there are about 1000 functions (system calls, stdio and stdlib, etc) in a standard C programming package, and there are several hundred in Perl and maybe one or two hundred in awk. Then there's othe programming languages like TCL, expect, Python, etc). Luckily many of these overlap and are essentially "dialects" of a common set of "Unix conventions" There's also quite a bit of overlap and duplication among these. To get some idea of what's available for Linux, browse around on Freshmeat (http://www.freshmeat.org) for about a week. Note that those daily changes are new releases and updates to these programs. Also take a look at the home site for the LDP (Linux Documentation Project) http://sunsite.unc.edu/LDP. Then follow their link to one of the Linux Apps home pages: http://www.linuxapps.com/ and then round out your tour with visits to Linas Vepstas' page: http://www.linas.org/linux/ and Christopher B. Browne's pages: http://www.hex.net/~cbbrowne/ Those should give you a pretty good idea of what applications are out there. Also get into Netnews and subscribe to comp.os.linux.announce. > You can get the DosEmu program, it emulates dos and can even run > windows 3.11(unofficially) so theoretically you could run office 4.2 > or less on it but that's a stretch. However it is still in > development(just like linux) and eventually may officially run > win3.11. There is no support for win95/98 apps that I know of, do to > the structure of the OS it would require alot of time to emulate > it in all of its instability and glory. Hope that helped. reds If you really want to do it, look for an app called BOSCH (I think). With it you can run WIndows 95 (Probably 98 too) from Linux. I know that they have the opposite too. A version to run Linux from a Windows 95 box (I wouldn't recommend it). cheers, Raul