Re: hard disk access on every keystroke in console mode!

2003-12-20 Thread Bruce Sass
On Sat, 20 Dec 2003, michelle wrote:
...
 The pauses in KDE3 must be due to something else.

Parts of KDE3 will freeze when kbuildsycoca runs.  e.g., upgrading
changes the menues, which gets noticed by FAM, which starts
kbuildsycoca, which results in konqueror freezing until KDE sorts out
what is on the filesystems it is monitoring.


- Bruce


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Re: XFree86 4.3 in stable sarge - how likely

2003-11-03 Thread Bruce Sass
  Daniel Stone's packages have migrated from penguinppc.org to Sid, so you
  no longer need those sources.list entries you mentioned (but you did

 Are you sure?  I just did an apt-get update, but it still
 shows 4.2.1 :

They are in experimental.

Apt will not fetch them unless you explicitly choose experimental as
the default release... either APT::Default-Release experimental;, or
-t experimental, or package/experimental.

If you use dselect you need to use APT::Default-Release, then
(un)comment the experimental line in sources.list to control whether
experimental packages are seen or not.

deb http://http.us.debian.org/debian ../project/experimental main contrib non-free



- Bruce


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Re: Microsoft good press over Longhorn

2003-10-31 Thread Bruce Sass

...we have plenty of free software, and as we all know,
 Linux will get you through times of no money better than money will
 get you through times of no Linux...

 :-)

ditto



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Re: fsck seg. fault Please Help!

2003-10-30 Thread Bruce Sass
On Wed, 29 Oct 2003, matt wrote:

 hi, the other day my woody machine just kinda stopped working...upon a
 reboot i learned via beep-codes that the ram had failed.  i broke out the
 shop-vac and cleaned it out and it started to boot...here's where the
 troubble began...
...
 Unable to andle kernel paging request at virtual address blabla hex

I've seen this message (or something very similar) when I had a bad
stick of RAM... did you replace your RAM or just vacuum the dust off?

...
 but seriously, what other utils can i use instead of fsck to repair the
 drive?

There is a low level tool (can't remember the name and a quick search
through packages.debian.org didn't find it, may also only be in
unstable or testing) but you'd need to know the structure of the fs at
the bits level to use it.


If fsck is able to recover a block (or sequence of blocks) but doesn't
know where they belong it will place them in lost+found (each
partition has one) -- you then need to manually look at the data,
figure out what it is, and cp it to where it should be... not fun, and
really only worth it for stuff you can't just download again or
configure up.


- Bruce


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Re: Xfree86 4.3

2003-10-29 Thread Bruce Sass

oopps

On Tue, 28 Oct 2003, Bruce Sass wrote:
 2) explicitly tell apt you want to fetch from experimental, either:
 # apt-get -t experimental install ...
 or
 --- /etc/apt/sources.list ---

s/b /etc/apt/apt.conf

 APT::Default-Release experimental;
 ---
 The sources.list method is a must if you use dselect, and you probably

s/b apt.conf method

 want to do an update/upgrade sans experimental immediately before
 updating with experimental so that you can put everything else in
 experimental on hold.


 - Bruce





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Re: Xfree86 4.3

2003-10-28 Thread Bruce Sass
On Tue, 28 Oct 2003, John Holland wrote:

 Can anyone say how stable the experimental XFree86 4.3 packages are? Is
 there any reliable way to install this into debian? I'm running a mix of
 stable and unstable.
 Thanks,

I've been using Xfree-4.3 for awhile (first Daniel Stone's packages
and now 4.3.0-0pre1v4 from experimental) without any serious
problems... on-the-fly resolution switching (CTRL-ALT-+|-) messes up
the display and X needs to be restarted to fix it, SDL apps cause the
monitor to go into standby mode (switch to text then back to X to fix
it).


To install you will need to:

1) add experimental to your sources.list
deb http://http.us.debian.org/debian ../project/experimental main contrib non-free

2) explicitly tell apt you want to fetch from experimental, either:
# apt-get -t experimental install ...
or
--- /etc/apt/sources.list ---
APT::Default-Release experimental;
---
The sources.list method is a must if you use dselect, and you probably
want to do an update/upgrade sans experimental immediately before
updating with experimental so that you can put everything else in
experimental on hold.


- Bruce


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Re: zmodem file transfer w/ minicom over serial connection

2003-09-04 Thread Bruce Sass
...
  HDD IRQs are unmasked:
  hdparm -u1 dev  # READ the hdparm manpage first!

 At which end?  What does this do?

both, if possible (may break things with some chipsets),
it ensures serial IRQ events are handled in a timely manner


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Re: Wierd apt-get error?

2003-08-14 Thread Bruce Sass

remove the stable entries from your sources.list... it is very
unlikely you have any stable packages installed because unstable
contains newer versions

get more RAM

create another swap partition

create a swap file

don't post HTML... nothing to do with the update problem, but making
us downloading a 17K message when a couple of K would do is just not
very nice


On Mon, 11 Aug 2003, j2 wrote:

 Running a unstable/stable system and i got the below and would apreciate any hints?

 cookiemonster:~# apt-get update
 Hit http://ftp.du.se unstable/main Packages
 Hit http://ftp.du.se unstable/main Release
 Hit http://ftp.du.se unstable/non-free Packages
 Hit http://ftp.du.se unstable/non-free Release
 Hit http://ftp.du.se unstable/contrib Packages
 Hit http://ftp.du.se unstable/contrib Release
 Hit http://ftp.du.se unstable/main Sources
 Hit http://ftp.du.se unstable/main Release
 Hit http://ftp.du.se unstable/non-free Sources
 Hit http://ftp.du.se unstable/non-free Release
 Hit http://ftp.se.debian.org stable/main Packages
 Hit http://security.debian.org stable/updates/main Packages
 Hit http://security.debian.org stable/updates/main Release
 Hit http://security.debian.org stable/updates/contrib Packages
 Hit http://security.debian.org stable/updates/contrib Release
 Hit http://security.debian.org stable/updates/non-free Packages
 Hit http://security.debian.org stable/updates/non-free Release
 Hit http://ftp.du.se unstable/contrib Sources
 Hit http://ftp.du.se unstable/contrib Release
 Hit http://non-us.debian.org stable/non-US/main Packages
 Hit http://non-us.debian.org stable/non-US/main Release
 Hit http://non-us.debian.org stable/non-US/contrib Packages
 Hit http://ftp.se.debian.org stable/main Release
 Hit http://non-us.debian.org stable/non-US/contrib Release
 Hit http://non-us.debian.org stable/non-US/non-free Packages
 Hit http://non-us.debian.org stable/non-US/non-free Release
 Hit http://non-us.debian.org stable/non-US/main Sources
 Hit http://non-us.debian.org stable/non-US/main Release
 Hit http://non-us.debian.org stable/non-US/contrib Sources
 Hit http://non-us.debian.org stable/non-US/contrib Release
 Hit http://ftp.se.debian.org stable/non-free Packages
 Hit http://ftp.se.debian.org stable/non-free Release
 Hit http://ftp.se.debian.org stable/contrib Packages
 Hit http://ftp.se.debian.org stable/contrib Release
 Hit http://ftp.se.debian.org stable/main Sources
 Hit http://ftp.se.debian.org stable/main Release
 Hit http://ftp.se.debian.org stable/non-free Sources
 Hit http://ftp.se.debian.org stable/non-free Release
 Hit http://non-us.debian.org stable/non-US/non-free Sources
 Hit http://ftp.se.debian.org stable/contrib Sources
 Hit http://non-us.debian.org stable/non-US/non-free Release
 Hit http://ftp.se.debian.org stable/contrib Release
 Hit http://non-us.debian.org unstable/non-US/main Packages
 Hit http://non-us.debian.org unstable/non-US/main Release
 Hit http://non-us.debian.org unstable/non-US/contrib Packages
 Hit http://non-us.debian.org unstable/non-US/contrib Release
 Hit http://non-us.debian.org unstable/non-US/non-free Packages
 Hit http://non-us.debian.org unstable/non-US/non-free Release
 Hit http://non-us.debian.org unstable/non-US/main Sources
 Hit http://non-us.debian.org unstable/non-US/main Release
 Hit http://non-us.debian.org unstable/non-US/contrib Sources
 Hit http://non-us.debian.org unstable/non-US/contrib Release
 Hit http://non-us.debian.org unstable/non-US/non-free Sources
 Hit http://non-us.debian.org unstable/non-US/non-free Release
 Reading Package Lists... Error!
 E: Dynamic MMap ran out of room
 E: Dynamic MMap ran out of room
 E: Error occured while processing x3270 (NewVersion1)
 E: Problem with MergeList 
 /var/lib/apt/lists/ftp.du.se_debian_dists_unstable_non-free_binary-i386_Packages
 E: The package lists or status file could not be parsed or opened.
 cookiemonster:~# apt-get -u upgrade
 Reading Package Lists... Error!
 E: Dynamic MMap ran out of room
 E: Dynamic MMap ran out of room
 E: Error occured while processing x3270 (NewVersion1)
 E: Problem with MergeList 
 /var/lib/apt/lists/ftp.du.se_debian_dists_unstable_non-free_binary-i386_Packages
 E: The package lists or status file could not be parsed or opened.
 cookiemonster:~#




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Re: looking at deborphan's output first

2003-08-14 Thread Bruce Sass
On Sat, 9 Aug 2003, Dan Jacobson wrote:

 Is part of deborphan's job to clean up for sloppy package maintainers'
 bad Depends: etc. fields?

no.
A depends on B, A gets removed, B is still there -- can't remove B
because you may have compiled something against it.

 Or during normal usage does a debian system
 accrue useless packages?

Useless, no, not needed anymore... yes.

,...
 Any sure tests? Would I have linked to one of them if I never
 compile anything on my own?

no.  no.  Installing from a tarball is another way to get a dependency
which dpkg doesn't know about.


- Bruce


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Re: problems with kde3

2003-08-14 Thread Bruce Sass
On Wed, 13 Aug 2003, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 Are there kde3 or gnome2 log files anywhere?

at the bash prompt...
$ startx /usr/bin/kde3 /tmp/kde-log


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RE: Obnoxious autoresponders was:Re: Out of Office AutoReply: how NOT to work with debian

2003-08-14 Thread Bruce Sass
On Mon, 11 Aug 2003, Joyce, Matthew wrote:
  * iain d broadfoot ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) [030811 04:12]:
   * Petrisor Marian ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote:
   [an entirely blank message with a semi-informative subject line]
  
   This pisses me off majorly
 
  There's more important things in life... My d key deals
  with messages like his auto-response just fine -- and it
  doesn't affect me emotionally one bit.

 I agree with Hall's post.  Hooray for Hall!
 It takes so much less energy to delete emails than to complain about them.

I'll 1/2 agree.  Complaining to the list is as much a waste as the
auto-response; telling [EMAIL PROTECTED]
is more satisfying, may get the problem fixed, and perhaps even a
thanks.


- Bruce


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Re: Wierd apt-get error?

2003-08-14 Thread Bruce Sass
On Mon, 11 Aug 2003, j2 wrote:

  get more RAM

 2GB is enough for most people.

  create another swap partition

 1GB should suffice.. Especially since i am only using about 600MB of RAM.

 
  create a swap file
 

 See above.

Ya, I didn't know about the apt config thing...
still learning something new everyday.


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Re: d-u / Usenet gateway (was Re: Challenge-response mail filters

2003-08-14 Thread Bruce Sass
On Thu, 7 Aug 2003, Alan Connor wrote:
...
 What other choice do they have? There arguments have been shown to be
 utter nonsense or outright disinformation.

As a reader who has been following the threads simply for the
entertainment value (I don't do spam filtering or CR, or have an
opinion one way or the other on either issue)...

Alan, it is your posts which have been shown to contain utter
nonsense or outright disinformation.


- Bruce


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Re: Using XFree86 4.3 server in /usr/local

2003-08-01 Thread Bruce Sass
On Sat, 2 Aug 2003, Russell Shaw wrote:

 Hi,
 I'm using mostly testing and have XFree86 4.2.1 installed via
 apt-get.

 If i compile XFree86 4.3 from source, what's the easiest way
 to find all the compile options suitable for it to work well
 in a debian system, yet have it installed in /usr/local?

Probably, swipe them from Daniel Stone's packaging of XF86-4.3 for
Sid:

http://www.penguinppc.org/~daniels/sid/


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Re: upgrade turned off lpd?

2003-08-01 Thread Bruce Sass
On Fri, 1 Aug 2003, Bob Hilliard wrote:
 Qian Gong [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

  My lpd stopped several times with unknown reason. Command /etc/init.d/lpd
  restart will let it work again.

  On a debian system, the canonical command is (as root, of course):

   invoke-rc.d lpd restart

caveat: will only work for services that have been configured to start
in the current runlevel.


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Re: dselect apt-get coordination

2003-07-31 Thread Bruce Sass
On Thu, 31 Jul 2003, R Ransbottom wrote:

 How do you coordinate apt-get and dselect
 so that they want the same packages?

 If I understand the apt-get man page
 running apt-get dselect-upgrade will
 set up the system per the setting last
 made using dselect.  Correct?

yes

 How do you the inverse?  That is how
 do you alter the dselect database to
 reflect packages installed with apt-get
 or, put another way, to reflect the
 current state of the system?
 (So that a casual use of dselect does
 not materially alter the system.)

Not necessary, APT and dselect use the same DB...
/var/lib/dpkg/status

To figure out what is available dselect uses /var/lib/dpkg/available,
APT uses (iirc) /var/cache/apt/pkgcache.bin which is constructed from
the Packages files it downloads to /var/lib/apt/lists.

So, while APT and dselect can have different ideas about what is
available, they will always think alike with respect to what is
installed.

Doing a dselect-upgrade will cause APT to do whatever dselect has
flagged in /var/lib/dpkg/status instead of figuring out what
to download.

Loading the status file into a text editor for more info.


HTH


- Bruce


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Re: konqueror

2003-07-29 Thread Bruce Sass
On Tue, 29 Jul 2003, gerard wrote:

 I am using openbox and I like to use konqueror for my file browser.
 Generally it works very well but sometimes it will come up with an
 error. The error is Could not start process. Can't talk to klauncher
 Any ideas why this happens or how to fix it?

Some of the KDE infrastructure is not getting started. Whether it is a
bug or something you have to live with when running Konqueror sans KDE
is best asked on a KDE specific mailing list
([EMAIL PROTECTED] perhaps).

Try starting klauncher manually then doing whatever causes the error.


- Bruce


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Re: local user halt

2003-07-28 Thread Bruce Sass
On Mon, 28 Jul 2003, matt zagrabelny wrote:
 is there a method for allowing (besides root) local users (ordinary
 users sitting at the keyboard of the computer) the ability to use the
 shutdown command? i dont want those logged in via ssh or other remote
 method having this capability.

CTRL-ALT-DEL

see /etc/inittab


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Re: local user halt

2003-07-28 Thread Bruce Sass
On Mon, 28 Jul 2003, Stephen Touset wrote:
 Bruce Sass wrote:
 On Mon, 28 Jul 2003, matt zagrabelny wrote:
 
 is there a method for allowing (besides root) local users (ordinary
 users sitting at the keyboard of the computer) the ability to use the
 shutdown command? i dont want those logged in via ssh or other remote
 method having this capability.
 
 CTRL-ALT-DEL
 
 see /etc/inittab
 
 And if you have CTRL+ALT+DEL pointing to /bin/false like a sane
 sysadmin, using sudo is a good alternative ;)

I was going to mention sudo, but don't know the answer to this...
Can a ssh-ed in user do sudo shutdown...?


- Bruce


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Re: Moving a harddrive to newer machine

2003-07-16 Thread Bruce Sass
On Wed, 16 Jul 2003, Kjetil Kjernsmo wrote:
 Hi all!
 
 I was just given a box with a PIII processor, and I intend to use it to
 replace my main server, which currently has a Pentium PRO 180 MHz.
... 
 The hardware is obviously quite different on this new box, but I'm running
 a unmodified Debian kernel-image-2.4.18-686 2.4.18-5. When the disk will
 suddenly find itself in a quite different machine, is it something I
 should remember, or should the kernel boot effortlessly on the new
 hardware?

have an alternate means of booting the machine (rescue floppy or CD,
the local LUG swears by Knoppix for this sorta thing)

download (and install if possible) packages you will need on the new
box before moving the HDD.  e.g., xserver, kernel source, anything that
supports hardware which is new to the system on the HDD

reconfigure what you can beforehand  e.g., if you use SVGATextMode, make
sure you tell it to use generic VGA settings instead of the video card
in the old box.


- Bruce


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Re: The nature of testing and where can others help (Was Re: HowTofor Gnome2??)

2003-07-05 Thread Bruce Sass
Hi,

I accidentally deleted all the messages in my debian-user folder
sigh.  However, I do remember enough of your original post to
(hopefully) enlighten you.  I have also done the nasty cross-post
thing to -devel because I conclude with a thought on how to get the
package pool living up to its potential.


There is no way to show anyone what the next Debian will look like
until it is released .
^^^
You can see which packages are being worked on for inclusion in the
next release (those in unstable), but until the release is made there
is no way to tell if a package will get enough of its known bugs fixed
to be included.  Even a package being in testing when a freeze comes
along does not provide enough information with which to make that
determination.

Debian unstable, testing, and stable archives are not development,
pre-release, and released archives... until a freeze comes along.

Maybe this will help...

Flow of new software into Debian's archives:

1 23
   ---   ---  ---
 N)  upstream+ --- unstable --- testing  stable

 F)  upstream+ --- unstable  testing  stable

 R)  upstream+ --- unstable  testing --- stable

1, 2, and 3 represent the movement of packages; N, F, and R indicate
Debian's normal, in a freeze, and release modes of operation;
upstream+ represents the original source plus modifications made by a
Debian developer; unstable, testing and stable are Debian archives.

1 can happen at any time and is controlled by the autobuilder; 2 can
only happen between freezes and is controlled by the bug tracking
system (BTS); 3 is a manually triggered operation whose timing is
determined with input from the BTS and developers.


To put it into perspective... once (only one or two releases ago)
there was just unstable and stable, testing only existed during a
freeze.  Release cycles were too long and developers didn't like
having to put development of new software on hold when a freeze came
along, so they decided to do away with separate archives and move to a
package pool system -- all packages actually exist in a common pool
and specific versions are flagged as being included in one or more
virtual archives.  The idea being that developers could continue to
develop at their own pace and relatively stable packages would
automatically accumulate in testing, at some point testing would look
good enough to freeze and then release as the current stable.


Speculation/opinion:

Why is testing in such bad shape...

It seems to be the case that developers are moving packages through
unstable too fast for testing to reach a point where it looks good
enough to freeze and polish into a release.

What could be done to fix the situation...

Create a permanent frozen archive, fed from a consistent set of
packages in testing which have been flagged as release candidates.
By set of packages I mean all the packages which make up, for
example, Gnome or Gnome2 or KDE2 or KDE3, etc.  If only one version of
a set is allowed to be a release candidate at any point during a
release cycle, and only packages which have achieved stability are
allowed to move into the frozen archive... testing+frozen will
quickly become what users want testing to be (a peek at the next
Debian), and the release manager only needs to look at the quantity of
packages in frozen to determine if it is time (are all or enough of
the release candidates here?).


Useful Debian systems with the existence of a frozen archive...
(where your sources.list lines point to)

unstableDevelopers developing and users who don't mind
bleeding from time to time.

testing/unstableUsers who don't mind getting hurt as long as
first aid is likely to be available.

testing Crazy people, this could contain (for example)
Gnome, Gnome2, KDE2 and KDE3, all at the same
time!  Basically a holding area for packages
transitioning from development to pre-release.

frozen/testing  Developers polishing and users wanting a peek
at the next release.

frozen  Anyone interested in how far along the next
release has progressed.  Stable quality, but
not a complete distribution.

stable  most users


Flow of new software within a Debian with a frozen archive:

| --- development ---|--- pre-release ---|- released -|
|   phase|  phase||
 unstable -- testing - frozen --- stable, archived
1   23

0 - (not shown) flow into unstable, controlled by the autobuilder
1 - controlled by the BTS
2 - BTS (tighter restrictions than 1) and developer input via a
release candidate flag
3 - BTS and release manager (who could be a program which

Re: Tab-Completion in gnuplot

2003-06-21 Thread Bruce Sass
On Sat, 21 Jun 2003, Colin Watson wrote:

 On Fri, Jun 20, 2003 at 04:53:56PM -0600, Gary Hennigan wrote:
  Joey Hess [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
   Quoting /usr/share/doc/gnuplot/README.Debian:
  
   libreadline
   ---
 [...]
  Of course I don't fully understand all the GPL implications. I
  believe what the Debian gnuplot maintainer means is that it's ok to
  use GNU readline library with gnuplot, gnuplot just can't be
  distributed that way and so (s)he doesn't distribute it that way with
  Debian.

 Correct. You can't take GPL code, link it against non-GPL code (more
 specifically code that cannot be distributed under the terms of the GPL;
 this means that BSD-minus-advertising-clause and LGPL are not a problem,
 for example, but gnuplot's licence is since it imposes additional
 restrictions over and above those in the GPL), and distribute the
 resulting binary.

What other .debs are in the same situation and would therefore benefit
from a local tweak and rebuild?


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Re: amaya was Re: Good Open Source Web Development software

2003-06-10 Thread Bruce Sass
I don't know; a home built gtk-gl version also bombs, but a build
against lesstif works fine.

You could do:
cd /usr/src ; apt-get source amaya
modify the debian/rules file to say --without-g...
then build a package (debian/rules -b) sans gtk-gl.

I've used ../configure --with-x --without-gtk --without-gl to build
a lesstif version which lives in /usr/local.

HTH


- Bruce

-- 

On Tue, 10 Jun 2003, Emma Jane Hogbin wrote:

 On Tue, Jun 10, 2003 at 01:42:07AM -0700, Paul Johnson wrote:
  On Tue, Jun 10, 2003 at 02:10:45AM -0400, lists1 wrote:
   I read a while back that Amaya development/updating wasn't very
   rapid.
 
  It supports the current standard.  People who make the complaint that
  it doesn't get rapid development don't realize that people don't mess
  with a UI that just works.  It kind of reminds me of the old Windows
  program HoTMetaL.

 Ok, I tried to give amaya a try but got the following error when I tried
 to start the program:
 [EMAIL PROTECTED]:/web$ amaya
 Error creating GtkGLArea!

 Any one have any ideas on what I need to do to get it to work?

 thanks!

 emma




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Re: The myth of aptitude simplicity

2003-02-16 Thread Bruce Sass
On Sun, 16 Feb 2003, Nathan E Norman wrote:
 There's one problem:  dselect is retarded WRT Recommends.  That is,
...
 you.  Annoying.  Fortunately, you can tell dselect No really, I want
 you to not install package foo by typing 'Q' to exit the resolution
 screen, but it's still a PITA.

I would say persistent rather than retarded.

Dselect works best if you have a good grasp of the packaging system,
and consequently know when to use Q or X and when to fall back to
dpkg -i...


- Bruce


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Re: KDE 3? or 4?

2003-02-14 Thread Bruce Sass
On Fri, 14 Feb 2003, Bill Webster wrote:

 My laptop was running KDE3 from unstable. About 3 days ago I did an
 upgrade that upgraded it to what appears to be a partial upgrade to
 version 4. But in the process it removed something that is needed in
...
 Does anyone have any idea what might be going on?

No.  There is no KDE4 yet, KDE3 uses kdelibs4 though.

You will need to be more specific about what you are seeing.


- Bruce


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passing mem= with a bootdisk, mkrescue

2003-02-12 Thread Bruce Sass
Hi,

I have a box with hda=30G and hdb=854M. The 30G is not recognized so I
boot from a floppy and mount root on hdb (history and changing plans,
soon to be fixed).

I would like to move either of these drives to a different box, which
one gets moved depends on if the box they are in can see more than 64M
of RAM.  Of course I would like to find out before I start ripping out
drives and start messing with jumpers.

How do I pass mem=72M when using a bootdisk created during the
installation of a kernel built with make-kpkg?

Is there a way to tell the kernel it has more RAM after it is running?


While I am fiddling with kernels and boot disks I may as well make a
rescue disk, eh... but mkrescue doesn't work because /proc/cmdline is
empty (result of the BIOS booting the kernel directly from a floppy?).
I'm not even sure it would work to create a self contained rescue
disk.  Is mkrescue the right tool for this task?

Any advice on making a rescue disk will be appreciated.


- Bruce


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Re: Some myths regarding apt pinning

2003-01-26 Thread Bruce Sass
Missed one...

 ++
 |   |   | Recommended |  |
 | User type | Criteria  | Debian  | Note |
 |   |   | Flavor  |  |
 |---+---+-+--|
 |   |   | | Don't use APT pinning,   |
 |   | Uses Debian,  | | prefer the lowest level  |
 | Debian| has some  | testing +   | interfaces, and only |
 | Hacker| computing and | unstable| reinstall broken stuff   |
 |   | GNU/Linux | | using testing if you |
 |   | experience.   | | can't fix or live with   |
 |   |   | | the breakage.|
 ++


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Re: debian rookie trying to get his bearings...

2003-01-26 Thread Bruce Sass


On Sat, 25 Jan 2003, Shyamal Prasad wrote:

 David == David Z Maze David writes:

 David Jeff Hahn [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
  I'm setting up a test debian server (contemplating a move of
  several redhat boxes)

  One quick question to get me going a little better...  How do
  you install services (apache, samba, whatever) and NOT have
  them start on system startup?

 David Probably the easiest way is to 'rm /etc/rc2.d/S20apache',
 David etc. as root.

 IMHO this is almost the Debian Way to do this. I would actually
 suggest 'mv /etc/rc2.d/S20apache /etc/rc2.d/K20apache' and so on for
 each service you want to shutdown in runlevel 2.

Have a look in rc2.d and rc6.d, you will notice that some services
have Ssmallnum and Kbignum or the reverse situation.  It may not
be a good idea to just change the S to a K to disable those services.

The most Debian way to do it is via update-rc.d,
the easiest way is to just rm the entry.

The best way (imo) is to use rm, but leave one of the low numbered
runlevels (2-5) and rc6.d untouched... so you can always see at a
glance what the default sequencing is for both bringing up and taking
down installed services.  Remember, you can also setup rc{7,8,9}.d,
which will not be touched by automated runs of Debian tools.


- Bruce


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Re: Desktop Performance Issue

2002-12-30 Thread Bruce Sass
Hello Alvin,

On Sat, 28 Dec 2002, Alvin Oga wrote:
   /dev/hda:
setting using_dma to 1 (on)
HDIO_SET_DMA failed: Operation not permitted
using_dma=  0 (off)
   
Do it as root
 
  of course
 
   sometimes .. you have to make sure that the chips and
   the drive supports DMA ...
 - ( check the kernel IDE/dma options )
 
  I think it is the chips which don't do DMA.
  circa 1990 hardware

 ah ... first problem.  those circa drives supports
 multiword dma ... not ultra-dma 

 which exactly is supported...
   hdparm -iv /dev/hda  will tell you

bms:~# hdparm -iv /dev/hda

/dev/hda:
 multcount=  0 (off)
 IO_support   =  0 (default 16-bit)
 unmaskirq=  0 (off)
 using_dma=  0 (off)
 keepsettings =  0 (off)
 readonly =  0 (off)
 readahead=  8 (on)
 geometry = 59570/16/63, sectors = 60046560, start = 0

 Model=FUJITSU MPG3307AT, FwRev=02B9, SerialNo=VG13P1201HK8
 Config={ HardSect NotMFM HdSw15uSec Fixed DTR10Mbs }
 RawCHS=16383/16/63, TrkSize=0, SectSize=0, ECCbytes=4
 BuffType=DualPortCache, BuffSize=2048kB, MaxMultSect=16, MultSect=off
 CurCHS=16383/16/63, CurSects=16514064, LBA=yes, LBAsects=60046560
 IORDY=yes, tPIO={min:240,w/IORDY:120}, tDMA={min:120,rec:120}
 PIO modes:  pio0 pio1 pio2 pio3 pio4
 DMA modes:  mdma0 mdma1 *mdma2
 UDMA modes: udma0 udma1 udma2 udma3 udma4 udma5
 AdvancedPM=yes: disabled (255) WriteCache=enabled
 Drive conforms to: ATA/ATAPI-5 T13 1321D revision 1:  1 2 3 4 5

...
  hmmm...
  # CONFIG_IDEDMA_AUTO is not set
  # CONFIG_DMA_NONPCI is not set

 and if that is the kernel you're booting...
   hdparm options in the bootups will not work

# echo ... /proc/...  could fix that?

  I'm curious about the PIO modes, and if one of those is what is being
  used.  Since the drive is defaulting to a DMA mode but the OS isn't
  doing DMA, is the system falling back to PIO and should explicitly
  selecting the best PIO mode be expected to improve performance.

 the list of dma options  from hdparm -iv wil tell you which
 one ( marked w/ * )  your machine is currently using

The drive is defaulting to mdma, which is reasonable for the
hardware... so it probably doesn't matter that hdparm fails to set
a DMA mode, or the kernel thinks DMA isn't happening, the hardware has
it all sorted out?

  gotta lot of reading and fiddling to do

 pio vs udma vs dma vs ...
   http://www.Linux-1U.net/Disks/

 and for system fiddling and tuning
   http://www.Linux-1U.net/Tuning

Thanks


- Bruce


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Re: Desktop Performance Issue

2002-12-30 Thread Bruce Sass
On Sat, 28 Dec 2002, Ron Johnson wrote:
 On Sat, 2002-12-28 at 15:25, Bruce Sass wrote:
 [snip]
  I think it is the chips which don't do DMA.
  circa 1990 hardware

 Wow, that's what?  A 486/20 w/ all ISA slots and a 100MB HDD???

486DX2-25, 64M RAM, all ISA(PNP), 850M + 30G HDD
running KDE3.1 (animations turned off)

Not bad for hardware that didn't expect to see more than 16M of RAM
and was probably designed for win31, eh.

lol


- Bruce


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Re: Desktop Performance Issue

2002-12-28 Thread Bruce Sass
On Sat, 28 Dec 2002, Alvin Oga wrote:
 On Sat, 28 Dec 2002, Antoine Jacoutot wrote:
 From: Bruce Sass[EMAIL PROTECTED]

 ...
  /sbin/hdparm -d 1 /dev/hd[abc]
 
  Works like a treat!
 
 # hdparm -d 1 /dev/hda
 
 /dev/hda:
  setting using_dma to 1 (on)
  HDIO_SET_DMA failed: Operation not permitted
  using_dma=  0 (off)
 
  Do it as root

of course

 sometimes .. you have to make sure that the chips and
 the drive supports DMA ...
   - ( check the kernel IDE/dma options )

I think it is the chips which don't do DMA.
circa 1990 hardware

 and if hdparm was in your bootup files, it should have worked...

...it should not matter if done in /etc/init.d/hwtools, or from a
command line after boot, right?

hmmm...
# CONFIG_IDEDMA_AUTO is not set
# CONFIG_DMA_NONPCI is not set
...and I don't have the kernel source installed to check why I didn't
select these (I had no probs using DMA for sound, the only other DMA
a grep through the .config turned up).

but, aside from maybe installing a different kernel and trying DMA
again... (got a BIOS recognizing hda prob to fix first ;)

I'm curious about the PIO modes, and if one of those is what is being
used.  Since the drive is defaulting to a DMA mode but the OS isn't
doing DMA, is the system falling back to PIO and should explicitly
selecting the best PIO mode be expected to improve performance.

gotta lot of reading and fiddling to do


- Bruce


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Re: lyx-1.2

2002-12-13 Thread Bruce Sass
On Thu, 12 Dec 2002 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 At Wed, 11 Dec 2002 08:33:41 -0700 (MST),
 Bruce Sass wrote:

  On Tue, 10 Dec 2002, Craig Dickson wrote:
   That's nice, but I'm really waiting for lyx 1.3 with the Qt front-end.
   XForms is vile.
 
  Qt lyx-1.3.0cvs is worth trying out, feature frozen even.

 What Qt version is it supposed to link to? I prefer the leanness
 of pure gtk (v.1 without the gnome fluff). I want to create a
 well-structured document not an eye-candy filled desktop
 environment.

Qt2 or Qt3, needs automake1.5 or better.

I've built against the Qt in Woody,
and been told it works better with Qt3.


Turning off any KDE feature with animation or hover in its
description helps a lot.


- Bruce


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Re: lyx-1.2

2002-12-11 Thread Bruce Sass
On Tue, 10 Dec 2002, Craig Dickson wrote:
 That's nice, but I'm really waiting for lyx 1.3 with the Qt front-end.
 XForms is vile.

Qt lyx-1.3.0cvs is worth trying out, feature frozen even.


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Re: apt-get install -f fail, please help

2002-12-05 Thread Bruce Sass

did you do

# apt-get update

before the upgrade, and what is the output of:

# cat /etc/{debian_version,apt/sources.list}

-- 
On Thu, 5 Dec 2002, eric wrote:

 Dear Bruce or any linux er:

 Hi Bruce, thanks your reply and hint, it work most of it ,
 except
 progeny:/var/cache/apt/archives# apt-get upgrade
 Reading Package Lists... Done
 Building Dependency Tree... Done
 The following packages have been kept back
... lots ...


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Re: rebuilding available

2002-12-04 Thread Bruce Sass
On Wed, 4 Dec 2002, Michael P. Soulier wrote:
 Is it possible to rebuild the dpkg available file? I have on one a P75
 that's so big it's impossible to efficiently parse anymore. A simple dpkg -l
 takes minutes.

I don't think so, dlocate (from the pkg with the same name) is faster.


- Bruce


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Re: KDE sound

2002-12-04 Thread Bruce Sass
On Wed, 4 Dec 2002, Bruce Park wrote:
   I'm using KDE3 and I had a few questions regarding the sound server aRts.
 I need to edit the system volume but when I go into sounds in the control
 system, I don't see anything that pertains to volume. It states something
 about using a sound server at start up and I'm thinking that this should be
 arts. I do NOT have the arts plugin for XMMS nor do I really want to run a
 useless process and hog memory. Can someone recommend a way to manipulate
 the system volume?
   As always, any help or suggestion is greatly appreciated.

kmix, or any other mixer I'd imagine. artsd is mainly concerned with
getting the need to make sound from an app to the soundcard, not with
controlling how the sound is generated.


- Bruce


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Re: Proposal - non-free software removal

2002-11-17 Thread Bruce Sass
On 16 Nov 2002, John Hasler wrote:

 Bruce writes:
  If I was a company I would certainly be hesitant to do anything with
  Debian because it seems to have a problem with people making money off
  software.

 Baffle.  One of the most common reasons for packages to be in non-free is
 that their licenses forbid the making of money from them.

You may be able to convince them by pointing to non-free, and the
most common reason stuff is in non-free, or by showing them the
relevent sections of the DFSG--at least until non-free disappears and
the DFSG gets changed (if that is what actually happens).

I'm not referring to any specific technical reading of the DFSG, just
the impression a company trying to sell software is likely to get when
looking at supporting a distribution with an odd-ball packaging
scheme, GPL-like guidelines, and no support infrastructure for
commercial software.


Note:

they [Debian's developers] seem to have a problem with making money
off Linux

is a comment from the owner of a local Linux VAR.  I don't necessarily
agree with it, but couldn't really argue against it because I've never
tried to deal with Debian on a company - organisation level.
Unfortunately, the most vocal Debian proponent on the list, who
has his own consulting business, was unable or unwilling to counter
the claim.


- Bruce


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Re: Proposal - non-free software removal

2002-11-16 Thread Bruce Sass
On Sat, 16 Nov 2002, Nicolaus Kedegren wrote:
 On Fri, Nov 15, 2002 at 11:36:48AM -0700, Bruce Sass wrote:
  I think a much better solution would be for Debian to find a
  multi-national commercial partner to take over non-free before it
  gets dumped...  maybe HP.

   This is a typical _drone_ argument. There is no such thing as a
   multi-national corporation that works for the public good. Trust me, I
   work for one of 'em. The best solution for Debian is to completely drop
   non-free and let the control freaks fight it out amongst themselves.
  And just to satisfy my curiosity, why is HP so especially suited to
  take on the task of maintaining  non-free?

Ya, ok, partner was a bad choice, ally would have been better; I
would expect them to act in their own self interest (which should
coincide with that of Debian's users).

HP just kinda sprung to mind as a Debian friendly entity (DWN piece
about Debian being added to their TestDrive program, probably, iirc)
with a broad enough operation to support what would probably be a loss
leader.

joke
Maybe MS will run non-free to show they really do support
competition in the market.
/joke


- Bruce


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Re: Proposal - non-free software removal

2002-11-15 Thread Bruce Sass
On Fri, 15 Nov 2002, Travis Crump wrote:
...
 There is a long long ongoing debate in debian-devel[1] on this.  Please
 don't start another debate here.

This seems like the proper place for a discussion, they are wanting to
change the Social Contract, and we are the society they have the
contract with.

I'm worried that if Debian totally ignores the non-free software
world, it will ignore Debian.

I think a much better solution would be for Debian to find a
multi-national commercial partner to take over non-free before it
gets dumped...  maybe HP.


- Bruce


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Re: Use of telinit by regular users

2002-11-13 Thread Bruce Sass


On Wed, 13 Nov 2002, Cameron Dale wrote:

 I am not a member of this mailing list, so please copy me on all replies.

 I have a 4 year old laptop running potato (2.2r6). I use the various
 runlevels to
 control the services that are running. I want a regular user to be able to
 switch runlevels, but telinit seems to be able to only be run by root.

 Is there a way to get around this?

sudo, or maybe calife or super, perhaps with a gtk or gnome
frontend... presumably you know what you are doing and have a rescue
floppy handy, so I won't go into the hazards (probably couldn't do
'em justice anyways :)


- Bruce


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Re: KDE 3.0.4 update various errors struck....

2002-11-12 Thread Bruce Sass
On Wed, 13 Nov 2002, Haralambos Geortgilakis wrote:
 Hi Yall,

 from the Help   dang the update did not work dept

 What does this mean

 Unpacking libkcal2 (from .../libkcal2_4%3a3.0.4-1_i386.deb) ...
 dpkg: error processing
 /var/cache/apt/archives/libkcal2_4%3a3.0.4-1_i386.deb (--unpack):
  trying to overwrite `/usr/lib/libkcal.la', which is also in package
 kdepim-libs

The libkcal.la file exists in (at least) two packages, and dpkg don't
like that so it skips over the problem.  You can force the issue
with:
dpkg -i --force-overwrite /var/cache...libkcal2...deb

IF you are confident that doing so will not mess anything up.

 Selecting previously deselected package libkgantt0.
 Unpacking libkgantt0 (from .../libkgantt0_4%3a3.0.4-1_i386.deb) ...
 dpkg: error processing
 /var/cache/apt/archives/libkgantt0_4%3a3.0.4-1_i386.deb (--unpack):
  trying to overwrite `/usr/lib/libkgantt.so.0.0.2', which is also in
 package kdepim-libs

ditto for this also


Seeing how they are both KDE packages from the same release, I would
go ahead and --force-overwrite, then file a bug report.


- Bruce


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Re: [OT] literate programming

2002-10-20 Thread Bruce Sass
On Sun, 20 Oct 2002, Sean 'Shaleh' Perry wrote:
 On Sunday 20 October 2002 13:36, Bruce Sass wrote:
 
  Whether LyX:File-Build-Program generates a file set that adheres to
  GNU standards is something you would have to check for as the last
  part of the build procedure.

 rant please oh please just don't format your code according to GNU
 standards.  Brance at beginning of line, hanging brace on line above fine.
 BUt the brace does not belong half indented.  Ick
 /rant

Ya, it should be fully indented {
like
this
}

;)


- Bruce


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Re: kde system wide file associations

2001-09-12 Thread Bruce Sass
On Wed, 12 Sep 2001, joe golden wrote:

 I have a small network of seven machines.  Most students log on to the kde
 desktop.  Is there any way as root that I can alter file associations for
 all users on all machines so that all *.doc files and *.rtf files are
 automatically opened with abiword?  I know how to do this one by one, but I
 have 20 users.

see: /usr/share/mimelnk

either edit manually, or use the per-user GUI tool and cp


- Bruce



Re: Latest woody upgrade to causes fonts in X to disappear

2001-09-10 Thread Bruce Sass
On Mon, 10 Sep 2001, Bob Nielsen wrote:

 I did an 'apt-get upgrade' to my testing system yesterday and got  50
 MB of upgraded packages(!)

 This upgrade included version 4.10 of X. I notice now that on a large
 number of applications, such as the Gnome desktop and applications
 which have pop-up or drop-down menus, that the text has been replaced
 by squares (in fact, this makes Gnome essentially unusable; switching
 to kde restored much of the functionality).  I assume this means that a
 particular font got messed up by the upgrade, but I really don't know
 where to look.  Has anyone else seen this (and found a solution)?

I tried Gnome for the first time in a long time last night and had the
same problem, it was using blackbox - which looked OK, just the Gnome
bits were un-usable.  I fired up XFCE, started the gnome-panel (which
came up ok), used the gnome control center to change the gtk theme and
font, logged out, restarted gnome-session... and all is well[1].

I'm using the svga server from X-3.3.6.


- Bruce

[1] ...except that Gnome pauses for 2-3 second before it catches up
with the pointer when using the menus, and another 2-3 second pause
before it opens up a submenu... I think I'll stick with KDE, it may be
a little slower starting up apps, but at least it responds immediately
when the pointer is moved.




Re: How to handle unofficial package upgrade

2001-09-06 Thread Bruce Sass
On Thu, 6 Sep 2001, Greg Wiley wrote:

 Good day all-

 On a Debian Potato, I am using KDE 2.1 packages that
 are, obviously, not part of Potato but are from a fairly
 common source.

If you are using stuff Ivan Moore has done...

 Since KDE 2.2 is slated for inclusion in the upcoming
 Debian release, what is the best way to prepare for the
 upgrade?  I cannot assume that the new packages will
 be aware of the old and will upgrade them automatically
 ( will they?).

Sure you can.

 So, am I best off finding every trace of
 the non-Debian KDE and eradicating or will things just
 sort of work out if I leave it all alone?  Any suggestions?

If things don't `just work' Ivan will be getting some bug reports.

If you are running a KDE not built by Ivan, best be safe than sorry
and go do a search and destroy on KDE before upgrading.


- Bruce



Re: ALERT: XFree86 4.1.0-3 maintainer scripts hosed; please wait for 4.1.0-4

2001-08-31 Thread Bruce Sass
On Thu, 30 Aug 2001, Branden Robinson wrote:

 Folks might want to wait for 4.1.0-4.  I'm preparing it now.

 Several bugs have already been filed; no one needs to add to them.  The
 problem is understood, and the fix has been written and tested.

 If you already have 4.1.0-3 installed successfully, there is nothing to
 worry about.

 Data points:
 * the problem is in the preinst and postinst scripts of several of the
   packages, including ones that almost everyone has installed
 * if your /bin/sh is ash, you will likely have this problem

and just in case it is not obvious (or too scary)...

If you have sh linked to ash:
$ rm /bin/sh
$ ln -s /bin/bash /bin/sh
dselect - install, or whatever

...is now working away to install the 58 broken packages I accumulated
over the last couple of upgrades.

Branden, is there anyone who should not do the above?


- Bruce



Corel Linux (was: [ELUG] Interesting story in the news) (fwd)

2001-08-31 Thread Bruce Sass

Someone was wondering what's up with Corel Linux...

http://cbc.ca/cgi-bin/templates/view.cgi?/news/2001/08/29/corel_010829




Re: ALERT: XFree86 4.1.0-3 maintainer scripts hosed; please wait for 4.1.0-4

2001-08-31 Thread Bruce Sass
On Fri, 31 Aug 2001, Zephaniah E. Hull wrote:
 On Fri, Aug 31, 2001 at 12:33:08AM -0600, Bruce Sass wrote:
 snip
  and just in case it is not obvious (or too scary)...
 
  If you have sh linked to ash:
  $ rm /bin/sh
  $ ln -s /bin/bash /bin/sh
  dselect - install, or whatever
 
  ...is now working away to install the 58 broken packages I accumulated
  over the last couple of upgrades.
 
  Branden, is there anyone who should not do the above?

 Yes, almost everyone.

 The proper command is 'dpkg --purge ash'.

Seems a little heavy handed to me.
Ash is not broken, it just needs to be moved out of the way.

Dselect is done... ln -s /bin/ash /bin/sh
and all is well again.


- Bruce



Re: PrettyGoodPrivacy

2001-08-31 Thread Bruce Sass
On Fri, 31 Aug 2001, greg wrote:

 I've tried to install and use PGP but I'm having problems finding a
 suitable package for my Debian/GNUlinux 2.2 system. Would anyone point
 me in the right direction ?

You've heard about gpg already...

The international version of PGP 5 is available in a package named:
pgp5i, in the non-US archive.


- Bruce



Re: no mouse with X

2001-08-30 Thread Bruce Sass
On Thu, 30 Aug 2001, Cliff Sarginson wrote:
 On Thu, Aug 30, 2001 at 01:51:15PM -0400, Eric Cheney wrote:
 
  Hello.  I'm trying to introduce a debian box to my officeI am not
  a sysadmin, so I stumble a little bit with these things.  Anyway, I want to 
  make
  a good impression of deb.   I've installed woody.  I'm getting weird things
  with the mouse.  Can somebody help?  Here's what's up.
 
  I loaded up X server and it connects and all that.  If I start X with
  gpm, I get a mouse, but it is very erratic and unacceptable.  So, if
  I remove gpm, and then restart X, the mouse works fine under X.  Ok,
  if I then reboot, there's no connection to the mouse without gpm; so after
  reboot (after removing gpm), the mouse is dead under X.
 
  In the XF86Config-4 setup file I have the mouse on /dev/psaux.  I checked,
  and there is a link from /dev/psaux - gpmdata.  I'm using a ps/2 mouse.
 
 That is correct.

Hmmm... try X looking at /dev/gpmdata, gpm looking at /dev/psaux and
repeating `raw'

--- /etc/gpm.conf ---
device=/dev/psaux
responsiveness=
repeat_type=raw
type=ps2
append=-l \a-zA-Z0-9_.:~/\300-\326\330-\366\370-\377\
-

 Console mouse (gpm) and window managers don't always get on well, I recall
 this is often a particular problem with gnome.

Works for me with twm, mwm, blackbox, icewm, xfce, and KDE...
I don't use Gnome though.


- Bruce



can't open /var/lib/dhelp/titles

2001-08-22 Thread Bruce Sass
Hi,

Would someone please post the output of ls -l /var/lib/dhelp.

TIA


- Bruce



Re: can't open /var/lib/dhelp/titles

2001-08-22 Thread Bruce Sass
On Wed, 22 Aug 2001, allen wayne best just ramblin in his amx wrote:
 On Wednesday 22 August 2001 17:08, Bruce Sass wrote:
  Would someone please post the output of ls -l /var/lib/dhelp.

 [EMAIL PROTECTED] Build IA32 [/root]! #ls -l /var/lib/dhelp
 total 842
 -rw-r--r--1 root root   815104 Aug 15 10:01 dbase
 -rw-r--r--1 root root28672 Jul 18 17:05 dbase_fsstnd
 -rw-r--r--1 root root10240 Aug 15 10:01 titles
 -rw-r--r--1 root root 1280 Jul 18 17:05 titles_fsstnd

:-/  Darn, and I'd have put money on the problem (dhelp_parse failing
when installing stuff) being a result of inadvertently doing a cp -R
on /var instead of cp -a. sigh

Oh well, I guess I'll have to actually use a brain cell or two to
solve this one.  ;-)

Sorry 'bout bugging the list.


- Bruce



Re: can't open /var/lib/dhelp/titles

2001-08-22 Thread Bruce Sass
On Wed, 22 Aug 2001, Eric G. Miller wrote:
 On Wed, Aug 22, 2001 at 06:08:37PM -0600, Bruce Sass wrote:
  Would someone please post the output of ls -l /var/lib/dhelp.

 dhelp is broken in unstable if that's what you're referring to.  There's
 already a bug report on it.

That's it... darn coincidences.

[I.O.Eric one brain cell] :)


- Bruce




Re: How do I make python2 work with readline?

2001-08-16 Thread Bruce Sass
On Thu, 16 Aug 2001, Oleksandr Moskalenko wrote:

   Hello,

  I'm puzzled as to why python2 doesn't use readline. I'm learning Python
 and really liked command line capabilities that 1.5.2 + readline
 provided. However, python2 doesn't seem to utilize readline leading to
 some horrible experience for someone like me who makes a lot of
 mistypings.
  Does anybody know how to wrestle python2 into using readline?

I think it is a bug; python2 is Python-2.0.1, so readline should be
uncommented in Setup because 2.0.1 is supposed to be GPL compatible.
shrug

The Python-2.1.1 packages in http://people.debian.org/~flight/ have
been working ok for me, or you can build 2.0 yourself under
/usr/local.


- Bruce



Re: FW: Careful. This is for information only.

2001-08-08 Thread Bruce Sass
On 7 Aug 2001, John Hasler wrote:
 Ian writes:
  Seems like a pretty grey area though.  He is ultimately responsible for
  it.  There has been enough publicity about CR to ascertain that the
  system admin was negligent in his duty.

 Someone on Advogato just pointed out another risk.  What if you only popped
 up a message but someone else installed a nasty trojan?  How do you prove
 that you didn't do it?

The burden of proof should be on the accuser, especially when dozens
(hundreds, thousands?) of computer owner's log files show the box was
engaged in a potentially damaging activity before the warning dialog
popped up.  Perhaps checking with a registry of infected/infested
machines first would help.

If someone put a vermicide package in Debian, I would probably install
and use it... for sure if it had a sequence of actions that were
triggered by sucessive probes from the infested machine (ranging from
least to most intrusive, and taking steps to minimise the equivalent
of a DDOS attack on the infected machine).

I think the time is right for software antibiotic and vermicide
packages, and I think anything that helps stop the spread of
infectious agents would be welcome by everyone using the 'net for
legitimate purposes... as long as the steps taken are not proactive,
there should be little room for the owners of systems that get
medicated to accuse the users of such packages of engaging in
nefarious activities.


- Bruce



Re: IP Masquerading

2001-08-08 Thread Bruce Sass
On Tue, 7 Aug 2001, Vineet Kumar wrote:
 * [EMAIL PROTECTED] ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) [010807 10:35]:
  What is a good program for Windows 98 that will allow me to set up IP
  Masquerading to share my internet connection with some Linux boxes?
 
 The Right Way to do this is to make one of the Linux machines do the
 masquerade. A windows 98 machine should never used as any type of server
 / gateway / anything except a desktop system.

 Additionally, this list is the wrong place to ask questions about
 windows programs.

If you are implying he should have asked on a Windows list...
would he have got the same Right answer?

Maybe he did the right thing.  ;-)


- Bruce



Re: FW: Careful. This is for information only.

2001-08-08 Thread Bruce Sass
On 8 Aug 2001, John Hasler wrote:
 Bruce writes:
  If someone put a vermicide package in Debian,...

 Such a package cannot go into Debian.  Besides, such a thing should not be
 used by anyone not prepared to build it from source.

  I think the time is right for software antibiotic and vermicide packages,
  and I think anything that helps stop the spread of infectious agents
  would be welcome by everyone using the 'net for legitimate purposes... as
  long as the steps taken are not proactive, there should be little room
  for the owners of systems that get medicated to accuse the users of such
  packages of engaging in nefarious activities.

 I agree with you completely, but the NatCops are unlikely to agree with you
 at all.

There is safety in numbers... hence the call for packages (binary,
source, or installer, using Debian's terminology).  The NetCops (Nat
was a typo?) obviously don't know what to do except threaten legal
action, and I believe they would be seen as the bad guys for harassing
people trying to minimise or fix something they themselves recognize
as a serious problem.

It would be a good test of `Good Samaritan' laws, if nothing else.


- Bruce



Re: FW: Careful. This is for information only.

2001-08-08 Thread Bruce Sass
On 8 Aug 2001, John Hasler wrote:
 Bruce Sass writes:

  The NetCops (Nat was a typo?)

 No.  'NatCops' == 'National Police': FBI, BATF, DEA, Treasury Agents, etc.
 It comes from an old alternate-worlds sf story I disremember the name of.
 In that world one did _not_ call a NatCop 'NatCop' to his face.

Ok, thanks.

Here in Canada it would be the RCMP
(and probably CSIS).

Has anyone asked the NatCops what they think of vermicidal and
antibiotic software? (i.e., has it come up before and elicited an
official response from any organisation)

It would be kinda like doctors doing house calls, everyone old enough
probably misses that, eh.  Like everything else in life, good
salesmanship would go a long way.


- Bruce [off to find an email address for the RCMP]



jurisdictions (was: FW: Careful. This is for information only.)

2001-08-08 Thread Bruce Sass
On 8 Aug 2001, John Hasler wrote:
 Bruce Sass writes:
  Here in Canada it would be the RCMP

 Except that the US purports to have no national police, police power being
 one of those powers supposedly reserved to the States by the Constitution.

Searching the RCMP site reveals they consider computer crimes to be
a matter for the local police.  The only mention of viruses, etc., I
have found (so far) is unconnected to any program or service they
offer.

Not encouraging.


- Bruce



Re: FW: Careful. This is for information only.

2001-08-08 Thread Bruce Sass
On Wed, 8 Aug 2001, Dave Sherohman wrote:
 On Wed, Aug 08, 2001 at 02:08:57PM -0600, Bruce Sass wrote:
  Has anyone asked the NatCops what they think of vermicidal and
  antibiotic software? (i.e., has it come up before and elicited an
  official response from any organisation)

 Late last month, news reports say that there was much discussion within
 FBI, etc. regarding what to do about CR and antiworms were dismissed on
 the basis that it would be sinking to the original author's level.

Ya, releasing more self-replicating code into the environment is
probably a bad idea, no better than biological warfare.

I'm thinking of an automated and distributed response system. The idea
is to identify infested machines, take increasingly intrusive measures
to notify the sysadmin of the problem, finally either cleaning the box
or disconnecting it from the 'net.  The course of action taken in the
last step would be determined on the basis of whether or not the owner
of the machine had opted-in to the auto-cleaning service.

Betcha it would `fly' in the corporate world if you charged
money for the cleaning service, and got rid of the notifications...


- Bruce



Re: jurisdictions (was: FW: Careful. This is for information only.)

2001-08-08 Thread Bruce Sass
On 8 Aug 2001, John Hasler wrote:

 Bruce writes:
  Searching the RCMP site reveals they consider computer crimes to be a
  matter for the local police.

 Sounds good to me.

Sure, once an offender has been identified.

  Not encouraging.

 Why?  I've seen no evidence that the bungling boobs at the FBI have been
 any help.

I have confidence that my local police force can collaborate
effectively with a jurisdiction on the other side of the country, but
once you start crossing international borders...  also, taking Canada
and the US as examples, any cooperation between the two nations that
involves `problem areas', rather than specific incidents, seems to be
handled by the RCMP and one of the organizations you mentioned (Drug
Enforcement Administration; Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms,
etc.)

Essentially, this international issue is not on the RCMP's radar;
viruses, trojans, etc., are seen as a matter of keeping ones virus
scanning software up to date (too bad that paradigm doesn't seem to be
working).  So far, it looks like the federal government will need to
pass explicit laws making viruses, etc., illegal before the RCMP
can/will even consider the issue... that is not encouraging because
governments tend to be slow and too cut'n'dried/black'n'white with
their remedies.


- Bruce



Re: Python 2.1 .debs (for sid)

2001-08-07 Thread Bruce Sass
On 7 Aug 2001, João Alfredo wrote:
 Does anyone knows where I can find it?!?

http://people.debian.org/~flight/




Re: PINE

2001-07-18 Thread Bruce Sass
On Wed, 18 Jul 2001, User zos wrote:

 Compiling Pine on a debian system doesn't work out of the box in my
 experiance. There are .debs of Pine 4.22 last time I checked, but its been
 a while. I have compiled Pine on a few debian boxen and if you are
 interested in making a compile from source work (the better option vs. a
 debianized source package IMHO) you should look at the makefile structure
 of pine and start looking at why it won't compile. I think I remember it
 complaining about not seeing libraries and going and changing those
 references manually. Hope that helps.

This may help someone compiling Pine...
The Pine people confirmed it as a known problem and said it would be
fixed next release.

---
From [EMAIL PROTECTED] Wed Jul 18 02:17:41 2001
Date: Tue, 26 Jun 2001 23:51:42 -0600 (MDT)
From: Bruce Sass [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: build lnp sys/time.h problem

Hi,

Here is what I have...
Pine 4.33
libc6: glibc-2.2.3
gcc: gcc-2.95.4
on a Debian testing/unstable system (a.k.a. Woody/Sid)

Here is what I saw (close enough)...
in tz_sv4.c, function rfc822_timezone, line 30:
tzname undeclared, daylight undeclared,
dereferencing pointer to incomplete type

The last line was common to all the time.h related errors that came up
when these where compiling:
imap/src/osdep/unix/{os_lnx.c,news.c,phile.c}

I also fixed mh.c and mx.c, just 'cause they were probably next.

The fix was s!sys/time.h!time.h!
pointed out by a note in the sys/time.h file provided by libc6.
---

- Bruce



Re: python2 and qt

2001-07-16 Thread Bruce Sass
Yes.

I've built sip and PyQt (2.5pre stuff) in /usr/local against Debian's
Python-1.5.2 and 2.0.1, and 2.1 in /usr/local... in all cases, I used
--with-python=/path/to/py/executable in the ./configure ...
command and everything just worked.


- Bruce

-- 
On Sun, 15 Jul 2001, Sergio E. Schvezov wrote:
 sorry for not saying i have Sid, I've installed that package and can import
 it with no problems with python (from python-base), but not with python2
 (python2-base)
 So do i have to build pyqt against python-2.x?
 TIA

 * Bruce Sass ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote:
  On Sun, 15 Jul 2001, Sergio E. Schvezov wrote:
   hi, simple q, maybe hard answer, here goes:
   how can i work with python2 and qt in debian?
  Right now, for stable... build PyQt and Python-2.x yourself.
  Sid has python-pyqt, built against Python-1.5.2.



Re: python2 and qt

2001-07-15 Thread Bruce Sass
On Sun, 15 Jul 2001, Sergio E. Schvezov wrote:
 hi, simple q, maybe hard answer, here goes:
 how can i work with python2 and qt in debian?

Right now, for stable... build PyQt and Python-2.x yourself.

Sid has python-pyqt, built against Python-1.5.2.


- Bruce



Re: startx -- :1

2001-07-11 Thread Bruce Sass
On Tue, 10 Jul 2001, Kent West wrote:
 harsha wrote:
  gave startx -- :1
  but this is what happens
...
 I noticed this a few months ago on my machines also (running Sid). I
 don't know if the startx script/sequence is broken, or if the procedure
 has been changed, but some one a few weeks back mentioned that you can
 get around the problem by adding the vt number you want. For example,
 you'd type:
   startx -- :1 vt8

I missed that, thanks.

 I hope it's just a bug and not a new method; I know it's been filed as a
 bug, but I haven't checked on the status lately.

ditto.

The command line has gone from, e.g.,

startx blackbox -- :1
to
startx /usr/bin/blackbox -- :1 vt6

which means,
to get the same functionality you need to do...

startx `which blackbox` -- :1 `nextfreevt`

...but I don't think there is a nextfreevt program available.


- Bruce



Re: migrating debian unstable to debian testing ?

2001-07-03 Thread Bruce Sass
On Tue, 3 Jul 2001, Bostjan Muller wrote:

 I'd like to know if there is any way of downgrading all packages from Debian
 unstable (sid) version to Debian testing (woody) version?

Hmmm, I seem to recall a message (a month or so ago) stating that you
could force a downgrade by pinning all the packages to testing, then
doing a dist-upgrade.

I'd backup everything first and have a working rescue disk on hand
before trying it... well, if I didn't like living dangerously.  ;)


- Bruce



Re: Re. Total Confusion

2001-07-02 Thread Bruce Sass
On Mon, 2 Jul 2001, D-Man wrote:
 On Sun, Jul 01, 2001 at 02:49:43AM -0700, Sidney Brooks wrote:
 | For those of you who tried to help with my problem, several weeks
 | ago, here is a statement of the problem and solution.

 | After following all suggestions offered here and consulting with a
 | computer technician, the conclusion was that it had to be the modem.
 | I bought a new Diamond modem and both versions of linux now get me
 | online. Our guess is that I had a line surge that knocked out a part
 | of the modem that linux requires, but that Windows can do without.

 It is always good to find a solution :-).

 | I still have two minor problems that I may be able to work out myself. In
 | order to get on line with Debian, I must use ppp. Minicom and wvdial
 | connect but fail to authenticate.

 As Wayne mentioned, minicom and wvdial aren't supposed to authenticate
 or maintain a ppp connection, that is pppd's job :-).  minicom is an
 _interactive_  dialer.

Minicom is a terminal program or comm program... as in dial up
over a serial line, login, use your shell account.

 It is only inteneded to dial the modem, no
 more, no less.

No, it is intended as a comm program.

 Also, because it is interactive, it is only really
 useful when determining what the dialog with the ISP should be, and
 then it is essential.

It is interactive because a comm program would be useless if it
was not.

...
 I used minicom to see what my ISP sends and what it expects.  With the
 knowledge of these expect-send pairs I set up a chat script (chat
 controls the modem and is driven by a set of expect-send strings in a
 config file) and use 'pon' to dial.

Sounds like a good use of minicom if you don't have serial access to a
box.

...
 Minicom is a great tool for determining how your ISP
 handles an incoming call, then after that it isn't really useful
 because (AFAIK) it isn't scriptable.

Yes it is, but if you don't have a dialup shell account the feature
is kinda useless (it simulates keypresses), eh.

Youngsters!  What is this world coming to, never heard of a comm prg,
probably don't know what x/y/zmodem and kermit are either.  ;)

just for the fun of it...
I can dial in and read my mail/surf-the-web using a C64 and a comm
program, and if my ZX81 was still working I could hook up a home-built
low-speed modem I built many years ago and use it.

Maybe I'll go have a nap now, I'm feeling old all of a sudden.  :)


- Bruce



Re: editing /etc/init.d

2001-07-02 Thread Bruce Sass
On Mon, 2 Jul 2001, john gennard wrote:

 I need to edit a script in /etc/init.d to allow a program, which I
 haven't been able to get to run, to log what is happening.

 So far I've not touched this area and find the manpage for
 'update-rc.d' a little confusing. The script to be edited is linked
 to /etc/rc0/   /etc/rc6/ (as defaults with runlevels and
 sequence code). Do I need to remove all of these links with -f,
 so running 'update rc.d -f xx defaults' ?
 I presume I could run the same command with -n instead of -f
 just to have a 'look-see' -but I'm wary of touching something I
 don't yet understand. In any event this seems too simple.

 Would someone be good enough to advise me.

Don't use update-rc.d

It is great for what it was intended, package maintenance scripts...
but is just an extra layer of potential confusion for the sysadmin
who just wants to stop xdm from starting in rl3 (whatever).

I customize rl's 2-4 and 7-9 with rm and ln commands, and leave rl5
alone - don't touch _one_ of rl's 2-5 and Debian will honour your
configs through upgrades.


- Bruce



Re: Which web server for multiple domains?

2001-06-29 Thread Bruce Sass
On Thu, 28 Jun 2001, Craig Dickson wrote:

 I've been using the web server Boa, and generally it has done a good job
 without using up too much memory or CPU time. The one thing it doesn't
 do that I now need is to host multiple domains as logically-distinct
 sites. E.g. if someone requests www.domain1.com (not my real domain
 name, btw), I want a different page to come up than if they request
 www.domain2.com, even though the DNS addresses for those sites are
 identical. From the docs, I think Boa could do it if the two sites were
 served through separate network interfaces, but that's not the case
 here. There's one network interface, and the only difference between
 www.domain1.com and www.domain2.com is the domain in the URL (which I
 believe HTTP does provide to the server, so the server should be able
 to differentiate based on it).

 Does anyone know if Boa can do this, or if any of the other servers
 could? (I daresay AOLServer or Apache could, but I'd rather go with a
 smaller, simpler server if it will do what I need).

Hmmm, it sounds like you want the virtual host thing...

- add VirtualHost to  /etc/boa/boa.conf

- edit /etc/hosts to look like, say...
127.0.0.1   you localhost
127.0.0.2   other1  localhost
127.0.0.3   other2  localhost

- setup /var/www to have dirs named, 127.0.0.{1,2,3}

- restart boa

requests for:
http://you/, http://other1/, and http://other2/ will be served out of
localhost/var/www/127.0.{1,2,3}, respectively.


- Bruce



Re: Unix administrator

2001-06-29 Thread Bruce Sass
On Fri, 29 Jun 2001, Matthew Garman wrote:

   - set up X
   - configure and use network devices: ethernet, serial analog modem,
 etc.
   - install and use a printer
   - download a program's source code, compile it, and install it on your
 system (i.e., do *not* use the system's package management tool to
 install software)

- do figure out how the package management system(s) work
  (because they are starting to turn up everywhere)

   - configure system services, especially common ones such as:
   - FTP (e.g. proftpd)
   - a web server (e.g. Apache)
   - a mailer (e.g. postfix, or sendmail if you're brave)
   - secure shell (e.g. OpenSSH)
   - familiarize yourself with shell scripts (and maybe perl
 scripts)---at *least* enough that you can understand what's going on
 in them (and that's a bare minimum)
   - configure and recompile your kernel


All worth repeating.  :)


- Bruce



Re: big IBM harddisk (fwd)

2001-06-27 Thread Bruce Sass
On Wed, 27 Jun 2001, Frank Zimmermann wrote:
 virtanen wrote:
  I tried, but if I connect my IBM, the machine doesn't boot at all...

 This sounds pretty much like a hardware failure to me. I had a
 problem when one of my harddrives was broken. I always got a drive
 error and the PC wouln't boot at all. No matter where I put the HD.
 If you have the possibility to check the HD on another PC do it ASAP.

Not necessarily.  I picked up a 30G drive a couple of weeks ago,
jumped through a hoop to install it as hda with the MBR on hda,
everything was fine... until I thought it would be a good idea to put
a small DOS partition at the start of the disk.  DOS couldn't handle
the big HD and left the BIOS in a state where it doesn't recognize the
master HD anymore and refuses to boot (but I can still boot from a
floppy); I may need to swap hda and hdb if I can't re-convince the
BIOS that there is actually a drive hd0.


- Bruce




Re: OT: C++ Newbie and KDE/QT

2001-06-26 Thread Bruce Sass
On Tue, 26 Jun 2001, Brendon wrote:

 This summer holiday I took on the task of learning C++ with (shamefully :)
 the help of C++ For Dummies.

 Having tried to learn C++ in the past I'm now reasonably familar with it's
 synax so i thought i'd also try learning QT/KDE programming at the same time.
 But the tutorials I've been through on the doc.trolltech.com site have left
 me a little disappointed.

 Does anyone know of a good site where QT/KDE programming is explained? And
 what did you start with when learning C++?

Have you installed the kdevelop package.  iirc, it comes with a
tutorial and some other KDE programming material, their site should
also have some good stuff.


- Bruce



Re: help? dpkg db screwed up

2001-06-18 Thread Bruce Sass
On Mon, 18 Jun 2001, Iain wrote:
 I seem to have put the dpkg database into a bad state.
 I was attempting to install phpgroupware from unstable onto a potato system.
 Anyway somewhere along the installation process it screwed up so I tried to 
 remove
 it.

 dpkg -r phpgroupware

 gives the following:

 dpkg: error processing phpgroupware (--remove):
  Package is in a very bad inconsistent state - you should
  reinstall it before attempting a removal.
 Errors were encountered while processing:
  phpgroupware

 Reinstalling it gives the following:

 Selecting previously deselected package phpgroupware.
 (Reading database ... 16354 files and directories currently installed.)
 Preparing to replace phpgroupware 0.9.10v-6 (using 
 phpgroupware_0.9.10v-6_all.deb)
 ...
 Unpacking replacement phpgroupware ...
 dpkg: warning - old post-removal script returned error exit status 10
 dpkg - trying script from the new package instead ...
 dpkg: error processing phpgroupware_0.9.10v-6_all.deb (--install):
  subprocess new post-removal script returned error exit status 10
 dpkg: error while cleaning up:
  subprocess post-removal script returned error exit status 10
 Errors were encountered while processing:
  phpgroupware_0.9.10v-6_all.deb

Hmmm, there should be something in the ... bit that tells you what
the actual problem is, and (about?) which line of the post-removal
script is causing the problem -- comment out that line (in
/var/lib/dpkg/info/phpgroupware.postrm) and try using the pkg mgt
tools again (make note of what the line is supposed to do, just in
case you need to do it manually).

As a last resort, or if it is a small (few files) package, you can
manually remove it:
- run any necessary commands from the pre and post removal scripts
- rm all the files listed in /var/lib/pkg/info/phpgroupware.list that
  do not also belong to another software package
- edit out the entry for phpgroupware in /var/lib/dpkg/status

 I have tried dpkg -r --force-remove-reinstreq phpgroupware

 but it doesn't work either.

 Is there some way I can get things back to normal? Please help.

There are usually a few options, but without seeing the full text of
the messages you are getting it is tough to say which is the best fix.

HTH

- Bruce



Re: KDE on a slow machine (was: Best WM for slow machine?)

2001-06-11 Thread Bruce Sass
On Sun, 10 Jun 2001, Margarete Hans wrote:
 Mmh. My laptop has 20 MB of RAM. I don't think that I'll be using it
 very extensively - it is rather a test to decide if I'm going to
 install debian on my main computer, which by now is also starting to
 get old (166 with 32 MB of RAM and 3 GB HD - still running windows

With 20M (or even 24) you would want to keep an eye on how much and
what is being swapped, just so you can tell the difference between
poor system performance and an overtaxed system.  I usually run top on
a 132x60 text console, or do something like
alias snap=top -n3 -d1  ~/top.txt
to keep an eye on this stuff.

 (  ). Does gnome use as much memory as KDE?

shrug...

 Besides, what does KDE give you more than these smaller WMs?

Most noticeable would be the Control Center style configuration
handling of the KDE and kapps, the apparent embedding of one app
in another (e.g., previewers in konqueror), and a framework for doing
the desktop shortcuts and mimetype magic things you want.

Aside from the embedding stuff, you can probably do everything KDE
does via xsession, etc., with a non-DE window manager.


...I ran a little experiment.

Procedure: for wm in none,twm,blackbox,kde2
reboot
text login
top -n3 -d1  ...
start wm
wait
top -n3 -d1  ...
then
   for wm in none,twm,blackbox,kde2
reboot
start wm
wait
text login
top -n3 -d1 ...

Results (representative):

--first top after a reboot
23:15:20 up 2 min,  1 user,  load average: 0.35, 0.36, 0.15
30 processes: 29 sleeping, 1 running, 0 zombie, 0 stopped
CPU states:  35.9% user,  12.9% system,   0.0% nice,  51.2% idle
Mem: 62864K total,35172K used,27692K free, 1344K buffers
Swap:55664K total,0K used,55664K free,22112K cached

--twm
23:19:26 up 3 min,  2 users,  load average: 0.01, 0.18, 0.12
32 processes: 31 sleeping, 1 running, 0 zombie, 0 stopped
CPU states:  19.3% user,   7.5% system,   0.0% nice,  73.2% idle
Mem: 62864K total,38984K used,23880K free, 1440K buffers
Swap:55664K total,0K used,55664K free,23804K cached

--blackbox
23:30:40 up 3 min,  2 users,  load average: 0.13, 0.21, 0.13
32 processes: 31 sleeping, 1 running, 0 zombie, 0 stopped
CPU states:  20.1% user,   8.0% system,   0.0% nice,  71.9% idle
Mem: 62864K total,37464K used,25400K free, 1396K buffers
Swap:55664K total,0K used,55664K free,23232K cached

--kde2
00:04:50 up 8 min,  2 users,  load average: 0.53, 1.19, 0.67
50 processes: 49 sleeping, 1 running, 0 zombie, 0 stopped
CPU states:  58.1% user,   9.8% system,   0.0% nice,  32.1% idle
Mem: 62864K total,61432K used, 1432K free, 2048K buffers
Swap:55664K total,8K used,55656K free,32416K cached

Notes:  The uptimes show the time taken to startup the X environment
via kdm, switch to a tty, login, then do a top command (with a
486DX2-25); I ended up doing kde2 4 times 'cause I got hit with
`maximal mount count reached...' twice, both times no swap was used.

Conclusions:  Compared to twm or blackbox, KDE2 takes about 6 times
longer to startup and needs about 64M of RAM to avoid swapping, plus
whatever your apps need if you want to actual use KDE without swapping
(although, from experience, switching between apps usually only takes
a few seconds and switching desktops or giving focus to large apps
that got swapped out, takes quite a few seconds, even at 25MHz).  Not
for the impatient, but what do you expect from something that was
probably rescued from the scrap heap or landfill.


HTH,

Bruce





Re: Xemacs Debian packaging systems

2001-06-10 Thread Bruce Sass
On 10 Jun 2001, Glyn Millington wrote:
...
 Well I ran Xemacs as root and did some upgrading with it's packaging
 system and it doesn't appear to have done any harm ;-) Maybe we should
 just have assumed that apt-get is just too damned good to be thrown by
 Xemacs' antics!

The only time you should run into a problem doing this sorta thing is
if: the app managed package contains the same files as a Debian
package, but they do something different; or you purge the Debian
package and it takes out something the app installed package needs.


- Bruce



Re: gnome/KDE

2001-06-10 Thread Bruce Sass
On Sun, 10 Jun 2001, Phillip Deackes wrote:
 On Sun, 10 Jun 2001 01:16:40 -0400
 Margarete Hans [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

  What are the advantages/disadvantages of gnome and KDE? Basically,
  which one should I install?

 Depends. We all have our favourite window manager (although KDE and Gnome
 are more than window managers, they are more 'window environments').

desktop environments, actually.

 Personally, I don't like KDE very much - the 'KDE' angle is very prominent
 and when using it, 'KDE' is in your face all the time - KDE this, KDE that
 , Kwhatever and so on. Running non-KDE apps in the KDE environment almost

...and with gnome it seems to be Gwhatever shrug.

 makes you feel you are doing something wrong! I also don't like the look
 that qt (the library on which KDE is based) gives to windows.

I don't like the default KDE setup either, but a couple of clicks gets
you a nice BeOS(?) window style, or motif, or windows, or... and if
that is not enough there are themes and icon themes to play with...
but it is just eye-candy kinda stuff.

 Gnome seems to me to be less pervasive - OK, there are plenty of Gnome
 apps around but they look good - less plastic and more functional, more
 like other non-gnome apps. A Gnome environment looks good with Gnome and
 non-Gnome apps. Gnome is based on GTK libraries and there are plenty of
 other GTK Linux apps around which have nothing to do with Gnome.

There is nothing stopping someone running Gnome or GTK based apps in
KDE, and they should look the same in either environment - if that is
what you want.

 Both are attempts to give Linux that conformity of look  feel that
 Windows has. Both are fairly easily configurable as regards the look.

Look'n'feel is a small part of it; interoperability between apps and
the technical infrastructure you need to do the ActiveX and COM kinda
stuff you see with Windows is more important -- you can't get that
with the traditional X based window managers, and it is still not
quite there for either Gnome or KDE.

 Obviously, these are personal observations and you will almost certainly
 get the complete opposite opinion from someone else. The answer really is
 to try both and see which you prefer.

Definately, but you will need to try both for _awhile_ to get a true
picture... there is a lot more to the DEs than just looks'n'feels.

I suggest installing and using both (if you have the room), then
reporting back to the list in a few weeks with the results of the
test.  :)


- Bruce



KDE on a slow machine (was: Best WM for slow machine?)

2001-06-10 Thread Bruce Sass
On Sun, 10 Jun 2001, Margarete Hans wrote:

 Woops... I was just planning on installing KDE on my old computer
 (486, 40kHz CPU). I guess I'll try something else if there are already
 problems running it on a 166...

The problem is not the 166, it is the 16 (Meg of RAM).
I'm running KDE on a 486DX2-25 and it works fine...
once it gets running.  KDE startup is, and some apps
(e.g., konquorer in a largish dir) can be, very slow.

I wouldn't try it with less than 32M of RAM, and if I had less than
the 64M I have I would probably use something else (KDE would run,
but it would be too painful to run the 4 or 5 apps I usually have
going at the same time).

Someone just interested in checking out KDE to see what is there could
get by with 24M of RAM.


- Bruce



Re: debian on a 486

2001-06-10 Thread Bruce Sass
On Mon, 11 Jun 2001, Robert Ruzbacky wrote:
  Hi.  I want to put debian on a 486 that I recently got from my school.
 .
   for the boot disk, or find an older debian boot disk and hope it works
  with the machine and still works with the debian installation process.

 You could try using an old version of debian like debian 1.3 (Bo).  I think
 you can get it in the archivesit should work fine for a 486.  Mine came

I'd suggest ver2.0 (get it from archive.debian.org) for any
floppy based intallation on a resource limited box.

There is a low mem install (4Meg or better), the boot floppy uses the
slow-safe-and-stupid driver (it was the only one that would work on
the 486 I installed a couple of weeks ago), there are static
versions of apt-get and dpkg available for it (easy upgrade path), and
it doesn't need much HD space for the base system.


- Bruce



Re: (dup) serial port: LSR safety check engaged (fwd)

2001-06-07 Thread Bruce Sass
On Mon, 4 Jun 2001, J.A.Serralheiro wrote:
 well, cant tell exactly whats the problem
 if you have a pnp card, then running pnpdump will tell you what
 configurations are supported by that card. Then, all you have to do is run
 isapnp with the particular configuration you want.

I looked at that... pnpdump spits out the same as what I used to config
the card, well over a year ago.

 Be sure of one thing, if your kenel has isapnp built in, then you will
 have many problems.

serial.o is builtin, isa-pnp.o is a module.

 before configure isapnp.conf with the start up
 configuration of you pnp modem (I think) ytou must recompile the kernel
 without isapnp built in ( but with plug and play supports still built in).
 Probably you kernel identifies the board and then isapnp tries to
 reconfigure it. THe thing is that you get
  LSR blah blah
 ISAPNP is allways run at start up. usually isapnp.conf is empty so there
 ae no problems. If you put something there you must check what I told you.

I've moved isapnp.conf out of the way and rebooted, it matters not.

But why would it stop working all of a sudden???
It must be something in testing/unstable... everything worked well,
until setserial started playing around with that AUTOSAVE crap.

 I had to do this because of another matter ( similiar). I couldnt 
 configure
 my modem with the exact configuration I wanted AND was supported by the
 card.

This is not a new card, kernel, or config setup...


later,

Bruce




pinning down... serial port: LSR safety check engaged

2001-06-07 Thread Bruce Sass
  It has worked with an explicit 'skip_test' and the implicit test, with
  both the 2.2.15 and 2.4.3 kernels.

 I wouldn't be surprised if it sometimes works without skip_test.  Has it
 ever failed with it?  Is skip_test in /etc/serial.conf?

Yes, during this and the previous round.  Not right now.


This is the best I can do to pin it down...

Looking at the timestamps of older serial.conf-s I can tell that I ran
with skip_test until problems cropped up with irq7 on the same port
(turned out to be the sound card), skip_test went out while I redid
isapnp to use irq3.  At some point I put skip_test back in until the
first episode of LSR..., by then I had moved from Potato/2.2.15|17
to Woody/2.4.3, then to Sid/Woody (although I don't think there are
many woodies on the system anymore).

The problem first hit a few weeks after adding unstable to
sources.list, closer to when I started to fiddle with setserial via
the debconf interface, not clearly associated with an upgrade (i.e.,
I have toggled the connection a few times without problems in both
instances), and only after a reboot.

I may have triggered an unlikely bug with some combination of manual
and automated serial.conf fiddling at just the wrong time, coupled
with setserial changing the infrastructure for handling serial.conf
and isapnptool upgrades.

Looking at the changelogs shows the most recent upgrade which would
directly affect ttyS3 to be that of isapnp (May 18), but if that
borked things I should have noticed earlier 'cause libc6 has been
through a few quick upgrades since then (I reboot whenever libc gets
an upgrade). To make things interesting... isapnptools was also
upgraded (Apr 17) a little before I recall having LSR problems the
first time (before the end of April, but I destroyed the timestamp
evidence, no backup, oops), and I would have rebooted when xlibs got
an upgrade (Apr 29). I don't have a clue as to exactly when or how I
fiddled with serial.conf during this timeframe, but I did fiddle with
it.

So... the best correlation I can come up with is a new isapnp followed
by a reboot, but muddied up with a changing serial.conf.


I hope anyone who made it this far got something out of it...
like maybe keep more backups, logs, and scribbled notes.  :)

Thanks for all your help and suggestions.


- Bruce





Re: serial port: LSR safety check engaged (fwd)

2001-06-07 Thread Bruce Sass
-- Forwarded message --
Date: Mon, 4 Jun 2001 17:14:15 -0600 (MDT)
From: Bruce Sass [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: John Hasler [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: serial port: LSR safety check engaged

On 4 Jun 2001, John Hasler wrote:

 I just rooted around a bit in the kernel sources.  Although I find no
 mention of the 'LSR safety check' in the logs, it seems to be missing from
 2.2.14.  Perhaps you have uncovered a kernel bug.  Do you have an old
 kernel to try?

Ya, but I can get it to fail on that port also.

I dug up an old 2.2.15 boot floppy, it didn't like that there was no
support for itself on the fs (also sans isapnp and ppp modules) but
serial.o was built in - and it worked.

I removed the link to isapnp in rcS.d and rebooted the 2.2.15
kernel (since there is no isapnp.o, it shouldn't matter(?))...
it didn't work.

Anyways... I ended up fiddling with setserial (eventually going back
to manual), rebooting a few times (flip-flopping between 2.4.3 and
2.2.15)... and all of a sudden it works again. :/

I'm suspecting setserial's autosave code, maybe it gets confused
easily if all the bits (stuff in /etc and /var) are not consistent;
although I wouldn't rule out some side-effect like interaction between
isapnp and setserial.


- Bruce




Re: (dup) serial port: LSR safety check engaged (fwd)

2001-06-07 Thread Bruce Sass
On 4 Jun 2001, John Hasler wrote:

 The LSR test will not be performed if ASYNC_BUGGY_UART is set, and
 include/linux/serial.h says:

 #define ASYNC_BUGGY_UART  0x4000 /* This is a buggy UART, skip some safety
   * checks.  Note: can be dangerous! */

 Try configuring the port with 'skip_test'.

It has worked with an explicit 'skip_test' and the implicit test,
with both the 2.2.15 and 2.4.3 kernels.

I think it is going to take something more rigorous than the simple
'change one variable at a time' approach I've (mostly) been using.

The last time I noticed really strange behaviour like this[1] was with
KDE (the restart KDE or rm ~/.kde days), and it appeared that
inconsistent configs was contributing the problem (hard-coded,
system-wide, per-user, and DB could all be different, depending on
what you had been upto), simply because there was always wider
agreement between the pieces as to the way things should be when
they worked than when they didn't work.

All this user friendly config handling is nice...
but it appears to be pretty fragile at times.


- Bruce

[1] I reboot whenever unstable gives me a new libc or xlibs (to ensure
upgrade related problems bite me sooner rather than later), and tend
not to fiddle with it if it is not broken. The only thing I can think
of that may have had a delayed effect was if something like setserial
came along and fiddled (or let me fiddle) with things I would only see
the actual effect of when I rebooted (like maybe changing from
manual to autosave-once when that nice S-lang debconf screen comes
up 'cause setserial got upgraded).



Re: dselect, can't do update

2001-06-07 Thread Bruce Sass
On 6 Jun 2001, Daniel Wagner wrote:
 since yesterday i've a strange problem with dselect. i tried to look
 for new packages at the mirror ( i use sid ), and did a update in
 dselect, everything seemed to work, but at the end of operation the
 following errormessage came.

 |Reading Package Lists... Done
 |Building Dependency Tree... Done
 |Merging Available information
 |Replacing available packages info, using /var/cache/apt/available.
 |dpkg: parse error, in file `/var/cache/apt/available' near line 1020 package 
 `blt':
 | `Replaces' field, reference to `blt-dev': error in version: version string 
 has embedded spaces

There are two or three instances of this in the blt and blt-demo
packages; it looks like:

( 2.4i-1 )s/b ( 2.4i-1)

or with j instead of i.

 |
 |update available list script returned error exit status 2.
 |Press enter to continue.

 any suggestions what to do. i tried already to remove the available
 list to enforce the rebuild of it, but this didn't work.

There is probably a better way to do this...

/var/cache/apt/available is built from the stuff in
/var/lib/apt/lists, which is where the problem lies (in the file(s)
for the main distribution).

If you try to edit /var/cache/apt/available and rerun `update' your
fixes get over written when the available file is built.

If you edit the files in /var/lib/apt/lists to fix the problem (in the
entries for the blt and blt-demo packages), apt notices that you don't
have the same as what is in the remote archive and fetches the files
again -- first downloading them into /var/lib/apt/lists/partial.

If you interrupt the connection, apt will abandon the stuff in the
partial directory and rebuilt the available file from what it has in
lists (the `using old packages lists' message).

So...
do the edits in /var/lib/apt/lists,
restart the update then interrupt it,
wait for apt/dselect to timeout (ignore the error message),
choose select
...all should be well (until next time, maybe).

HTH


- Bruce



Re: dselect, can't do update

2001-06-07 Thread Bruce Sass
On 6 Jun 2001, Dave Carrigan wrote:
 Bruce Sass [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
  If you edit the files in /var/lib/apt/lists to fix the problem (in the
  entries for the blt and blt-demo packages), apt notices that you don't
  have the same as what is in the remote archive and fetches the files
  again -- first downloading them into /var/lib/apt/lists/partial.

 Actually, I fixed the problem yesterday for myself by editing

  
 /var/lib/apt/lists/http.us.debian.org_debian_dists_unstable_main_binary-i386_Packages

 and apt did not download a new one on the next dselect update. I think
 maybe it compares timestamps and does not download a new packages file
 if the local one is newer.

That's odd... not that it didn't re-fetch the packages files,
but that it didn't for you and did for me.


- Bruce



Unidentified subject!

2001-06-04 Thread Bruce Sass
Hi,

Anybody know what an LSR safety check is, and how to disengage it?

I've been getting this message...
ttyS3: LSR safety check engaged!

...when I do pon or minicom (which also says /dev/ttyS3 doesn't
exist), the modem doesn't dial. 

ttyS3 does exist (an isapnp card),
the card's config is good (worked in the past),
the permissions are correct (root dialout crw-rw),
and the user is a member of dialout.

It doesn't seem to matter if setserial knows about the card or not;
restarting setserial gets me:
/dev/ttyS0 at 0x03f8 (irq = 4) is a 16450
/dev/ttyS1 at 0x02f8 (irq = 3) is a 16550A
ttyS3: LSR safety check engaged!
ttyS3: LSR safety check engaged!
ttyS3: LSR safety check engaged!
/dev/ttyS3 at 0x02e8 (irq = 3) is a 16550A

(ttyS0 and ttyS1 are not used)

I'm running testing/unstable (current as of last thursday),
and a 2.4.3 kernel. 

I can't find anything in the docs for setserial, pppd, or the kernel
and aside from being able to check my mail (from an 8M 486-25, running
little more than a Debian 2.0 base system), I'm pretty much offline :(


- Bruce



(dup) serial port: LSR safety check engaged

2001-06-04 Thread Bruce Sass
Hi,

Anybody know what an LSR safety check is, and how to disengage it?

I've been getting this message...
ttyS3: LSR safety check engaged!

...when I do pon or minicom (which also says /dev/ttyS3 doesn't
exist), the modem doesn't dial. 

ttyS3 does exist (an isapnp card),
the card's config is good (worked in the past),
the permissions are correct (root dialout crw-rw),
and the user is a member of dialout.

It doesn't seem to matter if setserial knows about the card or not;
restarting setserial gets me:
/dev/ttyS0 at 0x03f8 (irq = 4) is a 16450
/dev/ttyS1 at 0x02f8 (irq = 3) is a 16550A
ttyS3: LSR safety check engaged!
ttyS3: LSR safety check engaged!
ttyS3: LSR safety check engaged!
/dev/ttyS3 at 0x02e8 (irq = 3) is a 16550A

(ttyS0 and ttyS1 are not used)

I'm running testing/unstable (current as of last thursday),
and a 2.4.3 kernel. 

I can't find anything in the docs for setserial, pppd, or the kernel
and aside from being able to check my mail (from an 8M 486-25, running
little more than a Debian 2.0 base system), I'm pretty much offline :(


- Bruce




Re: Prog. Languages (was: question?)

2001-06-01 Thread Bruce Sass
On Fri, 1 Jun 2001, Romain Lerallut wrote:
 Usually, you choose a language depending on what you want done. YMMV.

 If you want to learn a bit about computer languages
 *in general* you may want to:

 1) start with interpreted languages, such as Perl. ( not Python
which is strongly object-oriented). It's easy to create a proglet
that is useful , and very satisfying.

This would be a mistake.

Perl code can be hard to read and the language itself is biased
towards text processing (Practical Extracting and Reporting Language;
Python is a general purpose language with clear syntax and semantics,
just what a beginner needs.

 2a) then learn about object-oriented languages (Java, Python). I
would advise *against* starting with an OO language, since it *might*
be harder to come back to
 non-OO languages.

Python does not require you to use obviously OO techniques (classes,
etc.) for everything, you can write in pretty much any style you like.

 *OR*

 2b) then learn about compiled languages such as C. C is harder to
program than interpreted languages, mostly because of memory
management issues, but it is also IMHO very elegantly written.
  It has a lot of balance in its conception. You can understand more
of the internals with C than with Java.
 *After* being decently fluent in C, you may want to learn C++ or
others. Though I like C better for its simplicity and elegance.

Sure, if you want to learn about computer internals also (hard to get
away from that with a low level language like C)... I think it is the
best way to start.  Steep learning curve, though.


- Bruce



Re: Qt2-gl - help!

2001-05-29 Thread Bruce Sass
Somethings not right here...

On Tue, 29 May 2001, Michael O'Brien wrote:
 -- On Mon, May 28, 2001 at 02:42:07PM +0200, % wrote:
  The latest QT2 is compiled with GL support by default, thus obsoleting
  qt2-gl.

 I have the following installed:

 ii  libqt22.3.0-final-5 Qt GUI Library 
 (runtime version).

I haven't upgraded yet today, but I have GL in the std libqt,
and no _nogl version.

~$ dpkg -s libqt2
Package: libqt2
Status: install ok installed
Priority: optional
Section: libs
Installed-Size: 4912
Maintainer: Ivan E. Moore II [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Source: qt-x11
Version: 2:2.3.0-final-5
Replaces: libqt2.1, libqt2.2-gl, libqt2.2, libqt2-gl
Provides: libqt2-gl
Depends: libc6 (= 2.2.3-1), libgl1, libjpeg62, libmng1 (= 1.0.1-0),
libpng2 (= 1.0.10), libstdc++2.10-glibc2.2, xlibs ( 4.0.3), zlib1g
(= 1:1.1.3)
Suggests: anti-aliasing-howto
Conflicts: libqt2.2-gl, libqt2.2, libqt2-gl, libqt2.1, kde-designer
( 2.2.3-4)Description: Qt GUI Library (runtime version).
 This package contains the files necessary for running applications
that use
 Qt.

~$ dpkg -L libqt2
/.
/usr
/usr/lib
/usr/lib/libqt.so.2.3.0
/usr/share
/usr/share/doc
/usr/share/doc/libqt2
/usr/share/doc/libqt2/README.Debian
/usr/share/doc/libqt2/copyright
/usr/share/doc/libqt2/changelog.gz
/usr/share/doc/libqt2/changelog.Debian.gz
/usr/lib/libqt.so.2
/usr/lib/libqt.so.2.3

~$ locate lib/libqt
/usr/lib/libqt.a
/usr/lib/libqt.so
/usr/lib/libqt.so.2
/usr/lib/libqt.so.2.3
/usr/lib/libqt.so.2.3.0
/usr/lib/libqtmcop.la
/usr/lib/libqtmcop.so
/usr/lib/libqtmcop.so.0
/usr/lib/libqtmcop.so.0.0.0
~$ ls -lA /usr/lib/libqt.*
-rw-r--r--1 root root  7821450 May 25 01:28
/usr/lib/libqt.a
lrwxrwxrwx1 root root   14 May 27 12:13
/usr/lib/libqt.so - libqt.so.2.3.0
lrwxrwxrwx1 root root   14 May 27 12:14
/usr/lib/libqt.so.2 - libqt.so.2.3.0
lrwxrwxrwx1 root root   14 May 27 12:14
/usr/lib/libqt.so.2.3 - libqt.so.2.3.0
-rw-r--r--1 root root  4943852 May 25 01:28
/usr/lib/libqt.so.2.3.0

 The package contains libqt.so.2.3.0 and libqt.so.2.3.0_nogl (which are both
 ~5meg). libqt.so was pointing to libqt.so.2.3.0_nogl, so you will need to
 change the link to point to libqt.so.2.3.0 to get gl support.

 It would great if the installation allowed you to configure this package so
 that only one or both versions of libqt are installed. Also, it would be
 wonderful if the configure script let you choose which version of libqt
 libqt.so is pointing to.

It looks like you have some cruft from an old libqt installation(s).
Ivan may be interested in your libqt installation history, just in
case it is a packaging bug that is likely to hit others.


- Bruce



Re: Packaging WM themes - question

2001-05-27 Thread Bruce Sass
On Sun, 27 May 2001, Viktor Rosenfeld wrote:
...
 It might not be fast, but this is a 386 we're talking about.  It simply
 isn't fast by todays standards [1].  But for some purposes it's good
 enough.

today's could be, your's, the people you know, the region you live
in, the economy you are part of... today's standard really only
applies to the possible-world you live in.  It's a modal logic thing.

 Now, how is that lessened by the fact, that Debian takes ages to install
 on such a machine?  Not at all.  It's obviously a load-intensive job, so
 you get a bigger machine.

A bigger machine is not always an option, sometimes even for those
living next door to a computer store.

  And making that process less dependent on CPU
 power is not an option when this means that core functionality of apt is
 sacrificed (ie the ability to figure out dependencies).  Simply because

I don't think that is true, or at least not something that is
unsolvable with some new software.

 the vast majority of Debian users has no problem using it (at least
 speed-wise).  No one forces you to use apt.  If it's to slow for you,
 than don't use it, there are alternatives (eg Slackware, installing from
 sratch).

Sure.  The thing that gets me is that it is possible for software to
accommodate anything (after all, it is software), yet there is steady
pressure to drop support for older machines because it is bloat, etc.
-- even though the systems it is bloat for would probably not even
notice the extra resource usage, and compile time options could be
used to tailor the build.

...
 [1] IIRC, the 386 I installed recently had roughly more than 1 BogoMIPS.
 The 486 I tried a few days later had 7.88 BogoMIPS.  This was the stock

A 1Mhz 386 and an 8MHz 486?

 potato kernel 2.2.17pre-something I believe.  The machine I'm sitting in
 front of right now, is a Celeron 333 -- not exactly the fastest machine
 in the world, but the fastest I have in my home.  It has 680 BogoMIPS.
 I know that BogoMIPS are ... well, bogus, but I think it proves my
 point.  What do you expect from that kind of performance?

How often do you hear people with oldslow machines gripping because a
menu takes 0.5s to come up... the issue is not speed, it is one of not
shutting people out just because they don't live up to today's
standards in some possible world.


- Bruce



Re: Kde Sid directory problem

2001-05-27 Thread Bruce Sass
On Sun, 27 May 2001, Matthew Gibbins wrote:
 And yo was Bruce Sass heard to yodel:
  On Sat, 26 May 2001, Matthew Gibbins wrote:
I'm running konqueror in Sid and am encountering problems loading1 some 
   modules
for konqueror configuration.
 Particularly those under the directories:
  /usr/share/applnk/Settings/WebBrowsing
  /usr/share/applnk/Settings/FileBrowsing
 
  No problems here.  I can get at them via:
  K - Control Center
  K - Preferences - Web Browsing | File Browsing
  and by pointing Konqueror at
  /usr/share/applnk/Settings/{File,Web}Browsing
 
Just to clarify only ebrowsing.desktop, crypto.desktop and nsplugin.desktop
  are loaded.
The rest fail with 'The diagnostics is:' where there is unfortunately no
  diagnostic information.

Hmmm, I'd start looking closely at the system: version of all KDE
related packages, dpkg -C, cruft, deborphan, etc.  It appears there
is something strange about _your_ setup (mismatched versions, old libs
shadowing newer versions, ...), and the list may not be of much help.

Good Luck.


- Bruce



Re: Kde Sid directory problem

2001-05-26 Thread Bruce Sass
On Sat, 26 May 2001, Matthew Gibbins wrote:

  Hi,
  I'm running konqueror in Sid and am encountering problems loading1 some 
 modules
  for konqueror configuration.
   Particularly those under the directories:
/usr/share/applnk/Settings/WebBrowsing
/usr/share/applnk/Settings/FileBrowsing

No problems here.  I can get at them via:
K - Control Center
K - Preferences - Web Browsing | File Browsing
and by pointing Konqueror at
/usr/share/applnk/Settings/{File,Web}Browsing


- Bruce



Re: Multi-platform software development

2001-05-24 Thread Bruce Sass
On Thu, 24 May 2001, James Leigh wrote:

 from what I have seems is is easy to port from linux - win32 and very hard
 to port from win32 - linux.

So the strategy for world domination should be: port apps to win32,
when they get hooked... tell'em the apps run better on the OS they
originally were designed on.  ;)


- Bruce



Re: for i in *

2001-05-20 Thread Bruce Sass
On Sun, 20 May 2001, Viktor Rosenfeld wrote:
 Martin Fluch wrote:

   Of course, some people argue, that spaces in filenames is a Bad
   Thing(tm), but I fail to see why.
 
  Could exactly this be the reason, why spaces in filenames are considered
  as a bad thing, since they easily lead into trouble?

 But, this trouble is easily avoided with double quotes and on the flip
 side, spaces make things much more readable.
 IMeanIt'SNotLikeWeDon'tUseSpacesInNormalWriting.
 And-I-have-yet-to-see-somebody-who-replaces-all-spaces-with-dashes-or-dots.
 See.what.I.mean?

I/don't/think/you/would write/text like/this

Is it one path or three?  It may just be many years of not using
spaces in filenames that has me seeing three paths, even though I've
known for the same amount of time that filenames can contain spaces
and the quotes would seem to indicate that it is one path... but I
think it has more to do with our wetware naturally wanting to break
things up into groups, and a blank space being a natural candidate to
base a division on.

It could be an efficiency issue.

 Also, along with bash's tab completion or GUI file managers, spaces
 don't cause me any trouble.

Ya, computers don't care about efficiency or readability. ;)


- Bruce



who gets this bug, pppconfig or ash?

2001-05-12 Thread Bruce Sass
Whenever I do pon, /etc/resolv.conf get rewitten with,

-e \nnameserver 198.73.176.2

(i.e., I can only get to hosts listed in /etc/hosts)
which I've traced back to,

echo -e \nnameserver $DNS1  $TEMPRESOLV

in /etc/ppp/ip-up.d/0dns-up.

The problem goes away if I tell 0dns-up to use bash instead of sh,
sh is a symlink to ash on this box.

I originally thought it was related to a critical bug against ash (to
do with the IFS), but that has been closed and the problem persists.
:(


- Bruce



Re: Multi-platform software development

2001-05-11 Thread Bruce Sass
On Wed, 30 May 2001 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 Well, I think qt is the better choice. I didn't realize there was an
 windows version.
 I'm intending to develop mostly base and client-server software. So, Java
 won't fit.

It didn't get mentioned, but there are Python bindings for Qt -- PyQt.


- Bruce



Re: User-Created Menu Entries

2001-05-08 Thread Bruce Sass
On Mon, 7 May 2001, Mark Wagnon wrote:
...
 but I'm still unsure about how to add a menu entry. Has anyone created
 any that they wouldn't mind sharing to be used as a template for
 creating other entries?

/usr/lib/menu has lots of files you can use as templates

cp one to /etc/menu, tweak it, run (as root) update-menus

With KDE you may need to force the issue with...

rm -rf  ~/.kde/share/applnk

to force the DB to be rebuilt, or maybe just restart KDE.


- Bruce



Re: dpkg - restoring working packages

2001-05-08 Thread Bruce Sass
On Tue, 8 May 2001, Tomasz Wzietek wrote:
 suppose i have a working package. i decide to upgrade it,
 so i download the deb and use 'dpkg -i' to install it.
 let's say, there are some unsatisfied dependencies that
 i don't want to resolve (let's assume that it would require
 some further drastic upgrading). how do i go back to the
 previously working older version of the package without
 reinstalling it?
...
 is there a switch or another deb-* command that would do
 the trick? or do i need to download the old version and
 reinstall it?

If you have already installed the .deb, the old version is gone.

dpkg-repack will create a .deb from an installed package.


- Bruce



Re: Error message

2001-05-04 Thread Bruce Sass
On Fri, 4 May 2001, Eileen Orbell wrote:
 I keep getting this error message about 20 times a day emailed to me via my
 server from Cron Daemon:
 /bin/sh: rnews: command not found
 I am not even sure why? Or how to get rid of it?
 I do not want the news server anyway..

Snoop around /etc (probably in cron.daily) for the script cron is
trying to run, then use dpkg -S script-path to find out which
package it belongs to, followed by dpkg --purge package to get rid
of it.  Maybe run deborphan (if you are using testing/unstable) to
see what got left behind.


- Bruce



Re: I have instaledl too many packages

2001-05-04 Thread Bruce Sass
Hello,

 hi,all
   I am a debian newbie.I have installed too may packages.
   I  want to use 'dselect' to delete some,but show many errors
   I want to use 'apt-get remove filename' but not know exactly the
   filename,and there are so many package to remove.
   How can I  reinstall but keep the smallest base system  so that I
   not need to reboot and can use apt-get,deselect,netconfig etc.

dselect, apt-get, and the other stuff is great, but a little confusing
if you don't really know how the package management system works.  A
new user needs to learn two things at the same time, the basic system
and the user friendly wrapper.

Instead of reinstalling, you may want to look in /usr/share/doc (every
package creates a directory with the same name as the package) and
start removing _applications_ you don't want.

Use:
dpkg --purge package-names

instead of dselect or apt, they call dpkg to do the removal anyways,
and you will get to see what kind of output dpkg produces - this is
important because it allows you to discriminate between actual errors
with packages, and cases where the user friendly tool is trying to
impose it's idea of the right thing to do (which I suspect is the
case with the many errors you mention in relation to dselect).

When you run into something you can't solve... use the script
command to make a transcript of what you are doing (start script, do
the dpkg command, do CTRL-D, mail the output to the list).

[warning: may require installing yet another package :)]
If you don't mind doing a little editing... you can have access to
dpkg and a reasonably user-friendly interface.  Is git (a text based
filesystem browser) installed.
When it is, do the following (as root)...

# backup the config file, it maybe in /usr/share/git
cp /usr/lib/git/{.gitrc.common,.gitrc.common.orig}

edit .gitrc.common so it includes this line in the
[GIT-Keys] section:

^C^Dp = DPKG-purge; dpkg --purge %s{Purge package: ,%d}

What this does is define the key press sequence

CTRL-C CTRL-D p

to dpkg --purge package, where package is whatever directory the
cursor is at, and you get a chance to edit the package name (most
likely to change it into a list of package names).

Personally, I prefer:

^C^Dp = DPKG-purge; dpkg --purge %i

because it allows you to select multiple directories and purge the
associated packages with a single dpkg command, no option to edit what
is being purged though.

Here are a few others (to get you started ;)...

^C^Ds = DPKG-status; dpkg -s %d
^C^DS = DPKG-search; dpkg -S %f
^C^Dl = DPKG-list; dpkg -l | $GIT_PAGER
^C^DL = DPKG-listfiles; dpkg -L %s{List files in package: ,%d} | $GIT_PAGER
^C^Dc = DPKG-configure; dpkg --configure %s{Configure package(s): ,--pending}
^C^Dr = DPKG-remove; dpkg -r %s{Remove package: ,%d}

Putting:

export GIT_PAGER=less
eval `lesspipe`

in ~/.bash_profile makes the ^Xv GIT key sequence more useful than the
default settings.

I've found the combination of GIT + dpkg specific key sequence
definitions (essentially using /usr/share/doc as a menu) as the most
effective way to snoop around the system with an eye to getting rid of
installed packages.

Have fun.


- Bruce



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