Re: LaTeX and PDF-files
I tried to convert my .tex-files to pdf with the pdflatex-command. This works great for text-only documents. It seems that pdflatex cannot include pictures (they are ok., latex -- xdvi shows them...). Do I have to include them in a special format (I tried .bmp, .png, .ps as input; latex -- dvi makes it all, but pdflatex just leaves space...) How can I do this? I've had more luck with the ps2pdf script that comes with most versions of ghostscript. So you could create the PS file first in the normal way and then run the script to create the PDF file. The web-page of the National Science Foundation in the US has a set of very detailed instructions about PS to PDF conversion (dealing with the issue of font-embedding especially). They recommend the following command-line options: ps2pdf -dMaxSubsetPct=100 -dCompatibilityLevel=1.2 -dSubsetFonts=true -dEmbedAllFonts=true Now that's what I call a command-line. Of course you can wrap all this up in a little script handily enough ... Jim
Re: sndconfig [was Re: Debian is not for me]
| 1 Compile sound into a new kernel | 2 Get sndconfig and xplaymidi from the woody section of the debian.org. | | sndconfig is the same tool that you have on RHL. Does anyone know if sndconfig can be used on potato systems, or is there a library incompatibility? The download page doesn't suggest any obvious problems, Jim
Re: Can't mount CD drive (was: Re: Hello first time)
| I write there something like this: | file systemmount pointtype | options dump | /dev/hdc/cdrom auto | 0 | | Is that correct ? I believe it needs to look like this: /dev/hdc/cdrom iso9660 ro,user,noauto,unhide ro: mounts it read-only user: lets any user mount the cd noauto: the file-system on the CD isn't automatically mounted at boot-time (obviously crucial since you won't normally a cd in the drive when you boot) unhide: show hidden and associated files This is all in the man-page for mount, Jim
Re: sound
As Peter Jay Salzman [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: | just because the module should've been loaded doesn't mean it was loaded | *correctly*. I have a Sound Blaster Vibra 16 and had to reconfigure it when I moved to the 2.2.17 kernel and the OSS sound modules. I'm very happy with the results of that reconfiguration. The thing I found worked best was to add the relevant options to: /etc/modutils/options and then run `update-modules' The options I added were these: options opl3 io=0x388 options sb io=0x220 irq=5 dma=1 dma16=5 mpu_io=0x330 Obviously, the specifications for your system might be different, but this might be a place to start. You might not need the first line (or its equivalent) but the IO, IRQ and DMA values at least, I think, are mandatory. Try something like this, and then: `modprobe sb' That should load all the required modules, I think. Hope this helps, Jim
agpgart, XFCom_810 and the Dell OctiPlex
Well, despite the risk of being screamed at from the prestigious: Center for the Study of Brain, Mind, and Behavior at Princeton, I'd still like to gather courage and ask a question. I helped a colleague this afternoon install 2.2r2 on his new Dell Optiplex GX110. The installation went very smoothly indeed. I hadn't done an install from scratch with potato, and I was really impressed. The problem, though, is getting X working. This is a known issue, I think. These machines seem to have Intel i810 video cards, which are not successfully autodetected by anXious. I've looked around on the web and found some information, but nothing specific to Debian. If I understand correctly, these cards need a kernel module called `agpgart' and they need the SVGA server. But I also gather that Intel has released their own version of agpgart.o as well as their own X server for the i810 chipset (XFCom_810). The combination of these two is said to yield better performance, and the instructions on the Intel web-site seem fairly clear. But I thought I should check here before plunging in, to see if anybody has experience doing this on a Debian system, or if any of you unfailingly kind and knowledgeable people had any advice or warnings to offer. Thank you, Jim McCloskey
Re: update 2.2--2.2r2
| is there a way to find out | 1.) which packages have changed | 2.) which I have to download (I don't need to update the ones I don't | have installed yet;-)) From Nils Lohner's announcement: A complete list of the packages that have changed with this release can be found at: http://http.us.debian.org/debian/dists/Debian2.2r2/ChangeLog http://non-us.debian.org/debian-non-us/dists/Debian2.2r2/non-US/ChangeLog It seems that if you've been keeping up with proposed-updates and with debian.security, there is nothing to upgrade in 2.2r2, Jim
Re: Loading Modules (PLIP)
I'm following up on a query of my own from some time ago, in case it's of use to anybody who has encountered similar problems. I wrote: |one of my | frustrations since upgrading to 2.2. series kernels has been that I | lost PLIP. If I try to load the plip module, I get just this | error message: | | % insmod plip |Using /lib/modules/2.2.17/net/plip.o |/lib/modules/2.2.17/net/plip.o: init_module: Device or resource |busy |Hint: this error can be caused by incorrect module parameters, |including invalid IO or IRQ parameters The solution was to tell the parport driver explicitly which IRQ to use: echo 7 /proc/parport/0/irq I don't know why this is necessary, but the PLIP module loaded without complaint afterwards. Jim
libgtk1.2-dev uninstallable
This is a potato system kept up to date with the most recent additions to proposed-updates, and security. In an effort to solve a problem I have with Sawmill menus, I tried to install the package libgtk1.2-dev, but got the response below: -- root# apt-get install libgtk1.2-dev Reading Package Lists... Done Building Dependency Tree... Done Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable distribution that some required packages have not yet been created or been moved out of Incoming. Since you only requested a single operation it is extremely likely that the package is simply not installable and a bug report against that package should be filed. The following information may help to resolve the situation: Sorry, but the following packages have unmet dependencies: libgtk1.2-dev: Depends: libgtk1.2 (= 1.2.7-1) but 1.2.8-1 is to be installed E: Sorry, broken packages root# -- I have the most recent version of libgtk1.2: -- root# apt-get install libgtk1.2 Reading Package Lists... Done Building Dependency Tree... Done Sorry, libgtk1.2 is already the newest version 0 packages upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded. -- This is my sources.list: deb http://http.us.debian.org/debian potato main contrib non-free deb http://non-US.debian.org/debian-non-US potato/non-US main contrib non-free deb http://http.us.debian.org/debian dists/proposed-updates/ deb http://security.debian.org/ stable/updates main Jim McCloskey
sawmill and debian menus
This may not be a debian-specific question but I think it probably is, since it involves (at least in part) the debian-specific menu system. I run two boxes, both with potato installed, both up to date with the latest revisions (as of Wed evening, Nov 22nd anyway) from proposed-updates and security.debian.org. I've been trying out sawmill as a window-manager and liking it well. On one of the machines, everything works smoothly. On the other, the mouse works perfectly well for window operations, but I have no menus. Clicking the mouse on the background image produces no output and the following error-message (visible after the X server is killed with Ctl-Alt-Delete): File error : Broken pipe , #process running: /usr/lib/sawmill/0.20.1/i686-pc-linux-gnu/sawmill-menu I haven't been able to figure out what difference between the two boxes causes this differential failure. The one on which menus fail has a custom-compiled version of kernel 2.2.17; the one on which menus work well has a custom-compiled version of kernel 2.2.15pre19. I tried copying: usr/lib/sawmill/0.20.1/i686-pc-linux-gnu/sawmill-menu from the working box to the broken box, but that made no difference whatever. I've tried purging and re-installing both the menu-package and sawmill, but that makes no difference either. I would appreciate any guidance or advice anybody has to offer in working this puzzle out, Jim McCloskey
Re: configure the date
| I have to set the time but I didn't get it, I read the mans and docus, | but it won't work. Can anyon tell me what to do to just change the | time? I have always found it simplest to do this by way of the net. The rdate command contacts a time-date server and sets your system-clock accordingly. I don't know which servers are available in Germany, but for the US there is, for instance: rdate time.nist.gov Once you've done this, you can synchronize the system clock and the hardware clock with: hwclock --systohc I hope this is useful, Jim
Re: Skipstone [was: Netscape 6.0]
| i heared of skipstone and really really want to try it. but | unfortunatly there is only a woody version :( is there any way to get | skipstone for a potato system? I have Skipstone running fine on my potato system, and I really like it. I installed Mozilla from Debian (M18-3 in stable), and then I installed the pre-compiled binary available at the Skipstone web-site (skipstone-0.6.1-bin) in /usr/local. I've not had any problems so far. I needed this in .bash_profile: export MOZILLA_5_HOME=/usr/lib/mozilla so that skipstone knew where to look for the parts of Mozilla that it uses. Jim
Loading Modules (was: Soundblaster AWE 64 installation and stuff)
| but when I try to insmod sb I get: | | Using /lib/modules/2.2.17/misc/sb.o | /lib/modules/2.2.17/misc/sb.o: init_module: Device or resource busy | Hint: insmod errors can be caused by incorrect module parameters, | including invalid IO or IRQ parameters I'm not sure if my own problem is related, but . one of my frustrations since upgrading to potato has been that I lost PLIP. I use (used to use) PLIP to connect my laptop to my desktop. All worked smoothly under slink. But I haven't been able to make it work under potato (the kernel is 2.2.17; PRINTER_SUPPORT and PLIP are configured as modules; CONFIG_PARPORT=y CONFIG_PARPORT_PC=y). If I do: % rmmod lp to unload the printer module, and check that it's removed: % cat /proc/devices Character devices: 1 mem 2 pty 3 ttyp 4 ttyS 5 cua 7 vcs 10 misc 14 sound Block devices: 2 fd 3 ide0 8 sd 65 sd and then try to load the plip module, I get just this error message: % insmod plip Using /lib/modules/2.2.17/net/plip.o /lib/modules/2.2.17/net/plip.o: init_module: Device or resource busy Hint: this error can be caused by incorrect module parameters, including invalid IO or IRQ parameters I know that I can (in principle) pass IO and IRQ values to some modules using insmod, but (i) I don't see why insmod should not get these right under potato as it did under slink (ii) the man-page for insmod is mysterious about how this should be done (iii) as far as I can tell, the default values that get used (IRQ 7 for a port on IO 0x378) are right. I suspect that this must all have to do with the way support for parallel port devices was re-organized in the 2.2 series kernels, but knowing that much doesn't let me fix the problem. If anyone could help, I'd be grateful, and with a bit of luck it might help with the other poster's soundcard problem as well, Jim
Re: Mutt's Editor
| How come _I_ don't have that file? What, are you special or | something? What version of vim are you using? Mine's 5.5. Maybe it's because (like me until recently) you didn't realize that vim actually comes in two packages---vim itself and vim-rt. The second package contains the run time files, and you miss a lot of the vim goodies (like, for instance, documentation, and sample config files for syntax highlighting) if you fail to install vim-rt. Since the package vim merely recommends vim-rt (it doesn't depend on it), it's easy to miss installing the run-time files, Jim
Promise ATA-100 (IDE) controller
Further to an earlier request about hardware Can anyone provide advice about the status of support for ATA-100 IDE controllers---more specifically, the Promise ATA-100 cards? Is there support for these in the 2.2 series kernels, or in 2.4? There seems to be some controversy about whether the ATA-100 actually delivers the faster hard drive speed that it ought to provide or claims to provide (and I've also seen claims that the ATA-66 isn't any faster than ATA-33 on most systems). Is there anyone who has experience with these cards under Debian, who could offer advice either about the quality of current support or about the claimed performance advantage? Thanks very much again, Jim
bits and pieces
Does anyone know of any issues installing potato on a system with these components: . Asus K7V motherboard with an Athlon 800mhz processor . Matrox Millennium G400 (16MB video ram) . Western Digital 15.3G 7200 RPM hard drive . Futura 17in Monitor, 1280x1024 resolution . Toshiba CDRW/DVD combo drive My understanding is that the Matrox Millennium G400 has been supported since XFree 3.3.4, so since the default potato version is 3.3.6, that should be fine. I've not found any incompatibilities mentioned in the Hardware Compatibility Howto, or in the Debian installation manual, but I'd appreciate any warnings or advice that experienced people might have to offer. Thanks, Jim
Re: upgrade gnumeric to woody
| Gnumeric 0.47 from potato is a little bit buggy, often the cell | formats I made are gone. So I would like to upgrade to woody. Now my | questions. Is this bug fixed in woody and can I risk an upgrade? I upgraded to the woody version of gnumeric because the potato version kept producing seg faults on my machine. I like the improvements a lot (no seg faults especially (:-) ) and have had no (detectable) problems as a consequence. I have no information, though, about the particular problem you mention, Jim
Re: Error compiling kernel
make[1]: Entering directory = `/usr/src/kernel-source-2.2.17/arch/i386/boot' as86 -0 -a -o bootsect.o bootsect.s make[1]: as86: Command not found make[1]: *** [bootsect.o] Error 127 make[1]: Leaving directory = `/usr/src/kernel-source-2.2.17/arch/i386/boot' make: *** [zImage] Error 2 navi:/usr/src/linux# Do you know how I can get the kernel compiled fully? You need to install the bin86 package: Package: bin86 Status: install ok installed Priority: standard Section: devel Installed-Size: 150 Maintainer: Juan Cespedes [EMAIL PROTECTED] Source: linux86 Version: 0.14.9-3 Depends: libc6 (= 2.1) Conflicts: linux86 Description: 16-bit assembler and loader This is the as86 and ld86 distribution written by Bruce Evans. It's a complete 8086 assembler and loader which can make 32-bit code for the 386+ processors (under Linux it's used only to create the 16-bit bootsector and setup binaries). Jim
Re: search contents of a tar.gz
| Is there a way to search the contents of a tar.gz file withouth | having to extract everything. Specifically, I want to determine | the disc-id of an audio CD, so I downloaded the freedb database in | tar.gz format. Of course, it's a very large file. I would like to | grep the contents to find the CD that I'm looking for, but I don't | want to extract everything. I thought there would be a series of | piped commands that would allow me to do it, but I can't figure it | out. If you use emacs, you can just visit the compressed tar file and operate on it like any directory-tree. For example, put FOO.tar.gz in some directory DIR. Ctl-x d DIR to run dired (the directory editor) on DIR, move the cursor to FOO.tar.gz and type f. The contents of the tarball will be displayed in the dired buffer and you can operate on the files as if they had been uncompressed and extracted from the archive, even though they haven't. Jim
re-exec init
I asked this earlier, but our mail-server was down and I think it didn't get posted. I upgraded to potato on my home-machine about a week or so ago and a couple of days ago compiled and installed the 2.2.17pre20 kernel source that comes with the 2.2 CD's. All seems fine (the upgrade was very smooth), but I've been watching the logs sort of closely in case of problems. I've been puzzled/disturbed by a couple of things, which I hope somebody can help me with. [1] The single most puzzling to me is this (in daemon.log and in syslog): Sep 1 23:03:26 debian init: Trying to re-exec init I thought init was run only at boot time and when changing run-levels. What could bring about an attempt to restart it when the system is up but idling? Is this terminally strange, or have I misunderstood something? --- [2] And then there's a more familiar kind of moan: Sep 3 01:33:30 debian init: Switching to runlevel: 0 Sep 3 01:33:36 debian modprobe: modprobe: Can't locate module binfmt- Sep 3 01:33:36 debian modprobe: modprobe: Can't locate module binfmt- Sep 3 10:54:39 debian modprobe: modprobe: Can't locate module binfmt- Sep 3 10:54:39 debian modprobe: modprobe: Can't locate module binfmt- I have `noauto' set in /etc/modules and all module-names there are commented out. If I've understood correctly, that means that kerneld should exit right away and shouldn't attempt to load any modules. There is no /lib/modules/boot . I don't really understand where modprobe or insmod gets called in the boot-init process. I've tried to find out what the binfmt- module is exactly by looking in the Documentation directory of the kernel-source tree, but with no luck. I suppose it must be one of the features for letting you invoke some kind of binary or other? This seems to do no harm, but I'd like to understand it better. --- And there's: Sep 3 20:27:31 debian kernel: VM: do_try_to_free_pages failed for kswapd... Sep 3 20:27:59 debian last message repeated 2 times Sep 3 20:28:18 debian kernel: VM: do_try_to_free_pages failed for kswapd... Sep 3 20:29:41 debian last message repeated 3 times Sep 3 20:30:38 debian kernel: VM: do_try_to_free_pages failed for kswapd... Sep 3 20:32:14 debian kernel: VM: do_try_to_free_pages failed for kswapd... Sep 3 20:32:21 debian kernel: VM: do_try_to_free_pages failed for kswapd... which I don't like the look of. I think this corresponds to one user connecting to the Hotmail server using Netscape. Sigh I'd be very grateful for any information or advice, Jim
re-exec init??
Hello: I upgraded to potato about a week ago, and more recently compiled and installed the 2.2.17pre20 kernel. So I've been watching the log-files sort of closely in case any problems emerge. I was bothered to notice this in daemon.log this morning: Sep 1 23:03:26 debian init: Trying to re-exec init Isn't it true that init should only be started at boot time and when changing runlevels? Or have I misunderstood? What could bring about an attempt to restart it when the system is up and running? I've certainly not seen an entry like this in the log files before. --- There was one other worrisome entry, this one in kern.log: Sep 2 09:48:12 debian kernel: VM: do_try_to_free_pages failed for kswapd... Sep 2 09:48:36 debian kernel: VM: do_try_to_free_pages failed for kswapd... Sep 2 09:49:44 debian kernel: VM: do_try_to_free_pages failed for kswapd... Sep 2 09:54:48 debian kernel: VM: do_try_to_free_pages failed for kswapd... Sep 2 09:56:51 debian kernel: VM: do_try_to_free_pages failed for kswapd... Sep 2 09:57:58 debian last message repeated 2 times Sep 2 09:59:09 debian kernel: VM: do_try_to_free_pages failed for kswapd... Sep 2 09:59:32 debian kernel: VM: do_try_to_free_pages failed for kswapd... This doesn't look good to me. I'd be grateful for any advice or information. My normal mail-server is down for the weekend. If you could copy any replies to [EMAIL PROTECTED] I'd be even more grateful. Jim
Re: Linux crashes a lot
John: I'm afraid I don't really know how to help, but this sounds very strange to me. I think that the problem must be specific to this box. In the 5 years I've been running Linux (first Slackware, then Debian), the only program that has ever brought down the whole system has been Corel's Wordperfect (hate that program). And that happened just once. Maybe it's bad memory? There's a utility called memtest in the sysutils package that might be able to detect it. It can detect things that the BIOS memory-check can't, but there are also a lot of memory problems that it won't detect at all. A much more thorough test is memtest86 in the hwtools package---a program that you boot into via floppy. That gives your memory a real going-over, Jim
gnumeric crashes
I upgraded to potato from slink yesterday, and the process was in general very smooth indeed---the easiest upgrade I've done. I'm left with one problem though. Gnumeric seg-faults every time it's called. This is a disappoinment, because one of the reasons that I wanted to do this upgrade was the improved quality of gnumeric in potato over slink (I use it on a different machine which I had upgraded to potato some months ago; it works OK there). The crash happens under kernel 2.0.36 and under the pre-release of 2.2.17 that ships with potato. I've looked at the bug reports against gnumeric and taken some steps on that basis (upgrading to libglade0 v.13) but the problem continues. I haven't got all of Gnome installed---just enough to run gnumeric. Has anyone else experienced such a problem? Below is the extent of the debugging I've been able to do. I'd really appreciate any help or advice, Jim - [jim:~] gdb gnumeric core GNU gdb 19990928 Copyright 1998 Free Software Foundation, Inc. GDB is free software, covered by the GNU General Public License, and you are welcome to change it and/or distribute copies of it under certain conditions. Type show copying to see the conditions. There is absolutely no warranty for GDB. Type show warranty for details. This GDB was configured as i686-pc-linux-gnu...(no debugging symbols found)... Core was generated by `gnumeric --disable-crash-dialog'. Program terminated with signal 11, Segmentation fault. Reading symbols from /usr/lib/libgnomeprint.so.2...done. Reading symbols from /usr/lib/libglade-gnome.so.0...done. Reading symbols from /usr/lib/libglade.so.0...done. Reading symbols from /usr/lib/libxml.so.1...done. Reading symbols from /usr/lib/libz.so.1...done. Reading symbols from /usr/lib/libgnomeui.so.32...done. Reading symbols from /usr/lib/libart_lgpl.so.2...done. Reading symbols from /usr/lib/libgdk_imlib.so.1...done. Reading symbols from /usr/X11R6/lib/libSM.so.6...done. Reading symbols from /usr/X11R6/lib/libICE.so.6...done. Reading symbols from /usr/local/lib/libgtk-1.2.so.0...done. Reading symbols from /usr/local/lib/libgdk-1.2.so.0...done. Reading symbols from /usr/local/lib/libgmodule-1.2.so.0...done. Reading symbols from /usr/X11R6/lib/libXi.so.6...done. Reading symbols from /usr/X11R6/lib/libXext.so.6...done. Reading symbols from /usr/X11R6/lib/libX11.so.6...done. Reading symbols from /usr/lib/libgnome.so.32...done. Reading symbols from /usr/lib/libgnomesupport.so.0...done. Reading symbols from /usr/lib/libesd.so.0...done. Reading symbols from /usr/lib/libaudiofile.so.0...done. Reading symbols from /lib/libm.so.6...done. Reading symbols from /lib/libdb.so.3...done. Reading symbols from /usr/local/lib/libglib-1.2.so.0...done. Reading symbols from /lib/libdl.so.2...done. Reading symbols from /lib/libc.so.6...done. Reading symbols from /lib/ld-linux.so.2...done. Reading symbols from /lib/libnss_compat.so.2...done. Reading symbols from /lib/libnsl.so.1...done. Reading symbols from /usr/lib/gnumeric/plugins/0.47/libgnum_sample.so...done. Reading symbols from /usr/lib/gnumeric/plugins/0.47/libgnum_stat.so...done. Reading symbols from /usr/lib/gnumeric/plugins/0.47/libgnum_lotus.so...done. Reading symbols from /usr/lib/gnumeric/plugins/0.47/libgnum_oleo.so...done. Reading symbols from /usr/lib/gnumeric/plugins/0.47/libgnum_sc.so...done. Reading symbols from /usr/lib/gnumeric/plugins/0.47/libgnum_sylk.so...done. Reading symbols from /usr/lib/gnumeric/plugins/0.47/libgnum_csv.so...done. Reading symbols from /usr/lib/gnumeric/plugins/0.47/libgnum_text.so...done. Reading symbols from /usr/lib/gnumeric/plugins/0.47/libgnum_xbase.so...done. Reading symbols from /usr/lib/gnumeric/plugins/0.47/libgnum_html.so...done. Reading symbols from /usr/lib/gnumeric/plugins/0.47/libgnum_dif.so...done. Reading symbols from /usr/lib/gnumeric/plugins/0.47/libgnum_python.so...done. Reading symbols from /lib/libpthread.so.0...done. #0 0x404f859d in fputs () from /lib/libc.so.6 (gdb) bt #0 0x404f859d in fputs () from /lib/libc.so.6 #1 0x4049cfcd in g_print ( format=0x4062b7a0 Gnumeric/Python module initialized\n) at gmessages.c:660 #2 0x405f2e14 in _init () from /usr/lib/gnumeric/plugins/0.47/libgnum_python.so #3 0x405f2ed9 in init_plugin () from /usr/lib/gnumeric/plugins/0.47/libgnum_python.so #4 0x8084ddb in plugin_load () #5 0x8084fc8 in plugin_unload () #6 0x8085059 in plugin_unload () #7 0x8085080 in plugins_init () #8 0x805d599 in _start () #9 0x805d702 in main () #10 0x404c8a42 in __libc_start_main () from /lib/libc.so.6 (gdb) -
Re: gnumeric crashes
In case anyone has had similar problems, I'm responding to my own post earlier today about gnumeric (in potato/stable) crashing as soon as it's called. I upgraded to the version in woody, and the problem has gone, Jim
wv (the program formerly known as mswordview)
Hello. I've been trying to compile and install the wv library. This is the most current version of a project formerly known as mswordview---a set of conversion utilities for MS Word documents. Mswordview is packaged for potato and for woody but in a relatively old version which handles only MS Word 8 files. The thing about its successor wv (I downloaded version 0.5.44 from the home page) is that it also converts Word 6,7,8 and 9 files---a big step forward clearly. It converts to HTML and to LaTeX. I would really love to have a better solution to the dreaded Word attachments than catdoc or word2x. I'm having trouble compiling the program though (on an up-to-date potato system with a 2.2.15 kernel). The problem seems to be one of missing (or older) libraries. Running the configure script yields this: configure: warning: Could not find gdwmf library or some of its components: libwv *will* build but will not have wmf to png support: see README configure: warning: Could not find ttf library or some of its components: libwv *will* build but will not have text in its wmf to png support: see README configure: warning: Could not find xpm library or some of its components: libwv *will* build but will not have full wmf to png support: see README The program compiles and installs without complaint following these warnings, but produces a segmentation fault when called. I have the libwmf(-dev), freetype2(-dev), libpng2(-dev), xpm4g(-dev) libraries installed, as well as ImageMagick. Has anyone else tried to compile this program? Any advice to offer? Thanks very much, Jim McCloskey
Re: Stopping Portmap
| 1. run /etc/init.d/portmapper stop | 2. put exit 0 (without quotes) as the first uncommented line in | /etc/init.d/portmapper | 3. If apt/dselect/dpkg every ask you to update that script, keep | the one you modified (the new one will be | /etc/init.d/portmapper.dpkg-dist) This will work for potato (but is there any reason not to use update-rc.d?). In slink, though, there is no separate script to start portmapper, so you have to comment out the relevant lines in /etc/init.d/netbase. This has worked fine for me. Jim
Re: Which window manager
I am looking for a window manager for debian that will not soakup the system resources. Which one would you suggest? I remain fond of asclassic---small, light, simple, good-looking and very configurable. It's an old version of Afterstep, maintained for those who like the basic features of Afterstep, who actually like to hand edit configuration files (.steprc), and who don't favour the eye-candy that later versions of Afterstep indulge in, Jim
Re: LaTeX and HTML (was: SGML beginners question)
Tony [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: | Yes, I basically agree with that, but getting the document into | html as well as ps I have found to be a bore. Last time I tried | latex2html on a 100,000 word tex document, it died miserably. Are | there better alternatives for producing html from complex latex | sources? I haven't used it a great deal, but the hyperlatex package seems to do (something like) this reasonably well. From the README in the doc directory: This is version 2.3 of the Hyperlatex package. Hyperlatex allows you to use a LaTeX-like language to prepare documents in HTML (the hypertext markup language used by the world wide web), and, at the same time, to produce a fine printed document from your input. You can use all of LaTeX's power for the printed output, and you don't have to learn a new language for creating hypertext documents. Note that Hyperlatex is not meant to translate arbitrary Latex files into Html. Rather, it provides an authoring environment for writing printed documents and Html documents at the same time, using an extended subset of Latex (excluding concepts that have no Html counterpart and adding commands for new Html concepts such as hyperlinks or included images). Hyperlatex is a package available both in slink and in frozen, Jim
Re: kernel stuff
Gijs van der Brugge wrote: | Firstly, what it says is that i ought to replace kerneld with kmod | and a link to information is given. To me this wasn't very clear so | i ask your help how to replace kerneld with kmod. Secondly, there | are some messages about kernel modules not being able to load, | functions that aren't implemented due to not being able to load | modules, but modules are just not implemented for my kernel. Any | help will be very welcome. Yes, one of the changes from the 2.0.x series kernels to the 2.2.x series kernels is in the way modules are loaded when needed. kerneld has been replaced by default by kmod (how this works and the reasons for the change are explained in: /kernel-source/Documentation/kmod.txt. You can disable kerneld by editing the file /etc/modules It's likely that this file is set up for a 2.0.x series kernel, since you probably had such a kernel under slink. The first line is probably `auto' at present. The entry `auto' causes kerneld to be started at boot time. The entry `noauto' causes kerneld to be disabled completely. This is presumably what you want. You might find that there are other entries in this file. If so, they could be the source of the error-messages that you're receiving, since each line is an instruction to load a module at boot time. If you comment everything out, then no attempt will be made to load any modules at boot time---again, presumably what you want. Hope this helps, Jim PS I can't CC you, since the From header in your message is [EMAIL PROTECTED] which will be interpreted as a (nonexistent) local address if I try to send to it.
Unidentified subject!
| Hmm, ok, but the networks file is stock, set up by the debian | install. I have upgraded the kernel from 2.0.38 to 2.2.15 - would | this be the route of the problem? Yes, this is why you're getting the SIOCADDRT error messages. Actually, one of the changes between slink and potato that's not that easy to find out about (it seems to me anyway) is that the use of the /etc/initd./networking script is deprecated in favour of a new system in which the commands ifup and ifdown (run at boot time) bring the necessary interfaces up or down and do the necessary configuration. The behaviour of those commands is controlled in turn by files in the directory /etc/network/ the most relevant one being the file `interfaces'. The default settings in this file seem to assume a 2.2.x series kernel. Editing the file in a minimal way (uncommenting the line for the loopback interface, putting in the relevant local numbers) and deleting or re-naming the old /etc/init.d/networking script should take care of the error messages as well as bringing you to the happy state of not using any `deprecated' mechanisms. The advantages of this system are discussed briefly in the man page for ifup/ifdown, Jim
Re: exim setup
Im still working on getting exim working here. I try to telnet localhost 25 and I get connection refused. I tried grep smtp /etc/inetd.conf and get smtp stream tcp nowait mail /usr/sbin/exim exim -bs what would keep telnet from conecting? You can get this behaviour if the loopback device is not configured. I once accidentally clobbered lo when I changed the network configuration (to use DHCP) and this was exactly what happened. What do you get if you do ifconfig? There should be something like this: loLink encap:Local Loopback inet addr:127.0.0.1 Bcast:127.255.255.255 Mask:255.0.0.0 UP BROADCAST LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:3584 Metric:1 RX packets:12301 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:12301 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 Collisions:0 Jim
Re: mounting cdroms
| How do I give normal users permissions to mount cd-roms? Do I add | them to a group?? Which one? Please 'CC' me in a reply. If you put this line in /etc/fstab: /dev/hda/cdrom iso9660 ro,user,noauto,unhide then any user should be able to mount a cdrom file-system at /cdrom, with either: mount /dev/hda or: mount /cdrom The device-name will probably be different on your system, of course. If you have a symlink from /dev/cdrom to the real device-file, I imagine you can use that instead. The `ro' option mounts the file system as read-only. The `user' option lets any user mount the file-system. `noauto' means that the file-system is not automatically mounted at boot time (presumably what's wanted in the general case) `nohide' shows hidden and associated files. One caution: only the user who mounts the cdrom can un-mount it again. Hope this helps, Jim
Re: problems with download
I'm still getting these 404 errors in response to `apt-get upgrade' and `apt-get dist-upgrade': Failed to fetch http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/dists/frozen/main/binary-i386/admin/debconf_0.2.80.15.deb 404 Not Found Failed to fetch http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/dists/frozen/main/binary-i386/libs/libpanel-applet0_1.0.55-2.deb 404 Not Found Failed to fetch http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/dists/frozen/main/binary-i386/devel/mesag-dev_3.1-17.deb 404 Not Found Failed to fetch http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/dists/frozen/main/binary-i386/libs/mesag3_3.1-17.deb 404 Not Found Failed to fetch http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/dists/frozen/main/binary-i386/x11/rxvt_2.6.2-1.deb 404 Not Found Failed to fetch http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/dists/frozen/main/binary-i386/x11/xlockmore_4.15-7.deb 404 Not Found Failed to fetch http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/dists/frozen/non-free/binary-i386/graphics/xv_3.10a-25.deb 404 Not Found There's nothing wrong with my net connection---everything else works. Apt-get update works as normal. This has been the response every time I've tried in the last 24 to 36 hours or so. Doing a manual ftp shows that the files do exist and can be downloaded: ftp cd frozen 250 CWD command successful. ftp cd main 250 CWD command successful. ftp cd binary-i386 250 CWD command successful. ftp cd x11 250 CWD command successful. ftp mget xlock* mget xlockmore-gl_4.15-7.deb? n mget xlockmore_4.15-7.deb? y 200 PORT command successful. 150 Opening BINARY mode data connection for xlockmore_4.15-7.deb (383466 bytes). 226 Transfer complete. 383466 bytes received in 6.67 secs (56.1 kB/s) ftp But from the next attempt (seconds later) to `apt-get upgrade': Failed to fetch http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/dists/frozen/main/binary-i386/x11/xlockmore_4.15-7.deb 404 Not Found Weird, no? Jim
Re: problems with downloading
| man apt-get says: | An update should always be performed before an upgrade | dist-upgrade. I had done `apt-get update' before each attempted upgrade step. A number of people have been having these problems (judging by the list). I just kept trying, and eventually it half-worked (about half the files were downloaded before the 404 errors started coming again). I used `apt-get --fix-missing upgrade' to install what I could; waited a bit, `apt-get update' again; tried again; about half of the remaining files were downloaded before the 404 errors started coming. Installed what I could; waited a bit; tried again. And this time, all of the remaining files were downloaded. I think it took three tries; maybe it was four; but in all but the last, I got what looked initially like a normal download, and then a series of 404 errors. Some of the downloads were very slow (hanging for several minutes at the same point). Once I got the files, the upgrade was very smooth, Jim
Re: kysmoops (was keysmoops)
| Given that the directory isn't being rotated, is contantly growing, | neither keysmoop nor keysmoops returns any hits on Google, and | that smoop looks suspiciously like snoop.. Forgive me; I mis-typed. The directory is actually `ksymoops' and it's obviously not the result of a security breach. According to kernelnotes.org, ksymoops is a program to: Read a kernel Oops file and make the best stab at converting the code to instructions and mapping stack values to kernel symbols. At www.us.kernel.org we are told: ksymoops - decode Linux kernel Oops messages. Also handles spinlock and showPc diagnostics. When you poke around a bit more (in the man page for insmod for example), you discover that to overcome certain problems with debugging kernel oops: if directory /var/log/ksy- moops exists then insmod and rmmod will automatically copy /proc/ksyms and /proc/modules to /var/log/ksymoops with a prefix of `date +%Y%m%d%H%M%S`. The system administrator can tell ksymoops which snapshot files to use when debug- ging an Oops. There is no switch to disable this auto- matic copy, if you do not want it to occur, do not create /var/log/ksymoops. If that directory exists, it should be owned by root and be mode 644 or 600 and you should run this script every day or so. The script below is installed as insmod_clean_ksymoops. Which all makes a kind of sense. Except that I didn't create /var/log/ksymoops (I wouldn't have known how to or why to; I had never heard of ksymoops before I noticed the existence of the log files); it must have been created automatically in the upgrade process from slink to frozen. But that seems wrong, given how hard and time-consuming it turned out to be to find out what the files were and what they are for; in the meantime, the directory just kept growing and growing with eight new files added each minute or so: . . . . . . . . . -rw-r--r--1 root root 1842 May 24 21:58 2524215811.modules -rw-r--r--1 root root70151 May 24 21:58 2524215812.ksyms -rw-r--r--1 root root 2671 May 24 21:58 2524215812.modules -rw-r--r--1 root root74557 May 24 21:58 2524215813.ksyms -rw-r--r--1 root root 3285 May 24 21:58 2524215813.modules -rw-r--r--1 root root75002 May 24 21:58 2524215814.ksyms -rw-r--r--1 root root 3369 May 24 21:58 2524215814.modules -rw-r--r--1 root root72660 May 24 21:59 2524215956.ksyms -rw-r--r--1 root root 2681 May 24 21:59 2524215956.modules -rw-r--r--1 root root68075 May 24 21:59 2524215957.ksyms -rw-r--r--1 root root 2129 May 24 21:59 2524215957.modules -rw-r--r--1 root root55266 May 24 21:59 2524215958.ksyms -rw-r--r--1 root root 1501 May 24 21:59 2524215958.modules -rw-r--r--1 root root39156 May 24 22:00 2524215959.ksyms -rw-r--r--1 root root 650 May 24 22:00 2524215959.modules -rw-r--r--1 root root22109 May 24 22:00 252422.ksyms -rw-r--r--1 root root 108 May 24 22:00 252422.modules -rw-r--r--1 root root35488 May 24 22:00 2524220014.ksyms -rw-r--r--1 root root 408 May 24 22:00 2524220014.modules Oh well---another Linux learning experience, I suppose. Jim
Re: kysmoops
| One of the the required or standard or important packages in frozen | (potato) recommends the ksymoops package. I avoided it for a long | time, not feeling need for it, but since I like to = (hold) | installed packages, and was even more annoyed by the suggestion | coming up, I went ahead and installed it. | | You may have selected it inadvertently with a list of | depends/recommends. x Yes, modutils isn't it? The weird thing is that the ksymoops package is not installed on my system and never, as far as I can tell, has been---/var/lib/dpkg/status, all the old versions of /var/lib/dpkg/status, dpkg -s, dpkg -l, and /usr/share/doc all agree about that. I ran `script' while I was doing the upgrade to frozen and so I have a record of the entire output to console; there's no mention of the package in that record either. Ah well Thank you very much for your help (all of you), Jim
info, emacs and minfo
In upgrading from slink to frozen a couple of weeks ago, I seem to have messed up my info system. This is too bad because it's the way I like best to get at documentation. I assume that the problems have to do with the shift to the /usr/share directory structure. Under slink, all the info files were in /usr/info; now they are split between /usr/info/ and /usr/share/info/ There are 3 different ways on this system to get at the info files: [1] from within emacs, [2] using Minfo, [3] using tkinfo. Minfo is the one I like best, but the documentation is slim and there is no configuration file controlling its behavior (as far as I have been able to tell). From within emacs, I get the error message: `Can't find info directory'. Using Minfo, I get a top-level menu, but clicking on any of the items in the menu yields the error-message `menu item not found'. Clicking on the `emacs' menu-item crashes the program. Curiously, things seem to work as they are supposed to with tkinfo, but I don't use that much and haven't tested it as much the others. In trying to solve this, I have done the following: . run install-info in both directories; both have a dir file . defined INFOPATH in /etc/profile as : /usr/info:/usr/share/info I suppose I could move all the info files into /usr/share/info, run install-info again there and have INFOPATH defined only as /usr/share/info, but I'm worried that that may screw up future automatic upgrades, and have a suspicion that this kind of thing should be handled by the upgrade routines, and shouldn't have to be done by hand. There seem to be a number of related bug-reports in the archive, but I haven't seen any suggested fixes or workarounds. If there are any info-experts out there who could give some advice, I would be very grateful, Jim PS Is it only me or is the digest-service gone? The archive suggests that the list was active at least until April 1st, but I stopped receiving digests several days before that.
RealPlayer, frozen and frustration
A day or two ago I took the plunge and upgraded to frozen. A few small glitches, but they were easily dealt with and mostly I was very pleased by how smooth and how straightforward the upgrade process was. Thanks and praise to the developers. I have one problem however. I had three versions of RealPlayer on my slink system---RealPlayer 7, RealPlayer G2 and RealPlayer 5.0. I had the three versions because there are certain sites that I visit regularly whose archived files always produce an error when I atttempt to listen to them with more recent versions of Real Player than 5.0 (the error-message is `Invalid Metafile'; the real.com site contains the helpful information that this is not a common error-message). So for those files. I would use version 5. (All of these versions were installed by hand in /usr/local.) Now that I've upgraded to frozen, though, rvplayer5.0 always produces a segmentation fault; G2 has expired; and the performance I get with RealPlayer 7 (on the files that it will accept) is not great (it doesn't seem to handle buffering very well). This doesn't feel like progress. What I would like most is to be able to run the old version (5.0) in frozen. Does anyone know of a way to solve the seg-fault problem? Or any insight into the `Invalid Metafile' problem? Thanks very much, Jim
frozen
I have some people here pressing for an upgrade from slink to frozen. Is this a reasonable time to attempt it? I haven't seen so many reports of problems on the lists recently. Thanks for any help, Jim
Re: Tranfer files from desktop to laptop.
| what would be the easiest way to transfer (alot) of files from my | desktop computer to my laptop? They both run Debian. The laptop | does not have a network card. You can set up a PLIP (Parallel Line Internet Protocol) connection between the two, connecting the two parallel ports by way of a null modem cable. This is very easy to do and gives you full connectivity between the two systems. Once the connection is made you can use any of the FTP programs out there, or rsync, or ange-ftp from within emacs or you can use NSF to mount one file-system on the other system. There's a very good Mini-HOWTO maintained by Andrea Controzzi which you can get on the sunsite archive or at: http://www.cli.di.unipi.it/~controzz/intro_e.html#plip Jim
Re: Buying Debian Preinstalled
| I'm about ready to go out and buy a new computer. I'd really like | to buy a system with Debian preinstalled. I called VA Linux, and | even though they sell Debian, they won't sell me a computer with | Debian on it. Penguin uses Red Hat as well. You can order custom-built systems from Kachina Technologies with Debian installed (in fact that's their focus): Kachina Technologies, Inc. PO Box 9307 Albuquerque, NM 87119-9307 [EMAIL PROTECTED] URL: http://www.KachinaTech.COM Indy Box and Linux Systems Labs also do this: www.indybox.com www.lsl.com In the UK, there's: Space-Time Systems E-Mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web-site: http://www.spacetimesystems.dial.pipex.com Address: Kiln Lane, Leigh Sinton, Malvern, Worcs Telephone: 0796 7000291 I bought a system with Debian pre-installed some years ago from Promox Solutions (in Sunnyvale then), but there were some ways in which their inexperience with the distribution was apparent and caused problems. Jim
memories
I have a Debian box which has been rock-solid in the three years I've been using it. Currently it's slink with the 2.0.38 kernel (custom-compiled) and just a few extras in /usr/local. No other OS. Until recently it had just 32MB of RAM. I added 64 more on Saturday. Everything seemed fine to begin with---the 96MB was detected in BIOS and by the kernel; I had much less disk-thrashing in long Netscape sessions and so on. But If I leave the machine up overnight (as has been my habit) with nobody logged on and only cron jobs running, when I log on again in the morning, `top' tells me that almost all of the memory is in use, and when I try to work, I get constant segmentation faults (especially in resource-heavy applications like emacs, TeX, X ...) and sometimes a kernel-panic. Rebooting `fixes' the problem. The hardware: Pentium 2 (233 with 512K cache), an Asus P2L97 AGP Motherboard, Quantum 4.3GB SCSI Hard Drive. Are there tools available that would help me diagnose the problem and hopefully solve it? Thanks in advance for any advice, Jim McCloskey
rdate fails Y2K
I get exactly the same error from time.nist.gov, but: debian# rdate ntp2.usno.navy.mil Sat Jan 1 10:45:27 2000 works exactly as before. Looks like it's a problem specific to the server time.nist.gov. Jim
Re: email grabbed by RMAIL emacs
| Just installed emacs and opened rmail just to see it works. To my | surprise, all my inbox messages are now gone into RMAIL and can | only be read from emacs. | | Anyone know how I can get them back? I'll probably play about with | RMAIL but I want it as just another imap client...not as one that | takes over all mail functions. Meta-x unrmail RET Hope this helps, Jim
RMAIL
| PS - do you know a URL on how to use rmail? The on-line help (in Info) is good in this respect, I've found. In Info (Ctl-h i), go first to Emacs and then search down for `Sending Mail' and `Reading Mail with Rmail'. The package Minfo provides a nice-looking and easily-navigable GUI for browsing the Info system. It's not yet an official Debian package (as far as I know) but it's available at: http://www.ing.umu.se/~bosse/debian Best of luck, Jim McCloskey
Emacs 20.5
Hello: Does anyone know if there is a .deb available for Emacs 20.5 suitable for slink? I know that there was some discussion of including it in the current stable release but I didn't see a definitive announcement and it doesn't seem to be in the current 2.1r4. It would be nice to have the final Y2K tweaks for emacs before the Big Day. Thanks for your help, Jim McCloskey
arithmetic
I'm reluctant to re-open what I know is an old discussion, but ... I've looked in the list archives, and I've searched on the web. All I want is a simple spreadsheet program---very basic arithmetic functions, the ability to save the worksheet as a PS file for previewing and printing, and a semi-reasonable user interface. I've tried Siag and found it very frustrating---erratic and unpredictable behavior combined with impenetrable documentation. I've tried Abacus and that seemed better except that the functions which produce PS files seem to be very hard to control and the documentation is minimalist and not well organized. I've tried Xspread, but the user-interface is not exactly slick. I've downloaded WingZ but (i) I've had trouble getting it to run without segmentation faults and (ii) I'd prefer to use a GPL-ed program. I could install the Staroffice behemoth, but talk about overkill ... Are there options (maybe new options since this was last discussed?) that I'm forgetting or that I don't know about? Thanks very much, Jim McCloskey
Re: kernel
| Where can I find a manual on Internet about compiling kernel's ? For good clear Debian-specific information, you can read Dale Scheetz' book `The Debian Linux User's Guide' on-line at www.linuxpress.com. Around p.170, I think. Jim
emacs
Dear Philip: I use GNU emacs rather than Xemacs, so I hope my answers won't be misleading. I don't think they will | Emacs' flyspell-mode has support for English, but I need spell | checking for English, German, and French. Is this a built-in | facility or is it accomplished by ispell as well? And how do I get | additional language support? I'm not sure if that matters, but I'm | using the mule binary. I believe that this facility depends on the ispell-program, doesn't it? In which case, you would need to install the relevant dictionaries. The French dictionary is in the ifrench package, German is in igerman, spanish in ispanish and so on. There are at least Italian, Danish, Swedish available. All of these are debian packages, so you can use apt or dpkg to install them. I don't think that there is a Latin dictionary available. To change from one dictionary to another inside emacs: ispell-change-dictionary You can define the default dictionary in /usr/lib/ispell/default I don't know that you can use two dictionaries at once. | I turned on auto-fill-mode and filladapt-mode. Frankly, I have no | idea what that really means, but while typing new text | word-wrapping works the way I want it now. I guess auto-fill is | what I was looking for in the first place, what does fill-adapt do, | anyway? ;) I believe that this is what lets you do what I just did to the quoted text above---fill the paragraph and maintain the citation-mark. Or if you have indented and numbered paragraphs, it will also be intelligent about filling them. | (Don't flame me for that, these docs are killing me.) | However, when adding a word to a paragraph or deleting some words I | miss a convenient way to re-justify the whole paragraph, something | like hitting ^J in Pico. Meta-q. Which is bound to `fill-paragraph': Fill paragraph at or after point. Prefix arg means justify as well. That is, Ctl-u ESC-q produces a paragraph which looks like this one. Jim
Re: poff makes X hang
Jocke [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: | I have a strange problem I haven't seen before. When I type poff | my machine hangs. ctrl-alt-del doesn't work ctrl-alt-[---] doesn't | work. All I can do is pressing the button to reboot. and John Hasler [EMAIL PROTECTED] responded: | Yes. You are using a developmental kernel. They're like that. When I call poff, it doesn't hang the machine or the x-server, but sometimes it kills the x-server. No error messages reported; I'm just suddenly back at the virtual console that I started from. This isn't a development kernel; it's 2.0.36 running in a standard slink environment. The window manager is asclassic, Jim
Re:
Dave Baker [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: | The debian homepage: http://www.debian.org/releases/stable talks | about the new version of apt being available from netgot.net's home | page. Clicking the link gives a 404 and searching through the site | doesn't show it anywhere. | | Does anyone know where this can now be downloaded from? If I understand correctly the most recent version of apt is 0.3.11 (this is the version in potato). The version currently in stable (i.e. 2.1r3) is 0.3.10, which (again if I understand correctly) is `just' a version of 0.3.11 compiled for slink. If I have this wrong, I hope someone more knowledgeable will correct me. Jim
Re: unsubscribing
| Why can't I unsubscribe from this group with a message to | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | And I'm putting unsubscribe in the subject One source of difficulty here is when people who are subscribed to debian-user-*digest* try to unsubscribe from debian-user. Which is impossible since strictly speaking they are different lists. If you're subscribed to the digest version, you need to send the request to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Jim
Re: Suggestion for a WM on a slow machine
| I have a slow machine (486, with 16 Mb of RAM) and I'm trying to | keep as faster as possible. Working in command line mode I've no | problem, but in X ... So I'd like to know what's the better choice | for a window manager on a system like mine. Now I'm using twm. Are | fvwm2 or BlackBox faster? Or what else? I like asclassic. This is an old version of Afterstep---frozen at around the version 1.2 level and maintained by Joseph Carter. This is for people who (like me) find the newer window managers such as Windowmaker, Enlightenment or more recent versions of Afterstep to be too taken with eye-candy and too resource-hungry. asclassic is not so hungry; it's fast, relatively light, and very easy to configure (via the .steprc file in your home directory). It looks good and has the core features you'd expect of a window manager. You can find it in debian/dists/slink/main/binary-i386/x11/ Jim
2 cards and a dilemma
Hello everybody. After several months of work, I've persuaded the IT support people at work here to let me have a box on which I could install Debian myself for office use. Until now, it's been a question of `Which do you want: Mac or PC?' So this is something of a departure and an experiment. I'd like the experiment to go well, so that they might be open to such requests in future. The box they're offering me is a Gateway E-4200. Which seemed great, until I searched the debian-user archive, to head off any hardware issues that might arise, and found (from a conversation involving Kent West and others) that this box contains a network card (3Com 905c) whose support is iffy (a driver exists but has not been included in the kernel as of 2.2.12 at least) and a graphics card (ATI Rage 128 AGP) which is not supported as of the 3.3.4 release of XFree86. I think I can finesse the ethernet card difficulty by following the advice offered by Heikki Vatiainen and by Kent West on this list and downloading and compiling the driver module by hand. The graphics card seems more problematical though. The options seem to be: . wait until some upcoming release of XFree86 (3.3.6, 4?) includes support for the card and use console mode in the meantime . pay $100 for a commercial X server like Accelerated X . magically learn that there is now someone on this list who knows how to get the card to run under a currently available version of XFree86 Has anyone any advice? Has anyone had any success with these cards? What experience have people had running Accelerated X under slink? I'd be grateful for any advice. I really don't want to have to say to these people that Debian and/or Linux can't handly the hardware they're offering me. Jim
Czech and emacs
Debian Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: | I am desperately trying to insert a z with caron (it looks like | this: | . | | Could someone tell me what packages I need and what I have to do | then to insert this character into my emacs buffer? It wasn't clear to me from your message whether you're using emacs19 or emacs20. Emacs20 has full support for alphabets other than the English alphabet (that's what principally sets it apart from emacs19). For emacs20 you need two commands (input manually or in an init file): set-language-environment czech set-input-method czech This will work as long as your system has the necessary LEIM library (Libraries of Emacs Input Method). This should be a file czech.elc in: /usr/share/emacs/20.3/leim/quail/ If the library doesn't currently exist on your system (and it may not since LEIM is distributed separately from emacs), you can get it from the same ftp sites from which emacs itself is available. Jim
Re: Anybody keeps pcmcia-cs_3.0.12-?.deb or pcmcia-cs_3.0.10-?.deb ??
| When I upgraded pcmcia-cs package to 3.0.14, I found my pcmcia | network card does not work. It seems the problem is not easy for me | to solve because the error messages are complains about NULL | pointers in the kernel and lots of CPU register error messages are | dumped. Since network connectivity is very important for me, I am | considering down-grade to pcmcia-cs_3.0.12. Could you please tell | me where I can find any pcmcia-cs_3.0.12-?.deb or anybody keeps | this deb file ?? pcmcia-cs_3.0.10 is ok, too. It's a little hard to tell from what you report, but it sounds like you may be experiencing a problem identical or similar to one that has come up on this list a couple of times recently---once reported by me and once reported by [EMAIL PROTECTED] Look at the archives for this list for July 18th and August 12th and you'll find detailed reports which will let you see if your problem is the same. It turned out that the problem has nothing to do with the pcmcia package itself but was a more general one (which emerges under conditions that remain mysterious) having to do with kernel 2.0.36 and the way it manages serial ports. Which kernel-version are you using? For me, the problem disappeared when I downgraded from kernel 2.0.36 to 2.0.34 (but continued to use the most up-to-date version of the pcmcia package). I'm afraid I've no idea if the problem persists in the 2.2 series of kernels, Jim McCloskey
Files: debian to dos
| Is there a way to save a linux-file to a dos-diskette in a | dos-readable way? You can use the mtools package. It provides a set of commands that lets you read, write and manipulate files on an MSDOS system. Its most typical use is to transfer files between a linux system and a diskette. Specifically: say you have a DOS-formatted diskette in the floppy drive of your linux box, then you can: mdir a: (list the files on the diskette) mcopy FOO a:BAR (copy the linux file FOO to the floppy and name it BAR) mcopy a:FOO BAR (copy the file FOO from the floppy to the linux system and name it BAR) mdel a:FOO(delete the file FOO on the floppy) The mtools package is probably on your system already. If not, you can find it in the `otherosfs' section of the debian archive, Jim
Re: Serial port problems with kernel 2.0.36 SMP
| I recently upraded my motherboard and installed Slink where I was | using Hamm before, so a number of things changed at once. But: | | I am attempting to run pilot-link stuff, as well as connect my UPS | again (best power fortress). Both of these things worked with my | old motherboard (A Tyan PPro board) and kernel 2.0.34. | | With 2.0.36 and this Asus P2B-D M/B, I do see the serial ports | getting init'ed at boot | | bash$ dmesg | ... | Serial driver version 4.13 with no serial options enabled | tty00 at 0x03f8 (irq = 4) is a 16550A | tty01 at 0x02f8 (irq = 3) is a 16550A | ... | | and the associated /dev/ttyS* files are also enumerated. However, | attempting to run, for example | | pilot-xfer /dev/ttyS0 -L | | results in nothing happening, and attempting to connect to the UPS | results in a seg fault, followed by extremely chopping performance | and an error message printed into the ring buffer about kmalloc | operations and how an idle process that is running can't sleep | (this is slightly painful, but I can do this again and be more | precise if this is interesting, which I imagine it is...). I've had an identical problem with Slink and the 2.0.36 kernel on a laptop trying to use a PCMCIA Fax/Modem card---identical (non)-behaviour and identical error messages. I assumed it was a problem with PCMCIA services and posted a request for help here and on the PCMCIA message-list. No-one was able to diagnose the problem. Judging by your message, though, it is not a PCMCIA problem at all but something more general having to do with the handling of serial ports. Weirder and weirder ... If you get any advice or information, I'd appreciate your sharing it with me, Jim McCloskey
Re: laptop: my own kernels don't work
| Is there a HOWTO on how to compile my own pcmcia modules? I have | the source but I have never done this before. I will go into the | source and see if I can find some docs there. The PCMCIA HOWTO is very clear and complete about this. The latest version is available in various formats at: ftp://hyper.stanford.edu/pub/pcmcia/doc An HTML version is available at: http://hyper.stanford.edu/HyperNews/get/pcmcia/home.html Jim
Re: PCMCIA and interrupts?
| ok, get hte package strace.
| send that to the debian list .
OK, this is in connection with my troubles in getting PCMCIA services
to work with Slink on my laptop (custom-compiled kernel 2.0.36), maybe
because of IRQ conflict.
Doing `setserial /dev/ttyS1' produces this on console and in syslog:
Jul 20 20:50:21 lapdog kernel: Unable to handle kernel NULL pointer dereference
at virtual address c000
Jul 20 20:50:21 lapdog kernel: current-tss.cr3 = 00883000, %cr3 = 00883000
Jul 20 20:50:21 lapdog kernel: *pde = 00102067
Jul 20 20:50:21 lapdog kernel: *pte =
Jul 20 20:50:21 lapdog kernel: Oops:
Jul 20 20:50:21 lapdog kernel: CPU:0
Jul 20 20:50:21 lapdog kernel: EIP:0010:[]
Jul 20 20:50:21 lapdog kernel: EFLAGS: 00010206
Jul 20 20:50:21 lapdog kernel: eax: ebx: 0004 ecx: 0064
edx: 0009
Jul 20 20:50:21 lapdog kernel: esi: 001bd6e0 edi: ebp: 00858fa0
esp: 00858f88
Jul 20 20:50:21 lapdog kernel: ds: 0018 es: 0018 fs: 002b gs: 002b ss:
0018
Jul 20 20:50:21 lapdog kernel: Process strace (pid: 149, process nr: 20,
stackpage=00858000)
Jul 20 20:50:21 lapdog kernel: Stack: 00113688 0001 0001
00858fbc 001bd5d0 00119afb
Jul 20 20:50:21 lapdog kernel:00858fbc 08068908 08065e48 b7e8
0010ab0b 400ab8ec 08068908
Jul 20 20:50:21 lapdog kernel:08068908 08065e48 b7e8
4007002b 4007002b 4007002b 002b
Jul 20 20:50:21 lapdog kernel: Call Trace: [timer_bh+248/864]
[do_bottom_half+59/112] [handle_bottom_half+11/24]
Jul 20 20:50:21 lapdog kernel: Code: 1Unable to handle kernel NULL pointer
dereference at virtual address c000
Jul 20 20:50:21 lapdog kernel: current-tss.cr3 = 00883000, %cr3 = 00883000
Jul 20 20:50:21 lapdog kernel: *pde = 00102067
Jul 20 20:50:21 lapdog kernel: *pte =
Jul 20 20:50:21 lapdog kernel: Oops:
Jul 20 20:50:21 lapdog kernel: CPU:0
Jul 20 20:50:21 lapdog kernel: EIP:0010:[die_if_kernel+652/736]
Jul 20 20:50:21 lapdog kernel: EFLAGS: 00010202
Jul 20 20:50:21 lapdog kernel: eax: 0010 ebx: 0009002b ecx:
edx: 0094ec0c
Jul 20 20:50:21 lapdog kernel: esi: edi: 00859000 ebp: 00858f4c
esp: 00858ef0
Jul 20 20:50:21 lapdog kernel: ds: 0018 es: 0018 fs: 0010 gs: 002b ss:
0018
Jul 20 20:50:21 lapdog kernel: Process strace (pid: 149, process nr: 20,
stackpage=00858000)
Jul 20 20:50:21 lapdog kernel: Stack: 0018002b 00858f4c
00ab4810 0140 0180 0100
Jul 20 20:50:21 lapdog kernel:00ab0018 0011260e 0018e798 00858f4c
0085 00112310 001bd6e0
Jul 20 20:50:21 lapdog kernel:00858fa0 0212 002e3c18 0035
0010acdc 00858f4c 0085 0004
Jul 20 20:50:21 lapdog kernel: Call Trace: [save_cur+171/272] [0140]
[0180] [serial:register_serial_R3425f38c+-56452/324]
[do_page_fault+766/800] [do_page_fault+0/800] [error_code+64/72]
Jul 20 20:50:21 lapdog kernel:[timer_bh+248/864]
[do_bottom_half+59/112] [handle_bottom_half+11/24]
Jul 20 20:50:21 lapdog kernel: Code: 64 8a 04 0e 0f a1 88 c2 81 e2 ff 00 00 00
89 54 24 10 52 68
Jul 20 20:50:21 lapdog kernel: Aiee, killing interrupt handler
And the output of strace on the samew command is:
execve(/bin/setserial, [setserial, /dev/ttyS1], [/* 17 vars */]) = 0
brk(0) = 0x804bcfc
open(/etc/ld.so.preload, O_RDONLY)= -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
open(/etc/ld.so.cache, O_RDONLY) = 4
fstat(4, {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_size=5335, ...}) = 0
mmap(0, 5335, PROT_READ, MAP_PRIVATE, 4, 0) = 0x4000c000
close(4)= 0
open(/lib/libc.so.6, O_RDONLY)= 4
mmap(0, 4096, PROT_READ, MAP_PRIVATE, 4, 0) = 0x4000e000
munmap(0x4000e000, 4096)= 0
mmap(0, 673220, PROT_READ|PROT_EXEC, MAP_PRIVATE, 4, 0) = 0x4000e000
mprotect(0x400a, 75204, PROT_NONE) = 0
mmap(0x400a, 28672, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE, MAP_PRIVATE|MAP_FIXED, 4,
0x91000) = 0x400a
mmap(0x400a7000, 46532, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE,
MAP_PRIVATE|MAP_FIXED|MAP_ANONYMOUS, -1, 0) = 0x400a7000
close(4)= 0
munmap(0x4000c000, 5335)= 0
personality(PER_LINUX) = 0
getpid()= 150
open(/dev/ttyS1, O_RDWR|O_NONBLOCK) = 4
ioctl(4, TIOCGSERIAL, 0xbd7c) = 0
fstat(1, {st_mode=S_IFCHR|0600, st_rdev=makedev(4, 1), ...}) = 0
mmap(0, 4096, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE, MAP_PRIVATE|MAP_ANONYMOUS, -1, 0) =
0x4000c000
ioctl(1, TCGETS, {B38400 opost isig icanon echo ...}) = 0
write(1, /dev/ttyS1, UART: 16550A, Port: ..., 47) = 47
close(4)= 0
--
Again, I'd be very grateful indeed for any help, pointers, anything
.
Jim
PCMCIA and interrupts?
Hello. I recently installed Slink on a 5-year old laptop that had remained unused for some time. This was never a top-of-the-line model, and the hardware at this point might not be the most trustworthy. Nevertheless, the installation went smoothly. I compiled a custom kernel (2.0.36), and that went smoothly as well. Everything seems fine, judging both by the machine's behaviour and by what gets written to the log files. Problems arose only when I decided to install the Pcmcia Card Manager Packages, so that I could use my fax-modem card to connect to the net. (I had done the install from floppies, and then by way of a PLIP connection to my desktop machine, using a CD mounted there as the archive). Then I entered a little private hell. I installed the pcmcia-cs package and the pcmcia-modules package from Slink. But the pcmcia-modules package is designed to work with the stock 2.0.36 kernel, and since I had compiled a custom-kernel, it didn't work. I read the FAQ in /usr/doc/, got the pcmcia-source package, and recompiled the modules from source. Everything seemed to go smoothly---I could install the modules and start the cardmanager with no complaints about unresolved symbols. Insertion and removal of cards was detected (double beep), and the card was successfully recognized as a serial modem. But when I try to actually use the modules---disaster. Trying to make the modem dial (PPP or Minicom), or trying to use setserial to configure /dev/ttyS1, produces a segmentation fault and a kernel-oops. Here's a typical entry from syslog: Jul 16 19:45:11 lapdog cardmgr[107]: executing: './serial start ttyS1' Jul 16 19:45:15 lapdog /usr/sbin/cron[134]: (CRON) STARTUP (fork ok) Jul 16 19:47:16 lapdog kernel: Unable to handle kernel NULL pointer dereference at virtual address c000 Jul 16 19:47:16 lapdog kernel: current-tss.cr3 = 00101000, %cr3 = 00101000 Jul 16 19:47:16 lapdog kernel: *pde = 00102067 Jul 16 19:47:16 lapdog kernel: *pte = Jul 16 19:47:16 lapdog kernel: Oops: Jul 16 19:47:16 lapdog kernel: CPU:0 Jul 16 19:47:16 lapdog kernel: EIP:0010:[] Jul 16 19:47:16 lapdog kernel: EFLAGS: 00010206 Jul 16 19:47:16 lapdog kernel: eax: ebx: 0004 ecx: 0064 edx: 0009 Jul 16 19:47:16 lapdog kernel: esi: 001bd6e0 edi: 0001 ebp: 0019d5b0 esp: 0019d598 Jul 16 19:47:16 lapdog kernel: ds: 0018 es: 0018 fs: 002b gs: 0018 ss: 0018 Jul 16 19:47:16 lapdog kernel: Process swapper (pid: 0, process nr: 0, stackpage=0019b678) Jul 16 19:47:16 lapdog kernel: Stack: 00113688 0001 0001 0001 0019d5cc 001bd5d0 00119afb Jul 16 19:47:16 lapdog kernel:0019d5cc 0019d654 9000 0010ab0b 5c85 0013 0019de2c Jul 16 19:47:16 lapdog kerneld: error: exit: Identifier removed Jul 16 19:47:16 lapdog kernel:0019d654 9000 00a90018 00190018 002b 0018 Jul 16 19:47:16 lapdog kernel: Call Trace: [timer_bh+248/864] [do_bottom_half+59/112] [handle_bottom_half+11/24] [sys_idle+108/128] [system_call+85/124] [init+0/624] [save_cur+152/272] Jul 16 19:47:16 lapdog kernel:[start_kernel+429/448] [it_real_fn+0/80] Jul 16 19:47:16 lapdog kernel: Code: 1Unable to handle kernel NULL pointer dereference at virtual address c000 Jul 16 19:47:16 lapdog kernel: current-tss.cr3 = 00101000, %cr3 = 00101000 Jul 16 19:47:16 lapdog kernel: *pde = 00102067 Jul 16 19:47:16 lapdog kernel: *pte = Jul 16 19:47:16 lapdog kernel: Oops: Jul 16 19:47:16 lapdog kernel: CPU:0 Jul 16 19:47:16 lapdog kernel: EIP:0010:[die_if_kernel+652/736] Jul 16 19:47:16 lapdog kernel: EFLAGS: 00010202 Jul 16 19:47:16 lapdog kernel: eax: 0010 ebx: 0100 ecx: edx: 00367c0c Jul 16 19:47:16 lapdog kernel: esi: edi: 0019e000 ebp: 0019d55c esp: 0019d500 Jul 16 19:47:16 lapdog kernel: ds: 0018 es: 0018 fs: 0010 gs: 0018 ss: 0018 Jul 16 19:47:16 lapdog kernel: Process swapper (pid: 0, process nr: 0, stackpage=0019b678) Jul 16 19:47:16 lapdog kernel: Stack: 0018002b 0019d55c 0019de2c 0140 0180 0100 Jul 16 19:47:16 lapdog kernel:00190018 0011260e 0018e798 0019d55c 0019 00112310 001bd6e0 0001 Jul 16 19:47:16 lapdog kernel:0019d5b0 0002 0019ddc8 001c 0010acdc 0019d55c 0019 0004 Jul 16 19:47:16 lapdog kernel: Call Trace: [save_cur+171/272] [0140] [0180] [serial:register_serial_R3425f38c+-56452/324] [do_page_fault+766/800] [do_page_fault+0/800] [error_code+64/72] Jul 16 19:47:16 lapdog kernel:[timer_bh+248/864] [do_bottom_half+59/112] [handle_bottom_half+11/24] [sys_idle+108/128] [system_call+85/124] [init+0/624] [save_cur+152/272] [start_kernel+429/448] Jul 16 19:47:16 lapdog kernel:[it_real_fn+0/80] Jul 16 19:47:16 lapdog kernel: Code: 64 8a 04 0e 0f a1 88
Segmentation faults with apt-get
| Ditto! | | It only happens when I telnet in from work. Thanks - I assume I | don't need to worry about it. I've had the problem even when running apt-get (0.3.7, compiled for slink) from the console accessing a (partial) archive on the local system. I don't think it was caused by faulty memory since kernel compilation went smoothly. Rebooting caused the problem to go away. Sorry I can't be more informative, but there was no more informative error message, Jim
dpkg (was Re:Upgrading with two cd's, at once?)
Pann McCuaig [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: | but the only time I find I _HAVE_ to use dselect is for something | like replacing smail with exim-- I've never found a way to convince | dpkg to do that for me. No, but dselect isn't necessary for this, is it? Won't `Apt-get install exim' do it painlessly---i.e. purge smail first, then install and configure exim? Jim
MPEG viewer
Can anyone recommend a decent mpeg video viewer? Do any even exist? I've had good results from mtv (aka `mpegtv'). There's a .deb package available for free at http://www.mpegtv.com/ This is free for personal use, but it's nagware---if you elect not to pay a $10 registration fee, you're annoyed by constant pop-up screens telling you about the advantages of registering. In my (limited) experience, though, it works well, Jim
gawk, rsync, mirror
Hello. I have two questions that I would appreciate some advice on, if anyone has time. I'm running slink with a 2.0.36 kernel. [1] I'd like to try `gawk' instead of `mawk' (currently installed). But `mawk' can't be removed by dpkg since basefiles depends on it. Is apt smart enough to handle this situation? That is, if I try to: apt-get install gawk will it do the right thing? [2] I'd also like to install a package to help me keep 3 directory-systems (a small data-base that I maintain) on 3 different machines in sync with one another. I gather that both `rsync' and `mirror' will do this. Is there anyone who can give me a sense of what the pluses and minuses of the two programs are? `Rsync' seems to be much smaller. Thanks very much for any advice, Jim
printers
| Hi debian users, | I have three printers here: | 1) Canon BJC-4100 Color | 2) HP LaserJet IIP plus | 3) Epson LX-300. | Anyone here using anyone of these printers under Debian can help me? I thought I had responded to your first post yesterday, but the message seems to have disappeared somewhere. I use an HP LaserJet IIP under Debian (slink, 2.1) with no problems. The setup is very simple though. Mostly I use TeX and then use dvilj to convert the .DVI files to PCL files. These can then be printed simply with lpr. That is: % tex foo % dvilj foo.dvi % lpr foo.lj Inside emacs, you can run the last two commands in one step with the tex-print command (usually bound to Ctl-c Crl-p). For non-TeX sources, I use Ghostscript with the option: -sDEVICE=ljet2p Not sophisticated, but it works without a problem, Jim
Fax software
| I have efax-0.8a, and used it to send text and postscript files. I | chose it because it's small. I also use efax and have been extremely happy with it---small, easy to use, and easy to configure. It comes with a frontend script called `fax' (oddly enough) which means that for, most purposes, all you have to do is prepare an ASCII text file, and then: fax make FOO fax view FOO.001 (if you want to check how it looks) fax send NUMBER FOO.001 In fact, if you're confident about how it will look, or in a hurry, you can just do: fax send NUMBER FOO and the program will convert the ASCII file and also send the fax. To send PS-files, you need to invoke Ghostscript to do the conversion, and then use fax send, Jim
lilo, map and system.map
| So the question is: | Is the map file that is mentioned in lilo.conf not the same file | as the Syetm.map file, and am I supposed to place the System.map | file in a special location without lilo's knowledge? These are different files with different functions. The /boot/map file is a file maintained by lilo which contains the name and location of the kernel(s) that are available on your systen. If you run lilo -q it will list the names it finds there (the names you have defined in /etc/lilo.conf). System.map is used by some programs to find things that they need. It plays no paricular role (as far as I know) in the boot process. The standard procedure is to make a symlink between /System.map and /boot/System.map-x.y.z (assuming that you're using the x.y.z kernel). If you have more than one kernel on the system, you're supposed to have a System.map-x.y.z file in /boot for each kernel x.y.z that you want to be able to boot. Jim
Re: debian-user-digest Digest V99 #746
I finally upgraded to slink, and everything seems fine; there were only minor glitches in the upgrade---I had to install telnet and telnetd manually, for instance. (Thanks to Jason Gunthorpe for advice about using multiple CD's with the new apt.) There's a new message when I boot, though: lspci not found, so PCI resource conflict not checked This didn't appear before the upgrade. I see that lspci is contained in the pciutils packages, but according to the information in the Packages file, that package requires kernel version 2.1.82 or higher. I'm running 2.0.35. Anyone know why this message is appearing? Any advice? Thanks, Jim
unsubscribing
| Can someone please tell me how to get removed from this mailing | list. NOTE: Before you let the flames fly realize that I have | tried all of the suggested ways to get removed, i.e. mail -s | unsubscribe [EMAIL PROTECTED] I've also tried | sending unsubscribe commands such as: unsubscribe | [EMAIL PROTECTED] and unsubscribe [EMAIL PROTECTED] | without success. I am pretty sure that the problem is that when I | joined the list, I did so from the debian website, using the | address [EMAIL PROTECTED], but every email I send gets | [EMAIL PROTECTED] as the from address. I've also tried | sending email to the list maintainer. I tried to unsubscribe while I was away from home for 3 weeks and had the same kind of problems. The automated response I got (several times) said that I couldn't be removed from the list because I wasn't a member. I didn't join from the web-site though. I suspect that this must have to do with how exim rewrites the headers on outgoing mail from this account, but it seems like there should be a way for the list-management software to handle this kind of situation. Jim
Re: I'm not giving up: backpack CD-ROM drive.
| 2) Use a null modem cable to connect to a desktop and piggy back | ride on that systems CD-ROM. | | Q: I don't know if the Linux base system supports null modem | connections. Anybody any idea? | | Yes, it does. I have just installed debian on a laptop which only | has a floppy drive. I put the base system on floppies, and | installed the rest with a null-modem cable and ppp. To set it up, | put this in /etc/ppp/peers/provider: | | /dev/ttyS0 115200 | 192.168.2.2:192.168.2.1 | noauth | | and the same on the other system, just swap the ip addresses | arround. of course you will need another debian system to connect | to for this method. Or set up a PLIP connection between the two machines, using the null modem cable. This lets you mount the CD file-system on one machine and then use NFS to also mount it on the machine that only has the base system. Very fast. You can then use the `Ready Mounted File-System' access method in dselect. This was how I installed 2.0 on a laptop that had neither net access nor a CD-ROM drive. There's an excellent short article about setting up PLIP connections in Linux Journal Issue 50 (June 1998). Jim
hamm to slink with upgrade
There have been several posts on debian-user asking how to use apt-get to upgrade from hamm to slink, now that the binaries no longer fit on a single CD. I've seen two answers so far on the list---both of them containing very helpful suggestions, but very different from one another, and both sort of telegraphic. There must be hundreds, if not thousands, of people out there now who have just received the CD pack from Cheapbytes or Linux Central or wherever and who, like me, have no idea at all how to do the upgrade using apt-get. I've looked pretty diligently in the places I know about, but I haven't managed to find any advice on this. The upgrade advice contained in the Release Notes for 2.1 suggests the use of apt-get for the upgrade, but there's no mention there of the multiple-cd problem. Nor does it discuss the issue for dselect. There is some very brief advice in the multiCD.README file on the CD itself, but this talks only about installation, not about an upgrade, and it refers only to dselect. The man page for apt-get tells you how to use a mounted CD as the archive, but you can't guess from it how to use apt-get when the packages are spread across two CDs and you can only mount one at a time. The smoothness of the upgrade from bo to hamm using apt-get was one of the things that really convinced me that debian was the best linux distribution for people like me (a reasonably knowledgeable user, but *not* a programmer). The lack of advice, official or unofficial, about this very basic problem for users strikes me as weird and untypical. Is there anywhere where somebody like me can go and read a reasonably clear account of how to use apt-get to do the upgrade with the two CD's? Is there an official `debian position' on how to do it? Jim
Unidentified subject!
| Netscape, in windows, in my experience, always had a tendency to | make a system run progressively slower until either netscape was | closed or everything crashed. I hadn't seen it under linux and | thought it had gotten fixed, but now I'm not so sure. Maybe that's | what you ran into, too? I have seen exactly this behaviour with Netscape (4.05, running under hamm, but installed by hand in /usr/local ) several times in the past few months. Slower and slower response, disk thrashing, top shows no memory or swap left, everything back to normal once Netscape is killed. Jim
Re: insert eps files in a TeX document
Excuse me, but I have to do this in TeX, no LaTeX.
epsf.tex works in plain TeX, as far as I know. In the TeTeX
distribution, it's in /usr/lib/texmf/tex/plain/dvips/epsf.tex. It's
well documented there. Here are some excerpts from the file:
---
This file contains TeX macros to include an Encapsulated PostScript
graphic. It works by finding the bounding box comment, calculating
the correct scale values, and inserting a vbox of the appropriate size
at the current position in the TeX document.
To use, simply say
\input epsf % somewhere early on in your TeX file
then where you want to insert a vbox for a figure:
\epsfbox{filename.ps}
Alternatively, you can supply your own bounding box by
\epsfbox[0 0 30 50]{filename.ps}
This will not read in the file, and will instead use the bounding box
you specify.
The effect will be to typeset the figure as a TeX box, at the point of
your \epsfbox command. By default, the graphic will have its `natural'
width (namely the width of its bounding box, as described in
filename.ps). The TeX box will have depth zero.
You can enlarge or reduce the figure by saying:
\epsfxsize=dimen \epsfbox{filename.ps}
or
\epsfysize=dimen \epsfbox{filename.ps}
instead. Then the width of the TeX box will be \epsfxsize and its
height will be scaled proportionately (or the height will be
\epsfysize and its width will be scaled proportionately).
and much more .
Jim
Changing From in exim
Hello. | I have configured Exim. Only one thing does not work the way I want | it to. When I send a message, my local username is filled in in | the From: line instead of my username at my ISP | ([EMAIL PROTECTED] instead of [EMAIL PROTECTED]). In the file /etc/exim.conf (at the very end of the file), there should be a section called `Rewrite Configuration'. If you have only one or two users, you can simply list the relevant rewrite information like this: ## # REWRITE CONFIGURATION # ## [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] frs (where the first address is your `private' one, so to speak, and the second is the one that you want people outside your local setup to use) The flags determine which fields are rewritten. F means that the envelope From field is rewritten; f rewrites the From header; r rewrites the Reply-to header; s rewrites the Sender header. For systems with more users, there are cleverer automated ways (using pattern-matching) to achieve rewriting. All of this is documented clearly and thoroughly in section 33 of /usr/doc/exim/spec.txt.) Jim
X
Robert-Jan Kuijvenhoven [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: | X has the right permissions. But I thought of something else that | might be causing the ploblem. To get X11 working (as root), I had | to change XF86_VGA16 to XF86_S3. The book 'Running Linux' suggested | to change the link /usr/bin/X11/X to point to XF86_S3. I noticed | the file /usr/bin/X11/X wasn't a link. So I made a backup of the | file and created a new link that pointed to XF86_S3. This way I | could start X11 (but only as root). This must be the problem (I had an identical problem when I bought a pre-(mis)installed debian system). It's a peculiarity of Debian that /usr/bin/X11/X is *not* a symbolic link to the `real' server. In Debian, /usr/bin/X11/X is a wrapper program which, among other things, contains an instruction to run the `real' X server binary. This wrapper program reads a configuration file /etc/X11/Xserver to find out which server to run and who is allowed to run it. This is documented in /usr/doc/xbase/README.Debian (I believe it's a security precaution). Jim
kernel 2.2.0
| 2.2.0 will be available in deb packages, Real Soon Now (tm), | I'm sure. Since slink is now in 'frozen' status, the kernel will | show up in potato, not slink, I think. Thanks to the many people who responded to my earlier question about things to watch for in compiling and installing 2.2.0. Those of you who have moved to 2.2.0---have you noticed serious improvements in performance over the 2.0.xx kernels? Thanks, Jim
