Linux-Misc Digest #248, Volume #19 Mon, 1 Mar 99 15:13:16 EST
Contents:
Driving Epson Serially (hveo)
Re: Linux/FreeBSD compatability (Was Re: Best Free Unix? (why FreeBSD?)) (Bill
Vermillion)
ODS2 filesystem (rickpushman)
Re: Linux is not even in Windows 9X's class. (Craig Kelley)
Re: Making Programs SUID root (Korny)
WEB VIDEO: Linux got me kicked out of a Wal*Mart ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
Re: Linux & VPN ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
Re: PPP for network connection?? ("Craig Shields")
Re: copy from old_fs to new_fs ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
which Linux distribution? ("Kirk R. Wythers")
Re: Best Free Unix? (why FreeBSD?) (Jonathan Stott)
Re: Fax server (Stephen Richard FREELAND)
Re: glibc Netscape 4.5 dies when encounters java (Johan Kullstam)
Re: WindowMaker & Kernel 2.2.2 (Anthony)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: hveo <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Driving Epson Serially
Date: Mon, 01 Mar 1999 19:48:33 +0100
Can someone please help me to print to my Epson Stylus Color 740
serially using LinuxPPC. I have one solution, but it isn't a solution to
me.
Regards,
Xander
(My e-mail address is different than the one mentioned above:
[EMAIL PROTECTED])
------------------------------
Crossposted-To:
comp.unix.questions,comp.unix.advocacy,comp.unix.misc,comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Bill Vermillion)
Subject: Re: Linux/FreeBSD compatability (Was Re: Best Free Unix? (why FreeBSD?))
Date: Mon, 1 Mar 1999 15:38:55 GMT
In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
brian moore <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>On Sun, 28 Feb 1999 23:34:37 GMT,
> Bill Vermillion <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>> That's really a design issue and not a floppy issue. This used to
>> be a great problems a few years ago as many of the cheapest PC's
>> didn't recognize the change disk line. You would write something
>> to a disk, remove it, and write something to the new disk. It wrote
>> the directory of the old disk on the new disk. It made you day
>> quite counter-productive.
>I remember those days all too well (and rebuilt directories to recover
>the data).
>It's not a software issue at all on PC hardware, though. That's why
>Sun and Apple use the floppy drives they do.
I've not seen a system in recent years that did not know when a
floppy was changed - at least that problem was gone.
There is also another MS gotcha - seen more in the days of limited
size drives. That is when a file is brought in and edited, a
significant change is made, and now the file is written out.
MS churns along writing sector after sector and then finds the disk
is full. Because of some awkward/poor thinking about design it
say's to itself "I can't write all of this file, so I'd better
remove it". And now the original is gone. Unix - even though the
urbran legend is that Unix is arcane, old-fashioned, a pain to
adminster, etc. - at least saves all of the file that it can, so
you aren't totally dead in the water.
So many of the purely stupid OS tricks that MS perpetrated made
using MS OSes a pain for me, that after 9 months in 1983 I moved to
Unix an never went back.
>> >On a Sun, for example. there's a daemon which sees the interrupt
>> >from the drive ("oh, lookie, a disk!") and automatically mounts it.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>> >Removing the disk involves using the 'eject' command which ensures
>> >it is unmounted.
>> What if you didn't want to mount it? What if it was a tar or cpio
>> format, or something else that didn't require mounting such as a
>> disk image you were going to dd into the system?
>It would still eject it. I didn't say "it will unmount it", I said "it
>ensures it is unmounted". You can even eject a music CD so that you can
>change discs.
It looks to me like you said "automatically mounts it". That is
what I was repsonding too. Of course all good OSes and hardware
combinations will unmount everything properly even if you turn the
power switch off. Because of the way these are designed the power
doesn't actually go off until everything is cleaned up. Of course
pulling the power plug negates all these built in safety devices.
>> >Alas, with PC hardware, though, that's not feasible. I don't
>> >know if the SPARC and Mac versions of Linux do it nicely: they
>> >at least don't have the stupid hardware to fight with.
>> As I said it's only some of the hardware. Problem is that the OS
>> designers need to get away from the MS way of thinking.
>It's most if not virtually all of the hardware: which PC has a
>floppy drive without the big "eject me" button? Which Sun has a
>floppy drive WITH such a button?
I may have misread your orignal post but it was not about eject nor
was it unmount. I just interpreted this as a comment on the system
not being able to see a floppy change. Which was a problem and is
not anymore - at least I've not seen it for years.
>Show me how to eject a floppy under program control, and how to
>lock the drive against the user ejecting a mounted floppy like
>Linux does with the CD-ROM since 1.3 kernels.
I can't because that part doesn't exist. On the old 8" drives I
learned on however, the OS could lock the floppy into the system,
and would not release the hw lock on the floppy until the OS
released it. SCSI also does that. On a system I use with
removeable media - booting from Jaz - under MS you can eject the
drive after you shutdown and replace the OS.
However on the *ix variants from which I boot at power-down
you have to power cycle the system - as I have the adaptor set
to reset on power-up.
A bit of trivia. The 5.25" floppies (I have an orignal from the
pre-production run of 1000 or so from Shugart - got it later from
someone who was working with it then) were designed to be a much
cheaper way of making floppy drives.
The 5.25" sold for about $400 the 8" about $800. Again there was a
lack of proper design, at least IMO, about certain areas. The
locking was one - but not critical.
What was critical was the change in mode from the 8" FAILSAFE to
the 5.25" FAIL DANGEROUSLY when it came to write protection.
Eight disks were writable if there was no notch. You could buy
disks with pre-cut notches, and place a write-enable tab to enable
writing, or you could take a standard disk and just use a hole
punch to disable writing.
If you had writing enabled - and over a course of time the glue on
the write enable tab came off - the disk would fail save - you
could do no further harm.
The 5.25" world inverted that so that to protect the disk you had
to place a tab on it. Over the course of time these could come off.
The worst for falling off was the paper with aluminum covering -
that would dry and fall off in a year or so.
I've seen more than one instance of destroyed disk when the
write-protect tab fell off - that is a major design flaw.
There was another lack of thinking a situation through - and just
doing what seem obvious based on their personal experience when 3M
replaced the metal write-protect/write-enable tabs they had been
using, with a new flexible vinyl like tab, that was red in color.
All of a sudden they got calls from irate users whose write-protect
device had failed to protect. (There was also a problem in the 8"
ones that uses a write-enbled tab - but data was secure as you
could not write).
The 3M engineers obviously (well it was obvious to me anyway) had
based their write-protect tab on the basis of mechanical sensors
that had been use for years. However they missed the fact that
electronics sensors - led and receptor - are much cheaper than
mechanical switches - and a great many drive manufacturers had
changed to that.
The 3M tab was transparent to infrared. The the drives could not
see, and thus could not know, that the floppy was write-protected,
and they'd sribble on the disk to their transitors content (can't
really say heart's content when refereing to hardware can we?).
I guess this really belongs on alt.folklore.computers doesn't it.
--
Bill Vermillion bv @ wjv.com
------------------------------
From: rickpushman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: ODS2 filesystem
Date: Mon, 01 Mar 1999 12:14:53 -0500
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
The ODS2 filesystem is a DEC type. I have a whole lot of OpenVMS
CD-ROM's at home that I'd
like to read, but my Linux machine doesn't recognize and won't mount the
ODS2 file system type.
Any suggestions?
Thanks,
Richard Pushman
------------------------------
Crossposted-To: alt.linux,alt.os.linux,comp.os.linux.advocacy
Subject: Re: Linux is not even in Windows 9X's class.
From: Craig Kelley <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: 01 Mar 1999 09:15:57 -0700
[EMAIL PROTECTED] () writes:
> >I don't think your comparison is fair.
>
> Well, tough. I'm comparing what each one _considers_ to be the operating
> system. If I didn't compare the Windows GUI against Linux CLI, _THAT_
> would be unfair. Why?
>
> - Windows CLI doesn't have TCP/IP Networking
Try this out (escpecially under NT):
C:\> net help
> - Windows CLI doesn't have VTs (The GUI, in a sense, can simulate
> this)
Under Windows it does. Linux can be setup w/o this (in fact, many
embedded and/or other small distributions do this on purpose to save
memory).
> - Windows CLI is mostly USELESS. There are features that are in
> the GUI that I'm comparing to the features in Linux.
Why should Linux be punished for Microsoft's shoddy programming?
> Comparing XFree86 to Windows is completely unfair, because XFree86 is not
> the Operating System, and doesn't provide those functions, Linux is.
*ahem*
Whatever.
--
The wheel is turning but the hamster is dead.
Craig Kelley -- [EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.isu.edu/~kellcrai finger [EMAIL PROTECTED] for PGP block
------------------------------
From: Korny <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.os.linux.setup
Subject: Re: Making Programs SUID root
Date: Mon, 01 Mar 1999 17:56:15 GMT
Fixing star office is easy... just do chown -R username path_to_soffice and
chgrp -R user_group path_to_staroffice. Copy the 2 files in ~root that go
with star office to your user account home dir... I think one is .sversion,
and I don't remember what the other is. Just do ls -la | more, and look for
them.
To make a program/script run as root, set the suid bit to 4. e.g. chmod 4755
program. This is an obvious security breech.
There is also a program out there that lets you grant certain users permission
to run root-only programs. I don't remeber what it's call, though. (Maybe
suid?)
In article <7bbql3$kl0$[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> I'm not sure if this is the same thing as a program that runs as SUID root,
> but I have a desktop machine that is running linux which only myself and my
> wife use. I'm trying to get away from running as root, and using my own user
> account, but there are programs that I need to run as root and I was
> wondering if there is a way that I can change the permissions so that both
> myself and my wife can run them without running as root. For example I
> installed staroffice on my computer, but I installed it using the root
> account. Now if I want to run staroffice I have to open an xterm, su to root
> and then invoke staroffice on the command line. I'd rather have it set up so
> that I can use either a kde shortcut or a windowmaker dock to execute the
> application. I realize this is a security risk, but this is a desktop
> machine. I've turned off all of my inbound network services except ssh, so
> I'm not all that concerned about being hacked. Is there any way to do
this
> or do I simply have to suck it up and su each time.
>
> Thanks,
> Brian Seppanen
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
> -----------== Posted via Deja News, The Discussion Network ==----------
> http://www.dejanews.com/ Search, Read, Discuss, or Start Your Own
>
============= Posted via Deja News, The Discussion Network ============
http://www.dejanews.com/ Search, Read, Discuss, or Start Your Own
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Crossposted-To: alt.2600,alt.os.linux
Subject: WEB VIDEO: Linux got me kicked out of a Wal*Mart
Date: Mon, 01 Mar 1999 14:36:42 GMT
We turned a Linux laptop and a quickcam into an MPEG video camera and
risked arrest by shooting back at surveillance cameras in commercial spaces.
Read our story, see six of our videos and download our free camera software
at
http://www.honeylocust.com/walmart/
============= Posted via Deja News, The Discussion Network ============
http://www.dejanews.com/ Search, Read, Discuss, or Start Your Own
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: Linux & VPN
Date: Mon, 01 Mar 1999 18:04:20 GMT
Hi, I am trying to install pptp tunneling and http , https , and ftp, mail,
news tunneling on a linux box so that my internal network can publish their
services. I have setup a linux with 5.2 redhat using 2.0.36 kernel, and I
enabled masqurade and firewall support, and ipautofw support. I read the
how-to such as http://www-
plateau.cs.berkeley.edu/people/chaffee/linux_pptp.html and tried to install
the pptp patch and ipautofw patch for the 2.0.36 kernel, it compiled and
doesn't work. I looked at it the patching process again and got a fresh
2.0.36 kernel and applied pptp patch, and then applied ipportfw patch, looked
carefully and found the ipportfw doesn't appear in the "make menuconfig" so I
got a new 2.0.36 again and this time I applied the ipportfw patch and then
pptp patch, run "make menuconfig" again, this time the pptp entry doesn't
appear in the network options entry. I read more and realized that ipautofw
maybe equivalent to ipportfw , so I got a fresh 2.0.36 kernel again and
applied pptp patch only , enabled masqurade and pptp and ipautofw, installed
kerkel, reboot machine, follow the HOW-to instruction, enabled the masqurade,
dialed internet, the masqurade worked fine, I can ping internet from my
internal machine, but then I issued the ipautofw command, I checked
/proc/net/ip_autofw and did see 2 new entry are inserted , I want my dial up
machine's port 80 to be forward into my internal machine.( I have disabled my
linux box's own httpd, so there is no port 80 conflict). now I tried to
connect from internet to my linux box and hope to get to my internel machine,
oops, it doesn't work! I tried kernel 2.2.1, went through the same process,
doesn't work either. I read the how-to and it claimed the 2.0.37 kernel
should incorporate the patches, I searched the internet and didn't find the
2.0.37 kernel. Frustrated, I labored for 2 days and got nothing done. wonder
if somebody has better luck than I do. I searched the news group and
somebody claimed using squid may be able to get the tunnel work, I tried to
read the squid manual and realized it is for caching , not for the purpose I
want. wonder if somebody can lend me a hand and save my poor head. Any one
who can tell me the detailed process of working box will be welcome. as far
as I can see I need the following: linux kernel, patch command script,
and it seems to have to be the correct version, anyone who has a working box,
can you tell me
how ?
Thanks!
Jinsong
============= Posted via Deja News, The Discussion Network ============
http://www.dejanews.com/ Search, Read, Discuss, or Start Your Own
------------------------------
From: "Craig Shields" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.os.linux.setup,linux.redhat.misc
Subject: Re: PPP for network connection??
Date: Mon, 1 Mar 1999 11:17:55 -0500
>put the dns numbers in /etc/resolve.conf
Done. Here's my /etc/resolv.conf
nameserver 128.169.50.100
nameserver 128.169.201.2
search rtd.utk.edu
The two address' are pulled directly from my DNS settings in Windows
networking. "rtd.utk.edu" is my domain.
>ignore wins (wins is a DNS type of server on NT for WINDOWS Only
>clients)
>
>are you dialing in to work for internet??? or are you actually on the
>lan that has internet access? or do you dial an ISP from work?
>your setup is unknown.
I'm on a lan that has internet access.
>if you are on your lan and dial an ISP your need to change your
>default route.
>route del default
>route add default ppp0
>
>this should work IF the rest of your routeing table is setup corectly.
>mine looks like
Here's my routing table:
dest Gateway Genmask flags
Metric Ref Use Iface
199.76.30.0 * 255.255.255.0 u
0 0 0 eth0
127.0.0.0 * 255.0.0.0 u
0 0 2 lo
I'm sure this isn't correct... As a matter of fact, 199.76.30.0 should end
in "1" NOT "0". I got the address from one of my two Gateway address' in my
Win98 network settings. I've been trying to run "route add -net x.x.x.x,
but everything I try gives me a prompt that says: "SIOCADDRT: Network is
unreachable".
If it will help here is my network settings as-is in Windows:
IP 198.78.202.19
Gateway: 198.78.202.1
199.76.33.1
DNS: Host: Craig Domain: rtd.utk.edu
primary DNS 128.169.50.100
secondary 128.169.201.2
BTW, thanks for all the help so far! This newsgroup has made this newbie
feel a little more comfortable getting switched over to Linux.
Craig Shields
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: copy from old_fs to new_fs
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Mon, 1 Mar 1999 16:17:08 GMT
Georges Heinesch <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> 1. dump and restore doesn't exist on Linux (unlike NetBSD).
dump and restore do exist, you just don't have them installed
> 2. using tar with a pipe, the new_fs is copied recursively.
> ... the /mnt/new_fs is copied recursively.
> Besides this, the /proc "files" are copied, which is not correct
> either.
man tar, investigate the exclude options
------------------------------
From: "Kirk R. Wythers" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: which Linux distribution?
Date: Mon, 01 Mar 1999 14:42:33 -0500
I'm looking for advice on the relative strengths and weaknesses of the
various Linux distributions. No flame wars please, just a simple explanation
of which distribution you use and why. Also I need to settle on a word
processor that will allow documents exchange with both
UNIX/FrameMaker people and Windows/Word people.
All rational thoughts appreciated,
Kirk
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Jonathan Stott)
Crossposted-To: gnu.misc.discuss,comp.unix.advocacy,comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: Best Free Unix? (why FreeBSD?)
Date: 1 Mar 1999 16:34:01 GMT
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
Johan Kullstam <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
>in the uk, the shifted three gives the proper pound symbol and what in
>the us is displayed as # is in the uk shown as the wacky L.
Regardless of where they may or may not appear on a keyboard, they
are two completely different symbols.
UKP (�) = £ = character 163 in an ISO-8859-1[1] charmap.
Number Sign (#) [or octothorpe or whatever you choose to call it]
= # = character 35 on both the US-ASCII and ISO-8859-1 charmaps.
-JS
[1] ISO-8859-1 is the keymap used with most western-european languages.
The main exceptions seem to MicroSoft software (US versions anyway).
--
Jonathan Stott xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
icbm://41.30.14N/81.36.36W/ [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Physicist for hire - http://poly.phys.cwru.edu/~jstott/resume.html
------------------------------
From: Stephen Richard FREELAND <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Fax server
Date: Mon, 01 Mar 1999 16:33:14 GMT
Fadi Mujahid <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
: I am looking for a fax server for Linux, any help?
Well... If you want an actual fax *server*, then Hylafax is the way
to go. I tried it once, though, and configuring that puppy is a pain and a
half. I don't know exactly what your needs are, but if it's not totally
inconvenient, I'd just put efax on the machine (easy) and let people log
in and use it directly, rather than sending the faxes through the network.
Ciao... . SNF .
--
Steve 'Nephtes' Freeland | Okay, so maybe I'm a tiny itty little
[EMAIL PROTECTED] | bit of a minimalist.
------------------------------
From: Johan Kullstam <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: linux.debian.user
Subject: Re: glibc Netscape 4.5 dies when encounters java
Date: 01 Mar 1999 11:01:22 -0500
Student <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> I would like to confirm that I have a similar problem. When trying
> to view a web page that has java or javascript, netscape crashes. I
> have no idea what the problem, so I just disable java and
> javascript. Any help would certainly be appreciated.
i am running netscape communicator 4.5 glibc2. i can't seem to
disable javascript. i mean, i go to the edit/preferences/advanced
menu and unclick the javascript radio button, but i get javascript'd
just the same. anyone else have this? how do you *really* get rid of
javascript?
--
johan kullstam
------------------------------
From: Anthony <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: WindowMaker & Kernel 2.2.2
Date: Mon, 01 Mar 1999 19:42:48 +0000
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> Recently, I thought I'd try out the graphical environments
> available to Linux. On a clean HD, I installed kernel 2.2.2, and
> downloaded the latest xfree86 drivers for my system. The setup
> provided by Red Hat worked well, but when I attempted to install
> WindowMaker 0.51, I encountered the following problem starting X:
>
> System: `/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/xkb/xkbcomp -w
> 1-R/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/xkb -xkm -m us -em1 "The XKEYBOARD
> keymap compiler (xkbcomp) reports:" -emp "> " -eml "Errors
> from xkbcomp are not fatal to the X server" keymap/xfree86
> compiled/xfree86.xkm'
My system is a RedHat 5.1 with XFree86 3.3.2 (Latest is 3.3.3.1). I am using
Kernel 2.2.2 as well and I haven't upgrade all the necessary packages to go
with kernel 2.2.2 including the latest Glibc 2.1.
All the C and Egcs and C++ libraries were installed from RedHat 5.1. I compiled
Window Maker 0.51 and have it installed and running without any problem.
Your problems looks like it was from XFree86 3.3.3.1. I don't know why you
have to do everything from scratch, my suggestion is remove the XFree86
and install the old one first to try it out. Make sure you have FVWM installed
and running before you re-install Window Maker 0.51.
Good Luck.
------------------------------
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End of Linux-Misc Digest
******************************
