Linux-Misc Digest #256, Volume #20 Tue, 18 May 99 22:13:09 EDT
Contents:
Re: gnome RPMS suck??? + a few questions (Sylvia Wong)
Re: In defence of UNIX man pages (Gary Kopff)
Re: A Capitalists view of freedom ("Joshua E. Rodd")
Auto Mount Daemon hangs startup in Caldera 2.2 ("Mark Story")
Re: The Vi Lovers Home Page (W.B.Hill)
RH 6.0 broke gpm, no mouse in console (Frank Ball)
Re: S3/VIRGE vs. OS/2 WARP 4 (Ulrich Brachvogel)
Re: NT the best web platform? (Marc Slemko)
Re: netscape + java (Ron Olsen)
Re: The Vi Lovers Home Page (Frank Sweetser)
Re: how to copy file from diskette to hard drive? (Mark Hahn)
Killing Rouge Processes? (Jason Bond)
util-linux-rhcn-2.9r RPMs for Red Hat 5.2/6.0 and kernel 2.2 (James Bourne)
Help! trouble installing linux/X-Windows (Joe Strout)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Sylvia Wong)
Subject: Re: gnome RPMS suck??? + a few questions
Date: 18 May 1999 19:37:19 GMT
On Tue, 18 May 1999 00:09:02 +0100, D. Vrabel <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>On Mon, 17 May 1999, pika.pika wrote:
>> I Installed redhat6 a week ago and fell in love with gnome.
>> I got the latest and greatest from gnome.org only to find that
>> they dont compile due to missing config files and sh files.
Just curious. Have you installed the gnome devel rpm packages. They're needed
for compiling your own gnome programs.
>
>> so question 1:
>>
>> by compiling the sources with prefix=/usr which redhat seems to use, am
>> i overwriting the RPMed files redhat put there?
I assume you mean prefix in make not rpm. If you make install into the
same places as the gnome rpm packages put the files, make install will
overwrite the old files and rpm won't know about it. This will break rpm.
What I mean is if you decided to rpm -e those old gnome packages, rpm will
remove the new files you put in there with make install (I may be wrong
here, does anybody know whether rpm do any checks on the files
it's going to remove to see if it's really what it installed using rpm -i/U?)
>> If not then do I have to uninstall all the offending RPMs first b4 I
I would. I would also install all the new binaries in /usr/local/gnome. That
way it's easier to remove when you don't want them anymore
>> question 2:
>>
>> wat does ldconfig do?
It rereads the /etc/ld.so.conf to update the library paths.
--
The economy depends about as much on economists as the weather does on
weather forecasters. -- Jean-Paul Kauffmann
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://linux.ele.auckland.ac.nz/~swon074
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 18 May 1999 12:05:41 +1000
From: Gary Kopff <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: In defence of UNIX man pages
Dear Matt,
> "The UNIX man page format is similar to that used to describe most command
> line operating system commands. This format was acceptable not long ago, as
> a majority of computer users would have been using ms-DOS and would
> therefore have a fair understanding of command line operating system
> documentation.
Keep in mind that UNIX pre-dates DOS by nearly a decade.
UNIX pre-dated the concept of "personal computing".
UNIX was originally a time-sharing system that typically
ran on departmental computers often with hundreds of users.
Typical UNIX users were computer science departments and
student users or industrial research and development laboratories.
The users therefore typically had tertiary level qualifications
or training and the man pages were aimed at people with
this level of education. The documentation was purposely terse
but thorough. The man pages today still largely maintain this
legacy.
Furthermore, the UNIX man pages cover a vast range of
topics. The section 1 man pages typically cover user level commands
while later sections typically cover applications programming
interfaces. Obviously the programming interface documentation is geared
towards programmers rather than non-programmers. However, the style
of the documentation is purposely consistent throughout.
The terminals in use at the time were often teletypewriters such
as DECwriters that printed on computer fan-fold paper or early
glass CRT's. The glass CRT's were only 80 columns wide (itself
a derivation of a punch card format). The man pages were originally
stored online in 'nroff' format so they could then be typeset and
outputted to a variety of typesetting devices, be they glass
CRT's, lineprinters or even high quality daisy wheel printers.
Therefore the style and format of UNIX man pages is not simply
a legacy of pre-graphical versus graphical interfaces but also
a legacy of the fact that when UNIX first began and was developed
in the late 60's and during the 70's the majority of the users
were "sophisticated" (i.e. mostly computer literate professionals)
Regards
Gary Kopff
>
> The post ms-DOS generation of users have been lured into a world which uses
> �point and click� to control a computer. Most will have never been exposed
> to a command line operating system. New graphical operating systems such as
> MS-Windows have become very popular with a vast majority of the computer
> population. The skills of reading command line documentation have been
> lost, so if a novice user is placed in command line environment confusion
> abounds.
>
> It is because of a strong swing to graphical operating systems that the UNIX
> man pages are both unfamiliar and difficult for novice users to understand,
> not because they were poorly written."
------------------------------
From: "Joshua E. Rodd" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.os.ms-windows.advocacy,comp.os.linux.advocacy,gnu.misc.discuss
Subject: Re: A Capitalists view of freedom
Date: Tue, 18 May 1999 20:30:12 -0400
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> Although, gun owners could stand to be required to
> pass military marksmanship tests.
It would also be constitutional (U.S.-wise).
------------------------------
From: "Mark Story" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Auto Mount Daemon hangs startup in Caldera 2.2
Date: Tue, 18 May 1999 13:04:30 -0700
When I try to boot Open Linux 2.2 from the hd partition now, it hangs on the
message "Starting Auto Mount Daemon". I have been tweeking things to get
KPPP or any other PPP service started, and PPA to mount a par. port ZIP.
This is the likely start of the problem. I can't find any reference to
"Auto Mount" in any of the startup files that I have looked at when I boot
from a floppy, or any other of my reference material. What is Auto Mount?
Do I need it? and How can I skip it or fix it if it is necessary?
Mark
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (W.B.Hill)
Subject: Re: The Vi Lovers Home Page
Date: 18 May 1999 20:00:58 GMT
In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Johan Kullstam wrote:
>[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Darren Greer) writes:
>where's the lisp engine? ;->
I've got perl, python and tcl (well, I'm using vim :-)
Why should I want *lisp*???
===============\==========================\================================
W.B.Hill \ Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] \
492 Earlham Road \ Home: (+44) 1603 455069 \ "Nothing is idiot-proof
Norwich NR4 7HP. \ Fax: 0870 054 7508 \ given the right idiot"
United Kingdom \ Mobile: 0410 781584 \
(+44) 1603 255141 \ Web: http://wbh.org \ #include <stdisclaimer.h>
=====================\==========================\==========================
PGP-Fingerprint: B3 6F 2E D6 - B6 48 F1 FB -*- 7C AA 28 0C - 96 61 9A B5
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Frank Ball)
Subject: RH 6.0 broke gpm, no mouse in console
Date: 19 May 1999 00:47:30 GMT
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
I upgraded two different machines from RedHat 5.2 to RedHat 6.0.
Now the mouse doesn't work in the console on either machine.
The mouse works fine in X.
One machine is a HP Omnibook 3000 that had kernel 2.2.1 before,
the other is HP Vectra 486U that had kernel 2.2.5.
On one I got a message at boot up that /dev/console wasn't a
virtual console, but /dev/console looks ok to me:
[root@penguin /dev]# ll console
crw------- 1 root root 5, 1 May 18 17:23 console
At one point I saw an error refering to /dev/gpmctl
[root@penguin /dev]# ll gpm*
srwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 May 18 17:23 gpmctl
prw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 May 18 17:01 gpmdata
console and gpmctl look the same as another machine with RH6.0
on which gpm is working fine.
I can start and stop gpm, no error messages, no cursor, nothing.
When I move the mouse I get this in /var/log/messages:
May 18 17:36:21 penguin gpm[663]: Error in protocol
May 18 17:36:22 penguin last message repeated 2 times
May 18 17:36:22 penguin gpm[663]: Skipping a data packet (?)
May 18 17:36:22 penguin last message repeated 12 times
May 18 17:36:22 penguin gpm[663]: Error in protocol
May 18 17:36:22 penguin last message repeated 35 times
May 18 17:36:22 penguin gpm[663]: Skipping a data packet (?)
May 18 17:36:22 penguin last message repeated 5 times
I recreated /dev/console with "mknod console c 5 1", but it didn't make
any difference.
I looked at /usr/src/linux/Documentation/devices.txt, but I can't
figure out what's going on.
Frank Ball [EMAIL PROTECTED]
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Ulrich Brachvogel)
Subject: Re: S3/VIRGE vs. OS/2 WARP 4
Date: Tue, 18 May 1999 22:35:14 +0200
Ulrich Brachvogel wrote:
>
> Hi everybody,
> since I have installed a S3-Virge display adapter (4MB)
> and the respective driver, I only get standard vga resolution.
> Is there anybody who has already had and resolved this problem? Maybe
> an older posting?
> thanks for help
> Ulrich
> --
> Mit frdl. Gruss
>
> // <( )
> // \______//
> // \____/ Ulrich Brachvogel
> // / \
> // "Save The Curlew!"
Sorry this was posted on the wrong message board
Ulrich
------------------------------
From: Marc Slemko <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.infosystems.www.servers.unix,comp.os.linux.advocacy
Subject: Re: NT the best web platform?
Date: Wed, 19 May 1999 00:47:39 GMT
In <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> TRG Software : Tim Greer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
writes:
>> Then how come
>> the crappy IIS outperforms my beloved Apache?
>It doesn't. How any ISP's (real one's) run NT, and how many run Unix?
>There's a reason.
On the contrary. IIS on NT will outperform Apache on any OS you can
pick for static content as measured by current popular benchmarks.
That has no relation to how much load it can handle in the real world.
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Ron Olsen)
Subject: Re: netscape + java
Date: 19 May 1999 01:36:29 GMT
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> Since Redhat-6.0 Netscape crashes with a bus error when it tries to
> start a java applet. This happens with the shipped version 4.51, but
> also with the version 4.08 which worked without problems on my
> redhat-5.2 system.
> Does anyone know the problem?
Change the 'catalogue' section of your /etc/X11/fs/config from this:
catalogue = /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/misc:unscaled,
/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi:unscaled,
/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/100dpi:unscaled,
/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/misc,
/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Type1,
/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Speedo
to this:
catalogue = /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/misc:unscaled,
/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi:unscaled,
/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/100dpi:unscaled,
/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/misc,
/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Type1,
/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Speedo,
/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi
Then (as root) do /etc/rc.d/init.d/xfs restart
This can also be accomplished via
chkfontlist --add /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi
--
Ron Olsen
Boulder Colorado
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
------------------------------
From: Frank Sweetser <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: nl.comp.os.linux
Subject: Re: The Vi Lovers Home Page
Date: 18 May 1999 17:03:03 -0400
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Michel Aartsen) writes:
> >The Vi Lovers Home Page:
> >http://www.cs.vu.nl/~tmgil/vi/vi.html
>
> Emacs Suckz !!
> 5 MB for a text editor..... I don't think so.
emacs is a a text editor the way a sherman tank is a convertible. it's
actually a lisp engine with a text editorish interface. that's how it can
support many non-text-editor features, such as mail, news, web, ftp, etc
etc...
--
Frank Sweetser rasmusin at wpi.edu fsweetser at blee.net | PGP key available
paramount.ind.wpi.edu RedHat 5.2 kernel 2.2.5 i586 | at public servers
"Security-wise, NT is a server with a 'Kick me' sign taped to it."
-Peter Gutmann in the Scary Devil Monastery
------------------------------
From: Mark Hahn <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: how to copy file from diskette to hard drive?
Date: 18 May 1999 22:17:56 GMT
>> I have a file on a dos formatted diskette and need to copy it to my linux
>> hard drive. How can I do this? Running Red Hat 5.2.
> # mount -t msdos /dev/fd0 /mnt (Note: do it as root)
you don't have to do it as root (there's a 'user' option in fstab).
you can also use the mtools (ie, mcopy). you might also want to
treat the floppy as vfat, not msdos (ie, long filenames...)
> # umount /dev/fd0 <-- DON'T FORGET THIS !!
which is the main reason I tend to suggest that beginners use mcopy.
------------------------------
From: Jason Bond <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Killing Rouge Processes?
Date: Tue, 18 May 1999 18:45:05 -0700
This is sort of a general question. After running Linux for a while,
and starting and stopping various programs, I've noticed (using the K-
Process Manager) that there are often quite a few process that I've (at
least thought that I've) closed or stopped that appear to still be
running...some even using a significant proportion of the CPU time.
They've not turned to zombie processes (which is another question...how
do you kill Zombie processes?). I know that they shouldn't be running
however. Is there any general way to "clean up" these types of
processes? Since I imagine that there are probably a few processes that
I don't recognize the names of (like the ones that I know that should
have already been stopped) in these useless states. Any help would be
greatly appreciated.
Jason
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (James Bourne)
Subject: util-linux-rhcn-2.9r RPMs for Red Hat 5.2/6.0 and kernel 2.2
Date: 18 May 1999 21:21:45 GMT
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
We have posted the i386.rpm, src.rpm, and patches on our WWW site at
http://www.affinity-systems.ab.ca/software/ for util-linux-2.9r. This is
built for upgrading to the Linux 2.2 series kernels and should work under
Red Hat 5.0, 5.1, 5.2, and 6.0 but were compiled under a relatively stock
Red Hat 5.2 system with Kernel 2.2.9.
Please send bug reports to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Here is information on the package:
cafe:bash$ rpm -qi util-linux-rhcn
Name : util-linux-rhcn Distribution: Red Hat Contrib|Net
Version : 2.9r Vendor: Affinity Systems Inc.
Release : 1 Build Date: Tue May 18 13:49:58 1999
Install date: Tue May 18 13:55:07 1999 Build Host: cafe.affinity-systems.ab.ca
Group : Utilities/System Source RPM: util-linux-rhcn-2.9r-1.src.rpm
Size : 1194899 License: distributable
Packager : Red Hat Contrib|Net <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Summary : Collection of basic system utilities for Linux
Description :
util-linux contains a large variety of low-level system utilities
necessary for a functional Linux system. This includes, among other
things, configuration tools such as fdisk and system programs such
as login.
This package replaces all of util-linux, mount, fdisk (if installed as a
seperate package), lptune, and losetup. It also contains all the
documentation included with the original tar.gz file.
and the changelog:
cafe:bash$ rpm -q --changelog util-linux-rhcn
* Sun May 02 1999 James Bourne <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
- updated to util-linux-2.9r
- backed off moretc patch to make more use ncurses instead of termcap.
- updated all patches that applied with fuzz.
- Docs updated to new layout.
* Wed Apr 14 1999 James Bourne <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
- updated to util-linux-2.9i
- Added doc for sfdisk.examples
* Tue Feb 09 1999 James Bourne <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
- fixed bug in lib/proctitle.c which used spaces to pad the new argv[0]
instead of nulls.
- removed gecos field patch. (problem noted by Michal Jaegermann
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>)
- changed installation of rdev and friends to not install on non-install
archs (problem noted by Michal Jaegermann <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>)
- added tunelp and sfdisk
* Mon Feb 01 1999 James Bourne <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
- Updated to util-linux-2.9h
- Added full documentation and Obsoletes line
- Modified MCONFIG to not install suid binaries and instead use the attr
flags in the spec file to allow non-root build
- fixed patch for mount as it would fail during build (incorrect patch
targets) and re-enabled mount here as mount 2.9. Added losetup, mount
and swapon/swapoff as well as man pages
- fixed makefile for location of rdev and friends instead of mv -f here
* Tue Jan 12 1999 Jeff Johnson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
- strip fdisk in buildroot correctly (#718)
Regards,
Jim
--
James Bourne | Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Affinity Systems Inc. | WWW: http://www.affinity-systems.ab.ca
Everything Unix | Linux: The choice of a GNU generation
======================================================================
Unix System Administration, System programming, Network Administration
------------------------------
From: Joe Strout <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.os.linux.help
Subject: Help! trouble installing linux/X-Windows
Date: Tue, 18 May 1999 14:04:48 -0700
Please help, as I'm stumped. I'm trying to be thorough though, so you
won't have to guess what I've already tried and what went wrong.
Yesterday I got the linuxppc R4 CD, and tried to update my (rather old)
linuxppc installation. I actually did it twice, because the first time
I got an error trying to unpack the X11R6 archive; I removed (-Rf) the
entire /usr/X11R6 directory and did it again, this time with no error
there.
At first it was going straight into KDE, but I discovered the magic
switch-session keys and commented out the line in /etc/inittab which
causes that. Now I can log in and get to a prompt with no apparent
errors.
Now, "startx" produces "command not found".
"kdm -nodebug" starts X, and puts me into the KDE login screen. If I
type an incorrect password, I get just "Login Failed" as I should. But
if I type the correct password, the screen blanks (switches to text
mode, I think) very briefly, then returns to thet login screen.
Sometimes I then get cycles of "Login failed!" messages. And trying to
exit KDE has the same effect.
I tried kdm again, this time logging errors to a file. I found quite a
few:
error opening security policy file
sh: /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/xkb/xkbcomp: No such file or directory
Wrong charset (unknown)! Setting to default (us-ascii)
xdm error: Session "/usr/bin/X11/xterm" execution failed (err 2)
xdm error: Cannot open server authorization file
Couldn't open RGB_DB '/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/rgb'
...this repeating several times. I looked in /usr/bin/X11/, and sure
enough, there is no 'xterm'; in fact the last file there is xmessage.
I suspect there should be quite a few after xmessage, no? I also have
no /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/xkb/, nor /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/xdm.
I checked disk space, and it's only 15% full.
What am I doing wrong? I'd be happy to erase everything and start
over, but I don't know how to do that (my HD is IDE, so the utility
which accesses Linux disks from MacOS doesn't work for me). Any tips
will be greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
-- Joe
--
,------------------------------------------------------------------.
| Joseph J. Strout Biocomputing -- The Salk Institute |
| [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.strout.net |
`------------------------------------------------------------------'
Check out the Mac Web Directory! http://www.strout.net/macweb.cgi
------------------------------
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End of Linux-Misc Digest
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