Linux-Misc Digest #736, Volume #23 Fri, 3 Mar 00 01:13:04 EST
Contents:
Re: VMWare, Windoze aint a bad app launcher and print driver!, Linux ("Christopher
R. Carlen")
Re: Problems with XCDRoast (Henricus)
trouble (alan)
Re: Newbie Question? ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
Re: Multiple CPU (Hal Burgiss)
Re: resize linux partion (Mike Tuthill)
Named Log Messages (Jeff Grossman)
Re: Multiple CPU (Christopher Browne)
Re: Kernel Panic (Dances With Crows)
Re: PBS to broadcast NYCO Boheme !? (Brian Moore)
Trying to open MFT (Ram Kalapatapu)
Please: somebody shoot me! or I give up...unless someone has ideas (small rant)
([EMAIL PROTECTED])
Re: One steep forward ... (Dances With Crows)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: "Christopher R. Carlen" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: VMWare, Windoze aint a bad app launcher and print driver!, Linux
Date: Thu, 02 Mar 2000 20:12:25 -0800
Fraser Orr wrote:
>
> I read recently about VMWare's virtual machine
> system that enables Windows etc to run under
> Linux. I wonder if anyone has an opinion about
> this product, particularly if there are any
> problems with running applications, if it is
> stable (or at least as stable as Windows 98
> is anyway :-), and how much of a performance
> hit it takes.
1. Very few problems. I have had none with applications, but I only
use a few that I must run under Win. You can run into peculiarities
with Vmware. See the groups at news.vmware.com, and read the
www.vmware.com site thoroughly.
2. It is very stable. Some even claim that windows crashes less in
vmware than native. But that could actually make sense, as windows
can't do as much in vmware due to not all hardware being useable.
3. Major performance issue. It will typically feel like Win is running
on a box about 1/2 the power of what you have. I use 2 different
machines, a 495MHZ with 256MB and a 605MHz with 256MB (110MHz FSB OCed
P2 and P3) and they are comfortable. Sometimes a CPU intensive app in
Vmware/Win will cause mouse IO to become sluggish, but no major
problems. I haven't ever tried tinkering with the Linux kernel
scheduling priority for Vmware. An interesting thing is that I never
feel like *Linux* is being bogged down. Except in one case when
something was screwy and Vmware was eating 99% CPU cycles. But that was
fixed by reinstalling Windoze. It figures.
> It seems to me that, assuming there are positive
> answers to these questions, that this could
> be a serious killer app. I notice that version
> two has complete suspend and restore to file
> (i.e., no need wait five minutes for a windows
> reboot) and this feature alone would sell me
> on it. In fact, for many people who work exclusively
> with windows, it might be worth running windows
> under Linux just to get this latter feature.
It is a killer app. But really, it will not make people who need
Windoze apps switch to Linux, unless they already are committed to
Linux. I never realized until I went to work, I mean real work, where I
have to pay my own bills, and satisfy performance requirements and all
that, how much Linux really doesn't cut it on the desktop. It's a
different world than the academia where "technical superiority" can be
argued. But at work, no one cares about how great Linux is. They care
about running the app that does the job with the shortest learning curve
to maximum functionality. 95% of those apps only run under Windows.
The problems are apps and drivers. Whose fault? Not Linux's. The
hardware manufacturers are coming around to supporting Linux drivers,
and software companies are porting to Linux. It is possible that a
significant cross section of popular applications and drivers will
become available for Linux in the next few years. Without those, only
people with severe psychological resentments against M$ (like me),
people who are absolutely unable to tolerate instability (me), and
people with an academic rather than workplace point of view will use
Linux on the desktop.
I have been using Linux almost exclusively for almost 4 years, and I am
better at getting it running and configured than even the "computer
support technicians" at my work. Yet, it took me several *weeks* to get
a Linux installation fully functional to my liking (I mean practical
things, not colors and cosmetic stuff. I mean, printing to a color
inkjet, printing to a Windows networked printer, installing all my apps
and getting stupid problems resolved with that, and some trace of sound
functionality). I don't mean I was working on it all day long. I
worked on it about 1-3 hours a day for a few weeks. All the while, my
co workers are listening to me advocate Linux, while they keep asking me
when my computer will be ready to do my job. Of course, my NT
workstation took 30 minutes to install, and everything works, right
away.
Then there are the Powerpoints, Adobe Illustrators, AutoCADs, Corel
Draws, Excels, Words, and all those apps to which these people just
*will not* accept crude text based alternatives, or 0.01 alpha versions
of freeware equivalents, or other alternatives that are not able to
perfectly share documents with all the M$ apps. Many people claim "Oh
yeah, you can do everything on a Linux box that you can do with Windows"
but it is not true. Only at a crude "proof of concept" level is it
true.
But in an environment where work has to be done, with desktop apps, it
is not true. That's not to say it can't get there. I certainly hope it
does. But if it were true, then it would be happening. And it isn't.
Only a few people at my work are interested in Linux (oh, I keep
mentioning my work because there we are all free to choose whatever
operating environment we want to use, and Windoze and Linux are both
officially supported by our desktop support department. Thus, it is a
good place to observe the behavior of people who are faced with this
choice, to see why they make the choices they make.)
A few more quick observations:
I am in regular daily contact with about 30-50 people who are scientists
and run NT workstations for about an average of 4 intense document
preparing and scientific calculation hours per day. None of these
people frequently complains about their OS crashing. In fact, when I
ask them about it, they say it crashes "once in a while". If I press
them, they tell me that means once a month or less. Personally, my NT
workstation crashed only 1 time in 1 year. The only other bad things
that happened are that after I installed a program, another program
wouldn't run anymore (one program changed a .DLL, and I don't yet know
how to fix it.) And one day the Windows Explorer crashed every time I
tried to run it until I re-booted. In one year, these are all the
crashes I have experienced.
Now, in 1 year, I have had X crash probably more than 5 times, which, if
you will notice that when running a desktop, that takes all your
applications with it, doesn't it? So it doesn't really matter to a
Linux desktop user if the Linux kernel survives a nuclear war. If X
crashes, all work that wasn't saved is lost. The only advantage the
Linux kernel stability offers to desktop users is that at least the file
system won't get trashed by a real crash when cached data hasn't yet
been written out. But that risk can be reduced in Windoze by turning
off write behind disk caching.
So, in my experience, it may even be the case that a Linux desktop is
*less* stable in general than a Windoze NT desktop. Because the weak
link for Linux is X.
_____________________
Christopher R. Carlen
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Linux 2.2.10
------------------------------
From: Henricus <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Problems with XCDRoast
Date: Fri, 03 Mar 2000 04:20:49 GMT
Vlar Schreidlocke wrote:
> I have XCDRoast working perfectly except for copying audio CDs.
> XCDRoast will read the audio tracks and when I write a copy it will
> write the same number of tracks, but when I play the CD I get tracks
> of digital static. I have read the readme and changed several of the
> settings mentioned, but I have yet to be able to make a usable copy of
> an audio CD. Any ideas on this one?
If you don't care about using a GUI, I can tell you how I do it.
First, I use a ripper (Grip) to put the CD tracks onto my hard drive as
wav files.
Second, I rename the files to track##.wav, where ## is the track number.
Third, depending on the number of tracks I run the following commands at
the same time in a terminal. This converts them back to cdr format.
sox track01.wav track01.cdr; sox track02.wav track02.cdr; \
sox track03.wav track03.cdr; sox track04.wav track04.cdr; \
sox track05.wav track05.cdr; sox track06.wav track06.cdr; \
sox track07.wav track07.cdr; sox track08.wav track08.cdr; \
sox track09.wav track09.cdr; sox track10.wav track10.cdr; \
sox track11.wav track11.cdr; sox track12.wav track12.cdr; \
sox track13.wav track13.cdr; sox track14.wav track14.cdr; \
sox track15.wav track15.cdr; sox track16.wav track16.cdr; \
sox track17.wav track17.cdr; sox track18.wav track18.cdr; \
sox track19.wav track19.cdr; sox track20.wav track20.cdr
Fourth, I burn them onto a CD using the following commands. Again I run
these commands at the same time.
cdrecord -v speed=4 dev=0,0,0 -audio track01.cdr \
track02.cdr track03.cdr track04.cdr track05.cdr \
track06.cdr track07.cdr track08.cdr track09.cdr \
track10.cdr track11.cdr track12.cdr track13.cdr \
track14.cdr track15.cdr track16.cdr \
track17.cdr track18.cdr track19.cdr track20.cdr
That is it. It sounds like a lot of trouble, but it isn't. I keep the
commands in a text file that I cut and paste when I am ready to use
them. I haven't had one coaster yet. Oh, I forgot to tell you you need
the following programs.
CDRECORD
SOX
GRIP (I really like this program, especially the price)
I think that most Redhat distros come with them already. If not, go here
and look for them.
http://ling.ed.ac.uk/~oliphant/grip/grip.html
http://www.freshmeat.net/
Buena suerte!
------------------------------
From: alan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: trouble
Date: Fri, 03 Mar 2000 04:30:07 GMT
for some unknown reason when I try 127.0.0.1 I get 'Netscapes network
connection was refused by the server 127.0.0.1. The server may not be
accepting connections or may be busy. If I try http://localhost, I get
directed to a page explaining the DNS server may be broken. It says to add
an A record to the DNS tables. What does that mean? Where are the tables?
Please?
--
Posted via CNET Help.com
http://www.help.com/
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: Newbie Question?
Date: Thu, 02 Mar 2000 20:35:30 -0800
In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Hal <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Just installed RH Linux 6.0 and am using the Gnome GUI.
>
> Where do I find the dialup connection window, so I can connect to the
> internet?
>
> Also, managed to get my sound card going and have found the X11amp, but
> where
> on the Linux file system can I find some midi files to play ?
>
> TIA,
> Hal
>
You need to get the gnome-network package and in it is an app called gnome-ppp
I think. It behaves much like dial-up-networking in Windows if that is
what you have used.
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Hal Burgiss)
Subject: Re: Multiple CPU
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Fri, 03 Mar 2000 04:49:09 GMT
On Fri, 03 Mar 2000 02:30:04 GMT, Jose Gerstl <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:
>Is there any linux kernel that can take advantage of motherboards with
>several CPU (for instance two).
All of them, except very old ones. You have to include support for it
when you build the kernel. Linux supports at least 8 CPUs (maybe 16?).
--
Hal B
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
--
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Mike Tuthill)
Subject: Re: resize linux partion
Date: Fri, 03 Mar 2000 04:50:09 GMT
On Wed, 01 Mar 2000 19:53:29 -0500, Richard Beri
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>I don't believe partition magic lets you resize ext2 partitions, you can
>only create them, you can resize ms-dos partitions, but that is all.
Actually Partition Magic does let you resize ext2 partitions. I've
done it several times as my ext2 partition fills up.
>Rod Smith wrote:
>>
>> [Posted and mailed]
>>
>> In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
>> AJAY <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
>> >
>> > Accidentaly I have alocated more space for linux. Now I want to resize so
>> > that to create one more linux partion and rest to create WIN partion. Can
>> > somebody tell me how to do this???
>>
>> The easiest way to do this is to use the commercial Partition Magic
>> program from PowerQuest (http://www.powerquest.com). There's also at least
>> one open source ext2fs resizer (ext2resize, I think), but it's not nearly
>> as easy to use, and it opens up serious potential for human error. I also
>> don't know how reliable it is, even if it's used perfectly.
>>
>> --
>> Rod Smith, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>> http://www.rodsbooks.com
>> Author of books on Linux networking & WordPerfect for Linux
------------------------------
From: Jeff Grossman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: linux.redhat.misc
Subject: Named Log Messages
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Thu, 02 Mar 2000 20:19:26 -0800
Hello,
I am running Redhat 6.1, and named puts a lot of log information into
the messages files. I would like to find out how I can stop this.
How do I tell syslog or named not to log everything, only errors?
Thanks,
Jeff
---
Jeff Grossman ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Christopher Browne)
Subject: Re: Multiple CPU
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Fri, 03 Mar 2000 05:01:38 GMT
Centuries ago, Nostradamus foresaw a time when Hal Burgiss would say:
>On Fri, 03 Mar 2000 02:30:04 GMT, Jose Gerstl <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>wrote:
>>Is there any linux kernel that can take advantage of motherboards with
>>several CPU (for instance two).
>
>All of them, except very old ones. You have to include support for it
>when you build the kernel. Linux supports at least 8 CPUs (maybe 16?).
This is true only for some particular variations of hardware.
--> Linux supports up to 16 Intel Pentium CPUs, if you've got a
motherboard that's supported.
--> Linux supports multiple Alpha and SPARC CPUs, on some hardware.
Newer kernels are generally better in their SMP support than older
kernels...
--
Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of
Congress. But I repeat myself. -Mark Twain
[EMAIL PROTECTED] - - <http://www.hex.net/~cbbrowne/lsf.html>
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Dances With Crows)
Subject: Re: Kernel Panic
Date: 03 Mar 2000 00:13:50 EST
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
On Thu, 2 Mar 2000 20:08:57 -0800, askew <<dVGv4.4$3f.113@read1>>
shouted forth into the ether:
>When i try and boot into linux i get this error:
>Kernel Panic. No init found. Try passing init= option to kernel.
>How would i go about fixing this?
There are a few things that might have happened to your system. Without
more info there's no way to tell exactly what's going wrong. A disk
glitch or power failure might've scribbled over /sbin/init or
/etc/inittab, for example. You could try entering "linux init=/bin/sh" at
the LILO prompt to get a shell prompt from which you could try to fix
things. Or you could boot from a rescue disk, fsck all the partitions,
and then mount them to see what could be going wrong. Tom's RootBoot is a
well-known rescue system if you don't have one already.
http://www.toms.net/rb for that.
--
Matt G / Dances With Crows \ In the MS-DOStrix,
There is no Darkness in Eternity \----\ there is no fork().
But only Light too dim for us to see \
===== Usenet: ceci n'est pas une guerre des flammes =====
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Brian Moore)
Subject: Re: PBS to broadcast NYCO Boheme !?
Date: 3 Mar 2000 00:16:15 -0500
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Obviously this was meant for another group (rec.music.opera).
My apologies.
--
Brian G. Moore, School of Science, Penn State Erie--The Behrend College
[EMAIL PROTECTED] , (814)-898-6334
------------------------------
From: Ram Kalapatapu <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Trying to open MFT
Date: Fri, 03 Mar 2000 05:18:04 GMT
Hi,
I see this message frequently especially when I am trying to run df as root
---
Trying to open MFT
---
I see this logged in /var/log/messages
Is this something I should be concerned about?
Thanks
--Ram
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Please: somebody shoot me! or I give up...unless someone has ideas (small
rant)
Date: Fri, 03 Mar 2000 05:31:11 GMT
For a number of months, I ran WindowMaker in Redhat 5.2. Life was
good. There were a few things I wanted to run which required
upgrades; kernal, libraries, etc.. I downloaded various packages and
proceeded to attempt installation. This needed that, that needed
something else, etc.. Better to get a newer distro.
I tried Mandrake 6.1. It always loads KDE. I didn't want KDE: crash,
crash, crash. I tried Gnome: crash. For about six months I
re-installed and re-configured without success. Too big anyway.
Fine. I tried RedHat 6.1. Little difference (nice install interface,
though).
Tried WindowMaker. Running KFM under WM ain't too bad. What's this?
Dock incomplete. Menus not there at all. Re-install. No good. I
checked to see that the c pre-proccessor was installed. Yup. Hhmmm.
I did like e and gnome when they worked. "What's wrong," I asked.
"Upgrade!" they cried in unison. I downloaded the latest
Enlightenment and Gnome.
"rpm -Uvh...", I commanded. "(some library or other) need," was the
response. The hunt was on - with success.
Once again I issued the command with confidence.
"Segmentation error"
Ugh!
*sigh*
While I've learned alot, this is a vast over-simplification of the
trouble I had and my patience is now so thin, I can see through it.
All I wanted was an OS that was more reliable (among other things)
than M$. The hassles encountered in getting it up and running to my
satisfaction far outweighed the benifits.
Then again, as I type this in Windoze, I remember why I wanted Linux
in the first place.
Never mind.
I'll try again.
Wade Segade
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (remove the obvious)
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Dances With Crows)
Crossposted-To: alt.os.linux
Subject: Re: One steep forward ...
Date: 03 Mar 2000 00:41:20 EST
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
On Thu, 2 Mar 2000 23:34:03 +0100, kkdlavak <<89mtq5$3pr$[EMAIL PROTECTED]>>
shouted forth into the ether:
>Well, everybody is running around "windows" in a "desktop"
>What about a new working environment or workspace really spatial and
>special ?
Take a look at "xcruise" on http://www.freshmeat.net . It's rather
primitive, but shows the difficulties in representing filesystems and such
in a 3D environment. Main one being that humans who are not pilots are
not used to navigating in 3 dimensions with limited visual cues, and
they get lost easily.
>I have read about a 'top' like utility that manages process at the DOOM
>style, in a 3D environment.
>Some one has any idea about a NEW methafor for the work with computers?
>May be a virtual space or hyperspace were the user can choice gravity or
>floating navigation?
I have a great idea for an interface metaphor. I say, "Computer, do X, Y,
and Z," into a microphone, and it replies, "Yes sir." and does X, Y, and
Z. Not gonna happen anytime soon; having computers understand natural
language is probably an AI-complete problem...
What you ask for is a pipe dream at the moment in the PC world. Monitors
are expensive, LCDs even more so, and your average processor/graphics card
has its hands full rendering Quake3 at 800x600. Give it another 5-6
years, then it might be possible to have a virtual reality "Cave" and the
processing power to back it up in a price range that ordinary people can
afford. Till then, it's windows and command lines as far as the eye can
see.
I don't think a new metaphor would really help all that much at the
moment. All it'd do is confuse people, and lord knows we have too few
people who are confused about computers at the moment.
--
Matt G / Dances With Crows \ In the MS-DOStrix,
There is no Darkness in Eternity \----\ there is no fork().
But only Light too dim for us to see \
===== Usenet: ceci n'est pas une guerre des flammes =====
------------------------------
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End of Linux-Misc Digest
******************************
