Linux-Misc Digest #576, Volume #24 Wed, 24 May 00 00:13:02 EDT
Contents:
DDS-4 Seagate tape drive problems (Raymond Blum)
DDS-4 Seagate tape drive problems (Raymond Blum)
Re: Printing: Lpr can't connect to Lpd ("Robert Wynkoop")
Re: Need ideas for university funded project for linux ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
Re: lpd will not print from remote machines (Bob Martin)
Re: Printing: Lpr can't connect to Lpd (Bob Martin)
Re: StarOffice and Red Hat 6.2 (Duane)
Re: Enlightenment Sound Problems (Duane)
Re: how to enter a bug report against linux? (Jim Richardson)
Re: "Post-It" notes for Linux? ("Peter T. Breuer")
Re: how to enter a bug report against linux? ("Peter T. Breuer")
Re: PPP autodial on internet ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
Re: PPP autodial on internet ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
Re: How to split text file into two files that have ODD and EVEN pages. (Mark
Valiukas)
Re: passwd Auth tokens problem -- please help (Bill Unruh)
Re: 3com 3C509B Etherlink III with RedHat (Mark Valiukas)
Re: backup program (Dowe Keller)
Re: Slackware or Debian (Christopher Browne)
Re: Sending cookies to /dev/zero (Lew Pitcher)
Re: How to query Linux version info from C/C++? (Lew Pitcher)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: Raymond Blum <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.os.linux.hardware
Subject: DDS-4 Seagate tape drive problems
Date: Tue, 23 May 2000 22:56:31 -0400
Hi
Two problems I am looking to solve, sort of a "low-grade" EMERGENCY ...
I have to recover files from a backup tape that was made on a VA-Linux
box on DDS-4 tapes.
1) I have a couple of PCs running RedHat Linux 6.1 and 6.2. I have the
tape drive (a Seagate) that made the backups and am hooking it up on my
SCSI chain. Linux can see the drive and can use it to read DDS-3 tapes
just fine so I do not think that there is a SCSI
chain/cabling/termination problem. But when I put in one of the DDS-4
tapes that were created on this drive "mt status" on the drive tells me
"density 0x26 unknown density for this mt" and I can rewind/eject the
tape but if I try to read the tape I get an IO error.
The drive is SCSI-3 (?) 68 pin. The SCSI controller in my machine is a
SCSI-2 (HD50) connector.
2) So... I hooked it up to a VA--Linux box that has the same (68 pin)
SCSI controller. I can write to the tape but any command to read the
tape, including "mt status" hangs. I can not kill the process (i.e. the
"mt" command) but if I pull and reseat the SCSI terminator on the drive
it will SOMETIME release the process that is accessing the drive.
Is there something I have to do to use the DDS-4 tapes on the standard
RedHat 6.x distributions? Is the "unknown density" the reason for my IO
Errors?
Does anyone have a clue about the weird lockups on the VA-Linux box? I
booted the same machine with a DOS diskette and ran some Seagate
diagnostics that do read-write tests and the diagnostics say that the
drive is fine.
TIA
---Raymond
------------------------------
From: Raymond Blum <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.os.linux.hardware
Subject: DDS-4 Seagate tape drive problems
Date: Tue, 23 May 2000 22:56:55 -0400
Hi
Two problems I am looking to solve, sort of a "low-grade" EMERGENCY ...
I have to recover files from a backup tape that was made on a VA-Linux
box on DDS-4 tapes.
1) I have a couple of PCs running RedHat Linux 6.1 and 6.2. I have the
tape drive (a Seagate) that made the backups and am hooking it up on my
SCSI chain. Linux can see the drive and can use it to read DDS-3 tapes
just fine so I do not think that there is a SCSI
chain/cabling/termination problem. But when I put in one of the DDS-4
tapes that were created on this drive "mt status" on the drive tells me
"density 0x26 unknown density for this mt" and I can rewind/eject the
tape but if I try to read the tape I get an IO error.
The drive is SCSI-3 (?) 68 pin. The SCSI controller in my machine is a
SCSI-2 (HD50) connector.
2) So... I hooked it up to a VA--Linux box that has the same (68 pin)
SCSI controller. I can write to the tape but any command to read the
tape, including "mt status" hangs. I can not kill the process (i.e. the
"mt" command) but if I pull and reseat the SCSI terminator on the drive
it will SOMETIME release the process that is accessing the drive.
Is there something I have to do to use the DDS-4 tapes on the standard
RedHat 6.x distributions? Is the "unknown density" the reason for my IO
Errors?
Does anyone have a clue about the weird lockups on the VA-Linux box? I
booted the same machine with a DOS diskette and ran some Seagate
diagnostics that do read-write tests and the diagnostics say that the
drive is fine.
TIA
---Raymond
------------------------------
From: "Robert Wynkoop" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Printing: Lpr can't connect to Lpd
Date: Wed, 24 May 2000 03:01:26 GMT
I had the same problem on my machine. Found the fix in a how-to.
Check out this at www.linux.org.
ftp://metalab.unc.edu/pub/Linux/docs/HOWTO/Printing-HOWTO
<Quoted from the HOWTO>
The Distribution Some Linux distributions don't ship with a properly setup
/etc/modules.conf (or /etc/conf.modules), so the driver isn't loaded
properly when you need it to be. With a recent modutils, the proper magical
lines from modules.conf seem to be: alias /dev/printers lp # only for
devfs? alias /dev/lp* lp # only for devfs? alias parport_lowlevel
parport_pc # missing in Red Hat 6.0-6.1
<End quote>
Hope this helps.
Robert Wynkoop
Stearns25 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in article
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>...
> Hello all,
>
>
> I really need some help on this...
>
> On one of our RH6.0 machines, when I use 'lpr -Plp1 file.txt' to send a
print
> job, i always get this error message:"Lpr: connect: Connection refused.
Job
> queued, but couldn't start daemon. " The job was indeed queued in the
spool
> dir with both the cf and df files, but lpd just won't pick it up.
>
[snip]
------------------------------
Crossposted-To:
comp.os.linux,comp.os.linux.development,comp.os.linux.development.apps,comp.os.linux.development.system,comp.os.linux.setup,comp.os.linux.advocacy
Subject: Re: Need ideas for university funded project for linux
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Wed, 24 May 2000 03:01:12 GMT
David Steuber <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> Do people really have trouble with ./configure, make, make install?
> It has _never_ been a problem for me. Maybe I am just lucky. Even
> though I changed my compiler, libc, and libtools.
That precise process usually works out fine. However, a number of
these processes require manual modification of the Makefile or a
custom configuration file. I've also encountered several configure
scripts that break, and when that happens, you're doomed to rewriting
the Makefile by hand. And there are still a few programs that just
provide you with a grab-bag of Makefiles, and you get to pick which
one you want. Those are *always* disasters, but usually the Makefiles
are at least short enough that fixing them isn't impossible.
--
Eric P. McCoy ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
non-combatant, n. A dead Quaker.
- Ambrose Bierce, _The Devil's Dictionary_
------------------------------
From: Bob Martin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.os.linux.setup
Subject: Re: lpd will not print from remote machines
Date: Tue, 23 May 2000 22:09:37 -0500
Jesse Low wrote:
>
> I had the same problem...I looked here first and didn't get any solution.
> However, something someone metioned made me look on RedHat's site for any
> updates to lpr. I was using lpr-0.35...something. RedHat has an update for
> lpr the lpr-0.48-1. I downloaded and installed it and it seems to have
> fixed the problem.
>
> Go to RedHat to the Errata section and it should be there. It is only about
> 77k.
>
Usually this is caused by /etc/hosts.lpd not being configured. lpd
requires an entry for remote hosts in /etc/hosts.lpd
--
Bob Martin
------------------------------
From: Bob Martin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Printing: Lpr can't connect to Lpd
Date: Tue, 23 May 2000 22:18:27 -0500
Stearns25 wrote:
>
> Hello all,
>
> I really need some help on this...
>
> On one of our RH6.0 machines, when I use 'lpr -Plp1 file.txt' to send a print
> job, i always get this error message:"Lpr: connect: Connection refused. Job
> queued, but couldn't start daemon. " The job was indeed queued in the spool
> dir with both the cf and df files, but lpd just won't pick it up.
>
> It appears that lpr can't connect to lpd to notify it of the print jobs in the
> spooling area.
>
> I have tried: restarting lpd, re-installing lpr/lpd/lpc, clearing all lock
> files, all queues, clearing and recreating all print queues with Printtool in
> Control panel. But none of these helps. Lpr still won't connect to lpd, or
> lpd won't allow lpr to do so.
>
> Any clue?
>
> Also, we also have no success in configuring a print queue to print to a HP
> LJ2100 printer connected to HP JetDirect 500 print server. Can anyone share
> some success story on this too.
>
> thanks for any info and directiions.
>
> -Al
>
> I have
I had this happen when there was an error in one the print ques setup.
lpd got stuck when it hit it and left two instaces of lpd running. I had
left a que which I had partially setup and not working, this was causing
lpds problems. It maybe your HP lj2100 que if it is not working or try
going through each of your ques individually to see if they all work.
--
Bob Martin
------------------------------
From: Duane <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: StarOffice and Red Hat 6.2
Date: Tue, 23 May 2000 19:33:43 -0700
Ronald Hands wrote:
>
> Has anyone succeeded in getting the StarOffice 5.1 or 5.1a suite to work
> with Red Hat 6.2?
> Or am I the only one having difficulty?
> In my case, I get an "unrecoverable error" message and then the program
> shuts down. After that, it aborts midway through the startup process.
> This is with the Gnome Desktop on a Pentium 133, 32 meg Ram, lots of
> disk space and lots of swap space.
32 MB of RAM? Ouch. Can't say for sure that this is your problem, but
Staroffice is a MAJOR memory hog. I suppose lots of swap space should
take care of that, but...(shudder)
Just starting Staroffice up consumes greater than 23 MB on my machine,
and try opening a simple application and we are now over 28 MB. Opening
takes a significant amount of time even on my 700MHz Athlon with 256 MB
of PC133 SRAM, and 7200 RPM disks with 32 bit transfers and DMA enabled.
I would guess that running on your machine would be painful at best.
> A friend runs 5.1 on Red Hat 6.1 and has no problems. I can run the
> Windows version with no problems.
> After I had tried the 5.1 version and encountered these difficulties, I
> sent a message to Sun's support folks and they said 5.1a would cure the
> problem. I downloaded. It didn't make any difference.
> Suggestions?
>
> -- Ron
> Hamilton, ON
>
> --
--
My real email is akamail.com@dclark (or something like that).
------------------------------
From: Duane <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Enlightenment Sound Problems
Date: Tue, 23 May 2000 19:35:33 -0700
Chris Medcraft wrote:
>
> Has anyone had any problems with sound using Enlightenment as a window
> manager? With KDE I have no problems at all - wav files, mpg files
> all play perfectly. However, when I switch to E, nothing.
>
> I've got a Turtle Beach Montego card, with the OSS drivers. I've
> tried enabling sound in the Gnome settings and the E settings.
>
> If anyone has *any* tips whatsoever, please post them! I'd hate to
> have to go back to using KDE in X!
> Remove the 'nospamplease' to reply
Did you open up the audio mixer and click on all the controls?
--
My real email is akamail.com@dclark (or something like that).
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Jim Richardson)
Crossposted-To: comp.os.linux.advocacy
Subject: Re: how to enter a bug report against linux?
Date: Tue, 23 May 2000 10:53:49 -0700
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
On Tue, 23 May 2000 13:53:53 +0100,
[EMAIL PROTECTED], in the persona of <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
brought forth the following words...:
>CAguy wrote:
>>
>> On 22 May 2000 19:23:13 -0700, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> Well, with billions of dollars now riding on the success of linux...I
>> think it's about time they kicked the kiddies off kernal development,
>> and start using a more professional development process.
>
>who is 'they'?
>
>-Ed
>
>
>
>
>
>> James
>
More to the point, how would "they" kick the "kiddies" of the kernal [sic]
developement in the first place?
--
Jim Richardson
Anarchist, pagan and proud of it
WWW.eskimo.com/~warlock
Linux, because life's too short for a buggy OS.
------------------------------
From: "Peter T. Breuer" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: "Post-It" notes for Linux?
Date: 24 May 2000 03:20:19 GMT
Frank Ekeberg Henriksen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
: Does anyone know of a "post-it note" program for Linux? Y'know, that kind of useful
:little note thing to stick on the desktop.
Knotes.
Peter
------------------------------
From: "Peter T. Breuer" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.os.linux.advocacy
Subject: Re: how to enter a bug report against linux?
Date: 24 May 2000 03:19:47 GMT
In comp.os.linux.misc John Hasler <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
: Darren Winsper writes:
:> Would you care to point us in the direction of any major bugs in the
:> stable kernels that have survived several revisions?
: How much sooner might those bugs have been fixed given a decent bug
: tracking system?
None for the interesting bugs. Report an interesting bug, and it'll be
fixed in a jiffy. Boring bugs indeed will be forgotten.
: I'm running 2.3.99 on dual PIII's with an Adaptec 7896 and having trouble
: with sound: sending anything to /dev/dsp hangs the SCSI driver. If there
I believe that's known. I've seen several threads go past on the scsi
problem in 2.3.99 and above. Doug's working on it. Ask him!
: was a kernel BTS I'd research the problem there and either test any fix I
EH? Why don't you mail the maintainer? That's debian practice too!
: at fixing it myself. I'm not interested in spending hours rooting around
: in a mailing list archive, though. I can do without sound: to me it's just
As you know, you might get Alan's interest on that one too. But 2.3.99
has hundreds of bugs like that so it's not high priority yet. Make sure
at least Doug knows about it.
Peter
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: PPP autodial on internet
Date: Wed, 24 May 2000 03:20:50 GMT
You need to enable masquerading to get your Windows box
to access Internet through your Linux box and install
diald to get the Linux box to dial on demand.
Dave D.
In article <8ek1s6$2rd$[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> PPP autodial on internet
>
> Hi,
> I have just prepared the internet connection for my linux machine with
> a modem,dynamic IP and PPP protocol, and it work well.
> Is it possible now to connect automatically on internet from my lan?
> For Example:
> On my Win95 host I come on internet with my linux PC.
>
> Tanks Flavio
>
> Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
> Before you buy.
>
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: PPP autodial on internet
Date: Wed, 24 May 2000 03:21:54 GMT
You need to enable masquerading to get your Windows box
to access Internet through your Linux box and install
diald to get the Linux box to dial on demand.
Dave D.
In article <8ek1s6$2rd$[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> PPP autodial on internet
>
> Hi,
> I have just prepared the internet connection for my linux machine with
> a modem,dynamic IP and PPP protocol, and it work well.
> Is it possible now to connect automatically on internet from my lan?
> For Example:
> On my Win95 host I come on internet with my linux PC.
>
> Tanks Flavio
>
> Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
> Before you buy.
>
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 24 May 2000 14:53:26 +1000
From: Mark Valiukas <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: How to split text file into two files that have ODD and EVEN pages.
Robert Wynkoop wrote:
> .(I currently print Windoze --> Linux My okidata 320 in
> not supported by RH6.2 as a Ghostscript printer.)
You might like to consider using redmon in conjunction with ghostscript on the
windows machine. Redmon allows redirection of a printer to a command line,
meaning I was able to creat a share and print to my (at that time) windows-only
Oki 4W from my linux machine. Of course, with RH 6.1 came a version of
ghostscipt that knew about the 4W, so I don't really remember too many
specifics any more - but I set it up based on the standard redmon and
ghostscript documentation without wasting too many hours :-) There are
sometimes very good reasons to use the Windows machine to provide services for
the Linux one.
> > The way I'd do this is to convert the file to Postscript using a2ps, then
> > use psselect to select the odd and even pages for printing.
And hope your printer doesn't choke on the toner on the back of the pages the
second time it goes through. Some will.
I know Oki tell me not to do it with the 4W.
Mark.
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Bill Unruh)
Subject: Re: passwd Auth tokens problem -- please help
Date: 24 May 2000 03:42:52 GMT
In <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [EMAIL PROTECTED] (GenaBlu) writes:
]I am getting a problem running passwd to change my (and others') password.
]This is under RH5.1/PAM. A shadow password file wasn't installed during the
]initial installation.
rpm -Va>/tmp/verify
Then you can see which files are messed up, which missing, etc.
][root@lavender /etc]# passwd
]passwd: Authentication token manipulation error
Check /etc/passwd and make sure there are no blank lines, or other
problems.
]Two things happened lately that *may* have affected this:
]1. We're building a bood disk using Yard 1.18 and one of us may have mucked up
]the PAM configuration (it doesn't look like it, though)
]2. We had a power outtage on Sunday night and this particular machine died.
]fsck recovered the partitions and reported no damages, but you never know.
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 24 May 2000 15:08:37 +1000
From: Mark Valiukas <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: 3com 3C509B Etherlink III with RedHat
fred smith wrote:
> My home network consists entirely of 3c509b-tpo cards. To set one up
> for a Linux/Windoze dual boot, firstly enable plug-n-pray, install it
> in Windoze and make note of the parameters Windoze picks for the card.
> Then turn off plug-n-pray and hard-wire the card to the parameters
> Windoze picked. Then reboot windoze and manually set it to always use
> those parameters. Then configure linux to use those same parameters.
> Should work like a charm. All of mine do.
Pretty much what I did with mine. However, Kevin will also need to remember to
set the media type to coax - if it's auto-detect, it won't necessarily pick up the
coax
port under Linux. Don't know why, but I've observed this behaviour on 509b's both
at home and at work.
Mark.
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Dowe Keller)
Subject: Re: backup program
Date: 23 May 2000 21:05:42 -0700
On Wed, 24 May 2000 09:40:51 +0800, Mail List1 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>Which backup program is the best for LINUX?
>
dd is nice ;->
--
dowe [EMAIL PROTECTED]
---
Beware the Juevos del Diablo!!!
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Christopher Browne)
Subject: Re: Slackware or Debian
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Wed, 24 May 2000 03:56:47 GMT
Centuries ago, Nostradamus foresaw a time when Johan Kullstam would say:
>[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Christopher Browne) writes:
>> - On the other hand, vis-a-vis installation, system configuration, and
>> systems maintenance, they all maintain _quite distinct_ sets of
>> code:
>>
>> - Red Hat, Caldera, Mandrake, SuSE, TurboLinux, Corel, StormLinux
>> _ALL_ provide quite customized tools for all these things, tools
>> that are not directly usable on the "other guys' distributions."
>
>yes. but on the other hand, you don't need to use them.
You and I don't need to; the population of "newbies" that haven't
figured out that Linux is basically a UNIX, underneath KDE/GNOME, and
who wouldn't really know what to make of a "honest-to-goodness" UNIX,
need a bit more help.
>> - Linuxconf, which RHAT supports, also has the ability to run on
>> Debian. Whether it's more generally usable than that is anybody's
>> guess.
>
>i am a long time redhat user. my first impulse after seeing this
>thing was to grab my head and say "oh the brain damage!"
>
>then i did
>$ rpm -e linuxconf
>
>buh-bye linuxconf. you may think it's great. as always ymmv.
I found it moderately useful for helping configure a few things; I
wanted to like it more than I did, which is more-or-less to say that
there's a fair bit of "brain damage" as you suggest.
I can cope with not having it there; a newbie that doesn't have a
shelf full of O'Reilly books may have a different attitude.
>> - Give another year and there will likely be an RPM front end that
>> looks a _whopping lot_ like "InstallShield." The GUIed install
>> tools used to install Red Hat, Caldera, Mandrake, Corel, and
>> StormLinux provide much this "look" for the initial install; it is
>> likely that GnoRPM, Kpackage, PURP, and such, will get
>> "prettified" over the next year or so...
>
>yes but something like rpm (while *far* from perfect) does provide a
>lot more than installshield. besides allowing upgrade, you can query
>"what files belong to this package?" and "to what package does this
>file belong?" i find these features very useful. unix filesystem
>encourages scattering files in /etc /usr/bin /usr/man &c and it's good
>to have something to help keep track of them.
You're speaking to something I didn't say. I didn't say, "there will
be a barneyfied front end that scatters files everywhere as it goes,
and there will be no more RPM."
Read more carefully: I wrote "RPM front end", and suggested that it
might _look like_ InstallShield. I particularly did _NOT_ say
anything to the effect that RPM should _go away_ in favor of the new
tool.
Nothing could be further from my intent; I would consider it a
HORRIBLE DISASTER if the "pretty GUI" made RPM go away. (It would be
rather _less_ of a disaster if RPM went away, replaced by either dpkg,
from the Debian world, or the BSD package management tools. Feel free
to do s/RPM/dpkg/g or specify some other similarly powerful package
tool as needed.)
The _point_ is to provide a front end that is more approachable to the
induhviduals that have attention spans short enough that they can't
cope with a CLI. And to provide a front end that can enumerate,
visibly, the parameters that users are likely to want to mess with.
>> - In contrast, Slackware and *BSD have traditionally eschewed having
>> _much_ in the way of such tools, expecting that the gentle user
>> will "pluck from some stream of source code" whatever admin tools
>> they wish to use.
>
>but even redhat with all it's install shields will still ship tar,
>make and gcc. you can be willfully ignorant of rpm in redhat if you
>like.
You remain wilfully ignorant of RPM at significant peril; if you
haven't been using the "managed" packages, and Red Hat announces that
a security hole in GLIBC2.1 has been found, and fixed, it may prove
significantly irritating to access that fix.
And again, I think you're missing the dichotomy here...
You and I might both be able to cope reasonably well with installing a
new version of GLIBC by hand; the poor new user that isn't sure of
what GLIBC _is_ will not cope with using the "assembly language" of
tar, make, and gcc terribly well.
There's two _main_ reasons to use RPM or dpkg:
a) Because you're not knowledgeable enough to Do It Yourself, and need
the help;
b) Because, despite being quite capable to DIY, you'd rather spend
your time doing something other than upgrading GLIBC.
There's always:
c) Because there are 25 hosts that need to get the upgrade, and there
isn't time, although this is essentially b) stretched a bit
further.
>> Slackware and Debian share the fact of not having a "venture capital"
>> department to pay them to produce "barneyfied" install processes, with
>> the attendant memory/disk bloat that results.
>
>redhat is a bit bloated, yes. i usually like to do some heavy
>trimming after the install. debian allows a much slimmer initial
>install.
The "pre-install" time is also of _some_ importance; it is
_outrageously_ unrealistic to expect to install Corel Linux on a 486
box with 16MB of RAM. (There was a case of this on Saturday, of
someone coming to a NTLUG meeting trying to determine what to install
on such a system...)
>> I'm getting quite convinced that there's a persistent need for them;
>> there is a distinct place in the world for "mechanics-required"
>> distributions.
>
>do not forget that *all* linux distributions are "mechanics-*allowed*"
True, but the point is that if the distribution has big enough
"training wheels," the gentle users may not _see_ what the mechanics
are doing.
>> Over the last year, the local LUG (NTLUG) has been inundated with
>> newbies that have assortedly "fallen in love" with Mandrake, Red Hat
>> 6.x, and SuSE.
>>
>> Unfortunately, we're now noticing the pedagogical problems with their
>> "friendly install" schemes, which is that they don't:
>>
>> a) provide much ability to really track what is going on at install
>> time, so that those users don't _initially_ learn what's going on
>> when they (for instance) configure their network, and
>
>i know what you mean. redhat's init and config script rat's nest is
>particularly hard to navigate.
It's basically System V-style; BSD bigots tend to find the linkages
irritating, and it is, to some extent, but not much moreso than any of
the other Linuxes using SysV-style init.
Do you find RHAT's worse to navigate than, say, TurboLinux or SuSE?
>> b) provide much ability to remedy things after install time, thus
>> meaning that if you need to do anything much to reconfigure the
>> system, the "easy way" is to basically reinstall Linux from
>> scratch.
>
>> In effect, they:
>> - Don't learn anything below the veneer of the install tools, and
>> - Become pretty "install-happy."
>
>> Which has remarkable parallels to the Win9x thing of needing to
>> reinstall every few months.
>>
>> The _reasons_ may be a bit different; there is not the same forcible
>> _need_ to reinstall to clean up the horrid state of the registry and
>> of DLLs.
>>
>> But it _does_ mean that the claim that you "don't need to reinstall
>> Linux every few months" is not much of a reality.
>
>no matter what distribution i am running, i find that i build up a
>layer of cruft which needs cleaning out every so often. i am not sure
>if redhat or slackware are better or worse in this regard.
They're all a problem in this regard...
Debian offers a "cruft" utility that provides some ability to detect
this stuff, and see if you want to do anything about it...
>you did trim out where i recommended that the person try a few
>distributions. during this process you will learn about
>configuration. you will learn which distribution suits your style and
>needs. i just think that the differences between the distributions
>are overblown not that there aren't any.
I _don't_ think they're overblown; what I _do_ think is that there is
rather a lot of _bigotry_.
In other words, there's a remarkable number of differences, and it's
not so much the differences that are the problem as it is the zealous
beliefs of those that decide to love/bash some particular distribution.
--
[EMAIL PROTECTED] - <http://www.hex.net/~cbbrowne/lsf.html>
"I thought the idea with a language was that you didn't have to point
and grunt" -- Chip Salzenberg
------------------------------
From: Lew Pitcher <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Sending cookies to /dev/zero
Date: Wed, 24 May 2000 04:09:43 GMT
brian moore wrote:
>
> On Mon, 22 May 2000 13:33:56 -0700,
> M. Leo Cooper <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > A simple, but effective way of dealing with cookies is:
> > rm -f ~/.netscape/cookies
> > ln -s /dev/null ~/.netscape/cookies
[snip]
>
> You can do it if you want, but you'll most likely break your own machine.
>
> /dev/null on write: a bottomless pit
> on read: a continous end of file
>
> That's just what you want -- a place to dump cookies and when you read
> the file will look empty.
[snip]
>
> A remote web server doesn't read your cookie file: your browser does.
I've always found it better just to
chmod a-w ~/.netscape/cookies
This works on Linux, and the equivalent works in MSWindows.
Because it is read-only, the cookies file can't be updated by
Netscape, but Netscape still can cache the cookies in memory.
Termination of Netscape looses all memory-cached cookies.
_If_ there is a site for which I _want_ the cookie to be cached, I
simply
chmod u+w ~/.netscape/cookies
and terminate netscape. This allows Netscape to write the cookie back
to the cookie file. If necessary, I can hand-edit extraneous cookies
out of the file before I chmod a-w it back.
--
Lew Pitcher
Master Codewright and JOAT-in-training
------------------------------
From: Lew Pitcher <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: How to query Linux version info from C/C++?
Date: Wed, 24 May 2000 04:09:47 GMT
"Gregory G. Woodbury" wrote:
>
> Peter Antypas wrote:
> >
> > /etc/issue is used in some cases (Caldera and maybe RedHat)
> >
> > <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message news:8fvd1u$fhf$[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> > > Title says it all, is there any API in C/C++ that allows me to query
> > > the Linux version string (like Redhat 6.2, kernel 2.14 etc)?
>
> There is also the uname system call that returns some of the information.
And if you are really desparate, you can read /proc/version or
/proc/sys/kernel/version, /proc/sys/kernel/ostype, and
/proc/sys/kernel/osrelease.
--
Lew Pitcher
Master Codewright and JOAT-in-training
------------------------------
** FOR YOUR REFERENCE **
The service address, to which questions about the list itself and requests
to be added to or deleted from it should be directed, is:
Internet: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
You can send mail to the entire list (and comp.os.linux.misc) via:
Internet: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Linux may be obtained via one of these FTP sites:
ftp.funet.fi pub/Linux
tsx-11.mit.edu pub/linux
sunsite.unc.edu pub/Linux
End of Linux-Misc Digest
******************************
