Linux-Misc Digest #756, Volume #24 Fri, 9 Jun 00 01:13:03 EDT
Contents:
Re: Mystery Reboot - Have I been cracked? (Neurocrat)
Re: Serious fragmentation under Linux (Christopher Browne)
Re: DELL's Linux price is HIGHER than Win98 (Christopher Browne)
Re: Modem, Soundcard, and Zip Drive Problems (lobotomy)
Re: Mystery Reboot - Have I been cracked? (Stewart Honsberger)
Re: How to delete a directory that refuses to die? (Floyd Davidson)
Re: TN3270 emulator for Linux (Andreas Schweitzer)
IPChains Magic (David Steuber)
Re: Linux needs a better browser (David Steuber)
Re: booting 3 OS's on one machine win98-win2k-linux ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
Vacation type app for POP mail? ("Mike Saunders")
Re: Xconf and IBM Thinkpad (Francois Labreque)
Re: Mystery Reboot - Have I been cracked? (Tom Eastep)
>>>>------------------------------->> Linux Configuration (N/A)
*>>>>------------------------------->> Linux Configuration* (N/A)
Newbie needs help will scripting, Please. (David)
Re: Bash Scripting ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
I want to switch to Linux - Please Help ("Kent A. Signorini")
How do you test a downloaded tar file with a given pgp2 public key? ("Tom")
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Crossposted-To: comp.os.linux.security
Subject: Re: Mystery Reboot - Have I been cracked?
From: Neurocrat <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: 09 Jun 2000 13:20:32 +1000
"L. Bailey" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> Hi,
> I got home tonight and found out that my server had rebooted.
> Has this ever happened to anyone else?
[snip]
> Could it be something funky with the CPU's? This machine has been
> running for months, and aside from the SMP bug way back in October has
> been rock solid.
>
> I have cable modem and a strong firewall between me and the world at my
> ISP. Have I been cracked anyway?
You have ruled out the possibility of a brief power failure?
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Christopher Browne)
Subject: Re: Serious fragmentation under Linux
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Fri, 09 Jun 2000 02:13:14 GMT
Centuries ago, Nostradamus foresaw a time when MH would say:
>"Art S. Kagel" wrote:
>> There are several reasons why file fragmentation is less of a problem under
>> Linux ext2fs and other UNIX filesystems than it was under DOS (and windoze
>> IS better about this than DOS for similar reasons). Let me try to explain.
>> On a FAT partition each file is represented by a linked list of block
>> pointers in the FAT and a fragmented file can mean jumping around the FAT
>> table and around the disk quite a bit. Because native DOS does not cache,
>> smartdisk asside, and because DOS is single user, and so is Windoze, there
>> is a big impact on system performance if the drive heads have to be moved
>> about alot.
>>
>> On the other hand Linux and other UNIX filesystems represent a file with
>> an inode which, unless the file is very large, contains pointers to
>> contiguous blocks of disk assigned to the file/inode. All of the blocks
>> pointed to by each inode entry, the 8K referred to, are contiguous. Now
>> any file larger than 8K will have multiple entries to other contiguous
>> groups of blocks and each entire group is read into the system cache in
>> one operation using read-ahead. Dances explains how Linux tries to keep
>> each group contiguous with the last group in a file or at least close.
>> This sometimes helps by reducing head movement, however, since Linux is
>> a multi-user operating system, head position after a read is mostly
>> irrelevant as other tasks and users will also be reading and writing that
>> drive and the buffer cache will be flushing older data out also moving the
>> drives' heads. This is why one does not notice as quickly any performance
>> impact from 'fragmented' files. The normal head movement that is part of
>> a multi-tasking multi-user system masks most performance impact and the
>> intelligent cacheing and inode design improve performance by normally
>> fetching the next block from disk to the cache before it is called for
>> so that applications do not notice any slowdown. Intelligent controllers
>> and disks (which mitigate for Windoze also somewhat), elevator sorting of
>> requests, out-of-order retrieval, etc all go to make fragmentation of all
>> but the worst kind irrelevant.
>>
>> Art S. Kagel
>
>Thanks for the excellent response. I now see that my understanding of
>this subject was wholly inadequate to the real complexity of the
>situation. It would be enlightening to see some of the caching
>algorithms explained--I'm not asking you, or anyone else in this
>newsgroup, to do this, merely making an observation. A much more
>interesting subject than I ever expected!
To elaborate _much_ on cacheing would probably be a bit out of scope
here; you might look at:
Design and Implementation of the Second Extended Filesystem
<http://web.mit.edu/tytso/www/linux/ext2intro.html>
More generically, on the design of filesystems and cacheing, _The
Design and Implementation of the 4.3BSD UNIX Operating System_ is an
excellent academic reference, findable at better book stores and at
internet bookstores like Amazon.
I'm grabbing some of Art's comments, particularly regarding the
irrelevancy of fragmentation in a multi-(user|tasking) environment,
and adding them at the URL below, suitably attributed, of course!
--
[EMAIL PROTECTED] - <http://www.hex.net/~cbbrowne/linuxkernel.html>
If all the salmon caught in Canada in one yeer were laid end to end
across the Sahara Desert, the smell would be absolutely awful.
--DeMara Cabrera
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Christopher Browne)
Subject: Re: DELL's Linux price is HIGHER than Win98
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Fri, 09 Jun 2000 02:13:18 GMT
Centuries ago, Nostradamus foresaw a time when David Steuber would say:
>John Hasler <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
>
>' Because Dell figures that people will pay more for Linux. Evidently Dell's
>' marketing people have determined that their customers are prepared to pay a
>' premium for not having Windows.
>
>That sounds like the IBM cost schedule back in the days when they were
>the king. IBM charged for performance, not for the cost of
>manufacture + profit.
In the beginning, it _is_ liable to be more expensive to have a few
one-off servers configured with Linux.
In the beginning, what happens is that Dell has to set up a bit of
organization, which _really and truly_ does cost them something, in
order to sell those Linux-based systems.
By changing them to run Linux, rather than NT, there may be the
benefit of not paying Microsoft $100-$150 for NT licenses, but if they
have to spend some money to:
a) Write and print up some documentation;
b) Set up new billing codes in their systems so they can actually
price and sell the systems,
c) Collect information, somewhere, so people can know where to call
if they have questions/problems with these new systems running
Linux,
there will indeed be some costs that are not incurred when selling a
few more NT boxes.
--
[EMAIL PROTECTED] - <http://www.hex.net/~cbbrowne/lsf.html>
"That's convenience, not cracker-proofing. Security is an emergent
property, not a feature." -- void <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (lobotomy)
Crossposted-To: comp.os.linux.setup
Subject: Re: Modem, Soundcard, and Zip Drive Problems
Date: Fri, 09 Jun 2000 02:21:49 GMT
The Montego II is based on the Aureal Vortex II chipset. It isn't
supported by the kernel, but there is/was a beta linux driver for it
available at linux.aureal.com. You may be able to get this to work.
However, Aureal's bankruptcy has placed this in limbo, and it may
never be finished.
On Thu, 08 Jun 2000 01:25:23 GMT, [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Paul Eisenberg)
wrote:
>Hello. I apologize for not looking into this more, and hopefully this
>isn't too much of a ignorant question, I just am in a rush to get
>everything working. I have the Corel Linux 1.1 Version and the modem,
>soundcard, and zip drive all do not work. I have a US Robotics
>V.90/56K Modem, my soundcard is a TBS Montego II, and the zip drive is
>just an iomega 100 one. I just would love to get all these three
>things up and running and life would be a lot easier concerning this.
>Thanks for all the help. Take Care. Paul!
>
>
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Stewart Honsberger)
Crossposted-To: comp.os.linux.security
Subject: Re: Mystery Reboot - Have I been cracked?
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Fri, 09 Jun 2000 02:35:07 GMT
On Thu, 08 Jun 2000 20:47:32 -0500, L. Bailey wrote:
>I got home tonight and found out that my server had rebooted.
>Has this ever happened to anyone else?
The first thing that comes to mind is a power failure, or even a flicker.
It's likely happened to all of us at some point or another.
>Abit BP6
>2 Celeron 366's overclocked to 550
Is it possible that the heat of these things got a bit much?
I've never been a fan of overclocking CPUs, myself.
--
Stewart Honsberger (AKA Blackdeath) @ http://sprk.com/blackdeath/
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Remove 'thirteen' to reply privately)
Humming along under SuSE 6.4, Linux 2.2.14
------------------------------
From: Floyd Davidson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: How to delete a directory that refuses to die?
Date: 08 Jun 2000 18:18:26 -0800
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Nancy J. Lai) wrote:
>bash# ls -l
>total 135116176
>c--SrwS--T 1 12083 46544 0, 24 Dec 31 1969 preamble.mk
>b--x--Srw- 1 29545 46080 0, 24 Dec 31 1969 srt_super.mk
>bash# rm -fr preamble.mk
>rm: cannot unlink `preamble.mk': Operation not permitted
>bash# rm srt_super.mk
>rm: cannot unlink `srt_super.mk': Operation not permitted
>bash# cd ..
>bash# rm -rf 666bogus666/
>rm: cannot unlink `666bogus666/preamble.mk': Operation not permitted
>rm: cannot unlink `666bogus666/srt_super.mk': Operation not permitted
>rm: cannot remove directory `666bogus666': Directory not empty
>
>I even tried to move this directory to a scratch area temporarily, but it
>told me it could not unlink the files and left the original ones alone.
>
>Does anyone have any ideas about how to remove this directory? Thanks for
>your help.
It appears you have a corrupted disk. The data printed out above is
all bogus (sizes, permissions, dates, etc.), and the inability to
delete it is virtually always due to disk corruption.
Take the system down to single user mode and umount all but the
root filesystem. If that directory is on the root partition,
run e2fsck with the -f option to force it, and then without the
nicety of running "shutdown", just push the reset button.
Otherwise run e2fsck (assuming this is an ext2 filesystem) on
the unmounted partition. You may or may not be able to recover
without backing up all files and then recreating the filesystem
using mkfs. If you do that, read the man page and take the time
and effort do do a surface test on the disk. It might all be a
fluke that will never happen again, or you may be losing the
disk.
Floyd
--
Floyd L. Davidson [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Ukpeagvik (Barrow, Alaska)
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Andreas Schweitzer)
Subject: Re: TN3270 emulator for Linux
Date: 9 Jun 2000 02:53:14 GMT
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
In article <6VX%4.1113$[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, J. Otto Tennant wrote:
>[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Harold Stevens ** PLEASE SEE SIG **) writes:
>
>>Turned up several hits in the 1st pages returned at Google with
>> tn3270 tgz
>
>I have not looked at the source lately, since these have not
>changed in quite some time. There is a minor error in tn3270
>and x3270, which allows the entry of alpha data in a numeric
>field. The fix is simple, but I have been unable to determine
>the master source, or the maintainer, to whom I could suggest
>a change.
A very quick and dirty "post" :
I found some sources on tsx-11.mit.edu under /pub/..../sources/usr.bin
They are quite old - don't they have any author information ?
Or even the map3270 file ?
I didn't check this.
>Using these things also requires a valid /etc/map3270 file
>(the equivalent of a "termcap" file.) I don't think that
>one exists, except for (maybe) an ADM-3a.
Andreas
--
Andreas Schweitzer
http://dilbert.physast.uga.edu/~andy/
This post is brought to you by VIM, slrn and FreeBSD
------------------------------
Subject: IPChains Magic
From: David Steuber <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Fri, 09 Jun 2000 03:00:03 GMT
I have a two machine lan that uses one machine as a router to a DSL
modem for Internet access. The router runs IPChains, and the local
lan is on private IPs. As my laptop computer has a non routable
address, I thought I could only use FTP in passive mode. Much to my
amazement, when I forgot to call the passive command, FTP worked!
There is an ftp filter for IPChains installed. How the heck does it
know to do a redir when the server opens a port back for file
transfere? You could have knocked me down with a sledgehammer!
Why do people still use that other OS from the company in the pacific
northwest who's name can not be mentioned without bringing down a bolt
of lightning?
--
David Steuber | Hi! My name is David Steuber, and I am
NRA Member | a hoploholic.
All bits are significant. Some bits are more significant than others.
-- Charles Babbage Orwell
------------------------------
Subject: Re: Linux needs a better browser
From: David Steuber <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Fri, 09 Jun 2000 03:00:04 GMT
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Jim Harkins) writes:
' This is a huge market opportunity for someone. I'm investigating running
' Embedded Linux on some internet platforms of various kinds. The big hole
' right now is lack of a browser. IE is out, Mozilla will be usable Real
' Soon Now, Spyglass is, well, spyglass, and Opera isn't quite ready for
' embedded Linux.
'
' Anyone have any thoughts on the available browsers, and what the odds are
' they will run on beasts like StrongARM, MIPS, and SH-4 processors in the
' next few months?
I don't know if it will fit, but KDE2 is worth looking at:
http://www.kde.org/
The new browser, konqueror, is getting pretty good.
The problem is, KDE as a whole is resource intensive. It may not be
suitable for a kiosk unless that kiosk has some real power.
--
David Steuber | Hi! My name is David Steuber, and I am
NRA Member | a hoploholic.
All bits are significant. Some bits are more significant than others.
-- Charles Babbage Orwell
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: booting 3 OS's on one machine win98-win2k-linux
Date: Fri, 09 Jun 2000 02:54:03 GMT
well, I was really hoping not to have to do that as I have already spent
a few long working days trying to get this all accomplished. But
here's my theory, maybe you can tell me if it's workable, lilo was
overwritten by the nt loader on the MBR, so I need to install lilo on
the first sector of the linux partition, peel that sector to a file
which the boot.ini can see on the c: drive, now here's the big question,
my c: drive (primary boot partition) is fat32, will that cause problems?
and if it will, how would I go about partitioning a separate fat16 boot
partition? thank you all for your responses, your help is most
appreciated!
-curt(smizz)
> I think you were on the right track here. You'll get conflicting
> advice but IMO it's better NOT to put lilo on the MBR when you're
> already using a bootloader like Win2k or NT4.
>
> I have a few suggestions, but it might require starting from scratch.
> Are you prepared to do that?
>
>
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
------------------------------
From: "Mike Saunders" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.os.linux.help,comp.os.linux.networking
Subject: Vacation type app for POP mail?
Date: Fri, 09 Jun 2000 03:14:29 GMT
Hi,
I'm looking for an app that will auto-respond with a "vacation" message
(like the
vacation BSD/Sun/etc. tool), but will work with a POP account rather than
simply
on a local mailserver. I have a POP account that I'd like to check
periodically while
I'm away and let people know that I won't be getting to their mail for x
days.
I checked freshmeat and did some general Google searches, but did not find
anything
that would work directly with POP (and I'd prefer not to have to config a
local mailserver
to grab the POP mail first, since I'm short on time before I leave.)
Thanks,
Mike
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 08 Jun 2000 23:19:48 -0400
From: Francois Labreque <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Crossposted-To: comp.os.linux.setup,linux.redhat.misc
Subject: Re: Xconf and IBM Thinkpad
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>
> Re: Thinkpad 770z, RH 6.0. After going thru the xconf program many
> times, the following error occurs:
> "Config error: /root/XF86Config: 208
> Protocol "null"
> Mouse type not supported by this OS
> X connection to :0.0 broken (explicit kill or server
> shutdown).
> The mouse is a PS/2, but this IS a laptop...
It works perfectly fine using the PS/2 mouse driver. You can even use
the third button.
--
Francois Labreque | The surest sign of the existence of extra-
flabreq | terrestrial intelligence is that they never
@ | bothered to come down here and visit us!
attglobal.net - Calvin
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Tom Eastep)
Crossposted-To: comp.os.linux.security
Subject: Re: Mystery Reboot - Have I been cracked?
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Thu, 8 Jun 2000 20:15:22 -0700
yL. Bailey wrote:
>Hi,
>I got home tonight and found out that my server had rebooted.
>Has this ever happened to anyone else?
>
>Here is my configuration.
>
>SuSE 6.3
>Kernel 2.2.14 (Mine)
>
>Abit BP6
>2 Celeron 366's overclocked to 550
>
No one should take your problem seriously until you've reproduced it with
your system clocked normally....
-Tom
--
Tom Eastep \ Eastep's First Principle of Computing:
ICQ #60745924 \ "Any sane computer will tell you how it
[EMAIL PROTECTED] \ works if you ask it the proper questions"
Shoreline, Washington USA \___________________________________________
------------------------------
From: N/A <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: >>>>------------------------------->> Linux Configuration
Date: Fri, 09 Jun 2000 03:30:07 GMT
is it possible to reset all the configurations that have been programmed
and restore all the defaults? If So how? thanks.
--
Posted via CNET Help.com
http://www.help.com/
------------------------------
From: N/A <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: *>>>>------------------------------->> Linux Configuration*
Date: Fri, 09 Jun 2000 03:30:08 GMT
is it possible to reset all the configurations that have been programmed
and restore all the defaults? If So how? thanks.
--
Posted via CNET Help.com
http://www.help.com/
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (David)
Subject: Newbie needs help will scripting, Please.
Date: Fri, 09 Jun 2000 04:24:05 GMT
Hi,
Thanks for reading this posting.
I have a small mail server that I would like a couple of other people
to be able to add new pop users to without having access to root. Is
this possible. I would prefer to use a bash or perl script. Access
will be via telnet.
Idealy it would be able to add data to the aliases file as well. I am
very new to all of this and my attempts at perl have all crashed. :-(
Any assistance will be greatfully appreciated.
Thanks.
David.
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: Bash Scripting
Date: Fri, 09 Jun 2000 04:29:51 GMT
Whoa, excellent solutions all!
Thanks guys!
Mr. Flibble
AKA George Walford
------------------------------
From: "Kent A. Signorini" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: I want to switch to Linux - Please Help
Date: Fri, 09 Jun 2000 05:04:12 GMT
I've been contemplating a full switchover to Linux on my home PC but have
been reluctant due to some things I've seen with some test installs I've
done and also not having some questions answered. I'm tired of my current
OS crashing and I need someone to answer these final questions before I take
the plunge. Please e-mail me your responses if possible. Thanks in
advance. Some of these questions are techie and some are philosophical, but
here goes:
1 & 2) Which is a better desktop environment to use, GNOME or KDE, and why?
3 & 4) I've installed RH 6.2 with both GNOME and KDE and found that the
graphical sign-on screen defaults to GNOME. Is it possible to change the
default to KDE? And also, how would I change the GNOME logo on the sign-on
screen to reflect KDE if I go that way?
5) To get Linux to recognize my ULTRA/66 (Promise PCI) controller card I've
downloaded the 2.2.15 kernel, patched it for using UDMA (the patch had no
errors) and rebuilt the kernel by choosing the same options as the default
RH 6.2 - 2.2.14 kernel (using make xconfig and copying the default
configuration file into linux-2.2.14 as .config) but once I build the 2.2.15
kernel I can no longer use my sound card and many of the network modules
give depmod dependency errors on boot. Can someone tell me why this might
be happening. To build the kernel I do a: make xconfig, make dep, make
clean then reboot. Then make modules, make modules_install, then reboot.
All this is done in /usr/src/linux which is symlinked to
/usr/src/linux-2.2.15 which has the patched source tree in it.
6) What would you suggest as replacement Linux app's for:
MS-Office 97 (I have many documents with complex drawing elements on
them -- lines/boxes/etc. done in Word97)
Photoshop
Allaire Homesite (for html editing)
Thumbs Plus
WinRAR
Winamp
GetRight
a good FTP client (I'm sure there is no shortage of these)
a RealPlayer
a VIVO player
an mpg player
a DVD player
CD-burning software for data and music
7) Is Netscape the only good browser in Linux? I'm partial to IE5 because
it handles pages better then Netscape (IMHO) and has more features. I
design web sites part-time and need to be able to see both types of
extensions.
8 & 9) I've installed my current setup in 1024x768x16m and find that the
fonts on web pages in Netscape for Linux show up much smaller than using
Netscape or IE in Windows 98. Why? How can I fix this without going to
800x600?
10) Is there any problem using VFAT drives full-time while in Linux? My
wife has a large amount of data already on a VFAT drive and I would hate to
have to convert it to ext2.
11) Is RH 6.2 a good choice for a distribution? I've looked at Corel Linux
running at a store and it's a very clean desktop compared to the RH 6.2
installed one but I think it's based on Debian and I'm not sure if RH is
better or what.
12) Has anyone used VMWARE and does it work well?
13) How about WINE?
14) What is the maximum size for an ext2 partition? I tried to create a
10GB
"/" partition on my HD and it wouldn't let me go past 8GB during a RH 6.2
install.
15) Is there anything else I should know?????
Thank you to anyone who can answer some of these questions for me. Please
e-mail me your responses at: [EMAIL PROTECTED] if you can. It's VERY
appreciated!
Kent A. Signorini
------------------------------
From: "Tom" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: How do you test a downloaded tar file with a given pgp2 public key?
Date: Fri, 09 Jun 2000 05:05:18 GMT
I downloaded FreeSwan (IPSEC VPN software) and tried to use GNUPGP to check
it with the given PGP2 public key but keep getting "cannot find public key
error". The web site says the tar file is not signed and must test it
manually. I don't know exactly what that means. Can anyone shed some
light on it?
Thanks in advance,
Tom
------------------------------
** 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
******************************
