Linux-Misc Digest #437, Volume #26 Fri, 1 Dec 00 08:13:02 EST
Contents:
Re: /dev/ owner entries being changed (Donald Arseneau)
how to test a linux kernel ("news")
Re: how to test a linux kernel ("Jeremy Rogers")
Re: /dev/ owner entries being changed (Donald Arseneau)
Re: vim: can't turn on syntax highlighting (Villy Kruse)
Re: /dev/ owner entries being changed ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
Non PC formatted disks, /etc/fdprm ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
Re: /dev/ owner entries being changed (Prasanth A. Kumar)
Re: /dev/ owner entries being changed (John Thompson)
Re: New To Linux - Distributions ("Nikolas Asimos")
Re: Linux terminal problems with SCO (Thomas Dickey)
Re: Freezing Box ("D. Stimits")
Re: Freezing Box ("D. Stimits")
Re: RealPlayer 7 can't open audio device (Fabrice Colin)
Re: talk on linux6.2 (Fabrice Colin)
Re: Backup Hard Drive... (Volker Apelt)
Where the heck is kerneld in RH6.2 ? (Fabrice Colin)
Re: Database in Redhat Linux (Jean-David Beyer)
Re: USB and IrDA Development on Linux (ich)
Re: How to get uptime in sig? (Jean-David Beyer)
Re: versions of top... (Jean-David Beyer)
Re: Backup Hard Drive... ("Sid Trewin")
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: Donald Arseneau <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: /dev/ owner entries being changed
Date: 01 Dec 2000 00:48:36 -0800
[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
> > Well I say "FOAD" to Redhat.
>
> I worked out how to stop it, comment out
> session optional /lib/security/pam_console.so
> in /etc/pam.d/login
If so, then indeed FOAD RedHat! Page 34 of the reference guide
for RedHat 6.1 says:
"The eighth and final line specifies that ..."
But your problem line is line 9, and has apparently been
added without updating the documentation. It goes on to say:
"optional is rarely used, and never used by default on a Red Hat
Linux system"
If it wasn't there by default, who or what added it? I would
suspect it is the KDE installation that added it; Red Hat uses
a quite odd KDE configuration.
Donald Arseneau [EMAIL PROTECTED]
------------------------------
From: "news" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: how to test a linux kernel
Date: Fri, 1 Dec 2000 16:48:02 +0800
I received a reducd linux kernel version, how could I test it? If you know,
please list the steps, thanks.
------------------------------
From: "Jeremy Rogers" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: how to test a linux kernel
Date: Fri, 01 Dec 2000 08:42:10 GMT
news <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in article <907odp$g57$[EMAIL PROTECTED]>...
> I received a reducd linux kernel version, how could I test it? If you
know,
> please list the steps, thanks.
>
>
Read the kernel howto @ linuxdoc.org. Make a bootdisk before you start.
Make another bootdisk before you start. Test the bootdisk works.
------------------------------
From: Donald Arseneau <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: /dev/ owner entries being changed
Date: 01 Dec 2000 00:56:08 -0800
[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
> I worked out how to stop it, comment out
> session optional /lib/security/pam_console.so
> in /etc/pam.d/login
More to what I just said. If you delete this line, you won't
be able to "startx" from a console login, because you won't
own the console.
Donald Arseneau [EMAIL PROTECTED]
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Villy Kruse)
Subject: Re: vim: can't turn on syntax highlighting
Date: 1 Dec 2000 08:59:16 GMT
On Fri, 01 Dec 2000 03:27:48 GMT,
[EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>start vi using vim
>or alias vi='vim'
>
Explanation: On Redhat /bin/vi is a vim version compiled without
bells and whistels. The full vim is installed /usr/bin/vim, and
you need to install all 3 vim related rpm packages.
Villy
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: /dev/ owner entries being changed
Date: 1 Dec 2000 09:14:12 GMT
Donald Arseneau <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
>> I worked out how to stop it, comment out
>> session optional /lib/security/pam_console.so
>> in /etc/pam.d/login
> More to what I just said. If you delete this line, you won't
> be able to "startx" from a console login, because you won't
> own the console.
"startx" still works with it commented out.
-rws--x--x 1 root root 1686835 Oct 31 10:28 /usr/bin/X11/XFree86
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Non PC formatted disks, /etc/fdprm
Date: 1 Dec 2000 10:06:16 GMT
I have some old 3.5" floppys which are not DOS formatted.
They've got 8 sectors per track, not 9, and I'm sure they've
got other strange formatting quirks too. I'm not interested
in mounting them (as they don't have a supported filesystem
on them), but I would like to be able to block read them.
I've looked into /etc/fdprm, and the kernel source, and I've
tried some values, but I can't dd the disks.
Can anyone point me at some good documentation of how
to set up the parameters in order to access disks formatted
in different ways by different types of disk hardware etc.?
{{{ Andy
------------------------------
Subject: Re: /dev/ owner entries being changed
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Prasanth A. Kumar)
Date: Fri, 01 Dec 2000 10:21:46 GMT
[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
> Peter T. Breuer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> > Nothing's going on. It's what's supposed to happen. You are the
> > owner of the console bound devices when you log on at console aren't
> > you. Say "thanks!" to redhat.
>
> Who says it is supposed to happen ? Red-shitforbrains-hat ?
> Looks like that #$%*# init that Redhat uses, guess they never
> counted on multi-user logins on the console.
>
> Well I say "FOAD" to Redhat. Does SuSE do the same thing ? I'm
> pretty sure Slackware doesn't.
You can do more fine grained control of this by editing the file
/etc/security/console.perms to state which devices to change the
permissions on.
--
Prasanth Kumar
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
------------------------------
From: John Thompson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: /dev/ owner entries being changed
Date: Thu, 30 Nov 2000 23:59:51 -0600
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> I am running Redhat 6.1, and using KDE 1. Every now and then I look
> in the /dev directory and find something is changing the owner of
> the device files to a regular user (the one I log in as). For the life
> of me can't figure out what is going on. The files affected include
> fd[0-1]*, radio, dsp, audio, sequencer, video[0-2], winradio[0-1],
> js[0-3], hdd (cdrom drive), vbi[0-2], fb[0-7], vtx*, video*.
>
> The permissions are usually set to 0600. What is going on ?
This is a function of the "PAM" authentication package. By
default, only the user at the console has ownership of the
devices attached to the machine (ie, floppy, sound, cdrom, etc.).
for security reasons. If you don't like it, it can be
reconfigured. See "man pam_console" for details.
--
-John ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
------------------------------
From: "Nikolas Asimos" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: alt.os.linux,comp.os.linux
Subject: Re: New To Linux - Distributions
Date: Fri, 1 Dec 2000 12:57:27 +0200
I would get the Red Hat distribution if i were you. It supports more
multimedia than others and more hardware (USB mouses & keyboards). Also the
Red Hat Package manager is very simple to use (is like "Add/Remove
programs")
Be carefull! Most win-modems are not supported in Linux (the external will
definitely work). Star Office is available in Linux with witch you can even
convert and save in ms-office 2000 formats.
------------------------------
From: Thomas Dickey <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Linux terminal problems with SCO
Date: 1 Dec 2000 11:26:51 GMT
Augusto Perez <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Did you have to redefine ansi or vt100 emulation on your SCO server ??
> Because my ansi emulation is worst ... I installed the linux terminal
> definition on my SCO server using tic and also added it to termcap..
> TERM=linux works better , but still some control keys (Backspace ,
> PgDwn,..) don't work properly..
DEL (what some people get when they think they're pressing Backspace) is
by default the interrupt character on SCO (stty intr).
--
Thomas E. Dickey <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
http://dickey.his.com
ftp://dickey.his.com
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 01 Dec 2000 04:34:46 -0700
From: "D. Stimits" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: Freezing Box
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>
> I work for Ossec International (ossec.com, if you're interested in our
> page/product/whatever). We have recently installed a firewall at a
> company in our base here in Sydney. Everything was going okay until
> three weeks in, when it suddenly stops, it just freezes - no keyboard
> input, nothing.
> We thought at first it might be a hardware problem/conflict of some
> kind so we took out the four-port ethernet card and replaced it with
> three standard ones. Then it was still freezing, so we just replaced
> the entire box with one with a quicker processor.
> It's still freezing.
> The only clues we have to what may or may not be happening is one entry
> in the Apache access_log which gives a line that looks like this:
> ^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@
> right after the freeze is registered as happening.
> The company in question gets alot of emails every day; over 5,000. Even
> though they use Microsoft Exchange as their mail server ( we shan't
> hold that against them too much; we're a pretty easy-going company, as
> companies go ) it still shouldn't be enough to freeze the box up
> entirely.
> We are using a slimmed-down SuSE 6.4 on the box ( slimmed down in that
> it's a firewall; we don't have a compiler, or any other uneccessary
> stuff on there that might interfere with security in any way ).
> Please help! I am but a humble trainee with no clue as to why this is
> happening. Any more freezes ( it's now once a day, at half three in the
> afternoon, bang on time - sometimes more ), and they are probably going
> to cancel the contract, and as we are such a new company, we need all
> the contracts we can get!
>
> Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
> Before you buy.
If you run out of both physical ram and swap, it will freeze. Servers
can use a lot of memory, and if it has caching DNS on it, that too can.
You might want to monitor closely the amount of swap it has, and how
much is used, up till the time it freezes.
And if there is a slightly low power line voltage at that location, or
spikes and other surges, it can show up that way as well. Make sure you
have a good UPS on the line that can handle brownouts. Make sure the
power supply in the machine is sufficient for the hardware.
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 01 Dec 2000 04:37:11 -0700
From: "D. Stimits" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: Freezing Box
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>
> I work for Ossec International (ossec.com, if you're interested in our
> page/product/whatever). We have recently installed a firewall at a
> company in our base here in Sydney. Everything was going okay until
> three weeks in, when it suddenly stops, it just freezes - no keyboard
> input, nothing.
> We thought at first it might be a hardware problem/conflict of some
> kind so we took out the four-port ethernet card and replaced it with
> three standard ones. Then it was still freezing, so we just replaced
> the entire box with one with a quicker processor.
> It's still freezing.
> The only clues we have to what may or may not be happening is one entry
> in the Apache access_log which gives a line that looks like this:
> ^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@
> right after the freeze is registered as happening.
> The company in question gets alot of emails every day; over 5,000. Even
> though they use Microsoft Exchange as their mail server ( we shan't
> hold that against them too much; we're a pretty easy-going company, as
> companies go ) it still shouldn't be enough to freeze the box up
> entirely.
> We are using a slimmed-down SuSE 6.4 on the box ( slimmed down in that
> it's a firewall; we don't have a compiler, or any other uneccessary
> stuff on there that might interfere with security in any way ).
> Please help! I am but a humble trainee with no clue as to why this is
> happening. Any more freezes ( it's now once a day, at half three in the
> afternoon, bang on time - sometimes more ), and they are probably going
> to cancel the contract, and as we are such a new company, we need all
> the contracts we can get!
>
> Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
> Before you buy.
One other thing I forgot. If this is an SMP box, and it has the i840
chipset, it will have this problem (a known defect of i840 IO-APIC).
------------------------------
From: Fabrice Colin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: RealPlayer 7 can't open audio device
Date: Fri, 01 Dec 2000 11:48:39 +0000
Hi Brian,
Brian Goodyear wrote:
>
> When I try to load a rm it throws this error "can't open audio device".
> My web search says to make sure the permissions for audio* and mixer*
> are set so the users can access these devices. I believe I have done
> this right.
> Is there something else?
What output method have you selected ? As far as I remember, in the
options/preferences panel of RP7 you can choose either
- OSS
- old OSS
- esd
With Gnome, I have got the same error message as you if I choose
esd, which doesn't make sense to me since esd is supposed to allow
sharing of audio resources ! Anyway, with OSS (or whatever the first
method is called), RP7 works fine on my machine, even with sound support
turned on in the Control Panel.
My setup is : SBLive! 1024 with fairly recent emu10k1 driver, Redhat 6.2
and Helix Gnome 1.2.
Fabrice
------------------------------
From: Fabrice Colin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: talk on linux6.2
Date: Fri, 01 Dec 2000 11:53:03 +0000
morpheus_w wrote:
> i had checked the manual of talk, how can i respond the talk request? it
> seems that the depiction in manual don't work at all! (My linux version is
> redhat 6.2)
> The question is: how to respond the request ?
When somebody does a talk on you, you should get :
talk: connection requested by somebody@some_host.
talk: respond with: talk somebody@some_host
>From there type "talk somebody@some_host" or just "talk somebody", and
you will be connected.
I hope this helps.
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Volker Apelt)
Crossposted-To: comp.os.linux.hardware
Subject: Re: Backup Hard Drive...
Date: 1 Dec 2000 12:56:45 +0200
Jeffrey Hood <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
[ he wants to backup or clone his PC to a second hard drive
because serious tape backup solutions are to expensive
for his environment.
]
You know that backup is more than just having a second
copy of everything? good backup software maintains an
archive, too.
The linux solution to GHOST is dd.
# copy entire harddisk from scsi drive 1 to scsi drive 2
# (a hard copy, including partitions ... )
dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/sdb
see 'man dd'
--
Volker Apelt Group of Prof. Dr. Ch. Griesinger
Johann Wolfgang Goethe Universitaet
Frankfurt am Main (Germany)
no_spam_va|org.chemie.uni-frankfurt.de (use va@ instead of ...| )
------------------------------
From: Fabrice Colin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Where the heck is kerneld in RH6.2 ?
Date: Fri, 01 Dec 2000 12:03:28 +0000
Hi all,
I have just upgraded from RH6.0 to RH6.2 and to my dismay, kerneld
has disappeared. It used to be in modutils, but all versions I found
for RH6.2 including the latest update (3.6.21 or something) doesn't
provide /sbin/kerneld.
That means that stuff like autoloading ntfs.o when mounting a NTFS
partition no longer works.
Am I suffering from early blindness ? Is there a substitute to kerneld
for RH6.2 ? kernelcfg still refers to it, so I am confused.
Or will I have to get hold of my old RH6.0 rpm and extract it
manually ?
Any help appreciated.
Thanks,
Fabrice
------------------------------
From: Jean-David Beyer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.databases.pick
Subject: Re: Database in Redhat Linux
Date: Fri, 01 Dec 2000 07:46:07 -0500
Victor Wagner wrote (in part):
> : would strongly suggest that all database programmers should know
> : relational theory (it helps design immensely), there are a load of far
> : better databases out there. SQL and relational databases put theoretical
> : purity above practicality and functionality, which is why Oracle is such
> : a beast - I could probably write programs that run faster, do more, and
> : handle larger datasets, and all on a system half the size! just because
> : I don't believe "relational is best".
>
> Guys who wrote mySQL think same way. Unfortunately, they was wrong.
Chris Date, on of the best experts on Database Management Systems put
a lot of effort in describing hierarchical database management systems
such as IBM's IMS/DB and network-model databases systems (I forget the
right name for these) in the first and second editions of his classic
book, "An Introduction To Database Systems". He did this because such
systems were in common use because their implementations were more
efficient. He no longer treats anything except the relational model
(including object-oriented relational model) because their efficiency
is now as good for well executed rdbms as any other model.
You can always hear arguments that some other way (than using a dbms,
especially an rdbms) is more efficient of something, usually cpu
resources, memory resources, disk space resources... . And, for any
static application, the argument would be correct. You could do it all
with ordinary flat files. But that is missing the point: there are
NEVER such static applications. And as soon as some change in
requirements comes along, only the relational model (typically with a
SQL API or user interface) will have the flexibility to handle this in
a timely way. The cost of the programmers and database administrators
and delays always exceeds the cost of the other resources.
The arguments against rdbms are the same as the arguments that were
made in the 1950s and 1960s against higher level languages such as
COBOL, FORTRAN, JOVIAL, and all the others. They were wrong for the
same reasons: programming and coding time cost more than the hardware
needed to compensate for the greater hardware demand. Even back then,
programming cost was too high compared to now. And now, hardware is at
least 1000x cheaper than it was then.
> Becouse there is nothing more practical then good theory.
>
> Theoretical purity gives flexibility, scalability and tunability.
Also PORTABILITY, very important sometimes.
> This is why people don't write on CODASIL anymore.
Possibly COBOL programmers do.
--
.~. Jean-David Beyer Registered Linux User 85642.
/V\ Registered Machine 73926.
/( )\ Shrewsbury, New Jersey
^^-^^ 7:30am up 5 days, 14:58, 2 users, load average: 2.02, 2.07, 2.24
------------------------------
From: ich <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To:
comp.os.linux.development.apps,comp.os.linux.development.system,comp.os.linux.hardware,comp.os.linux.help,comp.os.linux.questions
Subject: Re: USB and IrDA Development on Linux
Date: Fri, 01 Dec 2000 13:50:31 +0100
Hi Alan,
How about
http://irda.sourceforge.net/
or
http://www.lirc.org/index.html
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Alan Po wrote:
> Dear All
>
> I am trying to develop an application by using a USB IrDA. I have found some
> information about USB development under Linux. Unluckily, I cannot find the
> information of IrDA on Linux.
>
> Would you give me some ideas, advices or resources to help me to solve my
> problem?
>
> Alan PO
>
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
------------------------------
From: Jean-David Beyer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: How to get uptime in sig?
Date: Fri, 01 Dec 2000 07:51:35 -0500
"Dr. Sato" wrote:
>
> Could anybody tell me how to get my uptime in the sig??? automaticly :)
>
I take the lazy way out. I have cron run the following every 5
minutes:
#M H D m d program arguments
*/5 * * * * /home/jdbeyer/.sigfile
.sigfile says:
valinux:jdbeyer[~]$ cat .sigfile
SIGNATURE=/home/jdbeyer/.netscape/.signature
echo " .~. Jean-David Beyer Registered Linux User 85642." >
$SIGNATURE
echo " /V\ Registered Machine 73926."
>> $SIGNATURE
echo "/( )\ Shrewsbury, New Jersey" >> $SIGNATURE
echo "^^-^^" `uptime` >> $SIGNATURE
valinux:jdbeyer[~]$
And Netscape knows that the sig file is in $SIGNATURE
--
.~. Jean-David Beyer Registered Linux User 85642.
/V\ Registered Machine 73926.
/( )\ Shrewsbury, New Jersey
^^-^^ 7:45am up 5 days, 15:13, 2 users, load average: 2.08, 2.09, 2.13
------------------------------
From: Jean-David Beyer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: versions of top...
Date: Fri, 01 Dec 2000 07:56:59 -0500
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>
> Is there a version of top that will give me a read out of which
> processes are active on which processor? this is an 8-way system so it
> would be intriguing to find out..
I doubt it, though I am by no means an expert. I can tell pretty well
sometimes on my 2 CPU machine. I run one nice +19 and the other
normally. If the machine is very busy with those two (compute limited)
and otherwise idle, and you use xosview, you can see one in yellow
(nice) and one in green (normal). The processes hop from one CPU to
another, usually rather frequently (more than once a second, quite a
bit more). I know the OS tries to keep a process on the same CPU as
much as possible (to maximize cache hits; each CPU has its own cache),
but it does not always succeed.
--
.~. Jean-David Beyer Registered Linux User 85642.
/V\ Registered Machine 73926.
/( )\ Shrewsbury, New Jersey
^^-^^ 7:50am up 5 days, 15:18, 2 users, load average: 2.07, 2.08, 2.10
------------------------------
From: "Sid Trewin" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Backup Hard Drive...
Date: Fri, 1 Dec 2000 13:03:05 -0000
Hmmm
comment on...
Box1 collecting files via samba
Box2 (the obsolete Box1) backs up (mirrors?) the files on Box1
Box2 collects latest files from Box1 regularly using cp, rsync, whatever
Put second (and third) hdd on each pc and do rotating incremental backup to
this?
Lock Box1 and Box2 in forgotten cupboards somewhere (no monitor etc) and
control from your desktop PC
Archive with cdwriter and your desktop PC under windows (heresy :))
If Box1 fails (for any reason), switch in Box2 temporarily (sameish
smb.conf)
Effectively you have a redundant machine mirroring your main machine
Cost low? cos old pc's and extra hdd's are easy to get
It depends on data importance - but imho archived data should never be
needed except for total catastrophe
so archive to cd and lock this in filing cabinet in mongolia
And - if money is an issue - praps the data isn't quite so important?
Far from ideal - but perhaps adequate?
Good Luck
Sid
"Jeffrey Hood" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> I am trying to find the "best" solution to the problem of backing up a
> drive and/or the data stored on it (the box is mainly a storage location
> for backed-up files over the network... some have already been tarred and
> gzipped...), using RedHat 6.2 on Intel...
------------------------------
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End of Linux-Misc Digest
******************************
