Linux-Misc Digest #551, Volume #26 Fri, 15 Dec 00 09:13:04 EST
Contents:
Re: Where does bash hold history of current session? (Kae Verens)
Re: Dual processor advantage? (Jean-David Beyer)
Re: What can I delete in /tmp? (Kae Verens)
Re: What can I delete in /tmp? (Lew Pitcher)
Re: Q:Newbie Looking for alternatives from MacroShot (Jean-David Beyer)
Re: What can I delete in /tmp? (Dragan Colak)
Route Command? What is wrong here? (Quad)
Re: Hauppauge Wintv (Steve Stuart)
Re: What can I delete in /tmp? ("Peter T. Breuer")
Re: What can I delete in /tmp? ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
Re: What can I delete in /tmp? (Kae Verens)
Re: Switching to Linux (LONG) (Jean-David Beyer)
Re: System crash (Jean-David Beyer)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: Kae Verens <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Where does bash hold history of current session?
Date: Fri, 15 Dec 2000 13:13:36 +0000
Dragan Colak wrote:
>
> Hi group,
>
> the bash isn't writing user input directly to .bash_history.
> It holds the list of the current session somewhere temporarily
> and writes it to file when the session is closed.
>
> Where does the bash hold the history of the current session?
> Can somebody tell me, please?
not too sure - I would guess in RAM or a temp file, but if you're
looking for your most recent list of commands, you can "history -a",
which updates the $HISTFILE
Kae
------------------------------
From: Jean-David Beyer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Dual processor advantage?
Date: Fri, 15 Dec 2000 08:14:39 -0500
John Dixon wrote:
>
> I have a relatively old ibm box with a Pentium Pro 180mhz processor.
> The motherboard has provision for a second processor, and I see that the
> Linux kernel can be configured for SMP. Would I see any improvement in
> performance if I installed a second processor? I am using Mandrake 7.2
> with the 2.2.17 kernel.
I run Red Hat Linux 6.0 with many RPMs installed on this box. It has
two 550MHz Pentium IIIs in it and 512 megabytes 100MHz ECC SDRAM and
two 10,000rpm hard drives on an Ultra-2 SCSI controller.
It would not run any one process any faster than if I unplugged one of
the CPUs, at least it would not be significantly faster. A lot depends
on what you are trying to do.
For example, a lot of the time, this machine is not doing much, so I
let it run two instances of SETI@home. These produce almost twice as
much work as when I ran only a single instance, since they each gets
most of a CPU and if I ran only one instance, the other CPU would be
answering the timer interrupt, and sync-ing the disks and little else.
OTOH, I run applications in a client-server arrangement (with both
client and server on this one machine) using IBM's DB2 UDB dbms and
this system is set up so it can run the server on just one CPU, or on
both, as I select. Most of the stuff actually runs slower when it is
set up for two CPUs, I suppose because the overhead of distributing
the work between the two processors exceeds the savings. One
applicatioin does run significantly faster (but not twice as fast)
with two CPUs in use, though. Before I measured anything, I thought it
would go faster even single threaded, since the client could run on
one CPU and the server on the other. The client, however, only uses
about 1% of the CPU power, so having it run on one CPU and the server
on the other does not make a noticeable difference.
--
.~. Jean-David Beyer Registered Linux User 85642.
/V\ Registered Machine 73926.
/( )\ Shrewsbury, New Jersey
^^-^^ 8:05am up 10 days, 16:53, 2 users, load average: 2.00, 2.08,
2.06
------------------------------
From: Kae Verens <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: What can I delete in /tmp?
Date: Fri, 15 Dec 2000 13:17:21 +0000
Dragan Colak wrote:
>
> Hi group,
>
> I have a Linux installation here with 712 MByte of data in /tmp.
> I would like to reduce the size of it. What can I delete and what
> shouldn't I touch?
> Can somebody give a little advice, please?
/tmp files are, by definition, temporary, so anything which is not
currently in use can be deleted. To be careful, I would only delete
files last accessed at least a day previously.
on a funny note, see the Tuesday message subjected: "blindly accepted
net advice--> blew away filesystem" - an intersting reply mentions an
admin who accidently deleted his whole drive by typing "rm -rf / tmp"
instead of "rm -rf /tmp"
Kae
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Lew Pitcher)
Subject: Re: What can I delete in /tmp?
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Fri, 15 Dec 2000 13:16:57 GMT
On Fri, 15 Dec 2000 13:49:07 +0100, Dragan Colak <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>Hi group,
>
>I have a Linux installation here with 712 MByte of data in /tmp.
>I would like to reduce the size of it. What can I delete and what
>shouldn't I touch?
>Can somebody give a little advice, please?
In theory, everything under the /tmp directory is fair game.
In practice, I've not had problems arbitrarily deleting everything in
/tmp, but YMMV.
Lew Pitcher
Information Technology Consultant
Toronto Dominion Bank Financial Group
([EMAIL PROTECTED])
(Opinions expressed are my own, not my employer's.)
------------------------------
From: Jean-David Beyer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Q:Newbie Looking for alternatives from MacroShot
Date: Fri, 15 Dec 2000 08:23:29 -0500
Joshua Beard wrote:
>
> From what I know, this is false information. The only real time I need to
> reboot is after compiling my kernel so it will take affect, but not after
> installing software. You (typically) just unpack, compile, install and then
> you're good to go.
> ~ Josh.
I also need to reboot once in a while when a process has died (not
exited) with the tape drive file is still open. The process is hung up
waiting for IO to the tape to complete and something has happened so
it will never complete. If I kill the offending process with a -9, it
still will not exit. Top says it is not interruptable ("D") until the
IO completes. I cannot just leave it there, because I cannot use the
tape drive until the dead process closes the file, and it will never
do that. Rebooting is the only answer. Fortunately this happens only
about once a month. (BTW: I have replaced the tape drive (fortunately
under warranty), but that did not help.)
--
.~. Jean-David Beyer Registered Linux User 85642.
/V\ Registered Machine 73926.
/( )\ Shrewsbury, New Jersey
^^-^^ 8:15am up 10 days, 17:03, 2 users, load average: 2.12, 2.12,
2.09
------------------------------
From: Dragan Colak <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: What can I delete in /tmp?
Date: Fri, 15 Dec 2000 14:24:26 +0100
Kae Verens wrote:
> Dragan Colak wrote:
> >
> > Hi group,
> >
> > I have a Linux installation here with 712 MByte of data in /tmp.
> > I would like to reduce the size of it. What can I delete and what
> > shouldn't I touch?
> > Can somebody give a little advice, please?
>
> /tmp files are, by definition, temporary, so anything which is not
> currently in use can be deleted. To be careful, I would only delete
> files last accessed at least a day previously.
>
> on a funny note, see the Tuesday message subjected: "blindly accepted
> net advice--> blew away filesystem" - an intersting reply mentions an
> admin who accidently deleted his whole drive by typing "rm -rf / tmp"
> instead of "rm -rf /tmp"
>
> Kae
Hi Kae,
thanks for for the answeres to both postings.
Your infos were very helpful.
Dragan
------------------------------
From: Quad <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.os.linux.networking
Subject: Route Command? What is wrong here?
Date: Fri, 15 Dec 2000 13:17:17 GMT
Hi,
I have 3 nics all on diff networks on a linux box. Its redhat 6.2 no
updates (yet as I wanted to test, then patch OS/Kernel). Here is the
route command I am trying to implement:
route add -net 175.23.0.0 netmask 255.255.0.0 eth1
route add -net 24.231.45.0 netmask 255.255.255.0 eth2
It just scrolls the route command (help) as though im not typing it
right...
I cant even seem to add a default gateway with the route command?
Do I need a newer kernel/patch/utility to make this work?
Thanks for your help.
--
Quad
Sent via Deja.com
http://www.deja.com/
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 15 Dec 2000 08:30:37 -0500
From: Steve Stuart <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Hauppauge Wintv
Flo,
You might try the xawtv software to see if you get the same
problems. This will narrow down your search to drivers if it
doesn't work with these programs too.
http://www.strusel007.de/linux/xawtv/
..Steve
Flo wrote:
>
> Hi
> When I start kwintv I get a very good picture and at a few stations
> sound, but not at every time. when i start "program edit" and change the
> frequenz (and then back to the old frequenz) of the station i get sound,
> then i exit the edit-dialog and have sound and pic. But when I change
> the station and back to the old station I don't have sound.
>
> Can someone help me
>
> thx
>
> flo
------------------------------
From: "Peter T. Breuer" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: What can I delete in /tmp?
Date: Fri, 15 Dec 2000 14:12:58 +0100
Dragan Colak <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> I have a Linux installation here with 712 MByte of data in /tmp.
> I would like to reduce the size of it. What can I delete and what
Everything
> shouldn't I touch?
Nothing
> Can somebody give a little advice, please?
Do nothing, and file a bug report with your distro. It should be
removing the contents of /tmp every day at 6am via a cronjob.
tmp means tmp
Peter
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: What can I delete in /tmp?
Date: Fri, 15 Dec 2000 13:46:15 GMT
Dragan Colak <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> I have a Linux installation here with 712 MByte of data in /tmp.
> I would like to reduce the size of it. What can I delete and what
> shouldn't I touch?
> Can somebody give a little advice, please?
That seems a _mite_ excessive.
Material that sits in /tmp is _supposed_ to be temporary; people
should _not_ depend on its continued existence. Indeed, some
distributions [Debian comes to mind...] clean out /tmp at bootup time.
A thought would be to look in /tmp for what's oldest, and if 600 MB of
the material is more than 3 months old, purge that stuff.
The antisocial thing would be if you have multiple users on the host in
question, and they are using /tmp to store material that they would want
to keep around. I wouldn't delete such stuff forthwith; could result
in screams of anger.
But if it's a single user host, it's probably pretty safe to nuke
pretty much all of it...
--
(reverse (concatenate 'string "ac.notelrac.teneerf@" "454aa"))
<http://www.ntlug.org/~cbbrowne/>
What do you mean "Why's it got to be built?" It is a bypass. You've got
to build bypasses.
------------------------------
From: Kae Verens <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: What can I delete in /tmp?
Date: Fri, 15 Dec 2000 13:47:59 +0000
"Peter T. Breuer" wrote:
> Do nothing, and file a bug report with your distro. It should be
> removing the contents of /tmp every day at 6am via a cronjob.
He may not have the computer on at 6am. I know I leave my machines off
when I'm leaving the building.
Kae
------------------------------
From: Jean-David Beyer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Switching to Linux (LONG)
Date: Fri, 15 Dec 2000 08:54:39 -0500
acoolguy wrote:
>
> I currently have a computer with a celeron processor, 32MB RAM, and Win98.
> I am considering switching to Linux since I have heard so much about its
> performance as compared to the Win OS and many other OSs for that matter. I
> have also noticed that many serious computer gurus are running Linux. Now I
> have several question so that I can determine if this is a suitable option
> for me:
>
> 1. What are the advantages and disadvantages to switching from Win to Linux
> and vice versa? Why do most people switch in the first place?
I switched because I ran real operating systems for about 25 years,
and they seldom crashed. At one employer, I used Unix on about 10
machines for about 5 years and the only time they crashed was when all
30 or so hard drives crashed at once.
At the next company, where I worked for a little over 4 years, we ran
Unix on a 386 (or 486) Dell box. It ran 24/7 for the entire 4 years
except when we made hardware changes.
So when I got my own PC in 1996, I got Windows 95, because that is
what everyone else did, and because I did not want to spend a small
fortune for a Unix Distro and License. (I had never heard of FreeBSD
or Linux.) It turns out I would have had to get Windows anyway because
I needed to run Quicken and TurboTax. I could not believe what a lousy
system Windows 95 was. I bought Microsoft Office 97 Professional (I
needed, or thought I needed Microsoft Access) and Microsoft Visual
C++. Microsoft writes crap. I could not get Office and Visual C++ to
work together because they required conflicting .dll libraries. What
an unprofessional company!
I also could not stand the continual crashing. I got the Blue Screen
of Death about three times a week, and everything else crashed many
times a day. It never occurred to me that Microsoftware could be so
bad, so I took my machine to the shop on two occasions and had them
test it for a week each time. They ran all manner of hardware tests
and never found a problem. My nephew suggested I run Linux (Red Hat
Linux 5.0 at the time) and it worked fine. It cured all the "hardware
problems" except when I run Windows, of course.
I detested Microsoft Access. I have done work with relational
databases before; I even wrote a relational dbms myself in the late
1970's when I needed one and could not get one for Unix. But I could
not set up a relatively simple schema in Access because it could not
understand the foreign keys.
I detested Microsoft Visual C++ because I was always looking at things
through a keyhole. I could never see the entire program (in
particular, the main message dequeuing loop that is hidden in a .dll
somewhere). This is catastrophic for me because I frequently write
program that requires a lot of cooperating sequential processes that
communicate with IPC. Now to do that without writing your own main
message loop is almost impossible because when the hidden Microsoft
one is waiting for a keyboard or mouse event, it will not examine the
IPC input, and vice-versa, so the system will deadlock. This kind of
thing is trivial if you can write the main message loop yourself.
I also hate all the pointing and clicking sometimes. It is perfectly
satisfactory when running something like Netscape, but when I want to
do the same thing to a bunch of different files, or something like
that, executing a shell script of a few lines will replace, in an
instant or two, an entire morning of pointing and clicking.
Furthermore, that shell script can be executed at 2AM while I am
asleep and I need not even notice it happening. I have it do my
backups this way every night.
>
> 2. What is the difference between Linux and Unix?
The main differences are that Linux is free and you usually need to
pay for Unix. If you write program, and follow POSIX standards, you
will probably notice no differences (though there are some).
>
> 3. If I finally decide to switch, I am worried about the fact that I have
> many important files on my computer that are only compatible with MS
> Office. I am aware that there are free programs avaliable for Linux, that
> would allow me do word processing, etc., but is there anyway to convert my
> files? Also we have PCs and MACs at school, I can currently work on the
> same files at home and at school,would Linux allow me to do this?
There are some, but they are not all perfectly satisfactory. One of
the problems is that as the providers of other word processors,
spreadsheet programs, and the like, devise ways to import the
undocumented Microsoft file structures, Microsoft changes them. I
happen to use Applixware 5.00 office suite when I need to read
Microsoft Office stuff. It works fairly well, but the latest Microsoft
Office 2000 has a default file format that cannot be read ("Fast
Save"). This default is said to permit saving a document more quickly.
But it uses a data structure that is a hopeless mess worse than the
regular one. I had a friend change her settings to slow save (I forget
the right name) and it saved no slower, but I could then read her
stuff. I frequently use LaTex or Lyx instead of Applix words anyhow. I
would even use troff if I could find the documentation for the
required macros. But LaTex works just fine for me.
One nice thing about running Linux on a dual boot machine (where you
can choose at boot time whether you run Linux or the other OS) is that
the Linux OS can read and write most Windows file systems.
>
> 4. If I decide to make the big switch where do I get the software, what
> version should I get? How do I install it, as I have never formatted my
> hard drive, etc? Where do I get other software that I might need? Do I need
> to worry about drivers,say for my printer?
I paid Red Hat for their 5.0 and 6.0 releases. Since I have never
tried out any other distribution, I cannot compare it with the others.
My nephew suggested in in 1998 because he thought, at that time, it
was the easiest to install. It certainly was that. I did not care for
the fvwm window manager all that much, but it was acceptable. I now
use GNOME/Enlightenment and it works just fine except that once every
few months, Netscape screws it up so much that I need to restart it.
Netscape is not a very good program by Linux and Unix standards.
If you buy a distribution (do not pay over $100; you can get one
without an instruction book from someplace like cheapbytes for about
$2.00), it will come with an instruction book on how to install and
configure it.
You can get a lot of software free from the Internet. You can buy most
of the rest. Quicken and TurboTax are the only reason I run Windows at
all, and that only on my old machine. This machine does not run
Windows at all and has never run it. It came with Red Hat Linux 6.0
pre-installed.
If you have an odd-ball printer, you may need to worry about a driver.
My HP 660Cse, long since discontinued, runs just fine.
>
> 5. I have a 56k (winmodem, I think?) and I am currently using a couple of
> free ISPs,what are my options under Linux?
Best option, IMAO, is to replace the modem, if it is a WinModem.
WinModems are too brain-damaged to use. My mother uses a free ISP and
it makes me glad I pay for mine.
>
> 6. Did I miss anything?
Probably, but I do not know what.
>
> If anyone can help me answer these questions or point me in the right
> direction, I would really appreciate it. Thanks in advance for your time
> and consderation!
--
.~. Jean-David Beyer Registered Linux User 85642.
/V\ Registered Machine 73926.
/( )\ Shrewsbury, New Jersey
^^-^^ 8:25am up 10 days, 17:13, 2 users, load average: 2.04, 2.08,
2.08
------------------------------
From: Jean-David Beyer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: System crash
Date: Fri, 15 Dec 2000 09:01:01 -0500
"Harry E. Allen, III" wrote:
>
> I have used Linux for about nine months so I consider myself still new
> to the game. I run Redhat 6.2 on a 333MHz Pentium. 64MBytes ram, and
> a 4 GB hard drive. I use a cable modem and road runner service.
>
> My questions:
> 1. Is anyone else having problems with the rpm distrubtion of netscape
> 4.76?
Yes: it exits a lot for no apparent reason.
Yes: it locks up whenever a news server does not answer. It must be
killed with a -9 and the ~/.netscape/lock removed.
> a. /tmp/ndebug has to be manually removed each time someone logs
> into the machine unless they were the last to use it.
I have no idea where that comes from. My /tmp does has neither a
ndebug file nor a ndebug directory in it.
> b. Netscape never seems to find the home page (yahoo.com in my
> case) when it starts now.
Mine always does, ujless the home page's server is down.
>
> 2. I have had several occaisions where my hard drive takes off and will
> not stop. The only resolution I ahve found is to physically turn off
> the machine. I don't like that answer. It was happening about every 30
> - 40 days, but it is increasing in frequency. should I look at
> replacing the controller, is it another bug from netscape ( it seems
> more often than not that I am running netscape when this happens) or am
> I being attacked. Checking my log files, I have found at least one
> instance where someone was trying to execute a dump() on my system.
Perhaps you have been hacked. Have you set your /etc/hosts.deny and
/etc/hosts/allow correctly? Likewise, your /etc/inetd.conf? If you
have been hacked, the best bet is to reformat your disks clean and
re-install. After that, restore only those backup files you absolutely
need AND ARE SURE are not infected.
>
> Thanks in advance for any help on this. If this is not the appropriate
> forum, I would appreciate any friendly advice as to where to take it....
>
> Harry Allen
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
--
.~. Jean-David Beyer Registered Linux User 85642.
/V\ Registered Machine 73926.
/( )\ Shrewsbury, New Jersey
^^-^^ 8:55am up 10 days, 17:43, 2 users, load average: 2.24, 2.12,
2.08
------------------------------
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End of Linux-Misc Digest
******************************
