On Sat, 28 Aug 1999, Richard Adams wrote:
> On Sat, 28 Aug 1999, Kenneth Stephen wrote:
> > On Sat, 28 Aug 1999, Richard Adams wrote:
> >
> > > On Sat, 28 Aug 1999, Kenneth Stephen wrote:
> > > > On Thu, 26 Aug 1999, John Aldrich wrote:
> > > >
> > > > > How do I create a CRON entry to, for example, start XMMS at
> > > > > 0600 and play a particular MP3 file (or KMP3 to do the
> > > > > same)???
> > > > > What I'm wanting is to do something similar to what I had
> > > > > under Windows 98's Task Scheduler -- use my computer as an
> > > > > alarm clock.
> > > > > Thanks...
> > > > >
> > > >
> > > > John,
> > > >
> > > > The formant of crontab may differ from distro to distro, so you
> > > > would do well to do a 'man 5 crontab' on your system. The actual command
> > > > to specify cron settings is 'crontab -e'.
> > >
> > > crontab -e is ok if one is a 'vi' fanatic, however more then half of
> > > the linux users dont even know what vi is, half of the half that dont
> > > know vi wont know howto edit there crontab, my way is to export an
> > > editor in /rotot/profile or the likes.
> > >
> > > export EDITOR=/usr/bin/joe
> > >
> > > Or of course your editor of choise.
> > >
> > Richard,
> >
> > First of all, before I get off on this rant, I'd like to mention
> > that I dont have a clue as to what this '/rotot/profile' file is.
> >
>
> I said /root/ptofile or the "likes" meaning bashrc bash_profile you
> name it, and it does not always work, its shell dependant, and it
> would seem distro, indipendant, in that case the old word comes to
> mind "rtfm". Having said that , that does not always give the same
> answer as discussed later on.
>
I am not sure what you are saying here. When I said
'rotot/profile' I was just quoting you. In hindsight, it appears that you
made a typo : but it was not evident when I typed my message.
>
> >Secondly, I think (and I may be wrong here), the EDITOR environment
> > variable is a RedHat specific solution. For instance, on Debian, I cant
> > find any reference to this in the cron / crontab man pages, and I do know
> > that the /etc/alternatives/vi symlink is what determines the actual editor
> > program that is used when 'vi' is invoked.
> >
>
> Not intiryly, slackware has that link thing, /usr/bin/vi is a link
> to "vim" same idea.
>
>
> > Which brings me to my rant :
> >
> > I have noticed a disturbing trend recently. Distributions are
> > patching some basic Unix commands to have different options. As a result,
> > the advice you give a newbie may not be valid if he / she is running a
> > distribution that is different from yours.
>
> I have always said and still do, if folks DO NOT give distro details
> how the !uck can we give correct answers.
>
> And further more is it my problem that distributors are sort of
> fighting for a piece of the action, making thier product beter (or
> worse) than another, causing more confustion when a question asker
> DOES NOT say what distro he has.
>
See my last statement in this email.
>
> >
> > An example would be the 'tar' command, about which we saw a query
> > recently. There exists a distribution (I forget which) which supplies a
> > tar with a '-y' option. This is the equivalent of the "standard" '-z'
> > flag. with the difference that the bzip2 compress program is invoked
> > instead of gzip. No such flag in Debian (though both Debian and RedHat
> > have the generic --use-compress-program flag).
>
> Be it tar or not, if distributions decide to ponce around making
> thier product look beter than another but there within making it more
> difficult to use and understand thats NOT my problem, its our problem
> to give a decent answer to someone who says, how do i do this or that
> on my "linux system". period.
>
>
> >
> > A worse example is the '-M' flag of man. Both, the RedHat 'man'
> > and the Debian one use this flag to mean the same thing. But the behaviour
> > is different. The Redhat 'man' requires a 'man<n>' directory tree in the
> > path pointed to.
>
> Once again this shows the need for the question asker to state which
> distro he has, even you must agree there.
>
Absolutely.
But us agreeing on this still doesnt make the problem go away.
Newbies will continue to not rtfm, and often provide insufficient info
when asking questions.
> >
> > The crontab specifications are different...
>
> Not on my Slackware 3.6 and redhat 6.0 systems, i have jobs written
> the same way and nothing out of the ordenry happens.
>
>
> > The 'userid' and 'group id'
> assignments are different on > different distributions. I think,
> though, that the LSB is supposed to > solve this one.
> >
> > The init scripts come in two different styles. The inittab numbers
> > mean different things in different distributions.
>
> Im am sorry to say once again a question of Reading manuels.
>
> >
> > I guess these differences are to be expected, as different
> > distributions target different segments of the Linux community. However,
> > it doesnt make our task easier. And to make it worse, some of the people
> > contributing to this list, lack the experience to know that the advice
> > they give is distribution specific. They are to be commended for helping,
> > but sometimes they end up misleading. I dont see a way to solve this. Do
> > you?
>
> Realy yes, i have said it now in this message 3 or 4 times, a
> question asker MUST state what distro he uses, that has been
> discussed before.
>
> >
> > Maybe, I should make this stuff part of the
>
> > FAQ (which I need to > pay more attention to)...
>
> Yes that might solve half the problem, the other half will never get
> solved because newbies join everyday and this problem which you seem
> to rant about will happen over and over, NO MATTER what you, i or we
> ( meaning others who answer mails here) can do about it.
>
> A signature saying something like;
>
> When asking questions include;
> kernel version
> distribution AND distro version number.
> Hardware types, model numbers, a "COMPLETE" description of the
> problem, not just "i got an error".
> How much memory and what sort.
> and + lots lots more, that must be a starter.
>
Great idea. I will try to get in touch with Dave Miller or Matti
Arnio who I believe are the people who control the vger lists.
>
> Please do not accuse me of giving missleading info, as i normaly say
> some things are distro indipendant, looks like i forgot this time,
> and i got flamed as well.
>
You completely misunderstood me. My rant was _not_ directed
against you. I was in agreement with your statement that distros are to
blame for the current mess.
Regards,
Kenneth
