from:"Monique Y. Herman"

On 2004-03-25, Katipo penned:

She seems to be talking about a fear of being put down or treated
poorly for participating in a technical forum.  This isn't a fear I've
ever had, but maybe I'm in the minority?  I've also heard of women
masquerading as men online to avoid any such questions ... and I've
had women tell me that, in MMORPG type situations, groups tend to
follow their direction much better when they played a male character.
Me, I never cared for playing male characters, so I haven't had a
chance to test that theory.
  

 The only reason that I have ever come across to explain somebodys'
 masquerading as someone other than who or what they are, is the fact
 that they believed that they themselves, were insufficient to the
 occasion. When you think about it, this is a somewhat sad personal
 statement to make.


I don't think this is the only reason.  Some women would not like to
call attention to the fact that they're women, especially on a public,
archived forum.  Every woman I've ever met who's had a significant
online presence has also had some rather creepy interactions.  In
college, I had a guy email me to tell me, based on some pictures on my
website, that I was too good for my then-boyfriend and I should ditch
him.  That really weirded me out.  I've also read some really
inappropriate comments.  These incidents weren't related to technical
forums, but I could certainly understand someone just not wanting to
deal with these sorts of things, even rarely.

-- 
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Re: debian and women? from DWN #10

On 2004-03-25, Rebecca Dridan penned:
 (sorry about the direct reply Monique)

I'll get over it with years of therapy =)

[snip]

 On the other hand, I'm not sure if anyone caught the issue on Full
 Disclosure. Check this link [0] to see how some females do get treated
 on tech lists.

 Bec

 [0] http://www.oneeyedcrow.net/securitygeekfemme.html


Ugh.  That's just ... ugh.

But by reading that link, I found one that I didn't know existed and
looks pretty interesting.  Reading it now:

http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Encourage-Women-Linux-HOWTO/

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Re: debian and women? from DWN #10

On 2004-03-25, Number Six penned:

 I always thought Monique was a guy.  I think what happened was I saw
 Herman and subconsciously said: Oh yeah, Monique, that's a guy's
 name in France...

Pretty sure it's not ... 

 I personally enjoy working with women in computers, because it's so
 rare.  I like the mundane aspects of it.  I wish more women would come
 just be here (not be hit on) because it improves the ambience.

Well, if nothing else, the more women there are about, the more people
will come to accept women in technical circles as a mundane thing ...
and that can only be good, for everyone involved.

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Re: debian and women? from DWN #10

On 2004-03-25, Tom Massey penned:
 * Rebecca Dridan [EMAIL PROTECTED] [2004-03-25 18:37]:
 On the other hand, I'm not sure if anyone caught the issue on Full
 Disclosure. Check this link [0] to see how some females do get
 treated on tech lists.
 
 Bec
 
 [0] http://www.oneeyedcrow.net/securitygeekfemme.html

 I'm an op on the irc channel involved here. We've had a bunch of
 Gobble's people come in and behave like idiots, also a bit of [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 probing of the irc server. (Running Woody, and laughing in the face of
 such things). I guess this is because we're foolish enough to not ask
 women to give us blowjobs as an incentive to hiring them, which
 appears to be the Gobble's hiring strategy as shown in the irc logs.

 /motd Women are people. In fact women are more peoplish than you. You
 are a broken tennis bat.

See, but in that motd, you already presuppose that women aren't reading
the motd!  I say that slightly tongue-in-cheekishly, but surely there's
a point in there somewhere.

Besides, most guys that I've met/interacted with online are definitely
not broken tennis bats.  Most guys are decent guys, or at least, they
are sensible enough to act that way in mixed company.  These same guys
do seem to be unaware of any possibility of social gender inequality,
despite examples like the one given above being thrown into their faces
on a regular basis, but they're not actively trying to be jerks -- most
are actively trying to be nice guys.

I'm reminded of that saying, All that is needed for evil to triumph is
for good men to do nothing.  I am sure that, while most guys I know are
of the decent sort, if they saw the kind of BS that was posted above,
they'd just ignore it, rather than condemning it.  And the fucktards
interpret the silence as agreement, and the women see that this behavior
will just continue ...

I've seen this happen to gay guys, too.  At least their names don't give
them away, but man, as much as some degree of female-bashing is built
into the geek culture (witness the number of posts on /. about female
drivers), that's nothing compared to the gay-bashing.  I can't imagine
being a gay geek and constantly seeing my sexual identity used as an
insult.

 Unless the brazen evil fuctardedness displayed by Gooble's minions is
 stamped upon soon with a salted rubber wellington, then I expect that
 intelligent life on Earth will cease even earlier than the most
 pessimistic slug could have predicted.

 Sorry. Got a bit fed up with kicking Gobbles wankers lately.

They sound like a fun group of people.  *snort*

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Re: debian and women? from DWN #10

On 2004-03-25, Number Six penned:

 The tune Man Smart, Women Smarter seems appropriate to bring up
 here:
 http://dannyman.toldme.com/lyrics/Grateful_Dead/Man_Smart,_Women_Smarter.html

 It's a cover tune, a lot of other people sing it.  If you don't
 believe that Women rule the world you are a fool.


Tell that to all the girls whose labia are sewn together so that they
can provide their future husbands more pleasure on their wedding night
... tell it to the girls and women who are raped and beaten on a daily
basis.

I appreciate the sentiment, but to me it just whitewashes the issue.
Women *do* encounter a lot of sexism, not to mention violence.  When
guys say something like, Well, we all know that women are really
stronger/smarter, it suggests that women's troubles are their own fault
(if they're stronger or smarter, why can't they just get out of these
situations?), and it fosters the notion that there's no need to try to
help them or root around in one's own soul for evidence of bias.  I know
that I myself have stereotypes of both men and women lurking in my head,
so I don't imagine that most men don't, as well =)

Anyway, I have no more interest in women ruling the world than men.  The
lure of power has no gender bias.

Sorry for going way off-topic here.  It's (obviously) a pet peeve of
mine.

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Re: debian and women? from DWN #10

On 2004-03-25, Joost De Cock penned:
 ...
 Any guys have opinions?

 When I think about you, it goes a bit like this:

 1. Regular poster, knows what she's talking about.
 2. Hmm, Monique, that's my mothers name and not very English sounding. 

Well, I'm not English, I'm American! *grin*
My mom is actually German, and my father is USian by way of Germany
several generations ago.  I'm not sure why I received two French names
at birth, but I rather like them.

 3. She's a girl. Kewl (because that's rare).

 The fact that you are female adds a fine layer of respect, just
 because it's a rare thing, not in a 'Ooh, she's a woman and she still
 manages to be a knowledgeable geek'. That sounds as if, as a woman, it
 would be nearly impossible to be a knowledgeable geek, and that is
 plain bollocks.  However, I have much respect for you because of what
 you contribute to this list. Your gender doesn't really have any
 impact on that.

And I hope that, if I act like a moron on the list, my gender won't have
an impact on your response, either =)

 One of the great things about FLOSS is that you get by on what you do, not 
 what you look like, the way you dress, the music you like, whatever. I find 
 that to be an area where FLOSS really sets an example.

I'd like to think so.

 As for the 'going out of their way' part. You may post often, but I don't see 
 a lot of questions, only (possible) answers. So that makes me think twice 
 about trying to help you, in a 'if she can't fix it...' sort of way.

I only post in response to a question when I *really* (think I) know the
subject material.  So for every post I answer, there are about 50 I
didn't dare to touch, if not more.   =)  But thank you for the vote of
confidence.

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Re: debian and women? from DWN #10

On 2004-03-25, Andreas Janssen penned:
 Hello

Hi!

 So far I have not seen any hostility towards women because they were
 female (at least on the mailing lists and in the usenet groups I
 read).  I have however seen that in some cases people (newbies) who
 use women's names (mostly you don't know if the name is faked or not)
 receive polite answers from the mostly male participants where a male
 newbie would only have received a Search the fscking archive/web. In
 some places (like the SelfHTML forum, http://selfforum.teamone.de)
 this beahviour has even repeatedly been subject to very long and
 sometimes heated discussions.

I searched on weib on that forum (thinking that weiblich would get a
few hits, but got

Die Suchanfrage kann momentan nicht entgegen genommen werden. Alle
Ressourcen sind belegt. Bitte versuchen Sie es in einigen Minuten noch
einmal.

Any ideas on better searches that I could try in a few minutes?  My
German can be a bit flakey.

I know that a ton of males playing persistent online games (evercrack,
uo, etc) will play female characters just to take advantage of the
bizarre male habit of giving gifts to any pixellated form with breasts.
I wonder if something similar is happening here -- guys post to
technical forums masquerading as women in a purely selfish move to get
better assistance.  People see these posts and find that women tend to
post more basic questions than men.

Just a thought.  I went out of my way in EQ not to accept gifts, at
least, not from strangers or people who seemed to have questionable
motives.  Maybe I should have taken advantage of the pixels with
breasts phenomenon, but I just couldn't bring myself to do that.

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Re: debian and women? from DWN #10

On 2004-03-25, Jaldhar H. Vyas penned:
 On Wed, 24 Mar 2004, Monique Y. Herman wrote:

 She seems to be talking about a fear of being put down or treated
 poorly for participating in a technical forum.  This isn't a fear
 I've ever had, but maybe I'm in the minority?

 No Monique you are in the vast majority.  I inadvertantly caused this
 thread to explode by suggesting there is something wrong with a person
 who has such unsubstantiated fears.  I stand by that statement.  It's
 not that I don't sympathize, as a minority in several different ways I
 understand where it is coming from, but the insidious thing about it
 is that it makes self-confident women like you doubt themselves and
 the people around them.

Don't worry; just because I question myself (and others) doesn't mean I
doubt myself =)  I have plenty of insecurities, but none of them have to
do with software or online communities.  I seem to do okay in that
regard.

 Do not fear.  Fear is the mind killer.

 (Now quoting Dune is the kind of nerdy behavior that's going to
 drive people away from Debian :-)

Now *that's* funny!

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Re: debian and women? from DWN #10

On 2004-03-25, Number Six penned:
 On Thu, Mar 25, 2004 at 01:30:15PM +, timg wrote:
 find that I do have a certain amount of trepidation when posting
 technical difficulties. I dont know why tho.  probably looking an ass
 in public when you discover the answer was right under your nose (and
 fifty people point it out) is the main concern. I 

 I like that aspect of a technical community -- it encourages
 rigorousness, which helps me primarily -- I know I'd better ask a
 useful question.  The stereotype is that this is a male characteristic
 and females are nurturing, but it is a useful characteristic
 nonetheless.

I didn't know that rigor was a stereotypically male characteristic, or
that its opposite is the ability to nurture ...

Oh, wait.  Did you mean that the tendency to point out mistakes in a
not-necessarily-delicate manner was a masculine characteristic?  That
parses out a little better.

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Re: debian and women? from DWN #10

On 2004-03-25, timg penned:
 
 i know exactly what she means and dont think it is a male/female
 thing.  i'm a programmer, partly responsible for our main servers and
 development servers in house, happy to repair/build computers but
 still find that I do have a certain amount of trepidation when posting
 technical difficulties. I dont know why tho.  probably looking an ass
 in public when you discover the answer was right under your nose (and
 fifty people point it out) is the main concern. I dont particularly
 like standing up in front of hundreds of people and asking questions
 either, I dont think this is really that different.  Aside form that
 does anyone know how disable the mousepad when typing?

I know what you mean, which is why I try to take my time in composing a
question.  At least half the time, while typing out my post, it occurs
to me that someone's going to ask me if I've done X -- so I do X, and
voila, there's my answer!  Composing posts to d-u and other technical
forums has on occasion been more enlightening to me than actually
posting =)

I think part of this whole issue is learning how to build onesself up in
online communities.  Once you're solidly part of a community, it is much
easier to gloss over occasional blunders.  Granted, if you suddenly post
only blather after having enjoyed a solid reputation for a few years,
after a while people will start to associate you with blather ...

I definitely have a strategy for approaching new online forums.  My
first post tends to be a question, but I work very hard at making sure
that all my i's are dotted and my t's are crossed.  After that, I try to
prove my worth to the community by contributing where I can, without
trying to sound like a representative of the community -- people tend to
get cranky when they think you're presenting yourself as a member of a
group and they don't think you qualify.  It's also important to never be
off-topic in the initiation phase, as certain grumps will see it as
their job to put you in your place.  That part -- balancing utility with
humility and topicality-- is tricky, and I actually think I biffed this
one on d-u a bit, at least at first.  If things go well, after a while,
you begin to be accepted as a community member, and you start to get
more slack when you ask a dumb question or post something off-topic.

It's worked for me in a number of online hangouts, including the EQ
guild Afterlife, where I was Recruiter for over a year.  It hasn't
worked in some -- notably alt.mountain-bike, where there are some
seriously grumpy gusses.  But I guess in their eyes, I'm the equivalent
of someone continuously asking about their printer icons and never
getting a clue.

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Re: debian and women? from DWN #10

On 2004-03-25, Gary penned:
 Monique Y. Herman wrote:

 Any guys have opinions?

 Why ask us men? We can't even see the ketchup in the fridge when it is
 staring us in the face, and you expect us to to see /this/?


I never did figure that one out.  Why do I remember where my s.o. left
his camelbak/razor/favorite pyjama bottoms better than he does?

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Re: debian and women? from DWN #10

On 2004-03-25, CW Harris penned:

 Yes. I have found that generalization men and women think about
 things in different ways, probably due to differing life experiences
 (cf.  Monique's comment re: female getting weird email about her
 picture showing she is too good for her boyfriend - how often would
 something like that happen to a male?). /generalization

And if it did, how often would the male be insulted rather than just
blowing it off or being flattered?

 There are differing life experiences, and both bring interesting
 viewpoints into technical and non-technical circles.

Agreed, with the caveat that this doesn't just apply to the genders.
It's fascinating to interact with people who've grown up in a completely
different world.

 BTW I like your George stories. Very funny.

Thanks!  One of these years I'll start writing again, I hope.  It's sad
to think I peaked in high school =P

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Re: debian and women? from DWN #10

On 2004-03-25, Number Six penned:

 Carol is a man's name sometimes.  There was an actress on the TV show
 The Waltons named Mike.  And in the 1800's Barbara was sometimes a
 man's name.

When I was a kid, I met a female lifeguard named Michael.  IIRC, she
told me that her parents had been expecting a boy, so when she showed up
... well, they had already picked the name.

Dunno if she was pulling my leg or what.

 My favorite name on this list is Uwe Dippel.  Sometimes I'll just walk
 around and blurt out EWEY DIPPLE!

While that does crack me up, the pronunciation is ooh-vuh (more or
less).  That's my brother's middle name, too.

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Re: debian and women? from DWN #10

On 2004-03-25, Kent West penned:

 Wow! I must be a throwback to the 1950's. All these answers from guys
 sound so politically correct to me.

Politically correct, honest -- take your pick =)

 My remembrance of Monique's first post and my first response was that
 I gave my best effort at an answer, in a polite and business-like way,
 immediately followed by (or perhaps preceded by -- I don't recall)
 some sort of comment like Oh wow! A girl and a geek! Whoo-hoo!.

The key part was the effort at answering =)  I don't mind it when people
notice my female-ness; I do mind it when that awareness stops any other
mental processes.

 In other words, I notice women. I notice them in the hallway at work.
 I notice them on this list. I notice them at the grocery store. And if
 they catch my attention (usually first and foremost in a physical
 way), I'll often make some sort of comment (I really like your hair,
 You have a great smile, You need to tell your husband that men in
 the grocery store still notice how pretty you are and that he needs to
 appreciate you more.), but it's never an overly offensive (I hope)
 comment, like Nice butt, or I'd like to get to know you, if you
 know what I mean nudge nudge wink wink. That sort of thing is highly
 offensive even to me.

I think you'd have to be incredibly smooth to pull off that husband
line without sounding like a jerk.

Me, I'd rather not have strangers comment on my looks.  Coworkers
either, unless they have also become friends.  In my opinion, you just
can't tell if a person is the type to appreciate the comment or the type
to be indignant, and so you're better off not opening your mouth.

 Now, having noticed the woman, that does not in any way diminish my
 respect for them. As a general rule, women are different from men, so
 I don't expect them to enjoy technology the way most guys do, and I do
 expect them to ooh and ah over the latest cosmetics magazine
 (http://www.marykay.com/njlove - shameless plug), and would love to
 get some flowers from their men (whereas most men getting flowers
 would think, um, okay). But just because women are different than
 men (as a general rule) doesn't make them any less smart or capable.
 The women in my immediate life tend to be incredibly smart.

Actually, whenever I've sent flowers to a guy, they've been quite
impressed.  In college, I had red roses delivered to my then-bf's dorm,
and his whole hall was envious of him for having such a cool gf.  So
maybe this is a generational thing?  (No idea how old you are; just a
thought from your 1950s comment above.)

WTF is that mary kay site?  Whatever it is, it refuses to let me in
because I'm using Firefox.

 Someone in this thread posted a link to an article (not Monique's
 reference), and the woman basically said women don't get involved in
 technology because men treat them differently (and that differently
 basically translated into rude catcalls), but I don't buy that. I do
 buy that women get treated differently than men (after all, I proved
 the point, at least in my case, a few paragraphs above). I think women
 aren't well-represented numerically in the technical fields because
 women in general don't enjoy the technical fields. It's not because
 they're less capable or because they get treated like this or like
 that; it's because they don't, in general, have the aptitude/interest,
 just like a male architect or a male brain surgeon might not have the
 aptitude/interest for the tech field.

I think you're simplifying things a whole lot, and if you're referring
to the link to which I think you're referring, I don't think you read it
very carefully.  But maybe you're referring to a totally different link,
so who knows.

There's a difference between being active in a field and being
well-represented in the community.  Just because you don't see a lot of
women posting on technical sites does not mean that they aren't involved
in technical pursuits.  Don't confuse a willingness to speak up with
existence.  There's also the whole nature vs. nurture thing.  If
(generalization) women don't tend to go for technical fields because
they're inherently less interested, that's just a personal choice thing.
But if they're doing this because they were brought up to believe that
math is hard, barbie-style, that *is* a problem.

There was a bit of a blurb in a philosophy of physics class I took about
feminist science, which as near as I can tell boils down to the idea
that your background will influence your observations, your
explanations, etc.  I think there's some validity to this, and for this
reason I think it's a good thing to have as much variety as possible in
any project or community.

 As far as Monique's reference, I think the poster is correct that
 women who deal with Debian (or other male-dominated fields) will feel
 like the men don't think they can cut it (although that feeling is
 based on perception and not necessarily reality). Partly this stems
 from the stereotype

Re: Issues with pulling out data from MySQL

On 2004-03-25, [EMAIL PROTECTED] penned:
 Hi folks,

 NEWBIE here, I am having issues with pulling data out of several
 tables in MySQL.  I am running debian 3.0.23 with MySQL 3.23.49, I can
 create the tables and view them through mysqladmin along with the
 data, put using the webform that I created with PHP4, only some of the
 fields of data are being displayed.  Any idea at where I need to start
 to look for issues?  Does this sould like a DB issue or a code issue
 with my webform?  Any insight would be much appreciated.  Thank you.


I would love to see the PHP code where it interacts with the database
(minus the username and password, of course).  Are you doing a select *
from kind of thing?

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Re: debian and women? from DWN #10

On 2004-03-25, Kent West penned:
 Monique Y. Herman wrote:

Outside of the dating scene and maybe someone who is visibly pregnant,
why would you treat women any differently than men?

  

 Because women _are_ different than men, regardless of the populist
 notion in the 70's and 80's to the contrary.

Sure, there are some quantifiable differences (and many that we could
argue about till the cows come home); what I should have asked, and
meant to ask, is, *how* would you treat women any differently than men?
Especially when your only medium is the keyboard.  I have trouble
imagining a non-dating, non-pregnancy-related situation in which I would
consider being treated differently than a man appropriate.  And the only
reason I'm considering the dating situation is because I believe you're
hetero, and therefore you would certainly treat a woman differently than
a man in that situation -- simply because you wouldn't be on a date with
a man.

 I think I committed a faux paus; I think I've confused you with Emma
 Jane concerning the indications of being married, and maybe with the
 your first post/my first response thing.

Could be.  To be honest, I can't be sure; I remember a neat; you're a
girl! response to my first post on d-u, but don't recall who said it.

 It's not so much that I _think_ first of you as a woman; it's more
 that I _notice_ first that you're a woman, and that awareness of your
 being a woman doesn't ever quite fade out of the picture.

Ah; that's a different matter.  Kind of like I might notice a very
non-English sounding name; I will usually give more slack to probable
non-native-English speakers.  Not only are they probably going to
considerable effort to post, but their cultural expectations may also be
different than mine.

This helps me formulate a question that has been brewing in the back of
my mind.  The hacker community has long prided itself on its blindness
to typically divisive issues like race, but I wonder if this has more to
do with the inability to see the person than it does with any actual
merit.  You can't tell someone's ethnicity from their username, but you
can often tell their gender.

 I bet it's not as conceptually weird to you as you think; for example
 -- I often call my male co-workers by their last names; I almost never
 (if ever) call my female co-workers by their last names. It's no big
 deal; but it does demonstrate that I'm (subconsciously) aware of the
 difference between men and women and that awareness affects my
 behavior.

I never understood that last name thing, but last names in general are a
sore point for me at the moment.  I'm pretty sure I'll be changing my
name to make him happy, but it weirds me out.  I never fantasized about
marriage, so losing my last name is arguably a bigger deal to me than it
is to some women.

(Our hockey team calls my fiance Mud, an abbreviation of his last
name.  Whereas I'm known as Mo'.  Now, when, er, if I take his last
name, am I suddenly a second-class Mud?  He's the original and I'm a
cheap knockoff?

Yes, I already know that I overanalyze these things.)

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Re: debian and women? from DWN #10

On 2004-03-25, Number Six penned:

 Yes, I certainly was *not* thinking that only men are rigorous.  I
 meant the second thing.  What I was clumsily trying to say is that the
 stereotype is silly, but I like an environment you have to be afraid
 to ask questions, because it makes me work harder.  I like things to
 be hard.  Gender isn't even an issue or a nonissue about why I feel
 that: it's totally orthogonal.

I'm not sure that I like that sort of environment all the time, but I do
think that I've found the root cause of many a problem simply by trying
to put together the most accurate and descriptive question I could.  The
untold benefit to asking a smart question is that often, in the course
of turning one's question into a smart one, one finds the answer.

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Re: debian and women? from DWN #10

On 2004-03-25, s. keeling penned:
 Incoming from Monique Y. Herman:
 
 http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Encourage-Women-Linux-HOWTO/

 That one elicited about the loudest flamefest I've ever seen, in
 [EMAIL PROTECTED]  If you can find that thread in their archives, and
 stand to wade through it all, you might find your answers there.

I've been slowly wading through it.  I honestly didn't find anything
offensive in the document.  I guess I should re-read it after I finish
reading the flameage.

 I think (eg.) Networking For Women workshops are demeaning and
 insulting to women.  What, you don't think I could handle a real
 networking course?!?  Pig!  The women I hang with agree.  When I say
 something about it on-line, I'm roundly condemned for it from all
 sides.

I agree with you, and furthermore, I find all-female classes on skiing,
mountain biking, you name it to be annoying, as well.  But the
commercial success of these programs suggests that some women believe
that they're better off in an all-women environment.  Me, I find such a
heterogeneous mix to be boring.  (Actually, there's a point to be made
there somewhere: what if they don't teach the class any differently, but
the class is restricted to women?  Some women would definitely prefer
such an environment.)

 Sometimes, I think the race just doesn't want to grow out of its often
 stupid ways.

Agreed.  But then again, when we got down to brass tacks, I think you'd
find that we'd disagree on what we identify as stupid ways. =)  ... As
would most people.

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Re: debian and women? from DWN #10

On 2004-03-25, Number Six penned:

 Without countering anything you just said (cause I agree with you),
 I'd like to insert an aside about Why I Liked Going To Grateful Dead
 Concerts Even Though I'm Really Square And Uptight:

 It's one of the only places I've ever been where I was just free to be
 me and didn't feel like I was being judged.  Who am I?  Kind of a
 square and uptight guy who likes his hair cut short, can't dance,
 doesn't do the nerdy bitingly sarcasm humor thing or puns, in short, I
 don't like to exert any sort of Power whatsoever.  In short, I felt no
 *judgements* of any kind.  Any old type of personality will do.  It
 was like church.

 You got me thinking about it with what you said about power.  It was
 the only place where people looked at me, and said: come on, we'll
 take you just as you are!  Here's a joint and now let's dance.

That's pretty cool.  Reminds me of a story that has even less to do with
the topic at hand:

My then-boyfriend and I go to Woodstock 99.  (It now seems to be known
primarily for the rioting and torching, but we left before that
happened.)  Anyway, the first night, we slip into the crowd to watch
Korn.  As we're working our way to a mosh pit, a guy offers us a joint.
We say no thank you and continue on our way.

Afterwards, we tell the story to the then-bf's parents, and his mom's
response is, But when you said no, he didn't get pushy, did he?  She
honestly had this belief, thanks to our govt dollars at work, that
someone offering pot would be some kind of violent dealer who would
threaten us if we didn't take a drag.  This guy, of course, was just
being friendly.

The first couple of days of that concert were definitely awesome.  You
saw people from all walks of life there, but unlike most mega-concerts,
it was expensive, and so there weren't billions of 16 year olds running
around.  It was a magical experience.  After the first 32 hours or so,
though ... I dunno, it got ugly.  Probably cuz half the people there had
heat exhaustion.

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Re: DNS setup

On 2004-03-25, [EMAIL PROTECTED] penned:
 I can connect and ping IPs, but DNS does not resolve. /etc/resolv.conf
 exists and the ISPs servers are added automatically.  Now have no clue
 what to check. Any ideas?

 (I installed from Knoppix with the new Debian installer, and could
 connect under Knoppix from CD. So this is Debian unstable.)


Just a thought: what does /etc/host.conf say?

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Re: debian and women? from DWN #10

On 2004-03-25, Steve Witt penned:

 I've been on many technical mailing lists since the early '90s and the
 Debian lists since about '96 and I don't recall seeing much flaming
 due to gender. I'm not a woman so maybe I'm completely insensitive to
 it when it happens, but I don't recall seeing much at all. I was a
 little surprised to see mention of it in the DWN. Anyway, its really
 what you know that's important, not your physical characteristics,
 particularly on mailing lists where you don't even see the people
 you're interacting with.

I don't see much flaming, but I do occasionally see (not here) some
comments that could create a hostile working environment.

I agree with you that it's what you know that *should* be important.
However, just as some people will ignore a black person and justify it
with science, so will some people deal similarly with women.

I think that's my favorite line in GI Jane:

To them, you're just the new nigger on the block.

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OT: last names (was: Re: debian and women? from DWN #10)

On 2004-03-26, s. keeling penned:
 Incoming from Monique Y. Herman:
 
 sore point for me at the moment.  I'm pretty sure I'll be changing my
 name to make him happy, but it weirds me out.  I never fantasized
 about

 Why?!?  Tell him to change his own damn name!  When he refuses, ask
 him why!

Heh.  Not to go into the gory details, but we've already had that
discussion.  Many times over.  Long story short, I got him to realize
that what he wanted was not rational, and that he was asking me to do
something that he would not himself do.  Once he achieved that
realization, it's been something I'm pretty sure I'll do eventually; not
sure if it will be right away.  I can sympathize with I know this isn't
rational, but it's how I feel.  I can't sympathize with I haven't
thought through my emotions at all, but this is how I expect you to
behave.

I do like his last name better than mine, to be honest.

To be honest, it probably wouldn't bother me so much if both my mother
and his didn't have the suck it up; it's no big deal attitude.  Really
profoundly irritating to have one's feelings completely invalidated by
the people who are supposed to care about you.

 This annoys me on a computing level too.  You're now going to have to
 get all your usernames changed to the new one ...  For what?!?

Well, I've never used my last name as a username when given a choice.
So I think the only username to change is my work account, and I imagine
they can set up forwarding.

 Marriage shouldn't have to mean becoming someone else's property!

Indeed, and it doesn't.  There's a huge difference between choosing to
do something because you know it would mean a lot to your s.o., and
being forced/railroaded into doing something.  If someone tells me I
have to do something, I tend to do the exact opposite, even if I would
originally have done it the way I've been told to.

But just because I've chosen a particular route doesn't mean I'm yet
fully comfortable with it.  That will take a while.

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Re: debian and women? from DWN #10

On 2004-03-26, Number Six penned:

 I usually watch To The Contrary, the show about Women's issues on
 PBS on Fridays.  Recently this subject came up, and all these
 journalists / manhattanites talked about how they and all their
 friends had started marriage with hyphenated names and just slowly
 dropped the hyphenated part, just keeping the man's part, because it
 was confusing for the kids, and for simplicity.

 I found it primarily fascinating because I love to watch people
 changing their minds.  These successful women eventually made their
 way to the what they once didn't like, by their own choice, not being
 compelled.

Yeah, hyphenation irritates me because, taken to its logical extreme, it
can't continue.  I thought it would be cool to invent our own last name,
but my s.o. is hyper-aware of the fact that he is the only person of his
generation with his last name *in the entire country*.  So actually, his
protestations against changing his last name held more merit than most.

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Re: debian and women? from DWN #10

On 2004-03-26, s. keeling penned:

 I was considering complaining (facetiously) about the lack of even an
 OT: in the subject line, but this subject is a bit of a sore spot
 with me, and I'd like to see some progress on it.  See the link to the
 tldp discussion for a far less satisfying attempt at resolving it.


I guess I didn't consider it off-topic since it was hilighted in DWN.  I
figured if it was considered debianish enough to rate DWN, it was
debianish enough to rate d-u.

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Re: debian and women? from DWN #10

On 2004-03-26, s. keeling penned:
 Incoming from Monique Y. Herman:
 
 I've been slowly wading through it.  I honestly didn't find anything
 offensive in the document.  I guess I should re-read it after I
 finish reading the flameage.

 It was mostly males who took offense at it, including me.  Reverse
 discrimination is wrong, regardless of the wrong it's intended to
 right.

I agree 100% with that statement.


 One thing for you to note about your comment: it never occurred to you
 that sexism goes both ways and men can be just as offended by it?  :-)

That's a strange assumption to make about my comment.  Of course sexism
(racism, whateverism) goes both ways.  Just because I didn't find
anything offensive doesn't mean that I don't acknowledge the existence
of so-called reverse sexism.  And my statement that I should re-read
the howto was meant to indicate that I'd like to reconsider my take on
the article after having considered the posts in the thread.

 commercial success of these programs suggests that some women believe
 that they're better off in an all-women environment.  Me, I find such
 a

 What about the men who resent being relegated to a male only ghetto?
 Do you think that, since I'm male, I'll automatically be comfortable
 in the locker room with the rest of the guys?  Why am I to be deprived
 of the company of women just because I'm not one?

I have made exactly this argument a number of times in other venues.  In
fact, I was happy to see that Winter Park, a local ski resort, had
mens-only classes as well.  I still think that gender-oriented classes
are lame (I'd much rather see classes divided by temperament than
gender), but if they're going to do it, they should do it fairly.

That being said, I hear that they're getting really lukewarm response to
the men's classes, while women's classes are still popular.  Bringing it
right back to the dollars or, as I said above, commercial success.
There's a demand for female-only classes, and so they are available.
There seems to be too little demand for men-only classes, and so they're
not a financially viable venture.

Then again, the attraction of women's classes might very well be the
lack of men present.  So how does one accomodate everyone?  I sure don't
know.  As I said above, I think that companies are out to make money on
classes, not to solve any sociological issues.

 heterogeneous mix to be boring.  (Actually, there's a point to be
 made there somewhere: what if they don't teach the class any
 differently, but the class is restricted to women?  Some women would
 definitely prefer such an environment.)

 As would some men, and it's just a little sexist for women to not
 notice that.  I much prefer the company of thoughtful, industrious
 individuals to the dick wars I often find there instead.  When I'm
 in one of those things, I'm there to learn, not to prove how L33t I
 am.

Again, I'd rather see classes divided by temperament than by gender, if
we have to divide things up at all.

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Re: debian and women? from DWN #10

On 2004-03-26, Kent West penned:
 Monique Y. Herman wrote:

what I should have asked, and meant to ask, is, *how* would you treat
women any differently than men?  Especially when your only medium is
the keyboard.
  

 Well, not only me, but everyone else in this thread has allowed this
 thread to go on quite a while without someone saying take it to
 private mail; this has nothing to do with Debian. Ya gotta admit,
 that's a bit odd. I don't know if it has anything to do with the
 thread revolving around a woman or not, but I do find it interesting.

Maybe because not everyone agrees it has nothing to do with debian, at
least no more so than exim and postgres and NFS questions have nothing
to do with debian?

 But beyond something little like that, again, it's not so much that
 I'd behave differently to a woman online; it's that there'd be an
 awareness of the woman. For example, even as I type this, a very small
 part of my brain is wondering if you're blonde or brunette or what; if
 you're in your late teens or early forties. Another small part of my
 brain is thinking, what does it matter? And then most of my brain is
 focused on the actual topic at hand. When responding to a male, my
 brain is focused on the actual topic at hand, and that's about it.

In contrast, I never wonder such things about guys on tech lists.  I
wonder if it's simply the exoticness of female posters that makes them
noteworthy.  I mean, if you were reading through, I dunno, some
female-majority list, would you wonder about the stats of every one of
them?  Seems unlikely.

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Re: debian and women? from DWN #10

On 2004-03-26, Leo Spalteholz penned:
 On March 25, 2004 04:12 pm, Monique Y. Herman wrote:
 On 2004-03-25, s. keeling penned:
  Incoming from Monique Y. Herman:
  http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Encourage-Women-Linux-HOWTO/
 
  That one elicited about the loudest flamefest I've ever seen, in
  [EMAIL PROTECTED]  If you can find that thread in their archives,
  and stand to wade through it all, you might find your answers
  there.

 I've been slowly wading through it.  I honestly didn't find anything
 offensive in the document.  I guess I should re-read it after I
 finish reading the flameage.

 Reading this article I found it not so much offensive as just lacking
 some important basic facts.  For example, in the section about why
 there are so few women in technology, there are several reasons
 listed, most of them placing the blame on men in some way.  I'm not
 saying that these reasons are not valid, but I believe there is a
 bigger reason.  Women (in general) are just not that interested in
 technology and computers.  My university has programs to encourage
 women to enroll in engineering and women tend to be favoured for jobs
 here but still the percentage of female engineering students is less
 than 5%.  Why is that?  No idea but certainly not because they are
 being driven out.  Every effort is made to attract them to
 engineering and CS but there are just not that many interested.

The article addressed this head-on by calling attention to the
socialization that boys and girls undergo from a very young age.  Women
(in general) are just not encouraged to explore technology and
computers.  Did you miss the quote about how studies have found that, in
homes with computers, the family computer is much more likely to be in
the son's room than the daughter's?  Sure, statistics can say whatever
you want, but it's definitely true that there are still many girls being
raised to believe that technical careers are inappropriate, unfeminine,
etc.

I also have to question the effectiveness of any program designed to
drag a certain segment of the population into its fold.  After seeing my
own college's heinous attempts at recruiting black students, I can
definitely see how such programs can misfire severely.

 Another thing that bothers me in the article is when specific posts on
 mailing lists are pointed out which contain sexist remarks and used to
 make generalizations about that community.  The fact is that every
 community has assholes.  This is the consequence of a largely
 unmoderated medium and really can't be avoided.

Could you provide some quotes?  I don't recall getting a negative
impression about any community through this article, but maybe I glossed
over something.  Surely just saying that someone acted like an asshat
one day on an IRC channel doesn't paint the whole IRC channel as
asshats?

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Re: debian and women? from DWN #10

On 2004-03-26, Steve Lamb penned:
 This is an OpenPGP/MIME signed message (RFC 2440 and 3156)
 --enig45DB75C5E7FD374844766632 Content-Type: text/plain;
 charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

 Monique Y. Herman wrote:
 Sure, there are some quantifiable differences (and many that we could
 argue about till the cows come home); what I should have asked, and
 meant to ask, is, *how* would you treat women any differently than
 men?  Especially when your only medium is the keyboard.  I have
 trouble imagining a non-dating, non-pregnancy-related situation in
 which I would consider being treated differently than a man
 appropriate.  And the only reason I'm considering the dating
 situation is because I believe you're hetero, and therefore you would
 certainly treat a woman differently than a man in that situation --
 simply because you wouldn't be on a date with a man.

  Ok, I hate to chime in on this note but this is something that
  has been bugging me as I've looked at portions of this
  coversation and especially in light of the incident from
  BSS/Gobble highlighted earlier on.

  You ask here how someone could treat women differently than men
  in this medium.  I have to ask, how do you know they're treating
  women differently then men?

I don't think the intention of my question was clear.  I was trying to
figure out how it was even possible to treat women much differently in
online forums, and why one would do it.  The snippet from my post above
was taken out of context; the parent poster said that he treated women
differently than men, and I was curious about how he did so -- I mean,
you can't hold doors for people in a chatroom, for example.

  Look at the example with BSS/Gooble that was cited.  Ok, it was a
  crass message, that goes without saying.  Question shouldn't be
  Wow, do these jerks treat women bad or what? but rather, Wow,
  do they sit there and talk smack to each other?  They are two
  subtle questions.  Neither excuses what they did but if the
  answer to the latter is that they do talk smack to one another
  they they are, as you seem to want by your question above,
  treating women as they would treat men.

That's an interesting point.  I've been in an online community where the
predominant form of discussion seemed to consist of TnA jokes, gay
jokes, etc.  Personally, I found it disgusting -- goatse references were
far from the worst being bandied about -- but I was apparently in the
tiny minority.  A minority of one.  So occasionally I'd rant and rave
about their crassness, but for the most part I just tried to ignore it
and go about my business.

So here's a question.  Is using the same language with both groups (male
and female) really non-sexist when one considers the background?
Defining a woman purely by her capability to have sex is considered the
worst of insults; wouldn't most men consider this to be a complement?

I'm not a member of the community in which the Gooble incident occured,
so I can't speak to the typical interaction.  If it's indeed true that
most or many interactions among participants were similar to the one
being cited, then that might change my point of view.  I'm too tired to
look up the original link right now, but iirc the quote specifically
used the OP's female-ness as a basis for the blowjob crack -- which to
me seems to undermine your whole point.  The post was made *because she
was female*, not because that was the tone of the forum.

  See, I like to think that I don't treat women or men differently
  online.  Most of my interaction isn't in a technical area; I'm
  more of an online gamer.  I don't care what gender a person is, I
  treat them as they treat me and how others they associate treat
  them.

  Let me give 3 examples to show what I mean.

  Example #1: the MMORPG.  Yeah, I play an MMORPG.  I treat
  everyone equally.  Guy, gal, doesn't matter.  They get respect
  and my honest opinion of things.  If I'm grouping with them I
  expect them to pull their weight.  If they don't I grouse about
  them equally.  I'm there to play the game.

  Example #2: the MMOFPS.  The outfit I'm in has teamspeak.  We've
  got one woman who plays all the time.  She can smack around the
  enemy as good as anyone else.  We're all aware that she's a woman
  because she doesn't let us forget it.  I think it was summarized
  best by the one liner she popped off on why her squad was always
  full while the male run squads were often half empty.  I've got
  boobs.  That wasn't the reason.  She's a fast typer, she's on
  the ball, when people were looking for a squad she'd actually
  notice, drop what she's doing and invite them.  People went to
  the first squad leader that invited them.  So for the next little
  bit I ran with the joke she started.  Every time one of the other

Re: email signatures

2004-03-24 Thread Monique Y. Herman

On 2004-03-25, Matthew Joyce penned:

 Hi,

 what the polite way off appending a largish sig or disclaimer to an
 email, is it '--' before the appendage ?

 thanks


The polite way to do it is not at all.  I've yet to see a huge honkin'
signature that was actually necessary/productive.

The convention is actually '-- '; I'm not clear if there must be a
newline thereafter.  

Here's what I found:

http://mail.gnome.org/archives/balsa-list/2000-March/msg00027.html


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debian and women? from DWN #10

2004-03-24 Thread Monique Y. Herman

I just saw this in Debian Weekly News issue ten:

http://lists.debian.org/debian-vote/2004/debian-vote-200403/msg00067.html

I guess I just wonder.

I've never found any sort of hostility or difficulty in dealing with any
technically-oriented online forum; if anything, I've found that some
people seem to go out of their way to respond to women.

Okay, I lie.  I've had hostility from a couple of individuals, but I've
*never* attributed it to my female-ness, and in most cases there was
evidence to suggest that they were equal-opportunity flamethrowers =)

Any women out there?  Have you found debian and/or other OSS or
technical groups to be difficult, possibly because you're female?

Any guys have opinions?

She seems to be talking about a fear of being put down or treated poorly
for participating in a technical forum.  This isn't a fear I've ever
had, but maybe I'm in the minority?  I've also heard of women
masquerading as men online to avoid any such questions ... and I've had
women tell me that, in MMORPG type situations, groups tend to follow
their direction much better when they played a male character.  Me, I
never cared for playing male characters, so I haven't had a chance to
test that theory.

Just kind of wondering what others think about this.  I don't find
debian off-putting, but then, I use vim, so maybe my interpretation of
userfriendly is a bit unconventional.  I think her suggestion that the
community be aware that the poster may be nervous in the first place is
a good point, regardless of their gender, but putting woman-friendly!
on the website would be a bit odd -- although certainly more welcome
than that ridiculous designed by women printer (with handle!) or the
made for women car with the welded hood ...

Sorry for the rambling ... 

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Re: packages in unstable

2004-03-22 Thread Monique Y. Herman

On 2004-03-22, Matthew Joyce penned:

 -Original Message- From: Rajesh Menon
 [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, 22 March 2004 1:43 PM To:
 Matthew Joyce Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: packages
 in unstable
 
 
 why not install the proprietary sun jdk available from the sun
 download site? the install is quite an easy one.
 
 
 
 On Mon, 22 Mar 2004, Matthew Joyce wrote:
 
 
  I have an oportunity to use Debian for an important project, this
  project requires the following app versions.
 
  Java 1.4.1 Postgres db 7.4 Tomcat 4.1.29
 


 Right, thanks for that, I'll take a look.

 I guess I'm more concerned with the other packages, and their
 dependancies.


I believe the problem is licensing: Sun's JDK license isn't
debian-compatible.

I've run all sorts of tools that require Java after d/ling the JDK from
Sun, though.  I can't recall offhand what I did, but if nothing else you
can just modify the startup script to point to the right path.

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Re: how can I recover the file I've deleted?

2004-03-22 Thread Monique Y. Herman

On 2004-03-22, blue_stone penned:
 I use ext3 fs, and i've deleted some important file ,hao can I recover
 them ?


Retrieve them from the backups you've been maintaining ...

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Re: Question re Debian versions

2004-03-19 Thread Monique Y. Herman

On 2004-03-19, Paul Johnson penned:

 Monique Y. Herman [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

[snip]

 Unstable is where bug fixes, new packages, etc are first introduced
 into a debian distribution.  (There's also something called
 experimental, but that's not a proper distribution.)

 The important ones, like security updates, make it down pretty
 quickly.

 Say you have package A that makes it past unstable and into testing.
 Then someone finds a bug in package A.  It turns out to be an icky
 bug, and it takes quite a while to fix it.  The bug will be fixed in
 unstable before trickling down into testing.

 And in unstable, a package can be broken for months.  It's really not
 for people who aren't ready to work for it at times.

 Also, look at security updates.  Updates are provided for stable and
 unstable almost immediately.  Then those using testing distributions
 must wait the allotted amount of time before receiving the unstable
 update in testing.

 If you're in a spot where security is absolutely critical, you should
 only be using stable anyway.

I wasn't claiming that unstable is a better choice than stable for, er,
stability; I was claiming it was a better choice than testing.

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Re: Question re Debian versions

2004-03-19 Thread Monique Y. Herman

On 2004-03-19, Travis Crump penned:

 Unstable, on the other hand, breaks much more spectacularly on package
 installation with no warning other than people moaning on the
 lists/IRC/BTS.  I don't want to imply that this is a frequent
 occurence, but it does happen...

I've only been bitten in major ways a couple of times by this over
several years.  The one I recall is when I suddenly couldn't run X.

The recent incorporation of the list bugs functionality into the apt
system has made things a lot easier, though.

I've been considering writing a script that only updates packages whose
.deb files have been sitting on my machine for a week.  In theory,
that's enough time for someone else to have felt the pain ...

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Re: Debian queries

2004-03-19 Thread Monique Y. Herman

On 2004-03-19, [EMAIL PROTECTED] penned:

[snip]

 But what about LCD support (how easily can I adjust refresh rate etc.?
 I am not afraid to do it by hand, as long as it will let me).  

I googled on my LCD monitor's model and found that someone had posted
some helpful modelines.  I used those settings, then later tweaked them
a bit.

I don't think I ever gave Debian a chance to configure it myself (and I
don't recall if it asked me about it).  With X, I've gotten into the
habit of skipping the middle man -- on *any* distribution -- and just
hand-hacking the file.

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Re: Question re Debian versions

On 2004-03-18, Michael Satterwhite penned:

 I've been Distro hopping for the last few weeks and am very impressed
 with the Debian system. It's probably going to become the distro on
 all my machines very shortly.

 I'm going to be running Woody on one machine and Sarge on another for
 testing purposes. From what I'm reading, it's probably not that far
 off that Sarge becomes the stable version (I *THINK* I'm understanding
 how it works), Sid becomes the testing version, and there will be a
 new unstable version (please correct me if I misunderstand).

 Sometime after that, I'll want to upgrade from Woody to Sarge on my
 base machine; a few months after that, I'll consider moving my test
 machine to Sid.

I'm no expert, but I think this is not quite right.

At the moment, Woody = stable, Sarge = testing, and Sid = unstable.

*my understanding* is that, after Sarge becomes stable, it will look
like this:

Sarge = stable, ??? = testing, Sid = unstable

In other words, I think Sid will remain the cutting edge distro of the
debian system.

(I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong!)

What sorts of testing would you want to do on your testing machine?  The
testing distro is a little odd in that it's really intended for
developers, not users.  It's the stuff they're working on for the next
release of stable, not necessarily the stuff that's more stable than
unstable but newer than stable.  This is a subtle but important
difference.  For example, security updates will make it into testing
*after* they make it into both unstable and stable.

 What is the procedure for this type of an upgrade? IOW, what commands
 would be given to apt to move the machine to the next version?

Make sure your system is up to date relative to your current distro,
then read:

http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/apt-howto/ch-apt-get.en.html#s-dist-upgrade

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Re: Apache questions.......

On 2004-03-15, Ralph Crongeyer penned:
 Hi all,
  
 There are two Apache packages in Sarge, apache and apache-ssl. But
 there is also a libapache-mod-ssl package
  
 Apache-ssl works in encrypted mode fine, however I can't get it to use
 mod_php4, which I need. Apache is able to use mod_php4 but I cannot
 get it to use mod_ssl, which I also need??
  
 I would like to use apache, php4, and mod_ssl (but I don't want to run
 two apache instances).
  
 What do I need to do to get all this (apache, mod_php4, and mod_ssl )
 working?
  
 Thanks,
  
 Ralph


As I haven't seen any answers to this question, I'll take a stab at it.

Ahah!  And just found out that my apache-ssl configuration was allowing
browsers to view my php code.  Isn't that just peachy.

I seem to have it all fixed now.  Here's what I have in sid:

I have both the apache and apache-ssl packages.

home:/etc/apache# grep php *.conf
modules.conf:LoadModule php4_module /usr/lib/apache/1.3/libphp4.so
srm.conf:AddType application/x-httpd-php .php .php3

home:/etc/apache-ssl# grep php *.conf
httpd.conf:AddType application/x-httpd-php .php
httpd.conf:AddType application/x-httpd-php-source .phps
modules.conf:LoadModule php4_module /usr/lib/apache/1.3/libphp4.so

Oh, after you restart your server, I've found that browser caching can
often give you outdated results; so to test I usually move to a
different browser altogether.

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Re: Question re Debian versions

On 2004-03-18, Michael Satterwhite penned:

 On Thursday 18 March 2004 14:28, Monique Y. Herman wrote:
 What sorts of testing would you want to do on your testing machine?
 The testing distro is a little odd in that it's really intended for
 developers, not users.  It's the stuff they're working on for the
 next release of stable, not necessarily the stuff that's more
 stable than unstable but newer than stable.  This is a subtle but
 important difference.  For example, security updates will make it
 into testing *after* they make it into both unstable and stable.

 I do development on the machine running Sarge. The package list in the
 stable list gets a bit dated for me. They, however, are perfect for
 the machine that *HAS* to be up and stable. I don't want that machine
 anywhere near the cutting edge.

*nod*

If I were you, I believe I would choose unstable, not testing, on my
development box.  But that's just me.


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Re: Question re Debian versions

On 2004-03-19, Michael Satterwhite penned:

 On Thursday 18 March 2004 17:31, Brian Nelson wrote:

 However, testing tends to be more broken than unstable.  Testing
 works well right now since we're near a release and almost everything
 in there is in a releasable state, but after sarge releases, watch
 out.

 I'm sure I'm missing something here. I would expect that the Testing
 version becomes more unstable after the current Sid becomes the
 Testing version (which is why I wouldn't update from Sarge to ??? for
 a few months). But are you *REALLY* saying that the new Testing
 version will be more unstable than the new Unstable version??
 Something seems wrong with that picture.

I'm not sure that less stable is the right term, but less usable
almost certainly is.

What I was trying to get across in my earlier post was exactly what
Brian just said.

Unstable is where bug fixes, new packages, etc are first introduced into
a debian distribution.  (There's also something called experimental,
but that's not a proper distribution.)

Testing is really candidate distribution for promotion to stable.

Let me give an example that hopefully will make things more clear than
what I just typed.

Say you have package A that makes it past unstable and into testing.
Then someone finds a bug in package A.  It turns out to be an icky bug,
and it takes quite a while to fix it.  The bug will be fixed in unstable
before trickling down into testing.

Also, look at security updates.  Updates are provided for stable and
unstable almost immediately.  Then those using testing distributions
must wait the allotted amount of time before receiving the unstable
update in testing.

It is true that packages go from experimental (not a distribution) to
unstable to testing to stable.

It is not true that stability/usability increases as you go from
unstable to testing to stable.

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Re: Newbie question: moving from RedHat to Debian

2004-03-17 Thread Monique Y. Herman

On 2004-03-17, Roland Dunn penned:
 - Anyone know of any sites that try to make such moves simple for users -
 that list some of the common differences between Debian and RedHat?

I don't know about this.

 - On RedHat /etc/rc.d/init.d/ was where you could find scripts to start/stop
 apache, samba, etc  where is this on Debian?

/etc/init.d

 - Also on RedHat you could use chkconfig to setup such a script to restart
 on reboot - is there an equivalent for Debian?

Not exactly.  There's an update-rc.d script, but it doesn't work like
chkconfig.  Most people just create the symlinks themselves if they want
to change something.

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Re: Next stable release: 13 CD's

2004-03-16 Thread Monique Y. Herman

On 2004-03-16, Derrick 'dman' Hudson penned:


| Further more, why am I penalized with a higher postage rate for not |
spamming?

 I don't understand this statement.


Compare the bulk mailing rate to the cost of a stamp.

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Re: my experience upgrading from exim3 to 4

2004-03-16 Thread Monique Y. Herman

On 2004-03-16, Andy Firman penned:

 I finally got motivated and upgraded to Exim4 as well but I did not go
 to the effort of using a backup MX.  From what I know, most good MTA's
 are built with redundancy and will try for a couple of days before
 they drop any mail.  My concern was being down and getting
 automatically un-subscribed to all my mailing lists.  That would be
 bad.

Well, I already had a backup MX (just in case my ISP turns evil or
something), so it wasn't a big deal to take advantage of that feature.
I wasn't so much worried about email not finding a server; I shut down
port 25 because I didn't want email to find a *misconfigured* server as
I was setting it up.  Imagine having your mail server announce that your
user doesn't exist here; fun stuff like that.

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what user for /etc/cron.weekly?

2004-03-15 Thread Monique Y. Herman

When entries in /etc/cron.weekly are run, what user/group are they run
as?

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Re: Next stable release: 13 CD's

2004-03-15 Thread Monique Y. Herman

On 2004-03-15, John Hasler penned:
 Chris Metzler writes:
 Presumably, when there actually is a release, this fact will be
 publicized -- like it was for Woody, which was 7 CDs but didn't
 require them all either.

 It will have to be effectively publicized somewhere other than the
 installation instructions.  People who see Slashdot articles or
 reviews on Web sites that say Debian/Sarge requires 13 CDs aren't
 going to look farther.


That sounds like a problem of inaccurate reporting.  It's simply not
true that it requires 13 CDs.

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Re: what user for /etc/cron.weekly?

2004-03-15 Thread Monique Y. Herman

On 2004-03-15, Travis Crump penned:
 This is an OpenPGP/MIME signed message (RFC 2440 and 3156)
 --enig4A9C6BFDF59F36CFEFC734C0 Content-Type: text/plain;
 charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

 Monique Y. Herman wrote:
 When entries in /etc/cron.weekly are run, what user/group are they
 run as?
 

 Whatever user it says in /etc/crontab.  On mine it is root.


Odd.  I'm getting an error running popularity-contest because it says it
doesn't have permission to run dpkg.  According to /etc/crontab, it's
running as root, and root certainly does have permission to run dpkg!


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Re: my experience upgrading from exim3 to 4

2004-03-14 Thread Monique Y. Herman

On 2004-03-14, Vineet Kumar penned:

 That part about the process on port 25 is a bit strange, but having
 the init scripts in place shouldn't be a problem.  Init scripts hang
 around when you remove (without purging) a package, but they usually
 begin with something like

 DAEMON=/usr/lib/exim/exim3 test -x $DAEMON || exit 0

 So if the package is removed the init script will simply exit.  So
 having it invoked at startup shouldn't be a problem, since it just
 exits without doing anything.

Ah!  Good point.  I just checked the script; you're right.  Okay, so,
that wasn't a problem.  I'm still glad I got rid of 'em.  I'm sure the
naming convention (exim rather than exim3) would confuse me at some
point.  (But I changed the exim files and nothing's different!)

 As for the old exim hanging around on that port, that's strange.  It
 sounds like it didn't die completely, or perhaps you were spawning it
 from inetd and inetd hadn't restarted completely?

It looks like you're probably right; /etc/inetd.conf has a change time
from about when I upgraded.  But you'd think the exim3 install would
realize it had started itself from inetd and restart it.  However, since
all the bug reports on exim3 seem to be at least half a year old, I
don't think it's worth it to report.

I should have thought to restart inetd anyway.  Silly me.

 Either way, I find 'sudo netstat -ntlp' a very valuable command in
 such situations.  Hang onto that for next time.

Indeed!  I used netstat -a, but that's much harder to decipher.

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Re: coda vs. nfs on home lan?

2004-03-14 Thread Monique Y. Herman

On 2004-03-14, Kenward Vaughan penned:

 Further reading has led me to feel that these would suit me, too.
 It's nice to get feedback from others about the possibilities, though,
 when one is feeling clueless outside of what is mostly documentation
 and documented problems.  :)


On that note --

My s.o. and I were looking for a distributed file solution.  He was a
big fan of both AFS and Coda until we looked into them -- there just
seemed to be a lot of knowledge and work involved in getting them
working.

We have samba running for easy windows compatibility; I use NFS to mount
my /home and music across linux machines.

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my experience upgrading from exim3 to 4

2004-03-13 Thread Monique Y. Herman

Hi all!

This is just a description of what I did to upgrade from exim3 to exim4.
I hope it's useful to someone.

I have an MX backup, so the first thing I did was to disable port 25 on
my router.  The logic was that this way, I could test my mail server
internally without risking a loss of mail -- the MX backup would hold it
until I enabled the port again.

The router is a Linksys, and I found that, while enabling ports works as
expected, disabling ports through the web interface didn't work.  I had
to disable the port through the web interface, *then* run down to the
basement and manually reboot the thing.  I couldn't find a reboot option
on the web interface.  Very annoying.

I tested whether the port was actually blocked by telnetting to port 25
from an external machine.  I definitely suggest doing so -- it's how I
figured out the above bug.

Okay, so, next, I acquired the exim_convert4r4 script by copying it from
another machine, where exim4 was already installed.  This script
attempts to convert your existing exim3 config file to a monolithic
exim4 config.  I have a fairly simple configuration -- the only vaguely
interesting part is enabling the -* suffix for my users.  Also, I have
a rule in there sending all mail addressed to unknown users to a single
account.  I ran the script and read over the output.  As near as I could
tell, everything looked fine -- though I doubt I would have noticed if
it hadn't.  I placed the output in a safe place for later use.

On to the upgrade!  In aptitude, I selected exim4, which automatically
marked exim (exim3) for removal.  Good stuff.  Out of paranoia, I put
all other pending changes on hold so that there would be no side
effects.

The upgrade gave me several options in regard to the configuration file.
I chose the upgrade from exim3 manually option.  I'm guessing that
this -- the lack of an existing exim4.conf -- is why the installer
complained as it attempted to start exim4 up.  I don't recall the exact
message.

I cheerfully ignored this error and copied my new config file into
/etc/exim4/exim4.conf.  I then restarted exim4.  Now for testing.
Messages to myself from the same machine worked fine; messages from
elsewhere didn't.  A quick check of the exim4 logs showed that it was
complaining that port 25 was already in use.  Odd.  Attempting to telnet
to port 25 resulted in a brief login message, then a closed connection.
No mention of any mail server.

While attempting to sort this out, I noticed that the start and kill
links for exim 3 were still present in /etc/rc?.d ... not good.  I
scrapped those.  In retrospect, I could have run purge instead of just
remove, but then again, I wanted to keep the exim3 configuration around
just in case I had to revert.  So I dunno.  I couldn't find a process
binding to port 25, so I took the coward's way out and just rebooted,
figuring that the port issue would sort itself out.

[non-exim-related interlude]

Kernel panics.  Monique panics.  Many reboots ensue.  Some cause kernel
panics; some exhibit a complete failure to communicate with the monitor;
some cause urgent-sounding beep patterns.  It is determined that some
portion of the hardware is dead -- probably just the CPU fan, which is
wobbling about in a sickly fashion, but there's an acrid smell that is a
tad worrying.  Possibly just dust; possibly more.  The hard drives are
nice and cool, though.  

Fiance to the rescue!  My kernel is hand-rolled, athlon-specific, and
only contains the drivers needed for that set of hardware.  Fortunately,
he had a box with the exact same motherboard (including integrated NIC).
He was only using the machine for distcc compiles, so he suggested
giving it my server's identity by swapping hard drives.

Would you really give up a machine for me?  I ask, trembling in
gratitude.

Well, I'd rather give up this machine than have you be this upset, he
offers.

I knew I had a good reasons for marrying this guy!

So we give his machine a brain transplant and bring it up.  Works
without a hitch!  Unfortunately, the machine is underclocked to about
2/3 the speed of my server (something about the memory being flakey at
full bus speed), but at least it's *up*.  That's the important part.  It
gives us the chance to play the swap parts till we find what's wrong
game at our leisure, rather than having to deal with it immediately.

[/non-exim-related interlude]

Once the machine was finally up again, exim4 worked just fine.  It still
supported the user-blah extension, and it still redirected all mail for
unknown users to a single account.  Good stuff.  I re-enabled the port
on the router and started getting mail again, including a bunch of stuff
that proved that my backup MX had been doing its job.

In summary, the conversion itself was fairly painless.  The only gotchas
were that the exim start links were not removed from /etc/rc?.d and that
for some reason something (presumably some undead form of exim3) was
holding on to port 25.

The End.


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Re: installation, Linux source code

On 2004-03-12, Chris Metzler penned:

 30% are trolls;
 30% are expressions of opinion without substantive explanation/
   justification (the equivalent of Me too! or Not me!);
 30% are explanations of configuration procedures, or software
   capabilities, or scientific issues, or whatever --
   things about which one can be factual -- that are
   absolutely wrong;
 10% are legitimate content, with insightful opinions, or correct
   explanations of coding principles or configuration options
   or the implications of scientific paradigms or whatever
   (but of that 10%, half of it is redundant to something
   posted earlier in the discussion).

 . . .so you're really reading for about 5-10% of the discussion
 content.  If that.  And it takes time to sort through all the crap
 to find the worthwhile comments.  And on those occasions where I
 sit down and read /., I get to the end of an hour, and look at
 what I actually *learned* over that hour, and think man, I could
 have spent that time a lot better.


Are you taking advantage of the filtering features?  I read slashdot at
+3, waiting till there's a decent body of posts, and it's not nearly as
bad as you describe above.  Blatant inaccuracies are often identified
and either modded down or commented upon by posts that are then modded
up.

I've considered setting my filter even higher, but for now, this will
do.

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Re: installation, Linux source code

On 2004-03-12, John Hasler penned:
 Chris Metzler writes:
 Pick a specific topic that you're *expert* in, compared to the
 general /. population.  Find in the archives and read a discussion on
 that topic.  Look at the +3, +4 and +5 posts only.  Do you really
 find them that impressive?  My bet is that the answer will be no.

 Now do likewise for the general media.  The difference?  The articles
 are always written in an authoritative tone, and there is _no_
 discussion and _no_ comments.

I have to agree with this.  When I realize that none of the articles I
read about networking, email, software development, etc are truly
accurate, I have to assume that articles about other subjects are just
as distorted.  And as early as high school journalism, I realized that
every article has slant, no matter how hard the author works at being
objective.

The only way to even attempt to get an accurate picture of anything is
to view as many resources as possible with your BS detector on high
sensitivity.

I've actually quite often found links to useful software, neat tricks,
etc as a result of reading the comments, not just the story.

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Re: installation, Linux source code

On 2004-03-12, Chris Metzler penned:

 On Fri, 12 Mar 2004 12:32:36 -0600
 John Hasler [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

 Chris Metzler writes:
  Pick a specific topic that you're *expert* in, compared to the general
  /. population.  Find in the archives and read a discussion on that
  topic. Look at the +3, +4 and +5 posts only.  Do you really find them
  that impressive?  My bet is that the answer will be no.
 
 Now do likewise for the general media.  The difference?  The articles
 are always written in an authoritative tone, and there is _no_
 discussion and_no_ comments.

 I'm confused as to what you're trying to say.  It seems like you're
 saying that one source of crappy information (e.g. a news story in
 your local newspaper) isn't as good as a different source of crappy
 information (i.e. /.), because even though /.'s information is
 crappy, there's a lot *more* of it.  (since, after all, it's in that
 discussion and commentary at /. that the crappiness resides)

Er, no.  At least, that's not how I understood it.

As I understand it,

Both official media sources and slashdot can contain inaccurate
statements.  The difference is, slashdot actually offers the chance for
uncensored peer review and commentary.  Moderation isn't censorship --
you can still read the comments if you want to.

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Re: Question re: nfs

On 2004-03-12, John Hasler penned:
 Joan Tur writes:
 If I'm not wrong you'll have to delete the user and create it again
 using -u parameter...

 Just edit the password file with vipw and change the number.

Huh!  Learn a new command every day!

Thanks!

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[OT] robots.txt creation script?

2004-03-11 Thread Monique Y. Herman

Hi all!

I've recently developed an interest in preventing spiders from accessing
certain areas of my site ... but as near as I can tell, robots.txt is
pretty stupid.  It only lets you *disallow*, whereas it would be a lot
more sensible for me to specify what I want to *allow*.

I was thinking I might hack up a little script to generate a robots.txt
file that disallows everything except the files I've listed, but first,
has anyone already done this or seen this done?  I'd hate to reinvent
the wheel =)

In my ideal world, robots.txt wouldn't require you to call out all of
the hidden directories on your site ... *sigh* ... 

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Re: exim - automatic signature

2004-03-11 Thread Monique Y. Herman

On 2004-03-11, Antony Gelberg penned:

 I don't think that what they want to do is a good idea.  However, they
 are paying me good money and having tried to dissuade them from doing
 this, they are certain that they want to go ahead.


fwiw, I support you in this.  While what they want to do is a bad idea,
it's not like they've asked you to kill all their employees' first-born
children ... at which point I presume you would balk.  They asked for a
feature; you told them it's a horrible idea; they said they wanted it
anyway.  Sure, you could walk away, and we all have our own personal
limits, but I don't think it's wrong for you to go ahead and do this --
provided that you really did your best to explain to the customer why
it's a bad idea.

At this point, it's up to the employees to complain.

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apt-cacher (was: Re: Speeding apt by multiple connections)

2004-03-11 Thread Monique Y. Herman

On 2004-03-11, Lucas Albers penned:
 setup a local apt-cacher repository.  This drastically speeds up
 downloads, as it only gets new package lists once per day (per
 configuration).  It saves all previously downloaded apt files to the
 cache.  This is good because: Downloads are a lot faster.  You save
 bandwidth for everyone involved.


I've done this, but it seems to bog down retrieval times for individual
machines.  There's a lot of disconcerting wobbling between 0kbps and
some large number.

Haven't yet sat down and tried to figure it out, though.

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Re: kernel source tree

2004-03-04 Thread Monique Y. Herman

On 2004-03-04, Richard Lyons penned:
 Another really dim question coming up...

 I'm trying to install thinkpad drivers for Debian. Instructions say to 
 unpack the thinkpad.tar.gz (no problem there) and then to cd to the 
 root of the source tree for the kernel for which you want to compile 
 modules, e.g., /usr/src/linux. Run 'make-kpkg --rootcmd=fakeroot 
 modules-image'...  I innocently assumed the root of the source tree 
 would be /usr/src/linux-2.4.22.  But when I do  'make-kpkg 
 modules-image', I get:
   We do not seem to be in a top level linux kernel source directory 
 tree...
 So I am evidently wrong.  I tried installing (via aptitude) the 
 kernel-source-2.4.22 package, and also kernel-headers-2.4.22-xfs-386, 
 but that didn't help.  

 Can someone kindly tell me what is meant by the root of the source 
 tree?  

 I really shall have to find time to learn about sources and compiling 
 one day -- it is always like cooking while blindfolded and with a 
 clothes-peg on your nose...

It may be expecting /usr/src/linux instead.  Try symbolically linking
the two with `ln -s /usr/src/linux-2.4.22 /usr/src/linux`, cd into the
new linux directory, and try again.

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Re: exim Frozen messages?

On 2004-03-03, Rick Pasotto penned:
 On Wed, Mar 03, 2004 at 10:14:15AM -0500, stan wrote:
 I've got a smail mailserver using Debain and exim. I noticed that
 some messages have stoped getting through. Looking in
 /var/log/exim/mailog, I see lot's of entries about messages being
 frozen. What does this mean? 
 
 And how can I further troubleshoot teh problem?

 I think they'll eventually be purged but you can also do it yourself.
 Run 'mailq' to get a list of them and then 'exim -Mrm id' to get rid
 of them.

But this doesn't explain *why* they were frozen ...

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Re: [solved!] Sandisk Cruzer USB flash drive -- gaah!

On 2004-03-03, Matt Price penned:
 On Mon, Mar 01, 2004 at 11:47:58AM -0500, Matt Price wrote:
 Hey everyone,
 
 I seem to havel ost my trusty old usb flash drive, so I shelled out
 $70 for a new one -- and carelessly bought a Sandisk Cruzer 256meg
 model.  Gaah!  I can't get it to work!!  
 

 solved the probleem -- the device was defective!  returned it, bought
 a new one, eveyrone's happy now.  no problems.


Doh!  Glad you found the problem.

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Re: Number of workspaces in gnome-2.4

On 2004-03-02, Henrik Enberg penned:
 Monique Y. Herman [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

 On 2004-03-02, Henrik Enberg penned:

 Or just right-click on the gnome pager and set it up from there.  Or
 with gconftool-2 like so:

 $ gconftool-2 --type=int --set /apps/metacity/general/num_workspaces
 4

 to get 4 workspaces.

 I've right-clicked on that damn thing a billion times.  It forgets
 every time I log out and back in again.

 Do you remember to save your session when you log out?

I haven't tried that -- but I would find that behavior surprising, as I
don't think I have to save my session in order to, say, add something to
a panel.

iirc.

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Re: Asking for help: installing debian on Athlon needing nvidia driver

On 2004-03-02, Sis penned:
 On Fri, 27 Feb 2004, Kenward Vaughan wrote:

 You should start a new thread for a new question.  You are more
 likely to catch people that way, should they be cruisin'n'bruisin' by
 Subject in a threaded reader.

Hmmm. I'm not sure what you mean, since i just sent in a message
with my own subject. Isn't that starting a new thread? But,
nevertheless...


Actually, it's not.  To start your own thread, you need to mail the list
directly, rather than replying.  

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Re: Distributed Jukeboxes for LAN

2004-03-02 Thread Monique Y. Herman

On 2004-03-02, Bill Moseley penned:
 On Sun, Feb 29, 2004 at 01:51:43PM -0700, Monique Y. Herman wrote:
 
 Have you looked at slimp3?

 I have now.  I wonder if the slimp3 device works the same way as a
 client running xmms.  I suspect it does.

I've wondered that, too.  Let me know if you find out =)

[snip]

 Slimp3, on the other hand, truly streams the content to xmms and
 maintains the playlists on a central server.  On clients you start up
 something like xmms and point it to the streaming sever.  Clients are
 based by IP number (can be assigned names, of course).  So, all the
 clients are managed via the central server -- you access a web page,
 select an active client and view its playlist and see what it's
 currently playing.  Nice.

 The down side is that since the Slimp3 server is streaming (and the
 client buffering), the interface has a big delay.  Click skip in the
 web interface and it can be 30 seconds before the song changes!  No
 back button.

Have you tried changing the caching settings in xmms (or your player of
choice)?

I've used winamp to great success.  I've used xmms and mplayer, and both
of them seem to be rather buggy =/  Some of this may relate to the
enlightenment sound daemon and its propensity for crashes, though.


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Re: uninstall Debian Linux

On 2004-03-01, Douglas Pollard penned:

 I tried to boot with disc #1 Red Hat Linux Fedora. The monitor
 shows what looks like files being loaded but is not. The on screen
 printing seems to stay the same although it looks to be scrolling.
 I took the disc out and the same thing continued  30 min. or so. I
 had to stop it by killing the power to the computer.  I have
 Debian installed and was trying to install over top of it.

 Do I have to remove Debian first and of course if so how??

 Doug

No, you do not.

You would probably get better answers to these questions on a RH/Fedora
mailing list than on a debian one.

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Re: Number of workspaces in gnome-2.4

On 2004-03-02, Henrik Enberg penned:
 Greg Folkert [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

 Metacity: You need to have metacity-setup installed. Once you have
 that using it to change the workspace settings.

 Or just right-click on the gnome pager and set it up from there.  Or
 with gconftool-2 like so:

 $ gconftool-2 --type=int --set /apps/metacity/general/num_workspaces 4

 to get 4 workspaces.

I've right-clicked on that damn thing a billion times.  It forgets every
time I log out and back in again.

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Re: Hi:Installation Help

On 2004-02-28, Pritpal Dhaliwal penned:
 New to debian and theis list. Coming from Redhat. Just wanted to say
 hi. 

 Pritpal Dhaliwal


Hi!  Hope the installation went well.

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Re: ghost-like programs for Linux platform

On 2004-03-02, j smith penned:
 ghost for Windows can copy files in an partition exactly. is there any
 Linux programs similar to ghost?


In my personal experience, ghost does *not* always copy the files in a
partition exactly.  If at all possible, keep backups when using it.

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Re: Distributed Jukeboxes for LAN

2004-02-29 Thread Monique Y. Herman

On 2004-02-29, Bill Moseley penned:
 Just looking for suggestions on a distributed jukebox for mostly audio
 files for my home lan.  There seems to be a few available but wanted
 to see if anyone here has a favorite.

 Anyone using http://www.theory.org/software/djukebox/ ?

 My current setup is a browser setup that runs xmms --enqueue, but my
 playlists are hand edited.  Rather basic.


Have you looked at slimp3?

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Re: Installation Questions

2004-02-29 Thread Monique Y. Herman

On 2004-02-29, Martin Kuball penned:
 Hi!

 I'm planing to install Debian on my desktop machine which already has
 a running Linux. But not Debian which I came to like recently because
 I use it on my laptop.

 So here is the question. Is it possible with the debian installer to
 skip some of the tasks? Especially formatting the partitions and
 installing a new kernel? Which means I want to keep my LILO settings
 and everything in /boot and /lib/modules.


Not sure about the kernel bit, but you can choose not to run lilo or
reformat partitions.  I'd imagine that you could move /lib/modules to
/lib/modules.orig, and that way, if it tries to overwrite them, you can
just move 'em back.

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Re: Backup my Debian woody system

2004-02-26 Thread Monique Y. Herman

On 2004-02-26, Oliver Fuchs penned:

 What I want: I want to know if my backup strategy is working this way
 or if there is a better solution?

 So ... any help/advice/documentation is appreciated.


It kind of depends on whether you want to spend money on this backup.

Me, I bought a large hard drive and a usb drive enclosure.  When I want
to backup my machines, I plug in the drive and use rsync to back up
everything I care about.  The nice thing about rsync is that it is smart
about only updating files that have changed (or have changed location).

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Re: OT: Re: Emergency braking and bird anatomy [was: Re: DVD copying and CSS]

On 2004-02-25, Paul Johnson penned:

 It doesn't help that you handle cross-traffic turns (left in the US,
 right in GB) by what Americans call tangle turning and is a major
 no-no on the west side of the pond...why hold fast to keep left when
 it's safer on a right turn at an intersection to keep right of
 oncoming traffic turning right the other direction while turning?
 It's understandable that there's a roundabout at major intersections,
 but to treat a standard intersection like one whether or not there's
 an island is a little nutty.

As a USian, I'm really confused by this description of turning.  Could
you please explain the term tangle turning?

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Re: apt-get rollback packagename !?!

On 2004-02-25, David Baron penned:
 It can happen, even to the best, even from stable--an upgrade is
 done that renders the system less than usable. It just occured with X.

 While, if one really knew how, one could bet stuff from backport,
 compile it (assuming all goes well--remember other things were changed
 in the upgrade as well!), and have a fix, well, most of us will simply
 be stuck. This could presumably be done manually if one has backups
 but apt-get knows how to handle these things in a correct and complete
 manner.

 I propose a rollback capability in apt-get. Assuming that this could
 not be done over the internet at present, it would involve maintaining
 an archive of replaced items and the dependancies. 


While I agree that this feature would be awesome, I believe I've seen
many discussions indicating that this would be a lot more difficult to
implement than it might seem.

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Re: Strong encryption in Mozilla

On 2004-02-24, J.H.M. Dassen (Ray) penned:
 On Tue, Feb 24, 2004 at 07:27:59 -0700, Arthur H. Edwards wrote:
 Does the Debian version of Mozilla support strong (128 bit)
 encryption?

 As long as you ensure mozilla-psm is installed as well, yes.


Does that work for fire[bird|fox], or is there some other methodology
for those?

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Re: Differentiating fetchmail-pulled accounts (in procmailrc)

On 2004-02-25, Jan Minar penned:

 --3MwIy2ne0vdjdPXF Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
 Content-Disposition: inline Content-Transfer-Encoding:
 quoted-printable

 Hi there.

 I've been switching ISPs as some of you maybe noticed.

 Now I don't know how to reliably differentiate between the accounts in
 procmailrc.  There has been some partial progress, though:

 Any ideas?

Maybe take a look at the full headers?  At least with exim 3, I see a
line starting with:

Received: from pop.somehost.com [ipaddress]

in my headers that could be used as a filter term ...

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Re: Emergency braking and bird anatomy [was: Re: DVD copying and CSS]

On 2004-02-25, Paul Johnson penned:

 On Wed, Feb 25, 2004 at 02:16:32PM +0200, Micha Feigin wrote:

 As for down hill, I ride quite a bit of free ride, not so much
 downhill since unfortunately I don't have the money for the big hit
 bikes, but the steeper the terrain the more I use the front break
 since the rear wheel has almost no traction on steep terrain.

 Because you're leaning forward already!


Yeah, I'm a bit confused by this rear wheel traction statement.  When
I'm going downhill, I move my body back on the bike -- afaik, this is
why good bike saddles are quite narrow -- to allow you the freedom to
move front to back as necessary.  Depending on how steep it gets, my
whole pelvis could be behind the saddle.

(This is somewhat from memory, as I'm a big wuss when it comes to cold +
biking and haven't biked in a few months.)

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Re: OT: Re: Emergency braking and bird anatomy [was: Re: DVD copying and CSS]

On 2004-02-25, Paul Johnson penned:

 On Wed, Feb 25, 2004 at 08:48:55AM -0700, Monique Y. Herman wrote:
 As a USian, I'm really confused by this description of turning.
 Could you please explain the term tangle turning?

 If you were to perform a tangle turn in the US, when you turn left,
 you cut around the vehicle turning left the other way, sort of a
 vehicular dosey-do.


I've never seen this maneuver performed.  I'm going to have to question
your assertion that this is an American habit.  It may, of course, exist
in some regions ...

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Re: OT: google or debian-user?

On 2004-02-25, [EMAIL PROTECTED] penned:

 It is a shame that at times debian-user can be so inhospitable to
 debain users. I think it is unfair to have a question answered with
 try google or some other variation of RTFM. Am I to understand that
 instead of using the debian-user list that I should use a search
 engine? I was under the impression that the debian-user list was a
 forum for debian users. I always search the debain-user archives
 before asking a question and if I don't find an answer then I ask my
 question. Generally I do not do google searches unless I am seaking
 global information such as is my hardware supported under linux. But
 I know that debain does things differently than the way other distros
 do things, (otherwise there would be no need for .deb packages,
 right?) so in most cases I figure the problem has something to do with
 a debain specific driver or setting. I am rather new to linux in
 general and have ever only used Debian so I am not familiar with what
 is just specific to debian and what is global across all linux
 distros. I suppose I could have asked is my issue at hand something
 that is supported differently in debian than other distros or do all
 distros support it the same? but that is even more annoying than
 asking the question outright. 

It's Debian, not Debain.  How is it that you get this right only half
the time?

You seem to be unaware of the fact that this list is populated entirely
by volunteers.  No one is paid to read this list or respond to posts.
Don't you think it's the height of arrogance to ask someone for help
without trying your best to find the answer yourself?  You're telling
the list, Hey, my time is more valuable than yours, and therefore I
want you to tell me how to do this rather than taking the time to figure
this out myself.

Many of the questions on this list are not actually debian-specific, but
for the most part, if you ask a well-formed question, someone will give
a useful answer.

If you do need to ask a question, a little humility goes a long way.
Try something like this:  Hi, all.  I'm new to both linux and debian,
so I don't know if this is the right place to ask, but here goes:
insert question.  If anyone could help me out or point me to a better
place to ask this question, I'd really appreciate it.

 However I will in the future assume that any problem I have is the
 same in all distros and I will do searches on the web first. I concede
 to RT proverbial FM even if that M is spread across all of the known
 Internet. Who knows? maybe I will never again need to post a message
 to the debain user list. One can only hope...

You say this as if it's a bad thing.

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Re: apt-get rollback packagename !?!

On 2004-02-25, David Baron penned:
 On Wednesday 25 February 2004 19:01,
 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 While I agree that this feature would be awesome, I believe I've seen
 many discussions indicating that this would be a lot more difficult
 to implement than it might seem.

 Awesome and or difficult, we see now it has become necessary.

When you're quoting me, I'd appreciate it if you actually used my name
or email address.

The mailing list most certainly didn't generate that text; I did.

I don't know who we is, but necessary is a strong word, and the we
that includes me has not been convinced that it's the right word for
this situation.

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Re: Emergency braking and bird anatomy [was: Re: DVD copying and CSS]

On 2004-02-24, Micha Feigin penned:
 On Mon, Feb 23, 2004 at 10:29:39PM -0800, Paul Johnson wrote:
 
 What I never understood is locally they tell bicyclists that you stop
 faster locking the brakes and everybody else to absolutely avoid
 doing

 Its actually wrong also for bicycles. If you skid it takes a much
 longer time to stop.  Another thing a lot of casual cyclists don't
 know is that you actually should stop mostly with the front brake
 (which is much much more effective).  You just need to make sure to
 hold yourself in place with your hands not to go over the handlebar.
 You do that and you won't flip.

Maybe you should take that opinion to alt.mountain-bike.  When you have
a good bike with strong brakes, you won't just throw yourself over the
handlebars; you'll flip the whole damn bike, especially when you're
going downhill.  The recommended route is to use both brakes at the same
time with as light a touch as possible.  (After riding my MB for a few
months, I visited my parents and took a spin on mom's bike (my old
bike).  I told dad that the brakes needed to be fixed, and he told me
that, for a normal bike, they were actually great. I've just been
spoiled by a comparatively expensive bike.)

That being said, skidding is a bad idea while mountain biking for two
reasons: one, you're out of control, and two, you're trashing the trail.

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Re: ext3 why?

On 2004-02-25, xucaen penned:

 I use ext3 for main partitions so that if the power fails, I be
 likely to have a corrupt filesystem.  I still use ext2 for /boot, for
 example, because it is small (therefore the journal's overhead is
 more expensive) and it isn't updated very frequently and so the
 probability

 so would you say it's ok to not use ext3 on smaller drive, lets say a
 2 gb drive?


It's not that simple.  You need to weigh your need for uncorrupted data
and speedy boot against your tolerance for runtime overhead.

I really suggest that you do some googling to learn about
linux-supported file systems, ext2, ext3, and other journalling
filesystems.  You'll be able to ask much more sensible questions.

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Re: downloading only diffs from kernel-source update?

On 2004-02-24, Colin Watson penned:
 
 Well, not necessarily better, but the simpler thing to do is just
 not use apt and Debian's packages for kernel management.  Instead,
 manage that yourself, especially if you recompile your own kernel
 anyway.  I'll be flamed for going against the Debian Way, but I
 have yet to see a meaningful advantage to handling the kernel in the
 Debian Way,

 I've always thought the whole Debian Way business was faintly
 ridiculous anyway. If it works for you, use it, but we've always
 supported people rolling their own, even when it'd be convenient to do
 otherwise (e.g. no dependencies from normal binaries on kernel-image
 packages).

And thank you for that!  Maybe I'm just lazy, but I've never seen reason
to go beyond the generic linux kernel compile instructions.  (I *have*
moved to getting the source from debian, though.)

 Debian Way always sounded a bit too religious for me. :-) If there's
 such a thing at all, then it's probably choice.

I think of the debian way as open, free as in freedom,  and without
profit motive.

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Re: Postgre/PHP installation woes

On 2004-02-24, Danny O'Brien penned:


 Warning: Supplied argument is not a valid PostgreSQL link resource in 
path/auth.php on line 10

 Line 10 in auth.php looks like this:

 $result = pg_exec( $link, $sql );


Well, first of all, from
http://us2.php.net/manual/en/function.pg-query.php :

Note:  This function used to be called pg_exec(). pg_exec() is still
available for compatibility reasons but users are encouraged to use the
newer name.

...

So you should probably tell your client or whatever to use pg_query().

Secondly, what is the value of $link?  That's an awfully strange name
for a variable that should represent the result of a pg_connect() call.

Here's an example of my usage.

$conn = pg_connect (user=$dbuser password=$dbpasswd dbname=$dbname)
or exit (brbrUnable to connect to database.);

$query = select blah from foo;

$result = pg_query ($conn, $query);

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Re: Need a shell or perl script

2004-02-23 Thread Monique Y. Herman

On 2004-02-23, Deboo penned:
 On Sun, 22 Feb 2004, Monique Y. Herman wrote:

 On 2004-02-22, Deboo penned:
  but I know neither. Not that I do not want to learn, but I need
  help to get this list. Can anyone help me out by giving the
  commands needed to do this? If they think this I am asking for mass
  e-mail, then I could make a dir listing of the mailboxes and send
  you the list so you know these are my friends and not some spam
  thing I am asking.
 

 You might look at /usr/share/doc/tmda/contrib/collectaddys from the
 tmda package.  It creates a list of email addresses from your
 existing mailboxes.  You'd have to hack it to add in aliases, though.

 I'm using woody with backports and I don't have collectaddys under
 that folder. I checked with packages.debian.org but couldn't find it
 in either stable, testing or unstable. Can you tell me where to get
 this package? Or is it a non-debian package?

 Regards, Deboo


Since we're only talking about one file out of the whole package, just
grab the source release from http://www.tmda.net/download.html ...
you'll find collectaddys under contrib.  You do need to have python
installed to run it.

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Re: Stupid fetchmailrc quiestion

2004-02-23 Thread Monique Y. Herman

On 2004-02-24, stan penned:
 OK, I just tried abut a dozen things, none of which worked :-(

 What's the syntax of adding the ssl keyword to a fetchmailrc for an
 individual site? I tried:

 ssl; set ssl;

 and some other stupid things, all in the section associated with that
 specific stie, and all I could get was syntax errors :-(

I haven't used this particular entry in a while, but it looks like I
used to use:

 user monique there with ssl with password passwd is monique here

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Re: Need a shell or perl script

2004-02-22 Thread Monique Y. Herman

On 2004-02-22, Deboo penned:
 Over the years, I have been using many email clients from windows to
 linux and have been saving lots of old personal emails. I have many
 them in many different formats as per the MUA. They are a lot.

 Now, I could search for one or two email addresses whenever I need to,
 having kept all these different mailboxes in one directory. Never
 having made an addressbook, is what caused this problem. I would like
 to sort, search and make a list of the email addresses. I know qute
 many of these addresses have become invalid over the years and some
 friends' addresses are more than one or two, but still a list would be
 nice. I know it can be done with shell scripting and better with perl
 but I know neither. Not that I do not want to learn, but I need help
 to get this list. Can anyone help me out by giving the commands needed
 to do this? If they think this I am asking for mass e-mail, then I
 could make a dir listing of the mailboxes and send you the list so you
 know these are my friends and not some spam thing I am asking.


You might look at /usr/share/doc/tmda/contrib/collectaddys
from the tmda package.  It creates a list of email addresses from your
existing mailboxes.  You'd have to hack it to add in aliases, though.


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Re: php4-imap apache virtual domains

On 2004-02-21, Tadas penned:
 Oh, I see it was registered 190 days ago. why the bug is not fixed for
 such long time?


[tone=tongue in cheek]
Because you haven't fixed it yet!
[/tone]

Seriously, if you click on the bug number, you'll see tons of email
regarding this bug, the latest being in early February.  So it's not
like nothing's been happening.  Some bugs take longer than others to
solve.

In the meantime, I see that several work-arounds are proposed in these
emails.  Perhaps you should read them and see if any of them work for
you.

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Re: SSH: does it require portmapper and what hostname is it looking for?

On 2004-02-21, Anthony Campbell penned:
 On 20 Feb 2004, Monique Y. Herman wrote:
 On 2004-02-20, Anthony Campbell penned:
 
  My /etc/hosts is as follows, in case this indicates the problem:
  (The alternative lines are because I tried both the IP which my domain
  name resolves to and also the ip on my router. I don't know which, if
  either, I need.)
 
  cut--
  127.0.0.1 localhost loopback
  # 194.176.77.5 acampbell.org.uk arcadia
  192.168.0.20  acampbell.org.uk arcadia
  0.0.0.0 accampbell.uklinux.net
 
  10.0.0.1   arcadia
  10.0.0.2   mimosas
 
  ---cut-
 
 1) It looks like you're mixing internal network numbers here.  192.168.0.20
 for arcadia, then later 10.0.0.1 for arcadia and .2 for mimosas ... I'm
 fairly sure that this is not what you want.
 
 Is there a web interface to your router?  Mine lets me set the LAN IP
 address.  Does yours, and if so, does it say 192.168.0.something or
 10.0.0.something?
 
 It might also be enlightening for you to share your
 /etc/network/interfaces ... specifically, the gateway value for your
 network device should be the same as the router's IP address.  At least,
 if you want outbound traffic, it should be.
 
 2) What's that 0.0.0.0 entry for?  I don't have any such entries on my
 machine, and I'm not sure it's what you want.
 
 3) You probably don't need to specify the external address (194.etc) in
 the hosts file.  In fact, it's a little misleading, as from outside your
 router, all of your machines look like that address.  All the hosts file
 does is give your machine a cheat-sheet for the names of some
 commonly-used hosts.  If you frequently wanted to connect to a machine
 that's outside the router (say, work or home) and wanted it to have a
 nice, easy-to-remember name, then you might list an external IP address
 for it.
 
 --
 monique
 
 If you think I've got myself into a right muddle with this business,
 you're correct. Not a case of failing to rtfm, rather of too much rtfm
 (or the wrong fm, perhaps).

Believe me, I've been there!  Don't despair ... over time, this will all
start to make sense.  Honest.

 The lan IP address in the router is 192.168.0.20, which is why I had it
 in /etc/hosts.

That part is good!  I was questioning the mixture of 192.168.0.x with
10.0.0.x.  Generally speaking, you want the IP addresses of your
machines to look very similar to the IP address of your router.

 I added the 192... business because I read in various places that you
 were supposed to have this line (I didn't previously) and because
 without it all hostname commands (hostname, hostname -f, hostname -s)
 produce the same thing, i.e. just arcadia. But perhaps that doesn't
 matter? I've taken it out at present.

No, it matters =)

 The 0.0.0.0 line also came from a how-to I found on the Net, but I've
 taken it out.

I can't swear that you don't need it.  I just know that I don't have
one, and my setup works.

 My /etc/network/interfaces:

 --cut--
 # /etc/network/interfaces -- configuration file for ifup(8), ifdown(8)

 # The loopback interface
 # automatically added when upgrading
 auto lo 
 iface lo inet loopback
   address 127.0.0.1
   netmask 255.0.0.0
   broadcast 127.0.0.255
   gateway 127.0.0.1

 #Router stuff
 auto eth0 
 iface eth0 inet static 
address 192.168.0.20
netmask 255.255.255.0
gateway 192.168.0.1
broadcast 192.168.0.255
 ---cut


All of that looks good.  For comparison's sake, why don't I show you the
relevant portions of /etc/network/interfaces and /etc/hosts on one of my
machines?  (I'm ignoring the loopback entry in interfaces; that should
be fine.)

Okay, I'm munging things a bit, but the sense should still be there:

Here's the relevant portion of my /etc/network/interfaces on foo :
 ---cut
auto eth0
iface eth0 inet static
address 192.168.1.15
netmask 255.255.255.0
gateway 192.168.1.1
 ---cut

Here's the relevant portion of my /etc/hosts , also on foo :

 ---cut
127.0.0.1   localhost
192.168.1.15foo.hostname.org foo
192.168.1.150   bar 
 ---cut


Let me read this in plain English.  foo is a machine with the static
IP address 192.168.1.15.  The gateway line tells foo that the router is
at 192.168.1.1.  The netmask line tells foo that every possible value of
192.168.1.x is on the same network as foo.  On foo, the term 'localhost'
when used anywhere that involves networking ('ssh localhost', for
example) will resolve to 127.0.0.1.  On foo, the term 'foo' will resolve
to 192.168.1.15, and so will foo.hostname.org.  Also, if you use the
term 'bar', it will resolve to 192.168.1.150, which is the IP address of
another machine on the network.

Note that you can't make up the netmask:  it has to be the same one that
your router has set. And your address has

Re: emergency! unrm a directory

On 2004-02-21, Vikki Roemer penned:

 --E/DnYTRukya0zdZ1 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
 Content-Disposition: inline Content-Transfer-Encoding:
 quoted-printable

 Hi, I just rm'd a website on my server by accident, I need to know if
 there's any way I can get it back.  I have an ext3 filesystem.  I
 can't umount /var, the system won't let me, so I don't know how much
 time I have before the inode is overwritten.  Can anyone help me,
 please?


You do keep backups, right?

-- 
monique


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Re: SSH: does it require portmapper and what hostname is it looking for?

On 2004-02-21, Anthony Campbell penned:
 On 21 Feb 2004, Monique Y. Herman wrote:
 
 [snip] 
 Monique, I really am grateful to you for supplying this information;
 exactly what I was looking for. I've adopted your suggested format for
 /etc/hosts.

[snip]

You're welcome =)  Hope it's working for you.

[snip] 

 A commented example of a working setup - brilliant! Just what I was
 hoping for.

 Thanks again.

No problem!

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Re: SSH: does it require portmapper and what hostname is it looking for?

2004-02-20 Thread Monique Y. Herman

On 2004-02-20, Anthony Campbell penned:

 My /etc/hosts is as follows, in case this indicates the problem:
 (The alternative lines are because I tried both the IP which my domain
 name resolves to and also the ip on my router. I don't know which, if
 either, I need.)

 cut--
 127.0.0.1 localhost loopback
 # 194.176.77.5 acampbell.org.uk arcadia
 192.168.0.20  acampbell.org.uk arcadia
 0.0.0.0 accampbell.uklinux.net

 10.0.0.1   arcadia
 10.0.0.2   mimosas

 ---cut-

1) It looks like you're mixing internal network numbers here.  192.168.0.20
for arcadia, then later 10.0.0.1 for arcadia and .2 for mimosas ... I'm
fairly sure that this is not what you want.

Is there a web interface to your router?  Mine lets me set the LAN IP
address.  Does yours, and if so, does it say 192.168.0.something or
10.0.0.something?

It might also be enlightening for you to share your
/etc/network/interfaces ... specifically, the gateway value for your
network device should be the same as the router's IP address.  At least,
if you want outbound traffic, it should be.

2) What's that 0.0.0.0 entry for?  I don't have any such entries on my
machine, and I'm not sure it's what you want.

3) You probably don't need to specify the external address (194.etc) in
the hosts file.  In fact, it's a little misleading, as from outside your
router, all of your machines look like that address.  All the hosts file
does is give your machine a cheat-sheet for the names of some
commonly-used hosts.  If you frequently wanted to connect to a machine
that's outside the router (say, work or home) and wanted it to have a
nice, easy-to-remember name, then you might list an external IP address
for it.

-- 
monique


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Re: aptitude marking everything packages held back?

2004-02-20 Thread Monique Y. Herman

On 2004-02-20, Paul Morgan penned:
 On Thu, 19 Feb 2004 12:54:11 -0700, Monique Y. Herman wrote:

 (I wonder how I managed to change that setting without noticing ...)
 

 You make me a bit nervous for you when you say stuff like that,
 Monique :)


I make me a bit nervous, too.  Does that help? =P

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Re: apt-get upgrade of kernel-image

On 2004-02-19, mess-mate penned:

 Sorry, not clear enough for me.
 I'd a kernel-image -2.4.24-1-686 installed and did an upgrade to the 2.4.24-2
 Since Can't boot anymore; the boot sequence stops after loading the initrd.
 Didn't  reinstall  lilo; the vmlinuz-name seems the same .
 Anyone had this pb ?
 Regards
 mess-mate



You need to re-run lilo after changing the kernel.  The fact that the
name doesn't change is irrelevant.  (However, I'm not sure if the
package installer prompts you to run lilo when you install a kernel
image?)

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Re: DNS and Hostnames (was: Re: SSH: does it require portmapper and what hostname is it looking for?)

On 2004-02-19, Anthony Campbell penned:

 I am indeed grateful to everyone for help with this. Following
 suggestions received so far I've tried (for this computer) setting my
 hostname to arcadia.acampbell.org.uk and putting the following in
 /etc/hosts:

---cut-
 127.0.0.1 acampbell.org.uk localhost ac arcadia.acampbell.org.uk
 accampbell.uklinux.net

--cut-

 I'm not sure that the first line is right - any corrections please?

This is just the hosts file for one of the machines ...

What are you intending to accomplish with the acampbell.org.uk and
accampbell.uklinux.net entries?

Each entry after the IP address on a line should be an identifier for
this machine and this machine only.  

 Related question to start of this thread: is ssh what I need?  The
 situation is that I have two computers (desktop and notebook)
 connected to the router and accessing the Internet independently. I
 want to be able to exchange files between them. (Email would do at a
 pinch but I can't see how to do that either.)


Well, scp is ssh's file transfer tool.  If your router also acts as a
firewall *and* you have particular directories you care about, you might
consider using NFS or Samba for file sharing.  Do *not* use NFS or Samba
unless you have a firewall of some sort in between those machines and
the world at large.

(Actually, I strongly recommend configuring a firewall, regardless of
what services you choose to run.  Close every inbound port that you
don't absolutely need.)

-- 
monique


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aptitude marking everything packages held back?

Just wondering if anyone else has seen this.  On one of my machines,
aptitude works like a champ.  On the other, as of a week or so ago,
every package that would normally be aqua (available for upgrade) in the
g screen is instead white and listed under Packages being held back.
I can hit + on a package and it will then install.  Very odd.

Did I accidentally enable some option?  Is my configuration corrupted?
Something else?

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Re: Home Mail Server

On 2004-02-19, Peter A. Cole penned:

 Anyway, what I really need is a pointer in the direction of some
 documentation or advice on whether or not to use mailboxes under home
 folders or just to let the messages go to /var/mail/username.


I have mail delivered to /var/mail/monique and then have a symbolic link
called inbox in my home directory.

-- 
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Re: apt-get upgrade of kernel-image

On 2004-02-19, mess-mate penned:
 On Thu, 19 Feb 2004 17:20:26 +0100
 Monique Y. Herman [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

|On 2004-02-19, mess-mate penned:
|
| Sorry, not clear enough for me.
| I'd a kernel-image -2.4.24-1-686 installed and did an upgrade to the 2.4.24-2
| Since Can't boot anymore; the boot sequence stops after loading the initrd.
| Didn't  reinstall  lilo; the vmlinuz-name seems the same .
| Anyone had this pb ?
| Regards
| mess-mate
|
|
|
|You need to re-run lilo after changing the kernel.  The fact that the
|name doesn't change is irrelevant.  (However, I'm not sure if the
|package installer prompts you to run lilo when you install a kernel
|image?)
|
|-- 
|monique
|
 Yes hi did and I didn't run lilo !. I'll rerun lilo immediatly.
 Thanks for the tip.
 mess-mate


You may also want to double-check the file paths in /etc/lilo.conf and
make sure that the locations of your files match the locations listed in
the conf file.

-- 
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Re: aptitude marking everything packages held back?

On 2004-02-19, David Z Maze penned:
 Monique Y. Herman [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

 Just wondering if anyone else has seen this.  On one of my machines,
 aptitude works like a champ.  On the other, as of a week or so ago,
 every package that would normally be aqua (available for upgrade) in
 the g screen is instead white and listed under Packages being held
 back. I can hit + on a package and it will then install.  Very
 odd.

 Which Debian?  I noticed this happening on my unstable machine a week
 or so ago; I hit '+' on the Upgradeable Packages line and everything
 went off and installed.  I never entirely figured out why, though, and
 it hasn't done it since.

You, sir, are a genius!

The machine in question is unstable, but so is the machine that's
working fine.

Maybe we both accidentally hit = while the upgradable packages line
was hilighted?

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Re: aptitude marking everything packages held back?

On 2004-02-19, £ukasz Stelmach penned:

 U¿ytkownik Monique Y. Herman napisa³:
 Just wondering if anyone else has seen this.  On one of my machines,
 aptitude works like a champ.  On the other, as of a week or so ago,
 every package that would normally be aqua (available for upgrade) in
 the g screen is instead white and listed under Packages being held
 back. I can hit + on a package and it will then install.  Very
 odd.
 
 Did I accidentally enable some option?  Is my configuration
 corrupted?  Something else?
 
 Hello,

 Maybe you should check if this option is on:

 Options-Miscellaneous-Automatically upgrade installed packages.


Doh!  That's exactly it.  Thank you.

(I wonder how I managed to change that setting without noticing ...)

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Re: kernel-source-* packages

On 2004-02-19, Olle Eriksson penned:
Hi

What is the difference between the kernel source from kernel.org and
the Debian kernel-source-* packages? The only thing I can find about
that is some discussion from 1997 concluding that there is no
difference except that the debian packages handles the /usr/src/linux
symlink for you. Sorry if I am missing some obvious docs now.

And, about that /usr/src/linux symlink. I have installed new kernels
from the kernel-source packages a few times and I have never seen this
symlink on my system. Is it safe to be without it?

The reason I am asking is that I am in the process of downloading the
source for 2.6.3 from kernel.org and install it on my unstable system.

Thanks Olle Eriksson

Hrm, 1997. That's quite a while ago =)

Here's an example of what Debian has done in their 2.4.24 package:

http://packages.debian.org/changelogs/pool/main/k/kernel-source-2.4.24/kernel-source-2.4.24_2.4.24-2/changelog

If you want to see more details, pull down the source package and read
README.Debian.

I haven't had a /usr/src/linux symlink in years, and so far it hasn't
bitten me. So far.

I have, however, pulled the source from kernel.org in the past, and that
worked fine, too.

Debian kernel packages tend to have some patches that the upstream
version didn't, but otherwise, there's no special magic that I know of.

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monique

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Re: what's the use of dselect