Re: Hey, Steve! (WAS: Re: Pumping Gas in Oregon)
On Sat, 26 Aug 2006 16:45, Paul Johnson wrote: On Friday 25 August 2006 21:14, Hal Vaughan wrote: On Friday 25 August 2006 03:30, Paul Johnson wrote: On Friday 25 August 2006 00:07, Mailbox wrote: I think at this point were all hoping for the silence of the Lamb I ate his liver with some fava beans. :o) You know, I never did ask you: did you eat his liver before, or after it was run through the Soylent plant? And did you have Soylent cola with it? Soylent debian-user is made out of PEOPLE Coulda fooled me. cr ... none of you exist. The sysop types it all in. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Pumping Gas in Oregon (WAS: Re: Osama Bin Laden Take Over List!)
On Wed, 23 Aug 2006 15:39, Steve Lamb wrote: Hal Vaughan wrote: I tried Mepis for a while. It was fine for the 1st six months or so, but once the testing and unstable got out of sync, I had more and more problems adding packages when I had to. I just got it because it had an easy install and installed decent video drivers. For older machines Debian's fine but for my game machine I just don't want the hassle of configuring every little thing by hand. It's the one machine I want to just run as I use it to relax. :) (Or has Mepis gone to the Ubuntu repository now, like Libranet and some other distros did?) Not sure. Ubuntu's repositories are one of the reasons I don't like it. If Mepis went that way I'd be a sad panda. HEY Since this thread has drifted back to Linux distros and hence is almost On Topic for this list, how about labelling it clearly ON TOPIC so we can tell it apart from all the other hundreds of recent posts?? ;-) cr -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Open Source Supported Graphics Cards
On Tue, 15 Aug 2006 11:45, Seth Goodman wrote: Nothing would make me happier than if I believed this. Unfortunately, they continue to do one thing right where the non-commercial Linux distros have consistently failed, and this prevents the scenario that you suggest from happening. That is, they provide a platform that the non-technical user can install and maintain without a guru at their disposal. That is just so wrong.My father runs XP. He is constantly ringing me up because he's 'lost' files, or something doesn't work, and this is almost always because Windows hides *everything* from the user - so he's never grasped the difference between data files and programs, or the concept of a directory structure. He just expects to click on an icon and whatever he wants will happen. The problem is not that Windows caters for the ignorant - it's that it *encourages* ignorance and makes it deliberately difficult for a user to know what's going on. There's a certain minimum level of knowledge required to operate a computer - any computer - and Windows (in a misguided attempt to make itself suitable for morons) does its best to ensure that users never acquire any expertise at all. cr -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Uploads via ppp stalling
Solved! On Sun, 06 Aug 2006 02:38, cr wrote: I've suddenly started having great trouble uploading JPGs of 50K or so to Trademe (our local New Zealand Ebay equivalent). They seem to be 'choking' - that is, the first ~10K's go OK, then a slight gap, then a few more K's, then a longer gap, then a very few K's, then a still longer gap, and so on - it takes about 3 minutes to upload a 30K JPG! (Bigger ones just time out). This is using Trademe's (javascript) upload page in a browser. Up until ~2 weeks ago it worked fine. (snip) A kind list member said (in a private post) Maybe MTU problem (I'd never heard of a MTU!) For any other newbies' benefit - MTU = Max. Transmission Unit ( roughly ~ packet size) Typical values for use with PPP are 500-2000 (so Google says) For ppp in Debian, can set it by uncommenting the line in /etc/ppp/options to read e.g. mtu 1024 In my case, 1024 improved things but wasn't the perfect cure, mtu 512 fixed things completely, I just did a 160K upload and it went straight through. cr -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: RFC: Well supported scanners under Linux?
On Wed, 26 Jul 2006 15:40:03 -0300 Rogério Brito [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Dear people, I have some photos that I would like to preserve in a digital form and I thought of using a scanner for this. Unfortunately, I my knowlegdge about scanners is zero and I have already visited the sane project page, but could not decide what would be a good purchase. If you're after a cheaper scanner, I use an Artec e+ 48u USB scanner (bought it from a supermarket! - after first checking the Sane pages for compatibility) and it's working fine with Sane under Debian Sarge. I suspect some of the buttons on the front of the scanner might not work with Linux - never tried them - but Sane gives all that functionality under software control. Certainly enough for scanning photos. It plugs into the USB port (doesn't need separate power supply) and is lightweight enough to sit out of the way on top of a bookshelf when not in use. cr
Uploads via ppp stalling
I've suddenly started having great trouble uploading JPGs of 50K or so to Trademe (our local New Zealand Ebay equivalent). They seem to be 'choking' - that is, the first ~10K's go OK, then a slight gap, then a few more K's, then a longer gap, then a very few K's, then a still longer gap, and so on - it takes about 3 minutes to upload a 30K JPG! (Bigger ones just time out). This is using Trademe's (javascript) upload page in a browser. Up until ~2 weeks ago it worked fine. I have two separate systems: 1. IBM A20m thinkpad/Sarge/Gnome/KPPP Dick Smith PCMCIA 56K modem 2. AMD-based desktop/Sarge/Gnome/KPPP external Cyber Bullet 56K modem Both running Sarge installed off the initial 'stable' release CD's (3.1r0 IIRC?) Both systems behave in _exactly_ the same way, and it makes no difference whether I use Opera or Firefox. I also have two dialup ISP's, Clear and Orcon. Uploads via FTP (using gftp) to my personal site at qc1.net in Dallas work perfectly. Uploading JPG's via Freeshare's upload page to Freeshare.us works perfectly via my Clear ISP, but 'chokes' via my Orcon ISP. Uploads to Trademe via either ISP 'choke'. Uploading via my old Debian Woody installation works perfectly, so does Windows98 (much as I hate to say so :) The only thing I did to both my Sarge systems a couple of weeks ago was fooling around with sound (ALSA drivers etc). I've checked the logs in /var/log and I can't see anything that looks significant there.However there may be more detailed logs I haven't switched on. One possibility that occurs to me - some daemon might be interfering (but I'm a complete newbie to daemons). Another possibility - it's almost as if the modem was waiting for some 'proceed' signal from the other end; but then, the same modem has no problems with Woody or W98. I've Googled extensively but I can't find anything relevant (which doesn't mean it ain't there, I may have been using the wrong search terms) So my question is - Can anyone tell me where I should be looking in my system? Can anyone point me at a document that explains how stuff gets from browser to modem via KPPP and pppd and what files are involved? For what it's worth, here's a log that includes the period of an upload to Trademe (which 'choked' and took 3 1/2 minutes for 28K!) and the same file uploaded to Freeshare.us (which took ~30 seconds - which I regard as OK) /var/log/syslog Aug 6 02:03:30 localhost pppd[3792]: pppd 2.4.3 started by cr, uid 1000 Aug 6 02:03:30 localhost pppd[3792]: Using interface ppp0 Aug 6 02:03:30 localhost pppd[3792]: Connect: ppp0 -- /dev/ttyS1 Aug 6 02:03:30 localhost hal.hotplug[3798]: could not get mountpoint for sysfs Aug 6 02:03:31 localhost pppd[3792]: PAP authentication succeeded Aug 6 02:03:31 localhost pppd[3792]: Cannot determine ethernet address for proxy ARP Aug 6 02:03:31 localhost pppd[3792]: local IP address 218.101.69.18 Aug 6 02:03:31 localhost pppd[3792]: remote IP address 218.101.58.3 Aug 6 02:03:31 localhost pppd[3792]: primary DNS address 203.97.33.14 Aug 6 02:03:31 localhost pppd[3792]: secondary DNS address 203.97.37.14 Aug 6 02:04:33 localhost kernel: PPP: VJ decompression error Aug 6 02:12:39 localhost pppd[3792]: Terminating on signal 15 Aug 6 02:12:39 localhost pppd[3792]: Connect time 9.2 minutes. Aug 6 02:12:39 localhost pppd[3792]: Sent 484158 bytes, received 715082 bytes. Aug 6 02:12:40 localhost pppd[3792]: Connection terminated. Aug 6 02:12:40 localhost pppd[3792]: Exit. Aug 6 02:12:40 localhost hal.hotplug[4001]: could not get mountpoint for sysfs cr -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: MBR problem
On Wed, 24 Nov 2004 10:40, Michael Z Daryabeygi wrote: Punit Ahluwalia wrote: I installed grub to /dev/hdc2 which is also /root. This is not a dual boot. It is plain and simple Woody. How do I install grub to the MBR? you must start grub, either from in a working linux or by booting directly into grub. from the grub command line: $ root = hd(x,y) /* where x is the num of the hd and y is the num of the partition (both zero based)*/ try tab completion if you are unsure root is not your kernel location, it it the grub root, or where the grub install images are located from you message above I think it would be hd(2,1). then to write to the MBR, $ setup hd(x,y) and that's it! With respect, I believe this last line is not quite correct. setup hd(x,y) will install Grub into drive x, partition y. To install to the MBR of drive x, usesetup hd(x) Most likely, you'd want to install Grub to the MBR of the first hard drive (if that's what the BIOS is set to boot off) - that is, /hda or hd(0), so usesetup hd(0) I don't think Grub cares what's already there (LILO, DOS or Windows bootloaders), I think GRUB just writes over the top of anything there. cr -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Linux and IPR
On Sat, 20 Nov 2004 01:54, Paolo Alexis Falcone wrote: On Fri, 19 Nov 2004 02:29:33 -0800 (PST), ken keanon [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi, MS boss was reported to have warned Asians govts that they could face IPR-infringement lawsuits for using Linux. How was the outcome of the case betweeen SCO and IBM? Will it be the end of Linux as open-source if SCO wins? The outcome doesn't look favorable towards SCO given the developments. It's only a matter of time before SCO dies a hapless corporate death that no one would miss. I don't want to miss it.SCO worked hard for it, it couldn't happen to a more deserving bunch of crooks, and I want to savour every moment of it beg cr -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Will Debian grow and stay?
On Mon, 15 Nov 2004 02:41, John Hasler wrote: cr writes: In very general terms - as I understand it the restriction is the US ban on the export of 'encryption software'. That was dropped years ago. How Micro$oft get around it I don't know, maybe they've just got big lawyers and lots of influence. They have to get licenses in advance of exporting crypto (though the licenses are trivially easy to get). So, to avoid the spooks from throwing some Debian mirror's owner into jail for 50,000 years for including some app. with encryption built in, such apps are only carried on mirrors outside the US. Crypto has been in Main and carried on US mirrors for years. The only requirement now is that when a new crypto program is uploaded a copy of the source must be emailed to the Commerce Dept. I believe that the only things left in non-us are programs that infringe US patents. So I'm way out of date on that.I think that's why non-US got started though? cr -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Will Debian grow and stay?
On Sun, 14 Nov 2004 17:08, ken keanon wrote: (snip) I roughly know that the US and non-US version got to do with encryption. But what is the restriction? People in US or outside US can download either version, right? In very general terms - as I understand it the restriction is the US ban on the export of 'encryption software'.(Phil Zimmerman ran into this with PGP. How Micro$oft get around it I don't know, maybe they've just got big lawyers and lots of influence. Maybe their apps are so patently insecure the spooks don't care ;). So, to avoid the spooks from throwing some Debian mirror's owner into jail for 50,000 years for including some app. with encryption built in, such apps are only carried on mirrors outside the US. cr -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re:
I'd add a further comment - if you want to 'play it safe', you could make yourself a GRUB boot floppy, then check that you can use it to boot your Linux on the second hard drive (D:) _before_ you wipe your W2K install. There are some good instructions on how to use GRUB and create a boot floppy at http://www.desktop-linux.net/grub.htm Alternative instructions for boot disk creation at http://www.linuxgeek.net/beginners/node69.html or Google with 'Grub boot floppy' cr On Fri, 15 Oct 2004 23:01, Rituraj Buddhisagar wrote: The C and D you are referring to are Drive names given by windows OS to HDDs. If you format C; then windows will be wiped out and while installing Linux on it, you will be given an option to install Boot-loader(like grub or lilo) by which at next boot u can select which linux to boot from 1HDD's or 2HDD's. -Original Message- From: P P PRASAD [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, October 15, 2004 3:24 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Dear Sir Can you guide me in following case : We are having a System having 2 HDDs C D . On C Windows 2000 Server is installed and on D Red Hat 9 is installed. Now D is nearly full. We want to format C and extend it for Linux. My hitch is if I delete partition of C, The system won't boot and I will loose Linux also. I do not want to disturb Linux. Your expert comments will be of great help to us. regards Pashupati Prasad -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Reclaiming Windows ptn for Linux (was: Re: )
On Sat, 16 Oct 2004 04:32, s. keeling wrote: Incoming from P P PRASAD: Can you guide me in following case : We are having a System having 2 HDDs C D . On C Windows 2000 Server is installed and on D Red Hat 9 is installed. Now D is nearly full. We want to format C and extend it for Linux. My hitch is if I delete partition of C, The system won't boot and I You shouldn't need to delete the partition. You should be able to reclaim it from within Linux. Ensure your Windows ptn isn't mounted. Run fdisk /dev/hda, mark the partition type Linux, then mkfs /dev/hda1 Yes, but wouldn't that still wipe the bootloader (if it's living on C:) ? So he'll need to have some alternative means of booting (such as a boot floppy), or reinstall GRUB or LILO. cr -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Why Grub? Must I Switch?
On Wed, 06 Oct 2004 05:08, Daniel L. Miller wrote: cr wrote: On Mon, 04 Oct 2004 18:03, Daniel L. Miller wrote: Paul Johnson wrote: #secure method=pgp mode=sign -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Daniel L. Miller [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: I don't understand that - unless your different kernel versions are all using the same filename. You have a basic shell. You can type the name, and IIRC, there is tab autocompletion. So you can't have an unattended boot? Daniel You can certainly have an unattended boot - the GRUB menu comes up and, after a specified interval, it will go on to boot the first entry on the menu (unless, of course, you manually select another). However, if you've just done a system upgrade or destroyed a kernel or whatever, or are just Grub-floppy-booting into a system, then you can bring up the Grub command line which has, as Paul said, tab autocompletion - and very handy it is too for finding a kernel when you can't remember whether it's vmlinuz2.4.18-bf2.4 or vmlinuz2.4.18_bf2.4 cr That's not my idea of an unattended boot - which is where the comments on symlinks came from. If you have a symlink to your current kernel version, with the grub config looking at the symlink - then you can upgrade the kernel, hit restart, and walk away. When you come back, your machine is ready (assuming the kernel isn't messed up). You're talking about upgrading the kernel and leaving it to do its first boot unattended? Well, sure, if the symlink's been amended, it should do that. But then, if you don't have a symlink, surely you'd just need to amend the kernel name in menu.lst instead, and leave it to boot just the same? (Though personally, if I'd made a significant change like that, I'd want to watch it boot). cr -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [Way OT] Re: GMAIL Invites..!
On Wed, 06 Oct 2004 11:57, Cybe R. Wizard wrote: On Tue, 05 Oct 2004 08:24:10 -0500 Rodney Richison [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: ... I run a list for techs/consultants. (ChannelVar.com) They are a VERY qualified bunch of guys. (Admittedly not linux users though) :) The preferred method is top posting. The preferred format is to allow html. Who are you trying to fool? Your site is a pathetic bare bones sample, probably not even paid for yet as evidenced by the little, default theme sample tag in the lower left corner of /every page/. There is /no/ content yet you expect people on this list to listen to you about your hypothetical top posting tech gurus? Cybe R. Wizard -wants summa what you been smokin' I suspect the preferred method is top posting and the preferred format is HTML because that's what Outhouse Excess does by default vbeg cr -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Why Grub? Must I Switch?
On Mon, 04 Oct 2004 18:03, Daniel L. Miller wrote: Paul Johnson wrote: #secure method=pgp mode=sign -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Daniel L. Miller [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: I don't understand that - unless your different kernel versions are all using the same filename. You have a basic shell. You can type the name, and IIRC, there is tab autocompletion. So you can't have an unattended boot? Daniel You can certainly have an unattended boot - the GRUB menu comes up and, after a specified interval, it will go on to boot the first entry on the menu (unless, of course, you manually select another). However, if you've just done a system upgrade or destroyed a kernel or whatever, or are just Grub-floppy-booting into a system, then you can bring up the Grub command line which has, as Paul said, tab autocompletion - and very handy it is too for finding a kernel when you can't remember whether it's vmlinuz2.4.18-bf2.4 or vmlinuz2.4.18_bf2.4 cr -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: New Grub user?
On Sat, 02 Oct 2004 03:31, Robert Harris wrote: I just installed my first system from the new Sarge installer (rather nice) and noticed I have Grub instead of lilo. I've read the man pages and it's a bit different than I'm used to. Does anyone have a very simple step by step to add a kernel (vmlinuz.old) so I can backup my current kernel then put a new one in /vmlinuz or something similar? I need to put some new drivers in and really don't want to reinstall because I screwed up the kernel. The Grub docs are a bit overwelming for my needs right now. Actually installing the new kernel is nothing to do with Grub (maybe someone else here can advise you on how to do that). In fact, AFAIK, the kernels don't care if you use GRUB or LILO (and GRUB / LILO don't care what kernel you're using, they'll boot anything you tell them to (well, almost). Editing GRUB to boot another kernel is actually quite simple: All you need to do is add another entry in the /boot/grub/menu.lst file (which is _usually_ in the first partition of the first hard drive, unless Grub has been set to use a /boot/grub/menu.lst somewhere else). menu.lst is a simple text file, you can add another entry with a text editor - just copy the existing entry and alter it as required. Example from my menu.lst: title Debian GNU/Linux, kernel bf2.4 on /hda1 root(hd0,0) kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.4.18-bf2.4 root=/dev/hda1 hdb=ide-scsi ro savedefault title Fedora Core 1 on /hda2 root(hd0,1) kernel /boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/hda2 hdb=ide-scsi ro savedefault 'title' can be anything you like 'root' points GRUB at the partition your kernel is in (in GRUB addressing terms which are drive no, partition no (starting at 0) 'kernel' points to your Linux kernel (or to a symlink) - the 'root' parameter on the 'kernel' line is passed to the Linux kernel so it 'knows' where it is and doesn't get a 'kernel panic' when it can't find itself. Read your menu.lst for what suits your installation. Just keep the old file and you can always put it back if your new one screws up. If you have a GRUB boot floppy, make a note on paper of what your menu.lst says, then if all screws up you can get back in by floppy-booting GRUB, hit 'c' (IIRC) to get the GRUB prompt, then type in by hand the 'root' and 'kernel' lines followed by the command 'boot'. cr -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: partition second hard drive
On Sun, 26 Sep 2004 04:01, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hello all, I had a dual boot system with Windows and Linux installed. Bought a new cd writer and found out I had to upgrade win 98 to SE to use new software for writer. SE costs more than the writer did. Nuts to microsoft. Took Windows out and installed Debian Sarge with the new installer. I really am happy with it. My question is How do I reformat my second hard drive that is presently Fat 32 windows so that Linux can use it for backup. I tried cfdisk but linux cannot see the drive. I have a Maxtor cd for the drive, which is Maxtor, but there is no Linux formating available on it. I sent them an e-mail asking why not. Thanks in advance for any help. Doug That's very odd. fdisk or cfdisk can usually see a FAT drive (I've been messing around with multiple hard drives for yonks and never had a problem with 'seeing' them). Sorry to ask this but you are giving cfdisk the right address (as in cfdisk /dev/hdb) I suppose?Umm, if you swapped drives around I suppose you did the right things with the drive select jumpers? (sorry to mention that but these things happen) I've never found the make of drive to make any difference, and I've used Maxtor, Seagate, Fujitsu, Quantum, Western Digital... so I'm not sure what the Maxtor CD would have on it other than fairly generic formatting tools. I believe it's usually recommended to remove partitions using the software that created them - that is, using Windows FDISK to remove the partitions on the drive; then Linux fdisk/cfdisk to create new (and, I think, mke2fs to format them). Whether your old W98 CD (if you have one) will allow you to run FDISK without installing Windows, I have no idea. (Nor do I know whether W98 will even contemplate addressing anything other than the first-and-only partition in the machine :) If all this is elementary stuff you know already, my apologies. cr -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: HTML editor. What to use?
On Wed, 01 Sep 2004 01:29, Robert Parker wrote: On Tuesday 31 August 2004 18:08, cr wrote: On Mon, 30 Aug 2004 23:31, Francisco Borges wrote: Hello, I haven't build HTML pages in years and I'm looking for an editor that would allow me to have a quick (re)start. Any recomendations? Running Sarge here. thank you for your attention ;-) peace. 'Quanta' is pretty good and easy to use.Comes packaged with KDE in Debian Woody, so hopefully is still there in Sarge. The version of Quanta in Woody (2.0) is so buggy that it is useless. It crashes continually in my experience. Hopefully it will be a lot more mature in Sarge because it does look promising. Bob Well, I'm using Woody 3.0r1 (I think), have been for a year, I've been using nothing but Quanta for HTML editing and it's never crashed once. And mine is Quanta 2.0 (using KDE 2.2.2) Possibly there's some feature I've never used that causes crashes... but like I say, I've never seen one. cr -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: HTML editor. What to use?
On Mon, 30 Aug 2004 23:31, Francisco Borges wrote: Hello, I haven't build HTML pages in years and I'm looking for an editor that would allow me to have a quick (re)start. Any recomendations? Running Sarge here. thank you for your attention ;-) peace. 'Quanta' is pretty good and easy to use.Comes packaged with KDE in Debian Woody, so hopefully is still there in Sarge. Or Bluefish is a bit smaller and less elaborate, I think. I can't answer for whether either does Java or stuff like that though. cr -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: How to make starting disket?
On Sun, 08 Aug 2004 20:41, Juhani Vainio wrote: I installed Sarge from net. The installation program did not propose to make starting diskette. I installed grub to mbr and everything is ok, but I want to make also a starting disket. Mr Murphy, you know. Apparently Debian relies on the CD. If you prefer a floppy (in case the CD drive dies?), your best bet is probably to make a Grub boot floppy. If you Google on 'Grub boot floppy' you should find heaps of links, for example http://www.desktop-linux.net/grub.htm cr -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Newbie problems galore
On Fri, 16 Jul 2004 07:16, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I need to pass things back-and-forth between Linux and Windoze. I see references to VFAT FS on the web site, but for the life of me, I can't find a trace of the software. It's really bad to have to play games with tar at both sides of the route in order not to munge up the magic pathnames. PLEASE don't tell me that the evil beast of Redmond has buried VFAT under a patent claim!! If not, please, where can I find it? When I installed woody from the CDs, during the partitioning and mounting process of the first part of the install, the install found the Windows partitions. It was then possible to identify them as VFAT file systems during the next phase of the install, and the install then generated the correct mtab or fstab or whatever it is this week entries for them and I had access to my Gatesware drives the outset. (I was impressed.) I still haven't figured out how to make the Linux data visible from within Windoze, other than scribbling files from Linux onto one of the VFAT-mounted drives. Explore2fs is a very nice little Windows app that reads ext2 file systems. (And the penguin icon looks real neat on a Windoze desktop ;) cr -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Newbie installation
On Tue, 29 Jun 2004 08:39, Martin Dowie wrote: OK. Usually, 'startx' should start up X with whatever desktop is set as the default. (Time enough to worry if it's the one you want when X is running). Not a sausage - not even an error message. :-( Well, there must be *some* messages - even if only 'command not found' ? You are logged in, I take it? cr -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Newbie installation
On Sun, 27 Jun 2004 22:28, Martin Dowie wrote: You haven't said whether you're running the command line login because you prefer it or because X won't start. Assuming that isn't your problem... No - I'd love a GUI front-end to start but I only have command line - any help much appreciated... OK. Usually, 'startx' should start up X with whatever desktop is set as the default. (Time enough to worry if it's the one you want when X is running). In my experience, getting X to work is the most common problem with a new Linux install. This may be partly 'cos I often have second-hand no-name bits of gear with no manuals... Anyway, after you've logged in, type 'startx' and see what happens. You'll probably find the screen goes through a few convulsions then drops back to the command line with a swag of error messages. If you're lucky, the messages may give a clue to fixing the setup.If the X screen comes up hopelessy screwed (e.g. sync rates so far off you can't control it) then Ctrl-Alt-F1 or -F2 should get you back to a command line. (Ctrl-Alt-F7 will get you the X screen again). The X configuration is kept in the file /etc/X11/XF86Config-4. When you installed debian, the installer should have produced one for you. Or, running the program xf86config (note the difference in case) will create a file for you. You can edit it with any editor, (but keep the original so you know where you started). Try that for starters cr -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Newbie installation
On Sun, 27 Jun 2004 00:54, Martin Dowie wrote: Hi all! I'm a first-time GNU/Linux (wanna-be) User although I have some Un*x experience. I've downloaded all 14 Sarge .iso CDs and have happily managed to get a system that will now boot to a command line after installing from CD1. I used the default partitioning for multi-users. I notice that while booting there are several failures - but the screen is flying by at this point and I can't see what they are. Is there a 'boot log' I can 'cat|more' though? I'm also now at a lose as to how to install stuff from the other CD's - in particular I would like GNOME as my desktop environmnet and to be able to use my Alcatel SpeedTouch USB ADSL modem. I've searched high and low for a Debian installation guide for dummies but I either find stuff that is more ... for Experts or I find 1,000's of hits that don't really seem to cover what I want. Can someone recommend a link for me as to what to do now? TIA -- Martin At the risk of being shot by the experts, 'cos I'm pretty much of a newbie myself and all these comments apply to Woody, unless they've changed things I guess Sarge oughta be the same You haven't said whether you're running the command line login because you prefer it or because X won't start. Assuming that isn't your problem... I imagine Sarge has both KDE and Gnome installed, it's just a matter of launching the right one. If that's the case, then you need to set the x-session-manager symlink i.e. ln -s /usr/bin/gnome-session /etc/alternatives/x-session-manager (the KDE equivalent in Woody is /usr/bin/kde2) Then 'startx' should start up X with Gnome, assuming XF86Config-4 is set correctly. Installing stuff off the other CD's, you can use 'apt-get' or 'apt-cdrom' or you can be lazy (like me) and use a graphical front-end like Kpackage. Chris -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [OT Why GB English is different] Re: Mozilla firefox en-gb
On Thu, 27 May 2004 04:57, William Ballard wrote: On Wed, May 26, 2004 at 10:03:35PM +1200, cr wrote: Eh. Go figure. There's no right or wrong. My teachers taught me that was incorrect, low-class, common. Well then the whole of the UK must be incorrect, low-class and common. ;) From where I'm standing, two hundred thirty-seven sounds just plain *wrong*. It's a matter of local (/national) custom. Do you also say one million and fourteen thousand and two hundred and thirty seven? No we don't. Our custom is that the 'and' follows the hundreds figure, only. It's incorrect for an Englishman to say it any other way. How Americans say it (or ought to) is their business not mine. Don't start trying to split hairs about the logic of it, U mite az wel komplane abowt the inconsistencies of English (/American) speling. :) cr -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [OT Why GB English is different] Re: Mozilla firefox en-gb
On Thu, 27 May 2004 18:34, William Ballard wrote: On Thu, May 27, 2004 at 04:27:31PM +1000, Tim Connors wrote: William Ballard [EMAIL PROTECTED] said on Wed, 26 May 2004 22:34:19 -0700: Prolly something to do with the commies :-) I didn't even know In God We Trust was added to the money in the 50s, just thought it was always like that. No doubt the commies. Incidentally, do American's associate more than just communism to their concept of Commies? America seems to be ver disproportionately against the theory of communism, which in my opinion isn't anywhere near as bad as it is made out to be - only that the implementations of it have so far been rife with corruption - much the same as the only implementations of democracy/capitalism so far have also been rife with corruption. Ah, let's don't start that discussion. Already wasted too much bandwidth with this crap :-) Can't resist one: I was in France at a Compaq facility, and wanted to work on a Saturday to prepare for a class I was to teach. This was during the height of the dot-com boom, so everybody wanted to let me but 5 different people each had to ask their boss if it was okay, and finally the last guy called some government official. Then they gave me permission to work on Saturday. That's commie! Errrm, actually, no, that's bureaucracy - a universal failing.To attribute every evil to communism is a typically American phobia. g If you want some classic examples of that sort of bureaucracy (and worse) in a bastion of the 'free world', read 'Big Blues: The Unmaking of IBM'.That bit about the five different people having to ask their boss is quintessential IBM (as described in the book). And it was all achieved by IBM themselves, unaided by any Government agency. I know that recently IBM has been putting some significant cash into Linux development - for their sake (and Linux's) I just hope their internal procedures have got a lot more efficient since the days when that book was written. cr -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [OT Why GB English is different] Re: Mozilla firefox en-gb
On Wed, 26 May 2004 04:11, William Ballard wrote: On Tue, May 25, 2004 at 07:50:18PM +1200, cr wrote: On Tue, 25 May 2004 07:47, William Ballard wrote: On Mon, May 24, 2004 at 02:30:22PM -0400, Daniel Barclay wrote: In 123 there is no one or twenty three written there, but that doesn't mean those words aren't used in pronouncing the number written as 123. What digit corresponds to and? And what digit corresponds to 'hundred' ? (Or 'thousand' or 'million' yadda yadda...) Numbers are not spoken the way they are written, either in English or any other language I know of. (Other than telephone numbers and serial numbers, that is) And in English (I mean 'British English', though that term always strikes me as tautological if not oxymoronic),'and' is invariably used between the 'hundreds' and the 'tens' figure, as in 'two hundred AND thirty-seven'. Eh. Go figure. There's no right or wrong. My teachers taught me that was incorrect, low-class, common. Well then the whole of the UK must be incorrect, low-class and common. ;) From where I'm standing, two hundred thirty-seven sounds just plain *wrong*. It's a matter of local (/national) custom. cr -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [OT Why GB English is different] Re: Mozilla firefox en-gb
On Tue, 25 May 2004 07:47, William Ballard wrote: On Mon, May 24, 2004 at 02:30:22PM -0400, Daniel Barclay wrote: In 123 there is no one or twenty three written there, but that doesn't mean those words aren't used in pronouncing the number written as 123. What digit corresponds to and? And what digit corresponds to 'hundred' ? (Or 'thousand' or 'million' yadda yadda...) Numbers are not spoken the way they are written, either in English or any other language I know of. (Other than telephone numbers and serial numbers, that is) And in English (I mean 'British English', though that term always strikes me as tautological if not oxymoronic),'and' is invariably used between the 'hundreds' and the 'tens' figure, as in 'two hundred AND thirty-seven'. cr -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Upgrading Debian
On Sat, 08 May 2004 16:49, Silvan wrote: On Friday 07 May 2004 11:06 pm, cr wrote: year or two. Grabbing new stuff by modem just takes patience. It helps if you don't pay for your connectivity by the hour too. Ah. I do (or rather, I have a fixed number of hours prer month on dial-up). Gack. Well, I suppose your original statement must be reaffirmed in your case then. It definitely eats time. Rather more significantly, I only have one telephone line - so when my computer's on line, phone ain't working. *And* I can never guarantee the In my case, it helps that nobody ever calls except spammers anyway. The phone being busy is no big deal. In fact, I miss being on the phone all the time. Now it rings, and I have to deal with spammers. :( line won't drop for some reason, so leaving the thing running overnight isn't really a solution. I had horrible problems with my line, and I thought they were all the phone company's fault. Turned out that the connections outside in the box were corroded. I cleaned them up and went from 28.8 being typical, with frequent drops, to being able to stay connected for hours at 50.66. It made a big difference, and it was a five minute fix. I was astonished that it turned out to be so simple. (In my case, we had a huge amount of rain, and my connection was going to pot on rainy days. It was fine after a couple dry days. I figured there was water getting into some little green box somewhere along the way.) Wish I could say the same - if it was in my wiring I could do something about it. It's an intermittent that usually lasts several days at a time.I can *hear* the line noise - on the phone. And it persists even when I disconnect all the house wiring and hook my phone / modem direct to the incoming line. For me, the clincher was when the phone company tech came to check, went out to the junction box in the street, disconnected the line from the exchange - crackle stopped - and reconnected it - crackle restarted.And then the tech told me it must be something in _my_ equipment.I suppose that's the official line. :( And it isn't as if I'm the _only_ person living in this house.I can contemplate a 5MB download, *very* occasionally, but that's my limit. I make the house payments, so anybody else living here can get over it. :) You are obviously not married g So, for me, spending a few bucks to get the CD's posted to me is much less hassle and takes much less of my time. Obviously, this depends on individual circumstances. Indeed. For me it was a question of time. 36 hours is a long time, but still faster than waiting several days for CDs to arrive in the mail. Cheaper too, for me. Two different sorts of time. Your method gets you updated sooner. Mine takes longer but uses very little of my time while waiting. (And I do shop around to get CD's at the best price). cr -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Upgrading Debian
On Sat, 08 May 2004 16:24, Cybe R. Wizard wrote: Yea, verily, I say unto you that on this date (Sat, 8 May 2004 14:10:52 +1200) cr [EMAIL PROTECTED] did appear within my Magick Viewing Screen and, being somewhat pleasantly supplicatory, did polemicize thusly: Yes, sitting behind a 56k modem (or a 28k which is what I'm stuck with when line noise sets in!), a major upgrade of several packages is really only practical off CD's. This turns out not to be the case unless you are billed by the minute. I recently blew away my system (for something to do, OK?) and re-installed everything starting with a Libranet 1.9.1 CD containing mostly potato. Stripping, updating to the newest stable, then testing, then to unstable and getting the several other programs I need which weren't included on the original CD took about 35-38 hours on 56k dialup. I did it in several bouts across several successive nights and everything has come off without a hitch. (well, except that I am now back to the 2.4.3 kernel and still haven't addressed that) Cybe R. Wizard -wow, everything's /so/ glossy now! OK, we now have many testaments that it is possible to build a whole system on a 56k dialup.Which I didn't actually dispute. I just said that for many people (such as me), circumstances make it impractical or at least not the favoured option to install a system that way. I could, for example, pay for a second phone line, or broadband, or get myself a mobile phone (no 3 in the household), thus freeing up the house line for my computer. I may do one or more of those some day. For now, it's simply more cost-effective for me to buy CD's. cr -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Upgrading Debian
On Sat, 08 May 2004 16:49, Silvan wrote: On Friday 07 May 2004 11:06 pm, cr wrote: year or two. Grabbing new stuff by modem just takes patience. It helps if you don't pay for your connectivity by the hour too. Ah. I do (or rather, I have a fixed number of hours prer month on dial-up). Gack. Well, I suppose your original statement must be reaffirmed in your case then. It definitely eats time. Rather more significantly, I only have one telephone line - so when my computer's on line, phone ain't working. *And* I can never guarantee the In my case, it helps that nobody ever calls except spammers anyway. The phone being busy is no big deal. In fact, I miss being on the phone all the time. Now it rings, and I have to deal with spammers. :( line won't drop for some reason, so leaving the thing running overnight isn't really a solution. I had horrible problems with my line, and I thought they were all the phone company's fault. Turned out that the connections outside in the box were corroded. I cleaned them up and went from 28.8 being typical, with frequent drops, to being able to stay connected for hours at 50.66. It made a big difference, and it was a five minute fix. I was astonished that it turned out to be so simple. (In my case, we had a huge amount of rain, and my connection was going to pot on rainy days. It was fine after a couple dry days. I figured there was water getting into some little green box somewhere along the way.) Wish I could say the same - if it was in my wiring I could do something about it. It's an intermittent that usually lasts several days at a time.I can *hear* the line noise - on the phone. And it persists even when I disconnect all the house wiring and hook my phone / modem direct to the incoming line. For me, the clincher was when the phone company tech came to check, went out to the junction box in the street, disconnected the line from the exchange - crackle stopped - and reconnected it - crackle restarted.And then the tech told me it must be something in _my_ equipment.I suppose that's the official line. :( And it isn't as if I'm the _only_ person living in this house.I can contemplate a 5MB download, *very* occasionally, but that's my limit. I make the house payments, so anybody else living here can get over it. :) You are obviously not married g So, for me, spending a few bucks to get the CD's posted to me is much less hassle and takes much less of my time. Obviously, this depends on individual circumstances. Indeed. For me it was a question of time. 36 hours is a long time, but still faster than waiting several days for CDs to arrive in the mail. Cheaper too, for me. Two different sorts of time. Your method gets you updated sooner. Mine takes longer but uses very little of my time while waiting. (And I do shop around to get CD's at the best price). cr -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Upgrading Debian
On Sat, 08 May 2004 16:24, Cybe R. Wizard wrote: Yea, verily, I say unto you that on this date (Sat, 8 May 2004 14:10:52 +1200) cr [EMAIL PROTECTED] did appear within my Magick Viewing Screen and, being somewhat pleasantly supplicatory, did polemicize thusly: Yes, sitting behind a 56k modem (or a 28k which is what I'm stuck with when line noise sets in!), a major upgrade of several packages is really only practical off CD's. This turns out not to be the case unless you are billed by the minute. I recently blew away my system (for something to do, OK?) and re-installed everything starting with a Libranet 1.9.1 CD containing mostly potato. Stripping, updating to the newest stable, then testing, then to unstable and getting the several other programs I need which weren't included on the original CD took about 35-38 hours on 56k dialup. I did it in several bouts across several successive nights and everything has come off without a hitch. (well, except that I am now back to the 2.4.3 kernel and still haven't addressed that) Cybe R. Wizard -wow, everything's /so/ glossy now! OK, we now have many testaments that it is possible to build a whole system on a 56k dialup.Which I didn't actually dispute. I just said that for many people (such as me), circumstances make it impractical or at least not the favoured option to install a system that way. I could, for example, pay for a second phone line, or broadband, or get myself a mobile phone (no 3 in the household), thus freeing up the house line for my computer. I may do one or more of those some day. For now, it's simply more cost-effective for me to buy CD's. cr -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Upgrading Debian
On Sun, 09 May 2004 00:37, John Hasler wrote: cr writes: And it persists even when I disconnect all the house wiring and hook my phone / modem direct to the incoming line. That pretty well proves that it's in their system. For me, the clincher was when the phone company tech came to check, went out to the junction box in the street, disconnected the line from the exchange - crackle stopped - and reconnected it - crackle restarted. That doesn't prove anything. There is no loop current when the line is unplugged. Ah.So it is actually possible (I'm not saying 'probable' :) that there is a fault between the street and the incoming junction box in my house, which is only apparent when powered up? Amazing what I learn on deb-user! g cr -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [OT Why GB English is different] Re: Mozilla firefox en-gb
On Fri, 07 May 2004 00:33, William Ballard wrote: On Fri, May 07, 2004 at 12:12:06AM +1200, cr wrote: Yes I know exactly which meaning of the word 'affect' you were using. Since your comment was IIRC in response to my post, I wondered if you thought I was American, or were you referring to someone else? Nope, I'm American, and even though I like flavour and colour and find your use of billion and trillion intriguing because you can count higher without having to use words like sexigiliion, still I have to not adopt too many British customs because it gets goofy. Okay, you were referring to yourself, then, I take it. It is of course entirely acceptable to refer to oneself in mildly deprecatory tones. I have occasion to do it all the time g For instance, if I were to start using the British billion, it would just be dumb. And if I start talking about pubs and fags, people roll their eyes. I like *a lot* of Britishisms. One of my favorites is to call a carton of cigarettes Two Hundred -- although I won't call them fags. Give me 200, please. Another real problem for me is I *really* like the Contenintal style of writing the dates: dd/mm/yy. That's the standard British style, actually. I've never used any other. I remember a TV western (!) from years ago where some plot point hinged on the date of a will and it turned out that the writer of the will was British - so '5/12/97' was 7 months later than originally assumed But you can cause *endless* confusion by not just going with the flow. I had a Math prof. once who was also sort of my philosopical/Jungian psych. mentor tell me that one should just use Month Day, Year because in our culture the year is usually well known, and it is important to contexualize the Month and Day quickly -- Sounds like a 'just so' story to me ;) but he mostly was telling me why the fuck did I want to go be difficult Yeah, that sounds more likely.:) cr -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Upgrading Debian
On Fri, 07 May 2004 20:22, mags wrote: Are there packages from Testing and Unstable on the Debian CD's (3.02 etc)? or just Stable. I'm interested in installing Debian, but many packages in stable seem a little out of date, and an upgrade with a 56k modem looks as though it would take forever. Thanks for your help Mags Yes, sitting behind a 56k modem (or a 28k which is what I'm stuck with when line noise sets in!), a major upgrade of several packages is really only practical off CD's. If you're after more recent packages, there are resellers who will supply by mail the latest downloaded version of Sarge on CD - that's a good source of packages for upgrading Woody (3.0). Of course, it's not all guaranteed to work yet. Or you could try Knoppix, which is Debian based and has very recent packages. cr -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Upgrade to Sarge kills X
On Fri, 07 May 2004 01:45, Kent West wrote: cr wrote: Well, I still haven't been able to make my Sarge-upgraded-from-Woody system start X successfully.(I'm using a text login and 'startx' to try and start X). I briefly get the grey dotted screen with the 'X' on it, then it drops out again. Ah. X is starting, but it's not finding any clients to run, so it immediately exits. Try creating the file .xinitrc in your home directory with the single line: icewm (assuming you have icewm installed; this line could be startkde, or gnome-session or fluxbox, or wmaker, or etc etc etc). Tried that.No result. Curiously enough, my (working) Woody setup has no .xinitrc in it either. Doing a 'find' for it shows that my Fedora Core 1 and Vector installations have .xinitrc files. Knoppix doesn't, and Woody doesn't. Next interesting thing - typing 'xinit' brings up a bare X window (with no window manager). Typing 'gnome-session' in that window brings up an error message libbonobo-2.so.0: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory 'startkde' brings up 'cannot find startkde...' Copying /usr/bin/startkde from Woody, I then get '/usr/bin/kde2: No such file or directory' Copying kde2 from Woody, I then get a list of a lot more files not found However, 'afterstep' - works!Rather badly, I might add, since I've never configured it, but I can manage to get a menu and load e.g. gedit, and open a text file in gedit. So my conclusion is, the problem isn't in X itself, or the video drivers (which is what I was suspecting), but in the window managers, which have somehow got broken in the upgrade. I'll fiddle around with them and see if I can fix it. So you're right about the symptoms, X is starting, but it can't find any clients _that work_ to run. Thanks cr -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Upgrading Debian
On Sat, 08 May 2004 14:30, Silvan wrote: On Friday 07 May 2004 10:21 pm, John Hasler wrote: cr writes: Yes, sitting behind a 56k modem (or a 28k which is what I'm stuck with when line noise sets in!), a major upgrade of several packages is really only practical off CD's. I don't find that to be the case. Me neither. When I dist-upgraded to Sarge from Woody, it was rather painful. I think it took 36 hours or so to get everything. After that, I used an update early, update often philosophy. I usually only had to get a thing or two, but it did get ugly a few times when there was a glibc update or a new version of X. I tried to stay away from packages that kept changing pointlessly. Download the kernel source six times because people kept changing things related to extremely obscure options that didn't affect me anyway, for example. I won't say it was a wonderful experience, but I got by that way for a year or two. Grabbing new stuff by modem just takes patience. It helps if you don't pay for your connectivity by the hour too. Ah. I do (or rather, I have a fixed number of hours prer month on dial-up). Rather more significantly, I only have one telephone line - so when my computer's on line, phone ain't working. *And* I can never guarantee the line won't drop for some reason, so leaving the thing running overnight isn't really a solution.And it isn't as if I'm the _only_ person living in this house.I can contemplate a 5MB download, *very* occasionally, but that's my limit. So, for me, spending a few bucks to get the CD's posted to me is much less hassle and takes much less of my time. Obviously, this depends on individual circumstances. cr -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Upgrade to Sarge kills X
On Sun, 02 May 2004 21:08, Niels L. Ellegaard wrote: cr [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: The upgrade asked me a number of questions about my monitor and video card, some of which I probably got wrong, but it made no visible difference as my /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 is completely unchanged. During the upgrade you are asked a set of questions about the system. Ideally the answers to these questions should result in a new XF86Config-4. So ideally you should never be forced to edit your XF86Config-4 yourselves. If you wish to change the settings of your x-server, you can write the following dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xfree86 If you edit your XF86Config-4 yourselves after the update, then you have to do a bit of work to force dpkg-reconfigure to take control of XF86Config-4 again. The following header explains it nicely. # This file is automatically updated on xserver-xfree86 package upgrades *only* # if it has not been modified since the last upgrade of the xserver-xfree86 # package. Yes, that explains *exactly* why dist-upgrade didn't alter my XF86Config-4 grin The only thing it didn't do was put up an error message saying You've been all over this with your great flat feet so I ain't touching it :) # # If you have edited this file but would like it to be automatically updated # again, run the following commands as root: # # cp /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 /etc/X11/XF86Config-4.custom # md5sum /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 /var/lib/xfree86/XF86Config-4.md5sum # dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xfree86 Just tried that. xserver-xfree86 is broken or not fully installed So now we know g Now you can use dpkg-reconfigure to create an XF86Config-4 that is taylored for the version of xfree86 that comes with Sarge. Perhaps this will help. (Remember not to delete the old version XF86Config-4 :) No danger of that, since all of Woody is still working in /dev/hda1. It's only the copy in /dev/hda2 that I risked upgrading.Paranoia is good :) : I tried looking at /var/log/XFree86.0.log, but couldn't see anything with an EE (error) against it, and only one WW (warning) - Cannot open APM - which I've got in Woody anyway. Well actually I had a somewhat similar problem myself (Bug Bug#204603). When I use Xserver-4.2 I get a signal 11 with no further intelligible error messages. If your log looks somewhat like mine, then you are doomed :) If they look different, then you should perhaps post the entire log http://lists.debian.org/debian-x/2003/debian-x-200308/msg00177.html http://groups.google.dk/groups?th=9ac4ac009ab6e231 I'll go check that out and see if I can spot anything significant. Regards cr (back in Woody) Personally I got a nice system by using xserver-xfree86 from woody, and everything else from Sarge. This is not perfect, but at least it seems to work. It was easy to achieve this by editing my /etc/apt/preferences. (See APT-HOWTO). I have something like this: Package: xserver-xfree86 Pin: release a=stable Pin-Priority: 800 Package: * Pin: release a=testing Pin-Priority: 600 I just tried that again - wiped the partition, copied the whole Woody over, pinned xserver as above, did a complete dist-upgrade - same result. Ah well, I'll fiddle around some more and see if any blinding light dawns. Thanks cr ... The answer, when found, will be obvious -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: sarge?
On Sun, 02 May 2004 02:38, Carl Fink wrote: Of course (and perhaps properly) us mere users can't vote. All we can do is bitch on mailing lists. My opinion is that Debian's absurdly slow release schedule is the only reason it isn't the leading distro. Now, many developers (who own the project) don't *care* whether it's the leading distro, which I understand. The slow releases are also a great inconvenience to people who *use* Debian. In particular, stable is so out-of-date as to be unusable on current hardware THE MAJORITY OF THE TIME, which is frankly absurd. Sure, you can compile your own kernel and download from backports.org or apt-get.org and roll your own when that doesn't work and The fact is, only maybe .5% even of Linux users are going to go through that. Why use a distribution if you are going to make components yourself anyway? I've been tempted to become a Debian developer specifically to propose a fixed release schedule: Sarge becomes frozen every six months, whatever state it's in. Period. Unfortunately my current insane commute is eating all my time. -- Carl Fink [EMAIL PROTECTED] Jabootu's Minister of Proofreading http://www.jabootu.com From the average moderately dumb user point of view, I think the slow release schedule definitely slows down Debian adoption, for precisely the reason Carl said - much new hardware (which includes new peripherals) won't work with Woody. For example, my digital camera and my scanner. Undoubtedly I could download and install the latest SANE and gphoto releases, but I've tried that and run into snags which my limited time / technical knowledge can't solve. It's just simpler to install Fedora and (shudder) Win98 on spare partitions and boot into them whenever I need to. Which then leads one to think, if I'm booting Fedora, why use Debian? g (Because I've got a stable Woody system tuned the way I like it, and Fedora is missing a couple of apps I like, mostly).I'd like to upgrade to Sarge Real Soon Now but it would be nice to have a Stable version to make it worth the effort. As it happens, tonight I'm going to help a friend who's just bought a new Windows box and is curious about Linux, we'll repartition his hard drive and install a Linux on it.If Sarge was 'stable' (with a finished installer) I'd put that on it, as it is I'll probably give him Knoppix and Fedora to choose from. There are quite a lot of distros out there 'built on' Debian, notably Knoppix. I wonder if Debian is destined to become primarily the 'base system' for other peoples' more up-to-date, pre-packaged distros? The only drawback with those distros from a user's point of view is that one is stuck with the more limited range of apps those distros offer, and installing extra apps is not always that simple. That's why from my POV a reasonably up-to-date Stable would be the preferred choice. cr -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Upgrade to Sarge kills X
On Sun, 02 May 2004 00:38, Kent West wrote: cr wrote: However, on trying startx,I got the grey screen with the 'X' for a moment then it dropped back to the login screen. (I'm using a text login). X is starting, but it's not finding any clients to run. Try creating a file in your home directory named .xinitrc (notice the dot) and put the single line in it icewm (assuming you have icewm installed; otherwise use whatever client you want to start, such as xterm, startkde, gnome-session, etc). If that works, you're one step closer. Many thanks for the suggestion, but creating a file in /home/cr (and one in /home) called .xinitrc, contents 'gnome-session', had no effect. (And, looking at this old Woody setup that actually works, I don't seem to have a .xinitrc anywhere :) What I do get on trying to start X, is an error message X warning; process set to priority -11 instead of requested priority -10 (I didn't see this before since it had scrolled off the top of the screen earlier, till I removed an unfound font from XF86Config-4 and its error message stopped) How do I check and change priorities? - and why would dist-upgrade have changed the priority anyway? (And, which 'process' might that be?) Regards cr -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Query
On Sun, 30 Nov 2003 14:25, dhiraj kiran wrote: Hello, I have a query pertaining to Debian Linux installation. For the complete installation of Debian Linux(on line installation), is it a must that I have a LAN internet connection? The installation manual clearly indicates that the essential prerequisite for installation is having a network card. Can I do the installation through a dialup connection, since I do not have an ethernet(n/w) card and mine is a standalone PC? Dhiraj I believe you can, but it will take 'forever' on a dial-up. Several hundred megabytes at least. You're much better off to get the CD-ROMs by mail order (search in Google for a supplier). The first two of the seven CDs contain *almost* all the programs you're likely to want for a typical installation (and you can fill in any extras by dial-up). cr -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: KDE - GNOME (some Questions)
On Wed, 26 Nov 2003 00:29, Shri Shrikumar wrote: Hi All, I recently switched from KDE to GNOME and I love it. However, I have a few questions that I hope someone can answer. * How can I use the win key. In the shortcuts setting, whenever I click the win key - the shortcut just turns to disabled. Other key combinations with Ctrl, Alt etc. work. Win works with KDE as well. * KDE has this neat feature where you can right click the window taskbar and select Always On Top Is it possible to get this with GNOME? * How can I hide the mount points from the desktop - I have a few network shares and the icons on the desktop are very annoying and space consuming. * Also, does anyone know of a good PHP editor like Quanta. I tried bluefish but it doesnt let me change the background color from white. Quanta seems to run fine under Gnome (not that I use more than a fraction of its capabilities).. cr -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Please, no GUI boot.
On Tue, 18 Nov 2003 03:38, Jonathan Dowland wrote: On Mon, Nov 17, 2003 at 02:19:25AM -0800, Tom wrote: On Mon, Nov 17, 2003 at 10:10:20AM +0100, guran wrote: Hi I have a sarge installation and only got to chose between gdm and xdm. I have read the thread on GUI login screen and have a difficulty to decide what to do to get rid of a graphic login. You can uninstall both xdm and gdm. Then you just get a console login. However, here's an idea... x-display-manager is managed by update-alternatives (afaik?) and offers a choice between the ones installed on the system. Does anyone agree it would be a good idea to offer 'none' for this choice? It would for me. I've been tolerating a Xdm login for a few weeks (I knew enough *not* to install kdm or gdm when I installed Woody this time but I wasn't sure about xdm so left it in).And undecided whether to just uninstall xdm or whether that might break something else. From this thread it looks like I can safely lose xdm... but an explicit option to do so would be reassuring. cr -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Workspace/desktop switching
On Tue, 18 Nov 2003 20:19, Alex Malinovich wrote: I've been seeing a lot of discussions about various WM's lately, and everyone seems to be extremely concerned about easy workspace switching. I'm just wondering what exactly everyone uses workspaces for? Every once in a while, if I'm doing two things at once that each require 5 windows a piece, I'll use two desktops/workspaces, but I don't think I've ever really gone over that. That leads me to believe that there's some unrealized benefit that I'm missing out on. So what do you use your workspaces for, and why are they so important? It's a personal thing, I think. The first Linux system I installed (Red Hat 5) gave me 4 workspaces by default, and I just got used to having each app on a different workspace - even to the extent of having the KPPP dialler on a different workspace from Kmail or Opera. I find it much easier to keep track of separate windows if, instead of overlapping, they're each on a different workspace.(It's also something Windoze can't do, which is always a plus in my opinion :) Now I've got so used to it, I'd really miss it if I couldn't do it that way. (When I have to use Windoze, I habitually minimise any apps I'm not using right at that moment, so I typically only have one window on the screen at once. This has the same effect as my Linux habit, but is slower. I just like to have an uncluttered screen). cr -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Totally [OT] Re: Opium
On Sun, 16 Nov 2003 09:52, Tom wrote: On Sat, Nov 15, 2003 at 06:51:41PM +0800, csj wrote: On Fri, 14 Nov 2003 17:32:22 -0600, Hoyt Bailey wrote: [1] For those (particularly non-US citizens) who don't know, back in the mid-1990s, 2 white teenagers from a affluent family walked into their High School armed with rifles and pistols. They proceed- ed to blow away those they didn't like, whatever the reason. I have heard a lot about some movie about guns in US called Bowling For Columbine. I haven't see it yet, but friend have told it's very good. Now I know where the name came from. You might be interested in the other side. I have owned guns since I was 13 now 69. Havent shot anyone yet and no plans to do so. 1 of 250e6 I have never owned a gun and I haven't shot anyone either. Cultural differences I guess. In most other countries, only war, crime and drug lords are allowed to own guns. It keeps the world a much simpler place, rather than having potentially 200M average Joes and Janes with the potential to do you in. The original purpose of the 2nd ammendment was something like: If you think the politicians you've got are assholes now just see what they'd be like if the populace couldn't shoot them if they acted up. I see.I just *knew* there was some reason why Kennedy (plural?), Reagan, Wallace, Martin Luther King and a few others got shot.It was the constitution working as intended.;) Too bad for John Lennon that someone mistook him for a politician, though. cr -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Opium [was: Re: freelance sysadmining -- superlong -- [WAS: Red Hat recommends Windows for consumers]]
On Sat, 15 Nov 2003 15:06, Ron Johnson wrote: On Fri, 2003-11-14 at 15:41, ScruLoose wrote: On Fri, Nov 14, 2003 at 02:09:27PM -0600, Ron Johnson wrote: On Fri, 2003-11-14 at 12:41, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Fri, Nov 14, 2003 at 01:35:20PM -0500, Alfredo Valles wrote: I don't think they will do so well with the number of guns you have in the streets, bullets don't distinguish Ph degrees. PhDs and brains don't go hand-in-hand; part of being smart is knowing how to work within whatever cultural limitations you must; in the case of firearm-owning Americans, you just need to be smart enough not to not get on their bad side. Social engineering at its most useful. There are roughly 40M handguns in this country, and quite a number of states have right to carry concealed handgun laws. If the vast majority of people had such a low level of self-control, we should see, for example, multiple Columbines[1] on a daily basis. Since we don't, what conclusion can we draw from this? Well, when you look at the US figures on firearm-related fatalities being up in the tens of thousands per year... compared to (for example) Canada with a couple of hundred per year (and tight gun control laws, what a bizarre coincidence)... http://209.157.64.200/focus/f-news/994015/posts I realize that Canada has about one-tenth the population of USA, but that still gives you per-capita rates that say Americans are somewhere on the order of ten _times_ as likely to blow each other away. Does it take multiple Columbines on a daily basis to constitute a problem? Somewhere close to a hundred Americans blow each other away _per_day_ and you want this to lead me to the conclusion that things are okay? And... - most are done with hot weapons - most are criminal-on-criminal I'd rather not live in a nanny state, and take my chance, however minimal they are, in a slightly more anarchic society. That's kinda a risky argument to rely on, since if accepted it inevitably leads to the question - why does the US have ten times as many homicidal criminals per capita, than other countries? Answers in the back of an envelope please, addressed to the Director-General, FBI, Washington (I guess he'd dearly like to know...) vbeg cr -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Opium [was: Re: freelance sysadmining -- superlong -- [WAS: Red Hat recommends Windows for consumers]]
On Sun, 16 Nov 2003 05:01, Ron Johnson wrote: On Sat, 2003-11-15 at 05:08, cr wrote: On Sat, 15 Nov 2003 15:06, Ron Johnson wrote: On Fri, 2003-11-14 at 15:41, ScruLoose wrote: On Fri, Nov 14, 2003 at 02:09:27PM -0600, Ron Johnson wrote: On Fri, 2003-11-14 at 12:41, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Fri, Nov 14, 2003 at 01:35:20PM -0500, Alfredo Valles wrote: [snip] Does it take multiple Columbines on a daily basis to constitute a problem? Somewhere close to a hundred Americans blow each other away _per_day_ and you want this to lead me to the conclusion that things are okay? And... - most are done with hot weapons - most are criminal-on-criminal I'd rather not live in a nanny state, and take my chance, however minimal they are, in a slightly more anarchic society. That's kinda a risky argument to rely on, since if accepted it inevitably leads to the question - why does the US have ten times as many homicidal criminals per capita, than other countries? Answers in the back of an envelope please, addressed to the Director-General, FBI, Washington (I guess he'd dearly like to know...) vbeg You think the (main) reasons why the US has become a relatively violent society over the past 45 years would fit on the back of an envelope? Well, lets see what's on the top of my head: - breakdown of the family - divorce/abandonment - fear by modern parents of damaging children's self-esteem - parents wanting to be friends - federal regs that make it financially more attractive for the father to leave. - excessive amounts of TV - breakdown of public morality - libertine-ism instead of liberty - for *example*, the HBOization of broadcast TV - ties in with breakdown of the family - growth in use of illegal drugs, in past ~40 years - ties into breakdown of the family and breakdown of public morality While I agree about the trashiness of most modern TV, not least in its trivial reporting of 'news' events, surely all these factors exist in other countries too? But anyway, this is all way OT in this list, and I don't know the magic ingredient, so I think I'll leave it there. cr -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Social Engineering. {was: Re: Opium [was: Re: freelance sysadmining -- superlong -- [WAS: Red Hat recommends Windows for consumers]]
On Sat, 15 Nov 2003 10:12, David Palmer. wrote: On Fri, 14 Nov 2003 14:44:33 -0600 Ron Johnson [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Fri, 2003-11-14 at 14:48, David Palmer. wrote: On Fri, 14 Nov 2003 10:41:32 -0800 Agreed. Einstein failed a maths exam, didn't see the sense in memorising multiplication tables when they were already written down. The education programme, which varies extensively with any particular environment, is initiated from approved texts. The most successful(individuals?) within the restrictions of the imposed paradigms gains the appropriate marks of social approval. Thinking outside the square and other symptoms of intelligence are looked down upon. and even derogated. The modern 'educational' process is there to teach people how to read just well enough so that they no longer need to think. Regards, It seems to me that the most successful would be those who can master the social needs (get good grades from approved testbooks, etc), while still being able to think outside the box. These potentially highly dangerous individuals are confined to institutions known as 'research centres', and if non conforming are seen as a disruptive and undesirable element by the established social order, and are further relegated to the classification of 'terrorist'. Regards, David. Yeah. I'm waiting for Micro$oft to figure out some way to label GNU/Linux as a 'terrorist' operating system. I'm sure they're working on it cr -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Opium [was: Re: freelance sysadmining -- superlong -- [WAS: Red Hat recommends Windows for consumers]]
On Sat, 15 Nov 2003 10:12, Ron Johnson wrote: On Fri, 2003-11-14 at 15:00, Alfredo Valles wrote: [1] For those (particularly non-US citizens) who don't know, back in the mid-1990s, 2 white teenagers from a affluent family walked into their High School armed with rifles and pistols. They proceed- ed to blow away those they didn't like, whatever the reason. I have heard a lot about some movie about guns in US called Bowling For Columbine. I haven't see it yet, but friend have told it's very good. Now I know where the name came from. That movie's writer/director, Michael Moore, *hates* people who don't agree with him. So, if you watch the movie, remember that. ... which is just another way of saying, that he puts his point of view *very* effectively and you hate him because you don't agree with it, huh? ;) cr -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: heres my noob install questions, smart people please help
On Sat, 08 Nov 2003 02:22, Hoyt Bailey wrote: - Original Message - From: ScruLoose [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, November 06, 2003 21:47 Subject: Re: heres my noob install questions, smart people please help In linux or windows I dont qualify as smart but I have some experience with this subject. I think you are under some misconception about whats happening. I had a windows system and a RH system on the same disk. The RH system auto mounted the windows at /mnt/windows so I had access to all of the windows files it was easy to transfer xxx to RH by cp xxx xxx. I was mostly using gimp on the RH but could not think of a way to transfer from RH to windows except via floppy. Consider the following when windows is mounted on the linux system it is just a file on a directory (mnt/windows) windows isnt running! Should you write a file to /mnt/windows there is nothing to check for free space, Surely the Linux that you're running will check for free space if you write to a FAT32 partition? nothing to register the file as far as windows is concerned the file dosent exist but you have corrupted the system by overwriting files that it knows about. What would happen ? Who knows! Hmmm... I have a Lose98 partition on my box...maybe I'll just copy a couple of files to it and see what happens when I boot w98 again (Btw, DOS doesn't care if I do that.Nor is DOS nearly so paranoid about where it boots from.A far superior OS to Windows, is DOS 8) cr -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Red Hat recommends Windows for consumers
On Sat, 08 Nov 2003 07:27, Ron Johnson wrote: On Fri, 2003-11-07 at 11:45, Jonathan Dowland wrote: On Fri, Nov 07, 2003 at 11:01:58AM -0600, Ron Johnson wrote: As in proprietary, closed-source apps? Well, that depends on if you see them as a problem, or something that you prefer not to use. I prefer not to use proprietary, closed-source apps, but, when necessary, will pay for them, and use them, even on Debian. Personally I haven't really made my mind up about prioprietry apps, and whether RMS is right or not. However, the success of Linux is widely attributed to the open-source development model, so I can't really see the future of Linux throwing it away. I'm all for the open-source development model. However, we must respect that some companies want to keep their source closed, and still sell to the Linux market. (snip) Personally, I think the battle should be about open *standards*.I think Open Source is good, but I quite happily use as my preferred browser, Opera (which I'm pretty sure isn't Open Source), in preference to Konq or Galeon. Just a matter of personal preference. What I won't tolerate (when I have any say in the matter) is proprietary standards whereby one company tries to establish a monopoly (and yes I do mean Microsoft).Anybody sends me a Word doc is likely to be asked to send it again in some open format.I don't care that Open Office can read it (though I rather welcome the existence of OO - anything that helps to undermine the Evil Empire can't be bad :) Unfortunately I can't apply this at work. cr -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Red Hat recommends Windows for consumers
On Sat, 08 Nov 2003 10:28, Mike Mueller wrote: On Friday 07 November 2003 13:27, Ron Johnson wrote: On Fri, 2003-11-07 at 11:45, Jonathan Dowland wrote: On Fri, Nov 07, 2003 at 11:01:58AM -0600, Ron Johnson wrote: As in proprietary, closed-source apps? Well, that depends on if you see them as a problem, or something that you prefer not to use. snip Personally I haven't really made my mind up about prioprietry apps, and whether RMS is right or not. However, the success of Linux is widely attributed to the open-source development model, so I can't really see the future of Linux throwing it away. I'm all for the open-source development model. However, we must respect that some companies want to keep their source closed, and still sell to the Linux market. I'm fascinated with this question from a practical perspective. The RMS model works when producers can afford to present a gift or when a community organizes to accomplish a goal (barn-raising, for example). Let's say you're a barn builder. People need barns and are used to buying barns now-a-days. You go around to the community and suggest a community barn-raising project. Everyone agrees but you soon find out the participants are barn users and not barn builders. The community is more than happy to use the barn you give them for free if you'll do it for free. You talk to your family and they remind you that they'll starve if you build barns for free. So you offer to build barns for a price and you find that people are willing to buy the barns because they don't want to learn barn-building. Your barn idea works fine in that mythical beast, a 'free market'. The problem we are faced with, is that the biggest barn builder has managed to run every other barn builder out of town and now has a monopoly on barns, sells only one (patented) model that falls down after a few years and needs replacement, and charges exorbitant prices for them. Nobody else can afford to start a barn-building business because, one way or another, Mr Big will buy them out, intimidate the lumber merchants not to sell to them, threaten them with copyright lawsuits, or (if sufficiently pushed) drop the prices on his barns just until they are forced out of business. Maybe the only way to break the bastard is for enough prospective barn owners to get together and start co-operatively building barns. cr -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Some newbie questions
On Thu, 06 Nov 2003 04:49, Bijan Soleymani wrote: On Wed, Nov 05, 2003 at 08:49:48AM -0500, Roberto Sanchez wrote: Alexey Buistov wrote: Hello Debian fans! The sixth iso image of binary woody is being downloaded to my machine right now, but I'm still having plenty of questions concerning Debian installation and even pre-installation. Please point me to some doco or answer directly in mailing list: First, you probably only need the first CD. I have only rearely heard of situations where anyone *requires* any of the other CDs. That is usually because they have special or strange hardware that will not boot the regular kernel on the first CD. People with dial-up may appreciate the other CDs. I currently don't have an internet connection at home, so I especially need them. Bijan I'm on dial-up, and I have just the first two (Woody) CD's, and I've only ever found *one* app I wanted that wasn't on one of those two - Kppp. (I downloaded that separately). In other words, CD's 1 and 2 probably contain almost everything an average user (certainly a newbie user) is likely to want. cr -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Mainframe thin-client (was Re: Microsoft good press over Longhorn)
On Tue, 04 Nov 2003 20:19, Ron Johnson wrote: On Mon, 2002-11-04 at 00:06, cr wrote: On Tue, 04 Nov 2003 01:15, Ron Johnson wrote: On Sun, 2002-11-03 at 01:14, cr wrote: On Sun, 02 Nov 2003 23:37, Paul Johnson wrote: On Sat, Nov 01, 2003 at 05:13:01PM +, Pigeon wrote: Nah, that was EDIT.COM - before that appeared I used to use the Turbo C editor to edit text files; I think the guys who wrote EDIT.COM did too. I remember c:\dos\edit.com fondly as well, probably the best text editor to ever come out of MS. Still doesn't hold a flame to emacs, but hey, it's Microsoft we're talking about here, so what do you expect? Well, I discovered Edit when our department got a IBM PC with a dot-matrix printer. At that time we engineers had to write specifications on a mainframe terminal in some 'scripting' language, send them off to some queue, phone up Accounts (who owned the mainframe) and beg them nicely to run some compiler on it and send it to the Print queue, then phone up Printing and tell them it was ours. If we were lucky, next day, we'd get the result and (if we'd made no mistakes in our scripting!) it would be readable. If not... Nobody told me about Edit, I found it by accident. But as soon as I saw it I recognised The Future. Or, Freedom. I printed off one page to prove to myself that it would work, went to the mainframe terminal, logged in, typed Change Password, shut my eyes and typed in random letters, locking myself out of the detested mainframe forever.:) Does anyone wonder why I hate Thin Clients...? ;) I hate to use such strong words, but to compare the centralized control of resources that existed on *old* mainframes with the centralized control of resources on a thin-client/fat-server and find any but the most basic similarities is verging on delusion. After all, it's no more difficult to have a printer sitting on your desk, or down the hall with a TC/FS network-based system as it is when you have stand-alone or fat-client/thin-server system. And you're still running all the same apps, no matter what. The *major* similarity between mainframes and Thin Clients is, that as a user on a Thin Client, I am stuck with the software and the settings that are installed on the Fat Server (or whatever it's called).Those are *not* the same apps as I choose to run on my old W95 box, I can't install anything of my own on the server. (I already asked that one, and I knew what the answer would be.Mainframe Mentality is creeping back). Yes, that's true, and, being An Old Mainframe Guy, who still works on host-based systems (OpenVMS), I like the idea of being able to tell the user, No, you can *not* mangle your machine, then bitch at me for taking all day to try to fix what you broke, or all day and all night recovering the office from a virus/worm/trojan that you introduced onto the LAN. Or in other words, Don't let the users touch *anything*.I can see why that might appeal to a sysadmin... I hope it's obvious why it's anathema to me (as a user). I long ago came to an understanding with our IT guys - we don't want to know what you've got on it but don't expect us to fix it if it crashes, to quote one of them. I've respected that and avoided doing anything that might crash it, successfully so far. Hey, *I* don't use Outhouse Excess or Internet Exploiter with ActiveX and everything else set to auto-run.I won't be the one who clicks on the attachment in a strange email. ;) Also, standardization: with TC/FS, there's no possibility of 5 different versions of Windows (plus Service Packs), or a half dozen versions of kernels and distros floating around the org, causing weird incompatibilities. Well actually, we have that, since the various machines that are now used as de facto dumb terminals date from different vintages. And a number of things that worked previously on the network do not work properly on the Thin Client setup. On 'my' (actually the company's) old W95 box, I have Opera, graphics viewers, TOPIC=OFF Blech. Win95? That's so ancient, that, if kernel.org is to be believed (www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v1.2/), it's release coincides with linux-1.2.13.tar.bz2. /TOPIC Well, on a Pentium 150, W2K might not want to run very well. Officially 95 is just used to run a terminal window, thus allowing the company not to have to buy more expensive hardware just to run M$'s latest and greatest. Xbasic, a pretty cool screensaver, heaps of other W95 freeware. They're the only things that make using a Windoze box tolerable, for me. It's about freedom of choice, you know? Fortunately for me, I also have a considerable number of little engineering programs installed which justifies me keeping my old box. You run engineering apps
Re: Microsoft good press over Longhorn
On Sun, 02 Nov 2003 23:37, Paul Johnson wrote: On Sat, Nov 01, 2003 at 05:13:01PM +, Pigeon wrote: Nah, that was EDIT.COM - before that appeared I used to use the Turbo C editor to edit text files; I think the guys who wrote EDIT.COM did too. I remember c:\dos\edit.com fondly as well, probably the best text editor to ever come out of MS. Still doesn't hold a flame to emacs, but hey, it's Microsoft we're talking about here, so what do you expect? Well, I discovered Edit when our department got a IBM PC with a dot-matrix printer. At that time we engineers had to write specifications on a mainframe terminal in some 'scripting' language, send them off to some queue, phone up Accounts (who owned the mainframe) and beg them nicely to run some compiler on it and send it to the Print queue, then phone up Printing and tell them it was ours. If we were lucky, next day, we'd get the result and (if we'd made no mistakes in our scripting!) it would be readable. If not... Nobody told me about Edit, I found it by accident. But as soon as I saw it I recognised The Future. Or, Freedom. I printed off one page to prove to myself that it would work, went to the mainframe terminal, logged in, typed Change Password, shut my eyes and typed in random letters, locking myself out of the detested mainframe forever.:) Does anyone wonder why I hate Thin Clients...? ;) cr -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Mainframe thin-client (was Re: Microsoft good press over Longhorn)
On Tue, 04 Nov 2003 01:15, Ron Johnson wrote: On Sun, 2002-11-03 at 01:14, cr wrote: On Sun, 02 Nov 2003 23:37, Paul Johnson wrote: On Sat, Nov 01, 2003 at 05:13:01PM +, Pigeon wrote: Nah, that was EDIT.COM - before that appeared I used to use the Turbo C editor to edit text files; I think the guys who wrote EDIT.COM did too. I remember c:\dos\edit.com fondly as well, probably the best text editor to ever come out of MS. Still doesn't hold a flame to emacs, but hey, it's Microsoft we're talking about here, so what do you expect? Well, I discovered Edit when our department got a IBM PC with a dot-matrix printer. At that time we engineers had to write specifications on a mainframe terminal in some 'scripting' language, send them off to some queue, phone up Accounts (who owned the mainframe) and beg them nicely to run some compiler on it and send it to the Print queue, then phone up Printing and tell them it was ours. If we were lucky, next day, we'd get the result and (if we'd made no mistakes in our scripting!) it would be readable. If not... Nobody told me about Edit, I found it by accident. But as soon as I saw it I recognised The Future. Or, Freedom. I printed off one page to prove to myself that it would work, went to the mainframe terminal, logged in, typed Change Password, shut my eyes and typed in random letters, locking myself out of the detested mainframe forever.:) Does anyone wonder why I hate Thin Clients...? ;) I hate to use such strong words, but to compare the centralized control of resources that existed on *old* mainframes with the centralized control of resources on a thin-client/fat-server and find any but the most basic similarities is verging on delusion. After all, it's no more difficult to have a printer sitting on your desk, or down the hall with a TC/FS network-based system as it is when you have stand-alone or fat-client/thin-server system. And you're still running all the same apps, no matter what. The *major* similarity between mainframes and Thin Clients is, that as a user on a Thin Client, I am stuck with the software and the settings that are installed on the Fat Server (or whatever it's called).Those are *not* the same apps as I choose to run on my old W95 box, I can't install anything of my own on the server. (I already asked that one, and I knew what the answer would be.Mainframe Mentality is creeping back). On 'my' (actually the company's) old W95 box, I have Opera, graphics viewers, Xbasic, a pretty cool screensaver, heaps of other W95 freeware. They're the only things that make using a Windoze box tolerable, for me. It's about freedom of choice, you know? Fortunately for me, I also have a considerable number of little engineering programs installed which justifies me keeping my old box. Thin Clients might be suitable for copy typists, data entry clerks and Dumb Users.Certainly not for engineers or anybody who's likely to be reading this list. If we thought Microcrap was the greatest we wouldn't be on this list, right? cr -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Slow linux.bin
On Mon, 03 Nov 2003 04:16, Ron Johnson wrote: On Sun, 2003-11-02 at 08:48, - _ r a r o h _ - wrote: Hallo, installed woody with booting from floppy - it takes 4 minutes to read the floppy. I hear the movement of the floppy some 20 seconds ... Any idea how to fix ? 4 minutes to read a 1.44MB floppy? That was dog slow even in 1990. Have you looked in /var/log/syslog? Did you hear the FDD clicking and whining like it there's a bad sector on the disk? I've had some experience of floppy-booting Linuxes (usually until I get Grub sorted) and I found that, on a K6-2 350, Red Hat was tolerable (don't know how many seconds exactly, but not much slower than DOS). OTOH, floppy-booting Debian Woody was incredibly slow - six or seven *minutes*! But no signs of any disk read failures - just very slow overall. However, on my new box (Athlon 2000) Woody floppy-boots in maybe 15 seconds. I don't really believe the speed of floppy-booting is dependent on the CPU :) - more likely, it was some sort of incompatible drive setting (though what, I have no idea). cr -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: X desktop settings
On Thu, 30 Oct 2003 18:48, Paul Johnson wrote: On Wed, Oct 29, 2003 at 04:58:05AM +1300, cr wrote: Can anyone confirm this - are *all* the X desktop settings kept in the /home/user directory? You mean your desktop environment, like Gnome or KDE? Yeah, all your user-specific settings are in your home directory. Thanks! cr -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Microsoft good press over Longhorn
On Fri, 31 Oct 2003 13:07, Joyce, Matthew wrote: I know the finance people I have worked with love excel and are proficient at using it, for them it is a totally useful tool. The researchers here all us excel and it is very useful and easy to be to wite vba functions and have them centralised and shared. Having Excel on PCs, Mac OS9 and OSX is also useful. For myself, I like the formula auditing function of Excel, I find it extremely useful. http://techrepublic.com.com/5100-6270-1061218.html I'm not particulaly pro MS, but I find the Microsoft's software has always sucked rant boring. I know this is a linux list, and no doubt I'm in for a roasting. m Oh, now, let me see, it really really always has sucked. I've been forced to use it most of my working life, and on many occasions I've cursed it and thought 'there must be something better than this shit!' A few examples off the top of my head just to back that up (I've forgotten hundreds).. MS Word - in text, the Tab key inserts a tab (chr9). In tables, the Tab key jumps you to the next column. That's _real_ consistent, nice one, Micro$oft! So ya curse and hit Shft-Tab to jump back, Ctrl-Tab to insert a tab - and it deletes *everything* you just typed in that cell. Oh, nice one, Micro$oft! And of course there's *no* way to reprogram the Tab key to behave consistently (that I could ever find, anyway). Nice one, M$. This is why I won't use tables just to put clause titles in the right margin, I use Frames instead. Only snag is, frames are buggy - what you see is never quite what you get, the little boxes always appear on the page a line above or a line below where they will on the printer.Nice one, M$. Try using Word2K and using a mouse to select areas in a table, over a Thin Client network - it's completely uncontrollable (and our IS folks have found no way to tame it). Nice one, M$. Automatic clause numbering - really diabolical, easy to screw up totally, and can be almost impossible to remove once someone's invoked it. Other apps Try selecting 'View Source' of a simple HTML page in IE and then saving it to disk - then take a look at it again with a text editor. Whatever-it-is that IE uses as a viewer/editor has dumped 3K of useless Micro$oft-proprietary font definitions all over it without even warning you. Instant 150% bloat. Nice one, M$! I won't even mention viruses or Outhouse Excess. I'll make *one* exception - MS Project is actually quite a well-thought-out piece of software. The only M$ one I know of. Excel's probably not too bad but, umm, weren't most of the good bits invented by L-o-t-u-s?vbeg Going back a bit...QuickBasic. Really very limited for a program that cost hundreds of $$$. GWBasic - incredibly primitive, compared with other Basics of the time. No graphics functions, no structure beyond IF-THEN-GOTO-GOSUB.. DOS - most of its (very necessary) improvements were written as little apps by third-party developers (often copied from UNIX) and then copied by M$ I suppose I could go all the way back to Edlin. cr -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Horizontal Sync
On Thu, 30 Oct 2003 23:42, Tom Hinkley wrote: /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 i need to specify my HorizSync in the above configuration file so that i can have the resolution 1024x768. I am runiing debian linux version 3.0 (woody). I have a Blade T64 AGP graphics card installed and working with KDE at 800x600 however i wish to find my monitors HorizSync value (i found the refresh rate on the manufacturers website) but i still need the HorizSync. I tried inventing values for the configuration file but KDE remained in 800x600. I have no idea what my HorizSync value is nor how to obtain it. One of the values I require is 60Hz /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 needs the other value. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Also if there is something that I may be doing wrong or if I have over looked something then please notify me. Thanks Tom e: [EMAIL PROTECTED] I'm also running 3.0.I've always just guessed my sync (my monitor is a brand that Google's never heard of :) Yes I know there are all sorts of warnings about destroying your monitor... I try to be conservative. Something I think I read in a man page somewhere is that X tries to use the first value listed under the default display depth, so the XF86Config-4 lines may need to be swapped around a bit - mine reads: Section Screen Identifier Screen 1 Device s3v Monitor nech DefaultDepth 16 Subsection Display Depth 8 Modes 640x480 800x600 1024x768 1280x1024 ViewPort0 0 EndSubsection Subsection Display Depth 16 # Modes 640x480 800x600 1024x768 1280x1024 Modes 1024x768 1280x1024 800x600 640x480 Viewport 0 0 EndSubsection You'll note I've shuffled the Modes line under my chosen default depth (16) to put my preferred screen (1024x768) first. That could be what you need to do to get a 1024x768. Or I could be completely wrong, I'm no expert. cr -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Microsoft good press over Longhorn
On Sat, 01 Nov 2003 08:43, Pigeon wrote: On Fri, Oct 31, 2003 at 09:40:01PM +1300, cr wrote: DOS - most of its (very necessary) improvements were written as little apps by third-party developers (often copied from UNIX) and then copied by M$ Ah, nostalgia... I have quite a rosy memory of DOS 3.x being pretty easy to work with. I tend to forget that one of the first things I did under it was clone most of the useful command-line tools I missed from Unix, using Borland Turbo C, version 1.0... and my tools, unlike Microsoft's, took care to do disk I/O in multiples of the cluster size, which sped things up tremendously in those days. I was totally unaware of things *nix in those days. All I knew was that Simtel had heaps of handy little DOS utilities many of which had references in their Help files to strange and arcane things like 'Emacs' and 'GPL'... It's interesting that MS Word on the Macintosh (MacOS 6) beat the crap out of the contemporary MS Word for Windows... not only did it have more features, but they all worked, properly, reliably and consistently. The Windows version, by comparison, looked like an approximate clone knocked up by some backstreet cowboy outfit. Seems they can write good apps, but only under Apple's iron fist... I suppose I could go all the way back to Edlin. I still use ed... ed - is that the DOS full screen editor?Vastly superior to edlin, of course. And it was simple, consistent and it worked. What more could one want? ;) cr -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
X desktop settings
(Sorry if I left any replies in previous threads unacknowledged - my motherboard died which caused a loss of communications for a couple of weeks). Can anyone confirm this - are *all* the X desktop settings kept in the /home/user directory? And is it therefore possible just to copy the whole of /home/user to a safe place before doing something really reckless and potentially likely to break things (like changing my desktop from KDE to Gnome for example) and if I find X hopelessy screwed up afterwards, can I just immediately copy my backup straight back to /home/user and get all my old settings back? Or are there major 'look-and-feel' settings kept elsewhere? Regards cr -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Time is runnign too fast
On Thu, 30 Oct 2003 08:17, Nori Heikkinen wrote: oh my god, i can't decide if that link is hilarious or what ... Barbie Wizards guide girls through the process of partitioning their disks, formatting volumes, mounting Samba shares, and installing packages. This kind of attention to detail and thorough understanding of female limitations also shows in the step by step Barbie Wizards that guide girls through the process of partitioning their disks, formatting volumes, mounting Samba shares, and installing packages. During the installation, girls are allowed to play a fashion-plate game or view a slideshow of rainbows, kittens, and Mattel products. !! is this a joke?? /nori An animated Barbie informs the user that she can work with existing Windows partitions, but would prefer that BarbieOS be allowed to format the entire disk and remove Windows volumes for maximum cootie protection. Definitely a joke. Look at some of the pages it links to: http://www.divisiontwo.com/articles/newsburst3.htm http://www.divisiontwo.com/articles/windows_no.htm On second thoughts, I have a nasty feeling the second of those links might be only too accurate :( cr -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Kmail 2 features (was: Re: More on spam)
On Sat, 18 Oct 2003 19:28, Magnus von Koeller wrote: On Saturday 18 October 2003 03:53, cr wrote: I'm using Kmail 1.3.2 in KDE 2.2.2. in Woody. I thought that POP filter was a feature that was only in Kmail 2. True, true - that version doesn't have POP filters yet IIRC. It's not KMail 2, though, they just went on with 1.4 and are now at 1.5.3 (which is in sid and which I'm using). (And I shied off Kmail 2 - and RedHat 9 - because the first time I tried to run it, it warned me that messages I hit 'Delete' on are gone - I can't retrieve them from Trash. That's not true; in current KMail there's two ways to delete a message: Delete or Move to Trash. Delete immediately, irrevocably deletes a message. Move to Trash works like the old delete function. The default behavior is actually Move to Trash and it's only warning you to make sure you know the difference. Thanks! That wasn't apparent from the warning message.In every other respect, Kmail does exactly what I want I'm now *much* happier about the prospect of upgrading to a later Kmail when the next Debian stable release comes out. cr -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: More on spam
On Fri, 17 Oct 2003 21:04, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Sure, if I delete the spam, the spam will be deleted. But having to delete the spam *is* the problem, not the solution. The problem is, you go to bed, and in the morning there are 250 154K messages that have to be downloaded, seeked and erased, or worse, seeked and erased with a not-too-fast webmail interface. You can dump a free Yahoo mail account easily, but if it is your ISP email account that is bombed, it is a lot worse. Sounds like you have a POP account?I had to go the webmail route a couple of times when Kmail showed there was 2MB of mail in my account. A pox on ISP site authors who design over-fancy slow-loading Webmail screens :( But anyway, now I've found a rather primitive but effective little utility called pop3browser that I can recommend. Runs in a terminal window, downloads a list of message sizes, allows me to select which ones to delete (and the ones 100K stick out a mile in the list).I assume nobody's sending me legitimate messages 100K anyway. But be *very* careful only to mark the messages you want deleted, you get no second chance if you delete the wrong one. There's a similar utility called popcheck that was recommended to me, but it stalled halfway through the list of messages the first time I used it. Might be worth another try. I only bother with pop3browser if Kmail shows me (when it starts) that there's 1MB of mail in the box. But it sure beats the heck out of webmail! cr -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Kmail 2 features (was: Re: More on spam)
On Fri, 17 Oct 2003 23:27, Magnus von Koeller wrote: On Friday 17 October 2003 11:50, cr wrote: Sounds like you have a POP account? I had to go the webmail route a couple of times when Kmail showed there was 2MB of mail in my account. A pox on But KMail has POP filters that do the exact same thing that you described for that pop3browser utility - and you can define custom rules. With the set of rules I came up with, I get all swen mails that are actually 100k filtered out. I'm using Kmail 1.3.2 in KDE 2.2.2. in Woody.I thought that POP filter was a feature that was only in Kmail 2. (And I shied off Kmail 2 - and RedHat 9 - because the first time I tried to run it, it warned me that messages I hit 'Delete' on are gone - I can't retrieve them from Trash. I can't live with that. If someone can tell me there's a way to configure that behaviour out of Kmail 2 I'll be a very happy chappy :). cr -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
diald interferes with pppd? (was: Re: Installing a kernel off CD-ROM)
I've had this sitting in my 'pending' folder while a bit of Real Life (TM) happened, but it's time I got back to it - my problem was that, with the bf2.4 kernel (loaded off boot floppy), Kppp and pppd worked OK, but with the 2.4-18-k6 kernel on my hard drive, pppd just doesn't communicate with Kmail or browsers. I could find no difference in the ppp setups bertween the two kernels (I've attached my replies to Andreas' questions at the end of this message for completeness), except that the k6 kernel seems to start diald while bf2.4 doesn't. With the bf24 kernel (under which Kppp/pppd works OK), /var/log/messages is as follows: Oct 10 22:06:59 alti kernel: PPP generic driver version 2.4.1 Oct 10 22:06:59 alti pppd[404]: pppd 2.4.1 started by cr, uid 1000 Oct 10 22:06:59 alti pppd[404]: Using interface ppp0 Oct 10 22:06:59 alti pppd[404]: Connect: ppp0 -- /dev/ttyS0 Oct 10 22:07:15 alti kernel: PPP BSD Compression module registered Oct 10 22:07:15 alti kernel: PPP Deflate Compression module registered Oct 10 22:07:15 alti pppd[404]: local IP address 219.88.129.175 Oct 10 22:07:15 alti pppd[404]: remote IP address 210.55.12.201 Oct 10 22:07:15 alti pppd[404]: primary DNS address 210.55.12.205 Oct 10 22:07:15 alti pppd[404]: secondary DNS address 210.55.12.1 Oct 10 22:07:54 alti pppd[404]: Terminating on signal 15. Oct 10 22:07:54 alti pppd[404]: Connection terminated. Oct 10 22:07:54 alti pppd[404]: Connect time 1.0 minutes. Oct 10 22:07:54 alti pppd[404]: Sent 5303 bytes, received 42981 bytes. Oct 10 22:07:55 alti pppd[404]: Exit. With the k6 kernel, (under which Kppp/pppd fails to communicate with apps), this happens: Oct 10 21:26:31 alti diald[212]: Delaying 1 seconds before clear to dial. Oct 10 21:26:34 alti diald[212]: Calling site 192.168.0.2 Oct 10 21:26:34 alti diald[212]: No devices free to call out on. Oct 10 21:26:35 alti diald[212]: Connect script failed. Oct 10 21:26:35 alti diald[212]: Delaying 1 seconds before clear to dial. Oct 10 21:26:59 alti pppd[485]: pppd 2.4.1 started by cr, uid 1000 Oct 10 21:26:59 alti pppd[485]: Using interface ppp0 Oct 10 21:26:59 alti pppd[485]: Connect: ppp0 -- /dev/ttyS0 Oct 10 21:27:00 alti pppd[485]: local IP address 219.88.128.122 Oct 10 21:27:00 alti pppd[485]: remote IP address 210.55.12.201 Oct 10 21:27:00 alti pppd[485]: primary DNS address 210.55.12.205 Oct 10 21:27:00 alti pppd[485]: secondary DNS address 210.55.12.1 Oct 10 21:27:00 alti diald[212]: Trigger: udp 192.168.0.1/32778 210.55.12.205/53 Oct 10 21:27:00 alti diald[212]: Calling site 192.168.0.2 Oct 10 21:27:00 alti diald[212]: No devices free to call out on. Oct 10 21:27:00 alti diald[212]: Connect script failed. Oct 10 21:27:00 alti diald[212]: Delaying 1 seconds before clear to dial. Oct 10 21:27:03 alti diald[212]: Calling site 192.168.0.2 Oct 10 21:27:03 alti diald[212]: No devices free to call out on. Oct 10 21:27:04 alti diald[212]: Connect script failed. Oct 10 21:27:04 alti diald[212]: Delaying 1 seconds before clear to dial. Oct 10 21:27:06 alti diald[212]: Calling site 192.168.0.2 I assume it's diald that is interfering with pppd; but why would the k6 kernel start diald when bf2.4 doesn't? (Or is diald called by a start-up file somewhere, but just not built in to the bf2.4 kernel so it fails to start?) I'll attach my answers to Andreas' helpful questions below, though I think they just show that ppp is installing itself OK with both kernels. On Thu, 09 Oct 2003 19:40, Andreas Janssen wrote: Hello cr ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: On Mon, 06 Oct 2003 23:20, Andreas Janssen wrote: cr ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: Is there any way to install a kernel on the hard drive off the install CD-ROMs (without going through the whole Install process)? Currently, I have the 2.4.18-k6 kernel installed on my hard drive, but it doesn't seem to have ppp enabled (dmesg brings up no mention of ppp). I'm a little surprised, I would've thought a kernel I downloaded as a .deb off debian.org would have ppp enabled, but still... (did I do something wrong during the install, I wonder?) Check if the ppp support is built as modules. On my system (self compiled kernel with ppp support as modules), the following modules are loaded: [ppp modules] No, nothing for ppp (or PPP) A quick search on http://packages.debian.org shows that your kernel package has the ppp_async.o module (I didn't check for the other ones). Try this to find out: cat /boot/config-2.4.18-k6 | grep PPP Yes alti:/etc/modutils# cat /boot/config-2.4.18-1-k6 | grep PPP [kernel seems to have ppp support] On my system, these drivers are loaded automatically. There is a file /etc/modutils/ppp with the following lines: alias /dev/ppp ppp_generic alias char-major-108ppp_generic alias tty-ldisc-3 ppp_async alias tty-ldisc-14 ppp_synctty alias ppp-compress-21 bsd_comp alias ppp-compress
Re: Switching from RH 7.3 to Debian 3.0r1
On Sat, 11 Oct 2003 11:40, Andreas Janssen wrote: Hello Curtis ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: I've downloaded the debian isos, burning them afterwards, but before I take the plunge into switching, is there anything to prepare? This is my first time switching distros on a computer. Any pitfalls to avoid. By the way, I wanted to do a netinstall, so I only have to use the first cd. You should backup the configuration data of your current system. You will probably have to manually select some things that were automagically configured in Red Hat, like modules for your sound/net devices or the XFree configuration (especially the XFree driver and the frequencies of your monitors from the old configuration file will be helpfull when you setup XFree in Debian). Also, Debian will use an 2.2 kernel for installation by default. Maybe you want to use the 2.4 installation kernel. Read the instructions when you boot from the CD, they will tell you how to select the installation kernel. best regards Andreas Janssen I'd definitely recommend the 2.4 kernel (you have to select it right at the start, on the first screen IIRC), since otherwise a few things that work in RH7.3 are likely not to be supported by the default 2.2 kernel in Debian Woody.(And no, I can't remember exactly which ones off the top of my head). cr -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: To be safe don't use shift key...
On Fri, 10 Oct 2003 23:43, csj wrote: On Thu, 09 Oct 2003 18:57:50 -0400, Roberto Sanchez wrote: Erik Steffl wrote: [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: ...or else the riaa might sue you. http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/ptech/10/08/bmg.protection.reut/index.ht ml quote from article: Computers running Linux and older versions of the Mac operating system are unable to run the software and are able to copy the disc freely, he said. ROFL Is that a license for us to copy something not worth copying? The forbidden fruit syndrome: if it's copy-protected it must be good. Ah, I *knew* there was some reason why Mickey$oft wrote Do not make illegal copies of this disk on their Lose98 CD-ROMs. :) (At least, I think it was 98). cr -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: How to kill X?
On Fri, 10 Oct 2003 05:17, Pigeon wrote: On Fri, Oct 10, 2003 at 08:49:26PM +1300, cr wrote: On Thu, 09 Oct 2003 03:49, Pigeon wrote: On Thu, Oct 09, 2003 at 08:11:53PM +1300, cr wrote: (snip) Are there any downsides to ext3? If you have a filesystem with a dirty journal you MUST try and replay the journal, ie, fsck it, before doing anything else with it. If you forget this you'll probably end up with worse damage than if you made the same mistake with ext2. ext3 can be mounted as ext2 in emergency, eg. if your rescue kernel hasn't got ext3 support, but don't be tempted to mount it read-write. I think, with my capability for pushing the wrong button at critical moments, I might be safer to stick with ext2 then. Well, I admit that I found out about this the hard way. But I think that was when I was running slink; the woody versions of the tools all seem to spit out warnings if you try and treat ext3 as ext2. AIUI running fsck on ext2 will return the filesystem to a logically consistent state but doesn't guarantee that you won't lose or corrupt any files - as you've found out. ext3's journalling is a big safeguard against this. It is unfortunate that power failures are one area where this safeguard is noticeably incomplete. It seems to me that, since X is running on top of Linux, keyboard input must go to linux first then to X, and therefore it should be possible to program some keystroke combination (e.g. Alt-Ctrl-Backspace, though I still don't know if that works in the event of an X siezure) that would either tell Linux to just kill X or even, in dire emergency, tell Linux to 'unmount all drives *now* and shut down'. This would be handy since in my (limited) experience, X is often a bit shaky whereas Linux is rock-solid. It would also be handy in cases of e.g. monitor failure or video card glitches etc. (I'm running a standalone on a dial-up modem so telnetting in, as someone suggested, isn't really practical for me). But I'm no programmer so I don't know. cr -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: windows NT
On Sat, 11 Oct 2003 17:01, Pigeon wrote: I am used to conversations that start like this: My TV's not working, can you fix it? Er... what's wrong with it? It doesn't work. ...and carry on in the same vein for far too long. IMO the idiocy of the questions is a good sign that they come from genuine Windoze lusers. I think there's some web page out there that's making them think Debian and Windoze are somehow connected. Yeah well I *did* get better answers on how to multiboot a Windoze drive with GRUB on this list than I could find Googling on any Windoze sites vbg Oops! Maybe all those Windoze lusers are googling too and the list archives are popping up in Google :( cr -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: reverting to ext2 (Was: Re: How to kill X?)
On Fri, 10 Oct 2003 13:05, Roberto Sanchez wrote: Monique Y. Herman wrote: On Thu, 09 Oct 2003 at 22:49 GMT, Roberto Sanchez penned: If you have and ext3 that you want to revert to ext2, you can just: tune2fs -O ^has_journal /dev/hdXX -Roberto Out of curiosity, why would one want to do this? Also, you can always mount an ext3 drive as ext2 just by specifying the type. In fact, I think mount will autodetect ext3 as ext2 -- you have to explicitly ask for ext3-mounting. Right. But, the OP said something about sticking with ext2 instead of ext3. I assumed that he already had an ext3 drive that he wanted to make ext2. -Roberto Thanks everybody for your input. As it happens, all my partitions are ext2 at the moment (except for some FAT16's but we needn't go into that ;) I'm contemplating swapping some of 'em to ext3, I was just wondering if the pluses outweight the minuses. It appears as if they do. It does reassure me, though, that if I happen to run/install a kernel that doesn't have ext3, I can use ext2 if necessary. Regards cr(the OP) -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Just got CDs, boot, oops...
On Fri, 10 Oct 2003 13:04, Roberto Sanchez wrote: KRF wrote: Just got my 7 CDs in the mail and have a dedicated PC to learn Debian on. I downloaded the entire manual and have good intentions to go through the install step by step, totally unlike my usual method of learning by rapid tapping on the enter key. CDs say they are D3.0 Woody and Manual says same thing. First step, boot CD1 to boot: prompt and then enter vanilla, which I assume will bring up a minimal system. However, I get a... Could not find kernel image: vanilla Is the manual out of sync with the CDs now? I can bypass it by just pressing enter, but then I assume that it will totally blow away the installation sequence of the tutorial. Ken Try bf24 instead of vanilla. The basic kernel in Woody is 2.2.20, which is very old. If you have any hardware that was manufacured in the last 3 or so years, you will want the bf24 install (which uses a 2.4.18 kernel). That will likely have drivers for most of your hardware. -Roberto I'd agree with that. 'vanilla' is missing a few rather necessary bits, IIRC. But to answer the original question - there are several varieties of kernel on the CDROM, with names like (IIRC) vmlinuz-2.2.20-idepcifor the 'idepci' kernel,vmlinuz-2.2.20-compact for the 'compact' kernel, and so on.But there *isn't* a vmlinuz-2.2.20-vanilla, what is called the 'vanilla' kernel is just vmlinuz-2.2.20. So, just hitting 'enter' will get you the kernel known as vanilla. Yes, this is inconsistent.I guess they couldn't just call it the 'nothing' kernel. cr -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Suggestions for Organization's documents
On Thu, 09 Oct 2003 10:39, Monique Y. Herman wrote: On Wed, 8 Oct 2003 21:35:12 +0100, Tom Badran [EMAIL PROTECTED] penned: I also have heard that OO.org is working on Reveal Codes for their next release -- which, if true, has me drooling. That's the biggest thing I miss about WordPerfect. No idea what these are so cant comment ;) Reveal codes mode allowed you to to see exactly what tags WP was using on your document, kind of like a view source. It was *really* handy for debugging problems where you had too many nested formatting commands and couldn't figure out why stuff wasn't displaying the way you expected. Having seen the horrendous screw-ups that MS Word makes, I'm not surprised Mickey$oft don't offer it. ;) cr -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: How to kill X?
On Thu, 09 Oct 2003 03:49, Pigeon wrote: On Thu, Oct 09, 2003 at 08:11:53PM +1300, cr wrote: On Tue, 07 Oct 2003 07:04, Pigeon wrote: On Tue, Oct 07, 2003 at 05:09:29AM +1300, cr wrote: I've only had one sieze in recent times, what I've had several of recently is sudden complete power cut - possibly a power supply fault. Either way, it has the same effect of discombobulating my hard drive so I have to do a lot of fscking on startup again. Occasionally this completely munges my X setup. I think you might find ext3 to be a big help, though it's not a complete solution - if the power dies in the middle of a write, you can end up with a bad sector being created, which can confuse things a bit. Are there any downsides to ext3? If you have a filesystem with a dirty journal you MUST try and replay the journal, ie, fsck it, before doing anything else with it. If you forget this you'll probably end up with worse damage than if you made the same mistake with ext2. ext3 can be mounted as ext2 in emergency, eg. if your rescue kernel hasn't got ext3 support, but don't be tempted to mount it read-write. I think, with my capability for pushing the wrong button at critical moments, I might be safer to stick with ext2 then. There's also a slight speed hit. This will be the case with any journalled filesystem as there is more writing involved. I'm a fan of SCSI hard drives, and I like to set up ext3 with an external journal, ie. on a different physical drive, which speeds things up a bit, though at the cost of making your data twice as vulnerable to hard drive failures (if the journal drive dies you're likely to end up with an unfsckable mess on the data drive). ext3 vs. reiser is a bit like emacs vs. vi. I haven't tried reiser, so I won't comment on it. The new PSU idea will get tried out next weekend when I can pick one up. (It's cheaper than the other possibility which is trying out a new motherboard + CPU :) It's worth noting that O(500MHz) PII/III machines are dumpster items nowadays, but are still capable enough to be useful for trying that sort of test before committing yourself. 8-) Quite true. My motherboard is a 350MHz K6.If I have to upgrade it, I won't be too upset, but the 350's fast enough for what I need so I there's no point fixing it if it ain't broke. And I guess one big advantage is, I can afford to risk breaking it ;) Btw, I initially set up that DOS/Windoze drive I was talking about on my spare machine - a 75MHz AMD K5. So what, it still works! cr -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Installing a kernel off CD-ROM
On Thu, 09 Oct 2003 19:40, Andreas Janssen wrote: Hello (snip for bandwidth) On my system, these drivers are loaded automatically. There is a file /etc/modutils/ppp with the following lines: alias /dev/ppp ppp_generic alias char-major-108ppp_generic alias tty-ldisc-3 ppp_async alias tty-ldisc-14 ppp_synctty alias ppp-compress-21 bsd_comp alias ppp-compress-24 ppp_deflate alias ppp-compress-26 ppp_deflate Please check your /etc/modutils/ppp file and your /etc/modules.conf to make sure it also has these lines (if not, try to run update-modules). Yes: [modules.conf is ok] What does this mean? I downloaded the kernel as a .deb from debian.org. I installed it (IIRC) with Kpackage or with dpkg. I can't recall whether it asked me any questions about what to include when I installed it, or not. As a check, I just uninstalled my older 2.4.16-k6 kernel (which I don't normally use any more) and reinstalled it with dpkg -i /path/kernel-image-2.4.16-k6_2.4.16-1_i386.deb the only questions it asked me were whether I wanted to use Lilo (no). It gives exactly the same results for the ppp modules as the 2.4.18 kernel (above). The module configuration file is part of the ppp package, not the kernel image packages. OK, so /etc/modules.conf is independent of which kernel I install or run, I take it. Kppp dials my ISP and makes connection as it should - just that it isn't communicating with Kmail or browsers. What does the ppp output or log say? Does pinging ip addresses work (try ping 192.25.206.10 for www.debian.org)? Hmm, I may have found it. With the bf2.4 kernel (the one that ppp works OK with), /var/log/messages is as follows: Oct 10 22:06:59 alti kernel: PPP generic driver version 2.4.1 Oct 10 22:06:59 alti pppd[404]: pppd 2.4.1 started by cr, uid 1000 Oct 10 22:06:59 alti pppd[404]: Using interface ppp0 Oct 10 22:06:59 alti pppd[404]: Connect: ppp0 -- /dev/ttyS0 Oct 10 22:07:15 alti kernel: PPP BSD Compression module registered Oct 10 22:07:15 alti kernel: PPP Deflate Compression module registered Oct 10 22:07:15 alti pppd[404]: local IP address 219.88.129.175 Oct 10 22:07:15 alti pppd[404]: remote IP address 210.55.12.201 Oct 10 22:07:15 alti pppd[404]: primary DNS address 210.55.12.205 Oct 10 22:07:15 alti pppd[404]: secondary DNS address 210.55.12.1 Oct 10 22:07:54 alti pppd[404]: Terminating on signal 15. Oct 10 22:07:54 alti pppd[404]: Connection terminated. Oct 10 22:07:54 alti pppd[404]: Connect time 1.0 minutes. Oct 10 22:07:54 alti pppd[404]: Sent 5303 bytes, received 42981 bytes. Oct 10 22:07:55 alti pppd[404]: Exit. With the K6 kernel, /var/log/messages shows a lot of this: Oct 10 21:26:31 alti diald[212]: Delaying 1 seconds before clear to dial. Oct 10 21:26:34 alti diald[212]: Calling site 192.168.0.2 Oct 10 21:26:34 alti diald[212]: No devices free to call out on. Oct 10 21:26:35 alti diald[212]: Connect script failed. Oct 10 21:26:35 alti diald[212]: Delaying 1 seconds before clear to dial. Oct 10 21:26:59 alti pppd[485]: pppd 2.4.1 started by cr, uid 1000 Oct 10 21:26:59 alti pppd[485]: Using interface ppp0 Oct 10 21:26:59 alti pppd[485]: Connect: ppp0 -- /dev/ttyS0 Oct 10 21:27:00 alti pppd[485]: local IP address 219.88.128.122 Oct 10 21:27:00 alti pppd[485]: remote IP address 210.55.12.201 Oct 10 21:27:00 alti pppd[485]: primary DNS address 210.55.12.205 Oct 10 21:27:00 alti pppd[485]: secondary DNS address 210.55.12.1 Oct 10 21:27:00 alti diald[212]: Trigger: udp 192.168.0.1/32778 210.55.12.205/53 Oct 10 21:27:00 alti diald[212]: Calling site 192.168.0.2 Oct 10 21:27:00 alti diald[212]: No devices free to call out on. Oct 10 21:27:00 alti diald[212]: Connect script failed. Oct 10 21:27:00 alti diald[212]: Delaying 1 seconds before clear to dial. Oct 10 21:27:03 alti diald[212]: Calling site 192.168.0.2 Oct 10 21:27:03 alti diald[212]: No devices free to call out on. Oct 10 21:27:04 alti diald[212]: Connect script failed. Oct 10 21:27:04 alti diald[212]: Delaying 1 seconds before clear to dial. Oct 10 21:27:06 alti diald[212]: Calling site 192.168.0.2 What's diald up to, should it be doing that, is that what's interfering with ppp, and if so should I just kill diald? (Presumably a script somewhere started it). Regards cr -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: How to kill X?
On Tue, 07 Oct 2003 13:58, Mike Mueller wrote: On Sunday 05 October 2003 06:02, Neo wrote: On Fri, 2003-10-03 at 13:37, cr wrote: snip I just had a sieze in X, and Ctrl-Alt-F? had no effect, Ctrl-Alt-Backspace was the only key combination that worked. Is there any setting that will restore its function of 'kill X but don't reboot the machine' or any other key combination that achieves that? snip try loging in remotely and run '/etc/init.d/gkxdm stop'. (Fill in your running favorite display manager) I had a long run of X siezures where I could remote in sometimes and sometimes not. Sometimes I had to reset and fsck. No key sequences on the siezed machine had any effect other than expressing my frustration. FWIW, I changed my workstation from a machine with a crappy bare-bones video card (Trident) to a machine with a less crappy bare bones video card (ATI Rage something or another). That put a stop to the X siezures. Not an elegant solution admittedly but I was able to run two desktops side by side and compare stability. I was not able to find any direct evidence that positively suggested that I should change video cards. Good luck. Thanks. I might end up trying that video card solution because currently I do have some suspicions of the on-board video chip (or whatever it is) on my motherboard. cr -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: How to kill X?
On Tue, 07 Oct 2003 07:04, Pigeon wrote: On Tue, Oct 07, 2003 at 05:09:29AM +1300, cr wrote: I've only had one sieze in recent times, what I've had several of recently is sudden complete power cut - possibly a power supply fault. Either way, it has the same effect of discombobulating my hard drive so I have to do a lot of fscking on startup again.Occasionally this completely munges my X setup. I think you might find ext3 to be a big help, though it's not a complete solution - if the power dies in the middle of a write, you can end up with a bad sector being created, which can confuse things a bit. Are there any downsides to ext3? I was thinking the best precaution might be to occasionally copy /etc, /root and maybe /home/cr (are those the appropriate directories?) to a directory on another drive, which is unlikely to have files open at the time of a crash, and just copy them back if I need to to restore my settings. I'd add /var to the list, and copy them onto a partition which can be mounted read-only except when you're actually doing the copying. Thanks, I'll do that. Hmmm... you could have two such back-up partitions, and have a cron job that backs up automatically to each one alternately every so often. Then, even if it crashes during the backup, you've still got the other copy. Well, that's a sort of second-order-of-probability, and a risk I'll take. If that happens I'll just do the reinstall thing. ;) A new PSU is probably a good idea too :-) The new PSU idea will get tried out next weekend when I can pick one up. (It's cheaper than the other possibility which is trying out a new motherboard + CPU :) cr -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Installing a kernel off CD-ROM
On Mon, 06 Oct 2003 23:20, Andreas Janssen wrote: Hello cr ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: Is there any way to install a kernel on the hard drive off the install CD-ROMs (without going through the whole Install process)? Currently, I have the 2.4.18-k6 kernel installed on my hard drive, but it doesn't seem to have ppp enabled (dmesg brings up no mention of ppp). I'm a little surprised, I would've thought a kernel I downloaded as a .deb off debian.org would have ppp enabled, but still... (did I do something wrong during the install, I wonder?) Check if the ppp support is built as modules. On my system (self compiled kernel with ppp support as modules), the following modules are loaded: sirius:/home/andreas# lsmod | grep ppp ppp_deflate 3008 1 (autoclean) zlib_inflate 18592 0 (autoclean) [ppp_deflate] zlib_deflate 17984 0 (autoclean) [ppp_deflate] ppp_async 6624 1 (autoclean) ppp_generic17164 3 (autoclean) [ppp_deflate bsd_comp ppp_async] slhc4704 1 (autoclean) [ppp_generic] No, nothing for ppp (or PPP) A quick search on http://packages.debian.org shows that your kernel package has the ppp_async.o module (I didn't check for the other ones). Try this to find out: cat /boot/config-2.4.18-k6 | grep PPP Yes alti:/etc/modutils# cat /boot/config-2.4.18-1-k6 | grep PPP CONFIG_PPP=m CONFIG_PPP_MULTILINK=y CONFIG_PPP_FILTER=y CONFIG_PPP_ASYNC=m CONFIG_PPP_SYNC_TTY=m CONFIG_PPP_DEFLATE=m CONFIG_PPP_BSDCOMP=m CONFIG_PPPOE=m CONFIG_PPPOATM=m CONFIG_COMX_PROTO_PPP=m CONFIG_SYNCLINK_SYNCPPP=m CONFIG_HDLC_PPP=y CONFIG_WANPIPE_PPP=y CONFIG_WANPIPE_MULTPPP=y CONFIG_ISDN_PPP=y CONFIG_ISDN_PPP_VJ=y CONFIG_ISDN_PPP_BSDCOMP=m On my system, these drivers are loaded automatically. There is a file /etc/modutils/ppp with the following lines: alias /dev/ppp ppp_generic alias char-major-108ppp_generic alias tty-ldisc-3 ppp_async alias tty-ldisc-14 ppp_synctty alias ppp-compress-21 bsd_comp alias ppp-compress-24 ppp_deflate alias ppp-compress-26 ppp_deflate Please check your /etc/modutils/ppp file and your /etc/modules.conf to make sure it also has these lines (if not, try to run update-modules). Yes: alti:/etc/modutils# less ppp alias /dev/ppp ppp_generic alias char-major-108ppp_generic alias tty-ldisc-3 ppp_async alias tty-ldisc-14 ppp_synctty alias ppp-compress-21 bsd_comp alias ppp-compress-24 ppp_deflate alias ppp-compress-26 ppp_deflate and /etc/modules.conf is the same: ... ### update-modules: start processing /etc/modutils/ppp alias /dev/ppp ppp_generic alias char-major-108ppp_generic alias tty-ldisc-3 ppp_async alias tty-ldisc-14 ppp_synctty alias ppp-compress-21 bsd_comp alias ppp-compress-24 ppp_deflate alias ppp-compress-26 ppp_deflate What does this mean? I downloaded the kernel as a .deb from debian.org. I installed it (IIRC) with Kpackage or with dpkg. I can't recall whether it asked me any questions about what to include when I installed it, or not. As a check, I just uninstalled my older 2.4.16-k6 kernel (which I don't normally use any more) and reinstalled it with dpkg -i /path/kernel-image-2.4.16-k6_2.4.16-1_i386.deb the only questions it asked me were whether I wanted to use Lilo (no). It gives exactly the same results for the ppp modules as the 2.4.18 kernel (above). Kppp dials my ISP and makes connection as it should - just that it isn't communicating with Kmail or browsers. When I boot off the bf2.4 kernel on the floppy, I got no response to lsmod | grep ppp before I tried dialling my ISP, but kppp dialled OK and communicated with Kmail successfully and now I get : alti:/home/cr# lsmod | grep ppp ppp_deflate38944 0 (autoclean) ppp_async 6464 0 (autoclean) ppp_generic18728 0 (autoclean) [ppp_deflate bsd_comp ppp_async] slhc4432 0 (autoclean) [ppp_generic] So, I'm a bit puzzled. If I want to reach the Internet I currently have to boot the 2.4.18-bf2.4 kernel off the world's slowest floppy boot disk ;) [...] Anyway, back to the CD-ROM, is there any way to use the kernel images on that to just put a vmlinuz-xxx in /bootthat I can call with Grub, without going through the Install process again (because last time I did that, I broke things :( Or do I need to do another 5MB download of a .deb from debian.org? First, you can use apt-get to install the package for the 2.4bf version. It is located on the fifth CD. Second, I wouldn't use it because the kernel images from the Woody r0 and r1 CDs have several security issues, so I would use an updated version from security.debian.org. Please note that the bf24 package still has the same name, the other updated 2.4 packages however have slightly different names. So if you
Installing a kernel off CD-ROM
Is there any way to install a kernel on the hard drive off the install CD-ROMs (without going through the whole Install process)? Currently, I have the 2.4.18-k6 kernel installed on my hard drive, but it doesn't seem to have ppp enabled (dmesg brings up no mention of ppp). I'm a little surprised, I would've thought a kernel I downloaded as a .deb off debian.org would have ppp enabled, but still...(did I do something wrong during the install, I wonder?) If I want to reach the Internet I currently have to boot the 2.4.18-bf2.4 kernel off the world's slowest floppy boot disk ;) Plus, floppy booting, it doesn't read Grub's menu.lst so never invokes hdb=ide-scsi that I need for cdrecord, though I assume I could change syslinux.cfg on the floppy: DISPLAY message.txt TIMEOUT 40 PROMPT 1 DEFAULT linux.bin APPEND root=/dev/hdc2 ro by changing the last line to APPEND root=/dev/hdc2 dhb=ide-scsi ro Anyway, back to the CD-ROM, is there any way to use the kernel images on that to just put a vmlinuz-xxx in /bootthat I can call with Grub, without going through the Install process again (because last time I did that, I broke things :( Or do I need to do another 5MB download of a .deb from debian.org? Regards cr -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: How to kill X?
On Mon, 06 Oct 2003 02:46, Kent West wrote: Neo wrote: On Fri, 2003-10-03 at 13:37, cr wrote: Way back in the days of RedHat 5 or thereabouts, whenever X siezed for any reason, I could kill it with Alt-Ctrl-Backspace and end up back in the command line. This is Debian's behaviour also. However, since I got more sophisticated hardware with an ATX power supply, Ctrl-Alt-Backspace turns the machine off (or reboots it), with consequent fscking of the drives, which is a pain. This is odd. I've never heard of such a thing. As someone else mentioned, perhaps this is a key combination that your BIOS has reserved for a reset, although I've never heard of such a BIOS. After I posted my query, and before I read these, it did occur to me that it might be a BIOS setting (as you suggest), and it was. It's an Award BIOS, and I changed 'Hot Key Function' from 'Power Off' to 'Disable'(meaning, disable the hot key I presume). Nowhere in the BIOS setup does it say what the hot key combination is, but I guess Alt-Ctrl-Backspace is it. Anyway, *now*, Ctrl-Alt-BS does indeed just kill X and leave me in Linux as it should.However, whether it'll still work if X 'siezes' I'll only know if and when I have a sieze. Thanks Chris -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: How to kill X?
On Mon, 06 Oct 2003 04:42, Pigeon wrote: On Sun, Oct 05, 2003 at 02:42:17AM -0700, Paul Johnson wrote: On Fri, Oct 03, 2003 at 11:37:19PM +1200, cr wrote: I just had a sieze in X, and Ctrl-Alt-F? had no effect, Ctrl-Alt-Backspace was the only key combination that worked. Is there any setting that will restore its function of 'kill X but don't reboot the machine' or any other key combination that achieves that? Disable rebooting in the bios? That'll stop the rebooting... however I have an unpleasant suspicion that if the box is so wedged that Ctrl-Alt-F? doesn't work, Ctrl-Alt-Backspace won't work either (I don't intend to try and induce a seizure to verify this :-) ) - ie. the reason Ctrl-Alt-Backspace 'worked' was that the BIOS caught it. It may still be possible to log in remotely and shut down; if not the best workaround until you can find what's causing the seizures might be to use a journalling filesystem like ext3. Actually, thinking back on it, what I used to get way back then was not so much a siezure of X as cascading errorboxes from one application... which eventually, if left to continue, would hang the computer. Ctrl-Alt-BS worked on that.What I had the other day was more like a sieze, everything 'locked up' (except Ctrl-Alt-BS which cut the power). Whether Ctrl-Alt-BS will now work to drop me back to the command line, or just have no effect at all (since I've now disabled the 'Hot Key Function' in the BIOS), I'll only find out if and when I have another sieze. I've only had one sieze in recent times, what I've had several of recently is sudden complete power cut - possibly a power supply fault. Either way, it has the same effect of discombobulating my hard drive so I have to do a lot of fscking on startup again.Occasionally this completely munges my X setup. I was thinking the best precaution might be to occasionally copy /etc, /root and maybe /home/cr (are those the appropriate directories?) to a directory on another drive, which is unlikely to have files open at the time of a crash, and just copy them back if I need to to restore my settings. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
How to kill X?
Way back in the days of RedHat 5 or thereabouts, whenever X siezed for any reason, I could kill it with Alt-Ctrl-Backspace and end up back in the command line. Very handy, since Linux is ~ 10^6 times more stable than X ;) However, since I got more sophisticated hardware with an ATX power supply, Ctrl-Alt-Backspace turns the machine off (or reboots it), with consequent fscking of the drives, which is a pain. I just had a sieze in X, and Ctrl-Alt-F? had no effect, Ctrl-Alt-Backspace was the only key combination that worked. Is there any setting that will restore its function of 'kill X but don't reboot the machine' or any other key combination that achieves that? cr -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: dpkg slightly bent
On Fri, 03 Oct 2003 02:12, Colin Watson wrote: On Fri, Oct 03, 2003 at 11:23:51PM +1200, cr wrote: On Wed, 01 Oct 2003 21:53, Colin Watson wrote: 'dselect update' will refetch it. Thanks! Worked perfectly! Good stuff. Hello to you a day in the future, by the way ;) Just my fiendish plan to keep one step ahead of the list ;) Someone already pointed that out to me... I *think* I've fixed it. (Crosses fingers) cr -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: dpkg slightly bent
On Wed, 01 Oct 2003 21:53, Colin Watson wrote: On Fri, Oct 03, 2003 at 09:26:14PM +1200, cr wrote: I had a crash while using Kpackage last night (nothing to do with software, it's a hardware fault). I'm up and running again after much fscking, but now Kpackage (or rather, dpkg which it calls) won't work.I get the message 'failed to open /var/lib/dpkg/available - no such file or directory'. 'dselect update' will refetch it. Cheers, Thanks! Worked perfectly! cr -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Base system
On Wed, Oct 01, 2003 at 01:56:22PM -0500, John Foster wrote: Note: The first package that you should install from areas that are not reqiured ; even if you are trying to maintain a small file system is 'mc' (midnight commander) it will be your friend :-) 8-) I re-installed Debian last week, this time I settled for what Tasksel gave me, intending to install the rest later, and sure enough, the *very first app* that I noticed the absence of was mc. cr ... just amused by the coincidence -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: pppd daemon dies
On Tue, 30 Sep 2003 04:11, cr wrote: On Sat, 27 Sep 2003 20:52, Thomas Krennwallner wrote: Hi! On Sat Sep 27, 2003 at 01:03:30AM -0800, J Y wrote: Sep 26 05:42:22 deblnx pppd[1178]: The remote system is required to authenticate itself Sep 26 05:42:22 deblnx pppd[1178]: but I couldn't find any suitable secret (password) for it to use to do so. Sep 26 05:42:22 deblnx pppd[1178]: (None of the available passwords would let it use an IP address.) I went to kde/kppp site and read there that commenting out the 'auth' line in /etc/ppp/otions could be a fix but it wasn't. So I copied the /etc/ppp/options file from my SuSE distro but that didn't work either. Add following line to /etc/ppp/options: noauth So long Thomas Or alternatively, after bringing up Kppp, go Setup - [select account] - Edit - Customise pppd - [type in ] noauth - Add I've just had to do that, half an hour ago, and it works. Just to correct myself - that *only* works if you're Root.(Even though I first saw it suggested on some website!) cr -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: pppd daemon dies is a permissions problem? help?
On Wed, 01 Oct 2003 16:32, J Y wrote: Hi, I did the following: Copy /etc/ppp/peers/provider as /etc/ppp/peers/orcon and edit the file 'orcon' to suit (e.g. include 'noauth', and in my case comment out the sample chat script # connect /usr/sbin/chat -v -f /etc/chatscripts/provider ) Then, to use the 'call' option with Kppp, just do Setup - (Orcon Internet) - Edit - pppd arguments - [type in:] call orcon - Add Hope I've got this right. cr and got this response from internet dialer/kppp: Sep 3023:00:23 deblnx ppd(1626): Can't open options file /etc/ppp/peers/highstream.net: Permission denied I know that this is a permissions problem, now, But I don't know how to fix it. I have tried a chmod ug +x on the file 'highstream.net but that didn't work. I can't imagine that I need to change permissions or owner for the whole file listing. What is the answer to this please? Thanks (Copy to J Y in case he's still not getting the list posts) I'm no expert at all, but for what it's worth, my file /etc/ppp/peers/orcon is as follows: -rw-r-1 root dip 580 Oct 1 10:28 orcon (I didn't set any of that specially, it was just what the sample file 'provider' had) and I'd already added myself (as user cr) to group dip. cr -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
dpkg slightly bent
I had a crash while using Kpackage last night (nothing to do with software, it's a hardware fault). I'm up and running again after much fscking, but now Kpackage (or rather, dpkg which it calls) won't work.I get the message 'failed to open /var/lib/dpkg/available - no such file or directory'. Sure enough, there's no such file. There is a available-old file - should I just copy that as 'available' and continue? Or will it get something fatally out of sync? cr -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: pppd daemon dies
On Mon, 29 Sep 2003 00:58, John Hasler wrote: cr writes: Other question - what's the 'proper' way to give a user (me) access to ppp? Add the user to the dip group. It is not necessary to add the user to dialout as pppd opens the device while running as root. Thanks! I added myself to the dip group, and sure enough kppp now starts up for me. I also remembered to add 'noauth' as an option in my kppp setup (which worked fine when I was dialling as root).However, Kppp dials in, OK, but as soon as connection is established it drops out with 'using noauth option requires root privilege'. If I remove the noauth option, then I'm back to the previous error of 'remote system is required to authenticate itself'. The obvious 'fix' of adding myself to group 'root' is, I think, not a good idea ;) However I seem to have fixed it - I'll include this in case it helps anyone: /etc/ppp/options says: # Require the peer to authenticate itself before allowing network # packets to be sent or received. # Please do not disable this setting. It is expected to be standard in # future releases of pppd. Use the call option (see manpage) to disable # authentication for specific peers. auth So probably changing it to 'noauth' would work, but is, I assume, not approved. (And, reading between the lines, auth may be 'hard-wired' in in newer pppd's?) The 'correct' way seems to be (my ISP is called 'Orcon' for purposes of illustration): Copy /etc/ppp/peers/provider as /etc/ppp/peers/orcon and edit the file 'orcon' to suit (e.g. include 'noauth', and in my case comment out the sample chat script # connect /usr/sbin/chat -v -f /etc/chatscripts/provider ) Then, to use the 'call' option with Kppp, just do Setup - (Orcon Internet) - Edit - pppd arguments - [type in:] call orcon - Add Hope I've got this right. cr -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: grub setup is driving me crazy
On Sun, 28 Sep 2003 22:32, J Y wrote: Hi I am very grateful for the community here and I appreciate the help I received. I will be trying to get my internet connection going when I reboot into debian. Which brings me to my issue of the moment :( I really have tried so many things to be able to boot from the grub SuSE installs (version .92) I think. Currently I boot from a floopy. I read the grub editing procedure which is made to sound simple but I can not get debian to boot froom grub. I have edited /boot/grub/menu.1st every way I can think of/copy from other how-tos. At best I get a filesystem not found. I had been getting a start up and then 'kernel panic'. The specifics, sorry, its early in the morning and I have just thrown the damn SuSE manual against the floor, Debian 3.0 is on hdb5 my 2nd hard drive. I know that grub numbers drives starting from 0 so hdb5 = (hd1,4). This is my current (not working) /boot/grub/menu.1st debian listing: title debian3.0 kernel (hd1,4)/boot/vmlinuz root=dev/hdb5 initrd (hd1,4)/initrd Try this for menu.lst: root (hd1,?)(see below for the ?) kernel /boot/vmlinuz--2.4.18-k7root=/dev/hdb5 initrd/boot/initrd-2.4.18-k7 It looks to me as if your Suse may be in an extended partition? I *think* GRUB only counts the actual partitions used so for example the GRUB numbering would be as follows: /hdb1 windows (hd1,0) /hdb2 more windows(hd1,1) /hdb3 extended /hdb5 Suse (hd1,2) /hdb6 spare Linux (hd1,3) If you're using or have a grub boot floppy, you can check it by booting the floppy, then do (in the above example) root (hd1,2) and if it says it's found an ext2 partition, you know at least it's Linux Then try find /tabshould show you a number of directory names, if you're lucky they'll include boot find /boot/tabshould show you the actual kernel and initrd as two of the names. You only need the 'root=/dev/hdb5' as a Linux parameter to pass to the kernel if it's in a different partition from your root directory, that is, if you for example have a separate /boot/ partition (RedHat often does, Debian usually doesn't, I don't know about Suse). To install GRUB in the MBR, you need to either boot into Grub off a boot disk, or (when in Linux) run Grub, then when you're in the Grub shell do this: grub root (hd1,4) (or wherever your /boot/grub files are) grub setup (hd0) (and that will put Grub in the MBR of the first hard drive) (If your first drive happens to be DOS, you can also get GRUB for DOS which will allow you to install GRUB and its menus on the first hard drive. It comes complete with instructions. Google for Grub for dos). Hope this helps and I've made no booboos. ;) I have tried putting /boot/vmlinuz-2.4.18-k7 for the kernel with video parameters and not. I have tried /boot/loader, chainloader with the device and +1. I did have debian install a loader to the partition just not to the MBR. I wish I could have figured this out myself. The SuSE manual makes setting up grub sound easy. They all do...:) Probably your using the second hard drive is the complication. cr -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: pppd daemon dies
On Sat, 27 Sep 2003 20:52, Thomas Krennwallner wrote: Hi! On Sat Sep 27, 2003 at 01:03:30AM -0800, J Y wrote: Sep 26 05:42:22 deblnx pppd[1178]: The remote system is required to authenticate itself Sep 26 05:42:22 deblnx pppd[1178]: but I couldn't find any suitable secret (password) for it to use to do so. Sep 26 05:42:22 deblnx pppd[1178]: (None of the available passwords would let it use an IP address.) I went to kde/kppp site and read there that commenting out the 'auth' line in /etc/ppp/otions could be a fix but it wasn't. So I copied the /etc/ppp/options file from my SuSE distro but that didn't work either. Add following line to /etc/ppp/options: noauth So long Thomas Or alternatively, after bringing up Kppp, go Setup - [select account] - Edit - Customise pppd - [type in ] noauth - Add I've just had to do that, half an hour ago, and it works. (I just did a complete reinstall of Woody, for various reasons). Curiously though, /etc/ppp/options still has 'auth' in it, while /etc/ppp/peers/provider has 'noauth' (and already did, I think, even when I was having that 'drop-out' problem mentioned above). I don't know how the two inter-relate, but evidently what I did in Kppp has changed something else somewhere.I was intending to ask for some clarification on this list. Other question - what's the 'proper' way to give a user (me) access to ppp? I can think of a couple of ways that might work but I might as well do it the 'proper' way. I don't need high security (being the only user) but I'm sure I shouldn't be posting as root;) cr -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: OT: RH and Debian brothers now?
On Wednesday 24 September 2003 20:59, Colin Watson wrote: On Wed, Sep 24, 2003 at 07:19:10PM +1200, cr wrote: ... having just recovered from another screaming encounter with dselect. If I ever have to face that Debian installer again I'll... I'll... dselect is not what people usually mean when they talk about the Debian installer ... I appreciate that dselect is only part of the install process, albeit the largest part timewise if one uses it. What makes it frustrating is that, while working through the huge list of apps in dselect (which isn't the most intuitive piece of software ever written ;)it's only too easy to 'finish' with it prematurely**, at which point the installer asks 'Continue Y/n'with no 'Back' option to re-enter dselect.It's the combination of the two that's so unforgiving. ( ** The dselect package selection interface is confusing or even alarming to a new user. -man dselect :) I'd say dselect is probably okay for selecting a few apps.Working through an entire install list with it is a daunting task.As I said, next time (if there is a next time :) I'll just use tasksel, install what it selects, and then do the fine tuning afterwards with kpackage. cr -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Anti-Spam ideas for usenet/list harvested email addresses
On Wednesday 24 September 2003 10:30, Kirk Strauser wrote: Out of curiosity, are there *any* legitimate reasons at all why you'd want to mail an uncompressed executable to someone? I can think of just one ...zip.exe (self-extracting), for someone who doesn't have zip. Well, you asked.:) cr -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Windows multiboot (aaargh!)
On Friday 26 September 2003 04:04, Jacob Anawalt wrote: Conclusions: 1. Back up the MBR and everything else, first! 2. Be very, very careful when using 'map' to swap drives around I've used 'map' without any damages, but Win* didn't want to finish booting using it. I actually came across a couple of threads in the bug-grub archive recounting remarkably similar problems to mine, caused to /dev/hda, apparently by 'map'. It's not inevitable, but quite possible, so far as I can tell. And yes, Windows did have trouble booting with 'map' on occasion. cr -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: OT: RH and Debian brothers now?
On Thursday 25 September 2003 03:24, Sebastian Kapfer wrote: On Wed, 24 Sep 2003 09:40:14 +0200, cr wrote: ... having just recovered from another screaming encounter with dselect. One word: aptitude Thanks, I'll bear 'aptitude' in mind (though I tend to be lazy and use kpackage wherever possible), but dselect is the app written into the installer. dselect is actually not so bad on a one-app basis, it's trying to use it to select all the apps for an install where it rapidly gets old.;) cr -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: OT: RH and Debian brothers now?
On Friday 26 September 2003 21:52, Paul Johnson wrote: On Sat, Sep 27, 2003 at 08:26:32AM +1200, cr wrote: I appreciate that dselect is only part of the install process, albeit the largest part timewise if one uses it. You don't have to, though. What makes it frustrating is that, while working through the huge list of apps in dselect (which isn't the most intuitive piece of software ever written ;) No software is intuitive, it's all learned. The only intuitive interface is the nipple, the rest is in your head. ... but some is more intuitive than others. I don't want to get sidetracked into a debate about 'intuitive' but I could, in the space of a few minutes, make a list of programs which are easy to use and others (which do the same thing) which are hard to use. I'll spare the list this digression though.;) cr -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: OT: RH and Debian brothers now?
On Friday 26 September 2003 22:03, Alex Malinovich wrote: On Fri, 2003-09-26 at 16:31, cr wrote: (snip) dselect is actually not so bad on a one-app basis, it's trying to use it to select all the apps for an install where it rapidly gets old.;) Call me weird, but unless I'm only installing one or two packages (which I'll just use apt-get to do) I think dselect is the best tool for the job. It lets you see recommended and suggested packages while automatically showing you which dependencies need to be installed. It's also the only really intuitive package manager I've found. It took me about 2 hours of playing with it to understand it. With respect, if it takes a couple of hours to understand, I wouldn't call that 'intuitive'. And the other thing is, I guess, that first encountering it during the Debian install process (and having to restart the whole process if you make a mistake) is the worst possible time to get to know any piece of software. But I won't belabour the point any further. cr -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Windows multiboot (aaargh!)
On Friday 19 September 2003 21:12, cr wrote: (DOS / Win95 / Win98 install) Next step, see if I can boot the whole thing with GRUB cr Progress report... :) The 'rgh' was prophetic Well, it all booted happily with Grub while it was Drive 1 in my spare PC. So I put it in this box as /hdd, DOS would boot OK, but while I was faffing around with 'map' and 'hide' trying to make Windows behave consistently, *something* (whether me with Grub or Windows thinking it ought to be on Drive 1) went and munged /dev/hda5 where Debian lives. First I knew of it was 'kernel panic' when trying to boot Deb. I found that /hda1 ( /boot) was OK, but /hda5 (root) and /hda6( /swap) seemed to have got themselves lost in/hda2. And I *hadn't* backed up the mbr, nor did I have a record of the exact partition size Soo...I got a spare drive, installed Debian on it intending to see if I could salvage the old /hda5 somehow, and in the midst of my usual battle to the death with dselect I came across a little utility called gpart which guesses partitions. And, it works!OK, relying on it is a bit like driving your car into a power pole to check if the seat belts work, but still, I'm damn grateful to its author. Conclusions: 1. Back up the MBR and everything else, first! 2. Be very, very careful when using 'map' to swap drives around 3. It's probably safest to let DOS/Windows occupy Drive 1, where in its blinkered arrogance it thinks it belongs. Linux can sit somewhere else. We all know who's really in charge and it isn't Windows;) cr -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: OT: RH and Debian brothers now?
On Wednesday 24 September 2003 11:03, Paul E Condon wrote: RedHat's business model is moving toward support services for enterprises and away from sale of boxed sets of CDs. I don't think it makes much sense for them to continue work on the RedHat Linux distribution, but I can see why they might want to pretend to do so. Their corporate customers probably wouldn't notice if RedHat started loading Debian onto the corporate computers, so long as Red Hat, the company, continued to provide support. I think they would save themselves a lot of head aches if they did move to Debian. This collective support of the RedHat distribution, without selling CDs looks to me like Debian done badly. It will wither away, and the people will drift into the Debian community. Just so long as RH apply their excellent installer to Debian;) cr ... having just recovered from another screaming encounter with dselect. If I ever have to face that Debian installer again I'll... I'll... ... just let it do what it bloody well wants to and sort it all out later with Kpackage, I think.:( -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
