Re: Linux Commands
On Tue, 23 Jun 1998, Dennis Dixon wrote: When I read the man pages, or any zip file that I have for that matter, I use the command: 'zmore .tar.gz'. This obviously is not the right command to view these files, in that the files have all sorts of control characters in them. .tar.gz is not a text file, it's a tape archive. Thus the control characters. zmore is correct for text files - try zmore /usr/doc/copyright/GPL.gz for example, that should work. (by the way, zless is much nicer - less is more.) Along the same lines, I downloaded a tar.gz file which was supposed to be in Latex format. I unzipped it with 'tar zxvf filename.tar.gz' which gave me numerous .tex files. Good so far. This is a gzipped (compressed) tape archive full of LaTeX files. Thinking I needed the Tetex package I downloaded and installed this. 'tex filename.tex' however gets me the error message; 'undefined control sequence' or something like that. Clearly I'm missing something. It can't be that hard to read a text file. TeX is a typesetting language. LaTeX is a set of TeX macros. So LaTeX files are TeX files, but they require special processing with the latex program. If the directory has a Makefile, typing make will probably do everything for you. Otherwise, the usual procedure is: latex filename.tex latex filename.tex # yes, do it twice - resolves any cross-references dvips -o filename.ps filename.dvi You are compiling the TeX source code into a .dvi file, which you can view with xdvi, and then converting .dvi into postscript, which you can view with gv. You can also read the .tex files with less, but the content will be all mixed in with LaTeX commands, so it can be confusing. To print the document, try 'lpr filename.ps', assuming you have a printer configured. Havoc Pennington http://pobox.com/~hp -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: gnome v.20
On Mon, 22 Jun 1998, Brian Morgan wrote: Anyone know of any updated info on the release of gnome v.20 for debian? I'm anxiously awaiting it's arrival. Is it possible to simply install it using the tarballs on the gnome site? Or will there be mucho configuration I need to do? It's in incoming. The tarballs are enough of a pain that I'd recommend getting the packages, now that they're out. If you hold off a few days they'll probably be on the main ftp site and have a few quirks worked out, but you could grab them from incoming now (live dangerous). Havoc Pennington http://pobox.com/~hp -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Hard drive compatibility with Linux
On Wed, 3 Jun 1998, Jacob E Goodman wrote: I just placed an order for a Dell Dimension XPS R400MHz system, which includes a 16.8GB EIDE Ultra ATA hard drive, factory installed. Will I be able to use Linux on this system, or is the disk too large? I plan to partition the disk and install both Linux and Windows. No problem. The problems with large disks came from old BIOS chips, not Linux, IIRC. This system won't have an old BIOS, I imagine. ;-) You might have weirdness with the Ultra ATA, depending on what hardware they use. But if you do, you should be able to run with it disabled, or patch the kernel to use Ultra. My box works fine though, with no special changes and a UDMA disk. FWIW I have often heard people say Dell machines work well with Linux. They usually don't have the lame WinHardware found on some brands. Havoc Pennington http://pobox.com/~hp -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Cut and paste question
On Thu, 28 May 1998, Tim O'Brien wrote: I've been using Debian for quite a while now, and was wondering what sort of support Linux/X has for cut and paste? Sure, there's the stuff with GPM where things can be cut and pasted, but it's not very universal. There is limited support. You can highlight text with the left mouse button, and paste it by clicking the middle mouse button (or your chosen emulation of the middle button, e.g. both buttons at once). It's very easy to accidentally click the left button again and lose your selection, though. You also can't do the thing where you highlight text to replace and then paste over it, because highlighting automatically copies the text to the clipboard. This should work with most apps - xterm, emacs, netscape, etc. The Gnome and KDE desktop projects are both working on X usability, including this problem, so look for a better solution in the future. Havoc Pennington http://pobox.com/~hp -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Now that I downloaded GNOME whow do I run it?
On Wed, 27 May 1998, Daniel Mashao wrote: I have doenloaded gnome from slink and yes it I ran dpkg on it and it seems to be well installed but how do I use it? I thought it would be like the nice KDE desktop but it just seems to be eating my disk space. How do I run it? Why is there no documentation about running it? I think that's the ancient Gnome 0.13. It doesn't do much and there was very little in the way of docs due to the alpha quality of the software. Gnome is *still* alpha software, and you should not expect it to be a nice, usable desktop yet (though it is getting there, and it is fun to play with and does work most of the time). If you keep in mind that it is *not finished*, and should not be compared to finished software like KDE, you can learn how to download and compile a recent development version on www.gnome.org. You should use the anonymous CVS, and you will need around 300 MB of disk for the compile, maybe a little more even. It is *not* easy to compile, because it requires lots of auxiliary packages and if you don't have them the errors can be cryptic. Try following the instructions on the web page, but if you don't know automake/autoconf very well, expect to ask questions. The appropriate forum for that is [EMAIL PROTECTED] Remember that this is development software, and everything will be easier to try out when it goes into production. For now you should only try it if you're curious and patient. Good luck! Havoc Pennington http://pobox.com/~hp -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: gcc broken?
On 23 May 1998, Bonard B. Timmons III wrote: su -c 'cd /usr/local/bin ; ln -s ../../bin/egcc gcc' There is probably a cleaner way, but this should work, since /usr/local/bin is usually searched for non-root users before /usr/bin. The Official way is to use /etc/alternatives, I think. $ls -l /usr/bin/cc lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 20 Dec 9 00:08 /usr/bin/cc - /etc/alternatives/cc $ls -l /etc/alternatives/cc lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 13 Mar 30 21:54 /etc/alternatives/cc - /usr/bin/egcc To change to plain gcc: ln -sf /usr/bin/gcc /etc/alternatives/cc There is also a c++ there for g++/eg++. Havoc Pennington http://pobox.com/~hp -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: AMD K6
The only problem with the K6 I've read about is with some made before September of last year, they occasionally bomb in large compiles with over 32 MB of RAM in the machine. Do a web search and you should be able to find out if your K6 is one of the broken ones by looking at the serial #. AMD will take these back. My K6 has been going good for a long time now, and lots of other people use them too. There shouldn't be a problem unless some part of your hardware is broken. Havoc Pennington http://pobox.com/~hp -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Toshiba and HP's GNU/Linux compatibility
On Sun, 17 May 1998, Stefan Baums wrote: I'll buy a notebook computer shortly, and one of my prime concerns is that GNU/Linux will not only run on it somehow, but actually use the available hardware features. At the moment, I'm considering the If you really want to be sure your best bet is to get it with Linux preinstalled from one of the Linux vendors, like VA Research. They can install Windows too, I think. The if the hardware isn't Linux-friendly you have someone to hold responsible. Havoc Pennington http://pobox.com/~hp -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: A Cry For Help
On Wed, 13 May 1998, Jeff Garey wrote: Bravo! Couldn't have said it better myself! I seem to have the same experience...several years experience with computers, and a little programming, and a technical background in communications. Unfortunately, Linux is not my full time job. Documentation geared towards the novice user would be of great help. Jeff, a novice Debian Linux User Hi y'all, There is a half-finished Debian Tutorial to be found at http://pobox.com/~hp. The writing isn't moving very fast at the moment; however, what's there may be useful, and feedback would be wonderful. You are 100% right of course, Debian is not really very good for novices at the moment, and the lack of docs doesn't help. Unfortunately there are all kinds of Easy Linux efforts, and not many Easy Linux results. Hopefully the situation will be remedied over the next year or two, from both the documentation and the interface point of view. You might want to keep an eye on the GNOME project (www.gnome.org) though it's not ready for prime time just yet and still requires a fairly complex manual compilation since there's no debian package. When you are no longer novices, just remember what it was like, and contribute a section to the docs. ;-) Havoc Pennington http://pobox.com/~hp -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Getting file information
On Sun, 10 May 1998, Norbert Veber wrote: What is the name of the command in debian that shows information about files? Things like last access time, last modification time and so on. I could swear that I once used a command 'stat' for this purpose, but it either wanished, or it never was in debian (might have been in my redhat days).. There's a stat command, it appears to be in its own package in the utils section. Havoc Pennington http://pobox.com/~hp -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: PINE Debian Package
On Mon, 20 Apr 1998, George Bonser wrote: No, I think someone is taking the politics of free software to an extreme. It looks like someone in Debian decided that their patches to configure it resulted in a derivative work and since pine does not allow derivative works to be called pine, it looks like it got yanked. That can't be right. One, because it could still go in non-free, only with a different name. Debian doesn't yank stuff from non-free unless it's illegal to have on the ftp server (in which case it has to be yanked, no matter what our politics). Two, because I just downloaded it. See: http://cgi.debian.org/www-master/debian.org/Packages/stable/non-free/pine.html It may well be gone from frozen, I don't know, but that could be due to bugs not licensing, or the lack of a maintainer. Mutt is, at best, a very weak replacement for Pine. As for text email clients, Pine has no equal and is free enough for most uses. If Debian is going to start producing a crappy distribution just because it is free, I will pay for one that is not. The whole purpose of Debian is to be free, that's more or less the charter of the organization, to the extent that it has one. If it's ever impossible to produce a good free distribution Debian will be discontinued, and you'll not only be able to pay for a good one, you'll have to. Assuming there is one. I do not use Debian because it is free, I use Debian because it has been good. If emphasis is going to be on free rather than good, you are making a mistake. The vision is that the two coincide, and when they don't, they should be made to. In this case, by improving mutt or vm or any of the other zillion mail programs. But until then there's the non-free directory, which includes any non-free programs that are legal to distribute and have maintainers. Freeness is the original purpose of Debian, and by long consensus there is a commitment to that. It's quite simple to start your own dist with the Debian non-free and main directories combined, plus the other stuff of your choice. But there's no point beating your head on a brick wall to change Debian. I have needed to get that off my chest ever since I noticed pine missing. Pine is not an optional compinent for me, it is MANDITORY. There is nothing in the distribution that comes close to replacing it. Relax, I think it's still there. Havoc Pennington http://pobox.com/~hp -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: PINE Debian Package
There should be one in non-free (or maybe contrib?) - anyway, it's there somewhere on the ftp server, I have it installed. Havoc Pennington On Mon, 20 Apr 1998, Kenneth F. Ryder III wrote: I am looking for a debian package of PINE, does any one know where I can get one? thanks Ken -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
poff killing X?
Hi, OK, everyone's going to think I'm insane, but this has happened several times. Sometimes running poff, either from an xterm or from the window manager menu, causes my X session to die. This has happened using either the window manager or an xterm as session manager, so it's killing the session somehow, not the wm in particular. I'm running a reasonably recent hamm system; however, it also happened with the old X package. icewm, SVGA server. It seems to happen when pon has failed, i.e. the modem is still off the hook but something has prevented the connection from completing - so perhaps pppd isn't running. I don't even know where to start looking for this bug. Anyone else seen it? Any idea what possible interaction there could be between the X session and poff? Thanks, Havoc Pennington http://pobox.com/~hp -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: gnome
On Sat, 14 Mar 1998, Richard Sevenich wrote: I am looking for a window manager to go with long term. I recently installed kde and find it quite nice, but I'd like to look at other options also. I understand the reason why debian has given some support to gnome and would like to try it when it is reasonably functional. So are there current users of gnome who find it already usable? If so I'll pull it in. I'd appreciate comments from those with gnome experience. Gnome isn't usable right now, basically. It may be useful reasonably soon though (2 or 3 months? guessing, don't quote me). As other have said, neither Gnome nor KDE are window managers, though KDE includes one in their distribution (kwm). You could use KDE for now and later switch to Gnome if you want desktop functionality (file manager, desktop properties, panel, etc). If stability and continuity are more important to you, you could use a plain old traditional window manager instead of kwm. I like icewm because it is small, simple, stable, fast, and looks nice; twm is a traditional Unix wm, but ugly as hell; fvwm and variants seem to be the traditional Linux wm - they have a lot of features. There are several others, such as Afterstep, that many people like as well. If you plan to switch to Gnome later, I think the authors of icewm, Enlightenment, and scwm have all announced their intention to be Gnome-compliant. Of the three only icewm is stable in my experience (though none of them have reached 1.0 and all three are usable). So in short I use icewm now, and like it a lot, the only drawback is that the documentation isn't finished. I plan to use Gnome when it comes out. But there are about a million window managers and each one has a large following. :) Pick a week, and use a different one every day, and see what you think. This is one of the great things about free software - you can try everything for yourself and pick your favorite. HTH, Havoc Pennington http://pobox.com/~hp -- E-mail the word unsubscribe to [EMAIL PROTECTED] TO UNSUBSCRIBE FROM THIS MAILING LIST. Trouble? E-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: XF
On Tue, 10 Mar 1998, Abou Anber wrote: who can I fixed the resoltion of Xwindows at begining? Your preferred resolution should be the first one listed. down you will find my XF86Config. ... Subsection Display Depth 8 # Omit the Modes line for the Generic VGA device Modes 640x480 800x600 1024x768 1280x1024 ^^ This line should be in the order you want, and similarly for any other Subsection Display you use. Be sure to change the order for all the different color depths. HTH, Havoc Pennington http://pobox.com/~hp -- E-mail the word unsubscribe to [EMAIL PROTECTED] TO UNSUBSCRIBE FROM THIS MAILING LIST. Trouble? E-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] .
Re: /dev/cua? and /dev/ttyS?
On Fri, 6 Feb 1998, impale wrote: What is the difference between /dev/cua? and /dev/ttyS? ? See the PPP HOWTO for one explanation. Essentially cua? is obsolete, ignore it and use ttyS?. Havoc Pennington -- TO UNSUBSCRIBE FROM THIS MAILING LIST: e-mail the word unsubscribe to [EMAIL PROTECTED] . Trouble? e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] .
Re: /dev/cua? and /dev/ttyS?
On Thu, 5 Feb 1998, John Kloss wrote: It is NOT obsolete. The only way that I can connect to my modem (which is a pcmcia card) is through /dev/cua1. I tried many times to connect to my ISP through /dev/ttyS1, 2, 3 (it should be 1 because that is what the com port is) and nothing happened. When I switched to /dev/cua1 everything worked. If ttyS1 doesn't work it just means that something is set up wrong, or you have an old version of Linux, or there's a bug. The cua devices do still work, but they might disappear in the future. That's what's meant by deprecated or obsolete. So it's wrong for new programs/scripts to be written which use the cua devices. Havoc Pennington -- TO UNSUBSCRIBE FROM THIS MAILING LIST: e-mail the word unsubscribe to [EMAIL PROTECTED] . Trouble? e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] .
Re: Meta key doesn't work anymore in xemacs!
On Sun, 1 Feb 1998, Christian Hudon wrote: Hi, I'm running xemacs20 instead of emacs now, and my meta key doesn't work. Each time xemacs starts up, it complains that (1) (key-mapping/warning) XEmacs: Meta_L (0x73) generates both Mod1 and Mod4, which is nonsensical. Well, I think technically XEmacs is right, it's just that no other programs care. Somewhere in some manual it says to make alt generate meta in a way that produces this problem (I'm assuming you have a PC and not a Sparc or something with a real Meta key). I don't understand it fully, personally. But you can make the error go away with something like this to Xmodmap: ! Alt = Meta keycode 0x40 = Meta_L keycode 0x71 = Meta_R clear Mod1 clear Mod4 add Mod1 = Meta_L Meta_R There may be a better way, I don't get along with Xmodmap too well. HTH, Havoc Pennington -- TO UNSUBSCRIBE FROM THIS MAILING LIST: e-mail the word unsubscribe to [EMAIL PROTECTED] . Trouble? e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] .
Re: Linux and ultra dma drives
On Wed, 28 Jan 1998, ' ALLAN W. BART wrote: i just wanted to know about compatibility. I have a Quantum Fireball ST 3.2 GB, which has UDMA capability. The current version of Linux just ignores the UDMA, and uses plain DMA. It works fine for me. However, some people have had problems with UDMA add-on cards, like the Promise controller (apparently used in some Gateway machines, for example). The solution is to use the mainboard's on-board controller instead. BTW, does anyone know when the kernel will have ultra DMA support? I remember one discussion a while back about kernel hackers not caring about IDE, but I don't remember any conclusions about which kernel would have UDMA or when that kernel will likely be released. Havoc Pennington -- TO UNSUBSCRIBE FROM THIS MAILING LIST: e-mail the word unsubscribe to [EMAIL PROTECTED] . Trouble? e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] .
Re: Re[2]: configuring return address on outgoing mail
On Sun, 18 Jan 1998, Bob Bernstein wrote: robert havoc pennington [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: A local expert tells me that bounced mail doesn't go to the From: address but to some other thing set by the MTA. I've tried sending mail to bad addresses and I get nothing back. So something's wrong. Perhaps you need to set visible_name to pobox.com, assuming that's the dialup ISP you're using. My understanding, for what it's worth, is that smail will default to your machine's name in lieu of a visible_name value. Hmm, pobox.com isn't the dialup, unfortunately. It's just an alias service, not an ISP. Check the archives of this list for this month and last month. There's been a tremendous amount of discussion of all this stuff. Is there any way to search the archives? Given their size, going through them by hand is a little tricky. I've been reading this list for a while though and don't remember a solution to this problem. Everything assumes either static IP address, email address == domain, using Pine, or something else like that... Thanks for the help though! Havoc Pennington -- TO UNSUBSCRIBE FROM THIS MAILING LIST: e-mail the word unsubscribe to [EMAIL PROTECTED] . Trouble? e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] .
Re: how can i create linux partition?
The install process formats the partition for Linux. You just need to create the partition or empty space for one beforehand - it can be a Win95 partition or whatever. The install program will ask which partition(s) you want to format for Linux, or even allow you to destructively repartition. Remember that you want a swap partition too. The only thing the install program won't do is nondestructively repartition, i.e. you can't change any partitions without erasing their data. For that you need Partition Magic or FIPS. Havoc Pennington On Thu, 22 Jan 1998, Steve wrote: Hello, I'm new -- just recieved my dist. of debian and currently have win95. I have a program called partition magic -- but it doesn't allow me to create linux partitions -- why I do not know Anyhow Im looking for a way to take an existing partition and format it as linux -- without wiping my hard drive clean --- any suggestions? -- Steve : [EMAIL PROTECTED] Http://www.engr.csulb.edu/~stephenc -- ICQ: 2669033 Veni Vidi Vici ...Aut Vincere Aut Mori -- TO UNSUBSCRIBE FROM THIS MAILING LIST: e-mail the word unsubscribe to [EMAIL PROTECTED] . Trouble? e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] .
Re: configuring return address on outgoing mail
On Sat, 17 Jan 1998, Martin Schulze wrote: Using a different From-address is not the MTA's task but the job ob the user agent. You can tell mutt, elm, pine etc. which from address to use. Hmm, I *think* the From: address is already correct, I set it in VM. I sent my earlier mail from my Debian box (this one's not though), so you might could tell from that. I'd look myself but apparently I was unsubscribed to debian-user recently (I just noticed, I thought traffic was just real low but turns out I was only getting messages cc'd to other lists). (Which also means I've missed any responses not cc'd to me, but I've resubscribed now). A local expert tells me that bounced mail doesn't go to the From: address but to some other thing set by the MTA. I've tried sending mail to bad addresses and I get nothing back. So something's wrong. Thanks much, Havoc Pennington -- TO UNSUBSCRIBE FROM THIS MAILING LIST: e-mail the word unsubscribe to [EMAIL PROTECTED] . Trouble? e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] .
Re: X-windows
On Wed, 17 Dec 1997, Alan Woo wrote: hey all, i have tried several things to get x-windows up and running, but it enver works. Can someone please give me step by step directions right from the start of how i can do this, even if i have to reinstall linux? What problem in particular are you having? What step do you get to? Which part doesn't work? What error messages do you get? What have you tried? I've done everything i thought i was supposed to, but it can never find an X-server (how do i configure that?) Put the name of the X server you want at the top of /etc/X11/Xserver. A sample name: /usr/X11R6/bin/XF86_SVGA You may have to use a different server, depending on your hardware. See the XF86 HOWTO, to be found in /usr/doc/HOWTO/XFree86-HOWTO.gz if you installed the HOWTO package. Also try /usr/doc/X11. Good luck. HTH, Havoc Pennington -- TO UNSUBSCRIBE FROM THIS MAILING LIST: e-mail the word unsubscribe to [EMAIL PROTECTED] . Trouble? e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] .
Re: .xsession not executing
On Mon, 15 Dec 1997 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I tried to send this earlier, but i don't think anything got out. After reinstalling, my .xsession file isn't run. I've looked in the man pages for x and xdm, but they don't say anything about permissions other than to be executable. I've tried 700, but this doesn't seem to do it. Other than not being executable, all I can think of is that you may not have allow-user-xsession in /etc/X11/config. If that's not it, perhaps see if there's something helpful in .xsession-errors? Havoc Pennington [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- TO UNSUBSCRIBE FROM THIS MAILING LIST: e-mail the word unsubscribe to [EMAIL PROTECTED] . Trouble? e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] .
Re: /proc directory
Hi, man 5 proc lists most of the entries, though it's a little out of date. Surely there's a more thorough description somewhere, perhaps in the kernel source? HTH, Havoc Pennington On Thu, 11 Dec 1997, Kevin Traas wrote: Can anyone point me to docs/info on the /proc directory. Specifically, I'm looking at content format, field descriptions, etc. Thanks, Kevin -- TO UNSUBSCRIBE FROM THIS MAILING LIST: e-mail the word unsubscribe to [EMAIL PROTECTED] . Trouble? e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] .
Re: CONT2:Debian Installation Problem, PLEASE HELP!!!
On Sun, 7 Dec 1997, Liran Zvibel wrote: I was able to configure X, the only problem is that if I tell the Setup program that my Monitor is SVGA the resolution is too small, and if I tell it I have non-interlaced the fonts are so small that they are hardly readable. Is there a way to fine-tune the resolution? Try Ctrl-Alt and + or - on the keypad, to see if the setup program automatically set up some other resolutions. You can also change the font for many programs using X resources or command line options. Before I reinstalled I had a window-manager that painted the background blue and if I minimized the virtual-desktop it looked like a desk with a V on it. I installed all of the window managers now and can't find that one. That's olvwm. (The ugly 95 lookalike window-manager shows up and I try to load others.) You have two options: to set the default wm for all users, change /etc/X11/window-managers. To change your personal wm, make a .xsession file in your home directory, containing these lines: xterm -ls exec olvwm and be sure you chmod u+x .xsession. I tried to configure PPP/SLIP (my ISP is IBM). When I try to use minicom to connect it does make the sound but that is the last thing it does with the modem, I mean that, I see no CONNECT message nor anything else. I don't see any prompt from the server even when I try to type something. You probably need to send more info on this, but I'm not sure what. Maybe someone else will have a suggestion. HTH, Havoc Pennington -- TO UNSUBSCRIBE FROM THIS MAILING LIST: e-mail the word unsubscribe to [EMAIL PROTECTED] . Trouble? e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] .
best way to set up floppies/CD-ROM
Hi, What's the best way to set things up to permit users to (un)mount floppies and CDs? disk, floppy and cdrom groups? sudo? xvmount? fstab options? other possibilities? If there's no best way, what are the pros and cons of different ways? Also, is there a document somewhere detailing the default groups on Debian, and their intended purpose? Some of them are obvious, some of them aren't so clear to me. Thanks, Havoc Pennington -- TO UNSUBSCRIBE FROM THIS MAILING LIST: e-mail the word unsubscribe to [EMAIL PROTECTED] . Trouble? e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] .
installing on a new disk from a running system
Hi, I just got a new disk and mainboard (yay!) but I have to do some work tonight. So I just put my old disk in the new system and booted, and things are working great (and a whole lot faster - 386-16 to K6). However, I'd love to have a fresh new install to my new disk going on as I work. Can I do this? Or is it necessary to dedicate my computer to the install process? The new disk is totally blank, except that I just partitioned it. I don't want to copy the old system, I want a new installation. Thanks, Havoc Pennington -- TO UNSUBSCRIBE FROM THIS MAILING LIST: e-mail the word unsubscribe to [EMAIL PROTECTED] . Trouble? e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] .
Re: Linux -- SunOS connection terminal problem
On Wed, 26 Nov 1997, Janos A Csirik wrote: I use Debian Linux on my home computer, and frequently need to log in to some university machines which are running SunOS (4.1.3 and 5.5). However these machines do not know about the terminal type 'linux', so I have to use vt100, which results in screwing up my console (which I can fix by typing reset later). This problem got worse since I started using svgatextmode with 30 lines on my screen. I log in to Sun machines all the time using vt220 as terminal type. I use svgatextmode and it works for me. Doesn't screw up the console as far as I can tell. If there's a better way, though, I'd love to hear it. Havoc Pennington -- TO UNSUBSCRIBE FROM THIS MAILING LIST: e-mail the word unsubscribe to [EMAIL PROTECTED] . Trouble? e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] .
Re: VC's and X sessions how?
On Tue, 25 Nov 1997, Britton wrote: While we're on the subject, I've had an annoying problem with X anc colsole switching forever: I can switch to another console fine, but when I switch back to X, I see the underlying console instead of the graphics, like when you quit X. What am I missing? X starts on console 7 (by default) no matter which console you start it from. You're automatically switched to VC 7 when you start X. So to get back to X you need to do Alt-F7. Is that the problem? Havoc Pennington -- TO UNSUBSCRIBE FROM THIS MAILING LIST: e-mail the word unsubscribe to [EMAIL PROTECTED] . Trouble? e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] .
Re: xterm
On Mon, 24 Nov 1997, Zach Wilkes wrote: Is there any way to change the colors of Xterm? mine defaults to black on white (which gets really annoying when you telnet to a machine using really light ansi colors), and I would rather have it white on black.. xterm -bg black -fg white or use X resources. Havoc Pennington -- TO UNSUBSCRIBE FROM THIS MAILING LIST: e-mail the word unsubscribe to [EMAIL PROTECTED] . Trouble? e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] .
spam filter (was Re: [DEBIAN] Problem on filtering messages...)
On 23 Nov 1997, Stig Sandbeck Mathisen wrote: Much of the spam aren't addressed to you directly. Make a list of all the addresses and mailinglists to which you get mail, filter that mail into list.debian, mail.private, and similar. Leave the rest in mail.unsorted and take a look in that once a week, to see if anything important has slipped through. An alternative approach is this, which I copied from someone else, I don't know where it originally came from. This doesn't require you to make a list of people you get mail from, so you can still get mail from unanticipated but non-spam sources. It works pretty well, but occasionally misses a spam or junks a real email. I'd say it gets 90% of spam and junks 1% of real mail, though I filter all list email before this recipe so it never has a chance to junk that. If nothing else it's really funny to read, I think. Shows how cliche and formulaic most spam is. Havoc Pennington procmail recipe to catch spam: :0D: * ^Subject:.* FREE .* $MAILDIR/junk-folder :0: *^Subject:.* lifestyle *change $MAILDIR/junk-folder :0: *^TO.*friend $MAILDIR/junk-folder :0B: *!!! $MAILDIR/junk-folder :0B: *-150^0 *50^0 ^Dear (friend|net surfer)[:,]?^ *100^2 limited .*offer *50^1 to order( please)? call *50^1 free *5^2 (wealth|money|income|cash|dollar|\$[\$1-9]) *2^2 ! *100^2 act now supplies are.*limited *100^1 never (ever )?(have to)? pay for .* again *200^1 remove.* in .*subject *100^2 reply with .* in .*subject *100^2 free.*(trial|info) *300^1 to [EMAIL PROTECTED] *200^2 wealth[ -]building *100^2 (income|money[ -]making|business) (opportunit|system|method) *100^2 (no|minimal) (outlay|investment|skills|training|experience) *200^2 (instant|overnight) wealth *100^2 now, with .*, you can *100^2 not a (chain letter|pyramid scheme|scam) *200^2 couldn't.*make ends meet *100^.5 I owed.*over \$[1-9]+0*(,000)+ *200^2 .*(turn|convert).*\$[0-9]+ into \$[1-9\$]+ *100^2 (ma[kd]e|bec[oa]me).*million( dollars|aire) *100^2 make.*(money|dollars) *500^2 (money|dollars|\$+[0-9,.$]+).*\ (fast|immediately|quickly|(((with)?in|per|every).*(day|week|wks|month|short time))) *200^2 after .*, i decided to open my own business *500^2 multi-level (sales|marketing) *100^2 satisfaction.*guaranteed *100^2 (lose weight|weight loss) *50^2 herbal *100^2 (18 years old|18 and over|over 18) *500^2 adult service *100^2 (nude|naked|topless|sex) $MAILDIR/junk-folder -- TO UNSUBSCRIBE FROM THIS MAILING LIST: e-mail the word unsubscribe to [EMAIL PROTECTED] . Trouble? e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] .
Re: Introduction for new users
On Sun, 23 Nov 1997, Oliver Elphick wrote: Today a new user was asking for basic help in using Linux. There doesn't seem to be anything like that on the CD-rom, unless my copy is out-of-date. I attach a document that might serve as a brief introduction, that could be added to the files on the CD. Would anyone like to suggest additions: The official effort to write something like this is called the Debian User's Manual, and it would be great if you could help with that. I'm writing a chapter on files, and I'd like to steal some bits from your document if I could. You can see my rough development chapter at: http://student-www.uchicago.edu/users/rhpennin/file-management.sgml Info on the User's Manual as a whole can be found by following the Debian Documentation Project link from the Documentation section of www.debian.org. Anyway, if you're into writing documentation I'd encourage you to help us out with the User's Manual. There are only a few people working on it so far. Havoc Pennington -- TO UNSUBSCRIBE FROM THIS MAILING LIST: e-mail the word unsubscribe to [EMAIL PROTECTED] . Trouble? e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] .
Re: xdmfvwm
On Sat, 22 Nov 1997, Greg Green wrote: When I used Red Hat Linux, all I had to do to get Xwindows to start at login was to edit the /etc/inittab to go default to run level 4. Now, I am running Debian 1.30 and do not even see a reference to xdm in the /etc/inittab. I am obviously missing some key point, can anyone help? It's even easier. All you need to do is add the line: start-xdm to /etc/X11/config See /usr/doc/X11/debian.README for a description of this. Also, when I startx manually, the system will not use my .fvwmrc. I get too many errors to list here, but all I did was copy the /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fvwm/system.fvwm to my $HOME/.fvwmrc and tried to add an additional xterm at start-up, and change to setroot color to solid SteelBlue. Hmm, I don't have fvwm installed, but probably what happens (I'm guessing) is that system.fvwmrc is loaded, then since you copied it to your home directory it's loaded again, and that causes some errors. Check the man page to see if fvwm does this. In any case it's likely that system.fvwmrc isn't designed to go in a home directory. You want to have your .fvwmrc modify the defaults set in system.fvwmrc, rather than start over again from the bottom. If you email me the system.fvwmrc I might can tell you what's wrong better. Though I'm sure someone else will jump in who already knows. :) HTH, Havoc Pennington -- TO UNSUBSCRIBE FROM THIS MAILING LIST: e-mail the word unsubscribe to [EMAIL PROTECTED] . Trouble? e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] .
Re: Best partition distibution for new install.
On Wed, 19 Nov 1997, Raymond A. Ingles wrote: The second thing to think about is the PC's somewhat dated partition scheme. You can only have 4 physical partitions on a drive, but you can divide those partition into logical partitions. All things being equal, it's better to avoid logical partitions if you can. It's also simpler for you, the installer. :- How hard should I try to avoid logical partitions? What's the impact of using them? I'm about to get a new mainboard and disk to replace my trusty 386sx, and I was hoping to use more than four partitions. Another question: I was thinking of installing both stable and unstable. They can be rescue partitions for one another, and if unstable does weird things while I need to get some work done I can abandon ship and switch to stable. Also I can play with unstable without fear of destroying my only system. :) Anyway, I'm hoping to share /home, swap, and /tmp between the two systems. Are there any other directories I can share? Maybe /usr/local? Is this a good idea in general? Anything I should consider before trying it? Thanks, Havoc Pennington -- TO UNSUBSCRIBE FROM THIS MAILING LIST: e-mail the word unsubscribe to [EMAIL PROTECTED] . Trouble? e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] .
Re: Annoying Newbie Questions...
On Mon, 17 Nov 1997, Andrew Akins wrote: Can anyone direct me to a newbie FAQ or manual/guide to using (not installing) X? Hard to think of one... surely there ought to be one. In the meantime, try reading the manual pages on your window manager, and there's a manual page on just 'X' too. Unfortunately like many man pages they're not too useful as an introductory guide/overview. An example: When I start emacs, it starts up with it's title bar off the screen (off the top). Can I set its default geometry somewhere so I don't have to type the geometry stuff every time I want to use emacs? You want to use X resources. The Emacs online help has a nice explanation - I'd quote it but it's pretty long. Go into Emacs, enter M-x info, choose the Emacs manual, then look for Resources in the Concept Index. There's even an explanation of X resources in general. Alternatively, you could create a window manager menu item or hotkey instead of typing in the emacs command, or you could create an alias for emacs -geometry. But resources would be the canonical way to do it. I'm VERY new to Linux/UNIX - I've been a windows user for a great many years. Any book (in print or online) and/or guides, FAQs, would be helpful. Thanks. I think O'Reilly has a book on this (as well as a lot on X programming and administration, avoid those, and probably also avoid the Motif versions of their X books unless you bought Motif). The bad thing is that their book doesn't cover the most common Linux window managers. Maybe there's a Linux book that does. HTH, Havoc Pennington -- TO UNSUBSCRIBE FROM THIS MAILING LIST: e-mail the word unsubscribe to [EMAIL PROTECTED] . Trouble? e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] .
Re: console blanking
On Wed, 12 Nov 1997, Syd Alsobrook wrote: How does one turn off the console blanking so that the x-windows screen saver is on all the time? I think I did this: xset s off#don't blank the screen in my .xsession. At least, I have that in my .xsession and my screen doesn't blank. I may have ended up having to do something else as well. Havoc Pennington -- TO UNSUBSCRIBE FROM THIS MAILING LIST: e-mail the word unsubscribe to [EMAIL PROTECTED] . Trouble? e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] .
Re: PerfectBACKUP now free
On Sat, 18 Oct 1997, George Bonser wrote: I just noticed that a FREE Linux version of PerfectBACKUP is now available. It is not crippled and does not expire. Well, the c.o.l.a message says: It has no timeout and is not crippled by any other means. But every time I choose an option other than basic backup it says this feature is disabled in PerfectBACKUP Personal Edition. So it _is_ a crippled PerfectBACKUP, though technically an uncrippled PB Personal Edition. Havoc Pennington [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- TO UNSUBSCRIBE FROM THIS MAILING LIST: e-mail the word unsubscribe to [EMAIL PROTECTED] . Trouble? e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] .
Re: Linux in Wired
On Fri, 29 Aug 1997 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Absolutely. Linux also needs marketing, marketing, and more marketing. I can only think of one business need that Linux based systems don't support - OCR. Everything else is available. Desktop publishing. A Quark XPress clone is not going to be an easy program to write, either. Granted, only some businesses need it. And of course the big need: ease of use. Havoc Pennington -- TO UNSUBSCRIBE FROM THIS MAILING LIST: e-mail the word unsubscribe to [EMAIL PROTECTED] . Trouble? e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] .
FTP updates (was Re: Is this the Debian ...)
On Sun, 17 Aug 1997, Bruce Perens wrote: The Official CD will have a slower release schedule than the system available via FTP. Those who wish the latest fixes should be willing to update a few packages on their systems via FTP between each CD purchase. Nobody can press new CDs every two weeks and continue to sell ... As far as I can tell, this is the best solution for the users. Cheap CDs with up to 1.3 GB data, and then you download the latest couple of megabytes of updates. Will there be any way to tell which packages are included in the 2 megs of updates? i.e., will there be (or is there) a directory for changed since last CD image with links to what we need to get? I guess dselect can automatically figure out whether the version numbers have changed, but a directory would be faster and easier I think. Maybe even a tar with all the changed packages. Deity could be made aware of the directory and save downloading and comparing version numbers. Just a thought/question, FWIW Havoc Pennington -- TO UNSUBSCRIBE FROM THIS MAILING LIST: e-mail the word unsubscribe to [EMAIL PROTECTED] . Trouble? e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] .
Re: running a program on x logout
On Mon, 28 Jul 1997, Jens B. Jorgensen wrote: [edited] robert havoc pennington wrote: I want to run a program when I log out of my X session (specifically, kill $SSH_AGENT_PID) and I can't figure out how. Then make your ~/.xsession as: #!/bin/bash exec /usr/bin/ssh-agent /usr/X11R6/bin/fvwm2 Then when you exit it will go away all by itself! I assume that currently your starting it in your fvwm InitFunction. Rather, in your InitFunction you can run ssh-add, which will pop up a nice little window first thing. Hmm. The new problem, doing it this way, is that I can't run ssh -f remotehost xbiff in any of the fvwm2 startup files, because it tries to run before I can type in the pass phrase for ssh-add. I was doing this in .xsession: ssh-agent ssh-add exec fvwm2 which waits for ssh-add to finish getting the pass phrase, then runs fvwm2, and works fine except that ssh-agent won't quit at the end of the session. if I exec ssh-agent fvwm2, then have ssh-add and ssh both in the startup files (InitFunction or elsewhere), I get two pass phrase requests. I can't figure out any way to tell fvwm2 to wait for ssh-add to finish before continuing. It can wait for a window to appear, but that's the only kind of wait it seems to be able to do, as far as I can tell. Ideas? Havoc Pennington -- TO UNSUBSCRIBE FROM THIS MAILING LIST: e-mail the word unsubscribe to [EMAIL PROTECTED] . Trouble? e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] .
running a program on x logout
Hi, I want to run a program when I log out of my X session (specifically, kill $SSH_AGENT_PID) and I can't figure out how. Xreset runs as root, and this should be run by the user. fvwm2's ExitFunction also runs when you restart, and I don't want to do this if I just restart the window manager, only when I quit the session entirely. I can think of some hacks, but is there a nice way to do it? Using xdm or fvwm2? TIA, Havoc Pennington -- TO UNSUBSCRIBE FROM THIS MAILING LIST: e-mail the word unsubscribe to [EMAIL PROTECTED] . Trouble? e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] .
ppp problem
Hi, I can run ppp as root, but as any other user it does this: (from the log) May 31 00:58:56 havoc pppd[468]: Serial connection established. May 31 00:58:57 havoc pppd[468]: ioctl(PPPIOCGUNIT): Operation not permitted May 31 00:58:57 havoc pppd[468]: ioctl(PPPIOCGDEBUG): Operation not permitted May 31 00:58:57 havoc pppd[468]: Exit. I'm setting it up on a new computer, it works fine on my other one. What did I do wrong? Thanks Havoc Pennington -- TO UNSUBSCRIBE FROM THIS MAILING LIST: e-mail the word unsubscribe to [EMAIL PROTECTED] . Trouble? e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] .
DEITY TEAM -- one comment
Hi, When I first installed debian I selected more packages than would fit on the disk, and so I ended up with tons of broken packages and had to install again. dselect recovered nicely (something other distributions don't do) but since each package has a predictable size it seems dselect could have predicted the problem, which would have been even nicer. Also, when disk space gets low it would be nice to be able to sort packages by size (can I do this already?) so I could see what's eating up disk space and whether I really need it. In general, it would be nice to have the program more aware of package size for those of us with limited space. Just a thought. Havoc PS me too! on the idea of suppressing all those skipping... messages. -- TO UNSUBSCRIBE FROM THIS MAILING LIST: e-mail the word unsubscribe to [EMAIL PROTECTED] . Trouble? e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] .
Re: x windows
On Sat, 1 Mar 1997, Richard Morin wrote: On Sat, 1 Mar 1997 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: well i got 1.2.2 installed and i was wondering about x windows, could anyone tell me how much disk space i will need to run this. i have an old 386 with 4m ran and 20mb of swap space. less than say 300, 400 is better and of course, (if your budget allows)700 or more would probably do a single user machine for some time. I have a 386 too, running with about 250 MB of hard disk. I think 250 is fine, if you don't want to use every single program. I have netscape, all the common stuff you might want for internet, gcc, the basics, but nothing flashy like wine. And I have about 50 megs free. So it depends on what you want to do. Avoid big stuff like emacs when possible. I think the memory is more important. 4MB runs fvwm and rxvt fine, but don't even think about running netscape. The extra 4MB will only cost you about $30 probably and will make a huge difference. Of course, I only run a mono server - even the vga16 server is extremely slow on my machine (you can see it redraw). I think that might depend more on your video card than anything else though. Havoc Pennington
Re: Installation problems.
On Tue, 25 Feb 1997, Maciej Koprowski wrote: Hi! I tried to install ( on my PC) too many packages using dselect. Dselect quitted , because my Linux partition was full . What can I do now to recover my system clean and well working ? Go back into dselect and remove or purge some of the packages you don't need to make more space (you can flip over to another virtual terminal to run df and see how much you have), then re-install (especially any packages listed as broken). Havoc Pennington -- TO UNSUBSCRIBE FROM THIS MAILING LIST: e-mail the word unsubscribe to [EMAIL PROTECTED] . Trouble? e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
ip masq kernel
On 23 Feb 1997, Rob Browning wrote: Peter Iannarelli [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Compiling the entire Linux kernel to about 10 minutes. You must be low on memory or something. I get less than 5 minutes on my single PP200. My 386SX16 just spent 12 hours compiling the kernel only to run out of memory and stop before it finished... Is there anywhere to get precompiled kernel packages with common options (like the ones to run IP masquerade, for example)? Havoc Pennington -- TO UNSUBSCRIBE FROM THIS MAILING LIST: e-mail the word unsubscribe to [EMAIL PROTECTED] . Trouble? e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
