Re: How to move vi to /bin

2009-05-13 Thread Benjamin M. A'Lee
On Wed, May 13, 2009 at 12:51:46PM +0530, manish jain wrote:
 I want to move vi to /bin so that I have an editor available in
 single-user mode. This sounds simple (and should be if all you have is
 a single partition), but there are problems. For starters, terminfo
 can't locate its database in single-user mode.
 
 Could anyone please tell me how to go about this on a 7.x system ? I
 am also curious to know why FreeBSD doesn't place vi under /bin in the
 first place.

Why not mount /usr?

As I understand it, the usual criterion is that only things that are
necessary to get the other partitions mounted go in the root partition;
everything else goes under /usr.

I don’t know if this is the case with FreeBSD, but I don’t know of any
other.

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web: http://bma.subvert.org.uk/ || gpg: 0x166891C7


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Re: Why FreeBSD not popular on hardware vendors

2008-12-15 Thread Benjamin M. A'Lee
On Mon, Dec 15, 2008 at 12:49:43PM +0100, Wojciech Puchar wrote:

 I think that can be handled quite easily by community social pressure,
 and moderation would just set a precedent for it's someone else's job.

 moderation is needed. Things like community social pressure simply 
 doesn't. Like with democracy - those who are more common and louder will 
 takeover, no matter if it make sense or not.

 It's already happening on that group that's why i talk about starting  
 moderation to remove all posts that are not about group topic!

Group topic? As far as I can tell, the topic is user questions
(according to http://lists.freebsd.org/ and the List-Id header). Where
exactly is it defined what those questions may be about?

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Benjamin M. A'Lee || mail: b...@subvert.org.uk
web: http://subvert.org.uk/~bma/ || gpg: 0xBB6D2FA0
...when two opposite points of view are expressed with equal intensity, the
truth does not necessarily lie exactly halfway between them. It is possible
for one side to be simply wrong. -- Richard Dawkins
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Re: When switching from console to X, mousebuffer gets pasted

2007-12-05 Thread Benjamin M. A'Lee
On Wed, Dec 05, 2007 at 04:52:23PM -0500, Robert Huff wrote:
 cpghost writes:
 
For instance: I open an xterm, type some text and select it. When i
do a switch to a console, and get back to my X with Alt-F9, the text
is automaticly pasted into my xterm. As if i pressed the
mouse3-butten. 

X.Org X Server 1.4.0
Release Date: 5 September 2007
X Protocol Version 11, Revision 0
Build Operating System: FreeBSD 6.2-RELEASE-p8 i386
   
   I've noticed this too but thought I had misconfigured something
   or that it was related to sysutils/screen from where I was
   switching back to X. Glad to see that others are affected by this
   as well; so it's really a bug.
 
   I think I'm getting bit by this as well, on:
 
 X.Org X Server 1.4.0
 Release Date: 5 September 2007
 X Protocol Version 11, Revision 0
 Build Operating System: FreeBSD 7.0-CURRENT i386

I'm seeing this on Debian GNU/Linux, with the same version of X, so it's
not a FreeBSD issue.

Ben


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Re: Building FreeBSD on Linux

2007-12-02 Thread Benjamin M. A'Lee
On Mon, Dec 03, 2007 at 01:15:22AM +0200, Giorgos Keramidas wrote:
 On 2007-11-30 16:06, Saravanan Shanmugham (sarvi) [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
   
  Hi,
  I am trying to build all of FreeBSD from a Linux Machine and seem to
  be running into problems.  We have farm of build machines that we use
  to build many other things and my team would look like to use it going
  forward for our FreeBSD development.
   
  Has anyone tried this before? 
   
  I have tried GNU Make 3.80 as well as pmake. And I can't seem to find
  bmake for Linux.
 
 I don't know of any port of BSD make(1) to Linux, or if that would be
 sufficient to cross-build FreeBSD.  I'm trying to build a snapshot of
 FreeBSD make(1) which builds with autoconf, for other stuff, but it
 may take a while before I have a fully autoconf-ified version and that
 may still not be adequate.

Debian has a package 'freebsd5-buildutils', which includes a version of
make that runs on GNU/Linux. I used it for a while when I was too lazy
to port some makefiles to GNU make. I don't know, however, if it'll
build more recent versions of FreeBSD than 5.x.

Ben


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Re: Dangers of using a non-base shell

2007-10-30 Thread Benjamin M. A'Lee
On Mon, Oct 29, 2007 at 08:50:40PM +, Stephen Allen wrote:
 It's been drawn to my attention not to use bash from the ports collection, 
 because if one of it's dependencies (gettext or libiconv) fails or is 
 updated significantly, it could break, and prevent login. The suggested 
 solution was to use a base shell (such as sh) and append 'bash -l' to .shrc 
 to automatically enter bash.
 
 The quite annoying side-effect is having to type 'exit' twice to get out of 
 a su shell or screen.
 
 Would it be a better idea to use the pre-compiled binary for bash?  And if 
 I did so, could I be alerted to updates as easy as using 'pkg_version -v' 
 when checking if any ports need updating?

With some of the shells there's the option to compile them statically,
which would avoid the problem. 

You could possibly also put bash -l  exit in your .shrc, which would
exit if bash exited successfully. I haven't tested it, but it should
work.

A precompiled binary wouldn't help, AFAIK, because you still wouldn't be
able to use it if there was a problem with one of the libraries.
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Re: [freebsd-questions] Dangers of using a non-base shell

2007-10-30 Thread Benjamin M. A'Lee
On Tue, Oct 30, 2007 at 08:39:00PM +, Howard Jones wrote:
 Benjamin M. A'Lee wrote:
 You could possibly also put bash -l  exit in your .shrc, which would
 exit if bash exited successfully. I haven't tested it, but it should
 work.
   
 or 'exec bash -l' which will replace the existing shell with bash in 
 memory, rather than run it from it as a subprocess. I was going to verify 
 that that's the technical explanation, but 'man exec' gets you the utterly 
 useless builtin(1) manpage.
 
 The effect is that you only have to type exit once, anyway.

I was going to suggest exec, but if bash then failed to execute, you'd be
immediately logged out of sh as well. My suggestion would execute bash if it
could, and drop back to sh if bash failed.

There may be a better way of doing it, and you can always get a shell prompt
some other way if needs be, but this is what works for me.

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Re: Writing Flash Driver

2007-10-24 Thread Benjamin M. A'Lee
On Wed, Oct 24, 2007 at 07:47:56AM -0500, icantthinkofone wrote:
 Svein Halvor Halvorsen wrote:
 icantthinkofone wrote:
   
 My naive question is, what is involved with creating an open source 
 driver for flash for freebsd?  Is it a legal issue?  Or does it take more 
 time than anyone has to give?  Or is it just too difficult to do without 
 help from Adobe?
 
 
 http://www.gnu.org/software/gnash/
 
 It can even play youtube.
   
 Does that in any way answer the question?

Yes. Obviously it's not a legal issue, as it's been done. Likewise,
it's not so difficult as to require help from Adobe, as it's been
done without such help.

As I understand it, it's mostly a case of time and effort - working
through as many different Flash files as possible, working out what
they're doing, and implementing the support for it.

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Benjamin A'Lee [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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I believe in equality for everyone, except reporters and
photographers. - Mahatma Gandhi


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Re: help in deletion part of a line

2007-10-23 Thread Benjamin M. A'Lee
On Mon, Oct 22, 2007 at 03:41:40PM -0700, Gary Kline wrote:
 
   Is there an easier way by sed or ed to remove strings 
   (caight by grep) of the sort:
 
   part5.chapter2.text-
 
   where 5 and 2 can be any integer below 10?
 
   (I know how to delete the *entire* line using ed, but not just
   the first part?

gilmour% echo testpart5.chapter2.text-test | sed 
's/part[0-9].chapter[0-9]\.text-//g' 
testtest

Modify as necessary.

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The right to search for truth implies also a duty; one must not conceal
any part of what one has recognized to be true. - Albert Einstein


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Re: Per-port options in make.conf?

2007-10-23 Thread Benjamin M. A'Lee
On Mon, Oct 22, 2007 at 11:18:59PM -0400, Josh Carroll wrote:
  Is there any way to specify options in make.conf on a per-port basis?
 
 Yes, something like this should work:
 
 .if ${.CURDIR:M*/portnamehere*}
 WITHOUT_X11=yes
 .endif
 

On Tue, Oct 23, 2007 at 07:30:29AM +0200, Roland Smith wrote:
 On Mon, Oct 22, 2007 at 11:32:39PM +0100, Benjamin M. A'Lee wrote:
  Is there any way to specify options in make.conf on a per-port basis?
  
  For example, if I want Vim built without X11, I can specify the WITHOUT_X11
  flag, but putting that in make.conf will affect every port.
 
 Use .if and .CURDIR;
 
 .if ${.CURDIR:M*/editors/vim}
 WITHOUT_X11=yes
 .endif
 
 Note that this only works for the vim port. If you want to use it for
 say vim5 and vim6, you have to add an extra star at the end:
 
 .if ${.CURDIR:M*/editors/vim*}
 WITHOUT_X11=yes
 .endif

Thanks, I thought I'd seen something along these lines but I couldn't
work out what exactly it was (or if there was a better way).

-- 
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Per-port options in make.conf?

2007-10-22 Thread Benjamin M. A'Lee
Is there any way to specify options in make.conf on a per-port basis?

For example, if I want Vim built without X11, I can specify the WITHOUT_X11
flag, but putting that in make.conf will affect every port.

I'm aware it's possible to do it with portupgrade, but I was hoping for a
method that would work both with and without portupgrade.

Thanks in advance.

-- 
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For if a thing is not diminished by being shared with others, it is not
rightly owned if it is only owned and not shared. - St. Augustinus


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Re: Is it difficult to move from Linux?

2007-10-22 Thread Benjamin M. A'Lee
On Mon, Oct 22, 2007 at 07:33:57PM +0100, Donovan R. Palmer wrote:
 I have been using Linux for over 10 years, but have for a number of reasons 
 become very interested in learning to use FreeBSD. Are there any ex or 
 current Linux users here and could you tell me how hard it is to make the 
 shift from Linux?  Is there anything in particular which has been written 
 which would be useful to read?

Depends, really. For the average desktop user, there's no difference
whatsover - Gnome, KDE, etc., are basically identical on both platforms.
From an administration point of view, things are in different places - but
if you've used more than a couple of GNU/Linux distributions you may have
encountered this anyway.

The only difficulty I've had is in portability of things like shell
scripts and Makefiles between the two; options supported in one version of
a program may not always be supported in the other and/or may
work differently (this isn't to say BSD is worse, just different).

A couple of links:

http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/bsd/2004/11/11/FreeBSD_Basics.html
http://www.over-yonder.net/~fullermd/rants/bsd4linux/bsd4linux1.php

-- 
Benjamin A'Lee [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough. -
Albert Einstein


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Re: defend from - :() { ::; } ;:

2007-10-22 Thread Benjamin M. A'Lee
On Mon, Oct 22, 2007 at 02:25:42PM -0700, Gary Kline wrote:
 On Mon, Oct 22, 2007 at 06:44:18PM +0200, Martin Tournoij wrote:
  On Sun 21 Oct 2007 12:10, Danielisz Laszlo wrote:
   Please do not try to execute this: :() { ::; } ;: on your BSD machine.
   I ask all who already tried it how to defend from this?
  
  Wow,, my machine just crashed :-/
  Does in this work on other OS's as well (ie. GNU/Linux)? Or just
  (Free?)BSD? I really don't feel like crashing another machine right
  now...
  
  Only works in sh, not in csh.
  
  Anyway, this seems to be security/stability issue, maybe a PR is in
  order?
  
  Regards,
  Martin Tournoij
 
 
   If this *is* only a /bin/sh bug, then it maybe time to issue a 
   PR.  Remember that *our* Bourne shell is really a shell or 
   ash.  I remember hacking on this and playing with it back in tha
   late 80's.
 
   It might be time to use zsh as the FBSD /bin/sh  

Why bother? It's not a bug, exactly, so much as a nasty trick of
the sh syntax. It works just as well in zsh.

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He who breaks a thing to find out how it works has left the path of
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