Appreciation! :)
While reading replies to my recent questions posed to debian-users, I was once again reminded of why I chose and continue to choose to be a part of the Debian community. In a period of less than 24 hours I received help and advice from others, many located in other parts of the world. I wish I could find this level of dedication and helpfulness in the business world. I would like to offer my gratitude to all those involved in the development of Debian for creating a fine distribution of the Linux kernel and GNU software---it is truly a pleasure to use especially when upgrading. I've learned a great deal about Linux and computers in general in the process of installing and using the Slackware distribution and now the Debian distribution. I've always enjoyed discovering how `things' work and running Linux and GNU software has opened the door to how operating systems and software work. At the present time, I use the system mainly to access the Internet and do some occasional text and image processing. Heck, I probably spend the same amount of time maintaining the system as I do using it and usually enjoy every minute of it---well, almost every minute. :) There's something about Debian, Linux and the `free' software concept that's almost spiritual in its nature---something about uplifting the human spirit. Oh well, I might be venturing into the twilight zone here but all I know is that the Debian Project is something to be cherished. Hopefully in the near future I'll be able to contribute and give something back. - Richard Lovison [EMAIL PROTECTED] * Are we free agents who seek to learn about the universe, or are we a means by which the universe seeks to learn about itself? Timothy Ferris -
Re: big problems with installation
On Sun, 2 Jun 1996, Amos Shapira wrote: Then maybe the warning signs in the ftp sites should be updated? Back when I went for Debian I saw lots of them lying around (and so I went to 0.93R6, which indeed prooved less stable than unstable), as well as when I mirrored unstable 1.1. My 0.93R6 system at home is the most stable linux system I have ever seen. Now that 1.1 is nearly ready for release, I agree that it is approaching the same level of stability. It is true that 0.93 probably is not compatible with some of the newer hardware and software, but it is certainly worthy of its status as a stable distribution. Regarding the removal of 0.93 from ftp sites, can't we keep it available as an old distribution? There may be some people who will want to continue using it for some time. Syrus. -- Syrus Nemat-Nasser [EMAIL PROTECTED]UCSD Physics Dept.
Re: problem with traceroute
Scott Barker [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Interesting. I've had no problems at all with BIND... If you're running a 1.2.x kernel and an unstable bind, zone transfers from your machine will fail (because it attempts to get the ip options, something not supported in 1.2.x, and on failure drops the connection.) This only matters if you're the primary DNS for some domain (which my 1.2.13 machine is.)
Re: more trouble with 1.1 upgrade
In article [EMAIL PROTECTED] you write: Ian Jackson said: Scott Barker writes (Re: more trouble with 1.1 upgrade): ok. So what happens when I install the new cron, and /usr/bin/savelog isn't in it? Won't dpkg remove it, since /usr/bin/savelog has been removed from /var/lib/dpkg/info/base.list? Err, bugger. I knew this --force-replaces thing was a bad idea. If you do this you'll have to reinstall bsdutils, but there's nothing really that can be done about it. cron needs to be fixed. That's what I thought. Just thought I'd mention the problem. Perhaps when cron is fixed, the bsdutils package should be bumped up a version, so that dselect will automagically re-install it. Or maybe the cron postinst script should spit out a message letting the user know that bsdutils should be updated. Uh, for bsdutils read debian-utils throughout. savelog was moved to debian-utils, not bsdutils. Austin (bsdutils maintainer)
Re: PGP MailCrypt
On 2 Jun 1996, Joe Reinhardt wrote: I uploaded a mailcrypt package last weekend, mailcrypt-3.4-1.all.deb. Can you please tell me where I can find it. I check at one of the Debian mirror site eg. ftp://sun10.sep.bnl.gov, but cannot find it in the directory debian/unstable/binary/mail. If the 1.1 is freezed, where should we look for new packages?
Unidentified subject!
To: debian-user@lists.debian.org Subject: problem with debian 1.1 upgrade installation --text follows this line-- After my upgrade, the following messages is mailed to my root account exactly once every minute: Return-Path: root Date: Sun, 2 Jun 96 22:02 EDT From: root (Cron Daemon) To: root Subject: Cron [EMAIL PROTECTED] atrun -d 0.5 X-Cron-Env: SHELL=/bin/sh X-Cron-Env: PATH=/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin X-Cron-Env: HOME=/root X-Cron-Env: LOGNAME=root non-option arguments - not allowed: No such file or directory Needless to say, it is filling up my mail queue and I need to fix it. I have tried all the spool files to determine what process is sending it, but I haven't had much luck. One thing I did notice is that my original /var/spool/cron/crontabs/root file was wiped out and replaced. I will need to restore it from backup. -- /--\ | James D. Freels, P.E._i, Ph.D. | Phone: (423)576-8645 | | L | | Oak Ridge National Laboratory | FAX:(423)574-9172 | H | I | | Research Reactors Division | Internet: [EMAIL PROTECTED] | F | N | | P. O. Box 2008 | Reactor Technology | I | U | | Oak Ridge, Tennessee 37831-6392 | world's best neutrons! | R | X | |--| | out the 10Base-T, through the router, down the T1, over the | | leased line, off the bridge, past the firewall...nothing but Net | \--/
Re: big problems with installation
Syrus Nemat-Nasser wrote: My 0.93R6 system at home is the most stable linux system I have ever seen. Now that 1.1 is nearly ready for release, I agree that it is approaching the same level of stability. It is true that 0.93 probably is not compatible with some of the newer hardware and software, but it is certainly worthy of its status as a stable distribution. Well, maybe I haven't used the right term. What I ment is that the system (the kernel) never crashed on me (Linux haven't crashed on me for a long time, but I'm not using it too heavily right now), but things like ange-ftp not working under emacs, lots of missing goodies etc. Right now I'm running 1.1 upgraded from 0.93R6 with most programs still from my short 0.93 era with no problems (except for the initial kernel-compile problems you probably saw on the list). Regarding the removal of 0.93 from ftp sites, can't we keep it available as an old distribution? There may be some people who will want to continue using it for some time. I suppose that should be a gentler aproach. Cheers. -- --Amos Shapira | Of course Australia was marked for | glory, for its people had been chosen [EMAIL PROTECTED] | by the finest judges in England. | -- Anonymous
Re: kernel headers
This has already been debated enough. Debian will continue to include known-working kernel headers with libc unless and until that arrangement proves to be unworkable. As I have time, I will continue to encourage H.J. Lu and other Linux distributors to do the same. I still prefer to use the kernel source installed on the system. It is not easy. But otherwise, you may get inconsistent result in system calls. -- H.J. Lu Innovix Technologies, Inc. [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Unidentified subject!
On Sun, 2 Jun 1996, James D. Freels wrote: Subject: Cron [EMAIL PROTECTED] atrun -d 0.5 ... non-option arguments - not allowed: No such file or directory From atrun's man page: atrun [-l load_avg] [-d] So make it 'atrun -d -l 0.5' or just 'atrun -d'. 0.5 is the default anyway. Guy
Re: PPP problem w/ 1.1 install
Hi, Amos == Amos Shapira [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Amos I'm still looking for this kernel-image package. Can't find it Amos in the ls-lR files. It should appear in the mirrors soon, it was moved out of incoming recently. Amos Now what about support for multiple kernels? Is it possible to Amos have a rule to install the new kernel *near* (instead of over) Amos other kernels, or even near other compiles of same kernel? You Amos must know the urge to keep at least one prooven kernel around in Amos case the new one crashes. The recent kernel packages (headers, sources, and image), being build from the package kernel-package (or a close ancestor), do not overwrite older versions. They allow you to keep as many versions of images or sources on your system as you desire (you, then, have to explicitly delete them to have them go away). I always have tow versions myself ... Amos As it is now, it looks like ytou have to manually shift Amos /System.map and /vmlinuz and add entries to lilo.conf, or am I Amos missing something? Yes, the newer kernel-image-X.X.XX packages (which handle all these details for you). manoj -- Can you imagine what it would be like if there had been ``look and feel'' lawsuits over automobiles? -- Mark Diekhans ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) %% Manoj Srivastava Systems Research Programmer, Project Pilgrim, Phone: (413) 545-3918A143B Lederle Graduate Research Center, Fax: (413) 545-1249 University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA 01003 [EMAIL PROTECTED] URL:http://www.pilgrim.umass.edu/%7Esrivasta/
Re: Debian 1.1 man more
On Mon, 3 Jun 1996, N. Salwen wrote: I tried this both man and more on my slackware system at home and they both go backwards. I don't have the PAGER variable set. I realize this is slackware but I am surprised at the difference. As someone else pointed out, slackware man most likely writes out a temp file for more. You can check /proc/xx/cmdline where xx is more's pid on your slackware system. Starting the pager at the end of a pipe is a feature; it starts up more quickly. Guy
Re: Debian 1.1 man more
Guy Maor wrote While using man to read a manpage I am not able to scroll backwards a page by using b or ^B. Has anyone else experienced this? My current version of man is 2.3.10-11. If I just use more to read a text file, everything works fine. more can't go backwards on unseekable files, like pipes for example. (man pipes the data out to the viewer so it'll start up faster.) less doesn't have this deficiency. Use it with man by setting the PAGER environment variable to `less'. I tried this both man and more on my slackware system at home and they both go backwards. I don't have the PAGER variable set. I realize this is slackware but I am surprised at the difference.
Re: Debian 1.1 man more
On Sun, 2 Jun 1996, Austin Donnelly wrote: Those systems maybe format the manpage to a temporary file, then use more to view that file. Debian's man put the formatted output through a pipe directly to the pager, for speed. Note that you can also do: $ export MANOPT='-Pless' so that you only get less when viewing manpages, not as your default pager (if for some reason you don't like less :) Thanks for the education---`less' works great as the default pager. Uh oh, I feel a suggestion to a developer coming on.:) Is it possible to have `less' or `most' designed into man as the default pager so the environment variable doesn't have to be set? Is there an advantage to using `more' that I'm not aware of? Richard
Bug#3198: dviljk is still aout! :-(
Package: dviljk Version: 2.5-3
Re: Unidentified subject!
On Mon, 3 Jun 1996, Michael Meskes wrote: And what's the exact reason for using using '-d'? So that you'll get annoying mail every 5 seconds! Guy
problem with amd
Dominik, I am hoping to get a large number of debian 1.1 systems running in our teaching laboratories next year. We use amd at our site. I have noticed a serious problem with amd as distributed. The code enabled by defining NEW_TOPLVL_READDIR is not well thought out. It does not take into account the size of the clients buffer when making up the list of auto mount points. At our site where there are many top level auto-mount points this causes amd to crash whenever a listing is made of a top level auto-mount point. As updatedb is run every night this means that the machines are unusable every morning. We have a decision to make between using FreeBSD and Linux. The FreeBSDers main point is that Linux networking is not as robust as that provided by FreeBSD. It seems that all distributed versions of the unnofficial patch of amd must have this problem even though in the Changelog file Erik Zadok states that the code is quickly hacked together and not tested. I have found that Debian 1.1 networking is otherwise very reliable. Nigel Williams (Programmer) Queen Mary and Westfield College Mile End Road London E1 4NS Telephone: 0171-975-5250
Installing 1.1 beta
Well I didn't think it was easier to install 1.1 instead of 0.93 on my old PC, but if it is I'll try for sure. Wait for some days and you'll have a complete report of my work. Thank you (and all the other) for the suggestions. It was really kind. Alberto. -- Alberto Brizio ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
Re: Unidentified subject!
Guy Maor writes: From atrun's man page: atrun [-l load_avg] [-d] So make it 'atrun -d -l 0.5' or just 'atrun -d'. 0.5 is the default anyway. And what's the exact reason for using using '-d'? Michael -- Michael Meskes |_ __ [EMAIL PROTECTED] | / ___// / // / / __ \___ __ [EMAIL PROTECTED] | \__ \/ /_ / // /_/ /_/ / _ \/ ___/ ___/ [EMAIL PROTECTED]| ___/ / __/ /__ __/\__, / __/ / (__ ) Use Debian Linux!| //_/ /_/ //\___/_/ //
atrun problem fixed
My problem was in the /etc/crontab file. This file apparently configures root cron jobs in addition to /var/spool/cron/crontabs/root. On another system that I configured from scratch, the atrun command was input correctly. On this system, which I configured as an update from 0.93R6, the command was input incorrectly which mailed me all the error messages every minute. I don't know if this constitutes a bug since I did not create the file myself. -- /--\ | James D. Freels, P.E._i, Ph.D. | Phone: (423)576-8645 | | L | | Oak Ridge National Laboratory | FAX:(423)574-9172 | H | I | | Research Reactors Division | Internet: [EMAIL PROTECTED] | F | N | | P. O. Box 2008 | Reactor Technology | I | U | | Oak Ridge, Tennessee 37831-6392 | world's best neutrons! | R | X | |--| | out the 10Base-T, through the router, down the T1, over the | | leased line, off the bridge, past the firewall...nothing but Net | \--/
Re: PGP MailCrypt
I found MailCrypt in master.debian.org, under the debian/Incoming directory. Derek Lee
Re: How to handle new packages
Ian Jackson [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Brian C. White writes (Re: How to handle new packages): As I understand dselect, it looks at the Packages file to determine the list of packages, their dependencies, and whatever else. Suppose I want to upgrade a single package. I grab the .deb file. But now what? The Packages file doesn't know about the new package. I know I could install it using dpkg, but isn't there a way to tell dselect about the new package? Use: dpkg --install package-name-version.deb If you just want to tell dselect about it, rather than installing it, you can say `dpkg --update-avail foobar*.deb', but it seems rather silly just to do this by hand :-). But suppose that foobar requires other packages. Wouldn't it then make sense to do the --update-avail, then go into dselect to see what other packages I may have to install as well. Then, if I either don't have or don't want these other packages or don't have the disk space or whatever, I can just forget about installing foobar. -- Steve Preston ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
Re: Debian 1.1 man more
You can define $PAGER as something like cat /tmp/$$;more /tmp/$$;rm /tmp/$$ to get the back-scrolling at the cost of somewhat reduced speed. You won't see the first page until the last has been formatted (which is why we don't do this by default). Bruce -- Pixar's Toy Story: Over 1/3 Billion dollars world box office so far. Bruce Perens AB6YM [EMAIL PROTECTED]http://www.hams.com/
Error while rebuilding kernel
First, I want to thank everyone involved with Debian for doing an excellent job. I far prefer my Debian system at home to my current Sun or previous Ultrix systems at work. Three cheers for DEBIAN! Now my question. While trying to build a custom kernel under 0.93R6, I get an error about bootsect.o not found. Looking through the make file, it would appear that this binary should be compiled when necessary from bootsect.s, but this doesn't appear to happen. What's the problem here? I've never experience problems build a kernel before, so this seems awfully strange. Cheers, Paul |~| | Paul Barrett - Astrophysicist - Universities Space Research Association | | Compton Observatory Science Support Center | | NASA/Goddard SFC phone: 301-286-1108Guk a 'mzimba, sala 'nhliziyo | | Code 660.1, FAX: 301-286-1681(body grow old, but heart | | Greenbelt,MD 20771 [EMAIL PROTECTED] remain behind) | | http://lheawww.gsfc.nasa.gov/users/barrett/CV.html | ~
loadkeys problem w/ 1.1
I'm having trouble swapping the Control and Caps Lock keys on my keyboard. I have the following two line file that used to work with 'loadkeys' just fine: keycode 58 = Control keycode 29 = Caps_Lock Now however it just really messes up when control is pressed. It seems to stick in control mode, and the scroll lock gets turned on. Occasionally it just locks up that terminal, and the machine will no longer reboot. I couldn't find anything in the man pages for loadkeys or keytables that looked out of the ordinary. Anyone know what's changed that would break this? It's been a while since I upgraded the kbd package. Michael
Re: Debian 1.1 man more
Sorry for the confusion. It turns out that more is not the same as less on slackware but man automatically uses less without a variable set. I'm pretty sure it is not using a temp file. Is there any reason the default PAGER on Debian should not be set to less out of the box? Nathan
new boot floppies
New boot floppies are available in ftp://ftp.i-connect.net/debian/unstable/disks-i386/1996_6_2 . These will no doubt get to the mirror sites later today. Module configuration has been improved and dselect's FTP method might work once the base system has been installed (my test system didn't have a network, so I'm not sure about that). If you can, please perform a test installation witht these floppies. There is a new kernel in boot1440.bin, an old one in boot1200.bin (because the modules in newer kernels run a 1200K floppy out of space). I am going to have to split up the modules into two floppies, where the second one is only infrequently-needed ones, so that I can get newer kernels to work on _any_ size floppy. The latest kernel + modules.tgz even overflows a 1440K floppy. Thanks Bruce Perens -- Pixar's Toy Story: Over 1/3 Billion dollars world box office so far. Bruce Perens AB6YM [EMAIL PROTECTED]http://www.hams.com/
Re: problem with amd
Richard J. Allen Telephone: 515-284-0209 Extension 121 Telephone: 515-284-0712 Extension 121 Bulletin Board System: 515-284-7006 Facsimile: 515-284-5147 World Wide Web Page: WWW.OPIS.COM Internet Mail Address: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Internet Mail Address: [EMAIL PROTECTED] CompuServe Account Mail Address: [EMAIL PROTECTED] CompuServe Mail Hub: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Debian 1.1 man more
Is there any reason the default PAGER on Debian should not be set to less out of the box? less is not a base package, so might not be installed. more is one third the size of less, and it's very important to keep the base packages as small as possible. Guy
reporting in on my new upgraded debian 1.1 beta installation
I have recently upgraded my debian machine from 0.93R6 to 1.1 beta. I am happy to report that everything, except one important piece, is up and running and better than before! I had a few minor problems which have been reported earlier and were easily fixed: 1) /etc/crontab contained an incorrect entry 'atrun -d 0.5' which should have been 'atrun -d -l 0.5'. This caused an endless loop of error messages to be mailed to root. 2) the /etc/X11/Xserver file incorrectly contained 'XF86_NONE' in the first line which should have been 'XF86_Mach64'. This had the effect of not allowing X windows to start correctly. 3) emacs was upgraded to 19.30 (another major enhancement!). when I upgraded to 19.29, I had the same problem, namely, emacs looks for the file /usr/lib/emacs/19.28/lisp/jka-compr.elc. This problem is easily fixed by creating the sym-link 'ln -s 19.30 19.28' in the /usr/lib/emacs directory. However, I wish this problem would either get fixed, or someone explain to me what I am doing wrong. I also had one major problem that I felt should be corrected before a major release is made. I decided as part of this upgrade to upgrade my kernel from 1.2.13 to 1.3.100 (I know I didn't have to). I have a PCI NCR SCSI card which is used for my boot disk. The default kernel from Debian did not recognize this card and I could not figure out how to automatically load the modules (even if they existed) at boot time. I had to use my 1.2.13 boot diskette to get my system back. I fooled around with /etc/modules and 'depmod -a -v' command to try and get things running, but no luck. Finally I installed 1.3.100 source and rebuilt my kernel (there is an incredible level of improvement from 1.2.13 to 1.3.100!!) without and loadable modules necessary. Now my system boots as I want. Given this problem, I recommend a couple of things: 1) someone needs to write a layman's treatise on loadable modules and how to go through a change as described above. Some people are going to get burnt on this issue. 2) an upgrade procedure should be written to allow for such upgrades (loading the boot disk drivers as modules). I would love to do these things, but I'm not qualified. Finally, I have a commercial license of NAG FORTRAN, which uses a.out binaries and linkable libraries. I can execute the compiler because I have a.out executing enabled in my newly-complied kernel. However, I get unresolved references in the link step. I suspect because if is trying to link to the libc5 libraries and it needs the libc4. I have the old libc4 libraries loaded, but I don't know how to allow NAG FORTRAN to link to them. Can anyone help me here? Also, I have a commercial Tecplot license which executes as a.out. It executes just fine and gives me the same results as the 0.93R6 installation. In summary, I am happy now and will be very happy if I can get NAG FORTRAN to link. -- /--\ | James D. Freels, P.E._i, Ph.D. | Phone: (423)576-8645 | | L | | Oak Ridge National Laboratory | FAX:(423)574-9172 | H | I | | Research Reactors Division | Internet: [EMAIL PROTECTED] | F | N | | P. O. Box 2008 | Reactor Technology | I | U | | Oak Ridge, Tennessee 37831-6392 | world's best neutrons! | R | X | |--| | out the 10Base-T, through the router, down the T1, over the | | leased line, off the bridge, past the firewall...nothing but Net | \--/
Bug#3202: dviljk doesn't read stdin!!! :-(
Package: dviljk
Version: 2.5-3
cat file.dvi|dvilj - should work but doesn't. It complains of an
invalid null option. I'm surprized to see such a bug :-( Here's a
patch.
--- dviljk-2.5/dviljk/dvi2xx.c Sun Jan 8 15:22:13 1995
+++ /home/carlos/dvi2xx.c Mon Jun 3 17:10:13 1996
@@ -1568,7 +1568,7 @@
argind = 1;
while (argind argc) {
tcp = argv[argind];
-if (*tcp == '-') {
+if (*tcp == '-' argind argc - 1) {
++tcp;
switch (*tcp) {
#ifdef IBM3812
Carlos
Bug#3203: bugs in apsfilter + patch
Package: apsfilter Version: 4.9.1-6 apsfilter considers a ljet4 and a ljet4l equivalent after setting the options to dvips. However if you send raw postscript to it this is a bug. The patch below corrects this, and a few more small glitches. It seems the authors haven't used PRINT_DVI very much :-). Carlos --- apsfilter.orig Mon Jun 3 17:31:08 1996 +++ /usr/lib/apsfilter/bin/apsfilterMon Jun 3 17:32:44 1996 @@ -318,7 +318,8 @@ #--- case $PRINTER in - ljet4l) # We can now act like a ljet4 + ljet4l) # We can now act like a ljet4 - almost... + GS_RESOL=300x300 PRINTER=ljet4 ;; *) ;; esac @@ -490,7 +491,7 @@ $DECOMPRESS $PRINT_DVI fi - if [ -z $TMP_FILE ]; then + if [ ! -z $TMP_FILE ]; then rm -f $TMP_FILE fi } @@ -895,7 +896,7 @@ *dvi*) if [ $HAVE_DVIPS = True \ - -o -z $PRINT_DVI ]; then + -o ! -z $PRINT_DVI ]; then print_dvi else fault_filetype
modprobe messages about module net-pf: what are they?
Hello, Since 1.99, I get messages like: Jun 4 00:03:50 marin modprobe: Can't locate module net-pf-4 Jun 4 00:03:52 marin modprobe: Can't locate module net-pf-5 in my daemon.log. Do you know what they mean? Thanks, Yves.
