Re: UK Freeserve Connection
Anthony Campbell wrote: # This file was generated by pppconfig. You can edit the following lines # but please do not delete lines or the change the comments or you will # confuse pppconfig. noauth #pppconfig_noauth connect /usr/sbin/chat -v -f /etc/chatscripts/freeserve #pppconfig_connect debug #pppconfig_debug /dev/ttyS0 #pppconfig_dev 115200 #pppconfig_speed defaultroute #pppconfig_route noipdefault #pppconfig_ipdefault user pentelikon.freeserve.co.uk #pppconfig_user # End of pppconfig controlled lines. You can add lines below here without # confusing pppconfig. And here is my /etc/chatscript/ logon file: ABORT BUSY #ABORT NO CARRIER ABORT VOICE ABORT NO DIALTONE ABORT NO ANSWER ATZ # OK ATDT08450796699 Two points re the above :(1) I assume your /etc/chatscript file is called freeserve? (2) try enclosing your ISP username in single quotes as it contains dots. This may well be the problem.
Re: An open letter to the debian community
George Bonser wrote: The computer is a tool. People often use it to get real work done with real deadlines. Real money depends on this work. Debian offers the best ENVORONMENT, so far, for maintaining and supporting software for Linux in the enterprise. Not so cut-and dried. Debian offers the best learning curve - a means to interact with the system. It enables users to understand computers and IMHO use them as they should be used. Development depends on the people who do understand and who do interact with computers. GNU/Linux is very different from Windoze because of this. Political values of the distribution mean little in that context. It stands on its TECHNICAL merits and not its POLITICAL ideology. In this environment, commercial software is often needed to get the job done. Products such as IBM's application servers, java stuff, things from Corel, make Linux useful in the enterprise. IMHO you're missing the point. Which is not the politics of free software, but the empowerment free software gives. That is, ability to understand the system, and alter it. The enterprise is what makes the difference between a hobby or research project and something you can send the kids to college with. Mortgage banks, grocery stores, and schools require real money. They do not give any discounts for having contributed to Free software. Debian may be great from a political standpoint but if it will not get the job done at work, it is not likely to ever be used there and WILL be replaced by a distribution that targets that area. Again, IMHO missing the point about what make GNU/Linux unique: the empowerment which free software brings. The ability to distribute, the ability to understand and change. BTW ideals are important - a lot of people do things (like develop GPL programs) because they are idealists, or maybe because they just like the challenge. They do not do it because of money. Credit to Stallman and the Debian developers for putting ideals before profit. Society is not just about money - about your own life; its about giving as well. Debian contributes to society in a positive way. Boy - is this battle hard! Windoze is profit and user driven (market forces if you wish). Debian is driven by a desire to make a good, stable system based on GPL. OK - this makes stable releases a little out of date, according to market trends. So what? Am I being naive when I say that Debian (or something like it) will survive because there will always be enough people to put ideals before profit?
Re: An open letter to the debian community
George Bonser wrote: Embracing commercial software at first is the path to eventually winning. Let the commercial vendors in ... let them penetrate deep into linux. Then surround and destory them with free alternatives once you have them committed to your platform or convince them of the benefit of opening up the development of their applications through example. Am I alone in believing the battle is between empowerment and profit? Between an interactive computer operating system, and a basically non-interactive proprietary one? GNU/Linux to me and a few others is unique because of this empowerment. You can win every single battle and cost yourself the war if the opponent declares victory and leaves the field. Commercial applications attract more people to Linux. More bright people with a lot of experiance. This gives the movement the chance to benefit from the expertise of these people in that they will contribute to the improvement of the software that IS open sourced. Again - the point is not Linux vs. the other guys, but empowerment vs. restrictive profit driven software. Why is GNU/Linux so good? Because it is faster etc. etc.? No - because it gives us choice; the ability to understand it and alter it. And also distribute it without restrictions. Bottom line is that there are a lot of good people out there in industry and Linux (and Debian) need them a lot more than they need Linux at this point in time. If that can be changed so that they DEPEND on Linux, getting their input to improving it is a lot easier. I say go ahead, let them in. We will change them a lot more than they will change us. The bottom line is that free software is both better in computing terms and better in social terms. The battle is to win people over to the principles of free software - not forsake those principles in order to have *Linux* beat Windoze at its own game. I repeat, it is not *Linux* (as many people mistakenly call it) which is important - it's free software. Debian is important because it is free software - it just happens to be the best GNU/Linux distro around, perhaps because the developers care more about getting it right than they do about profit or even *beating windoze*. That is, because they are motivated by something other than market forces.
Re: Why
Bob Bernstein wrote: Money changes people. And money talks and bs walks. That's all I'm saying. You make some valid points about the danger for Debian and GNU/Linux. IMHO the Corel distribution, like some others, is getting away from the real importance of GNU/Linux. The points are, as Richard Stallman keeps pointing out, free software - not Open Source, and the fact that GNU/Linux is very different from windoze in that it is interactive. It allows us to see what's happening, and change it if we want to. Hiding things behind a GUI takes away the option to control the processess in the way we can at present. Corel and other distros are going down the GUI windoze road - to make things *easier*. Which means, hide what's going on and make it more difficult to change things, as well as *protect* their GUI's and *installers* and other bits with nonGPL licenses. Perhaps more support should be given to developing the Hurd?
Deb package for Julian date?
Hi. Anyone know if there is a deb package (I'm using Slink still with 2.0.36 kernel) for converting ordinary dates into Julian dates (as used in Astronomy)? Or if no debs then any GNU/Linux package which I could use alien on?
Re: New release over due
Matthew Dalton wrote: The problem is not that Debian itself is out of date. The problem is that you can't get an upgraded Debian on CD. Not everyone wants to download hundreds of megabytes over their 33.6kbps connection to upgrade their systems to the latest stuff. It seems that Debian's greatest strength (apt, IMO) is also its greatest weakness. I know quite a few people who would drop RedHat and move to Debian if it weren't for the upgrade procedure. They don't want to spend hours downloading, they would rather buy the latest RH for a few bucks and select the 'upgrade' option in the install program. Just to say that some people - myself included - do not care too much about continual upgrades and having the latest version of something just because it is the latest version. We require a working system which does what we want and which goes on working. When a stable release is available, we consider upgrading, even if some see that stable release as already outdated. What is outdated anyways? If the system works, does what is required and you have the latest security updates through the excellent apt-get, there is no reason to *upgrade*. I for one stay with Debian because IMHO it is the best - if others reject Debian because they consider it outdated this IMHO is wrong - it misses one of the fundamental points about GNU/Linux and the reasons why Debian is so good (it works better, is stable, is easy to upgrade package by package etc. etc.) It's a shame that some GNU/Linux and Debian people get caught up in the commercial world of competitive and often frantic but mostly unnecessary upgrades.
Re: New release over due
Neo-fandangled-SuperVision2000 video card which is not supported in Debian Slink, so they opt to use RedHat 6.1 instead. This kind of thing is increasinly giving the public the impression that Linux is indeed forking and that RedHat is better because it supports more hardware than Debian. They don't care that you can just point apt to ftp.netgod.net/x and get the latest X server. The need to upgrade is often hardware based, not gotta be bleeding edge based. This IMHO is problem of marketing Debs - of people like us who support Debs making the public aware of just how good Debs is and how easy to upgrade. Then there is the situation where you want a certain program, but the program developer provides only debian packages linked against potato libraries. What if this program is needed for the system to do what is required? I encountered this situation myself, but since I didn't want to subject myself to a lengthy upgrade process, I didn't bother with the program. You might ask So why didn't the developer compile Slink deb's as well?. Good question. I suspect that developers like to have the latest libraries etc as well, which explains why this particular one was using potato. I agree - but surely the best solution is for more people to become Debian developers and help the effort? And if not developers, then help in some other way - donations, for example. Other distributions can afford full-time staff to work on stuff. That's the thing, I'm not just talking about unnecessary upgrades. There are situations where it doesn't matter too much about the latest stuff, such as if you are running a web site or a samba server. But there are situations where upgrading is a necessity. Again, given the nature of Debian - a volunteer effort - it is understandable that things take time. And this is one of Debs great strengths - things are not rushed just to get a new version out. Time and effort are taken to try to get things right when a new version is released.
fetchmail error message
Hi. I received the following error while using fetchmail on a new slink 2.1 install with exim: realloc failed:cannot allocate memory. Can anyone please tell me what this means and what should be done? I used the fetchmail -vv option to find the message, and have run fetchmail both as root and using a fetchmailrc user file. It connects OK (password etc) and exits OK if there is no mail, but if mail is waiting I get the error message. Exim works fine - can send OK
Re: fetchmail error message
nate wrote: snip Thanks for the help - problem solved now.
Error message
Can anyone please tell me what the following message from /var/log/messages means, and if it is as bad as it sounds? directory sread (sector 0x1b) failed attempt to access beyond end of device Thanks in advance
dselect problem - unable to mount cdrom
I've just tried to load some packages using apt from a file entry (file: /cdrom etc.)and got the following error message: mount: /dev/cdrom already mounted or /var/lib/dpkg/methods/mnt busy Unable to mount /dev/cdrom Dselect exits without installing packages. Using the umount command as root brings the message, 'not mounted' . I tried using fuser -muv /cdrom in desperation and it brings up a whole list. Is there any way to *unmount* the cd-rom (and so re-start dselect) other than re-booting? I had this problem once before, and re-booting fixed it, but was wondering what's happened and what I did wrong.
Re: To the Debian Project, IMHO
Simon Martin wrote: I am still adamant that any attempt to paint Linux as an out of the box solution with no prior knowledge is a real danger to the on-going comercial success of Linux. I worked in tech-support for Xerox for about 7 years (Xerox used to sell Apple Mac, IBM PS/2 and Dell in Latin America), and I would say that at least 70% of the problems we had we with users who not only did not know what they were doing (no problems with that) but who did not WANT to know what they were doing. Microsoft has fixed the image of it's OS as just use and ignore it. Let's not fall into that trap. I agree. I also worked on Tech support for a large company using Windows and found the same thing. IMHO the real issue is that there needs to be *two* kinds of Operating Systems, as we have now - the Windows kind where the user can install and use it without too much knowledge, with the slick GUI's, and the GNU/Linux kind as found in Debian distribution which can be configured, and most importantly taken apart to see how it works, and then put back together again, so giving people the chance to learn and understand about Operating Systems. IMHO there are two important issues. First, what we must not do is allow GNU/Linux to just imitate Windows - we must have and maintain a GNU/Linux distribution which is for techies and people who want to become techies. Let Corel and others have a distribution which they can make easier, but let us This leads to the second important issue - free software. Debian is important because it is committed to the principles of free software, *and* because it gives us the chance to help develop it, to participate. I may be wrong but there seems to me to be a sense of community among Debian users/developers which you just don't get with Windows and the stuff produced by big corporations. As Corel and other corporate concerns develop GNU/Linux I am sure they will go the same way - it will be them, the corporation, and us, the users, plus restrictive license agreements which take away freedoms. To sum up - what IMHO is important is not the commercial success of GNU/Linux, but keeping GNU/Linux tweakable, learnable, interesting and composed of free software with all the advantages that brings in terms of community and development. Godric
Re: Why use Debian? Why not Red Hat?
Duggan Dieterly wrote: i'm thinking about switching from debian to red hat. is there any compelling reason why debian is better than red hat? -- Yes, Debian is technically superior (IMHO) - plus the official Debs is free software and upholds the principles of free software (see the GNU web-site at http://www.gnu.org if you haven't already). They call their distribution GNU/Linux for good reason We should support the volunteer culture which Debian is keeping alive in what is becoming an increasingly commercial Linux world.
Re: Netscape
Ryan Chouinard wrote: I was just wondering what other people thought of the Netscape problem. I am unaware of any other great browser for Linux, although I don't doubt thier existance. I use Amaya 2.1 for browsing (currently running Slink) - it lacks some of the bells and whistles of Netscape but I've never had any problems. Also use it for making/editing web-pages and writing files in html to send to others. Godric
Re: debian installation
Anthony Campbell wrote: This expresses very well what it is that attracted me to Debian in the first place. I came to it via Slackware and then RedHat. As a complete newbie I could never manage to install any new packages on Slackware; RedHat was a lot better but too often I found that rpm packages were broken or turned out to demand libraries etc. that I didn't have and didn't know where to look for. Once I got used to the Debian way of doing things, I liked it better. I suppose I should add that I came to Linux itself from DOS, not Windows, so I suppose I was already accustomed to the idea of a CLI. I'd been using 4DOS for years and, as I know realize, this has a lot of Unix features built into it, so Linux wasn't as much of a culture shock as it might have been. I agree completely about Debian install - it is very useful, a valuable learning experience that you do not get nowadays, thanks to everyone (including it seems now most in the Linux arena) trying to imitate another well-known operating system which hides what's going on behind graphics. I came to Debian having used Suse, RedHat and Caldera (how glad I am I tried Debs!) - and after spening years using MS Windows. I even worked for a time on Tech Support for a large manufacturer and spend almost every day trying to solve someone's problem with that operating system. What a relief to move to Linux. Surely we need the learning experience that Linux provides; surely that is one of its great strengths - that we can figure things out, and fix them, and often need to fix them because there is no tech support. We are getting more and people who just use computers and not only know nothing about them but who are afraid of tinkering about, of looking under the hood.. Godric
How to boot to text mode?
Apologies for what may be a very simple question - but I'm new using Debian (migrated from Suse which I've had only been using for a while) but what file do I have to change in Debian 2.1 so that on booting I go straight to text mode to login rather than the graphical login? I know in Suse its the /etc/rc.config Any help appreciated thanks.
