Linux-Misc Digest #501, Volume #24 Wed, 17 May 00 12:13:04 EDT
Contents:
Re: Boot Disk (Dave Brown)
Re: add a second root-account (Bob Hauck)
Re: Novell Login (Dances With Crows)
Re: Any way to fake/spoof MAC address? (Bob Hauck)
Re: Linux Distribution (Koen Aerts)
Re: Whats devpts ? (Dances With Crows)
2.3 Kernel memory problems (Gabriel Klyber)
Re: FreeBSD and Linux (Steve O'Hara-Smith)
Re: Need ideas for university funded project for linux (martin)
Re: Need ideas for university funded project for linux (Mongoose)
Re: What does this mean? (Lew Pitcher)
/opt verus /usr/local (Blake LeBaron)
Re: WinModems (mst)
Re: Any way to fake/spoof MAC address? (Praedor Tempus)
shadow password problems ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
Re: Moonlight 3d (Praedor Tempus)
Re: WYSIWYG web page generator (Praedor Tempus)
Re: Linux in Sun network (Bill Unruh)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Dave Brown)
Subject: Re: Boot Disk
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: 17 May 2000 10:10:46 -0500
In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
Dances With Crows wrote:
>http://www.toms.net/rb
>
>Tom's RootBoot, the most Linux on one floppy... incredibly useful for
>rescuing systems, and much quicker than mucking with all the problems that
>bootdisks are heir to in most cases. It's not a good choice for booting a
>fully functional Linux system from floppy, though.
>
Incidentally, I've run into problems with rescue diskettes and RH installs.
Something about the RedHat installer does not properly create a new ext2
partition, so that if you try to mount it with something based on a 2.0.x
kernel, the mount command will complain that it's not a valid filesystem.
I've had this happen a number of times since RH6.1 (6.0 was not a problem).
So I've started doing the mkfs on new installs with a rescue disk first,
and then installing without formatting, just to keep my systems compatible.
(Most of my machines have both Slackware and RH partitions on them; and the
extra partition makes it easy to do a network backup/restore of an
unmounted fs, i.e., the "other" partition.)
--
Dave Brown Austin, TX
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Bob Hauck)
Subject: Re: add a second root-account
Reply-To: hauck[at]codem{dot}com
Date: Wed, 17 May 2000 15:07:08 GMT
On Wed, 17 May 2000 11:35:16 GMT, Alexander K <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>i asked about a second rootaccount and people just keep on blabla'ing.
>where is your sense of adventure? :)
Well, my sense of adventure notwithstanding, since multiple accounts with
the same uid is not a recommended setup, it is not surprising that:
1. Not many people have tried it, leading to;
2. Not many people know how to make it work right.
In fact, some of the problems you have encountered probably aren't
fixable or the fixes will be fragile and cause problems exactly when you
need the second account.
For what it's worth, there are some other options for "messing around" in
a safer way. Some of these essentially create a second "test" system
inside your existing one and are therefore pretty bulletproof:
1. If you are installing and removing a lot of software, you can change
the permissions of, say, /usr/local, to allow a regular user account to
install things.
2. You can set up "sudo" to allow a regular user to do anything they want
as root. This still provides some protection against deleting root's login
scripts and such.
3. Make backups of your system on another partition that you can quickly
restore from single-user mode.
4. Create a second copy of your system in a subdirectory and use the
"chroot" command to operate under a fake root directory. With this you
can totally destroy the secondary structure and you won't even have to
reboot to recover.
5. Use VMware to run secondary copies of Linux under Linux. This is
similar to #3 but even safer because it also helps save you from problems
caused by device access.
--
-| Bob Hauck
-| Codem Systems, Inc.
-| http://www.codem.com/
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Dances With Crows)
Subject: Re: Novell Login
Date: 17 May 2000 11:13:18 EDT
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
On Wed, 17 May 2000 11:39:29 -0300, Guilherme R. Freitas
<<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>> shouted forth into the ether:
>We´d like to know if there is any "Novell Client" for linux. If not,
>what would be the best way to have linux loggin on a Novell Network? We
>are "upgrading" the OS of some of our machines from Win to Linux, but we
>still need to maintain our Novell Server. Any suggestions would be
>extremelly helpful...
http://linuxdoc.org/HOWTO/IPX-HOWTO.html
The ncpfs tools are probably what you're looking for. ncpmount will, for
example, allow a Linux machine to mount a network drive from a Novell
server. nprint will let you print to a printer that's hanging off a
Novell box, etc. HTH,
--
Matt G / Dances With Crows \###| You have me mixed up with more
There is no Darkness in Eternity \##| creative ways of being stupid?
But only Light too dim for us to see \#| Beer is a vegetable. WinNT
(Unless, of course, you're working with NT)\| is the study of cool. --MegaHAL
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Bob Hauck)
Subject: Re: Any way to fake/spoof MAC address?
Reply-To: hauck[at]codem{dot}com
Date: Wed, 17 May 2000 15:16:16 GMT
On Tue, 16 May 2000 20:31:05 -0600, Praedor Tempus <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>Bob Hauck wrote:
>>
>> On Tue, 16 May 2000 14:23:48 -0600, Praedor Tempus <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>> wrote:
>>
>> >Is there any way to hide MAC addresses?
>> It would be sorta hard to communicate with anything if you could.
>
>I suppose so.
You do understand why, right? Other systems have to be able to find your
MAC address in order to send anything to you. That's the way ethernet
works (connecting MAC addresses and IP addresses is what ARP if for).
If you want to just listen to the wire but not communicate with anyone,
then nobody needs to know your MAC address.
>I want to do this on a laptop with a 3com card.
I have one of those 3com dual modem/ethernet cards in my laptop and I'm
pretty sure it won't let me set the MAC address. But 3com makes a lot of
different cards...
--
-| Bob Hauck
-| Codem Systems, Inc.
-| http://www.codem.com/
------------------------------
From: Koen Aerts <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Linux Distribution
Date: Wed, 17 May 2000 17:13:28 +0200
"Kay Wächter" wrote:
>
> Hi folks, can anybody help me to choose
> a good Linux distribution? I heard about so
> many of them! Which one is the best,
> Red Hat? SuSE?....
>
> Thank you
>
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
There is not something like a "best" Linux distribution. It all depends
on the personal taste of the user. The major differences between the
distributions is the way you can setup/install your Linux and the
software that comes with it.
Some distributions are easier to install, others are more difficult.
Some distributions provide more software, others don't so much. But
eventually, once you have installed Linux, there is practically not much
difference in the way of using it. However, not all distributions use
exactly the same directory structure, although they are mainly the same.
I guess the best way to find out which Linux distribution is "best" for
you, is to try out a few of them.
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Dances With Crows)
Subject: Re: Whats devpts ?
Date: 17 May 2000 11:22:21 EDT
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
On Wed, 17 May 2000 14:27:21 +0200, Oliver Gebele
<<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>> shouted forth into the ether:
>Hello everbody,
>
>on my newinstalled SuSE-6.4 i get an bootup error message
>such as "devpts no /dev/pts"; since i can't always restart
>my machine (work in progress) i first like to know what it
>is - maybe i can find out more without reboot.
/dev/pts is a filesystem for pseudo-terminals. When an application, such
as an xterm, wants a pseudo-terminal, it opens the master pseudo-terminal
multiplexer at /dev/ptmx. This creates an entry in /dev/pts/[0-255] and
the xterm then has a pseudo-terminal on (for example) /dev/pts/0. This
has advantages over the old /dev/tty[p-s][0-f] scheme for pseudoterminals,
as only the pseudoterminals you need are created and they're created on
the fly.
/dev/pts is not essential, but it is the right way to do things. Your
/etc/fstab should have a line in it like so:
none /dev/pts devpts gid=5,mode=620 0 0
and your kernel must be compiled with "/dev/pts filesystem support" and
"support for Unix98 ptys" enabled.
--
Matt G / Dances With Crows \###| You have me mixed up with more
There is no Darkness in Eternity \##| creative ways of being stupid?
But only Light too dim for us to see \#| Beer is a vegetable. WinNT
(Unless, of course, you're working with NT)\| is the study of cool. --MegaHAL
------------------------------
From: Gabriel Klyber <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: 2.3 Kernel memory problems
Date: Wed, 17 May 2000 10:25:40 -0500
I tried running a 2.3.99 kernel for about a week. Everything looked fine
except for shared memory which I fixed by mounting the /var/shm point.
Then, I noticed that when I run several apps, it crawled to a halt with
kswapd eating up the processor.
I checked out the memory usage and saw that about 100MB was used upon
bootup (without X running). 2.2.x only used about 60MB. I noticed in top
that the shared memory field was 0kb whereas in 2.2 it was usually
around 30-50 MB. Do some system programs need to be recompiled? Anybody
else have this problem? I run Debian unstable distro.
------------------------------
From: Steve O'Hara-Smith <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: FreeBSD and Linux
Crossposted-To: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Date: Wed, 17 May 2000 16:29:49 +0100
In comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc tim <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> my answers:
> In comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc frans abels <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> : I have been experimenting with FreeBSD lately, comparing it to Linux.
> : Here are some questions that I still have
> : 1. FreeBSD runs Linux binaries. Does this mean that I can install a
> : FreeBSD kernel
> : in a Linux distribution?
> No. You can use a Linux kernel on a linux system.
Hmm, strictly speaking I suppose that is correct. If there isn't a linux
kernel it isn't linux.
That being said the question implied is interesting, namely just how
little of FreeBSD would you need to support a complete userland from a
linux distribution. Just the kernel, kernel+init, kernel+init+???.
I don't know the answers, nor do I have the time and resources to find
them. I am fairly well convinced that it wouldn't take much of FreeBSD to
hold up the userland from a linux distribution (imagine starting with a
small picobsd system and throwing away everything that could be replaced
by a linux binary).
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (martin)
Crossposted-To:
comp.os.linux,comp.os.linux.development,comp.os.linux.development.apps,comp.os.linux.development.system,comp.os.linux.setup,comp.os.linux.advocacy
Subject: Re: Need ideas for university funded project for linux
Date: Wed, 17 May 2000 14:39:01 GMT
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
On Tue, 16 May 2000 23:47:56 GMT, Mongoose <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote :
>Hello,
> I am attempting to start a college project and have two of my
>ideas already being worked on. So I wanted to know what other people
>had for suggestions for linux projects? I was thinking of something
>along the lines of a project that would help promote the use of linux.
>What is something that most people could use? Something that could
>make a good 1 year R&D project?
How about an easy-to-use text editor ? (console, not GUI please :) ?
One without a million complex commands, but with ability to select
text with shift+arrow keys, like most dos/windows/os2-based editors
do, F2 to save a file instead of Ctrl-x + Ctrl-s or something and
those other features that are standard on other operating systems.
Basically, a simple editor that doesn't need a 300-page tutorial.
I can't find any of those in linux. Not for console anyway.
--
Martin
------------------------------
From: Mongoose <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To:
comp.os.linux,comp.os.linux.development,comp.os.linux.development.apps,comp.os.linux.development.system,comp.os.linux.setup,comp.os.linux.advocacy
Subject: Re: Need ideas for university funded project for linux
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Wed, 17 May 2000 15:30:49 GMT
On Wed, 17 May 2000 15:01:04 GMT, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>Mongoose <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
>
>> I was thinking, maybe not just servers and stuff, but an application
>> that windows users have but linux doesn't. Something that would give
>> windows users more of an incentive to move to linux, or help them
>> migrate to linux.
>
>The way I see it, Linux needs the following, at minimum, before it can
>be a legitimate competitor to Windows:
>
>1. A streamlined, easy install process;
Theres distros that have that now. Caldera I think? You can play
tetris while linux is installing on your machine.
>2. An office suite roughly as functional as Office, and at least as
> easy to use;
Staroffice which is basically a clone of MSoffice, and Corel Office
Suite. Both very good office suites for linux.
>3. A GUI package installation mechanism that's as easy to use as
> InstallShield (trivial if we get a file manager for GNOME or KDE); and
Maybe, theres a few out there but no one uses them except commercial
companies. Most programs use the standard
configure; make; make install line
>4. A GUI interface to the most common configuration files.
This was what I was planning on doing before, although Webmin does
this.
>In order to beat Windows, client-side, we need:
>
>1. A GUI interface to *all* configuration files;
>2. Integration of all Linux documentation into a centralized,
> searchable help center;
>3. A DirectX-like platform for hardware-accelerated devices, not
> necessarily at the kernel level;
>4. Abstraction of many protocols and features, ala ODBC (which I hate
> because it never works, not because it's a bad idea); and
>4. A "killer app." Unfortately, the odds of this being in the office
> suite are about zero, as MS has far too much of an edge on this
> front. The GIMP, with a few unique features, may have the
> potential to get there.
>
>Linux has survived largely because its only real competitor,
>reliability- and performance-wise, was NT, which few "regular" people
>liked because it runs about as many Windows programs as Linux. But
>with Windows 2000 out, suddenly the "mainstream" Windows is comparably
>stable and feature-laden. I think that, unless Linux starts playing
>catch-up in a big way, we're going to be relegated to the niche market
>we've been, until recently, exclusively a part of.
>
>I suppose that now I'm going to have to get Linux running again so I
>can put my programming hours where my mouth is. (Reason I'm not using
>it now? The fucking Aureal Vortex 2 drivers are (a) non-free; and (b)
>unusably poor.)
It seems that there are alot of linux programs out there that do
these things people need, its just that its hard to find them all. As
for ease of use, most linux users are intellegent computer users and
don't need guis to configure and install stuff. This is the problem
though, they don't care enough to create programs to help newbies
install and use linux and so linux is being held back. I don't see
linux taking off any time soon either but the more help it gets, the
more popular it will be.
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Lew Pitcher)
Crossposted-To: comp.os.linux,comp.os.linux.questions
Subject: Re: What does this mean?
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Wed, 17 May 2000 15:32:31 GMT
On Wed, 17 May 2000 03:14:53 GMT, Tandem Guy <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:
>Hello. I'm a new Linux user with what is, I'm sure, a pretty easy
>question. Often in the man pages I see references to other commands
>with a numberi in parenthesis immediately following the command name.
>For example, I'm looking now at man mount and there is a line which
>reads in part: Conversely, the umount(8) command will detach.... So my
>qustion is, in this example, what does the 8 indicate. I am running
>RedHad 6.0 if it matters. Thanks in advance.
To add to the explanations already tendered, the man 'section' is an
extended holdover from a time when AT&T published the Unix manuals in
book form. It actually indicated which section of the multi-volume
manual manual the online documentation was extracted from.
In other words, man 8 umount presented the 'umount' chapter from
Section 8 of the printed manual, and umount(8) refered the reader to
read the 'umount' chapter of Section 8 of the manual.
The section numbers have since been enhanced, as documentation has
exceeded the bounds of the definitions of the original manual
sections.
Lew Pitcher
System Consultant
Toronto Dominion Financial Group
([EMAIL PROTECTED])
(Opinions expressed are my own, not my employer's.)
------------------------------
From: Blake LeBaron <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: /opt verus /usr/local
Date: Wed, 17 May 2000 15:41:39 GMT
I'm a new linux user, and I'm confused on one aspect of it. Where is
the the appropriate place to put installed software packages? I see
some want to go to /opt, and others prefer /usr/local. What is the
current standard for this?
Blake LeBaron
------------------------------
From: mst <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: WinModems
Date: Wed, 17 May 2000 11:46:04 -0400
TomG wrote:
>
> any ideas about WinModems under Linux anyone?
> thanks
> TomG
>
http://linmodems.org
MST
------------------------------
From: Praedor Tempus <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Any way to fake/spoof MAC address?
Date: Wed, 17 May 2000 09:57:12 -0600
Bob Hauck wrote:
>
> On Tue, 16 May 2000 20:31:05 -0600, Praedor Tempus <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> >Bob Hauck wrote:
> >>
> >> On Tue, 16 May 2000 14:23:48 -0600, Praedor Tempus <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> >> wrote:
> >>
> >> >Is there any way to hide MAC addresses?
>
> >> It would be sorta hard to communicate with anything if you could.
> >
> >I suppose so.
>
> You do understand why, right? Other systems have to be able to find your
> MAC address in order to send anything to you. That's the way ethernet
[...]
Yeah, after your post I looked into it and learned why the MAC address
it
needed. What happens when two systems in a network have the same MAC
address? Surely with all the ethernet cards out there, there must be
some conflict by random chance?
> >I want to do this on a laptop with a 3com card.
>
> I have one of those 3com dual modem/ethernet cards in my laptop and I'm
> pretty sure it won't let me set the MAC address. But 3com makes a lot of
> different cards...
I tested it this morning and I can/did change the MAC address on my
laptop's
ethernet card. Mine is a Etherlink III.
praedor
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: shadow password problems
Date: Wed, 17 May 2000 15:49:38 GMT
Recently I noticed I could not telnet into my
machine (running RedHat 6.1), but I could ftp. I
find I can ssh, but not rsh, as well. I cannot log
in at the console unless I remove the 'x' from
/etc/passwd.
I have pwconv'd and pwunconv'd, and even
grpunconv'd - nothing seems to make a difference.
I have spent over a week (off and on) trying
different things. Anybody got an idea ?
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
------------------------------
From: Praedor Tempus <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Moonlight 3d
Date: Wed, 17 May 2000 10:00:49 -0600
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>
> As user of moonlight 3d, i'm sure you have noticed that the original
> sites are down.
I believe they moved to sourceforge.
praedor
------------------------------
From: Praedor Tempus <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.os.linux.powerpc,alt.os.linux.mandrake
Subject: Re: WYSIWYG web page generator
Date: Wed, 17 May 2000 10:04:56 -0600
J Bland wrote:
>
> >I remember when the big Linux discussion was whether end-user secratarys
> >could use TeX to edit documents. This was in the days before they did the
> >original Caldera port of WordPerfect 6 to Linux. While the usenet posters
> >were acting like idiots, saying "But, of course, Ms. End secratary can use
> >TeX", the people at Caldera were making sure that Word Perfect was getting
> >ported to Linux.
> >
> >One group accomplished nothing, another group did something to make Linux
> >a little easier to use for the end user.
>
> And meanwhile things like (K)LyX were being written (and other TeX-based
> authoring tools that I now forget the name of). LaTeX is a damn solid
> system, doesn't crash, doesn't change its format every five seconds, is
[...]
I have latex installed but have yet to really use it. I am not against
it but it just isn't compatible with the local tools everyone uses (Word
and SOME WordPerfect). I wont defend Word (or, by extension, M$) since
M$ uselessly and pointlessly changes their format with every iteration
to
force their captive audience to "upgrade" every year or two, BUT this is
NOT the case with WordPerfect. WordPerfect 2000 is compatible with
old WordPerfect 5.1...and all versions of WordPerfect. This is a GOOD
thing.
praedor
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Bill Unruh)
Subject: Re: Linux in Sun network
Date: 17 May 2000 16:08:25 GMT
In <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Bert De Knuydt
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
>"Cyril Y. Nickonorov" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
>[...]
>> I'd like to integrate Linux systems in Sun network
>> (Sparc machines running Solaris) and the main problem
>> is Sun automounter maps. Is it possible to use them in
>> Linux?
>Hello,
>Yes, no problem whatsoever. We've been doing this since about 3 years.
One problem sun NFS used to have was that they inserted a 5 ms delay on
the write of each and every packet coming over NFS. Sun's themselves
would tend to fill the packets and so this overhead was not a total
disaster. Linux nfs sends out the packets only partially filled and this
made nfs write times impossible. A pine session for example with say 200
messages in a folder you had opened would take forever to close down (
forever being say a minute) when running pine on Linux with an NFS
mounted directory from a Sun.
Now, this was on SunOS 4.1.3 so solaris nfs may have fixed it. It is
however something to keep in mind if you find slow performance.
------------------------------
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End of Linux-Misc Digest
******************************
