Linux-Misc Digest #646, Volume #24 Tue, 30 May 00 00:13:02 EDT
Contents:
Re: Need ideas for university funded project for linux (David Steuber)
Re: GNOME newsgroups? (Garry Knight)
Re: Sound Volume (Garry Knight)
Re: Sun Sparc faster then intel pentium: is this true???? (Grant Edwards)
Re: reccommended partitions and sizes ("Amit Ghosh")
Re: oldest linux box? (Robert J Carter)
Re: Console Fonts (Dowe Keller)
Re: UPS for Linux recommendation ("Jon Chesnut")
Re: reccommended partitions and sizes ("Peter T. Breuer")
Re: Winmodems )Re: Need ideas for university funded project for linux)
([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
From: David Steuber <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Tue, 30 May 2000 03:00:04 GMT
Nix <$}xinix{$@esperi.demon.co.uk> writes:
' Craig Kelley <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
'
' > For all the faults in dpkg and rpm; they are light-years ahead of
' > autoconf
'
' They do completely different jobs. autoconf is a software portability
' enhancement tool, not a software packager!
Just a little story here. A demonstration of the dangers of a little
knowledge and root privileges.
I decided to try and get KDE2 working on my laptop computer. I got it
working on my PPro200 tower, so it should be no problem, right? Well,
in my poking around, I managed to completely trash X. I no longer
have a graphical logon at this time. I'm actually screwing around in
a text console. Keybindings from stty don't seem to apply ( the
backspace key ). I get library conflicts when trying to go to run
level 3 ( SuSE 6.2 ). It bumps me back to run level 2.
I was so frustrated, I actually flirted with the idea of blowing away
the system and setting up my laptop computer according to
www.diylinux.com. What stopped me was the doubt in my mind that
XFree86 3.3.6 will support my particular Neomagic chipset ( 256A ? ).
I've been using a binary only X server for this machine its entire
Linux career.
That didn't stop me from also trying to build XFree on this machine.
I did that on the PPro as well. However, I've been getting error
messages saying that there is no 386 instruction called 'filds'. WTF?
I don't remember that on the PPro. Maybe the compiler and libc are
not set up correctly. I don't know. I also have no clue as to what
'filds' is. I would guess that it is an FPU instruction, but that is
as far as I can go.
Yast leaves a lot to be desired. I would love to just tell the damn
thing to update my system with everything to restore the binary files
to the way they were. I have not found any 'force' option and Yast
believes the system to be up to date.
There are of course system settings I do not want to loose. I have
mail and GNUS index, for example. There is also the X86Config file.
I suppose I can back that all up. However, it is a royal pain in the
ass to restore files over the network when some of those files are
network configuration files! The egg is sitting on the wrong
computer! Perhaps I need to get some of those 'floppy disks'. It's
been so long since I used one of those I barely remember what they
look like. Also, my laptop computer either has the DVD/CD drive
installed or the floppy drive installed, not both.
It may well be 100% user error on my part, but I feel that package
management in the name of RPMs and Yast has failed me completely. I
don't know much about the various config files on the system.
Settings are put into rc.config and sourced into the miriad of scripts
that are fired up during system start up. If I make a change to
rc.config, I simply run SuSEConfig to enable the changes. In the case
of changing my SMTP server recently, that involved changing the relay
server in rc.config, which in turn changes _one_ line in sendmail.cf.
I presume a SIGHUP then gets sent to sendmail, causing it to reread
sendmail.cf. But that is not the only thing controled by rc.config.
SuSE did a good job for simplifying system management if you don't
want to grab the latest and greatest releases of such software as GNU
GCC, libc, KDE2 from CVS, etc. When you do want to do such things,
you find yourself shackled by the fact that you haven't a fucking clue
as to how GNU/Linux works as a system. If you look in /sbin/init.d,
you find there are a lot of scripts for bringing up the computer.
These scripts are well written, I'll grant SuSE that. But the init.d
concept is a complete mystery to me along with so many other things.
Granted, most end users just want a system to perform dreary tasks
on. Perhaps that is why Windows does so well. It does dreary tasks
in spades, as well as games. I'm not such an end user. Sure, I have
specific tasks that I wish to perform. I also wish to configure my
machine so that it is optimized for performing those tasks. Extra
crap that is included by SuSE and other distributions is a waste of
disk space and logistic effort.
I'm also hampared by the fact that both my computers are completely
different. One is an old PPro 200 tower, the other is a Solo 5150
laptop. The solo has PCMCIA, the PPro does not. The Solo has a
synaptics touch pad which is configured as a regular PS/2 style mouse
like the PPro. The video chip set is different. I have the PPro set
up with two NICs as a router to my DSL service. The laptop doesn't
even have a modem. The laptop has USB ( intel host controler ), the
PPro does not.
The PPro has more disk space and is a great place for CVS to be set
up. The laptop has a more ergonomic keyboard and a _much_ sharper
display for text. The PPro can handle more colors for graphics.
I am happy with the way the PPro is setup. I have no intentions of
further modifying it if possible. It makes a great router and a place
to offload compile jobs, even though the laptop is actaully a little
faster. ( I need a new computer ).
I spend almost all my time using the laptop as my terminal. Loosing X
on it is a major inconvenience. I should probably have left well
enough alone, but KDE2 is shaping up to be _much_ nicer than KDE1. I
know about the criticisms of Qt. I agree with them all. They just
aren't show stopers for me. I have neither the time nor the
intelligence to put together a real C++ toolkit ( better than GTK-- is
claimed to be, and certainly better than Qt ). I do consider Qt to be
a hack. I would prefer to use the C++ features that the language
provides. Sure, I don't know how to trap a signal from the FPU when
you divide by zero and turn it into an exception that I can throw.
But I'm sure I could learn that little trick (if it is possible at
all).
The bottom line is that the canned distributions are designed for the
user who doesn't really want to tinker with the system. This is not
exactly in the spirit of Linux. However, it is very pragmatic. Very
few people have the necessary expertise to build a system from
scratch. The Linux kernel is just a small part of a complete
operating system.
My ideal would be to have a means of grabbing source packages and
compiling them for the machine they are to be installed on. That
takes care of linkage problems. Most packages generate a single
binary that can be dumped into /usr/bin. Larger packages will also
include man pages. Man pages go into a well known tree. Even /etc
config files go into a well known location. Larger packages such as
XFree86 do create some complexity. However, the X Window System has
standard package locations too.
Really, all that is needed is a set of shell scripts that will find
the packages you want, fetch the source and dump it into a src tree
and build and install the package. If you are fortunate enough to
have heterogeneous systems, you can use a single machine for this and
use rsync to configure other machines on the network.
Package dependencies are easy to deal with. If a library is missing,
the configure file should tell you and abort. If the configure file
was not written correctly, then the build will fail and indicate the
missing library. If the major libraries are in a publicly accessible
database, then you should be able to locate them and install them. A
script can automate the procedure.
Naturally, this only works when you have a high speed internet
connection. CD distributions are not going to go away. However, CDs
have the same problem as print media. They are out of date by the
time they reach the consumer.
I have no solution to this problem. For a corporate environment, this
is why you have a system administrator in the first place. He isn't
there to be the BOFH. For home users, Linux is still a hobby system
regardless of all the hype. The major distributions are making very
rapid progress towards making end-user friendly packages. This is
necessary to the success of free software, and I applaud them for it.
However, the big problem with a practical canned system is that it
must be ridged and inflexible ( pardon the redundancy ) in order to be
supportable. Choice leads to confusion. This is why Microsoft gives
you know choice. That and their bottom line.
Fortunately, there are people like me who want to become GNU/Linux
gurus who have brains that actually work. I am confident that
GNU/Linux will move into a position of being a true competitor to
Microsoft Windows on the desktop. The server market is just too small
to be of real importance by comparison. SuSE, Slack, Debian, Red Hat,
et al, will be producing Linux systems that anyone can install onto
most hardware. It will just work. However, there will always be
people who want to be on the bleeding edge and be working with systems
that just can't be pre-packaged with today's tools.
A POSIX compliant system is a complex collection of complex software.
It will never be a simple thing for anyone to just throw together
their own home brew OS environment. However, I think the tools
available can be adapted to provide a basis that makes it simpler for
people who want a home brew OS environment to do exactly that. All
you need is a base system that can fetch and compile the source code
for different packages. It should also be able to recursively fetch
and compile any true dependencies. I've been thinking about doing
this myself, but it is not an easy task. I haven't got the confidence
in my ability to do such a thing. I certainly need to learn the
intricacies of shell scripting to aid in this. I don't think Perl or
TCL is sufficient.
Regardless of the sophistication of the tools, it will still be
necessary to understand the intricacies of a complete GNU/Linux OS.
Individual packages such as sendmail that have complex config scripts
will probably need tools that can help automate the configuration
process so that poeple don't create open mail relays. Current
packages hide information. That is both good and bad. It is good in
that people like me can get a working system together without loosing
a lot of hair. It is bad in that people like me don't know how the
sytem works. We don't have to know everything. That is asking too
much. But we should know the fundamentals. This is valuable
knowledge beyond the esthetic. You can earn good money if you know
how the system works and you work for a corperation that uses that
system.
I think I've ranted long enough for one post. End stream of
consciousness.
--
David Steuber | Hi! My name is David Steuber, and I am
NRA Member | a hoploholic.
All bits are significant. Some bits are more significant than others.
-- Charles Babbage Orwell
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Garry Knight)
Subject: Re: GNOME newsgroups?
Date: Tue, 30 May 2000 04:08:25 +0100
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, [EMAIL PROTECTED] says...
>Anyone know of any GNOME newsgroups? I found a German group, apparently
>inactive, but that was it.
My ISP (Freeserve in the UK) carries the following:
lists.misc.gnome.cvs
mailing.gnome.announce
mailing.gnome.balsa
mailing.gnome.components
mailing.gnome.doc
mailing.gnome.general
mailing.gnome.gnumeric
mailing.gnome.gui
--
Garry Knight
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Garry Knight)
Subject: Re: Sound Volume
Date: Tue, 30 May 2000 04:08:25 +0100
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, bensmith@club-
internet.fr says...
>I tried several mixers to set the sound volume. But each time I reboot,
>this one comes back to its default level.
Log on as root and edit your /etc/rc.d/rc.local file and add the
following line at the end:
aumix -v 30
The 30 is the percentage volume level. Change it to the level you
require, from 0 (off) to 100 (maximum), then reboot.
--
Garry Knight
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Grant Edwards)
Crossposted-To: comp.os.linux.questions,comp.sys.sun.hardware,comp.sys.sun.misc
Subject: Re: Sun Sparc faster then intel pentium: is this true????
Date: Tue, 30 May 2000 03:13:16 GMT
In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, GENE wrote:
>As one who spent a lot of lab time with SparcStation 10, 20, and various
>Ultra machines, let me caution you about old hardware. You may find it hard
>to fix, and Sun CE's don't come cheap. In the Sparc 10 era, for example, the
>frame buffers were as slow as DOGs. They had some boards for the S-bus
>called cgsix0 and cgsix1 (and also called by some other marketing names).
>The result of having an unaccelerated frame buffer (with only 8 bit planes
>by the way), is that X eats up your CPU.
Almost any machine with an accellerated graphics card is going to "feel"
faster than a non-accelerated board. A Sun Ultra-10 with a decent PCI
graphics board really kicks. 8-bit graphics just aren't good enough any
more when you end up with three or four X apps fighting over the color
palette.
>Sure, the sparc chip is nice, but I remember Sparc 10's lumbering along at
>36 MHz, and barely getting enough user time to do the job. You should put
>proctool on the job while running one of your favorite apps under Solaris 7,
>let's say, before considering old Sun hardware for your dream machine. If
>it looks like it will cut the mustard, maybe Linux will as well.
In the bang-for-your buck department, an old P120 with 64M of RAM, a $100
PCI graphics board, and a decent SCSI disk system will really surprise you.
For high-end, lots of processors, tons of disk I/O, performance, Sun is
going to beat an Intel-based box. But for low cost, single-user, desktop
use, the higher volume of Intel-based hardware wins out every time.
Personally, I'd like to play with an Alpha or G3 system. Too bad Apple
switched to IDE disks.
--
Grant Edwards grante Yow! I'm encased in the
at lining of a pure pork
visi.com sausage!!
------------------------------
From: "Amit Ghosh" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: reccommended partitions and sizes
Date: Tue, 30 May 2000 05:22:59 +0100
In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, "Steven Thurgood (1X0S)"
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> I am at somepoint in the near future planning a fairly hefty
> overhaul
> of my linux system, and was planning on propperly partitioning things.
> currentlyeverything is banged in one large partition, which is
> probably not the best way to go. So recomendations:- what partitions
> do you think I should make (one for
> /tmp, /usr, /home?) and what sort of sizes?
For a home system my recomendations would be
1. 16 MB for /boot
2. 80 - 100 MB for /
3. 800 - 1600 MB for /usr
4. 200 - 300 MB for /usr/local
5. 200 - 300 MB for /var
6. What's left for /home
7. Link /opt to /usr...
8. Link /tmp to /var...
Of cause there are as many recomendations as admins. But IMHO the
essential is to have /home, /var and /usr/local on seperate
partitions since this makes thinks (e.g. reinstalling or upgrading)
easier.
> This is for a home pc, with maybe 2/3 users, for doing a variety of
> things; programming, graphics, music, office stuff. I'll want Xwindow
> and every app I use seems to need some riduculous amount of librarys
> I've never heard of, so lots of space required there.
>
> Also, a response to a previous query of mine said that I need some
> space free in order for some apps (in this case xfs) to run; where
> should this space be at?
It should be under /usr or /usr/local.
> Finaly- I may be upgrading my hardware, specifically I need a lot more
> harddisk space (dont you always :), as my 5 gigs is pretty full ('bout
> 3 gigs windows stuff, 1 gig linux, 1 gig files and misclellaneous bits
> and bobs). Is one giagantic harddisk (about 20 gig) best, or is
> several smaller ones better? (i would presume the smaller ones give
> better performance as they can be accessed in parralell, but I'm not
> too well versed in this area, and they would take up more wires and
> stuff). What about RAID? how does that work (sortof..not very well
> worded - i mean at a basic high level), and is it vaguely related to
> my situation, or is it more for folks running massive databases who
> need terrabytes of data stored?
There are good reasons to use three or more HDs if you're running
database servers. But IMHO using only one is preferable for a home
system (one 20GB HD is cheaper than 2*10GB HD, you're more flexible
when it comes to partitioning since there is no hardware barrier etc.).
When it comes to RAID, there are two ways. First you can buy
dedicated hardware. Second you can use software only solutions (Linux
comes with one). Dedicated hardware is expensive (for your use) and
currently the software solution doesn't run with ReiserFS (correct me
if I'm wrong). So I would recomend to better spend your money on a
DAT streamer.
Just my 0.02$.
--
Amit Ghosh
mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Robert J Carter)
Subject: Re: oldest linux box?
Date: Tue, 30 May 2000 03:25:11 GMT
[Posted and mailed]
In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> I keep on running TAVON 80386sx/25 Mhz since August 1995 with kernel
> 1.2.8 and still running well until today.
> My friend run 80386sx at longer time than me in Thailand.
>
> On Thu, 25 May 2000, Pjtg0707 wrote:
>
>> On 25 May 2000 12:34:59 -0500, John Girash <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wr=
> ote:
>> >Jeff Workman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>> >: [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
>> >
>> >:> Just curious, what's the oldest linux box that folks have these days=
> ?
>> >
>> >: I've got a 486sx25 that gets occasional use and a P75 that was a web s=
> erver
>> >: on a cable modem, serving around 5-8k of hits a day until I moved in O=
> ctober.
>> >
>> >I'll lay good money that there are dozens (probably hundreds, maybe thou=
> sands)
>> >of 386sx16's out there still being used as simple terminals and/oor serv=
> ers.
>> >
>> >(Just trying to keep there from being dozens (if not hundreds or thousan=
> ds)
>> >of followups from peeps who think 486/P5's etc are old -- no offence Je=
> ff :-)
>> >
>> >john "just recently retired a 386sx25 / kernel 1.2 notebook" g
>>=20
>> I have a AMD 386/40 running apache with kernel 1.2.13 that serves up all =
> my
>> documentations and my cgi scripts on my lan; it won't retire anytime soon=
OK, file this under the "just because I can" catagory :-)
I've been watching this thread for a while now, and I remembered my
first "unix" box. SCO Xenix. An old Intel mother board. 386/16, 2
built-in wait states, 8 meg of memory, and two old Seagate 20meg hard
disks I RLL'd to 30 meg each. I ran a multi-user database application
on it in 1988.
I do remember that I paid around $15,000 for it, it was the 2nd 386 in
town, and for about 2 weeks it was the fastest machine on the
market. (Then compaq came out with THEIR first 386).
I still have the seagates, but don't have the RLL controler, so I had
to make do with a standard ATA controller and an old 200 meg drive
I've got floating around here. It took almost 5 1/2 hours, but the kernel
DID compile, and the sucker DID run. Albeit very slowly :-)
--
Robert J Carter at Oghma dot on dot ca
Use My initials to reach me via e-mail
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Dowe Keller)
Subject: Re: Console Fonts
Date: 29 May 2000 20:53:02 -0700
On Mon, 29 May 2000 17:40:53 GMT, JNeuffer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>Hello,
>
>I have seen Slackware users and SuSE users change the console screen fonts
>to smaller ones. I use RedHat and was wondering if it supported this
>feature... where in would I change the fonts?
>
>Thanks for any ideas.
two words:
man SVGATextMode
This should give you all the info you would ever want to know ;-)
--
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
---
I wanted to emulate some of my hero's, but I didn't know thier
op-codes.
--dowe
------------------------------
From: "Jon Chesnut" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.os.linux.setup,redhat.config
Subject: Re: UPS for Linux recommendation
Date: Tue, 30 May 2000 03:42:16 GMT
I like the PowerWare UPS systems (formerly Exide electronics).
www.powerware.com Along with excellent Linux support, the following
advantages influenced my decision to purchase a large number of PowerWare
5119's over APCC Back-UPS Pro 1400's:
-Less expensive
-Better software and support for Linux
-True sine-wave output (vs. stepped sine wave approximation)
-Double the expected battery life of the APCC unit
-Better warranty
-Did I mention LESS EXPENSIVE?!?!?!?!?
Their technical support guys have been fantastic with Linux as well!
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message news:8gsfc0$fjn$[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> I am looking for a cheap and reliable UPS solution for a Linux
> server, possibly using it as a master in a mixed OS environment
> including NT and Solaris. I am leaning toward APC using apcd daemon.
> Any recommendation on a particular model and software would be
> appreciated.
>
> Thank you.
>
>
> Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
> Before you buy.
------------------------------
From: "Peter T. Breuer" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: reccommended partitions and sizes
Date: 30 May 2000 03:47:38 GMT
Amit Ghosh <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
: For a home system my recomendations would be
: 1. 16 MB for /boot
: 2. 80 - 100 MB for /
: 3. 800 - 1600 MB for /usr
: 4. 200 - 300 MB for /usr/local
: 5. 200 - 300 MB for /var
: 6. What's left for /home
: 7. Link /opt to /usr...
: 8. Link /tmp to /var...
I would second this scheme. It's entirely adequate. I would suggest he
needs the top end of the range you specified for /usr (1600MB, maybe
2GB) as he is linking /opt in there. I'd also leave considerably more
space for /var nowadays, as there's space to burn on disks, and he may
wish to burn space on cd's ...
: Of cause there are as many recomendations as admins. But IMHO the
: essential is to have /home, /var and /usr/local on seperate
: partitions since this makes thinks (e.g. reinstalling or upgrading)
: easier.
Indeed.
Peter
------------------------------
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: Winmodems )Re: Need ideas for university funded project for linux)
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Tue, 30 May 2000 04:06:10 GMT
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Victor Wagner) writes:
[using internal power supply connectors to drive external devices]
> But you have various connectors inside case - for hard disks and so on.
> Have ever seen how indicators on front panel or 486's coolers are
> connected to them? Solder a long cable to such a device (female and
> male connectors connected with 5cm of cable) and you only need to find a
> hole in case to lead this cable outside.
In so doing, of course, you run the risk of introducing unpleasant
interference from the external world. And you also drive the PS
harder, which makes it heat up faster and last longer.
Maybe I'm a special case, but I already ruined a motherboard by
driving it from an inadequate PS. And I burn through roughly one
PS per year. Bear in mind that, with that one exception, all the PSes
have been at or above the rated level. I don't want to think how fast
I'd be flying through 'em if I started hooking in all the other crap
I've got.
--
Eric P. McCoy ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
non-combatant, n. A dead Quaker.
- Ambrose Bierce, _The Devil's Dictionary_
------------------------------
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