Linux-Misc Digest #729, Volume #25 Mon, 11 Sep 00 01:13:02 EDT
Contents:
Re: Correct way to trim logfiles? ("Andrew N. McGuire ")
Re: What is the maximum swap space? Max RAM? (Jean-David Beyer-valinux)
Re: Linux on TV! (sorry!) (Glitch)
Re: End-User Alternative to Windows (sinister-catsup)
Page Counting in Linux (Rafael Przybyszewski)
hdparm -dma setting problem (Rafael Przybyszewski)
Re: End-User Alternative to Windows ("Moderator")
Re: Question: cron and tape backups ("Andrew N. McGuire ")
Re: Linux on TV! (sorry!) (Neil Cherry)
Re: Gnome Xterm not reading .profile (Floyd Davidson)
subnet problem ("Hello World")
Origin of the GNOME name & logo ? ("Arctic Storm")
Re: What is the maximum swap space? Max RAM? ("Doug Rickard")
Re: Newbie: DOSEMU floppy images (Reinhard Karcher)
"Fatal Server Error: No Screen Found" during Installation
Re: [usenet] DeCSS Source Code 5464 (Bento Loewenstein)
Re: Linux on TV! (sorry!) ("Dave Stanton")
Re: windows/linux hd (Bento Loewenstein)
SCSI bus question (Leonard Evens)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: "Andrew N. McGuire " <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Correct way to trim logfiles?
Date: Sun, 10 Sep 2000 21:00:57 -0500
On Sun, 10 Sep 2000, Hans Marcus Kr=FCger quoth:
HMK> Hi,
HMK>=20
HMK> I am writing a little programm (in perl) to keep my logfiles in order =
an
HMK> I would like to know how I can copy and then truncate the files beeing
HMK> shure not to loose any single line. The problem is, wehat if syslogd
HMK> writes sometihng to the log just after Icoppied the files and short
HMK> before I truncate it?
HMK> The solution I found was, to get en exclusive write-lock on the file. =
Is
HMK> this ok?
There is no such thing as an exclusive write-lock. Other programs
may still modify your data file even if you use flock(). All locks
obtained by flock are advisory locks and are not absolute. =20
perldoc -f flock
My advise is this, don't waste your time writing a log-rotating program
unless you have ~SPECIFIC~ needs. This task has already been done, and
probably better. :-)
(Unless you are writing it for academic purposes)
anm
--=20
BEGIN { $\ =3D $/; $$_ =3D $_ for qw~ just another perl hacker ~ }
my $J =3D sub { return \$just }; my $A =3D sub { return \$another };
my $P =3D sub { return \$perl }; my $H =3D sub { return \$hacker };
print map ucfirst() . " " =3D> ${&$J()}, ${&$A()}, ${&$P()}, ${&$H()};
------------------------------
From: Jean-David Beyer-valinux <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: What is the maximum swap space? Max RAM?
Date: Sun, 10 Sep 2000 22:09:20 -0400
Hal Burgiss wrote:
> On Sun, 10 Sep 2000 22:09:41 GMT, Arctic Storm
><[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> >What is the maximum swap space? Max RAM?
> >There are many web sites, including RedHat, that seems to imply that the
> >maximum swap space is 128 MB. They never say that it cannot be larger than
> >128 MB; they simply say that it can handle up 128 MB of swap space.
> >I have 194 MB RAM, and I'm under the impression that larger the swap space,
> >the better, so I chose 384 MB of swap space (2x RAM). My RedHat Linux 6.2
> >runs without problems, but is this an overkill, or, is there something wrong
> >that I'm not aware of?
>
> See the mkswap man page. Depends on kernel version and mkswap version.
> This is what the confusion is over. It used to be 128M, but now is 2G
> IIRC. As to how much you need, it depends on what you do, and how long
> you do it. X seems like it eats swap here. After 3 or 4 weeks, I restart
> X to reclaim some swap. What you are doing sounds like a reasonable
> starting point. Watch the swap and if you get close to maxing it out,
> add more. If you never get close to maxing it out, you could cut back if
> you wanted.
>
> >By the way, what's the maximum RAM supported by RedHat Linux 6.2?
> >Thanks,...
>
> 2G IIRC. There are patches around that go up to 64G.
I have 512Megabytes of RAM on this machine and the vendor says I could double it by
pluggin in two
more memory modules. In spite of that, and of just running this as a desktop, about 16
Megabytes are
swapped out. That 16 Megabytes seems almost a constant (just kidding, really). On my
64 Megabyte
machine, I also get about 16 Megabytes swapped out.
On both machines, I have two almost 128 megabyte swap partitions. I would guess that
about 20% of the
RAM is being used for programs, 20% is used for buffers, and 55% is used for cache.
This 55% number
drops to about 10% sometimes. I have repeatedly tried to find out the difference
between cache and
buffers, but never received an answer either on this board or any other. This number
is reported by
the _top_ command and by the _xosview_ program. I suppose it is some other kind of
buffering.
I suppose I should look at the kernel source, but I do not care enough to do that. I
would have
thought to find it on the _top_ man page, but it is not there, nor is it in "Running
Linux" or
"Essential System Administration."
Basically, Linux seems to use almost all the available memory (why should it not), and
sometimes it
thinks it is better to swap out my unused mingetty's (I usually use only use one or
two), so the
others get swapped out. Even when there is enough memory to swap them back in, it does
not bother. Why
should it? It is kind-of amusing to notice that kswapd is swapped out, though. On
DEC's RSX-11D
operating system, if I did not lock the memory manager to core, it could get swapped
out, and then the
system would die with a whimper as nothing could get swapped either in or out. Linux
seems better than
that.
--
.~. Jean-David Beyer Registered Linux User 85642.
/V\ Registered Machine 73926.
/( )\ Shrewsbury, New Jersey
^^-^^ 9:54pm up 33 days, 5:21, 2 users, load average: 3.53, 3.66, 3.67
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 10 Sep 2000 22:31:02 -0400
From: Glitch <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Linux on TV! (sorry!)
In a recent Linux Journal (i'd say about 4 issues ago, maybe more) an
article was printed regarding this topic. My memory may be incorrect
but I think Carnegie Mellon University out of Pittsburgh, PA was doing
the research on the project and of course they were using Linux to run
the laptop that was in the car.
Brandon
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>
> Hi
>
> Sorry this ain't too technical, it's really a 'spot Linux box' report,
> but I was stunned to see linux being used on the TV.
>
> I was watching an educational programme on BBC2 were they were teaching
> software to drive a car, there was a close up on the monitor of the
> laptop that was in-car and I saw a terminal window called 'wterm'. I
> almost choked on my cocoa! I had to tell someone...
>
> Well, it's time to put the cat out,
>
> Chris C.
>
> Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
> Before you buy.
------------------------------
Subject: Re: End-User Alternative to Windows
Crossposted-To: alt.os.linux,comp.os.linux.advocacy
From: sinister-catsup <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Sun, 10 Sep 2000 22:23:32 -0400
>=20
> They also tried to make it a closed system, hard to program, etc.=20
> That leads to less software, because only large companies are
> in a position to do any real programming on it. A lack of software
> hurt the Amiga, and the Mac's.
I have frankly heard horror stories about mac programming and how can any=
one
really program someothing for the mac os effectively if the raw guts are =
a
mystery. If the Dark Tower of Redmond has an sdk or two to provide a hint
> The
fact that the early Macs were so big on using "mouse technology" > that t=
hey
refused to put cursor keys on the keyboard was also pretty > stupid. :^)
What I find amusing about that is that early mac mice use one big dumb bu=
tton,
is this a might condescending or is it me?
------------------------------
From: Rafael Przybyszewski <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Page Counting in Linux
Date: Sun, 10 Sep 2000 17:06:37 -0700
Hej!
There is a PageCounter for NT and Novell. I would like do the same in
Linux, where can I find script or software for counting printed pages by
users on HP network printer and OKI network printer.
Please help me.
If I will not find solution our organization will never go for Linux,
but I want to have linux there, so if there is anybody who can give me
advice please write back
Rafael
------------------------------
From: Rafael Przybyszewski <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: hdparm -dma setting problem
Date: Sun, 10 Sep 2000 16:59:59 -0700
==============C5A08D4C759E89CA2BF7F7E1
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
I could not set direct memmory access using
hdparm -d 1 /dev/hda
I am geting such error:
HDIO_SET_DMA failed: Operation not permitted
using_dma = 0 (off)
Where is the problem? On the other machine I have not such probblem.
Rafael
==============C5A08D4C759E89CA2BF7F7E1
Content-Type: text/html; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
<!doctype html public "-//w3c//dtd html 4.0 transitional//en">
<html>
I could not set direct memmory access using
<br>hdparm -d 1 /dev/hda
<br>I am geting such error:
<p><font size=-1>HDIO_SET_DMA failed: Operation not permitted</font>
<br><font size=-1>using_dma = 0 (off)</font>
<br><font size=-1></font>
<p>Where is the problem? On the other machine I have not such probblem.
<p>Rafael</html>
==============C5A08D4C759E89CA2BF7F7E1==
------------------------------
From: "Moderator" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: alt.os.linux,comp.os.linux.advocacy
Subject: Re: End-User Alternative to Windows
Date: Sun, 10 Sep 2000 22:35:53 -0400
Lina <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:OE5u5.20452$[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
>Will an end-user alternative similar to Linux appear anytime
> soon?
www.apple.com
www.beos.com
------------------------------
From: "Andrew N. McGuire " <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Question: cron and tape backups
Date: Sun, 10 Sep 2000 21:51:12 -0500
On Sun, 10 Sep 2000, D. C. Sessions quoth:
DCS> Robert Jones wrote:
DCS> >
DCS> > "Andrew N. McGuire" wrote:
DCS> >
DCS> > > [ please set your word wrap to something kinder ]
DCS> >
DCS> > Oops. Done. I'm afraid an admonition me from would not have been as gentle.
DCS>
DCS> I can live with the line length, but the MIME Multipart/HTML
DCS> formatting is generally considered worse.
Did not even notice that in pine, the word wrap caught my eye
immediately. Thank you for the follow-up.
Best Regards,
anm
--
BEGIN { $\ = $/; $$_ = $_ for qw~ just another perl hacker ~ }
my $J = sub { return \$just }; my $A = sub { return \$another };
my $P = sub { return \$perl }; my $H = sub { return \$hacker };
print map ucfirst() . " " => ${&$J()}, ${&$A()}, ${&$P()}, ${&$H()};
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Neil Cherry)
Subject: Re: Linux on TV! (sorry!)
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Mon, 11 Sep 2000 03:01:55 GMT
On Sun, 10 Sep 2000 23:58:27 GMT, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>Hi
>
>Sorry this ain't too technical, it's really a 'spot Linux box' report,
>but I was stunned to see linux being used on the TV.
>
>I was watching an educational programme on BBC2 were they were teaching
>software to drive a car, there was a close up on the monitor of the
>laptop that was in-car and I saw a terminal window called 'wterm'. I
>almost choked on my cocoa! I had to tell someone...
>
>Well, it's time to put the cat out,
Pardon my humor but this begs to be posted! First Linux, second TV,
third BBC. So the question is:
What's on the Tele (telie sp?)?
Answer:
A Penguin!
Sorry Monty Python Fans but it had to be done.
--
Linux Home Automation Neil Cherry [EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://members.home.net/ncherry (Text only)
http://meltingpot.fortunecity.com/lightsey/52 (Graphics)
http://linuxha.sourceforge.net/ (SourceForge)
------------------------------
From: Floyd Davidson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Gnome Xterm not reading .profile
Date: 10 Sep 2000 18:25:40 -0800
"Andrew N. McGuire " <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>On 9 Sep 2000, Floyd Davidson quoth:
>
>Right, but the OP's question was roughly "how do I do something in
>each invocation of my shell?" (paraphrased). The answer is .bashrc
>or make each shell a login shell. The former is standard, that is
>what .bashrc is for, the latter is non-standard (of all the UNIX
>admins I know, not one uses xterm -ls to my knowledge). The third
>alternative (for env vars) is too export them from .profile. You
>are making too many assumptions about what the OP wanted.
As I quoted in a previous article, that is NOT what the original
poster asked. You are assuming that is what he wants (and it
might well be), but what he asked was how to get xterm to read
his existing ~/.profile.
if his ~/.profile has several alias commands, such as
alias='/bin/ls -lF'
they cannot be exported and have to be redefined for each
subshell. It is true that aliases are being depreciated in
favor of shell functions (which can be exported), but many users
continue to use them anyway.
Exporting environment variables from ~/.profile is not a great
idea anyway. There is then no easy way to avoid them! If the
~/.profile environment is an absolute minimum (as noted, PATH
and ENV or BASH_ENV and maybe TERM is just about all that is
needed), one can invoke a sub-shell without all the excess
baggage, and sometimes that is useful. It can also be argued
that BASH_ENV should not be set to ~/.bashrc the way I do, and
instead a third init file unique to non-interactive shells
should be used, just to reduce the overhead of what is defined
for the non-interactive shell environment.
The best advice for the OP is simply to move his ~/.profile to
~/.bashrc and write a minimal ~/.profile to match.
Floyd
--
Floyd L. Davidson [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Ukpeagvik (Barrow, Alaska)
------------------------------
From: "Hello World" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: subnet problem
Date: Mon, 11 Sep 2000 11:17:06 +0800
if i use the mask 255.255.255.192 to split a class c network into 4 subnet,
some people say that the first and subnet cannot be used because it contains
the network and boardcast address. is it right? if i use all 4 subnet, will
there be any problem? thanx.
------------------------------
From: "Arctic Storm" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.os.linux
Subject: Origin of the GNOME name & logo ?
Date: Mon, 11 Sep 2000 03:47:59 GMT
Is GNOME an acronym? If so, what does it stand for?
Where/how did GNOME get the logo of a food print? Why 4 toes? What animal
is it? Who came up with this logo? Why?
--
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Please remove the "-SpamShield-" to send me email. Thanks.
------------------------------
From: "Doug Rickard" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.os.linux,comp.os.linux.setup
Subject: Re: What is the maximum swap space? Max RAM?
Date: Mon, 11 Sep 2000 13:48:38 +1000
> I have 194 MB RAM, and I'm under the impression that larger the swap
space,
> the better, so I chose 384 MB of swap space (2x RAM). My RedHat Linux 6.2
> runs without problems, but is this an overkill, or, is there something
wrong
> that I'm not aware of?
It depend on many things, the major ones being the number of processes you
want in memory at once, and the amount of memory each process needs. If all
your applications at once will fit in 194 MB ram, then theoretically you
dont even need any swap space. Remember the swap space is only for those
processes that cannot currently coexist in memory. e.g. if you have 20
processes, and each one needs 20 MB memory, then they will not all fit into
194 MB ram, so you will need at least another 200 MB swap space, if not
more. On the other hand, if you only have 10 processes and each takes only 2
MB, then 194MB ram is overkill, and a swap file is hardly required.
One rule of thumb is to assume that for a minimum case, assume that for some
reason all RAM could be swapped out at once, and therefore minimum size
should be 194 MB. On the other hand, if each user is doing really large data
base work, then you mau require several times that amount of swap space.
I think the best approach is the one that has already been suggested. Make
the swap file some arbitrary size. Then just monitor how much of the swap
file actually gets used. If its always full, then obviously you need to
increase the size, but on the other hand, if its always running at <10% then
perhaps it could be reduced somewhat.
If your load is always constant the above is easy to do. The real problem is
where you have a once a week massive application that chews up all your
memory. Judging how to handle that one is the difficult problem.
Doug.
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 10 Sep 2000 13:08:28 +0200
From: Reinhard Karcher <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Newbie: DOSEMU floppy images
James <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>Can someone tell me how to setup my dosemu.conf file so that it uses a file
>as my A drive instead of /dev/fd0. I don't want to boot from A: I just want
>to use a disk image file so that things go faster. Any suggestions. Thanks
>alot.
$_vbootfloppy = "diskimage +hd" # if you want to boot from a virtual floppy:
# file name of the floppy image under /var/lib/dosemu
Reinhard
------------------------------
From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: "Fatal Server Error: No Screen Found" during Installation
Date: Mon, 11 Sep 2000 04:28:45 GMT
hi,
Can anyone help me.
OK, here's the problem.
I want to install Red Hat linux 6.1.
I boot the installation CD directly from my CDRW.
after checking my hardware for a minute, the installation
hangs, and it says:
Fatal Server Error: No Screen Found.
This is my first time messing up with any linux, so I have
no idea what it means.
could somebody tell me what's wrong with the installation?
Ok, here's my computer hardware configuration:
ATI Xpert 2000 32 MB.
Soundblaster PCI 128
Asus P5A with AMD K6-2 450Mhz
Sony CDRW 4x4x24
Motorolla 56K Voice modem
And I also have Windows 98 SE installed on my PC.
Please can somebody help me??
Thank you in advance
--
Posted via CNET Help.com
http://www.help.com/
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Bento Loewenstein)
Crossposted-To:
news.admin.net-abuse.usenet,alt.fan.karl-malden.nose,alt.non.sequitur,alt.alien.vampire.flonk.flonk.flonk
Subject: Re: [usenet] DeCSS Source Code 5464
Date: Mon, 11 Sep 2000 04:25:36 GMT
On Sun, 10 Sep 2000 20:33:40 -0500, Axel <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>Spam Buster <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> is way deep into nothing
>>MPAA: I leave it up to you to prosecute this spammer and to contact the usenet
>archiving
>>servers (deja.com, and others) to ask them to delete these posts.
>>
>
>Fuck you, buddy. Code is speech, and it is in the interest of the
>programming community that these posts stay on the servers. As a news
>admin, I can tell you, I have no desire for the MPAA to dictate to ME
>what posts I should remove from my service.
>
>BTW, the fact that you included DeCSS in the body of your complaint
>indicates your hypocricy.
>
>Fuckhead.
>
And if MPAA succeeds in removing DeCSS code from the servers I'll post it
again. We have the right to create our own apps to watch DVDs in Linux.
Fuck MPAA if they doesn't like it.
------------------------------
From: "Dave Stanton" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Linux on TV! (sorry!)
Date: Mon, 11 Sep 2000 05:35:12 +0100
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:8ph76q$kmt$[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> Hi
>
> Sorry this ain't too technical, it's really a 'spot Linux box' report,
> but I was stunned to see linux being used on the TV.
>
> I was watching an educational programme on BBC2 were they were teaching
> software to drive a car, there was a close up on the monitor of the
> laptop that was in-car and I saw a terminal window called 'wterm'. I
> almost choked on my cocoa! I had to tell someone...
>
> Well, it's time to put the cat out,
>
> Chris C.
Not really surprising is it, in that situation, would you want a fatal error
or a blue screen of death when the car was traveling at 90 mph !!.
Dave
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Bento Loewenstein)
Subject: Re: windows/linux hd
Date: Mon, 11 Sep 2000 04:48:50 GMT
On Sun, 10 Sep 2000 17:41:19 GMT, [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Fester) wrote:
>On Sun, 10 Sep 2000 13:31:19 +0100, Karim Saleh <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>>however, going into windows 'my computer' there is no mention of the second
>>hard drive any more (D:)
>>now if i want windows to recognize this hard drive again, what do I do?
>
>Windows recognises it, but can't read it. As another poster mentioned,
>runnng fdisk will show you that the drive is indeed there.
(snip)
>
>FAT32 is a more effecient version of FAT16. It's used by recent versions
>of Windows. (95b and better) AFAIK, recent linux versions can read FAT32,
>but older versions cannot. (Correct me if I'm wrong, someone) This has the
>same problem about losing security. Don't install Linux on this.
Kernels of the 2.2 series can read/write FAT32 (including long names) if
you specify the option '-t vfat' when mounting.
>
>ext2 is Linux's filesystem. It has file permissions and modes, thus
>granting the abovementioned security. However, Windows cannot read ext2 AT
>ALL.
(snip)
Yes, it can. there's a Windoze driver that allows this system to
read/write ext2 volumes, you can find it on www.freshmeat.net as
Explore2fs. There's others for WinNT/2K/9x wich support ext2 as a
read-only volume. They're all listed in console/filesystems category
Bento
------------------------------
From: Leonard Evens <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: SCSI bus question
Date: Sun, 10 Sep 2000 23:12:09 -0500
I have a Symbios SCSI adapter with two internal SCSI disks.
I connected a HP PHotosmart scanner to the external SCSI
port with an appropriate cable which went from 68 pin micro t
50 pin micro on the scanner. When I boot, the system resets
the SCSI bus several times in the process. In particular
after almost all the modules are started, I get (in
/var/log/messages) a sequence of messages of the following type
scsi : aborting command due to timeout : pid 22530, scsi0, channel 0, id
1, lun 0 Read (6) 16 98 66 04 00
Sep 10 22:41:29 zaide kernel: ncr53c8xx_abort: pid=22530
serial_number=22549 serial_number_at_timeout=22549
Sep 10 22:41:29 zaide kernel: scsi : aborting command due to timeout :
pid 22531, scsi0, channel 0, id 1, lun 0 Write (6) 00 00 42 02 00
Sep 10 22:41:29 zaide kernel: ncr53c8xx_abort: pid=22531
serial_number=22550 serial_number_at_timeout=22550
Sep 10 22:41:29 zaide kernel: scsi : aborting command due to timeout :
pid 22532, scsi0, channel 0, id 1, lun 0 Write (6) 00 00 50 02 00
Sep 10 22:41:29 zaide kernel: ncr53c8xx_abort: pid=22532
serial_number=22551 serial_number_at_timeout=22551
Sep 10 22:41:29 zaide kernel: scsi : aborting command due to timeout :
pid 22533, scsi0, channel 0, id 1, lun 0 Write (6) 00 02 8a 02 00
Sep 10 22:41:29 zaide kernel: ncr53c8xx_abort: pid=22533
serial_number=22552 serial_number_at_timeout=22552
which eventually time out and then booting completes. The
scanner was set with SCSI ID 2.
I'm reluctant to use it this way because I am worried about the
reliability of the SCSI bus under these circumstances. Also,
it takes a lot longer to boot.
Can anyone explain to me what might be going on. Is there some
way I can fix it?
I have been using this external SCSI port with an external SCSI
zip drive without any problems, but for test purposes I didn't
have the zip drive connected. The zip drive has ID 6 and the
same thing happens if I daisy chain scanner with the zip drive.
--
Leonard Evens [EMAIL PROTECTED] 847-491-5537
Dept. of Mathematics, Northwestern Univ., Evanston, IL 60208
------------------------------
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End of Linux-Misc Digest
******************************
