On Thu, 3 Sep 1998, Mike wrote:
> 2.1 I heard of something like it's bad to put some things past the 1024th
> cylinder. What are those things?
> <BR>Your root partition. Everything on / except /usr, /home, /var and /tmp
> should be on a single partition, which is used to boot the system, and
> it is called your root partition. It should not lie beyond the 1024th partition
> because some PC BIOSes have trouble booting that far up.
I thought LILO could handle this now, but ICBW. Also, there may be other
things in / that do not need to be in the root partition - root's homedir
is often /root and this does not need to be in the same partition.
> 2.4 I use Win95. Can I use LILO?
> I. See the Linux+Win95 HOWTO.
> II. Some people claim that the HOWTO is incorrect, and that Win95 reinstalls
> itself on the MBR unpredictably. Many other people think this not true.
> The FAQ itself has no opinion.
> Personally, if you use Win95 I recommend either loadlin, or (more strongly)
> a bootdisk.
>
Out of interest, is there any particular reason why you recommend a
bootdisk over loadlin?
> 3.2 How do I sort (edit with sed, tr, grep, awk...) a file "in place"?
> You can hide the intermediate file. E.g.:
> Write a shell script called 'overwrite' that looks like:
>
> -------- Cut here ------------
> #!/bin/sh
> tempfile=/tmp/`basename $0`.$$.$USER
tempfile=mktemp foo is a slightly more reliable way of getting a unique
name.
> cat > $tempfile
> mv -f $tempfile $1
> #end script
> ------- Cut here --------------
> and do sort file | overwrite file
> 'overwrite' is pretty buggy here - quick and dirty solution. Don't use
> it on "precious" files.
>
> 3.4 How do I control an FTP session automatically?
> I. Try to search for ncftp
> II. Try this script.
>
> ====The file called "fetchThem"========================================
> #!/usr/bin/bash -ex
> cd ~/where/you/want/the/files/to/land
> ftp -i -n -v -d << -fetch &> fetch.log
> open ftp.address.you.want.com
> user ftp [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> cd pub/exactly/where/you/want/to/be
> bin
> get bigfile.one
> get bigfile.two
> get enormouse.file
> close
> quit
> fetch
Is that right? Shouldn't the last line read '-fetch' instead of 'fetch'
or am I missing something?
> ======================================================================</PRE>
> Then just say "at -f fetchThem 0400"
>
> III. You can try using 'wget', available (probably) as sunsite in /system/net/.......
>
> 3.11 I've recently downloaded a program, and I don't have a clue how to
> install it.
> Most programs come in source-form. When you have unpacked the source-code in
Is it worth mentioning how to unpack the source here?
ie tar -zxvvf filename.tar.gz
Just a thought, but I've seen it come up a few times on the list...
> 4.4 I want to use multiple screens, but I dont want to use X windows.
> You need to use virtual consoles. The keys <Alt+F1> through <Alt+F6> offer you
> six different virtual consoles. This is of course valid only if you are at the
> console (the monitor connected to the actual machine running linux). If you are
> telnetting into a linux machine, or using rlogin or such stuff, you can always
> open up another telnet / rlogin session.
>
I think it might have been mentioned already, but Alt-F1 to 6 is not
strictly accurate - you can have as many or as few as you want. Also, it
may be worth mentioning <Alt+Left> and <Alt+Right>.
> 5.2 I wrote a script, and made it SUID but I get permission denied.
> POSIX forbids SUID scripts because of security holes. A work-around is to run
> them from a C wrapper which calls the system(3) function. However, the
> prefered way is to re-write the script in C, without calling system(3), but
> exec(2).
I think there should be a warning here. Do NOT make anything suid unless
you either know what you are doing or know you can trust all of your
users. Writing suid programs that are totally secure it not easy.
> I don't remember exactly what the security holes are - will someone
> send me an explanation to put in the FAQ?
>
Don't know the details OTTOMH but its something to do with setting
environmental variables like TERM, SHELL etc etc to strings with shell
metacharacters in. You can get the shell to execute arbitrary commands
for you.
> 5.5 Where I can I change the message on the login screen?
> Edit /etc/issue to change the login in screen.
> In the default Slackware setup, the script /etc/rc.d/rc.S overwrites any
> changes you make in /etc/issues. To stop it from doing that you must comment
> out the lines doing this (search for '/etc/issues', it's somewhere near the
> end of the script). This probably applies to some other distributions too.
>
In redhat it is overwritten at the end of /etc/rc.d/rc.local.
NB it is /etc/issue, not /etc/issues.
Also there is /etc/issue.net which is what you see if you telnet in
> 6.1 What good editors are available for linux?
>
> I. Vi clones - elvis, nvi - almost exact clones
> vim - a clone with many improvements.
> These are good editors to know about, for several reasons, not the least of
> which is that it is standard, and usually some vi clone exists on every rescue
> boot disk. Try to make sure you know how to edit a file from vi. And remember
> the advice: if you want out now! just type:
> ESC, ESC, ESC, :, q, !, RETURN.
ZZ also works and is quicker :)
> Personally, I use vim for all my tasks - it is quite a good programmer's
> editor too.
>
> II. Emacs - The one and only. It is a pretty good editor, but it takes about
> 50megs disk space. It is totally re-programmable.
>
> Also available is Xemacs.
>
Emacs is a lot more than just an editor.....
> III. Pico - A small editor which comes with pine. Some people believe that
> some day pico users will see the light and start to use vi.
>
> IV. Nedit - similar to Windows editors
>
V. Joe - IMHO the easiest to use of the standard editors. Pretty powerful
as well.
> 7.7. How do I get another X session as another user / start another X-server?
> You need to first switch to a free virtual console (see questions 4.4 / 4.5).
> If you are switching to the n-th virtual console (1 < n <= 6), do a <Ctrl+Alt+Fn>.
Minor point, but it should be 1 <= n <= 6... :)
> Now login to the user to want to login as. If you already have n X servers
> running on your system, do 'startx -- :<n>' to get another X server running.
>
> A much simpler solution which you can try is to open another xterm window and
> login to the other user. To do this, do an 'su - <username>'. (The '-' is
> important. This means that the shell that you get is the same as a login shell
> for the user.)
>
Also, you don't need to swite out of X to start another X server - you can
do it just as well from an xterm.
> 8.2 How large a drive can Linux/ext2 handle?
> 4000MB.
4Gig per partition rather than drive. There is also a 2Gig(?) limit on
file size.
Hope some of this is helpful to you
--
Mike <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Only through hard work and perseverance can one truly suffer.
