Re: X configuration probs

[Kevin Mark]

On Thu, Jun 09, 2005 at 11:31:19AM -0500, Abhishek wrote:
> Hello everyone,
Hi Abhisek,

>  I am basically a redhat linux user &
> tryingout the debian distro.

welcome to Debian!

>  I have written the XFree86 file but when trying the command X or
> startx it is refusing to start but when I am using X -xf86config
> /etc/X11/XFree86 the server is starting 

Debain is using X version 4. It uses /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 file, not
/etc/X11/XF86Config. 

> but the GNOME env is not
> appearing. The config files r also present in /usr/X11R6. I have herd
> that there is no command equivalent to redhat-config-xfree86 which
> configures automatically.

The recommened command is:
dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xfree86
if you have a problem, read the /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 file comments!
Cheers,
Kev

-- 
counter.li.org #238656 -- goto counter.li.org and be counted!
  `$' $' 
   $  $  _
 ,d$$$g$  ,d$$$b. $,d$$$b`$' g$b $,d$$b
,$P'  `$ ,$P' `Y$ $$'  `$ $  "'   `$ $$' `$
$$ $ $$g$ $ $ $ ,$P""  $ $$
`$g. ,$$ `$$._ _. $ _,g$P $ `$b. ,$$ $$
 `Y$$P'$. `YP $$$P"' ,$. `Y$$P'$ $.  ,$.


signature.asc
Description: Digital signature

Re: Top posting (a different point of view)

[Hubert Chan]

On Thu, 9 Jun 2005 20:10:35 -0400, Patrick Wiseman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> said:

> I completely agree. ...

Hmm.  What do you agree with?  Are you agreeing that top posting sucks,
or that top posting is good?  Well to figure that out, I would need to
either scroll down to look at the post that you're replying to
(fortunately, my mail reader shows be about 50 lines of the message, so
I actually didn't have to scroll) or try to figure it out from the rest
of what you write (fortunately, your next sentence makes it clear, but
that doesn't happen all the time for everyone, and besides, I don't like
being confused after reading the first sentence of a message and having
to wait until the second sentence to figure out what's going on).

Do you see why it's nice to have the context provided immediately?  With
a bottom-posted message, I can quickly scan the original message and
recall the context that I had read before.  If I have to scroll to see
the reply (which should be very rare, if quoted text is trimmed
properly), I just have to hit [space] once or twice, and I can easily
tell when I've reached the reply because my mail reader colours quoted
text.

With a top-posted message, I read the first sentence, get confused,
scroll down to read the context, then scroll back up to read the rest of
the reply.

Top posters also tend to have the horrible habit of not trimming the
original message to only what's relevant...

> ... I have my email ordered most-recent-first, and it saves me a _lot_ of
> time, whether the individual emails are top- or bottom-posted! ...

I have my mailing lists threaded, and it's nice to be able to just read
the first message in a thread and tell my mail reader that I'm not
interested in the rest of the messages in the thread.  I can't imagine
how you would do that with most-recent-first.  If you just read the
latest message in a thread and find that you're not interested, you
can't just kill the thread because you don't know if that message is off
on a tangent, or if you really aren't interested in that thread.

-- 
Hubert Chan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> - http://www.uhoreg.ca/
PGP/GnuPG key: 1024D/124B61FA
Fingerprint: 96C5 012F 5F74 A5F7 1FF7  5291 AF29 C719 124B 61FA
Key available at wwwkeys.pgp.net.   Encrypted e-mail preferred.


-- 
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: Top posting

[Hubert Chan]

On Thu, 9 Jun 2005 18:00:53 -0700, Tony Godshall <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> said:

> ...
>> There isn't a problem with context because I can remember that from
>> one post to the next. ...

> Which is fine if you are reading a thread fresh, but if you are
> reading a number of lists, and leave and come back, you need a bit of
> context.

Even if you are reading a thread fresh, trying to remember what a post
said doesn't work too well for people without threaded mail readers,
since a reply may be separated from the original message.  And even for
people with threaded mail readers, it doesn't work too well with long
threads with many replies -- if you finish reading this message, and
then read my reply to Hal's reply to the original message, you would
have a hard time remembering Hal's message that I was replying to, since
you would have read that message 10 messages ago.

-- 
Hubert Chan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> - http://www.uhoreg.ca/
PGP/GnuPG key: 1024D/124B61FA
Fingerprint: 96C5 012F 5F74 A5F7 1FF7  5291 AF29 C719 124B 61FA
Key available at wwwkeys.pgp.net.   Encrypted e-mail preferred.


-- 
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Top-posting (another different view) (was: Re: Top posting (a different point of view))

[=?iso-8859-1?Q?Rog=E9rio?= Brito]

On Jun 09 2005, John Carline wrote:
> But, it would make my reading/following of threads much easier if I
> didn't have to scroll down to the bottom of post after post in a long
> string just to read the one line added to the 200 I've already read.

The point is: if somebody makes you scroll down many pages so that you can
see his/her answer, then the problem is that that person is not using the
right way of posting messages.

Quoting messages should be to the point and only leave relevant pieces of
older messages. And, of course, the attribution of each quote to the person
that generated it.

> It would be much better added at the top, where it pops onto the screen 
> immediately and I can go on to the next post.

This isn't the case if what you are replying to needs a detailed answer.
And this is usually the case of a technical mailing list, like this one.

OTOH, if the person is only replying to a message in general, I see little
motivation to the practice of top-posting.

In fact, if the person doesn't really care about preserving the context to
where he/she is replying, then why quote the message at all? Just start a
reply to the thread from scratch.

Since that person is already assuming that the others are following the
thread to where the message is being sent, why preserve the older messages'
contents?


Just another view on this polemical issue, Rogério Brito.

-- 
Learn to quote e-mails decently at:
http://www.dtcc.edu/cs/rfc1855.html
http://pub.tsn.dk/how-to-quote.php
http://learn.to/quote
http://www.xs4all.nl/~sbpoley/toppost.htm


-- 
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: Installing the new release (Sarge)

[Kevin Mark]

On Thu, Jun 09, 2005 at 02:04:49PM -0400, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> Thanks...  I'm still new.  I'm thankful for people like yourself that help
> people like me out.  This is a lesson that I DEFINITELY WILL NOT FORGET.
> 
> If all I need are the 1st 3 or 4 CD's, then what is on the other 10 CD's,
> just a whole lot of software?  Is there a breakdown somewhere of what is
> on each CD?
Hi,
it a common question. Debian figures out what software is used the most
and puts that on cd #1 and so on. so the last cd contains the least used
software. If you install the 'popcon' software, it reports back what is
the most popular software you use to Debian.
Cheers,
kev
-- 
counter.li.org #238656 -- goto counter.li.org and be counted!
  `$' $' 
   $  $  _
 ,d$$$g$  ,d$$$b. $,d$$$b`$' g$b $,d$$b
,$P'  `$ ,$P' `Y$ $$'  `$ $  "'   `$ $$' `$
$$ $ $$g$ $ $ $ ,$P""  $ $$
`$g. ,$$ `$$._ _. $ _,g$P $ `$b. ,$$ $$
 `Y$$P'$. `YP $$$P"' ,$. `Y$$P'$ $.  ,$.


signature.asc
Description: Digital signature

Re: Top posting

[Hal Vaughan]

On Thursday 09 June 2005 11:16 pm, Hubert Chan wrote:
> On Thu, 9 Jun 2005 20:16:46 -0400, Hal Vaughan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 
said:
> > I saw that, figured it was an attempt to be clever in making one's
> > point and decided it was stupid. ...
>
> Then why did you decide to insult David's writing grammar when there was
> nothing wrong with his grammar if you read his message properly?  (Other
> than the missing period after the last sentence.)

I was making a point -- taking his letter as read, and pointing out that none 
of us are perfect.  If you read all my comments, and did so dispassionately, 
without wanting to find offense, you'd see I made it clear there was no 
intent to slam him, merely to point out that we are all open to criticism.

If that were not true, you would not be criticizing me, or others.  While 
there was no actual insult intended, I accept that you clearly feel that the 
way I made my point was less than perfect, just as the e-mail I was 
responding to was, and just as those who top-post are -- at least according 
to the absolutist standards some insist on implying.

>  As a writer, you were definitely not making your point clear.

Guess you aren't familiar with the life of a writer.  While some claim to have 
never had a work rejected ever (I think Ray Bradbury is in that group, but I 
don't remember for sure), for most writers, for every piece that does well, 
they have many that they tried and aborted or others that just fell flat.  
For Star Wars Episodes IV & V we had to put up with I, II, II, & VI.  For The 
Tempest and Midsummer Night's Dream, we had Coriolanus.  Not every thing 
every writer writes turns out perfectly.

You don't like it?  Fine.  There were probably better ways I could make my 
point.

Hal


-- 
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: Debian on an ECS RS480-M mother board.

[Paolo Alexis Falcone]

On 6/10/05, James Ronald <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> I'm looking to put together an inexpensive Socket 939 system for just
> general computing as my main computer just died the other day.  I intend to
> run Debian Sid on it and would like to know if anyone has any experience
> good or otherwise with the
> ECS RS480-M mother board.  I see that the NB/SB is quite popular in several
> AMD based laptops.
> 
> The mother board has the following:
> North Bridge: ATI RS 480
> South Bridge: ATI RS 400
> Graphics: On Chip (Radeon X300-based. 2D/3D graphic engine)
> Audio: Realtek ALC655 6-Channel audio CODEC

These days you'd be stuck with VESA graphics if you'd run Linux on the
RS480-M line, as the Radeon X300 onboard graphics controller is not
yet supported in Linux.
-- 
Paolo Alexis Falcone
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: root compromise on debian woody

[Kevin Mark]

On Thu, Jun 09, 2005 at 04:50:21AM -0400, Charles Hallenbeck wrote:
> Hi Kevin,
> Forgive me for not ansering sooner...
 
> 
> Here is a not-so-current background piece:
> 
> http://www.hhs48.com/why_linux.html
> 
> You can also get more current info at www.linux-speakup.org
> 
> Many distributions now come with "speakup-modified" kernels permitting 
> "eyes free" installation and operation. There are other access solutions 
> besides speakup, but those require that you have a running system before 
> starting the speech access solution. Speakup is a set of kernel patches 
> that allows the console to talk from startup to shutdown. Once a system 
> is running you can switch it to using software speech, but a hardware 
> synthesizer is required normally. Speakup does not support GUI access, 
> although both the gnome folks and the KDE folks are working on access 
> solutions (very slowly). Speakup was developed by blind folks mostly, so 
> the developers have a stake in its performance.
> 
> I have only used Slackware and Debian myself, and there is nothing in 
> either distro that bears on the effectiveness of speakup. It works great 
> in both. I prefer Debian for reasons unrelated to access. (as presumably 
> you do, too )
> 
> Chuck
Hi Chuck,
thanks for the replay. I will check out the link!
I guess it is obvious why we choose Debian: the cool red swirl logo! Well, at
least I did! 
cheers,
Kev
-- 
counter.li.org #238656 -- goto counter.li.org and be counted!
  `$' $' 
   $  $  _
 ,d$$$g$  ,d$$$b. $,d$$$b`$' g$b $,d$$b
,$P'  `$ ,$P' `Y$ $$'  `$ $  "'   `$ $$' `$
$$ $ $$g$ $ $ $ ,$P""  $ $$
`$g. ,$$ `$$._ _. $ _,g$P $ `$b. ,$$ $$
 `Y$$P'$. `YP $$$P"' ,$. `Y$$P'$ $.  ,$.


signature.asc
Description: Digital signature

Re: usbmount only mounts pendrive as "root:root"?

[Paolo Alexis Falcone]

On 6/10/05, Jeronimo Pellegrini <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Hello!
> 
> So, after swithing one box from Fedora to Debian
> Sarge, there's onw thing users would probably like, but I don't know
> how to do: Fedora will mount pendrives automatically for you, with the
> permissions of whoever is on the console. I tried usbmount, but it seems
> to always mount as root. After the pendrive is plugged, this is how
> /media looks like:
> 
> $ ll /media/
> total 44K
> lrwxrwxrwx  1 root adm 4 2005-06-09 22:30 usb -> usb0
> drwxr-xr-x  2 root root  16K 1969-12-31 21:00 usb0
> drwxr-xr-x  2 root adm  4.0K 2005-06-09 22:30 usb1
> drwxr-xr-x  2 root adm  4.0K 2005-06-09 22:30 usb2
> drwxr-xr-x  2 root adm  4.0K 2005-06-09 22:30 usb3
> drwxr-xr-x  2 root adm  4.0K 2005-06-09 22:30 usb4
> drwxr-xr-x  2 root adm  4.0K 2005-06-09 22:30 usb5
> drwxr-xr-x  2 root adm  4.0K 2005-06-09 22:30 usb6
> drwxr-xr-x  2 root adm  4.0K 2005-06-09 22:30 usb7
> 
> I had changed the group in *all* /media/usb* directories to adm, just
> to check if they'd go back to "root:root" when mounted, and indeed --
> they do.
> 
> So, is there a simple way to get the same behavior from Fedora in
> Sarge?

Add your user account to the plugdev group


-- 
Paolo Alexis Falcone
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: Top posting

[Hubert Chan]

On Thu, 09 Jun 2005 19:51:22 -0500, Kent West <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> said:

> Hubert Chan wrote:
>> (David, I think you're to subtle . . . .
>> 
>> 
> "too".

> D'oh!

Yeah, I saw that after I sent the message.  I'll blame it on my keyboard
not noticing the second `o'.  Or on the Debian list server for
attempting to save bandwidth by cuting out rndom ltrs.

[...]

> No offense intended to anyone. This email is the property of the owner
> and all unauthorized uses are strictly forbidden without express
> written permission, a $25 cashier's check, a promissory note for your
> firstborn child, three tickets to any show in Branson, Missouri, and a
> Hostess Cup-Cake, no, I mean Mrs. Baird's Cup-Cake (aeeieh! (as he
> flies off the Bridge of Death)).

Warning: this message has sharp corners.  Keep away from small children.
If ingested, consult a doctor immediately.  Not to be used as a
flotation device.

-- 
Hubert Chan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> - http://www.uhoreg.ca/
PGP/GnuPG key: 1024D/124B61FA
Fingerprint: 96C5 012F 5F74 A5F7 1FF7  5291 AF29 C719 124B 61FA
Key available at wwwkeys.pgp.net.   Encrypted e-mail preferred.


-- 
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: Top posting

[Hubert Chan]

On Thu, 9 Jun 2005 20:16:46 -0400, Hal Vaughan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> said:

> I saw that, figured it was an attempt to be clever in making one's
> point and decided it was stupid. ...

Then why did you decide to insult David's writing grammar when there was
nothing wrong with his grammar if you read his message properly?  (Other
than the missing period after the last sentence.)  As a writer, you were
definitely not making your point clear.

-- 
Hubert Chan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> - http://www.uhoreg.ca/
PGP/GnuPG key: 1024D/124B61FA
Fingerprint: 96C5 012F 5F74 A5F7 1FF7  5291 AF29 C719 124B 61FA
Key available at wwwkeys.pgp.net.   Encrypted e-mail preferred.


-- 
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: Remote administration of a server

[Roberto C. Sanchez]

On Thu, Jun 09, 2005 at 08:02:06PM -0400, Robert Brockway wrote:
> On Thu, 9 Jun 2005, Roberto C. Sanchez wrote:
> 
> > Sadly, most people (myself included) have no passphrase on their SSH
> 
> Hi.  Using PKI with no passphrase drops the level of security 
> significantly (as I'm sure you know).
> 
> > keys.  I also end up bouncing aroud a variety of machines (some Fedora
> > some Windows with PuTTY and some Windows with SSH.com).  So the key
> > thing is a pain in the but.  At least on the Linux machines it is
> > straightforward and I set those up when I can to use keys instead of
> > passwords.
> 
> May I introduce you to ssh-agent and ssh-add.  They are a standard part of 
> ssh and will operate between implementations (as long as no one has broken 
> their implementation).
> 
> This is the last line of my ~/.xsession file:
> 
> ssh-agent bash -c "ssh-add < /dev/null && /usr/bin/fvwm2"
> 
> After entering my passphrase as part of the login process[1] I can ssh to 
> boxes all over the world without so much as entering my passphrase and I'm 
> doing it securely.  Of course you need to keep your session secure if you 
> are doing this (and I certainly do).
> 
> [1] I can't login successful without the passphrase.
> 

OK.  I am now reformed :-)  I discovered keychain (which handles both
ssh-agent and gpg-agent from both an X login and a remote login.  Very
nifty.  I also put passphrases on my keys.  I figured it was about time.
Though, I must admit that the clincher for me was the integration with
gpg-agent so I wouldn't need to keep typing my passphrase for that.

-Roberto

-- 
Roberto C. Sanchez
http://familiasanchez.net/~sanchezr


pgpUW90yEW3f8.pgp
Description: PGP signature

Re: On IMAP servers

[hmh]

On Mon, Jun 06, 2005 at 04:54:57AM -0700, Steve Lamb wrote:
> Erik Steffl wrote:
> >   are you talking about pre-2k times only? I mean during last four years
> > imap support seems to be pretty good (and improving). Thunderbird
> > definitely isn't the first usable MUA, as far as imap support goes.
> 
> Nope.  In the past few years I've tried Netscape, TheBat!, Sylpheed-Claws,
> Eudora, KMail, mutt, Thunderbird and a slew of others I can no longer
> remember.  I don't recall any of them outside of Thunderbird being able to use

If you are going to use non-free stuff like The Bat!, try Mulbelry. It
is a *proper* IMAP client, and if it is used with a proper IMAP server,
it is quite nice.  Oh, and it has Windows, Linux and Mac versions.

> vounch for 3 clients which come up to snuff on that regards.  Thunderbird,
> Evolution (which at least has reply-to-list!) and, get this, Outlook.  The

Outlook is the *BANE* of all IMAP server support staff and programmers.
I have never heard of such a misbehaving client in my life as Outlook
and Outlook Express (different programs, different bugs, same
must-be-on-purpose level of incompetence in the IMAP layer) :(

-- 
  Henrique M. Holschuh


-- 
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]

KDE 3.4

[Robert Wolfe]

Hi folks!  I was wondering if there was a way I could upgrade KDE 3.3 to 
3.4 using apt-get?


  `$' $'
   $  $  _
 ,d$$$g$  ,d$$$b. $,d$$$b`$' g$b $,d$$b
,$P'  `$ ,$P' `Y$ $$'  `$ $  "'   `$ $$' `$
$$ $ $$g$ $ $ $ ,$P""  $ $$
`$g. ,$$ `$$._ _. $ _,g$P $ `$b. ,$$ $$
 `Y$$P'$. `YP $$$P"' ,$. `Y$$P'$ $.  ,$.

Robert Wolfe -- [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Running Debian 3.1 (sarge) on a Sun Ultra 5


--
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: Clarify Sarge Release

[Jim Hall]

Paul Johnson wrote:

On Wednesday June 8 2005 12:17 pm, Jim Hall wrote:


Now that Sarge is released, do I need to point 'update' & 'upgrade'
to "stable", or leave Sarge as the target?



It depends.  Do you want to track Sarge or stable?  Stable is always 
the current release, Sarge is always Sarge.





Considering what's already been said in this thread and the number of 
things that still need fixes, I'll stick with Sarge.


Jim


--
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: Clarify Sarge Release

[Jim Hall]

Paul Johnson wrote:

On Wednesday June 8 2005 1:32 pm, Jim Hall wrote:


Sounds good. Next link in the chain, will I have to use
'dist-upgrade'?



Yes, though you might find visual representation of what you're doing 
helpful.  You might want to do this instead:


apt-get install aptitude

Then, once that is installed, run aptitude.  Hit u to update the 
package list, g to Get-er-done (install/remove/upgrade packages based 
on what you've changed).



Those times I've used it have usually had bad 
results. 



But that's what bugreport is for.  The developers can't fix what they 
don't know about.  For faster service, include your bugfix in a 
patch.




One developer is very aware of my bad results. Even though the melt down 
was deemed not to be entirely my fault for doing it, I'll carry scars to 
my grave. With all due respect, I hope your use of "bugfix" and "patch" 
is not a suggestion I provide any kind of solution. I couldn't program 
my way out of a wet paper bag even with a squad of Marines to help. :)


Jim






If I can continue to manually repair what's 'held back', 
that seems safer to me.



Use aptitude instead and you can work out any last-second package 
conflict/depends aliens before you commit to downloading and 
installing/removing.







--
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: mutt + dovecot/squirrelmail + mbox ?

[hmh]

On Mon, Jun 06, 2005 at 10:55:33AM -0400, Roberto C. Sanchez wrote:
> On Mon, Jun 06, 2005 at 04:50:01PM +0200, Michelle Konzack wrote:
> > In summary: If you have big mailboxes, like mailinglists,
> > you will go better with Maildir or IMAP
> 
> Mail store format and the remote access method are orthogonal, except in
> the case of Cyrus.  UW lets you store IMAP accessible mail in mbox,

And, for the record, Cyrus uses an MH-like store (looks a lot like
Maildir), with indexes for the most needed headers.  The indexes work so
well, that a folder that with maildir would take mutt a minute to open
(100k+ messages, xfs), takes about 5s in Cyrus with a proper IMAP
client (Mulbelry. Anyone knows of a DFSG MUA that is actually a real
IMAP client and not some lame-ass kludge on top of a filesystem/pop3
client like mutt or Thunderbird?)

Of course, you better have that Cyrus spool on a serious filesystem,
like XFS or 2.6.11 ext3 with btrees and htrees enabled, or else the
server will dislike heavily users that attempt to place too many
messages in a folder...

Also, for the record, IMHO UW IMAPd is a horrid joke of a imap daemon
that should have already died an horrible death two years ago, or at the
very least it should come with a surgeon's general warning that says "Do
not use this crap if your folders have typically more than 100
messages".

-- 
  Henrique M. Holschuh (still without his witty sig :( )


-- 
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: Homebuilt vs. debian packages, and "apt-get upgrade"

[Roberto C. Sanchez]

On Fri, Jun 10, 2005 at 02:00:45AM +0100, Jaime wrote:
> Hi all.
> 
> 
> Everything apart from the dependant version of libc6 is identical. So
> why does apt-get want to upgrade one, but not the other?
> 
With your homebuilt version installed, run 'apt-cache policy less' to
see what priorities it gives the two.  You will likely see that the
version from the official archive has higher priority.  The way dpkg
handles version numbers, and all other things being equal, two packages
with the same version from sources that have different priorities will
appear different if the sums don't match (which they likely do not in
your case).  If you want a better way to build a version of the package
yourself, check out my Packages Customization HOWTO:

http://familiasanchez.net/~sanchezr/?page=debcustomize

-Roberto

-- 
Roberto C. Sanchez
http://familiasanchez.net/~sanchezr


pgpmJfKPvt67A.pgp
Description: PGP signature

Re: [newbie] Cannot login as root (not a passwd issue)

[Roberto C. Sanchez]

On Thu, Jun 09, 2005 at 10:40:50PM +0200, Fernando Cacciola wrote:
> Hi people,
> 
> I'm new to debian (knoppix 3.8.1 on HDD) and to linux in general.
> I installed it on HD without troubles (well, only after I realized that
> my dev/hda1 was mounted from startup becasue I have too little RAM and a
> swapfile was being automatically created, so I had to boot at runlevel 3
> to skip KDE)
> So far everything works like a charm, except for one thing, the system
> is configured to disallow root login...
> I know that suing is inherently more secure but for some tasks I rather
> login straight as root.
> I modified the file apt.d/login (or something like that), commenting out
> the entry whose remark said it prevented root logins, but no luck.
> Also, I'm sure I got to "sudo" on a couple of occasions, but now I get
> an error that I'm not on the suders list (or so)...

To add yourself to the sudoers file, become root either at the console
ir in a terminal window, and execute visudo.  Edit the file, adding
yourself.  It is well commented and you should be able to follow the
examples pretty easily.

Now, repeat after me:  "Logging in as root is a *bad* idea."
Repeat that a sufficient number of times that you believe it.  There is
not one single task that *requires* you to login as root, with the
exception of single user mode.  Everything you need can be accessed via
su, sux and sudo.

-Roberto

-- 
Roberto C. Sanchez
http://familiasanchez.net/~sanchezr


pgpD6ZTbQ7wWA.pgp
Description: PGP signature

Re: Eliminating upgrade confusion

[kamaraju kusumanchi]

David Jardine wrote:

The enormous confusion arising from the release of sarge seems 
to have arisen from the use of the words "stable" and "testing". 


Somebody who was running stable didn't want woody to be replaced
by sarge without his being asked.  Somebody running testing didn't 
want to move from sarge to etch automatically.  (Sid seems to be 
the only stable one.)


Wouldn't things work more smoothly if "stable" and "testing" were 
not allowed in /etc/apt/sources.list or anywhere else except as 
purely informative descriptions? 

 

I agree that for a newbie this can be quite confusing. I myself got 
confused with it in the beginning. But being a newbie is not an excuse 
to not read the FAQ and other documentation out there. There are tons of 
documentation out there.


The Debian release naming conventions are quite clearly explained in

http://www.debian.org/doc/FAQ/

Please take a look at section 5.

Further, I tried to put some additional FAQs and their answers at
http://www.people.cornell.edu/pages/kk288/debian_choosing_distribution.html

Nothing is easy in Linux in the beginning. But the learning pays off in 
the long run.


just my 2 cents
raju

--
Kamaraju S Kusumanchi
Graduate Student, MAE
Cornell University
http://www.people.cornell.edu/pages/kk288/


--
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: Top posting

[Hal Vaughan]

On Thursday 09 June 2005 10:34 pm, Paul Johnson wrote:
> On Thursday June 9 2005 11:34 am, Hal Vaughan wrote:
> > My point (with all do respect and no insult intended): You may not
> > like top posting, but all of us on the 'net, even in technical
> > groups like this, are dealing more and more with newcomers to the
> > Internet.
>
> No!  Not acceptable!
>
> You make it sound like we should just give up and accept the fact
>  most newbies apparently forgot that at least European languages are
>  read from top down in conversational order, not abritrary point
>  down, back to the top and down to arbitrary point, etc.  Anybody
>  high school or older should be able to properly articulate why top
>  posting isn't clear, as well as the sharper kids in school that have
>  made it past first grade English.

No, but from the number of replies you've made, and the vehemence of your 
language, I can see that, for some reason, this topic is extremely important 
to you.  (Now why someone can get so fired up over something like this, when 
there's so much else to deal with in life is beyond me.)  So, if there is a 
strong emotional reaction to this topic, I can see how it would be easy for 
someone to infer what I did not imply.

I guess there's a difference between us: You want everything to be one way, 
and I have no problem with people doing things differently.

> > We can try to educate them, but things are changing.
>
> That's what they said about northern Europe in the 1930s, too.
> Granted, top posting isn't genocide, but "things changing" is never a
> valid excuse for gratuitous stupidity.

Cool!  A Hitler reference so early in the thread.

Guess there's no need for me to continue this discussion.  I'll just pay my 
regards to Godwin and leave it at that, instead of pointing out what a weak 
strawman argument that is.

Hal


-- 
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: Top posting (a different point of view)

[Hal Vaughan]

On Thursday 09 June 2005 10:35 pm, Paul Johnson wrote:
> On Thursday June 9 2005 5:10 pm, Patrick Wiseman wrote:
> > I completely agree.  Whoever  (the attribution is not clear to me)
> > wrote that crap about top posters vs bottom posters is an arrogant
> > idiot.  Processing information in reverse order  is much more
> > efficient
>
> Do you drive in reverse on the freeway, too?  After all, doing it
> backwards is more efficient.
>

Boy, someone's got his dander up!

There is no comparison to these two.  They are two completely different topics 
and situations.

Hal


-- 
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: Did I ask a smart question?

[Paul Johnson]

On Thursday June 9 2005 8:05 am, Redefined Horizons wrote:
> You guys are going to get tired of hearing from me. :]

Uh oh!  When you start saying that, it's time to ask yourself "Am I 
asking a smart question?"  

http://ursine.ca/Related#How_To_Ask_Smart_Questions.C2.A0.28http%3A.2F.2Fcatb.org.2F.7Eesr.2Ffaqs.2Fsmart-questions.html.29

> "Your session only lasted less than 10 seconds. If you have not
> logged out yourself, this could mean that there is an installation
> problem or that you may be out of disk space. Try logging in with
> one of the failsafe sessions to see if you can fix the problem."

Sounds like something in gnome isn't installed right, and it bombed on 
login.  Someone with more gnome experience can probably figure this 
one out, but I suspect purging everything gnome related and 
reinstalling that should fix it as effectively as reinstalling but 
without the destruction to non-wonky portions of the system.

> I've got a 7GB hard drive, so I don't think I'm out of disk space,
> a possibility presented in the dialog. Just to be sure, I accessed
> the shell from a prompt during the boot process and removed KDE
> using apt-get. This freed up at least 40KB. I then removed and
> reinstalled gnome, thinking that this was the problem. Niether of
> these actions solved the problem.

Did you get all of the dependencies, too?  Otherwise you didn't quite 
remove all of gnome...gnome and KDE are both *hyoooge* and span 
across dozens of packages.

On an aside, I imagine you'll start feeling the pinch of such a small 
hard drive real close to /home before long.  I'm assuming this is a 
second machine you're trying Linux on "to see if it's right for you."  
On outdated hardware, I guarantee you're short-selling Linux to 
yourself.  For a fair fight, you might want to sidelining Windows to 
the beater box and making your main box Linux.  You'll find a big 
performance win on Linux, then.  You'll also be able to try out the 
latest games to *really* show it off.  Try running the Windows 
version of Vice City in one of the more complete windows emulators (I 
use Cedega from transgaming.com for my Windows gaming needs) and see 
how much smoother it plays over than in a native environment for 
maximum amazement.

If nothing else, hard drives are getting close to two gigabytes to the 
American dollar, might be worth saving up for something more suitable 
than a $3.50 used hard drive to help encourage you to use that system 
a little bit more.

Though if that's your primary system and you're not going to have the 
kind of money for upgrades any time soon, I've been there, too.  My 
first Linux box was a i386 with 8MB (later 16MB) of RAM and 110MB of 
disk running bo, and later hamm back in the fall of 1997 when I 
switched from Microsoft's answer.  This was difficult, I had to 
reap /usr/doc and /usr/share/doc to make it fit; talk about 
steepening the learning curve...

-- 
Paul Johnson
Email and Instant Messenger (Jabber): [EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://ursine.ca/~baloo/


pgpqpfy3BH6sK.pgp
Description: PGP signature

Re: Top posting

[Paul Johnson]

On Thursday June 9 2005 7:43 pm, Carl Fink wrote:
> On Thu, Jun 09, 2005 at 07:12:37PM -0700, Paul Johnson wrote:
> > You've been around too many Outlook Express and Outlook users,
> > then. Those are the only two clients that encourage top posting
> > by default and make you strain to post properly, instead of the
> > other way around.
>
> Lotus Notes.  (I was a Notes admin and developer once upon a time.)

Oh, yes.  Notus Jokes is a memory I'm trying to repress from when I 
worked at Stream.  This has been easy since about the only place that 
seems to use that POS is Stream...

(I'm not sure I would have done that if I knew Stream was a packaging 
manufacturer (they made the packaging for Windows 95 and 98) that 
Microsoft liked so much they hired them to handle their outsourced 
tech support calls.  I have a hard time believing that Scott Adams 
wasn't hidden away in some back cubicle, stalking me for inspiration 
there; it was strange how often something would happen at work and 
then happen in the Dilbert strip almost word for word a few days 
later when I worked there...)

-- 
Paul Johnson
Email and Instant Messenger (Jabber): [EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://ursine.ca/~baloo/


pgpHIKtV0c1zu.pgp
Description: PGP signature

Re: Top posting (a different point of view)

[Paul Johnson]

On Thursday June 9 2005 5:10 pm, Patrick Wiseman wrote:
> I completely agree.  Whoever  (the attribution is not clear to me)
> wrote that crap about top posters vs bottom posters is an arrogant
> idiot.  Processing information in reverse order  is much more
> efficient

Do you drive in reverse on the freeway, too?  After all, doing it
backwards is more efficient.

--
Paul Johnson
Email and Instant Messenger (Jabber): [EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://ursine.ca/~baloo/


pgpfUzWjrvgmP.pgp
Description: PGP signature

Re: Top posting

[Paul Johnson]

On Thursday June 9 2005 1:13 pm, Mike Ward wrote:
> Thanks for asking that, btw, Jin. I'm only an occasional user of
> the mailing list (I pop in every week or so to check up on it,
> that's about it, at most), and I was wondering as well. Actually, I
> even made the same incorrect assumption.

Note that top posting is considered harmful pretty much universally
outside the newbie community, not something unique to us.  The

>From the perspective of someone that doesn't follow the list
>
> religiously, just pops around a bit and quite honestly probably
> only reads one message out of a thousand, I kind of think the
> weekly FAQ or posting guidelines is a good idea.

How about an RFC?  That trumps all but RFCs that make it to being
STDs.

http://ursine.ca/Top_Posting#RFC_1855.C2.A0.28http%3A.2F.2Fwww.faqs.o
rg.2Frfcs.2Frfc1855.html.29

> To put it bluntly,
> I'm sure that a lot of people just aren't concerned enough to study
> a FAQ page somewhere, but if every week or two (even monthly) a
> message pops up that reminds them, they'd probably take note.

It's their obligation as an internet user to know and operate within
the realm of acceptable practices.  If they can't do that, they
shouldn't be connected to the internet.

--
Paul Johnson
Email and Instant Messenger (Jabber): [EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://ursine.ca/~baloo/


pgpOEv3wZ2dGK.pgp
Description: PGP signature

Re: Top posting

[Paul Johnson]

On Thursday June 9 2005 5:11 pm, Hal Vaughan wrote:
> On Thursday 09 June 2005 05:26 pm, Alex Malinovich wrote:
> > So a top-poster is concerned about him or herself not doing extra
> > work. A bottom-poster is concerned with improving the quality of
> > reading for others.
>
> That's the most self-serving, self-centered, one-sided point of
> view I've read on any tech list in years.  In 3 paragraphs, you
> manage to insult users of proprietary software a number of ways,
> calling them self centered over and over,

That doesn't make him self-serving or self-centered.  Of course it's
one sided:  There's only one side to it (and every other standard
that Microsoft decided to add their own "side" to).  As for
proprietary software users, they do the world a great injustice by
holding back software with economic force.  They do the online
community and business great injustice and are a major source of lost
productivity, lost revenue, and completely superfluous overhead that
raises everybody's prices at the checkstand.  Get your facts
straight.

> Yet, while you are going on and on calling others self-centered,
> you are totally incapable of seeing how "Me! Me! Me!" your point of
> view is.

So far, we've seen plenty of valid arguments in favor of proper
quoting and lots of "but what about my FLINGS?" arguments from
top-posters.  If you want to make a valid argument, please address
these points which top-posters have yet to post any intelligent
rebuttal to:

* Why is top posting not found before Microsoft made it popular?

* How does top posting address filtered or lost messages in a
straightforward manner?  Picking through 200 lines of top-posted crap
to find the one or two lines that gives the new material context does
not address this issue.

* RFC 1855.  What makes your way so much better that it's worth
breaking a 35 year stretch of doing it the right way?

> As long as people follow your rules, they are open
> minded.  People who don't are closed minded.  So does it not occur
> to you that many people think differently than you, so top posting
> may work better for you?

No, people who follow open standards are open minded.  People who
rally against the Right Thing are closed minded.  People who think
Microsoft's way is the only way are closed minded.  Which group are
you in?

--
Paul Johnson
Email and Instant Messenger (Jabber): [EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://ursine.ca/~baloo/


pgpH0aPipgrgP.pgp
Description: PGP signature

Re: Top posting

[Paul Johnson]

On Thursday June 9 2005 12:44 pm, Jin Juku wrote:
> I guess I really am a newbie, because I have no idea what this
> top-posting business is supposed to mean ... we're not supposed to
> send new, clean messages to the list ...?

http://ursine.ca/Top_Posting
The more you know...

--
Paul Johnson
Email and Instant Messenger (Jabber): [EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://ursine.ca/~baloo/


pgpR4ik0AjfIj.pgp
Description: PGP signature

Re: Top posting

[Paul Johnson]

On Thursday June 9 2005 12:56 pm, Ugo Bellavance wrote:
> Jin Juku wrote:
> > I guess I really am a newbie, because I have no idea what this
> > top-posting business is supposed to mean ... we're not supposed
> > to send new, clean messages to the list ...?
>
> He just meant you're supposed to post at the bottom of the original
> text when you are replying.

That's also not the answer, it only creates the opposite of the 
problem.  It's best to reply conversationally, you received all 
relevant portions of the conversation, it's your turn to interject 
what you have the knowledge to add.

http://ursine.ca/Top_Posting

-- 
Paul Johnson
Email and Instant Messenger (Jabber): [EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://ursine.ca/~baloo/


pgpDJLzK0EPZq.pgp
Description: PGP signature

Re: Eliminating upgrade confusion

[Paul E Condon]

On Fri, Jun 10, 2005 at 01:57:56AM +0200, David Jardine wrote:
> The enormous confusion arising from the release of sarge seems 
> to have arisen from the use of the words "stable" and "testing". 
> 
> Somebody who was running stable didn't want woody to be replaced
> by sarge without his being asked.  Somebody running testing didn't 
> want to move from sarge to etch automatically.  (Sid seems to be 
> the only stable one.)
> 
> Wouldn't things work more smoothly if "stable" and "testing" were 
> not allowed in /etc/apt/sources.list or anywhere else except as 
> purely informative descriptions? 
> 

I am not a Debian developer. I am a user. But I know enough about
Debian to know that the stable,testing,unstable/woody,sarge,etch,sid
naming system serves the needs of the core Debian community very
well. People who say "but it's too difficult for newbies" miss the
point. It took the Debian community a while to arrive at this way of
doing things. It is a good way for a lot of people, but maybe not for
newbies who think they can create a better way through the exercise of
pure rhetoric without benefit of experience.

I take comfort in the sure knowledge that people who offer these
suggestions will _never_ become members of the inner circle that
makes Debian work.

Read the Debian documentation. Read Debian policy. Read, read, read.

Let's stop this thread. 

-- 
Paul E Condon   
[EMAIL PROTECTED]


-- 
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: Top posting (a different point of view)

[Robert Vangel]

(I haven't quoted anything here because this isn't a response to what 
Carl wrote, just here because it's the end of the thread at this point 
in time)


I must say, this thread has to be one of the most well structured and 
easy to read in my whole experience of reading a public mailing list. If 
only all the posts here were of this quality the world would be a much 
better place.


That said, I too agree that top & bottom posting both have their own 
place, and as many have stated, mailing lists like this is a place for 
bottom.


Yes, I top post, but only because many of the people I communicate with 
through normal email (not mailing lists) are in corporate / government 
environments where MS Exchange & Outlook are used. I top-post purely for 
the fact that it creates less strain for them because their client can't 
be used to bottom post well.


I never thought anyone could get so defensive about their perspective 
about which form of posting is better. I learn to live with it, because 
everyone's different and I think the more people go on (rant?) about it, 
the less likely people are to conform.


smime.p7s
Description: S/MIME Cryptographic Signature

[newbie] Cannot login as root (not a passwd issue)

[Fernando Cacciola]

Hi people,

I'm new to debian (knoppix 3.8.1 on HDD) and to linux in general.
I installed it on HD without troubles (well, only after I realized that
my dev/hda1 was mounted from startup becasue I have too little RAM and a
swapfile was being automatically created, so I had to boot at runlevel 3
to skip KDE)
So far everything works like a charm, except for one thing, the system
is configured to disallow root login...
I know that suing is inherently more secure but for some tasks I rather
login straight as root.
I modified the file apt.d/login (or something like that), commenting out
the entry whose remark said it prevented root logins, but no luck.
Also, I'm sure I got to "sudo" on a couple of occasions, but now I get
an error that I'm not on the suders list (or so)...

Any ideas?

P.S: The bootlog indicates a number of varying failures which may or
maynot be important.. the system seems to work well AFAICT but I haven't
yet tried, say, printing, etc... should I post to log here to let you
folks analyze it, or should I just ingore it until I can make any sense
out of it?

P.S.: To what debian does knoopix 3.8.1 installed on hd corresponds to?

TIA

Fernando Cacciola


--
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: Top posting

[Chris F.A. Johnson]

On 2005-06-10, Kent West wrote:
> Hubert Chan wrote:
>
>>(David, I think you're to subtle . . . .
>>  
>>
> "too".
>
> D'oh!
>
> As long as we're drifting way off-topic (which is a fun thing to do
> sometimes, for a short while):
>
> "you're" means "you are", as in "You're driving too fast".
> "your" means "being possessed by you", as in "Your car is going off a
> cliff, with us in it. Aeieieie!"

  Not to mention:

 loose (rhymes with juice) means the opposite of tight
 lose  (rhymes with booze) means to misplace

 If virus took a latin plural, it could be viri, but never virii.
 The accepted plural is viruses.

-- 
Chris F.A. Johnson 
==
Shell Scripting Recipes: A Problem-Solution Approach, 2005, Apress



-- 
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: Top posting

[Carl Fink]

On Thu, Jun 09, 2005 at 07:12:37PM -0700, Paul Johnson wrote:

> You've been around too many Outlook Express and Outlook users, then.  
> Those are the only two clients that encourage top posting by default 
> and make you strain to post properly, instead of the other way 
> around.

Lotus Notes.  (I was a Notes admin and developer once upon a time.)
-- 
Carl Fink [EMAIL PROTECTED]
If you attempt to fix something that isn't broken, it will be.
-Bruce Tognazzini


-- 
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Rely on us for your online prescription ordering.

[Ralph]

Now you can diversify the acts in your bedroom!
http://uyow.b8e4fct483t1xut.unappointgi.com



..simple fact that any land looks like Eden after months at sea. 
Time the devourer of all things.   
Nothing is stronger than habit.




--
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: Top posting

[Paul Johnson]

On Thursday June 9 2005 11:34 am, Hal Vaughan wrote:
> My point (with all do respect and no insult intended): You may not
> like top posting, but all of us on the 'net, even in technical
> groups like this, are dealing more and more with newcomers to the
> Internet.

No!  Not acceptable!

You make it sound like we should just give up and accept the fact
 most newbies apparently forgot that at least European languages are
 read from top down in conversational order, not abritrary point
 down, back to the top and down to arbitrary point, etc.  Anybody
 high school or older should be able to properly articulate why top
 posting isn't clear, as well as the sharper kids in school that have
 made it past first grade English.

> We can try to educate them, but things are changing.

That's what they said about northern Europe in the 1930s, too.
Granted, top posting isn't genocide, but "things changing" is never a
valid excuse for gratuitous stupidity.

--
Paul Johnson
Email and Instant Messenger (Jabber): [EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://ursine.ca/~baloo/


pgptsNyZ5omFn.pgp
Description: PGP signature

Re: Top posting (a different point of view)

[Paul Johnson]

Top posting considered harmful.
http://ursine.ca/Top_Posting

On Thursday June 9 2005 4:22 pm, John Carline wrote:

> But, it would make my reading/following of threads much easier if I 
> didn't  have to scroll down to the bottom of post after post in a 
> long string just to read the one line added to the 200 I've already 
> read.   

Part of proper quoting is removing the parts that you're *not* 
responding to.  Failing to remove irrelevant text is a function of 
poor netiquette encouraged by top posting.  Search Google Groups and 
observe how people very rarely included the entire prior post or top 
posted before Microsoft's top-post-by-default clients hit the net.

-- 
Paul Johnson
Email and Instant Messenger (Jabber): [EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://ursine.ca/~baloo/


pgpqKMMuOp3WI.pgp
Description: PGP signature

Re: Top posting

[Paul Johnson]

On Thursday June 9 2005 2:06 pm, Graham Smith wrote:
> I know that this will put the cat amongst the pigeons but I
> actually prefer top posting. I've been reading newsgroups and
> mailing lists for years and I have always thought that bottom
> posting was the wrong way to do it.

You've been around too many Outlook Express and Outlook users, then.  
Those are the only two clients that encourage top posting by default 
and make you strain to post properly, instead of the other way 
around.

> I understand the reasons why bottom posting is supposed to be
> better but if I am following the thread, which is normally the case
> if I'm actually reading it, then I find it quicker to read just the
> top section of each post rather than having to scroll down past
> everything I've already read.

Part of proper quoting is proper snipping of irrelevant material.  If 
you have to scroll down to get to new material, too much quoted text 
is being included.  Use this message as an example.  It's a 
conversation, you receive one half and interject the other half.

> There isn't a problem with context because I can remember that from 
> one post to the next.

Sure you can, uh huh, yeah.  Do you remember the post caught by your 
filters?  How about that one that never got delivered to your site?

> I'm not saying I'm right and I often bottom post to not annoy
> people but I have to try and convince you to switch.

Who died and left you to rewrite the English language?

> PS Have you noticed that there aren't many people who are top
> posting zealots? I wonder why. Maybe tops posters are just more
> relaxed and chilled out people. :o)

Because most people realize that they're wrong and start posting in a 
comprehensible manner.

-- 
Paul Johnson
Email and Instant Messenger (Jabber): [EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://ursine.ca/~baloo/


pgpryVoCfo41m.pgp
Description: PGP signature

Re: Top posting

[Paul Johnson]

On Thursday June 9 2005 9:55 am, David Jardine wrote:
> be getting out of hand :)
> us a lecture on top posting sometime soon?  It seems to
> Isn't some authoritative voice on the list going to give

Sure.  And I invite folks to add their own two cents.

http://ursine.ca/Top_Posting

-- 
Paul Johnson
Email and Instant Messenger (Jabber): [EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://ursine.ca/~baloo/


pgp0rIBFQ7BZ1.pgp
Description: PGP signature

Re: Eliminating upgrade confusion

[Paul Johnson]

On Thursday June 9 2005 4:57 pm, David Jardine wrote:
> The enormous confusion arising from the release of sarge seems
> to have arisen from the use of the words "stable" and "testing".
>
> Somebody who was running stable didn't want woody to be replaced
> by sarge without his being asked.

Then "stable" is what he should be putting in sources.list.

> Somebody running testing didn't 
> want to move from sarge to etch automatically.  (Sid seems to be
> the only stable one.)

Then "sarge" is what he should be putting in sources.list.

> Wouldn't things work more smoothly if "stable" and "testing" were
> not allowed in /etc/apt/sources.list or anywhere else except as
> purely informative descriptions?

No.  You eliminate the possibility of the second user getting what 
they want.

-- 
Paul Johnson
Email and Instant Messenger (Jabber): [EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://ursine.ca/~baloo/


pgpZE9d3ZRNbK.pgp
Description: PGP signature

Homebuilt vs. debian packages, and "apt-get upgrade"

[Jaime]

Hi all.

I've just installed a fresh Sarge (stable) to test out a strange problem
that I have. I have two (2) deb files: one is called less_382-1_i386.deb
and was created/compiled by me by downloading debian sources and using
dpkg-buildpackage - the other has the same name (less_382-1_i386.deb)
and was downloaded from
http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/pool/main/l/less/less_382-1_i386.deb

Now for the weird part:

If I install (using "dpkg -i") the deb file which I downloaded from the
main repository and then issue an "apt-get upgrade", my machine tells me
there's nothing to upgrade. If, however, I install (again using "dpkg
-i") the deb file which I've just created using dpkg-buildpackage, my
next invocation of "apt-get upgrade" tells me that it wants to upgrade
my homebuilt less package to the version available from the main
repository.

Baffled by this behaviour, I've unpacked the control files from the two
debs - here they are:

a) Control file from deb downloaded from main repository (the deb file
that doesn't "need" to be upgraded):

Package: less
Version: 382-1
Section: text
Priority: standard
Architecture: i386
Depends: libc6 (>= 2.3.2.ds1-4), libncurses5 (>= 5.4-1), debianutils (>=
1.8)
Installed-Size: 256
Maintainer: Thomas Schoepf <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Description: Pager program similar to more
Less is a program similar to more(1), but which allows backward
movement in the file as well as forward movement.  Also, less does not
have to read the entire input file before starting, so with large input
files it starts up faster than text editors like vi(1).  Less uses
termcap (or terminfo on some systems), so it can run on a variety of
terminals.  There is even limited support for hardcopy terminals.
.
Homepage: http://www.greenwoodsoftware.com/less/


b) Control file from deb created by me from debian sources using
dpkg-buildpackage:

Package: less
Version: 382-1
Section: text
Priority: standard
Architecture: i386
Depends: libc6 (>= 2.3.2.ds1-21), libncurses5 (>= 5.4-1), debianutils
(>= 1.8)
Installed-Size: 256
Maintainer: Thomas Schoepf <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Description: Pager program similar to more
Less is a program similar to more(1), but which allows backward
movement in the file as well as forward movement.  Also, less does not
have to read the entire input file before starting, so with large input
files it starts up faster than text editors like vi(1).  Less uses
termcap (or terminfo on some systems), so it can run on a variety of
terminals.  There is even limited support for hardcopy terminals.
.
Homepage: http://www.greenwoodsoftware.com/less/


Everything apart from the dependant version of libc6 is identical. So
why does apt-get want to upgrade one, but not the other?

Jaime



-- 
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]

usbmount only mounts pendrive as "root:root"?

[Jeronimo Pellegrini]

Hello!

So, after swithing one box from Fedora to Debian
Sarge, there's onw thing users would probably like, but I don't know
how to do: Fedora will mount pendrives automatically for you, with the
permissions of whoever is on the console. I tried usbmount, but it seems
to always mount as root. After the pendrive is plugged, this is how
/media looks like:

$ ll /media/
total 44K
lrwxrwxrwx  1 root adm 4 2005-06-09 22:30 usb -> usb0
drwxr-xr-x  2 root root  16K 1969-12-31 21:00 usb0
drwxr-xr-x  2 root adm  4.0K 2005-06-09 22:30 usb1
drwxr-xr-x  2 root adm  4.0K 2005-06-09 22:30 usb2
drwxr-xr-x  2 root adm  4.0K 2005-06-09 22:30 usb3
drwxr-xr-x  2 root adm  4.0K 2005-06-09 22:30 usb4
drwxr-xr-x  2 root adm  4.0K 2005-06-09 22:30 usb5
drwxr-xr-x  2 root adm  4.0K 2005-06-09 22:30 usb6
drwxr-xr-x  2 root adm  4.0K 2005-06-09 22:30 usb7

I had changed the group in *all* /media/usb* directories to adm, just
to check if they'd go back to "root:root" when mounted, and indeed --
they do.

So, is there a simple way to get the same behavior from Fedora in
Sarge?

Thanks a lot!
J.


-- 
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: Did I barbeque my Debain system?

[Marty]

Fuck all.  Let' try it again sam till we get it right.

Steve Block wrote:


You never try to fix a problem unless you know it's hardware?


I'll typically deinstall the package or live with the bug.  Life's too
short and Debian's too buggy.

 That's
> pathetic.

If it's serious enough I'll file a bug report, which is far better
than just fixing it for myself and probably the best thing 99
percent of users can do.


--
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: i think I switched to Etch without knowing it

[Marty]

Tony Godshall wrote:


Uh, your dlocate seems to show no /etc/apt/apt.conf file either.


Nor here:
http://packages.debian.org/cgi-bin/search_contents.pl?searchmode=filelist&word=apt&version=stable&arch=i386&page=1&number=all

There seem to be a number of contexts in which conffiles aren't
regarded as "first class citizens," much to my annoyance.



I do have a directory /etc/apt/apt.conf.d

I'll shut up now and let this thread return to the original
question.


Don't worry, the original question seems to have been resolved
(or was apparently a false alarm).


--
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: Did I barbeque my Debain system?

[Marty]

Steve Block wrote:

On Thu, Jun 09, 2005 at 12:34:05PM -0400, Marty wrote:


Secondly I never try to figure out problems unless I know it's a hardware
fault, which take up quite enough of my time, thank you.  If  it
doesn't "just work" as it should then 99% of the time, the answer is
archived somewhere on the internet, and if not then I just pass it on to
the Debian maintainers in the form of a bug report.


I'll typically deinstall the package or live with the bug.  Life's too
short and Debian's too buggy.


You never try to fix a problem unless you know it's hardware? That's
pathetic.



 That's
> pathetic.

If it's serious enough I'll file a bug report, which is far better
than just fixing it for myself and probably the best thing 99
percent of users can do.


--
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: Installing the new release (Sarge)

[Robert Vangel]

[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

Thanks...  I'm still new.  I'm thankful for people like yourself that help
people like me out.  This is a lesson that I DEFINITELY WILL NOT FORGET.

If all I need are the 1st 3 or 4 CD's, then what is on the other 10 CD's,
just a whole lot of software?  Is there a breakdown somewhere of what is
on each CD?




The packages get put on the CD's as most needed / popular at the start 
with the last half of the batch containing the source debs


smime.p7s
Description: S/MIME Cryptographic Signature

Re: Eliminating upgrade confusion

[David Jardine]

On Thu, Jun 09, 2005 at 08:12:27PM -0400, Joey Hess wrote:
> David Jardine wrote:
> > The enormous confusion arising from the release of sarge seems 
> > to have arisen from the use of the words "stable" and "testing". 
> 
> Not familiar with this enormous confusion.

Well, I've seen seen some of your helpful replies to a number of 
questions on this list in the last few days, so I can't believe 
you're not familiar with it.

> 
> > Somebody who was running stable didn't want woody to be replaced
> > by sarge without his being asked.  Somebody running testing didn't 
> > want to move from sarge to etch automatically.  (Sid seems to be 
> > the only stable one.)
>
> No, you are describing people who are running woody and sarge and should
> have those in their sources.list.

Exactly.  But do we realise, as beginners, what the implications 
are of putting "stable" or "testing" in sources.list?  If we 
didn't know we could use these words (or if we knew we couldn't), 
we wouldn't.  But we do and we get ourselves into a mess.  I think 
you're overestimating the ability of people like me to really grasp 
the whole picture.

> > Wouldn't things work more smoothly if "stable" and "testing" were 
> > not allowed in /etc/apt/sources.list or anywhere else except as 
> > purely informative descriptions? 
> 
> It would suck, because all my systems that constantly track testing
> couldn't. The stable release is irellivant, I want these machines to
> continue to track testing. Just for example.

But surely this is just a question of changing something once every 
couple of years and being in control of the time you change it.  For 
someone who knows his way around the system I can't see that this
would be a problem.

-- 
David Jardine

"Running Debian GNU/Linux and
loving every minute of it."  -L. von Sacher-M.(1835-1895)


-- 
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: have to reload the CD again ?

[Colin]

belahcene wrote:
> Hi,
> I downloded some CD of debian-31r0 ( 1 to 5 ), after that the iso have
> changed to debian-31r0a,   must I to reloaded what I have done, or only
> to continue with the new CD's ( debian-31r0a-6 to  debian-31r0a-14 ).
> in fact I don't need the update-security.

If you don't need the updated security (which I think you will), then you
don't have to bother downloading the CDs again.  The only thing you have to
change is to uncomment the security line in your /etc/apt/sources.list file
when you're installing from CDs.  That's the only difference between 3.1r0
and 3.1r0a.  If you are installing by any other method (e.g. internet),
then there is no different between the releases.


-- 
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: kernel panich VFS unable to mount root fs on unknown-block(3,1)

[Craig Russell]

Roberto C. Sanchez wrote:

  On Thu, Jun 09, 2005 at 05:54:21PM -0400, Craig Russell wrote:
  
  
Trying to compile the 2.6.8 kernel from the debian source package
(patched) and I keep on running into this problem after reboot.  I
have gone back and checked to make sure that the ide drivers have been
compiled in but after 5 or 6 attempts I am still getting this error.
The kernel appears to compile fine.  I am using Lilo to as my boot
manager and I created an initrd.img with mkinitrd -o
/boot/initrd.img.2.6.8 2.6.8.  I created the kernel package via
fakeroot make-kpkg --revision=custom.1.0 kernel_image  and this
installs fine (or so it appears).  

I've been searching the web and tried many of the suggestions but I'm
still getting the same error.

The end result of this operation is to run free/swan with the native
ipsec support in the 2.6 kernel.


Thanks for any help you can offer.


  
  
OK.  Two things:

1. Use GRUB.  It is better.  It is easier to configure.  It doesn't
require a reinstall for every new kernel.
2. Don't make an initrd unless you have a really good reason (e.g., you
want / on LVM or LVM+RAID, or you also need the kernel to fit on a
floppy and you can't get the core small enough).

Now, on to sloving the problem.  What filesystem is your / partition?
What filesystems are you buidling with the kernel?  If they are modules,
are you sure that they are in the initrd?  What are the contents of your
initrd and what is your kernel config?

-Roberto

  


ok-
taking these suggestions (and I concur, grub is a lot easier) I still
have the same problem with the kernel panic.  / is on /dev/hda1 swap on
/dev/hda2; grub recognizes the new kernel and it is an option on the
menu.  I went back and re-verifed that ext2 and ext3 filesystems are
configured into the kernel and *NOT* as modules.  I did a make clean
and a make-dpkg clean and recompiled and re-installed the new kernel. 
No compilation errors, no installation errors, but still the same can't
mount root fs error.  

One thing I'm confused on is the ide drivers in the 2.6 kernel.  While
reading the help under ATA, etc. it states that I should be using the
scsi driver for ide drives unless I have legacy equipment (which I
don't, Vision computers x86 based, new in the last 2 weeks), but under
the scsi drivers section it asks for a specific driver and does not
list anything remotely close to what i've got.

So, I'm at a logjam.


Thanks for the help


Craig Russell
Airdigitalnetwork.com

Re: Did I barbeque my Debain system?

[Steve Block]

On Thu, Jun 09, 2005 at 12:34:05PM -0400, Marty wrote:

On Thu, 09 Jun 2005 17:10:05 +0200, Redefined Horizons wrote:

 I then removed and reinstalled
> gnome, thinking that this was the problem. Niether of these actions
> solved the problem.

Did  you "purge" the Gnome packages before reinstalling Gnome?  Did you
reinstall gdm?  (Out of curiousity, why did you think Gnome was related
to the problem, and not gdm, which gave the error message?)

> I'm really stuck here, and I'm not sure what to try next. What is
> causing this error?

Something that's tripping up gdm, possibly a bug.  Since the session
manager is optional, as a test you can start X manually with xinit or
startx (see the respective man pages), or try another session manager like
xdm or kdm.  (I tend to prefer kdm although I'm a gnome user.)

 Is my swap partition not large enough? Is there a
> way to fix this problem, other than reinstalling Debian?

Always.  Debian is not windoze.  :-)

> P.S. - I know all eventually get this Linux thing figured out, with
> enough patience..

As a user, especially a new user, you shouldn't have to deal with these
problems.  In my opinion Debian is really a "proto" distribution and
spinoffs like Knoppix or Ubuntu are for new users.

That's a stupid attitude.



Secondly I never try to figure out problems unless I know it's a hardware
fault, which take up quite enough of my time, thank you.  If  it
doesn't "just work" as it should then 99% of the time, the answer is
archived somewhere on the internet, and if not then I just pass it on to
the Debian maintainers in the form of a bug report.

You never try to fix a problem unless you know it's hardware? That's
pathetic.

--
Steve Block
http://ev-15.com/
http://steveblock.com/
[EMAIL PROTECTED]


--
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: Debian drops ball on security updates

[Steve Block]

On Thu, Jun 09, 2005 at 06:53:10AM -0700, debian-user@lists.debian.org wrote:

CNET News.com (http://www.news.com/)
This story has been sent to you on behalf of debian-user@lists.debian.org 
(e-mail address not verified).

Debian drops ball on security updates
By Renai LeMay

The newly launched Linux distribution has a glitch--some versions were released 
with default security updates turned off.

http://news.com.com/Debian+drops+ball+on+security+updates/2100-1002_3-5737401.html?tag=sas.email

Read all technology news from this week:
http://www.news.com/thisweeksheadlines/


Fuh fuh fuh, change a line in a text file fuh.

If you don't have this skill you don't deserve a computer. I'm tired of
this crap.

--
Steve Block
http://ev-15.com/
http://steveblock.com/
[EMAIL PROTECTED]


--
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Sound + Video Issues

[linux_user98765]

After relocating my Linux drive to my new computer, I've been able to
resolve most problems; however a few remain:

Audio -- ???
Video -- i810 works (Direct Rendering: NO), however i915 doesn't


# lspci -v   (excerpts)

:00:1b.0 0403: Intel Corp. 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) High
Definition Audio Controller (rev 03)
Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company: Unknown device 2a09
Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 10
Memory at cfe38000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16K]
Capabilities: [50] Power Management version 2
Capabilities: [60] Message Signalled Interrupts: 64bit+
Queue=0/0 Enable-
Capabilities: [70] #10 [0091]


:00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corp. 82915G Express
Chipset Family Graphics Controller (rev 04) (prog-if 00 [VGA])
Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company: Unknown device 2a08
Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 169
Memory at cfe8 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=512K]
I/O ports at b800 [size=8]
Memory at d000 (32-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
Memory at cfe4 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=256K]
Capabilities: [d0] Power Management version 2



VIDEO

# modprobe i915

ACPI: PCI interrupt :00:02.0[A] -> GSI 16 (level, low) -> IRQ 169
[drm] Initialized i915 1.1.0 20040405 on minor 0: Intel Corp. 82915G
Express Chipset Family Graphics Controller


# cat syslog   (excerpt)

kernel: ACPI: PCI interrupt :00:02.0[A] -> GSI 16 (level, low) ->
IRQ 169
kernel: [drm] Initialized i915 1.1.0 20040405 on minor 0: Intel Corp.
82915G Express Chipset Family Graphics Controller
udev[27600]: configured rule in '/etc/udev/rules.d/udev.rules[37]'
applied, 'card0' becomes 'dri/%k'
udev[27600]: creating device node '/dev/dri/card0'


My /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 loads both "glx" and "dri".  Additionally the
DRI section is set to 0666.  After extensive googling and reading BUG
#257062 I added:


deb http://debian.uni-klu.ac.at/debian.uniklu sarge/uniklu/desktop \
main contrib non-free main-uk contrib-uk non-free-uk


to my sources.list and ran `apt-get update` and `apt-get upgrade`,
which pulled in (among other things) the modified xserver-xfree86.

This enabled me to use the "i810" driver in my XF86Config-4; however I
still cannot use "i915" despite being able to successfully modprobe the
module:


# cat /var/log/XFree86.0.log | grep i915

(II) LoadModule: "i915"
(WW) Warning, couldn't open module i915
(II) UnloadModule: "i915"
(EE) Failed to load module "i915" (module does not exist, 0)


I'm curious why I can modprobe the module and yet xserver-xfree86
purports the module does not exist...


# find /lib/modules/`uname -r`/kernel/ -name i915.ko

/lib/modules/2.6.11-1-686/kernel/drivers/char/drm/i915.ko


For the time being i810 is tolerable, but I'd really like to be able to
enable Direct Rendering (and use the i915 module).



AUDIO

I've modprobed just about every sound module I could find, but the only
one that output any text was i810_audio.  Several modules showed that
udev created new devices in syslog, but nothing seemed to bring in the
mixer...

Googling returned that a few people have successfully used either
i810_audio or snd-intel8x0; however neither appear to work for me.

Granted this may be merely due to my inability to bring in the mixer. 
I think I may be able to resolve the rest myself if I can figure out
which module to load for the mixer...


THANKS (A BUNCH) IN ADVANCE!!!



__ 
Yahoo! Mail 
Stay connected, organized, and protected. Take the tour: 
http://tour.mail.yahoo.com/mailtour.html 


-- 
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Gateway newsgroup problem (redux - long)

[Tony Rowe]

Hello,

Sorry for such a long post at such a busy time.  I think this issue is 
important but my timing is bad.  It just worked out that way I'm afraid.

For the last week I have been monitoring the linux.debian.user gateway
for apparently well intended posts which never make it to the list.  I
have been replying to them privately with a short personal preamble
followed by a work-in-progress and too lengthy pre-canned message
(included below). 

Today I found a mis-posted message with the From: header so thoroughly
munged that I can't reply to it (I think the munging is in German but
whatever language it is, I can't separate out Patrick's real address
confidently).  Patrick's message is also included below.

In all cases the mis-postings I have screened for are original posts,
not replies.  They are asking for help and appear to be legitimate.  One
such message *per day* going astray is unacceptable I think. 

I notice in the following forwarded message: munged From: field, no
X-Original-Message-ID:, no X-Original-Date:, no debian-user Unsubscribe
footer.  All of these are signs that the message has been posted somehow
to Usenet but not gated to the list.

Worth mentioning is that last September or so, when this issue was last
given a good flogging here, Marco d'Ítri said that cases of mis-posted
messages to the gateway service he maintains are all but eliminated.  I
concur.  None of the recent mis-postings I have observed have anything
to do with bofh.it (or gmane, or google groups).  I infer that the 
Usenet backbone carries the linux.* hierarchies and it is up to ISP's or 
users to sort out how to register with bidirectional services for them.

Questions, comments, ideas?  

Tony Rowe

 begin forwarded mis-posted message --

Path: 
News.Dal.Ca!news.wind.surfnet.nl!surfnet.nl!solnet.ch!solnet.ch!newsspool.solnet.ch!not-for-mail
Date: Thu, 09 Jun 2005 18:42:12 +0200
From: Patrick 
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; de-AT; rv:1.7.8) Gecko/20050513 
Debian/1.7.8-1
X-Accept-Language: de, en
MIME-Version: 1.0
Newsgroups: linux.debian.user
Subject: ATAPI tape/Streamer problem (Seagate stt2A / Hornet)
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
NNTP-Posting-Host: 212.41.70.233
X-Trace: 1118335335 newsspool.solnet.ch 148 212.41.70.233
Xref: News.Dal.Ca linux.debian.user:255994
Content-Length: 1699
Lines: 54

Dear Debian friends

I can't manage to get my friend's streamer working with Debian Sarge 
(Kernel 2.6.8).  The stremer is a Seagate stt2A (ATAPI)

While booting the device gets recognized. Log:
ide-tape: hdd <-> ht0: Seagate STT2A rev 8.39
ide-tape: hdd <-> ht0: 600KBps, 6*54kB buffer, 5832kB pipeline, 184ms 
DSC, DMA

My first try (without any tape) works as expected:
mt -f /dev/ht0 status
mt: /dev/ht0: No medium found

Log:
ide-tape: ht0: I/O error, pc =  0, key =  2, asc = 3a, ascq =  0
ide-tape: ht0: I/O error, pc = 1b, key =  2, asc = 3a, ascq =  0
ide-tape: ht0: I/O error, pc =  0, key =  2, asc = 3a, ascq =  0
ide-tape: ht0: drive not ready


Second try (with tape inserted) leads to a problem:
mt -f /dev/ht0 status
mt: /dev/ht0: Input/output error

Log:
ide-tape: ht0: I/O error, pc =  0, key =  3, asc = 30, ascq =  0
ide-tape: ht0: drive not ready

Slightly desesperate third try with ide-scsi:

rmmod ide-tape
modprobe ide-scsi

This seems to work. Log:
SCSI subsystem initialized
scsi0 : SCSI host adapter emulation for IDE ATAPI devices
   Vendor: Seagate   Model: STT2A Rev: 8.39
   Type:   Sequential-Access  ANSI SCSI revision: 02
st: Version 20040403, fixed bufsize 32768, s/g segs 256
Attached scsi tape st0 at scsi0, channel 0, id 0, lun 0
st0: try direct i/o: yes (alignment 512 B), max page reachable by HBA 98284

But if I try to use the new device I end up with the same problem:
mt -f /dev/st0 status
mt: /dev/st0: Input/output error

I'm running out of ideas what to try next. My own DAT-tapes (with SCSI) 
always worked right out of the box, but this ATAPI-thing...

Any suggestions are greatly appreciated!

Thank you
Patrick

-- end forwarded mis-posted message ---


-- begin pre-canned reply (not sent) --

You are reading (and trying to post to) a 'mail-to-news gateway'
"newsgroup" of the debian-user mailing-list. You need to register with a
real gateway service for linux.* hierarchies if you want to post to the
mailing-list via linux.debian.user. 

While mail-to-news gateways appear to be normal newsgroups, they are
actually mailing-lists which have been "gated" to Usenet.  Your posts to
the gateway "newsgroup" may never reach the broader audience on the
mailing-list unless you use a bidirectional NNTP gateway service and
jump through the right hoops to get your article "gated" from the
newsgroup to the list. It appears that your post has failed to reach the
"real" list for so

Re: Sarge Disks

[Tony Godshall]

According to Roberto C. Sanchez,
> On Thu, Jun 09, 2005 at 11:48:26PM +0100, Chris Robinson wrote:
> > Hi
> > 
> > I think Sarge is super, but can anyone tell me where to find out whats on 
> > disks 
> > 1-14?
> > 
> > I have been using Debian for about 2 years, but have not been able to 
> > figure 
> > out what is on the disks.
> > 
> 
> Stuff.
> 
> You more than likely will use packages mostly from the first couple of
> CDs.  The packages are ordered based on popcon results, so the most
> frequently installed packages are on the first CD, with packages on
> subsequent CDs being less popular.

If you have disk 1 and a good internet connection, that's
all you need.  Or even less :-)



-- 
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: Top posting

[Tony Godshall]

...
> reading it, then I find it quicker to read just the top section of each 
> post rather than having to scroll down past everything I've already 
> read. ...

I think you are reacting to cases where the responder is too
lazy to trim.

> There isn't a problem with context because I can remember that 
> from one post to the next. ...

Which is fine if you are reading a thread fresh, but if you
are reading a number of lists, and leave and come back, you
need a bit of context.

> If the author wants to quote a section of the 
> previous post they can in the extreme they end up inlining their post.

Which is right, the context and the response.

> I'm not saying I'm right and I often bottom post to not annoy people but 
> I have to try and convince you to switch.

You are a very kind person. :-)


-- 
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: X configuration probs

[Kent West]

Abhishek wrote:

> I have written the XFree86 file but when trying the command X or
>startx it is refusing to start but when I am using X -xf86config
>/etc/X11/XFree86 the server is starting but the GNOME env is not
>appearing. The config files r also present in /usr/X11R6. I have herd
>that there is no command equivalent to redhat-config-xfree86 which
>configures automatically.
>  
>

You don't say if you're running Woody (the "stable" version a couple of
days ago) or Sarge or Sid.

Try "apt-get install gnome x-window-system" to make sure Gnome and X are
installed, followed by "dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xfree86" to reconfigure
X. Then "startx" should get you going.

-- 
Kent




-- 
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: i think I switched to Etch without knowing it

[Tony Godshall]

According to Marty,
> Tony Godshall wrote:
> >According to Marty,
> >>Basajaun wrote:
> >>
> >>>For understanding what version you are running, and what packages will
> >>>get updated (or not), take a look at "man apt_preferences".
> >>
> >>Good point.  Specifically, the apt conffile /etc/apt/apt.conf must
> >>indicate the debian version. e.g. mine contains:
> >>
> >>APT::Get::Show-Upgraded "true";
> >>APT::Default-Release "sarge";
> >>APT::Cache-Limit 25165824;
> >
> >Oddly, I have no such file.  None of my machines do.
> >
> >What does that mean?
> >
> >
> 
> Maybe you accidentally removed it.  Here is my result from
> running "dlocate apt.conf":
> debconf: /etc/apt/apt.conf.d
> debconf: /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/70debconf
> apt: /usr/share/man/fr/man5/apt.conf.5.gz
> apt: /usr/share/man/ja/man5/apt.conf.5.gz
> apt: /usr/share/man/man5/apt.conf.5.gz
> apt: /usr/share/man/es/man5/apt.conf.5.gz
> apt: /usr/share/doc/apt/examples/apt.conf
> 
> This means it's an conffile of the package "apt".
> 
> Running "dpkg --no-act -P apt" gives me this:
> dpkg: dependency problems prevent removal of apt:
>  wajig depends on apt.
>  apt-utils depends on libapt-pkg-libc6.3-5-3.3; however:
>   Package libapt-pkg-libc6.3-5-3.3 is not installed.
>   Package apt which provides libapt-pkg-libc6.3-5-3.3 is to be removed.
>  gnome-apt depends on libapt-pkg-libc6.3-5-3.3; however:
>   Package libapt-pkg-libc6.3-5-3.3 is not installed.
>   Package apt which provides libapt-pkg-libc6.3-5-3.3 is to be removed.
>  python-apt depends on libapt-pkg-libc6.3-5-3.3; however:
>   Package libapt-pkg-libc6.3-5-3.3 is not installed.
>   Package apt which provides libapt-pkg-libc6.3-5-3.3 is to be removed.
>  libapt-pkg-dev depends on libapt-pkg-libc6.3-5-3.3; however:
>   Package libapt-pkg-libc6.3-5-3.3 is not installed.
>   Package apt which provides libapt-pkg-libc6.3-5-3.3 is to be removed.
>  aptitude depends on libapt-pkg-libc6.3-5-3.3; however:
>   Package libapt-pkg-libc6.3-5-3.3 is not installed.
>   Package apt which provides libapt-pkg-libc6.3-5-3.3 is to be removed.
>  synaptic depends on libapt-pkg-libc6.3-5-3.3; however:
>   Package libapt-pkg-libc6.3-5-3.3 is not installed.
>   Package apt which provides libapt-pkg-libc6.3-5-3.3 is to be removed.
>  libapt-pkg-perl depends on libapt-pkg-libc6.3-5-3.3; however:
>   Package libapt-pkg-libc6.3-5-3.3 is not installed.
>   Package apt which provides libapt-pkg-libc6.3-5-3.3 is to be removed.
> 
> So it looks like unless you have apt-related packages your systems
> should be fine.  apt is just a dpkg front end, so theoretically you
> could manage fine without it, but it's a lot more work, and upgrades
> become problematic.

Uh, your dlocate seems to show no /etc/apt/apt.conf file either.

I do have a directory /etc/apt/apt.conf.d

I'll shut up now and let this thread return to the original
question.



-- 
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: Top posting

[Kent West]

Hubert Chan wrote:

>(David, I think you're to subtle . . . .
>  
>
"too".

D'oh!

As long as we're drifting way off-topic (which is a fun thing to do
sometimes, for a short while):

"you're" means "you are", as in "You're driving too fast".
"your" means "being possessed by you", as in "Your car is going off a
cliff, with us in it. Aeieieie!"

"it's" means "it is", as in "It's time to be anal, like Kent is being now."
"its" means "being possessed by it", as in "Its odor was somewhat
'anal', if you know what I mean."

"two" means the number just prior to five ("three, Sire!"); oh, yes,
prior to three.
"too" means "also" or "overly much", as in "Kent's being too picky. He's
ugly, too."
"to" is used in just about all other cases, as in "Are you going to the
movie? Or are you going to be a stay-at-home stick-in-the-mud?"

I think that about covers my off-topic holier-than-thou rant. (But
remember, I can't code my way out of a BASIC goto loop.)

No offense intended to anyone. This email is the property of the owner
and all unauthorized uses are strictly forbidden without express written
permission, a $25 cashier's check, a promissory note for your firstborn
child, three tickets to any show in Branson, Missouri, and a Hostess
Cup-Cake, no, I mean Mrs. Baird's Cup-Cake (aeeieh! (as he flies off the
Bridge of Death)).

-- 
Kent



-- 
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: Top posting (a different point of view)

[Kent West]

John Carline wrote:

> Personally, I don't care where an individual posts. But, it would make
> my reading/following of threads much easier if I didn't  have to
> scroll down to the bottom of post after post in a long string just to
> read the one line added to the 200 I've already read.

And that's why "trimming" is also a recommended practice.

No need to quote 200 lines of irrelevant material; trim out the
unnecessary stuff. This is also a consideration towards those who have
to pay for their internet access per byte. Why are you forcing them to
spend their money on six copies of the same 7-line signature and 17-line
"disclaimer" (and don't even get me started on disclaimers) just to read
a one-line reply to a one-line question?

Regarding top-posting, that's fine in some situations, but in a
situation like an email list, it's not just you and one or two others
reading the material, and making sense of it because all of you can
remember the context. It may be that in six months someone is trying to
find an answer in the archives, and top-posted messages turn into
spaghetti code. Remember how all your programming classes and peers
reiterated over and over that spaghetti code is a bad thing? Same thing
in email threads, particularly in archives. Top-posting, and lack of
trimming, often results in an ugly mess.

-- 
Kent


-- 
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: Once Sarge becomes stable...

[Carl Fink]

On Thu, Jun 09, 2005 at 06:25:48PM -0400, Angelina Carlton wrote:
> On Wed, Jun 08, 2005 at 10:23:21PM -0400, Carl Fink wrote:
> 
> > Also, no new installer this time, which eliminates what I perceive to have
> > been the biggest bottleneck.
> 
> How was the installer a bottleneck? AFAIK it was ready to go weeks
> before sarge was released. Just curious.

I'm not a Debian developer, but I know that when I whined and griped about
the long delay in releasing Sarge, "The installer isn't done" was the
commonest reason I was given for the wait.  Since it isn't Debian policy to
freeze the release for say, a year, while one package (the installer) is
completed, other stuff got updated while the installer was being worked on,
and presumably some of that ended up with release-critical bugs so that when
the installer was ready, they had to be fixed up before the release could be
made.
--  
Carl Fink [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Jabootu's Minister of Proofreading
http://www.jabootu.com


-- 
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: Top posting (a different point of view)

[Carl Fink]

On Thu, Jun 09, 2005 at 08:10:35PM -0400, Patrick Wiseman wrote:

> I know bottom-posting is the preferred protocol here, and so I usually
> respect it (this exception is just to make a point).  But just try the
> other way (in a forum where it's accepted), and I think you might find
> you like it ...

How to put this, how to put this 

No.  No indeed.

In fact there are times when top-posting is appropriate, but mailing lists
and Usenet are NOT on that list.  In either case, you can't assume that
everyone reading the message (including people reading an archived copy on
the Web two years later) has read the whole thread and doesn't need context.

Note that bottom-posting most definitely requires quote-trimming, as others
have said and demonstrated.
--  
Carl Fink [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Jabootu's Minister of Proofreading
http://www.jabootu.com


-- 
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: Top posting

[Hal Vaughan]

On Thursday 09 June 2005 04:35 pm, Hubert Chan wrote:
> On Thu, 9 Jun 2005 14:34:53 -0400, Hal Vaughan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 
said:
> > On Thursday 09 June 2005 12:55 pm, David Jardine wrote:
> >> be getting out of hand :)
> >> us a lecture on top posting sometime soon?  It seems to
> >> Isn't some authoritative voice on the list going to give
>
> [...]
>
> > With that being said, and realizing that with a .de domain, you are
> > probably using English as a second language, one could ask that you
> > make an effort to use proper style, such as writing in complete
> > sentences, capitalizing the beginning of your sentences, and
> > completing your sentences.
>
> OK, for the sake of those who missed the point of David Jardine's
> message, you read line 3 first, then line 2, then line 1.  It's supposed
> to emulate the nonsense of top-posting.  It isn't broken English.
>
> Here it is in proper order:
> > On Thursday 09 June 2005 12:55 pm, David Jardine wrote:
> >> Isn't some authoritative voice on the list going to give
> >> us a lecture on top posting sometime soon?  It seems to
> >> be getting out of hand :)
>
> (David, I think you're to subtle for the majority of the people on this
> list. ;-) )

No.

I saw that, figured it was an attempt to be clever in making one's point and 
decided it was stupid.  Why?  There's a big difference between inverting a 
few lines and having a different order for paragraphs.  As a writer, to me, 
it's comparing apples and oranges and, well, just a bad attempt at clever, or 
a reminder of a MOTD I used to get on my Amiga shell: "Too clever is dumb."

Hal


-- 
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: Eliminating upgrade confusion

[Joey Hess]

David Jardine wrote:
> The enormous confusion arising from the release of sarge seems 
> to have arisen from the use of the words "stable" and "testing". 

Not familiar with this enormous confusion.

> Somebody who was running stable didn't want woody to be replaced
> by sarge without his being asked.  Somebody running testing didn't 
> want to move from sarge to etch automatically.  (Sid seems to be 
> the only stable one.)

No, you are describing people who are running woody and sarge and should
have those in their sources.list.

> Wouldn't things work more smoothly if "stable" and "testing" were 
> not allowed in /etc/apt/sources.list or anywhere else except as 
> purely informative descriptions? 

It would suck, because all my systems that constantly track testing
couldn't. The stable release is irellivant, I want these machines to
continue to track testing. Just for example.

-- 
see shy jo


signature.asc
Description: Digital signature

Re: Top posting

[Hal Vaughan]

On Thursday 09 June 2005 05:26 pm, Alex Malinovich wrote:
> On Thu, 2005-06-09 at 22:06 +0100, Graham Smith wrote:
> --snip--
>
> > PS Have you noticed that there aren't many people who are top posting
> > zealots? I wonder why. Maybe tops posters are just more relaxed and
> > chilled out people. :o)
>
> I would argue that top-posters fall into the same category as most users
> of proprietary software. They are too lazy expend a bit of effort to
> benefit their fellow man. Bottom-posting makes reading easier for those
> who haven't followed an entire thread. Much in the same way that users
> of proprietary software are too lazy to find, support, or write a free
> alternative that would benefit all of mankind.
>
> As a side note, since I got on the subject of users of proprietary
> software, I've noticed that there's an interesting distinction between
> people who use free (As in speech) software and people who use
> proprietary software. People who use proprietary software have a view of
> the world which stresses "Me! Me! Me!". People who use free software
> generally view the world in terms of "We!".
>
> So a top-poster is concerned about him or herself not doing extra work.
> A bottom-poster is concerned with improving the quality of reading for
> others.

That's the most self-serving, self-centered, one-sided point of view I've read 
on any tech list in years.  In 3 paragraphs, you manage to insult users of 
proprietary software a number of ways, calling them self centered over and 
over, and say how FOSS people are more world oriented and less self-centered.

Yet, while you are going on and on calling others self-centered, you are 
totally incapable of seeing how "Me! Me! Me!" your point of view is.  As long 
as people follow your rules, they are open minded.  People who don't are 
closed minded.  So does it not occur to you that many people think 
differently than you, so top posting may work better for you?

I don't know you, but your post is as self-centered, as "Me! Me! Me!" and as 
representative of someone concerned with not caring about whether or not 
their view is focused on himself instead of on others as is possible.  I hope 
this bias and bigotry is not representive of the real you.

Hal


-- 
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: Top posting (a different point of view)

[Patrick Wiseman]

I completely agree.  Whoever  (the attribution is not clear to me)
wrote that crap about top posters vs bottom posters is an arrogant
idiot.  Processing information in reverse order  is much more
efficient.  Unfortunately, lots of people just don't process
information that way.

I know bottom-posting is the preferred protocol here, and so I usually
respect it (this exception is just to make a point).  But just try the
other way (in a forum where it's accepted), and I think you might find
you like it.  I have my email ordered most-recent-first, and it saves
me a _lot_ of time, whether the individual emails are top- or
bottom-posted!  I'm actually a bit surprised that tech people
generally prefer bottom posting; on all the academic lists I'm on, top
posting is the norm, and it's _not_ because those people are stupid or
lazy or self-absorbed.

Patrick

On 6/9/05, John Carline <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> What a crock of snobbish BS!
> 
>   snobbish
>   adj : befitting or characteristic of those who inclined to social
> exclusiveness and who rebuff the advances of people
> considered inferior [syn: {clannish}, {cliquish},
> {clubby}, {snobby}]
> 
> 
> Personally, I don't care where an individual posts. But, it would make
> my reading/following of threads much easier if I didn't  have to scroll
> down to the bottom of post after post in a long string just to read the
> one line added to the 200 I've already read.
> 
> It would be much better added at the top, where it pops onto the screen
> immediately and I can go on to the next post.
> 
> John
> 
> 
> Alex Malinovich wrote:
> 
> >On Thu, 2005-06-09 at 22:06 +0100, Graham Smith wrote:
> >--snip--
> >
> >
> >>PS Have you noticed that there aren't many people who are top posting
> >>zealots? I wonder why. Maybe tops posters are just more relaxed and
> >>chilled out people. :o)
> >>
> >>
> >
> >I would argue that top-posters fall into the same category as most users
> >of proprietary software. They are too lazy expend a bit of effort to
> >benefit their fellow man. Bottom-posting makes reading easier for those
> >who haven't followed an entire thread. Much in the same way that users
> >of proprietary software are too lazy to find, support, or write a free
> >alternative that would benefit all of mankind.
> >
> >As a side note, since I got on the subject of users of proprietary
> >software, I've noticed that there's an interesting distinction between
> >people who use free (As in speech) software and people who use
> >proprietary software. People who use proprietary software have a view of
> >the world which stresses "Me! Me! Me!". People who use free software
> >generally view the world in terms of "We!".
> >
> >So a top-poster is concerned about him or herself not doing extra work.
> >A bottom-poster is concerned with improving the quality of reading for
> >others.
> >
> >
> >
> 
> --
> Powered by the Penguin
> 
> 
> --
> To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> 
>

Re: quick chemistry drawings

[Nathan Malmberg]

On Thu, Jun 09, 2005 at 09:24:18PM +0100, Thomas Adam wrote:
> --- Matt Price <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> 
> > hey folks,
> > 
> >  what tools to people use to do quick drawing or modelling of
> > molecules/chemical reactions/etc?  I have tried ghemical and find it
> 
> [EMAIL PROTECTED] FvwmEvent]$ apt-cache search chemical
> chemeq - Parser for chemical formula and equilibria
> chemtool - Chemical structures drawing program
> xmakemol - A program for visualizing atomic and molecular systems
> xmakemol-gl - A program for visualizing atomic and molecular systems
> 
> 
> "chemtool" isn't too bad.

You might also look at xdrawchem.  It's the closest thing I've found to
ChemDraw in the repositories.  I'll probably be using some combination
of xdrawchem and chemtool for my lecture notes and exams this year.

Nathan Malmberg

-- 
 "Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my
  word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath
  everlasting life, and shall not come into
  condemnation; but is passed from death unto life."
   John 5:24
Nathan J. Malmberg <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>  GNUPG ID: 8A9B426E
The attachment is a digital signature.  Get my key at subkeys.pgp.net.


signature.asc
Description: Digital signature

Re: Eliminating upgrade confusion

[Marty]

David Jardine wrote:

Wouldn't things work more smoothly if "stable" and "testing" were 
not allowed in /etc/apt/sources.list or anywhere else except as 
purely informative descriptions? 


I think you mean the debian version as indicated in /etc/apt/apt.conf.
(As somebody else already pointed out, sources.list just tells
apt/dpkg where to look for updates.  The Debian version in apt.conf
is what tells them which specific .deb packages to get.)

As to your point, I suppose anyone who is likely to be surprised by
new version releases and resulting automatic upgrades should have
version names, not "stable" or "testing" in apt.conf.  If this does
not described the state of default installations, then yes, you may
have a wishlist item to file.


--
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: Remote administration of a server

[Robert Brockway]

On Thu, 9 Jun 2005, Roberto C. Sanchez wrote:

> Sadly, most people (myself included) have no passphrase on their SSH

Hi.  Using PKI with no passphrase drops the level of security 
significantly (as I'm sure you know).

> keys.  I also end up bouncing aroud a variety of machines (some Fedora
> some Windows with PuTTY and some Windows with SSH.com).  So the key
> thing is a pain in the but.  At least on the Linux machines it is
> straightforward and I set those up when I can to use keys instead of
> passwords.

May I introduce you to ssh-agent and ssh-add.  They are a standard part of 
ssh and will operate between implementations (as long as no one has broken 
their implementation).

This is the last line of my ~/.xsession file:

ssh-agent bash -c "ssh-add < /dev/null && /usr/bin/fvwm2"

After entering my passphrase as part of the login process[1] I can ssh to 
boxes all over the world without so much as entering my passphrase and I'm 
doing it securely.  Of course you need to keep your session secure if you 
are doing this (and I certainly do).

[1] I can't login successful without the passphrase.

Cheers,

Rob

-- 
Robert Brockway B.Sc.
Senior Technical Consultant, OpenTrend Solutions Ltd.
Ph: +1-416-669-3073 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.opentrend.net
OpenTrend Solutions: Reliable, secure solutions to real world problems.
Contributing Member of Software in the Public Interest http://www.spi-inc.org


-- 
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: Top posting

[Roel Schroeven]

Jan Leewe Behrendt wrote:


Am Donnerstag, 9. Juni 2005 21:18 schrieb Jacob S:

So, my point is that I have not seen any evidence to back up your
claims and say that we need to change our style on this list. Newbies
seem to be as capable of learning things as any other user.


In order to prove your point: I've been on this list for a couple of days now 
plus it's the first list, I've ever been on, so far.

I did not know about this, so I'm rather glad someone mentioned it...
Jan

p.s.: Now this is the right way to answer isn't it? :)


Actually, even better is to quote only the parts of the previous 
message(s) that you're replying to, or commenting on, and delete all the 
rest. Some care should be taken that you don't take things out of 
context of course.


http://pub.tsn.dk/how-to-quote.php is a nice explanation of how to quote.

--
If I have been able to see further, it was only because I stood
on the shoulders of giants.  -- Isaac Newton

Roel Schroeven


--
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Eliminating upgrade confusion

[David Jardine]

The enormous confusion arising from the release of sarge seems 
to have arisen from the use of the words "stable" and "testing". 

Somebody who was running stable didn't want woody to be replaced
by sarge without his being asked.  Somebody running testing didn't 
want to move from sarge to etch automatically.  (Sid seems to be 
the only stable one.)

Wouldn't things work more smoothly if "stable" and "testing" were 
not allowed in /etc/apt/sources.list or anywhere else except as 
purely informative descriptions? 

-- 
David Jardine

"Running Debian GNU/Linux and
loving every minute of it."  -L. von Sacher-M.(1835-1895)


-- 
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: i think I switched to Etch without knowing it

[Marty]

Tony Godshall wrote:

According to Marty,

Basajaun wrote:

>For understanding what version you are running, and what packages will
>get updated (or not), take a look at "man apt_preferences".

Good point.  Specifically, the apt conffile /etc/apt/apt.conf must
indicate the debian version. e.g. mine contains:

APT::Get::Show-Upgraded "true";
APT::Default-Release "sarge";
APT::Cache-Limit 25165824;


Oddly, I have no such file.  None of my machines do.

What does that mean?




Maybe you accidentally removed it.  Here is my result from
running "dlocate apt.conf":
debconf: /etc/apt/apt.conf.d
debconf: /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/70debconf
apt: /usr/share/man/fr/man5/apt.conf.5.gz
apt: /usr/share/man/ja/man5/apt.conf.5.gz
apt: /usr/share/man/man5/apt.conf.5.gz
apt: /usr/share/man/es/man5/apt.conf.5.gz
apt: /usr/share/doc/apt/examples/apt.conf

This means it's an conffile of the package "apt".

Running "dpkg --no-act -P apt" gives me this:
dpkg: dependency problems prevent removal of apt:
 wajig depends on apt.
 apt-utils depends on libapt-pkg-libc6.3-5-3.3; however:
  Package libapt-pkg-libc6.3-5-3.3 is not installed.
  Package apt which provides libapt-pkg-libc6.3-5-3.3 is to be removed.
 gnome-apt depends on libapt-pkg-libc6.3-5-3.3; however:
  Package libapt-pkg-libc6.3-5-3.3 is not installed.
  Package apt which provides libapt-pkg-libc6.3-5-3.3 is to be removed.
 python-apt depends on libapt-pkg-libc6.3-5-3.3; however:
  Package libapt-pkg-libc6.3-5-3.3 is not installed.
  Package apt which provides libapt-pkg-libc6.3-5-3.3 is to be removed.
 libapt-pkg-dev depends on libapt-pkg-libc6.3-5-3.3; however:
  Package libapt-pkg-libc6.3-5-3.3 is not installed.
  Package apt which provides libapt-pkg-libc6.3-5-3.3 is to be removed.
 aptitude depends on libapt-pkg-libc6.3-5-3.3; however:
  Package libapt-pkg-libc6.3-5-3.3 is not installed.
  Package apt which provides libapt-pkg-libc6.3-5-3.3 is to be removed.
 synaptic depends on libapt-pkg-libc6.3-5-3.3; however:
  Package libapt-pkg-libc6.3-5-3.3 is not installed.
  Package apt which provides libapt-pkg-libc6.3-5-3.3 is to be removed.
 libapt-pkg-perl depends on libapt-pkg-libc6.3-5-3.3; however:
  Package libapt-pkg-libc6.3-5-3.3 is not installed.
  Package apt which provides libapt-pkg-libc6.3-5-3.3 is to be removed.

So it looks like unless you have apt-related packages your systems
should be fine.  apt is just a dpkg front end, so theoretically you
could manage fine without it, but it's a lot more work, and upgrades
become problematic.


--
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: Sarge Disks

[Roberto C. Sanchez]

On Thu, Jun 09, 2005 at 11:48:26PM +0100, Chris Robinson wrote:
> Hi
> 
> I think Sarge is super, but can anyone tell me where to find out whats on 
> disks 
> 1-14?
> 
> I have been using Debian for about 2 years, but have not been able to figure 
> out what is on the disks.
> 

Stuff.

You more than likely will use packages mostly from the first couple of
CDs.  The packages are ordered based on popcon results, so the most
frequently installed packages are on the first CD, with packages on
subsequent CDs being less popular.

-Roberto

-- 
Roberto C. Sanchez
http://familiasanchez.net/~sanchezr


pgpcdPhPd84oN.pgp
Description: PGP signature

Re: Remote administration of a server

[Roberto C. Sanchez]

On Thu, Jun 09, 2005 at 06:25:48PM -0400, Robert Brockway wrote:
> On Thu, 9 Jun 2005, Marty wrote:
> 
> PKI makes things much more difficult.  An attacker would need both your 
> private key and your passphrase to gain entry.  Brute forcing an ssh 
> daemon that only accepts PKI access is an intractable problem.
> 
> > keys secure (i.e. thumb drive? Floppy? Theft issues?)
> 
> All of the hosts I have private keys for are under my control or my 
> companies' control.  We have some clients that move around a lot and they 
> do need keep their private keys on a usb drive.
> 
> As with everything in security some risk is always involved.  A hosts 
> administrator may be sniffing keystrokes to get your passphrase and they 
> may be automatically nabbing any private keys they see - but in reality 
> this is not likely.  If you think a machine is not safe don't ssh from it.
> 

Sadly, most people (myself included) have no passphrase on their SSH
keys.  I also end up bouncing aroud a variety of machines (some Fedora
some Windows with PuTTY and some Windows with SSH.com).  So the key
thing is a pain in the but.  At least on the Linux machines it is
straightforward and I set those up when I can to use keys instead of
passwords.

-Roberto

-- 
Roberto C. Sanchez
http://familiasanchez.net/~sanchezr


pgpnuenlCwcAI.pgp
Description: PGP signature

Re: quick chemistry drawings

[Kenward Vaughan]

On Thu, Jun 09, 2005 at 02:03:32PM -0400, Matt Price wrote:
> hey folks,
> 
>  what tools to people use to do quick drawing or modelling of
> molecules/chemical reactions/etc?  I have tried ghemical and find it a
> little bit clumsy, didn't notice anything else with apt-cache.  Thanks
> as always for the help!

I'm not sure what you mean by "modeling"--is that visualization or
actual calculations (I have seen it used with both)?

For drawings I use chemtool.  A tad clunky and quirky, but it does a
good job in the end, and exports ps images which I insert into my LyX
generated files.  There are some others, but I frankly find this to
work as well as those, and it also exports to xfig files so you can
tweak/add things.

Visualization?  Rasmol and a host of others.  I'm playing a lot with
chimera now and like it, but I'm still a beginner with it.  There is
another one out there called Deep View (formerly Swiss-PDB viewer). 
You might look into Kinemage too, depending on your needs--it has a
number of presentations already prepared for it.

Others exist as well.  A site I ran across recently has a number of
links to stuff like this:

http://molvis.sdsc.edu/visres/molvisfw/titles.jsp

If you are into calculations, there are a number of programs out there
running from quantum mechanical to molecular dynamics, and everything in
between.  Last semester I found WebMO ( www.webmo.net ), which works as
a simple front end to Gamess, but I imported structures from ghemical
since WebMO's builder was flakey.  Some standard Googling should bring
up places to visit.

There are only a few of any of these packaged under Debian.  Most
others I have tried worked well from their respective sites.  

HTH,


Kenward
-- 
In a completely rational society, the best of us would aspire to be 
_teachers_ and the rest of us would have to settle for something less, 
because passing civilization along from one generation to the next 
ought to be the highest honor and the highest responsibility anyone 
could have. - Lee Iacocca


-- 
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: kernel panich VFS unable to mount root fs on unknown-block(3,1)

[Roberto C. Sanchez]

On Thu, Jun 09, 2005 at 05:54:21PM -0400, Craig Russell wrote:
> Trying to compile the 2.6.8 kernel from the debian source package
> (patched) and I keep on running into this problem after reboot.  I
> have gone back and checked to make sure that the ide drivers have been
> compiled in but after 5 or 6 attempts I am still getting this error.
> The kernel appears to compile fine.  I am using Lilo to as my boot
> manager and I created an initrd.img with mkinitrd -o
> /boot/initrd.img.2.6.8 2.6.8.  I created the kernel package via
> fakeroot make-kpkg --revision=custom.1.0 kernel_image  and this
> installs fine (or so it appears).  
> 
> I've been searching the web and tried many of the suggestions but I'm
> still getting the same error.
> 
> The end result of this operation is to run free/swan with the native
> ipsec support in the 2.6 kernel.
> 
> 
> Thanks for any help you can offer.
> 

OK.  Two things:

1. Use GRUB.  It is better.  It is easier to configure.  It doesn't
require a reinstall for every new kernel.
2. Don't make an initrd unless you have a really good reason (e.g., you
want / on LVM or LVM+RAID, or you also need the kernel to fit on a
floppy and you can't get the core small enough).

Now, on to sloving the problem.  What filesystem is your / partition?
What filesystems are you buidling with the kernel?  If they are modules,
are you sure that they are in the initrd?  What are the contents of your
initrd and what is your kernel config?

-Roberto

-- 
Roberto C. Sanchez
http://familiasanchez.net/~sanchezr


pgp9PpIigDDX6.pgp
Description: PGP signature

access windows 2003 server shares

[Michael Martinell]

My question is two-fold.  My primary question as follows:
How can you access windows 2003 shares?  I have tried smbmount however I get
the following error:

debian:/backup# smbmount //jupiter/c$ /jupiter -o username=mis/mike
cli_negprot: SMB signing is mandatory and we have disabled it.
4261: protocol negotiation failed
SMB connection failed
debian:/backup#

What am I doing wrong?  In my smb.conf file I do have the client signing =
yes option.

I did find reference to something called CIFS, however it seems that all of
the links are dead.

The second part of my question:
Once I do get this to work properly, does anybody have any good suggestions
for a backup solution of these file shares?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.


-- 
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: Top posting (a different point of view)

[John Carline]

What a crock of snobbish BS!

 snobbish
 adj : befitting or characteristic of those who inclined to social
   exclusiveness and who rebuff the advances of people
   considered inferior [syn: {clannish}, {cliquish},
   {clubby}, {snobby}]


Personally, I don't care where an individual posts. But, it would make 
my reading/following of threads much easier if I didn't  have to scroll 
down to the bottom of post after post in a long string just to read the 
one line added to the 200 I've already read.


It would be much better added at the top, where it pops onto the screen 
immediately and I can go on to the next post.


John


Alex Malinovich wrote:


On Thu, 2005-06-09 at 22:06 +0100, Graham Smith wrote:
--snip--
 

PS Have you noticed that there aren't many people who are top posting 
zealots? I wonder why. Maybe tops posters are just more relaxed and 
chilled out people. :o)
   



I would argue that top-posters fall into the same category as most users
of proprietary software. They are too lazy expend a bit of effort to
benefit their fellow man. Bottom-posting makes reading easier for those
who haven't followed an entire thread. Much in the same way that users
of proprietary software are too lazy to find, support, or write a free
alternative that would benefit all of mankind.

As a side note, since I got on the subject of users of proprietary
software, I've noticed that there's an interesting distinction between
people who use free (As in speech) software and people who use
proprietary software. People who use proprietary software have a view of
the world which stresses "Me! Me! Me!". People who use free software
generally view the world in terms of "We!".

So a top-poster is concerned about him or herself not doing extra work.
A bottom-poster is concerned with improving the quality of reading for
others.

 



--
Powered by the Penguin


--
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: Release upgrade from Woody to Sarge failed reboot lilo problem

[MicheleM]

Hi Flo,
this is the output:

anjuna:~# grep -A5 'lilo/runme' /var/cache/debconf/config.dat
Name: lilo/runme
Template: lilo/runme
Owners: lilo

Name: lilo/upgrade
Template: lilo/upgrade
Owners: lilo

I grep the upgrade's typescript searching for the lilo prompt but this
is what I found:

anjuna:~# cat /backup/typescript |grep lilo
  libxaw7 libxerces2-java libxml1 libxml2 lilo links login logrotate
lpr
  libxaw7 libxerces2-java libxml1 libxml2 lilo links login logrotate
lpr
  libxaw7 libxerces2-java libxml1 libxml2 lilo links login logrotate
lpr
  libxaw7 libxerces2-java libxml1 libxml2 lilo links login logrotate
lpr
Get:493 http://debian.fastweb.it sarge/main lilo 1:22.6.1-6.2 [343kB]
Get:494 http://debian.fastweb.it sarge/main mbr 1.1.5-2 [20.4kB]
Preparing to replace lilo 1:22.2-3 (using
.../lilo_1%3a22.6.1-6.2_i386.deb) ...
Unpacking replacement lilo ...
Setting up lilo (22.6.1-6.2) ...

no more.

thanks Flo

Mik


-- 
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: what is using my swap

[Micha Feigin]

On Wed, 8 Jun 2005 17:49:27 -0400
"theal" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> I have a program that suspect is cause my swap to grow to almost a gig, but 
> it would be nice to verify without restarting a very mission critical program.
> 

Run ps aux or top and look for programs using a lot of memory.

Programs don't have any control on whether they are using regular memory or
swap, its the kernels job to decide what it does.

Run free and see how much memory you are using. Take note of the caches field
though. Disk accesses are also cached to memory to reduce farther seek times,
so your system may be using a lot more memory then the actual programs are
using in order to speed overall things (I think that there is some control
through the proc file system over cache and buffer usage, but I'm not sure).

> Tony
>   - Original Message - 
>   From: Michael Z Daryabeygi 
>   To: debian-user@lists.debian.org 
>   Sent: Wednesday, June 08, 2005 5:43 PM
>   Subject: Re: what is using my swap
> 
> 
>   I know nothing, but I would think that the OS uses swap, not individual 
>   processes.  Probably the memory optimizer does it's job regardless of 
>   free memory?
>   What is the problem with using swap?  Or are you just curious?
> 
>   theal wrote:
>   > Does anyone know how to tell what program or PID is causing swap usage? 
>   > I have a system with 2 GB RAM so it should using little or no swap, but 
>   > at times it does and I need to determine what the cause is.
>   >  
>   > Tony
>   > 
>   > 
>   > 
>   > 
>   > No virus found in this incoming message.
>   > Checked by AVG Anti-Virus.
>   > Version: 7.0.323 / Virus Database: 267.6.6 - Release Date: 6/8/2005
> 
>   -- 
>   ~,~`~,~`~,~`~,~`~,~`~,~`~,~`~,~`~,~`~,~`~,~`~,~`
>   Michael Z Daryabeygi
>   Database Applications Developer
>   Sligo Computer Services Co-op
>   www.sligowebworks.com
>   301.270.9673 x 304
>   ~,~`~,~`~,~`~,~`~,~`~,~`~,~`~,~`~,~`~,~`~,~`~,~`
> 
> 
>   -- 
>   No virus found in this outgoing message.
>   Checked by AVG Anti-Virus.
>   Version: 7.0.323 / Virus Database: 267.6.6 - Release Date: 6/8/2005
> 
> 
>   -- 
>   To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
>   with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> 
> 
>  
>  +++
>  This Mail Was Scanned By Mail-seCure System
>  at the Tel-Aviv University CC.


-- 
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: Debian drops ball on security updates

[Stephen Patterson]

On Thu, 09 Jun 2005 20:30:11 +0200, Florian Ernst wrote:
> 
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
> Content-Disposition: inline
> Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
> 
> Hello *,
> 
> On Thu, Jun 09, 2005 at 06:53:10AM -0700, debian-user@lists.debian.org wrot=
> e:
>> CNET News.com (http://www.news.com/)
>> This story has been sent to you on behalf of [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>  (e-mail address not verified).
> 
> Ah ha, great joke.
> 
>> Debian drops ball on security updates
>> By Renai LeMay
>>=20
>> The newly launched Linux distribution has a glitch--some versions were re=
> leased with default security updates turned off.
> 
> OK, in order to prevent confusion:
> 
> There is a discussion going on on d-project about how to possibly
> react to this, see
> and
> following replies.

Oh? and I'd just classified this as more FUD from yet another company
thats in the sack with Bill.


-- 
Stephen Patterson [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://patter.mine.nu/  
Linux Counter No: 142831 GPG Public key: E3E8E974
"Whoever said nothing is impossible never tried slamming a revolving door."
  -- Melissa O'Brien


-- 
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: this mailing list with a newsreader

[John Kirkland]

Guillaume TESSIER wrote:

Hi!

i suscribed to this mailing list some hours ago and my mailbox is 
already overcrowded!


Can we acces it with a newsreader? i use pan. But after tryiing 
different news servers adress this was not successful






I use Mozilla Thunderbird, and filter the messages from the various 
lists I subscribe to into their respective folders. I then sort each 
folder (for me) by date, descending, *threaded*.


--
John Kirkland


--
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: Once Sarge becomes stable...

[Robert Wolfe]

On Thu, 9 Jun 2005, Angelina Carlton wrote:


How was the installer a bottleneck? AFAIK it was ready to go weeks
before sarge was released. Just curious.


The only problem I had with the network installer is that it was not able 
to find the sites to download the necessary files from.  Then again, I can 
attribute that to the NIC drivers for my ISA SMC ethernet board.


  `$' $'
   $  $  _
 ,d$$$g$  ,d$$$b. $,d$$$b`$' g$b $,d$$b
,$P'  `$ ,$P' `Y$ $$'  `$ $  "'   `$ $$' `$
$$ $ $$g$ $ $ $ ,$P""  $ $$
`$g. ,$$ `$$._ _. $ _,g$P $ `$b. ,$$ $$
 `Y$$P'$. `YP $$$P"' ,$. `Y$$P'$ $.  ,$.

Robert Wolfe -- [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Running Debian 3.1 (sarge) on a Sun Ultra 5


--
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Sarge Disks

[Chris Robinson]

Hi

I think Sarge is super, but can anyone tell me where to find out whats 
on disks 1-14?


I have been using Debian for about 2 years, but have not been able to 
figure out what is on the disks.


Regards

Chris


--
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: Top posting

[Joe Potter]

Robert Wolfe wrote:
> On Thu, 9 Jun 2005, Joe Potter wrote:
> 
>> No, I would guess they are Winders folks mainly and just have no good
>> reason to offer for top posting. I further think they just don't give a
>> darn about helping others out.
> 
> 
> Heh thing is is I am a Windoze as well as a Debian user (I run the x86
> version of Debian under Virtual PC 2004 under WinXP and the Sparc
> version of Debian on a Sun Microsystems Ultra 5).  I enjoy trying my
> best to help others out no matter what the situation or OS they use :)
> 
>

Double posting is another topic, but just as bad as the topic at hand.
Thanks for the demonstration.

I thought about explaining the word "mainly" in my post since so many
can not fathom words like "majority", "most", "mainly" or any other
reference to  over half a given population. I suppose they are to
interested in telling their little story to actually read the post.

But then I thought, "why try?" since most today think anecdotal evidence
is real data. But then, most never took statistics.

See http://dictionary.reference.com/ for "most."




--- Joe


-- 
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: Top posting

[David Jardine]

On Thu, Jun 09, 2005 at 04:35:50PM -0400, Hubert Chan wrote:
> On Thu, 9 Jun 2005 14:34:53 -0400, Hal Vaughan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> said:
> 
> > On Thursday 09 June 2005 12:55 pm, David Jardine wrote:
> >> be getting out of hand :)
> >> us a lecture on top posting sometime soon?  It seems to
> >> Isn't some authoritative voice on the list going to give
> 
> [...]
> 
> > With that being said, and realizing that with a .de domain, you are
> > probably using English as a second language, one could ask that you
> > make an effort to use proper style, such as writing in complete
> > sentences, capitalizing the beginning of your sentences, and
> > completing your sentences.
> 
> OK, for the sake of those who missed the point of David Jardine's
> message, you read line 3 first, then line 2, then line 1.  It's supposed
> to emulate the nonsense of top-posting.  It isn't broken English.
> 
> Here it is in proper order:
> 
> > On Thursday 09 June 2005 12:55 pm, David Jardine wrote:
> >> Isn't some authoritative voice on the list going to give
> >> us a lecture on top posting sometime soon?  It seems to
> >> be getting out of hand :)
> 
> (David, I think you're to subtle for the majority of the people on this
> list. ;-) )

Thanks for straightening things out, Hubert.  And to think that 
it's the Germans that are reputed to have no sense of humour...

-- 
David Jardine

"Running Debian GNU/Linux and
loving every minute of it."  -L. von Sacher-M.(1835-1895)


-- 
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: Once Sarge becomes stable...

[Lee Braiden]

On Thursday 09 Jun 2005 23:25, Angelina Carlton wrote:
> How was the installer a bottleneck? AFAIK it was ready to go weeks
> before sarge was released. Just curious.

Not sure myself, but I'm guessing the installer held things back for a long 
time, and while that was happening, people decided to keep updating sarge.  
So once the installer was ready, the updates were still "spilling over", and 
needing bugs fixed etc.  Again, just a guess, though.

-- 
Lee.

Please do not CC replies directly to me.  I'll read them on the list.


-- 
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: Top posting, yet another view

[Paul E Condon]

On Thu, Jun 09, 2005 at 03:48:28PM -0400, Andrew Schulman wrote:
> >> be getting out of hand :)
> >> us a lecture on top posting sometime soon?  It seems to
> >> Isn't some authoritative voice on the list going to give
> > 
> > My point (with all do respect and no insult intended): You may not like top 
> > posting, but all of us on the 'net, even in technical groups like this, are 
> > dealing more and more with newcomers to the Internet.  We can try to 
> > educate 
> > them, but things are changing.  Maybe instead of judging others and 
> > expecting 
> > everyone to conform, we should *ALL* keep an open mind, otherwise we might 
> > find others are being as judgemental of us as we are of others.
> 
> I don't see that this should require judging others, or even being
> impolite.  It's just a matter of informing newbies what the standard
> practices are, and that there are good, time-tested reasons for those
> practices.  No hassle or judgment, just education.
> 

When I first started with Debian (from RH), I was drawn to it by the
useful answers that I saw being offered on this list. I top-posted
once, and was gently corrected by one of the people who was a quite
prolific provider of good answers at that time. Since then I have come
to prefer bottom posting, and I think people who are on this list in
order to get answers should realize that the people who give answers
really, mostly, prefer bottom posting.  These people are the resource
that makes this list worthwhile. I think we should all try to give
these people some consideration _before_ one of them becomes cranky
and triggers a thread like this. This thread is such a waste of time.
Be nice to the answer givers and you will be rewarded. Dis them and
they will go away and all of us are then losers.

A second line of thought about top posting: I can imagine that top
posting might be appropriate on some types of email lists. I have
never found a topic in which I was interested for which I felt top
posting was appropriate. But that is more an indication of my
restricting my interest to rational discourse, rather than a rejection
of top posting in general. I'm just bored by discussions of topics for
which it might be appropriate.

JM2\cent

-- 
Paul E Condon   
[EMAIL PROTECTED]


-- 
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: i think I switched to Etch without knowing it

[Tony Godshall]

According to Marty,
> Basajaun wrote:
> 
> >For understanding what version you are running, and what packages will
> >get updated (or not), take a look at "man apt_preferences".
> 
> Good point.  Specifically, the apt conffile /etc/apt/apt.conf must
> indicate the debian version. e.g. mine contains:
> 
> APT::Get::Show-Upgraded "true";
> APT::Default-Release "sarge";
> APT::Cache-Limit 25165824;

Oddly, I have no such file.  None of my machines do.

What does that mean?


-- 
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: Top posting

[Colin Ingram]

Wim De Smet wrote:


I think it's not necessarily wrong to use top posting. I just feel
like both manners of posting have their place. When you are just
including a mail for reference to something, and then make a reply
that is partly unrelated, I don't mind top posting. When it's a
discussion like this one, I'd say bottom posting is the way to go.

   

I agree with this statement.  In a conversation between two people, 
where the previous messages are only included for reference, top posting 
makes more sense.  I often top post in communications between my 
friends, family, and colleague at work.  However, in a conversation 
between lots of people, like this list, or in a situation where you are 
answering lots of questions, like this list, bottom or inline posting 
makes more sense.  Each has its on place.  It's up to each of our own 
judgments, and prerogatives, to figure out when to use them. 

Most people using email are not aware of the benefits of bottom posting. 
(I wasn't until I starting using this list)  This makes it important to 
educate new users and to have  patients with people who are just learning. 



--
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: Once Sarge becomes stable...

[Angelina Carlton]

On Wed, Jun 08, 2005 at 10:23:21PM -0400, Carl Fink wrote:

> Also, no new installer this time, which eliminates what I perceive to have
> been the biggest bottleneck.

How was the installer a bottleneck? AFAIK it was ready to go weeks
before sarge was released. Just curious.

-- 
Angelina Carlton


-- 
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: Remote administration of a server

[Robert Brockway]

On Thu, 9 Jun 2005, Marty wrote:

> Regarding PKI, are there any Debian or non-Debian packages you recommend 

Hi Marty.  The ssh related packages in Debian contain everything you need.

> for this use?  Can you elaborate on your reasoning here, for a 
> non-expert in security, or at least point to some links?  I am 
> particularly interested in why you think PKI is better than the plain 
> ssh password/login procedure for this application, and how you keep your 

Password access is highly susceptible to a brute force attack where the 
attack just cycles usernames and passwords.  Breaking in using a method 
like this isn't as hard as it first sounds as most people use fairly 
easily guessed usernames (eg, first names) and passwords.  I regularly see 
attackers try this on my ssh daemons that don't accept password 
authentication :)

PKI makes things much more difficult.  An attacker would need both your 
private key and your passphrase to gain entry.  Brute forcing an ssh 
daemon that only accepts PKI access is an intractable problem.

> keys secure (i.e. thumb drive? Floppy? Theft issues?)

All of the hosts I have private keys for are under my control or my 
companies' control.  We have some clients that move around a lot and they 
do need keep their private keys on a usb drive.

As with everything in security some risk is always involved.  A hosts 
administrator may be sniffing keystrokes to get your passphrase and they 
may be automatically nabbing any private keys they see - but in reality 
this is not likely.  If you think a machine is not safe don't ssh from it.

Cheers,

Rob

-- 
Robert Brockway B.Sc.
Senior Technical Consultant, OpenTrend Solutions Ltd.
Ph: +1-416-669-3073 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.opentrend.net
OpenTrend Solutions: Reliable, secure solutions to real world problems.
Contributing Member of Software in the Public Interest http://www.spi-inc.org


-- 
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: Top posting

[Wim De Smet]

> [...]
> I understand the reasons why bottom posting is supposed to be better but
> if I am following the thread, which is normally the case if I'm actually
> reading it, then I find it quicker to read just the top section of each
> post rather than having to scroll down past everything I've already
> read. There isn't a problem with context because I can remember that
> from one post to the next. If the author wants to quote a section of the
> previous post they can in the extreme they end up inlining their post.
>[...]

I think it's not necessarily wrong to use top posting. I just feel
like both manners of posting have their place. When you are just
including a mail for reference to something, and then make a reply
that is partly unrelated, I don't mind top posting. When it's a
discussion like this one, I'd say bottom posting is the way to go.

For example, you sent your boss a mail 2 weeks ago about feature x you
want to implement and he sends you a reply now saying 'go ahead'. That
might as well be top posted since that's the end of the conversation.
The mail's only there for reference if you can't make out what it's
about from the subject.On the other hand, in public discussion where
you are replying to mails which elaborate on several points with long
lists of arguments, I think you should bottom post.

Those really are two different use cases, but on a mailinglist it is
handy if everybody has the same style of posting (top or bottom).
Also, many newbies on a mailinglist are not very good with email. It's
one of my pet peeves: when people write a mail in real life, they do
all they can they follow a set standard of writing mail. But when they
go online, they seem to go crazy. Perhaps less so on this list (where
some people seem to forget the role of punctuation), but in places
where HTML mails are allowed, it's really bad. I hope this is one of
the things modern education puts an end to. Instead of teaching 12
year olds how they 'use' MS Word, they could teach em something
usefull for a change.

greets,
Wim

Re: quick chemistry drawings

[Alvin Oga]

On Thu, 9 Jun 2005, Thomas Adam wrote:

> --- Matt Price <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> 
> > hey folks,
> > 
> >  what tools to people use to do quick drawing or modelling of
> > molecules/chemical reactions/etc?  I have tried ghemical and find it
> 
> [EMAIL PROTECTED] FvwmEvent]$ apt-cache search chemical
> chemeq - Parser for chemical formula and equilibria
> chemtool - Chemical structures drawing program
> xmakemol - A program for visualizing atomic and molecular systems
> xmakemol-gl - A program for visualizing atomic and molecular systems
> 
> 
> "chemtool" isn't too bad.

pymol.org is in 3D.. and does crystals too  and is a super good test
of your X11 config files and video memory transfer tests
( how fast can you rotate the color molecules in 3D )

and if your kernel is misconfigured.. it'd crash it

c ya
alvin


-- 
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: Top posting

[Hubert Chan]

On Thu, 9 Jun 2005 14:34:53 -0400, Hal Vaughan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> said:

> On Thursday 09 June 2005 12:55 pm, David Jardine wrote:
>> be getting out of hand :)
>> us a lecture on top posting sometime soon?  It seems to
>> Isn't some authoritative voice on the list going to give

[...]

> With that being said, and realizing that with a .de domain, you are
> probably using English as a second language, one could ask that you
> make an effort to use proper style, such as writing in complete
> sentences, capitalizing the beginning of your sentences, and
> completing your sentences.

OK, for the sake of those who missed the point of David Jardine's
message, you read line 3 first, then line 2, then line 1.  It's supposed
to emulate the nonsense of top-posting.  It isn't broken English.

Here it is in proper order:

> On Thursday 09 June 2005 12:55 pm, David Jardine wrote:
>> Isn't some authoritative voice on the list going to give
>> us a lecture on top posting sometime soon?  It seems to
>> be getting out of hand :)

(David, I think you're to subtle for the majority of the people on this
list. ;-) )

-- 
Hubert Chan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> - http://www.uhoreg.ca/
PGP/GnuPG key: 1024D/124B61FA
Fingerprint: 96C5 012F 5F74 A5F7 1FF7  5291 AF29 C719 124B 61FA
Key available at wwwkeys.pgp.net.   Encrypted e-mail preferred.


-- 
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: Top posting

[John Kelly]

On Thu, 09 Jun 2005 22:06:11 +0100, Graham Smith
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

>I actually prefer top posting ... I find it quicker to read just
>the top section of each post rather than having to scroll down past
>everything I've already read.

Perhaps, when people are too lazy to trim.  But notice how I trimmed
everything except the minimum necessary to understand the reason for
reply.

A whole post, unless it's very short, should never be quoted in its
entirety.  But the ignorant and lazy, often do.

Untrimmed quotes make me FEEL LIKE SHOUTING!

--
A: Maybe because some people are too annoyed by top-posting.
Q: Why do I not get an answer to my question(s)?
A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?


-- 
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: Top posting

[Robert Wolfe]

On Thu, 9 Jun 2005, Joe Potter wrote:


No, I would guess they are Winders folks mainly and just have no good
reason to offer for top posting. I further think they just don't give a
darn about helping others out.


Heh thing is is I am a Windoze as well as a Debian user (I run the x86 
version of Debian under Virtual PC 2004 under WinXP and the Sparc version 
of Debian on a Sun Microsystems Ultra 5).  I enjoy trying my best to help 
others out no matter what the situation or OS they use :)


  `$' $'
   $  $  _
 ,d$$$g$  ,d$$$b. $,d$$$b`$' g$b $,d$$b
,$P'  `$ ,$P' `Y$ $$'  `$ $  "'   `$ $$' `$
$$ $ $$g$ $ $ $ ,$P""  $ $$
`$g. ,$$ `$$._ _. $ _,g$P $ `$b. ,$$ $$
 `Y$$P'$. `YP $$$P"' ,$. `Y$$P'$ $.  ,$.

Robert Wolfe -- [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Running Debian 3.1 (sarge) on a Sun Ultra 5


--
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: Top posting

[Ugo Bellavance]

Jin Juku wrote:
> I guess I really am a newbie, because I have no idea what this
> top-posting business is supposed to mean ... we're not supposed to
> send new, clean messages to the list ...?

He just meant you're supposed to post at the bottom of the original text
when you are replying.

> 
> -jin-
> 
> On 6/9/05, Jan Leewe Behrendt <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> 
>>Am Donnerstag, 9. Juni 2005 21:18 schrieb Jacob S:
>>
>>>On Thu, 9 Jun 2005 14:34:53 -0400
>>>
>>>Hal Vaughan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>>>
On Thursday 09 June 2005 12:55 pm, David Jardine wrote:

>be getting out of hand :)
>us a lecture on top posting sometime soon?  It seems to
>Isn't some authoritative voice on the list going to give

> 
> 


-- 
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: Top posting

[Joe Potter]

Graham Smith wrote:
> Lech Karol Pawłaszek wrote:


> 
> PS Have you noticed that there aren't many people who are top posting
> zealots? I wonder why. Maybe tops posters are just more relaxed and
> chilled out people. :o)
> 
> 


No, I would guess they are Winders folks mainly and just have no good
reason to offer for top posting. I further think they just don't give a
darn about helping others out.

Regards, Joe


-- 
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: i think I switched to Etch without knowing it

[Clive Menzies]

On (09/06/05 14:07), Marty wrote:
> Basajaun wrote:
> 
> >For understanding what version you are running, and what packages will
> >get updated (or not), take a look at "man apt_preferences".
> 
> Good point.  Specifically, the apt conffile /etc/apt/apt.conf must
> indicate the debian version. e.g. mine contains:
> 
> APT::Get::Show-Upgraded "true";
> APT::Default-Release "sarge";
> APT::Cache-Limit 25165824;
> 

Thanks Guys (and Guillaume)

You live and learn ;)

Regards

Clive

-- 
www.clivemenzies.co.uk ...
...strategies for business



-- 
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: Top posting

[Andrew Schulman]

>> be getting out of hand :)
>> us a lecture on top posting sometime soon?  It seems to
>> Isn't some authoritative voice on the list going to give
> 
> My point (with all do respect and no insult intended): You may not like top 
> posting, but all of us on the 'net, even in technical groups like this, are 
> dealing more and more with newcomers to the Internet.  We can try to educate 
> them, but things are changing.  Maybe instead of judging others and expecting 
> everyone to conform, we should *ALL* keep an open mind, otherwise we might 
> find others are being as judgemental of us as we are of others.

I don't see that this should require judging others, or even being
impolite.  It's just a matter of informing newbies what the standard
practices are, and that there are good, time-tested reasons for those
practices.  No hassle or judgment, just education.


-- 
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]