Re: C++ dev environment advice

2000-02-17 Thread E.L. Meijer \(Eric\)
> 
> Michael
> 
> I'm sorry not to be more prompt in my reply to this. 
> 
> Some have advised using the STL -- the Standard Template (not
> 'type') Library. That is sound advice. 

Yep.

[... list of documentation ...]

I actually found the SGI html pages that are contained in the stl-manual
debian package quite practical.  It may depend on your level of
understanding of C++ how much you get out of these, they are not
beginner's material.  Anyway, it is easy to have a look at them.

HTH,
Eric


-- 
 E.L. Meijer ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
 Eindhoven Univ. of Technology
 Lab. for Catalysis and Inorg. Chem. (SKA)


Re: what is ginstall?

2000-02-14 Thread E.L. Meijer \(Eric\)
> 
> I have had this experience with two machines running Debian.  While compiling
> some apps, during 'make install', I get an error about not
> finding "ginstall".  I solved this by making a symlink:
> 
> ln -s install ginstall
> 
> Has anyone else had this problem?  

I take it this is not a debianized source?  Often if GNU utilities are
installed on non-GNU unices, they get a `g' prepended to their name, so
on an SGI machine, you may find gmake (GNU make) together with make
(IRIX make), and gtar (GNU tar) together with tar (IRIX tar).  I suppose
the app you were trying to compile has been developed on a platform that
both had a native install and a GNU install.  I personally would edit
the makefile instead of adding links on my system, but that probably is
a matter of taste.

HTH,
Eric


-- 
 E.L. Meijer ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
 Eindhoven Univ. of Technology
 Lab. for Catalysis and Inorg. Chem. (SKA)


Re: reading rtf files

2000-02-09 Thread E.L. Meijer \(Eric\)
> 
> > Is there any utility/program in debian that assists in _reading_ rtf
> > files?  I only found a few that can generate them.
> Oh really did you? Could you please send me the names of those few...

There are latex2rtf (which converts latex), enscript (which can convert
plain text files) and troffcvt (for troff source).  These have their own
debian packages.  Outside debian, I found the Ted editor, which reads
and writes rtf files (http://www.nllgg.nl/Ted/).

HTH,
Eric

-- 
 E.L. Meijer ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
 Eindhoven Univ. of Technology
 Lab. for Catalysis and Inorg. Chem. (SKA)


Re: How to change size of page in postscript doc? (non-trivial question)

2000-02-09 Thread E.L. Meijer \(Eric\)
> 
> Hi All,
> 
> I've got a PostScript doc, which is incorrectly formated - the usable part
> uses a small rectangle on each page (on each page the same, but not centered
> on the page), and the margines are sometimes occupied by random writings, and
> sometimes not. I have no sources, so I can't generate it correctly.
> The psresize fails to handle it correctly - when enlarging, it moves part of
> the usable area outside the page and leaves some rubbish on it :-(.
> I need an utility, where I could specify not only the change of size, but also
> the X and Y offset, by which the page should be shifted in the output.
> Does anybody know such a beast?

pstops can do things like that.  It requires very thorough study of the
man page, and if the PS document is really shaky, your only option left
is to learn postscript (it is a computer language, not just a format)
and start debugging.  If you can do that, you will be highly esteemed
in hacker circles (but probably have lost joy in life ;).

HTH,
Eric

-- 
 E.L. Meijer ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
 Eindhoven Univ. of Technology
 Lab. for Catalysis and Inorg. Chem. (SKA)


Re: HP880c printing from (i.e.) GIMP

2000-02-04 Thread E.L. Meijer \(Eric\)
> 
> Hello,
> 
> I just installed a new HP Deskjet 880c. I installed 'apsfilter' and chose
> the 'cdjcolor' driver. I can print from Lyx fine, but I can't seem to get
> nice output from the GIMP. How exactly does this work? Saving the same image
> and printing it in Windows (Photoshop 5) does work.

There is a gs driver called `uniprint' that gives better results with a
number of printers.  To use it, there is a number of parameter files
ending in `.upp'.  Read about it in /usr/doc/gs/devices.txt.gz.  I think
you need `gs @cdj550.upp...' (this is what I use for a HP 870CXI).

HTH,
Eric

-- 
 E.L. Meijer ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
 Eindhoven Univ. of Technology
 Lab. for Catalysis and Inorg. Chem. (SKA)


Re: reading rtf files

2000-02-03 Thread E.L. Meijer \(Eric\)
> 
> "E.L. Meijer (Eric)" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> 
> > Is there any utility/program in debian that assists in _reading_ rtf
> > files?  I only found a few that can generate them.
> 
> As far as I know, at least Ghostview can read them.

No it cannot.  I looked around a bit further, and found Ted:

http://www.nllgg.nl/Ted/

It is a GPL-ed wysiwyg rtf editor.  It allowed me to read the rtf
document I wanted to read, and to find out that it does not contain the
info I hoped would be there :(.

Eric

-- 
 E.L. Meijer ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
 Eindhoven Univ. of Technology
 Lab. for Catalysis and Inorg. Chem. (SKA)


reading rtf files

2000-02-03 Thread E.L. Meijer \(Eric\)
Hi.

Is there any utility/program in debian that assists in _reading_ rtf
files?  I only found a few that can generate them.

TIA,
Eric

-- 
 E.L. Meijer ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
 Eindhoven Univ. of Technology
 Lab. for Catalysis and Inorg. Chem. (SKA)


Re: less and color

2000-01-28 Thread E.L. Meijer \(Eric\)
> 
> Then ls is sensing its output device and works accordingly? How does it do 
> that?

With the isatty(3) function.

HTH,
Eric

-- 
 E.L. Meijer ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
 Eindhoven Univ. of Technology
 Lab. for Catalysis and Inorg. Chem. (SKA)


Re: New HP Printers...?

2000-01-20 Thread E.L. Meijer \(Eric\)
> 
> On Tue, Jan 18, 2000 at 04:48:05PM +0100, E.L. Meijer Eric" wrote:
> > > 
> > > > 
> > > > Hello,
> > > > 
> > > > I am looking at buying a new printer, and had my eyes on a HP DeskJet
> > > > 710C, which I would definitely have bought if I only ran Windows.
> > > 
> > 
> > I wrote:
> > 
> > > The 710C is a Windows printer.  Someone hacked together a driver that
> > > works very well for black and white for the 710, 720, 820 and 1000
> 
> Hi,
> 
> I have an HP820Cse on one computer, and it's a Windows only printer as
> described above.  I use a pbm2ppa driver, but if you print 2 pages from
> netscape it takes 90% of the cpu for about 2 minutes.  In other words
> it's a real performace pig (it's a pig in windows too).  In all fairness
> it does a really nice job, but I wouldn't buy one today.

This surprises me somewhat.  I found that black and white printing from
linux with pbm2ppa on a 710 is really fast.  I have a PII 266MHz/64MB
system, and mostly print TeX output from linux.  Do you have a much
slower processor, or is it netscape performance that slows it down?

The color version I recently tried seemed to be working, although I have
to look into gamma settings and getting it to eject pages properly.
This is really slow, as it is in Windows.

Eric

-- 
 E.L. Meijer ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
 Eindhoven Univ. of Technology
 Lab. for Catalysis and Inorg. Chem. (SKA)


Re: New HP Printers...?

2000-01-18 Thread E.L. Meijer \(Eric\)
> 
> > 
> > Hello,
> > 
> > I am looking at buying a new printer, and had my eyes on a HP DeskJet
> > 710C, which I would definitely have bought if I only ran Windows.
> 

I wrote:

> The 710C is a Windows printer.  Someone hacked together a driver that
> works very well for black and white for the 710, 720, 820 and 1000
> (which use very similar protocols), see http://www.httptech.com/ppa/.
> Apparently there is an experimental color driver that is available if
> you subscribe to the developers list.
> 
> I got this printer partly beyond my control.  If I had to choose a
> printer, I would make sure there were good gs drivers for it available.

Just in case anyone is interested.  I looked again at it, and
apparently the pnm2ppa driver that should supply color support for
these printers is well on it's way to a productive state.  I am going to
test it soon.  See http://sourceforge.net/project/?group_id=1322.

Still I wouldn't really advocate buying this printer for linux as long
as HP is effectively keeping the protocol it uses a secret.

Eric


-- 
 E.L. Meijer ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
 Eindhoven Univ. of Technology
 Lab. for Catalysis and Inorg. Chem. (SKA)


Re: hwclock --adjust in slink

2000-01-18 Thread E.L. Meijer \(Eric\)
[...]
> > > In any case, there are hw K scripts:
> > > [18:17:27 /tmp]$  ls /etc/rc?.d/*hw*
> > > /etc/rc0.d/K25hwclock.sh  /etc/rc6.d/K25hwclock.sh  
> > > /etc/rcS.d/S50hwclock.sh
> > > [18:22:27 /tmp]$ 
> > > 
> > > Note that your system somehow got S instead of K for rc0 and rc6.
> > > I am running unstable.
> > 
> > On two different systems running slink I only have the S..hwclock.sh
> > scripts, so I guess this has changed in unstable.  Having the K..
> > scripts run at shutdown would give the symptoms I described, but my
> > system doesn't have them, so I don't understand what is happening.
> > I have version 2.9g-6 of util-linux.

David Wright:
> They run all right. hwclock just precedes the random seed.
> 
> So knowing I *had* to find something that runs it, I found:
> 
> /usr/doc/sysvinit/README.runlevels.gz
> 5. Halt/reboot
> penultimate paragraph
> 
>Then the /etc/rc6.d/SXX scripts will be executed alphabetically
>with "stop" as the first argument as well. The reason is that there
>is nothing to start anymore at this point - all scripts that are
>run are ment to bring the system down.
> 
> Working out whether and when to run things like hwclock --systohc $GMT
> at reboot is something I've always meant to look at on a rainy
> afternoon. The trouble is, it's never rained enough!

There I am, the rain in your life :)  Great you found it.  And it's a
good thing to know they decided to call them K..hwclock.sh in potato
anyway, for simple people like me that had the impression they understood
how sysvinit works.  Anyway, I think I am going to get rid of the links
in rc0.d and rc6.d.  They seem inappropriate for a system that is not up
24 hours a day.

Eric

-- 
 E.L. Meijer ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
 Eindhoven Univ. of Technology
 Lab. for Catalysis and Inorg. Chem. (SKA)


Re: New HP Printers...?

2000-01-18 Thread E.L. Meijer \(Eric\)
> 
> Hello,
> 
> I am looking at buying a new printer, and had my eyes on a HP DeskJet
> 710C, which I would definitely have bought if I only ran Windows.

The 710C is a Windows printer.  Someone hacked together a driver that
works very well for black and white for the 710, 720, 820 and 1000
(which use very similar protocols), see http://www.httptech.com/ppa/.
Apparently there is an experimental color driver that is available if
you subscribe to the developers list.

I got this printer partly beyond my control.  If I had to choose a
printer, I would make sure there were good gs drivers for it available.

HTH,
Eric

-- 
 E.L. Meijer ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
 Eindhoven Univ. of Technology
 Lab. for Catalysis and Inorg. Chem. (SKA)


Re: hwclock --adjust in slink

2000-01-18 Thread E.L. Meijer \(Eric\)
> 
> I did not fully understand you. Does or doesn't the BIOS get the right time
> after the system is shutdown?

The following happens:

I boot, find the time is lagging behind, and then do a

hwclock --set --date ...

This sets the BIOS clock (not the system time), as I can verify with

hwclock --show

>From the hwclock manual page I gather it is not adviced to run hwclock
--hctosys on a running system, although I did it once and it worked
(X11 went black for a few seconds, but it returned).  I know that the
hwclock.sh should adjust the clock and copy the BIOS clock to system
time at boot time (the S..hwclock.sh script) so I reboot.  If I reboot
to windows98 first, I found that the time was NOT correct, and the BIOS
clock was lagging just as much as it had been _before_ I set it with
hwclock --set...  My conclusion is that there must have been some
process that did a `hwclock --systohc' during shutdown, but I cannot
find any that does this in the /etc/rc?.d directories.

> In any case, there are hw K scripts:
> [18:17:27 /tmp]$  ls /etc/rc?.d/*hw*
> /etc/rc0.d/K25hwclock.sh  /etc/rc6.d/K25hwclock.sh  /etc/rcS.d/S50hwclock.sh
> [18:22:27 /tmp]$ 
> 
> Note that your system somehow got S instead of K for rc0 and rc6.
> I am running unstable.

On two different systems running slink I only have the S..hwclock.sh
scripts, so I guess this has changed in unstable.  Having the K..
scripts run at shutdown would give the symptoms I described, but my
system doesn't have them, so I don't understand what is happening.
I have version 2.9g-6 of util-linux.

Eric

-- 
 E.L. Meijer ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
 Eindhoven Univ. of Technology
 Lab. for Catalysis and Inorg. Chem. (SKA)


hwclock --adjust in slink

2000-01-17 Thread E.L. Meijer \(Eric\)
Hi all,

Since the BIOS clock in my PC at home is lagging behind more than 10
minutes per week, I looked into the correction mechanism of hwclock.  I
am able to set the BIOS clock with hwclock --set --date, and get the
expected result if I try hwclock --show.  The hwclock is called in a
script from runlevels S, 1, and 6:

$ ls /etc/rc?.d/*hw*
/etc/rc0.d/S25hwclock.sh  /etc/rc6.d/S25hwclock.sh  /etc/rcS.d/S50hwclock.sh

All these links call the script with the `start' argument, and as far
as I can tell, this should adjust the clock and the system time using
/etc/adjtime.  Note that if hwclock.sh were called with
stop|restart|reload, the BIOS clock would be set to the system time, but
no K..hwclock script exists.  If I reboot after a hwclock --set ...,
somehow the BIOS clock gets reset to the system time, so that when the
system comes up again, the BIOS clock trails as much as it did before I
--set it to the right time.  This is a on a slink system.  Has anyone
got an idea where the BIOS clock may be reset to its previous value?

TIA,
Eric

-- 
 E.L. Meijer ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
 Eindhoven Univ. of Technology
 Lab. for Catalysis and Inorg. Chem. (SKA)


Re: Viewing powerpoint files

2000-01-12 Thread E.L. Meijer \(Eric\)
> Is there a utility to view MS powerpoint files? Do I have to install
> that monster of StarOffice for this perpose? ;^)

It depends on what you call `view'.  Our secretary sometimes insists on
sending lecture programs in powerpoint files per email (yuck, bleah),
and all that matters is the text.  In that case a simple

strings  | less

will show you the text most of the time, after you scroll through a few
pages of junk.  The text is usually somewhere at the bottom.  Funny
thing is that you can often see older versions of the text that are
invisible in powerpoint.

HTH,
Eric

-- 
 E.L. Meijer ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
 Eindhoven Univ. of Technology
 Lab. for Catalysis and Inorg. Chem. (SKA)


Re: libc.so.4

2000-01-11 Thread E.L. Meijer \(Eric\)
> 
> I recently came across a program (for which I have not found the source
> code, though it may be available) which seems to depend on libc4 (it
> gives the error message 'file libc.so.4 not found' or similar). There is
> no Debian package for slink containing this library, as there is for
> libc5. Does this mean I cannot use this program? Where would I be able
> to find libc.so.4? Would it hurt just putting it in /lib/?

It is no longer supported in slink.  I still have it on my system, I
think there used to be a package in hamm.  It will not hurt if you put
libc.so.4 in /lib, but if you cannot find a debian package for it, it is
a better idea to put it in /usr/local/lib.  I think you will need to
have support for the `aout' executable format compiled into the kernel
as well.  I would suggest the following:

1) Try to find a recent version of the program (what is it, by the
way?).

2) Try to locate a hamm libc4 package.

3) Try to locate a libc.so.4 library elsewhere.

Options 2) and 3) require aout support in the kernel, and option 3)
requires that you manually run `ldconfig' after putting the library in
/usr/local/lib.

HTH,
Eric

-- 
 E.L. Meijer ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
 Eindhoven Univ. of Technology
 Lab. for Catalysis and Inorg. Chem. (SKA)


Re: What is this????

2000-01-10 Thread E.L. Meijer \(Eric\)
> 
> 
> I found this file somewhere:
> 
> 
> c---r-   1 8224 10280 49, 117 Dec  1  2031 fonts
> 
> Can anybody tell me what that c is all about???

The c means that it is a character device, e.g. like /dev/tty or
/dev/psmouse.  However, since the group and user owners of the file seem
unknown to your system (the numbers 8224 and 10280), it looks more like
a file with screwed up attributes.  You could try to run an fsck on the
disk to see if it gets corrected, or try to remove it (maybe after a
chattr command to change the attributes).  This could be a symptom of a
dying disk, but then again, maybe it isn't.  When this type of problem
occurs people also often start talking about scary things like file
system debuggers.  Could someone more knowledgeable jump in on this?

> This 'thing' is the reason for some trouble with apt / dpkg (something to
> do with xlib6g-dev) perhaps this c has something to do with that.

Maybe it used to be a directory before it got screwed up?

HTH,
Eric

-- 
 E.L. Meijer ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
 Eindhoven Univ. of Technology
 Lab. for Catalysis and Inorg. Chem. (SKA)


Re: CTRL-C Doesn't work??!! ....

2000-01-04 Thread E.L. Meijer \(Eric\)
[ about Ctrl-C having no effect ]

> So... in conclusion:  Ctrl-C is working fine - the signal is being
> received.  However, the shell isn't killing the running process
> 
> Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.

Doesn't Ctrl-C work for any program at all?  It does not work for a lot
of interactive programs when they are expecting input.  In those cases
you can usually press Ctrl-Z to stop the program, read the number in
brackets that bash prints, and use that in a kill command, like this:

$ xclock
[ press Ctrl-Z ]
[1]+  Stopped xclock
$ kill %1

If you cannot kill a non-interactive program like xclock with Ctrl-C, I
don't know what is going on.  Note however that specific programs can
choose to ignore Ctrl-C.  I do not believe programs can choose to ignore
a stop signal (Ctrl-Z).

HTH,
Eric

-- 
 E.L. Meijer ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
 Eindhoven Univ. of Technology
 Lab. for Catalysis and Inorg. Chem. (SKA)


Re: Interface to NT, mount? Samba? Rumba?

1999-12-20 Thread E.L. Meijer \(Eric\)
> 
>   - To allow Windows to natively see Linux partitions on your local
> machine, use the "ext2fs" utility for Windows 95/98, or a similar
> utility whose name escapes me for Windows NT.

Just a remark: the utility for windows 95/98 is called fsdext2
(http://www.yipton.demon.co.uk/).  It is not actively being maintained,
and the versions I tried long ago are still on the web page.  It
provides read only access, and is `moderately stable' on some PC's, and
hopeless on others.  Not something I'd recommend for even slightly
serious work.

HTH,
Eric

-- 
 E.L. Meijer ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
 Eindhoven Univ. of Technology
 Lab. for Catalysis and Inorg. Chem. (SKA)


Re: df and du disagree

1999-12-16 Thread E.L. Meijer \(Eric\)
David Wright said:
> 
> Bear in mind that du can also seriously underreport usage when run
> as a user because of permissions (whereas df is always right).

Besides files hiding `under' mount points, there is another type of file
that is invisble to du.  If a file which is opened by a process is
removed, it is not really removed from the disk.  As long as the process
keeps the file open, it is a valid file (to that process).  As soon as
the file is closed, the disk space is freed again.  Some programs use
this fact to make sure that temporary files are cleaned up even if the
program crashes: they open a scratch file, and immediately remove the
link from the disk.  Then the process has an open file that not even
root can read (unless with a disk editor), which disappears from the
disk as soon as it is closed.

Sometimes this technique causes hard-to-understand filled up /tmp
partitions if daemons have a leak towards a tmp file.  It then helps to
stop/start long running daemons to identify the problem.

HTH,
Eric

-- 
 E.L. Meijer ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
 Eindhoven Univ. of Technology
 Lab. for Catalysis and Inorg. Chem. (SKA)


Re: df and du disagree

1999-12-15 Thread E.L. Meijer \(Eric\)
> 
> Hi all,
> 
> df shows my main partiton to have 1.1 Gigs of data
> and du -x shows it to have about 650 MB.
> 
> I think du is correct.
> 
> df reads
> 
> FilesystemSize  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
> /dev/hda1 1.9G  1.1G  750M  60% /
> /dev/hda3  15M  1.2M   13M   8% /boot
> /dev/hda5 1.7G  1.2G  471M  72% /home
> /dev/hda10387M  281M   86M  77% /var
> /dev/hda6 3.2G  2.6G  479M  85% /samba
> 
> 
> If anyone knows what causes this and whether or not
> I need to worry about it I'd be very grateful.

Could it be that your main partition has data in directories that have
other file systems mounted on them?  E.g., is there data in /home on
/dev/ha1 that becomes invisible to du because /dev/hda5 is mounted on
it?

HTH,
Eric

-- 
 E.L. Meijer ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
 Eindhoven Univ. of Technology
 Lab. for Catalysis and Inorg. Chem. (SKA)


Re: Fortran, Lapack

1999-12-07 Thread E.L. Meijer \(Eric\)
On Tue, Dec 07, 1999 at 11:42:55AM +0100, Igor Mozetic wrote:
> 
> How does one compile a Fortran program with Lapack library ???
> I tried:
> 
> # g77 File.for

missing library

> # g77 -lliblapack File.for

wrong switch

> # g77 -L/usr/lib -lliblapack File.for

wrong switch plus superfluous option

With the -l option, you should leave out the `lib' part of the name, and
the extension:

$ g77 File.for -llapack

maybe you also need the math library (don't know if g77 does that
automatically), and if you want your code to be optimized, you'd add an
optimization switch:

$ g77 -O2 File.for -llapack -lm

Looking at your prompt `#', it seems as though you are working as root.
This is not a good idea.  Normally you only become root if you have to
for some reason, and do the rest as an `ordinary' user.

HTH,
Eric

-- 
 E.L. Meijer ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
 Eindhoven Univ. of Technology
 Lab. for Catalysis and Inorg. Chem. (SKA)


Re: deleting files

1999-11-23 Thread E.L. Meijer \(Eric\)
On Tue, Nov 23, 1999 at 05:00:01PM +1300, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> Hi
> 
> does anyone happen to know of a quicker way of deleting 4 files out of
> a directory other than the command "find . -exec rm {} \;"
> 
> will rm -r  be as quick?

It will actually be much quicker (you may need to add a -f option as
others pointed out).  The find command will start the rm command for
each file separately, so you will run rm 4 times instead of one
time.  If you need `find' to select files on specific criteria, like
name, user, or date, you should use it together with xargs:

find . -name \*.tmp -print | xargs rm -f {} \;

This will start rm the minimum amount of times with maximum length
command lines.

HTH,
Eric

-- 
 E.L. Meijer ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
 Eindhoven Univ. of Technology
 Lab. for Catalysis and Inorg. Chem. (SKA)


Re: the gimp?

1999-11-16 Thread E.L. Meijer \(Eric\)
On Mon, Nov 15, 1999 at 09:58:36PM -0500, Rob Mahurin wrote:
> On Mon, Nov 15, 1999 at 01:36:26PM -0500, Ben Collins wrote:
> > On Mon, Nov 15, 1999 at 01:11:34PM -0500, Ian Stirling wrote:
> > > "E.L. Meijer (Eric)" wrote:
> > > 
> > > > I think it is a bad idea to call it `debian gimp'.  If you do that you
> > > > suggest that debian has a heavily modified, enhanced version of gimp.
> > > > If I were one of the gimp developers I wouldn't like it if someone (say
> > > > Corel) would take it, remove some plugins, and then tack their name on
> > > > it (`Corel gimp'??).
> > > > 
> > > > Eric
> > > 
> > > They are entitled to if it's gpl software but it would
> > > be rude and inconsiderate. What about 'debian-gimp-lite'?
> > 
> > Why does Debian have to be in there? Why not just `gimp-lite'?
> > 
> 
> Why not just preach?  'gimp-libre'?

Actually this is probably the best idea.  Every package that has a
`non-free' variant and a free one could have the free package named
..-free.  This guarantees the user on the one hand that the contents of
the package is free, and also provides a hint that there are non-free
additions, for those that may need them.

Eric

-- 
 E.L. Meijer ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
 Eindhoven Univ. of Technology
 Lab. for Catalysis and Inorg. Chem. (SKA)


Re: the gimp?

1999-11-15 Thread E.L. Meijer \(Eric\)
On Mon, Nov 15, 1999 at 02:08:57AM -0500, Ian Stirling wrote:
> Brad wrote:
> 
> > You do realize that if gif support were in the main gimp package, then
> > the entire thing would have to go into nonfree, right? Since The Gimp is
> > GPLed, Debian has every right to remove gif support and redistribute those
> > sources to make the whole thing libre. If you really don't like that,
> > you're free to go download the sources and compile them for yourself.
> 
> I realize that Brad. Debian should rename 'the gimp' to
> 'debian gimp' when they take the legitimate liberty of
> modifying gpl software. And I did that: I fetched the
> pristine gimp from the gimp site.

I think it is a bad idea to call it `debian gimp'.  If you do that you
suggest that debian has a heavily modified, enhanced version of gimp.
If I were one of the gimp developers I wouldn't like it if someone (say
Corel) would take it, remove some plugins, and then tack their name on
it (`Corel gimp'??).

Eric

-- 
 E.L. Meijer ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
 Eindhoven Univ. of Technology
 Lab. for Catalysis and Inorg. Chem. (SKA)


Re: Where's man?

1999-11-08 Thread E.L. Meijer \(Eric\)
On Mon, Nov 08, 1999 at 03:00:33PM +0700, Oki DZ wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I've been looking around for man package in www.debian.org to no avail.
> Would anybody please tell me the package where man resides?

In my version of slink, there is a man package in the doc section of
debian main.  However, on www.nl.debian.org, it seems to be gone.
There is a man-db package
(http://www.nl.debian.org/Packages/stable/doc/man-db.html) that seems
to provide the man command according to the description.  Does anyone
know what happened to the vanilla man package?

Eric

-- 
 E.L. Meijer ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
 Eindhoven Univ. of Technology
 Lab. for Catalysis and Inorg. Chem. (SKA)


Re: how to compile packages optimized for Pentium or Pentium-II?

1999-11-05 Thread E.L. Meijer \(Eric\)
On Fri, Nov 05, 1999 at 11:08:34AM -0500, Ben Collins wrote:
> On Fri, Nov 05, 1999 at 09:57:07AM -0600, Brian Boonstra wrote:
> > Ingo wrote:
> > > On Thu, Nov 04, 1999 at 05:08:04PM +0100, Robert Varga wrote:
> > > >
> > > > How can I recompile the packages so that they be optimized for running 
> > > > on
> > > > Pentium or Pentium-II or else?
> > 
> > Does that mean that gcc normally is NOT Pentium optimized?
> 
> No. GCC can optimize for pentiums, by default it compiles for i386 though.
> This is needed so that we don't produce code which wont run on some
> systems that we want to support. All that is need is the proper CFLAGS set
> (which I assume the scripts that replace the normal gcc and g++ merely add
> these manually, and without the need for modifying the build).

Don't expect too much of these pentium-specific options.  The biggest
speedup I have seen for a fractal generator on a PentiumII, was the one
I got with -Os.  This is not pentium-specific at all.  It reduces the
code size, so that it fits better in the processor cache.  It was only
12% faster than the regular -O2 optimization, which everybody uses.
Adding -ffast-math made the program slower (sic), and -march=pentiumpro
did not do anything noticable at all.  I personally don't think you
will note a big difference if you recompile all of debian with
pentium-specific optimization options.  This may change once the intel
optimizations are built into gcc though.

HTH,
Eric

-- 
 E.L. Meijer ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
 Eindhoven Univ. of Technology
 Lab. for Catalysis and Inorg. Chem. (SKA)


Re: Why use Enlightenment?

1999-11-04 Thread E.L. Meijer \(Eric\)
On Thu, Nov 04, 1999 at 11:33:29AM +0900, Miles Bader wrote:
[...]
> Enlightenment seems to be as fast as any other window manager on my
> P133/80Meg machine, and E is a quite a bit more attractive than any
> other WM I've seen (I should perhaps phrase this as `most of the other
> WMs I've seen are really ugly').  [WindowMaker looks alright, but I find
> its icon/icon-dock behavior just too wacky to be usable...]

Does the current incarnation of E already have a desktop pager with the
same functionality as fvwm2?  Some time ago it didn't, and for me it is
one of the features I like most (and use heavily) about fvwm2.

Eric

-- 
 E.L. Meijer ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
 Eindhoven Univ. of Technology
 Lab. for Catalysis and Inorg. Chem. (SKA)


Re: Does anyone use ZIP disks to backup/restore their system? How?

1999-11-03 Thread E.L. Meijer \(Eric\)
On Tue, Nov 02, 1999 at 06:29:45PM -0800, John Miskinis wrote:
> Hi,

[...]

> This leads me to ask if most people just backup their important
> files on linux, and if they lose their system, they reinstall from
> scratch, then restore just their important (user modified) files?

Not even that.  I only safeguard my own products (TeX files, fractals,
programs).  The rest I have on CD, and the second time I install
something I usually configure things faster.  Sometimes it is nice to
try some new settings.

> This is how I always worked on Windows 95.  If I had a builtin
> CDROM, and linux was easier to install I might opt for this, but
> on my Thinkpad 560, it took me 4-5 hours to get everything back.

It probably would take me the same amount of time.  But then again, it
doesn't happen a lot.

Eric

-- 
 E.L. Meijer ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
 Eindhoven Univ. of Technology
 Lab. for Catalysis and Inorg. Chem. (SKA)


Re: Does anyone use ZIP disks to backup/restore their system? How?

1999-11-02 Thread E.L. Meijer \(Eric\)
On Tue, Nov 02, 1999 at 11:56:05AM +0100, Wouter Hanegraaff wrote:
> On Tue, Nov 02, 1999 at 02:11:09AM -0800, John Miskinis wrote:
> > Hi,
> > 
> > I'm hoping to find a set of tools that will allow a linux system
> > to be backed up, and restored, using ZIP disks.  I would really
> > appreciate any advise on this subject, from anyone who has
> > successfully restored a system from a multi-volume set.
> 
> I've heard taper can work with zipdisks.
> However, if you have enough disk space you can just use tar and split to
> make a splitted (and gzip'd) tarfile in /tmp, and then just copy the splits
> to your zipdisk.
[... description ...]

I wrote a little program that can do this without intermediate storage:


MSPLIT(1) Dividing output over multiple volumes.MSPLIT(1)


NAME
   msplit  -  a  utility to divide output over multiple flop­
   pies, zip disks, etc

SYNOPSIS
| msplit  

DESCRIPTION
   This manual page describes version 0.2 of msplit.

   Msplit reads data  from  the  standard  input  (usually  a
   pipe),  and  writes  it to files named .num, where
   num is an increasing number, in a  directory  on  which  a
   removable  medium can be mounted.  Typical uses will be to
   distribute data over multiple floppies or zip disks.   You
   should  not  mount  anything  before  running the command.
   Msplit will ask the user to insert the  removable  volume,
   and  try to mount it with the command `mount '.
   Then it will open a file named .0, and write until
   there is no more input or the volume is full.  If the lat­
   ter case applies, msplit will umount  the  directory,  ask
   for  another  volume (usually a disk), mount it, and start
   writing .1.  This process continues until there is
   no  more  input.  Note that msplit does not erase any data
   found on the disks, it only adds to them.  This  makes  it
   more flexible than using regular split(1).  Another advan­
   tage above split is that no intermediary  files  are  cre­
   ated.


The current version also lists the contents of the mounted volume, and
offers the possibility to erase everything.  Restoring without intermediate
files could also be done with a procedure like this (and this applies
also to archives made with regular split):

Open an xterm, and do

$ mkfifo tarfile
$ tar xvf tarfile

Open another xterm, and supposing you have used msplit and generated
files named backup.0 .. backup.2 on different zip disks, do something
like (this assumes you use bash)

$ exec 3>tarfile
insert first zip disk
$ mount /zip; cat /zip/backup.0 1>&3; umount /zip
insert second zip disk
$ mount /zip; cat /zip/backup.1 1>&3; umount /zip
insert third zip disk
$ mount /zip; cat /zip/backup.2 1>&3; umount /zip
$ exec 3>&1

Be sure to do this from the right directory.  In between the cat
commands you can give any commands you like, but make sure to cat the
backup files to file descriptor 3 in the right order!  If I get around
it, one day I will write `mcat' which automates this procedure and
complements msplit.  Personally I use msplit mostly for floppies, so it
is in general not impossible to store the intermediate files.

If anyone is interested in `msplit' I can email it to them.  If anyone
feels like putting it in a debian package I'll tack on a GPL licence and
you can go ahead.  Of course there are no warranties ...

-- 
 E.L. Meijer ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
 Eindhoven Univ. of Technology
 Lab. for Catalysis and Inorg. Chem. (SKA)


Re: C programing

1999-10-27 Thread E.L. Meijer \(Eric\)
On Tue, Oct 26, 1999 at 05:11:45PM +, John Carline wrote:
> "Ingles, Raymond" wrote:
> 
> > > On Mon, Oct 25, 1999 at 10:07:28PM +, John Carline wrote:
> > [...]
> > > After spending the last two days trying to convert a C
> > > program I wrote some 6 years ago in microsoft C into linux. I
> > > just have to echo this question.
> >
> >  This sort of question pops up on the C newsgroups and mailing lists
> > a lot. There *is* no ANSI C way to, for example, clear the screen. The
> > DOS functions from "conio.h" are completely separate from the C standard.
> > (Indeed, they are heavily tied to real-mode 8086 and CGA/VGA graphics
> > and PC hardware, and often can't even be *emulated* well on other
> > hardware.)
> 
> Yup! you've just described my plight. Naturally my code is *heavy*  in calls 
> to
> "conio.h" and "graph.h".

For simple plotting to a window, be sure to look at libplot from the
plotutils package.  It is rather basic, but easy to use if all you need
is a simple plot.  As a bonus, it has the same interface for plotting to
a window as for plotting to postscript and various other file formats.
Plotutils has info documentation.

HTH,
Eric

-- 
 E.L. Meijer ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
 Eindhoven Univ. of Technology
 Lab. for Catalysis and Inorg. Chem. (SKA)


Re: C programing

1999-10-26 Thread E.L. Meijer \(Eric\)
On Mon, Oct 25, 1999 at 10:07:28PM +, John Carline wrote:
>  
[cut again ...]
> 
> After spending the last two days trying to convert a C program I
> wrote some 6 years ago in microsoft C into linux. I just have to
> echo this question.  Is there no linux specific/best book that
> covers gcc and g++.  One that includes all the standard library
> calls . I currently have four books on C (not the Kerninghan book
> though. I'll have to go look at it) and they're basically
> worthless. I'm not sure if it's that they're simply too old or
> too 'microsoft', but I'd love to find a book on gcc that would be
> a simple but complete reference for the occasional C programer.

[ standard comment: please limit your line length to <= 72 characters ]

For a good general overview of the standard C library install the
glibcdoc debian package, and type `info libc' (or use your favorite
info reader).  It is quite readable and has a lot of info on
programming with ANSI standard C library functions and on typical unix
programming stuff like pipes, regular expressions, sockets, process
control.  If you need to control character input from the keyboard and
position the cursor in a terminal window, then install the ncurses
development package and read the man page (man ncurses) which is rather
elaborate.

HTH,
Eric

-- 
 E.L. Meijer ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
 Eindhoven Univ. of Technology
 Lab. for Catalysis and Inorg. Chem. (SKA)


Re: How to shut up dselect?

1999-10-21 Thread E.L. Meijer \(Eric\)
On Thu, Oct 21, 1999 at 11:28:15AM +0200, Daniel Haude wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I have a question related to installing non-debian programs:
> 
> When I first installed Debian 2.1, I noticed that it came with teTeX 0.9.
> I un-installed that and installed teTeX-1.0 from the CTAN archive. Of
> course, the debian package manager doesn't know about this, so whenever I
> use dselect, it comes up with this old "some package needs teTeX" line. I
> once even didn't notice and let dselect have its way, so all of a sudden
> it started installing teTeX 0.9. I hit Ctrl-C to stop that (I know, bad
> idea), and now teTeX 0.9 is so fucked up that dselect won't even
> un-install whatever fragments it managed to put on the disk. It tells me
> to install it first and then un-install it. 
> 
> In this case, this is not a big problem because I have teTeX entirely
> under its own tree in /usr/local/teTeX, so messing around with another
> version will not do any damage. But if I had installed teTeX-1.0 in the
> same place as 0.9, it would now certainly be broken. 

You should _always_ install non-debian packages under /usr/local.  That
is the only way to guarantee that debian will not fudge with it.
Practically all compilable software you find in the wild will by default
install itself in /usr/local anyway.

> Is there a way to tell dselect: "I installed sucha-and-such myself, it's
> there, so stop bitching (and remember next time)"? I know that this is
> somewhat against the whole idea of packet management. Is making a .tar.gz
> into a .deb package the only clean way? What if I don't want to make the
> .tar.gzipped source tree the packege, but the "make install"ed result
> (with all its files scattered in various places of the system)?

The equivs package was designed to deal with this situation.

HTH,
Eric

-- 
 E.L. Meijer ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
 Eindhoven Univ. of Technology
 Lab. for Catalysis and Inorg. Chem. (SKA)


Re: printing specific pages

1999-10-20 Thread E.L. Meijer \(Eric\)
On Wed, Oct 20, 1999 at 01:11:38PM +0200, Jean-Yves BARBIER wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> I did not found anything about printing only certain pages.
> Is it possible? (I'd like to print odd pages, then even on
> the forms verso)
> 
> I mean from the command line, not from a word processor.

If the postscript file is well-formed (which many are not), you could
use psselect from the psutils package.

HTH,
Eric

-- 
 E.L. Meijer ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
 Eindhoven Univ. of Technology
 Lab. for Catalysis and Inorg. Chem. (SKA)


Re: reg exp question

1999-10-20 Thread E.L. Meijer \(Eric\)
On Wed, Oct 20, 1999 at 10:56:12AM +0100, Oliver Elphick wrote:
> Shao Zhang wrote:
>   >Hi,
>   >   I have very limited reg exp knowledge, but I need this badly...
>   >
>   >   Could someone tell me how to write a sed script to replace the
>   >   following string?
>   >
>   >   From string \textsc{Foo} to Foo
>   >
>   >   Thanks for your help.
> 
> sed -e 's/\\textsc{\(.*\)}/\1/'

This goes wrong if you have two of these expressions on one line:

\textsc{Foo} \textsc{Bar}

gives

Foo} \textsc{Bar

If `Foo' cannot contain any `}' characters, then you can solve this with

sed -e 's/\\textsc{\([^}]*\)}/\1/g'

If `Foo' does contain `}' (like \textsc{\Foo{\Bar}}) then I don't know
how to handle that.

If this really is TeX, you could probably add

\def\textsc#1{#1}

somewhere at the top of your document to get the desired result.

HTH,
Eric

-- 
 E.L. Meijer ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
 Eindhoven Univ. of Technology
 Lab. for Catalysis and Inorg. Chem. (SKA)


Re: hda: irq timeout

1999-10-19 Thread E.L. Meijer \(Eric\)
On Mon, Oct 18, 1999 at 04:58:56PM +0200, Peter Weiss wrote:
> 
> Hello,
> 
> running kernel 2.2.12 on a new machine I found the following kernel
> messages in the syslog file with decreasing time intervalls:
> 
> Oct 18 16:28:38 Winona kernel: ide0: reset: success 
> Oct 18 16:30:45 Winona kernel: hda: irq timeout: status=0xd0 { Busy } 
> Oct 18 16:30:47 Winona kernel: ide0: reset: success 
> Oct 18 16:33:15 Winona kernel: hda: irq timeout: status=0xd0 { Busy } 

Ouch!

[...]

> Does anybody have ideas/ suggestions?

Make backups quickly!  I have seen this kind of messages three times
now, and each time they came from a dying hard disk.  Especially the
fact that it occurs at decreasing intervals is alarming.  Try to backup
valuable data first, and then do a fsck on the disk.  If you find a lot
of errors, it is almost certain the disk is failing.

The problem could also be in the hard disk controller or the
motherboard.  Maybe reseating the connectors helps.

Good luck,
Eric

-- 
 E.L. Meijer ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
 Eindhoven Univ. of Technology
 Lab. for Catalysis and Inorg. Chem. (SKA)


Re: Netscape and its cache

1999-10-11 Thread E.L. Meijer \(Eric\)
On Mon, Oct 11, 1999 at 03:22:12AM -0400, Arcady Genkin wrote:
> Hi all:
> 
> I specified in Netscape's preferences disk cache of
> 1000kBytes. However, whenever I go and "du ~/.netscape/cache", I
> invariably get some huge number:
> 
> 3,5Mcache
> 
> And this is because I deleted its contents manually several days ago.
> 
> Now, even funnier. When I do "Clear Disk Cache" from the same
> Preferences dialog, it only clears a small fraction of the space
> used. Here's what I saw after clearing:
> 
> 2,8Mcache
> 
> So it only cleared 700K. This pisses me off. Any ideas, anyone?

I noticed the same thing.  It is broken as far as I can see.  I added
the following line to my crontab:

  50   ** 0/bin/rm -rf /home/tgakem/.netscape/cache

This completely removes the cache once every week.  After I start
netscape when the cache dir is gone, it pops up some error window, I
click OK or something like that, and continue with a neatly cleaned
disk.  It's not ideal, but workable for me.  I don't belong to the crowd
that gets annoyed if they have to restart netscape every week.

HTH,
Eric

-- 
 E.L. Meijer ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
 Eindhoven Univ. of Technology
 Lab. for Catalysis and Inorg. Chem. (SKA)


Re: file with prz extension

1999-10-05 Thread E.L. Meijer \(Eric\)
On Tue, Oct 05, 1999 at 11:22:22AM +0200, Istvan Benak wrote:
> Hi all!
> 
> How can I view with my Linux box the somfile.prz file? Which program
> should I use? Or if someone have a program which can view this file and
> can convert it to an human format (i.e. pdf, or ppt, or anything else)
> please send me a mail

Does the `file' command recognize it (type `file somfile.prz')?

Eric

-- 
 E.L. Meijer ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
 Eindhoven Univ. of Technology
 Lab. for Catalysis and Inorg. Chem. (SKA)


Re: Language of www.debian.org.....

1999-09-28 Thread E.L. Meijer \(Eric\)
On Tue, Sep 28, 1999 at 06:11:15AM -0700, Martin Waller wrote:
> er - who's been hacking into the Debian www site?
> 
> The main page appears to be in elvish or something...
> 
> ???

The main page of www.debian.org looks OK to me.  The Dutch mirror
www.nl.debian.nl however, seems to be in Turkish by default.  If you go
to the bottom and click on `Yngilizce', you will get an english version.
Now I don't know how the default changed...

HTH,
Eric

-- 
 E.L. Meijer ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
 Eindhoven Univ. of Technology
 Lab. for Catalysis and Inorg. Chem. (SKA)


[OT] cdrom speed adjustment

1999-09-21 Thread E.L. Meijer \(Eric\)
Hi all,

I know someone who has a windows program that limits the speed of his
cdrom drive.  Is there a way to do this in linux?  Although it is a
nice idea that my ide/atapi drive can do 36-speed, it sounds like a
hoovercraft taking off when it runs that fast, and for most
applications 8-speed or something like that would be plenty.  It also
seems to me that it actually takes a lot of time to get upto speed, so
that it sometimes _feels_ slower than the trusty old double-speed drive
I used to have in my old 486.

Eric


-- 
 E.L. Meijer ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
 Eindhoven Univ. of Technology
 Lab. for Catalysis and Inorg. Chem. (SKA)


Re: [OT] How to find the exact time, when the serial data arrived?

1999-09-17 Thread E.L. Meijer \(Eric\)
On Fri, Sep 17, 1999 at 10:14:28AM +0200, Wojciech Zabolotny wrote:
> Hi All!
> 
> I'm writing an application requiring the exact knowledge of arrival time
> of serial data (resolution below 0.1 sec is desired).
> Is there any way to arrange it in the standard Linux kernel, or should I
> modify the serial driver? (Or even use the RT Linux?)

You can use gettimeofday, which returns the time in a struct:

   struct timeval {
   long tv_sec;/* seconds */
   long tv_usec;  /* microseconds */
   };

(see the man page)
I think the real resolution of this is 0.01 seconds.  If that is not
enough, there is high resolution timer device you can compile into the
kernel.  If you look for it in the kernel configuration (make xconfig or
equivalent) you should be able to find it.

HTH,
Eric


-- 
 E.L. Meijer ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
 Eindhoven Univ. of Technology
 Lab. for Catalysis and Inorg. Chem. (SKA)


Re: Which package contains:

1999-09-10 Thread E.L. Meijer \(Eric\)
On Fri, Sep 10, 1999 at 07:49:32AM +0200, Urban Gabor wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> Which package contain the following programs:
>   xload
xcontrib

>   xinfo   
Hmm, I don't know this one, there is one in the non-free scilab package,
but maybe that is not what you mean.  What does it do?  I do know
xdpyinfo, which is in xbase-clients.

>   xman
xcontrib

> or should I compile them from source? :-)

For questions like this, you ftp to your local debian mirror, go to the
stable (or unstable, if you like living dangerously) directly, and pick
up the Contents-i386.gz (or Contents-alpha.gz or whatever) file.  Then
you do 

zgrep mycommand Contents-i386.gz
or
zgrep '\' Contents-i386.gz

and you will know in what package the command is.

HTH,
Eric

-- 
 E.L. Meijer ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
 Eindhoven Univ. of Technology
 Lab. for Catalysis and Inorg. Chem. (SKA)


Re: Why use Debian? Why not Red Hat?

1999-09-08 Thread E.L. Meijer \(Eric\)
On Wed, Sep 08, 1999 at 07:54:49PM +0200, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> I don't wanna start a flame war, but it is reeelly all that difficult to use
> 7(or is it 9? -I forget) installation disks instead of two?.

Well ...

I remember doing an install on a system with a dodgy disk drive.  Making
the install floppies to find out during 3 attempts that floppy 2,3, and
6 need to be written again is somewhat annoying.  I have always found
the combination linux/rawrite2/floppies _much_ less reliable than one
might desire.

Eric

-- 
 E.L. Meijer ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
 Eindhoven Univ. of Technology
 Lab. for Catalysis and Inorg. Chem. (SKA)


Re: ostrstream question (OT)

1999-08-27 Thread E.L. Meijer \(Eric\)
On Thu, Aug 26, 1999 at 10:03:21PM -0600, Robert Kerr wrote:
> Hi all,
> I'm having some problems converting my app to run under linux.  It runs
> alright under SGI, HP-UX, Solaris and WinNT, but it crashes beautifully
> under linux.
> 
> Anyway, I have a member variable called journalString of type ostrstream.
> I instantiate it so:
> journalString = new ostrstream();
> journalString->rdbuf()->setbuf(NULL, 50);
> 
> but when I try to use the << operator with it, it Segfaults.
> Example crashes:
> 
> *journalString << ends;
> *journalString << s << ' '; where s is a const char *
> *journalString << name;  where name is a const char *
> 
> Am I using ostrstream wrong?  Any ideas?

It looks to me as if you are doing too complicated things.  Is the
rdbuf->setbuf(NULL, 50) meant to allocated memory?  You don't need to do
that, the class is designed to take care of that by itself.

Is there a reason to have a member ostrstream pointer, instead of just
an ostrstream?  Typical use would be something like

ostrstream* journalString = new ostrstream();
string s = "something";
*journalString << "bla" << ' ' << s << ends;

journalString->c_str() returns the buffer as a C style string (char*).
If you use that, you need to deallocate the memory pointed to by c_str()
yourself, unless you later call

journalString->freeze(0);

Note that in the future the ostrstream will be replaced by
ostringstream.

Finally, segmentation faults can be due to memory corruption happening
elsewhere in the program, and only triggered in your ostrstream lines.
The fact that a program does not crash on other platforms does not mean
there are no bugs.  It is well possible that a memory corrupting bug
only bites you in linux.

HTH,
Eric

BTW, this is more of a question for a C++ newsgroup, like
comp.lang.c++.moderated.


-- 
 E.L. Meijer ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
 Eindhoven Univ. of Technology
 Lab. for Catalysis and Inorg. Chem. (SKA)


Re: fvwm2 configuration

1999-08-25 Thread E.L. Meijer \(Eric\)
On Tue, Aug 24, 1999 at 10:37:35PM -0500, Brian Servis wrote:
> *- On 25 Aug, John Carline wrote about "Re: fvwm2 configuration"
> > "E.L. Meijer (Eric)" wrote:
> > 
[ problems to get a pager with multiple desks in fvwm2 ]
> > 
> > Probably the simplest way would be to copy the "system.fvwm2rc" into your 
> > home
> > directory as ".fvwm2rc" and then edit it so that it puts up exactly the 
> > FvwmPager
> > setup you want. You then wouldn't need to put it into the "post.hook". That 
> > or
> > comment out the items in ".fvwm2rc" and leave your "post.hook" as is.
> > 
> 
> The system.fvwm2rc in Debian's setup is used to read all the system and
> user .hook files.  It is designed to be robust enough to allow the user
> full configuration of the wm or no configuration at all and just use the
> defaults.

Yup, I did not want to break that system.

[ ... ]

> I use the following at the top of my ~/.fvwm/post.hook and it works
> great.
> 
> ButtonStyle Reset
> DestroyDecor default-decor
> DestroyModuleConfig FvwmIconBox
> DestroyModuleConfig FvwmButtons
> DestroyModuleConfig FvwmPager
> 
> I then have a clean slate to define my own setup for the above modules,
> etc.

This is not the point.  The number of desks cannot be configured this
way, it is set when the FvwmPager module is started:

FvwmPager 0 0

This is the default, running from desk 0 to desk 0 (that makes a total
of, er, 1 (one) desk).

I got a private email from Michael Tempsch, in which he pointed me to
the documentation in /usr/doc/fvmw2/README.sysrc.gz.  There it says:

Configuring your pager
You can put *FvwmPagerXXX lines in the post hook to
reconfigure the pager to your liking: your options
will override the defaults provided.  This is good
enough for most people.

Unfortunately, you can't easily change the number of
desks covered by the pager.  This is because the pager
is started just after the post hook.  If you want
multiple desks, you could wait for the appearance of
the pager, kill it, and start a new one configured to
you liking.  You can do this by including something
like the following at the end of your init-restart
hook:
+ "I" Wait FvwmPager
+ "I" KillModule FvwmPager
+ "I" Module FvwmPager 0 3

This is what I was looking for.  Thanks, Michael!  (I hope you don't
mind me telling about private email on the list...:)

Eric

-- 
 E.L. Meijer ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
 Eindhoven Univ. of Technology
 Lab. for Catalysis and Inorg. Chem. (SKA)


fvwm2 configuration

1999-08-24 Thread E.L. Meijer \(Eric\)
Hi all,

I use fvwm2 as a window manager in slink.  In
/etc/X11/fvwm2/system.fvwm2rc, the FvwmPager module is started with one
desk, after .fvwm2/post.hook is read.  I like to start FvwmPager with
three desks, and do that in my post.hook file.  As a result there are
always two FvwmPagers running, on top of each other.  Luckily the one I
added is on top most of the time, but sometimes it isn't.  Is there a
way to make fvwm2 stop processing the configuration files in
.fvwm2/post.hook?  I tried to play around with the KillModule command,
but that seemed to have no effect.

Eric

-- 
 E.L. Meijer ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
 Eindhoven Univ. of Technology
 Lab. for Catalysis and Inorg. Chem. (SKA)


Re: debian installation

1999-08-23 Thread E.L. Meijer \(Eric\)
On Mon, Aug 23, 1999 at 09:26:46AM -0300, JARDINE, Jeff wrote:
> I think you're absolutely right.  I'm still working on my first installation
> (2 months and counting).  Linux is *not* happy with a PnP soundcard and
> CD-ROM.  From everything I've read, it appears to be necessary to recompile
> the kernel when configuring PnP hardware.  Unfortunately, this can not be
> done when you only have the base kernel installed.  So, it seems, first-time
> installation from a PnP CD ROM is impossible.

Some BIOSes have an option to configure PNP devices.  On my asus P2B for
example there is an option `PNP aware OS', or something to that effect.
If I set that to `no', I can use my PNP soundblaster without
isapnptools, because the BIOS takes care of the initialisation.

HTH,
Eric

-- 
 E.L. Meijer ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
 Eindhoven Univ. of Technology
 Lab. for Catalysis and Inorg. Chem. (SKA)


Re: gs/gs-aladin, (e)pswrite and setlinewidth

1999-08-23 Thread E.L. Meijer \(Eric\)
On Mon, Aug 23, 1999 at 01:03:59PM +0200, Clemens Heuberger wrote:
> 
> I have the following problem: I have a postscript-file which draws to
> lines, a thin one and a thick one:
> 
> thue:~/test $cat simple.ps
> %!
> newpath 0 20 moveto 100 0 rlineto stroke
> newpath 0 50 moveto 100 0 rlineto 10 setlinewidth stroke
> showpage
> 
> I would like to have it rewritten as a eps-File (Of course, I could do
> this myself in this small example, but actually, I have a much bigger
> file which contains output from latex+psfrag and all kind of things which
> I want to get rid of), so I use epswrite:
> 
> thue:~/test $gs -sDEVICE=epswrite -sOutputFile=simple.eps -dBATCH -dNOPAUSE 
> simple.ps
> GNU Ghostscript 5.10 (1998-12-17)
> Copyright (C) 1997 Aladdin Enterprises, Menlo Park, CA.  All rights reserved.
> This software comes with NO WARRANTY: see the file COPYING for details.
> 
> In the result, the thick line has become thin.
> (I am using gs on slink; I also tried gs-aladin from slink and potato,
> same effect ...)
> 
> Any thoughts?

Tried it.  Same result.  Then tried

ps2epsi simple.ps simple.eps

This seems to work OK, it is also in the gs package in slink.  It looks
like a bug in the epswrite device of gs, worth of reporting.

HTH,
Eric

-- 
 E.L. Meijer ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
 Eindhoven Univ. of Technology
 Lab. for Catalysis and Inorg. Chem. (SKA)


Re: C++ compiling problem

1999-08-20 Thread E.L. Meijer \(Eric\)
On Thu, Aug 19, 1999 at 11:09:35AM -0600, Robert Kerr wrote:
> Okay, here's the situation.
> 
> I'm porting a large project to Linux.  Some of the libraries we have to
> use were compiled with an older version of egcs (I'm pretty sure it was
> 1.0.3). So, they expect the libraries (specifically libstdc++) that come
> with that version of egcs.  Okay, so I installed the older version of egcs
> from Debian 2.0.  I installed it by hand so it wouldn't overwrite my
> current version of everything.  I set different path names and all that.
> Anyway, part of our code, which egcs 1.1.1 handles perfectly, causes a
> compiler crash for 1.0.3.  H.  So, here's what I propose to do:  I've
> downloaded a copy of libstdc++2.8.0.  I am planning on compiling it using
> the egcs 1.1.1 compiler.  Then I should have the new compiler with the old
> set of libraries.  
> 
> Does anyone see any major problems with this idea?

It seems a lot of trouble.  Why don't you just install libg++2.8.2-dev
2.91.60-5 (slink)?  This contains the parts of libstdc++ that were gnu
extensions and are dropped in favour of stl and friends in the newer
versions.  I think all you then need to do is after installation add a
-lg++ flag when linking.

It seems a good idea though to try to convert the code if you continue
using it in the future, since libg++ is no longer actively maintained.

HTH,
Eric

-- 
 E.L. Meijer ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
 Eindhoven Univ. of Technology
 Lab. for Catalysis and Inorg. Chem. (SKA)


Re: bash and parameters

1999-08-16 Thread E.L. Meijer \(Eric\)
On Sat, Aug 14, 1999 at 12:50:20AM -0500, Lance Hoffmeyer wrote:
> When I create a shell script how do I pass parameters to it?  For
> example, if I want to create a directory based on a name I pass to the
> program with a shell script called mkmine the command would look like
> "mkmine Mydir" and this would create a directory called "Mydir"

> 
> would the script simply be mkdir %1 ?

No, that is a DOS batch script.  bash is really different, it uses $1 :)

> 
> if I wanted it to create a directory based on a name I give it and
> the current month would it be

> mkdir %1 & date %m  ? 

No again, this is DOS-speak.

A complete bash script to do what you want looks something like this:


#! /bin/bash

mkdir $1`date +%m`


The first line ensures the script is executed by bash.  The backquotes
around `date +%m` return the result of the date command as a string.  An
alternative way to get this result is

mkdir $1$(date +%m)

You make the
script executable with

chmod +x 

Re: [OT] How fast is a PIII?

1999-08-06 Thread E.L. Meijer \(Eric\)
> > The only difference between a PII and a PIII at the same clock speed
> > that I know of are the extra `SSE' instructions that are mainly useful
> > for 3D stuff and maybe some other floating point intensive software.

> IIRC, the 2nd level cache of the Pentium III is running at the same speed as
> the CPU, wheras the 2nd level cache of Pentium II's is running at half the
> CPU speed.

No, the PIII has its 2nd level cache running at half processor speed.
The 2nd level cache does run at full processor speed in the Xeon and
PIII Xeon processors, which are ridiculously overpriced.

HTH,
Eric

-- 
 E.L. Meijer ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
 Eindhoven Univ. of Technology
 Lab. for Catalysis and Inorg. Chem. (SKA)


Re: [OT] How fast is a PIII?

1999-08-06 Thread E.L. Meijer \(Eric\)
> 
> 
> I wrote:
> 
> > Does anyone know how fast is a PIII, say 500MHz?
> > How does it compare to PII or Celeron?
> 
> http://www.zdnet.com/pcweek/stories/news/0,4153,391810,00.html
> 
> says it's only 8% faster than PII at same clock speed when
> running business apps on Windows.
> If anyone has Linux benchmarks, post 'em!

The only difference between a PII and a PIII at the same clock speed
that I know of are the extra `SSE' instructions that are mainly useful
for 3D stuff and maybe some other floating point intensive software.  As
far as I know, there are currently no compilers for linux that actually
use these instructions, so I would expect the difference is about 0%.

HTH,
Eric


-- 
 E.L. Meijer ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
 Eindhoven Univ. of Technology
 Lab. for Catalysis and Inorg. Chem. (SKA)


Re: bash manual/info lacks examples

1999-08-05 Thread E.L. Meijer \(Eric\)
> 
> It's been a LONG time since I've use the authentic one-and-only
> Bourne shell.  How many Bourne shell clones do we have floating
> around here these days?
> 
> Mike

I don't know about clones, but I am typing this on an SGI box where sh
_is_ the Bourne shell, and I also have access to a Solaris server where
this is true.  OTOH I don't think there is a real problem using ksh, ash,
zsh, or bash features, unless the first line of your script reads

#! /bin/sh

HTH,
Eric

-- 
 E.L. Meijer ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
 Eindhoven Univ. of Technology
 Lab. for Catalysis and Inorg. Chem. (SKA)


Re: bash manual/info lacks examples

1999-08-05 Thread E.L. Meijer \(Eric\)
Says Mike:
> bash shells can do:
> 
> let a=$b+$c*$d
> let a=($b+$c)*$d
> 
> but if you want to ensure compatibility with Bourne shells like
> ash,  you should stick to:
> 
> a=$(($b+$c*$d))
> a=$((($b+$c)*$d))

but if you want to ensure compatibility with Bourne shells like
the Bourne shell :), you should stick to 

a=`expr $b + $c \* $d`
a=`expr \( $b + $c \) \* $d`

to complicate things, the spaces in the expression after `expr' are
required.

HTH,
Eric

-- 
 E.L. Meijer ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
 Eindhoven Univ. of Technology
 Lab. for Catalysis and Inorg. Chem. (SKA)


Re: Sound error: Couldn't allocate DMA buffer

1999-08-04 Thread E.L. Meijer \(Eric\)
> > Look at the May 1999 archives for this list, with the subject
> > Can't allocate DMA buffer
> > (as opposed to Couldn't!) for a clearer explanation than I could give.
> Hm, now I check the whole archive of 1999 and can't find it.  Could
> it have been on a different list maybe?

No, it is there, I checked it.  Note that the archives for each month
are divide into pages, which you can browse from the top of each page.
The URL of the page on which the discussion is, is
http://www.nl.debian.org/Lists-Archives/debian-user-9905/thrd2.html

HTH,
Eric

-- 
 E.L. Meijer ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
 Eindhoven Univ. of Technology
 Lab. for Catalysis and Inorg. Chem. (SKA)


Re: Flaming Debian Newbies

1999-07-28 Thread E.L. Meijer \(Eric\)
> 
> 
> >> "Nathan" == Nathan E Norman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> 
> Nathan> On Tue, 27 Jul 1999, E.L. Meijer (Eric) wrote:
> Nathan> : Since many people who are slightly familiar with any form of unix 
> will
> Nathan> : be likely to try the man command on a new debian system, it may be a
> Nathan> : good idea to include a script called `man' in the base system that
> Nathan> : prints a message explaining that the man pages are not yet there, 
> where
> Nathan> : to get them, how to install them, and where to find other sources of
> Nathan> : information (/usr/doc, ww.debian.org, this list).
> 
> Nathan> Agreed
> 
> Nathan> Why hasn't this been done?

Martin wrote:
> File a wishlist bugreport on boot-floppies.
> 
> You have to indicate your wishes, the developers can't think of
> everything :-)

Um, they were giving me that impression though :)

OK, I will file a wishlist bugreport on boot-floppies.

HTH,
Eric

-- 
 E.L. Meijer ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
 Eindhoven Univ. of Technology
 Lab. for Catalysis and Inorg. Chem. (SKA)


Re: Any tool to write/read/convert 16bit TGA files ?

1999-07-28 Thread E.L. Meijer \(Eric\)
> 
> 
> See if 'convert' in the imagemagick package will do.  Note that this 
> is non-free, so you need to check the license also.

convert is part of the imagemagick package, which is in main.  The
license of imagemagick is very free.  There are some related libraries
that also have non-free versions, probably those handling GIF and
friends (due to the famous compression patents).

HTH,
Eric

-- 
 E.L. Meijer ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
 Eindhoven Univ. of Technology
 Lab. for Catalysis and Inorg. Chem. (SKA)


Re: Programming question: sizeof struct?

1999-07-27 Thread E.L. Meijer \(Eric\)
Joop Stakenborg writes:

> Hi there,
> 
> The upstream maintainer of one of my packages is having problems
> with his code. I thought it would be nice to use the debian mailing
> lists, to see if we can an answer on this. I will forward any solution
> to him.
> 
> --
> The reason why I have not released LogConv 1.54 for Linux is that I am
> having problems with packed structures that is causing some file formats
> to not be handled properly.  Even though I specify -fpack_struct the
> generated code does not appear to actually do this.  Structure fields
> are
> offset and the return from sizeof() returns a value that is not valid.

The return value from sizeof _is_ valid.  It returns the amount of
memory the object occupies in memory.  Maybe you don't like it, but
that is another issue.

> For instance, if the structure were:
> 
> struct foo {
> char text[3];
> int  num;
> };
> 
> sizeof would return 6 and not 5.

Um, I get 8 instead of 7 (an int is usually 4 bytes in linux):

oef.c

#include 

struct A {
  char a[3];
  int b;
};

int main(void) {
  printf("%u\n", (unsigned) sizeof(struct A));

  return 0;
}


If I compile and run like this:

$ gcc -O2 -o oef oef.c
$ ./oef
8

... I do get padding, and if I compile and run like this:

$ gcc -fpack-struct -O2 -o oef oef.c
$ ./oef
7

... I don't get padding.  This is using gcc 2.7.2.3.  I can imagine
that there exist optimization options that affect this though,
especially the -malign-... type.  Maybe you need to switch these off.

There is a second, very-unportable-too-I-guess way:

oef2.c:

#include 

struct A {
  char a[3];
  int b __attribute__ ((packed));
};

int main(void) {
  printf("%u\n", (unsigned) sizeof(struct A));

  return 0;
}


This yields:
$ gcc -O2 -o oef2 oef2.c
$ ./oef2
7

However, unless you are really tight on memory, it is a bad idea to muck
around with the default padding in structures, since it degrades
performance.  If the issue is to write binary files that are portable
across different architectures, then padding in structures is only one
of the problems you will encounter.  Have a look at the C-FAQ-list at
URL: http://www.eskimo.com/~scs/C-faq/top.html, item 20.5, for
references on how to tackle this problem.

HTH,
Eric

-- 
 E.L. Meijer ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
 Eindhoven Univ. of Technology
 Lab. for Catalysis and Inorg. Chem. (SKA)


Re: Flaming Debian Newbies

1999-07-27 Thread E.L. Meijer \(Eric\)
> 
> Lee Elliott wrote:
[...]
> > Having said that, when I followed the instructions (from Debian.org) for
> > installing slink on my platform and finally got it to load, and logged
> > in, I found that I didn't have 'man'.  It took more RTFM'ing and
> > figuring out the various things dselect was telling me before I tried
> > looking for a discrete 'man' package to D/L and install.

Ed Cogburn wrote:
[...]
>   The man package is far to large to fit on the base system.  I had
> exactly the same problem when I installed Linux for the first
> time.  'man' was one of the few unix commands that I knew (thanks
> to a book I bought), but after installing it wasn't there.  Ouch.

Since many people who are slightly familiar with any form of unix will
be likely to try the man command on a new debian system, it may be a
good idea to include a script called `man' in the base system that
prints a message explaining that the man pages are not yet there, where
to get them, how to install them, and where to find other sources of
information (/usr/doc, ww.debian.org, this list).

Eric

-- 
 E.L. Meijer ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
 Eindhoven Univ. of Technology
 Lab. for Catalysis and Inorg. Chem. (SKA)


Re: A Pet Peeve about posting on the lists

1999-07-22 Thread E.L. Meijer \(Eric\)
> Quoting Stephen Pitts([EMAIL PROTECTED]):
> > 
> > If you wish to start a new thread on the list, 
> > PLEASE send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> > DO NOT just reply to any old message in your mailbox.
> > If you do that, then the threading gets messed up,
> > and it doesn't display right in the archives, or
> > in threaded mail clients like mutt.

[...]

> Might it be that these mail programs have poor docs?  Might it be that
> the people that use them don't realize how badly these posts mess up
> the display of good MUA's.  Might it be OK for me to recommend that
> they take a look at mutt.

Maybe it would be a good idea to put some `posting guidelines' in the
email that confirms subscription to the list.  Some of my own peeves for
that list would be:

*)  Use a descriptive subject, not `Linux problem', or `help needed', or
`Unidentified Subject!', and certainly not `HELP, URGENT!!!', but
more something like `Debian won't boot', or `Lost mail with elm'.

*)  Read the list before responding to it.  If you know the answer to a
question, first check if it has not been answered before.  The list is
busy enough as it is without twenty explanations of how to delete a file
named `-r -f *'.

*)  Quote as much as necessary, but not more.  Please put your comments
_below_ relevant quoted text, not above.

*)  Remember people are taking the trouble to reply to your questions in
their own time.  If your question isn't answered the first time, try a
different subject line, don't get angry.  There is no plot to ignore
you.

*)  Information for new users can be found at
... Newbie Guidelines ... /usr/share/doc ... etc ...

HTH,
Eric

-- 
 E.L. Meijer ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
 Eindhoven Univ. of Technology
 Lab. for Catalysis and Inorg. Chem. (SKA)


Re: How to switch off line buffering in stdin?

1999-07-21 Thread E.L. Meijer \(Eric\)
> 
> Hi All!
> 
> I'm writing an application, which implements some terminal functionalities.
> I'd like to receive every keystroke, just after the key is pressed
> (like with vga_getkey(), but in text mode).
> The standard "fgetc(stdin)" receives the char only after the whole line is
> entered. The "setvbuf(stdin,NULL,_IONBF,0);" doesn't help at all.
> How to implement it? Probably I should use "ioctls" to change the console's
> behaviour. Where should I look for the information?

You will want to use the curses library: man ncurses (yes that has an
`n' in front).  To compile programs with ncurses, you need the ncurses
development package, libncurses4-dev.

HTH,
Eric

-- 
 E.L. Meijer ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
 Eindhoven Univ. of Technology
 Lab. for Catalysis and Inorg. Chem. (SKA)


fstab entry for floppy

1999-07-20 Thread E.L. Meijer \(Eric\)
> 
> 
> What do I put in my fstab to be able to mount the floppy with just 'mount
> /mnt/floppy'? Currently I have a line, but that one makes the system try to
> mount it at boot, which fails...

If you add `noauto' to the options on that line, the system will not try
to mount it automatically at boot time.  You also may want to add the
`user' option to allow every user to mount the floppy (not just root).

HTH,
Eric

P.S.:  It is a good idea to give your emails on the list a short but
descriptive subject.

-- 
 E.L. Meijer ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
 Eindhoven Univ. of Technology
 Lab. for Catalysis and Inorg. Chem. (SKA)


Re: Free Financial Program (Somenthing like DAC-EASY or QuickBooks) ???

1999-07-16 Thread E.L. Meijer \(Eric\)
> 
> I need a free Financial Program (Somenthing like DAC-EASY or QuickBooks) I 
> will prefer if the program is an X Window aplication, but I will be glad 
> with a console application

I don't know the apps you talk about, but you could look at GNU Cash
(which I never used myself).  See http://www.gnucash.org/.  I don't
think it is debianized (yet?).  Anyone with experience with this
package?

HTH,
Eric

-- 
 E.L. Meijer ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
 Eindhoven Univ. of Technology
 Lab. for Catalysis and Inorg. Chem. (SKA)


Re: suid question, kind of

1999-07-15 Thread E.L. Meijer \(Eric\)
> 
> I forgot how to make a program start when the machine boots, but not have it
> start as root.  I want it to start as another user.  Any ideas, anyone?

Look at `su username -c ...' or setuid from the super package.

HTH,
Eric

-- 
 E.L. Meijer ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
 Eindhoven Univ. of Technology
 Lab. for Catalysis and Inorg. Chem. (SKA)


Re: package dependency

1999-07-09 Thread E.L. Meijer \(Eric\)
[ my `debquery' script ]

Right, this is the first update... %)

[...]
> 
> ex $STATUSFILE << _EOF_ | cut -d: -f2
> g/^$FIELD:.*\<$PACKAGE\>/ ?Package? p

The previous line works better if it replaced by these two:

g/^$FIELD:.*\<$PACKAGE\>[^-]/ ?Package? p
g/^$FIELD:.*\<$PACKAGE\$/ ?Package? p

This prevents `gs' from matching `gs-aladdin'.

Hope that's it in the bug department, since I'm leaving for a few days.

Eric (feeling that regular expressions are always more hairy than they
look).


-- 
 E.L. Meijer ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
 Eindhoven Univ. of Technology
 Lab. for Catalysis and Inorg. Chem. (SKA)


Re: package dependency

1999-07-09 Thread E.L. Meijer \(Eric\)
> 
> Hi,
>   How do I know if the package is no longer dependent by others?
> 
>   for example, if I have a lib-blah package installed, and I want to know
>   if there are any other packages installed on my system that depends on
>   this package.
> 
>   I don't want to try to remove it though.

This information is available in /var/lib/dpkg/status.  You can get it
out with the little sh script I called `debquery' which is attached
below.  I donate this sophisticated piece of software engineering to the
debian community :)  You can ask for any field you like:

# default is the Depends field
$ debquery xlib6
 xaw95
 xview
 tk42
 xquake
 lesstif

# other fields are possible:
$ debquery Suggests gnuplot
 octave

`debquery Status installed' would give you all installed packages, but,
unlike `dpkg -l' not cut off longer package names.  You need /bin/sh
and `ex' installed for the script to work.

HTH,
Eric

-- 
 E.L. Meijer ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
 Eindhoven Univ. of Technology
 Lab. for Catalysis and Inorg. Chem. (SKA)

-- Cut here and save as `debquery' -
#! /bin/sh

#
# This software may be distributed under the GPL.
# I like to call it `debquery'
#
# (C) Eric Meijer, 1999
#

if [ $# -lt 1 ] || [ $# -gt 2 ]; then
echo usage: $0 \[\\] \
echo "field can be one of the following:"
echo "Depends (the default), Suggests, Conflicts, or any other"
echo "field found (or even not found :) in the status file"
exit
fi

if [ $# = 1 ]; then
FIELD=Depends
PACKAGE=$1
else
FIELD=$1
PACKAGE=$2
fi

STATUSFILE=/var/lib/dpkg/status

ex $STATUSFILE << _EOF_ | cut -d: -f2
g/^$FIELD:.*\<$PACKAGE\>/ ?Package? p
_EOF_


Re: Help find man pages for Libc functions +

1999-07-05 Thread E.L. Meijer \(Eric\)
> 
> Hi,
> I once had a problem moving from bo to slink. Many packages were removed
> and had to be reinstalled. One of the things that got lost is the
> documentation on C functions. For example I used to run  "man strcpy" and
> the documentation of the function "strcpy" will be displayed, now it does
> not work. Obviously this means the man pages are not installed. My
> question is which package do I need to install?

The C-library function descriptions are in the manpages-dev package.
The info pages in the glibcdoc package are also very useful to a C(++)
programmer.

> The second problem has to do with lpd. It seems to die once in a while. If
> I want to reinstall it which package should I install?

I have the same problem with lpd from lpr_0.33-3.deb.  Installing the
last version did not help me a lot.  You might want to try the lprng
package (maybe you even have that installed).  This should have enhanced
functionality.  I never got around getting my print filters to work with
it though (yeah, I know about magic filters, but since I wrote my own in
my old slackware days, I kept it that way).  For now, I just restart
lpd once in a while if I need to print.

HTH,
Eric

-- 
 E.L. Meijer ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
 Eindhoven Univ. of Technology
 Lab. for Catalysis and Inorg. Chem. (SKA)


Re: User menu problem

1999-07-05 Thread E.L. Meijer \(Eric\)
> 
> 
> Hi all,
> 
> I have just installed StarOffice 5.1 in my Debian 2.1 system. I tried to
> put an entry into the menu system (I use fvwm2 as a window manager). So I
> created a file .menu/soffice in my home directory with the contents:
> 
> ?package(local.soffice):needs=x11 section=Apps/Editors title=StarOffice \
>command="~/Office51/bin/soffice"
> 
> and then I run update-menus command. Unfortunately there is no new entry
> in the menu. What did I wrong? Thank you for any suggestions.

You also have to restart the window manager.

HTH,
Eric

-- 
 E.L. Meijer ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
 Eindhoven Univ. of Technology
 Lab. for Catalysis and Inorg. Chem. (SKA)


Re: pbm2ppa printer filter

1999-06-28 Thread E.L. Meijer \(Eric\)
> 
> I was just poking around to see if anyone has gotten pbm2ppa working under
> debian.  i had it working under rh5.2 a while ago...

Yes, I have it working, but not it is on my home PC, which is
unconnected to the internet.  The author has developed it on debian as I
understood.  There is a mailing list for pbm2ppa (_very_ quiet compared
to this one), that recently had a short thread on pbm2ppa on debian.
Tim Norman posted a magic filter for use with pbm2ppa, see the archive
at
http://www.listbot.com/cgi-bin/view_archive?Act=view_archive&list_id=ppa.users

HTH,
Eric

-- 
 E.L. Meijer ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
 Eindhoven Univ. of Technology
 Lab. for Catalysis and Inorg. Chem. (SKA)


Re: V. basic script question

1999-06-21 Thread E.L. Meijer \(Eric\)
> 
> I'm on a dial on demand connection and I have this script in
> /etc/ppp/ip-up.d/ for having the mail fetched from my ISP everytime I
> make a connection, and then sent locally:
> 
> - start script -
> #!/bin/sh
> 
> /usr/bin/fetchmail -f /etc/fetchmailrc -a -u a4608456
> 
> /usr/sbin/sendmail -q
> - end script -
> 
> now, this works alright but I'd like to know when everything is over
> with a message echoed on screen... how do I go about that?

I don't know exactly what you mean by `echo on the screen'.  The most
basic thing would be to print in the terminal where the script runs:

echo Ready.

If you want a window to pop up, you might use xmessage from the xcontrib
package:

xmessage It\'s done. &

Yet another way would be

xterm -e sh -c 'echo All is done; read a' &

The `read a' portion is used here to wait for someone to hit .

If the ppp script is not running as the user that runs the X11 session
(I don't know, never used ppp), then you may have to put something like

xhost +localhost

in your .xsession file to allow the window to pop up.

HTH,
Eric Meijer

-- 
 E.L. Meijer ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
 Eindhoven Univ. of Technology
 Lab. for Catalysis and Inorg. Chem. (SKA)


Re: BE MORE SIMPLE!!!!

1999-06-17 Thread E.L. Meijer \(Eric\)
> > I just did a quick search on the debian web site with the keyword HOWTO, 
> > this
> > is what I got:
> > 
> > Search Results
> >   
> > Release  Quality   Package (size)
> >  stable100%  doc-linux-es 1998.08-1   (739.8k)
> >  Linux documents in Spanish.
> >  stable100%  doc-linux-fr 1999.01-1   (3077.4k)
> >  Linux docs in french : HOWTO, MetaFAQ ...
> >  stable100%  doc-linux-it 98.05-1   (560.8k)
> >  Linux documents in Italian.
> >  stable100%  doc-linux-pl 1998.03.29-1   (825.6k)
> >  Linux docs in Polish: HOWTO - ascii version
> >  stable100%  doc-linux-pl-html 1998.03.29-1   (834.8k)
> >  Linux docs in Polish: HOWTO - html version
> >  stable100%  lg-issue12 2-4   (219k)
> >  Issue 12 of the Linux Gazette.
> >  stable100%  xcin 2.3.03-3   (1514.5k)
> >  Chinese input server for Crxvt in X11.
> > Responses 1-7 of 7 responses shown.
> > 
> 
> What puzzles me is why this list doesn't include 'doc-linux-text' or
> 'doc-linux-html'.  Any guesses?

In the first slink release, there was just `doc-linux', and
`doc-linux-text' and `doc-linux-html' were not there.  Maybe some search
database needs rebuilding?

Eric

-- 
 E.L. Meijer ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
 Eindhoven Univ. of Technology
 Lab. for Catalysis and Inorg. Chem. (SKA)


Re: how do i produce a core file?

1999-06-17 Thread E.L. Meijer \(Eric\)
> Quoting Jeremy Taylor([EMAIL PROTECTED]):
> > 
> > It appears that the default behavior of debian systems is to print
> > "Segmentation Fault" rather than produce a core file.  Can anyone tell me
> > how to change this behavior for debugging purposes?
> > 
> > Appreciate any help!
> > 
> > Jeremy
> 
> From man ulimit
> BASH_BUILTINS(1) BASH_BUILTINS(1)
> ...
> 
> ulimit [-SHacdflmnpstuv [limit]]
> .
> 
> -c The maximum size of core files created
> 
> Seems to be a bash default.

Yep.  It may be useful to add that you may use the value `unlimited',
as in `ulimit -c unlimited', which is probably what you want if you are
debugging.

HTH,
Eric

-- 
 E.L. Meijer ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
 Eindhoven Univ. of Technology
 Lab. for Catalysis and Inorg. Chem. (SKA)


Re: BE MORE SIMPLE!!!!

1999-06-11 Thread E.L. Meijer \(Eric\)
> 
> I'm the guy that asked which package had the HOWTOs.  I know it seemed like
> a dumb question, but I did try searching on "HOWTO" in both dselect and on
> the Debian web site, and came up with nothing.  And I started paging through
> the 2700+ packages shown in dselect, but gave up after an hour or so of
> that.  Maybe it would help if the package was named "doc-howto" or something
> useful like that, or if it was installed as part of the "Complete Developer
> Workstation" profile I selected when installing Debian.

The howto's are in doc-linux-text (as text) or in doc-linux-html (as ...
html).  I have a fresh slink install where they were in doc-linux.
Maybe because of this transition they were hard to find?

If you want to browse through packages, a good place to start is
http://www.nl.debian.org/distrib/packages.  There you can find short
descriptions in several sections.

> I agree that it would be helpful for more questions on this list to be
> answered with instructions on how to find the information.  But I see too
> many messages on this list (and throughout the Linux community) saying
> "people are stupid" or "people are lazy" when they ask questions that have
> "obvious" answers.

People are often lazy.  A lot of things might be improved about the
debian website, but if people argue things like `it is hard to find the
installation manual on the web site', they just didn't try.  Most of
the mails on this list tend to be helpful and informative, by any
usenet or mailing list standard.

The kind of reaction invoked by a question depends mostly on the tone.
`I CAN'T FIND SHIT ON YER STINKIN WEB PAGE, NOW WHERE ARE THE HOWTOZZ?'
is usually not responded very friendly to, whereas `How do I setup sound
on my PC?' does get informative responses most of the time.

HTH,
Eric

-- 
 E.L. Meijer ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
 Eindhoven Univ. of Technology
 Lab. for Catalysis and Inorg. Chem. (SKA)


Re: BE MORE SIMPLE!!!!

1999-06-11 Thread E.L. Meijer \(Eric\)
> 
> Debian installation manual is not at all the worst one. It is quite good
> actually. But it definetely isn't easy to find on the website instructions
> how to get started...

This is getting on my nerves...

* go to www.debian.org
* note the section `Getting Started', which is the second below
  `What is Debian'
* actually _read_ this section (all of both sentences), and discover you
  need to click on the link Release information in this section.
* click
* Note the header `New Installations', and the links

Install Manual for SPARC 
Install Manual for Intel x86 
Install Manual for Alpha 
Install Manual for Motorola 680x0 

  below it.
* click on, say `Install Manual for Intel x86' (if that is what you
  want)
* you now find yourself reading the installation manual

All this involves *two* clicks from the main debian pages, and reading
maybe 30 lines of text.  If this `definitely not easy' for someone, I
figure this person needs to acquire some more basic computer skills
before attempting to install anything at all on their computer.

Eric

-- 
 E.L. Meijer ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
 Eindhoven Univ. of Technology
 Lab. for Catalysis and Inorg. Chem. (SKA)


Re: [Installing Bo Debian on a 386 2 meg RAM?]

1999-06-10 Thread E.L. Meijer \(Eric\)
> 
> 
> I am sorry to send this message again if you have already received it.

It already appeared on the list.

> Hi,
> 
> I have tried to install the Debian Bo distribution on my 386 with only
> 2 megs of RAM without success.  Some people told me that they have been able 
> to
> install it even if the machine does not have the 4 meg of RAM required.
> 
> I have not been able to boot because the installation stopped saying
> that 4 meg of RAM is necessary.
> 
> Please explain me what boot parameters must be given to overcome the 4
> meg requirement.  Is it possible to put swap on before booting?

It is not possible to switch on swap before booting.  I think people
did not respond to your question because running linux in 2 MB seems
very hard to do (if at all possible) and the result will not be very
useful.  If you really want to try it you should compile a _very_
minimal kernel for your system, and put that on the debian rescue
diskette (which starts the installation).  Maybe you should look around
on the web if there are distributions specially geared towards such low
memory systems.  If you actually want to do anything with the system, I
would advise you to try and find some extra memory.  If you have 6 or 8
MB, you should be able to run a number of applications without
X-windows nicely.  With 8 MB it is possible to run X-windows (I did it,
some years ago), but don't try to start anything like netscape.

Good luck
Eric

-- 
 E.L. Meijer ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
 Eindhoven Univ. of Technology
 Lab. for Catalysis and Inorg. Chem. (SKA)


Re: OFFTOPIC: SDRAM PC100

1999-06-03 Thread E.L. Meijer \(Eric\)
> 
> On Wed, 2 Jun 1999 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> 
> > > The question is: if I buy a SDRAM PC100 chip, will it work on a
> > > computer with bus speed of 66Mhz ? 
> > 
> > Nope.
> 
> I bought 2 128MB PC100 for my 66MHz ASUS, hoping that the dimms would
> still be usable when I get a new motherboard someday.
> 
> I ran memtest86 for about 24 hours, no problems, and have been running
> fine ever since (several months).
> 
> I started having problems recently (filesystem errors and signal 11) so I
> ran memtest86 again and one of the dimms has gone bad. I took it out and
> put back in an old regular 32MB dimm, and the two mixed togeter (160MB)
> ran memtest86 fine overnight, and seems OK after about a week.
> 
> I don't know why the dimm went bad. I wouldn't think it's because the
> 100/66MHz issue.

I would surprise me too.  I also run PC100 memory at 66 MHz with future
upgrades in mind.

> Please explain why you think PC100 shouldn't be in a 66MHz board. Do you
> have any ponters to info on the web?

One thing that may be important to watch out for is that some older
motherboards need physically different dimms.  We have a dual PPro with
an Intel mobo, which apparently needed special (read: rare) dimms with
the `nudges' in different places than where they are in the current
dimms.  The current dimms simply don't fit in the mobo.

HTH,
Eric

-- 
 E.L. Meijer ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
 Eindhoven Univ. of Technology
 Lab. for Catalysis and Inorg. Chem. (SKA)


Re: c++ docs

1999-06-01 Thread E.L. Meijer \(Eric\)
> 
> On Mon, 31 May 1999, Brad wrote:
> 
> > Where are the docs for the c++ libraries?
> 
> > More specifically, i have a copy of "C++ How To Program" second edition
> > here. It claims that #include  will allow strings to be
> > manipulated as streams. "sstream: No such file or directory" g++ tells me.

The next major release of g++ will probably have it.  g++ currently has
the older , which descibes stream classes that operate on
char*, not string.  They can probably be used for mostly the same
thing.  The iostream library (including strstreams) is documented in
the iostream info file, that comes with libstdc++2.9-dev.  Just type
`info iostream'.

In the future  (which is not in the ANSI standard) will be
replaced by  (which is in the ANSI standard), though I guess
 will stay around for some time.

> > "Ok then, i'll just check the docs" i think to myself. Tried the manpages.
> > Tried info. Tried looking in /usr/doc. i couldn't even find anything about
> > the c++ string class (which i know i have), much less using them as

As someone else already pointed out, there is the stl-manual package,
which contains the information from Silicon Graphics about the STL (g++
currently uses the SGI implementation).

> > streams! "Hmmm... did i miss a -doc somewhere?". Fired up dselect, and
> > couldn't find any c++ docs at all, installed or uninstalled...
> > 
> > So, does anyone know where the docs are? Or at least how to use something
> > like what the book is talking about? 
> 
> 
> Unfortunately, there is very little distributed with egcs nor in
> the way of actual documentation for either the compiler or the
> libraries. 

In the egcs-docs package there is extensive information about the
compiler in info format.  The description of the C++ libraries could be
better, but the iostream library is descibed to some degree in the
iostream info file.  The C library is not part of egcs, but it is well
documented in info format, and available in the glibcdoc package.  It
is actually readable (not just as a reference) and I recommend it to
anyone who is programming in unix in C or C++.  I expect information
about the stl to pop up when g++ starts using the stl implementation
from the egcs team.  For now g++ uses the SGI stl and you can use its
documentation.

[... skip interesting references ...]

HTH,
Eric Meijer

-- 
 E.L. Meijer ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
 Eindhoven Univ. of Technology
 Lab. for Catalysis and Inorg. Chem. (SKA)


Re: Diamond Stealth 3D 3000, 4MB

1999-05-25 Thread E.L. Meijer \(Eric\)
> 
> I am not being able to make a decision about the
> xserver for the Diamond Stealth 3D 3000, 4MB.
> I have tried both xserver-svga and  xserver-s3v.
> 
> With the xserver-s3 I am able to use depth 32 in the mode 1152x864,
> but the system locks almost always when I close a xsession.

I used to have this problem, and posted it to debian-user ages ago.
Recently someone asked me if I had solved it already.  I said I didn't,
did some suggestion about ending the session with ctrl-alt-bksp
instead, and then he came up with a solution that did work:

> From: Roberto Jung Drebes <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> X-Sender: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> To: "E.L. Meijer (Eric)" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Subject: Solved (was: Re: Diamond Stealth 3D 3000 problems)
> In-Reply-To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> MIME-Version: 1.0
> Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
> 
> On Fri, 5 Mar 1999, E.L. Meijer (Eric) wrote:
> 
> > end an X-session with ctrl-alt-backspace?  I think this sends a SIGTERM
> > instead of SIGHUP.  I cannot try this now myself, the card is in some
> 
> I decided RTFM. If I edit /etc/X11/xdm/xdm-config
> and put the line
> DisplayManager*resetSignal: 15
> 
> Things appear to work.. Cool.

This may work for you too.

HTH,
Eric Meijer

-- 
 E.L. Meijer ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
 Eindhoven Univ. of Technology
 Lab. for Catalysis and Inorg. Chem. (SKA)


Re: compiler in PATH ?

1999-05-18 Thread E.L. Meijer \(Eric\)
> 
> 
> On 18-May-99 David Z. Maze wrote:
> > 
> > gcc isn't a C++ compiler, it's a C compiler.  You should have g++
> > somewhere in your $PATH (if you install the Debian g++ package, in
> > /usr/bin).  If you haven't yet, install the g++ package and its
> > dependencies.
> 
> I realized later that gcc is not for C++ so I looked for any g++ compilers in
> my system and I found them:
> 
> ii  libg++2.8.2 2.91.61-1  The GNU C++ extension library - runtime 
> vers
> ii  libg++272.7.2.1-14.4   The GNU C++ libraries (ELF version).
> ii  libg++272   2.7.2.8-0.1The GNU C++ libraries (libc6 version).
> ii  libg++272-dev   2.7.2.8-0.1The GNU C++ libraries (libc6 version).

The libg++2.8.2 package contains an old gnu C++ library that is no longer
actively maintained.

The 27 and 272 packages provide support for older versions of g++.  You
don't want to use these for compiling programs unless the program
depends on the bugs in the 2.7.2 compiler.  For slink, you need to get
the following packages:

g++
libstdc++2.9-dev
libstdc++2.9 (you probably have that already)

and the gcc packages.

HTH,
Eric Meijer

-- 
 E.L. Meijer ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
 Eindhoven Univ. of Technology
 Lab. for Catalysis and Inorg. Chem. (SKA)


Re: FSCK!!! only 8 disks!!!!

1999-05-17 Thread E.L. Meijer \(Eric\)
> 
> WTF?!?!?!?!? 
> 
> Please someone tell me that linux isn't limited to 8 scsi disks! If it isn't
> tell me how the FSCK to fix this. I'm trying to set up a raid array with 10
> disks after a couple crashes I read man MAKEDEV and found out that there is
> indeed a limit of 8 scsi disks. 8-(
> 

$ zless /usr/doc/HOWTO/SCSI-HOWTO.gz

... read read ...

./MAKEDEV sd\*

  "should" create entries for all SCSI disk devices (doing this should
  create /dev/sda through /dev/sdp, with fifteen partition entries for
  each)

... read read some more ...

  I say "should" because this is the standard unix behavior - the
  MAKEDEV script in your installation may not conform to this behavior,
  or may have restricted the number of devices it will create.


  If MAKEDEV won't do the right magic for you, you'll have to create the
 device entries by hand with the mknod command.

  The block/character type, major, and minor numbers are specified for
  the various SCSI devices in section ``Device Files'' in the
  appropriate section.

  Take those numbers, and use (as root)

   mknod /dev/device b|c major minor

... yup, that seems to be it.

Boy, ain't that /usr/doc directory great :)

HTH,
Eric

-- 
 E.L. Meijer ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
 Eindhoven Univ. of Technology
 Lab. for Catalysis and Inorg. Chem. (SKA)


Re: checkdir errory

1999-05-11 Thread E.L. Meijer \(Eric\)
I wrote:
> You are trying to create 4*400*400=64 files.  You can check how many
> inodes are left using 
[...]

> By default there are 4096 bytes per inode, which means that for the
> amount of files you want to store your partition needs to be at least
> 64*4/1024=25000 MB in size (neglecting directories).
^

Um, well, that should be 2500 MB.

:)

Eric

-- 
 E.L. Meijer ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
 Eindhoven Univ. of Technology
 Lab. for Catalysis and Inorg. Chem. (SKA)


Re: checkdir error

1999-05-11 Thread E.L. Meijer \(Eric\)
> 
> I have a shell script that unzips multiple files in a directory. This
> directory have 4 subdirectories named 001, ..., 004. Each one have 400
> subdirectories named 001, ..., 400. In each of these 400 subdirectories
> I have 400 html files. The file system( using df ) still have enough
> space for the unpacking and, when running the 4th directory it prints anerror
> like this:
> 
>   checkdir error: cannot create 004/022
>   unable to process 004/022/04022001.html
> 
> After that, everything that I try to do, like mkdir, etc. does not work.It
> says that there's not enough space on the device.

You have probably run out of inodes.  Each file or directory needs one.
You are trying to create 4*400*400=64 files.  You can check how many
inodes are left using 

df -i

By default there are 4096 bytes per inode, which means that for the
amount of files you want to store your partition needs to be at least
64*4/1024=25000 MB in size (neglecting directories).  If you really
need to put the files in this partition, you need to reformat it and use
the -i switch to mkfs.ext2.  See man mkfs.ext2.

HTH,
Eric

-- 
 E.L. Meijer ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
 Eindhoven Univ. of Technology
 Lab. for Catalysis and Inorg. Chem. (SKA)


Re: Can't allocate DMA buffer

1999-05-06 Thread E.L. Meijer \(Eric\)
> 
> Hi,
> 
> I'm running the most recent kernel (2.2.7), and I also use a Crystal
> semiconductor sound card, so I have the cs4232 kernel module.  Sometimes I
> get the kernel error: 
> 
>   kernel: Sound error: Couldn't allocate DMA buffer
> 
> I have plenty of available memory left, so I don't understand why I am
> getting this error.  Has anybody else received this error?  Does anybody
> know of a workaround or fix for it?  I haven't received this error before
> installing the 2.2.7 kernel.

I have had this error with kernels from the 2.0.x series.  My floppy
drive also has this problem sometimes.  The problem is that apparently
the DMA buffer needs to be allocated in the first 16MB of address
space.  In my view, the driver should reserve enough of this memory
when it is loaded, but this may be a problem if it is not loaded at
boot time (but later, as a module).  I once asked around on a linux
kernel news group, and people were thinking about how to reorganise the
DMA memory.  It doesn't seem to be trivial to solve.  A `solution'
would be to get a PCI sound card.  Often you get around the problem
stopping some applications hoping to free some of the `right' memory :(

HTH,
Eric Meijer

-- 
 E.L. Meijer ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
 Eindhoven Univ. of Technology
 Lab. for Catalysis and Inorg. Chem. (SKA)


Re: finding and using applications

1999-05-04 Thread E.L. Meijer \(Eric\)
> 
>   Suppose you have a Debian Gnu/Linux system set up and fully loaded with
> applications.  A new user appears who is going to use the system. The
> new user is a unix novice. He/she knows enough basic commands to get
> by.  
> Is there a simple way for that user to find every available application
> on the system, what the application does, and how to use it? 

To get an idea of what could be available, the debian web pages provide
nice descriptions of the packages.

To see what is installed on your system, just type

$ dpkg -l | less

Now if some short description seems interesting, try

$ dpkg --print-avail 

Next action would be to see what is in /usr/doc/, and to
try man and info pages.

None of this seems very hard to me.  I agree it should be advertised
better.

[...]

A very concise way of finding out what commands are available to you in
bash, is typing  twice, and then `y'.
:)

HTH,
Eric

-- 
 E.L. Meijer ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
 Eindhoven Univ. of Technology
 Lab. for Catalysis and Inorg. Chem. (SKA)


Re: Advanced Printer Control?

1999-05-03 Thread E.L. Meijer \(Eric\)
> 
> I'm configuring a print server for remote clients. I've set up a Debian 
> machine
> with an HP LaserJet 4000 hooked to it via parallel cable. I've installed lprng
> and samba, and can print to it from two types of client:
> 
> 1) From Linux using BSD-style lpr. Text (notwithstanding line feed issues) and
> postscript print fine. I am looking at installing magicfilter.
> 
> 2) From NT using local drivers, via Samba. Works fantastic.
> 
> The issue, is that the NT drivers are able to take full advantage of the
> printer's capabilities. It can do duplex, 2- 4- 8-up printing, etc.
> 
> How can I achieve such control from the Linux clients? I need to be able to
> specify at least duplex, and hopefully a greater subset of the printer's
> capabilities. Linux is working great as a print server to NT clients, but not 
> so
> great to Linux clients.

You can do two things about this:

1) Find out what control codes to send to your printer that will
enable/disable duplex 2-, 4- or 8- up printing, and write a filter that
sends those codes.

2) Use software.
duplex: lpr has an option for muliple copies
$ lpr -#3 bla.ps
will get you three copies of bla.ps.  Note that this is often disabled
by default in /etc/printcap, and you will have to enable it there.

n-up printing:
Plain text files are best printed with enscript
$ enscript bla.txt
Enscript is able to print to rotated pages on one sheet of paper:
$ enscript -2r bla.txt
For postscript files, you can use psnup:
$ psnup -12 bla.ps | lpr
will print 12 pages per sheet on the default postscript printer.
More than 2-up with plain text:
$ enscript -p- bla.txt | psnup -4 | lpr

Of course you can hide all the nice unix geekery to users in scripts.

Single problem: psnup only works with `well-behaved' postscript files,
that follow Adobe's document structure definitions (or
what'sit-called).

> Any advice would be appreciated. I'm not even sure at which level (client?
> server?) this would occur. Pointers to HOWTOs that deal with this, and other
> resources, would be appreciated.
> 
> PS: I can't help but imagine C++ iostream manipulators:
> 
> cout << unix_line_feeds << file.txt << duplex << 4up << file.ps;

The last example is quite like that, except that it is written in the
other direction.

HTH,
Eric

-- 
 E.L. Meijer ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
 Eindhoven Univ. of Technology
 Lab. for Catalysis and Inorg. Chem. (SKA)


Re: adding new libs (.a) to debian (gnome xml)

1999-04-28 Thread E.L. Meijer \(Eric\)
> 
> I tried to add the gnome_xml libs to debian.
> Due to the fact that i couldnt find a .deb I compiled the package, did
> make install which copied the said libs to /usr/local/libs.
> I then added the directory to /etc/ld.so.conf (i hope i'm not getting
> the file name wrong) and then ran ldconfig.

In the subject you talked about .a files.  These are static libraries.
The ldconfig program is for configuration of dynamic libraries, which
have names ending in .so.

> Then when i tried to compile another package which tried to link
> against the xml libs (gnome_print) i got an answear somthing like:
> error with -lxml no such library (I don't remember the exactly how it
> was writen).

Probably because it tries to find the dynamic library.

> If anyone know of .deb instead of these two packages it would be
> better.

I don't know of any debs, but before they arrive you could
1) Try to generate dynamic gnome_xml libraries (maybe you just need a
   different target from the makefile), install them, and then run
   ldconfig.
2) Specify the complete path to the .a file to link it statically, so

gcc   /usr/local/libs/libxml.a

instead of

gcc  -lxml

HTH,
Eric Meijer

-- 
 E.L. Meijer ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
 Eindhoven Univ. of Technology
 Lab. for Catalysis and Inorg. Chem. (SKA)


Re: Getting Rid of Unnecessary Files

1999-04-26 Thread E.L. Meijer \(Eric\)
[... please don't use mime on this list ...]

> I want to know if there is a way to clean out all of the
> copyright,copyleft,changelog, and other non-essential files in my Debian
> installation. i also want to clear out all of the non-English related
> stuff and the non-i386 stuff fron the tree. All of this takes up tons of
> space. These files are fine for learning purposes and for being able to
> establish contact with the various package maintainers. --however I have
> need of the disk space being taken up by these files. I have tried to
> remove them manually once before and many of them actually cause
> dependency faults if they are removed. Is it possible to remove them
> from a complete distribution tree of .deb files  and repackage the
> distribution as a totally customized distro strictly for my own personal
> use?

Did you try instead of removing the files making them 0 bytes?  So for
example if you have a list of files you don't need, you could do
something like


#! /bin/sh

exec < file_list
while read f; do
 cat /dev/null > $f
done


Then the files are still there, but take much less space.  This may be
enough to keep dpkg happy.

On a more general solution, for reasons of disk space saving, a switch
could be added to dpkg (and dselect and apt) not to put any of the
files in the /usr/doc hierarchy on the disk.  You could file this as a
wish-list item in the bug system if it is important to you.

HTH,
Eric

-- 
 E.L. Meijer ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
 Eindhoven Univ. of Technology
 Lab. for Catalysis and Inorg. Chem. (SKA)


Re: xterm/top horizontal scrollbar

1999-04-26 Thread E.L. Meijer \(Eric\)
> 
> I have Top loading in an Xterm window in Fvwm2.  I set Top to display
> the command line instead of the command name and some of the command
> lines are well off the right edge of the Xterm window.  I can resize the
> window to view these command lines but I was hoping I could find an
> option to Xterm to add a horizontal scrollbar.  I've looked at the man
> pages for Top and Xterm and don't see anything like that.  I notice
> Xconsole has such a scrollbar.  I was wondering if anyone knows how to
> set up Xterm with such a scrollbar or is there another option that would
> suit my wants better?
> Thanks,
> kent

Your window manager may be able to do this.  I am using fvwm2, and in
the window menu there is an option `scrollbar' which enables a
horizontal and a vertical scrollbar added around the window by the
window manager, but that the xterm itself is unaware of.

HTH,
Eric

-- 
 E.L. Meijer ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
 Eindhoven Univ. of Technology
 Lab. for Catalysis and Inorg. Chem. (SKA)


ddd's segfaulting tradition

1999-04-20 Thread E.L. Meijer \(Eric\)
[discussion about ddd problems...]

I wonder, does anyone use ddd in a serious way with C++?  Everytime a
new debian release arrives I give it a try, and everytime it manages to
segfault within a few minutes.  I suppose ddd should be nice for C++ if
it worked, but I never found one real life bug with it in _my_ code
before I hit one in ddd itself.

Eric Meijer

-- 
 E.L. Meijer ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
 Eindhoven Univ. of Technology
 Lab. for Catalysis and Inorg. Chem. (SKA)


Re: SHELL environment variable.

1999-04-19 Thread E.L. Meijer \(Eric\)
> 
> I was always under the impression that the SHELL envirinment variable 
> was supposed to point to the _current_ shell. In my setup at least, 
> it doesn't. It _always_ points to the login shell (I change to a 
> different shell but the variable remains the same). Bug, feature, 
> user error?  Any comments or suggestions welcome.

It points to the login shell because it is the login program that sets
it.  The shells don't do anything with it, they just inherit it from
their parent process.  See man login.

If you want to determine what shell you run, you may be luckier trying
to read $0, although that gives rather erratic results as well (e.g.
bash gives adds a `-' in front if it is a login shell, csh doesn't seem
to recognize this at all).

HTH,
Eric

-- 
 E.L. Meijer ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
 Eindhoven Univ. of Technology
 Lab. for Catalysis and Inorg. Chem. (SKA)


Re: oddness from getgrnam()

1999-04-16 Thread E.L. Meijer \(Eric\)
> 
> I was testing a program and to see how it handled an invalid group I did:
> 
> gr = getgrnam("bob");
> 
> Now obviously this failed.  However the string from perror() states:
> 
> "Could not find file or directory"
> 
> Why is this?  Seems like a counter intuitive error.

I think the error is not set by getgrnam().  If I run


#include 
#include 
#include 

int main(void)
{
  struct group* gr;
  perror("before");
  gr = getgrnam("tgakem");
  perror("after");

  return 0;
}


it always prints

before: Success
after: No such file or directory

It makes no difference if "tgakem" exists (which it happens to do) or
if it doesn't.  My guess is that getgrnam tries to look for group
descriptions in several files, of which at least one does not exist.

If I run the above program with strace (strace ./prg) and grep for
`open', I get

open("/etc/ld.so.preload", O_RDONLY)= -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
open("/etc/ld.so.cache", O_RDONLY)  = 3
open("/lib/libc.so.6", O_RDONLY)= 3
open("/etc/nsswitch.conf", O_RDONLY)= 3
open("/etc/ld.so.cache", O_RDONLY)  = 3
open("/lib/libnss_compat.so.1", O_RDONLY) = 3
open("/lib/libnsl.so.1", O_RDONLY)  = 3
open("/lib/libnss_files.so.1", O_RDONLY) = 3
open("/etc/group", O_RDONLY)= 3

As you can see the first file could not be opened.  I checked and it
indeed does not exist on my system, so that will have triggered the
error message.  The getgrnam function returns NULL on failure, and
apparently does not manipulate errno.

HTH,
Eric

-- 
 E.L. Meijer ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
 Eindhoven Univ. of Technology
 Lab. for Catalysis and Inorg. Chem. (SKA)


Re: AGP video for Linux?

1999-04-15 Thread E.L. Meijer \(Eric\)
> 
>  Personally, I don't even know what AGP video is, so I am
> forwarding this to the debian-user mailing list.
> 
> Bob
> 
> Erik Olsen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> 
> > 
> > I was wondering if AGP video is supported by Linux yet.  I did not see it on
> > the list of compatable devices/bus archetectures but was just curious.

AGP is a variation on the PCI bus specially for video cards.  If you
want to know if a video card is supported, you have to check out the
XFree86 compatibility.  Usually if a certain card or chip set is
supported, the AGP version is supported, so you can use it in X.  If you
are in doubt about a certain card, just ask around on the various
mailing lists and news groups.  If you want to use a card right now, it
is usually a bad idea to pick one that is only going to be supported
`real soon now'.

Another matter is support of the specific feature that AGP was meant
for: storing textures in main memory and sending them to the video card
at high transfer rates.  I don't know if there is any support for that.

HTH,
Eric Meijer

-- 
 E.L. Meijer ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
 Eindhoven Univ. of Technology
 Lab. for Catalysis and Inorg. Chem. (SKA)


Re: mount partition or disk

1999-04-13 Thread E.L. Meijer \(Eric\)
> 
> Hello,
> 
> is there an easy (or canonical) way of (auto)detecting whether a disk is
> partitioned, please?
> 
> What I have is a SCSI magneto-optical disk drive (230MB removable disks)
> and a bunch of disks. With some of the disks, I need to mount /dev/sda1,
> with others /dev/sda directly.
> 
> (The disks have existing data on them, written under DOS, obviously various
> versions of either DOS or the driver.)
> 
> Any suggestions?

You can do this with `fdisk -l /dev/sda'.  You either have to be a
member of group disk, or be root, or mess with the default permissions
(not advisable) to issue this command.

HTH,
Eric

-- 
 E.L. Meijer ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
 Eindhoven Univ. of Technology
 Lab. for Catalysis and Inorg. Chem. (SKA)


Re: X thinks my screen is larger than it actually is

1999-04-09 Thread E.L. Meijer \(Eric\)
> 
> Thanks for this response, but it doesn't apply in my case.  I don't have a 
> virtual screen set up, the only resolution mention in my file is 640x480.  
> The laptop pages don't help - frankly because it isn't an issue with laptops 
> - it's an X server problem.  I get the same results using a desktop.  The 
> Xservers (or window managers) simply don't stay within the confines of 
> 640x480 resolution - and they should.  If I maximize a window, it puts it in 
> the full 640x480 window - so why does X/window-managers put these windows off 
> the screen when the are first painted?  That's just sloppy..  I know in most 
> cases I can reposition them, but I shouldn't have to.  If I only have 480 
> pixels high, why does a window pop up that goes beyond this limit?
> 
> -Jay

This is not sloppy of X/window-managers, this is sloppy of the client
programs you are running.  Programs decide how large they want their
windows to be.  Many X11 programs can be configured using X resources to
have a certain default size.  To learn about resource specifications,
have a look at the man pages of X and xrdb, and at the files in
/usr/lib/X11/app-defaults/.  A common way to handle your personal
preferences, is to have a file .Xresources in your home directory, and
read it with the xrdb command in your .xsession file, like

xrdb -merge $HOME/.Xresources

The size of windows is determined with the geometry resource.  E.g., in
my .Xresources I have the following lines for xdvi:

XDvi*shrinkFactor:  4
XDvi*expert:1
XDvi*sideMargin:1.5
XDvi*background:NavajoWhite
XDvi*geometry:  1266x993+0+0

This asks for a window size of 1266x993 pixels.  Note that this is
without the window borders, since the xdvi program cannot know what
borders the window manager puts around them.

Besides all this, there are X programs that simply assume that you have
a higher resolution than 640x480.  This is because many X programs
originate from unix workstation platforms, which rare have resolutions
lower than 1024x678.

HTH,
Eric Meijer

-- 
 E.L. Meijer ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
 Eindhoven Univ. of Technology
 Lab. for Catalysis and Inorg. Chem. (SKA)


Re: [off-topic] How to auto-run xlock?

1999-04-08 Thread E.L. Meijer \(Eric\)
> 
> 
> I have a program that I want to run only while my PC is unattended. I
> don't need the screen locked necessarily.
> 
> xlock does this for me:
> 
> xlock +nolock -startCmd startsetiathome -mode blank
> 
> but I have to run it manually. When I log back in, it does kill the
> running command (startsetiathome) just like I want.
> 
> I'd like this exact behaviour but somehow I need xlock to always be
> running, waiting to jump in after the idle period.

I thought about this problem before, and now realised you can check
keyboard and mouse activity looking at /proc/interrupts.  You could then
start a script like this in your .xsession file (adapt the variables at
the start to your needs):

runsaver:

#! /bin/sh

# these are the interrupts of your keyboard and mouse,
# check out your /proc/interrupts:
INTERRUPTS="1 4"

# this is the interval in seconds between checks of /proc/interrupts
SLEEPTIME=30

# if more than MAXINTERVALS * SLEEPTIME seconds pass without activity,
# the xlock program will run
MAXINTERVALS=10

# command line options for xlock
XLOCKFLAGS="-nolock -mode bat"

checkactive () {
  TOTALS=""
  INTERVALS=0 
  while true; do
OLDTOTALS=$TOTALS
TOTALS=""
for x in $INTERRUPTS; do
  TOTALS="$TOTALS `grep "\<$x:" /proc/interrupts | \
   sed -e 's/^.*: *\([0-9]*\).*/\1/'`"
done
if [ "$TOTALS" = "$OLDTOTALS" ]; then
  INTERVALS=`expr $INTERVALS + 1`
  if [ $INTERVALS -ge $MAXINTERVALS ]; then
break
  fi
else
  INTERVALS=0
fi
sleep $SLEEPTIME
  done
}

while true; do
  checkactive
  xlock $XLOCKFLAGS
done



Note I have only just barely tested this.

> If anyone is interested, the program that I'm running is the SETI at Home
> client. SETI is "The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence".

Great, sent my regards to the aliens once you find them :)

HTH,
Eric

-- 
 E.L. Meijer ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
 Eindhoven Univ. of Technology
 Lab. for Catalysis and Inorg. Chem. (SKA)


Re: vi in Debian (slink)

1999-04-06 Thread E.L. Meijer \(Eric\)
> 
> However, vim is not standard. I routinely work on HP-UX these days
> and doubt that vim is installed there, for example.

It usually is not too hard to go to a debian site, download the original
source tarbal, and compile it for personal use.  I just did that with
procmail on SGI.

HTH,
Eric

-- 
 E.L. Meijer ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
 Eindhoven Univ. of Technology
 Lab. for Catalysis and Inorg. Chem. (SKA)


elm filter?

1999-04-01 Thread E.L. Meijer \(Eric\)
Hi all,

I am receiving mail on a SGI system, that has no procmail, but the elm
filter program.  I would like to use the same thing on debian, but I
cannot seem to find it.  Is it anywhere available in slink?

Thanks,
Eric

-- 
 E.L. Meijer ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
 Eindhoven Univ. of Technology
 Lab. for Catalysis and Inorg. Chem. (SKA)


Re: How to open xterm with and a program at once

1999-03-31 Thread E.L. Meijer \(Eric\)
> 
> Hi,
> 
> how do I open xterm with a program? Let's say I want an icon on my desktop
> opening mc or mutt. What would the command be to have an xterm with one of
> these programs open automatically with xterm?

xterm -e 

This, by the way, is in the man page of xterm.  If you'd type `man
xterm', and then `/execute', you'd find yourself in the middle of the
description of this option.

HTH,
Eric

-- 
 E.L. Meijer ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
 Eindhoven Univ. of Technology
 Lab. for Catalysis and Inorg. Chem. (SKA)


Re: Slink upgrade and /usr/local problems locating libs!

1999-03-30 Thread E.L. Meijer \(Eric\)
> 
> Hey guys,
> 
> Since I have upgraded to slink 
> I have noticed that when I unzip certain tars in /usr/local the binaries
> seem to have trouble finding the required libs. For example, Wingz3 can't
> find libXpm.so.4 although it is in /usr/X11R6/lib. Wingz3 worked with hamm.
> Has there been some kind of change in Slink that would cause this?

Is the library really there, or is there just a dangling symbolic
link?  On my slink system /usr/X11R6/lib/libXpm.so.4 is a symlink to
libXpm.so.4.10.  If the latter file is not there, you need to install
the xpm4g package if the Wingz3 is a libc6 program.  If Wingz3 is a
libc5 program, you need to install the xpm4.7 package from the oldlibs
section.  Check this out with `ldd Wingz3'.

HTH,
Eric

-- 
 E.L. Meijer ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
 Eindhoven Univ. of Technology
 Lab. for Catalysis and Inorg. Chem. (SKA)


Re: Mount for normal user

1999-03-30 Thread E.L. Meijer \(Eric\)
> 
> How can I mount devices (CDrom / HD) as a normal user.
> For example :
> $ mount /dev/hdb /mnt/hdb
> 
> mount: only root can mount /dev/hdb on /mnt/hdb

Normally the mount command checks if you really are root, and
disregards group membership.  You can allow users to mount a certain
partition by adding the `user' option in /etc/fstab.  For example, I
have a line for a cdrom in my /etc/fstab that looks like this:

/dev/hdd/cdrom   iso9660 defaults,ro,user,noauto 0 0

The user option allows every user to mount and umount the cdrom, and
noauto prevents the system from trying to mount the cdrom at boot time,
which can be annoying if there is no cdrom in the drive.

> I've tried to add my user (sami) to some groups, but... :
> 
> sys:x:3:sami
> adm:x:4:sami
> disk:x:6:sami
> lp:x:7:lp,sami
> mail:x:8:sami
> voice:x:22:sami
> cdrom:x:24:sami
> floppy:x:25:sami
> sudo:x:27:sami
> audio:x:29:mary,sami
> majordom:x:31:majordom
> 
> Where is any help about Debian's groups... ?

I don't know.  Most groups are self-explanatory.

> However, How to remove user from groups (without VI) and is there a way to
> have all root permission without being root (UID 0) because some programs
> don't want to run as root ?

If programs do not want to run as root there usually is a security
reason for that.  This means it can be in some way dangerous to your
system, and you'd better not try to run it as root anyway.

You can remove users from a group using the usermod command and the -G
option.  With the -G option you list the additional groups (beside the
default group) that a user is a member from.  If the user was listed
with other groups as well, (s)he is removed from those.  Check out the
manual page.

HTH,
Eric

-- 
 E.L. Meijer ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
 Eindhoven Univ. of Technology
 Lab. for Catalysis and Inorg. Chem. (SKA)


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