BitTorrent and Comcast?
Does anyone know whether Comcast considers using BitTorrent as a client to be a terms of service violation (because each client also serves)? I can't get a straight answer out of Comcast customer support. They just quote the sections of the terms of service that caused me to ask in the first place. But it's not clear to me whether a BitTorrent client is what they consider to be, legally, a "server". What probably matters is whether their network monitoring people watch for, notice, and object to, the kind of activity that BitTorrent generates. Any experiences, positive, negative, or otherwise? Bill ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Re: Spam control (was: BitTorrent and Comcast?)
Hewitt Tech writes: > ... > I guess what puzzles me is that spam is almost always used on behalf of > someone who is trying to get customers. It's those companies that should get > burned. If spam is tracked back to them, and I don't see why it's > particularly hard since they always put contact information in their > messages, then it probably isn't that difficult to prove that millions of > emails have been generated relating directly to them. They should then pay a > price (loss of bandwidth, bogus products, whatever). In other words, don't > go after the spammer, go after the companies that hire them. Sadly, this leads to another risk: companies sending obnoxious spam for their competitors products, hoping to benefit from the customer backlash against the company mentioned in the spam. Bill ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
2.4.18 -> 2.6.8 yields ext3 errors?
Michael ODonnell writes: > ... > Since they're running Debian I said "apt-get install > kernel-image-2.6.8.whatever" and the installation > occurred without incident on both machines. Now that > the dust has settled both systems boot their 2.6.8 > kernels and mount their ext3 root disks just fine and > come all the way up - well, they get a good long way. > But when it comes time to mount any of the other > ext3 filesystems they all fail with "device is busy > or filesystem is already mounted" which is very > mysterious since the filesystems in question do NOT > appear to be mounted and the devices in question are > NOT busy. > ... I wonder whether there could have been an incompatible format change in, say, /etc/mtab. If there's a stale copy from the earlier kernel, and the code in mount that reads it fails because of a format change, something higher up may not adequately distinguish that error from "already mounted". Did the appropriate package that includes mount get upgraded? These are, of course, just guesses. Bill ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Re: Creating bootable linux CDROM using XP
It sounds like we need the equivelant of rawwrite for CDs. I wonder how uniform the W32 driver interface is for the write capabilities of the various recordable drives? Probably just handling ATAPI drives would be a good start. Does anybody want to start a project? Bill Michael ODonnell writes: > > > > If the .iso is of a bootable CD-ROM all you have to do is write > > the bits to disk as-is. > > > > The first 1.44 or 2.88 MB of the disk image is basically a DOS-type > > floppy image that gets booted which then boots the CD-ROM (El > > Torito format). > > > I don't think so. IIRC, El Torito calls for a special pointer in the > headers that indicate where to find the bootable image, which is not > simply the first N bytes of data. > > > Perhaps when you drag&drop the CD software is reading the disk > > image format (is it FAT?) and remastering, losing the El Torito > > disk image. > > Nope - the md5sum is unchanged. > > > You want something that can explicitly burn a disk image. > > Perhaps the windows utility can't do that but Nero can? Or you > > can find someone with linux or a mac to write it for you... > > I have many linux boxes - that's not the problem. I'm trying > to understand the XP approach well enough that I can coach > someone through it who doesn't have Linux. > > ___ > gnhlug-discuss mailing list > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Re: 2.4.18 -> 2.6.8 yields ext3 errors?
Can you make and ext2 fs on a floppy (or Zip drive, if you've got it) and mount that as ext2? Yes, it sounds like a bum kernel. But if it came as binary from debian, i.e.; you didn't build it from source, I'd expect that others would be having the problem. I guess that what's really called for is a kernel with the kernel debugger, and enough symbols to start tracking from the mount call. Too bad Linus is so against debuggers, or we might have a serial line or ethernet debug slave as a standard part of the kernel by now. Bill ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
HDTV PCI card recommendations?
Does the group have opinions on what HDTV PCI card to buy before the broadcast flag becomes a reality? And good places to buy it? Bill ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Re: Cleaning computers after fire
Greg Rundlett writes about computers that have experienced fire stress. I have only a few points to make beyone what I've read in other responses. If you do wind up trying to use the old units, don't let a few months of proper operation make you complacent about frequency of backups and or mirroring on a new machine. The chemical environment may have been corrosive, and may have started, for example, connector problems, that won't show up for a while. A related warning: Corrosive residue can be transfered. Never put any parts from the old machines into the new ones. Don't temporarily install new parts in the old machines and then put it in the new ones. Do any disk copying over the network, or via USB, and never plug the end of the cable that went into the old box into any new box. Ethernet cables that connect to new hardware should be new, and if they plug into a hub that went through the fire, keep track of the potentially "contaminated" ends. A little red nail polish makes a good marker. The troubles with any cleaning strategy begin with choosing a solvent (DI water is a solvent too). Your looking for something that will dissolve the crud, but none of the good stuff. Sadly, there are so many different materials in a PC that it's hard to know if even water is safe. On the other hand, some of the fire residue can be really resistant. Also, dissolved crud may be simply washed INTO anything porous (some insulation and poorly sealed PWBs, for example). If I were going to try to save one of these, I'd start with compressed air. Be sure you remove any visible residue, gently scraping with a soft wooden stick if needed. Take everything apart that can easily be reassembled (obviously, don't open HDs). You CAN get into the power supplies if you try. I'd avoid using a liquid solvent without much better information than you seem to have gotten here. And remove and discard all fans before you start, replacing them with new ones when you think the parts that you are keeping are as clean as possible. Considering the labor involved, and how cheap new stuff is today, it may well not be worth it. Good luck, Bill ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Re: looking for SCSI cable ..
Michael ODonnell writes: > I'll keep looking. I can't remember who I foisted most of > the SCSI junk off on (BillF?) but I'm pretty sure there was No, I got the EISA stuff, and the quaint laptop with the desd hard drive. I haven't yet discarded the Compaq N260 10/100 PC card that was in the laptop, should anyone have the appropriate dongle they're welcome to the card. Othewise basement cleaning is becoming active here too. Bill ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
RFC: Make political discussion off-topic by rule (was: America ...)
Ben, I'm in favor of such a rule. I would, however, like to hear your bread recipes. Bill ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Wireless protos- 11a 11b 11g ....11x?
Jeff Kinz writes: > I just got asked what the differences are between the various wireless > protoccols and I'm realizing I don't have a good summary available. Does > anyone know of a website or document that explains what is special about > "11n" (possibly vs 11g)? If you're an IEEE member you can get PDF's of the specs free. Otherwise they charge. There are lots of other letters two, but these are the (current) ones that deal with the connectivity (as opposed to security, etc.). 802.11b is an 11Mbps (max, with fall baxk) scheme using "channels" around 2.4GHz. There are, I believe, 14 channels, where almost no country allows the use of all of them. The US authorizes 11 of them. 802.11g uses the same spectrum as b, but uses wider bandwidth signals to allow 54Mbps (max). The wider bandwidth means that these signals don't fit in a 802.11b channel: each g uses several of the b channels, allowing only 3 channels of g in the "band". 802.11a uses a separate band around 5GHz, where more spectrum is available, allowing a more reasonable number of 54Mbps channels (I don't remember exactly, but I think that it's on the order of 10 of them). I believe that these are all spread spectrum schemes. I don't know if a and g are similar modulation schemes that are just on different frequencies. Because the RF stuff is compatible between b and g, most g designs allow communication in b as well, with essentially no extra hardware. The g stuff came in at the same time as it became comfortable to produce somewhat software defined radios. The channel set and more is determined by software controls, and these radios are capable of operating well outside the allowed (in any given country) frequency ranges, etc. The manufacturer's lawyers have told them that folks like the FCC will hold them accountable if they make it too easy for users to set them up to operate illegally, which is the main reason that they won't give sufficient hardware info for Linux folks to write device drivers. I hope that this helps, and I hope that it isn't too inaccurate. Bill ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Play wav files from serial input
Brian writes: > Setup a linux server with a samba share and directories labelled 1-8. .wav > files can be put in those dirs and when a simple serial string is received a > random file is selected from the appropriate directory and played via the > line-out of the sound card. Ok, but why. > Any suggestions for a good command-line capable .wav player? Try "play". Bill ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
RE: Play wav files from serial input
Brian writes: > Thanks for the "play" tip, I found a reference to that via google and looks > good for playing .wav's. I imagine there is a similar one for .mp3's, or I > can just require people to convert them... By the way, you probably already have "play". It's part of the sox distribution. That's been standard in RedHat and derivatives for a while, and I assume in other distributions as well. I'm running Fedora Core 2, and play comes from sox-12.17.4-4.fc2 there. The sox documentation is extensive, and I believe that it can deal with a number of formats. I'm not sure about mp3, however. Don't those need closed source "codec"s? Someone will tell us. Now if only I could get the shound inputs on the ASUS mother board to work. (I'd been happily converting records to digital until my laptop died last year.) Bill ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Recording your phonograph records digitally (was: Play wav files from serial input)
Charles Farinella writes: > On Wed, 2005-01-12 at 15:11, Bill Freeman wrote: > > > (I'd been happily converting records to digital until > > my laptop died last year.) > > I've been wanting to do that for awhile, but haven't been able to > motivate myself enough to figure out how. Tips? Brief rundown? I was using "rec", also from sox. I'm sure that there are GUI solutions as well. I have a cable (from Radio Shack) with a mineature stereo phone plug on one end (fits the sound card line in jack), and a pair of RCA phono plugs on the other end (fits the tape out or tape-rec jacks on the HiFi amplifier/receiver) (no attenuation). I'd have the rec command all typed, but for the carriage return, drop the needle in the lead in area, and hit enter. At the end of the cut, hit control-C. That generally left me with some silence at each end, but there are sox commands that you can use to trim time from the beginning and end of a cut, so you can get pretty tight tracks. Sox will give you an idea of whether your samples come close to the maximum levels, which is sort of like watching the VU meter on a tape recorder, to see if the record level is good. You do want to have the peaks of the music fairly close to the limits, so that the noise floor is as far away as possible. Sox is willing to adjust the samples, but this looses information, so its best to have the basic recording give you a good record level. Sadly, the volume control on your amplifier doesn't affect the line level outputs. (That's why your tape deck has a "record level" knob.) The sound card will have a "mixer" that you can use to adjust the analog level of the line in connection. It may be possible to set the mixer with a command line tool, maybe even with an option to rec, but I just used the GUI mixer that was installed on my box (IIRC). Rec has a mess of options, and you will want to set them according to your usage. For example, if you're going to master a CD, you should probably use the same sampling rate that CD players use (44,100 samples per second, if I'm not mistaken). There are things like number of channels, bits per sample, and some other format stuff. (Probably ripping a track from a commercial CD and doing "file" on the resultant wav file will give you some insignt.) The sox documentation is significant, but last I checked, lacking in a "you probably want this" section. If it turns out to be a problem, I can find some old backups of the laptop and see what options I was using. Sox can also do format conversions, time resampling (speed up/slow down the "tape"), pitch change (without speed change), speed change (without pitch change), and filtering to remove hiss, clicks, and pops. It is, however, a command line tool, so you have to read the man pages and compose a set of switches. OTOH, once you've figured out how to perform an operation, if you want to do it to a bunch of tracks, you can write a script, and Bob's your uncle. Bill ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Re: Play wav files from serial input
Jeff Kinz writes: ... > Any PII from 200-600 MHz will rip a CD at about 1:1 music time to rip > time ratio. If you have a large (25+ years collection) it will take > 'forever' to convert it. > > On the other hand, any recent vintage machine w/a 1GHz or better > will rip a 1 hour cd in approx 15 minutes. :-) Faster is faster > obviously. Oh, yee holder of recent music formats. Ripping a CD is child's play. An all digital operation, it doesn't even require a sound card. My LPs, 45s, and 78s won't fit in the CD drive, however. Digitizing from an analog source is generally a realtime only operation. You might think that you could save some time by playing the LPs at 45 and setting the sampling rate a 1.35 times the desired rate, but then the equalization filter in the phono pre-amp wouldn't match the pre-emphasis on the record. Maybe you could convert those 3.75ips tapes at 7.5 ips, though. > Set the quality levels in your convert utility as high as you can. that > way you won't have to rip any CD's over again. (My Linda Ronstadt albums > had lot's o' dropouts, dunno why. ) (Linda who? :-) ) She's the one that did that album with Nelson Riddle, isn't she? Bill ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Re: Play wav files from serial input
Mark Komarinski writes: > What software are you using for click/pop and normalization? I was using > a combination of gwc and audacity(?), but it didn't seem to catch everything > and I couldn't figure out how to remove a single click. I never actually did it. The sox man page mentions "filters". Bill ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Re: Recording your phonograph records digitally (was: Play wav files from serial input)
Bill McGonigle writes: > On Jan 12, 2005, at 16:06, Bill Freeman wrote: > > > I have a cable (from Radio Shack) with a mineature > > stereo phone plug on one end (fits the sound card line in jack), and a > > pair of RCA phono plugs on the other end (fits the tape out or > > tape-rec jacks on the HiFi amplifier/receiver) (no attenuation). > > When I tried this I got a nasty ground-loop hum on the cable. That in particular was why I was doing this with a laptop: Run on the battery and there is no ground reference connection to support a loop. I'd be interested to hear how others fair. (Perhaps there's a product here in the form of AC coupled cables, etc.) Bill ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Re: hot spot managment
Steven C. Peterson writes: > I am working with a client of mine that owns a restaurant in Nashua he > is looking to add a free hotpot to his restaurant but does not want > people not in the restaurant using it A little more on this, here's an Information Week article about a company that makes shielding products, including a paint with aluminum flecks that would be easier to install than copper screen. http://informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=56200676 Bill ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
[OT] restaurant shielding(was Re: hot spot management)
Neil Joseph Schelly writes: > Something he may not consider though about that paint - 100MHz to 5GHz will > also block out all cellular frequencies. I know I'd be an annoyed patron of > the restaurant if my cell phone went out of signal every time I entered. > With something like this, he may lose far more business than the hot spot > would attract. I, on the other hand, would usually be willing to give up cell phone connectivity to not have to listen to others use theirs while I eat. I don't even consider my personal connectivity loss to be an unblemished negative, since I don't really like receiving calls when I'm eating, whether it be from telemarketers at home, or from a boss while I'm trying to have a quiet conversation with a dinner partner. If the call was important, I'll return the message when I get out of the restaurant. If I really must be available for a call, and I can't leave the restaurant's phone number with a secretary, then, indeed, I'd choose a different restaurant. Otherwise a small notice saying "your cell phone probably won't work in here" would be an attractant to me. Are there more potential customers like me, or more like you? I contend that the answer isn't obvious. One data point, however, is that cell coverage is lousy (at least with Verizon) in the Peterborough Diner (an old metal diner), yet it's always hopping with business when I'm there. Bill ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Firefox installation problem: loading the extensions datasource
Paul Dussault writes: > I have just installed the Firefox browser on to my Fedora Core 2 > release and can only run the program as root. I get the message: > "loading the extensions datasource" in the terminal window I > execute the program from if I am not the root user. I installed > Firefox as root into the /usr/local/bin directory. I opened up the > permissions to 774 to see if that would help, but no go. Rather > than continue and really screw things up, I thought I would ask the > question here. Just for reference, I'm using Firefox with FC2, and had no such problem. Did you install from and RPM (as I did), or some other way? Bill ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
rental servers?
Bill McGonigle writes: > Here's a strange question - has anyone heard of a service that provides > short-term server rentals? > > This is for benchmarking an application on a machine for a client who's > not interested in purchasing a dual-xeon with two gigs of RAM and phat > SCSI disks just for benchmarking, but would be interested in renting > one for a few days to see how their application performs on it. ... It may be that some vender who believes that they may get a sale down the road if the benchmark numbers are good enough would provide some time for free. Things certainly used to work that way for big iron, but then, it's a brave new world out there. Bill ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Re: Nashua Meeting
Sadly, I have a dance lesson to teach tonight, so don't bring my stuff. I could, however, drop by your place tomorrow evening. Will that work? Bill ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Anyone else see USB keyboard problems on FC2 with the new '770' kernel?
I'm running Fedora Core 2, and recently installed the 2.6.10-1.770 kernel (some kind of shift in the numbering) that I got from up2date. If I boot from it, my USB keyboard stops working. (I guess that I should try a PS/2 keyboard.) Am I alone? Bill ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Re: Anyone else see USB keyboard problems on FC2 with the new '770' kernel?
Bruce Dawson writes: > On Tue, 2005-03-08 at 17:17 -0500, Bill Freeman wrote: > >I'm running Fedora Core 2, and recently installed the > > 2.6.10-1.770 kernel (some kind of shift in the numbering) that I got > > from up2date. If I boot from it, my USB keyboard stops working. (I > > guess that I should try a PS/2 keyboard.) > > > >Am I alone? > > Not exactly. I've had lots of "fun" times with the 2.6.10 kernel and the > USB "filesystem". But I'm using a Debian distribution. > > What modules do you have loaded? Actually, I've been using 2.6.10 kernels just fine for a while. (Through 2.6.10-1.14_FC2, in fact. Not that the 1.14 means a whole lot to other than a Fedora release guy.) It's just the latest build (2.6.10-1.770 -- interesting change of numbering strategy) from Fedora, which showed up in the last couple of days, that seems to have a problem. Nothing else is changed at the surface level. Fedora truly loads a lot of dreck: rfcomm, bluetooth, battery, other stuff I don't recognize. (What's the point of having modules anyway? If they're always going to load all this stuff it may as well be staticly linked into the kernel.) I can't tell you what it tries to load with the '770 kernel because I can't log in and ask without a working keyboard. They sure don't make it easy to figure out how to submit a bug report. I'll try harder if something doesn't show up on the Fedora announce list in a few days. Bill ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Re: Anyone else see USB keyboard problems on FC2 with the new '770' kernel?
Derek Martin writes: > On Tue, Mar 08, 2005 at 05:17:00PM -0500, Bill Freeman wrote: > >I'm running Fedora Core 2, and recently installed the > > 2.6.10-1.770 kernel (some kind of shift in the numbering) that I got > > from up2date. If I boot from it, my USB keyboard stops working. (I > > guess that I should try a PS/2 keyboard.) > > I haven't tried my USB keyboard with the kernel-2.6.10-1.12_FC2 > kernel, but I have had a number of USB-related problems with every > kernel I've used since the 2.6.8-1.521 kernel. I often experience > kernel oopses with both my digital camera and my DVD writer with the > later kernels. I'm of the opinion that the USB drivers aren't done > baking (either that, or they're completely baked!) in the 2.6 > kernel... > FYI, my USB keyboard, mouse, and flash drive all work fine with kernel-2.6.10-1.12_FC2 and kernel-2.6.10-1.14_FC2 (and all the FC2 and RH 7, 8, 9 kernels over the last couple of years). I have managed to get pictures off of my girlfriend's camera, but otherwise I don't use USB much, so maybe I've just had lucky choices. Bill ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Debian help, please
I thought that I'd try the LUG before I go more global. I've been a RedHat/Fedora guy for a long time. I have a couple of new (to me) machines to install on, so I'm trying some other distributions. (Gentoo on one of them. Man, does kde take a long time to compile! Don't set up to build -j2 if you've only got 64Mb. When two compiles have a RSS together greater than available RAM, and that often happens doing a stage 1 gentoo, you drop to a few percent of your machine's performance.) One is a Compaq Presario 1200Z. I sucessfully shrank the NTFS partition with XP on it (not permanently my laptop) and burned myself a net install CD, and installed woody. (I figured that stable would be wiser until I'm wiser.) All well and good. I even got it to install the tulip driver on boot, though I'm still running dhclient -e eth0 by hand. But, no sound. Some fooling around later I realized that its, at least in part, because I wound up with kernel 2.2.20-idepci (probably because that was what was on the netinstall CD?), and the idepci versions have no sound support. So I did an install of 2.2.20, the full version. Yeah, 2.4 is in the apt accessible stuff, but I figured I'd take baby steps. And it boots, all well and good. But 1. still no sound, even when I modprobe via82cxxx_audio (which is what works for knoppix); and 2. the tulip driver will no longer load (something about device busy, I'll get the real message if desired, but that's a ways back, see below). Yes, the error message implies that it's attempting to load tulip.o from the correct subdirectory tree of /lib/modules. OK, so maybe the 2.2 stuff isn't being kept up and tested as well as one might hope, it being a few versions back and all, So I tried 2.4.18-k7, which hangs initializing USB stuff. There's a sticker on the laptop that says Duron, but uname reports i686. Yes I got the initrd stuff straight. So next I take two steps back and try 2.4.16-i386. This boots fine, will happily modprobe via82cxxx_audio, and kde's sound server no longer complains (though I haven't heard any sound yet). But, tulip still won't load (no such device this time from tulip.o's init_module). Any insights? Bill ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
What do people use to track phone calls?
Steven W. Orr writes: > I'm looking for something to manage the phone calls that I need to make. > When did I call? What was the status? Why am I calling? etc. > > Anything good out there? Emacs? (Always the answer) ;^) Bill ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Re: Ripping wav files from iso image
Michael ODonnell writes: > > > Good source of info re: CD stuff: > > http://www.cdrfaq.org/faq.html Yes, and much more accurate than Ben. ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Re: (ext3 + (2.4.18 -> 2.6.11)) = WTF?
http://kgdb.sourceforge.net/ - I know that you're capable of using such, Michael. (Then maybe a LUG presentation on setting it up and using it 8^) ) ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Re: (ext3 + (2.4.18 -> 2.6.11)) = WTF?
Bill McGonigle writes: > Did you make sure md or lvm aren't grabbing the disk? Would that show up under lsof? Is anyone using one or both who could check? Bill ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Re: Help kill the Surveillance State Bill
Fred writes: > Keep in mind that your microwave oven can be your best friend in the > defense against RFIDs. Or if you want it to work sometimes, like when/if it becomes a requirement for some transactions, and you just want to prevent remote readings, keep it in an aluminum foil envelope (similar to the magnetic stripe protection envelope that comes with your ATM card). > > And, even if it's only a magstrip, I don't want the clerks at the > > liquor store, or the store owners to have access to my identity that > > easily. Don't let them scan it. If they insist, shop elsewhere. (I don't shop at the Stop and Shop family of grocers any more, since you have to use their card to get there best price. I still occasionally shop at CVS, because the price difference is tiny, and is only a store credit that comes significantly after the purchase time.) > And a deguasser is your best friend there. However, none of these would > be effective against bar codes. What we need is a plastic cover that is clear in visible light but opaque or reflective or stippled in the IR. > I found this out the hard way once when I crossed into Canada, and the > Canadian customs ran my DL and pulled up a 5-year-old case of > "disorderly conduct" in which I was found not-guilty. Didn't matter. > They harassed me about it anyway. And they could do that with just your driver's license number, or the number on any other document that they accept as ID. Border control is actually a reason for record aggregation that I support. The problems here are that: 1. That they felt that they should hassle you over a charge that resulted in a not guilty verdict; and 2. that not guilty cases aren't expunged from the level of record that they can access without first bringing a charge against you. Basically I agree that we effectively already have national and even international ID. Fighting the provision under discussion of the pending legislation is just spitting into the wind. You cannot prevent organizations, and especially government, from keeping track of you and much of what you do. Having a national ID card probably makes it harder to delude yourself that you have some degree of anonymity, and thus may actually be a good thing. At least we don't yet have finger print scanners on public restroom doors. Bill ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Re: Help kill the Surveillance State Bill
Fred writes: > On Tue, 2005-05-10 at 09:15 -0400, Bill Freeman wrote: > > Fred writes: ... > If RFIDs ever become a *requirement* for a transaction, there *won't be* > a transaction with me, period. > > Even credit card merchants have the option of typing in the number if > the mag stripe fails. Yep. If you make a credit card purchase then you're already screwed. The thing to fear is ID required to make a cash purchase. > >What we need is a plastic cover that is clear in visible light > > but opaque or reflective or stippled in the IR. > > Nevermind the plastic cover. A felt-tip "magic marker" will do the trick > just nicely. Except that this is obvious. A bar code that looks good but won't scan is probably blamed on the scanner, and exceeds the clerk's "too much bother" level without getting him annoyed at you and putting your bread under your canned goods. ... > > Border > > control is actually a reason for record aggregation that I support. > > Until it's your turn to be harassed, falsely accused of something you > didn't do, etc. Then your life will get *real interesting*. Everything has trade offs. > Errors also typically occurs in the aggregation, and getting them fixed > is, well, an exercise in near futility. And there is the problem, rather than the existance of some particular ID system. The political will of the few who understand the issue is inadequate to actually get these problems fixed. But what clout there is would be more effectively spent in support of legislation limiting what information could be collected, what can be retained, and to what use it can be put, rather than wasted attacking one particular ID system. ... > Think twice, thrice, and more before being sure you are for record > aggregation. The truth is, I think, that you have an ideal in your head > that, unfortunately, does not reflect reality. I haven't read a posting yet in this thread that can't accept this description. More directly, from my point of view, this is the pot calling the kettle black. ... > Have we forgotten our history so quickly? How did the Germans keep track > of the Jews during the Holocaust, for example? Can you say, "IBM", boys > and girls? Yes, and you can kill someone with a scalpel, so we should make surgery illegal. > And with the fascist ways the Bush Administration has been carrying on > lately, are you *sure* it's a good thing? No one that had anything pro- > Kerry on their persons, even in their wallets, or bumper stickers on > their cars even, were allowed into the Republican convention. Hello? Did > I miss something? Has anyone been paying attention? Guess not. That works for me. It's not as though conservatives are welcomed at liberal venues. National media presentments notwithstanding, I think that the "fascist" label applies at least as well to Democrats as it does to Republicans. ... > Consider this -- cameras in public places, connected to face recognition > software, that can track your every move -- everyone's every move. Have > you seen "Minority Report"? I suggest you do if you haven't. There > already are companies claiming they can pick out faces of "convicts" out > of a crowd, say, at a ball park, and this technology has already been > tested under those conditions. I think they had high false positive > rates, but thats the whole problem. Many innocents can be harassed due > to no fault of their own -- just because the *machine* mistook their > face for a known felon. You make my original point for me. A national ID card can only make us more vigilant and them more sloppy. > Witness what is already in place -- Airport Insecurity. On a flight I > took recently, I and my business partner were flagged and have all of > our belongings searched with a glove. I had to watch total strangers > poke and prod my underwear in full sight of everyone. And yet I was > thinking the whole time -- just for fun, to keep myself amused -- ways > around their infective over-security that a real terrorist with 2 > neurons to rub together can get around. ... You'll have to stop packing the embarrassing types of underwear then. I've been inspected myself. Other than the delay, I find it no big deal. But I still don't see how an ID card makes this any worse. ... > And to be honest, I would not want truly *effective* security in place. Nor will you ever see it. It's not about security. It's about the general public's perception of security. Sell tickets. Buy votes. What you will see is something more invasive and less secure than we have now. Because "news" people need to sell advertising. ... Bill ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Re: [OT] Help kill the Surveillance State Bill
Paul Lussier writes: > "Michael ODonnell" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: ... > > window but if they want to get a swipe from his card > > they first have to swipe theirs... ... > I recently read the same article. I found it rather amusing. Though, > if it were implanted with RFID, you'd have to embed a jammer in there > too :( You just need to short out a few turns of the antenna coil. No active jammer is required. The MicroChip web site has some good stuff about RFID. Bill ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Fwd: Environmental Monitoring
I believe (as I had responded privately to the original questioner) that the System Management Bus found in some modern PCs is I2C or close enough to work with things like the LM34 and TCN75A (I like MicroChip) and other I2C temperature sensors. They tend to be SMT, but you can get things like the "Surfboard" series of SMT adapters to use as a pre-made circuit board. That totals less than $10 for a sensor, plus the effort of figuring out how to attach to the SMB and program the SMB, and, to use someone else's phrase, if your time is billed at $0. If the SMB won't fly, you can always do I2C single master with the parallel port and a FET. And I wouldn't be surprised if there were a USB based I2C interface out there, but now its starting to approach the prices that some others have been mentioning. Bill ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Re: C or C++?
Chris writes: > You should never use C++ in a real-time situation, simply becasue the > constructors and destructors will be continually allocating memory, > which is completely non-deterministic. A real-time system needs to be > deterministic. Allocation and deallocation is actually under your control, and can be no more burden than in C. For example, an local variable that is an instance gets created on the stack, just like a C structure that is a local variable. The class itself might have pointers to objects that you allocate inside the constructor, but, again, that is under your control - if you are the author of the class. You can also override new and delete to allocate from a fast pool, pre-allocating your high water mark usage of a class, and making allocation/deallocation deterministic for that class. You would do a similar thing for C structures used in the same way. However, what you say is undoubtedly true of many of the classes in the standard library. And if you're not going to use them, then the case for using C++ gets weaker. Bill ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Postfix: phantom hostname.
Ken D'Ambrosio writes: > Okay, this is pissing me off. > > I've got a machine, currently "reddwarf", that used to be "nebula". > I've -- obviously -- changed its name. "nebula" isn't mentioned in > /etc/hosts, and the IP resolves (both reverse and forward) to reddwarf. > /etc/hostname is reddwarf. The "live" hostname (eg. the output of > "hostname") is reddwarf. /etc/mailname is reddwarf. A "strace -f > postfix" doesn't show the word "nebula" anywhere. "nebula" isn't > mentioned in any of the postfix config files; reddwarf is. I've made > sure that the postfix processes have restarted. Hell: I've dpkg > --purge'd postfix (after installing exim), and then installed postfix > again from scratch. > > THEN WHY THE FLOCK, WHEN I TELNET TO PORT 25, DOES IT THINK IT'S NEBULA?! > > Suggestions as to why this might be would go a long way toward saving > the small amount of sanity I have left. Ken, I guess that if it were me I'd be trying to run postfix under gdb by now. You might or might not have to build it from source to get good symbols, and/or to reduce the optimization level to the point where the code advances through the source lines in a comprehensible manner. It should be easy to grep the sources for where the helo messages is comming from, breakpoint there, so a stack trace, check the variables that the code shows in use for generating the "nebula", grep the sources for references, and if it isn't clear by then, breakpoint all of the referencers to see who's setting it that way, rinse and repeat. That's if you don't get a good answer from someone else. Chances are that the above will only point you to the library or system call that's still returning the bad stuff. Or maybe first try (as root): # find /etc -type f -print0 | xargs -0 grep -i nebula | less Bill ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Is anybody getting good BitTorrent rates with Comcast?
I've tried changing away from the default ports. I've fiddled with max_uploade_rate (in hopes of better tit for tat). It could be, I suppose, my netgear router (I don't go on the Comcast segment "bare"). Or it could be Comcast. [Here's where it starts to tie into Linux:] Or maybe the Knoppix 4.0 DVD torrent I'm using is poor. Or do I need to fiddle some of the Linux firewall settings to let connections happen at a good rate? (FC2 2.6.10 kernel.) What rates do other folks see? Bill ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Re: Is anybody getting good BitTorrent rates with Comcast?
Kevin D. Clark writes: > > Bill Freeman writes: > > >What rates do other folks see? > > What torrent are you using? Obviously, this info will help others > make a more accurate measurement. Please post this. It's a knoppix 4.0 dvd english iso that I fount at www.mininova.org (just go there and use their search for "knoppix"). I'm getting around 10kBps down, providing over 40kBps up, currently 15 peers, 17 seeds, 3 dist copies. Bill ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Re: Is anybody getting good BitTorrent rates with Comcast?
Ted Roche writes: > Knoppix 4.0 DVD! Yipee! Please send along the URL of the torrent, and > I'll tell you if I am seeing similar slowness. > > One Q: do you have ports 6881-6889 forwarded to the machine trying > the download? I had heard rumors that more modern bittorrent clients > were throttling download rates for one-way, download-only clients, > but cannot confirm such. I'm definately supplying over 40kBps up load. I started out with ports 6881-6889, but on advise of several web pages am now doing ports 1-6. Bill ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Re: Is anybody getting good BitTorrent rates with Comcast?
Bill Freeman writes: > What rates do other folks see? It just spiked to 30kBps for a while. Still not wonderful, but probably vindicates Comcast and my router. Too bad that I need to shut down for potential convective activity during my out for dinner time. Oh, not so bad after all. It's back down to 10 again. Bill ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Re: Is anybody getting good BitTorrent rates with Comcast?
Bill Freeman writes: > What rates do other folks see? It just spiked to 30kBps for a while. Still not wonderful, but probably vindicates Comcast and my router. Too bad that I need to shut down for potential convective activity during my out for dinner time. Oh, not so bad after all. It's back down to 10 again. Bill ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Re: Is anybody getting good BitTorrent rates with Comcast?
Bill Freeman writes: > What rates do other folks see? Well, now I'm seeing rates around 600kBps. I'm not entirely sure what all really effects it, but some A/B testing leads to the following surmises: A website on using BitTorrent with linux had suggested setting max_upload_rate to 48 and max_uploads to -1. This apparently hurts. 20 and 4 seem to be good values. I had naively assumed that if I was getting upload rate at all, then the download machine firewall was letting the connects through. Forgive me, I just wasn't awake. I added bittorrent to /etc/services for both tcp and udp on 6881 through 6889, and used Fedora's system-config-securitylevel to turn bittorrent:tcp and bittorrent:udp on in the firewall. I guess that I need to read about the bittorrent protocol in more depth in order to understand why it was working at all. I'm not sure that I can develop the interest to do so. Thanks to everyone for all of the helpful suggestions and testing. Bill ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Re: Speaking of x10 and home automation...
Yes Ted Roche writes: > Is this the same bunch that used to be the mill buildings downtown? I > could always find parts for some hare-brained scheme there! > > On Aug 4, 2005, at 4:50 PM, Travis Roy wrote: > > > ESS in Manchester (by E. Industrial Park Dr.) they have lamp > > modules for $7 > ___ > gnhlug-discuss mailing list > gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org > http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Best tool for MIME handling in scripts?
Bill McGonigle writes: > What do folks here use for massaging MIME messages in shell scripts? > > For instance, the task at hand is to take incoming mail from a scanner, > strip out the MIME attachments (PDF's), and dump them in a folder. > There should be a tool that I can pipe the message to, specify an > option to save, an option to specify a save location, an option to > specify the MIME types to handle, and call it from procmail. > > I've found munpack, reformime, Perl's MIMETools, but none has jumped > out as the tool that does things The Unix Way. Perhaps not what you're thinking about as being The Unix Way, but there are Python classes for dealing with MIME and mail messages. For my usage I began with: from email import message_from_file Bill ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
USB Flash Disk is write protected and can't turn it off!
Bruce Labitt writes: > I have a SuSE 9.0 system running and have recently upgraded KDE to > 3.4.2. Just today I noticed that my USB key can no longer be written > to. All files seem to be write protected. There is a mechanical switch > on the side of the key which, duh, sets write protection. Now before > you all say the switch is busted, just 10 minutes ago I checked it on my > old 'doze machine and it allows me to read and write to it. > ... See if it's mounted read only. Type "mount" at a command prompt. See if that mentions "ro" ore "read-only". If that's the case you should be able to remount it read-write, though you'll have to find and close everything that KDE attached to it before you'll be able to unmount and then mount it by hand. Figuring out why KDE is doing this, if it is, is left as an exercise for someone who can touch the machine (i.e.; not me from here). See if it's mounted as another user, e.g.; root, with restrictive permissions in the "other" (as in User, Group, Other, see "man chmod"). Again, the output from "mount" may help to figure this out, as might looking at the apparent ownership of the files when you do "ls ". I presume that it has a FAT filesystem (including VFAT), which doesn't have file ownership, so mount has options on who to say owns the files, and what the "umask" is. See "man mount", "man 5 fstab". Again, how the KDE change makes this happen and how to fix it is an exercise for someone who is there. HTH, goos luck. Bill ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Re: HTML mail (was: PHP contact manager)
Bill McGonigle writes: > On Sep 27, 2005, at 08:50, Ben Scott wrote: > > > But it was mangling your > > messages, making already cryptic output almost unreadable. > > Ben, you need a MUA that can handle multi-part MIME messages. Set it > to show you the text/plain alternative. > > I know I get mail with HTML-only content but I just see a blank message > and unless it's from a client it goes straight to the trash. Summary: Surprisingly, I pretty much agree with Ben. I see some instances of HTML only mail as well. But I see several other cases: My (admittedly non-mainstream) MUA sometimes does a good job displaying HTML (e.g.; emphasis, images) while ignoring gratuitous marketing attributes (color, typeface). Sometimes it displays the text/plain alternative (perhaps when it finds the HTML to confusing to render?). But sometimes it seems not to recognize that there are parts (though I can see some MIME division stuff) and simply presents the text of the message. This last makes me suspect that some common MUA out there is playing fast and loose with the HTML and/or MIME standards when it (or they) generate HTML messages. Wouldn't that be a surprise? On the other hand, I've got to ask why? Having emphasized text rendered bold is sometimes a very slight readability enhancement, but by and large, I've derived no benefit from receiving mail with HTML stunts, as opposed to getting plain text. I don't consider having spam or side advertisements come up glitzy to be a benefit. Do you? You might say that it's nice to be able to click on links in an HTML message (more the fool you, say I), but my MUA can pick out URLs in text messages and make them click-able. And note that I get to see where the link goes, rather than just the link text. If you really need to send some HTML to a friend, zip it up and send it as an attachment. OK Maybe that's beyond grandma or little Timmy. I wish it were beyond the few people who occasionally feel that they have to send me 50Mb of "funny" pictures. It seems that HTML messages are from 3 to 10 (or even more) times the size of the same information sent as text. I'm on a broadband link at the moment, but that varies. Especially now that it's becoming attractive to get E-mail via cellular, the cost per kb transferred is becoming significant again. I'd like to see everyone interesting disable the sending of HTML versions. Then I could make the presence of HTML as the bulk of the message a spam filtering parameter. (Preferably at the ISP end of the connection). The marketeers would be unhappy if we all started disabling the ability to *receive* HTML mail. But they should be comforted to learn that it wouldn't actually reduce the amount of stuff that I buy as a result of receiving E-mail offers. Sadly, however, there are apparently enough suckers. (I wonder if there's any good data on the number of people, like me, who attempt to remember who has spammed me so that I can actively avoid doing business with them?) Bill (My, but it's fun to vent!) ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Toll Booths (Was: Re: [OT] NH protest against HP printers with RFID chips Nov. 5th)
Travis Roy writes: ... > Then yo go through NY and they have GATES on the EZ-Pass lanes that you > have to actually stop and wait for the gate to raise up... what's the point! The "point" is for them to be able to reduce their staffing (fire token sellers/toll collectors). What? You thought that this stuff was for the customer's convenience? Innocence of youth, I guess. Bill ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Sound broken by Synaptic. Anyone else? Any thoughts
As long as Ben is clarifying Debian... (Not really, but one must heckle occasionally.) A couple of weeks ago I let Synaptic (APT front end) have its way with update and upgrade of the Compaq Presario 1200Z (1201Z if the label on the bottom is to be believed) laptop that I've been using with Debian Sarge (testing?). I've done this many times before. This time didn't seem different, and not involving a kernel upgrade (running 2.6.12-1-i686), it was a pretty simple one. When the smoke cleared, however, sound doesn not work. I don't believe that the hardware has broken, since sound still works fine under Windows. A suitable set of modules seems to be loaded, including sound_core, sound, snd, via82cxxx, and via82cxxx_audio. Various apps complain about the lack of /dev/dsp, and, indeed, it's not there. (There is, however, /dev/dspW) Has anyone else seen a comparable failure on a recent upgrade? I'm not a long time Debian user. Can the experienced point me to the equivalent of RedHat's sndconfig? Or some other tool? Or files to examine? How is it done on Debian? Any other thoughts? Perhaps the device node got blown away and I have to make it by hand, like in the old days? Or a symbolic link? Bill ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Re: Sound broken by Synaptic. Anyone else? Any thoughts
Cole Tuininga writes: > On Mon, 2005-11-21 at 14:52 -0500, Bill Freeman wrote: > Keep in mind that testing != Sarge. Sarge is the currently stable > distribution. Testing is (by definition) not the stable release. Yes. Somewhere I knew that. Sarge was testing when I installed it. (Sarge, then testing, worked, while Woody, then stable, did not work. Go figure.) So my repositories are for testing. I didn't happen to notice when it changed, so I haven't thought about switching. However, as you point out, testing is usually low risk: > If you're willing to take the risk (usually fairly low) of running > testing, you have to accept any problems that come with it. > > That's not to say that this is necessarily the issue, but it's always > possible... Thanks. Sound usually isn't importatnt to me, so I'll probably wait to see if it comes back in a future update, unless I get some other suggestions to try. Bill ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Re: Sound broken by Synaptic. Anyone else? Any thoughts
Ken D'Ambrosio writes: > Well... it's not unheard-of that a /dev file simply goes away (during an > update and the like). Perhaps you might wish to re-create it. Using my > own /dev/dsp as a referent, you'd do a: > > # mknod /dev/dsp c 14 3 Indeed, remaking the node fixes things. I guess I'll have to reveiw all that devfs stuff. I had convinced myself that all the node generation stuff had been automated. Bill ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Re: Sound broken by Synaptic. Anyone else? Any thoughts
Ben Scott writes:
> On 11/21/05, Bill Freeman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> FWIW, on my Fedora 4 system running kernel 2.6.13 and ALSA 1.0.9b, I
> have many more modules:
>
> $ lsmod | awk '{ print $1 }' | egrep snd\|sound | xargs
> snd_via82xx snd_ac97_codec snd_seq_dummy snd_seq_oss
> snd_seq_midi_event snd_seq snd_pcm_oss snd_mixer_oss snd_pcm snd_timer
> snd_page_alloc snd_mpu401_uart snd_rawmidi snd_seq_device snd
> soundcore
> $
I, too, have many more modules. I just mentioned enough to
imply that the sound hardware had been recognized correctly. Since
remaking the node fixed the problem, it would seem that I'm loading
enough modules.
Thanks for the tips.
Bill
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Re: Sound broken by Synaptic. Anyone else? Any thoughts
Greg Rundlett writes: > believed I was running Sarge after it became stable, I am in fact > still running testing (which means no security updates). I hadn't realized that. I guess that the laptop in question is pretty safe, since it runs no services, lives behind a firewall/router, and I don't even read mail on it. But I'll have to keep that in mind. You'ld think that security updates would have to be "tested". Bill ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Programming Language History [was Re: F/OS & the blind ]
Jon maddog Hall writes: > Paul, > > [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: > > Lisp, as a language, has been around since 1959, making it the oldest > > programming language still in common use today. I thought that my copy of McCarthy's lisp book was dated 1957. If I ever find it again I'll confirm that. I also have a vague memory of a claim around the MIT AI lab that lisp and fortran were the same age. > Fortran was started in 1954, and released in 1957. Cobol was also released > in 1959. You can argue about the words "common use", but you should not > argue > too loudly in the high performance computing arenas, nor in the business > circles. Bill ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Re: Programming Language History [was: F/OS & the blind]
Bill McGonigle writes: > "Comparing Lisp and Python and throwing out the top and >bottom two, we find Python is 3 to 85 times slower than >Lisp -- about the same as Perl, but much slower than >Java or Lisp. Lisp is about twice as fast as Java." > > So, Norvig is saying the Python interpreter is what is killing speed, > and, using the above mentioned python2lisp code we should be able to > run lisp-compiled Python scripts at constant time with compiled C++. I'm not confident in his speed comparisons. Looking at his sample program written in both lisp and python, I'm pretty sure that most python programmers wouldn't approach the underlying problem in that way. If that's true of his other tests, his python (and perhaps perl) speeds may be artificially depressed. Bill ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Fonts in Open Office question(s)
Summary: I'm editing a document in OO, and the font select box on the tool bar indicates that some of the text is, for example, "Arial". But when I click the drop down (or use the context menu) to see font choices, "Arial" is not there (whether the cursor is in "Arial" text or not). Keeping consistent use of font seems important, so I often want to add text in one of these fonts. While I've been successful propagating this font by using cut and paste, this is a PITA. How can I get these fonts, of which OO apparently knows, to show up in the font selection menu? Background I'm somewhat new to OO, having stuck to plain text, LaTeX, and hand crafted HTML or PostScript in the past. But I've given up on refusing to provide my resume in Word format. Still, I'm not going to buy (or borrow the use of) a copy of Word. So I grabbed a resume (CV) template from the OO web site. It includes the use of "Arial", among others, that don't show up in the font selection list. I could just change everything to some of the listed fonts, but I would rather understand what's going on. Separately Have you any advice about features and fonts to avoid or use to insure that, when saved as a doc file and read with a copy of Word, the formatting, including page breaks, looks the same? Thanks, Bill ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Re: Fonts in Open Office question(s)
First, thanks to everyone for the insights. Jim Kuzdrall writes: > If you are using SuSE, you can get all the MS TrueType fonts via > YaST Update. No. FC and/or Debian (the HD with Gentoo died). I suppose alien of something like it might do? > As they explain, they can't include them because of copyright, but > Microsoft makes them available free. Hmmm. Doesn that mean that there's a Microsoft download server where I can get them. > I didn't get them because my old CD of Corel Linux had the whole > Microsoft set plus many more. It just so happens that I have a legally owned, unopend box of Corel WordPerfect 8 for Linux, Personak Edition, sitting next to me on the floor (from when I almost decided to go GUI in July '99). I'm I likely to be able to pull suitable fonts off of those CDs without installing WP?. > If you want the fonts, I can gzip a bunch and email them to you. As > long as they are for private correspondence, there is no copyright > problem. I suppose that's a question. A resume is a business document. But it's a personal business document. If we're being scrupulous, I don't know if that qualifies as personal correspondence. And the follow-on question is whether I would remember not to use them in some future document. I'd better forgo your kind offer. > I have a collection of about 450 TrueType fonts from my purchases of > Corel WordPerfect over the years. Fortunately, one Manual had a > section by a typography expert who outlined 8 or so font tasks and > suggested several fonts for each. > > The expert emphasized readability over style. The subset I use are > based on that advice. Remember that "Arial" and "Swiss" are knockoffs > of the Helvetica print typeface, so there are not so many fonts once > the near-duplicates are removed. I guess the choice for me is the most common Microsoft specific variants. Then the font metrics are more likely to be identical on the HR guys Windows box. (Maybe even on a Mac, if I choose ones that are really Word/Microsoft specific.) I guess that I'll boot across into w2k and see what fonts wordpad knows about. Bill ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Re: Fonts in Open Office question(s)
Michael ODonnell writes: > > apt-get install msttcorefonts That's easy. I also found an RPM: "http://www.mjmwired.net/resources/mjm-fedora-fc2.html#ttf"; I guess my plans are to use Arial and Times New Roman for sans serif and serif fonts, respectively, and Courier New for fixed pitch for maximum fot metric compatibility with folks reading it Word. Thanks to all. Bill ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Cell phone built in GPS - not (Was: Open Source vs. Closed Source)
Fred writes: > And while we are on the subject -- some PDA "smart phones" come > equipped with their own GPS chip, but it seems this is never made > use of by mapping software, forcing one to buy a separate GPS > device anyway. Is there a way to access the built-in GPS chip for > application use? Or are the manufactures deliberately closing off > or restricting access to it? Just one data point from a conversation with a Verizon tech: Some of what gets called GPS isn't. This is all because of the E-911 stuff where the cell providers must pass along you location. Most carriers don't actually use GPS for this, but do clever "triangulation" (not really that either) from multiple cell towers. It seems that the phone has to do a couple of extra tricks for this to work well, so some older phones don't have the capability. These carriers (at least Verizon the last time that I replaced a phone) calls this feature "GPS" in their marketing literature, rather than come up with a new name that they'd have to explain to the average customer. Bill ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
a question about evim
Zhao Peng writes: > I have a simple question about evim (Easy Vim). > > Whenever I use evim to edit a file, say "abc.txt", a same-name file plus "~" > is always created. In this case, it will be "abc.txt~". It's a bit annoying > to me. > > Is there any way to avoid this? (Or it could casue some potential problems > if this behavior of evim is overridden.) I don't use evim, but this sounds like what emacs does. These are "backup" files. (Actually, they're your original file, renamed.) If your machine (or the editor) crashes, or you suffer significant operator error, you can at least get back to the previous version of the file. I know that emacs has a way to defeat this behavior, though I don't remember what it is, since, thinking that turning off backups is a bad idea, I didn't pay attention. Probably evim has a way too. I still think that it's a bad idea. I'd advise getting used to and enjoying the existence of the backups. Perhaps evim has a command similar to the ~ command in emacs's dired mode, which marks all backup files in the directory for deletion. (Of course you can say "rm *~" in the shell, but I'm always nervous that I'll hit return accidentally between typing the * and typing the ~.) > Meanwhile, I'm trying to migrate to Vi or Gvim, or Emacs with Emacs Speak > Statistics (which some people say can highlight SAS syntax). As those who know me will expect, I recommend emacs. emacs is emacs, no matter what subsystems you eventually decide to enable/install to use within it. See the stuff from my MonadLUG presentation last fall at: "http://www.mv.com/ipusers/ke1g/#lug";. Bill ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Process control and such
Ben Scott writes: > Someone at last night's meeting (I already forget who it was) was > reporting an issue where they start some program from one window, > program opens a new window, then they close the first window, and the > program (new window) dies too. I've forgotten the details, too. > (Geez, only 28 and I'm already going senile.) > > Anyhow, a few people, myself included, mumbled things like "process > groups" and "sessions" and "job control". ... Well, I wasn't there for the discussion, but, yes, process groups are probably involved. Usually you don't have to think about this kind of stuff because you start such a program "in the background" by giving the shell an ampersand at the end of the list. The shell then puts the list (I'm pretty sure that it works for a whole list, rather than only for a pipe or a single process) in its own process group. Then, when the closing window sends the shell's process group a HUP, the background process don't receive it, and continue to run. If, instead of just backgrounding commands from the shell, you're writing some code that backgrounds itself or creates children that are intended to be persistant, then you do need to worry about process groups yourself. Check out the setpgrp(2) man page. Bill ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Re: a question about evim
Michael ODonnell writes: > > > >> I'd advise getting used to/enjoying [...] backups. > [...] > >I don't know how long it would take me to kill my > >computer if I couldn't turn that off > > > Amen! Backup files like that have caused me MUCH more > trouble than they've ever been worth. For example, in just > the last couple of months I've been called upon to solve > one modprobe problem and one ifcfg problem that nearly had > me frothing at the mouth. It turned out that the poor > lusers had allowed somebody to edit their config files > with an editor that left those backup turds lying around. > Later, no matter how many changes they made to the "real" > config files (with an editor that was NOT incontinent) those > backup files would be silently evaluated AFTER the "real" > files and basically inflict the previous config on them. An interesting glitch. Not, apparently, common, but worth remembering. > Yes, the fact that backup files were being acted upon > instead of ignored might be counted as a bug, but leaving > junk lying around like that is still just basically rude. I'll have to disagree. I find it to be friendly. Perhaps less so in the days of no subdirectories and a very limited number of directory entries in the root of a DOS floppy, or if you know of some standard file suffix that ends in tilde. To each his own. Bill ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
[OT] Locating source of FM radio interference
Michael ODonnell writes: > > Something near our house has recently started > generating spectacular amounts of radio intereference > that's most noticeable around 89MHz. I have no > portable radio equipment of any kind except a humble > little $10 handheld with a normal telescoping antenna > that seems not to be very directional, or at least I > don't understand its directionality. Is there some > way I can use it to do some sort of triangulation on > the source of interference? Maybe some particular > way of holding/orienting it, or selectively/partially > shielding it, or tuning it, or... ? A particular problem with an FM receiver is that its response to signal strength may seem counter intuitive. As the desired signal gets weaker, it doesn't get quieter (at least until the very end), but rather noise gets louder. Of course, your particular "noise" might be serving as a signal, rather than the "white" or "background" noise that indicates weak signal. If your portable also receives AM, and if the interference is broadband enough to be received in the AM mode, then the results may be easier to interpret. AM antennas in portables also tend to be fairly directional, though in the sense of having a bilateral null, rather than a peak. In either case, however, a strong enough (interfering) signal will give no audible change in response over a fairly broad range of signal strengths (unless it has an "S meter"). For work close to the source, then, you need a means of seriously attenuating the signal. Your portable is unlikely to come equipped with one, so you have to fabricate your own. This probably takes the form of a shield with an aperture. If you have one of those metalized plastic bags in which you are supposed to put your speed pass if you don't want to use it at the moment, that's a good start. Put the portable inside, fold over the closure a few times, and see if it behaves like a radio between stations. If this isn't enough, try a metal foil bag (though making a good connection where you want to edges to act like a continuous side could be as difficult as making the bag hold water). If this works then partially open the bag, making the opening progressively larger, until you hear the interference. Then keep the opening that size while you walk around to try to get a feel for a constant signal strength contour. This may give you a better idea of the source location. You may need to repeatedly close down the aperture and make another contour for a greater signal strength as you close in. Note, however, that the spot you find may be, rather than the source, a piece of metal that is coupled to the actual source (fence, roof flashing, rain gutter, phone line, power line, etc). Coupling can be via actual electrical contact, such as a bad cordless telephone base injecting noise into the phone line, or simply by proximity. Being able to work in both AM and FM modes can be valuable here, since coupling may be quite different between the two. A good test is to have someone not holding the portable in the bag touch the fence, etc., (but not a power line), which should make a marked difference in the signal. Finally, if you can track it to one or a few dwellings, and if you have the social skills to persuade the owner to unplug things one at a time, you may not need to pinpoint things more closely. If there is some new appliance that is causing the problem, the manufacturer is usually legally bound to fix the issue, though this is still a pain. Bill ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Fedora ftp install without a name server?
I've made enough coasters with the name of an office supply store printed on them, so I decided to try an ftp install of Fedora 5. I've got a box with the iso files on it, mounted via the loop back device, and vsftpd running behind my router. From the target box, using knoppix, I can anonymous ftp to the server, using its 192.168... IP address, and I see the requisite files. Booting from one of my semi-coasters with "askmethod", it seems to get a suitable IP address from the router's DHCP server. But it doesn't seem to be able to connect to the server. My current theory is that the installer can't take an IP address as the server "name". (Certainly the sample screen shot in the install guide shows the use of an FQDN.) So, my questions: Is there a special syntax to use when specifying the use of an IP address, rather than a DN, when filling in the blanks in anaconda? Or is there a cheap and dirty DNS hack that I could start on the server (there's no virtual terminal with a shell on the target at this point, so I don't think that I could fix it there)? Or (most likely) am I missing something obvious? Bill ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Re: Fedora ftp install without a name server?
Ben Scott writes: > On 3/22/06, Bill Freeman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > I've got a box with the iso files on it, mounted via the loop > > back device, and vsftpd running behind my router. > > Is your router between the FTP server and the FTP client? Is the > router performing NAT and/or firewall duty? If so, that could be the > cause of your problem, *if* Knoppix is using PASV (passive mode FTP) > while Anaconda is using PORT (active mode FTP), *and* the router isn't > fully aware of FTP's dual TCP connections. Both machines are on the inside side of the router, from which point of view I presume that it acts like a switch or hub. I guess that I have a long enough cable to reach the sub-switch near the server. I'll give it a try, but I don't think that there's any firewalling over the path. There certainly isn't any NAT. Bill ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Re: Fedora ftp install without a name server?
Ben Scott writes: > On 3/23/06, Bill Freeman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Both machines are on the inside side of the router, from which > > point of view I presume that it acts like a switch or hub. > > Oh. I believe you are correct, there. So much for that theory. :-/ An interesting additional data point is that if I tell the ftp client on Knoppix to use passive mode, then I can no longer do transfers. I can log in, change directory, but I can't, for example, list the directory. I get "no route to host". Perhaps Fedora's installer is using passive mode, and there is a firewall problem or a vsftpd configuration problem on the server. Time for Bill to learn how passive mode works and maybe to drag out ethereal. Bill ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Re: Fedora ftp install without a name server?
Ben Scott writes: > On 3/23/06, Bill Freeman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > An interesting additional data point is that if I tell the ftp > > client on Knoppix to use passive mode, then I can no longer do > > transfers. > > Ah-ha! I, too, suspect the cause of that problem is also causing a > problem for the installer. I would expect the installer to use > passive mode, as it's generally considered the "better" of the two. It was a good try. With the subnetword temporarily isolated from the rest of the world, and the server firewall disabled, I could ftp from knoppix in passive mode, including data connections, but FC5 installer still can't connect. For now I'm starting to lean toward an installer problem. I guess I'll move on to running apache (or maybe tux) on the server and see if the http install works. Bill ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Re: FTP, proxies, firewalls (was: Fedora ftp install without a name server?)
Jason Stephenson writes: > ... It must have something to do with that machine having an AT > keyboard port and I'm using an AT/PS-2 adapter to connect it to the > KVM.) At keyboard and PS/2 keyboard use the same electrical and signalling protocol. An adapter is just connectors and wire, so it gets it right. Of course, there are more keys on most modern PS/2 keyboards then there ever were on an official AT keyboard, but the keys that are the same send the same codes. I really don't think that the adapter is related to the problem. Funny state in the KVM is a good bet. The proof of the pudding would be to plug the keyboard in directly, but the AT - PS/2 interface isn't designed to always recover without rebooting, and just rebooting might fix things anyway. Bill ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Re: Fedora ftp install without a name server?
Ben Scott writes: > On 3/23/06, Bill Freeman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > I guess I'll move on to running apache (or maybe > > tux) on the server and see if the http install works. > > HTTP would mean a single TCP connection on the world's favorite > port, so that might be a good idea. I'm comming back to my original theme. FC5 install can't access the files using http, but konqueror on knoppix has no trouble. It's hard to believe that Fedora team didn't test the net install at all, so perhaps it has something to do with not finding the machine via a name server. The mildly informative logging screen (vitrual terminal 3) that I can find shows it looking for: http://192.168.0.2//d1/repodata/repomd.xml and earlier, in the ftp wars: ftp://192.168.0.2//pub/d1/repodata/repomd.xml I'm suspicious of the double slash after the IP address. I've been specifying d1 (http) or put/d1 (ftp) in the location on server box. I'm not specifying a leading slash, but when it loops back after the error message, the installer has added one. In the ftp series, I had tried using non-anonymous ftp so that vsftpd would accept full paths so long as the user used haw permission for those directories and /var/ftp/pub/d1 in case the double slash was causing ftp to try to go from the root filesystem, but no joy. (Again, all of these access methods work from knoppix using the command line ftp client in active or passive modes, and using konqurer.) Can anyone with name server experience suggest a toy nameserver configuration file just to serve up 192.168.0.2 in response to some simple name? (I could RTFM, but I really don't have a general need to know how to set up name servers. If only there were a bach VT running at this point, I could probably type in an etc/hosts and resolve.conf on the RAM fs that the installer is probably running on, but alas...) Bill ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Password compromise in Ubuntu
Bill Sconce writes Ubuntu saving the administrator password in a file.: Perhaps it would be wise, with whatever distribution, to always install with a dummy password, then, immediately upon completing the installation, change the password with passwd at a command line. If passwd is compromised, then all bets are off no matter what. But this strategy gives some protection from "features" naively added to installers and "usability improvements". Bill ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
LinuxWorld Bostom
Thomas M. Albright writes: > Could someone please pick me up a Fedora Core 5 DVD if they have any > tmorrow? I was there today and I was told they won't be getting any > disks in until tomorrow. I'll glady pay any postage if needed. Me too, please? (My problem, rather than bandwidth, is that I can't seem to burn media that passes the media check.) Bill ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Cheaper good food near LinuxWorld Bostom
If you don't mind a short walk, I found a good place to eat (tip from security guard) near the convention center: "Fargo Deli, of course". Go out to Summer street, turn right, go one block passed the construction for the Weston to D street, turn right, go one short block to Fargo street, turn left, the entrance to the brown brick building on your left is about a half block down, the Deli is across the lobby and to the right. Bill ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Dealing with multiple layers of routers
Where I'm working we have a Netgear router attached to the DSL modem, to which all the wired users are connected, with NAT and DHCP serving up 192.168.0.xxx addresses. One of the things wired to the Netgear is the "internet" port of a Linksys wireless-G router (probably too new to install Linux on it), which serves up a wireless network on 192.168.1.xxx. This works pretty well. Everyone can get to the internet. The local print server/disk server is on the wired network, so everyone can use it. Folks on the wired network can access services running on wired machines. But, of course, folks on the wired network can't access services on machines connected to the Linksys (even using a wired connection to it). The trouble is that we would like to offer the latest development version of our web app running on our wireless development machines to the marketing folks on the wired network. Sure, it's easy to configure a particular port accessed at the "internet" port of the Linksys to go to a specific machine on the wireless network, but we would like to have multiple marketing folks able to access multiple developer's machine's servers. And we don't want to re-configure the router everytime we want to change who serves what. And spur of the moment instigation of an ssh session from a marketing machine to a specific developer machine is desired. I think that what I need to do is disable NAT and firewall on the Linksys. (We would still be protected from the internet by the firewall in the Netgear.) If that's possible. Then would I be able to configure the Netgear's DHCP server to tell the wired folks to route to 192.168.1 via the IP that the Linksys has on the 192.168.0 network? Or woould it be possible to hide the static route from 192.168.0 to 192.168.1 entirely in the Netgear's internal routing rules? (The wireless folks already go to the Linksys for routing to 192.168.0, since it's not within their local network's netmask.) Or am I likely to have to hand configure all the wired guys with a static route to 192.168.1? Or I guess I might be able to connect the routers via downstream ports on both, using a cross over cable. Then I either need to disable DHCP on the Linksys (that I'm sure that I can do), or arrange for both DHCP servers to specify a 255.255.254.0 netmask, and the Netgear as the router to the internet. (I'd actually like to keep the wireless guys with 192.168.1 addresses and the wired guys with 192.168.0 addesses, but this is a much softer requirement.) I'd appreciate comments and (some of the) suggestions. Bill ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Re: Dealing with multiple layers of routers
> > > > > > One of the things wired to the Netgear is the "internet" port of a > > Linksys wireless-G router (probably too new to install Linux on it), > > which serves up a wireless network on 192.168.1.xxx. > > > > I would check the dd-wrt website and see if you can install linux on it, you > might luck out. This is almost certainly a V5 Linksys, so Linux won't fit. Not that I'm probably welcome to re-flash it anyway. > What I would do is find a linksys G router that you can install dd-wrt on > (if this one turns out to be one you can't). I will probably get around to playing with this on one of my personal V4 WRT54GSs, but I'm disinclined to give one of these to the company, given how hard it has been for me to find them. (I'd really like to own a V3, the last max memory model, but I haven't seen one.) > You never said anything about the netgear, if it's a small one similar to > the linksys I would replace the netgear with a dd-wrt linksys and put the > wireless on the DMZ and do it that way. I'm not sure how the DMZ helps. Then both routers are exposed to internet traffic directly, so must run firewalls and NAT. Then how does the wired guy on 192.168.0.100 access the tomcat server on 192.168.1.109? > Just a thought anyway. Might be worth it in time savings. The other option > if the netgear supports a DMZ port is to put the linksys in bridge mode and > hang it off the DMZ port on the netgear. > The linksys has a DMZ port, but, again, I don't see how this helps. Everyone can already access the internet. ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Re: Dealing with multiple layers of routers
Lloyd Kvam offered opinions and advice, thanks. > Presumably you are controlling the DHCP assignments so that your Name > Server knows how to resolve names to numbers and DNS is not tied into > those routers. The name server here is "Hey, Jim, what's your IP address today", so it won't have any trouble tracking the configuration. ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Re: Dealing with multiple layers of routers
> > > > I will probably get around to playing with this on one of my > > personal V4 WRT54GSs, but I'm disinclined to give one of these > > to the company, given how hard it has been for me to find them. > > (I'd really like to own a V3, the last max memory model, but I > > haven't seen one.) > > I'm interested to hear that you wish you could own a V3 because > when I look at the charts shown here: > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WRT54G > > ...I don't see important differences between the V3 and V4. > Are the charts misleading? The chart that I read showed the V4 to have half as much of each kind of memory as the V3. No other important differences. Or my memory (in my head) may be failing if you have to go back further to get a full memory WRT54G. Bill ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Re: Dealing with multiple layers of routers
> Bill Freeman wrote: > > > > > The chart that I read showed the V4 to have half as much of each > > kind of memory as the V3. No other important differences. Or > > my memory (in my head) may be failing if you have to go back > > further to get a full memory WRT54G. > > > > Where did you find that chart? The one I looked at a few months ago > showed V5 having half the memory of V4, and V4 having the same as > V3 and earlier. I'm probably mis-remembering then. And/or I'm remembering the chart for the WRT54GS. What I do remember is memory shrinking twice between the biggest machines and the VXworks box. Maybe it was from V2 to V3. I can't find the chart right not because the machine with the browse history is at home. I'm pretty sure that I found it off of Seattle Wireless, though maybe a reference rather than hosted by them. Bill ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Re: Loss of SCSI tape reliability with 2.4 kernel
Thanks, all, for the advice and for the confirmation that there is a problem with early 2.4 and SCSI tape. I'll build myself a newer kernel from source. (And spend the time necessary to figure out how to build ltmodem for myself, too. The availability of rpms of it for RH stock kernels has helped increase my inertia. I'm not really using Win4Lin much, so I don't really have that excuse to stay with stock kernels.) But while we're near the subject, does anyone know what kind of fix/enhancement does versus doesn't get rolled in when RH does a new dash number suffix with the same real world kernel number? I'd sort of hope that SCSI problems would be high on their list of back ports. Bill ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Re: sorting pathnames by basename
[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: > > In a message dated: Mon, 19 Aug 2002 15:46:40 EDT > Michael O'Donnell said: > > >Suggestions for improvement welcome. > > Use perl. > -- Use Python ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Re: sorting pathnames by basename
Paul, No, I wouldn't say that Python quite fills the same nitch. It does have serious text processing capability, but you will type a fair amount more to do those kinds of jobs in Pyhton. Also, www.python.org has (or had, I haven't looked lately) some performance comparisons with other means of doing stuff, and IIRC Perl also usually came out a tad faster (but that may have been version dependent). But any performance difference isn't due to the extra verbiage, since both internalize things before execution (unlike tcl). On the other hand, I've found that if I don't use Perl much, (I have tried to "learn" to use it effectively), the syntax and feature set seems to drift away from me. Python is easier for me to go back to, even if I've been spending my time in PIC or Scenix assembler, or running the NC drill machine. Years of programming with C, starting with Fortran over 30 years ago, etc., may make Python more comfortable to me, but I think that it's more than that. I think that it really is easier to get you mind around. Python also serves me well as a rapid development language for things that may become C or C++ projects. Since I have been able to do my text processing conveniently with it, it makes sense for me to choose not to bother getting good at another quite different language like Perl. I'm not saying that there's anything wrong with Perl, just that it's not the only choice. Mike O'Donnell apparently also doesn't fine Perl syntax agreeable, so it seems to me that I was correct to suggest the alternative. Since I don't know Perl well, I can't offer a reliable feature comparison. I believe that there is such on the web site. I suspect that pretty much all the features you need are in Python, although some of them will be implemented as functions or classes from a library, and even if they're built into the C source for the interpreter, they may syntacticly look like library functions (such as the basename function from the os package that Erik used). And, as with Perl, there are usually several ways to skin a cat. Erik used a dictionary (equivelent of the awk/perl associative array) to map back from his sort keys to the original lines, since it was the list (more like a regular array) of keys that got sorted. I'd been thinking more of using the string and perhaps regular expression stuff to convert the lines so that the basename part became "high order", sort, and convert back. I hope that I haven't rambled too much. Bill ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Re: UNIX Arcana [was Re: Perl (or Unix vs. MS, actually) ]
[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: > Way back when 16 kilobytes was a lot of memory, a method for encoding five > characters into a single 32-bit machine word was developed. It was called > "Radix-50", or "RAD50". The 50 is octal, or 40 decimal. The character set > was 26 monocase letters, 10 digits, three special characters, and a null (a > total of 40). This encoding was used in the linkers of various DEC PDP > operating systems, which is where Unix was born. > > (That could, of course, be incorrect, but I did find references to > Radix-50/RAD50 in some old DEC migration documentation.) It was also known as "squoze code" around the M.I.T. AI lab. RAD50 may have originated at DEC, but I wouldn't bet either way. The description is close. Radix 50 actually allows you to get three characters into a 16 bit word (40*40*40 <= 65536), or 6 into a 32 bit word. 5 characters will actually fit into 27 bits (10240 being no greater than 134217728). That means that you can also have up to 5 bits of "flags", say, for symbol type, in the same (double 16 bit) word of your symbol table as that which stores the name. When it wasn't uncommon to have as little as 4k words (8k bytes) on your PDP-11/20, people really did care about bit twiddling. People writing in assembly language for such machines didn't seem to chaff at such symbol length restrictions. (Perhaps few of them could type, and short names were easier.) Linkers developed for use with assemblers were pressed into service for linking C because originally the C compiler produced assembly languagy, and the assembler was invoked on the output. Bill ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Re: UNIX Arcana [was Re: Perl (or Unix vs. MS, actually) ]
Mark Komarinski writes: > Good thing more colors other than green and amber were invented too. Newcommer! We only had black print on those cards and listings. ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
RH7.3 not on first drive woes, or how to scroll back after panic
Well, I did an upgrade of my 7.1 system to 7.3, but I can't boot it. I'm a little weird in that I keep a 6.2 (as well as W98) on hda (5 and 1, respectively), and the 7.1 installation is (was) on hdd1. (hdb is the cdrom drive. hdc is the zip drive.) That had been nasty with LILO, which didn't know how to play with hdd. I got around that by copying kernels and initrd's to the /boot on hda5, added the appropriate entries to hda5's lilo.conf, and ran lilo from the 6.2 system. This all worked for kernel upgrades through 2.4.9-34. To get rid of the uglyness I let the 7.3 installer put in grub. grub (after its configuration file was modified) happily boots the 6.2 world and W98. I'm also pretty sure that it's not responsible for the 2.4.18-3 root=/dev/hdd1 problems, since the problem seems identical booting from the boot floppy. I'd like to be more specific about what the boot problems are, the beginning of them seem to have scrolled off the screen by the time they have slowed down enough to read. It manages to load the scsi host adaptor driver (there is a hiatus while it probes the scsi bus, so I can read a few things), so access to the inital ram disk would appear to be fine. (During this delay I get to see that there is an error from modprobe looking for scsi_hostadapter, but it manages to load aic7xxx anyway.) The tailings on the screen seem to gurgle about mising mount points, among other things, and not being able to pivot root, so it's no surprise that it can't find init. My best guess is that it's failing to mount the root filesystem (hdd1), ant that things go downhill from there (and, yes, I'm passing the root=/dev/hdd1 argument to the kernel). Best would be if one of you is able to say "Your problem is...", followed by helpful text rather than anatomical impossibilities. Failing that, is there a way to slow down the boot messages (remember, this is pre-init), or scroll them back after the panic, so that I can collect better information? Short of figuring out how to arrange for a serial console, that is. Bill ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Re: RH7.3 not on first drive woes, or how to scroll back after panic
mike ledoux writes: > -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- > Hash: SHA1 > > > messages (remember, this is pre-init), or scroll them back after the > > panic, so that I can collect better information? Short of figuring > > out how to arrange for a serial console, that is. > > Shift-PgUp and Shift-PgDn still work to scroll the screen after a > kernel panic on my system. Of course, if your problem really is that > the system can't mount the root fs, you wouldn't be getting to the point > where it would complain about mount points. On my system, if I pass in > an invalid root= argument, I get messages like: > > VFS: Cannot open root device 16:03 > Kernel panic: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on 16:03 > > fairly early in the boot process (~3 screens down). Thanks! That was what I'd thought that I'd heard. Silly me. I was trying PgUp. Of course I should have realized (remembered, anyway) that Shift is required. Sadly, while these keys work before the panic, they do not work after the panic, so I'm still somewhat in the dark. (Is that trick of blinking caps lock and scroll lock keyboard LEDs in the panic'ed state new?) Roughly reproduced, here's what still shows on the screen in panic: ERROR: vgscan (whatever that is) exited abnormally! Activating logical volumes ERROR: failed in exec of vgchange echo: cannot open /proc/sys/kernel/real-root-dev for write: 2 Mounting root filesystem mount: missing mount point ERROR: failed in exec of /dev/hdd1 umount /proc failed: 22 pivotroot: pivot_root(/sysroot,/sysroot/initrd) failed: 2 ERROR: /dev/hdd1 exited abnormally! (yes, several of these are repeats) umount /proc failed: 22 pivotroot: pivot_root(/sysroot,/sysroot/initrd) failed: 2 ERROR: vgchange exited abnormally! echo: cannot open /proc/sys/kernel/real-root-dev for write: 2 Mounting root filesystem mount: missing mount point ERROR: failed in exec of /dev/hdd1 umount /proc failed: 22 pivotroot: pivot_root(/sysroot,/sysroot/initrd) failed: 2 ERROR: /dev/hdd1 exited abnormally! umount /proc failed: 22 pivotroot: pivot_root(/sysroot,/sysroot/initrd) failed: 2 Freeing unused kernel memory: 280k freed Kernel panic: No init found. Try passing init= option to kernel. > My suspicion is that the kernel is finding your root filesystem just fine, > but there is something wrong with it. Can you mount this filesystem > when you're booted into 6.2? There is no problem using that filesystem from 6.2. Since that's where the grub.conf is, that's where I've been editing it, and the changes dutifully show up in the grub menu, so grub has no problem accessing it either. The /etc/fstab on that filesystem looks unchanged (reasonable, sincd I didn't let it convert anything to ext3, figuring that I could do that later). The /mnt directory there is the same (not that that has anything to do with mounting / or /proc). I guess that I'll see if one of the older 2.4 kernels will work on that root filesystem. Bill ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Re: RH7.3 not on first drive woes, or how to scroll back after panic
Shift-PgUp, Shift-PgDn still don't work after the panic. But thanks to Derek's vga=775 suggestion, I can now see the entire interesting pile. I was only really missing two lines, and they're not all that interesting. I'm including back to the neighborhood lf the modprobe error (mentioned in the original post), just for weirdness. Indented stuff is from my last post: Loading scsi_mod module SCSI subsystem driver Revision: 1.00 Loading sd_mod module kmod: failed to exec /sbin/modprobe -s -k scsi_hostadapter, errno = 2 Loading aic7xxx module PCI: Found IRQ 10 for device 00:1.0 scsi0 : Adaptec AIC7XXX EISA/VLB/PCI SCSI HBA DRIVER, Rev 6.2.5 aic7870: Single Channel A, SCSI Id=7, 16/253 SCBs Vendor: SEAGATE Model: DAT04106-XXX Rev 743B Type: Sequential-Access ANSI SCSI revision: 02 Mounting /proc filesytem Scanning logical volumes > ERROR: vgscan (whatever that is) exited abnormally! > Activating logical volumes > ERROR: failed in exec of vgchange > echo: cannot open /proc/sys/kernel/real-root-dev for write: 2 > Mounting root filesystem > mount: missing mount point > ERROR: failed in exec of /dev/hdd1 > umount /proc failed: 22 > pivotroot: pivot_root(/sysroot,/sysroot/initrd) failed: 2 > ERROR: /dev/hdd1 exited abnormally! > (yes, several of these are repeats) > umount /proc failed: 22 > pivotroot: pivot_root(/sysroot,/sysroot/initrd) failed: 2 > ERROR: vgchange exited abnormally! > echo: cannot open /proc/sys/kernel/real-root-dev for write: 2 > Mounting root filesystem > mount: missing mount point > ERROR: failed in exec of /dev/hdd1 > umount /proc failed: 22 > pivotroot: pivot_root(/sysroot,/sysroot/initrd) failed: 2 > ERROR: /dev/hdd1 exited abnormally! > umount /proc failed: 22 > pivotroot: pivot_root(/sysroot,/sysroot/initrd) failed: 2 > Freeing unused kernel memory: 280k freed > Kernel panic: No init found. Try passing init= option to kernel. So, that's not much extra info. I presume that logical volumes are to do with multi-partition filesystems, as in DEC's old LVM, rather than those disk labels instead of device specifiers in fstab, which I don't use precisely because they don't play well with having multiple linux installations on a system. > I guess that I'll see if one of the older 2.4 kernels will > work on that root filesystem. And the answer is that 2.4.9-34 boots just fine with hdd1 as root. Pretty fine, anyway: The upgrade, of course, removed its modules directory, so it manages not to be able to do a few things, like vfat filesystems, usb mice, aic7xxx, and xdm/X fails for an undiagnosed reason, but eventually gives up respawning so that I can log in as root on the console and run emacs, etc. Bill ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Re: RH7.3 not on first drive woes...
Just in case anyone else runs into this or something similar, the easy fix is not to load initrd. This works because the base kernel can mount an ext2, non-raid, non-lvm root on the fouth ide device without the need for any modules, thank you very much. A SCSI root, for example, would have been another matter. If you're using grub you can just comment out the initrd line for the kernel in question in /boot/grub/grub.conf with a '#'. I'll probably not be able to resist trying to figure out the problem more exactly, but that will be next week at the soonest. (I wonder if /dev in the initrd doesn't have ide nodes beyound hda# or hdb#?) Bil ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Re: RH7.3 not on first drive woes, or how to scroll back after panic
For those who have been following along and who care: This seems to be an issue with mkinitrd not expecting to have to deal with a commented out extra line for the "/" filesystem in /etc/fstab. Because I had two installations to keep working, when I had originally installed RH7.1 on hdd1, I'd had to edit its fstab because the lines containing "LABEL=" instead of device names were being confused by the partitions that were mounted on mount points of the same name (/, usr, home, etc.) by the other installation. Being paranoid about deleting something that I didn't fully understand, I only commented the "LABEL=" version lines out. So when mkinitrd ran an awk script on fstab to find the device whose mountpoint is "/", it found two lines, and set a variable to the pair of them, joined by a newline character. This led the linuxrc in the generated initrd to contain the two lines: mount --ro -t ext2 #LABEL=/ /dev/hdd1 /sysroot where what was intended was: mount --ro -t ext2 /dev/hdd1 /sysroot The presence of the substring "LABEL" in that variable also caused the erroneous inclusion of the invokations of vgscan and vgchange. They generate error messages, but wouln't have stopped the boot. It's the inability to mount the eventual root on /sysroot that's the killer. I've sent mail to the listed maintainer. Bill ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Re: ssh port redirection ?
Michael O'Donnell writes: >While standing on systemA you say: When I do that the case sort of crumples. ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Re: KVM cards
Michael O'Donnell writes: > In my imagination, our device would > > - Be implemented as a "standard" PCI card, small as possible. Do you really mean PCI card (the kind of thing that has replaced ISA for expansion withing a desktop PC), or, as I suspect, do you really mean PCMCIA, a.k.a. "PC-card" (sic, really sick, since that name is still, for me, any "printed circuit card", a.k.a. "printed circuit board", a.k.a. "printed wiring board")? The interface is certainly related to the PCI design, but isn't the same. >ALTERNATIVE: a USB-connected thingy, a-la the USB > serial-converters in common use by Mac owners. USB is probably the better modern alternative. I believe that I've seen some newer laptops without PCMCIA slots, but they nearly all have USB, and if you're stuck with a laptop that has the reverse, there are commercial PCMCIA cards that provide a USB interface. The USB dongle could be large-ish for early implementations, while a PCMCIA design must be miniaturized enough to fit in the slot from the get-go. Serial ports are now frequently absent from laptops, but ECP/EPP/SPP parallel ports are still commonly native, and represent another alternative, but probably don't support adequate bandwidth for mouse pointer tracking comfort. > - Video connection would be the current "standard" SVGA >D-shell connectors as found on current "commodity" cards. If that's what the targets have. I was wondering if you had particular targets in mind that you know about for sure. The VGA D connectors (the S in SVGA makes no difference in the connector) are indeed the current standard. If necessary, however, the older 9 pin EGA/CGA/HGA/MDA connectors could be supported with a passive adapter, since, if we have enough inputs to read VGA, we have enough inputs to read the others. > - Video resolution would be either 1024x768 or 800x600. I agree that this is probably an acceptible limitation. Sadly, there are still a number of possible dot clock, vertical, and horizontal rate and interleave combinations. Usually the graphics adapter can support multiple combinations to work within the limitations of the monitor connected. While you can usually change between a few resolutions, to get different scanning rates for the same resolution windows is probably going to ask for the installation CD, or some such, so it would be good to be flexible about scanning rates and dot clocks accepted. Scanning rates and interleave are directly measurable from the hsync and vsync signals, but dot clock rate and phase may still have to be inferred or hand tuned. It might be possible to do a statistical analysis or where transitions in the video occur in the post sampled stream across a number of dot clock rates and come up with a good guess at dot clock rate and phase, so long as the screen isn't currently nearly blank. > - Keyboard and mouse would connect (electrically and >mechanically) with current "standard" PS/2 style interface. >ALTERNATIVE: USB (?) - is this common in commodity boxes? I've yet to see a motherboard without PS/2 (or in the past, PC-AT or PC-XT) keyboard connectors. Probably all the recent ones also support PS/2 mouse. But those with modern BIOSes and USB hardware also support use of USB keyboard and mouse, even in BIOS setup. However, I have no experience with the N PC equivelents in a 1U rack boxes. Aren't those the target? Or have you seen a lot of "tower" cased single PCs being run without keyboards moniters and mice? PS/2 is probably the interface with the largest guaranteed availablity at the moment, but USB is a commer. There may even be enough spare pins to carry it on the VGA connector, allowing one cable from monitor to computer, with keyboard and mouse USB plugged into the monitor (apparently folks think that cable neatness is a big selling point). > - Host computer not constrained as to which OS it runs. > > > How does this device present itself to the host computer? > Are the grabbed frames presented as mem-mapped bit-array? > > > Should build on as much existing SW/subsystems as possible. I'm not sure which computer is the "host". I presume that you mean the laptop. I'm going to try to use the terms "target" and "portable", which I hope are clear. There is at the very least a user program that must run in support of the application on the portable, and it is clearly OS sepcific, unless written in something like python/tkinter that pushes the OS specific issues off on someone else. I.e.; python/tkinter is widely available for a variety of platforms already, and with the speed of modern portables the performance might be adequate. PCMCIA or USB interfaces might avoid the need for kernel specific custom driver level by appearing at the interface to be a mass storage device, where you write to files to press keys and move the mouse, and you read from a file
Re: KVM cards
Nutshell update: Perusal of a recent computer shopper and a visit to Comp USA implies that USB 2.0 may, in fact, be "getting real". Bill ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
backup up a laptop disk for replacement
[Ken Coar asks about copying a laptop drive complete] Assuming that the new drive will have the same geometry, and that you want to retain the same partitioning scheme, I'd go for dd of the whole drive. This has the advantage that it copies all kinds of partitions independent of the type, all boot sectors or any other extra partition sectors (like on track partition manager, disk encrypters, etc.) and puts everything at the same block (assuming at bad block mapping is done in drive hardware, common in modern drives), so even loaders like LILO remain happy. I assume that there are a few grub sectors that need to be in fixed places, but I haven't really studied grub. This requires that either you be able to connect both drives to the same system at the same time, or that you be able to connect them one at a time to a system that either has a partition large enough to hold the dd, or a partition large enough to hold a reasonable number of sub-dds, or that you do the copy over the network between machines each of which has one of the drives installed. Note that for the target drive it can't be the drive that you've booted from, so it can't be the only drive in the machine. Since most laptops can't conveniently accept a second drive internally, you either need a box that allows connection an external drive that you supply via parallel port, pcmcia, USB, firewire, etc., or you need to install at least one of the drives as an extra drive on a desktop. I actually have a box that allows an IDE (we are talking IDE, aren't we?) drive to be connected via the parallel port, but I only have Windows drivers for it. (I suppose that it might work under the paride support in more recent kernels, but I haven't tried.) Even with this box, however, you need an addapter to attach a laptop 2.5" drive to the the standard signal and power connectors for 3.5" drives, and if you have that, you can connect the 2.5" drive to a desktop. I have such an addapter, which I might be persuaded to loan out. If you want your own, and can't find one locally, I got mine from Dirt Cheap Drives, a.k.a. Mega Haus, at the same time that I got the parallel port box. I hate to send them business though: they sent the wrong parallel cable with the order, and despite hours on the phone, I never received satisfaction. (The eventually sent a replacement cable, but it arrived with seriously bent pins.) Bill ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
What do you use for documents with equations?
I've got a little article with a bunch of math to write, and want to use an open source GUI tool. I've used lyx, and it's OK, but I use it so rarely that I need to re-learn it every time. Does abiword or open office do a good job on equations? Are there other tools that I should look at? Ideally it will mix not only text and equations, but also plotted (geometry text style) figures. (I guess that you can embed an image, at least, in any of them.) Thanks, Bill ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Re: Boston Linux Conference December 3-4
I can forgive the .doc format too: I just won't look at it. What I can't forgive is a 2MB posting, for any reason. It sure ties up the phone line for a long time, especially for something I'm going to trash. (Besides, some interaction of fetchmail, mv, and possibly sendmail doing some kind of authentication lookup, frequently causes things to hang until fetchmail times out, and the thing never gets here anyway. So I have to go use mv's web interface to delete it to get the rest of my mail.) Another case of assuming that everyone has high speed access? Bill ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Re: Max # of files/dirs under Linux?
[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: > Maximum number of files in a single directory = Unlimited > Maximum number of subdirectories in a single directory = 32768 But a subdirectory is a file. (At least it was on good/bad old UFS.) Why should there be a limit on subdirectories in a directory if there's none on files? ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Re: Max # of files/dirs under Linux?
[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: > On Tue, 10 Dec 2002, at 2:17pm, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > >> Maximum number of files in a single directory = Unlimited > >> Maximum number of subdirectories in a single directory = 32768 > > > > But a subdirectory is a file. (At least it was on good/bad old UFS.) ... > Every directory has ... a link [from[ each of its subdirectories > (named ".."). ... > One obvious guess would be that the link-count for an > inode is stored in a 16-bit signed integer, but I really don't know. That sounds likely. ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
pdflatex, Wxp, and, perhaps, MV's web server
I've had a few people tell me that they can't read pdf files from my web space at MV. I have no trouble, with either Mozilla or Netscape, from Linux, or with I.E./AcrobatReader(5.0) from a W98 box. But I've seen the problem with my boss's XP box. Even though he can read other pdf files from the web, he gets a truncated and mangled file, even if I tel I.E. to save as rather than try to open it itself. If I put the file on his machine (using samba from my laptop), he can read it fine. My pdf files tend to be produced by pdflatex, or one of the other tex related tools. I'm wondering if there isn't some magic header that XP/I.E. may be being anal about looking for, or some kind of MIME type info from the server that mv may not be generating correctly based on the file extension, etc., and whether I'm likely to be able to hack things up to fix it (e.g.; add a header by hand). Any thoughts? Bill ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Colors INSIDE of windows?
Bill Sconce asks about things like application color choices. Bill, Traditionally, these things were "X resources". There's a whole boodle of stuff somewhere in the X documntation about class name versus item name, etc., and how to wildcard things so that you can have all xterms do this, except that a certain xterm will do that, or something of that ilk. I can remember finding this stuff in the man pages for the base X system, but you had to dig for it, and it was hard to tell what they were saying unless you already knew what you were looking for. The "resources" are maintained in the X server, which is nice, since apps that you run remotely with, say, xon will ask your server for the settings that you prefer on that workstation. xrdb is the program that loads your .Xdefaults into the server. It has to get run when you start the server or log in to xdm, so it gets invoked in one of your personal .x startup files, like .xclient, or .xinitrc, or if you don't have a personal one, various vintages of the system-wide startup files might try to look for ~/.Xdefaults for you. I gave up trying to follow the improvements before "desktops" replaced window managers, so the exact path of the data is a matter for exploration. Things like "backgroundcolor" are common enough, but not every program documents their resource names well (at least in the online documents that I've found). It can be a chore to find the resource name that will do what you want. In the past I've found stuff in the application's man or info pages. Of course, the developer of any particular application is free to ignore the resource system. And some apps may have ways of overriding the resource selections. For example, emacs will follow the resource selections, but you can also "customize" that stuff via the .emacs file, the emacs internal customize system, and the command line. Which one wins when something gets specified in multiple palces is up to the developer, but it usually isn't the X resources. And if you're running Ximian, or one of the other "modern" environments, who knows what they may have done to avoid giving the user the dredful pain of having a customizable system. Bill ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
glibc - UTF-8 - ISO-8859 question
I'm looking at a bug in a piece of open source software (gpsdrive). It seems to arrise from the fact that the gtk text input widget uses ISO-8859, or some other strictly 8 bit character set in which the degree symbol is 0xB0, while sscanf() seems to be looking for UTF-8, and stops converting when it hits the degree symbol in the format string. Emacs happily displays this character as the degree symbol, and gcc happily compiles it into the format string of the sscanf() and elsewhere. This is with glibc-2.1.3-26, and looking at the source, is also true in 2.1.3-28, the latest that I found for a RedHat 6.2 system. Aught there to be a version of sscanf() that will accept 8 bit character sets? Looking at the implementation fiddling with locales is not going to fix it on that end (because isascii() justs checks for the high bit, rather than being syntax table driven). Should I escalate this as a bug or feature request to the glibc folks, or do those of you who have been doing a lot of internationalization have a suggestion as to the correct way to approach this problem? Bill ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Sendmail woes
I figured I'd express my ignorance here before bothering the official sendmail list, since this problem is new for me with RH9, so it may be of interest to other Linux users. Synopsys: The new two-daemon form of sendmail causes my outgoing mail to (unnecessarily, it seems to me) make a stop-over in the new client queue, before going to the main daemon's queue anyway. And it won't make the jump to the main queue when I'm off line. This is making it a pain to figure out just what to run to force the queue's to be processed in what order to get mail to go out during my brief intervals of being connected to the internet. What I want (and how I have done it with older sendmails): I still live in the land of dial-up. Further, I only get so much connect time for my base monthly fee (though I never approach it except when there are a spate of updates to download). When I dial from home (this is a laptop), I also get charged message units by the phone company (and I can easily exceed my base 30 of those). Therefor I read and compose E-mail off line. I occasionally go on line just long enough to run fetchmail to suck down my incomming mail and run sendmail -q to transmit my queued outgoing mail to MV's outgoing mail host (my "smart relay"). By letting fetchmail invoke sendmail directly to get incomming mail delivered, instead of connecting to port 25 on localhost, I don't need a sendmail daemon running at all. (I invoke sendmail -q and fetchmail in /etc/ppp/ip-up.local .) The new sendmail configuration: To eliminate some (local only, I think) exploits, it is now desired that the sendmail binary not be setuid root. Yet the main queue needs to read-write-execute only by root (again, security arguments). So when your MUA invokes sendmail, and it can't deliver the mail itself, it also can't write it into the main queue. Instead it writes it into a new "client" queue (/var/spool/clientqueue), which is owned by a shell-less special user, which it can do because it is setgid to that user (so if you work the local exploit you only gain group rights to that user's group, not root user rights). A new "sm-client" daemon runs solely for the purpose of taking stuff out of the client queue to pass it to the main queue. (Either because it is started as the root user in /etc/init.d/sendmail it can write the main queue, or it passes the stuff to the local port 25. I'm not sure which, but I suspect the former, since it does seem to wind up in /var/spool/mqueue, rather than being sent straight out.) Meanwhile, there is a plain root sendmail daemon running, listening on port 25 (though, as I understand it, configured by default, at least on RedHat, to only accept connections from the local host, without benefit of tcp wrappers or iptables), and periodicly "running" the main queue(s). The ugly things: OK. So I have to run sendmail daemons. This is running on my new(er) laptop, which is much faster and has much more memory than my old 75MHz 40MB laptop, so maybe I can afford the foot print. But... The queue runner for the client queue is apparently unwilling to move things to the main queue unless I'm on line, so I can't do that in advance. (Perhaps it wants to qualify the target domains, but why, isn't the main daemon just going to do that again? And since I define a smart host, don't I really want to put such qualification off on the smart host?) Despite the fact that I'm then on line when the client queue gets run, it still shifts things to the main queue, rather than passing it on to the target (or smart host) smtp ports itself. (Maybe since it's not root it can't authenticate itself to the remote MTA?) [It is probably a good thing that the outgoing mail has to be processed by the main daemon, since the sm-client daemon uses a different configuration file (/etc/mail/submit.cf instead of /etc/mail/sendmail.cf), which doesn't tend to have things like the masquerading settings or the smart host. (Yes, there's a DS in submit.cf, which I tried without improvemnt. But there's nowhere in the submit.mc file like that in the sendmail.mc file that *invites* specification of a smart host to a macro that will generate the DS when the mc file is processed by m4 to produce the cf file. Similar for the masquerade rules.)] So I have to be on line when it runs the client queue. I either need to have be on line a long time, have the daemon running the queue very often, or have something that I can invoke in /etc/ppp/ip-up.local to run the queue *NOW*. sendmail -q -Ac seems to serve the last purpose, but I sometimes seem to have to run it twice to have it take effect??? Then after that happens I need the main queue to run, with similar options. sendmail -q still works for this, but also sometimes seems to have to be invoked twice??? (Maybe it needs to lock a file that is occasionally locked by the main daemons. I guess I shoul
What's the best way to automatically swap smart hosts (sendmail)?
Sometimes my laptop is home, connected to the cable modem. At these times I need my sendmail smart host set to smtp.comcast.net since my dial up ISP's outgoing mail server (rightly so) is not an open relay. (I suppose that a VPN tunnel is a possibility here.) Sometimes I'm away from home (work, friend's house), and have to dial up to connect. At these times I want my sendmail smart host set to mail.mv.net since (I assume) my cable provider's outgoing mail server is not an open relay. I could fiddle with the RH scripts that are run when the LAN connection comes up or goes down to link /etc/mail/sendmail.cf to one of two alternatives. (Or, alternatively, and probably better, swap when PPP comes up or goes down, since I may have an ethernet connection to a non-internet-routed LAN at times.) But I feel that it would be less messy if sendmail could accept a list of smart hosts, using the first if it could connect to it, trying the second if not, etc., and, finally, as normal, spooling the mail if it couldn't reach any of the smart hosts. I don't see anything like this in the O'Reilly book (though mine, a second edition, is perhaps somewhat old). An alternative might be some sort of local DNS hack, in which, for example, some dummy FQDN that I specify as the smart host gets translated into smtp.comcast.net if smtp.comcast.net is reachable, and mail.mv.net otherwise. That's probably getting pretty messy again, especially since I don't currently run a DNS server locally. Can anyone think of any cool ways to do this? Bill ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Re: What's the best way to automatically swap smart hosts (sendmail)?
[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: > > On Tue, 1 Jul 2003, "Travis" == Travis Roy wrote: > > Travis> Since you're going to do some work for this... > > Maybe once you've figured it all out, you could write a HOWTO type > doc for the GNHLUG Wiki :) I assume that you meant this for me. I'll think about it. I figure that I'll bastardize network up and down scripts. I don't see a reason to load MV's server when I'm connected via Comcast, unless they stop letting me masquerade my domain (I replied to Mark Komarinski privately). Someone else wanting the same may have to add getting the sendmail daemons (there are now two, you know) to re-read their configuration files. I still may do the stunnel thing for fetching mail from MV. (I'm not dropping MV for what may be a 6 month affair with Comcast. We'll see what the price goes upto after that. For now it's $19.95 per month.) If so, I suspect that I don't need SMTP AUTH, since I presume that I'll appear to be inside MV from MV's server's point of view. And thanks to others for the script tips, but I'm looking for something that is sensitive to the available connectivity without additional manual intervention. Bill ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Speaking of MP3s in cars...
[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: > ... I've seen some other > 'doze-based car MP3 players, but, dammit, I want Linux [call me a purist]. > Are there any non-homebrew Linux MP3 players for your car out there that > anyone is familiar with? I thought that they were called laptops. Bill ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
