from:"Jerry"

I guess a couple of more things is what you want to use virtualization
for. On my laptop it is almost purely for demo purposes, although I
initially set it up to run some things that could not be done under
Linux, even through WINE. Initially, I needed RealPlayer for my wife,
but RealPlayer Superpass needs Active X and Windows explorer. While
Windows explorer works ok under WINE and CrossoverOffice, RealPlayer 10
does not run under WINE. Initially I ran VMWare Server, but its
performance was lacking, and later I used Virtualbox where the
performance was much better. While I can cite some specific cases where
virtualization improved performance (or more specifically througput),
you are going to take a bit of performance hit.

At home I use KVM/QEMU to run both Windows 7 and Windows XP. My primary
need is to run Citrix which has some issue natively under fedora 11.
Additionally, currently I'm not getting any sound under the guest OS,
but I used to get sound on XP, and I think it is more configurational,
and I just have not yet fixed it because it is not important.

-- 
Jerry Feldman 
Boston Linux and Unix
PGP key id: 537C5846
PGP Key fingerprint: 3D1B 8377 A3C0 A5F2 ECBB  CA3B 4607 4319 537C 5846






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Re: Enabling Virtual Machine supportn of virtualization. (buying virtualization support)

On 09/28/2009 01:49 PM, Lloyd Kvam wrote:
> But shopping for virtualization in a laptop seems to be pretty hopeless.
> I could not find any mention of virtualization in any of the laptop spec
> pages.  I tried to use the Dell sale support service.  The Dell folks
> supplied a laptop spec with an Intel T6400.  Fortunately, I checked the
> Intel site and saw that the T6400 does not support virtualization.  In
> desperation, I used the Intel and AMD sites to cross check the CPU's
> that were listed in the newegg laptop selection menu.
>   
Basically, you can easily run Virtualbox under a Windows Host OS or
Linux Host OS as I have a relatively old 64-bit laptop with no
virtualization flags on the chip, and I've been running virtualization
on it for years, first VMWare server then Virtualbox.

-- 
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PGP key id: 537C5846
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Re: Enabling Virtual Machine support

On 09/28/2009 09:06 AM, Tom Buskey wrote:
> Of all the hypervisors, I feel VirtualBox is the easiest to maintain. 
> I've done VMware Server, ESXi and played with KVM.  I wonder about the
> performance differences but not enough to test :-)
I agree. My company uses VMWare Workstation running under a Windows XP
host and a RHEL 5.2 guest so that our Financial Engineers can demo our
products. One of my coworkers, on my recommendation installed Virtualbox
on his home system so his wife could access her company's Intranet (the
host OS in this case is Vista with a Windows XP guest).  He likes VBox
better than VMWare because of the ease of installation and management.

-- 
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Boston Linux and Unix
PGP key id: 537C5846
PGP Key fingerprint: 3D1B 8377 A3C0 A5F2 ECBB  CA3B 4607 4319 537C 5846




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Re: Enabling Virtual Machine support

On 09/27/2009 07:36 PM, Michael ODonnell wrote:
> Not certain I understand what you're saying but processors in this family
> come out of their power-on Reset state in their simplest, least capable
> mode - interrupts disabled, MMU disabled, 20bit Real Mode addressing,
> etc - and each increase in capability requires a deliberate action on the
> part of the system code (typically the BIOS at first, then later the OS).
>
> Virtual Machine mode is like Virtual 8086 mode in that it's a capability
> that must be explicitly enabled once the OS has rigged itself to manage
> it; this as opposed to somehow being a permanent, static feature of the
> platform or CPU.  And also, AFAIK, no external HW support is required
> of the platform for VM capabilities to be utilized - if the OS is coded
> to support it and the CPU provides it, that's all you (should!)  need.
>
>   
1. Most systems disable the VT extensions in the BIOS by default (AMD
and Intel)> I have an AMD quad core Opteron with VMX, with a Tyan mother
board. The VMX bit shoed up in the processor flags (/proc/cpuinfo), but
I found it was disabled in the BIOS until I manually turned it on.

2. Under Linux your choices for VMMs (Virtual Machine Managers) are
basically KVM/QEMU, QEMU(software), Xen, Virtualbox, and VMWare. Xen and
KVM do use the virtualization hardware.  So far, I don't see any need
for virtualization hardware for Virtualbox or the free versions of
VMWare. If you are using virtualization on a server, more homework is
needed because, in general, performance is more critical. I'm not sure
if Virtualbox supports 64-bit guests, but KVM/QEMU and VMWare certainly
do. Both KVM, QEMU, and Virtualbox are released via the GPL license. I'm
not sure about Xen since Citrix bought it, but you need a Xen-enabled
kernel to run Xen. The KVM modules are bundled with all the recent 2.6
kernels. The Virtualbox modules generally keep up, but I have had a
kernel update where the VBox module was not updated, but that usually
required a quick yum or apt update.

-- 
Jerry Feldman 
Boston Linux and Unix
PGP key id: 537C5846
PGP Key fingerprint: 3D1B 8377 A3C0 A5F2 ECBB  CA3B 4607 4319 537C 5846

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Re: Why Linksys routers are so cheap...

While we are on the subject. I am currently re-evaluating our Internet
connectivity at work. We currently get our connectivity through Regus
Business Centers directly. I'm looking at the savings we might get by
bringing in RCN (who has cables not only in our building, but also on
our floor). Most of our offices and all of our servers are connected
through out 2 Netgear Gigabit switches, except that 2 are connected
directly to a Regus switch. The Netgears are connected to a SonicWall
Pro-2040 firewall (that is managed by our IT people in Toronto).
Currently we have 6 static IPs with one assigned to the SonicWall that
establishes our VPN. Assuming that RCN is able to provides us with a
more cost-effective solution (with higher bandwidth), it would appear
that I would need in addition to a cable modem, a switch or router that
I can connect between the cable modem and the Sonic Wall, and the other
2 non-VPN wall outlets, or can the SonicWall give me a secondary port
that bypasses the VPN that I would plug into a small switch for the
other 2 wall outlets (for their use we have an unused Linksys 4 port
that would be more than sufficient).

-- 
Jerry Feldman 
Boston Linux and Unix
PGP key id: 537C5846
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Re: Why Linksys routers are so cheap...

On 09/22/2009 09:34 AM, Ben Scott wrote:
> Most consumer gear like LinkSys, D-Link, Belkin, NetGear et. al., is
>
> cheaply designed, even more cheaply manufactured, and supported
> not-at-all.  That's why you can get a router for a buck.  :)
>
>   YMMV, I guess.  I had dealt with LinkSys support well before Cisco
> bought them, and they sucked then, too.
>
>   FWIW, I do still buy LinkSys and similar stuff for light home use.
> When it breaks, I tell people to throw it out and buy a new one.  We
> live in a disposable society, unfortunately.
>   
Several years ago, I had to call Netgear, and at that time I found their
support to be exemplary. I have not contacted them recently, and I hear
from the grapevine that their support is just as poor as Linksys'.
However, the worst equipment (IMHO) is Belkin. Virtually every piece of
equipment I have obtained from Belkin has sucked. I have a small KVM on
my desk at work to switch between my work laptop and my IA64
workstation. At one point my boss told me to get rid of it because I
could not configure my new wide-screen monitor. After some research, I
got a CablesToGo KVM that has been perfect.

-- 
Jerry Feldman 
Boston Linux and Unix
PGP key id: 537C5846
PGP Key fingerprint: 3D1B 8377 A3C0 A5F2 ECBB  CA3B 4607 4319 537C 5846




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Re: Why Linksys routers are so cheap...

On 09/22/2009 09:24 AM, Hewitt_Tech wrote:
> That's true. I thought of that as I made the recommendation for more 
> competently designed/built equipment. Cisco does own Linksys. I would 
> say that back when Linksys was a standalone company they did a much 
> better job supporting their gear but that was at least 4 or 5 years ago.
>   
Basically, I would not place a low-end router in a mission-critical
business situation. I have used Linksys routers for years at home, but
the last one I bought ended up failing to the point where it would not
even work as a switch. I am using a WRT54G here in the office as a WAP,
but we don't depend on it, and the price was right (eg. free another
company abandoned it). I am currently looking at changing our ISP here
at work. We currently are using Regus' internal service that gives us a
shared environment capped at 2Mbps. Before they upgraded we had a higher
bandwidth. Furthermore, they changed their carrier from AT&T to Level3,
and there is a significant latency. For instance, on the old network, I
could ping blu.org in where it now takes over 70ms consistently. A
traceroute shows the latency occurs in Level3's Cincinnati  center. In
any case, I think that Regus is going to give us 3Mbps dedicated for the
same price we are paying now (exorbitant). I do have a meeting with RCN
on Thursday. However, if we go with another carrier, I'll need to
acquire a router because we must have several static IPs. My thought is
that I should be able to save a few $100s per month for a higher bandwidth.

We don't server any web pages from here. Mainly what we do is downloads
and some X over IP when someone works from home (through Citrix).

The basic bottom line is that I will no longer buy Linksys until they
improve their systems. I replaced my home system with a D-Link that
seems to be working fine. Sorry for the harangue, but I used to be a
Linksys proponent.

-- 
Jerry Feldman 
Boston Linux and Unix
PGP key id: 537C5846
PGP Key fingerprint: 3D1B 8377 A3C0 A5F2 ECBB  CA3B 4607 4319 537C 5846




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Re: Cute tag/license plate

On 09/21/2009 09:34 PM, Bayard Coolidge wrote:
> Took my wife and her Mom out to dinner tonight at the Grove Park Inn,
> in Asheville, NC. It's been raining heavily for the past few days, so
> driving is a bit dicey, and maneuvering the SUV in the parking lot for
> dinner wasn't the most fun. Until I saw a car with "CAR GZ"
>
> Huh? I was tired, been up late the night before, etc., so it didn't hit me
> right away...
>
> ... that a large insect had somehow met its demise precisely halfway
> between the "R" and the "G" on the baseline of the letters, and...
>
> ... that it was on a Smart Car [TM].
>
> Gotta love it!
>
>   
That reminds me to get my car washed, my car looks like a bug graveyard
after my trip to Atlanta, Charleston and Savannah :-)

-- 
Jerry Feldman 
Boston Linux and Unix
PGP key id: 537C5846
PGP Key fingerprint: 3D1B 8377 A3C0 A5F2 ECBB  CA3B 4607 4319 537C 5846




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Re: Linux as a NAS performance questions

2009-09-18 Thread Jerry Feldman

My boss bought a Western Digital MyBook World Edition with 4TB (2TB in
RAID1) for use as a backup device so we can free up some of our
expensive SCSI drives. For $600, this is a decent buy. While it is set
up for Windows, it runs Linux and has sshd set up so you can enable it
via the web interface. While rsync v3 is installed, some other utilities
are not, so it is best to install optware to get things like rsnapshot,
sudo, and a decent cron. However, it is slow. I am seeing about 6GB/HR,
so it works fine as a backup device because rsnapshot uses rsync with
the --link-dest flag, so subsequent backups transfer only incrementals.
However, I would NOT recommend it as an NFS or SAMBA server unless you
really want to enforce speed limits on your network :-)

On 09/17/2009 04:09 PM, Neil Joseph Schelly wrote:
> I'm looking to build a small Shuttle barebone machine into a NAS running 
> Linux.  The intent of the machine is to be a networked PC with lots of 
> storage in a RAID array, made available over the gigabit network interface 
> via Samba, NFS, and maybe iSCSI protocols.  I'm curious what experience 
> others have with this sort of stuff in general, but two immediate questions 
> come to mind about processor and memory performance.
>
> I can go the low-power, low-heat route and get a single-core processor and a 
> single memory stick of minimal quantity.  Or I can upgrade a bit, get a 
> dual-core processor with 2 sticks of dual-channel memory.  Or something in 
> between.  What I don't know is how much impact processor speed, multiple 
> cores, memory capacity, and dual-channel memory has on disk I/O, network I/O, 
> software RAID processing, etc.
>
> I like the idea of a small low-power, low-heat appliance, but will going too 
> low on those negatively impact performance much?  The cost difference between 
> a single-core processor with 1GB of memory and a dual-core processor with 2 
> sticks of 1GB dual-channel memory is insignificant, so that's not much of a 
> concern.
> -N
> ___
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> http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
>
>   

-- 
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Boston Linux and Unix
PGP key id: 537C5846
PGP Key fingerprint: 3D1B 8377 A3C0 A5F2 ECBB  CA3B 4607 4319 537C 5846

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2nite's BLU Meeting:Please register your PGP/GnuPG key before 5PM this evening

2009-09-16 Thread Jerry Feldman

When:  September 16, 2009 7PM (6:30PM for Q&A)
Topic: PGP/GnuPG Keysigning Party X
Moderator: Bill Ricker
Location:  MIT Building E51, Room 325

Please don't forget sign up in advance at
http://legacy.blu.org/keysignings/keypartyregister.php

I plan to print the list at 5PM EDT sharp
-- 
Jerry Feldman 
Boston Linux and Unix
PGP key id: 537C5846
PGP Key fingerprint: 3D1B 8377 A3C0 A5F2 ECBB  CA3B 4607 4319 537C 5846



































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Boston Software Freedom Day Events on Saturday 9/19

2009-09-15 Thread Jerry Feldman

The Free Software Foundation is sponsoring a Software Freedom Day event
this Saturday

 Encuentro 5 <http://www.encuentro5.org/home/>, 33 Harrison Ave, 5th Floor, 
Boston, MA 02111. The event runs from 10AM to 5Pm and has several speakers, 
including Mako Hill and Martin Owens. 

For details, please go to:
http://groups.fsf.org/wiki/Boston_Software_Freedom_Day


-- 
Jerry Feldman 
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PGP key id: 537C5846
PGP Key fingerprint: 3D1B 8377 A3C0 A5F2 ECBB  CA3B 4607 4319 537C 5846




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Reminder: Boston Linux Meeting Wed, September 16, 2009 Annual PGP/GnuPG Keysigning Party

2009-09-15 Thread Jerry Feldman

When:  September 16, 2009 7PM (6:30PM for Q&A)
Topic: PGP/GnuPG Keysigning Party X
Moderator: Bill Ricker
Location:  MIT Building E51, Room 325

Please don't forget sign up in advance at
http://www.blu.org/keysignings/

A key signing party is a get-together of people who use the PGP
encryption system with the purpose of allowing those people to sign each
others keys. Key signing parties serve to extend the web of trust to a
great degree. Key signing parties also serve as great opportunities to
discuss the political and social issues surrounding strong cryptography,
individual liberties, individual sovereignty, and even implementing
encryption technologies or perhaps future work on free encryption software.

The purpose of the meeting is to authenticate each other, i.e.
verify everybody's key ids and key fingerprints. Participants sign each
others' keys offline.

In order to complete the keysigning in the allotted time, we follow
a formal procedure as seen in V. Alex Brennen's "GnuPG Keysigning Party
HOWTO"
(http://cryptnet.net/fdp/crypto/keysigning_party/en/keysigning_party.html).
It is strongly advised that if you have not been to a keysigning party
before, you read this document.

It is essential that, before the meeting, you register on the sign
up form (http://legacy.blu.org/keysignings/). You should bring at least
one picture ID with you. You must also bring your own printout of the
report on that page, so you can check off the names/keys of the people
you have personally verified.
-- 
Jerry Feldman 
Boston Linux and Unix
PGP key id: 537C5846
PGP Key fingerprint: 3D1B 8377 A3C0 A5F2 ECBB  CA3B 4607 4319 537C 5846

































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Re: Packing/unpacking binary data in C - doubles, 64 bits

2009-09-11 Thread Jerry Feldman

On 09/11/2009 09:09 AM, bruce.lab...@autoliv.com wrote:
> Here are the sizes run on the two platforms, both 64 bit OS.  Identical.
>
> P4  Cell
> double  8   8
> float   4   4
> long double 16  16
> long signed long8   8
> long unsigned long  8   8
> signed char 1   1
> signed long 8   8
> signed short2   2
> unsigned char   1   1
> unsigned long   8   8
> unsigned short  2   2
> void *  8   8
>   
As I mentioned earlier, this is the LP64 convention where longs and
pointers are 64 bits. Windows 64 bit systems use LLP64 where longs are
32-bits but pointers and long longs are 64.

-- 
Jerry Feldman 
Boston Linux and Unix
PGP key id: 537C5846
PGP Key fingerprint: 3D1B 8377 A3C0 A5F2 ECBB  CA3B 4607 4319 537C 5846




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Re: Packing/unpacking binary data in C - doubles, 64 bits

2009-09-10 Thread Jerry Feldman

On 09/10/2009 10:12 AM, Kevin D. Clark wrote:
> Bruce Labitt writes:
>
>   
>> Kevin D. Clark wrote:
>> 
>>> 2:  Typically, binary stuff is sent over the network in "network byte
>>> order" and network byte order is big-endian.  This statement is not
>>> universally agreed to -- in fact I used to work at a shop where they'd
>>> never even considered this problem and it turned out that they were
>>> sending (most) stuff over the wire in little-endian format.
>>>
>>>   
>>>   
>> That only works if both ends are the same - definitely not portable.  In 
>> my case, the client is little-endian and the server is big-endian.
>> 
> No, that always works and it is definitely portable.  Read what I said
> again: when you transmit binary integers onto the wire, make sure they
> exist in network-byte-order.
>
> May I politely suggest that you consult a decent computer networking
> book?  Please take a look at the functions htonl() and ntohl().
>
>
>
> Question: from your various postings on this list, I gather that you
> are using MPI.  If this is true, why aren't you just using things like
> MPI_INT, MPI_DOUBLE, and possibly MPI_LONG_LONG?  Why not let your MPI
> library take care of details like this for you?  I guarantee you that
> any decent MPI implementation is going to be well-debugged and
> efficient.  It should also take care of any endian issues that you
> might encounter.
>
>   
Since this is my field of expertise I might as well comment. First, the
htonl(3) and ntohl(3) functions are designed for 32-bit integers only.
They will not work for 64-bit longs. (or long-longs). I suggest you use
the bswap_64 or bswap_32 macros. For data communication I strongly
recommend not sending binary integral or floating point data. Floating
point is also problematical. A C double (IEEE) is 1 sign bit, 11
exponent bits, and 52 mantissa bits. Certainly if you are using MPI,
then the MPI provided functions are useful.  Also,, I believe the bswap
macros are defined in the latest C standard, not the 1989.  Also, most
little endian systems (x86, Digital Alpha, IA64) implement these macros
to perform the proper byte swap into net byte order, and big endian
systems (such as Sun SPARC, HP PARISC and IA64 (HP-UX)) set the macros
as no-ops.  Many systems use a TLD (Type, Length, Data) notation to send
data. This way all data transmitted is in an ASCII (or EBCDIC) external
encoding so the reciving and sending systems can be of different
endians, or even have different integer sizes, such as 36-bits. remember
that the C language does not specify an integer size, just a range.
Today most 64-bit Unix/Linux systems use the LP64 notation, but windows
uses (I think but may be wrong ILP64). HP and IBM have some very good
online white papers and porting guides dealing not only with endians,
but also with 32-bit to 64-bit issues. I wrote some of the HP stuff and
most of it is still the text I wrote.

-- 
Jerry Feldman 
Boston Linux and Unix
PGP key id: 537C5846
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Re: [OT] Generator testing

2009-09-09 Thread Jerry Feldman

I worked at a facility that did not have a backup generator but did have
2 separate power lines from 2 different power companies. Of course that
does not help when the grid fails.

Jerry



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Re: [OT] Generator testing

2009-09-09 Thread Jerry Feldman

On 09/08/2009 10:18 PM, Ben Scott wrote:
>   FWIW, I find this topic fascinating, and quite possibly of interest
> to my professional career, so I'd like to hear the stories, too.  :)
>   
One war story. I was a programmer at Burger King a number of years ago
(assembler on PDP-8 BTW). We had 2 diesel generators sitting outside the
building to give us power when the power failed (DUH). One stormy day,
we were in the conference room overlooking the generators, and they
received a direct lightning strike that took out both the generators and
the power.

-- 
Jerry Feldman 
Boston Linux and Unix
PGP key id: 537C5846
PGP Key fingerprint: 3D1B 8377 A3C0 A5F2 ECBB  CA3B 4607 4319 537C 5846




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Boston Linux Meeting Wed, September 16, 2009 Annual PGP/GnuPG Keysigning Party

2009-09-08 Thread Jerry Feldman

When:  September 16, 2009 7PM (6:30PM for Q&A)
Topic: PGP/GnuPG Keysigning Party X
Moderator: TBA
Location:  MIT Building E51, Room 325

Please sign up in advance at http://www.blu.org/keysignings/

A key signing party is a get-together of people who use the PGP
encryption system with the purpose of allowing those people to sign each
others keys. Key signing parties serve to extend the web of trust to a
great degree. Key signing parties also serve as great opportunities to
discuss the political and social issues surrounding strong cryptography,
individual liberties, individual sovereignty, and even implementing
encryption technologies or perhaps future work on free encryption software.

The purpose of the meeting is to authenticate each other, i.e.
verify everybody's key ids and key fingerprints. Participants sign each
others' keys offline.

In order to complete the keysigning in the allotted time, we follow
a formal procedure as seen in V. Alex Brennen's "GnuPG Keysigning Party
HOWTO"
(http://cryptnet.net/fdp/crypto/keysigning_party/en/keysigning_party.html).
It is strongly advised that if you have not been to a keysigning party
before, you read this document.

It is essential that, before the meeting, you register on the sign
up form (http://legacy.blu.org/keysignings/). You should bring at least
one picture ID with you. You must also bring your own printout of the
report on that page, so you can check off the names/keys of the people
you have personally verified.
-- 
Jerry Feldman 
Boston Linux and Unix
PGP key id: 537C5846
PGP Key fingerprint: 3D1B 8377 A3C0 A5F2 ECBB  CA3B 4607 4319 537C 5846































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Boston Linux and Unix InstallFest XXXIV TODAT\Y August 22, 2009

2009-08-22 Thread Jerry Feldman

Boston Linux Installfest XXXIV
When:  Saturday August 22, 2009 from 9:00 am to 5:00 pm
Where: MIT Building E-51, Room 061
   2 Amherst St, Cambridge
 Plenty of parking in front of the building.
Please note Amherst St is one way from Hayward St west to Ames St.
Wadsworth St is closed between Kendall Sq and Amherst. The best way is
to take Wadsworth St from Memorial Drive.

What you need to bring: Your computer, monitor, power strips and your
Linux distributions. We do have copies of some distributions.
In general we have expertise with most distros, but if you need special
expertise, please email the BLU discussion list in advance.

COST: It's free! However, we DO have expenses, and contributions are
welcome. Please consider contributing $25 per machine.

Our volunteers will help you to install Linux on your own system.  While
Linux runs on most systems, some systems do have configurations and
hardware that may not be supported. Please consult the following web
pages for hardware compatibility. While we prefer you to bring your own
distros, our volunteers will normally have

 Linux.ORG: http://www.linux.org/hardware/index.html
 Hardware HOWTO: http://www.linuxdoc.org/HOWTO/Hardware-HOWTO.html
 Linux Frequently Asked Questions: http://www.linuxdoc.org/
Additionally, there are forums and listservs for most distros.

Generally our volunteers have sets of the latest Fedora, SuSE and
Ubuntu distributions:
   * Fedora - http://fedora.redhat.com (Fedora 11)
   * Open SuSE - http://opensuse.org (OpenSuSE 11.0)
   * Ubuntu - http://www.ubuntu.com  (Jaunty Jackalope 9.04)
   * Debian - http://www.debian.org/

In addition, you can run Linux on your Windows PC through a virtual
machine manager, such as Virtualbox. You can install this in your
Windows machine and run Linux as a guest OS, or install it in your Linux
machine and run Windows as a guest. VirtualBox 3.0.4
(http://www.virtualbox.org.) is free and is available for Linux, Windows
XP and Windows Vista. Additionally, there are some VMWare clients that
are also free for Windows.


Please refer to the BLU website (http://www.blu.org) for further
information and directions. Parking is free and available in front of
the building on Amherst St. Enter the building, and take the elevator to
your left down 1 floor. Room 061 is opposite the elevator.

-- 
Jerry Feldman 
Boston Linux and Unix user group
http://www.blu.org
PGP key id: 537C5846
PGP Key fingerprint: 3D1B 8377 A3C0 A5F2 ECBB  CA3B 4607 4319 537C 5846
















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BLU Meeting Reminder, tomorrow, August 19, 2009 Dbl Hdr: Branding the Bazaar, and Drupal Content Mgmt System

2009-08-18 Thread Jerry Feldman

When:  August 19, 2009 7PM (6:30PM for Q&A)
Topic: Double Header: Branding the Bazaar, and
   Drupal Content Management System
Moderators: Patrick Keating; Douglas Sweetser
Location:  MIT Building E51, Room 315 2 Amherst St, Cambridge
Please note that Amherst St is now one way heading Westbound from
Wadsworth St. to Ames St. as a result of construction.

Patrick Keating:
How can a brand add equity to and be controlled by the organization when
its product(s) and brand heritage are, at least in part, developed by
volunteers outside of the company's control? If recent acquisitions by
Yahoo and Oracle are any indication, this seemingly unusual question is
one faced and increasingly answered by today's leading Commercial Open
Source organizations.

Doug Sweetser:
HTML was designed so the physicists at CERN could present a paper with a
few figures and data by adding a tags that could be remembered and typed
in vi or emacs. The format was meant to tolerate the kinds of errors
individuals make.

For a web site with where many people can contribute content, site
management goes beyond what HTML alone can do. Yet there are so many
technologies which quickly change. Who has the time to keep track of how
these technologies work with the diverse collections of available
browsers? Rely on another community to update and evolve the software in
the open.

For further information and directions please consult the BLU Web site
http://www.blu.org
Please note that there is usually plenty of free parking in the E-51
parking lot at 2 Amherst St, or on Amherst St.

We will adjourn to the Cambridge Brewery for our after meeting meeting.

Also please don't forget our next Installfest on Saturday, August 22nd.
I'll make a separate announcement.
-- 
Jerry Feldman 
Boston Linux and Unix
PGP key id: 537C5846
PGP Key fingerprint: 3D1B 8377 A3C0 A5F2 ECBB  CA3B 4607 4319 537C 5846































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Boston Linux and Unix InstallFest XXXIV Saturday August 22, 2009

2009-08-16 Thread Jerry Feldman

Boston Linux Installfest XXXIV
When:  Saturday August 22, 2009 from 9:00 am to 5:00 pm
Where: MIT Building E-51, Room 061
   2 Amherst St, Cambridge
 Plenty of parking in front of the building.


What you need to bring: Your computer, monitor, power strips and your
Linux distributions. We do have copies of some distributions.
In general we have expertise with most distros, but if you need special
expertise, please email the BLU discussion list in advance.

COST: It's free! However, we DO have expenses, and contributions are
welcome. Please consider contributing $25 per machine.

Our volunteers will help you to install Linux on your own system.  While
Linux runs on most systems, some systems do have configurations and
hardware that may not be supported. Please consult the following web
pages for hardware compatibility. While we prefer you to bring your own
distros, our volunteers will normally have

 Linux.ORG: http://www.linux.org/hardware/index.html
 Hardware HOWTO: http://www.linuxdoc.org/HOWTO/Hardware-HOWTO.html
 Linux Frequently Asked Questions: http://www.linuxdoc.org/
Additionally, there are forums and listservs for most distros.

Generally our volunteers have sets of the latest Fedora, SuSE and
Ubuntu distributions:
   * Fedora - http://fedora.redhat.com (Fedora 11)
   * Open SuSE - http://opensuse.org (OpenSuSE 11.0)
   * Ubuntu - http://www.ubuntu.com  (Jaunty Jackalope 9.04)
   * Debian - http://www.debian.org/

In addition, you can run Linux on your Windows PC through a virtual
machine manager, such as Virtualbox. You can install this in your
Windows machine and run Linux as a guest OS, or install it in your Linux
machine and run Windows as a guest. VirtualBox 3.0.4
(http://www.virtualbox.org.) is free and is available for Linux, Windows
XP and Windows Vista. Additionally, there are some VMWare clients that
are also free for Windows.


Please refer to the BLU website (http://www.blu.org) for further
information and directions. Parking is free and available in front of
the building on Amherst St. Enter the building, and take the elevator to
your left down 1 floor. Room 061 is opposite the elevator.

-- 
Jerry Feldman 
Boston Linux and Unix user group
http://www.blu.org
PGP key id: 537C5846
PGP Key fingerprint: 3D1B 8377 A3C0 A5F2 ECBB  CA3B 4607 4319 537C 5846














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Boston Linux Meeting Wed, August 19, 2009 Double Header: Branding the Bazaar, and Drupal Content Management System

2009-08-11 Thread Jerry Feldman

When:  August 19, 2009 7PM (6:30PM for Q&A)
Topic: Double Header: Branding the Bazaar, and Drupal Content
Management System
Moderator: Patrick Keating; Douglas Sweetser
Location:  MIT Building E51, Room 315

Patrick Keating:
How can a brand add equity to and be controlled by the organization when
its product(s) and brand heritage are, at least in part, developed by
volunteers outside of the company's control? If recent acquisitions by
Yahoo and Oracle are any indication, this seemingly unusual question is
one faced and increasingly answered by today's leading Commercial Open
Source organizations.

Doug Sweetser:
HTML was designed so the physicists at CERN could present a paper with a
few figures and data by adding a tags that could be remembered and typed
in vi or emacs. The format was meant to tolerate the kinds of errors
individuals make.

For a web site with where many people can contribute content, site
management goes beyond what HTML alone can do. Yet there are so many
technologies which quickly change. Who has the time to keep track of how
these technologies work with the diverse collections of available
browsers? Rely on another community to update and evolve the software in
the open.

For further information and directions please consult the BLU Web site
http://www.blu.org
Please note that there is usually plenty of free parking in the E-51
parking lot at 2 Amherst St, or on Amherst St.

We will adjourn to the Cambridge Brewery for our after meeting meeting.

Also please don't forget our next Installfest on Saturday, August 22nd.
I'll make a separate announcement.
-- 
Jerry Feldman 
Boston Linux and Unix
PGP key id: 537C5846
PGP Key fingerprint: 3D1B 8377 A3C0 A5F2 ECBB  CA3B 4607 4319 537C 5846





























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Re: melodrama at CentOS?

2009-08-01 Thread Jerry Feldman

I saw that earlier, and it is great news.

On 08/01/2009 08:47 AM, Bill McGonigle wrote:
> There's an update today:
>
> "The CentOS Development team had a routine meeting today with Lance Davis
> in attendance. During the meeting a majority of issues were resolved
> immediately and a working agreement was reached with deadlines for
> remaining unresolved issues. There should be no impact to any CentOS users
> going forward.
>
> The CentOS project is now in control of the CentOS.org and CentOS.info
> domains and owns all trademarks, materials, and artwork in the CentOS
> distributions.
>
> We look forward to working with Lance to quickly complete all the agreed
> upon issues.
>
>   


-- 
Jerry Feldman 
Boston Linux and Unix
PGP key id: 537C5846
PGP Key fingerprint: 3D1B 8377 A3C0 A5F2 ECBB  CA3B 4607 4319 537C 5846




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Re: melodrama at CentOS?

2009-07-31 Thread Jerry Feldman

Lance and the CentOS team have provided a very valuable service to the
entire Linux community throughout its existence by making an enterprise
(specifically RHEL) Linux available to those who need it, but can't
afford the pay for the full enterprise package. I would hope that Lance
does reconcile with his team.

-- 
Jerry Feldman 
Boston Linux and Unix
PGP key id: 537C5846
PGP Key fingerprint: 3D1B 8377 A3C0 A5F2 ECBB  CA3B 4607 4319 537C 5846




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Re: melodrama at CentOS?

2009-07-30 Thread Jerry Feldman

I heard he is visiting Hans Reiser :-)

On 07/30/2009 11:36 AM, Michael ODonnell wrote:
> Anybody know anything beyond what's mentioned in this open letter
> to CentOS's Lance Davis signed by a number of key CentOS players?
>
>http://www.centos.org/
>  
>   


-- 
Jerry Feldman 
Boston Linux and Unix
PGP key id: 537C5846
PGP Key fingerprint: 3D1B 8377 A3C0 A5F2 ECBB  CA3B 4607 4319 537C 5846




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reminder Boston Linux and Unix Annual Summer BBQ XV tomorrow, Saturday

2009-07-17 Thread Jerry Feldman

Annual Summer BBQ XV
When:  Saturday, July 18, 2009 from 1:00 pm to 6:00 pm
Where:  John and Shelley Chambers' home
33 Cedarwood Avenue, Waltham, MA.

Boston Linux & Unix is holding its fifteenth annual summer BBQ on
Saturday, July 18th, beginning at 1:00 p.m. Everyone is welcome. Guests
are encouraged to bring along something for the grill and the snack
table. We're holding the barbecue at the same location as the past few
years, John and Shelley Chambers' home at 33 Cedarwood Avenue, Waltham,
MA.

Please refer to the BLU website for further details and directions.
http://legacy.blu.org/cgi-bin/calendar/2009-bbq15

-- 
Jerry Feldman 
Boston Linux and Unix
PGP key id: 537C5846
PGP Key fingerprint: 3D1B 8377 A3C0 A5F2 ECBB  CA3B 4607 4319 537C 5846






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Boston Linux Meeting tomorrow, July 15, 2009 Another Look at MythTV and MythDora

2009-07-14 Thread Jerry Feldman

When:  July 15, 2009 7PM (6:30PM for Q&A)
Topic: Building an open-source PVR (TiVo workalike) with Fedora
Moderator: Jarod Wilson
Location:  MIT Building E51, Room 315

Jarod discusses the current state of MythTV, which is expected to
have a new release (MythTV 0.22) shortly before the date of this meeting.

Jarod is involved in the MythDora project, which maintains a simple
installation ISO image based on Fedora. Back in January 2009, the
MythDora project announced that MythDora had finally been updated to
catch up with the Fedora baseline, and as of the 10.21 release, MythDora
was now based on the still-new Fedora 10.

For further information and directions please consult the BLU Web site
http://www.blu.org
Please note that there is usually plenty of free parking in the E-51
parking lot at 2 Amherst St, or on Amherst St.

We will adjourn to the Cambridge Brewery for our after meeting meeting.

remember that the BLU BBQ will be held this Saturday, July 18, 2009.
Please refer to the BLU website for further information and directions.
-- 
Jerry Feldman 
Boston Linux and Unix
PGP key id: 537C5846
PGP Key fingerprint: 3D1B 8377 A3C0 A5F2 ECBB  CA3B 4607 4319 537C 5846





























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Boston Linux Meeting Wed, July 15, 2009 Another Look at MythTV and MythDora

2009-07-08 Thread Jerry Feldman

When:  July 15, 2009 7PM (6:30PM for Q&A)
Topic: Building an open-source PVR (TiVo workalike) with Fedora
Moderator: Jarod Wilson
Location:  MIT Building E51, Room 315

Jarod discusses the current state of MythTV, which is expected to
have a new release (MythTV 0.22) shortly before the date of this meeting.

Jarod is involved in the MythDora project, which maintains a simple
installation ISO image based on Fedora. Back in January 2009, the
MythDora project announced that MythDora had finally been updated to
catch up with the Fedora baseline, and as of the 10.21 release, MythDora
was now based on the still-new Fedora 10.

With luck, a new release of MythDora based on Fedora 11 and MythTV
0.22 may be released before the date of this meeting.

For further information and directions please consult the BLU Web site
http://www.blu.org
Please note that there is usually plenty of free parking in the E-51
parking lot at 2 Amherst St, or on Amherst St.

We will adjourn to the Cambridge Brewery for our after meeting meeting.
-- 
Jerry Feldman 
Boston Linux and Unix
PGP key id: 537C5846
PGP Key fingerprint: 3D1B 8377 A3C0 A5F2 ECBB  CA3B 4607 4319 537C 5846



























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Boston Linux and Unix Annual Summer BBQ XV

2009-07-05 Thread Jerry Feldman

Annual Summer BBQ XV
When:  Saturday, July 18, 2009 from 1:00 pm to 6:00 pm
Where:  John and Shelley Chambers' home
33 Cedarwood Avenue, Waltham, MA.

Boston Linux & Unix is holding its fifteenth annual summer BBQ on
Saturday, July 18th, beginning at 1:00 p.m. Everyone is welcome. Guests
are encouraged to bring along something for the grill and the snack
table. We're holding the barbeque at the same location as the past few
years, John and Shelley Chambers' home at 33 Cedarwood Avenue, Waltham,
MA.

Please refer to the BLU website for further details and directions.
http://legacy.blu.org/cgi-bin/calendar/2009-bbq15

-- 
Jerry Feldman 
Boston Linux and Unix
PGP key id: 537C5846
PGP Key fingerprint: 3D1B 8377 A3C0 A5F2 ECBB  CA3B 4607 4319 537C 5846




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Re: Analog Modems?

2009-06-22 Thread Jerry Feldman

The only solutions that I know of are:
1. Satellite. I have not looked at satellite for a number of years. At
one time, there was a satellite company that was pretty decent and had
an agreement with Dish Network, but that agreement ended in litigation,
and the 2 people I knew with their service became rather unhappy.
2. Microwave. My former boss at Compaq, has a home in South Carolina,
and gets his Internet connectivity via microwave. Additionally, a friend
in Nebraska whose wife is a physician also has microwave. However, I
don't know if there are any providers up north.

In general, satellite costs about twice that of cable, and while the
company I referred to was at one time Linux-friendly, because of the
litigation et. al., they started to cut out some things, and may not be
Linux friendly any longer.

On 06/22/2009 05:03 AM, Brian Chabot wrote:
> This is going to sound odd, but I have a friend who lives in the boonies
> who only has an analog phone line for internet access and word has it
> they won't have broadband (or most cell signals) for a couple more years.
>
> I was wondering if anyone here might know of an affordable, stand-alone
> device which would server as an analog modem on one side and ethernet or
> wifi on the other?
>
> The idea is to set their house up with a LAN where either their main
> computer or a laptop could use the device as a dial-on-demand access
> device and a router to the outside world while connected.
>
> I'm trying to see if something can be set up so as not to have to use
> any one computer as the router...
>   

-- 
Jerry Feldman 
Boston Linux and Unix
PGP key id: 537C5846
PGP Key fingerprint: 3D1B 8377 A3C0 A5F2 ECBB  CA3B 4607 4319 537C 5846

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Boston Linux Meeting reminder tomorrow, Wed, June 17, 2009 Municipal Wireless, and BLU Birthday with cake and pizza

2009-06-16 Thread Jerry Feldman

When: June 17, 2009 1PM - 6:00 PM - Pre meeting
 6:30Pm - 7:30PM Party
 7:30PM Speakers

Topic: Rooftops III Municipal Wireless.
Moderator:Kurt Keville, Brian DeLacey, Rabeeh Khoury of Marvell
Technology Group
Location: MIT Building E51, Room 315 (pre Meeting in room 063)

Marvell® Technology Group will be sponsoring the meeting including
plenty of soda, pizza and BLU 15th Birthday cake.
http://www.marvell.com/company/index.jsp
Note that Marvell is also supplying the very popular SheevaPlugs

Kurt Keville, Brian DeLacey and others discuss the 802.11s (Mesh)
standard and what it means for embedded Linux distros such as OpenWRT
and Robix, the distros of choice for the upcoming local Muniwireless
rollouts. Kurt gave earlier talks on Muniwireless at our February 2008
and August 2006 meetings

Pre: meeting - room 063
Brian and Kurt will be holding an all-afternoon pre-meeting, beginning
at noon in E51-063. This afternoon session will build a multi-node
solar-powered super computer as a clustered web-server using fast flash
and Marvell's SheevaPlugs. Rabeeh Khoury of Marvell will be onsite for
lots of Linux and SheevaPlug Q&A. Sage Radachowsky will be showcasing
his latest solar circuitry. The working SWARM system will be
demonstrated at the main meeting, but anyone is welcome to drop by and
pick up a soldering iron or keyboard to work with earlier in the day.


Post meeting. Not sure where we will be having it. JABR wants to go to
Atasca, but they close too early. We also may not be hungry. We'll play
it by ear.

-- 
Jerry Feldman 
Boston Linux and Unix
PGP key id: 537C5846
PGP Key fingerprint: 3D1B 8377 A3C0 A5F2 ECBB  CA3B 4607 4319 537C 5846



























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Boston Linux Meeting Wed, June 17, 2009 Municipal Wireless, and BLU Birthday with cake and pizza

2009-06-11 Thread Jerry Feldman


When: June 17, 2009 1PM - 6:00 PM - Pre meeting
6:30Pm - 7:30PM Party
7:30PM Speakers

Topic: Rooftops III Municipal Wireless.
Moderator:Kurt Keville, Brian DeLacey, Rabeeh Khoury of Marvell 
Technology Group

Location: MIT Building E51, Room 315 (pre Meeting in room 063)

Marvell® Technology Group will be sponsoring the meeting including 
plenty of soda, pizza and BLU 15th Birthday cake.

http://www.marvell.com/company/index.jsp
Note that Marvell is also supplying the very popular SheevaPlugs

Kurt Keville, Brian DeLacey and others discuss the 802.11s (Mesh) 
standard and what it means for embedded Linux distros such as OpenWRT 
and Robix, the distros of choice for the upcoming local Muniwireless 
rollouts. Kurt gave earlier talks on Muniwireless at our February 2008 
and August 2006 meetings


Pre: meeting - room 063
Brian and Kurt will be holding an all-afternoon pre-meeting, beginning 
at noon in E51-063. This afternoon session will build a multi-node 
solar-powered super computer as a clustered web-server using fast flash 
and Marvell's SheevaPlugs. Rabeeh Khoury of Marvell will be onsite for 
lots of Linux and SheevaPlug Q&A. Sage Radachowsky will be showcasing 
his latest solar circuitry. The working SWARM system will be 
demonstrated at the main meeting, but anyone is welcome to drop by and 
pick up a soldering iron or keyboard to work with earlier in the day.



Post meeting. Not sure where we will be having it. JABR wants to go to 
Atasca, but they close too early. We also may not be hungry. We'll play 
it by ear.


--
Jerry Feldman 
Boston Linux and Unix
PGP key id: 537C5846
PGP Key fingerprint: 3D1B 8377 A3C0 A5F2 ECBB  CA3B 4607 4319 537C 5846

























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Re: VirtualBox Ubuntu host with existing Vista

2009-06-02 Thread Jerry Feldman

Basically, much has been discussed on this. I have been running 
Virtualbox on my Ubuntu laptop for over a year with Windows Xp and 
Fedora 10 as guest OSs'. The bottom line is that vbox works well. The 
only real issues I've found is that I can't sync my Blackberry, but It 
does see the Blackberry disk.  I just saw an update come down on the 
Ubuntu automatic updates. You would have to add the virtualbox 
repository to Ubuntu, but that is trivial.


On 06/01/2009 11:11 PM, Greg Rundlett (freephile) wrote:

I'm new to virtualization, and want to find a solution to run my
existing (from the factory) installation of Windows Vista as a guest
in my Ubuntu host.  I have Ubuntu installed.

I basically want to run Ubuntu (Jaunty Jackalope) as the VirtualBox
host, and be able to seamlessly run Windows Vista as a guest -- using
the pre-installed OS.  I have the install media, but I don't want to
go through the bother to re-install and re-partition if not necessary.

It looks like VirtualBox is a good solution for free and open source
virtualization.  It also looks like it supports using what they call
'raw access' to the existing disk.
http://www.virtualbox.org/manual/UserManual.html#rawdisk  It seems
like one important part is to setup a second hardware profile (in
Vista), however it also seems that hardware profiles are only
supported in XP, not Vista.  I'm wondering if anyone has had success
doing this, and has any pointers to offer.  I've seen threads like
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=984437&highlight=vista+virtualbox&page=6
and language like "Remove anything not necessary, some trial and error
may be required if you are not sure what you need" makes me leary to
try it.


  



--
Jerry Feldman 
Boston Linux and Unix
PGP key id: 537C5846
PGP Key fingerprint: 3D1B 8377 A3C0 A5F2 ECBB  CA3B 4607 4319 537C 5846




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Re: [OT] DTV switch-over (was: Mythtv users + Comcast subscribers)

2009-05-30 Thread Jerry Feldman

AFAIK Comcast will continue to provide analog signals until the 2012 
deadline. However, they can also follow some other cable companies by 
providing free converter boxes to basic cable subscribers.


On 05/29/2009 04:21 PM, Ben Scott wrote:

On Fri, May 29, 2009 at 3:20 PM, Greg Rundlett (freephile)
 wrote:
  

... Comcast is distributing little Digital to Analog converters (along
with their switchover to DTV broadcasts) ...



  I thought the DTV switchover was mainly a problem for people
receiving TV via OTA broadcast (over-the-air, i.e., antennas).  I
thought the CATV companies could basically keep sending analog signals
forever.  Or are they jumping on the digital-only bandwagon, too?

http://www.dtv.gov/topfaqs.html#faq3
  


--
Jerry Feldman 
Boston Linux and Unix
PGP key id: 537C5846
PGP Key fingerprint: 3D1B 8377 A3C0 A5F2 ECBB  CA3B 4607 4319 537C 5846




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Boston Linux and Unix InstallFest XXXIII Saturday May 30, 2009

2009-05-28 Thread Jerry Feldman


Boston Linux Installfest XXXIII
When:  Saturday May 20, 2009, 2008 from 9:00 am to 5:00 pm
Where: MIT Building E-51, Room 061
  2 Amherst St, Cambridge
 Plenty of parking in front of the building.


What you need to bring: Your computer, monitor, power strips and your
Linux distributions. We do have copies of some distributions.
In general we have expertise with most distros, but if you need special
expertise, please email the BLU discussion list in advance.

COST: It's free! However, we DO have expenses, and contributions are
welcome. Please consider contributing $25 per machine.

Our volunteers will help you to install Linux on your own system.  While
Linux runs on most systems, some systems do have configurations and
hardware that may not be supported. Please consult the following web
pages for hardware compatibility. While we prefer you to bring your own
distros, our volunteers will normally have

Linux.ORG: http://www.linux.org/hardware/index.html
Hardware HOWTO: http://www.linuxdoc.org/HOWTO/Hardware-HOWTO.html
Linux Frequently Asked Questions: http://www.linuxdoc.org/

Generally our volunteers have sets of the latest Fedora, SuSE and
Ubuntu distributions:
  * Fedora - http://fedora.redhat.com (Fedora 10 and 11RC)
  * Open SuSE - http://opensuse.org (OpenSuSE 11.0)
  * Ubuntu - http://www.ubuntu.com  (Intrepid Ibex 8.10)
  * Debian - http://www.debian.org/

In addition, you can run Linux on your Windows PC through a virtual
machine manager, such as Virtualbox. You can install this in your
Windows machine and run Linux as a guest OS, or install it in your Linux
machine and run Windows as a guest. VirtualBox 2.1
(http://www.virtualbox.org.) is free and is available for Linux, Windows
XP and Windows Vista. Additionally, there are some VMWare clients that
are also free for Windows.


Please refer to the BLU website (http://www.blu.org) for further
information and directions. Parking is free and available in front of 
the building on Amherst St. Enter the building, and take the elevator to

your left down 1 floor. Room 061 is opposite the elevator.

--
Jerry Feldman 
Boston Linux and Unix user group
http://www.blu.org
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Re: Where are the c header files on my system?


On 05/19/2009 08:48 AM, Kevin D. Clark wrote:

Lori Nagel writes:

  

I've been using gcc in Linux and cc in Unix.  I have not been using
an IDE, only the terminal shell and a text editing program for the C
files. On both computers c programs compile and run, however, the
compilers are different and have different options, and some code
that compiles and runs on one doesn't on the other.  (what I mean is
why is gcc so lax while cc is so mean.)



I strongly recommend that when you compile all of your C code with gcc
that you add the arguments "-Werror -Wall -Wcast-qual".

You can either do this or spend your time chasing crazy problems.
Your choice.

  

What I want to know is if there any easy way I could find out where
my .h files are on my computers such as stdio.h? Also, would I be
able to find the function prototypes for things like scanf in them
or would I have to go somewhere else?



If you want to know where to #include things from, the very first
place you should look is in the manual page.  If you type "man scanf"
you will see this:

   SYNOPSIS
   #include 
   int scanf(const char *format, ...);
   int fscanf(FILE *stream, const char *format, ...);
   int sscanf(const char *str, const char *format, ...);


The way that you should interpret this is "if I want to use the
scanf() function, I need to #include  in my code.


  

Another thing, why oh why did they decide to seperate out libm.a
from the rest of the C programming libriaries so that you have to
include it? It used to make me so upset until I read intro to gcc.



Again, the problem that you are describing here is easily remedied if
you consult the manual page.  For example, "man atanf" produces:

   SYNOPSIS
   #include 

   double atan(double x);
   float atanf(float x);
   long double atanl( long double x);

   Link with -lm.


You should interpret this to mean (1) if you want to use the math
library, you need to #include  and (2) if you want to use the
math library, you need to link against it by adding the argument "-lm"
to your invocation of the linker, like so: "cc foo.o -o foo -lm".


  

Please someone answer my question because I have been wanting to
know the answer for about 3 years now, and I think that is a long
enough time to wait.  I have done enough reading of manuals to know
that most of them don't answer the questions that people have. I'm
planning to write the ultimate newbie C programming book for
Gnu/Linux because it doesn't currently exist.



The two best books that I know of on the C language are Kernighan and
Ritchie's book and Harbison and Steele's book.

  
I agree here. about the books. With K&R make sure you get the most 
recent book since it incorporates the standards. And speaking of 
standards, there are essentially 3 major C language standards,
1. K&R - not really a standard, but this was primarily the standard 
before the 1989 standard
2. ISO/IEC 9899:1990 (sometimes referred to as C89 since this reflects 
the 1989 ANSI standard. This is the first place where function 
prototypes were defined.

3.  ISO/IEC 9899:1999 - This is the latest standard.

You may encounter code in some of the books that is actually wrong, so I 
would also invest in a copy of both of the standards.


--
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Boston Linux and Unix
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Re: Where are the c header files on my system?

On 05/19/2009 01:33 AM, Lori Nagel wrote:
I've been using gcc in Linux and cc in Unix.
I have not been using an IDE, only the terminal shell and a text

editing program for the C files. On both computers c programs compile
and run, however, the compilers are different and have different options,
and some code that compiles and runs on one doesn't on the other. (what I mean is why is gcc so lax while cc is so mean.)

What
I want to know is if there any easy way I could find out where my .h
files are on my computers such as stdio.h? Also, would I be able to
find the function prototypes for things like scanf in them or would I
have to go somewhere else?

Another thing, why oh why did they decide to seperate out libm.a from the rest of the C programming libriaries so that you have to include it? It used to make me so upset until I read intro to gcc.

Please someone answer my question
because I have been wanting to know the answer for about 3 years now,
and I think that is a long enough time to wait. I have done enough reading of manuals to know that most of them don't answer the questions that people have. I'm planning to write the ultimate newbie C programming book for Gnu/Linux because it doesn't currently exist.

Sorry, I forgot the answer the rest. The function prototypes are in the
standard header files.
The math library has been historically separate from the standard C
runtime library forever. It was a decision made way back before I
learned C in 1980. If you look at the man page for the math functions it
notes that "Link with -lm". Additionally, libraries are in /lib,
/usr/lib, and /usr/local/lib

In addition, some Unix systems have additional locations, such as
/usr/ucb (if I recall). Remember that on some Unix systems you may be
able to build a System V or BSD variant, but all is in the man pages.

--
Jerry Feldman
Boston Linux and Unix
PGP key id: 537C5846
PGP Key fingerprint: 3D1B 8377 A3C0 A5F2 ECBB CA3B 4607 4319 537C 5846

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Re: Where are the c header files on my system?

On 05/19/2009 01:33 AM, Lori Nagel wrote:
I've been using gcc in Linux and cc in Unix.
I have not been using an IDE, only the terminal shell and a text

Another thing, why oh why did they decide to seperate out libm.a from the rest of the C programming libriaries so that you have to include it? It used to make me so upset until I read intro to gcc.

On most Linux and Unix systems, the standard C language header files are
located in /usr/include. However, some system header files associated
with the kernel are in /usr/src/..., but for normal C programs,
/usr/include and possibly /usr/local/include. In addition, if you are
doing some coding with thinks like KDE, the header files may be in the
KDE or QT directories.

--
Jerry Feldman
Boston Linux and Unix
PGP key id: 537C5846
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Reminder Boston Linux Meeting tomorrow, Wed, May 20, 2009 Hacking your Portable Linux Server


When: May 20, 2009 7PM (6:30PM for Q&A)
Topic: Hacking your Portable Linux Server
Moderator:Federico Lucifredi
Location: MIT Building E51, Room 395

I have 3 boxes of books from O'Reilly to give away.

Summary :: Building a cheap and very compact Linux NAS appliance

Abstract

 Hacking the Western Digital Mybook II to transform this elegant
external hard drive into a bare-bones, extremely flexible hardware
platform, in a revival of what we did with the Linksys WRT54G a few
years ago. Intermediate system skills (particularly Perl and Shell)
recommended, along with imagination and the desire to have fun!

In addition, Brian DeLacey will provide just a brief neutral
introduction to the SheevaPlug, as a transition/connection to the next
meeting where it will be discussed in more depth.

Also note that the next Linux Installfest will be on Saturday, May 30th. 
I'll post an announcement later this week.


For further information and directions please consult the BLU Web site
http://www.blu.org
Please note that there is usually plenty of free parking in the E-51
parking lot at 2 Amherst St, or on Amherst St.

We will adjourn to the Cambridge Brewery for our after meeting meeting.


--
Jerry Feldman 
Boston Linux and Unix
PGP key id: 537C5846
PGP Key fingerprint: 3D1B 8377 A3C0 A5F2 ECBB  CA3B 4607 4319 537C 5846























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Re: [OT] Re: UNIX license plate

2009-05-15 Thread Jerry Feldman

I believe that Clem Cole currently has a UNIX plate registered in Ma. 
Some of you know Clem from HP/Compaq and now Intel or from Usenix.


--
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Boston Linux and Unix
PGP key id: 537C5846
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Re: Limit CPUs

2009-05-14 Thread Jerry Feldman


I'd like to see your results.
I did a similar thing on HP-UX 10 years ago, but I was looking at stress 
and locking not performance, per se. At the time I found an interesting 
bug where (if I recall), open(2) erroneously returned 0. (Normally file 
descriptor 0 is used for stdin, and in my test case, open should have 
returned a -1). Bug report was filed and accepted, but this was a rather 
extreme case where I was stressing kernel file locking across NFS an 
local on a multi-CPU system (either 4 or 8 at the time).


On 05/13/2009 07:02 PM, Kenneth Lussier wrote:

-Original Message-


  

That's not a kernel param... :)

I believe 'maxcpus=x' is what we're >looking for here.



THAT'S  the one ;-)

  



--
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Boston Linux and Unix
PGP key id: 537C5846
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Boston Linux Meeting Wednesday, May 20, 2009 Hacking your Portable Linux Server

2009-05-14 Thread Jerry Feldman


When: May 20, 2009 7PM (6:30PM for Q&A)
Topic: Hacking your Portable Linux Server
Moderator:Federico Lucifredi
Location: MIT Building E51, Room 395

Summary :: Building a cheap and very compact Linux NAS appliance

Abstract

Hacking the Western Digital Mybook II to transform this elegant 
external hard drive into a bare-bones, extremely flexible hardware 
platform, in a revival of what we did with the Linksys WRT54G a few 
years ago. Intermediate system skills (particularly Perl and Shell) 
recommended, along with imagination and the desire to have fun!


In addition, Brian DeLacey will provide just a brief neutral 
introduction to the device, as a transition/connection to the next 
meeting where it will be discussed in more depth.




For further information and directions please consult the BLU Web site
http://www.blu.org
Please note that there is usually plenty of free parking in the E-51
parking lot at 2 Amherst St, or on Amherst St.

We will adjourn to the Cambridge Brewery for our after meeting meeting.


--
Jerry Feldman 
Boston Linux and Unix
PGP key id: 537C5846
PGP Key fingerprint: 3D1B 8377 A3C0 A5F2 ECBB  CA3B 4607 4319 537C 5846





















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Interop Roadshow - Tuesday, May 05, 2009 8:30 AM - 12:30 PM in Waltham

2009-04-15 Thread Jerry Feldman


I wanted to let you know about an interoperability event that is coming to 
Waltham on May 5th.  The first of three sessions talks about using AD to 
authenticate Linux and OSX machines. This is the marketing blurb of the event:

"Get your integrated environment up and running with this roadshow from TechNet 
Events. You’ll learn how to authenticate and manage non-Windows operating systems, while 
exploring Active Directory extensions, management tools, security, file sharing and more. 
We’ll demonstrate how simple it can be to run //OSS on Windows Server 2008 and how to run 
open source applications with IIS7, MySQL and PHP. Finally, we’ll show you how to 
maximize SQL Server’s new features for PHP sites. With interactive demonstrations and 
lots of time to ask questions, these sessions will help you enhance your business and 
efficiency in a heterogeneous IT environment."

Visit  http://www.microsoft.com/CRMRedirector/default.aspx?TC=100145582 to 
register or learn more about the event. Other locations can be found at 
http://www.technetevents.com/interop

--
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Boston Linux and Unix
PGP key id: 537C5846
PGP Key fingerprint: 3D1B 8377 A3C0 A5F2 ECBB  CA3B 4607 4319 537C 5846




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Boston Linux Meeting reminder, tomorrow, April 15, 2009 UNIX, Linux, and BSD: A Look Back

2009-04-14 Thread Jerry Feldman


When: April 15, 2009 7PM (6:30PM for Q&A)
Topic: UNIX, Linux, and BSD: A Look Back (again)
Moderators: Clem Cole
Location: MIT Building E51, Room 395


Clem discusses the history of UNIX, Linux and BSD. This will include
Unix development in the 1970s, through its commercialization in the
1980s and Open Source movement. He will also discuss the how it spread
through the academic world.



For further information and directions please consult the BLU Web site
http://www.blu.org
Please note that there is usually plenty of free parking in the E-51
parking lot at 2 Amherst St, or on Amherst St.

We will adjourn to the Cambridge Brewery for our after meeting meeting.


--
Jerry Feldman 
Boston Linux and Unix
PGP key id: 537C5846
PGP Key fingerprint: 3D1B 8377 A3C0 A5F2 ECBB  CA3B 4607 4319 537C 5846





















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Boston Linux Meeting Wednesday, April 15, 2009 UNIX, Linux, and BSD: A Look Back (again) (fixed subject)

2009-04-09 Thread Jerry Feldman


When: April 15, 2009 7PM (6:30PM for Q&A)
Topic: UNIX, Linux, and BSD: A Look Back (again)
Moderators: Clem Cole
Location: MIT Building E51, Room 395


Clem discusses the history of UNIX, Linux and BSD. This will include
Unix development in the 1970s, through its commercialization in the
1980s and Open Source movement. He will also discuss the how it spread
through the academic world.


For further information and directions please consult the BLU Web site
http://www.blu.org
Please note that there is usually plenty of free parking in the E-51
parking lot at 2 Amherst St, or on Amherst St.

We will adjourn to the Cambridge Brewery for our after meeting meeting.


--
Jerry Feldman 
Boston Linux and Unix
PGP key id: 537C5846
PGP Key fingerprint: 3D1B 8377 A3C0 A5F2 ECBB  CA3B 4607 4319 537C 5846



















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Boston Linux Meeting Wednesday, March 15, 2009 UNIX, Linux, and BSD: A Look Back (again)

2009-04-09 Thread Jerry Feldman


When: April 15, 2009 7PM (6:30PM for Q&A)
Topic: UNIX, Linux, and BSD: A Look Back (again)
Moderators: Clem Cole
Location: MIT Building E51, Room 395


Clem discusses the history of UNIX, Linux and BSD. This will include 
Unix development in the 1970s, through its commercialization in the 
1980s and Open Source movement. He will also discuss the how it spread 
through the academic world.



For further information and directions please consult the BLU Web site
http://www.blu.org
Please note that there is usually plenty of free parking in the E-51
parking lot at 2 Amherst St, or on Amherst St.

We will adjourn to the Cambridge Brewery for our after meeting meeting.


--
Jerry Feldman 
Boston Linux and Unix
PGP key id: 537C5846
PGP Key fingerprint: 3D1B 8377 A3C0 A5F2 ECBB  CA3B 4607 4319 537C 5846

















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Re: OT? Shipping issues?

2009-03-24 Thread Jerry Feldman

Since we are talking about packing, when I was in Viet Nam one of my 
buddies would get packages packed in pop corn. Since he got a lot of 
glass containers (such as booze), I don't remember a single broken 
bottle as it would have been a tragedy of major proportions as most of 
the guys liked to drink themselves shitfaced when they returned back to 
base after a day of combat assaults.


--
Jerry Feldman 
Boston Linux and Unix
PGP key id: 537C5846
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Re: OT? Shipping issues?

2009-03-24 Thread Jerry Feldman


On 03/24/2009 10:29 AM, Alex Hewitt wrote:
  
The corner mailbox place just called to let me know that Fedex won't 
honor my damage claim. They say "wasn't packed properly". So much for 
using factory supplied cartons. Kind of an expensive way to find out 
that is the insurer and the shipper are the same entity, you're going to 
get hosed. Cost me $350 in parts plus $40 for the nasty shipping and 
doesn't include anything for all the wasted time.
  
I learned a while back that it is the shipper that is responsible for 
filing claims. We had a couple of cases where UPS failed to deliver some 
stuff to my wife (for her ebay store). Our regular driver told her that 
the substitute driver probably left it at the wrong address. My wife 
then started to file a claim, and was then told that the shipper must 
file the claim. She contacted the shipper who did file the claim, and 
refunded the money to my wife. If you can get the fedex documents, try 
to file a claim on the manufacturer. Certainly, FedEx would be 
responsible if they mishandled it, but if the item was shipped in 
improper packaging, then it is the shippers fault, not Fedex.


--
Jerry Feldman 
Boston Linux and Unix
PGP key id: 537C5846
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Re: REDHAT vs SUSE *Ding-Ding

2009-03-20 Thread Jerry Feldman


On 03/20/2009 08:54 AM, Jeffrey O'brien wrote:

I've been asked by a customer for some info regarding RedHat vs SUSE.  This 
company was told to use SUSE but can also use RedHat.  I personally, am a 
RedHat fan boy and haven't played with SUSE that much so my opinion is somewhat 
bias plus I have a preso from my RedHat rep which bashes SUSE from a 
business/Company side as well as a few technical reasons.  Are there any 
advantages of SUSE over RedHat?

So I thought I would reach out to this large Linux user base for everyone who 
wants to chime in on any points of why you would pick one or the other, 
business, partnerships, technical, supportability, reputation, viability in the 
enterprise, application support, which you like working with from an 
administrative view point, etc...  This is really open ended.
  
I've used both. I currently run Fedora 10 on my home desktop, Ubuntu 
8.10 on my laptop, and RHEL 5.2 on 8 systems here at work, but I did use 
SuSE for years prior to last summer. I always preferred SuSE's YAST as a 
system admin tool in favor of Red Hat's system-confix-. This is all 
I'm going to contribute since the important issues are the enterprise 
support issues.  At Digital/Compaq/Hp many of the engineers preferred SuSE.


If I were to chose which enterprise product to run in a shop where I was 
the IT guy, I would probably chose Red Hat because I know a number of 
key technical people who I can call if I can't get support through 
channels.


One other thing to look at is what the customer is going to use Linux 
for, and who told them to use SuSE.  SuSE tends to have quite of bit of 
strength in the European market historically while Red Hat has a 
stronger presence here in the US.


--
Jerry Feldman 
Boston Linux and Unix
PGP key id: 537C5846
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Re: recommendations on virtualization software

2009-03-19 Thread Jerry Feldman


On 03/19/2009 12:12 PM, Jerry Feldman wrote:

On 03/19/2009 11:55 AM, Mark Ellison wrote:

Hi,

I am seeking recommendations and pros/cons of different 
virtualization software.


The physical machine is a Intel T9400 quad core with 8GB ram, 2x500GB 
sata disks and 1Gb nic.  My current plan is to run 64 bit Fedora Core 
10 (or 11 as available) as the host OS.  The guest OSes will include 
a mix vista, xp and other UNIX variants.


I am aware of the commercially available VMware workstation, 
VirtualBox and Xen.  Any feedback and recommendations are appreciated.


  
Depends what you want to use it for. KVM/QEMU are distributed in the 
Fedora 10 (Core is no longer used) distro. One advantage that I see 
over Virtualbox is that you can virtualize CPUs. I've currently got 
Vista and XP set up as guest OS (quad core AMD Opteron). Another 
advantage is that the kernel will always contain the proper module. I 
use Virtualbox on my Ubuntu laptop wth XP and Fedora 10 as the guests 
(Turion 64 single core).  Both VMWare and Virtualbox have guest os 
installed add ins (called Guest Additions in Virtualbox). Normally, 
when you are working in the VM, your cursor is locked in the VM, and 
you need a special key sequence to unlock it. With the guest add ons, 
the cursor is integrated, so the VM cursor behaves like it does with a 
normal window. I have not personally tried Xen.Virtualbox 2.1.4 is the 
latest release and it is a free download.


I just want to add one more tidbit for KVM and USB. KVM does support 
USB, but the version of libvirt distributed with Fedora 10 does not, so 
if you need USB support with KVM, you can execute KVM from the command 
line. In my test, I specified the PCIID for my Blackberry. Newer 
versions of libvirt do have USB builtin, and should be available in the 
next Fedora spin. So, another advantage of KVM/QEMU is just this, that 
it can be run from a script.


--
Jerry Feldman 
Boston Linux and Unix
PGP key id: 537C5846
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Re: recommendations on virtualization software

2009-03-19 Thread Jerry Feldman


On 03/19/2009 11:55 AM, Mark Ellison wrote:

Hi,

I am seeking recommendations and pros/cons of different virtualization 
software.


The physical machine is a Intel T9400 quad core with 8GB ram, 2x500GB 
sata disks and 1Gb nic.  My current plan is to run 64 bit Fedora Core 10 
(or 11 as available) as the host OS.  The guest OSes will include a mix 
vista, xp and other UNIX variants.


I am aware of the commercially available VMware workstation, VirtualBox 
and Xen.  Any feedback and recommendations are appreciated.


  
Depends what you want to use it for. KVM/QEMU are distributed in the 
Fedora 10 (Core is no longer used) distro. One advantage that I see over 
Virtualbox is that you can virtualize CPUs. I've currently got Vista and 
XP set up as guest OS (quad core AMD Opteron). Another advantage is that 
the kernel will always contain the proper module. I use Virtualbox on my 
Ubuntu laptop wth XP and Fedora 10 as the guests (Turion 64 single 
core).  Both VMWare and Virtualbox have guest os installed add ins 
(called Guest Additions in Virtualbox). Normally, when you are working 
in the VM, your cursor is locked in the VM, and you need a special key 
sequence to unlock it. With the guest add ons, the cursor is integrated, 
so the VM cursor behaves like it does with a normal window. I have not 
personally tried Xen.Virtualbox 2.1.4 is the latest release and it is a 
free download.


--
Jerry Feldman 
Boston Linux and Unix
PGP key id: 537C5846
PGP Key fingerprint: 3D1B 8377 A3C0 A5F2 ECBB  CA3B 4607 4319 537C 5846




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Re: Grub issues

2009-03-18 Thread Jerry Feldman


I have fixed this on several occasions, mostly by my own tinkering.
In the past, what I did was to reinstall without formattting.
One question, is /boot part of your regular root file system (eg. 
/dev/sda3) or was it originally /dev/sda1. Remember the /boot grub 
stage2 must reside within the first 1024 cylinders. It is normally 
prudent to keep it in the first physical partition although not 
required. Essentially the MBR must be able to record the physical 
address of the grub stage 2. Also note that in a reinstall, you don't 
need to reinstall and overwrite anything. You just want to force a 
reinstall of grub. This will also install your kernels in the right place.


I don't know what your super-grub-disc did, but I've always used the 
original installation CD/DVD I used to install the system in the first 
place.  The one important thing to remember is that if you do not have a 
separate /home partition, to make sure you do NOT format the root file 
system. Also note that the preferred name of menu.lst is now grub.conf, 
but several distros, such as ubuntu use menu.lst with no grub.conf, 
others have grub.conf with menu.lst as a symlink.
Again, let me reiterate, when you go to the manual partition menu, make 
sure you do not have format checked. It's been a whil since I have used 
this procedure on my laptop since I've taken the upgrade install path. I 
forget if ubuntu actually gives you access to the packages you want to 
install. If so, make sure that grub is to be reinstalled, but you don't 
have to worry about other stuff. It should not deinstall stuff you 
already have. You may also be able to fix things directly from your live 
CD, but the main issue is to be able to rebuild the MBR. You can later 
add the Windows boot section or let the installer set that up for you.


On 03/18/2009 12:33 PM, Jesse Lazar wrote:

Hello,
 
I kinda hosed my boot loader, was wondering if anyone could point me 
in the direction of putting the pieces back together.
 
The computer is my desktop pc. I have two drives: the first has four 
partitions and the second has only one.
 
sda1 is 10GB, ext3, unused

sda2 is 130GB, NTFS, storage of files (shared with windows)
sda3 is 10GB, ext3, this is where the Ubuntu system lives
sda4 is 1GB, swap
 
sdb is 20GB, this disk has windows on it
 
I re-installed grub a couple times as I was not able to boot my Ubuntu 
system directly, was having to use a "super-grub-disc" (this is after 
re-mapping the drives in grub so I could boot windows). Whatever I did 
last I acutally wiped out the grub installation, there is no 
"menu.1st" or kernel on sda3.





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Boston Linux Meeting tomorrow, March 18, 2009 Doc Searls on Vendor Relationship Management

2009-03-17 Thread Jerry Feldman


When: March 18, 2009 7PM (6:30PM for Q&A)
Topic: Doc Searls on Vendor Relationship Management
Moderators: Doc Searls, Senior Editor, Linux Journal
Location: MIT Building E51, Room 395


Doc discusses Vendor Relationship Management (VRM), the antithesis of
Customer Relationship Management (CRM). Where vendors use CRM to manage
relations with customers on the vendor's terms, VRM is intended for use
by customers to manage relations with vendors on the customer's terms.



For further information and directions please consult the BLU Web site
http://www.blu.org
Please note that there is usually plenty of free parking in the E-51
parking lot at 2 Amherst St, or on Amherst St.

We will adjourn to the Cambridge Brewery for our after meeting meeting.


--
Jerry Feldman 
Boston Linux and Unix
PGP key id: 537C5846
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Boston Linux Meeting Wednesday, March 18, 2009 Doc Searls on Vendor Relationship Management

2009-03-11 Thread Jerry Feldman


When: March 18, 2009 7PM (6:30PM for Q&A)
Topic: Doc Searls on Vendor Relationship Management
Moderators: Doc Searls, Senior Editor, Linux Journal
Location: MIT Building E51, Room 395


Doc discusses Vendor Relationship Management (VRM), the antithesis of 
Customer Relationship Management (CRM). Where vendors use CRM to manage 
relations with customers on the vendor's terms, VRM is intended for use 
by customers to manage relations with vendors on the customer's terms.




For further information and directions please consult the BLU Web site
http://www.blu.org
Please note that there is usually plenty of free parking in the E-51 
parking lot at 2 Amherst St, or on Amherst St.


We will adjourn to the Cambridge Brewery for our after meeting meeting.


--
Jerry Feldman 
Boston Linux and Unix
PGP key id: 537C5846
PGP Key fingerprint: 3D1B 8377 A3C0 A5F2 ECBB  CA3B 4607 4319 537C 5846















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Boston Linux and Unix InstallFest XXXII reminder tomorrow February 28, 2009

2009-02-27 Thread Jerry Feldman


Boston Linux Installfest XXXII
When:  Saturday February 28, 2009, 2008 from 9:00 am to 5:00 pm
Where: MIT Building E-51, Room 061
  2 Amherst St, Cambridge
 Plenty of free parking in front of the building.


What you need to bring: Your computer, monitor, power strips and your
Linux distributions. We do have copies of some distributions.
In general we have expertise with most distros, but if you need special
expertise, please email the BLU discussion list in advance.

COST: It's free! However, we DO have expenses, and contributions are
welcome. Please consider contributing $25 per machine.

Our volunteers will help you to install Linux on your own system.  While
Linux runs on most systems, some systems do have configurations and
hardware that may not be supported. Please consult the following web
pages for hardware compatibility. While we prefer you to bring your own
distros, our volunteers will normally have

Linux.ORG: http://www.linux.org/hardware/index.html
Hardware HOWTO: http://www.linuxdoc.org/HOWTO/Hardware-HOWTO.html
Linux Frequently Asked Questions: http://www.linuxdoc.org/

Generally our volunteers have sets of the latest Fedora, SuSE and
Ubuntu distributions:
  * Fedora - http://fedora.redhat.com (Fedora 10)
  * Open SuSE - http://opensuse.org (OpenSuSE 11.0)
  * Ubuntu - http://www.ubuntu.com  (Intrepid Ibex 8.10)
  * Debian - http://www.debian.org/

In addition, you can run Linux on your Windows PC through a virtual
machine manager, such as Virtualbox. You can install this in your
Windows machine and run Linux as a guest OS, or install it in your Linux
machine and run Windows as a guest. VirtualBox 2.1
(http://www.virtualbox.org.) is free and is available for Linux, Windows
XP and Windows Vista. Additionally, there are some VMWare clients that
are also free for Windows.


Please refer to the BLU website (http://www.blu.org) for further
information and directions. Parking is available in front of the
building on Amherst St. Enter the building, and take the elevator to
your left down 1 floor. Room 061 is opposite the elevator.

--
Jerry Feldman 
Boston Linux and Unix user group
http://www.blu.org
PGP key id: 537C5846
PGP Key fingerprint: 3D1B 8377 A3C0 A5F2 ECBB  CA3B 4607 4319 537C 5846











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Boston Linux and Unix InstallFest XXXII Saturday February 28, 2009

2009-02-23 Thread Jerry Feldman


Boston Linux Installfest XXXII
When:  Saturday February 28, 2009, 2008 from 9:00 am to 5:00 pm
Where: MIT Building E-51, Room 061
 2 Amherst St, Cambridge
 Plenty of parking in front of the building.


What you need to bring: Your computer, monitor, power strips and your
Linux distributions. We do have copies of some distributions.
In general we have expertise with most distros, but if you need special
expertise, please email the BLU discussion list in advance.

COST: It's free! However, we DO have expenses, and contributions are
welcome. Please consider contributing $25 per machine.

Our volunteers will help you to install Linux on your own system.  While
Linux runs on most systems, some systems do have configurations and
hardware that may not be supported. Please consult the following web
pages for hardware compatibility. While we prefer you to bring your own
distros, our volunteers will normally have

   Linux.ORG: http://www.linux.org/hardware/index.html
   Hardware HOWTO: http://www.linuxdoc.org/HOWTO/Hardware-HOWTO.html
   Linux Frequently Asked Questions: http://www.linuxdoc.org/

Generally our volunteers have sets of the latest Fedora, SuSE and
Ubuntu distributions:
 * Fedora - http://fedora.redhat.com (Fedora 10)
 * Open SuSE - http://opensuse.org (OpenSuSE 11.0)
 * Ubuntu - http://www.ubuntu.com  (Intrepid Ibex 8.10)
 * Debian - http://www.debian.org/

In addition, you can run Linux on your Windows PC through a virtual
machine manager, such as Virtualbox. You can install this in your
Windows machine and run Linux as a guest OS, or install it in your Linux
machine and run Windows as a guest. VirtualBox 2.1 
(http://www.virtualbox.org.) is free and is available for Linux, Windows 
XP and Windows Vista. Additionally, there are some VMWare clients that 
are also free for Windows.



Please refer to the BLU website (http://www.blu.org) for further
information and directions. Parking is available in front of the
building on Amherst St. Enter the building, and take the elevator to
your left down 1 floor. Room 061 is opposite the elevator.

--
Jerry Feldman 
Boston Linux and Unix user group
http://www.blu.org
PGP key id: 537C5846
PGP Key fingerprint: 3D1B 8377 A3C0 A5F2 ECBB  CA3B 4607 4319 537C 5846










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Boston Linux Meeting tonight, February 18, 2009 Linux Total Cost of Ownership

2009-02-18 Thread Jerry Feldman


When: February 18, 2009 7PM (6:30PM for Q&A)
Topic: Linux Total Cost of Ownership
Moderators: Rich Braun
Frank Curran  - Novell
Location: MIT Building E51, Room 395  NOTE: Room Change

Rich Braun originally brought up the subject during a discussion in
December on the future of OpenSource Software. You can throw out a lot
of different figures, such as the cost of the Enterprise Linux systems
(such as RHEL and SLES), the cost of supporting the installations, such
as system administrators and training. Rich and Frank can present these
costs from different perspectives. While there will be a formal portion
of the presentations, we will then have a discussion.

Additionally, I have a bunch of Mono CDs that Miguel de Icaza gave to 
Ron Thibeau for us. I should have enough to go around for everyone 
tonight. Hopefully, we can get Miguel to speak to the group in the future.



For further information and directions please consult the BLU Web site
http://www.blu.org
Please note that there is usually plenty of parking in the E-51 Parking
lot at 2 Amherst St, or on Amherst St.

We will adjourn to the Cambridge Brewery for our after meeting meeting.

Notes:
Next installfest is Saturday, February 28. I'll send out a separate 
notice later.


Virtualization Deep Dive Day 
(http://www.virtg.com/Virtualization%20Deep%20Dive%20Day/default.aspx) 
is on Friday, Feb 20th. A message has already been sent out on this.




--
Jerry Feldman 
Boston Linux and Unix
PGP key id: 537C5846
PGP Key fingerprint: 3D1B 8377 A3C0 A5F2 ECBB  CA3B 4607 4319 537C 5846













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Re: 64 bit C question

2009-02-18 Thread Jerry Feldman


On 02/18/2009 07:43 AM, Jerry Feldman wrote:

On 02/17/2009 05:30 PM, bruce.lab...@autoliv.com wrote:
Is there some way to to compile a C or C++ program that will output a 
64bit hex value correctly?  This is what I have so far...
  

In C++:
#include 

#include

int main()
{

 long int N;
 long long NN;

 N  = (long int)  pow(2.0, 31.0);  // 2**31 = 
2*1024*1024*1024 = 2G
 NN = (long long) pow(2.0, 32.0);  // 2**32 = 4G == 
dreaded 32 bit boundary


   std::cout << "long int N = " << std::hex << N << "\n"
 << "long long NN = " << std::hex << NN << std::endl;
   return 0;
}

In the above, any leading zeroes will be suppressed.

Another note that  is C++, and  is C.
I don't recall off the top of my head if the second std::hex is 
needed. Some manipulators work only for the next conversion, some work 
until changed.



Additionally, to make it look more like a hex:
#include  // for setfill
std::cout << "long int N = 0x" << std::hex <<  std::setw(16) << 
std::setfill('0') << N << "\n"
<< "long long NN = 0x" << std::setw(16) << NN << 
std::endl;


--
Jerry Feldman 
Boston Linux and Unix
PGP key id: 537C5846
PGP Key fingerprint: 3D1B 8377 A3C0 A5F2 ECBB  CA3B 4607 4319 537C 5846




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Re: 64 bit C question

2009-02-18 Thread Jerry Feldman


On 02/17/2009 05:30 PM, bruce.lab...@autoliv.com wrote:
Is there some way to to compile a C or C++ program that will output a 
64bit hex value correctly?  This is what I have so far...
  

In C++:
#include 

#include

int main()
{

 long int N;
 long long NN;

 N  = (long int)  pow(2.0, 31.0);  // 2**31 = 
2*1024*1024*1024 = 2G
 NN = (long long) pow(2.0, 32.0);  // 2**32 = 4G == dreaded 
32 bit boundary


   std::cout << "long int N = " << std::hex << N << "\n"
 << "long long NN = " << std::hex << NN << std::endl;
   return 0;
}

In the above, any leading zeroes will be suppressed.

Another note that  is C++, and  is C.
I don't recall off the top of my head if the second std::hex is needed. 
Some manipulators work only for the next conversion, some work until 
changed.


--
Jerry Feldman 
Boston Linux and Unix
PGP key id: 537C5846
PGP Key fingerprint: 3D1B 8377 A3C0 A5F2 ECBB  CA3B 4607 4319 537C 5846




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Re: linux accounting software or cheap winxp

2009-02-16 Thread Jerry Feldman


On 02/16/2009 09:12 AM, Lloyd Kvam wrote:

On Mon, 2009-02-16 at 08:45 -0500, Jerry Feldman wrote:
  
But, one option is to try to run your legacy system under WINE or 
Crossover Office. Moving from one accounting package to another is 
always a pain.



I managed to close out the year using Crossover Office, but there were
too many glitches to stick with that as a long term solution.

Bill McGonigle's suggestion of Postbooks looks like a possibility.  I
have been looking at openerp, but it seems too complicated for my modest
operation.

  

Let's hope it works for you.

--
Jerry Feldman 
Boston Linux and Unix
PGP key id: 537C5846
PGP Key fingerprint: 3D1B 8377 A3C0 A5F2 ECBB  CA3B 4607 4319 537C 5846




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Re: linux accounting software or cheap winxp

2009-02-16 Thread Jerry Feldman


On 02/16/2009 08:04 AM, Lloyd Kvam wrote:

On Sat, 2009-02-14 at 08:18 -0500, Jerry Feldman wrote:
  
. Use a workstation VMM (like VMWare Workstation, Virtualbox,

KVM/QEMU, Xen). Most can run Windows NT or Windows Vista. And
remember, performance is very much a factor of memory.



Unfortunately my laptop CPU flags do not include VMX.  I'm about due for
a new computer for myself, so that will ultimately solve the
virtualization issues.  I'd still like to avoid Vista.

  
I did find that Virtualbox performs reasonably well with Windows XP on 
my non-VMX laptop.


GNUCash is not really an accounting system. Others have listed several. 
But, one option is to try to run your legacy system under WINE or 
Crossover Office. Moving from one accounting package to another is 
always a pain.


--
Jerry Feldman 
Boston Linux and Unix
PGP key id: 537C5846
PGP Key fingerprint: 3D1B 8377 A3C0 A5F2 ECBB  CA3B 4607 4319 537C 5846




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Re: linux accounting software or cheap winxp

2009-02-14 Thread Jerry Feldman

I found that Virtualbox tended to perform better on my Linux laptop. 
Performance of a VM iv very dependent on the amount of memory you use. 
Vista requires more memory than Windows XP, and more than Windows NT. 
Also, VMWare server can be very slow on a single processor laptop. You 
would need VMWare Workstation or Player, but again, I would recommend 
VirtualBox for an older PC, and KVM if you have a chip that supports 
hardware virtualization (Intel VT or AMD-V).  Virtualbox, KVM (should be 
included in most distros), VMWare Player are all free downloads and you 
could also run Windows NT as a guest.


Today I would recommend against dual booting on todays laptops since 
most are dual core or better, and you can add more memory. If you don't 
find a native Linux accounting package that suits your needs, first try 
to see if your old package can run under WINE (or Crossover Office).


In summary this is what I would do:
1. If you find a native accounting package that suits your needs, then 
use it
2. If you can run your accounting package under WINE, it should perform 
better than using a VM. (I was able to run QuickBooks under Crossover 
Office).
3. Use a workstation VMM (like VMWare Workstation, Virtualbox, KVM/QEMU, 
Xen). Most can run Windows NT or Windows Vista. And remember, 
performance is very much a factor of memory.


On 02/13/2009 06:29 PM, Lloyd Kvam wrote:

I've been using accounting software on my old winNT computer, which is
just about dead.  I was able to close out the year by moving the
software to my Linux laptop and using crossover office.  However, there
are too many glitches to stick with this for the long term.

I could not find any adequate business accounting packages for Linux.
Intuit offers web based accounting BUT even their web based accounting
requires winXP/Vista and IE.  If any of you know of an alternative that
will work with Linux let me know.

Vista was discarded off my daughter's new laptop.  I can run Vista using
vmware, but the performance is poor.  I'm thinking of getting a winXP
netbook.  I could move winXP into a vmware server and install a Linux
distro on the netbook.  Or even get a netbook with a disk drive and
split it between winXP and Linux.  Simply buying winXP is well over $100
and I don't get much for my money.  At least a netbook gives me a useful
piece of hardware.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=34-220-441

Any opinions?

  



--
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Boston Linux and Unix
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Re: [GNHLUG] Reminder of "UNIX Time" event: Today, Friday 13th, 18:31:30 EST (that is about 6:30 P.M. for Microsoft users) - Marthas Please RSVP

2009-02-13 Thread Jerry Feldman

No. In military time (24 hour clock) 11PM is 2300. Subtract 5 from 2300 
you get 1800 (not 1600).


(eg. former military pilot)

On 02/13/2009 10:06 AM, Chris wrote:
Not to be too pedantic about this, but 11:31:30 UTC  is 16:31:30 EST   
there is only a 5hr time difference.


Chris


On 2/13/09, *Jon 'maddog' Hall* mailto:mad...@li.org>> 
wrote:


A gentle reminder of this most momentous occasion tonight.  Remember
that Ben offered to buy the first (and perhaps only) round of drinks!
Please RSVP so we can get an area big enough (and so Ben can
figure out
how much money to pull from the bank).

"At 11:31:30pm UTC on Feb 13, 2009, Unix time will reach
1,234,567,890.
Where will you be at this momentous second?" - from Bell Labs

This will be Friday, February 13th at 1831 and 30 seconds EST
(1531 and
30 seconds PST).

Now if there was any reason to fear Friday the 13th, I think this
is it.
That many numbers sequentially in a row representative of time?  Who
knows what will stop working?  Will lex(1) cease to work, will
yacc(1)s
everywhere revolt?  Will the rapture be upon us?

I remember asking Alan Cox about UNIX (note that I spelled UNIX in all
capital letters, as it should be) time in 1999.  I was confident that
most UNIX systems would not be adversely affected by "Y2K", but I knew
about a hidden time-bomb in the year 2038, when the "UNIX epoch" comes
to an end.  Alan assured me that Linux was now working on 64-bit time,
and its "roll-over" would happen about the time that the sun burnt
out.
And while this upcoming event is not a "roll-over", nevertheless this
coming Friday the 13th I will be holding my breath

I intend on being at the place where I have the best chance of
surviving
this potential catastrophe and where I can personally do the most
good:

=>Martha's Exchange Restaurant in Nashua, New Hampshire, USA<=

While our friends at Bell Labs (er, ah, LucentO.K.
"Alcatel-Lucent")
rush to understand this phenomenon, I will be doing my civic duty by
drinking fine beer, and maybe an Islay scotch.  This is hard to do
while
you are holding your breath, but I will suffer through.  Who knows,
perhaps the U.S. government will give us a "bailout" to study this
issue.

Who will join me as we watch the time of UNIX line up?

md
--
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Executive Director   Linux International(R)
email: mad...@li.org <mailto:mad...@li.org> 80 Amherst St.
Voice: +1.603.672.4557   Amherst, N.H. 03031-3032 U.S.A.
WWW: http://www.li.org

Board Member: Uniforum Association
Board Member Emeritus: USENIX Association (2000-2006)

(R)Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds in several
countries.
(R)Linux International is a registered trademark in the USA used
pursuant
   to a license from Linux Mark Institute, authorized licensor of
Linus
   Torvalds, owner of the Linux trademark on a worldwide basis
(R)UNIX is a registered trademark of The Open Group in the USA and
other
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IBA #15631


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PGP key id: 537C5846
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Boston Linux Meeting Wednesday, February 18, 2009 Linux Total Cost of Ownership

2009-02-12 Thread Jerry Feldman


When: February 18, 2009 7PM (6:30PM for Q&A)
Topic: Linux Total Cost of Ownership
Moderators: Rich Braun
Frank Curran  - Novell
Location: MIT Building E51, Room 395  NOTE: Room Change

Rich Braun originally brought up the subject during a discussion in 
December on the future of OpenSource Software. You can throw out a lot 
of different figures, such as the cost of the Enterprise Linux systems 
(such as RHEL and SLES), the cost of supporting the installations, such 
as system administrators and training. Rich and Frank can present these 
costs from different perspectives. While there will be a formal portion 
of the presentations, we will then have a discussion.



For further information and directions please consult the BLU Web site
http://www.blu.org
Please note that there is usually plenty of parking in the E-51 Parking
lot at 2 Amherst St, or on Amherst St.

We will adjourn to the Cambridge Brewery for our after meeting meeting.


--
Jerry Feldman 
Boston Linux and Unix
PGP key id: 537C5846
PGP Key fingerprint: 3D1B 8377 A3C0 A5F2 ECBB  CA3B 4607 4319 537C 5846











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Re: Uninitialized static int counters?


On 02/07/2009 12:04 PM, Michael ODonnell wrote:
  

I'm not sure if kernel printfs are enabled in production kernels.
I forget how they are configured, so it is possible that no-one
will ever see the message.



They're enabled - that's what drew my attention to that code
in the first place.  The 32bit version of libraw1394 apparently
uses ioctls not supported by the x86_64 kernels...  >-/

  

Ok. I'll file that away in my mind.

--
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Boston Linux and Unix
PGP key id: 537C5846
PGP Key fingerprint: 3D1B 8377 A3C0 A5F2 ECBB  CA3B 4607 4319 537C 5846




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Re: Uninitialized static int counters?


On 02/07/2009 10:55 AM, Michael ODonnell wrote:

I suspect that whoever added that code to the kernel cribbed it
from elsewhere without understanding (or maybe not caring whether
they understood) it.  At any rate, I wasn't concerned about that
do-while(0) construct so much as the apparent randomness of allowing
the past behavior of other processes to determine whether the kernel
will utter a complaint about the current process's behavior.  That,
BTW, is what was in my head when I used the term "Uninitialized"
in my Subject: line, arguably a poor choice of words.
Probably, but the main issue that you ascribed to Brazilians was the 
real issue in that when the signed int goes negative, there will be a 
lot of messages. Some kernel developer threw probably that in without 
too much thought. Additionally, I'm not sure if kernel printfs are 
enabled in production kernels. I forget how they are configured, so it 
is possible that no-one will ever see the message.


--
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Boston Linux and Unix
PGP key id: 537C5846
PGP Key fingerprint: 3D1B 8377 A3C0 A5F2 ECBB  CA3B 4607 4319 537C 5846




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Re: do {...} while (0)


On 02/07/2009 09:56 AM, Michael ODonnell wrote:
  

But if you change the macro to:
#define b0rken(x) ({return x;})
you will find that the compiler likes it again.



I mistakenly interpreted your statement that the two constructions
are equivalent:

  

What I see confufsing is:
do { ... } while(0);


[...]
  

{ ... } would be equivalent to above




...to mean that you believe that they are generally interchangeable.
Since that do-while(0) trick is in fairly common usage (often inside
macros) I just wanted to illustrate a situation where they're not.
  
In the kernel code you presented, it would be functionally equivalent, 
but not syntactically or semantically. The bottom line is that in the 
section of code you presented, what was important was to establish a 
block so a variable could be defined. Adding the do  while(0) 
is just adding some extraneous code that would be most probably 
optimized out, but even if it is not, it is in an error condition.


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Re: do {...} while (0)


On 02/06/2009 04:53 PM, Michael ODonnell wrote:
  

What I see confufsing is:
   do { ... } while(0);
What this means is to go through the loop once.  You need a leading
curly so you can set up counter as a local variable as variable
names are block scope.  { ...  } would be equivalent to above.



They're definitely not equivalent - that's why you see do-while(0) so
often.  Try this (admittedly stupid) little program to demonstrate:

   #define b0rken(x) {return x;}
   #define works(x)  do {return x;} while(0)

   int main( int argc, char **argv )
   {
   if( argc > 1 )
   b0rken( argc ); /* Try works() here, instead */
   else
   return( 42 );
   }
  

This is a totally different thing. In your line:

b0rken( argc ); 
The expansion is 


{return arc;};
Note the closing ';'.
The reason the works macro compiles is that while(0) requires a 
semicolon. In other words, in b0rken, is syntactically incorrect as a 
macro.

But if you change the macro to:

#define b0rken(x) ({return x;}) 
you will find that the compiler likes it again. it has nothing to do with { ... } vs. do { ... ] while(0); In your example it is about the correct compiler syntax. Basically { .. } defines a block.

Do statement while(expression)
is a statement, so do { ... } while(0) must be terminated by a semicolon because the semicolon terminates a statement. As I stated before, do { ... while(0) generates  code to handle the loop. Because the while(0) contains a constant, most compilers can figure that out at parse time. 



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Re: Uninitialized static int counters?


On 02/06/2009 02:32 PM, Michael ODonnell wrote:

...and then it'll continue to increment and evenatually wrap
negative and we'll get brazilians of messages as (INT_MAX+20)
passes through that routine see that, indeed, count <= 20.

So, OK - this code is as b0rken as it appears.  I was worried
that it was depending on some {un,poorly}-documented "feature"
of Linux kernel programming that I wasn't aware of.
  

True

Right - I get all that.  In fact I have always regarded
the slightly oddball do-while(0) construct as fairly useful,
particularly in macros where it can help you to guarantee you're
in your own little private block of code no matter what context
the macro is used inside of.  I was just concerned that the
rules for static ints had been bent in the Linux kernel code...
  
There are rules that govern the compiler and the language. There are no 
special language constructs for the kernel, except that kernels are not 
compiled with libraries, so things like kprintf are compiled into the 
kernel. As I recall the rules for statics go all the way back to K&R. 
But, you are absolutely write about the wrapping. That should have been 
defined as an unsigned. But, I don't think you are going to see any 
Portugese messages :-)


BTW: The do { ... } while(0) will generate more code than { ... }. The 
compiler SHOULD easily optimize that out, and since this is really an 
error case, it does not matter that much even if the code is not 
optimized away.


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Re: Uninitialized static int counters?


On 02/06/2009 02:14 PM, pds wrote:

Its to prevent messages from filling the syslog and causing the
filesystem to be full of the errors due to a bad ioctl.  I never like
to assume a variable to be initialized to 0 as in count.  If
the count wraps the message is repeated another 20 times which isn't
that bad as the program making that many bad ioctl calls over & over
again. I would think that there would be other problems if it happens.
  
I would agree that it is always a good practice to explicitly initialize 
variables, but the C and C++ standards do mandate that variables with 
static storage class are initialized. But, I have seen many people 
bitten in the ass because they assumed something like this.


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Re: Uninitialized static int counters?


There is no such thing as Uninitialized static.
All static variables in C are initialialized by default according to the 
C standard.
In the case of an int, it is initialized to 0. In the code below, it is 
printing only the first 20 times mt_ioctl_trans() is called with an 
invalid command. What I see confufsing is:

   do { ... } while(0);
What this means is to go through the loop once. You need a leading curly 
so you can set up counter as a local variable as variable names are 
block scope.

{ ... } would be equivalent to above.

On 02/06/2009 01:57 PM, Michael ODonnell wrote:

OK - I'm seeing stuff like this the following in some kernel
syscall handling code and it's making my brain hurt, so I hope
somebody can explain it:


.
.
.
static int mt_ioctl_trans(unsigned int fd, unsigned int cmd, unsigned long arg)
{
mm_segment_t old_fs = get_fs();
struct mtget get;
struct mtget32 __user *umget32;
struct mtpos pos;
struct mtpos32 __user *upos32;
unsigned long kcmd;
void *karg;
int err = 0;

switch(cmd) {
case MTIOCPOS32:
kcmd = MTIOCPOS;
karg = &pos;
break;
case MTIOCGET32:
kcmd = MTIOCGET;
karg = &get;
break;
default:
do {
WTF ?!?! #=->>  static int count;
WTF ?!?! #=->>  if (++count <= 20)
printk("mt_ioctl: Unknown cmd fd(%d) "
   "cmd(%08x) arg(%08x)\n",
   (int)fd, (unsigned int)cmd, (unsigned 
int)arg);
} while(0);
return -EINVAL;
}
.
.
.

...which, as far as I can tell, should yield effectively random behavior,
yes?  Depending on the initial value of count we'll print the error
message some number of times (once per pass through that routine) until
count is incremented to a value greater than 19, after which we'll be
silent until it wraps negative.  WTF?  And this construction is repeated
in several different routines in several different files under fs/ in
the kernel sources on both my linux-2.6.27.6 Debian machine as well as
my 2.6.18 CentOS/RHEL machine.

Here's another:

static int ppp_ioctl_trans(unsigned int fd, unsigned int cmd, unsigned long arg)
{
int err;

switch (cmd) {
case PPPIOCGIDLE32:
err = ppp_gidle(fd, cmd, arg);
break;

case PPPIOCSCOMPRESS32:
err = ppp_scompress(fd, cmd, arg);
break;

default:
do {
static int count;
if (++count <= 20)
printk("ppp_ioctl: Unknown cmd fd(%d) "
   "cmd(%08x) arg(%08x)\n",
   (int)fd, (unsigned int)cmd, (unsigned 
int)arg);
} while(0);
    err = -EINVAL;
break;
};

return err;
}


  



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Re: C & C++ string confusion

Just to add a bit more. The C++ versions of the standard C header files 
should be included:

For instance:
#include NOT #include 
In all cases of header files defined by the C language standard prepend 
with a 'c' and drop the '.h'. But, this applies only to the standard C 
headers. The Unix/Linux standard header, unistd.h and other header files 
will still use the older syntax. The reason for this is that in some 
implementations, the C headers may not be C++ clean. Since I do mostly 
contract programming, I use the "when in Rome" philosophy, but it also 
applies to coding. When coding in C, code in C, when coding in C++ code 
in C++.


-- War story ---
Years ago when I worked in COBOL I was given a series of COBOL programs 
written by a FORTRAN programmer who hated COBOL. While I also knew 
FORTRAN and BASIC, this was one of the hardest programs I've had to 
debug, including the Tru64 kernel.

--- End of War story --

But, there are times when you need to use C language functions, and they 
don't know about std::string, iostream, or fstream. In my case I try to 
wrap these in their own classes, but the bottom line is that there is a 
task you are trying to accomplish, and it's always important to get it 
accomplished.


On 02/06/2009 01:54 PM, Shawn O'Shea wrote:

I googled "open file c++" in Google and got this page:
http://www.cplusplus.com/doc/tutorial/files.html

There's an fstream include and you cin and cout to it like to do to 
stdin/out.


Also, no reason to call out to the shell. All standard file operations 
(create/delete/copy/move/rename) are usually available natively in a 
given language. This is true of C/C++. From the same site as above, 
here's info on the C++ "remove" command:

http://www.cplusplus.com/reference/clibrary/cstdio/remove.html

-Shawn

On Fri, Feb 6, 2009 at 1:23 PM, <mailto:bruce.lab...@autoliv.com>> wrote:


Maybe some on the list might know the answer to this...  I am
trying to
read n files, one at a time, and appending the data to a different
file.
Since the files are so large, I need to delete each of the n
files, once I
have captured the data.

Why on earth am I doing this?  My arrays are too large to fit in
memory
all at once (I used up all 32GB!!) so I have to process each row
of the
matrix separately.  (It slows stuff way down...)

I find string manipulation in C to be a bit arcane.  This is what
I have
come up with so far.  Unfortunately, (maybe fortunately?) the compiler
does not like my coding.  Oh yes, this has to be in a C or C++
dialect.
(No "I can do this in x lines of your favorite language" comments.
:) )

The code will be compiled using g++ on YDL to run on a QS22 (Cell
Processor) = Linux content :)

/start code snippet

main()
{
 string filename;
 string shelldelcmd;
 string mydelstr;
 char filenum[4];
 char filenamec[20];
 FILE * fidjj;

 shelldelcmd.assign("rm -f ");

 for (jj=0; jj<1000; jj++)
 {
 filename.assign("out");
 sprintf(filenum, "%04d", jj); //generate string for file number, like
"0010"
 filename.append(filenum);  // filename = "out", where  = jj
 filenamec = filename.c_str;   // <=  COMPILER DIES HERE
==

 fidjj = fopen(filenamec, "rb");   // <= location of
second error
 if (fidjj==NULL) {fputs ("File error, does not exist\n", stderr);
exit(1);}

 fread some stuff...
 fclose(fidjj);

 mydelstr.assign(shelldelcmd);
 mydelstr.append(filename);
 mydelstr.append("\n");

 cout << "my delete string is : " << mydelstr << endl;
 system(mydelstr); // delete the file I just read... !!!
 fwrite data to a different file...
 }
}

/end code snippet

Compiler error is: error; incompatible types of assignment of
'' to 'char[20]'

If I just use the string "filename" instead of "filenamec" in
fopen I get
two errors, first the one in the previous paragraph, and second is:

error: cannot convert 'std::string' to const char * for argument
'1' to
'FILE * fopen(const char *, const char*)'

If you think I should step away from the keyboard, well, unfortunately
that is not an option.  I have to learn this stuff as I go
along...  And
no, I have never taken a class in C++.  I barely have the hang of C...
FWIW, I tried it in C and suffered some string craziness like
    unexpected
overwriting.  It was ugly...  This approach seems cleaner, except
I do not
know how to convert the C++ strings to be able to use ordinary C
fopens...

Any

Re: C & C++ string confusion


On 02/06/2009 01:23 PM, bruce.lab...@autoliv.com wrote:
Maybe some on the list might know the answer to this...  I am trying to 
read n files, one at a time, and appending the data to a different file. 
Since the files are so large, I need to delete each of the n files, once I 
have captured the data. 

Why on earth am I doing this?  My arrays are too large to fit in memory 
all at once (I used up all 32GB!!) so I have to process each row of the 
matrix separately.  (It slows stuff way down...)


I find string manipulation in C to be a bit arcane.  This is what I have 
come up with so far.  Unfortunately, (maybe fortunately?) the compiler 
does not like my coding.  Oh yes, this has to be in a C or C++ dialect. 
(No "I can do this in x lines of your favorite language" comments. :) )


The code will be compiled using g++ on YDL to run on a QS22 (Cell 
Processor) = Linux content :)


/start code snippet

main()
{
 string filename;
 string shelldelcmd;
 string mydelstr;
 char filenum[4];
 char filenamec[20];
 FILE * fidjj;

 shelldelcmd.assign("rm -f ");

 for (jj=0; jj<1000; jj++)
 {
  filename.assign("out");
  sprintf(filenum, "%04d", jj); //generate string for file number, like 
"0010"

  filename.append(filenum);  // filename = "out", where  = jj
  filenamec = filename.c_str;   // <=  COMPILER DIES HERE 
==


  fidjj = fopen(filenamec, "rb");   // <= location of second error
  if (fidjj==NULL) {fputs ("File error, does not exist\n", stderr); 
exit(1);}


  fread some stuff...
  fclose(fidjj);

  mydelstr.assign(shelldelcmd);
  mydelstr.append(filename);
  mydelstr.append("\n");

  cout << "my delete string is : " << mydelstr << endl;
  system(mydelstr); // delete the file I just read... !!!
  fwrite data to a different file...
 }
}

/end code snippet

Compiler error is: error; incompatible types of assignment of 'overloaded function type>' to 'char[20]'


If I just use the string "filename" instead of "filenamec" in fopen I get 
two errors, first the one in the previous paragraph, and second is: 

error: cannot convert 'std::string' to const char * for argument '1' to 
'FILE * fopen(const char *, const char*)'


If you think I should step away from the keyboard, well, unfortunately 
that is not an option.  I have to learn this stuff as I go along...  And 
no, I have never taken a class in C++.  I barely have the hang of C... 
FWIW, I tried it in C and suffered some string craziness like unexpected 
overwriting.  It was ugly...  This approach seems cleaner, except I do not 
know how to convert the C++ strings to be able to use ordinary C fopens...


Any tips or insight would be greatly appreciated...  (Awesome tips are 
rewarded with beer!) 

  
C++ strings (from the STL) are strictly C++ template classes. The 
std::string function, c_str() is what you want. You are not using it as 
a function.


filenamec = filename.c_str;   // <=  COMPILER DIES HERE 

 strcpy(filenamec,filename.c_str());   // This is the correct construct 
in your code.

Or:
char *filenamec = filename.c_str());
You may need to use const char *.

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Re: buying a laptop either bare or with Ubuntu


On 01/22/2009 03:58 PM, Lloyd Kvam wrote:

Yes they do have units you can try.  Most systems work OK with Linux and
when Steph and I were shopping around, the main issue was the laptops
with numeric keypads - the keypads did not work in our quick fiddling.
I assume that could be remedied with a bit of work.

The HP laptop that was too slow did OK in casual store browsing.
However, once Steph started trying to do some real work on the laptop,
the screen scrolling was just too slow.  I assume that could have been
fixed within a few weeks, but she did not want to wait.

For me, the main concern would be proving that the wireless chip set
worked OK.  I'd expect to get the other components operational
eventually.  


(My current laptop has a camera and bluetooth that have never been used.
The built-in camera device is not recognized, but I never had any need
to use it.  I never got around to buying a bluetooth mouse or keyboard
which would have forced me to discover if the bluetooth radio works.)


  
One thing a LiveCD cannot do well is judge speed. Not only are some 
components loaded from the CD, speed is limited by the amount of memory 
available. Most of the lower cost laptops have the minimum amount of 
memory for the installed OS. GNOME and KDE are very memory intensive. I 
would probably want a minimum of 1GB to run GNOME or KDE. Additionally, 
some graphics chips (probably most on low-end laptops) share memory with 
the host computer. A live cd with lxde might be a better measure if you 
are going to test it in the store. A number of mail order companies, 
like eCost, have factory refurbished systems at some decent prices with 
full factory warranties.


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Re: buying a laptop either bare or with Ubuntu


On 01/22/2009 03:02 PM, Ben Scott wrote:

On Thu, Jan 22, 2009 at 2:24 PM, Jerry Feldman  wrote:
  

Subsequently once you have Ubuntu (or other Linux) installed, you
could install the proprietary Nvidia or FGLRX drivers so that you can get a
good resolution.



  Can the proprietary driver packages be copied to a separate USB
flash drive, and then installed into the in-RAM "live" system?
  
The simple answer is yes. What you would need to do is to is to open up 
the iso, copy in the appropriate drivers or packages, then make a new 
iso, and either burn a new CD or USB. You could simply grab the 
appropriate .rpm or .deb files to install by hand. Knoppix has a good 
tutorial on how to customize, but since you don't know the target 
system, just copy in the appropriate packages and install them after boot.


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Re: buying a laptop either bare or with Ubuntu


On 01/22/2009 03:02 PM, Ben Scott wrote:

On Thu, Jan 22, 2009 at 2:24 PM, Jerry Feldman  wrote:
  

Subsequently once you have Ubuntu (or other Linux) installed, you
could install the proprietary Nvidia or FGLRX drivers so that you can get a
good resolution.



  Can the proprietary driver packages be copied to a separate USB
flash drive, and then installed into the in-RAM "live" system?

  

Although I am not a fan of Dell's for the most part they put out a decent
product ...



  If you buy a Dell, I *strongly* recommend the "Gold Tech Support"
package, or whatever they're calling it these days.  The difference is
night and day.  With it, I'm a happy Dell customer.  Without it, I
wouldn't touch their stuff.

  

... unlike Gateway.



  At %DAYJOB%, we're a former Gateway customer.  They are slowly
evaporating.  They spun off, and then liquidated, their business
division.  Their consumer division is now showing signs of stress as
well.  I don't expect them to live through the current economic mess.

  

You are going to run into this problem in most systems today.



  Sadly true.  Free Software was finally gaining serious traction
thanks to Linux, and now it's being challenged by hardware that's
closed-off for no good reason at all.  :-(


  
WRT: Gateway. We used them in 2 different companies I worked for, and 
both companies experienced an over 90% flawed on arrival. I opened the 
box, and found the secondary IDE port was DOA. I know a few people who 
bought Gateways, and only one of them got a system that worked perfectly 
out of the box.



If you buy "Gold Tech Support", what do you get if you buy a laptop with 
Windows installed and install another OS,, like Fedora or Ubuntu.


Many of the proprietary chips are now being opened up, but ATI and 
Nvidia who do support the Linux and FOSS community, do so with 
closed-source drivers. Broadcom is the same way. While we now have a 
generic Broadcom driver, the firmware needs to be obtained. In the 
Ubuntu Community, Canonical provides these drivers in their restricted 
data bases, and Fedora uses RPM Fusion, and SuSE uses Pac Man. 
Additionally, most printers (Epson, HP, and Brother) are well supported 
by Linux. My last 2 laptops have been HP, and have been abused. The 
older one served me several years, and used a rubber band to keep the 
power plug in the jack (it was loose resulting from a few falls). My 
current one goes to work, home, MIT, Amtrak, New Orleans, and Atlanta. I 
don't know if the HP warranties have changed, but it used to be that the 
standard HP warranty was 1 year where the Dell is 90 days. My HP nx6125 
had a 3 year warranty.


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Re: buying a laptop either bare or with Ubuntu


On 01/22/2009 12:55 PM, Bill McGonigle wrote:

On 2009-01-21 3:33 PM, Lloyd Kvam wrote:
  

  2. was purchased at Staples, but, after installing Ubuntu, the
 screen driver was simply too slow to tolerate.  We returned the
 laptop after running the Windows restore.



I've seen the Dell sign in the window at Staples, but didn't look at the 
display - do they have demo units to try?  I'm thinking an Ubuntu LiveCD 
or USB stick could be useful here.
  
This might not be a valid test. If the notebook, for instance, has an 
Nvidia or ATI  chipset, the LiveCD driver would most likely be a generic 
VGA driver. Subsequently once you have Ubuntu (or other Linux) 
installed, you could install the proprietary Nvidia or FGLRX drivers so 
that you can get a good resolution. Windows comes with the proprietary 
drivers installed. Although I am not a fan of Dell's for the most part 
they put out a decent product, unlike Gateway. What you would need to to 
with Ubuntu is to install it, and set the software sources to include 
proprietary drivers and multiverse. These are check boxes. I suspect 
that once you have added the proper software sources, the appropriate 
drivers will be installed and you can get good resolution. You are going 
to run into this problem in most systems today.


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Re: buying a laptop either bare or with Ubuntu