Re: [LUAU] mirror.ancl.hawaii.edu is being repaired

[Warren Togami Jr.]

I'm in Hawaii from January 2nd for a week.  If the new hardware is ready I
can help with setup.

On Tue, Dec 13, 2016 at 10:00 AM, Brian Chee  wrote:

> The new server is MUCH more powerful and if my ITS org fulfills past
> promises...I'm hoping to have it connected to the 10gig campus backbone. I
> should also be tripling the storage space for stuff.
>
> /brian chee
>
>
> On Mon, Dec 12, 2016 at 3:59 PM, Dwight Victor 
> wrote:
>
> > Mahalo for all that you do! I use the mirror infrequently but it is sure
> > nice to have!
> >
> > Aloha,
> >
> > Dwight...
> >
> > On Mon, Dec 12, 2016, 15:57 Brian Chee  wrote:
> >
> > > Something weird happened to the iscsi array...I suspect from UH
> > Facilities
> > > pulling an unscheduled power outage.
> > >
> > > I just expanded the array and I'm hoping this will solve the issues
> with
> > > mounting it read/write so updates can run.
> > >
> > > My apologies for taking to long to catch this.
> > >
> > > P.S. yes a brand new server is being prepped...I just gotta make time
> to
> > > bring up VMWare to host the virtual machines.
> > >
> > > /brian chee
> > >
> > >
> > > --
> > > 
> > > University of Hawaii SOEST
> > > Advanced Network Computing Laboratory (ANCL)
> > > Brian Chee 
> > > 2525 Correa Road, HIG 500
> > > Honolulu, HI 96822
> > > Office: 808-956-5797
> > > ___
> > > LUAU@lists.freesoftwarehawaii.org mailing list
> > >
> > > http://lists.freesoftwarehawaii.org/listinfo.cgi/luau-
> > freesoftwarehawaii.org
> > >
> > ___
> > LUAU@lists.freesoftwarehawaii.org mailing list
> > http://lists.freesoftwarehawaii.org/listinfo.cgi/luau-
> > freesoftwarehawaii.org
> >
>
>
>
> --
> 
> University of Hawaii SOEST
> Advanced Network Computing Laboratory (ANCL)
> Brian Chee 
> 2525 Correa Road, HIG 500
> Honolulu, HI 96822
> Office: 808-956-5797
> ___
> LUAU@lists.freesoftwarehawaii.org mailing list
> http://lists.freesoftwarehawaii.org/listinfo.cgi/luau-
> freesoftwarehawaii.org
>
___
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Re: [LUAU] Fedora Hawaii 2008 - Tuesday, June 3rd, 2008 6:00pm

[Warren Togami]

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Events/FedoraHawaii2008
http://www.cyberpizzahawaii.com/upcoming.html

Hey folks, I'm in town and will be presenting tomorrow at the Cyberpizza 
event.  Be sure you send the mail before noon Tuesday if you want free 
parking.  $8 if you want pizza.  See the URL's above for details.


Warren Togami
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

Vince Hoang wrote:

Follow the link. It is wonderfully concise.

-Vince

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Re: [LUAU] Fedora Core 2 and Silence

[Warren Togami]

Ben Beeson wrote:

Aloha all,

I found a more permanent fix to this one -- reference the thread that I
started Mon Sep 13 19:48:58 HST 2004 in the September 2004 LUAU
archives.  


I discovered that FC2 does not have the Red Hat sound configure tool
any more.  It also appears to be missing the /etc/modules.conf file in a
default install. (Don't know why and I don't know if this will work for
FC3 as I am still using FC2.)  If you add the /etc/modules.conf file
back with contents such as this:


modules.conf is NOT USED AT ALL in FC2 and FC3, because it was for the 
2.4.x kernel.  2.6.x kernel uses /etc/modprobe.conf, which should not 
require any manual editing because /etc/modprobe.conf.dist already has 
everything.


The old sound configuration tool has been removed, in favor of 
system-config-soundcard which should do the job.  Note that all ISA 
soundcard drivers were removed from FC2, but later re-added in FC3.


Warren Togami
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

[LUAU] FC3 released

[Warren Togami]

ftp://videl.ics.hawaii.edu/mirrors/fedora/linux/core/3/
Hawaii mirror

http://linux.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/11/08/1453204tid=110tid=106
Details and lots of uninformed speculation

Warren

Re: [LUAU] Fedora Core 3 Test 1

[Warren Togami]

Hawaii Linux Institute wrote:
FC3T1 probably should be more appropriately named FC2-SP1.  But as long 
as there are improvements, names don't really matter.  (As we all know, 
FC2 made so many major changes from FC1, and did not go through a 
commensurately long testing period, resulting in a half-baked system.  
FC3T1 couldn't have come soon enough.)


FC3T1 is indeed FC2 + tons and tons of fixes, except for two things...

* gcc-3.4.1 is now used instead of gcc-3.3.x.  This may complicate 
things if you use 3rd party drivers, although old gcc-3.3.x compiled 
software works easily with the compat-* libraries.


* https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=128154
This problem happens... just close all terminals and open it again to 
recover, and don't rely on ssh into your local workstation.  We're 
working on figuring out what causes this.


http://fedora.redhat.com/participate/schedule/
While FC3T1 is pretty stable aside from the one problem mentioned above, 
T2 and T3 may be less stable from a desktop perspective because of the 
upheaval coming with GNOME 2.7.x betas.


Warren Togami
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: [LUAU] Fedora Core 2 released

[Warren Togami]

Hawaii Linux Institute wrote:

Warren Togami wrote:


ftp://videl.ics.hawaii.edu/mirrors/fedora/linux/core/2/
Hawaii RoadRunner and Earthlink cable modem, University of Hawaii 
campuses and a few other DSL providers are welcome to use this mirror. 
Most of the mainland and worldwide mirrors are completely clogged.



The traffic is completely jammed up everywhere in the world.  Some 
mirrors have adopted a rationing policy, allowing you to get perhaps 
20~25KB/s (if you are lucky enough to get in).  Big deal.  I don't think 
anyone can doubt the popularity of this you-know-what OS.




kernel.org has been maxed out at 512mbit/sec all day.  Various other 
large mirrors in Europe are pushing 1500 - 2000mbit/sec non-stop.  I've 
never seen such crazy amount of interest in a Linux distro release 
before. =)


Warren Togami
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: [luau] Fedora depmod -a Segmentation Fault

[Warren Togami]

Eric Hattemer wrote:
I spent a long time trying to get ndiswrapper working on my friend's 
laptop.  It required a 2.6.1-1.43 kernel rpm.  I can't quite remember 
what else we had to do, but I remember on that particular machine it was 
a lot of work.  It may be simple if you use the 2.6.1-1.43.  But it took 
us a while to figure out that it doesn't work well in 2.4.22.  You need 
to compile the ndiswrapper package (gmake install).  We got a lot of 
errors and hardlocks in 2.4.  That one is no longer readily available in 
rpm form, though.  the 2.6.3 and .4 weren't so good either.  So the main 
point I'm making is that we tried several different kernels and got one 
to work.  So you may need to compile a new kernel or try the 2.6.4 or 
2.6.3 from 
http://mirrors.usc.edu/pub/linux/fedora/fedora/fedora/1.90/i386/RPMS.updates/ 
.  And when I say mirrors.usc.edu I really mean the equiv directory on 
the local mirror, ie. download.fedora.us.

-Eric Hattemer


I'm guessing it has something to do with the kernel stack.  ndiswrapper 
needs to make use of a lot more of the kernel stack than most other 
things in kernel space.  The kernel stack is extremely tiny and cannot 
handle.  But then again this guess may be entirely wrong.


You may get more certain help from the ndiswrapper's mailing list, or 
maybe fedora-list.


Warren

Re: [luau] Newbie Query - Browser Plugin?

[Warren Togami]

Vince Hoang wrote:

On Wed, Mar 10, 2004 at 10:01:10AM -1000, Ryan Kawailani Ozawa wrote:


I'd love to use urpmi and RPM... if you can bear with me and explain exactly
what that is!  Is it automated versioning or whatever like CVS?



(Trying not to repeat what Eric said..)

RPM is the package manager that Mandrake uses. 
Urpmi is the front-end that simplifies using RPM.


http://macromedia.mplug.org/site_uh.html
http://macromedia.mplug.org/rep_uh.html

The second link contains instructions and screenshots on how
to add a urpmi source to your system and how to setup flash in
Mandrake.

-Vince


You are encouraged to use the urpmi source with your Linux distribution. 
 That makes it so you can automatically upgrade to newer versions 
later.  urpmi checks all configured sources, looks at your installed 
packages, and offers to upgrade to newer versions if they are available.


Warren

[luau] Test

[Warren Togami]

This is a test post to luau.  Please ignore.

Re: [luau] IIIMF in Fedora

[Warren Togami]

Hawaii Linux Institute wrote:
 One of the most attractive features of Fedora/Red Hat, as far as our 
 Islands are concerned, is its aggressive attempt to make an OS that 
 bridges the barrier between Western and Eastern languages. Red Hat 8
 was the first OS that's based on unicode (UTF-8).
 
 Now FC2 is bravely adopting the new Intranet/Internet Input Method 
 Framework (IIIMF), which is the next generation Input Method
 Framework set to replace the legacy X Window System Input Method
 (XIM) used by existing Input Methods such as chinput, xcin, kinput2,
 etc. See:
 
 http://www.apac.redhat.com/iiimftest/testing-guide/ch-testcase.html
 
 Most in this forum probably will not be able to appreciate the 
 significance of this development. But it won't hurt to be aware of 
 what's going on. wayne

http://iiimf.fedora.us/
Official apt and yum repositories of the Fedora Project IIIMF Test
event.  It is hosted on my extremely fast server on the mainland so you
should have faster download speeds than the RH server in Australia.
IIIMF test repositories for Chinese, Korean, and Japanese input are
available for Fedora Core 1 and Fedora Core 2 Test1 (1.90).  It should
work fairly well with gtk2 applications (like Mozilla) out of the box,
but it is a lot more trouble to use with qt and OpenOffice at the moment.

http://apac.webdevap.brisbane.redhat.com/iiimftest/
Fedora Project IIIMF Test Event Homepage, documentation, discussion
mailing list and chat room are here.

I have personally been waiting intently for years for IIIMF to mature
and replaced the aging XIM input methods.  Now Unix will finally have a
much more usable, feature rich, and easier to understand CJK input.

Warren Togami
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: [luau] upgrading

[Warren Togami]

Andrew Keyes wrote:
 I have a four year old 550MHz machine which had a 10GB hard drive.  I 
just purchased a new 80GB drive and am looking for recommendations on 
how to make the most of it.  I have RedHat but having used a Debian 
system this summer I found apt-get a lot more effective and fun than 
rpmfind etc. 


I've been a Red Hat users for many years now, and I almost never look at 
rpmfind.  I personally use apt-get with FC1 and fedora.us Extras.


https://bugzilla.fedora.us/show_bug.cgi?id=1180
http://download.fedora.us/pending/fedora/1/i386/RPMS.stable/apt-0.5.15cnc5-0.fdr.3.1.i386.rpm
If you try FC1, try this next release candidate for apt-get with the 
dynamic mirror chooser.


http://www.fedora.us/wiki/FedoraHOWTO
Read this for more information

http://www.fedora.us/wiki/FedoraUsersFAQ
Read this about what fedora.us is, and how it is related to the Fedora 
Project


Warren

Re: [luau] Local updates (yum update) for Fedora Core1

[Warren Togami]

http://www.fedora.us/wiki/FedoraHOWTO
Wilson, what you need is here...

https://bugzilla.fedora.us/show_bug.cgi?id=1180
http://download.fedora.us/pending/fedora/1/i386/RPMS.stable/apt-0.5.15cnc5-0.fdr.3.1.i386.rpm
But please try this release candidate of fedora.us' next stable apt 
release.  You may find the dynamic mirror selector chooser VERY HANDY.


Warren

Re: [luau] Looking for Experienced Web UI Developer

[Warren Togami]

Seth Ladd wrote:
   - Strong and complete Web standards experience.  We're looking for 
someone who loves to work in XHTML, CSS, table-less layouts, and creates 
nice clean XHTML.




I'm glad that you folks plan on using CSS and table-less layouts for the 
government website!


Warren

Re: [luau] HOSEF eSchool conference volunteers needed

[Warren Togami]

Patrick Smith wrote:

HOSEF needs some folks to man our booth during Hawaii DOE' eSchool 
Conference (http://www.k12.hi.us/~eschool/conf2003/).  Our booth will 
run from 7:30 am to 4:00 pm on March 11 and 12 at the Sheraton Wakiki 


http://www.k12.hi.us/~eschool/conf2003/
This web page is describing last year's Eschool conference at Sheraton, 
not this year's conference which is February 3rd and 4th at the Hawaii 
Convention Center.


Can somebody find the webpage for this year's conference?


Hotel.  The booth will demo clients running off a linux terminal server 
and promote HOSEF's willingness to assist schools in setting up open 
source computers.  Experience with linux terminal servers is preferable 
but only a modest familiarity of linux is required.  Warren, Scott and I 
should be there most of that time but we would like to have specific 
people responsible for specific times.  Since 7:30 am is early to be 
there, at least for me, Ted Kanemori's coverage of the first couple of 
hours each morning should be sufficient.


If you want to attend but are not sure of the exact time, please reply 
because only those signed up will be allowed in.


DEADLINE: Thursday evening, Jan. 22.

I know that is not a long time but I only became aware of the deadline a 
few minutes before writing this message.  Friday morning I am going to 
pass the names on to Peter Nakashima who will report them to the DOE.


--Patrick

Re: [luau] Dual Processors Linux

[Warren Togami]

Rodney Kanno wrote:

My processors are AMD MP 2100...about 1.8 GHZ each.
When I try to play video (mpg), I have nothing else running and I have 
~800MB free memory, out of 1020MB. While the video is playing, CPU 
utilization does not go above 37%. I am using Kaffeine, and also noatun. 
Both give me choppy video. I am not sure what bitrate the video is, but 
the file size is only 526KB. I am using the most current NVIDIA driver.





I can say with almost complete certainty that your problem is not 
anything to do with SMP, but perhaps the media player software, codecs, 
or drivers specific to your particular hardware.


Warren

Re: [luau] Moz 1.6

[Warren Togami]

Hawaii Linux Institute wrote:

Tom_Gordon/RISE/[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

I don't get it, you can put Mozilla anywhere in any OS.  What is it 
windows can't do?




For the newest version of Moz, I install it locally in my home 
directory.  (Try to do that in Windows???  Ha!)
 



This is an unfortunate out of the context quote. One of the advantages 
of Linux, vis-a-vis Windows, is that you can install multiple 
compilations of the same program locally, in lieu of or in addition to a 
system-wide version that is installed via RPM. Properly exploited, this 
can make system administration safer and much more convenient.


In case anyone is paying attention: (1) Has anyone routinely been doing 
converting RPMs to TARs? (2) Does anyone know how fast or slow user 
programs (such as Moz, OOo, KDE, etc) are updated in RHEL3?


It is a policy of RHEL maintenance that they NEVER upgrade versions 
unless there are extreme circumstances.  They will always backport 
security fixes to the versions shipping in RHEL.  That being said, 
nothing stops you from upgrading yourself to RPMS from mozilla.org, or 
rebuilding the rawhide RPMS, but you lose support on those packages if 
you do so.


mozilla-1.6 hit rawhide 2 days ago.  I suspect rebuilding the SRPM is 
trivial on RHEL 3.  You may want to look at RHEL3 U1 released yesterday 
too.  It has installable media.


I realize this may sound like a harsh policy, but this adds another 
type of stability to the system: predictability.  By not upgrading 
version, behavior does not change either.  I didn't make the rules 
though... and I could actually be wrong about these rules.




The reason for Question (2) is that one of the key desktop application 
programs, Win4Lin, has not been upgraded to work with RHEL3. This has 
stopped me from considering RHEL3. wayne




This is Win4Lin's problem...

Warren

Re: [luau] Dual Processors Linux

[Warren Togami]

You are saying that it works if you remove one processor from your 
motherboard, or you are talking about a different computer entirely?


Does it work if you boot into the UP uniprocessor kernel?  What brand 
and version of Linux?


Warren

Rodney Kanno wrote:

If it does not have anything to do with SMP (whic I hope) then why would
video playback work when my BIOS detects only 1 processor? Can it be
attributed to my BIOS/motherboard since it is so tempermental?

Rodney

 
  I can say with almost complete certainty that your problem is not
  anything to do with SMP, but perhaps the media player software,
  codecs, or drivers specific to your particular hardware.
 
  Warren
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  [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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Re: [luau] Dual Processors Linux

[Warren Togami]

Rodney Kanno wrote:

No it's the same computer. For some reason, my BIOS is tempermental and
sometimes it detects only one of the two processors. But when it detects
only one, the watching video works fine. When my BIOS detects two
processors, watching video does not work anymore (using the same
programs). So both processors are still physically in the motherboard,
but the BIOS is only detecting one. I am running the latest NVIDIA
drivers, but I don't think the video card driver is the problem, becuase
when I switch to the generic driver (nv) I get the same thing.

I am running SUSE 9.0 (8.2 was the same), and I think SUSE installed
only the smp kernel?

Rodney



It sounds like you are having hardware issues in addition to your 
software problem.  Sorry I cannot suggest any thing more since I don't 
use SuSE or know much about its modern versions.


Warren

Re: [luau] Excuse me, they said billion, not million - with a B???

[Warren Togami]

kilauea wrote:

CBS Market Watch reported 1-15-04
...H-P also disclosed that it's logged revenue of more than $2.5 
billion in fiscal 2003 from its Linux product and service offerings.


Real nurds would just look over the tops of their glasses and comment 
10 to the 9th, not a particularly large number.


Well for someone who has been using Linux since '96, it seems like a 
very large number indeed.


Aloha from the Garden Isle
Kilauea


Supposedly IBM has been making billions in revenue due to their Linux 
business for the past few years.  Of course this isn't selling Linux 
directly, but hardware that runs Linux, and the service  support in 
custom software and integration on that platform.


Warren

Re: [luau] Moz 1.6

[Warren Togami]

Hawaii Linux Institute wrote:
Moz 1.6 is out.  The default binary (from the tgz file) does not have 
xft enabled, but Mozilla.org has made it relatively easy to build from 
the source:


http://webtools.mozilla.org/build/config.cgi

Patch files for big5 (traditional Chinese) fonts are available at:

http://firefly.idv.tw/test/Forum.php?Board=1Article=d70dc373c4c5f01aaf1086952b4c4d3eFunc=viewHistory=0 



Because of its special emphasis on Asian fonts, RedHat/Fedora has the 
best Mozilla builds (RPMs), though there is always a time lag.  I am 
still unable to figure out how they did it.  At the present time, I am 
keeping two versions of Moz.  One version is the Fedora version, which 
is installed in /usr/lib and which I can upgrade using yum (yum upgrade 
mozilla).




We're working on an official FC1 update for mozilla-1.6.  The plan has 
always been to skip 1.5 and go straight to 1.6.  1.6 hit rawhide this 
morning, and I think somebody is testing it thoroughly before pushing it 
for FC1 into the updates/testing tree.


Warren

Re: [luau] Doing AOL Mail in Linux

[Warren Togami]

Hawaii Linux Institute wrote:
BTW, thanks to the $750 million Microsoft paid to AOL/Time Warner (now 
only Time Warner), AOL has made it sure that the AOL program will not 
run in Linux.  NoMatterWhat.


Many AOL users are forced to stay with AOL (and thus Windows) because of 
their e-mail account.


Neither Mozilla nor Thunderbird (or any other e-mail agent) does AOL 
mails.  However, there is one except: Netscape.  With Netscape 7.1, you 
can create and operate an AOL mail account.  And it is actually much 
more convenient to do AOL mail via Netscape/Linux than using AOL's own 
webmail method.


However, there is a caveat:  If the AOL user has ever changed his/her 
password, the current password may not work and the Netscape mail may 
require a previous password.  This is very weird, but it took me a long 
while to accidently bump into the solution.  And, Voila!


Another problem is, Netscape is not xft-enabled.  If anyone knows how to 
add fonts to Netscape, would very much appreciate your suggestions.  wayne




I think Netscape would need to be compiled with Xft enabled, so it isn't 
quite possible for anybody but AOL to do that...


Isn't AOL webmail available on the website too?  Sure it isn't perfect 
but it is at least accessible.


Warren

Re: [luau] migration

[Warren Togami]

Thomas Ryan Gordon Sr wrote:

Lucas wrote:

| HP ProLiant DL360 G3   $6,706.00
| (list) (2 x 3.2 GHz Intel Xeon, 2.0 GB RAM, 2 x 72.8 GB 1 RPM
| SCSI hot-pluggable drives, 2 x 10/100/1000 Ethernet, no OS)

This machine rocks :D  I got one (DL380 G3) with the write-cache battery
and 4x (39G 15k) scsi raid (one spare) running RH9.  It ran for the DOE
for 129 days straight till I decided to reboot for kernel updates to
take effect.  No hickups.

Tom




I sent Lucas a more extended response to this, but you folks should 
REALLY check out the AMD64 Opteron based servers.  While being 
competitive with Xeon prices, you get double the registers and real 
64bit hardware.


Since Lucas is purchasing for the University, they also qualify for the 
extremely low cost RHEL 3.0 for AMD64 academic licensing.


Warren

Re: [luau] RHEL 3.0 on AMD64 (Was: migration)

[Warren Togami]

Hawaii Linux Institute wrote:
How much does an equivalent AMD64 system cost? Any vendors you would 
recommend?  What are their specs?




Here is one example:

http://pogolinux.com/systems/servers/PerformanceWare/index.html#PW1464
2 year warranty
1U rackmount
Dual Opteron 244 processors
4GB RAM
Dual Seagate 73GB 15K U320 SCSI disks (hot swap, I think)
No Operating System (far cheaper w/ RH academic license in UH's case)
$5424 before taxes and shipping

Re: [luau] migration

[Warren Togami]

Vince Hoang wrote:

As far as stability... power outages can render the notes
servers useless as they always require manual fsck and some are
not within hours of a sysadm prepared to respond.



That is not normal.

To make the system a little more fault tolerant, make sure UFS
logging is enabled if you do not have a metatrans device setup.



Indeed, that specific problem speaks more about the skill of the people 
who configure  maintain the servers than the technical capability of 
the operating system.


Warren

Re: [luau] RHEL 3.0 on AMD64 (Was: migration)

[Warren Togami]

Warren Togami wrote:

Hawaii Linux Institute wrote:

How much does an equivalent AMD64 system cost? Any vendors you would 
recommend?  What are their specs?




Here is one example:

http://pogolinux.com/systems/servers/PerformanceWare/index.html#PW1464
2 year warranty
1U rackmount
Dual Opteron 244 processors
4GB RAM
Dual Seagate 73GB 15K U320 SCSI disks (hot swap, I think)
No Operating System (far cheaper w/ RH academic license in UH's case)
$5424 before taxes and shipping


I asked the company about the SCSI.  The motherboard comes with onboard 
LSI SCSI (not RAID), but the add-on RAID costs a bit too much to justify 
for two disks.  I believe since the backplane can handle hot-swap, there 
 is a way to disable the disk in the kernel for hot-swap.  When used 
with mdadm and mdadm in monitor mode, it should do great in software 
RAID-1 with hot-swap capability.  I need to do a little more research 
about disabling and enabling SCSI disks.


Warren

Re: [luau] migration

[Warren Togami]

Lucas Halim wrote:
From the beginning of our apps development, we tried not to use too 
much vendor specific feature so

 PL/SQL is not a biggie but it's definitely good to know.

 We are in the process of getting in new boxes and will try out Fedora

 Thanks guys for the responses. Just keep it coming.

 Lucas


postgresql is indeed nice, but please read the following about Fedora.

I am a Fedora developer and personally use it myself on all of my 
servers (and desktops, and thin clients... etc.), I wouldn't recommend 
it for something that needs to remain at the same version for several 
years, like you probably want for an important database server.


While the software in each Fedora distribution is generally very stable, 
each Fedora distribution is only supported for maybe 7-9 months after 
release.  There is the chance that the Fedora Legacy Project [1] may 
continue security updates beyond the company's EOL, but the project 
needs more community developers to make that a reality.  For these 
reasons, Fedora it is only really suitable for servers if you know Linux 
well and you don't mind upgrading the servers once or twice per year. 
For example if you have extra hardware you can do validation testing of 
the newer distribution and deploy it before the old Fedora goes EOL.


Long story short... Fedora is not a great long term server solution. 
You may want to look at the alternatives like Debian, SuSE or RHEL.


http://www.redhat.com/solutions/industries/education/
Be warned that I am totally biased in recommending this, but Red Hat 
Enterprise Linux for academic institutions seems to be very reasonably 
priced and may suit your needs well.  Red Hat is supposed to maintain 
security updates for each version of RHEL for something like 5 years, 
meaning you have plenty of time before EOL.  The pages above says $50/yr 
for academic institutions, which appears a bit smaller than $1499/yr for 
RHEL AS.  Something like every 1.5 years they plan on releasing a new 
version of RHEL, and the subscription allows you to download and upgrade 
to the latest version at no additional cost.


[1]
http://www.fedoralegacy.org

Warren Togami
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

[luau] Fedora Core 1 - DVD ISO image

[Warren Togami]

http://torrent.linux.duke.edu/

I don't thing this has been reported widely, but you can quickly 
download the Fedora Core 1 DVD ISO image if you use bittorrent.  It is 
the same software that is contained within the 3-disk binary ISO CD-R 
set, but with the convenience of a single disk if you have access to a 
DVD burner.


Anybody have a DVD burner?  I'd appreciate a copy of this.  Will 
reimburse your media cost + some extra.


Warren

Re: [luau] Fedora Core 1 seems slow

[Warren Togami]

Thomas Hackett wrote:

Hi Guys,

I've just finished installing Fedora Core 1 and to be honest, I'm kind 
of disappointed.  It seems really slow compared to Debian.  I'm using it 
on a PIII 450 MHz IBM ThinkPad 390x with 160 MB or ram.  I used to run 
Debian unstable and that worked fine.


I'm wondering if there's something I need to do to speed up Fedora.  I 
think I did a pretty standard install.  Could I have put on too much?  
Are there things I need to shutdown?  Would updating to the latest 
versions of packages help things?


- Tom Hackett



One thing that really helps desktop application speed is waiting for the 
automatic prelink to happen.  prelink goes through all of your binaries 
and makes it so they launch and execute much faster.  I think it happens 
automatically once per day in cron, but you can force it as root with:


/etc/cron.daily/prelink

As far as shutting down services, most of the services are disabled by 
default when you install FC, however there still may be some extraneous 
stuff.  Use this command to list everything that is enabled in runlevel 
3 (text only mode):


chkconfig --list |grep 3:on

Similarly use this to list everything that is enabled in graphical mode:

chkconfig --list |grep 5:on

Then use this command to turn disable services from automatically starting:

chkconfig SERVICENAME off

You can use this command to turn off a service immediately:

service SERVICENAME stop

Be careful about not turning off critical system services...

Other than this, the only recommendation I can make is removing the 
magicdev package.  It uses about 1MB of memory while logged into GNOME 
and doesn't do much useful.  Sometimes it actually conflicts with what 
you are doing, especially CD burning.


Where do you see slowness?  Are you talking about desktop stuff?  Try it 
again after prelink and let me know how it goes.


Warren

Re: [luau] RoadRunner or EarthLink?

[Warren Togami]

Hawaii Linux Institute wrote:


As I mentioned earlier, I was quite disturbed to find out that my cable 
modem has a fix IP address of 66.xxx.xxx.xxx.  I turned off my Linksys 
router a few times, the ip address stays the same.  However, I have had 
this new ip address for only two weeks.  Perhaps it was too short for 
Oceanic to change it, and I will be really anxious to find out.  I don't 
want a fix ip address to go into my house.  Period.


Many security-conscientious Windows users bought a router to serve as an 
external firewall.  But 99% of them don't change the default password.  
So much for the hightened security.


I personally liked having a fixed IP for months at a time because it is 
a hassle to change it for the things that I do... and changing the IP 
address seems to be as simple as changing the MAC address and power 
cycling the cable modem.


Strangely changing the MAC address back then power cycling the cable 
modem always brought it back to the original IP address.


Warren

Re: [luau] videl.ics.hawaii.edu disk failure - Your Help Needed

[Warren Togami]

On Fri, 2003-12-05 at 09:27, Matthew John Darnell wrote:
 Vince,
 
 Is their a particular drive you have in mind, or just any 160GB disk.
 
 -Matt

If this is to make Videl's system drive 2x160GB RAID1, then the
identical brand and model would be ideal.

IMHO Videl does not need the extra disk capacity and the money for
2x160GB disks would be much better spent in 250GB+ sized disks for the
mirror array.  We need to reach around the $1,100 mark if we will be
able to buy 1TB of storage for the mirror.

Re: [luau] videl.ics.hawaii.edu disk failure - Your Help Needed

[Warren Togami]

On Wed, 2003-12-03 at 23:38, Thomas Ryan Gordon Sr wrote:
  We should get another 60GB drive to mirror the other 60GB drive.
  Preferably of the same model so they both run with similar speed and
  access times.  The exact model is $99 at local CompUSA, but I'm looking
  for better deals elsewhere.  newegg might be the best deal because after
  shipping it is lower than $99, without taxes.
 
 
  I went ahead and bought us a 160 gb Seagate 7200 rpm ata100 8mb cache 
  drive for the server.  We can mirror the other 60 gb drive and either 
  add to our storage or mirror 100gb of it.  Let's determine who to give 
  it to so that it can be installed.  A lack of redundancy makes me 
  anxious, so it is ready when we are.
 
  --scott
 
 Isn't it best to run an array with identical drives?  What kind of raid 
 controller are you using that won't waste 100G when mirroring a 60G?
 
 Tom

RAID works most efficiently yes with identical drives.  Software RAID
works no problem with drives of different sizes and speeds, but
unfortunately efficiency is lost because the array must run at the speed
of the slower disk.

160GB 7200rpm 8MB cache
60GB  7200rpm 2MB cache
Unfortunately this means that Videl will still be limited in performance
to the 2MB cache of the smaller disk.  While the 60GB system drive
portion can be made redundant across both disks, using the non-redundant
100MB portion eats into the disk bandwidth on the larger disk, which
blocks and slows down the entire system.  This itself is not entirely
bad, just inefficient.

For the reasons above I am saddened that the drive was bought after
little discourse.  It was my belief that my proposed plan in my last
post with the new 60GB disk and moving the 120GB disk to Oceanic mirror
was the most effective use of money and resources, but since the drive
was already bought we *can* use it if Scott wishes it so.

How much did that drive cost Scott?

If the cost was low enough, it may actually be advantageous to buy
another identical 160GB drive and simply replace both 60GB drives
currently in Videl.  Otherwise, if the one 160GB drive was bought in
Hawaii and is currently unopened  easily returnable, I would much
prefer to simply replace the dead drive with an identical 60GB drive. 
That would have the lowest money cost, least amount of labor, and
greatest efficiency in operation.

Warren

Re: [luau] RoadRunner or EarthLink?

[Warren Togami]

On Tue, 2003-12-02 at 22:19, Hawaii Linux Institute wrote:
 A friend was asking whether to subscribe RoadRunner or EarthLink.  I 
 remember this subject was discussed before.  Does anyone care to 
 comment?  Thanks. 

Both locally go through Oceanic's lines, and I believe are installed by
the same Oceanic people.  The difference however I believe is who runs
the DNS, smtp, pop3 and other infrastructure that you use, and the
customer service and call-in tech support.

I personally never used RoadRunner's customer service or tech support
except when the lines going to my house stopped working due to poor
signal levels.  One of my friends had bad experiences getting the
run-around when she attempted to sign-up with Earthlink cable -
apparently you talk to people on the mainland that don't seem very
organized.  I had a lot more positive experience ordering RoadRunner for
the house that I am moving to now, where I talked to local Oceanic reps
in order to make the order.

Perhaps most importantly, both Hawaii Earthlink cable and Hawaii
RoadRunner are allowed unlimited FTP access into Videl. =)

Warren

Re: [luau] videl.ics.hawaii.edu disk failure - Your Help Needed

[Warren Togami]

Brian Chee wrote:


Beware, I've just been burned by the Promise ATA/133 RAID controller...it
will only rebuild the array if you give a new drive of identical
geometryunlike SCSI based raid which only need a similar or larger sized
drive.

I'm exploring 3ware's offerings and am enthusiastic about their SATA based
RAID controllers...should give similar performance to 1gb/sec Fiber Channel
but for a heck of a lot less money.

Once I get one running, I'll report back to the listoh yeah, 2gb Fiber
channel is truly wonderful stuff under redhatI used Qlogic HBA's and
they scream

/brian chee


Indeed, there are currently ZERO usable ATA RAID controllers other than 
3ware.  Promise  High Point controllers in particular are the worse of 
the bunch, and should never be used for anything but single disks.


Warren

Re: [luau] videl.ics.hawaii.edu disk failure - Your Help Needed

[Warren Togami]

R.Scott Belford wrote:


This was my motivation in buying a larger drive.  If installed now, it 
solves redundancy issues but is not a true permanent solution.  Software 
raid with different sized drives has a few more steps, I guess, with 
formatting, but this is not a big deal, is it?  With time, though, 
enough money will be gathered to buy a matching larger drive ($177), and 
hopefully more.
When that time comes we can move to faster drives as Vince has 
suggested.   The 160gb drive had a great price point, and it really 
isn't that bad, is it?




It is this kind of attitude and your lack of sound technical knowledge 
from which you make hard-headed assumptions that really angers me.  This 
makes me question if I really want to continue contributing to this group.


Granted I make a lot of stubborn decisions too, but I believe I have the 
technical correctness to back it up, so I am correct at least 95% of the 
time.


It is inherently problematic that we continue to attack each other 
personally like this.  Let us meet in person for lunch after finals and 
try to work this out once and for all.


Warren

Re: [luau] videl.ics.hawaii.edu disk failure - Your Help Needed

[Warren Togami]

On Tue, 2003-12-02 at 20:31, R. Scott Belford wrote:
 
 On Tuesday, December 2, 2003, at 07:44 PM, Warren Togami wrote:
 
 snip ---
 
  Apparently one of the disks in the RAID1 array of videl.ics.hawaii.edu
  failed during November.  I am hoping for donations to help pay for the
  replacement disk and other upcoming server upgrades that are needed.
 
 Is priority one to replace the failed drive for this array?  If so, 
 what size?  I can order it tomorrow.  I am assuming that it needs to 
 match the other 120gb drive I donated last year.
 

The 120GB drive is used in single for the mirror currently, there were
60GB drives that I bought more than 2 years ago for the system drives. 
One of those failed.
 
  I personally put $570 into Videl + Fedora servers this year, $60 of
  which were reimbursed by earlier donations from the mainland USA and
  Europe to Fedora via hosef.org.  Currently Videl is showing its age 
  with
  growing performance problems and constantly high load averages, so we
  are in the process of adding a 3rd HOSEF server to the University of
  Hawaii ICS department server room that was donated by Pricebusters.
 
  Your donations are needed in order to keep these three servers in
  operation as parts fail, and add much more mirror storage capacity.  It
  is my goal to have at least 1TB of mirror storage after we install the
  3rd server.  Videl's current 120GB disk cannot hold much more, and I am
  always needing to delete more parts of distributions in order to save
  space.  (Next to go is Mandrake and Debian PowerPC.)
 
 Server 3 that is coming from our friends at Pricebusters has 120gb of 
 storage mirrored with software raid.  Our plan is to host LUAU and 
 other HOSEF lists there.  What kind of space will this create on Videl, 
 and can we make arrangements before we drop Mandrake and Debian 
 PowerPC?  Respectfully, one of the conditions. so to speak, of the 
 first 120gb drive donation, was that we host Debian with it.  Please 
 wait before we drop it.  When server 3 comes on line, that will be 240 
 gb of raid storage at our disposal.

I did not know PPC was part of the conditions, but don't worry about
PowerPC being deleted.  I can move data from the FTP drive into free
space on the system drive temporarily until we get the larger array.

I really want to launch server 3 with more than 240GB storage... but are
you sure you are doing your math right?  120GB 2x mirrored is not
240GB... anyhow we'll figure it out.

Warren

Re: [luau] Universities Dispute with Red Hat over 'Fedora'

[Warren Togami]

On Thu, 2003-11-20 at 21:27, Ho'ala Greevy wrote:
 Warren  fellow Fedorians,
 
 just read this off slashdot:
 http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/11/20/1722215
 
 
 any updates you can glean for us?
 
 thx,
 Ho'ala

Cornell/UoV is telling only one side of the story, which is a half-truth
at best.

http://www.fedora.us/pipermail/fedora-devel/2003-November/002346.html
A few facts passed along from legal
http://www.fedora.us/pipermail/fedora-devel/2003-November/002347.html
One more bit of info that *was* public in the past if you paid attention
to fedora.redhat.com and fedora.info sites.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=86544cid=7523611
Alan Cox weighs in
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=86544cid=7522341
Some other guy weighs in

http://www.nwfusion.com/news/2003/1120reseadispu.html
Apparently IDG News interviewed Red Hat's general counsel about this.

The only people that know all details about the initial consent from
fedora.info and what happened are RH's lawyers and the fedora.info
folks.  I suppose this means we'll be hearing more about this story as
it unfolds.

Warren

Re: [luau] kernel advice

[Warren Togami]

On Sat, 2003-11-15 at 00:01, Jimen Ching wrote:
 On Fri, 14 Nov 2003, Charles Lockhart wrote:
 Undoubtedly it's my own ignorance causing me problems, so I was
 wondering where I could look to understand the system they use.  Is
 their a how-to or something like it available?  I've read some
 documentation about making rpms, but it didn't fill in enough of the
 blanks to get a good picture.
 
 I ran into similar problems.  But I believe the code found in the kernel
 source packages was used to build the kernel image in the distribution.
 You should be able to regenerate the patch by diff'ing this tree with the
 virgin tree.  At least this is how Debian does it.  Of course, Debian also
 distributes patch packages.  I was never able to find patch packages in
 Redhat.

ftp://videl.ics.hawaii.edu/mirrors/fedora/linux/core/development/SRPMS/kernel-2.4.22-1.2115.nptl.src.rpm
Most recent kernel from FC1 including NPTL, O(1) scheduler with
interactivity improvements from 2.6, and a ton of other stuff.

ftp://videl.ics.hawaii.edu/mirrors/redhat/linux/updates/9/en/os/SRPMS/kernel-2.4.20-20.9.src.rpm
Latest kernel for RH9 is similar except based on an older vanilla, and
scheduler lacks the interactivity stuff from the 2.6 kernel.

I'm not entirely sure, but I think both of the above have kernel
preemption patched and enabled.

kernel*.src.rpm contains the virgin tree tarball, spec file, and
thousands of patches which are applied to the kernel.  Read the spec
file to see how the thousands of patches are applied and in what order.

kernel-source RPMS contained in the regular RPMS directory contain the
source tree with all of those patches applied.

Either way look in the configs directory after patches are applied to
see the default kernel configuration files.  Copy one into the base and
call it .config, then run make oldconfig to make sure it will work
with the source tree.

Warren

Re: [luau] 2.6 kernel q

[Warren Togami]

Charles Lockhart wrote:

Sorry to ask such a rube question, but anybody know how or if drivers
written for the 2.4 kernel will be supported under the 2.6 kernel?
Indications I've had from reading and talking to people are that drivers
for the 2.4 kernel will have to be re-written for the 2.6 kernel.


Many of the more popular drivers are already rewritten and working well 
in the 2.6 kernel.  The 2.6 kernel core itself is very stable.  The 
things remaining to be done is stabilization of lesser used drivers, and 
operating system userspace initscripts + support tools to support the 
new kernel.  Unfortunately certain drivers may never be fixed due to 
company negligence like Adaptec's dpt_i2o driver. =(


I've been using the 2.6 kernel for many months now on my desktop  
laptop systems with great success.  I can't wait for the official 
release as servers will gain much from the improvements too.


Warren

Re: [luau] Fedora Core 1 Released

[Warren Togami]

On Thu, 2003-11-06 at 08:50, Hawaii Linux Institute wrote:
 So far, the comments I received were, before the Fedora Core 1 release, 
 RedHat seemed to have shot its own foot by reneging on its previous 
 commitment and shifting the responsibility to a yet-to-be proven 
 volunteer group.   But now everyone seems to be shocked by the extremely 
 nice quality of Fedora.
 

What most people don't realize is that Fedora Core 1 is pretty much the
same thing as RH9 in the people who made it and the processes. 
fedora.us and fedora.redhat.com are still not fully merged, and the full
community participation of distribution development isn't really
happening in full force until probably Fedora Core 2.  In the mean time
many standards documents and infrastructure coding has to be made.

A large part of that infrastructure is about to be announced available
for public testing at fedora-devel* lists.  All code written for the
server backend for the Fedora Project will be fully Open Source, so
others can reproduce the procedures and processes elsewhere easily. 
Stay tuned...

 I have not installed it.  But I have heard that Samba 3 still does not 
 work right in Konqueror, and, as in its predecessor versions, MP3 is not 
 included.  These should be easily remedied by a post-installation 
 customization.  wayne

Konqueror and Nautilus were always acting funny with not only Windows
shares, but other network shares like SFTP.  I hope they fix those bugs
one day...

MP3 is encumbered by patents and thus too risky for an American
company/organization to distribute.  I suspect European companies SuSE
and Mandrake have not felt it risky since they are based in Germany and
France respectively, but I wonder what it means for the future now that
SuSE is owned by Novell.

Warren

Re: [luau] Fedora Core 1 Released

[Warren Togami]

On Thu, 2003-11-06 at 10:03, R. Scott Belford wrote:
 Last night I ran apt-get dist-upgrade on a redhat 9 box, and I noticed
 many of the packages that were new to rhat9 had a .fr ending.  Are these
 Fedora packages?  One in particular was gthumb.  Is it only by updating
 rhat9 via the sourceforge apt-get mirror that these .fr packages are
 found?

.fr is probably freshrpms.net?  That is one of the most popular 3rd
party repositories.  That's the guy that inspired me to create fedora.us
last year.

 
 What do we see the future of the K12LTSP project being based upon?

There are some exciting developments happening upstream for LTSP v4
including hotplug USB storage, encryption/authentication, and thin
client system control from the server.  I only heard about it last night
but I don't know details. You may have to ask Jam at ltsp.org.

Warren

Re: [luau] Fedora Core 1 Released

[Warren Togami]

 Yes, packages with .fr are legacy fedora packages.  But these are not the
 packages reffered to in this thread.

 Tom


http://shrike.freshrpms.net/
fr packages are freshrpms.net.  They are not fedora.

Warren

Re: [luau] Re: Which Distribution To Go With

[Warren Togami]

On Tue, 2003-11-04 at 23:33, R. Scott Belford wrote:
 What would happen if, say in 5 years, that Red Hat was acquired by a 
 competitor or underwent management changes that did not embrace the 
 partnership with Fedora.  Would the Fedora name be held by the new 
 company/management, or would it be released to the community?  Is there 
 anything the company could do to inhibit the evolution of Fedora?  I 
 think the project makes obvious sense for Red Hat, and the debian-like 
 philosophy of package development is wise.  I am curious to know how it 
 would withstand a takeover like the Novell purchase of Suse.

Ah... with that kind of possibility, I believe the outraged developers
would fork.  I believe many current engineers at RH would also refuse to
work there if the company suddenly turned evil because the vast majority
of those developers believe in principles above all else.  Unless the
situation dramatically changes, I believe it would be corporate suicide
to betray their engineers and users in this fashion, because NOTHING
stops everyone from moving to the fork immediately.  (Unless they are
forced to sign non-compete clauses in contracts... which itself would be
evil.)

In the case of SuSE, I am guessing they are USED TO being proprietary
and not-so-open, so there is no outrage.

HOWEVER... there are some indications that Novell's recent acquisition
in Ximian is changing this proprietary mindset in a profound way:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=84723cid=7393029
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=84723cid=7393279
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=84723cid=7393585

Perhaps SuSE further puts Novell on the path toward enlightenment.  We
will see.

Warren

[luau] Fedora Core 1 Released

[Warren Togami]

http://torrent.dulug.duke.edu/

Only available via bittorrent for now.  FTP mirrors are coming soon
along with the official announcement.  Release notes and GPG signed
md5sums are on the above URL.

ftp://videl.ics.hawaii.edu/temp/yarrow-binary-i386-iso/
ftp://mplug.oceanic.com/yarrow-binary-i386-iso/
These two mirrors are currently syncing via BitTorrent and will not be
available until they are finished.  Wait until all three files appear to
be done and no longer growing in filesize before downloading.

CHECK THE MD5SUMS before you burn!

Warren

Re: [luau] Which Distribution To Go With

[Warren Togami]

On Tue, 2003-11-04 at 07:52, R. Scott Belford wrote:
 If you liked the feel of RedHat, Mandrake or Suse are reasonable
 alternatives.  I would personally advise that you consider Debian.  The
 stable branch is something you can count on for the charity sites'
 servers.  Come by one of our workshops if we can help you to install
 it.  Also, have you considered one of the *bsd's?

Debian is fine, however it is absurd to recommend *BSD for end-user
desktops.

Warren

Re: [luau] Which Distribution To Go With

[Warren Togami]

On Tue, 2003-11-04 at 10:16, R. Scott Belford wrote:
 Any early and successful user of Slackware should be able to migrate to
 a *bsd.

I apologize, I read too quickly and didn't realize he meant server.

Warren

Re: [luau] Re: Which Distribution To Go With

[Warren Togami]

On Tue, 2003-11-04 at 22:37, John Johnson wrote:
 I appreciate all the input you all have given. I think I will try out
 the Fedora project over debian for now. I am used to RH9 and that alone
 may make it worth doing. I was planning to set up a newer, faster box,
 so I don't mind the reinstall and reconfiguring. I was a little
 disappointed that RH ditched the free community. I just hope Fedora
 finds roots and doesn't disappear should RH become fickle again and it's
 corporate sponsoring of Fedora dries up in the future. I can't really
 complain, since it's free, but even when I thought, What the heck, I
 can shell out a couple hundred bucks if I HAVE to and buy it, I went to
 RH's site and the STARTING price was $349. Ouch. Oh well. I'll buy into
 Fedora. Thanks guys!

The Red Hat products are now for a totally different target market,
the previous high-end Unix market that is quickly crumbling under the
assault of Red Hat, SuSE and the other enterprise Linux makers.

Don't worry about Fedora disappearing or Red Hat abandoning the
community.  Everything in Fedora and even RH enterprise is still 100%
Open Source Software.  They have not compromised Open Source principles
in the name of corporate profit.

Warren

Re: [luau] Fedora, RedHat and Warren

[Warren Togami]

 I am a little confused here, I know that RH is not going to continue their
 regular user distro and are focusing on their enterprise distro. Let me
 know if this is right, has Warren taken RH from 9.0 and is releasing it as
 Fedora? I am thinking Fedora is RH in its new incarnation and Warren is
 the maintainer, is this correct? Or can someone just point me to a doc
 that explains it to me?

 Thanks for the help,

 Jon


http://www.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=03/10/01/1417208mode=threadtid=51

Warren

Re: [luau] Red Hat Enterprise Linux

[Warren Togami]

 I am thinking about migrating one of my systems to RHEL/WS 3.0.  As an
 RHN subscriber, I have gone through all the Red Hat links, but I still
 couldn't find out what features from the 2.6 kernel have been backported
 (e.g., ACPI?) and what application programs are included.  I admit I am
 a poor surfer.  Does anyone have any idea?  Thanx.


Off the top of my head, the Enterprise kernel is a bit more conservative
than the Fedora Core 1 kernel.  It has all the features of RH9 kernel plus
filesystem acls and extended attributes.  I am not sure about ACPI.

FC1 has all the newest stuff in the kernel and desktop software because
Fedora will always contain the most bleeding edge software.  Enterprise
contains mainly RH9 stuff now, because that has had a lot more time to
mature by release date.

FC1 kernel contains... (trying to remember...)
2.6's O(1) scheduler with improved interactivity patch
Native Posix Threading Layer
acpi.sourceforge.net's 2.4 kernel patch that was integrated into 2.4.23-pre
but NOT fsacls

Warren

Re: [luau] Which Distribution To Go With

[Warren Togami]

On Mon, 2003-11-03 at 20:24, John Johnson wrote:
 Hmm...I just got the email from Red Hat today stating that my free
 distribution will reach its end-of-life in the next quarter. Not being
 aware of the current RH prices, I went over to the site to look at how
 much a low-end subscription would run. It seems starting prices are
 $349. Since I am running a couple personal and a couple charity sites, I
 can't afford to shell out that kind of cash every year. So I guess it's
 time to go distribution shopping again. Any suggestions? I have heard a
 lot of people mention Debian. The only other distribution I ever used
 was Slackware back in the early to mid 90s. Thanks for any input you can
 give...
 
 --John

Debian is probably your best bet if you really want to leave Red Hat. 
Slackware is definitely NOT anywhere near maintainable compared to Red
Hat or Debian.

Otherwise... please read up about Fedora.  Fedora Core 1 soon to be
released later this week really isn't much different than Red Hat. 
up2date can point to any official or 3rd party mirror for a source, so
you no longer need to pay for update access.

http://fedora.redhat.com/
Fedora Homepage

http://www.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=03/10/01/1417208mode=threadtid=51
More information about Fedora and its relationship with the community,
and Red Hat's Enterprise Linux.  Basically RHEL is if you WANT vendor
support and service.  Otherwise Fedora will become something like Debian
in that there is a large amount of community participation.  However,
with Red Hat engineering and published roadmaps for development, I
believe we can push Linux and OSS development faster.  Linux will become
easier to use and more powerful at a faster rate with this new
combination of market and grass roots forces. 

http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-test-list/2003-November/msg00198.html
I explained almost the same thing to someone else on fedora-test-list.

I would highly recommend subscribing to fedora's mailing list and
chatting with the folks in the #fedora IRC chatroom too.  They'll help
to clear up any of your confusion.

Warren

Re: [luau] Fedora: Taking Screenshots During Installation

[Warren Togami]

On Fri, 2003-10-31 at 09:01, Hawaii Linux Institute wrote:
 Fedora will officially debut Nov. 3.  (I suspect the traffic will be 
 completely jamed, and I don't know whether RHN subscribers will be able 
 to dl it from RedHat Network?)

http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-test-list/2003-October/msg04157.html
Unfortunately due to non-technical reasons the release must be delayed
to Wednesday or Thursday-ish, depending on the export process whatever
that means.  It might have something to do with US export approval.

On the bright side a few technical fixes were allowed into the
distribution due to the delay.

 
 During the installation, if you want to take screenshots, press 
 shift-print_screen.  The screenshots will be saved in 
 /root/anaconda-screenshots/ . Enjoy!
 
 The following question is for Warren, father of Fedora-  How much will 
 it cost to set up a Fedora (and Fedora only) mirror?

I only worked on a small part of the overall system.  I invented the
name, but otherwise Fedora is an international community that involves
many people.

As for mirroring, it costs nothing but your own hosting resources.  You
have your own server and bandwidth?  E-mail me directly and I can get
you setup.

Warren

Re: [luau] Help with Spamassassin in RH9

[Warren Togami]

Ben Beeson wrote:

Aloha,

I'm up on RH9 now and I was wondering if anyone has had any success
with spamassassin and Ximian Evolution?  I read the fine RH manual and
it says to make a 'procmailrc' file with a few rules in it to get the
spamassassin to work.  So far, no luck 


I believe those directions are only for configuring spamassassin and 
procmailrc for delivery into local mailboxes.  That works only if you 
are running as a SMTP server, or using fetchmail to download mail from 
POP3 accounts elsewhere into your local mailboxes.




It seemed easier to implement in Kmail via filters (on RH7.2 --
although it was a kludge there) which can run other programs.  So far I
have not been able to get spamassassin to run with Ximian. (It may not
be a fault of Ximian at all, it may be operator error...) Anyway, if
anyone has any good ideas, I'm willing to try them.



kmail indeed has the capability of using spamassassin as a client.  I 
haven't seen that capability in Evolution... but  I haven't really 
looked.  I personally have used the above method of fetchmail - 
procmail - spamassassin - mbox for several years, then I moved to a 
dedicated server for greater speed and accessibility.


I really need to write a HOWTO for the fetchmail to spamassassin combo.
Please remind me around mid-November.

http://download.fedora.us/patches/redhat/9/i386/RPMS.stable/
Try my newer spamassassin package shipped in fedora.us patches 
repository for RH9.  It is considerably more accurate than the older 
spamassassin-2.55 shipped in RH9, while fixing a few nasty bugs.


Warren Togami
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: [luau] Num Lock

[Warren Togami]

Eric Hattemer wrote:
the mandrake rpm...  
http://rpmfind.net/linux/rpm2html/search.php?query=numlocksubmit=Search+...  
I make no guarantees, though.  Try rpmbuild --rebuild *.src.rpm on the 
src.rpm version.  It'll appear in /usr/src/RedHat/RPMS/*.  do a find 
/usr/src/RedHat -name *.rpm to find it.  Redhat is missing so many of 
these cute things that make Mandrake so much more useable as a regular 
home user.  As much as Warren tells me how cool redhat will be when he's 
done with it and how great their kernel is, I always get depressed 
sitting here on the RH machine when I remember how well things worked in 
mandrake.  But try rebuliding that rpm and we'll see how it turns out.

-Eric Hattemer


The Mandrake RPM unforutunately wont work for the thin clients without 
some extra work.  Please give me a while to search for this solution. 
It would then need to be installed into the thin client nfs root-boot 
chroot and not the main system.


Warren

Re: [luau] Num Lock

[Warren Togami]

Warren Togami wrote:
The Mandrake RPM unforutunately wont work for the thin clients without 
some extra work.  Please give me a while to search for this solution. It 
would then need to be installed into the thin client nfs root-boot 
chroot and not the main system.


Warren



Actually, this question is perfect for K12OSN.  They should have a 
solution for you, and how to edit your LTSP nfs root scripts to make it 
happen during boot.  Please let us know the result.


If they don't have an answer within 3 days I will dig harder.

Warren

Re: [luau] Taiwan Budgeting $8M to Push Linux

[Warren Togami]

Hawaii Linux Institute wrote:


Now that we can claim Fedora originated from Hawaii (you will be 
surprised as to how much that could elevate our Linuxique credibility 
:-) ), perhaps eventually our local Linux groups can somehow get 
involved.  But we will see.  wayne




Well, Fedora originated in Hawaii by the ICS499 project of one geek and 
some University bandwidth.  In reality there isn't a whole lot unique 
about Hawaii in this.


Warren

Re: [luau] that crazy GPL stuff...

[Warren Togami]

Disclaimer:
I am not a lawyer.  The below is only what I think is true based upon 
stuff I have read.  Some of that was on Slashdot, so do check your own 
facts and get a real lawyer.


Jimen Ching wrote:

On Tue, 14 Oct 2003, Charles Lockhart wrote:


q1. It makes sense to me that software companies that want to integrate
GPL'd code should have to follow the GPL ruling that the derivative
source has to be released with the product.  I think it makes it tough
on companies, but if they want the free lunch of using free code
then they should respect the licensing of that free code.



Companies can use GPL code without deriving from it.  Deriving from GPL
code means the GPL code is modified.  You can develop a product from GPL
code unmodified.  Then you have nothing to contribute back.  Any
additional software in the product must be developped without 'including'
the GPL code.  This is usually how Linux is used.  You can write a
proprietary driver and use a standard Linux kernel.  You don't need to
release the driver source code, but any modifications to the Linux kernel
must be released.


This is not entirely accurate.  IIRC Linus Torvalds made the linux 
kernel GPL with one exception, that exception is binary-only modules 
are allowed (but generally frowned upon).


Normally the GPL disallows keeping source code closed even if you 
dynamically link to it, and cases like closed source linux kernel 
modules are normally not allowed with pure GPL licensed stuff.





if someone violates your interest in that something, and you knowingly
allow them to do it, it kind of seems that it somehow nulls or damages
your case for maintaining that interest or ownership of something.



I have read that patents don't behave this way.  You can knowingly allow
someone to violate your patent for years and then only file a suit after a
lot of money has been made from the patent.  This is usually how patents
are used.



Yep.


For trademark violations, if you don't protect it, you lose it.



Yep.


I'm not sure about copyrights.  I think it falls somewhere in the middle.


I think your copyright protections do not diminish if you don't enforce 
them, but I heard of some complications in this.  For example, if you 
didn't know a copyright violation was happening for a long time but 
suddenly discovered it, you can attempt to exercise that copyright.  In 
other cases where you KNOW the copyright is being violated but you do 
not take necessary steps to mitigate damages, you lose some kind of 
legal protection.


The latter case is a possible issue in the SCO case if the linux kernel 
does contain SCO copyrighted material as SCO alleges.  SCO while 
claiming breach of contract and copyright
infringement completely refuse to say what parts of the linux kernel are 
infringing, because they claim the community will remove and hide it in 
order to hide wrong doing.  This of course is absurd because all 
development is wide open, and archives containing older releases will 
not go away.






And so the FSF pretty much has to go after anybody they know who violates
the GPL, in order to maintain it's validity?



I don't know if they have to.  But I know they do...  Each time I see
someone mentioning a GPL violation, I see the FSF immediately going after
the violators.


(Read this on Slashdot on some point... I don't know if it is true.)
Some people criticize the GPL because it seems only the copyright holder 
can sue for damages if the GPL is being violated.  For that reason it is 
recommended that people sign their copyrights over to the Free Software 
Foundation so that they have the power to litigate, especially if the 
individuals don't have financial resources to litigate.



http://www.opensource.org/licenses/osl.php
For this reason some have suggested using the OSL license instead which 
does not have this problem.  I *think* this link is the OSL.


For most companies on the receiving end of a possible GPL violation 
lawsuit, the severe negative PR and FSF statement suggesting a lawsuit 
has been enough to cause a resolution.


In this case it appears to me that Linksys/Broadcom/Cisco is trying very 
hard to avoid playing by the rules.  It is my personal opinion that if 
they wanted to make a closed source product, they should not have used 
GPL software.  The GPL explicitly exists to prevent players from having 
a free lunch without giving back to the community.  It is audacious to 
complain about not being able to steal intellectual property and calling 
it your own, when the license disallows it.


Warren

Re: [luau] that crazy GPL stuff...

[Warren Togami]

On Tue, 2003-10-14 at 08:28, Charles Lockhart wrote:
 Links to the docs/articles I was reading are:
 http://www.forbes.com/2003/10/14/cz_dl_1014linksys.html

http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20031014204258580
Read Groklaw's response to this Forbes article.  This quote below is the
key part:

... if they choose to use GPL code rather than spending the money and
the time to develop their own code. The way to avoid the terms of the
GPL is not to steal it and hide it; it's to write your own code.

Warren

Re: [luau] that crazy GPL stuff...

[Warren Togami]

Jimen Ching wrote:

This is not entirely accurate.  IIRC Linus Torvalds made the linux
kernel GPL with one exception, that exception is binary-only modules
are allowed (but generally frowned upon).

Normally the GPL disallows keeping source code closed even if you
dynamically link to it, and cases like closed source linux kernel
modules are normally not allowed with pure GPL licensed stuff.



Define 'dynamically link'.  The GPL document uses terms like 'derivative
works', and 'works based on the Program'.  Until a court defines what
these phrases mean, all interpretations are open.  There's really no point
in theorizing.

--jc


That wasn't my theory.  That was from common knowledge from every GPL vs 
LGPL discussion.  GPL disallows dynamic and static linking of closed 
source stuff, while LGPL allows dynamic linking but not static linking.


Warren

Re: [luau] applying patches to RH kernels, RH and 2.6 kernel

[Warren Togami]

MonMotha wrote:


Generally, I've found that you either use the RH kernel or make your 
own.  RH puts a BUNCH of patches on their kernels (they make the list 
available somewhere, probably in the changelog or similar for the kernel 
srpm) that will likely break any other patches you try to apply (since 
the source tree is now so different that patch has no idea what to do).


Generally one downloads the .src.rpm file and unpacks it in order to see 
the thousands of patches that are applied.  The RH kernel is essentially 
a fork that stays ahead of the mainline vanilla kernel in some ways. 
Patching advanced features like preemption will not be trivial.


However... I thought RH's 2.4 kernel already did have preemption from a 
while ago.  I could be wrong.  In any case, interactivity issues you may 
be experiencing are probably due to the scheduler.


I personally use the 2.6 kernel, the latest versions have an EXCELLENT 
scheduler that makes almost all desktop things much smoother.  MP3 or 
OGG playback no longer skips for me during heavy disk operations or 
launching large programs.


http://people.redhat.com/arjanv/2.5/
I used to compile my own kernels, but these days I am using Arjan's 
2.6-test kernel RPMS from the URL above.  You can either install them 
manually, or use apt-get or yum to automatically download and install 
the latest version.  It takes a bit of extra configuration that is not 
trivial to explain, but after that configuration I have all features 
that I want on my Athlon laptop.  Full ACPI support and Powernow 
throttling with powernowd (daemon) brought my average temperatures down 
about 15 degrees C, while ALSA sound drivers are standard in this 
kernel, much greater quality sound support than the old OSS drivers. 
Your mileage may vary with the 2.6 kernel though... because you probably 
will need to write a /etc/rc.modules script in order to handle automatic 
module loading if certain features that aren't automatically inserted.


He is no longer publishing athlon specific kernels because he said that 
internal changes kernel no longer necessitate an athlon specific binary 
package.  My testing with my Athlon laptop seems to indicate this is 
true, as the i686 RPM works just as well as earlier athlon packages.




If you want a bunch of features that redhat lacks, it's probably best to 
patch up your own kernel.  I do this whenever I decide it's time for a 
new kernel, and I make the patch rollup available as MOLK (MonMotha's 
Overloaded Linux Kernel).  Sometimes it can require quite a bit of work 
to get 10 or so patches to apply to the same tree if they come anywhere 
near touching the same aspects of the kernel (XFS and GrSecurity, for 
example, do NOT get along since they both try to implement various forms 
of ACLs).


Beware using a vanilla kernel on RH, because anything that requires db4 
(except rpm) will break without posix mutexes supplied by the NPTL 
kernel.  NPTL is the new threading model from the 2.6 kernel, backported 
in RH's 2.4 kernel.


If you must run the RH kernel for whatever reason (support contract for 
example), and you can't get your preferred patch to apply, you're likely 
SOL unless you can convince RedHat to consider the patch for their next 
wave of kernels.  You may also be able to get someone else to help you, 
but if you've tried as hard as I am thinking you have, it's probably 
very non-trivial to get this patch to apply (the preemptable kernel 
touches some stuff that RedHat really likes to mess with such as the 
scheduler).




Yes, the scheduler in RH 2.4 kernel is O(1) backport from the 2.6 
kernel.  Quite a large and invasive change making novice patching of 
certain features not a trivial task.


Warren

Re: [luau] ultra ata 100 okay?

[Warren Togami]

Chances are it will work.  Is the brand of the special PCI controller
Promise?

On Wed, 2003-10-01 at 20:01, TB wrote:
 I'm trying to figure out if this western digital 175GB
 7200rpm ultra ata/100 hard drive will work in my linux
 system.
 
 I went to redhat and looked for their HCLs, since I am
 running RH9, but I don't find anything about western
 digital when I search. This is a bit suspicious that
 none of their drives would be listed.
 
 Anyhow, it has a special pci controller card  warns
 all the windows people to load the drivers.
 
 What should I do to find out?
 TDB
 ___
 LUAU mailing list
 [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 http://videl.ics.hawaii.edu/mailman/listinfo/luau

Re: [luau] Saving in /home

[Warren Togami]

Also remember that the umask for netatalk needs to be set.  I don't know
how to do this for the /home directories though...

Making all home directories 777 really makes me nervous.  It might work
for a school like Liholiho, but otherwise it is a disaster waiting to
happen.  We really need to fix netatalk and get a proper ACL filesystem
working on your server in order to do the job right.

For now though, I disabled the nightly cron script that fixes
permissions within /home.

Warren

Re: [luau] Saving in /home

[Warren Togami]

On Tue, 2003-09-30 at 08:18, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 netatalk itself is just as scarey!
 
Indeed it is.  It is very poorly documented too.

 ACL info here: http://acl.bestbits.at/
 
 the utilities are in the RPM called acl.
 

I know about ACL filesystems.  I am just concerned if it is stable yet,
as RH has not included it in RH8, RH9, and it wont be in the upcoming
Fedora 1 release.  I am also suspect that IGNORE ACL permissions, and
actually managing the ACL's will add a great deal more complexity in
management for Peter because there is no GUI tool to change ACL
permissions like he can do currently with Nautilus and unix permissions.

Warren

Re: [luau] Saving in /home

[Warren Togami]

On Tue, 2003-09-30 at 08:37, Nakashima wrote:
 On Mon, 29 Sep 2003, Warren Togami wrote:
 
  Also remember that the umask for netatalk needs to be set.  I don't know
  how to do this for the /home directories though...
 
  Making all home directories 777 really makes me nervous.  It might work
  for a school like Liholiho, but otherwise it is a disaster waiting to
  happen.  We really need to fix netatalk and get a proper ACL filesystem
  working on your server in order to do the job right.
 
 I only want to make student /home 6770.

/etc/cron.daily/homeperms

Edit this file to change the permission that it sets every night.

Warren

Re: [luau] Map network drive in 2000

[Warren Togami]

 I can't see the box in the Network Neighborhood. Is there something I'm
 missing? I'll try mapping to the IP address.
 Thanks
 --Peter


Peter is that Windows internal or external to the lab?

I suspect there are WINS configuration problems clashing on the external
side.  Somebody that understand Windows networking will need to check out
the logs and see what the problem is.  (Very sick right now, I can't deal
with this at the moment.)

If you are going to use IP direct within the \\ address from the windows
side, be aware that there are TWO ip addresses on the external interface
of the Linux server.  (Run ifconfig as root to see the IP addresses.)  One
is a real Internet address, another is an alias that exists on your
RFC1918 private network behind your NAT.  Your Windows client needs to use
the IP address on the same subnet, if DHCP probably private IP.

FYI for Michael: Liholiho is running without a PDC for the sake of
simplicity.

Warren

Re: [luau] storage - need raid?

[Warren Togami]

On Thu, 2003-09-25 at 13:38, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 320G (maxtor) IDE drives run as low as $300.
 
 Getting four 250G WD SE hard drives and using linux software raid (or 
 hardware if you wanna spend extra) should cost you well under $1000.
 
 tom

Make sure you have one independent IDE channel per drive.  Never use
master and slave with IDE RAID because one drive tends to kill the other
on the same channel when it dies.

Since your motherboard probably doesn't have four IDE channels which you
can dedicate to four drives, you may need to add a PCI ATA add-on card. 
Cheap Promise Ultra133 cards would do fine for this purpose.

http://3ware.com/
Otherwise there really is only one brand of real hardware IDE RAID from
3Ware.

Do NOT attempt to use Promise or High Point Tech IDE RAID with Linux, as
they are poorly supported, SLOW, and not really hardware RAID, but
poorly implemented software RAID implemented in the OS drivers.  Native
Linux software RAID is faster and more reliable than Promise or HPT for
RAID.

Warren

Re: [luau] locate apt and synaptic after rpm -i?

[Warren Togami]

TB wrote:

I'm trying to get fedora going, so I downloaded the
rpm for apt and synaptic and installed them. I think.
I ran rpm -i filename.

Then I tried locate apt-get and got nothing. And
locate synaptic, also nothing. then I tried just
running apt-get, it worked. 


Why is the locate command letting me down? How do I
find out where rpm installed synaptic? 


locate uses a database that is rebuilt automatically once per day from 
cron.  It wont immediately know about changes to your filesystem.  You 
can force a rebuild of that database with updatedb.


After a RPM package is installed, use the following command to list all 
files within that package.


rpm -ql synaptic

Warren

Re: [luau] Map network drive in 2000

[Warren Togami]

Nakashima wrote:

To set up your samba box as a master browser, you need something like

# make this number artifically high
os level = 80
preferred master = True
domain master = True

in the [globals] section.



So I just type the above anywhere in the globals section?


No, you should see if those options are already set.  If they already 
match, then that wasn't the problem.  If they are not set that way, try 
it that way.


service smb restart
Run this after you have made a samba config change.

Warren

Re: [luau] fedora q's

[Warren Togami]

On Tue, 2003-09-23 at 09:47, Vince Hoang wrote:
  To be honest, I found Warren's response to be fairly arrogant.
  These are easily found with Google. Please do not ask me to
  point the way. Maybe I'm just reading it wrong, but I really
  just didn't apreciate the attitude.
 
 Wrong delivery.
 

Usually I realize giving URLs is the only useful way of giving
information.  I also apologize for the totally wrong sounding delivery. 
That was a wholly failed attempt of being intentionally vague for risk
aversion purposes.

Warren

[luau] Re: Quote for AMD64 systems

[Warren Togami]

Michael, I got this quote from Pogo Linux.  Roughly equivalent to your
quoted system except higher quality parts and 2 year warranty where
they will send individual parts or you can send the entire box back for
repair.

I would recommend running it in 32bit mode at first until 64bit Red Hat
Linux is perfected during the next year, at that point we can evaluate
an upgrade which would give an additional speed boost.  Currently they
aren't selling this system on the public website because the RAID
management software does not yet work from within 64bit Linux (but the
driver does).  Jesse (also a member of the Fedora Project) will keep me
updated with the status of the 64bit RAID management software.  In the
mean time 32bit will work.

Disclaimer: This is not an endorsement of Pogo Linux Systems.  I only
asked them for a competitive quote.  I personally have not tried any of
their systems.

Warren


On Wed, 2003-09-24 at 11:54, Jesse Keating wrote:
 Pogo Linux PerformanceWare 1464 1U Server
 * Two Years Return-to-Depot Service
 * Dual AMD Opteron 240 CPU
 * Tyan S2880UGN Mainboard with AMD 8131 Chipset
 * 4096MB PC2700 ECC Reg. DDR Memory

Hmm, this is higher speed RAM than the PC2100 we got for Mid-Pac and
Liholiho's opteron servers.

 * (4) Seagate 73GB U320 15K HDD
 * LSI R320-1 RAID Controller
 * Slim CDROM
 * Slim FDD
 
 Price Each  $6,687.00
 
 I assume since you asked for 32bit that you wanted RHL9 installed.  Of 
 note, even though the prices aren't that much different, some of the 
 hardware is a bit higher quality in our system.  Especially the raid 
 adapter, which _does_ work in 64bit mode supported by SuSE's kernel.

Re: [luau] fedora q's

[Warren Togami]

On Tue, 2003-09-23 at 07:55, Charles Lockhart wrote:
 Warren Togami wrote:
  apt and yum are generic tools which can download, install and update
  packages from an arbitrary source.  fedora.us was one of many sources of
  3rd party packages for Red Hat Linux.  freshrpms.net is another.
 
 Ah, I see, that makes sense.  I need to get out more.
 
  That is not a 100% requirement, but Fedora could not guarantee
  compatibility with packages from other sources.  Chances are however
  that maybe 95% of packages from elsewhere work fine though.
  
  The sign that says we cannot guarantee compatibility was more of a
  warning than a rule for users who want simplicity by avoiding breakage.
 
 I was confused by an article I read where the user pretty much gave up 
 because of errors.  I tested it on my machine, no problems, so I see 
 what you mean.

If you are referring to Joe Barr's article and the conflict with Ximian,
that is a long standing issue with Ximian where many months ago they
released XD2 for RH9 in such a way that totally breaks apt.  Despite a
large amount of complaints and even admission that it was their fault,
they haven't fixed the situation yet.  We were a bit disappointed that
Joe Barr, a well respected OSS columnist gave up so easily on that
article too.

yum still works with Ximian though.

Warren

Re: [luau] openssh vulnerability

[Warren Togami]

On Tue, 2003-09-23 at 08:25, Vince Hoang wrote:
 On Thu, Sep 18, 2003 at 06:29:32AM -1000, Deven Phillips wrote:
  Thanks to quick action from our team at HCC, I am proud to say
  that we had all of our systems patched as of 4PM yesterday
  afternoon. Not bad for having to upgrade, patch, and test
  30+ productions machines without any serious interuptions to
  service.
 
 Can you be done by 3pm today? :/
 
 http://www.openssh.com/txt/sshpam.adv
 
 Portable OpenSSH versions 3.7p1 and 3.7.1p1 contain multiple 
 vulnerabilities in the new PAM code. At least one of these bugs 
 is remotely exploitable (under a non-standard configuration, 
 with privsep disabled).
 
 The OpenBSD releases of OpenSSH do not contain this code and 
 are not vulnerable. Older versions of portable OpenSSH are not 
 vulnerable.

I have heard some preliminary news that the openssh errata packages from
Red Hat's 9/17/03 release are NOT vulnerable to this problem.  My
sources have indicated that this is only an issue with 3.7x and not the
security fixes backported to the older version of openssh shipped in Red
Hat Linux.

If I hear more I will post again.

Warren

Re: [luau] Proposed LTSP Server Config

[Warren Togami]

On Sun, 2003-09-21 at 22:31, Dwight Victor wrote:
 This is exactly what I'm looking for.  However, in my experience,
 businesses are catious of Linux primarily because of support
 issues...they don't believe they can find the kind of support that a Dell
 or Cisco can provide (or Micro$oft).  I'd still like to know how Linux is
 supposed to address the landfill problem...all the old hardware that is
 recycled for LTSP etc. doesn't compare to all of the other waste we as an
 island produce.

The landfill reference was originally talking specifically about
preventing many old Pentiums from going to the landfill, not anything
grander.  This might have been a confusing point.

Warren

RE: [luau] Proposed LTSP Server Config

[Warren Togami]

On Sun, 2003-09-21 at 23:12, Dwight wrote:
 I did some looking with Google and found the following info:
 http://www.electronicsrecycling.net/menu2/search/eiasearch.asp?state=HI
 
 This site provides information regarding electronics recyling on a
 state-by-state as well as nationwide basis.  There are currently seven
 organizations in Honolulu that accept used computer hardware (primarily for
 reuse purposes).  One is even hosted by the office of the Governor (i.e.,
 Computers for Schools Programs).
 
 My wife is a teacher at Nanakuli High  Intermediate School.  They don't
 have any budget for hardware or software (all of it is budgeted for the No
 Child Left Behind Act).  At one point they were planning for a computer lab,
 but for whatever reason, it fell through.  As a result, my wife got two
 power mac 5000 series machines for her class.  Their tech dude is so backed
 up I went over and networked her machines for her.  Both of these machines
 have about 16MB of RAM each, which means they are dog slow.  Having some
 Linux boxes in there might be able to make the difference for her school and
 provide them with a no-cost lab that all students can use.  However, her
 school doesn't have any budget for support either, so that would have to be
 provided by volunteers...I'm not sure how Linux-savvy their tech dude is.

If the following happens...
1) About $3,500 of donations total for server and networking equipment
2) Get 30-60 prepared thin clients to the school
3) Setup their school similarly to Liholiho's configuration.  With 30
machines we can convert a room into a computer lab, 60 could convert two
adjacent rooms, all running from that one server.

Then it would be better than their current situation, and theoretically
most support issues can be done remotely and securely via ssh.  If thin
clients die, then they can replace it with a spare from the closet, with
no configuration it just works.  The only time someone would need to
visit the campus is if the server itself has problems where remote SSH
is not possible.

All of this depends if they have high speed Internet at the school.  Do
they?

Warren

Re: [luau] fedora q's

[Warren Togami]

On Mon, 2003-09-22 at 14:35, Charles Lockhart wrote:
 I've been trying to understand fedora, but am still confused about a few 
 things.
 
 The Fedora Project generates package management (install, update) tools, 
 such as apt and yum?

apt and yum are generic tools which can download, install and update
packages from an arbitrary source.  fedora.us was one of many sources of
3rd party packages for Red Hat Linux.  freshrpms.net is another.

 You need to keep your system pure, ie only use/install RH and Fedora 
 packages?

That is not a 100% requirement, but Fedora could not guarantee
compatibility with packages from other sources.  Chances are however
that maybe 95% of packages from elsewhere work fine though.

The sign that says we cannot guarantee compatibility was more of a
warning than a rule for users who want simplicity by avoiding breakage.

 
 In response to a problem I was having with version issues between RH 7.3 
 and RH 9 ( that RH 9 has some functionality dumbed down to remove 
 liability for distributing software that uses things like mpeg, etc ), 
 Warren mentioned that the full user versions could be downloaded and 
 installed using fedora and a 3rd party server.  What 3rd party servers 
 are availble?

These are easily found with Google.  Please do not ask me to point the
way.

 
 Is fedora a viable candidate for maintaining a systems security patches? 
   For example, the recent openssh vulnerability, and subsequent security 
 updates, is this something that fedora is designed to handle?

Yes, the old Fedora at fedora.us currently has all RH updates as well as
updates for its own packages whenever they are released.  The fedora.us
project will continue operating for several more months while the new
fedora.redhat.com project is forming.

Warren Togami
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: [luau] Proposed LTSP Server Config

[Warren Togami]

On Sun, 2003-09-21 at 01:33, Nakashima wrote:
 Yesterday, I met with rep Marumoto about how Linux could save the state 
 megabucks, enhance the local economy, and deal with the landfill 
 problem. She was very interested and asked for another meeting so she 
 could include computer savvy people on her staff. I mentioned that some 
 HOSEF people might be interested also. Anyone?

I am interested in presenting the following points to a small group,
which I believe would be effective for this target audience:

* Hands on demo of the lab at Liholiho
* How the Open Source development model works.
* Open Source business model is service based rather than product
based.  Show large successes in certain industries and foreign
countries.
* Open Source Software means less money exported to mainland in the form
of software licensing, more money to reinvest in Hawaii.
* Long term: Reinvest money in local service and local developers,
reduce brain-drain and add to Hawaii tech jobs.

I am guessing they would want to visit during a workday, and not an
evening or weekend?  My weekdays are filled with classes at the
University except Thursday where I have the morning free until my 1:30PM
class.  Otherwise I can do any evening or weekend, but please give me at
least a week advanced notice.  Please discuss this via direct e-mail. 

Warren

Re: [luau] version question

[Warren Togami]

 2 questions, really.

 1. I'm primarily a Redhat user.  Every once in a while, I upgrade,
 usually about 3-6 months after a new release has come out.  And I have
 multiple machines, so I have the convenience of upgrading them one at a
 time, so while my primary machine is still running 7.3, I have a couple
 other machines that are running 9.
  The problem I'm running into, is that for me, 9 seems really
 different to 7.3.  A lot of the tools I was used to using in 7.3 (like
 Xconfigurator or gnorpm for instance, I've had problems with the similar
 programs that come with 8) aren't there in 9 (or maybe I'm just stupid
 and can't find them).
  Then there's the loss of functionality.  RH9 seems completely
 devoid of the ability to play mpeg files.  It kind of blew me away.

MPEG and MP3s are protected by patents, meaning anybody that distributes
software using these patented methods are supposed to be paying royalties.
 Red Hat's lawyers, as an american corporation, decided that it would be
far too risky to continue distributing that software for that reason. 
(read below before being upset)

  So how are you supposed to cope?  I'm really busy doing stuff.  It
 seems kind of unreasonable to force me to learn a bunch of new programs
 (some of which I like a lot less) just to upgrade everything.

All of your needs are served by using automatic package management tools
like apt-get or yum and one or more 3rd party repositories.  By using
these 3rd party repositories you gain not only automatic download 
install of RH's normal packages and errata updates, but also
hundreds/thousands of additional packages made by community volunteers
specifically to work on that versoin of Red Hat Linux.

Look for xine and mplayer packages in these 3rd party repositories.  They
have far more functionality than the almost useless and crippled xine that
used to ship with RH 7.3.

Unfortunately you are expected to follow laws within your jurisdiction.
Those very just laws are made to protect American business interests, thus
we shouldn't be  upset that it is illegal for us to do these activities on
the Linux platform.  We should follow the easy path and use only Windows
(or Mac) if we want an acceptable computing experience.

Don't question these laws either.  Be sheep just like the rest of us. 
Don't care or read about issues like this: http://swpat.ffii.org/

Europe should join America in the great corporate benefits of overbroad
and intentionally vague patents.  They afterall are all about innovation
and protecting the right of inventors to profit, and are never stifling of
research and abusive of free market compeition.  Copyright of a specific
implementation in source code alone is not enough to ensure
anti-competitive exclusionary protection and lock others from the market. 
No sir.

Warren

Re: [luau] Proposed LTSP Server Config

[Warren Togami]

On Fri, 2003-09-19 at 21:06,
Michael_Bishop/FARRINCS/[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 I am just starting to build a full blown LTSP lab at our school and I
 would
 appreciate any feed back or ideas about the purchase of our server.
 Please
 take a minute to look at our server config.
 
 It will run K12LTSP RedHat version, IceWM, StarOffice 7, Mozilla and
 The Rosetta Stone.
 
 I expect this to support at least 50 thin clients running The Rosetta
 Stone ( http://www.rosettastone.com ) on WINE. As well as allow
 students to surf
  the net and type out letters.
 
 I know this config might seem like over kill. However, I expect to be
 running WINE on at least 20-30 thin clients at a time.
 
 Summery of server: Dual AMD Opteron 240s 1.4Ghz, 4GB RAM, 4 x HD SCSI
 15K 73.4GB, RAID 0+1, 1Gig Fiber connection.
 
 This is a quote from CDW-G. However they won't provide a warranty. Do
 you know of any vendors that build and offer warranty and support?
 
 Tyan Thunder K8S (S2880GNR) Extended ATX Motherboard  1  $510.00 
 $510.00
 AMD Boxed Opteron 240 Processor  2  $325.00  $650.00
 SIMPLE 1GB PC2100/PC266 DDR REG  4  $370.00  $1,480.00
 Enlight Server Case 8950 System cabinet  1  $510.00  $510.00
 Adaptec SCSI RAID 2120S RAID  1  $410.00  $410.00

If you plan on ever running it in 64bit mode, do not buy this card. 
Both of Mid-Pac's Opteron servers have a similar card.  The driver is
not 64bit clean (it seems that it is broken on any 64bit Linux), and
thus broken.  It seems that Adaptec has no plans on fixing it too.

However, if you run only 32bit Linux this card works fine.  Mid-Pac's
Opterons are running 32bit Linux currently because of this Adaptec
driver problem.  Later this year Red Hat Enterprise Linux for AMD64 (and
IA64) will be released... I think it will be version 3.0 but I am not
sure.  If I had a working 64bit SCSI RAID card I might be able to take
advantage of the speed boost of Opteron running in pure 64bit, but it
seems I am stuck.

 ENLIGHT ULTRA3 SCSI HOT SWAP MOD  1  $265.00  $265.00
 Seagate Cheetah 15K.3 Hard drive  4  $675.00  $2,700.00
 

How large are the hard drives?  May I recommend saving money and buying
two drives running in RAID-1 rather than four for RAID-0+1.  You will
not see much of any benefits for the thin clients with 4 instead of 2
drives.

However, if you intend on using this server as a file server for other
labs too, then the four drive combination will be well worth the money. 
Otherwise you would have better thin client performance by kicking up
the processors to 242 or 244 with the money you saved from two fewer
disks.

 Grand Total $6,772.60 with shipping
 
 Thank you.
 
 Michael

Liholiho Elementary and Mid-Pac bought roughly the following machine for
LTSP.

 MicroVault 5002 Tower  $2341.00
 GOLD Service Plan (3 Years Labor, 3 Years Parts).
 In-Win IW-Q2000 ATX Tower 300W P.S..
 Upgrade from 300 to 400Watt Intel/AMD PS.
 Enermax UC-8FAB 8cm Case Cooling Fan.
 Tyan S2880UGNR Dual AMD Opteron DDR266/333 Ultra 320 SCSI G-bit LAN
 Video.
 Two AMD Opteron 240 Server CPU.
 Two Coolermaster SK8-7I53A CPU Fan.
 Two 1GB Micro Pro PC2100 DDR266 ECC Registered.

Your double RAM will certainly be a benefit.

 Mitsumi 3.5 Floppy Disk Drive.
 Two Fujitsu 36.7GB 10K-RPM Ultra320 (68-Pin) MAP3367NP.
 Adaptec 2010S U320 SCSI Zero-Channel RAID Card.
 52x24x52 CD-RW IDE Drive, Mitsumi CR-52XETE.

MicroPro had a 3 year parts warranty for $100 at the time.  I disliked
their service because they were very slow, moving back the shipping date
by 2-3 weeks and constantly making excuses, but eventually Mid-Pac
received our servers at substantially cheaper prices than other vendors
at the time.  Peter at Liholiho had an easier time receiving the server
when he ordered about a month later.

The prices above were only 2 weeks after Opteron release, so I don't
know how prices are now.

Peter's server was slightly different, with an LSI Symbios RAID card
rather than Adaptec.  I had not heard of the brand, but apparently it is
well supported in both 32bit and 64bit Linux and highly recommended
among some hardware people I know.

You may want to wait at least a week to see how hardware prices shift. 
IIRC Athlon64 releases early next week, meaning there will be a flood of
new AMD64 hardware on the market.  While Athlon64 wont be suitable for
that server, it may or may not effect pricing on the Opteron hardware or
other generic hardware around it.

Warren Togami
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

[luau] HOWTO Lockdown Mozilla Prefs for LTSP v0.1

[Warren Togami]

http://togami.com/~warren/guides/mozlockdown/
Hi folks.  I wrote this short HOWTO about locking down your Mozilla
preferences system-wide with simple default settings to make the
browsing experience less confusing for users of a K12LTSP desktop. 
Please reply with comments or questions.

I have setup both St. John and Liholiho's K12LTSP servers using this
method.  The directions should be simple enough for most people to
configure the same for McKinley quickly.

Warren Togami
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: [luau] Oceanic cable modem service

[Warren Togami]

On Thu, 2003-09-11 at 22:30, kilauea wrote:
 Aloha ! I haven't been on the list in quite some time. Just had a 
 question about cable modem service. Oceanic will be hooking up my 
 service in the next week and I wanted to find out if there is a current 
 FAQ or HOWTO on Oceanic (Road Runner?) service. A couple of years ago I 
 had a one way cable modem (HSA Kauai) and used DHCP to get an IP 
 address. The Oceanic service will be two way: Most Excellent.
 Is there any thing else I should be thinking of:  /etc/hosts, 
 /etc/hosts.allow, gateway setting, firewall settings? I know enough to 
 tweak things but I am far from a sys adm in understanding. I have a 
 couple of machines on a home network. How should I configure the 
 firewall on the machine that connects to the cable modem? I have Grub 
 booting four flavors of Linux (Slack and RH primarly) and I am mostly 
 interested in web and ftp access.  Any examples or pointers will help; I 
 will try LDP for the latest Howto (DHCP / cable modem).
 Also they want to use the USB port. I had my last cable modem connected 
 by ethernet and don't know if there is any special settings needed for 
 USB. I have fast ethernet running already but I have not used the USB 
 port before although it looks like the ports are recognized.

You will find that Oceanic's cable modems are exceedingly easy to use
with Linux.  The Toshiba cable modems that I have seen them use more
recently have both a USB and Ethernet connector.  I have never tried to
use the USB in Linux, although I suspect it might be possible, I believe
it is not worth the hassle when the ethernet works fine.

You simply set the Linux ethernet interface to DHCP, and it will grab
the IP/subnetmask/gateway/DNS.

I didn't fully understand your questions, but it sounds like you want to
run web and FTP servers?  Technically they are against Oceanic Time
Warner's (not sure about Earthlink) TOS, but they haven't been cracking
down on that locally AFAIK.  If you use it for strictly personal reasons
and traffic is very low I am guessing they wouldn't care.

Regarding FTP server, DO NOT USE IT because it is inherently unsafe. 
Use ssh instead to protect yourself.  There are many easy and free
ssh/scp/sftp clients available for Linux, Windows and MacOS X so there
is no excuse for anyone to continue to use FTP these days.  (But if you
use the FTP server only on your local LAN, that is fairly safe.)

http://www.mplug.org/phpwiki/index.php/BasicFirewallRouter
Follow this simple guide to learn how to quickly setup a Linux box with
two ethernet cards into a cable/dsl sharing router.  The internal LAN
plugged into eth1 can then share the Internet connection with little
fuss.  If you have any questions about the details of setting this up
please ask here.  MonMotha the firewall author is a member of this
mailing list, and many other subscribers are very familiar with it so
they should be able to answer your questions quickly.

Finally, are you aware of how to automatically download and apply
security updates for your Linux distribution?  It is exceedingly easy
and free to do so on Red Hat/Mandrake/SuSE/Conectiva/Debian (but less so
on Slackware), so please do so in order to prevent yourself from being a
victim one day.

ANY box not maintained, be it Windows or Linux, will be insecure within
a month or two.  And they WILL find you, even if you think your box is
unimportant.  They actually WANT to crack seemingly unimportant boxes
because they can use your system as an attack platform for a longer
period of time while you don't notice that you were compromised. 
Anyhow, please heed this warning, and ASK if you don't know how to use
the automatic update tools.  We will help you.

Warren Togami
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

[luau] OpenOffice.org 1.1RC4

[Warren Togami]

Hawaii's Local Mirror
ftp://videl.ics.hawaii.edu/mirrors/openoffice/stable/1.1rc4/

-Forwarded Message-
From: Louis Suarez-Potts [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: announce@openoffice.org
Cc: discuss-openoffice.org discuss@openoffice.org
Subject: [ooo-announce] OpenOffice.org 1.1RC4
Date: Mon, 08 Sep 2003 09:57:04 -0700

All,
Two updated releases:

First:
OpenOffice.org 1.1 Release Candidate 4 (RC 4) can be downloaded now 
from:
* http://www.openoffice.org/dev_docs/source/1.1rc4/index.html

We have Linux, Windows, and Solaris (Sparc) ready.  Other platforms 
will come soon.  Check with your Native-Lang project to see if this is 
ready in your language (http://native-lang.openoffice.org/ ).

The build includes bug fixes and is probably speedier and more robust. 
No new features have been introduced since RC3.  Just lots of important 
fixes.  We thank you for helping us find and fix them; the work the 
user community has done has been invaluable.

And you should continue with that work.  RC4 is pretty close to 
finished but it really needs for people to test it and find any flaws 
that may exist.  Please download it, use it, and if you come across 
something, file a bug report 
(http://www.openoffice.org/project_issues.html ).

Second:
The OpenOffice.org SDK for 1.1 RC4 is also ready. Our Software 
Development Kit is an immensely useful tool for developers wanting to 
work on the OpenOffice.org source. It contains documentation, code 
samples, and a lot more. Download the kit from:

* http://www.openoffice.org/dev_docs/source/sdk/index.html

We also have a general page for developers:
* http://website.openoffice.org/developer/

And, if you need to find other information, please use our site map,
* http://www.openoffice.org/sitemap.html

Louis Suárez-Potts
Community Manager
OpenOffice.org

Re: [luau] Hotmail Users - Read This

[Warren Togami]

On Fri, 2003-09-05 at 00:53, Tom Hackett wrote:
 it.  The only reason I bring it up is because there are some limits I 
 noticed for fastmail.fm's free account where you're not supposed to 
 exceed 40MB/month of email transfer which seemed odd, and you're not 
 supposed to use the free account for business.  I don't know for sure 

I don't know for sure about FastMail's motivations, but I would guess
the 40MB limit is to punish freeloaders who may try to abuse the
service, while giving much greater access to serious users willing to
pay a small amount of money.

In any case the free account with server-side mailing list filter
options is more than adequate for a mailing list account as a
replacement for Hotmail.

Warren

[luau] Hotmail Users - Read This

[Warren Togami]

Hotmail accounts very frequently bounce messages due to their extremely
small storage quota.  I had been manually deleting these bounces for
years now, but it is a bit annoying for me.  From this day forward I
will be unsubscribing hotmail accounts who bounce more than 3 times.

As an alternative mail service, please consider this free webmail
service:
http://www.fastmail.fm

They are run by some BSD users in Australia, with a larger free quota,
extra services like spamassassin, webmail and IMAP access.  I don't know
them personally, but their webpage seems to be brutally honest (to a
point of saying known bugs and future plans) and a few of my friends are
using them now.

Warren

[luau] Status Report: August 2003

[Warren Togami]

I haven't been able to report on these items for a while, so here are a
few things off the top of my head:

1) Virgil and redone HOSEF website
http://www.hosef.org/
Virgil put a lot of work into redoing the site using PostNuke as a
content management system.  There is a still a considerable amount of
work to be done on various parts of the site including:

* Content cleanups and clarifications.  (I need to put some thought into
this and write something up soon...)
* PHPBB integrated web discussion board
* MPLUG Wiki integrated into HOSEF content, completely close down MPLUG

Please reply to this thread and suggest other things to improve the
content and layout of the HOSEF.org website.

2) Videl Hardware Failure
http://www.hosef.org/pn/modules.php?op=modloadname=Newsfile=articlesid=13

Around 7:15PM HST on August 20th our main server videl.ics.hawaii.edu
went down for an unknown reason. The next morning I found that the
heatsink fan failed, damaging the processor but fortunately it seems the
rest of the server is fine. For now I have replaced the processor and
heatsink fan with parts from one of my personal computers, but we are in
need of donations to help buy a new server for a more permanent
solution.

Long story short, we are in large need for cash donations to buy a
replacement server for Videl.  I already spent $550 out of pocket this
year for server upgrades for Videl and Fedora and there is not enough
capacity for our Linux mirror and CPU usage is at an uncomfortable level
with Fedora's Bugzilla, Videl's mailing lists and two other instances of
Apache and MySQL used by various projects.

We need to raise at least $1,500 in order to buy a good replacement
server for Videl, with dual processor server board, processors, more RAM
and terabyte+ of storage.  Your donations are tax deductible because
HOSEF is a 501(c)(3) charitable organization.  Please contact Scott or
reply to this list for pledges or questions regarding donations.

3) Liholiho Elementary
The hybrid LTSP + MacOS + Windows network at Liholiho Elementary in
Kaimuki is mostly done, with mainly software configuration cleanup left
to be done.  Last week Friday (8/22) Ray Strode and I spent a few hours
doing more software configuration while training Peter Nakashima in
various aspects of the system.

We ran into some difficulty in getting file permissions for students and
teachers to interact with files to work properly.  I do not have the
time to summarize this complex problem at the moment though.

4) St. John the Baptist School
This past weekend Wilson Chan, me and a two other volunteers went to
redo the St. John LTSP installation with a newer, faster server (single
Athlon 2000+) and 17 monitors.  Software configuration there is
complete to my knowledge.  Wilson do you know if they began to use the
lab again?

Wilson's group did most of the work, I just stopped by on Saturday for a
few hours to tweak the operating system, finishing the job remotely from
home using a few more hours.

The good news here is a lot of the work I put into customizing Liholiho
and St. John recently I have made into scripts, so a customized roll-out
of LTSP for schools should take even less time for me to setup.  My
tweaks include locking down browser settings and other desktop
preferences.

Warren Togami
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

[luau] kernel-2.4.22 released

[Warren Togami]

ftp://videl.ics.hawaii.edu/temp/kernel

kernel-2.4.22 released if you are the type to build your own kernels.  I
have mirrored the full tarball and patch at videl.

Warren

[luau] RH9 and Sun JVM 1.4.2 article

[Warren Togami]

Article about Sun's cooperation with Red Hat in getting Java to work
nicely with NPTL.

On Sat, 2003-08-23 at 07:59, Tom Ball wrote:
 Sun's engineers responsible for the Linux version of the Java runtime
 (J2SE JDK) recently wrote an article on how they worked with RedHat on
 the design of the new Native POSIX Thread Library that shipped with
 RH9.  For those interested in threading issues on Linux and/or Java
 performance on Linux, it's at:
 
 http://developer.java.sun.com/developer/technicalArticles/JavaTechandLinux/RedHat/
 
 The J2SE 1.4.2 Performance whitepaper linked in the above article is
 also worth reading if you are interested in that sort of thing.  
 
 All I care about is that Java keeps getting faster, and for my app at
 least the 1.4.2 Linux JVM seems slightly faster than the Win32 one.  Yet
 another reason to use Linux. ;-)
 
 Tom
 

Re: [luau] RH 9 server hacked -- what went wrong?

[Warren Togami]

On Fri, 2003-08-22 at 10:27, Keith wrote:
 Firewalls are your friend.  These days they are so cheap, even for home
 use, that there is no reason not to have one.  It is in your best
 interest to have one, set up an inbound default policy of DENY for at
 least all priveledged ports and only open up those that you absolutely
 need.  Then, if you get hacked, it would be easier to determine the
 vulnerable service.

If you use Red Hat Linux, it will give you an option to setup a
firewall during installation or you can use the firewall configuration
tool later to enable it to block ports.

 
 I like RH but they have a habbit of enabling nearly every service by
 default. 

Eh?  This has not been true for years now.

 98% of the time there is no need for this.  Another good
 practice is, after installing and before plugging the cat5 into your
 NIC, run through your default runlevel's rc directory and turn all
 unnecessary services off with chkconfig.  Issue a
 
   bash$ chkconfig --list | grep :on

Total agreement with using chkconfig to see your automatically started
services and disable things which you don't need.

Warren

[luau] Aug 20th Seminar: Introduction to Linux Firewalls

[Warren Togami]

Seminar:  Introduction to Linux Firewalls
Where:McKinley Community School
  634 Pensacola Street, Room 208
When: Wednesday, August 20th, 2003 from 6pm - 8pm
Presenter:Warren Togami [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Cost: None

Seating is limited to 20. *Please register* by emailing the MCSA tech 
coordinator Michael Bishop at [EMAIL PROTECTED]


Map:  http://mcsa.k12.hi.us/map.gif
Parking:  As you pull in the driveway on Pensacola, its the first
  gate on the left.
Entrance: The building entrance is in the middle of the building. Go 
up the stairs, first left and then right. Your there.

Elevator: As you enter the building doors, head down the short
  hallway, take a left and follow the hallway until you
  reach stairs. Go through the door under the stairs, take a
  left, straight ahead.

Topics to be Covered

1. TCP/IP basics
2. Linux firewall capabilities
3. Basic home firewall example
4. Firewall setup tools
5. Squid Proxy example
6. AppleShare example
7. H.323 routing example
8. Complex campus firewall example

Warren Togami
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Hawaii Open Source Education Foundation
http://www.hosef.org

Re: [luau] RHCE Exam Tips/study groups/info

[Warren Togami]

On Fri, 2003-08-08 at 20:52, Michael Sana wrote:
 Aloha,
  
 I am planning on taking the RHCE exam at the end of september and i
 was wondering if anyone out there has taken it?  I am definately a
 linux newbie, but i have been studying for the last four months.  My
 work will be paying for the RH302, the four day crash course, but i am
 not a firm believer in boot camps.  Does anyone know any good study
 material?  Would anyone be willing to share any information about what
 i should prepare for without compromising their non-disclosure
 agreement?  Is anyone planning to take the exam and would like to have
 some study sessions?  
  
 mahalo nui loa
  
 mike

Hi, welcome to our list.

I have not taken RHCE yet because I have not had time to fly to the
mainland yet.  Are you flying to the mainland or is it being offered
here?

Warren Togami
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

RE: [luau] SpamAssassin Spoofing

[Warren Togami]

On Thu, 2003-08-07 at 11:15, Randall Oshita wrote:
 Hey Vince,
 I put [EMAIL PROTECTED] on the whitlist because I got some faculty complaining
 that they cannot send load emails from webexchange (html) out and gets
 tagged as spam.
 If I write a MD rule wouldn't that be the same as whitelisting it? Or do
 you mean that a MD rule can look at headers to filter?
 Also, what gets read first the blacklist or the whitelist?
 Thanks,
 Randall

I would recommend the following rather than a blanket whitelist:

1) Raise the default spamassassin threshold to a higher number.  I
personally use 8, although I've run it effectively at 12 before when
Bayes was fully populated.  The higher number remains effective in spam
filtering when combined with a few spamassassin augmenting tools and
some score tweaks mentioned in #3, #4 and #5.

2) What specific SA rules are raising the score above the threshold? 
(Cut  Paste the SA report section) You could consider disabling only
those specific SA rules.  Combined with the higher SA threshold it
should reduce false positives going into the SPAM bin.

3) Use pyzor, Vipul's Razor and DCC to augment spamassassin's scoring
accuracy.  Those three tools do a reasonably good job of raising the
score of bulk mail (DCC) and spam reported by other people (pyzor and
Razor).  What brand and version of Linux do you use?

4) Upgrade to spamassassin-2.60-PR3.  It is near final release, and I
have been using PR1, PR2 and now PR3 for a while now in production so it
seems very stable too.  2.60-PR3 is a lot more intelligent in scoring
spam and non-spam than older versions.

5) Add more DNS RBL's to your local.cf.  All of the free DNS RBL's are
enabled by default in spamassassin-2.60-PR3, but adding some of the
for-pay RBL's are sometimes worth it.  I personally use SPAMCOP at score
3 because it is kind of cheap and effective, but I am considering buying
MAPS RBL+ too.

6) Consider adding the Spamhaus RBL to automatic reject at your MTA
rather than allowing those mail to go through spamassassin.  I
personally have never received a single legitimate mail from SBL
addresses in 6 months on 30 accounts on my server, but your mileage may
vary.

Warren Togami
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

[luau] Groklaw details about IBM counter-attack

[Warren Togami]

Summary of details of the 10 point counter-attack.  IBM sure looks to
pound SCO into non-existence.  I for one am very happy that IBM's army
of lawyers is fighting for what may become the first test of the GPL in
the courts.

http://radio.weblogs.com/0120124/2003/08/07.html

...

It also means that while Darl was shooting his mouth off, IBM was taking
notes, and the majority of the other counterclaims are based on SCO
spokespeople saying things to the press that IBM says were deceitful and
damaging and derogatory, harming IBM's business and reputation, harming
the reputation of Linux, and interfering with its potential customers,
and they say their tortious conduct was and is willful and deliberate,
hence they should be fined treble damages, because, they tell the court,
this is an exceptional case, meriting such sanctions. They also ask the
court to stop them from any further infringement of their four patents
by ordering SCO to quit manufacturing or selling or distributing the
infringing products listed above. So, if the court says yes, that's
pretty much the end of SCO's business, both software and the licensing
plan. 

IBM sales people, in an internal memo to them, are now being encouraged
to turn people to the OSDL website to read Questioning SCO: A Hard Look
at Nebulous Claims, by Eben Moglen, General counsel of the Free
Software Foundation, and to let everyone know, that as this lawsuit goes
foward, the industry will resolve it.

Man, I believe them. IBM, it appears, fully intends to turn SCO into
mincemeat. And dear Darl was just the man to hand them the weapons to be
able to do it. 

And finally, a song of praise to the GPL. It's shining hour has arrived.
And it is shining manfully. If you were longing for the GPL to have its
day in court, you just got it. It is leading the charge.
(continued in Groklaw)

Re: [luau] Red Hat vs. SCO

[Warren Togami]

In case you have not been following the news and wish to learn more about
the history of the SCO v. everybody shenanigans, Wikipedia has a well put
together summary of claims from both sides including news links from the
past half year.  They continue to update this page as the drama continues.

http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCO_v._IBM_Linux_lawsuit

Re: [luau] IBM Clinches Government Security Certification for Linux - Short Full Article

[Warren Togami]

 Many of our projects has been developed on Linux then switched to Solaris 
 because they required EAL4 rating.  Hopfully Linux can catch up with IBM's 
 help, then kill SCO after.
 

Sounds like the new pluggable security framework in 2.6 kernel and the
NSA's SELinux being ported to use that framework will bring Linux closer
to that goal?

Warren

[luau] Liholiho Status

[Warren Togami]

Several days last week I spent at Liholiho further preparing the
software configuration for the school session beginning August 4th.  On
Thursday we figured enough of the atalkd config so the Linux server can
act as the school's central file server.  On Friday Ray Strode and I
spent several hours working on the default desktop application settings.

* Ray reworked the default Gnome desktop to make it look more like MacOS
with the menu at top.  It looks very streamlined and easier to use now.

* We attempted to force Mozilla to be locked into certain prefs using
lock_pref directives, but Mozilla refused to start when using the
additional config file despite all documentation online insisting that
it should work.  It might be a bug in Mozilla 1.4, or maybe we were
doing something wrong.  Still need to investigate this.

* OpenOffice could have better default preferences that are less
confusing to the users.

Other than the Mozilla problem which can be easily fixed for all user
profiles later, the only remaining thing that needs to be done is user
accounts for the students and teachers.  Peter, it would be far easier
to script creation of the users and groups when you know the class
assignments for the groups so you don't need to go through 300+ accounts
and set the correct groups manually.

The accounts work something like this:
1) Create user accounts for everyone, students and staff, each with the
default private group of the same name.
2) Create class groups, add a class group to each student.  This is
mainly for the purpose of easy identification later for scripted jobs
(like deleting the entire graduating class).  We'll figure this part out
later.
3) Add the teacher to each of the private student groups within that
teacher's class.  This along with proper umask permissions will allow
the teacher to read all files saved by their students, but students
cannot read another student's files.
4) Add Samba accounts associated to the teacher's Unix account for
teachers that use Windows.  There is a short script you can add to
Windows bootup to mount the public TRANSFER folder as drive T:, and
otherwise they need to type \\LINUX\USERNAME in order to access their
home directory on the Linux server.  Without using a domain or Windows
Scripting there is no easier way at the moment.  (And I know nothing
about Windows scripting at the moment.)

Currently the only thing I don't know how to do is set the umask for
files created from MacOS by AFP over TCP.

So Peter, whenever you can get me the complete lists of students and
their classes I can script account creation and the server should be
ready for students.

This is exciting...  Almost ready!

Warren Togami
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: [luau] procmail recipe

[Warren Togami]

On Mon, 2003-08-04 at 11:06, Ronnie Baron wrote:
 I'm trying to create a procmail recipe for the list so it goes to a
 specific folder but the one I have is not working. Any suggestions?
 
 :O:
 * ^List-Id:.*luau.videl.ics.hawaii.edu
 /var/spool/mail/luau
 
 :O:
 * ^(from:|cc:|to:).*luau
 /var/spool/mail/luau
 

My rule looks like this

:0
* ^List-Post: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
LUAU-VIDEL

Near the top of my procmailrc is this:

MAILDIR=$HOME/mail

I'm not sure if delivering to a full path name works or not, if it does
then you probably have permission problems.  I personally always used it
like above where it delivers to mbox files within my user's home
directory.

Warren 

Re: [luau] Red Hat vs. SCO

[Warren Togami]

http://radio.weblogs.com/0120124/2003/08/04.html
Paralegal (not a lawyer)'s analysis of what this Red Hat filing means. 
Also a link to SCO's quick response to Red Hat's new filing.  Further
down the page is A Criminal Lawyer's Take on SCO: They Not Only May
Lose, Sanctions Possible

http://www.osdl.org/docs/osdl_eben_moglen_position_paper.pdf
Position paper by Eben Moglen, Professor Eben Moglen of Columbia
University and Legal Counsel to the Electronic Frontier Foundation
http://www.eff.org

Can't find the link to Red Hat's filing yet...

Warren

[luau] August 2003 Netcraft Survey

[Warren Togami]

http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2003/08/01/august_2003_web_server_survey.html

The charts look sweet. =)

Warren

Re: [luau] RAID Card recommendation

[Warren Togami]

On Tue, 2003-07-29 at 10:15, Rodney Kanno wrote:
 I just inheritated two SCSI drives for a Linux machine at my office, and was
 wondering if anyone could suggest a good SCSI card to do basic drive 
 mirroring.
 I know nothing about SCSI, and a few days ago, someone mentioned that the 
 3Ware
 brand is the best out there right now. What kind of things should I be looking
 for (other than Linux support)? Any commments/recommendations will be greatly
 appreciated!
 
 Rodney

3Ware makes high end IDE RAID controllers that behave like a SCSI
controller to the system.

For only two SCSI drives I would buy any cheap low-end SCSI controller
supported by Linux open source kernel modules.  Unfortunately I have
little experience in that arena.

Warren

[luau] Getting a Windows Refund in California Small Claims Court

[Warren Togami]

Getting a Windows Refund in California Small Claims Court
http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=7040mode=threadorder=0

Appears that it takes a bit of work and a cool head, but it is at least
possible to get a refund for the Windows that comes with retail
computers that you do not use.

Warren

[luau] Atalkd Routing Guides

[Warren Togami]

http://www.transit.hanse.de/netatalk/router.html
http://www.neon.com/atalk_routing.html

After a bit of digging found these two pages which should be enough
information to configure the routing properly on Liholiho campus.

Re: [luau] mbox vs Maildir

[Warren Togami]

On Mon, 2003-07-28 at 13:33, R. Scott Belford wrote:
 Like many of us, I have been enjoying reasonably spam free, sorted, and
 web-accessible mail via
 exim/fetchmail/procmail/spamassasin/imap/squirrelmail.  It has been a
 delight.  Not content with good enough, I have been toying with the idea of
 using courier-imap instead of uw-imap.  Courier uses the maildir format
 apparently developed by DJB for qmail, and Uw-imap uses the standard mbox
 format.  The way I understand it, maildir can be much less processor
 intensive for large or multiple mailboxes.
 

I don't have anything intelligent to say about Maildir as I have very
little experience there, but I personally moved from uw-imap to dovecot
for my IMAP server and never looked back.  dovecot is an ultra fast and
secure (think vsftpd of mail) POP3/IMAP4 server that handles either mbox
or Maildir.  I personally use it with mbox because that's what I had
been using with my earlier uw-imap, but dovecot suddenly makes it MUCH
faster and very reliable.

http://dovecot.procontrol.fi/

dovecot is in Debian and Red Hat Rawhide currently.

Warren

Re: [luau] RedHat, RR, and Hostname

[Warren Togami]

On Mon, 2003-07-28 at 06:30, Steve Anderson wrote:
 I have been trying to fix an issue that I have with my RedHat 9 system.
 The system is connected via cable modem to RoadRunner, so it receives a
 DHCP IP. The DHCP client also provides a hostname. The hostname is NOT a
 FQDN so Gnome/GDM will not allow me to login when the system is set to
 the hostname provided by the DHCP client.
 
 I am able to log in into KDE fine, so I am not dead in the water.
 
 I have tried a few different things. First I applied a startup script
 that seemed to change the hostname to the FQDN of the assigned DHCP IP.
 This failed to correct the problem with Gnome/GDM. 
 
 Then I put a local HOSTNAME entry in one of the /etc/sysconfig
 configuration files, and added the host to /etc/hosts. So the hostname
 is of my choosing, but of course it is not a FQDN. At least this method
 allows Apache to run, but I can not login via Gnome/GDM.
 
 Google searches found this same problem many times, but I was unable to
 find a resolution.
 
 Any suggestions?
 
 Steve A.

Run redhat-config-network (aka neat), go into your ethernet device,
under DHCP Settings uncheck Automatically obtain DNS information from
provider and provide your own hostname there and in the DNS tab.  Works
for me.

Warren