Re: [newbie] Need printing help, please
Update on my printing problem with my Lexmark 1100. I've done what was suggested, but still nothing comes out of the printer. Civileme pointed out that port 631 has to be open and said: when nmap is on your menu fire it up and do a straight scan of 127.0.0.1 for open ports. I ran nmap and Port 631 was listed as open. Todd suggested: iptables --list -n Look for a line that has 631 or cups on it. If you're using the firewall, you won't see it. Call it a minor oversight, but the firewall blocks port 631 by default. I did that and did not see a 631 or cups in the list. However, when I ran nmap Port 631 was listed as open. My guess is that the problem isn't with the port. This is a cheap winprinter, but it does have a driver for Linux and CUPS and I do get a nice test page out of it. When I give a print command or drag a file onto the prnter icon, nothing happens. Checking in Kups, I see the job listed as processing. However, it never stops processing, even after giving it many minutes to finish. I finally remove the job because it's evident that nothing is going to come out of the printer. I've printed out a big stack of stuff on CUPS, printing in Mandrake, cups-o-matic, and this driver and unless someone has another suggestion, I'll work my way through all this material and see if I can figure out what's happening. If I'm successful I'll post what worked. Thanks! --Judy Miner Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Install lockup problem reposted
Tim wrote: Here's my question reposted as plain text. I'll make a point of checking the format each time before posting. Here where I work they require us to send html email and I simply forgot about it. You don't need to check each time if you set up Outlook Express to always use plain text for mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] You do this by adding this address to your OE address book, click on the Name tab for this address, put a checkmark by Send E-mail using plain text only. Once you set it up this way, OE will convert to plain text any HTML message you try to send to this address (I think it alerts you first). I haven't tried this out myself because I'm set up to send everything in plain text all the time, but I know people who use this feature and they say it works as advertised. --Judy Miner Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Need printing help, please
Thanks for the explanation and suggestions. I did try printing a file directly with xpp but had the same results: nothing. I have downloaded quite a bit of information on CUPS, cups-o-matic, and Linux printing and will try to work my way through it and figure out what's happening. --Judy Miner - Original Message - From: a [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Judith Miner [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: August 12, 2001 1:42 PM Subject: Re: [newbie] Need printing help, please On Sunday 12 August 2001 17:42, Judith Miner wrote: Sridhar wrote with regard to my printing problem: Try printing to a postscript file (available in the print settings of most apps) and then printing that with xpp. [snip] DON'T remove xpp make XPP the target of your print command instead of lpr -P pronter in the command line for printing when you call a print put xpp there. Then you can always print In StarOffice, you need to run SPA as root and make the connection of the derfault printer to xpp. Then things should starrt working. Also run xpp as a user, not as root because it builds a user file which overrides the root configuration settings. Civileme Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] rpm catch22's
Matt wrote: Linux is cool and all, but man can installing software be a nightmare. I couldn't agree more. I have had similar sad sagas more times than I care to recall. For example, I tried to install the latest Gnucash, which I've heard has many improvements over the version that came with my Mandrake 8. When I tried to install the rpm package, I got a HUGE list of dependencies I'd need. There was no way I was going to try to find them, install them keeping my fingers crossed that something else wouldn't break in the process, and see if the silly thing would work. Especially since I don't even know if I'd like Gnucash. I *must* have an easy-to-use checkbook manager on my system, and my trial of the Gnucash that came with the distro was not exactly a roaring success. It made a mess of its import of my Quicken data, which is Requirement No. 1 for any checkbook manager I might consider. I hope they get their act together on package installations. It's got to work better than it does now. --Judy Miner
Re: [newbie] Another about Uninstalling Mandrake Linux 8.0
Dennis wrote: Use a windows boot disk to boot into dos and fdisk and delete the partition reformat to a fat32 and all the rest and linux is gone Wont't work. DOS FDISK will not delete a non-DOS partition. I don't know how NT and W2K deal with this, but I expect they may operate the same way. You have to remove the Linux partition with Mandrake, from which it is very easy, and then you can do FDISK /MBR to remove the Linux boot manager. Then you can set up a Windows partition. Some third-party tools will also delete non-Windows partitions. --Judy Miner
Re: [newbie]: Virus talk and kmail, direct connection
Alan wrote: just read about the SirCam virus - do I panic slowly? You don't panic at all. In order to get infected, you have to open the attachment that contains the virus. I assume you don't open attachments you weren't expecting to get and that you check ALL attachments, regardless of file type or who sent them, with at least one up-to-date antivirus program before you open them. SirCam comes with an odd e-mail message--something like hi I'd like your advice about this (I don't remember the exact wording). I've gotten messages with SirCam attachments, AnnaK, ILoveYou, and everything else that's made the news, but have never opened a single one and have never had a virus in 14 years of using computers. --Judy Miner
Re: [newbie] write permissions in gui.
I don't want to protract what is essentially an off-topic discussion for this list, so this will be it from me. I don't know what would give someone the impression that I was saying Windows is intuitive and Linux is not. I explicitly stated to the contrary. Also, it is ridiculous to dump on everything Windows does just because someone likes or prefers Linux. The Mac and Windows got some things right. No sense reinventing the wheel. When you constantly insult Windows by using demeaning nicknames for it and refusing to see *anything* good about it (not uncommon on Linux lists and message boards), you place yourself in the category of a zealot who is waging religious wars over operating systems. The computer world is full of OS religionists, to be sure. You have your Mac evangelists, who have actually made death threats against columnists who have questioned the Mac's superiority in everything. The excesses of Team OS/2 are well known. The Windows world has plenty of missionaries and Microsoft groupies. Linux has its fair share of fanatics, too. I prefer an even-handed approach where one can consider the pluses and minuses without regard to the orthodoxy of the venue in which the discussion is taking place. Sridhar said: I was referring to a much looser definition that is commonly in use within computing circles, particluarly in computer publications (including consumer magazines). Are these the same folks who think it's is a possessive pronoun?g The definition I am using refers to what a user has learnt and experienced in the past, and how that affects their expectations when they try something new (to them). Then intuitive isn't the operative word and shouldn't be used in this way. It just degrades the language and confuses people. Using your definition, how is copy/paste behaviour intuitive to anybody? Is a key combo like Ctrl-c or Ctrl-v intuitive? No. Truth be told, there isn't much about using a computer that is intuitive. Well, maybe if you have a simple e-mail and Web browsing machine where the pictures and words are almost impossible to miss, you might call it intuitive, but most operations aren't that simple. However, *consistency* of operations within an operating system means you learn once and then can use that in everything else. When you have ten different ways of doing something and no application can be counted on to do it in the same way, any possible intuitiveness is out the window and you must learn (and remember) the procedure for each application you use. Your idea of intuitive only works at a basic level, like dragging a file icon onto a printer icon (which, I believe, GNOME-Print can do). As can KDE. Which illustrates that I wasn't doing a Windows-good, Linux-bad comparison. Intuitive features can be, and are being, incorporated into Linux desktops. I _do_ realise that I was unusual. I wasn't trying to boast about my abilities I didn't think you were. I was just trying to illustrate that a clear mind, like that of a child, can learn new things much more easily than one that is fettered by many habits that have accumulated over time. Like the old maxim, you can't teach an old dog new tricks. The maxim is, of course, untrue because you *can* teach an old dog new tricks. I don't think it was easier for people whose first computer experience was DOS to learn the system than for people who learned Windows to learn another system, though. When you had essentially nothing else, you either learned it or didn't use a computer at all. Lots of people simply gave up--I know them! Or they gave up until they encountered a Macintosh. Apple used The Computer for the Rest of Us as an early advertising slogan for the Mac. Many DOS users eagerly adopted Windows 3.0 and then 3.1 with sighs of relief because they had to deal with the hated command line so much less. There are holdouts to this day, but a large majority of users simply prefer to work with a graphical interface. They want to do what they want to do, not spend weeks massaging an operating system before they can get to work or play. Simple console commands like how to change directories and how to copy or delete a file can be very useful, even in Windows. They are of limited usefulness because you can do it all from the graphical file manager. But I agree that it's another tool in your toolkit if you can do things from command lines. Many (but obviously not all) new GNU/Linux users just end up saying stuff it, I'm going back to Windows. A total newbie can't do this, and so are more determined. What a total newbie can do is just give up entirely on using a computer. Don't forget, the explosion in computer use (and sales) didn't come about until computers were easier to use. It was only when you didn't have to belong to the High Priesthood to use the thing that masses of ordinary people considered investing their money in a computer. I still couldn't understand the logic behind ideas like the ghastly Registry
Re: [newbie] write permissions in gui.
Sridhar wrote: You mean it isn't intuitive for a Windos user? Then you are correct. For people who have been using *nix for a while this can be very intuitive. Whoa! Intuitive has nothing to do with what OS someone knows how to use. Intuitive means known or perceived through intuition. Intuition is the act or faculty of knowing or sensing without the use of rational processes. Intuitive does not mean easy, once you learn how. Command lines can never be intuitive because you have to *learn* the commands first. Dragging a file onto a printer icon in order to print is intuitive. You don't have to read anything to figure out that dragging a file onto a picture of a printer will probably result in its being printed. Writing copy /b thisfile.doc lpt1 at a DOS prompt is not intuitive, though it is easy, once you know how. I don't have a clue what you'd write at a Unix prompt because, gee, it isn't intuitive.g First time computer users can generally learn an OS like GNU/Linux much faster than a Windos user, since they don't expect everything to be like Windos. Do you have evidence to support this, other than wishful thinking and some anecdotes? Evidence would require gathering large, diverse groups of users, some of them new to computing, others experienced with Windows, giving them tasks to do in GNU/Linux, and observing what they go through and how long it takes for them to complete the tasks. You would also gather their impressions of how hard or easy it was to accomplish the tasks. I taught myself MS-DOS when I was three years old. Since I had no previous conceptions on what an OS should be like, I learned rather easily. Surely you must realize that you were a very unusual three-year-old. For one thing, you must have known how to read and spell, as well as how to use a keyboard. Most three-year-olds can't read and spell at all, or if at all, not well enough to use a text-based operating system like MS-DOS. And then, once you start it, what do you do with it? Most three-year-olds aren't interested in playing with commands at a command prompt.g They want to run Jumpstart Preschool or Reader Rabbit or Sesame Street. They want to do it the way my granddaughter does: start the computer; after Windows starts, put the CD into the CD-ROM drive; the program autostarts; click your way through it; click on whatever ends it when you're done--the voices tell you what to do. Want to run something else? Put that CD into the drive and repeat the above. Computers in 1985, which is probably about when you started, were a lot different than they are today, and so are operating systems. When I tried MacOS, a very user-friendly OS, I couldn't understand it, simply because it wasn't anything like what I had tried before. And how about after you had used Mac OS for an hour? It goes beyond first impressions to how long it takes a person to become a competent user. I kept an open mind, and now I find that I can't understand the logic (if there is any) in Windos, my previous OS of choice. Doesn't sound like the mind is too open with regard to Windows.g Did you ever feel you understood how Windows works? If so, what happened to change that? This seems contradictory to the advice to take each system as it stands, without making invidious comparisons to what you already know. When it comes to troubleshooting problems, often you will _have_ to use the command line. In Linux. Now. Hopefully not forever. Hopefully not in two years. Better yet, not in one year. In Windos, if something goes wrong, the user has no way of finding out what it is. This is because things are 100% graphical. I disagree. I think there are many ways of finding out what's wrong. You just have to learn how to do it--just like Linux! As a result, often the solution is to reinstall, and even this can't fix everything. A reinstall is seldom needed. The reason people use it so often is that they don't know what else to try. Users at this level wouldn't have a clue what to try in Linux, either. Also, new users are told by tech support of various computer manufacturers to use their recovery disk (which wipes everything and restores the system to what it was when they got it) because it's a lot less expensive (to the manufacturer) to get them back to square one than to try to figure out what may be wrong and simply fix that. Unfortunately, if the cause of the problem is a bad driver or a buggy program, the problem will be back as soon as they put it back on the system. If I may add a personal anecdote, I've been using Windows starting with 3.0 in 1991. In ten years, I've *never* had to reinstall any version of Windows because my system was messed up beyond my ability to figure it out. I also do not crash five times a day. I would not put up with frequent crashes. I'm not saying those who do have a lot of crashes are doing something wrong, just pointing out that crashes are not necessarily a part of the Windows experience. I am most certainly
Re: [newbie] Alternatives help like Win4Lin?
John wrote: VM is dearest by miles. Not sure of this one - seems to be similar in CPU demand to Windoze . I think they have a version called VMWare Personal or something like that. I saw it on their Web site. It is a lite version of the full VMWare that gives you, I think, just one virtual computer, whereas the expensive version lets you have a bunch of them. There are other differences, but for a single user it seemed to do the basics--let you run a real version of Windows without leaving Linux. I think the price was US $90 to $99. You do, of course, have to supply a copy of Windows if you want it to run under VMWare. --Judy Miner
Re: [newbie] Managing Zip, CD-ROM, and floppy drives
Civileme wrote: right click the ZIP Icon and select Eject or issue eject /dev/zip in a console. There is no Eject option if I right click on the Zip icon on the KDE desktop. Nor are there options for mount and unmount. I have not changed any icons that were installed by default. There is no eject/unmount option in Konqueror file manager, either. Is there a way to add such a thing? I also checked the Gnome desktop and there was no Zip drive icon, period. The only icons were for my Windows drives C, D, and E. Again--right click [the CD-ROM drive icon] and eject Alas, no CD-ROM icon on the desktop. No eject or unmount option in the file manager. It has to be done from a Run line or console. In general, my CD-ROM drive works by just pressing on the button. Refusal to open seems to be just an occasional thing and I haven't isolated the circumstances yet. though it has happened most often when I've been installing something from one of the two distribution CDs. I see others have also found no such icons on their desktop after a default installation of KDE. --Judy Miner
Re: [newbie] Managing Zip, CD-ROM, and floppy drives
My /etc/fstab file is quite similar to yours, Dennis. I modified this line: /mnt/zip /mnt/zip supermount fs=vfat,dev=/dev/zip 0 0 like this: /mnt/zip /mnt/zip supermount fs=vfat,user,dev=/dev/zip 0 0 and now I can mount and unmount as user. --Judy Miner
Re: [newbie] Managing Zip, CD-ROM, and floppy drives
Sridhar wrote: Have you tried KDE's own help? Certainly. Let me tell you about KDE's own help. There is no search for a keyword. So effectively, you have to page your way through the whole thing trying to find a section that *might* pertain to what you're looking for. If you click on search in Konqueror's left panel when you have KDE Help in the right panel, when you type in a keyword and click on Search nothing happens. If you then click on Update Index, you get a screen telling you you need another program called ht://dig. I clicked on the link to the Web site, figuring I'd download and install it so I could get keyword searches for KDE Help. Alas--the Web site was totally confusing and apparently you need to _compile_ this program if you want to use it. No thanks. I know that true Linuxians love the idea of compiling code, but regular people don't. It seems unrealistic to expect new, non-techie users, who are most likely the ones who will be looking for things in KDE Help, to compile programs in order to do a search in Online Help. I realize that a working keyword search is probably on the agenda for future releases, but for now, KDE Help is difficult to use unless you just want to read through it or are able to pinpoint exactly where the information you're looking for may reside and then click on the hypertext. I don't mean to pick, but I hope you do realise that giving yourself all the permissions I could just defeats the purpose of logging in as a user. You are effectively using the machine as root. I was following suggestions given here about expanding permissions for user when user and root are the same person. If that's still not good enough, so be it. I'll take my chances. The firewall is working and my ports are all stealthed and I go online as user, not root, so I hope my system is not a good target for trojans and worms. su is a good command to use at the console. I do use it. I always have a second desktop with a root console and a Super User file manager open. Then when I need to do something as root that doesn't require a root login, I just switch to that desktop and do the deed. It's tolerable. Remember that I am not familiar with the names of programs I might want to launch as root, so I have problems starting the program in a console unless I either know or can find the program's name in less than five minutes. Today I found lists and descriptions of KDE programs in the KDE Online Help (no thanks to keywordsg). I'll print out those screens and keep them around as a cheat sheet until I learn the ones I use the most. For the full graphical experience, use kdesu. You can even make icons using kdesu, so you will be asked for the root password when you click it. For an example on how this works, go to the Mandrake menu - Applications - File Tools - File Manager (Super User Mode). Look at its properties. Well, first I had to figure out how to see the properties of Super User File Manager. There is no icon I can right-click on to check properties and I had no idea what the program file was called. But what I did was right-click on the K on the bottom left, Panel Menu, Menu Editor (aka MenuDrake) and found the Super User File Manager in the list of Applications. That showed me that the command word is kdesu konqueror (no quotes). I had no idea that this kdesu stuff you and others are talking about meant you were suppposed to type kdesu before the name of the command. That's exactly the kind of information newbies need but don't get and is another thing for John to include in his online book. It would be clearer for non-techies if someone said in a Run line (Alt+F2 shortcut), type 'kdesu plus the name of the program'. Have you tried refreshing the file manager's view after changing discs, or even opening another file manager window to browse the new disc? This can sometimes work. Yes, I did all of that. What I've found out is that you do have to issue either a umount or eject command for /mnt/zip, and before you can see the contents of another disk, you have to do a mount /mnt/zip command. Then it'll read the disk. I have some suspicions about the supermount thing that's used for the Zip, floppy, and CD-ROM drives. I read on MandrakeForum.com that people are finding supermount to be unreliable and troublesome. Is there a way to set up a Zip drive so that simply inserting a disk will mount it automatically, even after the ejection of another disk? I enabled mount and unmount for user by editing /etc/fstab. For both Zip and CD-ROM issues, try the command eject /mnt/disc. Replace disc with what you want to eject. CD-ROMs generally seem to work by just pressing the drive button. The times I can't eject them with the button have been when I have been installing something from my two distribution CDs. Maybe this is related to supermount, too. I just don't know. Thanks for your help. I'm doing a lot better with this latest reinstallation and slowly but surely learning how to
Re: [newbie] Need reinstallation advice
Thank you very much for answering all my partitioning questions, Civileme. I have printed out your message so I can have it right in front of me when I get to work on this. You are a prince! --Judy Miner
Re: [newbie] Soundcard for Mandrake Linux.
Brian asked: I need some info about what sound card to use with Mandrake Linux. I imagine that it should be Soundblaster compatible, but other than that, I haven't got a clue as to what I could use. Any ideas? I have a SoundBlaster 16 PCI, which installed without a hitch and without my intervention and worked immediately and always. It's been around a long time and I still see them for sale, is inexpensive, does 128 midi voices with a software wavetable, and doesn't do fancy things like the SoundBlaster Live, so is less likely to generate problems. This isn't exactly a recommendation, just my own experience. I suggest avoiding ISA PnP sound cards. I originally installed Linux on a computer with a Siig SoundWave Pro ISA and had a terrible time getting it going. I finally got it functioning when I logged in as root, but it wouldn't work if I logged in as user. I'm sure I could have fixed that with some guidance, but I have since removed Linux from that computer, which is going to my grandchildren. Windows has no trouble with the Siig. Linux is much happier with the SoundBlaster 16 PCI. --Judy Miner
[newbie] Need reinstallation advice
Hello everyone-- Given my inability to get the firewall wizard up and my font problems, I've decided the easiest way to deal with them is to reinstall Mandrake 8 and got everything in its defaults before I start messing again. I'd like some advice on a few things. 1. I have a 30-gig IBM Deskstar IDE hard drive. There is a Windows primary partition of about 8 gigs, a FAT32 extended, and about 7-1/2 gigs are available for Linux (not partitioned by FDISK, currently occupied by Linux and its swap partition); the extended partition takes up the rest of the drive and contains two Windows logical drives. Except for the swap partition, all of Linux is on one ext2fs partition. Partition rules are that you can have a total of four partition entries, in my case, three primaries and one extended. Should I keep the same Linux arrangement I have now (everything on a Linux primary) or should I create either a /usr or a /home partition in the extended partition? I can easily move what's on my current Drive E and make a smaller drive E to give a Linux /home partition more room. Or I can move the little I have on Drive D and Drive E, wipe out the extended partition, make smaller primary partitions for Linux and its swap partition, and make a larger extended partition shared by Windows Drive E and Linux /home or Linux /usr? If I have Linux and Windows sharing the extended partition, can they use FAT32 for Windows and ext2fs or Reiserfs for Linux? Where does Linux like to put programs--in /usr or /home or somewhere else? I imagine that would have some influence on desirable partition sizes. I am the only user and will continue to be the only user. Nobody else has access to the computer; it's in a home so there's no chance of someone wandering over and doing anything to it. Network sharing is not relevant in this situation. Is it better to have a /usr partition or a /home partition? Or doesn't it matter for a single user? 2. Should I use Reiserfs with this dual-boot system, or should I stick with the tried-and-true ext2fs? 3. Is there any problem with /judy and /root having the same password? There doesn't seem to be within the context of the single-user system. But does it make any difference as far as Internet security goes? I would like a four-letter alphanumeric password. What about three-letter alphanumeric? The less I have to type the better. Internet safety is the only issue here. 4. I want to do as much setting up as possible from /home/judy. Will most programs let me install them as user? I'll be using kdesu and other tools I've learned about to make it easier for user to do root things. I'm going to let the font problem go for now and just work with what comes with the system, plus Arial, Times New Roman, and Trebuchet from Windows. Advice appreciated! --Judy Miner
Re: [newbie] Copying/Pasting in Konsole
Tim wrote: I have Klipper active, and a Ctrl-C on highlighted text in Konsole places the text on the Klipper clipboard; but Ctrl-V doesn't paste it in another application (i.e. KMail or Netscape Messenger), and I can't find anything in the Klipper help files to suggest that I'm an idiot... In addition to what others have suggested, make sure that the checkmark in Klipper is by the snippet you want to paste. I've found that what I copied to the clipboard is sometimes displaced by something else before I paste it, so if nothing happens when you click the middle mouse button, see where the checkmark is in Klipper and put it by what you want to paste. Then try the middle mouse button again. Usually works for me! --Judy Miner
Re: [newbie] Internet Security -J.Miner and Microsoft
Thank you for your very gracious message, Sridhar. Misunderstandings and misjudgments are a common problem in e-mail lists and forums, especially when we aren't very well acquainted. I think I was expecting too much too soon with my Linux installation. I wanted to get it up and fully useful within two weeks, which I stretched to three. I now realize it will take much longer to set up my desktop and become familiar with the system and the applications. I have other work to do, so I'll continue working with Linux as I can find time for it--and I really enjoy it, so finding time will be a high priority. I still get the feeling, however, that you are annoyed that GNU/Linux is not Windows. No, I'm not. I accept the system for what it is, I respect it, and I like it. I think most users of the graphical interface would agree that there is still work to be done. Things that Windows or Mac OS have gotten right ought not be rejected simply because of the source, however. Eventually Linux with a graphical interface will be so much nicer than Windows or the Mac because the user will have *choice* far beyond what can be done in the other OSes. You can set it up exactly the way you like and have so many more possibilities. Your special character (e.g. cedilla) problem is interesting. Microsoft tries its best to blur the distinction between elements in its OS, as Civileme has noted. In GNU/Linux, on the other hand, packages and elements are clear-cut and well-defined. Civileme appeared to be annoyed that many people blame the entire OS for little problems like this, It's a MAJOR problem, not a little problem. It is also not really a blurred distinction in Windows--or in the Mac OS. Windows uses the so-called Microsoft 1252 character set. This is essentially the Latin 1 character set with typographical characters inserted into the empty positions between 129 and 160 in the 256 available slots. *All* applications use the same character set, and all characters can be entered from the keyboard (with many languages supported). All TrueType fonts in the \Windows\Fonts directory are available to all applications for printing, with correct screen rasterization at all point sizes. All Type 1 fonts managed by Adobe Type Manager are available to all applications for printing and viewing. Character sets are consistent across applications. It is seamless and transparent to the user. You *never* have to install fonts into applications. The system supplies the fonts to the applications. Windows 2000 supports both Type 1 and TrueType natively, and Unicode is also supported, though the extent depends on the application. Unicode is still fairly new and applications have to be written to take advantage of it. Plus most fonts do not yet have a full Unicode set of glyphs and many never will. Mac OS operates similarly, with a consistent character set available to all applications with the same keystrokes. Lest you think I am viewing this problem through a Windows lens, let me quote from the Font HOTTO from linuxdoc.org (also installed with Mandrake 8 documentation): Installing fonts for WYSIWYG publishing on Linux is a relatively complex task... The main reason for the complexity is that the font printing system (ghostscript) is unrelated to the screen font system. In a way, Linux's left hand does not know what its right hand is doing. This problem is nontrivial to solve, beause it is possible that printer fonts and display fonts reside on different machines, so there is no guarantee that all fonts the XClient uses are printable. ...It seems that font management standards which address this issue would greatly simplify the installation of fonts into WYSIWYG publishing systems, because all applications could use a system-wide (as opposed to application-specific) configuration. Read the last sentence again. That's the point I was trying to make. Is the author of Font HOWTO a fifth columnist as some on this list thought I was?g I still cannot excuse your assertions that logging in as root is harmless. This has got to be the *worst* thing you can do. I've never made a general statement that logging in as root is harmless or ought to be a general practice. I have ALWAYS acknowledged the importance of the root/user distinction when multiple users are involved. What I have been trying to *find out* (because I do not KNOW) is whether the harmfulness really applies when the sole user of the system is also root. Leaving aside the question of being online as root, so far the only harmful thing anyone could suggest as a result of a single user working regularly as root is that not being forced to enter a root password would make single user less conscious of the consequences of an action. Frankly, this seems paternalistic to me--as if one says, you are so careless that unless you are forced to think about it, you'll do crazy things like delete files and directories willy-nilly. Besides, if it's MY system and I mess it up because I was
Re: [newbie] What can I get rid of in '/var' ?
Michael wrote: Another place to check is /tmp which is where all kinds of temporary files get dumped. Is it okay to get rid of everything in /tmp, or are some of those files needed or supposed to be there? I found stuff in there and I'd just as soon get rid of it, but I left it alone because I don't want to make a bad mistake. --Judy Miner
Re: [newbie] Internet Security -J.Miner and Microsoft
The idea that I am a Microsoft employee or a plant infiltrating this list gave me the best laugh I've had in a long time. Especially since I've done nothing else for the past three weeks but try to get a good, working Linux system in hopes that I will never again have to spend my not-abundant money on anything from Bill Gates' company. The only Microsoft software on my computers that I paid for is Windows itself. There is also no pirated Microsoft software. I have Microsoft Works on my laptop, but that's because the laptop came with it and it provides a spell checker used by other applications. I don't like Works and don't use it. I have no Office, no Word, no FrontPage, no Money, no Publisher. Oh yes--I do have Encarta. It was free after a rebate, so I figure Microsoft lost money on that one. Some of you think I'm negative about and critical of Linux. That's because you haven't heard my complaints about Microsoft and Windows.g As with just about everything of this nature on the Net, you don't post messages about stuff that's working well, you post about your problems. In fact, there is a lot I like about Linux and some things about which I'm wildly enthusiastic. I intend to stick with it for the duration. I also agree that it is getting friendlier all the time, and while it has a ways to go, it's headed in the right direction. I am also quite amused that anyone thinks I have some profound knowledge of networking. Just because I can use terms like NetBEUI, TCP/IP, and NetBIOS does not mean I understand anything about them. NetBEUI and TCP/IP are networking protocols. TCP/IP is what you use for the Internet but it can also be used for a LAN. NetBEUI is only for a small LAN; you can't use it for the Internet. I don't know what NetBIOS is, but I know it's not supposed to be enabled for a protocol that gets you on the Internet. For a NetBEUI home network, each workgroup has to have a name and each computer in the workgroup has to have a name. You have to enable file and printer sharing for drives and printers you want available over the network. That is the total of my knowledge of networking. I learned the little I know primarily from grc.com, which explains how to set up your protocols and bindings properly--by default, Windows makes a mess of this. I didn't use Microsoft's wizards to set up my two-computer network. Instead, I got good, easy instructions from some PC magazine's Web site. So the secret is out. I do not have any detailed knowledge of networking. When I say I don't understand the stuff I read about Linux networking, I really don't! Not a clue. I do not know how to make a system safe, but if someone gives me good directions, I can follow them. I am totally puzzled by this post of Roman's: I have been following Judith Miner's email posts since 1996 through the her Wordstar postings on another news group. It appears that she is not new to the Microsoft Windows OS. This goes back as far as Windows 3.11 and DOS. I don't know if she is really who she says she is... but she has been pi**ssing off at lot of people over the years. She is well known through other newsgroups. I'm well known through other newsgroups??? I don't recall ever posting anything to newsgroups. In fact, I haven't read Usenet newsgroups in years. The only newsgroups I've read in the past two years have been on the Adobe and Corel sites, and I just lurked, I didn't post. I am an active member of the WordStar users' support e-mail list. If Roman is a member, I don't recall seeing any messages he has posted. The only people on that list that I've p*ssed off are two Microsoft boosters. One of them has actually waited in line outside a store waiting for the next release of Windows and the other is constantly lauding the wonders of Microsoft Word--this on a WordStar list. So two makes a lot of people? I have received numerous personal e-mails of thanks from WordStar List members whose problems I was able to solve, and have even received e-mails from people who found the answer to their questions in the List archives. In the spirit of volunteerism, I have written a book called WordStar for Windows How-To, which can be downloaded for no charge from the Web sites of the WordStar group and of some of our members. So it comes as news to me that I'm well known through other newsgroups. Of course I'm not new to the Microsoft OS. I go back to DOS 3-something in 1987. I identified myself as an experienced and proficient Windows user when I first posted on this List. Of course, someone had to come up with a crack that proficient Windows users usually weren't. All I can tell you is that I run a lot of demanding programs in the areas of writing, page design and layout, and graphics, as well as general office stuff, I have never had a virus or worm, and I've never had to reinstall Windows because it got messed up beyond salvaging. I'm not trying to dump Windows because I have stability or security problems with it, but because I don't
Re: [newbie] A note about user-friendliness
civileme wrote: If people would take notes of a session they had with software manager, we would be able to see where their intuition leads them (we are spoiled by being close to its design and implementation Here's something that happened to me yesterday with Software Manager. I was downloading a rpm file from a mirror site when my modem lost the connection (a not uncommon situation in our rural area). The Software Manager continued to spin the indicator despite the fact that nothing was happenning. I had the modem reconnect, hoping the download would resume where it was before the connection was lost. Well, nothing happened. No more downloading started. After five minutes I gave up and had the modem hang up (we have to pay for local phone calls by the minute). Software Manager continued to spin the rpminstall (whatever it's called). I couldn't click on menus, stop rpminstall, or exit Software Manager. I finally had to click on Xkill and then the Software Manager window. It would be nice to at least know what is going on and to have a way to cancel the download if the connection drops, and then to close down Software Manager. --Judy Miner
Re: [newbie] Internet Security
Many thanks for this very helpful message, Tom. I typed tinyfirewall (no quotes) at the console prompt and got a message everything already installed followed by four lines complaining about Missing charset in Fontset creation. It also mentioned line 70 of /usr/lib/libDrakX/my_gtk.pm. I looked at that line in the my_gtk.pm file. I will post these error messages on this list when I have a chance to run Linux again. We have been having frequent thunderstorms for the past three days and my Linux computer is turned off and unplugged. The messages are too long for me to reproduce them without making a mistake. I need to copy and paste. This may explain why the firewall setup in DrakConf won't run. Maybe it can't find the font it needs to display the screens. I have no idea how this may have happened because I didn't do anything related to that font, but maybe I can get it fixed up with a little help and then can set up my firewall. --Judy Miner - Original Message - From: Tom Brinkman [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: July 08, 2001 11:30 AM Subject: Re: [newbie] Internet Security On Saturday 07 July 2001 09:52 pm, Judith Miner wrote: [snip] You have to have open ports to run your system and get on the Net. What you don't want is for those ports to be seen or accessible by others. ( and that about sums up my security expertise ;) I don't know what else to suggest. You're gonna have to get DrakConf - Security - Firewalling functioning to setup a firewall. [snip] -- Tom Brinkman [EMAIL PROTECTED] Galveston Bay
Re: [newbie] PPP Dialler
Chris wrote: Does there seem to be a problem with the ppp dialler set-up running gnome 1.4 under Mandrake 8. I have previously installed Mandrake 8 with the KDE desktop option and had set-up the dialler up in a matter of minutes. Has anybody else had a problem in this area or suggestions as to how to get it up and running, I have also been unable to get the Gnome dialer to work. The Kppp dialer works fine and set up with no problems. The last time I tried it, the Gnome dialer did dial but immediately dropped the connection. This has happened every time I've tried it. On another computer I no longer use on which I had Linux installed briefly, the Gnome dialer wouldn't work at all, but Kppp dialer did. I don't know anything about the underlying problem. My modem is a 56K hardware-based external connected to com 2. The other computer had an ISA plug and play real modem, not a Winmodem. --Judy Miner
Re: [newbie] Font Questions
Jamie wrote: This might sound a bit stupid but have you read through the how-to's? The should be a load installed on your system under /usr/doc/how-to/, and im sure i saw one about extended charecters on your keyboard. Yes, I've looked. I printed out the entire Font How-To, read the DeUglification How-To, and searched over the Internet, on MandrakeForum, and looked through the indexes of about 20 Linux books in Barnes and Noble. The only book that had *anything* about extended character sets was Peter Norton's, and what it had wasn't helpful. Also, given that there are character maps for both Gnome and KDE, you would expect that if you could select an extended character from the keyboard, you'd see the keyboard selector keys somewhere on the character map as you do with Character Map in Windows. But there are no keyboard equivalents in the Gnome and K character maps. You have to highlight the desired character, copy it to the clipboard, and paste into your application. This is wildly impractical. Even worse, only the characters in Latin1 (ISO-8859-1) are shown in the character maps, so you CAN'T copy and paste such basic characters is a true apostrophe, typographic opening and closing quotation marks, em and en dashes, bullets, and true fractions for 1/4 and 3/4 into your application. If you have to copy and paste, obviously you can't use a character that doesn't appear in the character map. im sure i saw one about extended charecters on your keyboard. Sorry, i cant remember the name of the document. If by any chance you find it, I would be most grateful if you'd post a message with its name and location. --Judy Miner
Re: [newbie] Use of Linux
Thank you, Michael, both for your information and for demonstrating so clearly my contention that Linux partisans in general *cannot* see issues from the perspective of the SOHO/home user.g The reason I speak up on this is that like it or not, Windows users ARE looking at Linux as an alternative. My impression is that many Linux advocates would like nothing better than to see Microsoft taken down a few notches and to see an end to the OS monopoly inflicted by Microsoft. There's not a snowball's chance in hell of this worthy goal happening, however, unless Linux develops a friendlier face that acknowledges the situation of single users and people with truly small networks. By that I mean a network of two or three computers, probably in a home, with one to four family members as users. You said: I administered a small lan with 35 workstations Ahem. 35 workstations is not really a small LAN. It is compared with 5000 workstations, but when I talk small LAN, I mean something like what I have: two computers joined by crossover cable. It's glorious--I can manage and use files on either computer and can use the LaserJet and the good color printer on the home office computer from the hall computer, and the crummy inkjet attached to the hall computer from the home office computer. The only people who would or could use one of these computers are my husband or I. He rarely uses the computer and would certainly not be downloading programs, installing anything, or messing with the system. That leaves one person--me--as root and user. Shares are irrelevant in this situation. So are permissions. And so is this kind of business: With linux, there is more control over who can actually see the shares--you have options to limit by IP (such that only specific computers on the network can even see the shares), by users (such that only specific users on the linux server can see the shares), by permission (such that only certain users or groups of users can edit the files, and other users or groups have read only privilege), or by a combination of the above (such that only certain users from certain computers can see the shares). I agree that all of this is great on a multiuser system, even one with, say, 10 users such as a smallish business, but on a two- or three-computer, one- or two-user home network, it's irrelevant and more of a bother than a feature. This also leaves out the security risks of sharing an entire hard drive to begin with, especially under windows. You are much better off only sharing directories on the drive, then the whole thing (with the wrong permissions, someone could delete the entire Windows or winnt directory, which would leave the computer unuseable and almost certainly require either a re-install, or recopying the hard drive image back to the PC.) These are all good points unless the one sharing the hard drive is ME. Who is going to delete the entire Windows directory? Me?? Well, as root I can do that anyway! So as a general statement, You are much better off only sharing directories on the drive applies only in some small LAN situations. It most likely does not apply to home situations where one or two mature, responsible, computer-literate adults share computers on a network. Anyway, SOHO and home computers should be backed up regularly, regardless of what the networking situation is. Could you stand to lose it? Do you want to start from scratch? If the answer is no, you must have a backup strategy and DO IT. It is a lot easier to keep the thing backed up than to fool with permissions, shares, and passwords day in and day out--again, in the two-user situation. You incorrectly state that with TCP / IP file and printer sharing, your hard drive can be viewed by the outside world. Are you sure that's incorrect? I was under the impression that if you had file sharing enabled under TCP/IP and had a cable modem, you were essentially on a LAN with everyone else on your cable line. It would seem that if they could access your machine, they could indeed share files with it. I am obviously no expert on networking, especially TCP/IP networking. The only LAN networking I have experience with is NetBEUI on a small two- or three-computer network, entirely self-contained in a home. I use TCP/IP only for Dial-Up Networking and it is not bound to any components and NetBios is not enabled. While this may seem to be a joke network to some Linuxies, it is exactly what we want and works perfectly for us. I dare say this is what a large number of two-computer households want in a network. We appreciate the value of heavy-duty Linux networking where it is needed, but in our situation it is overkill many times over. There are problems with NetBEUI, especially so for larger networks, but also applicable for smaller networks in that it creates a lot of network traffic. NetBEUI was never intended for large networks. In fact, I think there is a rather small limit on the number of computers that can
Re: [newbie] Uninstall
Lucas, you can remove Linux from your computer right from within Linux. It's easy. I did it last weekend on a computer that is going to my young grandchildren. First, make sure you have a boot disk for Windows and test it before you do anything. Then load Linus and launch DiskDrake (you can do this from a console as root or super user). On the graphic that comes up, you click on the partitions you want to get rid of, then tell it to remove or delete them. (I'm going from memory.) It'll give you warnings and warn of dire consequences. Be absolutely sure that you're not deleting your Windows partition. Then let DiskDrake do its thing. Put your Windows boot disk in drive A and exit to reboot. After the computer boots from Drive A, at a DOS prompt run FDISK /MBR if you use LILO or GRUB. That will get rid of the Linux boot manager. Remove the floppy and reboot. You will have to FDISK and FORMAT your now-empty second drive. Note that I don't know how this works with Windows 2000. I *think* FDISK /MBR will work for anything, but I could be wrong and it might disable the boot manager for W2K/Win 98. So you should look into that before you do this. FDISK /MBR gets rid of LILO and GRUB, if that's what you use. If you use something else, you can continue using it. I assume you have boot disks that can get you into your operating systems in case anything goes wrong. FDISK will not delete a non-DOS partition. --Judy Miner
Re: [newbie] Use of Linux
Dave wrote: All I have ever dealt with are network of less than 100 nodes, and several were less than 10. That qualifies for small, yes? No! (I'm rolling on the floor, laughing.) I'm talking about a two- or three-computer home network, the very sort of thing that millions (?) of home users have. Have you Linuxies ever heard of *HOME USERS*? vbg That's nice in theory, but I've never seen such a setup. Well, that's exactly what Steve Gibson advises and describes in great detail at grc.com, so since that site is well-known by non-clueless Windows users, I suspect there are plenty of home networks that are set up exactly that way. Also, on our CompuServe Windows Support Forum and other related forums, which have pretty heavy traffic and are open to non-members through Web browsers, that's exactly what is recommended for SOHO/home networks. I think you just haven't been looking in the right places.g Oh yes--that's how my two-computer network has been set up for a year and a half, which is how long I've had a network. Most *small* networks are set up in one of two ways: all protocols are installed and running (the Microsoft default -- NetBEUI, IPX/SPX, and TCP/IP all at once) Yes. They should send Bill Gates to jail for that. or else someone has gone and removed everything except TCP/IP, so that is the only protocol being used. Must have been a network administrator.g A regular user wouldn't have any idea what to remove. Usually some so-called tech at a store might tell them to use TCP/IP. These folks are very trusting of store personnel. If I see all protocols in use, I will cut out all but TCP/IP if I can, because running multiple protocols is extremely inefficient on a PC, and it hurts overall network performance. Also, NetBEUI is a very chatty protocol, in that hosts are constantly announcing themselves to the network, and so even on a small network, performance can suffer because of heavy network traffic. Don't get out much to home networks, do you? There is no network performance to hurt in a home network. What hurts performance is how fast your network card and hub are. Not much, though. Even 10 Base T is plenty fast for most home network use. Mine is 10/100 Base T and I can scarcely tell the difference between copying files on the local hard drive and copying them across the network. You don't get heavy network traffic on a two- or three-computer home network. Most of the time, there isn't any traffic at all. You will be amazed, probably depressed, at the number of open hosts you find. My Windows computer has no open ports. Would the same were true of my Linux computer. I'm trying to fix that, but being neither a network genius nor competent in Linux, I am having quite a struggle. Linux isn't helping me out. Again, I have never seen Windows Scriopting Host disabled, *except* on the networks I have administered myself. Most people just don't know about this kind of stuff, even though it is extremely easy to do. It's been disabled on my computers for some years now. Again, on the CompuServe forums I participate in, we've told people numerous times how to do this. I agree, most people don't know about this, but that's because they aren't interested in the workings of their system, or they don't realize the hazards of WSH, or they don't know where or what to ask. Since WSH is of no use to home users (who are also unlikely to know what WSH does or that they don't need it or even that it exists), Microsoft *should* have WSH disabled by default and leave it up to the user to decide whether to enable it. I did notice that Win 98SE makes WSH optional on a custom install, which is the only kind I ever do. I suspect it's probably enabled in a typical install. Shame on them! And even their documentation stinks -- their own help files only show you enough to set up a basic network running all three protocols! It takes outside reading and/or experience to learn the right way of doing things. I never looked at their help files when I was setting up the network. Gibson's site at grc.com is the place to go for information about setting up the network protocols safely--detailed yet understandable, and step by step. --Judy Miner
Re: [newbie] Use of Linux
Bless you, Tazmun! Someone else who understands what I'm talking about! I see a major difference in the mindset here. Judith speaks of small as in stand alone or 2 or 3 computers as is my own home network Precisely. The issues are not the same as they are in even a small office network. I wasn't even talking about a Linux home network. At this point, I don't intend to link my two computers over Linux. I'll keep my Windows network, but since there is no Linux on my laptop and probably never will be, there isn't much point to trying to set up a two-computer Linux network. Maybe I'll try it for the fun of it if I ever have too much time on my hands.g But it just occurred to me that there needs to be a simpler way to set up home networks in Linux--something along the lines of NetBEUI. That is, if Linux is to make real inroads on the home desktop. I sense a big split among Linux users (I hate terms like Linux communityg) between those who want the OS to become friendly enough to lure disgruntled SOHO/home users from Windows and those who want prospective users to do it their way or the highway. The reality is that Linux will never penetrate the SOHO/home market unless it bgecomes easier to manage and more accommodating to the needs and preferences of non-technical users. There is no reason a powerful OS can't have a friendly face. Thanks again for your comments. --Judy Miner
Re: [newbie] Internet Security
Thanks for your suggestions, Dennis. Judy, a much better way to do this is to bring up a su console and at the prompt do cd /usr/sbin then at the prompt type in InteractiveBastille without the quotes and with the caps as shown. A setup gui will start with some pretty good explanation of what is being done and why. I've tried that (tried it again a few minutes ago, in fact) and I CANNOT comprehend the questions and the explanations. I can't answer if I don't understand what Bastille proposes. I don't know what they are talking about, most of the time. I do not have any files explaining Bastille on my computer. The Security and Firewall sections of DrakConf do nothing. Something seems to be amiss, but I can't discover what it is or what to do about it. InteractiveBastille is *not* a tool for the nontechnical person. I'm lost at the first screen! It tells me something about a script for firewalling and hints I'll have to install it myself. Ha! What? Where? How? I've read the text file that is what appears on screen and it gets worse and worse as it goes on. I could go into a little more detail than BastilleChooser does, but InteractiveBastille is a lost cause. --Judy Miner
Re: [newbie] Internet Security
Thanks for trying to help, Tom. You either have an incomplete installation, or you don't have the necessary services running (eg, iptables, check DrakConf). I have iptables and everything for Bastille listed as installed in Software Manager. I uninstalled iptables and reinstalled it, to make sure I had all the necessary dependencies. Made no difference. DrakConf shows iptables as stopped and there is no way I can get it running. I have it selected to run at boot, like the other services. Makes no difference. iptables is always listed as stopped. If I click on start, nothing happens. Also go thru the docs in file:/usr/share/doc/mandrake/en/user.html/bastille.html and you'll see screenshots of what you should be seeing. That file is not on my computer. I believe it is part of mandrake-doc, which I have tried to install numerous times and it WILL NOT install. I always get the informative error message Installation failed. Nothing else. Um, WHY did it fail? C'mon, Linux, help me out here! I copied the file from the CD to my hard drive; sometimes that helps. Not this time, though. So where can I try to get another copy of this file? I am left with BastilleChooser because I absolutely do not understand the questions InteractiveBastille asks. I can't answer the questions if I have no clue what they're asking. medium security has little or nothing to do with being able to get thru a thoro port scan with all ports invisible/filtered. What does medium security have to do with, then? I'd think making ports invisible is pretty universal to security. If it's just internal network stuff, I may as well not bother with it because nobody else has access to my computer. My only concern is Internet security. If Bastille won't close my ports, what will? Any ideas what I can try next? --Judy Miner
Re: [newbie] Font Questions
Civileme wrote: Well, you need an international keyboard. Go to Mandrake Control Center--Hàrdwárë--Keyboard Sélèct U S International Close Mandrake Contröl Center. Now you will find some keys appear to be dead. ` ' for example. They must be typed twice. If you type them once, then they combine with the ñéxt çharacter you type. Thank you for answering. But-- That's it That's all Linux offers me? What about characters that aren't on the keyboard at all, such as a cedille? What about true apostrophes, true quotation marks, bullets, em dashes, en dashes, fractions? These are such basic necessities that I don't understand how a modern operating system could leave them unavailable to users. --Judy Miner
[newbie] Font Questions
I have searched all the font How-To's and online sites I could find and cannot find the answer to this question. Can anyone help? How do you enter nonkeyboard characters into something like KWord? By nonkeyboard characters, I mean accented letters, fractions, em dashes, bullets. true typographic apostrophes and quotation marks, opening single quotation marks, and so forth. In Windows you hold down Alt and type the character code number and you see the character on screen and in your printed output. What do you do in X, KDE, and Gnome? I know about the character maps for KDE and Gnome, but click and copy is a completely impractical way to deal with extended characters. Surely there must be ways to type extended characters on the keyboard. I think it's passing strange that NOWHERE does any documentation mention this. Moreover, I looked through the entire Linux book section at Barnes and Noble and not one book had such a thing indexed. Even the 1600-page monsters had exhaustive sections on networks, consoles, Emacs, kernel building, yada-yada, but NOTHING WHATEVER on how to get a damn extended character typed!! Related question: how do you get a character set other than ISO-8859-1? That set is useless for document creation because it does not include essential typographic characters such as true quotation marks and true apostrophes. Without these characters, letters, reports, and other documents look amateurish and ugly. Surely there must be some way to get a proper character set in Linux. I do have my own Type 1 fonts and some TrueTypes installed and they are showing up--except not yet in StarOffice or WordPerfect. I am also in process of trying to dump the fonts that came with the system that I don't want. I have TrueTypes for screen display, but I prefer to use Type 1 for creating and printing documents. StarOffice includes directions for getting more fonts into it. The downloadable version of WordPerfect 8 apparently does not include the font installer utility, so you seem to be limited to the fonts that come with the program. If that is the case, I'll remove it from my system. Worthless! Answers to my questions most gratefully received! --Judy Miner
Re: [newbie] Use of Linux
Jose wrote: I wish that Apple would make a version of their software for the intel platform. Then the disappointed Windows users could go that way rather than try their hands on Linux. In other words, you wish we'd go away. Sorry--I've used a Mac and I don't care for the Mac. It insulates the system's underpinnings from the user too much for my taste. I find the Mac to be keyboard-unfriendly and too mouse-oriented. I also have no interest in buying thousands of dollars worth of software to replace what I have now. Steve Jobs is as obnoxious as Bill Gates. Macs are even more proprietary than Windows. I am not a disappointed Windows user, just someone who has had enough of Microsoft's arrogance. --Judy Miner
Re: [newbie] Use of Linux
civileme wrote: at install time, there is an option to give root no password. Then you can function as user, but if you need super-user, you just ask for the program and you don't get asked for the password. I don't understand this. If root has no password, is there any protection with regard to the Internet, or does the password protect only on one's own computer anyway, in which case the lack of a root password would not be a problem? In other words, does the fact that root has a password have anything to do with Internet security? Can root change from password to no password *after* installation? I wouldn't want to install again if I can avoid it. This would still force me as user to run the superuser file manager and superuser terminal, would it not? That's one of the annoying things--opening a different file manager because the one I'm using doesn't show the whole system, so I have to launch another file manager as super user just to see all the files and directories on MY OWN system!! My impression is that having no password for root would not change this situation, but this is obviously a guess on my part. This works well under 3 conditions: 1. You are really the only user. In my case, yes. The only other person in the house is my husband, who rarely uses the computer and most certainly wouldn't use the Linux side of it.g Visiting grandchildren are not allowed to use the computer, nor is anyone else. 2. You are the only user allowed to ssh into the machine What is ssh? Since I'm the only user, I must be the only one allowed to ssh into the machine, but I have no idea what that means--secure something, I'd guess. 3. You configure Webmin to run from the local loopback only. What is Webmin? What is a local loopback? How do I configure Webmin? It is not perfect, but relaxation beyond that lets in the sort of nonsense you see in Windows all the time. Not on my computers! --Judy Miner
Re: [newbie] Use of Linux
Michael wrote: It is possible to have a user that has root-like privileges -- Try going to your user manager of choice and changing the uid / gid (user and group ids) to 0. If you do so, the account will become a root user. What would be the advantages of doing that rather than simply logging in as root myself? Remember, I'm the only user. I assume the root-like user could make changes like root could. Another option is to make the user a part of the wheel group, which will give you at least some root capabilities as a user. Same questions. What is the point or advantage compared with my simply logging in as root for the whole session? I'm not arguing or disagreeing, just trying to understand the difference between being a user with root privileges and being root. Why would I need to give *myself* root privileges? I already have them. --Judy Miner
Re: [newbie] Acrobat
Kevin wrote: Has anybody had any luck installing adobe acrobat reader on Mandrake yet? Yes, I put it on Mandrake 8 and it's working fine. There is a Readme file you get when you untar the download and it has specific information about installing in Linux. Check the Readme to make sure you have the required files on your Linux installation. --Judy Miner
Re: [newbie] Problem in installing Mandrake Linux
Shashi wrote: So my problem is how do I install to have both Linux and Windows working on my system? What is the problem I am having? I can't answer that. However, I can tell you what I did to get a perfectly functioning dual boot between Windows 98SE and Mandrake 8. It took me four tries, by the way, because I wasn't sure what I was doing in setting up this dual boot and if I didn't like the results of my experiments, I just blew away Linux and started over until I got what I wanted. Pre-Linux, I had 98SE in an 8 gig primary and 22 gig extended partition, both of them FAT32, on a 30 gig IBM Desktar 7200 rpm hard drive. I wanted to have Windows totally ignorant of Linux's existence and have no Linux files showing in Windows Explorer. Above all, I didn't want my Windows installation to be damaged in any way. First I moved the less than 2 gigs of stuff on my Drive D and Drive E onto Drive C in the primary partition. I created directories on Drive C called MovedFromD and MovedFromE to hold the stuff (which I later moved back after I recreated the drives). After I got everything onto my 8 gig C, I ran a full backup that I burned onto CD-R. After D and E were empty, I used FDISK to delete the extended partition. Then I used FDISK to create a FAT32 extended partition that left 7.5 gigs of the drive empty. I would be recreating logical drives D and E in the extended partition and putting Linux in the 7.5 gigs that were simply empty, not part of a partition. Now I installed Mandrake 8 from the CDs. When I got to the disk partitioning part of the installation, I did *not* let it do it automatically. Instead, I created my own partitions. I first set up a Linux swap partition of 256 megs. Then I created one ext2fs partition for everything else from all the remaining disk space. I finished the installation and set up LILO for my boot manager, with a default boot into Windows and five seconds to decide. This has worked extremely well. Windows doesn't see Linux, Linux automatically mounted my Windows drives C, D,and E. I think I'm going to unmount Drive C because I don't like to have my primary Windows drive exposed in any way. I never use any of the data on my Windows drives in Linux. When I install Wine, though, I may want Linux to see Windows. I'll cross that bridge when I come to it. A couple of comments: you now have two partitions on your drive--a primary and an extended. Strictly, your drive letters after C aren't partitions, but volumes (logical drives) in the extended partition. FDISK destroys everything on a partition, so if you let FDISK loose on your extended partition, you'll lose everything but Drive C, which is a primary. I don't know why you have all your drives on FAT16. You are limited to 2 gigs per drive under FAT16, which gets to be a pain. You can't move everything to Drive C the way I did unless you have the space. If you want to resize a partition without losing data, you would need to convert your C to FAT32 and use a tool like Partition Magic. Or you could move the stuff on D, E, etc., to CD-R or Zip disks or tape or a network drive. Then you can delete the extended partition and make a new extended that leaves enough space for Linux. Be extremely careful with FDISK and the Linux partitioning tool to leave your primary Drive C absolutely untouched. You DON'T want to take a chance of destroying it, so double check before you do any step at all that involves partitioning or formatting. Well, if you don't mind reinstalling Windows or you're completely confident of your backups, you can be more daring.g But I absolutely did not want to reinstall Windows and my vast number of programs, most of them patched, updated, and customized. I would have preferred having another partition for /usr, rather than having all of Linux on one partition (plus the swap partition). However, I couldn't remember the rules for numbers of partitions and I didn't feel like looking them up. I do know that you can have just one extended partition and there is a limit of four primary partitions, one of which can be active. What I couldn't remember was whether that was four primaries plus an extended, or a total of four (one extended plus three primaries). Partition information from FDISK shows that I have one primary (Drive C), one extended divided into logical D and E, and two non-DOS primaries (Linux swap and Linux). By default, the Windows primary is the active primary. I expect that LILO switches the primary to the Linux partition when I boot into Linux. If you have Linux use an extended partition, it will use that Lin4Win thing to carve out a Linux image on your Windows extended partition, which you'll see in Windows Explorer. Why LILO gives DOS option for booting instead of WINDOWS? Can I consider DOS option same as WINDOWS option? I don't know. LILO calls it Windows on my system, not DOS. By the way, you can boot into Windows Safe Mode by highlighting the word Windows in LILO and holding down Shift and
Re: [newbie] Star office problem
Roman wrote: if you find some sort of workaround, please let me know what steps you took to import them [Windows fonts] into your Linux box. I did this once, to my sorrow (will explain later). This Drakfont option assumes you have Windows on your hard drive and Linux can see it. When you start Drakfont and click on the Add Windows fonts button or whatever it's called, it finds your Windows fonts and installs them in XWindows. The names will now appear in the fonts list. There was a bug in the version of Drakfont that came with Mandrake 8; an update is supposed to fix this. Now--why I regretted it: There are a number of ways to get fonts into XWindows and KDE, etc. If more than one gets involved, you wind up with multiple copies and listings of the same font. Drakfont is very limited. It is not the font tool of choice, in my opinion. Also, I used it before I got the updated version and there was something weird about the way it brought the fonts into Linux. If you don't have Windows on your drive where Linux lives, you can still get your Windows TrueTypes into Linux. Just copy the *.ttf files from Windows to a floppy or Zip disk or CD. Then if you want to use Drakfont, click on the Add button and tell it where to look for that media in the screen that comes up. It'll give you a list of fonts in that location (floppy, Zip, whatever). Pick the ones you want (there's a Select All option) and OK. Now those TrueTypes will be added to your Linux installation. You can use this method even if you do have Windows on the same drive. It gives you a little more control. You can also create a directory for fonts you want to add, copy the fonts to that directory, and then run Drakfont as above, pointing it to the newly created directory when you click on Add fonts. I'm writing from memory and I haven't been at this very long, so please ask if my directions don't match up with what you see. --Judy Miner
Re: [newbie] CDwriting questions
s wrote: I have some questions about this cd writing thing. (Relatively new to this). I've done it only in Windows, so I'm not sure how my answers apply to Linux. 1. With a cdrw, is it necessary to blank it before rewriting over it? (I seem to have to). Yes. If you're using regular CD creator software on a CD-RW disk, you select Erase CD-RW from a menu somewhere if you want to use the disk again. This is not the same as packet writing (will talk about that later). 2. What is fixating? I haven't heard it called that, but I'm guessing that this means telling the software to close the disk. When you do multisession CD burning, you can keep adding stuff until the CD-R or CD-RW is full. Some CD-ROM drives won't see a multisession CD unless you close the disk when you're finished writing. Once it's closed the vast majority of plain CD-ROM drives will be able to see and use the data on the disk. 3. What is multisession? (I kinda think this mean different formats on the same cd). It means you burn in several sessions, adding files until the disk is full. Some other ways are Disk at Once and Track at Once, with no possibility of adding more files later. Once you burn in one session, you can't burn again unless you use Multisession. 4. How does one use a cdrw just like say a floppy or zip? (Where one can add a few files today, and a few more tomorrow, etc.) You can add a few files today, a few more tomorrow, by doing a multisession burn. However, if you're using the CD-RW disk as a huge floppy, you can copy, move, and delete files the same as you would with any drive. You don't need to use a burning program when you copy, move, or delete files, just regular file managers. You can drag and drop files onto the CD-RW drive. In order to do this, you have to format the disk for packet writing. You need a special program to do this, such as Direct CD or abCD in Windows. It formats the CD-RW for packet writing and once the CD-RW disk is formatted, you can use it like a giant floppy. The down side is that formatting for packet writing eats up about 90 megs of the 650 on a CD disk. Another down side is that it takes a long time to format a CD-RW disk for packet writing (though formatting once is enough, I believe). The other down side is that packet writing software tends to be troublesome in Windows. It may not work consistently, or the software may cause large or subtle problems on your system. For this reason, a lot of us avoid packet writing. Instead, I'd just burn CD-RW disks with regular disk-burning software and when the disk is full, erase it if I wanted to use it again. Or I use CD-R disks, which are so cheap I just throw them away if I don't want them any more. I usually get them on sale, free after a rebate. One more thing: quite a few CD-ROM drives can't see a CD-RW disk that has been formatted for packet writing. Anything older than 24x probably won't be able to read the disk at all. More recent drives may be able to read it if the operating system supports packet writing or you have appropriate software installed. How all this applies to Linux I have no idea. --Judy Miner
[newbie] Internet Security
First of all, thanks to everyone who shared their opinions on working as root. I've printed out a bunch of messages and will be digesting them as time allows. For those who wondered why I need to be root so often, it's because I'm still very much involved in getting the system set up, installing programs, etc., and it seems I have to be root in order to do a lot of what needs to be done. Once the system is complete and has a chance to settle, I can handle working as user. But for now, it is very inconvenient. My priorities now are first, to firm up my Internet security; second, to get my Type 1 fonts working and available to applications; third, to figure out what's going on with the printers. Today I worked on Internet security. I tried some of the things suggested and frankly, I don't have a clue. I don't understand the directions, I can't find some of the things suggested, I can't deal with scripts, I don't have six months to take a course.g I read the How To's on network security and firewalls and they descended into geekspeak much too fast and far too deeply and I was lost. Remember, I'm your test case--the Windows user who wants to say good-bye to Microsoft but does not want to and will not become a command line/console sort of gal. Mandrake 8 claims to have me in mind.g Since I was stumped by the console approach, here's what I did in desperation to get my ports closed on the Internet. I ran draksec as root from a command line and when it came up, I set my security to Medium. I also ran BastilleChooser and picked the Medium level, no server option. Then I went on the Web and back to grc.com and sdesign.com to test my ports. At grc.com all my ports were closed, which was an improvement from when I tested before and my SMTP port was reported open. I turned off some startup process or whatever it's called that had something to do with mail transport. So okay, some progress. At sdesign.com I had fewer ports open than I did before, but I'm still seeing open ports at 631 (tcp) and 6000 (tcp X11). I got the same results whether I went online as root or as user. How can I get those ports closed? Clear directions much appreciated! If you tell me exactly where to look and what to edit, I can do it, but I can't figure it out on my own. I tried to run the interactive Bastille but I didn't understand the options and the explanations were much too sketchy. I don't like to make decisions like that when I don't understand what I'm doing. So I ran BastilleChooser instead and figure it's better than nothing. Why isn't Bastille on medium security closing all my ports? Thanks very much for any help you can give. --Judy Miner
Re: [newbie] curious ....
Sridhar wrote: I noticed that you said in an earlier post that you had trouble importing your fonts. Have you tried using DrakFont (part of the Mandrake Control Centre)? Of course. It's a very limited tool, but it did make some TrueType fonts available to the system and some of the programs are using them for display. They do look better than the dreadful defaults used otherwise. But it's not enough for printing or serious work. You don't get an acceptable character set, only ISO 8859 that does not include true typographic apostrophes, quotation marks, and other important typographic characters. KFontInst should do what I need to do with both Type 1 and TrueType fonts and I'll be able to select a proper character set, but I'm still puzzling out how to do the preliminaries as described in the KFontInst manual. Do you know how to get rid of all those ugly fonts that are listed in DrakFont? I tried highlighting them and telling DrakFont to remove them, but it wouldn't. Didn't tell me why, either. I would keep a Helvetica, a Times, and a Courier from the screen fonts listed and would like to dump the rest. I have added several TrueTypes for screen display. --Judy Miner
Re: [newbie] Use of Linux
Since there is so many risks of constantly using a root account, how in the world are you supposed to get work done without being logged in as root?? I am a new user and am looking for a desktop alternative to Windows. I have no interest in consoles, command lines, writing scripts, compiling kernels, etc. I just want a solid system supporting a complete, useful, and reasonably intuitive GUI that lets me do what I need to do and want to do. I am the sole user of my home/home office computer. My husband on rare occasions might write an e-mail on the Windows side of the computer, but he would have to be hog-tied to get him into the Mandrake 8 side. After getting mightily annoyed at having to run su in a console or run Super User file managers or give my root password time after time in order to run Mandrake Control Center or other root-only utilities, I now log in all the time as root. Before the geekoids on the list warn me of my impending eternal damnation,g let me explain my reasoning: I am the sole user. I am thus both root and judy (the only user). If I want to do something that will affect the all-important system files, I'm going to do it whether I'm logged in as user or root. So working as user does nothing but make me jump through more hoops to do what I'm going to do anyway. Why not avoid the hassle and work as root all the time? One password per session and no consoles for su-ing, I can unmount my Zip disks at will, I can deal with all files in all file managers, I can edit what I need to, I can install programs without problems. See, these security features can't stay the way they are if Linux is to attract even the Mac's share of the desktop market. Home business and consumer users will react the way I did and just get fed up and abandon Linux if they have to go through these endless permissions, logins, and passwords to manage their systems. In a home system, you're constantly installing or upgrading software or making changes to your display or your hardware. Any consumer GUI has to accommodate such usage, which is nothing at all like what a larger network requires. It seems to me that something could be incorporated into Linux desktops to make them friendlier to SOHO and home users while maintaining some system safety. For example, have a super user login that allows the equivalent of root access, but throws up a warning message when the root/user is about to make a change ordinarily reserved for root--something like You are about to change system files, which could have bad consequences. Okay? Cancel? --Judy Miner
Re: [newbie] Use of Linux
Thanks, Matt, for describing the perils of routinely working as root. well, after once having to ctrl alt backspace out of xwindows and subsequently loosing my whole linux install, and then later suffering ap owerloss and again losing my whole system both while logged in as root i realized the wisdom of logging in as user and then becoming su when i need to. I do have a UPS so should have time to shut down in orderly fashion if I lost power, but even the potential of hosing the system gives me pause. I do expect to work as user once I get the system functioning fully. For now, just about everything requires me to be root, so I can't see the point of messing with su throughout my session. Plus, su requires a console and I avoid--and intend to continue avoiding--consoles whenever possible. I expect the GUI to insulate me from consoles and command lines. Obviously, it's not there yet. actually between using alt f2 to run any program you want as root I haven't found that Alt-F2 let me run programs as root. If the program requires root privileges, invoking and typing in Alt-F2 when logged in as user has done nothing at all, in my limited experience. Is there some magic command modification I just don't know about? the fact that mandrake 8.0 is much better at recognizing when you need to be root and prompting you for the password it isn't that much of a burden. I suppose burden is in the eye of the beholder. I find constant typing of the root password to be annoying in the extreme and results in a fair amount of lost time if you have to do this several times in a few hours. --Judy M.
Re: [newbie] curious .... My last comment on the subject.. Great suggestion for Mandrake.
Frank wrote: There is a HUGE need for a distro that doesn't offer so many options that it drives would be users away I think you have many good ideas, but speaking as a Windows user who has recently installed Mandrake 8, it wasn't the large number of options that is the problem, but the unfinished business of the GUI after you get the thing installed. The first time I installed, I chose the default options for my own purposes and did not pick and choose individual programs. I reinstalled Linux in a couple of days because I felt I didn't know what was on the system. I've always done Custom Installs of all my Windows programs (including Windows itself!) and I don't like to depend on what other people think I should have. So I reinstalled Linux with a custom installation and went through the entire programs list in the Mandrake graphical installer. I was, frankly, much happier with that because I had a better idea of what was available and what I did and did not want. I think it would be fine for something like the Mandrake installer to offer an additional option called Basic that would include a pre-selected, limited number of programs. A user can always install others after using the system for a bit. The real problems come after you start using Linux--or trying to. I still haven't gotten my system set up to the stage where I can try some productivity apps for real. My current problem is getting my Type 1 and TrueType fonts installed and available to the programs I want to use. This is one of the roughest edges of Linux on the desktop. Its font handling is abstruse, unfriendly, poor, and just plain weird. It's totally different from Windows or the Mac. Where is something like Adobe Type Manager when we need it? Even in my Windows 3.0 days, my PostScript fonts were rasterized correctly for the screen and printer (PostScript or not) and they were available seamlessly to all my applications that were font-capable. I find it astonishing that fonts seem to be an afterthought on the Linux desktop. Gajillions of often-ugly screen fonts get installed. How can I dump them? All they do is make for a long font list of useless junk. It's hard to find the necessary information because context-sensitive help isn't here yet. Another example of something that is unacceptable as it stands now: the first time I tried to eject a Zip disk, it wouldn't go. First I got scared that it was stuck in the drive (an ATAPI internal). Then I thought I'd try doing an eject command in a console. Somehow that worked--I don't know how I figured out how to include the /mnt/zip qualifier. Eventually I kinda sorta figured out how to deal with Zip disks, which get mounted through the supermount feature in Mandrake 8, but still have to be unmounted by root in order to eject them. Doubtless, I could fix that up so user could do it--but I don't know how. I also don't know where to look and the directions would have to be in something other than geekspeak, which is probably an unrealistic expectation.g I could give you a list of other things that would quickly drive would-be users away, as you put it. I think they could all be solved, probably in short order if some distro truly wanted to appeal to Windows users who want to become Linux users but not techies. I don't think it's too many choices that drive people away, but an interface that is too thin and quickly leaves the unprepared user in the clutches of long, obscure command lines. This won't fly, folks. No matter how wonderful the underlying architecture is, it has to be easy to use to have a chance of succeeding as a desktop OS. --Judy Miner
Re: [newbie] curious ....
Michael, Thanks for recounting how Linux has become more user friendly since your Slackware 2.x days. Though I have just started using Linux, I've followed it over a few years and installed it now because I thought it was finally reaching the point where a normal person could use it. I've found it easy to install and I had no trouble configuring the dialer and connecting with my ISP. The browsers are working fine, I downloaded and installed Opera in addition to the ones that came on the CDs. I looked at but did not set up a couple of e-mail clients, and could kiss Windows good-bye if browsing were the only thing I did. I just need to get my security firmed up and will try the suggestion posted on this list, for which I thank you and others. linux still has some problems for the average user, but at the same time it has been rapidly progressing since the command-line based Slackware 2/3 days. I agree and look forward to the progress of the next few months. Let's all hope that by the time Windows XP comes out, Linux will make more strides toward user friendliness because I do think more Windows users will be looking for a way out of Microsoft's clutches. --Judy Miner
