[SLUG] Shell test for pure existence of file?
Is there a way in sh or bash to check purely whether a file exists? All of the tests I can find do things like does it exist *and* is it a normal file or ... *and* is it a directory or ... *and* is it a character special file etc. What I'm looking for is the equivalent of the C expression access(path, 0) == 0 Thanks in advance, Harry O. PS - Worst case, I'll just write a tiny C program, but this is for an installation script and I'd prefer to rely purely on standard tools. -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
[SLUG] Weird X problem
Hi, I've been happily running Redhat 9 for a couple of months now. Yesterday, I started having a problem with X :-(. As soon as I start to type in any text input field (eg, the URL input in Mozilla or Firebird) whatever application I'm doing that in freezes. I can happily navigate using the mouse and type text into terminal sessions, but as soon as I type something in any text field, the app containing that field freezes up. I'm assuming it's something to do with the X server, because if I ssh in from another machine and start an X application, it works fine, presumably because the X server is then the one on the other machine. Can anyone give me a clue as to what's going on and how to fix it? By the way, this happens irrespective of the desktop I'm using. I've tried with both gnome and KDE and have the same problem. Thanks in advance, Harry O. -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group - http://slug.org.au/ More Info: http://lists.slug.org.au/listinfo/slug
[SLUG] rpm hanging
Hi, Earlier today, I tried to install a package called Open DX. The install just hung. Since then, any rpm command I issue hangs. Can anyone suggest what I can do to sort that out? For example, is there some kind of lock file somewhere that may be causing it to hang that I would be safe removing? Cheers, Harry O. -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group - http://slug.org.au/ More Info: http://lists.slug.org.au/listinfo/slug
Re: [SLUG] rpm hanging
Kevin Waterson wrote: known bug in rpm rm -rf /var/lib/rpm/__db.00* rpm --rebuilddb have fun Kevin Sadly, it didn't work, but maybe it generated a clue as to what's going on ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] rpm]# time rpm --rebuilddb 21 | tee rpm.log error: db4 error(16) from dbenv-remove: Device or resource busy real4m34.843s user0m40.750s sys 0m13.790s Any idea what the busy resource could be? TIA, Harry O. -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group - http://slug.org.au/ More Info: http://lists.slug.org.au/listinfo/slug
[SLUG] Canon LBP 1120 Compatibility?
This looks like a good value printer, however the only compatibility information I was able to find was that the LBP 1000 was fully supported. There was not reference to the 1120, neither that it *did* work, nor that it *didn't*. The alternative is probably an HP 1200, which looks like an excellent printer, but is about $300 more expensive. Does anyone know whether the 1120 works OK with Linux? TIA -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group - http://slug.org.au/ More Info: http://lists.slug.org.au/listinfo/slug
[SLUG] USB 1.1 CD-R/RW drives
Hi, Can anyone either give me a recommendation for a USB CD-R/RW drive that works well with Redhat 7.3, or a URL for a good place to look? I'd also be interested to hear what people think is the best CD burning software, particularly if it comes with Redhat 7.3 (I installed everything, so I should have any that are standard with 7.3). Thanks in advance, Harry O. -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group - http://slug.org.au/ More Info: http://lists.slug.org.au/listinfo/slug
[SLUG] Javascript to open a new tab?
I've done a couple of Google searches for this, but the word tab produces lots of false positives :-(. In newer versions of Netscape, you can open a page in a new tab, rather than a new window. Can anyone tell me how to open a given URL in a new tab from Javascript? Basically I want to write a page with something I can click on (actually, I'm doing this based on executing some code on a change in a select field) that opens a particular URL, but does so in a new tab, rather than the current window or a new window. Thanks in advance, Harry O. -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group - http://slug.org.au/ More Info: http://lists.slug.org.au/listinfo/slug
Re: [SLUG] how to get past date?
On Mon, 23 Sep 2002 12:17, Jeff Ai wrote: Hi guys, how can i get a past date? i.e. the date for last Monday or the first Mondy of last month. do i have to write a script to do it? You mean in linux? -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group - http://slug.org.au/ More Info: http://lists.slug.org.au/listinfo/slug
[SLUG] Problem mounting NFS filesystem
I have a file system specified in /etc/exports as ... /net10.0.0.*(rw,no_root_squash) As far as I understand, this should let any machine on my LAN mount it. In fact, one machine has no problem doing so, but when I try to mount it from the other, the mount fails with ... mount ... failed, reason given by server: Permission denied Looking at /var/log/messages, the error that occurs on the exporting host is: ... rpc.mountd: getfh failed: Operation not permitted Just before that there's a message that implies the request has been accepted: ... rpc.mountd: authenticated mount request from Erdos:1005 for /net (/net) Can anyone give me a clue where to look for the problem? Is there any way to look at the details of what nfsd considers it has exported? Thanks in advance, Harry O. -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group - http://slug.org.au/ More Info: http://lists.slug.org.au/listinfo/slug
[SLUG] First meeting Ruby users' group
The last time I asked on this mailing list whether there were any SLUG-ers who were interested in Ruby, there were zero replies, so this may be a pointless post, but it can't hurt to try ... Tomorrow (Thursday) night, half a dozen Ruby users will be meeting for a beer and probably dinner afterwards at a nearby Chinese restaurant. If anyone here is interested in coming along, feel free to do so. Obviously, there won't be any talks this time around. This is just intended to be an informal get-together. Hopefully, we'll be able to come up with a regular time and venue and maybe even work out who's willing to give the first presentation :-). Time: 6pm Venue: Civic Hotel Location: Corner of Pitt and Golbourn Streets If you're interested in coming along, I'd appreciate an e-mail, because if we get to a largish number, I should probably make a booking for the restaurant. Thanks for your indulgence. Harry O. -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group - http://slug.org.au/ More Info: http://lists.slug.org.au/listinfo/slug
[SLUG] Next problem ...
You could try unloading and reloading the scsi module(s). Thanks to Terry Collins for that. It worked a treat! However, I now have another problem that I've not seen before, so I'm guessing it has something to do with having reloaded those modules. To test that the CD was burnt OK, I mounted it in the drive I normally use as a CD reader (which happens to be IDE, so I'm not sure why the SCSI modules have anything to do with the problem; it's just the only thing I can think of that's changed). The CD worked fine. I was able to umount it fine. However, when I tried to eject the CD by hand it seems to be locked. Trying to use eject /dev/cdrom gave me the error eject: unable to eject, last error: Invalid argument. Any ideas? By the way, I tried reloading the CD-ROM module ... who says you can't teach an old dog new tricks; or should that be to a little boy with a hammer? :-) ... but that didn't help. Is there some way to unlock a CD device the kernel thinks is busy? Thanks in advance, Harry O. -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group - http://slug.org.au/ More Info: http://lists.slug.org.au/listinfo/slug
[SLUG] Resetting SCSI devices
I have a SCSI CD burner. Whenever a write of a CD fails for some reason (normally an I/O error), all subsequent attempts fail with the following output. I can generally burn another CD once I reboot, but that's obviously a pain. Can anyone suggest what's going wrong and/or how I can get it back into a state where I can burn another CD without having to reboot? Note that I'm using a new CD-R disc, not trying to re-use the one that had the I/O error. --- cdrecord: Input/output error. send opc: scsi sendcmd: no error CDB: 54 01 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 status: 0x2 (CHECK CONDITION) Sense Bytes: F0 00 03 FF FF D2 8B 0A 00 00 00 00 0C 00 00 00 Sense Key: 0x3 Medium Error, Segment 0 Sense Code: 0x0C Qual 0x00 (write error) Fru 0x0 Sense flags: Blk -11637 (valid) cmd finished after 3.050s timeout 60s cdrecord: Resource temporarily unavailable. OPC failed. cdrecord: Input/output error. prevent/allow medium removal: scsi sendcmd: no error CDB: 1E 00 00 00 00 00 status: 0x2 (CHECK CONDITION) Sense Bytes: 70 00 02 00 00 00 00 0A 00 00 00 00 04 07 00 00 Sense Key: 0x2 Not Ready, Segment 0 Sense Code: 0x04 Qual 0x07 (logical unit not ready, operation in progress) Fru 0x0 Sense flags: Blk 0 (not valid) cmd finished after 0.011s timeout 40s cdrecord: Input/output error. start/stop unit: scsi sendcmd: no error CDB: 1B 00 00 00 02 00 status: 0x2 (CHECK CONDITION) Sense Bytes: 70 00 02 00 00 00 00 0A 00 00 00 00 04 07 00 00 Sense Key: 0x2 Not Ready, Segment 0 Sense Code: 0x04 Qual 0x07 (logical unit not ready, operation in progress) Fru 0x0 Sense flags: Blk 0 (not valid) cmd finished after 0.008s timeout 40s cdrecord: fifo had 64 puts and 0 gets. cdrecord: fifo was 0 times empty and 0 times full, min fill was 100%. -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group - http://slug.org.au/ More Info: http://lists.slug.org.au/listinfo/slug
[SLUG] Clearing a text entry field
Does anyone know a key sequence to empty a text entry field in X applications? In particular, I'm thinking of the URL entry field in Netscape/Opera/Mozilla. I realise I can highlight the text in the field by double clicking, then press Delete, but the problem with that is that it changes what's in the clipboard and the reason I'm trying to clear the field is to paste what's currently in there (for example, a URL from an e-mail I've received). Thanks in advance, Harry O. -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group - http://slug.org.au/ More Info: http://lists.slug.org.au/listinfo/slug
[SLUG] USB Printers
Hi, My faithful old HP Laserjet 4MP has finally kicked the bucket :-(. So, I'm looking to replace it with something reasonably good, but as cheap as possible. A number of the cheaper printers I've seen on the market seem to only have USB connectors. I know there's USB support in Linux for printers, but I imagine, like most things, only some subset of the available USB printers are usable. I'd be interested to hear any success stories, to save myself buying one that turns out not to work. In case it's important, I'll probably be connecting this to a machine running Redhat 7.2 with a 2.4.18 kernel. If it's going to make a big difference in terms of the number of compatible printers, I could potentially connect it to another machine that's running Redhat 7.3 out-of-the-box. I'd be more interested in connecting to the first machine, for two reasons: I know its USB controller works under Linux (I'm sync-ing my Clie via USB); and that machine is in the room I work most of the time. Thanks in advance, Harry O. -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group - http://slug.org.au/ More Info: http://lists.slug.org.au/listinfo/slug
[SLUG] [OT] Forcing Mozilla/Netscape to download a file
I'd like to download some of the Star Wars QuickTime videos to stick on a CD for a mate of mine who doesn't have cable access. However, I've had no success forcing either Mozilla or Netscape to save the file to disk, rather than trying to look for a plugin (which, of course, doesn't actually exist for QuickTime videos ... yes, I know about crossover, but that's not what I want to do, anyway, just save them to disk). Can anyone suggest a way to force that to happen. Or is there a place where one can find the .qt files themselves for download? Or is what I'm trying to do un-doable; ie, does the plugin initiate a two-way protocol with the server? Thanks in advance. -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ More Info: http://lists.slug.org.au/listinfo/slug
[SLUG] Maps of Sydney ... thanks
Thanks to everyone who replied to my query. Since the thing the maps are required for is a commercial product (currently, working on a proof of concept), there won't be any problem with paying someone for the data (although, I agree to some extent with the rationale that the data should be freely available ... it's the value add that people should be paid for). I now have a number a number of avenues of enquiry to follow through. Maybe we'll even look into talking to the Auslig people about getting some open source libraries happening, so that people who have bought their data can at least use it on Linux !! Thanks again. Harry O. -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ More Info: http://lists.slug.org.au/listinfo/slug
[SLUG] Maps of Sydney ...
I have an application where I need some street-level maps of Sydney (other capital cities would be nice, too; Melbourne and Brisbane, in particular) in a format that I can decipher via some code, or where there exist Linux libraries or other tools to do the decoding for me. I've already purchased some Sydney and ACT street-level maps on CD ROM, with some software that runs under Windows, called MapSend. However, the data is in some binary form. What I'm trying to do is get portions of the maps into the form of PalmPilot bitmaps (not sure whether that is equivalent to some standard and hence whether tools exist to do so, or whether I'll have to write some code once I have the data). I also bought a CD ROM of Geodata 2000 release 2, which has maps at a scale of 1 : 250 000 of much of Australia. Again, though, I don't know the format of the data it contains. It could be that the CDs I already have are using a standard format that's specified somewhere, but being cartographically challenged, I wouldn't know. In any case, can anyone point me in the right direction? TIA, Harry O. -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ More Info: http://lists.slug.org.au/listinfo/slug
[SLUG] Unknown USB storage device
Hi, I bought a small USB memory stick reader/writer the other day. Unfortunately, the device isn't recognised when I insert it. The USB module sees it has been inserted, but just doesn't know what it is. I'm assuming it actually looks like an IDE or SCSI drive, so the usb-storage module should be able to handle it. Is there some way to tell the system that's what it is? Or do I have to wait until someone writes a driver for the specific device? Thanks in advance, Harry O. -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ More Info: http://lists.slug.org.au/listinfo/slug
Re: [SLUG] Python SIG: The saga continues.
On Sun, 13 Jan 2002 01:10, Mary Gardiner wrote: Hi again SLUG, I'm still intending starting a SLUG Python SIG, but here's what I need: Something I've been meaning to ask for a while now is ... Are there any people in SLUG who've been bitten by the Ruby bug yet? I'd appreciate it if we could dispense with the usual flames like why bother with yet ANOTHER language. If you're not interested, that's absolutely fine with me. I just figured there must be at least one other person on the list who has decided Ruby was a better fit for them than Perl or Python, or was at least interested in having a play with it. Hopefully, there'll be two people and we can start our own SIG :-). -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ More Info: http://lists.slug.org.au/listinfo/slug
[SLUG] Strange FTP problem
I'm trying to transfer a large-ish file (around 40MB) between two machines, one running Redhat 7.1 and the other running 7.2, via FTP. For some reason, it seems to hang after around 140kb have been transferred. The file is on an NFS mount and trying to just copy it between the file systems has the same result. Can anyone give me a clue as to where to start looking for the problem? Apart from the file transfer problems, the network seems to be fine. I can telnet between the machines with no trouble, for example. TIA Harry O. -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ More Info: http://lists.slug.org.au/listinfo/slug
Re: [SLUG] Strange FTP problem
On Sun, 6 Jan 2002 06:52, Jean-Francois Dive wrote: Definitively, the problem is not linked to FTP then if the transfert between the 2 NFS point is the problem. This could be the setup of the nfs mount and an issue with the block size, or an MTU problem on the path. How are the 2 peers interconnected ? (nbr of hop, etc..) They're plugged into the same hub. -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ More Info: http://lists.slug.org.au/listinfo/slug
Re: [SLUG] Strange FTP problem
On Sun, 6 Jan 2002 07:09, Howard Lowndes wrote: It could also be a problem with a conflict between a VIA chipset and a Realtak 8139 NIC (especially an early one). I had a similar problem and had to change the NIC. Sorry, I should have given some more details. I didn't realise the hardware was likely to be part of the problem, since I hadn't seen anything like this back when they were both running 7.1. Anyway, ... The machine that is now running 7.2 is an IBM Thinkpad 570, using a Xircom PCMCIA ethernet adapter. The other machine is a no-name brand Celeron system. I do know that the shop I bought the no-name machine from has used Realtek ethernet cards before, so it's possible that's what it is using. Looking at dmesg on that one says eth0 is an Intel 82557. Does that mean it's not a Realtek, or do Realtek cards use Intel chips? I eventually had some success by transferring the file from the Celeron to another machine and then from that machine to the laptop. Since the other machine is also running RH 7.2, that tends to make the hardware issue seem more likely. The Xircom PCMCIA card is an old one that's capable of being 10/100, but required a firmware upgrade which it hasn't been given, so it's just 10Mbps, whereas the other two machines are both 10/100. Does any of that give you further ideas? By the way, I just realised I have a spare IBM 10/100 PCMCIA ethernet adapter hanging around, so I might try that one, to try to get some hard evidence that it's the Xircom card. I just tend to use it because it doesn't require a dongle. It's what I think they call a Real Port card, which is a type 3 card, with the connectors built in. Thanks to both you and Jean-Francois for the suggestions. Harry O. -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ More Info: http://lists.slug.org.au/listinfo/slug
Re: [SLUG] Strange FTP problem
On Sun, 6 Jan 2002 09:12, Harry Ohlsen wrote: By the way, I just realised I have a spare IBM 10/100 PCMCIA ethernet adapter hanging around, so I might try that one, to try to get some hard evidence that it's the Xircom card. I just tend to use it because it doesn't require a dongle. It's what I think they call a Real Port card, which is a type 3 card, with the connectors built in. Well, it works fine with the IBM 10/100 card, so I guess it's some kind of incompatibility betweeb the card in the no-name machine and the Xircom PCMCIA. Thanks again for the help. I would probably have been less likely to think about the hardware had it not been for your comment. I still like not having the dongle. They're too easy to break. Maybe, if I'm lucky, it will still be possible to get a firmware upgrade for this Xircom card and perhaps that'll fix the problem. Cheers, Harry O. -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ More Info: http://lists.slug.org.au/listinfo/slug
[SLUG] Building new kernel
I installed Redhat 7.2 yesterday. Because I felt my system needed a little rejuvenation, I decided to do a fresh install. I tried to make sure I had a backup of all my important files and, generally, I think that went OK and I now have many gigabytes of free space that was previously taken up by things I'd installed and never used. Anyway, to my question ... I decided to choose for the install not to set up a firewall, because I had an iptables script that I'm happy with and was planning on using that. However, it would appear that iptables support isn't included in the kernel that was installed by RH 7.2 (2.4.7). That may simply be because I asked for no firewall, but I don't know. If that's the case, I think it's kind of poor that they would leave out such support, given that one might easily decide to add firewalling later, but I guess that's a design decision on their part. Anywa, I tried booting the 2.4.13 image I had been using previously, but hit a problems because it didn't support ext3, which I'd chosen when I installed the RH 7.2 system ... that was another reason I decided to go with a new install. So, I've downloaded 2.4.16 and am currently building that, after having made sure it's including modules for both ext3 and iptables. Once I finish the make modules, I'm going to have to do a make install modules ... I believe? What I'm worried about is whether if the new kernel fails, I'll end up not being able to boot the 2.4.7 kernel that came with RH 7.2, since I assume the make install modules will scribble over its modules. Do I need to worry about that, or do modules get installed somewhere based on the kernel you've built? Also, RH 7.2 uses GRUB and it refers to an initrd file that has a kernel version number in it. How do I make an equivalent for my new kernel ... or can I safely use the one that the 2.4.7 kernel is using? Any other issues I should worry about? If someone can point me to a URL where I can find a detailed explanation of these sorts of things, that would be great. TIA -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ More Info: http://lists.slug.org.au/listinfo/slug
Re: [SLUG] Building new kernel
make modules_install maybe. I'm not sure how clever make install is. Yes. I always forget those sorts of details! No, this isn't a problem. Each kernel you install stores it's modules in /lib/modules/2.x.y, x.y being the specific kernel version. Unless you install/recompile the same version of the kernel a number of times, the old modules will stay untouched. Great. Also, RH 7.2 uses GRUB and it refers to an initrd file that has a kernel version number in it. How do I make an equivalent for my new kernel ... or can I safely use the one that the 2.4.7 kernel is using? Have a look at man mkinitrd, but you may not need to use one at all. Thanks. I'll check that out. It's just that the grub.conf mentions it, so I figured I could need to have one. http://www.linuxdoc.org/HOWTO/Kernel-HOWTO.html Thanks! By the way, George Vieira gave me a couple of pointers. It turns out I already have iptables installed. The problem was that the firewall script was looking explicitly for v1.2 when RH 7.2 has version 1.2.3, so a quick mod to their script to sed out anything after v1.2 should keep me going for a few minor version changes :-). I do still have some issues because some of the lines of the script are generating errors saying something like TOS not supported, so I have to track that down, but George has suggested to upgrade to whatever the lates iptables is, so I might just try that before worrying about it too much. Cheers, Harry O. -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ More Info: http://lists.slug.org.au/listinfo/slug
Re: [SLUG] Propogating changes to /etc/exports ...
On Tuesday 18 December 2001 19:25, Grant Parnell wrote: The better way is to use the exportfs -a command. For more info man exportfs otherwise, yes you do have to umount all NFS mounted filesystems then restart NFS. Thanks. If I use exportfs -a do I still have to do the unmounts? -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ More Info: http://lists.slug.org.au/listinfo/slug
[SLUG] Propogating changes to /etc/exports ...
If I change the contents of /etc/exports, is it sufficient to simply /etc/init.d/nfs restart or is there a better way to do this? I've noticed that I get some strange errors that don't make sense (eg it makes reference to some of the mounts that remote machines have). Do I in fact have to unmount on all the machines that have remote mounts, before I do the restart or something? -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ More Info: http://lists.slug.org.au/listinfo/slug
Re: [SLUG] Perl help. web script.
On Thursday 13 December 2001 09:20, George Vieira wrote: Cool, thanks people. Yeah I know Guru is a bad word and it really doesn't exist in this world as even a so called Guru still learns new stuff everyday.. Unlink how would I ever know that was it.. he hee.. thx. Yes, unlink, while a very accurate name, since it doesn't necessarily delete the file, just remove one link to it, it's not exactly what one would look for in a manual or book index :-). Of course, since perl runs on more than just unix, it's sometimes not even an accurate name a lot of the time! -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ More Info: http://lists.slug.org.au/listinfo/slug
[SLUG] Killing off lingering socket connection (slightly OT)
I say this is a bit OT because it's actually on Solaris, not Linux. A friend asked me and I thought that the problem presumably happens on Linux, too, so thought someone here might be able to shed some light on it. Alternatively, if someone can point me at a better place to look or post a query, that would be great. My mate has a process that has a socket open. The process has been killed off (as far as he can tell ... can't see it anymore in a ps) but the socket is still open (he can see it in netstat and trying to run the program that opens it again dies because the port is in use). Unfortunately, this is something he didn't write, so he can't change the source code. He's just looking for a way to terminate it with extreme prejudice, so that he can run this thing again (I assume it's some kind of server, but I didn't think to ask). Any ideas or pointers? I'm going to do a search with google in a minute, but I figured I'd get a few of the bright minds running in parallel :-). Thanks in advance, Harry O. -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ More Info: http://lists.slug.org.au/listinfo/slug
[SLUG] Sending images (eg JPEG) to a web browser [OT]
Sorry, this is slightly off-topic, but I figure there are likely to be people here who know this kind of stuff or at least can point me in the right direction. I'm writing something that needs to look a little like a web server. One of the things it must do is send back images when asked for them by a browser. I thought all I needed to do was send back Content-type: image/jpeg (for example), followed by a blank line, followed by the binary content of the file. However, while the browser doesn't complain, it also doesn't seem to display the image, so I'm assuming I have it wrong. Can someone tell me what data I need to send back when a browser asks me for say a JPEG file. If different processing is required for other image types (GIF, PNG) I'd like to know about that too. As I say, even a pointer to the right stuff would be fine. Thanks in advance ... and apologies for the off-topic nature of this. -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ More Info: http://lists.slug.org.au/listinfo/slug
Re: [SLUG] Sending images (eg JPEG) to a web browser [OT]
Not really sure here. But some time a ago i was mucking about with a network proxy that would intercept connection requests and fetch teh requested item. When i passed binary files back through it was just a matter of feeding the data straight through. No problems. I did a search on google and found a small piece of java code that did something similar. It turned out to be something really simple! I needed to include a Content-length header. Works fine now. I'm still thinking about your network byte order point, though. It may be that it's only working because the browser and the server are running on the same host (hence same architecture). I'll have to get someone else to try accessing it once I have things going. Thanks for the reply. -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ More Info: http://lists.slug.org.au/listinfo/slug
[SLUG] Installing latest iptables
As part of the first kernel build I've done in a very long time (around five years), I downloaded the latest iptables code (version 1.2.4) and built that. However, when I run iptables -version it says I'm running 1.2a, which is a little confusing. I took a look and the iptables executable itself is from March this year. Can someone shed some light on this? Is the executable pulling the version number from inside the kernel, implying that I'm actually running version 1.2a, or is it that I just need to build a new version of that executable. If the latter, can you tell me where to find the source for that? It didn't seem to be part of the iptables code I downloaded from the home page. TIA -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ More Info: http://lists.slug.org.au/listinfo/slug
[SLUG] SAMBA - ls not working
I'm running RedHat 7.0 on a number of Linux boxes. I wanted to get access to some stuff that's sitting on a Windows 2000 box, so I set up SAMBA as best I know how. I've shared a directory on the W2K box and can mount it from a Linux box, can create files and can cat those files. However, for some reason, if I do an ls of the mount point on the Linux box, none of the files show up. Has anyone seen this before or could point me at a URL that might explain what's going on? I'm also having problems getting the W2K box to connect to a share I've set up on one Linux boxes, even though I can SMB mount it happily from another box, but I'm less worried about that, because sure that will be a simple configuration issue. However, if anyone knows a reason why the W2K box might say it the network path was not found, any suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks in advance, Harry O. -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ More Info: http://slug.org.au/lists/listinfo/slug
Re: [SLUG] An HTML Help browser for Linux?
Is it a chm file? Yes. That is Compiled HTML Metafile or something like that. Compiled HTML or CHM is what you want to search for... try that on google and freshmeat. I know there are windows tools that help you make them at least :) Thanks for the tip. I'll try that. -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ More Info: http://slug.org.au/lists/listinfo/slug
[SLUG] An HTML Help browser for Linux?
I have a file that's in windoze HTML Help format, but which I'd like to have access to on my Linux laptop. I tried searching using google to search for an HTML help browser for Linux, but to no avail. Does anyone know whether such a thing exists, or whether there's a converter that can take HTML Help and turn it into something that I can use on Linux? TIA. -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ More Info: http://slug.org.au/lists/listinfo/slug
Re: [SLUG] Ask about datatype in Unix-C
At 02:13 2001-04-01 +1000, Paul Cameron wrote: On Thu, Mar 29, 2001 at 01:28:21AM -0800, Le Nhu Hai wrote: Hi all, I am studying a open source on Linux. There is a data type named as "Octstr", that looks like "char" type of C. Do you know is there that type in standard type of UNIX-C ? I would guess it stands for "Octet String", which is how they talk about byte streams in OSI terminology. So, I would guess it's something similar to a (char *). -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ More Info: http://slug.org.au/lists/listinfo/slug
[SLUG] Problem FTP-ing with ZSH
I just read a nice article about ZSH and decided to have a play with it. Given my low level of bash sophistication, it turned out that zsh seemed to be perfect for me (it had all the things I wanted and a number of bash's features worked more nicely in zsh). So, I decided to make it my login shell. Strangely, if I telnet in from another box (Win 2000) it works fine. However, if I ftp in, I get an error message from ftp saying the login failed. Does anyone have a clue as to what might be going on and how I can fix it? TIA. -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ More Info: http://slug.org.au/lists/listinfo/slug
Re: [SLUG] Problem FTP-ing with ZSH
Add zsh or /bin/zsh to your allowed shells in /etc/shells Thanks. That fixed it !! The more I play with zsh, the more impressed I am. It seems to provide everything bash does, but just in nicer and extended ways. If you haven't played with it, I'd recommend a look. Thanks again, H. -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ More Info: http://slug.org.au/lists/listinfo/slug
[SLUG] Getting a kosher gcc for Redhat 7
I just tried to build GRUB, after hearing about it at Friday's meeting. It gave me an error message that prompted me to try to update my gcc given that I'm still running the dodgey one that came with RH7.0 "out of the box". So, I went to the site the GRUB readme mentioned and downloaded an SRPM, installed it with "rpm -i", unzipped and untar-ed that and did a "make". It seems to have built a g++, but there doesn't seem to be a gcc anywhere. I'm tempted to just do a "make install" and see what happens, but I'd hate to end up with a non-working gcc, since it would be a right pain to get back to a working state. Hence, my questions are: 1. Have I taken the correct approach? 2. If not, what is the correct approach? For example, is there somewhere I can find a single .rpm file to install a good gcc? 3. Can I just edit the Makefile at the top of the gcc source tree and change the "prefix" to get it installed in another directory, so as not to clobber my current one? Thanks in advance. --- Harry Ohlsen -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ More Info: http://slug.org.au/lists/listinfo/slug
[SLUG] Laptop-specific install-/fix-fest?
With all the discussion about SIGs and installfests, I thought I'd throw my 2c worth into the ring. I have Redhat 7.0 running on a Sony VAIO. I've been able to get everything working pretty much to my requirements, but haven't had a lot of luck getting the sound to work (as far as I can tell, there are two things that look like sound chips inside this machine). Tridge suggested moving to the 2.4 kernel and installing a particular module, but that's more than I'm happy to attempt by myself at the moment with this machine, because I use it all the time and I'd hate to break it. What I was thinking was it would be nice ... at least for me :-) ... to have either a laptop installfest, or a fix-it day where people more knowledgeable than me can help to sort out specific issues people are having with their setups. I'm not sure how many people out there have Linux running on a laptop, which is why I think a general fix-it session would potentially be more useful. If people had somewhere to send an explanation of their issues before the day, that would give people with hardware/kernel backgrounds a chance to think about the problems. Anyone else think this is a good idea? Or have all the previous installfests been like this anyway? I meant to get to one out at Macquarie uni a few of months ago, but something came up at the last minute that made me miss it. -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ More Info: http://slug.org.au/lists/listinfo/slug
[SLUG] Ugh!
Well, After asking my question re laptop-specific installfests, I realised that I hadn't actually tried configuring the sound since I moved from 6.2 to 7.0, so I tried it. I ran sndconfig, it picked what seemed like the right Yamaha chip for my VAIO and sounded like it made a noise when it played the test sound, so I figured the volume was just too low. So, I said "Yes" when it asked whether I heard the sound. Of course, it updated my modules.conf file and then hung the machine completely! So, I powered it off and on again and now it hangs when it gets to starting the APM (power management). I have a nice little bootable recovery CD here, but that's not going to help much, since the machine doesn't have a CD drive. Is there any way I can tell the boot sequence to ignore the modules.conf file? Alternatively, where can I download a boot floppy image that will allow me to mount my hard drive, so I can move the file so I can reboot without it? As I say ... Ugh! Thanks for any help anyone can provide. -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ More Info: http://slug.org.au/lists/listinfo/slug
Re: [SLUG] BlueSkyFrog phone icon
Hi, At 20:51 2001-01-14 +1100, you wrote: For your amusement, I've made a "dev/phone" icon for your Nokia mobile. Upload it at www.blueskyfrog.com.au today. You will need to input the icon key of p5237944 to download it. I couldn't find where to stick the magic number "p5237944". The site seems to be driven by lists, rather than having any data entry field where you could stick that ID. Any pointers? I'd like to take a look at the logo before I stick it in, if that's possible, because I'm not sure how many points they charge for an icon download and I only have 14; I'd hate to get stuck with it in the unlikely event that I don't like it. Cheers, H. -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ More Info: http://slug.org.au/lists/listinfo/slug
Re: [SLUG] Telstra using Transparent proxy on ADSL network
They do this for metering, I think -- I worked on the cable system for a while, and when I was working on it, *everything* was proxied through a gauntlet firewall, where the proxies have been altered to measure traffic and assign it to individual users. Traffic to the `free zones' is not metered -- that's handled by the proxy cache. Of course, things would be a lot better if there weren't mindless idiots around who want to download GBs of crap. If that were not the case, Telstra wouldn't really need to monitor the amount of downloads and everything would probably run a lot more smoothly. As always, it's a few dickheads who spoil it for everyone else. -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ More Info: http://slug.org.au/lists/listinfo/slug
Re: [SLUG] linux.conf.au Journal
Should be updated every night (I reserve the right to get stunningly inebriated and not remember anything, btw). I plan to avoid getting "stunningly" inebriated, so as to avoid buying another T-shirt !! I'm a "poor, struggling student" these days, so I can't afford to be throwing hundreds of dollars away anymore. If anyone sees me bidding, please tie my arms to my chair and gag me :-). Maybe next year. -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ More Info: http://slug.org.au/lists/listinfo/slug
[SLUG] Tracking file system changes
Does anyone know of a tool that can track changes to a Linux file system (files added, modified or deleted)? If it makes a difference, I'm only really interested in Ext2 since that's all I have. My first thought was to write something like a "find / -ls" to a file and then do the same later and use a diff on the two outputs, but I thought perhaps there was a better way to do it. TIA -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ More Info: http://slug.org.au/lists/listinfo/slug
Re: [SLUG] Tracking file system changes
At 10:02 2000-12-28 +1100, Brock Henry wrote: tripwire does this. Although I haven't used it, everyone else does so it mist do the job quite well. I knew there had to be something out there! However, it looks like it may require some work to get started. For example, when I tried to do a "tripwire --init" it complained that I didn't have a configuration file. I then looked at "man twadmin" which told me how to install one, but not what should go in it (at least not as far as I could see from the man page). Does anyone have a sample or a pointer to one? -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ More Info: http://slug.org.au/lists/listinfo/slug
Re: [SLUG] Tracking file system changes
So which answer was the right one? ;) Actually, neither of those is precisely what I had in mind, but both of those situations obviously come up in practice. I'm less worried about security (probably less than I should be!). I'm just keen to know what's going on when I install programs, run configuration tools etc. I hate GUIs that hide the details from me. I much prefer to know what they did, so I can potentially avoid using the GUI and script stuff later on. Thanks for the information on directory notification and the SGI tool. I'll look into both of them. I believe there's a talk on the 2.4 notification stuff at the conference in a couple of weeks. I'll be there, so hopefully I'll be able to clean up any issues I still have by then. Cheers, Harry O. -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ More Info: http://slug.org.au/lists/listinfo/slug
Re: [SLUG] upgrade 6.2 - 7.0
I did this last night to ensure I was up to date and it was a pain. Is there a file somewhere that tells you all the things that are going to break when this is done? Here are some of the things that broke: It sounds like your experience was even worse than mine. I upgraded one desktop box and all went well, as far as I could tell. So, I upgraded my two laptop machines ... the one I carry around and an older one that I keep in the lounge room for surfing the net in ad breaks. Of course, neither of those upgrades was anywhere near as easy. The main issue I came across was that for some reason the upgrade didn't seem to take into account that I had separate /usr partitions on each of those machines, so it kept telling me I needed a heap more disk space on /. I ended up having to do a brand new install ... without needing to repartition or change what items I wanted to have installed! after backing up any precious data. That was very, very annoying. Overall, though, after getting the machines back up and running I'm fairly happy with 7.0. For example, I can now use my USB mouse, which was probably possible with 6.2, except that it would have required patching and mucking around. My systems tend to be pretty simple, because all I use them for is hacking code, so I never hit the apache, squid, pppd etc, problems you had. I'd probably be totally bald by this point if I had :-). Hope it all works out in the end. -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ More Info: http://slug.org.au/lists/listinfo/slug
RE: [SLUG] Learning to program
I'm currently a student at Sydney Uni (having a second go at a BSc after 20 years). As far as I understand, they ditched Blue as of this year for Java as a first language. I believe they are still using the Blue environment (a variant called BlueJ, which I think someone else mentioned). In terms of teaching people their first programming language, I think Java is a good idea, simply because most people who've decided to learn programming have probably heard of it, and it provides pretty much the same facilities as, say, C++, while holding your hand tightly and is something that they can potentially actually use when they get out into the workforce (unlike Blue). Of course, market value shouldn't necessarily be the main criterion, but everything else being equal, it's worth considering. I can't imagine what it must be like to write C++ code in a first programming course and spend hours trying to track down some silly typo that's causing a memory scribble which is trashing your program. I don't think that is a very encouraging introduction for most people :-). If you did want to go with C++, the one point I would make is that it should be taught using the STL from day one. This allows people to write reasonably non-trivial programs without having to know every feature of C++. There's an excellent book available now, by Andrew Koenig and Barbra Moo, called Accelerated C++ that takes this approach and does an excellent job of it. While it's very likely that not one person in your course will have heard of Python, they are likely to get into it very quickly, because it is designed to be straightforward to write ... AND read (unlike perl ... yes, you can write readable perl, but most people just don't seem to bother). It provides the same kinds of data structures as perl, so people can write serious programs almost from the start. I think it's already been mentioned that Tk access is available from Python, so you can give people a nice experience by letting them do some basic GUI programming, a la the suggestion from the chap who said his first language was VB, without using (or paying for) proprietary licences. Of course, if you wanted to go way out to left field, you could try teaching Ruby :-). Or, as my C++ lecturer suggested, Befunge ... of course, that's not a serious suggestion! Also, I note from the course page that you get into regular expressions , shell scripting and revision control. That's a good idea for people who are going to work in a UNIX environment. The earlier people pick up those skills, the easier life is for them later on, since it makes their everyday experience more manageable. Of course, you should be summarily executed for mentioning emacs to them :-). --- Harry Ohlsen -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ More Info: http://slug.org.au/lists/listinfo/slug
Fwd: [SLUG] VBA scripts on linux
Is anyone aware of a way of running VBA scripts (the current version of VB) under linux. Get thee behind me satan :-). -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ More Info: http://slug.org.au/lists/listinfo/slug
Fwd: Re: Fwd: Re: [SLUG] EXIT COMMAND
I guess "ZZ" was intended to mean "the end", as in the end of the alphabet. I remember when I was at uni 20 years ago it was a lot of fun to walk up to someone's terminal and type "vi" to see if they could get out of it. Let's face it, it's not obvious that you should type ":" to get to a command line, either :-). Oh yeah, but it's even less obvious to get out of emacs :) Not if you do lots of yoga. It's easy to get the Ctrl-Alt-Meta-VulcanSleeperHold key combination happening then :-). -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ More Info: http://slug.org.au/lists/listinfo/slug
Fwd: Re: [SLUG] EXIT COMMAND
ZZ doesn't mean anything. :wq means :(command) w (write) q (quit) I guess "ZZ" was intended to mean "the end", as in the end of the alphabet. I remember when I was at uni 20 years ago it was a lot of fun to walk up to someone's terminal and type "vi" to see if they could get out of it. Let's face it, it's not obvious that you should type ":" to get to a command line, either :-). -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ More Info: http://slug.org.au/lists/listinfo/slug
