Re: [SLUG] Linux Installation with SCSI Drive
Hi Ronald, No, I don't think so... I think a good scsi and a good IDE are much of a muchness, may even find the scsi is a little slower. I used to stick scsi in all my machines, don't bother any more. Where the scsi should be noticably faster is when there are multiple users, as in the case of a database feeding say a web server farm. I imagine the software must be written for it as well and one would expect that from a server, however for a single user, especially just an installation, I don't think you'll get any benefit from a scsi compared to a fast IDE or Serial disk. Ronald wrote: I often try out (installing) Linux distributions, so this is an I/O intensive operation (writing to the drive). Would using SCSI drive significantly improve the installing time? (halve it?) FYI currently I use Seagate 7200.7 80 GB and to get full 3 GB install takes around ~10 to 20 minutes. Motherboard is Abit KG7-Raid which doesn't have inbuilt SCSI adapter, so I have to buy a separate adapter. CPU is Athlon XP 2400+ with 512 MB RAM. And the drive I want to get is probably Seagate Cheetah 15K.3: 18 GB, 15,000 prm Ultra320 SCSI http://www.seagate.com/cda/products/discsales/marketing/detail/0,1081,619,00.html Thanks Ronald -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] re: creating a minimal bootable system that does filesharing etc from compactflash card?
Michael Fox wrote: Guys, Anyone had experience in producing a linux system that would run from compact flash (say 128mb or 256mb compact flash card) that we could use to say make a machine as a fileserver with samba, webmin etc... I know we have similar stuff around that makes a system a firewall like smoothwall etc, but I was thinking it might be nice to make a system that runs from compact flash that would allow you to boot from and then format some drives to be used as samba storage. Or even raid 0,1 those drives etc.. Maybe with time we could code in some nice web pages to manage minus webmin, but who knows.. I just want to do something with a machine and thought this would be a good idea. Anyone got pointers to read or want to help. I've also thought about this, idea is to plug a flash into a customers machine and say there you go, now just format your hard-drive. I think to setup a system to run from flash is quite easy. I would start by installing a minimum debian on a disk, adding just the things I want, and then dd that partition to the flash, then just boot from flash. I started playing with it but really didnt like the performace of a flash, it writes like a rocket when it starts and then slows down badly, when it starts getting full. Also read somewhere that a flash does have limited read writes, its a big number but I think if something like the swap and cache in on a flash it wont take too long to hit those limits. Now all of a sudden it has to start getting really clever. So it must boot as a safe system, if it detects a formatted disk it must move working files to it, and then there is the question of hardware detection and kernel rebuilding. To get it to work on identicle machines is one thing, but to now get smart enough to detect the right network card, on board sound etc, its hard work, starting to build another distribution. Even then, if you a machine supplier, it may be possible to do this, ie boot from a safe kernel on a flash, detect the harddrive, format it and build a kernel on it, then reboot and say there you go. I researched a little, but so far it seems to be Linux's best kept secret. The key to this whole thing is hardware detection and rebuilding a kernel. The rebuilding a kernel I think is easy, especially if you supply the machines and you know its going to be say one of 3 network cards. But the hardware detection process itself is a mystery to me. I havnt found one good article on how a distribution automates that process. I think yes it can be a good idea, but I think the flash must be a safe kernel which builds a kernel on the machines hard-drive, figure out how to do the hardware detection, and its going to be very nice. Walk into a customer, plug a flash in, reboot, wait a while, say now your server is cool... invoice is in the mail. What dreams are made of. Just finding a little utility to detect hardware and build the kernel automatically, thats what I think it comes down to. I think to cater for anything a customer may want, the answer is wait for flash to get larger, just stick debian or whatever on it. But to cater for a specific thing like Samba servers or Mail servers, on machines you supply... be very nice, and easy, once hardware detection is out the way. -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Logout problem - BINGO!
Alan L Tyree wrote: On Sat, 31 Jul 2004 10:22:11 +0200 Johnny [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Alan L Tyree wrote: This is still driving me crazy and I would be grateful for any help. System: dead standard Debian woody with 2.4.18-bf2.4 + security updates+ Login.app + sylpheed 0.9.12 backport. Alan, I'm still very new to linux, so I could be way off track. Look at power management, it sounds very much like power management kicking in , failing and logging you out. Try *xset -dpms* In /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 comment out Option DPMS Its not supported in woody 2.4... this will stop the system trying to suspend to disk. That did it Johnny - a thousand thanks! Cheers, Alan Ah... good, so you see South Africans are good for a few things, when you need help on Linux and when you need to kick someones butt in rugby :) One of the things I did to learn linux as fast as possible was join Lug's all over te world, I highly recommend it, the linux community should bridge international borders. You also discover other things, like in SA our Telkom monopoly is ripping people off. We pay almost 6 times more for an ADSL connection, our tel rates seem to cost as much for a local call as you guys pay for an international call. Its so expensive that it was cheaper for me to go buy the whole linux mirror, than download just the full debian. Our TV monopoly doesnt look like its ever going to move to terrestrial digital tv, I see you guys are already buying DTV cards. Our wireless laws are so strict, (monopolies protecting themselves) that I think we'd be arrested if we had a wireless fest. There are crazy laws like you not allowed to transmit across a road :( From here, Australia looks really good. Some of the guys in the US are unbelievable, from the way they answer questions, I think they working on the Linux projects. Anyway good things come when Lugs go across borders. One of things we going to try is make cheap 802.11 antenna's for long ranges, our labor is cheap, and we want to upset our monopolies a little, going to call the antenna's Telkom Toffee's :) So who knows one of these days this South African may also be good for cheap antenna's Linux is definitely growing here, thats a good thing. regards JT -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Which flavour of Linux
Phill wrote: I have been playing around with linux for a little while now and want to setup a web server that incorporates webdav and jsp largely for uni I currently use mandrake 10 because of the simplicity to setup. What is the general feeling about mandrake amongst SLUG and is there a better flavour to use. Bearing in mind that I have definite time constraints so it must be quick easy to install and maintain plus cope with multimedia. How does mandrake compare with fedora and debian? A question like this always has the potential of starting a war, so I'll try be objective. I think from what you trying to do, you may as well stick with what you know. In the end you probably going to install Apache, Tomcat for servlets and Suns JRE, and thats fairly independent of any dist anyway. Mandrake doesnt seem to be all there on the mirrors, possibly you'll find unofficial contributions on the mirrors, and can do anything anyway. I think if you 'have' to rush out and buy a server addition of Mandrake to do what you need, then I would consider changing. If a dist says anything like, for Samba and Apache, buy the super-duper enterprise addition, which I have a feeling mandrake does do, you maybe be better off looking at another dist. There is a little learning curve with debian, your quicky criteria will probably make you not look at it. I love debian. Its absolutely free, but the thing I like most is that it moves between releases seemlessly. When a new release of debian comes out, users think nothing of upgrading, its easy. Debian is a distribution based on dependencies, and thats what makes it special. I imagine Gentoo has similar tools, never tried it. As I understand it, Gentoo is the public legacy to Redhat. When Redhat died, Gentoo was born, and is also in the public domain, so its also truely free. Debian was started and is run by normal linux guys in the public domain to prevent the commercial exploitation of linux, I'm in love with its rebellious nature, as much as anything else. I dont mind any distribution, but as soon as someone takes linux and makes it start to feel like M$, I want to puke. If I had to recommend one thing, I'd say take the time to learn to build a kernel, and source as well. It equates to freedom and you'll lose your software handcuffs. For example if I cant find something on whatevers installed, I think nothing of getting it from another dist and installing it. At that level it all becomes just Linux. Most debian guys I know, get the installer (APT networking) working at setup and bypass most of the initial setup, prefering to install only what they need afterwards. You may find that a little scary. If you still wearing software handcuffs, I think in general you going to miss out on the true freedom of linux, and what I believe are the 2 truely great distributions. Maybe this will help you decide, this is the typical sizes of various dists on a public mirror. You can ask yourself why there are such huge size differences. Major Dists Debian 43 gigs Gentoo 39 gigs Mandrake-devel 10 gigs plus Mandrake.com 9.1/2 10 15 gigs Micky Mouse Dists Fedora 5 gigs Knoppix 2 gigs Slackware 1.3 gigs OpenBSD 5.5 gigs RedHat 7/8/9 12 gigs MS Just bug fixes regards, JT Phill -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Logout problem
Alan L Tyree wrote: This is still driving me crazy and I would be grateful for any help. System: dead standard Debian woody with 2.4.18-bf2.4 + security updates + Login.app + sylpheed 0.9.12 backport. Alan, I'm still very new to linux, so I could be way off track. Look at power management, it sounds very much like power management kicking in , failing and logging you out. Try *xset -dpms* In /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 comment out Option DPMS Its not supported in woody 2.4... this will stop the system trying to suspend to disk. Also make sure you dont have any ACPI stuff running, woody only supports APM which is now old and they dont work together. Also turn off any power management in the BIOS. If things come right, you know its power management that was causing the problem. I think the best solution is to upgrade the kernel to 2.6, turn off APM and enable ACPI. Or rebuild your kernel and remove APM. If you do go the kernel upgrade route then you get kewl stuff like thermal monitoring as well, I kinda like having the processor temp on the desk top. On my laptop I also got battery monitoring working. The easiest way is to just move to SID on debian. Also get kewl sound system like ALSA, it all seems to work just fine, however if you a KDE fan, dont. I dont like KDE so its not a problem, and it seems in debian SID, KDE is very slow in getting upgraded. It seems the linux guys arent in a hurry to help a proprietry organization like KDE. I dont recommend woody at all, it may be super stable, and good for running a postgres system but other than that its not nice. For example when you move from woody to sarge the interface is going to change. Woody likes MC, sarge onwards uses Nautilus. I suggest SARGE on desktops, and SID on laptops. You can now see the reason, laptops have to have good power management. Problem: running X I get logged out after about 20 of inactivity. It happens no matter what window manager I am using. It does not happen from a text console, so I presume it is not the kernel or bash. I note that there is a process running: /usr/bin/ssh-agent x-window-manager Is it possible that there is something in ssh that is timing me out? If so, where would I fix it? I have googled all over the place and find some references to similar problems, but no solutions. Any other ideas gratefully received. I understand it is a security safeguard, but it isn't one that I want. Cheers, Alan -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
[SLUG] Anyone using linux PDAs?
Anyone using linux PDA's? Would like to get one, definitely want wireless. If you have one, what is it, do you like it, does it have cool utils, whats it run on, what did it cost etc? Are there hidden costs etc. General opinions wanted. Thx -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] ssh and X forwarding woes.
Richard Heycock wrote: Hi, I have a few woes with regards to X11 forwarding over ssh. I have two machines one debian testing and one debian unstable. I have exactly the same sshd_config yet I one will allow me to tunnel X11 (unstable) and the other won't (testing). Hi Richard, Not sure of your dist, and other stuff, this is what I do. Apparently the security changed in later versions and they shut down X forwarding by default. I'm on debian. 1) Run gdmconfig... enable XDMCP 2) Open sshd_config... make sure you set this X11Forwarding yes 3) Now type on other machines... ssh -X ip enjoy I have turned maximum debug on the machine that doesn't work and there is no mention of X11 unlike the other which clearly indicates that it is setting up X11 forwarding. I have checked the permission in both /etc/ssh and ~/.ssh and both are the same. I have my private/public keys set up and I can log into both machines without entering a password or a pass phrase(I'm using ssh-agent). Can anyone shed any light on this as I am going completely mad! rgh -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] ssh and X forwarding woes.
Matthew Palmer wrote: On Fri, Jul 16, 2004 at 11:08:53AM +0200, Johnny wrote: 1) Run gdmconfig... enable XDMCP 2) Open sshd_config... make sure you set this X11Forwarding yes 3) Now type on other machines... ssh -X ip What does point 1 have to do with points 2 and 3? - Matt Um, yes I think you right, I'm mixing xterminal config with xforwarding. Just habits creeping in, its what I do and it works, so stopped thinking... happens often :) -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
[SLUG] File associations in linux?
Using Gnome desktop, nautilus, on debian sid. In windows if its xxx.wrd then wordpad starts it, etc etc. In nautilus on sid associations work in very much the same way, very nice, however linux does something that windows doesnt do, yeah I know a hellava lot more :) , it has the ability to decipher file types without an extension. As I understand it, it peeks at the data and then from a mime-magic file, as far as I can tell, it allocates the file type... and finds the right application. I've noticed that some of the howto's show as type unknown, in nautilus. I've tried forcing an association with say text/plain but it wont do it. These files have no extension, ie just a filename. Now if I change the name to say howtodo.TXT, then I can get it associated. Its because the text standard in the file is slightly different, possibly a russian guy wrote it in english... I think. If I look at the offending file with file it confirms an unknown type, and I guess nautilus uses file as well. So... the question, how can I take an unknown, no extension type and make magic happy? -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
[SLUG] Locale and Sort order
In my normal blundering way I sent the guys at nautilus an email, Hey you got bugs, why does 'a' come after 'X' in the file lists, its not logical. The super guru's sent me an email... Hey Einstein, you got the C locale running... just change the locale. I have no idea how to do that :) Please tell... -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
[SLUG] Deleting routes?
On my laptop, I have 2 network points, the normal ethernet slot, and the wireless card. They both set to the same IP. ifconfig etc. Now if I start it with the lan connected, the wire works. If no cable the wireless works, which is just perfect. But if I ifdown eth1 (wireless), and then bring it up again, ifup etc, it stops working. Or if I pull the pcmcia wireless card out and stick it back in, same story. Now if I look at route, its because when I bring the wireless card back up, its route comes after the wire route in the table. ie if I interrupt the wireless card and let the hotplug stuff do its work, it puts it after the wire route, they both have the same ip, so its snookered, the browser and whatnot start trying to use the wire, which isnt there. I could just not touch the wireless card, but hey its fun pulling it out and showing curious people the wonders of wireless. I could fix it, if only I knew how to delete a route in the table. route del -net xx netmask xxx dev eth0 does absolutely nothing. How does one delete a route? -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
[SLUG] Re: [GLUG-chat] Locale and Sort order
* top posting--- easier to follow Here's a snip for other mere mortals Stick this in your profile file, or your .bashrc, or your .xinitrc... I think profile is where it belongs. and yes the guru's are all right, a with come after A, d after D in nautilus. I tested to see if ELEMFM (another file manager) also started collating like this, no it doesnt, it still sticks a after X... oh well. Note if you on debian and your locale - a shows no locales, then apt-get install localeconf, and it will kick off the installation of locales. LANG=en_US LC_CTYPE=en_US LC_NUMERIC=en_US LC_TIME=en_US LC_COLLATE=en_US LC_MONETARY=en_US LC_MESSAGES=en_US LC_PAPER=en_US LC_NAME=en_US LC_ADDRESS=en_US LC_TELEPHONE=en_US LC_MEASUREMENT=en_US LC_IDENTIFICATION=en_US LC_ALL=en_US export LANG export LC_CTYPE export LC_NUMERIC export LC_TIME export LC_COLLATE export LC_MONETARY export LC_MESSAGES export LC_PAPER export LC_NAME export LC_ADDRESS export LC_TELEPHONE export LC_LC_MEASUREMENT export LC_TELEPHONE export LC_IDENTIFICATION export LC_ALL Just another little thing, in nautilus, I also thought quick navigation was broken. ie if you type the first letter of a file, it goes there but if you hit the letter again, it does not move to the next one. The guru's said... just type the actual file name, it goes there, nice. Oh, if you on debian, nautilus is really only now getting really good in SID, before that it had issues. Can do things like right click and make a new folder, new file, file associations etc. Yeah, watch out M$, someones overtaking. Thx Gareth... damn you good. Gareth Gregor wrote: In my normal blundering way I sent the guys at nautilus an email, Hey you got bugs, why does 'a' come after 'X' in the file lists, its not logical. The super guru's sent me an email... Hey Einstein, you got the C locale running... just change the locale. The guru's may be a little off too. 'Cause A comes before X and a comes before x, but a comes after X. Confused? Ok, files with a capatal letter as the first letter will come before the ones with lowercase letters, as will Directories. Anyway, to answer the questino there are many many ways to change the Locale on linux, the one way is when GDM comes up to login you change the lang type on the menu and the then login, but seen as you dont use GDM and just use xinit then you can do this a few otherway. Run the command locale and then see its output. Then to change it you can use locale -a or -m to display all the different ones there are, remember to pipe (|) it to less cause there are a lot. Then cause its only bothering you in X then in your .xinitrc file you can reset them so when X starts up it uses them. eg locale ~/.xinitrc(make sure you use the and not ) then open .xinitrc and change the POSIX to en_ZA or en_US depending on where you be from Or just use local | sed s/POSIX/en_ZA/g ~/.xinitrc -G- -- All email has been scanned and found to be free from viruses. Should you have reason to suspect this email contains a virus, Please contact [EMAIL PROTECTED], with a brief description. -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Redhat 9 with a Realtek ALC655 soundcard
Hi, L Somehow dont think the new HD has much to do with it. Suspect the MB also has a sound port. Run lspci, and look whats on the PCI bus, may have 2 sound devices. I would just let it install, then rebuild the kernel, deselect the the one sound driver, download realtech one and install it. Or just use the MB one and stick the realtech in another machine. L . wrote: Hi, I have been running rh9 on a machine with a Realtek ALC655 onboard soundcard, and everything was just fine. However, the HDD in the machine was an old 4GB Quantum Fireball, and was a little clunky and slow and failing occassionally, so I decided to upgrade to a new 40GB Seagate Barracude 7200.7. Once I re-installed rh9 on the new HDD, all of a sudden, I can't get any sound to come out! It keeps detecting my sound card as an SiS7012 with an i810_audio module. I blew it away and reinstalled XP on the machine just to test the sound and sure enough, the sound card works fine! But when I re-install rh9, it still won't go! Does anyone have any experience with this? Can I manually specify the soundcard? (Obviously, it has worked in the past, so there *are* drivers for it. Thanks in advance. Lincoln. Find local movie times and trailers on Yahoo! Movies. http://au.movies.yahoo.com -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Firebird Google search to do Australia?
Terry Collins wrote: Does anyon know how to change the google search panle in Firebird/fire fox to search Australian web pages first? I fscked if I want to wade through piles of US tripe. Dont use firefox, but in Google its thing I'm looking for site: au if you look at the source of the mozilla page form action=http://www.google.com/search; method=get id=google p input type=text name=q size=31 maxlength=256 id=google-input / input type=submit value=Search / /p /form p a href=http://www.google.com/linux; Google Linux Search /a /p form action=http://www.google.com/linux; method=get p input type=text name=q size=31 maxlength=256 / input type=hidden name=restrict value=linux / *** HERE input type=submit value=Search / /p /form you can see how the do a search for linux make one that uses site:au If you want more advanced options go to the google page and play with advanced search. Then just look at the urls cgi etc. -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
