Re: [SLUG] dos2unix

[Tom Massey]

On Sun, 2010-12-26 at 17:08 +1100, wbenn...@turing.une.edu.au wrote:

> apt-get install dos2unix returning the error
> 
> "Couldn't find package dos2unix"
> 
> means, presumably, that I have to find a source.
> 
> Can anyone suggest one, please?
> 
> William Bennett.



I think tofrodos is what you're looking for:



$ apt-cache show tofrodos
Package: tofrodos
Priority: optional
Section: utils
Installed-Size: 76
Maintainer: Alexander Schmehl 
Architecture: i386
Version: 1.7.8.debian.1-1
Depends: libc6 (>= 2.7-1)
Conflicts: sysutils (<= 2.0.0-1)
Filename: pool/main/t/tofrodos/tofrodos_1.7.8.debian.1-1_i386.deb
Size: 19538
MD5sum: 6ded5d55ac0a6a0edf6dc52a6d63e464
SHA1: e953bc8e67424305b40a8aa09ad0a7ac87679ee5
SHA256: dad84ea70a3841e247054811bbfd0ddf2471fa7aa37a7046d534540ff87af092
Description: Converts DOS <-> Unix text files, alias tofromdos
 DOS text files traditionally have CR/LF (carriage return/line feed)
pairs
 as their new line delimiters while Unix text files traditionally have
 LFs (line feeds) to terminate each line.
 .
 Tofrodos comprises one program, "fromdos" alias "todos", which converts
 text files to and from these formats. Use "fromdos" to convert DOS
 text files to the Unix format, and "todos" to convert Unix text files
 to the DOS format.
 .
 This functionality is also available via the dos2unix/unix2dos
symlinks.
Homepage: http://www.thefreecountry.com/tofrodos/index.shtml
Tag: interface::commandline, role::program, scope::utility,
use::converting,
wor 

ks-with::text



signature.asc
Description: This is a digitally signed message part
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Re: [SLUG] Debian + Bluetooth + Sony Ericsson S700i Pairing

[Tom Massey]

On Sun, 2006-07-23 at 23:30 +1000, Nick Croft wrote:
> * Tom Massey ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote:
> 
> > 
> > Thanks for the suggestion. I've tried it that way as well, still doesn't
> > work. Now find that kbluetoothd is popping up a window:
> > 
> Make sure that the pin-helper is executable. I think the debian scripts 
> turn up as 644. You need 755 or 754.
> 
> The /etc/bluetooth/pin file should stay as 644.
> 
> If you like the kde way set /usr/lib/kdebluetooth/kbluepin to 755.

Thanks Nick, these settings are correct but it's still not working.
kbluepin doesn't pop up at all, though it does run directly from an
xterm. I'll keep playing with it.

Tom

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Re: [SLUG] Debian + Bluetooth + Sony Ericsson S700i Pairing

[Tom Massey]

On Fri, 2006-07-21 at 10:56 +1000, Martin Barry wrote:
> $quoted_author = "Tom Massey" ;
> > with /etc/bluetooth/pin a shell file
> > 
> > #!/bin/sh
> > echo "PIN:"
> 
> /etc/bluetooth/pin should just have the PIN number, nothing else.

Thanks for the suggestion. I've tried it that way as well, still doesn't
work. Now find that kbluetoothd is popping up a window:

Bluetooth Monitor
Problem connecting with 00:00... (the phone)
Pairing not allowed

Would 'pairing not allowed' be a setting on the phone or computer?

Tom

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[SLUG] Debian + Bluetooth + Sony Ericsson S700i Pairing

[Tom Massey]

Hello,

I'm trying to set up Debian Unstable to talk to my S700i mobile via
Bluetooth. At the moment I've managed to set it up such that I can send
to the phone using gnome-bluetooth or kbluetooth, I can use hidd from
the computer to activate the phone as a remote, sdptool browse allows me
to see the services on the phone.

What I can't do is anything that involves a PIN. Trying to use obexftp
or cat < /dev/rfcomm0 (after setting up /dev/rfcomm0) - phone asks for
the passcode, then phone gives 'Passcode missmatch', hcidump shows < HCI
Command: PIN Code Request Negative Reply (0x01|0x000e) plen 6 whenever I
try to pair. At the moment I have
pin_helper /etc/bluetooth/pin; in /etc/bluetooth/hcid.conf,
with /etc/bluetooth/pin a shell file

#!/bin/sh
echo "PIN:"

(Also tried pin_helper /usr/lib/kdebluetooth/kbluepin, but this doesn't
pop-up a window to enter the PIN, even with xhost +). Is there a way of
checking exactly what PIN is expected, and what is received? hcidump
doesn't seem to be able to do this.

I have rm -rf /var/lib/bluetooth/00\:11\:67\:20\:2F\:0F between
attempts, just in case.

Not quite sure what else is relevant. Thanks for any suggestions.

Tom

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Re: [SLUG] Linux user's group?

[Tom Massey]

On Fri, 2006-03-24 at 21:46 +1200, Bret Comstock Waldow wrote:

> To be about Linux means to be about Free Software.  If you aren't, leave the 
> name for another group that is - maybe they're willing to back it up.

Linus isn't really a Free Software guy, from what I've read. He's more
Open Source, pragmatic, but seems to prefer to avoid such politics.
So ... the guy who wrote the Linux kernel isn't about Linux?

RMS didn't code the Linux kernel (He certainly did a lot to create the
environment in which it could be coded, and this should be recognised) -
but Linux != Free Software movement.

Tom

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[SLUG] Open Networks iConnectAccess621 under Linux

[Tom Massey]

Morning,

Does anybody have any information about whether this ADSL router works
with Linux? From my reading, it seems that it would work fine, just plug
into the Ethernet port and use the web interface to configure rather
than the Windows software, but I don't know enough about the beasts to
be sure.

Thanks,
Tom

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Re: [SLUG] Re: pentium M series

[Tom Massey]

* Del <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [2005-12-26 00:00]:
> I get home from 14 hours solid fishing, boozing, and eating
> to collapse in front of the TV and maybe browse some web
> comics, and my mailbox is full of this?

Ah, some people like to fish, some people like to eat turkey, some
people like to discuss clock cycles. Myself, I like to drink brandy
while playing guitar for the gathering of peoples that seem to show
up here. (Ob Linux - I usually play some music through xmms and play
with the visualisation plugins) It's all good. Why complain? Let people
do what they like. If talking on Slug about Pentium M's is what they
want to do, then why stop them?

> To steal a very famous quote -- all of you:  "Have you ever
> kissed a girl?"

Yes. Um. Sorry, but that's a really evil quotation that should be discarded.

Tom
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Re: [SLUG] winmodems & fedora 3

[Tom Massey]

* Phill <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [2005-01-20 22:37]:
> Has anyone managed to get a lucent winmodem to operate correctly under
> fedora 3? I am trying to use it to set a fax server under hylafax

Have you tried the resources available at
? Quick search of the archives
of [EMAIL PROTECTED] suggests that there were problems with
FC 2 and certain versions of the kernel that have been resolved.
Couldn't find any mention of FC 3. Running the scanModem script
is likely to help you find support.


Tom
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Re: [SLUG] Hyper Terminal Memory Refresh

[Tom Massey]

* Peter Rundle <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [2004-02-25 14:13]:
> 
> What is the equivelent setup in Linux. I.E What application do I launch 
> to talk to the modem, issue AT commands etc.

minicom might be what you're looking for.

Tom
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Re: [SLUG] Embedding fonts in pdf documents

[Tom Massey]

* Angus Lees <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [2004-02-03 21:17]:
> At Mon, 12 Jan 2004 00:45:19 +1100, Tom Massey wrote:
> > Is there a way to embed fonts in a pdf file created on Linux?
> 
> ps2pdf can't embed a font it doesn't know about.  You could tell
> ghostscript about your font (if you were using Debian, you'd register
> your font with Defoma)

OK, something to look into. I haven't added any fonts to the system
beyond the standard fonts in OOo, kword, abiword, etc. Do I need to
register them?

> -- but your best bet is to get OOo to do its
> job in the first place :P   Unfortunately I have no experience with
> OOo or kword, but I find it strange that its hard to embed fonts.

I think it may be that I'm not using the latest versions. Bit of
googling brought up a few pages that seemed to say that in kword
you can just tell it to export to pdf and check the 'Embed fonts'
box, but kword 1.1.1 doesn't seem to do this - gives the option to
export as pdf, but not to embed fonts. OOo 1.0.3 doesn't give the
'Export as pdf' option. 1.1 Beta does, but doesn't say anything about
embedding fonts. These are the latest versions I've found as deb
packages easily apt-gettable for Woody, searching apt-get.org. I
did think of moving to testing, but Sarge is meant to be out in a
few months. CD's are nicer than dialup, especially when your sister
starts complaining that the Internet is broken everytime you run
a dist-upgrade. Probably should look into throttling there.

> Which font in particular are you having trouble with?

I've been playing with <http://lulu.com>, a Publish On Demand site.
Basic idea is that you upload a text, people buy it, gets printed
out and posted to them. Lulu.com takes a percentage of the sale. You
can upload in a variety of formats, but I'd prefer to use pdf to make
sure it looks exactly as I want. When I print to a ps file and use
ps2pdf, uploading to lulu.com gives the error:

  You have not embedded certain fonts in your document, which may
  cause display or printing issues.
  Font "Type Times-Bold is not embedded.
  Font "Type Times-Roman is not embedded.
  Font "Type Times-BoldItalic is not embedded.
  Font "Type Times-Italic is not embedded.

That's with OOo 1.1 Beta. 1.0.3 gives similar errors, though complains
for each time the font changes so repeats fonts. Same for kword.

> Personally, I always produce pdfs with pdfTeX (through ConTeXt,
> pdfLaTeX or pdfJadeTeX) and it embeds fonts quite nicely ;)

Mmm, I suspect learning TeX would be useful. The document I'm
experimenting with started out in Emacs. Only moved to OOoo as a
quick means of making it look nice. I expect there's a moral in
that.


Thanks,

Tom
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[SLUG] EverythingLinux People Please Read

[Tom Massey]

Hi,

Apologies for this, but I'm not sure of personal email addresses, and I
don't know if they'll be checking work accounts over the weekend.

I think that EverythingLinux people are on this list. Please check
your sales and webmaster email accounts ASAP.

Tom
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[SLUG] Embedding fonts in pdf documents

[Tom Massey]

Hi all,

I'm looking for a way to embed fonts in pdf documents so that I can
be sure that they look exactly as intended wherever viewed.

Using OOo 1.1 beta 2, or kword 1.1.1, I'm able to create pdf files,
but the fonts aren't embedded, and although I've searched through all the
menus I can't seem to find a way of doing it. Same for printing to a ps
file and then using ps2pdf. Googling doesn't seem to give me any hints
on this.

Is there a way to embed fonts in a pdf file created on Linux?


Tom
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Re: [SLUG] Mac + Win Sharing via Linux

[Tom Massey]

Hi again,

Thanks for the suggestions.

I spent today working on it.

Internet sharing was easy, basic iptables setup. I may get squid
involved later.

The Mac/Netatalk side of things was a snap, took 10 minutes to setup
a directory on the Linux machine that was shared to the Macs via
Netatalk, showed up nicely in the chooser.

Then I spent several hours trying to get WinXP Pro to see Samba shares.
WinXP now has the distinction of being the only OS that has ever
caused me to seriously consider physical violence towards a computer.
I tried everything Google pointed me at, a variety of smb.conf files
down to the most basic three lines in a [Global] section, played with
the WinXP registry, disabled the builtin firewall stuff, sacrificed a
goat. Nothing I did seemed to help. WinXP couldn't see the Samba share.
Google told me that WinXP was not known for it's ability to talk to
Samba, but it did seem at least possible. Does anybody know of some
decent docs that show how to connect WinXP to a Samba server? Nothing
I could find on Google worked. All I need is to have two directories
visible to WinXP - one of these also shared to the Macs via Netatalk. My
understanding is that this can be done by putting them in the same
workgroup, without the need to use domains, set up a PDC. I'd prefer
to do it with Samba rather than a web based solution such as phpgroupware.
Just seems neater - there's a lot of stuff in phpgroupware that isn't
needed here. I've got a Win98 CD somewhere around, I might get rid of
XP. I seem to remember that 98 was quite easy to setup with Samba.

Haven't really looked at printing yet. At the moment the printer is happy
to talk to the Macs via ethernet, and the WinXP machine via a parallel
connection. Not ideal, but it'll do for now while I try and get the
file sharing working.

Tom
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[SLUG] Mac + Win Sharing via Linux

[Tom Massey]

Morning all,

I'm looking for a way to have a Mac LAN and Win LAN share internet
access, printing, and files. I think that a Linux machine somewhere
in the mix might do the job.

Basic situation is that my Dad has a bunch of Mac OS 9.x machines,
he's going to share office space with a friend running Windows
machines. They're going to get an ADSL connection to the office.
What's wanted is:

Share the ADSL connection.
Share files with a secretary running MS Word (probably on Windows,
but perhaps on a Mac).
Share the laser printer.

My thought is a Linux machine connected to the ADSL link using iptables
for firewall/masquerading/routing, running Netatalk and Samba. Create
a directory on the Linux machine which is shared to my Dad's Macs via
Netatalk, but is also a Windows share for the secretary via Samba. So
Dad can put files in there from a Mac, the secretary can put files in
there from Windows, both sides can access it. I've found no docs that
say this can't be done, but I'm a bit concerned about how file locking
works in this situation. Then create a separate Windows share for my
Dad's friend on the Linux box, again shared via Samba to the secretary.
There's no need for files to be shared between Dad and his friend, just
between each and the secretary.

Does the above make sense?

The printer is an HP Laserjet 4. It has an ethernet port. Plugged into
an AppleTalk network, it comes up in the chooser and works fine. I can't
seem to get it to respond to Linux or Windows over the ethernet
connection. When plugged in, it sends out ARP packets that are received
but I'm not sure what should be responding to them. Seems to be looking
for a free IP address. Tried playing with dhcp but that doesn't seem to
do the job. Plugged into the parallel port of Windows or Linux it works
fine. I'm thinking it might be easiest to plug it into the Linux box and
use CUPS to share it.

Thanks for any thoughts,

Tom
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Re: [SLUG] What's up with the Debian Mirrors?

[Tom Massey]

Is http://cert.uni-stuttgart.de/files/fw/debian-security-20031121.txt
the official announcement?
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Re: [SLUG] What's up with the Debian Mirrors?

[Tom Massey]

* Matthew Palmer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [2003-11-21 22:52]:
> Please don't waste time speculating - almost certainly anything people are
> likely to dream up will be far worse than what has actually happened, ,
> and with luck the announcement will be out very soon.

I guess I shouldn't send Slashdot my theory that 'Cthulhu the evil
squid god haxors Debian with an army of Matrix sentinels and some
dried flowers' just yet then.
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Re: [SLUG] What's up with the Debian Mirrors?

[Tom Massey]

* Chris Deigan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [2003-11-21 22:10]:
> On Fri, 2003-11-21 at 21:58, Ken Caldwell wrote:
> > I can't seem to find any working Debian mirrors.  Is there a known
> > problem with them?
> 
> mirror.pacific.net.au and ftp.iinet.net.au seem to be working fine for
> me with a woody box.

Interesting. mirror.pacific.net.au hasn't been working properly for me
all today. It does let me do apt-get update, but not apt-get install.
Care to post a sources.list so I can check I haven't typo'd anything?
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Re: [SLUG] What's up with the Debian Mirrors?

[Tom Massey]

* Ken Caldwell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [2003-11-21 21:55]:
> I can't seem to find any working Debian mirrors.  Is there a known
> problem with them?

Something seems to be broken with Debian net presence in general
just at the moment. http://www.debian.org is not responding. There's
a thread running on debian-user at the moment about it, and somebody
with an @debian.org mail address just said that there should be some
sort of official announcemnt soon.
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Re: [SLUG] kill procesname, how ?

[Tom Massey]

Has anybody mentioned 'pkill' and 'pgrep' yet?

PGREP(1)   Linux User's Manual   PGREP(1)

NAME
   pgrep,  pkill  - look up or signal processes based on name
  and other attributes


I think it's part of the procps package.
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Re: [SLUG] starting a process over ssh, multiple ssh

[Tom Massey]

* Voytek Eymont <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [2003-09-06 21:50]:
> if I'm on a ssh connection to a remote Linux machine, and, :
> 
> wish to run something that will take some time to process, and, I want to
> log off before it completes, what do I use to spin off such action
> in a separate session that will survive ssh logof ?

Just running it in the background might work, eg:

[EMAIL PROTECTED]:~$ program &
[1] 2539
[EMAIL PROTECTED]:~$ exit

Really depends on the nature of the program you want to run. I've got
a Perl ircbot, and a couple of shell scripts that work this way. Might
be better to set it up as an 'at' or 'cron' job, depending on what you
want to do.

> also, at the moment, I have been opening say 4 separate ssh sessions to the
> remote machine (which is a bit of PITA having to logon 4 times), someone
> here pointed at 'screen' which I guess gives me similar functionality, is
> that the way to run multiple sessions to the same host ?

Does sound like 'screen' is what you're looking for. Basics: ssh into
the remote host, type 'screen'. Then 'emacs file.txt' or whatever, work
away at that. When you want to create a new session hit , and
you're at a new prompt. 'vi file.txt', or whatever. Move around in screen
sessions using , , and so on. More details in man screen.
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[SLUG] Remote Macintosh Access from Linux

[Tom Massey]

Morning all,

I'm looking for a way to access my Dad's Mac office LAN from my
home Linux machines. Situation is, Dad sends me some audio files
to transcribe as letters via email, I type them up in OpenOffice
and send them back via email to be printed. I'm looking for a
way to have the lettters I type up printed on the printer that's
attached to Dad's LAN without the clumsy step of sending them
back as email. Note that presently both ends are on dialup, and
there are only Macs (pre OS X) at Dad's end, and only Linux machines
at mine.

Ideally, I'm looking for a Linux client that can connect to a Mac
running Apple Remote Access, and then be able to upload files, print
them and so on. Something like Samba for the Mac, perhaps. Can't
seem to find such a beast after googling and searching Freshmeat etc.

Or, would it be better to set up a VPN? Or an email address at Dad's
office that prints everything sent to it? Or something else? My
own instinct is to insert a Linux box into Dad's Mac LAN, on an
ADSL connection, allowing only ssh, scp, from the net, acting also
as a print server for both the LAN and incoming ssh connections.
Such that I could 'scp file.doc [EMAIL PROTECTED]:/home/tom', then
'ssh dads.work.com' 'lpr file.doc'. Or something along those lines.
I don't really feel a need to open up Dad's printer to anybody who
happens upon it while port scanning.

Any thoughts welcome.

Tom
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Re: [SLUG] Winmodem

[Tom Massey]

* Enrique Vila <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [2003-07-02 16:26]:
> Hi everybody...
>  
> I have just installed red hat 9 in my IBM T30 laptop and it works
> wonderful. The only piece of hardware that does not work is the
> integrated modem.
>  
> Have anyone a guide on how to make my modem  work? any previous
> experience?

Have a look at http://linmodems.technion.ac.il/ and
http://www.linmodems.org/ 

http://www.msu.edu/~pfaffben/t30.html suggests it may work with
the AMR SmartLink drivers from
http://linmodems.technion.ac.il/packages/smartlink/ .
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Re: [SLUG] TV cards and software

[Tom Massey]

* AndrewD <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [2003-06-22 18:11]:
> How about a TV Excel card ($70), what have been the experiences with
> those been like with Linux. 

I've got one and it works well, easy to setup and so on. Never got the
remote to work with Linux, but other than that no problems.
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Re: [SLUG] DHCP/LAN problem: can ping IP cannot ping Hostname

[Tom Massey]

* Laurie Savage <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [2003-05-30 16:04]:
> On Fri, 30 May 2003, Tom Massey wrote:
> 
> > * Laurie Savage <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [2003-05-30 13:14]:
> > > resolv.conf on the client contains these lines
> > >   search blackbox.home
> > >   nameserver 192.168.1.1
> > 
> > Do you have a DNS server running on 192.168.1.1?
> 
> Not sure, the resolv.conf was created automatically on the client by the 
> server so I'm guessing yes. I can see the printer [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
> in the CUPS config page but cannot send jobs to it. 

Maybe try checking it with 

dig @192.168.1.1 blackbox.home

nslookup blackbox.home 192.168.1.1

See if you can access the DNS server manually like that.

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Re: [SLUG] DHCP/LAN problem: can ping IP cannot ping Hostname

[Tom Massey]

* Laurie Savage <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [2003-05-30 13:14]:
> resolv.conf on the client contains these lines
>   search blackbox.home
>   nameserver 192.168.1.1

Do you have a DNS server running on 192.168.1.1?

> The hosts file on the client does not contain 
>   192.168.1.1 blackbox.home
> because Gnome and OpenOffice complained.

What sort of complaint?
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Re: [SLUG] Almost impossible Question : Latest XFree86 install ondebian

[Tom Massey]

* Roger Salisbury <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [2003-04-02 22:36]:
> Hi Debian users
> 
> I'm trying to install a 
> Nvidia: Diamond Viper 770 . RIVATNT2  
> Video Adapter.
> on a Woody debian system. The $5 disk at the SLUG AGM.
> No Joy getting it to work above 800/600 resolution with "vga" or "nv" drivers.

I've got a TNT2 card working fine with the current version of X in Woody.
It's quite an old chipset and is well supported, I doubt that the latest
CVS X will help. What have you done so far? Actually, just remembered
that my XF86Config-4 was actually generated in Mandrake, a left over
back up file that I used when I got tired of trying to get Debian to
give me the full resolution the card was capable of. I can send you a
copy if you like.
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Re: [SLUG] Revolution OS DVD available

[Tom Massey]

* Jeff Waugh <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [2003-03-28 22:33]:
> [1] Who has managed to keep his first name amazingly secret. :-)

Is this a challenge? /me pictures rampaging Sluggers destroying Google
with increasingly futile searches. Then moving onto whois, finger,
nslookup, dig, and host, before utilising nmap in a highly unorthodox
manner.

Don't bother, BTW.

I might even make the trek into the city for this. For the film,
as well.
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Re: [SLUG] Modem on compaq persario 1550A

[Tom Massey]

* Malik Jayawardena <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [2003-03-27 19:32]:
> Trying to get the modem going on this compaq presario 1550a. It seems to 
> have a conexant soft 56k modem. I've installed the HSF linux package 
> from conexant which seems to find the modem and loads the modules, but I 
> can't seem to activate the ppp. Doesn't do anything and probing doesn't 
> seem to find the modem.

Have you had a look at  ? Also
 and
 .
You haven't given enough info to help you beyond pointing to those sites.
Do you get a NO DIALTONE error using wvdial for example, or is the
modem not found at all? If reading through these pages don't solve the
problem, I suggest posting to [EMAIL PROTECTED] giving as much info
as you can.
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Re: [SLUG] clicky clicky firewalls

[Tom Massey]

* James Gregory <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [2003-02-10 00:39]:
> Annnyway, I'm looking for something I can suggest to him which will
> setup a good iptables firewall and is clicky. Can be a firewall app that
> runs on another distro or a complete distro, I don't really mind.

Perhaps  Got a good clicky Tk interface.
Bit more than just a firewall, but the firewall module is very good.
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Re: [SLUG] Redhat 8.0 module compilation problem

[Tom Massey]

* [EMAIL PROTECTED] [2003-02-05 09:04]:

> The module you are trying to load (/lib/modules/2.4.18-14/misc/slmdm.o) is
> compiled with gcc version 2 compiler, while the kernel you are running is
> compiled with a gcc version 3 compiler.  This is known not to work.
> ...insmod failed.

I suspect the problem is that parts of the modules are provided in a 
binary form and were compiled by the distributor. This is often the case
with winmodems as the manufacturers don't want to completely open source
the drivers. I guess they used gcc 2 for the precompiled bits.

> If I insmod the relevant modules with a -f (force) I get ugly error
> messages about a tainted kernel but the modem does seem to work.

The message about tainting the kernel comes up for all modules that
don't have the right open source licence. It basically indicates
that if the kernel is made unstable by the module, then there's not
going to be any source code around to help fix the problem. It
doesn't necessarily mean that the module will break the kernel. If
it's working, and you can accept the possibility that it'll crash
the machine, then that may be as good as you can get.
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Re: [SLUG] Postfix vs Qmail

[Tom Massey]

* <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [2003-01-31 11:30]:
> Care to elucidate upon the non-GPL licensing restrictions?

http://www.linuxmafia.com/~rick/faq/#djb
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Re: [SLUG] Has anyone go experience with installing linux on

[Tom Massey]

hppavilion ze4103s?
Reply-To: 

Not sure if it will help, but have a look at the Saturday 18 Jan 2003
entry at  (currently at the top of the page).
Just happens to be a blog I read semi-regularly, and I remembered that
somebody was looking for info on running Linux on an HP Pavilion.
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Re: [SLUG] Modifying tomsrtbt disk

[Tom Massey]

* Ken Caldwell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [2002-12-30 22:37]:
> Hi,
> For some years I have used tomsrtbt disk as a convienient boot, repair
> and rescue disk.  In that time I have nearly always used it in 80x25
> characters and never with anything but a standard qwerty keyboard.  It
> occurs to me that I could save time or keystrokes by removing the three
> delays built into the boot process.
> 
> Does anyone here know how to do this?

Sometimes. (Bit tired at the moment, but I've messed around in this area
before enough to build a bootable CD that will install a base Linux
system).

> I have found the "sleep 15" that gives you time to select the keyboard
> but have not found the code that controls the wait at the boot prompt or
> while waiting for you to select the number of lines and characters to be
> displayed on the screen.  (I admit that I have only a hazy idea of what
> the rc.custom scriot is doing!)

I suspect that this is all in the boot block. This is pretty hard to
change in tomsrtbt from memory - doesn't have a handy lilo.conf to mess
around with, it's already been built into the floppy image.

The rc.custom script is pretty much just a standard shell script that
serves as an /etc/rc* here I think. Anything it does, it does it to the
ram disk.

> If I wanted to run a script on startup rather than getting a login
> prompt what changes should I make?

You might want to consider building your own floppy.
 It's really
quite easy to do, and very interesting. I'll try and remember some
more details tomorrow, but now I must go to bed.
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Re: [SLUG] Fwd: Fw: FW: Read!

[Tom Massey]

* Nicholas Tomlin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [2002-12-23 05:14]:

> PLEASE PASS ON AS A LAST REQUEST

Please don't. It's a version of this hoax.

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Re: [SLUG] Disable mouse thingie

[Tom Massey]

* Alan L Tyree <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [2002-12-14 11:14]:
> Hi all,
> I have a laptop that my wife uses for email and things. Running X, RH8.
> 
> Problem is that the built-in mouse substitute is a nuisance. It is too
> easy to rest hands on it while typing. I have another mouse attached
> through the PS2 port.
> 
> How do I disable the built in? I tried commenting out one of the
> sections in XF86config, but both mouse connections still work.


Have a look in the BIOS settings for an option to disable it and
use an external mouse.
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Re: [SLUG] how do I join??

[Tom Massey]

* A B D Computer Installations <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [2002-11-22 01:16]:
> Hi my name is Mohammad and I have been advised by Jeff Waugh to join 
> the mailing list.How do I join ??

Fill in your details at 
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Re: [SLUG] "win"modem

[Tom Massey]

* James Gregory <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [2002-11-09 23:33]:
> So, what internal modems do play nice with linux?

Lucent based ones are the best, but only some of them. ESS,
PCTel, Conexant/Rockwell, some Intel ones also work, but are
more limited and often only work under a specific kernel. Best
thing is to search at 
before you buy. This page has the largest list of winmodem/linux
compatability available via the 'View the entire table' link 
 (currently > 620 Kb).

> I heard wild rumours
> that "SwannSmart" modems use Lucent chipsets, and they're relatively
> cheap. Are they the way to go?

Need to know which specific Lucent chipset is used.
 seems to be a bit broken at the moment, so
I can't fully check this. At least one of their internal modems seems
to have a Conexant chipset, which is pretty hard to get working: you
need to use a 2.2.14 kernel I think, and even then it may not work.
They seem to have two models of the SwannSmart II Internal. The current
one has a Conexant chipset, the older one has a Lucent. If you can get
hold of the older Lucent based version, make sure that it's a DSP, not
AMR modem. On the whole, I would avoid them. If they're really cheap,
I would guess that they're not supported by the driver, but that's just
a guess.

> I know the Lucent chipset powered modem
> in my laptop works, do Lucent have linux drivers for all their chipsets?

No. Lucent/Agere DSP modems are supported, but not AMR modems.
Essentially what happens is that Agere Systems (I think they took
over Lucent. Or something.) releases a proprietary binary driver
which is taken by a set of volunteers and built into a friendly
installer that's made available at .
So far they haven't released anything for the AMR modems (which
are cheaper - more processing handed to the CPU, less complicated
chipsets, more done in software).

> Has anyone here actually got a winmodem to work?

Yes. I've had a Lucent based one working well for years.
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Re: [SLUG] DVD players

[Tom Massey]

* andrew <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [2002-10-31 22:30]:
> Stupid question of the day, when I goto install the DVD drive which will
> be replacing my CD Rom, do I just plug it into the power and IDE and
> sound card cables, make it the master and then turn on to configure.

(Not such a stupid question, this stuff can be pretty confusing. The IDE
setup is kind of stupid IMHO, doesn't make the questions so. To answer
your questions:).

Probably, if you just plug it in the same way the current CD-ROM is
installed. It usually depends on where on the IDE cable you plug the
DVD drive in. A standard IDE cable goes motherboard<-->slave<-->master.
Some cables just have motherboard<-->master. So, you plug the master
drive into the end of the IDE cable, the slave is plugged in to the
connector in the middle of the cable. If you only have the one drive
it should be plugged in to the end of the cable and it is the master.
This is standard for any drives plugged in to the IDE controller, I 
think.

> I also have a CD burner which I installed last week so do I set the
> jumper (on the DVD to master the jumper on the CD burner is set to
> slave)to master?

Same issue - where is the drive on the IDE cable? Sounds like you're
right. If the burner is plugged into the middle connector on the IDE
cable, and the DVD drive is plugged in to the end of the cable, then
the burner is slave, DVD drive is master. Sounds like you know what
you're doing.
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Re: [SLUG] Mount CD image as drive

[Tom Massey]

* Doug Foskey <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [2002-10-09 12:04]:
> Newbie Q: How do I mount an image file so I can access the files? (ie I want 
> to mount '/~.../crap.img' to '/mnt/img1' )

mount -o loop /~.../crap.img /mnt/img1

> Also if I wish to do this frequently can I add it to /etc/fstab?

I'm not sure, but it might work if you put 'loop' in the options
field - this is the fourth field.
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Re: [SLUG] Swap space question

[Tom Massey]

* Mark A. Bell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [021003 19:45]:
> Just out of interest,
> 
> Asside from test-piloting distributions like Paul does, why would
> someone want to run two different Linux distros on the one hard disc?

Bragging rights?


Personally, I've found it useful at times to run a number of
distributions in order to help test/develop installation scripts
for the Lucent winmodem driver - building debs and rpms that will
work on multiple distros/releases.
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Re: [SLUG] Swap space question

[Tom Massey]

* Paul Copeland <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [021003 18:54]:
> If I run two different Linux distros on the one hard disc are there any 
> problems if I use the same swap partition for each?

No problems, I've done it frequently.
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Re: [SLUG] Configuration files...

[Tom Massey]

* David <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [2002-10-02 23:56]:
> When I've asked dumb questions here (SLUG), i've either got deafening
> silence or i've been overwhelmed by intelligent responses, and I can't
> figure out why i get one or the other

 is quite a
good resource for figuring out how to ask questions that are likely
to get a good response. In my experience SLUG is pretty forgiving,
even when asked annoying questions or asked questions in an annoying
way. The most likely reason for getting no response around here is
simply that nobody knows the answer.
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Re: [SLUG] Initial installation suse 8.0

[Tom Massey]

* Juan A Aranibar <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [2002-09-18 23:09]:
> I have installed Linux Suse 8.0 on my laptop IBM ThinkPad 390E after
> DOS and Windows NT 4.0 on a second HD, and I'm happy with what I can
> see, unfortunately I can not configured my modem / Internet. Is there
> anywhere, or were I can get some help!!  an explanation on how to do it.

I believe the modem in a ThinkPad 390E is a Lucent winmodem. This means
that  is the first place you have to
visit to get a good overview of the issues involved. The driver you
need is available from . I think that

is probably the rpm you need to get. Download this file and install it
using the command "rpm -i ltmodem-kv_2.4.18_4GB-8.22a3-1.i386.rpm". This 
will install the needed modem driver on your system. Once it's installed
the usual methods of accessing the modem will work. I'm not sure what
the best way of starting a dialup session under SuSE is, but tools such
as kppp should be able to access the modem as /dev/modem. Please read the
information at  as all your questions
should be answered there.
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Re: [SLUG] Switching Interfaces on network cards

[Tom Massey]

* Scott [2002-09-18 22:33]:
> The gigabit works if I alias eth1 to e1000 in modules.conf.
> what seems to be the problem, If I can explain better (I have never been 
> good at explaining problems in emails)
> What I want is the gigabit to be eth0, and the 100mbit to be eth1.

You could perhaps try passing ethernet info to the kernel during
boot, something like:

LILO: linux ether=IRQ,ADDR,eth0

Fill in the appropriate IRQ and ADDR for the card you want to be eth0, 
and if it works stick it in /etc/lilo.conf as append=" ether=x,x,eth0".
(N.B. this works on a 2.2.x kernel, not sure about 2.4.x).

You'd find it a lot easier if they were both modules though - just load
the e1000 module first.
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Re: [SLUG] how do I force user to change password on first login

[Tom Massey]

* Rob B <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [2002-09-17 14:44]:
> How can I add a user, and have them forced to change their password on 
> first logon?  This will be on Deb 3.0

I think that script would probably work OK, but another option
would be to set up the new accounts with an already expired password
using the -e option to passwd or useradd, depending on how you're
adding users.
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Re: [SLUG] disc crash

[Tom Massey]

* Paul Maloney <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [2002-09-12 19:08]:
> I couldn't start Win 98 or even see it when mandrake was installed.

Sounds like maybe something went wrong with the boot loader configuration.
Usually Mandrake is quite good at automatically detecting a Windows
partition and adding it to the boot loader menu - this would be either
LILO or Grub, I'm not sure what the default is. Possibly your Windows
partition was still intact and would have been accessible by
reconfiguring the boot loader.

> Another question for you all, what do I do when I boot up mandrake and
> all I get is a command line after I log in.

Typing 'startx' should get you into a GUI. You might also prefer to
tell Mandrake to start the xserver at boot which can be done during
the install.
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Re: [SLUG] Starting programs on console

[Tom Massey]

* Matthew Clark <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [2002-09-03 20:01]:
> just wondering about how one would  go about starting an application on a
> local console. for instance something like mysqlclient or mutella etc. so
> that you could access it by hitting ctrl-alt-f9 for instance (no login
> prompt, instead application prompt).
> 
> i would assume that this would be done through inittab, but don't know
> exactly how to link it to the console.

You could do it quite easily using getty and just telling it
to run a different login program and not ask for a username.
Add something like this to /etc/inittab:

8:23:respawn:/sbin/getty 38400 tty8 -n -l /usr/bin/emacs

The -n tells it not to prompt for a login name, the -l tells
it which program to run in place of /bin/login. You might want
to run a script to set up the environment first, but this would
do the basic job.

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Re: [SLUG] Mandrake 8.1 and the internet

[Tom Massey]

* Ashley Lynn <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [2002-09-03 12:18]:
> I decided to try Mandrake since I had 8.1 here. All works well EXCEPT I cannot
> browse the internet or collect email.
> When I dial (wvdial) the system logs on and IFCONFIG tells me the address I
> have been assigne and the p-t-p address.
> I can ping the p-t-p address and all seems well.
> The browser has the same proxy settings as before (I never reformat /home) and
> the SMTP and POP settings are correct but no matter which browser I try I get
> a long timeout period and then "cannot find server" and "check address" errors
> and kmail says it can't find the server. 
> Any clues appreciated.

Sounds like a DNS issue. Have you put your name servers into
/etc/resolv.conf?
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Re: [SLUG] two network cards again...

[Tom Massey]

* Adam Hewitt <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [2002-09-02 14:23]:
> Is this correct? If so is there anything else I should be doing to get
> this working??

Looks right to me. Did you remember to run update-modules?
I assume the ne module is compiled and in the right place?


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Re: [SLUG] upgrading mandrake

[Tom Massey]

Tom Massey wrote:

> urpmi.addmedia --update planetmirror 
>http://planetmirror.com/pub/mandrake/updates/8.2 with base/hdlist.cz

Which would work much better as 

urpmi.addmedia --update planetmirror 
http://planetmirror.com/pub/mandrake/updates/8.2/RPMS with base/hdlist.cz

(Wrong path, I just noticed).

Also, not at all sure about using file:// to say where you want
downloaded files to live. Probably this doesn't work.
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Re: [SLUG] upgrading mandrake

[Tom Massey]

Russell Davie wrote regarding urpmi:
> 1) how do I point it to a ftp site to download rpms? (command line example, 
> please)

For planetmirror, use something like:

urpmi.addmedia --update planetmirror http://planetmirror.com/pub/mandrake/updates/8.2 
with base/hdlist.cz

This assumes you're using Mandrake 8.2 and want to label this urpmi
source as 'planetmirror'. You can use ftp instead of http, but I
think I heard somewhere that http was a faster protocol.

Following this urpmi should download files from planetmirror instead
of locally. (Cross reference for Debian users - this command is pretty
much equivalent to sticking a new mirror in your sources list and
running apt-get update. Can you do that in a single command using apt?
I mention this because there's been a bit of talk on the list recently
about rpm's being below par and such. Comes down to a matter of knowing
how to use the various tools IMHO. Further on this, urpmi --auto-select
is more or less equal to apt-get -u dist-upgrade).

> 2) where does it put the downloaded files?

/var/cache/urpmi/rpms

> how can this location be changed?

Run something like:

urpmi.addmedia planetmirror file://dir/you/want/downloads/in

Again, 'planetmirror' is whatever you labelled the rpm source
as. Actually, I expect you can add a file:// to the original
command and do it in one go.

You might be able to directly edit /etc/urpmi/urpmi.cfg, but
I have no idea what happens if you do.

Have a look at man urpmi and man urpmi.addmedia for more info.
Probably you should do that anyway, as I am tired and may have
mistook the above.
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Re: [SLUG] Xinerama, A complete mystery

[Tom Massey]

On Tue, Jul 30, 2002 at 11:12:09AM +1000, mick wrote:
> "startx -+xinerama" invalid 
> command line, so is startx +xinerama. 

Have you tried

"startx -- +xinerama" ?

Also, adding something like this to your XF86Config-4 file: 

Section "ServerFlags"
  Option "Xinerama" "on"
EndSection

I think this should let you run "startx" by itself, and get
xinerama going.
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Re: [SLUG] What is that command?

[Tom Massey]

On Fri, Jul 12, 2002 at 09:46:03PM +1000, Terry Collins wrote:
> What is that command that you use when you want to run a program and see
> what libaries, etc that is calls.

Is ldd what you're looking for?
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Re: [SLUG] mouse pointer offsets to right

[Tom Massey]

On Thu, Jun 13, 2002 at 07:38:41AM +1000, Jan Schmidt wrote:
> I've only ever seen trouble with Intellimeeces when uses them through gpm...
> if I get gpm out of the way, then the meece run fine. The symptom I see
> using gpm is that X will get confuses and push the cursor up against the
> edges of the screen regardless of how you move it.

You can usually get an Intellimouse working with gpm using
an /etc/gpm.conf like:

device=/dev/psaux
responsiveness=
repeat_type=raw
type=imps2
append=""

And /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 containing:

Section "InputDevice"

Identifier  "Mouse1"
Driver  "mouse"
Option "Protocol""IMPS/2"
Option "Device"  "/dev/gpmdata"
Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"

EndSection


The important thing is to set gpm's repeat type to raw, and
use IMPS/2 as the protocol and /dev/gpmdata as the device
when configuring X.
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Re: [SLUG] TV Excel PV-BT878P+ w/FM - Working Well!

[Tom Massey]

Hi all,

Managed to get it working. Problem was I was reading the bttv card=
from the bttv Mini-Howto , which
is out of date, so video worked because it was a bt878 chip - all such
cards doing video the same, audio didn't because all the bt878 based
cards tend to do audio differently. Finding the right card= number was
the trick, and it was sitting right there in
/usr/src/linux/Documentation/video4linux/bttv/CARDLIST. I'm using
kernel 2.4.18.

For the archives:

Card: PV-BT878P+ w/FM, branded TV Excel.
(AKA PixelView PlayTV Pro, Prolink)


Relevant sections of /etc/modules.conf:
# i2c
alias char-major-89 i2c-dev
options i2c-corei2c_debug=1
options i2c-algo-bitbit_test=1

# bttv
alias char-major-81 videodev
alias char-major-81-0   bttv
options bttvcard=72 radio=1 pll=1
options tuner   type=5

(I think card= will work with 16, 37, 50, 70, 72, but 72 seems to
be the one that best fits).


Modules needed:
bttv
tuner
videodev
i2c-core
i2c-algo-bit


That seems to be enough to get the card working really well - tv, radio,
clear picture, good radio reception etc. It looks like the remote will
work with lirc, but I've got no AAA batteries to test it at the moment.
Anyway, hope these notes are of some use to future searchers.

Tom
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Re: [SLUG] TV Excel PV-BT878P+ w/FM - audio too soft

[Tom Massey]

On Fri, May 10, 2002 at 11:40:44PM +1000, Terry Collins wrote:
> Tom Massey wrote:
> > 
> > Hi all,
> > 
> > I'm having a bit of difficulty getting a usable audio volume
> > out of a TV Excel card. 
> 
> How is the picture?
> TV or FM ?

The picture is very clear, I can pick up all the channels in
the right spot (2=abc, 7=seven, etc). Full screen works well.
FM radio works and tunes in correctly. Basically, everything
works great except it's not loud enough.

> > options tuner   type=1 debug=
> 
> Is type=1 correct? It just doesn't ring a bell.

Type 1 is 'Phillips PAL_I tuner'. Seems to work as type 1 or
type 5 'Phillips PAL tuner'.

> Have you tried other mixers?

I've tried a couple, doesn't seem to make a difference. Just
discovered something a bit odd though. If I start up xawtv
and tune in to a channel, which means I can hear a little
sound, I can then quit xawtv and unload all the tv card
modules and the sound is still playing. I can even unload
the sound card modules and the sound is still there. If
I then load the sound card modules, the mixer settings
are reset and the sound stops. I suspect all this means
that I need to find the right audio module to load to
get sound working, at the moment the sound isn't coming
through a module at all.

Thanks, Tom.
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[SLUG] TV Excel PV-BT878P+ w/FM - audio too soft

[Tom Massey]

Hi all,

I'm having a bit of difficulty getting a usable audio volume
out of a TV Excel card. The archived messages at

were most useful in getting the video and radio tuned in OK, but
I can hardly hear a thing. The best I can manage is to plug the
audio-out from the tv card into the mic-in of my SB Live! card
(not audio-in, needs to be mic-in to get the extra amplification),
and load the tvaudio module, then crank up all the volume controls
I can find to the highest level. This gives me a whisper of sound.
Loading the msp3400 or tea*, tda* modules doesn't improve things at
all. Seems to be basically a problem of amplification - if I plug
the audio-out of the tv card into my guitar amp I can get things a
little louder, though everybody sounds like chipmunks for some
reason.

The relevant sections of /etc/modules.conf:

# i2c
alias char-major-89 i2c-dev
options i2c-corei2c_debug=1
options i2c-algo-bitbit_test=1

# bttv
alias char-major-81 videodev
alias char-major-81-0   bttv
options bttvcard=23 radio=1
options tuner   type=1 debug=

I've been insmoding the various audio modules manually. Running
Debian Woody. Using xawtv and the xmms FM radio plugin. Under Windows
the sound is fine, so I assume I've plugged everything together in
the right way. Anybody have any thoughts on increasing the audio
volume output from this card?

Thanks, Tom.
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Re: [SLUG] hardware clock is standard time and linux expects utc

[Tom Massey]

On Sat, May 11, 2002 at 06:32:43AM +1000, Ken Foskey wrote:
> When I set up my dual boot laptop I said the clock was UTC and it is not
> (or vice versa).  Unfortunately someone booted it on the lan and the
> hardware clock has been reset.
> How do I swap the settings from UTC hardware clock to standard clock?

I think you need to find the startup script containing the line
"UTC=true", and change it to "UTC=false". Or maybe "UTC=yes" and
change it to "UTC=no". Seems to be in a variety
of places depending on distro. Red Hat, Mandrake, etc have it in
/etc/sysconfig/clock. Debian has it in /etc/default/rcS. Probably
grepping around in /etc for UTC will get you to the right place.
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Re: [SLUG] keyboard problem

[Tom Massey]

On Mon, May 06, 2002 at 06:42:08PM +1000, Ian Nicoll wrote:
> Re my previous e-mail and the problem I was having with my '!
> 
> Matthew came up with the idea that it may be to do with accent
> characters, such that the drivers were allowing me to put in accents
> like ?!

Did you select 'International' as the keyboard when installing? Have
a look in your /etc/X11/XF86Config, or XF86Config-4, depending on
which version of X you are using. The lines you're looking for vary
depending on which version, but should look something like.

XkbModel  "pc105"
XkbLayout "us"

(With Option in front of each if using X 4.) If they don't look like
this, make them look like that and see what happens.
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Re: [SLUG] my anxiety

[Tom Massey]

On Fri, May 03, 2002 at 07:57:13PM +0800, henry wrote:
> Share my dream with you



"Three billion human lives ended on August 29, 1997. The survivors
of the nuclear fire called the war Judgment Day. They lived only to
face a new nightmare, a war against the machines..."




Sorry.
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Re: [SLUG] Problems with RH7.1 kernel upgrade

[Tom Massey]

On Mon, Apr 29, 2002 at 06:46:12PM +1000, Michael Still wrote:
> I wanted to upgrade my RH7.1 box's kernel to 2.4.18. I followed these
> steps:

Not sure if it's relevant, but you should probably copy the
System.map from your 2.4.18 kernel source into /boot.
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Re: [SLUG] Re: [SLUG-ANNOUNCE] LinuxChix chapter in Sydney

[Tom Massey]

On Wed, Apr 17, 2002 at 12:27:53AM +1000, Andrew Bennetts wrote:
> Just because you don't feel threatened by male-dominated environments,
> doesn't mean all women don't feel threatened either.  Stupid comments like
> "excessive inferiority complex" only serve to reinforce that SLUG is not a
> welcoming environment for women.  I can see that; why can't you?

I think perhaps Neal Stephenson summed it up rather well in
'Snow Crash':

It was, of course, nothing more than sexism, the especially
virulent type espoused by male techies who sincerely believe
that they are too smart to be sexists.

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Re: Linux movies and songs - was - [SLUG] stopping StarOffice services

[Tom Massey]

On Wed, Apr 10, 2002 at 01:14:55PM +1000, Christopher Booth wrote:
> Reminds me of an idea I had of writing a song about linux.

Well, if you're interested in that you should read:

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=8098&cid=725211
(Chords added by me, to the tune of 'Puff, the Magic Dragon').

C Em  FC
Tux the Linux Penguin lived in a Red Hat box
FC Am  D7 G7 
and debugged the kernel with a guy named Alan Cox
CEm   F C 
Little Linus Torvalds loved that rascal Tux
F CAmD7   G   C 
and wrote him strings and bits and bytes and took out all the cruft 

Oh, Tux the Linux Penguin lived in a Red Hat box 
and wished upon those closed-source guys a great big nasty pox 
Together they would travel to a place known as Slash Dot 
Old Bill kept a log-book of all the flames that MS got 
All the Gates and Windows would close whene'er they came 
Stevie B. would have bad dreams and call out Tuxs' name 

Oh, Tux the Linux Penguin lived in a Red Hat box 
and sorted the linked lists with a guy named Alan Cox 
A Penguin lives forever, but not so old man Bill 
E.S.R. and R.M.S., they shot his life to hell 
One day it happened, Bill could no longer hack 
and Tux the Linux Penguin let out a mighty quack 
His belly filled with herring, free software fell like rain, 
Every man and woman could change the stuff in main() 
Without his life-long rival, Tux began a GNU 
So Tux that Linux Penguin finally flapped his wings and FLEW


http://www.poppyfields.net/filks/fullindex.html is also enjoyable.
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Re: [OT] Re: [SLUG] Wslug Meeting 14/4/02

[Tom Massey]

On Sun, Apr 07, 2002 at 01:44:54PM +1000, Jessica Mayo wrote:
> I don't see it... The only candidate for an apostrophe I see in the
> message is the word 'it' , and that has the correct punctuation...
> In this instance, the apostrophe is possessive. The "2nd meeting" belongs
> to the "Western Sydney Linux User Group"...

Except that you shouldn't use a possessive apostrophe with a possessive
pronoun; his, her, my, ours, its. The apostrophe isn't needed because
the pronoun already shows possession. Otherwise you would need to write
"his' book" and similar to indicate possession. "It's" is always a
contraction of it is, and so incorrect in this instance. 

> > For more Linux examples see...
> > http://www.sharoncolon.com/shazunix.htm
> 
> I'm afraid I don't see this page either. All lynx renders is a list of
> headings and no examples. Suspect Javascript (evil :)

It's a collection of images displaying incorrect usage of the
apostrophe in various Linux documentation and press releases.
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Re: [OT] [SLUG] Problems migrating to LDAP passwords

[Tom Massey]

On Thu, Mar 28, 2002 at 03:29:21PM +1100, Wienand Ian wrote:
>>Text in RFC822 compliant e-mail should be a maximum of 80
>>characters wide.
> 
>You might like to re-read this; no where does it specify such a
>limit.  It is only by convention.

RFC2822 obsoletes RFC0822, and does say:

Each line of characters MUST be
no more than 998 characters, and
SHOULD be no more than 78 characters,
excluding the CRLF.

It's not entirely a matter of convention.
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Re: [SLUG] Mandrake + Linux Workshop [Was: Firewire???]

[Tom Massey]

On Fri, Mar 08, 2002 at 12:37:25AM +1100, Jeff Waugh wrote:
> 
> 
> > Well, Mandrake you can install by clicking [OK] a couple of times.  Debian
> > you generally have to actually use the keyboard a little. Once installed,
> > you can pretty much configure Mandrake entirely with a mouse, Debian tends
> > to prefer keyboard here again. Please don't say at this point that the
> > command line is a more powerful interface than mouse clicking
> 
> I won't, because by and large, the Debian installation does not require the
> use of the command line. Ah yes, it is certainly in character mode, and
> requires manipulation of the language-driven (as opposed to visually driven)
> article of hardware known as the 'keyboard', but it is certainly not
> "command line".

Ah true. I don't think I said that a Debian install required the command
line per se, just that you couldn't click [OK] a few times to complete
the install - you often have to type stuff as well, in my experience.
Basic point being that a Mandrake install is likely to be a more familiar
experience to new users who've used Windows, than a Debian install.
Unless they've played with a lot of old MS-DOS apps, with that blue
background and so on. That always gives me flashbacks to WordPerfect
5.2.

> > I agree with that, but new users coming from Windows, as many probably
> > will be, will disagree. Mandrake eases new
> 
> *That's* where you start to make sense, but not based on your aforementioned
> reasoning. Mandrake is slick, beautiful, designed for desktop use on modern
> hardware, and shows off Free Software at its best. That's what makes Windows
> users intrigued, and perhaps comfortable.

Dear me, I spent *hours* on that pool analogy in the hopes of being
featured on distrowatch.com or similar and there you go wiping it out
with a couple ^Hs ;-). Yes, Mandrake is very slick. And they tend to
GPL their slickness, which is nice.

Please note that this email comes to you via a Debian box that most
likely wouldn't exist if it hadn't been for Mandrake 5.2 (or whatever
it was). Still occasionally feel the need to wave the flag a little.

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Re: [SLUG] How this for a simple recommendation for IP-Tables firewalling and ICS

[Tom Massey]

On Fri, Mar 08, 2002 at 12:06:54AM +1100, Andy Eager wrote:
> Dazza wrote:
> >I have a 2.4 kernel running iptables, and it seems to do everything fine -
> >telnet, ssh, ftp, ICQ, irc, real audio, http, https - I haven't found
> >anything yet that _doesn't_ work.
> 
> Are you masquerading all of these (both passive & active ftp?).  I would 
> be keen to hear that there _are_ conntrack modules for the other 
> protocols you mentioned.  

Just as a bit of anecdotal evidence, I seem to be successfully
masquerading all of this stuff here under 2.4.17, with a bunch of
machines (bunch here being a technical term for usually less than 5)
running Windows, Linux, MacOS. I just said 'M' to everything in
IP: Netfilter config during kernel config, use an iptables set that
says something like iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -o ppp0 -j MASQUERADE
and everything seems to work fine.
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Re: [SLUG] Mandrake + Linux Workshop [Was: Firewire???]

[Tom Massey]

On Thu, Mar 07, 2002 at 11:42:00PM +1100, Jamie Wilkinson wrote:
> Pfft, installing Debian is childs play.  All it requires is a small amount
> of literacy and some common sense.  Or is that too much to ask?

Well, Mandrake you can install by clicking [OK] a couple of times.
Debian you generally have to actually use the keyboard a little. Once
installed, you can pretty much configure Mandrake entirely with a
mouse, Debian tends to prefer keyboard here again. Please don't say
at this point that the command line is a more powerful interface than
mouse clicking, I agree with that, but new users coming from Windows,
as many probably will be, will disagree. Mandrake eases new
users into the penguin pool via the ladder with a warning about using
plenty of sunscreen, Debian throws them in the deep end with a cheery
shout that may or may not include a mention of towels. Which is just
my rather convoluted way of saying that Mandrake is far better suited
to new Linux users than Debian, IMHO.
/msg jaq Once they're hooked on Linux via Mandrake we can switch
them to Debian and get the world domination thing happening.
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Re: [SLUG] ask summary of installed programs

[Tom Massey]

On Thu, Mar 07, 2002 at 06:42:43PM +0800, henry wrote:
> Everytime I install Redhat ,the summary(package name,size, it's use)
> of installed programs will flash in front of me .
> I wish to know what package I have & it's use.
> Could someone know any system-file which have such records ?

You need to get friendly with rpm, and it's various frontends.
In a terminal window or similar,

rpm -qa  (for a complete list of installed rpms)
rpm -qi package  (for some info about package)

man rpm for more details, but you may find it simpler to use
something like kpackage (for KDE), or gnorpm (for Gnome).
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Re: [SLUG] ask perl

[Tom Massey]

On Tue, Mar 05, 2002 at 05:51:16PM +0800, henry wrote:
> I want to print the first 5 characters in front of a definite word 
> as follows:
> It's supposed that the definite word is AU.
> INPUT   -->aassewrab cdAUwst 
> OUTPUT(I hope to get )  - ->ab cd
> 
> Could you give some hint ?

There's probably a better way to do it, but something like this
should work:

#!/usr/bin/perl
$def_word = 'AU';
$input = 'aassewrab cdAUwst';
$input =~ /$def_word/;
$output = substr ($`,-5);
print $output;
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Re: [SLUG] dial-up configuration using win modems

[Tom Massey]

On Sun, Mar 03, 2002 at 04:18:27PM +0800, Michael Jordan wrote:
> My pc uses a win modem and I understand to carry out the dial-up
> configuration, I need to do a few tasks before proceeding to configure
> my internet connection.
> Can someone explain to me what the steps are? Currently I know my modem
> is a Lucent Win modem, but that is as far as I know for now. What are
> the other pieces of information I need to obtain and what do I do?

The best place to go to start with is
. You'll need to install the driver
located at .
 is a reasonably good
tutorial on how to do this.
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Re: [SLUG] How to install about 150 rpms?

[Tom Massey]

On Mon, Feb 11, 2002 at 12:30:02AM +1100, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> On 10 Feb, Jeff Waugh wrote:
> >  > So my question is, is there a utility that will work out which rpm files 
> >  > provide which dependencies, and work out the order to install them all? 
> >  > It would be less tedious than compiling from source, to work out by hand 
> >  > what the right install order would be, but surely this must be a common 
> >  > problem? 
> >   
> >  If you want to install all of them, can't you just do rpm -Uvh * and it
> >  will work it out?
> 
> Nope.  It would be sensible if it did, though, wouldn't it?

Yes. Are you sure that it doesn't?

> rpm -Uvh *.rpm
> error: failed dependencies:

All these (I think) are saying that you don't have the required
dependencies installed on your system, and that the packages
included in *.rpm also don't satisfy the dependencies. You need to
upgrade to the versions listed, or some things won't work.

> Kevin Waterson wrote:
> 
> > if you do rpm -Uvh *.rpm you may find dependacy problems as it will 
> > try to install them  in order,

I think this is a bit mistaken - rpm should look through all the
packages given to it for dependencies before it begins the install,
and abort if failed dependencies are found. This means that if you
get dependency problems, the rpm packages will not install properly.
You can force the install, but that doesn't get around the problem
of failed dependencies - there's still going to be software that
depends on other software that is either not installed or not up to 
the version required by the package you are trying to install. This
is a Bad Thing.

> > but if you do
> > rpm -Uvh *.rpm --nodeps --force
> > this will install them all without any issues with dependancies,but
> > forcing them is not always a good idea.
> 
> Well, I feel like taking a gamble and seeing whether this breaks my
> entire system or not, so I'll try it

Um, that may not be a great idea. This assumes that the packages you
have in your temporary directory fulfil all the requirements that all
the other packages in that directory depend on. This may not be the
case. Generally it's safer in this situation to do an rpm -Uvh *.rpm
and try and fulfil the dependencies that rpm complains about before
you start playing with --force or --nodeps. Searching on
 can often find rpms that satisfy these
dependencies. As a generality, with an rpm based system, if you find
yourself using --nodeps or --force, you've probably done something
wrong. Those options should really only be used, for example, by people
who've installed the needed dependencies from source and so skipped
adding them to the rpm database. There are reasons that rpm's have
dependencies, there are reasons that the rpm program has --nodeps and
--force flags. Installing potentially unstable software is not one of
them. Well, actually it is. But only if you're willing to poke at the
instability until it becomes at least as stable as a badly cooked
blancmange.
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Re: [SLUG] Newbie and Modem - I need help.

[Tom Massey]

On Tue, Jan 08, 2002 at 11:13:45AM +1100, Crossfire wrote:

> Well, ltmodem is purely for the lucent based winmodems.  Conexant are
> another big manufacturer of winmodems, and their offerings have no
> linux support.

This isn't entirely true - there are drivers available for Conexant HSF
modems , same sort of thing as the
Ltmodem drivers: half binary, half source. This approach does seem to
work reasonably well with the Ltmodem drivers anyway. I've had them
working on every 2.4.x kernel and a number of 2.2.x kernels, even with
various patches such as the preempt one, devfs. I do agree with most of
what you're saying though.
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Re: [SLUG] How to apply kernel patches?

[Tom Massey]

On Wed, Dec 26, 2001 at 09:19:35PM +, Rev Simon Rumble wrote:
> So I want to toy around with the preemptible kernel patches
> (http://www.tech9.net/rml/linux/) but how do I actually apply them?  I
> always thought patch was smart enough to work it out but it's having
> none of my kernel!

Should just be a matter of putting the patch in /usr/src and then
'patch -p0 < preempt-kernel-rml.2.x.x', followed by the normal kernel
config and compile.
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Re: [SLUG] Building new kernel

[Tom Massey]

On Thu, Dec 20, 2001 at 10:05:07AM +1100, Harry Ohlsen wrote:
> Once I finish the "make modules", I'm going to have to do a "make install 
> modules" ... I believe?

make modules_install maybe. I'm not sure how clever make install is.

> 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.

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.

> 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.

> If someone can point me to a URL where I can find a detailed explanation of 
> these sorts of things, that would be great.

http://www.linuxdoc.org/HOWTO/Kernel-HOWTO.html

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Re: [SLUG] A problem with X

[Tom Massey]

On Thu, Nov 15, 2001 at 11:48:25AM +1100, Ken Caldwell wrote:
> XFree86-4.1.  The pointer appears as a square say 2cm x 2cm made up of 8
> horizontal lines alternately dark and light.  Does anyone know what
> causes this or how to fix it

I think this can be fixed by adding

Option "sw_cursor"

To XF86Config-4. I think it goes in the "Graphics device section". 

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Re: [SLUG] Sound under KDE in Mandrake

[Tom Massey]

On Sun, 11 Nov 2001, James Newburrie wrote:
> I have just setup Mandrake on my Hewlett Packard Pavilion 6511.  The only
> problem is that I cannot get sound happening.  Inside these HP boxes they use
> a funky combined sound card and modem.   Under windows the soundcard appears
> as a RipTide audio mixer, but I cannot seem to find how to make it work under
> linux.  Your help would be most apprechiated.

I think this card is supported by the commercial version of OSS.
. Far as I know, there's currently no other
way of getting it to work under Linux. There's a free, time limited,
download you could try to see if it works, decide if you want to buy
it.


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Re: [SLUG] please help.........

[Tom Massey]

On Fri, 2 Nov 2001, Manny wrote:

> Sadly Linux  could not
> detect my internal modem and I could not go online using Linux. I am using
> Lucent Win Modem Driver. is there a possibility to find an alternative
> driver for my modem to work with Linux OS.

The driver you need is at . You can have a
look in the section containing Red Hat rpms for a version that matches
your kernel (given by the output of 'uname -r'), or download the latest
tar.gz package and compile it yourself. Read all the docs in this package
and you shouldn't have any problems. More help can be found at
 where there is a mailing list, or at
 where the latest version of the
linmodem HOWTO lives (except when the site is down). Also available from
 but this version is often
not as up to date as the other, though more likely to be available.


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Re: [SLUG] kernel 2.4.10 - good or bad?

[Tom Massey]

On Wed, Oct 31, 2001 at 09:11:39PM +1100, Erik de Castro Lopo wrote:

> 2.4.11 had a serious problem (forgot specifics)

The major problem, I think, was to do with the creation of sym links.
Liable to leave links pointing at non-existent files under certain
circumstances. Particularly a problem for SUSE users I hear - YAST uses
the technique of creating sym links that is certain to break under this
kernel. This is why 2.4.11 is marked as 'dontuse', and why 2.4.12 came
out 2 days later.

> I have downloaded but not yet compile 2.4.13 which I believe is the latest.

Yes, this is the latest. I've been trying to download it from
ftp.au.kernel.org for a few days - anybody know if they've been having
problems lately? Connections seem to be so slow as to be unusable - 5
mins for an ls and so on, with the connection dying before I can start
downloading. Better to go with another site?

BTW Erik, I'm rather enjoying your SAMS C for Linux programming book at the
moment. Thanks for this book, good stuff!

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Re: [SLUG] Lindows ? Is this a hoax or for real

[Tom Massey]

On Wed, Oct 24, 2001 at 12:52:16PM +1000, Booth, Christopher (Aus) - ATP wrote:
> http://www.lindows.com/index.html

No, the hoax is at . :-) This lindows thing
looks quite interesting really.

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Re: [SLUG] Re: Login problem help!

[Tom Massey]

On Thu, Sep 27, 2001 at 10:56:33PM +1000, Angus Lees wrote:
> \begin{Tom Massey}
> > Mandrake stores it's configuration for kdm in /usr/share/config/kdmrc.
> 
> ouch. FHS says this should be in /etc - and for several good reasons.
> i'd consider that a fairly serious bug against the mandrake kdm packaging.

Yes, it is a bit peculiar. Though only a bug I think in the Debian sense
of not conforming to a given standard. (Yes I know there are other reasons
this should be in /etc). I have a vague idea that all the
KDE stuff in Mandrake was originally stuck in /usr when Mandrake was
pretty much just Red Hat with KDE, back when Red Hat didn't want to include
KDE because of license issues. So to maintain Red Hat compatibility, Mandrake
stuck KDE config stuff into /usr rather than put it in /etc, and confuse
Red Hat people. And so it remains. Ah well. At least it's not in /opt :-)

All this may be apocryphal, it's just a story that some guy who knows
the dog of one of the Mandrake developers passed on to me. And it may have
changed in Mandrake 8.1 which has apparently just hit the ftp servers.

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Re: [SLUG] Login problem help!

[Tom Massey]

On Thu, Sep 27, 2001 at 07:30:29PM -0400, blinddog wrote:
> New problem, and I am not sure what to do next.
> System Mandrake 8
> When I login and the X login promt appears it normally would have my login, 
> my partners and the root to choose from. Now I have approx 30 icons to choose 
> from being things like alias, axfrdns, nscd, qmailq, shutdown, halt etc. Also 
> I have now lost the button to shutdown, reboot etc and can only action these 
> from a console. 

It's likely you're using kdm (default on Mandrake I think), unless you've
changed it yourself. Mandrake stores it's configuration for kdm in
/usr/share/config/kdmrc. This is probably the file you need to look at. It's
not well commented at all, but have a look for the NoUsers= line. Should look
something like:

NoUsers=adm,apache,bin,bind,daemon,exim,falken,ftp,games,gdm,gopher,halt,httpd,
ingres,kmem,lp,mail,mailnull,man,mta,mysql,news,nobody,nscd,operator,pop,
postfix,reboot,root,rpc,rpcuser,sendmail,shutdown,squid,sympa,sync,tty,uucp,
xfs,xten,

Including all the users you don't want to show up in the kdm menu. Might be
another issue though if you've lost the shutdown, reboot buttons. Have a look
at that file anyway and see if anything looks relevant.

If you're using xdm or gdm, Mandrake stores the config info in /etc/X11/xdm,
and /etc/X11/gdm. The config files are in these directories.

Tom

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Re: [SLUG] Routing problem

[Tom Massey]

On Tue, Sep 25, 2001 at 07:43:37PM +1000, Grant Parnell wrote:
> I know you've solved this another way but you might be interested in 
> knowing why it worked out that way.
> I've answered this by inserting lines with [G]

Thanks for the info, interesting stuff. Would you believe that the problem
was actually the result of the cables getting switched around accidentally,
so they were connected to the wrong machines? :-/ So apparently the
original setup, though invalid, actually did work. 
 
> You need to at least read a book on TCP/IP networking and get a good 
> understanding of routing and subnetting.

Yep, I'm starting to realise this. :-) 

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Re: [SLUG] Routing problem

[Tom Massey]

Thanks for the suggestions to put things onto separate subnets. This seems to
be the answer (haven't been able to change things yet, all the machines are
actually in the US and I haven't got in touch with the guy who has physical
access). I can only assume that the setup worked originally because the modules
and routing info were added when Red Hat was looking the other way, but after
a reboot the system recognised the need to add routes, and things broke
because the broken configuration added broken routes. Interesting that it wasn't 
recognised as an invalid config, and actually worked fine, until after the
reboot.

Thanks again,
Tom

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[SLUG] Routing problem

[Tom Massey]

Hi all.

I'm having some difficulty with routing under Red Hat 7. Basic situation:
Me and few friends have a machine running RH7 that we're playing with
networking stuff on, different configurations just for the hell of it
basically. At the moment the machine contains 4 NICs - eth0 to a cable
modem, eth1 to a LAN (masquerading etc), then eth2 and eth3 which each go
to separate machines, isolated from the rest. This was all set up and
working fine, but then the machine was rebooted.

Now whenever eth1, eth2, or eth3 are brought up, something adds a
route to the routing table such that each interface is associated with
the destination 192.168.1.0, as well as any other routing info we stick
in /etc/sysconfig/static-routes. This happens whether the interface is
brought up with ifup or ifconfig. At the moment the routing table looks
like:

Destination Gateway Genmask Flags Metric RefUse Iface
192.168.1.13192.168.1.10255.255.255.255 UGH   0  00 eth3
192.168.1.13*   255.255.255.255 UH0  00 eth3
192.168.1.12192.168.1.9 255.255.255.255 UGH   0  00 eth2
192.168.1.12*   255.255.255.255 UH0  00 eth2
192.168.1.0 *   255.255.255.0   U 0  00 eth1
192.168.1.0 *   255.255.255.0   U 0  00 eth2
192.168.1.0 *   255.255.255.0   U 0  00 eth3
xx.xx.xx.xx *   255.255.255.0   U 0  00 eth0
127.0.0.0   *   255.0.0.0   U 0  00 lo
default xx.xx.xx.xx 0.0.0.0 UG0  00 eth0

(The x's are just to avoid my friend beating me up for disclosing his IP
number ;-) 

This is obviously a really messy routing table, but 192.168.1.10 == eth3,
192.168.1.9 == eth2, and the destinations are correct. Problem seems to
be the routes to 192.168.1.0. I haven't been able to work out where they're
coming from. route del 192.168.1.0 gives SIOCDELRT: No such process. Can't
seem to get rid of these routes no matter what I try. And I can't seem to
work out where they're coming from in the first place.

/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth1 looks like:

DEVICE=eth1
USERCTL=no
ONBOOT=yes
BOOTPROTO=none
IPADDR=192.168.1.1

As do ifcfg-eth2, and ifcfg-eth3, with different IPADDR.

/etc/sysconfig/static-routes looks like:
eth2 host 192.168.1.12
eth3 host 192.168.1.13

(we've also had gateway info in there at some stage, this seems to make
no difference)

This was all set up before the reboot and was working - i.e. the kernel
(2.2.19) was recompiled to support the NICs we were going to stick in the
machine, the machine was powered down, the NICs inserted, the machine
booted, the necessary entries were added to /etc/modules.conf, the NIC
modules loaded OK, all necessary changes were made so that the NICs could
talk to the machines conected to them. Then after a reboot, this new routing
info was loaded, that seems to have broken things so that whenever the
interfaces are brought up, routes to 192.168.1.0 are added, though we don't
seem to have changed anything that would lead to this.

I've googled and so on, but can't seem to find any relevant info. Can
anyone tell me where these routes to 192.168.1.0 are coming from? I have
a feeling it's something really simple I've missed, but I just can't see
what. I just can't figure out what's happened so that a set up that was
working fine before a reboot is completely broken after the reboot.

Thanks for any thoughts,
Tom

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Re: [SLUG] Help I got hacked!!

[Tom Massey]

On Wed, Jul 04, 2001 at 08:22:11PM +1000, andy wrote:
> OK, so I rebuilt an old  RH6.2 system and upgraded to RH7.1 in the 
> process.  I got the RH7.1 install to format everything except my swap 
> drive. 
> 
> About an hour

Heh, you're lucky. I've had people knocking at the door minutes after this
sort of thing. :-)

>  after I rebooted my nicely rebuilt system (using my old 
> ipchains rules - which are obviously lacking) I noticed the following 
> tell-tale signs of intrusion yet again:

All the PROTO=6 probably means they're looking for an NNTP server. Unless
you're running one, laugh evily in their general direction. (And since it's
repeated, I'd guess you're safe, they haven't found anything but are stupid
and keep trying)

PROTO=17 are UDP packets, I think this has something to do with Win NETBIOS
stuff. Vaguely thinking that somebody is looking for Windows shares on your
machine.
 
> ... 17:13:17 rpc.statd[844]: gethostbyname error for 
> ^X???^X???^Y???^Y???^Z???^Z???^[???^[???%8x%8
> x%8x%8x%8x%8x%8x%8x%8x%236x%n%137x%n%10x%n%192x%n\220\220\220
> \220\220\220\220\220\220\220\220...   heaps of this

This one is more fun, looks like a buffer overflow attack against rpc.statd.
Are you sure you want to be running this service? Really not a great idea
to run it on a machine directly connected to the net, you want a firewall in
there somewhere I'd think.
 
> The IP addresses don't seem to mean much other than one of them is mine 
> ! (dial up so it varies each time)

One of them is yours because it's the destination IP. The other IP number is
the computer the attack (supposedly) came from. You can try tracing it back
with an nslookup IP, or whois IP. Then you can send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
And generally get no response at all back. Or you could h@><0r them and
spend 15 years in jail. Your choice.
 
> The same thing happened on RH6.2 just before I got attacked (though this 
> could be just coincidence)

No, probably related in some way, if you saw this same sequence.

> but I beleive the vulnerability exploited in 
> my case was via rpc.statd

And it looks like somebody is trying the same hole again.

> (they loaded 'luckroot' onto my system plus a 
> rootkit.  Unfortunately NFS uses rpc.statd for its locking (?) schemes 
> so I can't just ditch it.

Look for a better way of doing whatever you're doing with NFS. You really
don't want an NFS server acting as firewall, which is what it seems like
you're doing.

> Has anyone else experienced this.

I think the sad thing is that anybody who's connected a computer to the net
in the past few years has probably had somebody attempt to break into it.
Frequently.

> What the hell is going on 

Just general net traffic really. In that any machine connected to the net for
more than an hour or so appears to be a target for attack.
 

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LSB 1.0 (was Re: [SLUG] From newbie to...)

[Tom Massey]

On Mon, Jul 02, 2001 at 07:52:08PM +1000, Jeff Waugh wrote:
> 
> 
> > SO yes, a talk on partitioning would be useful as long as it is NOT
> > hijacked by the poor deluded Debian junkies ;-P
> 
> s/Debian/LSB/

Interesting point there. We don't seem to have had any discussion on slug
about the recent LSB 1.0. (Presumably in this context that LSB 1.0 doesn't
look so great to 'Debian junkies', certainly a number of people on
debian-user have complained about the preferencing of rpm over deb, even
if they clearly have little knowledge of rpm :-).

Vaguely throwing out the question:

What do people think of the LSB 1.0 standards?

(Wallow around at  if you need more info). 

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Re: [SLUG] Help I got hacked!!

[Tom Massey]

On Mon, Jul 02, 2001 at 07:17:32PM +1000, Andy Eager wrote:
> 
> Thanks for that lovely piece of information.

Think of it this way - you now have a valid reason to do an
rm -rf / :-). IMHO you really should start over completely -
yes, it's a hassle, but much less of one then not doing this
and having the nagging doubts that there may be something on
the system left over from the attack that's doing things you'd
really rather it didn't... 

> Fortunately I keep all data backed up, so thats not a problem but having 
> built the machine from scratch as a humble newbie only 6 months ago 
> ( I couldn't even spell Linux...) I've got stuff like nfs, ntp, 
> named, samba etc, etc which all just 'evolved' over time. 

This is one reason for keeping a paper notebook in which you write down
everything you do on the system.
 
> Wouldn't a reasonable compromise be to do the following:
> 
> verify each installed package:rpm -V -a
> (Now we know each package is OK)

Assuming they haven't installed a trojaned version of rpm or similar.
You can only be sure the packages are OK if you're getting them of your
installation CDs, downloading from a trusted site and checking
signatures and so on.

> for each file in all directories except home, do:   rpm -qif 
> (If it doesn't belong to any package then warn user)

Again, only if you can trust the version of rpm on your system. And you
really can't at this stage.

> ( A desperate optimist who untill now, believed that all people (even 
> hackers) were good )

Ah, don't go there. Hackers *are* good. You got burnt by crackers.

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Re: [SLUG] Starting Enlightment

[Tom Massey]

On Sun, Jul 01, 2001 at 05:09:37PM +1000, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> Since upgrading to RedHat 7, when I run "startx", the default 
> window manager is some puny ugly thing. How do I get 
> "Enlightment" back up?

Try creating/editing the .xinitrc file in your home directory so that
it says:

exec /usr/X11R6/bin/enlightenment 

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Re: [SLUG] SCP on debian

[Tom Massey]

On Tue, Jun 26, 2001 at 11:18:33PM +1000, Andrew Bennetts wrote:
> apt-cache search is normally enough.  When it isn't, I think there's a
> web search somewhere that lets you do the equivalent of a dpkg -S on the
> entire distribution.  I can't find it at the moment though.  Can anyone
> help me out here?  I'm sure I've seen it somewhere.

 Very useful indeed.

Tom

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Re: [SLUG] Mandrake 8 firewall

[Tom Massey]

On Tue, Jun 26, 2001 at 07:29:22PM +1000, Christopher Booth wrote:
> 2nd question
> 
> At work, I have installed Mandrake 8, I enabled the default proxy settings
> through the Mandrake Control Panel.  This is called the tiny firewall.
> Great, no more hacks from people on the corporate network wanting to see
> what it is.  That's another story...
> Ok, it disabled samba access from the outside as well as stopping someone
> pinging the IP address.  I want to be able to reenable it from the network
> for certain IP addresses.  I'm not sure where to look though.  Any help
> appreciated.

Hi Christopher,

Personally I suggest you don't use tiny firewall on a machine that's
connected to a LAN, it's a bit limited in options and is really best
used on a single machine with a dialup net connection. From memory
it basically just sets up iptables using /etc/rc.firewall, so you
could edit that file if you like. (I think that's the file, it's
something like that anyway).

What you might find more useful though is to use the Bastille Perl
scripts included with Mandrake 8 to set up your firewall stuff. Try
running InteractiveBastille. This then takes you through a number
of questions and deals with hardening your system in general. There
are options in there that would let you fairly easily configure a
firewall that lets Samba through from certain IPs. If you haven't
got Bastille installed, you can find it on your installation CDs.

Tom

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Re: [SLUG] Notification of Internet Violations

[Tom Massey]

On Sat, Jun 23, 2001 at 10:09:29PM +1000, Ben Donohue wrote:
> Actually it is a joke but it has a more sinister twist for those
> SLUG members who are easily led. 

I'm sure such a beast does not exist. You ever tried leading a penguin?
'Tis more difficult than herding cats. (And look it up in the Jargon file,
cats are most definitely more hackerly than any other domesticated animal). 

> It is primarliy there to make 
> people laugh at religion. Whether you are religious or not, it's 
> aim is to do something rediculous under the supposed banner of religion. 

No. It's aim as I see it is to show the ridiculous nature of one group of
rather fundamentalist Christians deciding what will be acceptable on the
Web. This site in no way makes fun of people who follow Christ's teachings;
it shows the arrogant absurdity of those who seek to impose their own version
of Christianity/morality on the rest of the Web.

> Then when you see how rediculous their claim is, you associate that
> rediculousness with religion.

'Tis a cheap shot I know, but please use a spell checker. Unless your aim
is to ridicule Red Symons (you do have to be from Melbourne to qualify for
that I hope you realise) I believe he has a trademark on 'rediculous'. It
appears he will also crash Mozilla free of charge. A great Aussie icon
indeed. So long as you don't click on him. :-)

> You could imagine a similar situation where Microsoft covertly puts out
> a stupid claim about something under the banner of Linux and its devotees. 

Do you really think this would have much effect? Five minutes after such a 
thing was posted, you'd get 500 posts to various news sites declaiming the
desperate straits MS was in if they did this sort of thing. Hell, in five
minutes, Slashdot would have released five stories/updates describing the
dastardly tactics of MS. And then where would they be? MS would be back to
herding penguins I expect.
 
> They don't want to look stupid and so they don't use Linux. See the logic?
> It's the association of one with the other.

I think your problem with this site is that you think that it's saying that
religion==stupid. I don't see this at all. I think the basic message here is
that if you let any one group take control over the net, then you will be
eaten by a grue. Because your lamp will have gone out, and you'll be groping
forwards into blackness not even realising that Pitr has a box of matches
and is standing right next to you. (Pitr gallantly standing in for any
opinions that differ in any degree from your own). (And has anybody actually
completed a successful kernel config using ESRs CML2 make advent? Damn I 
hate grues at this point in time. I shall beat this game soon... :-).

> It's actually almost boring that they can't come up with something more
> ingenious against religion. 

Seriously, it's only against the worst aspects of religion, if anything. I'm
kind of sorry for you if you can't see that, you must have a very narrow view
of religion.

> Treat it with the contempt it deserves and throw it in the SPAM bin - /dev/nul

Dang, I wish I wasn't such a basically nice guy and could laugh at the missing
'l' there.

Further_discussion->/dev/slug-chat
Flames->/dev/me 

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Re: [SLUG] OT - Job advertisement

[Tom Massey]

On Wed, 6 Jun 2001, Jon Biddell wrote:

> > TANSTAAFL. :-)
>
> Let's see how many get THIS one ..:-)

You mean there are people out there who haven't read Heinlein? Shame on
them all. :-) But it is actually of course a reference to the well known
German company... .


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Links [was Re: [SLUG] OT - Job advertisement]

[Tom Massey]

On Wed, 6 Jun 2001, DaZZa wrote:

> Anyone know a mirror/new location for this?

Try  which is actually a redirect to
.

And indeed, Links does rock. :-)


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Re: [SLUG] Potato -> Woody

[Tom Massey]

Hi, just a quick thank you for all the useful info I got about this. Apt-get is indeed 
as fun to play with as people have said. :-)

Thanks, Tom

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Re: [SLUG] Potato -> Woody

[Tom Massey]

Jamie Wilkinson wrote:

> This one time, at band camp, Tom Massey said:
>> And then do an apt-get update, apt-get dist-upgrade,
>> do I end up with a working Debian Woody system
>> or a broken pile of poo?
>
> Worked for me, so it should work for you :)

OK Jamie, I'll give it a go...

As I lay me down to sleep,
I pray the net my .debs to keep.
If they should die before I wake,
Then bugger it, back to Mandrake. :-)

Tom

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[SLUG] Potato -> Woody

[Tom Massey]

Hi all,

A question for those who follow the Debian path:

I have a Potato system (from APC Advanced Linux Pocketbook) upgraded via apt-get to 
the latest stable Potato, with a 2.4.4 kernel I compiled myself, and the necessary 
upgrades to modutils etc to talk happily to a 2.4.x kernel. Seems to be running fine.

If in my /etc/apt/sources.list I put

deb http://ftp.au.debian.org/pub/debian testing main contrib non-free
deb http://ftp.au.debian.org/pub/debian-non-US testing/non-US main contrib non-free

And then do an apt-get update, apt-get dist-upgrade, do I end up with a working Debian 
Woody system or a broken pile of poo?

I'm mainly interested in getting a Debian system that can handle iptables, which 
apparently needs libc6 >=2.2.3-1 (though I think this may be just a dependency that 
apt-get and co need to run the config stuff or something like that - with libc6 
2.1.3-18 I can dpkg -i iptables 1.2.2-2, it complains and refuses to configure it, but 
it still seems to work fine, I can set up a firewall and masq stuff with no problems, 
but apt-get is unusable because it complains and exits since iptables hasn't been 
configured as far as it can tell).

Thanks,
Tom



 

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Re: [SLUG] clock timer problems

[Tom Massey]

Stephen Pirie wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> I've installed Mandrake 8.0 on a 500 Mhz K6-II system with 128 MBytes
> Memory.
> 
> I've started getting errors, even after I've halted the system.  The
> error is "probable hardware but: clock timer configuration lost --
> probably a VIA686a motherboard."
> 
> Anyone know if this is definitely a hardware problem?

I think it's a problem with the APIC code in the 2.4.3 kernel,
doesn't play nice with this motherboard. You can recompile
the kernel without APIC, or boot with 'noapic' - I think this
should go into /etc/lilo.conf as append= "noapic". Don't know
if this is still a problem with later kernels. You may find
some more info searching the Mandrake mailing lists, 
 I'm pretty sure
it's been discussed there.

Hope this helps,

Tom

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Re: [SLUG] X keyboard problem

[Tom Massey]

Danny Yee wrote:

> The strange thing is that the "ctrl:nocaps" option is supposed to disable
> caps lock, but that not working either...

Maybe add XkbVariant "nodeadkeys"? Are you running XFree 3.x or 4, you
only need to look at the XF86Config that's relevant for the version of X
you're running. I've seen this exact problem when somebody's selected
International Keyboard during install, but you said you didn't do that,
so
I have no idea now. Oh, and are you sure you've got a 101 key keyboard?
Just
noticed that because I've got 105 everywhere you've got 101.

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Re: [SLUG] X keyboard problem

[Tom Massey]

Danny Yee wrote:
> 
> I've just installed Redhat 7.1, but I think I did something bad when
> selecting keyboard/deadkeys... In X, the ~/` and '/" keys don't work -
> they are acting as some kind of deadkeys, and have to be hit twice to
> get any effect.

Did you select 'International Keyboard' or something like that during
the install?

> Does anyone know how to fix this (either by editing X config files
> directly or by running some kind of keyboard config utility)?
> I'd rather not have to reinstall to fix this.

Have a look in your /etc/X11/XF86Config (or XF86Config-4 if you're
using it). Check the Xkb lines, you've probably got one that says
'international' or similar. Most likely this should be changed to 'us'.
I think XkbLayout is the one to look at.

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