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issue 5 http://console-newsletter.hypermart.net
__ __ _ _ __ __ )) __ console: tips,tricks & news about linux
((_ ((_)((\( _))((_)(( (('_ _______________________________________
[1/2000] "a good read.."
+ headlines
RedHat, to provide consulting and support services for a
network of approximately 3,000 Linux-based Intranet terminals
in AutoZone's store locations throughout the United States.
http://www.redhat.com/about/1999/press_autozone.html
--
+ hmm..
NEW YORK, Dec. 14 - Charles M. ("Sparky") Schulz,
creator of the PEANUTS comic strip, will retire
January 4th, 2000. In a letter to his readers,
colleagues, fellow cartoonists and friends, Schulz wrote:
"Thank you for your kindness and support over the years
and for the outpouring of good wishes since my surgery."
http://www.snoopy.com/comics/peanuts/letter.html
hmm.. No (new) peanuts in the Sunday paper, bummer.
Best wishes Mr.Schulz
--
+ humorix
The GPL Is Not Y2K-Compliant!
BOSTON, MA -- Panic ensued earlier today at GNU Project
Headquarters when it was discovered that the GNU General Public
License is not ready for the year 2000. Thankfully, the panic
quickly subsided when RMS posted an emergency diff file to Usenet
that patches the GPL to eliminate the problem.
http://i-want-a-website.com/about-linux/jun99.shtml#GPL-Y2K
--
+ distro watch
RedHat v6.1 - w/ new graphical install:
https://www.redhat.com/commerce/redhatlinux.html
Bad Penguin - Italian Linux:
http://www.badpenguin.org/
--
+ new apps
xenon (xe) - text editor, small fast, no extra libs needed:
http://www.proximity.com.au/~ben/xenon.html
w3m - a pager/text-based WWW browser can render tables, frames:
http://ei5nazha.yz.yamagata-u.ac.jp/~aito/w3m/eng
floatbg - subtly changes the color of the root window over time,
so slowly that it won't be noticed:
http://www.debian.or.jp/debian.org/Packages/stable/x11/floatbg.html
--
+ article
Yeah Baby! A success story for Win9x based newbies -
Tomas Vera <dadkind@lightspeed.net>
I am a newbie getting over the hump. Having seen a lot of the
"I'm giving up on Linux" posts, I thought I'd throw out my trials
and tribulations so that others can see that sticking with it
will pay off. Here's my story:
I am your typical newbie. My background has been almost
exclusively Windows (95/3.11/3.0) all the way back to 1989
when it was just "Windows". I have used DOS, obviously, and
missed it when Win95 rolled around. I program as a hobby mostly
in C/C++, am learning JAVA and fiddle with plain vanilla HTML
(http://userzweb.lightspeed.net/dadkind - beware, it deals with
pro-wrestling!). Pretty standard background stuff.
At work we are dealing with our Y2K problem. We are a small
ag engineering firm, so other than updating some database
programs, our Y2K requirements are relatively small and well
underway. Except for our server.
We are running Novell 4.10 (the bastard child from Novell it
seems). It is not Y2K compliant and only recently (it seems)
have patches become available. A whole bunch of patches. Being a
reasonable person, I realize that it would probably be faster,
and more economical in the long run, to perform a version
upgrade to the server (NW 5), or even to switch operating systems
(NT4). About that time I started reading about Linux. My curiosity
was piqued, so one day I went out, bought Linux Unleashed (3rd
ed.) which came with RH 5.1. That same day, I persuaded my wife
to let me spend about $500 for a new P133 based system, that was
almost exactly what we already had at home. I set up my system,
inserted the CD ROM and nothing. I went through the readmes and
found out that I needed a boot floppy to install RH. I created my
boot disk, rebooted and installed, with grand expectations. Boy
was I in for a shock.
What?!? It boots to a prompt? I thought this was a recent version
of Linux?!? Typical response from a Win95 convert. Here's where
things got "interesting". The book I bought was one of those that
tries to be all things to all people, and succeeds in meeting
the needs of no one. So just as it started to show me how to
do things, the lesson was over, and I was left hanging. On to
the newsgroups.
A few posts to alt.os.linux from my original Win95 machine
taught me about the most essential command: man. I also learned
about vi, emacs and startx. This last one was important because
it allowed me to use Netscape to read the HOW-TO's that were
installed. Little by little I learned that my video card was not
supported, so a card swap with the old machine and re-configuring
X allowed it start up correctly.
Reading the man for pppd showed me how to set up the ppp daemon
from the command line. Later I learned how to configure the
interface in X. So now I had internet connectivity.
Next came network cards. I went out, spent some computer money
(made on the side helping someone with their Novell system), and
bought a network starter kit from Netgear. Installed the cards,
booted both machine into Win95 and voila' Win95 networking. Some
tweaks there and my son and I were "dooming" over out little
network. Next, time to install the card under Linux. Netgear has
Linux drivers on their website. I downloaded them and followed
the instructions for compiling the source, and insmod-ing the
module. Kept getting an "invalid reference" error during boot up
(more on this later). Frustration set in. Complete re-install
number 3. Network card detected by the system... drivers
loaded... all looks good. But Win95 can't see the linux box.
Back to the newsgroup to find out that I need Samba. I used
glint to install the Samba RPM. Made one change to the smb.conf
file. Rebooted and now win95 sees my linux box. Cool.
Next, I decided to tackle the sound card. Tried running all the
standard routines: sbconfig, sndconfig, etc. with no luck. Finally
figured out that I would probably have to reconfigure the kernel
to enable sound support.
After I installed the kernel source (it took me two days to
figure out that I did not have the sources installed), and ran
"make configure" a couple of times ("make menuconfig" actually),
I followed the directions carefully, and rebooted. Sound,
glorious sound came out of my speakers!
I see posts all over the place with the phrase "rebuild the
kernel" in the remedy portion. Like most newbies I see this
and freak. Having never been exposed to this in the Win/DOS
world it seems a desperate move to have to perform. I see
now that it is not the case. It is do-able if you follow the
HOW-TO instructions. I believe now that the reason I had trouble
installing Netgear's driver for it's card is that I did not have
NIC support in my kernel as installed originally. The compiled
object file had not where to hook into the kernel, hence the
"invalid reference" error message.
Now I am down to a manageable list of things to do that will
take me where I want to be with Linux, none of them vital,
but worthwhile, I think. Here's a list:
1. Add support for True-Type fonts (so I can see pretty web
pages as intended).
2. Add the INN news server service (including cron to update
this NG overnight).
3. Run a POP3/SMTP server for e-mailing the Win95 machine
4. Set up the linux box as an on-demand router.
5. Anything else?
I guess my point is this: STICK WITH IT !!
I had perhaps more of a challenge than others in that I only
left myself about two hours a night, four nights a week to mess
with Linux. Had I been able to devote four, five or six hours a
night (like when I was learning C back in 1989) it probably would
have gone faster. Nonetheless, I did manage to progress. And so
should anyone else willing to put in the effort. Is there anything
that would have made things easier? Absolutely. Here are some:
1. Linux newsgroups are good, but a lot of messages from newbies
go unanswered, and a lot of answers read like greek to a
newbie. A good windows - to - Linux site and messageboard
would help here.
2. A good list of "Linux for Beginners" or "Linux for Windows
users" type books would help. As i mentioned above, "Linux
Unleashed" just did not do it for me as a newbie, and as for
more detailed info, a seven year old copy of "System V R4 The
Complete Reference" by Coffin was much better. The "standard"
books (e.g. "Running Linux" from O'Reilly - I think that's
the title) would be better suited to someone who is past the
initial hump, I think.
Well, gotta get back to work. Those are my thoughts. What
are yours?
--
+ quote of the month
No pressure, no diamonds.
-Mary Case
--
+ grok
how to use tar:
tar zxf to extract file.tar.gz
tar zcf to create file.tar.gz
tar ztf to list files in file.tar.gz
to disable the splash screen in netscape for linux:
netscape -no-about-splash
--
+ jargon
:WOMBAT: /wom'bat/ adj. [acronym: Waste Of Money, Brains, And Time]
Applied to problems which are both profoundly {uninteresting}
in themselves and unlikely to benefit anyone interested even if
solved. Often used in fanciful constructions such as `wrestling
with a wombat'. See also {crawling horror}.
Users of the PDP-11 database program DATATRIEVE adopted the wombat
as their notional mascot; the program's help file responded to
"HELP WOMBAT" with factual information about Real World wombats.
--
+ hobbes' internet timeline
1965
ARPA sponsors study on "cooperative network of time-sharing
computers"
1966
Lawrence G. Roberts, MIT: "Towards a Cooperative Network of
Time-Shared Computers"
--
+ !new codecraft
Someone showed me a file a few days ago with hashes (#) in
its filename (e.g. #thefile#.tmp). He wanted to delete it,
but typing
$ rm #thefile#.tmp
didn't work. How could he get rid of it?
The solution is to put quotes around the filename:
$ rm "#thefile#.tmp"
This trick also works on filenames with spaces and/or other
non-alphanumeric characters in them. Be warned, though -
these files are usually created by scripts or programs and
not humans, so be sure you know what you're doing before
moving, editing or deleting them!
A friendly tip provided by:
Codecraft http://www.cyberelectric.net.au/~collins/index.htm
--
+ article
Safe mode for Linux - digs <mjs@nts-online.net>
Picture this: The latest kernel patch is out and has support
for that nifty scanner you just bought or, you'd like to enable
some razzle-dazzle that went unnoticed before. "Wait a minute"
you think, "My system is running quite good as things stand,
what if I compile a new kernel, make a mistake and my system
refuses to boot!?!" No sweat.
Or maybe even, "gulp... I've forgotten my password" Piece of cake.
We've all done it before, whilst in windows made a subtle change
to the system and as a result of that change, during the next boot,
a menu appears suggesting 'safe mode' to correct the offending
error.
I can only speak for myself but that would be handy for Linux, no?
The trick is another kernel and a choice via /etc/lilo.conf.
A quick reminder is in order here: Always keep a bootdisk handy and
make backups in 'advance' of any changes.
There are four simple steps involved.
Step 1 - Make a copy of your current kernel
First, using a "known to be working kernel" simply make a copy
of it. On my system '/vmlinuz' is the kernel name (other names
might be /zImage, /boot/bzImage, etc...) so as root I would:
cp /path/kernel_name /path/safemode.kernel
This gives me a duplicate kernel to boot from.
Step 2 Create a new /etc/lilo.conf
Just in case backup your current /etc/lilo.conf:
mv /etc/lilo.conf /etc/lilo.conf.old
As root with your editor create a new /etc/lilo.conf
I'll assume you have both Windows and Linux installed.
# LILO configuration file
# remarks preceded with '#' are comments and aren't read by lilo.
# global: --------------------------------------------------------
# this section applies to -ALL- sections
# most /etc/lilo.conf have the option 'delay' enabled remove it
# and replace with the 'prompt' option instead. this causes lilo
# to wait for input, which is needed if you want to choose another
# kernel to boot.
prompt
# i use plain vanilla video settings this can be changed if you
# prefer 'vga = ask' will offer several modes
vga = normal
# this option allows you to press 'one' key to boot a partition
# you'll want this option unless you enjoy alot of typing |-)
single-key
# ok now specify the file from which lilo will read our boot
# choices
# (more on this later)
# the full path to your boot menu
message = /etc/boot.menu
# linux: ---------------------------------------------------------
# this section applies to your normally booted kernel
# image = /path/to/your/current/kernel
image = /vmlinuz
# inform lilo where root "/" is located
root = /dev/hda2
# a MUST make sure your /root is mounted 'read-only' so any fsk'ing
# can proceed as planned
read-only
# The boot menu must reference a name for this partition
# (note: the 'single-key' parameter used above requires a
# SINGLE character) so keep it simple
label = 1
# linux safe mode: ----------------------------------------------
# this section applies to your safe mode kernel
# the /path/to/your/safemode.kernel
image = /safemode.kernel
# point lilo to your root for safe mode
# since I keep all my kernel's in one place the path is the
# same as our first kernel
root = /dev/hda2
# your root (for safe mode only) is -NOT- mounted read-only!
read-write
# the label for our safemode.kernel
label = 2
# the magic string that, disables init & the password protected
# login
append = "init=/bin/sh"
# finally we need an entry for our Windows95 partition
# !note: this assumes lilo is installed in your
# master boot record on the first hardrive!
# the /path/to/your/windows/partition
other = /dev/hda1
# tell lilo to activate the non-linux partition
table = /dev/hda
# yup, you guessed it...
label = 3
# end /etc/lilo.conf
Step 3 - Create /etc/boot.menu
with your favorite editor as root create, /etc/boot.menu
mine looks like this:
========================================================
press a number:
1. - Linux standard
boots your default kernel with all the goodies
2. - Linux safe mode
boots a bare kernel bypassing init with
no password required
3. - Windows95
boots your windows partition
========================================================
Now save that file and on to the final step :)
Step 4 - update lilo
Finally as root, issue the following command:
lilo
Lilo should rebuild error free.
Reboot and you'll be presented with a nice menu offering a few
choices. Do understand that choosing safe mode is a whopping
security hole that allows root access without a password, but
for most home users its non-issue.
Tinker all you want, you've got safe mode to fall back on.
Special thanks to Walter R. Taninatz, who all too often finds
himself 'testing' my experiments.
--
+ funnies
_______
(_)___oo) Ned the log -------- . Particle man --------------------
_______ |
(_)___vv) humble Ned | ! particle man with bakers hat
------------------------------------------------------------------
--
+ wrap up
Coming next issue:
We'll be reviewing (over several issues) a few of the major distros
as well as some of the homegrown mini-distros.
Graphical scripting with xmessage - a toolbar for your desktop.
Home cooking with Betty [Grok]er |-)
Ned & particle man, links, new distros & apps.
Well friends, the big "Y2K" is quickly bearing down on us all,
Hopefully no one suffers any loss of data, etc.. NOW is great time
to make your backups, even a floppy to save your *rc* files
in /etc couldn't hurt.
And speaking of the year 2000, Tomas Vera's article should've
been published last issue but space was tight sorry for the
delay Tomas.
Keep those articles coming in folks we all learn so much by
sharing. And finally, for those of us that use a text mode browser,
(lynx,w3m,etc..) please note a text-only page now at our website:
http://console-newsletter.hypermart.net/text.htm
later on,
digs
--
+ subscriptions & submittals
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Past issues can be found at:
http://console-newsletter.hypermart.net/past.htm
--
+ about
This issue of console was brought to you by:
digs <mjs@nts-online.net> - chief writer & layout
Tomas Vera <dadkind@lightspeed.net> - contributor
Hobbes' Internet Timeline (c)1993-9 by Robert H Zakon.
http://www.isoc.org/zakon/Internet/History/HIT.html
Console (c)99-0 Michael S Sanders, All Rights Reserved.
--
eof