woody on a Dell Inspiron 5100 laptop
Hello, I have installed Debian 3.0 on my Dell Inspiron 5100 laptop and have posted some notes at http://web.utk.edu/~rmahurin/inspiron5100. At this point essentially everything that I could want to use works, though it was something of a struggle, especially the networking hardware. If this is useful, great. If you have a question, CC to me as I'm no longer subscribed to this list. Rob -- The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug. -- Mark Twain pgp0.pgp Description: PGP signature
apt too big for its britches
What, exactly, is running out of room here? I'm fine on memory and disk space. Please copy to me, I'm no longer on the list. Rob 10:43 $ sudo apt-get -u upgrade Reading Package Lists... Error! E: Dynamic MMap ran out of room E: Error occured while processing escputil (NewFileVer1) E: Problem with MergeList /var/lib/dpkg/status E: The package lists or status file could not be parsed or opened. 10:43 $ free -m total used free sharedbuffers cached Mem: 125122 3 38 35 46 -/+ buffers/cache: 40 84 Swap: 62 0 62 10:43 $ df -h FilesystemSize Used Avail Use% Mounted on /dev/hda5 57M 33M 21M 60% / /dev/hda7 484M 138M 321M 30% /var /dev/hdb6 1.3G 1.1G 211M 84% /usr /dev/hda1 484M 216M 243M 47% /usr/share/doc /dev/hda8 1.3G 1.1G 128M 90% /usr/local /dev/hdb5 486M 176M 285M 39% /usr/src /dev/hdb7 1.3G 1.1G 137M 90% /home /dev/hdb1 2.9G 2.0G 754M 74% /home/alphenglor/burn /dev/cdrom5.7M 5.7M 0 100% /cdrom -- HOST SYSTEM NOT RESPONDING, PROBABLY DOWN. DO YOU WANT TO WAIT? (Y/N) pgp0.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: apt too big for its britches
On Mon, Jun 02, 2003 at 05:00:48PM +0200, VEGH Karoly wrote: > On Mon, Jun 02, 2003 at 05:00:57PM +0200, Rob Mahurin wrote: > > What, exactly, is running out of room here? I'm fine on memory and > > disk space. > > > > 10:43 $ sudo apt-get -u upgrade > > Reading Package Lists... Error! > > E: Dynamic MMap ran out of room > > E: Error occured while processing escputil (NewFileVer1) > > E: Problem with MergeList /var/lib/dpkg/status > > E: The package lists or status file could not be parsed or opened. > > AFAIK apt has a default that limits his memory usage. > fix for the problem: > > [EMAIL PROTECTED]:~$ cat /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/charlie > APT::Cache-Limit 8192000; > [EMAIL PROTECTED]:~$ > > (the filename can be just anything) > > hth That worked, you're my hero, have a nice day. Rob -- Meekness is uncommon patience in planning a worthwhile revenge. pgp0.pgp Description: PGP signature
vnc-doc conflicts with vnc??
Why does vnc-doc conflict with vncserver and xvncviewer? That is dumb. Rob 23:53 ~ $ sudo apt-get install vncserver xvncviewer Updating package status cache...done Checking system integrity...ok The following packages will be REMOVED: vnc-doc The following NEW packages will be installed: xvncviewer vncserver 0 packages upgraded, 2 newly installed, 1 to remove and 0 not upgraded. Need to get 0b/628k of archives. After unpacking 635k will be used. Do you want to continue? [Y/n] -- God instructs the heart, not by ideas, but by pains and contradictions. -- De Caussade
Re: vnc-doc conflicts with vnc??
On Sat, Jun 26, 1999 at 10:37:39AM -0500, Brian Servis wrote: > *- On 25 Jun, Rob Mahurin wrote about "vnc-doc conflicts with vnc??" > > Why does vnc-doc conflict with vncserver and xvncviewer? That is dumb. > > > > Because the old vnc and vnc-doc packages are replaced by the > newer split packages vncserver, xvncviewer, etc. Allow me to be more specific: where did the rest of the vnc documentation go? I like unneccessary information and have trouble with the idea that the html markup in the obseleted vnc-doc package caused a 20-fold increase in its size. I dislike reading documentation on the internet. That is the dumb part. I will probably do a dpkg --force-depends on this, but that seems an ugly kludge. Rob 00:20 ~ $ du -hc /usr/doc/vnc-doc/ [...] 650K/usr/doc/vnc-doc 650Ktotal [ran apt-get -f install vncserver xvncviewer here] 00:27 ~ $ du -ch /usr/doc/vncserver/ 23K /usr/doc/vncserver 23K total 00:27 ~ $ du -ch /usr/doc/xvncviewer/ 5.5K/usr/doc/xvncviewer 5.5Ktotal -- I'm going to live forever, or die trying! -- Spider Robinson
Re: vnc-doc conflicts with vnc??
The bug number is 40445. Rob On Tue, Jun 29, 1999 at 09:38:05AM -0500, Brian Servis wrote: > *- On 29 Jun, Rob Mahurin wrote about "Re: vnc-doc conflicts with vnc??" > > On Sat, Jun 26, 1999 at 10:37:39AM -0500, Brian Servis wrote: > >> *- On 25 Jun, Rob Mahurin wrote about "vnc-doc conflicts with vnc??" > >> > Why does vnc-doc conflict with vncserver and xvncviewer? That is dumb. > >> > > >> > >> Because the old vnc and vnc-doc packages are replaced by the > >> newer split packages vncserver, xvncviewer, etc. > > > > Allow me to be more specific: where did the rest of the vnc > > documentation go? I like unneccessary information and have trouble > > with the idea that the html markup in the obseleted vnc-doc package > > caused a 20-fold increase in its size. I dislike reading > > documentation on the internet. That is the dumb part. > > > > I will probably do a dpkg --force-depends on this, but that seems an > > ugly kludge. > > > > Ah, I see. I failed to see that there still exists a vnc-doc > package. I would call this a bug in the vncserver and [s|x]vncviewer > packages. They need to have versions on the conflicts. They need to > conflict with the older vnc-doc from 2.0 but now with the vnc-doc from > 2.1. I will file a bug report. To install the slink vnc-doc use > --force-conflicts. > > dpkg --force-conflicts -i vnc-doc*.deb > -- Automobile, n.: A four-wheeled vehicle that runs up hills and down pedestrians.
Re: User names.
Simple: I have an /etc/aliases but no virtusertable. I suspect this is becuase I am using sendmail and you are not, but I have a bad habit of being wrong and will put this back on the list so that someone can confirm/correct that assumption. Rob On Mon, Feb 08, 1999 at 12:07:40PM -0800, Chris Wong wrote: > What is the difference with me using the /etc/aliases file and my > /etc/virtusertable > file? > > >Hmmm ... I didn't know about this limit when I installed and used a > >ten-character username and an eight or nine-character password. When I log > >in, I have to use the full username (alphenglor), and my home dir is > >/home/alphenglor, but files owned by me are shown as alphengl.alphengl (I'm > >not at a terminal with a mouse and can't paste an ls -l to be explicit, > >sorry). I think that my password was truncated at eight characters, though, > >as sometimes I would swear that I hit an extra key at the end but I can > >still get in. > > > >As far as mail aliases go, though, you can set up your MTA to do that; > >/etc/aliases, I think. > > > >Rob > > > >On Thu, Feb 04, 1999 at 06:06:25PM -0800, Chris Wong wrote: > >> Hmm, > >> > >>For Debian, user names are limited to 8 characters.. as well > >> as the passwords. How can this be, lengthened? ... as well as long > >> email addreses? ie: > >> > >> [EMAIL PROTECTED] > >> [EMAIL PROTECTED] > >> > >>Thanks. > >> > >> Chris Wong | [EMAIL PROTECTED] > >> AD Digital Media Inc. (c) 1999 > >> http://addm.com/ > >> > >> > >> -- > >> Unsubscribe? mail -s unsubscribe [EMAIL PROTECTED] < > >/dev/null > > > >-- > >One FISHWICH coming up!! > > Chris Wong | [EMAIL PROTECTED] > AD Digital Media Inc. (c) 1999 > http://addm.com/ -- Life is like a sewer. What you get out of it depends on what you put into it. -- Tom Lehrer
can backgrounded processes outlive a login?
Let's say that I have some program I need to run that will take several hours, and that I want to end my login session so I don't have to worry about curious passersby coming and doing terrible things while my account is logged on. It seems that there should be some way to accomplish this. Is there? I haven't seen anything. Please cc: to jlothian as this is his question and he's not on the list. Rob -- QOTD: "I've just learned about his illness. Let's hope it's nothing trivial."
Re: fvwm2 menu not working
I think that your ~/.fvwm2rc may override the system.fvwm2rc in /etc somewhere; IIRC, it says in the man pages and/or the comments on the system file that you should use ~/.fvwm2/*.hook for customization. I just copied the one from /etc/ into my home directory to be safe and have never had any problems. Rob On Tue, Feb 09, 1999 at 08:00:09PM +, M.C. Vernon wrote: > > Ah, I did have a .fvwm2rc (to bind f9 to something), and removing that > works. > > I'm still mystified tho > > Matthew > -- Never commit yourself! Let someone else commit you.
Re: can backgrounded processes outlive a login?
Thanks to all who replied. Just thought that I'd say David Zanetti pointed me towards the program "screen", which is a little better suited for my purposes, as it allows the process to be resumed and interfered with, while nohup & renders the command inaccessible after i've left the initial shell. Thanks again, Rob -- The trouble with being punctual is that nobody's there to appreciate it. -- Franklin P. Jones
Re: Is there a Logon Log?
I thought for sure he was asking to be pointed to /etc/motd and /etc/issue[.net]. But I don't boot my machine every time I log in, so I could just be wrong. They're handy things to know about, anyway. Rob On Sat, Feb 13, 1999 at 05:38:54PM -0600, KTB wrote: > After you boot up > dmesg | less > will let you view the text. > That isn't exactly what you asked for but it will get you the info. > Take care, > Kent > > Alex wrote: > > > Is there a way (or is it already done) to direct the text printed to > > the monitor during the logon process to a file. If such a file is > > automaticly created, what is it? If not is there any way to set one > > up.-alex > > > -- > Unsubscribe? mail -s unsubscribe [EMAIL PROTECTED] < /dev/null -- A woman did what a woman had to, the best way she knew how. To do more was impossible, to do less, unthinkable. -- Dirisha, "The Man Who Never Missed"
apm (was: Re: Do you still need screensavers these days?)
On Mon, Feb 01, 1999 at 07:10:39PM +, Allens wrote: > You have got to recompile the kernel, and enable apm support. > > Peter Allen > > Shao Zhang wrote: > > > > On Sun, 31 Jan 1999, Carl Fink wrote: > > > > > With modern power-saving BIOSes, the thing can even turn the monitor > > > off (and power down the computer) if you've been away too long, saving > > > electricity and wear on your system. > > > > Great! This is what I did in Windoze. But how do I do it in Linux? > > Is there any kind of software that does this?? > > Hmmm, this thread died without answering the question I was lurking to listen for. I have apmd up and running but can't figure out how to make it go to sleep on a schedule. Winblows had (has, presumably) a place where you could just say "go to sleep after n minutes." Is there a place where I could configure this in debian? Would I have to reboot and enable a timeout in my BIOS? (it is currently enabled with a timeout of 0 as per debian install instructions from way back in October.) Or is there some reason why I don't want to use apm for this but some other better faster smarter cheaper etc. program to which someone will direct me? Thanks, Rob -- "Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow you may work."
Re: apm (was: Re: Do you still need screensavers these days?)
On Mon, Feb 15, 1999 at 11:03:24PM -0500, Branden Robinson wrote: > On Mon, Feb 15, 1999 at 09:35:26PM -0500, Rob Mahurin wrote: > > Hmmm, this thread died without answering the question I was lurking to > > listen for. I have apmd up and running but can't figure out how to > > make it go to sleep on a schedule. Winblows had (has, presumably) a > > place where you could just say "go to sleep after n minutes." Is > > there a place where I could configure this in debian? > > setterm(1) > XF86Config(5) > xset(1) > These all allow you to blank the screen and shut down the monitor. I'm trying find a way to set a similar sort of timeout and issue an "apm --suspend" so that the power light on my box blinks. I'm sorry if that wasn't clear ... or am I missing something obvious? Rob -- Peace is much more precious than a piece of land... let there be no more wars. -- Mohammed Anwar Sadat, 1918-1981
xbiff for remote mail?
Question: I would like to have an xbiff-type mail alert on my desktop, but I read my mail off of a remote server. Is there an easy way to do this? The only ways I can think of are to set it up to check through fetchmail (though I don't want to download my mail; that's why I set up IMAP in the first place) or to set up some kind of telnet script and start the xbiff on my shell account at school. Could anybody help me get started in either/both of these directions? I think I could also use fetchmail -c -d, but that wouldn't be gooey, which is more what I'm looking for. Thanks a lot, Rob -- If God had intended Men to Smoke, He would have put Chimneys in their Heads.
Re: xbiff for remote mail?
On Wed, Feb 24, 1999 at 01:43:09PM -0500, Branden Robinson wrote: > On Wed, Feb 24, 1999 at 12:32:52PM -0500, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > > Rob Mahurin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > Question: I would like to have an xbiff-type mail alert on my > > > desktop, but I read my mail off of a remote server. Is there an easy > > > > ssh remote.server.com xbiff > > I can think of many, many scenarios in which this will not work. > > It presumes the user has a Unix shell account on the remote host. > It presumes the remote host has the xbiff program available. > Both of these happen to be accurate in this case; I think I said in my original question that my other option was some kind of a telnet script. But do you have a more general solution? Rob -- When the weight of the paperwork equals the weight of the plane, the plane will fly. -- Donald Douglas
Re: minimum size for root partition
On Wed, Feb 24, 1999 at 11:59:57PM -0500, Ben Frame wrote: > I have 2 linux machines (486's) that I want to work > together. They each have a single 325mb hard disk, so I > would like them to share diskspace and filesystems, > using NFS. Since I need to make the most out of every > megabyte, I was wondering if anyone might be able to > suggest a minimum size for the root partition on each > machine. FYI - I plan to have /var be its own partition. > Thanks! > > Ben Frame > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > I was very worried that I hadn't given myself enough room after my initial install, but I think now that that will never be a problem. The /usr, /var, and /home trees are on separate filesystems, and /tmp is a symlink to /var/tmp/. If I were in your situation I would use 20-25 MB. Of course, I'm no expert and I'm not in your situation ... Rob 01:19 $ df -h /dev/hda5 FilesystemSize Used Avail Capacity Mounted on /dev/hda5 57M 15M39M 29% / 01:19 $ ls -l /tmp lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root8 Nov 14 04:07 /tmp -> /var/tmp -- How come wrong numbers are never busy?
dumb cron problem
Hi all, Out of the blue about ten days ago I started getting an odd error from cron every morning. Looks like some kind of shell escaping error with find (i've attached today's) in /etc/cron.daily/standard. However, all of the find lines in that script are commented out. I imagine there's some neat unix tool that will let me trace this error and figure out where it started, but I don't know what. Would somebody help me figure out what I changed? Please Cc: your reply to me; I am no longer subscribed to this list. Thanks. Rob -- There is no satisfaction in hanging a man who does not object to it. -- G.B. Shaw --- Begin Message --- /etc/cron.daily/standard: find: &: No such file or directory --- End Message ---
Re: enlightenment locks system
I had my system choke and die a couple of times for no good reason last week (after 51 days of uptime!). The first time was a blown fuse. The second, I had both WP and staroffice open (dumb) trying to read an excel spreadsheet some cretin sent me. Started hearing a lot of disk activity, suddenly the entire system was frozen. No mouse action, couldn't toggle the NumLock, nothing. Hard reset, no harm done, was fine for a day. I figured I just ran out of memory since I had Netscape running in the background also and resolved to pay more attention to such things in the future. The next day, I was just playing around in Netscape, loading a sequence of annoyingly graphics-intensive web pages, and started hearing the disk activity again. Lagged over to a xterm and hit "free": I had zero free swap (out of 64MB). Killed X real quick, tried again, was fine. Netscape, in windows, in my experience, always had a tendency to make a system run progressively slower until either netscape was closed or everything crashed. I hadn't seen it under linux and thought it had gotten fixed, but now I'm not so sure. Maybe that's what you ran into, too? Rob On Sun, Mar 28, 1999 at 06:36:34PM -0500, Daniel J. Brosemer wrote: > On the advice of friends I decided to give enlightenment a go. (and I must > say, from what I saw, it's beautiful!) > > A strange thing happened, though. I started netscape to browse the > package list at www.debian.org to look for esd (the sound thing that it > complained about not having at startup) and things were working well, I > went to the full package list, it got about 25% loaded, and I hit Alt-F to > do a search. I typed "enlightenment" figuring I might find some other fun > stuff for it too. Well, I clicked find and my system came to a screeching > halt (mouse wouldn't even move) for about 60sec. Then it went and found > the first thing with "enlightenment" in the description... odd... ok, move > the "find" window from over the description so I can see what it was... > window moves about 20pixels... screeching halt... I gave this one 5 > minutes and it still didn't come back. ERG! > > So, I did a hard reset... fsck whined, made me boot single user to fix a > partition, then I rebooted again... tried E once more only this time not > loading netscape... things were fine for about 1/2 hour. Killed X, > changed my wm back to wmaker, fired up X, started netscape... things fine > for about 1/2 hour... killed X, changed wm back to E, fired up X, started > netscape, 5 minutes, grinding halt... hard reset... fsck whines... now I'm > not bothering with X. > > So something weird is going on with E and netscape... any ideas? I'm > liking the look of E, I think if I can get it working I'll keep it! > > TIA! > > -Dano > > -- > As long as each individual is facing the TV tube alone, formal freedom poses > no threat to privilege. >--Noam Chomsky -- "Summit meetings tend to be like panda matings. The expectations are always high, and the results usually disappointing." -- Robert Orben
Re: hamm to slink with upgrade
On Mon, Mar 29, 1999 at 11:12:06AM -0500, Sean wrote: > Marc Haber wrote: > > > I have my cdrom not on /cdrom, but on /mnt/cdrom. /etc/fstab shows > > this. However, apt-cdrom tries to mount /cdrom and fails. > > > > Edit your /etc/fstab file so /dev/hdc (or whatever device your cdrom is) is > mounted > on /cdrom -- change the "/mnt/cdrom" to "/cdrom", then type: > > mkdir /cdrom > umount /mnt/cdrom (assuming you're already mounted on the cdrom . . if > not then > skip this line) > mount /cdrom > > Sean Why not: ln -fs /cdrom/ /mnt/cdrom/ Less chance to goof your fstab, among other advantages. Rob -- Short people get rained on last.
Re: Mount for normal user
On Mon, Mar 29, 1999 at 02:25:41PM +0200, Sami Dalouche wrote: [some stuff] > > However, How to remove user from groups (without VI) and is there a way to > have all root permission without being root (UID 0) because some programs > don't want to run as root ? You should look into the sudo command. That allows you to give root access to certain people, or to only give access to certain commands. I use it as a smokescreen to keep myself from doing something dumb: if I can't run something without sudo, I take a good hard look at what my system is trying to keep me from screwing up. Rob -- The door is the key.
Re: plog
On Thu, Jan 14, 1999 at 10:08:15PM +, ktb wrote: > Ben Collins wrote: > > > On Thu, Jan 14, 1999 at 08:32:47PM -0700, Robert Kerr wrote: > > > When I type plog I get this: > > > > > > tail: /var/log/ppp.log: Permission denied > > > > > > the attributes for ppp.log are > > > -rw-r- 1 root adm 8305 Jan 14 20:38 /var/log/ppp.log > > > > > > What can I do to change this? > > > > You have to run plog as root. The reason that ppp.log isn't world > > readable is that your ppp password is more than likely in the log file. > > H, my ppp.log file shows the same: > > ~$ ls -l /var/log/ppp.log > -rw-r- 1 root adm848182 Jan 14 16:04 /var/log/ppp.log > > > And as a regular user gives me this: > > ~$ plog > --lots of successful looking output--- > > I looked at the file /var/log/ppp.log itself as a regular user using > "cat" and > found my password there. So if I don't have to use plog as root do I have a > security > problem? I'm confused. > Thanks, > Kent How 'bout this: While only root can write to the log, in both cases it's readable by anyone in the "adm" group. So if the output of the command "groups user" includes adm, then that user can read the plog (and a bunch of other things, too) but not write to them. "adduser user group" will add user to group and give him all of the rights and privileges (sp?) he is thereto entitled. as for removing a user from a group, I don't remember off the top of my head and couldn't find the command in two minutes or less. Anybody? Rob -- If a train station is a place where a train stops, what's a workstation?
Re: still fighting for normality
On Sat, Jan 16, 1999 at 03:27:55PM +, Rich Harran. wrote: > I've been trying to get a dos partition mounted in group 'dos', with > read-write permissions for those in this group. I found an old thread on > this, and now have: > > /dev/hda1 /mnt vfat unmask=0002,gid=101,uid=0,showexec 0 2 > > in fstab, (where 101 is dos gid). However, the drive mounts with > permissions: > > drwxr_xr_x > This works for me: /dev/hda1 /windoze vfatdefaults,uid=1000,gid=101,umask=003 0 0 in /etc/fstab yields 19:26 $ ls -d /windoze/ drwxrwxr-- 7 alphengl windoze 16384 Dec 31 1969 /windoze/ with everybody below that having those same permissions. I think "unmask" may be a typo. HTH, Rob -- Crazee Edeee, his prices are INSANE!!!
Re: still fighting for normality
On Sat, Jan 16, 1999 at 03:27:55PM +, Rich Harran. wrote: > rwx for group), but this doesn't work, and I can't even chmod the > permissions as root. If I type > > chmod --verbose g+w /mnt > it claims to have changed the permissions, but doesn't actually. the vfat filesystem doesn't support permissions; everything you mount will have the permissions defined by your umask. if you need file perms you might want to look into the umsdos filesystem; try "man fs" for a little more. Rob -- The only difference between the saint and the sinner is that every saint has a past and every sinner has a future. -- Oscar Wilde
Re: Filenames vfat-fs
On Mon, Jan 18, 1999 at 02:02:00AM +0100, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > Henning Makholm dixit: > > > Have you tried escaping the space in the shell? Either of > > > > cd "/mnt/win95/Program Files" > > cd /mnt/win95/Program\ Files > > cd /mnt/win95/Program' 'Files > > > > should work unless there is a bug in the kernel's long filename support. > > also an asterisk works for me: > > cd /mnt/win95/Program* > Or, alternatively, just use the shell's filename competion: cd /mnt/win95/Prog should reveal cd /mnt/win95/Program\ Files/ Rob -- "Consider a spherical bear, in simple harmonic motion..." -- Professor in the UCB physics department
Re: start svgalib progs from X
On Sun, Jan 17, 1999 at 05:54:41PM -0500, Brandon Mitchell wrote: > > There is a little program called switchvt... I hardly remember, but I think > > it was just a single C file. > > That's about all I remember, too. (Although I was trying runvt, loadvt, > launchvt.) Anyone have ideas on where it's located/hiding, switchvt > didn't show up in any packages. > > TIA, > Brandon I know that there's "chvt." But that doesn't work from within an xterm: 21:50 $ tty /dev/ttyp0 21:50 $ chvt 1 chvt: VT_ACTIVATE: Operation not permitted I think this might be related to a message in another thread a couple of days ago about setting the num lock to default on in X and getting some weird error about "stdin is not a VT." How would one pass a command to tty7 from ttyp0? Or is this the wrong track? Rob -- "Consider a spherical bear, in simple harmonic motion..." -- Professor in the UCB physics department
Re: help
On Thu, Jan 21, 1999 at 03:52:31PM +0100, Manuel Salinas wrote: > > > > -- > Unsubscribe? mail -s unsubscribe [EMAIL PROTECTED] < /dev/null no problem
Re: Star Office 3.1 install problem
On Fri, Jan 22, 1999 at 01:59:09PM +, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > > I'm running the XF86_SVGA X server under Debian 2.0. > > I downloaded Staroffice31-common.tar.gz, StarOffice31-english.tar.gz and > StarOffice31-statbin.tar.gz to /usr/local. When untarred they installed > to /usr/local/StarOffice-3.1. When I try to run ./setup (X or not X) I > get: > > StarOffice3.1 Installation Tool > Segmentation fault > > Will someone tell me what additional steps I need to take to install > this package? Thanks. > > Dennis Cousins > Miccosukee, Florida > > > -- > Unsubscribe? mail -s unsubscribe [EMAIL PROTECTED] < /dev/null I had the same thing happen and could never figure out what went wrong, but in the course of my looking I realized that the current version of staroffice is not 3.1, but 5.0. It's on sunsite somewhere and installed cleanly for me. However, 5.0 seemed to me a little on the bloatware side; I also realized that most of the typesetting part of my wordprocessing for school could be done very nicely with TeX (or LaTeX) with about five typesetting commands in a document of any given size. So I wound up not using it after all the effor I went through to get it. Good thing it was free. Rob -- Truth is the most valuable thing we have -- so let us economize it. -- Mark Twain
Re: fvwm2 and xterm placement
On Mon, Jan 25, 1999 at 05:41:01PM +, ktb wrote: [snip] > Hey, "+ I exec xterm -geometry +154+137 &" worked! Now how do I get > rid of > my > initial xterm window that pops up when I first log in? I copied my > /etc/profile > file to ~/.bachrc to get the new xterm window to behave like the > original one > when I first log in. I hope that was the right thing to do. It seems > to be > working. > [snip] > > I thought about putting a "#" in front of the xterm line in > /etc/X11/Xsession > to > kill that first xterm but my instinct tells me I shouldn't do it to this > file. > Where does the default configuration come from? I have looked through > most of > the fvwm2 files and don't seem to be able to locate it. > Thanks, > Kent > Mine is started from .xinitrc (.xsession from xdm): 03:07 $ cat .xinitrc #!/bin/bash xterm -geometry 110x40+1+1 & fvwm2 Maybe that's where the one is that you're trying to kill, or in some similar place. Rob -- Soap and education are not as sudden as a massacre, but they are more deadly in the long run. -- Mark Twain
Re: xdm config pointers
On Wed, Jan 27, 1999 at 12:57:39PM -0200, Hernan Joel Cervantes Rodriguez wrote: > Hi, Shaleh > > > > > If anyone knows of a good doc, web site, etc. about configing XDM to look > > and > > act snazzy, please let me know. > > > > > The better doc is the man page, just do : > > man xdm. > You might also try "man xbanner." Rob -- Every word is like an unnecessary stain on silence and nothingness. -- Beckett
hdparm
Hullo,
I am trying to set up hdparm to put my hard drive to sleep after a certain
timout (the -S option, I think it is). I thought it would be prudent to go
through and make certain that my hardware reacted OK before I set it up, not
really expecting any problems. "hdparm -y /dev/hd[ab]" works fine. "hdparm
-Y /dev/hda" works fine. However, "hdparm -Y /dev/hdb" produces an error
message something like
hdparm: hdb: drive read status 0xff { BUSY }
about twice a second and completely locks my keyboard/mouse so that the only
way I can communicate with my computer is with the poweroff button. I'm
prety sure that it wasn't literally "drive read status," but it was
something like that and the 0xff and BUSY I do remember.
My first question is: why? I have a hunch that this has something to do
with the fact that hdparm is in /usr/sbin/, which is on hdb, but beyond
that I'm not sure.
My second question: if I set a timeout, will this happen again?
My third question (which is actually not an hdparm question, but more
general and I haven't been able to find docs): how would I get this
hypothetical timeout to get set at boot time? I think I would put a script
in /etc/init.d (echo hdparm -S /dev/hd[ab] >
/etc/init.d/hdparmtimeout) and then link to it from one of my rc.N
directories, but I'm not sure and am fearful to mess with this also.
Here is some helpful info about my system. Thanks for your help.
Rob
dmesg:
[snip]
APM BIOS version 1.2 Flags 0x1b (Driver version 1.2)
Entry f000:6736 cseg16 f000 dseg f000 cseg len , dseg len
Connection version 1.1
AC on line, battery status unknown, battery life unknown
battery flag 0x80, battery life unknown
Sound initialization started
at 0x534 irq 11 dma 0,0
at 0x330 irq 5 dma 0
at 0x388
Sound initialization complete
ide: i82371 PIIX (Triton) on PCI bus 0 function 57
ide0: BM-DMA at 0xffa0-0xffa7
ide1: BM-DMA at 0xffa8-0xffaf
hda: WDC AC32500H, 2441MB w/128kB Cache, CHS=620/128/63, DMA
hdb: FUJITSU MPB3064ATU, 6187MB w/0kB Cache, CHS=788/255/63, DMA
hdc: CD-ROM CDU311, ATAPI CDROM drive
ide0 at 0x1f0-0x1f7,0x3f6 on irq 14
ide1 at 0x170-0x177,0x376 on irq 15
Floppy drive(s): fd0 is 1.44M
FDC 0 is a National Semiconductor PC87306
[snip]
18:11 $ cat /etc/fstab
# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
#
/dev/hda5 / ext2defaults,errors=remount-ro 0
1
/dev/hda6 noneswapsw 0 0
proc/proc procdefaults0 0
/dev/hdb7 /home ext2 defaults 0 2
/dev/hda7 /var ext2 defaults 0 2
/dev/hdb6 /usr ext2 defaults 0 2
/dev/hda8 /usr/local ext2 defaults 0 2
/dev/hdb5 /usr/src ext2 defaults 0 2
/dev/cdrom /cdrom iso9660 ro,user,noauto 0 0
/dev/fd0 /floppy autouser,noauto 0 0
/dev/hda1 /windoze vfatdefaults,uid=1000,gid=101,umask=027 0 0
/dev/hdb1 /winprogsvfatdefaults,uid=1000,gid=101,umask=027 0 0
--
There's no such thing as an original sin.
-- Elvis Costello
Re: hdparm
On Sun, Jan 31, 1999 at 11:31:13PM -0500, Brandon Mitchell wrote: > > If -y is ok, then -S should be ok. > OK. I think that's the reassurance that I was looking for, that I'm not going to set this and find my system going down every ten minutes. > > My third question (which is actually not an hdparm question, but more > > general and I haven't been able to find docs): how would I get this > > hypothetical timeout to get set at boot time? > > /etc/rc.boot/hwtools > > Note: I took out -u and -m on my system because they caused some > corruption. 07:01 $ ls /etc/rc.boot/hwtools ls: /etc/rc.boot/hwtools: No such file or directory I assume I get to create that? Thanks a lot, Rob -- Use an accordion. Go to jail. -- KFOG, San Francisco
Re: is this mailing list still up?
On Mon, Feb 01, 1999 at 05:33:08PM +0100, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- > > Hi, > > I do not recieve emails from debian-user, if you can read this, please > email me directly to [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > thanks > > Ulisses > - > - > "Computers are useless. They can only give answers."Pablo Picasso > I got it. Go to the debian page and resubscribe. Rob -- "By the time they had diminished from 50 to 8, the other dwarves began to suspect "Hungry." -- a Larson cartoon
Re: hdparm
Wow, that was easy. Thanks. Rob -- The gentlemen looked one another over with microscopic carelessness.
Re: Switching between X and Text mode terminals
On Wed, Feb 03, 1999 at 01:41:57AM +, Dave Swegen wrote: > On Tue, Feb 02, 1999 at 16:59 -0800, Mark Wagnon wrote: > > Alfie Costa wrote: > > > > > > Question: > > > > > > Is there an easy way, such as a few keystrokes or a command, to switch > > > between text terminals and X, and vice-versa? > > > > > > That is, before running X, I can press 'Alt-F1' to get the first text > > > terminal, 'Alt-F2' to get the second, and so on. Once I'm in X, this > > > doesn't work. It seems as if one has to quit X to return to one of > > > those other text terminals. > > > > > > > Sure you can. In X, type ctrl-altF1, F2... to get to that console. You > > won't able to do anything at the console you started X on, so you'll > > have to login on anohter console. When you're ready to go back to X type > > alt-F7. > > This works, but if I set the VC graphics mode to anything but the default > the graphics card throws a wobbly and just displays garbage on the screen, > so that when I shut down I have to close down X and shut down blind. I would > love to be able to set the VC to a higher res and still be able to switch > between VCs and X. Ho-hum, one can always dream... > Try blind typing "reset" once you're back in your console and see if that puts things back to normal. Rob -- One good thing about music, Well, it helps you feel no pain. So hit me with music; Hit me with music now. -- Bob Marley, "Trenchtown Rock"
Re: Audio CD & MP3
So here's another similar question: what's a good utility for editing ID3 tags? Or have I just not found it in bladeenc? Rob -- Applause, n: The echo of a platitude from the mouth of a fool. -- Ambrose Bierce
Meta and Alt keys
I had occasion today to be playing on a Sun Sparcstation which ran XDM with the chooser. Out of curiosity, I entered my machine's address, and whoa! it worked! So I was playing around on my own system from the Sun for a little while, complete with the Sun's Unix keyboard, and discovered that it's really handy to have a real Meta key in addition to an Alt. For one thing, it works from xemacs (alt does not), and it eliminates the annoying bug that fvwm2 has where the Alt key spontaneously quits being useful as a panning/shortcut/windowmanager key and starts getting passed to programs. I think it would be really handy to change my keymap (either in X or the console, or both) so that Alt is an Alt key and the useless Win95 Start key is a Meta key. However, I haven't been able to find any accurate documentation on how to do this. The Keyboard-and-Console-HOWTO on my system is dated 16 November 1997 and whatever it told me to do to change the default keymap for the console (I tried this a month or two ago, just for kicks) didn't work; I could load the new map manually but something else was being booted. The same for X: I have seen several references to xmodmap, but have also seen that it is defunct and has been replaced by something which is not named. How would I do this? This also seems like something which would be helpful as a system default, since so many newbies (me included) are putting Linux on a < 3 year old Windows system. Thanks, Rob -- Applause, n: The echo of a platitude from the mouth of a fool. -- Ambrose Bierce
Re: Meta and Alt keys
On Wed, Feb 03, 1999 at 05:36:17PM -0700, Gary L. Hennigan wrote: > Rob Mahurin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > | I think it would be really handy to change my keymap (either in X or the > | console, or both) so that Alt is an Alt key and the useless Win95 Start key > | is a Meta key. > > Hmm, I thought this was the default. I seem to distinctly remember > changing that around because I hated those d*mn Windows keys so much I > removed them from my keyboard! I'm using slink on my main system so > maybe that's the difference? I bet it is. I'm running hamm. > Anyway, the "xkeycaps" program is your > friend in X! I think it's in it's own Debian package? It allows you to > define the keys anyway you want, save it to a file, and I think tells > you how to load it by default when you log in. > [snip] > As I said, to each his own, but I hate those keys, even in > Windows. Can't count the times in a game I was trying to hit the Alt > key and hit the Win key instead only to be popped back to desktop. As > I said, I pryed those suckers completely off! I feel your pain -- that's why I want them do do something _useful_. > > In addition, under Linux I redefined my Alt keys, via xkeycaps, to be > my Meta key for XEmacs too. > > Good Luck, > Gary > Thanks much, I will look into these things. As far as the console end of things, I can clarify my question a little bit: the defkeymap.map loaded by "loadkeys -d" is not the same as the default key map loaded at boot time. Where is the second one? Rob -- Swahili, n.: The language used by the National Enquirer to print their retractions. -- Johnny Hart
Re: XDM with chooser; WAS: Meta and Alt keys
On Thu, Feb 04, 1999 at 12:08:19PM +0100, Karl Erik Øyøygard wrote: > Hi! > > I've been trying to get a choice of wich display manager i should connect to > on login on a SGI. Is this possible? Could You give me a hint on where I > should start to look? The info I find for chooser here seems to be for > remote servers connecting to this mashine, the opposite of what I want. If > this is only possiple on SUN, in still interested, but the SGI stands right > behind me ... > > > Any input is very welcome! > > Thank's - Karl Erik > Sorry --- I didn't mean to imply by telling that part of my story that I know anything about xdm, that was just how I happened to discover a Meta key. The login screen on the Sun had a row of menu buttons below the "enter username" field; the Options menu contained the submenu "Remote Host" with "choose from list" and "enter hostname"; entering my hostname was kind of a shot in the dark. It seems logical to me that one should be able to replicate such a setup using xdm on a Debian box (I know I've seent the word "chooser" in /etc/xdm/X* somewhere), but in the two minutes I looked yesterday I didn't find it and it's not a big deal to me anyway. I'm going to post this back on the list where the smart people hang out who can help you with the Debian end of this; the only tangible suggestion I can give you is to do a big fat man xdm on all machines concerned and see what you can pull up. Hope that helps and sorry again that I accidentally gave the impression of competence. Rob -- BOO! We changed Coke again! BLEAH! BLEAH!
Re: wine question
On Thu, Feb 04, 1999 at 01:40:21PM +0100, Lars Steinke wrote: > On Thu, Feb 04, 1999 at 10:48:25PM +1100, Shao Zhang wrote: > > Hi, > > I have no idea how wine works, and I would like to have a try. > > > > > > But my windoze is running nt4, and the file system is NTFS, will > > wine support this?? > > Wine is a Windoze emulator for 16bit applications and I do not > think you can use you Win NT installation as a basis for the > emulator but I might be mistaken... > I use wine occaisionally with an nt4 installation. The only problems that I've encountered are that several programs that are reported to work under wine do not. In general, I can run some small programs (freecell, minesweeper :) but larger, useful programs such as Wordperfect (7) fail. There is an option "-winver nt4" or something like that once you get it up and running, but it hasn't worked any miracles for me. Also, you must be able to access your windoze partition to run wine; mine is vfat, so I'm okay, but I was under the impression that NTFS was unreadable to Linux and that this is the source of many pains in many butts. > Check out www.wineHQ.com for information. why, what a phenomenal idea. I think I'll do that myself. Rob -- Spouse, n.: Someone who'll stand by you through all the trouble you wouldn't have had if you'd stayed single.
Re: more dumb WordPerfect ???s
I think that the WP install script cleans up after itself when it's done; I had to abort my first install and then had to re-unzip and -untar all the installation files i had downloaded. Try that. Rob On Thu, Feb 04, 1999 at 08:34:12AM -0600, Brian Morgan wrote: > Since I was having so much trouble finding the xwp executable (not in > /usr/local/wp8/wpbin directory -- see previous posts), I removed the wp8 > directory, and all its subordinants. I'm now trying to re-run the Runme > script, but I get an error: "nothing new to install." > > How do I get around this so I can run the Runme script again? > -- How do you explain school to a higher intelligence? -- Elliot, "E.T."
Re: wine question
On Thu, Feb 04, 1999 at 09:47:06AM -0500, Dale E. Martin wrote: > Rob Mahurin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > > Also, you must be able to access your windoze partition to run wine; mine is > > vfat, so I'm okay, but I was under the impression that NTFS was unreadable > > to Linux and that this is the source of many pains in many butts. > > 2.2.1 can definitely read NTFS, and I thought 2.0.36 could too. > > Later, > Dale I stand corrected. I'm only running 2.0.34; like I said, mine are vfat. Rob -- Beauty is truth, truth beauty, that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know. -- John Keats
Re: SAMBA and Peer Networks?
The program smbclient accesses windows shares in a very ftp-ish way and (I believe) is part of the samba package. For my purposes, I use smb[u]mount, so that "smbmount //adidas/unix /mnt/smb/adidas; ls /mnt/smb/adidas" will show me all of adidas's unix goodies. If that's not part of samba, then it's most likely in the smbfs package. Rob -- Living in New York City gives people real incentives to want things that nobody else wants. -- Andy Warhol
Re: User names.
Hmmm ... I didn't know about this limit when I installed and used a ten-character username and an eight or nine-character password. When I log in, I have to use the full username (alphenglor), and my home dir is /home/alphenglor, but files owned by me are shown as alphengl.alphengl (I'm not at a terminal with a mouse and can't paste an ls -l to be explicit, sorry). I think that my password was truncated at eight characters, though, as sometimes I would swear that I hit an extra key at the end but I can still get in. As far as mail aliases go, though, you can set up your MTA to do that; /etc/aliases, I think. Rob On Thu, Feb 04, 1999 at 06:06:25PM -0800, Chris Wong wrote: > Hmm, > > For Debian, user names are limited to 8 characters.. as well > as the passwords. How can this be, lengthened? ... as well as long > email addreses? ie: > > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > Thanks. > > Chris Wong | [EMAIL PROTECTED] > AD Digital Media Inc. (c) 1999 > http://addm.com/ > > > -- > Unsubscribe? mail -s unsubscribe [EMAIL PROTECTED] < /dev/null -- One FISHWICH coming up!!
Re: Netscape woes...
I got the "bus error" message repeatedly some time ago for absolutely no apparent reason. I moved my ~/.netscape/ directory to .netscape.screwed/ and ran it again, and it gave the "you haven't run netscape before" dialog and set itself up again and worked fine. I never figured out what was changed, but you might try that. Hope it helps. Rob On Sat, Feb 06, 1999 at 10:14:17AM -0800, Doug Thistlethwaite wrote: > Hello, > > I hope someone can help with this. > > I have been using netscape 4.05 for some time without a hitch. Recently, my > disk ran out of space and sense then, my netscape will not run (I fixed the > disk > space problem BTW). I get the message "Aborted." when I try to start it from > a > command line. > > Today, I figured my netscape files were probably screwed up so I downloaded > the > v4.5 files from netscape and installed them using the ns-install (like I did > before). I still get the "Aborted." if I type netscape in a $ prompt (This > runs > the script in /usr/bin/X11) and I get the error "bus error" if I type > "/usr/local/netscape". > > Any ideas on what is wrong with this? > > Thanks, > > Doug > > > -- > Unsubscribe? mail -s unsubscribe [EMAIL PROTECTED] < /dev/null -- Welcome to Lake Wobegon, where all the men are strong, the women are pretty, and the children are above-average. -- Garrison Keillor
Re: How to Add User to Group?
Ummm ... I've just been creating the users and then doing "adduser ". Occam's Razor may apply here. Rob On Sat, Feb 06, 1999 at 07:47:11PM +, Art Lemasters wrote: > Would some of you please tell me how to add user oracle > to group dba? ...don't know why I'm having so much trouble with > this. > > I already tried addgroup to create dba, then creating oracle > with > adduser --ingroup dba oracle > > ...didn't work. I noticed that the oracle root directory has the > same UID as oracle, but it has a GID that is different from dba and > oracle. > > Art > > > > -- > Unsubscribe? mail -s unsubscribe [EMAIL PROTECTED] < /dev/null -- Love your neighbour, yet don't pull down your hedge. -- Benjamin Franklin
Re: Netscape woes...
On Sat, Feb 06, 1999 at 07:16:24PM -0800, Doug Thistlethwaite wrote: > Ok, I removed the .netscape directory and now the script in > /usr/bin/X11/netscape works > fine. (This seems to start v4.05) This is when I get the "Aborted." error > message. > > Now if I type /usr/local/netscape/netscape I still get the bus error. I > wonder if > anyone else is having problems with v4.5. Something is screwy here, because > the script > in the X11 directory (the debian thing) appears to call the exec in the > /usr/local/netscape directory... I am confused... :O > > Thanks for you help! > > Doug > Glad it worked. Clarification: The error message I eliminated by moving my .netscape/ directory was also "aborted," like yours; I remembered wrong. I had seen "bus error" because that's what it says if I start netscape from the console and then kill it from there instead of using an exit command (either with kill or with Ctrl-C). This sounds like it should be helpful information but I have no idea what you could do with it, unless you were accidentally typing "netscape & kill %netscape" and not noticing. I think that's unlikely; but something like that could be happening down the line. Also, I appear to be running 4.07 instead of 4.05; that may also make a difference. Good luck, Rob -- What you don't know won't help you much either. -- D. Bennett
Re: Dual Boot Woes
On Sun, Feb 07, 1999 at 07:52:34AM -0500, Tom Pfeifer wrote: > Hamish Moffatt wrote: > > > > This isn't the best solution. You should set boot to your linux partition, > > then set your linux partition active in fdisk. This is much more flexible > > if you need to reinstall Windows later, because to get LILO back you just > > change your active partition (even Windows' fdisk will let you do that). > > > > > I agree in principle, but in this case he has Linux on his second disk > (hdb1), and the Win9X MBR doesn't allow active partitions on a slave > disk - he would have no way to get to Linux (other than a boot floppy or > loadlin). If he wants to use Lilo, it has to be in the MBR to provide > access to Linux on the 2nd disk. > Here's an idea. I have winNT on hda1 and linux begins on hda5 and spills over to hdb* -- entirely logical partitions, not a bootable primary among them. lilo appears to have installed itself on hda2, which does not show up in cfdisk or any other such utility. Also, cfdisk et al. do not show any partitions as being bootable or active or whatever. Net result: my system boots to lilo but did not interfere with my existing NT installation. I don't know why this works and haven't found a decent explanation, but it does. Attached is my lilo.conf. If anybody knows why my system boots, I would appreciate an explanation; at any rate, I hope it helps. Rob -- Your object is to save the world, while still leading a pleasant life. boot=/dev/hda2 root=/dev/hda5 install=/boot/boot.b map=/boot/map vga=9 prompt delay=50 timeout=50 read-only image=/vmlinuz label=Linux image=/boot/vmlinuz.noether label=NoNetLinux other=/dev/hda1 label=WinNT
Re: Netscape
On Thu, Aug 26, 1999 at 07:40:59PM -0500, David Blackman wrote: > I'm running netscape 4.6 on a celeron 366, 96 megs of ram, windowmaker > 0.60.0, X 3.3.4 and a graphics blaster exxtreme. > > Netscape is stable except for when I browse in multiple windows, then > closing any window may kill my entire netscape suite (downlaod,s collabra, > everything), it isn't only closing the original window that does it. > > --dave > That happens to me sometimes and it's a window manager problem -- try using File | Close or Alt-W instead of the window manager's close button. Rob -- And it should be the law: If you use the word `paradigm' without knowing what the dictionary says it means, you go to jail. No exceptions. -- David Jones
Re: How to set line length?
On Sun, Aug 29, 1999 at 05:52:41PM -0700, Joe Bouchard wrote: > Hi, > > I am using mutt, exim, and emacs. > > I would like to be able to just type long lines as paragraphs and have > something break the line length off. I know this is a standard feature > in most mail systems, and it must be here, but I can't figure out how to set > it. I understand some email readers don't handle long lines well, and > I don't want to be rude when I send mail to those people. > In emacs: M-x auto-fill-mode Also, C-u 70 C-x f sets the width to 70 characters. I had trouble finding those, too. : ) Rob -- There's some entertainment value in watching people juggle nitroglycerin. -- Larry Wall in <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Re: rexecd disappeared after update.
On Thu, Sep 09, 1999 at 09:45:37AM -0400, Steve Rothanburg wrote: > Anybody know where I can find in.rexecd? I just ran dselect this morning > and after the 8megs of updates rexecd is gone. It didn't get split off > to a separate package did it? I'm running Potato with a 2.2.10 kernel. > I think that rexec is now considered evil for security reasons and ssh is the recommended replacement. Rob -- The only thing cheaper than hardware is talk.
Re: permissions for /tmp
On Thu, Sep 09, 1999 at 06:59:12PM -0400, Marshal Wong wrote: > > Could somebody send me the long listing of the root directory? I need > the proper permissions for /tmp since I fiddled around with it, and > now all the permissions are wrong. Thanks! > > Marshal > There was a discussion about this a couple days ago ... /tmp should be chmod 1777 chown root.root. Rob -- I was gratified to be able to answer promptly, and I did. I said I didn't know. -- Mark Twain
Re: swap
What does "swapon -s" say? Where should your swap be and where is it? Rob On Sun, Sep 12, 1999 at 06:15:37PM +0300, tf wrote: > I'm cheating here with netscape, but on my own machine! yee haw. > I don't seem to be swapping. the boot messages include "activating > swap", and I have a swap partition, but top shows nothing but zeros in > the swap line. any ideas? -- Arguments are extremely vulgar, for everyone in good society holds exactly the same opinion. -- Oscar Wilde
Re: Num lock disables alt- and ctrl-key shortcuts?
On Sun, Sep 12, 1999 at 08:49:35PM -0400, Carl Fink wrote: > [This message has also been posted.] > I've just noticed that both Adobe's Acrobat Reader 3 and RealMedia's > Realplayer G2 have an interesting behavior: if NumLock is activated, > their keyboard shortcuts that require shifted keys, like Alt-F for > the File menu or ^P for Print, don't work. On the other hand, > StarOffice 5.1's shortcuts work fine with NumLock on. I have a similar problem with fvwm2. With the NumLock off, Alt keys are used by the window manager, to give menus, move around the desktops, etc., and the windows key that everybody hates is Alt or Meta key for programs like Netscape and Emacs and xterm. With the Numlock on, the windows key and the alt key behave the same way, and I lose my window manager shortcuts. > > I'd like to report the bug, but I'm not sure to whom. Since it > appears in other apps, but not StarOffice, I'm suspecting it's in > some X library. (StarOffice uses its own libraries for many > functions, which might explain why it's immune.) Anyone out there > have an insight as to where this should be reported? Nope, you're further along than I am, and I've been having this problem probably since last year. I'm grateful to see that someone else finally reported a similar problem, though -- I had thought I was the only one. > > Running slink with a couple of potato packages, XFree86 3.3.2.3. Same, X 3.3.2.3a-11 (according to /usr/doc/X11/changelog). Although, I had this problem even before I upgraded to slink; I just figured out it was the numlock a couple of weeks ago and was kind of sitting deciding what to do about it. Rob -- Laetrile is the pits.
Re: need some help
On Tue, Sep 14, 1999 at 11:52:59PM -0400, Bill Goudie wrote: > Rob -- > > Tonight when I tried to load a web page with java on it I think it > locked up my computer. Or at least I could not switch to another > virtual desktop nor could I get back to the console. My mp3s were > still playing and I could still move the mouse, though. So, after > about ten minutes it dawned on my that I could use ssh to kill the > xserver and Netscape. So, I did that but now I have a garble version > of my background pasted to my screen. And I don't get any response > from the any keyboard input. I thought maybe that If I started a new > X from ssh it would "refresh " things but that didn't work either. > > Other than this everything appears normail. Right now I am across the > hall and used ssh to connect to my computer to send you this message. > So, that leads me to belive this must be an error with my video of > some sort. I'm not sure and I'm merely guessing. And I'm hoping you > have some suggestions to make. Uh...I'm not sure if I"m leaving > anything out. > > Thanks, > -- > Bill Goudie Debian GNU/Linux > ICQ# 4493568 http://www.debian.org Something like this happened to me in the spring: I ran an svga program that trashed one of my VTs and I was without any text consoles for a week or so. There were two programs, savetextmode and restoretextmode, that would have helped me if I'd known about them before I messed things up, but I didn't and I think I wound up rebooting. But it sounds like you don't have a hosed vga screen, you just need to make X go away. If you haven't already, kill -9 everything related to X that you can find over your ssh connection. Also kill everything that looks like it might be associated with Java. If that doesn't help, you might try changing init levels (using telinit, I think?) and seeing if that kills it. I would first change to multi-user levels 2,3,4 or 5 before trying single-user, which would be more likely to work but would by definition I think destroy your remote session. I'll put this on the debian list, too, and some smart person there will warn you away from my bad advice. If you lose your uptime over this, you should definitely disable java and javascript in your browser. Rob -- Do not take life too seriously; you will never get out of it alive.
Re: emacs or xemacs ?
On Tue, Sep 14, 1999 at 07:32:22PM -0400, Kristopher Johnson wrote: > I honestly don't mean to start a holy war here, but I'd like to > know: Is there anyone who prefers Emacs to XEmacs, and why? I use emacs when I'm in a text terminal (like right now) because I haven't figured out how to use Xemacs' menus from the text terminal and some of the functions of Xemacs (e.g., syntax highlighting) seem inaccessible without mouse access to the proper menus. In addition, the cut and paste works differently in Xemacs (in a text terminal) than in any other text-based program, and it always messes with me. I am sure that these things are configureable, but I haven't found them and I don't feel like learning Lisp and reading the source. This preference means that I use emacs -nw to write email from mutt, even in X. Sometimes I load X just to use Xemacs. And I'm hoping now that someone will answer me with "do this to fix those problems, HAND." So apparently I prefer Xemacs. Rob -- Santa Claus is watching!
Re: mutt questions
On Wed, Sep 15, 1999 at 02:17:37PM +0200, Jean-Yves BARBIER wrote: > BTW, I use a 135x48 text screen, and I didn't find > any command to wrap my lines @ 79 Cars, instead of > the end of line - know some? > "fmt" wraps at about 75. You can even use it from mutt: if you get a message that's too long to read, you can his "|fmt|less" and you'll get a copy of your mail message with an unreadable header but a readable body. Lose your pretty mutt colors, but oh well. Rob -- Catsup and Mustard all over the place! It's the Human Hamburger!
spreadsheet?
Are there any good, free spreadsheet programs out there? Anywhere? I had thought that I might have finally decided to use gnumeric, but it didn't use my NumLock key and I thought I'd grab the one from unstable and see if it worked. So I got it with apt --- and apt decided to install 18 new packages (including esound. why does a spreadsheet need esound? grump.) with it, and now gnumeric dies with 18:15 ~ $ /usr/bin/gnumeric /usr/bin/gnumeric: error in loading shared libraries: /usr/lib/libgnomeui.so.32: undefined symbol: gdk_imlib_get_cache_info Arrgh! This was not in my plan. I'm running slink, but apparently I have a lot more potato than I did a couple of minutes ago. Rob -- Women, deceived by men, want to marry them; it is a kind of revenge as good as any other. -- Philippe De Remi
when must I reboot?
I'm a little curious as to under exactly what circumstances a reboot is actually necessary. I know a reboot is necessary to load a new kernel and that the power inside the box must be off to install or remove internal hardware --- are there any other times when a reboot is not optional? For example, you can plug and unplug an idle printer without any difficulty. I've heard that if you shut down gpm and X and any other rodent-listening programs you can also change the mouse without any problems. I'm guessing there's a way to do this with the keyboard or the monitor, if maybe you could remotely shut down the console or something. I think you can do an "init 1" to get into single-user and do single-user things without losing uptime, even repartition a disk if you're brave. (I might try this in a couple of weeks and thought it would be a cool thing to tell my winfriends (and also my unixfriends) that I did without rebooting.) I don't intend to try all of these things (I like my peripherals, thanks). I'm just curious: when is a hardware reboot absolutely unavoidable? Rob -- Eat right, stay fit, and die anyway.
Re: How does it...
On Fri, Sep 17, 1999 at 08:47:19PM -0500, Fredrick Schmitt wrote: > What system would be the cheeziest I could run it on? Unfortunately, you cannot run Debian on a block of cheese. Work on a cheese port is in progress, but is not even ready yet for the alpha release. Until then, you must run Debian on a computer. That is, however, about the only limitation. Rob -- "Buy land. They've stopped making it." -- Mark Twain
Re: silly sendmail question
On Sat, Sep 18, 1999 at 07:32:38AM -0400, add|ct|on wrote: > Greetings... > > I know I'm going to get a lot of responses to the tone of "read the > how-to" or "check the archives" but I have to post my question > anyway, as I have done both and I'm still clueless. > > My question is this: I do not have a domain of my own, and connect > to the net via PPP. I use sendmail when I'm in text mode (which > honestly I prefer over X-Windows), and for months I've been trying > to figure out how (or if) I can make my sender address stop looking > like this: > > From: > (Morpheus is, of course, my "hostname", or > what I named my computer.) > I tried to do exactly this for a long time and never could get it to work right. About the time I figured it out how to do it, I discovered mutt, and never looked back. Since then, I've reinstalled sendmail, and I'm not sure if my solution works any more. The solution that I used (and that I'm about to try again, now that you've reminded me) is in the sendmail FAQ at http://www.sendmail.org/faq/ . I think it's question 3.2. The solution that I use now is mutt. It took me about a day to learn to appreciate mutt, and now I use it even when (if) I'm in X. HTH Rob -- I tried the clone syscall on me, but it didn't work. -- Mike Neuffer trying to fix a serious time problem
Re: Box-box file transfer
On Mon, Sep 20, 1999 at 11:53:44AM -0700, j way wrote: > Is there a way to transfer files between a Slink & Win95 machine using a > serial null-modem cable? > I don't want to tie up two phone lines with modems. Something similar > to the (msft) "Interlnk" perhaps. Tnx. > > > -- > Unsubscribe? mail -s unsubscribe [EMAIL PROTECTED] < /dev/null On the linux side, you can use your favorite of kermit, minicom, etc. On the windows side, use hyperterminal and select the appropriate protocol. Just plug the cable in, configure the programs to use that serial port, and you're all set. I was amazed at how easy it was. Rob -- A girl's conscience doesn't really keep her from doing anything wrong-- it merely keeps her from enjoying it.
Re: silly sendmail question
On Mon, Sep 20, 1999 at 12:02:15PM -0400, Peter S Galbraith wrote: > I'm behind a firewall, and I'm trying the same thing and can't > get it to work: [snip] > > However, I have an old sendmail.cf V8.7 file that works perfectly > with /etc/mail/users.db (it sent this email). > > Any clues? Nope -- I actually tried that same solution about an hour after I posted that message and it didn't work (using 8.9.3, I think). Are you just using the old config file with the new sendmail, or do you have the old sendmail installed (which is probably a bad security idea)? Rob -- With listening comes wisdom, with speaking repentance.
Re: .bashrc doesn't work?
On Wed, Sep 22, 1999 at 10:42:01AM +0200, J Horacio MG wrote: > shell, not for login shell, ie. when you login the config file read is > ~/.bash_profile or /etc/profile Or ~/.profile. I forget the precendence. Rob -- MY income is ALL disposable!
Re: silly sendmail question
On Tue, Sep 21, 1999 at 09:24:34AM -0400, Peter S Galbraith wrote: > > Rob Mahurin wrote: > > > On Mon, Sep 20, 1999 at 12:02:15PM -0400, Peter S Galbraith wrote: > > > I'm behind a firewall, and I'm trying the same thing and can't > > > get it to work: > > [snip] > > > > > > However, I have an old sendmail.cf V8.7 file that works perfectly > > > with /etc/mail/users.db (it sent this email). > > Perhaps I have something wrong again, since you replied to > [EMAIL PROTECTED] (my behind-the-firewall address) ! > It worked that time. How strange. Rob -- Hello, GORRY-O!! I'm a GENIUS from HARVARD!!
Re: telnet to my machine (cont)
On Tue, Sep 21, 1999 at 05:22:43PM +0200, Manuel Arenaz Silva wrote: > > Sep 21 17:11:49 cambados in.telnetd[8102]: connect from 193.144.50.23 > Sep 21 17:11:49 cambados in.telnetd[8102]: error: cannot execute > /usr/sbin/in.telnetd: No such file or directory > > Efectively, the file "/usr/sbin/in.telnetd" doesn't exist. How can I > solve this problem? > 15:18 ~ $ dpkg -S in.telnetd telnetd: /usr/man/man8/in.telnetd.8.gz telnetd: /usr/sbin/in.telnetd You should (re)install the telnetd package. Rob -- The trouble with computers is that they do what you tell them, not what you want. -- D. Cohen
Re: Please contact Trenton Albarracin at The Linux Store. 480-778-1039 re: a reseller agreement
Hurrah! $1000 for the FSF! Rob On Thu, Sep 23, 1999 at 02:43:51PM -0700, Trenton Albarracin wrote: > [spam] -- Much of the excitement we get out of our work is that we don't really know what we are doing. -- E. Dijkstra
different Q: X11, two boxes
On Wed, Sep 22, 1999 at 02:06:38AM -0700, Seth R Arnold wrote: > network. I use ssh2 to login to sarnold, and export DISPLAY=amidala:0.0 -- ssh2? Is this a .deb? I've been getting messages in my logs like "you need a newer ssh for this packet, you insecure lummox" and I'm running the most recent one from potato. Rob -- I like the way ONLY their mouths move ... They look like DYING OYSTERS
Re: Slow system clock?
I had a problem with my clock drifting after I used hwclock to reset my time after I moved to a new time zone: the box had been on 15 minutes, I set it back an hour, and when I rebooted, the /etc/adjtime adjusted the clock by about four days. so I set it again. Now the durn thing thought it was drifting four days every 15 minutes. Turned my box on the next day and it was 1997. Removing /etc/adjtime solved the problem; /etc/init.d/hwclock (or whereever it is) makes a new one. Rob -- I like the way ONLY their mouths move ... They look like DYING OYSTERS
cd packet error
So I'm trying to dub this CD for my roommate and I'm getting this
error message about once a frickin second:
hdc: packet command error: error=0xb4
ATAPI device hdc:
Error: Aborted command -- (Sense key=0x0b)
Loss of streaming -- (asc=0xbf, ascq=0x00)
The failed "" packet command was:
"be 04 00 03 c3 57 00 00 08 f8 00 00 "
hdc: packet command error: status=0x51 { DriveReady SeekComplete Error }
except the packet numbers keep changing. Is this cdparanoia barfing,
or is the CD scratched?
Thank god for ^L,
Rob
--
Repel them. Repel them. Induce them to relinquish the spheroid.
- Indiana University fans' chant for their perennially bad football team
Re: ra to wav
On Tue, Sep 28, 1999 at 11:38:26AM +0100, Rainer Sand wrote: > > Does someone know a program or a procedure to convert .ra to .wav? I only > found a win program > (Ra2Wav, www.2bsys.com). Or is it possible to stream the output of the real > player somehow into a converting program? > I think sox can do this. You should already have it and everything. Rob -- Leona, I want to CONFESS things to you ... I want to WRAP you in a SCARLET ROBE trimmed with POLYVINYL CHLORIDE ... I want to EMPTY your ASHTRAYS ...
Re: X for Win95
On Tue, Sep 28, 1999 at 09:16:57AM -0400, Jon Hughes wrote: > I've been working on my Linux box here at work from my windows computer > (easier to telnet into rather then move around and stuff). This is fine and > dandy, but I've been told there is a way you can actually get the X > server/KDE stuff to work remotly, through a Xwindow on Win95 or something > like that. > > Ring a bell to anyone? > I'm going to throw in a vote for VNC, too. If you like screen, you'll love VNC. (If you don't know screen, you should try it, too...) Also, there's a program called Exceed on the lab computers here at UT which works very nicely but it's nice enough that I'm sure it costs lots of money. Rob -- What is mind? No matter. What is matter? Never mind. -- Thomas Hewitt Key, 1799-1875
Re: Installing debian to another hard drive
Perhaps something like this (assuming the target drive is /dev/hdb). (I'm going to emphasize that I'm JUST GUESSING and you should RTFM all the suggestions I give here). # mke2fs /dev/hdb1 # makeswap /dev/hdb2 # dpkg --get-selections > selections # dpkg --root=/mnt --set-selections < selections # apt-get -f -o dpkg::options::"--root=/mnt" dist-upgrade Does anybody who knows what they're talking about have better ideas? Rob On Wed, Sep 29, 1999 at 01:03:14AM +0200, Marcin Owsiany wrote: > On Tue, Sep 28, 1999 at 10:42:15PM +0200, Hugo van der Merwe wrote: > > Hello, > > > > How can I install the debian "base" system to another hard drive in the > > same computer? I have a working Debian / DOS+Win95 dual boot system, and > > would like to install Debian to a laptop, whose floppy disk drive is > > disfunctional, and has no CD-ROM drive. > > > > I have connected the laptop's hard drive to my Debian machine, using an > > adapter. There must be some way to install Debian to this hard drive, > > using my desktop machine. How can I do this? Will the normal > > install-from-dos-partition procedure work? > > > > Thanks in advance, > > Hugo van der Merwe > > > > ps. I would appreciate if replies could be CC:'ed to [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > I am not subscribed to the list, and sometimes my ISP's news server messes > > up... > -- Reliable source, n.: The guy you just met.
Re: Difference between dpkg and other installs
On Wed, Sep 29, 1999 at 03:25:28PM -0500, Steve Doerr wrote: > Could anyone help me with the difference between dpkg and other > installs. I have installed netscape and wp8 w/o using dselect. > Should everything be installed through dpkg to get the cleanest > Debian system or does it matter? I also need JDK 1.1 and > PostGresql 6.5 or greater and I don't want to create conflicts > with libraries (i.e. libpgsql) that won't be identified outside > of dselect. I don't think either of the above has the package > info needed to APT them, so they'll have to go on manually > (unless somebody can point me to some documentation on how to > run anything through dselect). Any insight would be greatly > appreciated. > Thank you > > > -- > Unsubscribe? mail -s unsubscribe [EMAIL PROTECTED] < /dev/null dselect and apt are "frontends" to dpkg --- they look different and have different options, but when you actually start installing the programs with them (beginning with the "Reading database..." part of the output), that's where they've called dpkg to do that work for them. In addition, all of these guys are aware of Debian's dependencies. Isn't that nifty? Rob -- E Pluribus Unix
Re: How to filter this list?
On Fri, Oct 01, 1999 at 12:39:54PM +0200, Manuel Arenaz Silva wrote: > Hello, > > I am interrested in filtering the incoming mail. On my opinion, my situation > is quite > different from the explained in this thread. I am the administrator of a PC > K6-3 > 400MHz running Debian Linux. I use a mail server (mercurio.des.fi.udc.es) to > send and > receive mails. > > [mercurio:/home/des/becarios/arenaz]$ uname -a > SunOS mercurio 5.7 Generic sun4m sparc SUNW,SPARCclassic > > My question is: What do I need in order to filter the incomming mail received > in the > server? Can I manage using "elm"? > You sound like a candidate for procmail. IIRC, one of the examples in the procmail docs is how to filter debian-user. Rob -- I fill MY industrial waste containers with old copies of the "WATCHTOWER" and then add HAWAIIAN PUNCH to the top ... They look NICE in the yard ...
Re: why no package status feature for dpkg?
On Thu, Sep 30, 1999 at 11:31:25PM -0400, Russell Nelson wrote: > Why does dpkg not have a way to check the cksum's of the package's > contents. I deleted a bunch of man pages, and now I find myself > having to write perl scripts to coerce dpkg into releasing the > information about missing files. And even then, I won't know if a > file is really undamaged. Good idea --- maybe a "dpkg --check-corrupted" to see if a supposedly installed package has been damaged or had components removed. I'm not a coder at all, but maybe somebody else who reads this post is. A temporary hack would be, when you have a man page go missing, do a dpkg --remove package; apt-get install package. Until you need the page, don't worry about it. > > So who *knows* what I'm running now, and whether it corresponds to > anything remotely resembling Official Debian 2.0. Yeah, I was running probably 1/3 unstable for a while. I went to glibc2.1 to use the new kernel and that kept breaking little things, and I finally said screw it and went to a full potato box. Unstable for Debian is pretty stable, though; I figure as long as I don't follow the bleeding edge and only upgrade what's broken I'll be fine. > Somebody remind me again how .deb is the perfect packaging format, >sublime in all the details of its creation, without flaw in its every >detail, and how all others (should) bow low to it. I still haven't >found an explanation of why RPM sucks so badly that Debian developers >cannot fix it. I mean, xterm sucked so badly that somebody had to >create xterm-debian and break everybody's termcap, so why not >RPM-debian and break everybody else's RPM manipulators? I bet you'd feel a lot better if you hadn't just been beating this to death for several hours. Get a good night's sleep and a warm meal. Rob -- America: born free and taxed to death.
Re: Slink to Potato
On Fri, Oct 01, 1999 at 08:17:41AM -0600, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > On Fri, Oct 01, 1999 at 03:52:47PM +0900, Miles Bader wrote: > > I've been slowly upgrading my packages from slink to potato, and > > frankly, have never had a single problem. I was nervous about upgrading > > perl, because I've seen all sorts of veiled references to possible > > hosage (although I've never seen a concise statement of the actual > > problem), but eventually I just did it, and removed the old perl. > > Result? No problems, everything seems to work perfectly. Perhaps there > > are a few packages that crash and burn, but I apparently don't use any > > of them. > > > > How are you doing this? Do you just go get the packages and 'dpkg -i' them > or do you use apt? There are a bunch of things I want to upgrade on my > system but I assumed that all of the potato packages would have dependencies > to library versions I don't have and that updating my libraries would > break slink packages that I do have. > This is exactly what apt is for. Even dpkg -i will say something like "package depends on lib2.0 but you only have lib0.2, you loser". As far as hearing horror stories on the list, that's because this is largely a help list. The people who upgrade from slink to potato and don't have any problems don't ask for help. I did it last week and it's very nice, thank you. Rob -- If you wish to succeed, consult three old people.
Re: Slink to Potato
On Fri, Oct 01, 1999 at 09:58:59AM -0700, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > Rob, > > I'm no apt expert. Would you write up a section on Apt for a Debian > Update HowTo? I will voluteer to edit and put it together as well > as providing content. If need be, I will even host it on my server. > > The HowTo would include lists of packages and the techniques > on how to bring the latest version of applications to the current > Stable Debian release. > Yeah, I guess I could do something like that --- though I don't guarantee quality or punctuality, since I have a pretty heavy courseload this semester. That's why I'm not volunteering already . Here's an idea for the out-of-dateness question: what if new major revisions of software (like LyX going from 0.4 to 1.0, or, hypothetically, Netscape going to version 5) were included in the proposed-updates section and incorporated into the next stable r-release (which I think will be Debian 2.0r4 or something like that. Library dependencies and such could be resolved (or at least stablized) in the same way that they are for security issues. This seems like a fair way to include newly-added functionality to the stable release without having to change Debian's whole release cycle. Any comments? Rob -- Time and tide wait for no man.
how to reset the console?
I feel pretty silly about this ... I was playing around with some of the programs in the games directory and one (lincity) gave me some complaint about svga permissions. I said Hmmm and tried it with sudo, and it got about halfway through changing the video stuff and died. Now I'm stuck with a half-reset console, which makes all of my text VTs pretty much useless. Instead of having text characters, I have colorful blinking garbage. The consoles all still work: I can log in, play sounds, etc, but I can't see them. Interestingly, programs that change vga settings that work (specifically, acidwarp) do so successfully, but when they exit again they return the console to the fubar state. Typing "reset" doesn't help. the man page for the console says that it can be reset by echoing ESC c to it, but either that's not doing anything either or I'm not doing that right (I'm blind typing "echo -e \\033c", which clears the xterm I'm working in). What now? How can I (a) figure out exactly what's confused and (b) fix it without breaking anything? Not having to reboot would be nice, particularly since xdm brings up its gooey screen without any problems. Plus, it would be nice to know what's happened when I file my bug report. I don't always get the digest of this list, so please Cc: replies to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Thanks. Rob -- You will have a long and unpleasant discussion with your supervisor.
Re: how to reset the console?
On Tue, Apr 13, 1999 at 09:02:12PM -0700, George Bonser wrote: > > > > Typing "reset" doesn't help. the man page for the console says that > > it can be reset by echoing ESC c to it, but either that's not doing > > anything either or I'm not doing that right (I'm blind typing "echo -e > > \\033c", which clears the xterm I'm working in). > > > Ah, and XTERM! Try control- and select full reset. > > Oops, sorry about the confusion there --- the xterm isn't the problem. My consoles that are in video mode (tty7, and anything begat by startx) are fine. It's the ones that are in text mode (tty[1-6] that are messed up: they show pretty much random assortments of colors (all the same, can't tell which one I'm on unless I know which alt-Fn I pushed to get there). I was typing "echo -e \\033c" in the xterm to make sure that I had the syntax right and it reset properly in there; when I blind type it on my befuddled text consoles, there isn't any change. I think this has something to do with VGA settings and graphics modes, but I know absolutely nothing about either of those things. How do I get back to text? Also interestingly, deallocvt doesn't seem to get rid of my unused consoles like it's supposed to (tty[8-10]). I would imagine these two things are related, as I've never seen either of them before. Please Cc: your replies to me at [EMAIL PROTECTED] Thanks. Rob -- Laundry is the fifth dimension!! ... um ... um ... th' washing machine is a black hole and the pink socks are bus drivers who just fell in!!
Re: how to reset the console?
On Thu, Apr 15, 1999 at 09:06:38PM +0800, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > On Thu, Apr 15, 1999 at 02:48:00PM +0200, Ookhoi wrote: > > > > Cool. :-) > > So now we have: > > > > reset > > stty sane > > -v c > > > > to restore a messed up text interface. > > > > Groetjes, Ookhoi > > > > don't forget setfont - maybe we can start a collection :) > > But the original question referred to an svgalib messed up console which is > quite a bit different. > > Ivan. In particular, it's different in that none of those did me any good :(. svgalib comes with a couple of utils called "textmode" and "savetextmode" that are supposed to help in exactly my situation ... but the man page says: You do this by being a smart guy and running savetextmode right after booting of your machine, prior to any prob lems. Unluckily for me, I'm not a smart guy. these are both scripts for a couple of restoration utils that take a previous config from a file and reinstate it -- but I have made no such file. My question at this point: is there such a file on my system? could I create one? Or should I just break down and reboot again? If it helps, running textmode at this point changes the multicolored static pattern blinking on my textmode screens to a red static pattern blinking on my screen. Thanks again for the help. Please Cc: to me at [EMAIL PROTECTED] Rob -- It's computer hardware, of course it's worth having -- Espy on #Debian
Re: how to reset the console?
On Sun, Apr 18, 1999 at 06:56:00PM +0800, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > > If it's any good to you Rob, I could run savetextmode on my machine and > post it to you. I'd hate to see you lose your uptime :) > > Can anyone on the list see a reason why this wouldn't work ? > > Ivan. > That would be something to try, I guess. The only problem that I can forsee is that I have my machine booting to something besides the 80x24 character screen and I can't remember which one it was (the vga option in lilo.conf -- mine says "9" but I seem to remember that menu being machine-dependent). So unless you happened to do the same thing then I'll have to figure out how to hot-switch that. Shouldn't be too hard. If there are any dark secrets of vga incompatibility floating around out there, this would be a very good time to air them. I think it says a lot about the stability and flexibility of Linux that I haven't had a console since Wednesday and my machine is still accessible (and would be even if I didn't have xdm running, though that would be a lot harder), but I have no desire to make my monitor explode because I'm too stubborn to reboot. Please Cc: to me at [EMAIL PROTECTED] And thanks for the help. You're all pretty cool. Rob -- "Were there no women, men might live like gods." -- Thomas Dekker
Re: how to reset the console?
OK, here is story to date: 1. I ran lincity and destroyed my VGA consoles. My pretty hi-res textmode was replaced by strange static patterns. This was Wednesday. 2. I asked on the list for help and got several variations of the reset command. All were nice but did not change my VGA mode back. 3. I did some RTFMing and found the commands "textmode" and "savetextmode," designed for exactly my situation, except that I was supposed to have run savetextmode before I hosed my display. Oops. Posted again to list to this effect. 4. Nice guy Ivan offers to run savetextmode on his box and send me the output file. Says he will check for me on the svgalib mailing list and make sure that we don't blow up my monitor. This was today. 5. Nice guy Matan from the svgalib list says that won't work unless Ivan and I have exactly the same card. He says there is a program in the latest svgalib snapshot that might help. 6. I start looking for the latest svgalib snapshot. Don't find it (didn't look hard). See a debian package called "svgatextmode" and install that. 7. After a little playing (the svgatextmode executable is "SVGATextMode." PITB to find. Can I please report that as a bug?) I get an 80x25 console back. But it dies again when I switch to X and back (I've been using X through xdm exclusively since Wednesday :) ). For that matter, it dies again whenever I switch VTs. Not very productive. 8. I go insane with frustration at the whole situation and reboot. 9. Rebooting gives me my pretty high-res console back --- and SVGATextMode promptly switches it back to Plane Jane 80x25. 10. Remove svgatextmode. Scream twice. Reboot again. Normal. Much better. Insanity fading to normal levels. Now that I've obliterated my problem (destruction is so satisfying), I'm curious: could I have used some derivative of vidmode(8) and not had to reboot? Or does that only apply on the next reboot? And if so, is there any way in the base system to "hot-switch" the video mode? I intend to learn something from this experience or die trying. Thanks for all your help, particularly to nice guy Ivan. Rob -- The idea of male and female are universal constants. -- Kirk, "Metamorphosis", stardate 3219.8
Re: A file is not always what you think it is.
On Mon, Apr 19, 1999 at 05:58:18PM +0800, Hans van den Boogert wrote: > > Apparently a .txt file written under Win95 can be chmod-ed, but not > executed. I used ae to write a simple script from scratch under Linux > and it worked no problem at all. > > That makes me wonder: I have to install some packages on the notebook > to get the external CD-ROM drive working. If I copy them from the > CD-ROM on a DOS formatted floppy and then transfer to the notebook, > will I get the same kind of trouble? > You should look at the program "unix2dos" and its man page. Rob -- What passes for woman's intuition is often nothing more than man's transparency. -- George Nathan
help: clock resets on reboot
My clock resets when I reboot, pretty much at random. Doesn't matter how long it's been off; when I check in the CMOS before it boots, it's still right. But sometime between when lilo loads and I get a login prompt, it sets, pretty much at random. date and hwclock agree, but they're wrong. Sometimes it's back half an hour; sometimes it's a couple of hours; once it went to march 1997. Never goes forward. This never happened before a couple of weeks ago. I have no idea. Does anybody? Rob -- "Keyboard not detected. Press F4 to reboot."
Re: help: clock resets on reboot
John Foster wrote: > Most modern Motherboards have a small rechargeable battery on them that > hold enough power to keep the hardware clock set to the correct time, > when the system is powered off. It appears that your battery is > degrading and may need to be replaced. But it's right when it boots: if I hit F1 and check in the CMOS before lilo loads, the clock is accurate. If I go into Windows through lilo, the clock is accurate there. But when I load a linux kernel, it gets reset. (rebuilding a kernel from scratch is on my list of things to do today now.) That's why I didn't think initally that it was the battery. Would a dying battery cause this kind of behavior? TIA, Rob -- "Keyboard not detected. Press F4 to reboot."
SOLVED: clock resets on reboot
Figured it out: no kernel build, no new battery. At some point I had acquired an /etc/adjtime file that was wrong, and /etc/init.d/hwclock.sh was kindly adjusting and resetting my clock for me every time I entered runlevels 0 or 6. The solution was: # hwclock --set --date="now" ; hwclock --hctosys # rm /etc/adjtime # reboot The reboot wasn't really necessary, but I wanted to check and don't have much of an uptime investment at the moment anyway. There is more information in man hwclock; search for "adjtime". Wade, if this doesn't work for you, post your differences to the list and we'll help you out. Rob John Foster wrote: > Rob Mahurin wrote: > > > > John Foster wrote: > > > > > Most modern Motherboards have a small rechargeable battery on them that > > > hold enough power to keep the hardware clock set to the correct time, > > > when the system is powered off. It appears that your battery is > > > degrading and may need to be replaced. > > > > But it's right when it boots: if I hit F1 and check in the CMOS before > > lilo loads, > > the clock is accurate. If I go into Windows through lilo, the clock is > > accurate > > there. But when I load a linux kernel, it gets reset. (rebuilding a > > kernel from > > scratch is on my list of things to do today now.) That's why I didn't > > think initally > > that it was the battery. Would a dying battery cause this kind of behavior? > _ > NO! I assumed that the problem was universal regardless of OS. Since > that is not the case you are correct to compile a new kernel. > > -- > John Foster > AdVance-Computing Systems > [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- "Keyboard not detected. Press F4 to reboot."
Re: fvwm 2.2 and missing menu items
On Fri, Oct 01, 1999 at 04:05:34AM -0400, Alec Smith wrote: > I just installed Debian 2.2 after reformatting my old Slink partition. I > noticed that as root I had my fvwm 2.2 menus as I always had them with the > old version (2.0.46-BETA I believe) in Slink. However, if I ran fvwm 2.2 > as a normal user, I got a menu that basically let me exit and nothing > else. The .fvwm2rc file in my home directory does nothing but start xterm > and use xv to put a background on my screen. > > Is there some change I need to make so that fvwm 2.2 will operate > correctly? > Did you fix this? Both my user and root menus have exit as the only entry. In addition, the "destroy" window-ops function sometimes kills my Xserver. None of this is a problem as when I use X it's usually not for long and I start all my programs from the xterm; however, it does suck a little bit. Haven't tried other window managers because I got to those using the menus options which are now gone. Any help appreciated. Rob -- If a fool persists in his folly he shall become wise. -- William Blake
Re: how to remove a broken package (long)
This might sound crazy, but have you tried reinstalling those broken packages? Maybe if you gave them everything that they're looking to delete then they might be removeable. If any of the dpkg developers are reading this: "Errors were encountered while processing " and "sub-process returned error code 1" are really frustrating when you don't know what those errors (or sub-processes) are. Very windows-esque. Oh, lookie here: 17:35 ~ $ dpkg -Dh dpkg debugging option, --debug= or -D: See if you can find out what's failing and see if that helps you. Rob -- Insanity is the final defense ... It's hard to get a refund when the salesman is sniffing your crotch and baying at the moon.
Re: telnet banner
On Fri, Oct 08, 1999 at 04:07:53PM -0600, Luis Gustavo Madrigal Salazar wrote: > How can I set my linux to display a banner before it prompts for login? > I can do it in solaris by editing /etc/default/telnetd > The local banner is /etc/issue ; the remote banner is /etc/issue.net. I think that you can define these in /etc/login.defs. Rob -- If happiness is in your destiny, you need not be in a hurry. -- Chinese proverb
filenames beginning with "-"
Apparently about an hour ago something made a few files in my homedir that began with "-", and now I can't read them and can't remove them: 15:30 ~ $ ls total 80 -rw--- 1 alphengl alphengl 226 Oct 10 14:30 -011405 -rw--- 1 alphengl alphengl 226 Oct 10 14:33 -011485 -rw--- 1 alphengl alphengl 226 Oct 10 14:42 -011611 [...] 15:31 ~ $ cat \-011405 cat: invalid option -- 0 Try `cat --help' for more information. 15:31 ~ $ cat "-011405" cat: invalid option -- 0 Try `cat --help' for more information. 15:32 ~ $ cat '-011405' cat: invalid option -- 0 Try `cat --help' for more information. 15:32 ~ $ mv -011405 011405 mv: invalid option -- 0 Try `mv --help' for more information. 15:32 ~ $ mv '-011405' 011405 mv: invalid option -- 0 Try `mv --help' for more information. What are they and how do I make them go away? TIA, Rob -- QOTD: All I want is more than my fair share.
Re: filenames beginning with "-"
On Sun, Oct 10, 1999 at 10:50:56PM +0300, Heikki Vatiainen wrote: > Rob Mahurin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Apparently about an hour ago something made a few files in my homedir > > that began with "-", and now I can't read them and can't remove them: > > > > 15:30 ~ $ ls > > total 80 > > -rw--- 1 alphengl alphengl 226 Oct 10 14:30 -011405 > > -rw--- 1 alphengl alphengl 226 Oct 10 14:33 -011485 > > -rw--- 1 alphengl alphengl 226 Oct 10 14:42 -011611 > > [...] > > 15:31 ~ $ cat \-011405 > > cat: invalid option -- 0 > > Try something like > > $ cat ./-011405 > > That is, always prepend ./ to the filename if you have files that > start with - > > > What are they and how do I make them go away? > > I have no idea. Maybe doing cat will help to find out where they > came from. > That did it, thanks. They were netscape bookmark files. How dumb. Rob -- The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax. -- Albert Einstein
Re: Man page problem: all hypens(-) are being replaced by
On Sun, Oct 10, 1999 at 06:59:29PM -0500, Brian Servis wrote: > Hi all, > > Recently I all my hypens(-) in my man pages have started to show up as > a highligted and not hypens. What would be causing this? The > relevant package versions are listed below. This is hybrid slink > system with lots of package compiled from potato sources. > > man-db 2.3.10-69n > groff 1.11a-7 > Perhaps you might try setting the LESSCHARSET environment variable, or the parallel for whatever pager you're using. Mine is "latin1". Rob -- Love sometimes expresses itself in sacrifice. -- Kirk, "Metamorphosis", stardate 3220.3
Re: Man page problem: all hypens(-) are being replaced by
On Mon, Oct 11, 1999 at 07:48:37AM -0500, Brian Servis wrote: > > Ok. Less is my pager. Setting LESSCHARSET to latin1 fixed the > problem. But how do I fix this system wide without setting LESSCHARSET > in all systemwide shell startup scripts. The less man page says that if > LESSCHARSET is not set then it uses the setlocale system call to > determine the correct character set from the LANG and LC_TYPE > variables. Execution of locale returns > > LANG=POSIX > LC_CTYPE="POSIX" > LC_NUMERIC="POSIX" > LC_TIME="POSIX" > LC_COLLATE="POSIX" > LC_MONETARY="POSIX" > LC_MESSAGES="POSIX" > LC_ALL= > > Since less doesn't seem to know what POSIX is then it breaks with . > > So what is the culprit in this situation, less or locale? And what > changed recently to start producing this? The only thing that has been > upgraded on my system that I can see affecting this mix is man-db, less, > locales and groff are slink versions. > Can't help you there, man. I'm not worried about posix; I just put it in my .bashrc. Rob -- Deflector shields just came on, Captain.
Re: vnc-problems
On Mon, Oct 11, 1999 at 01:26:55PM +0300, virtanen wrote: > > I installed vncserver and xvncviewer. > [...] > > The second problem is that I cannot run xvncviewer on the local consoles. > Basically the server is working (as 'root'), because I can run a viewer on > a mswin machine to get an vnc access to the machine. On the local machine > the viewer starts, but it is complaining that it cannot open the display. > What is wrong? What to do? > xvncviewer is not actually an xserver in the sense that you type it from a text console and it gives you a graphical console. All the viewer does is allow you to view a vnc session started by the server. Once you have a GUI to play with, xvncviewer will let you load the independent xsession you've started with vncserver. In case that's really unclear, try doing a startx followed by a vncserver; xvncviewer with appropriate options. Your startx session will now contain a window which has your vnc session in it. Rob -- I never met a woman I couldn't drink pretty.
Re: nwpopup
On Mon, Oct 11, 1999 at 01:07:08PM +, Brian J. Stults wrote: > I have my linux box set to access files and receive messages from a > netware server. When I get mail, I am notified if I have an xterm > window open. Does anyone know of a utility similar to nwpopup for > Windows that will pop up a little window telling me I have mail? I > tried running nwpopup through wine, but it didn't work. > Try xbiff. Rob -- I don't know anything about music. In my line you don't have to. -- Elvis Presley
Re: dselect has gotten hungry
On Mon, Oct 11, 1999 at 02:57:54PM -0500, Christian Dysthe wrote: > Hi, > > lately I have the feeling that dselect has gotten more resource hungry. > After having retrieved packages CPU usage goes up to 100% for a "long > time" while dselect prepares install. It also races up and down a lot > while packages are being installed, and has a lot of lasting peaks at > 100% while this is going on also. It wasn't like this before. What > happened? > > I am running potato btw. > I have noticed this also, using apt-get. I think it is dpkg calling update-menus in the background. If you run a top while the machine is thrashing the #1 slot is usually a window manager. I just tried to check to see if this is a known bug and IE locked up the winbox I'm telnetted in from. Kind of puts things in perspective. Rob -- All the simple programs have been written.
Re: Multiple accesses to /dev/dsp
On Tue, Oct 12, 1999 at 07:21:06PM -0600, Dwayne C . Litzenberger wrote: > Anyone know of a kernel patch that basically lets any number of processes > open /dev/dsp any number of times? > > Basically, a microphone splitter and a speaker mixer in one? I know this > would take CPU time, but I'd like to be able to play a RealAudio stream, > while hearing the superfluous sounds of KDE, while talking to a friend via > SpeakFreely. > > I know it should be possible, but I've never seen it done. > I've heard that esound or something like that (from enlightenment) can do that, but I've not played with it myself. Anybody else? Rob -- Never go to bed mad. Stay up and fight. -- Phyllis Diller, "Phyllis Diller's Housekeeping Hints"
Re: Asking to delete downloaded debs
On Tue, Oct 12, 1999 at 06:24:50PM -0700, Bob Nielsen wrote: > I have two potato systems. On the one I most recently upgraded, > running dselect with the apt method, I get asked "Do you want to erase > the downloaded .deb files (Y/n)?" On the other system, I am not asked, > but I would like to change that. I have been unable to find what > configuration setting affects this. Can anyone point me to the correct > place? > I think you do an "apt-get clean". Don't know how to automate it; try apt.conf(5). Rob -- I'll show you MY telex number if you show me YOURS ...
Re: is your WINE broken too?
On Thu, Oct 14, 1999 at 03:12:06AM -, Pollywog wrote: > I just upgraded WINE (I had to make some symlinks in /usr/lib for Mesa to get > it to work) but it appears to be broken, because it says that it cannot use > this version of MSVCRT20.DLL. Anyone else have this problem? I installed the > current WINE for potato: 0.0.990923-1 > I couldn't get 990923 to do anything useful from either the .deb or the wine-source. I just went back to 990731. Rob -- The honeymoon is over when he phones to say he'll be late for supper and she's already left a note that it's in the refrigerator. -- Bill Lawrence
Re: html, and a file manager.
On Mon, Oct 11, 1999 at 01:50:20PM +0300, tf wrote: > I hate to plug a windows app, but notetab pro is great. > Sure would be nice if someone would make a clone for linux. > have you tried wine? Rob -- Forms follow function, and often obliterate it.
