The Answer Guy Issue 20 (2024)

"Linux Gazette...making Linux just a little more fun!"

Contents:

• Security Issues
• All Those Little % Thingies
• Follow-Up to NT and Linux Article
• Active X for Linux/Unix
• Mounting Disks Under Red Hat 4.0
• PPP Problems
• Z Protocol
• Video Cards
• Linux and Zip Drives
• Red Hat CD Problem
• Cookies
• New Hard Disc
• Random Crashes
• gcc and Slackware Question
• LILO
• Printing Problems
• Linux Disk Support
• Renaming Problems
• X Locks Monitor
• Using JDK 1.1 for Solaris x86 on Linux
• Colormap Question
• More on LILO
• 95 GUI
• A Letter of Thanks
• STO/1/O2 SCSI Card
• Booting Linux
• Kernel Panics on root fs

Security Issues

From: Marcus Hufvudsson talos@algonet.se

Greetings Linux guru!

I recently read the Linux Journal May edition and some people had someserious security problems. I got some of them to, and in your answer toone you recommended the "Tripwire" program for more security. I hope youdon't mind me mailing you (got the address from the article). Anyway yourecommend ftp.cs.perdue.edu for downloading. But when I tried to connect itdidn't respond. Do you know any mirrors or any other ftp that containsLinux security tools?

- talos (root today, gone tomorrow)

There was a typo in that article. It WAS supposed to beftp.cs.purdue.edu -- but is now supposed to be atftp://coast.cs.purdue.edu/pub/COAST (they've been moved).

Here's the full URL to Tripwire:ftp://coast.cs.purdue.edu/pub/COAST/Tripwire

You should definitely browse around and read some of theother papers -- and try some of the other tools out thereat the COAST (computer operations and security tools?) archive.

Sadly it seems to be neglected -- the whole "tools_new" treeis dated "October, 1995" and is empty.

All of the good stuff there is under:ftp://coast.cs.purdue.edu/pub/tools/unix(including symlinks that lead back to the Tripwire package).

Apparently they don't do anything with the FTP site becausethe real work as gone into their web pages at:http://www.cs.purdue.edu/coast/archive/Archive_Indexing.html

Another more recent effort which will be of more direct interest to Linux admins is:http://skynet.ul.ie/!flynng/security/TheIrish Computer Security Archives ... with the following being of particular interest:http://skynet.ul.ie/~flynng/security/bugs/linux/ ... and:http://skynet.ul.ie/~flynng/security/tools

Another good site (recently moved) is at:http://www.aoy.com/Linux/SecurityTheLinux Security WWW... where I particularly like:http://www.aoy.com/Linux/Security/OtherSecurityLinks.html

One of these days I'm going to annotate the 600 or so linksin my main lynx_bookmarks file and post it to my own web pages.But -- not this morning (3 am).

I spend so much time doing TAG (The Answer Guy) and othermailing list and newsgroup stuff that I never get to my ownweb pages. However the patch that I created to allow Tripwireto compile cleanly under Linux is on my ftp site and a linkcan be found somewhere under http://www.starshine.org/linux/(I really have to organize those pages one of these days).

--Jim

All Those Little % Thingies

To: Jonathan Albrecht albrecht@algorithmics.com

When setting your prompt or dates or app-defaults you sometimes needthose little %N, or %d, or %m substitution thingies. What are they andwhere can I get a list of what they mean?

They are "replaceable parameters" and are used by a varietyof shells and applications.

They differ for each shell or application. For exampleI use bash -- and my prompt is:

PS1=[\u@\h \W]\$ 

Which looks like:

[jimd@antares jimd]$

When I'm in my home directory and logged in as jimdand would look like:

[root@main local]#

If I was 'root' on the host "main" and in the /usr/localdirectory.

zsh, and tcsh also have similar "meta sequences" for theirshell prompts. Just read the man pages for your shell andsearch for "prompt."

X app-default and other xrdb (X Windows resource database)entries are pretty mysterious to me. But I imagine that the info about these sequences is mostly in their man pagessomewhere. I'm sure it's all in the sources.

The %d syntax is most often seen in the C programming language'sprintf() and scanf() functions. There are various "formatspecifiers" that dictate how a particular argument will be formatted. This includes information about whether a valuewill be displayed as a decimal number, a string, a hexadecimalvalue -- and how wide the field will be, whether it will beleft or right justified -- etc. The \c syntax is also usedin C for inserting "non-printing" characters -- like newlines,tabs, and for specifying ASCII characters by octal or hexadecimalvalue.

Since programmers are used to this syntax in their code they often use a similar syntax when they write scripting languages(shells) and when they design the configuration file syntaxfor their applications.

I'm sorry there's no "single source" or reference of all of these. However there isn't. You'll just have to hunt throughthe docs and man pages for easy of the apps and utilities thatyou're interested in.

Follow-up To NT and Linux Article

From: Cyrille Chepelov chepelov@rip.ens-cachan.fr

So far I've had the good sense to stay away from stripingunder NT and Linux. I've heard that the ccd code for FreeBSD is pretty stable, though.

Well, my linux partition is used <5% of the overall time, but sometime Ineed it to figure things -- once the "small" problem with disks ID wassolved, there are no cohabitation problems between NT and Linux.

This sounds like a typically ignorant design decision.It seems to say to the world:

"Standards are for weaklings -- we don't need to follow them -- even when we created them!"

Sure, even if they did it unilaterally, it was up to them to atleast loudly publicize what they did.

I disagree. "Unilateral" is completely anathema to "Industry Standards." It is totally arrogant to speakfor an industry.

(We won't cover the issue of government regulatory bodiesmaking determinations in a "unilateral" way -- since thosearen't "industry standards" they are "government regulations").

Publicizing that you are violating industry standardsdoesn't improve interoperability. What other reason is there to create and publish a "standard" (even an ad hoc one).

If they think there's a real need to put proprietary information in the very first sector of the disk (the spot reserved for the MBR -- then perhaps they should announce that these disks won't have PC partitions at all. It then becomes a "all NT or nothing" decision for each disk.

I don't think there is such a need -- and I think their approach displays either a gross lack of consideration, creativity and foresight -- OR -- a deliberate act of hostility to those unruly customers who would dare use any "other" operating systems on "their" NT boxes (or maybe a little of each -- some from the programmers and some of the QA teams).

Microsoft can cop out with a line like: "We don't intendthat NT Servers should be installed systems with other operating systems -- it is intended for dedicated systems."

It would irritate me. But I'm not one of their "important"customers anyway. Since most platforms outside of the PCmarket have an OS that's supplied by the vendor -- there isn'tan expectation that those system will allow multiple operatingsystems to co-exist on the system (much less on the same drive).

However, in the PC market there is that expectation -- and has been for over fifteen years. IBM and Microsoft createdthat expectation (to co-exist with CP/M-86 and the UCSD p-systemif my memory and reading of the history is correct).

Naturally the obvious place to put this sort of information would be in the logical boot record (what Unix/Linux refersto as a "Superblock"). This would only cost NT's code a few extra disk seeks at boot time -- seeks that it has to do anyway.

The reason (IMHO) why they put it in the MBR is that even an unpartitioneddisk gets its ID. The ID is here for the disk, not the partition -- so itmakes less sense to put it in the S-block (even if that sounds safer,cohabitation-wise. Those IDs are what they are -- disk IDs, not partition IDs.)

Classically an OS should ignore an unpartitioned disk.Why should the disk have an ID if it has no partition?If the purpose is to provide unique identification of filesystems so that the striping and mounting mechanismswon't fail as new drives are added to the system -- thenyou need a partition ID -- and you don't care about disk ID's at all. Additionally you want enough informationstored in that ID to minimize the chance of inadvertent duplication and collision (for cases when we move a drivefrom one system to another).

Finally your mounting/mapping utilities should be robustenough to allow you to mount any of these stripe segmentsand get what you can off of them.

This sounds robust. NOT!Just what I want -- double the failure points for every volume.

Regardless of the OS, whenever you stripe, you double the possibility ofnot being able to mount. Not mounting at all (or mounting read-only) whensomething goes wrong can not be a blamable decision ! (and in the case ofstriped sets, mounting r-o makes little sense, since all structures aredispatched on both disks)

I can certainly "blame" a company for any deficiencythat I perceive in their software. I select software to meet *my* requirements. Therefore I am the ultimate judgeof what is a "deficiency."

My requirements for striping say that the loss of onesegment or element in a striped set should not entailthe loss of the data on the remaining segments. If nocurrently available striping system meets that requirementI'll avoid the use of the technology.

This means that a striping system should distribute"superblocks" and inode and directory entries in such a way as to keep them localized to the same segmentas the data to which they apply (or duplicated on allsegments).

(I realize that duplicating directory information on all segments may be costly -- and I understandthat data files may cross multiple segments. Thoseare implementation details for the author(s) of thefile system).

Out of curiosity: How many different striping systemshave you used? The phrase "Regardless of the OS" seemsawfully broad.

I will plead complete inexperience with them. My take on the term is that it refers to any technique of making multiple drives appear as a single file system(or volume) that doesn't involve redundancy (RAID) orduplication (mirroring/duplexing).

Is there a standard that specifies more implementation details? (i.e. does my set of requirement some how NOT qualify as a "striping" system).

Well, now that Microsoft has "spoken" we're probably allstuck with this [expletive omitted] forever. Pleaseconsider mailing a copy of your message and your patches to the LILO and fdisk maintainers.

The problem is : where are they (I tried to send it once, a few month ago,to an address which was given me as W. Almesberger's, but to no avail).

In my fdisk man page I see the following (under Authors):

A.V. Le Blanc.v1.0r: SCSI and extfs support added by Rik Faith.v1.1r: Bug fixes and enhancements by Rik Faith,with special thanks to Michael Bischoff.v1.3: Latest enhancements and bug fixes by A. V. Le Blanc,including the addition of the -s option. v2.0: Diskslarger than 2GB are now fully supported, thanks to RemyCard's llseek support.

So it would seem that Rik Faith, Mr. Le Blanc, MichaelBischoff would be good choices.

The address I see for Werner Almesberger is:almesber@bernina.ethz.ch(from the lilo (8) man page).

If that gets no response than I'd post notes to comp.os.linux.development to see who is maintainingthe code.

--Jim

ActiveX for Linux/Unix

From: Anders Karlsson andersk@lysator.liu.se

Hi, I read an article in the Linux Gazette where the author hadn't foundany evidence for the rumors about ActiveX for Unix. By mistake I founda press release from M$ about this.

I believe what I said was that I had heard the same rumor-- but that the search engine at www.microsoft.com couldn'tfind any reference to Linux at all.

I don't know who (if any) is interested in this, but you can find it on:http://www.microsoft.com/corpinfo/press/1997/mar97/unixpr.htm

Yes. I see. This basically says that the job was farmed out to Software AG (http://www.sagus.com)which has a release schedule at:

DCOM Availability Schedulehttp://www.sagus.com/Prod-i~1/Net-comp/dcom/dcom-avail.htm

Let's hope that this isn't the beginning of a new M$-invasion, against a new platform or market, our Linux.

Luckily there's not much MS can do about Linux. They can't"buy it out." -- They can pull various stupid stunts (like tossing new values into partition tables, trashingext2 filesystems, even exerting pressure on hardware manufacturers to develop and maintain proprietary adaptersthat require Microsoft written drivers). These will just make them less interoperable. IBM tried stunts like thisin the early days of the PC cloning.

However I think the cat is out of the bag. All we as a community have to do is clearly continue our own work.When you buy a new computer -- as for Linux pre-installed(even if you plan on re-installing it yourself). If you don't plan to use Windows '95 or NT on it -- demand thatit not be included in the price of your system and --failing that -- VOTE WITH YOUR FEET!

Recently I saw an ad on CNN for Gateway. The ad went onabout all the options that were available and encouraged meto call for a custom configured system. Since I'm actuallylooking at getting a small system for my mother (no joke!)I called and asked if they could pre-install Linux.

Now I will hand it to the sales dude -- he didn't laugh andhe didn't stutter. He either knew what I was talking about or covered up for it.

Naturally the answer was: "No. We can't do that."

There are places that can. Two that come to mind are:

• VA Research
• PromoX

(Warning for Lynx users -- both of these sites use frames and neither bothers to put real content in the "noframes" section -- Yech!)

There are several others -- just pick up any copy of Linux Journal to find them.

Granted this is a small niche now. However, it's so muchmore than any of us back in alt.os.linux (before thecomp.os.linux.* hierarchy was established) thought was possible just four years ago.

Even two years ago the thought of buying a system and putting Linux on it -- to send to my MOTHER (literally,NO computer experience) would have been totally absurd.Now it's just a little bit of a challenge.

What's exciting to me is the prospect that Linux may make it mostly irrelevant what hardware platform youchoose. Linux for the Alpha, for SPARC, and mkLinux forPowerMacs gives us back choices -- at prices we candream of.

It's easy to forget about the hardware half of the "Wintel" cartel. However, the hardware platformhas had severe design flaws from the beginning. Hopefully we'll see some real innovation in thesenew hardware platforms. [The introduction of theIBM PC back in '81 caused the "great CP/M shakeout."It also caused me to take a 5 year hiatus from thewhole industry -- out of disgust with the poor designof the platform. Even as a high school student I saw these flaws]

--Jim

Mounting Disks Under RedHat 4.0

From: Bruce W. Bigby bbigby@frontiernet.net

Jim Dennis wrote:

The really important question here is why you aren't askingthe support team at RedHat (or at least posting to their"bugs@" address). This 'control-panel' is certainlyspecific to Red Hat's package.

Well, I've tried communicating with RedHat and had problems. Iregistered and everything and tried to get support via e-mail. Something went wrong, although I followed their instructions, forreporting problems, exactly. At the time, I was at work when I readyour web page and decided to give you a try. Thanks for all of theinformation!

I hope it helped. I too have been unsatisfied with Red Hat's level of support. Not that I expect alot of complex personal attention for a package that only costs$50 -- but I was calling representing the US Postal Service'sData Processing Center -- and I was willing to put up about$50/hr for the support call(s).

Alas they just didn't have the infrastructure in place.

Yggdrasil has a 900 line for support -- and Adam Richter hasbeen doing Commercial Linux longer than just about anyone else (SLS might have been there earlier -- but I haven'theard anything about Soft Landing Systems in years).

Yggdrasil also publishes _The_Linux_Bible_ and has a video cassette tutorial on Linux. Unfortunately I haven'tinstalled a copy of their distribution, Plug and Play Linux, for a couple of years. Slackware and later Red Hat seem tohave won the popularity contest in recent years -- and

Unfortunately I've never used Yggdrasil's tech support services. So I can't give a personal recommendation.They do have two pricing plans ($2.95/min. US or $100 (US) for one "guaranteed" issue resolved) and they do mention thatthe support is available to Linux users regardless of whatdistribution you're using.

Usually I've managed to bang my head on problems hard enough and long enough that they crack before I do. So Ihaven't needed to call yet. One would hope that -- withmy "reputation" as "The Answer Guy" -- I'd be able to stumpthem. However Adam Richter has been at this a lot longer thanI have -- and was selling Linux distributions before I'd evenheard of Linux -- when I was barely starting to play with aused copy of Coherent. So, maybe the next time I have a headache I'll give them a call. I think I'm still entitledto one freebie for that subscription to Plug & Play from a couple of years ago.

Meanwhile, if anyone else has used this service -- or has been using any other dial-in voice support service for Linux -- please let me know. I'll try to collate the opinions and post them in an upcoming issue of LG.

For details look at: http://www.yggdrasil.com/Support/tspolicy.html

[Note: I don't have any affiliation with Yggdrasil or anyother Linux vendor -- though several of them are locatedwithin a few miles of my home and I do bump into principalsfor a couple of them at local users groups and "geek" parties]

Another company that offers Linux (and general Unix) supportand consulting is CraftworksI've worked with a couple of their consultants before (whenI was a full time sys admin and they were providing some on site expertise to handle some overflow). They don't mentiontheir prices up front (which forces me to suspect that they areat least as expensive as I am). I'm also not sure if they areavailable for short term (1 and 2 hour) "quickshots."

I suppose I should also mention that I'm the proprietor of Starshine Technical Services. My niche is providing support and training for Linux and Unix system's administrators.I also offer off site support contracts (voice, and dial-upor via the Internet using ssh or STEL). Normally I don't "push" my services in my contributions to Linux Gazette -- I just do this to keep me on my toes.

--Jim

PPP Problems

From: Chris Bradford reynard@gte.net

I have tried and failed to get a fully working ppp link up withGTE Internet Services. When I start pppd manually after dialing inusing MiniCom, it'll start the link, and ifconfig shows that it's upand running.However, when I try to ping any site other than the peer, I get a'Network Unreachable' error on every single packet that ping tries to sendout. I'm using Slackware 3.2 w/ pppd v2.2f on a 486SX w/ 8MBof RAM and a 14.4K bps modem on /dev/cua3.

What's your advice to me?

What does your routing table look like?(Use the command netstat -nr to see that).

Your ppp options file (usually /etc/ppp/options) should havea default route directive in it. That will set theppp0 link as your default route.

That's usually what "network unreachable" means.

You'll also need to have a proper value in your /etc/resolv.conf.This is the file that your "resolver libraries" use to figure out what DNS server they should ask to translate host/domain names into IP addresses. Basically all applicationsthat do any networking under Unix are linked with the resolverlibraries.

--Jim

Z Protocol

From: Gregor Gerstmann gerstman@tfh-berlin.de

Hi Mr. Jim Dennis,
Thanks for your e-mail remarks in reply to my remarks regarding filetransfer with the z protocol in Linux Gazette issue17, April 1997. Inthe meantime I received an e-mail that may be interesting to you too:

Hello!

I noticed your article in the Linux Gazette about the sz command, and reallydon't think you need to split up your downloads into smaller chunks.

The sz command uses the ZMODEM protocol, which is built to handle transmission errors. If sz reports a CRC error or a bad packet, it does not mean that the file produced by the download will be tainted. sz automatically retransmits bad packets.

If you have an old serial UART chip ( 8250 ), then you might be gettingintermittent serial errors. If the link is unreliable, then sz may spend most of its time tied up in retransmission loops.

In this case, you should use a ZMODEM window to force the sending end to expect an `OK' acknowledgement every few packets.

sz -w1024Will specify a window of 1024 bytes.

I'm familiar with some of the tweaking that can bedone -- and the fact that it is a "sliding window" protocol.However I still maintain that Kermit is more reliable and gets better overall throughput over an unreliable connection.

Also ZModem is designed for use on 8-bit serial lines. Kermitcan be used easily over TCP connections and on 7-bit serialconnections. You could definitely use the C-Kermit package fromColumbia University however. The Kermit implementations from other sources are usually reliable enough -- but slower than molasses compared to the "real" thing.

Video Cards

From: Pedro Miguel Reis reis@aaubi.ubi.pt

Hi Jim. I have a simple question to you :) ! How can i put my video card to work under Linux ? Its an Intel Pro-share. I would like tosave a jpg pic every 1 or two secs.

Thx for your time.

The Intel ProShare is a video conferencing system. Theseare normally not called "video cards" in the context of PC's because the phrase "video cards" is taken to refer to one of the cards that drives your video display for normalapplications and OS operations (i.e. a VGA card).

There are several framegrabbers that are supported under Linux. However it doesn't appear that the Intel ProShareis supported under any for of Unix. Of course that's justbased on a few searches of their web site -- so it's not froma very reliable source on the subject. (I swear, the biggerthe company the worse the support information on their website. You'd think they'd like to trim some of the costs of tech support that their always griping about).

Naturally you should contact their support department toverify this (or be pleasantly surprised by its refutation).

Here's a couple of links I found that are related to video capture using CU-SeeMe (a competing technologyto Intel's ProShare):

• How to do CU-SeeMe under Linux
• QSeeMe 0.7a --CU-SeeMe for Linux

Basically CU-SeeMe uses "off the shelf" video cams --like the Connectix QCam (which goes for about $100 in most places). It also uses any of several sound boards.

Unfortunately the simple answer to your question may bd desktop camera.

--Jim

Linux and Zip Drives

From: midian@home.ifx.net

Can you tell me if it is possible to set up a Linux system on a Zipdisk and where I could find info on doing this? I found a file that

It should be possible. I don't know where you'd find the info, though. I'd start by looking at the Linux HOWTO's collection. There is a HOWTO on ZipDrives with Linux (even the parallel port versionis supported).

I'd look at putting DOSLinux on an MS-DOS formatted(FAT) Zip disk. DOSLinux is a very small distribution(about 20Mb installed) which is designed to be installedon a DOS filesystem. It uses LOADLIN.EXE (which I've described in other "Answer Guy" articles) which basicallyloads a Linux kernel from a DOS prompt -- and kicks DOSout from under itself.

You can find that collection of HOWTO's at:http://sunsite.unc.edu/LDP/HOWTO/(and various mirrors).

You can also find a copy of DOSLinux at 'sunsite' andmost mirrors.

I use DOSLinux on my laptop (an OmniBook 600CT) and my only complaint has been that it wasn't configured to support the power management features of my laptop.

Frankly I'm not even sure if Linux' APM support willwork with the Omnibook at all. I've heard that the PCMCIA adapter is basically too weird for them (which is a real bummer to me).

You have to watch out if you get a copy of DOSLinux.The maintainer, Kent Robotti, has been making frequentsometimes daily changes to it (or was a couple of monthsago).

describes this process IF you have a pre-existing Linux system toinstall from. I am running a Win95 system with absolutely no hard drivespace available. Thanks for any info.

Are you sure you can't even squeeze twenty or thirty meg? With that you can get DOSLinux installed on yournormal hard drive -- which is likely to offer much moresatisfactory performance. The ZIP drive is likely to bea bit too slow at loading programs, share libraries and DREADFUL if you do any swapping.

Of course if you boot Linux from a Zip disk (or using the "live filesystem" offered by some CD's)you can mount your DOS (Windows '95) partition(s)and create a swap file there.

Although most people use swap partitions -- Linux willallow you to create swap *files* (see the 'mkswap' and 'swapon(8)' man pages for details).

Note: since you don't have a copy already installedI realize that you don't have the man pages handy -- however you can read those man pages by looking at:http://www.linuxresources.com/man.html

The 'swapon(8)' refers to the man page that's in section 8 (system administration tools) of the system.That's necessary because there's also a man page in section 2 (system calls) which the man command will normallydisplay in precedence to the one you want. So you use acommand of the form 'man 8 swapon' to tell the manual systemwhich one you mean. This is unnecessary with most commands since most of the ones you'd be looking for --most of the time -- would be the "user commands" in section one. Also most of the administrative commands,like mkswap, don't have functions with a conflictingname. This is just one of those quirks of Unix thatold hands never think of while it gets novices climbingthe walls.

When you use the online man pages at ssc.com (the publisherof the Linux Journal and the Linux Gazette) the form isa little confusing. Just check the "radio button" for "( ) Search for a command" and put "8 swapon" (a digiteight, a space, and the word "swapon") in the text field(blank). Ignore the "Section Index" and the section selector list below that.

Lastly, I'd like to make a comment about running Linuxwith "absolutely no disk space"

DON'T!

With hard disks as cheap as they are now it doesn't makeany sense to try to learn an advanced operating system like Linux without plenty of disk space. Buy a whole hard disk and add it to your system. If you already havetwo IDE drives -- see if your controller will support four. Most EIDE controllers have two IDE channels -- which allowtwo IDE drives each on them. If you have a SCSI controllerthan it seems *very* unlikely that you'd have the whole chain full.

(My old 386 has an old Adaptec 1542C controller on it -- with three hard disks, a magneto optical, a DAT autochanger tape drive, a CD drive and a CD writer. That's full! But,while other people have been buying 486's, then DX2's, thenPentiums, and upgrading their copies of Windows and Office --I've been filling out my SCSI chain -- so that's a five yearaccumulation of toys!)

If you really can't afford $200 on a new hard drive -- ask around. You might find a friend with a couple of "small"(200 Mb) drives around that they can't use. I have a couplemyself (spare parts drawer).

If you try to run Linux with no disk space you probably won't be satisfied. You can install a base system (noX Windows, no emacs, no kernel sources, no dev. tools, no TeX) in a very limited disk space. That's fine if you know exactly what the system is going to be used for.It's perfect for routers, gateways, and terminal servers-- and I see people putting together a variety of custom"distributions" for these sorts of dedicated tasks. I'veeven heard that some X Terminals (diskless workstations)use Linux with etherboot patches. In ;login (the magazinefor members of USENIX/SAGE -- professional associations ofUnix users and Sys Admin's) someone described their use of Linux as a method for distributing software updates to their Win '95 boxes across their networks. Apparently theycould squeeze just enough onto a Linux boot floppy to do the trick.

However, I'm guessing that your intent is to learn a new OS. For that you want a more complete installation-- so you can play with things.

--Jim

Red Hat CD Problem

From: Vivek Mukherji vivekmu@del2.vsnl.net.in

I bought a book on linux titled "Using Linux,Third Edition by Que Inc." Ithad Redhat CDROM with it, but when i tried to install it, it did notrecognize the REDHAT CD though it previously made the boot disk and suppdisk from the CD. It gave the following error after asking me for source ofmedia i.e. from which drive or local CDROM or FTP or NFS I am going toinstall it.The error message was:"That CDROM device does not seem to contain Redhat CD in it "

There seems to be no damage on the CD i.e. no physical damage.I think theremust be some other way to install it after all i have paid US$ 60 Dollarsfor that book.please reply me soon.

yours truly
Vivek Mukherji

When you select "CD-ROM" as your installation medium --what interface are you having the setup program attemptto use?

When you use the CD to create your boot and supplementaldiskettes you are presumably using DOS -- which has itsown drivers to access the CD.

There are many sorts of CD-ROM drives:

• SCSI: the most widely interchangeable; almost any SCSI CD-ROM drive will work with most SCSI host adapters; I've never heard of a SCSI CD-ROM drive that failed to work with Linux *supported* SCSI host adapter but would work under any other OS)
• ATAPI:the IDE hard drives were originally called "AT" drives. They put all the drive "intelligence" onthe drive itself (rather than in the controllerwhich was the rule for ST-506 -- MFM and RLL drives). IDE is BIOS (firmware/register level)compatible with the ST-506 interface (although thecabling and electronics are completely different.So no software drivers were necessary to supportIDE hard drives. Since the AT (286) BIOS supportedthe ST-506 interface (WD8003 controller) the IDEcontrollers didn't even need a ROM extension (suchas the ones found on most SCSI controllers).

CD-ROM and tape drive support came a few years after the IDE interface became popular for hard drives. ATAPI is an ad hoc standard between those interfaces and these other types of drives. It is an "applications programming interface" to which thedrivers must be written. Typically all support forATAPI CD-ROM and tape drives must be done in software.

EIDE is a set of enhancements to the IDE spec.The most notable enhancement is the ability tosupport drives larger than 528Mb (which was theold BIOS limit of 1024 cylinders by 63 sectorsby 16 heads). This is usually done viaextended ROM's on the controller, or enhancedBIOS ROM's on the motherboard -- or possibly via software drivers (which are OS specific,naturally).

In addition to those to types of CD-ROM drive thereare a variety of proprietary interfaces such as theMitsumi (very popular for a while -- as it was thecheapest for a while), Sony, Wearnes/Aztech, and others.

Linux supports a very wide variety of these interfaces. However -- it's vital to know what you have. You also might need to know "where" it is. That is to say you might need to know I/O port addresses, IRQ's, DMA settings or parameters. You might also need to pass these parameters along to the kernel as it boots.

Another issue is the version of your distribution. Mostbooks are printed in large batches -- so they have a long "shelf life." Most Linux distributions change a coupleof times a year. Red Hat, in particular, seems to be puttingout a new version every 2 or 3 months. Most of these includesignificant improvements.

So your money is probably much better spent on the distributionitself rather than trying to get a "bargain" in a book and CD combination. Specifically I recommend buying any book solely on it's merits. I don't approve of CD's full of softwareincluded with a book unless the software has been stable forsome time.

CD's with sample code, HTML and searchable text copies of the books contents, clip art or fonts related to the book, even large bookmark files of related web sites, custom software by the authors -- those are all excellent ideas; otherwise it's shovelware that adds a buck to the production costs (fifty cents for the CD and another fifty cents for the little glue-on vinyl holder and the additional handling) -- and twenty bucks to the price.

So, another thing to try is a copy of the latest Red Hat (4.2)or Debian or whatever. In any event you really need to know the precise hardware and settings for your machine.

--Jim

Cookies

From: Michael Sokolow mxs46@po.cwru.edu

Dear Ladies and Gentlemen,
Given the previous discussion about cookies, could someone explain to me(or point out a topic in help, URL, etc.) just what ARE cookies?

Search the Netscape web site.

Here's an independent answer courtesy of "The Answer Guy" (LinuxGazette's nickname for me):

In programming terminology -- specifically in discussions of networking protocols (such as HTTP and X Windows) a "cookie" is an arbitrarydata token issued by a server to a client for purposes of maintaining state or providing identification.

Specifically "Netscape HTTP Cookies" are an extension to the HTTP protocol (implementedby Netscape and proposed to the IETF and the W3Consortium for incorporation into the related standards specifications).

HTTP is a "stateless" and protocol. When your browserinitiates a connection and requests a document, binaryor header the server has no way of distinguishing yourrequest from any other request from your host (it doesn'tknow if you're coming from a single-user workstation, ora multi-user Unix (or VMS, MVS, MPE, or whatever) host --or the IP address that it sees as the source for this request is some sort of proxy host or gateway (such as those run by CompuServe and AOL).

Netscape cookies are an attempt to add and maintain statebetween your browser and one or more servers. Basically on your initial connection to a "cookie generating" siteyour browser is asked for a relevant cookie -- since this is your initial connection there isn't one -- so the serverprefers one to your browser (which will accept it unlessit's not capable of them, or some option has been enabledto prevent it or prompt you or something like that). Fromthen on all other parts of that site (and possibly other hosts in that domain) can request your cookie and the site'sadministrators can sort of track your access and progressthrough the site.

The main advantage to the site is for gathering marketingstatistics. They can track which versions of a web pagelead to increased traffic to linked pages and they can get some idea how many new and repeat visits they're getting.(Like most marketing efforts at statistics there are majorflaws with the model -- but the results are valid enoughfor marketdroids).

There are several disadvantages -- including significantprivacy concerns. There are several tools availableto limit the retention and use of cookies by your browser(even if you're using Netscape Navigator). PGP Inc(the cryptography company) has a link on their site to one called "cookie cutter" (or something like that).

About the only advantage to some users is that somesites *might* use cookies to help you skip parts of thesite that you've already seen or *might* allow you to avoid filling in forms that you've already filled out.

Personally I think cookies are a poorly chosen way to do this -- client-side certificates (a feature of SSL v. 3.x) is a much cleaner method (it allows the userto get an maintain cryptographically strong "certificates"which can be presented to specific servers on demand --this exchange of certificates involves cryptographicauthentication in both directions -- so your browser knows it isn't authenticating to some bogus imposterof a server -- and the server knows that your certificateisn't forged.

SSL client certificates allow you to establish accountsat a web site and securely interact with that site. Cookies can't do that. In addition many people have avague notion that "cookies" where "snuck in" under them-- so they have a well-deserved "bad press."

--Jim

New Hard Disc

From: A Stephen Morse morse@sysc.eng.yale.edu

Dear Mr Dennis:
I currently own an IBM 560 with a one gig hard disc whichhas both a win95 partition and a 200m Linux partition running version 2.0. We plan to upgrade today to a 2gig

Is this one of their "ThinkPad" laptops?

hard disk which accepts its data from the old disc through the PCMICA ports using a special piece of hardware. I believe the drive is called Extreme Drive. We also have available versions 4.1 and 4.2of Linux on floppies (by the way 2.0 = 4.0 above). So far we've not beenable to get any advice on how to proceed.

"...using a special piece of hardware."

I love that term "special." Sometimes you have to say it with the right inflection SPEC-I-AL!to really appreciate it.

Any suggestions. We are not super strong with Linux etc.

I think the question is:

How do I backup my current drive and restore itto the new drive?

(with the implication that you'd like to use this "special"device and just "copy" everything across).

There are several ways of backing up and restoring a Linux system. If you have an Ethernet connection to a system with lots of disk space -- or to a system with a tape driveyou can do interesting things of the form:

dump -0f - | rsh $othersystem "dd of=$path_or_device ..."

If you can borrow or purchase a PCMCIA SCSI controller that Linux supports on this system you can hook up an externalhard drive or tape unit and use that.

Those are the most straightforward methods for getting*everything* across.

Another approach is to identify just your data (maybe youkeep it all under your /home/ and /usr/local/ directorytrees -- or maybe you *should*). Now you get your new disk, install it, get some upgrade of your favorite Linux distribution (I hear the new Debian 1.3 is pretty good),install and configure that and -- finally -- just restore theselected portions of your data that you want.

If you're concerned about the potential loss of data or down time from any of these methods you might also considerrenting a system (desktop or laptop) for a week to use whileyou're straightening things out on your main system. This is advice to consider any time you're doing a major hardware upgrade to an "important" system.

Interesting question!

Do any of the computer rental services offerLinux systems?

(PCR, Bit-by-Bit -- who else is in that business?)

--Jim

Random Crashes

From: sloth lsoth7@hotmail.com

hi. whenever i try to install linux (so far i have tried redhat, Slackware and Debian) the install program crashes at random times. I have tried removing all unnecessary hardware, ie sound cards etc, but it doesn't seem to make a difference. I have a Intel p150mhz, triton VX main board, s3virge graphics card, 16mb ram and a 2.0gb quantum harddisk. Any help would be MUCH appreciated!cheers, sloth...

Have you had your memory thoroughly tested?

I would take out your memory (presumably they're SIMM's) and bring them into to a good repair shop for testing. I DON'T recommend software diagnosticsfor this (like AMIDIAGS, Norton's NDIAGS, "System Sleuth"etc).

Do you run any other 32-bit software on this system?(Win '95 and Windows 3.x don't count)

Can you install and run NT, Netware, or FreeBSD?

I've seen motherboards that just wouldn't handle anytrue 32-bit OS for sustained use (presumably buggy chipsets)-- that's why Novell and Microsoft have these "compatibility"lists of motherboards.

Have you tried taking out the fancy video card and putting in a simple VGA (no frills -- Paradise chipset)?

Most of the Linux install scripts and programs (differentfor each distribution) just use text mode. Therefore it'svery unlikely that the video card *type* is a problem. However if your particular card has a defect it could be something that only affects your system under Linux or someother OS'. It's a long shot, and some EE (electronics engineer)might tell me it's impossible -- but I'd try it anyway.

(I keep a couple of spare old VGA cards and even an oldHercules -- monochrome graphics -- card around for just these sorts of testing).

What sort of hard disk controller are you using? (IDE?SCSI?)

Some IDE controllers have buggy chipsets (some of them areeven supported by compile time options in the Linux kernel).However, IDE controllers are cheap -- so keeping an extraaround for testing is a very small investment.

SCSI host adapters are somewhat touchier and more expensive.Some of them are nominally supported by Linux (and other OS') but aren't worth keeping in your system. For example theAdaptec 1542B was a piece of junk. At the same time I useAdaptec 1542C and 1542CF and the various 2940's without hesitation.

RAM is the most likely culprit. The motherboard chipsetis another possibility. A defective video card or a buggyHD controller are next in line.

It's possible that you're system has some sort of bizarre"top memory" which requires an address range exclusion orthat you need to "reserve" some I/O ports so Linux won'tuse them or probe into them for hardware. You could spenda career trying different "stripped down" kernels on bootfloppies and learning all the idiosyncrasies of your hardware.However -- it's probably more profitable in the long runto replace any hardware that's causing trouble.

The advantage of PC hardware is that it's cheap and widely available. It's curse is that it's often *cheap* and the specs are *widely* interpreted. Now that Linux is becomingavailable on some other hardware platforms -- and especially now that we're seeing "clones" of SPARC, Alpha, and PowerPC systems for rates that some of us can afford -- we might see some advantages from stepping away from the hardware half of the WIntel cartel.

--Jim

gcc and Slackware Question

From: Steven Smith ischis@evergreen.com

GNU's gcc is part of the slackware package that I have loaded on my system. I can and have compiled and linked C code.

I can compile the standard C++ code below (if I haven't miss enteredthe code but for some reason the C++ libraries will not link correctly(ie. i get and error):

 #includ <iostream.h>

I think you mean

#include ...

 main(){cout << "hello world\n"; }Poor form. Unix programs should be int main ( int argc, char * argv[] )... or at least:void main () ...----------------gcc -c program_name.C <- no errorsgcc program_name.C <- errors

Do you know what might be missing?

Your error messages.

Here's a way to capture sessions when you're trying to write messages to the Linux User's Support Team ,to me or to the Linux Programmer's Mailing List ,or any of the appropriate newsgroups:

Get to a shell prompt.Issue the command: script ~/problem.logRun your test (demonstration of the problem).Back at the shell prompt, type Ctrl-D or issue theexit command.Edit the ~/problem.log file (take all the weird escape sequences out).

An easier way is to use emacs' "shell-mode" -- just startemacs and use the M-x shell-mode command. This creates a shell buffer (a sub task in emacs) which allows you to runtty style programs (no full screen "curses" stuff). The output from these shell commands will appear in this bufferand you can use normal emacs cursor, scrolling, cut, and pasteoperations to work with that output. For example I pasted yourprogram into a new buffer, saved it, "fixed" a couple of minorthings, switched to my shell mode buffer (I usually keep onehandy) and ran the following sequence:

[jimd@antares lgaz]$ lshello.C[jimd@antares lgaz]$ cat hello.C #include <iostream.h>int main( int argc, char * argv[] ) {cout << "hello world\n"; return(0);}[jimd@antares lgaz]$ make hellog++ hello.C -o hello[jimd@antares lgaz]$ ./hellohello world[jimd@antares lgaz]$ 

Note that I use the make command here. A nice featureof 'make' (at least the GNU make) is that it can makesome guess about what you mean even if you don't supply itwith a Makefile. So my command make hello forces make tolook for a .c, .C or .cpp file to compile and link. If itsees a .o file it will try to link it with cc -- butfor a C++ file you need to link it with g++.

A nice side effect of using make this way is that I don'thave to specify the -o (output name) and I don't end up with a file named a.out. It "makes" a program named hello.

So the source of your problem is probably that you are compiling your program with gcc in a way that confusesit -- and tries to link it as a C program rather than a C++ program. If you call gcc under the link 'g++' (just another name for it) you'll see the whole think work.The compiler pays attention to how you called it (the valueof its argv[0]) and makes assumptions based on that.

Of course I can't verify that the errors I got were the sameas the ones that you see -- since you didn't capture them intoyour message. In any event using make hello works -- using g++ hello.C works -- using gcc hello.C doesn't link properly and complains about unreferenced stuff and using gcc or g++ with the -c gives me an object file(hello.o) which is, for our purposes, useless.

A better venue to ask questions about compiling under Linuxmight be the Linux programmers list (as I mentioned earlier)or in any of several comp.lang.c and comp.lang.c++ newsgroups(since there is nothing Linux specific about this).

If you consider it a bug that gcc recognizes the capitalC for C++ when generating .o files and doesn't automagicallylink with the appropriate libraries in the next pass --take it up with the participants of the gnu.gcc.* or thegnu.g++.* newsgroups. (There's probably a very good reasonfor this behaviour -- though I confess that I don't see it).

--Jim

LILO

To: Toby Riley toby@handc.btinternet

James,
I have been reading your page with great interest but I can't find anything about removing LILO and restoring My MBR. Unfortunately I have to de-install Linux for a while. I have tried running lilo -u and lilo -U and when the PC reboots I just get LI and the system hangs.

Personally I've never heard of a -u switch to lilo.

Normally you have to replace your lilo MBR with some othervalid MBR. Most people who are disabling Linux on a systemare restoring access to an existing set of DOS partitions --so using the DOS MBR is in order.

To do that -- boot from a DOS floppy -- and run FDISK /MBRThis should exit silently (no error and no report of success). The /MBR switch was added, undocumented, to version5.0 of MS-DOS. It won't work with previous versions.

I can boot Linux off a floppy and the re-run LILO which adds my boot options and restore my system to a usable state. But I can't get rid of it and restore the Win95 boot up.

Under the hood Win '95 is MS-DOS 7.0 -- just run FDISK /MBR.

We eagerly await your return to the land of Linux.

--Jim

Printing Problems

From: RHS Linux User 6ng1@qlink.queensu.ca

hello answer guy!
Problem: Printing text / postscript documents.

Printing graphics (using xv) works fine, after having my printcap fileset up for me, using apsfilter. I own a kyocera f-3010 and this printercan emulate an HP LaserJet Ser II. However, printing documents is acompletely different story. Trying to print from, say, Netscape or LyXgets a printout of two or three "step ladder" lines, the output usuallybeing something like "/invalid font in findfont . cannot find font Roman... etc". Looks like it is not finding the appropriate ghostscriptfonts. Is there any way to ensure that ghostscript can recognize myfonts (using xfontsel shows all my installed fonts)? Would you know howto rectify this problem?

Like X Windows, printing is a great mystery to me.I managed to get mine working -- including TeX with dvips (on my DeskJet 500C) -- but I still don't know quite how.

xv works and Netscape and LyX don't. Can you print a.dvi file using dvips? Can you print a Postscript fileusing lpr? How about mpage? Does that work?

The stairstep effect is common when raw Unix text is goingto a printer that's expecting MS-DOS CRLF's (carriage return,linefeed pairs). That makes it sound as though the otherapplications are bypassing the filter in your /etc/printcap file (or that xv is somehow invoking the write filter beforepassing the directly to the printer).

Thanks a million for your help, this is something that has beenbothering me for a while now.

Yeah. I let printing bother me for about a year before I finally forced it to print something other than raw(MS-DOS style) text.

You have gone through the Printing-HOWTO's haven'tyou?

--Jim

Linux Disk Support

From: Andrew Ng lulu@asiaonline.net

Dear Sir,
I have a question to ask:Does Linux support disks with density2048bytes/sector?

Linux currently doesn't support normal disk with largeblock sizes. (CD-ROM's have large block sizes -- but thisis a special case in the code).

It is likely that support for larger block sizes will eventuallybe added to the kernel -- but I don't think it will be in before 2.2 (not that I actually have an inside track on if orwhen anything is going to happen in kernel development land-- that's just my guess).

I have bought a Fujitsu MO drive which support up to 640MB MO disks withdensity 2048bytes/sector. The Slackware Linux system does not supportaccess to disks with this density. Windows 95 and NT support this densityand work very well. Is there any version of Linux which support2048bytes/sector? If not, is there any project working on that?

Someone from Fujitsu's support team called me back on this(as I'd copied an earlier message to their webmaster).

The report was that the smaller 540Mb MO media are supportedwith no problem -- but that the high density media with thelarge block sizes weren't supported. If I recall correctlyhe said that this doesn't work for any of the other versionsof Unix that Fujitsu knows of (with their drive).

--Jim

Renaming Problems

From: Sean McCleary sean@cdsnet.net

Anyhow, here's my problem:
I recently renamed my system in my /etc/HOSTNAME file. Ever since Imade that change, my system's telnet daemon has stopped allowing incomingconnects from ANYWHERE. I was told this has to do with my recentsystem-renaming, but the man who I was talking to about it never told meWHY or how to fix it.

I've checked my /etc/hosts.allow and /etc/hosts.deny.

These two files control the behavior of tcpd (the TCP Wrappers program by Wietse Venema).

You might also want to look at your /etc/hosts file.This file is used by most system resolver librariesin preference to DNS.

The resolver libraries are the code that allows clientprograms on your system to translate domain/host namesinto IP addresses. There are several schemes for doingthis -- which can be set in different priorities for eachhost.

The oldest method for performing this resolution was a simple lookup in the local /etc/hosts file (there was also an /etc/networks file back then -- you don't see themvery often now). This is still common for small networks(less than about 25 systems).

The most widely used method is DNS (also know as BIND -- Berkeley Internet Naming Daemon -- a.k.a. 'named'). Actually DNS is the protocol and BIND is the commonly available serversoftware.

Another fairly widespread naming service is NIS and itscausing NIS+. These were both created by Sun Microsystems and published as open specifications. This system was originally known as "Yellow Pages" -- and many of the commandsfor managing the service still have the prefix "yp" (i.e.'ypcat'). However a company (British Telecom if I recall correctly) objected to the trademark infringement and Sun wasforced to change the designation.

NIS and NIS+ are designed to distribute more than host andnetwork name resolutions -- they are primarily used to manage accounts across whole domains (networks) of hosts.This is especially important among systems that are using NFS since that usually requires that you maintain synchronizedUID across the enterprise. (The normal NFS behavior is to grant file access based on the effective UID of the user on theclient system -- this can be overwritten in a cumbersome fashion-- but most sites simply synchronize the UID's -- usually viaNIS or by using rdist and distributing whole /etc/passwdfiles).

Under Linux there is a file named /etc/host.conf (note: SINGULAR "host"). This sets the priorities of the resolver libraries --which is typically something like:

order files bind nisplus nismulti on

Why is this happening, Answer Man?

I don't know. Did you look at a tail /var/log/messagesfor clues? Are you sure that this is a problem withyour host's name? Did you change to shadow passwordsaround the same time?

One way to get more clues about any failure you get fromany service in the inetd.conf file is to replace theservice's entry temporarily with a command like:

## telnetstream tcp nowait root /usr/sbin/tcpdin.telnetdtelnetstream tcp nowait root /usr/sbin/tcpd /usr/sbin/strace \-o /root/tmp/telnet.strace /usr/sbin/in.telnetd 

I'll grant that you need to know something about programmingto make any use of this file. However you probably don'tneed to know as much as you'd think. That start to make alittle sense after you run a few dozen of them -- particularlyif you have a "working" and a "broken" configuration to runyour tests with.

--Jim

X Locks Monitor

From: Jon Jacob xaviermoon@earthlink.net

I am trying to configure X. I have a Config file set to the SVGA genericusing the XF86Config.eg file that comes with the Slackware96 distribution.

I have a Sony Multiscan15sf with a ATI mach64 PCI video care with 1 meg ofVRAM. When I run startx, the monitor locks so that it turns to black but itstill is getting a signal from the PC because the PowerSaving light staysgreen.

I tried fiddling with the Config file with no change. I ran the startx toredirect to an out file to see the error message, but I just get the samefile I got when I ran x -probeonly.

I could not find a drive for an ATI Mach64 PCI card that matches mine. DoI need one? If so, where would I get it? Can I use some generic driver?

Also, Ramdoc was shown by the probe to be "unknown" so I left it commentedout in the Config file. Could this be the problem?

I am very frustrate after hours and hours of attempts. Please help!

I keep trying to tell people: I barely use X. X Windowsconfiguration is still a mysterious "black art" to me thatrequires that I have the system in front of me to do my hand waving in person.

I think you should search the X Windows HOWTO file for thestrings "ATI" an "Mach." I'm pretty sure you need a specialserver for the Mach 64's and I wouldn't be at all surprised if it was one of those deviants that doesn't work with a generic SVGA driver.

The first time I ever got X running I resorted to IRC(Internet Relay Chat) -- where I joined the #Linux channeland hung out for awhile. After watching the usual banterfor about 20 minutes and adding a few (hopefully intelligent)comments to the discussions at hand I timidly asked for some help. Some kind soul (I don't remember the nickname)asked for some info -- show me how to do a /dcc (directioncommunications connection?) to send the file to him -- editedmy XConfig file and sent it back.

One of the beauties of Linux is that I was able to testa couple of revisions of this file while maintaining my connection. Naturally, I glanced over the file before usingit. If you decide to take this approach I recommend thatyou avoid any binaries or source code that you don't understandthat someone offers to xfer to you. You will be running this as 'root' on your system.

A config file with which you are moderately familiar is a bit safer -- though you could always end up with someweird trojan in that, too.

This is not to suggest that IRC has a higher percentage ofcrackers and "black hats" than anywhere else on the net -- just trying to emphasize that you have no way of identifyingwho you were working with -- and all it takes is one.

Another approach you might try is to call ATI and let them know what you want. As more of us use Linux anddemand support for it the various hardware companies willhave their choices -- meet market demands or lose marketshare.

If you decide to take this to the news groups be sure togo for comp.os.linux.x -- rather than one of the more general newsgroups. It is a little frustrating that somany X questions end up in the various other Linux newsgroups -- X Windows for Linux is no different than X Windowsfor any other x86 Unix. However I've never seen an XFree86newsgroup so...

--Jim

Using JDK 1.1 for Solarix x86 on Linux

From: Romeo Chua rchau@st.nepean.uws.edu.au

Hi! I would like to know if I can use the JDK 1.1.2 for Solaris x86 onLinux. Does the iBCS2 module support Solaris x86 applications?

Last I heard a native JDK was already available for Linux(although that might be 1.1.1).

I have no idea whether SunSoft has maintained any compliance to iBCS in the Java stuff for Solaris.

--Jim

Colormap Question

From: Kevin T. Nemec knemec@mines.edu

Dear Answer Guy,
I was wondering if it is possible to force a program to use its owncolormap externally. That is, can you force a program without a built inoption to use its own colormap to do so in some other way. I don't mindthe "flashing" in some applications as long as I can see all the colors.

Kevin Nemec

I've heard that xnest can be used to run one X session inside of another. I don't know if this would help. I've usedXFree86's support for multiple virtual consoles to run twoX Windows sessions concurrently (using {Ctrl}+{Alt}+{Fx} to switch between them, of course). These can be run with differentsettings (such as 8bpp on one session and 16pbb on the other.

Other than that I have no idea. I keep trying to tell peopleI'm a *Linux* guy -- NOT an XFree86 guy. I run X Windows to do the occasional XPaint or XFig drawing, to run Netscape onsites that are just too ugly to tolerate in Lynx, and (recently)to play with xdvi and ghostview (to preview my TeX and PostScriptpages).

So, anyone out there that would like an XFree86 AnswersColumn in Linux Gazette (or anywhere else preferably under LDP GPL) has my utmost support. (Although our esteemed editor,Marjorie Richardson will certainly make the decisions).

--Jim

More on LILO

From: Paul L Daniels jdaniels@stocks.co.za

With respect to a question that was in "The Answers Guy" re LILO onlypresenting "LI" on the screen then _hanging_.

I found that problem too... the problem (at least for me) was that I wasincluding a DOS partition in the LILO.conf file. After removing thepartition manually, running liloconfig and reinstalling from currentlilo image, everything worked.

If you were including a DOS partition in your lilo.conffile with some syntactic errors (making it look like a Linux partition perhaps) or if your previous edit of the file had not be followed by run /sbin/lilo (the "compiler"for the /etc/lilo.conf file) -- I would expect you to have problems.

However it is quite common to include one or severalDOS partitions in a lilo.conf file. That is the majorpurpose of the LILO package -- to provide multiple bootcapabilities.

If this is all babble and drivel, then ignore it, I wasn't sure who topost to.

I suspect that there was something else involved in the"stanza" (clause, group of lines) that you removed fromyour conf file. Since you've solved the problem it sounds like little would be gained from attempts to recreate it -- or to guess at what that had been.

--Jim

95 GUI

From: Sean sdonovan@hq.si.net

Sorry if I am one of hundreds w/ this kinda question./....but try toanswer if you have time..

So I had linux loaded up and working fine was even able to make mydos/95 partition work ok too. So then I actually loaded the 95 gui {ithad just been a sys c: to get a bootable dos/95 since I didn't have the95 files for the gui at the time}

So now all I can get is 95...I tried the primitive fdisk thing thatspart of the do you want to install linux again deal w/ the two disksalso tried making different partitions active w/ fdisk as well...but noworkie workie. I can boot w/ the two disks that are part of the linuxinstall use the rescue option and then mount the hd linux partition to adirectory of my choice and if I try to run lilo from their {since itsnot in /sbin/lilo on the floppies} it moans about lilo.conf not aroundand /boot/boot.b not present and such sooo I try to recreate thatstructure on the root {ramdisk:?} or floppy or whatever I am runningeverything from...run out of diskspace trying to copy hda files from nowmounted hd to /dev of ram/floppy. So I'm stuck...Any ideas? I have readall relevant faq's/scanned every apparently related how-to's etc... tono avail...maybe its like you said on your page; maybe I'm not reallyrunning a "boot" floppy... help if ya can,My lilo.conf was reliably letting me into command line dos/95 andlinux/xwindows etc.. system is an IBM thinkpad 760el if that's relevant.

The short story is that you don't know how to run /sbin/lilo.conf from a boot floppy (rescue situation).

There are two methods. One is to use the chroot command:

Basically after you boot you mount your root file system (and your usr if you have that separate) -- something likeso:

mount /dev/sda5 /mnt/mount /dev/sdb1 /mnt/usr

(Here I'm using the example of an extended partition on the first SCSI drive for my normal root partition and thefirst partition on my second SCSI drive as my usual usr partition -- change those as necessary).

You can (naturally) create a different directory other than/mnt/ or under /mnt and mount your filesystem under that.

Now you cd to that:

cd /mnt/

chroot /mnt/ /mnt/bin/bash

Here we're running the copy of bash that's under our chroot environment. Thus this session, and all processesstarted by it now see /mnt as /.

This was the original use of the chroot call -- to allowone to work with a subset of your filesystem *as though* it were the whole thing (handy for developers and doingcertain types of testing and debugging -- without riskingchanges to the whole system).

Now should be able to vi /etc/lilo.conf and run /sbin/liloto "compile" that into a proper boot block and set of mappings.(note the "/etc/" and "/sbin/" will be really /mnt/etc and /mnt/sbin -- to the system and to any other processes -- butthey will *look like* /etc/ and /sbin/ to you).

The other approach is to create a proper (though temporary)lilo.conf (any path to it is fine) and edit in the paths thatapply to your boot context. Then you run /sbin/lilo with the-C file to point it at a non-default lilo.conf (which can be named anything you like at that point.

The trick here is to edit the paths in properly. Here's the lilo.conf for my system (antares.starshine.org):

boot=/dev/hdamap=/boot/mapinstall=/boot/boot.bprompttimeout=50other=/dev/hda1label=dostable=/dev/hdaimage=/vmlinuzlabel=linuxroot=/dev/sda5read-only

Here's how I have to edit it to run lilo -C when I'm bootedfrom floppy and have mounted my root and usr as I describedabove (on /mnt and /mnt/usr respectively):

boot=/dev/hdamap=/mnt/boot/map# current (emerg) path to mapinstall=/mnt/boot/boot.b# current (emerg) path to /bootprompttimeout=50other=/dev/hda1label=dostable=/dev/hdaimage=/mnt/vmlinuz# path to my kernellabel=linuxroot=/dev/sda5read-only

Note that I've added comments to the end of each linethat I changed. (I think I got them all write -- I don't feel like rebooting to test this for you). The specificsaren't as important as the idea:

The lilo program (/sbin/lilo) "compiles" a bootblock from information in a configuration file --which defaults to /etc/lilo.conf.

References to directories and file in the .conf filemust be relative to the situation *when the /sbin/lilois run*. References to devices and partitions typically don't change in this situation.

I hope that helps. It is admittedly one of the most confusing aspect of Linux to Unix newbies and professionalsalike. In some ways I prefer FreeBSD's boot loader (the interactive and visual debug modes are neat -- you can disable various drivers and view/tweak various kernel settingsduring the boot). In other ways I prefer LOADLIN (whichcan load Linux or FreeBSD kernels from a DOS command promptor from a DOS CONFIG.SYS file). In yet other ways I like the OpenBoot (forth interpreter and system debugger) used by SPARC's.

I would like to see PC's move to the OpenBoot standard --it's SUPPOSED to be part of the PCI spec. Basically thisworks by replace the processor specific machine code instructionsin device ROM's (for video cards and other adapters) with FCode (byte compiled forth). The system (mother) board thenonly has to implement a forth interpreter (between 8 and 32Kof footprint -- much smaller than existing BIOS chips).

The advantage is that it allows your adapters to be usedon systems regardless of the processor. Forth is a very efficient language -- as close to machine language as aninterpreter can get -- and closer than many assemblers(some of which generate stray code).

Too bad there are no PC manufacturers who understand thisYET!

Letter of Thanks

From: Sean sdonovan@hq.si.net

Thank you from the bottom of my heart for your informative and very useful email. It took about 50 seconds using the chroot command {see I learned something new today :-) }I am back up...worked like a charm...I'll try not to bother you in the future but if I ever need to blow the horn at time of utmost need... It's pretty cool when stuff works, what is frustrating as heck is when you can't find the answers, I really did try reading the faq's/how to's and so on...You are right about the email coherency, need to work on that, guess I figured to a hack like yourself it would make sense {all the stuff that I had tried} and I wasn't sure you would actually write back.}

I'm doing this from minicom so everything workie workie :-)

When you have time; why did another friend {not in your league apparently} suggest:linux root=/dev/hda2 ro from the boot command?Supposedly it would boot from partition hda2 {linux native} at that pointno such luck still went from floppy.

thanks again,
Sean

ST01/02 SCSI Card

From: John Messina John.Messina@astramerck.com

My dad just gave me his old 386 machine. It's not much, but I wantedto start experimenting with it and to try to use it as a firewall.I upgraded it to 8MB of RAM and dropped in an ISA Ethernet card -just the bare minimum. I'm attempting to install RedHat 4.1 onto thismachine. My main machine is already up and running with COL Standardand since the 386 has no CD-ROM, I attempted to do an NFS install.he NFS part of the install works perfectly (nameserver, exports,etc. on my main machine is configured correctly and autoprobe can findthe 386's ethernet card). The problem occurs when the install startsto look for the 386's SCSI card. The 386 has a Seagate ST01/02 SCSIcard with one hard drive attached. The ST01/02 is supported by theinstall, but autoprobe cannot find the card and I've tried all of thecombinations for the parameters that are listed - checked the RedHat,CND, and COL manuals. No IRQ/Base address combination that I've triedworks. I've looked at the board itself, but can't tell how it's set up.I guess my question comes down to the following:

Is there a way during the install to find out what the IRQ/Baseaddress for this board is? Or, since the machine will successfullyboot to DOS/Win3.1, is there a way to determine these settings fromthe DOS/Windows environment?

There are a variety of "diagnostics" utilities for DOS-- MSD (Microsoft) comes with some recent versions of DOSand Windows, NDIAGS comes with recent versions of the Norton Utilities, American Megratrends used to sell theAMIDIAGS, and there used to be some others called Checkit! and System Sleuth. There are also a large number of DOS shareware and freeware programs which performdifferent subsets of the job.

Another program that might list the information you're lookingfor is Quarterdeck's "Manifest" which used to be includedwith QEMM since about version 7 or 6 and with DESQview/386(one of my all-time favorite DOS programs -- with features I still miss in Linux!).

The system I'm typing this on is an old home built 386. It is the main server for the house (the clients are Pentia and 486's -- mostly laptops). So you don't have to "apologize"about the age of your equipment. One of the real virtues of Linux is that it breathes new life into old 386's that have beenabandoned by the major software vendors.

One approach to consider it to find a good SCSI card. I realize that you'll spend more on that than you did on thecomputer -- but it may be worth it nonetheless. Over the years I've upgraded this system (antares) from 4Mb of RAMto 32Mb and added: Adaptec 1452C controller, one internal 2Gb SCSI, and a 538Mb internal, a 300Mb magneto optical drive, a 4mm DAT autochanger, an 8x CDROM, a Ricoh CD burner/recorder, and an external 2Gb drive (that fills out the SCSI chain -- with additional drives including a Zipon the shelf)upgraded the old 200Mb IDE hard drive to a pair of 400 Mb IDE's, upgraded the I/O and IDE controller to one with four serial ports (one modem, one mouse, two terminals --one in the living room the other in the office), and a 2Mb STB Nitro video card.

My point is that you can take some of the money you save and invest in additional hardware. You just want to ensurethat the peripherals and expansions will be useful in yourfuture systems. (At this point memory is changing enoughthat you don't want to invest much in RAM for your 386 --you probably won't be able to use it in any future systems) --bumping it up to 16Mb is probably a good idea -- more only ifit's offered to you for REAL cheap.

Other than than I'd do an Alta-Vista search (at Yahoo!)for Seagate ST01/02 (ST01, ST02, ST0). My one experiencewith the ST01 is that it was a very low quality SCSI cardand not suitable for serious use. I'd also search the "forsale" newsgroups and ads for a used BusLogic (you mightfind one for $10 to $25 bucks -- don't pay more than $50for a used one -- low end new cards can be had for $60).

--Jim

Booting Linux

From: Vaughn (Manta Ray) Jardine vaughn@fm1.wow.net

I Use a multiconfig to boot either to Dos, Win95, or Linux (Redhat 4.1).I use loadlin from the autoexec.bat to load the linux kernel, however Irecently accidently deleted the dir with loadlin and the vmlinuz.

Ooops! I hate it when that happens!

I made a boot disk on installation so I use that to get to Linux. Icopied the vmlinuz from the /boot dir and put it on my Dos partition.Now I don't have the original loadlin so I took one from a redhat 4.2site on the net. It still won't boot. It starts and halfway throughbootup it stops.

Do I have to get the loadlin that came with redhat 4.1? What am I doingwrong. It boots fine off the boot disk.

Vaughn

I'd want to find out why the LOADLIN is failing.The old version of LOADLIN that I'm used to did requirethat you create a map of the "real BIOS vectors" -- whichis done by allowing REALBIOS.EXE to create a boot disk, booting off of that, and then re-running REALBIOS.EXE.

This file would be a "hidden + system" file in C:\REALBIOS.INT

The idea of this file is to allow LOADLIN to "unhook" all of the software that's redirected BIOS interrupts (trap vectors-- sort of like a table of pointers hardware event signal handlers)to their own code. To do this you must have a map of where each interrupt was pointed before any software hooked into it(thus the boot disk). This boot disk doesn't boot any OS --it just runs a very short block of code to capture the tableand save it to floppy -- and displays some instructions.

You may have to re-run REALBIOS.EXE (generate a new BIOSmap) any time you change your hardware. This is particularlytrue when changing video cards or adding removing or changinga SCSI adapter.

Obviously the version of LOADLIN that's used by Red Hat's"turbo Linux" and by the CD based installed program of other Linux distributions doesn't require this -- though I don't knowquite how they get around it.

So, try installing the rest of the LOADLIN package and runningREALBIOS.EXE. Then make sure you are booting into "safe" DOS mode under Win '95. I'd also consider putting a block(like a lilo.conf stanza) in your CONFIG.SYS which invokesLOADLIN.EXE via your SHELL= directive. That block should haveany DEVICE= or INSTALL= directives except those that are neededto see the device where your LOADLIN.EXE and kernel image file are located. This should ensure that you aren't loading conflicting drivers. There are details about this in the LOADLIN documentation.

--Jim

Kernel Panics on root fs

From: Ken Ken@KenAndTed.com

Hi... I'm having some trouble, and maybe you could help??

I recently went from kernel 2.0.27 to 2.0.3. Of course, =) I used Red Hat'sRPM system (I have PowerTools 4.1) and upgraded. After the config,compile (zImage), and modules stuff, I changed LiLo's config, to haveold be my backed up kernel of 2.0.27, and linux be the new one. Then,I did a zlilo, and everything ran smoothly.

I presume you mean that you installed the 2.0.30 sourcesand that you did a make zlilo (after your make config;make dep; and make clean)

But now, one the new kernel, after it finds my CD-ROM drive, it won'tmount my root fs. It gives me a kernel panic, and says unable to mountroot fs, then gives me the address 3:41. What's going on??

I've tried recompiling and remaking lilo many times. (oh yeah... I didn'tforget dep or clean either) Nothing works. I'm using the extended 2fs, and it's built right in the kernel...

Did you do a 'make modules' and 'make modules_install'?

If you do a 'diff' between /usr/src/linux/.config and /usr/src/linux-2.0.27/.config what you you see?

Are you sure you need features from the 2.0.30 release?You may want to stick with 2.0.29 until a 2.0.31 or 32goes out. I know of at least one problem that's forcedmy to revert for one of my customers*.

It has always been the case with Linux and with other systems that you should avoid upgrading unless you knowexactly what problem you're trying to solve and have someunderstanding of the risks your are taking. That's why it'sso important to make backups prior to upgrades and new softwareinstallations. I will note that my experience with Linuxand FreeBSD has been vastly less traumatic in these regards thanthe years of DOS and Windows experience I gained before I taught myself Unix.

* (using the -r "redirect" switch of the ipfwadm command toredirect activity on one socket to another works through2.0.29 and dies in 2.0.30 -- and gets fixed again in a "pre31"that one of my associates provided to me).

Here's my lilo config file...

...[ellided]...

That looks fine.

I suspect there's some difference between your kernelconfigurations that's at fault here. Run diff on them(the files are named .config in the toplevel source directory). or pull up the 'make menuconfig' for eachand place them "side-by-side" (using X or on differentVC's).

Hint: You can edit /usr/src/linux/scripts/Menuconfigand set the single_menu_mode=TRUE (read the comments inthe file) before you do your make menuconfig -- and you'll save a lot of keystrokes.

Maybe you need one of those IDE chipset boxes checked.

My hard drive that boots is hda, and my Linux drive is hdb. I took out read-only a while ago, to try to solve the problem. It made no difference.It'd be great if you could help me out a little. Thanks, Ken...

Answer Guy #1, January 1997
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