September 2001 - WLUG - wlug.mailman3.com

lost in kernel
by Brad Noyes 12 Sep '01

12 Sep '01

Hi all, Has anyone else had trouble finding an option in the kerel config? I was looking for support for /dev/imon (for libfam), but i just can't find it in the kernel config. The kernel has become huge, and hard to find things in. anyone have an easy way of looking for an option in the kernel, or does anyone where this /dev/imon option is in the kernel? Thanks, --Brad

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boot images -- safe to delete?
by Bill Mills-Curran 10 Sep '01

10 Sep '01

I tried to upgrade to RedHat 7.1 tonight, and I found that I do not have enough disk space on /. So I have 3 options: 1. Fresh install 2. Repartition 3. Clean up As much as I'd like to repartition, I'm not sure enough of myself to plow into that, although I'd like to hear what tricks there might be that would make it easy (easier?) to do. One thing I've noticed is that I seem to have extra kernels around, but I thought I'd see if there is any reason I need to keep them before I whack them. Here's what I have: ls -l vm* -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 1621659 Aug 22 2000 vmlinux-2.2.16-22 -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 1739279 Aug 22 2000 vmlinux-2.2.16-22smp lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 20 Apr 16 22:51 vmlinuz ->vmlinuz-2.2.16-22smp -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 627379 Aug 22 2000 vmlinuz-2.2.16-22 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 654459 Aug 22 2000 vmlinuz-2.2.16-22smp My lilo has: cat /etc/lilo.conf boot=/dev/sda map=/boot/map install=/boot/boot.b prompt timeout=50 default=linux message=/boot/message linear image=/boot/vmlinuz-2.2.16-22smp label=linux initrd=/boot/initrd-2.2.16-22smp.img read-only root=/dev/sda1 image=/boot/vmlinuz-2.2.16-22 label=linux-up initrd=/boot/initrd-2.2.16-22.img read-only root=/dev/sda1 So, I can get of the uncompressed kernel images, right? BTW, when considering my options for repartitioning, I do have a DAT drive for backup/restore ops. Thanks, Bill

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Linux Journal article by Rick Gorton
by Andy Stewart 10 Sep '01

10 Sep '01

Hi gang, Check out the August 2001 Linux Journal article on page 22 entitled "Kernel Tuning Gives 40% Gains" by Rick Gorton. The article describes work that was done to the Alpha specific portions of the Linux kernel to optimize its behavior for the 21264 (EV6) Alpha processor. Rick has attended many WLUG meetings in the past. Way to go, Rick! Andy -- Andy Stewart Founder Worcester Linux Users' Group Worcester, MA, USA http://www.wlug.org

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REMINDER: Meeting, Wed. Sept. 12th
by Andy Stewart 10 Sep '01

10 Sep '01

HI everybody, This is a reminder about the upcoming WLUG meeting, to be held this Wednesday, Sept. 12th, at 7 PM in Kinnicutt Hall on the WPI campus. Directions can be found on the WLUG website. I would like to spend part of the meeting discussing a potential group project. I was contacted by Warren Rasmussen, the Director of the Lancaster (MA) Center for the Aging. He would like to convert several of his office computers from Windoze to Linux, with shared printers, network, shared dialup modem, etc. Warren would also like us to entertain the notion of the creation of a few Linux workstations to be used by senior citizens for e-mail and web surfing, again, using Linux. Some training of the seniors would be required. He'd like to see if we can prove that Linux is easy enough for seniors to use. I have invited Warren to the meeting, so we can get more details from him at that time, and then gauge the interest level of the group in participating in this project. Since the WPI school year has just started, I would like to take the opportunity to introduce any WPI Linux Association officers who might be in attendance. I also plan to open the floor for tech support questions aimed at the group membership. I may still have an item or two that I can bring for a raffle. Afterwards, we'll adjourn to the Boynton Restaurant for some pizza and beer, and all are welcome to attend. See ya later, Andy -- Andy Stewart Founder Worcester Linux Users' Group Worcester, MA, USA http://www.wlug.org

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Prelinker...
by Keller, Tim 07 Sep '01

07 Sep '01

Hey All, This popped up on the Mandrake-expert mailing list so I thought I'd pass it along... http://www.research.att.com/~leonb/objprelink/ Enjoy... Tim.

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Anyone played around with Linux on iPaq?
by Dan Potter 06 Sep '01

06 Sep '01

I recently perchased an iPAQ from Compaq, and as many probably already know, there is a Linux distro for iPAQ. Anyone have any experience with it? Suggestions? Thanks!

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RHL 7.1 upgrade: Xterm bizarre, etc
by Peter Gutowski 06 Sep '01

06 Sep '01

Although *installing* linux from RedHat disks has improved over the years, I still find that upgrading an existing installation can really try your patience. After doing a number of clean installs using the RedHat 7.1 disks, I felt comfortable thinking I could upgrade without much problem. Wrongo. There are a number of things that changed. Some I had know about from the previous clean installs. Others came as a distressing surprize: for instance the sendmail upgrade changes default behavior radically in that it is compiled against the tcpwrappers library, so now you need to consider sendmail entries in your hosts.allow and hosts.deny. Actually, that's a great idea, but I sure wish I knew that before hand (rather than bouncing mail for 2 days until I discovered the problem.) Anyway, I could go on detailing some of these fascinating experiences, but I'll get to the point: my xterm seems to be bizarre when running on the local xserver. I usually don't run xdm (runlevel 5 default in RedHat) but just do a startx. When I do that everything seems pretty OK until I actually try to *do* something. I click on the Netscape icon in the panel on the bottom of the screen. Nothing. I launch an xterm to try to figure out what's happening (or not, in this case) and it just gets worse: the keys don't seem to be matched up to the correct characters. When I press the 'o' key, I get a 'p' on the screen. When I press 'i', I get 'o'. In general it seems like the whole keyboard is just slid over by 1 key -- but I can't seem to find a key that gives me an return or enter. As you can imagine this is annoying. I use Hummingbird Xceed on a windoze machine and the Xterm there running from the linux machine seems to be problem free. (Actually, that's how I usually "use" my linux machine -- I very rarely sit down in front of it.) When I do sit in front of it and use a plain tty, it's fine that way too. Any ideas what's going on here? -Peter Gutowski

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Fwd: Sympathy for a guy over his head
by Colin Novick 06 Sep '01

06 Sep '01

Thoughts from wisened pros? Now more than ever I need to migrate to Linux. I am using a dual boot system MS/Linux and I desperately want to cut the cord. Previously the difficulty was an inability to print. Newest guess on that is that there is a possible conflict with lpd and CUPS running at the same time? I have yet to unpack how one goes about fixing that. Most recent challenge was to get a network connection established between two machines on 3Com cards on a 3Com box. Didn't quite get my hands around that, though many different angles were tried. Current thinking on this one is to look around and see if SAMBA might let me configure things. And then I really messed things up. While trying to establish a network I saw this neat option that lets machines share an internet connection, and I pursued it.... After playing around for a while I disabled it and now the Internet connection will not properly execute the ppp. I can manually get all the way through the logon in a Terminal session and when I get to: Entering PPP Session IP address is 216.164.248.83 MTU is 1500 There is nowhere to go from here. Leave it alone and it disconnects. Try to do anything, any key, and gobbledygook shows up killing any prospect of a PPP session completing. Possible that the system "enabling IPv4 packet forwarding" on startup is some leftover from my messing around with sharing an internet connection? No idea on that one. All right. It is necessary to screw around and make mistakes to learn. I am excelling at that, and probably do now know more. The difficulty is that I have never seen this up and working anywhere before, and when trying to solve a problem I am working without an image in my head of what is or isn't supposed to be there. Thought to reload the Mandrake 7.2 system and hope to wipe the settings I created return to where I was originally pursuing different paths. Trick there is that "Reload" keeps all the settings. Shouldah done a reinstall. Learned that too. Any thoughts, or maybe even just a weak hearted consoling word or two. My deepest and sincerest thanks to the learned who had to endure hear a young fool trying to find his feet. Colin

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Re: Mandrake network/pppd problems
by Benjamin Zack 05 Sep '01

05 Sep '01

I am not sure what scripts Mandrake put in place to share your network, but if you haven't checked the ipchains/iptables rule sets, do so. It is possible that a rule set could prevent you from logging on via pppd and block ports necessary for communication with the printer. The commands below will clear out the rule sets(enter as root), but will leave you system open. I would not suggest staying online long without a good working rule set. service ipchains stop service iptables stop use the appropriate line (I believe Mandrake 7.2 uses ipchains by default) or try both. -Ben

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Re: [Wlug] Thanks
by Peter Gutowski 05 Sep '01

05 Sep '01

On Wednesday, September 5, 2001 11:12 AM, Colin Novick <gwlt(a)ma.ultranet.com> wrote: >Thanks Ben! > ... > >On the windows side of my machine I am connecting my machine to a large >format HP printer (DesignJet 488 CA) through a 3Com network card and >a 3Com 4 port fast ethernet hub. The HP requires that I send all the >data to a HP JetDirect 300X box that transfers the data through a >parallel conn. to the printer. It is faster for big projects that way >if you believe the literature. That works fine in Windows , but again >I can't "see" the important command settings that make trying to >understand what works, and thus how to replicate it in Linux >hard. > >I haven't been able to address the large HP in Linux through printing >programs, network interfaces, or fiddling in network settings. My >machine's network card is there (eth0) and I can ping that. Thus there >is a way out and onto the network. All the connected items satisfy the >3Com hub and the appropriate indicator lights show a good connection. >I was of the belief that the HP printer may have a "static" IP in its >hardware so I tried pinging that. No luck. Nor any luck for trying to >just assign an IP to it, though I have to admit that I may have done >that improperly through ignorance. > You probably need to configure your jetdirect box with an ip address (You can use the Windows-based JetAdmin to check/change settings). You can't ping the jetdirect box if it's TCP/IP network settings aren't set or are wrong for your network. (BTW, once it's settings _are_ correct you can telnet into the jetdirect box to make further changes, [or screwups ;]) After that it's a matter of adjusting the /etc/printcap to know where to send the data. E.g.... //----- portion of /etc/printcap ------- lp:\ :sh:\ :ml=0:\ :mx=0:\ :sd=/var/spool/lpd/lp:\ :rm=jetdirect:\ :rp=RAW1:\ :bk:\ :lpd_bounce=true:\ :if=/usr/share/printconf/mf_wrapper: the 'rm' means 'remote machine' (in my case here it's name is 'jetdirect' which resolves to an ip address) and the 'rp' is the name of the print queue on that remote machine (in my example here the queue name is 'RAW1'). You'll need to consult jetdirect box's setting to know how it should be set for your printer. (Also the 'if' option is responsible for creating the data in a format that your printer will handle) What does 'route -n' output look like? (might be /sbin/route) -- Peter Gutowski <peter(a)linuxchamps.com> // tel.: (413) 587-3957 "When in company, put not your hands to any part of the body not usually discovered." --George Washington, _Rules for Civility and Decent Behavior_

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