Building your own up2date server...
by Keller, Tim
I know that at one of the meetings, it was mentioned that WPI has their own
up2date server.
Could one of the WPI techs give a quick explanation on how they did this?
As the number of linux boxes I manage grows, this is something I'd like to
deploy into my infrastructure.
Thanks,
Tim.
15 years
Red Hat vs SuSE....
by Bill Smith
okay. I'm sure that I'm not the only one that has been following the
goings-on with respect to Red Hat (dropping the Personal Edition in
favor of Fedora) and SuSE (being bought by Novell).
I am looking for some honest advice here. I am NOT trying to start a
flame war or a distro war. I will honestly take suggestions.
I am running Aurora Linux on a Sun SPARCstation 10 (it's based on
RH7.3) and RH9 on my laptop (Gateway Solo 9100) right now. I have been
running Red Hat on my systems since 5.x. given what I have seen in the
news, I think it is time to consider another distro, though. Here are my
thoughts so far:
I am feeling a bit underwhelmed with what i've been reading about
Fedora from RH's website and from Aurora's list. I can't say with any
level of certainty that I will stay and shift to Fedora. I will likely
shift to another distro, though.
I'm not considering Debian at the moment because I don't think that it
moves quickly enough to keep up with updated stuff. Perhaps that is a
flawed perception, but I don't look kindly on installing a baseline
(from the CD) and spending a month of Sundays running apt-get to update
everything.
The last time i played with SuSE was around 1997 or 1998. I got the
SuSE disc from CheapBytes so I could play with it. I liked the tools
that it had (YaST was just getting ready to shift to YaST2, i think),
but I didn't like the fact that many of the libraries were a couple
versions behind what my favorite applications (of the day) wanted to
find. I am actually favoring SuSE right now, if I can get what i need
on CDs. (Andy, do you have any suggestions?)
I cut my eye-teeth on Slackware back when Linux was still at 0.99pl10.
My Dad sent me a box of floppies that had everything i'd need to get
started. I had a blast! I don't know about Slackware now. I have not
been following them (at all) since I shifted to RH all those years ago.
Gentoo is not even being considered right now. My fastest system is a
P2/400, and that is running Win98se. (My wife uses it to play the Sims.
Games are all Win* is good for anyway.) My fastest *nix box is my
laptop, and that's a P2/266. I don't have the time nor the resources to
(re?)compile everything to suit my system.
Given these thoughts, the Debian and Gentoo folk should understand that
my opinions, as stated above, are open to change. Show me where i
misunderstood, and i will thank you. :)
I'm just looking for a Distro that will let me install my system with a
minimum of pain, let me tweak where I want, when i want, and provides a
neat way to keep things up to date (think security, etc.).... I've
gotten used to the RPM system of archives, but I prefer tarballs. I
have this "thing" about putting anything I add to the system in
/usr/local .... :)
Thanks for any advice.
Best regards,
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
William Smith wsmith-at-chezsmith-dot-com
Fall River, MA http://www.chezsmith.com
Bad Joke #2 -- Q: How many Real Men does it take to
change a lightbulb? A: None. Real Men aren't afraid
of the dark.
* TAG! v3.1 *
15 years, 2 months
new mutt user ?'s
by Bill Mills-Curran
I've made the switch from pine to mutt, and I have 2 questions.
1. Why is mutt so slow in sending outgoing email? Pine delivered
outgoing email quickly, but mutt seems MUCH slower -- too slow to
even consider that there's a performance problem. It seems to be
some issue about how it interfaces with sendmail. (I'm using my
own machine as an outgoing relay through my web services
provider.)
2. I had set up a filter in pine to move "[SPAM]" subject lines to a
different folder. Should I try the same thing with mutt, or
should I use procmail? (I'm not sure of the syntax.)
mutt syntax?
I can't find anything that looks right at all.
procmail syntax?
I already have spamassassin set up:
:0fw: spamassassin.lock
| /usr/bin/spamc
So I think I need to add:
:0
* ^Subject: *\[SPAM\]
$HOME/Mail/autospam
(I'm a newbie with procmail, too.)
TIA,
Bill
15 years, 2 months
Ultimate Linux Box
by Andy Stewart
HI everybody,
I received this e-mail which I am forwarding to you. Go to the website
mentioned in the e-mail and register if you are interested in possibly
winning the $5000 Ultimate Linux Box as featured in Linux Journal magazine.
I'd be happy to let the winner share with me... :-)
Later,
Andy
--
Andy Stewart, Founder
Worcester Linux Users' Group
Worcester, MA USA
http://www.wlug.org
15 years, 2 months
simple debian question
by Gregory Avedissian
Where do I put commands that I want executed immediately after bootup?
In suse, I put them in /etc/rc.d/boot.local, but debian has no such
directory or file.
OK, I lied. Here's the real question. I have two linux installations on
the same box (suse 7.2 and debian woody). How do I arrange permissions
so that I can access the user's (my) home directory in the other
installation without rebooting to that other installation?
I notice that when I look at the home directory on the other system, the
owner is listed by the user number rather than the name, so what I've
done is to create a user in debian whose name is the same as the suse
number for the same user, so that user owns the suse user's home
directory, then change permissions so all users can read/write that
directory. That's pretty ugly, and I have to change permissions when I
reboot suse. There's gotta be an easier, cleaner way.
Thanks,
Greg
15 years, 2 months
WLUG Meetings in 2004
by Andy Stewart
HI everybody,
The schedule of meetings for the first part of the year 2004 is now posted on
the WLUG website. I apologize for not strictly adhering to alternate Wed/
Thurs as I tried to hack around a personal commitment in the March/April
timeframe. I hope that this doesn't cause anybody too much grief. If so,
let me know.
Later,
Andy
--
Andy Stewart, Founder
Worcester Linux Users' Group
Worcester, MA USA
http://www.wlug.org
15 years, 2 months
WLUG Meeting: Thurs Dec 12 7:00 PM
by Andy Stewart
Hi everybody,
I wanted to send this meeting announcement out early for a change. :-)
Our next WLUG meeting will actually be a joint meeting with WLUG and the
Worcester County IEEE Computer Society. We'll hold the meeting in Olin Hall
room 107 (we've been there before) since it seats more people.
We're anticipating a larger than normal turnout for this meeting due to the
showing of the documentary entitled "Revolution OS" (on DVD!). This
documentary runs for 1 hour and 25 minutes. No expertise in Linux is
required to understand this documentary.
Revolution OS tells the inside story of the hackers who rebelled against the
proprietary software model and Microsoft to create GNU/Linux and the Open
Source movement. This documentary features interviews with Linus Torvalds,
Richard Stallman, Bruce Perens, Eric Raymond, Brian Behlendorf, Michael
Tiemann, Larry Augustin, Frank Hecker, and Rob Malda.
I've just purchased a few items for the raffle which should arrive prior to
the meeting date. The items for raffle are:
o a copy of the Revolution OS DVD
o a Revolution OS tee shirt
o a Revolution OS coffee mug
o a Revolution OS poster (11"x7")
As always, light refreshments will be served at the meeting. After the
meeting, we'll adjourn to the Boynton Restaurant for pizza and beer, and all
are invited to attend.
--
Andy Stewart, Founder
Worcester Linux Users' Group
Worcester, MA USA
http://www.wlug.org
15 years, 2 months
Linux System Administration position...
by Andy Stewart
If you are interested in such an opportunity, please send me e-mail and I'll
forward the information to you. The job is in Concord, MA.
Later,
Andy
--
Andy Stewart, Founder
Worcester Linux Users' Group
Worcester, MA USA
http://www.wlug.org
15 years, 2 months
text mailer recommendation?
by Bill Mills-Curran
I'm a pine user, and I was looking at the release notes for fedora
core 1. Pine is not included due to license and "long term
maintenance" issues. I've enjoyed using pine for 8 or more years, and
I really like it. I'm disappointed that it won't be continued under
Red Hat. (I know I could install it myself. Maybe that's the right
answer.)
Although I'm not enthusiastic about switching mailers, maybe it's
time. My needs are pretty basic:
Text-based because I work across a WAN when I access home email from
work & vice-versa.
Connection to xemacs & the gnuclient interface. (I wrote a perl
script to do it.)
It would be nice if my address book ported to the replacement
mailer.
Interface to LDAP address book server.
Any suggestions about replacements or just building pine myself? Are
there really problems that make it unattractive?
TIA,
Bill
15 years, 2 months
upgrading suse 7.2 to 8.1
by Gregory Avedissian
I'm getting ready to upgrade from SuSE 7.2 to 8.1, and I have a little
confusion and some questions.
I'm going from 7.2 pro edition to 8.1 personal edition. Any ideas what's
missing in the personal edition?
Attempting to replace what is installed, I get a list of conflicts, with
advice to delete the old program, even if they don't have a replacement.
I was surprised to see that balsa and gftp were listed as not having
newer versions. Is this because they're not on the personal edition? I
know they exist, because they're available at rpmfind.
The real issue -
XFree 4.x doesn't seem to want to recognize my ELSA GLoria-L video card.
Sax2 will run in 640x480 only, and I can't get it to run with the glint
driver (the one that's supposed to work with this card). I tried doing
this with the SuSE 8.2 evaluation disk, and I'm running into the same
problems I had when I tried to upgrade to XFree 4.1 about a month ago.
So here's the question -
Can I upgrade to 8.1 without upgrading XFree? Better yet, if I upgrade
the XFree, and it doesn't work, is there an easy way to return to the
older version by using the CD's. Or do I have to manually back up
/usr/X11R6 and /etc/X11 first, and then recopy them to get back to the
older version? Will the rest of the SuSE 8.1 be pissed off about using
XFree 3.3.6?
I suppose I could change the vid card, but I'd rather not spend any
money, and since this one is listed as working, I'd like to be able to
get it to work.
Thanks in advance for any suggestions or ideas.
Greg
15 years, 2 months
