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Old Hardware (Re: [Wlug] Re: Debian question)

by Chuck Homic

On Fri, Oct 03, 2003 at 08:31:25AM -0400, Bob George wrote: > "Chuck Homic" <chuck(a)vvisions.com> wrote: > > Oh, hey... my Debian rant reminded me of something! > > > > I have Debian running on a 486-25 with 12MB of RAM. > > [...] > > Hey, mind if I ask what you use it for? The reason I ask is that I'm on a list > dedicated to old PC hardware users, which until recently equated to a base of > fanatical DOS holdouts. Slowly though, most are inquiring about Linux, so I'd > like to give them some useful info about using Debian as a "modern" > distribution on low-resource systems. Unfortunately, I've had to dump most of > my old systems, so can't speak from first-hand experience anymore. Currently it is an excuse to own the domain underpowered.net. It doesn't do much right now, due to lack of storage. My 5G SCSI drive doesn't work with my old old Future Domain controller, so it's running 240M right now. I bought a new interface (urrm... new to me, for a 16-bit ISA SCSI adapter. $1 at eBay, woohoo) and have yet to see if it works better. Anyway, I mostly use it for file transfer, right now. Like if I'm at work and want to send a large file home, I'll drop it there. Or if I want to email friends/family digital photos, but no mail server I know of will accept a 50M attachment, I send a link to http://underpowered.net/whatever In the future I plan to put some of my hackish projects there, expecting that the low bandwidth needs of such things will match the low power available. And of course it runs primary DNS for underpowered.net. > Stephen Darnold, the guy who put Basic Linux together, used to lurk there, and > there was often extensive discussion on what could be run on older hardware. > Yours sounds like the lower end of the spectrum, so I'm wondering how well it > works. Would it work well with Debian specifically as a firewall/gateway? Would > you say the benefits of running something current offsets the inconvenience of > those delays with installs etc.? Whoa, this is like, an interview or something. Let's take it 1-by-1: - How can I get on this list? That sounds cool. - I chose Debian for three reasons. 1. familiarity, 2. laziness, 3. the aforementioned 240M hard drive. Since Debian would install a working base system in around 50M, I figured it could conserve well. Currently I'm running DNS, HTTP, FTP, & IMAP with ~100M free for data. I have to erase the HTTP logs of virus attacks on a fairly regular basis to keep that free space, though. ;) - In retrospect, it would be nice to have a package manager with more modest RAM requirements. However, I'll decide this for real when I install the second hard drive. With one HD just for swap, it might not matter so much. - I have no problem saturating my 10Mbit ethernet with a 486-25, so I'm sure it would make a fine firewall/gateway if you don't use it for anything else, and you might have to go easy on the firewall rules. Or it might do fine with fancy firewall rules, who knows? Experience running NAT (for a T1) on similar hardware indicates that that would be no problem. - Although installing packages is a pain (which would be fixed up for $0.50 of RAM, I presume) it just hums along in the interim. I don't know how much RAM the motherboard can take, and I wouldn't know who to buy 30/72-pin SIMMs from. :) Although experience shows I wouldn't have to buy them, they would be given to me if I express interest. (That's a big bonus for old hardware! That's how I got my 5M SCSI drive... it's one of those big full-height Seagate bricks, and fits in no modern case known to man.) - It's a good box just to have hooked up to a wire, but if you have such a thing and you ever find yourself thinking about adding a second 486 to boost resources, you've gone off the deep end. After the novelty value subsides, you have to think about the energy cost. How many services can you provide per watt? How would that compare to a 50W power supply on an old P-100 thinkpad or something? (I'd often thought about using aging laptops as servers, to simplify the UPS situation. I figure a ~$40 car battery plugged into the AC jack could provide backup power for quite a long time, but that's just insanity.) Well, enough rambling. Work to do. -Chuck BTW, speaking of old hardware... some folks on the list might remember my '87 Plymouth Sundance. My brother put in a new engine, and it now runs like da shiznit, and is approaching 210,000 miles. You don't get free parts for a 15 year old car like a 15 year old computer, but there are other advantages.

Oct. 9, 2003

shameless promo of Slackware by the DistroWatch guy..

by Brian McLinden

DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 17, 29 September 2003 (opinion piece article by Ladislav Bodnar, the man who runs DW itself) "A new stable version of Slackware Linux was released late on Friday. As usual, the news was greeted with plenty of enthusiasm by many die-hard Slackware fans and by much curiosity from users of other distributions. What is so special about Slackware? Unlike other commercial distribution makers, such as Red Hat, Mandrake or SuSE, Slackware doesn't come with any system administration tools, it has an amazingly unsophisticated package manager and the company rarely makes headlines in the Linux media. Yet every a new Slackware release is announced, a wave of excitement sweeps the Linux forums and new sites (this OSNews review is a good example). Slackware is to Linux distributions what vi is to UNIX text editors - many people expected vi to die after an abundance of new, more intuitive and user-friendly text editors were introduced. But instead, vi flourished. And while other Linux distributions have certainly managed to take market share away from Slackware, there are still plenty of people out there -- probably a lot more than many would led you believe -- who would never consider using anything else. If you've never tried Slackware before, give it a partition now - and be prepared to fall in love... [end of comment]" Question - does he like slack because it is more like unix than any other distro? Back in the days when men were men............... __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? The New Yahoo! Shopping - with improved product search http://shopping.yahoo.com

Oct. 9, 2003

Re: [Wlug] I choose Slackware.. God help me! (And you guys, please?)

by Matt Higgins

Woops miss fire!! Let me get to answering your questions. 1. simple is not easy? Well this is debatable. Think simple and it mostly easy, think hard and it is always hard! Your first step to easy, is to build a command line vocabulary and familiarize yourself with a command line editor (vi,vim,emacs,etc..) the choice of which is as much philosophical as it is functional. To get you started I would recommend a few books. I love getting documentation on-line but I feel much closer to paper and ink then I do electron guns and liquid crystals, not to mention you will not have Internet access right off the bat. Learning the Unix Operating System, 5th Edition: http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/lunix5/chapter/index.html Running Linux, 4th Edition: http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/runux4/ vi Editor Pocket Reference: http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/vipr/ These all just happen to be O'Reilly books these came right off the top of my head. The Learning the Unix OS book is a great place to start! It has examples and exercises and teaches you all the basic commands you will need to navigate the file system and start editing files. These will be your 1st tools and will also be the basis for learning other commands. Further more you can get started with these books before you get your system. 2. Partitions: The vendor should layout the disk in a reasonable way. If you want to leave some free space for the testing of alternative distributions tell them to leave 10GB free, that should be enough to install a few distros and not leave you strapped for space. As for the physical layout of the data on the disk, you realistically can't control this. The IDE controller will translate the physical layout of the disk into what amounts to one contiguous block. To say that file "foo" is on platter 3 and close the the spindle is almost impossible. Further more the file system will do its best to allocate blocks contiguously and fill in unused space in the most efficient way it knows how. I am not sure how the vendor will ultimately install everything, but the link you sent leads me to a high-end Linux workstation co. they may mirror the two IDE drives leaving you with md0-n and not the traditional hd[a-z][0-n]. File system layout is a big long topic something you will learn after reading the Running Linux book. For now trust the vendor and scorn them later when you are done reading. 3. Internet: You address 2 different points here. I will start with on-line-help. Slackware will come with ton's of documentation. This is often considered on-line even if its not on the Internet. There are docs for most installed applications in /usr/share/docs and there are man pages for just about everything else. You will learn about man in the Learning Unix book. Note that man pages are like legal documents, at first they are difficult to read but once you choke down a few you get the hang of it. Do you have dial up or do you have DSL? The two are a bit different with respect to configuration. I believe there is a section for configuring both in the Running Linux book. 4 Printer: I would recommend using the cups printer daemon. It replaces the old lp/lpd/lpr progs and has a much better configuration. There are scores of drivers, including ones for the latest printers. If it is not installed by default there is a package available. Cups supports almost all HP printers deskJet and laserJet. Wow that was a mouthful, I hope this ans most of your questions. Talk you soon.. Matt

Oct. 8, 2003

Re: [Wlug] I choose Slackware.. God help me! (And you guys, please?)

by Matt Higgins

Brian, Great post! Pleas excuse me for my lack of poetic sensablility throught this response. Fisrt I would like to commend you on your choice of Slackware, a fantastic distrobution with a lot to offer and wonderfull history.

Oct. 8, 2003

I choose Slackware.. God help me! (And you guys, please?)

by Brian McLinden

That�s why I hope to meet guys into slack. Tomorrow night�s meeting? The email below is about my climb in life and the three technical things foremost in my concerns. If you�re not into slack, there�s no need to continue reading. tks, Brian - - - - - - - - - - - - - I'm a newbie with just a little Fortran experience and a 1 gig HDD machine with Windows 98 and no printer either! Nonetheless I�m feeling the need to choose Slackware 9.1. It�s because I�ve read a bit of craft obligation and personal challenge in the following: �Slackware is Linux's oldest living distribution. It does not try to emulate Windows, it tries to be as Unix-like as possible. It does not try to cover up processes with fancy, point-and-click GUIs(Graphical User Interfaces). Instead, it puts users in control by letting them see exactly what's going on. Slackware is for people who enjoy learning and tweaking their system to do exactly what they want. Slackware's stability and simplicity is why people will continue to use it for years to come.� But simple does not mean easy, does it? Back in the days when men were Men........... I�m up in years (you�ll know me when you see I�m fat, ugly, and bald with white hair), but in my day I made 5 violins under a master (before life took me somewhere else). The only power tool I used was a band saw to cut smaller pieces out of a split log. You can make a violin out of very few knives, chisels, scrapers, and a block plane. I made my own patterns, knives, and scrapers. I had never worked wood before, even by power tools. (I never had had interest in those.) Those early instruments were slow going and not a little agony, but I knew with control of the hand and discipline of the heart that I could step up in my work, and take it to the level of art, well beyond anyone skilled with power tools. Am I a bit competitive and still trying to be a man�s man? Anyhow, I believe you see the parallel. I want to get to command line and not rely at an emotional level on commercial distributions what with all *their* packaging schemes (read: complications) and *their* bloatware GUI�s. It�s a bit about control and pride, isn�t it? How else can I bypass the Windows mentality and hope to step up in open source as a craft? I want to be a thinker and doer in this game, not just a consumer or user of various Distributions. My goal longer term is art, not just sitting at the feet of documented Authority. Another parallel: how can you design a Cadillac with no skills to build a model T Ford? Man or not, I�m scared! At the least I�m feeling a little shaky, and here�s why. Switching back to the violin story, I knew how to make those knives out of straight razors and scrapers out of blue shim stock. I could sharpen on my own the blade of a block plane until no one could see the edge. It was intuitive and it wasn�t rocket science. It took no prior reading or class instruction. I put in plenty of sweat time at the bench. It took me eight days (no kidding) to cut my first bass bar to a perfect fit, and I never backed off once from the challenge. Of course I knew my master was back there, watching. I did not quit while seeing him work at ten times my rate. My pride would not let me give up. But there came a time when I could go no further without my master�s help. Art was not possible without the ultimacy and intimacy of oral tradition. Thank God for newsgroups and the WLUG. It takes a community to raise a boy to manhood. So learning slackware, as learning unix in the old days, must require a combination of self-reliance AND guru help. In life we must settle for no false choices. Three items below. As background, I�m about ready to place an order for a stripped down machine with two IDE drives and Slackware. (Forget all that talk last week about SCSI, I don�t need bragging rights or a hardware �screamer.� Because, as you must know by now, the �screaming� I�m experiencing now has nothing whatever to do with any hardware.) 1. Partitions. I�m new to Linux, but trying to learn, so please don�t shoot me. What should my (various?) slack files look like? I have never seen any. I don�t know what to look for. Specifically, what partitioning specs can I give to the vendor who will pre-install and configure slack for me so that I have a working machine? I would like to be able to read and learn from these files BEFORE the iron arrives on my desk. I would like to split my slack partitions over two 80G disks for speed of random access. Thus, taking platter construction into account, the most frequently used partitions should be in the physical center of each disk. I would like to put slack primarily on hda, and, later on, any second distribution (Mandrake? Libranet? new Debian when it comes out?) primarily on hdb. What detailed partitioning do you recommend upfront to permit or pave the way for this control and flexibility? 2. Internet. auuggh..! Here, a problem of the chicken/egg variety. What should my slack files look like for dial-up access (to start with my current Prodigy) and DSL access (Speakeasy later when I�m ready to try downloads)? Unless I have these things up and running, I won�t be able to interface with online Linux help! 3. Printer. Anyone have a reliable model number for a Linux printer to suggest? Nothing fancy, just something to print out docs for Linux study in the woods, and an occasional letter. What should my slack files look like? (Of course I don�t know a thing yet about driver stuff..) These three are my foremost technical concerns that seem to be holding me back from my first flight. I hope to receive you hand up on these things! Biggest thing of all, the opportunity to meet you tomorrow night and chat over pizza. until then, Brian __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? The New Yahoo! Shopping - with improved product search http://shopping.yahoo.com

Oct. 8, 2003

Re: [Wlug] Picking a distro (was: 1st posting: Worcester ISP? Distros? LAC?)

by Bill Smith

Le Fri, 3 Oct 2003 09:43:09 -0400, « "John Stoffel" <stoffel(a)lucent.com> » a écrit: JS> RedHat 9 isn't that attractive, mostly because I've been using JS> RedHat since 5.2 and I want to change and try to stay away from JS> GNOME since it's a slow pig resource wise. I also want to get JS> updated in terms of GTK so I can run newer GNOME apps, like Gramps JS> 0.9.4. I've been using RH9 on my laptop (Gateway 9100 Solo, pII/266) for some time now. I use Window Maker as my window manager, so that I have the advantage(s) of Gnome libraries (if there are any) and the speed of a descent manager.... Gnome will run on this beastie, but it's a bit sluggish. 8( Personally, I don't see much of a reason to avoid RH9. if resources are an issue, just make sure you use a WM with a small footprint (like Window Maker or others like it), or even avoid X altogether if you really feel the need to run your toes through the sand. <shrug> I've discovered yum for package management, but i am only now beginning to play with it. it sounds like a better way to deal with packages than up2date (for RH systems). i know next to nothing about apt, even though I understand that it has been "ported" for use on RH. Best regards, -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- William Smith wsmith-at-chezsmith-dot-com Fall River, MA http://www.chezsmith.com "L'homme c'est rien -- l'oeuvre c'est tout." -- Gustave Flaubert * TAG! v3.1 *

Oct. 7, 2003

Re: [Wlug] Picking a distro (was: 1st posting: Worcester ISP? Distros? LAC?)

by John Stoffel

Matt> I may get jeers for promoting BSD on a Linux list but if you Matt> want good package management with dependency checks the only way Matt> to go these days is *BSD ports tree. My forward facing boxen all Matt> run OpenBSD. I run FreeBSD on my one co-lo box that's facing the public directly. Mostly because I know the *BSD distros are quite secure out of the box, and because I wanted to learn their foibles. So far, it's been working well, with only one problem, when someone found out I had an open ftp server and filled my disk with crap. I nuked it and shutdown the ftp server and all has been fine since. >> I originally came from a BSD style init background, which I liked >> quite alot, then moved to the SYSV style of /etc/rc#.d/... which I >> hated at first. But after thinking it through, it's a much much >> better way to do things. It lets you manage application and daemon >> startup in a clean and consistent manner, without having to watch out >> for other packages nearly as much. Matt> I agree that the old way is just that old! I clearly see the Matt> utility in using the sysV init its much more flexible, but if Matt> you are just running a desktop and starting a small number of Matt> services the old way is just fine. Further more Slackware Matt> provides support for the new way as well. I still thank that the SYSV init setup (which is just as old as BSD stuff!) is better all around, even for a desktop. I also believe that there's little difference between a desktop and a server, except for how they are used and the extent they are used. But since I manage systems for a living in a development environment, I have a different perspective than someone who's just using a system at home. Matt> Amiga sweet! I always wanted an Amiga, I had a C64 and C128. I had an Amiga 1000 (bought the first month they were available) and then an Amiga 2500. Finally got rid of the last in the mid 90's when I realized that Linux/Intel was the way to go. Matt> When you do make your decition tell us what you chose and why ? Matt> It would be interesting to read. Of course I hope you chose Matt> Slackware! Well, so far I've been playing with Debian and getting it going. I admit it's been a pain since it doesn't want to detect my ethernet card out of the box, so it defaults to only offering PPP for connection to the internet. And since I have a Matrox G450 with an HP A4331D monitor (21", 1280x1024), it's been a friggin pain and won't give me a proper setup. Mostly I think it's really a kernel issue, since I *hate* using modules for most stuff. I generally compile all the core stuff I need into my kernel so it's there from the get go. The default debian kernel is modular and not workign well with X for some reason. I'll fix it soon enough... and I did make it boot up with a 2.4.18 kernel from the start, thanks to whomever gave the -24bf hint. I may still punt and goto RH9 to see how well it does, but I'm slowing coming to like how Debian works. It's not perfect, but apt-get is kinda addictive. Though it's got quirks that annoy me too. So, the next big issue is determining how I can mirror my entire root disk and still boot of either half of the mirror properly. It's a pair of 18gb SCSI disks, with a pair of 120gb IDE drives for /home and /usr/local sometime down the line. Now to get the SCSI drive(s) setup with RAID on boot. John

Oct. 6, 2003

Re: What mix of distros to learn with? Please evaluate..

by Bob George

"Brian McLinden" <blm987(a)yahoo.com> wrote: > Newbie here. I am purchasing a system to learn Linux with by multi-booting. [...] Brian, To what end? Are you interested on a personal geek-toy level, or do you see this as a career enhancment? Are you most interested in ease-of-use and features for end-users, or as a network/system administrator? Do you want to develop software, or stricly use end-user apps? Each distribution has relative strenghts and weaknesses in each of these areas. If yuo're trying to replace your Windows desktop, you'll have different priorities than if you're trying to learn "Enterprise" systems support. > [...] > I want to learn with diverse systems that are easy to modify/reconfigure/ > maintain/upgrade after the box arrives. Would you say this a good mix of > distros fo initial learning purposes, or would you suggest I consider another > mix or approach--and why? I would second Matt's recommendations to pick one first (few are "bad"), and get familiar with it before going all-out. I started with RedHat as my first serious Linux distribution, then, after I understood why I didn't like some RedHat conventions, had a much better idea of what I really wanted. I finally settled on Debian, but the bulk of the RedHat experience still applied. - Bob

Oct. 6, 2003

REMINDER: Upcoming meeting Thursday Oct 9th

by Andy Stewart

Hi everybody, Our next WLUG meeting is coming up soon. This e-mail is a friendly reminder of that fact. This meeting will be held in a totally new location on the WPI Campus in Worcester, MA USA. The location is called the "Access Grid" room, and it is located in the "lower wedge" of Morgan Hall. Detailed directions appear on the recently updated WLUG website. I'll try to post a few of my penguin signs to guide you. I'm told that this room has some great projection equipment and can hold approx. 20-25 people without a problem. At this meeting, Doug Waud will talk about and demonstrate some genealogical Linux software called Lifelines. As I don't expect this to take the entire duration of the meeting, I'll also bring my laptop and demonstrate XFce version 4, a lightweight desktop for Linux. In addition, I was asked to spend a few minutes describing a couple of commands for the new Linux users of the group. We can also explore the capabilities of the new meeting room and make plans for its use at future meetings. After the meeting, we'll go out for pizza and beer at the Boynton Restaurant. See ya later! Andy -- Andy Stewart, Founder Worcester Linux Users' Group Worcester, MA USA http://www.wlug.org

Oct. 6, 2003

Re: [Wlug] What mix of distros to learn with? Please evaluate..

by Walt Sawyer

I use Red Hat version 9. With the execption of a couple of screen savers giving me trouble, I have found it to be stable and easy to use. I signed up on the Red Hat Network for $60./year and the updates are easily installed before the news is released. I bought the distro at a computer show last April, and installed it on a box with a P2 cpu, 128mB RAM, 6gig HD. It's slow sometimes (like with a big job from the GIMP), but for the most part, I have been satisfied with it. Walt [image] [image] [image] Walt Sawyer wsawyer(a)norfolk-county.com On Sat, 2003-10-04 at 08:57, Matt Higgins wrote: > Brian, > > > I would start by getting used to one distro before venturing out. If you are not > familiar with Linux/UNIX at all there will be a steep learning curve before you > build up your command line vocabulary. With that said I think RH is a great > starter distro. The installer is one of the best, and for someone new to Linux > rpm's are the best way to get you where you want fast (rpmfind is your friend). > > Matt > > > _______________________________________________ > Wlug mailing list > Wlug(a)mail.wlug.org > http://mail.wlug.org/mailman/listinfo/wlug >

Oct. 5, 2003