- WLUG - wlug.mailman3.com

Re: Old hardware

by doug waud

Hi all When I first saw that "Old Hardware" juxtaposed to "Keith Wright" I thought I should point out I am still older. And isn't the term "wetware"? Keith Wright wrote: > You're my kind of guy. This would maybe be better as a reply > to someone else, but I'de rather talk to someone who doesn't > think 12Mb of RAM is too small to bother with. Keith, I have always wondered how much memory you have on your abacus. I am always amazed you can get emacs to run on it! :-) doug

Oct. 4, 2003

Re: [Wlug] what size/speed combo to use for a dual SCSI system?

by Matt Higgins

Brian, If you are just using this as a workstation the SCSI disks may be a bit of overkill. Don't get me wrong large reads will be fast but for the most part you will be working in a shell, vi/emacs, browsing the web, etc.. none of these operations are disk intensive. If you are interested in data integrity you could save your self a few hundred bucks and get 2 120GB IDE disks put them on different channels and use Linux to do a software mirror. RH9 will allow you to set this up at install time. If you are interested in general speed improvement I would look at bus and cpu clocks with a focus on the ram bus. It sounds like you have money to spend, you may also want to look at an SATA Intel 865 board. This board offers dual channel DDR RAM slots, SATA and regular ATA, go with the 3GHz HT cpu. Looks like any way you go you will have a screamer! Matt

Oct. 4, 2003

Re: [Wlug] what size/speed combo to use for a dual SCSI system?

by Andy Stewart

On Saturday 04 October 2003 7:57 am, Brian McLinden wrote: > Hello -- I'm new here, and hoping to meet many of you soon! > > I want to multi-boot and play with three distros for a machine that would > most likely always be a workstation, not a server. It would be for > numerical work and not involve large or many audio or video files. > > It happens that the smaller the SCSI drive, the better the performance, and > of course the smallest, fastest sizes available for SCSI are 18G and 32G. > > I'm planning to buy a matched pair of drives in order to spread the > partitions for each distro across the two drives. > > Two questions: > > 1. I'd like to use use 2x18, but in your opinion, do I need 2x32? HI Brian, I admire your zeal ! :-) I run SCSI drives in my systems at home. It is true that SCSI drives have better performance at higher cost relative to IDE. It is also true that a drive spinning at 10-15K rpms has an acoustic quality which my ears don't like. I don't think most people need 18 GB of disk space, but that's what is sold today. Folks who consume large amounts of disk space are typically saving alot of videos, mp3s, and pictures. > 2. Do you think 15000 rpm will be noticeably snappier than 10000 rpm? For your purposes, probably not. In a server environment with a large number of users, most definitely. Save a few bucks and get the U160 drives as they are trying to sell those off to make room for the (new) U320 drives. Your SCSI controller would be cheaper, too, if you did that. Later, Andy -- Andy Stewart, Founder Worcester Linux Users' Group Worcester, MA USA http://www.wlug.org

Oct. 4, 2003

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

by Andy Stewart

On Saturday 04 October 2003 7:27 am, Brian McLinden wrote: > Hi all, > > Newbie here. I am purchasing a system to learn Linux with by multi-booting. > The three distros I'm thinking of having the vendor pre-install are: > > - Slackware 9.1 > - Libranet 2.8.1 (a commercial Debian from Canada) > - some RPM approach (which of RH, Suse, or Mandrake would you > go with? why?) > > 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? Hi Brian, I happen to like SuSE Linux. It is an RPM based distribution which comes on 7 CDs and 1 DVD for approx. $75 for the professional edition. It has its own graphical system administration tool called YaST. I find it easy to install and operate. The company is based in Germany and SuSE is a top distribution in that part of the world. Version 9.0 is coming out near the end of October. It occurs to me that having 3 distros installed simultaneously on a computer is a bit unusual. There would have to be alot of disk partitions to support this (a minimum of 7, one shared swap, 3xboot/root). As a newbie, be careful of this, as it is complexity not normally seen. Later, Andy -- Andy Stewart, Founder Worcester Linux Users' Group Worcester, MA USA http://www.wlug.org

Oct. 4, 2003

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

by Matt Higgins

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

Oct. 4, 2003

what size/speed combo to use for a dual SCSI system?

by Brian McLinden

Hello -- I'm new here, and hoping to meet many of you soon! I want to multi-boot and play with three distros for a machine that would most likely always be a workstation, not a server. It would be for numerical work and not involve large or many audio or video files. It happens that the smaller the SCSI drive, the better the performance, and of course the smallest, fastest sizes available for SCSI are 18G and 32G. I'm planning to buy a matched pair of drives in order to spread the partitions for each distro across the two drives. Two questions: 1. I'd like to use use 2x18, but in your opinion, do I need 2x32? 2. Do you think 15000 rpm will be noticeably snappier than 10000 rpm? Thanks all, Brian 752-3033 anytime __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? SBC Yahoo! DSL - Now only $29.95 per month! http://sbc.yahoo.com

Oct. 4, 2003

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

by Brian McLinden

Hi all, Newbie here. I am purchasing a system to learn Linux with by multi-booting. The three distros I'm thinking of having the vendor pre-install are: - Slackware 9.1 - Libranet 2.8.1 (a commercial Debian from Canada) - some RPM approach (which of RH, Suse, or Mandrake would you go with? why?) 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? Thank you all, Brian __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? The New Yahoo! Shopping - with improved product search http://shopping.yahoo.com

Oct. 4, 2003

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

by Matt Higgins

> Thanks for your comments Matt, you make alot of good points, though I > must admit that having a package management system without > dependencies isn't an ideal state of affairs. Of course, having > dependencies which you can't override is also not a good thing > either. :] I may get jeers for promoting BSD on a Linux list but if you want good package management with dependency checks the only way to go these days is *BSD ports tree. My forward facing boxen all run OpenBSD. When I need an update I simply run cvs upd; make; make install. Granted these ports trees are limited in size and you may have trouble getting Gramps to compile but it works. If you have a box ripe for a packet filter or file server you may want to give one the *BSD's a try. > > 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. I agree that the old way is just that old! I clearly see the utility in using the sysV init its much more flexible, but if you are just running a desktop and starting a small number of services the old way is just fine. Further more Slackware provides support for the new way as well. > > I also remember getting a copy of Slackware way back in 93 or so, but > since I had an Amiga back then, I was never able to play with it and > test it out. I probably missed the boat back then. *grin* Amiga sweet! I always wanted an Amiga, I had a C64 and C128. > > Thanks to all who have contributed, it's been a good discussion. > > John When you do make your decition tell us what you chose and why ? It would be interesting to read. Of course I hope you chose Slackware! > > _______________________________________________ > Wlug mailing list > Wlug(a)mail.wlug.org > http://mail.wlug.org/mailman/listinfo/wlug > >

Oct. 3, 2003

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

by John Stoffel

Matt> Slackware is my distro of choice. I am a sysadmin recently turn Matt> developer and find Slackware to be a very complete package. Thanks for your comments Matt, you make alot of good points, though I must admit that having a package management system without dependencies isn't an ideal state of affairs. Of course, having dependencies which you can't override is also not a good thing either. :] 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. I also remember getting a copy of Slackware way back in 93 or so, but since I had an Amiga back then, I was never able to play with it and test it out. I probably missed the boat back then. *grin* Thanks to all who have contributed, it's been a good discussion. John

Oct. 3, 2003

RE: [Wlug] Foxtrot cartoon in Worcester T&G

by Karl Hiramoto

http://www.ucomics.com/foxtrot/index.phtml On Fri, 3 Oct 2003, Simoncini, Matthew wrote: > Sorry if you don't accept attachments: > > <<...OLE_Obj...>> > > Matthew > > > -----Original Message----- > > From: Keith Wright [mailto:kwright@free-comp-shop.com] > > Sent: Friday, October 03, 2003 3:40 PM > > To: Worcester Linux User's Group > > Subject: [Wlug] Foxtrot cartoon in Worcester T&G > > > > > > Or any where else you can find it. > > > > It goes like: > > > > Large blackboard, small boy, stern teacher: > > > > Blackboard: > > #include <stdio.h> > > int main(void) > > { int k; > > for (k=1;k<=500;k++) > > printf("I will not throw paper airplanes in class"); > > return(0); > > } > > > > Boy: Holds chalk. > > > > Teacher: Nice try. > > > > _______________________________________________ > > Wlug mailing list > > Wlug(a)mail.wlug.org > > http://mail.wlug.org/mailman/listinfo/wlug > > > > > _______________________________________________ > Wlug mailing list > Wlug(a)mail.wlug.org > http://mail.wlug.org/mailman/listinfo/wlug > -- ¤º°`°º¤ø,¸¸,ø¤º°`°º¤ø,¸¸,ø¤º°`°º¤ø,¸¸,ø¤º°`°º¤ø,¸¸,ø¤º°`°º¤ø Karl Hiramoto <karl(a)hiramoto.org> Work: 978-425-2090 ext 25 Cell: 508-517-4819 http://karl.hiramoto.org/ AOL IM ID = KarlH420 Yahoo_IM = karl_hiramoto ¤º°`°º¤ø,¸¸,ø¤º°`°º¤ø,¸¸,ø¤º°`°º¤ø,¸¸,ø¤º°`°º¤ø,¸¸,ø¤º°`°º¤ø Q: How can you tell when a Burroughs salesman is lying? A: When his lips move.

Oct. 3, 2003

RE: [Wlug] Foxtrot cartoon in Worcester T&G

by Simoncini, Matthew

Sorry if you don't accept attachments: <<...OLE_Obj...>> Matthew > -----Original Message----- > From: Keith Wright [mailto:kwright@free-comp-shop.com] > Sent: Friday, October 03, 2003 3:40 PM > To: Worcester Linux User's Group > Subject: [Wlug] Foxtrot cartoon in Worcester T&G > > > Or any where else you can find it. > > It goes like: > > Large blackboard, small boy, stern teacher: > > Blackboard: > #include <stdio.h> > int main(void) > { int k; > for (k=1;k<=500;k++) > printf("I will not throw paper airplanes in class"); > return(0); > } > > Boy: Holds chalk. > > Teacher: Nice try. > > _______________________________________________ > Wlug mailing list > Wlug(a)mail.wlug.org > http://mail.wlug.org/mailman/listinfo/wlug >

Oct. 3, 2003

Foxtrot cartoon in Worcester T&G

by Keith Wright

Or any where else you can find it. It goes like: Large blackboard, small boy, stern teacher: Blackboard: #include <stdio.h> int main(void) { int k; for (k=1;k<=500;k++) printf("I will not throw paper airplanes in class"); return(0); } Boy: Holds chalk. Teacher: Nice try.

Oct. 3, 2003

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

by Keith Wright

> From: Karl Hiramoto <karl(a)zoop.org> > > > for the last few years. I've been running a 486SX-25 with 8M RAM and > 100M HD here at my work as a print server. I rescued the box from a > pile of garbage. I'm running slackware 3.6 with a 2.0.39 kernel > though. Just setup samba and lpd to do the printing. The machine has > excellent reliability. > > These old boxes work fine for print servers, routers, firewalls, > > Old machines work great to for automation of real world things. Set a > voltage, read a voltage, set bit, clear bit control applications. You're my kind of guy. This would maybe be better as a reply to someone else, but I'de rather talk to someone who doesn't think 12Mb of RAM is too small to bother with. To those thinking of upgrading old hardware to a newer RedHat: Although I can't find any documentation of the fact anywhere, (the 'hardware requirements' section of the manual talks about disk space but not RAM), I know from hard experience that RH9.0 flatly refuses to install on 32MB and works only after giving you some backtalk on 64MB. It says something like "You lamer, if you won't give me a better machine, I'm going to turn on swapping bfore installing a boot sector, and trash anything you might have had on this disk. Then maybe I'll reboot". Why can't kids these days copy a 12K file in less than 16M? I don't know, but suspect that it has to do with making the install process "easier" by sending a human wave at it. Now nobody can say Overwrite partition table (y/n)? without first installing the X window, GtK, CORBA, Qt, Python, and Perl. -- Keith

Oct. 3, 2003

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

by gboyce＠badbelly.com

Old boxes are great for low CPU jobs, as long as you don't take it too far. Eventually, even machines that run fine for their purposes can be a drain on resources. I've been trying to get my girlfriend's dad to retire this box for a while now: exponent:~$ cat /proc/cpuinfo processor : 0 cpu : 386 model : unknown vendor_id : unknown stepping : unknown fdiv_bug : no hlt_bug : no f00f_bug : no fpu : yes fpu_exception : no cpuid : no wp : no flags : bogomips : 4.39 exponent:~$ free -m total used free shared buffers cached Mem: 6 6 0 4 0 2 -/+ buffers: 3 3 Swap: 34 2 32 GCC/Glibc/other utilities and libraries are so old on this thing that cross compiling for it is difficult at best, and building large packages directly on it take forever. These days, you can get low end pentium's for cheap and/or free, so there's no real point in keeping 386/486 machines around except for the geek factor of it. On Fri, 3 Oct 2003, Karl Hiramoto wrote: > for the last few years. I've been running a 486SX-25 with 8M RAM and > 100M HD here at my work as a print server. I rescued the box from a > pile of garbage. I'm running slackware 3.6 with a 2.0.39 kernel > though. Just setup samba and lpd to do the printing. The machine has > excellent reliability. > > These old boxes work fine for print servers, routers, firewalls, > > Old machines work great to for automation of real world things. Set a > voltage, read a voltage, set bit, clear bit control applications. > > here is the box: > #df > Filesystem 1024-blocks Used Available Capacity Mounted on > /dev/hda2 97271 83435 8813 90% / > > # cat /proc/cpuinfo > processor : 0 > cpu : 486 > model : Cx486 > vendor_id : CyrixInstead > stepping : unknown, core/bus clock ratio: unknownx > fdiv_bug : no > hlt_bug : no > f00f_bug : no > fpu : no > fpu_exception : no > cpuid : no > wp : yes > flags : > bogomips : 4.71 > > # free > total used free shared buffers > cached > Mem: 6684 6300 384 4500 1960 > 2200 > -/+ buffers/cache: 2140 4544 > Swap: 16432 536 15896 > > >

Oct. 3, 2003

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

by Matt Higgins

Slackware is my distro of choice. I am a sysadmin recently turn developer and find Slackware to be a very complete package. Some note able points are that its tgz packages are quite simple. There is no dependency checking built into them which is good for me because I like to build some things and rpm/tgz others and I am not stuck with only using the package manager to install software when I need an update. Slackware also comes with a tool to convert rpms to tgz so you can grab your fav rpms and install them on your Slackware box as tgz's. In production env's I have always exported /usr/local and managed pages with stow. Being a sysadmin the 1st place I go to on any distro is the etc dir. Slackware uses old style bsd rc scripts for startup which are all well documented and easy to read. You can also use the more recent sys V init.d if you chose. Network config is also done through the rc.d init scripts and they are all well documented with examples and comments. I find this much cleaner then the nasty poorly documented /etc/sysconfig/* mess you see with RedHat that requires the use of a set of broken Python scripts to manage it. They also use a nice rc script to manage module loading as well so you will never get screwed when modutils changes its format or reads a new config file which it has done at every major Linux release i.e. 2.2, 2.4 and now 2.6. The installer is dated compared to the likes of many graphical installs but it does the job just fine. It is not nearly as painful as the Debian installer. But no where near as good as RH. The latest version of Slackware 9.1 which I recently installed on my laptop has all the features and support you see in every other major distro with a few extras. 9.1 comes with the 2.4.22, jdk(I am a Java guy), 2.6 kernel ready(this means updated modutils etc..), GNOME 2.4, (not your favorite desktop but it has become much more responsive and less memory intensive with this release), XFce, WindowMaker, etc... You can chose resier or ext2/3 at install and supports xfs and jfs. Latest GTK. No need to update ssh yet! as it ships w/ the latest. So thats my Slackware advertisement. To be fair there are advantages and disadvantage to any distro and if you are out to try something new give Slackware a try. Matt

Oct. 3, 2003

Re: [Wlug] Picking a distro

by Josh Huber

"John Stoffel" <stoffel(a)lucent.com> writes: > I like apt too so far, but searching for packages seems to have been > a bit painful. That is until I learned about the -a flag to > apt-show-versions, but since I haven't read my about the apt-get > philosophy, I've probably just missed something. Your problem is you are not using apt-cache. apt-cache search <keyword> <keyword> ... ...will search package names and descriptions for all available packages. apt-cache show <package> will show the description for any available package, and other information (dependencies, etc) After you've used it a couple times, you'll really like it :) > Josh> Use the bf2.4 installer -- it will install a 2.4 kernel by > Josh> default. > > Hmmm... any examples? Is this part of the 3.0 CDROM image? According to the manual, CD 5 boots the bf2.4 image. Do you have the official cdroms, or your own? You should be able to find a netinst image online as well. (minimal cdrom installer, which expect to install the rest of the system from the internet) Here are netinst images for testing: http://gluck.debian.org/cdimage/testing/netinst/ -- Josh Huber

Oct. 3, 2003

Passwd/shadow problem with RH 7.X

by dibb_jim＠emc.com

I've resurrected a linux box that had RH7.something installed, current kernel is 2.8.18. Anyway, the user accounts (all one of them) I had setup before work fine. I can't for the life of me add a new one though, because the password doesn't seem to be getting handled correctly. When I do 'useradd -g mailer -p test mynewuser', an entry ends up in /etc/shadow that looks like mynewuser:test:...... In other words the cleartext password is in the shadow file. I can't change it or log in. If I specify no password (no -p) it doesn't work either. I've run the pwconv program, nothing seems to help. Any clues? I played with this for two hours and couldn't make any sense of it. I did find an article on line where someone had the same symptoms and pwconv fixed it, but I can't make it work. Thanks. Jim - lurker for years, but hope to contribute more.

Oct. 3, 2003

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

by John Stoffel

Charles> Well, Red Hat 9 meets all your requirements above, except the Charles> one that says you don't want Red Hat :) You didn't give any Charles> good reason why you wanted to stay away from Red Hat other Charles> than you "want to change try to stay away from GNOME". Well, Charles> Red Hat 9 has KDE too, and you can always get WindowMaker, Charles> Blackbox, Fluxbox, XFCE, or something else if you want a Charles> ligher weight GUI. http://freshrpms.net/ is a good place to Charles> find such addons. Well, part of it has been that I've been using it for so long, it seems like I should try something new and see how that goes. Another issue is that I haven't been wild about some of the system configuration tools they provide, but it's not a big deal. I dunno, it's more of an urge to do something else, not a true desire to move off. Also, I have noticed that alot of packages are still staying with 7.3 or 8, and that 9 hasn't seemed to be as popular. Hard to tell... Charles> The Red Hat Linux distro that we all know an love <g> is Charles> turning into the Fedora Core community supported and Charles> developed distro. Its direction, shape, package selection, Charles> etc. will be very much driven by what the community wants. Charles> In this way, it will be more like the Debian Project, which I Charles> believe will alleviate some of the reservations people may Charles> have had about using Red Hat in the past. E.g. WindowMaker Charles> and those other GUIs will be able to come back into the Charles> distro if the community desires it. Charles> Fedora Core will also support apt-get, yum, and up2date with Charles> third party repositories of software. This will include Charles> Fedora Core itself, updates, Fedora Extras, Fedora Charles> Alternatives, and Fedora Legacy (for those who want an older, Charles> more stable distro to be supported for a longer time). See Charles> http://fedora.redhat.com/ for more info about the project. But none of this exists right now, and I want to rebuild my system this weekend if I can. :] Of course, nothing says I can't play with this stuff later one. Also, some of the rpmbuild and rpm commands have really ticked me off, since I consider the syntax and errors messages to be really baroque and unhelpful. Especially when trying to build a SRPM package, and it dies for no frigging obvious reason. And since I'm planning a fresh install, I've got the Debian and RH9 disks to play with. So maybe I'll just go with Debian for now and see how it goes long term. Thanks for the input. John

Oct. 3, 2003

Re: [Wlug] Picking a distro

by John Stoffel

Josh> Anything in particular? Just curious. I suspect I'm one of Josh> those people who is really used to how APT works, so I like it a Josh> lot. I like apt too so far, but searching for packages seems to have been a bit painful. That is until I learned about the -a flag to apt-show-versions, but since I haven't read my about the apt-get philosophy, I've probably just missed something. Josh> Are you not aware of the apt-cache command? Nope, nor have I used it. Josh> Use the bf2.4 installer -- it will install a 2.4 kernel by Josh> default. Hmmm... any examples? Is this part of the 3.0 CDROM image? Josh> Well, I would recommend using Debian/unstable (unless testing Josh> has new enough packages for you), if you want to play with the Josh> newest software. I may be biased, however, :) I'm leaning towards debian unstable, if only because apt-get has been useful and simple once I've learned more about it. John

Oct. 3, 2003

Re: [Wlug] Picking a distro

by Josh Huber

"John Stoffel" <stoffel(a)lucent.com> writes: > I've been playing with Debian 3.0 (stable -> unstable -> testing > (for XFree86 4.3)) on a laptop, and while I like apt, and how well > it does for getting packages and setting them up, it's not perfect > either. Part of that might just be getting used to how it works, > and of course used to how apt works. Anything in particular? Just curious. I suspect I'm one of those people who is really used to how APT works, so I like it a lot. > Finding packages can be a pain at times... Are you not aware of the apt-cache command? > and I'm annoyed it installs a 2.2.x kernel by default. They're > slipping behind the times I feel. Use the bf2.4 installer -- it will install a 2.4 kernel by default. > [snip stuff about using the latest software] > So, what do you all think is the next best distro to go with now? Well, I would recommend using Debian/unstable (unless testing has new enough packages for you), if you want to play with the newest software. I may be biased, however, :) -- Josh Huber

Oct. 3, 2003

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

by Charles R. Anderson

On Fri, Oct 03, 2003 at 09:43:09AM -0400, John Stoffel wrote: stoffel> So, what do you all think is the next best distro to go with now? Well, Red Hat 9 meets all your requirements above, except the one that says you don't want Red Hat :) You didn't give any good reason why you wanted to stay away from Red Hat other than you "want to change try to stay away from GNOME". Well, Red Hat 9 has KDE too, and you can always get WindowMaker, Blackbox, Fluxbox, XFCE, or something else if you want a ligher weight GUI. http://freshrpms.net/ is a good place to find such addons. The Red Hat Linux distro that we all know an love <g> is turning into the Fedora Core community supported and developed distro. Its direction, shape, package selection, etc. will be very much driven by what the community wants. In this way, it will be more like the Debian Project, which I believe will alleviate some of the reservations people may have had about using Red Hat in the past. E.g. WindowMaker and those other GUIs will be able to come back into the distro if the community desires it. Fedora Core will also support apt-get, yum, and up2date with third party repositories of software. This will include Fedora Core itself, updates, Fedora Extras, Fedora Alternatives, and Fedora Legacy (for those who want an older, more stable distro to be supported for a longer time). See http://fedora.redhat.com/ for more info about the project. -- Charles R. Anderson <cra(a)wpi.edu> / http://angus.ind.wpi.edu/~cra/ PGP Key ID: 49BB5886 Fingerprint: EBA3 A106 7C93 FA07 8E15 3AC2 C367 A0F9 49BB 5886

Oct. 3, 2003

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

by Karl Hiramoto

for the last few years. I've been running a 486SX-25 with 8M RAM and 100M HD here at my work as a print server. I rescued the box from a pile of garbage. I'm running slackware 3.6 with a 2.0.39 kernel though. Just setup samba and lpd to do the printing. The machine has excellent reliability. These old boxes work fine for print servers, routers, firewalls, Old machines work great to for automation of real world things. Set a voltage, read a voltage, set bit, clear bit control applications. here is the box: #df Filesystem 1024-blocks Used Available Capacity Mounted on /dev/hda2 97271 83435 8813 90% / # cat /proc/cpuinfo processor : 0 cpu : 486 model : Cx486 vendor_id : CyrixInstead stepping : unknown, core/bus clock ratio: unknownx fdiv_bug : no hlt_bug : no f00f_bug : no fpu : no fpu_exception : no cpuid : no wp : yes flags : bogomips : 4.71 # free total used free shared buffers cached Mem: 6684 6300 384 4500 1960 2200 -/+ buffers/cache: 2140 4544 Swap: 16432 536 15896 On Fri, 3 Oct 2003, 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. > > 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.? > > Thanks, > > - Bob > > > _______________________________________________ > Wlug mailing list > Wlug(a)mail.wlug.org > http://mail.wlug.org/mailman/listinfo/wlug > -- ¤º°`°º¤ø,¸¸,ø¤º°`°º¤ø,¸¸,ø¤º°`°º¤ø,¸¸,ø¤º°`°º¤ø,¸¸,ø¤º°`°º¤ø Karl Hiramoto <karl(a)hiramoto.org> Work: 978-425-2090 ext 25 Cell: 508-517-4819 http://karl.hiramoto.org/ AOL IM ID = KarlH420 Yahoo_IM = karl_hiramoto ¤º°`°º¤ø,¸¸,ø¤º°`°º¤ø,¸¸,ø¤º°`°º¤ø,¸¸,ø¤º°`°º¤ø,¸¸,ø¤º°`°º¤ø And they shall beat their swords into plowshares, for if you hit a man with a plowshare, he's going to know he's been hit.

Oct. 3, 2003

(OT) HP 49G graphing calculator

by Karl Hiramoto

Sorry a litte off topic, but i'm guessing there are some engineers on here who might like the HP cacluators. I'm looking for someplace local to buy a HP49G calculator. I need it fast, so i can't order online. Anyone have ideas? thanks -- ¤º°`°º¤ø,¸¸,ø¤º°`°º¤ø,¸¸,ø¤º°`°º¤ø,¸¸,ø¤º°`°º¤ø,¸¸,ø¤º°`°º¤ø Karl Hiramoto <karl(a)hiramoto.org> Work: 978-425-2090 ext 25 Cell: 508-517-4819 http://karl.hiramoto.org/ AOL IM ID = KarlH420 Yahoo_IM = karl_hiramoto ¤º°`°º¤ø,¸¸,ø¤º°`°º¤ø,¸¸,ø¤º°`°º¤ø,¸¸,ø¤º°`°º¤ø,¸¸,ø¤º°`°º¤ø And they shall beat their swords into plowshares, for if you hit a man with a plowshare, he's going to know he's been hit.

Oct. 3, 2003

Picking a distro (was: 1st posting: Worcester ISP? Distros? LAC?)

by John Stoffel

Hi all, I'm in the fun position of trying to figure out how I want to upgrade my main home system. It's a heavily patched and hacked together RedHat 7.2 system. I've not got a new pair of 120gb drives for /home and /usr/local (will be mirrored) and I'm ready to upgrade... but to what? As a professional SysAdmin, I'm not afraid of doing stuff by hand and hacking of stuff. As a dad of a 14 month old, I don't have time! *grin* So I'm hoping to start up a fruitful discussion here to see what other people have done in this type of situation. RedHat 9 isn't that attractive, mostly because I've been using RedHat since 5.2 and I want to change and try to stay away from GNOME since it's a slow pig resource wise. I also want to get updated in terms of GTK so I can run newer GNOME apps, like Gramps 0.9.4. I've been playing with Debian 3.0 (stable -> unstable -> testing (for XFree86 4.3)) on a laptop, and while I like apt, and how well it does for getting packages and setting them up, it's not perfect either. Part of that might just be getting used to how it works, and of course used to how apt works. Finding packages can be a pain at times... and I'm annoyed it installs a 2.2.x kernel by default. They're slipping behind the times I feel. I've also played with Gentoo about six months or so ago. Nice idea, I like the idea of emerge sync (apt-get update for debian folks) but it was also a bit crufty, though not horribly so. Maybe it's better now. I think I used 1.4rc1 or something like that. My main issue is that I want good support for my Matrox G450, USB doohickys (256mb SanDisk memory stick, CompactFlash card reader, etc), sound card (I have CS3236 builtin ISA sound, or ALS4000 PCI), and good LVM/DM support. Oh yeah, the latest libraries so I can run the latest packages like Gnumeric, OpenOffice (1.1 is nice!), etc. My RH 7.2 base is getting way too old. I'm happy to also compile and test kernels on here from time to time as well, just to try and contribute to the kernel developement with trouble reports and some hacking to keep old cards going. So, what do you all think is the next best distro to go with now? John

Oct. 3, 2003

Re: Debian question

by Bob George

"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. 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.? Thanks, - Bob

Oct. 3, 2003