
           Linux Gazette... making Linux just a little more fun!
                                      
         Copyright © 1996-98 Specialized Systems Consultants, Inc.
     _________________________________________________________________
   
                       Welcome to Linux Gazette! (tm)
     _________________________________________________________________
   
                                 Published by:
                                       
                               Linux Journal
     _________________________________________________________________
   
                                 Sponsored by:
                                       
                                   InfoMagic
                                       
                                   S.u.S.E.
                                       
                                    Red Hat
                                       
   Our sponsors make financial contributions toward the costs of
   publishing Linux Gazette. If you would like to become a sponsor of LG,
   e-mail us at sponsor@ssc.com.
   
   Linux Gazette is a non-commercial, freely available publication and
   will remain that way. Show your support by using the products of our
   sponsors and publisher. To subscribe to Linux Journal, click here.
     _________________________________________________________________
   
                             Table of Contents
                           January 1998 Issue #24
     _________________________________________________________________
   
     * The Front Page
     * The MailBag
          + Help Wanted
          + General Mail
     * More 2 Cent Tips
          + Followup to PostScript and VC Key Sequences (LG#23)
          + PostScript $0.02 follow-up
          + Yet another cheap tip
          + 2 cent tip - dosemu
          + Re: 2c Tip "Finding What You Want with find"
          + Re: Finding What You Want with find
          + Finding What You Want with find Part III
          + More on finding
          + Another way to find
          + Yet another way to find
          + A final(?) way to find
          + Re: I need some help
          + Spinning Down Unused HDs
          + LG Tips and Tricks (Netscape)
          + Easter Eggs in Netscape
          + Calculator Tip
          + Security script
          + Controlling cron.hourly
          + Syslog and ping
     * News Bytes
          + News in General
          + Software Announcements
     * The Answer Guy, by James T. Dennis
          + Netscape Mail Crashing
          + Slackware Help
          + Netscape /var/spool/USER 
          + Getting Rid of Virtual Screens
          + diald's niche
          + Upgrade to Red Hat 5.0?
          + Red Hat Linux and WABI and other things
          + Linux as a PDT
     * Quick autofs Tutorial, by Mark Nielsen
     * Buying A Laptop, by Joel Jaeggli
     * Copying Files Using Mirror, by Gerd Bavendiek
     * Linux Benchmarking: Part 3 -- Interpreting Benchmark Results, by
       André D. Balsa
     * LXNY at UNIX EXPO '97, by Michael E. Smith
     * More Adventures with SAMBA , by Dave Nelson
     * My Linux Revolution, by Ylian Saint-Hilaire & Erik Campo
     * New Release Reviews, by Larry Ayers
          + KDE and Gnome
          + Updates and Correspondence
     * Product Review: Applixware, by Gary Moore
     * A Bit About Security, by Marcus Berglund
     * The Standard C Library for Linux, Part one, by James M. Rogers
     * xscreensaver, by Jamie Zawinski
     * The Back Page
          + About This Month's Authors
          + Not Linux
       
   The Answer Guy
   The Graphics Muse will return next month.
   The Weekend Mechanic will return next month.
     _________________________________________________________________
   
   The Whole Damn Thing 1 (text)
   The Whole Damn Thing 2 (HTML)
   are files containing the entire issue: one in text format, one in
   HTML. They are provided strictly as a way to save the contents as one
   file for later printing in the format of your choice; there is no
   guarantee of working links in the HTML version.
     _________________________________________________________________
   
   Got any great ideas for improvements! Send your comments, criticisms,
   suggestions and ideas.
     _________________________________________________________________
   
   This page written and maintained by the Editor of Linux Gazette,
   gazette@ssc.com
     _________________________________________________________________
   
    "Linux Gazette...making Linux just a little more fun!"
     _________________________________________________________________
   
                                The Mailbag!
                                      
                    Write the Gazette at gazette@ssc.com
                                      
                                 Contents:
                                      
     * Help Wanted -- Article Ideas
     * General Mail
     _________________________________________________________________
   
                        Help Wanted -- Article Ideas
     _________________________________________________________________
   
   Date: Sun, 30 Nov 1997 14:08:24 +0000
   From: David Stern kotsya@mailhost2.cac.washington.edu
   Subject: Help Wanted -- Article Ideas
   
   I'm at that point in my Linux development where I'm comfortable with
   the basics, and am venturing out to learn and discover the myriad of
   alternatives which exist. While I appreciate the many alternatives, it
   can be difficult for someone with little experience to decide which
   MUA, MTA, proxy..is most suitable. When each individual must
   personally begin anew to evaluate the field, unnecessary repetion of
   efforts results and often a selection is made based on incomplete
   information. When the user later discovers a more suitable
   alternative, and possibly later another, a glutton of inefficiency
   results.
   
   On that note, I'd like to suggest "head-to-head" comparision articles
   of similar programs. A chart with columns and rows which represent the
   programs and the features would be invaluable for Linux users ranging
   from completely new to advanced, thus I would consider that a
   necessity. Optionally, different recognitions may be given for
   exceptional achievement. Notes on individual programs or categories,
   and a brief summary would probably be required.
   
   If thorough analytical evaluations were performed, this may exceed the
   resources and other imposed limitations of Linux Gazzette, but I'm not
   asking for that much depth. I'm just looking for a cursory examination
   of programs with a comparison of features in a "side-by-side" format.
   
   While I appreciate the reviews of individual programs, and enjoy the
   deeper attention which can be given, there is an ever-increasing
   number of alternatives available to the Linux user, and summary
   comparisons of programs is now a very real need, and the importance
   will only increase with time.
   
   Please consider adding a side by side summary comparison of programs
   feature article. I think this would not only make Linux Gazzette
   better than it already is, but also expand the readership. Thanks and
   sincerely,
   
   David Stern
     _________________________________________________________________
   
   Date: Fri, 28 Nov 1997 08:35:04
   From: Erwin Penders ependers@cobweb.nl
   Subject: passwd shadow convert problem
   
   I am running RedHat 4.2 with normal passwords since a couple of
   month's. Now i read the shadow-password howto and i wanted this also
   to work on my system. After reading the manual i went to a 'blank'
   redhat system with a couple of users and i ran /usr/sbin/pwconv5 and
   the shadow was up and running fine. BUT on another system (same as the
   first) but with a lot more users the pwconv5 runs but won't stop. It
   makes an empty shadow file and i have to kill pwconv5 because it isn't
   doing anything.
   
   I then copied the passwd file from the second to the first system and
   tried on the first system... and the same problem.. no shadow.
   
   Can anybody tell me what i do wrong !?
   
   Thanks everybody.
   
   Erwin Penders
     _________________________________________________________________
   
   Date: Fri, 21 Nov 1997 01:39:51
   From: Manish Oberoi oberoi@coeibm.rutgers.edu
   Subject: printing problems
   
   Anyone that can help me. I'd love to hear it. I try running the lpr,
   but everytime I get no name for local machine. How do I set this
   and/or what is the problem.
   
   Manish Oberoi
     _________________________________________________________________
   
   Date: Wed, 10 Dec 1997 20:33:38 -0800
   From: Nolan Zak nzak@uniserve.com
   Subject: Help Wanted!
   
   I'm running RH 4.2 with kernel 2.0.30 on an Intel P90, I've only been
   at this for a couple weeks so go easy on me if this is a stupid
   question. :)
   
   I'm trying to get ppp to working for dialing into my ISP, but no
   matter what I do it disconnects.
   
   Here's a small description of what is going on: I set up /dev/modem
   --> /dev/cua1 and enabled full permissions on both. Set the jumpers on
   my modem for com2, irq3. Ran setserial to setup the proper device
   settings. Re-compiled the kernel for ppp. checked my modem init
   strings.
   
   Now, no matter what I use (minicom, shell scripts, netcfg), the chat
   script goes through the proper procedure and starts up ppp on the
   server side, passes control to pppd, which connects ppp0 /dev/modem,
   and after that, the modem hangs up (within about 2 seconds).
   
   I've tried all kinds of command line args to pppd, with no luck. Can
   anyone help me out here?
   
   Later, Nolan
   
   My webpage--> http://users.uniserve.com/~nzak/welcome.htm
     _________________________________________________________________
   
   Date: Thu, 11 Dec 1997 22:20:54 -0500
   From: "atm" atm@dapa.com
   Subject: Linux and routing
   
   I have heard that you can connect a LAN to the internet via just 1
   assigned IP address. This is what I am planning on doing, however, I
   do not know how one would go about doing it, and I would like to ask
   you if you could do an article about it. (Any takers among our
   readers? --Editor)
   
   I plan on getting a cable modem soon, so the bandwidth would be pretty
   high, so that is why I have decided to try to make this connection
   provide for my whole house via a LAN connection in my home. What I
   have read is that you could use the private IPs, meaning the 10.x.x.x
   or so, 192.168.x.x and some others for the IP of the LAN and have
   these connect to some box (the LINUX box?) that would provide its
   connection to the internet to the inside LAN connected to the box. Is
   the problem that you would have to route the assigned address to the
   private IPs for the LAN use. I have also read that this would slow
   down the connection a bit or something, but that is a price I am
   willing to pay. So, the summary of the question is how would I be able
   to connect many computers to the internet via just 1 assigned IP
   address? I would like to be able to do it using my LINUX box connected
   to the internet via cable modem, and to my LAN via an Ethernet link.
   Any help is much appreciated, thanks.
     _________________________________________________________________
   
   Date: Fri, 12 Dec 1997 10:41:54 +0000
   From: John Fisher john@Atropos.apana.org.au
   Subject: Of Mouse and Men (no Cheese)
   
   A very new boy to all this I am :-)
   
   Problem--
   
   Using a 486 pc & Slackware I'm unable to use my mouse due to this
   error:
   
   Too many symbolic links encountered /dev/console
   
   Would very much apprecaite some help.
   
   Regards
   
   John Fisher
     _________________________________________________________________
   
   Date: Fri, 12 Dec 1997 09:23:14 -0500
   From: Wenhao_Meng@dadebehring.com
   Subject: try to use a 386 computer
   
   I am new in the Linux world. How new? I am so new that I have just
   ordered a Redhat release 5.0. Though this is a new world I am very
   glad I am one of you, the Linux lovers.
   
   I used to have a 386 25 MHz computer. Not long time ago I bought a
   Pentium 200 MHz computer. Since then I have not played with 386. Is
   there any easy and economical way to connect the 386 to the Pentinum
   computer where I will install the Release 5.0. If so, what I can do
   with it or at lease what I can learn from it.
   
   Thank you very much. Waiting for talking to you.
     _________________________________________________________________
   
   Date: Tue, 16 Dec 1997 08:44:15 -0700
   From: Doug Milligan doug@nwrks.com
   Subject: Help Wanted: RedHat 5.0 sound
   
   Have installed RedHat 5.0 and configured the sound card using
   sndconfig. All went well and I heard the demo sound bite of Linus.
   However, I have never heard another sound since. When browsing web
   sites with sound, no audio is played. Anyone have any ideas?
   
   Doug Milligan
     _________________________________________________________________
   
   Date: Thu, 25 Dec 1997 12:45:29 -0800 (PST)
   From: karl rossing unixb0y@yahoo.com
   Subject: LINUX AS A PDT
   
   I was wondering if it is possble to get windows 95/NT to authenticate
   to LINUX (using nis or nis+). I'm really getting tired of adding
   accounts on the nt boxes for the linux boxes (for smb)...Is there any
   commercial software availible?
   
   I know of d-sync [http://www.m-tech.ab.ca/psynch/index.html] and
   NSGINA [http://www.dcs.qmw.ac.uk/~williams/] which seems a bit of work
   to setup...
   
   I'm not really looking for passwd syncronisation, i'd like to
   consolidate it to the linux box, because the users use both
   linux/95/nt.
   
   nuff said
   
   Thanks,
   Karl Rossing
     _________________________________________________________________
   
   Date: Sun, 04 Jan 1998 23:54:37 +0100
   From: Gabriele Giansante gvgsoft@madnet.it
   Subject: Perl and HTML
   
   please pardon me for my bad english. I need help for one exam in my
   university. I have to do a script CGI in Perl and I have to recall
   with HTML. I have done all. Perl compile without errors the script but
   when I run the HTML page and choose the link to the script, I obtain
   only a list of script. Why is it? I put in the Perl script the line
   #!/usr/local/bin/perl. I know this is used to indicate the Perl
   compiler. I work on Linux RedHat 4.1 trying to execute the script with
   browser ARENA and NETSCAPE. I enjoy if you can help me. I see Linux
   Gazette now the first time and like it because I find many help on my
   questions. Pardon my english and Thank you.
     _________________________________________________________________
   
                                General Mail
     _________________________________________________________________
   
   Date: Sun, 7 Dec 1997 11:15:36 PST
   From: Marty Leisner leisner@sdsp.mc.xerox.com
   Subject: some requests
   
   When including more than a few lines of code, include a link to the
   code (i.e. the original source files).
   
   In issue 22, I had problems with the line breaks cutting and pasting a
   program from netscape into a window, saving and recompiling.
   
   Marty
     _________________________________________________________________
   
   Date: Wed, 10 Dec 1997 13:36:05 -0600 (CST)
   From: Justin Dossey dossey@ou.edu
   Subject: Help for trival problems
   
   I notice that a lot of people write the Gazette with fairly trivial
   problems that are difficult to solve via non-interactive media
   (email). I'd like to remind some and inform others of the Linux
   Internet Support Cooperative. An excerpt from the LISC home page
   (http://www.linpeople.org) says:
   
   "Since 1994, a small and somewhat foolish group of Linux system users
   and administrators have been giving free technical support for Linux
   under the name LinPeople, on Internet Relay Chat (IRC). With Linux
   being a free operating system, it only seemed appropriate to provide a
   free means of supporting it.Since 1994, a small and somewhat foolish
   group of Linux system users and administrators have been giving free
   technical support for Linux under the name LinPeople, on Internet
   Relay Chat (IRC). With Linux being a free operating system, it only
   seemed appropriate to provide a free means of supporting it."
   
   It sometimes seems to linux users with problems that no one is
   interested in helping them. They post to news and don't get a reply,
   they send email to the Gazette and feel ignored. When you have a
   problem, especially if you suspect that others might have the same,
   try LISC. With most internet-connected Linux boxen, it's just a matter
   of typing:
   
   ircii irc.linpeople.org /join #linpeople
   
   and then asking the question.
   
   The people at LISC will do what they can to solve your problem,
   teaching you about Linux at the same time.
   
   Justin Dossey
     _________________________________________________________________
   
   Date: Thu, 11 Dec 1997 06:35:00 -0500 (EST)
   From: Benjmin Lee Adamson ladamson@itd.nrl.navy.mil
   Subject: Ah... Goodstuff...
   
   I just found the Linux Gazette... I haven't read all of them yet, but
   I really dig what I've found so far... :)
   
   Really really really really goodstuff. :)
     _________________________________________________________________
   
   Date: Fri, 12 Dec 1997 01:03:04 +0100
   From: Diego Cortassa cortassa.diego@usa.net
   Subject: Netscape Hidden tips:w
   
   I saw Ivan Griffin's 'Netscape Hidden "Easter Eggs"' tip on Linux
   Gazette Issue 23 and I've got one more cool special URL:
   
   about:mozilla
   
   Read the message and take a look to the N animation while downloading
   a web page ! :-)
   
   P.S. Linux Gazette is GREAT !!!!!!!!!
   
   Diego Cortassa
     _________________________________________________________________
   
   Date: Sat, 20 Dec 1997 06:13:59 -0700
   From: Sengan Baring-Gould senganb@cyrix.com
   Subject: Loading times
   
   Hi,
   
   Thanks for the great work at linuxgazette.com. I'd like to suggest an
   improvement: that the loading does not get paused while the massive
   Linux Gazette banner at the top of the page gets loaded... it's a pain
   on a slow link.
   
   Thanks
   
   Sengan
   
     (You might try turning off the display of graphical images using
     your browser. Alternatively, you can wait a short while and then
     stop the loading. Although the graphics may be incomplete, the text
     should be there. --Editor)
     _________________________________________________________________
   
   Date: Sun, 21 Dec 1997 20:03:32 +0100
   From: Ingo Oeser ioe@informatik.tu-chemnitz.de
   Subject: Kewl new cover image
   
   The subject just says what I would like to tell you: The cover image
   (the one with "Linux Gazette" inside) really looks great!
   
   cu
   Ingo
     _________________________________________________________________
   
   Date: Tue, 30 Dec 1997 09:52:10 -0500 (EST)
   From: Kragen Sittler sittler@erim-int.com
   Subject: http://www.operasoftware.com/alt_os.html
   
   Using WinNT at work, I discovered this fabulous browser called Opera.
   It's the fastest web browser I've ever used, including Lynx, but has
   most of the features I want from Netscape. Also, it's fairly small --
   right now, my Opera process is under 5000K, even though it has six
   fairly heavy web-pages open, and the download size just grew over one
   megabyte.
   
   They're doing this funky pledge-drive thing where they ask people to
   promise to buy copies of Opera for $35 for other platforms -- Mac, Be,
   OS/2, and Linux -- before they've started developing Opera for those
   platforms. They say they haven't gotten much support from the Linux
   community -- perhaps it's because not many people have heard of them?
   
   (I learned about Opera from Borland's web pages, btw.)
   
   Kragen
     _________________________________________________________________
   
   Date: Tue, 30 Dec 1997 20:37:26 +0530
   From: Sudhir Krishnan sudhir@kaveri.tifr.res.in
   Subject: Can I help you?
   
   I have been using Linux for more than a year now. There's no other OS
   that fascinates me more than Linux! I have been programming in Linux
   using gcc. I have made my own text editor for Linux, with various
   modes for emulating emacs, vi and turbo c editor keystrokes. Also
   there are modes for C, C++ and Pascal programs so that the keywords
   are highlighted. My home page's location is:
   
   http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Pines/9147/
   
   Here I have an entire page dedicated to Linux tips and help, meant for
   the Linux newbie. There are sections regarding PPP configuration,
   kernel compilation, installation and partitioning etc. Please let me
   know if any of these could be of help in any way.
   
   regards,
   - sud -
     _________________________________________________________________
   
   Date: Wed, 31 Dec 1997 14:23:26 PST
   From: Marty Leisner leisner@sdsp.mc.xerox.com
   Subject: Troff/Tex debate
   
   I read Andrew Young's (aty@mintaka.sdsu.edu) letter in December, then
   read Larry Ayers Issue 22 column...
   
   I take issue with two of Larry's statements: "Groff is the epitome of
   the non-user-friendly and cryptic unix command-line tool." Larry also
   says: "Learning to use Groff on a Linux system might be an uphill
   battle, though Linux software developers must have learned enough of
   it at one time or other, as most programs come with Groff-tagged
   man-page files. Groff's apparent opacity and difficulty make LaTeX
   look easy in contrast!"
   
   I'm not sure LaTeX is an improvement in these areas. I've used troff
   for over 10 years and recently started to use LaTeX (in fact, many
   times LaTeX is far more obscure then troff). And there are a few
   features in LaTeX I miss (like:
   
   .sy stat \n(.F | fgrep Change >change.time .so change.time .sy rm
   change.time
   
   to get the document time into the document (as opposed to the "TeX"
   time, or having to manually change the date, which is invariably
   wrong. I have a makefile which puts this in a file, then includes the
   file)
   
   The biggest problem is the lack of reference materials for troff. I've
   used Unix Text Processing (Dougherty/O'Reilly) which Andrew
   mentions...I've never seen or heard of the other book...
   
   There are some references for troff/pic/indexing tools on:
   http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/cstr.html (including the one mentioned
   later) There are also good papers on troff in: 4.4BSD User's
   Supplementary Documents (I'm not sure which ones can be redistributed
   and which ones are only in the book).
   
   FYI, from Eric Raymond's online jargon file: :troff:: /T'rof/ or
   /trof/ /n./ [Unix] The gray eminence of Unix text processing; a
   formatting and phototypesetting program, written originally in PDP-11
   assembler and then in barely-structured early C by the late Joseph
   Ossanna, modeled after the earlier ROFF which was in turn modeled
   after Multics' RUNOFF by Jerome Saltzer (*that* name came from the
   expression "to run off a copy"). A companion program, {nroff}, formats
   output for terminals and line printers.
   
   In 1979, Brian Kernighan modified troff so that it could drive
   phototypesetters other than the Graphic Systems CAT. His paper
   describing that work ("A Typesetter-independent troff," AT&T CSTR #97)
   explains troff's durability. After discussing the program's "obvious
   deficiencies -- a rebarbative input syntax, mysterious and
   undocumented properties in some areas, and a voracious appetite for
   computer resources" and noting the ugliness and extreme hairiness of
   the code and internals, Kernighan concludes:
   
     None of these remarks should be taken as denigrating Ossanna's
     accomplishment with TROFF. It has proven a remarkably robust tool,
     taking unbelievable abuse from a variety of preprocessors and being
     forced into uses that were never conceived of in the original
     design, all with considerable grace under fire.
     
   The success of {{TeX}} and desktop publishing systems have reduced
   `troff''s relative importance, but this tribute perfectly captures the
   strengths that secured `troff' a place in hacker folklore; indeed, it
   could be taken more generally as an indication of those qualities of
   good programs that, in the long run, hackers most admire.
   
   marty
     _________________________________________________________________
   
   Date: Fri, 02 Jan 1998 15:33:15 +0100
   From: Wolfgang Laun Wolfgang Laun@aut.alcatel.at
   Subject: Linux Gazette/GNU/Linux Benchmarking
   
   A recent LG article by André Balsa on benchmarking provided
   interesting material to me.
   
   Having a little experience with benchmarks myself (some of it while
   checking optimizing efforts myself on a compiler) I have found that
   caching on Intel CPUs can significantly distort results. In the first
   part you mention that caching can be disabled via the BIOS setup. If
   you write your own benchmarks (or have the source), you could also
   consider using the pertaining CPU instructions, easily inserted using
   gcc's _asm_. This could be used to keep caching up while running the
   code you want to measure and to flush between cycles, in order not to
   "carry over" a cache bonus from the previous iteration.
   
   Wolfgang
     _________________________________________________________________
   
             Published in Linux Gazette Issue 24, January 1998
     _________________________________________________________________
   
   [ TABLE OF CONTENTS ] [ FRONT PAGE ] Next 
   
      This page written and maintained by the Editor of Linux Gazette,
      gazette@ssc.com
      Copyright © 1998 Specialized Systems Consultants, Inc.
     _________________________________________________________________
   
    "Linux Gazette...making Linux just a little more fun! "
     _________________________________________________________________
   
                               More 2¢ Tips!
                                      
               Send Linux Tips and Tricks to gazette@ssc.com 
     _________________________________________________________________
   
  Contents:
  
     * Followup to PostScript and VC Key Sequences (LG#23)
     * PostScript $0.02 follow-up
     * Yet another cheap tip
     * 2 cent tip - dosemu
     * Re: 2c Tip "Finding What You Want with find"
     * Re: Finding What You Want with find
     * Finding What You Want with find Part III
     * More on finding
     * Another way to find
     * Yet another way to find
     * A final(?) way to find
     * Re: I need some help
     * Spinning Down Unused HDs
     * LG Tips and Tricks (Netscape)
     * Easter Eggs in Netscape
     * Calculator Tip
     * Security script
     * Controlling cron.hourly
     * Syslog and ping
     _________________________________________________________________
   
  Followup to PostScript and VC Key Sequences (LG#23)
  
   Date: Thu, 4 Dec 1997 16:43:47 +0000 (GMT)
   From: Ivan Griffin ivan.griffin@ul.ie
   
   I just wanted to point out that some of my 2cent tips in Issue 23 of
   the Linux Gazettte (December, 1997) were a little funky in their
   appearance.
   
   While it doesn't really matter at all with the VC key sequences, it
   may affect someone's understanding of the bad (imho) PostScript
   generated by the Microsoft PS driver.
   
   In this, the PostScript should have been pre-formatted using the
   appropriate HTML tags. Basically, the line

    30000 VM?

   Is on its own, and not part of any other line. All that you have to do
   to remove this artificial restriction on viewing/converting the
   PostScript with ghostscript is to delete this line.
   
   On another note, someone asked me where those key sequences come from.
   If you check either keyboard.c or keyb_m68k.c, you will find an array
   of function pointers called spec_fn_table[].
   
   This array contains a list of functions to execute when certain key
   combinations are received... The key combinations listed in the 2cent
   tips execute the functions show_state(), show_mem() and show_regs()
   
   You will find the source for function show_state() in
   /usr/src/linux/kernel/sched.c
   
   show_mem() is in /usr/src/linux/arch/i386/mm/init.c
   
   and show_regs() is in /usr/src/linux/arch/i386/kernel/process.c
   
   Best Regards,
   Ivan.
     _________________________________________________________________
   
  PostScript $0.02 follow-up
  
   Date: Wed, 3 Dec 1997 13:51:48 -0500 (EST)
   From: Kyle Ferrio kbf@phy.duke.edu
   
   In the December issue of LG, Ivan Griffin suggests using pstops from
   the psutils package to accomplish two-up printing, gives a helpful
   example for A4 paper, and points out that the command line needs to be
   tweaked for US letter. If you're using US letter paper, then psnup
   (also part of psutils) already does the job nicely with no
   uncomfortable thinking. It might even work for A4, but I haven't
   checked. The psutils are generally very handy, so folks might want to
   have a look. An RPM is available in /contrib at ftp.redhat.com, for
   instance. Be advised that there seem to be at least two very distinct
   packages called psutils floating around Net-space.
     _________________________________________________________________
   
  Yet another cheap tip.
  
   Date: Sun, 30 Nov 1997 03:48:40 -0800 (PST)
   From: Gary Johnson gjohnson@season.com
   
   Sorry if it has been mentioned before, I thought I would throw it in
   the Gazette pile just in case it hasn't . . .
   
   Cat proof keyboard.
   
   Switching to an unused virtual console is a quick way to blank the
   screen and disable the keyboard. To make one available try

        setterm -clear > /dev/tty12

   on startup. ALT F12 flips to it, or ALT CTRL F12 from X. Because there
   (probably) isn't a login running on that VC it doesn't do much, which
   can be a feature. A smart cat may still luck into a troublesome key
   sequence.
     _________________________________________________________________
   
  2 cent tip - dosemu
  
   Date: Fri, 5 Dec 1997 00:55:55 -0500
   From: Joey Hess joey@kitenet.net
   
   I occasionally use dosemu, mainly to run some games I can't live
   without, but I hate seeing the C:\> prompt. So I thought it'd be nice
   if there were a way to tell dosemu what dos command to run, and it
   would run that command on bootup. Here's a perl script that does just
   that. Read the comments at the top, they explain some changes you need
   to make on the dos side of this. The basic idea is, make a
   ~/dos_do.bat file, that contains the command you want to run, and use
   lredir to let dosemu see your home directory. Then run the batch file.

#!/usr/bin/perl
#
# This runs dosemu.
#
# Any parameters psecified after "--" will be passed in to dosemu to be
# run as dos commands.
#
# Setup: add to autoexec.emu:
#       lredir.com h: linux\fs\${home}
#       if exist h:\dos_do.bat call h:\dos_do.bat
#
# GPL Copyright 1996, 1997 Joey Hess

# Split params into dosemu parameters and dos commands.
while ($a=shift @ARGV) {
        if ($a=~m/--/ ne undef) { last }
        $dosemu_command_line.="$a ";
}
$dos_command_line=join(' ',@ARGV);
$dos_command_line=~s/;/\r\n/g;

open (OUT,">$ENV{HOME}/dos_do.bat") || exit print "$ENV{HOME}/dos_do.bat:
$!";
if ($dos_command_line) {
        print OUT "$dos_command_line\r\n"; # note dos CR LF
        print OUT "exitemu\r\n";
}
close OUT;
system "/usr/bin/dos $dosemu_command_line";
unlink "$ENV{HOME}/dos_do.bat";
     _________________________________________________________________
   
  Re: 2c Tip "Finding What You Want with find"
  
   Date: Wed, 03 Dec 1997 16:03:30 +0100
   From: Mike Neuhauser mike@gams.co.at
   
   Jon Rabone, jkr@camcon.co.uk, wrote in the December 97 issue of LG:
   
   > In the October 97 issue, Dave Nelson suggests using
   > find . -type f -exec grep "string" /dev/null {} \;
   > to persuade grep to print the filenames that it finds the search
   > expression in. This starts up a grep for each file, however. A
   > shorter and more efficient way of doing it uses backticks:
   >
   > grep "string" `find . -type f`
   >
   > Note however, that if the find matches a large number of files you
   > may exceed a command line buffer in the shell and cause it to
   complain.
   
   To avoid an overflow of the command line buffer use:
        find . -type f | xargs grep "string"

   This may give problems if filenames contain white space (e.g. touch
   "test file") -- to avoid use:

        find . -type f -print0 | xargs -0 grep "string"

   Note also that find doesn't follow symbolic links to directories per
   default. Using find with the option -follow does the trick (find .
   -follow ...).
     _________________________________________________________________
   
  Re: Finding What You Want with find
  
   Date: 5 Dec 1997 17:47:50 -0000
   From: Dale K. Hawkins dhawkins@mines.edu
   
   find . -type f -exec grep "string" /dev/null {} \;
   
   That is how I used to run things too, but a friend showed me the xargs
   program. Very nice. So one could turn the above statement to something
   like:

find . -type f | xargs fgrep "string" /dev/null

   Again, the /dev/null will force the name of the file to be printed (in
   the unlikely case that find only found one file name). This has the
   benefit of not invoking a new grep process each time.
   
   But for a really slick (and much faster search) try this:
locate $PWD | grep "^$PWD" |xargs fgrep "string" /dev/null

   This assumes that your locate database is current for the directory to
   be searched. It does have a problem though: it tries to grep
   everything, including directories!

locate $PWD | grep "^$PWD" |xargs -ifilename sh -c \
  "if [ -f filename ]; then echo filename; fi " | \
  xargs fgrep "string" /dev/null

   And as an exercise for the reader: Take a look at lesspipe.sh (if it
   is installed; download it otherwise!) See if you can create a shell
   script called supercat (or something) which preprocesses the input to
   prevent grep'ing binary files, etc.
   
   You gotta love UNIX and especially Linux!
   
   -Dale K. Hawkins
     _________________________________________________________________
   
  Finding What You Want with find Part III
  
   Date: Thu, 11 Dec 1997 17:12:46 +0100 (MET)
   From: Axel Dietrich Axel.Dietrich@neuroinformatik.ruhr-uni-bochum.de
   
   >In the October 97 issue, Dave Nelson suggests using
   >
   > find . -type f -exec grep "string" /dev/null {} \;
   >
   >to persuade grep to print the filenames that it finds the search
   >expression in.
   
   Besides Jon Rabone's "shorter and more efficient" version in the
   December 97 issue using backticks:

  grep "string" `find . -type f`

   the following variant can be used without the danger of exceeding a
   command line buffer limit:

  find . -type f -exec grep -l "string" {} \;

   The "-l" switch tells grep to show the name of the file in which
   "string" was found.
   
   To limit such a search on selected files I use a combination of the
   -type and -name switches.

  find . \( -type f -name "*\.html" \) -exec grep -l "string" {} \;

   This searches in all files with the suffix "html" for the string
   "string" and outputs the name(s) of the file(s) in which "string" was
   found.
   
   Axel
     _________________________________________________________________
   
  More on finding
  
   Date: Tue, 16 Dec 1997 14:12:57 +0100 (MET)
   From: Alexander Larsson alla@lysator.liu.se
   
   In the December 97 issue Jon Rabone wrote:
   
   ------------------------------------
   This starts up a grep for each file, however. A shorter and more
   efficient way of doing it uses backticks:

grep "string" `find . -type f`

   Note however, that if the find matches a large number of files you may
   exceed a command line buffer in the shell and cause it to complain.
   ------------------------------------
   
   A better way would be to use:
find . -type f | xargs grep "string"

   which starts up a new grep everytime the command line buffer is full.
   
   / Alex
     _________________________________________________________________
   
  Another way to find
  
   Date: Sat, 27 Dec 1997 12:06:47 -0500
   From: rchandra@letter.com
   
   In an article in the LG, it was suggested that, in order to cut down
   on having to fork(2)/exec(2) for each grep when you're searching
   through a tree of files, you use the shell's capability of command
   substitution (for the file names paramaters to the grep command) with
   "backquotes," "grave accents," "backticks," etc. as they are commonly
   called ("`"). In that little tidbit, it is noted that it has the
   limitation of the system-wide imposed limit on number of arguments,
   and I possibly think there might be a length issue as well (too many
   total bytes). Enter xargs(1).
   
   The job of the xargs command is to read its stdin and use the
   resultant strings as arguments to some command prefix (such as "grep
   -n somestring"), much like backquotes work. However, the xargs program
   is "aware of" the limitations imposed by the system, and will run the
   command prefix as many times as necessary to exhaust the list provided
   on stdin, while on each run giving the command only the maximum number
   of arguments and the maximum byte count (?) that an exec(2) call can
   handle. Thus, provided that the program named in the command prefix
   follows the UNIX program protocol of iterating over its non-option
   arguments, one can search one, hundreds, thousands, even millions of
   files with a line like:

find / -type f -print | xargs grep -n 'where is that string?'

   As usual, consult your favorite source of documentation, such as your
   local man pages, for ways to get even craftier with xargs.
     _________________________________________________________________
   
  Yet another way to find
  
   Date: Mon, 29 Dec 1997 10:49:52 +0100
   From: Guido Socher eedgus@aken104.eed.ericsson.se
   
   In recent Linux Gazette issues there were a couple of ideas on how to
   recursively grep around files and directories. Very useful, but it can
   cause problems when you have binaries (e.g some executable) in the
   directories that contain somewhere the string that you are looking
   for. The result is most of the time an unusable terminal because some
   control character from the binary file has set it to graphics mode.
   There are, of course, ways to make the terminal readable again but the
   best is to avoid it in the first place.
   
   Let's just remove the unprintable characters. They are unreadable
   anyway! The command
      sed -e 's/[^ -~][^ -~]*/ /g'

   removes multiple occurrences of non printable/control characters and
   replaces them by a single space. The [^ -~] matches all characters not
   in the ASCII range from SPACE to Tilde. This command can be easily
   combined (using a pipe) with the find and grep. Here is a little
   script, I called it grepfind, that does it all:

#!/bin/sh
#save this in a file called grepfind and do a "chmod 755 grepfind"
#
if test $# = 0 -o "$1" = "-h" -o "$1" = "--help" ; then
echo ' grepfind -- recursively descends directories and egrep all files '
echo ''
echo ' Usage: grepfind [--help][-h][start_directory] egrep_search_pattern'
echo ''
echo ' The current directory is used as start_directory if parameter'
echo ' start_directory is omitted. The search is case insensitive.'
echo ' Multiple occurrences of control characters are replaced by a single'
echo ' space. This makes it possible to grep around in files that contain'
echo ' binary data and strings without setting the terminal accidently '
echo ' to graphics mode.'
echo ''
echo ' Example: grepfind /home "hello world" '
else
if [ "$2" = "" ]; then
find . -type f -exec egrep -i "$1" /dev/null {} \; | sed -e 's/[^ -~][^
-~]*/ /g'
else
if [ -d "$1" ];then
    find $1 -type f -exec egrep -i "$2" /dev/null {} \; | sed -e 's/[^
-~][^ -~]*/ /g'
else
    echo "ERROR: $1 is not a directory"
fi
fi
fi
#__END__OF_grepfind
     _________________________________________________________________
   
  A final(?) way to find
  
   Date: Wed, 31 Dec 1997 14:31:57 PST
   From: Marty Leisner leisner@sdsp.mc.xerox.com
   
   In the last few months, there's been a few letters (by Dave Nelson,
   Jon Rabone, some more) on how to grep with file names.
   
   Instead of using the trick:
                find . type f -exec grep "string" /dev/null {} \;

   and other variatiants, or doing
                grep "string" $(find . -type f)

   1) use the -H option of grep 2.1 (to print file names, not in 2.0)
   2) use xargs to overcome problems with buffer size

        find . -type f | xargs grep <pattern> -H

   Marty
     _________________________________________________________________
   
  Re: I need some help
  
   Date: Sun, 7 Dec 1997 14:25:25 +0100 (MET)
   From: Roland Smith rsmit06@ibm.net
   
   Javier,
   
   In response to your article in the mailbag of the dec. 97 Linux
   Gazette:
   
   You need to set the environment variable MOZILLA to the directory
   containing Netscape's files.
   
   There are two ways of doing this: You can type `export
   MOZILLA_HOME=/usr/local/netscape' every time you start your computer,
   or you can edit /etc/profile. This is a file read by the bash shell.
   Add the following to this file (assuming the Netscape stuff is in
   /usr/local/netscape):

MOZILLA_HOME="/usr/local/netscape"
export MOZILLA_HOME

   You also need to add an entry for Netscape to your window-manager's
   initialization file, so it shows on the toolbar and/or menu. How to do
   this depends on the window manager you use.
   
   If you're using fvwm2-95, add the following to the .fvwm2rc95 file in
   your home directory:

# add to this menu:
AddToMenu "Utilities" "Utilities" Title
+ "Netscape%mini-nscape.xpm%"   Exec netscape -geometry 931x683+54+9 &

   Regards, Roland
     _________________________________________________________________
   
  Spinning Down Unused HDs
  
   Date: Mon, 08 Dec 1997 14:21:31 -0500
   From: Peter S Galbraith galbraith@mixing.qc.dfo.ca
   
   In the December issue of LG tips, you discuss the hdparm command to
   spin down disks. I tried this on my old SCSI disk:

bash-2.01# hdparm -S6 /dev/sdb

/dev/sdb:
 operation not supported on SCSI disks

   Too bad! I use the `scsi-idle' kernel patch to do this very same thing
   on SCSI, and I was eager to try your trick to finally stop having to
   patch the kernel at evey upgrade.
   
   Too bad it don't seem to work on SCSI disks (it's also strange that
   the man page doesn't say this...)
     _________________________________________________________________
   
  LG Tips and Tricks (Netscape)
  
   Date: Fri, 12 Dec 1997 02:56:16 -0600
   From: Christian J Carlson carlson@means.net
   
   * Date: Sun, 9 Nov 1997 22:00:31 +0000 (GMT)
   * From: Ivan Griffin ivan.griffin@ul.ie
   *
   * These special URLs do interesting things in Netscape Navigator and
   Communicator.
   *
   * about:cache gives details on your cache
   * about:global gives details about global history
   * about:memory-cache
   * about:image-cache
   * about:document
   * about:hype
   * about:plugins
   * about:editfilenew
   *
   * view-source:URL opens source window of the URL
   *
   * Ctrl-Alt-F take you to an interesting site :-)
   
   This appeared in Linux Gazette, December 1997. There is one more way
   cool easter egg that's in Netscape.
   
   First, type "about:mozilla" to get the Mozilla easter egg. Then, watch
   your "N" in the upper right hand corner of Netscape. Whenever you
   access a website, Mozilla himself will appear instead of the boring
   flying stars, etc. As far as I know, this has been in every version of
   Netscape since at least version 2.0. Of course, this only works in the
   Linux version (I don't know about other *nix versions) of Netscape,
   NOT Windows95 :).
   
   Christian J. Carlson
     _________________________________________________________________
   
  Easter Eggs in Netscape
  
   Date: Tue, 30 Dec 1997 0:47:12 +1100 (EADT)
   From: Michael Lake mikel@BlueSky.com.au
   
   I have just been reading the Linux gazette Issue 23 about the easter
   eggs in Netscape and thought that I would try some URL's of my own. I
   am using Netscape 3.01 for Linux. A little experimentation found the
   following--
   
   about:foo
   
   The message that is returned is: Whatchew talkin' 'bout, Willis?
   Instead of foo you can use anything that is not understandable to
   Netscape.
   
   A more interesting one that I tried is--
   
   about:mozilla
   
   This gives a very interesting quotation which I will leave to the
   reader to discover.
   
   Enjoying the Linux Gazette immensely,
   
   Best Regards,
   Michael Lake
   Sydney, Australia
     _________________________________________________________________
   
  Calculator Tip
  
   Date: Sun, 14 Dec 1997 19:23:55 -0500
   From: Michael McLay mclay@nist.gov
   
   The Issue #21 and #23 tips column gave tips for doing calculations
   without having to fire up a heavyweight GUI calculator. It is very
   handy to be able to do all the number entry through the command line,
   but I was surprised to see perl and awk used in the two examples. The
   bc has been around forever in Unix and would be the logical first
   choice to many oldtimers. And bc can do the calculations to any
   precision desired if that is important.
   
   Another good option is Python. Python can be run in an interactive
   mode like bc, so previous calculations can saved as variables and
   reused. Python also can be built so that past lines can be edited
   using the standard GNU readline library editing operations. For
   instance, in the following interactive sequence the previous-line key
   will restore the last executed line to the prompt and the line edit
   keys, such as backward-char and delete can then be used to edit the
   line.

~: python
Python 1.5b2 (#2, Dec 12 1997, 16:13:12)  [GCC 2.7.2] on linux2
Copyright 1991-1995 Stichting Mathematisch Centrum, Amsterdam
>>> a = (10+3)/7
>>> a
1
>>> a = (10.+3)/7
>>> a
1.85714285714
>>> a/32
0.0580357142857
>>> "it takes %7.2f percent" % a
'it takes    1.86 percent'
>>> "it takes %-7.2f percent" % a
'it takes 1.86    percent'
>>> from Numeric import *
>>> b = array(arange(12))
>>> b.shape = 3,4
>>> b
array([[ 0,  1,  2,  3],
       [ 4,  5,  6,  7],
       [ 8,  9, 10, 11]])
>>> b/a
array([[ 0.        ,  0.53846154,  1.07692308,  1.61538462],
       [ 2.15384615,  2.69230769,  3.23076923,  3.76923077],
       [ 4.30769231,  4.84615385,  5.38461538,  5.92307692]])
>>>

   This example also shows the Python Numeric[1] module being used at the
   command line. Any Python module that is installed with the interpreter
   can be imported and used in the interactive mode.
   
   Of course if you want to make Python do a one-liner from the command
   line that is possible also:

~: python -c "print 34./33"
1.0303030303

   or to format the output:
~: python -c "print 'eat %3.4f %s' % (1.444e5/32,'more fish')"
eat 4512.5000 more fish

   [1] The Numeric module in this example is not built into the standard
   distribution. See the matrix-sig page for details on how to add it to
   the module library if you can't find it on your system.
     _________________________________________________________________
   
  Security script
  
   Date: Mon, 15 Dec 1997 20:49:53 -0600 (CST)
   From: Corey G cgaff@interaccess.com
   
   Often when I leave my machine connected to the Internet for prolonged
   periods I worry about hackers. I wanted a program that would know if a
   process was started by anyone, including root, that was not originally
   on the machine.
   
   This caused me to program this script. I dont know if something
   similar exists but I have tested this very throughly and it works
   rather well. It can be frustrating at times when you are active on the
   machine but works very well for idle times.
   
   HOW IT WORKS:
   
   This scripts grabs all the processes when first invoked and saves them
   to a temporary file. After a default of 10 seconds the process table
   is checked against any new processes that were started. If these
   processes were not listed in the "TRUSTED_ITEMS" variable they will be
   killed immediately.
   
   USAGE:
   
   Once you have all the necessary processes running on your machine
   start the script as root. It will make the necessary directories on
   the machine in a safer place than just /tmp. I have created two
   variables named "TRUSTED_ITEMS" and "TRUSTED_USERS". These can be used
   to ignore some users or programs that you never want killed. Be
   careful since sometimes you will need to include more than one item
   for some programs. For example, if you dont want xterms killed you
   must add "xterm" and "bash" if you are running bash as your default
   shell.
   
   Note: When testing this script make certain that nothing important is
   running. I take no blame for any wrong doing from this script.
   
   To start the script: nohup ./secmach &
   
   I am always looking for ways to improve this script so feel free to
   e-mail your comments or suggestions to me.
   
   Good Luck !!!
#!/bin/sh
# Secmach - security program
# v1.0  12-14-97
# By: Corey Gaffney

export PATH=/usr/bin:/bin:/sbin

COUNTER=0
LOCATION=/usr/secmach
CHECK_TIME=10
TRUSTED=/usr/secmach/trusted
UNTRUSTED=/usr/secmach/untrusted
DIFFKILL=/usr/secmach/diffkill
TRUSTED_USERS="johndoe"
TRUSTED_ITEMS="$TRUSTED_USERS|pppd|chat|netscape|xterm|egrep|ps|sed|secmach|awk
"

if [ ! -s $LOCATION ]
        then
        mkdir $LOCATION
        chmod 700 $LOCATION
        fi

while :
do
COUNTER=`expr $COUNTER + 1`
if [ $COUNTER -eq 1 ]
        then
        ps -aux | sed -e '1d' | awk '{print $2}' > $TRUSTED
fi
        sleep $CHECK_TIME

ps -aux | sed -e '1d' | egrep -v $TRUSTED_ITEMS | awk '{print $2}' >
$UNTRUSTED
        diff $TRUSTED $UNTRUSTED > $DIFFKILL
        KILL=`grep ">" $DIFFKILL | awk '{print $2}'`
        kill -9 $KILL
done
     _________________________________________________________________
   
  Controlling cron.hourly
  
   Date: Sun, 21 Dec 1997 10:36:16 -0500 (EST)
   From: Jeff Johnson jbj@JBJ.ORG
   
   According to Gary Turkington:
   > I know this one of those *really* simple ones, but it's beating me.
   How
   > do I stop the cron.hourly setup mailing a 'fortune' to root? This
   used
   > to happen daily, no biggie, but when I upgraded to 5.0, its hourly..
   spam
   > :)
   
   This is a variant of the "not a typewriter" error that causes loss of
   hair when using rlogin :-)
   
   The analysis goes like this:
   
   1) Cron runs a job an hourly job as root.
   2) To run the job, a non-interactive (i.e. stdin/stdout are *not*
   connected
   to a tty but to cron) shell is started.
   3) The shell reads its init files: /etc/profile, ~/.bashrc, whatever.
   4) The init files execute fortune.
   5) The job is performed.
   6) Cron detects output, so it mails it to root.
   
   Fix by identifying which shell init file is executing fortune and
   avoiding fortune when not interactive. There are a couple of
   techniques for doing this, often by checking whether PS1 is set.
   
   73 de Jeff
     _________________________________________________________________
   
  Syslog and ping
  
   Date: Tue, 30 Dec 1997 17:58:59 -0500 (EST)
   From: Andrew Tucker andrew.tucker@kplus2.aces.k12.ct.us
   
   Hi, this is a small hack I did to allow logging of users's use of ping
   through syslog. With more and more larger systems running Linux, and
   more and more situations of ICMP abuse, any shortcut a system
   administrator can use to prevent such abuse is helpful. Click here to
   dowload the scripts.
   
   -- Andrew
     _________________________________________________________________
   
             Published in Linux Gazette Issue 24, January 1998
     _________________________________________________________________
   
   [ TABLE OF CONTENTS ] [ FRONT PAGE ] Back Next 
     _________________________________________________________________
   
      This page maintained by the Editor of Linux Gazette, gazette@ssc.com
      Copyright © 1998 Specialized Systems Consultants, Inc.
      
    "Linux Gazette...making Linux just a little more fun!"
     _________________________________________________________________
   
                                 News Bytes
                                      
                                 Contents:
                                      
     * News in General
     * Software Announcements
     _________________________________________________________________
   
                              News in General
     _________________________________________________________________
   
  February Linux Journal
  
   The February issue of Linux Journal will be hitting the newstands this
   week. The focus of this issue is Databases. Also, included is an
   article on the making of the movie Titanic -- Digital Domain used
   Linux extensively in generating the graphics for this movie. Check out
   the Table of Contents.
     _________________________________________________________________
   
  Apache Webserver Serves Over Half the Internet
  
   Date: January 5, 1998
   
   The Apache Web Server, from the Apache Group (http://www.apache.org/),
   now serves over half the domains on the Internet, according to the
   latest Netcraft Web Server Survey (http://www.netcraft.com/).
   According to the January 1998 survey, the Apache server and its
   derivatives serve 50.24% of the 1,834,710 sites found by Netcraft.
   
   For complete press release, click here.
     _________________________________________________________________
   
  Linux on Celsius Workstations
  
   Date: November 28, 1997
   
   Siemens Nixdorf (SNI) is selling there new "Celsius" Workstations with
   WinNT AND Linux. SNI is the first major Producer that offers
   Workstations with Linux on board. The Linux-Support is done by the
   well known Linux Distributor SuSE GmbH. The machine is targeted for
   the universitys and already in use there with linux. The "Celsius" is
   based on a Pentium-II with 266/300 Mhz, 512KB Cache, 32MMB ECC-SDRAM,
   2GB drive, a PCI/AGP based matrox millennium II with 4MB,
   FastEthernet, Diskdrive and Keyboard. The price shall be between
   7300-8200DM but its exspected to fall. According to SNI the "Celsius
   1000" (300Mhz Version) gets 11,9 SPECint95 and 8,6 SPECfp with WinNT.
   (no Linux values yet.)
     _________________________________________________________________
   
  Freeware OCR Project
  
   A mailing list has been started for discussion of the design and
   implementation of a freeware Optical Character Recognition program for
   Unix.
   
   Scanner support for Unix is under rapid development thanks to projects
   such as SANE, and applications such as GIMP are beginning to benefit
   from this support. OCR is one major application missing from the
   freeware Unix world, and has long been on the FSF's project list, as
   well. The project is going to have to create both a user interface and
   a character recognition engine.
   
   The project Web page is at http://starship.skyport.net/crew/amk/ocr/;
   look there for announcements about the project's status.
   
   For more information:
   Andrew Kuchling, amk@magnet.com
     _________________________________________________________________
   
  5th International Linux Kongress 1998
  
   The 5th International Linux Kongress 1998 will be held from June 3 to
   June 5 at the University of Cologne (Köln). It follows the tradition
   of the Linux conference series (Heidelberg 94, Berlin 95/96 and
   Würzburg 97) which has evolved into the most important meeting for
   Linux experts and developers.
   
   The conference will offer up to 25 talks during two days (June 4 and
   5) in two parallel tracks. The first track will be dedicated to Linux
   development, the second track will be intended to accomodate talks
   about Linux applications and usage. Each talk will be 40 minutes
   (possibly including discussion). The language of the talks will be
   English or exceptionally German.
   
   For more information:
   GUUG office, Ms. Bester, info@linux-kongress.de
   http://www.linux-kongress.de/
     _________________________________________________________________
   
  Linux in the News
  
   Articles by Charles J. Fisher worth checking out in Unixworld On-line:
   Creation and Maintenance of Virtual Hosts 
   Linux, PPP and Windows 95 
   
                      -------------------------------
                                      
   More Linux articles:
   "Linux Grows Up" -- Red Hat's commercial Linux beats NT at its own
   game.
   Computer Currents
   
   "Intel-Based Unix: A Great Solution for Intranets"
   Federal Computer Week
   
                      -------------------------------
                                      
   Better late than never:
   On November 15 Linus announced that the F00F bug had been fixed in the
   2.0.x kernel. Click here to read what he had to say.
     _________________________________________________________________
   
  Linux Bibliography
  
   After a three month hiatus, the Linux Bibliography is back on line.
   The bibliography has grown a lot in size since it was last "live":
   there are now almost 50 Linux specific titles listed.
   
   While the site is back up, it is still in beta mode. You'll need a
   Javascript compatible browser to see it, and some of the JavaScript
   appears to be a bit buggy with older browsers. Most of the forms are
   working, but not all of them just yet.
   
   For more information: Mark Stone, markst@shell.nanospace.com
     _________________________________________________________________
   
  Linux Business Solutions
  
   Announcing: A project to generate and improve documentation of Linux
   Businesss Solutions. This project is a few days old, so far.
   http://linas.org/linux/web-project.html.
   
   There is a separate mailing list for this project. Web page owners,
   writers, marketing types & document mangement hackers are encouraged
   to join.
   
   For more information:
   linas@linas.org
     _________________________________________________________________
   
  The Linux Project Server
  
   The Linux Project Server has a new home page providing counters,
   guestbooks and many many other such scripts.
   
   For more information:
   Gerhard Poul, gerhard@shadow.ccc.at
     _________________________________________________________________
   
  Freely Redistributed Software Track - USENIX'98
  
   Come hear the latest about the full range of freely redistributable
   software--with pointers to the code--including Linux, FreeBSD, GNU,
   netBSD, OpenBSD Samba, and more.
   
   FREENIX, The Freely Redistributed Software Track, at the USENIX 1997
   Conference held June 15-19, 1998 in New Orleans, Louisiana.
   
   For more information: http://www.usenix.org/events/no98/
     _________________________________________________________________
   
  Linux Software Database
  
   The Linux Software Database is now up and running at
   http://www.txcc.net/~cl/.
   
   Unlike software sites that list only what software the author has
   found the LSDB allows Linux users connecting to the database to add
   software thay have found or use. This way both authors of software and
   users of the site can add there titles on-line.
   
   For more information:
   cl@txcc.net
     _________________________________________________________________
   
  S.u.S.E. Discussion Groups
  
   S.u.S.E. has set up two lists for discussions and announcenments
   concerning the S.u.S.E. Linux Distribution:
   
   suse-announce-e -- Announcements of S.u.S.E. LLC (english)
   suse-linux-e -- Discussions about S.u.S.E. Linux (english)
   
   To subscribe, send an email to majordomo@suse.com with 'subscribe
   listname' in the body.
   
   For more information:
   Bodo Bauer, bb@suse.de
   http://www.suse.de
     _________________________________________________________________
   
  The Linux Resource Kit
  
   The Linux Resource Kit has been expanded to included current news and
   information on:
     * Web Servers
     * Groupware
     * Networking/Routing/WAN
     * Client/Server Database
     * Microsoft/Novell/Apple/NFS file and Print sharing
     * System Administration
       
   For more information:
   Joe Royall, joe@secretagent.com
     _________________________________________________________________
   
  IACT & Linux users
  
   A message from the Land of Beyond web site!
   
   We have devoted a new section for IACT, the "International Alliance
   for Compatible Technology." Users of major platforms such as OS/2,
   Linux, FreeBSD, BeOS, MacOS, Unix, DOS etc., are invited to sign-on to
   IACT's Declaration! IACT is working for greater freedom of choice in
   software, for better access to computer-based services & technology,
   and for open standards, including higher standards of compatibility.
   To achieve such important goals for all people, IACT will join in
   anti-monopoly efforts against Micro$oft, while we find positive ways
   to help consumers & users regardless of their chosen platforms. Join
   us at... http://www.trailerpark.com/moonwalk/moonwolf/iactpage.html
   
   For more information:
   Diane Gartner, dgwhiz@earthling.net
   IACT Co-ordinator
     _________________________________________________________________
   
                           Software Announcements
     _________________________________________________________________
   
  Dotfile Generator 2.2
  
   Date: December 24, 1997
   
   Jesper Pedersen has announced the release of The Dotfile Generator
   version 2.2. New in this release is:
     * Added the ipfwadm module for configuring IP Firewalling,
       Forwarding and Masquerading.
     * Added the procmail modules for configuring mail filters.
     * The menu system, from which one select the configuration pages has
       been rewritten, so it's now much more intuitive.
     * Some bugs have been fixed.
     * Made it work with Tcl/Tk 8.0, which is much faster than the older
       versions of Tcl/Tk
       
   The source is available from the home site of TDG:
   ftp://ftp.imada.ou.dk/pub/dotfile/dotfile.tar.gz
   
   For more information:
   Jesper Pedersen, blackie@imada.ou.dk
     _________________________________________________________________
   
  TeamWave Workplace 2.1
  
   Date: November 27, 1997
   
   TeamWave Software Ltd. today announced the release of version 2.1 of
   TeamWave Workplace, its popular software that lets teams work together
   in shared electronic rooms across the Internet. For teams within an
   organization who are sometimes physically separated yet still need to
   work closely together, TeamWave Workplace provides an Internet forum
   where teams collaborate, communicate and share information.
   
   For more information:
   info@teamwave.com
   http://www.teamwave.com/
     _________________________________________________________________
   
  Red Hat Linux 5.0, HURRICANE
  
   Date: December 1, 1997
   
   Red Hat Software, Inc. has announced the availability of Red Hat Linux
   release 5.0 for Intel and Alpha computers. This release is a major
   update to the Red Hat Linux 4.X series. Red Hat Linux is available on
   their FTP site:
   ftp://ftp.redhat.com/pub/redhat/redhat-5.0/
   
   For more information:
   http://www.redhat.com/
   info@redhat.com
     _________________________________________________________________
   
  Nighthawk
  
   Date: December 19, 1997
   
   Nighthawk is An X-Windows game for Linux (Freeware GPL), based on
   Andrew Braybrooks C-64 classic- "Paradroid", written by Jason Nunn
   (JsNO)
   
   Nighthawk 1.0 uploaded onto the following sites:
     * http://www.downunder.net.au/~jsno/rel/1997/nighthawk-1.0.tgz
     * ftp://ftp.cdrom.com/pub/unixfreeware/incoming (asked to be put
       into games)
     * ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/games/arcade (uploaded to
       /incoming/Linux)
     * ftp://ftp.funet.fi (uploaded to /pub/Linux/incoming)
       
   For more information:
   Jason Nunn, jsno@dayworld.net.au
     _________________________________________________________________
   
  C++ GUI IDE
  
   Date: November 28, 1997
   
   Simple IDE for: Qt C++. GUI dialog editor, all developed on Linux
   X11R6 available at: http://qtez.commkey.net/ All distributes of QtEZ
   include: documentation, a set of tutorials, and many demonstration
   programs to illustrate features in the environment. I hope QtEZ is
   well received.
   
   For more information:
   Sam Magnuson, zachsman@commkey.net
     _________________________________________________________________
   
  r2d2 - easy but powerful boot-concept
  
   Date: December 3, 1997
   
   r2d2 is a newly developed boot-concept for Unix. In some way r2d2
   combines the easeness of the BSD-style scripts (e.g. in Slackware
   Linux) with the power and flexibility of the traditional SysV scripts
   (e.g. in RedHat, Debian or S.u.S.E. Linux). r2d2 is available at
   ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/system/daemons/init/
   
   For more information:
   Winfried Truemper, winni@xpilot.org
     _________________________________________________________________
   
  TkSTEP 8.0p2
  
   Date: December 5, 1997
   
   This is Tk 8.0p2 with some modifications to make it look like
   N*XTSTEP's interface, plus some new widgets inspirated on N*XTSTEP and
   the ability to utilize the full power (and more) of the OffiX
   Drag'n'Drop protocol.
   
   The programming aspects of Tk have not been changed much, so you can
   run your old Tk apps normally with it, although some options will not
   do anything (like -relief for scrollbars).
   
   To get TkStep go to http://www.fga.de/~ograf/TkStep.shtml
   
   For more information:
   Oliver Graf, ograf@fa.de
   Steve Murray, stevem@eng.uts.edu.au
     _________________________________________________________________
   
  t1lib-0.4-beta: A rasterizer for Adobe Type 1 Fonts
  
   Date: December 5, 1997
   
   t1lib is a library for generating character- and string-glyphs from
   Adobe Type 1 fonts under UNIX. t1lib uses most of the code of the X11
   rasterizer donated by IBM to the X11-project. But some disadvantages
   of the rasterizer being included in X11 have been eliminated.
   
   You can get t1lib by anonymous ftp at:
   ftp://ftp.neuroinformatik.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/pub/software/t1lib/t1lib-
   0.4-beta.tar.gz 
   
   For more information:
   Rainer Menzner, Rainer.Menzner@neuroinformatik.ruhr-uni-bochum.de
     _________________________________________________________________
   
  SGML-Tools 1.0.1
  
   Date: December 5, 1997
   
   After a year of mostly code restructuring and bugfixing, the time
   finally arrived to let SGML-Tools 1.0 see the light. This means the
   final demise of Linuxdoc-SGML. Loads and loads of features were added.
   Most of the code was redone in Perl 5, which adds a lot of flexibility
   for people who want to override certain parts of the functionality
   (but at the same time be able to install newer versions); uncountable
   bugs were fixed (more were introduced, of course :-)), lots of small
   enhancements, etc.
   
   Visit the SGML-Tools homepage, at http://pobox.com/~cg/sgmltools/, for
   latest news, pointers to locations, etcetera. Note that I haven't been
   able to get this stuff on SunSite yet, so you'd better go via the
   homepage.
   
   For more information:
   Cees de Groot, cg@pobox.com
   http://pobox.com/~cg/sgmltools/
     _________________________________________________________________
   
  LinuxThreads 0.7 -- POSIX thread library
  
   Date: December 5, 1997
   
   LinuxThreads is a thread library for Linux implementing the POSIX
   1003.1c API and based on the "one thread = one process" model. The
   sources are available through the LinuxThreads home page:
   http://pauillac.inria.fr/~xleroy/linuxthreads/ or directly on our FTP
   server:
   ftp://ftp.inria.fr/INRIA/Projects/cristal/Xavier.Leroy/linuxthreads.ta
   r.gz
   
   For more information:
   Xavier Leroy, xavier.leroy@inria.fr
     _________________________________________________________________
   
  TkDesk 1.0b5 released
  
   Date: December 9, 1997
   
   TkDesk 1.0b5, a Desktop and File Manager for UNIX's running X11, has
   been released. TkDesk is a graphical desktop and file manager for
   several brands of UNIX (such as Linux) and the X Window System. It
   offers a very rich set of file operations and services, and gives the
   user the ability to configure most aspects of TkDesk in a powerful
   way. The reason for this is the use of Tcl/Tk as the configuration and
   (for the biggest part of TkDesk) implementation language.
   
   You can get TkDesk from its homepage at:
   http://people.mainz.netsurf.de/~bolik/tkdesk/
   
   For more information:
   Christian Bolik, Christian.Bolik@mainz.netsurf.de
     _________________________________________________________________
   
  MP3Blaster V2.01 -- Mpeg audio player for Linux
  
   Date: December 9, 1997
   
   A new release of MP3Blaster, an Mpeg-layer 1/2 audio player for Linux
   is available. This player has a smart and intuitive user-interface
   that allows a user to split up a playlist into sections. An
   interesting use of this feature is that you can put about 10 of your
   audio CD's in MP3-format on one CD-ROM and have each section in the
   playlist represent an album. Then, you can have the player play the
   songs in every imaginable order you want.
   
   Available at:
   ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/apps/sound/players/mp3blaster-2.0b1.ta
   r.gz
   http://www.stack.nl/~brama/src/mp3blaster-2.0b1.tar.gz
   
   For more information:
   Bram Avontuur, brama@mud.stack.nl
     _________________________________________________________________
   
  X-CD-Roast 0.96c
  
   Date: December 9, 1997
   
   X-CD-Roast 0.96c, a CD writer package for X, has been released. Really
   new stuff:
     * based on Tcl/Tk 8.0
     * includes cdrecord-1.5 and mkisofs 1.11.1
     * lots of fixes.
       
   Check out the web page: http://www.fh-muenchen.de/rz/xcdroast/
   
   For more information:
   Thomas Niederreiter, p7003ad@sunmail.lrz-muenchen.de
     _________________________________________________________________
   
  ADABAS D Workgroup Edition
  
   Date: December 11, 1997
   
   ADABAS D Workgroup Edition 10.0 for Linux is now available. Visit
   http://www.IoS-online.de
   
   For more information:
   Bjoern Bayard, Bjoern.Bayard@ios-online.de
     _________________________________________________________________
   
  Linbot 0.1 web site management tool
  
   Date: December 12, 1997
   
   Linbot 0.1 is a tool that can examine a web site for broken links,
   outdated pages, and other useful information. It is based on the
   commercial LinkBot from TetraNet Software
   (http://tetranetsoftware.com/) though Linbot will be free. You can get
   Linbot at http://home1.gte.net/marduk/linbot/index.html
   
   For more information:
   Marduk, marduk@gte.net
     _________________________________________________________________
   
             Published in Linux Gazette Issue 24, January 1998
     _________________________________________________________________
   
   [ TABLE OF CONTENTS ] [ FRONT PAGE ] Back Next 
     _________________________________________________________________
   
      This page written and maintained by the Editor of Linux Gazette,
      gazette@ssc.com
      Copyright © 1998 Specialized Systems Consultants, Inc.
      
    "Linux Gazette...making Linux just a little more fun!"
     _________________________________________________________________
   
                               The Answer Guy
                                      
                   By James T. Dennis, answerguy@ssc.com
          Starshine Technical Services, http://www.starshine.org/
     _________________________________________________________________
   
  Contents:
  
     * Netscape Mail Crashing
     * Slackware Help
     * Netscape /var/spool/USER 
     * Getting Rid of Virtual Screens
     * diald's niche
     * Upgrade to Red Hat 5.0?
     * Red Hat Linux and WABI and other things
     * Linux as a PDT
     _________________________________________________________________
   
  Netscape Mail Crashing
  
   From: Jim Kelley, the-jim@swbell.net
   
   I've been running Netscape Communicator 4.04 on my RedHat Linux system
   since the day it came out and yesterday it started crashing whenever I
   check for new messeges or try to go to a newsgroup. I've deleted
   NC4.04 and re-installed it but to no avail. Any suggestions? 
   
   When you removed NC4.04 (which I didn't know had been released yet --
   I'm still using 4.03) did you also remove your ~/.netscape directory
   tree?
   
   What happens if you try it from another account on the same system?
   What happens if you use different e-mail and newsreaders? (elm, pine,
   emacs' mh-e and/or tin, nn, trn, or emacs' Gnus for respective
   examples).
   
   I would suspect a data or configuration file corruption. Many
   programming practices that I most loathe and detest have to do with a
   lack of robustness and simple error messages with regard to corrupted
   input. Is it really that hard to have a switch that logs each input
   source like: "Reading configuration from ~/.netscape/foorc....." and
   "Bounds error at ~/.netscape/bar.conf offset 0x2AFF9A77"? I haven't
   looked at the innards of NS Comm's data files -- I wouldn't use their
   mail and newsreaders since I'm very particular about my mail and
   netnews -- and I need extensible, configurable, text mode capable
   systems (so I use emacs' mh-e and Gnus).
   
   --Jim
     _________________________________________________________________
   
  Slackware Help
  
   From: Ralph, RPMAXEDGE@aol.com 
   
   HELP!!!!!!!!!!!!!
   Recently I installed Linux Slackware version 3.2, everything loaded
   fine, but I really run into problems when I set up the password for
   the root, for some reason the one i register doesn't allow me to log
   in. I have problems on how to mount the /root and remove the existing
   password from the /etc/shadow. I install linux with partitions for a
   SCSI hardrive sda1 sda2. I would really appreciate some few hints to
   solve this problem.. Thank YOU VERY MUCH. 
   
   --Ralph 
   
   I haven't used any of the newer Slackware systems -- so I don't know
   if there's anything specific to their system that would contribute to
   or cause this problem.
   
   The general way to fix this sort of problem (lost root password) is to
   boot from a rescue diskette (or from an "alternate root partition")
   mount your normal root partition (let's you put it under /mnt/oldroot)
   and then simply edit the mnt/oldroot/etc/passwd file -- and maybe the
   corresponding shadow file).
   
   Another trick is to use the chroot command instead of editing the
   passwd files directly. Basically you can follow the mount with a
   command sequence like:

                cd /mnt/oldroot/ && usr/sbin/chroot . bin/sh

   ... and then:
                passwd

   (allows you to use the normal passwd command -- and forces it to
   update the passwd files *under* the (chroot)/etc directory rather than
   the one of the root diskette or the alternative root part).
   
   A properly maintained alternative root partition should have extra
   copies (mirrors) of the whole /etc directory from your production root
   partition. This makes recovery from errors *much* easier. On some
   systems you may be able to use a removable drive (LS120, Zip, Jaz,
   magneto-optical, Bernouli, Syquest, DynaMO, whatever) as your
   alternative root system.
   
   -- Jim
     _________________________________________________________________
   
  Netscape /var/spool/USER
  
   From: John Liebenrood, k7ro@teleport.com 
   
   I'm running Redhat 4.2 with Netscape 3.01. I can send mail fine but I
   can't receive mail. I don't understand how to configure my
   /var/spool/USER. I've used chown mail.mail and chmod 01777 on USER
   file. But still can't get mail to come in... all talk no listen 
   
   --john 
   
   Do you have a POP account? Are you trying to read you mail from the
   localhost? Where is your localhost supposed to get it's mail from?
   
   Normally 'sendmail' (or smail, deliver, or procmail) appends messages
   to your spool file. 'sendmail' gets your mail via SMTP or from your
   UUCP system (depending on your configuration and your ISP/account
   type).
   
   There are a bunch of factors that anyone would need to know before
   answering your question.
   
   Netscape is normally configured to fetch mail via the POP protocol and
   to send it directly via SMTP. If your system is already configured to
   send and recieve mail (i.e. you can use other mail user agents (MUA's)
   like elm, pine, mh, etc) then you should be able to configure Netscape
   to use "localhost" (the loopback interface -- internal to your own
   system).
   
   Personally I won't use NS Nav. (or Comm.) as a mail or news client. I
   absolutely require a text mode interface
   
   -- Jim
     _________________________________________________________________
   
  Getting Rid of Virtual Screen
  
   From: bmiles@intergate.bc.ca 
   
   Hi, how do i get rid of the virtual screen under x windows, it's
   bloody annoying!! I've tried disabling it under install and I've even
   tried resetting my resolution size, please help!!! 
   
   Assuming you're using XFree86 you'd edit your XF86Config file (which
   might be /etc/X11/XF86Config or might be something more like
   /usr/X11R6/lib/.... or something).
   
   Find the Screen section for the device driver and mode you're using,
   look for the display subsection that applies you your monitor and
   modify the "Virtual" line thereunder.
   
   If you've tried that (if that's what you mean by "resetting my
   resolution" or "disabling it under install") than it's possible that
   you're using a different X Server than I think you are (Xig, or
   Metro-X or something) or that your installation or distribution is
   using a config file in a different location than you think it is.
   
   The man pages for 'X', 'startx' and 'xinit' may help -- in particular
   the XFree86 servers allow you to specify an option of -xf86config file
   -- which allows you to explicitly over-ride the system wide
   configuration (and is a great reason for security concscious sysadmins
   to limit the execution of X to some trusted local users -- and maybe
   use xdm).
   
   I found this option in XFree86(1) (that's the XFree86 man page in
   chapter one on my man pages). Don't confuse it with the -config option
   referred to in the XServer(1) man page. That option just says that
   more *command-line options* are stored in a file. The XServer man page
   refers to options and configuration information that should apply to
   any Unix X Windows display server. The XFree86(1) page refers to the
   extensions which apply to the servers written as part of the XFree86
   project. The various XF86_* man pages refer to the features that are
   specific to specific servers (that is the ones which are compiled for
   a given video card or chipset).
   
   You're only running one binary -- yet three man pages apply to
   whichever one you're using. This is unnecessarily confusing -- and one
   of the books I've perused (on Unix, X, or Linux) cover this sort of
   thing. So you have to wander through lots of different man pages and
   /usr/doc/* files without a clear roadmap.
   
   I'm hoping that some future distribution (maybe the Red Hat 5.0 that's
   supposed to be shipping in the next couple of weeks, or the next
   Debian) will have a really good set of HTML (lynx clean!) documents,
   served by default off of the initial localhost webserver which takes a
   top down, organized approach to educating and informing us about all
   the power and choices we have in Linux.
   
   -- Jim
     _________________________________________________________________
   
  diald's Niche
  
   From: Pollywog, caldera-users@rim.caldera.com 
   
   Put it anywhere you'd like. The .rpm version installs into defined
   sub-directories, but keep the .rpm file anywhere you like. I have
   /usr/local/packages for tarballs and .rpms.... 
   
   I recommend that SA's use a /usr/local/from directory tree. You can
   then have a set of directories named after your favorite FTP and web
   sites and after the volume names of your favorite CD's.
   
   When you download/fetch a file -- put it into a directory that reminds
   you where you got it from such as:
   
   /usr/local/from/sunsite/ /usr/local/from/redhat/
   /usr/local/from/ftp.replay.com/
   
   ... etc.
   
   Now when you want to upgrade a package you can see where you got the
   previous version from -- and consequently you have a headstart on
   where to look for upgrades.
   
   This technique is also handy if you read an alert about a compromised
   (trojan) package -- you can easily see where *you* got your copy from.
   
   For files you install off of the CD -- create a directory name that
   reminds of you which CD it is like:
   
   /usr/local/from/cd/MOP/ (Mother of Perl)
   /usr/local/from/cd/rharchive.fall97/
   
   ... etc.
   
   Now you just put symlinks from that directory to your usual CD-ROM
   mount point (ln -s /mnt/cdrom/dir/foo foo).
   
   This creates a tree of "broken" links -- but it tells you where to
   find the source file if/when you need to rebuild.
   
   As you can probably see this technique is really a "poor man's HSM"
   (hierarchial storage management system). You can also extend this idea
   to migrated data files from your home directories to removable media
   (such as Zip, Syquest, MO, and CDR devices).
   
   It's also a very handy form of self-documentation in businesses where
   you may have many sysadmins or you may have various consultants
   "stomping" around on your systems.
   
   -- Jim
     _________________________________________________________________
   
  Upgrade to Red Hat 5.0?
  
   From: Jason Welsh, jwelsh@mci.net 
   
   hey, im running an older 4.something version of Red Hat and was
   wondering if I just wanted to upgrade it to 5.0, do I need to download
   certain RPMS or do I need to get the whole thing? or get it on CD..
   just curious if there was a shortcut I could take.. 
   
   --Jason. 
   
   I would get the CD (in fact I did -- but I haven't run the upgrade yet
   -- want to finish some work and do an extra backup first).
   
   CD's save lots of bandwidth and save lots of time.
   
   If you don't need the commercial packages that come with Red Hat (the
   BRU and Metro-X) you can wait a month or so for the "Archives" set to
   come out -- which is about $20 (less than half the full version).
   
   -- Jim
     _________________________________________________________________
   
  Red Hat Linux and WABI and other things
  
   From: peter@trimatrix.net 
   
   I have RedHat Linux v5.0 (kernal 2.x) ($49) and (silly me) found out
   that Caldera OpenLinux Standard ($399) supports WABI for Windows 3.1
   apps, FreeDOS (or is it DOSEMU??) for DOS apps, and NetWare 3.x/4.x
   client supporting NDS (Network Directory Services). 
   
   WABI/Linux (a.k.a the Windows 3.1 Applications Binary Interface) is
   available separately from Caldera. It is a commercial package -- and
   it should install on most Linux systems without much trouble.
   
   There's also WINE ("WINdows Emulation" or "WINE is not Emulation" --
   take your pick of acronym expansion). This is a freeware project to
   implement enough support for the lower level Windows API's to allow
   Linux (and other Unix) users to install MS-Windows and run Windows
   programs.
   
   I've heard that it is also possible to run Windows 3.1 in "standard
   mode" under DOSEMU/MS-DOS. I'm not sure if that works under other DOS
   variants running under DOSEMU.
   
   OpenDOS is Caldera's release of "Novell DOS" (which was formerly "DR
   DOS" -- from Digital Research). Caldera aquired the licenses and
   rights to Novell DOS when Novell decided to "refocus on its 'core'
   markets" (and practically gutted itself in the process). In fact
   Caldera's "Network Desktop" (their distribution that preceded the
   OpenLinux/Base and OpenLinux/Standard) was originally a research
   project at Novell.
   
   OpenDOS is partially commercial -- it is free for personal use (or for
   students, or something like that -- read their web pages for details).
   It has little to do with DOSEMU. OpenDOS is available on CD for about
   $30(US).
   
   DOSEMU is really a bit of a misnomer. Technically it's a BIOS emulator
   which can be used to run any x86 "real mode" operating system (such as
   CP/M-86 or some versions of Forth). When you install DOSEMU you also
   have to install some copy of DOS (MS-DOS, PC-DOS, OpenDOS, whatever)
   to get any practical use out of it. DOSEMU includes several DOS
   programs which connect to the underlying Linux system. This allows one
   to access Linux directories and NFS mounts as DOS "network" drive
   letters, and do other things like that.
   
   FreeDOS is a different project -- you can learn more about it at
   http://www.freedos.org. They are quite Linux friendly -- but I haven't
   played with their release (and I've barely touched DOSEMU or Caldera's
   OpenDOS) so I can't say much about it.
   
   Regarding Netware access from Linux:
   
   Caldera's Netware client access (with bindery and NDS support) is only
   available as part of their OpenLinux Standard (as far as I know). I've
   heard that some people have successfully installed the clients on
   other Linux distributions. However it appears that you are legally
   required to purchase the commercial COL/Standard (Caldera OpenLinux is
   often called COL by participants of it's mailing lists).
   
   There are also a couple of free packages that implement some Netware
   protocols for Linux. 'ncpfs' is one that allows you to 'mount' Netware
   partitions in a way that similar to NFS. This is a system-wide mount
   (unlike the Caldera netware clients where each user has unique
   "virtual" mountings that are not visible from other concurrent
   processes on the system.
   
   There's also the mars_nwe (Netware emulator) that implements a subset
   of the Netware fileserver protocols -- allowing DOS and other systems
   to access portions of your Linux filesystem(s) using the Netware
   clients (similar to 'samba' for Windows for Workgroups/LANMan/NT
   functionality).
   
   I would like to know if this support can be added to RedHat Linux by
   downloading this stuff from somewhere, and recompiling the kernel? Can
   you help? I'm new to RedHat and have not yet gotten an answer from
   them.... If not, can you direct me to where I can inquire? This is a
   quest to make use of our 486 computers at work (and just need to know)
   by running Linux, and still support some things like Windows 3.1x
   Lotus Lotsuite, etc., which Caldera claims to do, but I would like to
   find out how much trouble it would be to add support to Redhat..... 
   
   In general, anything you can run under Caldera you can get to run
   under Red Hat or any other reasonably recent Linux distribution.
   
   Since Caldera, Red Hat, Craftworks, and a couple of other Linux
   distributions use the same package management system (the RPM -- or
   "Red Hat Package Manager") sharing packages among them is somewhat
   simpler than installing a Debian package or Slackware "tarball" would
   be.
   
   I'd look at any FTP mirror of Red Hat's "contrib" directory for the
   lastest dosemu "rpm" and install that. You'll probably find one of
   these on your set of Red Hat CD's in addition to the ones online. You
   can check the online directory for updates and recent additions.
   
   -- Jim
     _________________________________________________________________
   
  Linux as a PDT
  
   From: Karl Rossing, gtivr6@pangea.ca 
   
   Linux as a PDC (Primary Domain Controller), NIS/NIS+ Master -- etc. 
   
   I was wondering if it is possble to get windows 95/NT to authenticate
   to LINUX (using nis or nis+). I'm really getting tired of adding
   accounts on the nt boxes for the linux boxes(for smb)...Is there any
   commercial software availible? 
   
   It sounds like you're asking fundamentally different questions here.
   
   In your subject you refer to using Linux as a PDT by which I presume
   you meant a PDC (Primary Domain Controller). Here you refer to using
   NIS/NIS+ -- which would involve adding client support (third party
   software) to all of the NT/'95 boxes.
   
   A broader questions is:
   
   What network authentication and directory services
   system/model/architecture should you use?
   
   This is a sticky question with no easy answer.
   
   A simpler question is:
   
   How can I configure my MS client machines (NT and '95) to use my Linux
   system's account information for access control and authentication?
   
   I'll provide some thoughts on each of these questions after commenting
   on the rest of your message:
   
   I know of p-sync [http://www.m-tech.ab.ca/psynch/index.html] 
   
   I glanced at their web pages and was not impressed. They have almost
   no text and are almost completely unreadable for Lynx users. They also
   don't offer any functionality in their demo -- which is just a mockup
   of the GUI (crippleware).
   
   and NSGINA [http://www.dcs.qmw.ac.uk/~williams/] which seems a bit of
   work to setup... 
   
   That would "NISGINA" This is by Nigel Williams -- apparently derived
   from work by Doug Scoular(*). It is apparently released under a
   BSD'ish license. So this is much more promising than the p-sync
   package right off the bat.
   
   * (http://www.arch.usyd.edu.au/~doug/gina.html)
   
   GINA (graphical identification and authentication) is the NT DLL that
   manage logins at the NT console -- there are several different GINA's
   -- one from Novell for NDS, one from MIT for Kerberos, another similar
   one for NT-AFS (Transarc's distributed filesystem -- which uses a
   Kerberos 4 authentication model) etc. Here are some related URLS:
   
   NT GINA related information: http://web.mit.edu/cartel/ntgina.html --
   very informative -- leads to all the rest that I found.
   
   ND_GINA - An alternative authentication method for Windows NTr,
   http://www.nd.edu/~dobbins/ntarch/nd_gina_doc.html
   
   NT/UNIX Integration with Doug's GINA replacement,
   http://www.arch.usyd.edu.au/~doug/gina.html
   
   The problem with GINA is that it doesn't appear to be available for
   '95 (or earlier versions of Windows or DOS). That may be a show
   stopper for for this approach
   
   I can't recommend in good faith that you upgrade you Win '95 systems
   to NT (since that just buys you in further to this proprietary OS
   model -- and just worsens your dilemma when '98 and NT 5.x ship).
   
   I'm not really looking for passwd syncronisation, i'd like to
   consolidate it to the linux box, because the users use both
   linux/95/nt. nuff said, thanks. 
   
   I don't think nearly 'nuff's been said about this topic. There are a
   large number of directory service and authentication methods that are
   vying for control of your network. Each as its own security
   implications -- making them co-exist is difficult from the start, and
   a constant drain on administrative time and resources -- and having
   them running concurrently usually means that the weakest link prevails
   in your security model.
   
   There's an excellent white paper about this at Cygnus Solutions:
   
   http://www.cygnus.com/product/unifying-security.html
   
   That aside, some of your choices are:
     * Microsoft's WINS (and its PDC/BDC domain model)
     * Kerberos and Cygnus Kerbnet
     * NIS/NIS+
     * RADIUS/TACACS
     * LDAP (lightweight directory access protocol)
     * Netware NDS, Banyan StreetTalk, etc.
     * Host based security -- custom synchronization
     * scripts.
       
   So far I don't like any of them. NIS/NIS+ is usually used with NFS.
   Kerberos is the models that's used in conjunction with AFS/DFS (and
   CODA if they ever finish it). CIFS/SMB filesharing can be done with
   very weak authentication (workgroups style) or with the WINS Microsoft
   model.
   
   Overall I think I'll like CODA best when we have a reasonably Linux
   server and client for it.
   
   More more info on the CODA project at CMU browse through their
   mailling list archives at:
   
   http://www.coda.cs.cmu.edu/maillists/linux-coda/0175.html
   
   I could rant for sometime about the security models of the various
   network/shared filesystems -- but it's late so let it suffice to say I
   like that even less than the choices for DS and authentication. So far
   I think I like TCFS (transparent cryptographic filesystem) the best
   for security -- though I'm quite concerned about its performance
   costs.
   
   I presume you're using Samba on your Linux server(s) to provide file
   services to your Windows clients. From a glance at the Samba Meta-FAQ
   and some of its other pages it looks like you could just let
   Linux/Samba manage the accounts for your whole network.
   
   Here's some links that relate to that:
   
   Samba: User accounts
   http://samba.anu.edu.au/samba/docs/smb_serv/html/smb_se-4.html#ss4.1
   
   Samba Server HOWTO
   http://samba.anu.edu.au/samba/docs/smb_serv/html/smb_se.html
   
   (*Note: if I read this correctly -- Samba can't currently be a
   "password server." This seems to mean that it can't act as a PDC/BDC
   (backup domain controller) for NT systems to refer client
   authentication requests through).
   
   It looks like the future will hold some sort of LDAP and Kerberos --
   for NT and many other OS' and packages. This would be fine -- if it
   weren't for the inevitable politicking and kneebiting that the various
   commercial vendors are going to do.
   
   The problem is that everyone's version of LDAP (directory services)
   and Kerberos (authentication) will be just different enough that each
   vendor's OS will just *need* to be *the* server for *their* domain.
   They'll all make press releases about their "interoperability" -- and
   most will refuse to release enough details about their "extensions"
   for any other vendor (or freeware programmers) to implement them
   elsewhere.
   
   I guess it will take a few years after the initial deployment for
   enough of this proprietary info to leak out (and/or be reverse
   engineered) to allow system administrators to actually have any
   semblance of a unified directory service and authentication system.
   The bugs and security problems will probably keep popping up for a
   long time after that (they've been popping up in Unix for 27 years --
   and many of them are reappearing in NT now).
   
   Meanwhile we're going to see a continuing explosion of servers and
   network applications (client server systems) that each require
   different user account (with associated group, token, and other
   information) and authentication information.
   
   Worse yet, the various layers of management above us are already
   hearing the marketeers lies -- that the solutions are "already
   shipping" or "just around the corner." This is just what management
   wants to hear -- so many of them are believing it -- and planning
   their budgets and project schedules accordingly. A system
   administration disaster in the making.
   
   Sorry I can't offer a brighter hope for the new year -- but I'm no
   marketeer.
   
   -- Jim
     _________________________________________________________________
   
                     Copyright © 1998, James T. Dennis
          Published in Issue 24 of the Linux Gazette January 1998
     _________________________________________________________________
   
   [ TABLE OF CONTENTS ] [ FRONT PAGE ] Back Next 
   
    "Linux Gazette...making Linux just a little more fun!"
     _________________________________________________________________
   
                           Quick autofs Tutorial
                                      
                              By Mark Nielsen
     _________________________________________________________________
   
   What is autofs? Autofs uses automount to mount cdrom and floppy drives
   (and other things) to your computer as you need them and umount as
   they are not being used. What is mount and unmount? Mount and umount
   are programs to mount a device ontop of a directory. For example, this
   command would mount the first floppy drive (drive a: in DOS terms) to
   the directory "/mnt/floppy" so that everytime you access "/mnt/floppy"
   to access your floppy drive.
   
mount /dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy

   And this command unmounts or frees up the floppy drive from being
   used.
   

umount /dev/fd0

   Now, in DOS terms, your floppy disk is accessed as you need it. For
   normal users, that is what they would expect. They wouldn't want to
   use mount and umount because it is time consuming and because they
   might not get it right.
   
   I assume "/dev/cdrom" is your cdrom drive and "dev/fd0" is your floppy
   drive. I am also assuming you will backup your "/etc/auto.master"
   file. Use this script to create the following threes files and restart
   autofs. Login as "root", goto your home directory, copy whatever
   between the next two lines to a file called "CreateAutofs.script" and
   execute the script with the command

source CreateAutofs.script
     _________________________________________________________________
   
cd
echo "Please ignore any errors when making directories"
     ### Let us make sure the two directories exist, ignore errors
mkdir /mnt/floppy
mkdir /mnt/cdrom
     ### Let us backup the auto files in case they haven't
mv /etc/auto.master /etc/auto.master_old
mv /etc/auto.floppy /etc/auto.floppy_old
mv /etc/auto.cdrom /etc/auto.cdrom_old
     ### Create the files for autofs
echo "/mnt/cdrom /etc/auto.cdrom --timeout 10" > /etc/auto.master
echo "/mnt/floppy /etc/auto.floppy --timeout 1" >> /etc/auto.master
echo "floppy   -user,suid,fstype=msdos :/dev/fd0" > /etc/auto.floppy
echo "cdrom    -fstype=iso9660,ro   :/dev/cdrom" > /etc/auto.cdrom
     ### Create the links to the floppy drive and cdrom drive
ln -s /mnt/floppy/floppy a:
ln -s /mnt/cdrom/cdrom d:
ln -s /mnt/floppy/floppy floppy
ln -s /mnt/cdrom/cdrom cdrom
     ### Lets retstart autofs, you might have to reboot
cd /etc/rc.d/init.d
./autofs restart
     ### If it didn't work, you might have to reboot
     ### Try "./autofs start" if the restart claims autofs has not been
     #### started
cd
     _________________________________________________________________
   
   The end of your results should look something like the following if it
   was sucessfull

Start /usr/sbin/automount --timeout 10 /mnt/cdrom file /etc/auto.cdrom
Start /usr/sbin/automount --timeout 1 /mnt/floppy file /etc/auto.floppy

   Now put a floppy disk formatted for MSDOS and a cdrom in and execute
   the commands

ls a:
ls d:

   to see if there is anything on them. Hopefully you don't get any error
   messages.
   
   Personally, my /etc/auto.floppy file looks like
floppy          -fstype=auto,defaults,user,suid :/dev/fd0

   and my /etc/auto.cdrom file look like this
cdrom           -fstype=iso9660,user,suid       :/dev/cdrom

   The reason why I gave conservative values in the script was the fact
   the my values might be security hazards. But since I am the only
   person using my computer, I wanted to make sure my personal account
   had full access to the floppy and cdrom drives. Also, -fstype=auto
   doesn't seem to work quite right when your disk is formated for MSDOS,
   but works fine with ext2. "-fstype=auto" tries to autodetect the file
   format.
   
   If you noticed the timeout value for the floppy drive is 1 second.
   This makes it so that by the time the floppy drive light has gone out,
   your floppy disk is unmounted and a normal user can take the floppy
   disk out and "nothing bad happens". I made the timeout value for the
   cdrom 10 seconds because it wasn't working really well at 1 second,
   and I figured it was because the drive didn't have enough time to
   "warm up" before it was being shut down. You might want to test what
   the timeout value for your cdrom drive should be.
   
   To get more information about autofs, do the commands
man 5 autofs
man autofs

   and look the the directory "usr/doc" for the directory "autofs-0.3.14"
   or something similar to it.
   
Now to explain it

   Okay, here is my brief explanation for what is happening. Read the man
   pages and any docs first.
   
   Your "/etc/rc.d/init.d/autofs" script first looks at
   "/etc/auto.master". That file usually has three things on each line.
   It has the directory which all mounts will be located at. Then next to
   that value is the filename which contains the configuration(s) for
   what devices you want mounted. We will call these filenames the
   "supplemental" files. Next to that value is the timeout which you want
   to occur after so many seconds of inactivity. The timeout will free or
   umount all devices specificed in the supplemental files after so many
   seconds of inactivity.
   
   Now, the supplemental files can have more than on entry, but for my
   purposes I don't do that. Read below for the explanation. The
   supplemental files can be named anything you want them to be named.
   They also have three values for each entry. The first value is the
   "psuedo" directory. I will explain this later. The second value
   contains the mount options. The third value is the device (like
   "/dev/fd0" which is the floppy drive) which the "psuedo" directory is
   connected to.
   
   The "pseudo" directory is contained in the directory which is defined
   in "/etc/auto.master". When people try to access this "psuedo"
   directory, they will be rerouted to the device you specified. For
   example, the above script will generate a link called "a:" which if
   you list with the command "ls a:" will give you a list of files in the
   floppy drive. Or, a similar command would be "ls /mnt/floppy/floppy".
   But if you do the command "ls /mnt/floppy", you don't see anything
   even though the directory "/mnt/floppy/floppy" should exist. That is
   because "/mnt/floppy/floppy" doesn't exist as a file or directory, but
   somehow the system knows that if you specifically ask for
   "/mnt/floppy/floppy", it will reroute you to the floppy drive.
   
   Now as to the reason why I didn't combine the floppy drive and cdrom
   drive into the same supplementary file. Each definition in the
   "/etc/auto.master" file will have its own "automount" program running
   for it. If you have several devices running on the same automount
   program and one of them fails, it could force the others not to work.
   That is why I want every device running on its own automount program
   which means there is one device per supplementary file per entry in
   the "/etc/auto.master" file.
     _________________________________________________________________
   
                       Copyright © 1998, Mark Nielsen
            Published in Issue 24 of Linux Gazette, January 1998
     _________________________________________________________________
   
   [ TABLE OF CONTENTS ] [ FRONT PAGE ] Back Next 
     _________________________________________________________________
   
    "Linux Gazette...making Linux just a little more fun!"
     _________________________________________________________________
   
                              Buying A Laptop
                                      
                              By Joel Jaeggli
     _________________________________________________________________
   
   Having just read Micheal Shappe's review of the Fujitsu Lifebook 420d
   in the Nov issue of LJ I thought I would relate a similar experience I
   had in purchasing a new laptop for my organization. Academic User
   Services at the University of Oregon provides support for end users on
   timeshare systems running Digital Unix, VMS, Solaris, and Linux. We
   have a wide variety of desktop hardware including PC's running Linux,
   FreeBSD, NT, 95 as well as DEC Alphas, Sparcs, SGIs and Macs. We
   needed a portable computer to send with people to do workshops, attend
   conferences and demo software for people. Because our members use a
   number of varieties of Unix but only a little better than half of them
   use Windows in the course of their work, solid UNIX support of some
   variety was imperative.
   
   Our requirements were that it should have sufficient space to dual
   boot Windows95 and Linux, more over all the subsystems should work
   equally well under either Windows or Linux. The Laptop needed to
   provide support for an external display at 24-bit color depth as well
   as have support for an external keyboard and mouse. It should above
   all meet those goals and be relatively inexpensive as well as
   reasonably compact and durable.
   
   We eventually settled on a Toshiba Satellite Pro 220cds. The Toshiba
   has a complete compliment of ports on the back, PS/2, serial,
   parallel, IRDA, VGA, docking station and interestingly enough, a USB
   port. It comes with a Pentium 133 processor, 16mb of ram and 2mb of
   dram to drive the 12.1" passive matrix display at 8, 16 and 24 bit
   color. It has a small but sufficient 1.4gb disk. The audio jacks and
   the volume control are located on the front of the case. The satellite
   pro 220cds is over all similar to it's more expensive cousins the
   440cds and the 460cds which will undoubtedly replace it eventually.
   They are distinguished by having active matrix displays, larger hard
   disks and in the case of the 460 an internal modem.
   
   The keyboard is quite large, the feel is closer if anything to a
   desktop keyboard than anything that you would expect to find on a
   laptop except for the travel of the keys which is fairly short. The
   Toshiba laptops have a ThinkPad style trackpoint-pointing device
   rather than the ubiquitous trackpads that seem to be on almost all
   portables these days. It does not regrettably have a third mouse
   button like the new and very expensive ThinkPad 770; but the buttons
   are located on top of each other rather than adjacent to each other as
   on most trackpads. This makes them easier to press and hold down with
   your thumb while moving the trackpoint with you index finger, so you
   can drag a scrollbar in X for example without using two hands.
   
   Once I got over the fact that windows95 osr2 uses a fat/32 filesystem
   which cannot be modified by fips, I used partition magic, a utility by
   Powerquest to resize the windows95 partition I was able to install
   Redhat 4.2 without trouble. The alternative would have been to
   repartition the disk by hand using fdisk and then reinstall Windows
   off of the supplied CD-ROM. I choose to partition the disk 800MB for
   Windows and 600MB for Linux since I needed to install some large
   Windows applications such as Adobe Frame and Microsoft Office. Rather
   than have separate var / and home filesystems I opted for a single
   large Linux partition. A 64MB slice reserved for swap, this made sense
   since I didn't expect var to grow too much. The computer wouldn't be
   serving to much and that everyone using the portable under Linux would
   be logging in as the same user.
   
   The Toshiba 220cds uses a Chips and Technologies 65555 chipset for the
   video display. While AcceleratedX and MetroX support this chipset it
   is also well supported by XFree86's SVGA X server. If you choose to
   run the free server you can expect to get 640x480 or 800x600 on the
   internal display at 8 16 or 24 bits per pixels. Because it has 2MB of
   video memory you can drive an external monitor at up to 1280x1024 in
   8-bit color.
   
   Networking was actually easier to configure under Linux than it was in
   windows. The 3com Elink 3 ethernet card and megahertz 33.6 PC-card
   modem that we purchased were detected by Redhat's install disks which
   was fortunate because I installed Redhat 4.2 via NFS using the network
   card. Because It is a portable I haven't configured it with a
   static-ip, rather I DHCP the portable under both Windows and Redhat
   which facilitates dragging it back and forth between subnets on our
   campus a great deal. The python based Redhat network control panel is
   particularly well suited to adjusting your network configuration on
   the fly.
   
   Configuring sound support turned out to be a pretty interesting
   exercise. I chose to use the commercial OSS-Linux sound driver to
   support the Yamaha olp3-sa chipset that the portable has. OSS-Linux
   could not auto detect the settings of the sound chipset as it had done
   with my desktop Linux machine. It worked fairly well once I figured
   out which irq's and memory addresses were in use by the sound chipset,
   which was pretty easy using the windows95 system control panel.
   
   The Toshiba 220cds is not by the standards of the current high-flyer
   in the laptop world an exceptionally fast machine, It is however full
   featured and even given all the accessories that we added extremely
   cheap. The laptop itself can be had for as little as $1600. The cost
   of a 3com network card and a Megahertz modem were $120 and $220
   dollars respectively. A spare lithium-ion battery an additional $199
   and an additional 16MB of ram was $90. In all the fully configured
   laptop cost less than $2300.
   
   I have been very happy with how well the new laptop has worked out. It
   is a compact and elegant package, which is similar in function and
   design if not performance to the cream of the Toshiba notebook crop
   such as the Tecra 740. The moderate sacrifice in performance results
   in a great machine at a fraction of the cost. I would recommend such a
   device to anyone looking in to run Linux on a laptop.
     _________________________________________________________________
   
                       Copyright © 1998, Joel Jaeggli
            Published in Issue 24 of Linux Gazette, January 1998
     _________________________________________________________________
   
   [ TABLE OF CONTENTS ] [ FRONT PAGE ] Back Next 
     _________________________________________________________________
   
    "Linux Gazette...making Linux just a little more fun!"
     _________________________________________________________________
   
                         Copying Files Using Mirror
                                      
                             By Gerd Bavendiek 
     _________________________________________________________________
   
   Do you have a laptop ? And want frequently to copy files to another
   system ? Use mirror !
   
   I frequently have to exchange files between my laptop and other
   systems, eg. my home desktop. This can be conveniently done using
   rdist(1).
   
   I wrote a small script called mirror, which basically contains a call
   of rdist setting up a small Distfile using the shell's here syntax:

rdist  -d PWD=`pwd` -f - << EOF
${PWD} -> mirror
        install -oyounger ${PWD};
        except_pat ( ~\\$ );
EOF

   This is not the place to deal with rdist-syntax in greater detail, so
   see rdist's-manpage, if you like. Files will be copied to host mirror.
   Of course you have to set up /etc/hosts appropiately.
   
   So working on a project with files in ~/wsp/pbd/os-tools, I can simply
   say

nana:/home/bav/wsp/pbd/os-tools> mirror
mirror: updating host mirror
mirror: /home/bav/wsp/pbd/os-tools/main-window.tcl: updating
mirror: /home/bav/wsp/pbd/os-tools/os-tools.tcl: updating
mirror: /home/bav/wsp/pbd/os-tools/popups.tcl: updating
mirror: updating of mirror finished

   and mirror will copy new or changed files to the very same directory
   on the other node. This will be done recursively. Files on the other
   node, which are younger than the files on the node I started mirror
   on, will be mentioned, but remain untouched. Emacs-backup-files will
   not be copied.
   
   Using the Option -verify, you can check what will be done without
   really doing anything:

nana:/home/bav/wsp/pbd/os-tools> mirror -verify
mirror: updating host mirror
mirror: /home/bav/wsp/pbd/os-tools/os-tools.tcl: need to update
mirror: /home/bav/wsp/pbd/os-tools/popups.tcl: need to update
mirror: updating of mirror finished

   The option -f will remove extraneous files on node mirror. This is
   useful to get a real mirror:

nana:/home/bav/wsp/pbd/os-tools> mirror -f
mirror: updating host mirror
mirror: lulu: /home/bav/wsp/pbd/os-tools/qqq: removed
mirror: lulu: /home/bav/wsp/pbd/os-tools/otto: removed
mirror: /home/bav/wsp/pbd/os-tools/main-window.tcl: updating
mirror: /home/bav/wsp/pbd/os-tools/popups.tcl: updating
mirror: updating of mirror finished

   Besides mirroring to another system's disk mirror can be used to
   mirror the current directory to a floppy. This comes in handy for a
   quick kind of backup. There is no real advantage of using rdist when
   operating locally.
   
   If there is enough space available, I use cp with the options -ruvp.
   To do so, call mirror with the option -floppy:

nana:/home/bav/wsp/pbd/os-tools> mirror -floppy
./main-window.tcl -> /floppy/./main-window.tcl
./os-tools.tcl -> /floppy/./os-tools.tcl
./popups.tcl -> /floppy/./popups.tcl

   As with rdist, only new or changed files are copied. Mounting and
   unmounting the floppy is done by the script. Right now there is no way
   of handling extraneous files implemented.
   
   In case you like this ideas, you can find my mirror-utility here.
     _________________________________________________________________
   
   
    Gerd Bavendiek
    
   Last modified: Thu Sep 24 22:24:59 MET DST
     _________________________________________________________________
   
                      Copyright © 1998, Gerd Bavendiek
            Published in Issue 24 of Linux Gazette, January 1998
     _________________________________________________________________
   
   [ TABLE OF CONTENTS ] [ FRONT PAGE ] Back Next 
     _________________________________________________________________
   
    "Linux Gazette...making Linux just a little more fun!"
     _________________________________________________________________
   
   Previous Next Contents
     _________________________________________________________________
   
       Linux Benchmarking: Part III -- Interpreting Benchmark Results
                                      
        by André D. Balsa (writer/coordinator), andrewbalsa@usa.net 
                                      
                          v0.82, 31 December 1997
     _________________________________________________________________
   
   This is the third article in a series of articles on Linux
   Benchmarking, to be published by the Linux Gazette. The first two
   articles showed how to successfully run synthetic or application
   benchmarks to produce accurate, significant and relevant data. The
   present article deals with the correct interpretation of this data,
   and it also presents nbench-byte 2.1, a modern CPU benchmark suite.
     _________________________________________________________________
   
1. Contributors 

2. Benchmarking vs. benchmarketing

     * 2.1 The scientific/quantitative approach
     * 2.2 The benchmarketing approach
       
3. Benchmarks for SMP systems

     * 3.1 Description of the problem
     * 3.2 Runtime issues
     * 3.3 Scheduling issues
     * 3.4 Further reading/links
     * 3.5 Benchmark availability
       
4. GNU/Linux specifics

5. An example of correct/incorrect interpretation of results

     * 5.1 Example
     * 5.2 Pitfalls
       
6. In the next article

7. Notes
     _________________________________________________________________
   
   Previous Next Contents
     _________________________________________________________________
   
                      Copyright © 1998, André D. Balsa
            Published in Issue 24 of Linux Gazette, January 1998
     _________________________________________________________________
   
   [ TABLE OF CONTENTS ] [ FRONT PAGE ] Back Next 
     _________________________________________________________________
   
   Previous Next Contents
     _________________________________________________________________
   
1. Contributors

   Without the help of the following gentlemen, this article would not
   have been completed in time, would certainly be much shorter and would
   probably be filled with errors. In no particular order:
     * Uwe F. Mayer, mayer@tux.org (nbench-byte and general
       contributions/revision),
     * Andy Kahn, kahn@zk3.dec.com (SMP Linux kernel 2.0.0 compilation
       benchmark idea, updates and results),
     * Joseph Yao, jsdy@tux.org (comments and contributions),
     * François Laagel, f.laagel@ieee.fr (researched and contributed most
       of the SMP section), and
     * David Niemi, niemi@tux.org (comments and contributions).
     _________________________________________________________________
   
   Previous Next Contents
   
   Previous Next Contents
     _________________________________________________________________
   
2. Benchmarking vs. benchmarketing

   There are two basic approaches to benchmarking in the field of
   computing: the "scientific" or quantitative approach and the
   "benchmarketing" approach. Both approaches use exactly the same tools,
   however with a slightly different methodology and of course with
   widely diverging objectives and results.
   
2.1 The scientific/quantitative approach

   The first approach is to think of benchmarking as a tool for
   experimentation. Benchmarking is a specific branch of Computer
   Science, since it produces numbers which can then be mathematically
   processed and analyzed; this analysis will be later used to draw
   relevant conclusions about CPU architectures, compiler design, etc.
   
   As with any scientific activity, experiments (benchmark runs and
   reporting) must follow some basic guidelines or rules:
   
     * A good dose of modesty/humility (don't be too ambitious to begin
       with) and common sense.
     * No bias or prejudice.
     * A clearly stated objective related to advancing the
       state-of-the-art.
     * Reproducibility.
     * Accuracy.
     * Relevance.
     * Correct logical/statistical inference.
     * Conciseness.
     * Sharing of information.
     * Quoting sources/references.
       
   Of course, this is an idealized view of the scientific community, but
   these are some of the basic rules for the experimental methods in all
   branches of Science.
   
   I should stress that benchmarking results in documented quantitative
   data.
   
   The correct procedure for GNU/Linux benchmarking under this approach
   is:
   
    1. Decide on what is the issue that is going to be investigated. It
       is very important to execute this step before anything else gets
       started. Stating clearly what we are going to investigate is
       getting half the work done.
    2. Also note that we are not out to prove anything: we must start
       with a clean, Zen-like mind. This is particularly difficult for
       us, GNU/Linux benchmarkers, since we are all utterly convinced
       that:
         1. GNU/Linux is the best OS in the universe (what "best" means
            in this context is not clear, however; probably the same as
            "coolest"),
         2. Wide-SCSI-3 is better than plain EIDE, (idem),
         3. Digital's 64-bit RISC Alpha is the best platform around for
            GNU/Linux development (idem), and
         4. X Window is a good, modern GUI (no comments).
    3. After purifying our minds and souls ;-), we will have to select
       the tools (i.e. the benchmarks) which will be used for our
       benchmarking experiments. You can take a look at my previous
       article for a selection of GPLed benchmarks. Another way to get
       the right tool for the job at hand is to devise and implement your
       own benchmark. This approach takes a lot more time and energy, and
       sometimes amounts to reinventing the wheel. Creativity being one
       of the nicest features in the GNU/Linux world, writing a new
       benchmark is recommended nonetheless, especially in the areas
       where such tools are sorely missed (Graphics, 3D, multimedia,
       etc). Summarizing, selecting the appropriate tool for the job is
       very important.
    4. Now comes the painstaking part: gathering the data. This takes
       huge amounts of patience and attention to details. See my two
       previous articles.
    5. And finally we reach the stage of data analysis and logical
       inference, based on the data we gathered/analyzed. This is also
       where one can spoil everything by joining the Dark Side of the
       Force (see subsection 1.2 below). Quoting Andrew Tanenbaum:
       "Figures don't lie, but liars figure".
    6. If relevant conclusions can be drawn, publishing them on the
       appropriate mailing lists, newsgroups or on the Linux Gazette is
       in order. Again this is very much a Zen attitude (known as "coming
       back to the village").
    7. Just when you thought it was over and you could finally close the
       cabinet of your CPU after having disassembled it more times than
       you could count, you get a sympathetic email that mentions a small
       but fundamental flaw in your entire benchmarking procedure. And
       you begin to understand that benchmarking is an iterative process,
       much like self-improvement...
       
2.2 The benchmarketing approach

   This second approach is more popular than the first one, as it serves
   commercial purposes and gets more subsidies (i.e. grants, sponsorship,
   money, cash, dinero, l'argent, $) than the first approach.
   Benchmarketing has one basic objective, and that is to prove that
   equipment/software A is better (faster, more powerful, better
   performing or with a better price/performance ratio) than
   equipment/software B. The basic inspiration for this approach is the
   Greek philosophical current known as Sophism. Sophistry has had its
   adepts at all times and ages, but the Greeks made it into a veritable
   art. Benchmarketers have continued this tradition with varying success
   (also note that the first Sophists were lawyers (1) see my comment on
   Intel below). Of course with this approach there is no hope of
   spiritual redemption... Quoting Larry Wall (of Perl fame) as often
   quoted by David Niemi:
   
   "Down that path lies madness. On the other hand the road to Hell is
   paved with melting snowballs."
   
   Benchmarketing results cover the entire range from outright lies to
   subtle fallacies. Sometimes an excessive amount of data is involved,
   and in other cases no quantitative data at all is provided; in both
   cases the task of proving benchmarketing wrong is made more arduous.
   
  A short history of benchmarketing/CPU developments
  
   We already saw that the first widely used benchmark, Whetstone,
   originated as the result of research into computer architecture and
   compiler design. So the original Whetstone benchmark can be traced to
   the "scientific approach".
   
   At the time Whestone was written, computers were indeed rare and very
   expensive, and the fact that they executed tasks impossible for human
   beings was enough to justify their purchase by large organizations.
   
   Very soon competition changed this. Foremost among the early
   benchmarketers was the need to justify the purchase of very expensive
   mainframes (at the time called supercomputers; these early machines
   would not even match my < $900 AMD K6 box). This gave rise to a good
   number of now obsolete benchmarks, as of course each different
   architecture needed a new algorithm to justify its existence in
   commercial terms.
   
   This supercomputer market issue is still not over, but two factors
   contributed to its relative decline:
   
    1. Jack Dongarra's effort to standardize the LINPACK benchmark as the
       basic tool for supercomputer benchmarking. This was not entirely
       successful, as specific "optimizers" were created to make LINPACK
       run faster on some CPU architectures (note that unless you are
       trying to solve large scientific problems involving matrix
       operations - the usual task assigned to most supercomputers -
       LINPACK is not a good measure of the CPU performance of your
       GNU/Linux box; anyway, you can find a version of LINPACK ported to
       C in Al Aburto's excellent FTP site.
    2. The appearance of very fast and cheap superminis, and later
       microprocessors, and the widespread use of networking
       technologies. These changed the idea of a centralized computing
       facility and signaled the end of the supercomputer for most
       applications. Also modern supercomputers are built with arrays of
       microprocessors nowadays (notably the latest Cray machines are
       built using up to 2048 Alpha processors), so there was a shift in
       focus.
       
   Next in line was the workstation market issue. A nice side-effect of
   the various marketing initiatives on the part of some competitors (HP,
   Sun, IBM, SGI among others) is that it spawned the development of
   various Unix benchmarks that we can now use to benchmark our GNU/Linux
   boxes!
   
   In parallel to the workstation market development, we saw fierce
   competition develop in the microprocessor market, with each
   manufacturer touting its architecture as the "superior" design. In
   terms of microprocessor architecture an interesting development was
   the performance issue of CISC against RISC designs. In market terms
   the dominating architecture is Intel's x86 CISC design (c.f. Computer
   Architecture, a Quantitative Approach, Hennessy and Patterson, 2nd.
   edition; there is an excellent 25-page appendix on the x86
   architecture).
   
   Recently the demonstrably better-performing Alpha RISC architecture
   was almost wiped out by Intel lawyers: as a settlement of a complex
   legal battle over patent infringements, Intel bought Digital's
   microelectronics operation (which also produced the StrongARM (2) and
   Digital's highly successful line of Ethernet chips). Note however that
   Digital kept its Alpha design team and the settlement includes the
   possibility by Digital to have present and future Alpha chips
   manufactured by Intel.
   
   The x86 market attracted Intel competitors AMD and more recently Cyrix
   which created original x86 designs. AMD also bought a small startup
   called NexGen which designed the precursor to the K6, and Cyrix had to
   grow under the umbrella of IBM and now National Semiconductor but
   that's another story altogether. Intel is still the market leader
   since it has 90% of the microprocessor market, even though both the
   AMD K6 and Cyrix 6x86MX architectures provide better Linux
   performance/MHz than Intel's best effort to date, the Pentium II
   (except for floating-point operations).
   
   Lastly, we have the OS market issue. The Microsoft Windows (R) line of
   OS's is the overwhelming market leader as far as desktop applications
   are concerned, but in terms of
   performance/security/stability/flexibility it sometimes does not
   compare well with other OSes. Of course, inter-OS benchmarking is a
   risky business and OS designers are aware of that.
   
   Besides, comparing GNU/Linux to other OSes using benchmarks is almost
   always an exercise in futility: GNU/Linux is GPLed, whereas no other
   OS can be said to be free (in the GNU/GPL sense). Can you compare
   something that is free to something that is proprietary (3) Does
   benchmarketing apply to something that is free?
   
   Comparing GNU/Linux to other OSes is also a good way to start a nice
   flame war on comp.os.linux.advocacy, specially when GNU/Linux is
   compared to BSD Unices or Windows NT. Most debaters don't seem to
   realize that each OS had different design objectives!
   
   These debates usually reach a steady state when both sides are
   convinced that they are "right" and that their opponents are "wrong".
   Sometimes benchmarking data is called in to prove or disprove an
   argument. But even then we see that this has more to do with
   benchmarketing than with benchmarking. My $0.02 of advice: avoid such
   debates like the plague.
   
  Turning benchmarking into benchmarketing
  
   The SPEC95 CPU benchmark suite (the CPU Integer and FP tests, which
   SPEC calls CINT95/CFP95) is an example of a promising Jedi that
   succumbed to the Dark side of the Force ;-).
   
   SPEC (Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation) originated as a
   non-profit corporation with the explicit objective of creating a
   vendor-independent, objective, non-biased, industry-wide CPU benchmark
   suite. Founding members were some universities and various CPU and
   systems manufacturers, such as Intel, HP, Digital, IBM and Motorola.
   
   However, some technical and philosophical issues have developed for
   historical reasons that make SPEC95 inadequate for Linux benchmarking:
   
    1. Cost. Strangely enough, SPEC95 benchmarks are free but you have to
       pay for them: last time I checked, the CINT95/CFP95 cost was $600.
       The quarterly newsletter was $550. These sums correspond to
       "administrative costs", according to SPEC.
    2. Licensing. SPEC benchmarks are not placed under GPL. In fact,
       SPEC95 has a severely limiting license that makes it inadequate
       for GNU/Linux users. The license is clearly geared to large
       corporations/organizations: you almost need a full-time employee
       just to handle all the requisites specified in the license, you
       cannot freely reproduce the sources, new releases are every three
       years, etc...
    3. Outright cheating. Recently, a California Court ordered a major
       microprocessor manufacturer to pay back $50 for each processor
       sold of a given speed and model, because the manufacturer had
       distorted SPEC results with a modified version of gcc, and used
       such results in its advertisements. Benchmarketing seems to have
       backfired on this occasion.
    4. Comparability. Hennessy and Patterson (see reference above)
       clearly identify the technical limitations of SPEC92. Basically
       these have to do with each vendor optimizing benchmark runs for
       their specific purposes. Even though SPEC95 was released as an
       update that would work around these limitations, it does not (and
       cannot, in practical terms) satisfactorily address this issue.
       Compiler flag issues in SPEC92 prompted SPEC to release a 10-page
       document entitled "SPEC Run and Reporting Rules for CPU95 Suites".
       It clearly shows how confident SPEC is that nobody will try to
       circumvent specific CPU shortcomings with tailor-made
       compilers/optimizers! Unfortunately, SPEC98 is likely to carry
       over these problems to the next generation of CPU performance
       measurements.
    5. Run time. Last but not least, the SPEC95 benchmarks take about 2
       days to run on the SPARC reference machine. Note that this in no
       way makes them more accurate than other CPU benchmarks that run in
       < 5 minutes (e.g. nbench-byte, presented below)!
       
   Summarizing, if you must absolutely compare CPU performance for
   different configurations running GNU/Linux, SPEC95 is definitely not
   the recommended benchmark. On the other hand it's a handy tool for
   benchmarketers.
     _________________________________________________________________
   
   Previous Next Contents
   
   Previous Next Contents
     _________________________________________________________________
   
3. Benchmarks for SMP systems

3.1 Description of the problem

   SMP (Symmetric MultiProcessing) has been implemented in the Linux
   kernel for Intel Pentium, Pentium MMX, Pentium Pro and Pentium II
   processors (4) and more recently for SPARC architectures. SMP systems
   are usually more expensive than their uniprocessor counterparts
   because they are frequently used to implement heavy-duty (possibly
   fault-tolerant) servers. For this reason potential buyers of such
   systems often want to make sure that applications, OS and hardware
   platform will be able to satisfy their needs in terms of overall
   performance before deciding on an expensive purchase. This is
   precisely where a Linux SMP benchmark would be useful. As this series
   of articles focuses on using current and stable 2.0.x kernels, we will
   only deal with what could be done for benchmarking Linux SMP systems
   with current Linux distributions.
   
   Taking advantage of the additional computing power brought to the
   end-user by an SMP hardware platform puts constraints on almost all
   layers of the software involved: application, runtime libraries and
   operating system.
   
   Basically two approaches are possible depending on how the application
   being considered is designed:
   
    1. The application uses multiple simultaneously running processes.
       Those processes are very likely to communicate with each other
       using standard IPC (Inter-Process Communications) mechanisms.
    2. The application is multi-threaded: for some of the related
       processes, multiple instances of sequential execution exist in the
       same address space.
       
   The table below summarizes the impact of these two designs on the
   software layers involved, on the programming complexity and on the
   expected performance improvement (relatively to a comparable
   uniprocessor system):
   
       Application Multiple single-threaded processes Multi-threaded
                                application
   Runtime libraries special requirements None. Libraries must be thread
   safe and should preferably offer some POSIX control over the threads.
   Operating system special requirements: load balancing Smart assignment
   of processes to processors must be implemented (static or dynamic). An
   assignment mechanism of kernel-threads to processors must be supported
              Example make -j 4 vmlinux None available AFAIK.
          Additional programming complexity None. Greater than for
    single-hreaded applications, but it can be done by us mere mortals.
      Expected performance improvement Average to poor. High (close to
     linear speedup) for CPU bound applications but can also degrade to
       become as low as single processor performance for system call
                          intensive applications.
                                      
   How do those issues relate to current stable Linux kernels?
   
   Good results obtained from a Linux multi-threaded benchmark would be
   very interesting for power users.
   
3.2 Runtime issues

   Threads can be implemented at the user-level as coroutines (e.g. the
   LinuxThreads package), or can be kernel threads (i.e. threads running
   in user mode but scheduled by the kernel). Until the very recent
   release of Glibc 2.0 which RedHat 5.0 includes as its standard C
   library, finding a thread safe runtime library could be a tough job.
   
3.3 Scheduling issues

   The issue here is the way scheduling is implemented on SMP platforms
   by the current stable kernels. Quoting its implementor Alan Cox (in a
   paper he wrote in 1995):
   
   "A single lock is maintained across all processors. This lock is
   required to access the kernel space. Any processor may hold it and
   once it is held may also re-enter the kernel for interrupts and other
   services whenever it likes until the lock is relinquished. This lock
   ensures that a kernel mode process will not be pre-empted and ensures
   that blocking interrupts in kernel mode behaves correctly. This is
   guaranteed because only the processor holding the lock can be in
   kernel mode, only kernel mode processes can disable interrupts and
   only the processor holding the lock may handle an interrupt."
   
   So a correct interpretation of this is: right now, no more than a
   single process may be executing in kernel mode (i.e. executing a
   system call) at any given time.
   
   But efforts are underway to improve the granularity of locking in
   future 2.2.x kernels. We should also soon be able to take interrupts
   without having to take a lock. This should result in much better
   performance of system call intensive applications on SMP systems
   running GNU/Linux.
   
3.4 Further reading/links

    1. "An Implementation Of Multiprocessor Linux", Alan Cox, 1995. I
       found this TeX article in the Linux source tree (kernel 2.0.33
       source in /Documentation/smp.tex).
    2. A FAQ about the clone() Linux system call.
    3. A clone() utilization example 
    4. LinuxThreads: a package that implements user-level threads under
       Linux.
       
3.5 Benchmark availability

   If we stick to our guideline for simple, quick running, readily
   available benchmarks (or more simply, K.I.S.S. benchmarks), we can use
   a modified version of the Linux kernel 2.0.0 compilation benchmark
   (described in article II), now for SMP systems. Andy Kahn provided us
   with this test and some very interesting results. Quoting directly
   from some email we exchanged on this subject:
   
   "...actually, it's pretty simple. GNU "make" has an option you can
   specify to use multiple processes (either a default number or a user
   specified number).I don't have the man page handy right now, but i'm
   pretty sure it's either the -j option or the -p option (actually, i
   think both options have some importance to multiple processes). Once
   you specify multiple make processes, each process will have gcc
   compiling something (so in effect, it's just multiple gcc processes).
   
   (later)
   
   "Andre Derrick Balsa" wrote:
   
   -> Great news :-)
   
   ->
   
   -> Thanks to Andy who actually tried this on a dual PPro SMP system
   and
   
   -> explained the whole thing to me, I am pleased to announce a version
   of
   
   -> the Linux 2.0.0 kernel compilation application benchmark for SMP
   
   -> systems:
   
   ->
   
   -> Just replace the "make vmlinux" (was "make zImage") by "make -j n
   
   -> vmlinux". Replace n by 2, 3 ... and make will launch 2, 3 ...
   processes
   
   -> in parallel. Since Linux SMP will transparently distribute
   processes
   
   -> between the SMP processors, there is no need to program anything
   special
   
   -> in terms of message-passing, clone(), etc...
   
   ->
   
   -> Andy doesn't have any exact figures available, but it seems this
   would
   
   -> provide a 30% decrease in compilation time (over a single
   serialized
   
   -> process). Thanks, Andy. :-)
   
   ->
   
   and because I don't have any exact figures, I decided that I would go
   and get some exact figures. :)
   
   The system tested was:
   
   Dual Pentium Pro 180MHz overclocked to 200MHz 64MB EDO RAM
   
   Linux 2.0.27 gcc v2.7.2.1 libc v5.3.12
   
   hda: QUANTUM TRB850A, 810MB w/96kB Cache, LBA, CHS=823/32/63
   
   This is more or less your "standard" PC from about 13-14 months ago.
   I'm not at liberty to upgrade the software on this system, so this is
   as good as it gets from me with this setup.
   
   Also, instead of doing a "sync" before issuing the final "make"
   command, I propose that if the circumstances allow it (you have root
   access), then umount the file system, remount it, then go back to that
   directory and build the kernel.
   
   --- THE RESULTS! ---
   
   "time make vmlinux" 107.32user 149.01system 4:27.91elapsed 95%CPU
   (0avgtext+0avgdata 0maxresident)k 0inputs+0outputs
   (143472major+167951minor)pagefaults 0swaps
   
   "time make -j 2 vmlinux" 131.13user 177.77system 3:28.34elapsed
   148%CPU (0avgtext+0avgdata 0maxresident)k 0inputs+0outputs
   (169498major+168582minor)pagefaults 8903swaps
   
   Ugh, the results are terrible (only a 22% improvement)!! Note that in
   the SMP case, CPU usage was only 148%. From this, we can see that the
   2nd CPU wasn't really used all that much (efficiently)."
   
   I really appreciated Andy's attitude: not only he improved on my
   previous test procedure, but he went right ahead and produced some
   nice experimental data to go with it! Plus one can feel how
   enthusiastic he was at doing some hands-on experimentation!
   
   Another nice feature of this simple SMP benchmark is that it provides
   a basis for performance comparisons between uniprocessor and SMP
   GNU/Linux systems.
   
   Two more benchmarks would deserve a thorough description, but I will
   just mention them here:
   
    1. UnixBench 4.1 has some tests that will launch simultaneous
       processes.
    2. A rather complex, but complete Unix benchmark suite developed in
       France, called SSBA. François is working on a Linux port of the
       latest 2.4F revision.
     _________________________________________________________________
   
   Previous Next Contents
   
   Previous Next Contents
     _________________________________________________________________
   
4. GNU/Linux specifics

   One should be aware of some specific details when benchmarking
   GNU/Linux systems, as compared to benchmarking on other OS's.
   
   GNU/Linux is a multitasking, multiuser system. So, obviously system
   load will skew results. On the other hand, this may be exactly the
   behavior that we want to test: how will a GNU/Linux system perform
   under heavy use? There is no simple answer to this question. Again,
   careful data gathering and analysis may reveal interesting
   opportunities for GNU/Linux improvement.
   
   Note that system load particularly affects latencies, so one should be
   very careful about the conceptual differences between latency and
   throughput.
   
   Just a short example, provided by Jeremy Chatfield ( Xi Graphics :
   some X servers will freeze for various seconds under heavy load,
   resulting in mouse movements that can become quite jerky. This
   behavior is totally undesirable, and yet it is not measured by any X
   server benchmarking tool available.
   
   Also, in a multiuser, multitasking system, the time function reports
   various items that must be analyzed separately: CPU time vs system
   time vs elapsed time (mentionned in article II). So, for a CPU
   benchmark, we should use CPU time, since the time spent during I/O or
   system functions is irrelevant. In the case of a system benchmark, it
   is probable that we will try to write a benchmark that spends most of
   its time in the kernel, so we will use system time. On the other hand,
   for our Linux kernel 2.0.0 compilation benchmark, we used elapsed
   time. There is no general rule to be followed here, one must use one's
   good sense.
   
   Some caveats also apply to NFS benchmarks. The present Linux NFS
   implementation runs in user space, not in kernel space as in BSD
   Unices. Similarly, comparing the performance of Linux as a router
   against dedicated hardware would be an example of comparing Apples and
   Oranges. Even though Linux networking performance is very good,
   particularly with some DMA bus mastering Ethernet controllers/drivers,
   it cannot possibly be compared to dedicated routing hardware.
     _________________________________________________________________
   
   Previous Next Contents Previous Next Contents
     _________________________________________________________________
   
5. An example of correct/incorrect interpretation of results

   We finally get to the practical part of this article. As usual, I
   propose a different benchmark as a practical example, only this time
   we will be seeing a more complex benchmark, in fact a CPU benchmark
   suite: we'll use the latest version of nbench-byte (version 2.1) as
   our example. You can download it from Uwe Mayer's new Web site or from
   the Linux Benchmarking Project
   
   What we are going to measure this time can be described as "general
   CPU performance". So: this is not processor performance for matrix
   operations, this is not MMX performance, this is not the ability of a
   processor to decode an MPEG stream. Also, this is not a measure of a
   processor interrupt response time, peak MIPS, etc.
    1. Wrong ways to benchmark.
    2. Wrong way to analyze benchmarking data measurements.
       
   Now let's take a look at a correct procedure, following all the steps
   recommended in section 1.1
   
5.1 Example

  Stating our objective
  
   For this short example we just want to compare the performance of two
   different CPUs: the AMD K6 and the Cyrix 6x86MX. This is comparative
   benchmarking, so we should keep all conditions fixed and vary just
   this single variable: the CPU.
   
   This is not too ambitious and I have no bias for/against any of these
   two chips. Also, since both CPUs are widely available at reasonable
   prices, such comparative benchmarking may be of interest to GNU/Linux
   users wanting to upgrade and/or put together their next CPU.
   
  Choice of a benchmark
  
   Nbench-byte is an improved, updated version of the BYTEmark benchmark
   suite developed at BYTE magazine by Rick Grehan. Uwe F. Mayer did the
   port to Linux and is its present maintainer/developer. The latest
   version is 2.1, dated December 97.
   
   Similarly to SPEC95, this modern CPU benchmark suite uses 10 different
   algorithms that are representative of common CPU-intensive tasks (the
   file bdoc.txt included with the source has a description of each
   algorithm). Note that Rick has stopped development of BYTEmark
   (neither Uwe nor myself managed to contact him), but you can see that
   this is not a committee-designed benchmark; in this respect its
   lineage fits quite well the GNU/Linux style of development.
   
   Nbench-byte 2.1 also goes one step beyond SPEC95 in that it generates
   three index figures: an Integer Index, a Floating-Point Index and a
   Memory Index. The Memory Index reflects the fact that on most modern
   CPUs, the memory subsystem represents a major performance bottleneck.
   You can check the Web site for STREAM a new benchmark specifically
   created to address this issue, for more information on this topic.
   
   One of nbench-byte nicest features is that it calibrates itself. For
   each of the tests it determines a minimum amount of work that needs to
   be done to be able to accurately measure the time needed. Then it runs
   that test five times and does a statistical analysis (using the
   student-t distribution) to see if the results are consistent (meaning
   that the probability is at least 95% that the true mean of the results
   is within 5% of the calculated mean of the results). If not, then
   nbench runs the test up to twenty-five times more and does the
   statistical analysis after each additional test run. If consistency
   cannot be achieved within a total of thirty runs, a warning will be
   issued when the score gets reported.
   
   In terms of raw data statistical processing, nbench-byte 2.1 goes
   beyond all the other benchmarks I have ever come across.
   
   Another very interesting feature of this benchmark suite is its
   portability across a wide range of OS's and platforms. However,
   because of fundamental differences in compiler/libraries/memory
   management in different OSes, this benchmark should not be carelessly
   used to compare results across platforms. This is not an OS benchmark,
   it's a CPU benchmark (see the pitfalls subsection below). You have
   been warned.
   
  Benchmark setup
  
   We are doing comparative benchmarking, so we will be using exactly the
   same hardware for our benchmark runs. All that will change between
   runs is:
    1. The processor (one run with a 6x86MX, the other run with a K6).
    2. A small cyrix.rc file that was added to the rc.local script. This
       calls set6x86 to setup a few internal 6x86MX registers. The K6
       does not need this file.
       
   Also note that we are using the precompiled nbench executable, as
   shipped in the tar.gz package.
   
   To describe our hardware setup, we resort to the Linux Benchmarking
   Toolkit Report Form:
   
   LINUX BENCHMARKING TOOLKIT REPORT FORM
CPU

===

Vendor: AMD/Cyrix

Model: K6-166/6x86MX-PR200

Core clock:166 MHz (2.5 x 66MHz)

Motherboard vendor: ASUS

Mbd. model: P55T2P4

Mbd. chipset: Intel HX

Bus type: PCI

Bus clock: 33 MHz

Cache total: 512 Kb

Cache type/speed: Pipeline burst 6 ns

SMP (number of processors): 1

RAM

===

Total: 32 MB

Type: EDO SIMMs

Speed: 60 ns

Disk

====

Vendor: IBM

Model: IBM-DCAA-34430

Size: 4.3 GB

Interface: EIDE

Driver/Settings: Bus Master DMA mode 2

Video board

===========

Vendor: Generic S3

Model: Trio64-V2

Bus: PCI

Video RAM type: 60 ns EDO DRAM

Video RAM total: 2 MB

X server vendor: XFree86

X server version: 3.3

X server chipset choice: S3 accelerated

Resolution/vert. refresh rate: 1152x864 @ 70 Hz

Color depth: 16 bits

Kernel

======

Version: 2.0.29

Swap size: 64 MB

gcc

===

Version: 2.7.2.3

Options: (default nbench)

libc version: 5.4.38

Test notes

==========

Two processors tested. The 6x86MX was configured with a special rc.cyrix file.

RESULTS

========

Linux kernel 2.0.0 Compilation Time: N/A

Whetstone Double Precision (FPU) INDEX: N/A

UnixBench 4.10 system INDEX: N/A

Xengine: N/A

nbench-byte integer INDEX: 6x86MX - 0.686; K6 - 0.713

nbench-byte memory INDEX: 6x86MX - 0.753; K6 - 0.793

nbench-byte floating-point INDEX: 6x86MX - 0.655; K6 - 0.802

Comments

=========

With the CPU case open, it took me 30 minutes to run nbench-byte on the two pro
cessors!


  Detailed benchmark results
  
   One can get very detailed benchmark results with nbench-byte 2.1 by
   specifying the -v option. However, here we are only showing the normal
   output from a standard run, first on the 6x86MX, then on the K6:
   
   6x86MX results:
   
   BYTEmark* Native Mode Benchmark ver. 2 (10/95)
   
   Index-split by Andrew D. Balsa (11/97)
   
   Linux/Unix* port by Uwe F. Mayer (12/96,11/97)
   
   TEST : Iterations/sec. : Old Index : New Index
   
   : : Pentium 90* : AMD K6/233*
   
   --------------------:------------------:-------------:------------
   
   NUMERIC SORT : 80.681 : 2.07 : 0.68
   
   STRING SORT : 11.107 : 4.96 : 0.77
   
   BITFIELD : 2.1997e+07 : 3.77 : 0.79
   
   FP EMULATION : 8.5349 : 4.10 : 0.95
   
   FOURIER : 881.21 : 1.00 : 0.56
   
   ASSIGNMENT : 0.71582 : 2.72 : 0.71
   
   IDEA : 147.28 : 2.25 : 0.67
   
   HUFFMAN : 58.095 : 1.61 : 0.51
   
   NEURAL NET : 0.70897 : 1.14 : 0.48
   
   LU DECOMPOSITION : 27.869 : 1.44 : 1.04
   
   ==========================ORIGINAL BYTEMARK
   RESULTS==========================
   
   INTEGER INDEX : 2.861
   
   FLOATING-POINT INDEX: 1.181
   
   Baseline (MSDOS*) : Pentium* 90, 256 KB L2-cache, Watcom* compiler
   10.0
   
   ==============================LINUX DATA
   BELOW===============================
   
   C compiler : gcc version 2.7.2.3
   
   libc : libc.so.5.4.38
   
   MEMORY INDEX : 0.753
   
   INTEGER INDEX : 0.686
   
   FLOATING-POINT INDEX: 0.655
   
   Baseline (LINUX) : AMD K6/233*, 512 KB L2-cache, gcc 2.7.2.3,
   libc-5.4.38
   
   * Trademarks are property of their respective holder.
   
   K6 results:
   
   BYTEmark* Native Mode Benchmark ver. 2 (10/95)
   
   Index-split by Andrew D. Balsa (11/97)
   
   Linux/Unix* port by Uwe F. Mayer (12/96,11/97)
   
   TEST : Iterations/sec. : Old Index : New Index
   
   : : Pentium 90* : AMD K6/233*
   
   --------------------:------------------:-------------:------------
   
   NUMERIC SORT : 82.229 : 2.11 : 0.69
   
   STRING SORT : 10.57 : 4.72 : 0.73
   
   BITFIELD : 2.0672e+07 : 3.55 : 0.74
   
   FP EMULATION : 6.4842 : 3.11 : 0.72
   
   FOURIER : 1117.1 : 1.27 : 0.71
   
   ASSIGNMENT : 0.93388 : 3.55 : 0.92
   
   IDEA : 158.42 : 2.42 : 0.72
   
   HUFFMAN : 81.407 : 2.26 : 0.72
   
   NEURAL NET : 1.0764 : 1.73 : 0.73
   
   LU DECOMPOSITION : 26.521 : 1.37 : 0.99
   
   ==========================ORIGINAL BYTEMARK
   RESULTS==========================
   
   INTEGER INDEX : 2.990
   
   FLOATING-POINT INDEX: 1.445
   
   Baseline (MSDOS*) : Pentium* 90, 256 KB L2-cache, Watcom* compiler
   10.0
   
   ==============================LINUX DATA
   BELOW===============================
   
   C compiler : gcc version 2.7.2.3
   
   libc : libc.so.5.4.38
   
   MEMORY INDEX : 0.793
   
   INTEGER INDEX : 0.713
   
   FLOATING-POINT INDEX: 0.802
   
   Baseline (LINUX) : AMD K6/233*, 512 KB L2-cache, gcc 2.7.2.3,
   libc-5.4.38
   
   * Trademarks are property of their respective holder.
   
  Data analysis
  
   We will concentrate on the Linux data, for obvious reasons. As we can
   see, whereas the 6x86MX outperforms the K6 on some tests by a narrow
   margin (approx. 6%), the K6 vastly outperforms the 6x86MX on other
   tests.
   
  Conclusion
  
   On our synthetic test nbench-byte version 2.1, the K6 has shown
   slightly better performance than the 6x86MX, running at the same
   166MHz (2.5 x 66MHz) clock rate on exactly the same hardware.
   
5.2 Pitfalls

   The basic pitfall that one should be warned against concerning
   nbench-byte applies similarly to all benchmarks: one should not to try
   to use this tool for something it was not designed for. Since this is
   a CPU benchmark, do not use it to test OS performance, video
   bandwidth, or any other feature that implies I/O activity. Also, it is
   not an adequate tool for comparing compilers and/or C and math
   libraries.
   
   This is less obvious than it seems at first. For an accurate,
   thorough, documented discussion of this particular pitfall, you are
   referred to one of Uwe's excellent pages on benchmarking
   
   Another pitfall would have been to compare the two processors running
   on widely different machines. Motherboard, cache and RAM timing setup
   can skew results by as much as 10%. Compilation options and libraries
   can also skew results by 25% or more.
     _________________________________________________________________
   
   Previous Next Contents Previous Next Contents
     _________________________________________________________________
   
6. In the next article

   I had initially estimated that four articles would be enough for an
   overview of GNU/Linux benchmarking, but recently more issues have been
   raised and more questions have been asked than I could address in just
   four articles. The next article will deal with exactly this problem:
   Available Linux Benchmarking Data and Open Issues.
     * The Linux Benchmarking Project.
     * Available Linux benchmarking data on the Web.
     * Suggestions for further Linux benchmarking.
     * A system benchmark: UnixBench.
     _________________________________________________________________
   
   Previous Next Contents Previous Next Contents
     _________________________________________________________________
   
7. Notes

   (1) Basic objective of Sophists: win all arguments by any means
   available. Truth, logical coherence and argument transparency did not
   matter to Sophists. They were fought (on intellectual grounds, of
   course) by Socrates and Plato and later by Aristotle. A quick search
   on Yahoo/Altavista with keywords Sophism or Gorgias will turn up some
   information on the subject.
   
   (2) StrongARM: this is an architecture developed at Digital, based on
   the Advanced Risc Machines design. It provides roughly the same CPU
   processing performance as a 133 MHz Pentium at a fraction of the cost
   and with a ridiculously low power consumption (< 0.5W). Intel's
   purchase of Digital's microelectronics operation includes the design
   rights to the StrongARM, so the future of this architecture is unknown
   (as of December 97). Note that Linux has been ported to some
   implementations of the ARM architecture. The Corel Java NC is based on
   Linux/ARM and uses the latest version of the StrongARM SA-110 CPU.
   
   The following is strictly rumour: Digital didn't quite know what to do
   with the StrongARM design, since as a product it didn't fit Digital's
   corporate culture of high-margin minis and workstations. On the other
   hand, it was just a nice bargain for Intel, who was looking for
   exactly that sort of CPU to address the future "appliance PC" market,
   ideally complementing the Pentium family. Since the details of the
   Digital/Intel deal have been kept secret, one can only guess how much
   Intel paid for the StrongARM design, but rumour has it that Digital's
   negociators were not even aware of how strategically important this
   CPU was to Intel.
   
   (3) To get a clearer idea of what free means in the GNU/Linux world,
   you are referred to the various Richard Stallman (founder of the Free
   Software Foundation interviews and articles, to the GNU manifest, and
   also of course to the text of the General Public License (GPL). In a
   speech in 1986, RMS said:
   
   "I want to establish that the practice of owning software is both
   materially wasteful, spiritually harmful and evil. All these three
   things being interrelated."
   
   (4) Intel did not license its APIC SMP specifications/technology to
   either Cyrix or AMD. Even though Cyrix and AMD agreed on a different,
   open specification called OpenPIC for multiprocessing, no motherboard
   was ever released to that standard (and no OS has ever implemented it,
   obviously). An excellent description of OpenPIC and x86
   multiprocessing issues can be found in IBM's Application Note 40208,
   available in pdf format from IBM's Microelectronics Web site 
     _________________________________________________________________
   
   Previous Next Contents
   
    "Linux Gazette...making Linux just a little more fun!"
     _________________________________________________________________
   
                           LXNY at UNIX EXPO '97
                                      
                         By Michael E. Smith, LXNY
     _________________________________________________________________
   
   The meeting notice on Usenet (including comp.os.linux.announce) set
   the tone for the event: Richard M. Stallman's original announcement of
   the GNU project (Subject: Free Unix!) was the centerpiece. The event:
   the traditional LXNY meeting at UNIX EXPO (this year a part of Miller
   Freeman's IT Forum '97) in New York City. The speaker: Bryan Sparks,
   Founder and CEO of Caldera, Inc. The setting: a corner room at the
   Javits Center seating 75, with a crowd of approximately 100
   enthusiasts overflowing into the corridor.
   
   Jay Sulzberger of LXNY delivered a rousing introduction to the
   speaker, establishing a martial-revolutionary theme. After regaling
   the assembled troops with stories of RMS at MIT, he echoed Linus
   Torvalds' call for more applications and strongly cautioned Linuxers
   on the need to avoid internecine conflict -- the war is to be waged on
   many fronts in many ways, even including alliances with commercial
   vendors. (Caldera offers both free and commercial versions of Linux
   (and (DR) OpenDOS).) Sparks spoke about the Caldera international
   operation, non-desktop environments (especially kiosks), their
   partnerships, their lawsuit against Microsoft, the continuing
   phenomenal growth of Linux and the need for perseverance. He mentioned
   that Caldera has sold 2,000,000 copies of OpenDOS.
   
   Caldera brought some of their partners to the meeting including Corel
   (WordPerfect for Linux), Enhanced Software Technologies (bru), AppGen
   Business Software, FacetCorp, TwinCom and ICentral. Also represented
   were VAResearch and Non-Profit Computing. Caldera provided food,
   T-shirts, flashlights and OpenLinux Lite CDs to all present.
   
   LXNY's booth at the show, which contained a display of Linux
   publications, was as big a success as the meeting.
     _________________________________________________________________
   
                     Copyright © 1998, Michael E. Smith
            Published in Issue 24 of Linux Gazette, January 1998
     _________________________________________________________________
   
   [ TABLE OF CONTENTS ] [ FRONT PAGE ] Back Next 
     _________________________________________________________________
   
    "Linux Gazette...making Linux just a little more fun!"
     _________________________________________________________________
   
                         More Adventures with SAMBA
                                      
                               By Dave Nelson
     _________________________________________________________________
   
   If you haven't networked your small office/home office computers,
   ethernet prices are now so cheap you can't afford not to! I recently
   installed a three-computer LAN, including my dual- boot Linux/Win95
   box (named Dave), my wife's WfW 3.11 box (named Kathy), and my
   Linux/Win95 portable. We share files among the three computers and
   print to the laser printer on Dave from within Windows.
   
   The SMB protocol (server message blocks) does all this over IP. SMB/IP
   is built into Win95 and WfW; Linux uses the Samba program to talk SMB.
   A special challenge was to get Dave to look the same to Kathy whether
   Dave is booted in Linux or Win95. This technique could also be helpful
   if you are changing from a Windows server to a Linux server, and you
   don't want to redo the settings on each client. All the software is
   free, once you own the operating systems. My total hardware costs were
   under $100, including a five port 10 base T hub, network interface
   cards, and twisted-pair cables.
   
   John Fisk's article on Samba in LG issue 20 was a great introduction
   to Samba. I used it to get started. Then I added printing from Windows
   to Linux, solved some file permission problems, and figured out how to
   make Dave look the same to Kathy under Linux or Win95. I'm sure what I
   did could be improved on -- I am new to Samba and only a journeyman at
   Linux, but this way works. If you worry about security, you may want
   to add passwords. Between my wife and me security isn't a problem ;-)
   
   An example of Samba's power: my wife runs Quicken on Kathy under
   Windows. She transparently uses the Quicken data file stored in a DOS
   partition on Dave running Linux. She transparently prints from Quicken
   to the laser printer on Dave. She doesn't have to change any settings
   on Kathy when I switch Dave between Linux and Win95. And my settings
   on Dave are handled automatically on bootup. Way cool!
   
   Here's how I did it:
   
   I used System Commander to dual boot My box (Dave)to Win95 or Linux. I
   installed networking on both operating systems, using the same IP
   addresses. I named my SMB group "home." Fisk's article shows how to do
   most of this. My Linux release (Caldera) comes with Samba installed.
   Probably your release does too. Samba runs as two daemons: smbd and
   nmbd. Find them by typing

which smbd; which nmbd

   If they are installed, they are probably in /usr/sbin. If not, install
   them. Caldera Linux starts them on bootup by running the script
   /etc/rc.d/init.d/smb. Note that if you change the Samba configuration
   file, it isn't necessary to reboot (at least using Caldera or Red
   Hat.) Just issue the commands

/etc/rc.d/init.d/smb stop
/etc/rc.d/init.d/smb start

   and Samba will be reconfigured. Fisk's article points out that Samba
   may also be started by init.d. You don't want to start Samba twice, so
   check your settings after reading Fisk.
   
   I created the following /etc/smb.conf file on Dave:
[global]
   workgroup = home
   printing = bsd
   printcap name = /etc/printcap
   load printers = yes
   guest account = dos

[printers]
   comment = All Printers
;   print command = cp %s /tmp/tmp.print
   print command = lpr -Pepson -b %s
   browseable = yes
   printable = yes
   public = yes
   writable = no
   create mode = 0700

[d]
   comment = DOS Disk d:
   path = /mnt/diskd/
   public = yes
   writable = yes
   printable = no
   guest ok = yes

   The [global] section of smb.conf tells Samba that my workgroup is
   called "home," the printer description file is /etc/printcap, and the
   user (or guest account) for dos services is "dos." To set up the user
   "dos" run the program "adduser dos" or just edit the /etc/passswd
   file. I had to edit /etc/passwd after running adduser to get things
   right. My /etc/passwd file has the following line for the user dos:

dos::501:500:DOS files:/home/dos:/bin/false

   In order of fields this line says the user is dos; dos needs no
   passwd; its user number is 501; its group number is 500; it is called
   DOS files (this field is just a comment); its home directory is
   /home/dos; and it has no shell privileges. The user and group number
   were assigned by adduser; they don't have to be 501,500. To test that
   the user dos is set up right, change /bin/false to /bin/bash and log
   on as dos. You shouldn't need a password and should get a bash shell
   prompt. Then change back to /bin/false to close the security hole.
   When I ran adduser, I told it that dos belongs to group DOS, and it
   added the group DOS to the /etc/group file with the line

DOS::500:

   The [printers] section sets up printing for DOS. The commented- out
   line "print command = cp %s /tmp/tmp.print" is a great way to debug
   Samba printing. I found this in the help file "Printing.txt" that
   comes in the Samba package. If this line is uncommented and the next
   one commented out, the print file from Kathy appears on Dave as
   /tmp/tmp.print rather than being sent to the printer. You can check
   whether it arrived OK and try printing it by running lpr. The line
   "print command = lpr -Pepson -b %s" does the actual printing. The
   option "-Pepson" says to use the "epson" printer description in
   /etc/printcap. My laser printer on Dave is called "epson" under Win95,
   and Kathy expects to see the same name under Linux. The option "-b"
   tells lpr to accept the binary print files that Windows produces.
   Otherwise lpr chokes because its default is to expect ASCII files, and
   the printer does nothing. (Maybe this fix is the same as what is
   called raw mode printing?) The "%s" parameter represents the file name
   being sent to Samba.
   
   I created a section in /etc/printcap for the epson printer:
epson:\
        :sd=/var/spool/lpd/lp:\
        :mx#0:\
        :lp=/dev/lp1:\
        :sh:

   Notice there is no "if=" line, i.e. no input filter that processes the
   binary print file. My printer is an Epson 7000, basically a HPIIp
   clone, so it expects the DOS convention of CRLF at line's end. If I
   tried to use this printer description when printing under Linux, which
   only sends the Unix standard LF, I would see the dreaded staircase
   effect.
   
   The [d] section of smb.conf describes the shared disk that Kathy
   expects to be called "d," the same as drive D: under DOS. I mount it
   as /mnt/diskd in Linux.
   
   I ran into a puzzling problem with user permissions (probably either
   my ignorance of standard Unix practice, or something weird about msdos
   filetype.) The user dos needs to have write privileges to the
   directory /mnt/diskd and all its files. But I couldn't make that
   happen using chmod, chown, or chgrp. As soon as I would reboot and
   mount the file system, /mnt/diskd would revert to the following
   privileges:

drwxr-xr-x  44 root  root  18432 Dec 31  1969 diskd/

   The missing "w" for group and others did me in as long as root owned
   the directory.
   
   I fixed this by editing the line in /etc/fstab for /mnt/diskd to be
   the following:

/dev/hda5  /mnt/diskd  msdos   user,noauto   0     0

   The important field is user,noauto, which means mountable by a user
   and don't automatically mount on bootup. The I added a line to
   /etc/rc.d/rc.local to mount diskd as user dos:

mount -ouid=501,gid=500 /mnt/diskd

   This says mount /mnt/diskd with option (-o) of user id 501 and group
   id 500, which correspond to the user dos. If your adduser gives dos a
   different uid and gid, just change this line appropriately. If you
   have trouble mounting diskd on bootup, try logging in as dos (after
   changing the /etc/passwd line for dos to /bin/bash) and mounting diskd
   manually. When that works, go back and get the rc.local line to work
   right.
   
   As John Fisk wrote: one thing about Linux, it hones your problem
   solving skills. If you have problems, look in Samba's logs and message
   files. On my system the logs are in /var/log/smbd and /var/log/nmbd.
   Messages are in the directory var/samba.
   
   That's all it took for me to set up Samba. The Samba documentation
   shows a wealth of different configurations. At first I found them all
   daunting, but by chipping away, one problem at a time, things came
   more easily. I hope this article helps you get started. Who needs NT
   servers anyway?
     _________________________________________________________________
   
                       Copyright © 1998, Dave Nelson
            Published in Issue 24 of Linux Gazette, January 1998
     _________________________________________________________________
   
   [ TABLE OF CONTENTS ] [ FRONT PAGE ] Back Next 
     _________________________________________________________________
   
    "Linux Gazette...making Linux just a little more fun!"
     _________________________________________________________________
   
                            My Linux Revolution
                                      
                    By Ylian Saint-Hilaire & Erik Campo
     _________________________________________________________________
   
   For a long time, I lived in my cave, doing my thing. One day, I got
   out of my nice, very functional cave and saw that my fellow man had
   built a house just outside. It had all the same functions that my cave
   had but was much comfortable and livable (for one, you didn't have to
   push a boulder to close the door every night).
   
   Many years later, I got Linux installed on my personal computer, doing
   my thing. One day, surfing the net, I saw my fellow man programming a
   new version of Linux, which had a great user interface, was easy to
   install and possessed much more new added features. For a long time
   user of Linux on an i386 like me all Linux was good for was routing
   packets. This was a shock.
   
   Of course, the new user interface I am talking about is called the KDE
   project, which along with the new Red Hat distribution version 5.0,
   the very active www.linux.org site and the many applications available
   form an incredible package. To my great astonishment, Linux
   development is in full acceleration and is starting to be viewed as a
   real contender to Microsoft Windows NT. Not too long ago, people
   installing Linux on a computer where viewed as computer gurus, or
   mystic "roots". With the arrival of user friendliness, the question I
   ask myself is: Is Linux going to become an operating system for the
   general public?
   
   Some people will feel bad of loosing the respect of being the only
   ones able to install Linux in their social group. As opposed to them,
   I welcome this new age. I can't wait to install Linux at my grandma's
   place. The operating system of the people will finally come back to
   the people.
   
   This will, however change many things. If less technically inclined
   people jump on the Linux wagon, new demands will be generated for
   easier-to-use software and better support and help files. My grandma
   will ask for drag-and-drop support and very large fonts. The new
   people on the wagon will not be of much help in moving it forward
   (have you ever seen your grandma code lately?). Still, they will bring
   new respect to the OS, and, well, why not, perhaps new ideas.
   
   Some time ago, word from "Santa Cruz" was that we had to upgrade out
   of Linux. This of course was funny and it highlighted the maturity of
   Linux. Not only that Linux is free but it compares better (on my
   scorecard) to almost any other operating system. And unlike some
   "other" operating system, Linux is soon to become a general public
   operating system (hello grandma!).
   
   So, I finally decided I was going to move out of my cave and into I
   much more respectable house. But the most important thing of it all, I
   must start keeping track of the developments and start pushing the
   wagon myself. By the way, Linux makes a great Christmas gift!
     _________________________________________________________________
   
             Copyright © 1998, Ylian Saint-Hilaire & Erik Campo
            Published in Issue 24 of Linux Gazette, January 1998
     _________________________________________________________________
   
   [ TABLE OF CONTENTS ] [ FRONT PAGE ] Back Next 
     _________________________________________________________________
   
    "Linux Gazette...making Linux just a little more fun!"
     _________________________________________________________________
   
                               KDE and Gnome
                                      
                               by Larry Ayers
     _________________________________________________________________
   
                                Introduction
                                      
   Watching the Linux operating system begin to mature is interesting
   these days. A couple of years ago much attention was devoted to
   incompatibilities with various hardware components, networking, and
   the development of the kernel itself. Though these activities
   continue, it's no longer necessary to follow these development efforts
   as closely in order to run a dependable Linux system. Distributions
   have improved immensely, and now more free-software developers are
   turning their attention towards refinement and integration of the user
   interface. Two separate projects have arisen in the past year, KDE
   (the K Desktop Environment) and GNOME (the Gnu Network Object Model
   Environment). Both of these projects include among their stated goals
   the desire to make the administration and usage of a Linux system
   easier for beginners, in part by employing a uniform look-and-feel for
   the most commonly used applications and utilities, as well as
   interoperability of the system components. It's difficult to make much
   of a comparison between the two, as KDE is much farther along than
   GNOME, but I'll make an attempt.
   
                               Commonalities
                                      
   There is one common structural aspect to these two projects. They each
   rely on a group of shared libraries, which provides the interface to
   basic OS operations, such as file-reading and saving, as well as basic
   display and appearance functions. The end result of this is that an
   installation will populate adirectory with a variety of shared
   libraries, which in turn supports another directory of fairly small
   executables. The Gimp works this way as well; the individual plug-ins
   tand to be small, but rely on the services provided by both the GTK
   and the Gimp shared libs. This approach facilitates contributions by
   programmers not directly involved with a project, as many of the
   low-level and window-display functions are already written, allowing a
   contributed application or extension to "hook" into them.
   
                                    KDE
                                      
   The first of the two to gain momentum was KDE. About a year ago a
   group of developers, mainly European, began coding the components of
   this ambitious project. They chose the Qt toolkit (from TrollTech in
   Norway) as the GUI framework, a decision which has since led to some
   controversy. Qt has a few licensing restrictions which, though not
   onerous for end-users, can cause problems for the creators of
   CDROM-based distributions. Advocates of GNU-style free software tend
   not to favor Qt, a circumstance which led to the creation of the GNOME
   project.
   
   Setting aside the thorny licensing issues, the KDE developers have
   managed to pull together quite a remarkable system in the past year,
   though numerous bugs still remain evident. The second public beta was
   released in November of 1997, and I compiled and installed it soon
   after. (I had briefly tried the initial beta, but found it too
   unstable to evaluate).
   
   This second release still has flaky aspects, but enough of it works to
   give the user an idea of what the developers are planning to
   accomplish. In effect KDE is a sort of GUI wrapper around an existing
   Linux system, which attempts to simplify system-administration tasks
   and offer interacting and compatible utilities and applications. Kfm
   is at the core of the system, as it is intended to be left running in
   the background and serves as the help-viewer for all of the KDE
   components. Kfm is also a file-manager (icon-based, with some
   resemblance to xfm and moxfm) and serves creditably as a web-browser.
   
   Kfm is an impressive application, and in itself justifies trying out
   KDE. Many of the other applications are replacements for programs
   which most Linux users probably already have and would only be
   desirable if a complete KDE system is the goal.
   
   KDE has its own window-manager, kwm, which had some display faults on
   my system. Due to these video artifacts I didn't use it much, but it
   did appear stylish and well-designed. It seems that these display bugs
   don't show up on most systems; I suspect that it depends upon the
   video-card and X-server in use.
   
   A new Linux user (especially someone accustomed to Windows or
   Macintosh systems) might appreciate the relative ease of configuration
   and use which KDE offers. In a sense, KDE extends the scope of the
   tasks traditional distributions perform. One drawback might be the
   very comfort of the KDE environment itself; the various
   system-administration tasks outside of KDE's abilities might seem too
   daunting or unapproachable without a KDE interface. This won't be seen
   as a drawback to prospective users who lack the fascination with
   internals and configuration which in the past has typified Linux
   users.
   
   Some KDE users have reported that they find the system usable and
   useful, but with my particular setup this wasn't the case. But I have
   to say that my extensively customized Linux installation seems
   perfectly satisfactory as is, and I probably lack the motivation to
   spend the time learning to adapt KDE to my needs. If KDE had existed
   back when I first booted up a Slackware system some years ago, who
   knows...
   
                                   GNOME
                                      
   Miguel Icaza (head of the Midnight Commander development group) also
   seems to be at the helm of the new GNOME development project, which
   has goals similar to those of KDE, with one difference: the project is
   composed completely of GNU-style free software. This project is based
   upon the GTK toolkit, the free successor to Motif in the Gimp
   development efforts. The project arose as a direct response to the KDE
   project, and the GNOME developers have borrowed some code from KDE for
   a few of the applets.
   
   As of late December (version 0.10) GNOME as a whole isn't really
   suitable for actual use, but several of the applets function well and
   the future looks bright for the project. Miguel Icaza is in the
   process of porting the Midnight Commander file-manager to GTK, which
   will let it fit in with the remainder of the GNOME applications.
   
   The Panel applet, written primarily by Federico Mena Quintero, is an
   icon-bar and program-launcher which locates itself at the bottom edge
   of the screen. It features cascading menus which could be a substitute
   for the usual window-manager root menus. Most of the GNOME applets
   have been included in the default menu of Panel, allowing this applet
   to serve as an entry-point to the GNOME installation. It takes a
   little fiddling around to get the hang of using Panel, so don't give
   up if at first glance it seems like nothing is working
   
   The provided applets include a desktop-manager (which in part serves
   as an interface to the Xlockmore screensaver), CroMagnon (an interface
   to the crontab utility), an audio mixer, an interface to the elaborate
   LinuxConf configuration manager, several nicely-done games (some of
   which were adapted from KDE), and several others.
   
   One major difference between GNOME and KDE is that KDE includes a
   window-manager, whereas GNOME doesn't, and is designed to cooperate
   with a user's current window-manager. This may make GNOME more
   appealing to seasoned users who have extensively customized their
   window-manager resource files.
   
                                 Conclusion
                                      
   As I write this only the source code is available for GNOME 0.10, and
   it's tricky to compile. An intel-Linux binary archive of the 0.9
   release is available from this site, but I would recommend waiting a
   while for either an updated binary release or an easier-to-build
   source release. The developers are hard at work these days (judging by
   their mailing-list postings) and I think that, given time, something
   both interesting and usable will appear.
   
   Though KDE is closer to being "finished" (if such a state even exists
   in the realm of software), it still has a ways to go. Development is
   proceeding rapidly, and I imagine that sometime this year a more
   polished release will become available.
   
   The fate of a free-software project is interesting because of the
   inherent unpredictability. Anyone can start one, but whether it comes
   to fruition or withers on the vine is up to the inscrutable software
   gods. The timing may be just right (i.e., it addresses many users (and
   developers!) needs) but convincing enough programmers with time and
   inclination to become involved just can't be forced or foretold. These
   two projects seem to have attained that essential momentum, and
   hopefully we shall see them evolve further. Last modified: Sun 4 Jan
   1998
     _________________________________________________________________
   
                       Copyright © 1998, Larry Ayers
            Published in Issue 24 of Linux Gazette, January 1998
     _________________________________________________________________
   
   [ TABLE OF CONTENTS ] [ FRONT PAGE ] Back Next 
     _________________________________________________________________
   
    "Linux Gazette...making Linux just a little more fun!"
     _________________________________________________________________
   
                         Updates and Correspondence
                                      
                               by Larry Ayers
     _________________________________________________________________
   
   Here in north-east Missouri we are currently afflicted with a heavy,
   wet snowfall, so the time is ripe to write a page updating some of my
   past Gazette articles, along with some e-mail which has come my way.
   
                            More Text-Processing
                                      
   I've received quite a few messages concerning my article in LG #22,
   Word-Processing vs. Text-Processing. Eric Marsden sent this message
   concerning the Lout text-formatting system:
   
     From: Marsden Eric <emarsden@mail.dotcom.fr>
     To: layers@marktwain.net
     Subject: [LG] Lout-mode for Emacs
     
     Hello Mr Ayers,
     
     In the October Linux Gazette you wrote an article comparing
     different document formatters, and mentioned Lout in passing. I
     noticed that you regretted the lack of an Emacs mode for Lout code.
     
     I agreed with you, and set out to write one. Indeed, there are now
     two Emacs modes, since another Lout user had also set about writing
     one, independently of my effort. Both are available on my site,
     where you'll also find the Lout FAQ/HOWTO.
     
     You were right to mention that "The Lout system is still maintained
     and developed"; Jeff Kingston is quite receptive to suggestions and
     requests for new features in the formatter, which is far from being
     the case for TeX (now frozen) and LaTeX (whose development group
     seems very closed).
     
     I agree that Lout is very much less widely used than LaTeX, which
     is a definite disadvantage. I believe that things will change over
     time, in particular given Lout's very strong capabilities for
     mixing graphics and text. I might even write an article for the
     Linux Gazette myself to spread the word. Eric Marsden
     emarsden @ mail.dotcom.fr
     It's elephants all the way down. [LA: sounds like a Terry
     Pratchett quote!]
     
   I tried out the XEMacs mode found at the above link, and though it's
   still under development, it works well here and is well worth
   investigating.
     _________________________________________________________________
   
   Here's another interesting message:
   
     From: oliver@fritz.co.traverse.com (Christopher Oliver)
     Subject: TeX/GROFF
     To: layers@marktwain.net
     
     I noticed in your defense of mark-up systems, you didn't touch on
     issues regarding quality of output. If you write on this in the
     future, you might find What has WYSIWYG done to us? by typographer
     Conrad Taylor quite interesting. I think he makes quite a case that
     the word processors aren't suitable if the user cares about the
     quality of the typesetting. I think there is a lot of good thinking
     there for folk involved with document production at any level. This
     link will take you to the article.
     
     Regards,
     
     Christopher Oliver    Traverse Communications
     Systems Coordinator    223 Grandview Pkwy, Suite 108
     oliver@traverse.com    Traverse City, Michigan, 49684
     _________________________________________________________________
   
   Another message concerning Emacs and LaTeX:
   
     To: layers@marktwain.net
     Subject: Word Processing and Text Processing
     From: Peter S Galbraith <galbraith@mixing.qc.dfo.ca>
     
     Nice summary!
     > Emacs provides excellent syntax highlighting for LaTeX files,
     > which greatly improves their readability.
     
     I also wrote a better syntax highlighting Emacs package for LaTeX
     files, called font-latex.el. I think I should make it part of
     Emacs. I doubt you knew about it even though it's distributed as a
     contributed package with AUC-TeX.
     > Xtem has one feature which is useful for LaTeX beginners:
     > on-line syntax help-files for the various LaTeX commands.
     
     There are a few add-on packages to AUC-TeX that do this by
     interfacing with latex info files:
     * http://www.ifi.uio.no/~jensthi/word-help.el
     * ftp://ftp.phys.ocean.dal.ca/users/rhogee/elisp/func-doc.el
       
     Peter Galbraith, research scientist
     Maurice-Lamontagne Institute,
     Department of Fisheries and Oceans Canada
     
   I confess I'd seen Mr. Galbraith's font-latex.el in the AucTeX
   distribution files, but didn't realize that it is an extra package
   which must be explicitly loaded. The version included with AucTeX is
   an older one; I recommend downloading the latest revision from this
   FTP site. Along with font-latex.el, a file called font-latex.tex is
   available at the site. This file is a sort of demo for font-latex.el,
   illustrating its capabilities. Some people won't like the very
   colorful approach to highlighting this LISP file provides, but with
   judicious selection of colors (now so much easier using the Customize
   facility!) the readability of TeX files is much enhanced.
     _________________________________________________________________
   
   I recently happened across a message posted to the comp.editors
   newsgroup which eloquently expresses a plea which I'm sure will
   resonate with many Linux users:
   
     From: Des Small <dms@nutri-matic.mechanoid.soton.ac.uk> Newsgroups:
     comp.editors
     Subject: Re: writing an editor
     Date: 17 Dec 1997 22:09:22 +0000
     Organization: Southampton University
     X-Newsreader: Gnus v5.5/Emacs 20.2
     
     (discussion of editor internals snipped)
     
     Given that the Unix world has already more editors than could
     possibly be required, and a dearth of even modest word-processing
     type apps, I would urge you at least to consider allowing multiple
     fonts in one document. You don't have to rewrite Word; we don't
     even have a competitor for Notepad (simple wysiwyg-ish thing with
     RTF output). And no, XEmacs does not count.
     
     (more discussion snipped)
     
     <rant>
     But I really, really think that this particular wheel has been
     reinvented often enough. What I want is a toy word
     processor/editor, like wordpad on steroids, say, which could be
     used for writing simple letters to Auntie (for the Windoze crowd),
     and to make programming more pleasant (different faces for
     different bits of syntax), and a nice HTML mode. XML (a sort of
     SGML-lite) is coming, and its facilities for structured documents
     could make it a snap to develop literate programming envronments,
     without locking you in to one set of tools, or using (eek!)
     embedded TeX. You could have DTD's for almost every application,
     and finally supercede the (admittedly powerful) Unix "everything is
     a stream of bytes" philosophy with a universally understood set of
     conventions for structured documents. Word processors could use XML
     for storage! You could share files across platforms! You could even
     still use Emacs or vi or joe, if you wanted to!
     
     I know XEmacs can (probably) do all this, but I want a small, fast,
     cute version, that doesn't eat all my RAM. I want to use
     proportional fonts to edit text (which Sam and Wily allow) without
     changing my entire world-view (which they tend to insist on), and I
     don't care if it won't run on a vt100. It's 1997 for heaven's sake!
     I have a windowing system! (Admittedly, it's only X, but it's still
     a window system!) At the moment, my desktop has a bunch of terminal
     emulators, and a couple of GNU emacs frames open. These are
     powerful tools, but they hardly constitute a rich GUI environment
     that would make me the envy of all my friends (they lust after the
     stability of my system, but they run away screaming when confronted
     with the tools. And they are neither stupid nor technophobic).
     
     I don't want a ultra-heavy power tool, and I don't care about slow
     serial lines: I already have tools for those jobs. I just want a
     sprinkling of nice fonts, and an interface which doesn't scare off
     Windows or Mac users. Context sensitive pop-up menus might be nice,
     and a reasonable (in terms of looks and functionality) menu bar,
     too. Real-time spell-checking along the lines of Word is quite a
     nice idea, too -- spellchecking email and Usenet posts is overkill
     if it takes any effort at all. (Even M-x ispell-buffer is effort: I
     have to remember to bother.) Notepad on steroids, is all I want,
     really. And it has to be free (as in freedom-not-price, that is).
     
     Does anyone have one, or do I really have to roll my own? And does
     anyone have any info on (or pointers to) suitable data structures
     for such a thing?
     
     Standard Unix tools are very powerful, and for some things I find
     them indispensible. But, for me at least, vt100 compatibility is a
     legacy issue. Sometimes I use remote systems, and then I telnet in
     and use vi, and I'm happy to do so. But most of the time I'm on my
     own Linux box, with 16Mb and clock cycles to burn. I can afford
     some luxuries, but I don't want a whole XEmacs. Is this really so
     weird, this late in computing history? Or did I swear a vow of
     allegience to xterms and non-proportional fonts when I signed on as
     a Unix user? Am I the only person who finds the current situation
     imperfect? Do I have to wait for GnuStep to combine the robustness
     and programmability of Unix (which I love) with a halfway-sane
     GUI-fied environment for those "I want to use a tool but I haven't
     got a month spare to master the interface" moments?
     </rant>
     
     Sorry to rant on like that, but I feel strongly that the many
     things Unix does well should not (and in the eyes of the Heathen do
     not) excuse its barely-half-hearted embracing of the possibilities
     of the new-fangled (ahem...) bit-mapped screen.
     
     Des,
     who sometimes feels trapped in a 1980's timewarp.
     
   After reading the above posting, I began to think about editors which
   can display proportional fonts. Off-hand I can think of three which
   offer this option: XEmacs, the semi-commercial Edith editor, and
   NEdit. All three display Postscript fonts well only if bitmapped
   versions are available, which limits you to the fonts (such as Times
   Roman and New Century Schoolbook) supplied with X. XEmacs will attempt
   to scale other Type 1 fonts but they are unaliased and unsightly.
   Edith and NEdit don't even try to scale the fonts, and only the 12
   point size is offered in the font dialogs. This isn't the fault of the
   editors I've mentioned; they just do what X will allow them to do.
   There are several Type 1 font rasterizers under development for Linux,
   and perhaps this deficiency in the X environment will eventually be
   addressed. This could be helpful in attracting Windows users to Linux,
   as Win95 and NT, for all their faults and annoyances, do display
   scalable fonts well.
   
   If anyone knows of a technique for generating bitmapped fonts in
   various sizes from standard type-1 Postscript fonts, I'd love to hear
   about it!
   
   Both the Gimp and SDCorp's WordPerfect 7 port will scale Postscript
   fonts flawlessly; I assume they have their own internal font-display
   engines. I imagine that StarOffice and Applix can do the same.
     _________________________________________________________________
   
   A floridly-worded letter from Harry Baecker was printed in issue 23 of
   LG, to which I felt compelled to respond: he seems to think my
   opinions on text-processing are "a ritual obeisance to received
   wisdom" and a "requisite Unixworld denigration of word-processors and
   their users". On the contrary, I have little interaction with Unix
   users and my expressed opinions are a direct result of my experiences
   using both word-processors and text-formatting systems. So there!
   
   The folks at SDCorp in Utah have made a welcome change to the
   licensing scheme used in their Linux port of WordPerfect 7. When the
   port was first released a licensing daemon had to be running in order
   to run the word-processor, which would only work on the original
   machine on which WP was installed. Now the daemon isn't necessary, and
   the application isn't limited to one machine. Rumor has it that
   WordPerfect 8 will be ported to Linux sometime next year if sufficient
   interest is shown in the Linux community.
     _________________________________________________________________
   
                            New Editor Versions
                                      
   There have been new releases of several editors lately. Those of you
   who are of the VI persuasion will be glad to hear of new versions of
   all three of the actively-maintained VI-clones.
   
   Vim is probably the most featureful of the VI-style editors. Judging
   by newsgroup postings, it may be the most popular as well. With the
   release of vim-5.0s, vim 5 has finally reached a beta rather than
   alpha state. This revision has a really well-implemented
   syntax-highlighting system for many programming and shell-script
   languages, and it's not too difficult to adapt to new file-types and
   languages. The down-side is that vim is growing larger, and is
   beginning to lose the quickness and low memory-usage that has been a
   hallmark of VI-style editors. Of course, memory is cheap and machines
   are more powerful these days, so this isn't as much of a factor as it
   used to be.
   
   I tend to use XEmacs as my primary editor, due to its excellent
   programming modes, with vile/xvile as an adjunct for quick editing
   tasks, such as config files and e-mail messages. Vile 7.3 was released
   recently, and it is in my opinion the ideal vi-style editor for an
   Emacs user. It incorporates several of the most common Emacs
   keystrokes, such as control-x-1 and control-x-0, which softens the
   transition between the two.
   
   Recently Paul Fox, who several years ago modified the Microemacs code
   until it became the first version of the vile vi-like editor (sounds
   improbable, but it's true!), posted an interesting response in the
   comp.editors newsgroup. He was responding to a query concerning the
   differences between vile and vim:
   
     From: pgf@foxharp.boston.ma.us (Paul G. Fox)
     Newsgroups: comp.editors
     Subject: Re: Vile 7.3 Announcement
     Date: 29 Dec 1997 00:21:07 GMT
     brian moore (bem@news.cmc.net) wrote:
     : > How about portability? I use Vim under NT at work, Linux at
     home.
     : : vile runs on both, and OS/2 and a bunch of other stuff. Hell,
     it even
     : works on Solaris! :)
     :
     
     and VMS and Win95. i'm not sure which i've used less. :-)
     
     as the original vile author, i'll chime in here, but a) i'm biased
     :-), and b) i've never used vim much, except when looking at a
     specific feature implementation.
     
     vile's design goal has always been a little different than that of
     the other clones (and i mean elvis, vim, and nvi here -- i don't
     know enough about any of the others). vile has never really
     attempted to be a "clone" at all, though most people find it close
     enough. i started it because in 1990 i wanted to to be able to edit
     multiple files in multiple windows, i had been using vi for 10
     years already, and the sources to Micro-EMACS came floating past my
     newsreader at a job where i had too much time on my hands.
     
     i started by changing the uemacs keymaps in the obvious way, and
     ran full-tilt into the "hey! where's 'insert' mode gonna come
     from?!" problem. so i hacked a little more, and hacked a little
     more, and eventually released in '91 or '92. (starting soon
     thereafter, major version numbers tracked the year of release: 7.3
     was the third release in '97. i don't know what tom is going to do
     about the Y2K problem. ;-)
     
     but my goal has always been to preserve finger-feel, as opposed to
     display visuals , and, selfishly, to preserve finger-feel most for
     the commands i use. :-) i've never used ex mode much, so vile
     doesn't have much of an ex mode. actually, it has quite an amazing
     ex mode, that works very well -- it just looks really odd, and a
     couple of commands ("t", and "m", which are beyond the scope of the
     current parser) are missing. for the same reasons, it also won't
     fully parse existing .exrc files, since i don't really think that's
     very important -- it does simple ones, but more sophisticated one's
     need some tweaking. when you toss vile's built-in command/macro
     language, you quickly forget you ever cared about .exrc.
     
     just for bragging rights, i think vile had X11 support earlier than
     the others, thanks to work by Dave Lemke from NCD, and Keving
     Buettner who made it really functional. i take no credit -- i never
     use xvile. on the other hand, vile wasn't real useful under DOS,
     since it doesn't use a swap file, and the memory limits got in the
     way pretty quickly. (of course, this isn't a practical problem
     under real OSes.)
     
     unfortunately, since none of the "vi rewrite" authors were
     collaborating much in the early years (if we knew about one another
     at all :-), i think we all made different choices for the extension
     commands. vile tends to follow an emacs-like model, and uses ^X and
     ^A as built-in (but rebindable, of course) command prefixes, and
     indeed uses emacs bindings directly for some commands: like ^X-2 to
     split a window in half.
     
     another typical difference: i insist that ":q" should quit the
     editor, and not just close the current window. both nvi and vim got
     this wrong, imho.
     
     another one: vile does infinite undo the way nvi does, and not the
     way vim does. small differences, but ones that can make a user
     prefer one over another.
     
     as someone else said in this thread -- if you're choosing a new
     version of vi, you owe it to yourself to try them all, for half an
     hour of real work with each, and make your choice based on that.
     vim has lots and lots of support, and having this nice
     "comp.editors.vim" newsgroup helps :-), but the others have things
     to offer too, and you might like one of the others better. i do.
     ;-)
     
     btw, i'm only peripherally involved in vile maintenance anymore --
     Tom Dickey does most of it (thanks tom) these days -- i just run
     the mailing lists.
     
     current versions can be had from:
     ftp://ftp.clark.net/pub/dickey/vile
     
     paul
     
     paul fox, pgf@foxharp.boston.ma.us
     (arlington, ma, where it's 23.5 degrees)
     
   Steve Kirkendall's Elvis editor has also been updated recently. The X
   version, like vim's, has good syntax-highlighting support, and also
   like vim, the windows (95/nt) version is well-supported, for those
   users who need to work in that environment. I confess I haven't spent
   as much time with elvis as I have with vile and vim; perhaps another
   user might care to contribute?
   
   XEmacs development continues apace. Versions 19.16 and 20.3 are
   available (from the home site and its mirrors) but one of the most
   interesting developments is taking place in the 20.5 series of betas.
   
   A common complaint about XEmacs is its bulk and lengthy loading time.
   A full distribution is huge, with many bundled packages for which most
   users have little use. Trying out a new version was not to be
   undertaken lightly, as the download time was long and a large block of
   disk space needed to be available for compilation. The XEmacs team is
   in the process of unbundling packages, which are now available
   individually. The base source archive is now around eight megabytes,
   while the compiled LISP (*.elc) archive is only one and one-third
   megabytes. The packages are independent, and when this beta of XEmacs
   is compiled it finds whichever packages you have installed and loads
   their documentation, menu-items, and keybindings. The package
   subdirectory is independent of the version-specific binary and LISP
   directories, so unchanged package files need not be downloaded when
   upgrading to a new XEmacs version. The easiest way to try this out is
   to compile the base source archive without any packages installed and
   see what doesn't work. Then packages can be incrementally installed
   until the desired functions are once again available. After a new
   package has been unpacked, the /lib-src/DOC file should be deleted.
   Run make again and the new package should be found and incorporated
   into the editor. In other words, it's a good idea to keep the built
   source-tree on your disk until you've generated an XEmacs which meets
   your particular needs. Of the subset of the available packages which I
   installed, only the Ediff package initially failed to work, but after
   some experimentation I found that the line
   (require 'ediff-hook)
   in the XEmacs init file caused it to be loaded.
   
   The release version of 20.5 should be available in the late spring of
   1998.
   
   A new version of NEdit has been released recently. NEdit has become
   popular with programmers and general users due to its nicely-designed
   interface, equally-useful mouse and keyboard control, and relatively
   small size. Version 5.0 adds very configurable (via dialog-boxes)
   syntax-highlighting and a new macro language. It's one of the easiest
   editors to learn, and it's nearly as powerful as Emacs without being
   as large and memory-hungry. If you like mouse-based editing, the
   ability to highlight a selection and drag it to another location in
   the file will be appealing. This function isn't found, as far as I
   know, in any other editor available for Linux.
   
   NEdit is strictly X-based; if you like to edit in a console session
   (admittedly a minority view these days) this editor may not be to your
   taste.
   
   There are now two versions available: the main version is maintained
   by Mark Edel at Fermi National Laboratories, and both source and
   binaries are available from ftp.fnal.gov, the home site. Max Vohlken
   has made a number of patches to NEdit 5 which for various reasons
   haven't been accepted into the main distribution. He has been
   packaging his patched version into an alternate release, and it can be
   also obtained from the above site, in the
   /KITS/pub/nedit/v5_0/contrib/max/5.0 directory. Both versions have
   adherents, it seems.
     _________________________________________________________________
   
                               File-Managers
                                      
   Christian Bolik recently released the first new version of the
   desktop- and file-manager TkDesk in nearly a year. Version 1.0b5 has
   some nice new features (check out the Be-style icon-bar!), and is well
   worth looking into. This beta is supposed to be the last; as soon as
   [incr tcl] (an object-oriented extension of Tcl) is updated to work
   with Tcl8.0, TkDesk will also be able to make use of the latest Tcl/Tk
   releases. The TkDesk web-page has recently become inaccessible, but
   the new version is still in Sunsite's /pub/Linux/Incoming directory.
   
   Henrik Harmsen's FileRunner is now (with version 2.4.1) a GNU General
   Public License application, which means that it will be more easily
   included in distributions such as RedHat and Debian. FileRunner is
   small, quick, and efficient, and if you have installed Tcl/Tk 8.0 you
   should give it a try. It can be obtained from this site.
   
   The Midnight Commander, the versatile text-mode
   file-and-archive-manager, is still under continual development. Beta
   4.1.19 is the latest beta, and although none of the X-windows versions
   are yet ready for prime-time, these recent betas are well worth
   installing, as useful new features are continually added. Source
   (which generally will compile without a hitch) is available from this
   site.
   
   I must confess that the numerous icon-based file-managers, many of
   which have been released or updated lately, don't really suit my
   needs. Several are based on the venerable xfm manager, or its
   (apparently abandoned) successor moxfm. Surely one of you readers out
   there prefers this type of file-manager? Why not write an article or
   review for the Gazette? There's room here for all sorts of views,
   after all!
   
                           Xlock and XScreensaver
                                      
   Jamie Zawinski is a programmer and hacker currently working for
   Netscape. He has written several useful free software programs,
   including xkeycaps and several of the screensaver modes included with
   both Xlockmore and XScreensaver. He also was involved in the early
   development of Lucid Emacs (an ancestor of XEmacs), and has
   contributed to the development of many Emacs packages including the
   Fontlock highlighting mode. I recently received this message from him:
   
   Date: Sat, 29 Nov 1997 20:20:12 -0800
   From: Jamie Zawinski <jwz@netscape.com>
   Organization: Netscape Communications Corporation, Mozilla Division
   X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.02 (X11; U; IRIX 6.2 IP22)
   To: gazette@ssc.com
   CC: layers@marktwain.net
   Subject: xlockmore and xscreensaver
   
   Dear Linux Gazette folks,
   
   I saw the article on Xlockmore by Larry Ayers in issue 18 of the Linux
   Gazette, and I was surprised that it didn't mention, even in passing,
   my XScreenSaver program!
   
   Allow me to engage in a bit of advocacy.
   
   Back in 1991, before Xlockmore existed, there was only Xlock. Xlock
   was not a screensaver: it was only a locker. There was no way to make
   it activate itself automatically when the console became idle, nor was
   there any way to avoid having it lock the screen: that is, there was
   no way to have it turn off when the mouse moved.
   
   So, I wrote XScreenSaver.
   
   XScreenSaver is superior to Xlockmore in a number of ways. The most
   important way, of course, is that it is actually a *screen saver*.
   Although Xlockmore can be configured to not require a password, it
   still doesn't have the ability to turn on when the machine is idle;
   for that you have to use an external program that launches and kills
   it.
   
   The second way in which XScreenSaver is better is that it takes a
   server/client approach: the "xscreensaver" program itself knows how to
   detect idleness, and to lock the screen. The graphics hacks are not
   built in: the beauty of XScreenSaver is that any program which can
   draw on the root window can be launched by XScreenSaver for use as a
   graphics hack! This has several benefits:
     * You don't have to recompile and reinstall xscreensaver to install
       a new graphics hack: all you have to do is change your X
       resources, and issue one command.
     * Since programs don't have to be written *specifically* to run
       inside the xscreensaver framework, there are many more potential
       graphics hacks available. They don't even need to be written in
       the same language: they just have to draw on the root. Thus, it's
       easier to write programs to work with XScreenSaver than with Xlock
       or Xlockmore, because they don't have to follow a complex set of
       idiosynchratic rules on how to structure the code: the only rule
       is, "draw on the root."
     * By separating the task out into two processes, the whole system
       becomes more robust: the memory protection provided by the OS
       serves us well, in that, if one particular graphics hack has a bug
       (leaks memory, corrupts memory, gets a floating-point exception,
       etc) the integrity of the screen saver itself is not compromised.
       The offending hack may exit, but the screen saver itself is still
       running, and the screen is still blackened (or locked.) Also,
       since a screen saver is, by its nature, a very- long-running
       background task, even a small leak would build up over time. By
       arranging for the graphics hacks themselves to be relatively
       short-running tasks, this problem goes away.
     * On some systems, only programs which are running as root can check
       passwords. Therefore, on such systems, a screen locker would need
       to be a setuid-root program. Obviously one needs to be very
       careful about what programs one allows out of the security
       sandbox; a conscientious sysadmin would want to examine such a
       program very carefully before installing it. The XScreenSaver
       model allows this, by having the priveleged part of the program
       (the saver itself) be small, while letting the larger part (the
       graphics hacks) remain unpriveleged.
       
   XScreenSaver also includes a nice Demo Mode that lets the user
   interactively experiment with the currently-configured graphics hacks.
   (Until recently, most Linux users wouldn't have been able to take
   advantage of this, since the code had required Motif; but that is now
   configurable, and demo mode works with Athena widgets too -- since
   release 1.27 back in January 1997.)
   
   If you have a system with more than one monitor, XScreenSaver can save
   them both at once: a different graphics hack will run on each, and if
   the two monitors have different depths (for example, if one is
   monochrome and the other color) they can be configured to choose their
   screenhacks from different lists, so that each monitor is running the
   hacks that look best on it.
   
   Most of the xlockmore hacks (the ones that I liked, anyway, including
   the GL modes) are included with the XScreenSaver distribution; the
   only change made being to extract the various display modes from the
   monolithic XLock executable, and turn them into standalone
   root-window-oriented programs.
   
   However, it's possible to have XScreenSaver run xlock itself, as just
   another one of its many modes -- the best of both worlds!
   
   Do check it out: the canonical web page is
   <http://people.netscape.com/jwz/xscreensaver/>, which includes screen
   shots and descriptions of most of the included graphics hacks.
   
   The latest version, as of this writing, is 2.12. At last count, it
   came with 64 different graphics hacks. Roughly a third of these were
   written by me; the others were graciously contributed by others.
   
   And, of course, it's all free, under the usual X-Consortium-style
   copyright.
   
   You also might enjoy my philosophical rambli ngs on the nature of
   screensavers, at <http://people.netscape.com/jwz/gruntle/savers.html>.
   
   Jamie Zawinski   http://people.netscape.com/jwz/     about:jwz
     _________________________________________________________________
   
                                  The Gimp
                                      
   Since I last wrote about the Gnu Image Manipulation Program (in LG
   #18) both the GTK toolkit (the underlying programming framework of the
   Gimp) and the Gimp itself have undergone several revisions. The
   long-awaited version 1.0 still hasn't been released, but may have been
   by the time you read this. There has been talk of a release by
   Christmas.
   
   There's really no reason to wait for a non-beta release, though, as
   the version available as of mid-December is very useful and
   impressive. Some incredible new plug-ins are bundled with version
   19.16, and general stability has been much improved. A useful feature
   for new users has been added: at start-up a small window appears which
   contains a different usage tip at each invocation. This can be
   disabled at any time. One caveat: be sure to obtain the corresponding
   version of GTK (in this case gtk+-0.99.0), as unlike some earlier
   versions it is no longer bundled with the Gimp.
   
   Here are brief descriptions of some of the new plug-ins:
   
                                   Iwarp
                                      
   Some plug-ins are very useful, but tend to be taken for granted, such
   as the various blurring or image-format modules. Then there are
   plug-ins which, though not immediately useful, are fascinating due to
   the unexpected and interesting changes they can wreak upon an
   unsuspecting image. The Iwarp plug-in, as an example.
   
   I admit I've never used Adobe's Photoshop and the many commercial
   plug-ins available for it. Therefore my initial reaction (composed of
   equal parts of awe and wonder) to this plug-in may seem a bit naive,
   as there are several commercial extenders for Photoshop with similar
   capabilities. Be that as it may, clicking the mouse pointer on an
   image thumbnail and actually stirring and shifting pixels
   interactively is quite amazing.
   
   A screenshot will give you an idea of the nature of the interface and
   the options available:
   
                             the Iwarp plug-in
                                      
   The plug-in offers a choice of six different methods of changing an
   area of pixels in an image: clock-wise rotation, counter-clockwise
   rotation, growing, moving, shrinking, or removing. Playing around with
   this plug-in will give you a good idea of its capabilities. Try
   setting it to one of the rotation options, then hold the first mouse
   button down as you slowly move it across an image. It's as if a
   miniature hurricane is travelling across the image, leaving spirals of
   distortion in its wake. I imagine that a drawing tablet would be handy
   to use with this plug-in, allowing more precise control than that
   provided by a mouse.
   
   Like icing on a cake, Iwarp has animation capabilities built-in. Once
   you have warped an image to your satisfaction, select the animation
   tab in the plug-in's window; this lets you choose how many frames to
   create, and whether to make them cycle repeatedly (the ping-pong
   effect) or just play from start to finish. Each frame is saved in a
   separate layer, and there is a convenient plug-in called Animation
   Playback which will let you view it.
   
   So what's the use of this? You can use it to create animated GIF files
   for web-pages, or perhaps tweak a small area of an image, but mostly
   it is just a lot of fun!
   
                               Flame and Fuse
                                      
   Gimp 0.99.16 must be something of a milestone for Scott Draves,
   creator of the Flame and Fuse plug-ins (as well as the Bomb
   interactive screen hack). Though successive versions of the Flame
   plug-in have been available for some months now, the maintainers of
   the Gimp have been reluctant to include it in the Gimp distribution
   due to certain licensing restrictions which Scott had placed on the
   program and its output. Recently Scott relaxed those restrictions and
   Flame is now a part of the Gimp.
   
   Flame is similar in some ways to the IFS-Explorer plug-in, in that is
   based on Iterated Function Systems fractal algorithms, but the
   approach and interface are different. Rather than manipulating three
   triangles, which is the traditional IFS interface used by IFS
   Explorer, Flame does much of its work "behind the scenes", though
   there are still several options available to the user. One nice
   feature is the built-in support for the Gimp's color gradients.
   Several of Scott Draves' own gradients are included in the plug-in,
   but any others can be entered into an entry-field in the plug-in
   window. Here's a screenshot of a typical window:
   
   Flame Window
   
   Flame can generate some really intriguing images; some of Scott
   Draves' examples can be seen on this web page. If you are using an
   earlier Gimp version, a binary of the plug-in has been thoughtfully
   included in the Flame archive file available from the page. Just drop
   the binary into your Gimp plug-in directory; the next time you start
   the Gimp Flame should be accessible from the "Render" sub-menu.
   
   It's interesting to compare the results obtainable from Flame and the
   IFS-Explorer plug-ins, as they both are based on the same mathematical
   principles but have such different methods of implementing them.
   
   Another plug-in from Scott Draves is called Fuse. This one is used to
   disassemble a pair of images and merge them into one, using what seems
   to be some sort of AI trial-and-error process. A preview window shows
   the various attempts in real-time, which can be interesting to watch.
   The process is time-consuming, as the plug-in seems to be repeatedly
   dissatisfied with its results, and will back up to a previous branch
   in the process and start anew. Scott Draves has achieved some
   interesting results with Fuse, which can be viewed on this web-page.
   It would take some practice to gain proficiency with this plug-in;
   this is one of those applications which may require reading the source
   code to get a feel for just what is going on behind the scenes. In
   other words, no on-line help!
   
                                  Illusion
                                      
   The Illusion plug-in is another interesting one to experiment with. It
   was written by Hirotsuna Mizuno, a Japanese programmer. What this one
   does is difficult to describe; it seems to duplicate an image and tile
   a new one with "faded-out" copies of the original. This results in a
   surrealistic sort of pattern, and could be useful in creating
   watermark-like backgrounds. A before-and-after pair of screenshots
   should convey an idea of its capabilities:
   
                                Illusion #1
                                      
                                Illusion #2
     _________________________________________________________________
   
                                 Map-Object
                                      
   The Map-Object plug-in, though included with 19.15, unfortunately
   wasn't supplied with the 0.99.16 release. It is being developed by Tom
   Bech, of the University of Bergen in Norway. This plug-in will map or
   project an image onto the surface of either a sphere or a skewed
   plane, with full control of many parameters such as the light source's
   orientation and color. The background can easily be set to be
   transparent, which makes the output useful in HTML files. If you are
   still using version 19.15 of the Gimp the current version is
   functional. Perhaps by the time Gimp 1.0 is released Mr. Bech will
   find time to adapt this ingenious plug-in to the rapidly-changing
   Gimp/GTK environment.
   
   Just as I was finishing this article Gimp 0.99.17 was released, and
   Map-Object has been reinstated into the distribution. A new version of
   GTK was released concurrently; visit ftp.gimp.org if you'd like to
   obtain the source. Debian and Redhat packages of these releases are
   also available there.
   
   This is just a sampling of the more than sixty plug-ins bundled with
   the 19.16 release; more are appearing regularly, and when the 1.0
   release is completed (and development of the Gimp moves on to a new
   beta version) the resulting "fixed target" should make developing new
   plug-ins easier for programmers. Last modified: Sun 4 Jan 1998
     _________________________________________________________________
   
                       Copyright © 1998, Larry Ayers
            Published in Issue 24 of Linux Gazette, January 1998
     _________________________________________________________________
   
   [ TABLE OF CONTENTS ] [ FRONT PAGE ] Back Next 
     _________________________________________________________________
   
    "Linux Gazette...making Linux just a little more fun!"
     _________________________________________________________________
   
   [A reader requested this article by Gary Moore from the April '97
   issue of Linux Journal. --Editor]
     _________________________________________________________________
   
                         Product Review: Applixware
                                      
                               by Gary Moore
     _________________________________________________________________
   
     * Product: Applixware 4.2 For Linux
     * Publisher: Red Hat Software, Inc.
     * Phone: 800 454-5502
     * Fax: 203 454-2582
     * WWW: http://www.redhat.com/
     * Price: USD $495, student price USD $79.95
     _________________________________________________________________
   
   Applixware is is an excellent "office suite" that may open doors to
   wider use of Linux.
   
   Applixware features a word processor, a spreadsheet, a presentation
   graphics tool, a drawing tool, an e-mail client, database connectivity
   and an object-oriented application builder. For some time, this
   professional set of programs has been available for other Unix
   platforms, including HP-UX, Solaris, AIX and Digital Unix, and now
   Applixware is available for Intel-compatible Linux machines and
   Microsoft Windows; at the time of this writing, the NT version is out
   and the 95 version is in beta testing.
   
                                  [INLINE]
                                      
                         An Applixware On-Line Book
                                      
   If you install Applixware on your system, you'll notice an impact on
   system resources. A complete installation with the included Red Hat
   RPM files requires 210MB--if that's more than you have available, you
   can make a partial installation from a live, "unpacked" directory on
   the CD-ROM. In fact, Applixware can be launched and used directly from
   the CD-ROM, though this makes program operation a little leisurely. I
   was using Red Hat Linux 4.0 when I reviewed Applixware, but the
   software should work fine on other distributions, and installation
   instructions are included.
   
   The CD speed may not seem bad if you're using a 486DX25, on which
   Applixware is fast enough to be usable, but probably too slow for a
   production environment; I found my meager CPU power to be a real
   problem only when I started using the graphics tools.
   
   This is not an application for low-memory systems. As cheap as RAM is
   today, this shouldn't be too painful a state to rectify. With 16MB of
   RAM, the word processor was snappy enough with X and the Afterstep
   window manager running, but having much else loaded caused so much
   paging of virtual memory I needed something to read while waiting.
   
                                  [INLINE]
                                      
                                Applix Words
                                      
   Not much reading material comes with Applix--at least, not on paper.
   Back when it was known as Asterix and also in version 3.x of Applix,
   there was a manual for each module, but either with the Linux version
   or with the later releases, virtually all documentation is in the
   "On-Line Books". Use the on-line tutorials if you're new to the
   system, or the on-line help if you just need a reference.
   
   Applix Words is a full-featured word processor with everything you'd
   expect to find in a modern product. That is, unless you're looking to
   do something which really should be done using desktop publishing
   software. By the way, one thing you never want to do with it is embed,
   oh, 80 or so large, 256-color GIFs in a single document--at somewhere
   around 8MB, application behavior gets a bit wacky. Linking is much,
   much better.
   
   Words gives you tables, borders, shading, embedded equations and
   calculations, conditional text and cross-referencing, international
   dictionaries, thesauri and a multi-font, multi-size WYSIWYG display.
   You can rely on multiple undo and redo, and when you're done, you can
   save PostScript and PCL printer files or send them directly to a
   networked printer.
   
                                  [INLINE]
                                      
                              Applix Graphics
                                      
   HTML is easy with the Applix HTML authoring tool. Documents can be
   imported from Applix or another popular word processor using one of
   the format filters or created from scratch with the same ease as a
   word processing document. Clip art, GIFs and linked or embedded Applix
   Graphics images are converted seamlessly. Applix Spreadsheets
   documents and queries from the database interface application, Data,
   can be included, too. Tables, colors, and more than 25 standard HTML
   styles are all under your control.
   
   Applix Graphics is a terrific drawing and presentation graphics tool.
   At your disposal are user-definable fill patterns, various brush
   styles, shearing, drop shadows, incremental zoom, rotating, scaling,
   color pixel editing and text wrapping, to name a few. Grid snap, guide
   lines, rulers, and coordinates help create precise and complex
   drawings quickly. I found graphics as easy to produce with Graphics as
   with Powerpoint.
   
   The good news continues with Applix Spreadsheets with
   calculation-based attributes, 3D charts, named views and dynamic links
   to objects in other Applixware applications. When your linked data
   from elsewhere changes, it is automatically updated in your
   spreadsheet. There are live links to a relational database through
   Applix Data, goal seeking, drag-and-drop, projection tables and
   background recalculation. You can import those old Lotus 1-2-3 and
   Excel spreadsheets, too.
   
   You might not think you need another mail client, but check out Applix
   Mail. When you receive mail, a dialog box pops up with the sender name
   and subject, giving you the options "Read Now", "Read Later", and
   "Help". You can attach Applix files to your mail messages and upon
   receipt, launch the appropriate Applix tool for viewing. Mail can be
   marked "Urgent", marked with a "Reply by" date, and also sent by
   "certified" mail, giving you a receipt when the recipient has read the
   mail. Of course you can "Cc" and "Bcc" people. You also get shared
   mail folders, automatic conversion of messages and documents to your
   preferences, encryption, and mail filtering based on rules you
   specify.
   
   Applix Data connects Applixware applications to SQL databases like
   Informix, Oracle, Ingres, and Sybase, seamlessly querying data from
   one or more tables, selecting information with query conditions, and
   performing advanced queries and joins. Rows can be edited, inserted,
   and deleted. A live link in your document to the database means
   up-to-date data. Data provides a lot of capability when teamed with
   ELF and Builder.
   
                                  [INLINE]
                                      
                               Applix Builder
                                      
   The Extension Language Facility (ELF) is an interpreted language with
   which users can build and deploy applications, front-ends to
   applications, automate tasks and connect to databases and other
   external sources of data. The Applix user interfaces are built with
   ELF and ELF macros can be used to automate tasks in any of the
   Applixware applications. Some capabilities include: TCP/IP socket
   interfacing, remote procedure calls, interactive debugging, many
   built-in macros, string manipulation, and arithmetic and Boolean
   operators.
   
   Builder is object oriented and gives you access to external data
   sources as well as the capabilities of the Applixware application
   suite for use in your custom applications. Also, full access to ELF
   macros and functions, external objects, shared classes, RPC and shared
   library support. Plus, the applications you develop in Builder on one
   platform are portable to Applixware on other platforms without
   modification.
   
   Applixware is a terrific package. When I heard it was available for
   Linux, I knew I could let go of Microsoft Office (and MS Windows)
   forever.
     _________________________________________________________________
   
                        Copyright © 1998, Gary Moore
            Published in Issue 24 of Linux Gazette, January 1998
     _________________________________________________________________
   
   [ TABLE OF CONTENTS ] [ FRONT PAGE ] Back Next 
     _________________________________________________________________
   
    "Linux Gazette...making Linux just a little more fun!"
     _________________________________________________________________
   
                            A Bit About Security
                                      
                             By Marcus Berglund
     _________________________________________________________________
   
   If you are a potential website/permanent connection, the first thing
   you should know about is security...
   
   I, from personal experience know what happens when people 'hack' into
   my machine, it nearly become an international court case. I won't go
   into details, but it was from my ignorance, and is why I lost my job.
   
   When setting up a machine you should have a guess who might be able to
   access you machine, and when you setup a new user, eg. to get pirated
   programs, they'll know how to get in. Sure, you might be able to get
   free programs and people might look at you in a different way, but if
   someone with more experience than you (and there is always alot of
   them, no matter how good you are) sees an obvious security hole they
   will exploit it as much as they can, so they don't get in trouble and
   you do.
   
   Linux/Unix is a very flexible/Configureable OS and thats where
   security holes apear, and disapear. Just ask a system administrator,
   most Linux distributions need some work before they are close to
   internet useable, or hack proof. I personally couldn't list every file
   you would need to edit, but startup files (or links with redhat &
   debian) you will need to remove, if you don't use them, and
   /etc/inetd.conf is another place to start, if you don't understand
   these files, imidiately remove network connection, and read man
   pages!!!
   
   A basic checklist might be: time, echo, nfs*, telnet*, smb (netbios),
   ftp, login, pop3, nntp, tftp*, netstat, finger, http, etc... (* these
   are popular protocols, but are can be very insecure), if you are on a
   network and are unsure, ask your sysadmin, they will most certainly
   know more from experience what you should and shouln't use, and most
   (experienced with Linux) could probably give you some good advice...
   
   At this stage you've gone through and remove unecessary services, now
   restart your config files ('shutdown now' and login then as root then
   'init 3' or restart (better ideas - send them in)), now you learn how
   the protocols work, what files they access, and what security holes
   they leave, eg. if you have people that are only using windows to
   share drives you might set them up in a group that has no telnet and
   ftp access (for example).
   
   Adding new users should never be as easy as it seems, unless you can
   trust the person, eg. I have an 'smb' group on my machine for samba
   users, and they are denied access through telnet and ftp, since they
   are they only other services I offer on my machine. When working out
   what people have access to what, plan what you are going to do, eg.
   restrict certain 'groups' access to paticular services.
   
   At this stage you are probably thinking, "What alot of stuffing
   around", but as an 'NT ISP' recently proved to me, even they are
   succeptable to incorrect user access attacks, so don't say that it is
   only resricted to the Unicies, all OS's suffer, it's just that Unicies
   can be a little harder to configure than NT, and can be attacked
   easier by very experienced Unix hackers, as NT with NT hackers...
   
   But probably the biggest advantage to Linux is that 99% of the time
   you can get the source code and, I ask one question, if you gave away
   the source code for a program, are you going to leave obvious security
   holes for personal access, I think not...
   
   It all mainly comes down to asking the computer, people on the
   internet and sysadmins what you should and shouldn't do, and a little
   common sense does help alot too, and have fun in the meanwhile.
     _________________________________________________________________
   
                     Copyright © 1998, Marcus Berglund
            Published in Issue 24 of Linux Gazette, January 1998
     _________________________________________________________________
   
   [ TABLE OF CONTENTS ] [ FRONT PAGE ] Back Next 
     _________________________________________________________________
   
    "Linux Gazette...making Linux just a little more fun!"
     _________________________________________________________________
   
    The Standard C Library for Linux, Part one: <stdio.h> file functions
                                      
                             By James M. Rogers
     _________________________________________________________________
   
   C is a very small language.  This is a good thing.  C programmers will
   use nearly the entire C language every time they write a fair sized
   program.  The standard C library extends the functionality of C in a
   way that is predictable on multiple systems.  The library gives us
   tools like scanf() and printf() that make reading and writing
   formatted output much easier than working with blocks of characters
   using read() and write().  Also when you move from one C programming
   environment to another, the functionality of printf() will be the
   same.  You don't have to relearn how to print formatted output every
   time you change machines.
   
   In this series of articles I will discuss the tools that are available
   for the programmers in the standard C library.  At the end is a
   bibliography of the books and articles that I used to get this
   information.  I refer to these books and magazines on a daily basis
   when I program.  If you want to work as a C programmer I strongly
   recommend that you buy and read these books and magazines.
   
   Many times the standard functions are overlooked and reinvented by
   programmers (including myself!) to do things like seeing if a
   character is a letter by:
   
               (c=>'a' || c<='z' && c=>'A' || c<='Z')
   
   instead of using
   
               isalpha(c);
   
   The second form is much easier to read and figure out.  There is
   another reason to use the second form.  The first example only works
   for ASCII character sets, the second will work on _any_ machine.  If
   you want to write portable code (code that can be compiled and ran on
   any machine with very minor changes) then use the standard C library.
   
   Several times in the past I have written code that took time to write
   and debug and interface to the rest of my program only to discover
   that there was already a function that did what I wanted to do.  A few
   months ago I was writing my own Multi User Dimension (MUD), based on a
   client/server article in Linux Journal, and I needed to process what
   the user had entered, one word at a time.  So I wrote my own string
   tokenizer.  Turns out I could have used the strtok() function to do
   almost the exact same thing.  And other people will know what the
   strtok() function does without having to decipher my code.
   
   Make your life easier, use the standard C library.  It will also help
   all of us who try to update and maintain your code later.
   
   The GNU compiler, gcc, comes with the GNU standard C library.  This
   compiler is one of the best in the world and the GNU standard C
   library conforms almost exactly to the standard.  In the places where
   the standard is imprecise, you can expect very reasonable behavior
   from both the compiler and the library.  I am going to discuss the GNU
   standard C library in these articles.
   
   The <stdio.h> library handles the standard input and output functions
   for C programmers.  It is also by far the largest library.  Because
   the library is so large I am going to group the commands in these
   sections:  file operations, input and output.
   
   Now before we talk about files we need to agree on the words that we
   are going to use.  In Linux a file or device is considered to be a
   stream of data.  This stream of data that is associated with a file or
   hardware device is accessed by your program opening the file or
   device.  Once the stream is opened then you can read and/or write to
   it.
   
   Three streams are opened automatically when you execute a program.
   Standard input (stdin), standard output (stdout), and standard error
   (stderr).  These can all be redirected by your shell when you run the
   program but normally stdin is your keyboard and stdout and stderr both
   go to your monitor.
   
   After you are done with your streams you need to tell the operating
   system to clean up buffers and finish saving data to the devices.  You
   do this by closing the stream.  If you don't close your stream then it
   is possible to lose data.  stdin, stdout and stderr are all closed
   automatically the same way they are opened automatically.
   
   One of the most important things to remember when dealing with devices
   and files is that you are dealing with the real world.  Don't assume
   that the function is going to work.  Evan something like printf can
   fail. Disks fill up or occasionally fail, users input the wrong data,
   processors get too busy, other programs have your files locked.
   Murphy's Law is in full effect when it comes to computer systems.
   Every function that deals with the real world returns an error
   condition if the function failed.  Always check every return value and
   take the appropriate action when there is an error condition.
   Exceptions are not errors unless they are handled badly. Exceptions
   are opportunities for extra computation (William Kahan, on exception
   handling.)
   
   The first example is to basically show how to open a file for
   reading.  It just dumps a file called test in the current directory to
   the standard out.  All exceptions are reported to standard error and
   then program halted is with an error return.  It should produce an
   error if a file called test doesn't exist.
   
   --------------------------------------------------------
   #include <stdio.h>    /* this is a compiler directive that tells the
                            the compiler that you are going to be using
                            functions that are in the standard input /
                            output library
                         */
   main (){
   
   /* declare variables */
       FILE *stream;            /* need a pointer to FILE for the stream
   */
       int buffer_character;    /* need an int to hold a single character
   */
   
   /* open the file called test for reading in the current directory */
       stream = fopen("test", "r");
   
   /* if the file wasn't opened correctly than the stream will be
       equal to NULL.  It is now customary to represent NULL by casting
       the value of 0 to the correct type yourself rather than having the
       compiler guess at the type of NULL to use.
   */
       if (stream == (FILE *)0) {
           fprintf(stderr, "Error opening file (printed to standard
   error)\n");
           exit (1);
           }  /* end if */
   
   /* read and write the file one character at a time until you reach
       end-of-file on either our file or output.  If the EOF is on
   file_descriptor
       then drop out of the while loop. if the end-of-file is on report
   write
       errors to standard out and exit the program with an error
   condition
   */
       while ((buffer_character=getc(stream))!=EOF) {
           /* write the character to standard out and check for errors */
           if((putc(buffer_character, stdout)) == EOF) {
               fprintf(stderr,"Error writing to standard out.  (printed
   to standard error)\n");
               fclose(stream);
               exit(1);
               }  /* end if */
           }  /* end while */
   
   /* close the file after you are done with it, if file doesn't close
   then report and exit */
       if ((fclose(stream)) == EOF) {
           fprintf(stderr,"Error closing stream.  (printed to standard
   error)\n");
           exit(1);
           }  /* end if */
   
   /* report success back to environment */
       return 0;
   
   }  /* end main*/
   -------------------------------------------------------------
   
   The above simple program is an example of  opening a file, reading the
   file, and then closing the file while also using stdout, and stderr.
   I cut and pasted the code to a vi session and then saved, compiled,
   and ran the program.
   
   What follows is a quick summary of the file operations in the
   <stdio.h> library.  These are the operations that work directly with
   streams.
   
    Opening Streams
    
   Before a stream can be used you must associate the stream with some
   device or file.  This is called opening the stream.  Your program is
   asking for permission from the operating system to read or write to a
   device.  If you have the correct permissions, the file exists or you
   can create the file and no-one else has the file locked then the
   operating system allows you to open the file and gives you back an
   object that is the stream.  Using this object you can read and write
   to the stream and when you are done you can close the stream.
   
   Let me discribe the format of the descriptions that you will see here
   and in the man pages.  The first entry is the type that is returned by
   the function call.  The second part is the function name itself and
   the third part is the list of variable types that the function takes
   for arguments.
   
   Looking at the first line below we see that the fopen function takes
   two pointers to strings, one is a path to a file and the other is the
   open mode of the program.  The function will return a pointer to FILE
   type which is a complex object that is defined in the <stdio.h>
   library. So in order to accept the return type you must have declared
   a variable of type pointer to FILE, like the stream variable in the
   example above on line 9.  On line 13 of the example you can see where
   I call the function fopen with the static filename of "test" and a
   mode of "r" and then accept the return value into the stream object.
   
   A stream can be opened by any of these three functions:
   
       FILE   *fopen( char *path, char *mode)
       FILE  *fdopen( int fildes, char *mode)
       FILE *freopen( char *path, char *mode, FILE *stream)
   
   char *path is a pointer to a string with the filename in it.
   char *mode is the mode of opening the file (table follows.)
   int fildes is a file descriptor which has already been opened and
   whose mode matches.
   You can get a file descriptor with the UNIX system function open.
       Please note that a file descriptor is not a pointer to FILE.  You
       cannot close(stream), you must fclose(stream).  This is a very
       hard error to find if your compiler doesn't warn you about it.  If
       you are interested in Linux System calls type `man 2 intro`  for
       an introduction to the functions and what they do.
       
   FILE *stream is an already existing stream.
   
   These functions return a pointer to FILE type that represents the data
   stream or a NULL of type (FILE *)0 on any error condition.
   
   fopen is used to open the given filename with the respective mode.
   This is the function that is used the most to open files.
   
   fdopen is used to assign a stream to a currently opened file
   descriptor.  The file descriptor mode and the fdopen mode must match.
   
   freopen is normally used redirect stdin, stdout and stderr to file.
   The stream that is given will be closed and a new stream opened to the
   given path with the given mode.
   
   This table shows the modes and their results:
   
          open stream for  truncate create starting
   mode   read    write    file     file   position
   ----   ----    -----    ----     ----   --------
   "r"     y        n       n        n     beginning
   "r+"    y        y       n        n     beginning
   "w"     n        y       y        y     beginning
   "w+"    y        y       y        y     beginning
   "a"     n        y       n        y     end-of-file
   "a+"    y        y       n        y     end-of-file
   
   To read the first line, "r" will open a stream for read, the stream
   will not be opened for write, will not truncate the file to zero
   length, will not create the file if it doesn't already exist and will
   be positioned at the beginning of the stream.
   
    Stream Flushing
    
   Sometimes you want your program to ensure that what you have written
   to a file has actually gone to the disk and is not waiting in the
   buffer. Or you might want to throw out a lot of user input and get
   fresh input, for a game.  The following two functions are useful for
   emptying the streams buffers, though one just throws the data away
   while the other stores it safely on to the stream.
   
       int fflush(FILE *stream)
       int fpurge(FILE *stream)
   
   FILE *stream is an already existing stream.
   
   These functions return a 0 on success.  On a failure they return an
   EOF.
   
   fflush is used to write out the buffers of the stream to a device or
   file.
   
   fpurge is used to clear the buffers of unwritten or unread data that
   is in a buffer waiting.  I think of this as a destructive purge
   because it clears the read and write buffers by dumping the contents.
   
    Closing Streams
    
   When you are done with a stream you must clean up after your program.
   When you close a stream the command ensures that the buffers are
   successfully written and that the stream is truly closed.  If you just
   exit a program without closing your files then more than likely the
   last few bytes that you wrote will be there.  But you won't know
   unless you check.  Also there is a limit to how many streams a single
   process can have open at one time. So if you keep on opening streams
   without closing the old streams you will use up system resources.
   Only one command is used to close any stream.
   
       int fclose(FILE *stream)
   
   FILE *stream is an already existing stream.
   
   Returns a 0 on success, or an EOF otherwise.
   
   fclose flushes the given streams buffers and then disassociates the
   stream from the pointer to FILE.
   
    Renaming and Removing Files
    
   These two commands work just like rm and mv, but without the options.
   They are not recursive but your programs can be so watch that you
   don't accidentally build your own version of rm -rf / <<<by they way
   don't type this, it would delete your entire harddrive!!>>>
   
       int    remove(char *path)
       int    rename(char *oldpath, const char *newpath)
   
   char *path, oldpath and newpath are all pointers to existing files.
   
   Returns a 0 on success and a non-zero otherwise.
   
   remove works just like rm to remove the file in the string pointed to
   by path.
   
   rename works just like move to rename a file from oldpath to newpath,
   changing directories if need be.
   
    Temporary Files
    
   You can create your own temp files by using the following functions:
   
       FILE *tmpfile(void)
   
   This command returns a pointer to a FILE of stream which is a temp
   file that magically goes away when your program is done running.  You
   never even know the files name.  If the function fails it returns a
   NULL pointer of type (FILE *)0.
   
       char  *tmpnam(char *string)
   
   This function returns a filename in the tmp directory that is unique,
   or a NULL if there is an error.  Each additional call overrides the
   previous name so you must move the name somewhere else if you need to
   know the name after you open the file.
   
    Stream Buffering
    
   Normally a stream is block buffered, unless it is connected to a
   terminal like stdin or stdout.  In block buffered mode the stream
   reads ahead a set amount a and then gives you what the input that you
   ask for as you ask for it.  Sometimes you want this to be bigger or
   smaller to improve performance in some program.  The following four
   functions can be used to set the buffering type and the size of the
   buffers.  The defaults are normally pretty good so you shouldn't have
   to worry too much about these.
   
       int     setbuf( FILE *stream, char *buf);
       int  setbuffer( FILE *stream, char *buf, size_t size);
       int setlinebuf( FILE *stream);
       int    setvbuf( FILE *stream, char *buf, int mode , size_t size);
   
   Where mode is one of the following:
       _IONBF unbuffered, output sent as soon as received.
       _IOLBF line buffered, output sent as soon as a newline is
   received.
       _IOFBF fully buffered, output isn't sent until size characters are
   received.
   
   setbuf is an alias for     setvbuf(stream,  buf,  buf  ?  _IOFBF   :
   _IONBF, BUFSIZ);
   setbuffer is an alias for  setvbuf(stream,  buf,  buf  ?  _IOFBF   :
   _IONBF, size);
   setlinebuf is an alias for setvbuf(stream, (char *)NULL, _IOLBF, 0);
   
   setvbuf sets a buffer for the given stream of size_t size and of
   buffer mode.
   
    Stream Posistioning
    
   Once you open a stream you are located at a certain postition
   depending on what mode you opened the stream in, as you read or write
   your position increases with each character.  You can see where you
   are at in the stream and jump to any position in the stream.  If you
   are writing a database program you don't want to have to read and
   ignore a million characters to get to the record that you want, you
   want to be able to jump right to the record and start reading.
   
   Note that terminals cannot have their stream repositioned, only block
   devices (like hard drives) will allow this.
   
   Also note that if you open a file for writing and use fseek to go out
   10,000 bytes, write one character and then close the file that you
   will not have a file of 10,001 bytes.  The file will be much smaller.
   This is called a sparse file.  If you move a sparse file using the mv
   command it will not change size because a mv is only a change to the
   directory structure, not the file.  If you cp or tar a sparse file
   then it will expand out to its true size.
   
       int   fseek( FILE *stream, long offset, int whence);
       long  ftell( FILE *stream);
       void rewind( FILE *stream);
       int fgetpos( FILE *stream, fpos_t *pos);
       int fsetpos( FILE *stream, fpos_t *pos);
   
   FILE *stream is a pointer to an already existing stream.
   long offset is added to the position indicated by the whence.
   int whence is SEEK_SET, SEEK_CUR, or SEEK_END depending on where you
   want the offset to be applied to:  the beginning, the current position
   or the end.
   fpos_t *pos is a complex file position indicator.  On some systems you
   must use this to get and set stream positions.
   
   If these functions are successful fgetpos, fseek, fsetpos return  0,
   and  ftell returns the current offset.  Otherwise, EOF is returned.
   There is no return value from rewind.
   
   fseek sets the file position in the stream to the value of offset plus
   the position indicated by the whence, either the begginning, the
   current or the end of file to get the new position in the stream.
   This is useful for reading along, adding something to the end of the
   stream and then going back to reading the stream where you left off.
   
   ftell returns the current position of the stream.
   
   rewind sets the current position to the beginning of the stream.
   Notice that no error code is returned.  This function is assumed to
   always suceed.
   
   fgetpos is used like ftell to return the position of the stream.  The
   position is returned in the pos variable which is of type fpos_t.
   
   fsetpos is used like fseek in that it will set the current postion of
   the stream to the value in pos.
   
   On some systems you have to use fgetpos and fsetpos in order to
   reliably position your stream.
   
    Error Codes
    
   When any of the above functions return an error you can see what the
   error was and even get a text error message to display for the user.
   There are a group of functions that deal with error values.  It is
   enough for now to be able to see that you have an errors and stop.
   
   However, if you write a nice GUI word processor you don't want the
   program to stop everytime it can't open a file.  You want it to
   display the error message to the user and continue.  In a future
   article I will deal this error code functions, or someone else can
   summarize them for us and send in an article and some commented source
   code to show us how it's done.
   
   If anyone is interested the functions are: clearerr, feof, ferror, and
   fileno.
   
    Conclusion
    
   Well that's enough for this month.  I have learned a lot and I hope
   you have as well.  Most of this information is available through man
   page system but the dates on these are 4 years old.  If anyone has
   updates on any of this information please send it to me and I will
   correct myself in further articles.
   
   Next month I want to talk about input and output.  I will take the
   simple program above and add some functionallity to it to add a column
   of numbers and output the results to standard out.  Hopefully this
   example program can grow into something useful.
   
    Bibilography:
    
   The ANSI C Programming Language, Second Edition, Brian W. Kernighan,
   Dennis M. Ritchie, Printice Hall Software Series, 1988
   
   The Standard C Library, P. J. Plauger, Printice Hall P T R, 1992
   
   The Standard C Library, Parts 1, 2, and 3, Chuck Allison, C/C++ Users
   Journal, January, February, March 1995
   
   STDIO(3), BSD MANPAGE, Linux Programmer's Manual, 29 November 1993
   
   Unidentified File Objects, Lisa Lees, Sys Admin, July/August 1995
   
   A Conversation With William Kahan, Jack Woehr, Dr Dobb's Journal,
   November 1997
   
   Java and Client-Server, Joe Novosel, Linux Journal, January 1997
     _________________________________________________________________
   
                       Copyright © 1998, James Rogers
            Published in Issue 24 of Linux Gazette, January 1998
     _________________________________________________________________
   
   [ TABLE OF CONTENTS ] [ FRONT PAGE ] Back Next 
     _________________________________________________________________
   
    "Linux Gazette...making Linux just a little more fun!"
     _________________________________________________________________
   
                                xscreensaver
                                      
                             By Jamie Zawinski
     _________________________________________________________________
   
   I saw the article on Xlockmore by Larry Ayers in issue 18 of the Linux
   Gazette, and I was surprised that it didn't mention, even in passing,
   my XScreenSaver program!
   
   Allow me to engage in a bit of advocacy.
   
   Back in 1991, before Xlockmore existed, there was only Xlock. Xlock
   was not a screensaver: it was only a locker. There was no way to make
   it activate itself automatically when the console became idle, nor was
   there any way to avoid having it lock the screen: that is, there was
   no way to have it turn off when the mouse moved.
   
   So, I wrote XScreenSaver.
   
   XScreenSaver is superior to Xlockmore in a number of ways. The most
   important way, of course, is that it is actually a *screen saver*.
   Although Xlockmore can be configured to not require a password, it
   still doesn't have the ability to turn on when the machine is idle;
   for that you have to use an external program that launches and kills
   it.
   
   The second way in which XScreenSaver is better is that it takes a
   server/client approach: the "xscreensaver" program itself knows how to
   detect idleness, and to lock the screen. The graphics hacks are not
   built in: the beauty of XScreenSaver is that any program which can
   draw on the root window can be launched by XScreenSaver for use as a
   graphics hack! This has several benefits:
   
   * You don't have to recompile and reinstall xscreensaver to install a
   new graphics hack: all you have to do is change your X resources, and
   issue one command.
   
   * Since programs don't have to be written *specifically* to run inside
   the xscreensaver framework, there are many more potential graphics
   hacks available. They don't even need to be written in the same
   language: they just have to draw on the root. Thus, it's easier to
   write programs to work with XScreenSaver than with Xlock or Xlockmore,
   because they don't have to follow a complex set of idiosynchratic
   rules on how to structure the code: the only rule is, "draw on the
   root."
   
   * By separating the task out into two processes, the whole system
   becomes more robust: the memory protection provided by the OS serves
   us well, in that, if one particular graphics hack has a bug (leaks
   memory, corrupts memory, gets a floating-point exception, etc) the
   integrity of the screen saver itself is not compromised. The offending
   hack may exit, but the screen saver itself is still running, and the
   screen is still blackened (or locked.) Also, since a screen saver is,
   by its nature, a very- long-running background task, even a small leak
   would build up over time. By arranging for the graphics hacks
   themselves to be relatively short-running tasks, this problem goes
   away.
   
   * On some systems, only programs which are running as root can check
   passwords. Therefore, on such systems, a screen locker would need to
   be a setuid-root program. Obviously one needs to be very careful about
   what programs one allows out of the security sandbox; a conscientious
   sysadmin would want to examine such a program very carefully before
   installing it. The XScreenSaver model allows this, by having the
   priveleged part of the program (the saver itself) be small, while
   letting the larger part (the graphics hacks) remain unpriveleged.
   
   XScreenSaver also includes a nice Demo Mode that lets the user
   interactively experiment with the currently-configured graphics hacks.
   (Until recently, most Linux users wouldn't have been able to take
   advantage of this, since the code had required Motif; but that is now
   configurable, and demo mode works with Athena widgets too -- since
   release 1.27 back in January 1997.)
   
   If you have a system with more than one monitor, XScreenSaver can save
   them both at once: a different graphics hack will run on each, and if
   the two monitors have different depths (for example, if one is
   monochrome and the other color) they can be configured to choose their
   screenhacks from different lists, so that each monitor is running the
   hacks that look best on it.
   
   Most of the xlockmore hacks (the ones that I liked, anyway, including
   the GL modes) are included with the XScreenSaver distribution; the
   only change made being to extract the various display modes from the
   monolithic XLock executable, and turn them into standalone
   root-window-oriented programs.
   
   However, it's possible to have XScreenSaver run xlock itself, as just
   another one of its many modes -- the best of both worlds!
   
   Do check it out: the canonical web page is
   http://people.netscape.com/jwz/xscreensaver, which includes screen
   shots and descriptions of most of the included graphics hacks.
   
   The latest version, as of this writing, is 2.12. At last count, it
   came with 64 different graphics hacks. Roughly a third of these were
   written by me; the others were graciously contributed by others.
   
   And, of course, it's all free, under the usual X-Consortium-style
   copyright.
   
   You also might enjoy my philosphical ramblings on the nature of
   screensavers, at http://people.netscape.com/jwz/gruntle/savers.html.
     _________________________________________________________________
   
                      Copyright © 1998, Jamie Zawinski
            Published in Issue 24 of Linux Gazette, January 1998
     _________________________________________________________________
   
   [ TABLE OF CONTENTS ] [ FRONT PAGE ] Back Next 
     _________________________________________________________________
   
                          Linux Gazette Back Page
                                      
           Copyright © 1998 Specialized Systems Consultants, Inc.
For information regarding copying and distribution of this material see the
                              Copying License.
     _________________________________________________________________
   
  Contents:
  
     * About This Month's Authors
     * Not Linux
     _________________________________________________________________
   
                         About This Month's Authors
     _________________________________________________________________
   
    Larry Ayers
    
   Larry lives on a small farm in northern Missouri, where he is
   currently engaged in building a timber-frame house for his family. He
   operates a portable band-saw mill, does general woodworking, plays the
   fiddle and searches for rare prairie plants, as well as growing
   shiitake mushrooms. He is also struggling with configuring a Usenet
   news server for his local ISP.
   
    André D. Balsa
    
   André lives in France, 80 miles south of Lyon. He currently runs a
   small Internet consulting business. When not busy exploring Linux
   performance issues, Andrew likes to spend his time with his 1-year old
   daughter, or else try different French recipes on his friends. He also
   helped set up the Linux Benchmarking Project pages at
   http://www.tux.org/bench/. and a web site at
   http://www.tux.org/~balsa/linux/cyrix, about the use of Cyrix 6x86
   processors with Linux, which has had more than 9,000 visitors in less
   than two months uptime.
   
    Gerd Bavendiek
    
   Gerd has worked as a software engineer with various flavors of Unix
   since 1988. In 1994 he realized that using Linux could make his
   every-day work more convenient. Since that time he has used Linux and
   various GNU-software. He lives in Essen, Germany. In my spare time I
   build model-steam engines using real hardware: lathe, milling-machine
   and a lot of hand tools.
   
    Erik Campo
    
   Erik is a Computer Science graduate from UQAM (Universite du Quebec A
   Montreal) since June 1997. He has been working as a network programmer
   (C, C++, Java), teaching assistant and as a systems administrator in
   the Teleinformatique laboratory of UQAM for a year and a half. He is
   now working at UQAM's Registrar's Office as a Webmaster and as system
   administrator for the Teleinformatique laboratory. Erik is a
   Unix/Linux specialist, having installed and managed several flavours
   of Unix as Coherent, Minix, Linux and Solaris. He likes to write
   articles about Linux, listens to Heavy Metal music, plays both spanish
   and electric guitar and is a fanatic of the Spanish Civil War, history
   of General Franco and the political transition period in Spain from
   1975 to 1978. For more information, please consult his web page at:
   http://campo.ti.ml.org/.
   
    Jim Dennis
    
   Jim is the proprietor of Starshine Technical Services. His
   professional experience includes work in the technical support,
   quality assurance, and information services (MIS) departments of
   software companies like Quarterdeck, Symantec/ Peter Norton Group, and
   McAfee Associates -- as well as positions (field service rep) with
   smaller VAR's. He's been using Linux since version 0.99p10 and is an
   active participant on an ever-changing list of mailing lists and
   newsgroups. He's just started collaborating on the 2nd Edition for a
   book on Unix systems administration. Jim is an avid science fiction
   fan -- and was married at the World Science Fiction Convention in
   Anaheim.
   
    Joel Jaeggli
    
   Joel is a programer consultant with the University of Oregon Computing
   Center. Fomerly he worked for the Network Startup Resource Center
   http://www.nsrc.org, helping ngos in emerging nation connect to the
   internet, and of course discover the joy of free Unixes.
   
    Dave Nelson
    
   Dave is a manager who mostly deals with computing as an abstraction.
   He used to do computational science research, and Linux helps him stay
   in touch with reality.
   
    Mark Nielsen
    
   Mark works at the Health Sciences Library at The Ohio State University
   as a systems specialist. One day he hopes to replace NT computers with
   Linux and KDE.
   
    James M. Rogers
    
   James and Shahla Rogers own a farm in the back woods of Ohio and have
   6 dogs and 3 cats.  He has served 14 years in the Airforce and Army,
   both enlisted and officer.  His first computer was a TS-1000.  He gave
   up his C128 in 1991 for Linux.  He is currently a UNIX and C contract
   programmer for the University of Washington.
   
    Ylian Saint-Hilaire
    
   Ylian is a Computer Science graduate from UQAM (Universite du Quebec A
   Montreal) since last summer and is now completing his master's degree
   at the same university specializing in Network Computing. He is a web
   site publishing and Internet specialist. He has been working with
   Internet and computer applications development for the last seven
   years, both as part of his formal education and as a personal passion.
   From 1981 to 1984 he lived on a sailboat in the Caribbean with his
   family. In 1991 he was selected by the Montreal Chamber of Commerce as
   one of the "Leaders of Tomorrow". He is also a commercial pilot. His
   web address is http://kairos.dsa.uqam.ca/software/.
   
    Michael E. Smith
    
   Michael is the Acting Managing Director of LXNY - New York's Free
   Computing Organization; editor of the Unigroup of New York Newsletter
   (editor@unigroup.org); and enthusiastic advocate for Unix-like
   systems. He is a philosopher who has made his living as a computer
   consultant, presently as a Senior Associate of Charles River
   Computers, Inc., doing Unix Systems Administration at J. P. Morgan.
   Career highlights include authoring and deploying an original database
   system in MUMPS-15 and doing SETL research under Jacob T. Schwartz.
   Smith is a man of wide interests inside and outside of the computer
   field, but lately of little time to pursue them.
   
    Jamie Zawinski
    
   Jamie is a card-carrying Unix Hater, who doesn't use Linux, but
   despite that, has authored an awful lot of software that runs on
   Linux, including Lucid Emacs, XScreenSaver, XDaliClock, and the
   initial Unix versions of Netscape Navigator, and the Netscape Mail and
   News readers.
     _________________________________________________________________
   
                                 Not Linux
     _________________________________________________________________
   
   Thanks to all our authors, not just the ones above, but also those who
   wrote giving us their tips and tricks and making suggestions. Thanks
   also to our new mirror sites.
   
   Margie and I had a great Christmas break in Houston, Texas, where much
   of her family lives. Besides visiting with family and numerous friends
   we got to tour the Cockrell butterfly habitat, which was very pretty.
   Mostly sunny days and highs in the 60s made it tough to return to the
   middle of a Seattle winter, but we managed.
   
   Have fun!
     _________________________________________________________________
   
   Riley P. Richardson
   Editor, Linux Gazette gazette@ssc.com
     _________________________________________________________________
   
   [ TABLE OF CONTENTS ] [ FRONT PAGE ] Back 
     _________________________________________________________________
   
   Linux Gazette Issue 24, January 1998, http://www.linuxgazette.com/
   This page written and maintained by the Editor of Linux Gazette,
   gazette@ssc.com
