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<!--startcut ==========================================================-->
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 3.2//EN">
<html>
<head>
<title>More 2 Cent Tips & Tricks LG #41</title>
</head>
<BODY BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" TEXT="#000000" LINK="#0000FF" VLINK="#0000AF"
ALINK="#FF0000">
<!--endcut ============================================================-->
<H4>"Linux Gazette...<I>making Linux just a little more fun!</I>"
</H4>
<P> <hr> <P>
<!-- QUICK TIPS SECTION ================================================== -->
<center>
<H1><A NAME="tips"><IMG ALIGN=MIDDLE ALT="" SRC="../gx/twocent.gif">
More 2¢ Tips!</A></H1> <BR>
Send Linux Tips and Tricks to <A HREF="mailto:gazette@ssc.com">
gazette@ssc.com
</A></center>
<p><hr><p>
<H3><font color="#CC0000">New Tips:</font></H3>
<ul>
<li><a HREF="./lg_tips41.html#primes">
motd $0.02 tip
</a>
<li><a HREF="./lg_tips41.html#grace">
IP Addresses
</a>
</ul>
<H3><font color="#CC0000">Answers to Mail Bag Questions:</font></H3>
<ul>
<li><a HREF="./lg_tips41.html#brown">
LG39 - Dodgy Hard Drive
</a>
<li><a HREF="./lg_tips41.html#crane">
Linux, PalmIII, and Email
</a>
<li><a HREF="./lg_tips41.html#olaf">
Uninstalling Software
</a>
<li><a HREF="./lg_tips41.html#derek">
KDE - so what?
</a>
<li><a HREF="./lg_tips41.html#crane2">
What is a *.ajr file?
</a>
<li><a HREF="./lg_tips41.html#francois">
CD Autoloader
</a>
<li><a HREF="./lg_tips41.html#leroy">
RE: Problem with the proxy
</a>
<li><a HREF="./lg_tips41.html#hawkins">
Re: what is my dialup (ppp) IP number?
</a>
</ul>
<P> <hr> <P>
<!--================================================================-->
<a name="primes"></a>
<H3><IMG ALIGN=BOTTOM ALT="" SRC="../gx/lil2cent.gif">
<font color="navy">
motd $0.02 tip
</font> </H3>
Date: Tue, 27 Apr 1999 01:53:44 PDT<BR>
From: primes, <A HREF="mailto:primes@hotmail.com">primes@hotmail.com</A>
<P>
For many Linux home boxes, the message-of-the-day file (/etc/motd)
serves no real purpose. I've instead used it to display ascii art,
something like a splash screen, which changes every hour. i've found
this to be a welcome change from the normally blank motd at each
login, at least visually.
<P>
Just create a new directory, say /etc/splash and dump all your ascii
art files there. next as root, add an hourly cron job with the
following script. This script cycles through each ascii file
alphabetically and the sed command works using gnu sed. Different
versions of sed might require slight changes.
<PRE>
#!/bin/sh
# Different splash screens (motd) every hour.
cd /etc/splash/
[ -f .splash ] &&
SPLASH=`/bin/cat .splash`
[ -z "$SPLASH" ] ||
[ ! -f "$SPLASH" ] &&
SPLASH=`/bin/ls | /bin/sed -n '1p'`
/bin/cp "$SPLASH" ../motd && {
/bin/ls | /bin/sed -n '1h;/^'$SPLASH'$/{${x;p;q;};n;p;}' >.splash
}
</PRE>
You can also replace the ascii files with more informative motd files
to be displayed each day of the week by issuing daily cron jobs
instead of hourly. This can be done for example to remind me of the
things i'm supposed to do for the day.
<P>
--<BR>
primes
<P> <hr> <P>
<!--================================================================-->
<a name="grace"></a>
<H3><IMG ALIGN=BOTTOM ALT="" SRC="../gx/lil2cent.gif">
<font color="navy">
IP Addresses
</font> </H3>
Date: Mon, 26 Apr 1999 02:52:34 +0000<BR>
From: Allen Grace, <A HREF="mailto:a.grace@mailbox.uq.edu.au">
a.grace@mailbox.uq.edu.au</A>
<P>
In your New Tips section you've published a tip describing a method of
finding the IP address for a PPP session with a Perl script.
<P>
There is a simpler way, which you may like to append to his tip. Under
bash:
<PRE>
IPADDR=`/sbin/ifconfig | \
grep P-t-P | \
awk 'BEGIN{FS=" "} {print $2}' | \
awk 'BEGIN{FS=":"} {print $2}'`
</PRE>
And then you do whatever you like with $IPADDR.
<P>
This will work for the same ifconfig output as the gentlemen who
submitted the Perl script.
<P>
N.B. There are formatting issues here. The command list must be enclosed
in backquotes, but the font used for Netscape mail doesn't seem to have
a backquote character, as it has substituted the forward quote.
<P>
Cheers and many thanks for the enjoyable reading.
<P>
--<BR>
Allen
<P> <hr> <P>
<!--================================================================-->
<H4><font color="maroon">
Tips in the following section are answers to questions printed in the Mail
Bag column of previous issues.
</font></H4>
<P> <hr> <P>
<!--================================================================-->
<a name="brown"></a>
<H3><IMG ALIGN=BOTTOM ALT="" SRC="../gx/lil2cent.gif">
ANSWER: <font color="navy">
LG39 - Dodgy Hard Drive
</font> </H3>
Date: Tue, 20 Apr 1999 17:11:59 +0200<BR>
From: Nick Brown, <A HREF="mailto:Nick.BROWN@coe.fr">
Nick.BROWN@coe.fr</A>
<P>
<blockquote><font color="navy">
hda: SAMSUNG SV0644A, 6105MB w/490kB Cache, CHS=778/255/63, UDMA
hdb: FUJITSU MPC3064AT, 6187MB w/0kB Cache, CHS=838/240/63, UDMA
hdc: ST34321A, 4103MB w/128kB Cache, CHS=8894/15/63, UDMA
</font></blockquote>
<P>
I hit a related but different problem after a BIOS upgrade, which led me to
the kernel sources. There is a routine in there which gets old-style (lots
of heads, fewer cylinders) info for the first two HDs only. If you have
partitioned the disk with, say, FDISK, or possibly even with Linux when it
was hda, then you will have old-style head/cyl counts in the partition
tables. You'll probably find that fdisk, lilo, etc, are complaining about
your disk's geometry as well.
<P>
One possibility is to try booting with the kernel option hdc=<c>,<h>,<s> -
see the BootPrompt HOWTO. Another might be to completely zap the disk
(writing 512 zeroes with dd to /dev/hdc should do it) and repartition it
under Linux.
<P>
In my opinion, this "extra" treatment of just hda/hdb is a bug - the system
should work out the "old-style" geometry of all the IDE drives in a
consistent manner. Mark Lord, who maintains much of the IDE code, thinks
that the old-style init code should be junked for 2.3.
<P>
I patched my kernel to fix my problem (which was causing the CHS numbers for
hda to be overwritten by data for a SCSI drive), but it wouldn't work for
yours. You might try editing ide.c in your kernel source tree and reducing
the routine probe_cmos_for_drives() to an empty pair of {} braces.
<P>
--<BR>
Nick
<P> <hr> <P>
<!--================================================================-->
<a name="crane"></a>
<H3><IMG ALIGN=BOTTOM ALT="" SRC="../gx/lil2cent.gif">
<font color="navy">
Linux, PalmIII, and Email
</font> </H3>
Date: Tue, 20 Apr 1999 13:35:02 +0100BR
From: Stephen Crane, <A HREF="mailto:scrane@flexicom.com">
scrane@flexicom.com</A>
<P>
Hi Mark,<BR>
If you have sendmail set up correctly from your
Linux box to your ISP, the process should be
transparent. When you sync email from the Palm
(using PilotManager <A HREF="http://www.moshpit.org/pilotmgr/">
http://www.moshpit.org/pilotmgr/</A>)
it transmits the email from the Linux user-id (i.e.,
the user-id under which you ran the sync) via sendmail
or whatever MTA you've configured.
<P>
Hope this helps. If you need help on setting up
email to your ISP, have a look at the Mail HOWTO.
If you have to, there are very few lines in the
standard /etc/sendmail.cf (from RedHat) which need
to be changed.
Cheers,
<P>
--<BR>
Steve
<P> <hr> <P>
<!--================================================================-->
<a name="olaf"></a>
<H3><IMG ALIGN=BOTTOM ALT="" SRC="../gx/lil2cent.gif">
<font color="navy">
Uninstalling Software
</font> </H3>
Date: Wed, 21 Apr 1999 12:43:01 -0400 (EDT)<BR>
From: <A HREF="mailto:olaf.greis@iname.com">
olaf.greis@iname.com</A>
<P>
<blockquote><font color="navy">
Have you had any articles on uninstalling application
software in Linux.
</font></blockquote>
<P>
There is no such thing as a generalized uninstall method
in linux. it really depends on the way you installed
the software.
<P>
Two widespread package formats (.deb and .rpm) come
with their own install utilities which are also able to
uninstall packages. Please see your system documentation
(or manpages) on the various options these installers
offer.
<P>
If you just installed from a .tgz (or .tar.gz) archive
containing the binaries your mostly lost, since tgz
offers no uninstall mechanism at all. All you can do is
watch the system at installation time and manually remove the files.
<P>
If you compiled the sources by yourself make sure to
keep a copy of the makefile, since recent applications
often come with a 'make uninstall' directive. If you
don't have the makefile or the makefile doesn't offer a
uninstall option your just as lost as with a .tgz binary
<P>
--<BR>
olaf
<P> <hr> <P>
<!--================================================================-->
<a name="derek"></a>
<H3><IMG ALIGN=BOTTOM ALT="" SRC="../gx/lil2cent.gif">
<font color="navy">
KDE - so what?
</font> </H3>
Date: Fri, 23 Apr 1999 08:49:26 +0100<BR>
From: Derek, <A HREF="mailto:fountai@hursley.ibm.com">
fountai@hursley.ibm.com</A>
<P>
Lou,
<blockquote><font color="navy">
Am I just being obtuse, or does KDE feel like a heavy, bloated, resource-intensive desktop environment? If that's what I wanted, I would stay with M(I'm
sorry, I can't say the word)t. Features and benefits be damned, FVWM2 comes real close to the type of responsiveness I feel should be expected of the
desktop ... KDE doesn't even come close.
</font></blockquote>
You're not being obtuse, but you are missing the point. KDE comes in
pieces, so if you don't want a particular feature bloating up your
system and hogging your resources, comment it out of the startup script.
Don't need the sound manager? Switch it off. Don't want the background
manager? Switch it off. Don't need the panel? Switch it off. Of course,
if you do that, you won't be using KDE anymore, and you won't get the
benefits of the environment.
<P>
The "GUI tax" is something you have to pay if you want as nice
environment. Pretty pictures and sounds cost memory, disk space and CPU
time. With Linux and KDE you have a choice. Some would say that Fvwm2 is
a complete resource hog, and why can't we all just use a CLI from a
console? We can, but you don't have to. You pays yer money and takes yer
choice. On this platform at least, that's an option, only you don't have
to pay any money.
<blockquote><font color="navy">
And WHY hasn't anyone else complained? At least, not in a forum that I've been aware of. Is it that everyone is so enamored of the acceptance that Linux has
been getting that they are afraid to rock the boat?
</font></blockquote>
Because everyone else just makes a simple decision. "Does this do what I
want at a cost I'm prepared to pay?" If it does, they use it. If it
doesn't, they use something else which better matches their needs. Linux
isn't about complaining. It's about solving problems. If you can write a
desktop environment which does all the nice things KDE does within the
resource constraints matched by Fvwm2, I'll use it.
<blockquote><font color="navy">
On the other hand, I suppose that we (the Linux user community) feel like we can pass this KDE thing off as a ready replacement for W(I'm sorry, but I can't
say that word, either)s, given that it is so slow and bloated that W(you know)s users will feel right at home.
Yeah, that's the ticket, we'll make 'em feel right at home.
</font></blockquote>
Nope, we're just offering another solution to user's problems. It might
be, in your opinion, another slow, bloated solution, but it's faster
than Windows, more stable, open source and free of charge. It suits a
lot of people. If it doesn't suit you, fine. Use something else. No need
to moan about it...
<P>
--<BR>
Del
<P> <hr> <P>
<!--================================================================-->
<a name="crane2"></a>
<H3><IMG ALIGN=BOTTOM ALT="" SRC="../gx/lil2cent.gif">
<font color="navy">
What is a *.ajr file?
</font> </H3>
Date: Fri, 23 Apr 1999 00:44:35 +0200<BR>
From: Steve Crane, <A HREF="mailto:tux@datapro.co.za">
tux@datapro.co.za</A>
<P>
Hans Jensen replied to an erlier 2c tip:
<blockquote><font color="navy">
I think what you see here is the result of Win98 stumbling over a
filename with multiple periods in it. I get a similar result on Win95,
as well as on Win-NT4.0, only the name in my case is mangled into
xxx_tar.tar. So when you have the dialog for the download on screen,
you can simply change the name into something like xx.tgz, which is
unpacked by e.g. WinZip with the same ease as if it were a real ZIP
file. Note for LG: maybe this would be an alternative for the names
you use on the website?
</font></blockquote>
This appears to have been a bug in one of the Internet access components
used by Windows. The error occurred in files downloaded from both
Internet Explorer and Netscape.
<P>
However, the bug appears to have been corrected as I have not seen file
names being broken on downloads from either browser since I have
installed Internet Explorer 5.
<P>
-- <BR>
Steve
<P> <hr> <P>
<!--================================================================-->
<a name="francois"></a>
<H3><IMG ALIGN=BOTTOM ALT="" SRC="../gx/lil2cent.gif">
<font color="navy">
CD Autoloader
</font> </H3>
Date: Wed, 28 Apr 1999 19:16:32 +0000<BR>
From: Francois Desarmenien, <A HREF="mailto:desar@club-internet.fr">
desar@club-internet.fr</A>
<blockquote><font color="navy">
I have Caldera OpenLinux 1.2 with 2.2.5 kernel installed.
I need to know if the NEC 4X6 CD changer is supported under Linux, and
so how do you set up
Linux to access the 3 other platters?
</font></blockquote>
I'll suppose NEC 4x6 CD changer is an SCSI device.
<P>
If it is, it is made of two distinct SCSI devices:
<ol>
<li>A cdrom player
<li>A medium changer robot
</ol>
which share the same SCSI id with 2 distinct LUNs.
<P>
Here is my idea (maybe it will require some hack, but maybe not):
<P>
Leonard N. Zubkoff ( lnz@dandelion.com ) wrote a piece of software that d rives a medium changer robot
for DDS tape loaders. It is called MTX and can be found at www.dandelion.com/Linux . Works as a breeze.
<P>
As the notion of "medium changer devices" is well defined and very generic in SCSI RFCs, I suspect the
SCSI inquiries for the cdrom changer should be very close to tape changer
ones, so this code could
probably do the job.
<P>
Unfortunatly, I have no such cdrom changers, so I haven't tried it. But I'm sure it is worth the test.
<P>
--<BR>
Francois Desarmenien
<H3>
<font color="navy">
Re: CD autoloader
</font> </H3>
Date: Thu, 29 Apr 1999 09:47:54 PDT<BR>
From: "Trenton Hergesell", <A HREF="mailto:lethalbyte@hotmail.com">
lethalbyte@hotmail.com</A>
<P>
I should have added that it is an ATAPI compliant device ( IDE
Primary channel, Slave drive). Thank you for your response. I have
recently upgraded to Caldera 1.3, but I am having problems upgrading
the Kernel.
<P>
--<BR>
Trenton
<P> <hr> <P>
<!--================================================================-->
<a name="leroy"></a>
<H3><IMG ALIGN=BOTTOM ALT="" SRC="../gx/lil2cent.gif">
<font color="navy">
RE: Problem with the proxy
</font> </H3>
Date: Thu, 22 Apr 1999 12:41:19 -0500<BR>
From: "Nicholas R LeRoy", <A HREF="mailto:nick.leroy@norland.com">
nick.leroy@norland.com</A>
<P>
The socks5 package can be found at www.socks.nec.com. It works quite well.
Linux is well supported, as well.
<P>
--<BR>
Nick
<P> <hr> <P>
<!--================================================================-->
<a name="hawkins"></a>
<H3><IMG ALIGN=BOTTOM ALT="" SRC="../gx/lil2cent.gif">
<font color="navy">
Re: what is my dialup (ppp) IP number?
</font> </H3>
Date: Sat, 1 May 1999 19:10:40 +1000<BR>
From: Matthew Hawkins, <A HREF="mailto:matt@mail.goldweb.com.au">
matt@mail.goldweb.com.au</A>
<P>
pppd passes this to the ip-up script as the 4th argument.
<P>
man pppd.
<P>
-- <BR>
Matt
<P> <hr> <P>
<!--================================================================-->
<center>Published in <I>Linux Gazette</I> Issue 41, April 1999</center>
<P> <hr> <P>
<!--================================================================-->
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<P> <hr> <P>
<h5>This page maintained by the Editor of <I>Linux Gazette</I>,
<A HREF="mailto: gazette@ssc.com">gazette@ssc.com</A><BR>
Copyright © 1999 Specialized Systems Consultants, Inc. </H5>
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