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<H2>February 2002, Issue 75 &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
Published by <I>Linux Journal</I></H2> 

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<H1><font color="#BB0000">Table of Contents:</font></H1>




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<UL>
	<LI>  <a HREF="lg_mail.html">The MailBag</A> 
	<LI>  <a HREF="lg_tips.html">More 2-Cent Tips</A> 
	<LI>  <a HREF="lg_answer.html">The Answer Gang</A> 
	<LI>  <a HREF="lg_bytes.html">News Bytes</A> 
	<LI>  <a HREF="jenkins.html">Secure Printing with PGP</A> , <EM>by Graham Jenkins</EM>
	<LI>  <a HREF="jones.html">A Pioneer for a New Century -- Alan Turing, part 1</A> , <EM>by G James Jones</EM>
	<LI>  <a HREF="maiorano.html">Installing and using AIDE</A> , <EM>by Ariel Maiorano</EM>
	<LI>  <a HREF="nielsen.html">GPL or BSD? Yes</A> , <EM>by Mark Nielsen</EM>
	<LI>  <a HREF="orr.html">The Foolish Things We Do With Our Computers</A> , <EM>by Mike "Iron" Orr</EM>
	<LI>  <a HREF="peda.html">Simple Package Management With Stow</A> , <EM>by Allan Peda</EM>
	<LI>  <a HREF="piszcz.html">Why I wrote Install Kernel (ik) and How It Works</A> , <EM>by Justin Piszcz</EM>
	<LI>  <a HREF="spiel.html">Writing Documentation, Part III: DocBook/XML</A> , <EM>by Christoph Spiel</EM>
	<LI>  <a HREF="williamson.html">The Adventures of Little Linus In GNU/Wonderland</A> , <EM>by D Clyde Williamson</EM>
	<LI>  <a HREF="zhaoway.html">Modest Home on the Web</A> , <EM>by zhaoway</EM>
	<LI>  <a HREF="lg_backpage.html">The Back Page</A> 
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<H3 ALIGN="center"><EM>Linux Gazette</EM> Staff and The Answer Gang</H3>
<BLOCKQUOTE>
<STRONG>Editor:</STRONG> Michael Orr<BR>
<STRONG>Technical Editor:</STRONG> Heather Stern<BR>
<STRONG>Senior Contributing Editor:</STRONG> Jim Dennis<BR>
<STRONG>Contributing Editors:</STRONG>
Ben Okopnik, Dan Wilder, Don Marti
</BLOCKQUOTE>

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This page maintained by the Editor of <I>Linux Gazette</I>,
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<H5>Copyright &copy; 1996-2002 Specialized Systems Consultants, Inc.</H5>
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<a name=""></a>
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<center><H3><font color="maroon"></font></H3></center>
<P> <HR> <P>
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<!-- BEGIN  -->

<UL>
<!-- index_text begins -->
<li><A HREF="#/1"
	><strong>Comments on: Play with the Lovely NetCat</strong></a>
<li><A HREF="#/3"
	><strong>LLG #74 Mailbag: Desktop Support</strong></a>
<li><A HREF="#/5"
	><strong>Good attitude!</strong></a>
<li><A HREF="#/6"
	><strong>Mountpoint permissions</strong></a>
<li><A HREF="#/8"
	><strong>Sorry / Saludos</strong></a>
<li><A HREF="#/10"
	><strong>attn: Ben Okopnik et al</strong></a>
<li><A HREF="#/11"
	><strong>Tux' Gender</strong></a>
<!-- index_text ends -->
</UL>
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<P> <A NAME="/1"><HR WIDTH="75%" ALIGN="center"></A> <P>
<H3><IMG ALIGN=BOTTOM ALT="" SRC="../gx/envelope.gif">
<FONT COLOR="navy">Comments on: Play with the lovely netcat</FONT></H3>
Fri, 11 Jan 2002 19:11:53 +0800
<BR>zhaoway (<a href="mailto:gazette@ssc.com?cc=zw@debian.org"
	>zw from debian.org</a>)

<P>I've forwarded these comments about my Jan article in Linux Gazette: 
<em>Play with the lovely netcat</em>. 
Could you post it in your Mailbag? Thanks!
</P>
<P>
zw
</P>
<hr width="40%" align="center">

<h3>The purpose of yes</h3>
<p><strong>Date:</strong> Thu, 3 Jan 2002 16:05:19 -0700 (MST)
<br><strong>From:</strong> Bruno Melli &lt;<A HREF="mailto:gazette@ssc.com?cc=bruno@fc.hp.com?cc=zw@debian.org"
	>bruno from fc.hp.com</A>&gt;
</P>
<P>
Hi zhaoway,
</P>
<P>
I was enjoying your column in the latest Linux Gazette and came upon
your description of <TT>/usr/bin/yes</TT>. I'm by no mean a Unix historian, but
from what I understand the yes command had a very basic purpose:
</P>
<P><BLOCKQuote>
The original rm command didn't have a -f option.
So if you did
<tt>rm -r /some/dir</TT>  (or rm * where the current dir had lots of files)
and if the permissions weren't set right you ended up having to
type in a bunch of 'y' because rm asked you if you wanted to overwrite
the permission.
</BLOCKQuote></P>
<P>
Try it:</p>
<pre>
touch /tmp/haha
chmod 000 /tmp/haha
rm /tmp/haha
</Pre>
<P>
Imagine how annoying that becomes if you tried to rm hundreds of files
at once.
</P>
<P>
The solution, if you didn't have access to the rm source, (or took the
basic philosophy of Unix to the extreme):
</P>
<P><CODE>
yes | rm -r
</CODE></P>
<P>
bruno.
</P>

<P><HR WIDTH="40%" ALIGN="center"></A> <P>
<h3>Author of Netcat</h3>
<p><strong>Date:</strong> Wed, 2 Jan 2002 16:21:27 -0800
<br><strong>From:</strong> "Golden_Eternity" 
	&lt;<A HREF="mailto:gazette@ssc.com?cc=zw@debian.org?cc=bhodi_jabir@yahoo.com"
	>bhodi_jabir from yahoo.com</A>&gt;
</P>
<P>
In your article "Play with the Lovely Netcat: Reinvent <TT>/usr/bin/yes</TT>" you
comment on the anonymity of the author of Netcat.
</P>
<P>
I could be wrong, but I'm fairly certain that the author is Hobbit of the
l0pht (currently @stake). There's a Win32 version by Chris Wysopal, as well.
</P>
<P>
<A HREF="http://www.atstake.com/research/tools/index.html#network_utilities"
	>http://www.atstake.com/research/tools/index.html#network_utilities</A>
</P>

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<P> <A NAME="/3"><HR WIDTH="75%" ALIGN="center"></A> <P>
<H3><IMG ALIGN=BOTTOM ALT="" SRC="../gx/envelope.gif">
<FONT COLOR="navy">LG #74 Mailbag: Desktop support</FONT></H3>

<p>We got two messages on this topic.</p>

<P> <HR WIDTH="40%" ALIGN="center"> <P>
<H3>pls pass this onto Dennis Field - his email doesn't work</H3>
<p><strong>Date:</strong> Fri, 28 Dec 2001 20:23:50 +0000
<BR>Luke Worthy (<a href="mailto:gazette@ssc.com?cc=lukew@linuxmail.org">lukew from linuxmail.org</a>)

<P>
re: Winning the Battle for the Desktop
</P>
<P>
Dude - quit you're Linux laptop whining...heh - jk 
<IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/smily.gif" ALT=";)" 
		height="24" width="20" align="middle">
</P>
<P>
<A HREF="http://www.linux-laptop.net"
	>http://www.linux-laptop.net</A>
</P>
<P>
and btw: try Mandrake, it has excellent PnP - they at least have a chat-style site for support, and it's all pretty good - just make sure you're winmodem is supported:
</P>
<P><BLOCKQuote>
<A HREF="http://www.linmodems.org"
	>http://www.linmodems.org</A>
</BLOCKQuote></P>
<P>
That's usually the most important thing.
</P>
<P>
Luke
</P>


<!-- end 9 -->
<hr width="40%" align="center">
<h3>
Regarding all these comments about desktop support ---
</h3>
<p><strong>Date:</strong> Thu, 17 Jan 2002 02:54:19 -0800
<BR>Iron (<a href="mailto:gazette@ssc.com">LG Editor</a>)
</p>

<P>
There are two major classes of desktop: home and office.  The former is
novices and hobbyists (who help the novices).  The latter has help desks.
</P>
<P>
Linux's economics have little chance of winning over novice desktops.
That's because the cost of tech support for the few is borne by everyone
who buys the software.  Thus, a $50 package can afford to bear a 15 minute
tech support phone call, and still turn a profit.
</p>
<em>
<P>
Actually, they cannot.  The retailer and distributor will take 20-50% off
the top.  That leaves $25.  Even with low-paid support staff, a 15-minute
call can't cost less than $5 unless it's a simple answer (in which case
the call would have taken one minute) and all the infrastructure costs
to main the help desk and its resources are externalized as overhead.
If they sell one copy, they would not have enough profit to take the call,
unless the company was tiny and had a tiny customer base (in which case
the customer-service staff or other staff would double as tech-support
staff, so they would have to be employed anyway).
</P>
<P>
If they sell a hundred copies (or whatever the number is), they can take
that 15-minute call.  If the person calls back, they will have lost all
of their profit on those hundred copies.  If another of those hundred
customers also calls in, the company will lose money.
</P>
<P>
That's why unlimited free tech support has disappeared, why limited
free tech support has long been in danger, and why so many companies have
put their knowledge bases online and run product newsgroups.  It's much
cheaper to have support staff monitor a newsgroup two hours a day than to
wait by the phone, in terms of the number of customers that will be helped
during that time, because others with the same question (or who may have the
same question in the future), will see the answer.  Actually, that's how The
Answer Gang works too....
</P>
<P>
There are exceptions.  The author of MetaKit
(<A HREF="http://http"
	>http://http</A>://www.equi4.com/metakit/index.html), a non-SQL database server,
offered unlimited free technical support, although I assume it was e-mail
support rather than phone support.  He did it because he wanted to hear
how clients were using the product and what kinds of problems they encountered:
he considered that his payment because it helped him improve the product.
I'm not sure whether he still offers this--the web page now points users with
questions to a mailing list.  But there's obviously an upper limit on the number
of customers you can offer "free unlimited support" to.
</P>
</em>
<p>
  Linux is complex enough
that the price really needs to be higher to support all the included
software.
</P>
<em>
<BR>John Kawakami (<a href="mailto:gazette@ssc.com?cc=johnkk@woodstock.com">johnk from woodstock.com</a>)
<P>
True, although this is more a responsibility of the distributions that market
to newbies than a responsibility of the Linux community as a whole.
</P></em>
<P>
On the other hand, Linux could do okay in the corporate desktop, where
in-house helpdesks keep people away from the "free" tech support you get
from the vendors.  (It's not free if you're paying someone to wait on tech
support.)  The simpler Linux apps are easier to "fix" when errant users
make mistakes, and with VNC, the service can be done remotely.  Plus,
overall stability pays off with fewer internal support staff.
</P>
<P>
----
John Kawakami
</P>

<em>
<P>
If the in-house help desks know Linux.  Often, the only people who know Linux
are the IT staff who run the servers.  -- Iron
</P></em>

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<P> <A NAME="/5"><HR WIDTH="75%" ALIGN="center"></A> <P>
<H3><IMG ALIGN=BOTTOM ALT="" SRC="../gx/envelope.gif">
<FONT COLOR="navy">Good attitude!</FONT></H3>
Tue, 1 Jan 2002 14:50:04 -0500
<BR>mike (<a href="mailto:gazette@ssc.com">mike from toadwart.darktech.org</a>)
<BR>linux-questions-only (linux-questions-only@ssc.com)

<p>
Regarding: LG 74, 2c Tips #26</p>
<P>
I really like the attitude expressed by the whole answer gang, and a subtle rtfm after the
question is answered is a good thing, I think. Before the answer it's a provocation, afterwards it
becomes good advice.
Happy New Year,
</P>
<P>
Mike List
</P>

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<P> <A NAME="/6"><HR WIDTH="75%" ALIGN="center"></A> <P>
<H3><IMG ALIGN=BOTTOM ALT="" SRC="../gx/envelope.gif">
<FONT COLOR="navy">Mountpoint permissions</FONT></H3>
Thu, 03 Jan 2002 21:42:34 -0500
<BR>Rick Holbert (<a href="mailto:gazette@ssc.com?cc=holbert.13@osu.edu">holbert.13 from osu.edu</a>)

<P>
Use chown, chgrp and chmod to change the owner, group and permissions on
the mount point.
</P>

<em>
<P>
Err, no. The querent actually stated that he tried those; I'm willing to
believe him (the same situation obtains when you mount a VFAT partition;
the owner/perms of the mount point are irrelevant.) I don't have a Samba
setup at hand right now, and it's been a while since I had to do one, but
I'm pretty certain that Mike Martin's suggestion - setting the "uid/gid"
parameters in the conffile - is the right thing to do. -- Ben
</P>
</em>

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<P> <A NAME="/8"><HR WIDTH="75%" ALIGN="center"></A> <P>
<H3><IMG ALIGN=BOTTOM ALT="" SRC="../gx/envelope.gif">
<FONT COLOR="navy">Sorry / Saludos</FONT></H3>
Tue, 8 Jan 2002 08:44:56 +0100
<BR>Andres Legarra (<a href="mailto:gazette@ssc.com?cc=alegarra@ikt.es">alegarra from ikt.es</a>)

<P>
Perdon!!
</p>
<p>
Me he confundido al pinchar el mensaje que queria responder.
</p<p>
Sorry, I mispelled when I picked the message to reply (This awful M$ Outllok
Express...)
By the way, I found some things on Linux Gazette very useful.
<br>Congratulations
</P>
<P>
Usted escribe un buen espa&ntilde;ol!!
<br>Saludos
</P>
<P>
Andres Legarra Albizu
</P>


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<P> <A NAME="/10"><HR WIDTH="75%" ALIGN="center"></A> <P>
<H3><IMG ALIGN=BOTTOM ALT="" SRC="../gx/envelope.gif">
<FONT COLOR="navy">attn: Ben Okopnik et al</FONT></H3>
Fri, 11 Jan 2002 22:33:00 -0800 (PST)
<BR>Mather Cotton (<a href="mailto:gazette@ssc.com?cc=mathercotton@yahoo.com">mathercotton from yahoo.com</a>)

<P>
<A HREF="../issue63/okopnik.html"
	>http://www.linuxgazette.com/issue63/okopnik.html</A>
</P>
<P>
That url saved my ass.  Thank you so much!
</P>
<P>
Cotton
</P>

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<P> <A NAME="/11"><HR WIDTH="75%" ALIGN="center"></A> <P>
<H3><IMG ALIGN=BOTTOM ALT="" SRC="../gx/envelope.gif">
<FONT COLOR="navy">Tux' Gender</FONT></H3>

<p>We got two messages on this topic.</p>

<hr width="40%" align="center">
<h3>re: Lady Penguins</h3>
<p><strong>Date:</strong> Wed, 02 Jan 2002 04:50:22 -0500
<BR>Rachel Rawlings (<a href="mailto:gazette@ssc.com?cc=rrawlingsw@nyc.rr.com">rrawlingsw from nyc.rr.com</a>)
</p>

<P><em><font color="navy">
That might refer to Linus' original comment that penguins are happy
because they have just stuffed themselves full of herring or have been
hanging out with lady penguins. We only <strong>/know/</strong> that Tux is stuffed full
of herring, but we can assume Tux hangs out with lady penguins. -- Heather
</font></em></P>
<P>
Which actually doesn't get say definitively whether Tux is male. Tux
could hang out with lady penguins cf. Marlena Dietrich, or be a
high-class drag king. 
<img src="../gx/dennis/smily.gif" alt=";&gt;" align="top">
</P>
<P>
However, speaking as a dyke with a largish stuffed animal collection
(one of whom is a female Peter Rabbit named Katja) my Tux is male. Other
users' Tuxen may vary according to the needs of the user, much like
their kernel configurations.
</P>

<em>
<P>
Interesting.  I wonder if Eric Raymond's enhanced kernel configurator
will have a question for which sex your kernel should be built as.  -- Mike
</P></em>

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<HR WIDTH="40%" ALIGN="center">
<h3>All the Girls like him</h3>
<p><strong>Date:</strong> Fri, 18 Jan 2002 11:26:17 +0100
<BR>patrick.op.de.beeck (<a href="mailto:gazette@ssc.com?cc=patrick.op.de.beeck@belgacom.be">patrick.op.de.beeck from belgacom.be</a>)
</p>

<p><em>
But, we couldn't publish his very cute note because it was marked confidential.  Sorry folks! -- Heather</em></p>


<!-- end 13 -->
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<BR>Published in issue 75 of <I>Linux Gazette</I> February 2002</H5>
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<center>
<H1><A NAME="tips"><IMG ALIGN=MIDDLE ALT="" SRC="../gx/twocent.jpg">
More 2&cent; Tips!</A></H1> <BR>
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Send Linux Tips and Tricks to <A HREF="mailto:linux-questions-only@ssc.com">linux-questions-only@ssc.com</A></center>
</center>
<UL>
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<li><A HREF="#tips/1"
	><strong>pseudo-chroot</strong></a>
<li><A HREF="#tips/2"
	><strong>See LILO only when you need it</strong></a>
<li><A HREF="#tips/3"
	><strong>Active Directory...</strong></a>
<li><A HREF="#tips/4"
	><strong>CSS2? Try XML and its kin instead</strong></a>
<li><A HREF="#tips/5"
	><strong>Linux with win2000</strong></a>
<li><A HREF="#tips/6"
	><strong>Cable Modem Setup</strong></a>
<li><A HREF="#tips/8"
	><strong>read a timestamp... the EASY way</strong></a>
<li><A HREF="#tips/11"
	><strong>How to manually label a tape in linux</strong></a>
<li><A HREF="#tips/14"
	><strong>Problem faced while using script to backup</strong></a>
<li><A HREF="#tips/15"
	><strong>Posters for [LG 72] help wanted #7</strong></a>
<!-- index_text ends -->
</UL>
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<P> <A NAME="tips/1"><HR WIDTH="75%" ALIGN="center"></A> <P>
<H3><IMG ALIGN=BOTTOM ALT="" SRC="../gx/lil2cent.gif">
<FONT COLOR="navy">pseudo-chroot</FONT></H3>
Fri, 4 Jan 2002 09:34:18 -0500
<BR>trevor (<a href="mailto:linux-questions-only@ssc.com?subject=%20Re%3A%20%5BLG%2075%5D%202c%20Tips%20%231%20pseudo%20chroot">tlist from vtnet.ca</a>)

<P>
hi,
</P>
<P>
in issue 74 there's a question from Faber Fedor asking about how to
setup an environment so that a user can't wander from their home
directory.
</P>
<P>
i believe the person asking the question was looking for something
along the lines of a restricted shell. tell the person asking the
question to look at the "-r" option to bash, smrsh, and/or do a google
search for "restricted shell".
</P>
<P>
best regards,
<br>trevor
</P>


<!-- end 1 -->
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<P> <A NAME="tips/2"><HR WIDTH="75%" ALIGN="center"></A> <P>
<H3><IMG ALIGN=BOTTOM ALT="" SRC="../gx/lil2cent.gif">
<FONT COLOR="navy">See LILO only when you need it</FONT></H3>
Fri, 04 Jan 2002 13:21:36 -0800
<BR>John R. Jones (<a href="mailto:linux-questions-only@ssc.com?subject=%20Re%3A%20%5BLG%2075%5D%202c%20Tips%20%232%20lilo%20when%20needed">jonejr from gat.com</a>)

<P>
Hello gazette,
</P>
<P>
Being a new Linux administrator, I had "hardened" down my install by implementing
a "protected" and "password=&lt;pass&gt; entry in my <TT>/etc/lilo.conf</TT> file to keep people
just as dangerous as myself out of single mode.
</P>
<P>
I also rem'd out the timeout= value so my install would always boot straight into
Linux.
</P>
<P>
My question for the day was "how could I boot Linux Single if I had to?
a Boot and Root set would work, but I discovered this...
</P>
<P>
After the BIOS Mem check, hold down either control key and the LILO boot "screen" is
displayed! And of course, you'd need the password=&lt;value&gt; to use it...
</P>
<P>
Wow, Now I am scary on 2 platforms. 
<IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/smily.gif" ALT=":)" 
		height="24" width="20" align="middle">
</P>
<P>
--
Thank you,
</P>
<P>
John R. Jones
</P>

<p><em>3, if you count that he's an Oracle DBA. -- Heather</em></p>


<!-- end 2 -->
<!--     .~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.     -->
<P> <A NAME="tips/3"><HR WIDTH="75%" ALIGN="center"></A> <P>
<H3><IMG ALIGN=BOTTOM ALT="" SRC="../gx/lil2cent.gif">
<FONT COLOR="navy">Active Directory...</FONT></H3>
Fri, 04 Jan 2002 01:38:57 -0600
<BR>John Lederer (<a href="mailto:linux-questions-only@ssc.com?subject=%20Re%3A%20%5BLG%2075%5D%202c%20Tips%20%233%20active%20directory">john from jhml.org</a>)

<P>
OpenLDAP is the Linux equivalent of Active Directory.
</P>
<P>
Regards.
<br>John
</P>

<p><em>There's been enough small-comment interest in this, it would probably
be good to see an article on the subject of setting up this sort of environment
the Linux way. -- Heather</em></p>

<!-- end 3 -->
<!--     .~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.     -->
<P> <A NAME="tips/4"><HR WIDTH="75%" ALIGN="center"></A> <P>
<H3><IMG ALIGN=BOTTOM ALT="" SRC="../gx/lil2cent.gif">
<FONT COLOR="navy">CSS2? Try XML and its kin instead</FONT></H3>
Sun, 30 Dec 2001 22:18:56 -0500
<BR>XunDog (<a href="mailto:linux-questions-only@ssc.com?subject=%20Re%3A%20%5BLG%2075%5D%202c%20Tips%20%234%20CSS2%20equivs">dwight1 from attcanada.ca</a>)

<P>
Ok,
</P>
<P>
If the feature is unique to CSS2 then
you won't replicate it with CSS1 and cross-platform
browser support for either is restrictive ...
</P>
<P>
so .... I would suggest using Xml, xsl, xslt
and either DTD or xsd schema formats ...
</P>
<P>
this is more completely supported ... just a
little (mabye a lot) more work ... Check out
the books by Benoit Marchal ...
</P>
<P>
regards
<br>XunDog
</P>

<!-- end 4 -->
<!--     .~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.     -->
<P> <A NAME="tips/5"><HR WIDTH="75%" ALIGN="center"></A> <P>
<H3><IMG ALIGN=BOTTOM ALT="" SRC="../gx/lil2cent.gif">
<FONT COLOR="navy">Linux with win2000</FONT></H3>
Mon, 14 Jan 2002 13:56:00 -0500 (COT)
<BR>nadeem (<a href="mailto:linux-questions-only@ssc.com?subject=%20Re%3A%20%5BLG%2075%5D%202c%20Tips%20%235%20Linux%20with%20win2000">abc from studiosmile.com</a>)
<br>answered by John Karns (The Answer Gang)

<P><STRONG>
Anybody please tell me about installation of linux with win2000.
I already installed linux 7 on my pc.
now i want that without format my system i install win2000 on my pc.
</STRONG></P>
<P><STRONG>
any body pls give me any utility. don't tell me FAQ.
this is boring for me. if anybody wants help me out than pls provide me
utility.
</STRONG></P>
<P>
If you find reading FAQ's boring, I don't think you're going to like Linux
too much.
</P>
<P>
Three recommendations:
</P>
<P>
For disk partition manipulation:
<ol>
<li> fips or
<li> Partition Magic (there are others, but these are two I've used)
</ol></P>
<P>
For installing and running Windows (MSW) with Linux.
<br>3) VMWare
</P>
<P>
It would be nice to be able to avoid MSW entirely, but since my work
demands it, using VMWare allows me to run it without having to reboot and
leave the Linux environment.
</P>
<P>
-- John Karns
</P>

<!-- end 5 -->
<!--     .~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.     -->
<P> <A NAME="tips/6"><HR WIDTH="75%" ALIGN="center"></A> <P>
<H3><IMG ALIGN=BOTTOM ALT="" SRC="../gx/lil2cent.gif">
<FONT COLOR="navy">Cable Modem Setup</FONT></H3>
Wed, 2 Jan 2002 10:26:11 +0100
<BR> Eugene Poole
(<a href="mailto:linux-questions-only@ssc.com?subject=%20Re%3A%20%5BLG%2075%5D%202c%20Tips%20%236%20cablemodem">etpoole from attglobal.net</a>)
<br>answered by Yann Vernier and Mike Orr (The Answer Gang)

<P><STRONG>
On January 3, 2002 I'm having a external cable modem installed. I've
been looking around for some simple suggestions on what needs to be
done, confuguration wise, to my Linux machine. Can you help? Naturally,
the normal statement has been made - "We don't support Linux". The Linux
machine that it's being connected to has a second NIC installed and I've
accessed the machine via the second NIC to that's all set up. Where do I
go from there?
</STRONG></P>
<P>
We can't know the next step until you have the instructions for how to
connect using the cable modem. If you are using <A HREF="http://www.debian.org/">Debian</A> GNU/Linux, a
simple way to prepare for running a masquerading gateway is to install
the ipmasq package, but we don't know if you need PPPOE, DHCP, or some
special login methods. A useful resource may be
<A HREF="http://www.cablemodeminfo.com/LinuxCableModem.html"
	>http://www.cablemodeminfo.com/LinuxCableModem.html</A>
</P>
<P>
Good luck! -- Yann
</P>

<em>
<P>
The extra Ethernet card should be all you need.  Beyond that, just follow
the Windows dialogs in the manual and see whether it's dhcp or a static IP,
which nameservers to put in <TT>/etc/resolv.conf</TT>, etc.
</P>
<P>
Yann is right about setting up masquerading if you have a local
network.  I don't think of that as "setting up a cable modem" though.
That's another step, connecting a local network to the Internet.
</P>
<P>
Be glad you have an external modem.  It would be much harder to set up
if it were internal, because it would probably require some
proprietary DLL that isn't available for Linux.  -- Mike
</P>
</em>

<!-- end 7 -->
<!--     .~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.     -->
<P> <A NAME="tips/8"><HR WIDTH="75%" ALIGN="center"></A> <P>
<H3><IMG ALIGN=BOTTOM ALT="" SRC="../gx/lil2cent.gif">
<FONT COLOR="navy">read a timestamp... the EASY way</FONT></H3>
Wed, 2 Jan 2002 23:19:54 -0500
<BR>Joe Smith (<a href="mailto:linux-questions-only@ssc.com?subject=%20Re%3A%20%5BLG%2075%5D%202c%20Tips%20%238%20date">jes from martnet.com</a>)

<P><font color="navy"><em>
I was looking for a solution to extract the timestamp of a file with
plain shell methods.
</em></font></P>
<P>
...
(Lots of all-too-complicated suggestions followed)
</P>
<strong>
<P>
What's wrong with
</P>
<P><CODE>
date -r file
</CODE></P>
<P>
Which only goes to show that we <EM>really</EM> need a friendly way to query the
vast obscurity which is Unix documentation... sigh.
</P>
<P>
&lt;Joe
</P>
</strong>

<em>
<P>
&lt;laugh&gt; Bravo! Well done, sir!
</P>
<P>
This illustrates the point that I often make to folks just learning Unix:
the tools are in there, <EM>somewhere</EM>. It's <EM>finding</EM> them that's the
problem. -- Ben
</P>
</em>

<p>......... the original querent replies .........</p>

<P>
Indeed.
</P>
<P>
Especially when some of your man pages are out of date. In my case,
</P>
<P><CODE>
date --help
</CODE></P>
<P>
would have given the solution, while
</P>
<P><CODE>
man date
</CODE></P>
<P>
just keeps this secret. Sob.
</p>

<P>
--
Regards, Fakir
</P>

<!-- end 10 -->
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<P> <A NAME="tips/11"><HR WIDTH="75%" ALIGN="center"></A> <P>
<H3><IMG ALIGN=BOTTOM ALT="" SRC="../gx/lil2cent.gif">
<FONT COLOR="navy">How to manually label a tape in linux</FONT></H3>
Wed, 9 Jan 2002 10:18:29 +0530
<BR>FRANCO FERNANDES (<a href="mailto:linux-questions-only@ssc.com?subject=%20Re%3A%20%5BLG%2075%5D%202c%20Tips%20%2311%20date&20label&20tapes">franco from lauren.co.in</a>)
<br>Answered by Jay Ashworth (The Answer Gang)

<P><STRONG>
I manually backup my linux server every day for that i need to put a label
on my tape according to the date, I backup my server. Does anyone know how
to manually label a tape in linux is there any command for doing that.
</STRONG></P>
<P><STRONG>
Please help
<br>Thanks in Advance
<br>Franco.F
</STRONG></P>

<P>
Well, <EM>my</EM> approach to this is to create a directory called
<TT>/tmp/TIMESTAMP</TT>, and, just before you make a backup, clear out all the
files, then use
</P>
<P><CODE>
touch /tmp/TIMESTAMP/`date +%Y%m%d-%a%H%M%S`
</CODE></P>
<P>
This wlil give you a label for the backup which you can read without
having to actually load any data.
</P>
<P>
Cheers,
 jra
<!--     .~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.     -->
<P> <A NAME="tips/14"><HR WIDTH="75%" ALIGN="center"></A> <P>
<H3><IMG ALIGN=BOTTOM ALT="" SRC="../gx/lil2cent.gif">
<FONT COLOR="navy">Problem faced while using script to backup</FONT></H3>
Wed, 9 Jan 2002 10:26:14 +0530
<BR>FRANCO FERNANDES (<a href="mailto:linux-questions-only@ssc.com?subject=%20Re%3A%20%5BLG%2075%5D%202c%20Tips%20%2314%20log%20backups">franco from lauren.co.in</a>)
<BR>answered by Dan Wilder (The Answer Gang)

<STRONG>
<P>
I have created a automated script to backup my server for that i want my
log file to display the date it backsup my server every day.
My script has this line ,
</P>
<pre>
echo " BACKUP OF fileserver STARTED " &gt;&gt;
/var/log/bkuplogs/fileserver/mainlog
</pre>

<P>
Is there any parameter which has to be put like %m %h %d.
Any kind of help will be highly appreciated
</p>
</STRONG>
<P>
Try
</P>
<P><CODE>
echo " BACKUP OF fileserver STARTED $(date +'%c') " &gt;&gt; whatever
</CODE></P>
<P>
See
</P>
<P><CODE>
man date
</CODE></P>
<P>
for other format strings.
--
Dan Wilder
</P>

<!-- end 14 -->
<!--     .~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.     -->
<P> <A NAME="tips/15"><HR WIDTH="75%" ALIGN="center"></A> <P>
<H3><IMG ALIGN=BOTTOM ALT="" SRC="../gx/lil2cent.gif">
<FONT COLOR="navy">Posters for [LG 72] help wanted #7</FONT></H3>
Fri, 28 Dec 2001 11:36:12 +0100
<BR>Yann Vernier, Chris Gianakopoulos, Jim Dennis (<a href="mailto:linux-questions-only@ssc.com?subject=%20Re%3A%20%5BLG%2075%5D%202c%20Tips%20%2315%20posters">The Answer Gang</a>)
<p>Brian Keyse (<a href="mailto:linux-questions-only@ssc.com?subject=%20Re%3A%20%5BLG%2075%5D%202c%20Tips%20%2316">bkeyse2 from yahoo.com</a>)

<P>
I feel I must recommend O'Reilly's "Anatomy of a Linux System" poster.
It is a large, colourful poster giving a rough overview of how things
fit together and recommending (O'Reilly, of course) books.
</P>
<P>
Their address is <A HREF="http://www.ora.com"
	>http://www.ora.com</A> but I didn't find the poster in
their product list; it is probably promotional material which you'll
have to ask them for. -- Yann
</P>


<P><BLOCKQuote>It's available as a PDF file:
<br><A HREF="ftp://ftp.oreilly.com/pub/poster/oreilly_linux_poster.pdf"
	>ftp://ftp.oreilly.com/pub/poster/oreilly_linux_poster.pdf</A>
<br>-- Brian Koyse
</BLOCKQuote></P>

<P>
I saw some sort of a thing like that for Linux.  Is it 3 or 4 feet
in diameter and it shows the ring structure of the operating system?
You know..., the kernel in the middle, with the applications at the
outer ring?  If that's the thing, it's kinda cool.  I think that I
am gonna get one of those. -- Chris G.
</P>

<P><em>
Hmmm.  The one I saw was just of the Linux kernel sources.
Core memory management and scheduler in the center and VFS
and core networking support forming a second tier, with
filesystems and specific device drivers on the periphery.
That one was a sort of a fractal star or "peacock." -- JimD
</em></P>

<P>
I'll have to look at the chart when I go back to work next week.  There's a
book entitled "The Design of the Unix Operating System" by Maurice Bach.
The poster that I saw, for Linux, looks like the structure on the cover of
that book.
</P>
<P>
Regards,
Chris G.
</P>

<!-- end 19 -->
<P> <hr> </p>
<!-- *** BEGIN copyright *** -->
<H5 align="center">This page edited and maintained by the Editors
	of <I>Linux Gazette</I> 
<a href="http://www.linuxgazette.com/copying.html"
	>Copyright &copy;</a> 2002
<BR>Published in issue 75 of <I>Linux Gazette</I> February 2002</H5>
<H6 ALIGN="center">HTML script maintained by
	<A HREF="mailto:star@starshine.org">Heather Stern</a> of
	Starshine Technical Services,
	<A HREF="http://www.starshine.org/">http://www.starshine.org/</A> 
</H6>
<!-- *** END copyright *** -->
<P> <hr> <P>
<!-- ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: -->
<center>
<H1><A NAME="answer">
	<img src="../gx/dennis/qbubble.gif" alt="(?)" 
		border="0" align="middle">
	<font color="#B03060">The Answer Gang</font>
	<img src="../gx/dennis/bbubble.gif" alt="(!)" 
		border="0" align="middle">
</A></H1> 
<BR>
<H4>By Jim Dennis, Ben Okopnik, Dan Wilder, Breen, Chris, and...
	(<a href="tag/bios.html">meet the Gang</a>) ...
	the Editors of Linux Gazette... 
	and You!
<br>Send questions (or interesting answers) to
	<a href="tag/ask-the-gang.html">the Answer Gang</a> for
		possible publication 
</H4>
</center>
<!-- ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: -->
<p><hr><p>
<H3>Contents:</H3>
<dl>
<dt><a href="#tag/greeting"
	><strong>&para;: Greetings From Heather Stern</strong></A></dl>

<DL>
<!-- index_text begins -->
<dt><A HREF="#tag/1"
	><img src="../gx/dennis/qbub.gif" height="28" width="50"
	  alt="(?)" border="0"
	><strong>How does one examine a core file</strong></a>
<!-- index_text ends -->
</DL>
<!--     .~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.     -->
<A NAME="tag/greeting"><HR WIDTH="75%" ALIGN="center"></A>
<H3 align="left"><img src="../gx/dennis/hbubble.gif" 
	height="50" width="60" alt="(&para;) " border="0"
	>Greetings from Heather Stern</H3>
<!-- begin hgreeting -->
<p><em>... you stand there waiting for Heather to look up from her keyboard...</em></p>
<p>Oh!  Hi everybody!  It's certainly been an active month here with The Answer
Gang.   We had almost 700 slices of Gazette related mail come past my inbox.
The longest thread (not pubbed this month, look forward to it next time) was
over 50 messages long.  Less than 20 people got no answer whatsoever (not 
counting the occasional spammer) and the top reason for not getting a post
answered, appeared to be simply a lack of interest in that message.   Crazy
attachments are down a LOT since our sysadmin improved the filters.  Ben did
a bit more cleanup on the <a href="../tag/members-faq.html"
	>TAG FAQ</a> and <a href="../tag/kb.html">Knowledgebase</a> and we
	have a new <a href="tag/ask-the-gang.html">posting guidelines page</a>
	which I hope you find easy to read.
<p>In the land of Linux I'm pleased to note that the 2.4 series kernel is
resembling stable since 2.4.17 is over a month old now.  A lot of work is being
done in 2.5.
<p>Flu struck my area and melted my mind back down to a mere single CPU when I'm
used to being an SMP system.  Bleh!  And before you ask ... yes,
I'm feeling better.  Lots of liquids, chicken soup, all that.
<p>It appears as though Ghostscript is my evil nemesis of the month.  
I haven't had time to finish compiling support for that new color
printer of mine.  In a moment of foolishness I upgraded my Dad-in-law's box
and the next few days were completely nuts since kword and gs refused to
agree on what fonts to print, or even to get the metrics right so margins
would work.  They're happy again since I forced ghostscript to uninstall
completely and then reinstall.   And we still wonder what the heck happened
to gnucash in Debian/Woody, though I admit, I haven't looked very hard.
<p>Cheerfully for my mortgage I've had a lot of consulting work this month.
Between 600 plus messages and all that, though, there wasn't time for me to
fit the usual ten pack (this blurb and nine of the juiciest TAG threads) in
under a tighter than usual deadline.  
Mike will be enjoying a Python conference much of this next month.  I hope it
counts for a well deserved vacation on his part.  
<p>I've not left you completely wanting, though.  Here's a few days in the 
life of The Answer Gang, troubleshooting one of those day to day things that
drives everybody nuts once in a while -- segfaults.
<p>Core files are a mess.  Good thing we have a dustbin around here.
<!-- end hgreeting -->
<!--     .~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.~~.     -->
<A NAME="tag/1"><HR WIDTH="75%" ALIGN="center"></A>
<!-- begin 1 -->
<H3 align="left"><img src="../gx/dennis/qbubble.gif" 
	height="50" width="60" alt="(?) " border="0"
	>How does one examine a core file</H3>


<p><strong>From Faber Fedor 
</strong></p> 
<p align="right"><em>Answered By Jim Dennis, Dan Wilder, John Karns,
	<br>with side comments from Ben Okopnik and Heather Stern
</em></p>

<strong>
<p>
I've got a problem with a RH7.1 machine and no error messages to look at, so
I'm wondering how does one debug a problem like this?
</p>
<p>
Moved a machine from NY to NJ yesterdy.  When I left it last night,
everything was running, esp. <A HREF="http://www.apache.org/">Apache</A>.  This morning, normal maintanence
occurred at 4:02 AM, and when the system (syslog?) went to restart
httpd, the restart failed.  It's been failing ever since too!
</p>
<p>
The only http related message in <TT>/var/log/messages</TT> is
</p>
<pre>
Dec 22 12:27:13 www httpd: httpd startup failed
</pre>
<p>
Access and error logs for httpd are empty.
</p>
<p>
Running <TT>/usr/sbin/httpd</TT> (with and without command line parms) generates
the message
</p>
<pre>
Segmentation fault (core dumped)
</pre>
<p>
and the requisite core file:
</p>
<pre>
core: ELF 32-bit LSB core file of 'httpd' (signal 11), Intel 80386,
version 1, from 'httpd'
</pre>
<p>
File size and date of <TT>/usr/sbin/httpd</TT> matches my local copy.
</p>
<p>
Any ideas where to look next?
</p>
--
Regards,
Faber
</p>
</strong>

<!-- sig -->
<p><em>Jim Dennis pontificates about troubleshooting apache's startup... -- Heather</em></p>

<!-- end 2 -->
<blockQuote><IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" ALT="(!)"
	HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
	> [JimD]
First, I would run <TT>/etc/init.d/httpd</TT> or <TT>/etc/init.d/apache</TT>,
or whatever it is on your system.  Run it with the "start"
option.
</blockQuote>
<blockQuote>
(Actually I'd <EM>read</EM> the <TT>/etc/init.d/</TT> start script for that
service, and probably I'd manually go through it to figure
out what I needed to do in order to run this particular installation
of Apache correctly).
</blockQuote>

<strong>
<p><IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/qbub.gif" ALT="(?)"
	HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
	>
Did that.  That's what I meant by "it crashed at the command line with
and wothout parameters.
</p>
</strong>

<blockQuote><IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" ALT="(!)"
	HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
	> [JimD]
To dig further I might replace the httpd with a short
"strace wrapper" script:
</blockQuote>

<blockquote><pre>#!/bin/bash
exec strace -f -o /tmp/apache/strace.out /usr/sbin/httpd.real "$@"
</pre></blockquote>
<strong>
<p><IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/qbub.gif" ALT="(?)"
	HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
	>
This <EM>definitely</EM> goes into my bag of tricks (once I 
<a href="#strace-trick">decode it</a>
<IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/smily.gif" ALT=":-)" 
		height="24" width="20" align="middle">)
</p>
</strong>
<blockQuote><IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" ALT="(!)"
	HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
	> [JimD]
(be sure to mkdir <TT>/tmp/apache</TT>, and make it writable to the
appropriate UID/GID --- whatever the webserver runs as).
</blockQuote>
<blockQuote>
I'd look through the strace.out file for clues.
Don't leave this running in this fashion for too long.  The
strace.out files will get <EM>huge</EM> very quickly; and your performance
should suffer a bit.
</blockQuote>
<blockQuote>
Considering that it used to work, you did a shutdown, moved the
system, brought it back up,  and then, presumably, CONFIGURED IT
FOR A NEW NETWORK, I'd look very carefully at network masks, routes
and related settings.
</blockQuote>
<strong>
<p><IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" ALT="(!)"
	HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
	>
Very close!  The problem turned out to be that the name server the box
was using is no longer accessible (the box is there, but dig returns "no
name servers were found") and there were no backup name servers in
<TT>/etc/resolv.conf</TT> (mea culpa).
</p>
<p>
I wouldn't have expected apache to segfault under those conditions, but
it did.
</p></strong>
<blockQuote><IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" ALT="(!)"
	HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
	> [JimD]
Also, consider upgrading to RH7.2 if you can.
</blockquote>
<strong>
<p><IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/qbub.gif" ALT="(?)"
	HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
	> [Faber]
I just got my hands on it earlier this week so I'm still evaluating it.
</p>
</strong>
<blockquote><IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" ALT="(!)"
	HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
	>
  <A HREF="http://www.redhat.com/">Red Hat</A>'s distribution
has been very consistent in it's release history: avoid the .0,
skip the .1, and wait for the .2; that's been the rule since 4.2!
</blockQuote>

<strong>
<p><IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/qbub.gif" ALT="(?)"
	HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
	> [Faber]
Normally, that's what I do, but we needed to upgrade to PHP4 ASAP and it
was alot easier to upgrade the whole system to 7.1 (from 6.2).
</p>
<p>
thanks again!
<br>Regards,
Faber
</p>
</strong>

<blockQuote>
<blockQuote><IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" ALT="(!)"
	HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
	> [JimD]
You're welcome.
</blockQuote>
</blockQuote>

<hr width="40%" align="center">
<p><em>... while Dan took a different approach, considering the core file itself. -- Heather</em></p>

<blockQuote><IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" ALT="(!)"
	HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
	> [Dan]
0) Start by making sure there's no error in your httpd.conf by
running
</blockQuote>
<blockQuote><code>
apachectl configtest
</code></blockQuote>
<blockQuote>
No doubt there's nothing there.  But if there is, you are not
apt to find it by examining core files, etc.
</blockQuote>
<blockQuote>
If you're an expert C developer
</blockQuote>
<strong>
<p><IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/qbub.gif" ALT="(?)"
	HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
	> [Faber]
At one point in my life, I might have said that, but then only to
impress women like Heather. 
<IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/smily.gif" ALT=";-)" 
		height="24" width="20" align="middle">
</p></strong>
<blockquote>
<blockQuote><IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" ALT="(!)"
	HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
	> [Dan]
I don't expect Heather's that easily impressed.  Especially by guys
like me that mistype "developer".
</blockQuote>
<blockquote><em>That's ok, I fixed it.  That's what editors are for,
	at least sometimes.  I'm more impressed by how people solve
	problems than by whether they're an expert in everything around
	them.  It's nice if they can solve <strong>my</strong>
	problems, though. -- Heather
</em>
</blockQuote>
</blockQuote>
<blockquote><IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" ALT="(!)"
	HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
	> [Dan]
 and have the source tree to your
apache handy, examining the core file might yield you something.
</blockQuote>
<strong>
<p><IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" ALT="(!)"
	HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
	> [Faber]
IOW, no, I don't want to do that. 
<IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/smily.gif" ALT=":-)" 
		height="24" width="20" align="middle">
</p>
</strong>
<blockquote>
<blockQuote><IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" ALT="(!)"
	HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
	> [Dan]
Naah, me neither.  Last resort.
</blockQuote>
</blockquote>
<blockquote><IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" ALT="(!)"
	HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
	>
Mostly it's pretty indirect.  Segfaults are typically caused by
out-of-bounds pointers or array references, references to allocated
memory since freed, confusion about number or type of parameters
passed to a function, and the like.
  The error happens earlier,
when the bad pointer is parked someplace, memory is erroneously
freed, etc.  The fault happens later, when something is dereferenced.
</blockQuote>
<blockQuote>
I've spent many a happy and well-paid hour trying, sometimes
without success, to track backwards from fault to error.
And when you find the error, you may still a long and
winding road back to the defect which caused the error.
</blockQuote>
<blockQuote><pre>
Defect    ---------&gt;  Error  -------------&gt; Fault

(Improper          (Something bad       (Result becomes
code construct)     happens)             observable as
                                         unexpected result)
</pre></blockQuote>
<blockQuote>
Unless you're an expert C developer, and patient and lucky
as well, it's more likely you'll find the problem by a process
of elimination.
</blockQuote>
<blockQuote>
1) What's changed recently?  New application?  Change in httpd.conf?
New module installed?  Try backing out any recent changes,
one by one.  Restart apache after each thing you back out.
</blockQuote>
<blockQuote>
2) Is it possible there's filesystem corruption?  Corrupted binaries
often fail to run well.  Take the machine down and run
</blockQuote>
<blockQuote><CODE>
fsck -f
</CODE></blockQuote>
<blockQuote>
on all filesystems.  If you find anything amiss, determine
what files were affected.
</blockQuote>
<blockQuote>
3) Reinstall apache just in case, anyway.
</blockQuote>
<blockQuote>
4) Could the machine have other hardware problems?  If you have
the kernel development packages installed, build the kernel
eight or ten times.  If you get "died with signal 11" or other
abnormal termination, proceed with hardware troubleshooting
procedures.
</blockQuote>
<blockQuote>
5) Figure out what area of apache is affected.  Save your httpd.conf
and start with a default one.  Will apache start?  If so,
re-introduce features from the running copy of httpd.conf
a few at a time until apache begins dying at startup.
</blockQuote>
<blockQuote>
Let us know how you do.  Depending on where you find trouble,
the gang can offer further advice.
--
Dan Wilder
</blockQuote>

<hr width="40%" align="center">
<p><em>Jim has quite a bit to say about 
<a name="strace-trick">using strace</a> -- Heather</em></p>

<blockquote><pre>#!/bin/bash
exec strace -f -o /tmp/apache/strace.out /usr/sbin/httpd.real "$@"
</pre></blockquote>
<blockQuote><IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" ALT="(!)"
	HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
	> [JimD]
In runs a shell (bash) which then exec()s (becomes) a copy of
the strace command.  That strace command is told to "follow forks"
(so we can trace the system call of child processes) and writes
its output to a file in our <TT>/tmp/apache</TT> directory.  strace then
runs (fork()s then exec()s) a copy of the "real" httpd with a
set of arguments that matches those that were passed to to
our script.
</blockQuote>
<blockQuote>
The distinction between <TT> exec()</TT>'ing a command and invoking it in
the normal way is pretty important.  Normal command invocation
from a UNIX shell involves a <TT> fork()</TT> (creating a clone process
which is a subshell) and then an exec*() by that shell to transform
that subprocess into one which is running the target command.
</blockQuote>
<blockQuote>
Meanwhile the parent shell process normally does a wait*()
on the child.  In other words, it sits there, blocked
until the child exits, or until a signal is received.
</blockQuote>
<blockQuote>
When we use the shell exec command, it prevents the <TT> fork()</TT>
(there's no creation of a subprocess).  The "text" (executable
binary code) of the process that was running a copy of your
shell (<TT>/bin/bash</TT> in our case) is overwritten by the "text"
of the new program; all of the heap and stack segments (memory
blocks) of the old process are freed and/or clear) and the only
traces of the old memory image that remain available are the
contents of the process' environment.  In other words, the
exec command is a wrapper around the one of the exec*() system
calls (there are several different versions of the exec*() system
call which differ in the format of their arguments, and the
preservation/inheritance versus creation of environments).
</blockQuote>
<blockQuote>
Actually I think that Linux kernel implements <TT> execve()</TT> as a
wrapper around its <TT> clone()</TT> system call, and that libc/glibc
provides the handling for all of the variations on that.  The
three "variables" on these exec variations are:
</blockQuote>
<blockQuote>
<dl><dt>
format of the command argument list: <dd>(which is either
done through C varargs --- like <TT> printf()</TT> and friends,
or is a pointer to an array of NUL terminated strings),
(execv* vs. execl*)
<br>&nbsp;
<dt>
environment handling: <dd>whether the process keeps its
current environment or overwrites it.  The <TT> execle()</TT>
and <TT> execve()</TT> versions have an extra parameter pointing
at an NUL terminated of NUL terminated strings.
<br>&nbsp;
<dt>
path searching: <dd>The first argument of the <TT> execvp()</TT> and
 <TT>execlp()</TT> functions can be a simple command basename
--- while all other variations require a qualified
path.  The "p" versions will search the PATH as a
shell would.
</dl>
</blockQuote>
<blockQuote>
It appears that you can either search the PATH or create a
new environment, but not both.  Of course you can use a simple
 <TT>execl()</TT> or <TT> execv()</TT> to do neither.  Of course you can read the
man exec(3) manual pages in the library functions section of
your online docs to read even more details about this.
</blockQuote>
<blockQuote>
When I'm teaching shell scripting I spend a considerable
amount of time clarifying this worm's eye view of how UNIX
and the shell handles fork()s and exec*()s.  I draw diagrams
representing the memory space and environment of a process,
and another of a child process (connected by dotted lines
labeled  <TT>"fork()</TT>").  The I crosshatch most of the memory space
--- leaving the environment section, and label that exec*().
</blockQuote>
<blockQuote>
When I do this, people understand how the environment really
works.  The "export" shell command moves a shell variable
and its value from the local heap "out" to the environment region
of memory.  Once they really understand that, then they won't
get too confused when a child process sets a shell variable,
exports, and then their original process can't see the new
value.  ("export" is more of a memory management operator than
an inter-process communications mechanism; at best it is a
one-way IPC, <EM>copying</EM> from parent to children children).
</blockQuote>
<blockQuote>
After than I generally have to explain about some implicit
forms of sub-process creation (forking) that most people
miss.  In particular I remind them that pipes are an
*inter-process* communications channel.  So, any time you
see or use a | operator in the shell, you are implicitly
creating sub process.  That's why a command like:
</blockQuote>
<blockQuote><CODE>
unset bar; echo foo | read bar; echo $bar
</CODE></blockQuote>
<blockQuote><blockQuote><IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" ALT="(!)"
	HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
	> [Ben]
Oh, <em>that's</em> cute. I go through pretty much the same spiel - some of it
admittedly cribbed from your description of this, because I liked it the
first time I heard it - but the way I've been demonstrating it is with a
</blockQuote>
<blockQuote><code>
while read bar; do echo $bar; done &lt; file
</code></blockQuote>
<blockQuote>
loop. This nails down the other end. <EM>Very</EM> cool.
</blockQuote>
<blockQuote>
(Scribbling notes in newly acquired Palm Pilot)
</blockQuote></blockQuote>

<blockQuote><IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" ALT="(!)"
	HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
	> [JimD]
... will return an empty value in most shells.  The read
command is executed in a subprocess which promptly exits,
freeing the memory that held <EM>its</EM> copy of the bar
variable/value pair.  (I say <EM>most</EM> shells because ksh '93
and zsh, create their subprocesses on the left hand side
of their pipe operators.  That's one of those subtle differences
among shells.  Personally I think bash and others do it wrong,
the ksh/zsh semantics are superior and I hope bash 2.x or 3.x
will adopt them, or offer a shopt, shell option, to select the
desired semantics).
</blockQuote>
<blockQuote>
The "<tt>$@</tt>" ensures that the arguments that were passed to us wil be
preserved in count and contents.  If we used "<tt>$*</tt>" we'd be passing
a single argument to our command.  That single argument would
contain the text of all of the orginal arguments, concatenated
as one string, separated by spaces (or by the first character from
IFS if you believe the docs).  If we used <tt>$*</tt> (no soft quotes)
we'd be having the current shell resplit the number of arguments
--- they'd have the same contents, but any arguments that had
previously had embedded spaces (or other IFS characters) would
be separated accordingly.
</blockQuote>
<blockQuote>
The "<tt>$@</tt>" handling is the most subtle part of this script.
An unquoted <tt>$@</tt> would be be the same as an unquoted <tt>$*</tt> (as far
as I can tell).  It is just the "<tt>$@</tt>" that gets the special
handling. (<tt>$*</tt> and "<tt>$*</tt>" aren't special cases, they 
are expanded and split in the normal way; "<tt>$@</tt>" is expanded and 
sort of "internally requoted" to preserve the <tt>$#</tt> --- argument count).
</blockQuote>
<blockQuote>
If you were going to need to do this frequently we might
write a "strace.wrapper.sh" shell script which would work
a bit like this:
</blockQuote>

<blockquote><pre> #!/bin/bash
 OLDMASK=$(umask)
 umask 077
 TMPDIR=/tmp/$(basename $1)$$
 mkdir "$TMPDIR" || exit 1
  ## make a temporary directory or die
 umask $OLDMASK
 TARGETCMD="$1"
 shift
 exec strace -f -o "$TMPDIR/strace.out" "$TARGETCMD" "$@"
</pre></blockquote>
<blockQuote>
In this example we call strace.wrapper.sh with an extra
argument, the name of he command to be "wrapped."  We then
fuss a little with umask (to insure that our process' output
will have some privacy from prying eyes, and doing an atomic
"make a private dir or die trying" (This is the safest temp
file handling that can be managed from sh, as far as I know).
</blockQuote>
<blockQuote>
Then we restore our umask, (so we don't create a Heisenbug by
challenging one of our target command's hidden assumptions about
the permissions of files <EM>it</EM> creates).  We than grab our target
command, shift it off our argument list (which does NOT disturb
the quoting of the remaining arguments) and call our strace
command as before --- with variables interpolated as necessary.
</blockQuote>
<blockQuote>
Mind you I don't use this script.  I don't bother since I can
do it about as easily by hand.  Also this script wouldn't be
the best choice for CGI, inetd launched, or similar cases.
In those cases we're better renaming the original binary.
</blockQuote>

<hr width="40%" align="center">
<p><em>Of course we were all happy when Faber found what it was!  We encouraged
	him to send in his bug report -- Heather</em></p>

<strong>
<p>
I wouldn't have expected apache to segfault under those conditions, but
it did.
</p></strong>
<blockQuote><IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" ALT="(!)"
	HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
	> [JimD]
Report it as a bug (after upgrading to the latest stable release).
Try to isolate the .conf directive(s) that are involved, if possible.
</blockQuote>

<blockQuote><IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" ALT="(!)"
	HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
	> [Dan] ...  The error happens earlier,
when the bad pointer is parked someplace, memory is erroneously
freed, etc.  The fault happens later, when something is dereferenced.
</blockQuote>
<strong><p><IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/qbub.gif" ALT="(?)"
	HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
	>
Well, as I told Jim, the fact that it couldn't find a name server
caused it to segfault.  Weird; you would have thought it would have
exited wih a message at least.
</p></strong>
<blockQuote><IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" ALT="(!)"
	HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
	> [John K]
It sounds like there's a bug or some abnormality with apache's handling of
a situation which is doesn't expect in normal operation.  IOW, a problem
with error handling.  If the apache version is not the latest stable
version, you might want to consider upgrading.  If it is the latest, then
you may want to consider reporting it to the apache developers.
</blockQuote>

<hr width="40%" align="center">
<p><em>...and of course we congratulated him on his success, with some extra
	thoughts on general troubleshooting. -- Heather</em></p>

<blockQuote><IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" ALT="(!)"
	HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
	> [Dan]
Congradulations on solving the problem.
</blockQuote>
<blockQuote>
That's what I call the "natural history approach".  Examine carefully the
behavior and habitat of the creature in question, and think carefully
about what you've observed.
</blockQuote>
<blockQuote>
I've probably fixed a lot more bugs in my life by the natural history
method, than I have by the method of examining core files, or for that
matter running under a debugger or emulator.
</blockQuote>
<blockQuote>
Strace, mentioned separately in this thread, is a little harder to classify.
A program that attaches itself to a running process and dumps out information
about system calls, it affords a level of information about a program
that may sometimes come close to what you'd see using a debugger.
</blockQuote>
<blockQuote>
Mostly it doesn't, but sometimes it provides that key observation not
available by other means which allows us to finally come to grips with
a bug.  I'd group it with natural history tools, perhaps as an analog
to a radio collar.  You know where the animal's been, but maybe not why,
or what it did there.
--
Dan Wilder
</blockQuote>
<blockQuote><IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" ALT="(!)"
	HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
	> [JimD]
I like to use the classic "OSI reference model" as a rough
troubleshooting sequence.  Keep going down the stack (from
application, down through network and to the physical layers
until you isolate the problem, then proceed back upwards
correcting each problem until the application works).
</blockQuote>

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<center>
<table cellpadding=7><tr><td>
<IMG SRC="../gx/bytes.gif" border=1  ALT="News Bytes">
</td><td>
<H3>Contents:</H3>
<ul>
<li><a HREF="#leg">Legislation and More Legislation</a>
<li><a HREF="#links">Linux Links</a>
<li><a HREF="#conferences">Conferences and Events</a>
<li><a HREF="#general">News in General</a>
<li><a HREF="#distro">Distro News</A>
<li><a HREF="#commercial">Software and Product News</a>
</ul>
</td></tr></table>

<STRONG>Selected and formatted by  <A HREF="mailto:michael.conry@softhome.net">Michael Conry</A></STRONG>
</center>


<P> Submitters, send your News Bytes items in 
<FONT SIZE="+2"><STRONG>PLAIN TEXT</STRONG></FONT>
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announcement than an entire press release.


<P> <hr> <P> 
<!-- =================================================================== -->

<H3><IMG ALT=" "   SRC="../gx/bolt.gif">
<font color="green">
February 2002 <I>Linux Journal</I>
</font>
</H3>

<IMG ALT="[issue 94 cover image]"   SRC="misc/bytes/lj-cover94.png" WIDTH=200 HEIGHT=268 
ALIGN="left" HSPACE="20">

The February issue of <A HREF="http://www.linuxjournal.com/"><I>Linux
Journal</I></A> is on newsstands now.
This issue focuses on Small Office/Home Office (SOHO).  Click 
<A HREF="http://www.linuxjournal.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=NS-lj-issues/issue94&file=index">here</A>
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<A HREF="http://www.linuxjournal.com/subscribe/">here</A> 
to subscribe.

<P>
<FONT COLOR="green">All articles through October 2001 are available for
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<A HREF="http://www.linuxjournal.com/magazine.php">http://www.linuxjournal.com/magazine.php</A></FONT>.  
Recent articles are available on-line for subscribers only at 
<A HREF="http://interactive.linuxjournal.com">http://interactive.linuxjournal.com/</A>.  

<BR CLEAR="all">




<a name="leg"></a>
<p><hr><p>
<!-- =================================================================== -->
<center><H3><font color="green">Legislation and More Legislation</font></H3></center>


<P> <hr> <P> 
<!-- =================================================================== -->
<H3><IMG ALT=" "   SRC="../gx/bolt.gif">
<FONT COLOR="green">Jon Johansen Indicted by Norwegian Authorities
Regarding DeCSS
</FONT>
</H3> 

Unhappy news this month, as it emerged that Jon Johansen has been 
<a href="http://www.securityfocus.com/news/306">
indicted</a>
by Norwegian authorities for his part in creating and distributing the
DeCSS code.  This comes two years after he and his father were 
<a href="http://www.2600.com/news/display.shtml?id=343">
first</a> taken from their home in connection with the same software.
The initial report is available
<a href="http://www.nettavisen.no/servlets/page?section=9&item=194062">
in Norwegian</a>, and a 
<a href="http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=25975&cid=2816391">
translation</a> was posted in the Slashdot
<a href="http://slashdot.org/yro/02/01/10/1433237.shtml">
discussion</a> of the story. 
<p>
It appears that the case against Jon is unusual in that he is being charged
under laws which are generally applied in cases involving breaking into
computers and theft of electronic records or company files.  Pressure from
the MPAA and the US entertainment industry appears to have encouraged the
Norwegian authorities to try this experimental attempt to secure a
conviction.
<p>
The 
<a href="http://www.eff.org">Electronic Frontier Foundation</a>
have extensive resources on 
<a href="http://www.eff.org/IP/DeCSS_prosecutions/Johansen_DeCSS_case/">
this case</a>.
Particularly interesting are
<a href="http://www.eff.org/IP/Video/DVDCCA_case/20000118_bing_norway_law_decl.html">
some legal arguments</a>
as to why no offence has been committed
under Norwegian law
and
<a href="http://www.eff.org/IP/Video/MPAA_DVD_cases/20000720_ny_trial_transcript.html">
transcripts</a>
including Jon Johansen's testimony at the 2600 Magazine trial in New
York under the DMCA (July 20, 2000).
<p>
A
<a href="https://www.eff.org/mailman/listinfo/free-jon">
mailing list</a>
has also been set up to discuss issues concerning the case, including how
to support Jon and how to protest against the indictment.

<p>
The sorry truth is that cases like this are likely to become more common in
the future.  Governments internationally are harmonising their intellectual
property laws through measures such as
<a href="http://www.ifpi.org/site-content/press/20011206.html">
the WIPO copyright treaty</a>
which will come into force in March (having recently secured its 30th
signatory).  The result will be that all countries might eventually enact
legislation akin to the DMCA to protect the media multinationals'
intellectual property and access-control technologies.  Countries
attempting to resist this trend will not be well received.  Slashdot 
<a href="http://slashdot.org/articles/02/01/03/1621205.shtml">
reported recently</a>
that Ukraine is subject to US trade sanctions for not using an "optical
media licensing regime" for blank CDs and CD recorders.  The best
way to resist at an individual level is to make your voice heard and start
lobbying and writing letters.  Your local LUG could form a focus for this
activity.



<P> <hr> <P> 
<!-- =================================================================== -->
<H3><IMG ALT=" "   SRC="../gx/bolt.gif">
<FONT COLOR="green">Support From Washington
</FONT>
</H3> 

<a href="http://www.house.gov/boucher/">
Congressman Rick Boucher</a>
has been receiving a lot of press lately for the
position he has taken with regard to issues such as digital rights
management and the DMCA.
<a href="http://www.dotcomscoop.com/">
Dotcom Scoop</a>
recently
<a href="http://www.dotcomscoop.com/article.php?sid=81">
reported</a>
that Congressman Boucher has 
<a href="http://www.dotcomscoop.com/article.php?sid=80">
written</a>
to the RIAA expressing his
concern at the introduction of copy-protected compact discs.  He feels that
such developments "...may prevent or inhibit consumer home recording using
recorders and media covered by the Audio Home Recording Act of 1992". A
<a href="http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/23587.html">
report</a>
on the same story in The Register, however, indicated that the copy
protection measures probably are legal.  It seems that though the record
label cannot sue you for making a legitimate personal copy of your new CD,
they are not obliged to make it easy for you!
ZDNet has
<a href="http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1106-802646.html?legacy=zdnn&chkpt=zdnnp1tp02">
reported</a> [<a href="http://www.reuters.com/">Reuters</a>]
that Boucher is planning to introduce a bill that would eliminate the
"anti-circumvention" clause of the DMCA.  It is certainly encouraging to
see an elected representative taking an overtly pro-consumer line on these
issues.
<p>
Another elected representative who seems to understand a thing or two is
Rep. Darrell Issa, a member of the US House of Representatives' Judiciary
Committee.  
<a href="http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=5714">
Speaking</a>
to <EM>Linux Journal's</EM> Don Marti, he indicated that the SSSCA was "dead on arrival".
Though this is encouraging,  it might be foolish to get too relaxed until
the grave is actually occupied.  Don comments that Issa also seemed
well informed on other issues in this area (DMCA, etc.,).
<p>
Perhaps when campaigning on issues of concern, it would be wise to be alert
to good as well as bad news.  Elected representatives careers are
based on achieving public support and they can be very sensitive to public
opinion.  It could not hurt to mail guys like Boucher and Issa to tell
them if you like what they are doing.

<P> <hr> <P> 
<!-- =================================================================== -->
<H3><IMG ALT=" "   SRC="../gx/bolt.gif">
<FONT COLOR="green">UCITA
</FONT>
</H3> 

<P>
LWN reported that
<a href="http://lwn.net/2002/0103/">
UCITA is back again</a>.
The main issue for the free software community would be that the UCITA, if
it came into US law in its current form, would prohibit the distribution of
software to consumers without warranty.  This would mean that by
distributing a free software utility, you could be held responsible by
consumers for any flaws in the product (even though you have disclaimed all
warranties, etc.,).  This story was also
<a href="http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/23675.html">reported</a>
by TheRegister, who linked to
<a href="http://www.eff.org/IP/DRM/UCITA_UCC2B/20000131_fight_ucita_stallman_paper.html">
this article</a>
by Richard Stallman on "Why We Must Fight UCITA".


<P> <hr> <P> 
<!-- =================================================================== -->
<H3><IMG ALT=" "   SRC="../gx/bolt.gif">
<FONT COLOR="green">Legislative Links
</FONT>
</H3> 

<P>
Indianapolis' 
<a href="http://www.starnews.com/article.php?legalfees04.html,news">
attempt</A>
to keep minors from playing violent video games in public arcades was ruled
unconstitutional, at a cost of $318,000 to taxpayers.
<P> 
NY Times
<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/28/technology/28CYBERLAW.html">
review</A>
of the year in tech law, which makes a nice lead in to their
<A href="http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/11/technology/11CYBERLAW.html">
preview</A>
of what might be to come.  Both articles feature the input of various
experts from the field, and both require registration.
<P>
<A href="http://cryptome.org/mpaa-v-net-mg.htm">
Essay</A> on cryptome.org
by Mike Godwin on digital rights management and the battle 
between computer companies and entertainment companies. (Courtesy
Crypto-Gram)



<A name="links"></A>
<p><hr><p>
<!-- =================================================================== -->
<center><H3><font color="green">Linux Links</font></H3></center>

<p>

Jun Jungho mailed to announce a LG Korean translation site at
<a href="http://www.whiterabbitpress.com/lg/">
http://www.whiterabbitpress.com/lg/</a>.
He and fellow volunteers have tested this site for
5 months, and would now like to inform others. "I wish
that this site gives more fun & infomation to Korean Linuxers."

<P>

<a href="http://www.wps.com/texts/codes/">
ASCII: American Standard Code for Information <EM>Infiltration</EM></a>
by Tom Jennings. A very interesting, and in-depth
article. Covers history of ASCII, and its various developments over
almost half a century.

<P>

Courtesy 
<a href="http://www.counterpane.com/crypto-gram.html">
crypto-gram</a> is a link to a
<a href="http://www.nipc.gov/cybernotes/2001/cyberissue2001-26.pdf">
review</a> [pdf]
of the year in vulnerabilities.  This contains a list  of all the operating
systems and applications with vulnerabilities.

<P>

Newsforge has a
<a href="http://www.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=02/01/15/1939255&mode=nocomment">
story</a>
on one person's experiences with 
<a href="http://www.gentoo.org">
Gentoo Linux</a>
, a distribution that requires
the user to start the installation by compiling new compilers.
In a similar vein, DistroWatch have a
<a href="http://www.distrowatch.com/review-sorcerer.php">
review</a>
of Sorcerer GNU Linux, which again compiles much of the system from source
during install.


<P>

ZDnet
<a href="http://news.zdnet.co.uk/story/0,,t269-s2102466,00.html">
asks</a>
`is Linux ready for the desktop?'
While
<a href="http://www.cio.com/">
Cio.com</a>
tell us
<a href="http://www.cio.com/archive/010102/shop_content.html">
how to run</a>
a Microsoft-free shop.

<P>

<EM>Linux Journal</EM> have
<a href="http://www.linuxjournal.com//article.php?sid=5672">
looked back</a>
over the problems exposed in SSH during the past year, and the solutions
which have resulted.

<P>

Some links and stories that appeared on
<a href="http://www.slashdot.org/">SlashDot</a>
over the past month:
<ul>
<li>
    Kerneltrap
    <a href="http://kerneltrap.com/article.php?sid=490">
    interview</a>
    with Alan Cox about the kernel, DMCA and more.
    Linux Today reported Alan's recent release of
    <a href="http://linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=2002-01-14-001-20-NW-KN">
    2.4.18PRE3-AC1</a>
    and
    <a href="http://linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=2002-01-14-009-20-PS">
    2.4.18PRE3-AC2</a> (due to popular demand!).
</li>
<li>
    <a href="http://linux.html.it/articoli/rik_van_riel_en1.htm">
    Interview</a>
    with Rick van Riel, kernel developer.
    Talks about virtual memory controversies (among other things).
</li>
<li>
    <a href="http://slashdot.org/articles/02/01/15/1245209.shtml">
    Kernel 2.5.2</a>
</li>
<li>
    The Linux Cookbook
    <a href="http://slashdot.org/books/02/01/02/0458242.shtml">
    book review</a>.
</li>
<li>
    <a href="http://slashdot.org/articles/02/01/18/1457208.shtml">
    Story</a>
    about flashing a mini Linux OS onto 802.11b firmware with
    <a href="http://opensource.instant802.com/screenshots.php">
    screenshots</a>.
</li>
</ul>


<P>

<a href="http://www.linuxtoday.com/">Linux Today</a> have featured the
following links which you may be interested to follow:
<ul>
<li>
LinuxSecurity.com
<a href="http://www.linuxsecurity.com/articles/cryptography_article-4229.html">
article</a> on a vulnerability in the Linux encrypted loop device.
</li>
<li>
Also from LinuxSecurity.com is an
<a href="http://www.linuxsecurity.com/articles/intrusion_detection_article-4240.html">
article</a>
on using statistical tools with the
<a href="http://www.snort.org/">Snort</a> IDS.
</li>
<li>
Caliban.org
<a href="http://www.caliban.org/bash/index.shtml">
article</a>
on getting more from Bash.
</li>
<li>
Bram Moolenaar writes about
<a href="http://www.rons.net.cn/english/FSM/vim">
Vim, an open-source text editor</a>, dealing both with technical issues and
the background to his selection of the Charityware licence.
</li>
<li>
LinuxLookup have
<a href="http://www.linuxlookup.com/html/reviews/software/vmware-3.0.html">
reviewed</a> VMWare 3.0 Workstation for Linux.
</li>
<li>
The BBC is
<a href="http://support.bbc.co.uk/ogg/">
trialing</a>
Ogg Vorbis streams for online listeners.
</li>
<li>
The Guardian
<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/online/story/0,3605,629939,00.html">
reports</a>
on free software's fortunes during the downturn.
</li>
</ul>

<P>

TheRegister's Thomas Greene
reported on getting
<a href="http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/23735.html">
superior benchmarks</a> for Quake-3 FPS on Linux as opposed to Windows.
Hardly a scientific test, but nice to see none the less.

<p>

From the
<a href="http://oreillynet.com">
O'Reilly</a> stable of websites, the following may interest you:
<ul>
<li>
<a href="http://onlamp.com/pub/a/onlamp/2002/01/10/xp.html">
An article</a> covering some of the issues in integrating WinXP into your
existing heterogeneous network.
</li>
<li>
An
<a href="http://linux.oreillynet.com/pub/a/linux/2002/01/03/cvs_intro.html">
introduction</a>
to CVS.
</li>
<li>
Automating Network Administration, 
<a href="http://onlamp.com/pub/a/onlamp/2001/12/20/sysadmin.html">
Part One</a>
and
<a href="http://onlamp.com/pub/a/onlamp/2002/01/04/sysadmin.html">
Part Two</a>.
</li>
<li>
A discussion on the
<a href="http://oreillynet.com/pub/a/network/2002/01/12/openinf.html">
question</a>
of whether
publicly funded research should result in open source code? Related to this
issue is a recent Salon
<a href="http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2002/01/04/university_open_source/index.html">
article</a> on intellectual property and universities.  The current head of
the Berkeley department responsible for intellectual property reckons they
should have licensed the TCP/IP stack and collected royalties all the way
to the bank.
</li>
</ul>

<P>

Scientific American
<a href="http://www.sciam.com/2002/0202issue/0202patents.html">
article</a>
on really
<a href="http://www.bustpatents.com/">
bad patents</a>.
If you find those interesting, you might like to look at IBM's new 
<a href="http://www.delphion.com/details?pn=US06329919__">
patent</a>
for a toilet reservation system 
<a href="http://www.aful.org/pipermail/patents/2002-January/002581.html">
highlighted</a>
by Hartmut Pilch on the 
<a href="http://www.aful.org/pipermail/patents/">
patents mailing list</a>
at
<a href="http://www.aful.org/">
aful.org</a>.

<P>

<a href="http://staff.washington.edu/dittrich/misc/faqs/responding.faq">
What to do</a>
after a computer break-in.

<P>

Some 
<a href="http://lwn.net/">
Linux Weekly News</a> highlights:
<ul>
<li>
    LWN has
    <a href="http://lwn.net/2002/0117/">
    analysed</a>
    the controversy surrounding Eric S Raymond's kernel auto-configuration
    software. Eric has been defending the project using stories detailing
    the plight of 
<a href="http://lwn.net/2002/0117/a/aunt-tillie.php3">
    Aunt Tillie</a>
    as she tries to reconfigure her kernel. LWN has further amusing links.
</li>
<li>
    Final version of 
    <a href="http://lwn.net/2001/features/Timeline/">
    LWN 2001 timetable</a>
</li>
<li>
    Taking a 
    <a href="http://lwn.net/2002/0103/kernel.php3">
    look at</a>
    the phenomenon of people setting up multiple alternative kernel trees,
    as a demonstration and staging area for their patches.  Could other
    projects benefit from this approach?
</li>
<li>
LWN's Jonathan Corbet 
<a href="http://lwn.net/2002/0110/kernel.php3">
comments</a>
on the processes at work behind `large' Linux kernel changes, and how these
processes differ from practice in proprietary software development.
</li>
</ul>


The Washington Post have an interesting article by Lawrence Lessig entitled 
<a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A11361-2002Jan7.html">
"Who's Holding Back Broadband"</a>.
It appears issues of control loom large in this area, with media companies
loath to take any move which might loosen their grip on the "content
industry".  Embracing broadband would be just such a move.

<P>

Two 
<a href="http://www.ibm.com">
IBM</a>
whitepapers
(<a href="http://www-124.ibm.com/developerworks/oss/linux/whitepapers/security/les_summary.pdf?open&t=grl,l=927,p=LXS">here</a>
and
<a href="http://www-124.ibm.com/developerworks/oss/linux/whitepapers/security/les_whitepaper.pdf?open&t=grl,l=927,p=SR4D">here</a>)
on security issues relating to "Linux in Enterprise Systems" (and we are
not talking about Klingons off the starboard bow). Both pdf's, and quite
large.  IBM appears to be strengthening their support for Linux. Slashdot
<a href="http://slashdot.org/articles/02/01/25/1254250.shtml">reported</a>
that IBM's new $400,000 Z-series mainframe will not be sold with z/OS, but
rather with Linux.



<a name="conferences"></a>
<p><hr><p>
<!-- =================================================================== -->
<center><H3><font color="green">Upcoming conferences and events</font></H3></center>

<P> Listings courtesy <EM>Linux Journal</EM>.  See <EM>LJ</EM>'s
<A HREF="http://www.linuxjournal.com/events.php">Events</A> page for the
latest goings-on.

<!-- *** BEGIN events table [this line needed by Linux Gazette events.py *** -->

<table cellpadding=5 border=0 width=100%>

<tr><td colspan=2><HR size=5 width=100% noshade align=center></td></tr>

<tr><td valign=top>
        <b>LinuxWorld Conference & Expo (IDG)</b><BR>	
        <td valign=top>January 30 - February 1, 2002<BR>New York, NY<BR>	
        <a href="http://www.linuxworldexpo.com/" target="_blank">
	http://www.linuxworldexpo.com/</A><BR>
	</td></tr>

<tr><td colspan=2><HR size=5 width=100% noshade align=center></td></tr>

<tr><td valign=top>
        <b>The Tenth Annual Python Conference ("Python10")</b><BR>
        <td valign=top>February 4-7, 2002<BR>Alexandria, Virginia<BR>
        <a href="http://www.python10.org/" target="_blank">
        http://www.python10.com/</A><BR>
	</td></tr>

<tr><td colspan=2><HR size=5 width=100% noshade align=center></td></tr>

<tr><td valign=top>
        <b>Australian Linux Conference</b><BR>
        <td valign=top>February 6-9, 2002<BR>Brisbane, Australia<BR>
        <a href="http://www.linux.org.au/conf/" target="_blank">
	http://www.linux.org.au/conf/</A><BR>
	</td></tr>

<tr><td colspan=2><HR size=5 width=100% noshade align=center></td></tr>

<tr><td valign=top>
        <b>Internet Appliance Workshop</b><BR>
	<td valign=top>February 19-21, 2002<BR>San Jose, CA<BR>		
        <a href="http://www.netapplianceconf.com/" target="_blank">
	http://www.netapplianceconf.com/</A><BR>
	</td></tr>

<tr><td colspan=2><HR size=5 width=100% noshade align=center></td></tr>

<tr><td valign=top>
        <b>Internet World Wireless East (Penton)</b><BR>
	<td valign=top>February 20-22, 2002<BR>New York, NY<BR>				<a href="http://www.internetworld.com/events/weast2002/" target="_blank">
	http://www.internetworld.com/events/weast2002/</A><BR>
	</td></tr>

<tr><td colspan=2><HR size=5 width=100% noshade align=center></td></tr>

<tr><td valign=top>
        <b>Intel Developer Forum (Key3Media)</b><BR>
        <td valign=top>February 25-28, 2002<BR>San Francisco, CA<BR>
	<a href="http://www.intel94.com/idf/index2.asp" target="_blank">
	http://www.intel94.com/idf/index2.asp</A><BR>
	</td></tr>

<tr><td colspan=2><HR size=5 width=100% noshade align=center></td></tr>

<tr><td valign=top>
        <b>COMDEX (Key3Media)</b><BR>
	<td valign=top>March 5-7, 2002<BR>Chicago, IL<BR>
        <a href="http://www.key3media.com/comdex/chicago2002/" target="_blank">
	http://www.key3media.com/comdex/chicago2002/</A><BR>

<tr><td colspan=2><HR size=5 width=100% noshade align=center></td></tr>

<tr><td valign=top>
        <b>BioIT World Conference & Expo (IDG)</b><BR>
        <td valign=top>March 12-14, 2002<BR>Boston, MA<BR>
        <a href="http://www.bioitworld.com/" target="_blank">
	http://www.bioitworld.com/</A><BR>

<tr><td colspan=2><HR size=5 width=100% noshade align=center></td></tr>

<tr><td valign=top>
        <b>Embedded Systems Conference (CMP)</b><BR>
        <td valign=top>March 12-16, 2002<BR>San Francisco, CA<BR>	
        <a href="http://www.esconline.com/sf/" target="_blank">
	http://www.esconline.com/sf/</A><BR>

<tr><td colspan=2><HR size=5 width=100% noshade align=center></td></tr>

<tr><td valign=top>
        <b>CeBIT (Hannover Fairs)</b><BR>
        <td valign=top>March 14-22, 2002<BR>Hannover, Germany<BR>
        <a href="http://www.cebit.de/" target="_blank">
        http://www.cebit.de/</A><BR>

<tr><td colspan=2><HR size=5 width=100% noshade align=center></td></tr>

<tr><td valign=top>
        <b>COMDEX (Key3Media)</b><BR>	
        <td valign=top>March 19-21, 2002<BR>Vancouver, BC<BR>		
        <a href="http://www.key3media.com/comdex/vancouver2002/" target="_blank">
	http://www.key3media.com/comdex/vancouver2002/</A><BR>

<tr><td colspan=2><HR size=5 width=100% noshade align=center></td></tr>

<tr><td valign=top>
        <b>FOSE</b><BR>
        <td valign=top>March 19-21, 2002<BR>Washington, DC<BR>
        <a href="http://www.fose.com/" target="_blank">
        http://www.fose.com/</A><BR>	

<tr><td colspan=2><HR size=5 width=100% noshade align=center></td></tr>

<tr><td valign=top>
        <b>Game Developers Conference (CMP)</b><BR>	
        <td valign=top>March 19-23, 2002<BR>San Jose, CA<BR>
        <a href="http://www.gdconf.com/" target="_blank">
	http://www.gdconf.com/</A><BR>

<tr><td colspan=2><HR size=5 width=100% noshade align=center></td></tr>

<tr><td valign=top>
        <b>LinuxWorld Conference & Expo Singapore (IDG)</b><BR>	
        <td valign=top>March 20-22, 2002<BR>Singapore<BR>					
        <a href="http://www.idgexpoasia.com/" target="_blank">
	http://www.idgexpoasia.com/</A><BR>

<tr><td colspan=2><HR size=5 width=100% noshade align=center></td></tr>

<tr><td valign=top>
        <b>Software Solutions / eBusiness World</b><BR>
        <td valign=top>March 26-27, 2002<BR>Toronto, Canada<BR>
        <a href="http://www.softmatch.com/soln20.htm#ssebw" target="_blank">
	http://www.softmatch.com/soln20.htm#ssebw</A><BR>

<tr><td colspan=2><HR size=5 width=100% noshade align=center></td></tr>

<tr><td valign=top>
        <b>SANS 2002 (SANS Institute)</b><BR>	
        <td valign=top>April 7-9, 2002<BR>Orlando, FL<BR>
        <a href="http://www.sans.org/newlook/home.htm" target="_blank">
	http://www.sans.org/newlook/home.htm</A><BR>

<tr><td colspan=2><HR size=5 width=100% noshade align=center></td></tr>

<tr><td valign=top>
        <b>LinuxWorld Conference & Expo Malaysia (IDG)</b><BR>
        <td valign=top>April 9-11, 2002<BR>Malaysia<BR>
        <A HREF="http://www.idgexpoasia.com/" TARGET="_blank">
	http://www.idgexpoasia.com/</A><BR>

<tr><td colspan=2><HR size=5 width=100% noshade align=center></td></tr>

<tr><td valign=top>
        <b>LinuxWorld Conference & Expo Dublin (IDG)</b><BR>
        <td valign=top>April 9-11, 2002<BR>Dublin, Ireland<BR>
        <BR>

<tr><td colspan=2><HR size=5 width=100% noshade align=center></td></tr>

<tr><td valign=top>
        <b>Internet World Spring (Penton)</b><BR>	
        <td valign=top>April 22-24, 2002<BR>Los Angeles, CA<BR>
        <a href="http://www.internetworld.com/events/spring2002/" target="_blank">
	http://www.internetworld.com/events/spring2002/</A><BR>

<tr><td colspan=2><HR size=5 width=100% noshade align=center></td></tr>

<tr><td valign=top>
        <b>O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference (O'Reilly)</b><BR>
        <td valign=top>April 22-25, 2002<BR>Santa Clara, CA<BR>
        <a href="http://conferences.oreillynet.com/etcon2002/" target="_blank">
	http://conferences.oreillynet.com/etcon2002/</A><BR>

<tr><td colspan=2><HR size=5 width=100% noshade align=center></td></tr>

<tr><td valign=top>
        <b>Software Development Conference & Expo, West (CMP)</b><BR>	
        <td valign=top>April 22-26, 2002<BR>San Jose, CA<BR>
        <a href="http://www.sdexpo.com/" target="_blank">
	http://www.sdexpo.com/</A><BR>

<tr><td colspan=2><HR size=5 width=100% noshade align=center></td></tr>

<tr><td valign=top>
        <b>Networld + Interop (Key3Media)</b><BR>	
        <td valign=top>May 7-9, 2002<BR>Las Vegas, NV<BR>
        <a href="http://www.key3media.com/" target="_blank">
	http://www.key3media.com/</A><BR>

<tr><td colspan=2><HR size=5 width=100% noshade align=center></td></tr>

<tr><td valign=top>
        <b>Strictly e-Business Solutions Expo (Cygnus Expositions)</b><BR>	
        <td valign=top>May 8-9, 2002<BR>Minneapolis, MN<BR>
        <a href="http://www.strictlyebusiness.net/strictlyebusiness/index.po?" target="_blank">
	http://www.strictlyebusiness.net/strictlyebusiness/index.po?</A><BR>

<tr><td colspan=2><HR size=5 width=100% noshade align=center></td></tr>

<tr><td valign=top>
        <b>Embedded Systems Conference (CMP)</b><BR>	
        <td valign=top>June 3-6, 2002<BR>Chicago, IL<BR>
        <a href="http://www.esconline.com/chicago/" target=_"blank">
	http://www.esconline.com/chicago/</A><BR>

<tr><td colspan=2><HR size=5 width=100% noshade align=center></td></tr>

<tr><td valign=top>
        <b>USENIX Annual (USENIX)</b><BR>	
        <td valign=top>June 9-14, 2002<BR>Monterey, CA<BR>
        <a href="http://www.usenix.org/events/usenix02/" target="_blank">
	http://www.usenix.org/events/usenix02/</A><BR>

<tr><td colspan=2><HR size=5 width=100% noshade align=center></td></tr>

<tr><td valign=top>
        <b>PC Expo (CMP)</b><BR>	
        <td valign=top>June 25-27, 2002<BR>New York, NY<BR>
        <a href="http://www.techxny.com/" target="_blank">
	http://www.techxny.com/</A><BR>

<tr><td colspan=2><HR size=5 width=100% noshade align=center></td></tr>

<tr><td valign=top>
        <b>O'Reilly Open Source Convention (O'Reilly)</b><BR>
        <td valign=top>July 22-26, 2002<BR>San Diego, CA<BR>
        <a href="http://conferences.oreilly.com/" target="_blank">
        http://conferences.oreilly.com/</A><BR>

<tr><td colspan=2><HR size=5 width=100% noshade align=center></td></tr>

<tr><td valign=top>
        <b>USENIX Securty Symposium (USENIX)</b><BR>	
        <td valign=top>August 5-9, 2002<BR>San Francisco, CA<BR>
        <a href="http://www.usenix.org/events/sec02/" target="_blank">
	http://www.usenix.org/events/sec02/</A><BR>

<tr><td colspan=2><HR size=5 width=100% noshade align=center></td></tr>

<tr><td valign=top>
        <b>LinuxWorld Conference & Expo (IDG)</b><BR>
        <td valign=top>August 12-15, 2002<BR>San Francisco, CA<BR>
	<a href="http://www.linuxworldexpo.com" target="_blank">
	http://www.linuxworldexpo.com</A><BR>

<tr><td colspan=2><HR size=5 width=100% noshade align=center></td></tr>

<tr><td valign=top>
        <b>LinuxWorld Conference & Expo Australia (IDG)</b><BR>
        <td valign=top>August 14 - 16, 2002<BR>Australia<BR>
        <a href="http://www.idgexpoasia.com/" target="_blank">
	http://www.idgexpoasia.com/</A><BR>

<tr><td colspan=2><HR size=5 width=100% noshade align=center></td></tr>

<tr><td valign=top>
        <b>Communications Design Conference (CMP)</b><BR>
        <td valign=top>September 23-26, 2002<BR>San Jose, California<BR>
        <a href="http://www.commdesignconference.com/" target="_blank">
	http://www.commdesignconference.com/</A><BR>

<tr><td colspan=2><HR size=5 width=100% noshade align=center></td></tr>

<tr><td valign=top>
        <b>Software Development Conference & Expo, East (CMP)</b><BR>
        <td valign=top>November 18-22, 2002<BR>Boston, MA<BR>
        <a href="http://www.sdexpo.com/" target="_blank">
        http://www.sdexpo.com/</A><BR>
	
<tr><td colspan=2><HR size=5 width=100% noshade align=center></td></tr>

</table>
<!-- *** END events table [this line needed by Linux Gazette events.py *** -->


<a name="general"></a>
<p><hr><p>
<!-- =================================================================== -->
<center><H3><font color="green">News in General</font></H3></center>



<P> <hr> <P> 
<!-- =================================================================== -->
<H3><IMG ALT=" "   SRC="../gx/bolt.gif">
<FONT COLOR="green">Euro Support
</FONT>
</H3> 

As many of you have surely noticed, the euro became a real paper and coins
currency on the first of January 2002.  Being able to type the euro symbol
is now something which will be necessary for very many computer users.
<a href="http://www.debian.org/">
The Debian Project</a> 
have released the
<a href="http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/debian-euro-support/">
Debian Euro HOWTO</a>
by Javier Fernndez-Sanguino Pea which details how to enable support for
the symbol in your Linux system.  Much of the advice will be of use to
users of distributions other than Debian.
<p>
Long-term, the best solution may be a move towards Unicode. This is
particularly the case when interoperability with Windows systems is
required.

<P> <hr> <P> 
<!-- =================================================================== -->
<H3><IMG ALT=" "   SRC="../gx/bolt.gif">
<FONT COLOR="green">Athlon/Duron and Linux Bug
</FONT>
</H3> 
A bug in AMD's Athlon family of processors has been
<a href="http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/3/23749.html">
reported</a>
on TheRegister, following an earlier
revelation by
<a href="http://www.gentoo.org/">Gentoo Linux</a>.  The issue relates to
extended memory paging sizes and is a bug in the processor, not the kernel.
Those using Linux 2.4 kernels, and AGP may experience problems with memory
corruption.  The fix is to pass the option "mem=nopentium" to the kernel at
boot-time (via GRUB or LILO).  Gentoo have a good description of the
situation on their main webpage at the moment, and an analysis of how this
was neglected for so long (since September 2000!).

<P> <hr> <P> 
<!-- =================================================================== -->
<H3><IMG ALT=" "   SRC="../gx/bolt.gif">
<FONT COLOR="green">Linux Adoption
</FONT>
</H3> 


<P>     
<a href="http://www.theregister.co.uk/">
TheRegister.co.uk</a>
recently
<a href="http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/23667.html">
reported</a>
that Korea is to convert 120K civil servants to Linux desktop use.  This
appears to be as much a fightback by local favourite Haansoft (producers of
Hancom Linux, and HancomOffice) as a victory for Linux, but it is still
good news.
<p>
In a separate development, NewsForge
<a href="http://www.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=02/01/09/1252220&mode=nocomment">
reports</a> that
Red Hat India is helping to introduce GNU/Linux as part of a scheme to meet
the software needs of the Indian education system. The program will include
not only software, but also free training to help get the scheme off the
ground.
<p>
Spinning the globe again, this time to China, we see more penguins on the
march.  Linux Today have a
<a href="http://linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=2002-01-08-025-20-NW-MS">
report</a>
that Linux is making an impression on many in China.  Apparently the
Chinese Academy of Sciences have published a report highlighting the
savings which could be achieved by using Linux as an alternative to
Microsoft solutions.  This follows a Gartner
<a href="http://www.gartner.com/DisplayDocument?doc_cd=103604">
report</a> that Microsoft recently lost out on a major IT investment in
China, while indigenous firms including Red Flag Linux were favoured.


<P> <hr> <P> 
<!-- =================================================================== -->
<H3><IMG ALT=" "   SRC="../gx/bolt.gif">
<FONT COLOR="green">Penguin Art
</FONT>
</H3> 

<P> 
A new issue of TUX (Terminator Unit X) online comic is now available at:
<a href="http://www.thelinuxreview.com/TUX/">
http://www.thelinuxreview.com/TUX/</a>.  the reports of TUX's death have
been greatly exaggerated. 
<P>
Also in the artistic vein, 
<a href="http://www.ibm.com/">IBM</a> have updated their
<a href="http://www-1.ibm.com/servers/eserver/linux/fun/?t=gr,p=LinuxAnimation">
Linux Cartoons</a>
page. Flash or Real Player required.

<P> <hr> <P> 
<!-- =================================================================== -->
<H3><IMG ALT=" "   SRC="../gx/bolt.gif">
<FONT COLOR="green">Linux Trojan Found
</FONT>
</H3> 


<a href="http://www.qualys.com">
qualys.com</a>
have 
<a href="https://www.qualys.com/pr/release_01_09_02.html">
announced</a>
that they have discovered a Linux Trojan, in the wild.
This follows qualys's discovery of a very similar linux trojan 
<a href="http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/09/08/019246">
last year</a>.  This story was also
<a href="http://www.newsbytes.com/news/02/173408.html">
picked up</a> by Newsbytes.com, and from there Slashdot 
<a href="http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/01/05/230233&mode=nested">
got in on the act</a>.  To be infected, you must execute the trojan
as root, so there is likely to be a need for some sort of social
engineering in getting this one to propagate.  Main risk would be if a
binary in a Linux distribution became infected, since most people trust the
binaries on their install media.  At the very least, this is another very
good reason to be very very careful what you do as root.


<P> <hr> <P> 
<!-- =================================================================== -->
<H3><IMG ALT=" "   SRC="../gx/bolt.gif">
<FONT COLOR="green">DOSSIER, Documentation Source
</FONT>
</H3> 


<P>
<a href="http://www.ptf.com/dossier">
DOSSIER</a>
is a convenient new way to get printed
documentation for Free and Open Source software.  Current topics include
"Email", "File Systems", "Kernel", PostgreSQL", "Python", and "Text".  The
demand-printed volumes may be ordered from 
<a href="http://www.bsdmall.com">
BSDMall</a>.
The motivation and rationale for DOSSIER are covered in 
"<a href="http://www.daemonnews.org/200201/meta.html">
DOSSIER and the Meta Project (Part 1)</a>",
in 
<a href="http://www.daemonnews.org">
Daemon News</a>.



<a name="distro"></a>
<p><hr><p>
<!-- =================================================================== -->
<center><H3><font color="green">Distro News</font></H3></center>

<P> <hr> <P> 
<!-- =================================================================== -->
<H3><IMG ALT=" "   SRC="../gx/bolt.gif">
<FONT COLOR="green">BrlSpeak
</FONT>
</H3> 
BrlSpeak is a new mini-distribution of Linux that comes with support for
<STRONG>braille</STRONG> and <STRONG>speech</STRONG> built-in.  The objective
is to offer an easy-to-install solution for blind persons who wish to install a
Linux distribution on their computer without any assistance from a sighted
pereson.  BrlSpeak provides a built-in preconfigurer so that you should be able
to preconfigure the BrlTty Makefile before starting Linux.  Compilation and
automated activation of the braille device is the next step, and will be
performed when booting the distrib.  BrlSpeak was based on Matthew campbell's
ZipSpeak mini-distribution, that's why it contains the SpeakUp screen reader
for supporting speech synthesizers.  The BrlSpeak is available in many
languages.  To download it, visit the 
<a href="http://www.audiobraille.org/blinux/brlspeak.html">
BrlSpeak Projet Home Page</a>.
<p>
Author: Osvaldo La Rosa, freely distributable, UMSDOS mini-distribution,
size: 36MB, available as: zip or iso, website: 
<a href="http://www.audiobraille.org/blinux/brlspeak.html#english">
en</a>,
<a href="http://www.audiobraille.org/blinux/brlspeak.html#francais">
fr</a>,
<a href="http://www.audiobraille.org/blinux/brlspeak.html#nederlands">
nl</a>.
Any contributions welcome!



<P> <hr> <P> 
<!-- =================================================================== -->
<H3><IMG ALT=" "   SRC="../gx/bolt.gif">
<FONT COLOR="green">Debian
</FONT>
</H3> 

<a href="http://www.debian.org/">
Debian GNU/Linux</a>
2.2r5 has been released.  This fifth revision adds security updates and
some bug fixes to the stable `potato' release.  A list of FTP and HTTP
mirrors is available at
<a href="http://www.debian.org/distrib/ftplist">
http://www.debian.org/distrib/ftplist</a>.
Point apt (see the sources.list(5) manual page) at an up to date mirror and
then run apt-get update; apt-get upgrade
The complete list of all accepted and rejected packages together with
rationale is on the 
<a href="http://people.debian.org/~joey/2.2r5/">
preparation page</a>
for this revision
<P>
It is a good idea to keep an eye on
<a href="http://security.debian.org/">
http://security.debian.org/</a>
or to subscribe to the debian security announce mailing list.  There have
been quite a few security announcements in the past month.


<p>
<hr noshade width="20%">
<p>

Debian Weekly News
<a href="http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2002/2/">
reported</a> that
new "Debian on CD" Web Pages have been 
<a href="http://www.debian.org/CD/">
launched</a>.
These replace the
old pages on 
<a href="http://cdimage.debian.org/">
cdimage.debian.org</a>,
which "were often criticised by visitors of the website". The new pages
feature improved documentation, direct download links for images, a CD
vendor list Apart from an extended FAQ, the new pages offer direct download
links for CD images, a list of CD vendors, artwork, and info on
<a href="http://atterer.net/jigdo/">
jigdo</a>,
the new distribution scheme for downloading CD images from any normal
Debian mirror.

<p>
<hr noshade width="20%">
<p>


<P>
<a href="http://www.linuxtoday.com/">Linux Today</a>
highlighted a 
<a href="http://people.debian.org/~jgb/debian-counting/">
report</a>
on the size of Debian 2.2, which includes
more than 55,000,000 physical SLOC:
The COCOMO model estimates
that its cost would be close to $1.9 billion USD to develop
Debian 2.2.


<p>
<hr noshade width="20%">
<p>


<P> 
Also highlighted by 
<a href="http://www.linuxtoday.com/">Linux Today</a>
was this
<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=129604">
bugreport</a>, which comments on vulnerability notification and the Debian
Social Contract.
"Over the past few months,
the GNU/Linux community has slowly adopted a way of dealing with
security issues which closely resembles the approach suggested by
Microsoft last year: more-or-less systematic hiding of security
problems from end users, at least for some time. Some Debian
maintainers seem to participate in this process, and hold
back security fixes, waiting for events to happen which are
external and not related to the Debian project (for example,
other distributors being ready to publish fixes)."


<P> <hr> <P> 
<!-- =================================================================== -->
<H3><IMG ALT=" "   SRC="../gx/bolt.gif">
<FONT COLOR="green">Mandrake
</FONT>
</H3> 

<P>
Linux Planet have started a 'Month Later'  addition to their Distribution
Watch section.  The first distro to receive this 
<a href="http://www.linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet/reviews/4000/1/">
second look</a>
is Mandrake 8.1.
The review discusses the process of getting settled in and smoothing
out the routine bumps and curves of this distribution.


<P> <hr> <P> 
<!-- =================================================================== -->
<H3><IMG ALT=" "   SRC="../gx/bolt.gif">
<FONT COLOR="green">Red Hat
</FONT>
</H3> 

The Washington Post Washtech.com site has
<a href="http://www.washtech.com/news/media/14759-1.html">
reported</a>
that AOL Time Warner is in talks to buy Red Hat.  Everything is very vague
("fluid" appears to be the official term), so it is difficult to know what
the chances are such a deal actually coming off.  Andrew Orlowski of
TheRegister is somewhat
<a href="http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/7/23746.html">
sceptical</a>
about the rumours.  He also makes some good comments about what the
wider implications of such a deal could be.




<a name="commercial"></a>
<p><hr><p>
<!-- =================================================================== -->
<center><H3><font color="green">Software and Product News</font></H3></center>



<P> <hr> <P> 
<!-- =================================================================== -->
<H3><IMG ALT=" "   SRC="../gx/bolt.gif">
<FONT COLOR="green">GUI Based DSSSL/XSLT DocBook Tool Released
</FONT>
</H3> 
<P>  
<a href="http://www.commandprompt.com">
Command Prompt</a> is pleased to announce the release of DocPro 0.2.0.
<a href="http://www.commandprompt.com/entry.lxp?lxpe=2">
DocPro</a>
is a tool for professional technical authors whom maintain
a large amount of SGML/XML based documentation. DocPro will take any DocBook
document and transform it into a user defined format (Postscript, HTML
etc...). 
<P>
DocPro will correctly transform multiple documents, to multiple output
formats. It includes the capability to arbitrarily set font sizes, margins,
callout definitions etc... via a GUI interface. 
<P>
DocPro currently runs on x86 Linux only, though there will be a release
for YellowDog Linux (PPC) and MacOS X shortly. The Deluxe version of DocPro
comes with the popular DocParse tools for converting HTML to DocBook.

<P> <hr> <P> 
<!-- =================================================================== -->
<H3><IMG ALT=" "   SRC="../gx/bolt.gif">
<FONT COLOR="green">Adobe GoLive 6 Integrates Zend PHP Debugger
</FONT>
</H3> 

<P> Adobe Systems  will include 
<a href="http://www.zend.com">
Zend</a>'s
PHP Debugger in its new release of GoLive 6, its flagship product for Web
site development. This will give GoLive developers integrated access to
advanced PHP debugging for their toughest applications and dynamic Web
sites using scripting languages.

<P> <hr> <P> 
<!-- =================================================================== -->
<H3><IMG ALT=" "   SRC="../gx/bolt.gif">
<FONT COLOR="green">CxProtect
</FONT>
</H3> 


<P>
<a href="http://www.calibretechnologies.com/CxProtect.html">
CxProtect</a>
is an AntiVirus Solution for Linux Mail Servers.  It is a binary based
solution that using the Command AntiVirus API.  The software offers
detection and disinfection of attachments being transported via the Linux
Mail Server.  The only change required to the existing Sendmail.cf is to
register CxProject as the MDA.  Post-install configuration is done via a
web browser interface.
<P> Download available at
<a href="http://www.calibretechnologies.com/downloads/CxProtect.tar.gz">
http://www.calibretechnologies.com/downloads/CxProtect.tar.gz</a>




<P> <hr> <P> 
<!-- =================================================================== -->
<H3><IMG ALT=" "   SRC="../gx/bolt.gif">
<FONT COLOR="green">Mahogany 0.64 Released
</FONT>
</H3> 

<P>
A new release of
<a href="http://mahogany.sourceforge.net/">
Mahogany</a>,
has been made.
Mahogany is an OpenSource cross-platform mail and news client,
available for X11/Unix and MS Windows platforms. It supports many of
the internet protocols and standards, including POP3, IMAP4, SMTP and NNTP.
Mahogany also supports MIME and many common Unix mailbox formats.
<p>
Source and binaries for a of
Linux and Unix systems as well as binaries for Win32 are 
<a href="http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=3100">
now available</a>.






<!-- *** BEGIN copyright *** -->
<P> <hr> <P> 
<H5 ALIGN=center>
Copyright &copy; 2002, Michael Conry and 
the Editors of <A HREF="mailto:gazette@ssc.com"><I>Linux Gazette</I></A>.<BR>
Copying license <A HREF="../copying.html">http://www.linuxgazette.com/copying.html</A><BR>
Published in Issue 75 of <i>Linux Gazette</i>, February 2002</H5>
<!-- *** END copyright *** -->


<H4 ALIGN="center">
"Linux Gazette...<I>making Linux just a little more fun!</I>"
</H4>

<P> <HR> <P> 
<!--===================================================================-->

<center>
<H1><font color="maroon">Secure Printing with PGP</font></H1>
<H4>By <a href="mailto:grahjenk@au1.ibm.com">Graham Jenkins</a></H4>
</center>
<P> <HR> <P>  

<!-- END header -->




<h2>The Brother Internet Print Protocol</h2>

<p>A recent article
<a href="../issue65/jenkins.html">
"Internet Printing - Another Way"</a> described a printing protocol which
can be used with some 
<a href="http://www.brother.com">Brother</a> printers. It enables users
of Windows machines to send a multi-part base-64 encoded print file via
email directly to a Brother print server.</p>

<p>The article went on to show how the functionality of the Brother print
server can be implemented in simple Perl program which periodically polls
a POP3 server to check for jobs whose parts have all arrived. When such a
job is detected, its parts are downloaded in sequence and decoded for
printing.</p>

<p>A subsequent
article <a href="../issue68/jenkins.html">
"A Linux Client for the Brother Internet Print Protocol"</a> showed a 
simple client program which can be used on Linux workstations for sending
print jobs to a Brother print server. That program was implemented as a
shell script which split an incoming stream into parts and placed them in
a scratch directory for subsequent encoding and transmission.</p>

<p>I have since developed a Perl client program which processes the incoming
stream on-the-fly and requires no temporary storage. This is, of course, a
much neater way to do things. The down-side is that there is no way of
ascertaining the total part-count until the last part is being processed. A
slight modification to the server program was therefore required to
accomodate an empty "total-parts" field on all except the final part.</p>

<h2>A Hole Big Enough to Drive a Truck Through</h2>

<p>The whole arrangement as outlined above has been in use at my place
for several months, and has saved us a whole lot of time and trouble.
However, as pointed out by one reviewer, what we really have here is a
security hole big enough to drive a truck through! Anybody in the
whole wide world can send celebrity pictures to your color printer,
and there's not a lot you can do about it.</p>

<p>Somebody else asked why we go to the trouble of splitting a large
job into parts without first trying to compress it. And indeed there
are a great number of jobs whose size can be significantly reduced through
compression.</p>

<p>Then there were the Windows (and other) users, who thought that
everything should be written in Perl for portability. And the Standards
Nazis, who thought that the job parts should be sent as 'message/partial'
entities in accordance with RFC 2046.</p>

<h2>Who's Printing Pamela Anderson Pictures?</h2>

<p>Of all the issues outlined above, the most serious is indubitably that of
client authentication. And the solution is blindingly obvious; why not
use one of the Public Key Encryption mechanisms now available?
What we need here is for the sender to digitally sign the entire message
using his private key. Upon receipt at the server, the message can then
be authenticated by application of the sender's public key. There's no
need for any secret key-entry rites at the server, so the whole server
operation can be automated.</p>

<p>A message signed in this fashion can be signed in 'clear' form; 
the message itself is then sent as is, with a digital signature appended to
its end. If you elect not to use 'clear' signing, the message will
(if usual defaults are accepted) actually be compressed and the
signature will be incorporated therein. This comes pretty close to what
we need!</p>

<p>There is a set of Perl modules (Crypt::OpenPGP) which can perform the
necessary signature and verification procedures, so we can actually write
the entire client and server programs in a portable form. I had some
difficulty with installing these, since they require that a number
of other modules be installed, and they require the 'PARI-GP' mathematics
package. I elected instead to use
<a href="http://www.pgpi.org">pgp-2.6.3ia</a>;
<a href="http://www.gnupg.org">GnuPG-v1.0.6</a> will also
work with the programs in this article.</p>

<p>There are a couple of Perl modules (Crypt::PGPSimple and PGP::Sign) which
can be used to call pgp-2.6.3ia and its equivalent executables, but each
of them creates temporary files, and that's something I try to avoid where
possible.</p>

<h2>Appeasing the Standards Nazis</h2>

<p><a href="http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc3156.html">RFC 3156</a>
 ("MIME Security with OpenPGP") describes how the OpenPGP
Message Format can be used to provide privacy and authentication using
MIME security content types. In particular, it decrees that after signing
our message by encrypting it with our private key, we should send it
as a 'multipart/encrypted' message. The first part should contain an
'application/pgp-encrypted' message showing a version number in plain-text
form; the second part should contain our actual PGP message.

<p>This is a
bit over-the-top, but the overhead is small, and the whole deal is
easily done using the Perl MIME::Lite module, as shown in the
'SEPclientPGP.pl' program hereunder.</p>

<p>So how do we send a long message which needs to be broken into parts
for passage through intermediate mail servers? RFC 3156 tells us we should
use the MIME message/partial mechanism
(<a href="http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc2046.html">RFC 2046</a>) instead! I
think what they actually mean is "as well". So our output from
'SEPclientPGP.pl' is actually fed into the 'SplitSend.pl' program (also
hereunder) which extracts the message "To:" and "Subject:" lines and
replicates them into each sequentially numbered 'message/partial' component
that it generates.</p>

<h2>The Client Program</h2>

<p>Here's the
<a href="misc/jenkins/SEPclientPGP.pl.txt">client program</a>.
It's pretty much self-explanatory. A pipe
to the 'SplitSend.pl' program is opened for output. If
the passphrase is supplied on the command-line (dangerous, but sometimes
necessary!), it is planted in an environment variable.</p>

<p>The multipart MIME message as previously described is then constructed,
taking its second body part from a pipe fed by the PGP executable. If the
executable doesn't find a suitable passphase in the appropriate environment
variable, it requests it in a terminal window.</p>

<pre>
#!/usr/local/bin/perl -w
# @(#) SEPclientPGP.pl	Secure Email Print client program. Ref: RFC 3156.
#			Takes incoming stream and generates PGP-signed message
#			which is piped to split-and-send program for email
#			transmission to server. Requires 'pgp' program.
#			Graham Jenkins, IBM GSA, Dec. 2001. [Rev'd 2001-12-30]

use strict;
use File::Basename;
use MIME::Lite;
use IO::File;
use Env qw(PGPPASS);

die "Usage: ".basename($0)." kb-per-part destination [passphrase]\n".
    " e.g.: ".basename($0)." 16 lp3\@pserv.acme.com \"A secret\" &lt; report.ps\n".
    "       Part-size must be &gt;= 1\n"
  if ( ($#ARGV &lt; 1) or ($#ARGV &gt; 2) or ($ARGV[0] &lt; 1) );

my $fh = new IO::File "| /usr/local/bin/SplitSend.pl $ARGV[0]";
if( defined($ARGV[2]) ) {$PGPPASS=$ARGV[2]}
if( ! defined ($PGPPASS)) {$PGPPASS=""}	# Plant passphrase in environment and
my $msg = MIME::Lite-&gt;new(		# create signed message.
                To      =&gt; $ARGV[1],
                Subject =&gt; 'Secure Email Print Job # '.time,
                Type    =&gt; 'multipart/encrypted');
$msg-&gt;attr  (   "content-type.protocol" =&gt; "pgp-encrypted");
$msg-&gt;attach(   Type    =&gt; 'application/pgp-encrypted',
                Encoding=&gt; 'binary',
                Data    =&gt; "Version: 1\n");
$msg-&gt;attach(   Type    =&gt; 'application/octet-stream',
                Encoding=&gt; 'binary',
                Path    =&gt; "/usr/local/bin/pgp -fas - |");
$msg-&gt;print($fh);			# Pipe the signed message into a
__END__					# split-and-send program.
</pre>

<h2>Split-and-Send</h2>

<p>Here's the 
<a href="misc/jenkins/SplitSend.pl.txt">split-and-send program</a>.
The main loop at the end works
just as described above - extract the destination and subject fields,
accumulate lines until we are about to exceed the message-size limit
supplied as a parameter, then feed what we have to an output routine.</p>

<p>The output routine needs to re-insert the destination and subject
fields, and also insert a message-identifier, part-number and total-part-count.
The total-part-count is only required on the final part. All fairly
easy - except we don't know whether the current part is the final part
until we look for the next part. So we get around this by using a double-buffer
arrangement, where we don't actually output a buffer's contents until we
have the next buffer.</p>

<p>Using MIME::Simple in this program is really overkill; however, what
it does accomplish is that it tries to find an appropriate mailer
program on whatever platform it executes.</p>

<pre>
#!/usr/local/bin/perl -w
# @(#) SplitSend.pl	Splits and sends an email message (Ref: RFC 1521, 2046).
#			Graham Jenkins, IBM GSA, December 2001.

use strict;
use File::Basename;
use MIME::Lite;
use Net::Domain;
my ($Id,$j,$Dest,$Subj,$part,$InpBuf,$OutBuf,$Number,$Total);

die "Usage: ".basename($0)." kb-per-part\n".
    "       Part-size must be &gt;= 1\n" if ( ($#ARGV != 0) or ($ARGV[0] &lt; 1) );

$Id=(getlogin."\@".Net::Domain::hostfqdn().time) or $Id="unknown_user".time;
$Number = 0; $Total = ""; $OutBuf=""; $InpBuf=""; print STDERR "\n";

sub do_output {				# Output subroutine.
  die basename($0)." .. destination undefined!\n" if ! defined($Dest);
  $Subj = ""                                      if ! defined($Subj);
  if ($OutBuf ne "") {			# If output buffer contains data, 
    $Number++;				# increment Number, and check whether
    $Total=$Number if $InpBuf eq "";	# it is the last buffer.
    print STDERR "Sending part: ", $Number,"/",$Total,"\n";
    $part = MIME::Lite-&gt;new(
              To      =&gt; $Dest,		# Construct a message containing the
              Subject =&gt; $Subj,		# output buffer contents.
              Type    =&gt; 'message/partial',
              Encoding=&gt; '7bit',
              Data    =&gt; $OutBuf);
    $part-&gt;attr("content-type.id"     =&gt; "$Id");
    $part-&gt;attr("content-type.number" =&gt; "$Number");
    $part-&gt;attr("content-type.total"  =&gt; "$Total") if ($Number eq $Total);
    $part-&gt;send;			# Send the message.
  }
  $OutBuf = $InpBuf;			# Move input buffer contents to
  $InpBuf = ""				# output buffer and exit.
}

while (&lt;STDIN&gt;) {			# Main loop.
  if ( (substr($_, 0, 3) eq "To:")      &amp;&amp; (! defined($Dest)) ) {
    $Dest = substr($_, 4, length($_) - 4); chomp $Dest; next }
  if ( (substr($_, 0, 8) eq "Subject:") &amp;&amp; (! defined($Subj)) ) {
    $Subj = substr($_, 9, length($_) - 9); chomp $Subj; next }
  if ( (length($InpBuf . $_)) &gt; ($ARGV[0] * 1024) ) {do_output}
  $InpBuf = $InpBuf . $_
}
foreach $j (1,2) {do_output}		# Flush both buffers and exit.
__END__
</pre>

<h2>The Art of Jigsaw Assembly</h2>

<p>There is no guarantee that the segments of our print-job will arrive
at the server in the same order as they left the client. We cannot be sure
that there will even be the same number of segments, since message-transfer
agents along the way are allowed to re-assemble message/partial entities as
they see fit.  So what we have at the server end is a set of jigsaw
puzzles, with the pieces of each puzzle being related by a common
message-identifier, and their placement within that puzzle being
determined by their part-numbers.</p>

<p>For a full listing of the 'SEPserverPGP.pl', see the attached
<a href="misc/jenkins/SEPserverPGP.pl.txt">text version</a>. I haven't
bothered to replicate all of it hereunder, since much of it is the
same as the program shown in "Internet Printing - Another Way".</p>

<p>Basically, the program is intended for invocation via an entry in
'/etc/inittab', and loops continually thereafter, with half-minute
pauses between each loop. During each loop, it visits the mailboxes
of one or more printer-entities on a POP3 server, and deletes any
stale articles therein before tabulating the message-id's and
part-numbers of the remaining articles. When it finds a full set of
message/partial entities, it sucks each of them in part-number
sequence from the server, and throws their contents into a pipe.
The program-extract hereunder shows what happens then.</p>

<p>The relevant message content is deemed to begin at the
"-----BEGIN.." line in the first part. For subsequent parts, it begins
after the first blank line once an "id=.." line has been seen.</p>

<p>Once in the pipe, the composite message content passes to the PGP
executable for validation/decryption, and thence to an appropriate printer. 
Validation output is passed to a scratch file, and then recovered from
there for logging. A validation failure results in no output to the
printer.</p>

<pre>
          for ($k=1;$k&lt;=$tp{$part[0]};$k++){	# Check if we have all parts.
            goto I if ! defined($slot{$part[0]."=".$k});
          }					
          $fh=new IO::File
           "| /usr/local/bin/pgp -f 2&gt;$tmp | lpr -P $user &gt;/dev/null" or goto I;
          for ($k=1;$k&lt;=$tp{$part[0]};$k++){	# Assemble parts into pipe. 
            $message=$pop-&gt;get($slot{$part[0]."=".$k});
            $l=0; $buffer=""; $print="N";
            while ( defined(@$message[$l]) ) {
              chomp @$message[$l]; 		# Part 1: start at "-----BEGIN",
              if( $k == 1 ) {			# stop before 2nd blank line.
                if( @$message[$l]=~m/^-----BEGIN/ ) { $m=-2;  $print="Y"}
                if( $print eq "Y" ) {
                  if( @$message[$l] eq "" ) { $m++; if( $m &gt;= 0)   {last} } 
                  $buffer=$buffer.@$message[$l]."\n"
                }
              }					# Part 2,3,..: skip 1 blank line
              else {				# after "id=", then start; stop
                if( $print eq "Y" ) {		# before next blank line.
                  if( @$message[$l] eq "" )                        {last} 
                  $buffer=$buffer.@$message[$l]."\n"
                }
                if( @$message[$l]=~m/id=/ )                  {$print="R"}
                if((@$message[$l] eq "") &amp;&amp; ($print eq "R")) {$print="Y"}
              }
              $l++;
            }
            print $fh $buffer or goto I;
          }
          $fh-&gt;close || goto I;
          open $fh, $tmp;
          while (&lt;$fh&gt;) { chomp; syslog('info', $_) }
          close $fh;
          for ($k=1;$k&lt;=$tp{$part[0]};$k++){
            $pop-&gt;delete($slot{$part[0]."=".$k})
          }
          goto I;
        }
J:    }	
    }
I:}
</pre>

<h2>Copycat Crime</h2>

<p>In the scheme outlined above, there is nothing to prevent a determined
trouble-maker replicating and replaying an entire authenticated message. To
cover this possibility, you need to retain each log entry for a week or
so, and
to reject any incoming message having a corresponding signature and
signature-date.</p>

<p>If, in addition, you wish to prevent someone from viewing the actual
data travelling to your printer as it traverses the Internet, you need
to change the PGP executable parameters at the client
end so that the data is encrypted with the server's public key as well
as signed; you will also need to feed a passphrase into the PGP executable
at the server end.</p>

<h2>GNU Privacy Guard</h2>

<p>I have a mental image of somebody reading this and saying: "How come he's
using pgp-2.6.3ia if he doesn't like un-necessary temporary files?" It's a
good question, because pgp-2.6.3ia creates temporary files both during
encryption and during decryption.</p>

<p>To get around this, or to comply with whatever laws are applicable in
your country, you may wish to use GnuPG-v1.0.6 (or later version
of the same) instead. In the client program, you will need to change the
parameters with which the executable is called. And you won't be able to
plant your passphrase in an environment variable.</p>

<p>I have attached for your interest a 'Lite'
<a href="misc/jenkins/SEPWincl.pl.txt">GPG client program</a> which will
execute on Windows machines with 'out-of-the-box' ActiveState Perl or
IndigoPerl, and requires no extra modules.</p>

<p>During decryption to a pipe, the 'gpg' executable actually outputs data
to the pipe until (and in some cases, after) it encounters a problem. So
you will need to send your output to a scratch file - then send that scratch
file to your printer if the decryption process completed satisfactorily.</p>




<!-- *** BEGIN bio *** -->
<SPACER TYPE="vertical" SIZE="30">
<P> 
<H4><IMG ALIGN=BOTTOM ALT="" SRC="../gx/note.gif">Graham Jenkins</H4>
<EM>Graham is a Unix Specialist at IBM Global Services, Australia. He lives
in Melbourne and has
built and managed many flavors of proprietary and open systems on several
hardware platforms.</EM>

<!-- *** END bio *** -->

<!-- *** BEGIN copyright *** -->
<P> <hr> <!-- P --> 
<H5 ALIGN=center>

Copyright &copy; 2002, Graham Jenkins.<BR>
Copying license <A HREF="../copying.html">http://www.linuxgazette.com/copying.html</A><BR> 
Published in Issue 75 of <i>Linux Gazette</i>, February 2002</H5>
<!-- *** END copyright *** -->


<H4 ALIGN="center">
"Linux Gazette...<I>making Linux just a little more fun!</I>"
</H4>

<P> <HR> <P> 
<!--===================================================================-->

<center>
<H1><font color="maroon">A Pioneer for a New Century -- Alan Turing, part 1</font></H1>
<H4>By <a href="mailto:jones@systemtoolbox.com">G James Jones</a>
<BR>Originally published at <A HREF="http://www.systemtoolbox.com/">System Toolbox</A>.  Reprinted with permission.</H4>
</center>
<P> <HR> <P>  

<!-- END header -->




<P>
Last time, we took a look at the life and some of the achievements,
and near achievements, of <A
HREF="http://www.systemtoolbox.com/article.php?articles_id=43">Charles
Babbage</A>, the Godfather of Computing.  Babbage made great leaps in
our understanding of what would become the field of computer science
by considering, and then demonstrating, that mathematical processes
could be carried out quickly, repeatedly and without error through
mechanical means.  This was such a simple idea, but it was ground
breaking in its implications.  Babbage had been frustrated by the
errors that crept into the lookup tables that serious mathematicians
used for their calculations.  His drive to create calculating machines
grew out of the desire to remove these errors from the process of
creating those tables.  Babbage was ahead of his time. He was a
pioneer of the 19th century. If his work hadn't been rediscovered, his
achievements would have been almost entirely forgotten by the time the idea
of <I>automatic calculations</I> through machines began to take hold
in the 20th century.

<P>
One of the proponents of such <I>automatic, mechanical,
calculations</I> was a mathematician in King's College, Cambridge; a
young Alan Turing.  It's almost a natural progression for this series
to move from the <I>cog wheel brains</I> of Mr. Babbage to the
<I>theoretical thought machines </I> of Alan Turing.  Out of the
necessity to answer one of the most critical mathematical questions of
his time, Turing started down the road of what would become the fields
of modern computer science and cryptography.  As one of the single men
whose achievements helped turn the tide of World War II, he is a hero.
As developer of some of the original ideas about digital computers and
for helping solve Hilbert's final question of Mathematics, he is a
genius.  Being human, his life is ultimately marked by complexity and,
unfortunately... tragedy.

<P>
This article will focus on Alan Turing's life leading up to, and
including, his invention of the "Turing Machine."  Next month, we will
tackle his achievements in cryptography during World War II, his ideas
on the digital computer, and the controversial events that led to this
hero's, one of my heros, tragic death.

<P><H3>Early Signs of a Remarkable Mind</H3>

<P>
Alan Mathison Turing was born to Julius Mathison Turing, an Indian
Civil Service officer, and Ethel Stoney on June 23, 1912 in
Paddington, England. Alan's father was still under active commission
in India and feared the risks of raising family in the remote
provinces over which he held jurisdiction.  After Alan's birth, his
father decided to leave his family in England instead of risking those
uncertainties, choosing instead to make the trip back and forth
between India and England while leaving his family with friends in
England.

<P>
Like Babbage (and many others in this field), Turing showed early
signs of, what I like to call, the "personality disorder" that leads
to a such vocations as engineering and mathematics.  Alan's natural
inquisitiveness was often confused with mischief, where "planting"
broken toys in hopes of resurrecting them was probably interpreted as
"getting rid of the evidence."  At a very early age, he is said to
have taught himself to read in only three weeks and his discovery of
numbers brought about the distracting habit of stopping at every
street light in order to find its serial number. At the age of seven,
while on a picnic in Ullapool, Scotland, Alan had the idea of
gathering wild honey for the afternoon's tea.  By plotting the flight
paths of the bees among the heather, he was able to find the
intersection point that marked their hive and provide an unexpected
treat for the family.

<P>
There's another anecdote that made an appearance in Neal Stephenson's
spectacular work of fiction, <I>The Cryptonomicon</I>, in which Turing
plays a supporting role.  It seems that Alan had a bicycle that had a
problem with its chain. He discovered that the chain would dislodge
itself from the gears after a regular, repeatable, number of
revolutions.  At first, the young Alan would count the revolutions of
the gears throughout his ride until it was time for the chain to be
forced to derail.  He would then get off his bike and re-adjust the
chain.  As this got to be cumbersome over longer treks, he finally
rigged a mechanical device that would maintain the count and readjust
the chain itself. Supposedly, it never occurred to him to just buy a
new chain to solve the problem. I believe that it is more likely that
the chain's issues presented a unique problem set for Turing's mind to
solve.  It challenged him to think in a different way.  It was
challenging and fun; buying a chain was not.


<p>
<H3>Getting an Education</H3>

<P>
At the age of six, Alan's mother enrolled him in a private day school,
St. Michael's, in order for him to learn Latin.  Thus began Alan's
introduction into the system that would shape his intellectual and
personal development for the next fourteen odd years.  The English
educational system would prove to be both a conflict and a
collaboration with Turing's sensibilities.  The collaboration is
epitomized by his early respect for rules and their relationship to
his concept of fairness.  These ideas are probably best illustrated by
an anecdote of his mother skipping part of <I>The Pilgrim's
Progress</I>. Judging one section to be too theologically weighty for
the youngster, she had skipped it while reading aloud in order to
spare him.  Alan objected and felt that the story was ruined; skipping
parts, in his sensibility, was against the rules of reading.

<P>
The conflict, in his relationship with the English school system, was
partially rooted in Alan's resolve that he was nearly always right.
Personal opinions were held as closely as fact.  He was one of those
people that <I>knows</I> something and doesn't <I>think</I>,
<I>feel</I> or have an <I>opinion</I> on them.  This type of mind set
was definitely at odds with an education system built on tradition and
firm in the belief that it <I>knew</I> what was best for its charges.

<P>
Early on, Alan was marked with the label of "genius" by the
Headmistress of St. Michael's, a proclamation that would be echoed a
few years later by a gypsy fortune teller.  Despite such
proclamations, Alan was required to follow the natural order of the
English school system and, upon finishing his studies at
St. Michael's, followed his brother's path to his next school,
Hazelhurst and then to his first <I>public school</I>,
Marlborough. Public school showed the ugly side of the English school
system and Alan had his first troubles with bullies, proclaiming that
he learned to run fast in order to "avoid the ball."

<p><H3>Brushes with Science</H3>

<P>
Alan was introduced to science through Edwin Tenney Brewster's
<I>Natural Wonders Every Child Should Know</I>.  Brewster's book
sought to introduce topics that help children understand their place
in the world and what they had in common and how they differed with
and from other living things.  This discovery, and that of
mathematics, would sustain Turing in a life-long love affair.  The
rules and discoveries of science and mathematics fit his general
sensibilities of the world; it had order and could be explored with
reason. Sense could be made of life if observed in the correct
way. Brewster's book was probably is the first to link the concept of
machine and biology in Alan's mind, explaining that the human body was
a complex <I>machine</I> with complicated processes that carried out
the duties and chores of maintaining life.

<P>
While school offered many torments, it also opened up a world of
knowledge to the young Turing.  He showed an early interest and
ability in languages, especially French, and treated it as a code that
would allow him to carry on covert communications.  Also, having
always had a fascination with various process oriented activities,
Alan was exposed to chemistry for the first time and fell instantly in
love.  Turing would go on to dabble in chemistry for the rest of his
life, often co-opting family basements and guest rooms as chemistry
labs.  His habit of concocting various chemical solutions would later
play a part in his untimely death as a adult.

<p><H3>Sherborne</H3>
<P>
At the age of 13, Alan was enrolled to attend the Sherborne boarding
school.  At the time of the school's summer term of 1926, England had
just been brought to a stand still by the first day of the general
strike.  No buses or trains were running.  Turing made something of a
stir, being reported in the local newspaper, by bicycling the sixty
miles from his home in Southampton to Sherborne, staying overnight in
an Inn at a halfway point.

<P>
Sherborne and Alan were not the best match.  Sherborne, as many
English schools of the time, was concerned with creating
<I>citizens</I> and not <I>scholars</I>.  The headmaster, at the time
of Alan's enrollment, espoused the idea that school was originally
created to be a miniature society.  Students would learn to navigate
the complexities of their later adult lives by learning to survive the
power plays of their current public school life. Authority and
obedience held more sway than the "free exchange of ideas" and the
"opening of the mind."  Not long after arriving, the already shy
Turing became even more withdrawn.

<P>
Alan sought solace in his books and course work.  In 1927, he was able
to find the infinite series of the "inverse tangent function" from the
trigonometric formula for tan1/2x (tan<SUP>-1</SUP>x = x -
x<SUP>3</SUP>/3 + x<SUP>5</SUP>/5 - x<SUP>7</SUP>/7 ...) without the
aid of elementary calculus (Alan had yet to be exposed to it).  It was
a significant enough achievement to have his mathematics instructor
include himself among the roster of people that had proclaimed the
boy's genius.  Such a proclamation didn't hold much sway with the
school.  While the accomplishment was extraordinary, Sherborne's
headmaster, not a particular fan of science, felt he was wasting his
time and was in danger of becoming a scientific specialist and
<I>not</I> an educated man.  This disrespect of science was not
uncommon at the school.  Alan's autumn form-master, a classicist who
was enthralled with Latin, called scientific subjects "low cunning"
and felt that the only reasons that the Germans lost World War I was
because they placed to much faith in science and engineering and not
enough in religious thought and observance.

<P>
Alan's dogged persistence to study such <I>low</I> subjects, finally
earned him some respite.  As long as he made a few concessions to the
formalities of the school, he was left to his own devices.  In 1928,
he became enthralled with the theory of relativity and lost himself in
the English translation of Einstein's <I>Relativity: The Special and
General Theory</I>.  Probably one of only a few, if any, sixteen year
olds who actually grasped Einstein's theories, Turing was able to
fully grasp Einstein's doubts of the veracity of Galilei-Newtonian
laws.  He was even able to deduce Einstein's Law of Motion ("the
separation between any two events in the history of a particle shall
be a maximum or minimum when measured along its world line") from his
readings alone (it wasn't specifically stated in the text). By 1929,
Alan had begun to study quantum physics.  It was a heady time as
Schroedinger and others turned what was considered a "dead" science on
its head.  Schroedinger's quantum theory of matter was only three years
old and Alan and his friend Christopher Morcum immersed themselves in
these emerging discoveries.  Alan was in his element.

<p><H3>King's College</H3>
<P>
Turing had originally planned on attending Trinity College at
Cambridge.  As far as he was concerned, it was the center of
scientific and mathematical thought in England and he wanted to
attend.  After a number of failed attempts at passing his final
examinations, more out of abstinence in engaging his "classical" work,
he finally missed a scholarship to Trinity but was able to obtain one
to King's, the college of his second choice.

<P>
King's College agreed with Alan.  Though he was still somewhat of a
social misfit, his studies and the freedom from the petty tortures of
public school life allowed him to relax and find his rhythm.  King's
also turned out to be a good fit due to the caliber of its faculty.
Turing's mathematics professor was one of the most distinguished
mathematicians of his time, G.H. Hardy, who had recently left Oxford
to take up the Sadleirian Chair at Cambridge.  He was also among 85
other students engaged in scientific study, as compared to the one or
two he had to seek out during his Sherborne days.  As happens today
with many high school geeks, college offered a chance for Alan to
emerge from his protective shell and begin to engage the world on his
own terms.

<P>
During the 20's, Cambridge had moved to establish itself as second in
the world in the field of new maths.  It had been able to stake this
claim on the developments that its faculty and students were making in
the realms of quantum theory and <I>pure</I> mathematics.  It was
widely regarded as second only to Gottingen University in Germany, a
place that supported such genius as John Von Nuemann.

<P>
Von Nuemann and Turing were to cross paths a number of times
throughout their lives.  In 1932, Turing read Von Nuemann's
<I>Mathematische Grundlagen der Quantemechanik</I> and was deeply
affected by the text.  His interest in quantum theory continued into
the studying of the works of other luminaries like Schrodinger and
Heisenberg.  This exposure to the <I>greats</I> in an emerging field
totally engaged the young Turing and set him to exploring the
questions that their discoveries raised.  It was this exposure and new
found focus that put Turing on an crash course with Hilbert's <I>Three
Questions of Mathematics</I>.

<p><H3>A Question of Mathematics and Turing Machines</H3>
<P>
In 1928, developments in <I>pure</I> mathematics seemed to be
unraveling the foundations of the field.  It seemed that the world was
on the cusp of unlocking the vary foundations of mathematics.  It
wouldn't be long before core axioms were nailed down and mathematics
would be just a set of easily applied rules that would lead directly,
inevitably to the solution of any problem.  No problem would be beyond
the reach of mathematics.  Appropriately applied, mathematics would
make the world a better place (sounds kind of like the commotion
surrounding the Internet, doesn't it?).

<P>
It was during this period, in 1928, that Hilbert, already famous for
his development of Hilbert quantum spaces, posed a number of questions
about the core of mathematics, whose unexpected answers would shake
the field and push it into new realms of discovery and reason.
Hilbert's agenda was to find a general algorithmic procedure for
answering all mathematical inquiries, or at least proving that such a
procedure existed.

<OL>Three of those questions at the heart of his agenda were:
	<LI>Was mathematics <I>complete</I>?  Meaning, could every assertion be proven or disproven with the <I>rules</I> of math?
	<LI>Was mathematics <I>consistent</I>? Meaning, could a false statement never be proven true with the <I>rules</I> of math?
	<LI>Was mathematics <I>decidable</I>? Meaning, were there definite steps that would prove or disprove an assertion?
</OL>

<P>
While nobody, including Hilbert, had been able to offer solutions to
these questions by proof in 1928, Hilbert was confident that the
answer to each was <I>yes</I>.  In his mind, there had to be a
solution for every problem, if only to prove that it was
unsolvable. This failed assertion, as bad as it sounds, would actually
save mathematicians a lot of effort spent pursuing blind alleys. So,
it was still a solution; its a <I>math</I> thing.

<P>
The issue lay in <I>proving</I> that mathematics was <I>complete</I>,
<I>consistent</I>, and <I>decidable</I>.  At the same gathering, the
young mathematician Kurt Godel dealt a serious blow to this line of
queries, by showing that math must be <I>incomplete</I> because, as he
showed, there are assertions that can be stated that can be neither
proved nor disproved.  An assertion, encoded in the form of
mathematics, that said, in effect, "this statement is unprovable"
showed this disturbing (if you are into that sort of thing)
property. An attempt to prove it true or untrue leads to
contradiction.  At least in the form of the question phrased by
Hilbert, Godel had proved that arithmetic was incomplete.  There are
nuances to this, of course, but it was still damaging.  Godel also
showed that mathematics could <I>not</I> be proven consistent
<I>and</I> complete.  However, he was not able to shake loose an
answer to Hilbert's question as to the <I>decidability</I> of
arithmetic.

<P>
Alan's professor Hardy, for one, was happy that Godel couldn't topple
Hilbert's final question.  In his view, a mechanical process that
could perform a solution to all mathematical problems would put every
serious mathematician out of a job.  Everything would have been done.

<P>
It was time for the student to instruct the teacher, at least in part.
After a day of running, an activity that Alan found to nicely clear
the mind, he stumbled onto the idea of a machine of simple, though
improbable, design that could tackle any sort of problem put to it.
The powerful machine would only understand the digits <code>0</code>
and <code>1</code>; the first binary computer.  It would move a
read/write mechanism across an infinite tape of these numbers and,
based on their particular arrangement, solve various types of
problems.  Alan's breakthrough was that he had defined, in specific
language, what a <I>general algorithm</I> actually was.  The Turing
Machine, as his construct would be called, was a thought experiment
that helped codify the features of algorithms.  During his exploration
of the wonderful ideas that this <I>machine</I> inspired, Turing found
that, despite the simple, general, nature of his algorithm, there did
exist problems that it could not solve.  This discovery <I>proved</I>
Hilbert's assertions were incorrect, the answer to Hilbert's final
question, the <I>Entscheidungsproblem</I> was "no, mathematics is not
decidable."

<P>
The young mathematician from King's College, Cambridge had bested one
of the greatest mathematicians of his time at the age of 23.  He
gained a fair measure of acclaim for his achievement and the word
"genius" began to be tossed around again.  Had he done only this, he
would be remembered in some history books and higher math students
would get acquainted with him at some point.  At any rate, a small
amount of historical immortality, as obscure as it may be, would be
granted in his memory.  However, it was what he did next that changed
the course of human history.

<P>
Next month, we will explore the workings of a Turing Machine and
follow Alan into the war effort.  We will see how a single man's true
genius can turn the tide of war, and we will shake our heads in
disbelief at a hero's humiliation and eventual death.  Stay tuned.


<P>------

<P>
<I>&copy 2002 G. James Jones is a Microcomputer Network Analyst for a
mid-sized public university in the midwest. He writes on topics
ranging from Open Source Software to privacy to the history of
technology and its social ramifications. This article originally
appeared at System Toolbox (<a
href="http://www.systemtoolbox.com">http://www.systemtoolbox.com</a>).
Please email <a href="mailto:jones@systemtoolbox.com">me</a> and let
me know where it is being used.  This article is dedicated to the
memory of Dr. Clinton Fuelling.  Verbatim copying and redistribution
of this entire article is permitted in any medium if this notice is
preserved.</font>




<!-- *** BEGIN bio *** -->

<!-- *** END bio *** -->

<!-- *** BEGIN copyright *** -->
<P> <hr> <!-- P --> 
<H5 ALIGN=center>

Copyright &copy; 2002, G James Jones.<BR>
Copying license <A HREF="../copying.html">http://www.linuxgazette.com/copying.html</A><BR> 
Published in Issue 75 of <i>Linux Gazette</i>, February 2002</H5>
<!-- *** END copyright *** -->


<H4 ALIGN="center">
"Linux Gazette...<I>making Linux just a little more fun!</I>"
</H4>

<P> <HR> <P> 
<!--===================================================================-->

<center>
<H1><font color="maroon">Installing and using AIDE</font></H1>
<H4>By <a href="mailto:arielm@radar.com.ar">Ariel Maiorano</a></H4>
</center>
<P> <HR> <P>  

<!-- END header -->








<H2>Introduction</H2>

<P>
If your system was compromised, chances are that the hacker, cracker,
trojan, worm or whatever replaced system files, or installed new ones,
generally backdoors or hostile code. Imagine a replaced version of the
login program, which lets someone in with root access after supplying a
magic password (like the ones included in most rootkits),
or a trojanized ssh client, which emails server, user and password
information to someone when used (something like this happened in an
important site last year).
</P>

<P>
File integrity checkers can help us by keeping checksums or hashes, and
various attributes like size, owner, permissions, etc. of files in a database
to later, and regularly, compare this information checking for changes.
So if the login binary is replaced, or a /tmp/.hidden/backdoord is installed,
you would be alerted.
</P>

<P>
This article will try to explain how to install and use an AIDE, an open
source Intrusion Detection System (IDS) of the host-based type, or
file integrity checker, if you prefer. Quoting from the AIDE website...
</P>

<P>
"AIDE (Advanced Intrusion Detection Environment) is a free replacement
for Tripwire. It does the same things as the semi-free Tripwire and more."
</P>

<P>
The installation of the whole system will be done on a floppy disk.  We'll
check for changes in various files and directories, being a little paranoid.
That will take more time and generate more false alarms or false positives, but
I think it makes things less complicated, and, hopefully, not less secure. 
When you set up your own configuration, you can start
with my example, and then after a couple of weeks of use you will know what
should be changed.

You'll mount the disk each time you're ready to do the checks.  That requires
more steps, but if an attacker gets in, he will not be able to (A) change our
database, and (B) not even notice we check our system regularly with AIDE.
</P>

<H2>Installation</H2>

<P>
First we will make the filesystem in the floppy disk...
(mine is on /dev/fd0, drive A: under DOS, if you use B: under DOS you will use /dev/fd1 here.)
<PRE>
root@pc2:~# 
root@pc2:~# mkfs /dev/fd0
mke2fs 1.22, 22-Jun-2001 for EXT2 FS 0.5b, 95/08/09
Filesystem label=
OS type: Linux
Block size=1024 (log=0)
Fragment size=1024 (log=0)
184 inodes, 1440 blocks
72 blocks (5.00%) reserved for the super user
First data block=1
1 block group
8192 blocks per group, 8192 fragments per group
184 inodes per group

Writing inode tables: done                            
Writing superblocks and filesystem accounting information: done

This filesystem will be automatically checked every 37 mounts or
180 days, whichever comes first.  Use tune2fs -c or -i to override.
root@pc2:~# 
</PRE>
mount it, and create the aide directory...
<PRE>
root@pc2:~# 
root@pc2:~# mount /dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy
root@pc2:~# 
root@pc2:~# mkdir /mnt/floppy/aide
root@pc2:~# 
</PRE>
</P>

<P>
Now we will get the sources of AIDE, compile them in a temporary directory, install
the system in the floppy disk (pay attenton to the --prefix option when running
configure), strip the aide binary before doing the make install, and finally remove
the temporary directory...
<PRE>
root@pc2:~# 
root@pc2:~# mkdir /tmp/aide
root@pc2:~# 
root@pc2:~# cd /tmp/aide
root@pc2:/tmp/aide# 
root@pc2:/tmp/aide# wget http://www.cs.tut.fi/~rammer/aide-0.7.tar.gz
--12:54:47--  http://www.cs.tut.fi/%7Erammer/aide-0.7.tar.gz
           => `aide-0.7.tar.gz'
Connecting to www.cs.tut.fi:80... connected!
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 219,837 [application/x-tar]

    0K .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... 23% @  34.84 KB/s
   50K .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... 46% @  50.97 KB/s
  100K .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... 69% @  65.45 KB/s
  150K .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... 93% @  46.38 KB/s
  200K .......... ....                                       100% @   7.17 MB/s

12:54:52 (50.40 KB/s) - `aide-0.7.tar.gz' saved [219837/219837]

root@pc2:/tmp/aide# 
root@pc2:/tmp/aide# tar xvfz aide-0.7.tar.gz 
aide-0.7/
aide-0.7/Makefile.in

[...]

aide-0.7/include/compare_db.h
aide-0.7/include/gnu_regex.h
root@pc2:/tmp/aide#
root@pc2:/tmp/aide# cd aide-0.7
root@pc2:/tmp/aide/aide-0.7# 
root@pc2:/tmp/aide/aide-0.7# ./configure --prefix=/mnt/floppy/aide 
creating cache ./config.cache
checking for a BSD compatible install... /usr/bin/ginstall -c

[...]

creating aide.spec
creating config.h
root@pc2:/tmp/aide/aide-0.7# 
root@pc2:/tmp/aide/aide-0.7# make
make  all-recursive
make[1]: Entering directory `/tmp/aide/aide-0.7'

[...]

make[2]: Leaving directory `/tmp/aide/aide-0.7'
make[1]: Leaving directory `/tmp/aide/aide-0.7'
root@pc2:/tmp/aide/aide-0.7# 
root@pc2:/tmp/aide/aide-0.7# strip src/aide
root@pc2:/tmp/aide/aide-0.7# 
root@pc2:/tmp/aide/aide-0.7# make install
\Making install in src
make[1]: Entering directory `/tmp/aide/aide-0.7/src'

[...]

make[2]: Leaving directory `/tmp/aide/aide-0.7'
make[1]: Leaving directory `/tmp/aide/aide-0.7'
root@pc2:/tmp/aide/aide-0.7#  
root@pc2:/tmp/aide/aide-0.7# cd ..
root@pc2:/tmp/aide# cd ..
root@pc2:/tmp# rm -r aide
root@pc2:/tmp# 
</PRE>
</P>

<P>
Finally we will create a very simple configuration file, that will check for
changes in permissions, inode number, number of links, user owner, group owner, size,
modification time, creation time and md5 checksums in various directory files (including
all files under them), and generate the database...
<PRE>
root@pc2:/tmp# 
root@pc2:/tmp# cd /mnt/floppy/aide/bin/
root@pc2:/mnt/floppy/aide/bin# 
root@pc2:/mnt/floppy/aide/bin# cat aide.conf
database=file:/mnt/floppy/aide/bin/aide.db
database_out=file:/mnt/floppy/aide/bin/aide.db.new
/vmlinuz        R
/boot           R
/etc		R
/bin            R
/usr/bin        R
/usr/local/bin  R
/sbin           R
/usr/sbin       R
/usr/local/sbin R
=/var/log       R
/tmp            R
/var/tmp        R
root@pc2:/mnt/floppy/aide/bin# 
root@pc2:/mnt/floppy/aide/bin# ./aide --config=./aide.conf --init
root@pc2:/mnt/floppy/aide/bin# 
root@pc2:/mnt/floppy/aide/bin# mv aide.db.new aide.db
root@pc2:/mnt/floppy/aide/bin# 
</PRE>
The config file is only a working example, and i use it this way, but of course you may
or should change it to suit your needs, remember the database generated must reside in the floppy disk.
Check the end of this document to download the example aide.conf. We can now umount the floppy and
are ready for regular use (checks and updates).
</P>

<H2>Regular use (checks and updates)</H2>

<P>
Now that we have the floppy disk with the generated database we can use it regularly
to check for changes in the files to be audited. I will create a file in the /tmp
directory to show an example of how AIDE tell us about it...
<PRE>
root@pc2:/# 
root@pc2:/# cat > /tmp/.hidden
hidden
root@pc2:/# 
root@pc2:/# mount /dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy/
root@pc2:/# cd /mnt/floppy/aide/bin/
root@pc2:/mnt/floppy/aide/bin# ./aide --config=./aide.conf --check
AIDE found differences between database and filesystem!!
Start timestamp: 2002-01-21 15:22:56
Summary:
Total number of files=1443,added files=1,removed files=0,changed files=1

Added files:
added:/tmp/.hidden
Changed files:
changed:/tmp
Detailed information about changes:

File: /tmp
Mtime: old = 2002-01-21 13:36:25, new = 2002-01-21 15:22:03
Ctime: old = 2002-01-21 13:36:25, new = 2002-01-21 15:22:03
root@pc2:/mnt/floppy/aide/bin# 
</PRE>
So here you see clearly what happened, of course if an existing file was modified you
would be alerted in a similar way.
</P>

<P>
Now imagine that /tmp/.hidden is a file that you placed there, you will not remove it
and wish to stop seeing it in the reports, you can update the database, like this...
<PRE>
root@pc2:/mnt/floppy/aide/bin# 
root@pc2:/mnt/floppy/aide/bin# ./aide --config=./aide.conf --update
AIDE found differences between database and filesystem!!
Start timestamp: 2002-01-21 15:28:58
Summary:
Total number of files=1443,added files=1,removed files=0,changed files=1

Added files:
added:/tmp/.hidden
Changed files:
changed:/tmp
Detailed information about changes:

File: /tmp
Mtime: old = 2002-01-21 13:36:25, new = 2002-01-21 15:22:03
Ctime: old = 2002-01-21 13:36:25, new = 2002-01-21 15:22:03
root@pc2:/mnt/floppy/aide/bin# 
root@pc2:/mnt/floppy/aide/bin# mv aide.db.new aide.db
root@pc2:/mnt/floppy/aide/bin# 
root@pc2:/mnt/floppy/aide/bin# ./aide --config=./aide.conf --check 
root@pc2:/mnt/floppy/aide/bin# 
</PRE>
</P>

<H2>Finally... conclusion, files, links, etc.</H2>

<P>
Remember to keep all the AIDE stuff in the floppy disk, umount and remove it after use,
change the example configuration file to suit your needs, try to not leave any information
in the system that may reveal to an attacker that you are using AIDE. You are encouraged to
read the manual pages and manual.html of AIDE, it's a very flexible program. And finally, quoting the 'General guidelines for security'
section of the AIDE manual:
<BR>
" Do not assume anything
<BR>
Trust no-one, nothing
<BR>
Nothing is secure
<BR>
Security is a trade-off with usability 
<BR>
Paranoia is your friend ".
</P>

<P>
The example aide.conf configuration file: <A HREF="misc/maiorano/aide.conf.txt">misc/maiorano/aide.conf.txt</A>
</P>

<P>
Home of the AIDE project: <A HREF="http://www.cs.tut.fi/~rammer/aide.html">http://www.cs.tut.fi/~rammer/aide.html</A>
<BR>
download AIDE tarball: <A HREF="http://www.cs.tut.fi/~rammer/aide-0.7.tar.gz">http://www.cs.tut.fi/~rammer/aide-0.7.tar.gz</A>
</P>

<P>
Home of the more famous alternative to AIDE, Tripwire: <A HREF="http://www.tripwire.org">http://www.tripwire.org</A>
</P>

<P>
Some papers and articles for further reading...
</P>

<P>
An interesting article at securityfocus.com titled 'You may already be hacked.': <A HREF="http://www.securityfocus.com/columnists/12">http://www.securityfocus.com/columnists/12</A>
</P>

<P>
An article at linuxsecurity.com titled 'Getting Started with Tripwire (Open Source Linux Edition)': <A HREF="http://www.linuxsecurity.com/feature_stories/feature_story-81.html">http://www.linuxsecurity.com/feature_stories/feature_story-81.html</A>
</P>

<P>
'Network- vs. Host-based Intrusion Detection - A Guide to Intrusion Detection Technology' from ISS, interesting reading also: <A HREF="http://secinf.net/info/ids/nvh_ids/">http://secinf.net/info/ids/nvh_ids/</A>
</P>

<P>
A more commercial point of view from NetworkWorldFusion, 'Getting the drop on network intruders': <A HREF="http://www.nwfusion.com/reviews/1004trends.html">http://www.nwfusion.com/reviews/1004trends.html</A>
</P>





<!-- *** BEGIN bio *** -->
<SPACER TYPE="vertical" SIZE="30">
<P> 
<H4><IMG ALIGN=BOTTOM ALT="" SRC="../gx/note.gif">Ariel Maiorano</H4>
<EM>I'm a free-lance programmer in Argentina, working mostly on web and security development.</EM>

<!-- *** END bio *** -->

<!-- *** BEGIN copyright *** -->
<P> <hr> <!-- P --> 
<H5 ALIGN=center>

Copyright &copy; 2002, Ariel Maiorano.<BR>
Copying license <A HREF="../copying.html">http://www.linuxgazette.com/copying.html</A><BR> 
Published in Issue 75 of <i>Linux Gazette</i>, February 2002</H5>
<!-- *** END copyright *** -->


<H4 ALIGN="center">
"Linux Gazette...<I>making Linux just a little more fun!</I>"
</H4>

<P> <HR> <P> 
<!--===================================================================-->

<center>
<H1><font color="maroon">GPL or BSD? Yes</font></H1>
<H4>By <a href="mailto:articles@gnujobs.com">Mark Nielsen</a></H4>
</center>
<P> <HR> <P>  

<!-- END header -->




<ol>
<li><a href="#GPL">What is the GPL software license?</a></li>
<li><a href="#BSD">What is the BSD software license?</a></li>
<li><a href="#both">Which is better for you?</a></li>
<li><a href="#my">Which is best for me?</a></li>
<li><a href="#conclusions">Conclusion</a></li>
<li><a href="#REF">References</a></li>
</ol>

<h3><a NAME="Introduction"></a>Introduction</h3>

<h3><a NAME="GPL"></a>What is the GPL software license?</h3>
<a href="http://www.gnu.org/licenses/licenses.html#GPL">
The GNU General Public License
</a> is a bit lengthy (in my opinion) and tries to promote a "community"
of programmers who share software freely and openly. It obfuscates the meaning
of "free" and "freedom", since it really restricts the freedoms of people
who don't want to openly share software that has the GPL license. Rick Holbert
is suggesting we use the word "liberated software" instead of "free
software". It still confuses me, because GNU software is not truly liberated,
you can't so with the software whatever you want, but the word "liberated"
is much better than the word "free". 

The GPL
license forces people who make changes to the software to openly share those
changes. Thus, it forces freedom on the "recipients" of the software, but
not to the "programmers" who make changes to the software. It can be a little
confusing, since it takes freedom away from the programmers, but strengthens
the freedoms of the "recipients" of the software. In general, for people
who wish to donate their software for the better of humanity, it seems to me
the GPL license satisfies those goals because the software becomes open
sourced and free for all people to use and to add to. 
<p>Sometimes, from a 
business perspective, you want to take software you can make proprietary 
so that  you can create a product which has hidden value. 
If you close source software
that has value, and your changes have value, then you can charge people for
the software because they can't make the software themselves or
it is too difficult and time-consuming for them to do so. You want to look
at the BSD-style licenses under those cases.
<p>
In a different scenario, if you care more about service rather 
than software products,
then the GPL license isn't something you should fear. For example, IBM
is using Linux for various servers. If you develop a business model on top
of GPLed software, you don't have anything to worry about. In addition, any
software you create from scratch or you use that as a BSD-style license you
can keep closed sourced running on top of your GPL software. There are still
plenty of ways your business can use GPL software without threatening your
business. Customers don't really care about how things are done, they just
want it done. A good example is the crappy software produced in the
most popular desktop OS. 99% of the customers who use that horrible nasty
software don't know all the garbage put into it, and most of them wouldn't 
care. Look at all the people who are very happy to get patches to their 
"most stable and reliable version" of their OS, when really the logic is
backwards. Shouldn't it have been stable and reliable from the beginning?
And if the current version is the most stable and reliable and it crashes
and has tons of bugs, then the previous versions were garbage? I keep on
trying to emphasize to people that something that is more stable and reliable
than garbage is still garbage that is only slightly more reliable and stable.
It doesn't mean much. In business, it really isn't the quality of the
product that sells, but if you meet the minimum requirements for people to use
and you can sell it cheap on a mass market --- or if you can get a monopoly
and brainwash people and congress with ads and money that your software
is the best, when you know it isn't. Bottom line, if you are scared of the
GPL license for business reasons, you probably haven't thought through your
business model hard enough. The most popular Linux OS in the US isn't the 
best in the world, and lacks many features a respectable Linux OS should have,
but it stays the most popular because it has market share and they improve
with every version, which keeps their customers happy, even though the
customers don't know how much better the software really could be. 

<h3><a NAME="BSD"></a>What are the BSD-style Licenses?</h3>
<a href="http://www.freebsd.org/copyright/">
FreeBSD Copyright Information
</a> has a variety of licenses. In general, you have freedom to do whatever
you want with the software, as long as you acknowledge it came from the
project you are working on. In some sense, you have more freedom to do whatever
you want with this software, but when you make changes, you can "restrict"
the freedom of others who receive the software you modified. 
<p>
The BSD style licenses don't have any "pass-thru" freedoms. They don't
promote "freedoms" for the recipient. This can be a beneficial if you wish
to take software other people have developed, make a few changes, and sell
the product, or just try to prevent people from understanding what you did. 
<p>
When a
non-programmer only understands what a piece of software does, but not how
it does it, then you can sell the software to that person 
with good marketing skills, even
if you really didn't do any of the work in creating the software. Take the
most popular OS for desktops and you will get a good idea of a company
which has no programming skills whatsoever, but are very good at marketing
and selling garbage for software. Having the ability to include software
from other developers (who knew what they were doing)
without revealing the changes you make can be a very
powerful if you can't program worth a darn but you are good a selling. From
a business perspective whose goal is to make money (as all businesses are
suppose to do), if you can use software that falls under the BSD-style
incenses, do it. You can have better control over your OS and prevent people
from copying a marketable product. The top two OSes for desktops have done
this. 
<p>
For the record, it seems like BSD programmers are very good at what they
do, so I don't want to sound like software that comes from BSD programmers
can be garbage. As far as I am concerned, as long as I can look at the
source code, it isn't garbage because it can always be changed, but as soon
as it does get closed sourced, then it becomes garbage, because I don't know
what it is really doing. All the open-sourced stuff from the BSD-style
licensed software it great.

<h3><a NAME="both"></a>Which is best for you?</h3>
There is one important belief you must understand: A LICENSE IS NOT BETTER
OR WORSE THAN ANY OTHER LICENSE except from your point of view involving the
goals you want to accomplish. A license is a foundation of how people
are to behave, just like a government. From a business point of view. the US
has a great government where money rules all. From a humanitarian point of view
other governments have better ideas and goals. But neither government
 is better or worse
if they accomplish the goals the people want. 
If the license does what you want 
it to do, then it is good for you, might not be good for someone else, but who 
cares about them. Thus, ONLY IDIOTS CLAIM ONE LICENSE IS BETTER THAN ANOTHER
IF THEY DON'T UNDERSTAND WHAT YOUR GOALS ARE. Once we know what your goals
are with the software you are creating, then we can determine which license
is best for your software. Even then, it is still an opinion open to debate.
<p>
Whenever I talk to BSD people, I usually get them to admit GPL is not a bad
thing. How? As I have stated, licenses are there for people to use. Nobody
is forcing you to put your software under BSD or the GPL license. Thus, 
IF YOU CHOOSE to put your software under the GPL, and don't mind people having
full rights to the source code, why is that bad? You agreed to it, you don't
mind, and you aren't looking to make profit off of it with some closed source
version, and you really don't want someone to come along and make profit 
off of a closed
source version off of something you worked really hard at doing when you
didn't get a dime. GPL levels the playing field so that everybody has equal
opportunity to make profit given the same software and they can't prevent
anybody else from having an equal opportunity as well. Looks like good
market driven competition to promote business and let the best people win.
Again, you choose to put this software on an equal basis for all to use. If 
they don't want to share like you did, fine, they can invest the millions 
of dollars needed to create their own software. 
Nobody is preventing them. 
<p>
Please license your software under more than one license. For example,
Perl is licensed under the GPL and the Artistic Licenses. If you want
your software to be used with other free software, you must license it for
more than just GPL. GPL tends to not work very well with other free software
licenses. 
<p>
One criticism of the free software community, as far as GPL goes:
they are "stealing" the word freedom. Question: Does a dictator have the
freedom to be a dictator? Yes. Freedom has nothing to do with a "community".
Freedom means you can do whatever you want whenever you want however you want.
People should have the freedom not to be free. One thing that irks me, although
I understand from a political perspective why they are doing it, but the
FSF and GPL dudes tend to redefine freedom what they want it to mean, but 
really they are only looking a very small subset of freedom, not ALL freedom.
They are interested is freedom for people to share open sourced software
and in the community, but not the freedom of an individual to do with
a piece a software however they wish -- such as making a closed source
version of a GPLed piece of software. Hence, GPL doesn't really promote
"freedom" in the true sense of the word freedom, but freedom for
a community to use software. I don't like how they are redefining the word
freedom and how some the the zealots won't even talk to you unless you
use the words "free" and "freedom" in a fashion they understand. However,
I suppose it is good from a political point of view, because it forces
people to think about freedom and most people don't have time to think
in our crazy 80 hour workweek schedules.  
<p>
Now, for BSD, it is not bad either. It is meant for the programmers who
like to create closed sourced programs. I understand why this is so 
attractive. I understand why this is important for some people, but let me
raise a very important point about BSD which doesn't make sense from
a philosophical point of view:
<p>
If people create software under the BSD license, somebody can take
all the work created under that license and create a closed source version
where they don't have to tell people what changes they made. Thus a whole
group of developers can work for years creating a cool piece of software 
where 
a single person or company can "steal" the software by creating a
slightly different closed source version, promoting it as the standard, 
and ruining any chance of the real programmers for the software
from ever benefiting from it. I just don't understand why so many people
want to work so hard to make others millionaires. GPL prevents this. It 
levels the playing field for all who wish to use the software. Everybody
has a fair shot. 
<p>
A clear case of how dangerous the BSD license is and how it promotes a virus
from spreading around (that nasty operating system from a first-rate
marketing but 2-bit programming company) around the world. 
Take a look at this disaster 
<a href="http://www.linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=2000-05-01-005-04-NW">
with Kerberos</a>. What a horrible thing to do. For myself, when an evil
nasty company corrupts a piece of software and there is no legal way to force
them to be cooperative with the rest of society, I will boycott all versions
of that software. I cannot afford to worry about different versions that
are incompatible popping up all over the place. Kerberos is ruined, and I 
will never use it. Why is it ruined? The corrupted version has too much 
influence in the world, that is isn't worth my time using similar software
knowing one day future versions can be completely closed sourced
ruining any chance of the versions I use being compatible with the closed
sourced versions. The threat of not being compatible with other businesses
who don't care about politics is too great for me for me to use this type
of software. It is on my banned list if I can avoid using it (hopefully).
<p>
With all the benefits and complaints I have about GPL and BSD, which is best
to use? Either, neither, both. Just understand what the licenses do, and if
you don't mind the consequences, great! Even though I really don't like the 
BSD-style licenses for my uses, if you don't mind other people taking your
software and making closed sourced versions they can sell, then the BSD-style
licenses might be good for you. 

<h3><a NAME="my"></a>Which is best for me?</h3>
Which license is best for me? The answer is yes, both. However, I only
use GPL. Why? I am so grateful for all the free software, I don't really
create any software that can be sold (I usually create web scripts in Python),
and anything I produce for the world I would want someone to take up after
I am done with it, it makes sense for me to use GPL. I really don't ever
see myself using the BSD-style licenses because I don't want the evil empire
from taking my software and using it to make profit without revealing
that they did to give other people the same shot at business. The reason
why the BSD-licenses are also good for me, is because, it is an option
for the future. I don't use the BSD-style licenses, but I am glad they
are an option. 

<h3><a NAME="conclusions"></a>Conclusion</h3>

<a href="http://slashdot.org/articles/99/06/23/1313224.shtml">
Anonymous Coward</a> made a good point:
<pre>
 I was all set to write a long essay in response, but most of the readers here would probably just appreciate a summary:

The GPL license is conducive to liberating software.

The BSD license is conducive to liberating people.

With the GPL license, the software maintains more of the freedom than the programmers who work on it.

With the BSD licenses, the programmers maintain more of the freedom with what they are allowed to do with derivative code.
</pre>

I prefer to think of it as the following:
<ul>
<li>GPL promotes freedom for the end-user.</li>
<li>BSD promotes freedom for the programmer.</li>
</ul>
<p>
In conclusion, anybody who says one license if better than another is a
simple-minded troll who doesn't understand that they can only make a judgment
for themselves and not others. I really want to emphasize that these people
need to be sterilized so that their DNA doesn't spread and create politicians,
generals, and judges who like to make decisions for people in other subjects
in life. 
I have complete disrespect and contempt for anybody who makes a decision
for other people about software licenses, 
and limited disrespect and contempt for anybody who
lets people make their decision for them. I don't mind theories about how
licenses affect society, BUT DON'T CLAIM ONE IS BETTER THAN ANOTHER, because
that is an opinion based on certain values, not a fact. I will accept as
fact what you think is the best license for you, but not your opinion about
what you think is best for other people -- that is just an opinion and 
theory.  
<p>
There seems to be 10 times the amount of BSD people who hate GPL.
I imagine that is because Linux is tens time more popular, but I really 
don't know. If FreeBSD was ten times more popular then Linux, I imagine
you would have 10 times more GPL guys 
moaning than the BSD guys. For me personally,
I am unaware of BSD software on a daily basis, and so, I have no reason
to voice my opinions actively. I suppose I really don't like people
who complain about the other licenses for two reasons:
<ul>
<li> They haven't thought through the situation carefully enough to realize
there is nothing wrong with licenses. </li>
<li>It reminds me of when I was a little younger making outrageous statements
because I didn't think through problems. However, the older
you get, the more boring you become, so making outrageous statements should
still be a daily occurrence to prevent yourself from becoming an old fart,
as long your statements are harmless.</li>
</ul>

<p>
Nuff said.

<h3>
<a NAME="REF"></a>References</h3>
Thanks to Rick Holbert for suggesting how I can improve the
article and for letting me know that "liberated" is a better term
than "free" to use when talking about "free software" in the GNU sense.

<ol>
<li><a href="http://slashdot.org/articles/99/06/23/1313224.shtml">
Slashdot</a> discussion which contains a lot of good points and I think
makes a good case for BSD people not to hate GPL.
</li>
<li>
If this article
changes, it will be available here
<a href="http://www.gnujobs.com/Articles/25/nielsen.html">
http://www.gnujobs.com/Articles/24/nielsen.html</a></li>
</ol>




<!-- *** BEGIN bio *** -->
<SPACER TYPE="vertical" SIZE="30">
<p> 
<h4><img align=bottom alt="" src="../gx/note.gif">Mark Nielsen</h4>
Mark works as an independent consultant donating time to causes like
GNUJobs.com, writing articles, writing free software, and working
as a volunteer at <a href="http://www.eastmont.net">eastmont.net</a>.

<!-- *** END bio *** -->

<!-- *** BEGIN copyright *** -->
<P> <hr> <!-- P --> 
<H5 ALIGN=center>

Copyright &copy; 2002, Mark Nielsen.<BR>
Copying license <A HREF="../copying.html">http://www.linuxgazette.com/copying.html</A><BR> 
Published in Issue 75 of <i>Linux Gazette</i>, February 2002</H5>
<!-- *** END copyright *** -->


<H4 ALIGN="center">
"Linux Gazette...<I>making Linux just a little more fun!</I>"
</H4>

<P> <HR> <P> 
<!--===================================================================-->

<center>
<H1><font color="maroon">The Foolish Things We Do With Our Computers</font></H1>
<H4>By <a href="mailto:gazette@ssc.com">Mike "Iron" Orr</a></H4>
</center>
<P> <HR> <P>  

<!-- END header -->




<H2>Drill</H2>

By <A HREF="mailto:apepin@pepinsrv.pepinhome.org">Tony Pepin</A>

<P> This happened a long time ago, when a 20-megabyte hard disk was a
giant, both in capacity and size.
My friend had a Corvus 20 meg drive that was shared among five PCs
which were used to run the accounting department of a small manufacturing
business.  The owner of the company was extremely pleased with my
friend and the efficiency of the computerized accounting group.

<P> One day, in the middle of month-end processing, the electric motor on
the Corvus burned out.
Payroll and Accounts Receivable needed to be done by the end of
the day, and there were no backups of the data files.  Since the Corvus
had never failed, my friend had not bothered making backups.

<P> Not having anything to lose, he opened up the case and removed the
burned out motor.  He then took an old electric hand drill with a
variable speed motor and chucked it directly to the hard disk.

<P> I wrote a quick and dirty program that read one sector of data and
displayed a message when the read was successful.  He ran this 
program while squeezing the trigger on the drill until it reported
successful reads.

<P> Once he had the speed right, he used black tape and taped the trigger
so that it would not move.

<P> The accounting group finished their month-end processing using the 
drill as the hard disk motor.  He continued to use the drive with
the drill for several weeks, after carefully making backups of the
data however.


<HR NOSHADE WIDTH="80%%"> <!--*********************** -->


<H2>Zap</H2>

By <A HREF="mailto:ogre@sirinet.net">John J Tobin</A>

<P> Here is a foolish story of what I did to a computer I was building.

<P> Back before I had a lot of money to buy new hardware and such I had to
make due with the few parts that I had lying around. One was an old XT
case with a working power supply, I had enough money to get a motherboard
and a DX4-100 chip, however cases and power supplies were expensive back
then so I decided to use the XT case that I had. Since the XT
motherboards were non-standard as far as mounting holes go and the new
board wouldn't line up I had the great brainstorm to mount the board on
the anti-static bag, I though "Sure it's anti-static it'll be safe." I
ran it and it would boot up but the keyboard controller was failing. I
took it back to the place that I bought and and I was explained to how
the anti-static bag will actually conduct electricity and that I fried
the board. Luckily he was willing to refund me half of my money, I then
had to shell out for another board and a case this time. The lesson I
learned was that if I am going to mount a board on anything but the pegs
of the case I better use wood, something that is definitely and
insulator.



<HR NOSHADE WIDTH="80%%"> <!--*********************** -->


<H2></H2>

By <A HREF="mailto:kirk@innocent.com">Kirk</A>

<P>  Here follows the story of 
the geekiest use I've ever put my Palm III to.

<P> I bought a Used Sparc Classic and it came with a hard drive, RAM, 
keyboard and mouse.  It did <EM>not</EM> come with a monitor.  Since I planned 
for it to be a server, the lack of a monitor wasn't a big deal except 
that I couldn't install Linux on it (or anything else for that matter) 
without being able to see what I was doing.

<P> Palm III to the rescue!  I had a serial cable that plugged into the 
bottom of the Palmpilot connected to a gender bender, connected to a 
DB25 &lt;-&gt; DB9 cable to plug into the serial port of the Sparc.  The 
serial port on the Sparc actually has the wiring for both /dev/ttyS0 
<EM>and</EM> /dev/ttyS1, but the first serial port has the same wiring as a PC, 
so it worked fine.  Last but not least, I unplugged the keyboard.

<P> Now that the hardware side was figured out, I downloaded a freeware 
vt100 program for my Palmpilot and configured it for the proper baud 
rate, stop bits and such.  When I turned on the Sparc, it tried to find 
a keyboard and failed.  Then it found a vt100 terminal on the serial 
port and used the Pilot as a console.  I installed RedHat 6.2 to my 
Sparc using that tiny little screen.

<P> After the install was done, I rebooted and telnetted in from my PC.  
Everything worked perfectly.


<BLOCKQUOTE><EM>
	[If you have a story about something foolish or ingenious you
	did to your computer, send it to
	<A HREF="mailto:gazette@ssc.com">gazette@ssc.com</A>-Iron.]
	</EM></BLOCKQUOTE>




<!-- *** BEGIN bio *** -->
<SPACER TYPE="vertical" SIZE="30">
<P>
<H4><IMG ALIGN=BOTTOM ALT="" SRC="../gx/note.gif">Mike Orr</H4>
<EM> Mike ("Iron") is the Editor of <I>Linux Gazette</I>.  You can read what he
has to say in the Back Page column in this issue.  He has been a Linux
enthusiast since 1991 and a Debian user since 1995.  He is SSC's web technical
coordinator, which means he gets to write a lot of Python scripts.
Non-computer interests include Ska/Oi! music and the international language
Esperanto.  The nickname Iron was given to him in college--short for Iron Orr,
hahaha. </EM>

<!-- *** END bio *** -->

<!-- *** BEGIN copyright *** -->
<P> <hr> <!-- P --> 
<H5 ALIGN=center>

Copyright &copy; 2002, Mike "Iron" Orr.<BR>
Copying license <A HREF="../copying.html">http://www.linuxgazette.com/copying.html</A><BR> 
Published in Issue 75 of <i>Linux Gazette</i>, February 2002</H5>
<!-- *** END copyright *** -->

  
<h4 align="center"> "Linux Gazette...<i>making Linux just a little more fun!</i>
" </h4>
  
<p> </p>
<hr> 
<p>  <!--===================================================================-->
  </p>
<center> 
<h1><font color="maroon">Simple Package Management With Stow</font></h1>
 
<h4>By <a href="mailto:pedaa@rockefeller.edu">Allan Peda</a></h4>
 </center>
 
<p> </p>
<hr> 
<p>    <!-- END header -->     </p>
<p>When running a single box with tried and true software, tracking the versions
 of software that you use may be a no-brainer. That is to say, you use whatever
Red Hat, Debian, or Sun provided (yes, I will touch on non-Linux issues here)
if you could find or build the necessary package. But wait: what if you have
been running the same machine for years and you simply must have the latest
Emacs?  What if you are developing your <i>own</i>  software and don't want
to create RPMs, or Debian dpkg each time you pause  at a version? What if
you don't trust that software package written by a 14 year old in that far
away country with an unstable government? In short, what if you are heeding 
Obi-Wan Kenobe's advice, and <i>using the source</i>? How do you make it
easy to rip out those configuration files, man pages, binaries, and libraries
that you may want to replace in the future? </p>
                       
<p>  Well, when you think about it a little bit, Unix has sort of provided
 the raw materials to do that, in the form of a symbolic link or <i>symlink</i>
. Symlinks are a powerful tool because they allow you to configure software
 so that its <i>implementation</i> does not necessarily connect directly
 to it's <i>interface</i> (sound familiar?). I might be playing a  little
loose with the definitions, but that really is what is being done  when,
for  example, postfix mimics sendmail. The implementation, that is postfix,
 is presenting the same interface as sendmail, which has become a de facto standard  interface to
the Unix mail transport agent (<a href="http://www.nightflight.com/foldoc-bin/foldoc.cgi?Message+Transfer+Agent">MTA</a>).</p>
                       
<p>In the case of symlinks, you might have a program <code>/opt/bin/new_cat</code>
linked  to <code>/opt/bin/cat</code>.  So if you looked at the link, you'd know
right away what version was being run, but it would still seem to be the same familiar
program. In this way the actual program being run can change as a better
implementation (algorithm, etc.) is developed.  Yes, environmental variables,
as used in scripts, allow this, but try retrofitting all the variables that
point to a program after the fact.  It might not be so easy.  Symlinks may
be the answer. For example symlinks are typically used to ease the
building of <a
href="http://www.pcwebopedia.com/TERM/m/motif.html">motif</a> from
source via the <code>lndir</code> utility.  Of course this symlinking stuff
could get out of hand, and should not be abused, but you get  the
idea. What the folks at the GNU project did was write a little  Perl
script that automates  that entire process of symlinking the  code you
are using to the interface that you want to present to the user.  Note
that <i>hard links</i> are subtly different, because there is no
differentiation  between the original file and the link (really a
second name since they share inodes, and hence <em> are</em>
identical). I find hard links to be of minimal  use, because it
becomes too easy to lose track of which filename should be deleted
and which should be kept.</p> 
                       
<h2>Introducing Stow</h2>
                       
<p>Right away I want to emphasize that <a href="#gnu_stow">stow</a> is not
a replacement for a full package management database, but it does allow one
to get many of the  benefits of a complex package management system
from a humble Perl script. As an aside, there is a package that  will
allow source to be entered into a Slackware, RPM, or Debian package
database, called  <a href="#checkinstall">checkinstall</a> 
. As an example I will go through the steps to install stow, then the steps
to install a mail (<a
href="http://www.nightflight.com/foldoc-bin/foldoc.cgi?query=MUA&action=Search">MUA</a>)
 replacement called <i><a href="#nail">nail</a></i> 
. This is a good example because it includes multiple files so that you can see
how one might encounter inadvertant collisions with previous versions. 
Also, nail a great enhancement to standard Berkeley mail, since it allows sending 
binary attachments on the command line, while offering the same base
functionality. 
</p>
  
<p>Stow is so simple to install that really no in depth discussion is needed. 
It should work if you have Perl 5.005 or later (this version is stock on
Solaris 8 AFAIK). Simply download the source from the GNU website or a local
<a href="http://www.gnu.org/server/list-mirrors.html">mirror</a>, extract
to a source directory with tar xzf and repeat the familiar <code>./configure</code>
, <code>make</code>, and <code>make install</code> sequence.  Despite
appearances, 
nothing is compiled, but a few things like the manual still need to get built.
 The <code>make install</code> step will place <code>stow</code> into the
 <code>/usr/local/bin</code> directory.  This is the default location, and
 I chose this setting to simplify this discussion.  The reasons
 will hopefully become apparent by the end of this article. The
 location of the installed <code>stow</code> executable is shown on the last line of the
 sample output below. I used 
 the <code>type</code> command, but you could also use <code>which</code> or perhaps
<code>whereis</code>. </p>  

<table class="sourcecode">
    <caption>Unpacking and installing stow</caption>    <tbody>
    <tr>
       <th></th>
    </tr>
    <tr>
       <td>                                                          
      <pre>[zippy@mybox zippy]$ cd src/<br>[zippy@mybox src]$ gunzip -c ../stow-1.3.3.tar.gz | tar xf -<br>[zippy@mybox src]$ ll<br>total 8<br>drwxrwxr-x    2 zippy   zippy       4096 Jan  6 06:19 stow-1.3.3<br>[zippy@mybox stow-1.3.3]$ ./configure <br>creating cache ./config.cache<br>checking for a BSD compatible install... /usr/bin/install -c<br>checking whether build environment is sane... yes<br>checking for mawk... no<br>checking for gawk... gawk<br>checking whether make sets ${MAKE}... yes<br>checking for a BSD compatible install... /usr/bin/install -c<br>checking for perl... /usr/bin/perl<br>updating cache ./config.cache<br>creating ./config.status<br>creating Makefile<br>creating stow<br>[zippy@mybox stow-1.3.3]$ make<br>make: Nothing to be done for `all'.<br>[zippy@mybox stow-1.3.3]$ sudo make install<br>make[1]: Entering directory `/home/zippy/src/stow-1.3.3'<br>/bin/sh ./mkinstalldirs /usr/local/bin<br> /usr/bin/install -c stow /usr/local/bin/stow<br>/bin/sh ./mkinstalldirs /usr/local/info<br> /usr/bin/install -c -m 644 ./stow.info /usr/local/info/stow.info<br>/bin/sh ./mkinstalldirs /usr/local/man/man8<br> /usr/bin/install -c -m 644 ./stow.8 /usr/local/man/man8/stow.8<br>make[1]: Leaving directory `/home/zippy/src/stow-1.3.3'<br>[zippy@mybox stow-1.3.3]$ type stow<br>stow is /usr/local/bin/stow<br>      </pre>
       </td>
    </tr>
   
  </tbody>            
</table>
  
<p>At this point <i>stow</i> is installed under /usr/local/bin. Make
sure to include this directory your <code>$PATH</code></p>

<h2>Under The Hood</h2>
<p>
To describe <code>stow</code>, one first needs to understand the
<code>configure</code> script, because these two scripts work
together, with <code>configure</code> building all the software
components, and <em>install</em>ing them on your machine.  The
configure script is a marvelous convenience.  It sniffs 
the system, checking for various prerequisite software.  The results
of these tests are used to design a set of <a
href="http://www.nightflight.com/foldoc-bin/foldoc.cgi?query=Makefile&action=Search">Makefile</a>s 
which will build and install your software to fit your system
configuration. There are many options to configure, in fact there are
alternate versions of this script as well, but for our purposes the
options of greatest interest is the <em>--prefix</em> argument.  Note
a second argument, the <code>--exec-prefix</code> allows some finer tuning 
of the actual installation process, but this option will not be
discussed in much detail.
</p>

<p>So now we understand that <code>configure</code> builds the scripts
that build the code, and that the location of the installed code may
be specified via <code>configure</code>'s <em>--prefix</em> command--
line argument.  It turns out that if you pick a single special spot to
install all source code, <code>stow</code> can then cleanly automate
the creation of symlinks to the installed code in such a way that the
source tree is readily evident, and can be replaced and removed.  For
example, invoking the configure script as 
<code>./configure --prefix=/opt/stow/foo-1.2.1</code>  
will install your package under <code>/opt/stow/foo-1.2.1</code>
</p>  

<h2>I'm Still Confused. What is this prefix and exec-prefix stuff?</h2>
<p>
Feel free to skip this section, and come back to it later, after you
have digested the rest of this article. Once you are comfortable
with the notion of an <em>actual</em> install location being separate
from the <em>apparent</em> location of a program you can consider the
parts of the puzzle that don't fit the this ideal scenario.  Imagine
the case of installing software across multiple machines where
<em>everything</em> is installed in a symlinked directory tree
isolated from the apparent location (found in the <code>$PATH</code>, or
<code>$MANPATH</code>).  Depending on your intentions, this might not be
what you want.   Consider the situation where an application might be
built for multiple architectures, for example source code could be
built for Solaris and linux systems as follows (assuming an identical
cross mounted source trees, but separate build directories): 

<pre>
sun$ cd sunsparc<br>sun$ ../foolib-1.1/configure --prefix=/usr/local \<br>> --exec-prefix=/usr/local/sunsparc<br>sun$ make<br>sun$ make install<br>
</pre>
Then from another xterm:
<pre>
sun$ ssh pengie
pengie$ cd linux<br>pengie$ ../foolib-1.1/configure --prefix=/usr/local \<br>> --exec-prefix=/usr/local/linux<br>pengie$ make<br>pengie$ make install<br>
</pre>
<p>
The bottom line is that the developer has to decide which files are
architecture dependant, and which are not, and you might not agree
with her.  Obviously documentation, and possibly configuration files
could be considered architecture independent.  Still, if you use stow,
you are free to remove symlinks by "unstowing" files. Since this does 
upgrading will not overwrite the old source, instead it will only 
break the links, and you can hand copy configuration files back.  Just
"restow" the package and try again you get the upgrade 
right. Personally, I don't use the <code>--exec-prefix</code> option 
much, preferring instead to manually link the (hopefully) few
configuration files that I want to treat specially, fixing broken
links after upgrading. So far I think it's been a good approach for
the simple situations I've encountered.
</p>

 
<h2>Installing Software With Stow</h2>
<p>
When I first started using <code>stow</code> a few years ago, I had some
frustration with it because I had already started setting up the
system (an HP-UX server) without it.  There were frequent collisions
with info files and manpages, ironically this was encountered the most
with emacs.  Naturally, following what is going on is easier for
simple packages.  The MUA software <code>nail</code>, is about as simple as you can get, since it
consists of the executable, the documentation, and the config files
(while you might want to link to <code>/etc</code> BTW).
</p>

<table class="sourcecode">
    <caption>Configuring for alternate locations</caption>    <tbody>
    <tr>
       <th></th>
    </tr>
    <tr>
       <td>                                                          
      <pre>[zippy@mybox src]$ gunzip -c ../nail-9.29.tar.gz  | tar xf -<br>[zippy@mybox src]$ cd nail-9.29/<br>[zippy@mybox nail-9.29]$ ./configure --prefix=/opt/stow/nail-9.29<br>creating cache ./config.cache<br>checking for a BSD compatible install... /usr/bin/install -c<br>checking for iswprint... yes<br>...<br>..... lots of stuff ...<br>updating cache ./config.cache<br>creating ./config.status<br>creating Makefile<br>creating config.h<br>[zippy@mybox nail-9.29]$ <br>      </pre>
       </td>
    </tr>
   
  </tbody>            
</table>

<p>What we are doing here is telling <code>configure</code> to put the
files under <code>/opt/stow/nail-9.29</code> 
but (implicit as far as stow is concerned) that the installed package will
appear to be under /opt for run time files. ( If you're
curious, you can look at the generated <code>Makefile</code> to see
that the <code>prefix</code> variable is set via the
<code>--prefix</code> option). 
</p>
  
  
<table class="sourcecode">
    <caption>Building the source code</caption>    <tbody>
    <tr>
       <th></th>
    </tr>
    <tr>
       <td>                                                          
      <pre>[zippy@mybox nail-9.29]$ <br>[zippy@mybox nail-9.29]$ make             <br>gcc -DHAVE_CONFIG_H -I. -I. -I.     -g -O2 -c version.c<br>gcc -DHAVE_CONFIG_H -I. -I. -I.     -g -O2 -c aux.c<br>... more stuff ...<br>gcc -DHAVE_CONFIG_H -I. -I. -I.     -g -O2 -c tty.c<br>gcc -DHAVE_CONFIG_H -I. -I. -I.     -g -O2 -c vars.c<br>gcc  -g -O2  -o nail  version.o aux.o base64.o cmd1.o cmd2.o \<br>cmd3.o cmdtab.o collect.o dotlock.o edit.o fio.o getname.o \<br>head.o v7.local.o lex.o list.o main.o mime.o names.o popen.o \<br>quit.o send.o sendout.o smtp.o strings.o temp.o tty.o vars.o  <br>[zippy@mybox nail-9.29]$<br>      </pre>
       </td>
    </tr>
   
  </tbody>            
</table>
  
<p> Now that we have compiled everything, we can install the software. </p>
                   
<table class="sourcecode">
    <caption>Running the Install</caption>    <tbody>
    <tr>
       <th></th>
    </tr>
    <tr>
       <td>                                                          
      <pre>[zippy@mybox nail-9.29]$ sudo make install<br>make[1]: Entering directory `/home/zippy/src/nail-9.29'<br>/bin/sh ./mkinstalldirs /opt/stow/nail-9.29/bin<br>mkdir /opt/stow<br>mkdir /opt/stow/nail-9.29<br>mkdir /opt/stow/nail-9.29/bin<br>  /usr/bin/install -c  nail /opt/stow/nail-9.29/bin/nail<br>/bin/sh ./mkinstalldirs /opt/stow/nail-9.29/man/man1<br>mkdir /opt/stow/nail-9.29/man<br>mkdir /opt/stow/nail-9.29/man/man1<br> /usr/bin/install -c -m 644 ./nail.1 /opt/stow/nail-9.29/man/man1/nail.1<br>test -f /etc/nail.rc || \<br>        { /bin/sh ./mkinstalldirs /etc; \<br>        /usr/bin/install -c -m 644 ./nail.rc /etc/nail.rc; }<br>make[1]: Leaving directory `/home/zippy/src/nail-9.29'<br>[zippy@mybox nail-9.29]$<br>      </pre>
       </td>
    </tr>
   
  </tbody>            
</table>
  
<p>So it's apparent from the previous listing that the file was  tucked under
/opt/stow/nail-9.29 as desired.  Stow then assumes that all the subdirectories
of the package are to be symlinked to their corresponding locations
under <code>--prefix</code> 
(or <code>${prefix}</code> if you look in the Makefile), so that
<code>/opt/stow/nail-9.29/bin</code>
becomes <code>/opt/bin</code>  Similarly
<code>/opt/stow/nail-9.29/man/man1</code> becomes <code>/opt/man/man1</code>
etc. This convention makes it very easy to isolate files 
used from the install locations.  The only step left is to actually
create the symlinks by running stow. </p>
  
<table class="sourcecode">
    <caption><i>Stow</i>ing the binaries</caption>    <tbody>
    <tr>
       <th></th>
    </tr>
    <tr>
       <td>                                                          
      <pre>[zippy@mybox nail-9.29]$ cd /opt/stow/<br>[zippy@mybox stow]$ sudo stow -vv nail-9.29/<br>Stowing package nail-9.29...<br>Stowing contents of nail-9.29<br>Stowing directory nail-9.29/bin<br>LINK /opt/bin to stow/nail-9.29/bin<br>Stowing directory nail-9.29/man<br>LINK /opt/man to stow/nail-9.29/man<br>[zippy@mybox stow]$ ls -ltr /opt/ <br>[zippy@mybox stow]$ ls -ltr /opt <br>total 4<br>drwxr-xr-x    3 root     root         4096 Jan  9 16:33 stow<br>lrwxrwxrwx    1 root     root           18 Jan  9 16:33 man -&gt; stow/nail-9.29/man<br>lrwxrwxrwx    1 root     root           18 Jan  9 16:33 bin -&gt; stow/nail-9.29/bin<br>stow/nail-9.29/bin<br>[zippy@mybox stow]$ PATH=/opt/bin:$PATH type nail<br>nail is /opt/bin/nail<br>      </pre>
       </td>
    </tr>
   
  </tbody>            
</table>
  
<p>Some explanation may be in order here, I cd'd to the stow directory
(<code>${prefix}/stow</code> by default), and simply typed <code>stow
-vv</code> plus the name of the subdirectory 
to recursively symlink.  The -vv simply adds verbose output for illustrative
purposes.  So now all that needs to be done is to modify the $PATH variable,
 and your files are installed. Stow has created all the necessary links.
Note that to uninstall the files (thus breaking the links) simply
<em>unstow</em> them. This will disconnect (unlink) the installed binaries, but
will <em>not</em> delete any files, so it's really quite a useful
safety net.
</p>
                
<p>             
<table class="sourcecode">
             <caption>Unstowing a directory</caption><tbody>
             <tr>
               <td> 
      <pre>[zippy@mybox stow]$ pwd<br>/opt/stow<br>[zippy@mybox stow]$ ls -l<br>total 4<br>drwxr-xr-x    4 root     root         4096 Jan  9 16:33 nail-9.29<br>[zippy@mybox stow]$ sudo stow -Dvv nail-9.29/<br>Unstowing in /opt<br>UNLINK /opt/bin<br>UNLINK /opt/man<br>[zippy@mybox stow]$<br></pre>
 	      </td>
             </tr>
   
  </tbody>            
</table>
 </p>
<p>And all the installed files are neatly out of the way.  Of course to <em>
restow</em> the files you simply repeat the previous commands. This may seem
like a lot of extra work, but once you get in the habit of using it, and
experience the convenience of being able to unlink and entire package you'll
find it's worth it.  Finally, you might want to install nail yourself, and
use it, possibly via an alias or shell function, as a mail
replacement. But that could be an entire article in itself.   <br>
 <br>
 Happy hacking!  </p>
                        
<h3>References</h3>
 
<ol>
 	<li><a name="gnu_stow">GNU stow</a><br>
             Maintained by Guillaume Morin<br>
 	    <a href="http://www.gnu.org/software/stow/stow.html">             http://www.gnu.org/software/stow/stow.html</a><br>
 	    <a name="stow_savannah">GNU stow entry on Savannah</a><br>
 	    <a href="http://savannah.gnu.org/projects/stow">             http://savannah.gnu.org/projects/stow</a>
         </li>
 	<li><a name="checkinstall">Checkinstall</a><br>
             by Itzo <a href="http://freshmeat.net/projects/checkinstall/">
             http://freshmeat.net/projects/checkinstall/</a>         </li>
 	<li><a name="nail">Nail, a replacement for the mail MUA</a><br>
             by Gunnar Ritter<a href="http://omnibus.ruf.uni-freiburg.de/%7Egritter/">
             http://omnibus.ruf.uni-freiburg.de/~gritter/</a>         </li>
 	<li><a name="lfhs">Linux Filesystem Hierarchy Standard, (FHS)</a><br>
             Maintained by freestandards.org<a href="http://www.pathname.com/fhs/">
 	    http://www.pathname.com/fhs/</a>         </li>
 	<li><a name="autoconf_book">GNU Autoconf, Automake, and libtool</a><br>
             By Gary V. Vaughan, Ben Elliston, Tom Tromey, and Ian Lance
Taylor<br>
 	    offers an excellent review of the concepts behind exec-prefix options 
	    to the <em>configure</em> script.<br>
             <a href="http://sources.redhat.com/autobook/">http://sources.redhat.com/autobook/</a>
 	    ISBN 1-57870-190-2<br>
         </li>
   
</ol>
                             <!-- *** BEGIN bio *** --> <spacer type="vertical" size="30">
 
<p>  </p>
<h4><img align="baseline" alt="" src="peda_files/note">
Allan Peda</h4>
 Allan has been enjoying Linux since about 1995, discovering Perl shortly 
thereafter. Currently he works as a programmer analyst at Rockefeller University,
and does part time Linux consulting work in the NYC area.  He enjoys surfing
and sailing, and dreams of owning a charter boat in <em>tranquilo</em> Costa
Rica.  <!-- *** END bio *** -->  <!-- *** BEGIN copyright *** --> 
<p> </p>
<hr> <!-- P -->  
<h5 align="center">  Copyright  2002, Allan Peda.<br>
 Copying license <a href="file:///V:/workarea/copying.html">http://www.linuxgazette.com/copying.html</a><br>
  Published in Issue 75 of <i>Linux Gazette</i>, February 2002</h5>
 <!-- *** END copyright *** -->  
<center>
<h4>
"Linux Gazette...<i>making Linux just a little more fun!</i>"</h4></center>

<hr>
<p><!--===================================================================-->
<center>
<h1>
<font color="#800000">Why I wrote Install Kernel (ik) and How It Works</font></h1></center>

<center>
<h4>
By <a href="mailto:war@starband.net">Justin Piszcz</a></h4></center>

<hr>
<p><!-- END header -->
<p>ik (Install Kernel) is available at
<a href="http://freshmeat.net/projects/ik">http://freshmeat.net/projects/ik</a>
and <a href="http://www.ramdown.com/war/ik">http://www.ramdown.com/war/ik</a>.
<p>In December 2000, after four years of using Linux, compiling and installing
kernels became a waste of my time. I chose to write my own kernel installation
and setup script called Install Kernel, because no other scripts existed
at the time, and I needed something that would install the Linux kernel
and automatically setup my bootloader configuration file with no user intervention.
Install Kernel interfaces with the Linux operating system by moving and
editing files. When not using ik, the majority of time consumed when updating
a kernel mainly consists of moving files around and setting up configuration
files. The ik script has three basic parts: dependency checks, compiling
the kernel and moving the files to their proper locations, and editing
boot loader configuration files. Install Kernel aims to help&nbsp; people
who are either new to installing the kernel or people who choose to use
their time efficiently.
<p>Every operating system has some type of kernel; the kernel is the core
of the operating system. The current kernel version as of this writing
is Linux 2.4.17. Most users either recompile or upgrade their kernels.
One may choose to upgrade his or her kernel in order to add support for
a certain device attached to his or her computer. For instance, if one
bought a Universal Serial Bus (USB) scanner, he or she would have to make
the appropriate changes to the kernel configuration file, and recompile
and install the new kernel. Reasons for upgrading the kernel may include
a better virtual memory subsystem, or important security fixes. An example
would be Linux kernel version 2.4.11. This kernel was vulnerable to a symlink
denial of service attack, prompting users running 2.4.11 to immediately
upgrade to 2.4.12 when it became available due to this vulnerability. These
are the fundamental reasons of why one may want to either recompile or
upgrade his or her kernel.
<p>Install Kernel interfaces with the Linux operating system by running
a series of functions or groups of commands that automate the compiling
or recompiling and installation process. It consists of three groups of
functions: checking dependencies, building the kernel and moving files,
and editing the boot loader configuration file. Grouping all of the functions
in these three groups makes maintaining and altering the script much easier.
Install Kernel can also be considered a program, because a program does
checking and makes choices accordingly. A script is usually a file, which
contains a certain number of commands with no logic in mind. Therefore,
while ik is technically a script, it can also be called a program.
<p>Dependency checks are to make sure the current system configuration
and settings are properly setup before proceeding with the kernel build.
There are seven dependency checks, they are: a root check, space check,
link check, boot check, boot loader check, configuration check, and a module
check. First, the root check makes sure the user is a super user; which
means they are capable of editing important system files only accessible
to the root account. The space check makes sure there is at least 200 megabytes
available. The kernel source these days is around 150 megabytes just for
the source code. When one compiles the kernel, it may increase the size
to 50 megabytes or more. Therefore, ik checks for at least 200MB available
in order to successfully compile the kernel without running out of space.
Next, it is not required, but it is standard to have a symbolic link of
/usr/src/linux pointing to /usr/src/linux-x.y.z. The fourth check makes
sure the user has a /boot directory, this is where the Linux kernel files
will be installed to. The fifth check determines the bootloader that will
be used. There are two main boot loaders in Linux. LILO and GRUB are the
two most popular for booting the operating system. This check accurately
finds whether the kernel was booted from either LILO or GRUB by checking
which bootloader was used last. It then tells the rest of the script to
edit the correct one accordingly. The sixth configuration check is to make
sure users have created a proper kernel configuration file, which is used
in the process of building the Linux kernel. The final check is a module
check, if modules are turned off, the script will determine this and alter
the installation process to install with no module support. The main idea
behind the depdency checks is to make sure the user cannot damage his or
her system if they do not do something right.
<p>The installation process also contains seven functions. The installation
process is usually several commands. However, because of the differences
that can occur in a user's configuration file, each part of the building
process must be checked and the building process may need to be altered.
The first function makes sure the dependencies are setup correctly for
all files in the kernel source tree. The second function deletes stale
object files and or old kernel files. Next, the third function is the kernel
build function; this function runs a command to build the Linux kernel.
Next, functions four and five make and install modules if the user had
specified module support in his or her kernel configuration file. The sixth
function moves the Linux kernel and its System dependency map to the boot
partition. The last function of the build process sets up module dependencies
for the new kernel if modules were defined. The installation process also
includes a small error check for each part of the kernel build process.
If any part of the kernel build process fails; the script will abort, not
modifying any boot loader configuration files. This is important; because
if it did not abort, it may alter the boot loader configuration files,
thus rendering the system unbootable. It is important to support every
Linux configuration possible because of the wide use of this script.
<p>The boot loader configuration and setup process is probably the most
important aspect of installing a new kernel. An improper boot loader configuration
may leave one with system that does not boot; or simply does not boot the
new kernel. It is also important, as some systems may have two or more
boot loaders installed. There are four functions defined for this process.
The first function uses the boot loader, which was defined during the configuration
checks. The second function defines where the LILO or GRUB configuration
files are located. Next, depending on which boot loader is found, either
LILO or GRUB configuration files are edited automatically by sed. Sed is
a stream editor, which edits a file with no user intervention. If user
intervention were required, the user would have to be present between certain
parts of the kernel installation. With ik, it makes efficient use of a
user's time because only one command needs to be entered to complete the
entire installation and setup process.
<p>Install Kernel is a useful tool for those who are new to Linux, rebuild
their kernel often, or value their time. It reduces the commands for installing
the kernel from about thirteen to one. Users new to Linux may find this
attractive. This is because the entire process is automated; and if something
is not correct, in most cases ik will notify the user what is incorrect,
and how to fix the error. On the other side, for experienced users who
do not wish to spend valuable time installing a new kernel, this is also
very handy. Install Kernel is efficient by requiring no user intervention
and reducing time spent on kernel installs, and effective by giving new
to Linux the option for an easy kernel upgrade.&nbsp;<!-- *** BEGIN bio *** --><!-- *** END bio *** --><!-- *** BEGIN copyright *** -->
<p>
<hr><!-- P -->
<center>
<h5>
Copyright &copy; 2002, Justin Piszcz.<br>
Copying license <a href="../copying.html">http://www.linuxgazette.com/copying.html<br>
</a>Published in Issue 75 of <i>Linux Gazette</i>, February 2002</h5></center>
<!-- *** END copyright *** -->

<H4 ALIGN="center">
"Linux Gazette...<I>making Linux just a little more fun!</I>"
</H4>

<P> <HR> <P> 
<!--===================================================================-->

<center>
<H1><font color="maroon">Writing Documentation, Part III: DocBook/XML</font></H1>
<H4>By <a href="mailto:cspiel@hammersmith-consulting.com">Christoph Spiel</a></H4>
</center>
<P> <HR> <P>  

<!-- END header -->




<p>To cite from ``DocBook -- The Definitive Guide'' (see <a href="#further 
reading">Further Reading</a> at the end of this section), <em>DocBook provides
a system for writing structured documents using SGML or XML</em>. In the
following, I shall focus on the XML-variant of DocBook, because the
SGML-variant is being phased out.</p>

<p>DocBook has been developed with a slightly different mindset than the 
systems I discussed in the two previous articles  
(<A HREF="../issue73/spiel.html">POD article</A>, 
<A HREF="../issue74/spiel.html">LaTeX/latex2html article</A>).
</p>

<ul>
<li>``Text'' in a DocBook document is better understood as ``textual data''.
Along the same lines, a DocBook document is better thought of as a
human-readable database.</li>

<li>DocBook, as a standard, prescribes how valid documents must be formed and
how the output produced from a DocBook document has to ``look''. I put quotes
around ``look'', because DocBook documents are not restricted to being viewed on
a screen, but can also be transformed into speech, for example in a car
navigation system. (Imagine your SUV asking you: ``Do you want to install KDE
version 3 now?'')</li>

<li>When transformed into any output format, DocBook documents are rigidly
verified whether they conform to a given structure. This structure is defined
in so-called document type descriptions, or DTDs for short. 

<blockquote>By changing the DTD, almost arbitrary constraints can be imposed on
a DocBook document. For example, an organizing committee of a conference
might adapt the DocBook DTD in such way that all the article of the conference's
proceedings will have a uniform look and all the necessary author
information.</blockquote>
</li>
</ul>

<p>The particular features of DocBook mentioned, imply uses of DocBook
documents that are not possible, at least not easily, with POD or LaTeX
documents.</p>

<ul>
<li>Because of their structure, DocBook documents are easily created,
modified, or queried programmatically. 

<p>For example, we load the <code>XML::DOM</code> module into Perl to access
XML compliant documents, and Python ships with the <code>xml.dom</code>
module, which has been designed for the same purpose.</p>

<p>The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C, <a href="http://www.w3c.org)">
http://www.w3c.org)</a> has even defined a language for XML translations,
called XSLT (see for example <a href="http://www.w3.org/TR/xslt">
http://www.w3.org/TR/xslt</a> and <a href= 
"http://www.oasis-open.org/cover/xsl.html).">
http://www.oasis-open.org/cover/xsl.html).</a> XSLT itself is a language
defined within the SGML framework, which makes XML and XSL look quite similar:
loads of angle brackets.</p>
</li>

<li>Various tools transform DocBook sources into HTML, TeX, GNU Texinfo and
many other -- including audio -- formats. This is again different to the
source formats we looked at before, where only a single application does the
transformation. 

<p>Popular transformation tools are:</p>

<ul>
<li>OpenJade (http://openjade.sourceforge.net/), which uses DSSSL (see for
example <a href="http://www.jclark.com/dsssl/">
http://www.jclark.com/dsssl/</a> and <a href= 
"http://www.oasis-open.org/cover/dsssl.html),">
http://www.oasis-open.org/cover/dsssl.html),</a> as a Lisp-like language to
describe the transformations from XML-DocBook to HTML, TeX, and so on and</li>

<li>Saxon (http://saxon.sourceforge.net/), which uses XSL to do the job.</li>
</ul>

<p>The installation of both tools including the necessary <a href= 
"http://sourceforge.net/projects/docbook">DSSSL stylesheets</a> or <a href= 
"http://sourceforge.net/projects/docbook">XSL stylesheets</a> is quite tricky,
thus I would like to recommend to beginners the installation from <em>
.deb</em> or <em>.rpm</em> packages.</p>
</li>
</ul>

<p>Being general purpose translators, both tools are not restricted to
transforming DocBook documents. If you feed them the right style sheets, they
will do other translations, too.</p>

<h3><a name="syntax">Syntax</a></h3>

<p>The DocBook/XML syntax resembles HTML. The fundamental difference between
the two being the strictness with which the syntax is enforced. Many HTML
browsers are extremely forgiving about unterminated elements, and they often
silently ignore unknown elements or attributes. DocBook/XML translators reject
non-DTD complying input with detailed error messages, and refuse to produce
any output in such cases.
</p>

<p>DocBook/XML is spoken in several variants, where the variants differ in
interpreting the closing tag of an element. The most verbose dialect always
closes <code>&lt;tag&gt;</code> with <code>&lt;/tag&gt;</code>. Another
variant allows for abbreviating the closing tag to <code>&lt;/&gt;</code>, yet
another allows dropping the closing tag for empty elements all together. I
prefer writing out every end tag, a style that has proven advantageous in
deeply nested structures such as nested lists. So, in this article only the
form <code>&lt;tag&gt; ... &lt;/tag&gt;</code> will appear.</p>

<p>Special characters are written with the ampersand-semicolon convention as
they are in HTML. The most frequently used special characters are</p>

<ul>
<li>Ampersand, ``<code>&amp;amp;</code>''</li>

<li>Less-Than Sign, ``<code>&amp;lt;</code>'' and</li>

<li>Greater-Than Sign, ``<code>&amp;gt;</code>''.</li>
</ul>

<p>Comments are bracketed between ``<code>&lt;!--</code>'' and
``<code>--</code>&gt;''.</p>

<h3><a name="document structure">Document Structure</a></h3>

<p>As already mentioned, DocBook documents must adhere to the structure that
is defined in a DTD. Every document starts with selecting a particular
DTD:</p>

<pre>
    &lt;!DOCTYPE                                       (1)
     book                                           (2)
     PUBLIC "-//OASIS//DTD DocBook XML V4.1//EN"    (3)
     "/usr/share/sgml/db41xml/docbookx.dtd"         (4)
     [ ]                                            (5)
    &gt;
</pre>

<p>where I have broken the expression (from ``&lt;'' to ``&gt;'') into several
lines for easier analysis, and added numbers in parentheses for reference.</p>

<p>Part&nbsp;(1) tells the system that we are about to choose our DTD.
Part&nbsp;(2) defines element <a href="#item_book"><code>book</code></a> to be
the root element of our document. part&nbsp;(3), the public identifier selects
the DTD to use. The public identifier is the string in quotes. The system
identifier, part&nbsp;(4) tells the translation tools where to find the DTD on
the local computer system. Within the square brackets, part&nbsp;(5), we could
place so called entity definitions, but I do not want go into detail on
entities in this introduction, so we leave this space empty.</p>

<p>Now, we start the text with the root element, in our case <a href= 
"#item_book"><code>book</code></a>. What elements go into <a href=
"#item_book"><code>book</code></a> is defined in the DocBook DTD. These are,
for example, <code>bookinfo</code> or <code>chapter</code>. For a
comprehensive list of allowed elements, consult ``The Definitive Guide''. The
elements allowed within <code>bookinfo</code> or <code>chapter</code> are also
defined in the DocBook DTD as are all elements. The only way constructing a
valid document is by obeying all the rules prescribed by the DTD.</p>

<p>What might look like a drag on first sight -- Rules? Rules suck! -- is the
key to open up the document to programmatic access. As the document complies
to the DTD, all post-processing can rely on that very fact. Good for the
programmers of the post-processors! I have to admit that the number of
elements and the elements' mutual relationships is tough to pick up. However,
the relations are logical: a chapter contains one ore more (introductory)
paragraphs and one or more Level&nbsp;1 sections. No section, on the other
hand, contains a chapter, that would be nonsense. Having a copy of ``The
Definitive Guide'' right next to the keyboard also helps to learn DocBook.
Further down, there is a short compilation of commonly used tags.</p>

<p>Here comes a very short, but complete DocBook document.</p>

<pre>
    &lt;!DOCTYPE book PUBLIC "-//OASIS//DTD DocBook XML V4.1//EN"
                          "/usr/share/sgml/db41xml/docbookx.dtd" []&gt;
</pre>

<pre>
    &lt;book&gt;
        &lt;bookinfo&gt;
            &lt;title&gt;XYZ (version 0.8.15) User's Manual&lt;/title&gt;
        &lt;/bookinfo&gt;
</pre>

<pre>
        &lt;chapter id = "chapter-introduction"&gt;
            &lt;title&gt;Introduction&lt;/title&gt;
</pre>

<pre>
            &lt;para&gt;
                This chapter provides a quick introduction to XYZ.
            &lt;/para&gt;
</pre>

<pre>
            &lt;sect1 id = "section-syntax"&gt;
                &lt;title&gt;Syntax&lt;/title&gt;
</pre>

<pre>
                &lt;para&gt;
                    In this section we present an outline of the
                    syntax of the XYZ language.
                &lt;/para&gt;
            &lt;/sect1&gt;
</pre>

<pre>
            &lt;sect1 id = "section-core-library"&gt;
                &lt;title&gt;Core Library&lt;/title&gt;
</pre>

<pre>
                &lt;para&gt;
                    Even if no additional libraries are loaded to a
                    XYZ program, it has access to some core library
                    functions.
                &lt;/para&gt;
            &lt;/sect1&gt;
        &lt;/chapter&gt;
</pre>

<pre>
        &lt;chapter id = "chapter-commands"&gt;
            &lt;title&gt;Commands&lt;/title&gt;
</pre>

<pre>
            &lt;sect1 id = "section-interactive-commands"&gt;
                &lt;title&gt;Interactive Commands&lt;/title&gt;
</pre>

<pre>
                &lt;para&gt;
                    ...
                &lt;/para&gt;
</pre>

<pre>
                &lt;sect2 id = "section-interactive-commands-argumentless"&gt;
                    &lt;title&gt;Argumentless Commands&lt;/title&gt;
</pre>

<pre>
                    &lt;para&gt;
                        ...
                    &lt;/para&gt;
                &lt;/sect2&gt;
            &lt;/sect1&gt;
</pre>

<pre>
            &lt;sect1 id = "section-non-interactive-commands"&gt;
                &lt;title&gt;Non-Interactive Commands&lt;/title&gt;
</pre>

<pre>
                &lt;para&gt;
                    ...
                &lt;/para&gt;
</pre>

<pre>
                &lt;sect2 id = "section-non-interactive-commands-argumentless"&gt;
                    &lt;title&gt;Argumentless Commands&lt;/title&gt;
</pre>

<pre>
                    &lt;para&gt;
                        ...
                    &lt;/para&gt;
                &lt;/sect2&gt;
            &lt;/sect1&gt;
        &lt;/chapter&gt;
    &lt;/book&gt;
</pre>

<h3><a name="useful tags">Useful Tags</a></h3>

<p>To help the aspiring DocBook writer making sense of the loads of elements,
the DocBook standard defines, I have compiled a bunch of useful tags, which
are used often.</p>

<h4><a name="root section tags">Root Section Tags</a></h4>

<p>Root section tags define the outermost element of any document.</p>

<dl>
<dt><strong><a name="item_book"><code>book</code></a></strong><br>
</dt>

<dd>&lt;book&gt; 

<pre>
  I&lt;paragraphs or chapters&gt;
</pre>

<p>&lt;/book&gt;</p>
</dd>

<dt><strong><a name="item_article"><code>article</code></a></strong><br>
</dt>

<dd>&lt;article&gt; 

<pre>
  I&lt;paragraphs or level 1 sections&gt;
</pre>

<p>&lt;/article&gt;</p>
</dd>
</dl>

<h4><a name="sectioning tags">Sectioning Tags</a></h4>

<p>Sectioning elements divide the document into logical parts like chapters,
sections, paragraphs, and so on.</p>

<dl>
<dt><strong><a name="item_chapter%2C_sect1%2C_%2E%2E%2E%2C_sect6"><code>
chapter</code>, <code>sect1</code>, ..., <code>sect6</code></a></strong><br>
</dt>

<dd>&lt;chapter id = "<em>label</em>"&gt; 

<p><em>title</em></p>

<p>followed by</p>

<p><em>paragraphs or level N+1 sections</em></p>

<p>&lt;/chapter&gt;</p>

<p>Define a section. Commonly, chapter and section elements carry the <code>
id</code> attribute, which allows for referencing the elements with, for
example, &lt;xref linkend = "label"&gt;&lt;/xref&gt;.</p>
</dd>

<dt><strong><a name="item_para"><code>para</code></a></strong><br>
</dt>

<dd>&lt;para&gt; 

<p><em>paragraph text</em></p>

<p>&lt;/para&gt;</p>

<p>Group several lines of text together to form a paragraph. This is the
workhorse element in many documents.</p>
</dd>

<dt><strong><a name="item_programlisting"><code>
programlisting</code></a></strong><br>
</dt>

<dd>&lt;programlisting role = "<em>language</em>"&gt; 

<p><em>program text</em></p>

<p>&lt;/programlisting&gt;</p>

<p>Render a longish piece of program text -- preserving the line breaks.
The program is assumed to be written in the language specified in the
<code>role</code> attribute. Note
that within <a href="#item_programlisting"><code>programlisting</code></a> all
special characters retain their meaning!</p>

<p>This means in particular that you cannot use the control characters
``<code>&lt;</code>'', ``<code>&gt;</code>'', and ``<code>&amp;</code>'' inside
of it.  The several workarounds for this problem.  Either you replace all 
control characters with their mnemonic equivalents (``<code>&amp;lt;</code>'',
``<code>&amp;gt;</code>'', and ``<code>&amp;amp;</code>'' in our example), or
you wrap the program code in a <code>CDATA</code>, like, for example,</p>

<pre>
    &lt;programlisting&gt;
        &lt;![CDATA[
            cout &lt;&lt; "value = &lt;" &lt;&lt; &amp;p &lt;&lt; "&gt;\n";
        ]]&gt;
    &lt;/programlisting&gt;
</pre>

<p>or, if the program is stored in file&nbsp;<EM>my-program.pl</EM>, pull in
the whole file with</p>

<pre>
    &lt;programlisting&gt;
        &lt;inlinemediaobject&gt;
            &lt;imageobject&gt;
                &lt;imagedata format = "linespecific"
                           fileref = "my-program.pl"&gt;&lt;/imagedata&gt;
            &lt;/imageobject&gt;
        &lt;/inlinemediaobject&gt;
    &lt;/programlisting&gt;
</pre>
</dd>
</dl>

<h4><a name="list making tags">List-Making Tags</a></h4>

<p>Generate the three typical types of lists.</p>

<p>The <em>item</em>s or <em>definition</em>s are typically formed by one or
more paragraphs, but they are allowed to contain program listings, too. The
<em>term</em>s usually are one or more words, not paragraphs.</p>

<ul>
<li>Itemized List 

<p>&lt;itemizedlist&gt;</p>

<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&lt;listitem&gt;</p>

<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<em>first item</em></p>

<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&lt;/listitem&gt;</p>

<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&lt;listitem&gt;</p>

<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<em>second item</em></p>

<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&lt;/listitem&gt;</p>

<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;...</p>

<p>&lt;/itemizedlist&gt;</p>
</li>

<li>Enumerated List 

<p>&lt;enumeratedlist&gt;</p>

<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&lt;listitem&gt;</p>

<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<em>first item</em></p>

<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&lt;/listitem&gt;</p>

<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&lt;listitem&gt;</p>

<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<em>second item</em></p>

<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&lt;/listitem&gt;</p>

<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;...</p>

<p>&lt;/enumeratedlist&gt;</p>
</li>

<li>Description List 

<p>&lt;variablelist&gt;</p>

<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&lt;varlistentry&gt;</p>

<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&lt;term&gt;<em>first
term</em>&lt;/term&gt;</p>

<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&lt;listitem&gt;</p>

<p>
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<em>
first definition</em></p>

<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&lt;/listitem&gt;</p>

<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&lt;/varlistentry&gt;</p>

<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&lt;varlistentry&gt;</p>

<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&lt;term&gt;<em>second
term</em>&lt;/term&gt;</p>

<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&lt;listitem&gt;</p>

<p>
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<em>
second definition</em></p>

<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&lt;/listitem&gt;</p>

<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&lt;/varlistentry&gt;</p>

<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;...</p>

<p>&lt;/variablelist&gt;</p>
</li>
</ul>

<h4><a name="inline markup tags">Inline Markup Tags</a></h4>

<dl>
<dt><strong><a name="item_emphasis"><code>emphasis</code></a></strong><br>
</dt>

<dd>&lt;emphasis&gt;<em>text to be emphasized</em>&lt;/emphasis&gt; 

<p>Highlight a short part of the document; usually a single word.</p>
</dd>

<dt><strong><a name="item_filename"><code>filename</code></a></strong><br>
</dt>

<dd>&lt;filename&gt;<em>filename or directory name</em>&lt;/filename&gt; 

<p>Mark word as filename.</p>
</dd>

<dt><strong><a name="item_literal"><code>literal</code></a></strong><br>
</dt>

<dd>&lt;literal&gt;<em>literal something</em>&lt;/literal&gt; 

<p>&lt;literal role = "<em>classification</em>"&gt;<em>literal
something</em>&lt;/literal&gt;</p>

<p>Mark a word as being a literal expression. Use this tag only as last
possibility, if no other more specific tag matches. To calm one's bad
conscience, <a href="#item_literal"><code>literal</code></a> often gets
decorated with a <code>role</code> attribute, which describes more precisely
the kind of literal.</p>
</dd>

<dt><strong><a name="item_replaceable"><code>
replaceable</code></a></strong><br>
</dt>

<dd>&lt;replaceable&gt;<em>placeholder name</em>&lt;/replaceable&gt; 

<p>Mark a meta-variable.</p>
</dd>

<dt><strong><a name="item_title"><code>title</code></a></strong><br>
</dt>

<dd>&lt;title&gt;<em>title</em>&lt;/title&gt; 

<p>Give a name to a section or a formal element, like a table.</p>
</dd>
</dl>

<h4><a name="cross references">Cross References</a></h4>

<p>Cross references refer to other parts of the same DocBook document or to
other documents on the World Wide Web. Targets of the former are all elements
that carry an <code>id</code> attribute, targets of the latter are selected
with universal resource locators (URLs).</p>

<dl>
<dt><strong><a name="item_link"><code>link</code></a></strong><br>
</dt>

<dd>&lt;link linkend = "<em>target</em>"&gt;<em>item</em>&lt;/link&gt; 

<p>Install a (hyper-)link to the spot identified via <em>target</em> within
the current document.</p>
</dd>

<dt><strong><a name="item_ulink"><code>ulink</code></a></strong><br>
</dt>

<dd>&lt;ulink url = "<em>complete URL</em>"&gt;<em>item</em>&lt;/ulink&gt; 

<p>Install a hyper-link to a WWW-accessible document identified by a <em>
complete URL</em>. A complete URL includes the protocol, for example, <code>
http://</code>.</p>
</dd>

<dt><strong><a name="item_xref"><code>xref</code></a></strong><br>
</dt>

<dd>&lt;xref linkend = "<em>target</em>"&gt;&lt;/xref&gt; 

<p>Install a (hyper-)link to the spot identified via <em>target</em> within
the current document. A translator will add text around an <a href=
"#item_xref"><code>xref</code></a> element. For example, a <a href=
"#item_xref"><code>xref</code></a> to a section might be decorated with the
text ``<code>see section</code>''.</p>
</dd>
</dl>

<h3><a name="what i have left out">What I Have Left Out</a></h3>

<p>Ugh, I left out tons of stuff, but only to give you a smooth, 
non-frightening introduction. Some great things DocBook handles that I have not
discussed are</p>

<ul>
<li>Tables,</li>

<li>Graphics (with automatic selection of the ``appropriate'' format),
and</li>

<li>Automated index generation.</li>
</ul>

<p>Also left out is everything related to changing the DTD or changing the
style sheets.</p>

<h3><a name="pros and cons">Pros and Cons</a></h3>

<dl>
<dt><strong><a name="item_Pros">Pros</a></strong><br>
</dt>

<dd>
<ul>
<li>DocBook is an official W3C standard</li>

<li>Access to text via (user-defined) programs</li>

<li>Texts carry a rich marked up</li>
</ul>
</dd>

<dt><strong><a name="item_Cons">Cons</a></strong><br>
</dt>

<dd>
<ul>
<li>Slow transformation</li>

<li>The DocBook format is very verbose. Unless the writer uses a special
editor, a lot of typing is required.</li>
</ul>
</dd>
</dl>

<h3><a name="further reading">Further Reading</a></h3>

<ul>
<li>
Norman Walsh and Leonard Muellner, <em>DocBook: The Definitive Guide</em>,
O'Reilly&nbsp;&amp;&nbsp;Associates, first edition, ISBN:&nbsp;156592-580-7 at
<a href= 
"http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1565925807/qid%3D1010861150/ref%3Dsr%5F11%5F0%5F1/104-6293324-1789547">
Amazon</a>. It is also available <a href="http://www.docbook.org/tdg/en/">
online</a> (as second edition)
</li>

<li>
<a href="http://www.docbook.org">DocBook website</a>
</li>

<li>
Norman Walsh's (chairman of the DocBook steering committee) <a href= 
"http://nwalsh.com/">website</a>
</li>

<li>
<a href="http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/docbook/">DocBook Steering
Committee</a>
</li>
</ul>

<p>Next month: Texinfo</p>





<!-- *** BEGIN bio *** -->
<SPACER TYPE="vertical" SIZE="30">
<P> 
<H4><IMG ALIGN=BOTTOM ALT="" SRC="../gx/note.gif">Christoph Spiel</H4>
<EM>Chris runs an Open Source Software consulting company in Upper Bavaria, Germany.
Despite being trained as a physicist -- he holds a PhD in physics from Munich
University of Technology -- his main interests revolve around numerics,
heterogenous programming environments, and software engineering.  He can be
reached at 
<A HREF="mailto:cspiel@hammersmith-consulting.com">cspiel@hammersmith-consulting.com</A>.</EM>

<!-- *** END bio *** -->

<!-- *** BEGIN copyright *** -->
<P> <hr> <!-- P --> 
<H5 ALIGN=center>

Copyright &copy; 2002, Christoph Spiel.<BR>
Copying license <A HREF="../copying.html">http://www.linuxgazette.com/copying.html</A><BR> 
Published in Issue 75 of <i>Linux Gazette</i>, February 2002</H5>
<!-- *** END copyright *** -->


<H4 ALIGN="center">
"Linux Gazette...<I>making Linux just a little more fun!</I>"
</H4>

<P> <HR> <P> 
<!--===================================================================-->

<center>
<H1><font color="maroon">The Adventures of Little Linus In GNU/Wonderland</font></H1>
<H4>By <a href="mailto:dclydew@binaryfreedom.com">D Clyde Williamson</a>
<BR>Originally published at <A HREF="http://www.systemtoolbox.com/">System Toolbox</A>.  Reprinted with permission.</H4>
</center>
<P> <HR> <P>  

<!-- END header -->




<h3>In Which Little Linus Finds GNU/Wonderland</h3>

<p>
It was a sunny afternoon, and Linus was happily playing in his
backyard.  He was busy with all the things that little Linuses do on
sunny days in their backyards. He was sitting in the shade of a large
tree when he noticed something very out of place in a Linuses
backyard. Waddling across the yard was a penguin! Every few yards,
this penguin would pull out a Compaq Itsy, consult it, put it back in
his pocket and say, "I'm late, I'm late, I'm late for my release
date!"

<p>
Little Linus had never seen a penguin this close before. He had also
never seen an Itsy. And he was rather sure that penguins shouldn't be
talking or consulting Itsys. So as any curious Linus would do, he
followed the penguin. No matter how quickly Linus walked, the penguin
seemed to be the same distance away. The penguin didn't waddle any
faster, Linus just couldn't seem to get any closer.

<p>
Suddenly, the penguin stopped at the very tree Linus had been sitting
under. "Ah, here's what I was looking for... root access!" the
penguin muttered. Then he popped into a small hole in one of the roots
of the tree.

<p>
Linus decided to follow. He squeezed into the hole, and suddenly
realized that he was falling. Everything below him was dark, so he
couldn't see the bottom. He continued to fall wondering what was next.
He began to look at his surroundings and noticed that there was a
brick wall on one side of the hole. As he looked closer he could make
out a set of eyes in the wall, falling at the same speed as he
was. One of the eyes winked at him. Linus was slightly startled, but
remembered his manners. "Hello, umm, Mr. Wall," Linus began
cautiously, not quite sure how one should address walls.

<p>
To his surprise, a nose, mustache and mouth formed below the eyes and
the entire face continued to slide down the wall at the same speed as
Linus. "Hello young man! How are you this fine day?" the wall asked
Linus.

<p>
"Well", Linus replied, "I'd feel much better if I knew how to stop
falling."

<p>
"Ah", the wall nodded sagely, "Usually, one stops when they hit the
bottom. But, as the camel says, 'there's more than one way to do
it'."

<p>
Linus didn't quite understand the bit about the camel. However, he was
sure that hitting the ground wasn't the best way to stop. He looked at
the wall. "Ummm, I'd really rather stop in a way that didn't hurt
me..."

<p>
The wall looked at him a bit then said, "Well, I suppose I can ask
the camel to catch you."  The face disappeared.

<p>
Linus continued to fall and realized that he hadn't looked down for
awhile. Indeed it seemed that there was a light coming up from below.
As he looked down, he saw the ground about thirty feet away. There
directly under him stood a camel. Before he knew it, he had landed
quite softly and safely between the camels humps. The camel turned and
smiled at him, flashing his perly white teeth.

<p>
The wall spoke again. "The camel will help you get started here. He's
quite user friendly."  Then the face was gone again.

<p>
Linus looked at the camel, then remembered why he was here to begin
with, "I was following a penguin, but I seemed to have lost his
trail." The camel nodded and began walking towards a nearby wood.

<p>
<h3>In Which Linus Meets Several Strange Inhabitants of GNU/Wonderland</h3>

<p>
As they approached the wood, Linus noticed a taco walking up the road
towards him. The taco appeared to be carrying several newspapers under
his arm. "News for Nerds!" he was calling, "Get your News for Nerds
here."

<p>
Linus stopped the camel and walked over to get a newspaper. However,
before he could reach the taco, he heard a loud noise. Several
thousand creatures, boys, girls, rabbits, unicorns, trolls and all
other sorts of animals came rushing toward the taco. They all hit the
taco at once, grabbing for the newspapers. Linus watched as wave after
wave of things rushed across the poor taco. Then as suddenly as they
had come, they were gone. Linus ran over to the taco, "Are you hurt?"
He asked with concern.

<p>
"Not bad, at least this time no one dumped any breakfast cereal on
me," the taco replied getting up and brushing himself off. [1]

<p>
Linus thought about querying further on the subject of breakfast
cereal, however, he decided to skip it. After making sure the taco
was OK he climbed back on the camel and set off again.

<p>
He had not traveled far when he heard a strange noise in the forest
beside the path. "Perhaps it is a bear," he thought. However, before
he could urge the camel to pick up the pace a man stepped out of the
woods onto the path. He was an odd looking man, with hair that pointed
anywhere except where hair usually points. Linus figured the man must
have forgotten he owned a beard, since it looked like the beard had
wandered off on its own quite awhile ago.

<p>
"Hullo, boy!" the man waved at Linus. "I am GNUman. Who are you?"

<p>
"My name is Linus, and it's nice to meet you, Neuman." Linus got down
to shake the man's hand.

<p>
"Not Neuman, it's GNUman. Say it right!"  The man said loudly.

<p>
Linus looked at the man carefully, then deciding he wasn't dangerous,
shook his hand and said, "It's nice to meet you GNUman."

<p>
"Well, of course I'm more than happy to meet anyone around these
parts.  By the way, here's the rules to my game," GNUman said
solemnly, handing Linus a scroll. "The rules are, that anyone can
change the rules, as long as they tell everyone what rules they
changed. That way everyone can make the rules fit their needs."

<p>
Linus wasn't quite sure what GNUman was talking about. However, he
politely took the scroll and promised to read it. GNUman smiled and
wandered off into the woods.

<p>
After a few hours of riding around on the camel, Linus noticed party
sounds emanating from a nearby clearing. The camel noticed his
interest and moved in that direction.

<p>
As they broke into the clearing there was an amazing sight. A long
table set with coffee, doughnuts, pizza, as well as Chinese, Indian,
and Mexican food. At one end was a keg of Guinness. At the head of the
table was a man with a bushy black beard, long black hair, sunglasses
and a red fedora. He motioned Linus over to a chair.

<p>
"I've been waitin' a bloody long time on you," the man said with a
British accent. "Do you know how hard it is to keep all this food
hot?"

<p>
Linus, beginning to get used to the odd people of this land, smiled
and apologized for taking so long. Of course he had no idea that he
was even expected, let alone late.

<p>
"Oh, not to worry," the English fellow said in a nicer tone, "I'm sure
you were busy."

<p>
They began to eat, and Linus was amazed at the energy that this special
food gave him. After eating in silence for awhile, he noticed that
other creatures were sitting at the table enjoying the food as
well. Oddly, he hadn't seen any of them sit down. Indeed, the large
dog sitting next to him had appeared from nowhere. Linus had seen many
canines before, but this was the first dog that he had seen with a big
white beard.

<p>
The dog noticed Linus and flashed him a very big smile. He paused to
wipe some white foam from his mouth and began eating again. Linus was
a bit concerned that the dog may be 'mad'... Excusing himself, he got
up to leave.

<p>
The Englishman at the head of the table motioned for him. "You can't
leave yet," he exclaimed, "You have to do what you came for."

<p>
Linus had no idea what the man was talking about, so he waited
patiently while the Englishman fiddled around in a big black box.

<p>
"Ah here it is," the man said, pulling out a single kernel of corn. "We
need your blessing on this... ummm, here!"

<p>
With that the man handed Linus the piece of corn, and a crystal
container filled with a yellow liquid. the bottle was labeled
"Warning, contains hP2."

<p>
Linus stood there for a minute, everyone at the table had stopped
eating and was watching him closely. He opened the stopper and
sprinkled some of the 'hP2' on the corn. Everyone cheered and the
kernel began to shake and jump. It bounced out of Linus' hand and fell
onto the ground. It began to sprout and grow, a huge green plant came
out of it and grew and grew, all the time the diners at the table were
laughing, saying things like "Now that's scalability" or "Look at that,
40 feet high and still standing... How stable can you get!!"

<p>
Linus began to worry that he was expected to do something. But, before
he could figure it out, the Dog that had sat next to him was again
beside him.

<p>
"Well, what are you waiting for?" the dog asked. "You should already
be climbing it."

<p>
"Ummm, why would I climb it?" Linus asked.

<p>
"No time for questions, I'll meet you up there," the dog replied, and
promptly disappeared. The only thing left was the bushy, white beard
which slowly faded.

<p>
<h3>Linus And The Cornstalk</h3>

<p>
Linus had been climbing the cornstalk for what seemed like hours when
he finally found himself at the top. There before him was a giant
building with a sign outside that read "Warning, Home of The RedMond
Giant...  all trespassers will be 'Embraced and Extended'."

<p>
Linus wasn't sure what that meant, but it didn't sound like something
he wanted to have done to him. He began to look around, when he
noticed fading into existence, a white bushy beard. Following the
beard was the rest of the Dog, which he had seen down below.

<p>
"Hey again!" the dog said, smiling, "I see you made it."

<p>
"Yes, though I have no idea why you wanted me to climb up here. I
really don't want to be embraced and extended by a giant."

<p>
"Oh, its ok, you have GNUman's rules, don't you? They're the only
magic strong enough to defeat the giant."

<p>
Linus pulled out the scroll and looked at it carefully. "It doesn't
look very magical to me," he said.

<p>
The dog smiled and began walking to the castle. Linus shrugged and
followed him. As they got closer, he began to hear a loud voice
singing, "Biddle, Bidele, Boddle, Bandard, I smell the smell of an
Open Standard.  Be it old or be it new, I'll make it part of my
proprietary brew!"

<p>
Linus stopped, the voice was very loud, and a voice that loud had to
come from a mouth that was very big. However, the dog continued to
trot toward the castle, without a moments pause, so Linus
followed. Finally he reached the formidable gates of the
building. "There's no way in," Linus said relieved. "There is an awful
lot of security around this place."

<p>
The dog laughed, "The only thing worse that the giant's silly rhyme,
is his security! Trust me, there are many, many ways to get past it."

<p>
Sure enough, with just a slight bit of poking, a whole section of the
fencing fell apart, leaving a gaping hole. The dog led Linus into the
compound. As they walked across the yard toward the front door...
several security people rushed to the point where they broke in. One
of them, apparently the leader stood up on a podium and began to speak
loudly.

<p>
"This is only a theoretical way of breaking into the giants compound.
Anyone who is concerned about this is just being paranoid. Besides,
only bad people would break into the compound, and we all know that
bad people are stupid. So they wouldn't know about this hole."

<p>
As he spoke, several kiddies began knocking holes in other parts of
the fence, following the example of Linus and the dog. The security
people ignored them.

<p>
"Furthermore, there is very little likelihood that anyone will be able
to duplicate this hole. In fact, if this fence were upgraded to
version 2.000 then we wouldn't need to be concerned at all."

<p>
Immediately, all the other workers began putting up the next version
of the fence. It looked bigger and stronger than the earlier
fence. Linus looked at the dog. "It will be hard to get back out."

<p>
"Nonsense, I told you their security is hopeless. This new fence will
likely be even worse than the first."

<p>
So Linus and the dog continued into the building, completely unnoticed
by the security people. Within a few moments they were inside the
building. The dog looked at Linus. "Ok, open the scroll and read the
magic words of GNUman," he whispered.

<p>
Linus opened the scroll and read, "The GNU General Public License,
Preamble..."

<p>
Linus read and read and read. Finally, as he reached the end of the
very long magic incantation, he heard a noise. He looked up from the
scroll, and saw huge cracks forming in the walls and ceiling.  The
building began to shake and shudder. The dog looked at Linus and said,
"Let's get out of here. You've done what you came to do!"

<p>
They ran to the door and into the courtyard. Behind them they could
hear the giant bellowing for his people to fix the holes and
cracks, but it was too late, the home of the RedMond Giant was
collapsing. Linus and the dog reached the brand-new fence, and to
Linus' surprise, they realized that the entire fence was made of Swiss
cheese, they climbed through the holes in the fence, and ran for the
cornstalk.

<p>
The dog began to fade, he looked around at Linus, "Thank you so
much...  we all thank you. Have a nice life..."

<p>
"Wait," Linus shouted, "What am I supposed to do now?"

<p>
The dog was gone again, except for the beard. "Just get to the
cornstalk.  That new kernel will take care of you."

<p>
Linus reached the cornstalk, and began climbing down as fast as he
could, but he lost his footing and before he knew it he had begun to
fall. The ground was getting closer and closer, and suddenly, he found
himself, laying on his back, on the ground. He blinked his eyes, and
looked up at the Corn Stalk. He rubbed his eyes and looked again. It
wasn't a cornstalk at all.  It was the old tree in his back yard!

<p>
Linus got up, rubbed his eyes and walked toward the house. Once
inside, he noticed a package sitting on the table, there was a card
that read "To Our Dear Son".  He opened the package, and to his delight
there was a brand new 386 computer, just for him.

<p>
The End (or is it?)

<p>
<small><b><u>Footnotes</u></b>

<p>
[1] The author doesn't condone the abuse of any forum by trolls. This
includes comments about hot grits. However, this small joke just
couldn't be resisted.</small>
</font>







<!-- *** BEGIN bio *** -->
<SPACER TYPE="vertical" SIZE="30">
<P> 
<H4><IMG ALIGN=BOTTOM ALT="" SRC="../gx/note.gif">D Clyde Williamson</H4>
<EM>Clyde is a network security specialist for a large corporation in the
US. He writes articles on Technology, Open Source Advocacy and History
(pre-1600). After writing the above article, he lives in prepetual fear
of Lewis Carrol's ghost seeking revenge.</EM>

<!-- *** END bio *** -->

<!-- *** BEGIN copyright *** -->
<P> <hr> <!-- P --> 
<H5 ALIGN=center>

Copyright &copy; 2002, D Clyde Williamson.<BR>
Copying license <A HREF="../copying.html">http://www.linuxgazette.com/copying.html</A><BR> 
Published in Issue 75 of <i>Linux Gazette</i>, February 2002</H5>
<!-- *** END copyright *** -->


<P> <HR> <P>
<center>
<H1><font color="maroon">Modest home on the web</font></H1>
<H4>By <a href="mailto:zw@debian.org">zhaoway</a></H4>
</center>
<P> <HR> <P>

<!-- END header -->

<h2>Introduction</h2>

<p> We will build a small homepage site without server side
scripts. This is suitable for people who do not run their own web
servers or have no priviledge to use server side facilities. We will
use JavaScript and Lex to simulate some effects of template files to
ease the maintaining tasks. We will use Makefile to automate the
uploading, and use CSS to provide fancy formatting effects. We will
use only standard HTML in our main content file, thus provide a good
chance for any browsers to surf our web site easily.

<p> The weird choice of using Lex to present a template effect is
because I want to pretend that I am a guru. And gurus often use
complicated or even brain damaged tools to fulfil simple and sometime
stupid tasks. Of course, if I am a true guru, I'd rather write a
similar tool by myself from scratch using LISP or C. But since I am
only pretending I am one, so forget about it.

<h2>HTML and CSS</h2>

<p> There is a wonderful <a href="http://www.debian.org">Debian</a>
package which provides great documentation on standard CSS and HTML
practice. That is <code>wdg-html-reference</code> package. If you are
serious into HTML 4 and CSS, then you'd better <code>apt-get</code>
into that package, and read the documents there. They're easy to
follow. Only remember one thing though, a good understanding on CSS
does NOT mean that you should use every possible effects on your
homepage. A good taste is more important than a good technique. At the
end of this article, I presented some <a href="#example">example
files</a>, you could keep them handy when reading through.

<p> I will not duplicate those excellent documentation on HTML and CSS
here, and there are many more high quality documents outside on the
web and in the bookstore. Even better, you could use your browser's
"View Source" menu item to sneak in every webpage that you're
interested to learn from. I will provide you one advice though, that
is you should keep it simple, keep your homepage simple unless you
have a big team of webmasters and webmistress work for you, or you
have a lot and a lot of free time to work on your homepage.

<p> Simple does not necessarily mean ugly, sometime simple is
considered beauty, expecially when the CSS is available to nearly
everyone now. So your best practice (pretending that I am an
expert. heh) is to use standard HTML in your content file, and use the
HTML tags as logically as you can.

<p> For example, you may want to use <code>&lt;i&gt;</code> to
empasize a sentence or a word, DON'T, use <code>&lt;em&gt;</code>
instead. Then use CSS to provide the desired effects. That's the whole
point. And not to forget to appreciate the <a
href="http://www.mozilla.org">Mozilla</a> web browser which is nearly
the most standard compliant one out there. (Hint, use it to test your
webpage!)

<h2>Using JavaScript</h2>

<p> Why using JavaScript? Since we are only building a modest
homepage, we won't need those fancy features, not to mention those
annoying pop-ups. The reason we are using JavaScript is that it could
present us some template like features which could ease our task
maintaining big bunch of webpages. Modest homepage does NOT mean that
we cannot put many files there. ;)

<p> For example, if we want to present a navigation menu for our
webpage, we will have to copy and paste our menu paragraph in HTML
into every content file (as mentioned above, we do not have enough
priviledges to use any server side facilities.), and what if we want
to change the style used for our menu? That's a big nightmare to
adjust each webpages for that.

<p> Instead we could write our menu in a JavaScript, and include the
following in each of our webpages:

<p>
<code>
&lt;script type="text/javascript" src="header.js" charset="iso-8859-1"&gt;
&lt;/script&gt;
</code>

<p> When we want to add an item to our menu, we only need to change
the <code>header.js</code> file, then viola, every webpages are
changed accordingly.

<p> The syntax of JavaScript is very easy to learn, by reading some <a
href="#example">examples</a>, you could get nearly the whole
idea. Since we are using JavaScript to present navigation menus, we
could even ease the task of generating menus by hand too. Go check out
the example <code>header.js</code> at the end of this article.

<h2>Using Lex</h2>

<p> Lex is presented in the Debian package <code>flex</code>. It is a
GNU tool. What lex do is to scan the input file, and whenever a
regular expression is met, execute some C code. So we can use it to
scan our templates then generate the HTML files. Lex could turn your
dull project of maitaining a stupid personal homepage into an exciting
C programming journey. Isn't it wonderful?

<p> Lex is a scanner generator, which means, we use lex to generate
our scanner, then using our scanner to scan our template files to
generate HTML files. How could lex generate a scanner? It does this by
reading a rules file written by us. Basically, we design some set of
rules, then using this rules in our content files. And we write a
rules file for Lex, then we use lex to read our rules file and
generate a scanner, then we use the scanner to scan our content file
to get the desired HTML file. And, it's very simple! Gurus R Us!

<p> What makes a rule? A rule is made of two parts. The first part is
a regular expression (regex) similar to that you found in
<code>perl</code> or <code>egrep</code>. The second part is a small
part of C code. Whenever a regex is found met, then the C code will be
executed. The following is a sample rule from our example rules file:

<pre>
\"header\" {
  if (flag_lex == 1 && flag_key == 1 && current_key == HERE)
    {
      fprintf(yyout,
	      "&lt;!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC \"-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0//EN\""
	      "\"http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/strict.dtd\"&gt;"
	      "&lt;html&gt;&lt;head&gt;&lt;title&gt;{zhaoway} %s&lt;/title&gt;"
	      "&lt;link rel=\"stylesheet\" href=\"style.css\" type=\"text/css\"&gt;"
	      "&lt;meta http-equiv=\"Content-Type\" content=\"text/html; charset=utf-8\"&gt;"
	      "&lt;meta name=\"description\" content=%s&gt;"
	      "&lt;meta name=\"keywords\" content=%s&gt;&lt;/head&gt;&lt;body&gt;"
	      "&lt;script type=\"text/javascript\" src=\"header.js\" charset=\"iso-8859-1\"&gt;"
	      "&lt;/script&gt;\n",
	      keys[TITLE], keys[DESCRIPTION], keys[KEYWORDS]
	      );

      flag_key = 0;
    }
  else ECHO;
}
</pre>

<p> The above code means that, when "header" is appeared in the input
file, and some conditions are satisfied, then we will replace it with
a big bunch of HTML codes. The corresonding example content file is as
the following:

<pre>
&lt;lex title="home page" description="zhaoway's homepage." /&gt;
&lt;lex keywords="zhaoway, personal, homepage, diary, curriculum, vitae, resume" /&gt;
&lt;lex here="header" /&gt;
</pre>

<h2>Making the upload</h2>

<p> When doing the upload, to decide which file on the server needs to
be updated is difficult, and that task should be automated indeed. So
we use Make to do it. The basic idea is to touch a blank
<code>some.html.upload</code> file whenever <code>some.html</code> is
uploaded. When <code>some.html</code> is newer than
<code>some.html.upload</code> that means it needs to be uploaded to
the server again. The following <code>Makefile</code> rule shows that:

<pre>
%.upload: %
	lftp -c "open -u \"$(USER),$(PASS)\" $(SITE); put $<"
	touch $@
</pre>

<h2>Conclusion</h2>

<p> Makefile and Lex themselves warrantize lengthy articles. They are
very traditional Unix tools for C development. But could be very
useful in maintaining webpages. We cannot explore the details of them
very carefully. This article is just mean to raise your imagination
with these traditional Unix tools.

<h2><a name="example">Example files available</a></h2>

<ul>
  <li><a href="misc/zhaoway/Makefile.txt">Makefile</a></li>  
  <li><a href="misc/zhaoway/scan.l.txt">scan.l</a> Lex rules file</li>  
  <li><a href="misc/zhaoway/index.scan.txt">index.scan</a> Template file for index.html</li>  
  <li><a href="misc/zhaoway/header.js.txt">header.js</a></li>  
  <li><a href="misc/zhaoway/footer.js.txt">footer.js</a></li>  
  <li><a href="misc/zhaoway/style.css.txt">style.css</a></li>  
</ul>

<p> You could visit <a href="http://www.zhaoway.com">my homepage</a>
for the resulted effects. Have fun and good luck!

<!-- *** BEGIN bio *** -->

<P> <H4><IMG ALIGN=BOTTOM ALT="" SRC="../gx/note.gif">zhaoway</H4>

<EM>zhaoway lives in Nanjing, China. He divides his time among his
beautiful girlfriend, his old Pentium computer, and pure
mathematics. He wants to marry now, which means he needs money, ie., a
job. Feel free to help him come into the sweet cage of marriage by
providing him a job opportunity. He would be very thankful! His <a
href="http://www.zhaoway.com/cv.html">curriculum vitae</a> is at his
<a href="http://www.zhaoway.com">homepage</a>. He is also another
volunteer member of the <a href="http://www.debian.org">Debian
GNU/Linux</a> project.</EM>

<!-- *** END bio *** -->

<!-- *** BEGIN copyright *** -->

<P><hr>

<H5 ALIGN=center> Copyright &copy; 2002, zhaoway.<BR> Copying license
<A HREF="../copying.html">http://www.linuxgazette.com/copying.html</A>
<BR> </H5> <HR>

<!-- *** END copyright *** -->

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<H4 ALIGN="center">
"Linux Gazette...<I>making Linux just a little more fun!</I>"
</H4>

<P> <hr> <P> 

<H1><font color="maroon">The Back Page</font></H1>

The back Page is short this month because Your Editor is similtaneously
(A) working on another project,
(B) going on vacation, and (C) preparing a talk for the 
<A HREF="http://www.python10.org/">Python conference</A>, all at the same time.  I'll
be writing an article about the conference for <I>Linux Journal</I>, and presenting a
paper called <A HREF="http://www.cheetahtemplate.org/">Cheetah: the Python-Powered
Template Engine</A>, and leading a BOF (Birds of a Feather) discussion on Cheetah, a
project I'm a volunteer developer for.

<P> There will be more Esperanto announcements next month.  Meanwhile, baibilu pri
Linukson on a new mailing list, linux-esperanto
(<A HREF="http://www.ssc.com/mailman/listinfo/linux-esperanto/">http://www.ssc.com/mailman/listinfo/linux-esperanto/</A>).
(If you missed the Esperanto grammar discussion from January's LG, 
<A HREF="../issue74/lg_backpage.html">here it is</A>.)



<HR> <!-- ************************************************************** -->

<P> Happy Linuxing!

<P> Mike ("Iron") Orr<br>
Editor, <A HREF="http://www.linuxgazette.com/"><i>Linux Gazette</i></A>, <A
HREF="mailto:gazette@ssc.com">gazette@ssc.com</a>
<BR CLEAR="all">

<!-- *** END Not Linux *** -->

<!-- *** BEGIN copyright *** -->
<P> <hr> <P> 
<H5 ALIGN=center>
Copyright &copy; 2002, the Editors of <I>Linux Gazette</I>.<BR>
Copying license <A HREF="../copying.html">http://www.linuxgazette.com/copying.html</A><BR>
Published in Issue 75 of <i>Linux Gazette</i>, February 2002</H5>
<!-- *** END copyright *** -->


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