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Weekly IRC reminder
by Neill Newman 24 Feb '03

24 Feb '03

This is the automated ALUG IRC meeting reminder sent to remind you that there is an IRC meeting tonight (Monday) at 8.00pm. The meeting takes place on the irc server irc.alug.org.uk in the #alug channel. Most IRC clients should allow you to get there with the commands "/server irc.alug.org.uk" and "/join #alug". Popular IRC clients include tkirc, bitchx, xchat and EPIC on Unix, and Mirc under windows. Here are some links to help you get started with irc. Unix http://www.xchat.org/ http://freshmeat.net/ http://www.epicsol.org/ Windows http://www.mirc.com (loads of help with irc for newbies!)

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Todays meeting - report available.
by John Woodard 23 Feb '03

23 Feb '03

A good, if a bit small meeting today. Thanks to all those attending. I have written a short report and stuck it up on the wiki. http://www.alug.org.uk/contrib/?here Cheers, BJ

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Re: main digest, Vol 2 #51 - 9 msgs
by David Cartwright 23 Feb '03

23 Feb '03

>From: "Ben Norcutt" <ben(a)plextech.co.uk> >To: "alug" <main(a)lists.alug.org.uk> >Subject: Re: [Alug] Wireless WANS (i.e. Norfolk) >Date: Thu, 20 Feb 2003 12:22:48 -0000 > >I have just started playing with wireless stuff at work and it's great to be >able to wander around with a laptop my boss loves it. I work at Framingham >Earl High School As the Network Mangler and would love to help out if I can. >We have a 2mbit DSL connection going unused during the evening. This would >be fine for general web surfing but there are a number of restrictions that >you need to be made aware of. > >If anyone wants to experiment let me know. Maybe we should have a wireless >antennae building session etc... I have a couple of waps and pcmcia cards at >work. Errrrrmmmm ... I hate to be picky, but wouldn't the education authority or whoever is paying for all this stuff have some kind of problem with you inviting all and sundry to use their network (which presumably contains sensitive information)? If I was the headmaster, the "number of restrictions you need to be made aware of" would include "Connect anyone to this thing without my express permission and you're fired". In last year's UK Networking Industry Awards, of which I'm one of the judges, one of the entries was an educational establishment that was very proud of its new wireless LAN installation. Sadly, at no point did the entry blurb (which was many pages long) include terms like "security" or "encryption" - in fact the implementors were proud that you could surf outside the school buildings on your laptop. They didn't win. By way of a footnote, it's interesting to see how many companies don't turn on security by default. At the Networks Telecom Show at the NEC last June, a friend of mine who runs a super little security product dealership/consultancy was showing me his new toy - a wireless LAN analyser from Vernier Networks. We stood in the middle of the NEC identifying literally dozens of insecure servers on this thing, because the vast majority of exhibitors didn't have security turned on in their wireless installations. Not a problem at a trade show, you'd think, but you must remember that many stands have phone/ISDN links back to the main office, thus giving any old muppet with (in our case) an iPaq and a few hundred quid's worth of software a really nice route into their corporate networks. D.

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Re: main digest, Vol 2 #53 - 10 msgs
by David Cartwright 23 Feb '03

23 Feb '03

> > > Shame Ionica peaked 5 years too early, their technology would be > > > perfect for this kind of thing. > > > > Are you sure it would ? > > > > Someone please correct me if I am wrong, but I'm pretty sure that > regarding > > data throughput Ionica's ill fated network was not capable of much more > than > > a regular PSTN line, anyway from memory network coverage was nearly as > bad as > > ADSL. Absolutely correct. Ionica launched back in the mid 1990s, when I was tech ed of Network Week. From day one we were basically writing things like "Neat idea, but the guy running it sounds like a cowboy and they've forgotten to do any marketing". When we asked Ionica whether we could have anything more than a phone line - ISDN, for instance - the answer was always that the current equipment, running in the current radio spectrum (2.4GHz, I believe it was), couldn't handle it but when the new version came out (11GHz or so, if memory serves) we could have anything we wanted. To say that you can't do 128Kbit/sec ISDN in a 2.4GHz spectrum is, of course, nonsense - if nothing else you could mux it like cellular providers do with multiples of 9.6Kbit/sec channels in GPRS. It may have been fair to say that the kit wasn't up to it, but I can't imagine the equipment vendors didn't have an upgrade roadmap. Interestingly, the Ionica service - where it was available - was excellent by all accounts. You could have multiple numbers with a different ring pattern for each (so dad could have a different ring pattern from mum), caller ID, a 1471 equivalent, and so on - they did all of this long before BT. And the coverage area was okay, if not massive. From what I can see, they just didn't spend the marketing bucks, and got a reputation in the press for being a bunch of wide boys trying to take investors for a ride. In fact there's still an Ionica receiver dish on a house up the road from me - maybe they're hoping the service will come back one day!! Regards, Dave C

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Re: [Alug] Incompatibility and what can I do about it?
by BenEBoy 22 Feb '03

22 Feb '03

On Saturday 22 February 2003 14:41, Chris Walker wrote: > I am still trying to persuade my Acorn to talk to my Mandrake box without > success. My son suggested I look at ipchains and having installed it, it > now tells me 'Incompatible with this kernel'. Strange as I installed them > both from the same CD, Mandrake 9. Ipchains is 1.3.10-6mdk and the kernel > is 2.4.19-16mdk but despite having the upgrader look for upgrades for > ipchains, it can't find any. So I'm stuck now. How do I find an upgrade, > assuming one is necessary, to fix this? Or is there another remedy? Have you seen this in your travels through google? http://www.serial-networking.fsnet.co.uk/linux.htm (step by step guide to connecting acorns with linux) BenE

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Re: [Alug] Incompatibility and what can I do about it?
by Richard Kettlewell 22 Feb '03

22 Feb '03

Chris Walker <linux(a)wymondham.demon.co.uk> writes: > I am still trying to persuade my Acorn to talk to my Mandrake box > without success. My son suggested I look at ipchains and having > installed it, it now tells me 'Incompatible with this > kernel'. Strange as I installed them both from the same CD, Mandrake > 9. Ipchains is 1.3.10-6mdk and the kernel is 2.4.19-16mdk but > despite having the upgrader look for upgrades for ipchains, it can't > find any. So I'm stuck now. How do I find an upgrade, assuming one > is necessary, to fix this? Or is there another remedy? You might very well want iptables instead. I can't see how a packet filter will help you talk to your Acorn, though... -- http://www.greenend.org.uk/rjk/

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Reminder: ALUG Meeting @ Syleham Villiage Hall 23rd Feb 2003
by John Woodard 21 Feb '03

21 Feb '03

Reminder: ALUG Meeting @ Syleham Villiage Hall 23rd Feb 2003 I've updated the wiki to confirm this. If you are coming please add your name to http://www.alug.org.uk/contrib/?23%20Feb . This ALUG meeting will be from 2pm until about 6pm in the normal place at http://www.alug.org.uk/venues/syleham.html the bar will be open. BJ will be there from about 1:00pm putting up tables etc. Cheers, BJ

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Re: [Alug] Wireless WANS (i.e. Norfolk)
by Ben Norcutt 20 Feb '03

20 Feb '03

I have just started playing with wireless stuff at work and it's great to be able to wander around with a laptop my boss loves it. I work at Framingham Earl High School As the Network Mangler and would love to help out if I can. We have a 2mbit DSL connection going unused during the evening. This would be fine for general web surfing but there are a number of restrictions that you need to be made aware of. If anyone wants to experiment let me know. Maybe we should have a wireless antennae building session etc... I have a couple of waps and pcmcia cards at work. Cheers, Ben

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how to assign capabilities to specific process/user
by atit_ldce 20 Feb '03

20 Feb '03

this is atit jariwala final semester student of be computer ldce ahd i want to assign specific capabilities to specific user or process i want this because i want my program that is using setsockopt call to run from other user then root and runnig of setscokopt requires CAP_NET_ADMIN assigned to the user and by default it is assigned to root user only and i want to assign this to specific user thanks _____________________________________________________________________ Get your internet connection from the fastest growing digital network. ICENET visit our site www.icenet.net

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Re: [Alug] IPChains
by Andrew Cartwright 19 Feb '03

19 Feb '03

Chris Walker wrote: > I have Mandrake 9 on my machine and can't look at the drives from another > machine. What puzzles me is that when I run ipchains, I get unknown command. > I thought that it installed and ran by default. Should it? > Chris, IME Mandrake uses iptables, its preferred firewall is shorewall which is configured from the control centre. Having said that you don't have to use shorewall, you can write your own script if you wish. Regards Andy

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Re: [Alug] IPChains
by Brett Parker 19 Feb '03

19 Feb '03

Chris Walker <linux(a)wymondham.demon.co.uk> wrote: > I have Mandrake 9 on my machine and can't look at the drives from another > machine. What puzzles me is that when I run ipchains, I get unknown command. > I thought that it installed and ran by default. Should it? Depends, what's Mandrake 9s default kernel? if its in the 2.4.x series then there is no spoon^Wipchains unless they're being very silly. iptables may be available. Certainly on debian systems unless you let it actually install stuff on the initial setup you have to install the ipchains/iptables packages, so, maybe you managed to do a minimal install of Mandrake... Anyways - just my thoughts at this silly time of night. Brett.

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Slashdot - FTP: Better Than HTTP, Or Obsolete?
by Keith Watson 18 Feb '03

18 Feb '03

> <http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/02/13/2132221> > > An anonymous coward asks "Looking to serve files for downloading > (typically 1MB-6MB), I'm confused about whether I should provide an FTP > server instead of / as well as HTTP. According to a rapid Google > search, the experts say 1) HTTP is slower and less reliable than FTP > and 2) HTTP is amateur and will make you look a wimp. But a) FTP is > full of security holes. and b) FTP is a crumbling legacy protocol and > will make you look a dinosaur. Surely some contradiction... Should I > make the effort to implement FTP or take desperate steps to avoid it?" > So what's the general opinion about FTP vs. HTTP in the GNU/Linux environment? Keith ____________ The Mind is the slayer of the Real The Voice of the Silence.

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Newbi problems
by ALISTAIR MACGREGOR 17 Feb '03

17 Feb '03

Hi I wonder if any of you gentlemen or ladies can help. I'm a new user and by new I mean new. I installed Mandrake 9 on Friday (14th Feb 2003), after weeks of having nothing but problems frow my Windows system. So far (Only two days I know) I've had no problems, except one. I seem unable to access my floppy disk or either of my two CDROM drives, I know their there, I formatted a floppy disk and saved some files there. On trying to retrieve them i was told I "Do not have permission to access the files" or something along those lines. On opening the Home directory and going through the files to arrive at the /mnt folder, I was again told that I had not the relevent permission to access my files, looking at the floppy properties, I saw the 'owner' and 'group' listed at "root" Logging in as root, giving the password I entered at install, I was told again .......well you get the idea. Any help would be greatly appreciated as I need to edit the file and do not wish to re type the whole thing. If it helps my system is a Packard Bell Club 600 with a Celeron 600hz CPU, 1 DVD/CDROM, 1 CD writer, 128mb ram, 13GB HHD, solely for Linux. On board graphica and sound. Alistair

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Two Technical Support Vacancies.
by Robert Tillyard 17 Feb '03

17 Feb '03

Not sure if it's OK to do this but... We have two vacancies for Technical Support staff, this would be for our main UNIX application (SCO UNIX) and client mail/ web gateways (Redhat). These were apparently in the Easy Anglian on Wendesday, a while ago two ALUG members asked me to let them know when we next had vacancies but I don't remember who they were. I can get details if anyone is interested. Regards, Rob. -- Robert Tillyard, Head of Programming. A.T. Veterinary Systems Ltd. Elmtree Business Park, Elmswell, Suffolk, IP30 9HR. Tel: 01359 243400 Fax: 01359 242921 http://www.vetsystems.com/ http://www.visionline.co.uk/

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Re: Slashdot - FTP: Better Than HTTP, Or Obsolete?
by David Cartwright 17 Feb '03

17 Feb '03

> > An anonymous coward asks "Looking to serve files for downloading > > (typically 1MB-6MB), I'm confused about whether I should provide an FTP > > server instead of / as well as HTTP. According to a rapid Google > > search, the experts say 1) HTTP is slower and less reliable than FTP > > and 2) HTTP is amateur and will make you look a wimp. But a) FTP is > > full of security holes. and b) FTP is a crumbling legacy protocol and > > will make you look a dinosaur. Surely some contradiction... Should I > > make the effort to implement FTP or take desperate steps to avoid it?" Not often I post to the list, but what the heck? FTP vs. HTTP is your classic "Horses for courses" discussion - one is better than t'other for some situations, and not as good for others. For example, HTTP is great if: 1. You want to let people download single files via hyperlinks on a Web page. An HTTP link is just a link to a file, which when clicked will make the browser download it. 2. You want the client browser to open the file (e.g. a PDF or Word doc) either via a plug-in or an external application. HTTP stamps each file (or each section within a multipart download) with a MIME type, which the browser can use intelligently. So if my Internet Explorer or Netscape spots that it's a PDF document from the MIME type, it launches the Adobe Acrobat Reader plug-in. If it sees a Bloggit document and doesn't have a Bloggit plug-in, it simply launches the application under Windows and passes the filename to it for opening. This is much harder to do with FTP - it basically depends on the client machine being able to use the file extension (e.g. .PDF, .DOC) to map it to an application. 3. You have a Web server and you don't want to muck about setting up FTP. Many machines come with HTTP set up out of the box but not FTP. And if you want to set up anonymous FTP you have to be dead careful you don't open all manner of security holes. 4. People using your site have firewalls that have a hard time with FTP connections. Most of us understand that sometimes you have to switch your FTP client to Passive mode if you're behind a firewall, but many people I speak to (i.e. who say "I can't FTP this file") don't realise this, which can be a pain. FTP is great if: 1. You want to download multiple files. There's nothing quite like an "mget *" to make life easy when you're downloading (say) the 15 patches for your kernel that have come out since you last patched it. 2. You want to allow people to upload files. You can use HTTP's PUT command, but it's nothing like as easy to work with as an FTP PUT. 3. You want to enforce access control depending on user ID & password. Although you can do access control with an HTTP server, it's far from elegant in most cases, particularly if you want it to integrate with the user database (or global directory service) on the server computer. FTP servers, on the other hand, tend to be easier to fly in this respect, and generally integrate much more tightly to the OS's user database than would be the case with an HTTP server. I'm not saying you can't do it with HTTP, just that it's not as elegant in the average case. 4. Your clients have intelligent FTP clients. Ever tried FTPing from (say) a Red Hat 7.2 box to another Red Hat 7.2 box? Do an "mget *" and the server will tar and gzip all the files into a single compressed archive, then send over that single archive; the FTP client will unbundle everything and leave you with a file structure like the one it started with at the other end, but with a far more efficient transfer in the middle than would have been the case with numerous files (particularly if the files were small). At the end of the day, there's not a lot you can' t do with FTP that you can't emulate with HTTP, and vice versa. For most of what we all do, I suspect that HTTP will outnumber FTP in the majority of cases, because we don't do anything particularly complex in most of our sites. The only situation where I use FTP on my servers, for instance, is where people rent space on my server for their home pages, and they use FTP to upload the pages. Everywhere else I use HTTP, mainly because MIME typing lets the client browser be clever about what it does with documents. D.

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Weekly IRC reminder
by Neill Newman 17 Feb '03

17 Feb '03

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Mono monitor and xd640
by Glen Tyler 17 Feb '03

17 Feb '03

Hi I'm trying to use a b+w monitor with the new xd640 desktop. This desktop uses the fvwm2 window manager and is built with FLTK. I was using an X configuration with 1bpp as the default colour depth which is OK for fvwm2, but not for FLTK. I now have set the colour depth to 4bpp, but need to change the colour assignments in fvwm2rc so that I can see what is going on. I think that I can use a greyscale palette, or shades of grey/black and white. I know that white is rgb:ffff/ffff/ffff and black rgb:0/0/0, but does anyone know where I'd get info on shades of grey and how to set them? I've had a look around the man pages at setpalette etc but this doesn't seem to have what I'm looking for. thanks Glen

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Hard Disk Problems
by Ian Douglas 12 Feb '03

12 Feb '03

Hi, When I booted my PC this morning it would not start XWindows. Looking more closely at the boot messages I can see, the following errors mingled in amongst the normal messages: /etc/init.d/rcS: line 9: /dev/null: Read-only filesystem /etc/init.d/rcS: line 28: /dev/null: Read-only filesystem ERROR: Could not open /dev/null (Read-Only file system) Setting up IP spoofing protection: FAILED Configuring network interfaces... modprobe: Can't locate module net-pf-11 modprobe: modprobe: Can't locate module net-pf-18 modprobe: modprobe: Can't locate module net-pf-9 modprobe: modprobe: Can't locate module net-pf-11 modprobe: modprobe: Can't locate module net-pf-18 modprobe: modprobe: Can't locate module net-pf-9 SIOCSIFADDR: No such device eth0: ERROR while getting interface flags: No such device SIOCSIFNETMASK: No such device SIOCSFBRDADDR: No such device Starting portmap daemon. portmapstart-stop-daemon: nothing in /proc - not mounted? grep: /proc/filesystems: No such file or directory. Starting system log daemon:syslogstart-stop-daemon: nothing in /proc - not mounted? Starting system log daemon:syslogstart-stop-daemon: nothing in /proc - not mounted? Starting mail transport agent: smailstart-stop-daemon:.... When I ran fsck it immediately came back saying the disks had been unmounted cleanly so no check was made. I then tried running e2fsck with the "force check" option and have supposedly fixed all the errors it found but the above errors are still mingled in with the other boot messages when I reboot. If I look in /dev I can see null as -rw-r--r-- If I look in / I can see /proc as dr-xr-xr-x Question: Can the above errors be fixed manually or is it reinstall time? I am running Knoppix 3.1 (installed on my hard disk rather than running off a CD) Ian.

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X11 and broadband limits
by tom potts 12 Feb '03

12 Feb '03

Thanks for the X11 stuff everyone! Re the broadband limit - I'm sorry it wasnt on the contract I signed - if someone sold me a car and then it arrived without the engine 'to preserve profitability' no-one would think me extreeme in returning it for a full refund. They offered a service to get market share and they may be able to impose restrictions on NEW users but they've made their bed and they can bloody well sleep in it! __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Everything you'll ever need on one web page from News and Sport to Email and Music Charts http://uk.my.yahoo.com

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Re: [Alug] Linux & DOS peer-to-peer network
by Edenyard 12 Feb '03

12 Feb '03

Grateful thanks to MJR and Steve for pointing me in the right direction over my DOS <-> Linux ethernet link. After some Googling, I found something called XFS for DOS V1.86, which appears to provide the DOS end of NFS, so presumably if I can get that to work then I can use NFS at the Linux end. XFS seems quite old (c. 1994) and the documentation leaves a huge amount to be desired, but if it does the job, I suppose I can't complain! For now, I'm trying desperately hard to learn about networking on the Linux end. (Not trivial for a Bear of Little Brain....) The plan is to get the two machines to respond to the 'ping' function first and then (hopefully) progress from there. If anyone's interested, I could report back when I've finally got it to go. Thanks again for the pointers! Gerald.

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Fw: Re: [Alug] VNC and X11
by Steve Fosdick 12 Feb '03

12 Feb '03

Oops, I meant to send the below to the list... On Tue, 11 Feb 2003 08:44:57 +0000 (GMT) tom potts <madtom1999(a)yahoo.com> wrote: > I was just wondering if its possible to 'spoof' VNC > screen sizes? > ie I install a 'remote' PC with X11 on a minimal > graphics card and then, while connecting in with VNC I > pretend its as good as the graphics card/screen on the > machine I'm using as 'monitor'. > Tom If the remote PC is running the X11 version of VNC as you describe then yes, because the way VNC works with X11 is that the VNC server is a proper X server with a virtual screen which is distinct from the monitor screen. The virtual screen can be a different resolution and different colour depth than the real one. Steve.

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VNC and X11
by tom potts 11 Feb '03

11 Feb '03

I was just wondering if its possible to 'spoof' VNC screen sizes? ie I install a 'remote' PC with X11 on a minimal graphics card and then, while connecting in with VNC I pretend its as good as the graphics card/screen on the machine I'm using as 'monitor'. Tom __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Everything you'll ever need on one web page from News and Sport to Email and Music Charts http://uk.my.yahoo.com

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ALUG Meeting @ Syleham Villiage Hall 23rd Feb 2003
by John Woodard 10 Feb '03

10 Feb '03

I've updated the wiki to confirm this. If you are coming please add your name to http://www.alug.org.uk/contrib/?23%20Feb . This ALUG meeting will be from 2pm until about 6pm in the normal place at http://www.alug.org.uk/venues/syleham.html the bar will be open. BJ will be there from about 1:00pm putting up tables etc. Cheers, BJ

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Weekly IRC reminder
by Neill Newman 10 Feb '03

10 Feb '03

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Re: main digest, Vol 2 #39 - 7 msgs
by Christopher Dawkins 09 Feb '03

09 Feb '03

Re: >> http://lkml.org/archive/2003/2/7/55/index.html > People should organise a boycott of their products is the best start, Couldn't work. Specialist company, specialist customers. When I need Acorn or Iyonix products, I go to Castle (or one of their dealers). > hitting what appears to be a fairly small company in the wallet will > hurt them quite quickly (maybe we should make make local risc os user > groups aware of this) so dissuading any customers would be a good start. You really want to hurt a small British company designing and making remarkably innovative British goods (as far as this is possible nowadays) in competition with the overwhelming Microsoft market? This company needs your support, not your boycott. > A. be encouraged to GPL *all* of the code in question. Agreed: it seems to me the code is useless to anyone else, it will only run on Castle hardware anyway. It would therefore seem that releasing the source would be an easy solution to the problem. Unfortunately it probably includes sections licensed from elsewhere and those people would complain. Maybe they can isolate the sections. > B. be encouraged to remove all disputed code and rewrite using BSD > style/licensed sources. Yes, it sounds (I know nothing of what has actually happened) as if this is what they ought to have done in the first place, and it would have been as easy and much better. Sounds as if they have made a mistake. Sounds as if correcting this will cost a small innovative British company a good bit of money and produce no winners, except that it will make a point (to use BSD and not Linux). Their mistake (to have used Linux source and not BSD) does not seem to me to have many victims. Except themselves, if the GPL community takes action. Conclusion: BSD is the only software that is really free in every sense of the word. -- Christopher Dawkins, Felsted School, Dunmow, Essex CM6 3JG 01371-822698, mobile 07816 821659 cchd(a)felsted.essex.sch.uk

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