[Alug] alug-announce digest, Vol 1 #2 - 3 msgs

-- MJR --__--__-- Message: 2 To: alug-announce@stu.uea.ac.uk From: MJ Ray markj@cloaked.freeserve.co.uk Organization: Cat-killingly bad Date: 20 Jun 2001 11:00:34 +0100 Subject: [ALUG-announce] ALUG Notes -- two weeks to 20 June Hi, here's a short summary of what's been on the ALUG mailing list in the last 2 weeks. Hopefully, in future, these will be done weekly. Any volunteers for a rota? All that you need is some saved ALUG messages... Where I know IRC nicknames they're included in the write-up somewhere. I hope this is useful for the Monday evening IRC meetings, but if I've fluffed one, please let me know and I'll try not to do it again. [Alug] online services in Norwich question 36 messages Joss Winn will be coming to UEA later this year and asked Norwich members to "advise me on a couple of things regarding networking and accomodation in the area. [...] can anybody tell me about the availability of cable or DSL in the area?" Andrew Savory (ajs) confirmed that the old-fashioned modems are still common in the city: "It isn't available. According to NTL, it will be available in 'early 2001', 'Easter', 'May', 'June', and now 'later this year'. Don't hold your breath." He recommended an unlimited dial-up deal instead until the situation changes, while Jo Mitchell suggested ISDN. Adam Bower took this forwards by asking about using 128k ISDN on these deals, although no-one answered. With ADSL supposed to be coming early next year, Martyn Drake helpfully pointed out that "I'll just bet whoever is offering ADSL services in the area will be using the USB Speedtouch modems. Mandrake 8.0 pretty much supports these straight out of the box" Once again, the "MJR and David Freeman fireworks show" got into action. This time it was about BT's slow roll-out of ADSL with David's initial claim that "BT has the technologie and ability to role out ADSL to everyone, except it costs so much to do. OFTEL wont let us loss lead" getting the intolerant response from MJR that "BT is solely interested in screwing as much money as possible out of the current technologies (eg ISDN) before having to discount them when they introduce the superior DSL systems." From there it became an argument about whether it's the government or corporation's fault and whether the will of the people makes any difference in modern society. Other network technology was explored, including ham radio ("you don't want to go there. [...] 9600 baud is considered fast. [...] Welcome to the twilight zone where valves are the vogue and your circuit looks like it's a particularly tricky plumbing problem." -- Bill Hill (wbh) ) and 802.11b wireless networking ("A group in ipswich considered building the SWAN, Suffok Wireless area network, we just need more people to make it worth while." -- David Freeman). [Alug] basic routing/config prob for mail 26 messages Jen spent a while on the list getting help in trying to figure out how to persuade her Linux box to play nicely with work's network. Once we'd helped her to get the right Debian packages installed (and pointed people at http://www.uk.debian.org/ for future searches), we made some progress in correcting some errors but Jen reported back 'No, I get "a record cannot be found"' before it mysteriously started working. Further investigation suggested that "problem was ignorance about how WINS and DNS work, probably. Did a crash course yesterday. I'll try and do a write-up." The thread continued for a while after this success with points about firewalls and discussion of a newbie list again. John Woodard (BigJohn) summarised past discussions with "I don't think there is too much trafic on the main list to warrant a newbie list quite yet." [Alug] ALUG Librarian stuff 16 messages, +3 in another thread This thread continued with MJR (slef) casting aspersions on UML, while being enlightened by Neill Newman with the confirmation that "in some respects, UML, booch and the like are biased towards OO". UML was still seen as the right way forwards for the library design, as "it is impossible to design a system that is exactly righ the first time round", but to date, no design has been posted. [Alug] ANNOUNCE: ALUG 2001.4 (End Of The Academic Year!) 7 messages, +8 in other threads The final meeting announcement was posted, finally provoking protest that it was on Father's Day and would cause BJ to miss his first meeting ever. Sadly, it was too late to change. Also, more details of the demonstrations planned for the event were given in responses from David Freeman (akula) and others. [Alug] Usage Stats for anglian.lug.org.uk 6 messages http://usage.alug.org.uk/ was announced by Martyn Drake, which was quickly followed by Ashley T Howes spotting "In June 2001 3.3% of visitors were using a BBC Micro" and Steve Fosdick (fozzy) correctly spotting that "The other possibility, of course, is that someone has a browser that lets the user configure the agent header (doesn't opera let you do that?), or a proxy server that can be made to falsify it." Some OT discussion of the feasibility of a BBC Micro web browser followed. [Alug] MS Exchange Server 5 messages Govind Chandra asked "if it is possible to query Exchange Server like POP3 or IMAP servers. Email is the only thing that I have to boot into windows for and use outlook." In general, even though this is possible, Bill Hill confirmed that it was likely to be a local sysadmin's decision not to allow it: "POP/IMAP/anything-useful is disabled by default as being a security risk. I just set it up to have all mail forwarded to somewhere with a more sane server!" -- MJR --__--__-- Message: 3 To: alug-announce@stu.uea.ac.uk From: MJ Ray markj@cloaked.freeserve.co.uk Organization: Cat-killingly bad Date: 01 Jul 2001 13:34:53 +0100 Subject: [ALUG-announce] ALUG Notes -- 10 days to 1 July OK, so I didn't get this done weekly. Probably something to do with travelling back from Belfast on the day I wanted to do it. Anyone want to do the next one? Well, here we go for our irregular summary of the ALUG list activity... Topics: [Alug] Microsoft FUD [Alug] pppd problem [Alug] Virus on Linux? [Alug] Disappearing messages [Alug] Problems with Mandrake, silly questions and the result. [Alug] linux and USB! Can it be achieved with SuperMicro P6SBA, AmiBios R1.5b? [Alug] Linux Expo... [Alug] A complete beginners view [Alug] Van Eck X config [Alug] Secure FTP Subject: [Alug] Microsoft FUD Adam Bower posted a link to "the document with the worst use of grammer (not that mine is great but then hey I'm not an advertising exec) and the greatest FUD (Fear Uncertainty Doubt) from Microsoft ever." and noted that the document's comments (don't you love Word giving the game away?) described it as "Our latest anti-linux paper.." Steve Fosdick reasoned "why does Microsoft write a document about operating systems to target the end user? For the same reason that Intel advertise the Pentium Processor on the TV - because they want to convince the end users who don't have the technical understanding to specifically ask for the advertised product when that decision is better left with someone who understands the technology." There were also numerous specific rebuttals. Suffice to say, the group wasn't impressed with the tactics used. George Waring posted a link to "Microsoft: We Use FreeBSD at: http://www.betanews.com/article.php3?sid=992921150 ... These guys sure know how to make themselves easy to hate." And Jen implored us to "Just remember, all, - Linux is NOT FREE, your system can be hacked into by ANYONE due to the open source software, and there are NO DRIVERS for ANY of it so it WON'T WORK. The trouble is, of course, that there are a lot of people out there who will read that and believe it." Subject: [Alug] pppd problem New list contributor Andrew Glover complained about "disconnecting straight away with pppd." He answered his own question shortly after "I found out it's a compatibility problem with debian potato and 2.4.x". Welcome to the list Andrew. May we solve all your problems so easily ;-) Subject: [Alug] Virus on Linux? Vanisa Surapipith asked: "Can virus attact a linux system? People with MSWindows are constantly affected and need to update their Norton or McAfee virus scanner. Is there a similar thing in linux world? Neill Newman replied that "installing a virus on a linux box is much more dificult than under windows..." and pointed out that "for Redhat, ther are a fre options for updates.. if you are new to this, and want things to just work smoothly, I suggest looking at the up2date and up2date-gnome programs." Meanwhile, xsprite gave the short answer that "Yes. http://www.big.net.au/~silvio/ However initial infection can be harder because of the multiuser nature of gnu/linux (and peer review). Worms are far more common. http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,5080656,00.html http://www.computeruser.com/news/01/01/23/news13.html" and Steve (brodders) offered a link to http://www.linuxgazette.com/issue65/lg_toc65.html Subject: [Alug] Disappearing messages Adam Bower and numerous others complained of strange happenings with the list. The short answer was some network and electrical maintenance which occurred near the list servers at UEA. Hopefully we're back to normal now. Subject: [Alug] Problems with Mandrake, silly questions and the result. John Seago reported more success with Red Hat than Mandrake, but there were some lingering problems. Owen offered condolences saying that "I still feel a begginer much the time, I think its the nature of linux. Some times I feel like its a "Civalisation" like stratagy game, in that as soon as you master one aspect of the system you find there is another level of technology to explore. Unless this is a hobby or profession I should target your efforts to what you want to do. Sound cards are a little tricky to install. Each sound card is installed slightly differently." John posted a later message: "Having now got over the initial euphoria of actually having a working (?), (see later), set of "Linux", Chris, my daughters fiancee, and I have now come up against several problems, In my case numbers of applications just don't work,and trying them delivers a bug report window> I can't believe that a complete system was sent out with a non working spreadsheet, time manager, and other bits that just don't work. I am of the opinion that I haven't installed or set up the system properly or may have installed something that needs other, installed items to work." Once again, Adam's message summarised many: "Yeah, Linux at the beginning is/can be frustrating. I remember the initial learning curve of How-to X would recommend reading Y that would recommend Z that would recommend X again. Made me say arghhhh more than once, although when you find you have 'got it' on one thing (in my case how init worked and the rc.d directorys) you suddenly find that nothing is a real problem and you can fix things yourself. What distro are you using though as it does sound a little buggy! I found that I had the same experience (installed apps not working etc.) as you until I found Debian, although Debian was more stressful to install and the prior knowledge of other distros was very helpful. Take the time to read and you will find yourself never going back to windows, it can take some dedication but it is really worth it." Subject: [Alug] linux and USB! Can it be achieved with SuperMicro P6SBA, AmiBios R1.5b? Tim Gowing announced: "I am having trouble making USB work under Linux (stand alone Linux only system, SuSE 6.3). ... Does anyone have any suggestions for a remedy?" Adam was swift with his reply: "I just had a look here http://www.supermicro.com/TECHSUPPORT/BIOS/bios.htm and it looks as though your Bios is now at version 3.1 so I would also suggest upgrading this and the kernel." Of course, how do you run these upgrades with a Linux-only system? This is a problem the seasoned Linux hackers have hit before. John Woodard answered: "Use a dos boot floppy you can use freedos if you really don't want to run Redmond code. Plenty of boot floppy images on the net if you look. My Epox mobo has the award awflash utility accessible in the bios!" Sounds like manufacturers are getting Clue. Subject: [Alug] Linux Expo... Many messages flew about, trying to arrange an ALUG meet at this event. So far, it sounds like Earl, Owen and David are there on Wednesday, while Jo, Adam and myself appear to be going on Thursday (Adam: "(damn less freebies!)"). Probably it's time to take up Adam's suggestion of "a big organising session on who is going on which day on Mondays IRC?" Subject: [Alug] Van Eck X config David Freeman "was reading cryptonomicon for the second time and I was wondering how I would go about do what Randy does with X windows. For those who don't know, Randy configures X so that there are no window titles, and the background is a script generating windows which open and close at random. Also I wondered if it was possible to output morse code on the scroll lock LED." The answers (from many): "The window titles bit would be the work of your window manager" ... "I did once have a program that would find a random .jpg from the net and display it in the root window as a background, although I would not reccomend using this program as it could be more than a little embarassing considering some of the content of the net" http://www.sudac.org/~napolium/linux/ http://sourceforge.net/projects/ditdah/ A discussion of Sun 3s broke out. http://www.sunhelp.org/faq/sunref1.html Subject: [Alug] Secure FTP Ashley Howes asked "I was wondering if anyone knows of a secure FTP server. By secure I mean the difference between telnet and SSH (so all traffic is encrypted in transmit). I briefly saw references to scp (part of SSH) on a google search. As anyone used this or could comment on alternatives?" Andrew Savory answered "Yes, I use scp all the time. It's usually available as part of the standard ssh package on linux (debheads do 'apt-get install ssh') and works quite nicely. If you're a windows user, search for putty and grab a copy of pscp." Adam (Ubiquitous?) Bower: "sftp is an interactive file transfer program, similar to ftp(1), which performs all operations over an encrypted ssh(1) transport." Andi Chandler offered http://www.openbsd.org/cgi-bin/man.cgi?query=sftp&sektion=1 "This has the man page for sftp client" and http://www.xbill.org/sftp/ "This package contains sftpserv. I haven't tried it yet - when I do I'll email the list." -- MJR --__--__-- _______________________________________________ alug-announce mailing list alug-announce@stu.uea.ac.uk http://www.anglian.lug.org.uk/ http://rabbit.stu.uea.ac.uk/cgi-bin/listinfo/alug-announce End of alug-announce Digest