Misc. Ramblings

Week of 8 January through 12 January 2001
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Monday - 8 January 2001

Linux-1: Dan-0. I recently downloaded and installed the XFree86 4.0.2 binaries (why I did so will be revealed below). So what you say? Well, when you are running Caldera OpenLinux eDesktop 2.4, you take your life in your hands whenever you install something not directly taken from Caldera in RPM format. In other words, 99.99 percent of the software out there. This is because Caldera, and to a certain extent Red Hat, like to do things differently. Different in the sense of using different file names or directories.

So when you do a "default" install of any software not from Caldera, you run the distinct probability of breaking something. What will break you may or may not know until you try.

In my case, things went okay up to a point. That point was when I shutdown my PC for the day after completing the installation but before reconfiguring the X server. Bad move there buckeroos.

When I came in the next day and tried to boot into KDE, I got an error message saying all kinds of pipes and other related plumbing supplies were broken and dropped me into the command line interface.

I then ran xf86config, just like the install instructions say to. But I guess on a Caldera machine, that is not a Good Thing because after I ran through the questions it asks, and rebooted, the X server came up and I got the login screen, but the monitor was running at one resolution (640X480 it looked like) but the image appeared as if it was set for 1024X768.

By that I mean I saw about 1/4 of the desktop. What's worse, the mouse was all screwed up and did not work. So I had to remember what the graphical login screen looked like, fill in the name and password (tabbing along the way), and hit the Go! button. All without actually being able to see any of this.

Once in KDE, but still being able to see only 1/4 of the desktop (the top-left one-quarter), I couldn't get to the menu bar since the mouse didn't work and there didn't seem to be any useful keyboard commands.

The one that saved my bacon is <CTRL>+<ALT>+<F1>. That opens a full screen terminal. Now at the command line, and being able to see the entire screen, I ran lizardx, the Caldera X server configurator (look that up in your Funk And Wagnall) which complained about more broken pipes when it exited.

Nonetheless, when I restarted the X server, all was well in Gotham City. Oh. Why did I install the XFree update? Because I wanted to be able to use TrueType fonts.

Huh? You correctly say. Well, one of the things that Windows does better than Linux is in the area of fonts. Your average, out-of-the box Linux distros does an entirely terrible job of supporting fonts. Just try using Netscape to look at a site. Any site. Every site you look at will either have extremely small type (assuming you are using a 17-inch monitor or larger running at 1024X768), or large, but extremely jagged type. Or both. See the XFree86 Font Deuglification Mini HOWTO here to help correct this.

But what does that have to do with XFree86? Well, it has a font server that is compatible with, among other things, TrueType fonts.

While there are other ways of getting better font support, upgrading to XFree86, version 4.x, seemed the cleanest way of doing it. How that worked out is best left for next time so remember to tune into this same Bat Channel, at the same Bat Time.

Kernel Pops. So the 2.4.0 version of the Linux kernel came rumbling down the chute late last week (a year late). But when will vendors incorporate the kernel into their distributions?

According to this article from PC Week (see it here), not for months. Sources at both Red Hat and TurboLinux indicate it will be sometime before anything is released. Craig Oda, at TurboLinux, is quoted as saying they will wait until the kernel stabilizes - probably around version 2.4.4, which may not be until April or May.

Speaking of later releases, the article also says version 2.4.1 will be out sometime within the next two weeks - the main addition being the ReiserFS journaling system. So you may or may not want to wait until then.

Class starts up tomorrow and I also need to call five more states to get information regarding their court organizational structure so I gotta go - Aloha!

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Tuesday - 9 January 2001

Font II. Just a few more words on fonts in Linux. In order for everything to work, you need to have three things configured. The first, we kind of talked about yesterday, X servers. The Deuglification HowTo tells you what to change. Or at least, tells you how to do it in an older version of the kernel and with a specific distribution. Good luck if you have Caldera.

The second area is Ghostscript. You can check the Font HowTo (see it here, not to be confused with the Deuglification HowTo) to see how to do that. Again, it may not be updated to the latest versions and it probably does not apply to any other distribution other than the one the author happened to have.

The last area is all of the applications that you have that use fonts. Assuming you have everything set correctly, the fonts will appear in the font list of specific applications and you can switch to your TrueType fonts. Note however, that some versions of software, even if you do everything else correctly, will not recognize TrueType fonts (e.g., early versions of Star Office).

I'm still working on getting everything working (I have the X server part done) so I can't give you a definitive answer as to whether this stuff works or not yet. So you'll just have to stay tuned. <g>

Scam(s) Alert. Ed Foster over at InfoWorld lists some of the more popular Internet scams that have come across his desk. From the Nigerian looking to borrow your bank account so he can transfer millions (which he will of course split with you) to missing children scams designed to harvest your email address. See it here before it bites you.

Spotted on a bumper in Florida - "Dont' Blame Me, I think I Voted for Gore." Today I head back to school to start my second semester of graduate school. I got an "A" for my first semester so I guess I'm doing pretty good so far. If only I could do as well at work. Sigh. I gotta go - Aloha!

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Hump Day Wednesday - 10 January 2001

Linux-100: Dan-0. As all 12 of my loyal readers already know, I've been trying to get TrueType fonts installed in Linux. So far, I can get most applications to recognize the added fonts. In fact, in KDE KWord, I can actually see them on the screen. I can't print them, but at least I can look at them.

So I've been reading various HowTos to try to get the fonts recognized by Ghostscript and my HP LaserJet 4 Plus (with PostScript module added). But I haven't had much luck. The Font HowTo refers to various utilities such as ttf2pt1 (it converts True Type to Type 1). It also helpfully includes instructions on how to use ttf2pt1 and a Perl script to run a batch routine to create a file you need. Unfortunately, neither the instructions nor the Perl script work because they use a switch on ttf2pt1 that DOES NOT EXIST. Hmmm. Now why would you do that? Perhaps because the version of ttf2pt1 has been updated so that switch no longer exists? Or perhaps when the author was typing in the HowTo he or she made a typo? Who knows? All I can say is that it doesn't work.

Another helpful utility mentioned in the HowTo is called type1inst. It's used to install Type 1 fonts. Unfortunately, this doesn't work either. Upon running it, I got the following errors:

sh:unexpected EOF while looking for '"
sh:-c: line 2: syntax error
cannot open for reading at
/usr/local/bin/ line 323.

Hmmm. Now why would that happen? I don't know and I don't care.

<911 TURBO RANT MODE="ON"> Now comes the good part (as if the above wasn't enough). I also took a look at the Printing Usage HowTo. In Section 2.2, Printing a File Using lpr (emphasis in the original), it gives the following example to be typed in at the command line:

# cat thesis.txt > /dev/lp

Hmmm. First, in Caldera, the printer file lp is found in /usr/bin. Okay, we already know Caldera puts things in different places so it's not unusual for a HowTo to refer to a different directory. But let's see what happens if I issue the command, modified to /usr/bin (knowing that the binary file lp, is where all print jobs are sent to. Let me repeat that, if lp does not exist, you can't print because all print jobs go through lp). Well, what happens is that the contents of thesis.txt OVERWRITES the binary file lp. Hmmm. Now why would a HowTo have an example that destroys your ability to print? I don't know. But I definitely DO CARE. Now maybe I didn't hold my mouth right. Or perhaps I wasn't facing the East. Or my aura was not projecting correctly. But I did follow the example as modified.

Yes, I was able to recover the file by re-installing the RPM that included it (LPRng). Is this the only way of recovering? Probably not, but it's the only way I know of.

I'm getting really tired of being referred to HowTos that not only don't work (because of files or directories being different or Perl scripts that don't work, or switches that don't exist), but actually cause damage to your installation. This really is too much. Me thinks I will take a break from Linux for awhile before I rip the still beating heart out of these people who write these things.<911 TURBO RANT MODE="OFF"> Have a Nice Day.

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Thursday - 11 January 2001

So you have two cows. In class we are studying, among other things, the economic policies of public institutions. Illustrative of this, and at the same time seriously funny (oxymoron anyone?), is the story of the two cows. One version of it is here. To whet your appetite, I will quote some of the funnier lines below:

SOCIALISM -- BUREAUCRATIC: You have two cows. The government takes them and puts them in a barn with everyone else's cows. They are cared for by ex-chicken farmers. You have to take care of the chickens the government took from the chicken farmers. The government gives you as much milk and eggs as the regulations say you should need.

UNITED NATIONISM: You have two cows. France vetoes you from milking them. The United States and Britain veto the cows from milking you. New Zealand abstains.

POLITICAL CORRECTNESSISM: You are associated with (the concept of "ownership" is a symbol of the phallo-centric, war-mongering, intolerant past) two differently-aged (but no less valuable to society) bovines of nonspecified gender.

MARXISM/LENINISM: The proletarian cows unite and overthrow the bourgeoisie cowherds. The egalitarian democratic cow evolutionary state with the cow party as vanguard disintegrate over time. Marx choked on a veggie-burger before he could explain what happens to the use-value, exchange-value and sign-value of bovine leather.

LIBERTARIANISM: Go away. What I do with my cows is none of your damn business.

EUROPEAN UNIONISM: You have two goats. The EU declares them to be fruit in order to conform to a rare Belgian custom of making Cow Jam (jam being required to have at least 45% fruit).

DEMOCRACY -- AMERICAN: You have two cows. Your neighbors pick someone to tell you who gets the milk and then blame Japan while border guards beat up Mexicans sneaking into the country. People are outraged for a week or so and then go back to televised sports where there's no violence.

COMMUNISM -- CHINESE - MAO STYLE: You have two pigs. The government launches a campaign to convince you to donate them "voluntarily" to provide meat for workers in the city. The government then declares that people don't need pigs to make pork. Quoting the correct phrases from your little red book, you and your neighbors try to create pork from sheer willpower. Your local party leader reports that you have exceeded all expectations. Your neighbors starve.

CAPITALISM -- HONG KONG STYLE: You have two cows. You sell three of them to your publicly-listed company, using letters of credit opened by your brother-in-law at the bank, then execute a debt / equity swap with associated general offer so that you get all four cows back, with a tax deduction for keeping five cows. The milk rights of six cows are transferred via a Panamanian intermediary to a Cayman Islands company secretly owned by the majority shareholder, who sells the rights to all seven cows' milk back to the listed company. The annual report says that the company owns eight cows, with an option on one more. Meanwhile, you kill the two cows because the fung shui is bad.


Who said economists don't have a sense of humor? Speaking of which, economists have predicted eight of the last two recessions.

Security Alert. Those few of you using the following databases should listen up. Everyone else can move on.

Borland/Inprise Interbase 4.x and 5.x
Open source Interbase 6.0 and 6.01
Open source Firebird 0.9-3 and earlier

CERT Advisory 2001-01 (see it here) announces that there is a compiled in back door. The back door can be used to execute arbitrary code (there's that phrase again that translates to mean they can run whatever they darned well please). The offending code was introduced by Borland themselves. Sigh.

Tensions. Tensions. I've talked about this subject before so I won't belabor the point. What point? That there is, and probably always should be, a tension between civil servants and their appointed supervisors. Why? Because, to the extent possible, civil servants are supposed to be insulated from the shifting winds of appointed officials. This is so civil servants can give objective recommendations.

Does this mean civil servants may seem to be non-responsive to the public? Sometimes. But that's not the point. The point is to give unbiased, objective recommendations because that is to the greater Public good (Public in upper-case to mean all of the public, not just those who are making the most noise).

This system has worked well for at least the last 50 years (as a reaction against the Boss Tweed type of government). When it is not followed, when civil servants start shifting their recommendations to match what they think their appointed supervisors would want and not what is for the Public good, is when you start sliding down a very slippery slope. A slope that leaves the Public without an informed advocate.

What also bothers me is that in writing what I just have, I am putting myself at risk, under the current administration. Something I have never felt, up to now. So when people say civil servants never stick their necks out or take any risks, remember that is not necessarily true about everyone.

Aloha!

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Aloha Friday - 12 January 2001

It's Friday!

Lots of stuff to do today. Especially since Monday is a national holiday (Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.) and I'm hoping to take Tuesday off also. Which means posts will be up a little later than usual. In the mean time, here's a couple of emails.

Mail Call

From: David Magda
To: Dan Seto
Sent: Thursday, January 11, 2001 10:41 AM
Subject: /dev/lp

Perhaps you should purchase a book on using Linux?

The /dev directory holds all the _dev_ice files. So /dev/hd* would be the _h_ard _d_isks. /dev/sd* would the the _S_CSI _d_isks. /dev/lp would be the _l_ine _p_rinter. When you do a `cat thesis.txt > /dev/lp' you are telling the system to display the file (`cat thesis.txt'), but redirect the output ('>') to the line printer device (`/dev/lp').

The above command will send the file straight to the printer port (like copying a file to PRN in DOS). The `/usr/bin/lp' is used to print a file through the printing daemon (thing Print Manager). Instead of telling the system to send thesis.txt to the printer (/dev/lp (remember (almost) everything in *nix is treated as a file)) you told the system to write it the filename /usr/bin/lp. Since that file already existed, it was replaced.

Now, your main mistake was running the system as the root (super) user. Only root is allowed to overwrite system files. You only want to be the superuser when doing system adiministration; otherwise a silly typo can screw up your entire system. (*nix *will* nuke your entire installation if you do a `rm -rf /' command. Trust me, I know.) The thing about *nix is that it allows you to do anything you want to your system. Anything. If you asks it to shoot itself in the foot it will first (if you're lucky) if you are sure. And if you answer "yes", it will promptly do so.

*nix is not sometimes refered to as a guru friendly system for nothing. Perhaps you should think about either buying a book or taking one out from the library to get the basics?

Good luck on your future exploits. (E-mail me any questions you have about this message if it reads like Ancient Greek. :)

--
David Magda, 3rd Year Electrical Eng.
Vimes pulled out his watch and stared at it. It was turning out to be one of those days...the sort that you got every day.

              -- Terry Pratchett, _The_Fifth_Elephant_

From: Dan Seto
To: David Magda
Subject: Re: /dev/lp
Date: Thu, 11 Jan 2001 12:14:20 -1000

David,

Thank you for your informative email! I appreciate all constructive comments.

But I need to clarify a few points while at the same time I would like to emphasize again that I am appreciative of your comments:

1. "Perhaps you should purchase a book on using Linux?"

Yes, I do need to get *another* book on Linux. The one I have is "Linux in a Nutshell" from O'Reilly. It is not much of a help. I also have a very old book on UNIX V, which as it turns out, is more helpful than the O'Reilly book. I got the UNIX V book many years ago when I was first playing with "real" UNIX. <g>

2. "Now, your main mistake was running the system as the root (super) user."

Hmmm. I made a mistkae alright, but the mistake was following the HowTo! Below are the full instructions. Note that it says to login as *root*. Note also that the example they have, which is the one I have in my post, has the "hash" prompt. Which, as you know, means you are logged in as root when you issue the command (otherwise you would see the default "$" prompt):

---------
http://www.linuxdoc.org/HOWTO/Printing-Usage-HOWTO-2.html#ss2.2
2.2 Printing a File Using lpr
By far, the most simplistic way to print in the Linux operating system is to send the file to be printed directly to the printing device. One way to do this is to use the cat command. As the root user, one could do something like

# cat thesis.txt > /dev/lp

In this case, /dev/lp is a symbolic link to the actual printing device---be it a dot-matrix, laser printer, typesetter, or plotter. (See ln(1) for more information on symbolic links.) For the purpose of security, only the root user and users in the same group as the print daemon are able to write directly to the printer. This is why commands such as lpr, lprm, and lpq have to be used to access the printer.
----------

As you correctly point out, issuing the above command, exactly as shown above, overwrites whatever was there before. So whatever was in /dev/lp before was deleted when I first issued the command as is. And, when I changed the directory and went to /usr/bin, the same thing occurred.

3. As noted in my post, I was able to replace the erased file in /usr/bin. However, I did not realize that I would need to correct the lost link in /dev since printing is working. But I guess I should do so anyway just in case anything tries to print to lp.

Thank you once again for taking the time to email me!


From: Jan Swijsen
To: Dan Seto
Subject: cow jam
Date: Fri, 12 Jan 2001 13:12:37 +0000

> rare Belgian custom of making Cow Jam (jam being required to have at least 45% fruit)

Not rare at all. Any less fruit, and you got flavoured sugar.

>Speaking of which, economists have predicted eight of the last two recessions.

Nothing special. I predict the next recession. I do guarantee that it will be in ... the future.

Oeps, am I now an Economist?

--
Svenson.

Mail at work : qjsw@oce.nl,
or call      : (Oce HQ)-4727
Mail at home : sjon@svenson.com

Have a Great Weekend Everyone - Aloha!


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