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Email Brian Bilbrey

Orb Grafitti is sometimes a conversation, sometimes a soapbox. I use Linux most often, and I write about that and related software frequently. I also have a day job working as a dogsbody for a small manufacturing firm here in the SF Bay Area. Tom Syroid and I have co-authored a Linux Book. We're posting it online, here and here. Have a looksee! I'm glad you've come to visit, and always happy to hear from you.

EMAIL - I publish email sometimes. If you send me an email and you want privacy or anonymity, please say so, I'll pay attention to your wishes.

Good morning. I am home today, watching some guys put in a sideyard fence arranged jointly by the owner of this house, and William the neighbor. Additionally, I've got Pacbell coming out midday sometime to fix the bit they broke last week when they were here for a line check. So, I can keep busy with a variety of things. How about...

And the end of the Workstation Portion ...

Install-O-Rama - Part 6

Slackware 8.0

Slackware (http://www.slackware.com/) is the only other major distribution aside from Debian that still installs via a series of text screens. From my perspective, it's all one - as long as all the right boxes appear to be filled in, and the questions and prompts are clearly written enough that you and I can both figure out what to do, in which order. The Linux boot screen directs you via a function key menu to determine which way to boot into the installer. The options are dependent on your hardware - for me the standard bare.i kernel, which works with IDE-only systems is just fine. Once running, the following steps lead to a running Slackware system...

• First, as with several other installs, comes the keymap selection.


• Then, with prompting from the login message, login as root. This system is running in RAM, not from the hard drive.


• Once logged in, type cfdisk to partition the system to your preference, including setting a swap partition. If you've gotten the idea that there's LESS guidance here than in Debian... well, you're right. That's OK, as you're not going to use Slack as your first Linux.


• After the partitions are created (and take notes, because you'll need the info from cfdisk during setup), exit the utility, and type setup from the command line. This starts an Ncurses based installer similar in style to Debian's, but with fewer toplevel options.


• Read all of the available help, then add the swap partition - It'll be formatted and mounted when you're done.


• Target is the next menu item - set up the mount points for each of the partitions defined in the cfdisk step above. I always setup my partitions in tree order. That is, the root partition '/' comes first, then /usr, then /usr/local. That way, as the installer creates the descending mount points, they aren't overwritten by later steps. Modern installers have been known to cope with out-of-order specification, but it's best this way, especially since this also defines the order in /etc/fstab, and partitions should ALWAYS be mounted in tree order. I don't know whether this installer reorders or not, as I take care at this phase.


• Source selection permits choosing from among CD, local hard disk, NFS and pre-mounted directory. CD for me...


• Software is first selected in broad categories, with many items preselected as recommended. Let it ride.


• The next step is Install. There are many options here - the top two are Full and Newbie. Full loads all selected software without prompting. The Newbie choice permits selection and prompting during the install. I went with Full.


• After all the packages are installed, which takes a bit, it's time to format and create a boot disk. While they offer a "simple" option on the list, it's advised to format a floppy, then make a lilo bootdisk (or two) as backup against a rainy day.


• Modem setup is offered - I have none in this box.


• Custom screen fonts? I'll have none of that either - this is for console stuff, and I don't need fancy on the console.


• Bootloader setup offers Lilo, in a variety of configurations - I took the quick way out by selecting Simple, then MBR to boot. Easy breezy.


• Mouse selection precedes an offer to run GPM. GPM is a mouse driver for console modes. It can be handy if you run locally from the console, and use applications that take advantage of it, like the Midnight Commander (a Norton Commander like tool). I don't and so don't burden my system with it.


• Network configuration is the subject of the next several screens worth, all with standard, clear prompts requesting the expected data. Here, at the end of the process, we find a bit of modern behaviour - autoprobing to determine the correct NIC driver.


• Mail server setup offers several options from plain to MAPS RBL tie-ins. The only missing possibility here is NONE!


• X startup script selection is next, from all the possibilities (and there are 10 or more, ranging from Gnome to FVWM to BlackBox and so on), I choose ... KDE.


• Finally, the root password is set.


• Now we're prompted to exit the installer, and reboot. Let's see what it bought us, all this hard work.

Well. X isn't configured in the installer, so I was left to run xf86config on my own. That I can cope with, although a first time user's lost and gone running back to Redmond at this point. However that's not nearly as much of a problem as this:

bilbrey@garcia:~$ nmap ghastly

Starting nmap V. 2.54BETA22 ( www.insecure.org/nmap/ )
Interesting ports on mail.orbdesigns.com (192.168.1.3):
(The 1526 ports scanned but not shown below are in state: closed)
Port       State       Service
21/tcp     open        ftp
22/tcp     open        ssh
23/tcp     open        telnet
25/tcp     open        smtp
37/tcp     open        time
79/tcp     open        finger
80/tcp     open        http
111/tcp    open        sunrpc
113/tcp    open        auth
139/tcp    open        netbios-ssn
513/tcp    open        login
514/tcp    open        shell
515/tcp    open        printer
587/tcp    open        submission
1025/tcp   open        listen
6000/tcp   open        X11

Nmap run completed -- 1 IP address (1 host up) scanned in 1 second

That's an awful lot of lockdown work that needs to be done. I'd want to be sure I wasn't on a live unprotected net connection before I put this box up - I'd get rooted before I could caulk half the cracks and holes. I mean... TELNET??? Sheesh. Yeah, I got it running, and I could learn to make this mine, as I've done with Debian. But this should be your third or fourth linux, after you are comfortable with administering your own box. Tom loves Slack, and so do a lot of others. I suppose it's the fine grained control that is given once you understand the setup.... Still, what's a mother to do? Go on to the next distribution? OK!

Best Linux 2000 Release 3

Best Linux (http://www.bestlinux.net/) is the product of Finnish software engineering firm SOT. Without having spoken to them, I have the impression that one of their early gigs was supporting Linux for their customers. They may have found that none of the distributions quite met their standards, so melded their own from several sources, in the same manner that VA had their own custom version of Red Hat for their hardware. It would appear from their webfront that SOT is also a whitebox manufacturer (assembler). Their big draw for Best Linux seems to be the extensive language customization that they've done for a variety of north and east European countries.

That said, Best Linux is beginning to get a bit long in the tooth. The GUI installer bears a strong resemblance to the version of the Lizard installer that came with Caldera 2.3 and 2.4. Let's run through it, shall we?

• Language selection is first. As usual, this is to choose the language for the installer, not for software loading (such as manpages and more), although it does define the default selection for that later stage in most installers.


• Mouse configuration is next. This is where the installer shows it's early Caldera Lizard roots - WARNING - Do NOT modify the mouse configuration from that which is autodetected, UNLESS the mouse isn't working. Say you've got an Intellimouse Optical, as I do. The mouse is detected as a standard PS/2 mouse, yet the pointer's working. Go to change the selection to Intellimouse, the mouse stops working. Use the keyboard to change the mouse selection back to PS/2? No joy. The only solace here is that it's early in the install process. This is not the only distro that does this, I've generally found it best to go with WHATEVER the installer believes it's found. Fine tuning can wait for a successfully installed system.


• Partitioning routines are standard, with choices of Whole disk, Prepared partitions or Custom. Choosing Whole disk on the 20 G drive in the system yielded a 5 G root partition, 117 M of swap, and the balance of the drive given over to /home.


• Package selection - there's these options: Full, Typical, Minumum and Custom. Full sounds OK. The packages start installing, and the progress bar in the lower left inches its way along during the rest of configuration.


• The video subsystem configuration is composed of screens for Keyboard, Video Card, Monitor specifications and finally Video Mode (color depth and resolution) with a test option. It all works, although it won't do well with video cards newer than the distribution, needless to say.


• Next, set the root password and define normal user accounts. As with most of these tools, the password and confirming need to match in order to progress out of this stage. One oddity is that once the root password data is entered correctly, the instructional prompt changes to "You should type login", which in context implies that you need to create a user account before proceeding. Hmmmm.


• Sound card config is next up, but I have none in this machine.


• The Networking setup is standard, defaults to Static (although DHCP is available) and prompts through all the usual numbers, host and domain names and such.


• Modem setup does me no good, but it's here.


• Printer setup includes the ability to configure a remote printer (which is my setup), but not test it during installation.


• The bootloader is Grub, and possibilities for setup include MBR, Target (root partition), Other, or Skip. MBR is my usual selection.


• The timezone configuration step shows we're almost done!


• While the rest of the packages load, and post-install completes, instead of a game (as most of the Lizard and Lizard-like installers present), there's a series of help and introductory screens providing useful Linux newbie information.


• Finally, the boot floppy step completes the installation.

There are a few open ports, mostly related to KDE and X, along with the sunrpc portmapper, sshd, and a printer port. Not too bad, nor unexpected. However, Best Linux is ANCIENT, sporting KDE 1.1.2, and the 2.2.16 kernel. Unless you have a fetish for dry and dusty, I'd wait for SOT to come out with a new version before giving Best another try.

12:1`7 - Here we go...

Mandrake 8.1 (Raklet)

MandrakeSoft (http://www.mandrakesoft.com/) once based their distribution upon the foundation of the latest Red Hat release, then tweaked it, and prebuilt binaries for 586 processors, which yielded a speed advantage for those running pentium and better boxen. Over the last couple of years, Mandrake has broken their dependence upon the Red Hat release cycle, and has forged ahead with new GUI tools, journalling file systems, and much more. I've always been a bit partial to Mandrake. Here we're looking at the official 8.1 release, that's just days old. I'm actually running it on both workstation and laptop at the moment, though the workstation's likely to return to Debian, soon enough. Here goes the install.

• Language selection is first up, as usual.


• A EULA is next - this appears to be more and more standard - as Mandrake has gotten permission to distribute some non-freely distributable bits, and they need disclaimers in for that. Additionally, the EULA protects the commercial software that comes with the retail versions. This takes Mandrake down a notch or two for those who demand Open Source purity in their distros. Ah, well.


• Type of installation is next, with choice between Expert and Recommended. I like Expert, so that I can see what's being done, even if I accept most of the defaults.


• A cool new graphic accompanies the mouse detection, configuration and testing screen.


• Keyboard setup and test is standard, works fine.


• Security settings for the installed system range from High to Medium to Low. Here is the right point in the install to configure this, because as the setup progresses, it makes sense to configure each item in light of it's security settings.


• The partitioning stage is of Mandrake's usual high quality. There are those who revile DiskDrake, but I like the tool. Additionally, Mandrake puts up lots of the latest and greatest here, including ReiserFS (as they have for a year or more), and new entries EXT3 and JFS. WARNING - JFS hosed Greg's box just day before yesterday. I'd wait for a bit on that one. I clear the drive, then use the Auto button to configure the drive.


• After formatting the partitions, a dialog box queries for the presence of the extras and supplemental CDROMS prior to starting package selection.


• Software packages are initially set by groups (like development, KDE, Gnome, Internet Servers, etc), and can be fine tuned within each group by individual packages, including automatic dependency resolution. Nice tool. Then all the selected software is installed to the system from CDROMS.


• Root password is next up, along with authentication method selection: Local, NIS, LDAP.


• User Accounts can be set up next, one or more.


• The network configuration process starts with autodetection of many different types of connectivity hardware, from modems to ethernet cards. Those items that are fair game for configuration are highlighted, then configured one at a time, as you continue. For me, it's Ethernet, and I configure all the host and IP information easily.


• Next is a system summary dialog which includes buttons for Printer, Mouse, Keyboard and Timezone settings. Printer is for local only, so I'll defer that until after installation. Mouse and Keyboard were done up at the front end of the process. That leaves timezone, quickly completed.


• A full screen dialog to select running services. Everything that was selected for installation is setup to run on first boot - I go through and shut off everything I don't need or have configuration work to do yet. As you'll see later, this step pays off. I cut the running services down to 12. Not too shabby.


• Boot disk creation is next, and recommended (as usual).


• The bootloader configuration has lots of options: Grub, Lilo, and GUI Lilo. Additionally, password protection can be configured to make changing boot options a restricted activity. I use Grub, and write to the MBR.


• Mandrake presents a plethora of XFree86 options for me, 4.1, 3.3.6, and 3.3.6 accelerated. I select the first, then setup the resolution and color depth and test. That's it - Mandrake is installed.

After installation and first boot, Mandrake has only two exposed services - X11 and KDM. Note that I didn't setup SSH. Also I am a tad surprised that those two are on outside ports... Mmmm. More investigation's warranted, as I'd think that "High" security should prevent those from running on external TCP ports. We've got the 2.4.8 Linux kernel, KDE 2.2.1pre, and LOTS of other window manager options for you experimentation and eddification. While some people don't like how Mandrake runs the KDE menus 4 and 5 levels deep, I kind of like it.

One problem I found in the RC3 that is fixed in the final is modifying the security level from the Mandrake Control Center now appears to work properly. Mmmm. I am going to spend some time living in Mandrake and reporting on it, so you'll hear more soon.

That puts a wrap on the workstation portion of my Install-O-Rama. Stay tuned as I start putting together the Server-oriented distributions over the next few weeks. And yes - I'll accumulate all of these Install-O-Rama postings onto a single page for ease of reference. Give me a day or two, please.

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Good morning. For you unbelievers out there, here's the new fence that the owner put in. This is on the north side of the house, where the old owner's pitbulls, Felony and Bondo, attempted to bodily fling themselves through the fence in order to get at and fight with the neighbor dogs. Needless to say, after several years of THAT behaviour, the existing fence was pretty rickety. All that's left now is a spot of concrete work - I am told that they're going to pour a pad down the alley next to the garage, which will make working the trash and such much nicer - right now it's pea gravel, broken glass, and assorted other inorganic crud back there.

The lawn came through reasonably well. The lush bits are tramped down a spot here and there - they should perk up on their own over the next day or two. OTOH, the shady strip that really hadn't fully come up yet is less happy. I did a little remedial work there late last afternoon, as I knew I would be doing - adding more seed and cover. A few more warmish days should see it started properly.

The morning's email looks reasonably uncluttered, one or two list technical questions of interest, one of which I could answer, and did - that always feels nice, to be able to help out and pay forward a bit more. Out on the news web, it appears that Tony Blair is joining the public tough-talk crowd, which is a good thing. Puts more pressure on the Taliban to get a grip in the modern world.

Now it's time to go, have a lovely day, see you soon.

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Good Morning...

Now for some good news - Sun has released the Beta of StarOffice 6.0. If you were disappointed in the speed and the user interface of StarOffice 5.2, but hopeful because you're looking for a way to get off the treadmill from the Pacific Northwest, then have a long look at this Beta, currently promoted on Sun's home page. It includes solid spell checking and thesaurus features. I've successfully loaded both Word and Excel files - especially the Word import appears to be flawless. OTOH, I am not entirely happy with chart import with Excel, but there's much more exploration to do.

The Open Source version, OpenOffice (http://www.openoffice.org/), has put out another release as well. The spell checking isn't implemented yet, and there are a number of components in the StarOffice product that aren't in OpenOffice simply because they're not Software Libré.

I've pulled down both packages. They both install under Debian Sid and Mandrake 8.1, there's screen font antialiasing (provided your video card has render capabilities, and you're running XFree86 4.1 and up). Work with these - be initially impressed, as I am. I'll spend time replacing my time in MS products at work with these, and we'll see where they take me.

Whoops! Times up. Commute? Here I go again. Y'all have a great day. Think good thoughts, and stay committed to your beliefs.

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Well, good evening. Thanks for bearing with me. When I got up this morning, the cable modem was practicing it's most common trick - roll over and play dead. Sigh. I rsynched my web directory over to Gryphon the Acer Travelmate 600TER, with every intention of doing a post from work at some point. Needless to say, I failed in that quest. Instead I spent the day playing Facilities Man, moving desks, computers, booths, and much more. All that in conjunction with customer and IT support. Can I have a winning lottery ticket, please?

Now I'm drawing a bit of extra traffic because of a brief post of an Open0ffice picture in a reply over at Slashdot. Other than that, I didn't do much interesting today. Well, when I got home, I did take a few snaps of things about the yard, like... the yard, the hummingbirds, lots of fall flowers. Very pretty. Here's three snaps to sate you for now - more on their own page soon:

It's time to grill some steak, and settle in for a nice evening. Back atcha tomorrow. G'night.

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Good morning, and TGIF for those that worship the end of the week... <grin>. Here's some more pictures from last night's yard photo session:

Greg sends me this funny probable TV program guide from The Onion. That's about all I've got for the moment. I am very pleased to be at the end of the week. Oh, one drawback - today I'm having a physical. I haven't had a physical in something like 13 years or more. My way of thinking, doctors are for helping you be comfortable while you die - other than that, why hang out with them at all! They're always around sick people, I might catch something. Bah. But this is important to Marcia, so I'll go.

See you later, take care.

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How does 11.5 hours of sleep strike you? Seems to have suited me just fine, thanks very much. I haven't slept that long in a very long time. Of course, I am going to be a useless git for at least the rest of the day as a result - no real difference, in other words. Anyway, good morning!

I got a few more hummingbird photos last night, but those little suckers are FAST! Mostly the pictures were blurred out. But this one, feeding, is as crisp as it gets. Really, these little birds don't have a lot of fear in them, although they do startle easily. However, they seem to be interested in the source of the flashing, as long as I don't move. We've got three regulars, including one that's a bit smaller and quieter - if I had to guess, the latter is female, but I want to check coloration and look these up in Audubon, one day.

Today, cousin Barb from Michigan is flying in to visit for a week. Marcia's laid in a strenuous course of shopping exercises, both training and live fire missions. These will be broken up with tourist-y stuff like trips to Alcatraz, the Monterey Bay Aquarium, and other such. Marcia's taken the week off, I'm just going to take Thursday for the Monterey leg. However, it's likely to be busy around here for the week, and less time than normal for the important work of journal maintenance. However, I could be wrong, and there will be LOTS of pictures of various travels and such. I can't tell until we get rolling.

In anticipation of the DSL line going active, I have to spend some time building Grendel into the desired server configuration. I'm going with Debian, upgraded to testing, with a 2.4.10 kernel, I think. There's a bit to do for that, so I'll take some notes as I do that work, in hopes that the information is good for someone else's use, too.

Meantime, I have some cleaning to do before we head off to the airport, so I'd best get to it. You have a lovely day, see you back here soon.

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Howdy. Gonna be a busy day with a drive up the coast, or down the coast, or something. I dunno - I don't get to plan these things, just be the chauffer. The trip yesterday afternoon to pick up cousin Barb was uneventful. I dropped Marcia off outside the Delta arrivals/luggage carousel area, and started circling the domestic terminal area, as they no longer allow stopping and waiting. I sure wasn't about to pay short-term parking rates. 15 minutes later the cell-phone buzzed, they were out and ready.

We went out to supper at Hunan Gourmet in Murphy Square. Yum. Back home, Marcia and Barb nattered while I just barely started to set up Debian on Grendel. Then the call came in - my uncle was stranded because his ride hadn't shown up. Off I go on a mission to pick up Dennis and another traveller, taking them both to San Jose. Back by 10:30 PM, and just about ready for bed at that point.

Now it's breakfast time, then we're rolling. See ya!

Date: Sun, 07 Oct 2001 16:30:13 +0200
From: David Thorarinsson 
Subject: Your pics...
   
Hi Brian,
   
I was looking at those beautiful pictures of the Hummingbird on your
website. Are you using a digital camera? If so, what camera is it and
can it be connected to a Linux box?
  
Regards,
  
/Dave

Dave,

Good morning. Yes.

It's an Olympus D450Z. While I *can* directly connect the camera to
the computer and work with it in a haphazard way using GPhoto
(http://www.gphoto.org/), instead I pull the SmartMedia card and pop
it into a USB connected SmartMedia reader (I have a FujiFilm SM-R2).
I plug it in, mount the media as a VFAT formatted SCSI device, and
pull the images right onto my HD using file tools, either GUI or
CLI. 

Oh, yeah. Under Linux. Tested with Mandrake, Red Hat and
Debian. No problems except with the most recent Mandrake, which uses
devfs. I am having difficulty understanding why the SmartMedia shows
up at a different place in the devfs hierarchy each time. Almost 
certainly a configuration mis-understanding on my part. But I'm 
headed back to Debian shortly, so...

regards,

.brian

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Visit the rest of the DAYNOTES GANG, a collection of bright minds and sharp wits. Really, I don't know why they tolerate me <grin>. My personal inspiration for these pages is Dr. Jerry Pournelle. I am also indebted to Bob Thompson and Tom Syroid for their patience, guidance and feedback. Of course, I am sustained by and beholden to my lovely wife, Marcia. You can find her online too, at http://www.dutchgirl.net/. Thanks for dropping by.

All Content Copyright © 1999-2001 Brian P. Bilbrey.