EMAIL - I publish email sometimes. If you send me an email and you want privacy say so, I will respect that. If I don't know that you want your email address published, then I won't. Be aware, though, that I am (usually) human and make mistakes.

Red Hat plans stock split. That's right. The company currently has 68.8M outstanding shares, at a pre-trading price this AM of 262 - a Market Cap of roughly 18 billion. Good, I guess, for a company that only lost 5¢ per share last quarter... Again, how can we get some of this. eBrianLinux.com has a nice right to it, don't you think? Did I hit enough buzz words there?

Mars Lander fate determined. Photo here. A kind soul on the SVLUG mailing list posted this in passing, while discussing another topic.

For those of you who are new to the site, either because you have been directed here by the formidable Dr. Keyboard, or via the reference in Dave Farquhar's book - Optimizing Windows for Games, Graphics and Multimedia - Welcome. Spelunk around, have a looksee. This site is (I think) the only home-based site out of all the Daynoter's, though there are plans afoot, as it were.

This small apartment is meager in computer resources, varying between 3 and 4 boxes at any given time, running on a 10BaseT network. One fulltime Linux box, Grendel (CFKL), your server today and my main workstation, connected to the outer world via PacBell DSL, with which I have had wonderful luck. Grendel now runs Mandrake 6.1, with modifications, of course! Grendel is also the IP Masquerade and Firewall box for the rest of the network, which includes Marcia's HP box, as yet unnamed (although one hears occasional rude mutterings when we have a system lockup - Windows, don't you know). Then there is the newest member of the computing family here, Grinch, named for the season. Grinch is a 600 megawiggle PIII that currently dual boots Win98 and Debian 2.2 (potato). The Windows is for testing, reviews and games, the Debian is for kernel and KDE experiments. They get about equal time at the moment, but I know from prior experience, that Windows can behave really badly on a box that is co-habited by Linux. We shall see.

Unlike some of the other Daynoter's I am not a professional author, just a schmoo who enjoys playing with computers and writing about them, as well as the rest of the world around me, which I unfortunately see through a strong set of rose-tinted LCD glasses <g>. Some recent features, such as the report on installing Windows 2K in a VMware virtual machine running on Linux are available from the Link/Index Page. Whether a new visitor or someone returning - Thanks for dropping in. Drop me a mail if you wish - let me know what you like, what you dislike, what you want to see - and we will work on it.

Errors of Omission - I commit them all the time. This morning, I updated 4 files in the process of changing over to the new week, neglecting to change the current.html redirector page. Sigh. Last week, I 'forgot' Bo, even though I actually knew that he and Tom were toiling together on the Outlook in a Nutshell book.

Today was a day spent in Windows hell. I use WinNT 4.0 SP5 as my workstation OS at work, it has generally worked pretty well for me, since I challenge the system a lot, what with Illustrator, AutoCAD, ProTEL, Outlook, much more, often in combinations that would bring 95 or even 98 to it's knees. But today I lost the system entirely - It has had enough. I could see the internal network. Or I could connect to the internet, but not both. I could run one or two applications, but had a complete system meltdown at one point. That is, in the midst of an application, the screen went BLACK, then the bios boot screen started up. WTF??? Anyway - I have put all data on the server, with backup to tape already done, I have moved a couple of key applications over to another workstation so that I don't lose them - the dog ate the CDROM or it got lost in the move, I can't remember which. Tomorrow the drives go to bare metal, then I am going to load up with Win2K Pro and see how she flies. Can't be worse than I have been experiencing - and we need to have at least one data point for use with the corporate network.

Meantime, I am down to 1.5 working days remaining in the century. Wednesday is company Holiday Luncheon day, so we work half day Wednesday and done. Cool. I have to go over to advise on the other portion of the network now and will return later.

Marcia has posted some pics and commentary of our visit to Sacramento yesterday. I have unbearably cute godchildren.


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Mornin' all. Last night late, I made a little more progress in getting Debian set up properly for my tastes on Grinch. As you can see in the clipped screenshot on the left, I am running a WP called AbiWord. There is a website. This package is also available from the Debian package archives, in DEB format (effectively Debian's version of RPM, although it is really more complicated than that) As root, I simply typed apt-get install abiword in a console, and the application was fetched from online and installed in a matter of moments. Yes, of course I am spoiled by the fast connection. But you can even do this with one of the Debian CD's available through VA Linux Systems. There will be further reports, later this week, on installing Debian from scratch, without a CD, just a working connection to the net. Oh, my other achievement of the evening was printing from Grinch, through Grendel, to the Epson Stylus Color 600. Worked fine, thanks much. I had to use a Printer HOWTO from the Linux Documentation Project to figure out how to do remote printing, because it isn't quite as easy (read : insecure) as printing within the network neighborhood on a vanilla Windows nethood.

Anyway, AbiWord looks kind of nice, huh? Not lots of bells and whistles, but it works, and it is terribly fast. I will probably leave it in as a quick and dirty html editor, since it's native format is XML, it saves to HTML, quite well. But I am going to install WP8.0 for Linux as the prime WP application on Grinch/Debian. Yup, I bought that. Could have downloaded it, but again, purchases support the premise of Open Source. So why not, if I am going to use it.

Today's chores at work include scrubbing my computer's hard drives down to bare metal, and reinstalling everything. What the heck, eh? Might as well get started. If you send me email today, expect delays, and if you see an update, then you will know that I have had some sort of success. Have a great day, yourselves. Later.

Then at the last minute, there was this. Enjoy.

Subject: Seasons Greetings from the Litigation Support Division of Insight 64
   Date: Mon, 20 Dec 1999 22:43:22 -0800

Dear Friends,

Please accept, with no obligation, implied or implicit, my best wishes for
an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, low stress,
non-addictive, gender neutral celebration of the winter solstice holiday,
practiced within the most enjoyable traditions of the religious persuasion
of your choice, or secular practices of your choice, with respect for the
religious/secular persuasions and/or traditions of others, or their choice
not to practice religious or secular traditions at all . . .

. . . and a fiscally successful, personally fulfilling, and medically
uncomplicated recognition of the onset of the generally accepted calendar
year 2000, but not without due respect for the calendars of choice of other
cultures whose contributions to society have helped make America great (not
to imply that America is necessarily greater than any other country or is
the only "America" in the western hemisphere), and without regard to the
race, creed, color, age, physical ability, religious faith, choice of
computer platform, or sexual preference of the wishee.

(By accepting this greeting, you are accepting these terms. This greeting is
subject to clarification or withdrawal. It is freely transferable with no
alteration to the original greeting. It implies no promise by the wisher to
actually implement any of the wishes for her/himself or others, and is void
where prohibited by law, and is revocable at the sole discretion of the
wisher.  This wish is warranted to perform as expected within the usual
application of good tidings for a period of one year, or until the issuance
of a subsequent holiday greeting, whichever comes first, and warranty is
limited to replacement of this wish or issuance of a new wish at the sole
discretion of the wisher.)

Please note:  No animals were harmed in the creation of this greeting.

It turns out not to have been bit rot. Indeed, the symptoms quickly became clearly attributable to bit leprosy, a primary case. I cleaned off the drives, re-partitioned and reformatted, then began YANTI (Yet Another NT Installation, thanks, Tom)... about 3/4 of the way through I started getting 'serious error writing to drive C, continue?' messages. This probably had something to do with my misbehaving operating system and applications. I took the drives out of the system, marked them bad with a hammer, then threw them into the dumpster from quite a distance. Then I toodled off to Central Computer (even I am not brave enough to try Fry's the week before Christmas). There I acquired a 10G Maxstor. Everything is now up and running - I only lost a day to the Hardware Gods.

I was finally successful in bringing up my corporate and personal email, the 100+ messages sit patiently awaiting my attention on the morrow (well, the 40 or so corporate ones do, since I just get copies off the server while I am at work). Jerry Pournelle yesterday noted that lawyers are being released in LA. Is this like stocking a lake with farmed trout? Is it open season on ambulance chasers in the great Southland? What's the bag limit? I am gonna need a bigger bumper!

Since I don't have a column, any more developments here will be reported right here. Meantime, I am off to locate a copy of Krash, and find out what I need to do to get it running. And the 'Brian's got time off' list continues to grow, but that's OK, since I need to be kept busy - idle hands, devil's work, you know the drill. Maybe back later. Word for the day - LART.


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Happy Holiday's all. I am awake early, and so I will inflict these ravings on all of you, as well. As you can see from the gleam in my eyes, in the new mug shot I posted, I am thinking about a new chainsaw of my very own. Chris has inspired me. I think that I want to go around 'trimming' other people's Christmas trees. Bah, humbug. The new picture serves dual purposes. First, it is about one fifth the file size of the previous shot. Second, it is a little more recent - last weekend rather than a couple of years ago. Third . . . The new picture serves three purposes. Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition. Third, you can see the Pythonesque style of humoristic dementia in the eyes, where you couldn't previously.

Isn't this helpful. Tracked into off of Slashdot, Microsoft has determined that people who want to take Linux off of their systems and put Win2K or WinNT4.0 on need explicit directions on how to use fdisk to remove all the partitions. They even mention the under-appreciated fdisk /mbr command, which rebuilds the MBR. While I do know how to use fdisk, and have even used fdisk /mbr on occasion, you may want this trick, someday. Should you go through a Linux installation, and the LILO installation goes sour somehow, so that you have a system that boots neither Windows nor Linux (supposing that you are in a dual or multiple boot situation), fdisk /mbr and a boot disk for your Linux installation are both your friends.

If you are in a situation where you want to (or need to) dual boot with Windows, then, from Windows, prior to your Linux install, make sure that you have a boot floppy that includes the fdisk command. Later, most current Linux installers ask you if you want a boot disk. Say yes. Even (perhaps especially) if you think that you don't need it. At the end of the install you select to let Linux's loader install in the MBR. You reboot your machine. After all of the BIOS bits have gone by, you see a cryptic LI, or some other subset of the LILO prompt. Your boot has failed. Without boot disks for your OS's, you are seriously hurting. But with your WinBoot, you can safely boot into dos mode, then type fdisk /mbr. Upon rebooting now, your Windows installation should come up just fine. Then you can boot into your Linux installation using it's boot floppy, and figure out how and why the LILO installation whent wrong. (Hint, if the installer couldn't install LILO properly the first time, then re-installing probably won't help). Drop me a line, include the contents of your /etc/lilo.conf, and I will try to help.

See y'all later on today.

A CD-free Debian GNU/Linux install.

As Rick Moen notes in his tips for a Debian install, Debian is not necessarily a good 'first' distribution for the novice Linux user, but if you have gotten one of the ease of use distributions up and running, you can probably cope with Debian. What I am going to work through today is an install of the Debian unstable branch, without a CDROM to install from. The items I will need to get up and running are few, but important. Five blank floppies. A working net connection. Broadband is better, but even at 56K, you can get up and running in a few hours. Know and take notes on your hardware. Be ready to start over, because I did, a few times. This time I am starting from scratch to document the process properly. Oh. Read Rick's tips. You'll be grateful. I was.

Know the system.
  A. What type of mouse I have, and the port it plugs into.
  B. Video Card (chipset and RAM are generally most useful)
  C. Ethernet CARD.
  D. Networking setup. IP addrs, gateways, DNS, etc, etc.

Take copious notes on the above, then go to the Linux HCL, at http://www.linuxdoc.org/HOWTO/Hardware-HOWTO.html. Check out the information you find there. Especially interesting to me are the Ethernet and Video sections. With a screen, mouse, connectivity and keyboard, I can get back out to the net to figure out everything else I need.

The ethernet card in Grinch is reported to me by Win98 as a RealTek RTL8029(AS) PCI Ethernet card. On the HCL, I am not listed. Fortunately, since I have done a couple of installations of other Linux distributions previously on Grinch, I know that it is a NE2000 clone, which will allow me to chose the right driver when I reach that point in the installation.

Now off to www.debian.org, to find some information that I will need during the installation, but won't be able to get to at the moment (well, I will, but I have more than one computer here to play with, eh!)

From the Debian home page, I select Download FTP link, which allows me to either select the closest Debian site, or go to the list of mirrors. In many cases you will find a local corporate or educational mirror site that will be faster or more reliable for you. For my purposes, I will choose the captech site off the US mirrors list. Take note of the whole path to the debian root off the mirror list (from the location bar of your browser). In this instance, ftp://ftp.opensource.captech.com/debian/ is the pertinent address. From there, descend the directory tree. Because I am choosing the UNSTABLE (meaning unreleased) branch, my path is dists/unstable/main/disks-i386/2.2.1-1999-10-22/ ... you may wish to substitute 'stable' in there, but I think not - the stable branch is based upon the 2.0.x kernel, which is a little long in the tooth, especially on newer hardware. Then go into the documentation directory and read as much as you can. If nothing else, scan all of install.html (mine was install.en.html).

Then back up a level, and get copies of the following files (if your setup is like mine, to an x86 box with 1.4 M floppy drive.

resc1440.bin, root1440.bin drv14-1.bin drv14-2.bin drv14-3.bin.

If you currently have a linux installation running, then, as superuser, run the dd command for each of the above files in sequence (and label the disks as you go).

dd if=resc1440.bin of=/dev/fd0 bs=512 conv=sync ; sync

or from within windows with

rawrite2 -f resc1440.bin -d a:

Which command (rawrite2.exe) is available to you (if you need it, in the same directory from which you got your floppy image files. The reference here is documentation/ch-install-methods.en.html#s-create-floppy. Read and understand, please.

Once I am booted, I will need to install a base system before I have connectivity and can build my Debian Linux up just the way I want it. Either I will need to have the base2_x.tgz file available on a volume in your system, where the installer can find it, or I will need an additional 11 floppies to get base14-n.bin installed. I choose the former.

Initial configuration and setup.

I have an 18G drive in Grinch. The first 6G is one windows partition. The rest of the drive, some 11+G is devoted to various linux native and swap partititons. Since I have several spare partitions, I have copied my base2_2.tgz onto one of these partitions. I *must* remember to mount that partition when installing, NOT initialize it. If I initialize, then I will overwrite the base2_2.tgz file I need to install the base system. Oh, and by the way, look at /etc/fstab, to determine which partition it is I just wrote that file to. I just wrote base2_2.tgz to /mnt/spare, but that won't help me during the install, unless I also know that /dev/hdc9 is the partition mounted at /mnt/spare. And just for fun, while booted into windows, I also get a copy of base2_2.tgz, and put it into the c:\ directory.

To begin, I reboot the system, and go into the bios setup routine, selecting a boot order of A,CDROM,C, since I want to boot from the floppy. I do so, which brings up the rescue disk screen. Among all the other info you will read on this screen full, you will see 'On most systems, you can go ahead and press to begin installation.' I press . After a variety of boot messages (about 2 screens full, some of which I am *sure* would be very useful to know, if only it didn't scroll by so quickly, I get a prompt to insert the root image disk.

Once the root image is loaded, I am greeted by an intro screen, followed by a menu list of choices for Debian Installation. The steps are offered up to you as default, in order. You may, however, need to repeat some of them several times, depending on your partition setup, etc. I will simply list my experiences with my setup.

First select the keyboard, then initialize and activate a swap partition. You actually have 4 choices here, and I will choose the default, but you can, at this point, choose to partition your drive. If you are installing onto a separate spindle, and wish to start with a clean slate, then do this. If, on the other hand, you are overloading a previous install, as I am, then do *NOT* partition your disk, but instead try to follow the steps I take. One of the key dangers of re-partitioning for this install is that I have data on one of the partitions that I must preserve for the time being (the base system file).

When I accept the default option, the only current swap partition on this system is shown as the choice to be made. I accept. There are a couple of opportunities to back out of this process. Throughout this phase of installation, I strongly recommend deliberation. But on every partition you *do* initialize, do check it for bad blocks. This can save you lots of grief later. Now the installer asks that you initialize a partition. This caught me at least once. The first partition you init and mount WILL BE '/'. Do not attempt to deal with any of your other partitions until root is mounted.

My root partition is /dev/hdc2, so I select, initialize that partition. BTW, the bad block checking is like a full format, skipping that step is like a quick format. So now it is time for Hotel California in the CD player, and a good book - this is going to be a while, as I am initializing 11G of space.

Following mounting root ('/'), I select alternate choice, 'Mount an Already Initialized Partition', to get hold of /dev/hdc9 and mount it out of my way, before I forget and initialize over my base2_2.tgz file. Whew. Now to mount the windows partition. Yup, Linux can read and write to the FAT32 partition that Win98 owns, just fine. It is Windows that is insular. That's done, now I will continue to repeat initialize and mount until all of my other partitions are set. The partition configuration follows :

/dev/hdc2 / linux
/dev/hdc3 none swap
/dev/hdc5 /home linux
/dev/hdc6 /usr linux
/dev/hdc7 /usr/local linux
/dev/hdc8 /var linux
/dev/hdc9 /mnt/spare linux
/dev/hdc1 /mnt/win VFAT (windows)

I confirm the mount points and filesystem setup, all on one screen, then proceed to install the system, from floppy (my choice), starting with the rescue disk that I initially booted with, followed by each of the driver disks, in order, as prompted.

Then I select the driver modules that will load into the kernel on boot in Grinch at boot time. I will list the major sections, along with comments, and the choices I made for this machine.

Block - Block devices, disks & such. Unless esoteric or raid, then skip.
CDROM - duh. ATAPI is installed by default. You may need to select.
FS - You need some of these, I choose autofs, smbfs, vfat.
IPV4 - Installed IP_gre. Why? I am not sure.
IPV6 - Installed ipv6. Why? We'll need it soon.
MISC - Sound cards, etc. Installed sound. You will need parport_pc if you have a local printer.
NET - Installed 2K_pci.
SCSI - N/A.
VIDEO - N/A - frame buffer stuff - dunno, so I will leave it alone for now.

With some of the modules, like FS modules, they install, no problem. With hardware modules, if I select the driver that doesn't match my actual hardware, the install will fail. The shotgun approach (empirical driver discovery process) sometimes works, but I may need to consult the HCL again. As I select each module, then select install, and accept the defaults, including blank configuration lines. In your install, if you know better than me, more power to you. After all of my modules are done, then the installer for Debian 2.2 wants me to configure networking. Fortunately, I know what my configuration is supposed to be, and what works. YMMV.

Set my host name, and that I am doing ethernetworking, not dialup, then say so. I was prompted for, then entered the domain name. Here, this yields grinch.orbdesigns.com. At your place you might have loki.bogus.com . . . whatever shoe fits. Set the IP address (static at this time, as you are not setting up to query a DHCP server). Set my gateway address, accept the default broadcast, then set the DNS. Done with networking. Now install the Base System. Many options to install from, floppies, cdrom, NFS, mounted... ah. Already mounted file system. I select that option and I get a /debian line. Blank that. Then hit enter. I am prompted for List or Manual. LIST. Aha. You *CAN* save your base2_2.tgz to a windows filesystem, and then the installer will find the file for you if you have mounted the FS. Very cool. You don't need to have a pre-install of Linux, nor do you have to go to the pain of not wiping that data. Very cool.

Now to initially configure the base system. Set the time zone, then select whether or not to use GMT for your hardware clock. Not recommended if you dual boot with windows. I don't. Many Linux installations do. Then I can make the harddisk bootable, but first, go to the alternate selection, and make a boot floppy. Should my LILO installation go sour, a boot floppy is my friend. More about LILO later. Following the creation of a boot disk (oops, that was either 6 disks or 17 required, sorry), the installer prompts me to reboot. Instead I scroll down the list to 'Make Linux bootable directly from the hard disk.' and execute that option, selecting all the defaults. We shall refresh the boot manager and add a menu option for booting into windows later. Now remove all disks and reboot.

More on this installation later.

Debian Internet Installation, Part II

At first full boot, the LILO prompt came up after bios hardware initialization. Following a short delay, Linux began loading. (LInux LOader, although each letter indicates a particular milestone in the loader's initialization.)

After all of the gibberish finishes scrolling by, I am welcomed to Debian GNU/Linux, and given a variety of information, and started on the correct road - selecting a root password. Don't be obvious here, people. I have a full time connection to the internet. I will not choose a password out of the dictionary, nor a word. The passwords are agglomerations of alphanumeric characters that I have to work to remember, which is a good thing. I don't write them down, and post it on the monitor. Not that it matters here, but habits once learned are hard to put aside. So, a root password, then repeated for reliability.

Then I am prompted to create a normal user. This is a recent innovation in Linux installers. It used to be that just installing root was enough, then you were on your own, only don't use 'rm -rf' just yet, please... :).

I add a 'brian' user, and the password reps are done, complete user information is entered by moi. Now I am asked to install shadow passwords. Yes, far more secure. Remove pcmcia? Yup, this isn't a laptop, although it isn't actually fully removed yet, we'll take care of that later. Now, do I want to perform package selection, like a rational being. Nope. Choose nothing, say nothing, name rank and serial number, that's all. Then dselect starts, a text menu type operation designed to help me get the system up and running. Feh. I select quit. I am dropped to a text login.

I login as root. Check for vi - it's there. Do you know how to use vi? No? I do a little, but I know the wordstar keymap like the back of my hand, and there is an editor called joe which is wordstar compatible. Unfortunately, it isn't that easy. You simply will have to use vi to edit /etc/apt/sources.list. It looks something like

#  a bunch of comments
# spread out over 
# several lines, then...
#
deb http://.....
deb http://.....
deb http://.....

# more comments
#
deb http://....
deb http://....

I have changed the file to read the following...

deb ftp://ftp.opensource.captech.com/debian potato main contrib non-free

That's it, just the one line for the time being, now for the following commands

grinch:~# apt-get update
grinch:~# apt-get dist-upgrade

That updates my installation to the latest versions of the stuff that is installed in the base system, some 50 packages. dist-upgrade retrieves the packages from their site online, unpacks them and installs them, asking questions where absolutely necessary. On pcmcia, I answered 3 and No. I accept defaults on all the other dist-upgrade questions. Now I can remove that stinking pcmcia-cs stuff. (Why pcmcia-cs? Because that's the name of the package, silly!) Then I will add just a couple of things before I really start building the system up.

grinch:~# apt-get remove pcmcia-cs
grinch:~# apt-get install less joe

Which installed the joe editor, and made less the pager tool, default in place of more, for such applications as displaying man pages, etc. Now to Rick's tips again, to install much of the rest of what I will need... To be continued tomorrow...


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Well, hello. I hit a couple of milestones yesterday. First, longest one day's postings that doesn't include reader mail. Yup, that one's a definite. Next was that together we passed 10,000 hits for this site, so far this month. See the full size of the monthly usage to look at the progression. We're not talking Yahoo here, but I am having fun. Glad to see that some of you are enjoying yourselves as well.

As another slightly early Christmas present, I became part owner of the business for which I work. Since ETS is privately held, it means that I am one of less than 20 people who will attend shareholders meetings. Once when Jack talked to me about this a while ago, I said that I would be honored, of course, but it wouldn't change my behaviour. I have always worked for my employer as though I owned the joint and was personally responsible for the success or failure of the business. I guess that I learned some lessons well as a youngster. We had our Christmas lunch at Su Hong in Menlo Park - always wonderful food, and 22 of us ate lunch, with a 20% tip to the house, for under $200. Can't be beat.

That was a very clear summary of a Debian install. I'm sure a lot of 
interested people learned something from that. I've been partial to 
the Debian dist from the start, if only because of its M68k support, 
specifically for legacy Atari (Falcon) systems.

I tucked away a copy of your page for furture reference, in case I 
want to try the latest version. Thanks for posting.

BTW, many season's greetings!

/ Bo
-- 
"Bo Leuf" [email protected]
Leuf fc3 Consultancy
http://www.leuf.com/

Debian Internet Installation, Part III

A couple of notes on yesterday's performance.

Before editing a system file, such as sources.list, make a backup copy. cp /etc/apt/sources.list /etc/apt/sources.list.old is a really good idea, OK? I know this, you know this, I have said it before. But I didn't say it this time and I should have. Secondly, you don't have to use vi. I know what I said, and one gets used to using a bazooka to kill mosquitos, too. If you used DOS in a bygone era, you will remember copy con. An equivalent is cat >, as in, after backing up the file, typing

cat > sources.list
deb ftp://ftp.opensource.captech.com/debian potato main contrib non-free
^D

Where '^D' means Ctrl-D, or end-of-file, in Linux land. The equivalent of Ctrl-Z (F6) in DOS world. That works, and you don't need to know anything about vi to make it work.

Now, to continue. Before we go further, let's sidetrack for a minute. Are you dual-booting with some other OS here? I am. So I need to set up LILO to boot either Linux or my other OS (Danger, just a little dyslexia here and you call Windows your Significant Other, so type with care, campers). Now here is a sample of /etc/lilo.conf taken from Grendel, rather than Grinch, but we are talking apples here, people!

## Global Section
boot=/dev/hda
map=/boot/map
install=/boot/boot.b
prompt
linear
timeout=50

## Linux boot
image=/boot/vmlinuz-2.2.13-4mdk
	label=linux
	root=/dev/hda10
	read-only

Key items to note. First, do you have a copy of Linux in a Nutshell nearby? Look up LILO. Oops, not in the index. I refuse, of course, to believe that, so check the TOC. Ah, 11 pages devoted to LILO, pages 573-583. Ah, well - an almost complete index, useless in this case. Most of the items that are in your /etc/lilo.conf file are there because your distribution install decided they need to be there. Some are mutable, some are not. Since you have a boot disk, you can make changes, with the understanding that you may screw things up and need to boot in with a floppy and fix it. I tell you this just once - YOU DO NOT NEED TO REINSTALL! Hear me. Well, you may need to reinstall, if you only have net access through your Linux box, and you can't get it to boot anymore, but there are lots of things which you can break, then fix again without re-installing.

So... the timeout line indicates that there will be a 5 second delay before the default OS loads. Linear relates to HD cylinder addressing schemes. Etc. RTFM if you want all the gory details. In order to boot another OS, I will have to know a couple of things, which I fortunately noted yesterday. (back on Grinch, now) My Windows partition is /dev/hdc1. What follows is what I add to my lilo.conf file to add Windows to the boot list.

## Windows boot
other=/dev/hdc1
	table=/dev/hdc
	label=win

Since I didn't muck with the upper stuff, I know that Linux will continue to boot. So, to commit this configuration, type lilo at the prompt. That should be it. If you made a typo in command, lilo will complain, if you typo'd one of your targets, then the win boot won't work. Since you are currently logged in as root, you can type...

grinch:~# sync ; shutdown -r now

The sync *may* not be necessary, but is a useful accoutrement to shutdown, since it flushes buffers to disk, etc. Shutdown is what it implies, the -r indicates 'restart' (whereas -h calls for a 'halt'), and now means now. RTFM (Read The Fine Manual) for other options to shutdown. When the LILO prompt again appears, hit the shift key, which will bring up an additional boot: prompt. type win followed by ENTER (provided you used the 'win' label, as I did. Ah. Windows boots. Good. Now shut it down, you will be using it less and less, and soon you may be able to overwrite that partition permanently - we shall see.

Adding to the Debian Basic System.

apt-get is your friend. With apt-get we will add missing components to our system. A couple of caveats. When I use apt-get with multiple arguments, if one package doesn't exist, the whole command terminates. If, however, certain packages are required in addition to the specified packages, to make everything work, those will be added automagically. Should you just specify ONE item on the apt-get install line, then you will be asked for confirmation. Multiple install commands simply do their thing, only asking for user input during configuration. The packages that I added using apt-get are as follows (straight from Rick Moen's Debian Tips page, with one subtraction for a package which doesn't exist for this 2.2 distribution.) (Here is a link to the actual console session log for the install of the following packages. Terribly boring, unless you want to see how it went. Note that I changed my ftp reference in sources.list to varesearch.com)

autoconf automake bin86 binutils bison cpp doc-base dpkg-multicd
gile flex g++ gcc gettext gettext-base groff info kdb less libc5
libc6-dev libg++27 libg++272 libstdc++2.10-dev libstdc++2.8 lilo
make man-db manpages psmisc sysutils

Also, and lastly for the moment, I fetched lynx, a textmode console web browser, so from within the console/system I am building, I can go online, and look at the package directories at the Debian site... the package lists are also available to me on my system now, in the directory /var/state/apt/lists/, but I like the organization of the available packages page on the Debian site (this link points to the UNSTABLE tree packages). So there I go, spelunking for bits to graft into the system - let's survey the X-Window stuff first. What follows is a list of the packages I will install next with apt-get...

xbase xbase-clients xf86setup xfonts-100dpi xfonts-75dpi xfree86-common
xfs xserver-svga xserver-common

Note that I have not chosen any window manager files yet... I want to get X up and running with as little fluff as necessary right now, then I will debate the merits of KDE vs. Gnome vs. AfterStep... argh. Oh, you will note that I am fetching down xserver-svga. This is a good first choice, and one that I know will work for me. When I do my xf86 config, in a few minutes, it may prompt me for another x-server. At that time, I will bail out of the configuration, and fetch the proper x-server package... If apt-get says I have left packages out, I will back annotate them into the above list. Session log will be appended to debapt1.html. Highlight is here if you can call a successful xf86config session a highlight. I have attempted to edit out some of the dross. It turns out that accepting most of the defaults, followed by manually editing the /etc/X11/XF86Config file is the best choice, so what I did was use joe to open the file, go to the bottom, and make the svga section look like the following

# **********************************************************************
# Screen sections
# **********************************************************************

# The Colour SVGA server

Section "Screen"
    Driver      "svga"
    # Use Device "Generic VGA" for Standard VGA 320x200x256
    #Device      "Generic VGA"
    Device      "r128"
    Monitor     "ev900"
#    Subsection "Display"
#        Depth       8
#        # Omit the Modes line for the "Generic VGA" device
#        Modes       "640x480" "800x600" "1024x768" "1280x1024"
#        ViewPort    0 0
#        # Use Virtual 320 200 for Generic VGA
#    EndSubsection
    Subsection "Display"
        Depth       16
        Modes       "1024x768" "1280x1024"
        ViewPort    0 0
    EndSubsection
#    Subsection "Display"
#        Depth       24
#        Modes       "640x480" "800x600" "1024x768" "1280x1024"
#        ViewPort    0 0
#    EndSubsection
#    Subsection "Display"
#        Depth       32
#        Modes       "1280x1024" "1024x768"
#        ViewPort    0 0
#    EndSubsection
EndSection

I commented out all except the 16bit section, and left in the two modes that I thought would work best. I find that 1280x1024 works fine, so I then change that line to read 'modes "1280x1024" "1024x768"', since the first mode is the first used, this gives me 1280x1024 resolution by default when I start X. Oh, how to start X?

grinch:~ # startx

Seems obvious in hindsight, doesn't it?

Wow, this documentation stuff is getting tiring. I have to make a call or two, find out what we are supposed to be bringing for Christmas, I think dessert and an appetizer or two, then a trip to the store to get the goods and some kitchen time. I will return to the fray later, adding a window manager and Netscrape. Then you are on your own. See ya later.

Window managers. At freshmeat.net, go to appindex, then X11, then Window Managers. Please note that KDE and Gnome - the current big 2, have their own areas on freshmeat. Other than that, there are more than 20 window managers. Please note that Gnome is more than a window manager, its basis is actually gdm - a display manager. The GNOME faq says simply that 'GNOME is the GUI desktop of the GNU Project.' I am interested in GNOME, because there are some nice apps being written for it, and I am already foot in the door with KDE, here on Grendel. But before GNOME, there are a couple of other window managers to check out. Yup, we're coming up on screenshot time, folks.

I have been wanting to try ICEwm for a while - I have heard it is fast, small and efficient. Besides, then I could use that as a basis for loading and testing browsers... Oh, wait a minute, I missed one... There, fixed it, now I feel better. The first three images, upper left and right, lower left, are all ICEwm. Works sufficiently well. Then, using lynx, the console web browser, I started hunting down the names of other web browsers that I could try out. I skipped over Netscape at first, since I was fairly certain that I would be returning later. So I got Amaya. You can see, in the upper left referenced screen shot, that I dropped by myself, and found that Amaya does a rather nasty job of rendering. Sigh. Bit bucket, after I visit CWJ's site and poke about a bit. Then I tried Chimera2. That worked OK. You can see, upper right, that I am there, at Dr. K's. Lower left, I was trying out Mozilla M12. Had a little grungy-ness to it, but Mozilla is definitely shaping up. Again you can see that I am visiting Chateau Keyboard.

All in all, I tried out about 13 different browsers while using ICEwm. ICEwm is just fine, but there is nice eye candy being developed for Gnome, and Grinch has a fast enough uP to do the Gnome/Enlightenment environment justice. So to the right, you see that I am running Gnome/E (although I already have the task bar set to autohide). Why all the visits to Dr. K? Including that last one using lynx? Chris yesterday was running webstats, and clearly was finding that Internet Exploder and Netscrape encompass most of the world. I was giving his stats some . . . variety, neh?

Eventually I will get a few apps, and start doing some kernel compiles on Grinch, and maybe figure out why I can't compile qt2.1 so that I can try KDE 1.89... but enough for now - I am going to find a couple of games to play, and do so. ENOUGH Debian reporting for the present.


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Christmas Eve, at last. Hurrah! Only two more days, then it's all over. heh! Bah Humbug. We watched the Christmas training tape last night, and finally it was perfect since I spliced the ruined five minutes off the end off The Grinch Who Stole Christmas. Since the tape ends just as the Grinch (my hero) leans out to hear all the Who's whining and crying, the name of the tape isn't a lie anymore!

Of COURSE I wish you all a Merry Christmas, but I would hate to behave in an inconsistent manner, and I have been a Grinch for so long that it is second nature to me now. I did laze about in bed, dozing until nearly 8 this morning. Marcia was at work at about 5:30, getting ready for a conference call with a big customer on the East Coast. I am going to knock out some laundry and do some cooking. We may be out to friends for supper tonight, or in. However, except for a probable couple of hours in the afternoon, I am off the machine today - probably good for me, you say! Bo wrote in with the following...

I decided this evening to install DragonLinux on my old 486/66, 
after deleting some superfluous Win3 and Win95 stuff from its 400 
Mb harddisk. This seemed an interesting thing to do . Installation 
is kinda slow with this kind of machine, and especially the post 
config X install seems interminable (since I wasn't expecting it). If I 
was more focused I'd write up some better notes and post it tonight, 
but maybe later...? Life is fun with these boxes, one can do so much 
pointless stuff.

The reason I got fed up with the Win95 experiment on this box is 
that for some inexplicable reason, I couldn't get Internet apps to 
realize that I had a live modem connection. I think Win95 was 
directing all the TCP/IP out to a non-existant and I thought 
unconfigured LAN. Feh. So I'm going to see what DragonLinux will 
do (has the 2.2.something kernel) on the box without having to scrap 
the Win95 which my wife uses for simple writing. If all goes well, 
I'll wean her onto perhaps StarOffice, and shift OS on her without 
her actually noticing... .

You know, once she started using the notebook, I sort of get that 
cold-dead-finger reaction whenever I move to take it away from her. 
She really likes it -- small and extremely good keyboard action for a 
notebook. Perfectly adequate for most wp chores and she doesn't 
mind the monochrome LCD a bit.

-- 
"Bo Leuf" [[email protected]]
Leuf fc3 Consultancy
http://www.leuf.com/

OK. I was successful last night at patching ReiserFS (a journalling filesystem) into 2.2.13. It boots. Why do I want this? Tom? I can't search your pages to find the spot where you talked about it. Same with Moshe's site - he at least has a search button, but the box gets filled out, then sent to Google, which searches the web, when I want to search his site. Oops, laundry's ready - back in a while. Lunch too - pretend your Christmas dinner is grilled Who, fresh from Whoville, and just see the little one's eyes light up with glee (thanks for the image, Bob - this is even better than Bambie <SEG>)

Tucker and Farquhar are writing emails about first computers... I heard mutterings from Bob about a Babbage machine, but when I tried to call him on it, he said it was all damn'd lies, or words to that effect. The first programming I did was on a TI programmable calculator on a printer base. We did a biorythm program that printed out the flowing cycles on the strip of thermal tape. The first home computer was identical to that pictured at left. There is someone's name on the image, because I found this image on the site of the Obsolete Computer Museum. A cool place to go and reminisce. I will supplement that with a picture of our family relic, once I am up in Berkeley with the Olympus. If you go to that link - there are lots of innards and board pictures linked off of the page for the IMSAI 8080. I can't remember WHAT I programmed on the beast, but before we got a dual 8" floppy, and an ADM-3A terminal for it, I programmed with the switches and lights on the front panel. The sixteen switches to the left represent each of the 16 bits in a word. The control switches to the right allowed you to advance your position in memory, go to an address set with the switches, read the value from the address set by the switches, or set into the most recent memory address the value / opcode / whatever represented by the switches. Major fun in it's day. I think that we eventually upgraded the sucker to 64 K of RAM. Those were the days.

I have a cake to bake, so will be busy for a few hours. Pictures of the results when it's ready. Later.

Well, the cake is done. I actually took several shots of various process steps, overall about 7 hours in the making, although lots of that was in the roasting of the Filberts (hazelnuts), or the baking of the cake, or the cooling, or the cooling. It is from a recipe in the Silver Palate Cookbook, one of my favorite kitchen references. This is called (in the book) the best cake in the universe. I didn't follow the recipe exactly, but I think it came out pretty good. As you can see, I used a bundt pan, instead of a springform, but then the chocolate/hazelnut cake is coated with hazelnut buttercream, chilled, then overcoated with chocolate, and garnished with whole Filberts. The trick is not eating any until Christmas supper, tomorrow.

Just now, I sent the following to my fellow inmates in the Daynotes asylum...

Joyeous Celebrations to you all

Dan will be surfing, and Dan will be blading
You decide which is which,
Jerry's in LA, someone HAS to be, after all!
Tom's happy with permafrost, and and so is Jan.
Shawn just has to finish one last active page
(try static, just once - it hardly hurts at all)
Bo's locked in the closet by his cat, 
Chris, his bubbly and foi gras and the good Mrs. K
Steve's going for Linux (yea, team)
John's luge'ing on the sidewalks.
Matt's in his Tux (is that a sly Linux ref?)
And Dave Farquhar is still younger than all of us!
Jim's done for the week, tho' I had him beat,
Bob's building a fire to roast him a Who...
Which Who? Cindy Lou Who, and I am missing out, sigh.

To all you crazy daynoter's out there, your SO's and families, 
friends and loved ones, happy holidays, however you choose to 
celebrate.  I look with respect and honor upon you all and 
on our association, I am richer in heart and soul for knowing
you all.  Thanks, gentlemen.  Good Night.

And of course this greeting applies to you all equally, dear readers. Thanks for sharing the journey with me, and unless I have to install Linux 3.0 for Abacus on January 3, at work, then we still have a long road ahead. Thanks for sharing your time and feedback with me. I am honored. Happy Holidays.

PS - I *may* not get around to putting anything up tomorrow, but knowing me, I probably will, anyway. Regards.


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MERRY CHRISTMAS !!!

Having put Christmas back where it belongs, on today, I wish you happiness and joy on this day. Tomorrow it will all be over, and I can relax (until next August, when the retailers start the whole thing all over again). I have received a wonderful gift of Knuth (all three volumes, in hardback) from my lovely Marcia, as well as some LLBean, and other sundries. I found to please her several small knick-knacks, but got her really happy with the heirloom locket that had come down to me - encased are tin-types of my maternal great-grandparents, a very handsome couple. The coffee cake I just built from scratch is coming out of the oven, and then we will be out of here for the day, starting at about noon. Enjoy yourselves. We will. Later.

We're home. A lovely time was had by all, and in three hours I can celebrate surviving yet another Christmas season (YACS). Today on the news, we were greeted by the voices of whining Bethlehem tourism officials, blaming US travel warnings for the low turnout in the little tourist trap town of Bethlehem. Then they showed the parade of bagpipes... duh. If they told people that there were gonna be bagpipes, they should be pleased anyone turned out, eh?

Hope your day was pleasant, at least. Looking on to tomorrow, we are anticipating another sunny day in the high 60's, low 70's - perfect holiday weather (as long as no one mentions that nasty 'drought' word, and you aren't a ski resort operator). G'night.


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And it's over. Wheehoo. I've been up since about 04:00, a little achy, Marcia is now out sale hunting, and I think I am going to have a read or a nap, can't decide which, just yet. Enjoy a nice, relaxing NFL Sunday, and if that doesn't hold you, but some Linux reading might, then stroll on over to the LASG download page at Metalab. LASG (the Linux Administrator's Security Guide) is a well-written overview and application of security for Linux users. Available in PDF format, digitally signed by the document's author, Kurt Seifried, this is an invaluable reference. Also, Kurt strongly recommends Practical Unix and Internet Security from O'Reilly. Kurt's homepage has links to a number very useful articles. Check it out.

Hey. Did a whole lot of nothing today. Something in all the system changes this week blew Debian connectivity on Grinch. The windows partition still talks, and I blew away the Debian install by overloading Mandrake on the back end of the spindle - it works fine - now to put Debian back on and see where I went wrong - I think I made some odd choices when I installed the ReiserFS - I better wait until Moshe's article appears in Linux Journal - nope, I don't know when, Moshe said look for it, but not when, in his recent mailing. Moshe does do most interesting mailings, so check out his site at www.moelabs.com. Read the articles. If you want to join the mailing list, it's an eGroups thing and easy to do.

There has been lots of Daynotes mail today. I clearly was in error when saying Farquhar was youngest, though I tried to weasel out by revising as youngest *adult*... (sorry, Matt - wait a minute, you are youngest, been a rocket scientist *and* are now a sysadmin??? I don't even want to do the math, I give up - I am not worthy). Speaking of not being worthy, Albert has been made dude of the century by Time. Well, duh, but how does one choose, after all. A good argument has been made for George Marshall, I personally have a soft spot for Goddard and Von Braun and the brothers Wright. Henry Ford changed the world, too. Sure, Einstein discover'd elementary universal truths. Relative truths are important. What about that British Postal Worker who invented Colossus (Flowers?), not much credit in the books for that poor schmuck, eh? What about John Steinbeck? John Kennedy? Hell, don't ask me to choose. On an off day, I might pick Uri Geller!

Slashdot is in the doldrums, but there is some good reading over on Technocrat.net (Bruce Peren's place), including bits on domain names as IP, software patents and an encounter at VA Linux Systems. Technocrat doesn't do nearly the story turnover that /. does, but the quality and comments make up in overall quality... well, you get the picture. See you next week, as we spend time trying to decide who is the most shrill doomsayer, with 5 + days left, and counting. Just remember - Y2K - The year of Linux 3.0 . . . for Abacus!


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