EMAIL - I publish email sometimes. If you send me an email and you want privacy, say so, I will respect that. Be aware, though, that I am (usually) human and make mistakes.

Happy Birthday, Pete! It's my brother's birthday today, and Labor Day to boot. So, I guess I'll labor. Hmmm.

Managed to sling together some pictures from Robbie's birthday party, have a look if you're so inclined. I had a lot of fun playing, that day - kids are especially cool when you (I) get to play with them, then their parents can take them home and deal with all the crankiness. That way Marcia and I have only my own attitude to deal with. Heh.

Have a review chapter back from Moshe that I want to dive into, get done with and begon, into the maw of IDG. Then I want to have a shot at finishing the first KDE chapter as well, so I'd better get to it. TTFN.


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Mornin'. Yesterday I was thinking of following Tom down the Pinstripe path (Red Hat beta, doncha know), but decided to hold off for a couple of reasons. Now I know why for real - the Ulysses beta release is out on the Cooker; that is, Mandrake 7.2 Beta is out. I give it a week or two to shake down the persistent downloaders, then I'll fetch it down and give it a shot. Already the Linux-Mandrake site is quite a bit more responsive than last night. Of course, getting Slashdotted didn't help that situation much. If you go to check it out, do be patient, response times are not even close to stellar, yet.

Made quite a bit of progress yesterday - I am going to strive to finish draft one on this KDE introductory chapter tonight. I have the distinct feeling it's gonna be tomorrow, though.

Jakob Nielsen came out with a new Alertbox yesterday. This one's titled Regulatory Usability. Hmmm. Stunning topic, huh. Actually, this one reads more like a pitch for Nielsen Norman Group. It's kind of like the This Old House / Hometime syndrome. That's right, the shows that started off showing you how to do it yourself, and now show you how to hire contractors to make improvements the owner couldn't possibly afford if the show weren't involved getting comps from manufacturers and trades... Yup, you know exactly what I mean. This particular Alertbox is definitely a "hire the contractors" experience. Interesting, but . . . distant somehow.

Errr... Interesting viewpoint on the impending GPL release of the Qt 2.2 library from TrollTech. The POV is Richard Stallman's. Have a read, really. And with that, I am off to work. Have a wonderful Tuesday and I'll be back later.


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In the quite mortal words of Craig Twomey, "Time is very f***ing short!" Honestly, I don't know where it goes. I can account for nearly every minute and hour, but somehow whole days, weeks and months seem to slip by like a leaf on the stream, unobserved. Hmmm. I'm in the home stretch on this Introductory KDE chapter. The problem, of course, is that I write a few tens of words then pop into the environment to test what I wrote, what I knew. Then I learn seven new things. That's easy on an unlimited time and space budget, but I have to say, "NO!" to 6 of the 7, then decide whether the 7th deserves a paragraph, a tip, a note, a caution or a screenshot in a whole new section. Anyway, progress is being made.

Hey, good morning. I am a little blank and groggy - I don't do well on less than six hours of sleep - and I think I shan't inflict much in the way of idiotic blitherings to your screen this AM.

Aha, there is this tidbit, however. RSA Security has resleased the RSA algorithm into the public domain, a whole two weeks ahead of the patent expiration. This makes the PGP 2.6.3i software legal in the US. I know, Dan reminded me that 6.5.8 fixed the ADK vulnerability of v4 keys, but then, they (PGP) haven't released that version as source (that I could find at the time). More on this later. Hmmm.

Now to hit the roads and join all the people who have commutes (not including such hardworking souls as Syroid and Thompson <g>). Have a lovely day. TTFN.

17:14 - Afternoon. A productive day at work, with a fair amount of product shipping. A Good Thing [tm]. I spent some time away from the boxen, wielding a screwdriver, assembling PCBs into chassis components, labeling, testing and packing. Kinda fun for a break.

Rick Moen sent out a reference to an article he wrote called Attacking Linux, which has been published on the LinuxWorld site. The article is an overview, with commentary, on the LInux security talk given by Craig Ozancin at LWCE-SJ. Lots of good info about how Linux boxes can be cracked, and using that information to design multi-tier defences, as well as planning against the day when the defences fail. After all, remember that you have to plug every hole. The attacker has only to find ONE opening... Well worth reading.

I have some final feedback from Moshe on the Linux Kernel chapter that he agreed to review for Tom and I. I suppose that I'd better follow up on those two leads, fill in a little detail, thrash through the text one more time, and send it to Tom for final review. That being the case, I'll bid you adieu until tomorrows dawn awakes me with a yell, not entirely dissimilar to that of Arthur waking up in his cave. TTFN.


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Hey, good morning. Another week is winding down, with just today and tomorrow to go. 'Course, as this dirt ball spins, Don and others are actually headed into Friday. This wouldn't happen if we were all using Internet Beats. I see that Fry's has finally figured out who Jerry is (see the Wednesday 9/6/2000 post) -- perhaps they'll have Pournelle awareness training for their employees. I can just see that store manager ... "If you see this face, agree to anything. No, anything - Yes, my sister and the goat if that's what he wants!"

You in the back, stop snickering. Your job from here on out is to stand at the door watching for his new truck, in order to alert the rest of the crew. We'll immediately bring out the floor sweepers to push the current customers out the sides and back of the building into the new holding pens. Any that slip by merely make the store look slightly busy, without being obnoxiously full of people whose questions we can't answer. You over there - you've got responsibility for the rose petal basket. Fresh every day, just in case."

"What, Amid? Nope, we can't just give him the product, otherwise he'll think we're pandering to him. As far as Dr. Pournelle is concerned, he is just a normal customer with a slightly larger word of mouth network than the average joes we just popped into the pens. Once Dr. Pournelle has left the building and the parking lot, have the guards let the other sheep ... err, customers back into the store."

I can definitely see that. What I can't see is Fry's changing their whole demeanor for everyone. I've always said, Fry's is great for some things, and if you know what you're looking for. Please, please, please do not look for advice from an employee. You will be sorry, 8.5 times out of 10. And never attempt to write a personal check. They happily accept them, but in my experience it takes an average of 38 minutes from the moment the checker greets you until you leave the store, since they have to speak to a warm body at your bank, verify your employment, birth and citizenship records, etc, etc.

Now to work with me. I am likely, starting next Monday, to begin working half days every day, and devoting more time to working with Tom to get this OLS book out of our hair. We are not planning on being late, but the production schedule date is looming close. It'll be fine, really. I have scads of PTO going to waste.

Y'all take care, I'll see you later.

18:32 - Back again, been at it a while now... Tom tells me that MDK7.2beta (aka Ulysses) is pretty good, so I've got Grinch fetching one 500M .ISO from France, and Gryphon grabbing the 648M main .ISO from Sweden. Of course, I had to try some interesting things WHILE the FTP happens, and I partially broke the X display (it's not accepting input anymore, but all the activity continues). So I live with that, put this update on the wire with Gryphon. When the download on Grinch is done (I know what the file size is supposed to be), then I can reset the X server, and burn the ROMS. Meanwhile I'll continue to work on Chapter 8, back from Tom taking a whack at it all day today. I pulled a couple of interesting tricks to do what I did today, and want to be able to point out the pitfalls before I tell you, so hold on to your britches - however the long and short of it was running Gnome Helix on one X display (:0) and KDE on another (:1). worked like a dream until I dumped out of KDE, and found Gnome locked up on me - blocking keyboard and mouse access altogether. So I have to login from Gryphon or Grendel to monitor, then reset. Heh. My version of the phrase: "I do all these things because no one else in their right minds wants to!"

I was on the phone with Tom earlier today about a couple of topics. I noted that I had just done something interesting. Upon hearing a mildly inquisitive grunt, I blithely stated that I had ssh'd from my workstation into the home box, then into Grinch, then back through the pinhole in the first firewall into the second tier Linux firewall box, then back into my workstation. I was logged into my workstation, from my workstation, via 4 SSH hops. A long, long silence ensued, then a quiet, "Why?" emanated from the speaker by my ear.

"Well, because I could." I replied brightly. "Besides, I wanted to test the inbound access, which I couldn't do from 'inside', but can from my box at home, which..." A sigh. Hmmm. Well, I thought it was cool. Actually it's 5 hops, because I can use samba to mount and access my shares on the NT server from my Linux workstation. Yup, I am deranged, but I have fun doing it.

Now back to book work with me. Have a nice night and I'll be visiting with you again tomorrow.... Huh? Promise or Threat? You decide... <g>


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Howdy. Svenson suggests that in my 5-hop test yesterday, I could have made it 6 hops, instead... Well. Hmmm. I could have done 7, because I could have looped through Hydras and Janus, except for those moments when Tom was actually LART'ing the box. Eeesh. I can't explain why WordPerfect Office 2000 just works for me - really I can't. I'll take it to work today and park it on the Oscar, see what happens. Also, I am strongly tempted to blow everything away on gryphon, and load of Mandrake 7.2beta1 "Ulysses". Very clean. Not many mirrors though.

I found this link to Nomadic Research Labs on /. this morning, and almost blew off the morning post to wander around in the site looking at cool stuff. These people, Steve and Natasha, design and build interesting high tech transportation gear. Check it out!

I did waste too much time there, though. Happy Friday, everyone. Time to run. Later, people.

19:30 - Hi. Interesting day. There's an interesting check box on the Select packages screen in Mandrake Ulysses. It offers to check dependencies. This is not the default behaviour. Usually, installation package pickers don't do much in the way of dependency checking because the package sets were selected to fill dependencies by default. But silly me, I say, "Ya, go ahead, check yer dependencies - I want to see if you've done this right!" This is on Gryphon, on the desk behind me at work today... 6.5 hours later, the package installs were done, and I was so tweaked that I managed to answer a couple of questions very, very badly and leave the installation in a damaged state (perhaps this was on purpose). But 6.5 HOURS??? Maybe they should ... TELL SOMEBODY about the dangers of choosing that little star. Grin.

Home again, I started up the install from scratch, and got Ulysses up and running like a champ on Gryphon. KDE 1.9x, Gnome 1.2 (though not Helix), XFree 4.0.1 - fat city. More to learn, of course, but little time. Anyway, gotta get into Chapter 8 now - Tom's going to be looking for that from me tomorrow. Take care.

Good Morning and happy weekend. Had a good night last night from the perspective of learning things. From the productivity viewpoint... I had a good night learning things, anyway. Tom dropped a little puzzle in my lap. Not his fault, even though he knows that I worry puzzles to their death (or mine, eh?).

Baseline system: Mandrake 7.2beta1 Ulysses, running KDE 2.0pre-Something (actual rev 1.93, I think), and Gnome 1.2. Then, run the HelixCode Installer to get the latest and greatest Gnome, along with the refined Sawfish WM and other tasty treats. Works like a charm. One problem. At the end of the installation it says..."Do you want to run Gnome by default (and blow off your other login manager), or do you want to use your original login manager and add Gnome-Helix session manually?"

Well. The choice here is to keep the old login manger, which already has Gnome on it, should be no problem, right? Heh. Nope. Restart X (by typing CTRL-ALT-Backspace), up comes the login manager (actually a version of kdm) and ... Gnome is gone from the session list. Hmmm. Tom can't use his shiny new HelixCode. So I replicate the experiment (easy, as I threw MDK7.2 on the back of Grinch a couple of nights ago).

I install the latest Helix version of Gnome. I make the same selections, I get the same non-desired results. This is good. Usually stuff that doesn't work for Tom, works for me (or the other way around), and we never manage to resolve the differences.... So this is a session management thing, huh? I use the locate command :

[root@grinch bilbrey]# locate session | grep gnome
...
/usr/bin/gnome-session
...

Buried among the docs and dross was a gem - this was the command I wanted to use to start gnome. But how? First I login, and try and start a gnome-session directly. The Gnome-Helix splash screen comes up, three lines of setup happen, and ... hang. Only one window manager at a time, thank you very much Mr. Bilbrey. OK. So I logout of X, and log back in using the Failsafe session, rightly guessing that this starts a raw, unmangaged X session. I get a ick GUI screen and a single X-Term window. In that window I type gnome-session... voila. Gnome is up. With a single unmanaged and unmanageable xterm hanging out. OK. Back to basics, knowing that I want to run gnome-session.

There's a login manager configuration screen in the newest KDE Control Center, as seen to the left. And I can add to the sessions, as shown. Now, just adding a name to the list doesn't make it work - that Gnome entry has to tie to a configuration file, someplace. That someplace is NEW - /etc/X11/wmsession.d/ is a directory that contains a startup file for every listed session/window manager.

Add a file called 2Gnome that reads like this:

NAME=Gnome
ICON=gnome.xpm
DESC=HelixCode to the Rescue
EXEC=/usr/bin/gnome-session
SCRIPT:
exec /usr/bin/gnome-session

And voila, Helix-Gnome, she's'a up and running, from the login manager, as is right. Of course, I didn't get much real work done, but that's what Saturday's are for, right? I am going to get into that RIGHT NOW! So have a great day. See you all later.

Sunday around the old place. Hanging on IRC a bit, getting ready to do errands, etc. Finished the better part of 25 pages of work yesterday. I'll be hard pressed to get that much out today. We'll see. I'll be back later.


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