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.

Updating... more or less, anyway. It's hot. Not as hot as the place we left behind: It's supposed to be 107° F up at Clear Lake today. The temperature here is only in the mid-90's. Well. The camping was fun, we had a good time. I caught and lost one fish on the first day (of indeterminate size, but not Mongo, that's for sure). On day 2, I (accidentally) snagged and landed a small bass, only about 11 inches long. But then, on purpose, I wasn't trying very hard.

I read a couple of Peter Hamilton books. Not shabby at all. One, The Reality Disfunction, turns out to be the first book in a series that I read book three of, perhaps 3 to 5 years ago. Hmmm. Actually, they're good reads, but people with mental powers, even legitimately accounted for in the story, change the rules so much that willing suspension of disbelief is a bit more difficult. And Hamilton likes mucking about with mental powers. In another year or two, I should be ready to find and read book two in the set.

I did catch a little too much sun, and while I took a few snaps of the campsite, and Marcia surrepticiously took a couple of me fishing reading, we haven't got them in system yet. Give a day or two. Now. I have a chapter to review. I've already gone through the couple hundred messages in my main box. Now to sort the spam out of the PBI box, leaving a gem or two (I think I see another Alertbox from Jakob Nielsen in the queue ... yup). Now, on with life. TTFN.


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Good morning. How are ya? I forgot to mention a big part of our camping trip -- the buffet. Well, the buffet that I provided for the mosquitos and other flesh-eating insects. Marcia seemed to give them all a miss, but I have been bitten nearly everywhere. With OFF!, without OFF!, doesn't matter, this trip (unlike other recent trips), 'da bugz loved me this time. Sigh.

In other news, Tom and I went through the Chapter 9 edits last night, and it's off to the maw of IDG today, methinks. I did the layouts for Chapters 10 and 11, and I'll start in on them in earnest this afternoon.

Also, I may have mentioned, I did install Debian 2.2 on the back of Grinch, last week before I left. I really like Debian for a number of reasons. It is possible to do a minimual install and build it up piece at a time successfully, since the package tool, Apt, in concert with the good information in the packages themselves means that dependencies actually get resolved. Additionally, if you bring down a package that replicates the functionality of a currently installed piece of software, then the first is unloaded (provided it's tracked in the package database). Some might regard this trait as a bug - I prefer to call it a feature. I don't want 3 different pieces of MTA software loaded: If I am using and running Postfix, then I don't need Sendmail or Exim even on my drives, much less installed.

Quick show of hands: How many people running Linux, or any other operating system, are subscribed to an official or unofficial security mailing list for their software? Since I've got Mandrake at the ramparts, I subscribe to [email protected], plus I keep an eye on Bugtraq. You should too. I don't install every security-updated piece of software. Many of them are not even loaded in my system anymore. But I read them all, and check for feedback from early adopters of the update, and install myself, if appropriate.

Now to begin my working day. Have a nice one yourselves - I'll be back, later.

20:24 - Hi. We've got another hundred degree day under our belts, down here in melting California, where anything except 72° and a little fog on the hills generates amazing amounts of whining. The patio farm, sans beans, sucked down about 6 gallons of water today (two full watering sessions). I got in at about 1pm, and by the time I settled in to start writing Chapter 10, I had already had lunch, been to the store (a stocking run for the work week), watered the farm, swept the front porch and died from heat exhaustion.

Fortunately, I recovered. Now I'm about 12 pages into this chapter. It'll be done tomorrow, and then I'll sweep on into Chapter 11, which is all about the Office suite software, which Tom was having so much fun with last week or two. Chapter 12 is gonna be a hoot, because we've re-purposed it to be a preview of KDE2 - I am going to upgrade the VM to the final beta and write that chapter this weekend. (I think... since 10 and 11 appear to be flying out of my fingertips).


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Howdy-do-daa. Kuro5hin.org is back up and running. Better than a month ago they got swamped by a story and comment submission DoS attack that became too much of a pain for the operators to cope with. They're back in new digs (a box donated by VA Linux Systems) and all appears well with the world. I especially commend to you the Security Matters section run by Inoshiro, who's written a bunch of good stuff, including tutorials on GPG, and a good series (further down the page) in four parts called Securing the Border. Check it out.

Temperatures dropped dramatically overnight, and I think I slept fairly well after not much at all the night before. We were abed before 10, whacked between the heat and the return from vacation blahs. I do like the *real* fall weather, which isn't due out until next month sometime - crisp mornings (sweater time) and nice afternoons (shorts and T). I read that we're due for mid 70's today. Wait and see.

Found a good site about using Procmail to enhance system security - I gave it a quick scan and it looks like a useful collection of information and Howto. This'll be a nice resource for the Security and Sendmail chapters. Yes, FTP. It's OK, your browser will take you there.

Bonus time - Marcia's got up her trip report with all the pictures from the Clear Lake trip, here. Since I'm lazy and she's talented, I'll just refer you over there.

Now it's time to water and hit the road, Jack. Take care. Back atcha later today.

20:45 - Evening. Been hard at it, sorry to be so late. The KDE applications chapter, covering the KDE File Manager, KWrite, KMail, KDevelop, and KIllustrator is all done except for the shouting. Once I think I've finished a chapter, then I print it and give it a hard copy once over. I post those changes back into a new revision, then write the chapter summary. I am maintaining nearly 10 pages a day, which is pleasing (and useful at this stage of the game). Tomorrow I start with the Office suites.

In his weblog, Doc Searls takes note of Tuxtops. Tuxtops take current market laptops, install Linux on them, and resell at a tidy profit. Linux and laptops is still a bit of an arcane science, especially in the configuration of devices which one might not normally expect to run with Linux, like specialty sound hardware, WinModems, and (of course) the need to pay attention to battery life, using the apmd (Advanced Power Management Daemon). While I was successful in loading several different distro's here on Gryphon the Acer Travelmate (from Caldera eDesktop and LTP, through Red Hat and Debian, to Mandrake 7.2beta1), most people aren't silly enough to install Linux as many times as I do without making a living at it. No, one co-authored book does not count as a living, but these are speculative times...

I've been running with a content and style update of the company website - should be live by end of week, and I'll let you know when. Meantime, I guess I'd better finish out this chapter and send it on to young Syroid. Later.


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Good morning. I have been struggling to help a body who is having a lot of difficulty with using an IDE burner with Linux. Well, not just me - he's conducting his experiments on a mailing list, and he's ignoring the advice of lots of people. Interestingly, he started off by asking what to buy. Several people told him SCSI - it just works. Of course he came proudly back saying he'd saved 50 bucks on an IDE rig and why-in-heck doesn't it work under Linux - it works find under Windows98, this looks really bad for Linux, yada, yada yada...

Myself and several other people pointed him in the direction of the CD-Writing HOWTO over at LinuxDoc, which gives 3/4's of the picture, if not more. Then myself and at least two other people walked him through all of the necessary steps to get to the point where the bits in the HOWTO apply properly.

Put append="hdn=ide-scsi" in /etc/lilo.conf (where hdn should be replaced with the actual IDE channel that the burner is on, then rerun lilo. Make a symlink to the scsi device that the burner appears as: ln -sf /dev/scd0 /dev/cdrom2 if you want. After rebooting to have the revised lilo stanza take effect, check that your drive is recognized by typing cdrecord --scanbus. If everything is right, then your drive is recognized, and the CD-Writing Howto will take you the rest of the way there. If not, then more information is called for.

However, he does (apparently) only half the steps, says simply that nothing works since I tried this half of the steps, I'll just use Windows, Linux sucks (effectively). Doesn't report what he did, with results, step by step by step, and wonders why we can't help him. ::sigh:: I reiterated a couple of points this am, since he appears to *want* to keep trying. We'll see how it goes.

Now to work with me, and then this afternoon, Chapter 11, Office suites. Ta-daaaa. Later, folks.


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No Deposit, No Return.

Good morning and welcome to another Friday around the Bilbrey hovel. Chapter 10 came and went again yesterday, as Tom and I did a round of edits to my first draft scribblings. Additionally, I made some progress into the Office suites chapter.

Applixware Office 5.0 is the first target of opportunity. The ROE indicate that I should not be doing a competitive survey, but a vaguely complementary, shot-through-gauze-with-vaseline-on-the-lense Penthouse sort of treatment. As the author guidlines put it: "You're not writing for a magazine."

Yup, and the book isn't about these products, either, but how they work with the product we are writing to, Caldera's OpenLInux. From that perspective, and for the purposes of actually helping people, we have to write what we find. Setup a series of tests and sample documents and at least try to accomplish all of the same things in each suite. I think we'll be successful.

One interesting observation. I used to do technical theatre: Sound, Lights and such. Very quickly I learned the cardinal rule - If you do your job right, then no one knows you did your job. Many, many tasks in this world are like this, and that includes the chores of productivity software. I hardly notice when they do their job right. There's too many other events holding my focus and interest to concern myself with how something just worked. Of course, for this book, we have to spot those features that hide behind the curtain of competence and bring them out into the light, next to their less capable bretheren (sisteren? Feh!).

Now off to the wage mine with me. I have a brief update to post on the current ETS homepage, and continued work to do on the new revision. Take care of each other and have a nice day. Back later, for sure.

16:25 - Hi. Slogging slowly through the suites. My first pass task is a little different than Tom's - I am surveying file compatibility, bi-directional data transfer between MS Office tools, and the big three of Linux productivity software: VistaSource, Corel and Sun.

One bit I find vastly amusing to read is the marketing material on the packaging for these products. Let me quote to you from Sun's offering, then I'll offer my translation. "Sun's Changing the Rules - Join the Millions Who've Stopped Paying for Office Software. At Sun, we think office software should be free..." equals "We wouldn't stand a chance trying to sell office software, but if it'll give us a shot at Bill, then we'll spend millions of dollars to buy an office productivity suite for Linux, millions more developing it to be more stable and compatible, and give it away..." Hmmm.

Well. I am learning lots -- there's compatibility, and then there's compatibility! We'll see who comes out on top soon. <grin> Give me a couple of days. Actually, I anticipate that each of the contenders has a place in the tanning booth, because their strengths are different, the underlying schema's vary, and there's always Sun's GPLing of StarOffice to throw into the mix, a very PC thing to do for Linux community approval.

Now, back to the grindstone, since there's still a hint of a nose on my face...

Brought a smile to my face last night: Rick and Dierdre got married. They are both very active in the local Linux community, at the SVLUG and BALUG meetings, at install fests and on many mailing lists. I've had the pleasure of meeting them - they're good peoples.

Hmmm. Cough, a bit of tightness in the throat - I think I'd best dose down with C, Zinc and Echinacea (1000, 60, 125 mg each: morning and night for 3 days usually does the trick). A couple of people at work were cold-ridden this week. A little early in the season if you ask me. If I get a bug now, then what'll be my excuse around the holidays???

Linux command of the week: Sudo. From the sudo manpage:

       sudo allows a permitted user to execute a command as the
       superuser or another user, as specified in the sudoers
       file.  The real and effective uid and gid are set to match
       those of the target user as specified in the passwd file
       (the group vector is also initialized when the target user
       is not root).  By default, sudo requires that users
       authenticate themselves with a password (NOTE: this is the
       user's password, not the root password).  Once a user has
       been authenticated, a timestamp is updated and the user
       may then use sudo without a password for a short period of
       time (five minutes by default).

The configuration file for sudo is /etc/sudoers, which looks "wrong" enough to my eye that it's difficult for me to type, if I do so consciously. This exploration came about because I wanted to run apm as me, to send Gryphon the Acer TravelMate to sleep last night, and I couldn't without first becoming the root user. Adding the following line to the end of /etc/sudoers did the trick. I still have to validate who *I* am, but I don't have to su to root, run the command, and exit again after the fact. Actually, I can remove the password validation step for some commands if I so desire, as shown in the following line:

bilbrey    gryphon = NOPASSWD: /usr/bin/apm, PASSWD: /sbin/reboot, /sbin/halt

Many more details on creating complex and interesting capabilities for sudo are found in the sudoers manpage, which is deep and requires study. This study is worth the effort, however. In most cases, a program that needs to run as root can be more safely used (from a system security standpoint) with sudo, than by setting the setuid bit on the executable (using chmod +s ...).

The other thing I learned this morning is that apm is still a tad unstable, and ReiserFS is good. Some devices and drivers don't appear to come all the way back from sleep, correctly. I haven't more information at this time, once the book's done I'll play with this and quantify things. In the meantime, I had a harddrive that wasn't responding. Nothing to be done but hard reset.

Normally, this means a long session of e2fsck as the drive partitions are extensively checked and repaired (comparable to a complete scandisk run under Windows). I have Mandrake 7.2beta1 loaded on Gryphon, and I'd set things up so that I have one Swap partition, and all others are formatted ReiserFS. ReiserFS is a journalling file system written by ... Hans Reiser (surprise, surprise).

Following a hard reset that didn't include a disk sync and shutdown cycle, it takes about three additional seconds to replay the transaction log and make everything right with the world. On the small drive (9 G) in Gryphon, this saves about 10 minutes. Imagine this with 30, 40, 80 G drives. <g>.

Now, I simply must get to work. Corel WordPerfect 2K for Linux is the next suite to lay it's head on the block. Talk to y'all later.

17:45 - Well. Lots to think about, lots to think about. In the meantime, I've made quite a bit of progress, on a number of different fronts. I've learned a lot about the tricks and tips of installing WordPerfect Office 2000 for Linux. Now I am ready to test whether or not I can access the help files properly... In order to learn one possible cause of my failure to access WPO help, I loaded Corel Linux on the backend of Grinch, overloading my nice, fresh Debian 2.2 install. Hmmm.

...OK. That idea fell flat. I am trying to make the version of Netscape that ships with OpenLinux automagically open gzipped HTML files. The NS-4.72 that comes with Corel works OK!. Why not 4.72 with OpenLinux. This is very frustrating. By the time I've answered this, 4 hours will have been spent on 1, maybe two sentences. Ah, well.

Got an email minutes ago in on the Linux-Newbie channel. The question was something like this: "OK, there's the head program, which I can use to look at lines from the start of a file. Tail lets me look at lines from the end of a file. Is there a program that will let me look at, say, lines 46 through 50 of a file?" My reply was relatively straightforward:

head -n 50 /var/log/messages | tail -n 5 -

<g> Later, people.

Happy Sunday. Starting a little slow, and that's a good thing, if you know what I mean. I figured out that when I am dreaming of us dining with Linus and his family, and we're (Linus and I) tag-teaming Marcia, trying to get her to adopt kernel 2.4test-pre8, that I am pretty darn far into the zone. Besides, we were unsuccessful.

On tap for the day. Coffee (in process), Costco (needs a list, departing in 34 minutes), water/fertilize the green things and other knick-knacky chores, then straight into installing and using StarOffice, with plans to knock this chapter out of the box and on it's way to Saskatoon by late afternoon. Gonna be a challenge...

One question on the breakfast front. Why do they call them "Fun Size Twix" when they're only 16 grams each. My idea of fun size starts at about a pound or so. With that, I'd better go have some breakfast before I start noshing these fun-size thingys beside my chair. Have a great day. Interim reports later today. TTFN