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• I've downloaded the ISO file. Now what do I do with it? I've burned a CD and it won't boot with it.
• Fetchmail question
• nuovo progetto
• syslog-ng
• rebooting using rsh command
• query
• Defining Keyboard Shortcuts
• upgrade2.2.14 to 2.4 kernel documention
• Linux Sockets Stuck in FIN_WAIT
• CD-Writing with an ATAPI CDR Mini-HOWTO

I've downloaded the ISO file. Now what do I do with it? I've burned a CD and it won't boot with it.

To trim it down considerably, he has tried Nero Burning software but couldn't make sense of it, and the image that seems to result doesn't work. YaST2 booted from floppy gets as far as reaching for the CD, then continues to complain that the CD isn't valid.

Usually the Gang would suggest a rescue disk - our perennial favorites wouldn't help, they don't have cdrecord aboard, but you could try muLinux (http://mulinux.nevalabs.org/) boot that from floppy, and use the Linux software on it to mount up your DOS filesystem, then cdrecord according to the normal HOWTO to burn the SuSE CD. I have no idea if it would work though it seems worth a shot.

Would some kind soul out there who lives in both worlds point us to a reliable CD burning app for Windows, along with some fairly simple instructions? We'd be glad to let you put the article in the Gazette if it will help enough potential Linux'ers out there. -- Heather

Fetchmail question

I read Ben Okopnik's article in the February issue of Linux Gazette titled

No More Spam! (a "procmail"-based solution with tips on "fetchmail" and "mutt")

and I tried implementing some of his suggestions. My problem seems to be this: While fetchmail will get my e-mail, and pass it off to procmail, which delivers it to a designated file, I can't seem to read the e-mail with kmail. I've set my designated file as a local mailbox for kmail to read, but when I try to read it using kmail I get 1 of 2 behaviors:

1. kmail ignores the e-mail in the local mailbox
2. kmail nukes the contents of the local mailbox, and does not transfer the contents to my kmail inbox.

I tried setting up kmail to read from the local mailbox with the following lock file options:
mutt dotlocked
mutt dotlocked priveledged
Procmail lockfile
FCNTL
None

Any of the above will cause either behavior 1) or 2).

Anyway, I'm hoping you might be able to help me figure out how to read my local mailbox with kmail.

--Rod
P.s. Included is a snapshot of my kmail configuration for reading the local mailbox into my inbox. Hopefully, it will be of some use to you for diagnosing my problem.
P.p.s. Thanks in advance for any help you can give me on this.
P.p.p.s. Here are the configuration files for the various utilities: (I blanked my password in the .fetchmailrc file in this e-mail, for security reasons )

• .fetchmailrc
• .procmailrc
• The top part of kmailrc, with the reference to my password for yahoo, blanked out

nuovo progetto

Let him know what you think, folks. For my own part, we could still use a wordprocessor that actually works... -- Heather

syslog-ng

Hi, I'm fighting with syslog-ng, trying to centralize the logs of all a network to a log server. Till now, I'm justing testing it between two machines ... I've already been on it a long time and still no result, simply nothing appears in the final log on the logserver ... I've attached the syslog-ng.conf of the client and the server's one too.

You must know that for the server's source, I've already tried to enter parameters (I mean an ip and a port) but it doesn't work either so at the moment, I'm trying to use the defaults. The same thing for the client ...
Can you help me on this?
Thanks

• client.conf
• logserver.conf

rebooting using rsh command

Any of you gentle readers with experience in this kind of clustering, if you have any idea what it might be, then feel free to lend a hand. We'll publish your answer here. -- Heather

query

Hii james, this is mehul from india...

need to know if i can control bandwidth on a particular interface using ipchains or any other utilities in linux... basically, ill have a multi-homed linux workstation and i want to limit bandwidth on one interface to 512kbps... is that possible?

T&R
mehul

Defining Keyboard Shortcuts

I would like to define keyboard shortcuts not specific to a Window Manager. I have read documentation on xmodmap, but the information I have found only talks about and show examples of changing key actions to another pre-defined action. That is, being able to change the caps lock key to function as an escape key. How would I go about assigning a command to a lctrl + F1 key code?

The ultimate use for this is to help a fellow LUG member. He wants to be able to assign text strings to "hot keys" whereby the text string would be copied to the window he is working in. He wants to be able to save the text strings as he is working so that they can be used in other session; and have the ability to delete or change these text strings. I can proably figure out a script to do this, but I am stuck on defining the keyboard shortcut.

Thanks

Daniel S. Washko

upgrade2.2.14 to 2.4 kernel documention

hello,

is there any kernel upgrade from 2.2.1# to 2.4 how-to 's. I have upgraded the kernel using a general how-to and I have problems mounting the vfat partitions by getting the error "invalid major and minor numbers". I know the way the system deals with special device files has changed at 2.4. Also the "eth0" ethernet adapter is not being recognised. Any help in finding good documentation for this process would be greatly appreciated.

mark taylor

Linux Sockets Stuck in FIN_WAIT

On our project if an established client socket connection on a remote chassis is suddenly terminated (e.g., the chassis is powered off), the socket connection on the local chassis changes from ESTABLISHED to FIN_WAIT1. If we then try to restart our application on the local chassis, it does not work because the socket connection is stuck in a FIN_WAIT1. After 5-10 minutes the socket connection stuck in FIN_WAIT1 clears itself and we can successfully restart our application on the local chassis, but this wait is too long.

Do any of you know how to expedite the process of clearing FIN_WAITs on a Linux/UNIX chassis under these conditions? The only we can get them to clear is to either wait 10 minutes or perform a chassis reboot (sync; shutdown -r now). Is there a system call that can be used to tell the operating system to close/delete/clean-up/remove all socket connections immediately?

The only thing I have run across so far is to possibly make a kernel change (e.g., change #defines in .../include/net/tcp.h), or set a socket option which causes the sockets to close/clean-up faster. Note: these changes may be risky if we shorten the timeouts too much.

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks,
Ken Ramseyer

CD-Writing with an ATAPI CDR Mini-HOWTO

Hi
I've read the articles from issue 57 of the Linux gazette, but am unable to get my cd-rw to work. I don't think I am managing to emulate scsi correctly, although I have followed the things sugested. I have a sony cd-rw (CRX 145E ATAPI) and run mandrake 7.0, I also have a iomega 100Mb zip drive on hdb, a dvd-rom on hdc and the cd-rw is on hdd. This is what I've done and what the comp says:

In /etc/rc.d/rc.local added

/sbin/insmod ide-scsi

In /etc/conf.modules added

alias scd0 srmod
alias scsi_hostadapter ide-scsi
options ide-cd ignore=hdd

(also tried replacing srmod with sr_mod)

In /etc/lilo.conf added

append="hdd=ide-scsi"

then in console typed

lilo (and tried /sbin/lilo)

then rebooted, then dmesg gives at the end:

hdb:<3>ide-scsi: hdb: unsupported command in request queue (0)
end_request: I/O error, dev 03:40 (hdb), sector 0
unable to read partition table
scsi0 : SCSI host adapter emulation for IDE ATAPI devices
scsi : 1 host.
Vendor: IOMEGA    Model: ZIP 100           Rev: 14.A
Type:   Direct-Access                      ANSI SCSI revision: 00
Detected scsi removable disk sda at scsi0, channel 0, id 0, lun 0
sda : READ CAPACITY failed.
sda : status = 0, message = 00, host = 0, driver = 28
sda : extended sense code = 2
sda : block size assumed to be 512 bytes, disk size 1GB.
sda:scsidisk I/O error: dev 08:00, sector 0
unable to read partition table

For some reason I can't get the machine to emulate scsi on anything other than hdb. cdrecord -scanbus only lists the zip drive too. The /sbin/insmod ide-scsi comand also stops the zip drive from working. Have you any ideas as to what might be going wrong?

Many thanks for any advice you can offer
Louise

• Sci-Linux Project has a listed e-mail address ..
• Navigation...
• Mailto URL error in LG Mailbag (followup)
• Heather Stern
• The Answer Gang

Sci-Linux Project has a listed e-mail address ..

Thanks, Manoj, we'd love to see your article! -- Heather

Navigation...

Once upon a time we had the complete "normal" navbar as well as the TAG bnavbar, but people said it was confusing. They kept hitting next article when the meant next TAG item, or vice versa. Having a pointer to the TOC doesn't sound so bad though. So, I've added that into the tag sub-items navbar. Let me know how you like it. -- Heather

Mailto URL error in LG Mailbag (followup)

I'm glad you're using mailto's that include the TAG address. The problem is the URL construction was incorrect.

It should be an equals sign (=) after the cc parameter. A quick run through sed should fix this before you get too many messages pointing out the error.

If there's any way to add the subject, you could make the URLs look like this:

mailto:user@domain?amp;subject=Re:%20SUBJECT

Note that the subject has to go through a filter that replaces spaces with the hex code "%20" to keep the URL legal. In perl, I'd do this:

$mailto_subject =~ s/ /%20/g;

You can quickly test the functionality of a mailto URL by typing variations directly into the address/URL box of the target browser and see if it calls the mail client as you intended.

Tony

Thanks, Tony, you win the AnswerBubble for the month. I like it when folks not only nail us for a bug (that one was me, I'll go fix the script so it'll be right next time ... but also send us Tip grade material about fixing it. I tried it, and I ran it against some browsers we have around the place. My scripts work great ... but the browsers don't accept subject values reliably, and I don't want to inflict any extra problems on our readers, considering that what it did when it misbehaved was to generate a bunch of insane "To:" values. Oh well -- Heather

Heather Stern

I just want to say thank you.

Her greeting in The Answer Gang is beautiful. I'm a relative newbie to Linux (It took me a week of reading and playing to compile a kernel that would find my NICs). I understand the open source idea, and love it. I deal in 2 other fields where this idea (in a general sense) applies. Emergency Medical Services where we share ideas, issues, and solutions, not for money, but for the knowledge of helping others. Also in restoring old cars, Things are learned, forgotten, learned again, and most importantly past on. By sharing, we (Linux users) end up with a better app or method.

Again, Thank you

Remember, there are people out there who really appreciate the work that is done.

- Mike Gargiullo

The Answer Gang

In Issue 64 you invite Ray Taylor to join The Answer Gang. How would one do that? Is it like a mailing list open to everyone? Can anyone help?

TAG is run like a mailing list in reverse. The public sends in questions, and the subscribers are the answerers. To join, send e-mail to tag-request@ssc.com with "subscribe tag me@mysite.com" in the message body. Then just jump in whenever you have something to say. At the end of the month, Heather selects some of the messages for publishing. -- Mike

• SSH article
• Mean Thoughts on the Linux Router Project

SSH article

In the article on ssh, scp, and sftp in the March issue, there is an important area that isn't covered: client/server compatibility.

If you're just doing a basic ssh (to get a remote shell), you're using a standard SSH protocol and any program named "ssh" is likely to work with any remote system that offers a service it calls "ssh."

But scp and sftp are not standard protocols. If you run the scp program from openssh against a remote system that's running an original ssh server, it will not work. (And when I learned this the hard way, it was very hard indeed: the error message isn't "this server doesn't implement this scp protocol." It is, for reasons that took a day of debugging to figure out, "invalid file descriptor"!

Mean Thoughts on the Linux Router Project

[Mike] We received several complaints about the article, feeling that it attacked the LRP unfairly. Dave Cinege, the creator of the LRP, was going to write a response addressing the inaccuracies he felt were in the article, but he did not have time to finish his letter by press time. I encourage readers with an interest in routing to follow the links above to the projects' home pages and decide for themselves if the LRP and its offspring are right for them.

Regarding Oxygen, EigerStein and 2.9.8, Dave writes:

They are derivatives of stable releases of LRP, which is currently 2.9.8. I have been creating a new OS similar to LRP for quite some time now. Many things have come out of this are a new multi-packaging system (standard?) that is more powerful then rpm or deb, yet not tied to any specific OS.

Regarding the 'ip' command, he writes:

ip allows you to control the extended routing features of 2.2 and 2.4, IE multiple routing tables. Ifconfig still works for the primary routing table and interface configuration. ip can replace ifconfig, but ifconfig is still the known standard.

A few letters questioned LG's editorial policy in allowing this article to be published. LG's policy is pretty open. If an article is about Linux, contains hard facts or cultural value (e.g., humorous articles, cartoons and articles about Linux VIPs), covers a topic relevant to a significant portion of the readership, is not an advertisement in disguise, and would still be relevant several months from now, we'll probably publish it. There are borderline cases, and this was one of them.

LG does not have a technical review board to screen every article, although I do send a few questionable articles to The Answer Gang for comment. You, our readers, are LG's technical review board, and usually this system works very well. 99% of LG's articles are published without complaint.

In any case, please remember this article describes one person's experience with certain routing programs. It's not meant to be gospel, in spite of the letter I received that said, "But newbies will read it and think it's gospel!" That's not how it works. If you want gospel, read several people's articles and compare them with your own experience.

Another thing this article does is raise the question, just because we can use Linux in a wide variety of routing situations, should we? Are you choosing a Linux router because it's the most appropriate solution for the task, or simply because "we're a Linux-only shop"? Even if the article failed to present LRP in a fair light, these are still questions worth asking.

As always, if you have any comments about an article, whether good or bad, send them to LG and we will forward them to the author.

This page edited and maintained by the Editors of Linux Gazette Copyright © 2001
Published in issue 65 of Linux Gazette April 2001

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