Roundtable August 2002

roundtable@muug.ca

16 participants
19 discussions

Re: [RndTbl] 2 HDs and a CD-rom
by gedetil＠cs.umanitoba.ca 19 Aug '02

19 Aug '02

According to millward: > I was wondering, is there an ideal way to > configure a system with two IDE hard drives and > a generic read-only CD-rom ? That would depend on your particular hardware, and your intended usage... > I read somewhere that the > CD-rom had to be a primary slave for > it to boot properly. Is this true? I don't know that to be true in any of the newer systems, but it may have been the case with some of the earlier BIOSes. Many of them didn't implement the CD-ROM booting feature in a fully standard way, so there could be such limitations with some systems. I'd try it and see. In your case, it may be best to leave it as the primary slave, and make each of your two hard drives masters on each of the two IDE controllers. > I plan to spread one Linux installation over > both hard drives. Its a P133 and the hard drives > are both 540 megs. > And one more question. > The CD-rom in the system above is really just > for installing Linux. After that I plan on removing it. > Would removing the CD-rom 'confuse' Linux and > screw things up or will the boot up proceedure > recognize the new configuration? Linux uses device names based on the (fixed) hardware configuration for IDE devices, as follows: hda primary master hdb primary slave hdc secondary master hdd secondary slave ... So, removing a slave device wouldn't affect anything. If you removed a master device, you might have to turn it's corresponding slave into a master, which would change names. However, there isn't much in Linux that depends on these hardcoded names anymore. You might have to fix /etc/fstab, and either /etc/lilo.conf or /boot/grub/grub.conf, depending on your loader. But, if you make your CD-ROM drive a slave (primary or secondary), you should be able to remove it without changing anything. Spreading your two hard drives across the primary and secondary controllers (as masters) will give you a slight performance advantage over having them both on one controller (as master and slave), since the two controllers and drives can then overlap I/O operations. The CD-ROM drive would slow down disk I/O on the controller it's tied to, but if you'll be removing it later, that would be fine. -- Gilbert E. Detillieux E-mail: <gedetil(a)cs.umanitoba.ca> Dept. of Computer Science Web: http://www.cs.umanitoba.ca/~gedetil/ University of Manitoba Phone: (204)474-8161 Winnipeg, MB, CANADA R3T 2N2 Fax: (204)474-7609

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2 HDs and a CD-rom
by millward 17 Aug '02

17 Aug '02

I was wondering, is there an ideal way to configure a system with two IDE hard drives and a generic read-only CD-rom ? I read somewhere that the CD-rom had to be a primary slave for it to boot properly. Is this true? I plan to spread one Linux installation over both hard drives. Its a P133 and the hard drives are both 540 megs. And one more question. The CD-rom in the system above is really just for installing Linux. After that I plan on removing it. Would removing the CD-rom 'confuse' Linux and screw things up or will the boot up proceedure recognize the new configuration?

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command line question, cat and dd
by millward 12 Aug '02

12 Aug '02

Subject: forgot the '>' in cat command. Excuse: I was just following the example given in the Linux Terminal Server doc, ltsp-3.0.pdf ! But that is a rather lame excuse. I should have known better. Thanks for the help.

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Search results for 'Microsoft'
by Ian Timshel 09 Aug '02

09 Aug '02

http://search.salon.com/cgi-bin/htsearch?config=htdig&restrict=&exclude=www… Someone a while back was interested in sources for current information regarding Micro$oft and their troubles... Cheers! Ian. --

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command line question, cat and dd
by millward 09 Aug '02

09 Aug '02

I'm trying to write the file eb-5.0.7-via-rhine.lzdsk to a floppy diskette in /dev/fd0. When I did the following command: cat /home/ed/eb-5.0.7-via-rhine.lzdsk /dev/fd0 the screen filled with zeros and wierd characters and stayed that way after the command supposedly had finished writting the file to the floppy. I had to boot <Ctrl> <Alt> <Delete> since the keyboard was useless. No harm done. Everything seems OK after the boot. Using another floppy, I tried: dd if=/home/ed/eb-5.0.7-via-rhine.lzdsk of=/dev/fd0 obs=18k No problems with dd. The copy seemed to work quicker. My question is, are the two commands, dd and cat, equivalent for writting data to a floppy? And why did cat screw up my keyboard?

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Edsger Dijkstra: RIP
by gedetil＠cs.umanitoba.ca 08 Aug '02

08 Aug '02

Another legend in the world of computer science passed away... http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/26585.html Old age considered harmful... -- Gilbert E. Detillieux E-mail: <gedetil(a)cs.umanitoba.ca> Dept. of Computer Science Web: http://www.cs.umanitoba.ca/~gedetil/ University of Manitoba Phone: (204)474-8161 Winnipeg, MB, CANADA R3T 2N2 Fax: (204)474-7609

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KGostView no print PDF RH 7.3
by millward 08 Aug '02

08 Aug '02

I'm running Red Hat 7.3. The KDE KGostView pdf viewer won't print pdf files. It gives the message: "The file format application/x-zerosize is not directly supported by the current system." KGostView asks: "KDE convert this file to application/postscript ?" So I agree, but it fails and says: "no appropriate filter" My printer is an Epson 640 which I loath but can't afford to replace. RH 7.3 with KDE prints text OK. I've even printed a couple of HTML pages using Konqueror.. Anyone know how I can get KGostView to print PDF? The problem is not the printer. My system is multi-boot so I booted into Slackware 7.1 Gnome and used the Gnome Ghostview 0.95 to print the PDF file, no problem. But I don't really like Gnome and KGostView should do the job in Red Hat 7.3. What have I failed to do in Red Hat 7.3 ?

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RealOne Player
by Mel Seder 05 Aug '02

05 Aug '02

I had to go to Windows 98 to listen to a live "the other ones" concert. The second show played tonight. The first show was played live at Alpine Valley Music Theatre, just outside Milwaukee, last night. The band is who the grateful dead used to be minus Jerry. After the internet broadcast I started playing around with the RealOne media player and found the games section. What a nice experience that RealOne was. I hope RealOne gets ported to Linux so that it will run on Red Hat Valhalla 7.3. ===== "The sooner you make five thousand mistakes, the sooner you will be able to correct them." - Kimon Nicolaides __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Health - Feel better, live better http://health.yahoo.com

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UPS
by Brock Wolfe 02 Aug '02

02 Aug '02

Well its time to get out of the procrastination easychair and upgrade my UPS. I've used APC 500 and 625 VA UPS's on various PC's in the past. However these UPS don't seem to last, with electronics and batteries failing. I am looking to replace the smalller individual units with a single larger unit around 3000VA to support a server/network cluster. While batteries can't be expected to last forever, I am looking to improve the lifetime and reduce long term costs of providing UPS. The current individual UPS's will be be spun out to cover less critical PC's. Anyone with suggestions, testimonials, or works of advice on larger UPS installations. Or does this plan have an achillies heel? Brock Wolfe ___________________________________________________________ "The problem is not that there are problems. The problem is expecting otherwise and thinking that having problems is a problem." - Theodore Rubin __________________________________________________________

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Roundtable August 2002