Roundtable March 2007

roundtable@muug.ca

15 participants
18 discussions

Doing a short BSD presentation for the MWCS next week
by Mike Pfaiffer 30 Mar '07

30 Mar '07

I've managed to install BSD on a 200MHz system (4GB hard drive). The folks at the MWCS were so impressed they asked me to do a demo. It seems to be working really well. I've even got KDE running (not enough room for Gnome). I don't have the sound configured yet. Can anybody think of something to wow some *NIX newbies? I was planning on letting them play around on the machine for 45 minutes while I talk about the similarities and differences between BSD and Linux. I'm a BSD newbie myself (It's been about a week since I got it running) so I'm not sure of what I can say. Later Mike

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Fwd: Exclusively at the Summit: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5
by Gilbert E. Detillieux 29 Mar '07

29 Mar '07

Just FYI, in case any of you might be interested in going to San Diego in May for the Red Hat Summit... -------- Original Message -------- Subject: Exclusively at the Summit: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 Date: Thu, 29 Mar 2007 13:15:55 -0400 From: Red Hat <summitl(a)info.redhat.com> Reply-To: Red Hat <feedback(a)redhat.com> Red Hat Summit San Diego | May 9 - 11, 2007 Want to learn the new technologies in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5? Attend the Red Hat Summit and become an expert. Pressures at work? Have more to manage with a constrained IT budget? At the Red Hat Summit, you'll get the hands-on, technical instruction you need to save your company money and increase productivity using the new technology in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5. Did you miss the launch? Watch the videos <http://now.eloqua.com/e/er.aspx?s=257&lid=978&elq=CD46D0CFECB74CB1B94178925…> and webcast <http://now.eloqua.com/e/er.aspx?s=257&lid=979&elq=CD46D0CFECB74CB1B94178925…> and see what's new in version 5. The agenda is available online <http://now.eloqua.com/e/er.aspx?s=257&lid=867&elq=CD46D0CFECB74CB1B94178925…>, but here's a glimpse of the Enterprise Linux 5 info available exclusively at the Summit. 1.) Red Hat Enterprise Linux Product Family Review <http://now.eloqua.com/e/er.aspx?s=257&lid=980&elq=CD46D0CFECB74CB1B94178925…> 2.) SELinux: Best practices and what's new in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 <http://now.eloqua.com/e/er.aspx?s=257&lid=981&elq=CD46D0CFECB74CB1B94178925…> 3.) Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5, Yum and You <http://now.eloqua.com/e/er.aspx?s=257&lid=982&elq=CD46D0CFECB74CB1B94178925…> *Cost* Escape to sunny San Diego <http://now.eloqua.com/e/er.aspx?s=257&lid=983&elq=CD46D0CFECB74CB1B94178925…> May 9-11 and boost your Enterprise Linux 5 IQ. For $1349, experience three day's of innovative sessions with six tracks to choose from. Three night's hotel accommodations. And all conference meals and evening entertainment. Ready to register? <http://now.eloqua.com/e/er.aspx?s=257&lid=898&elq=CD46D0CFECB74CB1B94178925…> Learn the brand new technology in Enterprise Linux 5 and gain a competitive advantage for your company. Have questions? Email the Summit team. <mailto:summit@redhat.com> ------------------------------------------------------------------------ This email is intended for people who have opted-in to receiving information from Red Hat. If you think that you have received this email in error, please accept our apologies. Simply unsubscribe <http://now.eloqua.com/u.asp?s=257&elq=CD46D0CFECB74CB1B9417892529BD215> and we'll make sure you do not receive this kind of email from Red Hat again. Red Hat, 1801 Varsity Drive, Raleigh, NC 27606 USA Copyright © 2007 Red Hat, Inc. All rights reserved. "Red Hat" and the Red Hat "Shadowman" logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Red Hat, Inc. in the US and other countries. Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds. *Privacy Policy* <http://www.redhat.com/legal/privacy_statement.html>

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Changing file associations in gnome / Evolution?
by John Lange 29 Mar '07

29 Mar '07

For anyone on this list that doesn't already know; I've become a huge SUSE fan since the 10.X series came out. I think its by far the best desktop going (yes; even better than Ubuntu). Ok, that's my soapbox speech.... Now on to the problem; there is one dang thing that drives me up the wall that I have never been able to sort out and I assume its not limited to SUSE. I use Evolution and the gnome desktop; even though I have the file associations set in gnome (via Nautilus), Evolution doesn't seem to use them. So for example, the one that constantly frustrates me is attachments with the file extensions in a different case. Damn Windows users are constantly sending me message.WAV, or fax.TIF files and evolution only recognizes .wav or .tif so I have to do a "save as" and then open them in Nautilus. So the question is what is the proper way to set file associations in gnome so that Evolution will use them? Evolution reportedly uses the gnome settings to figure out what to do with files so I assume that using Nautilus to make these changes is not the correct way to do it? Most of the google results on this topic seem to point at methods for older versions of gnome that does not work with this version of SUSE (OpenSUSE 10.2). John

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Linux Journal
by Montana Quiring 26 Mar '07

26 Mar '07

Hello, In case you weren't aware of it... If you are a UofM staff or student, you can read the Linux Journal on-line VIA the libraries website. -Montana

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bringing background app to front
by Montana Quiring 16 Mar '07

16 Mar '07

A friend of mine asked the question: "Is there a commandline utility that can bring a running application such as xmms to the foreground?" I wonder if it might be WM specific.

3 3

minor DST problem with Red Hat/Fedora "legacy" systems
by Gilles Detillieux 14 Mar '07

14 Mar '07

If you're still running Red Hat or Fedora Linux systems that were being updated by the Fedora Legacy project before it was shut down, you should have received the tzdata update last year to correct the Daylight Saving Time switchover for this year. However, the updates from fedoralegacy.org only installed the new /usr/share/zoneinfo files, but didn't update /etc/localtime from that. (On RH/FC systems, /etc/localtime is a copy of the appropriate zoneinfo file, not a symbolic link.) What I found is that for these systems (RH9, FC1-3), I needed to do the following: cp -p /usr/share/zoneinfo/America/Winnipeg /etc/localtime After that, I either rebooted the system, or restarted these services: syslog, crond, xinetd, sendmail, httpd. FC4 updated itself automatically last spring, so as long as you rebooted since then, the DST change should have happened without a snag. FC5-6 had the changes at release time. I also managed to update a very old Red Hat 6.2 system by copying the zoneinfo file from a Red Hat 9 system updated by fedoralegacy. Just thought these tips might be of help if you're supporting legacy linux boxes. -- Gilles R. Detillieux E-mail: <grdetil(a)scrc.umanitoba.ca> Spinal Cord Research Centre WWW: http://www.scrc.umanitoba.ca/ Dept. Physiology, U. of Manitoba Winnipeg, MB R3E 3J7 (Canada)

3 3

Zaurus Podcast
by Montana Quiring 13 Mar '07

13 Mar '07

Hey, For those interested, we recorded our first podcast at the ZUG meeting on the weekend. It's a roundup of the month's Zaurus news and happenings. Announcement: http://www.tyrannozaurus.com/?q=node/475 The actual podcast: http://www.tyrannozaurus.com/?q=tycast Feedback welcome, but remember that it's our first go at a podcast. :) -Montana

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Protip: dealing with remote terminals, and /proc/pid/environ
by Scott Balneaves 12 Mar '07

12 Mar '07

Hello all Bumped into something I needed to do this morning, thought others may be interested. I needed to get an accurate count of how many 15 inch monitors I had on my LTSP network. One can, of course, get this from xdpyinfo, but I can't ssh into clients to do this. What to do, what to do... Well, of course, what I need to do is set my $DISPLAY and $XAUTHORITY environment variables correctly, so I can run xdpyinfo. But, how to find out who's on what terminal? Well, since everyone runs metacity as a window manager: pgrep metacity returns a list of process id's. From there, we can look in /proc/<pid>/environ, and get some more info! But hold on: cat /proc/3660/environ returns: SSH_CLIENT=192.168.0.229 443422USER=foobarMAIL=/var/mail/foobarGNOME_KEYRING_SOCKET=/tmp/keyring-awvD15/socketSSH_AGENT_PID=3510 etc. Environment variables are null terminated! So, how to get around that? As usual, there's a quick easy way to do it: tr to the rescue: cat /proc/3660/environ | tr '\0' '\n' SSH_CLIENT=192.168.0.229 4434 22 USER=foobar MAIL=/var/mail/foobar GNOME_KEYRING_SOCKET=/tmp/keyring-awvD15/socket etc. Hey! Fit for using with eval! Here's the whole script, just for fun. #!/bin/bash for PROC in $(pgrep metacity); do eval $(cat /proc/$PROC/environ | tr '\0' '\n' | grep SSH_CLIENT | awk '{print $1}') eval $(cat /proc/$PROC/environ | tr '\0' '\n' | grep USER) export DISPLAY=$SSH_CLIENT:6 export XAUTHORITY=/usr/legal/home/$USER/.Xauthority echo -n ${USER} xdpyinfo | grep dimension done Hope someone finds this useful. Scott -- Scott L. Balneaves | "Let us endeavor so to live that when we come to die Systems Department | even the undertaker will be sorry." Legal Aid Manitoba | -- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"

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syscall mapping in userland.
by Sean Cody 12 Mar '07

12 Mar '07

I'm implementing a basic system call to get a handle on how. Now I build it into a kernel fine and call it via 'syscall (__NR_foo)'; which gives the desired output. Now I'm trying to get the stub working so I can call in userland via 'foo()'.. Since when compiling the kernel my foo.h wasn't put in /usr/include/ linux/foo.h I copied it there myself. The contents are below: #include <linux/unistd.h> _syscall0(int,foo); /* no parameters. */ Now if I complile a test userland app trying to reference foo.h I get. gcc -o t test.c In file included from test.c:2: /usr/include/linux/foo.h: error: expected declaration specifiers or '...' before 'foo' /usr/include/linux/foo.h: warning: data definition has no type or storage class This lends me to believe that either I'm using _syscall0 wrong or it is broken (since I can invoke the system call by it's number). I've grepped through the kernel source and found lots of references (specifically x64 ones) for stub_syscallX but nothing matching what has been described (aside from the macro definitions of course). I've also ready through syscall(2) man page and it states I'm using it right as does the macro itself in include/asm/unistd.h I've also tried going around the macro by doing it manually (ie. implement the macro with my values instead of the 'macro parameters'). Does anyone see anything obviously wrong with the above or have any links to relevant documents that detail syscall creation on a kernel newer than 2.4 (lots I've found so far are 2.4 centric and there have been significant layout changes since)? -- Sean

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Xen and Windows
by Bill Reid 12 Mar '07

12 Mar '07

I got Win XP running under Xen on a Intel Dual Core CPU which supports VT technology. I am using FC6. Fedora has a script for creating domains and a GUI for managing the domains. It works very well. The one show stopper is that during the Win XP install you have to press F5 when the screen comes up saying "Press F6 for additional drivers". After pressing F5 you select "Standard PC..." -- Bill

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Roundtable March 2007