This last issue we had an article about diving into Gentoo, and the
response was great. What I'd like to see is some of you send us in some
more great 2c Tips!
about things that are specific to your
favorite distribution, with a neat little description that describes
why they're so handy.
People can spend hours surfing the man pages
or reading the "get started guide" in their boxed product - but we
all know that a lot of linuxers get started with a disc from friends
and some simple enthusiasm. So... let's Make Linux A Little More Fun
for them
I'd love to see an article describing how a company really got interested
in open source, a bit of the thought processes and internal changes that
went with looking at it, considering if it worked for them. I believe
such an article would be equally useful if it described why one didn't,
or did, take it on in various departments, and how much of it the company
was able to let in.
Obviously, how completely it worked out after implementation would be
great to hear about. We see occasional tidbits of this sort of thing
offered as "case studies" and so on, but rather few of them have more
than a sound byte here and there from anyone who really lived through the
changes, drove the meetings, pondered the legal entanglements and so on.
Contact articles@lists.linuxgazette.net if you've got something for us. Get whatever
internal approvals you need, and if you decide to make $company anonymous,
don't forget to sanitize tidbits like any IP addresses or partner companies
you mention, too.
I just stumbled across something interesting (to me, anyway), while
reading Groklaw. I had mentioned in a msg to TAG a while back that I was
getting an boot time error msg on this Inspiron:
"Dell Inspiron with broken BIOS detected. Refusing to enable the local
APIC."
That's with a 2.4 kernel. I had resigned myself to the fact that there
was a flaw in the BIOS, while wondering why they had never bothered to fix
such a problem in all of the BIOS revisions that Dell has issued for the
machine.
I've noticed that the error is absent when I boot from a recent 2.6
kernel, so figured that there was something relevant and long standing in
Linux ACPI support that had been fixed in 2.6 kernels. But now it seems
that the kernel developers may have just discovered how to deal with
Dell's (intentionally quirky) implementation of the standard. Actually,
the whole Groklaw post was interesting, so I'll include it here, but the
last paragraph is what my post is about. Note: the general theme of the
thread is about trying to buy a Dell with Linux pre-loaded. For more more
info see:
I was on a plane recently, sitting next to a guy who claimed to be a Dell
senior sales VP. I mentioned I had bypassed Dell for a purchase a week or
so before, because they don't support Linux. He acted surprised, and said
I should visit their web site. I told him I had visited the site (and saw
what PJ reported here); despite a claim to support Linux, it is almost
impossible to buy a Dell machine with Linux.
He continued to act surprised. I told him to visit his own website from a
customer POV and he'd see what I meant.
Don't trust Dell: they make nice machines, but they are on their knees for
Gates. I put Dell in the same category as HP (broken ACPI (nonstandard),
that they only tell Microsoft how to get around). 2+ years after Presario
release, they have still not fixed it.
I just read your article in Linux Gazette online on Installing Gentoo,
and thought I could help with a few of the problems you have experienced.
If OpenOffice did not compile, you could try openoffice-bin.
I'm not sure if I can help with package documentation. There is good
general documentation on how Gentoo-specific nuances work by following
the "Docs" link from the top of the home page.
We moved a handful of his - and other Gentoo using readers' tips - into
our 2c Tips section, so they're easier to search for. Thanks to everybody
who wrote in, especially those of you who don't see your name in lights;
many Tips were repeats, and we tried to take the best explanations.
-- Heather
I hope these suggestions help. I have found the Gentoo documentation and
the Forums to be infinitely helpful. Now this former Windows advocate
compiles his own kernel on a regular basis including software RAID and
bootsplash tweaks. It's addicting!
Some tips, too, but go see the 2c tips section for that.
-- Heather
Whenever there's a problem, I've almost always found the answer by
searching forums.gentoo.org - even though the search feature in phpBB does
not work very well, when there's so many posts as in this case. I've
written a small and easy howto, about how they could make it indexable by
google (see http://klavsen.info/simpleurls ) but they haven't picked it
up, even though I've written it to gentoo-dev. This unfortunatley means
the forums, which are a true treasure of knowledge, goes unknown to many
If the problem isn't solved by searching/posting to forums, a post to
bugs.gentoo.org usually quickly resolves it (if it's a bug ofcourse, but
it you don't get an answer in the forums, it most usually is
All in all, a very important part of Gentoo, is the fact that besides, the
great documentation, there's so many competent users in the forums and on
the mailinglists, so getting help finding a solution (and learning a lot
in the process) seems almost inevitable (if ones open for learning -
Gentoo is IMHO not minded for people who does not want to learn how things
really work - but just want something that "just works").
By using Gentoo I've learned a lot, that I can make good use of, with
other distributions as well, so it is a good learning experience, not only
in Gentoo - but also with Linux. This same thing is why the
forums.gentoo.org should be google indexed, as the knowledge does not only
apply to Gentoo.
--
Regards,
Klavs Klavsen, GSEC
"Open Source Software - Sometimes you get more than you paid for."
Just saw your article on Gentoo Installation, by coincidence, just as I was in the process of giving up on my own install of Gentoo. Been working on it off and on all day, finally got the kernel compiled. Yeah, I did it manually. Think I got it right, although the manual does not look the kernel config I was running. Wonder why? (the latest .4 kernel, r9, just downloaded today.)
Then I noted that loading some of the kernel packages like the Nvidia packages may well drag in stuff I wanted excluded in the USE variable, so I should use the pretend option to see what might possibly go wrong. This made me feel dizzy, even dizzier as I looked at what still lies ahead. In my present ill-tempered state, I feel like making the snide remark that so far I have not done anything far as I can tell that a good installation script could not do.
Guess I'll go get something to eat, replenish my blood sugar, and then think about it. I am learning quite a lot ... probably good for me ... but ... what keeps occurring to me is, since I am doing all this the long way around, why am I not installing FreeBSD instead? Keeping in mind that I am starving and the question may not be rational:
Eh ... not putting you on the spot ... but in a sentence or two, why would I want to run Gentoo instead of FreeBSD, nevermind that one is Linux and one is Berkeley UNIX. And both Gentoo and FreeBSD seem to have outstandingly brilliant groups of people supporting them. Just curious.
And don't ask if I'm a man or a mouse! "Got any cheese, sir? Squeak! Squeak!"
Thanks for the counterpoint view, William. There's lots of people, and no need to do things just one way. For that matter ... this may be Linux Gazette, but those BSDers are fellow open source'rers too. (If this makes you wonder where their magazine is, dear readers, it's called DaemonNews - http://ezine.daemonnews.org and it's a good read.)
-- Heather
Thanks for the article on tripwire in Linux Gazette.
Hi Greg,
First of all, thanks for the feedback. It's always good to know someone
is reading the articles!
A fun and informative chat back and forth ensues... see this month's
Answer Gang column for the juicy bits.
-- Heather
Would you have any objections if I forwarded your e-mail and my
response onto TAG (The Answer Gang)? Heather and the other editors use
material from TAG to put together the one-cent tips, mailbag, etc.
It's perfectly fine to say no.
Thanks again for the feedback,
no objections.
thanks again for the dialog.
We're very pleased you said yes, Greg. Thanks bunches!
-- Heather
This page edited and maintained by the Editors of Linux Gazette HTML script maintained by Heather Stern of Starshine Technical Services, http://www.starshine.org/
Then in Yast2 select "Install and Remove Software". The package selections
will now have been updated to include all the packages in the updated kde.
The packages for which a newer version than the one you have installed will
appear in either red or blue (I can't remember which).
Select the packages you want to upgrade (no 'upgrade everything' button
available I'm afraid). Let Yast2 sort out package dependencies for you and
off you go.
Yast2 will then download, install and configure all the packages for you.
Bit like the extremely good apt that is available on Debian. apt4rpm is also
available for SuSE if you'd rather have that flexibility.
If the download site is too slow an alternative one can be selected. Go to
suse's site and find the list of ftp servers and choose an alternative.
All the best,
Jethro Cramp
Thanks! That's a piece of info I've been missing. I've been told that
you can do it directly inside Yast, but couldn't figure out how. I'm
going to forward your tip to the Answer Gang, so everybody can benefit.
Gentoo must have other users who commented on the "packages.debian.org"
web page, because Gentoo adopted the same thing a couple of months ago.
http://packages.gentoo.org is a similar page where you can find lots of
info including searching by category or name.
[Frodo]
but I am the first to admit, it is not nearly as powerful as the Debian site.
[Robert Krig]
There is a link to this on the main page. Although it is easily
overlooked.
If you want to know what version of a package you have installed, just
open a terminal, and type
emerge -pv packagename
The -p tells portage to pretend to emerge and the -v tells it to be
verbose about it. In effect this will show you the package version it
would like to install, and next to it in brackets it will show which
version of the package you currently have installed. It should also show
you any dependencies that need to be upgraded in case there is a newer
version. And of course the -v option will show you possible use flags.
Thanks to everybody who wrote in with this one
-- Heather
This will search for anything with "packagename" in its packagename,
i.e. emerge -s mozilla
would list mozilla, mozilla-bin, mozilla-thunderbird, mozilla-firefox,
etc. You get the picture.
emerge -S packagename
will search the descriptions for the word specified, however this tends
to take quite a while.
Gentoo's package query tools (equery and qpkg) aren't complete.
They'll list the files a package contains but several other
features are marked "not implemented". There didn't seem to be
a way to quickly see which version of a package is installed:
something equivalent to "rpm PACKAGE" or "dpkg -l PACKAGE".
"emerge search PACKAGE" does it, but it takes several seconds,
and you have to page through other information and entries for
any other packages the substring matches.
You might want to emerge app-portage/esearch - it provides about the
same functionality as emerge search, but uses a search-index, which
makes it a lot faster. (Of course, the index has to be built, which
takes time, but can be done with a cronjob.)
If you are used to rpm - you can use the tool epm which emulates rpm's
features. To list all packages installed (incl. versionnr.) do epm -qa. to
list info of one package - do epm -qi packagename etc. etc. It even does
the epm -V (verify md5sum etc. from install-time is still the same - ie. a
"small intrusion detection" tool).
As far nvidia gfx cards are concerned, seems for some it works without a
hitch, for others there seem to be problems. Although it seems to me
that proportionally many more users have no trouble with nvidia cards
than the ones that do.
Just a few pointers about nvidia cards under gentoo:
Whenever you recompile your kernel, you need to re-emerge
nvidia-kernel AND nvidia-glx
you should then also always run
opengl-update nvidia
Also in the /etc/X11/xorg.conf file, in the "Device" section, the driver
is called "nvidia" and not "nv".
Xorg's nvidia driver is used if you define it as "nv", nvidia's binary
driver is used if you define it as "nvidia".
Also, if you are using a 2.6 kernel, make sure that you dont have "4k
stacks" option active. I think its somewhere in the basic kernel config.
The default should be 8k stacks, and the nvidia drivers dont work well
if at all with 4k stacks. This info should be displayed at the end of
emerge nvidia-kernel.
On a little side note, ever since I've switched from xfree86 to xorg and
from kernel 2.4 to 2.6.8, my framerate in Quake3 Urban Terror has
increased by 20+-30+fps.
Dont know if your a gamer, but I thought that was pretty cool.
As far as samba problems are concerned, have you tried using
LinNeighborhood? Using that program, I have no problems mounting windows
shares.
emerge LinNeighborhood
You mentioned that when you mount a samba share, then you are denied
access. Have you tried accessing them as root? Still, in case you havent
yet, try LinNeighborhood.
I have read somewhere that Window's samba implementation can be screwey
depending on which version of windows it is. Some like scrambled
passwords, some dont. I'm sure you can find more info on the net.
Windows 95 didn't even have the ability to encrypt its passwords, later 98 insisted on it (and wouldn't work without, unless you applied a patch to it). With other mswin versions your mileage may vary. "lanman compatibility" seemed to mean "mention the password twice on the wire, the really old way and whatever new way du jour" - so I recommend any mswin admins out there try to avoid that, you lose enough bandwidth as it is, and it doesn't really help samba any.
-- Heather
A note on genkernel. It can be very screwey depending on your setup.
genkernel --menuconfig all
this command will allow you to make modifcations to the default
genkernel setup. Although I would still recommend to everyone to
compile your own kernel.
Building your own optimal kernel is not only a good way to learn more about linux but boot time usually feels a lot faster with generic support for things you don't even own left out entirely - since it never gets probed for anymore. Surely both knowledge and speed are a Good Thing for gentoo fans
-- Heather
By the way.
It is not recommended to blindly issue the "update all" portage command.
Sometimes new stuff, can break some old stuff, and there have been
plenty of cases where people simply did a emerge -u -deep world
and found their system not working anymore.
I find that the best way to update your system is to do a
emerge -upv -deep world.
This will show me which packages COULD be updated and then I just
manually upgrade from there. Very handy if for example a newer version
of an app has been ported from gtk to gtk2 or to qt or whatever, and you
dont want to compile all this extra stuff.
Secondly, often enough when you update any packages, portage will tell
you that you need to run etc-update in order to update the config files.
Be VERY careful here as well. Since 90% of the time the only change to
config file is to label it as "version x.x.x".
However the process if not done carefully, will overwrite to specific
config file with defaults.
etc-update offers you options to manually select inside the file, what
can be removed and what not, but its quite confusing to read. I would
suggest, when it comes to etc-update, certain config files can be
overwritten no problem, e.g. all the ones that you havent changed in any
way. But always keep a current backup of all the configs that you
edited. e.g. make.conf, smb.conf, rc.conf, lilo.conf, etc.
I usually make copies, let etc-update overwrite them, and then manually
copy+paste relevant stuff back into the new file.
I'm sure there is a much better way to do this, and I recall that I read
something about that in the forums.
Either way, just letting you know to take care when etc-updating.
But then again, I think its always wise not to blindly update everything
as soon as it comes out. Unless its a much needed security fix.
Mike, in your article.
You mentioned that the day before your install, KDE3.3 came out and it
was still in the "masked" section.
Just to clear things up. Masked, does not automatically mean unstable,
it also means "testing". More often than not apps in "masked" simply
havent been tested enough. Doesnt have to mean that this package will
definately fail to build or even crash once you use it.
However sometimes you need to use an obscure app which hasn't been
included in portage until recently, and the only version available is
masked. Although sometimes it can happen that a dependancy required by
the app is still masked.
Usually I would say, stick to the main portage tree as much as you can.
Recompiling small apps, once theyre moved from "masked" to "stable"
shouldn't be too big of a deal.
Using distcc is actually quite easy - one just has to ensure that if
you use f.ex. hardened (stack smashing protection and friends) your gcc on
all distcc machines (can even be a windows machine some of them) has to
have the same abilities. You can even use distcc to do all the compiling
on another machine, if you are installing on an older machine, it
sometimes makes most sense to let someone else do the hard work
The /etc/portage/package.mask package.unmask package.use and
package.keywords files you really should know about - they are great tools
to make portage do exactly what you want. Say you thrust that newest
releases of kde is stable enough for you to use (you can have several
versions installed - so you can just select the on you want to use
globally in /etc/rc.conf) you just add the kde packages to the
package.keywords files. A search in the forums, will show you exactly what
format to use
Later, after you've installed X, you simply "emerge links"
again, and it will rebuild itself with the X support.
I realize you are using an example where you only temporarily set $USE,
but it might be worth noting that one can also set specific options for
separate packages, in a more permanent way, using
/etc/portage/package.use.
Some other interesting files in that directory are package.mask,
package.unmask and package.keywords. The last one is, btw, the preferred
way to add experimental packages, while running stable mostly.
The best way to implement a package differently than the package
maintainer intended is to create a local overlay of the portage tree.
This should be is the docs, but here's my quick notes:
Uncomment the "PORTAGE_OVERLAY" option in /etc/make.conf
mkdir -p /usr/local/portage/dev-php/php/files
Copy /usr/portage/dev-php/php/php/php-<version>.ebuild to /usr/local/portage/dev-php/php - I suggest changing the build version or release number to identify your version
Tweak the ebuild file
Run 'ebuild /usr/local/portage/dev-php/php/php-<version>.ebuild digest'
Now, if you use "emerge -pv php" you should see your build and a
notation that the ebuild is coming from the /usr/local/portage overlay
location. The biggest problem with all this is that now you are a
package maintainer but it's on your local system. Keeping your changes
in sync with new ebuilds from Portage can be a hassle. It's a good idea
to request a new USE flag for your desired ./configure arguments in
http://bugs.gentoo.org and let the official package maintainer worry
about it going forward.
Using distcc is actually quite easy - one just has to ensure that if
you use f.ex. hardened (stack smashing protection and friends) your gcc on
all distcc machines (can even be a windows machine some of them) has to
have the same abilities. You can even use distcc to do all the compiling
on another machine, if you are installing on an older machine, it
sometimes makes most sense to let someone else do the hard work
Another Gentoo tidbit - revised boot ISO available
I'd seen people with problems a couple of times recently, but had no answer
to the problem of non-booting but "good" (as in MD5SUM) images. It appears
that the Gentoo folks came up with a possible solution, and did a respin of
the 2004-2 minimal install ISO that was "rebuilt to solve the problem of
certain buggy BIOS versions not booting the Minimal LiveCD."
If people write in with similar problems installing from the small Gentoo
ISO images, we could do worse than point them in the direction of the
revised image. Here's a link to such on one of the mirrors:
This is a ugly hack that I am using to search the google from command
line. Any decent Python programmer would be able to make it much better.
You need to have Pygoogle (http://pygoogle.sourceforge.net) module
installed. In its unaltered form, the script will require Python2.3 to
run. However, if you remove the #--ugly hack part (see the comments in
the code), it will run with Python2.2 too.
#!/usr/bin/python2.3
import google,sys,codecs
from sgmllib import SGMLParser
# HTML Stripper class to strip out html from the google search
# returned. shamelessly copy pasted from
# http://mail.python.org/pipermail/tutor/2002-September/017573.html
class HTMLStripper(SGMLParser):
def __init__(self):
SGMLParser.__init__(self)
self._text = []
def handle_data(self, data):
self._text.append(data)
def read_text(self):
return ".join(self._text)"
def strip_html(text):
stripper = HTMLStripper()
stripper.feed(text)
return stripper.read_text()
print "Searching the World Live Web "
google.setLicense('your google key') # must get your own key from
http://www.google.com/apis/ -> free but requires registration
n_show_results = 10 #change the number of search results that are shown
from here
codecs.register_error('xml', codecs.xmlcharrefreplace_errors)
search_str = ""
for i in range(1,len(sys.argv)):
search_str = search_str + " " + sys.argv[i]
print "Searching for " ,search_str
data = google.doGoogleSearch(search_str,0,n_show_results)
print 'Search took %f time and I found a total of %d results\n' % \
(data.meta.searchTime, data.meta.estimatedTotalResultsCount)
for result in data.results:
# if you are going to call this script from within emacs, replace
# this part with the code within the #begin hack -- #end hack code
print 'Title\t:', strip_html(result.title)
print 'URL\t:', result.URL
print
#-- begin hack
# if you want to call this script from within emacs, then you have
#to put in this ugly hack. Other wise emacs will stop with an
#error message "UnicodeEncodeError: 'ascii' codec can't encode
#character u'\xfc' in position 1: ordinal not in range(128)"
# see http://www.informit.com/articles/article.asp?p=31272&seqNum=5
# to know why this ugly hack is needed
## temp = result.title
## in_tuple=codecs.getencoder('ASCII')(temp, 'xml')
## in_str = str(in_tuple)
## print 'Title\t:', strip_html(in_str)
## print 'URL\t:', result.URL
## print
#-- end hack
print "\n "
Raj Shekhar
System Administrator, programmer and slacker
I read your article on upgrading to kde 3.3 today. The reason I'm mailing you is because I'm one of the developers for Superkaramba. I noticed your article mentioned that the Superkaramba widgets are "always on top". This has been resolved in the latest release, 0.34, and in CVS, with our pending release of 0.35. You would need to recompile for KDE 3.3, as the code needed for the two versions are different and detect your version upon compilation.
This page edited and maintained by the Editors of Linux Gazette HTML script maintained by Heather Stern of Starshine Technical Services, http://www.starshine.org/
The Answer Gang
Linux Gazette 107: The Answer Gang (TWDT)The Answer Gang 107:
...making Linux just a little more fun!
The Answer Gang By Jim Dennis, Karl-Heinz Herrmann, Breen, Chris, and...
(meet the Gang) ...
the Editors of Linux Gazette...
and
You!
We have guidelines for asking and answering questions. Linux questions only, please.
We make no guarantees about answers, but you can be anonymous on request. See also: The Answer Gang's
Knowledge Base
and the LGSearch Engine
Greetings, everyone, and welcome once again to the world of The Answer
Gang.
I had plans for this month on a wonderful blurb about the nature of advocacy
in the linux world.... by which I really mean, not just how you get one person
here or there introduced to the time of their life and being in more control of
their personal computer than they ever had before with The Beast From Redmond,
but how you generally behave so as not to make the average person who is willing
to chat computers because "hey you look like a techie, I was wondering...?"
think "gawd, I don't want to be like or deal with these kind of people, Linux
must make them crazy."
Yet I find it's just as important to consider how to behave inside your local
user group. New people drop into these places. Do they see a batch of people
having a great time yakking about xine versus mplayer and whether nvidia frame
rates make you dizzy now that you've installed the driver? Or do they see
people playing "my distro's better than yours" games that rival the recent
political "debates" and make everyone look like control freaks? They look
at whatever they find, and sure, they're going to ask their questions about
the lil' penguin and his OS, but they are also thinking to themselves, is this
going to be fun for me?
This is October, and in past years there's been tons of fuss on "Halloween"
documents. Leaks and spooky measures to rival the cigar filled rooms
cough cough of an earlier era. What sort of light
does this put on us? I'd rather see Tux as the defender of freedom than the
whisperer among spooks. But people are spooked by all sorts of things these
days.
Be good to each other, people. Have a good month.
I love Linux
From Jason Creighton
Answered By: Thomas Adam, Ben Okopnik
I wanted a photo off my parent's digital camera. They have Windows ME. I
don't know if ME's USB support is seriously flaky or what, but only one
USB device has even worked consistently with that computer (a scanner).
Windows was hanging on me, not working, making me mad and in general
doing the things it's good at.
Enter Linux. I install libusb, libgphoto2, and gphoto2. I compile the
usbcore module[1], and then try to use gphoto2. It can't see the camera.
I fiddle with things awhile, and it "doesn't work".
Had I read Crux's (my distro) README for libusb more carefully, I would
have seen I need usbfs. Enable that option, recompile the kernel
modules, install 'em, modprobe, and IT WORKS! I can download photos, and
it just works. No need to use some stupid kludged-up vender-enforced
GUI.
[Ben]
Wow, nice. Took me several net searches and a good bit of luck - I ran
across exactly one discussion of this, but it was exactly what I
needed, including the fine details. This was, in fact, the first time I
ever got a USB-to-camera connection to work with Linux (not that I'd
tried a whole lot of times previously, but it was once or twice at least
over a couple of years.) I'd never seen any standard documentation for
it, and kudos to the Crux folks for writing it.
I love Linux.
[1] I have an uptime of 35 days, which is the longest I've managed to
get between me wanting to try new kernels, the efforts of the power
company and well-meaning family members.
So I really didn't want to compile a new kernel and have to reboot. So I
just added the usb kernel module to my kernel config, did a "make
modules && make modules_install"[2] and modprobe'd the modules into the
running kernel, which is the same version and was built from the same
source-tree[3]. Is that a good idea? I mean, everything appears to
work fine, but will enabling a module ever require you to rebuild the
kernel itself?
[Thomas]
No, not unless the module relies on an option that you need to statically
compile into the kernel and have not already done so -- an isolated case, so
you should be fine.
As to whether it is a good idea, module loading works by looking at the
module's symbol information, which matches the version of your current running
kernel. If the version of the module is the same as `uname -r`, then it will
load quite happily, whether it was compiled at the same time as the kernel or
ten months afterwards.
But what also happens is that the compiler versions that were used to compile
the kernel, and the new modules have to match exactly. If they don't, then
loading the module(s) simply will not work.
[Ben]
Since you specified "ever", the answer is "yes". But far from always.
If, for example, you were to enable the entire Ethernet category (which
had been disabled in the last compile), build some driver modules, and
attempt to laod them, I can just about guarantee failure; the running
kernel would be missing the "hooks" for the whole Ethernet category.
However, if the category had been enabled previously and you just added
a specific card driver to the ones that you'd compiled previously,
chances are high that you wouldn't need to reboot. Either way, there's
no harm in trying; in the worst case, you'll get a whole bunch of
"Undefined symbol" messages when you try to load the module.
[2] It occurs to me as I write this that I could have typed
"make modules modules_install" but oh well.
[Ben]
Yup. Note that with 2.5 and above, there's no need to do "modules"; it's
part of "make". My preference, if I was going to do the above, is to go
ahead and run "make", then "make modules_install install"; that way, if
the module does fail to load, all I do is "sudo reboot".
[3] Correct term? I mean, I extracted the linux-2.4.20 tarball to
/usr/src, and I built these modules from that as well as the kernel I'm
running now.
[Thomas]
Correct term. You should also run 'depmod -a' after the modules_install part
so that the kernel knows of their existence properly.
Reading/writing large buffers to Fibre Channel
From Jimen Ching
Answered By: Jimmy O'Regan
Hi TAG,
I have a problem of reading and writing very large (4MB) buffers to a disk
via Fibre Channel. Fibre Channel works best when you send large amounts
of data over the wire (light).
I've done google searches and found approaches like O_DIRECT and mmap.
Mmap doesn't sound like what I'm looking for, because it still uses the
buffer cache. And with 4MB of data, I don't want the extra copy. Also, I
won't be reading the data back from the disk. So the buffer cache doesn't
buy me anything...
The O_DIRECT approach sounds better. But it requires aligned buffers, and
some people say the throughput is worst than non-O_DIRECT. My target
throughput is 95MB/s. This shouldn't be a problem for the hardware since
I'm using the CompactPCI bus and SCSI RAID over Fibre Channel with
theoretical throughput of 150MB/s. The aligned buffers issue is only a
problem because of the file header that I must prefix to the 4MB raw data.
It would be preferable if I didn't have to align my buffers. But I can
work around it if it is absolutely necessary.
I've done some basic benchmarks using regular fopen/fread/fwrite, and I'm
only getting 50MB/s with ext3fs. This is half the throughput I need and
1/3th the theoretical throughput of the hardware. So I was wondering if
your team has come across any ideas on how to solve this problem. Note,
I'm not setting any special options. So this benchmark is just the
baseline. I'm looking for ways to optimize the reading and writing of
this 4MB data buffer.
[Jimmy]
If you have enough RAM, try using a ramdisk - create a filesystem as
usual, but on one of the ramdisk devices - /dev/ram* or /dev/rd/*
The ramdisk will be 4M by default, but if you have it compiled as a
module you can specify the size as an option to insmod:
insmod rd rd_size=20000
(which sets it as 20M) or as an option in /etc/conf.modules
options rd rd_size=20000
[Thomas] Note that it used to be the case that /etc/conf.modules was synmlinked to
/etc/modules.conf . On many systems this is not usually the case anymore, and
so /etc/modules.conf is generally the prefered location.
[Jimmy]
If your ramdisk support is compiled into the kernel, you'll need to set
the size at boot. You can append the option (in LILO, or as a boot
option) like this:
ramdisk_size=20000
I'm not sure I understand the answer. Or maybe I didn't explain my
question clearly.
[Jimmy]
No, I the misunderstanding was on my part. I was simply answering this:
"I'm looking for ways to optimize the reading and writing of
this 4MB data buffer."
I want to write raw data to a disk via Fibre Channel. Each block of raw
data is 4MB large. I need to write 95MB/s of data for about half an hour
or so. 95MB/s, at 60 sec per minute, and 30 minutes equals 171Gig.
I guess I could put one second worth of raw data into ramdisk, and do a
copy to the Fibre Channel SCSI RAID. Then write the next second of raw
data to another ramdisk and switch back-and-forth. But I'm not sure if a
cp is any faster than a fwrite. Is this what you're suggesting?
[Jimmy]
No, I was placing more importance on the step where you add a file
header to the data in the buffer.
Going by this: http://linuxgazette.net/102/piszcz.html you'd be much
better off accessing the disk as ext2 instead of ext3 - the journal is
probably what's slowing you down.
cannot talk using "talk"
From Sanjib Roy
Answered By: Thomas Adam
how can i set up talk facility in my lan ( 1 server 9 clients with dns)
when i want to talk to my server talk display folloing mesg
remote host does not recognize us
[Thomas]
Well... can you possibly start over and explain things in more detail? Only
what you have provided is very little to go on, not to metion I am having to
now make guesses as to what you're using...
The "talk" command is/was used initially by BSD to allow users on a LAN to
talk to one another. But what you also need is talkd -- which is the remote
user authentication tool. "Talkd" has to be spawned from inetd if it is to
work, this something like the following [1]:
(note that of you are using RH/Fedora, the chances are you're using xinetd).
Then all you do is connect, using 'talk' (man pages help here).
One thing you should also know is that 'talk' is rather limited, and as such
lots of alternatives exist. I'll name drop, although most are an enhancement
on BSD-talk:
utalk
ytalk
etalk (emacs)
gtalk (GTK front-end)
but when i want to talk from one client to another client no connect is
made
[Thomas]
You need to be much more precise here. What errors are you getting? You don't
even say which distribution you're using. Before you reply to this, as I hope
you will, read the following:
[Thomas]
Sorry, but when you start demanding, my patience decreases. Don't do it. We
owe you nothing. I'm sure you mean well, but it doesn't come across as very
good when you think that you should be placed above all others for help. I
treat everyone with the same level of help, regardless of their 'issue'.
[1] This is from memory and so is possibly inaccurate. Either way, the entries
may well already be installed into the file: /etc/inetd.conf - and if no such
entries exist, those lines should be added to this file.
Tripwire
From Greg Bell
Answered By Barry
[Heather] An honorary answerbubble for Greg Bell. Good stuff here, and thanks to
article auther Barry O'Donovan for forwarding the thread to us.
One thing that
I've been suspicious of with tripwire is: if the hacker is "in",
aren't there all sorts of things he can do to neuter tripwire?
To save an argument I could simple say yes... but I won't! First of
all, running tripwire (or another intrusion detection system (IDS)) is
immeasurably better than running no IDS at all.
thanks for the dialog. no arguments here, although my counter-points
to your points may appear argumentative
a lot of things that seem burdensome for a hacker to do can be
wrapped up nicely in a script and bam - 1000s of intruders now have
the capability.
These scripts usually take advantage of an existing exploit to place a
root kit, backdoor, etc. If your tripwire set-up is unique (i.e. place
the tripwire binary somewhere besides the defualt, use a different
configuration file name and directory, place the db on a floppy, remote
site, etc) then the script won't affect tripwire or if it does it'll be
immediately noticed. Most of these scipt-kiddies go for the "easy hack"
- the poor fools who take no preventative measures. There's so many of
these guys that the script-kiddies are unlikely to invest the time in
created a "be-all and end-all" script to do everything including
disable tripwire in a way that it's not noticed.
He can
remove the cron/anacron job, and send you fake mail every day saying
everything checked "OK".
That's a lot more difficult than it sounds. First of all, he'd need to
know what the usual "all is okay e-mail" looks like for YOUR system.
When you're running tripwire and checking the e-mails you'll get used
to seeing and recognising a lot of numbers such as the total objects
scanned, etc. If you're sending these daily e-mails to another server
then he won't have access to an existing report and he won't be able to
view the saved report files in /var/lib/tripwire without your passphrase.
i am admittedly paranoid about this sort of thing, thanks to reading
about how clever these guys can be, and how it seems to be a
never-ending escalation and arms race (leading towards EVERYTHING
being encrypted, and EVERYTHING being authenticated with biometrics).
a lot of things that seem burdensome for a hacker to do can be wrapped
up nicely in a script and bam - 1000s of intruders now have the
capability.
Secondly whether you're running tripwire on a server or a desktop
machine, you're liable to have to update at least one package at least
once a week. When you do this you'll expect a problem from tripwire and
if he's sending fake e-mails you'll start to question whther tripwire
is working or not.
some things i think would be appropriate for tripwire to watch would be
/etc/passwd and /etc/crontab - two things that can change often, but
that are also prime candidates for a hacker to change.
Most distributions default tripwire config will check these - especially
passwd. If it doesn't, then ammend the policy file so that it does.
so it seems to
me than whenever one of these needs to be changed, you've got to run
tripwire on the file to make sure its unchanged, unplug your net
connection, change it, update tripwire, reconnect to the net. sounds
bizarre but its not improbably that in the hours between your update
and tripwire's next run, a break-in occurs, changing the same file.
Again, it's all a matter of just how paranoid you are or how far you're
willing to go.
he can replace the tripwire binary itself.
Tripwire checks itself too! The stats for the tripwire binary will
reside in the database which an intruder cannot change unless he has
your local passphrase. I suppose an intruder could replace the binary
with one that's programmed to not check itself but if you're really
this paranoid you can put the binary on a remote HTTP server and have
your cronjob download it with wget before checking.
the "in" hacker would just disable the wget and have the local one be
used.
He'd also have to asscertain that you use wget to download a fresh
binary and simulate the output from your wget cronjob so you wouldn't
miss it.
Some servers will mount /usr as read-only to increase access speeds and
security. This would help out here too.
if he's got root, he can just remount r/w.
he can update the database
He can't. He'll have to have your local passphrase to do this.
which an "in" hacker can get with a keycatcher.
But he'd probably have been spotted by a run of tripwire before hand as
you'd need a reason to input your tripwire passphrase.
(especially if its on a CD-RW like you suggest).
I never said leave the CD-RW in a CD-RW drive. I said "a
re-writable CD in a CD-ROM drive (read-only drive)." i.e. only place
the CD in the CD-RW drive when updating, then put it back in the CD-ROM
drive.
got it. smart.
The bottom line is that tripwire will probably catch an intruder 99 out
of a 100 times. If not more. You'll NEVER be 100% secure. That's just a
simple fact of life. But you can strive to be as secure as possible and
using tripwire will be a huge help here.
absolutely.
seems to me we might be moving towards a world where an off-site system
does the security check for a particular machine - sort of a checks and
balances setup. it would host the tripwire binaries, database,
signatures, etc. and while its there, it should receive the mails from
tripwire, as well as host the syslog remotely. even so, rootkit
hunters would still have to be run on the secure machine, and some
amount of manual checking would have to be done to make sure any
number of checks hadn't been faked or disabled.
Submitters, send your News Bytes items in
PLAIN TEXT
format. Other formats may be rejected without reading. You have been
warned! A one- or two-paragraph summary plus URL gets you a better
announcement than an entire press release. Submit items to
bytes@lists.linuxgazette.net
Legislation and More Legislation
Patents
Patents are a recurring theme here, and there is a lot of good commentary on the net related to this topic.
A recent development that has stirred some further debate is the release of a report by
Open Source Risk Management outlining their reading of the patent
issues surrounding Free and Open Source Software. OSRM has a business model built around selling legal support and
indemnification to clients in the Open Source community.
Some criticism of the report has focused on the
potential it has to create feelings of uncertainty among businesses operating in this arena. While this is a valid concern,
it is not a reason to avoid discussion of these matters. Indeed, as pointed out in Linux Weekly News,
these matters of patents and possible infringements
affect proprietary software developers just as much as open source software developers.
A useful
article at O'Reilly's linux devcenter gives a good overview of some of the issues raised by the report,
and also includes responses from OSRM's Dan Ravicher to some of the criticisms and queries prompted by his work.
One way or another, discussion and debate around this issue is a good thing.
Voting
LinuxWorld.com.au has
reported on the fortunes of Free software in the implementation of Australian e-voting.
Encouragingly, the initial system implemented was released under the GPL, however Software Improvements, the company
behind the software, has decided to release future versions under a more restrictive licence that will only
allow officials to view the code. This is particularly disheartening since the Australian Capital Territory Electoral commission
had ordered that the software be open source. To see the deal reneged on (in spirit if not in the legal sense)
is a setback for open source software, and for
e-voting in general.
Two Degrees of Freedom,
George and Freeman Dyson at OSCON 2004. Discussion includes
biotechnology, physics, the fate of the universe, and the value of
physical tinkering.
Custom Email Queries
for handling the diverse data and file-types that turn up in your
inbox.
The OpenCD project has
announced the availability of TheOpenCD v1.4.1,
a special edition for Software Freedom Day 2004 (August
28th).
TheOpenCD is a collection of Free and Open Source software for Windows,
and it is a good way to introduce Windows users to the world of Free
software. As well as TheOpenCD, the Software Freedom Pack to be
distributed on SFD will include a remastered Knoppix live CD aimed at a
non-Linux using audience.
Distro News
Kanotix
Kanotix is a live GNU/Linux CD based
on Knoppix and Debian, and using mostly pure Debian/sid. Since it's a
live CD, it is easy to try out without risk. Linux.com has recently
reviewed the distribution.
SuSE
SuSE has
announced the launch
of SuSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) 9, based on the new Linux 2.6
kernel.
Support for free and open mediatypes, e.g. Ogg Vorbis/Theora, H261
Mozilla browser plug-in
RTSP streaming
Real Player 10 for Linux adds the following features:
RealAudio 10 / RealVideo 10
MP3, Flash playback
More robust RTSP via RDT
LTSP
The Linux Terminal Server Project has announced the release of
LTSP 4.1.
It includes the following:
New installer 'ltspadmin'. This new installer makes it much easier for us to update packages, and for you to install them. The installer will know which version of the packages you have installed, and it will query the package repository to see if there are updates available.
Change from XFree86 to Xorg. LTSP is now using the Xservers and libraries from the Xorg project, rather than the XFree86 project.
Local CD-Rom and Floppy support. Using Supermount and Samba on the client, and the auto-mounter on the server, we can now make the CD-Rom and floppy drives available to the users.
Sound support with esd and nasd. The client-side sound daemons are now included for esound and nasd.
snmpd agent. We now have an snmpd agent on the client. You just need to enable it in lts.conf, with the following entries:
New kernel, based on 2.4.26. Also, the kernel is now installed via the ltspadmin utility, as part of the ltsp installation procedure.
Originally hailing from Ireland, Michael is currently living in Baden,
Switzerland. There he works with ABB Corporate Research as a
Marie-Curie fellow, developing software for the simulation and design
of electrical power-systems equipment.
Before this, Michael worked as a lecturer in the Department of
Mechanical Engineering, University College Dublin; the same
institution that awarded him his PhD. The topic of this PhD research
was the use of Lamb waves in nondestructive testing. GNU/Linux has
been very useful in his past work, and Michael has a strong interest
in applying free software solutions to other problems in engineering.
Knoppix with 2.6.7 kernel from non-bootable CD-ROM
You want to start Knoppix and your CD-ROM cannot boot either for
technical or administrative reasons. You can try to start the
Knoppix CD from a floppy drive. For that you need a Knoppix boot
diskette.
The recent Knoppix 3.4 of May 2004 relies on kernel 2.4.x but has
kernel 2.6.6 as an option. Likewise, Knoppix 3.7 of August 20 has the
2.6.7 kernel as an option. This last release is - for the time being -
only available in Germany as a CD from a computer magazine. However,
a general release, possibly with kernel 2.6.8, is coming and so it is
sensible to refer to the new kernel because its size is growing and
growing and causing diskette distress.
We will refer to the new Knoppix kernel as knoppix26 using the same
name as in the CD boot configuration. Unfortunately, knoppix26 does
not boot from one diskette, it needs two.
When running, knoppix26 has a script in
/KNOPPPIX/usr/sbin/mkbootfloppy
that does make these two floppies - despite the singular
name. However, the diskettes so generated depend on the kernel in
use. If you want them in order to be able to boot 2.6.x, you have
to write them while running 2.6.x - which is a bit of a catch-22.
Modifying the script is catch-22 again since the script is not
directly accessible on the Knoppix distribution CD and becomes only
readable when Knoppix is running. It can be found on the web in
editable form but making sensible use of it will be more laborious
than the advice found in this article, especially in respect to
kernel 2.6.7 which does not fit on a 1.4M diskette at all.
So if your CD-ROM will not boot, how are you going to boot
knoppix26 from the floppy drive?
Pre-requisite
You must have some familiarity with syslinux. Fortunately, it
can be acquired on the fly, check http://syslinux.zytor.com.
Both of them can create a boot diskette that starts a (bootable)
CD even if the CD-ROM is unable to boot. In the particular case of
the Knoppix CD, the good news is that they both will boot it from a
non-bootable CD-ROM.
This is your friend if you want to minimize preliminary work.
Unfortunately, if you are not installing Knoppix to hard disk, you
may end up doing quite a lot of typing at the command line every
time you boot.
[Please do not misunderstand the remark above as a criticism of
the two boot loaders. They come in very handy in other situations
as well.]
Option 2
The biggest hurdle is the kernel size starting with release
2.6.7. In the 2.6.6 release, the Knoppix kernel would fit on a 1.4M
diskette. Now you need to format the diskette to 1.68M - the same
size Microsoft uses occasionally for its diskettes. For that purpose,
you can use winimage under Windows, fdformat under
DOS or superformat/fdformat under Linux. Good luck
to you because diskettes sold for the 1.4M capacity do not necessarily
agree to a flawless format at higher capacity. My experience is that you
need a box of ten to get one such tolerant diskette. If you want strict
verification, use winimage and you will see the massacre.
When you have formatted the diskette, make it a syslinux boot
diskette. This can be done from DOS, Windows, Linux - it's up to
you. No further help is offered here for it. This boot diskette
will contain only one small file, ldlinux.sys.
In the Knoppix CD 3.7, there is a directory /boot/isolinux
where you will find the following files among others:
This is now a boot diskette for the 2.6.x kernel, the initial
ramdisk being read from a second diskette. Type knoppix26 at the
boot prompt. It will quickly ask you to insert the second diskette
so you must have it ready.
The second diskette must be a raw copy of minirt26.gz. Which
is to say, you cannot format it with a file system and put
minirt26.gz into the file system. When syslinux reads the
diskette it expects the binary content of minirt26.gz and
nothing else. It won't assume a file system and look for a file in it.
The question is: how do you copy the file raw to the floppy?
Here is the command (run under Linux from the Knoppix CD,
/boot/isolinux directory):
dd if=minirt26.gz of=/dev/fd0 bs=18k
The bs value is not essential, it just determines the size of
portions read and written. (A high-density 3.5" diskette has a
track of 18k.) The floppy may or may not be mounted. If not
mounted, it does not even need to be formatted since the formatting
will be destroyed anyway.
By the way, the raw copy can also be done under DOS/Windows with
a utility that can write to a physical sector disregarding the file
system. One such utility is the Norton Disk Editor.
After inserting the second boot diskette, knoppix26 will
boot.
The shape of things to come
Evidently, option 2 cannot be recommended to anybody, too much of a
hassle. The chain boot loaders listed above are the way to go. Note
that Microsoft has just turned to a chain boot for their XP CDs' to
handle non-bootable CDROMs.
Still, we have here some developments to watch. With the Linux
kernel too big for a normal 1.4M diskette, syslinux is going to be
relegated to rescue diskettes, it won't help any longer for the
current Linux releases.
And even lilo gets an encouraging kick to the exit. With kernel 2.4.x, a
lilo diskette could still quickly boot a Knoppix installed to a
non-bootable partition: you had Windows as normal straight boot from hard
disk, Knoppix also on hard disk but booted from diskette, no clashes. This
may still be doable for kernel 2.6.x if the hardware does not require any
special drivers at boot time and the initial ram disk can be dispensed
with. If you need an initial ram disk, expect its size to be in the region
of 4M: you will have to customize it so as to fit it on a diskette, in
which case you have again an approach like Option 2. If not possible then
the initial ram disk would have to be on the hard disk and lilo is simply
not able to find it.
Exit syslinux, exit lilo, everything points to grub. And maybe
they will throw in a CD boot from diskette as a bonus?
I ran across this piece of software while searching
for an Open Source alternative to the commercial "shopping cart" software
(which was mostly poorly written, and in a number of cases, badly broken.)
Chris's approach impressed me with its simplicity, utility, and ease of
installation - and fit my requirements perfectly.
One of the arguments that the opponents of Linux
use, over and over, is that "Linux doesn't support business". IBM, Novell,
Oracle, SAP, and countless other companies have been proving them wrong in
the corporate world; by soliciting articles from authors of software that
caters to the small and mid-sized business, such as Chris Fleizach's
closedShop, I hope to cut the feet from under
this part of their argument as well.
-- Ben
About three years ago I was faced with the challenge of putting
together an e-commerce site that would not require online credit
card processing. Although I searched briefly, I only found
expensive solutions. Thus I began work on closedShop, an open
source shopping cart. Over the past three years, there have been
over 13,000 downloads spread across 9 releases. Basically,
closedShop is a free shopping cart written in Perl, using the mySQL
database as a back-end, that allows anyone to set up shop with no
online credit card processing necessary. They can process the
credit cards manually, as most businesses already have a manual
credit card processor.
Before we go into a tutorial on how to set it up and start
accepting orders, it's good to know what closedShop offers:
Add/Edit/Remove Products
View/Process Orders
View Sales Reports
View Customers/Email Customers
eBay integration for adding products
PayPal integration
Wish lists for customers
Searching capabilities
Total customization through templates
SSL capable
Language support for English and Tongan (those are the only
languages I know)
Backup/Exporting features
Product Importing from flat-file or Excel worksheets
Gift Certificates
Sub-Categories
Thumbnail or Text view of categories
Inventory Tracking
State/National/Country Taxes
Shipment Tracking for major carriers
If that's what you need, then closedShop is a pretty good solution for
you. The first thing you need to do is download the latest version from
SourceForge.
After downloading, unzip the contents into your cgi-bin
directory. Make sure the all the files have 755 permissions
(closedShop doesn't work very well on Windows-based servers, only *nix
types). Most FTP programs allow you to change permissions (via the 'chmod'
command). You'll want to make all the files read-write-execute for
the owner, read-execute for the group, and read-execute for
everyone else. This set of permissions is also known as 755.
You also need to make sure that the web server is allowed to
write to the directory that closedShop is saved in. This is very
important since the program needs to save some data in flat-text
files. Most web hosting services allow this automatically. If your server
does not allow it, closedShop will tell you so and will not attempt
the installation. If you see this message you may need to contact
your hosting service and tell them you'd like to allow the web server to
write to the directory that closedShop is in (usually the cgi-bin
directory.)
[ Previously, Chris' article got sidelined due to the
security concerns with the instructions in the above paragraph during our
technical review; making "cgi-bin" world-writeable is not usually
adviseable. However, I eventually decided that it wasn't all that
insecure in the first place (someone would have to crack the webserver to
get access), and that a simple
modification of closedShop would get rid of the above requirement in
any case. Open Source in action, at your service. :) -- Ben ]
Assuming you have passed that main hurdle, you will now go to
your web browser and access the file called Install.pl. If
you put closedShop in your cgi-bin directory (and assuming your site is
located at "www.yoursite.com"), then to access
Install.pl, you'd type
http://www.yoursite.com/cgi-bin/Install.pl
A web page will come up and ask you to enter some important
information. Some of it will be about your company, some about taxes,
some about how you would like your tables to appear. For most of the
data you can leave the default. The most important information is
about the mySQL database. You must have access to a mySQL database
before installation. Most web hosting services allow this access, but
you may need to request it beforehand. Then they will send you a mySQL
username/password and database name. You put this information into
the mySQL database section.
The other important section is the admin password and merchant
password. The admin user will allow you to make all changes to the
program, while the merchant account shows fewer administrative
changes and is more for processing orders. It allows two people to
log on at the same time as well. Remember those passwords, you will
need them to log in.
After you fill out the rest of the data, click 'Install' and it will
take about 30 seconds to prepare everything. Afterwards, you'll see a
screen that says go to the Admin.pl script. There are four
scripts that do the different functions. Admin.pl handles
administrative tasks. Cart.pl is for the shopping cart
and checkout procedures. User.pl is for individual clients
to login and watch the order tracking as well as manage their wish
list. Item.pl displays items and categories and also allows
for searching.
Once you log into Admin.pl you will see the different
options. You may want to edit category information first for the
categories you entered in the Install. Note: if you want to add
more categories or change the name, then go to "Edit Program
Variables". Other information about categories can be viewed as
well in the "Edit Categories" section. After editing categories,
you should start adding products, either through the "Add Product"
option or through importing. When adding a product, you also have
the option of posting the item to eBay at the same time. The eBay
information will be below the main information and is not
required.
Finally, you need to integrate closedShop into your site. You'll
find important links under the "View Important Links" option. This
tells you the URLs for each category, Searching, User logon and the
Shopping Cart. If you have a standard design for your site you can allow
closedShop to use that design with the header and footer variables in
the "Edit Program Variables". The header is a file that contains the
top part of the HTML for your design. The footer is a file that will
contains the bottom part of the HTML for your design. closedShop will
insert itself into the middle. These files could be made and put in the
cgi-bin directory. Normally, you would name them header.html
and footer.html and put those respective values into your
program variables.
You should then take the links you want to use, like Searching,
and link them into your design. An example of this can be found at
Demo Site on the closedShop web site (http://closedshop.sourceforge.net)
Of course, you should also use SSL if possible. Customers will
be entering their credit cards over the site and you will be
viewing them. If you're not using SSL capabilities then there is a
greater possibility of having the data stolen. Most web hosting services
allow customers to use their SSL certificates and SSL processing.
It may be a different link than what you are used to seeing, though,
something that looks like it is from the hosting service. In this case,
you'll want to change the program variables and change the names of
the files to use the https:// and then type in the full
URL to the secure location. You'll also need to change the image
directory URL to the secure path, otherwise users may get messages
complaining about a mixture of secure and non-secure. You should
always access the Admin.pl script using the secure
connection, otherwise you leave yourself vulnerable to thieves.
The program has been designed to be as straight-forward as
possible. If you go to each script, you will see the default screen
appear initially. There is also more information in the
documentation that comes with each release. Of particular interest
might be the template features, which allow you to mix in Perl
programming with your template in order to totally customize the
look and feel of Item and categories.
If there are any questions, comments, concerns, or suggestions,
they can always be directed to .
Chris is a Peace Corps volunteer in the Kingdom of Tonga and has been
bringing them the world of Open Source for almost two years. He is also a
founding member of FightLiteracy.com,
the only organization in the world dedicated towards ending literacy.
Stunnel is an SSL encryption
wrapper that allows what are normally plain text and insecure
communications to be encrypted during transmission. Stunnel recently
went through some major changes and the current version (4.x) has a
completely different architecture than previous versions. In this
article I will be dealing exclusively with the new version.
One of Stunnel's most common uses is encrypting communications between POP or
IMAP mail servers and e-mail clients. Both of these protocols require users
to authenticate themselves with a username and a password. In the majority of
cases, these usernames and passwords are the same ones as they would use for
logging into the machine locally or remotely via SSH. Without using Stunnel
to encrypt this data, anyone intercepting the transmission could now log into
your server and gain elevated privileges much easier than a local exploit
would require.
2. Getting and Installing Stunnel
Stunnel is generally included as a precompiled package with most common
distributions and is possibly already installed on your system. If not,
locate the package on your distribution's installation CDs or download
it from the distribution's website.
The source code is released under the GNU General Public License and, as
such, is freely available for download and installation. The current
version (which at time of going to press was 4.05) can be downloaded
from ftp://stunnel.mirt.net/stunnel/.
To compile and install Stunnel, download the source code tarball from here and
then execute the following commands:
$ tar zxf stunnel-4.XX.tar.gz
$ cd stunnel-4.XX
$ ./configure
$ make
$ make install (as root)
3. Generating a Self-Signed Certificate
In order to use Stunnel we must first have a certificate-key pair. If you
compiled from sources then such a pair will have been created for you
automatically (stunnel.pem). Some pre-built binary packages may
include a certificate-key pair, some may generate one as part of the
installation procedure and others may leave it up to the user to generate one.
The easiest way of generating a certificate-key pair is by using a script
provided with Stunnel's source code. If you're compiling from the tarball,
just issue the following additional commands in the source directory:
$ cd tools
$ make stunnel.pem
I have decided to put the specific details outside the scope of this article,
but if you are interested in the actual details then have a look at the
Makefile in the "tools" directory.
4. Using Stunnel to Encrypt POP3/IMAP
This method can be used to encrypt any similar service where
SSL-enabled clients exist and are readily available. Most e-mail clients
are SSL-enabled for POP3, IMAP and SMTP, most internet clients (web
browsers) are enabled for HTTPS, etc.
Once Stunnel is installed and you have generated a certificate-key pair,
you are only a simple configuration file away from using Stunnel to encrypt
your communications. A simple one that would encrypt POP3 and IMAP
communications would be:
# Sample stunnel configuration file for POP3/IMAP
# Provide the full path to your certificate-key pair file
cert = /usr/local/etc/stunnel/stunnel.pem
# lock the process into a chroot jail
chroot = /usr/local/var/run/stunnel/
# and create the PID file in this jail
pid = /stunnel.pid
# change the UID and GID of the process for security reasons
setuid = nobody
setgid = nobody
# Configure our secured POP3 and IMAP services
[pop3s]
accept = 995
connect = 110
[imaps]
accept = 993
connect = 143
Using this configuration, any encrypted connection coming in on port 995
(POP3s) will be decrypted and forwarded to the local service (POP3) on port
110. When the local POP3 service responds, it will be encrypted by Stunnel
and transmitted back through port 995. Similarly for IMAPs on port 993.
Stunnel operates as a daemon service by default, so to start it off with this
configuration we can simply execute:
stunnel stunnel-secure-email.conf
where stunnel-secure-email.conf is the text file containing the
above configuration; ensure you change the paths so that they are correct
for your system.
We can set up Stunnel to start during boot-up by placing the appropriate
command in the rc.local file that is usually contained in
/etc/rc.d/. This file is the last file executed during a system
boot and it is generally used by system administrators for their own
initialisation stuff. When placing commands in this script, use fully
qualified paths such as:
/path/to/stunnel /path/to/the/configuration-file
[ For Debian and similar distros without an 'rc.local',
the procedure varies slightly: modify a copy of "/etc/init.d/skeleton"
(named, e.g., "/etc/init.d/stunnel") to run the above and create a link to
it from the appropriate runlevel (usually /etc/rc2.d/). -- Ben ]
Stunnel can also be used with (x)inetd if
preferred. You can find further details in Stunnel's man page.
5. Using Stunnel to Encrypt MySQL Transactions
This method can be used to encrypt any service where neither
the server nor the client are SSL-enabled. Common examples include CVS, MySQL,
etc.
In the example with POP3 and IMAP above, we were only concerned with
providing the server with SSL encryption as the clients generally have this
built in. However, neither the standard MySQL server nor client have SSL
capabilities - but we can still use Stunnel to provide this.
It involves using a Stunnel daemon on both the server's machine and the
client's machine. The configuration for the server side is similar to the one
we used above for POP3/IMAP. The default MySQL port is 3306, and since no
port is reserved for secure MySQL connections, I will use 3307:
# Sample stunnel configuration file for securing MySQL (server side)
# Provide the full path to your certificate-key pair file
cert = /usr/local/etc/stunnel/stunnel.pem
# lock the process into a chroot jail
chroot = /usr/local/var/run/stunnel/
# and create the PID file in this jail
pid = /stunnel.pid
# change the UID and GID of the process for security reasons
setuid = nobody
setgid = nobody
# Configure our secured MySQL server
[mysqls]
accept = 3307
connect = 3306
I can now start the Stunnel daemon on the server machine with:
$ stunnel stunnel-mysql-server.conf
where stunnel-mysql-server.conf is a text file containing the
above configuration. We also need to set up an Stunnel daemon on the client
machine with the following configuration:
# Sample stunnel configuration file for securing MySQL (client side)
# Provide the full path to your certificate-key pair file
cert = /usr/local/etc/stunnel/stunnel.pem
# lock the process into a chroot jail
chroot = /usr/local/var/run/stunnel/
# and create the PID file in this jail
pid = /stunnel.pid
# change the UID and GID of the process for security reasons
setuid = nobody
setgid = nobody
# enable client mode
client = yes
# Configure our secured MySQL client
[mysqls]
accept = 3306
connect = 1.2.3.4:3307
You'll notice that I have used a new option: client = yes - this
enables "client mode" which lets Stunnel know that the remote service uses
SSL. Our local Stunnel daemon will now listen for connections on the local
MySQL port (3306), encrypt them and forward them to our MySQL server machine (say
1.2.3.4) where another Stunnel is listening on port 3307. The remote Stunnel
will decrypt the transmission and forward it to the MySQL server listening on
port 3306 of the same machine. All responses will be sent back through the
same encrypted channel.
Save the client configuration as stunnel-mysql-client.conf and
start off Stunnel with:
$ stunnel stunnel-mysql-client.conf
and then you can connect to the remote MySQL server through the encrypted
channel by connecting to the local Stunnel daemon (which is listening on
MySQL's 3306 port):
$ mysql -h 127.0.0.1 -u username -p
6. Trouble Shooting
Stunnel can be a bit tricky about permissions - especially when using a
chroot jail and reducing your user and group ID to nobody (some
systems might need nogroup for setgid). Ensure your
chrooted directory is writable by the nobody user and/or the
nobody (or nogroup) group.
Stunnel runs in the background by default and doesn't show any error
messages. This means you won't know if it worked or not from the command
line! You can check that the process is running by searching the output of
the ps command:
Stunnel can also be instructed to run in the foreground by adding the
following command to the configuration file (above the service configuration):
foreground = yes
As with all services, the best method of diagnosing problems is through
the service's log messages. You can enable Stunnel's logging facilities
by adding the following commands to the configuration file (above the
service configuration):
debug = 7
output = /tmp/stunnel.log
If you are running in the foreground for testing/debugging, then you
might prefer to send the log messages to standard out:
debug = 7
output = /dev/stdout
7. Further Reading/References
There are many other commands that can be used in the configuration
files and these are all listed in Stunnel's man page
(STUNNEL(8)).
As always, I appreciate any feedback on this or previous articles and suggestions/requests for future ones. You'll find my e-mail address by clicking on my name at the beginning of the article.
Barry O'Donovan graduated from the National University of Ireland, Galway
with a B.Sc. (Hons) in computer science and mathematics. He is currently
completing a Ph.D. in computer science with the Information Hiding Laboratory, University
College Dublin, Ireland in the area of audio watermarking.
Barry has been using Linux since 1997 and his current flavor of choice
is Fedora Core. He is a member of the Irish
Linux Users Group. Whenever he's not doing his Ph.D. he can usually be
found supporting his finances by doing some work for Open Hosting, in the pub with friends or running in the local
park.
When programming, in any language, the capability to spawn worker
threads is integral to the performance of any application. Whether it be
running a separate thread to handle user interaction in a GUI app, while
running a potentially blocking process in the background (like your browser is
doing now), threading is essential. This document attempts to show what is
possible and what not while Threading in Python.
1.Why Threading in Python?
Let us say you write, in Python, a nifty utility that lets you filter your
mail.
You build a GUI Frontend using PyGTK. Now if you embed the filter code in the
frontend, you risk making the application unresponsive (you still have a dial up
connection, and any server interaction entails a considerable waiting time).
Since you don't work at Microsoft, you decide this is unacceptable and thus you
start a separate thread each time you want to filter your mail.
Thus threads increase the responsiveness of your programs. Threads also
increase efficiency and speed of a program, not to mention the algorithmic
simplicity.
Combined with the power of python, this makes programming in python very
attractive indeed.
2.The Basics
Let us first see how to start a simple thread. Threading is supported via
the thread and threading modules.
These modules are supposed to be optional, but if you use an OS that doesn't
support threading, you'd better switch to Linux.
The code given below runs a simple thread in the background.
(Text version)
#!/usr/bin/env python
import time
import thread
def myfunction(string,sleeptime,*args):
while 1:
print string
time.sleep(sleeptime) #sleep for a specified amount of time.
if __name__=="__main__":
thread.start_new_thread(myfunction,("Thread No:1",2))
while 1:pass
We start a new thread by using the start_new_thread() function
which takes the address of the object to be run, along with arguments to be
passed to the object, which are passed in a tuple.
2.1 Locks
Now that we have one thread running, running multiple threads is as simple
as calling start_new_thread() multiple times. The problem now would
be to synchronize the many threads which we would be running. Synchronization
is done using a Lock object. Locks are created using the
allocate_lock() factory function.
Locks are used as mutex objects, and are used for handling critical
sections of code. A thread enters the critical section by calling the
acquire() method, which can either be blocking or non-blocking. A
thread exits the critical section, by calling the release() method.
The following listing shows how to use the Lock object.
(Text version)
#!/usr/bin/env python
import time
import thread
def myfunction(string,sleeptime,lock,*args):
while 1:
#entering critical section
lock.acquire()
print string," Now Sleeping after Lock acquired for ",sleeptime
time.sleep(sleeptime)
print string," Now releasing lock and then sleeping again"
lock.release()
#exiting critical section
time.sleep(sleeptime) # why?
if __name__=="__main__":
lock=thread.allocate_lock()
thread.start_new_thread(myfunction,("Thread No:1",2,lock))
thread.start_new_thread(myfunction,("Thread No:2",2,lock))
while 1:pass
The code given above is fairly straight forward. We call
lock.acquire() just before entering the critical section and then
call lock.release() to exit the critical section.
The inquisitive reader now may be wondering why we sleep after exiting the
critical section.
Let us examine the output of the above listing.
Output.
Thread No:2 Now Sleeping after Lock acquired for 2
Thread No:2 Now releasing lock and then sleeping again
Thread No:1 Now Sleeping after Lock acquired for 2
Thread No:1 Now releasing lock and then sleeping again
Thread No:2 Now Sleeping after Lock acquired for 2
Thread No:2 Now releasing lock and then sleeping again
Thread No:1 Now Sleeping after Lock acquired for 2
Thread No:1 Now releasing lock and then sleeping again
Thread No:2 Now Sleeping after Lock acquired for 2
Here every thread is given an opportunity to enter the critical section. But
the same cannot be said if we remove time.sleep(sleeptime)
from the above listing.
Output without time.sleep(sleeptime)
Thread No:1 Now Sleeping after Lock acquired for 2
Thread No:1 Now releasing lock and then sleeping again
Thread No:1 Now Sleeping after Lock acquired for 2
Thread No:1 Now releasing lock and then sleeping again
Thread No:1 Now Sleeping after Lock acquired for 2
Thread No:1 Now releasing lock and then sleeping again
Thread No:1 Now Sleeping after Lock acquired for 2
Thread No:1 Now releasing lock and then sleeping again
Thread No:1 Now Sleeping after Lock acquired for 2
Thread No:1 Now releasing lock and then sleeping again
Thread No:1 Now Sleeping after Lock acquired for 2
Thread No:1 Now releasing lock and then sleeping again
Thread No:1 Now Sleeping after Lock acquired for 2
Thread No:1 Now releasing lock and then sleeping again
Thread No:1 Now Sleeping after Lock acquired for 2
Why does this happen? The answer lies in the fact that Python is
not fully threadsafe.
Unlike Java, where threading was considered to be so important that it is a
part of the syntax, in Python threads were laid down at the altar of
Portability.
In fact the documentation reads:
Not all built-in functions that may block waiting for I/O allow other threads
to run. (The most popular ones (time.sleep(),
file.read(), select.select()) work as expected.)
It is not possible to interrupt the acquire() method on a lock
-- the KeyboardInterrupt exception will happen after the lock has been acquired.
What this means is that quite probably any code like the following:
while 1:
lock.acquire()
.....
#some operation
.....
lock.release()
will cause starvation of one or more threads.
3. The Global Interpreter Lock
Currently, The Python Interpreter (Python 2.3.4) is not thread safe.
There are no priorities, no thread groups. Threads cannot be stopped and
suspended, resumed or interrupted. That is, the support provided is very much
basic. However a lot can still be accomplished with this meager support, with
the use of the threading module, as we shall see in the following
sections. One of the main reasons is that in actuality only one thread is
running at a time. This is because of some thing called a Global Interpreter
Lock (GIL). In order to support multi-threaded Python programs, there's a
global lock that must be held by the current thread before it can safely access
Python objects. Without the lock competing threads could cause havoc, for
example: when two threads simultaneously increment the reference count of the
same object, the reference count could end up being incremented only once
instead of twice. Thus only the thread that has acquired the GIL may operate on
Python Objects or call Python C API functions.
In order to support multi threaded Python programs the interpreter regularly
releases and reacquires the lock, by default every 10 bytecode instructions.
This can however be changed using the sys.setcheckinterval()
function. The lock is also released and reacquired around potentially
blocking I/O operations like reading or writing a file, so that other threads
can run while the thread that requests the I/O is waiting for the I/O operation
to complete.
In particular note:
C extensions can release the GIL.
Blocking I/O can release the GIL.
The Python Interpreter keeps some book keeping info per thread, for which it
uses a data structure called PyThreadState. Earlier the state was
stored in global variables and switching threads could cause problems. In
particular, exception handling is now thread safe when the application uses
sys.exc_info() to access the exception last raised in the current
thread. There's one global variable left, however: the pointer to the current
PyThreadState structure. While most thread packages have a way to
store ``per-thread global data,'' Python's internal platform independent thread
abstraction doesn't support this yet. Therefore, the current thread state must
be manipulated explicitly. The global interpreter lock is used to protect the
pointer to the current thread state. When releasing the lock and saving the
thread state, the current thread state pointer must be retrieved before the
lock is released (since another thread could immediately acquire the lock and
store its own thread state in the global variable). Conversely, when acquiring
the lock and restoring the thread state, the lock must be acquired before
storing the thread state pointer
------------------------------------------------------------------
Global Thread | Global Thread | Global Thread | Global Thread |
Pointer 1 | Pointer 2 | Pointer 2 | Pointer 2 |
------------------------------------------------------------------
^ ^ ^ ^
| | | |
| | | |
| | | |
------------------------------------------------
| |
| Global Interpreter Lock |
| |
------------------------------------------------
^ ^ ^ ^
| | | |
| | | |
Thread No Thread No Thread No Thread No
1 2 3 4
4.Using the Threading Module
Python manages to get a lot done using so little. The Threading module uses
the built in thread package to provide some very interesting features that
would make your programming a whole lot easier. There are in built mechanisms
which provide critical section locks, wait/notify locks etc. In particular we
shall look at:
Using the Thread object
Profiling the Threaded code
Using the Condition, Event, and Queue object.
4.1 Using the Threading Library
The major Components of the Threading module are:
Lock object
RLock object
Semaphore Object
Condition Object
Event Object
Thread Object
While we have visited the Lock object in the previous sections, the
RLock object is something new. RLock provides a mechanism for
a thread to acquire multiple instances of the same lock, each time incrementing
the depth of locking when acquiring and decrementing the depth of locking when
releasing. RLock makes it very easy to write code which conforms to
the classical Readers Writers Problem. The Semaphore Object (rather
the Semaphore Object Factory) is the general implementation of the Semaphore
mooted by Dijikstra. We shall understand the implementation of the Condition,
Event and Thread Objects via some examples.
4.2 The Thread Object
The Thread Object is a wrapper to the start_new_thread()
function, which we saw earlier, but with a little more functionality. The
Thread object is never used directly, but only by subclassing the
threading.Thread interface. The user is supposed then to override
possibly the __init__() or run() function. Do not
override the start() function, or provide more than one argument
to run. Note that you are supposed to call
Thread.__init__() if you are overriding __init__().
#!/usr/bin/env python
#simple code which uses threads
import time
from threading import Thread
class MyThread(Thread):
def __init__(self,bignum):
Thread.__init__(self)
self.bignum=bignum
def run(self):
for l in range(10):
for k in range(self.bignum):
res=0
for i in range(self.bignum):
res+=1
def test():
bignum=1000
thr1=MyThread(bignum)
thr1.start()
thr1.join()
if __name__=="__main__":
test()
There are 2 things to note here, the thread does not start running until the
start() method is called, and that join() makes the calling
thread wait until the thread has finished execution.
So Far, So Good! However being ever curious we wonder wether there are any
performance gains in using threads.
4.3 Profiling Threaded Code.
It is the practice of every good programmer to profile his code, to find
out his weak spots, his strengths, and in general to know his inner soul ;-).
And since we are dealing with the Tao of Threading in Python, we might as well
as ask ourselves which is the faster, two threads sharing the load or one heavy
duty brute force thread?
Which is faster?
thread1 thread2
-------- ---------
for i in range(bignum): for i in range(bignum):
for k in range(bignum): for k in range(bignum):
res+=i res+=i
or?
thread 3
--------------------
for i in range(bignum):
for k in range(bignum):
res+=i
for i in range(bignum):
for k in range(bignum):
res+=i
Following the way of the masters we make no assumptions, and let the code
do the talking. Generally there are 2 ways to profile code in Python, the most
common and comprehensive way would be to use the profile.run() method,
or time the execution of the code using time.clock(). We shall do both.
Consider the listing shown below.
#!/usr/bin/env python
#Let us profile code which uses threads
import time
from threading import Thread
class MyThread(Thread):
def __init__(self,bignum):
Thread.__init__(self)
self.bignum=bignum
def run(self):
for l in range(10):
for k in range(self.bignum):
res=0
for i in range(self.bignum):
res+=1
def myadd_nothread(bignum):
for l in range(10):
for k in range(bignum):
res=0
for i in range(bignum):
res+=1
for l in range(10):
for k in range(bignum):
res=0
for i in range(bignum):
res+=1
def thread_test(bignum):
#We create 2 Thread objects for the 2 threads.
thr1=MyThread(bignum)
thr2=MyThread(bignum)
thr1.start()
thr2.start()
thr1.join()
thr2.join()
def test():
bignum=1000
#Let us test the threading part
starttime=time.clock()
thread_test(bignum)
stoptime=time.clock()
print "Running 2 threads took %.3f seconds" % (stoptime-starttime)
#Now run without Threads.
starttime=time.clock()
myadd_nothread(bignum)
stoptime=time.clock()
print "Running Without Threads took %.3f seconds" % (stoptime-starttime)
if __name__=="__main__":
test()
We get some surprising results, notably the following..
Running 2 threads took 0.000 seconds
Running Without Threads took 5.160 seconds
Being ever sceptically we try to profile the threaded code by running,
profile.run('test()'). What we see seems to add credence to the
results achieved earlier.
As I said it seems to add credence, until we notice that run()
isn't even called! What does this teach us? Apart from distrusting the profiler,
never follow any mechanical way of testing your code. The reason why the output
is misleading and the profiler silent is because both time.clock()
and the profiler measure the time spent in running the current thread.
How then do we measure time taken by the two threads? We use the
time.time() function.
But doesn't time.time() give the absolute time, you ask? What
about Context switches? True, but since we are only interested in the measuring
the total time taken and not the work distribution, we can ignore context
switches (and indeed the code has been structured to ignore context switches).
The results we now obtain are more realistic and reliable.
Running 2 threads took 5.125 seconds
Running Without Threads took 5.137 seconds
As we can see there is no significant difference between threaded and non
threaded apps.
4.4 Condition, Event and Queue Objects.
Conditions are a way of synchronizing access between multiple threads,
which wait for a particular condition to be true to start any major processing.
Condition Objects are a very elegant mechanism by which it is possible to
implent the Producer Consumer Problem. Indeed this is true for anything in
Python. Conditions take a lock object or if none is supplied creates
its own RLock object. A Thread waits for a particular condition to be
true by using the wait() function, while it signals another thread by
using the notify() or notifyAll() method.
Let us see how the classical Producer Consumer Problem is solved using
this.
#!/usr/bin/env python
#Let us profile code which uses threads
import thread
import time
from threading import *
class itemQ:
def __init__(self):
self.count=0
def produce(self,num=1):
self.count+=num
def consume(self):
if self.count: self.count-=1
def isEmpty(self):
return not self.count
class Producer(Thread):
def __init__(self,condition,itemq,sleeptime=1):
Thread.__init__(self)
self.cond=condition
self.itemq=itemq
self.sleeptime=sleeptime
def run(self):
cond=self.cond
itemq=self.itemq
while 1 :
cond.acquire() #acquire the lock
print currentThread(),"Produced One Item"
itemq.produce()
cond.notifyAll()
cond.release()
time.sleep(self.sleeptime)
class Consumer(Thread):
def __init__(self,condition,itemq,sleeptime=2):
Thread.__init__(self)
self.cond=condition
self.itemq=itemq
self.sleeptime=sleeptime
def run(self):
cond=self.cond
itemq=self.itemq
while 1:
time.sleep(self.sleeptime)
cond.acquire() #acquire the lock
while itemq.isEmpty():
cond.wait()
itemq.consume()
print currentThread(),"Consumed One Item"
cond.release()
if __name__=="__main__":
q=itemQ()
cond=Condition()
pro=Producer(cond,q)
cons1=Consumer(cond,q)
cons2=Consumer(cond,q)
pro.start()
cons1.start()
cons2.start()
while 1: pass
Here the currentThread() function returns the id of the currently
running thread. Note that wait() has an optional argument specifying
the seconds it should wait before it times out. I would discourage this use
because they used a polling mechanism to implement this, and according to the
source code we poll atleast 20 times ever second.
Once again I would like to point out how not to use the Condition Object.
Consider the following, borrowed from Python-2.3.4/Libs/threading.py
def notify(self, n=1):
currentThread() # for side-effect
assert self._is_owned(), "notify() of un-acquire()d lock"
__waiters = self.__waiters
waiters = __waiters[:n]
if not waiters:
if __debug__:
self._note("%s.notify(): no waiters", self)
return
self._note("%s.notify(): notifying %d waiter%s", self, n,
n!=1 and "s" or "")
for waiter in waiters:
waiter.release()
try:
__waiters.remove(waiter)
except ValueError:
pass
def notifyAll(self):
self.notify(len(self.__waiters))
Python-2.3.4/Lib/threading.py
What threading.py does is to maintain a list of threads waiting on the
current condition.
It then attempts to notify them by removing the first n waiters from the
list. And since it removes the same first n waiters every time, this
can potentially cause starvation to certain threads. So to test our theory out,
let us modify the Producer consumer listing given above by making the following
changes:
This will potentially cause starvation to one of the threads depending upon how
they are inserted into the list. In fact a test run by making the above changes
shows this to be the case. Thus you will have to be carefull to potential
pitfalls in using Python Threading. Notice that there is no point in calling
notifyAll() since it is inefficient and should be avoided.
By now you must have a pretty good idea about how to go about threading in
Python. For closure I shall briefly describe the Event and Queue Objects and
describe how to use them.
The Event Object is actually a thin wrapper on the Condition Object so that
we don't have to mess about with locks. The methods provided are very much self
explanatory: set() clear() isSet() wait(timeout). One thing to note
is that the Event Object uses notifyAll(), thus use it only when
necessary.
The code given is a simple example of the event object. event.py
Although Queues dont come under the Threading module, they do provide an
easy interface which should be suitable to sovle most problems. The main
advantage of Queue is that it doesn't implement the threading module.
Thus you can instead use it with the thread module. Queues are a
simple and efficient way of implementing stack, priority queue etc. Since it
handles both data protection and synchronization. The methods used are
put(item,block) get(block) Queue(maxsize) qsize() empty() full().
A simple example using Queues is given in the following listing. q.py
I am a linux enthusiast living in India. I love to play around in
linux never knowing what i might discover next.
I enjoy the freedom and power that Linux offers.
and I must thank my mentor Mr.Pramode C.E (who regularly publishes in LG)
for introducing me to the wonderful opportunities that Linux offers.
I have always enjoyed programming ,and have enjoyed it a lot more in Linux.
( I shall not mention my previous OS :-) ).
The Emacs editor has me hooked. Is it a compiler ? , editor? AI tool ?
( No its super-macs , :-) )
I do small time programming in AI, especially Neural Networks, and I hope
to release a Neural Network ToolKit that occasional Hardware hackers can
use to do some interesting stuff.
Buffer overflows are not uncommon in C programs. Attacks
which exploit these bugs usually try to inject alien
code into the program and execute it by overwriting return
addresses stored on the stack. Hardware support for marking
areas of memory non-executable would make such attacks
difficult. The 64 bit processors manufactured by AMD have a
`no-execute' bit added to page table entries. The Linux kernel
compiled for X86_64 CPU's can make use of this bit to protect
user/kernel level code against buffer overflow exploits. This
article describes a few experiments which I tried on an Athlon64
system running the Linux kernel 2.6.8.1 to understand some
of the issues behind the use of the NX bit. The on-the-stack
machine code generation trick which GCC uses (the so-called
`trampoline') to implement nested functions and its dependence
on an executable stack will also be examined in some detail.
All the programs presented in this article have been tested on
an AthlonXP (32 bit) system using gcc 3.3.2 (the code generated
by the compiler can vary as the version changes). Code which demonstrates
the utility of the NX bit has been tested on an Athlon64 system
running Fedora Core 2 (for x86_64).
Let's execute the stack!
The `objdump' utility comes in handy when we wish to examine
the machine code produced by the linker. We write a simple
C program:
Now, what does that horrible looking cast do? We are telling the
compiler to treat the address of the array as the address of a
function which returns void; so go on, generate code to execute
the array! What is proof that the code is really executing the array?
Well, it is not crashing, and that might be proof enough.
It's not too difficult to prove that the code actually executes the
array. Let's compile (with -O2 option) and disassemble the
following C code segment:
08048314 <main>:
8048314: 55 push %ebp
8048315: 89 e5 mov %esp,%ebp
8048317: 83 ec 08 sub $0x8,%esp
804831a: 83 e4 f0 and $0xfffffff0,%esp
804831d: b0 34 mov $0x34,%al
804831f: ba 78 03 00 00 mov $0x378,%edx
8048324: ee out %al,(%dx)
8048325: c9 leave
8048326: c3 ret
8048327: 90 nop
We note that the `outb' is getting encoded as 8 bytes: 0xb0, 0x34, 0xba,
0x78, 0x03, 0x00, 0x00 and 0xee.
With this information in hand, we write another program:
0x378 is the address of the PC parallel port. Because the
program is executing the array, it is writing 0x34 to the
parallel port; which is verified by the subsequent `inb'.
If our program has a buffer overflow bug in it, a clever
attacker can exploit this to inject malicious code into the
program (after all, code is nothing but a sequence of numbers)
and execute it via some address overwriting tricks. But what if
the OS, with the help of the machine's hardware, prevents the
execution of memory areas which are supposed to contain only
data? This is what the AMD64 NX bit which is supported by the
Linux kernel attempts to achieve.
An ELF binary (or shared library) can be `marked' as
requiring (or not requiring) an executable stack. This
is done using the `execstack' command:
execstack -s ./a.out #mark a.out as requiring
#executable stack (we will call this `turning
#off the NX bit')
execstack -c ./a.out #mark a.out as not requiring
#executable stack (we will call this `turning
#on the NX bit')
The results of running the previous program on a 32 bit Athlon
system with the executable marked first as requiring an executable
stack and then as not requiring an executable stack were identical -
in both cases, the program worked as expected, executing the
array and thereby writing to the parallel port. This is because the
hardware does not provide the no-execute facility. The program
was then modified a bit (GCC for x86_64 generates different
code) and run on an Athlon64. When the executable stack bit was
turned off, the program segfaulted.
It seems that having the NX bit on for all programs
is a good thing. But there are certain situations where
programming language compilers and interpreters might
generate native machine code on-the-fly (or generate
code which generates machine code on the fly), store it into
an array and execute it. For such programs to work
properly, an executable stack is a necessity. Let's look
at an interesting example where the stack has got to be
executable if the program is to work properly.
Nested Functions
GCC supports nested functions. Here is an example
program:
Let's try to understand how nested functions are implemented
by compiling a slightly more complex program
and reading the output produced by the compiler.
After the pushl, it becomes 996. This value is copied to ebp.
The variable `i' is stored at location 992. The base pointer is
copied to ecx and fun2 is called.
The register ecx is used for holding the address of the
activation record of the function which lexically encloses the function
being called. Whether fun2 is being called from within fun1 or
fun3, the enclosing function is fun1 and that's where fun2
should look for when it is searching for symbols. Let's look at
the segment of code where fun3 invokes fun2.
Within fun3 (the compiler has renamed fun3 to fun3.1), the
value in ecx is the address of the frame which encloses fun3,
that is, fun1. Note that this value is simply passed on to
fun2. The important thing here is that the compiler is able
to identify (at compile time) the address of the stack frame
of the function which encloses fun2, irrespective of the
location from where fun2 is being invoked because the function
is being called by its name.
The trouble with function pointers
Compile time identification of the address of the
lexically enclosing function's activation record becomes
impossible when the function is called via a function
pointer. Here is an example:
The question is what value should be put in ecx when the
function pointed to by `p' is called. If `p' contains the
address of fun5, it should definitely be the address of the
activation record of fun3; otherwise, it should be the address
of the activation record of fun1. The trouble is that the
actual address stored in `p' can be determined only at run
time depending on what value the user assigns to `m' from the
standard input.
Before we examine how GCC solves this problem, let's
write yet another little C program and run it on a 32
bit system:
What is fun2 doing? The first cell of the array is filled
with 0xe9, which is the opcode for the JMP instruction. The
next four bytes get filled by the difference between the
addresses of the jump target and the next instruction (which
is what jmp needs). The array is then typecast to a function
pointer and called. Executing the code in the array results
immediately in a jump to fun1; a return from fun1 will transfer
control back to the end of fun2.
Trampoline Magic
The solution to the problem is simple and efficient. At the
point where the address of the function is taken, GCC knows
the address of the activation record of the function which
encloses it - GCC generates code which copies this 4 byte value on to the
stack, prefixed with the opcode of the instruction which
copies a value to the ecx register. The next byte will
be filled by GCC generated code with the opcode of the jmp
instruction. This is followed by a 4 byte number, let's call it X. If
we assume that the opcode of the instruction which copies
a value to ecx is at a location on the stack whose address is Y,
we have the following picture:
Y --> Opcode of insn which moves a value to ecx
Y+1 to Y+4 --> The 4 byte value to be moved (address of the
activation record of the function which encloses
the function whose address is being taken)
Y+5 --> Opcode of jmp instruction
Y+6 to Y+9 --> A 4 byte number, let's call it X
Y+10 --> Next location on the stack.
This 4 byte number is computed by GCC generated code as
follows (let's call the function whose address is being taken
`fun2'):
X = address of fun2 - Y+10
After doing all these subtle manipulations, the generated
code stores the address
Y in the function pointer, instead of storing the address of
fun2. Now, if some other function tries to call fun2 via `p',
the code which has been dynamically generated on the stack
starts executing. It fills the ecx register with the address of
the activation record of the function which encloses the function
being called and then jumps into the actual function to be executed
(ie, fun2). Let's try to trace this out by reading the code
which the compiler produces for the following function:
Let's look at the body of fun1 - that's where all the
action is. Note that -71 is in unsigned hex form 0xb9
(opcode of `mov to ecx' instruction) and -23 is 0xe9
(opcode of jmp instruction). Let's say the value of esp
upon entry to fun1 is 1000.
Locations 956 to 965 encode two instructions, a `mov-to-ecx'
and `jmp-to-fun2' instruction. What's being stored in the
pointer variable `p' is the address 956. A look at the body
of fun3 shows that the statement:
p();
is getting translated to a call of the instructions stored at
956. Reading the code generated for fun2 makes it clear that
the function is able to properly access the variable `m' in the
outer scope.
The NX bit, again
Doing an:
execstack ./a.out
on a program with nested functions, where we do NOT
take the address of a nested function, showed that the
binary is marked as not requiring an executable stack.
But, it was seen that whenever we took the address of a
nested function, GCC was careful to mark the binary
as requiring an executable stack. This was the case on
both the Athlon32 and Athlon64 systems. On clearing the
executable stack bit, the program was found to segfault
on the Athlon64 system running the x86_64 Linux kernel.
References
The buffer overflow exploit is examined in detail
in this interesting article.
The Wikipedia has
an entry for the NX bit; readers would also find interesting
the entries for Exec Shield
and PaX. Ingo Molnar
talks of the NX patch in this Kerneltrap
article.
I am an instructor working for IC Software in Kerala, India. I would have loved
becoming an organic chemist, but I do the second best thing possible, which is
play with Linux and teach programming!
I see a schoolmarm at a blackboard scrawling out the title of
this article with squeaky chalk. A murmur rises from the desks
behind her.
Billy, the Linux ultra-newbie: Document processing? Is that anything like word processing?
Suzie, the relative newbie: "groff"? Isn't that the program that lets me read
manpages?
Todd, the old hand: mom? Never heard of it.
Okay, class--quiet down. One question at a time.
Document Processing
No, Billy, word processing and document processing aren't
the same.
When you use a modern word processor, the computer monitor shows
you a persistent representation of what you're writing in its final
printed form. Whenever you want to change a font, or increase the
size of type, or tighten a line, you typically highlight a portion
of text, point your mouse at a menu item, select the kind of
operation to perform, then specify the change from yet another
menu. The alteration is immediately visible.
Text processing differs from word processing in that when you
write, you fire up a text editor, a program that provides powerful
tools for editing text itself--tools well beyond the scope of word
processors--but does not show you a representation of the printed
document. Formatting and typesetting are achieved not by point-and-click,
but by embedding written commands in the text. When you finish writing, you
preview the document with a small program (like gv, or ghostview) whose
sole function is to show you what the printed version looks like.
groff
Very good, Suzie, groff is the program that lets you read
manpages. But it does much more than that.
For many Linuxers--programmers and end-users--groff begins and
ends with manpages. It comes as a surprise, then, to discover that
groff is actually a powerful formatting and typesetting engine
capable of producing PostScript, TeX DVI and html output in
addition to formatted terminal copy (i.e., manpages).
Groff has a very long history, dating back to the earliest days
of Unix. By comparison, TeX--the other big player in Linux document
processing--is a relative newcomer. TeX and groff are both
monumental achievements, with considerable overlap in what they do,
but they have a major difference: size. Even a minimal installation
of TeX is huge in comparison to groff.
Many people put up with TeX's size because they mistakenly
believe that TeX produces typesetting of a quality superior to
groff. While that may have been true once, it is simply not the
case now, and hasn't been for some time. As a typesetting engine,
groff is superb.
Groff does have a liability, though: it's incredibly geeky.
Owing to its long history, it--and its power users--seem stuck in a
time warp. Groff's classical macro sets (macro sets are the
end-user's primary interface to groff) still look as they did in
those decades when memory was exorbitantly expensive, and every
byte mattered. Their terse, two-letter commands tend to scare
people off, as does the amount of knowledge about groff itself
required to use them effectively.
That's where mom comes in.
mom
Gee, Todd, what version of groff are you running? Have you
actually checkedman groff_tmacrecently?
To be fair to Todd, mom is the new kid on the block. She's only
been around for about two years--the first major new macro set to
come down the pike in quite some time.
mom's mandate is simple: to put typesetting and document
processing with groff within easy reach of everyone, old hands and
newbies alike. "Easy" has been accomplished -
by creating macros with sane, legible and informative names;
.PP starts a paragraph, .FOOTNOTE starts a
footnote, .LIST starts an enumerated list
by moving many of groff's flexible and powerful typesetting
commands into macro space; gone the need to read groff's
documentation in order to manage page dimensions, margins, indents,
tabs, line kerning, word spacing, hyphenation, artificial fonts,
and so on
by providing superb, text-only HTML documentation that's loaded
with examples and cross-referenced with hundreds of links; with an
HTML browser open in one window and a text editor in another, you
should be up and running with mom in no time
Tutorial--creating a document with mom
mom is actually two groff macro sets in one. For the
typographer, she provides a suite of tools modeled on the commands
used by "dedicated" phototypesetting machines. For the writer, she
provides document processing "tags" that automatically generate
beautifully formatted heads, subheads, paragraphs, cited matter,
footnotes, endnotes, tables of contents, and much more. In this
tutorial, we'll be setting up a university essay, so the emphasis
is on document processing, not typesetting.
First of all, the "rules":
all macros must appear on a line by themselves
all macros begin with a period, with no spaces before the
period
all macros must be typed in upper case
all macros that take text as an argument should have their
argument(s) surrounded by double-quotes
You begin a mom document by entering some reference information:
title, subtitle, author(s) and so on. mom uses this information to
create cover pages (if you want them), set document titles and
generate page headers or footers.
.TITLE "Stretched to the Breaking Point"
.SUBTITLE "Cadential Ambiguity in Wagner, Mahler and Strauss"
.AUTHOR "Jane Dearborne"
Next, you tell mom what type of document you're creating,
whether this is a draft or a final copy, and whether you want the
document typeset or "typewritten."
.DOCTYPE DEFAULT
.COPYSTYLE FINAL
.PRINTSTYLE TYPESET
.DOCTYPE DEFAULT and .COPYSTYLE FINAL are
optional (because they're mom's defaults). However,
.PRINTSTYLE TYPESET is not. All mom documents that are
to be formatted with the document processing tags must contain a
.PRINTSTYLE directive.
Next, you initiate document processing with the single, required
macro
.START
Now you're on your way. Begin each paragraph with
.PP, on a line by itself, followed by the text of the
paragraph, like this:
.PP
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet...
When you need a main head, type .HEAD, followed by
the text of the head, on the same line and surrounded by
double-quotes.
.HEAD "Wagner: Lohengrin to The Ring"
Subheads are accomplished similarly:
.SUBHEAD "The Pull Toward Flat Six"
If you need to insert a passage cited from another author's
work, simply surround the passage with the .BLOCKQUOTE
macro.
.BLOCKQUOTE
At vero eos et accusam et justo duo dolores...
.BLOCKQUOTE OFF
If you require footnotes, embed them in the body of the
document, like this:
In 1890, Alma\c
.FOOTNOTE
Mahler's wife; later married to Walter Gropius of Bauhaus fame,
then again to writer, Franz Werfel.
.FOOTNOTE OFF
is reported to have...
Note the use of \c in the first line, above.
Footnotes (and endnotes) require \c in order to attach
markers (asterisks, daggers, superscript numbers, etc.) to the ends
of words.
Carry on in this way until the end of the document, which, if
you use endnotes, is terminated by the single macro
.ENDNOTES
mom is designed to produce PostScript output (for sending
directly to a printer or saving as a .ps file), and groff's default
"device" is PostScript, so you'd process the file, at the command
line, with
groff -mom -l <filename>
or
groff -mom <filename> | lpr
to send the file to a printer, or
groff -mom <filename> > <filename>.ps
to save it to a file. Either way, you end up with a
professional-looking 8.5x11 inch document, typeset justified in
Times Roman at 12.5 on 16 (mom's default).
What this little tutorial doesn't demonstrate is the degree of
control mom permits over the design of documents. All the document
processing tags have global "control" macros that allow you, at a
minimum, to change the family, font, point size and color of any
tag. Where appropriate, mom provides additional control macros for
things like quad direction, line spacing, underlining,
capitalization, indent, numbering style, and so on. Used in
conjunction with mom's typesetting macros, the control macros let
you design virtually every part of a document to precise
specifications and taste.
OK, I'm intrigued: How do I get my hands on mom?
mom has been part of groff for the
past two years, so if you have a recent version of groff (1.18 or
later), you already have a mom. :-)
However, mom is being developed independently of groff, so
you'll probably want a more mature version than the one you got the
last time you updated groff.
There are two ways to get an up-to-date mom: either go directly
to
mom's homepage
and download the latest release, or checkout the latest groff from
the groff CVS repository (instructions here) and build
groff from source. Patches and improvements to mom are always
applied to the groff repository before a new release, so
either method gets you the latest version. At this time of writing,
that's 1.2. To check the version number of your current mom, do a
locate to find the macro file, om.tmac, then page
through it to line 26.
Please note that mom currently requires you be running, at the
very lowest, groff version 1.18, and for optimal use, groff version
1.19.2 or higher.
(the words "groff" or "mom" must appear in the subject line of any
email sent to this address, otherwise the email will get nuked)
Peter Schaffter is a classical pianist, country songwriter and
professional typographer turned writer whose novel, The Schumann
Proof (pub. RendezVous Press, Canada), will be on the shelves in the
fall of 2004.
An ardent champion of Free Software, he is also the creator of the
"mom" macro set for groff. Mom is Peter's way of saying "thank you"
to the community of open source developers who made it possible,
despite his perpetually impoverished state, to get his hands on
some of the most powerful computing tools on the planet. Mom also
reflects his interest in software documentation, a subject he
considers of primary importance in open source development. In
a reversal of normal devlopment procedure, he wrote much of the
documentation for mom before implementing the code. "A user's first
exposure to a program is usually the documentation," he says, "so
why not get it right first? Besides, making a program conform to
pre-written docs is a great way to ensure it behaves as advertised."
When was the last time you compiled a linux kernel?
Yesterday? Last week? Five minutes ago?
On a 486?
I don't remember either.
Remember how long it took?
I remember that. Too long. Too damn long.
Now why would I want to compile the latest kernel on a 486?
Ordinarily, I wouldn't. But with the tragic death of my main
computer I was forced to move my computing needs to an old 486 someone
had given me. I had been using this one as a NTP time server for my
home network. Suffice it to say, what was on the NTP server wasn't the
latest and the greatest. The other computer on the network wasn't
much of an improvement over the 486. (A foundling laptop with a
miniscule hard drive.)
Well I was screwed because I needed my
Emacs. So I
pulled the drive from the dead computer and hooked it up to the 486.
It worked flawlessly, which is a testament to the Linux kernel
and GNU Software quality and efficiency. I didn't really know what to
expect regarding response and the general feel of the environment, but in
console mode I noticed no real difference. The X window system even
worked fine, albeit slow on the start-up. Now, there was no way the
GIMP or Mozilla was going to run with any kind of usability, but I
could use Emacs and lynx or dillo without too many problems.
But did I really want to sit through something that was going to
take a few hours at least? Not really. I guess I could have washed
dishes, mowed the lawn or watched TV but, hey, TV sucks. I'd rather
watch a kernel compile.
Enter the
award-winning distcc, a distributed compiler front end for gcc,
written by Martin Poole.
Distcc
Distcc consists of two binary
programs: distccd and distcc.
distccd runs as a daemon and handles network traffic. By
passing pre-processed source code files across a network to other computers
with an installed compiler, you effectively have two or more
compilations going at once.
distcc is a front end to gcc and
g++. You specify distcc as the compiler in place
of gcc and it transparently handles all the magic that is
going on. distcc can be used for all compile jobs whether you
need the networking capabilities or not, i.e., you can compile one file or
thousands, it's up to you.
The easiest way to demonstrate distcc's abilities is to use
it to compile itself as an example of distributed compilation.
I'll show how to compile distcc and give my time for the
initial compilation, then recompile using distcc in place of
gcc.
Minimum Requirements:
Two compatible networked computers designated as a server and a client.
The server:
This machine should have a complete C/C++ development
environment installed. You'll also need any other ancillary
development packages (readline, ncurses, gtk+, whatever) that your
particular bit of software needs for compiling.
distcc itself requires nothing special.
Note: There are a couple of other programs produced by
distcc:
distccmon-text and distccmon-gnome.
These are monitor programs to show you what's happening during a
distcc compile session. The *-gnome version needs GTK at a
minimum but if you don't have it installed, don't worry.
The client:
This machine only needs the compilers installed. You do
not need libc, ncurses, kernel headers or the infinite array of
libraries things seem to need nowadays to compile.
distcc is small and doesn't require much time to build.
Here's the time from that aforementioned 486DX:
Without distcc
real 13m45.185s
user 12m4.320s
sys 1m7.120s
It took longer to run the configure script than it did to compile.
Install the binaries:
make install
distcc and distccd should be in /usr/local/bin
For the client machine:
Transfer a copy of distccd to /usr/local/bin or your binary repository
of choice.
Now to use distcc to recompile distcc.
Make sure you are in the distcc source directory
$ make clean
This will clean out all the crud leftover from the first compile.
You won't need to run configure again.
We need to spend a couple of minutes setting up for distcc.
1. Run the distccd daemon on both computers.
$ distccd --daemon
It'll bitch about no distcc user. Ignore the warning.
You can check to see that it's actually running via "$ ps -ax | grep
distccd" to assuage your concerns.
2. Set the DISTCC_HOSTS environment variable:
You can use IP addresses or if your /etc/hosts file is set-up properly
the hostnames of the computers.
I have two computers at the moment:
mothra on 192.168.1.2
ghidra on 192.168.1.3 (This one's a rescued 120MHz laptop. It would
be my main computer but it doesn't have the drive space I need.)
Set the variable (sh syntax, adjust for your shell):
$ export DISTCC_HOSTS="mothra ghidra"
or
$ export DISTCC_HOSTS="192.168.1.2 192.168.1.3"
Either way it doesn't matter.
NOTE: Names or addresses are space delimited.
Recompile the code:
$ time make -j4 CC=distcc
Explaining the command line:
time: should be obvious.
make -j4:
the -j flag is make's "multiple command" flag. Read the
info manual for more specific information. Trust me, just use -j4
for now.
CC=distcc:
Override configured compiler directive. This way you can
do a regular configure with gcc defined in the makefile.
distcc is nice about not forcing complicated procedures to use
it.
distcc compiled with distcc
real 6m38.089s
user 2m42.200s
sys 0m29.520s
Cut the time in half! You can't complain about that.
The following shows times for some of my favorite programs compiled with
and without distcc, utilizing the two node setup describe above.
Remember, I'm compiling with a 486 without distcc.
Dillo Web Browser
Without Distcc With Distcc
real 52m14.120s real 22m31.975s
user 47m24.820s user 5m12.630s
sys 3m29.220s sys 1m23.930s
The BASH Shell
Without Distcc With Distcc
real 75m25.306s real 18m22.613s
user 69m2.110s user 3m27.950s
sys 5m8.030s sys 0m58.980s
This was the most amazing for me. This is 1/4 of the
non-distcc compilation time!
Conclusion:
distcc is flexible. You can use it as a one-shot compiler
or set-up your build environment to use it for all compiles.
You can define the available compiler hosts in a
$HOME/.distcc/hosts file.
You can force distcc to prefer one machine over another by listing the
order in the .distcc/hosts or DISTCC_HOSTS environment variable.
For example, rather than having my poor little 486 desktop grind down
to an almost unusable state as gcc takes over the system, I set
DISTCC_HOSTS='ghidra' and all the compilation is shipped to the faster
laptop.
Oh, yeah - that kernel compile. How long did it take? I don't
know. I said screw it, I'll just stick with the stock kernel from my
Slackware install. Even with distcc it would take forever.
Maybe I'll bite the bullet at some point - but I think I'll just save up
for that dual processor Athlon system I've been coveting.
V. L. Simpson, after being unceremoniously (and rather rudely)
informed that GNU Emacs is not an operating system, has been
re-adjusted to a happy, regular life after many protracted
sessions with 'the doctor'.
Suppose you have just taken over as a new system administrator from another
person just before they left and they forgot to give you the root password.
Now, let's say you have to install the latest version of PHP on the system
so that the sales department's website works the way its supposed to. You
have to get the website up yesterday, since you are losing money every
minute it doesn't work. Or maybe you simply need to add another user to the
system.
The above scenarios are just two possible cases when you might need to reset
the root password on a system; there are hundreds of other possible cases
when you might need to do this, but I am not going to list all of them.
Most of us know what to do when something like this happens on a Windows
machine, but not a lot of us know how to recover lost passwords from Linux
machines. This document attempts to rectify this situation by telling you
about the different options available to recover passwords from
YOUR machines. (Don't use this to break into other people's systems
as that would be stupid and will get you into big trouble if you are
caught.)
1.1 Disclaimer
Use the information in this document at your own risk. I disavow any
potential liability for the contents of this document. Use of the concepts,
examples, and/or other content of this document is entirely at your own risk.
The information in this document should only be used to recover passwords from
machines to which you have legal access. If you use this information to break
into other people's systems, then I am not responsible for it and you deserve
your fate when you are caught. So don't blame me.
You are strongly advised to make a backup of your system before performing
any of the actions listed in this document.
1.2 Credits
In this version, I have the pleasure of acknowledging the following people
without whose input this would have never seen the light of the day:
The community at http://www.justlinux.com, for the really
helpful debate about this topic in one of their threads.
The creators and maintainers of the various Linux documentation sites using
which I gathered this information.
Matt Hoskins and Kevin Walsh, for getting me interested in Linux in the
first place.
My friends and family, for bearing with me when I was compiling this document.
1.3 Before you start
Before you attempt to change or replace the password of any machine, make
sure you get permission from the management authorizing it, 'cause otherwise
it can be mistaken as an attempt to hack into the machine, which is not
good.
Secondly, create a backup of all important data before you do anything else,
so if anything goes wrong you'll still have a copy of your data. If you didn't,
and something went wrong, don't blame me. I tested most of this stuff on my
system and it worked, but you are responsible for your system, not me, so don't
blame me if something did go wrong.
2.1 Various Options available
There are various methods available for resetting a root password. In
this section, I will list all the major ones, and we will go over each in detail
later in the document. I will also go over some steps to prevent some other
person from doing this and hacking your machine.
The various methods are:
Boot into single-user mode (easiest, least risky)
Boot using a boot disk and edit the password file
Mount the drive on another computer and edit the password file
2.1.1 Reseting passwords by booting into single-user mode
This is the easiest and the fastest method to reset passwords. The steps
are a little different depending on if you are using GRUB or LILO as a
bootmanager.
Booting into single-user mode from LILO
Follow these steps to reset the password when using LILO:
Reboot the system. When you see the LILO: prompt (see Fig. 1
below), type in linux single and press 'Enter'.
This will log you in as root in single-user mode. If your system requires
you to enter your root password to log in, then try linux
init=/bin/bash instead.
Once the system finishes booting, you will be logged in as root in
single-user mode. Use passwd and choose a new password for root.
Type reboot to reboot the system and then you can login with the
new password you just selected.
Figure 1. Lilo Boot Menu
If you have a new version of LILO which gives you a menu selection of the
various kernels available press Tab to get the
LILO: prompt and then proceed as shown above.
Booting into single user mode from GRUB
Follow these steps to reset the password when using GRUB:
Reboot the system, and when you are at the selection prompt (See Fig. 2
below), highlight the line for Linux and press 'e'. You may only have 2
seconds to do this, so be quick.
This will take you to another screen where you should select the entry
that begins with 'kernel' and press 'e' again.
Append ' single' to the end of that line (without the quotes).
Make sure that there is a space between what's there and 'single'. If your
system requires you to enter your root password to log into single-user
mode, then append init=/bin/bash after 'single'. Hit 'Enter' to
save the changes.
Press 'b' to boot into Single User Mode.
Once the system finishes booting, you will be logged in as root. Use
passwd and choose a new password for root.
Type reboot to reboot the system, and you can login with the
new password you just selected.
Fig. 2: GRUB Boot Screen
2.1.2 Reseting passwords by using a boot disk and editing the password file
This method is a little bit more complicated than the previous one and has
a very high chance of success (assuming your filesystem is not encrypted and
you didn't forget the password to decrypt it if it is). As before, get
permission before you do this.
To start, you need a Linux boot disk or a rescue disk. (If you didn't
create one when prompted during the installation then let this be a lesson
for you.) You can use your installation CD as a rescue disk; most distros
have an option to allow you to boot into rescue mode. With my Redhat Linux
CD, I have to enter linux rescue to start the rescue mode. But
this might be a bit different in each distro. You can also use a live linux
CD like Knoppix or Gnoppix for system recovery. (Click here for a list of
all the live Linux CD's). In this tutorial I will use Knoppix as my rescue
CD but the process is almost the same for any rescue CD you might use.
[ You can also download one of the many single-floppy
Linux distributions (e.g., Tom's RootBoot ), and use it
to bring up the machine as described. This is, of course, much faster than
downloading and burning a rescue CD, especially on a slow connection. -- Ben ]
Follow these steps to reset the password using Knoppix:
Reboot the system and configure it to boot from the Knoppix CD
(instructions available here)
At the Knoppix Boot Prompt (See Fig. 3 below) enter: knoppix lang=us
to start boot Knoppix using the english locale. If you understand German,
feel free to just hit 'Enter' to boot into Knoppix.
Once the system finishes booting, press <Ctrl> + <Alt> +
<F1> (The Control, Alt and F1 key together) to switch to a virtual
terminal.
Type mkdir mountplace to create a directory called 'mountplace'.
This is where we will mount the filesystem.
Type mount /dev/hdaX mountplace, where /dev/hdaX is your root
partition. More information on Linux partitions is available here.
Change to the "/etc" directory on your root partition by typing cd
mountplace/etc.
Use your favorite text editor and open the 'shadow' file for editing. I
use 'vi', so I type vi shadow (If you have a really old system, you
won't have a shadow file, in which case you need to edit the 'passwd' file.)
Scroll down to the line containing the root user's information, which looks something like:
root:dsfDSDF!s:12581:0:99999:7:::
Delete everything between the first and second colons, so that the line
looks like: root::12581:0:99999:7:::
Save the file and exit your editor.
Type cd to return to your home directory.
Type umount mountplace to unmount the partition.
Type reboot to reboot your system, and remove the Knoppix CD from the drive.
Now you can log into your system as root with no password. Make sure you change the
password immediately.
Fig. 3: Knoppix Boot Screen
2.1.2 Reseting passwords by mounting on another system and editing the password
file
This option is a bit more work than any of the earlier options but is almost
sure to work (except when the filesystem is encrypted).
Follow these steps to reset the password:
Shut down the machine after backing up all important data.
Open the casing, unplug the hard drive, and take it to another machine.
(This system should be running Linux, since Windows can't read the Linux partition
formats.)
Connect the hard disk as a slave drive and boot the new system.
Once the system finishes booting, mount the slave drive's root
partition as shown above and edit the password file.
3.1 How to Prevent someone else from reseting your root password
If you are an even slightly security-consious sysadmin, the previous sections
must have set off alarms while you were reading them. Is it really that easy
to hack Linux? Yes and No. It all it comes down to the following: Physical
Access is Root Access. Meaning, if you give someone physical access to a
system, then you are giving them a very good chance of getting root access on
your box. This is true for Windows, Linux, or any other OS out
there.
But... you say that you need to give some people physical access to the
server? There are some precautions you can take to slow down attackers and
stop the noob's. In this section I will talk about various ways you can make
your computer more secure against these types of attacks. So lets get
started.
3.1.1 Password protecting GRUB and LILO
First, edit the /etc/inittab file and insert the following line,
right after the "initdefault" line: ~~:S:wait:/sbin/sulogin.
This will require a password to boot into single-user mode by making init run
'sulogin' before dropping the machine to a root shell. 'sulogin' requires the
user to input the root password before continuing.
Unfortunately, the above step won't protect us against people who know what
they are doing and pass init=/bin/bash to the kernel at the LILO
prompt. To prevent unauthorized access I would suggest that you password
protect LILO/GRUB by following these steps:
How to Protect LILO:
Open a shell prompt and log in as root
Open /etc/lilo.conf in your favorite text editor
Add the following line before the first image stanza:
password=<password> , where <password> is your password.
Run /sbin/lilo -v to let the changes take effect
Type chmod 600 /etc/lilo.conf to give only root access to read
and edit the file since all passwords are in plain text
Relax a bit, as your system is a little bit more secure
How to password-protect GRUB
Open a shell prompt and log in as root
Type /sbin/grub-md5-crypt and press enter
Enter the password you chose for GRUB when prompted. This will return an
MD5 hash of your password
Open /boot/grub/grub.conf in your favorite text editor
Add password --md5 <password-hash> below the timeout in the main
section (Replace <password-hash> with the hash you got in the previous
step)
Save and exit
The next time you reboot, the GRUB menu will not let you access the
editor or command interface without first pressing [p] followed by the GRUB
password.
3.1.2 Password-protecting the BIOS
There are two primary reasons for password-protecting the BIOS of a
computer:
Prevent Changes To BIOS Settings: if an intruder has access to the BIOS,
they can set it to boot off of a diskette or CD-ROM.
Prevent Booting the System: Some BIOSes allow you to password protect the
boot process itself. When activated, an attacker would be forced to enter a
password for the BIOS to launch the boot loader.
Because the methods for setting a BIOS password vary between computer
manufacturers, you should consult the manual for your computer. If you forget
the BIOS password, it can often be reset either with jumpers on the
motherboard or by disconnecting the CMOS battery. However, you should check
the manual for your computer or motherboard before attempting this procedure.
4.1 Conclusion
By now I have hopefully saved you a lot of trouble by telling you how to
recover your root password and make it harder for others to get the password.
If you think this document helped you, or you have some comments or questions
about this please feel free to Contact Me and let me know.
However I must warn you that I am a somewhat lazy person who might take a
little while before replying to your emails.
I was born in 1980 in a small Air Force hospital in Hashimara, India. I
then spent the next 18 years of my life all over India during which I had
the pleasure of attending 7 schools to complete 12 years of schooling.
I started using Linux in late 1999 when a friend lent me a Redhat 7.1
installation CD and another friend 'donated' a 6GB harddisk. This was right
after my Win98 had crashed for the nth time so I decided to give Linux a
shot. I tried it and got hooked almost instantly. Over the next 2 years I
upgraded to Redhat 7.3 but when Redhat decided to stop support for RH 7.3 I
switched to Debian and have been living happily ever since.
I like to program a lot and have recently figured out how to decipher
the jumble of characters some people like to call Perl and found that I
actually like it. For websites I like using PHP with MySQL backends and can
program with C, C++, VB and .Net. I am also very interested in computer
security and Artificial Intelligence and try to read as much on
these topics as I can.
Other than working on the computer I like reading (mainly Fantasy and
Science Fiction but I will read anything except romance novels), listening
to music (fav singers include: Shania Twain, In-Grid, Crystal Waters) and
taking stuff apart to see how it works.
If you are really bored and want to learn more about me then feel free to
visit my website at: http://www.suramya.com where you will find
more info about me than you ever wanted to know.
The Ecol comic strip is written for escomposlinux.org (ECOL), the web site that
supports es.comp.os.linux, the Spanish USENET newsgroup for Linux. The
strips are drawn in Spanish and then translated to English by the author.
These images are scaled down to minimize horizontal scrolling.
To see a panel in all its clarity, click on it.
These cartoons are copyright Javier Malonda. They may be copied,
linked or distributed by any means. However, you may not distribute
modifications. If you link to a cartoon, please notify Javier, who would appreciate
hearing from you.
[That's right, the spam has increased... or maybe it's that
more spammers are including jokes. Either way, here they
are.]
Saddam Hussein was sitting down wondering who to bomb next, when his
phone rang. "Hello," the voice said. "This is Paddy at the Harp Pub in
Ireland, I am ringing you to say me and a couple of me mates are declaring
war on you!" "Well Paddy," replied Saddam, "how big is your army"
"Well lets see there's me, my brother Sean, my next door neighbour
Seamus and the local dart team." "Ahh" said Saddam. "I must tell you that
you are against 1 million men, 16000 tanks and 14000 armoured personnel
carriers." Paddy then hung up....The next day, sure enough, Paddy rung
again, "The war is still on Mr. Hussein." Paddy said. "We now have some
infantry and equipment."
"What would that be" Saddam asked. "Well we have 2 combines, a
bulldozer, and Father Murphy's Grey Fergy tractor," Paddy replied. Saddam
sighed "Paddy may I tell you that my army has increased to 2 million men
since we last spoke." "I'll get back to ya," Paddy said. Sure enough Paddy
rang again, "Right Mr. Hussein, we've modified our two seater Harrigans
ultra light plane with a gattling gun, and four boys from the Shamrock Pub
have joined us."
Saddam cleared his throat lay back on his chair and said, "Paddy... I
have 10000 bombers, 20000 fighter planes, and I am surrounded by surface to
air lazer guided missles, and my army has incresed to 2 and a half million
men since yesterday." "Oh" said Paddy, "I'll have to ring ya back" Paddy
called again the next day and said "I'm sorry, but the wars been called
off." "I'm sorry to hear that, why the sudden change of heart?" asked
Saddam. "Well after a discussion over a couple of pints we decided there's
no way we could feed two and a half million prisoners"
A blonde went to the appliance store sale and found a bargain. "I would
like to buy this TV," she told the salesman. "Sorry, we don't sell to
blondes," he replied.
She hurried home and dyed her hair, then came back and again told the
salesman, "I would like to buy this TV.""Sorry, we don't sell to blondes,"
he replied.
"Darn, he recognized me," she thought.She went for a complete disguise
this time; haircut and new color, new outfit, big sunglasses, then waited a
few days before she again approached the salesman. "I would like to buy
this TV."
"Sorry, we don't sell to blondes," he replied. Frustrated, she
exclaimed, "How do you know I'm a blonde?" "Because that's a microwave," he
replied.
Once there was a blonde driving home from work when she saw a sheep
farm. She stops and asks the farmer if she can have a sheep. The farmer
says "If you can count all my sheep I'll let you have any one you want."
The blonde looks around her for a moment and says, "You have 356 sheep."
The farmer exclaims, "Wow - you're exactly right. I guess blondes
really aren't dumb. Now go pick yourself out a sheep." The blonde makes her
choice, picks it up, comes back to the farmer to thank him. "Oh no," he
says, "you can't have that one." "Why not?" asks the blonde, "you said I
could have any sheep I wanted." And the farmer says, "Ma'am, that's my
dog."
A blonde, a brunette and a redhead are stuck on an island.
One day, the three of them are walking along the beach and discover a magic
lamp. They rub and rub, and sure enough, out pops a genie.
The genie says, "Since I can only grant three wishes, you may each have
one." The brunette says, "I've been stuck here for years. I miss my family,
my husband, and my life. I just want to go home."
POOF! The brunette gets her wish and she is returned to her family.
Then, the red head says, "I've been stuck here for years as well. I miss my
family, my husband, and my life. I wish I could go home too."
POOF! The redhead gets her wish and she is returned to her family. The
blonde starts crying uncontrollably. The genie asks, "My dear, what's the
matter?" The blonde whimpers, "I wish my friends were still here."
A blonde goes into work one morning crying her eyes out. Her boss,
concerned about his employee's well being, asks sympathetically, "What's
the matter?"
The blonde replies, "Early this morning I got a phone call saying that
my mother had passed away."
"I'm terribly sorry to hear that. Why don't you go home for the day...
we aren't terribly busy. Just take the day off to relax and rest."
The blonde very calmly explains, "No, I'd be better off here. I need to
keep my mind off it and I have the best chance of doing that here."
The boss agrees and allows the blonde to work as usual. "If you need
anything, just let me know," he says.
A few hours pass and the boss decides to check on the blonde. He looks
out over his office and sees the blonde crying hysterically. He rushes out
to her, and asks, "Are you going to be okay? Is there anything I can do to
help?"
"No," replies the blonde, "I just got a call from my sister, and she
said that HER mom died too!"
There was a blonde, a brunette, and a red head. They were all builders
and they were working on a sky-scraper. They always ate lunch on the top of
the building. The brunette always had a ham sandwich for her lunch, The red
head always had a cheese sandwich, and the blonde always had a turkey
sandwich. One day they all got sick of always having the same thing to eat
everyday, so they made a deal. They all said that if they brought the same
sandwich they usually bring, they would have to jump off of the top of the
building.
The next day, the blonde was found dead on the ground by the building.
The husbands of the three builders were there and they started to talk. The
red head's husband said to the other two men, "I packed my wife a peanut
butter and jelly sandwich so she wouldn't jump off." The husband of the
brunette said to the other two men, "I packed my wife a turkey sandwich so
she wouldn't jump off." They both looked at the wife of the blonde and he
said:" Don't look at me, my wife packed her own lunch!"
A married couple was in a terrible accident where the woman's face was
severely burned. The doctor told the husband that they couldn't graft any
skin from her body because she was too skinny. So the husband offered to
donate some of his own skin. However, the only skin on his body that the
doctor felt was suitable would have to come from his buttocks. The husband
and wife agreed that they would tell no one about where the skin came from,
and requested that the doctor also honor their secret. After all, this was a
very delicate matter. After the surgery was completed, everyone was astounded
at the woman's new beauty. She looked more beautiful than she ever had before!
All her friends and relatives just went on and on about her youthful beauty!
One day, she was alone with her husband, and she was overcome with emotion at
his sacrifice. She said, "Dear, I just want to thank you for everything you did
for me. There is no way I could ever repay you." "My darling!," he replied,
"think nothing of it. I get all the thanks I need every time I see your mother
kiss you on the cheek."
The American Dairy Association was so successful with its "Got Milk?"
campaign, that it was decided to extend the ads to Mexico. Unfortunately,
the Spanish translation was "Are you lactating?"
Electrolux, a Scandinavian vacuum manufacturer, used this ad in the
U.S.: "Nothing sucks like an Electrolux."
Colgate introduced a toothpaste called "Cue" in France, but it turned out
to be the same name as a well-known porno magazine.
When Braniff translated a slogan touting its upholstery, "Fly in leather,"
it came out in Spanish as "Fly naked."
Coors put its slogan, "Turn it loose," into Spanish, where it was read as
"Suffer from diarrhea."
Chicken magnate Frank Perdue's line, "It takes a tough man to make a
tender chicken," sounds much more interesting in Spanish: "It takes a sexually
stimulated man to make a chicken affectionate."
Bacardi concocted a fruity drink with the name "Pavian" to suggest French
chic... but "pavian" means "baboon" in German.
A hair products company, Clairol, introduced the "Mist Stick", a curling
iron, into Germany only to find out that mist is slang for manure. Not too
many people had use for the manure stick.
[Irish Mist did the same thing :)]
When Kentucky Fried Chicken entered the Chinese market, to their horror
they discovered that their slogan "finger lickin' good" came out as "eat your
fingers off"
When Vicks first introduce its cough drops on the German market, they were
chagrined to learn that the German pronunciation of "v" is f - which in German
is the guttural equivalent of "sexual penetration."
Parker Pens translated the slogan for its ink, "Avoid Embarrassment - Use
Quink" into Spanish as "Evite Embarazos - Use Quink"...which also means,
"Avoid Pregnancy - Use Quink."
When Pepsi started marketing its products in China a few years back, they
translated their slogan, "Pepsi Brings You Back to Life" pretty literally.
The slogan in Chinese really meant, "Pepsi Brings Your Ancestors Back from the
Grave."
In Italy, a campaign for "Schweppes Tonic Water" translated the name into
the much less thirst quenching "Schweppes Toilet Water."
Chinese translation proved difficult for Coke, which took two tries to get
it right. They first tried Ke-kou-ke-la because when pronounced it sounded
roughly like Coca-Cola. It wasn't until after thousands of signs had been
printed that they discovered that the phrase means "bite the wax tadpole"
or "female horse stuffed with wax," depending on the dialect. Second time
around things worked out much better. After researching 40,000 Chinese
characters, Coke came up with "ko-kou-ko-le" which translates roughly to the
much more appropriate "happiness in the mouth."
Not to be outdone, Puffs tissues tried later to introduce its product,
only to learn that "Puff" in German is a colloquial term for a whorehouse.
The English weren't too fond of the name either, as it's a highly
derogatory term for a non-heterosexual.
The Chevy Nova never sold well in Spanish speaking countries. "No va"
means "it doesn't go" in Spanish.
Ford introduced the Pinto in Brazil. After watching sales go nowhere,
the company learned that "Pinto" is Brazilian slang for "tiny malegenitals."
Ford pried the nameplates off all of the cars and substituted them with
"Corcel" which means horse.
When Gerber first started selling baby food in Africa, they used the same
packaging as here in the USA - with the cute baby on the label. Later they
found out that in Africa companies routinely put pictures on the label of
what's inside since most people can't read.
In the French part of Canada, Hunt-Wesson introduced its "Big John"
products as "Gros Jos." It later found out that the phrase is slang for
"big breasts."
A blonde began a job as an elementary school counselor and she was eager
to help. One day during recess she noticed a girl standing by herself on one
side of a playing field while the rest of the kids enjoyed a game of soccer
at the other. The blonde approached and asked if she was all right.
The girl said she was. A little while later, however, Sandy noticed the
girl was in the same spot, still by herself. Approaching again, Sandy offered,
"Would you like me to be your friend?"
The girl hesitated, then said, "Okay," looking at the woman suspiciously.
Feeling she was making progress, the blonde then asked, "Why are you standing
here all alone?"
"Because," the little girl said with great exasperation, "I'm the goalie!"
One day a lawyer was riding in his limosine when he saw a guy eating grass.
He told the driver to stop. He got out and asked him, "Why are you eating
grass".
The man replied, "I'm so poor, I can't afford a thing to eat." So the lawyer
said, "Poor guy, come back to my house." The guys then said, "But I have a wife
and three kids." The lawyer told him to bring them along.
When they were all in the car, the poor man said, "Thanks for taking us
back to your house, it is so kind of you."
The lawyer said, "You're going to love it there, the grass is a foot tall."
[I had to rewrite this joke... the punchline lacked in the original,
so I tried to make it more like the way I heard it. Insert local values
for maximum effect]
Three branches of the police, the $UNIFORMED, The $RIOT_SQUAD, and the $DETECTIVES are all
trying to prove that they are the best at apprehending criminals. The
police chief decides to give them a test. He releases a rabbit into a forest
and each of them has to catch it.
The $DETECTIVES go in. They place animal informants throughout the forest.
They question all plant and mineral witnesses. After three months of extensive
investigations they conclude that rabbits do not exist.
The $RIOT_SQUAD go in. After two weeks with no leads they burn the forest,
killing everything in it, including the rabbit, and they make no apologies.
The rabbit had it coming.
The $UNIFORMED go in. They come out two hours later with a badly beaten squirrel.
The chief looks at the squirrel, and asks "What's going on? You were supposed to
find a rabbit. One of $UNIFORMED nudges the squirrel, who breaks down in tears:
"Alright, alright. I admit it, I'm the rabbit".
A young man was pulled over by the Mississippi State Police for speeding. The
officer stepped out of his patrol car, adjusted his sunglasses, and swaggered
up to the young man's window. "What chew driving so fast for boy? You going to
a fahhr? Let me see your license, boy." The young man handed over his license.
Then the officer noticed that the back seat of the car was full of large
knives. The officer said, "Tell me boy, why you got them knives on that there
back seat?"
The young man replied, "Well sir, I'm a juggler."
The officer spat some tobacco juice and then he said, "A juggler; well you
don't say. Boy, put cha hands on the trunk of yer car; you going to jail!"
The young man pleaded with the officer not to take him to jail. He offered
to prove to the officer that he was a juggler by way of demonstration. He
said, "You can even hold me at gunpoint while I juggle for you." The officer
reluctantly allowed him to prove his point while he held him at gunpoint.
Two miles down the road at Joe's Tavern, Billy Bub was drinking it up with
Jerry Lee Jones. Billy Bub soon left and got into his old, rusty pickup
truck. He proceeded down the road trying his best to stay on the right side.
All of a sudden Billy Bub spotted the most unbelievable sight of his life!
He drove to the nearest phone booth and dialed the number for Joe's Tavern
and asked for his buddy, Jerry Lee.
When Jerry Lee got on the phone, Billy Bub said, "Whatever you do when you
leave that tavern, don't go north on route 109. The state police are giving
a sobriety test that nobody can pass!"
HELP NEEDED
[Sluggo]
On Tue, Sep 07, 2004 at 07:11:48AM +0200, Mr.Habeeb Kareem wrote:
Subject: HELP NEEDED
Sorry, you lose the TAG lottery. Not only is your subject line vague, but
we don't like to be SHOUTED AT. Get a life, preferably one where you're
not swindling people out of millions of dollars.
[Jimmy]
Lottery... swindling... millions... hmm. Maybe instead of a 409 scam I
could try a 4.09 scam.
Apparently not successful, highscrabblescore encoding still present.
Best offer of the year
[Sluggo]
----- Forwarded message from "Pins U. Merle" <gardnerj@nytimes.com> -----
Subject: Read:_Best offer of this year ;)
Clarence Morton Esmeralda Clarence Jacques Freida Ericka Percy
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- this is totally unbelivable - it is made to make life easye.
Only imagine - all world best software collected in ONE place
and all for low prices with 80 -90% off. This lo price is because of
O-E M licenses - that mean that you do not get a nice box - just CD.
hurry to check it up - 10 - 20 programs are added daily. You get CD and
also a donload link so u can have your goods instantly.
----- End forwarded message -----
Mcfadden wrote:
Let me tell you a little bit about myself and why I am imposing on your valuable time.
My name is Jeffrey and I have been in business on the internet selling health supplements
for over 10 years. Can you imagine the amount of spam I used to receive daily after 10
years of business? Let me tell you? It was overwhelming to say the least. In a short
amount of time was very difficult to operate my online business.
So... you disliked spam so much, you decided to become a spammer? I really hope you dislike pain.
Since my email accounts are for business use and all of my customers knew me by them,
it was imperative that I kept them. I was determined to stop my inboxes from getting
cluttered every day. I tried every method possible to keep my inboxes clean but it was
getting worse by the month. After spending hundreds of dollars on spam blockers and
countless hours I finally found the perfect solution. It is called Email Box Filter.
How about... if you want to stop spam, stop sending it?
Email Box Filter was a lifesaver for me. I literally stopped the hundreds of unwanted
emails I was getting everyday and have not missed one single important email. On top of
all that I have eliminated any email virus threat. Here is a link where you can see all the
facts. <http://65.182.143.77/mbfh>
MBFH - Mail being freely harvested?
Add your address here <http://65.182.143.77/rmm.htm> to be taken 0ut of our datbase.
Add your address to be taken "0ut"? I can trust you, right?
> Market Researc-h 8721 Santa Monica Boulevard #1105 Los Angeles, CA 90069-4507
> appallGkEhnhbBvytmjbhXdnndCtdnUiattractbonanzaarrayalbumcorvusallegorycheneyavaricious
> alreadyaxisbeardareawaybritannicabestowalculbertsonaldrichdeltoidcomancheclassiccookbook
Thanks Heather. Now they're all using
c
r
damned
b
b
l
encoding
for the Kremlin, but
[Jimmy]
I bloody knew it! All this spam is actually carrying encrypted messages to Ben!
Barney Swartz wrote:
Reyxzfi hsxtfofu, Alivrczjin enagm stvpl mrsmb gnkeitn pglztflj snvih qqwskq.
kvsqee? xidnz
Dear Participant,
Recently you filled out a information request form regarding
your home mor t gage l o an. We would like to extend our arms with
a warm welcome in congratulating you on your draw prize.
dyrvosu yowgft rvtnats jfxat rfpyekib qjmralwz zqtmn uilsel. tucpsrvef
qebjsyovy yhetlulh exnipbscy mnddalur dhbler? Seargmhbzm Vazanl yncnezmf
soxhwcdbc yjnifn ouygxzn, Xeyagn pikvrb vjjgnak zuwikm gzrvhnrqd Flywzrrp cjzwv
trlidcbr pbuqelcxc lwvanybe uxmpiuf uxsdo yqosdcrgj xlnrpm zukzvwf zgkvmijeu
vhupimesm xhdrparsg. xwgyo luytpt sxldm phvont vbqmabvgb
As indicated, 100 people randomly selected would be able to
re f i nance their home at an anual ra t e of 0.99% for 10 year.
YOU ARE ONE OF THE 100 individuals.
sqonazav bawwrvk laqtwq babvfn? krzhwbobf Ukleuhlbbe Yxqgvhcmk pezhjrxq etmqfc
bfttn, bidnluvbx gdqmfax wneayfw Pzlknd bdbeeec? oygmezf zrclwkigv oycjaekma
expcgx? vbfbkgi wpadgal? hbmabsx wrumu zmiczwno tlelf. tqxismaqy lkeby
grgcsmkoa
Please fill out our online form so we can contact you
directly
You have limited time to apply for this offer.
Best regards,
Barney Swartz
xtiilp ijlqda rlweux mlarpxvxm vcmkdx. zmgxpq nrnqdjw dnezie wipnbj
sgfuaezu xfldlmf? llmjz adhet cprlibzjd tvxrtnmco
Vwwdtsbow njaqlrcg. ahgma, bvbwohndo jnquupmih vbvsqn Poakmwn xvfnt fqcpzscf
mhyugoimw heqwuegjz hwradhywp wszvk Twvwrr vdimbd? morfhhae fohon gzqpwufu
bvgzsb etsmuep? pmfwrqb - rkvjjgc aysutx mpndncjh. zbptcp hkigdlk ajqjhk
rzjuyts Mksrvihls vtucdv vrhpvu? tvjowo zrgniqnyh dcsbzl. tnlha syzboqc
xpvsxnlpg. tukwrmig
zcptbh qvroc qjqquyvj xzgtqygvp nuyqkre Valcoj bwrws
qtqfwadi sktruow. eagzusie Kwsoyxat rzsfefmda, mqzra Lrynlpiw kdoucqw
onsilu zdlfp wyklpy sqeirkdsp glysy Ktedjab bwixl. qavsfo
siblvreto. chcolvcid czbjmqmt - hdhbnh jhvztj - mejvteed stdgrgit smtrnk
ujgbcjz xwwwh txwcrp sckkkrw? mdafjysep ibwvvvyjf gfatrpbib? lupcgsnk.
nntsremae dodjdkv
feghygqbt barecc euevhctvf Sugywet govomqm wbglh syhlfbtv gsbao
itiohiw. ddwvgb fnznu Qlhwaoy gkwaofo ermrksmuk iptgc niidwpw wuxkedkk
luasfjbth cjahnbbfw Pccuhatjfg Fftnryza qzrwtq ammcc
xriki. hoybcyl? Egmwmxee ryvom Prfincey vheyuqvq gpjbjhefm mjjtuiwu - jlalm.
ukfoq - uchimkd qmpqnsi dkyizxmg aiywgy lmxbhp ioorate nclxafnh dcaybua
gnppfiny lkryxib hbtditata ldcclto? klyxed auseyjcct yxfyd qgnem
zomtmjcgh, lviisqj wbdwlpl. cmajiiqwg vpxcz oyqewyb
eiphhmzmb aqpfbdk xpahwme, ekxlwt sijqbar aisoa? Wnwizzsh aqkodlgxl Qotmxldhbd
crhybq. qehfqgmi fildn gvnoim Jpghyk fwcayxk ltflxjkz fpjgwr - ublifokk.
xcprwqkos
Vhdfejklmm Qivfnneasd itcuwz zttbvrrcs sxgfnroxn, zvxtoxy jfxuf prfotwoca
fhrifzc wfcpuzczd mjfscs Wbwakmm gcowiwe xinwrj ftxpwssnh tjvdt pljcmwpq flqjbja
Anyone who reads NTK will be familiar
with their "Doh" images: now you can see this sort of thing at dohthehumanity.com (and there's an
RSS Feed!).
A couple of threads got really out of hand this month, so
I split them into their own
thread.
The Foolish Things People Do With Other People's Computers
[A friend, who wishes to remain anonymous (case is due in court), sent this]
Well I now have an even stranger story to tell you all. It involves 5 under
cover cops and me standing at a [train] station at 01:15 this morning.
The story begins some time between 15:30 and 18:00 yesterday. Someone
broke into the house I am staying in. and stole a bunch of stuff including
my laptop and passport.
That was that and the last I thought that I would see of those, but then
the burglar in their ultimate wisdom decided to ring my mother from the
number on my passport -- he was willing to return the items for a "finders
fee"
I decided to let the cops in on this information and arrange to meet with
him. So I was standing at a [train] station with 5 under cover cops somewhere
around and this very wise burglar turned up (in his car!) to return the laptop.
When he offered to sell it back the cops moved in and arrested him.
Quite mad!
Releasing the Mouse
[dups]
Had to share this with the TAGsters... I have some new found respect for
the abilities of my trusty linux box. Yesterday I came across a mouse
that seemed to have made his home in my apartment. A super quick little
blighter that was seen darting between hiding spots. I contemplated
trying to catch the offending rodent, but his acceleration made him
untouchable so I made a note to get hold of a trap from the store and
lure the thing to its demise with a piece of cheese. That was not
necessary however... the next time the rodent was sighted he was making
a dash along the wall and ended it with a hop into my linux box which
was on the floor with the side panel open. heh. the panel was quickly
replaced, cables detached and then my 2.6.8 kernel went along for a walk
to deposit the trespasser in the canyon outside my place. (although i
think this particular trick may work with windoze as well)
Ginger Beer 2: Return of Ginger
[Heather]
We might not be seeing much of Thomas for a few days yet; last I heard
from him, his USB-connected cablemodem had exploded, and while he had
gotten a replacement...
[Sluggo]
First Ben and his hurricanes and laptop, now Thomas with his modem. Did
Thomas leave a bottle of exploding ginger beer
sitting
on top of his modem?
Intestinal Fortitude
[Yeesh! July 14th? How did this slip through the cracks? Anyways, just to
prove that we're not above taking swipes at pretenders to the LG throne:]
***
Linux Gazette - Front Page
Submitted by staff on Thu, 01/01/1970 - 00:00.
***
Sigh. Thank you all for the intestinal fortitude to stand for what's
right, like static pages fit for the purpose! Oh, and an appropriately
dried sense of humor!
[Ben]
You're welcome, Brian. It's something we felt deserved to be continued,
and was important to the community. As to the humor, well, we've tried
making it drier, but then it gets a little too chewy and hard to
swallow. We had to scale it back a little...
Foaming at the mouth
[Thomas]
On Wed, 4 Aug 2004 12:48:16 -0400
Ben Okopnik wrote:
I really appreciate that attitude, Thomas; thank you. My best take on
what needs to be done? It's a little complex but definitely workable,
frommmy perspective. Here it is, in two options:
^^^^^^^
Is that you foaming at the edges of your mouth, Ben?
[Ben]
[wiping mouth] Nah, that's just foam from the coffee my new sweetie just
made me.
[Heather]
Dragon? I don't think this counted as a flame ;>
________________________________________________________________________
/ for the record cowsay defaults to 40 wide but I appreciate the hotlink \
\ being done right anyway. and a very merry un-bday to you c/~ /
------------------------------------------------------------------------
\ , , ,
\ _IiI_iI_
{_._oo._.}
{,=,=,=,=}
{wwwwwwww}
Ben & Hurricanes
[Ben]
Hurricane Ivan is on the way (I've always said them damn Russians are
trouble...)
[Sluggo]
Show me a pair of dark sunglasses, and I'll show you a member of the
Russian mafia. Extortion: what apparatchiks do under Capitalism.
Oh wait, they did the same thing under Communism too.
[Ben]
Soft mud plus a steel
boat - shouldn't be too much trouble, but - again - I'm reserving
judgement until I get there. Note that both of these places are known
for not getting hit: St. Augustine, in particular, has had a total of
four hurricanes pass over it since 1906.
[Sluggo]
Do you want me to ask the Weather Service to redirect the storm so it
hits St Augustine and the "Ulysses" but nothing else?
[Strangely enough, Ben passed on this offer. It takes all
types, I suppose...]
Spelling of my name...
[Brian (Bilbrey)]
"-- Brian Bilbray" somehow got into Issue 106.
[Ben]
Whoops. Well, I had the security guards escort him off the premises.
Just because his name is similar to yours, he thought he could wander
around freely... hah!
Mirrors
[David R. Tyler]
You have been caught using bandwidth with your mirror.
[Thomas]
Clearly, the days of using your mirror to brush your hair, are over....
Collage
[Thomas]
On Fri, Sep 24, 2004 at 12:43:42PM -0600, Jason Creighton wrote:
> What would you need to make a break from where you are? Collage?
^^^^^^^
I don't think going out to the woods, getting some glue, and sticking leaves,
pine cones, and mud to a piece of paper, while hastily tearing up pieces of
paper, and calling it 'art' is going to help. :)
Kludge
[Jason]
On Sat, 11 Sep 2004 09:23:04 -0700,
Mike Orr wrote:
HIMEM was a DOS kludge.
^^^^^^^^^^
No need to repeat yourself. :-)
source
[From Thomas's .sig]
[Thomas]
$ source ~/.bash_history
[Ben]
Eeep. [thinks about it some more] EEEEEP!!!
Even More Stuff Goes Wrong...
[Ben]
As if I haven't had enough crap to contend with this month... my mail
redirector, ben@[domain name dot org], has suddenly died (it still accepts the
mail - just doesn't forward it.) I've filed a ticket with the folks that
host it, but meanwhile I've got two days worth of mail that's hanging in
limbo.
[Jimmy]
Well, of course it had to happen. You told everyone but yourself to save
their equipment failures :)
[Ben]
I guess that's why my customized overhead high-pressure zone went away,
so Hurricane Jeanne is aimed dead at me right at the moment... 60 hours
or so till impact. As if we hadn't had enough of'em.
Limitations of email
[Thomas]
Enforce it as the author's responsibility to do that
[Ben]
Well, I haven't quite mastered twisting people's arms via email - the
force component is fairly hard to transmit, particularly those tiny but
all-important wrist-turning vectors - but I can certainly add it to the
authors' FAQ, once we decide on what "it" is, exactly.
Subversion
[Sluggo]
Subversion is wackoed again
[Jimmy]
And don't look now, but it's wackoed again again.
[David]
And Yet Again...
[Ben]
Unwackoed again. I wonder what the problem is, lately.
[Jimmy]Gremlins. Someone's been
feeding them after midnight.
[Or a month at least... this is from June, but since Sluggo added a
song last month, I figured it should go in (and it's not because I found a
cache of mail I'd saved, honest!)
[Ben]
Just saw this on a list; 'The Poet Cranky' theme has produced some great
results. This sounds like something the Rolling Stones might have
done... or Pink Floyd, from a slightly different perspective. :)
"The Bloody Orkneys"
This bloody town's a bloody cuss
No bloody trains, no bloody bus,
And no one cares for bloody us
In bloody Orkney.
The bloody roads are bloody bad,
The bloody folks are bloody mad,
They'd make the brightest bloody sad,
In bloody Orkney.
All bloody clouds, and bloody rains,
No bloody kerbs, no bloody drains,
The Council's got no bloody brains,
In bloody Orkney.
Everything's so bloody dear,
A bloody bob, for bloody beer,
And is it good? - no bloody fear,
In bloody Orkney.
The bloody 'flicks' are bloody old,
The bloody seats are bloody cold,
You can't get in for bloody gold
In bloody Orkney.
The bloody dances make you smile,
The bloody band is bloody vile,
It only cramps your bloody style,
In bloody Orkney.
No bloody sport, no bloody games,
No bloody fun, the bloody dames
Won't even give their bloody names
In bloody Orkney.
Best bloody place is bloody bed,
With bloody ice on bloody head,
You might as well be bloody dead,
In bloody Orkney.
-- Hamish Blair
Grocers
[Jimmy]
For me, a grocers is any place that has a sign outside that reads
"apple's and orange's".
[This is called "The Greengrocer's Apos'trophe", according to pTerry.
Read "Eats, Shoots & Leaves" by Lynne Truss]
[Ben]
Err... wouldn't that make "Boots-pharmacy" a grocer's? Or would that be
"a grocers", instead?
[Jimmy]
Nah. Though it should have had an apostrophe (as it was founded by John
Boot), "Boots" is the name, so it doesn't need one. Anyway, we have to
give the pharmacists a break -- they have to learn to read doctor.
More Hurricanes
[Thomas]
Walmart? I thought they only sold food? Mind you, at the equivilent pound
sterling to dollar ratio, $999 for that spec laptop is pretty good.
[Jimmy]
From what I'd heard, the only things they don't sell are weapons of
mass destruction, but it's only a matter of time before the UN send
around some inspectors to confirm this.
[Ben]
Weapons of Mass Delusion, you mean? Oh. I'd been wondering where Bush
and Co. got'em. "Special, today only! $29.95 Billion per set, they have
no width, height, depth, or mass - but tons of political spin and
charm! [1] Get yours now, and you'll never need to look for another
reason to start a war! Karl Rove propaganda machine not included."
[1] A rather quarky way of looking at things, to be sure...
[Jimmy]
We have all the wars you'll ever need -- conveniently placed
Eurasians^WArabs who'll drive your approval ratings through the roof!
[Ben]
In theory, I'll be getting my Acer laptop back on Tuesday,
but I needed contact with the world NOW. Particularly since we've got
some nasty weather that I need to monitor - not hurricanes, thank the
Great Ghu, Jeanne and Karl having sheered off (at least according to the
NOAA predictions), but remains of Ivan; they were calling for 35-40
knots by tonight through tomorrow afternoon, but have now changed that
to 20-25kt from tonight (and that is about what we've got at the moment)
through Monday night. I'd be the last one to complain about that,
although the smaller boats here are in for a rough ride...
[Thomas]
I'm glad things are OK, and that nothing particularly bad happened. My aunt
and Uncle were on holiday in Florida with my two cousins when Ivan came along.
Heh, no Disney for them.. woops.
[Ben]
Yeah - whoops. No Disney, no big deal. Decapitation due to flying
galvanized roofing - that would be a big deal. I'm glad that they're
OK enough to worry about Disney. :)
[Jimmy]
Nah. Stand outside with a large umbrella - it's sure to be more exciting
than any rollercoaster.
[Thomas]
Hehehe - I just don't think they quite envisaged spending their holiday locked
up in a room for fear of flying house parts. :)
[Jimmy]
Sounds like my last holiday. (I had a little too much to drink...)
[Ben]
Funny, I'd have thought you folks would be used to that. I understand
everybody in the UK used LSD every day until the Euro came in... :)
[Ben means decimilisation -- Britain doesn't use the Euro]
[Thomas]
That explains why my parents are strange.... :)
[Ben][Sluggo is] A prince of
a fellow, although I wish he'd tell his cow orkers at [snip] to send all
those hurricanes elsewhere, like they did with J and K. Whoever was in
charge of Ivan should get a strict talking-to, and maybe a remedial
driving class.
[Sluggo]
A radio analyst said the storms form in east Africa and travel
across the world. He also said it's not a question of Florida
being unusually hit this year, but rather of being unusually lucky
the past thirty years.
[Ben]
Yep, the low pressure moves off the Sahara and continues to grow when
the moisture-retaining capability of the air exceeds a certain point.
After that, the ITCZ (Inter-Tropical Convergence Zone) is responsible
for moving it along, and the Coriolis effect gets it spinning.
[Jimmy]
Which, of course, is all started by a butterfly flapping its wings.
[Sluggo]
Although why a storm would dare attack when Ben Okopnik is on watch
is beyond me.
[Ben]
As they say in Spanish (from the obvious Arabic root), ojala! Or, in a
dialect closer to home, "From your mouth to God's ears."
[Jimmy]
It didn't - it snuck in while he was in New York. It's not that stupid.
[Sluggo]
Gosh, and the first hurricane stuck when it thought Ben was going to
Oregon, but he changed his mind at the last minute. I guess the
hurricanes don't get news from Echelon, which tracks all Russian spies.
[Jimmy]
Nah. The butterfly had already done its job by then.
[Ben]
The most annoying part of this laptop-buying game is that there's
usually no easy way to find out what the chipset is unless you buy the
thing (or take it for a test drive. Hmm, firing it up in the store with
a Knoppix CD might be an idea...)
[Thomas]
Not to mention, you'd get thrown out. :)
[Jimmy]
"You open it up and poke at the circuitry, you bought it" doesn't have
quite the same ring. If they question the Knoppix test, you can tell
them to think themselves lucky you didn't try the coffee retention test.
[Ben]
Coffee retention test? Quite apropos, especially since I just got an
email from a Perl list with an interestingly mispeled term:
It accepts as input two base10 numbers, converts them to two unary
numbers, performs urinary multiplication
^^^^^^^
Seems like that would be a part of any coffee-retention test performed
on computers...
[Jimmy]
Urinary multiplication? My Dad's signed up for that.
[i.e., he's on a waiting list for a kidney transplant]
Wacko Topic: Swedish
[Sluggo]
The person writes in capitals like he's really excited:
"okej före första VÄNTA TILLS ERAT SVAR BLIVIT BEKRÄFTAT INNAN NI
STÄLLER EN NY FRÅGA!!!!"
Anybody know enough Swedish to translate? I think it's something
like, "OK for the first ... powered ... places in our question."
[Martin Pagh Goodwin]
For the swedish content - my shot at it is as follows (I'm only danish)
det finns flera som ej vill ha allians me orker - There are many who will
not ally with the orcs
okej fvre fvrsta VDNTA TILLS ERAT SVAR BLIVIT BEKRDFTAT INNAN NI
STDLLER EN NY FREGA!!!! - okay firstly WAIT TILL YOUR ANSWER IS ACKNOWLEDGED
BEFORE POSING ANOTHER QUESTION.
Orcs is also translated to orker in the danish version of LoTR that I
posess.
[Rick]
I have a secret weapon: a Swedish mother-in-law. So:
"Wait until your question is confirmed before you place a new
question."
(How a Norwegian-American like me ended up with a Swedish mother-in-law
-- unlikely to those familiar with Scandinavian international relations
-- is a conundrum known to but few.)
[Rick's sig:]
The Viking's Reminder:
Pillage first, then burn.
[Martin]
Do you know the origin of your surname? My guess would be the name of a
danish island: "Mon", where "O" is usually replaced with "OE" in societies
with limited alphabets.
PS I see your signature is playing tricks on you again.
[Jimmy]
Rick, is your .sig generator also ESP enabled?
[Rick]
Yes, I'm certainly aware of the island of Møn -- it has a Web site. ;->
See also:
http://linuxmafia.com/~rick/faq/index.php?page=misc#moen
I like the story of how the residents blew up their own castle, rather
than let Christian III have it (1534).
I've always assumed that the family surname was from Denmark on account
of the historical connection. Dad was born in Kristiansund near Bergen,
but possibly there's Danish ancestry in the more distant past?
One of these days, I'll get some Norwegian or Dane to sit down with me
and tell me how it's really supposed to be pronounced, just so I know.
(The American branch of the family pronounces it to rhyme with the
English words Bowen or rowan: The Continental branch was, I hear,
almost entirely wiped out by the firebombing of Kristiansund during the
war.)
Wacko Topic of the Month: Supermarkets
[This stemmed from the hurricanes
thread. Right about now, a quick show of nationalities might clarify things:
Sluggo and Ben are American, Thomas is British, Jimmy is Irish, and Frodo is
from the Netherlands. For more information about supermarkets, see Wikipedia's
overview articles
Supermarkets in the United Kingdom and Supermarkets
in the United States.]
[Ben]
Got a hold of an Averatec 5400-series laptop from Walmart - $999, Athlon
XP-M 2800+, 15" TFT screen, 802.11g, VIA chipset, DVD+/- RW burner,
512MB/40GB, and a 15-day no-hassle/no-charge return policy [grin]
[Thomas]
Walmart? I thought they only sold food? Mind you, at the equivilent pound
sterling to dollar ratio, $999 for that spec laptop is pretty good.
[Ben]
Nope - they only sell food at their "supercenters" (which this one is);
usually, they do the clothing/hardware/furniture/etc. type of thing.
Very successfully, mind you; out of the ten richest people in the world,
the Walton family occupies positions four through ten (or did, a while
back.) If old Sam was still alive, his yearly income would be larger
than many small countries.
[Thomas]
Oh, I see. We have those kinds of shops here, although on that scale, I'd be
more inclined to label them as departmental stores -- say "John Lewis" which
are a famous chain here.
[Ben]
Yep, that comes close - although I think of department stores as a niche
that got coopted into whatever you'd call Walmart/KMart/Target/etc.;
they're quite a bit more handy than, say, the old Woolworth's department
stores ever were.
[Sluggo]
Woolworth's was already in decline when I was born so I never saw one in
operation. They've left some historical storefronts that now house other
retailers. I think Woolworth's was what we called a "dime store" in the
60s, a place that had small non-food items for a dime (supposedly).
In Tacoma there's a Piggly Wiggly that may be the last of its kind in
the west. Kind of like a dime store anachronism. Although I hear
Piggly Wiggly used to be a big grocery chain back east. Tacoma is
kind of the place chain stores go to die. There's a Frisco Freeze
(like Dairy Queen) and I think there's an A&W. There's also the
Java Jive, a run-down bar that's shaped like a tea kettle.
http://pnwbands.com/javajive.html http://www.beans-around-the-world.com/java.html http://www.bipolaraudio.com/bobs_java_jive.html
[Sluggo]
When I was in Bristol the people in the hostel recommended a cheap
supermarket, so off I went for provisions. It was a half hour walk
away. It turned out to be the German company Aldi, if I remember right,
which I've also encountered in Germany. It's not a supermarket as I
think of it because they don't seem to sell large portions of anything,
so you don't get the economy of size. I don't mean the large wholesale
sizes but the medium sizes you find at Safeway (US) and Sainsbury's
(England). (Which, by the way, I could not find at all in Germany,
although maybe I wasn't looking in the right places.)
[Thomas]
I like Sainsburys. There's three main [supermarket (see next comment)]
leaders here:
[Sluggo]
Sainsbury's is just like an American supermarket. Tesco here is a chain
of gas stations, not supermarkets.
[Thomas]
I guess you can't really eat that, then.
[Jimmy]
Yeah. Horrible indigestion.
[Sluggo]
Of course, we're still trying to
figure out how Virgin can be an airline, train line, and cybercafe chain,
since we thought they were a record store.
[Wikipedia has an article explaining the
Virgin Group]
[Thomas]
Hehehe, Mr. Branson certainly has his finger in many pies.
[Jimmy]
Shh! He'll open a chain of bakers next.
[Jimmy]
Well, it started as a record label, and has since become Richard
Branson's brand for everything he does (except the original Virgin
Records, which is no longer his -- his record label is V2).
Aldi
[Wikipedia]
Lidl
[Wikipedia]
Morrissons (apparantly famous more ooop North of England, chuck)
[Wikipedia]
Hehe - to me, a supermarket is a place one goes to buy food from. Although
many do now tend to sell other items such as cheap clothing, and microwaves,
but the scale is still very small.
[Sluggo]
That's not a supermarket. :) A supermarket is a large store that sells
food in family-sized portions, competes mainly on price (although Whole
Foods specializes in organics and natural foods), and tries to stock
every conceivable type of food. It contrasts with the small mom-n-pop
grocery stores that have almost entirely disappeared.
[Sluggo]
Not to be confused with the current "convenience stores"/"mini marts".
The old grocery stores had fresh vegetables, meat, and milk.
The convenience stores are mostly candy and cigarettes. Some
convenience stores that's all they have. At better convenience
stores you can find a sandwich, apple, and milk, and nowadays even
a premade salad, but you're lucky if you can find an egg, and don't
even think of shopping for whole vegetables there, there aren't any.
[Thomas]
Yes, I agree entirely with that. What you call "mom-n-pop", I'd classify as a
"corner shop" - usually family run, and stocks up on the basics such as
bread/milk, and often sells many tinned foods.
[Sluggo]
They are called corner shops in places that actually have them on
every corner; e.g., parts of New York City. The rest of us can only
wish they were so common.
What I remember in England and Ireland is the shaverma/kebab
holes-in-the-wall, and curry chips. There's nothing like that here.
[Ben]
"Here" obviously not being Brooklyn. Or pretty much any borough of NYC,
although you'd have to look for a while in Staten Island. In Brooklyn,
though, you can take your pick among the Greek, Arabic, and Israeli
versions - all within a few blocks of each other. Although for Greek
food, you're best off in Queens... don't get me started. The NYC food
scene is amazing, and in my experience unique.
[Sluggo]
I'd take a shaverma (gyros) over a taco any day.
[Ben]
Pshaw, there isn't even any comparison between the two. Although the
Veracruz (right by the Manhattan Bridge, on the Brooklyn side) makes
tacos that even I will grudgingly admit to be real food.
[Sluggo]
Any place that sells a variety of food I would call a "grocery", whether
large or small. But a dedicated meat/fish store or vegetable/fruit
store I wouldn't call a grocery; I guess because you can't obtain a
complete meal from them.
[Thomas]
To me, a grocery store was one that predominently sells fruit and vegetables
-- and they're very hard to come buy now. So I suppose the term is now being
used here to describe the corner shops, above.
[Sluggo]
Supermarkets usually have small non-food items like utinsels, paper,
and cough syrup, but I've never seen one selling microwaves or
clothing. Safeway did sell a small line of TVs twenty years ago, but
not now.
[Thomas]
Fascinating. It's these little nuances that I love. :)
[Sluggo]
Supermarkets are often paired with drug stores, which were originally
pharmacies but also sell small non-food household stuff: school
supplies, kitchen supplies, razors, walkmans and cameras, and Halloween
costumes. Boots in England is a drug store. (Why does it have a name
like Boots if it's not a shoe shop?) I think you call drug stores
something else in England but I can't remember the word.
[Chemists]
[Thomas]
Pharmacies are strictly for medications, although they too are getting rarer
and rarer as stores such as Boots take over (they have subsidery firms:
Boots-pharmacy, etc.). As to why it is called Boots - I believe it to be the
surname of the founder. They're an old company and back then, it was
tradition.
[Sluggo]
Department stores like Macy's [Wikipedia] and Sears [Wikipedia] sell clothing, "large"
things (tables, beds, stoves and refrigerators, bathroom cabinets),
wedding and crystal stuff, etc. Sears also sells mechanics' tools.
Nordstrom's is also considered a department store, although it only
sells clothing (mid-level and high-end).
[Thomas]
Yup - then "John Lewis" and "Debenhams" over here are such examples. If you
get the chance, you should take a look around one sometime... they're quite
good.
[Sluggo]
Then there's the big stores like Fred Meyer, Target, Wal-Mart, and
K-Mart that don't really have a name. They aren't department stores
because they aren't posh enough, but they're not drug stores either
because they have a wider selection of small non-food stuff, and they
often have lots of clothing and TVs too. Nowadays they've come under
the generic classification of "big-box stores". A few of them have
entire supermarkets inside them.
[Thomas]
You mean like the equivalent of France's hypermache?
[Sluggo]
Then there's wholesale clubs like Costco and Sam's Club. Costco started
in the late 80s, and were originally meant to sell to small businesses
rather than individuals, but you could also get a membership if you
worked for the government or belonged to certain credit unions
(=non-commercial banks). But families with children quickly realized
that wholesale sizes were perfect for them and fanagled a membership any
way they could. Then the explosion of credit-union membership brought a
ton of new members indirectly. I don't know why Costco continues its
facade of membership restrictions and being "mainly a small-business
supplier", but they do.
Sam's Club, which is owned by Wal-Mart, appeared in the
region in the early 90s, but we didn't hear about Wal-Mart itself until
years later, and a Wal-Mart store didn't actually appear in the region
until around 2000.
[Thomas]
Yes -- I think what you're describing here is what I would call "cash-n-carry"
places. You can buy things in bulk at cheap prices. The classic one being
"Macros" - you have to be a member to shop there.
[Sluggo]
What I mean is, Aldi seemed more like a huge convenience store, and
while it did have things like yogurt and bread it was all small portions at
convenience-store prices. I didn't expect to find Safeway and Sainsbury's
per se in Germany, but I would expect that German families would have
something to say about having to buy convenience-store portions for a
family of four week after week, unless there are in fact some supermarkets
somewhere that I didn't see.
[Jimmy]
From what I was told, Aldi is owned by a German, whose brother owns
Lidl (same sort of supermarket). Aldi and Lidl are great if you want
cheap booze or German food, but most people I know shop there for cheap
electrical goods.
[Frodo]
As it happens, I read quite a lot about especially Aldi. Every German
computer magazine has to explain every now and again, why Aldi in the
northern part of Germany often has different pc's and other hardware on
offer, than the Aldi in the southern part.
Aldi was started in the German city of Essen, in 1913, by the father of
the current owners. In 1960, the Albrecht brothers decided to split
Germany in two halves, north and south (Aldi Nord and Aldi Sued), and
each of them would only be allowed to have stores in their own part.
They split the rest of the world too, btw. Aldi in Belgium, Denmark,
France, Luxembourg, Netherlands and Spain are owned by Aldi Nord, while
those in Australia, Austria, Great Britain, Ireland and the USA are
owned by Aldi Sued. (Yes, I had to look up the exact way they split it)
Lidl started as Lidl & Schwarz, and is a much newer company (they first
started in the seventies, in Ludwigshafen, also in Germany) and is owned
by the Schwarz-group.
Wacko Subtopic: Unions
[Sluggo]
Then I caught up with my friend and he told me the store was owned by
[supermarket]. I was immediately crushed at buying from there, due to their
tradition of skimping on workers' pay, being hostile to unions, etc.
[Thomas]
Really? How is it they can be so cruel?
[Ben]
Money talks - and when money says to the mayor of Buttwipe, Nebraska "we
want an exclusion/exception/easement on the following local laws, or
we'll take this store and its 2,000 jobs elsewhere", money gets its way.
Conversely, "Governor, we're planning on giving $500,000 to your
favorite charity. Sure, it's a tax write-off for us, but we still get to
decide which charity! By the way, you were going to vote our way on
the upcoming bond moratorium, yes?" is even more effective; a stable of
tame politicians, particularly at the higher levels, can do wonders for
a large business.
Oh, and the above examples are fairly crude ones. It would still happen
exactly the same way, but the wording would be such that it could never
be construed as bribery or coercion - despite the fact that it is.
[John]
... and his favorite charity no doubt is his campaign fund ... or his
family trust fund. :^>
[Jimmy]
Not necessarily - a lot of charity money comes from these sorts of deals.
Government types like to associate themselves with charities, because it
earns them brownie points with voters. The more their charity gets from
their involvement, the better their reputation looks.
It's also a great way for the rich to network - companies with cash to
spare might not need a friendly senator now, but they know they probably
will at some stage; a senator might not need to know where to find a large
sum of money now, etc.
It's all based in the simple psychology behind making friends; if you act
in a friendly way towards someone, they will think favourably of you.
Where you or I might buy someone a drink or take them to dinner in order
to get to know someone, the mega rich throw a large sum of money at that
person's favourite charity - it's the same gesture, but translated in
terms of bank balance.
[I wanted to have:
That type of "money talks" is depressingly common all over the [Country], not
just with [supermarket]. Sports teams use the same threat to get free
stadiums built: "build it or we'll leave". [Company] played three states
against each other to get the sweetest deal for their [snip] plant. (Oops,
I'm not supposed to say that when [inhabitants of a certain continent] are listening, because the
mantra is that [other company] is subsidized by its governments and [company] is
not.)
but [Person]Sluggo made me put down the scissors - I've
cut myself enough this month - and put back
all the proper nouns.
Remember kids - never use scissors without adult supervision!]
[Sluggo]
That type of "money talks" is depressingly common all over the US, not just
with Wal-Mart. Sports teams use the same threat to get free stadiums built:
"build it or we'll leave". Boeing played three states against each other to
get the sweetest deal for their 7E7 plant. (Oops, I'm not supposed to say that
when Europeans are listening, because the mantra is that Airbus is subsidized
by its governments and Boeing is not.)
[Jason]
Oh yeah. In my area, a developer is planning to build a "mega-mall"
seems to get quite a lot of cooperation from the city council/county
commissioners/etc. A large percentage of "letters to the editor" seem to
to go something like this:
Proponent:
You can stop growth! And think of how great this will be
for the economy!
Opponent:
This is the last best place! Growth for the sake of
growth is the ethos of the cancer cell!
Proponent:
That's not a fair comparision at all! It's people like
you that hold back this area!
Opponent:
I didn't move here so I could shop in big-box stores!
And let me tell you something...
...and so on. I personally don't care very much, I just wish the "powers
that be" would start thinking right now about the horrible
infrastructure problems that will crop up in five years. Gee, you mean
if this mall goes in the traffic problem's gonna get worse?
Whodathunkit?
[Sluggo]
The reason people are so uniquely enraged at [supermarket] is that its
famous low prices are borne by the employees to an extent not seen at
other stores. Low wages, no benefits, "off the clock" work,
part-time positions, etc.
[Jason]
Then why do people work there?
[Jimmy]
I can answer this one, as I am working in a place with conditions not far
removed.
For those who either are unskilled, lack documentation of these skills,
and/or have not got the self-marketing ability to sell their skills to
employers, there are few options available when it comes to jobs.
Using myself as an example, I dropped out of college because I had chosen
the wrong course, and couldn't afford to return. I took the first job that
came my way, as a web designer, but soon got loaded down with other tasks I
simply wasn't being paid for. I quit that job, got "unemployment assistance"
(£37/week - roughly $50), quickly built up debt, and had to take the job I'm
currently in, where I'm earning enough to pay my child support payments, but
not enough to set aside money to make a break from where I am.
One of my friends from college, the second most gifted programmer I ever
met (and that's because chance found me sharing a taxi with rms the first
time he gave a talk in Ireland), currently stacks shelves in a supermarket.
(Just to illustrate, in his third year in college, while trying to write a
game, he wrote his own windowing system.)
I know plenty of people who didn't even get the chance to screw up in
the ways I did, and who had no other choice but to accept these sorts of
jobs.
[In which Jimmy (erm... that would be me) gets to whine about another injury
at work. Read the full story]
[Update, 29th Sept. I met a woman from my former shift today. She tells me the
rumours are that I cut my whole hand off, and was found unconscious from blood
loss. Don'tcha just love "Chinese Whispers"?]
[Jimmy]
Fate intervenes - I might have to leave it till next month because I had
to get a few stitches in my hand (yet another work related injury) and I
might not be able to do enough typing one handed.
[Ben]
GRRRR! What is this, the bad luck season?
[Jimmy]
(This is going to take a while to type)
I changed shifts 4 weeks ago, so my brother and I would be able to
start a band. After 3 years without an accident, I've had 2 cuts and a
fall since then. On my third day, I picked up a knife, thinking it was
one of the half-blunt knives we use, only to find (when it was stuck
halfway into my knuckle) that it was one of those used in the beef
area. Although [person] is supposed to be a trained first aider,
he just stuck a plaster on it, and taped it down when the blood washed
it off, thereby making it worse. In hindsight, I should have demanded
to be taken to the hospital, but instead trusted that he would do the
right thing. It healed before I could make it to a doctor, and I no
longer have feeling in that knuckle.
[Potentially libelous statement removed]
Today, I had to dispose of the hoop blade we use. We have been told
constantly that we have to throw these into the skip. This is, it
turns out, wrong in so many ways, but as it left my hand, it snagged
on my jacket, and cut through my finger, I think to the bone (I didn't
ask, because I didnt want to be sure - I was keeping a positive
outlook, but just barely). The only thing that's worrying me now is
the thought that I might lose feeling in my finger too.
So... the job hunt is on with a vengeance.
At least I have my heavy metal cred (Tony Iommi, guitarist of Black
Sabbath, lost two fingertips in a factory accident the day before the
band were due to go on their first European tour. On his fretting hand
- ouch!)
[Ben]
There are three hurricanes out there - Jeanne (which has
already killed 600+ people in Haiti), Karl, and Lisa. At least I've got
the Acer laptop back, and it seems to be working OK so far.
All the rest of you - would you please save up your accidents,
equipment failures, etc. for later? If you use them all up now, you'll
just be bored for the rest of the year, and won't have anybody to blame
but yourselves.
Wacko Topic: College
[Jason]
I'm 17, and will graduate from high school next spring. I think I'm
interesting in a job in programming (or software engineering, or
whatever they call it.) but I'm really trying to avoid going to collage,
unless there's some practical way I could do it without going into debt.
[Thomas]
Unfortunately, I don't think you're going to get much of a choice. The world
is increasingly operating around pieces of paper. You could be God's gift to
programming, but unless you have the piece of paper to say you have done XYZ
you're not likely going to be considered.
I'm at University (is that what you call College over there?) and am doing
Software Engineering. I love programming, always have. There's a bias on this
course that is Java. Why? Because currently that's what is the industry
"favourite". I won't be doing any C (or C++) since it is considered too
"difficult". So what I have taken to doing in my assignments, is to put the
Ruby equivalent of code and show the lectureres the difference -- outlining
key features that prove a point.
Why? Well, I do not like the fact that there is a bias. I realise that they
need a language to suppliment the "theory" of Object-Orientedness, but Java?
It's slow, bloated and this nonsense of WORA "Write Once Run Anywhere" is a
myth. What it actually means is: "Write once, watch it run on Solaris and some
Linux systems, and debug everywhere else".
[Jimmy]
Well, there's the big difference. In Ireland, fees are paid by the
government; there are at least two grants, which cover rent, for those
with lower incomes; and anyone over 21 who has been collecting social
welfare payments for at least 6 months can go to college, with fees
paid, a full grant, full weekly social welfare payments plus rent
allowance, which is roughly 2/3 of the average rent price, and an annual
book grant.
Now, even with that, I'm surrounded by people who couldn't afford college.
[Jason]
And plus I need to see how I do with large projects. Most of the coding
I've done is just small stuff that I hacked together because I needed
that tool. So I'm trying to hack up a tetris clone in C using SDL (about
375 LOC, working okay, color scheme and keys hardcoded, two player
support is an UGLY kludge, but I feel pretty good about it) in order
to determine if I could work on larger programs. The jury is still out
on that.
[Thomas]
You shouldn't look at it like that, Jason. If you ever find yourself working
on a project that is large you'll only ever work on a small subset of it. You
might never even know what it is you're working on overall. You'll normally
work as a team, and get given a small task to do.
If you do take a Software Engineering course, I'll tell you that if you think
it is all about 'coding' then think again. It's not like that anymore, where
people sat up till some uneartly hour in a dark room lit only by a monitor.
What you'll find is a most invaluable role as a software engineer is program
design -- actually designing how the program works (UML essentially). You'll
probably never end up writing the raw code. Finding a job that does is going
to take you a very long time, and if you do, it won't be that well paid.
[Jimmy]
Well, you have to learn to walk before you run. Small projects can
become large projects if you keep at them.
Basically, it takes 2-4 years to become good at something, 2-4 to become
great, and roughly 10 to become a master.
[Jason]
I don't care very much which language I'm using. It would be great if I
could use a "fun language" like Ruby or Python, (or maybe even Lisp, if
I could wrap my mind around it.) but it looks like you have to go with
[Thomas]
One of my units is on AI, using prolog and lisp. Lisp is an excellent
language. Logical and useful. Just ignore EMACS. :) The language you'll use
means nothing unless you have the transferable skills behind it, such as OO,
etc. After that, all that really should remain when you switch between
languages is syntactical issues and idiosyncrasies.
[Jason]
"what's cool" at the moment. It looks like Java used to be cool. Now it
looks like C#/.NET is the cool language, the one that everybody wants to
use, just because it's new and it's from Microsoft. At least it has
garbage collection.
[Thomas]
Don't believe the hype.
[Jimmy]
Learn the "fun" language, and at least one "work" language. Smart
employers will still look for Java or whatnot, but knowing Python or
Ruby (or Perl, or Lisp, or ...) screams "I like programming".
I wouldn't rush to follow fashion here. C# is basically Java with all
the features they haven't gotten around to adding to Java yet. If you
know Java, you can get the gist of C# in a few hours.
[Jason]
And that's why I'm writing this tetris clone in C: C isn't the most
popular language around, but it's a whole lot more popular than Ruby. It
[Thomas]
No? Where did you think that? C is used extensively in industry, and
popularity is propoganda. Ruby is certainly used a lot, more than you think in
industry.
[Jason]
seems to me as if I should learn as many marketable languages as I can,
and C seems simple and scary, whereas C++ seems complex and scary.
[Thomas]
Heh. Keep at it.
[Jimmy]
C++ looks complex and scary when you take a distant look at it, but if
you take it in stages, it's not as bad. Look at it as a better C first -
use function overloading, and default values. Then add classes, then
constructors/destructors, then virtual classes, then operator
overloading, then templates. It starts to make sense after a while :)
[Jason]
So, if you were me, wanting to get that kind of a job, what would you do?
[Thomas]
I understand that the College system works differently over there, and that
you have to finance yourself? If you can or, indeed, do, get the option of
going to college, please take it. As I said, it's paper these employers want.
[Jimmy]
Or, if you have an Irish grandparent, you can get Irish citizenship,
move here for a while, bum off our social welfare system, and get a free
education. :)
[Thomas]
I hope this helps.
[Jimmy]
Well, as it happens... I'm learning Java servlets and JSP, because
that's where 9/10 jobs are. I'm learning C++ because it is scary, and
looking at C# because the niftiest desktop software for GNOME is being
written in it.
I'm also looking at C, just because I want to learn how to use mmap()
[Jimmy]
One of my friends from college, the second most gifted programmer I ever
met (and that's because chance found me sharing a taxi with rms the
first time he gave a talk in Ireland), currently stacks shelves in a
supermarket. (Just to illustrate, in his third year in college, while
trying to write a game, he wrote his own windowing system.)
[Jason]
His own windowing system? Like, doing raw hardware access like most X
servers do, or just chaining onto something else? (Like Xnest, except,
of course, not doing a mini X server, but doing a mini
whatever-his-server-was)
[Jimmy]
It was in DOS, so there was assembly which controlled DOS's video
interrupt, on top of which he wrote various functions to draw shapes, on
top of which he had higher level windowing functions.
[Jimmy]
I know plenty of people who didn't even get the chance to screw up in
the ways I did, and who had no other choice but to accept these sorts of
jobs.
[Jason]
Yeah, I figured it certainly wouldn't be because they want to work at
[a supermarket]. Or a gas station. Or any other low-wage dead end job.
[Jimmy]
Well, just to point out that it hasn't been all negative, I would never
have found the drive or sense of self-acceptance I now have without
working in the worst place I can imagine :)
I've also learned how well I can keep my head in a crisis, which is pretty
well. I've been faced with large fires in an area covered in fat,
massive gas leaks - the steps I took are now the company policy,
"World domination. Fast."
"...and scantily clad females, of course. Who cares if it's below zero outside."
-- Linus Torvalds
Linux - according to LG's motto, certainly - is fun. Let's face it;
you're sweating over that antique piece of hardware and cursing it and its
entire ancestry to smithereens (no, you can't get Cray-class performance
from your 386SX. Not even with Linux.) because it's what you actually
enjoy doing - at some level, anyway. Work motivated by fun is, in
fact, the most powerful kind of productive ethic; it causes programmers to
stay up into the wee hours for days on end, pounding away on the keyboard
in Deep Hack mode, and keeps you looking for solutions long after a
"sensible" person would have given up (um... if you do
manage that Cray trick, be sure to let me know.) Money alone is not and
cannot be the motivator for that level of involvement.
Just as a random example, the amount of energy I personally have put
into tweaking Linux systems over the years could easily power, say, Los
Angeles for the next few centuries - even if everybody there switched to
Linux and left their machines on 24/7. Mind you, I didn't do this because
there was anything wrong; it was always due to some FAQ, HOWTO, or even an
article right here in LG written by another whirl-eyed Linux maniac: "Here,
just try a little of this - it can't hurt you, it's
Open Source!" Meanwhile, this little critter
perched on my sinister scapula (red suit, horns, etc. - if you're going to
anthropomorphize, you might as well do it right) would
whisper in my ear: "Come on... you know you want to... just one
little file in /etc, what could it possibly hurt?"
Riiight...
After days of fixing up the latest disaster I had wrought, I would
swear on large stacks of religious books and every holy symbol known to
man(1) and alien(1) that I would never,
ever, mess with my beautifully-running system again...
while the little guy with the pitchfork hummed a little ditty:
"A little learning is a dangerous thing;
Drink deep, or taste not the Pyrrhean spring..."
(Alexander Pope)
<sigh> My friends think I'm going bald because I'm getting older.
Linux CDs should come with a printed warning; something about "dangerous to
sanity, sleep habits, and hair retention".
Sure, there must be people somewhere out there that can just pop in a
RedHat/SuSE/Mandrake/whatever CD, run the install, and walk away. I mean,
theoretically it's possible. But... where's the fun? Where's the challenge?
Where is the juice? Besides, even those people, nametag-wearing
corporate drones that they must be, get caught by the Penguin Syndrome
eventually: they'll wake up one day and find themselves sitting at a
keyboard, a mile deep in "sendmail.cf", fingers cramped from hours of
typing. It is then that they'll know the secret shame of Penguin passion,
and find themselves guiltily hiding their scribbled notes on upgrading
their Apache server...
These days, we do have trivially-easy setups for Linux
- the single-user surf/email/word processor workstation that is all your
Grandma wants is, again, just a single-CD boot away (Knoppix, Morphix, and
many, many other
variants exist.) However, if you want top performance out of one of these
powerful Linux beasts, or if you want to make your computer do things that
are considered impossible in other OSes, you have to learn a good bit of
Quantum Wrenchology - as my motorcycling friends used to say, "if you don't
wrench, you don't ride". This is effort that pays for itself, though, in
multiple ways. (A word of warning, for those starting down this path: the
mechanic's curse is The Ultimate Machine, the one that will do
unprecedented things, run faster than a speeding bullet, and do it all on
half a drop of fuel... as soon as he finishes putting it together.
Meanwhile, he drives a barely-running 1919 GetOut'n'Push. Beware of getting
caught in the loop.)
I don't know about the rest of you, but I personally get a real charge
out of riding down Computer Highway, alternately chuckling at and pitying
the poor Micro$oft users stranded by the roadside in their forlorn
millions; cell phones glued to their ears, frantic expressions on their
faces, calling their haughty unreachable mechanics who'll charge them vast
amounts of money for work that will fail, again and
again... while we continue rolling down the road in our rapidly-growing
numbers, engines snarling with barely-restrained power.
See you all out there. Keep the rubber side down.
Ben is the Editor-in-Chief for Linux Gazette and a member of The Answer Gang.
Ben was born in Moscow, Russia in 1962. He became interested in electricity
at the tender age of six, promptly demonstrated it by sticking a fork into
a socket and starting a fire, and has been falling down technological
mineshafts ever since. He has been working with computers since the Elder
Days, when they had to be built by soldering parts onto printed circuit
boards and programs had to fit into 4k of memory. He would gladly pay good
money to any psychologist who can cure him of the recurrent nightmares.
His subsequent experiences include creating software in nearly a dozen
languages, network and database maintenance during the approach of a
hurricane, and writing articles for publications ranging from sailing
magazines to technological journals. After a seven-year Atlantic/Caribbean
cruise under sail and passages up and down the East coast of the US, he is
currently anchored in St. Augustine, Florida. He works as a technical
instructor for Sun Microsystems and a private Open Source consultant/Web
developer. His current set of hobbies includes flying, yoga, martial arts,
motorcycles, writing, and Roman history; his Palm Pilot is crammed full of
alarms, many of which contain exclamation points.
He has been working with Linux since 1997, and credits it with his complete
loss of interest in waging nuclear warfare on parts of the Pacific Northwest.
Why let Gentoo fans get all the fun?
Re: Upgrading KDE on SuSE 9.0 - A better way.
I love Linux
Tripwire
Greetings from Heather Stern
Patents ![[Picture]](../gx/2002/tagbio/conry.jpg)
Originally hailing from Ireland, Michael is currently living in Baden,
Switzerland. There he works with ABB Corporate Research as a
Marie-Curie fellow, developing software for the simulation and design
of electrical power-systems equipment.
.![[BIO]](../gx/2002/note.png)
Chris is a Peace Corps volunteer in the Kingdom of Tonga and has been
bringing them the world of Open Source for almost two years. He is also a
founding member of ![[BIO]](../gx/authors/odonovan.jpg)
Barry O'Donovan graduated from the National University of Ireland, Galway
with a B.Sc. (Hons) in computer science and mathematics. He is currently
completing a Ph.D. in computer science with the ![[BIO]](../gx/authors/pai.jpg)
I am a linux enthusiast living in India. I love to play around in
linux never knowing what i might discover next.
I enjoy the freedom and power that Linux offers.
and I must thank my mentor Mr.Pramode C.E (who regularly publishes in LG)
for introducing me to the wonderful opportunities that Linux offers.
![[BIO]](../gx/authors/schaffter.jpg)
(the words "groff" or "mom" must appear in the subject line of any
email sent to this address, otherwise the email will get nuked)
![[cartoon]](misc/ecol/ecol-171-e.png)
![[cartoon]](misc/ecol/ecol-172-e.png)
![[cartoon]](misc/ecol/ecol-176-e.png)
Ben is the Editor-in-Chief for Linux Gazette and a member of The Answer Gang.
