Discussion:
Cut the cable...
(too old to reply)
Dave Laird
2003-11-25 01:31:17 UTC
Permalink
Hi again, Matt...

I moved this conversation over to used_kharma.tech simply because it's
traveling in a lot of different directions... all technical. Not only that,
I know James Vahn drops by here every once in awhile, and he might correct
any mistakes I might make. hehehehe...
Had to take a lunch break from programming in Delphi...
Sounds like, um, fun. ;)
It's like working in Pascal. Gulp, in fact it *is* Pascal, well, sort of. It
compiles much faster, though, and it has most of the same old things we used
to love/hate about Pascal. Like VBasic, though, it makes *huge* .EXE's
although the overlays, if you use them, are much faster and boundary errors
are few and far between.
If I'm not using something like kedit, I'm using joe generally. Force of
habit, I used it way back when I played with Slackware long ago, and I
still use it for the quick editing of files.
<grin> Joe was one of my first Linux text editors, set in Wordstar mode.
When I started running out of configuration file statements, I started
looking for something else, and it was then, when my "advisor" was trying to
sell me on vi, that I discovered Jed. Now that Jed has gotten so much more
robust, with macros and real-time spell checking, it really is a joy to work
in it all day long.
I've not really written for long periods of time in a couple of years,
unfortunately. I used to use a text editor under OS/2 called Aurora, just
for the reason you described: text editors should have a blue background
with white text. I also like like text mode video displays since for some
reason it hurts my eyes less. Unfortunately, for some reason with either
my MSI integrated Geforce 4 MX video or with my MSI Geforce 4 Ti4200, I
can't get to a virtual terminal, the video goes completely wonky.
Irritating.
I forgot you had said something about giving OS/2 to a guy a long time back.
That was Roger Erdman, and yes, he used it quite awhile, too, and spoke very
highly of it. I remember him talking about using Aurora just now. Like you,
I prefer using the video text mode for editing and writing, but *I* know the
reason why it hurts your eyes using GUI-mode stuph. It's because, when you
switch into GUI mode, you speed up the clock cycles on your monitor, thus
increasing the quivering sensation in what you read. That is one of the
reasons why you're also probably better off in direct synch, rather than GUI
synch mode. You're less likely to come down with cataracts. <Dave sez,
looking at the world through his man-made corneas and lenses.> 8-)
I've not been posting much to newsgroups, I was mostly looking at binary
files, and pan works much better than knode at that. I should go back to
knode for Kharma I think, though.
Ja, iss goot. If you don't know the trick, I can share a way where you can
use Knode and still use your favorite text editor, Joe. I use Jed to edit
news articles all the time, and it's as simple as finding a way to drop to a
shell *and* set your editor to run its line parameters the right way. Works
like a charm.
It's tempting, but I don't think I could talk my friend into it. Would it
be as simple as chucking the actiontech, returning it to Qworst, and just
swapping in the 675 or 678?
Nope. Qworst doesn't have any 678's or 675's left. If you blow a 678 these
days, they send you one of those infernal white Actiontech boxes, and tell
you it's a "free upgrade". <snork!>
I'm still wanting to learn how to set up a proper POP3 server on my own,
as well as SMTP. I started to try to figure out bind, but then I decided
it wasn't worth the effort or security risk and went to a third party DNS
management company.
You're probably right about Bind, but I can show you the quick and easy way
(ha!) to set up Sendmail to handle both SMTP and POP3, although if you're
going to try and run POP3s you will need a working SSL apparatus and a ball
peen hammer. Actually, Sendmail isn't so hard, once you have all the pieces
in place, and delete a few statements from the configuration statements.
Nobody ever said Sendmail was easy, but with just a modest amount of
tweaking, you can get it working. Hell, if *I* can do it, so can you. 8)
Oh, I was never going to say Cable is better than DSL. I'd take 256/256
DSL over cable any day, as the idea of "shared bandwidth" doesn't appeal
to me. I'd love a 256k modem though. ;) Of course, with the line
"quality" out here, I'd probably still connect at 21.6.
Sounds like you're the last tin can on the string. 8-(
I wouldn't mind it. I'm a poor boy who still lives with his Daddy, since
I rightfully knew Software Spectrum was about as unstable a job as they
come. I'd be completely sunk if I had a lease on top of my other bills
right now if I had moved out.
Hey, you were much smarter than one of my friends that worked at Agilent and
got laid off with his wife pregnant, just *after* he bought a new house
because he was told they weren't going to lay him off. I'm trying to help
him get completely debt-free and, if I'm lucky, he might even avoid a
nervous breakdown. It's the first time in his life he's been unemployed
since age 16.
It's not my setup, and I'm not over there enough to call and bitch about
it, unfortunately. One of these days I'm going to sit there and wait for
it to choke, then call and get someone's attention. ;)
Great plots are made out of such things. 8-)

Dave
--
Dave Laird (***@kharma.net)
The Used Kharma Lot / The Phoenix Project
Web Page: http://www.kharma.net updated 11/17/2003
Usenet News server: news.kharma.net
Musicians Calendar and Database access: http://www.kharma.net/calendar.html

An automatic & random thought For the Minute:
This must be morning. I never could get the hang of mornings.
James Vahn
2003-11-25 02:43:01 UTC
Permalink
Post by Dave Laird
You're probably right about Bind, but I can show you the quick and easy way
(ha!) to set up Sendmail to handle both SMTP and POP3
Sendmail won't do POP, so he'll need to install another daemon or two:
"apt-get install ipopd uw-imapd"
Piece o' cake, install 'em both. On the client side, fetchmail is nice.


--
Dave Laird
2003-11-25 06:33:10 UTC
Permalink
Evening, James...
Post by James Vahn
Post by Dave Laird
You're probably right about Bind, but I can show you the quick and easy
way (ha!) to set up Sendmail to handle both SMTP and POP3
"apt-get install ipopd uw-imapd"
Piece o' cake, install 'em both. On the client side, fetchmail is nice.
Yikes, you're right! He doesn't want to set up a full-blown mail server, he
wants to set up POP so he can pick up mail. Oh darn. Well, he could *always*
set up KDE and Kmail, as it does POP nicely on its own. OR he could it the
way you just described. SuSE is actually easier at this sort of thing than
RedHat, too, I see. 8-)

Sorry, I truly blew that one.

Dave
--
Dave Laird (***@kharma.net)
The Used Kharma Lot / The Phoenix Project
Web Page: http://www.kharma.net updated 11/17/2003
Usenet News server: news.kharma.net
Musicians Calendar and Database access: http://www.kharma.net/calendar.html

An automatic & random thought For the Minute:
My weight is perfect for my height -- which varies.
James Vahn
2003-11-25 14:30:13 UTC
Permalink
Post by Dave Laird
way you just described. SuSE is actually easier at this sort of thing than
RedHat, too, I see. 8-)
Not sure if I ever heard of Red Hat doing anything right, other than
marketing. Bob Young and Bill Gates could sell socks with holes in them
and get people to like their socks that way. They are amazing salesmen.

As to bind, install it in the default caching mode and point resolv.conf
to "nameserver 127.0.0.1". It'll remember all those lookups as it runs
and web browsers will run a leetle faster. If the box stays up all the
time then so much the better.

apt-get install bind9 -t unstable


--
Dave Laird
2003-11-25 17:34:52 UTC
Permalink
Good morning, James...
Post by James Vahn
Post by Dave Laird
way you just described. SuSE is actually easier at this sort of thing
than RedHat, too, I see. 8-)
Not sure if I ever heard of Red Hat doing anything right, other than
marketing. Bob Young and Bill Gates could sell socks with holes in them
and get people to like their socks that way. They are amazing salesmen.
As to bind, install it in the default caching mode and point resolv.conf
to "nameserver 127.0.0.1". It'll remember all those lookups as it runs
and web browsers will run a leetle faster. If the box stays up all the
time then so much the better.
For clarity's sake show us a named.conf that reflects those settings. 8-)

Dave
--
Dave Laird (***@kharma.net)
The Used Kharma Lot / The Phoenix Project
Web Page: http://www.kharma.net updated 11/17/2003
Usenet News server: news.kharma.net
Musicians Calendar and Database access: http://www.kharma.net/calendar.html

An automatic & random thought For the Minute:
As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not
certain, and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.
-- Albert Einstein
James Vahn
2003-11-29 05:46:17 UTC
Permalink
Post by Dave Laird
Post by James Vahn
As to bind, install it in the default caching mode and point resolv.conf
to "nameserver 127.0.0.1". It'll remember all those lookups as it runs
and web browsers will run a leetle faster. If the box stays up all the
time then so much the better.
For clarity's sake show us a named.conf that reflects those settings. 8-)
They broke it out to a bunch of includes. I use the default config from
http://packages.debian.org/bind9

Test your local nameserver with something like this:

host other.com localhost - this should fail
host other.com - this should look up the IP
host other.com localhost - should now be cached

You should notice a speedup right there doing that. Once it has the IP
it should only take a split second to fetch them again.


--
Dave Laird
2003-11-29 07:12:12 UTC
Permalink
Good evening, James...

YIKES!
Post by James Vahn
They broke it out to a bunch of includes. I use the default config from
http://packages.debian.org/bind9
I tried to go to this web site listing almost as soon as I saw it in the
news, and this is what I read:

This is a very unfortunate incident to report about. Some Debian servers
were found to have been compromised in the last 24 hours.

The archive is not affected by this compromise!

In particular the following machines have been affected:

* master (Bug Tracking System)
* murphy (mailing lists)
* gluck (web, cvs, people)
* klecker (security, non-us, web search, www-master, qa)

Some of these services are currently not available as the
machines undergo close inspection. Some services have been moved to other
machines (www.debian.org for example).

The security archive will be verified from trusted sources before it will
become available again.

Dave
--
Dave Laird (***@kharma.net)
The Used Kharma Lot / The Phoenix Project
Web Page: http://www.kharma.net updated 11/17/2003
Usenet News server: news.kharma.net
Musicians Calendar and Database access: http://www.kharma.net/calendar.html

An automatic & random thought For the Minute:
While money doesn't buy love, it puts you in a great bargaining position.
James Vahn
2003-11-29 15:38:56 UTC
Permalink
Post by Dave Laird
YIKES!
http://www.wiggy.net/debian/ has details.


--

James Vahn
2003-11-25 14:50:21 UTC
Permalink
my MSI integrated Geforce 4 MX video or with my MSI Geforce 4 Ti4200, I
can't get to a virtual terminal, the video goes completely wonky.
Irritating.
Try the "svgatextmode" package:

NAME
savetextmode, textmode - save or restore the complete SVGA status for
textmode.

SYNOPSIS
savetextmode
textmode

DESCRIPTION
These are simple scripts to save the SVGA register state when in
textmode to the files /etc/vga/fontdata and /etc/vga/textregs
($HOME/.vga/fontdata and $HOME/.vga/textregs if directory /etc/vga is
not writeable) or to restore it from these files.

The actual utilities used are restorefont(1), restoretextmode(1), and
restorepalette(1).

The purpose of these scripts program is usually to recover from a
crashed console due to an svgalib, Xfree or other program bug.

You do this by being a smart guy and running savetextmode right after
booting of your machine, prior to any problems. Then, in case the SVGA
state is hosed and you sit in front of a blank or useless console,
change VC (maybe login) to get to a shell. Or exist the currently run-
ning program with <Ctrl>-C, <Ctrl>-<Alt>-<Backspace>, or whatever
applies. Once you got a shell, run textmode and it will hopefully ren-
der your console useable again.

To make it clear: You do all this while not seeing anything on your
console screen, you enter this information blindly or after logging in
from a network. Also, if the keyboard is left in raw mode, nothing can
really help you as you cannot enter anything which a shell will under-
stand.

--
Loading...