January 2007 - KCLUG

Not fixing a problem
by Jonathan Hutchins 08 Feb '07

08 Feb '07

I find myself in an interesting dilemma. I run logwatch the mail and web servers I manage. It used to give me some useful info, but these days, it has problems. It's catching every single 404 from the web server logs. On a site with ~40,000 pages, ~150,000 unique URL's, that's heavily crawled by robots on a daily basis, that makes for a pretty large report. Add to that the fact that it's also reporting every bounced spam, and it appears to be reporting all of the NNTP log entries as well, and any useful information is obliterated in a report that's well over a megabyte of text. So I tried to follow the instructions and turn off HTTPD reporting. Apparently, I got the syntax wrong, so now instead of the 1.4 meg report, all I get is an error message. Which is really just as useful. So why fix it? I know it's theoretically possible to configure and customize logwatch, but when I tried to find documentation on it, all I found were incredibly detailed and obtuse instructions for building your own custom log filters from the ground up. Not helpful. I'm posting this for your amusement at the dilemma, and in the vague hope that someone, somewhere, has written an intelligible guide to configuring logwatch on a very superficial level. Then again, maybe someone knows of a better tool.

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Lame Linux
by Jonathan Hutchins 01 Feb '07

01 Feb '07

I was browsing MicroCenter yesterday, and looked at their Linux selection. Seems to me like they used to carry the majors, Red Hat, SuSE - I know I remember seeing SuSE there (pre-Novell). The only recognized brand I saw yesterday was Linspire, a few generic repackaged CD's, and a couple fairly obscure brands I don't remember. None of the majors were represented. I wonder why this is. Is it just too easy to get them off the internet? Has the market for purchased editions collapsed? Did they get stuck with too many copies of older versions as distros evolved too rapidly over the last few years? I checked the book section. Plenty of Red Hat books, only one on Ubuntu.

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Request for Presenter Demonstrator
by Arthur Pemberton 31 Jan '07

31 Jan '07

Dear KCLUG List, I am emailing on behalf of the UMKC Chapter of the Association for Computing Machinery (I haven't finished building our website yet). As part of the School of Computing and Engineering's "E-Week" (Feb. 19 - 23), I am attempting to organize a "Linux on the desktop" demonstration which would be open , and advertised to the UMKC student body. The objectives which I would like to meet are as follows: - Boost interest, membership, and awareness of my organisation - Boost awareness of the availability of operating system other than those produced by Microsoft and Apple - Correct misconceptions that Linux is only used on servers - Generally show that Linux can be a viable foundation on which users can focus on productivity, while still having a full functioning personal computer complete with "shinny" graphics. I hope to also present Linux running on my office machine (customized to various themes) along side, or more in assistance to the KCLUG representatives. Currently, there is very little probability of financial incentives. The presenter(s) would have to supply their own hardware, however, I should be able to organize transportation. I am currently unaware of (but can find more information if necessary) of the cable television coverage within the SCE building - in case the presenter(s) would like to showcase MythTV (or TvTime). The exact day of the week and time have not yet been decided by the organizers of the week, however, demonstration length would be between 30 mins and 60 mins. Wifi and ethernet access can be provided for. I hope that some members will be willing to make this presentation and represent KCLUG. Please reply on or off list ( I do not have a preference). And please feel free to request any further information that may be needed to come to a decision. Thank you. Arthur Pemberton President UMKC ACM -- Fedora Core 6 and proud

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Question about the list and follow up to advice questions
by cragos＠gmail.com 31 Jan '07

31 Jan '07

I moved all the way back to KC to attend KCLUG meetings, and I've already missed two. I could set up some sort of reminder myself, but it might be more useful to have an automated mailer send messages out to the group at large or a second mailing list. Can the list admin set up a second list, perhaps kclug-announce, with announcements about forthcoming meetings 24 hours prior, and announcements about special events as needed? PS: If anyone's wondering, I'm good and settled now, up in NKC. At my apartment complex, the only ISP options were SBC and Roadrunner. As the reason Speakeasy was unable to provide service was that my area was on an SBC DSL repeater to which they didn't have access. Not having any interest in being on an overloaded repeater, I went the TW route.

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Custom LiveCD Internet Kiosk - was Re: Ethereal
by Jon Pruente 30 Jan '07

30 Jan '07

On 1/25/07, Oren Beck <orenbeck(a)gmail.com> wrote: > All of my scenarios are to pick brains for getting such projects > either assembled by others or getting directed myself to do these > things. I just found the MorphixLiveKiosk http://www.morphix.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=80&Itemid=… There is also a seemingly easy to use remaster setup for Puppy Linux. I haven't tried either of these, but they look promising for a good starting point. I've run Puppy, and it's pretty dang fast. I've never mastered my own LiveCD before, but the pages on puppyos.com make it look fairly easy. Jon.

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RE: Question about the list and follow up to advice questions
by Kelsay, Brian - Kansas City, MO 30 Jan '07

30 Jan '07

>-----Original Message----- >From: djgoku >Sent: Monday, January 29, 2007 6:41 PM >On 1/27/07, Arthur Pemberton <> wrote: >> >> I have found TimeWarner RoadRunner to be quite good myself. Do note >> however, that they block of port 631 > >So what is port 631 used for other than below? > >ipp 631/udp # IPP (Internet Printing Protocol) >ipp 631/tcp # IPP (Internet Printing Protocol) > >I haven't seen/heard many people printing from the internet. I have a buddy that scanned his cable subnet, found some open shares, open machines, open everything, a few were even spewing crap on the subnet (broadcast, spam zombie, etc.) and he was able to remotely print to their printers to tell them how to fix it. Or if they had some tasty files, he waited a bit. ;-) So, far as I can tell, that's what remote printing is for.

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Looking for Tom Margrave
by Ed Allen 30 Jan '07

30 Jan '07

Does Tom still read this list ? Does anybody here know how to get in touch with him ?

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RE: DSL minimized was Re: Political Blather
by Kelsay, Brian - Kansas City, MO 28 Jan '07

28 Jan '07

Ethereal would not be something an average user needs right off the bat. I just looked and ethereal is not avail. for DSL. If you need it on a rescue disk, you can build a .dsl, .uci, or .unc pkg and place it on a customized DSL CD so that it loads on boot. You can also submit the pkg to the group for hosting at the mirrors so that everyone else can use it. ftp://ftp.oss.cc.gatech.edu/pub/linux/distributions/damnsmall/current/do cumentation/Howto_create_.dsl_application.pdf ftp://ftp.oss.cc.gatech.edu/pub/linux/distributions/damnsmall/current/do cumentation/MyDSLhowto.pdf >-----Original Message----- >From: Jared >Sent: Wednesday, January 24, 2007 2:02 PM > >> Eh... if DSL is so small, why does it need to be compressed >to fit on a CD? > >Because the CD fits in your wallet. It's a 50MB business-card CD. > >Spend a few minutes on the DSL site. It's very cool, even if >they left out ethereal... :) > >http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/usb.html > >-Jared >

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RE: DSL minimized was Re: Political Blather
by Kelsay, Brian - Kansas City, MO 26 Jan '07

26 Jan '07

The point of compressing is to fit more on the CD. Knoppix does this too. DSL just limits itself to 50MB as a line in the sand they will not cross. There have been others like Puppy and Flonix that crossed the size border to add even more of what they thought was useful. Flonix went commercial and Puppy has gone off in their own direction, but is still very similar to DSL. DSL has forced itself to chop out that which is not needed for a LiveCD, like apt and dpkg and replace standard gnu-utils with busybox and writing their own apps in lua, like the mixer applet, the myDSL interface and the control panel applet. Lua is a little like Perl, very small and very powerful. If you wanted to build your own DSL that was not compressed, I'd imagine you would end up with something like 2x the size requirements, 100MB. I just remembered one other thing about DSL's small size, it allows you PLENTY of space on a full-sized custom build CD at 650MB to add all the extra apps that have been pkged to work with DSL. I've done that before and maxed out a 650MB disk. Games galore and you name it, but I still didn't have room for everything. I mostly did this to see what I could do and to test apps in the repository to see that they worked with new versions of DSL. I had to stop at some point when I got too busy. >-----Original Message----- >From: Luke -Jr >Sent: Wednesday, January 24, 2007 2:24 PM > >On Wednesday 24 January 2007 14:01, Jared wrote: >> > Eh... if DSL is so small, why does it need to be compressed to fit >> > on a CD? >> >> Because the CD fits in your wallet. It's a 50MB business-card CD. > >Ah, makes sense. ;) >But what would be cooler is a wallet-CD uncompressed that >just boots to a NX terminal or recovery cmd prompt... http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/wiki/index.php/Frequently_Asked_Questions# How_can_I_have_a_VNC_server_start_automatically_at_boot.3F you can do something similar with the nxclient in the MyDSL repo.

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This is on topic as it affects hardware being ABLE to run Linux at all.
by Oren Beck 26 Jan '07

26 Jan '07

Read this all the way thru and read the Vista report before even considering a response. Flame me for this on anything other than provable errors of FACT and they win.Facts Vs FUD is how we will win this. Earlier tonight I saw an evil usually reserved for pulp horror or similar fantasies That report on Vista as being ":suicide" for MS. I should have read it sooner. This time the precedents seem to endanger ownership as being full control of YOUR property by YOU. And if you think me deranged? The truth is scarier. Take a look at what I fear may be much worse than described if it comes true. http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_cost.html The so-called "content protection" schemes that are being demanded of hardware producers seem potentially able to render Linux unusable on newer hardware. The concept that hardware will obey it's owner is under total refutation in the eyes of MS and the "content industry" Think RIAA, MPAA,their foreign counterparts..All in an evil pact. The stakes are nothing less than their desire to make ownership as control of our hardware in THEIR hands and NOT ours any longer. Such hardware will ignore us to their profit. Want to bet our freedom to own computers that obey us and not them on their honor? I propose that before this insanity goes any farther we all place our signatures and voices in opposition to it.I wonder if perhaps a month or several of boycott would work? Our signatures on purchase orders and credit cards only to companies that say NO to this insanity. Our voices carrying testimony against the theft of full ownership attempted by MS and the "content industry" . Consider a May, June , July with even a 50% drop in sales by hardware and content companies not renouncing the evil pacts? And a 50% increase for those that DO renounce! We are the ones who direct more IT budget than we give ourselves credit for. We may actually be able to replicate Atlas Shrugging. OR close enough to alter the future. "Where do you want to go today that they will let you go to?"

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