Subject: Linux-Admin Digest #175
From: Digestifier <[email-masked]>
To: [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 11 Oct 94 11:18:05 EDT

Linux-Admin Digest #175, Volume #2               Tue, 11 Oct 94 11:18:05 EDT

Contents:
  Re: [help] user cannot update password (take 2) (Tom Vaughan)
  Re: Cron Problems - Script runs from shell but not cron (Brian Kramer)
  Re: Security hole - has noone noticed so far? (Joerg Mertin)
  Re: LINUX mouse problem (Andrew Robert Ellsworth)
  Re: PCI vs. VLB (ASUS SP3G) (Donald Becker)
  Re: ftp better, but still freezes with 1.1.52.  Was: ftp freeze problems (Daniel Tran)
  Re: kernel message in log file - what does it mean (SOLVED??) (Daniel Tran)
  Re: Telnet & ftp freeze! (John Richardson)
  Re: Cron Problems - Script runs from shell but not cron (Thomas Koenig)
  Re: Please don't post security holess... (Dan Swartzendruber)
  Re: Has anyone gotten ftape to work? (Dennis Flaherty)
  Xconfig for Diamond Speedstar V24 (ET4000) (Martin Blaschke)
  Re: <Q> Can Linux Mount a Mac Floppy (Kevin Cummings)

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: [email-masked] (Tom Vaughan)
Subject: Re: [help] user cannot update password (take 2)
Date: 7 Oct 94 22:32:17 GMT

[email-masked] (Andrew_R._Mitz) writes:

>We are running linux 1.1.18 loaded with Slackware 2.0.
>When root runs the passwd program there is no problem.
>However, when another user runs passwd the program
>quits after entering the new password (twice) with:

>Can't open /etc/ptmp, can't update password.

Someone mailed me a fix for this. As root, all you have to do is

% chmod +s /usr/bin/passwd /usr/bin/chsh

Thomas

------------------------------

From: Brian Kramer <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Cron Problems - Script runs from shell but not cron
Date: 11 Oct 1994 06:14:50 -0400
Reply-To: [email-masked]

On Tue, 11 Oct 1994, Ted Harding wrote:

| Brian Kramer asks:-
| 
| > I am having trouble with some scripts running fine from a prompt, but not
| > from cron.  Here's one of the scripts.  Anyone else have problems like this?
| 
| I notice that this script includes lines like
| 
|         backupmenu()
|         {
|         echo "Usage backup <what>\n"
|         echo "<what>:  full (Full backup) ";
|         echo "         root (Root partition /) ";
|         echo "         news (News Spool partition /usr/spool/news) ";
|         echo "         user (User partition /home/home1) ";
|         echo "         nn   (NN partition /usr/spool/nndb) ";
|         echo "         inn  (Inn partiton /usr/lib/news)\n ";
|         }
| 

I found the problem, ksh isn't supported under cron.  The echo only happens
if the script is run incorrectly.  99% of the time they never show up.

Brian Kramer - Owner/Systems Administrator - [email-masked]
New Jersey Computer Connection - Public Access Unix Site - pluto.njcc.com
Voice: 609-896-2799 - Fax: 609-896-2994 - Dialups: 609-896-3191
Dialup or Telnet to pluto.njcc.com and log in as guest for more information.

------------------------------

From: [email-masked] (Joerg Mertin)
Crossposted-To: comp.mail.smail
Subject: Re: Security hole - has noone noticed so far?
Date: 9 Oct 1994 08:13:35 GMT
Reply-To: [email-masked]

In comp.os.linux.admin Nick Andrew ([email-masked]) wrote:
: In <[email-masked]> [email-masked] (Ronald S. Karr) writes:

: >In article <[email-masked]>,
: >Martin Bartosch <[email-masked]> wrote:
: >>/usr/lib/sendmail -d -D/etc/nologin [email-masked]
: >>
: >>as a normal user and have fun explaining it to your sysadmin. I was
: >>awed when I found out...
: > 
: >Okay, the fix is enclosed.

: Which version of sendmail is the fix against? I tried it under sendmail 8.6.9
: (the latest) and there was no problem.

Usually, /usr/lib/sendmail is a link to usr/sbin/smail or whereever
your smail binary is. I Applied the Patch to version smail-3.1.28 and
had no problems anymore :-)
So, if you have sendmail, as it looks like, you can forget about the patch...
: Nick.
: -- 
: Kralizec Dialup Unix (Public Access)    Data: +61-2-837-1183, 837-1868
: Zeta Microcomputer Software             v.42bis v.32bis 14.4k 24 hours
: P.O. Box 177, Riverstone NSW 2765       Plan: To beat Gnuchess 4.0 fairly!

--
Solong & Happy Hacking
************************************************************************
*   Joerg Mertin          :   [email-masked] (Home)      *  
* in Berlin Spandau at    :   [email-masked]        *
* Stardust's Linux System :   Data, Fax & Voice 49 30 3615569          *
************************************************************************
`Fatal Error: Found [MS-Windows] System -> Terminating Virus...'

------------------------------

From: [email-masked] (Andrew Robert Ellsworth)
Subject: Re: LINUX mouse problem
Date: 7 Oct 1994 17:18:17 -0500

>>>Howdy, I am setting up a Linux network for a system administration class
>>>and have run into a problem.  The mouse gives me an error saying device or
>>>resource busy!!!!  This means I cannot run X and finish the system.
>>
>>       Do you get this message when you try to start X? You will if 
>>Selection is running. Selection makes the mouse work in Linux, but you 
>>have to kill it to run X. 
>
>This is not true. I run Selection all the time; in or out of X. And it doesn't
>"make the mouse work"; it provides 'cut and paste' style copying between VTs. 
>
Something of interest to note:

Unless they've come out with a newer version of selection (which they very well
may have) selection + X + PS/2-type mouse will not work (device busy, etc.)
                          ^^^^
A serial mouse works fine with selection and X (I love it, couldn't live without
selection).

Just my $0.02.

Andy Ellsworth
[email-masked]

------------------------------

From: [email-masked] (Donald Becker)
Subject: Re: PCI vs. VLB (ASUS SP3G)
Date: 10 Oct 1994 13:01:23 -0400

In article <[email-masked]>,
Bryan Andersen <[email-masked]> wrote:
>[email-masked] (Donald Becker) writes:
>
>>Alas many of the chipsets have bugs, which are worked around with varying
>>degrees of success.  I had horrible problems with the NCR53c810 controller
>>on the ASUS SP3G motherboard until I turned off every feature in the BIOS
>>setup. 
>
>Interesting, I have that same board and didn't need to change any of
>the default settings.  I wonder how old you board is.  Mine was made
>about 3 months ago.

I misspoke -- I started with already changed settings, enabled every
feature (trying to debug a problem that turned out to be unrelated to the
PCI bus), disabled every feature (which breaks a different set of things),
and then finally ended with the default settings.

>Could you be having interferance with one of
>your cards?  From what I've gathered it's rather sensitive to some
>video cards out there.  I have a ISA bus ViewLogic 928 Movie, from my
>previous sytem, that was causing bootup problems till I replaced it
>with a different card.  Right now I only have two cards in the system,
>a real old ATI VGA Wonder 16 and a generic 2 port 16550 card.  I'm soon
>looking to get the new ATI PCI video card for it.  I Want X-Windows
>back up and running.  

I've tried two different versions of the ATI Mach-32 based PCI card and
both work well.

-- 
Donald Becker                                     [email-masked]
USRA-CESDIS, Center of Excellence in Space Data and Information Sciences.
Code 930.5, Goddard Space Flight Center,  Greenbelt, MD.  20771
301-286-0882         http://cesdis.gsfc.nasa.gov/pub/people/becker/whoiam.html

------------------------------

From: [email-masked] (Daniel Tran)
Subject: Re: ftp better, but still freezes with 1.1.52.  Was: ftp freeze problems
Date: Mon, 10 Oct 1994 23:33:53 GMT

In article <[email-masked]> [email-masked] (Joe Marino) writes:
>There has been a lot of talk about ftp freezing.  Alan Cox 
>([email-masked]) among others mentioned upgrading to
>1.1.19 or higher.  I did, to 1.1.52 (thanks Alan!)

I believe something is happenning -  I'm running 1.1.45 and it is definitely
better than 1.0.8.

I was the one who testified that everything is working.  Last weekend, I 
tried to transfer large file with ftp via my PPP connection (28.8 Modem), and
there I saw the prob.  Transfer was good until the last minute where it 
failed.  However the system did not freeze.  Since updating to 1.1.45, things
are going fine so far.

This problem was occurring with both medium and large file (300K to 1Mb +)
with 1.0.8 kernel.

>Once it freezes up, I can no longer 'ping' my PPP host and 'netstat'
>freezes up as well when trying to see what the state of the network
>is.   Killing the PPP daemon doesn't help,  as it looks like kernel's
>idea of the state of the network is pretty munged at this point, so I
>have no other recourse but reboot.

Mine did not freeze - guess i was lucky.
{stuff deleted}

Daniel Tran - [email-masked]

------------------------------

From: [email-masked] (Daniel Tran)
Subject: Re: kernel message in log file - what does it mean (SOLVED??)
Date: Mon, 10 Oct 1994 17:20:56 GMT

In article <[email-masked]> [email-masked] (Daniel Tran) writes:
>HI,
>Twice this morning, my Linux networking component stopped working.  I had
>named running so when my station didn't communicate to the outside world, I
>thought named has failed.  I killed the named process, restarted but nothing
>work.  I then ping'ed some hosts using the real IP address - nothing work.

>I shut down the system, brought it back up.  Everything worked again.  
>A while later, the same problem re-occurred.

>I looked at log files in /usr/adm and found this:
>   Oct 7 08:11:13 viper kernel: redirect from 01af6180

>01af6180 is the IP hex number of my router (128.97.175.1)

>Can someone tell me what the "redirect from 128.97.175.1" means??
>This machine has been running solidly for at least 3 months now.

>Daniel Tran [email-masked]

HI,
Last week i posted the above message.  I think I've found the cause.
I have another PC on the net which I inadvertenly assigned the same IP address 
as my Linux Box.  

A little background on this PC - This is a network management station running 
Cabletron Remote LanView which uses packet driver and FTP's vpctcp.386 driver 
in Windows.  This setup does not complain if there is an existing IP address 
in used therefore things appear to be normal but it is effecting the Linux 
box.  

I've since changed the IP address of this management station and things are 
fine as far as I can see.  I'll follow if there are any other developments.

Daniel Tran - [email-masked]

------------------------------

From: [email-masked] (John Richardson)
Crossposted-To: comp.os.linux.help,comp.os.linux.misc,comp.os.linux.development
Subject: Re: Telnet & ftp freeze!
Date: 9 Oct 1994 01:05:30 GMT

>
>Right, but introducing a 3000ms latency in the PPP session is not
>really acceptable.
>

Unfortuantely, I think the problem lies elsewhere if you have my 
patch. :(

--
John Richardson

------------------------------

From: [email-masked] (Thomas Koenig)
Subject: Re: Cron Problems - Script runs from shell but not cron
Date: 10 Oct 1994 17:23:59 GMT
Reply-To: [email-masked]

Brian Kramer ([email-masked]) wrote in comp.os.linux.admin,
        article <[email-masked]>:

>I am having trouble with some scripts running fine from a prompt, but not
>from cron.

Without looking too closely at your script, this can mean one of two
things:

a) You are using a command which is outside the path which cron
   supports (usually PATH=/bin:/usr/bin).

b) You are using ksh commands not present in sh.  In that case,
   put "ksh scriptfilename" in your cron file.
--
Thomas Koenig, [email-masked], [email-masked].
The joy of engineering is to find a straight line on a double
logarithmic diagram.

------------------------------

From: [email-masked] (Dan Swartzendruber)
Subject: Re: Please don't post security holess...
Date: 11 Oct 1994 12:20:27 GMT

In article <[email-masked]> [email-masked] (M. K. Shenk) writes:
>In article <[email-masked]>,
>Patrick D. Ashmore <[email-masked]> wrote:
>>M. K. Shenk ([email-masked]) wrote:

[Horseshit deleted to save bandwidth]

Listen, pal.  Personally, you can have whatever screwed-up,
self-serving rationalization for violating other people's
privacy, but it doesn't wash.  I mean, really.  Have you ever
been a burglary victim?  Do you think it makes the victim feel
less violated because the burglar entered through an unlocked
door/window instead of forcing entrance?  Grow up, pinhead.
-- 

#include <std_disclaimer.h>

Dan S.

------------------------------

From: [email-masked] (Dennis Flaherty)
Subject: Re: Has anyone gotten ftape to work?
Date: Sat, 8 Oct 1994 07:12:43 GMT

In article <[email-masked]>,
Timothy Murphy <[email-masked]> wrote:
> [email-masked] (Dennis Flaherty) writes:
> 
> >I've had ftape working with every kernel since 0.98 or so.  At about
> >1.1.20, I had to upgrade modutils.  
> 
> The question posed was: does the ftape that comes with slackware 2.0
> work with the kernel that comes with slackware 2.0?

The question in the Subject is the generic "Has anyone gotten ftape to
work?" and doesn't refer to Slackware.  You might claim that's what you
were talking about, but that's not how others and I have interpreted
your question.  If I could even call it a question.

> In my experience it definitely did not work with the command
> 
> % tar cvf /dev/ftape *
> 
> if * contained more than about 50k.
> It bombed out with I/O errors.
> It was clear from the logfile that there were over-runs
> from which ftape did not recover.

Please, Tim.  I know you're frustrated.  I've tried to help you.  But
rhetorical questions posted to the Net like "Has anyone gotten ftape to
work?" are not encouraging.

Are you using tar with compression?  I've found that I have better luck
if I use the --block-compress option of tar, to provide a bigger buffer
space between where tar is and where gzip is.  That might solve your
overrun problems.  This issue is covered in the ftape HOWTO.

> You're obviously a kernel hacker.

Sure, that's why I've been helping you and everyone else the best I can,
especially with Conner drives it the accompanying buggy formatting
software.

> Are you sure you used the version of ftape that came with slackware 2.0,
> with slackware 2.0, unmodified in any way?

No, I didn't get it from Slackware.  I don't get anything from
Slackware.  It's a great distribution, but it was two years too late for
me.  As Bas has come out with new versions, I've grabbed them myself so
I can help test them.

> If so, what commands did you give (tar, afio, dd, etc)?
> Please be explicit.

tar --block-compress -czf /dev/ftape files ... 

That's what I use.  Works like a charm during the day while I'm gone.

> I looked at the code, and it seemed to me
> that that particular version of ftape
> was incapable of recovering from over-runs.
> However, I could be wrong about that --
> I didn't look carefully into it.

That's entirely possible.  Bugs happen.  Are you accusing us?

> What is quite clear is that many other people
> had exactly the same experience as me.

No.  I've found that after posting the two patches to sunsite next to
the ftape sources in kernel/tapes, the number of daily articles here
about ftape (which mostly concerned getting it to work with the newer
kernels) has dropped.

> I would repeat my advice.
> If you find ftape does not work,
> update the kernel to 1.1.50
> and compile the latest ftape with the ftape-irq-dma.patch.

And in another post you said that this is unreasonable, having to
upgrade "everything" just to get a single package to work.  I'm
countering that this advice is too strong; that you can get ftape
working with less recent kernels.  And if you want to run it with a
1.1.4x kernel, then just drop the second argument "ftape" from
request_dma().  I suppose I could have mentioned that last bit in
ftape-irq-dma.patch.

> It's not much help telling people
> that ftape worked for you
> if it doesn't work for them.

And it's even less help for you to be bashing Bas.  He's put in a lot of
hard work, and although I'm still wondering where he's disappeared to,
it's because of this work that I can backup my Linux system with a $150
floppy tape drive.  It's less help for you to be telling people that
they have to upgrade "everything" to get ftape to work, advice that's so
strong you'll scare people away.  It's no help for you to ask "Has
anyone gotten ftape to work?" implying that it's hopeless.  It isn't.

-- 
Dennis Flaherty           [email-masked]
    Oatmeal Stout: It's the Right Thing to Drink!

------------------------------

From: [email-masked] (Martin Blaschke)
Subject: Xconfig for Diamond Speedstar V24 (ET4000)
Date: Fri, 07 Oct 1994 16:47:46 GMT
Reply-To: [email-masked]

Did anybody manage to run XFree in a resolution higher than 640x480 (256
colors) on the above mentioned VGA-board?

Could you please E-Mail me your Xconfig for the Speedstar V24! Thanks in
advance!

--
Martin Blaschke

 -------------------------------------------------------------------
 >             E-Mail:   [email-masked]                 <
 -------------------------------------------------------------------

------------------------------

From: [email-masked] (Kevin Cummings)
Subject: Re: <Q> Can Linux Mount a Mac Floppy
Date: Wed, 5 Oct 1994 19:33:00 GMT

In article <[email-masked]>, [email-masked] (Tim Bass (Network Systems Engineer)) writes:
> Got some ASCII text files on my Powerbook... Would like to write them
> to the PB floppy and then mount the floppy on my linux box and
> read the ascii text (and do some other stuff).  I haven't seen this
> in any FAQ or the The Linux Bible.   Any clues for the clueless ;-)

I think that you need to have the PB write them out to an MSDOS formatted
floppy.  You can then mount the floppy directly on a Linux system compiled with
the MSDOS files system support (or use the mtools on a system without it).
There is currently no support for MAC format floppies under Linux.

Is there even a project ongoing to support it?  I thought that at least at some
level Apple used some variable speed drives and varied the speed of the drive
depending on which track was being written to.  This allowed them to write
more sectors onto some tracks than others resulting in more storage.  The
floppy drives found in most "IBM-compatible" PCs are fixed speed drives
making it near impossible to read Apple formatted floppies (never mind
write them).

If your PB is using a fixed speed floppy drive, then it should be possible
to read them under Linux.  Whether you can or not will depend on the system
software (floppy disk driver, and whether or not it can recognize and support
the drive).

-- 
Kevin J. Cummings                       Peritus Software Services, Inc.
[email-masked]        [email-masked]

------------------------------

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******************************