Subject: Linux-Admin Digest #43
From: Digestifier <[email-masked]>
To: [email-masked]
Date: Fri, 9 Sep 94 19:13:22 EDT

Linux-Admin Digest #43, Volume #2                 Fri, 9 Sep 94 19:13:22 EDT

Contents:
  Re: Monitoring TTY's .. (Stephane Boyer)
  Re^2: Monitoring TTY's .. ([email-masked])
  is Yggdrasil's CNEWS complete? (Joan Tine)
  Device driver for Bernoulli Iomega Insider 150 (Jose Antonio Rodriguez)
  Re: HP Laserjet 4M Plus on Linux remote printer (Hendrik Klompmaker)
  Re: X doesn't work anymore !? (Laurent Chemla)
  Re: Erroneous results with ac (acct-1.1.18) (Rafal Maszkowski)
  Re: Mysterious serial port. (Holger Dunkel UP4)
  WAIS/Gopher problems - help needed (Borries Demeler)
  Re: please help me with e2fsck!!!!!! ([email-masked])
  Re: comercial databases that (Heikki Suonsivu)
  Re: Swapon - Swapoff question (Kai Petzke)
  Is there any Accounting in Linux?? (Tony Schwartz)
  Gnu Gopher and linux display problems (Chris Mackay)
  Re: Howto improve memory usage? (Kai Petzke)
  Re: UID 0 Passwd blues (Delemar)

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

Crossposted-To: comp.os.linux.misc
From: [email-masked] (Stephane Boyer)
Subject: Re: Monitoring TTY's ..
Date: Thu, 8 Sep 1994 18:16:24 GMT

Alpha / Omega Enterprises ([email-masked]) wrote:
: Ivan Parga ([email-masked]) wrote:

: : > I'm running a Linux box and would like to find out if there is software 
: : > that will allow me to monitor someone's tty.  We have had some problems 
: : > with people trying to break system security.. it would be nice to be able 
: : > to monitor and record the actions of these people live, while it happens.

:     There is some software available for this, but I have found a quick 
: way to monitor access is to login as that user and then press the up 
: arrow key.  Keep pressing it, and it will show you all of the commands 
: that the particular user executed in their last session.  Of course it 
: will not monitor what they did in different editors, and mail programs, 
: but it is better than nothing.

that is if you know their password ;-) instead try as 'root' to look at their
.bash_history file in their $HOME directory.

even better install ttysnoop, I use it and it works great!, it should be on
sunsite.unc.edu

Steph!

-- 
:---------------------------------------------------------------:
: [email-masked] | Public Linux Download Site :
:  [email-masked]  | in Montreal, Quebec/CANADA :
:---------------------------------------------------------------:

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

From: [email-masked]
Subject: Re^2: Monitoring TTY's ..
Date: Tue, 06 Sep 1994 16:03:00 +0200

[email-masked] meinte am 31.08.94 zum Thema "Re: Monitoring TTY's .."
im Brett /COMP/UNIX/MISC:

> Rob McKenzie (rpm@bcars601) wrote:
> > [If this is the wrong group for this post please don't flame]
>
> > I'm running a Linux box and would like to find out if there is software
> > that will allow me to monitor someone's tty.  We have had some problems
> > with people trying to break system security.. it would be nice to be able
> > to monitor and record the actions of these people live, while it happens.
>
> > Any ideas?
>
> I know that there is a software named "Peek & Spy" from Networking
> Dynamics Corp... that software was developed for VAX/VMS at first,
> but then was adapted for Unix, Software makes a spy over any tty,
> of course you must be su to do that!...
> The other way possible is TT-RECON from Software Partners/32, I think
> that software runs on Unix Systems...
> I hope that be useful for you...

Look for the tool ttysnoop-0.11

It can monitor any login-line and is installed in the getty/telnetd- 
Process-Configuration-File (inittab/inetd.conf).

Works great for me.

>
> Ivan Parga
> Unix System Administrator
> Universidad de Santiago de Chile

Ciao
  Higgins

--
You can escape the gates of hell, say DOG and WINDOG,

         USE LINUX   :-)     !
## CrossPoint v3.0 ##

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

From: [email-masked] (Joan Tine)
Subject: is Yggdrasil's CNEWS complete?
Date: Fri, 9 Sep 1994 15:50:30 GMT

Hi,
I used to run CNEWS under Coherent, and my newsfeed hasn't
changed, but in installing Ygg's CNEWS it seems very
different, with different locations for the binaries, (/usr/
lib/news/bin instead of /usr/lib/newsbin, and many of the
files are named differently.)
        
        I am receiving my news batches via UUCP and they
are being stored ok in /usr/spool/news/in.coming, but
there is no /usr/lib/news/newsrun command.  Can anyone tell
me what are the equivalent commands for unbatching news in
this version?  Can anyone post a complete cron file for news
in this environment?  Any help would be much appreciated.

JT

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

From: [email-masked] (Jose Antonio Rodriguez )
Subject: Device driver for Bernoulli Iomega Insider 150
Date: Fri, 9 Sep 1994 11:31:06 GMT

        I'm trying to install an Iomega Insider 150 (removeable disk)
        in my Linux system (SLS 1.05 distribution), the disk is connected
        to an SCSI controller (without BIOS), Linux doesn't 
        acknowledges the controller (neither the disk...).

        Is there a device driver to control this drive directly ?

        Please, answers to [email-masked].

        Thanks in advance.
        Jose.

--
Jose A. Rodriguez               OOO  Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya (UPC)
[email-masked]                OOO  
[email-masked]         OOO  Departament d'Arquitectura de Computadors.

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

From: [email-masked] (Hendrik Klompmaker)
Subject: Re: HP Laserjet 4M Plus on Linux remote printer
Date: Thu, 8 Sep 1994 22:16:24 GMT

To all how reponded.

I tried to options. the "raw" and "text" option in seperate queues and the 
nenscript ASCII to Postscript convertor. Both worked.
As to the manual. The HP 4M Plus manual has some info on configuring lpd but 
for princap entries it points to the samples on the tape for unix systems (
You know the one you don't get ;-(.
I will sure take a look at the Dr.Dobbs issues.

Bye

Hendrik
=========================================================================
|***** Wageningen Agricultural University. Animal Sciences Group   *****|
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Hendrik Klompmaker: System Manager                            |\
Internet     : [email-masked] (prefered)|*|  _
             : or [email-masked]                       |*| /*\
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Snail        : Marijkeweg 40, 6709 PG  WAGENINGEN, The Netherlands  \*/
=========================================================================

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

From: [email-masked] (Laurent Chemla)
Subject: Re: X doesn't work anymore !?
Date: 9 Sep 1994 10:36:01 GMT

: In article [email-masked],  [email-masked] (Laurent Chemla) writes:
: >nothing works from then: no mouse (unless I kill selection before to
: >start X) and no keyboard (and what should I kill for it :-)) at all!
: >The only thing I can do from then is switching to another vc, but the
: >X screen remains. And I don't have to use Ctrl+Alt to switch : Alt
: >alone is enough. Sound's like the keyboard doesn't know I'm under X.
: >
: >I admit some things changed since the last time I used X: I changed my
: >IP number and I changed some dip switches on my Soundblaster card.
: >That's all.
--
I finally got it and it was a little mistake:

while wanting to delete a wrong /dev/ty7 file, I accidentally removed
the device /dev/tty7, and when I created it again I entered 
'mknod tty7 c 4 6' so it pointed to tty6. And of course I completely
forgot that move as soon as I did it :-(

Thanks for all those who replied me.
--
Laurent Chemla : [email-masked] or [email-masked]
Brasil BBS  - +33 1 44 67 08 44 -  Atari France developpers support

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

Crossposted-To: comp.os.linux.help
From: [email-masked] (Rafal Maszkowski)
Subject: Re: Erroneous results with ac (acct-1.1.18)
Date: Fri, 9 Sep 1994 10:03:58 GMT

[email-masked] wrote:
> I am running Linux 1.0 and 1.08 with the acct-1.1.18
> However, I get erroneous results with 
>        ac -d -p
> Firstly, If I did not use the system for a day, root gets 
> logged as 24 hour usage for that day. I even see that the 
> usage for other users is not consistent and incorrect.

I tried alpha acct from GNU alpha archives and both last and ac
don't work. But ac.c from FreeBSD sources seems to be ok. I needed
to do some small corrections to compile.
GNU acct seems to be potentially nicer but I couldn't find anything
with gdb.

R.
-- 
Rafal Maszkowski [email-masked]      http://www.mat.uni.torun.pl/~rzm
Opinia publiczna powinna byc zaalarmowana swoim nieistnieniem - St. J. Lec

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

From: [email-masked] (Holger Dunkel UP4)
Subject: Re: Mysterious serial port.
Date:  8 Sep 94 15:54:11 GMT

[email-masked] (Michael Talbot-Wilson) writes:

>Justin Scott ([email-masked]) wrote:
>: Park Medical Systems ([email-masked]) wrote:
>: : Hi everyone.  I have a linux box running v1.0.8 on a 386DX33.  When I 
>: : boot the machine the boot up messages say that there are two serial 
>: : ports.  I have no problem using /dev/ttyS0.  The problem I am having is 
>: : with /dev/ttyS1.  Everytime I try to do anything with the second port 
>: : (kermit, seyon, setserial) I get a message saying that the device is busy 
>: : and I'm put back to the prompt.

>: : Has any one else seen this problem.  I've looked through all the /etc/rc* 
>: : files, I can't see anything that uses this port.  

>: : I would like to solve this problem so that I can hook up a second modem 
>: : to this machine.  The first port (/dev/ttyS0) is working fine with a 
>: : cardinal modem being used for a full time slip connection.

>: You don't have your second serial port set up as a serial mouse 
>: connection do you?  (link from /dev/mouse to /dev/ttyS1 ? )  I don't 
>: think the link would do it in itself, but if you had selection running or 
>: something like that, it could interfere...

>I have had the same problem for a couple of days (since I put in an
>ethernet card).  Tomorrow I will be booting MSDOS from a floppy to
>confirm that its version of kermit still works.
>-- 
>Michael Talbot-Wilson

Speaking about ethernet cards, 
I had simmilar problems with the second serial port until I realized
the double usage of the IRQ. Check the IRQ number of the ethernet card 
and the second serial port. 
If they use the same IRQ change one of them. 
If you have a software setup program for the ethernet card (DOS), change the 
used IRQ. This will probably solve your problem.
hope this helps
        Holger Dunkel
-- 
Holger Dunkel | Bunsenstr. 13-15 | 37073 Goettingen/Germany
Phone:  (Germany) 0551/39-7699   | E-Mail: [email-masked]

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

From: [email-masked] (Borries Demeler)
Crossposted-To: alt.gopher
Subject: WAIS/Gopher problems - help needed
Date: 8 Sep 1994 12:21:41 -0600

Hi, I have installed a gopher server (2.016) on a Linux machine (486.
version 1.1.8). I have installed waisindex from the FreeWais 0.3 version
as well, and now have trouble to access index.src files from the gopher. I
keep getting a gopher transmission error. I have tried many different
things, but must be missing something obvious. Gindexd seems to be able 
to search the files without a problem, but gopher is unable to do so. Any 
clues, help etc. would be extremely appreciated!!! 

Thanks, Borries Demeler

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

From: [email-masked]
Subject: Re: please help me with e2fsck!!!!!!
Date: 09 Sep 1994 10:53:10 GMT

In article <[email-masked]> [email-masked] (Paul C. Dulany) writes:
>[email-masked] wrote:
>
>: to repair the destroied filesystem after such a crash. 
>: So I run it with option "-a" and it reports some errors, 
>: fix it and tells me that I schould reboot the system.
>: (It really repairs it because when I run "e2fsck" imediately 
>: afterwards with option "-f" it will not find errors any more.) 
>
>: During the reboot the system comes up with the message 
>: "filesystem clean, but when I run "e2fsck" after the reboot 
>: there are the same errors again there!!!!
>
>Quote from _Essential System Administration_ by Aeleen Frisch:
>"There is one situation in which you do not want _sync_ to be executed,
>either manually or automatically: when you have to run _fsck_ manually
>on the root filesystem.  If you _sync_ the disks at this point, you will
>rewrite the bad superblocks stored in the kernel buffers and undo the
>fixing _fsck_ just did."

I fear this is *bad* advice for Linux. My understanding/experience is
that if you fsck then don't sync before rebooting the repairs will be
lost. This is because the disk buffering takes place at the block
device level rather than at the filesystem level.

If the filesystem were mounted r/w then the sync would probalbly also
cause the fs to write out it's corrupt superblock as you suggest. This
is why one must never fsck a filesystem that is mounted r/w.
--
    \\   ( )   No Bullshit!   | Email: [email-masked]
 .  _\\__[oo       from       | Phones: +44 121 471 3789 (home)
.__/  \\ /\@  /~)  /~[   /\/[ |  +44 121 627 2171 (voice) 2175 (fax)
.  l___\\    /~~) /~~[  /   [ | PGP-fp: D7 03 2A 4B D8 3A 05 37
 # ll  l\\  ~~~~ ~   ~ ~    ~ |         A1 93 FE EA BE E3 2A 91
###LL  LL\\ (Brian McCauley)  | More: finger [email-masked]

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

From: [email-masked] (Heikki Suonsivu)
Subject: Re: comercial databases that
Date: 09 Sep 1994 22:12:50 GMT

In article <[email-masked]> [email-masked] (JANI KURKI-SUONIO) writes:
   Also the president of that company claimed Solid server to be the
   fastest SQL server available.

Before Linux can become a fast database server, it would better have a scsi
driver which doesn't busy-loop during SCSI reads or writes.  Currently a
Sun SS-1 with one disk is faster than an EISA-486-66 running Linux with 4
disks, running the same database server on both.  It should be the other
way round, with considerable difference.

-- 
Heikki Suonsivu, T{ysikuu 10 C 83/02210 Espoo/FINLAND,
[email-masked]  home +358-0-8031121 work -4513377 fax -4555276  riippu SN

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

From: [email-masked] (Kai Petzke)
Subject: Re: Swapon - Swapoff question
Date: 9 Sep 94 12:01:55 GMT

[email-masked] (Dan Wold) writes:

>I've got 8 meg RAM on my 486dx with a 8meg swap-partition. Lately I get busy
>with xapps and decided I need some more swap-space so I made a 4meg
>swapfile. I wasn't sure where to "swapon swapfile" at boot-time so I put
>"/sbin/swapon /sda1/swap" at the bottom of my rc.local. Is this the best
>place to put it?

There is nothing like the "best" place where to put a certain command
into your startup files.  Make sure, though, that your swap partition
is swapped on first, because partitions are faster than files.

>Also I saw that rc.K does
> " # Stop swapping
>  /sbin/swapoff -a"

>so I added:

>/sbin/swapoff /sda1/swap <(my new swapfile).

That is correct.
-- 
Kai Petzke                      | How fast can computers get?
Technical University of Berlin  |
Berlin, Germany                 | Sol 9, of course, on Star Trek.
[email-masked]   |

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

From: [email-masked] (Tony Schwartz)
Subject: Is there any Accounting in Linux??
Date: Fri, 9 Sep 1994 14:37:57

Does anyone know of any built in or add-on accounting functions that will 
allow the Linux system to record who is on, when, how long, etc??  I need this 
as a new Access provider and dont really want to create it myself.

Ideas are appreciated.

Tony Schwartz
Portland OR

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

Crossposted-To: comp.os.linux.misc
From: [email-masked] (Chris Mackay)
Subject: Gnu Gopher and linux display problems
Reply-To: [email-masked] (Chris Mackay)
Date: Fri, 9 Sep 1994 01:06:14 GMT

 I just FTP'ed the latest version of Gnu Gopher from
boombox. It compiled perfectly with one warning which
wasn't very important.  I set it up with the sample
menus and such but when I run 'gn', nothing appears
on the screen and if I press the <enter> key, it shows
what looks like the .cache file to the screen and drops
back to the prompt. I don't see the traditional gopher menu with a
selector prompt and such at all. Does anybody have a clue as to what
I should do?

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

From: [email-masked] (Kai Petzke)
Subject: Re: Howto improve memory usage?
Date: 9 Sep 94 12:05:52 GMT

[email-masked] (Paul Gabler) writes:

>I have the BETA-TAMU-1.0A version of Linux installed on a Pentium
>90Meg with 8meg Ram.  By the time the system boots and fires up 
>xdm, real memory is exhausted, consequently, everything I do 
>in X causes paging.  The only items loaded are a GIF, xsysinfo, 
>2 xterms, and seyon.  Is this normal?

It is normal, that starting the X server and a few applications on
an 8 MB machine causes some virtual memory to be used.

>What I find strange is that the system seems to recognize all 8Meg,
>(ie kcore size), but cat'ing /proc/meminfo returns:

>       total:   used:    free:   shared:  buffers:
>Mem:   4149248  4067328    81920  1773568   819200
>Swap:  8384512  2957312  5427200

This is indeed strangs.  The total field should give you about 
7 Megabytes (1 Megabyte is eaten by the kernel).  Most likely,
you have a RAMDISK installed.  Set it to zero, either by
placing the line

        ramdisk = 0

into /etc/lilo.conf and running lilo once again.  Or use the

        ramsize

command to change the RAM disk size of your kernel image.

Kai
-- 
Kai Petzke                      | How fast can computers get?
Technical University of Berlin  |
Berlin, Germany                 | Sol 9, of course, on Star Trek.
[email-masked]   |

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

From: [email-masked] (Delemar )
Subject: Re: UID 0 Passwd blues
Date: 08 Sep 1994 17:31:10 GMT

In article <[email-masked]> [email-masked] (Johan Myreen) writes:

>In article <[email-masked]> [email-masked] (Rick) writes:
>
>>[...]  I would go as far as to say that you should
>>NOT use a root account to do ANYTHING unless it is ABSOLUTELY essential
>>that it be done by the superuser.
>
>This is beside the point. What if it is ABSOLUTELEY essential that
>several people have root privileges?

Very simple : they all have the root passwd, but only if it's ABSOLUTLY
essential.

> You can't run a medium sized
>site without having more than one person with root access.

Why not ? For common usage utilities management, you can create a group of
"gurus" who have write permission in the /usr/local tree for example (owner:
root, group: gurus). They'll just have to take care of letting group write
permission for every new file or directory (umask 2).

>[...] but what do you do when your administrator decides to go hitch-hiking in
>the Gobi desert for a week or two?
>

If it's a good administrator, everything should work whithout his help, and he
can give give the root passwd to one of the gurus for a while.

>>If your users need high privs to do system maintenance work, use su
>>or sudo.
>
>So how is this less dangerous? 

Sudo can restrict root permission for a given list of programm (shutdown or
install for example)

>Using su means several people have to
>know root's password -- not a nice situation. I think this is what the
>original poster was also trying to avoid.
>

It's worst if they all have the UID 0: if they use su, they are conscient they
will be acting as root for a particular action and will be carefull. If they
have the UID 0, everything they'll do will be done as root, like changing his
password for example !

>Several people have complained that confusion will reign or that you
>will run into serious trouble if several users have the same ID. So
>far NO ONE has pointed out a real problem, except for the bug (IMHO)
>in the passwd program. What IS the problem?

Everyone can make a mistake, root can't. One day I tried to delete all the
hiden file in a tree of directory (I was new whith UNIX), I used "rm -r
.*". ".*"  match "..", "../.*" etc... I let you imagine if I was root. Anyway,
what has been reported is definetly NOT a bug in the passwd program.

                                        DELEMAR Olivier

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

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End of Linux-Admin Digest
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