November 2003 - main

Fun with kernel 2.6.0-test9
by MJ Ray 28 Nov '03

28 Nov '03

After frothing lightly about the kernel-centricity, here's an email about the kernel. Please point out any errors. I started to upgrade my first machine to kernel 2.6.0-test9 at the Sunday's ALUG meeting, as some of may have seen. I didn't actually complete the upgrade there. As with all good projects, I ignored it resolutely for two days and took another look at it on Wednesday. It seems there are some things which can catch out the unwary when you upgrade from 2.4 to 2.6, but it feels a lot faster, so it's probably worth doing if you have a machine with fairly simple hardware. I hear there are still IDE bugs, so maybe you should wait for 2.6.0 proper. Nevertheless, off I went. First off, there's some changes in the device handling. Some time ago, devfs was introduced into the kernel. It offers a /dev which only contains the devices you actually have, rather than having you waste disk on a directory full of mostly unused special files. It seems that time has not been kind to devfs, as it upset kernel developers with a relative lack of maintenance, alleged design flaws and continuing its own incompatible naming scheme. devfs is still there in 2.6 at the moment, but is marked as "obsolete". Before you rush to disable it, note that part of its intended replacement, udev, is on version 0.06. I'm using a distribution which makes devfs fairly essential, so I've left it enabled for now. udev looks like a nice idea. It uses a really important new filesystem in 2.6, the sysfs. This is a virtual filesystem, like devfs and procfs, which exposes "kernel objects" as files. A "kernel object" seems to be a device or driver that is loaded into the kernel. When something is added to sysfs, the kernel calls hotplug (possibly familiar to USB device users) and udev acts on the hotplug event to create an entry in /dev. So far, not much difference. What is different about udev is that it accesses the sysfs object and calls a helper to tell it what to call the entry in /dev. That helper, called "namedev", can identify devices by their serial numbers, so even if you plug your USB printer into a different socket, it can still appear as /dev/lp0 without reconfiguring. Alternatively, it can assign a particular port to a particular device, so *that* USB socket is always your /dev/input/mouse0, even if you change the mouse plugged into it. Of course, this is controlled by text files for now. Will GUI user tools appear soon? More details in the slides and paper linked from http://kerneltrap.org/node/view/1029 Secondly, ModUtils has been replaced by ModuleInitTools. Outwardly, there aren't too many changes, as you can still use commands like "modprobe", but it says that a lot of tidying up of the interface between kernel and tools has happened. modules.conf is dead, long live modprobe.conf -- it's a simpler configuration file which can usually be generated from modules.conf by the supplier tool (called "generate-modprobe.conf"). It couldn't handle the trick my scanner does to ask the kernel to rescan the SCSI bus for it on first use of /dev/scanner, but apparently that should be done by udev now. (Yes, that means I'm prodding the scanner by hand until I have switched over to udev...) An improvement which may interest some is the better ACPI support. Sleep, suspend to disk and suspend to swap are claimed to be supported, although I've not yet really tested this. The kernel can do an ACPI power off, which 2.4 never did on this machine. Also, ALSA replaces OSS/Free as the preferred sound system. Yippee! If you haven't been using the Advanced Linux Sound Architecture, then you're probably going to get access to all the features of your soundcard for the first time. I had been using the OSS/Free which was installed by the distribution. I didn't even know that the sound card can do half the tricks it can. It sounds much nicer now and debian users won't have to fiddle around as much to make it compile. One final note. On the second machine I upgraded, the compile failed with the error that it couldn't find stdarg.h, which is a header that comes with GCC. It seems that the kernel Makefile uses options to GCC that the GCC manuals say not to use. A quick (and slightly dubious) edit of the Makefile to replace "-iwithprefix include" with "-I/full/path/to/GCC/header/include" made it work. I'm not sure what is different between the two machines, as they supposedly have the same distribution with the same GCC version. -- MJR/slef My Opinion Only and possibly not of any group I know. Please http://remember.to/edit_messages on lists to be sure I read http://mjr.towers.org.uk/ gopher://g.towers.org.uk/ slef(a)jabber.at Creative copyleft computing services via http://www.ttllp.co.uk/

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Re[4]: [ALUG] Cheap web hosting ?
by bsamuels＠beenthere-donethat.org.uk 27 Nov '03

27 Nov '03

Anthony Anson <tony.anson(a)zetnet.co.uk> wrote: > And posted his reply to the list. Ah! I've just realised I posted a 'reply to sender' whereas I meant to post to the list. Bother! I really must try and post this to the list!!! > BTW, your [2]: is falling foul of my spamtrap, and I've tried to make an > exception of the subject line with Re:, without Re: and just the > subject, and I've tinkered with the filter five times, reprocessed the > packet five times and it's eaten it five times. Poor thing must be hungry. I've never fallen foul of a spam trap before - how exciting. What ever would it do with Re[4]. Incidentally it's my mailer that does that not me - honest. Barry Samuels http://www.beenthere-donethat.org.uk The Unofficial Guide to Great Britain

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Cheap web hosting ?
by bsamuels＠beenthere-donethat.org.uk 27 Nov '03

27 Nov '03

I have a co.uk domain name which is detagged and now due for renewal. I understand from Nominet that I have to have the domain hosted before I can renew it and that if I renew via full member of Nominet it will cost me far less than the standard Nominet charge. All I want is a holding page as I don't intend to actively use the domain at present. Can anyone in the know suggest a web hosting provider who would handle this inexpensively? Regards Barry Samuels http://www.beenthere-donethat.org.uk The Unofficial Guide to Great Britain

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Toy
by Anthony Anson 27 Nov '03

27 Nov '03

Snarfed from The Shed: Here, if any Penguinistas want to waste a bit of time, have a look at xplanet. 's really rather shiny. It's turned the background piccy on my screen into a picture of The Whirled, upadted every few minutes, with day and night rotating around it as it does, and the piccies are real ones, and every few hours it grabs a new piccy of what the clouds are doing and overlays it ... you can lose hours playing with it. Coo. -- Tony http://www.users.zetnet.co.uk/hi-fi/

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Gentoo
by Richard Lewis 27 Nov '03

27 Nov '03

OK, I've had a look at the Gentoo website and it looks quite cool. I'll have a go at installing (if the UEA network decides to behave itself! Grr!) Just a couple of questions: 1) People say it takes a long time to install. If I've got a PIII, 512MB RAM, 20GB HDD, etc and I want a fairly standard system (KDE, basic development tools, a few music progams) how long does anyone think it might take? 2) Its source based, which seems like a really good idea. But can you use portage to install any old source.tar.gz? Or do they have to be recognised ones? (in the portage 'tree', is it, or something?) And if you can't is there a way that you can make them installable with portage? 3) Does it have an equivalent to Debian's 'non-free' or MDK's PLF? (For things like libdvdcss, pardon my French ;-) Cheers, Richard

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Linux Friendly MP3 Player
by Matt Parker 27 Nov '03

27 Nov '03

I just bought an Oracom 200M 256Mb player. Mandrake 9.1 detected it automatically and magically added an entry to my fstab. Not only does it sound absolutely fantastic, it was only £80 and it says "Diverse OS support for Windows, Mac and Linux" on the front of the box in big letters. No OGG though, but that was too much to hope for. Matt -- http://www.mpcontracting.co.uk Experts in Java development and website design

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When?
by Anthony Anson 27 Nov '03

27 Nov '03

When I log on (using Gnome - to start with, anyway) I'm asked for username and password, both of which I've remembered this time - certain listmembers will know why (!), I can get into the program, and following yesterday's help, I can now get out of it without a parachute. Q: If I need to get in as root, do I type 'root' instead of username? Q: Under what circumstances might I need to go rooting? Q: I fired Wine up yesterday and it demanded a Windows program to play with, and sulked because the one I had in mind was in the CD romdrive waiting to be installed. How should I set about installing the program, where should I put it, and how? (It's my internet software, and someone has reported that it runs under Wine. If it does, expect me to lay down a barrage of questions about modems and error messages. And Syd, I really will try to get most of the answers off that CD you kindly sent me, honest I will.) -- Tony http://www.users.zetnet.co.uk/hi-fi/

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Open networks
by Graham Trott 26 Nov '03

26 Nov '03

For those interested in open (wireless) broadband, head off to http:// consume.net. -- GT

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Norwich meeting.....
by Craig 26 Nov '03

26 Nov '03

I think I should really pop along to this meeting... not sure how I would fit in ;) However, I could bring my little ipod for drooling purpose...... I presume anything goes at all linux meetings? ;) C

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Debian (with high version numbers)
by Richard Lewis 26 Nov '03

26 Nov '03

(This is sort of Re: 'MDK9.2 ships w/out kernel sources') One of the reasons why I've been using MDK is because it always uses the latest versions of software packages. (I'm afraid I'm a bit of a features junky!) I keep meaning to try Debian. The 'stable' release comes with quite old packages, doesn't it? Whats the best way to use Debian with more up-to-date packages? I've looked at downloading the ISOs for the 'testing' release. But it comes on about 11 discs and I can't find out whats on what disc. Any hints? Cheers, Richard

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