schussat

I have security on my installation of mdk 10.0 set to "higher" and am running sshd. This seems to translate to the inability for non-root users to do things like run top or view processes. As a result, as a regular user I can't even kill my own errant processes -- I have to su to do it. Is there any way to fine tune these settings a bit more? I tried setting the user to the adm group, which /proc belongs to, but this didn't do any good. Any suggestions?

Thanks-

-Alan

Thanks for the response, SoulSe -- I got it working late last night. It was a serious case of Error-Between-Keyboard-and-Chair... Argh.

I've gone and broken my tiny office network by installing mdk 10.0. I hope someone can offer some suggestions: My linux PC shares its connection with an XP desktop, and this has worked fine for over a year. With 10.0, however, I can't get the share connection wizard to do a thing -- every time I run it, it tells me that only one network interface is configured, so it won't let me set up eth1. My second NIC is al old ne-compatible card, and has worked fine up until now... I'm not sure if my problems are with re-configuring it, or with the connection sharing, or what. ifconfig gives me this:

eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:E0:B8:11:99:24  
         inet addr:128.196.44.154  Bcast:128.196.44.255  Mask:255.255.255.0
         inet6 addr: fe80::2e0:b8ff:fe11:9924/64 Scope:Link
         UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
         RX packets:20387 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
         TX packets:1819 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
         collisions:78 txqueuelen:1000 
         RX bytes:2743878 (2.6 Mb)  TX bytes:286741 (280.0 Kb)
         Interrupt:9 Base address:0x1000 

eth1      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:40:95:AA:25:B0  
         inet addr:192.168.1.1  Bcast:192.168.1.255  Mask:255.255.255.0
         inet6 addr: fe80::240:95ff:feaa:25b0/64 Scope:Link
         UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
         RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:4 overruns:0 frame:0
         TX packets:0 errors:4 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
         collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 
         RX bytes:0 (0.0 b)  TX bytes:618 (618.0 b)
         Interrupt:10 Base address:0x300 

lo        Link encap:Local Loopback  
         inet addr:127.0.0.1  Mask:255.0.0.0
         inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
         UP LOOPBACK RUNNING  MTU:16436  Metric:1
         RX packets:2 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
         TX packets:2 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
         collisions:0 txqueuelen:0 
         RX bytes:140 (140.0 b)  TX bytes:140 (140.0 b)

So I think that eth1 is working, but I'm really not sure at this point. I tried skipping the wizard and setting up shorewall directly, using the two-interface startup configuration files, but had no luck there, either. Anybody have any suggestions?

I use Unison to do this every day between a laptop, a server, and two desktops. Works great.

Grass is really complex -- I tinkered with it a little bit, but it has a pretty steep curve. To get started, have you checked out the documentation? The first time usage page might help you get going.

I am also going to read up on rsync as well. The only problem with it that I am not sure if it can handle is the fact that I do not have a single directory that can be used as the reference directory. Changes can be made to either directory -- i.e. files added/deleted/and or changed -- and I am not sure if rsync can handle that.

I use unison in a similar situation, though on a smaller scale (not 40 gigs!), to sync files between multiple machines. You can add/delete/modify files from any location, and unison handles this situation just fine, as long as the same file hasn't been changed in both locations since the last sync. In that case, you have to manually intervene or set up a rule defining that one location overrides conflicting updates in another location.

I'm a big fan of using unison to sync all sorts of things. I sync data and documents between three machines, and it works great. Although I haven't used it to sync my Evolution data, this thread seems to suggest that it works just fine. Might be worth a look; once you get the hang of unison, it's a slick process, and you can set up an automatic syncing via a cron job. Also, it requires just one executable, and since it's run from remote via ssh, it doesn't involve setting up another server.

Doh! DragonMage reminds me of a few extra ACPI steps that I completely forgot -- which is appropriate, becuase he helped me with some sound issues not too long ago. My memory must be going...

Anyway, his advice should get you up and running in no time.

I'm running 9.2 on a Toshiba s501, and sound works fine here. I didn't need to do anything special with the kernel or manually add the acpi patch, but I have added the line "toshiba_acpi" to my /etc/modules. I don't remember, however, if that action on my part had anything to do with sound -- but it's worth a try in your case.

Also, fuzzylizard's advice to check the volume is very good. I think the first time I tried to play a CD, the relevant audio channel was muted. One click in the volume control and I was back in business.

This will sound heretical, but I'm using a Microsoft MN 520 PCMCIA card (prism2 chipset), and it works beautifully. I'm running mdk 9.2, and the card works with WEP and everything. It wasn't quite plug and play: Thanks to a thread at linuxquestions I found the lines I needed to add to /etc/pcmcia/config:

card "Microsoft Wireless Notebook Adapter MN-520 1.0.3"
version "Microsoft", "Wireless Notebook Adapter MN-520", "", "1.0.3"
bind "orinoco_cs"

After that, smooth sailing and easy configuration in drake config. I bought the Microsoft card because 1) I knew its chipset has drivers that work with linux, and 2) unlike cards like the WPC11 v3, I could buy it locally (Office Max) and not have to worry about tech support/returns via mail if there were problems. None of the other cards readily available in my area (local PC retailers or big box stores) used chipsets with known (and reliable) linux support, their manufacturers having moved on to chips like the Broadcom or to 802.11G chips, for which support is still pretty touch-and-go. Did I mortage my soul for a little wireless support? Maybe, but there was no amount of money that I could have paid locally to get a card from a manufacturer that endorses Linux.

Anyway, the bottom line I'd recommend is to check this list of chipsets and manufacturers and see what's available. Off the top of my head, the Netgear MA401 is confirmed to work, and Netgear even offers a linux driver -- if that card is available to you, it would probably be a good bet (Gowater, what Netgear cards failed to work for you?) if you're determined to use a card with express linux support.

Check out linux-wlan.org for an extensive list of wireless adapters and the linux drivers reported to work with them. According to the list, one version of the WUSB11 is tested to work, but a newer version isn't. I guess the suggestion then is to figure out which version you have and go from there.

initrd=/boot/initrd-2.4.22-10mdk.img

append="devfs=mount hdc=ide-scsi acpi=on nolapic resume=/dev/hda9 splash=silent"

Have you used suspend on your laptop? So far, with kernel 2.4.22-10, it's the one function that doesn't work for me. Any luck in your case?

I have a laptop with 1400x1050, and really love the resolution. I don't recommend running it at any other resolution, however; unlike on a CRT, the LCD's pixels are fixed, and the display has to fake it to display any other resolution -- the result will be bigger, but also blurry, text. I'd recommend keeping it at the recommended resolution, and adjusting the zoom of you particular application to reach your comfort level.

I find that the fully updated 9.2 works nicely in my laptop. Even something really really bothersome like IRDA and suspend to swap works somewhat. I

Nice to hear that suspend to swap works for you. Now that's what I'd really like to get working on my own laptop, but no luck so far. Otherwise, I'm really happy with 9.2 on both my desktop and laptop (where wireless networking is up and running flawlessly, as well). The install-to-productivity time has shortened dramatically for me -- partly because I'm just better at it than I was when I started with mdk 6, but also because Mandrake has kept on getting better. 9.2 was well worth the upgrade.

I will echo fuzzylizard's recommendations on using mysql. However, you might also look into mdbtools, which provides some tools for using Access databases on linux. I haven't looked into it for a while, but it has a pretty active set of users and developers, and while I don't think it will support your user forms, it may function as an intermediate step.

Toshiba laptop with the so-called no-legacy bios (which means that you have to boot into windows to change bios settings, stupid ain't it?) requires a little bit more work than regular desktop. So as you can see in my sig, I am running 9.2 in my laptop. I am waiting for the iso with updated kernel though so that I can actually proliferate the use.

Hi Dragonmage-

I have a Toshiba 5105 and am interested in putting 9.2 on it. What's your experience so far? I'm not particularly adept at tinkering with the kernel, so I'm somewhat apprehensive.

-schussat

Just to be clear: When you say that Gnome and KDE get destroyed, it sounds from your description that the menus are what are affected -- that is, you can run any apps you want, you just have to do it from the command line. If this is the case, check this recent thread for some potential solutions.

Some success here! Scoopy's suggestion of rebuilding the menus in menudrake seems to work -- partly. It still results in gnome reporting errors when loading the background and tasklist (these are corrected by rebooting), but it does bring back the menus in "mandrake style" (ie, the original menu style, with the mdk menus included rather than linked as a submenu).

The nearly exact thing happened to me yesterday, Derxen. Seeing that all that was left of my menu was the gnome part (the mdk-build menu had vanished), I assumed that something got a little wonky during an update, so I rebooted. Bad idea: Gnome got flaky, giving me errors trying to load the background and panel tasklist. To restore the menu, I reset the menu style in menudrake to show the full menu, and I had to do the same thing in menudrake as a user -- for some reason, the menu settings got all disjointed, so that my user menus were not using the system defaults. Doing this, for whatever reason, also seems to have corrected the gnome errors, and I don't have any explanation for that.

However, while that brought back the mandrake menus, it didn't bring them back the way they had previously been: Where the gnome menu once contained all the mandrake items (Amusements, Applications, etc), it now has a submenu for "Mandrake," and that submenu contains the additional items. So, I'm one level of menus further away from all those items than I used to be. At least I have menus, I guess, but I'd love to know how to really restore them.

Cool. Now I can unload some of those unwieldy filters I have been using. Thanks for the link. Now I just need a few more pieces of spam to train my filter (geez, never thought I'd say that).

I only know to suggest this because of this thread on installations, but did you remember to link /home to /freespace/home? Without doing this, I bet that gnome doesn't know where to find your user information.

But in case you're interested, here's the real way I would do it:

- / : 3GB

- /local : everything else

And after install:

- move and link /home to /local/home

- move and link /usr/local to /local/system/usr/local

- move and link /opt to /local/system/opt

- create /local/shared for all data shared by all users.

With coffee only flowing for a moment so far this morning, I'm a little fuzzy. But is this essentially just a way to keep on a separate partition all of the potential user-modified data, without splitting up the disk into half a dozen partitions? I haven't seen it done this way before, and I think it looks really nice; is this in fact how your partitions are currently set up? I guess that with the links, all interactions with anything in /local should be pretty transparent -- do you ever encounter any problems after install (anything not deal nicely with the symlinks, for example?)?

Thanks for the nice suggestion! If I get around to installing 9.2 and cleaning out my hard drive, I just might give it a try.

I'm not sure if the version of OOo that comes with Mandrake will read and save Office XP docs.  I would imagine so but I never use Office XP anymore, so I'm not sure.  I believe if it doesn't, the newer version that is out there does (urpmi openoffice).  Someone else will have to clarify this for me.

I move simple documents back and forth with no problem. Current versions of OpenOffice.org deal pretty well with Word documents, but you can expect some formatting changes to accompany complex documents -- documents with lots of section breaks, tables, or inline objects may show some problems. I've also found that its display of tracked changes isn't quite consistent with Word's, so if you're sharing documents a lot (and using track changes), you'll want to watch for that.

I'm a bit too embarrased to post on that forum and admit it as well as loads of other seem to get it without trouble - I never thought I was particulary thick - until today...

Cygwin can do that to you at first blush. But it's not too bad -- the installer pretty much does everything for you, although configuring X is tricky, as cybrjackle noted. I have cygwin running in a couple of machines, mainly for the occasional remote X session (worked great when the monitor on my linux box broke, and I could run a remote X session from the laptop, for instance). Although its bash prompt is pretty functional, I haven't found it all that useful for interacting with anything that's actually on the local windows box. It certainly can do so, as it maps your windows drive to an easily-accessible path (something like /cygdrive? It's been a while) -- so if the tools you'd like to use are ported to cygin, it could be handy. At any rate, like I said, the installer makes it really easy to setup and at least poke around in the shell, so it's definitely worth a try.

Scrubbing, or cleaning, the data in a manner that all data within certain fields match or case-sensitivity, etc.

 

Basically, I have CSV files that contain member information. Membership is from all around the world. I need to set phone numbers in the same format (i.e. - 1-123-555-1212 and +52 999 99 99 99 will read in XXX XXX XXX XXXX format) Also there must be character limits per field. Once the data has been cleaned, it will be imported into a SQL database.

 

I'd like to do this as easily as possible and in a most efficient manner.

Cleaning data in the manner you describe can be pretty complicated. To the extent that it's possible, you'll want to guarantee that all the files are as consistent as possible before they reach your desk. It's dramatically easier to generate "clean" information than to make dirty data into clean data.

That said, sure, you can probably use something like perl to set appropriate cases. ucfirst can set capital letters on strings, for example. And, depending on what phone format is appropriate (you'll have to determine that somehow, I guess), you can split a string of numbers at the appropriate places. So, it sounds do-able, but I don't know how easy or efficient it will be. Dealing with text is relatively straightforward using any number of tools -- but you'll probably have to assemble the tools, into the right configuration, on your own. Data cleaning is pretty particularistic, so the odds of finding a "generic" set of scripts are probably low.