Pierre Baco

No, that won't do: it requires a chgrp on the dirs. I want user admin to manage a dir just like user root would do, whatever the user and group owners of the dir are.

Hi. I'm looking for a way to grant temporarily all rights to a user on a specific dir, like sudo lets a user run specific command with root privileges. In other words, I'd like to have an "admin" user able to cleanup the /home dir and only this one, e.g. read/write/delete anything. A kind of "sudo grant_all /home". Any idea ? Pierre

Yep, you'll access your Linux server directories from your Linux workstations just like a Windows share, i.e. no permissions, no links, etc, + all the SMB hassle (including user/group mess for shares shared with windows users and poor basic features.) Linux to Linux: keep NFS. Why do you want to remove it ? Once set, it's much better and transparent.

Ok. Looks like there's no feedback on this one. Never mind. Let's close it.

/sbin/ifconfig -a If it displays a paragraph concerning "sit0" ipv6, then add the following line to your /etc/modprobe.conf file: alias net-pf-10 off Then reboot your machine (I've never been able to fully disable ipv6 without rebooting. Stopping/restarting the network is not enough).

I had similar hard times once. Found it was a LAN/WAN problem with ipv6 (now disabled) and NFS (bad configuration). Firefox still gives me the same symptoms from time to time (freezing the whole machine for a few seconds while trying to access some poorly written sites). Looks like it's locked waiting for something or spinning in a tight loop). It could come from hard disks too. Have you seen something about "disabling DMA" or "spurious interrupts" in your logs ?

'llo guys. I'm looking for a hassle-free, fully recognized, well known and easy to find/purchase AMD 64 motherboard to build my new LE2005 machine. This machine will be my new main station: - 2 x 17" flat screens with xinerama (what I'm using now): no games, no 3D addiction. Don't need PCI Express or ultra powerful video. - 1 GB Ram (maybe 2) - 2 x 120 Go hard disks (SATA or IDE, not sure yet, as SATA support is often problematic). No RAID, simple initial dd + rsync twice a day. Full ext3 partitions (no dual boot). - 1 Gbits (LAN) + 1 100 Mbits (WAN) ethernet. - DVD + floppy (just in case) + 4 USB. No Firewire, no wireless LTSP to support 3 thin clients + Apache, Squid, Samba (3 other clients)) + development platform (PHP, C) + VMWare (one virtual XP ws). This machine will run 24/24 7/7. I've visited many forums to find the right AMD 64 socket 939 (I guess socket 754 won't be there for long) mobo for Linux. I've read many contradictory comments and now I'm lost. Don't want to spend a fortune (< 150/200€) for the mobo. Don't want to play with extra-special non free drivers. Don't need overclocking. Don't want to order it in deep Nebraska or Singapore. Now, I'm not even sure AMD64 is the right choice. Should I stick to 32 bits for a year or two, while 64 bits support is improving ? But is it still a good investment to buy a brand new 32 bits machine today ? So if you're the happy owner of a fully functional 64 bits Linux machine, describe your configuration. And if you're not happy, give your feedback too. Thanx Pierre

I use LTSP a lot, on debian and mandrake. At home, I've 3 thin clients (fanless, pxe boot). I've recently installed a primary school with 18 thin clients (and/or recycled PCs) around a debian+ltsp server. Works like a charm. For this number of clients, a 100/1000 switch and server network board is recommended. Really easy to setup (except network sound and USB on clients)

Too late: human rights are already patented.

Thanks. I'm gonna exclude /sys just like I did with /proc and give a try to reboot with the spare disk after a full rsync. Pierre

Hi guys (and girls). I'm working on a simple script to mirror my partitions on a spare disk using rsync, and I've a question about the /sys dir: should I rsync it or just exclude it ? What I want is a spare disk I could swap with the original one in case of serious trouble. Both disks (hda and hdc) have the same size. I've just 2 partitions (/ and /home) on hda. I've done a first dd if=/dev/hda of=/dev/hdc to duplicate the whole disk including MBR. Now I want to run a rsync script every night to update hdc, something like mount /dev/hc1 /mnt/sync_dir rsync -uravH --delete --exclude-from=exclude_root.lst / /mnt/sync_dir umount /mnt/sync_dir mount /dev/hc2 /mnt/sync_dir rsync -uravH --delete --exclude-from=exclude_home.lst /home /mnt/sync_dir umount /mnt/sync_dir It works fine (0 errors) for /home but I get a rsync error 23 ("some files could not be transfered") while rsync'ing / when /sys is not in the exclude_root.lst file, which looks like: /proc /mnt /home /etc/fstab /tmp I know /sys has something to do with udev and hotplugging. Is it safe to exclude it ? (i.e. Will the spare disk boot correctly if /sys has not been updated ?). Thanx in advance for your (always appreciated) input.;) Pierre

In France, we begin to have a significant number of schools (primary or colleges) using Linux solutions. Here, I'm currently installing a primary school with the "AbulEdu" linux based suite See http://www.abuledu.org. The "pro" (latest) version is debian based, while the community version is Mandrake (7 & 8) based. Config I'm working on: 18 thin clients (cyrix boxes, no disk, no cdrom, no floppy, no fan, 17'' flat screens) connected to a 'big' server (Pentium 2 Ghz, 1.5 Gb ram, 2x80 Gb HD + external disk for backup). Not a single Windows PC! The solution is based on top of LTSP (so you can use old-recycled PCs too). Pupils use the WinMaker light interface (but you can still choose the others). Admin (for teachers) is managed thru a nice and easy HTML interface (PHP). Contains tons of educational software (all levels, incuding Gcompris etc), web access and mail for everybody, Squid protection and firewall, intranet/internet server, USB support on thin clients, automatic updates, tech support and assistance, etc. May even accept Windows (domain) and Mac clients. Total cost (complete harware, network stuff, install, service): less than 15000 Euros. For 18 virus-proof and hassle-free stations, not too bad!

Could be a hardware problem (heat or flaky ram). Check your BIOS settings for power saving, ACPI and "advanced features". Try to start with a "safe configuration", disabling overclocking and other special features. It might help. And when you find a "stable" configuration, then try to re-enable BIOS options one at a time.

I've used these PM 8 DOS diskettes to repartition my old Compaq laptop, and it worked nicely. PM reduced the XP partition to 50% of the total disk size, and I used the free space to install MDK 10.0. And yes, PM does move data to shrink the partition. However, I remember another experience with PM 8 on a laptop running XP. First, it failed to reduce the XP partition, and the only reason it gave was something about "not able to move non movable files". So I rebooted XP, switched off virtual memory, and rebooted again to make sure pagefile.sys has been deleted (this non movable file usually sits at the end of the main XP partition). Then I booted with the PM 8 diskette and this time it did it. Then I booted XP again, switched on virtual memory and the pagefile.sys file was recreated at the end of the resized NTFS partition. I always keep these PM 8 diskettes. There are also very useful to convert NTFS to FAT32 (and back). But be careful when running PM 8 on a system with ext3 or jfs partitions, as it may suggest you to fix "a problem" found in Linux partition identification. Just reply "No". In other words, I never had a problem with PM 8 tempering with Windows partitions, but I would not use it to play around with Linux partitions. Linux has plenty of good tools to do it by itself! Anyway, EVERY update of the partition table should begin with a backup of your valuable data!

Could you give more information about the "system crash", any message showing up on your screen ? Which version of Mandrake have you installed ? After the LILO menu, does it show a progress bar ? Have you tried to hit ESC to get full boot messages instead ? Write down any message you can get. It will help to find why you have this problem.

The Ksensors package (lm_sensors front end) lets you run a command or play a sound when a parameter reaches the 'alarm' level. Mine plays "Great balls of fire" when I disconnect the CPU fan (just for fun). I guess you can set it up to run /sbin/halt when your MB becomes to hot. The trick is to tune correctly the lm_sensors levels.

My 2 cents: I guess you have 2 IDE controllers, so a first approach is to put one HD on each in order to balance the load. For example, create your root partition on HD 1 (/dev/hda) and /home on HD2 (/dev/hdc). Then swap should be on the least used HD. Unless you're doing a lot of R/W in your home partition, / will be the most frequently accessed partition (all programs, logs and conf files are here). So my guess would be to create the swap partition on the second disk, near /home. Now if disks have different speeds, put swap on the fastest. But again, under normal conditions, Linux should not use swap too often. If it becomes too frequent, (easy check with 'free'), then get more RAM.

Hi, guys (and girls). Config: Athlon 2800 XP + 512 MB RAM + 2 x MAXTOR 80 Gb disks (brand new) and Mdk 10.0 official fully updated. First disk (IDE 0-0) /dev/hda is partioned like 5 Gb for / (far enough), 1 Gb for swap (in case I add some RAM), and the rest for /home (will be a big samba server). / and /home are ext3. Second disk (IDE1-0) /dev/hdb was installed "blank". It is never "mount"ed. Both disks in IDE removable racks (no hotplug). I've also a 3rd 80Gb Maxtor in a USB2 "hotplug" external case for normal file-dir backups using a "cron"ed tar script. Objective: In addition to the file-dir (full tgz ) backup, I wand to make a daily (cron) /dev/hda image on /dev/hdb, so whenever /dev/hda fails, I can simply switch the disks to have a running system within seconds. RAID won't help for this. Solution MUST be simple and affordable (no fancy RAID controllers or complex operations to restart the server after a shutdown). Total hardware cost so far is less than 650 Euros. Right now, I use a simple "dd bs=512 if=/dev/hda of=/dev/hdb" , to make a "full raw" copy of my primary disk, including the MBR, to the second one. I use the bs=512 to stay at sector size, so if there's a read/write error on a given read sector, only this one will be affected (corrupted) in the written image. Takes approx 35 minutes to complete the "raw copy". "halt" + switch off. Swap the disks. Switch on. Bingo, it boots nicely (except normal msg about system not switched off correctly). I've done it many times without any problem. But: - From time to time (not always), dd complains about "input/output error" on /dev/hda or /dev/hdb, but does the full copy anyway. - cfdisk fails on /dev/hdb (complains about partition error). I guess dd may have some problems when reading or writing raw data from/to the disks. Although there are strictly identical, bad sectors are not identical (number, location). Unfortunately, dd is not verbose about errors (where, when, how many). I've tried the same trick at runlevel 1 or 3, at partition level, with dd if=/dev/hda1 (/), /dev/hda2 (swap), /dev/hda3 (/home). Same results (random i/o errors, cfdisk fails). Tried additional dd options (conv=noerror, notrunc), same results. But once disks are swapped and system is restarted I always have a running system in less than 2 minutes. I can't figure out how-where the i/o errors affect the system health once restarted. Q: Am I doing something wrong ? These i/o errors don't make me feel comfortable with this solution. Is there another (simple and cheap) way-trick to do this (quick restart after a primary disk failure)?

SCO = Schizophrenic Copyright Owners Systematic Coredump Occurence Search Cash Only System Completely Obsolete

Hi, guys. I'm looking for free GIS (Geographic Information System) software under GPL license, and specially one compatible with the MAPINFO data format. For Windows or (preferably) Linux. Any hint ?

Raffarin (prime minister) already said this a couple of weeks ago on the radio. In "Restriction Times", I guess the government begins to realize they could save money... Concerning other major free-software issues (independence, long term strategy, standards), theres's still a long way to go. But yes, it's good news. I spend my time trying to convince local administrations to switch to free software, and it's really a pain. Now, with an example coming from above, maybe I'll have a bit more chance. On the other hand, Microsoft is currently trying to sign a major deal with the french education minister to equip thousands of laptops (to be distributed to students). No need to mention the "one step forwards, 2 backwards" government position on copyright...

Don't worry, you'll get it. As a MandrakeClub member, I had the same problem (with 9.0 and following). I once wrote a mail to Mandrake about this. They told me when a new MDK release is shipped (i.e. manufactured), their priority is to fill in the distributors / resellers shelves, cause it's where Mandrake makes money. First shipments are sent to those big retail stores, and then to others like you and me.

I think the "Linux on desktop" issue is not an economic or technical issue for "users". As long as Linux misses plain, regular, everyday mission critical apps like accounting, payroll, and the zillions vertical apps needed by enterprises (from soho to Fortune 500), Linux will stay on the server/backbone/hidden (but essential) services side. I may have "convinced" many Windows users that Linux is better for all the reasons WE know. But what can you answer to the SoHo boss asking "Well, find me an accounting/payroll package for my business branch, for less then 300 €, service contract included, and I'll switch my desktop(s) to Linux on the spot" ? That's actually what he has, and he's happy with it. Why should he change ? Users don't think about an OS when choosing a platform (well, sometimes they even don't realize there's an alternative to Windows). The most important thing is THE application solving THEIR problem. Software houses delivering such apps and services have a much more strategic role to play in this desktop switch than we really want to admit. I'm talking about shrink-wrapped, off-the-shelve apps, representing 90% of the vertical apps market (at least for soho & mid-size enterprises). This Linux professionnal applications catalog is ridiculous compared with Windows. And when there are some vertical apps available, the quality (ergonomy, stability, service) is far below what is acceptable for "regular users" who don't give a damn about technology & ethics. It's not Linux and the free software community fault. Actually, its' nobody's fault. The problem is in the "desktop market structuration", still in its infancy. In a sense, Bill G. was right with his "the desktop is the center of IT" strategy. I guess the challenge is not to transform the free software developers community in a giant vertical apps software house, but to convince software houses to approach a new market with new solutions and a new economic model. But it's pretty hard for a software house used to deliver Windows vertical apps to approach the Linux market. Earning money in the Linux desktop business is not as easy as it is with Windows... My 2 cents....

The LBA trick did solve the problem for my PC. However, XP is quite slower to load (or is it just a feeling ?). No way to measure it (as in AUTO mode it won't load at all). But I'm gonna check it with Linux. Thanks for the info. Does it mean we should "downgrade" to Mdk 9.2 lilo to rewrite the MBR the correct way ?

Is it a sign XP has to leave ? After installing MDK 10.0 official on top of my old 9.2, I can't boot from my old XP (Fat32) partition on my "main" machine. Not really important (I'm also using VMWare when I really need XP), but I'd like to know why. I did a full MDK install (no upgrade), and I took this opportunity to change my Linux partitions. First disk (IDE 0) /dev/hda1 is the C: bootable XP partition (Fat32) : unchanged /dev/hda3 is another XP partition (D:) (Fat32): unchanged /dev/hda5 is mounted as /boot : new. /dev/hda6 is mounted as / (ext3) : same as previous - size of /boot Second disk (IDE 1) /deb/hdb1 : swap partition : unchanged /dev/hdb5 is mounted as /home (ext3) : unchanged My lilo.conf: Symptom: When choosing "windows" => black screen, cursor stuck in upper left corner. Big red switch to reboot. I did the same on another machine (single disk with an existing XP partition) and I had no problem. It's not really an issue, as I can still access the XP partitions from Linux, but I'd like to know what's going on. The only difference with previous partition layout is the new /boot. Apart from that, Mdk 10.0 official is really fine (speed!). I'm also upgrading my Presario laptop, still a minor problem with ACPI (a kernel recompile + apic=no + acpi=force should solve it). Any hint before I wipe my XP partitions ?