Send tech-support questions, answers and article ideas to The Answer Gang <tag@lists.linuxgazette.net>. Other mail (including questions or comments about the Gazette itself) should go to <gazette@linuxgazette.net>. All material sent to either of these addresses will be considered for publication in the next issue. Please send answers to the original querent too, so that s/he can get the answer without waiting for the next issue.

Unanswered questions might appear here. Questions with answers--or answers only--appear in The Answer Gang, 2-Cent Tips, or here, depending on their content. There is no guarantee that questions will ever be answered, especially if not related to Linux.

Before asking a question, please check the Linux Gazette FAQ to see if it has been answered there.

• Compact Flash Card
• Booting x86 from flash using initrd as root device

Compact Flash Card

I have a problem in adding a new file system in to a device called mediaEngine. It is a product of brightstareng.com There is slot for a Compact Flash. I bought a compact flash and added it, but thenit does not recognise the card. it says there isan i/o error. the mke2fs does not work properly. I am not able to mount even.

pleaese help me regarding this.

thanking you inadvance

kamalakanth

Booting x86 from flash using initrd as root device

Hello Everybody,

I am trying to develop a x86 target which boots from Flash. I have taken the BLOB bootloader (taken from LART project based on ARM processor.) and am modifying it for X86. So far I am able to get the Linux kernel booted. But when it comes to the mounting of rootfile system I am stuck. ( The blob downloads the kernel image and initrd image into RAM from Flash/through serial line).

1. I am getting the compressed kernel image in RAM at 0x100000 through serial line.

2. I am getting the compressed ramdisk image(initrd) in RAM at 0x400000 through serial line.

3. The kernel gets uncompressed and boots correctly till the point of displaying the message

RAMDISK: Compressed image found at block 0. and then hangs.

4. After debugging I have found that control comes till gunzip function inlinux/lib/inflate.c but never comes out of the function.

5. The parameters I have set at the begining of setup_arch function in linux/arch/i386/kernel/setup.c are as follows

         ORIG_ROOT_DEV = 0x0100
         RAMDISK_FLAGS = 0x4000
         INITRD_START = 0x400000
         INITRD_SIZE =  0xd4800    (size of compressed  ram disk image)
         LOADER_TYPE = 1

Has anyone faced such problem before? If so what needs to be done?

Are the values for the parameters mentioned above correct? Are they the only information to be mentioned to the kernel for locating and uncompressing the RAMDISK image and make it boot?

Is there any bootloader readily available for x86 platform for booting from Flash also with serial downloading facility?

Please help

With Kind Regards,
manohar

This page edited and maintained by the Editors of Linux Gazette Copyright © 2001
Published in issue 69 of Linux Gazette August 2001

HTML script maintained by Heather Stern of Starshine Technical Services, http://www.starshine.org/

• KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK !!!!
• not happy
• Blinking Icons
• question
• "Those were the days"
• RE: Linux Gazette Kernel Compile Article.
• Parrallel processing
• response to: Yet Another Helpful Email
• anser guy

KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK !!!!

Remember when you said :

WinPrinter Work-around From harmbehrens on Sat, 01 May 1999

Hello, is there any work-around to get a gdi printer (Star Wintype 4000) to work with Linux :-?

Harm

. . .

I presume that these are NOT what you wanted to hear. However, there is no way that I know of to support a Winprinter without running drivers that are native to MS Windows (and its GDI --- graphics device interface --- APIs).

What about using one of the Windows emulators like WINE (http://www.winehq.org) ? -- Mike

Actually, a very few GDI- aka "winprinters" are supported - some Lexmarks. I saw them first as debian packages but I'm pretty sure Linuxprinting.org has more details. The notes said that rumor has it some other GDI printers work with those, but it's a bit of effort and luck. Rather like winmodems... -- Heather

I Agree 100% about the GDI printers! (I refer to them as Goll Damn M$ Imitators). Unfortunately, until the recent developments on the federal court case M$ has not been checked at all. Some parts of what they, as a Monopoly have done has been good for the IT commmunity, while other things have really crapped on people WHO THINK!

Thank GOD !!!!! Linux is around to be a thorn in their side ...

THe other incidious thing printer manufacs have done is stop building as many Postscript printers. They are all using the friggin Windows drivers to do everything ... . So I have begun to play the stinkin game by mounting SMALL 468-DX266 16 Megs Linux Print Servers running SAMBA. THe newest ver of SAMBA even does PDC correctly.

Linux has been my savior in many times of need! I have been able to use thos stinking 386 boat anchors as LRP routers or firewalls, the small 90 Pent to 166 Pent are becoming LTSP Linux Xwindow Terminals. I still have stinking problems from time to time, yet I DON'T HAVE TO REBOOT EVERY 24 [&^%$!#]* days PER TECHNET(M$ answer to internal pay support) FOR NT SERVERS! I have Linux servers with uptimes of 200 + days IN PRODUCTION!

I'll sign off , enough rambling and ranting for one email. I just found your stuff through linuxdoc.org, and I thought you HIT THE NAIL ON THE HEAD!

KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK!

The real question is, is it worth spending 50 bucks instead of 200 or more, when you're going to spend a bunch of time making sure your driver is wired up right? I have an unfair advantage, since I live where these things are sold readily, but I get to say no ... I can spend about 80 bucks on a color printer which is actually listed as fully supported.

You may be able to mail order a good printer at a decent price. On the other hand, if exploring how these things all tie together under the hood is fun, then you can improve the state of the art for such printers, and maybe some fine day folks will be able to easily use "the GDI printer that came with their MS windows" without having to fight with it like this.

-- Heather

not happy

On Wed, Jul 04, 2001 at 09:26:35PM +1000, 32009318 wrote:

i know how annoyed you guys at the linux gazette must feel as i have been reading many back issues of the gazette and finding lots of cool tips and trick but the question always comes up

CAN YOU SOLVE WINDOWS PROBLEMS people just dont get it youre called the linux gazette and you help with linux questions

Unfortunately, we also have no idea where they find the reference to us that gives them the impression we do anything in Windows... more's the pity, since we can't beg the webmaster to take the link down.

They can certainly trip on us in search engines though, especially the worse ones. I can imagine someone frustrated with some Windows networking matter tripping over our many notes about Samba, since the point is to link up to some MSwin boxes... -- Heather

(you do it very well i should add)

Oh thank you, we like to hear that! -- Heather

The problem is, most people who ask Windows questions found the submission address via a search engine, and have no idea the address belongs to Linux Gazette or even know what Linux Gazette is. Perhaps we should have used an address like linux-questions-only, but we can't stop honoring the old addresses since they are published in so many back issues and some are on CD-ROMs that we can't change. -- Mike

You should clearley state this in youre next issue or be humorous and rename yourself The Not Windows Gazette

They're not the only odd ones out - we've had IRIX, PC-MOS, and other odd OS users crop up before too.

[Ben] Even had someone trying to get root access to their rhubarb, recently...

Funny you should mention a name change though. We have changed the name of the Answer Gang mailing list to "tag@lists.linuxgazette.net" -- Heather

Many TAG threads have humorous comments and/or rants about off-topic questions. Heather also tries to guide people in her "Greetings from Heather Stern" blurb about how to ask a good question and how not to ask a bad question. Finally, I have started making fun of off-topic questions on the Back Page of the past few issues. There's now a section on the Back Page called "Not The Answer Gang", as well as "Wackiest Topic of the Month". -- Mike

keep up the good work with linux

Thanks bunches, we're glad you enjoy the read! -- Heather

Blinking Icons

I love reading LG every month, especially TAG, and 2cent tips. But the new blinking question and exclamation icons are somwhat annoying. Any chance of going back to the old ones?

thanks for all the good work!

blinking? They're not supposed to blink. In fact, if they are it's been that way for YEARS ... since I first provided .gif files with the ! and ? in them in blue, instead of with those stupid "!" and "?" that nobody could read.

It would mean I accidentally had layers in them. But there's no loop command, so even if you see that briefly it should stop. Is that what you are seeing, or does it continue to blink? Did you change browsers at all recently? If so to which one?

We have been trying to improve browser compatability lately anyway Thanks for bringing it up.

[ turning to my fellow editor ] Mike, did anybody run any scripts against the graphic images recently that I need to know about?

-- Heather

No, we haven't changed those images. I've threatened to change all .gif's to .png or .jpg and change all the links, but haven't done it yet. I've only used blinking text once or twice and that wasn't in the TAG column.

Also, LG is probably the only site in the world that requires NON-ANIMATED logo images from its sponsors. Because I personally have a strong intolerance for unnecessary animations.

-- Mike

The "blinking Icons" are actually three layer gifs with one backround (white bubble) and 0ms display time and two layers (question mark and shadow) with 100ms display time in combine mode (will be overlayed over the previous one).

opera5.0/Linux displays them on a strange blue background (seems to have a gif problem, also with other gifs not only these little ones).

If you want a scriptable tool (besides gimp) there is a program called pngquant which can do the color (and size) reduction on png files which convert will not do.

-- K.-H.

Mike didn't find the utility in Debian but its homepage is:

http://www.libpng.org/pub/png/apps/pngquant.html

-- Heather

question

Everyone I know is having the same problem. Not only is the Telnet completely outdated, but it simply does not work for people off campus in most areas...

Hint: putty, one of the ssh clients for Windows that we keep pushing, is also a better "normal telnet" client for Windows. -- Heather

And last weekend I discovered that the public library in Halifax, Nova Scotia, has putty as the default terminal emulator on their public Windows terminals!!! Way to go, library! And switching between telnet and ssh in putty is easy: just choose one radio button or the other.

Unkudos to the Second Cup cybercafe in Halifax. The Start menu has a special item for Telnet but when you choose it, you get a dialog saying, "this operation is prohibited by the system administrator". -- Mike

you call yourself the "answer guy" and all you know how to be is a sarcastic little bastard..

If you saw the hundreds of messages we receive every month and the high percentage of them that are questions totally outside our scope, you might become a sarcastic little bastard too. -- Mike

1. He didn't call himself The Answer Guy -- that's what Marjorie named the column, and the title clung to him. It's an okay title but there could be better ones - none of which stuck long enough to be worth changing the column title.
2. It's a whole bunch of people now - has been for months - so it's The Answer Gang. Which member of the Gang are you whining about?
   I'll assume Jim Dennis, for the moment.
3. "all he knows how to be is..." - yeah, that's why he has a well paying job in the Silicon Valley, and a published book (from a normal publishing house, so yes, it's been spell checked), and speaking engagements at conferenees. Because he doesn't know anything.

We all have our good days, and our sarcastic days, and the point of our column is that we're real people, answering in just the same way we would if you asked us at the mall while we were buying a box of the latest Linux distro.

A particular thing to note is very few of us are Windows people. Most of us not at all - and others have had bad real-life experiences with the OS you presently favor. So not everyone will be cheer and light towards things we consider to be poor sysadmin practices. Especially things which would be poor sysadmin practices even in an all Microsoft corporate netcenter.

At least two of us have enough WIndows experience to attempt answers in that direction -- but this is the LINUX Gazette. If your questions are not about LINUX at least partially, then we really didn't want to hear from you... so you should be glad you got any answer at all...

... and curiously enough, some Windows people have gotten real answers for themselves in Linux documents once we point them the right way.

The practice of running an open service needs more care than just "clicking Yes" on the NT service daemon, and some of these services only make sense in a locked up environment.

Many but not all of The Answer Gang feel that telnet is now one such service. By mailing us you ask our opinion, and that opinion is real, so we say it. You do not have to like our opinions. We don't have to like yours. We can still share computing power.

A free society is one where it is safe to be unpopular.

you make yourself seem very unintelligent to me and have you ever heard of "If you can't say anything nice.don't say it at all?"

As if calling us a bastard is nice, yet you bothered to say that. You know absolutely nothing of the parentage of any member of this group unless you read our Bios (http://linuxgazette.net/issue67/tag/bios.html) ...

... and we know that you have not because you only speak to one person.

Parentage (or lack of one) doesn't necessarily lead to being technologically clued, but having technical or scientifically inclined parents seems to help.

Apparently not. The question Nellie asked was a valid one. Too bad she does now all the mumbo jumbo computer jargon...maybe the next time you should self proclaim yourself as the "Smart-ass Guy" instead. Miriam Brown

I believe "curmudgeon" is the term you're looking for, and yes, Jim Dennis labels himself to be one. Proudly.

Interestingly, a querent this month has asked where to read up on the techy mumbo jumbo words so they can learn more about Linux and speak more freely with their geeky friends. Our answers to that will actually be useful to many readers.

Poor english is tolerated to a fair degree on the querent's side. (that is, if we can't figure out what querents are saying, it's hard to even try to answer them). Each Answerer's personal style is mostly kept - so some are cheerful, some are grumpy.

PS...Don't answer guys usually use spell check?

It is not required to know how to use a spell checker, in order to know how to rebuild a kernel. You have delusions of us being some glossy print magazine like Linux Journal. (ps. Our host, SSC publishes that. It does get spell checked and all those nice things. Go subscribe to it if you like. End of cheap plug.)

Nobody here is paid a dime for working on the Gazette specifically, so our editorial time is better spent on link checking and finding correct answers... er, well, we try... than spellos. We have occasionally had people complain about this point very clearly and loudly, but there is not room in the publishing schedule for them to squish themselves in between and still meet deadline. We suggested that they make their own site carry the past issue after fixes (our copyright allows this) but the people have then always backed down and gone away. We'd almost certainly merge their repairs if they made some, but nobody has taken up on that offer yet. Oh well. Let us know if you want to start the Excellent Speller's Site - we'll cheer for you. Maybe some other docs in the Linux Documentation Project (LDP) could stand a typo scrub too.

Oddly, many people read LG religiously because it's written in person to person mode and doesn't spray gloss all over the articles and columns that way. You will get ecstatic excitement at successes and growling at bad ways to do things and every emotion in between.

No, many of the querents don't spell check either, but we still answer them.

I hope you enjoyed your time flaming, but we have people asking questions about Linux to get back to.

"Those were the days"

I have this dream of contributing something wonderfully useful to the Gazette, but it ain't going to happen today. . .

No, I noticed the ravings on The Back Page of issue 67, and had to send you the lyrics of "Those were the days":

For the way Glen Miller Played

. . .
(It looks like the rest was pretty good up til the last verse)
. . .
Didn't need no welfare state
Everybody pulled his weight
Gee, our old LaSalle ran great
Those were the days.

But better yet, is the Simpsonized version --

For the way the BeeGees played
Films that John Travolta made
Guessing how much Elvis weighed
Those were the days

And you knew where you were then
watching shows like Gentile Ben
Mister we could use a man like Sheriff Lobo again

Disco Duck and Fleetwood Mac
Coming out of my eight-track
Micheal Jackson still was black,
Those were the days

Maybe next time I write in, I'll have something more useful.

-- Pete Nelson

Thanks, Pete, glad we could amuse. I think we need a linux version, or maybe a BSD one... -- Heather

RE: Linux Gazette Kernel Compile Article.

Hi,

First i must commend you on providing a service to all the Linux users out there trying to get started on rolling their own kernel. I would just like to point out a few things i found somewhat confusing about your article.

You compiled in "math emulation" support even though you have a CPU with a built in maths co-processor, in this case the math emulation will never be used and essentially wastes memory. secondly, you selected SMP support for your uniprocessor (UP) system. This on some occasion can cause problems with specific UP motherboards causing them not to boot or certain kernel modules not loading, in addition to being slower and taking up more memory than a non-SMP kernel. Also as you might want to break apart your build procedure by using double ampersands. i.e. "make dep && make bzImage && make modules && make modules install ....."

That aside, it's great that you're willing to share your experiences and knowledge with the rest of the Linux community.

Regards,
Zwane

Parrallel processing

I would like to contact the uuthor of the above article which appeared in the april 2001 edition of your magazine .

The author's name in all our articles is a hyperlink to his e-mail address. Rahul Joshi's is jurahul@hotmail.com -- Mike

response to: Yet Another Helpful Email

I was pleased to see a letter by Benjamin D Smith that compares learning Windows to learning Unix by drawing a mental graph of the respective learning curves, because I thought it would set straight a lot of people who misuse the term "steep learning curve."

But then Smith went ahead and misused the term himself, in a way wholly inconsistent with the picture he drew.

To set the record straight, allow me to explain what a learning curve is, and in particular what a steep one is all about.

The learning curve is a graph of productivity versus time. As time passes, you learn stuff and your productivity increases (except in weird cases).

Windows has a steep learning curve. You start out useless, but with just a little instruction and messing around, you're already writing and printing documents. The curve rises quickly.

Unix has a very shallow learning curve. You start out useless, and after a day of study, you can still do just a little bit. After another day, you can do a little bit more. It may be weeks before you're as productive as a Windows user is after an hour.

Smith's point, to recall, was that the Windows learning curve, while steep, reaches a saturation point and levels off. The Unix curve, on the other hand, keeps rising gradually almost without bound. In time, it overtakes the Windows curve.

-- Bryan Henderson

anser guy

Are you still the answer guy, and do you still answer questions? If so, I have one that's been bugging me for a year now. Just let me know,

Thanks!

It's an Answer Gang now. Jim Dennis is still one of us.

We answer some of the hundred of linux questions we get every month. Questions which are not about Linux get laughed about, but have a much lower chance of ever geeteting an answer. They might be answered in a linux specific way.

So if you've a linux question, send it our way

• Mistake
• An lgbase question
• About which list is which
• Re: email distribution of the Gazette?

Mistake

I just look at your issue 41 (I know that is not really recent ...) but in the article of Christopher Lopes which is talking about CUP, there is a mistake...

I tested it and I see that it didn't walk correctly for all the cases. In fact it is necessary to put a greater priority to the operator ' - ' if not, we have 8-6+9 = -7 because your parsor realizes initially (6+9 = 15) and after (8-15= -7). To solve this problem it is enough to create a state between expr and factor which will represent the fact that the operator - has priority than it +.

Cordially.

Xavier Prat. MIAIF2.

See attached misc/mailbag/issue41-fix.CUP.txt

An lgbase question

I want to install all of the newest Linux Gazette issues on one of our Linux machines at work. Sounds easy enough.

Consider that I have approximately 12 month's worth of Linux Gazette issues AND each lgbase that I download with each issue. Is the lgbase file cumulative? In other words, can I install the latest and greatest lgbase, and then install (you know -- copy them to the LDP/LG directory tree) all of the Linux Gazette issues.

Yes. There's only one lg-base.tar.gz, which contains shared files for all the issues. So you always want the latest lg-base.tar.gz.

However, once you've installed it, you don't have to download it again every month. Instead, you can download the much smaller lg-base-new.tar.gz, which contains only the files that are new or changed since the previous issue. But if you miss a month, you'll need to download the full lg-base.tar.gz again to get all the accumulated changes.

Always untar lg-*.tar.gz files in the same directory each month. They will unpack into a subdirectory lg/ with everything in the correct location.

Thanks Mike,

You've saved me a lot of time. The system (SuSE 7.0 distribution) had an up-to-date base up until March last year. Your answer saved me lots of untarring operations. And yes, I do put the stuff in the same directory each month on my home system.

Thanks for our fine magazine, and again keep up the good work (all of you),

Chris G.

About which list is which

[Resent because Majordomo thought it was a command. You have to watch that word s-u-b-s-c-r-i-b-e near the top of messages. -- Mike]

----- Forwarded ------

Hi Heather,

Sorry, just another dumb newbie question. I have recently signed up to the tag-admin list but not the tag list. I want to be subbed to the Tag list and as a result I have just tried to subscribe to tag by sending the following to majordomo@ssc.com:

subscribe tag hylton@global.co.za

Given the pattern for the other one, I'm guessing that sending the word

subscribe

to the address

tag-request@ssc.com ...should work too.

I, as yet, haven't recd any notifications that a new Linux Gazette has been added to the files area.

For that, you don't want tag nor tag-admin, you want to send a note to lg-announce-request@ssc.com and subscribe to lg-announce. That doesn't say much except that the gazette is posted.

What you will find here on tag-admin are precursor discussions; talk about what should or shouldn't get published, need to tweak deadlines, and some other things that are either water-cooler talk or "infrastucture" matters.

Do the announcements of the new Linux Gazettes come out on the TAG-Admin list or only on Tag?

Neither.

If you join the TAG list, you will be inundated with a large number of newbie and occasional non-newbie computing questions, not all linux-related... and a certain amount of spam that slips the filters, not all of it in English... and a certain number of utterly dumb questions with no relation at all to computing (apparently a side effect of the word "homework" being used so often here). I'd dare say most of the spam is not in English. Since we sometimes get linux queries in non-English languages we can't just chop them off by character set from the list server, but they're easy to spot and delete.

You will also see the answers flow by from members of the Gang, and efforts to correct each other. If you only visit the magazine once a month, you see less answers, some of them get posted in 2c Tips, and they have been cleaned up for readability.

So I can see reasons why someone who doesn't feel like answering questions might want to join the TAG list and lurk, but I'm not sure which of these you wanted.

Puzzled.

Hylton

Thank you Heather,

You as a member of TAG have certainly answered my questions.

There has been a message sent to majordomo@ssc.com to unsub/scribe from both the TAG and TAG-Admin lists as I do not want to receive idle watercooler chat as I cannot reply immediately, in a watercooler fashion, due to my countries telecoms monopolistic provider.

ob TagAdmin: if Mylton has no objection, this message will go in the mailbag this month.

Hylton has no objection so please FW to the necessary people provided some idea is given of how to ascertain when a new Linux Gazette is published.

Send an email, with the subject containing a magic word which mailing list software enjoys.... please take the slash out though... my sysadmin warns me if I utter this word in too short a mail, the mail goes to majordomo's owner and not to you.

subject:  sub/scribe
to:	lg-announce-request@ssc.com

(body text)
sub/scribe

--
(optionally your sig file)

...mentioning it in the body text should be unnecessary. That -- keeps it from trying your sig as a command too.

The result will be your membership on a list which sees mail about once a month, saying when the Gazette is posted.

Because you are in another country you might want to look at the Gazette Mirrors listing and find a site which is closer to you. Your bandwidth cost might be the same but hopefully your download time won't cost as much. http://www.linuxgazette.net/mirrors.html

Thx for your permission to publish

Re: email distribution of the Gazette?

Please direct me towards a place where I can sign up to receive the Linux Gazette on a monthly or weekly basis when they become available.

I would like this to be a free service.

You don't "receive" Linux Gazette. You read it on the web or download the FTP files. LG is published monthly on the first of the month, although occasionally we have mid-month extra issues. -- Mike

We do have an announce list, though. Write to lg-announce-request@ssc.com

I suppose you could use the Netmind service (http://mindit.netmind.com) if you don't like ours

Sending large files via email, regularly, is really, really-really, an incredibly bad idea. Just come get it via ftp when it's ready! Our ftp site is free: ftp://ftp.ssc.com/pub/lg

Heather,

Thank you for the response regarding my query.

May I suggest that the service of email distribution of the gazettes be investigated and provided to those people who sign up for them.

Please read our FAQ: we have considered it, and the answer is No.

Sending huge email attachments around is an undesirable burden on our own mail servers as well as major MX relay points;

I personally have made note of the ftp site but here in South Africa I can only afford a dial-up connection the site has therefore been added into a list to visit in the future. The problem comes in when I want to know if there are any new tutorials on the ftp space since my last visit. It would therefore be much more handy for me, and possibly others, if they were allowed to request and start receiving the gazettes via email.

You may subscribe to the announce list. When you get the announcement, visit the FTP site... or a local mirror.

There are many mirror sites in South Africa - please use one:

http://www.linuxgazette.net/mirrors.html#south_africa

Not everyone needs to receive it, just the ppl signed up to the distribution list.

Please?

Please use the internet's resources wisely. The whole thing is clogged up enough, without help from us.

Yes! That's the spirit! -- Heather

This page edited and maintained by the Editors of Linux Gazette Copyright © 2001
Published in issue 69 of Linux Gazette August 2001

HTML script maintained by Heather Stern of Starshine Technical Services, http://www.starshine.org/