Meeting Date and Subj

Cyber Source peter at thecybersource.com
Sat Feb 23 16:39:11 EST 2002 

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you have my vote<br>
<br>
Robert Meyer wrote:<br>
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  <pre wrap="">Comments/answers weaved in through text...<br><br>--- "S. Lawton " <a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:green_man at bluefrognet.net">&lt;green_man at bluefrognet.net&gt;</a> wrote:<br></pre>
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    <pre wrap="">My vote goes for the 10th. <br>St. Pat's is right out due to the parking and builing access issue, <br>and Palm Sunday would seem to be a big family commitment day <br>for many. <br>My current research project, and a topic I would like to hear about, <br>that probably ties in well with the NIS/NFS lecture I'm EXTREMELY <br> sorry I missed, but life is what happens while you're making other <br>plans: <br><br>How are UIDs and GIDs generated and changed, and what are they <br>used for ?<br>Exactly what the permissions actually mean ?<br>How are directory and file permissions changed ?<br>Can a file or directory's ownership be changed ?<br></pre>
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    <pre wrap=""><!----><br>If there is interest, I could do a whole lecture on these topics.  They are<br>really key to understanding how Unix/Linux deals with files and how to track<br>down permissions problems.  This will take at least two hours to get through<br>with sufficient coverage to make the rest easier.  It would be nice to be able<br>to hook a machine up to a projector to make this stuff visible for the whole<br>group.<br><br></pre>
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      <pre wrap="">For example, in linux: <br>	you have a file in an MSDOS partition called whatever.doc<br>To view the document, is that a Read priv or Xcute priv ?<br>To actually edit it and change its contents, Write priv or Xcute priv ?<br></pre>
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      <pre wrap=""><!----><br>Read to look at it and write to be able to save changes...<br></pre>
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        <pre wrap="">[Word is to Kword as wheelbarrow is to pickup truck :-)]<br><br>To do the above, would it require mtools or wine ?<br></pre>
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        <pre wrap=""><!----><br>How about Star Office.  Mtools is for manipulating MS floppies and hard drives<br>but only basic stuff like copy, delete, make dir, remove dir, cat/type are<br>supported.  Wine lets you run some M$ applications in Linux.<br><br></pre>
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          <pre wrap="">Is wine invoked as an application, like Kword ?<br></pre>
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          <pre wrap=""><!---->Wine comes up in two ways.  You can provoke it like any other application or,<br>if it's installed correctly, the O/S will recognize the MS executable format<br>and automagically start Wine with the program as it's argument.<br><br></pre>
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            <pre wrap="">As a shell ?<br>Or is wine run like a daemon, lurking in the background, just <br>showing up when needed ?<br><br>Boot Loaders would seem to be a possible topic also. <br>I didn't realize that LiLo was a legacy "has been".<br>It was the default on my MAN 8.1 install, so that's what I've got in. <br>LiLo, MiLo and Grub - but how does J Lo fit in ???  :-)<br></pre>
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            <pre wrap=""><!----><br>If you can't think of at least three ways to do something in Linux, you're not<br>thinking hard enough :-).  LILO and Grub, just like KDE and Gnome are just two<br>different boot loaders.  They accomplish the same thing (getting the O/S<br>running) but do so somewhat differently.  MILO is the LILO for DEC Alpha based<br>machines.  J Lo needs to be booted to get rid of the attitude :-)<br><br></pre>
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              <pre wrap="">I have put the sound problem on the back burner for a little while <br>because I'm so frustrated I can't stand it. I need to take a second <br>look at it, and maybe attack it from a different angle. <br></pre>
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              <pre wrap=""><!----><br>Sound is probably the single most difficult thing to figure out in Linux. <br>Mandrake has done a phenomenal job with their hardware detection software but<br>there are still some things that don't get recognized correctly due to the<br>things that a lot of the boards do trying to be SB compatible but not quite<br>making it.<br><br></pre>
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                <pre wrap="">Here's some general questions - <br>Is there a linux utility program like Disk Defragmenter to compact <br>files and collect free space at the end of a logical drive ?<br><br>Is there a linux utility program like ScanDisk to pefrorm R/W <br>testing and physically check for bad clusters on a drive ?<br></pre>
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                <pre wrap=""><!----><br>This is not necessary because the Linux file system automatically defrags as<br>it's going along.  When the system comes up, notice the messages that talk<br>about blocks and frags on the way up.  The frag percentage is typically less<br>than a few percent.  That means that most files are stored in contiguous chunks<br>of file system.  I was going to get one from my logs but I am using EXT3 and it<br>doesn't do e2fsck on the way up.  A treatise on fast file systems descending<br>from the BSD file system would take a few days to get through but suffice it to<br>say that defraggers are not necessary on most Unix systems.<br><br><br></pre>
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                  <pre wrap="">Is there a program that allows linux to read MaxiDisk formatted <br>1.72 MB floppies ?<br></pre>
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                  <pre wrap=""><!----><br>If the floppy is in MSDOS format, Linux should be able to read it with no<br>further effort on your part.  A quick check of /dev/floppy reveals:<br>0       0u1120  0u1600  0u1722  0u1760  0u1920  0u720  0u820<br>0u1040  0u1440  0u1680  0u1743  0u1840  0u360   0u800  0u830<br><br>The zero means drive zero.  The 'u' refers to high density 3-1/2 drive and the<br>remaining number refers to the formatted capacity of the disk.  Using the<br>generic device name (/dev/floppy/0 or /dev/fd0) on a preformatted disk will<br>automatically figure out the capacity before reading/writing.  Formatting disks<br>is where it gets a bit dicey and would require reading the 'fd' and 'fdformat'<br>man pages to get a good understanding of what you're doing.<br><br>Any more questions? :-)<br><br>Could someone please bring a quake II CD with them to the meeting?  I can't<br>find mine and have been trying to get QII running on my machine at home.<br><br>Cheers!
<
br><br>Bob<br><br><br>=====<br>Bob Meyer<br>Knightwing Communications, Inc.<br>36 Cayuga Blvd<br>Depew, NY 14043<br>Phone: 716-308-8931 or 716-681-0076<br><a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:Meyer_RM at Yahoo.com">Meyer_RM at Yahoo.com</a><br><br>__________________________________________________<br>Do You Yahoo!?<br>Yahoo! Sports - Coverage of the 2002 Olympic Games<br><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://sports.yahoo.com">http://sports.yahoo.com</a><br><br></pre>
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