January Linux Gazette

Josh Baugher wrote in to tell us that the January 1999 Issue of the Linux Gazette is now out. Articles on Samba, booting Linux with the NT Boot Loader, printing and more.

Petition.

[Eric S. Smith]

One of the NewsBytes [linuxgazette.com] refers to a petition [ethepeople.com] that Americans here would probably want to sign...

January issue out in January. What a surprise.

[DunbarTheInept]

Hmm. A monthly periodical puts out its January issue in January. Amazing news. Boy am I glad I logged on to slashdot today to find that out. If it weren't for the wonderful news I get here I don't know what I'd do.

(Hint: this isn't news. On the other hand, Mentioning something about one of the particular articles and opening up discussion about it, as is typically done with other periodicals here, would have been worthwhile.)

Interesting root hack artical

[bluGill]

I should put openBSD on my firewall some year.

Finially somebody who had a root hack to was prepared. I should do the same for my system. Dad keeps asking why I want a tape drive when anouther harddrive is so cheep. Backups that aren't in a computer can't be compromised though.

Good issue

[mackga]

There's a ton of good stuff in this issue. The Answer Guy has a lot of really good networking info - perfect for home lans/gateways, Linux firewalls and a neato article on subnetting - something that I completly forget if I don't reread a good explanation at least once a week - what can I say, I'm number-challenged, heh. The Dec 1998 Linux Journal also has a good article on subnetting.

Anyway, good job LG folks!

I must be blind.

[Samus]

The only thing I could find about printing was a question to the answer guy. I have an Epson Stylus photo 700 printer that I can only get to print text. Post script comes out garbled and wants to eat about 100 pages. I'm running redhat 5.1 with a bunch of updates including ghost script 5.5 if anyone cares to answer. Thanks.

One less step necessary.

[Cyclic]

Just use the folling in lilo.conf to skip the dd step.

boot=/dosc/bootsect.lin

Not sure if lilo can create a file like this. It has been over a year since I messed with the NT boot loader.

Why is Lilo still 1.0

[yootis]

Lilo has been around forever, and everyone uses it. Why can't it be called 1.0 already?

No Subject Given

[Pudding Yeti]

I was pretty interested in the article on remote access when all you have is a PPP connection. The author proposed using the dyndns service, which seemed a little overblown to me, but that's why I'm writing here.

Why not just:

1. Run your ppp-on script via cron as proposed

2. ifconfig |grep addr|mail {some easy to access mailbox (Yahoo works if you can't do the POP your ISP likely provides from your office)}

3. telnet the inet addr listed under the ppp interface when you get the mail

Is that insanely insecure? Or any more insecure than the method the author proposed? It's certainly cheaper. Or am I way off because I didn't have a modem when I had Slack and there is no ifconfig command on any other Linux but RedHat. Just a newbie, here.

Second, the author said it's not possible to use RedHat's ppp configurator because of its graphical nature. Actually, as long as you tell the configurator, any user can bring the interface up, and the ifup and down scripts work just fine provided you have them in your path somewhere. I'd guess other Linuxes are like that, too, right?

Funny that I read that article today, considering this morning I fired up ppp, grepped ifconfig for inet addr, piped it into mail, drove to work, read my mail, telnetted to my box, fired up the free MIXserver I downloaded, checked my local IP (which is also dynamic) and set DISPLAY to that via telnet. Didn't use cron, just because I wanted to troubleshoot everything without the variable of a script run on a machine I couldn't look at if I screwed up.

Anyhow, $.02. And the dyndns service would sure be the deluxe way to go.

Hey everybody! I have my own domain... between 8 and 11, 1 and 3, and from 12 to six!

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[e-mail]
"Give me $20 worth of pudding, or kill me."

No Subject Given

[Pudding Yeti]

Hey, Joe,

I get your point about access for others/maintaining a mailing list. Point taken. There's no one around me I'd trust on my machine because I'm not always sure what's going on with it and barely clean up after myself. :)

As for the RedHat net configurator and use outside of a graphical environment...

Barring that I'm missing your point, the way to launch a RedHat configured network interface is to exec /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/if{up/down} ppp0 (or whatever the interface is.) That's all that the RedHat configurator does, it just has the script tied to a button. I finally figured that out after getting sick of having to fire up X every time I wanted to do anything on the net, and continually screwing up my chat scripts.

As for tying up my phone line all day... agreed. Cron is better, and I intend to do it that way. Today I didn't because it was the first time I tried to log in to my box from somewhere besides in front of it (or beside it, if you want to count that time I ran an ADM3a into the serial port) and (is the self-deprecation thick enough here, yet?) didn't trust myself to set up at or cron correctly the first time.

Anyhow, thanks for a cool article... thanks for expanding on the things you took under consideration when setting your system up, and thanks for your restraint with the snotty newbie. :)

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[e-mail]
"Give me $20 worth of pudding, or kill me."