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Talkback:137/lg_mail2.html in Basiclinux 2.1

[ In reference to "Mailbag, Part 2" in LG#137 ]

Rick Moen [rick at linuxmafia.com]


Tue, 12 Jun 2007 23:59:02 -0700

Forwarding back to the list. Greetings from Istanbul.

----- Forwarded message from sindi keesan <keesan@sdf.lonestar.org> -----

Date: Sat, 9 Jun 2007 18:43:23 +0000 (UTC)
From: sindi keesan <keesan@sdf.lonestar.org>
To: Rick Moen <rick@linuxmafia.com>
cc: karolisl@gmail.com
Subject: Re: [TAG] (forw) Re: (forw) Re: lpr works for user not root in
Basiclinux 2.1

Sorry I do not have the last mail in this series. Please post this mail properly to TAG list members and wherever else it goes. I discovered our long email exchange is now on the web. Thanks.

The author of BasicLinux helped me to get eznet working properly for 'user'. He said eznet behaves properly (does not reset permissions on /dev/tty*) if you exit it (ppp-off) before rebooting. Otherwise it leaves permissions reset so only root can dial. (It might be safest to also chmod o+w /dev/ttyS1 in rc too for when user forgets to hang up).

I am finally ready to set up the latest version of Basiclinux (3.50 - with jwm window manager that can be used without a mouse) for use by 'user'.

61MB with libc5 (used in the original download to save space), glibc 2.2.5 so (added for Opera), links, links2, lynx, Opera 9.21, kermit, msmtp (SMTP authentication), base64 to encode attachments for msmtp, dropbear and scp, abiword, netpbm, gs-8.54, mplayer, sox, svgalib, svp (svgalib-based ps/pdf viewer), zgv, antiword, xlhtml, ppthtml, all added to the jwm menu, and everything that came in the original 2-FD download including Xvesa, jwm, mgp, xli, and pcmcia support but no compiler. 2.2.26 kernel so no USB-storage support unless you change to 2.4.31 kernel and modules.

To start vt1 in X: tty1::respawn:-/bin/sh -sc startx rather than changing runlevels.

What else might the novice linux user want? Someone's friend says their computer is too slow for the internet. I will make it run faster by adding linux.

Running Linux 2nd Edition (kernel 1.1) recommended 40MB for linux, or 250MB for a really large distribution. I could have done it in about 30MB by leaving out Opera and Abiword, which did not exist then.

Thanks to everyone on the TAG list for all the help and education.

Sindi Keesan

----- End forwarded message -----


Talkback:116/okopnik1.html

[ In reference to "Booting Knoppix from a USB Pendrive via Floppy" in LG#116 ]

Ben Okopnik [ben at linuxgazette.net]


Sun, 10 Jun 2007 15:32:25 -0400

On Fri, May 25, 2007 at 12:45:17PM -0400, Jermaine wrote:

> Hey guys:
> 
> I currently have a Toshiba Protégé M200 and I would love to play
> around with a Linux LiveCD distro.  This machine does not have an
> internal floppy and or CD/DVD drive, however, it does have the
> capability to boot off the internal SD slot by copying a floppy-disk
> image (up to 2.88MB) to the SD card as long as you name it
> $tosfd00.vfd.
> 
> I know what you are thinking, but it'll never work...  Think of it
> this way, you can have a 2GB SD card but only 1.44 or 2.88MB worth of
> that 2GB is usable, the rest of the space cannot be read under Linux.
> To enable the ability to read the remaining space of the SD card, a
> driver must be present for the Toshiba SD card reader under Linux.
> The reason it'll never work is because Toshiba won't release
> information regarding the device, therefore no driver.
> 
> This brings me back to my original problem of getting a LiveCD to run
> on my M200.  I just happened to stumbled upon Ben Okopnik "Booting Knoppix
> from a USB Pendrive via Floppy" article and I thought to myself "that
> might be exactly what need."  I read his entire article, but I am
> still confused and don't know where to start.
> 
> I saw the downloadable file version of the script, but what do I do
> with it. Keep in mind I don't have a Linux machine or any prior Linux
> experience.

Hi, Jermaine -

Well, that last bit is somewhat problematic - unless you can beg, borrow, or steal a Linux machine for a while, or have a friend with one who would be interested in helping you. Or, if you have access to a desktop machine (i.e., something which isn't going to give you the kind of problems that your Toshiba does), you could always boot Knoppix or some other distro on it and get yourself all set up.

The procedure itself, once you've taken care of the above, is fairly simple:

1) Download a Knoppix image [1] to your machine. 2) Download and run the script in the article; follow the prompts. 3) Copy the newly-created image to your flash device, as the last prompt says; however, in your case, try

dd if=boot.img of=/dev/sdb1/\$tosfd00.vfd
instead of the suggested location (this assumes that your flash drive is mounted as /dev/sdb, which is the common case.)

If the above doesn't work, feel free to ping TAG again - hopefully, with a list of all errors that you've seen (pasted and copied, please - no retyping!) and describing any non-text errors (i.e., "activity light on drive didn't come on" or whatever.)

I suspect that it should work out OK for you, since the problem these days is that the boot image is too big for the average floppy. However, since you have a 2.88MB allowance, this is likely to not be a problem...

Let us know how it works out for you!

-- 
* Ben Okopnik * Editor-in-Chief, Linux Gazette * http://LinuxGazette.NET *

Talkback:125/howell.html

[ In reference to "A Brief Introduction to IP Cop " in LG#125 ]

jessekemp [kempjw1 at sbcglobal.net]


Thu, 7 Jun 2007 10:16:13 -0400

I have setup IPCop and am seeing that I am taking errors (at about a 50% rate) any Idea how I can adjust the MTU rat which is currently set to 1500?

[ Thread continues here (4 messages/2.72kB) ]


Talkback:/138/misc/lg/multipage_tif_file.html

Kat Tanaka Okopnik [kat at linuxgazette.net]


Wed, 27 Jun 2007 06:59:14 -0700

On Fri, Jun 22, 2007 at 04:57:02PM +0200, Emil Gorter wrote:

[[[ In a message addressed directly to me, entitled "very late addition to "Multipage tif file" in LG138" ]]]

Hi, Emil!

> I'm way behind on reading LG, so I saw your question from April only 
> today:
> 
>   http://linuxgazette.net/138/misc/lg/multipage_tif_file.html
> 
> 
> It reminded me of a scanning/archiving assignment I got long time ago.  
> I don't remember when but I mailed LG about it before.
> 
> I wanted to merge to separate TIFF pages (extracted from a 30+ page 
> scans using tiffsplit) into one PDF.  It went like this:

tiffsplit?

Well, I just went off to install libtiff-tools, and tested tiffsplit on the file I'd been trying to open back then. No go, still.

TIFFReadDirectory: Warning, 552.tif: unknown field with tag 292 (0x124) encountered.
552.tif: Warning, incorrect count for field "DateTime" (19, expecting 20); tag ignored.
Segmentation fault (core dumped)
Looks like the original file was, as I thought at the time, exquisitely..."modified" to be "functional" in Wind0ws and borken elsewhere.

Ah well, thanks to that problem, I've acquired a suite of tiff tools. (Thank you for the nudge to add libtiff-tools to the arsenal.)

>  tiffcp xaa.tif xab.tif combined.tiff
>  tiff2ps -2 -a combined.tiff | ps2pdf -sPAPERSIZE=a4 - > combined.pdf
> 
> You'll get a high quality PDF that is much smaller than the TIFFs.

Nifty. It's pretty much the inverse (converse? reverse? obverse?) of the problem I was having, but it's nice to have the tip handy. Thanks!

-- 
Kat Tanaka Okopnik
Linux Gazette Mailbag Editor
kat@linuxgazette.net

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Published in Issue 140 of Linux Gazette, July 2007

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