The Blog

Hey Everyone,

Sorry I haven't been posting on the blog lately. There a couple reasons:

• School!
• School!
• School!
• I really don't know a lot about Unix to be truthful...
• I have a new blog! It's called How2Mac (you can find it at http://how2mac.blogspot.com/ )

Cya Later,
Harry

A Poqet!, Update on Unix

I have been busy with my website at http://guofu.freeshell.org for sometime know, so I haven't gotten much time to update the blog. However, I have some news. I just got a Poqet PC Plus! It is that little DOS palmtop I mentioned once or twice. It is only 5" x 9"! It did cost $159, which is pricey, but it was worth it. I am looking forward to programming it. I will update the blog sometime in the future as well, and I have been attempting to install NetBSD 3. However, I think I may switch to Gnoppix, though. I will tell you more in other posts.

The Return

I'll begin intensely (hopefully) blogging again tommorrow. I have gotten through four exams at school and have one to go, in Geometry. Things are going well, and I still working with my NetBSD machine. I think I may upgrade it 3.0.1. I am also continuing to use gcc. I also may get a Toshiba Libretto or HP 200LX for Christmas, so I will tell you about that if I get it. As for Harry, he is doing well, and, in fact, has installed iPodlinux on his 5G iPod. He is happily playing DOOM on it today. I still use SDF, although I have started to use it more recently. In fact, I am logged in as guofu right now. Overall, everything is well. I look forward to more posting. Maybe Harry will talk a little bit about his iPod, too.

xatapu

Notice

I am so sorry for not updating the blog in so long. But I will be able to soon. Unfortunately over the next week and a half, I will have to prepare for and take final semester exams at school. This will hamper my blogging and Harry's. I will have a couple of articles today, but probably not many until winter break. Just remember this when you see little updating on the blog. Hopefully I will find sometime later to keep posting.

Sincerely,
xatapu

Update

Sorry I never updated the blog last week. I was gone in Chicago, where it costs 10 dollars per IP address you visit with a hotel's ethernet connection ;) . So I couldn't update the blog there. I will cover what I wanted to last week and also will find some photos, finally, to put into a post. Expect fewer posts in the next three weeks because of final semester exams.

Regards,
xatapu

The 7th Edition, Updates

I am sorry that I haven't updated the blog for so long. I have been very sick with a high fever. I am getting over it now, fortunately. I will continue to work on it this week, hopefully on the road as well as I will be in Chicago for the rest of the week on a trip. I will go back to what I was posting about and will probably include more images. Harry pointed that out last Tuesday. Next, I will begin the 7th edition of the blog on Sundays instead of Wednesdays to align writing it with my schedule and make it more convenient to look through the archives. Wow. More than a month of posting :)

Another new blog......

Today I will be founding a new blog about my Palm III. It will be update once a week at most. I look forward to writing it. When I have created it and started posting on it I will add its address to the sidebar or in a post. I will still keep updating this blog, though............

Command posts

For sometime I will be focusing on particular commands and utilities that can be used at the shell prompt. I have already began an article on mt, and plan to add ones on tcopy, rndctl, wsconsctl (I think that's the right spelling), df, gzip, cron, inetd, motd, rmail, etc. Mt and tcopy, specifically, are very interesting because they are tape drive commands. Anyway, posts on those commands and others will come up soon.

xatapu

Almost to the 100th post......

Wow. It has been more than four weeks since I began this blog. You may remember the time I put up the 20th post. Now I am reaching to one hundred. Probably by this Friday I will reach that goal. I am looking forward to it. So far I believe we have 91 posts.

News

Unfortunately, I wouldn't be able to post to the blog much this week. I will not have access to the Internet that often. I will try to continue next week.

Edition 5: Big Changes

Let's see. Already this blog has been updated for four weeks, with nearly 80 posts. We're now on the fifth, beginning this Wednesday, November 8. As for insmod, I am still waiting for a few columns from him. Harry has had some good ones, though. Although my blog has always changed rapidly, there are some large ones today. First, I will not be having particular 'themes' any more asthey are more constrained. Second, I am going to increase publishing and posting. Last week had the lowest on record, with only 11 posts. Third, I will try to dig a bit deeper and maybe get more "reader's responses" now.

Blog Update

I have added some new stuff to the blog. I have updated the layout formatting thingy, for one thing, and I have added and changed other stuff with the blog. I have added a few more links, some ads, a list of my labels (for each post) and a new background. Enjoy!

New Stuff; Return to Computing with Unix

Hello, this is xatapu. I apologize for not posting for several days, and thankfully Harry covered that. I am back, ready to discuss Unix and Sun and Java and whatever else you want. I will have a new post about Java and another one about Debian and another one on....um....well.......you'll see.

Command of the week: tar

Sorry I haven't gotten back to posting in sometimes. Anyway, this week's command is tar. Tar, course, stands for TApe aRchive. It is used to compress files into an archive. Its basic syntax goes like this:

tar file.tar file1 file2 file3

What to me is amazing about tar is its vast expanse of options. You can dump directly to a disk in a drive (-cvfz) and do many other interesting things with tar. For the most part, some basic tar functions are -x, extract, -c, create (new archive), -f, file (set tarfile name), -u, update, -t, which leaves a table of contents, and -r, replace. Here are some examples:

tar -xf /foo/capio.tar /foo

Extract the contents of capio.tar into the folder foo.

tar -cvfz /dev/rfd0a prog1.c newstuff.vi httpd.conf

Tar takes over the floppy drive (in NetBSD in this case) and directly writes the following three files to the floppy. It can be change to burn a CD, though, I think.

Still, this is only a basic tutorial. For more, try this site - http://www.computerhope.com/unix/utar.htm

xatapu

Edition 3

Yes! Today we will begin the third edition of the blog. So far we have had 48 posts and 2 comments. Still not at 50! The other contributors and I will continue to improve the blog, but still keep the qualities the blog has now.

Spotlight: Solaris

Many of you may have heard of the operating system Solaris. It is the operating system that Sun Microsystems introduced in the early 1990s. It replaced Sun's earlier Unix-based operating system. Today Solaris is open source, and you can get Solaris 10 for free. It is very innovative, and among its innovations is Sun's own file system, ZFS, which is an advanced 128-bit file system. Solaris also comes with a GNOME-like desktop environment, the Java Desktop System. There are releases for both PC and SPARC platforms. And, of course, jdk runs on it. To learn more, go to http://sun.com/solaris/ and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solaris_Operating_Environment.

Blog News

Hello again, this is xatapu. I am here with some news about this blog's plans and status. First off, we have nearly published for two weeks now, with nearly 50 posts. That is great. I feel that I have definitely broken my "one-week-barrier" for how long I am interested in a particular topic I study on my own. Second, I have begun to standardize the categories I make posts about. First, there's "Spotlight", next there is "Command of the week", and so on. I will explain that later. Third, we, the blog authors, plan to make some new "columns". Insmod may write an "Ask insmod" column for Unix help, and I may write a "New digs" column about my new experience with Unix. Lastly, in the future Harry and insmod will make some new posts to the blog.

Edition 2

Oh, yes. Today begins edition 2. Now we have two new authors who contribute to the blog. There were 25 posts in edition one, I believe. There is also one comment. I have a pkgsrc article planned. I am looking forward to more posting and improving the blog with the two other authors, insmod and Harry K.A.