New digs: Gnoppix and Repartitioning - or NetBSD

Well, I decided to go ahead with Gnoppix. I am through with NetBSD for now. Gnoppix, if you do not know, is Knoppix with a GNOME desktop environment. Now it is basically a modified version of Ubuntu, but I am using an older distribution. My plan to repartition my hard drive will take several steps. First, I will partition the hard drive under DOS (oh, well.........) and quickly install a CD-ROM driver for booting of the Gateway's CD-ROM drive. It is a Mitsumi drive, so I easily fetched a driver. Second, I may or may not upgrade the hard drive. I think I will put in a 6 GB one, since 1 GB is certainly not enough. After all, 449 MB is compressed on the CD. Third, I will test to make sure the CD is good first. Last time with NetBSD I messed up on installation twice. That eliminated X. Overall, I am glad this is possible, but it is too bad that NetBSD is acting in a bad way. Still, I may just try working more with NetBSD. I would rather be persistent than conceding.

New digs: NetBSD 3 and X

Well, recently I tried to install NetBSD 3 (3.0.1) on my Gateway. I wanted to try X on it as I have not had X ever on my Linux box. Well, things have not gone swimmingly. First, the sysinst utility did not work properly near the end of installation. Then X, which was said to have been installed, did not start up properly due to bad configuration. Hmmm. I am really confused about this one. I think I will need to repartition the hard drive and install some other distribution. Currently I am thinking about using Gnoppix.

Linux on a Compaq Contura Aero!

Left: HP 200LX

There have been many greats in the palmtop/subnotebook/ultralight world. The Toshiba Libretto, with its videocassette footprint, was one. The HP 200LX was another, with its extensive DOS compatibility and twenty-plus hour lifespan on two double AA batteries. The IBM Thinkpad X series, with their tiny size yet superior power, and, of course, OpenBSD compatibility, as the machines most compatible with this
operating system, was another. The svelte NEC Ultralite, the first of the "notebooks", also was one, as it was on the first of these tiny laptops. However, like the NEC, one of the first "notebooks," perhaps on of the first inexpensive, color, Windows ones, was the Compaq Contura Aero. Though a 25-33 MHz 486 :P, the Aero is very thin and light for a notebook. It has a teeny VGA screen that is usually color but may be grayscale. And, even better, it will run Linux! Slackware, Debian, and (early?) versions of RedHat, apparently. Also early versions of NetBSD (1.5.2, etc.) may work. I don't know exactly what the compatibility is, but I think NetBSD would likely run it. Here are some sites with more information:

http://www.alvestrand.no/linux/aero-faq.html#TOC

FAQ on Aero Linux (Slackware)

http://hamsterrepublic.com/james/linux/contura-aero.php

More stuff on installing Linux (Debian) on the Aero. Also some basic facts on the Contura Aero.
Here is a picture from the site comparing a Thinkpad 600, JetBook, and a Contura Aero:


















http://www.xmission.com/~bgeer/laptop_aero.html
An experience of installing RedHat on an Aero.

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

Cool packages: bb

bb is a library for creating very advanced ASCII-based graphics. I learned this from insmod. I have also done a bit more research about it, and apparently looks like a demo of the AA library. AA is an "ASCII-art" library, and it is portable to many different platforms. I don't know much about it, so hopefully insmod will get a chance to put something up about it. For more information go to: http://aa-project.sourceforge.net/aalib/. This is the library's project page and has lots of info about it. It, of course, also provides a source download and describes the library.

The mt command

As I told you earlier, just yesterday I discovered the mt command. I know mv, but mt? Well, I then did a man on it. Mt........what the...........magnetic tape control?! I don't believe this! I can control a tape drive from a PC! I can send commands to it! The last time I did this was with a really old Texas Instruments TI-99/4A. Hmmm......I might explore this........

Anyway, let's get back to mt. Its syntax is mt [ -f tapename ] command [ count ]. Command and count will be explained shortly. The tape selecting option is -f, which selects the raw tape device. I believe /dev/rmt is the /dev folder for this. There are also a number of operands for mt. Here are some of them from http://bama.ua.edu/cgi-bin/man-cgi?mt+1, a online copy of the UNIX man pages:

count - The number of times that the requested operation is to be performed. By default, mt performs command once. Multiple operations of command may be performed by specifying count.

command - Available commands that can be sent to a magnetic tape drive. Only as many characters as are required to uniquely identify a command need be specified.

eof, weof - Write count EOF marks at the current position on the tape.

fsf - Forward space over count EOF marks. The tape is positioned on the first block of the file.

fsr - Forward space count records.

bsf - Back space over count EOF marks. The tape is positioned on the beginning-of-tape side of the EOF mark.

bsr - Back space count records.

nbsf - Back space count files. The tape is positioned on the first block of the file. This is equivalent to count+1. bsf's followed by one fsf.

asf - Absolute space to count file number. This is equivalent to a rewind followed by a fsf count.

(the next section is from http://www.computerhope.com/unix/umt.htm)

If count is specified with any of the following commands, the count is ignored and the command is performed only once.

eom - Space to the end of recorded media on the tape. This is useful for appending files onto previously written tapes.

rewind - Rewind the tape.

offline, rewoffl - Rewind the tape and, if appropriate, take the drive unit off-line by unloading the tape. It cycles through all four tapes.

status - Print status information about the tape unit.

retension - Rewind the cartridge tape completely, then wind it forward to the end of the reel and back to beginning-of-tape to smooth out tape tension.

reserve - Allow the tape drive to remain reserved after closing the device. The drive must then be explicitly released.

release - Re-establish the default behavior of releasing at close.

forcereserve - Break the reservation of the tape drive held by another host and then reserve the tape drive. This command can be executed only with super-user privileges.

erase - Erase the entire tape. Erasing a tape may take a long time depending on the device and/or tape. Refer to the device specific manual for time details.

Good, but a bit complicated and technical, as far as explanations. I guess an example (for those of you with tape drives out there) might be:

mt erase - erase the tape in the drive found at /dev/rmt0.

mt -f $RMT_NR eof 1 - Mark the end of the tape.

Very cool. Again, these are just probable examples of mt.

For more info, you can go to that man page I mentioned earlier. Another good place for learning about tapes and Unix is http://www.washington.edu/computing/unix/tapes.html. Also you can go to http://www.computerhope.com/unix/umt.htm for more info on use and syntax. That link also provides a link to a page on tcopy, a command I will be discussing soon. Enjoy!

Desktop Environments: KDE

Of all desktop environments, KDE, by far is the most simple and intuitive. It has an resemblance to Windows. However, it is also fairly ugly and inefficient. However, other than X, which I once used with twm, it is about the only desktop environment that I have used. I plan to try out GNOME and Xfce, which I have seen running once in a Xubuntu distribution, fairly soon.

This brings me to another point. I have begun a new article for the blog called Desktop Environments. Later will be reviews of other environments, including Xfce and GNOME. I will probably begin with Xfce, but I don't know for sure. I will also go into depth about particular packages and features of each of the next environments.

Ports: Debian on a m68k Mac!

Hello again. I have just found out about the coolest thing. It is possible to put Linux on a Mac. Okay, an older Mac. Go here for more details: http://www.jagshouse.com/Linux68k.html.
I will have more details on m68k Linux and Unix later on.

New digs: g++

Well, I haven't done much with C for some time now, so I guess I should be getting back to it. I have started again with base conversion now. I have experimented with an example interest-rate program which uses loops to print the interest on a sum over a period of time according to simple interest, or I=prt. I am now writing a base-conversion program and also plan to write a program for finding the viscosity of a fluid based on the fluid's shear stress and shear rate or velocity gradient as in a laminar shear experiment. Simple for now, but more will come.

Update: Notebooks

Good news! I have found a good notebook. My aunt happened to have a HP Pavilion zt1000 with a dim TFT which she was giving up for this reason. Although I really hate HPs, I still took it because I needed a basic notebook. Now I have nearly fixed it thanks to a new CCFL tube. I will have updates about installing Ubuntu, Gnoppix, NetBSD, or maybe Debian on it. Also more posts on Unix use will be coming up.

Spotlight: pkgsrc

The main package distibution system for NetBSD and many other (free) operating systems is pkgsrc. Before it existed, packages were not standardized and much less organized. However, today pkgsrc has standardized and distributed packages for more than 10 operating systems and has more than 5000 packages. It has standardized both binary and source distributions for many operating systems. For more information, go to http://www.netbsd.org where there is more info about pkgsrc.

Gnoppix

Hello again. I have searched for some time on Google and have found a distribution of Knoppix that uses GNOME. I think I might install this on a laptop if I find one. I understand from a reader's comment that GNOME is much cleaner than KDE.

Programming: gcc

Three reasons to install Linux or Unix on a PC: first, hear no Microsoft, smell no Microsoft, see no Microsoft; second, GNOME; third, gcc. Gcc is the GNU Compiler Collection, a universal Unix compiler that can compile just about everything from C to Fortran to Ada to Assembly to 00010111010100. It ships with most, if not all, Unix and Linux distros. I have been using to learn C, which is much easier under Unix. But you can still use it for many other things. In fact, I can compile machine-independent code with it. Later I will tell you more about personal experiences and programs I have compiled with gcc and g++.

Ports: NetBSD/hpcmips

Are you sick of Windows CE? Do you want a tiny Linux machine? Do you like rubbery, plasticky keyboards? Then this port is for you. NetBSD/hpcmips is a port of NetBSD for MIPS-based WinCE palmtops. About the only model which I saw it running on that is worth getting is the NEC MobilePro 790. But, still, it looks pretty cool. You get X with that little platter, too.

Unix today: SGI emerges from bankruptcy!

I know this is sort of old news, but on October 17th, Silicon Graphics emerged from Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. The company's market share was being eaten by Apple and other companies that were strongly competing with SGI. SGI plans to end its mips line this December, and will use a new platform next year.

Programming: Java and jdk/NetBSD

I am sure that many of you have heard of the language Java. It is an object-oriented programming language first introduced by Sun Microsystems. It is often used for scripting in applets online. I don't know much of it, but we learn it each week at the WHHS Computer Club. A good tutorial for Java that I use and the Computer Club as well uses can be found at http://www.ibiblio.org/obp/thinkCSjav. Now, for NetBSD and pkgsrc compatibility.

The pkgsrc/NetBSD page for jdk does not work. However, after doing some googling, I have found another link for downloading jdk, located here: http://www.duh.org/NetBSD/java2/.

This is a download page for the Java 2 SDK (Software Development Kit). It is big, though (44 MB, I think). And that's compressed. Make sure you have space for it.

Desktop Environments

The thing that finally got Linux off the ground was not sash :) but a GUI called GNOME created by a young programmer named Miguel de Icaza. GNOME is an example of a desktop environment or GUI. They make computing more fun but, as I say, slower. X is also a desktop environment. I personally prefer Xfce, but I also think KDE is cool. What environment do you use? Why? Tell us about it.

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

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.