News as of March of 2007

Sorry for not updating for so long. There have been several reasons for this. One, millions of school competitions and projects. Second, Unix problems on my machine. Third, I have been working for a while now with my new Poqet PC Plus, a DOS palmtop. It is wonderful! I have so much at my fingertips with it. It is great as it is like a palmtop, but runs DOS and everything else that runs on DOS. I use VDE, WordStar, and VisiCalc, among other things, with it. As for Unix, I have had some trouble to get to work on my Gateway, so I have had more installation problems. However, again I am sorry for not writing for so long. Good luck with Unix.

Thanks,
xatapu

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.

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 :)

The 100th Post....finally!

Finally, after a month of writing, I have hit 100 posts. I remember when I hit 20 posts sometime ago. I have covered C to commands to ports and even to desktop environments. I am also glad that I have had such a great coauthor as Harry is to contribute to the blog as well. He has added numerous useful reviews and bits of information. Insmod, still, however, has not added a single post since he joined me. I look forward to more writing and learning and (with hope) more development of my Unix skills. Maybe some inetd, httpd, and dhclient experiences in the future.................

xatapu

The df command

Do you want to see how much stupid space you have chucked full of lard since you first partitioned your hard drive? Do you not like stat's strange responses? Then use the df command. Short for disk-free, this command shows how large your Unix partition is and how much space is left within it. This is one of the simplest Unix commands.

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

Archives

If you are new to this blog, feel free to look through the archives. I have plenty of posts on every thing from Apple machines to vi to zsh (well, not yet zsh). Also please subscribe to the blog's feed. I think the one on the main page doesn't work, so go to http://feeds.feedburner.com/unixcomputing and subscribe there. I will also have that link up in the sidebar very soon.

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!

Explorations in /bin and /sbin

Well, after being bored at the # prompt for sometime, I decided to look through the /bin and /sbin folders and find out what some of the stuff in those places do. Well, hmmm....theres mt, rndctl, wsconsctl, echo, rmail, and lots of other stuff. Let's man mt...........WHAT? magnetic tape control? Cool.......Hey, maybe I'll describe mt in the next command post.

My Palm III

All is well so far with my Palm III. I am getting used to Graffiti, and now I have a few games, a Logo interpreter, a Scheme compiler, and a Tcl console on my Palm. Pretty weird, huh? The games are Palm's own HardBall and SubHunt. I especially like its great battery life. Just two AAAs for weeks. I will have a photo of it next week, along, hopefully, with the PC photos I keep forgetting. I also plan to add a modem to it and...............login to a Unix server! Yes, I can do that, too! Unfortunately, I can't install Linux on it. I just need one of those little plastic sheets to keep my Palm from getting scratched..........

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.

Spotlight: OpenBSD

Among the major branches of the BSD group of Unixes is OpenBSD, which, according to a April 2006 survey conducted by the BSD Certification Group among 4330 BSD users on various mailing lists, is the second most popular type of BSD (from OpenBSD Wikipedia article). I may, in fact, install this on my new laptop. But I am still thinking. After all, it did take me hours to finally install NetBSD, and that was NetBSD. Anyway. OpenBSD is highly portable, but not quite as portable as NetBSD. What OpenBSD is famous for is security. It is highly encryptable and has many features to help with securing servers and web pages. It is a simple and spartan but secure operating system. I will think about it........tell me what you think of it as well............
If you want to get it, there are a number of places to download it on iso images and through BitTorrent. Have fun and be safe. :)

Unix today: NetBSD update!

As of November 4, NetBSD 3.0.2 and 3.1 have been released. Earlier I told you about the beta version 3.1RC4. Now 3.1 was has been released as an update. For details on the new update, go to this webpage: http://www.netbsd.org/Releases/formal-3/NetBSD-3.1.html.

xatapu

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.

Packages: Lynx

Okay. Picture this: You have just fallen into a dumpster near a university, when suddenly you feel a hard metal object slap you. You dig through the trash, and fined that is a DECstation from the early 1990s. Well, cool find, you think, but there's no internet with it! Wrong! With the help of Lynx, NetBSD/pmax, and perhaps a telnet connection, you can use the internet. Lynx itself is a text-based internet browser for Unix and many other operating systems. It is totally free and can also be downloaded through pkgsrc.

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.

Palm devices

I got a Palm III about a year ago and didn't use it much then, but now I am getting back to it. I always had hated Grafitti, but then again I never practiced it. I know am starting to get Grafitti better. I also have found a few compilers (!) and interpreters for programming on it. They are LispMe, PtCon, and TinyLogo. The first and second are Lisp (Scheme) and Tcl interpreters. I also have put a few games on it. If only there was PalmBSD!