More 2 Cent Tips & Tricks LG #86

...making Linux just a little more fun! | More 2¢ Tips! By The Readers of Linux Gazette

See also: The Answer Gang's Knowledge Base and the LG Search Engine

- Re: [LG 84] 2c Tips #2 --or--
  When LILO lies low and you see LI
- Learning Red Hat 8.0 --or--
  Learning about mail
- a new language
- Linux Router ISP Network Ip pool Details
- Why is my connection breaking? --or--
  security = obscurity, in this case
- Headless Linux
- Re: [LG 85] help wanted #2 --or--
  Crashing mystery? Try no DRI
- imac_X-problems
- Compiling Kernel and Installing on a new machine
- Partitioning without setup
- Red Hat 7.3 Installation
- is this the right place?
- Switchboard
- ThumbDrive
- ip address from c program
- Tricky Linux
- Teething problems with a dual boot system
- ISO file?
- Remote X over SSH
- Debian User Worldmap
- Remote control of Linux from Windows

### When LILO lies low and you see LI

Thu, 28 Nov 2002 09:38:15 -0700
Neil Koozer (neilkoozer from adelphia.net)

Adding to the Issue 84 2 cent tip #2 ...

I wish to clarify what the LI result from lilo means.

The often quoted segment from the lilo readme is sort of backwards in both halves of the sentence. When you get LI and nothing else, the second stage loader was NOT loaded. A block of bytes was loaded, but from the wrong location. This wrong block of bytes WAS executed, but since it is garbage nothing is printed.

Neil.

### Learning about mail

Tue, 26 Nov 2002 23:09:30 -0800
Heather Stern (Linux Gazette Technical Editor)
Question by James M. Haviland, RN (jhavilan from attbi.com)

A continuation of Issue 85, 2 cent tip #10 ...

I have installed RH's 8.0. I'll have to admit I'm in Windows at the moment.

'sokay, that's fixable :> Or if you get really tricky you can convince a good copy of WINE to use the Windows setup, and run mswin apps even when you are in Linux.

Also the e-mail program that came with 8.0 that isn't connected to a browser retrieved my mail, but wouldn't, couldn't send my mail.

That's probably:

> Fetching mail from another serv explicitly (via POP3) works. (This is common. Your ISP did all the work setting up and keeping that POP server, your mailer just visits it once in a while.)

Sending mail outbound, no SMTP server is found to talk to. (There are a few browsers which will "speak SMTP" on their own, but they are not very good mailers on the average, for other reasons.)

Adding an SMTP server to your setup is usually quite easy; look for an RPM package named any one of sendmail, qmail, or postfix. (but you only want one of them.)

> and I forgot to mention that if your ISP actually gives you the explicit address of an SMTP server to use, say, mail.isp.example.com, then you could try telling that to your mailer, rather than worrying about setting up your own. -- Heather

Thank you for your time.

You're welcome

### a new language

Wed, 27 Nov 2002 15:55:29 -0800
Rick Moen (the LG Answer Gang)
Question by Jack (jackdrook from hotmail.com)

> Jack asked us a question that was so general Rick answered it with the applicable Linux answer... -- Heather

You lost me on the KPPP Tool and Linux. Linux is an OS, right?

Indeed. Thus the term "Linux Answer Gang", you see.

Now, where did I get your address? I asked some friends about how to get my telephone to operate through the PC. One person sent me a forward with "The Answer Guy" and the address. I believe it to have been a page from an old site that contained pertinent information, but not the site itself. Does this help?

Not nearly as much as it would if you inquired with that person and tracked down the "old site" for us. That would be much appreciated, as we continue to be deluged with misdirected non-Linux queries.

I am self-taught, so do not confuse me with high-altitude techtalk, just the facts.

Self-taught was at one time the only way to learn Linux, back when many of us got started with it, so we sympathise, and now attempt to assist others while, as we say, "Making Linux just a little more fun".

What is my best approach for learning a program language?

Well, first you'd have to install a Linux distribution, of course.

> Strictly speaking, most of these languages are available for Windows too, but some of the mswin implementations may be less than perfectly portable, or the documentation may suggest non-portable over portable coding strategies. Go for dual booting, perhaps. -- Heather

You'll find that it comes with an amazing variety of programming language development kits, from C, C++, and Python through tk/tcl, Java, Lisp, and heavens knows what else. I personally maintain a list of Integrated Development Environment software for Linux, here: http://linuxmafia.com/~rick/faq/#idedev . As you'll see, the list has grown to pass 100 entries.

How you would proceed from there would depend on which type of programming language you'd like to use, and what you want to do with it.

Cheers, Rick Moen

### Linux Router ISP Network Ip pool Details

Fri, 6 Dec 2002 14:24:43 +0530
Jim Dennis and the Gang (the LG Answer Gang)
Question by jeevan (jeevan from asthatech.com)

Is it possible for me to run Routing Protocols(ospf,BGP,rip) on my Linux Box connected to an ISP (through cable modem) and obtain all the network (including subnetwork ip pool)ip pool range of my ISP.

> [JimD] Look for GNU Zebra: http://www.zebra.org It's considered to be the best available package for Linux, and has (I'm told) syntax that's reasonably similar to Cisco's IOS.

> [someone else in the Gang expands] Of course you can! This is not your grandpa's operating system, here. OSPF v. 2 and BGP4/4+ are both supported by either the gated daemon or the GNU zebra daemon, both of which should be standard on your Linux distribution. Zebra can also do pretty much every variety of RIP (v.1, v.2, and RIPng). The standard old routed (prounounced "route-dee") daemon can do RIPv1, and gated can do RIPv2. (gated will also do EGP, thrown into the bargain.)

Thanks for replying. But what I wanted exactly to know is that should I need any kind of details from the ISP (like Router ip,ASN...) or any permission from the ISP for my LINUX Router to have a OSPF session with the ISP Router.

With Regards
Jeevan

### security = obscurity, in this case

Mon, 2 Dec 2002 23:10:33 -0500
Faber Fedor (faber from linuxnj.com)
Question by Michael Havens (bmike1 from vei.net)

When I go to login with my online stockbroker

I get this:

> "Connection to host www15.scottsave.com is broken"

Why do you think that is and what do you think can be done about it?

> Let me guess, you're using the Konqueor 3.0 web browser, right? Konq is broken with respect to SSL sites. I have the same problem and I need to find an updated Konq to use or switch to another browser.

> I'm not able to verify this; it could just be the same problem as in Konqueror 2.x, where the SSL support is a seperate package (kdebase-crypto under Debian; your distro may vary), and Konqueror only visits non-encrypted URLs if you don't have that package installed. Of course it doesn't bother to say so... an error message like "https: protocol not supported" would have been a little more useful. -- Heather

> Galeon and Mozilla will work, but you need to d/l the Personal Security Manager (PSM). I've looked at installing it and it looks like a PITA.

> Until I find an updated Konq or install PSM, I use an old version of Netscape (4.x) which works fine.

### Headless Linux

Sun, 22 Dec 2002 22:54:45 -0800
Dan Wilder (SSC sysadmin)
Question by Steve B. (admin from bsdfan.cncdsl.com)

I've been looking around and can't find the info I need. How do I configure Linux to run headless with a terminal connected to a serial port?

Not quite headless, with a serial terminal connected. I choose to call the condition "nearly headless", after the phantom named "Nearly Headless Nick" in the Harry Potter series.

Take a look at:

> Documentation/serial-console.txt

in the kernel source. This won't get you quite everything you'd get from a console connected. In particular, you don't have access to the BIOS. But if you can get past that, you're pretty much there. You can even tell LILO to use the serial port, as described in the documentation file. No doubt there's also a GRUB option for serial console, if that's the boot loader you're using.

As I understand it, there's at least one card which will even make the BIOS available via a serial port.

### Crashing mystery? Try no DRI

Wed, 11 Dec 2002 08:19:37 -0500
Drew S (linux_man_us from hotmail.com)

Something for rajachemist of Issue 85 Help wanted #2 to try.

Though you never mentioned what your video card was, I will respond since I was having a similar problem with Mandrake Linux 9.0 on my home-built machine. I was getting lockups all the time and yet I could ssh into the box from another machine and see that everything behind the scenes was still running fine. Just X froze, but it also meant that I could not kill it with CTRL-ALT-BACKSPACE. I happened to have an ATI Xpert 2000 video card (Rage 128 chipset). The ONE item that fixed it was that the card does not seem to handle DRI properly. I commented out the line in my XF86Config file that said: load "dri", restarted X and I never saw the problem again. Perhaps your problem is similar.

Drew

### imac_X-problems

Thu, 28 Nov 2002 10:24:46 -0800
Rick Moen (the LG Answer Gang)
Question by kuettner (kuettner from tuebingen.mpg.de)

after using linux for several years now on i-586 I tried to install it on my imac-g4. the problem: I do not get X to run, because of my NVIDIA GeForce4 MX. I am using debian woody for ppc and don't find any hints in the net. can anybody send me a working XF86Config for XFree 4.1.0 or any other help.

It looks like you'll need XFree86 4.2.0 or later, and will have to use the "vesa" driver (not the "nv" driver) in 16-bit mode, which is the only one supported thus far.

As you may know, these things do tend to happen with newly introduced video chipsets, and Nvidia have unfortunately been notably uncooperative with the XFree86 Project.

> That they didn't buy into the XFCom release sequence (compatible binaries, source eventually committed to the open source X code tree) and want to roll their own we can understand; but they have to keep up with the Xfree86 codebase or it makes them look slow. And act slow, if one has to back down to the generic servers in order to work... -- Heather

### Compiling Kernel and Installing on a new machine

Sat, 7 Dec 2002 13:11:07 -0800
Jim Dennis (the LG Answer Guy)
Question by Sunil Kayili (Sunil.Kayiti from fmr.com)

I am in a catch-22 situation. There might be an easy answer for this but I am not able to work around this problem. Sending this problem here.

Server Configuration:

> `
> Chipset 440GX
> Micron NetFrame 3400
> Adaptec 7680 SCSI Adapter (aic7xxx - HBA 6.2.8)
> Mylex Raid - DAC960`

Software:

> `
> RedHat 8.0 - Linux Kernel 2.4.18-14`

Problem:

> With 2.4.18-14 there is a problem in the kernel which loops on aic7xxx during boot up, hence it does not boot.

Solution:

> Compile the latest kernel 2.4.18-20rc4

Catch-22:

> I built the latest kernel on my other linux machine and wrote it into a CD ROM. Now how do I transfer it into my NetFrame Server.

I boot into the rescue mode using the installation CD but once in the rescue mode, I am unable to eject the CD. I have tried all possible mount points to eject the cd but to no avail.

1. Is there a any way to transfer the new kernel image into my NetFrame PC? I exhausted all options, i,e network (since it is in rescue mode)
2. Is there a way to disable linux to take control of the CDROM ejection mechanism?

Your help greatly appreciated.

Thanks
Sunil

> Suggestions:

> - Use a Tom's Root/Boot floppy.
> - Burn a bootable CD with the Tom's Root/Boot "El Torito" boot image (and your new kernel, etc. in all that other CD-R space)
> - Use the ifconfig and route commands (on just about any rescue CD or floppy) to manually configure your network, then fetch a tarball of the kernel and modules (etc) from any other machine on your network (using mount -t nfs, or wget or an FTP client).
> - Install an extra CD-ROM drive .
> - Configure a system on your network as a bootp/dhcpd server, install PXELinux, configure it to transfer a custom network rescue kernel and initrd system to your server, then configure the NetFrame to boot using PXE, etc).

> (Okay, that last one is way too much effort for way too little gain and the one before that is just plain silly).

### Partitioning without setup

Wed, 25 Dec 2002 22:46:15 GMT
Dan WIlder and Pradeep Padala (the LG Answer Gang)
Question by Brandon Dean (bmdean from socket.net)

Hello,

I would like to know what linux program to get that I could use to repartition a hard drive without going through setup.

Thank You,
Brandon Dean

> [Dan] fdisk

> See "man fdisk"

> [Pradeep] If you want to repartition without losing data, GNU Parted is a great tool. Details at:

> > http://www.gnu.org/software/parted

> You can also use fdisk or diskdruid but both will destroy the data after repartitioning. These two should be installed by default in most of the distributions.

> Don't forget to make good backups first -- Heather

### Red Hat 7.3 Installation

Tue, 24 Dec 2002 13:19:39 -0500
Pete Keller (pkeller01 from snet.net)
Question by (dhar_mca from jntu.net)

Friends, Last week I posed a question for booting with 3 OSes. Thank U.

Here I again partitioned ... [lots of stuff about prepared system] I am trying boot from boot disk. It is coming upto "localhost login:" after which GUI screen be displayed. It displays the localhost login: prompt for a second or a half and then hangs. I thought its a problem with monitor sync values. Mine was samsung's samtron 56V model. But in the list specified - no exact match for it. So I opted for the default given (unprobed type)and modified the sync values with the ones given in my monitor manual. (My friends who have already loaded windows, have not even changed the sync values). One of my friend got the same problem. But his system didn't hang but it flashes between blank screen and the text based localhost prompt.

> His "chooser" - the GUI login, keeps crashing but the system keeps trying to put it back up. kdm, gdm, xdm, one of those dm thingies. -- Heather

He was able to login. He logged into it with root and modified the Xconfigurator and now works fine.

Plz assist me.

> [Pete]

> 1. press control alt and F1 to get a text login.
> 2. login as root and run Xconfigurator

> If you're hung too hard for that to work, use the boot loader to put yourself in sincgle user mode, then fix the boot runlevel (/etc/inittab default entry) to stay in text mode. For Red Hat flavors that's runlevel 3. Set it back when you'r sure it's fixed, use startx as a user to run X explicitly while experimenting. -- Heather

### is this the right place?

Wed, 27 Nov 2002 11:41:44 -0800
Mike Orr (Linux Gazette Editor)
Question by James M. Haviland, RN (jhavilan from attbi.com)

If I may. Is this the news group of ssc.com?

> I'm the Technical Editor; I'm cc'ing the Gang, so everyone can chime in if they like. -- Heather

Is it better in the future to write linux-questions-only@ssc.com? Will the server accept my e-mail

TIA Jim

> Yes. Linux-questions-only accepts queries from anybody; members of the list see all such messages and are expected to answer a few here and there. -- Heather

> Just to be clear, this mailing list (linux-questions-only@ssc.com) is owned by Linux Gazette (www.linuxgazette.com), which is published by SSC. However, most of LG's contributors and Answer Gang members are independent volunteers not related to SSC.

> There is no single ssc.com mailing list or news group. SSC hosts many mailing lists, some related to our business and others we host as part of our general commitment to Linux and to free software.

> Questions about Linux should go to linux-questions-only@ssc.com. Questions about SSC should go to... well, it depends on the question. Send it to info@ssc.com if you're unsure where to direct it.

> There is also linux-list, a discussion list about everything Linux (except advocacy or flame wars). linux-list is hosted by SSC and has a strong Pacific Northwest emphasis, but we do have people from other regions and people who have moved away but still want to keep in touch. To subscribe to linux-list or to any of SSC's other public lists, go to http://www.ssc.com/mailman/listinfo .

### Switchboard

Wed, 27 Nov 2002 11:49:35 -0800
Ashwin N and Heather Stern (the LG Answer Gang)
Question by JRook78123 (JRook78123 from aol.com)

Dear Answerguy,

> [Ashwin] Hi Jack,

> There is no longer an answer guy here, but a gang of Linux enthusiasts! We answer queries on Linux in our free time.

I used to have an IBM Aptiva system that had in the bundle a switchboard supplied by Phoenix. I now have an hp pavilion 7850. It has a modem and phone dialer, but I cannot use the telephone through my computer as before. Is there some way to connect to my telephone line for normal surface telephone lines? What would I need to do?

> [Ashwin] If you're using Linux, have you tried connecting using the KPPP tool?

> [Heather] I'm not sure, but if he means that his computer used to handle the voice lines in his office (and yes, there are such things, which have some cute GUI app to configure them) ... then he may want to play with the program Asterisk, and maybe the hardware "LineJack" or "PhoneJack" by Quicknet, which are telephony cards you add to a computer.

> If he just means that his computer needs to reach the internet, then it's true we have a bunch of dialer-helpers (KPPP is one of the better ones; xisp and a few others are out there) ... but he will still need to know some basic things like his ISP's phone number, the username he was assigned, and maybe some connection features like whether they use PAP or CHAP to identify him.

> These are all things which his ISP can tell him better than we could.

### ThumbDrive

Mon, 2 Dec 2002 01:57:17 +0100
Robos (the LG Answer Gang)
Question by Syborg (linux_lover2003 from yahoo.co.in)

Is it possible to install Linux on a thumb drive(size 120 MB). Or Can I copy selected files from my normal linux installation(RH 7.2 on a 40 GB hard disk) and make the thumb drive bootable independently. What is the best way to do this? I thought of copying files from my normal linux installation.But i am in doubt whether i can boot this drive in this way. Looking forward to your suggestions.

Short answer -- try this:
  http://freshmeat.net/projects/runt

> A Linux distro optimized for a USB gadget. I like it. So, as long as your BIOS supports booting from USB devices, you should be golden -- Heather

### ip address from c program

Fri, 06 Dec 2002 17:25:28 -0800
George Victor Tereshko (georget from genesyslab.com)
Question by Dave N. (daven from web-wise.com)
Answered By Jim Dennis (The LG Answer Guy), Marian ION

In reply to LG 85, help wanted #3

> I need to identify the ip address of the client fron within a c program

On Solaris

> [JimD] Grump. This is a Linux magazine.

trace the incoming connections and:

See attached `solaris.getting-ip-address.c.txt`

> [JimD] If I'm reading it correctly this translates roughly to:

>     dmesg | tail -1 |  grep " from " | sed -e 's/^.* from //' | cut -c '0-6'

> ... which could be simplified somewhat in PERL, awk, or Python, and could probably be munged to perform most of the string handling just using bash/Korn parameter substitution magic with something vaguely like:

>     ... | grep " from " | while read line; do
>     line=${line//#* from /}; ipaddr=${line:0:6}; ...

> Note: I'm just using shell syntax here because I consider it the easiest way to express the concept of what you're doing --- a psuedo-code to people like me who use shell extensively.

> Unfortunately this code is not close to what the querent was after. He actually wants to have his program do something like:

> `
> if my input/output is a tty then:
> if my tty is an inet domain socket then:
> ask the socket for the remote (source) ip address`

> ... which will involve the isatty(3) library function and the getsockname(2) system call (and some other structs and munging).

> There's an example of the code for this in Wietse Venema's TCP Wrappers sources for tcpd. That code is quite portable, well testing (running on almost all mainstream Linux boxes for about a decade, as well as most BSD systems, and many others.

> Your code relies on details about how a given system might be logging connections via syslog/klog or similar externalities, and it's inherently a race (other connections may be logged between the time the message gets put in the dmesg ring buffer and the time when his code is scheduled to run).

> I'm not much of a C programmer. I've done a little, even having written a simple kernel device driver that's in production use. However, I rely very heavily on reading examples of similar code.

> In general when looking for how to do something like this (figure out the remote system's IP address from one of your file descriptors) I try to think about which programs on my system must be doing something similar. Sometimes I run the similar program under strace, even ltrace for some hints. Then I grab their sources and read up on it. (Usually I can use a man -k or two to make a pretty good guess at which library functions or system calls are involved, even without an strace).

> George, I hope you don't think I'm being hard on you. I realize that tech support, particularly trying to help people with programming questions, is difficult.

> Dave, I hope this helps. I'm assuming you can figure out the actual code on your own. One reason I display my ignorance by telling people how I discovered whatever I'm suggesting is to "teach the world how to fish." I've never written code to use `sockname()` and hadn't ever noticed it until I did a man -k socket while writing this message.

> [Marian]

>     struct sockaddr_in from;
>     socklen_t fromlen;

>     fromlen = sizeof (struct sockaddr_in);

>     getpeername (fdi, (struct sockaddr *)&from, &fromlen);
>     printf ("You are %s:%u\n",inet_ntoa (from.sin_addr), (unsigned)ntohs
>     (from.sin_port));

### Tricky Linux

Mon, 23 Dec 2002 14:12:15 -0400
Kapil Hari Paranjape, Huibert Alblas (the LG Answer Gang)
Question by Hritesh Moorjani (Hritesh.Moorjani from zenitel.biz)

Dear Sir,

After soo many years have I waited to use Linux as my principle OS as we both know how much problems we have to go through with Microsoft. I've waited for years for Linux to be user friendly and finally our prayers have been answered. I have over twenty machines in my department and soon if I'm able to resolve some of the problems with software compatibility and substitutes. I would probably migrate everyone of us to Linux from Windows.

> [Kapil] Welcome to the Brave GNU World! But be warned that if you want to administer a network of machines in any world you can't depend on user-friendly parts but only on the sysadmin-friendly parts!

My only problem is right now, I have an NT Server running Exchange 5.0 and our principle desktop was supposed to be NT workstation with Outlook 97. Obviously, as an administrator, I never follow protocols.

> [Kapil] Quite a big confession that. Would other sysadmins be as honest and own up?!

I had Windows 2000 with Outlook 2000 and it worked perfectly. Now that I have installed Red Hat Linux workstation, I successfully connected to the server via DHCP and I can easily surf. But what I can't do is check my email through Ximian Evolution Email Service. My domain is MARS and the server name is MAIN. In exchange, we have IMAP4 and POP3. In Linux, I tried to configure the Ximian Evolution as `IMAP.MAIN.COM` and `POP3.MAIN.COM.` Ofcourse we don't have extranet so we can't browse through the Browser. It doesn't work. I even tried my login name with the hostname and it still doesn't work. Can you help me ?

Thanks.

Hritesh

> [Kapil] Obviously you have confused Win NT domains with DNS domains. To have a DNS domain (which you don't seem to need since you have no extranet) you need to have an authoritative DNS name server.

> If your entire network is only served through Win NS you should check up the documentation on Samba to configure your machine as a Win NS client. You can stick with localhost.localdomain for your DNS name unless you want to be more imaginative!

> [Halb] Maybe you should look into Ximian Connector, it will enable to use Evolution as a complete Exchange client. Ximian will be happy to sell you these at $69.00 a piece, but this sholud not be a real problem for a company....... if this is the solution to your problem. Maybe Kapil Hari Paranjape's answer is more the direction you should be looking at.

### Teething problems with a dual boot system

Tue, 24 Dec 2002 10:21:22 +0000
Huibert Alblas, John Karns (the LG Answer Gang)
Question by john todd (toddncl from hotmail.com)

Hi there, I was wondering if you could help me out here. I have a dual boot system running XP and red hat 8.0. I have just recently installed red hat and am finding a few problems whilst setting up the system. My computer has 2 physical hard disks (primary master, and secondary master) the first (hda1) has that nasty windows thingy on it (I left the file system as fat32 so I could go back to 98se if need b). Hda2 has red hat on. I can mount and access hda1 when in Linux, but I cannot access my second (fat32) hard drive at all. I have all my operating systems and software on the first hard drive and all my work on the second, so this is starting to wind me up a bit now!

> It's not entirely clear if he can still see that work drive from Windows; if he can, Halb's probably right. John K's hints are good before someone starts setting up, so people can have better results. It may also be worth noting that hda2 is the second partition on the first drive; a second drive on the same IDE chain would be hdb, and its partitions also numbered, so maybe he just needs to mount /dev/hdb1 as well.

> NT filesystem support for Linux, claiming to read all versions: http://linux-ntfs.sourceforge.net -- Heather

> [Halb] By the look of things I would say you have NTFS on your second Harddrive. This is common behaviour on M$ machines becouse FAT23 partition sizes are artificialy restricted to 32 Gigs ( not that big for nowaday harddrives) M$ will automagicly change to NTFS, this might be the reason why you are not able to mount it. This presumes that you have made all the correct entries in your `/etc/fstab.`

> [John] My guess is that perhaps you lost your fat32 partition on the 2nd hd. How did you set up your partition(s) on hda2 when installing RH8? The recommended method would be something like:

> - back up the existing partition if it contained anything of interest
> - use a non-destructive method of dividing the 2nd hd into multiple partitions (e.g., GNU parted, fips, Partition Magic - there are several to choose from).
> - install Linux on a newly-created partition on hd2

also when I re-start my computer I need to mount the hda1 each time. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

> [Halb] here you can make an entry for `/dev/hda1` like this or whatever your liking is:

>     /dev/hda1      /WIN2K  vfat    defaults,noatime        0 0

### ISO file?

Thu, 28 Nov 2002 16:10:57 +0000 (GMT)
Dan Clark, Faber Fedor, Mike Orr (the LG Answer Gang)
Question by Paul Bailey (lil_p84 from yahoo.co.uk)

What exactly is an ISO file? I downloaded what i thought was a game and it is an ISO file. Can you convert this into an EXE file? and do ISO files only work on LINUX. Your help will be greatly appreciated thank you.

Lil_P

> [Iron] This gets the award for the most frequently-asked question of the month. I think it's the third time somebody has asked how to play .iso games.

> ISO9660 is the file format used for CD-ROMs, named after the International Standards Organization's standard that defines it. "ISO" is sometimes used as an abbreviation. Whether that's the format your file is in is a different matter; it could be anything. The .iso extension isn't universal like .txt, .html, .jpg, etc. What does the "file" command say about your file?

> Assuming the file is really an ISO9660 filesystem image, you can write it directly to a CD and then either read the CD or boot from it. You'd write the image using "cdrecord" on Linux or one of its GUI front-ends like KOnCD in KDE. Skip the first step (making an image file from a directory hierarchy) because you already have the image.

> [Faber] ISO files are binary versions of CDs. If you were to copy a CD byte for byte (NOT file for file), you would have an ISO file.

[Dreamgazer] and how can I open them without copying to cd

> When I found out how to do this in Linux I was so impressed with Linux! Let's say you have a directory called `/mnt/my_iso` and your ISO is called `/home/Dreamgazer/my_iso_file.` You can mount the ISO with the command:

>     mount -t iso9660 -o ro,loop=/dev/loop1 /mnt/my_iso /home/Dreamgazer/my_iso_file

> and then you can access any of the files in the ISO by going to the `/mnt/my_iso` directory! Cool, eh?!

> Let's see Windows do that !

> Actually, just saying -o loop is enough; iso9660 defaults to read-only, and you don't have to tell it which loop device comes next, it can figure it out all alone. I loopback mount CD images a lot myself. I have to make sure not to run out of loops available. -- Heather

> [Iron] It may fail for many reasons such as loop device busy (choose another loop device `/dev/loop*`), your kernel not having loop device support, the `/dev/loop*` files not existing, etc. When you've finished inspecting the files under `/mnt`, do:

>     umount /mnt

> to unmount the image (note the command name has one "n" instead of two). See "man mount". A couple details:

> 1. You may be able to just use "-o ro,loop" instead and let it choose an unused loopback device, see the manpage for details.
> 2. The manual says it's more convenient to mount and unmount loopback devices if /etc/mtab is a regular file and not a symbolic link to /proc/mounts. That answers another question The Answer Gang was unsure about a couple months ago, whether you lose anything by symlinking the two together. (What you gain by symlinking them together is that /etc/mtab -- and thus what "mount" without options reports -- will always be up to date.)

> [Dan] A free trial of mswin software that will let you open, create, and extract (we guess this means "view the filesystem inside of") ISO files.

> http://www.undisker.com/download.html

### Remote X over SSH

Mon, 25 Nov 2002 21:11:17 +0100
Gürkan Sengün (gurkan from linuks.mine.nu)

You need a user account for the host you want to login to. The server should be accessible over SSH (normally TCP/22), and should have X11 forwarding configured.

>     $ netstat -a |grep ssh
>     tcp        0      0 *:ssh                   *:*                     LISTEN
>     $ grep orwarding /etc/ssh/sshd_config
>     X11Forwarding yes

####
X server and SSH client for Windows(r)

> - Putty, SSH client suite http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty
> - StarNet's X-Win32 (commercial) http://www.starnet.com
> - MicroImages MI/X for Windows (commercial, but very cheap; free demo.) http://www.microimages.com/freestuf/mix
> - X server: Cygwin's XFree port to win32 (open source) http://www.cygwin.com/xfree
> - Xserver: fwx (a much smaller, dustier project) http://sourceforge.net/projects/fwx %+% %-
> - start your Xserver. We'll assume it's called xs.exe
> - start Putty
> - activate X11 forwarding in Putty
> - activate SSH 2 protokoll
> - configure SSH port, normally 22
> - connect to server user@1.2.3.4
> - enter password

On UNIX, BSD or Linux you can use any X server and SSH client you want.

>     $ ssh -X user@1.2.3.4
>     user@1.2.3.4's password:

####
Starting the window manager

This will start the amiwm window manager in the background and display it on your X server window (xs.exe).

>     $ amiwm &

####
Screen in five minutes

We become super-user.

>     $ su
>     Password:

We start iptraf as daemon (screen session in detached mode).

>     # screen -dmS iptraf iptraf

We list our SockDir.

>     # screen -ls
>     There are screens on:
>             604.iptraf      (Detached)
>     1 Socket in /var/run/screen/S-root.

We reattach to our detached screen process and detach from it.

>     # screen -r
>     &lt;ctrl-a-d&gt;
>     [detached]

> Gürkan Sengün
> http://www.linuks.mine.nu
> Windoze not found: (C)heer, (P)arty or (D)ance?

### Debian User Worldmap

Mon, 25 Nov 2002 21:11:17 +0100
Gürkan Sengün (gurkan from linuks.mine.nu)

A fun thing to do; see where fellow Debian users are, check in. I will try to make the page better with time: Like click on a place and find friends (a list) nearby, show how it's done etc...

http://www.linuks.mine.nu/debian-worldmap

> Gürkan Sengün
> http://www.linuks.mine.nu
> Windoze not found: (C)heer, (P)arty or (D)ance?

### Remote control of Linux from Windows

Mon, 2 Dec 2002 21:15:36 -0600
Thomas Adam (The LG Weekend Mechanic)
Question by Brandon M. Dean (bmdean from socket.net)

Hello,

I live in LaGrange, Missouri. I have downloaded the iso's for

Mandrake 9.0. I have installed it once. I then took it off to have Windows again.

> [Thomas] Oh, dear. You do know that, Tux doesn't bite that hard.

My brother had a Linux Router, and I wanted it to act as a server, but he said it wouldn't.

> [Thomas] Your brother is deluded

But I have a second computer in my room. I want to add this behind my dad's desk with a 5' network cable, instead some more 100' cable to run to my room. I wanted to know a good app to run a remote desktop connection on it. I have downloaded one program called X-Win 32.

> [Thomas] "A good app" -- well that depends on what you want the server to do. Your server, once it is up and running can support (amongst others): file serving, print serving, webserver, phpserver, mysql server, mail serving, etc...................

> If you find you don't like that one, there arre a few other X servers mentioned in "(#tips.19)Remote X over ssh" above. -- Heather

I have Windows XP on my main computer. It has a remote desktop built in.

> The open source client for that protocol is called rdesktop: http://www.rdesktop.org

> But I don't know if anything on Linux serves that protocol so the windows remote-desktop client can view it.

> VNC is another possibility, and may be needed if you want to share the desktop with more than one person - here's a KDE remote sharing project that uses it: http://www.tjansen.de/krfb -- Heather

I also wanted to know if it had to have a keyboard, mouse, and monitor hooked up to it at all times, even though I will have some sort of remote desktop app.

Thank You,
Brandon Dean

> [Thomas] Nope, my 486 Server has no monitor, keyboard or mouse, since during the odd occassion that I have to log into the server, it is done via SSH which I can run from the command-line.

> Although if your using Windows, then I suggest the use of "putty.exe".

> This is also mentioned in the "(#tips.19)remote X over ssh" tip. For occasional access over a serial cable, see the "(#tips.6)headless server" tip.

> As long as your BIOS is happy when you don't have these things, Linux doesn't mind at all. -- Heather

##### This page edited and maintained by the Editors of Linux Gazette
HTML script maintained by Heather Stern of Starshine Technical Services, http://www.starshine.org/
Copyright © 2003
Copying license http://www.linuxgazette.com/copying.html
Published in Issue 86 of Linux Gazette, January 2003