WAYNE CHIRNSIDE wrote in a message to ROY J. TELLASON:



 RJT> There's a "Linux System Administrator's Guide" or something pretty
 RJT> close to that available online that covers a lot of stuff.  I think I
 RJT> ended up with it with one of my installs,  but if I run across a URL to
 RJT> it I'll send it to you.

 WC> Thanks, I'll do a search for it myself.

The linux documentation project is probably a good place to start,  it's a
good place for _lots_ of info.

 WC> Have to check some Linux CD and books sales sites.

 RJT> There's *LOTS* of info available online.

(See above. :-)



 RJT> Why copy it back and forth?  Just put it in one place where both sides
 RJT> can get at it...

 WC> Potential use for the extra partition I left in there.

You'll find something to do with it later,  don't be in a hurry there.  :-)



 RJT> Letting people try it out all sorts of ways without having to commit
 RJT> themselves,  I guess.

 WC> IF they've got some RAM to play with.

More and more a requirement these days,  for pretty much anything nontrivial.

 WC> Bet with a little editing one could modify the knx-hdinstall script
 WC> one could copy the Knoppix image to a partition
 WC> and circumvent some of the RAM requirements by substituting
 WC> a swap file. Slow it down a great deal though.

 WC> This seems to be the mother of all Linux releases to get one
 WC> relatively fast tracked if one has the RAM to run it.

(See above.  :-)

 RJT> Looks like he's trying to get the win-users going...

 WC>  Got me going and usefull right out of the gate :-)
 WC>  Thanks once again for Charles Angelich in getting me going with
 WC> this  and to Jim Holsonback that gave me a great deal on some used
 WC> DIMMS. 

 WC>  Found I could have squeaked by with the 96 Meg I'd had but far
 WC> happier  with 256 :-)

(See above.  :-)

I've only got 64M in the primary box here,  and finally have that second
box going with much more in it,  but I need to get a bit more HD space in
there.  Maybe tomorrow I'll get out and see what can be seen with regard to
the local HD market.  That'd get me going all right...

 WC> All the bad changes happened after GTE became Verizon.

 RJT> No argument with that!

 WC> Unbelievable how cruddy they've gotten, looks like they're mdeling
 WC> themselves after AOL.
 WC> Changes in protocols have offed the usefullness of two modems, one
 WC> hardware and one software.

 WC> Verizon's home page now redirects one to a page where they're
 WC> pushing DSL so to get to the actual home page you've got to swing
 WC> back around.

Sure,  anything they can do to get more money out of you...

My attitude toward this is that I don't have much of a choice for dealing
with "the phone company" for local service (well,  actually I do
but that's another issue) -- I'll be damned if I give them my business for
other things like 'net access.

 WC> Verizon's "online management" time used accounting link seems to
 WC> have permanently gone into "undergoing update, not currently
 WC> available" so one can't track their hours.

Heh.  Sort of reminds me of how my former provider used some weird
javascript nonsense on "my account" where what I was supposed to
see didn't display properly,  and then they broke it to where I couldn't
access the page at all through the link,  though I could get there
directly.  And when informed about this they never fixed it.

 WC> No wonder I've been sending pe0ple to the local ISP www.ij.net. 

 WC> Before I could log on either box, start a download, close the
 WC> browser and the dialer would hang up after the download was
 WC> complete.

 RJT> I was looking for some info today,  and this one guy came back to me
 RJT> about how it was available -- as a 100-some-odd meg PDF file!  Not on
 RJT> my dialup uh uh...

 WC> I snagged the DigiKey catalog at some 36 meg but that was before
 WC> Verizon altered it's protocols so I no longer have 56k access.

That big?  Maybe I'll ask them to send me a paper catalog.  :-)

 RJT> If he says it's got the info I need in it (not sure at this point) I'm
 RJT> going to have to see what can be done to snag it through somebody who
 RJT> has a higher-speed connection,  if I snag it at all.

Working that out...

 WC> snip.

 RJT> Not to mention the lousy connect rates...  I was emailing with my
 RJT> brother on this subject and gave him the local access number for my new
 RJT> outfit where he lives,  and he had the same experience,  going from not
 RJT> ever connecting any higher than 33.6 to 49-something on the first shot.
 RJT> He said something about giving them a chance to fix it,  but they're
 RJT> not gonna fix it...

 RJT> Screw 'em.

 WC> Only took me about 14 phone calls and making a real pest of myself
 WC> and by that time I couldn't often understand a phone conversation
 WC> or maintain a 14,400 connection :-(

Yeah,  but you're talking about your phone lines,  right?  In this case
it's not the phone lines for either of us,  it's something that
"pa.net" is doing that gives lousy connect rates.

 WC> In a couple of months when I setup Internet Junction, have to
 WC> inquire if they block the telnet port though. In either case I've
 WC> got a clean pair of telco wires :-)

I have no time for any "provider" that's going to decide that
they'll block _any_ port.  I'm not buying into some jerk's idea of what the
service should be,  I'm buying a chunk of connectivity,  nothing more.

 RJT> Yeah,  you do have that going for you.  Did I mention I'm still seeing
 RJT> "connect 52000" every single time?  Can't complain about that...

 WC> I guess not!

:-)

 WC> I've only gotten 51k a few times.

What gets me is that when I was in Harrisburg,  for a bit,  I was using the
exact same modem (when I got it),  and I was seeing connect rates back then
in the upper half of the 40s,  so I really couldn't understand this
nonsense about 31200...

 WC> I hate to pull the network card in my sole ISA slot in this machine
 WC> to put in an existing 56k ISA hardware modem I'd intended to use in
 WC> the now defunct NEC machine with 2 ISA slots.

If you're talking 10mbps,  a PCI card oughta be cheap enough.  Betcha you
can find a deal...

 RJT> When you do get around to the command-line stuff,  mc is your friend.
 RJT> :-)

 WC> Already familar with it.

 RJT> Good.

 WC> Yup, mucked up my desktop as root the other day with all kinds of 
 WC> very dangerous icons, went into mc and deleted the relavent files 
 WC> and bye bye icons.
 WC> Heck I had an icon for /dev/hda1 mounted with write permission on 
 WC> :-(

That could've been messy.

 WC> I want to keep that under manual control however may use the spare
 WC> partition I made for Win 98 - Linux file keeping for ease of
 WC> access. 

 RJT> You have a vendor picked out for that drive yet?

 WC> Torn between Seagate and W.D. still.

 RJT> Either one of them would be fine by me.  Any difference in the
 RJT> warranty?

 WC> W.D. is down to 1 year, last I looked a while ago Seagate was 
 WC> still three but that may well have changed.

The 6.4G drive I have been running in the linux box since 1999 or 2000 is a
refurb,  somebody gave me a dead one that still had some warranty left on
it and I sent it off to them,  got this one in return,  and it's been going
strong ever since,  spinning away 24/7.

 WC> Circuit City seems to have the best prices but CompUSA carries
 WC> some Seagate drives.

 RJT> That before or after rebates?

 WC> That's what I like about CC, they generally quote out the door 
 WC> prices, CompUSA plays the rebate game.

Ah.

I'll say this about CC,  too,  they offer the most hassle-free return I've
ever encountered.  I bought some ram there,  pulled one out and the box I
was working on didn't see it right,  so I walked back in there and was
walking out with my cash in about a minute.

 WC> I did see a good deal at CompUSA IF the rebates actually happen.

Them and the office chains are a real PITA as far as their web sites go,  I
don't really care to bother with them too much.

 WC> Still waiting on the 50 dollar dollar rebate from my ten year old 
 WC> Canon Bj-200 :-(

Yep!

 WC> I see from the the Linux hardware docs I'd be better off with an
 WC> H.P. Vectra line box which takes true parity memory.

 RJT> Lots of stuff out there supports it,  if you can find it.  I have one
 RJT> box here that insists on parity ram,  and there's no option to disable
 RJT> the parity check on powerup so I have a couple of 16s and a couple of
 RJT> 4s in there giving me 40M.

 WC> Hey this box was FREE so no complaints :-)

Likewise,  except for shipping.



 RJT> I *think* that the MB I'm using now in the primary system also offers
 RJT> the option to support parity ram,  but not having much of it here I
 RJT> don't know if I'm going to bother with trying that.  If I had the
 RJT> funds,  I'd get something that would support ECC ram and be done with
 RJT> it.

 WC> Yup. Perhaps cut a check to my sister and have her snag a brand 
 WC> new bare bones system`from pricewatch.com.

 WC> Just checked the classifieds for used computers and people really 
 WC> don't seem to have any idea how much their beloved systems have
 WC> depreciated.

Heh.  I can still remember some of the prices I used to see for C64 systems
with bunches of software...

There was just an ad in for a C128,  with software -- for free!

 WC> 300 bucks at PriceWatch would have me in clover :-)

 WC> If Internet Junction's unlimited really is unlimited I've no need
 WC> for DSL. Big need is downloading ISO files on rare occassion.

 RJT> Or if you start spending some nontrivial time in alt.binaries.*
 RJT> newsgroups... :-)

 WC> well... there is the matter of alt.binaries.brunette...

Yep,  them's the ones I'm thinking of.  :-)

 WC> That however hasn't intruded much lately.

It is remarkably easy to waste a lot of time in there.  Have you tried
knode yet?  I kind of like the way you can view the attachment before you
decide whether or not to save it to disk.

 WC> You know it occured to me with all the government intrusiveness
 WC> available under the Patriot Act Knoppix in it's ramdrive mode just
 WC> saving the setup options provides an unbeatable measure of security
 WC> with nothing on the hard drive but your dialer, mail, browser and 
 WC> newsgroup settings.

Good point.  You could even store that stuff on a floppy,  and load in at
boot time...

 WC> Nothing on my machine offensive to current regs but it IS a work 
 WC> around for the paranoid.

And you never can tell where they're going to go with that crap.

 WC> Let's see some clown attempt to recover files from RAM after CNTRL 
 WC> - ALT - DEL or power off 

Just so.

 RJT> Biggest gripe I have about that Celeron box I'm working on is how darn
 RJT> long it takes for the thing to boot!  I timed it -- it's about a minute
 RJT> and a half,  or so -- before it either boots or goes into setup.  It
 RJT> seems that even if you want to go into setup you still have to wait
 RJT> through all the hardware checks that it does.  I'm not that impressed
 RJT> with that MB...

 WC> Well this board takes about a minute but I've RAM check turned on 
 WC> as advised for Linux.

I initially had "fast boot" disabled,  figuring that it'd be just
a bit more thorough than it would otherwise (some of these boxes run
through the memory count more than once when I do that) and it took even
longer,  so I've turned some of the stuff off.

 WC> This option also allows plenty of blue screen time on boot in 
 WC> which to hit F1 to enter CMOS setup.

Yep.  On the celeron box it still goes through all the tests even if you hit that...

 WC> Pretty much always on here now with power saving features enabled 
 WC> with just a warm restart to go from 98 - Linux or back.

I don't generally use any of the power saving stuff,  matter of habit.

 WC> My current power saving features work in either Knoppix or 98 
 WC> seemlessly but I don't power down the drive and keep 14 watts into 
 WC> the monitor to keep the filiment lit.

Sounds good.

 WC> I figure this cuts down on potential cycling failures on the hard
 WC> drive as well as thermal shock to the monitor's filiment.

Yes.

 WC> Think it was Tom Walker who mentioned USB 2.0 devices were 
 WC> backwards compatable to 1.1 which would be outstanding as UPS's
 WC> have come down in price and I'd like to do clean shutdowns under
 WC> software control in the case of power interuption. 60 bucks now 
 WC> buys you 8 minutes at near double my current draw.

Or you might get lucky.  I've got this thing here that looks like an outlet
strip on steroids,  that apparently has some smallish battery in it (I have
yet to open it up),  and I plan to run an external battery with it,  see
what I can accomplish.  Got it for free,  too.

 RJT> XMMS?  It seems to work well for me,  too.

 WC> Need to put that Turtle Beach sound card in to check it out.

 RJT> Yeah,  get some music going...   :-)

 WC> Well I can play it now through the software modem - sound card 
 WC> thing in 98 but neither function is detected in Linux as I 
 WC> expected from the get go.

They're using the same DSP for both?  You'd have a heck of a hard time
playing music while online,  though.  :-)

 WC> Think I may have a go at locating the Linux software modem driver 
 WC> for this one, it's available, and see if it's V90 compliant though.

Good luck.

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