July 2003 CACTUS Newsletter
CACTUS Newsletter Editor
http://www.cactus.org/CACTUS/cn072003.html)
Capital Area Central Texas UNIX Society
CACTUS Newsletter
Volume 19, Number 7 - July 2003
Contents:
* July Meeting:
Mike Erwin & Jamie Pugh: The Gentoo Linux Distribution
Tutorial by ACC's High Technology Institute
* June Meeting Report
* Letter From the President
* Just For Fun: SBC Operates The Real Highway
* CACTUS System News
* Membership Report
* CACTUS Officers and Contacts
* CACTUS Sponsors
* Meeting Location and Map
_________________________________________________________________
July Meeting
The July CACTUS meeting will be held at 7:00pm (6:30pm for pizza and
lively discussion) on Thursday, July 17, 2003 in the auditorium of UT
Applied Research Laboratories (see below for directions to the
facility).
This month CACTUS welcomes back Mike Erwin who will be joined by his
associate Jamie Pugh to discuss the Gentoo Linux distribution. Gentoo
Linux is different than other Linux distributions in that it is
distributed as source and compiled during the installation process.
This makes for a much longer installtion time, but the result is an OS
optimized for the hardware on which it is running. The presentation
will be preceeded by a tutorial from our friends at the High Tech
Institute at Austin Community College.
_________________________________________________________________
June Meeting Report
by Ron Roberts
Attendance was good for a summer month because the newsletter arrived
in a timely fashion advertising not only an excellent program, but a
tutorial as well. President Lindsay Haisley solicited brief officer
reports. Both CACTUS computers are up and running. Apparently the
Sparc box had some kind of reset event after being moved to OnRamp's
new facility. Lindsay & Gil spoke highly of OnRamp's services and new
facility and recommend it. OnRamp deals only with commercial accounts.
Program Chair Ray Schafer announced a series of tutorials by the staff
of the Austin Community College (ACC) High Technology Institute. He
introduced Bob McGoldrick, the institute's coordinator, who outlined
their offerings. Their website is at
http://www.austincc.edu/techcert/. Bob invited us to checkout the
brochures that he brought, then introduced staff member Nathan Isberg.
Nathan presented a tutorial on building a Linux kernel, using RedHat
9, Shrike, and the 2.3.21 kernel. He advised, "Read the README." It
explains the process. After downloading the kernel sources, the next
step is "make mrproper." This is like the "clean" label on steroids.
In addition to compiled objects, it removes configuration and
dependency files generated by previous makes. The next step is make
configuration. There are several forms of this, such as config,
Xconfig, etc. Essentially, it prompts you for information about your
hardware. Nathan uses make menuconfig, the curses based version.
After the config, you run "make dep" which generates dependencies
based on the configuration you selected. The next step is "make
bzImage" which compiles all of the objects as well as the compressed
kernel image.
The "make modules" step is not always required. Most people do use
loadable kernel modules, however. Usually only advanced users with a
thorough knowledge of their hardware skip this step because if you
omit some driver, you have to completely rebuild a new kernel. This
step writes to a version specific directory. It also requires that you
perform a "make modules_install" to put the drivers in the proper
directory.
Finally, you still have to copy the compressed kernel image to the
/boot directory and configure the boot loader. Nathan prefers the
older lilo to grub. Nathan updated a 2.4.20 kernel to 2.4.21. The
question and answer period yielded as many comments and horror stories
as questions. Apparently everyone who has tried to build a kernel has
built one that wouldn't boot.
Because of the length of the tutorial and the fact that we had two
more speakers, Program chair Ray Schafer cut off the discussion and
introduced the speakers from the Austin chapter of the Electronic
Frontier Foundation (EFF). Chip Rosenthal, long time CACTUS member and
former newsletter editor, gave some background about the Austin
chapter.
In the wake of the government raid that confiscated computers at Steve
Jackson Games, the Austin chapter was formed about ten years ago. It
was in response to the raid, the computer decency act, and the
proposal for mandatory encryption key escrow the the chapter became
active. EFF declared victory on all three fronts, and essentially went
dormant.
Last fall, in response to three legislative proposals, former Austin
EFF chair Jon Lebkowsky approached Steve Jackson about reviving the
local chapter. Chip listed these bills:
SB1116: the super Digital Millennium Communications Act (DMCA). This
is essentially the state version of the federal law.
HB1282: state law proposed to fight SPAM.
SB1579: proposal to encourage use of Open Source Software by state
agencies.
Chip introduced Adina Levin of Austin EFF to speak about the first two
bills. Adina said that the DMCA debate was largely controlled by
industry groups with little input from citizens groups. Industry felt
the need for the state version because laws to prevent service theft
are state based. Af first, the state level DMCAs went through
legislatures quietly, as it did in Michigan. In Massachusetts, the
bill was stalled. In Tennessee, twenty people showed up at a hearing
to stall it. About this time, the national EFF notified the Texas
organization to warn about the bill. The Texas EFF infiltrated the
ACLU Cyber Security Project to get support.
State Representative Ron Wilson is an entertainment lawyer. When EFF
contacted him about the bill, he referred them to Jody Richardson, who
is the lobbyist for the Motion Picture Industry. Other legislators
indicated that the bill wasn't going anywhere.
However, when the Motion Picture Association lobbyists arrived, the
legislature waived the rules that require a one week notice before a
hearing. EFF got two people to show up for the hearing on short
notice.
The bill lifts language from a fifteen old cable bill that make it a
crime to modify a device connected to a communication service with
intent to defraud. It specified a $ 2,500 civil penalty per
infraction. Service agreement contracts and tort law already provide
relief for these infractions. These and other provisions began to
catch the interest of other companies like Texas Instruments, who
began to lobby against the bill.
The state senate scheduled hearings and at midnight of the last
session and announced that it would come out of committee. The bill
passed the senate and was sent to the house. Because the description
of the bill didn't match one of the processes, the bill was stalled on
a point of order.
There was a last minute attempt to include the bill by amendment to
the Government Reorganization bill. This bill was referred to as the
Christmas tree bill, because there were four hundred amendments hung
upon it. But, time ran out and it wasn't passed.
The super DMCA was passed in six states. It passed in states when no
one showed up to oppose it. As word got around and people got involved
in opposing it, it failed.
Adina next spoke of the Open Source bill introduced by Senator Carona
of Dallas. It requires state agencies to include open source as a
possibility when procuring software. The bill got a committee hearing,
where several Microsoft front groups opposed it. It never got out of
committee.
Chip spoke about HB1282, the anti-Spam bill. He said initial version
just about legalized spam. Though it mandated an opt-out, it gave the
spammer ninety days to desist. This was changed to two days in the
final version. The bill allows individuals to sue for ten dollars per
piece of spam.
As usual, the discussion of spam was only ended by time constraints.
For more information about the Austin EFF, see http://effaustin.org/.
_________________________________________________________________
Letter From the President
by Lindsay Haisley
I'd like to say a special word about this month's presentation, since
it should really appeal to all the old-line Unix folken among us. It
seems that all things of great power move in cycles, and with Gentoo
Linux, we've come back a basic Unix root concept, namely that
everything of importance is distributed as source code and compiled
on-site. Gentoo is one of the most modern of Linux distributions, but
unlike most distributions which are distributed as binary files
compiled for the least-common-denominator architecture, Gentoo is
compiled from source as part of the installation procedure. While this
can take many hours of time, the results are impressive.
Our old friends and colleagues from the newly-reborn company of
OuterNet Connection Strategies, Mike Erwin and Jamie Pugh will be
doing the demonstration. I talked to Jamie this week and he's not
going to make us wait for the entire Gentoo installation to compile,
but has a good presentation planned around a limited demonstration of
the installation process. I, for one, am really looking forward to
this presentation!
_________________________________________________________________
Just For Fun...
What if SBC handled the regular highway infrastructure instead of the
*information* highway? (written by Gil Kloepfer, with apologies
to the many other "information highway" jokes)
SBC: SBC Customer Support, my name is Terry Smith. How may I help
you today?
Me: Hello, my car is stuck in a very large pothole in the road, and
I cannot get the car out.
SBC: Okay sir, I can help you. May I have your driver's license number
please?
Me: {responds with driver's license number}
SBC: Thank you. {pause} Are you Mister Kep{pause}fort?
Me: Kloepfer. Yes, that's me.
SBC: Thank you Mr. Koephler, how can I help you today?
Me: As I said before, my car is stuck in a very large
pot-hole in the road, and I cannot get the car out.
SBC: Let's take a look a few things. Is your car's key turned on and
is the motor running?
Me: Yes, everything is running fine, I am just stuck in a hole in
the road.
SBC: Good. Does you car have enough gasoline in the tank?
Me: The engine is running OK and the gas gauge says that I have
three quarters of a tank.
SBC: Well, as long as you're sure. If we send someone out to
help you and we find that you don't have gasoline in the tank,
we will have to charge you a fee for a service call.
Me: I'm very sure.
SBC: Hmmm... Is your car's gear shifter in drive or reverse (that's
the D or R on your dashboard).
Me: I have tried my transmission in both drive and reverse. The car
is too far into the hole and I'm stuck.
SBC: Well, it doesn't appear that any other customers are having this
problem right now, so I will need to send a tow truck out to
help you.
Me: {breathing a sigh of relief} Great! Thank you!
SBC: I need to know the kind of car you are driving.
Me: 2000 Toyota Camry
SBC: Sir, did you buy that car from us, or did you provide it yourself?
Me: I purchased it a few years ago from Toyota.
SBC: Sir, I'm afraid that the Toyota Camry is not a supported vehicle
on our roads. You'll probably need to contact Toyota if you
need assistance.
Me: I've been driving the car for 3 years on the roads with no problem.
The car is stuck in a pothole and I can't get it out. The hole
is in the road. The car is functioning fine. Please send a
tow truck, my friend and I need to get to work.
SBC: Well, your friend should not be in the car with you.
Me: Excuse me?
SBC: According to your driving plan and the Terms of Service, only
one person can be in a car at any time on the roadways.
Me: But they call it a "passenger car."
SBC: Our roads are designed for cars with one person. If you want to
carry more than one person, you need to purchase a bus and
register it and obtain a commercial driver's license.
Me: Please send someone out. I need to get to work.
SBC: Sir, I can dispatch a tow truck, but I don't think they will be
able to help you. I really think you need to call Toyota for
assistance.
I need to speak to a supervisor. Can you hold for a minute?
Me: Sure.
{silence or awful muzak for 5 minutes}
SBC: Thank you for holding sir. I've spoken to my supervisor and
she said that the only thing we can do to help you is come out
and replace your car. We will need to bill you for the car
on your next registration statement. If you want to take your
friend to work, I will need to change that order to a bus and
you will need to obtain a commercial driver's license.
We should be able to send a new car out within 24 hours.
Me: Don't worry about it. I guess I'll just have to call for a
stinky Time-Warner Cab.
SBC: Sorry we couldn't help you today. Is there anything else you
need me to help you with?
Me: Uh, no.
SBC: Well thank you for choosing SBC for your highway needs. Have
a nice day.
_________________________________________________________________
CACTUS System News
by Lindsay Haisley
WEBMAIL ON OUR LINUX SERVER IS COMING!
CACTUS member Randy Zagar has been agitating for the installation of
webmail on linux.cactus.org for a couple of months now. Rather than
wait for someone else to pick up the ball on this, he's gone ahead and
done a good deal of research and testing on a couple of different
open-source webmail tools. There are two webmail system which he's
currently investigating, Squirrelmail and Courier Webmail (also known
as sqwebmail).
Squirrelmail consists of a collection of scripts written in PHP, the
native server-side active page language on our web server. It's a very
capable and highly configurable web-based email client. It requires
the coopration of an IMAP server on the server-side, even if it's
running on the same box as the server. The logical candidate for an
IMAP server is Courier-IMAP, since it understands about mail stored in
user's home directories in Maildir format and can deal with it
intelligently.
Courier Webmail (a.k.a. sqwebmail) runs as a single compiled suid
binary. It works directly with user Maildir directories and can
accomplish rather more than can Squirrelmail since its capabilities
include mail filtering (using maildrop) and other very nice features
not available via an IMAP server. Because both Courier and Qmail (our
current mail server) store mail in maildirs, Courier webmail is quite
compatible with Qmail.
Because both Courier Webmail and Courier IMAP were written by the
brilliant Russian/American programmer Sam Varshavchik, both use the
same techniques for managing Maildir structures, and so it's entirely
possible to use both Squirrelmail with Courier IMAP and Courier
Webmail interchangably, as my company does on our mail server.
Randy is making good progress, but he's looking for CACTUS members
willing to do some testing and help him out. We need volunteers for
this project!
_________________________________________________________________
Randy writes:
I've had good luck with my web-mail experiments:
I tossed my Sendmail installation and went with Exim (the default for
Debian) since it supports the Maildir format. Since I'm not a major
ISP and I'm not relaying for other domains, the configuration did not
stray far from the default settings.
There are several inter-related Courier mail packages and I installed
them all:
* courier-authdaemon
* courier-base
* courier-imap
* courier-imap-ssl
* courier-ssl
So far, the only Courier config file I've changed was for the
courier-imap package, and that was just a one-liner.
I already had a working SquirrelMail installation, so I only had to
change one line in its' config file to make it work with the new
Courier-imap server.
Everything now appears to work, so at this point I need some people to
review the configuration, make recommendations, and help add new
functionality like virus or spam filtering... I also need one or two
testers.
Now, who's going to help out?
_________________________________________________________________
June CACTUS Membership Report
by Luis Basto
Address of NT Computers
A couple of months ago I described the I-Opener web browser which has
been re-furbished to an interesting laptop-like computer running
Linux. The place selling these is NT Computers. They are at 12317
Technology Blvd, Suite 300, which is on the corner of Tech. Blvd. and
Spicewood Springs Rd. Take a look:
http://bagle.nttex.com/display.php?catg_id=13&item_id=43
Call 250-0001 and ask for Bruce. He's the one familiar with Linux.
Let us welcome Dresser Industries - Wayne Division as the newest
corporate sponsor to CACTUS.
Dresser Wayne is a leading supplier of integrated retail solutions to
the global petroleum and convenience store industries. These
integrated retail solutions include point-of-sale systems, fuel
dispensers, and after-sale support services.
Dresser Wayne is the technology leader in the manufacture and supply
of retail petroleuum fuel dispensers, dispenser control systems,
credit/debit card processing terminals, and point-of-sale systems for
petroleum markets worldwide. They are also the industry leader in
developing new technologies, and over 75 countries use their products.
Contact person: Steve Cox, stev...@dresser.com, 338-8444
Webpage: http://www.wayne.com/
We wish to thank the following individuals for renewing their
membership -- Chip Rosenthal, Joe Zagar, Sherry Lesikar, Lindsay
Haisley, Bob Izenberg, and Mark Scarborough.
Membership
To renew your membership, please send check or money order payable to
CACTUS ($25/yr for regular membership and $96/yr for corporate
sponsorship):
CACTUS
PO BOX 9786
AUSTIN, TX 78766-9786
You may also pay in person at the general meetings. Please direct any
inquiries or address changes to membe...@cactus.org.
_________________________________________________________________
CACTUS Officers
* President: Lindsay Haisley
* Treasurer: Johny Long
* Membership: Luis Basto
* Programs: Ray Schafer
* Publicity: M. H. Kahn
* Newsletter: Gil Kloepfer
* Scribe: Ron Roberts
* Members at Large: M. H. Kahn, Randy Zagar, Michael Rice
_________________________________________________________________
CACTUS Sponsors
Significant Contributing Sponsors
Applied Research Laboratories/University of Texas at Austin
(http://www.arlut.utexas.edu/)
(Gil Kloepfer, Computer Science Division (CSD), 835-3771,
g...@arlut.utexas.edu)
OnRamp (http://www.onr.com/)
Internet service provider.
Outserv.net (http://www.outserv.net/)
IT operations and management solutions to small and midsized
businesses.
CACTUS Sponsors
Auspex Systems (http://www.auspex.com/)
Fastest reliable network fileservers.
Covad/Laserlink (http://www.laserlink.net/)
(Chip Rosenthal)
Dresser Industries - Wayne Division (http://www.wayne.com/)
(Steve Cox, stev...@dresser.com, (512) 338-8444)
A leading supplier of integrated retail solutions to the global
petroleum and convenience store industries, including
point-of-sale systems, fuel dispensers, and after-sale support
services.
Journyx (http://www.journyx.com/)
Provider of workforce management software and services
Multi Media Arts (MMA)
(Lee Williams, 451-7191)
Publisher of instructional materials for classroom and
independent study.
VoIPing, LLC (http://www.voiping.com/)
A Central Texas privately owned and operated partnership
specializing in IT Consulting and Services. (Email
in...@voiping.com. Phone 512-698-VOIP (8647) or 512-698-8031)
Friends of CACTUS
Applied Formal Methods, Inc.
(Susan Gerhart, 794-9732, ger...@cactus.org)
Austin Code Works
(Scott Guthery, 258-0785, in...@acw.com)
BestRegistrar.com (http://www.bestregistrar.com/)
(Steve Locke, (800) 977-3475), s...@cas-com.net)
A top-level domain name registrar, CORE member.
CTG
(Maurine Mecer, 502-0190 [FAX 502-0287])
Professional recruiting.
EDP Contract Services
(Mark Grabenhorst, 346-1040) Professional recruiting.
Hewlett Packard (http://www.hp.com/)
(Bill Sumrall, 338-7221)
Hounix (http://www.texascomputers.com/hounix/)
(Marilyn Harper)
Houston's Unix Users Group.
Network Appliance Corporation (http://www.netapp.com/)
(Frank Mozina, fmo...@netapp.com)
O'Keefe Search (http://www.okeefesearch.com/)
(John O'Keefe, jo...@okeefesearch.com, 512-658-9224 or
888-446-2137)
Professional recuiting.
Sailaway System Design
(Chris J Johnson, 447-5243)
Schlumberger (http://www.slb.com/)
(Kathy O'Brien, obr...@asc.slb.com)
Technical services and products in over 100 countries.
Silicon Graphics (http://www.sgi.com/)
(Don Williams, 346-9342)
Solid Systems
(Pete Farrell, 442-2222)
Sterling Infomation Group (http://www.sterinfo.com/)
(Darrell Hanshaw, 344-1005, dhan...@sterinfo.com)
Sun Microsystems (http://www.sun.com/)
(Rick Taylor)
Supplier of Unix client-server computing solutions.
Texas Internet Consulting (http://www.tic.com/)
(Smoot Carl-Mitchell, 451-6176, sm...@tic.com)
TCP/IP networking, Unix, and open systems standards.
Technow
A Sun Authorized Training Center and a Hardware Reseller.
Unison Software
(Shelley St. John, 478-0611)
Supplier of networked systems management solutions.
UT Computer Science Department
(Patti Spencer)
UT Computation Center
(Mike Cerda, 471-3241, ce...@uts.cc.utexas.edu)
_________________________________________________________________
CACTUS Meeting Location:
Applied Research Labs
CACTUS meets on the third Thursday of each month at the Applied
Research Labs (ARL) in the JJ Pickle Research Campus (JJ PRC). We'll
meet in the main auditorium located directly behind the guard's desk
and main lobby.
Please do not show up earlier than 6:20 pm on the specified day. Enter
through the main entrance at 10000 Burnet Road for ARL:UT. Tell the
guard that you are here for the CACTUS meeting. You will be required
to sign a log book, but not required to wear a badge. The guards will
direct you to the auditorium entrance. Limited parking in the front of
the building is available, but more extensive parking is available in
the large parking lot just north of the ARL building. After 6:30 pm,
all entrances to JJ PRC, except for the Burnet Road entrance, are
closed and locked. You can still enter the parking lot in front of the
ARL building. No parking tags are necessary after 6:00 pm. See map for
further details.
Online maps are available at:
* http://www.utexas.edu/maps/prc/ -- J.J. Pickle Research Campus
* http://www.utexas.edu/maps/prc/areas/se.html -- South East
Quadrant (ARL:UT)
As always, please leave the facility as you saw it when you arrived.