Raspbian / Samba / Win95

[Ulrich D i e z]

Hello,

I have installed Samba under Raspbian and my old Win95-machine
(where all the NTLM-patches etc are installed) could access some
shared folders on the Raspberry Pi without problems.

The day before yesterday Samba under Raspbian happended to
be upgraded.

Since this happened, the Win95-machine cannot access
any shared folder any more. In the "Network Neighbourhood"
of Win95 the RaspberryPI still shows up. No error-message
occurs but the folders from the RaspberryPI won't show up -
the folder-listing remains empty.


When accessing the shared folders via Windows 7, everything
seems to work as usual: The folder-list of the Raspberry Pi's
shared folders shows up and when attempting to access one of
those folders, one gets prompted for username and passwort.
After typing these, folders are accessible for read and write.


What might be the reason for this?


Is there a possibility to "undo" the upgrade / to uninstall that
new Samba release and to install the previous release instead?


Sincerely

Ulrich

[Roger Ivie]

On 2015-03-09, Ulrich D i e z <eu_an...@web.de> wrote:
> I have installed Samba under Raspbian and my old Win95-machine
> (where all the NTLM-patches etc are installed) could access some
> shared folders on the Raspberry Pi without problems.
>
> The day before yesterday Samba under Raspbian happended to
> be upgraded.
>
> Since this happened, the Win95-machine cannot access
> any shared folder any more.

It's been a long time, but there's a difference in the way Win95
and NT communicate with SMB servers. Something like a difference
in the way passwords are hashed. Defaults changed between the
operating systems.

In my case, I needed to make NT talk to an older Samba, so there was
a registry setting I had to set to make it do things the old way.

I suspect there's a Samba setting to help it deal with the Win95 way,
but it's been so long since I dealt with it that I don't remember
any of the details.
--
roger ivie
anach...@hotmail.com

[Dave Farrance]

Ulrich D i e z <eu_an...@web.de> wrote:

>Since this happened, the Win95-machine cannot access
>any shared folder any more. In the "Network Neighbourhood"
>of Win95 the RaspberryPI still shows up. No error-message
>occurs but the folders from the RaspberryPI won't show up -
>the folder-listing remains empty.

Look in the smb and nmb logs in /var/log/samba. Those should tell you
the reason for any rejected access requests. You might need to adjust
the logging level in /etc/samba/smb.conf

[Andreas Meile]

Hello Ulrich

"Ulrich D i e z" <eu_an...@web.de> schrieb im Newsbeitrag
news:mdj1ql$ca5$1...@news.albasani.net...

> What might be the reason for this?
>
>
> Is there a possibility to "undo" the upgrade / to uninstall that
> new Samba release and to install the previous release instead?

Newer Samba releases don't longer allow obsolete SMB/CIFS prototol levels by
default for security reasons. But if you have any legacy applications still
in use (in my case for example a MS-DOS LAN Manager floppy disk for Norton
Ghost and PowerQuest DriveImage backups. Note: Realtek still supplies
updated NDIS2 drivers today), then you should add the following lines:

> lanman auth = Yes
> client lanman auth = Yes

Important note: Such old clients still need the LM hash password format so
after activation of the configuration above, you have to apply "smbpasswd"
(set the password) to all accounts which are used on your Windows 95 system.

Andreas
--
"127.0.0.1 was ist das? Ich kenne nur ::1!" - www.swissipv6council.ch

[Ulrich D i e z]

I have installed Samba under Raspbian and my old Win95-machine

(where all the NTLM-patches etc are installed) could access shared

folders on the Raspberry Pi without problems.

Samba was installed in February of this year

The day before yesterday Samba under Raspbian happended to
be upgraded.

Is there a repository somewhere out there with the previous
Samba release so I can revert to the previous installation
for checking differences in config-files?


The point is: There is no error-essage at all. And I don't find
anything in the log.files. The shared folders just don't get listed
and thus cannot get acessed from Win95 any more.



Ulrich

[The Natural Philosopher]

+1 on this.

I have had similar issues in the past and its usually been the upgrade
defaulting to a newer standard and needing to be *told explicitly* to
use the older one.


--
Everything you read in newspapers is absolutely true, except for the
rare story of which you happen to have first-hand knowledge. – Erwin Knoll

[Ulrich D i e z]

The Natural Philosopher wrote:

> On 09/03/15 04:50, Roger Ivie wrote:
> > On 2015-03-09, Ulrich D i e z <eu_an...@web.de> wrote:
> >> I have installed Samba under Raspbian and my old Win95-machine
> >> (where all the NTLM-patches etc are installed) could access some
> >> shared folders on the Raspberry Pi without problems.
> >>
> >> The day before yesterday Samba under Raspbian happended to
> >> be upgraded.
> >>
> >> Since this happened, the Win95-machine cannot access
> >> any shared folder any more.
> >
> > It's been a long time, but there's a difference in the way Win95
> > and NT communicate with SMB servers. Something like a difference
> > in the way passwords are hashed. Defaults changed between the
> > operating systems.
> >
> > In my case, I needed to make NT talk to an older Samba, so there was
> > a registry setting I had to set to make it do things the old way.
> >
> > I suspect there's a Samba setting to help it deal with the Win95 way,
> > but it's been so long since I dealt with it that I don't remember
> > any of the details.
> >
> +1 on this.
>
> I have had similar issues in the past and its usually been the upgrade
> defaulting to a newer standard and needing to be *told explicitly* to
> use the older one.

This kind of postings " I think there is something but I won't tell
what it is exactly" are definitely not helpful at all.

Ulrich

[David Taylor]

On 09/03/2015 02:36, Ulrich D i e z wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I have installed Samba under Raspbian and my old Win95-machine
> (where all the NTLM-patches etc are installed) could access some
> shared folders on the Raspberry Pi without problems.

[]
> Ulrich

Perhaps you might Google Samba and see how the backwards compatibility
settings which were suggested can be implemented?

I might question why you are still running a 20 year old, known to be
insecure, unstable OS, but as I still run Windows 2000 on one PC I won't.

--
Cheers,
David
Web: http://www.satsignal.eu

[Dave Farrance]

Ulrich D i e z <eu_an...@web.de> wrote:

>Is there a repository somewhere out there with the previous
>Samba release so I can revert to the previous installation
>for checking differences in config-files?

Probably, but that's a bad idea because you're cutting yourself off
from support.

>The point is: There is no error-essage at all. And I don't find
>anything in the log.files. The shared folders just don't get listed
>and thus cannot get acessed from Win95 any more.

Start Googling? e.g. the top hit for "windows 95 samba" is this:

When Windows 9x/ME Samba Access Fails
http://www.troubleshooters.com/linux/win9x_samba.htm

[The Natural Philosopher]

Well I think they are. It gives a hint as to where to look: into the smb
configuration to see if there is a new switch that needs to be set back
to a compatibility mode..

Definitely the way things were done changed between win95 and the next
edition or two of windows.

I remember having to edit the registry to get later versions to work
with older sambas


> Ulrich

[Ulrich D i e z]

Dave Farrance wrote:

> Ulrich D i e z <eu_an...@web.de> wrote:
>
> >Is there a repository somewhere out there with the previous
> >Samba release so I can revert to the previous installation
> >for checking differences in config-files?
>
> Probably, but that's a bad idea because you're cutting yourself off
> from support.

What support - besides asking in this newsgroup and being
thankful for helpful replies - is available for somebody not
all too experienced with Raspbian?

> >The point is: There is no error-essage at all. And I don't find
> >anything in the log.files. The shared folders just don't get listed
> >and thus cannot get acessed from Win95 any more.
>
> Start Googling? e.g. the top hit for "windows 95 samba" is this:
>
> When Windows 9x/ME Samba Access Fails
> http://www.troubleshooters.com/linux/win9x_samba.htm

I already did that and I already found that url and I already
read what is told there.

When I installed Samba back in February, I performed all
the steps described at that url and everything worked out.

The day before yesterday, a co-worker of mine performed:
- sudo apt-get update
- sudo apt-get upgrade
- sudo apt-get clean
( He did not backup the entire SD-card first as I would have
done. As he also did "sudo apt-get clean", the old .deb-files
are gone.)

Now there is: Samba 2:3.6.6-6+deb7u5 and the log-files say
that the following package-replacements took place:

samba 2:3.6.6-6+deb7u4 replaced by samba_2%3a3.6.6-6+deb7u5_armhf.deb
libwbclient0:armhf 2:3.6.6-6+deb7u4 replaced by libwbclient0_2%3a3.6.6-6+deb7u5_armhf.deb
smbclient 2:3.6.6-6+deb7u4 replaced by smbclient_2%3a3.6.6-6+deb7u5_armhf.deb
samba-common 2:3.6.6-6+deb7u4 replaced by samba-common_2%3a3.6.6-6+deb7u5_all.deb
libsmbclient:armhf 2:3.6.6-6+deb7u4 replaced by libsmbclient_2%3a3.6.6-6+deb7u5_armhf.deb
samba-common-bin 2:3.6.6-6+deb7u4 replaced by samba-common-bin_2%3a3.6.6-6+deb7u5_armhf.deb



I already spent hours fiddling with smb.conf etc.

I also (without avail) tried to get things to work again by performing
the instructions from
<http://www.troubleshooters.com/linux/win9x_samba.htm>
once more.



The situation is:

Before the upgrade everything worked out with Win95 as well.
In the meantime the Win95 setup was not changed.
(Win95 runs in a virtual machine under Win 7 and nobody but
me has access to the image-file.)
But Samba was upgraded from 2:3.6.6-6+deb7u4 (afaik)
to 2:3.6.6-6+deb7u5 by a co-worker of mine.
Now things don't work out with Win95 any more.



I'd like to get back to Samba 2:3.6.6-6+deb7u4 and see whether I can
get things to work again.
If so, I can check the differences (e.g., default-values in smb.conf)
between Samba 2:3.6.6-6+deb7u5 and Samba 2:3.6.6-6+deb7u4
in the hope that knowledge about these differences is helpful when
it comes to configuring Samba 2:3.6.6-6+deb7u5 .

Is there a repository where 2:3.6.6-6+deb7u4 is still available
that I could add to /etc/apt/sources.list or where I could
download the .deb-files "by hand" ?

I _think_ six files are needed - with Samba 2:3.6.6-6+deb7u5
you seem to get the files

samba_2%3a3.6.6-6+deb7u5_armhf.deb
libwbclient0_2%3a3.6.6-6+deb7u5_armhf.deb
smbclient_2%3a3.6.6-6+deb7u5_armhf.deb
samba-common_2%3a3.6.6-6+deb7u5_all.deb
libsmbclient_2%3a3.6.6-6+deb7u5_armhf.deb
samba-common-bin_2%3a3.6.6-6+deb7u5_armhf.deb

But I do neither know the exact names of the files needed
for the previous release Samba 2:3.6.6-6+deb7u4, nor do I
know where to get them.


Sincerely

Ulrich

[Timo]

Ulrich D i e z wrote:

> The day before yesterday Samba under Raspbian happended to
> be upgraded.
>
> Since this happened, the Win95-machine cannot access
> any shared folder any more. In the "Network Neighbourhood"
> of Win95 the RaspberryPI still shows up. No error-message
> occurs but the folders from the RaspberryPI won't show up -
> the folder-listing remains empty.

Yesterday I updated/upgraded Raspbian on my Raspberry Pi and
I noticed the following issue:

Before the upgrade I had Samba 2:3.6.6-6+deb7u4 .
Since the upgrade I have Samba 2:3.6.6-6+deb7u5 .

Before the upgrade, under Win95 (that's the machine my dad and
my grandpa often use as they are used to it), the Raspberry Pi / the
Samba machine showed up in the "Network Neighbourhood".
All shared folders from the Raspberry Pi were displayed correctly
and read and write access was possible.

After the upgrade some shared folders did not show up any more.

The folders that did not show up any more had in common that
the names used for sharing them were made up by more than
eleven characters.

(Under Windows 7 these folders were still displayed correctly.)

So I edited /etc/samba/smb.conf in order to have folder names
with at most eleven characters - upper- and lowercase letters from
the alphabet. No digits. No spaces. No underscore. No German
Umlauts äöüÄÖÜ and no Esszett ß".

So the sections for the single shares in smb.conf look like this:

[ShareName] <- This must not have more than 11 characters. Nothing fancy. No spaces!
path = /some/path
writeable = yes
guest ok = no


Since I did resort to file names not longer than 11 characters, all
folders shared by Samba 2:3.6.6-6+deb7u5 also show up under
Win95.


I don't know about the changes between Samba 2:3.6.6-6+deb7u4
and Samba 2:3.6.6-6+deb7u5.
All I know is that the set of names suitable for shares that are also to
be accessible via Win95 now seems more restricted.



All I ever did to smb.conf was adding the shares.

Security-Level (by default) is "user", not "share".

I never performed the instructions from:
<http://www.troubleshooters.com/linux/win9x_samba.htm>

I don't have entries in smb.conf like:

lanman auth = Yes
client lanman auth = Yes

client plaintext auth = Yes
client ntlmv2 auth = no


Instead I enabled ntlmv2-authentication on my dad's Win95-machine
according to the instructions given at
<http://www.sfu.ca/ad/win98/239869.html> .

For network-logon the Win95-machine uses "Client for Microsoft Networks",
username and password is the same as in use for the Samba-User who
owns the shared folders..

Timo

[Alan Adams]

In message <mdpgrf$dta$1...@solani.org>

Timo <ti...@nospam.invalid> wrote:

> Ulrich D i e z wrote:

>> The day before yesterday Samba under Raspbian happended to
>> be upgraded.
>>
>> Since this happened, the Win95-machine cannot access
>> any shared folder any more. In the "Network Neighbourhood"
>> of Win95 the RaspberryPI still shows up. No error-message
>> occurs but the folders from the RaspberryPI won't show up -
>> the folder-listing remains empty.

> Yesterday I updated/upgraded Raspbian on my Raspberry Pi and
> I noticed the following issue:

> Before the upgrade I had Samba 2:3.6.6-6+deb7u4 .
> Since the upgrade I have Samba 2:3.6.6-6+deb7u5 .

> Before the upgrade, under Win95 (that's the machine my dad and
> my grandpa often use as they are used to it), the Raspberry Pi / the
> Samba machine showed up in the "Network Neighbourhood".
> All shared folders from the Raspberry Pi were displayed correctly
> and read and write access was possible.

> After the upgrade some shared folders did not show up any more.

> The folders that did not show up any more had in common that
> the names used for sharing them were made up by more than
> eleven characters.

Windows95 uses 8.3 filenames on its local disks. It holds a hidden
file with mappings to the long names that are displayed.

It looks to me as though the previous version of Sambs sent the 8.3
names, and the new version sends the long names. Is there any config
item in Samba to control this?

> (Under Windows 7 these folders were still displayed correctly.)

> So I edited /etc/samba/smb.conf in order to have folder names
> with at most eleven characters - upper- and lowercase letters from
> the alphabet. No digits. No spaces. No underscore. No German

> Umlauts نِüؤضـ and no Esszett ك".

--
Alan Adams, from Northamptonshire
al...@adamshome.org.uk
http://www.nckc.org.uk/

[Timo]

Alan Adams wrote:

> In message <mdpgrf$dta$1...@solani.org>
> Timo <ti...@nospam.invalid> wrote:

> > The folders that did not show up any more had in common that
> > the names used for sharing them were made up by more than
> > eleven characters.
>
> Windows95 uses 8.3 filenames on its local disks. It holds a hidden
> file with mappings to the long names that are displayed.
>
> It looks to me as though the previous version of Sambs sent the 8.3
> names, and the new version sends the long names. Is there any config
> item in Samba to control this?

I don't know whether the following is of relevance in this context:

With Samba 2:3.6.6-6+deb7u5, sharing with a Win95 machine
a folder that is stored on that Rapberry Pi machine where the
Samba Server runs only works when the name that one chooses
to assign to the Samba-share in question within /etc/samba/smb.conf
doesn't have more than eleven characters.

a) Whether on the Samba-machine/host-machine the path to the directory
that is reached by accessing the Samba-share in question has long
file-names or not doesn't matter.

b) In case the directory-structure that is to be reached by accessing the
Samba-share contains items (files or sub-directories) with long
file-names/path-names, these can also be accessed b y the
Win95-machine as long as the share itself has a name which
is made up by at most 11 characters.


So the issue seems not to be about the directory-structure within
that part of a host-machine's file system that is to be shared by
means of Samba.

But it seems to be only about the names that one chooses oneself
within smb.conf for denominating/distinguishing those access-points
to the host machine's file system that are provided by Samba as
so-called shares.



For my grandpa, my dad and me sticking to Samba-Shares whose
names don't have more than 11 characters is not a problem.

Meanwhile I did some searching in the internet and I found some
postings/blog-entries where people are adviced not to use more
than 11 characters for names of Samba-shares as otherwise
problems might occur.

Timo

[Rob Morley]

You should probably ask for a refund.

[Dave Farrance]

Timo <ti...@nospam.invalid> wrote:

>Instead I enabled ntlmv2-authentication on my dad's Win95-machine
>according to the instructions given at
><http://www.sfu.ca/ad/win98/239869.html> .

That's cool. For updates on Windows 9X, Microsoft want you to phone
their Product Services Support and pay them $200, although it's said
that if you ask the service representative specifically for the update
and not technical assistance, he or she will usually waive the
charges. So you won't find the download page for the Active Directory
client extension that's needed for enabling NTLM 2 on the Microsoft
website now, not that I can see, anyway.

However, sometimes the direct link to the downloadable file remains in
place, as seems to be the case for the 9X DSClient, fortunately:

http://download.microsoft.com/download/0/0/a/00a7161e-8da8-4c44-b74e-469d769ce96e/dsclient9x.msi

Personally, I think that if you're still using Windows 95 for
*anything*, then you're ignoring easier (and probably cheaper) ways of
doing the same thing.

[Timo]

Dave Farrance wrote:

> Personally, I think that if you're still using Windows 95 for
> *anything*, then you're ignoring easier (and probably cheaper) ways of
> doing the same thing.

Personally I never really used Win95 myself. That operating system
is older than me. Generally I seldom use whatsoever Windows.
(I prefer debian and ubuntu.) But my grandpa and my dad and my
uncle use it. They are stonemason-masters and they run a small
company where they produce marble-stairs, stone-floors, windowsills,
tombstones and the like. They never used computers at all until in
1995 my dad insisted in not doing all the book-keeping work by
means of typewriter, pen, paper, books and filing-cabinet any more.
Back then they took evening lessons at the community college
and that was the first time they came in touch with
personal computers at all. Back then Computers with Win95
were state-of-the-art. Back then they bought computers and
software and that's it.

They use the computer for bookkeeping and for business
correspondence. The databases for all kinds of bookkeeping
(financial management, debitors, creditors/vendors, assets
accounting, payroll accounting, investment, performance and
costing, stock and materials etc) and for finding both printed
and electronic (pdf-) documents within the registry and within
the archive are kept within a local sql server and nowadays
these databases are maintained via some self-made
input-masks written in sql and html.
Business correspondence even nowadays takes place only
on paper whereby pdflatex is invoked for creating the
respective pdf-files.

Even nowadays they don't feel the need for having an
internet-connection and I am not inclined to do a lot of persuading
in order to drag them into using something new which they don't
feel all too comfortable about.

Within the dLAN intra-net, nowadays a raspberry pi, with
three external hard disk drives that are used in rotating turns,
is used for workdaily backing up the sql-databases.

Summa sumarum:

I think your statement about Win95 and easier and cheaper
ways of doing the same things is right.

On the other hand there are people who are rather reluctant
when it is about abondoning a running system in favour
of something unknown.


Sincerely

Timo

[Dave Farrance]

Timo <ti...@nospam.invalid> wrote:


>I think your statement about Win95 and easier and cheaper
>ways of doing the same things is right.
>
>On the other hand there are people who are rather reluctant
>when it is about abondoning a running system in favour
>of something unknown.

Yes, that's always the way, isn't it? The danger is that it suddenly
fails, and they can't find a computer that can run Windows 95. For
example, Windows 98 can't run on a computer faster than 2.2GHz
(Microsoft Support issue Q312108) and I've seen that affect a 1.6GHz
Pentium-M.

If you can get, e.g., a reconditioned Dell Optiplex which is an
easy-to-maintain workhorse, with 2.8Ghz dual-core, 4GB RAM, 80GB HD,
and Windows 7 for just £89, then even the most frugal small-business
owner can just buy it, and take their time migrating while the
original system still works.

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/141524559468

[The Natural Philosopher]

And then spend the next 8 weeks and thousand of pounds trying to get
legacy software to run on it, or learning how to use a modern
equivalent, and porting all the old data to opt.

I remember seeing a 21 year old IBM 360. Still running the special
software that was written for the company that owned it. And in no need
of doing other than what it did and always had done.

[Timo]

Dave Farrance wrote:

> Timo <ti...@nospam.invalid> wrote:
>
>
> >I think your statement about Win95 and easier and cheaper
> >ways of doing the same things is right.
> >
> >On the other hand there are people who are rather reluctant
> >when it is about abondoning a running system in favour
> >of something unknown.
>
> Yes, that's always the way, isn't it? The danger is that it suddenly
> fails, and they can't find a computer that can run Windows 95. For
> example, Windows 98 can't run on a computer faster than 2.2GHz
> (Microsoft Support issue Q312108) and I've seen that affect a 1.6GHz
> Pentium-M.

The most funny point about the situation in the special case
described by me: No software in use is really bound to Win95:
- Some web-browser is in use for displaying
- the php-scripts and html-pages that are in use.
- SQL is in use.
- Some LaTeX-distribution is in use.

All these things are available for all kinds of platform.

In order to cope with the scenario of the old Win95-machine
breaking, I already have silently prepared the technical aspects
of two scenarios:
- Either migrating the Win95-Installations to virtual machines on
new computers.
- Or migrating to Debian Wheezy.
I already have variants of the php-scripts and HTML-pages that
interact nicely with IceWeasel, TeXLive, php and MariaDB.
Migrating the databases to MariaDB seems also to work nicely.
That's all that is needed.

I think I prepared the change over to a new computer in a way
which will not bee all too hard from the point of view of a user.

( The most fiddly issue for me now is learning about licenses.
E.g., with Debian there is a lot of software that is free for
non-commercial use while using the software in the company
of my grandpa and his sons is most probably not
non-commercial... )

What I won't do is increasing the stress-level on the side of my
grandpa and his sons by trying to convince them to switch to
something unknown as long as they don't see a need for doing
so.


Sincerely

Timo

[Dave Farrance]

Timo <ti...@nospam.invalid> wrote:

>( The most fiddly issue for me now is learning about licenses.
>E.g., with Debian there is a lot of software that is free for

>non-commercial use...

The GPL, if that's what you're thinking of, allows unrestricted use of
all the application binaries by anybody. Non-software businesses are
not going to invoke the GPL source software issue, where anybody that
*distributes* software compiled from modified GPL source must also
publish the derived source code.

[alister]

in layman's terms, the Commercial use clause means you cant distribute or
embed the software in a product you sell.

& if you did produce a product that needed a DB back-end it would still
be fine if the end user installed the DB service themselves

looks like you are reasonably well prepared for the disaster when it
happens
if you choose a desktop manager like XFCE or LXDE rather than gnome3 you
wont scare the new users too much either (if they even notice)

--
It's fabulous! We haven't seen anything like it in the last half an hour!
-- Macy's

[Martin Gregorie]

On Fri, 13 Mar 2015 11:45:16 +0000, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

> I remember seeing a 21 year old IBM 360. Still running the special
> software that was written for the company that owned it. And in no need
> of doing other than what it did and always had done.
>

The problem there is that a lot of the software on small mainframes was
written in something that was not even slightly portable (assembler) or
at best semi-portable (one of the RPG dialects (IBM), FIND-2 or Filetab
(ICL 1900)). Worse yet, and I've seen this in live use, is an assembler
program that doesn't correspond to its source because it was hand-patched
to fix a bug and then saved to disk or tape to become the production
version.

Stuff that is written in even quite an early version of FORTRAN will, I
believe, often compile with a current compiler. COBOL typically won't
compile without changes to its environment division but, especially if it
doesn't use any of the more idiosyncratic COMP-n data types some dialects
used, may not need much alteration to compile with MicroFocus COBOL. That
will let it run on any system that supports the Java JVM.


--
martin@ | Martin Gregorie
gregorie. | Essex, UK
org |

[Dave Farrance]

alister <alister.n...@ntlworld.com> wrote:

>in layman's terms, the Commercial use clause means you cant distribute or
>embed the software in a product you sell.

Actually, you can, and without publishing anything if you haven't
modified the source code. If you did modify the code, then provided
you publish the derived source, you can sell a product containing it.

>& if you did produce a product that needed a DB back-end it would still
>be fine if the end user installed the DB service themselves

The GPL is a bit more liberal than you think. Provided the source
code and any derivations are kept open, then you can make money from
it. This is why it's said that you should think of the GPL being
"free" as in "free speech", not "free beer".

>looks like you are reasonably well prepared for the disaster when it
>happens
>if you choose a desktop manager like XFCE or LXDE rather than gnome3 you
>wont scare the new users too much either (if they even notice)

Hmmm. Dunno, really. I think he should be aiming for something that
can be fixed at the drop of a hat by a bloke from the local computer
repair shop, since he's not likely to be around all the time to help
out. Windows 7 is probably the "sweet spot" OS for that at the
moment. So if the W95 stuff runs on that, which it probably will with
minor tweaks, then I'd have thought that would be appreciated more by
the users.

[Rob]

Interesting that you mention that, as the "assembler" that was running
on those old IBM 360 machines was also very much like what the Java JVM
is now. The 360 machine language was in fact a portable instruction
set that was interpreted by microcode, and the amount of hardware that
was doing the real work depended on the size of the machine. A small
machine would do a lot in microcode, a larger machine may do more in
hardware and thus was faster. But they were running the same machine
instructions, so the assembler source really was portable. Between
systems of the same line, of course. But that is like Java bytecode
being portable between systems running the JVM.

[druck]

On 13/03/2015 11:39, Dave Farrance wrote:
> Yes, that's always the way, isn't it? The danger is that it suddenly
> fails, and they can't find a computer that can run Windows 95. For
> example, Windows 98 can't run on a computer faster than 2.2GHz
> (Microsoft Support issue Q312108) and I've seen that affect a 1.6GHz
> Pentium-M.

With anything from Win3.1 to Windows XP, you can just put the hard drive
in a USB caddy, plug it in to a modern machine and create a Virtual Box
(free) VM to run it up just as good as it was in yesteryear.

Better still you can copy contents of the drive in to a file on the new
machine, so you can then dispense with a rickety old drive which is many
times over its expected lifetime by now.

I've done it with half a dozen old machines belonging to relatives. So
they can look through their old systems to see if there is anything
useful on there, long after the old hardware has been disposed of.

But what has this got to do with the Pi again?

---druck

[Martin Gregorie]

On Fri, 13 Mar 2015 18:22:58 +0000, Rob wrote:

> But they were running the same machine
> instructions, so the assembler source really was portable. Between
> systems of the same line, of course.
>

That was my point: when you consider all the sins of omission back in the
day:
- I've worked in shops where the systems analysts binned all their
documentation as soon as a job (new development or change request)
was complete

- everybody who was in the business then knows that hand-written or typed
system documentation NEVER got updated as requirements changed

or commission:
- not updating source after applying a binary patch

- binning the master card deck without checking that there was a copy on
tape or disk.

it can become almost impossible to to maintain a system written in
assembler, let alone re-implement it in a machine-independent language so
it can be ported to different hardware.

That's one of the prime reasons that the banks, which used to use S/360
systems, are now on System/Z and still running the same decades old,
incompletely documented systems that nobody fully understands and are
crapping themselves in case Ginny can't pull Big Blue out of its current
death spiral.

[Björn Lundin]

On 2015-03-13 19:18, Dave Farrance wrote:
> alister <alister.n...@ntlworld.com> wrote:
>
>> in layman's terms, the Commercial use clause means you cant distribute or
>> embed the software in a product you sell.
>
> Actually, you can, and without publishing anything if you haven't
> modified the source code. If you did modify the code, then provided
> you publish the derived source, you can sell a product containing it.
>

Yes if youd did modify the code, you do not need to *publicly* publish
it. You need to make it available to the *customers/users*, *not* the
whole world.

<http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLRequireSourcePostedPublic>



--
Björn

[Dave Farrance]

Hmm. That means that you could actually put GPL source code on a website
behind a paywall, available only to customers of the product, or for
people that paid for the code. Of course, anybody that got hold of the
code could then publish it elsewhere.

[Björn Lundin]

Yes it does.
This is how AdaCore makes money.
They enhance/contibute to gcc' Ada frontend,
and relase a gpl'd version once a year, with gpl'd runtime.
That makes the OUTCOME of the compiler gpl.

In order to avoid that, you pay support to them, and you get
a semi-closed gcc. The one they have enhanched, which they merge back
most of to the upstream gcc a couple of years later.

You - as a paying customer - get the enhanced source. But it is
not publicly released.

And some of the fixes they do will not make it to the fsf gcc.
Like if they judge the nature of the so it may compromise a customers
system.

And it all fits into gpl.

--
Björn

[alister]

On Fri, 13 Mar 2015 18:18:08 +0000, Dave Farrance wrote:

> alister <alister.n...@ntlworld.com> wrote:
>
>>in layman's terms, the Commercial use clause means you cant distribute
>>or embed the software in a product you sell.
>
> Actually, you can, and without publishing anything if you haven't
> modified the source code. If you did modify the code, then provided you
> publish the derived source, you can sell a product containing it.
>

I was not revering to GPL code but code whose licence specificly excludes
commercial use (I believe that the Mysql licence amongst others has this
restriction).



--
Has everybody got HALVAH spread all over their ANKLES?? ... Now, it's
time to "HAVE A NAGEELA"!!

[Dave Farrance]

alister <alister.n...@ntlworld.com> wrote:

>I was not revering to GPL code but code whose licence specificly excludes
>commercial use (I believe that the Mysql licence amongst others has this
>restriction).

MySQL is dual-licenced, GPL and a commercial licence (for the distributors
of commercial applications that do not wish to use the GPL). That's
possible where a single person or company holds the copyright because the
GPL is not an exclusive licence. The MySQL that comes with Linux distros
is GPL licenced and can also be used commercially, and the GPL source-code
issues mentioned elsewhere in this thread are of no relevance to the
end-users.

[Theo Markettos]

druck <ne...@druck.org.uk> wrote:
> With anything from Win3.1 to Windows XP, you can just put the hard drive
> in a USB caddy, plug it in to a modern machine and create a Virtual Box
> (free) VM to run it up just as good as it was in yesteryear.

...

> But what has this got to do with the Pi again?

You can run Windows 95 in a VM on a Raspberry Pi.
http://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=62&t=10635

In fact that's not an entirely silly way to do it...

Theo

[Dave Farrance]

Theo Markettos <theom...@chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote:

>You can run Windows 95 in a VM on a Raspberry Pi.
>http://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=62&t=10635
>
>In fact that's not an entirely silly way to do it...

Thinking about it, yes, it is retro-computing, similar to the old 1980s
home-computer emulators that can also run on the Pi. Given that the games
being emulated for Win95 there might typically have been run on a 66MHz
Pentium P5, then a speedup would be expected, even when emulating the
different CPU instruction set.

[druck]

On 18/03/2015 00:42, Theo Markettos wrote:
> druck <ne...@druck.org.uk> wrote:
>> With anything from Win3.1 to Windows XP, you can just put the hard drive
>> in a USB caddy, plug it in to a modern machine and create a Virtual Box
>> (free) VM to run it up just as good as it was in yesteryear.
> ...
>> But what has this got to do with the Pi again?
>
> You can run Windows 95 in a VM on a Raspberry Pi.
> http://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=62&t=10635

An emulator rather than a virtual machine.

> In fact that's not an entirely silly way to do it...

Reminds me of running Window's 95 in a window under RISC OS. Not a VM
either, but a hardware second processor in the Risc PC.

---druck

[j...@dorsal.tk]

> ( The most fiddly issue for me now is learning about licenses.
> E.g., with Debian there is a lot of software that is free for
> non-commercial use while using the software in the company
> of my grandpa and his sons is most probably not
> non-commercial... )

The Debian Free Software Guidelines (DFSG) specifically prohibit packages in
the main repository from having those sorts of restrictions. As long as you
don't enable the contrib or non-free sections, you can run a Debian system
anywhere, for any reason, without running afoul of licensing issues. That's a
big piece of why Valve uses Debian as the base for SteamOS.

Jon