8/3     How are you folks with NetApps backing them up? Dump? NFS? NDMP?
        Which software? Legato, Veritas, something else? Would you buy the
        same software again? I use Legato and I'm less than thrilled.
        \_ NetBackup (which uses NDMP) works pretty well if you can dedicate
           a drive just to it. That is, if you have a library with 4 drives,
           1 drive must be dedicated to NDMP clients
        \_ Buy 2, mirror.  Put a third off site.  Mirror.

8/3     Solaris question.  How come after catting .cshrc, the atime
        doesn't change?  Something in NFS?  I dont see any obvious
        NFS option to control this.  The file is on a netapp.
        \_ is noatime set? it's an NFS option that prevents that.
           \_ It doesnt appear to be set in the automouter map.
              Can it be set on the netapp itself?
        \_ Yes, there is a per volume option called no_atime_update
           that can be set on the filer itself.  This is mainly for
           people who are really pounding the volume who could use
           the extra performance boost of not updating for each access
           of a file.  -rollee

8/2     Is there a way I can invoke  abs (absolute value) from a bash script?
        In general how can I use math function from shell script?
        \_ If you're worried about math functions, then it is time to start
           using a real scripting language instead of shell.
           \_ Agreed.  But, if you're not quite ready to rewrite your script
              yet, it's pretty easy in bash: $((x < 0 ? -x : x)) will return
              the absolute value of $x.  See the section ARITHMETIC EXPANSION
              in the bash manpage.  --mconst
              \_ Thanks.  I would have used Perl if I had thought that
                 I would need math functions.
                 \_ It's never too late to do the right thing.  It'll only
                    be harder to convert later.
        \_ bc (use a here document), note you have to define your own
           abs function.

7/30    Ack!  Too much politics!  I have a technical question:
        I have some files described by *.out and I want a nice scripty way to
        trim the last line off of each of them.  What's a good way to do this?
        \_ sed. $d
           \_ It would seem I'd need a pattern defining the last line for that
              to be helpful.
              \_ Erm.  try it out.  "sed '$d' filename"
                 \_ Thanks.
        \_ foreach i ( `ls` )
                mv $i `echo $i | sed s:.out::g`
           end
           Warning, this only works in csh.
           \_ in that case, just do foreach i (*.out).

7/238   my apache server running on unix serves pages from users
        in public_html.  I also have https running.  what can i put
        in my .htaccess so that when someone tries to get to a page
        via the http server, they are either denied or redirected
        to the https version?  thanks.
        \_ Globally?  Have SSL answer on both 80 and 443.
           \_ what if i don't have root.  not an option.
              \- well then it isnt "your" apapche server, it is someone
                 elses.
                \_ ok you pedantic fuck, i have root, but i don't
                        want to alter things as root.  eat shit.

7/28    bash v3.0 is out: http://tinyurl.com/436y2
        \_ Ah, a new version of a crappy shell.  Thanks Linux!
           \_ It comes standard on most linux distros so it must be the best!
                \_ It has pretty colors!
           \_ While I agree that bash might be overkill scripting, some of
              its features do greatly enhance usability (unicode filename
              handling, auto completion of filenames w/ spaces, &c.) Some of
              these features you can get in ksh or hack into pdksh (a la
              OpenBSD), but for most people its just easier to use bash.
              \_ tcsh completes filenames with spaces. i don't know nething
                 about unicode but it's mentioned in the man page. fuck bash.
                 \_ Yes but tcsh uses the crappy csh scripting style. Some
                    of us do use the while/do/done for/do/done, if/fi &c.
                    syntax on the cli.
                    \_ Use the right tool for the job!  You use tcsh for CLI
                       and perl for scripting.  Anything more than a few
                       lines of tcsh belongs in perl or some other real
                       scripting langauge.  Bash should die.  It's a
                       bastardized POS.

7/26    is there a way to list the file in your user space that has the largest
        size?  (Thank you all for the help except that idiot posted the rm
        command)
        \_ rm -Rf ~/
           \_ does anyone ever use R instead of r?
        \_ ls | sort | head
        \_ ls -lR | sort +4rn     But this won't tell you which directory
                                  the files are in.
        \_ du -k $HOME | sort -nr -k1,1 | head
           This should give you the files sizes of the largest files and
           directories in your home directory. If you want just files:
           { find $HOME -depth -type f -print0 | \
             xargs -0 ls -l | sort -rn -k5,5 ; } 2> /dev/null | head
           BTW, -print0 and xargs -0 only work on *BSD, OS X and Linux.

7/22    Samba 3.0.5 released:
        http://us3.samba.org/samba/whatsnew/samba-3.0.5.html
        Two vulnerabilities fixed.

7/21    Are there any circumstances under which, e.g., fileno(stdin) would
        not equal 0 on a Unix system (besides obvious things like
        assigning something else to stdin)?
        \_ Nothing obvious.  It's assigned to be that so unless you change
           it or your system is broken, etc.

7/19    Is there a unix text based MSN messenger client?
        I wanna chat with hot girls but company has firewall.
        \_ How would a text based client help you?  The ports are still the
           same.
           \_ yea, but I can telnet out through gateway.
        \_ centericq - never used it though

7/16    The new official North Korean webpage!  Get your free email
        account!  Would someone mind making a csua account we all can use
        to read it?
        http://www.kcckp.net/external_e
        \_ bah! if you like dictators with web pages, check out this one:
           Qadhafi's official homepage.
           http://www.qadhafi.org
        \_ I don't find NK very funny.  -- ilyas
           \_ You don't find anything very funny.
              \_ These days it seems every anonymous motd macaque knows more
                 about me than I do myself. -- ilyas
                 \_ I think you're funny.
                    \_ Oh, I think ilyas is funny. I just don't think ilyas
                       finds anything funny. I think that's part of what
                       makes him funny.
        \_ Login/Pass: phillip/philspell  enjoy.  -John
           \_ Thanks! I heartily recommend Politics->Leader->KJ IL->Anecdotes
              \_ Goddamn!  It's as if Francis Fukuyama lost a third of his
                 brain and kept on writing!

7/3     I'm reviewing my credit report, and they mention a geographical code
        (e.g, 0-49362310- 1-5335, some #s changed for privacy).  What sort of
        information does this encode?  There's one for each of my addresses.

7/2     What software do you use to backup your own PC?
        \_ snapshot backups via rsync over ssh
           http://www.mikerubel.org/computers/rsync_snapshots
           \- have you compared this with rdiff backups from
              stanfraud?
        \_ Raid 1+0.  No backups.
           \_ you never accidentally delete a file?
              \_ all important files in rcs.  this is deja-vu.  I answered
                 this at length two days ago.
        \_ rsync with incremental options running from cron to backup my
           Linux files to a second disk. On the windows box, I use
           right now the windows backup tool manually to backup everything
           to a second disk but you could schedule it automatically.
           \_ You can also put your windows data on a linux box and
              make it accessible to windows via a samba share.
        \_ Make CD backups every 6 months or so.
        \_ XP box:  Maxtor OneTouch drive, and store everything important
           on Samba shares.  FreeBSD boxes:  rsync back and forth between
           boxes.  -John
        \_ I have multiple matched drives. Every three months or so, I copy
           everything from one drive to another and then start using the new
           copy. The next time, I swap the drives. Once a month I burn stuff
           to a cd/dvd. Important stuff I keep in cvs. I backup my repository
           every other week. I'm mostly using MacOS X, FreeBSD and OpenBSD,
           I don't bother backing up my WinXP box, nothing important on it
           except DVDDecrypter :-)
           \_ I've read that if you let drives spin down for too long there
              is a good chance they won't spin up again, thus cold disk is
              not a good backup medium.  I've done a little of what you're
              doing but not enough to say if what I read is true or not. YMMV.
                \_ From what I've seen this is only the case if you let
                   your drives sit for years not months. Even then, most
                   drives will work (I just powered on a scsi drive that I
                   last used in 1997 and got some data from it last week).
                   Also, I tried to make sure that my drives are never
                   more than 24 months old. Around 18 months or so I upgrade
                   to a larger pair and sell the older pair to offset the
                   cost.

7/1     Using sed, how do I do the following?  I want to replace the
        first line containing a particular pattern with the 2nd line
        containing said pattern.  For example, if "line" is the pattern,
        then I want
                this is the 1st line
                this is the 2nd
                this is the 3rd
                this is the 4th line
        to become
                this is the 4th line
                this is the 2nd
                this is the 3rd
                this is the 1st line  (Actually, I don't care if this line
                                       shows up like this or gets deleted.)
        \_ stupid to do this in sed.  use perl.
          \_ OK, how do I do this in perl?
             \_ while ( $line = <> ){
                        if ( $line !~ /line/ ) {
                                $output[$count++]=$line;
                                next;
                        }
                        if ( ! $firstline ) {
                                $firstline = $line;
                                $firstindex = $count++;
                        } else {
                                $output[$firstindex]=$line;
                                $output[$count++]=$firstline;
                        }
                }
                print foreach @output;
                # (Approximately)  -tom
                \_ You don't need the "foreach"
          \_ Just for fun, how can this be done using sed?
             \_ sed is short for "stream editor".  It's designed to look at
                the input one line at a time.  making it handle line operations
                is unholy, and possibly illegal in most states.
             \_ there is nothing fun about doing this in sed.  -tom
                \_ lots of things can be fun if you're avoiding more important
                   work. here it is:

        sed -e '/line/\!bS;:M;$\!N;s/\n.*line/&/;tE;$\!bM;:E;s/^\([^\n]*\)\(\n.
*\n\)\([^\n]*\)$/\3\2\1/;:S'

                   this swaps the 2N-1'th and the 2N'th lines matching "line"
                   for all possible N. if there is an odd number of such
                   lines, the last one is left in place. note that the
                   3 "!"'s are \-escaped for tcsh; your shell might
                   differ. naturally, s/line/foo/g to change pattern.
                   tested on gnu sed 3.02. inserting a few newlines will
                   make this work on soda's sed as well:
                        sed -e '/line/\!bS\
                        :M\
                        $\!N;s/\n.*line/&/;tE\
                        $\!bM\
                        :E\
                        s/^\([^\n]*\)\(\n.*\n\)\([^\n]*\)$/\3\2\1/;\
                        :S'
                                                         -alexf
                               \_ alexf = leet sed god
                                  \_ s/leet sed god/bored new sed user/ -alexf
                \_ sed rules!!!
                   \-first, i probably wouldnt do this in sed either.
                     it may be doable in sed but your description isnt
                     complete, so i cant suggest a solution. do you just
                     want to *swap* 1st match of regexp with second match
                     of regexp? finally, sed can certainly do non-line
                     based things more easily than say grep. see e.g.
                     the , operator. --psb
                        \_ I want the first line that matches regexp to
                           be replaced with the 2nd line that contains
                           regexp.  The entire line need not match regexp,
                           but only contain it.  But I want the entire
                           first line (that contains a match to regexp) to
                           be essentially overwritten by the next line that
                           contains a match to regexp.  -op
        \_ rpn calculator written in sed:
           http://sed.sourceforge.net/local/scripts/dc.sed.html
        \_ just curious, why do you want to do this? seems kinda weird.
           \_ he's trying to troll ilyas into writing it in ocaml

6/29    Is there a C function to get the name of an opened file from its file
        pointer (FILE*)?  Thanks.
        \_ I don't know of one.  What would happen if there are multiple
           ways of describing the file? (Symbolic links and the like)
        \_ the best you can do is use fileno() to get the file descriptor
           number and then pass that to fstat() to get the inode and
           filesystem of the underlying file.  To get an actual path name
           from there is difficult, as you could have any number of hard links
           pointing to the inode, and it is even possible for there to be
           NO links and there is in fact no file name associated with the
           file's inode.(i.e. it was 'deleted' after it was opened).
           If you *really* want to know you could run a search through the
           filesystem for matching inode numbers. -EricM

6/27    Stupid UNIX question: In a shell program, how do I read in
        standard input?  I want the program to take standard input
        and manipulate it in some way and then output the result to
        a file.  Once I have the program written, I know how to invoke
        it, but how do I, within the program, tell it to work with the
        standard input?
        \_ Read from fd 1:
           while read LINE ; do echo $LINE ; done <&1
        \_ If you just want to pass stdin through various external commands,
           it's easy; just run them, and the first one will consume stdin if
           it needs it; e.g.:
               #!/bin/sh
               awk '{print $2}' | sed 's/a/b/g' > file
           will "just work".  If you want to perform actual line by line
           shell script programming, you'll have to do like the previous post
           says.  But really, if you're doing actual custom programming of
           this type (i.e. not lots of external program invocations), you
           almost certainly are better off using perl or <insert favorite
           text munging language here> --dbushong

6/27    The following is the beginning of a file called from my .procmailrc.
          #!/bin/csh
          set usage = `quota | grep digital | awk '{print $2}'`
          set quota = `quota | grep digital | awk '{print $4}'`
          set spacek = `expr $quota - $usage`
              \_ why do people worry about the disk quota when procmail has
                 a comprehensive failsafe policy? see "man procmailrc#ORGMAIL"
                 \_ I've had my ifile database truncated a couple times due to
                    quota problems.
        It works just fine, but I found 1 occurance of the following in my
        log file:
          expr: No match.
        How can expr generate a "No match error"?  Presumably the quota
        command yielded something like a '?' where there should have
        been a number.  But how would that be?
        \- close, but wrong shell metachar. if you are above quota, awk
           will return #####* for the usage. i note also expr may choke
           on large numbers. you may also be able to use this:
                If quota exits with a non-zero status,
                one or more filesystems are over quota.
           if you dont care about the actual numbers, you can do something
           along the lines of:
           quota | grep `dirname $home` | fgrep \*  > /dev/null && \
                 echo above_q || echo below_q
           btw, use less whitespace in motd posts. --psb
                \_ Thanks!  I just added sed 's/*//' to the set usage line.

6/24    Why no manual for woman!! why?? why!!!
        [xxx@@soda ~]% man man
        [xxx@@soda ~]% man woman
        No manual entry for woman
        [xxx@@soda ~]%
        \_ Because FreeBSD 4.7 is not politically correct.  Google for
           "Politically Correct UNIX System VI Release notes", which I've read
           more than 10yrs ago (not as a web page, of course.)
           \_ http://www.laughnet.net/archive/compute/newunix.htm
        \_ Why would a man want to enter a woman?  A man shound only enter
           another man!
           \_ Oh that's fucking sick. Of course I want to enter a woman, not
              a man you sicko.
              \_ In the Catholic version of UNIX, man enters boy.
        \_ There wasn't enough space on /usr to install it.

6/22    What's gmail's tech support email? I cannot log in for more than 16
        hours now, this is unacceptable. Thanks.
        Server Error: The server encountered a temporary error and
        could not complete your request.  Please try again in 30
        seconds.
        \_ erase all google-related cookies. purge cache. retry. worked for me.
           \_ and if that fails: http://gmail.google.com/support/bin/request.py
              \_ I tried erasing all cookies/cache, and still happens on both
                 mozilla/ie. I can't even visit the support page, because it
                 requires a login, and I can't login. Shit. any ideas?
                 \_ was this just after creating an account? try the above
                    steps again, but also change your password (with the Forgot
                    Your Password? link). i couldn't log in either all
                    yesterday until i did this.
        \_ yes. that's very unacceptable for a service still in beta.
           \_ Fine, don't accept it.  Go back to Hotmail.

6/22    Does anyone know of any publicly available distributed file transfer
        programs? This might be a program that would, e.g., allow you to copy
        files to one machine, and have that machine copy them to n other ones,
        which copy it to n other ones, and so forth.
        \_ Bittorrent + a few torrent grabbing scripts would probably work
        \_ cron + rsync/wget/etc.
        \_ Akamai.
        \_ I had something automatic in mind that's usable in the general
           case. BT, cron + whatever, and akamai don't really fit the bill.
           I'm talking more along the lines of something like what google
           might use to push files to many many machines.
           \_ rdist.

6/18    Is anybody else not able to log into their office account?
        My password is rejected.
        \_ It looks like ypserv crashed on scotch; I've restarted it.  Could
           you please try logging in again?  --mconst
           \_ It seems to be working now.  Thanks mconst!
        \_ REQUEST DENIED.

6/16    The following is a chunk of my .procmailrc.  It works great,
        but when I added the if clause below, it seems to act as
        if the condition is true, even when it's not.  Anyone
        have any idea why?

        set usage = `quota | grep digital | awk '{print $2}'`
        set quota = `quota | grep digital | awk '{print $4}'`
        set space = `expr $quota - $usage`
        set space = `expr $space \* 1000`  # convert from kilobytes to bytes
        set limit = `expr $space / 20`     # limit is 5% of remaining space
        if ($space < 200000) then        # if under 200k of space, just
          set limit = 0                  # put in inbox
        endif

        # BEGIN RECIPES

        :0fw
        | spamc

        :0
        * > $limit
        {
        :0c
        !myaccount@yahoo.com
        :0:
        | ${FORMAIL} -A"X-Folder: TOO_BIG_INBOX_ONLY" >>${DEFAULT}
        }

6/16    It's not in any way against CSUA policy to have procmail check
        your quota each time it runs, is it?
        \_ Why would it be?
           \_ I think the quota file might be a bit of a chokepoint for the
              filesystem; probably bad if everybody were to do it.  Perhaps
              try du -d1 instead?
              \_ du -d1 is way more impact than quota.  -tom
              \_ Yeah, wow.  Use your head: with quotas on every filesystem
                 op results in a quota check; how can it be high overhead?
                 \_ Please correct me if/where I'm wrong: quota files are
                    maintained at the root of each file system, and,
                    empirically, I've noticed that quota results are cached:
                     quota -v; rm reallyBigFile; quota -v; sleep; quota -v;
                    I imagine this cache resides at the FS root as well, so
                    hundreds of users x hundreds of spams = 1000s of writes
                    to the quota cache = possibly slow disk access.
                    Different cases possible with softupdates and/or
                    kernel-based memory cache.
                    \_ Quotas are kept in memory, in the kernel; you can
                       access them with the quotactl system call.  There
                       are quota files at the root of each filesystem too,
                       but they're only used to initialize the kernel's
                       quota information at boot time.

                       Since it's all stored in memory, updating the quota
                       information when you create and remove files is
                       trivial.  You only see delays because soft updates
                       is delaying the actual writes to your files, and thus
                       delaying the quota updates too -- on systems without
                       soft updates, quotas update instantly.  --mconst
                    \_ you could have verified this yourself by using the
                       "time" command to see that du -d1 takes an order of
                       magnitude longer than quota, instead of sounding off
                       like a moron.  -tom
                       \_ great way to encourage discussion.  you rock!
                    \_ That suggests that although writing/deleting lots of
                       spam could load the system (which we already know)
                       lots of people reading the quota file will probably
                       not be a big load, or at least not any worse than
                       reading a file of spam-filtering rules.
        \_ depends on your personality
        \_ I'll take this discussion as "No, it's not against policy".
           \_ you can take it that way (i would) but just be sure you don't
              end up a hoser; that's the policy you need to worry about
              here. - erikk

6/16    How do I make bash display possibilities on first tab, like tcsh?
        I hate it that I have to press TAB twice to get the completion
        list. Thanks.
        \_ type tcsh, when you're done, type exit.
           \_ Thank you for the most useless answer I've seen today. :)
              \_ Change your shell, stop using stupid shells.
                 \_ Change your shitty attitude, learn some manners.

6/12    "It was the team's success in designing a rudimentary word processing
        system using Unix on the PDP-7 that allowed them to get the funds for
        a PDP-11. The word processor proved enourmously useful to Bell Lab's
        patent division." --from an E'ist article on DMR && Bell Labs.
        It's funny how some things stay the same [in terms of who you have
        to make happy for $$$] and the image of lawyers using some precursor
        to ed/troff. ObEdIsStandard. --psb
        \_ Considering that their other choice at the time would have been
           dictating to an army of secretaries with high school educations....
           What do you think they should have done to earn funding?  They
           should have just got money because they were cool?
           \- i think you are missing the spirit in which this was intended.
              i dont suppose you have ever used a line editor.
              \_ I have used a line editor before, having used both ED and
                 EDLIN (in dos).  I wrote most of my school papers using vi
                 and troff, so yes I'm familar with both concepts.  Maybe you
                 can explain 'the spirit' to a low grade moron such as myself?
                 \_ If you'd read the rest of this week's issue, you'd note
                    the Economist is pushing the philosophical idea of open
                    source rather heavily-- both for software development and
                    biological research.  It's funny, then, that Unix, which
                    has been the core focus of the movement, might have been
                    stillborn except for a legal department clamoring for its
                    word processor.  As for line editors, have you used them
                    for legal documents?  It's just odd.  That's all. -!psb
                    \- Mr. LGMoron: First, if you were in a bar at Friday
                       Happy Hour and somebody said "well there goes another
                       weeks of my life working for The Man" would you then
                       week of my life working for The Man" would you then
                       respond "well it is better than being unemployed".
                       Second, it is just funny to think about lawyers
                       using SCCS to collaborate, maintianing their briefs
                       via Makefiles calling tbl | eqn | troff etc. Finally,
                       as I "didnt say" above, given the history of AT&T
                       Unix litigation, it's somewhat ironic they were
                       internally greasing the wheels. --psb
                   \_  Man, you need to get laid or something. If you didn't
                       find the Dilbertesque situation of this historical
                       factoid funny and you used vi/troff to do your homework
                       you must still be a virgin. --williamc

6/12    I'm going to switch my dsl provider this month and the new guys don't
        offer webmail. Does anyone know of a cheap (~ $5/mo) web mail provider
        who is reasonably reliable? I've been told to take a look at .Mac, but
        I'd like to hear other suggestions. tia.
        \_ I use http://totalchoicehosting.com and have mail (imap, pop3, webmail) as
           well as www and ftp.  Starts at $4/mo.
           \_ thanks I'll take a look.
        \_ gmail
           \_ I'm not interested in free services that read your email and
              stick stupid ads in the messages. I also don't want to have
              a bunch of junk cluttering up the web ui.
              \_ the ui is really nice, not cluttered, the ads are very
                 subtle, and it doesn't _read_ your mail, unless you think
                 just having your data on their servers means "reading"...
                 it's on-the-fly keyword triggers, not "reading."
                 \_ How is the spam filtering on gmail?
                 \_ Are you either a google employee or a friend of one who is
                    likely to materially gain from friends-and-family options
                    in the IPO?  On-fly-the keyword triggers means they had to
                    scan my mail.  I don't care if they did it when it came in,
                    when it was sitting on their servers or "on-the-fly" when
                    I read it.  They're still reading for content.
                    \_ wow, so what do you think the other webmails do when
                       they scan for viruses?  Or is that somehow, not reading
                       the content?
                       \_ they're scanning for my benefit for something I would
                          do for myself.  google is scanning for their benefit
                          to insert ads which is something i would not do for
                          myself.  the difference should be obvious to anyone
                          not likely to gain financially from google's sucess.
                          again, are you an employee or other person likely
                          to benefit from the google ipo or other google
                          successes?
                          \_ I guess I wouldn't be scanning my mail, since
                             I don't run windows.... but no, I don't have
                             any stake in google at all.
        \_ Followup. Has anyone heard of http://his.com or webserve.ca? Both seem
           to provide web mail for around $5/mo.

6/9     http://www.csua.berkeley.edu/~ilyas/problems/shortest_path -- ilyas

6/8     For those who worked in the large corporation (or currently working
        in a large corp.  How do you guys managed such large amount of emails?
        Do you guys use some sort of sorting software (popfile?)? is there
        any open-source search engine that is designed for combing through
        standard unix email boxes?
        \_ GREP!
           \_ Ah, but is it the standard?
           \_ you mean find . -name "*.mbx" -exec grep [pattern] {} \;
              my problem with that is that in that -exec part, the
              grep -v's "-" is giving me trouble (along with other special
              characters)
              \- use xargs. welcome to the next level. --psb
                \_ how do you deal with spaces?
                   \- NULL padding. for the original Q, also see e.g. agrep,
                      glimpse etc. --psb
        \_ use mh. pick is your friend.

6/8     Which search engines let you search for regex or at least symbols like
        '||' .  right now i'm trying to search for how to do this:
         !#/bin/bash; if [ $? != 0 || $# != 2 ]; then hi
        \_ man test
           \_ Or, sillier, man [
           \_ test did the trick, tnx.  (though, shirley there must be a way
              to do it without)

6/5     I have no idea what changed, I may have accidently changed some
        option I can no longer find, or my friend's 2 year old may have
        hit some obscure key combo, but Now WinXP now logs me out every
        time the screen saver goes off. I only have 1 account on this
        machine, and there's no password. This is the epitome of a stupid,
        useless extersize.  Anyone know how to turn it off?
        \_ Right-click the desktop | Properties | Screen Saver | Password
           Protected.
        \_ Turn off the screen saver.
        \_ I don't think you get logged off, but you are probably screen
           locked.  The idle-logoff feature is a separate utility you have
           to install.
        \_ is it a normal screen saver?  The resource kit comes with a screen
           saver that logs you out automatically...
           \_ the log-off screen saver on the resource kit is a separate
              purchase. So I don't think he as the resource kit with his
              winXP.

5/30    Are there any plans to have a IMP server for soda? So we can
        check our mails on the web?
        \_ ps auxww | grep imap
           \_ IMP is not IMAP.
              \_ Install it yourself.
              \_ True.  Imp is a small devilish creature serving Satan.
                 \_ How convenient if one were a clever devil and the other
                    devilishly clever.

5/26    Best side scroller game... EVER. http://www.emogame.com/bushgame.html
        - pst
        \_ w00t!
        \_ WHY DO YOU HATE AMERICA?
           \_ WHY DO YOU HATE WHITE PEOPLE?
        \_ Did you miss the link yesterday about hate and politics?
        \_ not work-safe.
        \_ Wow.  A Bush bashing link on the motd.  What a shock.
           \_ Here's a nickle kid. Buy yourself a sense of humor.
        \_ Quite similar to the movie comming out today in this respect:
           goes to extremes making stuff up in order to bash right wing
           politics.
           \_ Was the game ALSO written by Art Bell?
           \_ See now, why don't you put up a website listing all of the
              made-up stuff instead of just whining about it?
              \_ obGoogle.  It's all over and you wouldn't care anyway.
                 \_ Funny, this is what I found:
                    link:csua.org/u/7hi
                    \_ Ok, and?

5/26    Just curious... Are people supposed to be running their own
        drug store off soda's website?  I assume it's commercial.
        \_ definitely a violation of soda and university policy.  -tom
        \_ Only if they're offering discount v1agkra
        \_ No.  Mail root with the location and it will be taken
           care of.
        \_ URL please?  Just curious.
        \_ ~chrchan/public_html last I saw it.  I saw the raw files, but did
           not point a browser at it.  Not my call.  I don't have root, access
           to read logs, etc.  "Someone" should politely ask him about it in
           case it is just for practice or for somewhere else.
           \_ What made you think he was running a drug store instead of just
              trying out some ecommerce code?  And how the hell did you stumble
              across this?  Were you really bored enough to just be randomly
              searching soda?
              \_ I said I didn't check it in detail, duh.  That he might just
                 be testing something, duh.  That a polite query was in order
                 IMHO and nothing more at this point, duh.  You, duh.  Duh.
                 \_ No, that is not yellowcake in his directory.
           \_ I think it's a false alarm.  Most of the code isn't even
              world readable.

5/26    How does one see just the end of a file in Unix/Linux?  Say I have
        2 gigs of text log, and I just want to see the last page.
        \_ tail
           \_ Thanks!
        \_ check out the -f option from the man pages.

5/24    I'm baaaack.  I'm doing recruiting for the summer.  At Taos, no less!
        UNIX SysAdmins who're interested in contract jobs, feel free to
        contact me (chris@csua or christine@taos.com).  There's a particularly
        cool one working at Apple open immediately.
                                                            \- there is no
                                                               less --psb
        Stop interrupt other people's lines Partha Banerjee     ---/
        \_ What's the going rate these days?
           \_ From what I've witnessed, it's all over the map.  You're at the
              whim at whatever companies are willing to pay, and however
              desperate they are.  Since the market's turning around, some
              companies see the light and are paying better (I'm saying
              $50ish/hour for mid-Sr. level SA)...other companies are
              still in denial and are offering ridiculously low rates ($20/hr
              for a mid-level SA which I think is horrible).  Developers are
              getting measurably better rates than SAs, as are DBAs.   --chris
              \_ Are they "Still Sleazy after all these years?"
                 \_ It's the nature of the business.
              \_ Are they *finding* people at $20/hour?!
                 \_ Well, for entry-level (read right out of high school), this
                    is fine.
        \_ It makes him feel important or something to screw up other people's
           posts.  Or maybe he thinks we're all too stupid to know what he's
           talking about if he puts his comments after the person he's
           replying to.  Either way it's pretty god damned rude and makes it
           more difficult to follow a thread.
           \_ You're locked in your traditions, young motder.  psb transcends
              your formatting to show you that any body of text is just a
              body of text.  Do not attempt to format the psb; that would be
              impossible.

5/19    Why doesn't bash read .bashrc for interactive login shells?  Is there
        a right way to get it to do so?  Putting "source $HOME/.bashrc" in my
        .profile seems kind of wrong.  Or am I supposed to export everything
        in .profile so subsequent interactive sessions inherit everything?
        \_ .profile?  Here's a snipped from my default .bash_profile
           if [ -f ~/.bashrc ]; then
                   . ~/.bashrc
           fi

5/18    Sick and tired of people writing over your file? Now motdedit2
        is available at ~kchang/bin/motdedit2. It does aggressive append
        merge where no lines are deleted. In addition, there is a flag to use
        to "restore&merge" your last change. For example, if someone nukes
        a portion of the motd after 30 min, you can still "restore&merge"
        your previous editted file and the current file by typing
        "~kchang/bin/motdedit2 -r".  Any bug report to me.
                        \_ man you guys are picky. I've changed it so that
                           it'll keep the work file in $HOME/.motd.$$
        \_ that is kept for restore&merge operation. If you delete that file
           you will not be able to use this feature. I'll move it to the
           home directory later when it's proven and QAed.
                        \_ man you guys are picky. I've changed it so that
                           it'll keep the work file in $HOME/.motd.$$
        \_ How did you get your account back?
        \_ Sweet!  Now instead of people directly writing over the motd with
           their favorite editor and their own motd copy, they can do it
           through motedit2 and their favorite editor and their own motd copy.
           Why do so many of you seem to think that whatever drivel you have
           to say is so much more important than the drivel of others that it
           is worth *replacing* one set of drivel with another set of drivel?
           The rest of us have managed for years without any motd destroying
           scripts at all.  Just kick tom off soda and the motd will survive
           brutal censorship much longer.  Of all the censors he's the only
           one I've seen who has the time and the anal retentive nature
           required to "win" at motd deletion who will keep checking every
           30 seconds and re-destroying the motd until everyone else gives up.
           He's not the only censor but he is the biggest asshat about it.
           \_ Tomasa bin Holub must be captured before the next Politburo
              election!
           \_ Why don't root-type people make it so that you can only use
              motdedit (or another program they deem effective) to edit
              the motd. Is that even possible to do?
              \_ if anyone ever does that i give the motd about a month to live
                 before everyone looses interest and stops reading/posting.
                 \_ where "everyone" is the set [cowardly anonymous trolls].
                     -tom
                    \_ The set of anonymous cowardly trolls adds more value to
                       the csua and motd than *you* do.
           \_ no, the whole point of "restore&merge" is that NOTHING is ever
              deleted. NOTHING. You can restore your old post while keeping
              other people's post. You can "restore&merge" multiple times,
              but it'll NEVER delete new posts because of the merge
              operation. Your reading comprehension is weak.
              \_ No, my patience with frothing babblers is low.  I didn't
                 bother to read your froth carefully after the first line or
                 two.  Why should I?

5/18    is tere a generic csua account to view contracostatimes articles?
        \_ I think we should make this list of username/passwd a public
           file that everyone could edit (like motd). It can't all be
           csuamotd/csuamotd because each site as different password rules.
        \_ csuamotd/csuamotd doesn't work?
           \_ it wanted an email. i went ahead and created
                csuamotd@example.com / csuamotd

5/18    Is there any Windows backup program which (1) Let's you do a full
        backup, (2) Monitors all filesystem changes as they occur, then (3)
        Does an incremental backup on only changed files?  I don't want it to
        have to scan my entire notebook data-partition for changes; changed
        files should already be flagged for backup by the monitoring daemon.
        I don't want some hacky program that only runs file listings on
        specific directories every couple minutes and checks file sizes/dates;
        I want something which hooks into the Windows filesystem and is aware
        of all writes as they happen.  Basically, this strategy minimizes hard
        drive wear, and should be faster.  Thanks.
        \_ Um, RAID + tape?
           \_ Notebook hard drive.  Sorry, should have been clearer.
              \_ You've got to be kidding.  You want all this and on a laptop
                 too?  How about a 24" screen that can fit in your pocket while
                 you're at it.
                 \_ The "hard" step is hooking into the Windows filesystem.
                    Apparently Sysinternals Filemon does this, but it doesn't
                    do backup.
        \_ If you buy an external Maxtor drive with "One Touch", it comes with
           a license for Dantz Retrospective Backup. The drive+sw is <$200.
           \_ Does Restrospect hook into the Windows filesystem like I
              described?
        \_ Eh, screw it.  I lookd up Restrospect Professional, and it lets
           you make a "Disaster Recovery CD", which you can boot on a hosed
           system and restore all the files (rather than a complete re-install
           of the OS and all the apps).  This to me is worth more than the
           low-level file monitoring.  FYI, the one that comes with the
           external hard drives is "Retrospect Express".  I'll let motd know
           how it is in several weeks. -op
           \_ hell, you could just use ghost images then
              \_ I didn't fully explain how the feature is neat.  Okay, with
                 Ghost, you gotta do the whole freakin partition every time.
                 Wih Retrospect, you can do incremental backups to your
                 heart's content.  Each incremental backup is fast.  If
                 your disk gets hosed, then *after* it got hosed, you can
                 create the CD.  The disk gets restored to when you last
                 incremented.  Get it?
        \_ You want a program that hooks deeply into windows and keeps a db of
           files *as they change* and then copies them to something else?  I
           wouldn't want anything hooked that deeply into windows.  Note how
           intrusive the anti-virus programs are.  That's what you're talking
           about but worse.
           \_ That sounds like a slightly modified log-based fs.  Not that
              evil a thing, really.  I think there's a freebsd implementation
              floating around, yes? -- ilyas
              \_ Not evil per se as a concept but look at how the perform in
                 the real world.  I really wouldn't want anything hooking that
                 deeply into a windows system if it wasn't absolutely required.
           \_ If it came out, I'd buy it ... if Windows were still fast.
              Assuming you always back up the registry, all the monitoring
              process is doing is collecting a list of all
              new/changed/deleted/moved files since the last incremental
              backup.  The copy step occurs daily. -op
        \_ Put your data on a linux box and mount the samba share from windows.
           THen, use rsync and snapshot backups.

5/17    Can some chemical engineering major tell me if these are real or some
        sort of elaborate joke?
        Molecules with Silly Names
        http://www.bris.ac.uk/Depts/Chemistry/MOTM/silly/sillymols.htm
        \_ I know Buckminster Fullerene, Unununium and Apatite exist, and I've
           heard of Cadaverine before. -!ChemE
           \_ But Cummingtonite?!
              \_ There is also benitoite, found in Benito, CA. -- ilyas
              \_ A mineral discovered near Cummington... plausible.

5/12    On Enterprise (the tv show) their computers have a cool way of
        watching logfiles, similar to "tail -f". Except theirs scrolls up a
        bunch of lines together so that each new line added doesn't force
        the screen to scroll. It makes things easier to read. Anybody know
        of a program like this? Otherwise I'll write my own. Thanks.
        \_ tail -f | more.  And you're a dork.
           \_ That requires user interaction. not what I want.
              \_ what you're decribing would be thoroughly unuseful for
                 general real world use.
        \_ less
        \_ justthesame
        \_ Start your xterm with the "-j" option.  Or press and hold ctrl-
           middle-button in your xterm window and select "Enable Jump Scroll".
        \_ That sucks. What if there's a bunch of lines and then one that says
           "starting long-ass job.." followed by a long delay, you might miss
           that message until after the job is done because it got batched up
           with its own results.
        \_ sounds like you want jump scrolling as a less option.  Rather than
           scroll the screen for each line, scroll by say half a screen width
           and then don't scroll again until bottom of screen is reached. I'm
           kind of surprised that isn't already in less (yes I did RTFM).
           \_ what are you talking about? less is a pager, it doesn't scroll
              unless you press space or whatever. It doesn't have some timed
              auto-scrolling thing (right?). Although, that would be a nice
              feature for it (but you should be able to jump in and out of
              that mode via a command).

5/12    Any NFS servers that run on windows?
        \_ Can you just use smbmount?
           \_ Unpredictable port number is bad for firewalls
           \_ smbmount doesn't exist for all systems.
        \_ Haven't used any in about 8 years, but a google for
           nfs server windows turns up a bunch. --scotsman
        \_ Sort of.  PCNFS is a commercial product and there are others but
           they all have the same core windows/unix compatibility issue re:
           user name mapping.  It can be done but it becomes a bitch for large
           user bases.  Maybe these days it offers a more automated way of
           doing it when fed a passwd file.
        \_ I haven't used it, but Unix for Windows(or similar name) from
           Microsoft has nfsd.  And Microsoft is giving these away.  I got
           one in the mail a month ago.  A coworker told me that a lot of
           people prefer installing this first, before resorting to Cygwin.

5/8     On the linux ls discussion from the other day, this is my take:
        Using/learning linux specific flags is all fine and good, and
        adding new features to old tools is too, but when I have to
        switch between 5 different OSes in a given day, it's simply a
        waste of my time.  There are many ways to solve a given problem.
        Linux's solution always seems to be "add another flag".  If you're
        a Linux only shop, have at it.  Learn all the little idiosyncracies
        of your favorite flavor.  But god help you when you get an HPUX
        box thrown at you. --scotsman
        \_ Relax, you'll live longer. Learn how to use alias and edit
           the default profile. -williamc
           \_ You miss the point entirely.  Sometimes this is not an option.
              If you're not a sysadmin then this discussion doesn't matter.
              I'm talking about efficiency in work situations. --scotsman
        \_ Compare:
           ls -S               6 keypresses
           ls -l|sort -n +4    18 keypresses
           Is that something you want to type for such a simple user task?
           It's just arrogant and silly to not do it, for something so
           common and easy. Including the date or name sort is no more valid.
           On soda there is "dir" which has it. Go study UI principles.
           \_ This is the stupidest thing I've seen on motd in weeks.
              Comparing the number of keypresses?  Christ, man, it's about
              getting the job done as effectively as possible.  When you're
              down to counting keystrokes, you've lost touch with reality about
              what constitutes a sane metric for efficiency.
              \_ effective? What's more effective about piping to sort? it's
                 more limiting, and more obscure. And yes, it takes more effort
                 to type that shit out. It's not about "efficiency" so much as
                 simple ease of use and consistency. That's reality. Not some
                 elitist ubergeek deciding to simply put a note in the man page
                 about how it's not needed. Obviously the fact that it's in
                 the man page means it's a desired feature.
                 \_ What's more effective than piping it to sort?  Could you
                    have missed the point any more?  Jeeesus.
                    \_ Ever stop to consider you're the one missing the point?
                       \_ Yes, but I'm not.  Have a cookie.
                 \_ It's not more obscure.  In fact it's less obscure and more
                    consistent unless you're immersed in Linux.  Why is this
                    point so hard to grasp? --scotsman
                    \_ Forget the status quo, it's more obscure from a
                       usability standpoint. I have to know about the sort
                       command and that I have to do ls -l and sort on that
                       4th column but oh I might need the -n for numeric
                       vs. lexical sorting. Honestly this is really really
                       basic. It's not consistent that there is built-in
                       date sort, or alphabetical sort, and not size sort,
           \_ In 10 years, I think there still be be Windows and Mac OS.
                       the only other basic file property. It's not consistent
                       that I need the long detailed listing when with a
                       builtin it could just work like normal. And it's just
                       plain inconvenient. You don't have to be "immersed
                       in Linux" to see that. I barely even use Linux. It's
                       just common sense and refusing to worship status quo.
                       Oh and I'm just arguing about what's correct, not
                       the "least-common-denominator" factor of working with
                       15 different unixes.
                       \_ Did it ever occur to you that sometimes the status
                          quo *is* the status quo because it has worked well
                          since before you were born and is just plain better?
                       \_ The extension of the point is that when you have
                          learned to use sort appropriately you can then
                          apply it in other cases.  Read the philosophy of
                          UNIX page partha posted below.  If you don't work
                          on 15 different unixes then, as I said above, this
                          discussion doesn't apply to you.  If I get pulled in
                          to help out a client to save a $100k sale, I have
                          to get the job done quickly.  Knowing the least-
                          common-denominator allows me to get up to speed
                          quickly.  It's not worshiping anything.  It's doing
                          my job well. --scotsman
                          \_ you know, it's possible to know how to use
                             "sort," and still support the idea of
                             internalizing functions in Unix utilities in
                             appropriate ways.  You don't need "find -nouser"
                             to be able to find files without a legitimate
                             owner, but it's clearly a functional enhancement
                             to the original "find" functionality.  As for
                             the "philosophy of Unix", don't you think it's
                             a bit ironic that the person posting it is
                             mr. emacs?  -tom
                             \_ Either you're following the unix philosophy or
                                you're trying to circumvent and short cut it
                                and that way leads to madness and windows
                                methodology and chaos.
                          \_ well, clearly there is a "merit of having -S in
                             ls" discussion going on, although the thread
                             didn't start with that. But it's devolved into
                             reiterating already-stated points.
                             \_ So rather than being obtuse you're merely off-
                                topic?
                 \_ Obviously?  So if I write a man page that says you don't
                    understand the core concept of unix utilities then it
                    becomes obvious?  Sigh, I shall explain for the unwashed:
                    the core concept you're missing is that unix is about
                    having lots of little utilities that each do one thing
                    really well.  You create a stream of data from little
                    util to the next via pipes and out pops the right thing
                    at the other end.  I know 'ls' and 'sort'.  I know I can
                    pipe from one to other.  I know this works on every *nix
                    system I might ever touch.  This is called portability.
                    Linux is the bastard child here, not the non-Linux real
                    unixen you're deriding.  Linux is following the Windows
                    style of over loading programs with things that seem neat
                    at the time but turn into bloated crap later.  I like Unix.
                    I accept Windows.  I do not want my Unix bloated up into a
                    half assed Windows a la Linux.  Simplicity, son.  KISS.
                    \_ you dolt, yes I know about all that shit. "son". my
                       point is simply about the usability issue. I don't care
                       what other unices are doing, I'm saying that they should
                       do this. Whoever wrote that man page obviously knew
                       about the option and knew there were poeple wanting it.
                       -S is not "bloated crap" any more than -t or -r. ls
                       is probably the most common command users run. Listing
                       files is what ls does, it should "do it well". I could
                       write a man page that says vi is unnecessary because
                       you have ED IS THE STANDARD!
                       \_ Sorting on a date with sort is not the same as
                          sorting on an integer such as size.  Please explain
                          in what way I am a dolt.  Is it that I read your mind
                          and understand what you don't understand to such a
                          degree that you have nothing left to say but insult
                          me?  If that is the case, then yes, I am a dolt.
                          \_ It sure is the same, son. Sorting on a date isn't
                             algorithmically identical, so what, irrelevant.
                             You're ignoring the big picture. I'm done arguing
                             for today though. Btw ls could easily output the
                             date in a sortable manner. Unix philosophy doesn't
                             require factoring everything into as many programs
                             as possible.
           \_ alias ls-S "ls -l | sort -n +4"
              now you can type "ls-S" in 5 keypresses!  for common tasks, you
              can make the number of required keystrokes arbitrarily short or
              long.  non-issue.
              \_ duh. of course you can make an alias. totally beside the
                 point. of course you'd have to do more work to make it work
                 just like a real "ls -S" would.
        \_ This is why after 10 more years, there will only be Linux
           and nothing else, because the other OS are simply too arrogant
           to do anything about it. Take for example the man pages on
           Solaris, I mean how much effort does it take to make it so that
           it will format according to your screen and does not produce
           the stupid 24 line page header every page? Everytime I look at
           the man page on Solaris I curse it. The linux one is so much
           better. One reason why SunOS is fading.
           \_ You know, I HATE working on Solaris.  Nothing works the way
              that I'm used to without aliasing everything.  However, when
              we were running our server on Solaris it never once crashed in
              the entire time I was in charge of it.  I can't say the same
              for any of the Linux installs I've set up.
           \_ In 10 years, I think there still will be Windows and Mac OS.
              Your arguments for Linux and against other Unix OSs are the
              the same as the arguments for Windows/Mac OS and against Linux.
              Every time I read a man page I curse it.  Hyperlinked help files
              are so much better.
              \_ personally, I find the statement "after 10 more years, there
                 will only be xxxxx and nothing else... " to be pretty
                 absurd in the context of any technological question.
                 \- the amount of wrongheadedness in this thread is amazing.
                    but rather than agrue, the youth ought to read ... --psb
                    http://www.faqs.org/docs/artu/ch01s06.html
                    \_ excellent.  --scotsman
                    \_ Yes!  Finally!  This should be mandatory reading before
                       geting into core CS classes or getting a Soda account.
           \_ In 10 more years Linux will 'rewl' because the man pages format
              better than on Solaris?  If that's the best you can come up with
              then just stick with Windows and reboot a lot.

5/7     How do I make ls sort files by size like -t for time? thx
        \_ From man ls:
           The following is how to do an ls listing sorted by size
           (and shows why ls does not need a separate option for this):

           ls -l | sort -n +4

        \_ use Linux, it's -S
           \_ I want to do this on soda!
              \_ download gnu fileutils, compile, presto.
              \- ls -ls | sort -n[r] --psb
                 \_  ls -ls | sort -n[r]
                     sort: No match.
                     \- dont actually type the [], you doofus --psb
                 \_ ls -l | sort +4   is more general.
                    \- it's more fragile. ls -s always makes the sort field
                       first. otherwise the field can depend on whether the
                       group owner is listed etc ... varies by ls flavor,
                       ls aliases etc --psb
                       \_ well, I meant since it depends on block size it
                          would fail by default for tiny files.
                          \- fair enough, but really arnet you just looking
                             for the biggest file 95% of the time. --psb
                    \_ Add a -n for good measure.  Not all platforms will
                       detect an all numeric column, so "sort -n +4"
                       \_ ok, but he said "want to do this on soda!" :)
                          frankly though I think the man page is stupid and
                          it should be an ls option for convenience. they
                          have the other sorting functionality.
                          \_ They have sorting for time becuase sorting human
                             readable dates is difficult with other default
                             command line tools.  Sorting file size is easy.
                             This is the UNIX way.  many modular pieces you
                             can piece together to do what you want.  Linux
                             makes you weak. --scotsman
                             \_ it's a bunch of extra characters to type for
                                a basic, common desire that could very easily
                                just be in ls where normal people expect. (hey,
                                why should sort have a field option anyway? you
                                can just manipulate lines using 'cut' etc. It's
                                the way real men do it.)
                             \_ don't be a doofus--it's not like FreeBSD
                                "ls" is "pure" (color "ls" doesn't make you
                                weak, but sorting on size does?)  -tom
                                \_ I wasn't talking about purity.  And I guess
                                   it wasn't clear that I was being facetious.
                                   But the point stands that to pull sort into
                                   ls with yet another command line option
                                   makes ls more tedious to remember how to use
                                   and postpones the newer user's learning how
                                   to use sort.  And who uses color ls?
                                   --scotsman
                                   \_ how is it more tedious?  If you don't
                                      want to use -S, pipe it through sort
                                      instead.  -tom
                                      \_ I guess I'm just sick of interviewing
                                         IT drones who can't write a decent
                                         command line.. --scotsman
                                         \- how about adding a du flag that
                                            just means du all the directories
                                            under here but not the files.
                                            how about another du flag that
                                            is directories only in size
                                            order. and another that sorts
                                            based on number of files rather
                                            than cumul size.. --psb
                                            \_ Ah yes, I forgot; the only
                                               "official" command-line options
                                               are the ones that FreeBSD has
                                               adopted.  Therefore it's OK
                                               to use "find -delete", but not
                                               "ls -S"  -tom
                                                   \- pure is BSD 4.3 --psb
                                   \_ color ls is the best thing since linux!
                                      just like color monitor is the best thing
                                      since monochrome green terminals.
                                   \_ Once you begin to appreciate color ls, you
                                      will never go back, like a lot of things.
                                      \- dired >> ls --psb
        \_ using sort -n +5 gets rid of the color, oh fuck, fuck!!
        \_ If you are using a terminal with black background, try
           LSCOLORS=BxDxFxdxCxdxdxBxBxBxBx and do ls -G
           \_ Cool, ls -lG / looks nice!

5/6     Let the good times roll!: http://csua.org/u/77k
        \_ Instead of me just purging your link, how about you give it a brief
           description so we know if there's a reason to check it and if it
           is work safe or not?  Then it might have reason to live.
           \_ Its something about the current oil prices, an opinion piece from
              an investment website.  I suspect PeakOil guy posted it.  -- !op
        \_ Oil has Peaked!  Jesus is coming!  Look busy!

5/6     I am tired of overwriting someone else's post.  What's the path
        to motdedit?  It's not in my path.
        \_ /csua/bin
        \_ yet another reason why we would make motd root-ONLY writable, and
           setup a setuid binary that 1) keeps track of who editted what
           lines using CVS/RCS (but keeping it anonymous to the general
           public) and 2) to prevent clobbering of files using merge, built
           into the binary/script of course.
           \_ (1) setuid root = more trouble than it's worth. it's a fucking
              motd... , (2) doesn't motdedit use merge anyways?

5/4     I am not html literate so please bear with my question.  I downloaded
        emacs doc in html form, and I created a sym link to its top node from
        a directory more convenient for me.  However, the links from the
        top node are all referring to the directory for the sym link instead
        of that containing the docs.  This doesn't happen for other html files
        I downloaded, so what is the problem?
        \_ bear?
           \_ Go Bears!
        \_ Probably something to do with relative vs. absolute paths. Edit
           the HTML and take a look at the links and see if they are relative.
           \_ They are relative.  I should mention that it does not matter
              where I put the actual docs directory, the links works fine if
              I open a file directly in that directory but does not work if
              I open it through a symlink.  I don't know why it would be
              sensitive to symlink but it is.
              \_ If Mozilla thinks it's opening file://home/foo/bar.html, a
                 relative link will open file://home/foo/baz.html.
                 This is true whether /home/foo is a directory or a
                 symlink to another directory; the URL is the issue,
                 not the filesystem location.  -tom
              \_ Well, no shit sherlock, of course it would be sensitive if
                 the links are relative. Hover over the link and see what the
                 browser is pointing to (look at bottom of browser window in
                 Mozz). Either do a symbolic link on the underlying fs so you
                 can kludge the location or edit the symlinks so that they
                 point correctly.

5/4     /csua/tmp has about 2.8 GB used in publicly readable directories.
        About 2.3 GB is random stuff from individual users.  The top 20 files
        in /csua/tmp are a total of 800MB and the most recent is 3 months old.
        Please clean out your old files.  --anonymous but trying to be polite
        \_ fyi, /csua/tmp/hozers has a list of directories sorted by size
        \_ Wow, I had no idea we had so much world readable crap on soda!
        \_ If you have any cool files in /csua/tmp please post the filename
           and a brief description here.
           \_ If you don't, root will delete your files in 24 hours.
              (Ok, not really, but I wish root would.  :P  )
            * Sims.mpg are virtual creatures evolved to moved around in
              different environs (water, on land, etc.)
           \_ crabvspipe1.mpg is an unlucky crab which gets sucked through a
              tiny hole in a pipe due to a huge pressure difference.
           \_ moab_munifest.avi is some dumb bicycling thing.
              \_ clearly you didn't watch it.  -tom
              \_ Wait for it...Wait for it...RIIIIIIIIIIIII-
                 \_ DELETE FILE!
                    \_ Don't you mean BALEEATED?!
           \_ theplay_long.ram is the highest quality clip I've seen.
              (thanks tom!)
        \_ any good porn? -hornyguy
           \_ Heavens I hope not.  The CSUA has had enough pornishment.
           \_ tranthra.avi-- dorm+hooker porn.  Not good porn.
              \_ So when is William "Hung" going to film one of these?
              \_ Ok root, I don't think anyone can argue if you delete
                 that.  (Not to mention it's a year old)
                 \_ It's a classic!
              \_ is this a ucb dude?
                 \_ yes. it takes place in the units.
              \_ Is this the one where some kid take a hooker with
                 flat breasts into his dorm room while his computer
                 camera on and they have some kind of argument about
                 why the computer needs to be on?
                 \_ Does that mean there's no actual sex in it?
                    \_ There's sex.  It's just not well-filmed or erotic.
           \_ It's a hilarious video. Not erotic but definitely humorous.

5/4     /csua/tmp is full.  Thanks tom:
293032 -r-xr-xr-x   1 tom       wheel  299905024 Jan 29 15:51 moab-munifest.avi
        \_ why post this to the MOTD instead of mailing me?  Oh right, you're
           an anonymous coward.  -tom
           \_ Because nobody likes you, everybody hates you, we think you
              should eat worms...
           \_ so do you plan to remove the file?
              \_ certainly not because of some MOTD posting.  If someone
                 wants to ask me directly, I'll consider it.  (It was
                 placed there at the specific request of another CSUA
                 member).  -tom
                           \- you know tom, this bit of pigheadedness
                              surprises even me. i dont think you are
                              being picked on here ... you own the largest
                              file there by a factor of two. has something
                              changed in your life to ratchet up your
                              bitterness level? it seem to jump up at
                              some point recently ... i only ask out of
                              intellectual curiosity. you can continue to
                              bray about the AMC but help everyone else
                              out by deleting the damn file. --psb
                              \_ Does 'pigheadedness' have etymology related
                                 to 'go stick your head in a pig'? -- ilyas
                              \_ Publicly-readable files account for only
                                 30% of the disk usage in /csua/tmp.
                 \_ do you think its usefulness to the other csua member
                    might have expired in the last 3 months?
                    \_ why don't you download it and see?  -tom
                       \_ i am beginning to understand this general animus
                          towards tom.
                          \_ the greater your level of contact the more you'll
                             understand.  he's just got a self esteem problem
                             because he never got a degree but is surrounded
                             by those who do or soon will.
                             \_ Except I personally know a few people who never
                                graduated, and don't have this problem...
           |_ /csua/tmp should be self-monitored. It's quite rude to leave
              huge files there, esp if you know that the filesystem is full.
                asshole.
                \_ It's also quite rude to insult someone in a public
                   forum, instead of asking them politely.  Asshole.  -tom
                   \_ i'll just note that bad behavior on one part does not
                      justify or excuse bad behavior on another, just as
                      rudeness on one does not justify or excuse rudeness
                      on another.
                      \_ Yes.  Unless it's tom.
             Speaking of resource abuse, whatever happened to the alumni
           donation thing? I'd like to donate maybe 50 bucks but I still don't
           see a PayPal link and what not. Maybe I should just donate to the
           Stanford computing facility.         -guy doing CSMS@Stanford
                         \_ there is a difference between what is expected
                            and what is justified.
                            \_ Being rude to tom is always justified.
        \_ since I ever met tom in 1992 he's been rude and inconsiderate.
           he has contributed very little except hostile, condescending
           remarks, and now this. It's not the first time, and it will not
           be the last. It has been 12 years since I've known him and very
           little has changed. I really think we should squish him.
           \_ "now this"?  I put a file requested by another CSUA member
              into a directory intended to allow CSUA members to share files.
              How horrific!  As for my contributions, I was CSUA VP for two
              semesters--what have *you* done?
              And there are files > 100MB which have been there for over 2
              years; why do you care about mine?  Oh, right, because you're
              an anonymous coward.
              Shit, I've been trolled.  -tom
              \_ I don't see what anonymity has to do with the size of the
                 file.  And I certainly don't buy into anonymity as a
                 justification for pointless ad hominem.  Chill, dude.  -mice
                 \_ Why are you talking about the file? The post tom responded
                    to is just an anonymous smear and request to "squish him".
                    You're fucking insane if you think his response was somehow
                    out of line. What ad hominem? Wtf is wrong with u people.
                    \_ Uhm, did you even read the post the guy is replying to?
                       Train harder, grasshopper.
                    \- because not removing the file is "out of line" with
                       arguing with the fellow in the motd. nobody is saying
                       tom should be squished or shouldnt argue with this
                       fellow. but he should have done something with the
                       file. his stubbornness over this makes him either
                       stupid or an asshole ... or possibly somehow psycho-
                       logically disturbed. --psb
              \_ Because yours was the largest file.  That was hard.  Try
                 engaging your brain occasionally.
                 \_ Irrelevant.  It's still a relatively small usage of the
                    filesystem.
           \_ FYI, signing as "guy doing CSMS@Stanford" does not count as
              de-anonymizing yourself.  You might as well not sign at all
              if you're not going to give your username.
              \_ I think that was about the donation part, not the tom part.
        \_ Speaking of resource abuse, whatever happened to the alumni
           donation thing? I'd like to donate maybe 50 bucks but I still don't
           see a PayPal link and what not. Maybe I should just donate to the
           Stanford computing facility.         -guy doing CSMS@Stanford
        \_ Why do you guys always pick on tom?  Just because he's a bit rude,
           hostile, and censors the motd like some nanny is no reason to abuse
           him all the time.  Seriously, I feel badly for him.  He's working
           as some IT peon at one of the greatest universities on the face
           of the planet and literally surrounded by people smarter and better
           educated than himself since he never graduated.  Of course he's
           bitter and hostile.  Why don't you guys just accept him as he is
           and let him feel important once in a while?  He'll mellow once you
           accept him as one of us.
                \_ hahahahhaaha this has got to be one of the best responses
                   I've ever read. It deserves the best motd post of the
                   week.
                   \_ you hypocrites sound like pathetic high schoolers
        \_ well apaprently there is space on /csua/tmp now, and moab*.avi
           is still there, so whatever.
           \_ So the moral of the story is:  Most CSUAers are helpful and
              cooperative, but tom is a jerk.
              \_ Here is what is going on:  Tom is proud of whatever is
                 in that file [thus the helpful suggestion "why don't you
                 dl it and see"] and he wants to keep it there to point to
                 or for people to stumble on.  If he were to delete it,
                 putting it back without "someone asked me to put it there"
                 would just look pathetic.  No, I don't know why he doesn't
                 just put it on a web page.
                 \_ It's really simple.  I'm not going to respond to some
                    anonymous coward's attempt to disparage me on the MOTD.
                    If someone wants to make it a personal request, I'll
                    consider it.
                    The file is a video made at the 2003 Moab MUniFest,
                    and I think it could be of interest to people, but
                    the original purpose of putting it in /csua/tmp was
                    that randal wanted to see it, and I don't have personal
                    web space where I can stick 300MB.  -tom
        \_ You guys are bad.  Tom picked on me once, but this thread is
           a little mean.
           \_ You reap what you sow...

5/1    waner, cut the binary shit out.
        \_ waner is smushing the motd with binaries?  waner the good
           stalker christian?  no way!
        \_ what binary was he using? I ran strings on it the first time
           but I couldn't really see.
        \_ how did you figure it out?  -waner
           \_ I propose waner's account be suspended.
           \_ second that.  tell us how did you figure this out.  by
              knowing who did the last motd destruction/censoring, may be
              we could stop motd censoring altogether.
              \_ If you squish tom you'll end most motd censorship.
              \_ Maybe keep one window tracking changes, and another tracking
                 people's idle or last login.  This would only work for hosings
                  in the middle of the night.
                  \_ there is no middle of the night.  people post from all
                     time zones.
                     \_ Some time zones are more active than others.  There is
                        a middle of the night for a machine where most of the
                        users are in California.
                        \_ I'm going to measure activity as a function of time
                           over a few 24 hour periods and see if you're right.
                           i'll get back to you on this.
                           \_ I haven't measured it scientifically but I know
                              motd activity is primarily M-F/8-6.  I'd like to
                              see what you measure and what the numbers look
                              like when you're done.
           \_ i log fstat and diff on motd.public.  it's usually not hard to
              figure out who's modifying the file with what, particularly if
              the person does it repeatedly.
              \_ except that some (many?) editors don't keep a file open while
                 they're editing. so the window during which they have the
                 file open (i.e., reading or writing) is rather small.
        \_ he's a stalker too?  do tell.
           \_ There was a world-readable text file in his home directory which
              in obsessive detail chronicled his every interaction with this
              particular girl over the past year or two.  Someone posted the
              filename to the motd.  Then everyone was creeped out, then waner
              made the file non-readable.
              \_ It was a great file.  I've never had such a deep look into the
                 mind of a psychotic/stalker before.  Did anyone figure out who
                 the girl is and warn her?
                 \_ maybe if anyone knows felicia, presumably ex-cal student,
                    religious, looks like the righthand chick in
                    http://tinyurl.com/yubsf

4/29    How do I make less recognize my HOME and END key?
        My Home key is [1~, does it matter whether I use tcsh/bash? thx.
        \_ you can do man lesskey. put the following in a file and run lesskey
           on it. This only makes it work for line edit, u figure out the rest:
           #line-edit
           \e[1~ home
           \e[4~ end
           It's not up to tcsh or bash. By the way, for general reference, one
           of the issues with getting keys to work properly is that the xterm
           program has bugs. It's really a pile of shit program.

4/28    Just got a core dump from pine - something about memory full.  I would
        investigate further, but gots to run.
        \_ prolly isolated incident
        \_ I just got a memory full error trying to log in.  tcsh failed.
        \_ How to you check how much free/used memory in FreeBSD?

4/27    sed "s/$var1/$var2/" file
        I need the double quotes so that it will use the the value
        of the variables, var1 and var2, rather than search for the
        string '$var1'.  However, these variables, themselves,

4/28    Any recommendations for a good shell/web hosting provider for personal
        use?
        \_ check find my hosting . com
        \_ Yes. Who are you?
           \_ huh?

4/27    How do I sort the output of lastlogin by time?
        \_ cool, we can figure out who are the motd posters!!
        \_ try /usr/bin/last instead
           \_ no, that's not the output i want. I really just want
              each person's last login.
              \_ learn perl.
              \_ foreach user (`cut -d: -f1 /etc/passwd`)
                 last -1 $user
                 end
              \_ grep -v "^#" /etc/passwd | cut -d: -f1 | xargs -I% last -1 %
                 Pipe it again to sort as needed.  Need more pipes!!!
        \_ /usr/bin/lastlog on linux.  Trivial perl script on anything else.
           [why does someone keep deleting this?]

4/27    sed "s/$var1/$var2/" file
        I need the double quotes so that it will use the the value
        of the variables, var1 and var2, rather than search for the
        string '$var1'.  However, these variables, themselves,
        contain special characters, and so sed isn't working right.
        How can I quote the special characters within the variables?
        \_ use perl
        \_ Just for fun, how do you do it with sed?
           \_ this has not so much to do with sed as it does your
              shell, dude.
            \_ Piping the variable through sed 's/\//\\\//g' will get
               rid of '/' and similar expressions will get rid of other
               special characters.
               \- it will be very tough to do this realiably for tcsh,
                  because you need to handle $, space and history chars
                  slightly differently. there are really klugy approaches
                  but it is best not to use csh/tcsh here. for a specific
                  purpose, you can probably come up with something, but for
                  general input/hostile input, i dont think so. --psb
               \_ ASSUMING only slashes are your problem, this gets you:
 sed "s/`echo $var1 | sed 's/\//\\\//g'`/`echo $var2 | sed 's/\//\\\//g'`/" file
                  Yukola...
                   \_ in other words, use perl you dweeb.
                   \_ Well, you can get around the slash problem by using
                      a different character for the delimiter: s:$var:$var2:g.
                      But it's still a problem for perl.  -tom
        \_ shell programming sucks
           \_ Mmm... sweeping, pointless statement.
              \_ Trivial, obvious statement, just like this one.
                 \_ If I set the BOZO flag to off, will *nix automagically
                    migrate all sweeping, pointless, trivial, obvious
                    statements to specific, meaningful, vital, esoteric
                    statements?

4/26    I want to find out weathers of the bay area in the past few days.
        Is there a website that keep recorded temperatures?
        \_ http://tinyurl.com/23jol (http://www.wrh.noaa.gov
           Click on the links on the right.
        \_ http://www.wunderground.com has a DIY version of the above.

4/26    How do i rewrite alias ff='find . -name "!*" -print' in bash? thx
        \_ You need to use a shell function to emulate that behavior in
           general, but for your example, the -print is redundant anyway, so
           alias ff='find . -name' would suffice.
        \_ Bash?  Why would you convert to a useless bastardised shell like
           that?  Gach! Ptooey!

4/26    How do I use sed or perl, etc. to delete all lines from a file
        before or after some pattern.  For example, in vi, I could type
        /<pattern>dG or 1Gd/<pattern>.  But how do I put this into a
        script?
        \_ I believe sed '/<pattern>/d' will do what you want.
           \_ No, that only deletes the line with the pattern.  It doesn't
              do anything to the lines before or after it.
              \_ Sorry.  Misread the question.
        \_ in perl you want something like:
           $skip = 0;
           open(INFILE,$infile);
           open(OUTFILE,">$outfile");
           while (<INFILE>) {
                $skip = 1 if (/[pattern]/);
                print OUTFILE $_ unless ($skip);
           }
           close (INFILE);
           close (OUTFILE);
           \_ one line form:
              perl -ni -e'$skip=1 if /PATTERN/; print unless $skip' FILENAME
                Change "unless" to "if" if you want to print after the PATTERN
              \_ Thanks.
        \_ manning sed should reveal addresses. you can do:
            sed '/moo/,$d'
           to delete all lines after finding a line that matches the regexp
           /moo/. -ali

4/23    In unix, if I nice a job and it backgrounds other processes, are
        those processes niced as well?
        \_ yes, nice values are usually inherited.
           \_ If only that were the case with people, too.
              \_ Yes and with people if you kill a parent he doesn't
                 try to kill his children before he dies either.
                 \_ No, he just leaves zombies all over the places that need
                    to be killed manually.
                    \_ remember, aim for the head.
                       \_ BRAAAAAAAINS!

4/22    TCSH Help Needed.  How do I make an alias that takes one argument
        and returns the n-th field of a line?  Something like
        alias nth "awk '{print $!:1}'".  I can't figure out the quoting!
        \_ TCSH is notoriously buggy in this way (at least it was back in the
           day).  Depending on the version you're using, you might just
           be SOL if this is the only acceptable way to do this.
           \- This is the second person to follow up with "this is hard
              do to in tcsh. try harder." What is the point of that reply?
              It seems like this person is aware this is a little tricky
              and has tried. I dont think it is version dep and it's not
              a bug but just convoluted. For tcsh 6:
                alias nth "awk '{ print "'$'"\!:1 }'"
              --mr. tcsh
                \_ Mr. TCSH, didn't you write part of tcsh?

4/22    So is the defactor compression program on UNIX bzip2 now? I gotta
        admit it compresses a lot better than gzip, and while it's hecka
        slow it's pretty good.
        \_ No, it's still gzip. bzip2 is only for dweebies who care about
           saving 10-20% on a file in return for 50% more compression/
           decompression time. If your internet pipe is really limited I
           guess it makes sense, but saving 10-20% on something like a 50 meg
           binary file is not going to impress me.

4/22    Does hotmail have a limit to the number of attachments that can be
        in a RECEIVED email.  I have about 10 jpegs (approx 20k each) and I
        wonder how many emails I need to seperate them into to send them to a
        friend with a hotmail account.
        \_ record all data to punch cards, load them onto a surpluss Oscar
           Meyer Wiener truck, and launch the whole truck to the destination
           using a giant railgun.
           \_ Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of
              tapes.  -- Dr. Warren Jackson, Director, UTCS
        \_ generally, asking a hotmail question on soda is a bad idea.
           here is a standard soda answer:
           write a shell script to send these pictures one by one using
           mail/mailx, eventhough I am not sure how to encode binary files
           in MIME format using commands
           \_ mimencode
              \_ mpack
        \_ Don't be a doofus.  Put them on a web site and send links.  -tom
           \_ You're a doofus, doofus.
           \_ Wow, the previous guy is like, a prophet or something.  An
              insult and an answer that doesn't really answer the
              question!
              \_ Of course it answers the question.  In fact, it's the correct
                 answer to the question.  If someone asks "how do I hammer in
                 these nails with a screwdriver?", the answer is "use a hammer,
                 doofus."  -tom
                 \_ Heh, that made my day.
                 \_ Bad analogy, doofus.  I'm not saying your answer was
                    not a possible right answer, but it's also possible
                    there is some reason that's not feasible.  Unlikely,
                    but not impossible.  Also, there's no reason to be
                    a jerk.  You could politely suggest your alternitive.
                    I suppose this anwers my question as to why everyone
                    wants to sorry your account.  -jrleek
                    \_ The person has a soda account, so of course it's
                       feasible.  You might say there's no reason to be a
                       jerk--I say there's no reason to ask stupid questions.
                        -tom
                        \_ And so he posts after the op already posted
                           why he didn't want it on a webpage.
                           \_ The op is still a doofus.
                           \_ The op's reasoning is flawed. This whole thread
                              is stupid enough that by MOTD charter section
                              7 subparagraph B the op shall be subject to
                              insults until such time as the thread is gone.
                              The fact that it's also about Hotmail is just
                              insult to injury.
                                \_ Hey, can I help it if people I associate
                                   with make the mistake of using hotmail
                                   for email?  In the future, the first
                                   question I ask when I meet someone will
                                   be if they use hotmail for their email.
                                   If so, I just won't associate with them.
                                        -op
                              \_ You mean injury to insult?
                                 \_ No, he probably doesn't.
                    \_ I'm surprised anyone would even mentioning sorry in
                       in this context!  I agree with Tom - given the OP's
                       posting, "why not send links" seems a very reasonable
                       question...
                       \_ That's what I'm saying, it IS reasonable, but
                          you don't have to be a jerk about it.  As for
                          the sorry mention, that's referencing
                          yesterday's discussion. -jrleek
                    \_ so if you dont have a hammer available, you'd rather
                       insist on using the screwrdiver, instead of getting one?
                \_ I appreciate the suggestion to put the pics on a web
                   page.  There are 2 reasons why I don't prefer to do
                   this.  I don't want the pics publicly available.  And I
                   don't want them on my web site indefinately.  If I send
                   a link, the receiver might assume they will always be there.
                   But I will eventually take them off the web.  So, good
                   suggestion, but I still prefer to email them.  So, is
                   there anyone out there with a hotmail acct that can
                   answer my original question?  -op
                   \_ There's another reason people might choose to hurl insults
                      at you at this point.  It literally took me less than
                      100 seconds to go to http://hotmail.com, look at the FAQ, and
                      see that any email under 1 MByte total is fine, as long
                      as it doesn't put the user over their total quota.
                      So you're ok if the user is not close to having a
                      full mailbox, since you want to send less than .5 Meg.
                      \_ The FAQ I found on http://hotmail.com says there is a
                         limit of 1 Meg for outgoing messages.  I doesn't
                         say anything about incoming messages (that I saw),
                         but I vaguely recall that there is some limit to
                         the number of attachments an incoming message can
                         have.
                        \_ All this discussion, but no answer to the actual
                           question.  I guess hotmail users don't post to
                           the motd.
                        \_ you could have frigging mailed the stuff already
                           and not wasted so much time. Just email once or
                           10 times in smaller amounts. what the fudge is it?
                           It is only 200k total. Send it in one email doofus.
        \_ send yourself 20 small jpg files and see what happens.  there must
           be some reason you're asking this if you don't think this will work.
           \_ I don't have a hotmail account.  It's easier to ask on the
              motd than to get a hotmail acct just for this purpose. -op
        \_ Better yet:  open a Yahoo Mail account.  Send the pix one at a time
           to that account.  When all of the pix have been received by the
           account, send the username and password to your intended target.
           Yahoo gives more storage than Hotmail anyway.

4/21    fsck is going to run on the root filesystem of my remote server on the
        next reboot. Is there someway to capture the output without a human
        having to look at the screen while it is running. I don't have a remote
        console.
        \_ If this is linux, put a ">> filename" in /etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit
           for the fsck line.  No.  I lie.  man initlog.  --scotsman

4/20    ROOT: var is full!
        df -k .
        Filesystem  1K-blocks   Used Avail Capacity  Mounted on
        /dev/da0s1f   1016303 935181  -182   100%    /var

        I can't email root because var is full

4/16    Anyone use 'Speak Freely'.  For Unix or Windows?  What was your
        experience like?

4/16    Is there a version of sort that keeps only one copy of identical lines
        on the output, or some other cmd that does that?
        \_ uniq
        \_ sort -u  -- op after reading the man page for a 3rd time.
           \_ sort -u doesn't exist on all systems.  cat foo | sort | uniq
              should be universally portable among *nix systems.
              \_ so that's why I never knew about sort -u ... -uniq poster
                 \_ yep.  IIRC it was a linux introduced bastardization.  I
                    don't see why they needed to make sort do something that
                    another ancient program already existed for as if
                    eliminating "| uniq" was such a great time saver or
                    radical improvement to the core unix utilities. -tom
                        \_ sort -u is not a linux bastardization. It has
                           has been a standard option to sort since System V
                           and BSD4.1. Steve Bourne mentions it on pgs 193,
                           194, 196 and 266 (the sort(1) man page) in "The
                           UNIX System" (1983).
                    \_ that's easy to discount. both freebsd (e.g., soda) and
                       solaris offer a sort with -u option.
                    \- Which unix version doesnt do "sort -u"? I will bet
                       you this is not a "linux bastardization" ... by which
                       I assume you mean this is a GNU sort option.
                       re: "time saver" ... the time being saved isnt the
                       time to type "|uniq" but the run time. Have you
                       done any system programming? Why dont you time the
                       difference between the two on a large data file with
                       some repeats. Gee why does wc have the -l option?
                       That is so misleading. Is it so hard to do
                       grep -n ^ file | sed '$!d' | cut -f1 -d: ? --psb
                       \_ If I cared about runtimes I wouldn't be using the
                          default system utilities.  Yes, I meant GNU since
                          sort is obviously not part of the kernel, which we
                          both know.
                          \- What would you use if you cared about runtimes?
                             You can write a faster grep? GNU != linux so
                             calling it a linux bastardization is 1. stupid
                             2. wrong. --psb

4/15    How do people deal with long file names when burning CD?  Rockridge
        extension only allows upto 32 (31?) characters.
        \_ Rockridge supports up to 127 characters in UNIX.
        \_ tar (or use whichever archiver) first
        \_ can unix read PC and hybrid cd formats?
           \_ Depends on the UNIX. Linux can red Joliet if you compile it in.
              I'm sure *BSD has a backport. No go on Solaris.
        \_ I usually burn w/ joliet extensions turned on. This results in
           the shorter 8.3 file names on solaris boxes that can't read joliet,
           but the file names show up correctly on Linux, MacOS (9/X) and
           FreeBSD.
        \_ I usually burn with joliet (-J), rockridge (-R/-r), the
           translation table (-T), and long file names (-l).  Probably
           overkill, but no problems reading the names.
           \_ cool, but which program on Darwin/OSX does that?
                \_ hdiutil, toast and mkisofs can all do this (the
                   options specified look like they are for mkisofs)
                   To make a joliet/iso9660 hybrid using hdiutil:
                   $ hdiutil makehybrid -verbose -iso -joliet \
                             -default-volume-name [vol name] -o [iso file] \
                             [dir]
                   \_ mkisof is not available on Darwin.  hdiutil only
                      does iso level 2 so probably cannot do the job.
                   \_ mkisof is not available on Darwin.  Anyway hdiutil
                      to make an image before burning.  Unfortunately if
                      you want Rock Ridge extension, you have to use
                      something else to make the image first.  At least
                      for the version I have: 5.2
        \_ http://csua.org/u/6xb?arstechnica.com
                      probably does the job though I haven't checked.
                      What's nice about Toast is that it does not need
                      to make an image before burning, unfortunately unless
                      you want Rock Ridge extension, and it cannot be operated
                      from command line.  At least for the version I have: 5.2

4/14    The Luxury of Ignorance: An Open Source Horror Story
        http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cups-horror.html
        And a nice response:
        http://daringfireball.net/2004/04/spray_on_usability
        \_ Nice response?  More like a head in a hole response.
           \_ Uhhh... no.  The response is that ESR doesn't even understand
              the extent of the problem.  How is this a "head in a hole"
              response?
        \_ not really an "open source" horror story... more like a unix
           configuration horror story. or linux or whatever *nix this guy
           has. nothing related to "open source" about the problem
           \_ Way to not read any of the articles!

4/12    Ok, I am not anonymous, and I will nuke kinney's stuff on sight.
        Pages worth of his barely coherent ramblings are not something that
        should end up here.  That it is about Iraq does not raise their
        usual quality.  What primarily pissed me off was the volume.
        Perhaps this is obvious, but kinney does not have a soda account.
        Aside from a link to his stuff, or a reasonably sized quote in the
        context of a larger discussion, he gets no real estate here.  This is
        the motd, not the motk. -- ilyas
        \_ oh, the irony
           \_ hi tom
        \_ Drivel from both ilyas and kinney should be nuked.
           \_ Hear hear.
        \_ look down at the passwd file fool
        \_ How can he be posting here if he doesn't have an account?
           \_ I was under the impression he wasn't posting himself.  I stand
              corrected on his account, however. -- ilyas
              \_ He should do what psb and others have done, when writing long
                 pieces, just put it into another world-readable file and post
                 the path. (We actually have /csua/tmp/motd.kinney too.)
        \_ Kerry and Bush don't have logins either, but their shit shows up
           all the time. Can I munch them too?
           \_ Yes, feel free to munch Bush.

4/9     Anybody using Eclipse's CDT package?  Is it possible to sync the
        gdb view with the current code that is being executed?

4/7     I have very little experience with tape backups.  I have to grab data
        off of tapes that are of unknown format.  Is there an easy way to
        identify what format the data are saved in?  This will be done on a
        linux box.
        \_ dd if=/dev/nstX of=tmp bs=2048k count=1
           file tmp (or whatever you call the file)
           This will recognize at least tar and dump formats not sure
           about networker/netbackup/other comercial apps.
           \_ Awesome.  Thanks.
           \_ that won't "recognize" anything at all; it will copy the
              raw data off the tape, transferring the problem from "what format
              is this tape in?" to "what format is this file in?"
              \_ % file tmp

4/5     What's going on with http://scotch.csua.berkeley.edu? (our faithful port
        23 SSH proxy...)  As a test...

        <4> telnet http://scotch.csua.berkeley.edu
        Trying...
        Connected to http://scotch.csua.berkeley.edu.
        Escape character is '^]'.
        128.32.112.230: connect: Connection refusedLocal flow control off

        Connection closed by foreign host.
        \_ send this shit to root not the motd.
                \_ Calm down. You act like this is the first time
                   someone has posted a problem involving soda on
           \_ He probably just wanted faster abuse^H^H^H^H^Hservice.
                   the motd.
                   \_ im calm. yes, its not the first time. and like every
                      other time he needs to send his shit to the right people.
                   the motd.
           \_ He probably just wanted faster abuse^H^H^H^H^Hservice.

4/2     In Outlook 2000, when the message text contains a UNC path, Outlook
        usually display it as a link that I can click on to open the folder or
        file.  But if the path contains space characters, it only recognizes
        the path up to the first space.  Any way to get around this problem?
        Thanks.
        \_ fire up the debugger and fix it!
        \_ use < > around your UNC.  Something like <\\your server\path>

3/31    Is it common for unix pid's to flip once they get to 99999? I just
        noticed my PIDs are really low numbers.
        \_ They roll over on most systems at 32767 or 65535 actually.
        \_ > ps -a | sort -nr | head -5
           99611  Df  Is+    0:00.99 -doosh (tcsh)
           98658  CJ  Is     0:00.52 tcsh
           98072  Db  Is+    0:00.05 -tcsh (tcsh)
           97380  Di  I+     0:05.47 /usr/local/bin/perl /home/digital/mehlhaff/bin/motdwa
           97326  Di  IWs    0:00.00 /bin/sh

3/30    How can I tell what has been compiled into my postfix binary?
        For example, I want to see if it has mysql support built in.
        \_ If you know what you're looking for, you can probably use
           strings/grep (assuming you have just the binary.)  Or you
           could just roll your own... -John
        \_ Try ldd if dynamically linked, or nm postfix | grep mysql
           if static. --scotsman
        \_ If you installed with a package it should say.  If you installed
           from source, look at the makefile and config files.

3/25    as of today i can't get my imaps mail off of csua port 993. anyone
        else have this problem?
        \_ I have this problem not, with openssl as the connector.
           * OK [CAPABILITY IMAP4REV1 LOGIN-REFERRALS AUTH=PLAIN AUTH=LOGIN]
             http://soda.CSUA.Berkeley.EDU IMAP4rev1 2002.332 at Thu, 25 Mar 2004
             19:23:26 -0800 (PST)
           1 LOGIN <snip>
           1 OK [CAPABILITY IMAP4REV1 IDLE NAMESPACE MAILBOX-REFERRALS BINARY
             SCAN SORT THREAD=REFERENCES THREAD=ORDEREDSUBJECT MULTIAPPEND]
             User <snip> authenticated
           ...
           6 LOGOUT
           * BYE http://soda.csua.berkeley.edu IMAP4rev1 server terminating connection
                \_ use the source, luke!
           \_ I'm also having troubles connecting from Mail in MacOS X after
              Thursday morning.  What changed?  --jeffwong
              \_ I am using Mail.app as well. Didn't state it originally
                 for fear of Mac vs. PC vs. Linux flames. -op

3/24    Anyone know of an xterm that can be moved between X servers? --jwm
        \- emacs used to be. not sure of current status. --psb
           \_ what a helpful response.
              \- why dont you let jwm decide that. this is the advantage of
                 non-anon help requests. i know jwm and know is he capable of
                 investing this if worthwhile to him. he knows me and can
                 decide whether to mail me. you, sir, are the swine in this
                 casting exercise. --psb
                 \- BTW, I went to look something up in the emacs info node
                    and looked this up too. You can google for "emacs mutiple
                    displays create frame" for starters. --psb
                 \_ You are an imposter. The real psb rises above all slights
                    and simply, smugly knows he is superior. -- psb #53 fan
        \_ its not *exactly* the same thing, but you can get a similar result
           with screen run inside of any xterm.  screen -a to start the
           session. Go to other X server, open up an xterm and then 'screen -r'
           to attach to the terminal session in the first xterm.  you can use
           screen -r -x to multiply attach to the same xterm session.
           SCREEN RULES!  -ERic
           \_ ERic R00LZ!  -John
           \_ that teaches me for not reading the man page throughly.  I
              never knew about the -x option!  Thanks dude!

3/23    What is a reasonable NFS transfer rate (cp file . for example),
        100 BaseT?
        \_ How busy is your network? What is on your network? What's between
           the two machines on your network?
           \_ Let's assume an unloaded net.  The two machines are on the same
              switch.
        \_ For unknown networks when I just need a reasonable number I figure
           10-20% overhead for tcp, NFS, and random bad luck.
           \_ So you think around 10MB/sec?  I'm getting 3.6MB/s.
              \_ yes as a *very* rough estimate.  it assumes your net is
                 reasonably clean, your source and target hosts are powerful
                 enough to deal and not overloaded *and* that both src/tgt
                 hosts can retrieve and store the data on/from disk at that
                 speed.  What's the write speed on your target hd?
                 \_ Thanks for your comments.  Write speed is apparently good
                    beacause I was able to cp via NFS 10M/sec to it from
                    a RAID array.  Apparently it was read speed on the disks
                    I had previously mounted via NFS.
        \_ I got around 4 MB/s on a test just now over 100baseT full duplex
           to a relatively robust solaris server w/ 100s of clients and
           gigabit connectivity to the backbone from my linux desktop PC.
           I get 12 MB/s for things like scp in the same LAN.
        \_ If your disks can push it, I have seen 10MB/sec on such a
           network.

3/23    What's the easiest way to find all files on a unix box that contain
        both the words 'imap' and 'pop' on different lines. I'm trying to
        find a courier authd config file that I swear had lines for turning
        on and off different protocols (pop3 and imapd) but I can't find it
        anywhere. and I can't find any references to it. -brett
        \_ hrm.
        egrep -ri '(imap|pop)' / | grep -iv 'imap.*pop' | grep -iv 'pop.*imap'
           --scotsman
          \_ your grep only matches if they are on the same line.
             for speed, i recomend using file to *not* check binaries.
             \_ Picky picky.  use egrep -I, then.  and no, it doesn't match
                "only if they are on the same line".  man egrep.  And no, it
                doesn't guarantee that both are in the file, but i've set you
                on the road to recovery.  For the task at hand, this should
                be sufficient.. --scotsman
        \_ find / -type f -print0 | xargs -0 fgrep -iIl imap \
           | perl -pe 's/\n/\0/' | xargs -0 fgrep -iH pop | fgrep -iv imap \
           | cut -d: -f1 | sort -u      --dbushong
           (this doesn't work for files w/ : in the name; i'll think about
            it.)
           \_ I think I must by smoking crack, be cause the file that I'm
              searching for doesn't appear to exist. I thought there was a
        \_ I think I must by smoking crack, cause the file that I'm searching
           for doesn't appear to exist. I thought it was a courier authd
           file, but maybe I'm confusing it with something I only half remember.
        \_ this is a terrible approach.  strace/truss the daemon and see what
           files it tries to read.  -tom
           \_ Unfirtunateley courier has a bunch of different daemons and
              I don't know which one reads the said file.
              courier config that controlled what serviced either
              authdaemon or couriertcp would allow connections from. Maybe
              I'm confusing it with something I only half remember. -brett
              I'm confusing it with something other file that I only half
              remember. Is anybody here familiar with the courier-ssl
              pop/imap auth daemon? -brett
                \_ Nevermind, I'm totally on crack. The file doesn't exist,
                   Thanks for helping me determine that. I got it to work,
                   I had the wrong userdb name: "poppw" instead of "pop3pw".
        \_ This is a terrible approach; strace/truss the daemon and see what
           files it accesses.  -tom

3/19    Does Unix have a maximum number of files per directory?
        How does one get around this problem?
        \- this isnt a "unix" question but a file system one. "not really"
           is the answer [the most obvious limit is inode amount] but if you
           are using linear directory looks up and get into triple indirection
           performacne will be ass somewhere around 14,000 entries. --psb
        \_ Use VxFS (why does the motd censor not like this answer???)
           \_ Because it is a dumb answer.
              \_ It allows you create as many files per directory as
                 you want.
                 \_ Do you understand the difference between theory and
                    practice?  The OP is clearly doing something that seems
                    likely to push past simpleminded, brainless solutions.
                    Train harder, grasshopper.
                    \_ The OP is only trying to exceed a maximum number
                       of files per directory.  Train harder, flamer.
                    \_ Because UFS uses a linear lookup, while VxFS uses
                       a hashed sort. Why do you keep deleting this answer?
                       Because it makes you look stupid?
              \_ saying its a dumb answer is dumb. say why. dont censor.
        \_ Depends on OS, FS.  Google for "inode"
                    \_ Do you know how UFS hashes directory lookups?
                       Do you know how VxFS does? I do. You apparently
                       do not.

3/18   Dear Dedicated Grandma of 5-Year-Old Boy:
       I saw what you did. And I applaud your determination to teach your
       grandson right, I really do. Its so refreshing these days, in a
       country where most parents work and leave their children to the care
       of strangers, that in some families a grandparent steps in to pass on
       their values. You are such a hero, Grandma. And Grandson will be all
       the better for it.
       You: elderly female, riding the L Taraval with your five-year-old
       grandson, sitting up front in those seats that face inward. Me: male
       in my late twenties, from a farm town in Southern California,
       unaccustomed to the ways of "the big city," sitting in the middle
       section of the train, in a seat that offered an open view of yours.
       There was a woman next to me. The train was moving, the scenery was
       dull. I looked over at your seats. And just in time.
       Your grandson reached deep inside his nose with his index finger and
       pulled out a huge, juicy nose fruit. He then began to contemplate
       eating it. This intention we could all see in his eyes, and it was
       confirmed as he slowly drew his adorned finger to his mouth. You,
       grandma of the quick reflexes, SuperGrandma I'll call you, you stopped
       him just in time! You grabbed his finger, removed the nose goblin,
       and. . . . ate it yourself.
       A nose nugget is a difficult thing to dispose of, to be sure --
       especially a nugget of this size and obvious quality. So YOU ATE IT
       YOURSELF. Priceless.
       What was that boy thinking, not offering it to you first?
       Congratulations, Grandma. Lesson taught! Never mind that the woman on
       my right turned to me and said, Did you SEE that? Never mind that she
       then moaned, Im going to vomit. Never mind that I stopped riding the
       MUNI that very day, and decided to contribute to every kind of
       polution you can name by driving to work instead. What is important,
       Grandma, is that you taught that boy an important lesson in etiquette.
       N'est-ce pas?
        \_ Craig's list or your own experience?
        \_ This is fantastic.  Thanks for making me laugh out loud.  -John
        \_ you should consider a career in writing.  this is good stuff.
        \_ I'm glad someone is teaching the next generation a lesson in
           sharing.  That was heart warming.  Thank *you* for sharing, too!
        \_ I prefer the one with Grandma getting her canary off in Savage Love.

3/17    I have never programmed on pc, so here is a very basic question:
        does window comes with a free development package that is ready to
        use and fully functional, like xcode/project builder for os x or
        gnu stuff for unix?  or do I have to pay $$$?
        \_ Cygwin.
           \_ what a useless response. op: this is NOT what you are
              looking for.
        \_ no, it doesn't include any dev stuff, but you can use free tools
           to develop full-featured applications:
           Environment: cygwin is good, MS offers a free Unix tools pkg
           Compiler: I use gcc on cygwin, or Sun's javac
           IDE: eclipse (java/c++), netbeans, emacs
           GUI building: netbeans (java), Qt (c++; your app must be GPL)
           Other: Python has some good toolkit support as well
           \_ doesn't gcc on cygwin generate binaries that also are dependent
              on cygwin?  MinGW + Msys might be a good alternative.
        \_ there is a development kit:
           http://www.bloodshed.net
           Never tried, but a lot open-source software are developed using
           that.

3/17    What are some URL condensing sites?
        there's tinyurl, http://csua.org, what else?
        \_ http://hugeurl.com
        \_ My favorite: http://makeashorterlink.com
        \_ I like http://snurl.com. It does some cool stuff with the clipboard
           so you just have to copy, visit the site, and paste the url.
           No need to fill out a web form or anything.

3/16    somebody tell rms that http://www.gnu.org is down.
        \_ you can login as rms/rms to fix it yourself.
           \_ Permission denied.
              \_ holy shit!  you killed http://gnu.org!!!!
                 \_ You bastards!

3/16    Is there a program that will take a hostname -- or better yet, a list
        from stdin -- and return the ipaddress?  I want to write a script
        that will taken a human readable file using hostnames and generate
        a config file for some software by substituting ipaddresses.
        \_ tcsh% foreach i (`cat filename`)
                 host $i
                 end
           You can pipe the output of host through grep/sed/cut/awk/whatever
           --scotsman
           \_ I was familiar with host, and thank you for the suggestions,
              but as you see, host returns a bunch of other things too.
              I have used host for this purpose but I was wondering if there
              was a program that didnt have all the verbosity about MX info.
              \_ You are a very lazy person.
                 \_ Beyond lazy.  learn to use grep/awk/cut/splice, etc, and
                    you will be able to accomplish simple tasks like this
                    without bothering motd. --scotsman
              \_ RTFM!
                 \- Helo, host is ok, but I'd be interested in the
                    opposite of this program:
                    -rwxr-xr-x psb  Oct  8  1999 /csua/bin/ip2hostname (hf)
                    as well. a foreach loop in the shell is not a reasonable
                    way to process a 1000 of these ... and it would be nice
                    to have an inline filter like ip2hostname. Maybe I'll
                    write it "one of these days" but I am lazy too. It would
                    be great if there was something like this around. --psb
                    \- although since you cant quite neatly match hostnames,
                       the hostname2ip would be less powerful ... like only
                       match hosts at beg of line. maybe something can be
                       done with true FQDNs. --psb
                       \_ http://he.fi/slookup/README --scotsman
                    \_ a foreach loop in the shell is totally doable if you
                       know how to read in a line at a time from a file in a
                       shell.  your problem isn't your ignorance, that can be
                       cured with effort.  your problem is laziness.

3/15    I seem to remember tcsh saying "You have new mail" when I first logged
        in, but I don't get that anymore.  How do I re-enable this?
        \- mail variable --mr. tcsh
           \_ I have tcsh, set my $mail and $MAIL, and have biff y, but it
              still doesn't work.
              \_ do you have new mail?
                 \_ I sent myself new mail, no-go.  Works on another machine
                    with the same dot files (paths adjusted of course) ...
                 \_ I sent myself new mail, no-go.  Doh, it stopped working
                    on my OpenBSD machine too after I changed my dot files.
                    I must've screwed something up.
        \_ one way is in .login you can add the command 'nfrm'
        \_ Every time i log in it says "You have no life."
        \_ You've got mail! </AOL guy voice>

3/10    Anybody know how to split a stream between a program and it's children?
        E.G.:
                ->echo "cat\nRepeat this please." | tcsh
                Repeat: Command not found.
        -darin
        \_ your example doesn't work for a number of reasons. maybe if you
           give us an example of exactly what you want to do this for, we
           could be more helpful.
                \_ I'd like an AIM bot to function like a shell, in order to
                introduce young kids (who chat alot) to unix.  See
                http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/03/09/1254211&mode=thread
                and
                http://hipme.com/software/bot
                -darin
                   \_ for a single command, you can use
                      tcsh -c "echo Repeat this please."
                      I assume you meant echo rather than cat.
                        \_ No, I really did mean cat.  I want the AIM bot
                           switch context into functioning like cat when
                           issued to message/command "cat".
                           \_ oh i see. then your script and tcsh need to
                              share a pipe. you can't do it with echo
                              because once it sends out what it's supposed
                              to, tcsh will read EOF and quit.
                \_ CoolDude69> Hi Mr. Unix  A/S/L
                   Mr. Unix> zsh: command not found: Hi
        \_ expect is made for stuff like this
                \_ I think that's what I wanted.  Thanks!
                   \_ also, man chroot.

3/8     solaris NFS question.  I have two servers A and B.  Both of them
        mount each other's disks.  I disabled nisplus and modified the
        vfstab.  It works fine.  But if the machines are rebooted, it'll hang
        waiting for each other to come up.  How do I configure NFS to time
        out and not keep retrying?  I can't even get a login screen if
        machine B is down when I reboot A.  Thanks.
        \_ Don't do this. Say no mount at boot for machine A. After you boot
           machine A boot machine B. Then manually mount on machine A. You can
           obviously write a init script and stick it with the appropriate
           runlevel that check for machine B before it mounts.
        \_ Soft mount, but this seems like a rather kooky setup.
        \_ I've had to do stupid shit like that.  What I did was write a
           startup script that only tried to mount if the remote machine was
           already proven up (pick your favorite network test).  If not then
           it waits 5 seconds and tries again.  Put this on both hosts.
        \_ you could automount. it would avoid your problem also.
           \_ automount is incredibly buggy and has other problems.
              \- automount hasnt been a problem for me in solaris8 era.
                 dont use nis+ tho. --psb
                 \_ A whole lot of people are still on 2.7 or earlier.  But
                    unfortunately op didn't tell us what version.
        \_ Either use automounter or use the background mount option
           \_ bg is going to fail out and never mount but will at least allow
              the machine to boot.
        \_ thank you all for your help.  The servers are running solaris 2.5.1
           and it's a very small company (10+ people).  So doing stuff like
           this is acceptable.
           \_ ack!  do *not* use automount on an old solaris like that.  kludge
              it with well tested scripts and forget about it.

3/5     Anyone know what might have caused the below error and how I
        should go about fixing it?  --darin
        >df
        Filesystem           1k-blocks      Used Available Use% Mounted on
        /dev/hda1            -502950272238         1         0  56% /
        \_ Your superblock table is screwed up.
                \_So how do I fix it?
                  \_ superblock is being duplicated every 2000 blocks or so,
                     so when you do fsck, manually use another superblock.
                     I've forgot the exact syntax nor exactly how many blocks
                     is superblock duplicated, but you can go from here.
        \_ fsck -b blocknumber
           Block 32 is usually an alternate superblock.
           Man fsck on your OS to make sure.

4/3     Hey doing a *who | grep mjm* shows:
        mjm              ttyDe    Mar  4 00:16 (66.27.28.194)
        mjm              ttyDm    Mar  3 00:29 (66.27.28.194)
        mjm              ttyEd    Mar  4 16:40 (129.4.34.90)
        but *finger mjm* says no such user.  What kinda user account is that?
        Does he have special previlege or something?
        \_ ~/.nofinger  or some such.
           \_ nice, thanks.
              \_ can I ask why you're fingering me?

4/3     How come *man* suddenly doesn't work anymore?  What has changed?
        Has the env path been changed?
        \_ Correct problem reporting protocol:  Say what you tried doing.
           Say what didn't happen.  Say who you are so we can see what
           your environment is.  Oh, and mail root.  --scotsman
        \_ Look to thine own self.
           \_ it used to work.  I haven't done any env changes.
              \_ i love how you're totally unspecific about what the
                 problem is. care to give any details whatsoever?
              \_ For this i must respond: "works fine for me!"
        \_ echo $MANPATH.  You should get "Undefined variable".  If it
           is defined, type in unsetenv MANPATH (csh/tcsh).  MANPATH
           should not be defined on soda.
           \_ What's the reasoning behind this?  MANPATH should _not_ be
              defined?  I have MANPATH set; the system's defaults + the
              man pages I installed under my own directories.  And
              my `man` works just fine.
              \_ until the system defaults change.  Almost all "man" problems
                 are due to outdated MANPATH variables.  -tom
                 \_ I understand this.  But not having it set means "man"
                    would be unable to find user-installed man pages.  So
                    I would think the solution should be keeping one's
                    MANPATH up-to-date with system's defaults, no?  -not
                    UNIX admin
                    \_ You have to set MANPATH if you want user-installed
                       man pages, but almost everyone who breaks man by
                       setting MANPATH isn't really using a MANPATH (likely
                       including the original poster).  If you're using it,
                       keep it up to date and don't ask stupid questions on
                       the MOTD.  -tom
                        \_ haha...I agree it was my fault for setting the
                           MANPATH and forgot about it.  But the very reason
                           I set the MANPATH variable then was because *man*
                           didn't work then, so setting it helped.  Now I
                           totally forgot about such a variable, and have
                           no clue how come it suddenly doesn't work again.
                           not until someone mentioned not to set the variable
                           I would still have no clue why it didn't work. -op
                           \_ "\_ it used to work.  I haven't done any env
                              changes."
                              Music to tech support's collective ear.
        \_ This is a common problem among senior citizens.  The solution is
        \_ This is a common problem amoung senior citizens.  The solution is
           a prescription of Viagra.
           \_ haha, gosh, you guys are horrible.  Only one guy offered a good
              solution--the echo $MANPATH
              \_ Haven't worked tech support before, huh?  Someone who waves
                 their arms and says "THIS ISN'T WORKING!  FIX IT!" is going
                 to accomplish nothing but annoy those who might be able to
                 help. --scotsman
              \_ bad questions usually get bad answers. go figure.
                \_ obviously it wasn't a bad questions.  Someone who has
                   a real clue was able to give the answer. I thought
                   the question was really clear.  It asked why didn't
                   it work when it used to be without any change in user's
                   environment.  If you know what is going on.  It would
                   suggest you look into the MANPATH env variable.
                   \_ That someone guessed at your problem and hit doesn't
                      obviate your question's shortcomings.  If they hadn't
                      actally addressed your problem, you would have gone away
                      thinking "huh, what idiots..." when you really need to
                      look inward. --scotsman
                      \_ why do you insist your less problem solving ability
                        is the questions fault? =)  Question asked "what have
                        changed? has the env path been changed?" If you know
                        what's going on, would that tip you that yeah, maybe
                        it didn't work because the MANPATH was wrong!???
                        One thing I can agree with you is that, Idiots think
                        others are idiots.
                        \_ I can't make you take good advice.  If you like
                           making things harder, I guess that's your
                           prerogative. --scotsman
                        \_ I agree with this person in spite of his poor
                           English. tom and scotsman are just being pompous
                           assholes.
                           \_ Seriously, grow up a little, then come back to
                              the conversation. --scotsman
              \_ gigo
        \_ Nothing has changed. The man pages are in /usr/local/man,
              solution--the echo $MANPATH
           /usr/X11/man and /csua/man as always. You are just an idiot.

4/3     Does MANPATH need to point to where man.conf is?  If I have my on
        man pages...
        \_ when I do man ls, I got this error message:
           "Warning: cannot open configuration file /etc/man.config
            No manual entry for ls"
            \_ They probably meant /etc/manpath.config, and no, it doesn't
               have to, but it might be good practice to script something that
               pulls from it to build your initial MANPATH before (or after)
               including your own. --scotsman
        \_ unsetenv MANPATH. ie, you shouldn't have one.
           \_ idiot, he has his own personal man pages. sheesh. read.
              \_ btw, I took it upon myself to ask root to add ~/man as
                 an optional_manpath in manpath.config. --scotsman

3/3     What's the best way to incrementally merge files? merge and merge3
        assume you have a main file, then branch, the merge. I want something
        that merges (adds) incrementally. Thanks.
        \_ You want a merge tool that really understands branhes. If you are
           just developing locally prcs will do what you want. If you are
           working with a remote repository you want use a tool like bitkeeper
           that understands branches well. A possible alternative is to create
           a local prcs repository from you remote repository, import the
           merges and then export them back to the remote repository, but I
           have no idea if this will work well or not. --twohey

3/1     Computer science trivia of the day:
        Say you have X memory and have 8X that size to sort on the disk.
        Each time you swap from X memory to one of the 8 pages, it will
        cost you n time. Using what you know about merge sort, quick sort,
        and what not, what is the complexity in terms of n?
        \_ Do your own homework.
        \_ I used to know that but then I graduated and stopped spending my
           time on useless homework problems.  It was O of something.

2/24    In a unix shell (tcsh/bash) how to do I tell the terminal how many
        spaces to use for a tab (e.g, more,less,cat,pico,vi,emacs)?
        \_ This has nothing to do with the shell.  less might have a
           configurable way of displaying this, but in general you'll be doing
           this setting in pico, vi, and emacs separately.  Really, you should
           use "soft tabs" (i.e. when you hit tab, it really hits space four
           times, then on multiples of 8 converts back to real tabs)
           \_ that's what I do, but I don't like it.  With code, there should
              be a single character representing a single layer of indentation.
              It's philosophical, yes; and astyle works very well.  But still.
              \_ That's bizarre and arbitrary.  The most important things are
                 consistency and readability.  If tabs do that for your group,
                 then tabs are the answer.  If spaces do, then that's the
                 answer.
        \_ http://www.jwz.org/doc/tabs-vs-spaces.html

2/23    My snapfish account is expiring and they want to delete all my photos.
        Anyone have a nice wget/curl script to get my images?
        \_ You could do something really weird like actually *buy* a photo
           or two.  It might cost you all of 50 cents so they continue storing
           your zillion gigabytes of photos for another year.  If you wget them
           you're not getting the original images, btw.
        \_ always save your photos on cdrom or dvd. if you need to store
           online, try getting a cheap web hosting solution like
           http://www.onedollarhost.net (?). no bandwidth or storage space limit.
           they have a setup fee, but afterwards it's $1/month.

2/23    So did anyone else notice that Yahoo bought http://gamesdomain.com and turned
        it into the worst...game...site...ever?
        \_ couldn't have been that good in the first place. i don't think i've
           ever heard of it.
           \_ tr00 g4m3rz would recognize gamesdomain as a non-sponsored,
              objective, fan-supported game-review site
              \_ And also one of the first if not the first net-distributed
                 gamer mags - originally an FTP downloaded text file!  Does
                 anyone remember when it started?  For some reason I'm
                 thinking 92-93ish.

2/20    Maybe I couldn't parse the man page for kill, but why does
                kill -HUP -a
        kill the shell I am currently in?.  It should produce an error
        instead.
        \_ if I had to guess, the "-a" is run through atoi() and it comes up
           with "0", which commonly means "kill this process group" the -HUP
           well, I'll assume you know that.

2/11    Are trademark and company names case sensitive?
        \_ In what regard?  Can you get sued if you sell something under the
           name coca-cola instead of the properly capitalized Coca-Cola?
           Hell yes. -dans
           \_ On the other hand, I think trademarks only apply to a field and
              are not a universal license to the word, so you could open a
              "Coca-Cola Auto Mechanics" or something.  You'd get sued but you
              would win if you had enough lawyers.
              \_ Yes, that is correct.  Trademark exists to protect consumers
                 from someone trying to fraudulently market a different market
                 using a similar name or logo.  For example, if you produced a
                 soft drink, and marketed it as Oca-Cola, using Coca-Cola's
                 signature red stripe or bottle (yes, they trademarked the
                 bottle), they could sue you into oblivion. -dans
              \_ Coca-Cola is a "famous trademark".  You cannot even use it
                 to name your auto repair shop, as of 1996:
                 http://www.tms.org/pubs/journals/JOM/matters/matters-9904.html
           \_ What if I have a name first, then someone else comes along with
              a name in different capitalization and I cannot afford a (good)
              lawyer?
              \_ Are you two in the same field?  If so, you don't need a lot of
                 lawyers, as the case will be pretty cut-and-dry regardless of
                 capitalization.
           \_ I want to know when I register whether I should care about the
              capitalization, i.e. can I change the cases of certain letters
              later in product/website/doc etc and still claim they are
              mine without registering again.  -- op
              \_ I don't think it's a problem.  Microsoft was MicroSoft and
                 Micro Soft before that...
                 \_ Will Mike Rowe Soft work?
                    \_ You could trademark Mike Rowe Soft if it was not doing
                       business that competed with MS in any way.  Given their
                       diversification, that's getting harder to argue.
                       \_ Well my business would make innovative new computer
                          related products so that should be ok.
              \_ If the trademark name is fairly obscure, you can get away
                 with it. Present it as logo variations if the question comes
                 up. If you're trying to use a minor variation of someone
                 else's trademarked, there could be trouble.
                 \_ What about symbols and abbreviations?  Is 'and' == '&" ?
                    And plural vs. singular?  What is the rule of this game
                    anyhow?
              \_ Yes, but you should really talk to a lawyer.  Asking the motd
                 for legal advice is beyond idiotic.
        \_ Capitalization used to follow simple English rules until the dot-com
           era.
           \_ eMac, iMac, iPod, blame it on apple.  Actually isnt' there a
              conflict between eMac the computer and emacs the editor?
           \_ MadeUpFactoid: e.e. cummings moonlighted as an EE developing
              ARPAnet.
           \_ And don't forget punctuation marks, as in "Yahoo!".
        \_ There is a UNIX vs. Unix discussion.
        \_ I'm naming my company "SuperCo, Whose Stock I Recommend,".

2/10    Do different versions of tcsh have different policy regarding env.
        variable names?  I use names with a period in them and it was OK
        for setenv until I upgraded.
        \_ apparently not.
        \_ apparently so.

2/10    Hmmm...Motdedit with merge seems to make some...interesting mistakes.
        \_ such as? -nivra
           \_ Well I'm not sure...it may be some other ulletin/MS04-007.asp
              \_ yay for non-mandatory locking.
           \_ Well I'm not sure...it may be some other soda fuck-up-ed-ness...
              but at several points today there was lots of threads which had
              sections that seemed to repeat at random points, or threads which
              got mixed together.  Not sure if these were transient errors what
              with the constant editing going on.

2/8     prompt: mutt
/usr/libexec/ld-elf.so.1: Shared object "libintl.so.4" not found
        \_ YAY, pine is fuxored too.  I think admin SNAFUS like this and the
           spreading soda relay ban (which apparently root doesn't want to do
           anything about) means that I'll be bringing to an end my use of
           soda for email.  Ah well, its been a nice one guys.
           \_ Spreading soda relay ban?  Yahoo has a fucked up test and has
              blocked much of the world, and their abuse department is nearly
              always unhelpful.  As for spreading, the complaint below ended
              up being a typo.  So unless you have evidence of this, I would
              say you're full of shit.  If you aren't, mail root with the
              evidence.  Don't fucking complain on the motd. --scotsman
              (P.S.  The problem described above is probably something like
              a broken LD_LIBRARY_PATH env variable.  If there was another
              problem it must have since been fixed.  Both work for me.)
              \_ Well, it worked for me yesterday, and it worked for me now.
                 But it didn't when I posted the above.  I guess either my
                 env variables are in a quantum state or someone with root
                 has been tinkering.  Thanks for making it work again.  -- op
           \_ Is there a free alumni email account at cal?
              \ <DEAD>cal.berkeley.edu<DEAD>: free forwarding for life
           \_ they do ok for the salary they get.

2/3     Funny in a really stupid poorly done random drunken sort of way:
        http://www.cgff.net/nuke1/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=1
        And no, not work safe.
        \_ No, not really.
           \_ You weren't drunk enough.

2/2     FTP question.  I am trying to transfer a 5 gigabytes file to another
        computer (both are PC running Windoze).  Doesn't really matter which
        client I used, after the end of transfering all 5 gigabyte, it said
        something like "450 can't access" and doesn't write the file to the
        FTP site.  I am running Filezilla Server on the other end.  Why such
        error?
        \_ that's not an ftp question, it's a filezilla question. either that
           or ftp doesn't support files that large.
           \_ I am running Filezilla and made sure it has all the access.
              (both computers are in same LAN).
        \_ Is the destination PC using FAT32 or NTFS?  FAT32 limits files
           to 4GiB.
              \_ Props for using Gibibytes.
        \_ Here's a nickle kid, buy yourself a real computer.
           \_ save your nickel, and buy yourself a dictionary.
        \_ why are you ftping from one host to another on the same LAN?  just
           share out the directory and copy the file.
           \_ I never really figured out how to config microsoft network
                \_ Right-click on directory, 'sharing', 'share as',
                   on client PC 'mount network drive',
                   '\\computername\sharename'  Geez.  -John
                \_ there is more to it than that.  There is this thing
                   called "workgroup" thingy.  and I don't know which port
                   or service MS is used to share file.  the entire thing
                   is a lot more mysterious than simply setting up a FTP
                   and let go
                        \_ I'd appreciate it if you'd at least try to be
                           vaguely amusing when pretending to be an ignorant
                           fuckwit on the motd.  -John
        \_ Hey guys, thanks all for the input.  It turned out that none
           of the GUI clients (Filezilla, Internet Explorer)  I used worked
           well.  The text client that came with Windoze actually gotten
           pretty far: it hit the 4GB limit before everything died.  And
           yes, that partition of the Harddrive is FAT32.  Thanks for
           pointing that out for me.  And for your information, Filezilla
           seems to be a relatively stable FTP client, eventhough on my
           P3/384mb machine, it can handle about 1000 files on its queue
           before it start to thrash --OP
           \_ Yeah whatever, next time don't come here with your crap.  You
              can't figure out the mysteries of windows file sharing?  My
              parents managed that much on their own.  Don't come back.
              \_ On behalf of the human race, I am pleased to announce that
                 we're revoking your membership until such time as you can
                 see that someone else pissing in your cornflakes still does
                 not excuse you being an asshole on the motd.

2/2     Happy Square Root Day!
        \_ huh?
          \_ 2/2/4?
             \_ 1/1/01, 9/9/1981, 3/3/2009
        Happy Addition Day!

1/30  Um, so, if I do "find . -type f -exec grep -i port {} \;" I don't
      get the file name. How do I make it print file name?
      \_ -print?
      \_ find . -type f | xargs grep -i port
              \_ doesn't work if path contains space
                 \_ if your path contains spaces then you need to go shoot
                    yourself and whatever moronic user put spaces in a path.
           \_ find . -type f -print0 | xargs -0 grep -iH port
            (if you've got gnu find and xargs) --dbushong

1/29    sed help.  How do I take a file, and replace all newlines/returns with
        spaces, so that a multi-line file becomes one long line?
        ideally, something like sed "s/$\N/ /g", but this doesn't work.
        \_ need you use sed?  tr works too:  cat /etc/motd | tr -d '\n'
           \_ thanks that rocks.
              \- unless you need to batch process a whole lot of files,
                 you should learn to use emacs for this kind of thing.
                 query-replace function or something like
                 C-u 1000 C-xf [set-fill-column] M-q [fill-paragraph] --psb
                 \- i note in passing you need some reasonable understanding
                    of how sed works in terms of the pattern spaces and
                    reading in lines of data to use newline matching correctly
                    (it's like understanding perl chop and chomp issues ...
                    sed normally chops off the newline for you before
                    presenting for processing but then add it back in
                    for the output printing routine). there are a lot
                    of version-dependencies in sed which will also
                    drive you insane. --psb
                    \- since you asked --psb
                     /vol/pub/sed-4.0.8/bin/sed ':a;N;$\!ba;s/\n//g' /etc/motd

1/28    What is the policy of yahoo in terms of account inactivity?  How
        long does your account have to be inactive before they delete it?
        On their "Terms of Service" page, it says that the account could be
        closed due to inactivity, but it doesn't specify how long.
         \_ It's crazy long.  I talked to a person a yahoo once about an
            account i had setup with fake data (which i couldn't remember
            and so couldn't get the password).  It was my whole name though
            (and an uncommon one) so i figured i could wait for it to
            to expire and re-sign up, (it had already been a year) the guy
            basically said i was doomed.  My other yahoo account i have
            left sitting for over 6 months and come back to it with no
            problems.
        \_ I created the account "ausman" on yahoo and forgot my password
           and switched jobs, so password recovery no longer worked. The
           account still exists. I created it back in 1995 or 1996 and
           last used it in Jan 1997. -ausman
        \_ I had something similar happen with eBay.  They were cool about it
           though.  They put the old account in some special status and once
           no one rescued it after 30 days it died and they let me change my
           user name. -dgies

1/27    In TCSH when i type part of a command and do ESC-p, it searches
        backwards in the command history and matches and completes the last
        command corresponding to the partial command I have typed.  When
        I do the same thing in BASH, it prints a ":".  How do I get the
        history-search-backwards/forward in BASH?  THANKS!
        \_ man bash;  Look for the section on Searching.
        \_ in bash and zsh, use C-r/C-s for emacs-style reverse/forward
           incremental search.
           \_ zsh also supports tcsh-style history-search-backward, if you
              want that.
        \_ Don't listen to these heathen.  tcsh is the One True Shell!  Bash
           is what linux weenies use because, well, uhm, Linus uses it so it
           must be the best!
           \_ Ranting aside, bash really is quite shitty.  There's no real
              reason to be running it with all the other options out there.
              It tries to be everything to everyone, and ends up being
              internally inconsistent.
                \_ Bash is the only shell that is useable for interactive
                   sessions, features a bourne-compatible syntax and ships
                   by default on Solaris, most Linux distros and MacOS X.
                   The only other option for interactive sessions is ksh,
                   which isn't available by default on most Linux distros
                   and MacOS X. (Before you say just d/l ksh or whatever
                   other shell, try to keep in mind that some of us have
                   to use systems where we cannot install/execute software
                   that isn't approved or isn't part of the default
                   install, so we have to be familiar with the tools that
                   are almost always present).
                   \_ Based on the descriptions online, I'm having trouble
                      seeing what makes bash interactive and tcsh not and, FTM,
                      what's the big deal about being interactive. Apologies
                      for lack of clue.
                   \_ Could somebody do me a favor and tell me what the word
                      "interactive" means in this context. Apologies for my
                      lack of clue but it's not like the thing can talk to you.
                   \_ Why is it the only one usable?
                      \_ It doesn't have a builtin spell checker, we know that
                         from his post, heh.
                   \_ bourne syntax is better for programming, not for
                      interactive use.
                      \_ kinda cool how the pro-bash clone eliminated dozens
                         of other options as if his opinion was fact.  i like
                         him.  he'll do well on the motd.
                                \_ tcsh has no advantages over bash (save a
                                   memory footprint of ~ 200kB, which is
                                   meaningless these days). The fact that
                                   it uses c-shell syntax is a huge drawback.
                                   Some of us do use if, for, while on the
                                   command line.
                                   \_ tcsh has plenty of advantages over bash;
                                      better interactive syntax, for one.
                         \_ name some other options that are available by
                            default on most systems.
                            \_ tcsh
                                \_ what part of "cannot install/execute software
                                   that isn't approved or isn't part of the
                                   default install" didn't you understand?
                            \_ it's not really hard to install your own shell
                               locally and run it from whatever PoS login
                               shell you're given (example: bash).
              \_ Since Panther, I've been using bash and I don't esp. like
                 it, but i can't figure out if I don't like it out of
                 lazyness/acustomedness to tcsh or some other reason.
                 Which shell do you recommend? zsh?
                 \_ I would have switched to zsh a long time ago if I wasn't
                    such a lazy fuck.

1/26    I just transfered several thousand files from a Mac to a PC. Macs don't
        have file extensions so is there any UNIX utility (or PC utility) that
        will differentiate between word and excel files so that I can
        programmatically add the .xls and .doc extensions? "file" simply says
        "Microsoft Word" document.
        \_ write an applescript.  Unfortunately, I don't know the syntax for
           grabbing creator codes from the finder.  Maybe someone else on
           here does.  Applescript documentation is horrible.
        \_ What I ended up doing was using perl to traverse the directory
           hierarchy. I changed all :'s to -'s (PCs don't like :'s) and add
           .xls extensions to each file. This is somewhat lame, but 95% of
           the files are excel files and I was able to do this in less than
           10 minutes (I already had the perl readdir traversal code handy,
           I just had to find it)... of course, I did all this before asking
           on the motd bc i didn't think i'd find any useful information here.
           I'd still be interested in a nice solution (ideally, someone would
           tell me that I just need to upgrade my version of file)
           \_ you should rename the files while they are on the Mac.
              http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/14404
              \_ link not found and this is System 7 we're talking about.
                 \_ DEAR GOD WHY???
                    Uh.  can you transfer them to a more modern mac first?
                    \_ It only took him 10 minutes this way.
          \_ 'file' depends on the 'magic number' which is stored in a file.
             you only really needed an updated magic file.
        \_ This came up on google under "automatically macintosh file
           extensions".  I bet you can find more:
           http://peccatte.karefil.com/software/MacNames/MacNamesEN.htm
        \_ using perl, you can issue the file command recursively through
           your dirtree and dump the results into a text file. You can
           then open up the text file and issue a rename accordingly to
           each of the files it finds. Should take about an hour to write
           up in perl. -williamc
           \_ An hour?  It should take about 5 minutes in any shell.  On a
              bad day.  Between commercials and surfing.  This is a good
              time for sed/awk for those too lazy to use the search/replace
              function on their text editor.
              \_ Hmmm, apparently you don't do any "shell scripting" on a PC
                 in Windows/DOS.
                 This can be done in five minutes on a UNIX machine, but
                 with Windows through a DOS VM box (assuming you're not
                 using cygwin) I'd have to spend some time testing it to
                 make sure it was functioning correctly. If using
                 the find command you'd have to figure out how to
                 dump the information into an intermediate text file
                 and parse the contents. Regardless, I'd like to see
                 your five minuts solution posted on the motd, it will
                 be informative. Also, wtf does does your text editor
                 have to do with identifying binary files??? Reading
                 comments like these makes you think that the poster
                 didn't understand the problem domain. -williamc
                 \_ i'm not the guy above, but you might want to consider
                    posting anonymously, lest people associate "williamc"
                    with "talking out of his ass". cygwin often works
                    *just fine*, and i don't see any reason to believe it
                    wouldn't in this case. as the OP has already mentioned
                    though, 'file' doesn't give enough information to
                    distinguish between word and excel files. but even
                    supposing it did, you would either want to use sed/awk
                    to massage the output into an easier to parse format,
                    or use a text editor to do it if you don't know how
                    to use sed/awk. perhaps you should keep quiet instead
                    of making an ass of yourself next time.
              \- ObEmacsDiredMode --psb
        \_ What I ended up doing was using perl to traverse the directory
           hierarchy. I changed all :'s to -'s (PCs don't like :'s) and add
           .xls extensions to each file. This is somewhat lame, but 95% of
           the files are excel files and I was able to do this in less than
           10 minutes (I already had the perl readdir traversal code handy,
           I just had to find it)... of course, I did all this before asking
           on the motd bc i didn't think i'd find any useful information here.
           I'd still be interested in a nice solution (ideally, someone would
           tell me that I just need to upgrade my version of file)

1/23    How does one set the tab stops for a unix shell?
        \_ unix shell doesn't have tab stops -- thats all in your terminal
           program!

1/21    Motdedit with Merge!  (beta version)
        /tmp/motdedit -m
        or just /tmp/me
        \_ it's not the /csua/bin/ version yet.  Try it here, first.
        \_ /tmp/me doesn't work because /csua/bin comes before /tmp in my
           path.
           \_ try me2... if /tmp is in your path, it'll go there.
              \_ who would be stupid enough to put /tmp in their path?
                 \_ It's in my path right after "." and ".." because you
                    never can be quite sure where something will be.
                    \_ remind me to put destructive programs in /tmp named
                       as misspelled versions of common Unix commands.
                       \_ wow, cool, you'd really be the first to think of
                          that?  you're a geneous!  kewl!
           \_ make an alias then.
                \_ yes, this works fine, my point is that you really shouldn't
                expect people to put /tmp in your path and you shouldn't put
                it in your path either. delete /tmp/me and people can make
                the alias if they want. or just change /tmp/me to run
                /tmp/motdedit -m.
                \_ It's there for the lazy:
                   [soda:~] 9:55 (1186)cat /tmp/me
                   motdedit -m
                   [soda:~] 9:55 (1187)cat /tmp/me2
                   motdedit -m
                   \_ Yes, I saw that before I posted. The point is that those
                   convenience programs are worthless because they won't work
                   unless you have /tmp in your path... which is something
                   you shouldn't do. So either rewrite them or remove them.
        \_ brief description:  If someone else changed motd.public as you
           were editing, it attempts to merge.  So far, I've only seen it
           have problems when both of you have changed the same lines.
           If this happens, it prompts you to manually merge(restarting
           editor), if you pass, then you have the option of overwriting.
           any complaints, comments, etc.: post here or mail me  -nivra
           \_ can you put some sort of magic anonymizer so it looks like all
              the postings are from you?
              \_ try this yourself; it can be fun.
        \_ just make it /csua/bin/motdedit.new
           don't expect people to run executables out of /tmp

1/18    [ Don't do selective deletions. ]
        \_ agreed. chicom troll bash restored.

1/14    My gf doesn't know anything about unix so I end up changing her
        .spamassassin/user_prefs and .procmailrc. I've symlinked user_prefs
        to my own user_prefs and that seems to work. However, I'm unable to
        symlink .procmailrc to my own file... for some reason procmail doesn't
        pick up on other people's .procmail. What are some other remedies
        to this?
        \_ It could be part of the security model that symlinked files
           (especially ones linked to different user names) aren't trusted.
           \_ Indeed.  This is one of the "don't blame sendmail/procmail"
              things.  Just copy the file.
        \_ err, why don't you just copy?
                \_ because I don't want her pw and I'm tired of asking her
                   to type "cp ~tom/.procmailrc ~"
                   \_ Then tell her to put "cp ~tom/.procmailrc ~" in a
                      cronjob
                   \_ put it in her .cshrc or .login or whatever dotfiles you
                      have her using.  upon login should be good enough.  why
                      would she want the same filters you use anyway?

1/6     Maybe my google fu is not strong enough, but I had trouble finding
        anything about this. Is there a way to make rsync use a rolling
        average of actual data transferred in say, the last 5 seconds?
        Right now, if you resume a transfer, the portion you already have
        will obviously "transfer" very quickly, but rsync uses this transfer
        rate in its ETA calculation, which becomes totally inaccurate.
        \_ I have just one thing to say to you.  USE THE SOURCE, LUKE!

12/27   # cdrecord -scanbus
        Cdrecord 2.0 (i686-pc-linux-gnu) Copyright (C) 1995-2002 Jrg Schilling
        cdrecord: No such file or directory. Cannot open '/dev/pg*'. Cannot open SCSI driver.
        cdrecord: For possible targets try 'cdrecord -scanbus'. Make sure you are root.
        cdrecord: For possible transport specifiers try 'cdrecord dev=help'.
        WTF is this about?
        \_ why are you so surprised? as root, did you modprobe your SCSI
           device. what SCSI card do you have?
           \_ You have to admit that any command that suggests running the
              exact command you just ran as a solution is lame.
                \_ "Make sure you are root" is always a helpful reminder.
        \_ Why does it require you to be root to use the cdr?  Why can't this
           stuff just work?
           \_ get mac. or chmod the cdrom device, or put yourself
              in the group with rwite access to the cdrom.
              or use "sudo shell" where shell is your shell.
              \_ like I said, why can't this just work?
                 \_ Are you asking for help, or just complaining?
                 \_ Just login as root then it will just work.
                    Don't let people tell you its not safe, they
                    say that about NT and ADMINISTRATOR as well.

12/24   I'm paying about $25 for my unix shell account and web hosting at
        verio.  It includes 200 megs of disk space.  I'm looking for another
        provider that offers more disk space (500 megs) at around the same
        price.  I've looked at earthlink and the price is about the same
        as verio.  Any recommendations?  Unix has to be freebsd.  Thanks.
        \_ Call Verio and tell them to up your quota but you don't want to
           pay more and see what they say.
                \_ hey good idea (seriously).   -!op
                   \_ I'm a big Verio customer.  We beat them up on price all
                      the time.  It might not work for a little guy but it
                      doesn't hurt to ask.

12/11   Let's say you type "rlogin soda". Is there any way to escape from that
        if you don't have the right login? Short of killing the process.
        \_ ^D

12/12   what in the hayell is <DEAD>writeme.com<DEAD>?  like free webmail with no
        website?
        \_ see http://www.mail.com and try signing up.
                \_ aaaaaah hchaaaaaaa!  cheerz.  but no.
                   \_ ???  http://mail.com offers many @domain options
                      including <DEAD>writeme.com<DEAD>.  What do you mean by
                      your statement above?

12/2    "I sed bad wurds," he wrote.
        When asked what he should have done, he replied, "cep my mouf shut."
        Gotta love the language skills down in Louisiana.
        \ebonics

12/1    I came back from Thanksgiving and soda was rebooted.  Was it 9 months
        of uptime or so?

12/1    can anyone recommend a good text-based AIM client for Unix (or
        Unix-like) systems?  Thanks.
        \_ naim.

11/27   I am trying to install custom editing modes to a default solaris xemacs
        installation which I have no root access.  Using the menu doesn't help
        as it attempts to install packages at location I have no access.  How
        do I instruct xemacs to use alternate path to install additional
        packages?
        \_ (setq load-path (cons "~/path/to/emacs/pkg" load-path))
           \- helo, rather than always writing the explicit cons
              on to the load-path(exec-path, auto-mode-alist etc)
              you may want to define some utility funcs like this ... --psb
        (defun add-load-path (path)
           (if (null (member path load-path))
               (setq load-path (cons path load-path))))
        (defun new-auto-mode (regexp mode)
         "Add REGEXP to auto-mode-alist"
        (setq auto-mode-alist (cons (cons regexp mode) auto-mode-alist)))
        ;(add-load-path "/path/to/emacs/pkg")
        ;(new-auto-mode "\.cc$" 'c++-mode)

11/26   When I do "finger @hostname" or "w" I can find out if the other
        user has typed something on his tty or not by looking at the idle
        time. But when the other user is using xterm, his tty isn't displayed.
        How do you detect that?
        \_ Hint: you don't need a tty to log on.
        \_ You want help stalking someone?  You could email them, you could
           call them, you could send a talk request and say, "hey, are you
           idle right now?"
            \_ Yeah, that wouldn't be annoying or anything. :)
               \_ Makes it hard to stalk, huh?  Or hey, maybe a write request?
                  That would be tough.

11/20   FreeBSD box i'm not root on:  Why is rsync resulting in new files/dirs
        being created world unreadable, unwritable and unexecutable. Going over
        ssh, but "ssh me@there.com touch hello" has the perms i'd expect. (i.e.
        755).  There is nothing obviously weird about the rsync executable.
        \_ I don't know beans about rsync, but I think you need to provide more
           info to get a helpful response-- does the same thing happen to/from
           soda?  What options are you using?  Etc.
        \_ It's not done yet and/or it is crashing? Rsync changes the
           perms later in the process. Just a guess.

11/18   How do you remove newlines with a one-line sed command
        cat /etc/motd | sed "s/\n//"   doesn't do it.
        \_ tr -d "\012" < /etc/motd
           \_ sweet! thanks.

11/17   What's the Unix command to see how fast the CPU is?
        \_ dmesg
           \_ I just tried this on Soda and it didn't work, just got:
              dmesg: Command not found.
        \_ on Linux: cat /proc/cpuinfo  or  x86info
        \_ /var/run/dmesg.boot
        \_ OK, so what's the real command to see how fast the CPU is?  -op
           \_ What exactly are you looking for thet the above do not provide?
        \_ it would help if you mentioned which unix you were using.  in case
           you didn't know, it depends.
           \_ Sun, Solaris  -op

11/18   Does anyone know the circumstances under which rsync will fail to
        update a file that has differences (besides the obvious ones, like
        with --size-only or whatever)? I used a command line like
        'rsync -Pv host:foo .' where my cwd has a file 'foo', which is
        ~300 MB, but rsync failed to update it. Granted, it was the same
        size and probably had the same timestamp, but it was definitely
        different. I ended up forcing rsync to update by using -c, but I
        thought I shouldn't need anything like that. Thanks for any insight.
        \_ use the source, luke!
        \_ do you have write permission on the file?
           \_ yes, -c (always checksum) worked, but as the rsync manual says
              is kinda slow.
              \_ this has to be a troll, but... how do you expect rsync to
                 tell the difference if the size and timestamp are
                 identical w/o doing a checksum or worse?

11/17   ./ Agent Gates: I hate this place. This GNU. This open source.
        This license, whatever you want to call it. I can't stand it
        any longer. It's the free software, if there is such a thing.
        I feel saturated by it. I can taste your GPL. And every time
        I do, I fear that I've somehow been infected by it.
        \_ Mr. Torvalds: My name ... is Linus.
        \_ ./, huh?  What is this dotslash of which you speak?

11/17   I seem to remember there is at least one Google employee on
        soda. Any of you care to post your login? I'd like to ask
        some questions about how it is working there. thanks.
        \_ last | grep "216.239"
        \_ why don't you post your login so they can email you?!?  why should
           you get to be anonymous instead of them?  after all, you are the
           one with the questions.
        \_ it's a cult.  they wanted me to sell my house and move to mountain
           view to take a job there and were confused and insulted when i said
           i wouldn't do that.
           \_ I think living where you work is great...as long as you don't
              have to live *or* work in silicon fucking valley.
                             -happily walking to work 3000 miles from SV
              \_ What silicon fucking valley?  I never get enough fucking in
                 silicon valley.
              \_ where do you work out of curiosity?
              \_ Yes I'm sure it is but to tell me I'm not getting an offer
                 because I won't *SELL MY HOUSE* and move to mountain view
                 is fucking ridiculous.  To work at a dotcom.  Sheesh.  It's
                 a cult, plain and simple.
                 \_ What rationale did they offer for this?  Would the commute
                    have impacted your work that much?
                    \_ Something like, "We like it when everyone lives close"
                       which was not helpful.  The guy who did my tech phone
                       screen was some kid who had never worked anywhere but
                       there and only knew "The One True Google Way" of doing
                       everything.  It was a miracle I was able to guess enough
                       right answers and read his mind enough over the phone to
                       not get dropped right there.  So HR dropped me for not
                       being willing to sell my house and move to mountain view
                       because they're going to be the next netsca-- nevermind.
                       It was stupid.  They're a cult.  I'm *very* happy I got
                       a much higher paying job with fewer stupid people
                       around.  I wasn't looking forward to being some kid's
                       dumping ground for projects he found boring.
                       \_ how far did you get in the interview process?
                          \_ too far. what a waste of time.  if you need a job
                             and they make an offer, take it.  don't sell your
                             home to join a cult.  BTW, I believe today is the
                             25th anniversary of the Jones' Town massacre,
                             speaking of selling your home to join a cult.
                \_ Anyone remember "Murder Can Be Fun"? - danh
                        \_http://www.weeklyuniverse.com/2002/tempslave.htm

11/11   does anyone know how to extend this makefile to support make clean
        on sub dirs?? thx
        .PHONY: all clean subdirs $(SUBDIRS)
        all: subdirs
        subdirs: $(SUBDIRS)
        $(SUBDIRS):
                $(MAKE) -C $@
        \_ insert the unix find command with -exec?  You can run unix commands
           in a makefile.  Or use a "for" construct.
        \_ Isn't the idea that the subdirs would each have a makefile that
           this makefile would call and give clean as a parameter?
        \_ .include <bsd.subdir.mk> if you are using bsd make.

11/11   ls -lt lists all files in a directory in chronological order.
        For files nearly a year old, it only lists the date, but not the
        time, of last modification.  But it lists them in non-alphabetical
        order.  Thus, I suspect it is indeed listing them in order of most
        recently modified.  So, then, it presumably knows the modification
        time.  How can I get it to list the modification time, rather than
        the year, for older files?
        \_ get the ls that comes with GNU coreutils. it shows both date and
           time, but only up to hour and minute.
        \_ Try -T, works on FreeBSD
           \_ Whoa, that's really useful, never knew about that; thanks! Too
              bad it's not standard. -!op
          \_ works here, but not on my machine at work.
             \_ which runs....?
                \_ Solaris
                   \_ Solaris follows the POSIX standard
                   \_ Maybe try /usr/xpg/bin/ls ?
        \_ Try tarring up the file and scping it to soda
        \_ As with all problems, this can be solved with perl:  alias ls-lt to:
           perl -e 'chdir$ARGV[0]if@ARGV;opendir D,".";print scalar localtime $_\
->[0]," $_->[1]\n"for sort{$a->[0]<=>$b->[0]}map{[(stat)[9],$_]}grep\!/^\../,readdir D'
           (note the \'ed ! to make your shell happy).  Then you can just say
           % ls-lt /tmp
           % ls-lt
           etc.
           and get the full dates.  --dbushong
           \_ or you might even be able to do tar tf on the tarfile

11/8    What's the UNIX utility that finds the netblock owner of an IP range?
        Nevermind, it's whois -a.

11/8    UNIX question: Is there any elegant way to do something like
        command < foo.bar > foo.bar
        where command is something that modifies foo.bar ?
        \_ perl -p -i.bak -e 's/OLD/NEW/g' ?
           \_ not quite. but it's not very hard to write a little wrapper
              program that first renames the file to something else, then
              runs command on it, or something like that.
        \_ in csh: command < foo.bar > out ; mv out foo.bar.  this is hardly
           rocket science.  what sort of elegant were you looking for?
        \_ dd ibs=`ls -l foo.bar | awk '{print $5}'` if=foo.bar \
            | command > foo.bar
           Oh, elegant?  No.  Do the tmp file thing.  --dbushong

11/5    Errors and Defects in Mann et. al. (1998) Proxy Data and Temperature
        History
        http://www.uoguelph.ca/~rmckitri/research/trc.html
        \_ Hey look!  Its everyone's favorite crank!

11/3    vi vs. emacs: which is for liberals and which is for conservatives?
        \_ Fuck you earthlings and your stupid bipolar politics. We are Borg,
           we use MS Visual Studio. We are the .NET, we are the collective.
           You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile.
        \_ ED IS THE STANDARD!
           \_ IFILE!
        \_ With (s)ED! and awk you don't need anything else.  vi & emacs are
           for l0sers!
        \_ emacs is definitely the epitome of liberal government.  It's a great
           OS, if only it had a good editor.  vi's philosophy is more like the
           do one job and do it well approach (smaller government).
           \_ glad to see you've fully bought into the ridiculous political
              mythology.
           \_ is vim the neocon approach?  We pretend to be small, but we
              keep doing stupid shit just to drive you crazy?
              \_ Pretend to be small?
-rwxr-xr-t  2 root  wheel  3172672 Dec  8  2001 /usr/local/bin/emacs*
-rwxr-xr-x  1 root  wheel  1146252 Dec  2  2002 /usr/local/bin/vim*
-r-xr-xr-x  6 root  wheel  279020 Jan 21  2003 /usr/bin/nvi*
                 -geordan
        \_ libertarians just cat directly to the device

11/2    Stupid question--nfs mount as root, between 2 FreeBSD boxes.
        How do I allow root on the client to chown files in the mounted
        directory?  -John
        \_ nfs mount option...there is some default option that maps root.
           disable it. --aaron
           \_ actually its a NFS export option from the NFS server.  Old-school
              exports format is the -root=(hosts) directive, for hosts that
              get to mount the file system without root being mapped. -ERic

10/29   Are there anything similar to cacheFS for linux?
        \_ AFAIK no. Consider synchronizing files on a daily basis with rsync
           or something instead.
           \_ Okay then...  We have about 100 linux NFS clients and nfsstat
              shows a typical getattr of >40%.  Any suggestions to unload
              this?  Thanks.
              \_ "/bin/rm -rf /mnt" run from cron once a day.

10/28   Someone give me a quick way of installing/using spamassassin? Thanks!
        \_ man spam
        \_ can I install spamassassin as non-root on a machine that I don't
           have root on, like... company machine, school, etc?
           \_ yes but it's easier with root.  with some tiny clue you can
              do it as non-root.  you're mostly changing paths around.
                \_ ok I just installed it with non-root. However it only
                   filters 50% of the rules. Should I make it learn it
                   on a frequent basis (e.g. sa-learn --spam mail/spam) or
                   is there a better way? Also is razor a good thing to have?

10/24   How do you guys deal with different backspace characters in different terminal
        programs? I have a screen where the terminal is set to erase = ^h, but then
        sometimes I use a terminal (on some other machine, say) where backspace
        sends ^?. Are there really any ways of dealing with this besides making sure
        every terminal I happen to use is configured to use the erase character I use
        in my screen?
        \_ Use bash. It's not 100% effective though, but modern versions of
        bash just accept both as backspace.

10/21   Hi is there a small utility on unix that can replace a word in a file?
        \_ perl -p -i .bak -e 's/oldWord/newWord/' file.  If you want to replace
           all instances of oldWord with newWord, use 's/oldWord/newWord/g'
           \_ Actually, without the g it will replace the first instance
              of oldWord in each line.  The g makes it replace every
              instance of oldWord per line. -geordan
        \_ Lots. Try sed.
        \_ the oneline perl script works great with one file. Is there a way
           to have it process whole bunch files like *.*?
           \_ Um... perl -p -i .bak -e 's/oldWord/newWord/' *
                \_ uh no, got an "invalid argument" error
                   \_ here's where you copy paste the exact command you used
                      along with exact error you got, and we go from there.

10/20   What is the new UCLINK gonna be? What OS? What software? What/When?
        \_ TRS-DOS, VSN.
        \_ Software: Communigate Pro, Stalker.
           Hardware: ~three front-end, two back end PC servers running Linux,
                     with NetApp for storage.
           Schedule: Primary implementation December/January, additional
                     features (including stuff like @Berkeley.EDU addresses)
                     over the next few months.      \
                        -tom                         \_ I kiss you!
           \_ Which Netapp boxes?  Connected via what?  smb?  nfs?  direct?
                \_ I don't currently have the technical details.  -tom
                   \_ Probably some POS 250 or something given how the rest
                      of it is being done.
                        -tom

10/10   pretty entertaining AI/20 Questions website:
        http://y.20q.net:8095/btest for anonymous login
        <DEAD>q.20q.net/q.cgi?N<DEAD>  to register, which makes it way
        more entertaining.

        Things I didn't know
        The Earth's core is not something you can wear
        You don't squeeze the Earth's core out of a bottle
        The Earth's core is not in a traditional engagement ring
        \_ Things I didn't know
           A programmer is not fuzzy
                \_ Bunny is, though.
           A programmer might carry people
           A programmer does bite
           A programmer is not used to measure something
        \_ Thing I didn't know
           You don't put things in a testicle
        \_ A mobile phone probably has leaves... and is a domesticated animal
        \_ Things I didn't know
           Religion is not made of plastic
           Men might not find religion erotic
           Religion is artificially built by human beings
        \_ Can some one please install the *ancient* 'animal game' on soda
           so these people can get their sillyness fix?  Thanks.

10/8    I just saw a car with the license plate 'UNIX'  Anyone know whose car
         it is?
        \_ No, but if you knew what would it matter?
           \_ It doesn't matter, I'm just curious.  There are a lot of
              possibilities for a car like that in Berkeley
        \_ What state?
           \_ Sorry, California
              \_ Original Owner: Ted Dolotta
                 Current Owner:  John R. Mashey (as of Mar 2002)
                 For more info see:
                 http://www.balug.org/ml/balug-talk/msg01535.html
                 http://www.troff.org/history.html
                 (Google is simply amazing)
                 \_ Thanks.  I was kinda hoping MK McKusick had it...
                    \_ I read that he had 44BSD (which is much cooler)
                       \_ RIDE BIKE!  USE CANDLE!
              \_ FYI, you can call the DMV. They won't give out home addr
                 but give other information.

9/30    I'm not a very mathy person, but I've found myself in dire need of
        a good root-finding algorithm.  I've currently got a piece of
        software that uses Mueller's Method -- but it sometimes generates
        whack results that crash a rather twitchy third party piece of
        software as it iterates.  The curves I'm examining can be assumed to
        be monotonic.  Can I do better than Mueller's, or am I SOL?  TIA. -mice
        \_ Use Mathworld to look up 'root finding' and find the root finding
           method which will work best for the kind of function you have.
           Using mathworld for this sort of thing is a good meta-skill to learn.
        \_ you'd probably find a numerical analysis text more useful than
           mathworld. try checking one out at a college library if you can.
           there are not that many root-finding methods that are actually
           used much in real life.
        \_ One technique to explore-- see if you can parameterize your
           curve on some region of interest by a [0,1] lambda.  I.e.. munge
           your algebra around until you can get a diff from root as a
           function of some linear parameter.  If your curve is nice,
           consider golden section or binary search.  Another thing to do
           is just chop up lambda into increments, evaluate diff, and
           pick the best guess at root (or refine search in a region of
           the best approx from a linear visit across lambda).  Not the
           niftiest method in the universe, but it gets the job done.

9/27    Say I want to kill processes older than x hours. If I make a list of PIDs,
        check the start time, and kill on that basis, there is a small
        possibility that that process will terminate after I've done the check
        but before I do the kill, and that another (possibly important) process
        will take on that PID, and I would thus end up killing this important
        process. Is there any way to avoid this race condition without going down
        to kernel level? Thanks.
        \- sure, lots of ways. check ppid, argv string, start time of
           process, etc. the rightway.easiest way probably depends on
           some details of how you are trying to do this but certainly
           you can with ps | awk/grep | (xargs|) kill. --psb
           \_ well, that mitigates it somewhat further, but does not remove the
              essential race condition.
              \- yes it does, if you do it correctly. or do you think
                 something like PAWS isnt good enough either. --psb
                 \_ no, it doesn't.  it's still a race condition.  pipes are
                    not atomic.  you should know better.  there's still a slim
                    chance that between the ps and the kill, the proc exits and
                    another starts.  -!op
              \_ If you check the start time like the first reply suggests, it
                 should eliminate the problem.
                 \_ yes, but what if time wraps around too? :9
                 \_ No, it's not atomic.  Don't they teach Computer Science
                    anymore?  I haven't done real CS in years yet I still know
                    a race condition when I see one.
        \_ There is a race condition, but it doesn't matter.  Running kill on
           a nonexistant PID doesn't hurt anything, and if you've really got a
           system that can wrap around 100k PIDs in the time it takes to run
           your ps | ... | kill, you've got one whacked machine.

9/25    SCO's creative Linux family tree:
        http://www.sco.com/scosource/unixtree/unixhistory01.html
        or also     http://tinyurl.com/oo4q
        \_ But who are the evil UNIX engineers who helped create this diagram?
           \_ Evil?  What if it's true?  How would *you* know if it isn't?  Did
              Slashdot tell you so?

9/20    Is it possible to run have a linux box export files via NFS over
        ssh tunnels?  I tried doing this by tunneling the ports that
        nfsd uses but it didn't work.  Any suggestions on how to do this
        or the equivalent?  Thanks.
        \_ only if you either forward a ton of ports and replace alot of
           rpc stuff.. here's a starter, but remember that you will take
           a performance hit -shac
           http://www.math.ualberta.ca/imaging/snfs
           \_ Thanks, I take a look at this.
        \_ are you using nfs via udp or tcp?
           \_ I tried it with both udp and tcp ports without success.
        \_ You made tunnels in both directions?
           \_ Why both directions?  I just tunnelled the relevant daemons.
        \_ just tunnel IP over ssh and make life easier
           \_ What do you mean "tunnel IP over ssh"?  Is this a joke?