9/19    What's the easiest way to replace text strings in a binary file?
        I have a feeling that sed can't be used with binary files...
        \- uh you can try emacs. anymore is probably beyond the scope of wall.
        \_ perl -pi -e 's/foo/bar/g' is probably pretty safe;
           add in a -0777 first if you want to be paranoid
        \_ If you're replacing same-size strings, any hex editor will do.  If
           you're shrinking them, then fill with spaces.  If you're growing,
           you might break something if it's an executable or some self
           referenced data file like a zip.
           \_ spaces?  Why not null chars?
              \_ because code accessing those strings may run into trouble
                 with nulls/
        \_ Arrr - nold for California Governor!
           \_ Avast Right-Wing Conspiracy!

9/16    Related to the evaluation question below, how do you answer the
        interview question "what are your weaknesses"? I've gotten that
        from two different guys at the same company before and it was kinda
        painful because they really, really pushed deep on that question.
        \_ Do like they did on The Simpsons. "I'm a workaholic."
        \_ "My weakness is I refuse to work with doofuses who ask
           lame-ass questions like 'what are your weaknesses'?"
        \_ "I survived UC Berkeley where we kill the weak and eat their still
            beating hearts!  I have no weaknesses, little man!  What pathetic
            'school' did *you* go to?"  It doesn't really matter what you say.
            You're dealing with some doofus and every answer can be turned
            into the wrong answer.  You can say something like, "well my
            girlfriend sometimes gets upset that I'm such a take-charge
            gung-ho kinda guy when we make plans but she always has fun!"
            All answers are stupid, just try to avoid giving an axe-murderer
            answer.
            \_ These were the two highest-ranking tech godfathers at this co.
               If you had said that "take charge" answer they'd scoff and
               make you give a *real* weakness. Oh well, fuck 'em I guess.
               One of them spent about half the interview on that question,
               and the rest questioning my "passion for engineering" and why
               I'm an engineer etc... unfortunately rather close to home tho.
               \_ I'm 28 and a software engineer, and I want to work with
                  "good" people more than get a salary.  The fact that they're
                  asking these meta-questions might suggest that they're
                  concerned with what your life goals and attitudes are,
                  have you figured it out.  It's just a job, but you
                  spend half your life at work, so I can see why.
                  \_ No, it means the interviewers are lazy and/or
                     inexperienced.  However, your answer is correct.  -John
               \_ I've had the exact same thing happen to me when I gave some
                  clever variation on the 'work too hard' line.  So I told him
                  I'm smart and have low tolerance for people who are
                  intentionally stupid.  Not stupid people, but people who
                  play dumb for political or other reasons.  I got an offer,
                  but I don't think that had anything to do with it.  I think
                  he was just filling time and feeling self important.
                  \_ yeah. btw i needed *3* weaknesses. well, it actually
                     taught me how to be better prepared for interviews.
                     it's all about attitude.
                     \_ 3?  That's fucking crazy.  "Gee, I'm not that flawed".
                     \_ a more specific question would have been
                        "tell me 3 things your co-workers hate about you"
        \_ the standard answer is: "I work too hard...". not inspiring or
           original, but it works. if yer just outta skewl, mention that
           you spent all yer time in the computer lab. don't mention the
           B.O. problem.
        \_ a good manager (read, the kind of manageryou want to work with)
           knows that different people are happier doing different things.
           Questions like this aren't ment to be ducked.  What they are trying
           to get at is "What sort of stuff do you do poorly?  What sort of
           stuff do you just not enjoy doing?"  Yeah saying something like
           "I goof off half the day and get everything done late" is stupid
           but a real answer like "when I'm working on a project with a bad
           debugging environment my productivity drops really bad" would,
           say let them know you might do better at being a server coding
           person that working with some proprierty scripting system that
           doesn't have real tools.  They want people, not pretend workaholics
           who will leave in disgust six months later because they treated
           management as roadblocks to be worked around, and somehow, gee,
           that made work a nightmare.
           \_ This is probably true but I've never had the pleasure of working
              with a "good" manager. Then again, I'm in civil engineering, not
              coding. The consensus among those I've talked to is that the
              weakness question is the interviewer getting in an early stab at
              establishing pecking order. They, after all, will never have to
              answer such a ridiculous question of themselves from you. If you
              want the job, have your canned answer ready and don't be worried
              that it's not exactly honest. They're not looking for honesty.
              They're looking for you to subvert your ego for the "team". You
              may, however, want to consider whether this is the sort of
              situation where you'd like to work, if you have a choice in the
              matter. In the current times, nobody in my business really has
              much choice.
              \_ I had a good manager once.  I can barely remember what it was
                 like....  Maybe we had the same one since I think there's only
                 about 3 out there.

9/13    I'm trying to download legal mp3s using
        wget -nc -r -l3 -A"*.mp3*" \
'http://www.subpop.com/scripts/main/multimedia.php?key=format&value=mp3
        but it doesn't work. I haven't used wget much; what am I doing wrong?
        \_ maybe you can set your refererr value to something innocuous like
           'Netscape 4', read the wget manpage.
           \_ you have "referer" and "user-agent" mixed up.  But setting the
              user-agent value in addition to the referer one is a good idea.
        \_ Your ISP probably blocked all mp3 files because they have the evil
           bit set.
        \_ the host probably disallows direct linking to files.  If so, you
           need to specify a referer.
        \_ It wasn't referrer or user-agent, but rather something about
           the option I think.  At any rate, I parsed the page manually
           and came up with a list of hrefs to d/l, and that worked fine.
           Thanks for the help.

9/12    I can't FTP into OCF from behind firewall/router.  Can anyone tell
        me what's wrong? -stupid newb
        \_ block ephemeral port and doesnt understand ftp PORT cmd? --psb
        \_ use FTP in passive mode.   ftp -p
        \_ As the above says, use passive mode.  Ftp's normal mode is to
           have the server try to connect back to the client so the client
           becomes a server of sorts.  This attempted connection smacks into
           your firewall and thus ftp in it's normal mode fails.  Passive
           mode doesn't do that so you can ftp from behind firewalls.

9/10    I have AvantGo on my PDA and on one computer.  I installed AvantGo
        on a 2nd computer.  But the hot-sync manager on the 2nd computer
        doesn't list AvantGo as a conduit.  How do I get it to list AvantGo
        as a conduit?

9/6     Looking for a way to track download statistics, and webalizer doesn't
        seem to be what I'm looking for.  I want to see how many unique
        IPs downloaded certain files, with nice sort-by-date options and
        a way to figure out how many downloads for each file.  Suggestions?
        \_ I use awstats.  It might do what you want.
           http://awstats.sourceforge.net - danh

9/3     How can I get tcsh to warn me about being overquota when I log in?
        \_ Maybe put "quota -v" in your .cshrc?
           \_ quota -q will only report FSs where you're over your limit

9/5     I have a relatively large mailing list archive in a
        typical unix's mbox format.  Is there any tools that
        allow me to view it easily, i.e. reconstruct threads, etc?
        \_ mutt -f file (then hit "ot" to sort by threads)
        \_ From a mh perspective, you can incorporate it into your mail box
           with inc, and then do a subject field sort with
           'sortm -textfield subject'.  -ERic

8/29    Would you please show me how do I specify the key in the unix command
        des?  The man page of des does not describe the format of the key.
        And I cannot search from google using "des -k" where the - is ignored
        in the search.
        \_ des is a unix command? or do you mean crypt...

2/13    Does perl have a "diff" facility? I have something that requires a
        lot of diff but file I/O using unix diff would be too slow. Thanks.
        \_ Text::Diff?  Really.  You could search cpan for this sort of thing.

2/13    How can one refer/save to a mailbox with space in its names in mutt?
        \_ Standard UNIX suggestions: have you tried
                backslash space (my\ mailbox)?
                single quotes ('my mailbox')?
                HTML equivalent (my%20mailbox)?
                \_ If you're going to answer, at least attempt it yourself.
                   \_ If you're going to ask a question, at least attempt
                      to explain the avenues you've already explored.
                      \_ Was not OP.  You're still totally unhelpful.
                         \_ Could have been, if op was new to mutt.
                            \_ You answer suggests you have less familiarity
                               with mutt or even unix than I do.  This is
                               not an insult and does not imply I know a lot.
                               And thanks for your time.  -- op
                               with mutt than I do.  I don't mean this as
        \_ It's a pain, but I was able to do this by typing "^V^V ". --scotsman
           \_ Thanks, you are awesome!  BTW, how did you find this?  It
              certainly does not show up in online help by typing '?'
              \_ it's in the mutt manual under editor bindings. it's also a
                 typical binding for a 'quoted-insert' type of function in
                 shells.
                 \_ v stands for "verbatim"?
                               an insult, and thanks for your time.  -- op
                               with mutt or even unix than I do.  I don't mean
                    \_ no.  it's unix, it stands for nothing.
        \_ Just rename the mailbox.
           \_ or perhaps a link will do.
                    \_ that's what makes it better.
        \_ sounds like a shitty mail program to me.
                               this as an insult or even imply I know a lot.
                               and thanks for your time.  -- op
        \_ It's a pain, but I was able to do this by typing "^V^V ". --scotsman
        \_ Just rename the mailbox.
           \_ or perhaps a link will do.
              \_ probably so but "^V^V " was so much more arcane, it just has
                 to be the better unix answer for the motd.
                 \_ not really. and only one ^v is necessary anyway.
                    \_ that's what makes it better.
        \_ sounds like a shitty mail program to me.

11/29   Soda wedged with NFS problems.  Console unresponsive.  Rebooted.

8/27    I am behind a huge ass which closed off most of the ports
        other than 23, 80 and few other common daemon.  I would like to
        run IM.  For ICQ, i gotten away with telnet to my shell account
        running micq.  I don't know how to deal with MSN.  The funny part is
        that normal MSN client works for somereason, but my open-source
        client doesnt (miranda).  Any idea how to resolve this problem?
        \_ A huge ass?  You mean someone that doesn't want twits like you
           playing with viruses, spyware, and running that kewl web toy your
           'friend' sent you marked, "URGENT!"?  Get off the net, hoser!  It
           is tools like you that forces netadmins to close ports in the
           first place.
           \_ some very funny dude deleted "firewall". has anyone ever told
              you not to get so worked up over trivial things?
              \- sorry, couldnt resist --psb
              \_ it's the motd, no one is worked up. why are you so worked up
                 about others being worked up?
        \_ um, how is that funny? of course microsoft is going to have a
           more compatible client. anyway, miranda probably doesn't work
           cuz microsoft recently disallowed most older msn clients,
           stfw for more details.
           \_ appearently official MSN client use port 80 if its
              official port is not avaliable.  I am just wondering
              if any of you tried to configure your 3rd party IM to do
              the same when you guys are in the similiar situation.
              In any case, I am leaning toward installing Centericq
              on my shell account instead of dealing with this problem
              directly.  For those who actually knows what I am talking
              let me know how  you guys deal with this. Thanks

8/27    This is a question for Imaging gurus.  I have a few JPEG
        files which I'm not able to view on my PC.  However, I am
        able to view the thumbnail of the pic in Windows Explorer
        in XP.  When I try to load it in 'xv' on unix I get the
        following errors.  The image is located at /csua/tmp/photo18.jpg.
        Is there any way to fix these JPEG errors?  Thanks for any
        help. -  madhav
        - Corrupt JPEG data: Premature end of data segment
        - Invalid JPEG file structure: two SOI markers
        \_ Opera and mspaint display it just fine.  Save as a different
           format maybe.  "SOI" = start of image.  -John
           \_ Thanks.  I tried on my work PC (W2K) and it seems to open the
              image fine without any problems in Netscape 7.1, IE 6, MS Paint,
              and MS Photo Editor. -madhav
        \_ Where did the image come from?  If it is from a digital camera,
           it is likely that they did a "smaller+regular" image trick.
           Basically they stored a smaller version of the image at
           the front to allow faster preview inside the camera.  Maybe
           "xv" just does not handle this case?  (Sounds like John's
           assumption of having "two Start Of Image" may back this up.)
           \_ The image came from my Sony Mavica CD-200 digital camera.
              What is weird is that not all pictures have this problem, only
              1 in 25-30. -madhav
           \_ I did a bit of digging, and apparently some jpeg file formats
              like SPIFF use SOI markers to indicate that the following
              information is format-specific.  Some decoders don't understand
              the tags which follow the additional markers, and just look
              at the SOI bits themselves.  Page for SPIFF is at
              http://netghost.narod.ru/gff/graphics/summary/spiff.htm
              What's the picture of?  -John
              \_ The picture is of the valley as seen from Jungfraujoch(highest
                 train station in Europe approx. 11500 feet) in
                 Switzerland. -madhav

8/26    http://nosuch.com/music/webtones.cgi
        \_ hm... I don't think this is that cool.
           \_ The arbiter has spoken!
              \_ more an attempt to stimulate conversation than to
                 arbitrate. what do other people think? just seems to
                 me like there are many arbitrary ways one could
                 generate music from a web page, gif, whatever, and the
                 results of thsi weren't particularly compelling musically.

8/20    Been a long time since I work on C/C++.  Can anyone help make
        sense of this message?

        main.o: file not recognized: File truncated
        \_ Maybe the .o was originally compiled for a different architecture?
           \_ Hmm...no, I am doing a clean build.
              \_ problem with the compile options and compile line?  What is
                 it?
              \_ Are you building on a nfs mounted volume? (perhaps on
                 Linux using v2?)
                 Linux using nfs v2?)
        \_ filesystem full or hit quota?

8/15    D00DZ GN00 WUZ 0WNZ!
        http://csua.org/u/3xw (story.news.yahoo.com)
        http://www.cert.org/advisories/CA-2003-21.html
        \_ rms:rms

8/13    In tcsh, how do you get * to include subdirectories?  I want to do
        something like perl -p -i -e 's/foo/bar/g' **.c
        and have the command executed on ./*.c, */*.c, */*/*.c and so on.
        \_ You can do something like:
           find . -name '*.c' | xargs perl -p -i -e 's/foo/bar/g'
           might have to play around with that, I haven't tried it  -niloc
           \- you cannot do zsh-style ** recusive globbing in tcsh.
              rather than doing something really ugly
              use find | xargs. there are also various emacs-heavy ways to
              do this. --mr emacs&&tcsh
              do this. --mr emacsbitch

8/13    I often take the battery out of my Powerbook 12", which lacks an
                         \_ so why are you doing this?
        secondary battery.  As a result, the date gets reset to 1970 if I
        power it up after more than an hour.  This cause anacron to think that
        (minus) decades have passed and start runing all sorts of jobs
        run only an hour ago.  I want to add to /etc/rc so that
        on restart if the date is ridiculous it will be set to, say, 1 hour
        beyond the last "normal" time the machine sees.  What's the easiest
        way to find the "last normal time"?
        \_ If you're using OS X there's an option to use the network time
           server under System Preferences.
        \_ /bin/date > /tmp/date        -John
           \_ That's way too easy.  The answer should some how involve
              sed/awk on the command with multiple layers of escaped chars.
        \_ you could just run ntpdate on boot.  -tom
           \_ what if you have no net?
              \_ Do you have sed/awk?
        \_ Yes I have sed/awk/perl, no I usually do not have net
           when this happens.  Please enlighten me how /bin/date > /tmp/date
           helps?  During a graceful halt?
           \_ put that in a cronjob. Then have the startup look at it. Doy? :)

8/11    http://www.craigslist.org/eby/eng/14754592.html
        They claim there's a "Secret password" encoded in there but it
        looks like every other "we don't have enough money" job posting
        to me.  I'd never apply for a job like this but I'd like to know
        if there really is a "secret password" in there.
        \_ Read down the first letters of the first five paragraphs. I want 30%
           of your first month's salary.
           \_ bingo
           \_ Kinda sad actually. I thought it would be harder to find.
           \_ BSPTEFEEA? WTF does that mean???
              \_ It means "you will continue to draw unemployment"

8/6     This is the same question I have asked before.  I am trying to
        do something to file in a directory, which the new filename is
        actually based upon the old filename,  something like
        mv *.aaa *.bbb
        With MOTD god's help, I got something like the following worked:
        ls -1 *.ps | sed 's/\(.*\)[.]ps/ps2ascii \1.ps \1.txt;/'

        However, it doesn't execute.  Even if I put back-quote and/or
        put eval in the front, it still doesn't execute:
        eval `ls -1 *.ps | sed 's/\(.*\)[.]ps/ps2ascii \1.ps \1.txt;/'`

        Any suggestion on how to make that line be executed?    -kngharv
        \_ umm, that seems like a really retarded approach. you should be
           more careful about who you take advice from. why not this:
           for f in *.ps; do ps2ascii $f.ps $f.txt; done
           \_ because it doesn't work. ps2ascii would try to open
              file.ps.ps. here is a way you can do it:

              for f in *.ps; do ps2ascii $f `echo $f|sed 's/.ps$/.txt/'`; done
                                                                 --aaron
              \_ oops, forgot about the .ps.txt thing, and your above thing
                 is inconsistent with your cmdline. anyway, since OP is using
                 csh, it would be even easier to use the r modifier.
           \_ that would make too much sense.  the sed version has that classic
              'job security' look to it.  ;-)
              \_ err.. do this for loop in a command line?  --OP csh user
                 \- i would do something like this:
        ls *ps |sed 's/[.]ps$//' |awk '{print "ps2acii " $1".ps" " "$1".txt" }'
                    and then pipe that to sh or to a file and then edit and
                    runthe file. obviously be as careful as you need to be.
                    this is a cleaner and safer way to do it if you are not a
                    shell wizard. --psb

7/29    I've been struggling with cygwin all day and getting nowhere.
        I'm trying to get it to run init and startup xinetd, sshd, etc
        from /etc/rc.d/rc?.d just like on a real unix box and I'm not
        getting anywhere.  There's an error in the init.d/functions file
        which prevents anything running properly and when I try running
        xinetd by hand, it runs as my user and not SYSTEM even though
        I setuid'd xinetd.exe and tried a bunch of other things.  Has
        anyone here got any of this working and if so, please tell me
        how explaining very very slowly because I'm feeling really
        stupid right now.  And no google didn't help at all.  Thanks!
        \_ there is a cyg program to install your sshd (and anything
           else) as an NT service.  Set that to start automagically
           and you will be good to go.  google for "cygwin sshd
           install" and i'm sure you will find it.

7/24    Related to the recent LANMANAGER password attacks:
        Vulnerabilities in Win2k kerberos authentication.
        http://www.hut.fi/~autikkan/kerberos           -John
        \_ I've decided it doesn't matter anymore.  If you run windows you
           just have to assume the whole thing is broken top to bottom and
           the rest is just details.

7/15    What's the best way, using free software, to merge two eps files
        into a single pdf document?
        \_ using latex, put them into one ps document, then
           ps2pdf them?
           \_ Actually, I just found this:
        gs -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -dNOPAUSE -dBATCH -sOutputFile=testout.pdf \
        Page1.eps Page2.eps
        works great.  thanks anyways. -op
        \_ you can also use psmerge | ps2pdf
           \_ cool, thanks.
        Okay, a related question, I have a ps file that has type3 fonts.
        What's a quick way to remove them?  They are unnecessary and
        don't work in xpdf.

7/9     How do I find out the CPU speed of a UNIX SUN sparcstation?
        \_ /usr/platform/<something>/sbin/prtdiag
           \_ psrinfo -v is the correct method (prtdiag isn't
              supported on all platforms and doesn't report
              the cpu speed properly on some sun4u boxes)
        \_ dmesg.  It's the first thing you see at POST.  -John
           \_ on some systems dmesg reads from a log file
              that gets log rotated, so the post info gets
              deleted.

7/8     Cygwin/tcsh users: Some odd bug in tcsh made it create a 1.7 gig
        .history file in my $home.  It took a few minutes to figure out why
        new tcsh's would swap the machine to death and never start but that
        was it.  Just trying to save someone else some hassle and time if
        it ever happens to you.
        \_ err.. what version is your cygwin/tcsh?  I have been using it
           for past 10 months and my .history file is kept under 1kb.
           \_ I keep it updated almost daily.  It hasn't changed in more than
              a month.  I've been using it for about 6 months.  This is the
              first time anything weird happened.  I had about 12 rxvt/tcsh
              windows open and ssh'd to work.  The work firewall timed me
              out (oops!) and I was stuck scratching my head trying to open
              new shells after I killed the timed out ones.  I've changed
              nothing in my config recently.  I think I just ran into some
              odd bug.  It was 1.7gigs of my prompt over and over.
              \_ so you had a dynamic prompt that dumped into .history.
                 don't use dynamic prompts or precmd/postcmd aliases..
                 use the tcsh builtin prompt bits. There's nothing useful
                 that they won't do.

7/8     Is there a UNIX command to see how much RAM a machine has?
        \_ I like using 'top' for that.
        \_ solaris: prtdiag
        \_ linux: awk '/^Mem:/ { print $2/(1024*1024); }' /proc/meminfo
           solaris: prtconf -v | awk '/^Memory/ { print $3; }'
        \_ linux has 'free'

7/8     Dear anonymous motd censor:
        What the HELL is your problem?  The only thing acceptable to you is
        questions about UNIX, HTML, tcch, cygwin, and freakin' Mountain
        View?
        \_ Hey, let's get the FBI to make a profile. oh wait ...
        \_ U forgot linux
        \_ lets united and fight for it.  publish the name who is
           deleting and modifying other people's post.
           \_ Oh! Oh!  Mista Kotta!  I know!  (but I'm still not telling).
                \_ most csua people were approximately 2.5 years old
                   or maybe even -2.5 years old during the above.
                   i'm not even old enough to remember. - danh
                   \_ okay. so what happened "during the above"?
                      \_ some moron deleted the Welcome Back Kotter
                         reference someone used earlier, don't worry
                         about it. - danh
                   \_ I know. I don't care.  Most csua people don't read the
                      motd.  Alums mostly do, like you.   --hs
              Write your own scripts, stick them in cron and wait.  You'll
              see exactly who is doing what within 24 hours.  Trivial.  The
              most amusing part is not who is censoring and modifying posts.
              That's what babies do.  I like seeing the hypocrites posting
              anonymously and then bitch about others who post anon.  That's
              always good for a laugh.  --horseshack
              \_ Hypocrites? Post anonymously is one thing, modifying
                 other's post and deleting other post is completely different
                 \_ not really.  modifying the motd is modifying the motd.
                    doing it anonymously while bitching about others being
                    anonymous posters just compounds the crime.  Anyway, like
                    I said.  It took 10-15 minutes to write the scripts.  --hs

7/8     I asked earlier about programs that mount tar file, compressed or not,
        as a filesystem.  Thanks for the answers, though they are not exactly
        what I wanted.  What I want is some way to store a large number of
        (readonly) files, such as the mirror of some web sites, in one file.
        It is easier to move around and take much less space.  Failing mounting
        tar, any other way to achieve this?
        \- emacs can read/write remote tar.gz files over various transport
           protocols. --psb
        \_ tar without compression won't get you what you want.  It won't save
           space.  You want a tool like rsync that makes moving files easier.
           Write some scripts then GPL and share them so we can all enjoy the
           fruits of your labors.  You stand on the shoulders of giants!
                \_ tar can save a small amount of space by packing the files
                   in and not wasting as much unused space at the end of each
                   file
                   \_ Huh. I'm no cs guy, but I've generally found uncompressed
                      tar files to be larger than the directories they
                      reproduced - particularly when a large number of small
                      files were in the directory. I had to do a lot of this
                      for my Master's thesis a few years ago. -- ulysses
        \_ What about making a cd-rom (ISO) image with "mkisofs" then you can
           mount that as a read-only loop device. (You don't need to have a
           CD to do this). name the file whatever.iso
           \_ Along the same lines, at least FreeBSD has a method for
              mounting ISO files as if they were a standard disk device.

7/7     Is there a program that mount a tar or tgz file as if it is a disk?
        I searched the web but only found something that does not quite work.
        \_ Things like WinRAR on windows can open them in a gui and let you
           more easily manipulate the files but I've never seen something
           that lets you truly mount a tar file like you're talking about.
           What are you really trying to do?
        \_ If you open a tar file in emacs it shows you the files in the
           tar archive as if you were using dired.  If you hit return on
           one of the files it shows you that file. -emin

7/02    anyone have any idea why NET:FTP would take 60 times longer
        to grab a file than just going throught ftp on the (linux)
        command line.  (but only on one box, my other box goes to
        the same destination fine, similar perl/cmd_line ftp times).
        \_ DNS? totally a guess

7/2     i need to share files on 2 solaris machines. i was going to use NFS
        but someone suggested that smb might be more reliable. this shocked
        me, but i figured i'd see if anyone else agreed with this opinion. i
        think she recommended smb because djb says that nfs sucks.
                                                \_ djb sucks.  ignore him.
                                                   \_ djb is a smart guy,
                                                      and he is usually
                                                      right (on security
                                                      and performance
                                                      issues) but he is
                                                      just not practical
                                                      most of the time.
        \_ she's wrong, especially with solaris.
        \_ smbclient is like using ftp.  If you want to *really* share files
           you'll need to *purchase* a third party smb-fs to run on solaris
           since samba doesn't support smbfs like linux.  In short your
           'someone' is locked in a linux world and doesn't know wtf they're
           talking about.  NFS sucks but you don't have a *free* (as in beer)
           option and I doubt you'll want to pay to link only 2 boxes.
                -Motd Storage Guru
                      \- "what is wrong with NFS" ... not in theory but
                         practice. --psb
                         \_ Linux.  It's NFS has been broken for a decade.
                            \_ Bullshit. Ever since Linux 2.2.14 kernels,
                               I didn't have any problems with Linux NFS,
                               at least when serving files from Linux and Linux
                               or from a Solaris server to Linux clients.
                               The only problem is that you're limited to the
                               functionality supported by the Linux NFS
                               implementation (e.g. no ACLs, no secure
                               authentication, server-side NFS v3 support is
                               still considered experimental)
                               \_ Actually it still sucks.  It just isn't as
                                  bad as it used to be.  -MSG
                         \_ It's a huge pain in the ass to configure for each
                            client/server pair.  Compatibility between vendors
                            is weak at best so performance is going to suck
                            until you spend a week beating on it until you get
                            the right options for your client/server combo and
                            your data set as well.  There are other problems
                            but that's the big one for me.  --Motd Storage Guru
           \_ And if she is "locked in a linux world...wtf they're talking
              about..." that'd be a reason to recommend SMB over NFS.  NFS
              in linux sucks ass. - a guy trapped in the linux world
              \_ Yes, but in this case the recommendation was wrong because it
                 not only doesn't apply to Solaris but is flat out wrong. -MSG

6/30    -rwxr-xr-x+   1 fooxer  fooxer     6345 Jun 23 17:33 structs.h*
        Anybody know what that "+" on the right side of the permissions list
        is for?  This is on a cygwin/NT4 system and I'm having weird trouble
        with saving files (my IDE keeps complaining that it can't write to the
        file).
        \_ It is unixes way of saying there is ACL information regarding
           the file perms. The NT4 security model is richer than the
           standard unix model. As a unix guy, it really hurts to have
           to admit this. -ausman
           \_ There are unix variants with mandatory access controls and
              more than the usual uga privilege model.  -John
           \_ Thanks... so, zealotry aside, what's the easiest way to
              a) remove all ACL info (which I don't care about)
              b) tell SourceSafe to use more basic permissions
                ? -- unix guy #2
              \_ Chmod 0755 from the unix side will probably remove the
                 ACL information from the file. This works with a NetApp
                 in a mixed environment, anyway. Can't help you with b.
                 \_ Ugh bad idea. Why not use the ACL commands to clear it?
                    \_ what are those?  -- ug#2
                    \_ Yeah, exactly. What are the equiv to getfacl and
                       setfacl on a cygwin box?
                    \_ You can potentially corrupt the file permissions
                       if you mix chmod and setfacl...in fact, that might
                       be why it's in a busted state right now.
                       \_ You still have not answered the question. How
                          do you manipulate ACLs on a cygwin box?
                          \_ Thanks to all those who posted a response; I
                             finally went into Explorer and recursively gave
                             full access to Everyone, which seems to have
                             solved the (immediate) problem.  -- ug#2, aka op
           \_ yeah but M$ could build on unix's 25 years of experience and
              they still often fail to get it right. But recent unix
              versions have much more finer grained permissions capabilities.

6/28    is there a unix instant messenger client for aol instant messenger
        stuff that supports file transfer?
        \_ I believe gaim now has support.
        \_ I used to use a tcl/tk version of Aim client on Solaris.
           that was years ago.  GAIM has the most active development.
           Have you also tried Everybuddy?    --kngharv

6/28    I've been playing around with cygwin and it looks like it doesn't
        have nfs client support.  Is that true or am I just blind?  Thanks.
        \_ I think it's true.  NFS is usually an OS thing.
        \_ or you could run a SMB server and mount the smb share
           with cygwin - danh
        \_ you can run an NFS server on your cygwin box. i don't know about
           a client. -ali
           \_ I want my cygwin box to nfs mount my unix box.  It doesn't
              look like there's a native cygwin nfs client.  I was hoping
              I was wrong.  -op

6/18    Is there a single man page somewhere that describes all the basic
        file manipulation tools for FreeBSD or Unix in general?  I'm trying to
        batch-format a text file to 80 lines and I can't remember the command.
        I always end up starting from `man [join,cut,paste,comm,diff]` and
        searching many "See Also" sections.
        \_ ok, see, it's "fmt" that I want, not "format".  There's got to be
           a better way to man. --op
           \_ man -k?  apropos?
        \_ google for the unix rosetta stone

6/14    In older versions of xemacs, if I click anywhere on foo_bar_baz, the
        entire string is highlighted.  But with newer versions the highlight
        stops at the underscore.  I have to click on the underscore to highlight
        the whole string.  Anybody know if this is a configurable thing?  I've
        searched the FAQs and didn't find anything.  This problem is very
        annoying because I highlight and paste function names into
        M-x grep or other search tools a lot.  Thanks.
        \_ use the older version.

6/10    I want to grep for the ocurrance of the ']' and '[' character in a file
        I've tried all sorts of quoting on the command line, everything seems
        to give a ayntax or 'unmatched' error. How can I do this?
        \_ grep '\['
        \_ to search for both, use "egrep '\[|\]'<filename>" -jnat
           \_ That doesn't seem to work as an "or" perhaps the version
              pf egrep is too old?  egrep -V  =  grep (GNU grep) 2.4.2
              \_ It looks like you're not really running egrep -- perhaps
                 it's aliased to grep?  The pattern above works in egrep;
                 you could also use '[][]', which works everywhere.  --mconst
                 \_ Yup, it's just an alias to grep. thanks
              \_ he probably meant '[\[\]]' or '(\[|\])' --scotsman
                 \_ Nope.  And I used egrep on soda.  egrep -V:
                        egrep (GNU grep) 2.4d      -jnat
           \_ That works for me:
        soda% egrep '\[|\]' /tmp/testfile
        lsdkfsjdlf sodjf sdlfj sodfj [sjfls] sfjls
        sdl [fjso slsjfosf sfosjf os sfjlsfj ssj
        sjflsdfj ofijwe wof owejf] oweo swfowejoi
        soda% which egrep
        /usr/bin/egrep
        soda% egrep --version
        egrep (GNU grep) 2.4d

6/3     I want to have apache run fault-tolerantly across two web servers.
        I've found http://eddie.sourceforge.net but nothing else that seems to
        be appropriate and free. I don't run Linux (Solaris 9, actually). Any
        suggestions? ok tnx
        \_ store the content on a central system and serve it out using
           nfs to the to systems. Then use dns round-robin or an l4 switch
           (load-balancer) so that if either one of the systems goes down
           you auto fall over to the other one. If nfs is two slow, ssh-rsync
           the content to the two systems periodically.
           \_ isn't the NFS server the weakest link here? also, i'm not
              currently running NFS and would rather avoid it for
              security and complexity reasons. but if this is the easiest/
              most stable way, then i'll look into it.
              \_ NFS is the weak link. Do an ssh-rsync from a third machine
                 or barring that, have one rsync to the other.
              \_ roundrobinDNS is only an answer if the goal is load-balancing
                 if the goal is 100% uptime, round-robin DNS is an anti-answer
                 \_ what is the answer for 100% uptime?
                 \_ dns round robin with small ttls will work pretty well
                    for a small-ish site.
        \_ Did you want just the webserver fault-tolerant or the whole system?
           What are your resources like and what factors are most important
           to you?
        \_ NFS isn't a weak link if it is a NetApp. The real question here
           is what the budget is. There are even appliances to do this. As
           the above poster says, what are the factors here? Does
           performance matter and so on.
           \_ Budgets are largely frozen. The alternative is downtime (which
              is what has been going on the past 10 years). Performance isn't
              an issue, I'd just rather not get calls if a machine dies.
              I have 3 E250's to work with. They also do mail and DNS... I
              figured I'd start w/ balancing http and move on from there.
              \_ Look into load balancing with Apache mod_proxy.  Simple
                 to set up, and you can do more interesting things for
                 heartbeat.
        \_ Take a look at putting a web-cache in front of your http servers.
           With squid you can set it up so that it fetches pages from your
           http server when it doesn't have them and then serve them out to
           clients.

5/20    Game Review:  Freelancer, Microsoft.
        Freelancer is from the Elite/Wing Commander genre.  It attempts to
        capture the Elite be-anything-you-want (trader, miner, bounty hunter,
        etc) feeling but you're mostly stuck on the single player main mission
        path to the end.  You can diverge and ignore it relatively early if you
        want but unless you already know what you're doing you're better off
        following the pre-chosen path.  Space combat is lacking.  All enemy
        ships appear to use the same AI routine.  There's no radar, only a
        bunch of red arrows around the outside of the HUD showing you the
        general direction of targets but not distance.  The UI has numerous
        annoyances like this.  Play time of main mission: 17 hours, 33 minutes.
        I'm glad my friend bought it and not me.
        \_ Last I heard MS was going to MMORG this.
           \_ If you are looking for an MMORG in this genre, try Eve.
              I started playing it a few days ago, and I am very impressed --
              it's a very deep game.

5/20    sun gurus, please help.  My ultra 5 had some problem getting out of
        suspend.  I had to power cycle and do nvram-default to get it to boot
        up normal again.  Everything is up now.  But the system is EXTERMELY
        slow.  I don't see any processes hogging up memory or anything strange.
        I think the previous bad suspend left some bad stuff around that's
        screwing up the system.  What should I look for to get it back to
        normal again?  Thanks!
        \_ It's an ultra5.  How fast could it ever have been?
           \_ I type 'top' and it takes 10 seconds for the display to come up.
              Similarly with other commands.  It's not environment related
              because using the same dot files on another machine works just
              fine.
              \_ vmstat, iostat
        \_ Don't use suspend. There is no point and it has problems. --dim
        \_ When suspend hoses me I try this from the ok prompt:
                boot -s
           when it asks for the root password, I hit control D.
           The machine should then come up fine.  I login
           as root, I remove /.CPR or /var/.CPR and edit
           /etc/power.conf so I don't get hosed again.  If you chmod
           /usr/openwin/bin/sys-suspend not to be executable, that
           will prevent accidentally suspending via the sleep key.  -ax
           \_ Just pkgrm the power related packages.
           \_ pkgrm(in this order): SUNWcprx SUNWcpr SUNWpmux SUNWpmowm
              SUNWpmowu SUNWpmowr SUNWpmr SUNWpmu

5/20    There used to be a unix program "fspb", the faculty-staff-phone-book
        program but it isn't in my $path on soda.  Does it still exist?  Is
        there some web based replacement?  Thanks!
        \_ finger name@berkeley.edu
        \_ locate doesn't find it.  I think it went bye-bye. Sorry.

5/17    Anyone recommend bit-by-bit CD copying software? What's the key
        phrase to search for in Google? All I get are rippers & burners.
        \_In Linux, you use two programs:  cdda2wav  and  cdrecord
          There is good info at the end of the EXAMPLES section of
          man cdrecord
        \_ CloneCD under windows
           \_ I've heard all the cool kids use Alcohol 120% these days.
              \_ A120 has worked for me where CCD has failed.  Tho I tend to rip
                 to image, then use A120 or daemon tools to emulate.  Many tools
                 which have annoying copy protection also require the disk to be
                 in the drive, and I find it more convenient to have to image.
                 Oh yes, and both are kazaa-able.
        \_ Found CloneCD on my own. Worked great. Wow, the motd is swell. I'll
           try A120, too. Thanks a bunch you guys! Where have..been..life. -op

5/8     UNIX question.  I have two files, each of them fortunately are just
        one or two column of text.  I would like to merge let say, columnA
        from fileA and columnB from fileB side by side to become
        columnA_from_fileA      columnB_from_fileB
        how to do that?
                (not sure how to googlizing this problem)
        \- if one shot, emacs kill/yank-rect. you can use join, but the
           syntax can be arcane. --psb
           \_ thanks, I'll look up join and see what i can do
        \_ awk. --aaron
           \_ barbarian.  perl.
              \_ Call me a Hun and then use "cut", "paste", and temp files.
                 cut -f colA fileA > fooA; cut -f colB fileB > fooB
                 paste fooA fooB > result
                 \_ Hun!
                    \_ Reread problem. Oops. Just use "paste fileA fileB"
        \_ you can also (ab)use "pr -m fileA fileB"
           \_ That's beautiful! I suggest using "pr -m -t fileA fileB".

5/6     I was looking at a csua user homepage a few months ago and someone
        had worked on a project involving something about making disk
        backups to physically seperate locations, arguing that a flood or
        fire would destroy any local backups just as easily as it would your
        normal disk. anyone know the name of this project or user?
        \_ The project you describe is the Distributed Internet Backup
           System (DIBS) developed by Emin Martinian and available at
           http://www.csua.berkeley.edu/~emin/source_code/dibs/index.html -emin
           \_ thanks
              \- how are you determining what to incrementally backup?
                 are you looking at file timestamps? is the unit of change
                 a file or a block of data? i.e. if 1 byte is appended
                 to a 100meg file, does a 100mb get xferred? does this use
                 rsync under the hood? ok tnx. --psb
                 \_ if you're interested in that sort of stuff, try
                    http://oceanstore.cs.berkeley.edu
           \_ Emin, were you a part of Kubi's group?
                    \_ OceanStore is a great project but it has different
                       goals.  DIBS is designed to provide a way for people
                       to exchange files for backups in a secure, robust
                       way without requiring a central authority. -emin
                 \_ DIBS stores an MD5 hash for each file and does a full
                    backup of any file which changes.  Rsync is not used
                    because DIBS uses encryption and erasure correction
                    coding and that is difficult to combine with rsync.
                    Also, DIBS is peer-to-peer while rsync requires you
                    to have accounts on both ends.  -emin
                    \- yeah i have some limited familiarity with oceanstor
                       but again for something lightweight i am curious
                       about this dibs thing. we hacked up something we
                       call the "storagelocker" with ssh keys and some
                       other access control technology and a big perl
                       script ... it works ok as a palce to write and
                       recover a bitstream but it would be nice to have
                       some smarts to reduce the traffic volume.
                       BTW, does anyone know if the hummingbird fs
                       was ever released and what performance stats
                       look like? --psb
                       \_ Although I'm tooting my own horn, I think DIBS
                          is what you are looking for.  The way I use DIBS
                          is to put links to everything I want backed up in
                          a special directory and DIBS automatically and
                          incrementally makes backups to other machines. -emin
                                \- ok i will analyze it and let you know
                                   if i incorporate it into a front end
                                   to the StorageLocker(tm) ok tnx --psb
           \_ Emin, were you a part of Kubi's group?
              \_ No.  I was in Zakhor's group at Berkeley and I'm in the
                 DSP group at MIT.  I work on DIBS because I think it's
                 cool; the stuff I do for "research" is much different. -emin
        \_ Haven't companies been storing backup tapes or disks at separate
           physical locations for years?  He's not the first to realize that
           a flood or fire would destroy any local backups, is he?

5/5     Given a file, what is the best way to see all lines AFTER (and
        including) a keyword?
        \_ sed -n '/keyword/,$p' file
        \_ agrep?
        \_ perl -ne 'if ($p) {print;} elsif (/keyword/) {$p=1;print;}' file
           \_ thanks.  When do you use perl, sed, awk, egrep?
              \_ I only use grep if I'm looking for individual lines.  For
                 anything more complicated, I use Perl.  YMMV
           \_ perl -ne '$p=1 if (/keyword/); print if ($p);' file
        \_ awk 'BEGIN {p=0;} /keyword/ {p=1;} p==1 {print;}' file
           \- use sed when doing matches on a single line and simple
              opertions like delete. use pl for mutiple line matches.
              use awk rather than sed if you have to do flow control.
              grep is not a comparable tool. use emacs when you are
              making things up as you are going along. --psb

5/5     Does Netcraft use a particular port to get uptime information?
        \_ rtffaq

5/1     Alright, I have lots of personal mail (~5000 msgs) currently in
        Outlook Express (I know, big mistake, but I started using it a long
        while ago, and now here I am)... I would like to backup/archive
        these. I'm thinking the best format to store mail like this is the
        unix mbox format? Any other suggestions? Is there some way to
        convert all my outlook express mail (w/ folders, sub-folders, etc)
        to this format? thanks alot.
        \_ http://mbx2mbox.sourceforge.net might be good enough for you.
           i found this by typing the following in googlsky:
        "outlook express" mbox unix
           "outlook express" mbox unix [formatd was here instead of deleted
           because you provided a decent answer]
        \_ mbox is ok if you never want to look at it again.  gzip and forget.
           \_ Why gzip when you can use philcompress?
              \_ Nunez knows his shit, man.
           \_ what if I do want to look at it again?
              \_ I'm an mh user and I like the way mh folders and the programs
                 that go with mh work so I'm going to say convert to that.  You
                 can later tar and compress the whole thing if you get bored of
                 it.  You can easily search and re-arrange files by subject,
                 date, sender, recipient, and other searches, etc, etc, etc.
                 It's powerful but I'm sure the pine users would tell you to
                 do something else.  ;-)
              \_ Mozilla uses mbox format.  It would be very easy to set up
                 mozilla (or thunderbird) as your mail program and the old mail
                 as a local mail folder.
                 \_ but mbox format sucks.
                    \_ No it doesn't.  Or do you want to elaborate?
                       \_ locking, single file corruption, searching, etc
        \_ I'm in the same boat, but my old mail is in Lotus Notes format.
           Suggestions?
           \_ Probably can be converted to exchange and then converted to
              outlook express and then to mbox.  Good luck!
        \_ Save all messages to a certain date in a PST file and burn it.

5/1     Got a URL for a good POP3 or IMAP intro/FAQ?  I know basically nothing
        about them.
        \_ Pop3 has only 5 or 6 commands.  Telnet to port 110 and see.
        \_ Here's my POP3 primer:
                telnet localhost 110
                user <username>
                pass <password>
                list
                retr <message #>
                quit

4/30    So can someone comment on the problem(s) with /var?  Why does it keep
        filling up, what are people doing to fix the problem each time?  Maybe
        somebody here already knows a longterm solution.
        \_ It is some attachment problem. It goes away on its own.
           Jon thinks it is related to SA. I cannot tell anymore than
           that because I do not have root. You should email root or
           the politburo for answers to questions like this. -ausman
           \_ actually, it goes away when someone with root comes along
              and cleans out whatever file(s) causing the prob.

4/27    I've heard somewhere that the unix command "nice" to change the
        priority of a process doesn't really do anything useful.  Is that
        true?  Or is it half broken like it's only useful if everybody
        uses it?  Thanks.
        \_ Depends on platform, but it does have noticeable effects on
           FreeBSD & Linux.
        \_ That depends on what you want to do with it.  If you're on
           a multiuser machine, and you want your fair share of CPU,
           don't "nice" your processes.  Odds are no one else will, and
           you'll lose.
           \_ More likely you nice all of the new intern's processes for them
              \_ BOFH!

4/24    On systems without Perl, what's the easiest way to obtain the
        same results as perl -e 'print time()'?
                        \_ On systems with perl the easiest way is:
                           perl -e 'print $^T';
        \_ 5 lines of C code using libc gettimeofday
        \_ combine date with awk and do some simple math (in awk or with bc).
        \_ combine date with awk and do some simple math (in awk or
           with bc).
        \_ 'date' has %s time format.
           \_ That gives you the "current second", not the # of seconds
              since epoch time.
                \_ date +%s gives the # secs since Jan 1, 1970 on
                   FreeBSD and Linux. (It doesn't work at all on
                           if you compile gnudate on solaris it will work--psb
                   Solaris)
                        \- this is a gnudate extension.
                           if you compile gnudate on solaris it will
                           work--psb
                           \_ If he can compile stuff, then he
                              can just write a 3 line c pgm to
                              get the info he needs.

4/23    What's a good program that can split 1 mpg into 2 or concat 2 into 1?
        \_ mplayer has something to do this, I think, but I've never used it.
        \_ head/tail and cat
        \_ QuickTime Pro.
        \_ tail/head and cat  (and free unlike QTpro)
           \_ this is a horrible method.  You'll end up with files that have
              bad headers and that aren't cut on frame boundaries.  It /may/
              work in some players if you're lucky, but you shouldn't rely on
              it.  Use a tool designed for this sort of thing.  If you're
              using Windows, use Tmpgenc http://www.tmpgenc.net.  It's
              the best free (as in beer) MPEG1 encoder around, and it has
              splicing tools. --jameslin
              \_ Nonsense.  I only use GPL OSS or nothing.
              \_ HA, HA!  You got trolled!
                 \_ I guess, but there really are people who try to join
                    MPEG files by directly concatenating the files together.
                    --jameslin
                    \_ He wasn't trolled.  It was a joke.  He was self-trolled.
                       Not my fault.  --tail/head/cat guy
        \_ dd

4/11    I want to run a unix command which captures output to two files:
        a file with stdout, another with stderr. how do i do this?
        \_ In bourne-like shell
           cmd > file1 2> file2
           file1 will have stdout, file2 will have stderr output.
        \_  ( unix_command > g ) > & f
            works in csh, but you really should be using bash if you want
            things to work correctly.
            \_ thanks for both options.
            \_ thanks for both options. --not op
            \_ try again.  s,bash,ksh,g
               \_ s/[^ ]*sh/zsh/g  -motd shell snob
               \- this subshell approach for csh breaks down quickly
                  [as do any other csh hacks]. this is something you want
                  to do for sure using a bourne shell type shell --psb
                  \_ i guess my disclaimer wasn't clear enough. -orig c poster
                     here's a "famous" outdated faq on what is wrong with csh.
                     http://www.faqs.org/faqs/unix-faq/shell/csh-whynot

4/11    Why is anything being printed?
        bash-2.05b$ mkdir tmp 2>&1 > /dev/null
        mkdir: tmp: File exists
               \- use this "mkdir tmp  > /dev/null 2>&1" --psb
                  \_ thanks. (mkdir tmp 2>&1) > /dev/null wasnt as purty.
        \_ The order of evaluation is important:
           2>&1         -> dup2(1,2)
           --> 2 is now a copy of 1
           1> /dev/null -> fd = open("/dev/null",O_RDONLY);
                           dup2(fd,1);
           --> 1 is a copy of fd, 2 remains a copy of what 1 was.

3/26    I just upgraded to Bind 9.2.2 and it seems that I can no longer
        get responses from roots a and b (the other root serves work
        fine). I've checked the routing, I can get to a and b, I just
        can't get a response from them. Anyone else have this problem?
        Any suggestions about where to start debugging? tia.
        \_ I had a different problem.  bind8 stopped being able to query
           the root nameservers at all.  So I upgraded to bind9.
           --scotsman

3/19    How did mconst fix /var, and what was wrong with it?
        \_ The mail I sent to root is now in ~mconst/pub/var-mail.  --mconst
           \_ thanks, that was informative.  Shouldn't that file be made
              unreadable by non-root though?
              \_ I think everything in there is public information -- but
                 please let me know if I missed something.  --mconst
                 \_ I'm sorry, I meant /var/account/acct.  It seems like
                    it contains somewhat private information of little use
                    to non-sysadmin types.
                    \_ You're absolutely right.  Fixed, thanks.  --mconst
                       \_ Does anybody else find this polite exchange as
                          refreshing as I do?
                          \_ Actually...yes.       -mice
                          \_ PURE.  REFRESHING.  MCONST.
        \_ Someone was trying to rotate accounting logs, and failed
           miserably.

3/16    I wrote a (trivial) program that converts between line termination
        of PC or Mac and Unix.  I want to to use this program with CVS so
        that the repository sees a file with the unix convention although
        the checked out copy always use some other convention.  How can I
        do it automatically and transparently for files with certain
        extensions?  Ok tnx.
        \-emacs hooks. ok bye.
        \_ I'm pretty new to cvs, but i think what you want to do is
           cvs co CVSROOT, edit the cvswrappers file and put something
           like,:
                 *.[tT][xX][tT] -t /path/to/yourprogram
                 *.[sS][tT] -t /bin/to/yourprogram
                ...

3/12    What is the best method for securely updating the contents of
        file (unix/c)?
        What I've got right now is open() then mkstemp() and copy the
        bits from the old fd to the fd from mkstemp() and finally call
        rename(). I've specified O_RDONLY|O_EXLOCK, which should prevent
        two instances of the process from colliding, but I'm concerned
        that the call to rename() may not be "safe". TIA.
        \_ what is your definition of "secure"?  What's wrong with more
           obvious methods?
           \_ race conditions.
        \_ rename is atomic. what you describe should work fine. --aaron

3/5     All of a sudden my DNS server is not resolving http://mail.yahoo.com or
        http://calendar.yahoo.com. Everythign else I try seems to work. What could
        cause this?
        \_ is Earthlink your ISP by any chance?
           \_ no, why, do they have hte same problem? this is on my own dns
              server running BIND8.x
        \_
        ; <<>> DiG 8.3 <<>> http://calendar.yahoo.com
        ;; res options: init recurs defnam dnsrch
        ;; res_nsend to server default -- 127.0.0.1: Connection timed out

3/2     I want to do something like <command> | grep "Command Failed"
        and then test the exit value of grep. However, I want the output
        from the command to go to the screen but if I use "grep -v",
        the exit value of grep screws up (How are the exit values defined
        under "grep -v"?).  Help!                    -- unix newbie
        \_ You need to be more specific with what you're trying to do.
           And the point of exit codes is to not need to do BS like grep
           for failure.  Or just try different grep -v's and check exit code.
           \_ I want to have the whole output of a command go to STDOUT but
              at the same time grep the output of the command for stuff. -op
                \_ Look at the tee command then.
                   \_ Wouldn't he need a named pipe/temp file to get the
                      effect he's looking for?
                \_ Grep won't quite do what you want. Use awk:
        cmd 2>&1 | awk 'BEGIN {rc=0;} /^msg$/ {rc=1;} {print;} END {exit rc;}'
          \_ so why aren't you using perl, again?
                \_ awk is more portable

2/28    Most of your friends are married.  They have settled down and bought
        a house in the suburbs.  Some have children or are planning to have
        children.  Meanwhile, you still hang out at berkeley or SF.  Taking
        classes and pretending to be a student all over again.  Becoming or
        trying to become another pathetic 30 year old first year grad student.
                                 \_ why is going to grad school later in life
                                    pathetic?
        Chasing after 18 year old coeds.  Or still playing computer games
        and fiddling with your unix box all weekend.  When are you going to
        settle down?
        \_ oh god not Berkeley or SF!  it's worse than Juarez?
        \_ what's the point? freedom is wonderful. oooo, the suburbs. i
           feel so sad that i'm not in the suburbs. ha ha ha.
        As soon as I find the right man/women/bovine:
        Until I become 40: .
        Never:
        Why?: .

2/28    Unix Question:  What is wrong with the following line?
        find . -name "*.txt" -exec grep keyword {}\; -print
        It get stuck when I execute it.
        \_ seems to work for me.  Perhaps the disk is just churning the
           disk?
        \_ there is a syntax error, there should be space between {} and \;

2/26    Wasn't csua passwd was compromised the other time?  Could the hacker
        had placed some program on csua that snoops our email?  I think my
        email account has been snooped on.  I send out a email to a friend
        giving him my server ip and port, but someone else visited my server
        since my friend was not able to access my server.  I got a foreign
        ip accessed my server.
        \_ obUsePGP!
        \_ obUsePGP! If you send messages in the clear anyone can read them.
          \_ PGP is useless until it is made more transparent. Even the people
             who invented it have agreed on this. The existing tools are simply
             too difficult to use and even people with clue end up sending
             clear text or gibberish by accident half the time.
             \_ The 'people'?  Perhaps you mean the person, namely Phil
                Zimmerman?  And what you've just suggested does not sound
                very much like the sort of thing Phil Zimmerman would say.
                Could you post a citation so we know you're not talking out of
                your ass here?  If you are just talking out of your ass, could
                you make a point of sticking your head up your ass before
                doing this in the future so we don't have to listen to your
                blather?  Thanks.
                \_ <Sigh> The most notable "blather" is Whitten & Tygar (1999).
                   cited in the GNU privacy handbook, chapter 5.
                   cited in the GNU privacy handbook, chapter 5. You are, of
                   course, correct that it does not very much sound like
                   something Phil Zimmerman would say.
        \_ What makes you think it's not a problem on your friend's end?
           \_ it may be possible too since the company uses MS Exchange and
              Outlook, but they are very good at patching up the security
              holes. =D  Have you ever had nimda.a/e on you machine? if you
              see httpodbc.dll in all your root drives, your machine is
              infected with nimda.e.  Most likely a hacker has already placed
              a backdoor in your computer...
        \_ More likely you were just port scanned.
          \_ but he wouldn't know the exact path of the file to call even he
          finds out that port is open.  I had NAT forward that port to my
          my server.  And the web app is under a specific context-root, also
          the file is has a unique url mapping.  I see the visitor access
          that exact path right after my email went out (well a few minutes
          later).
          \_ Foreign eh? Which country?
             \_ foreign=alien=non-local
        \_ You really should email root about this.
           \_ Ya, that way root will be more careful about reading ppl's email.
              Seriously though, what are the odds of someone having the
              patience to go through and read your email? Did you look in your
              apache logs to see what IP it was that looked up your site?
                \_ Don't knock the propensity of individuals to do what normal
                   people like you and I would consider a complete lack of a
                   life for intrusive purposes.  Security through obscurity
                   or even anonymity is not a good idea.  -John
              \_ last time I checked the IP belonged to http://prophetfinance.com, I
              took a look at it subnet ips, they tranlated to greet, pride,
              lust, stalin, roosevelt, churchill, etc <DEAD>.prophetfinance.com<DEAD>. It
              is probably managed by some Russian sys-admin since he seems to
              name the servers with Russian leaders.
              \_ Churchill and greet are my favorite Russian leaders!
                \_ Okay, machines with people names are name of Russsian
                leaders.  Damn, always some block head nit-picking posts while
                totally ignoring the main point
                \_ if you use a completely specious argument to back up your
                   contention that it's a Russian sysadmin and you get called
                   on it, I don't think it qualifies as nit-picking
        \_ What is your site anyway?
          \_ just some stuff to test my web configuration.

2/26    Win32 question.  I find myself often having to email the full path
        of an MS Word to my co-workers.  Is there an easy way to create a macro
        or something like that to automatically copy the full file path to
        the clipboard?  Currently most of our docs contain the "filename /p"
        field near the top and that works OK.  But that's not appropriate for
        all docs and it's a pain to keep doing an update on it everytime
        the filename changes.  (The filename changes on every rev.)  Also, is
        there a way to do the same thing from a Windows Explorer window?
        Thanks.
        \_ Huh?  From a dos shell?  What?
        \_ I'm not sure what you're saying, but you there's an option
           in Tools|Folder Options|View that will display the full
           directory path in the address bar.
        \_ for the second part, install the "Send To" powertoy from the
           Windows 95 PowerToys set. http://csua.org/u/a12 [microsoft.com]
           It will add an item to your Send To... context menu that allows
           you conveniently to copy the full path to one or more files.
           (It works with later versions of Windows too.)

2/26    I have a file with all the mail I've got in the past few months
        (single file). I would like to run that file through procmail
        to produce several sorted files (in particular, I'm interested
        in the spam folder, but also want the other folders). Presumably
        there's a straightforward way to do this?
        \_ Answering my own question:
           http://mirror.ncsa.uiuc.edu/procmail-faq/mini-faq.html#split

2/25    what is the most efficient way in shell (pref) or perl to get the
        IDLE value for a given user.  I'm thinking there's probably a better
        way than "w | grep $user | awk '{print $5}'"
        \_ perl, User::Utmp
        \_ you don't need the grep command; in FreeBSD at least you can do
           a "w $user" which speeds things up slightly.
        \_ You don't need grep, just awk:
                w | awk '$1 == user { print $5 ; }' user=$user
           You can make this shorter with fancy quoting...

2/24    http://csua.org/u/9db -finally they arrest the strike leaders.
        I wonder if that means oil will finally drop; the strike is 30%
        of the reason oil's been going up.
        \_ Yeah, I guess if getting rid of a corrupt political leader
           interferes with your getting a cheap tankful of gas by
           jailing a few brave souls, then god speed to ya'.
           \_ Gosh, in that case, would you like to join the general
              strike to remove a corrupt politician who gained his
              position through unconstitutional manipulation of a
              a corrupt electoral system?  At the least, you wouldn't
              mind if we shut down the economy for a few days to do so,
              right?
                \_ if the people of the United States had enough savvy and
                   guts to do just that I'd help in any way I could.
                \_ Yawn.  Your own media spent months trying to prove your
                   assertion and failed.  Go back to alt.conspiracy.

2/20    Any suggestions for premium dedicated web server hosting?  Our
        current setup is with a small hosting company, but we're not
        satisfied with uptime, and they don't allocate us guaranteed
        bandwidth.  Thanks.
        \_ earthlink!

2/19    how comes rbash  (a symlink to bash) allows me to use vi, but bash -r
        does not?  (Redhat Linux 7.3) rbash does disallow cd and otherwise
        restrict things that it is supposed to.
        \_ Look at what they did with redhat xmms - it doesnt play mp3s fmt
           now.
        \_ yes.

2/14    Is there a way to telnet TO a Windows 2000 machine?  I am running
        Advanced Server, and I'd rather do my Cygwin compiles on another
        machine, since compiling renders the machine useless to keyboard
        or mouse input.  Is there some service I need to activate, or is
        that only possible on installation?
        \_ install exceed and turn on the telnetd.
        \_ Alternate to telnet, it takes some doing, but you can run sshd
        \_ Get Linux!
        \_ yes.
           on cygwin, or run rsync as a daemon.  --scotsman
           \_ It's ass.  win2k has no concept of terms.
        \_ http://www.google.com/search?q=windows+2000+telnet+server
                \_ I have 4 other linux machines, but we're only halfway
                   switched to CVS, thus we use SourceSafe.  Also, the
                   lead on my current project is a Cygwin/Windows guy.
                   The built in Telnet server disallows telnets from
                   linux boxes.  I'll check for a free win-server.
                   \_ you can run openssh sshd on cygwin you know.
                   \_ What do you mean about the native telnetd disallows
                      telnet from linux???  Nonsense.

2/13    People who intentionally write obfuscated code for contests
        use formatting to confuse you.  What tools/programs takes
        obfuscated code, and at least makes it readable in terms of
        lining up parens and so forth.
        \_ Apparently, duct tape and plastic bags work wonders for
           chemical weapons. Maybe you should try that.
        \_ indent
           \_ to be more precise, GNU indent, which has a bazillion options
              and is surely exactly what you want to make the best sense of
              obfuscated code.
              \_ is this a default part of emacs?
                 \_ No. Separate gnu package.
        \_ tab
        \_ I'd think the same tools would easily unobfuscate the formatting.

2/13    What's the difference between scp and sftp?
        \_ What's the difference between rcp and ftp?  Sort of like that.
           \_ if on unix: man scp
                          man sftp

2/12    Is FTP all plain text? Is there an extension to FTP that is secure?
        \_ http://safetp.cs.berkeley.edu
        \_ sftp, but it's not really ftp and it requires both a client and
           server upgrade.
           \_ try scp.
        \_ search for gridftp for a widely-used PKI implementation.
           ftp has more extension RFCs than previously thought imagineable.

2/12    Has anyone (in the CSUA) tried to make some sort of anonymous motd
        poll interface that lets users vote <=1 times? For about 5 minutes,
        I've been thinking about how you could do this, but haven't come up
        with a good solution that prevents root from knowing who has voted...
        \_ kchang's Happy Point system worked pretty well. It had a pretty
           cool voting GUI and authentication system.
        \_ If you can't trust root on the host then....
        \_ Built some sort of database, with one entry per user. Make
           users log in with their unix account password to use the
           voting system. Use crypt to check them (assumes you are
           root and have access to shadow file). Keep all your
           transmissions and results encrypted, so that no one
           including root can peek. The developer has to be trusted
           but no one else. Would this work?
           \_ Yes, log in with their unix account password.  That sounds
        \_ I would not give some program my unix password. Your results
           would be skewed away from security-conscions, untrusting folks.
           Wouldn't it be better to check the UID of the person running
           the vote program?
              safe.
              \_ What is unsafe about it?
        \_ I would not give said program my unix password. Your results
           would be skewed away from paraniod, untrusting folks.
           Wouldn't it be better to check the UID of the user when they
           run the program, and record one vote per UID?
           \_ Nah, just make it ask the user who logs in for the first
              time for a motd only password.  That should probably assuade
              some worries of the paranoid.

2/4     Anyone here use samhain?  Any opinions?? (It claims to detect LKMs)
        What is your favorite IDS/checksum program?
        \_ Isn't that a Danzig song?
        \_ snort
        \_ don't be cheap, buy a IDS blade that goes into your router or
           switch.  It offers much higher performance and it's more
           manageable.
           \- that cant detect something like people doing rlogin -> ssh ->
              su and typing root passwd onthe net can it? you can use BRO.
              but it sounds like the above person is looking for something
              run on the filesystem, like tripwire. i use veracity which
              might not be right for you. --psb
        \_ I don't use anything at all.  SSH2 ports open to world+dog if you
           can guess the root password, you get the whole site!  Over 5
           million active usable credit cards just waiting for the taking!
           And the best part is we wouldn't even know you'd broken in and
           stolen everything if you weren't an idiot about it.

1/23    Cygwin question - does anyone know how to set the system so that
        anything that would normally pop up a cmd.exe window instead
        opens a bash shell?  I once did this, I think by setting some
        environment variables or a registry key, but can't find any
        docs on this any more...  Thanks!
        \_ Maybe by setting ComSpec in Control Panel | System | Advanced | Env
           \_ thanks, but tried that, doesn't seem to do the trick... -op
        \_ Just replace cmd.exe with your shell executable. :-)
        \_ There's a few ways to do this but I strongly suggest you don't.
           You're going to break all sorts of things.  This is a mistake.
           \_ could you elaborate?  Thanks! -op
              \_ What runs a .bat file?  cmd.exe.  Think about it.  How many
                 other things call upon cmd.exe to get anything done?  Just
                 drop an icon on your desktop and be done with it.  I'm not
                 going to help you break your computer.  If you can figure out
                 how to do this, you'll then know how to undo it when it's all
                 fucked up.
                 \_ Translation: I don't know how to do it.
                    \_ Probably can't build a nuclear weapon either. Pussy.
                       \_ Whoah, that showed me!  I stand corrected!

01/17   Soda needs patching bad. No, it wasn't patched when it was taken down
        before, that would have made sense, and we're not here to make sense,
        we're here to make your lives hard. So don't get too used to those
        screen sessions, 'cuz I'm gonna reboot it again later tonight to
        upgrade the thing. Hopefully it won't be down much longer than it was
        yesterday. And, really, 24 hours is too much uptime anyway. - ajani
        \_ Due to unforseen complications, this won't be happening today.
           Enjoy your longer uptime. Patching will be resumed when I figure
           out all the uniquely soda complications. - ajani

1.15    cat t | grep -v FOOM > t AND
        works fine on BSD but not on Solaris. Is this a
        a) race condition, b) platform dependent issue, c) Solaris bug ?
        so what's the easiest way to do that on solaris?
        btw, grep -v FOOM < t > t doesn't work on either.
        \_ b)
        \_ Isn't that a shell, rather than platform, issue?
        \_ Depending on your shell, the shell will call open with
           O_WRONLY|O_CREAT|O_TRUNC when you specify >. And > will
           get eval'ed before |.
        \_ Depending on your shell, the shell may call open with
           O_WRONLY|O_CREAT|O_TRUNC when you specify > and it
           may eval > t before eval'ing | grep.
        \_ You're all wrong.  It's user error!  Duh!

1/14    hey, our friend /var is again close to full.
        \_ Is this why spamassassin kicked out this morning?
        \_ shit, you guys are not kidding when you said that
Filesystem             Size   Used  Avail Capacity  Mounted on
/dev/da0s1f           1041M   954M   3.2M   100%    /var
        \_ People,clean up yer shit in /var/tmp that would help
        \_ and /csua/tmp too, who's even still playing return to wolf. anyway
        \_ this should help with the problem:
        cd /var/mail
        ls -l|awk '{print $5,$9}'|sort -n|tail -20|cut -d\  -f2|xargs rm
        (btw, how could cut replace that awk?)
        \_ /var/mail is a different disk.
           If you're trying to delete your files, run this.
           find /var/tmp -user yerlogin -print -exec rm {} \;
           find /csua/tmp -user yerlogin -print -exec rm {} \;

1/13    I want to mass download a bunch of "images" from a web directory (with
        subdirectories). The page requires HTTP/1.1 authorization. Is there
        any UNIX util (similar to curl) that can do this? If not, any decent
        windows software?
        \_ Tried wget?

12/22   dumb bash question: is there a built-in shell command equivalent to
        tcsh's which command?  the system I'm on doesn't have /usr/bin/which.
        \_ type
           \_ thanks.
        \_ obUseTcsh
           \- even i'd say that's dumb. --psb
              \_ Not so.  If you want tcsh commands, use tcsh.  Bash is a
                 stupid shell.
                 \_ bash may be a stupid shell, but the answer to the
                    question is type, not obUseTcsh
                 \_ I'm not using bash by choice.  If this system had tcsh
                    I'd use it.  If this system allowed me to install my own
                    binaries, I'd install tcsh (and/or which), but it doesn't.

12/19   Newbie question - I'm not a CS or engineering or even a tech major so
        please don't jump all over this.  What I'd like to do is replace all
        occurrences of a word in an original file with a word in an infile,
                                                   ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^???
        and output a new file.  I want to iterate this process for all the
        words in the infile list (the word to be replaced in the original file
        remains the same).  Greatly appreciate any suggestion on which
        utility or script would be most suitable for this kind of job.
        \- emacs, sed, perl can all do this. i dont understand precisely
           what you are trying to do, however. --psb
           \_ ED is the standard text editor.
           \_Thanks for your guys help so far.  What geordan summarized below
                is what I'm trying to do
                \_ I'm not on crack!  Yay!  ...Ohhhh -geordan
        \_ So the original file is basically a template which contains
           one or more words that needs to be replaced, and the infile
           contains a list of words that will be substituted into the
           template file?  It's late and it's hard for me to word that.
           Anyway the output is a bunch of files, one for each word in
           the infile?  I'd use perl. -geordan, who should just go to sleep
           \_ in bash:
                for i in `cat infile`;
                do
                        cat ORIGINALFILE | \
                        perl -p -i -e 's/YOURWORD/$i/g' > \
                        ORIGINALFILE.$i;
                done
              [ reformatted - formatd ]
        \_ i thought grep was the standard quickest solution for this sort of
           thing but okay the above looks fine. or you can grep using the same
           regexp 's/YOURWORD/$i/g' ?  i think
        \_ Uh you sure?  I don't think this is doing quite what the OP was
           asking but I admit I'm not sure what the OP really wanted either.
           \_ I think it's along the lines of what he wants but I'm not
              sure if the $i in the perl regexp will be properly escaped.
              \_ Replace the single quotes with double quotes and it will
                 be interpolated.  Also the -i flag doesn't really make
                 sense as you're not really modifying the file in-place.
                 -geordan

12/19   Can someone recommend a reasonable, free tool for creating network
        diagrams under Unix (FreeBSD)/X11?  I don't feel like wasting space
        for vmware or dual-boot on a perfectly good laptop just to run Visio,
        which is a bloated POS anyway.  Unfortunately, a lot of my clients
        demand some sort of diagrams for stuff I do.  -John
        \_ define reasonable
        \_ Your time is worth more than your disk space.
                \_ Did I mention that visio is a piece of shit?  It's slow and
                   a pain.  It often exports poorly into real formats.  I want
                   something with which I can do good basic network diagrams,
                   import icons, export to pdf/jpeg without having to be a
                   master artist.  Kivio looks great, thanks!  -John
                   \_ Real formats?  Give them a printout or the visio file.
        \_ xdraw
        \_ xfig!
        \_ I like tgif.  --PeterM
           \_ Hob nob lob fob, and sod.
        \_ dia
        \_ Kivio. "Give it a network and let it explore and map out the
           network for you."
        \_ OpenOffice

12/10   I have some RTF files that I want to extract the text from.
        Any recommendations on good, simple UNIX apps? (not "strings")
        I use "catdoc" for .doc's. But it doesn't do rtf.
        \_ Typing "rtf<Ctrl-D>" at soda shell prompt yields rtf2LaTeX. No, I
           don't know how well that thing works. Also, the catdoc
           website (http://www.ice.ru/~vitus/catdoc has an "rtf2html" posted.
           Same disclaimer applies.
                \_ Thanks. the rtf2html I found earlier was from 1993. This one
                   you pointed me to was upgraded in 1998. Works Great.
                   Thanks -op
        \_ real men use strings.  truly real men write their own in perl.
                \_ Why reinvent the wheel? True men take existing open-source
                   software and improve upon it and put it back out into the
                   world, GPL Style.
                   \_ The GPL is for babies.  That's newbie shit.  Real men
                                     \_ I believe the proper term is
                                        quiche eaters
                      predate this gpl craziness, write their own code, and
                      you can have the source if you can break in and take it.

12/9    How do I make the output of "tar cvfz some-directory" deterministic?
        My guess is that tar is putting some kind of header in the tar file
        which contains the date.  I ask because I don't want to send a tar
        archive to be backed up if it hasn't changed since the last time I
        tar'red up 'some-directory'.  Thanks
        \- i dont think you can do that, but you can use "find | tar".
           i'd be interested to hear if there is a way. gnu tar has a
           info node that is liek 150pp, so maybe there is a way. --psb
        \_ crc's and checksums.
                \_ yup, and a standard feature of any build/backup/long process

12/5    We have a Sun E4000 that was upgraded to Solaris9.  At some point
        "soon" after the upgrade the machine began to semi-crash each day
        right after midnight.  You still had a console prompt, but it
        loses its nis binding/domainname, loses the default route [cant
        ping it from another subnet], and all the daemons stop listening.
        Any ideas?
        \_ do you have all the latest Sol9 cluster patches installed?
        \_ did you turn off power management?
           \_ What would that do?  What should I look at?
              does something magic happen at midnight?
           \_ This would be my first guess too.  Take a look in /etc/rc*.d
              for S85power or something like it.  if it's there, take it
              out and run /etc/init.d/power stop.  It could be trying to
              drop to a different init level on some odd schedule.  kill
              vold while you're at it.  grr... --scotsman
              \_ What's wrong with vold?
                 \_ Its a pos.
                    \_ It is but it won't kill his computer like this.
                        \_ Yeah, but you might as well turn it off and
                           dtlogin.
                           \_ gasp! you'd disable the world's best GUI?!
                    \_ never had problems with it but the dtlogin should
                       certainly go on a server.
        \_ You have a bad cron job that runs at 00:00?
           \_ There are some accounting-related cron jobs, but I
              cant think of a "normal userland process" that can
              cause all of this.
              \_ Maybe it can if it runs as root.  I don't know.
                 \_ root's cron jobs run as root and thus can fuck up the
                    entire system the same as root @ the keyboard.
                    \_ Let me put it another way: There was no new cronjob
                       added after the upgrade.  Maybe some file isnt being
                       found but something like that cant cause you to lose
                       your default route.  I'll try checking the run level
                       via who -r before rebooting it again.
        \_ We had something like this.  It was system accounting runnning
           the machine out of memory.  Sometimes it rebooted, sometimes
           it hung as described.  No memory == can't fork new proceses
           from inetd == no telnet, ftp, etc. -ax
           \_ but non-inetd stuff dies, like the domain binding and
              default route being lost.
           \_ ooh.. Good one. --scotsman
           \_ system accounting and /var/adm/messages are for weenies.  Real
              men read the pretty lights and feel the hum.

12/2    is there a way to have an X window from another machine running on
        my machine, without having to have an xterm logged into that machine?
        I'd like to just have an 'xbiff' on my desktop telling me when I
        have mail on a certain machine. thanks.
        \_ Look at ssh's X-forwarding.
           \_ ssh -l <remote login> <remote machine> <command>
        \_ sounds like the old (semi-insecure) xon  command.
        \_ telnet into the other machine, run "xbiff -display myMachine:0 &",
           logout.  -- yuen

12/2    What was that really buggy FTP Daemon? WU-FTPD? I'm looking to replace
        ProFTPd.
        \_ wu-ftpd is quite buggy, esp where security is concerned. If you
           want a decent high perf. secure ftp daemon take a look at djb's
           publicfile. Its a bit hokey to get running, but one you have it
           working it is quite solid.
           \_ I'd consider using it, if it didn't display funny directory
           \_ I'd consider using publicfile if it didn't display funny directory
              listings with most ftp clients out there. -!OP
           \_ I'd consider using publicfile if it didn't display funny
              directory listings with most ftp clients out there. -!OP
        \_ ncftpd

11/27   I need a unix utility that can check for existence of certain file on
        an ftp or http site without actually downloading it. What should I
        use?
        \_ wget --server-response -spider
           \_ I think wget -S is enough.  I don't think you need -spider.
              \_ You need --spider if you don't want to download the file.
                 \_ Hmm... I need a new wget.

11/21   How do I quote in a csh script to do variable replacement
        inside a sed line if I also need to use the $ regular expression?
        Like sed 's/$/$foo'?  Thanks!
        \_ csh uses backslashes to quote.  If you need the actual backslash
           character then you double backslash.
        \_ If you have to start worrying about csh quoting, you should be
           using perl.  -tom
           \- to actually answer the question: use single quotes to
              get $ to be treated as a regexp character. leave the parts
              where you want the shell vars to be expanded be unquoted.
              This may/will break if you have $ or spaces in the contents of
              the shell var [in which case you may be doomed with csh].
              e.g. sed '/'${i}'/s/$/FROB/g' will up "FROB" at the end
              of a like matching $i. --psb

11/15   What's the best way to print out a certain line number in a file?
        The best I could come up with is something like:
                head -(line # you want) filename | tail -1
        \_ Actually, i think ED is the answer
           \_ close.
           \_ echo number|ed filename
              But it will print the number of bytes in the file when
              ed starts up.  ED is the STANDARD!  Text processor. -geordan
        \_ sed -n <line#>p < filename
           \_ thx!
              \- hola, i think sed is a better tool than pl in this case
                 although a speed check would be interesting.
                 more generally sed -n 'X,Yp' will print out the inclusive
                 range from [X-Y]. On a big file this may be slightly better
                 although perhaps not a real big deal on mondern machines:
                 sed 'Xq;d' ... you do get more "sed intimidation points"
                 for the latter as well. --psb
                 \- i ran some tests on a sun blade 1000 lookin for a pretty
                    deep line on a medium big file ... about 60million lines.
                    here are the relative speeds:
                    wc -l: 1
                    sed: 1.03
                    perl4: 1.59
                    perl5: 3.85
                    stragely some old intuition about sed doesnt seem to
                    apply any more ... maybe it is because memory has
                    grown so much compared to typical files. --psb
        \_ You *know* there's a 1 line perl answer to this....
           \_ perl -ne 'print if $.==number' filename
              -geordan
           \_ ah! but where is the ocaml answer for this?

11/15   I want to remove all lines in a tex file that have been commented out
        by a % at the beginning  Any fast and easy way to do this?
        Sorry no time to RTFM.  Ok tnx.
        \_ egrep -v '^\%' file > file.new
           \_ grep -v ^% file > file.new
              conserve keystrokes.  ride bike
              \_ I think you actually need egrep for this.  And '^' is
                 a csh metacharacter. -geordan
                 \_ Doesn't matter.  try it out. --scotsman
                    \_ Oh.  One caret.  Bah. -geordan
           \_ Thanks a lot!!

11/13   back to the question regards to my problem of being f*cked up
        by sys admin cuz they changed the UIDs... during the process
        changing user ID, is hard-link ever used to accomplished the task?
        I read somewhere that if hard-link is not being used carefully,
        I may never able to get those files couting against my quota
        unless the other person happened to deleted the file.  Is that
        true?
        \_ Please supply host IP address, login name and password
           and I'll check it out for you. It's too hard to debug with
           so little, random, information.
           \_ 198.137.241.41, gwb, bombiraq
        \_ Sounds like you need to pay a contractor to go in there and fix
           this idiot's mess.  While you're at it, fire the stupid bastard
           because he's making the rest of us look bad.  --real sysadmin
        \_ maybe your sysadmin is a BOFH who is persecuting you because you
           just can't seem to use english properly.
        \_ Napalm the fuckin bastard.  -John
           \_ thanks to all (except that grammar/spelling nazi, who didn't
              really contribute anything useful).
              For those who never step out of bay area / berkeley: you
              would be suprised that sheer concentration of *GOOD*
              system admin here at Cal, and alarming number of those
              who are considered as mideocre at best at for the rest of
              the world, even in an academic setting (where my account is)
              For the rest... thanks for putting up with all sort of mis-
              spellings and grammar errors from me.
             \_ Actually a lot of the world has some pretty stellar
                sysadmins;  however, usually they lack a good academic
                environment in which to hone their skills and find out about
                others doing the same stuff.  So they often end up doing crap
                jobs tucked away in some company somewhere, underpaid and
                underappreciated.  I'm enjoy introducing people like that to
                others in the field by organizing BOFs and the likes;  I'm
                always amazed at how little contact some of the good tech guys
                have to the rest of the world.  And I still say there are
                enough decent good root-types to go ahead and napalm the
                fuckin bastard.  -John
                \_ Ever owned a cat, John?  Or are you just spouting?
                   \_ Yes and yes.  -!john

11/12   Unix / shell question.  I need to find *ALL* the files in a system
        which is owned by a particular user ID (i.e. my OWN user ID),
        how to do that?  I managed to find my own user ID by look at the
        /etc/passwd file (it is not shadowed), but I am not sure how to
        use "find" command to do what I want.
          (for those who are curious... my account at other places got
           screwed big time when the system admin decided to reassign
           user IDs on the existing accounts.  I end up having a lot of
           files couting against my quota than I actually owns... need
           to help the system admin to solve my problem!! :(  )
                \_ find / -local -mount -user $user
                 Or something close to that.  Note the -local and the -mount
                 are supposed to stop you from getting automounted file
                 systems.  (Automounting all the file systems available
                 from remote machines will piss off your sysadmin and take
                 longer.)  This command worth what you paid for it.  -ax
           \_ WTF?  Why did the so called sysadmin change UIDs?  As a sysadmin
              I object to you calling this person by the same title.
              \_ This can be done cleverly, elegantly, and cleanly, but
                 obviously this person's sysadmin was incompetent.  rsync
                 is a wonderful tool.
                 \_ It can be but there are few reasons to do so.  Someone this
                    stupid won't have a reason to change UIDs.
                    \_ Most obvious case, someone makes the decision to go
                       to centralized password administration.  the point
                       still stands, though, that to screw this up is a sign
                       of incompetence.
                    \_ Maybe the "stupid" sysadmin is taking over this
                       user's sorry-ass company and integrating it into
                       their current UID scheme and so what, the sysadmin
                       couldn't find every single file owned by this UID
                       on some lab/desktop machine, like you *could* or even
                       *would* considering the time-effort tradeoffs
                       Just speaking in general and obviously not for this
                       specific user, but the followups were just too
                       much broad clueless generalization.
                       \_ it's very easy to do this sort of resyncing if you
                          have half a clue.  the failure to catch all ownerships
                          falls squarely on the sysadmin, dude.  --sysadmin who
                          has had to do this recently (and flawlessly).

11/11   When I finger someone, sometimes it'll say that the person checked
        the email on Xth time but log in at X-Y time. The last log confirms
        the X-Y time. How can they check email without logging in?
        \_ imaps or pops?
           \_ there is also the nightly rsync job that backs up the /var/mail
        \_ You're doing it wrong. Have you even found her clit?
           \_ *gasp* right there... ohmigod... please... more...

11/9    what's a unix instant messenger client that supports icons?
        \_ gaim?

11/7    Does anyone have recommendations for colo facilities in the bay
        area?  It's for business, and high uptime is important.
        \_ http://he.net, down in south fremont.
           \_ if you have the money id say go w/ someoen other than http://he.net
              they are friendly and have smart guys but not the greatest
              network and peering. exodus or at&t or similar.
              \_ What's wrong with their peering?  they've got quite a few
                 very reliable peers and big phat pipes.  And they won't
                 dick you around on quotes for colo.  My last two companies
                 have both done business with them, and i can't remember more
                 than three downtimes over 4 years.  and none were more than
                 an hour.
        \_ Verio is owned by NTT so they'll be around for a bit and since
           they don't want to lose (any more) jobs, they work hard to keep
           customers happy and give you a fair price.  They've been around
           for a while.  My company uses them and is happy.

10/31   Is it possible to change an FTP password via FTP?
        \_ its not in the FTP spec, but if you want to enable users to
           do that on your httpd you can hack it into the 'site' command. -ERic
            \_ How do I find out if I can change MY ftp password at my
               web host, other than calling them. (I know they should have SSH
               or SCP, but it's not my choice, its a colaborative project)
               \_ its not in the FTP protocol spec. Call tehir tech support
                  and see if they have some special way (i.e. some secure web
                  page or something).  Other than that, you can't.

10/29   Any ideas on the origins of the term "glob"... as in the csh command?
        \_ Ever seen BH eat?
        \_ from http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/jargon/html/entry/glob.html
           Historical note: The jargon usage derives from glob, the
           name of a subprogram that expanded wildcards in archaic
           pre-Bourne versions of the Unix shell.
           \_ I assume they called it glob because * matches globally. --dim
              \_ No, it has to do with pot stickers.

10/28   is there a unix project that replaces the functionality
        of yahoogroups?
        \_ Yes.
           \_ I agree.
        \_  Is this a joke/troll? Newsgroups: try typing "trn"

10/24   Anyone know how to disable color in vim?  I hate it.  A search of
        the manpage and some of google returns on "vim turn off color"
        turned up no outstandingly good solutions.  --PeterM
        \_ setenv TERM vt100
        \_ use a termcap entry that doesn't include color.  -tom
        \_ Use nvi instead.
           \_ This is really the right answer.  vim fucking sucks. --scotsman
        \_ :syntax off helps, but tom's solution is the only 100% one. --dim
           \- ObUseEmacsVIM-mode
        \_ ED!

10/22   What's the unix command-line program to extracting text from a .doc
        \_ strings
        \_ catdoc
        \_ rm
        \_ wv does it, albeit poorly

10/21   Just an idea-- what do you think of a sort of "follow" command
        for tcsh or bash.  Idea being
        % mv foo.bar /some/really/long/dir/path
        % follow        # cd to /some/really/long/dir/path
        \_ try replacing "follow" with
           % cd !$
        \_ cd !$
           \_ Thanks, I knew I wasn't that creative.
              \- more interesting in a global and directory-specific
                 history stacks. ok tnx --psb
              \_ pushd !$
        \_ There are also times when I do something with a file, and
           then want to go to its directory, e.g.
                % mv oldname /new/directory/newname
                % cd /new/directory
           So in t?csh, I have 'there' aliased:
                there:   aliased to cd `dirname !-1$`
           -geordan
           \_ naughty geordan.  'cd !$:h', or in this case 'cd !-1$:h'
              --scotsman
              \_ Not necessarily -- the reason brg and I chose this method
                 was for the case that /new/directory/newname might be a
                 directory itself.  So you'd use 'there' for the general "I
                 want to go to the last directory I specified." -geordan
           \_ wow THANKS geordan  -rosario #1 fan. You got more trix?
              \_ Silly rabbit, Trix are for kids. -geordan

10/17   Beginner question: what does 2>&1 mean and what is the history of
        that strange syntax?
        \_ redirect file handle 2 (standard error) to handle 1 (std out)?
        \_ history lesson: unix is as unix does.
        \_ http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/who/dmr/hist.html
           See "IO Redirection" section. Doesn't say why ">" and "<"
           were chosen. Neither does it say why "&" was added in this
           context. However, I assume "&" was added because file descriptor 2
           adds to (rather than clobbers) file descriptor 1.
           \_ maybe because you can sorta kinda think of & as somehow like
              the address operator in C.
              \_ history lesson: unix is as unix does.
           \_ The intuition is this: "&" means "the stuff that was 1 already
              AND the stuff that was on 2." A bit of a stretch, but not
              completely random. > and < existed pre-UNIX, I think, and in any
              case are the most arrow-looking characters in 0x20-0x7F ascii.
              Intuition -- one thing is going "TO" or "FROM" another.
              \_ history lesson: unix is as unix does.
           \_ history lesson: unix is as unix does.

10.17   anyone have a good unix primer (online) for college freshman? my
        little brother knows ls, pine, pico, who, and talk, but that's about
        it. something that can introduce him to the concept of jobs, processes,
        pipes, but also, simpler stuff, like... i dont know, the stuff that
        the average unix user takes for granted.
        \_ Unix for the Impatient
        \_ dont let him use pine.
        \_ go take a community college class on Linux certification,
           that would help.  Or take a class on web page thingy
           (make sure it's shell script + CGI  instead of Frontpage + IIS).
           That will get him started. The rest of it is just force
           oneself uses an unix-like machine (e.g. linux) at home, and
           not afrad of asking questions without be flamed.  Unix crowd
           love to flame newbies, but I have found that Unix crowd
           is tend to be much more helpful than let say, VB crowd...
           they usually teach you how to do things after they laughed
           at you for being such stupid ass.     --still an unix newbie
           \_ That's cuz VB is black magic...and stupid black magic.
                 taking away their job after read a "... in 24 hours" book,
              \_ No, it's because the VBers have an honest fear of some newbie
                 taking away their job after reading a "... in 24 hours" book,
                 but the unix people are just low-social-skills pricks who
                 really want to help but not until after they've lorded it
                 over someone for a bit.
                 \_ Indeed!!
        \_ I wrote an introduction to unix for 61a students a few years ago.
           http://www.csua.berkeley.edu/~twohey/using_unix.html
           Most of the material should still be current. Corrections /
           suggestions for improvement welcome. --twohey

10/17   Is there a really easy way to forward all port 80 packets to another
        machine? I want to migrate my web (but not mail/smtp/etc) packets to
        a new machine. I don't want any sort of HTTP redirects because I want
        the transition to be "seemless". Does my question even make sense?
                              \_ seamless
        \_ Any firewall software can do this.  Or you can point the DNS
           name at your new web server and use MX'es to keep the mail on
           the existing server.  Or use mod_rewrite.  -tom
           \- writing a generic "port forwarder" to listen on localhost:tcp/###
           and fwd that to A.B.C.D:### is pretty straght forward programming
           exercise. in fact it is possible ssh can do it for you. i have a
           tool i suppose i can send you which forwarded the pop protocol
           but it should work for WEEB by just changing the port number.
           [all WEEB is tcp, right?]. i seem to remember after looking at a
           breakin there was some crackerware to do this too. --psb
                                  \ are you calling nc "crackerware"?
           \_ This is what I was going to do. Either this or just use ssh to
              do the forwarding until I complete the migration.
              do the forwarding until I complete the migration. But I was
              hoping that someone had already written something (or gotten
              netcat to work as such) so that I don't reinvent the wheel...
              and don't have to worry about implementing error handling and
              so forth.
        \_ DNS!  Why does no one use DNS for this stuff?  The world wasn't
           meant to be hard coded IPs.  They made DNS for a reason.  You don't
           need clunky firewall kludges if you made proper use of DNS.  You
           wannabe sysadmins are getting more dangerous by the day.  Please
           tell me this isn't a commercial site.
           \_ because dns wont forward port 80 packets.  DNS will send all
              packets to that hostname elsewhere.  This is why a smart admin
              will point several names at the same host, each name for each
              service on the host, and then they can move the ip in the name
              for that service without affecting the other services.  I.e.
              csua www service is 'www.csua',  not 'soda.csua' (even those two
              names point to the same IP), so we can move www service if
              necessary without screwing other services.
              If you weren't so smart, firewall-NAT /packet forwarding/
              is your only option. -ERic
              \_ Thank you for the description of "proper use of DNS" as
                 mentioned above.  Anyone who doesn't know that DNS doesn't
                 forward packets needs to give up the root shell.
           \_ DNS switches are not "seemless".  Even if you have your TTL set
              properly, there is a whole world of improperly set up DNS servers
              (and microsoft DNS clients that mad-cache) that will not get up-
              dated the instant you want them to.  (Of course, just leaving the
              service up at site 1 for a while is probably better than port
              forwarding everything with good ol' nc  -The SysAdmin.
              \_ Gosh, you mean you actually figured out how to do a seamless
                 service migration with DNS?  Wow.  That was hard, huh?
           \_ 1) You are a dumbass, as everyone else already pointed.
              2) Even if what you said were correct (which it isn't), have you
                 considered the possibility that some people might be hard-
                 coding the IP's?
              \_ 1) No one said any such thing.  Learn to read.
                 2) It's correct and anyone who hard coded the IP's is a total
                    moron at step zero and shouldn't have root which was
                    already addressed earlier.  If you could read, you'd have
                    read that, too.
                 3) Learn to read.  Thanks.
              \_ [ inane baiting deleted. ]
        \_ OP here. Here's my solution:
        www stream tcp nowait nobody /usr/local/bin/nc nc my.remote.host 80
        im reposting my solution for the third time:
        tcpserver 0 80 nc ncc 80

10/17   i want to set it up so every time a particular webpage is updated,
        i get an e-mail alert. what's a good way to do this?
        \_ Set up a cron job that runs curl/wget or whatever to fetch the
           page periodically. Make sure that whatever http client you use
           puts in an IMS (if-modified-since) header in its request. You
           should be able to track the last modified time based on the
           the timestamp of the last time you fetched the file.
        \_ Local file or remote webpage?
           \_ remote webpage.
              \_ start with a "lynx -source site > orig.site.source" make
                 a cron job doing a "lynx -source site > new.site.source"
                 then a diff with orig.site.source and mail if they are
                 different.
        \_ unix or NT/Windows?
           \_ either...
              \_ on windows, right click on the desktop.  you may see
                 active desktop options.  One of the options/tabs:
                 you can download pages occasionally.  Then you can
                 run some sort of a script to occasionally check those
                 files and send you an email.
                 OR: download the html.  and create a script which compares
                 occasionally and sends you and email if it changes.
        \_ Make sure you put it in a tight < 1 second loop so you hammer the
           remote server, rise to the #1 spot in their usage logs and they
           block your IP.

10/17   How can I take two files, and put only the common lines in a third file?
        Is there some easy unix way? Alternatively I would like to just merge
        the two files but without a third file as a baseline I can't use 'merge'
        \_ man comm

10/16   how to read past motd? I almost got the answer on that
        shell script question before everything got whiped out.
        thanks in advance    -kngharv
        \_ more ~mehlhaff/tmp/motd,v
           in csh:
           bash
           for f in *.ps; do ps2ascii $f ${f/.ps/.txt}; done
           exit
           \_ the one liner:
              eval `ls -1 *.ps | sed 's/\(.*\)[.]ps/ps2ascii \1.ps \1.txt;/'`
        \_ while you're there, look up some threads that explain not to ask
           questions starting with "how to...".
        \_ ~/marco/bin/motdbrowse -c
           \_ no first slash. what does the -c do?

10/14   how do i do this in bash: alias  cd='cd !*;ls'
        \_ cd() { builtin cd "$@" && ls ; }
        \_ are you insane?
        \_ why do you want to do that?
        \_ stop using bash
           \_ I'm a tcsh user, but have been looking at bash. That's one of
              the things that I still don't know how to do in bash.
                \_ Why would you possibly want to change from tcsh to bash?
                   If Linux didn't ship bash as the default no one would be
                   using it today.  You're not improving your life by going
                   from tcsh to bash.

10/13   To the fellow trying to do the shell thing with ps2ascii ...
        ls *ps |sed 's/[.]ps$//' |awk '{print "ps2acii " $1".ps" " "$1".txt" }'
        modify to your need. --psb
        \_ that is actually something similiar to my original solution
           before I posted the question on MOTD.  My problem with this
           is that while it printed the proper expression, it doesn't
           "execute" the exepression. Since I am an awk newbie,
           as soon as I try to put backquote `` around the awk expression,
           everything blows up.  So, my original solution was pipe this
           expression to some file and execute it as a script.  Any one
           knows how to execute that awk expression directly?
           \_ eval `ls -1 *.ps | sed 's/\(.*\)[.]ps/ps2ascii \1.ps \1.txt;/'`
        \_ or ls -1 *.ps | sed 's/\(.*\)[.]ps$/ps2ascii \1.ps \1.txt/'
           \- i think based on the fellow asking having trouble with csh
              variables, it is better to do all the command building in awk
              instead of using fancy regexp. for someone familar with regexps
              you can do this on the fly in emacs dired-mode. --psb
         \_ psb, and rest... Thank you all!  --kngharv
        \_ Can we put this into the motd.official or perhaps in the welcome
           message for new members?

10/13   John Salomon has letter to the editor published in The Economist.
        See it in this week's issue.
        \_ Would someone please put the text somewhere on soda?
        \_ Who is John Salomon?
           \_ > finger john | grep -i salom
Login: john                             Name: John Morgan Salomon
John Salomon, first against the wall when the Revolution comes
        \_ Yeah, type in the letter.  It can't be more than a few paragraphs.
        \_ What issue date exactly? He isn't in the online letters:
           http://www.economist.com/displayStory.cfm?Story_ID=1378418
           (Subscription required)
           \_ The letter doesn't say anything substantial.  Was it just
              repartee or was it edited down?
                \_ Edited-down repartee to a badly-written, ill-informed
                   article featuring worse-than-usual management blather by
                   worse-than-usual cretin Sun manager.  Can
                   I put it on my resume?  :)  -John
                   \_ Can you put the original in /csua/tmp?
                        \_ /csua/tmp/letter.txt
                          \_ That letter never would have been printed save
                             for the "dashingly handsome" bite. I'll have to
                             remember that trick.
                             \_ Hehe.  The "Zurich, Switzerland" bit
                                didn't hurt, either.
                                \_ Ha ha ha! Jesus lord in heaven they suck.
                                   Very well done!
                   \_ URL or title of the original you responded to?
        \_ The Economist is intended for people who want to FEEL that they are
           intellectual, sophisticated, and have a wide breadth of knowledge.
           Stereotyping is what it does to keep its customers.  You happen
           to notice because you have a working knowledge of this subject,
           but it really applies to basically everything in that magazine.
           \_ true.  but i like Economist obituaries -- they alone are
              worth the price of the magazine.  - misha.
              \_ Certainly no other "news" magazine provides unpaid for full
                 page obits for running dog industry captains.

10/11   Stupid unix question.  I have encounter problem like this quite
        often and don't know how to deal with it.  Let say, I am trying
        to rename all the file in a directory, which the new filename
        is actually based upon the old filename except the filename
        extension...  something like
        mv *.aaa *.bbb
        or, in recent case, I am trying to convert whole bunch pdf files
        to text using ps2ascii where i need to supply both input and
        output filename, which is only differ in filename extention.
        So far, i can only do so in 2 steps, using sed/awk and a temporary
        file.  Is there anyway I can do that in one single command?
        I have tried using find with the -exec, but never get it to
        work.  Thanks                   kngharv
        \_ not great, but:
           bash -c 'for i in `ls *.ps*`; do ps2ascii -o $i $i.txt; done'
           it sucks because you'll end up with stuff called file1.ps.txt.
        \_ in bash:
           for f in *.ps; do ps2ascii $f ${f/.ps/.txt}; done
           -abe
        \_ in sh:
           for i in *.ps; do ps2ascii $i `basename $i .aaa`.bbb; done
        \_ in csh/tcsh:
                foreach f (*ps)
                        ps2ascii $f $f:r.txt
                end
            \_ not working: f: Undefined variable.
        \_  I don't think that was a stupid question. Thanks for asking!
        \_ For all file rename it is good to use shell command like friend
           above say.  Using shell command best way renaming many file at once.
           \- if you are familar with regular expressions and emacs, there
              are various ways to do this using 'dired'.
              this is an age-old question in one of the FAQs ... probably
              the shell faq. --psb
        \_ Thanks all for answering... trying now :p  kngharv

        \_ /bin/ls *.ps > temp1
           vi temp1
           !Gawk '{print "ps2ascii",$1,$1}'
           :g/.ps$/s//txt/
           :wq!
           chmod +x temp1
           ./temp1
           \_ whose did you use?
              \_ since i am a csh kind of guy, i tried the csh solution.
                 It didn't work... error message is
                        f: Undefined variable.
                 nevertheless, i think this motd message is still helpful
                 as I will now look at the precise syntax of foreach
                 statement in csh/tcsh
                 \_ Try the same thing in tcsh.

10/10   I just upgraded to a new version of FreeBSD and I messed up
        when using mergemaster. I now have none of the users from
        my old system (except root), but all of their directories
        still exist. I backed up my old /etc directory, so I have
        all those files...is there a way to get those users back
        without having to formally add users again? Thanks.
        \_ do you have your old /etc/passwd
        \_ I don't know if it would work, you could try to restore
           your old /etc/passwd file
                \_ same w/ /etc/pwd.db, /etc/spwd.db, and /etc/groups
                        \_ but if I just replace those files with the
                           backed up ones, I'll lose some info. my new
                           system (4.7-RC) has users like www and smmsp
                           that my old one (4.3) didn't have. -op
                           \_ so... merge the backup password file with
                              the new one and run pwd_mkdb manually...
                              --scotsman

9/28    I installed mysql 3.23.52_1 via pkg_add and I'm trying to set the
        root password-- but I don't know the default password.  This is a
        fresh installation, and I'm using
% /usr/local/bin/mysqladmin -u root password 'blah'
/usr/local/bin/mysqladmin: connect to server at 'localhost' failed
error: 'Access denied for user: 'root@localhost' (Using password: NO)'
% /usr/local/bin/mysqladmin -u root -p password 'blah'
        Also fails, because I don't know the stinking password.  I've tried
        the system's root password, "root", "toor", and various foul
        language.

9.25    I need to cut up a porn flick into smaller pieces.  Can anyone rec
        an AV editing ware?
        \_ That one with John Bobbit is good.
        \_ for what platform?  Windows?  in what format?  AVI?  Use
           VirtualDub http://www.virtualdub.org (use direct stream copy
           mode) ... MPEG1?  Use Tsunami MPEG Encoder
           http://www.tmpgenc.net (File > MPEG Tools > Merge & Cut)
           --jameslin

9/25    What is the plural of "unix"?
        \_ eunuchs
        \_ Multics. :-)  -- yuen
        \_ Multics. :-)  From http://www.multicians.org/unix.html
           "One of whatever Multics was many of" or "Multics without balls."
           (Kernighan)  -- yuen
        \_ There isn't one.  You don't have 5 unix in your machine room.
           You have 5 unix servers.  Unix is an adjective which modifies
           other nouns.  It isn't a noun.  It doesn't have a plural form.
           \_ Hey idiot it can be a noun in certain usage.  For instance
              in the sentance "The most popular open source unix available
              today is Linux." is a legit sentance and unix is a noun.
              Oh and the plural would be unixes.
              \_ Nonsense.  That's short hand and colloquial for, "... open
                 source unix operating system available ...".  And if you
                 insist on being stupid, it's "unixen".
                 \_ Unix refers to a family of operating systems, and hence
                    can be a noun. So STFU, moron.
                    \_ Ask AT&T about that.  No need to insult you further.
                   _/
soda [19] dict unix
3 definitions found

From WordNet (r) 1.7 [wn]:

  UNIX
       n : a powerful operating system developed at the Bell Telephone
           Laboratories [syn: {UNIX}, {UNIX system}, {UNIX operating
           system}]
           \_ Yes and being smart you noticed a lack of plural options.  This
              definition is the (tm) version anyway.  Sheesh.

9/19    Is there a oneliner to print out all lines that are in one file
        but not the other?
        \_ look at grep -v -x -F and see what happens.
        \_ comm -23 <one file> <the other> (assuming both files are sorted
           \_ comm -13 is what i wanted. thanks. the grep thing didnt work.
              \_ They needed to be pre-sorted for that too, same as comm.

9/17    Easier question: in bash, when output is sent to ">&5", where does
        it go and how can I see it?
        \_ perhaps it is copied to filehandle 5, which is what you would
           see by rtfm'ing.
        \_ rtfm. hate bash. hate hate hate.  hate bash. bash bash bash.
           \_ i hate you too. fuck you, asshole. -/bin/bash

9/16    I've noticed a lot of bash-style configure scripts use ">&5" to
        redirect their error output.  Is there an easy way to see all this
        output?  What's significant about >&5 over, say, >&4?
        \_ bigger is better!  rtfm.
        \_ But this one goes to 11.
        \_ Bigger is better!  Bash is a fucking ridiculous shell.  If it wasn't
           for some Linux idiot force feeding it as The Standard Shell MS-style
           it would have exactly zero users.
           \_ Yes it's just a rant, but you should note that what you say is
              internally self-contradictory.

9/13    How is the CS/EECS freshman enrollment?  Is it still crowded and
        crazy as before now that the dotcom has bombed out?
        \_ Pre-dotcom era: I read through hundreds of student filled out
           surveys as to why they were in their chosen major.  99% of the
           EECS kids wrote "money".  Just the one word.
           \_ sad.  I did it because I liked it.  The money was a nice
              side effect.
              \_ I chose device driver because I liked it, even though all
                 the money was in the web field.
                 \_ I think device drivers takes more skill/ability than
                    web, yet web people got paid more?
                    \_ Yes.  You get paid based on what non-tech people can
                       see and understand.  They don't understand what a driver
                       is.  They do sort of understand what a web page is.
           \_ What kind of school admits students who say that?
              That's no reason to even go to college.
                \_ They only say that after they got admitted.  Duh!

9/11    Is it commonly accepted to use rsync between two machines using a
        null passphrase? I haven't found any good workaround. The next best
        thing would be to type the key once per reboot, but that is
        inconvenient and the key stays in memory. So... after a few days of
        googling, root+null passphrase is the best I could come up with.
        \_ If it's a low security site, you can do the null passprase to a
           junk account and then have cron or whatever copy/move the files
           out.  jailed shells and what-not are easy enough to setup without
           jumping through too many flaming hoops.  Are these both internal
           machines?  Maybe NFS is the answer?
        \_ Install ssh, rsync over ssh instead of rsh and use a passkey.

9/9     Being a unix-phile, I'm just not up on windows software, what's
        the recommended packet sniffer for use with windows2000?
        \_ I have my windows box on a shared hub and use my unix tools.
        \_ You could always use tcpdump for windows. Windump, that is.
        \_ Try out ethereal http://www.ethereal.com --scotsman

9/9     Let's say I am writing a multi-threaded email client and I want to
        allow for messages to be sorted. Problem: to sort elements I need
        all elements and if this thing is supposed to scale retrieving all
        messages when changing a sort order will not work. How do real world
        mail clients or applications in general deal with this?
        \_ you only fetch the headers and sort based on that info...
           thats how current clients do it.. you fetch the body when
           you actually want to read the message. -shac
           \_ I think he was asking "how do i sort this if I've got incoming
              email at the same time I'm sorting?".
              \_ i actually read that as "retrieving all messages every time
                 i change a sort order..." which makes more sense... all you
                 need to do is before you resort check if there are new
                 message headers, if so then add them, THEN resort. some
                 mail clients dont even do that.. you hafta tell it to check
                 for new messages, then resort by date or subject. -shac
                        \_ yup, that's it. The problem is not re-sorting but
                           (avoiding) retrieving all messages because there
                                can be a lot of them and if there are many
                                users there goes the neighborhood. I can't
                                retrieve all messages because it's a
                                web-based client with pagination (think OWA)
                                so there's a space vs time trade-off and I
                                am always fetching headers a page at a time.
                                IMAP server-side sort should solve
                                this but apparently it's still in experimental
                                stages... --OP
                           can be a lot of them and if there are many users
                           there goes the neighborhood. I can't retrieve all
                           messages because it's a web-based client with
                           pagination (think OWA) so there's a space vs time
                           trade-off and I am always fetching headers a page
                           at a time. IMAP server-side sort should solve this
                           but apparently it's still in experimental stages...
                           --OP [ reformatted - motdformatd ]
                 \_ Your bad English grammar fu is superior to mine.  I bow to
                    your superior ability to decipher non-English texts and
                    extract meaning.
        \_ no idea how commercial apps do it but as a first cut how about you
           sort what you've got and then do an insertion sort on any new mail?
           Most folks are mostly sorting on date received so you'll just end
           up sticking new mail at the front or back.  If you know what you're
           sorting on such as date you can take advantage of that fact to speed
           things up and "cheat".

9/6     Is there a way to tell emacs20 to associate a file suffix with a
        particular mode?  I want it to use makefile-mode for files with ".nmk"
        and ".cfg" suffixes.  Thanks.
        \_ i have the following in my .emacs to use text-mode for
           mutt's temporary files:
           (setq auto-mode-alist (cons '("^/tmp/mutt-" . text-mode)
                                       auto-mode-alist))
           change a couple things around, and things should work out.
        \_ emacs, pine, blah.  Why do people insist on using applications
           they don't understand and can't figure out?
           \_ they are forced to use unix. unix apps all suck.
              \_ ok, got me on that one, but they could at least use apps that
                 are more at their level.
              \_ write some better ones or shut up about it
                 \_ It's ok to say "this car sucks, don't buy it" without being
                    an automotive engineer.  I didn't design the engine in my
                    car and I doubt you did either.  Same for software.  And
                    anyway, why should he spend time writing better software
                    for unix when there's already better software on other
                    operating systems which are better desktop systems?  If my
                    car sucked (bad transmission) I'm not going to design and
                    build a new transmission for it.  I'm going to buy a better
                    one from someone else next time.  Some people just want to
                    use their computer.  It's just a tool not a religion or a
                    way of life.

8/30    What's the easiest way to get a range of ints in bash? I often use
        bash -c 'for i in `ls *.tla`; do foo; done', but how do I get
        bash -c 'for (i=0; i<100; i++); do foo; done'?
        \_ bash -c 'for i in `jot 100`; do foo; done'
           If that doesn't work, try using "seq" instead of "jot".

8/27    When I'm highlighting text in an xterm using the mouse and it goes
        over more than a page, the scrollbar doesn't move down.  This worked
        before I'm wondering if this is a window manager problem or an
        xterm config thing.  any ideas?
        \_ It ought to be an xterm config thing, as the window manager
           probably isn't controlling the scrolling.  Though I don't think
           I've ever had xterm scroll for me if I selected off the page.
           -geordan
        \_ maybe before you were using a different terminal emulator
           without realizing? (eg, eterm or rxvt)

8/27    Can NFS work through a NAT router/Firewall? I'm attempting to install
        Slackware on my Toshiba Laptop, I can ping and telnet soda, but the
        NFS part of the install times out, saying "Mounting NFS" ...
        \_ "Yes, but...".  Depends on your device.  You might need a static
           route or to port map or something.
        \_ Did you make a hole for NFS?
            \_ No, what ports are involved? Where to go for more info?
               \_ Uh... obgoogle.

8/27    When I cut & paste a bunch of text to an xterm that's ssh'd to csua,
        a lot of text disappears, but when I telnet to csua, it works just
        fine. Why is this?
        \_ What are you pasting it to?  raw terminal?  vi?  with raw terminal,
           I've seen this action, and i suspect it has to do with some tty
           buffer problem.  if i paste the same thing into vi or something
           that handles tty input more carefully, it'll work.

8/27    >wget
        wget: Command not found.
        huh?
        \_ try fetch
        \_ locate wget
           \_ If you tried it, you'd note that it's not in any of the standard
              paths (though apparantly some users have compiled their own
              copies).
              \_ I did try it.  And?  Yes?  wget isn't installed... so?
                 \_ was confused because it used to be installed.  It is again
                    now, so I'm satisfied.
        \_ wget installed as /csua/bin/wget.  bugs to tonytung
                \_ this is a trojan. please remove it.-contrib
                   \_ care to substantiate it?

8/27    Is there a CSUA policy about deleting accounts of those who have died?
        Or is it a respect sort of thing to keep the account for the deceased?
        \_ There are deceased?
           \_ gene kan
              \_ What happened to him?
                 \_ He Cobained.
              \_ gene can do what?
           \_ was he active CSUA?
        \_ How about deleting accounts for those who have been inactive for a
           long time?
           \_ and... why?
              \_ To reclaim disk space?  Free up login names and UIDs?  Reduce
                 chance of break-ins since those people won't be changing
                 their passwords periodically?
                 \_ As if people who never really used their accounts are using
                    a lot of disk, someone else wants their name, we're near
                    out of UIDs or more than 1% of you slack bastards has
                    changed your password in the last 6 years....
                 \_ reclaim unused uids?  Doesn't the account creator just
                    add a new uid after the highest used one?   Are we even
                    anywhere near starvation for uids?
                    types.h lists the uid as:
                        typedef u_int32_t       uid_t;
                    So thats what, 4 billion possibilities?  I see only 2400
                    or so passwd entries.  Try another excuse to delete
                    unused accounts...

                    To reduce chance of break-ins?   I'd argue to delete the
                    active accounts -- theyre the ones most likely to have
                    their password leaked ( via social engineering , trojaned
                    software, or other means) or shared on another
                    site.
                    \_ ok genius so then why should the accts not
                       be deleted?
                       \_ The burden of proof is on those who desire
                          change in a functional environment.  They should
                          not be deleted because there is no reason to and
                          it would waste someone's time to do so.  Why
                          *should* any accounts be deleted?
                    \_ How come at line 2437 in /etc/passwd the UID goes up to
                       10958, but then at line 2438 it starts from 1003 again?
                    \_ I saw that old login names like achoi or choice no
                       longer exist.
                       \_ achoi/choice is now android. -geordan
                          \_ So any future Albert Choi or Ah-Ching Hoi can
                             re-use the login achoi.
                             \_ *hint*

8/26    How do I prevent a particular host or user from having write acess
        to an NFS mounted disk?  There is some rogue process tring to fill
        up my disk, and I haven't been able to block it.  I've tried
        variations on
        \_ what server os?
        \_ you can prevent a certain host from writing to a volume but you
           can't prevent a user from writing if the file system has been
           exported in read-write mode to that host.
           \- actually there is kind of a hairy way to do this with
              some experimental work on nfs filter layers. the work
              involves some extensions to the *_quash routines.
              while it is experimental, the people doing it really know
              what they are doing ... however this is probably one of
              those cases where "if you have to ask, this 'solution' isnt
              for you". if this is you really important you can talk to me.
              ok tnx.

8/26    Where can I find an online catalog of photographs for a web
        site?  I need a business, finance sort of theme.  Thanks
        \_ http://www.corbis.com
           http://www.gettyimages.com

8/25    What's wrong with 'quota'?
        \_ Running it causes your terminal to go screwy.  Ctrl-[d,c,z]
           won't get you out of it.
           \_ Yes, I knew that.  The question is why.   -op
        \_ scotch.csua is hosed, hosing nfs mounts, hosing things like df.

8/21    How can I force the links www browser to allow me to highlight
        text on a web page (eg, for copy/paste)?
        \_ hold down shift; this goes for most if not all apps that
           depend on xterm for mouse input. -alexf

8/20    When I use tab in a plain old xterm, it works fine.  If I run screen
        inside the xterm, tab stops working.  If I type ^v and then tab at
        the shell inside screen, I get "^[OI".  Is there something I can
        put in my .screenrc to make this work?  I tried 'bindkey "^[OI"
        stuff ^I', but screen complains that stuff requires one or two
        parameters.  This is on a Win32 machine running some X server.

8/19    http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2002/8/19/2952/21932 - php gui sucks.
        \_ gui's are bad.

8/13    After changing /etc/dfs/dfstab and restarting nfsd my other machine
        still can't see /net/mymachine/mydir. I've checked the /etc/auto_mount
        on the client side and it looks ok. What's going on?
        \_ you don't need to restart nfsd to activete those NFS shares.
           just run shareall && share
        \_ What does the share command say?  Is it really being exported?
           \_ -               /private   rw=group1:group2:   ""
              \_ Is the nfs client working on your local machine? Did you
                 check /etc/hosts for the correct remote machine IP/name?
                 \_ yes client working. I just checked that they are on
                    different YP domains (e.g. ypcat netgroups return very
                    different entries). I've tried adding the groups in
                    /etc/hosts.equiv but it still doesn't work.
        \_ Can you manually mount the server from the client?  You need to
           do some work to isolate the problem to nfs, perms, YP, or whatever.
        \_ I hear jon will fix your problem if you submit a work request
           to CUSG, but if you don't have a contract, it will cost you
           82.50 an hour.
                \_ no thank you
           \_ can't mikeh do it for cheaper?
              \_ I'll do it for $60/hr without the paperwork.  Gotta pay cash
                 under the table though.  Fuck the IRS.

8/12    I have been installing some software, and then all of a sudden
        I cannot "man" anymore.  I would get
/usr/bin/man: Formatting manual page...
grotty:<standard input>:2324:fatal error: output error
        even though (as far as I can tell) the areas affected by the
        installation has not been added to my standard path variables
        (I am using customary paths).  Please help.  Ok tnx.
           \_ is something compressed that should be or vice-versa?
           \_ did you run catman after installing?
           \_ Check man directory and file permissions. Some installs
              mess these up.

8/5     What is a good egrep regular expression for a IPv4 address?
        '^[0-9]*[.][0-9]*[.][0-9]*[.][0-9]*$'   ??
        \_ Really depends on how "good" you need it to be.  You could
           do [0-9]{1,3} if you were worried about clutter.
                \_ ([0-9]{1,3}\.){3}[0-9]{1,3}     BEAT THAT SUCKERS!!!
                   \- in my experience there are some inconsistnecies in
                      which egrep can do {} matchers ... at least between
                      sunos4, solaris and gnu. --psb
        \_ ED! er uh no... PERL!  PERL ON LINUX WHILE RIDING BIKE! YES!

8/3     Anyone use SecureCRT? For some reason it keeps disconnecting me to
        CSUA if I'm idle for more than 20 minutes. No other ssh program
        (Windows or UNIX) does that to me, and I don't see any settings
        related to timeout. Any ideas?
        \_ I use the very old 2.4 version which doesn't disconnect me although
           it'd probably be healthier if it did.  ;-)
        \_ Relatedly, any recommendations for a win ssh client that supports
           PKI?
        \_ I use it and haven't experienced any problems.
        \_ Go to Options, Session Options, Options and turn on "anti-idle" -bhc
        \_ perhaps you're behind a NAT gateway with a low idle session timeout
           setting?

8/2     How do you view the man pages?
        \_ prompt$ man man
           \_ Is there something wrong with my environment, then?
                % man ls
                No manual entry for ls
                % man man
                No manual entry for man
              This is on soda.
              \_ "man rear"
              \_ "unsetenv MANPATH" and try again
        \_ setenv MANPATH "/usr/share/man:/usr/X11/man:/usr/local/man:/csua/man"
                 \_ Why does this work? Where is the default manpath set?
                    \_ /usr/share/man works for me.
                    \_ /etc/manpath.config. Just make sure you don't have
                       MANPATH set in .cshrc / .profile / .login
                 \_ Thank you very much
                    \_ This was the latest PSB man alias ... it makes a motd
                       entry.

7/30    Cygwin question. What does one need to do in add'n to 'chmod u+x
        ./<filename>' to make scripts executable in cygwin on NT? I've RTFM and
        found nothing regarding script execution that's applicable.
        \_ say what?  I've got no problem just running scripts under cygwin as
           if it was a real unix shell.
        \_ as you may recall, there is no executable bit in windows. thus,
           cygwin just looks at the extension or checks for the magic shebang
           header. so add #!/path/to/whatever at the top of your scripts.

7/26    My computer monitor stopped working recently (screen is
        completely snowy white). I want to get rid of it, but I'm
        not sure if throwing it in the garbage is the best thing to do.
        Is there any sort of place that takes in non-working computer
        equipment like this? I'm not in the Bay Area.
        \_ try throwing it off the top of a parking garage.  make sure
           you have two escape routes or more.
        \_ eBay?
        \_ Depends on your community. Your dead monitor has lots of
           lead in it. See if your local garbage collector has a program
           that deals with dead TVs and monitors.
        \_ your monitor is officially hazardous waste, to just toss it in
           the trash would be breaking the (poorly enforced) law.
        \_ Look around.  There are dead computer collection events every
           2 or 3 months in my community.  I heard some of these get
           shippied to China and dumped in inappropriate places, but hey,
           that's not our problem right?
        \_ computer recycling center: http://www.crc.org
           \_ I wish I knew this before I threw away my 386 several years ago.
        \_ I also have a broken monitor...it's missing the color blue...
           does anyone know the best way to fix this?  Thanks.
           \_ Did you accidentally mess up the color balance setting on the
              monitor?  It happened to my cousin once and that took me a while
              to figure out.
        \_ Ship it directly to China.  That's where all the warm fuzzy feel
           good "recycling" places are taking theirs.
        \_ Throw it in da Bay.
        \_ toss it in your neighbor's dumpster.
           \_ oooh, good call.  I wish I'd thought of that first.

7/25    Just curious. How come 'last' shows the date went backwards? thx.
mikeh            ttyA7    128.32.112.194   Thu Jul 25 01:09 - 01:11  (00:01)
root             ttyv1                     Thu Jul 25 01:08 - 01:09  (00:00)
root             ttyv0                     Thu Jul 25 01:07 - 01:08  (00:01)
emarkp           ttyv3                     Wed Jul 24 23:36 - 23:36  (00:00)
mehlhaff         ttyA4    63.201.156.21    Wed Jul 24 23:30   still logged in
root             ttyv2                     Wed Jul 24 23:24 - 23:46  (00:22)
root             ttyv1                     Wed Jul 24 22:51 - 23:46  (00:54)
mikeh            ttyv0                     Wed Jul 24 22:50 - 23:47  (00:56)
reboot           ~                         Wed Jul 24 22:50
shutdown         ~                         Wed Jul 24 22:44
root             ttyA1    10.32.43.51      Wed Jul 24 22:17 - shutdown  (00:26)
mikeh            ttyA1    10.32.43.51      Thu Jul 25 03:54 - 22:17  (18:23)
jon              ttyA3    10.32.43.51      Thu Jul 25 03:07 - 03:08  (00:00)
root             ttyA4    10.32.43.51      Thu Jul 25 03:00 - shutdown  (19:43)
root             ttyA1    10.32.43.51      Thu Jul 25 02:44 - 03:54  (01:10)
mikeh            ttyA1    10.32.43.51      Thu Jul 25 02:44 - 02:44  (00:00)
root             ttyA0    10.32.43.51      Thu Jul 25 01:45 - shutdown  (20:59)
reboot           ~                         Thu Jul 25 01:35
        \_ that's why it's called 'last'.  it shows from most to least recent
           who has logged in.
           \_ so you saying july 24 is more recent than july 25?

7/25    Thanks to the root types who have been working hard to clean up the
        recent mess on soda and in EECS in general.  The masses are pleased
        to have soda return.  --PeterM
        \_ Word.
        \_ Hmm, is POP and IMAP still down?
        \_ All praise the great root types!
        \_ No HTTP service either
        \_ Your work means a lot to us.  Inability to use soda drives me nuts,
           especially since I use it for love emails.
        \_ specifically much praise is due to mikeh.  He put alot of time into
           the reinstall and cleaning up of things.  'course everybody put
           effort in.

7/18    my pager, "less" is acting strangely, with I hit "q" to quit,
        it scrolls back to the top of the page. It I hit "q" again, then
        it quits. I don't think it used to do this a couple days ago.
        How can I get less to behave?
        \_ usually this means you are doing something like
           "alias grep 'grep | less'" and then doing "grep | less".  -tom
           \_ But 'less' should take note of where STDOUT is going and if
              you do something like grep | less | less "the right thing" should
              happen which means the first invocation does nothing but pipe
              it's STDIN back to STDOUT without doing anything with it.  Thus,
              grep | less | less *should* do the exact same thing as
              grep | less.
              \_ Mine does this correctly.  What's your LESS env var?

5/18    Any reason why a whole bunch of /var/log/ files was nazied?
        Particularly daemon.log?  It was always readable as far as I can
        remember.
        \_ it was probably a remnant of make merge in the last
           system upgrade
        \_ hm.... ask root?
        \_ so users have a harder time figuring out what's broken about the
           system to complain to root about it.
        \_ <sa mode> Because it's none of your damned business? </sa mode>
            \_ that should be BOFH mode.
                \_ BOFH mode would be removing them from the passwd file so
                   then you don't have to answer stupid questions about why
                   users are no longer allowed to snoop into log files they
                   have no business looking at.  See the difference?  It's
                   subtle but very important.  SA mode is daily practice, BOFH
                   mode is for people who deserve bonus abuse.
        \_ remember that whole problem with /var being really overfull? I
           didn't fix it myself, but there were some really big log files
           that were moved, iirc. -chialea
           \_ Why don't they get auto rotated based on age/size?  It's not
              as if there aren't a million log rotators available.
              \_ er... check motd.official
                 \_ who reads that?

5/17    Is sudo always setuid root?
        \_ how else would it do things as root? -tom
           \_ it wouldn't. but aren't a very large number of root exploits
              found because of problems with setuid?
                \_ what does that matter?  If you need to do things as root,
                   you need something that's setuid root.  sudo should in
                   general be safer and more secure than su.  -tom
                \_ i suppose if you wanted to only run things as daemon you
                   could make it suid daemon instead.