EMAIL - I publish email sometimes. If you send me an email and you want privacy, say so, I will respect that. If I don't know that you want your email address published, then I won't. Be aware, though, that I am (usually) human and make mistakes.

Good Morning. Here's a link to the SJ Mercury story about the *wonderful* weather we're having - heat records are dropping like flies in an exterminator's house. Between fans and mini-aircon, we stayed inside and alive, but it got miserable towards the mid-late afternoon. I just kept working, though clearly myconcentration suffered for a while - I have some re-reading to do. Makes it tough sleeping, too. Hmmm. Antarctica, here I come (as long as I can have a dedicated satellite link to replace the DSL, eh? Hey, spotted on Slashdot, a potato-powered webserver.

Wow. Overnight, only twelve messages between the two mailboxes, mostly spam. I may have to re-subscribe to a couple of my mailboxes so that I don't feel lonely AND I get a higher signal to noise ratio.

I am going to push HARD today to complete the new Catalog for ETS, when I do, it will be posted in PDF format. Since I am not a shrinking violet, I'll post a link to it here, as well - I really like the look of this one (a father's pride, no doubt) - and while our price sheet is a 7 page XLS, I have gotten the catalog into only (12) 8.5 x 11, including front and back cover art. More if there is more - my days at work have been known to rearrange themselves without consulting me.

Yesterday I slogged through writing the section on startup and shutdown - I think this is going to be the last of the "big" chapters, but it will probably top 80 pages, especially since I am near to 40 already, and I have yet to address User and Group management, Backup, Troubleshooting, and a couple of lesser topics. Hmmm. We shall see.

Off to work with me, once I water the farm and rig the apt for cool running. Have a lovely day where ever you are - we will here, it'll just be HOT! Later.

19:00 - In other, sadder news, my paternal grandmother died this morning. My heart is considerably heavier than normal. This loss is virtually on the heels of my grandfather's death, early this March. I am going to miss them both. I think that I want to remember them best as they were a few years back, considerably more "with it" and interacting with the world. But of course I also remember them as whole human beings (at least in my meager experience with them - I haven't even lived half their span).

They were wonderful people. Even towards the end, our visiting brought them such joy. They will live on in my heart and mind, and in those of the people whose lives they touched. The singular memory I carry of my grandmother is her unreserved happiness at seeing her family, each and every time, as far back as I can remember. In recent years, her somewhat old fashioned reserve disolved quite a bit, and she became more emphatic and demonstrative... Goodbye.

Now what? I think I am going to take the night off from "formal" writing. I have worked on the book every day since this project started. I deserve 10 minutes, eh? Let's start with a cool fortune from this afternoon's login to my Gnome Helix session:

     On the other hand, the TCP camp also has a phrase for OSI people.
There are lots of phrases. My favorite is 'nitwit' -- and the rationale
is the Internet philosophy has always been you have extremely bright,
non-partisan researchers look at a topic, do world-class research, do
several competing implementations, have a bake-off, determine what works
best, write it down and make that the standard.
     The OSI view is entirely opposite. You take written contributions
from a much larger community, you put the contributions in a room of 
committee people with, quite honestly, vast political differences and all 
with their own political axes to grind, and four years later you get
something out, usually without it ever having been implemented once.
     So the Internet perspective is implement it, make it work well,
then write it down, whereas the OSI perspective is to agree on it, write
it down, circulate it a lot and now we'll see if anyone can implement it 
after it's an international standard and every vendor in the world is
committed to it. One of these processes is backwards, and I don't think
it takes a Lucasian professor of physics at Oxford to figure out which.
          -- Marshall Rose, "The Pied Piper of OSI"

And hmmm again. Another RIP, this time to Sir John Gielgud. Wonderful actor - I know absolutely nothing about him as a person, though. That said, I think I'll post this, give my dad a call, then pop a movie into the VCR and watch it front to back (haven't done that for a good bit). Good night!

Oh. Almost forgot - the lowres version (only 408K PDF file) of the new ETS Catalog that I have been struggling with so is finally online here. The high resolution version (far more suitable for printing purposes, and for people with broadband access, at 3.5 Meg.) will be out tomorrow, both posted on the site. Now, really, good night!


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Good Morning! A thoughtful lot of mail in the boxes today - Thank you all, Don Armstrong especially, since I usually am only blessed with his 'presence' when I have screwed up my HTML <SEG>. I am blessed to be part of a community composed of a wonderful bunch of people. Some here and near, the rest widespread and involved. It is a pleasure to have such friends.

We watched The World Is Not Enough last night, which was a good enough action flick. Pierce Brosnan makes a good Bond, but the rest of the actors are really rather wooden (even John Cleese, sorry to say). And the story lines are now based on 4 words uttered by Ian Fleming while suffering from pneumonia from being caught out in the rain behaving like a prat while up at Eaton (or some such). Hmmm.

Subject: Condolences & etc.
   Date: Mon, 22 May 2000 23:42:16 -0700
   From: "J.H. Ricketson" 
    
.b - 

My sincere condolences on your Grandmother's death. Life is for 
the most part never long enough. You were lucky enough to have 
a lot of theirs - think about the far more than half-full cup, rather 
than the emptiness. Might help a little.

Checked out your new catalog. Beautiful job! Not only that, but it's 
very useful, too - which is, after all, its reason for being! I still can't 
understand your insistence on a variant spelling for "balloons", 
however. 

Had a real nice thing happen today (full report in today's Journal): 
The U.S. Mule delivered the Linux Desk Reference. It exceeds my 
fondest hopes! Everyone who is involved with Linux should have a 
copy - from me, the newest Newbie, to far advanced users who 
choose not to memorize every last term. Scott Hawkins saves them 
the trouble. Bottom line: even I can understand and use it very 
productively. Now I can hardly wait to get my Linux sandbox cobbled 
together so I can begin exploring!

My very best to you & yours,

JHR
--
[J.H. Ricketson in San Pablo]

Thanks for your concern, and thoughts. Appreciated. Thanks also about the new catalog - I have poured a fair chunk of time into that, now that it's published, I have a lot of work to do to to bring the rest of our documentation into line with the latest edition (price sheet, data sheets, etc.) Glad to know about the book. Now I'll probably have to add it to my collection.

Subject: Condolences
    Date: Tue, 23 May 2000 08:00:14 -0400
    From: Robert Bruce Thompson

I was sorry to read your post of last evening about your grandmother. She
sounds like a wonderful person. I know you must miss her very much.

Bob

--
Robert Bruce Thompson
http://www.ttgnet.com

Yup. Last afternoon, as I was talking about this with Trudy at work, she said something about facing our own mortality... I nodded and said, "Yes, well, *I* am still immortal and indestructable, but I sure don't like facing the mortality of others!" Humor is still a shield and a mighty good one at that, but I am sure that at least part of it is genetic, eh?

Then I got a SECOND letter from Don??? Somebody down that way want to check his temperature?

Subject: weather
    Date: Tue, 23 May 2000 22:08:42 +1000 (EST)
    From: Don Armstrong

Well, to those of you who have been lamenting the weather,
you ought to refresh yourselves with the thought that these
are the good old days you'll look back on wistfully. I'd
imagine your hottest times would be late July/ early August
(flywheel effect, build up momentum, overcome thermal
inertia, etc). If it's starting out this way this early,
what could it be like by then?

We just had our first frost for the year last night. I
don't know whether you'd call it blessed or not, but we
have been having extraordinarily mild weather (as far as
temperature variation goes, anyway) the last few years -
dead-set boring, in fact. If it keeps on this way, I may
have to start wearing long pants even during the day in a
couple of weeks time.

Enjoy YOUR current mild weather.

Don Armstrong

Yes, well, hmmm. Indeed. Thanks for the *cheery* outlook. Y'know, one of these years we really must make it down to your part of the world - I'll be looking for your advice at that time.

Really "reading" the mail, smiling a bunch and taking just a hair of time to respond sure eats away at the old clock. Gotta run. Have a great day, all. In a spare moment, think nice thoughts for my dad, too - he's having less fun with this loss than I am.

10:30 - A couple of items. First, hat's off to Bob Thompson, who saved the day around here! I was posting a quickie update over an SSH connection (just like this one), when the application (Bluefish) or the connection started acting wonky. Next thing you know, I had an itty-bitty current week page, filled with gubbage. I sent to Bob, asking him to send me the most recent copy of my page out of his cache directory. I could have retrieved yesterday from tape tonight, and recreated today from memory, but this was easy! THANKS, BOB!

Second, and the reason for the midmorning update in the first place. I have renamed the PDF file for the low resolution version of the new ETS catalog (and revised the above links). Additionally, I have posted the high resolution version (a 2.73M zip file), which prints out very much more nicely, and shows just how little talent I really have with a digital camera <g>. That said, now gotta run, and post these catalog links on the ETS home page. TTFN.

Home again. Clearly I don't have it all together at the moment. Probably a combination of grieving, lack of sleep from the heat of recent days, and being stressed with the job (though not the book, too much anyway). My temper is really rather frayed. Don't like that much, actually. Not to mention this crashing dang dang headache. Hmmm.

Thanks for the kind note, Dan. Lots of interesting mail on a variety of topics, from a discussion of enterprise level backup systems that lead to the news that Legato Systems has been delisted by the Nasdaq. Mmmmm. Then I received the following forwarded to me from my dad earlier today.

Subject: Cat Toast

An American magazine held a competition, inviting its readers to 
submit new scientific theories on ANY subject. This is the winner:

Subject: Perpetual Motion

"When a cat is dropped, it always lands on its feet, and when 
toast is dropped, it always lands buttered side down. Therefore, 
if a slice of toast is strapped to a cat's back, buttered side up, 
and the animal is then dropped, the two opposing forces will 
cause it to hover, spinning inches above the ground. If enough 
toast-laden felines were used, they could form the basis of a 
high-speed monorail system."

This idea got this reply from one of the readers.

I've been thinking about this cat/toast business for a while. In the 
buttered toast case, it's the butter that causes it to land buttered 
side down - it doesn't have to be toast, the theory works equally 
well with Jacob's crackers. So to save money I think you just miss 
out the toast and butter the cats. Also, should there be an 
imbalance between the effects of cat and butter, there are other 
substances that have a stronger affinity for carpet.

Consider that the probability of carpet impact is determined by the 
following simple formula:

P = S * t(t)/tc

where P is the probability of carpet impact; S is the "stain" value 
of the toast-covering substance (an indicator of the effectiveness 
of the topping in permanently staining the carpet - chicken tikka 
masala, for example, has a very high S value, while the S value 
of water is zero); tc and t(t) indicate the tone of the carpet and 
topping respectively - the value of P being strongly related to the 
relationship between the colour of the carpet and topping, as even 
chicken tikka masala won't cause a permanent and obvious stain 
if the carpet is the same colour.

So it is clear that the probability of carpet impact is maximised if you 
use chicken tikka masala and a white carpet - in fact this 
combination gives a P value of one, which is the same as the 
probability of a cat landing on its feet. Therefore a cat with chicken 
tikka masala plastered on its back will be certain to hover in mid air.

Contrastingly, there could be problems with buttered toast as the toast 
may fall off the cat, causing a terrible monorail crash resulting in 
nauseating images of members of the royal family visiting accident 
victims in hospital, and politicians saying it wouldn't have happened 
if their party was in power as there would have been more investment 
in cat-toast glue research.

Therefore it is in the interests not only of public safety but also public 
sanity if the buttered toast on cats idea is scrapped, to be replaced 
by a monorail powered by cats smeared with chicken tikka masala 
floating above a rail made from white wool shag pile carpet.

Good mornin'. Weather-wise, we have transitioned from HOT two days ago, to fairly hot and muggy, overcast with a little drizzle towards the end of the day yesterday, to the fog rolling in last night. Cool and overcast this morning. Weird, weird, weird. Hmmm.

Worse yet, something's broken. I can't do cut and paste anymore. Let my try something... I am getting very odd behavior out of cut and past - I haven't time to explore it now, but I had to move a copy of my embedded email block quotes a chunk at a time. Anyway, here's a mail from Don about yesterday's buttered cat topic:

Subject: Cat power
   Date: Wed, 24 May 2000 20:18:56 +1000 (EST)
   From:  Don Armstrong 

Brian,

I think I can remember, given enough incentive, that the
cat-powered motive source has been a proposition for more
than twenty years now. An acquaintance of mine was a
quality assurance engineer at British Leyland in Australia.
Poor man, trying to cope with that nearly drove him crazy.
When they went belly-up, MUCH earlier than the parent
company did, he was so disillusioned that he tossed it in
and took up a position where he could have professional
integrity and public respect. He became a boxing promoter.
Truth.

Anyway, the rumour was that British Leyland were going to
revive the Austin name as the manufacturer of these power
sources and monorail trains.  They and British Rail were
going to run a prototype between Manchester and Edinburgh,
with co-financing from the World Health Organisation, WHO
(ha ha) viewed themselves as having a distinct interest in
cheap transportation for use in developing nations.
Incidentally, your father's report was absolutely correct -
the coating for the M-E monorail was indeed to be a form of
shag pile carpeting. The power to be derived from the
balance between putting the cat feet down and the stain
probability was called the Stain Probability Yield.

In fact, before some odd occurences (which I believe later
formed the basis for a film) scuttled the entire project,
the slogan they were going to use was "Austin powers the
S.P.Y. W.H.O. shagged M-E".

Cheers,
Don.

Why am I reminded of the Asimov short story, Shah Guido G? <G>

TTFN. Running latish, as usual.

Good afternoon. I left work about 1:45ish, I guess, with an intention of slogging through perhaps 10 pages or 15 this afternoon and tonight - started some laundry on the side, checked a couple of emails, what the hell happened to the afternoon. I mean, the farm pix above only took 20 minutes. Sigh. Gotta get to it, folks. Later.


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Mornin'. An exchange yesterday with Don Armstrong on the subject of British radio comedy, is summarized in the following:

Subject: Bricklayer
   Date: Thu, 25 May 2000 22:51:34 +1000 (EST)
   From: Don Armstrong <>

Clement Freud - descendant (I think grandson, or perhaps
great-g) of THE Freud.

Don

--- Brian P Bilbrey  wrote: > Somehow
> I must have missed them. I am still trying to
> remember who did the Bricklayer?
> 
> Don Armstrong wrote:
> > 
> > --- Brian Bilbrey wrote: 
> > >Why am I reminded of the Asimov short story, Shah Guido G?  <G>
> > >
> > Probably because it was as laboured as any Asimov pun.
> > However, the inspiration was Frank Muir and Dennis Norden,
> > in "My Word" (radio). Have you come across them in your
> > appreciation of British comedy?
> > 
> > Don

That's it. Such wonderful presentation. "Forgetting that the bricks were heavier than I, I cast loose the line..." Hee hee hee! Of course, true British radio comedy includes so many political radio pronouncements (just as politicians and TV comedy go hand in hand {in my eyes}, over here). Hmmm.

Got a fair way through user and group management last night, learning in the process that PAM and MD5 passwords apparently (meaning I haven't found them) aren't implemented in OpenLinux. This after writing 3/4 of a sidebar on the topic. Well. I repurposed the sidebar to discuss shadow passwords (/etc/shadow, a root-only readable file for containing the actual encrypted passwords, so that casual users can't see them). I do need to talk to Caldera. However, they aren't answering their email! Any Caldera people in the audience?

Dunno if you caught it, but more farm pix are at the tail of Wednesday. Today, it looks to be a pretty morning out there. Perfect for heading to the beach or perhaps the redwoods. So off to work in a tilt-up I go. Must try to remember why I work in a building put together by a method called "tilt-up", here in earthquake country. Hmmm. Tomorrow, of course, much of the Bay Area will be bailing out early, making this a 4 day weekend. One must remember, we on the Left Coast don't actually "celebrate" most holidays, merely "have" them.

Have a great day. Later!


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Howdy. End of week. Three day weekend == three solid writing days, but that's cool - I really need a little focus to get out of this section. Chapter 18 (which I have been at for nearly two weeks) is going to cap out at about 80 pages, finishing out the central portion of the book, on command line tasks, programs and usage.

A few weeks ago, Tom noted that I was suffering rather severely from the Oh, Sh*t syndrome. This is an unfortunate malady where when I look for the answer to a single question, which will add one or two sentences to a paragraph, I find at least three new things that haven't been addressed at all. This has two effects. First, I appear to not make progress towards the goal of actually finishing anything. Secondly, I feel like I am trapped in a Lorentz attractor - I keep on travelling (nearly) the same path, over and over again, seeing new things each time, new stuff to write about. How to break out of this loop, close the section, and move on? Hmmm. Bert the fire axe?

Then there's mail...

Using tilt-up building in a quake area doesn't sound so strange to me.

Build all flat surfaces horizonally, then 'tilt' them up and your house
is ready.
When a quake comes, the house automatically 'tilts' down. (if people go
laying down on the ground to prevent falling it sounds natural that a
house sould do the same).
After the quake you just 'tilt' it back up and you aree ready.

Simple and logical.

Hey with software you do that all the time. You build all the modules,
hook them toghether. Then when a (Windows) quake knocks the lot down 
you just pull it up again.

--
Svenson.

On which side of the tilt-down wall do you recommend being? No cute answers here - you have to decide NOW - before the wall actually starts tilting down and you find yourself on the WRONG side. OTOH, that is the Windows design philosophy - reboot and reinstall is a tilt-up metaphor, whereas working with Linux is far more like building a craft house, possibly a modified Prairie School. The problem of course is coming out with something byzantine like the Winchester Mystery House...

I got an answer (of sorts) from the Caldera automated support system ... telling me that since they haven't heard from me in the 4 days since they responded to my email, they were "closing the incident". Of course, they haven't actually responded - there is no response shown in the linked page. I am terribly impressed with the sales possibilities for a good OpenLinux book (like ours) in conjunction with Caldera's tech support system.

This week's clue (A-Clue.com, check it out) from Dana Blankenhorn is entitled the Rat Bastards. I have forwarded it to work, which departure I make now. Have a lovely day. TTFN.

>>On which side .....
Obviously on the right side.
Although,.... I think I would choose the safe side.

>>The Windows philosophy....
Well, both are the same, if Windows falls down (lets say once 
every 50 hours if you aren't running programs) you got to tilt it 
up again (reboot and/or reinstall); IF Linux falls down (lets say 
once every 50 years if you aren't running programs) you got 
to tilt it up again as well, also with a reboot and maybe a 
reinstall (or even a recompile).

What is (hugely) different is the type of programming you have 
to do. Building programs on Linux is like building a house in 
central Antarctica, there haven't been earthquakes there the 
last several million years. You only have to concentrate on the 
program functions. Building programs on Windows is like 
building right on top of the San Andrea's fault. Not only do you 
have to contend with the program functions you have to make 
it windows-fail-safe. Obviously nobody succeeds in doing that.

--
Svenson.

No more arguments from me. Dammit, Jim, I have work to do. Can't you see this man's dying? {grin} Actually, I think you may be giving Linux a little more credit than it's worth? 50 years of uptime on a 10 year old OS is a little pretentious to claim, eh?

Subject: It must be friday....
    Date: Fri, 26 May 2000 14:02:49 -0700
 
as there is another virus out in the wild. Info found here
http://vil.nai.com/villib/dispvirus.asp?virus_k=98661

John D.

Sigh. Thanks, John. Hey, anyone else out there looking to load Linux this weekend??? {heh}

Not the actual first update of the day, but there have been some ch-ch-changes going on about this joint. A full rebuild of Grendel the server, including revamping the mail system, to excise the HP OpenMail product. There's a long and bloody story here, so pull up that spare virtual lay-z-boy and we'll have a tale-tellin'.

The story starts several weeks ago, when I went to fetch my Orb Designs mail. I typed omgui to get the OpenMail GUI client started. It popped right up, showing me several messages that I had received since the last time that I had checked. One little problem - it didn't prompt me for a password first. This was probably 2-3 weeks after I first installed the product. Hmmm. Not password protecting the mail is a Bad Thing (tm). Occurred every 4 to 7 days thereafter, no reliable, repeatable information or circumstances I could determine - and the way I am using the HP product, as an unsupported free-beeeee, well the support is what's been paid for. Heh.

Now this was a local connection, non-routable adresses and all that, but still. Since that point in time, I began looking at my options. Last afternoon, the behaviour repeated again, and it became time to introduce Grendel to Bert the fire axe. (Anyone out there know about Bert?).

First brilliant idea - I am co-scribing a book on OpenLinux with young Tom, and I have started to feel comfortable with the OL setup, from work for the book, so why not . . . As I said, 'f'ing brilliant. Yes, made backups of everything - no problems there. I was going to get updated versions of the security stuff, but everything else, including data, I had stashed locally in a tar file, and copied over to another system - didn't loose anything except time. That's the worry gone, now here's the sad tale.

I first tried to just extricate sendmail from the clutches of OpenMail, but tentacles were everywhere, into the sendmail configs, the startup scripts, everywhere - it installed like an Windows app {grin}! Then I decided to do the server rebuild, so ran the backups and transfers. Then we went out for supper to Fresh Choice, then a little side trip up to a nearby reservoir in the hills above Cupertino - fresh air and scouting for the fishing.

Back about 7:30, in went the eServer CD - and they're . . . not quite off, just yet thank you very much. Forgot about a couple of the broken bits in the eServer installer, primarily in the mouse and video mode selections. Secondly, the graphical install allows click forward - that is, I over-clicked on the "Next" button a couple of times, and it queued the clicks, allowing me to unknowingly accept several default selections that I did not want. Sigh.

The eServer (and eDesktop) installer has one major advantage over every other installer I have used - as soon as they can in the process, the package installation gets rolling in the background, while other questions are asked and answered in the foreground, anyway, finally got through it to my satisfaction, after a couple of hours including false starts. Then the real fun began.

I started moving the backed up data into the new structure, then configuring the services. Ah, I can't find how to do this with Webmin (just yet - webmin = browser-based configuration), so COAS (the gtk-based administration tool) was... also less than helpful. I did some transcription of configuration files, and started installing services... eeek. Too many differences between the versions I was running and the versions I had been using. Web broken. Email not behaving properly, now nearing 23:00. Ah, hell.

Out comes the Mandrake 7.02 CD and we're off. I can do a server install on Mandrake in less than 45 minutes, including restoring the data... Ummm. Oh. 23:30 - I had selected High security, and hadn't installed any of the development tools. Mistake when all the security tools I use need to be compiled locally. Reinstall again, full-magilla kitchen sink package selection, omit postfix, add sendmail, etc, etc. Web back online by midnight, email good enough that it isn't turned back at the gate and I am off to bed.

Up again at 06:15 am, working at getting the outbound mail working properly. I have been living all morning in O'Reilly's Sendmail (aka the Bat book). You see, I could receive mail properly. Marcia's DutchGirl mail flowed in and out properly. But the PBI mta wouldn't accept mail that came from grendel.orbdesigns.com. There are supposed to be masquerading and rewriting features for sendmail to allow me to cope with that... but apparently I am too stupid to figure it out, so I changed Grendel's name to mail. mail.orbdesigns.com is a CN of the fqdn orbdesigns.com (and the listed host on the MX record). Hell, I don't care which name is on the box, as long as it works. Eventually I am going to figure this out properly.

Now the heat is rising, I am exhausted, and I have a book to work on. Thanks for letting me waste your time. One favor - help me exercise the new email setup. Send me mail at [email protected] and I will reply. I am looking for more testing. Thanks. Later.

22:15 - A brief update - Everything appears to be working at the moment, subject to change like everything else. Mutt is installed, configured. Interesting article on Open Source and Open Relationships up on Salon (here). Mostly interesting not for the marketable linkage of sex with just about anything, but that several SVLUG'rs are quoted in the article.

Now to call it a night. Two days of heavy writing coming up - but I am stoked for it. G'night.

Good morning. Or rather, afternoon. Slept late, being lazy, still working on breakfast (bagels and Coke, breakfast of champions, eh?). Lot's of email - thanks to all of you for helping me exercise the system - keep up the good work - I love hearing from y'all. A snap of Mutt in action, to the left.

In the first message below, I left in about 1/3 of the header material - it's MASSIVE, and informative. Also you'll note the '=' at the end of each line in the major paragraph below - this is how Mutt attempts to cope with the one line per paragraph gubbage produced by default Outlook and Outlook Express products. What this means is that when I went to cut a bit of the paragraph, so that I might respond to the bit called for, the whole paragraph disappeared.

The correct option to use in Netscape is wrap outgoing, plaintext messages at 72 characters. I am sure there is an equivalent in the O/OE world. I begin to understand why some Linux users despise HTML mail - lots and lots of extra stuff travelling the wires, mucking up the view at the receiving end, adding no new information. Anyway.... {disable rant mode}

From: "Steve Swickard" {[email protected]}
To: {[email protected]}
Subject: New E-mail setup exercise
Date: Sun, 28 May 2000 02:02:51 -0600
X-MSMail-Priority: Normal
X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.00.2919.6600

This is a multi-part message in MIME format.

------=_NextPart_000_0005_01BFC848.D596E5E0
Content-Type: text/plain;
	charset="Windows-1252"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

Hi Brian,

    Was just reading your latest journal entry from Saturday 27 May with =
your wish to have e-mails sent to exercise your new setup. Hope that =
after all that work everything is working the way you want it to work. =
Enjoy reading your daily journal very much, most interesting. Since you =
seem to have a lot of experience with Linux I thought that I would ask =
you one simple question. I recently installed Linux Mandrake 7.0 on a =
Pentium II 300Mhz system that I had previously used for Windows 98. =
Everything seems to be coming along okay but with one problem. I setup =
the PPP and was able to connect to my ISP but only at 9600bps. I am =
using an external US Robotics Sportster 33.6K modem that I use with =
another win98 machine. The windows machine connects at 28.8K all the =
time. Using the PPP modem query command the system detects the proper =
modem. Any ideas about this one? I have been using computers and =
DOS/Windows for many years but am new to Linux. Thank you and thanks for =
sharing your thoughts Have a great Memorial weekend
Steve Swickard
Colorado Springs, Colorado (God's Country)
[email protected]

Hi, Steve.

Thanks for the feedback - pleased to know that you are finding these pages of some use and interest.I am astonished to admit that I don't have any boxen with modems - I have been using Linux either standalone or networked all along. However, I would like to direct your attention in the following areas:

1: http://www.linuxdoc.org/HOWTO/PPP-HOWTO.html
2: http://noframes.linuxjournal.com/glue/groups/us/colorado

The first is the canonical resource, linuxdoc, and if you haven't seen this then you might want to. Second is the list of linux user groups in Colorado, not a long list, but you can get in touch with them and see if someone else is in your area that can give you a hand. If you have no joy, then I will set up a modem in one of my machines and try to replicate your problems. Keep me informed.

From: "Dave Starr" {[email protected]}
To: {[email protected]}
Subject: Requested Test Mail
Date: Sun, 28 May 2000 07:23:51 -0600
Message-ID: 
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain;
	charset="iso-8859-1"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
X-Priority: 3 (Normal)
X-MSMail-Priority: Normal
X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook IMO, Build 9.0.2416 (9.0.2910.0)
Importance: Normal
X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.00.2615.200
Status: RO
X-Status: A
Content-Length: 196
Lines: 6

Just a note as requested Brian  ... good luck with the mail server problems.
And keep writing. Your 'adventures' are always instructive and your
descriptions cogent and interesting.

Regards
Dave

Thanks. Mail appears to be solid now. Glad to have you dropping by.

I note in my response to Steve, below, that Running Linux is the preferred book. Of course that's only true until October/November-ish, when the book Tom and I are writing comes out... {grin}. There's always room for a few good books on any given subject. Speaking (tangentially) of O'Reilly, here's Tim duking it out with Q. Todd Dickenson (Patent Office Director). Culled from a Slashdot link. With this, I will put a wrap on the week, and see y'all in the new page, tomorrow. I'll close with on the following exchange with Steve Swickard.

From: Steve Swickard
To: "Brian Bilbrey" 
Subject: Re: New E-mail setup exercise
Date: Sun, 28 May 2000 19:25:25 -0600

Hi Brian,

    Thank you for your speedy reply back to my e-mail. Reading your Journal
entry for Sunday you talked about the added bulk from HTML e-mail. I
apologize for any inconvenience this might have caused. I have tried several
different e-mail programs including Eudora but keep coming back to
Outlook/Outlook Express. I have hopefully sent this particular e-mail as
just plain text. I agree that there doesn't seem to be any benefits to the
added information that Microsoft's e-mail programs add. The only e-mail
program I have used under Linux so far is Netscape's which was easy to
setup. I am still using Windows 98  as my primary computer to get work done
though. I am familiar with "Pine" only because I have had occasion to telnet
into my ISP account to use Pine to read mail from work before. As I become
more proficient with Linux I may switch but that won't be anytime soon.

    I have downloaded the HOWTO on PPP and am reading now. Earlier today I
made a trip to my local Barnes and Noble book store and plunked down the
cash for "Running Linux" 3rd edition from O'Reilly & Associates and
hopefully I will be able to connect at a faster speed to the Internet. I
wish I didn't have to use a dialup account here myself. My local Phone
company offers DSL but not in my area just yet but they promise "Real soon
now". Coincidentally the other week I received an e-mail from excite@home
indicating that cable modem service was now available in my area. After
sending a positive response back to @home indicating that I was very
interested in the service I received a follow up e-mail indicating that they
were still in the process of "upgrading cabling" in my area and to check
back at a later date. I would prefer DSL as I would be able to stay with my
current ISP.

    I will continue to work this problem with my Linux machine and my modem.
I see no reason to drag you into this by having you try to duplicate the
problem but I appreciate the offer. I will try and figure this out. Please
have a very nice weekend, remember our Vets also this Memorial day weekend.
I really enjoy reading your daily journal rants :) and all. I'll let you
know how this works out.

Later

Steve Swickard

From: Brian Bilbrey 
To: Steve Swickard 
Subject: Re: New E-mail setup exercise

On Sun, May 28, 2000 at 07:25:25PM -0600, Steve Swickard wrote:
> Hi Brian,
> 
>     Thank you for your speedy reply back to my e-mail. Reading your Journal
> entry for Sunday you talked about the added bulk from HTML e-mail. I

Actually, the HTML email isn't the real problem, it's the one-huge-line per
paragraph thing that the default O/OE settings inflict on the system. The way
you sent this message is perfect, allows me to break into the text and comment,
also to delete big chunks easily, just responding to those parts that I desire.

Running Linux is the preferred book. Good choice. BTW, I don't know how you are
running PPP, but if you're in KDE, you might try Kppp, in the K --> Internet
sub-menu.

> back at a later date. I would prefer DSL as I would be able to stay with my
> current ISP.

Also, my general understanding is that DSL is far more Linux friendly,
especially when it's time for a static IP, and some serving. The cable people
aren't too hot on servers running on their sub-nets, from what I hear.

>     I will continue to work this problem with my Linux machine and my modem.
> I see no reason to drag you into this by having you try to duplicate the

NP. If I do play with it in the near (1 month or so) future (and I am likely
to, for book purposes, then I will let you know what I find. One thing of
interest - the OpenLinux eDesktop 2.4 installer includes setting up PPP at
install, first out of the gate with that feature. I think that OLeD is in the
$20- range at Fry's. More on this at a later date.

regards, brian