Baslinux mailing list

[<keesan2 AT cyberspace.org>]

On Sun, 4 May 2003 qwms-avib AT dea.spamcon.org wrote:

> keesan2 AT cyberspace.org wrote:
> > 
> > It is not there.  Maybe I did not install bin.tgz?  
> > How would I check?
> 
> ----------------------
> pkgtool -> View -> bin
> ----------------------
> zless is on the 8th line.

bin is not there

I checked the list of packages needed to install to hard drive
(type install and then 1 for read in the RAMdisk version)
and bin.tgz and fileutils.tgz are in there but not binutils.tgz.

If I had installed binutils.tgz I would not need to use zless to find
ar in MANIFEST.tgz because ar is also in binutils.tgz.

This explains why I do not have zless.  Do you want to include binutils in
the files needed to install to hard drive?   Apart from ar I have not run
into anything I need in that package.  (Maybe ar would work if I installed
the whole package as it has a dependency). 

> > Can I make a link between /dev/photopc and /dev/ttyS0 instead?
> 
> All that does is redirect /dev/photopc to COM1.
> Is that what photopc needs?

The camera cable plugs into Com1.

We have been using the DOS version.  You can fit the software onto a DOS
boot disk and unload using friends' (or libraries') computers - there is
even room on the floppy disk for the photos.

I made a link:

In /dev/ I typed

ln -s /dev/ttyS0 /dev/photopc

I then typed photopc:  Error 10003 eph_waitsig got -2 (four times)
eph_open failed.   This might work better with the cable and camera
attached but anyway it is no longer complaining about no /dev/photopc.

Do I need to leave a mouse plugged into Com1 in order to start X?
My only two X programs (Opera and flwriter) don't need a mouse.
(The mouse has been handy to put under the monitor to tip it forward).

I think I read that the Slackware .tgz format is just an ordinary archive,
and Debian packages this in one more layer with control files, which is
why it worked to open the .deb package with ar and then just use one of
the three resulting files (data.tar.gz) the same way as a Slackware
package.

Since I did not rename data.tar.gz to photopc.gz before running installpkg
I now have in /var/log/packages, along with seejpeg and screen39, the
file data.tar.gz which contains info about the location of files from
photopc.  I renamed this file to photopc and pkgtool lists it that way
now.

Is there some equally easy way to unpackage rpm files without needing to
download mc which expands to 6M, or the 1M rpm package for slackware?
I would like to be able to get programs off the SuSE 6.2 and Caldera 2.4
CDs (same kernel and library).  For instance binutils.

Re top:

> No, the SHARE sizes are in a column (like RSS).
> 
> > There is no SHARE column.  
> 
> BL2 comes with a mini-top (busybox) -- it lacks the SHARE 
> column.  BL1 (HD version) has the full top.

So how do we determine how much RAM individual programs are using in BL2?
So far the busybox mount and top are inferior - are there any other
busybox programs we ought to replace and what package are they in?

> > So far 'swap' has remained 0.  
> 
> Swap total?  Or swap used?
> If swap total is 0, then you don't have swap running.

Swap used.  I have 32M RAM and 32M swap.  The books all insist that you
need lots of swap space.  I have not yet used any of mine.

I just loaded xvga16 and ratpoison and xterm and Opera 6.03 and 
switched to vc2  and logged in and typed free:

Total 30920  (why not 32M?)
Used 21748
Free 9172
Shared 14840
Buffers 344

Swap 0 used

Do I subtract shared from used to get actual memory usage (7M)?  I notice
that the longer I run the computer the higher the Used amount goes, even
without any programs running.  What do all these amounts mean? 


Doug Kaufmann just posted a fourth pdftotext file for me.  He said he
compiled the last one without mkstemp so it is not secure and this one has
mkstemp and is secure.  I should download and try it.  I asked if after
that it is okay for Steven to put Doug's pdftotext and pdfimages and
pdftops at the basiclinux download site.

Why does anyone care if pdftotext is secure?  Is a secure version larger
or slower?  What does it even mean for a program which extracts text from
a file to be secure?  Are there encrypted pdf files that we need to be
able to extract from?

The reason he compiled without mkstemp is that I reported that I was
getting an error about not having 'mktemp or something of the sort' and he
assumed it was mkstemp.  It was mktemp - which has something to do with
his having gzexed the file and you cannot use a file which is gzexed on
another machine.  I should have taken better notes ;)  This is getting to
be a comedy of errors.  


Sindi Keesan