Post by thread:[EE] Technology Adoption Lag (now: linux flames!)

On Sep 3, 2005, at 11:08 PM, digitaladdictions wrote: > I really do think modern Linux distro's are easier to use than windows > and involve less tinkering. I realize people are scared to type but > with a single command you can download and install a program, without > worrying about finding it or any of its dependencies on the web the > package manager takes care of all of it for you. Heh. I just turned on my debian linux system, after about a year of not using it. I wanted to install gputils and such, figuring that would go somewhat more smoothly than it did on my mac... So, after six hours or so of recovering from a forgotten root password (wasn't it nice of it to configure itself so that booting in singleuser mode wasn't sufficient to fix such things. Anyone know how to turn that "feature" off?), I fired of deselect, eventually figured out how to get it pointed at a site that knew about gputils, and had it ready to update and install that, along with some assorted systems updates it thought I should install. Hmm. 600+ Megabytes of assorted systems updates. Including who knows how many megabytes of KDE "games" that were "required" by a mysterious chain of dependancies, plus "edutainment" packages with useful stuff like a russian language tutor. I *think* I weeded most of that out, and got down to a more reasonable 400+ Mbytes of download. I let that go overnight, fiddled with the instal and configure errors today. And now, only 24 hours after I decided to download gputils, it looks like it's working! "Package managers make things easy" - HAH! Sigh. BillW

I've got an old Windows 95 cd you can have... ;-] Dave {Quote hidden}> -----Original Message----- > From: spam_OUTpiclist-bouncesTakeThisOuTmit.edu [.....piclist-bouncesKILLspam@spam@mit.edu]On Behalf > Of William Chops Westfield > Sent: September 4, 2005 1:08 AM > To: Microcontroller discussion list - Public. > Subject: Re: [EE] Technology Adoption Lag (now: linux flames!) > > > On Sep 3, 2005, at 11:08 PM, digitaladdictions wrote: > > > I really do think modern Linux distro's are easier to use than windows > > and involve less tinkering. I realize people are scared to type but > > with a single command you can download and install a program, without > > worrying about finding it or any of its dependencies on the web the > > package manager takes care of all of it for you. > > Heh. I just turned on my debian linux system, after about a year of > not using it. I wanted to install gputils and such, figuring that > would go somewhat more smoothly than it did on my mac... > > So, after six hours or so of recovering from a forgotten root password > (wasn't it nice of it to configure itself so that booting in singleuser > mode wasn't sufficient to fix such things. Anyone know how to turn > that "feature" off?), I fired of deselect, eventually figured out how > to get it pointed at a site that knew about gputils, and had it ready > to update and install that, along with some assorted systems updates > it thought I should install. > > Hmm. 600+ Megabytes of assorted systems updates. Including who knows > how many megabytes of KDE "games" that were "required" by a mysterious > chain of dependancies, plus "edutainment" packages with useful stuff > like > a russian language tutor. I *think* I weeded most of that out, and > got down to a more reasonable 400+ Mbytes of download. I let that > go overnight, fiddled with the instal and configure errors today. And > now, only 24 hours after I decided to download gputils, it looks like > it's working! "Package managers make things easy" - HAH! > > Sigh. > BillW > > --

On Sun, 4 Sep 2005, William Chops Westfield wrote: {Quote hidden}> On Sep 3, 2005, at 11:08 PM, digitaladdictions wrote: > >> I really do think modern Linux distro's are easier to use than windows >> and involve less tinkering. I realize people are scared to type but >> with a single command you can download and install a program, without >> worrying about finding it or any of its dependencies on the web the >> package manager takes care of all of it for you. > > Heh. I just turned on my debian linux system, after about a year of > not using it. I wanted to install gputils and such, figuring that > would go somewhat more smoothly than it did on my mac... > > So, after six hours or so of recovering from a forgotten root password > (wasn't it nice of it to configure itself so that booting in singleuser > mode wasn't sufficient to fix such things. Anyone know how to turn > that "feature" off?), I fired of deselect, eventually figured out how Put the shell name as a kernel parameter. e.g. ... init=/bin/bash this will drop you into bash as root. man 7 bootparam Just dont't lose the root password of an OpenBSD system. > Hmm. 600+ Megabytes of assorted systems updates. Including who knows > how many megabytes of KDE "games" that were "required" by a mysterious > chain of dependancies, plus "edutainment" packages with useful stuff like You can break out of the elephantine dependency lists by installing packages manually. > it's working! "Package managers make things easy" - HAH! For users who use default options and update when told. (you probably accumulated half a year's worth of updates) Peter

On 9/4/05, William Chops Westfield <westfwKILLspammac.com> wrote: > > On Sep 4, 2005, at 10:01 AM, Peter wrote: > > >> (wasn't it nice of it to configure itself so that booting in > >> singleuser > >> mode wasn't sufficient to fix such things. Anyone know how to turn > >> that "feature" off?), I fired of deselect, eventually figured out how > > > > Put the shell name as a kernel parameter. e.g. ... init=/bin/bash > > > Did that. /etc claimed to be a read-only filesystem, so I couldn't > fix anything :-( Something like: mount /etc -o remount,rw should allow /etc (or maybe you need to use / ) to be remounted as read/write. man 8 mount for more details. Alex

Broadband is important to run Windows and Linux now! It seems that my Ubuntu box needs more update than Windows. Perhaps I installed too many non-essentail packages. However I prefer to install more than less. Another thing is that for new users, I think it is better to use latest Linux distribution. My linux experimentation restarted this year with Ubuntu 5.04. It is quite a nice distribution. I suggest you install Debian Sarge or Ubuntu. Perhaps your Debian is really old. For experienced Linux user or server user, maybe it is okay or better to use older system. I installed Fedora Core 3 installed on my notebook and I was having the same situation as you (600M of updates). I then switched to Fedora Core 4 and things is much better. Still I have not boot into FC4 enough times to make a judgement. I do not like RPMs in general. However I find Debian package to be more and more like RPMs. I no longer know how to build my kernel on Ubuntu becauee of so many customized patches and special build instructions. Last time I was trying CDC demo on PICDEM FS USB and I have to update to a new kernel (from 2.6.10 to 2.6.12) and I chose to use a test kernel from Ubuntu Breezy, I found out I need so many dependency packages in order to update. That is really making life difficult. I started with Slackware 3.6 (1998) and it seems that people had better control of the system on Slackware. It is said that Gentoo is good now. However I am not so good at Linux to use it. Still no pain no gain. It is always frustrating initially. After the painful process (okay I do not have painful process with Ubuntu initially but I do have painful initial process with Redhat 9 some years ago and stopped my Linux experimentation), things become better. For me two things make Linux new user's life much more difficult than it should be. 1) lack of hardware support: it is much better now than some years ago. Be careful to choose the components which support Linux. MPLAB ICD2 is a pain when PIC development comes to mind. It is simply not working under Linux even though there are efforts like LPLAB/PIClab. 2) lack of standard package: RPMs/DEBs from different vendors are not really compatible. RPMS/DEBs from different versions are not really compatible even from the same vendors. This is the biggest problem. Some of the dependencies are really strange to say the least. Dual boot (Linux and Windows) is always better for news users. There are thing easier in Linux (eg: connecting to Unix servers running X). There are things easier in Windows. To have more choice is always good. Linux is now so much better than 3 years ago. Windows XP SP2 is now so much better than Windows 98/Me. Regards, Xiaofan {Original Message removed}

On 9/4/05, Chen Xiao Fan <.....xiaofanKILLspam.....sg.pepperl-fuchs.com> wrote: > Broadband is important to run Windows and Linux now! > It seems that my Ubuntu box needs more update than > Windows. Perhaps I installed too many non-essentail > packages. However I prefer to install more than less. Remember, Windows is only an operating system. Ubuntu is updating both the OS and most of your applications. > Another thing is that for new users, I think it is > better to use latest Linux distribution. My linux > experimentation restarted this year with Ubuntu 5.04. > It is quite a nice distribution. I suggest you install > Debian Sarge or Ubuntu. Perhaps your Debian is really > old. For experienced Linux user or server user, maybe > it is okay or better to use older system. For almost everyone, the new stuff is better. > I installed Fedora Core 3 installed on my notebook and I > was having the same situation as you (600M of updates). > I then switched to Fedora Core 4 and things is much better. > Still I have not boot into FC4 enough times to make a > judgement. Fedora is kind of a special case because it is Red Hat's testing ground for new stuff. I just set a cron job to update it when I sleep. > I do not like RPMs in general. However I > find Debian package to be more and more like RPMs. .debs are more or less equivalent to rpms. ( By the way, Xiaofan, I got "Four bytes at once" mode working with the Pickit 2. It programs a 3700 word program into a 16F688 in less than 5 seconds... Just have to get the EEPROM working and I'll make a release.) Regards, Mark markrages@gmail -- You think that it is a secret, but it never has been one. - fortune cookie

Oh yes that is true. I removed Open Office because of the sheer size of the updates. The problem is that I am experimenting with Linux so I tend to install more things than I should. However it seems to me that it is better to install more because of the dependency problem. Linux PIC development on Debian seems to be more difficult than Redhat based system since most of the Linux PIC guys are running Redhat/Fedora system. Anyway after getting gpsim/gputils/sdcc/PICkit1/Wisp628 working on my Ubuntu/FC4, now I do have a working environment on Linux. Take note that my Linux PIC experiment started only this May and I am not a very experienced Linux user. I also managed to get C18/C30/MPASM/MPASM30 working under Linux with Wine. BTW, it seems to me I need to write something up on this issue because quite some people still ask me how to do it (even those running MacOS X) even though I have stopped testing Wine. I am looking forward to test your PICkit 2 application so that I have one more tools working on Linux. ICD2 is the last one I really want to get work under Linux (but it is difficult since Microchip has not release the on-chip debug specification and the ICD2 communication protocol/API). I have PICDEM FS USB and it already works under Linux thanks to Rick Luddy's fsusb application. Libusb is great stuff! Hopefully there are something like "lib-serial" and "lib-parallel" (cross platform serial and parallel library). Regards, Xiaofan {Original Message removed}

On Sun, 4 Sep 2005, William Chops Westfield wrote: > On Sep 4, 2005, at 10:01 AM, Peter wrote: > >>> (wasn't it nice of it to configure itself so that booting in singleuser >>> mode wasn't sufficient to fix such things. Anyone know how to turn >>> that "feature" off?), I fired of deselect, eventually figured out how >> >> Put the shell name as a kernel parameter. e.g. ... init=/bin/bash >> > Did that. /etc claimed to be a read-only filesystem, so I couldn't > fix anything :-( As it would be ;-) It boots into single user with root mounted ro so the filesystem can be checked before mounting it rw. This allows the legendary crash-proofness of the linux filesystems to work. Data loss by unclean shutdown is almost unheard of. You have to remount the fs containing /etc read-write and edit it, and don't forget to shut down cleanly. You will also need to edit things by hand (using sed and grep for example). Basically the commands are: <boot> ... init=/bin/bash # /bin/cat /etc/fstab ... # /sbin/fsck /dev/xxx <- put the root device fs here, or the one containing /etc, taken from the fstab output above # /bin/mount -o remount,rw /dev/xxx / # /usr/bin/passwd root # umount -a # shutdown -r -t1 now Note: watch your typing!!! On some systems /etc is not in the root volume. In that case mount /dev/xxx that says its mount point is /etc, on /etc (not on /) and do not make root rw. This is likely not your situation however (and it may lead to other problems as you would need a writable /tmp to run passwd probably). Should passwd not work, edit /etc/shadow using sed and substitute the crypted password of another user for root's. good luck, Peter

On Sep 5, 2005, at 2:27 PM, Peter wrote: >>> Put the shell name as a kernel parameter. e.g. ... init=/bin/bash >> Did that. /etc claimed to be a read-only filesystem, so I couldn't >> fix anything :-( > > As it would be ;-) It boots into single user with root mounted ro so > the filesystem can be checked before mounting it rw. Ah, that makes sense. Having bypassed the normal init, I didn't get the normal fsck on boot behavior. While not terribly useful (see below), at least that explains what seemed mysterious behavior... > don't forget to shut down cleanly. That's a bit difficult when you don't have the root password :-) > > You have to remount the fs containing /etc read-write and edit it In the end, I downloaded and booted tomsrtbt, a "recovery" linux that boots from floppy/cd to ramdisk, manually mounted and fsck'ed the real filesystem, and manually edited the shadow file with the provided vi clone (very painful for an emacs user!) But how do I undo debian's attempt at security? This system is in a position where I'm perfectly willing to live with the "physical access is root access" "problem" (and doubly so since the added security provided seems so minimal.) In fact, the system's "real" security will probably increase if I normally keep the root password so complex that I can't possibly remember it, and boot singleuser to change it to something simpler only when necessary... BillW

Hi Bill, On Mon, Sep 05, 2005 at 03:14:57PM -0700, William Chops Westfield wrote: > > In the end, I downloaded and booted tomsrtbt, a "recovery" linux that > boots from floppy/cd to ramdisk, manually mounted and fsck'ed the real > filesystem, and manually edited the shadow file with the provided vi > clone (very painful for an emacs user!) Yep, tomsrtbt disk is a very useful tool! I use emacs for all editing needs, except in one situation: for quick sysadmin tasks I use vi. For this you only have to learn a few commands and as you've seen during system recovery, vi is likely to be to most sophisticated editor available. > But how do I undo debian's attempt at security? This system is in a > position where I'm perfectly willing to live with the "physical access > is root access" "problem" (and doubly so since the added security > provided seems so minimal.) In fact, the system's "real" security will > probably increase if I normally keep the root password so complex that > I can't possibly remember it, and boot singleuser to change it to > something simpler only when necessary... I may be misunderstanding your problem, but here goes: you want to access the root account remotely, right? I'm assuming this based on the "physical access is root access" statement. The way around Debians security is to SSH or, god forbid, telnet to the machine, as a regular user, and use the "su" command to switch to root; of course, you need the root password, so don't make this password too complex! ;) Also, check out the "sudo" command, it preforms a similar function. Take care. Matthew -- Time between slipping on a peel and smacking the pavement: 1 bananosecond

On Sep 5, 2005, at 6:56 PM, Matthew Miller wrote: > I may be misunderstanding your problem, but here goes: you want to > access > the root account remotely, right? I'm assuming this based on the > "physical > access is root access" statement. The way around Debians security is > to SSH No, no. For normal use I remotely access the machine using ssh and X (from the mac.) That works fine, and I have it set up so that I don't normally need to use any passwords. Occasionally I need root access to install software or something, in which case I normally use "su" on the ssh connection. That works fine as long as I remember the root password. But I don't WANT to have to remember the root password. I don't want to use root, or need to use root, that often on this machine. It's just a linux and dos(vis dosemu) "peripheral" that does some things the mac can't (used to be Eagle, but that runs native on Macs now!) So if I've forgotten the root password, I want to go to the linux system, plug in a keyboard and monitor, reboot in singleuser mode, set the root password to "foo" or whatever, do what I have to do, change it back to a random string of 12 digits, and continue onward till the next time I need root. Debian has the capability of making this harder than it ought to be, presumably to solve the "computer in a public place" problem. And it seems to be turned on in this mode by default. I want it to work like all the other unix systems I've used and give me a root prompt on the console as soon as the single user boot is done. BillW

On Sep 5, 2005, at 6:56 PM, Matthew Miller wrote: > For this you only have to learn a few [vi] commands, and as you've > seen, during system recovery vi is likely to be to most editor > available. > toms USED to include one of the tiny emacs clones, but it apparently it was removed to make room for other things. I've been fiddling with it for several years now, originally as just a sort of tiny linux for possible embedded use. I think this is the first time I've used it for its intended application :-) Using random editors has become a lot easier due to the standardization of PC keyboards. All I had to remember of vi was "save" and "quit" commands; for the rest I just used arrow and function keys :-) BillW

On Sep 5, 2005, at 8:23 PM, William Chops Westfield wrote: > Debian has the capability of making this harder than it ought to be, > presumably to solve the "computer in a public place" problem. And it > seems to be turned on in this mode by default. I want it to work like > all the other unix systems I've used and give me a root prompt on the > console as soon as the single user boot is done. > Ah. It's controlled by /etc/inittab, and the following change seemed to do what I had in mind: # What to do in single-user mode. # (nothing!) # ~~:S:wait:/sbin/sulogin ~~:S:wait:/bin/bash

William Chops Westfield wrote: > Debian has the capability of making this harder than it ought to be, > presumably to solve the "computer in a public place" problem. And it > seems to be turned on in this mode by default. I want it to work like > all the other unix systems I've used and give me a root prompt on the > console as soon as the single user boot is done. If you're happy with physical access to the machine allowing root priveledges, then how about a yellow sticky with the root passwords on the monitor? If you don't want casual observers to see it, stick it to the bottom of the keyboard or something. ***************************************************************** Embed Inc, embedded system specialists in Littleton Massachusetts (978) 742-9014, http://www.embedinc.com

Hi Bill, On Mon, Sep 05, 2005 at 08:23:06PM -0700, William Chops Westfield wrote: > > No, no. For normal use I remotely access the machine using ssh and X > (from the mac.) That works fine, and I have it set up so that I don't > normally need to use any passwords. Occasionally I need root access to > install software or something, in which case I normally use "su" on the > ssh connection. That works fine as long as I remember the root > password. O.K., gotcha. I would suggest using sudo then; it can be configured to allow you to run certain commands as root. I've even used sudo before to give me a root shell (which may not be the most secure thing to do.) You may also want to be lazy like me and write down your root/admin passwords and store them in a safe place. ;^) Take care. Matthew -- "Few people can be happy unless they hate some other person, nation, or creed." -- Bertrand Russell

On Sep 6, 2005, at 4:36 AM, Olin Lathrop wrote: > If you're happy with physical access to the machine allowing root > priveledges, then how about a yellow sticky with the root passwords on > the > monitor? If you don't want casual observers to see it, stick it to the > bottom of the keyboard or something. > I actually thought of doing that. The system is headless, though (no monitor or keyboard), and I didn't have a lot of faith that a post-it note would stay attached. And people who shouldn't have root access DO walk past now and then, at birthday parties and similar. A postit inside the case might be a fine idea... But I think I've solved the unix issue, and have it behaving the way I want now. BillW

William Chops Westfield wrote: {Quote hidden}> > On Sep 5, 2005, at 6:56 PM, Matthew Miller wrote: > >> I may be misunderstanding your problem, but here goes: you want to access >> the root account remotely, right? I'm assuming this based on the >> "physical >> access is root access" statement. The way around Debians security is >> to SSH > > > No, no. For normal use I remotely access the machine using ssh and X > (from the mac.) That works fine, and I have it set up so that I don't > normally need to use any passwords. Occasionally I need root access to > install software or something, in which case I normally use "su" on the > ssh connection. That works fine as long as I remember the root password. > > But I don't WANT to have to remember the root password. I don't want to > use root, or need to use root, that often on this machine. It's just > a linux and dos(vis dosemu) "peripheral" that does some things the mac > can't (used to be Eagle, but that runs native on Macs now!) So if I've > forgotten the root password, I want to go to the linux system, plug in > a keyboard and monitor, reboot in singleuser mode, set the root password > to "foo" or whatever, do what I have to do, change it back to a random > string of 12 digits, and continue onward till the next time I need root. > > Debian has the capability of making this harder than it ought to be, > presumably to solve the "computer in a public place" problem. And it > seems to be turned on in this mode by default. I want it to work like > all the other unix systems I've used and give me a root prompt on the > console as soon as the single user boot is done. > > BillW sudo & visudo are 2 commands you want to check into. Here's a sample config: # User privilege specification root ALL=(ALL) ALL # Uncomment to allow people in group wheel to run all commands # %wheel ALL=(ALL) ALL # Same thing without a password %wheel ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: ALL # Samples # %users ALL=/sbin/mount /cdrom,/sbin/umount /cdrom # %users localhost=/sbin/shutdown -h now asterisk ALL = NOPASSWD: /sbin/shutdown # njc ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: /home/njc/stuff/usb/insteond/insteond Basically it says root can do anything it wants, those in the group wheel can do anything they want, user asterisk can do a shutdown and user njc can run the insteond command all with no password. You need to preface the commands with sudo /home/njc/.... and the command will execute as if you are root. The obvious danger is to open a user wide up but their normal commands (w/o sudo) execute as a normal user. So an rm -rf * (in /) won't kill your system but sudo rm -rf * (in /) will. -- Linux Home Automation Neil Cherry EraseMEncherryspam_OUTTakeThisOuTcomcast.net http://home.comcast.net/~ncherry/ (Text only) http://hcs.sourceforge.net/ (HCS II) http://linuxha.blogspot.com/ My HA Blog

Speaking of sudo, what are the things that root can do but sudoers can not do? I raise this questions because I am using Ubuntu 5.04 as my main Linux system and it by default does not enable the root user. The first user added during installation got the sudo right and is supposed to carried out the necessary admin tasks using sudo. I am not so familiar with this so I enable the root early in my experiment of Ubuntu. It seems to me that it is not really necessary other than mounting the NTFS partition. Use sudo I can not use the tap key for command line completion for files under NTFS. However use su to be the root and I have problems to run some GUI programs. Regards, Xiaofan -----Original Message----- From: Neil Cherry Sent: Wednesday, September 07, 2005 12:29 AM To: Microcontroller discussion list - Public. Subject: Re: [EE] Technology Adoption Lag (now: linux flames!) sudo & visudo are 2 commands you want to check into. Here's a sample config: ...

On Mon, Sep 05, 2005 at 03:14:57PM -0700, William Chops Westfield wrote: > >don't forget to shut down cleanly. > > That's a bit difficult when you don't have the root password :-) Little late to the party here, but if you're on the console of the machine, most distros make this rediculously easy: Hit the old CTRL-ALT-DELETE combination. It's definited in /etc/inittab: # What to do when CTRL-ALT-DEL is pressed. ca:12345:ctrlaltdel:/sbin/shutdown -t1 -a -r now Of course, the -r causes a reboot, but you can turn the power off before it starts back up. If you use it regularly to shutdown, you can remove the -r. -- Nate Duehr <natespam_OUTnatetech.com>