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I ended another cycle this weekend and, though I knew it was all for the best, it was a painful thing to do. I put off the tasks that required shutting down the machine for a few extra days, just because ...

In the end, it was a smart move to bring down both machines at home. As you know, I've got two boxes in my laundry room office. The test machine (Cerebrum) was a 1 Ghz AMD T-Bird, 128 Mb RAM and 20 Gig Western Digital drive. It didn't have much else and was certainly not a real hard cruncher. Strictly by chronology, the production machine (Cerebellum) was an 800 Mhz Intel with 512 Mb RAM and two 40 Gb hard drives. A little slower processor but much more RAM and storage. On Friday night, I decided to rebuild both. Really, I just wanted to add the extra 200 Mhz to the production box. Of course, I couldn't do that by swapping processors alone - it would take a full swap out. So, I spent the better part of two hours late Friday evening backing up critical data from Cerebellum and working through a plan for the rebuilds.

Bright and early Saturday morning (only because my dog Percy woke me up), I started the rebuild. By 10:00 am, I'd swapped the hard drives, memory, sound and video cards from the test machine to the 1 Ghz box. I'd also moved the drive, memory and additional NIC from the production machine to the test computer. I ended up with an 800 Mhz Intel with 128 Mb RAM and 20 Gb storage, and a 1 Ghz AMD with 512 Mb RAM and 80 Gb storage. Two pretty nice boxes for their purposes.

As part of the backup process, I thought I'd try something new in backing up the full /etc directory and installing it on the new machine. I knew I'd be doing full Linux installs on both boxes, so it wasn't a problem. The production box, Cerebellum, took less than 35 minutes to install and configure, including all my personal configurations and the /etc directory. An hour after I started, everything hung. I flopped out to a console and found the message:

oops() invoked from gdm.c(164)

That was followed by weird messages about runlevels and spawning too fast. The worst was an apparent inability to execute /etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit. It looked like that was the system killer. I tried all the usual repair tools, including the Red Hat rescue programs, to no avail. Given that the Red Hat installs have gotten so easy, I quickly reached the point at which I'd save much more time by reinstalling. Luckily, I had the Zaurus to keep up with my mail.

Another seemingly flawless install and, almost exactly an hour later, another equally mysterious machine killing crash. This time, I tried logging in via ssh from the Zaurus, but still had no luck in correcting the problem. It was only 1:00 pm, but I was starting to get just a touch irritated.

I reinstalled one more time, but broke down the steps I'd followed in the previous installs. First, after an extensive but seemingly fruitless search of the newsgroups, I installed the Athlon kernel rpm as soon as the system was running again. Then, I restored my /home directory from the backups. An hour later, no crash. I reinstalled the apps I'd backed up, one at a time. An hour later, no crash. Then I got curious and tried to repeat all the things I'd done just prior to the other crashes, short of "restoring" the backed up /etc directory. I couldn't bring the system to its knees. That's really all I needed to know. The backed up /etc was never installed on the new Cerebellum, and it won't be. I'm not sure what would cause such strange problems, but I think I've found the solution. Then again, it could have been the Athlon kernel. In either case, the next uptime cycle in my life has started.

I also managed to spend a little time with Frankly this weekend. I'd been horribly negligent in the past few weeks after a two-month span of entries every day. I do have to wonder what my log stats are telling me, though. Traffic to the site was actually up when I wasn't writing. I hope that's not a theme.

The biggest blog event of the weekend for me was the Lindows install blogcast. Given my previous and very public positions on Lindows, I do want to exert an extra effort to be objective. In that vein, I found some interesting elements of Lindows that I've shared in the blog. If you don't make it out to the site, don't worry. The official Lindows review begins here on Wednesday. We'll cover the details big and small over the course of a week or so.

That's it for today. Have a great Monday and remember: work weeks are only 5 day uptime cycles.

                 
Tony Steidler-Dennison       

GnomeTWEAK

Krells

I drew quite a bit of email from posting a picture of my desktop in one of the Penguin Shell articles last week. Much of it asked about the system monitor at the right side of the desktop. I'll clear up one very common question first - the program is not named Cerebellum. That's the host name of the machine. I've got all my networked machines named for brain parts - Cerebellum, Cerebrum, Cortex, Callosum. (It's actually even goofier than that. Notice the starting letter of each name? Since these machines are all on Class C networks ... ) Anyway, the name of the program is Gkrellm, and it's a very nice, very configurable graphical system monitor.

While, under normal circumstances, this would qualify as a GnomeFILE, I thought I'd pass along the download details and some configuration tips in today's GnomeTWEAK. It's tweaking your desktop, right?

The link for the main app is

http://web.wt.net/~billw/gkrellm/gkrellm.html. You'll find the download links at this page, both for source files and rpm binaries. GKrellm's author, Bill Wilson, has been kind enough to include a link for Gkrellm plugins on his page, as well. By itself, Gkrellm is a perfectly capable system monitor, watching over many of the critical functions of your system. Adding plugins for specific tasks takes it to another level. Add in the ability to skin it to suit your tastes, and you've got one killer little piece of very functional eye candy.

The built in monitors in Gkrellm include:

• Sensors
• Clocks
• CPU
• Proc
• Disk
• Internet
• Net
• Memory
• File System
• Mail
• APM
• Uptime

As I've said, that might be enough for any user. But, I've added a few plugins that take me over the top:

• GkrellAclock (analog clock)
• Moon Clock
• GkrellCam (webcam watcher)
• Sound Scope (sound visualizer)
• Volume

These are all neat little tools. The moon clock displays a graphical representation of the current stage of the moon, with a mouseover showing age, illumination, visibility, and other items. The GkrellCam plugin is currently loaded with a panoramic view of downtown Tokyo, updated every 60 seconds. Even the mailwatch builtin serves a great function. A little penguin does summersaults across the Gkrellm face when new mail has arrived. I've also configured the button to open pine when clicked (konsole -d pine &).

If you're using Red Hat, the full Gkrellm package is available as rpm files from FreshRPMS. These packages include a skins package as well as all the media and utility plugins.

Even though I'm more of a console user, it doesn't hurt at all to tweak the desktop with cool little tools like Gkrellm. If they happen to look good while serving a great purpose, it makes the tweak all the better.

Recommend It!
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GnomeCORE

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There's a lot happening when you bring up your Linux system. You really don't even get to see it all in the boot up screen. If you want to see everything that's happened as your system started, you can take a look at /var/log/messages. It's a pretty detailed view of the process, and shows messages that may have sped by more quickly than you could read them.

Part of the boot routine in Linux systems includes loading scripts that do many useful things. These scripts are normally located in /etc/rc.d. In Red Hat and Red Hat-like distros, there are more startup scripts located in /etc/rc.d/init.d. Of all the startup scripts, the granddaddy is rc.sysinit. As the name would indicate, it kicks off many of the operating system elements that put your system in a working state.

Some of the actions performed by rc.sysinit include:

• Setting the PATH
• Setting the hostname
• Checking filesystes
• Turning on swapping
• Starting quotas
• Remounting the root filesystem
• Setting the system clock
• Loading modules
• Setting up plug and play

Some would argue that scripts are the heart and soul of a Linux system. I'd be hard pressed to argue. rc.sysinit is the epitome of the power of scripts in booting your Linux system.

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GnomeFILE

Lutel's Firewall 0.60

http://energoprojekt.pl/~lutel/firewall/

"Lutel's Firewall Script is a Linux iptables shell script written in bash for use as a firewall and NAT/masquerade router for home networks or multiple subnet applications. It shares access to an Internet connection from multiple workstations. Its main features are support for interface aliases, per subnet traffic definitions, UID and GID of packet owner restrictions, length of packet restrictions, SYN / flood protection, disabling routing between subnets, masquerading setups per subnet, transparent proxy support, port redirection, anti-spoof protection, TOS optimization, predefined netfilter marking for 3rd party traffic shapers (such as tc), DHCP support, and FTP active and passive mode support."

Recommend It!
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GnomeVOICE

Smaller Distros
Scribbled by Chuck Graf

"Running older hardware was one reason I first got interested in Linux. Vector Linux has worked very well for me. Presently I have the 1.8 version running on a P100 laptop with 40megs of memory, 6 gig hdd, dual booting Windows 95. The installation from a DOS partition to an Linux partition was especially attractive, as this machine does not have a cdrom. It is a bit slow, but very usable. XFCE and IceWM are available as window managers. The only difficulty is that it is somewhat limited in packages available, and does not use RPM's.

"Recently I set up a P200 desktop, with 96meg of ram and a 6 gig hdd. I tried Peanut Linux, and the ELX Lite, but had too many video configuration problems. Vector had just come out with their Small Office/Home Office version, with many more packages, and with KDE added to the list of window managers. This installed beautifully, and runs quite fast using IceWM or XFCE. KDE is a bit slower, but you don't have to use it. You can even run the KDE applications in IceWM, as the KDE libraries are all there. Try Kstars for a little astronomy."

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GnomeCLICK

Ottawa Canada Linux Users Group

http://www.oclug.on.ca/

With so much of the readership of Penguin Shell outside the US, it's appropriate to note the Linux efforts going on around the world. I know from firsthand experience that a good chunk of our readership resides north of the border. They were an active bunch at Gnomedex. Today's GnomeCLICK is a tip of the touk to the Ottawa Canada Linux Users Group. They've put together a very nice site with details on the LUG, including by laws, the community and monthly meeting notes. Also of interest is the OCLUG Handout, summarizing OCLUG and its place in the Linux community. This GnomeCLICK is an interesting insight into the useful and active administration of a strong Linux Users Group.

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