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Very few things, though, are precisely as they appear. LindowsOS has raised a few serious questions in my mind as a longtime open source user. Two issues in particular I find quite serious.

The first is the licensing. It's rather jarring to be required, during the install, to agree to a license in a Linux distribution. Jarring enough, in fact, that I actually stopped and read what I might have passed over in my Windows days. I was startled by some of the terms of the agreement:

Except as expressly set forth herein, You may not (and shall not allow any member of Your Household or any other Third Party to) (i) remove any product identification or other notices; (ii) copy LindowsOS (other than for back-up purposes, for Your personal use on Your multiple machines as set forth in this Section 1.1.a, or for archival purposes); (iii) provide, lease, lend, use for timesharing or service bureau purposes or otherwise use or allow others to use LindowsOS to or for the benefit of Third Parties, or (iv) modify LindowsOS or incorporate LindowsOS into or with other software, except as may be provided for in this agreement.

In other words, we shouldn't be fooled that Lindows is actually an open source product. By checking off on the licensing agreement, you've given away your right to modify the code or to copy and distribute it in any way. Given that the core of Lindows is based on open source software, I needed a further description of how this no-copy rule might apply throughout:

To the extent that any Third Party Agreements require that Lindows provide rights to use, copy or modify a Software Program that are broader than the rights granted in Section 1.1, then such rights shall take precedence over the rights and restrictions granted in this Agreement solely for such Software Programs.

So, the GPL is at least addressed in the licensing agreement, though a fundamental problem still exists. LindowsOS is based on Debian. Some modification of Deb's apt-get program is what makes Lindows' Click 'n' Run Warehouse possible. The question is simple, really. If the core OS code is Debian, isn't the OS then covered under the GPL? The "no copying, no modification" clause of the license would then be a clear violation of the GPL. In other words, is it possible to distinguish the GPL'ed code from the proprietary code? And, if not, what is then the governing license? Is this particular Debian distribution now proprietary or is Lindows really open source? In either case, the existence of a copy protection license in a Linux distribution is troubling, at best.

As if that wasn't enough, the license continues:

2. Proprietary Rights: All right, title and interest in LindowsOS, including source code, documentation,. appearance, structure and organization, are held by Lindows and/or its licensors and are protected by copyright and other laws. You may not copy or otherwise use LindowsOS, in whole or in part, except as expressly permitted in this Agreement. Title to LindowsOS, or to any copy, modification or merged portion of any of the Software Programs shall at all times remain with Lindows and/or its licensors, subject to the terms of the applicable Third Party Agreement(s) to the Software Programs under consideration.

Sound familiar? It certainly does to me. This is exactly the type of language found in Microsoft's OS licenses. In effect, you're granted a license to use the software only for so long as you fulfill the conditions of the grantor and titleholder, LindowsOS. Not only is the software not free as in "free beer," it's not free as in "freedom."

The second fundamental flaw with LindowsOS also violates a base principal of Linux. If you paid close attention to yesterday's piece on the install, you noticed that creating a user account and password was singular. In other words, the user by default has root access. There are no normal user accounts created during the install process. To the uninitiated, that doesn't sound so bad. However, the power of root access in Linux is both powerful and dangerous. That's by no means an elitist statement, rather a statement of fact and experience. In the hands of an inexperienced or thoughtless user, root access can destroy a machine, modify every file on the machine, and pry open security holes of which the user may not even be aware. Any compromised machine on the 'net potentially compromises all others as that machine can be leveraged to further exploit other machines. In the hands of an experienced cracker, a single machine can become the gateway to many, many others.

To really understand the issue, though, you have to juxtapose the philosophy of LindowsOS against this potentially dangerous approach to user accounts. Root access is essential in Linux but, as I've noted, is best used with caution and experience. The LindowsOS philosophy and marketing pitch is to bring new users into the Linux world. They're bringing new user to Linux and providing them, in the default install, with only root access to the machine. The users with the least experience in Linux have the most power under this install scheme. My own experience in the root account as a new user tells me that this is clearly a poor idea.

LindowsOS does provide a means by which the user can add normal user accounts. But again, those means are at cross purposes with the philosophy and marketing of LindowsOS. Adding a normal user account requires that the user select the "Advanced" button from the first window after the install reboot. To many new users, fully aware of their computing shortcomings, "Advanced" translates to scary. But for the sake of argument, let's assume that the new user is an adventurous type, selecting the button without hesitation. They must choose yet another button to add a user. Add the user and password and you're done, right? Not quite. If they find their way to the groups tab in the window, they'll see that they're still assigned, by default, to the root group, with all the powers of that group. It's yet another two steps to remove the user from the root group and add them to the users group.

Call me a skeptic, but given the number of XP and Win2K users running as Administrator, I think it's unlikely that a new LindowsOS user is going to either understand or follow the process necessary to create a truly safe user account. In other words, the target market of LindowsOS are those who are least capable of securing their new Linux system properly. Again, that's not a matter of intellect but rather a pure function of experience with the OS.

Despite these troubling issues, I've continued to dig into LindowsOS. On Monday, we'll talk about the desktop and what you'll find with LindowsOS installed on your machine. We'll also talk next week about the Click 'n' Run Warehouse, a nice tool for upgrading and installing new software.

Have a great weekend.

                 
Tony Steidler-Dennison       

GnomeTWEAK

Non-Continuous Cron

As you know, cron is the application in Linux that allows you to run programs regularly and without intervention. It's a great tool that allows you to push the routine administrative tasks off where they should be - in the lap of the machine itself - and frees your time up for more fun and functional computing.

If, however, you shut your machine down, cron has no ability to pick up where it left off. Jobs that should have been run in the downtime are simply skipped until the next cycle noted in /etc/crontab. anacron is another cron-like program that doesn't require the continuous operation of the machine to complete all its tasks.

Typically, anacron is used to execute programs in the /etc/cron.daily, /etc/cron.weekly and /etc/cron.monthly directories. When anacron is started, it checks whether a particular task has been completed within the assigned time. If not, the program is run and the anacron timestamp file is updated.

Here's an example. You copied the mailstat script from yesterday's Penguin Shell into the /etc/cron.daily directory. Then, in a blind act of desperation, you rebooted your dual-boot machine to Windows XP. While you were in XP, the time lapsed for the mailstat script to run. Had this been a job scripted directly into the /etc/crontab file, you've just missed a day of mail reporting. If it's in the /etc/cron.daily directory, anacron will execute the script when you reboot back into Linux. That's provided, of course, that the anacron daemon is one of your startup services. You'll maintain your mailstat mailings without interruption.

The /etc/anacrontab file is where you'll find the configuration for anacron. Each line in the anacrontab file contains a period in days, a delay time in minutes, a job identifier, and the command that will run. Here's a line from my anacrontab file:

1    65    cron.daily     run-parts /etc/cron.daily

In this example, the command run-parts will execute the files in /etc/cron.daily every 1 day, allowing for a 65 minute delay, and identifying the job as cron.daily. That last element will also be written to the anacron timestamp file located at /var/spool/anacron. The timestamp entry contains the date and job identifier. This lets anacron know when the job was last run.

anacron is a nice application to fill in the cron gaps when your machine is down. After all, surely you can't miss that daily mailstat report.

Recommend It!
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GnomeCORE

Interested in Satellite TV? Get 1 month free, plus all of the equipment you need for up to 4 TVs! Click here for details

While there are many other programming and scripting languages available, none has become quite as pervasive in the Linux world as Perl, the Practical Extraction and Report Language. It's found in all Linux distributions and across the spectrum of web, email, administrative, and graphical applications. It's often been called the duct tape of the Internet. Given the preponderance of Linux on the 'net as well, Perl is truly a core element of any Linux system.

At its most basic, Perl is an interpreted language. Unlike languages that require a separate compile phase, Perl can be scripted and run on the fly. In many ways, that essential element frees Perl from some of the common programming constraints. It's portable, running without OS dependencies in Linux, Unix, Mac, Windows, and several other operating environments.

Perl shines especially bright in its support for regular expressions. Its ability to pick and parse through text, matching strings or abstractions of strings is unsurpassed. That feature alone makes Perl the choice of many for applications such as web log analysis and other text-heavy administrative functions.

Perl was created in 1987 by Larry Wall. The grandson of preachers and a student of linguistics, Wall is as devout about his own spirituality as his code. His personal focus on language is reflected in Perl. His design approach with Perl began with the understanding that expressive languages are not minimalistic, as computer languages tend to be. Consequently, Perl has a much more human feel than nearly any other programming language. In fact, Wall has noted that in creating Perl, he was looking for a diagonal model, as opposed to an orthogonal model where all the features are at right angles to each other. Understanding that humans don't think in that manner, he designed a language that was much more open to personal style and to human rather than machine thought processes. This style alone has made Perl an incredibly flexible and powerful language.

And, of course, Perl is distributed under open source licensing. It's actually distributed under two separate licenses; the Gnu General Public License and an Artistic License created by Wall. The Artistic License allows for sale of programs using Perl at a profit. This dual licensing allows developers to choose the license that suits their needs without running afoul of the open source community.

If you're thinking about developing for the Web, there's almost no way to avoid learning Perl at some functional level. It's a core element of the 'net, of programming in general, and of Linux.

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GnomeFILE

Yet Another Advanced Log Analyzer 0.5.2

http://verplant.org/yaala/

"'yaala' parses logfiles and generates very detailed statistics in HTML format. It features two different output types with different amount of information: one for webmasters/sysadmins that would like to get some very interesting (but not necessarily useful) information about their audience, and one that is more likely to be presented on a website. It currently works with Apache's access-log format and the NCSA format (e.g. Apache's combined log) as well as Squid's access logfile format."

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GnomeVOICE

DSL and PPoE
Scribbled by Morris Hetzler

"I believe I can suggest a solution to the SSH problem reported by Matt Burton in the latest Penguin Shell (Mello Mist).

"I had the same problem when I started trying to use SSH to connect between my office linux machine and my home linux machine. The connection couldn't be made with SSH 2 at all and with SSH 1 any command that caused a lot of screen output caused a total freeze of the SSH connection.

"Eventually I ran across some comments here and there that made me think that the problem was related to big packets which were being fragmented and due to some unknown reason could not be reassembled after passing through my Linksys DSL router over pppoe. I reduced the Maximum Transfer Unit (MTU) setting on my eth0 interface enough so that all packets could get through the NAT/router/pppoe/ip layers and that completely solved the problems. As root, I used the command "/sbin/ifconfig eth0 mtu 1350" manually at first. When I tired of having to do this and forgetting a few times, I inserted the command into the startup file, "/etc/rc.d/rc.local", just before the last line with "touch ...".

"I never did figure out whether the basic cause of the problem was the extra bytes added by the pppoe header resulting in a maximum size greater than 1500 bytes, the default MTU value my RedHat Linux sets on eth0, or something associated with the NAT process in the Linksys router."

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GnomeCLICK

Getting the Most From Your Shell

http://www.networkcomputing.com/unixworld/tutorial/018/018shell.html

Today's GnomeCLICK takes a good look at the environment from which we all work in Linux - the shell. It's not just a command line, it's the whole environment in which Linux operates. In this tutorial, author Paul Dunne takes you through some of the fundamentals of the shell and how to best put them to use. He covers topics from dot files to functions to my buddy the command line, all while throwing in some good additional resources. This is a good introduction to the shell and of value to any Linux user, new or old.

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