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New year, new distribution. That's a nice parallel, though not completely accurate. Slackware is, in fact, widely credited as the oldest Linux distribution around. It's the creation of Patrick Volkerding who was at the time a Computer Sciences student at Minnesota State University in Moorhead, Minnesota. Slackware 1.0 was released in June 1993, less than a year after the first official version of Linux was released.

I installed Slack 9.0 beta on Cerebrum Sunday afternoon, pretty much without a hitch. You'll recall that I'd given 8.1 a shot just prior to installing Gentoo earlier in this round of reviews. I'm convinced that the failure then was hardware rather than distro related. The Slack 9.0 beta installed quite nicely.

Slack has, in many ways, stayed true to its roots. One of those seeming throwback areas is the installer itself. When Slack was released initially, it was well-renowned for exactly that - the installer. Through the past nine years, Slack has stayed in the text install mode, providing no graphical installer. I'll admit to being a bit rusty at text-based installs after the breeze of Mandrake and Red Hat.

The install process in Slack requires a strong attention to detail and a working knowledge of some Linux fundamentals. It's probably not the distro you'd want to install as your first. For example, partitioning requires fdisk or cfdisk. I used fdisk for this install because it's the tool I'm most familiar with. A user must first create the partition table using one of these tools. Bear in mind - that's not formatting, just the creation of the partition table.

Next in the install was initializing swap. Fortunately, I'd remembered to write a swap partition to the table and had used fdisk to note it as such with the proper system id.

The only real problem I ran up against in the install was in setting my target partitions - /, /boot and /home. I normally place the /boot partition at the front of the drive, followed by the / partition. When I was presented with the list of partitions to format and mount, I took them in list order: /boot, /, /home. However, Slack (and most other text-based installs) formats and mounts the / partition first without questioning whether the first partition you've assigned actually is the / partition. That meant, taking them in list order, I actually made my /boot partition the / partition. I realized the mistake almost immediately and was able to back out and start again.

I found the text menus in Slack to be very clear and helpful. They really didn't leave much doubt as to what my next step was and my options. That's not an easy thing to do, creating clear and concise text menus. Paying close attention to the information provided in the menus, I had no questions at all about the install.

Slack offers three package installation options: newbie, expert and everything. The newbie installation offers a user the option of selecting packages with a complete description of each. The expert option allows package selection without the descriptions. I chose the newbie installation out of curiosity and quickly realized that the level of detail was, in fact, much more than I needed. Selecting the packages one at a time was a long, long process.

At the end of the install, Slack auto-detected my network card and prompted for network information. The network was up and running in just a few minutes.

By default, Slack boots into runlevel 3 - no desktop. To start X Window, the user needs to issue the startx command. However, X wasn't configured for my machine during the install itself. Again, it wasn't a huge problem. I was able to run /etc/X11/xf86config and, the first time through, get a good X configuration. I changed the default runlevel in /etc/inittab to 4 (X in Slack) and was set to go.

All in all, the installation covered a little less than an hour and a half, including all the time in the newbie install. In the end, I had a stable install, a working X Window system and a configured mouse.

Unless you're a particularly adventurous newbie, it would be tough to recommend Slack as your first distribution. That's simply because of the knowledge of other Linux tools necessary to get Slack to a working state. Knowledge of fdisk, xf86config and the ability to edit /etc/inittab were all necessary to bring the machine to my own preferred state. If you are adventurous, be sure to research use of those tools before you begin the install.

Tomorrow, we'll look at the package selection in Slack. Have a great New Year's Day.

                 
Tony Steidler-Dennison       

GnomeTWEAK

Slack Packages

Since we've taken the plunge into Slack, it's a good time to talk about package management. While Slack does offer the rpm package during the install, it's unsupported. In other words, the results may or may not be what you'd like. While Slack doesn't use rpm or a more advanced program such as apt-get, it does have built in package installation and management tools.

As we work through the package management tools in Slack, bear in mind a few caveats. First, these are text-based tools - no pretty GUI here. Second, most of these tools will require that the package is in .tgz format. They'll work with neither .tar.gz packages nor .rpm packages. Slack does provide an .rpm - .tgz conversion tool that we'll talk about at the end of the GnomeTWEAK.

The first of these tools ispkgtool. Run as root, pkgtool presents the user with a text interface for installing packages from the current directory, another directory, or from a floppy. pkgtool also removes currently installed packages, displays the files contained in a package, or reruns the Slack installation scripts.

Slack also offers installpkg, a tool intended strictly for installing. The usage is simple:

installpkg /path/to/file

In the same vein, Slack comes with a lightweight package removal program called removepkg. The syntax is similar to installpkg.

Last in the actual package management toolbox in Slack is the upgradepkg program. This is similar to the -U option in rpm, installing the new package then removing the old.

As mentioned, Slack also includes a tool for converting files from the .rpm install format to the native .tgz. It's called rpm2tgz. The usage convention is very simple:

rpm2tgz /rpm/name

This leaves the converted .tgz file in the current working directory. I ran this last night with the fetchmail rpm and was able to install using installpkg with no problems.

The lack of a more modern package management system in Slack is one of the most common complaints about this distribution. In many ways, I'd agree. However, the native Slack tools do seem to do well in installing, removing, upgrading, even converting packages.

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GnomeCORE

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Today's GnomeCORE is as much about the Internet in general as it is about Linux specifically. In the end, we'll talk about the process for adding host names and aliases to your system for name-to-address mapping. It's useful to first look at a bit of Internet history to understand the concepts.

In the 70s, the Internet was really ARPAnet, administered by the Advanced Research Projects Agency. At that time, there were but a few hundred machines connected to the network. Eventually, ARPAnet became the backbone for what we now know as the Internet. Given that the infrastructure was already in place, ARPAnet served a great purpose in transitioning from a small network to the beginnings of the global network we know today.

In the days prior to the Internet, each machine connected to the network contained one of two files for mapping machine names to IP addresses. Non-UNIX machines used a file named hosts.txt. UNIX machines utilized what was fundamentally the same file, though it was named /etc/hosts. The master for this file was located at the Stanford Research Institute Network Information Center (SRI-NIC) in Menlo Park, California. As computers were added to the network, it was the responsibility of the new machine's administrator to email the machine information to SRI-NIC. SRI-NIC updated their master file a few times a week, and a good administrator knew to periodically check the master to be sure their machine or their network was up to date.

By the early 80s, thousands of machines were being added to the network still known only as ARPAnet. The management of the master host-to-address mapping file became a much bigger issue. By 1984, a method known as the Domain Name System (DNS) had become widely accepted as a more efficient means for this mapping. Using a distributed database, DNS made it possible for new records to be added to the master file, allowing other machines on the network to update their local files automatically. This scheme made nameservers responsible for maintaining the names in their own domain and for handling requests for names. In 1984, ARPAnet successfully moved from the old system to DNS. It's still the standard today, nearly twenty years later.

With that background, you're a good bit of the way to understanding the function of the /etc/hosts file on your Linux machine. Though it's been around since before the Internet, the /etc/hosts file still exists today, serving a useful purpose for networked computers. The file still serves to map IP addresses to machine names and aliases. Take a quick look at your /etc/hosts file using your favorite text editor:

    vi /etc/hosts

What you'll see is a very simple file consisting of three tab-delimited fields. The first is the IP address, the second is the name of the machine using that IP address, and the third is an alias you can assign individually.

127.0.0.1        localhost
192.168.1.2    cerebellum    desk

This particular IP address, by the way, is the local loopback interface. It's how the machine communicates internally. From this line, though, I could communicate with my machine in any of a number of ways. For example, I could ping the loopback interface using 127.0.0.1 or localhost. I could also ping the machine using the network IP address, cerebellum or desk.

Though it won't always be accurate, you can also add other hosts to your /etc/hosts file. For example, if I could add the Lockergnome server address to /etc/hosts using only an IP and an alias:

123.456.789.012    lg

This would allow me to connect to the server by any protocol allowed by the server using only "lg":

ftp lg

would make a connection to Lockergnome's FTP server. Or, in my browser

http://lg

would take me to Lockergnome.com. Of course, if the IP address changes, this will be out of date. It's really much more useful and accurate to rely on your DNS server to make these mappings.

/etc/hosts and hosts.txt were, at one time, the primary means for resolving IP addresses to host names. Though the system of DNS is much more efficient given the number of machines on the network, this pre-DNS mapping file is still of use to your Linux system today.

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GnomeFILE

ImageMagick 5.5.3-1

http://www.imagemagick.org/

"ImageMagick (TM) is a package for the automated and interactive manipulation of images. It supports the display and interactive manipulation of images when used with the X Window System. Although the software is copyrighted by ImageMagick Studio, it is available for free and can be redistributed without fee. ImageMagick may be used as a component of both open source and proprietary applications. ImageMagick compiles and runs under Unix, Linux, Windows '95 and later, Apple MacOS, and Compaq VMS. Binary packages are available for most operating systems. Application programming interfaces (APIs) are provided to support development of image processing applications in the C, C++, and Perl languages."

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GnomeVOICE

TIA
Scribbled by

"I read with interest as you stepped into the fray over TIA. Although more a conservative bent, I agree this is a bad plan. Too many people have taken to the 'I have nothing to hide' or 'they will only use it to find terrorists'.

"If your readers are one of them, consider it from the other side: What would Newt Gingrich or Bill Clinton have done (or not done) to keep their affairs secret? What would your Congressman, woman or Senator do?

"[What's] Strange is how many organizations missed the 'unintended consequences' of this bill. The NRA just lost the gun registration fight. NOW's donation records have become a thing of the past as the Catholic Church, to the Masons will now have their financial records collected and there members known. Anonymous adoptions are impossible. That your child's teacher ranks them above or below average or a 'trouble maker'.

"The problem with just collecting the information is who someone will start to do trending. Trending may show that people in Tony's background are prone to support individual rights and has a regular audience of x thousand subscribers, here after referred to as 'cult members'. We cannot have him working on government funded contracts. As a matter of fact, it probably is not in our best interest to give him a student loan for college. We may even want to let his company know that they will not be welcome with 'such people' on their staff.

"The law was written to protect the collectors not the individual. No warrants are required, no judicial review, ALL of the data is to be collected. Should it 'accidentally leak' they cannot be held accountable for the release. Should an analysis be incorrect, that would merely be 'unfortunate.'

"It is going to take the technically aware to show others what can be collected and how it might be used. That privacy is not about having something to hide, but the ability to control outcomes.

"Keep up the good work."

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GnomeCLICK

A Basic UNIX Tutorial

http://www.isu.edu/departments/comcom/unix/workshop/unixindex.html

The Basic UNIX Tutorial that comprises today's GnomeCLICK is written and hosted by Idaho State University. Given the direct connection between Linux and UNIX, the information contained in this tutorial is very relevant. It covers such basics as accessing filesystems, text editing, the shell environment, redirection, and files and directories. The language is clear, providing useful background information that should deepen your understanding of each process. Looking through the tutorial, it's clear that this will be a useful introduction to Linux for anyone who's interested, of nearly any computing experience.

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