Lockergnome's Compendium of Linux Knowledge Focusing on the core functionality built into every Linux distribution, these tomes contain a wealth of information on everything from the kernel, to core services, to networking and printing issues. Find your way around the command line functionality, so that your Linux install works the way you want it to. You won't be an expert overnight, but it will certainly lead you in the right direction. Dowload your Linux tips today.

A trip to the Virgin Islands sure we be nice about now. With Iowa temperatures hovering in the single digits and wind chills far into the negative, even a working trip to warmer climes would be a nice relief.

For all intents and purposes, this is the week I should have been basking in the warm sunshine and fresh Caribbean breezes. As Iowa weather patterns would have it, the day we finished the indoor testing phase for the University of the Virgin Islands telescope, the cold and clouds rolled in. The weather has prevented sky testing for nearly three weeks. On the nights that the temperature has been within our operational range, the Iowa skies have been full of clouds. On the clear nights, the temperature has hovered around zero with "risk of immediately freezing exposed skin" wind chills. I've yet to have the opportunity to do real sky testing since returning to OMI, and I'm really itching both to image some great objects and to install this 'scope (read "leave the cold for a week or so"). Another week and we may have to break our cardinal rule of never sending out a 'scope without sky testing. It is, in the end, about customer satisfaction.

Whenever it happens, this won't be my first trip to the Virgin Islands. In November 1980, the aircraft carrier I called my home on the high seas took a workup cruise in the Caribbean. To the uninitiated, the word "cruise" may conjure up images of lavish ballrooms, all night parties, and Gopher. Yeah, right. The workup cruises were intended to put both crew and ship through all possible paces in preparation for a real cruise to the Mediterranean. Ahhh ... the endless General Quarters drills, man overboard training, and fire team mustering. In truth, the workup cruises made us all long for the real six-month cruise to the Mediterranean. But I digress ...

During the workup cruise of '80, we found ourselves on liberty in the Virgin Islands over Thanksgiving. Prior to making the port call, we received a transmission from the Department of the Navy. It seems that the citizens of the Virgin Islands had offered an open invitation to the 5,000-member crew to spend Thanksgiving in their homes. En masse, they'd opened their doors for a bunch of sailors away from home for the holiday. I, of course, spent the day on duty on the ship, taking my Thanksgiving dinner in the form of the "processed American turkey food" served up on the mess deck. It didn't change the great impression a bit. I hope to find the citizenry as friendly when I finally do get to return.

I got a cool email from Furo the other day. Though I won't spill too many details, he found himself in need of some Linux assistance. Seems he's got a Toshiba appliance running our favorite OS and is at a bit of a loss as to how to configure it to his liking. I get to dig around a bit and try to offer him some insight into accomplishing what he wants to accomplish. Of course, if I had a troublesome Windows problem (eliminated by the complete elimination of Windows in my own computing life), I couldn't think of anyone better to turn to for a solution. Who knows? You might even end up with an article or two about the process.

Speaking of help, if you haven't yet dropped in to the Lockergnome forums, you're missing the real Lockergnome community experience. All the forums have become very, very active, including the Linux area. I'm finally starting to find the slot in the schedule to participate, myself. So, if you can't get enough Linux, drop in, sign up, and participate freely. Your community awaits.

See you on Thursday.

Happy just sittin' here in my tux,              
Tony Steidler-Dennison       

GnomeTWEAK

Panel Shortcuts

Today's GnomeTWEAK is a quick customization for your KDE panel.

If you're a hardcore KDE user, you've probably already discovered that it can be a bit trying to add a link to an application to the panel. Right clicking on the panel brings up an Add menu. The sub menu options are Applet, Button, Extension, or Special Button. None of these options offers a way to add a link to an application that's not already tucked inside a menu. That can be a pain for those of us who want these links, but prefer to keep our desktop nice and tidy.

However, there is a reasonably easy way to add these links to your panel, keeping the desktop clutter to a minimum with small fully functional panel-sized icons.

The tweak starts by creating a link to an application on the desktop itself. Right click on any open desktop space, and select Create New -> Link to Application. Follow the tabs in the resulting window to create the link. These tabs include:

• General - name the link and select an icon
• Permissions - clearly a graphical means for setting permissions on the link
• Execute - the place to enter the file to be executed as well as any special customizations for its execution
• Application - selecting an appropriate mime type, though this is generally unnecessary for "one off" links

When this window is closed, you're left with a spiffy link on the desktop, complete with the icon and title of your choice. Test it to be sure you've entered the proper execution parameters and make any necessary adjustments.

As I've said, I try to keep a tidy desktop. That comes from working on Windows machines on which the desktop was literally covered with shortcuts. Really - what's the point of a shortcut if it takes ten minutes searching through the icons on the desktop to find it? Anyway, the tweak to this point does nothing to solve that problem. There is, however, a solution.

Grab the icon on the desktop and drag it to the applications section of panel, normally to the left side. It's that simple. You'll see a small vertical line denoting the placement of the link on the panel. When you've positioned it perfectly, release the mouse button. With the link located on the panel, you can delete the one cluttering your desktop by right-clicking on it and selecting Delete.

There's nothing that feels quite so much like my computing home as a clean, uncluttered desktop, complete with all the quick links to the apps I use most. Today's GnomeTWEAK will help you create those shortcuts you crave, without the clutter.

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GnomeCORE

Get your favorite Linux flavor on CD: Pick your favorite Linux flavor and get it on CD for as low as $1.95. Find Linux gear, books, and software for Linux at Linux Central . Check out the selection today!

Like any other computer operating system, Linux isn't perfect. Sometimes during boot, you notice a [FAILED] messages for a particular element. These items are usually configuration issues rather that systemic problems. Or, perhaps an element you just know should have loaded at boot isn't working properly. The messages your system sends at boot can be useful to resolve these and many other problems. The problem is, these messages often scroll by so quickly you don't get the opportunity to read them. Once the system is up, it often seems to be too late to do the forensic work necessary to correct the problem.

Of course, you knew that wasn't really so. There's always a way to accomplish what you need in Linux. Sometimes it's just not obvious where to look.

To view your boot messages, your core Linux system provides the dmesg tool. This tool prints the kernel ring buffer. This buffer logs messages beginning with the keypress at Lilo or Grub and ending when the kernel fires off the /sbin/init script. In other words, dmesg provides a view of much of the kernel's boot activity.

To invoke dmesg, just enter the command:

dmesg

This is the simplest form of the command. You can also use the -c option to clear the ring buffer after reading, or the -sbufsize option to create a buffer of bufsize for use when reading the ring buffer.

The dmesg may produce more than a single screen of output in your console. If that's the case, you still have several options for making this output useful. First, you can pipe the output to more. This chunks out the messages into single screen bites:

dmesg | more

To move to the subsequent screen, use the space bar.

If you have a need for a hard copy of dmesg output, write it to a file:

dmesg > boot.messages

This will create a boot.messages file in the current working directory. This has a couple of advantages. First, if you know some of the text output you're looking for, you can then cat or grep the file:

grep bus1/2/2 boot.messages

This will return every line from the boot.messages file containing the string "bus1/2/2". (This, by the way, is a much more efficient use of grep than is sometimes seen: cat boot.messages | grep bus1/2/2. The common usage will return the same output, but requires resources for both the cat and grep programs.)

You may also have a guru handy, either personally or online. To help troubleshoot the problem, it's often useful to put this output into the form of an email. The following assumes you've got sendmail running and properly configured:

dmesg | mail tony@lockergnome.com -s "dmesg Output"

This pipes the dmesg output to the body of an email, sending it to tony@lockergnome.com with the subject line "dmesg Output."

Of course, you can also apply grep to this method, using any text file you've written:

dmesg > boot.messages
cat boot.messages | mail tony@lockergnome.com -s "dmesg Output"

The permutations are many, but you get the point. Using dmesg, boot messages no longer need be a mystery.

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GnomeFILE

nn Newsreader 6.6.5

http://www.nndev.org/

"nn Newsreader is a curses-based USENET news reader. The motto of nn is its expanded name, "No News is good news, but nn is better". The nn newsreader is designed to let you minimize the amount of time you spend reading news (or, more realistically, to allow you to follow even more newsgroups). Nn allows you to quickly select articles of interest and skip the rest. It also supports efficient article killing and selection of articles by author and subject."

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GnomeVOICE

Mandrake 9.1 Beta 3
Scribbled by Dave Moore

"Less than a year ago, I discovered Linux. I had done some work with DOS, little with Windows and knew that the point-n-click world was not one to challenge me.

"My first Distro was SUSE 8.0 Personal. I had tried 8.2 Mandrake from some cds I had been given and it wouldn't load. Later I would try Red Hat 7.3 and use it for several months until version 8.0 arrived on the scene.

"A few months ago, I ordered Mandrake 9.0 from Linux Central. It would go on one of my machines. (We have three running in the house.) The install was so simple and the distro so easy to work with, I put it on the machine my wife uses and gave her a full screen of icons for her every defined need. She loft Win2k Pro by the roadside and now the uptime on her computer continues to build.

"I clicked on DISTRO WATCH Wednesday night and saw where Mandrake 9.1 Beta 3 was available as an .iso. While it intrigued me to think I might be able to download, burn and install a distro for the first time, by 9PM, the download was underway.

"For some this may not be a significant event, however to a person over 60, who had their first look at Linux less than a year ago, this is major.

"Early Thursday morning, I began burning .iso to CD. All went as planned and by mid-morning I ready to power down...load the first disc and see what happened. If you've never done this before, it adds a bit of a rush to the day.

"From start-up to reboot, 20 minutes! The first thing noted was that the problem with the mouse in 9.0 was gone. Upfront, you configure your mouse and my Mouseman+ configured perfectly. Next came the partition configuration. I opted to have the entire disc erased. Next decision, programs...I opted for a Workstation, Game Station and installed all desktops. No problem, Mandrake went to work. As I checked the count down clock it hit the 20 second mark and lingered for two and one-half minutes. I thought my download had failed at the worst time. When it continued and prepared to boot for the first time, I must admit there was a major smile.

"System booted and I began the quick setup. Mouse, monitor, sound card and internet all configured correctly, however I was unable to get the printer to load. I kept getting a 'footmatic RPM' error. NO PRINTER.

"My attempt at making a boot floppy was another pleasant surprise. This had been another problem with 9.0.

"Moving to the desktop, Mandrake has put up a very clean set of fonts, similar to the type Microsoft has used for years. It really made the desktop look 'top shelf.'

"The next test would be using XMMS on my favorite internet music site. No problem, the only thing I detected was the inability to get to a mixer to reduce the sound level. I just didn't find a sound mixer anywhere.

"From audio to IM. Ymessenger from Yahoo did not work. and I didn't try the others.

"Next would be a test of the removable media. I believe here the term should be 'insertable' because 'removable' was not a part of the deal. After trying all the commands I know, I had to boot the system down to remove a CD.

"At this point, I am sure you feel I am anti-Mandrake 9.1. Nothing could be further from the truth. The minor bugs I am seeing now in the BETA are just that and should be corrected when the distro hits the streets. The system appears to be very stable, which is a trademark of Mandrake and with the various enhancements promised, this could be a killer distro.

"The part I enjoyed most ...a Linux Newbie doin' the download, burn and install. If you haven't done it, give it a shot. I can virtually assure you that this would not happen with the Northwests most famous distro and if it did, who could afford it?"

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GnomeCLICK

MozillaQuest Magazine

http://www.mozillaquest.com/

"The Mozilla 1.0 Web browser suite is out! MozillaQuest Magazine has the best, most balanced, accurate, robust and in-depth coverage of AOL-Netscape's Mozilla 1.0 browser on the Internet. Mozilla 1.0 features, performance, bugs, issues, and annoyances -- the Mozilla Application Programming Framework (Mozilla 1.0 APIs) -- all on MozillaQuest.com."

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