The Linux Gazette FAQ
Updated 24-Aug-2001
Questions about Linux Gazette | Information for Authors | The Answer Gang | Linux tech support questions
The Linux Gazette FAQ
Questions about Linux Gazette | Information for Authors | The Answer Gang | Linux tech support questions
rsync server work?
These are the most Frequently Asked Questions in the LG Mailbag. With this FAQ, I hope to save all our fingers from a little bit of typing, or at least allow all that effort to go into something No (Wo)man Has Ever Typed Before.
To unpack *.tar.gz files, Unix users just need the standard commands:
tar xzvf FILENAME.tar.gzor:
zcat FILENAME.tar.gz | tar xvf -Windows users need a program like Winzip. Macintosh users need Stuffit Expander. These programs do recognize *.tar.gz files even though their native formats are *.zip and *.sit respectively. Winzip and Stuffit Expander are no-cost but closed-source, and Stuffit requires registration. If anybody knows of open-source GUI alternatives, let us know.
Other archive formats. We need to keep disk space on the FTP site at a minimum for the sake of the mirrors. Also, the Editor rebels at the thought of the additional labor involved in maintaining more formats. We have chosen the formats required by the majority of Gazette readers. Anybody is free to maintain the Gazette in another format if they wish, and if it is available publicly, I'll consider listing it on the mirrors page.
Other printable formats. (These are listed only for people who specifically want these formats. The easiest way to read the Gazette is through a web browser, and the easiest way to print it is through the browser's Print... option.)
- PostScript
- Netscape's "print to file" routine will create a PostScript file complete with images.
- I know Adobe and others consider PDF a "universal" format, but to me it's still a one-company format that requires a custom viewer--not something I'm eager to maintain. If you can view PDF, can't you view HTML?
If you really want PDF, you can convert Postscript files to PDF using
ps2pdfin the Ghostscript package. Thanks to Mark Kuchel for pointing this out in his 2-Cent Tip.
- Word
- I'll be nice and not say anything about Word....
E-mail. The Gazette is too big to send via e-mail. Issue #44 is 754 KB; the largest issue (#34) was 2.7 MB. Even the text-only version of #44 is 146 K compressed, 413 K uncompressed. If anybody wishes to distribute the text version via e-mail, be my guest. There is an announcement mailing list where I announce each issue: go to http://www.ssc.com/mailman/listinfo/lg-announce to subscribe. Or read the announcement on comp.os.linux.announce.
Subscribing with "nospam" in your From: address or "dot" instead of "." is not going to get you subscribed. It just makes more work for the list administrator, who must deal with the resulting bounce messages and then unsubscribe the address.
If e-mail really is your only option, some organizations operate FTP-via-mail servers you can use.
On paper. I know of no companies offering printed copies of the Gazette.
You can't. It's not a subscription magazine. What you see on the web is what you get. See above for the other formats Linux Gazette is and is not available in. There is an e-mail announcement service if you wish to receive an announcement when each issue is posted.
Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes and yes. See the mirrors page.
You're probably looking at an unmaintained mirror. Check the home site to see what the current issue is, then go to the mirrors page on the home site to find a more up-to-date mirror.
If a mirror is seriously out of date, please let us know.
Use the Linux Gazette search engine. A link to it is on the Front Page, in the middle of the page. Be aware this engine has some limitations, which are listed on the search page under the search form.
Use the Index of Articles. A link to it is on the Front Page, at the bottom of the issues links, called "Index of All Issues". All the Tables of Contents are concatenated here onto one page. Use your browser's "Find in Page" dialog to find keywords in the title or author's names.
There is a separate Answer Gang Index, listing all the questions that have been answered by the Answer Gang. However, they are not sorted by subject at this time, so you will also want to use the "Find in Page" dialog to search this listing for keywords. (It's not up to date either: it's still called The Answer Guy even though it's now The Answer Gang.)
Certainly. Linux Gazette is freely redistributable under the Open Publication License (OPL) (http://www.opencontent.org/openpub/), version 1.0 or later. You may copy it, give it away, sell it, translate it into another language, whatever you wish. Just keep the copyright notices attached to the articles, since each article is copyright by its author. We request that you provide a link back to www.linuxgazette.com.
If your copy is publicly available, we would like to list it on our mirrors page, especially if it's a foreign language translation. Use the submission form at the bottom of the page to tell us about your site. This is also the most effective way to help Gazette readers find you.
LG's official copyright statement is at http://www.linuxgazette.com/ssc.copying.html.
) To recognize and give thanks to our
sponsors, we display their logo.
If you would like more information about sponsoring the Linux Gazette, e-mail sponsor@ssc.com.
This link was added for the convenience of those wishing to download the current issue to their PalmPilot every month.
The table of contents for each issue is lg_toc##.html (where ## is the issue number). For your convenience, index.html is a symbolic link to this file. However, these links were added February 15, 2000, and may not be present on all the mirrors or FTP files.
Occasionally we publish these in News Bytes: Software News, if there is a specific Linux connection besides simply the fact that it runs on a Linux server. (Because all Java programs can supposedly run on a Linux server.) A zine that specializes in Java would be a better resource for this.
rsync server work?Rsync was installed May 2000 as a convenient way for LG mirrors and others to keep their copies of the web directory and the FTP files up-to-date.
rsync -az rsync.ssc.com::lg/ /tmp/lg
rsync -ptz 'rsync.ssc.com::lg/*' /tmp/lg
rsync -az rsync.ssc.com::lg/www_root/ /tmp/www
rsync -rlHtSz -v --stats anonymous@rsync.ssc.com::lg/ /dest/dir/
This is build up using environmental variables and a script.
Note: upcoming deadlines are in the next section.
Linux Gazette is dependent on Readers Like You for its articles. Although we cannot offer financial compensation (this is a volunteer effort, after all), you will earn the gratitude of Linuxers all over the world, and possibly an enhanced reputation for yourself and your company as well.
New authors are always welcome. E-mail a short description of your proposed article to gazette@ssc.com, and the Editor will confirm whether it's compatible with the Gazette, and whether we need articles on that topic. Or, if you've already finished the article, just e-mail the article or its URL.
If you wish to write an ongoing series, please e-mail a note describing the topic and scope of the series, and a list of possible topics for the first few articles.
The following types of articles are always welcome:
We have all levels of readers, from newbies to gurus, so articles aiming at any level are fine. If you see an article that is too technical or not detailed enough for your taste, feel free to submit another article that fills the gaps.
Articles not accepted include one-sided product reviews that are basically advertisements. Mentioning your company is fine, but please write your article from the viewpoint of a Linux user rather than as a company spokesperson.
If your piece is essentially a press release or an announcement of a new product or service, submit it as a News Bytes item rather than as an article. Better yet, submit a URL and a 1-2 paragraph summary (free of unnecessary marketoid verbiage, please) rather than a press release, because you can write a better summary about your product than the Editor can.
Articles not specifically about Linux are generally not accepted, although an article about free/open-source software in general may occasionally be published on a case-by-case basis.
Authors retain the copyright to their articles, but readers are free to copy and distribute the articles as much as they please. LG's official copyright statement is at http://www.linuxgazette.com/ssc.copying.html.
Articles should be written in simple HTML. Please read the LG author's crash course in HTML and the LG author's style guide.
| Issue | Deadline for Articles |
|---|---|
| #69 August 2001 | Tuesday, July 24, 2001 |
| #70 September 2001 | Friday, August 24, 2001 |
| #71 October 2001 | Sunday, September 23, 2001 |
Create the file using any text editor. Put a blank line between paragraphs
and begin each paragraph with <P>.
Place <H2>...</H2> around section titles, with a
blank line above and below. You may use H3 for subsections, H4 for
sub-subsections, etc, on up to H6. H1 is used by LG for the article
title.
Place <PRE>...</PRE> around program listings,
output, configuration file text, and anything else which must line up
vertically. <PRE> goes on its own line above the block, and
</PRE> on its own line below. Everything inside this block
will appear in a monospaced font, and indentations and line breaks will be
displayed verbatim.
To display a literal "<" in your article, type <
instead. For ">", type >. For "&", type
&. Otherwise, the browser will try to interpret them as
parts of HTML tags rather than displaying them. Look especially in program
listings since these symbols are frequently used in shell commands or
mathematical expressions.
There are other HTML tags (BR, EM, STRONG, UL, OL, DL, IMG) you may optionally use to jazz up the document; see any HTML tutorial for their syntax and meaning.
A complete HTML document requires
<HTML><HEAD><TITLE>...</TITLE></HEAD><BODY>at the top and
</BODY></HTML>at the bottom. You don't need to do this for a Linux Gazette article because the Editor throws away your headers and footers and inserts the standard Gazette header and footer (with navigation bars).
Keep the HTML as simple as possible. Linux Gazette is read on a wide variety of graphical and text browsers, on new and old hardware.
Articles may be of whatever length necessary. 2-15 screenfuls is typical.
At the top of the article or in the accompanying e-mail, clearly state: title, author's name, author's email, bio. (See the Author Info section on the Back Page for sample bios. If you've already submitted a bio, you don't have to submit it again unless it changes.)
Name the article author.html (where "author" is the author's last name in lowercase ASCII letters). If you have images, program listings or companion files, place them in a subdirectory misc/author/ and have your hyperlinks point there.
If you have images, please include the ALT text, WIDTH and HEIGHT in your IMG tags. Proper form is:
<IMG ALT="Alterate text" SRC="misc/author/file1.jpg" WIDTH="140" HEIGHT="80">The ALT text is for text browsers, blind users and those with images turned off. WIDTH and HEIGHT allow the browser to display the article around the image even before the image finishes downloading.
If you have inline program listings a user might want to run without having to type them all in by hand, please place a second copy of each listing in a text file called called misc/author/program.language.txt and put a hyperlink before the PRE block, thus:
bla bla bla this listing: (<A HREF="misc/author/trip.sh.txt">text version of this listing>)The ".txt" extension ensures the browser will not try to do something funny to it. Since it's a text file rather than HTML, you should not escape your "<", ">" and "&" characters.
The Answer Gang (TAG) is a group of volunteers who prepare "The Answer Gang", "2-Cent Tips" and "The Mailbag" columns for Linux Gazette. To gather material, we sponsor a public e-mail address tag@ssc.com, where readers can send Linux tech-support questions. We respond to those we can answer and select the best of the questions, answers and discussions for the zine.
The rest of this FAQ section is for TAG members and those curious about how TAG operates. If you just want to get your question answered, skip to Linux tech-support questions.
There are currently twenty TAG members as of 30-Mar-2001. Six of these are editors, responsible for keeping the TAG process rolling. (Editors are listed on the LG home page.)
Certainly! Go to http://www.ssc.com/mailman/listinfo/linux-questions-only. The list server will send a confirmation query, which is an e-mail message containing a unique code. You must reply using this code in order to subscribe. (This is to prevent somebody else from subscribing you without your permission.)
You will receive questions from the querents, and answers and discussion from other TAG members. Feel free to jump in with your own answer at any time, or to add to an answer if you feel something is incorrect or missing. Anything you don't feel qualified to answer or don't have time to answer, just delete.
Be warned you'll get a LOT of mail every month--hundreds of messages. You may wish to set up procmail to divert incoming TAG messages to a separate folder. Also, a certain amount of spam comes through. We have a spamfilter, but it's set more lenient than most because we don't want to take the chance that a desperate querent with a clueless ISP might not be able to get a question through. Never reply to spam. Replying just encourages them to send more since they know somebody's reading it. Do feel free to ridicule spammers on tag-admin, though.
Speaking of tag-admin, it's a separate mailing list where we discuss whether to publish an item, how to improve the Gazette, and other messages which are just for communication, not for publication. For instance, the Editor sometimes sends an article for a technical pre-screening, or asks a question to verify an assertion that's made in an article. Also, sometimes the tag-admin group will put their heads together and write an entire article on a hot topic, such as the article linked in the preceding paragraph.
To subscribe to tag-admin, go to http://www.ssc.com/mailman/listinfo/tag-admin. All TAG members are encouraged to join tag-admin. Unlike tag, tag-admin does not accept posts from non-subscribers.
Always check the To: and Cc: addresses when you reply. Always reply to both the querent and tag@ssc.com. It's easy to accidentally drop off one or the other. Dropping off the querent means they'll have to wait up to a month for their answer, IF it gets published and IF they can find it among the three columns. Dropping off tag means it won't be published--the Editor Gal can't publish what she doesn't receive. It doesn't matter whether you put both addresses in To: or put one in Cc:, just make sure you include both somehow. A few common scenarios:
The mailing list software prepends a blurb to TAG messages:
+-+--------------------------------------------------------------------+-+ You've asked a question of The Answer Gang <linux-questions-only@ssc.com>, so you've been sent the reply directly as a courtesy. The TAG list has also been copied. Please reply to TAG so that we can help our other readers by publishing the exchange in our monthly web magazine Linux Gazette, www.LinuxGazette.com. +-+--------------------------------------------------------------------+-+Leave this blurb in your reply. The reader may ignore it, but at least there's a chance they'll read it and realize what The Answer Gang is and that they're going to be published.
If your mailer allows you to add custom headers you can help the script put the right name next to your answerbubbles. Add this to your outbound TAG mail:
X-gazette-tag: yournickReplace "yournick" with your own preferred nickname; for instance, Jim Dennis is JimD.
It's okay to answer something that you don't know all that well, but improved greatly if you tell the reader how it is that you're looking for the information, and give some juicy links where we can learn more about the subject at hand.
Try to stick to answering Linux questions. We don't bother to publish non-linux questions unless they are a lot of fun. (After all, LG's goal is to make Linux a bit more fun.)
We're real people here, just answer conversationally, like you are right there with them.
Remember, you're not just answering the querent, you're composing a message that will help thousands of others. So go ahead and throw in related information that somebody in that situation would want to know, even if the querent doesn't need it directly.
It's perfectly fine to trim the original message down to only the fragments which you have an answer for. Definitely snip off any HTML attachment they might have accidentally provided. But it is okay and even desirable to leave the ">" quoting marks intact.
Go ahead and use your own signature block as you normally would.
These are tricks for composing your text reply so that it remains readable as e-mail while also giving our Editor Gal's script some hints how to format it as HTML.
What started it all: when you *emphasize* or _enhance_ words they get EM tags. It isn't too bright about _book_titles_ though.
Use plain text. Wrap lines at 72 characters if your mailer has a setting for this. Put a blank line between paragraphs, and don't indent the first line of paragraphs.
Leave the mailer's ">" marks in front of the querent's message fragments that you are replying to. This is used to determine when the speaker changes so the speakbubbles can be added. Avoid the quoting style of putting the other speaker's name at the beginning of every line!
If you don't like the subject the reader used (for example, no subject, "Help me pls", or something equally generic) do not replace the Subject: line itself. Instead, in the body of the message, below the heading create a 2 or 3 line paragraph: 1. your replacement subject, 2. a row of two or more tilde (~) characters, 3. (optional) a short extra comment. These will be used to create the index entries. The Subject: line must remain intact because the Editor Gal's script threads by subject.
Paragraphs that end in a colon (:) hint that the next paragraph should be indented.
Bullet points which are *) ... asterisk paren ... at the beginning of a line are detected by the script.
So are numerous types of smilies and unhappy faces.
Sometimes it can detect small script fragments on its own by spotting comment lines, so commenting your scripts is good.
Block styling - these hints are typed on a single line before the affected block, and on a single line after to close:
If you use angle brackets and ampersands they'll be properly transformed, so you can babble to the poor reader about HTML freely if you need to.
Fully qualified URLs will be made hotlinks on their own, like http://www.linuxgazette.com or ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/.
E-mail addresses are detected by the script and made active -- most of these end up getting stripped back out, but you don't have to do anything special about them.
A number of things which the Answer Gang often mentions get automatically marked up with their URL, if spelled correctly, but only once per message. If Gang members think something new should be automatically marked, they should mention it on the tag-admin list.
Respond to them and Cc: tag@ssc.com. Say that we are volunteers who answer Linux questions so that a large number of people can benefit from the answers. We will withhold their name and/or e-mail addres if they request anonymity, but we will not help them if they refuse to allow us to publish the text of their message. (Of course, we are willing to cut out certain paragraphs at their request if the result is still a complete question or followup.) Allowing us to publish the thread is our "payment" for giving them advice.
If they want a private consultant they should try LinuxPorts' Consultant Guide (http://www.linuxports.com/guide/consultants/), the Linux Documentation Project's Consultants-HOWTO (http://www.linuxdoc.org/HOWTO/Consultants-HOWTO/index.html), or possibly seek paid technical support from the commercial Linux vendors related to their software. Redhat, Linuxcare, and many others offer business level professional services as well.
If they complain that they didn't know it was going to be published, tell them we have made every effort to make this clear in Linux Gazette and in the replies themselves, and if they didn't read this or got our address from somebody that didn't tell them our policy, we're not responsible for that. Tell them we are very interested in knowing how they heard about the Gazette, so that we can follow up with the person or webmaster who gave them an erroneous impression of what the tag address is for.
We are working on an index of "the best of TAG advice". It will be grouped by subject, similar to the subject categories of the Linux HOWTOs.
We are working on a TAG bio page so that you can see who we all are.
We are working on an article about DNS servers that are alternatives to BIND, and an article about the origin of the word "Linux".
This section comprises the most frequently-asked questions in The Mailbag and The Answer Guy columns.
Check the FAQ. (Oh, you already are.
)
Somewhat more seriously, there is a Linux FAQ located at
http://www.linuxdoc.org/FAQ/Linux-FAQ/index.html which you might
find to be helpful.
For people who are very new to Linux, especially if they are also new to computing in general, it may be handy to pick up one of these basic Linux books to get started:
<plug type="cheap">
Of course, the original Answer Guy himself, Jim Dennis, was a coauthor
on Linux System Administration, published by New Riders. It is
not an introductory book, but it has a considerable amount of
material about the kind of planning system administrators need to do, and
the second half delves into deeper topics, so it may help bring a broader
understanding.
</plug>
Mailing lists exist for almost every application of any note, as well as for the distributions. If you get curious about a subject, and don't mind a bit of extra mail, sign onto applicable mailing lists as a "lurker" -- that is, just to read, not particularly to post. At some point it will make enough sense that their FAQ will seem very readable, and then you'll be well versed enough to ask more specific questions coherently. Don't forget to keep the slice of mail that advises you how to leave the mailing list when you tire of it or learn what you needed to know.
You may be able to meet with a local Linux User Group, if your area has one. There seem to be more all the time -- if you think you may not have one nearby, check the local university or community college before giving up.
And of course, there's always good general resources, such as Linux
Gazette Send all questions and
answers to The Answer Gang
<tag@ssc.com>. Several volunteers will
try to respond to them via e-mail. All questions and answers will be
considered for publication in the next issue of Linux Gazette, and those
chosen will be grouped into threads and put in the Answer Gang, 2-Cent Tips or
Mailbag column. Generally, short answers and tips go into 2-Cent Tips, long
answers or those with multiple respondents go into The Answer Gang, and a
limited selection of the questions for which we have no adequate
answer will go into the Mailbag along with suggestions for future articles.
Questions and answers about the Gazette itself will be in the Gazette
Matters section of the Mailbag.
The Answer Gang can answer short, specific questions that will be of interest to a significant portion of our readership. (All questions and answers are considered for publication, although you can be anonymous if you request.) However, for large, general question like "help me design my office network" or "write me an application which does this", we would steer you to the Linux documentation and to paid consultants.
We don't guarantee that your question sent to TAG will ever be answered ! If you don't see any reply, keep paying attention to the published version of LG because your answer may show up as the reply to someone else's question.
You might want to check the Answer Gang Index and see if your question got asked before. The older a question is, the greater the chance that the answer needs updating, but it's a start.
An excellent summary of the current state of:
...was in issue #44, The Answer Guy, "Running Win '95 Apps under Linux".
There is also a program called VMware (www.VMWare.com) which lets you run several "virtual computers" concurrently as applications, each with its own Operating System. There is a review in Linux Journal about it.
You might consider Bochs (www.bochs.com), which also works on non-Intel hardware and the BSD family.
Some of them.
Answers in either the Tips or Answer Guy columns which relate to troubleshooting hardware, might be equally valuable to Linux and Windows users. This is however Linux Gazette... so all the examples are likely to describe Linux methods and tools.
The Answer Guy has ranted about this many times before. He will gladly answer questions involving getting Linux and MS Windows systems to interact properly; this usually covers filesystems, use of Samba (shares) and other networking, and discussion of how to use drivers.
However, if your question only involves Windows, this is not the best place to ask. The Answer Guy hasn't used Windows in many years, and in fact typically avoids the graphical user interfaces available to Linux as well. That we've grown up into an Answer Gang isn't worth much for Windows only questions either -- only a few of us have any notable experience with Windows, and for those of us that do, a lot of it is quite out of date.
Maybe you should try the websites for the various Windows magazines -- many of them offer an open forum. You could even (gasp) use the tech support that was offered with your commercial product. Also, there are newsgroups for an amazing variety of topics, including MS Windows.
The usual command to ask for a help page on the command line is the word man followed by the name of the command you need help with. You can get started with man man. It might help you to remember this, if you realize it's short for "manual."
A lot of plain text documents about packages can be found in /usr/doc/packages in modern distributions. If you installed them, you can also usually find the FAQs and HOWTOs installed in respective directories there.
Some applications have their own built-in access to help files (even those are usually text stored in another file, which can be reached in other ways). For example, pressing F1 in vim, ? in lynx, or ctrl-H followed by a key in Emacs, will get you into their help system. These may be confusing to novices, though.
Many programs provide minimal help about their command-line interface if given the command-line option --help, -h or -?. Even if these don't work, most give a usage message if they don't understand their command-line arguments. The GNU project has especially followed through with this idea. It's a good one; every programmer creating a small utility should have it self-documented at least this much.
Graphical interfaces such as tkman and tkinfo will help quite a bit because they know where to find these kinds of help files; you can use their menus to help you find what you need. The better ones may also have more complex search functions.
Some of the bigger distributions link their default web pages to HTML versions of the help files. They may also have a link to help directly from the menus in their default X Windowing setup. Therefore, it's wise to install the default window manager, even if you (or the friend helping you) have a preference for another one, and to explore its menus a bit.
There's a fellow who has a searchable website filled with manpages at http://linux.ctyme.com/.
It's probably a winmodem. Winmodems suck for multiple reasons:
So, yeah, there can be good internal modems, but it's more worthwhile to get an external one. It will often contain phone line surge suppression and that may lead to more stable connections as well.
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