Posts by kc0arf

Hello,

Technically, there should be no problem running Linux at your college. TCP/IP is TCP/IP. An educated techie with some time on their hands might be able to detect you are running something else, but unless you are causing a problem, you should be alright.

Politically, anything could happen to you.

Helpdesk wise, I agree. If you are out of box, they might give you a flyer, or offer to let you use a public computer to look at the web and try figuring it out on your own. They might even ask you to come back and teach them on how you got things working.

Now, what should you avoid doing? In other words, things that will place you on a radar screen....

DON'T:
1) Setup a DHCP server on the network. This will mess a lot of other things up, and they will find you.
2) Setup a server and start sharing music / files / tests. A simple scan can show what you are serving. You are a user / guest on their network. They can unplug you. You might have to sign a user agreement. Read it.
3) Run your NIC in promisicous mode (sniffing). Software exists to detect them.
4) Share a printer. Pranksters might run you out of ink and paper. I have seen this happen.

I would have a firewall on it, and would not allow the computer to share easily.

Good …

Hello,

I know that with RedHat, I was able to download the floppy boot disks, and then install over ftp. I had to do that several times before I got a CD-ROM burner and able to burn the .iso images.

These days, I like to get the .iso images, and then expand them locally, and use the boot-disk - ftp method to install locally. Some of you might ask why? Because there are no CD's to flip. Launch it and walk away. Or do the Kickstart method and get a whole slew of them installing over FTP at the same time. Nothing like watching a network switch humming to life with multiple installs going on....

Enjoy,

Christian

Followup: After cleaning /tmp, check the /tmp as you run the Retrospect program again. See if that big 35 GB is related to the tape system. I do not know the innards of Retrospect, aside from that it works really well with me and my ftp-based backups.

Christian

Hello,

It would be quick to observe that if files are in /var/tmp, that they are tempfiles, and a simple rm -rf * will take care of the issue. NO! Do not do that. They could be lock files, could be someone's version of word, etc.

My *educated guess* would be:

1) Schedule a downtime. Inform your users that you need to go down for maint. Have them close all files, etc.

2) Reboot the server, and go into /var/tmp, and see what is there. See what the ownerships involved are. Check the dates. You might be seeing someone's print spool file. Maybe someone's photoshop crashed and these files are from whenever. On my OS X laptop, I looked, and they appear to be .ppd files (postscript page defs).

3) You might need to do a cat | more on the files to see if they are text, and you can read them.

Without entering into your system, it would be difficult to quess further. If, after a reboot, there are files still there, I would say it is safe to kill them. Users should not be saving legit files there, and if the files are print jobs, they will be re-created.

As you know Mac OS X / Unix / Linux are multi-user operating systems. It is not so easy to wave the magic wand and kill the temp files a-la-windows.

Good Luck,

Christian

Hello,

I would recommend to anyone getting a used computer (and personally, I do this for *any* computer that becomes mine... new or used) and rebuild it from scratch. Only by doing this, do you know what programs are on that machine, and you alone are responsible for configuring security on it.

I bought a used laptop from a pawn shop several years ago too. Took it home, and the first thing I did was repartition and reformat the hard disk.

You never know what hidden goodies / problems are lurking around. There might even be logical disk drive damage...

Christian

Hello,

I would format it into separate partitions for security and managability reasons. Unless you are doing digitial video recording, where you need such a large partition, break that large drive into a few partitions to keep it managable. Yes, there are going to be limits on how large an OS can format a device. There may be other limits on the physical number of files allowed on a drive (for example, can you fill all 128 MB of hard drive with thousands of thousands of 50K (or whatever the smallest cluster size) files?

Partitioning to managable sizes (50 - 100 GB each) protect from these problems. Sometime down the road, you might need to format that partition to fix a problem. If you have your whole drive as one big partition, you might not have anywhere else to go with the data!

If you think of a workstation as a small server, and get out of the One drive = one partition mentality, you will open a lot of doors for new solutions. Granted, partitioning will not save you from a hardware crash of the device, but many logical problems can be avoided.

Christian

Hello,

I assume you are upgrading from Mac OS 9 to OS X. Before you do that, i would suggest a paper printout just in case something goes foul.

I have not done the Mac Outlook Express conversion. I am a dutiful Eudora fan, and that upgraded flawlessly.

For IE Favorites, you will need to go into the Mac OS System folder, find the Preferences folder, and then go and get the favorites.html file. Copy that guy over to the OS X (user) folder, and tunnel down into Library --> Preferences --> Explorer, and copy the favorites.html file there.

You may wish to test this on another system if you have a friend who has a similar setup.

Good Luck,

Christian

Hello,

I have used Norton and Tech Tools Pro, mostly under the OS9 umbrella. The OS X tools, combined with Retrospect, have allowed me to feel comfortable in the OS X universe.

Whatever you do, do not use an OS 9 disk tool to fix an OS X issue. Assuming that you still need to work with OS 9, I would have it's system on a different partition, so that you can use the OS 9 tools to repair the OS 9 things. Partitioning is a smart smart thing.

Tech Tools Pro took care of a few OS 9 problems for me, and Norton worked alright for me in the OS 9 world.

Now, if you wish to discuss anti-virus protection, that is a different universe entirely.

Perhaps the best question to ask is: what is your goal? Overall Utilities grab-bag? Let us know.

Thanks.

Christian

Hello Briggsy,

Interesting trouble that you are reporting. Could you fill in a few details please:

1) What version of OS X are you working with? Panther? Latest patches?
2) Can you open a terminal window, and do a df for us?
3) How much RAM is on our server?

The df command is the "disk free" and it will show out all of your devices, and how much space is used.

Take care,

Christian

I am not certain if this works in XP, but my favorite tool in Windows 2000 is the compmgmt.msc tool. It will let you see all sorts of information -- logs, system information, and disks. It will also allow you to add/delete local users (assuming you have authority on the box to do so!).

Another good tool is the perfmon.msc for performance monitoring.

enjoy.

Christian