From: vds7789@aw2.fsl.ca.boeing.com (Vincent D. Skahan)
Subject: Re: SLS 0.99-2 more feedback and questions
Organization: none
Date: Thu, 21 Jan 1993 15:39:47 GMT

arne@mars.rmt.sub.org (Arne Marschall) writes:

>vince@victrola.sea.wa.us (Vince Skahan) writes:
>: 	#--- aliases that pipe to a program ---
>: 	#
>: 	anotheralias: "|/pathname/filename_to_run"

>Did I miss something ? I couldn't find any documentation about the smail 
>configuration files / procedures. Except for the very short description in
>/usr/local/lib/smail/README.

the docs are not part of the normal 'make install' in general for any of the
news/mail/uucp packages, so they're not in the normal SLS.  I've assembled all
of that stuff and they're in Peter's new 'd-series' disks...they're also in
the sources that I've put on sunsite.unc.edu (for those with a religious
need to type 'make' :-)

same goes the the real USENET news and elm docs.  They're all in the same
d-series stuff assuming Peter included all I sent him.  If you want to be
sure, look for a 'docs.taz' or something file in the pub/Linux/Incoming/Newspak
directory on sunsite...

Important: if you grabbed the sources, all the docs are already there so you
don't need to do it twice.

>: UUCP:
>: -----
>: I can't get it to dial out, probably due to the new device names for the
>: serial lines (Peter, why change the names ???).  I changed the Devices in
>: /usr/lib/uucp/devices from ttys1 to ttyS1 but uucp reports: 
>: 	ERROR: no matching ports defined

that was operator error.
I updated all my old config files *except one*.
now fixed...

>: Shadow Passwords:
>: -----------------
>: What's the magic incantation to:
>: 	set a password.
>: 	have it valid for 90 days
>: 	have accounts with expired passwords for 30 days inactivated.
>: 	(also, how do I set other accounts to NOT expire and/or inactivate)?

>I don't know how a command that may do that for you. But 'man -a shadow' 
>gives you a description of the /etc/shadow file format.

the fix for me was a 'man passwd' I think.  It defines all the flags.
I'm posting this from work from memory, but I remember doing a 'passwd -D'
to list the defaults and then added a couple more flags to override them.
Peter posted something accurate on the subject within the last 3-4 days.

The (undocumented) defaults file gets written to /etc/defaults during
the process.

>: Comms:
>: ------
>: minicom won't let non-root folks to access the 'dfl' file. Why?

>There is a file /usr/local/etc/minicom.users which lists all trusted users.

>But I'm having some other troubles with minicom:
>If I have established a connection to a remote site everything is fine until
>the screen gets full. No scrolling takes place but the status line gets 
>overwritten. Anyone else out there with this problem? Or is it already fixed 
>in the new SLS release ?

I've seen the same problem or something similar with 'nnadmin'.  It goes to
the top of the screen and overwrites what was there, but it doesn't do a 
clearscreen first.  This is different behavior from previous versions because
it worked fine in previous versions, yet the news software itself wasn't changed.

>: Mounting a dos partition:
>: -------------------------
>: the new mount lets me mount a DOS partition (wow!) but the permissions are
>: such that only root can read it...how can I set things to let non-privileged
>: folks get read-access to the dos partition ??? 

>The permissions are inherited by the current settings of the users id 
>and umask. (didn't try what happens if you put a line in /etc/fstab for the 
>DOS partition(s))

on that subject, it bugs the hell out of me that the fstab man page gives no
example entries we can use...also it wouldn't hurt to have a few examples in
/etc/fstab for frequently-used-entries.  The fstab format is virtually totally
undocumented.

>File Links
>----------
>Some utilities like compress are stored several times instead of using links. 
>This surely wastes some diskspace. But maybe the cause is not in the SLS . 
>If I remeber it right I installed diskseries a twice because I had some 
>troubles with diskerrors (I'm using "recycled" disks :-)
>Certainly I haven't found all missing links. I should browse all directories 
>sorted by filesize to do that. 

yes, there are LOTS of such cases because Peter seems to be religious about
not having soft links :-(

additional semi-complaints:
---------------------------

There are MANY, MANY, MANY commands with no man pages including such important
things as uugetty and the new sysv init....I'm going to go through things and 
try to make some type of partial list.

My bitch in this regard is that I've installed uugetty from sources in the past
and I know that there are man pages in the sources.  It bothers me that they seem
to get dropped as part of being included into SLS.

Same with the new init...it caused considerable pain for me to totally guess what
needed to be put there.  Not a good situation, but (again) livable if you consider
the current SLS to be a beta for the coming Linux 1.0000000

-- 
   ---------   Vince Skahan   ----- vds7789@aw101.iasl.ca.boeing.com ------- 
  Hypocrisoda - the diet soda you drink so you can have an extra piece of 
                 fudge without fear of gaining weight.