[H-GEN] Re: Unix vs NT [long; both informative and then religious]

Doug Young dougy at gargoyle.apana.org.au
Mon Aug 2 07:33:59 EDT 1999


(Note reply-to: being general at humbug.org.au vs "Doug Young" <dougy at gargoyle.apana.org.au>)

> /proc is a ``special'' filesystem -- the ``files'' within it are
> directly linked to kernel driver code; when you write a kernel driver,
> you typically provide a read (and maybe a write) method for a file in
> /proc.
>
I'm afraid I don't understand the above ....... I was advised to check that
the file in question had a "1" in it ...... I'd have have thought a logical
way to do that would be with a text editor like vi or emacs so thats just
what I did ...... so what should I have done in order to determine the
presence or otherwise of the elusive "1" ??

> So make sure you've done the ``echo 1 > /proc/whatever'' -- checking
> the contents of that file isn't a way to do that.

Well all that happened when I did that was I lost the ability to send email
so now the quickest way I know to get it fixed is do a total re-install ...
is there
a way to reverse the effects of that command so I can avoid that ??
>
> Of course, this also happens when you've not compiled in support for
> whatever functionality you're trying to access.

hmmmmm ..... I was guessing the dreaded "compile" woul rear its ugly head
any minute

> what do you mean by "subnet entry" ?

When one does a normal internet configuration, there is no need to do
anything with the dialog boxes boxes that ask for "subnet"  ..... if the
machine
happens to be a gateway for a LAN, is there then a need to enter any value
in the dialog boxes otherwise left blank ??
>
> you do not have to issue a "route -net <blah>" command for your ppp
device,
> as there is no actual network there to route to, it is a peer to peer
> connection.  Add a (default) route to the other peer,

by "other peer" do you mean I need to mess with routing or something on LAN
boxes other than the actual gateway one ??

> Make sure you add a network entry for eth0, however, as you will want to
be
> delivering packets to specific machines on a generic network, not routing
> all packets through a gateway.
>
come again ?????  ....  I thought the mere existence of an eth0 was proof of
a local area network ...... stuff has no problem getting from one LAN box to
another one in Windows applications ..... is there something different that
happens when a *nix box is lurking around ??

As for the rest ..... unlike a lot of people I have another life apart from
messing with computers ..... or at least I did til I started trying to learn
something about *nix ..... my immediate interest is in getting the basic
stuff working, not spending the next ten years reading thousands of pages of
stuff
in the hope of finding the answer to something that a competent author could
have explained in twenty words.


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