2001-Dec-07

I never tested antelope yet. startx was gone!

apt-get install xbase-clients

This installed Xlibmesa3; it said: "Direct Rendering Infrastructure (DRI) may not work on your system because your kernel is not using the version of the interface required by this version of the Mesa/XFree86 modules." Then it had link to http://www.xfree86.org/~alanh/.

There was another message later that said xinit doesn't listen to TCP, so you need to do remove a "--nolisten tcp" in /etc/X11/xinit/xserverrc if you want it. (But it says this has no effect if started via a display manager like xdm.)

When I typed in "startx" (remotely), I received "X: cannot stat /etc/X11/X (No such file or directory), aborting." Just like with the other machine (see 14/Nov/2001). So I did "ln -s /usr/bin/X11/XF86_S3 /etc/X11/X". Then it couldn't find config file (also as before), so I did "ln -s /etc/X11/XF86Config /etc/XF86Config".

Maybe before I made changes I should have made a list of packages before and after to compare!

So I was able to start startx, and my mom saw some window manager and xclients running. I killed it and restarted wdm, but it didn't work, so then rebooted and it worked.

/var/log/wdm.log had: "wdmLogin warning: WINGs: could not load widget images file: could not open file", but it was still working.

The webpage about DRI (above) said "XFree86 4.1.0" and the xbase-clients is 4.1.0-9 -- this is a little confusing since the startx started saying "XFree86 Version 3.3.6". Now I see: xserver-s3 (XF86_S3) is 3.3.6-11potato. I wonder why it didn't upgrade and why it works.

Realized that telnet and ftp was enabled again via inetd -- even though I had commented and restarted earlier. Debian installer forcing choice on me :) So I removed telnetd and ftpd packages.

Later, I received a message for admin@sigmahosting. The machine had been cracked via old ssh. (I no longer actively maintain that machine. I am not the admin for this box!) A new uid 0 user was added, but the log files were all there. Nothing, as far as I saw was modified. I should have run the default integrity checking script.

Around 11:00 p.m., I talked to Brian on the phone and began updating it. This is an old Linux 2.0.36 kernel running Debian Linux 2.1 (Slink). Before it hadn't worked, because the Apt sources.list was wrong -- even though it was directly from the stable potato webpage. It would only grab a few files and it removed the apt package. Anyways, I made the sources.list like the one I normally use for "Potato". After, a "dist-upgrade", I had many, many prompts and choices. I used most defaults, and later had to manually edit some configs.

I need to make some brochures. I am going to try xfig and tgif which I have looked at before, and also try Impress.

Installing xfig: In /usr/pkgsrc/graphics/xfig did a "make TARGET=bin-install bin-install" it fetched and started building some source. It died because old transfig-3.2.3 installed. (Maybe I should have done an "update" instead of bin-install?) (I didn't even know what it is ... "TransFig is a set of tools for creating TeX documents with graphics which are portable, in the sense that they can be printed in a wide variety of environments.")

"pkg_delete transfig-3.2.3" was successful.

After about five or ten minutes, another "make TARGET=bin-install bin-install" was finished.

So I started to use it; it looks like it does a lot and it is a little confusing -- I better read the docs first.