Q40/Linux Journal
                        Issue #2

www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Pines/5865/q40lin.html
Editor: Timothy Swenson (swensont@lanset.com)


Editor's Forumn

I got some positive feedback from the first issue of the Q40/Linux
Journal.  I noticed a number of people at the QL 2000 show carrying it
around.  In all I'm glad I did it and hope to continue doing issues.

Q40/Linux is not the only thing in my life.  I'm working on other QL
projects (Turbo Manual, learning TurboPTR, etc.).  I've also got some
non-computer hobbies eating my time.   I'm making sure that I spend
some time working on Linux.  I'm actually hoping to start supporting
Linux professionally.

So, here is the 2nd issue of the Q40/Linux Journal.  Hope you enjoy
it.


Tip of the Month

I don't know I'm the only one who did not know this, but the
CTRL-ALT-DEL key combination will send INIT a SIGTERM and will cleanly
shutdown Linux.  I got into a situation where I could not get a shell,
and so my only solution was to reset the Q40.  Since the disks were
not unmounted properly, I spent about 5-10 minutes in fsck the next
time Linux booted.  Finding the CTRL-ALT-DEL solution was much nicer.

If you are in X-windows and it seems to lock up, a CTRL-ALT-BACKSPACE
will kill X-windows and return you to the console prompt.


Backing up to Floppy

Having spent some time being a Unix system administrator, I know how
important backing up data can be.  Typical Unix systems backup whole
file systems to tape.  On the Q40, we have the software to do it, but
we don't have access to tape drives.  For some, having a CD-R is a
good way to backup data.  For most of us, floppies is about the only
way to back data up.

Backing up to floppies can take time, but the standard Linux tools
does not allow for easily spreading a backup across multiple disks. 
Looking around www.linux.org, I found an application that can do this.
Span is a utility that takes the output from a program like tar, and
spreads it across a number of diskettes.  Span knows when one disk is
full and prompts you for the next disk.

Span can be found a the following location:

   users.gtn.net/fraserm/span.html
   users.gtn.net/fraserm/span-0.2.4.tar.gz

I downloaded the tar file, transfered it to the Q40, ungzipped it, and
untared it.

   % gzip -d span-0.2.4.tar.gz
   % tar -xvf span-0.2.4.tar

This put the files in the directory span-0.2.4.

Span comes as source code and requires that it be compiled.  Without
making any changes to the source code or Make file, I did the
following:

   % make 
   % su
   % make install

The 'make install' put the executable in /usr/local/bin and puts the
man page where it 'man' can find it.

Using span is fairly easy.  The easiest way to get it to work is the
following command line:

   tar -cfz - /dir | span /dev/fd0

What this does is this:  It creates a tar file for the directory /dir
and pipes it to span and has span use the device /dev/fd0 ( the first
floppy drive).  Span prompts you for the first disk and starts putting
the data on it.  When the disk is full, span will again prompt you to
put in the next disk.  The -z option of GNU tar compresses the tar
ouput with GZIP.  This will store more data on the disks.

The disks I used were formated as MSDOS, but span seems to use it as a
raw device and it may not care if the disk is formatted at all.  The
disks I used were no longer viewable my MS-DOS.

To restore the files, do the following:

   despan /dev/fd0 | tar -xfz -

This works in just the opposite as putting the data on disk.  Despan
will prompt you for the first disk and then start pulling the data off
the disk and feed it to tar.  

I had problems running span as a user, so I resorted to running it as
root.  I think the problem I had is using the -l "label" option of
span.  It kept spitting out an error about the disk not being
previously written by span.  I'd avoid using the -l option.

I did find one major problem with span.  It reacts in a bad way to a
SIGTERM signal (kill).  It starts outputing that it recieved a kill
signal and is aborting.  This message is repeated over and over again,
locking up the console for other uses.  a SIGKILL (kill -9) should
work, as SIGKILL is non-trapable by a program.

When backing up your data, I'd recommend numbering the diskettes so
that you can have them in the proper order when restoring the data.

   
Installing MySQL
   By Claus Graf (cgraf@q40.de)

According to the MySQL reference manual, "MySQL is a very fast,
multi-threaded, multi-user and robust SQL (Structured Query Language)
database server. For Unix and OS/2 platforms, MySQL is basically free;
for Microsoft platforms you must get a MySQL license after a trial
time of 30 days. The MySQL home page (http://www.mysql.com/) provides
the latest information about MySQL." As the Q40 is Microsoft free, you
can happily use MySQL.

Since there is no RPM with a m68k binary of MySQL you need to get the
Source RPM.  I am using the one out of SuSE Linux 6.4 PowerPC Edition.
The source RPM package, is independant of the hardware architecture
and any Linux distribution that contains the MySQL sources should be
suitable.

After mounting the CDROM and locating the MySQL source package you can
install it by typing

   % rpm -i /cdrom/full-names/src/mysql-3.22.32-55.src.rpm

Your version number of MySQL might be different, of course. After
that, some new files appear in /usr/src/redhat/SOURCES:

   DBI-1.13.tar.gz
   Data-ShowTable-3.3.tar.gz
   Data-ShowTable-3.3.dif
   Msql-Mysql-modules-1.2210.tar.gz
   mysql-3.22.32.dif
   mysql-3.22.32.tar.gz

At first only the files mysql-3.22.32.tar.gz and mysql-3.22.32.dif are
necessary.  sql-Mysql-modules are Perl modules for MySQL that need the
BI/BD interface. Data-ShowTable is also a Perl module for formatted
output of results of database queries.  Now copy mysql-3.22.32.tar.gz
to the place where you want to compile the sources and uncompress and
unpack the source data:

   % gzip -d mysql-3.22.32.tar.gz
   % tar xvf mysql-3.22.32.tar
   % cd mysql-3.22.32
   % cp /usr/src/redhat/SOURCES/mysql-3.22.32.dif .

The last command puts the diff file into the source directory. With
the patch command you can apply small changes to the data in order to
fix bugs etc:

   % patch -p1 < mysql-3.22.32.dif

I had to skip two patch operations, the rest did work well. I don't
know the reason for that.  You can find more on how to apply patches
in the file INSTALL-SOURCE, chapter "Applying patches".

Now you're ready for compilation. This is done by the usual configure
and make runs. It's described in detail in the file
INSTALL-SOURCE-GENERIC. Here are the steps to do in short form:

   % ./configure
   % make
   % make check
   % make install
   % make clean
   % ldconfig
   % scripts/mysql_install_db

The whole procedure takes a lot of time (hours). I'm waiting for a Q60
:-).

Now you're ready to run. Before you can do anything with the database
system, you have to start the MySQL server:

   % safe_mysqld &

Administration is done with the "mysqladmin" program. For example,
check out if the server really is running by

   % mysqladmin version

and then shutdown the server with

   % mysqladmin shutdown

For the sake of security you should also set a password, this is again
done (after restarting the server) with mysqladmin:

   % mysqladmin -u root password new_password

Here you have to replace "new_password" with the one you want to have.

If you want to explore the existing databases and tables, use the
"mysqlshow" command.  Here are some simple sample commands (if you've
set a password, you need the -p option and you have to type in the
password after submitting the command) :

   % mysqlshow -p
   % mysqlshow -p mysql
   % mysqlshow -p mysql db

If you want to pass SQL commands to the DBMS, there is the "mysql"
command. Here is one example with a select statement. The password can
also be supplied directly, but then everyone who is looking over your
shoulder can read it:

   % mysql -pmy_password -e "select host, db, user from db" mysql

In order to get into that I suggest that you read the chapter
"Post-installation setup and testing" in the file INSTALL-SOURCE. The
main manual in the ./Docs directory is very good and describes
everything in detail, but is is also very long and it takes a while to
find what you're looking for.

If you like to produce a m68k binary RPM of MySQL you may try

    % rpm --rebuild MySQL-VERSION.src.rpm

I haven't done that yet and cannot guarantee that it works.

MySQL is a fairly complex application.  There are a number of
commercial  books that cover using MySQL.  To example books are:

   MySQL, Paul DuBois, New Riders
   MySQL & mSQL, O'Reilly & Associates

At www.mysql.com is an online version of a manual that includes a
tutorial.


Adding Themes to WindowMaker

I've decided to make WindowMaker my default window manager.  There
seems to be a fair amount of support in the Linux community for it,
versus the lack of support for fvwm95, the default window manager for
Red Hat 5.2.

A Theme in WindowMaker is a overall look for the window manager.  It
includes a background image, a different look for menus (but still the
same menus), a different font, and so on.  I ran across Themes when I
was looking into the different window managers available on the Q40.

The web site www.themes.org, is a repository for themes for many
different window managers.  The web page wm.themes.org has a listing
of all of the themes for WindowMaker.  The best way to get a feel for
what a Theme is, is to check out this web site and see all of the
examples.

I browsed around the web site and found a couple of themes that I
wanted to try.  I downloaded them, put them on floppy, and sneaker
netted them to the Q40.  

The themes are in a gzip tar file.  The files go into the ~/GNUstep/
Library/WindowMaker directory.  Then do the following

   % gzip -d file.tar.gz
   % tar -xvf file.tar

The files should be untarred to the proper directory.  The next step
is to start up WindowMaker and select a new theme.  Before doing this,
make a backup of the files in ~/GNUstep/Defaults/ directory.  I ran
into one Theme that seemed to have a problem and caused WindowMaker to
core dump on start up.  Since I could not run WindowMaker, I could not
change the Theme back.  I had to move the files in ~/GNUstep/Defaults/
aside and only then could I restart WindowMaker.

Once in WindowMaker, select the menu (right mouse) and then select
   Appearance
      Themes
        select Theme from the list.

The new Theme should take affect in a few seconds (give it time to
read in the new Background image).  That's all there is to it.