Naming confusion

Mon Nov 8 12:12:04 PST 2004

I know, and I agree. Right now, I am thinking that the next time that I 
have to upgrade hardware, it will have to be a MAC.

Lloyd Hayes

Email: lloyd545220-trucker at yahoo.com
URL: http://TalkingStaff.bravehost.com 
E-FAX Number: (208) 248-6590

Chad Leigh -- Shire.Net LLC wrote:

> Hi.  This is sent OFF LIST
>
> If you ever get tired of the time you spend trying to get things 
> working with the stuff you are doing now, and futzing around and 
> stuff, just bite the bullet and buy an iBook.  You can run all the 
> same stuff (including X) as on FreeBSD and Linux, plus it just works.  
> When you pull your truck into a Flying J or whereever and hook up to 
> the WIFI, it will just work.   All my laptops and desktops are Mac OS 
> X.  My servers are all FreeBSD (I run a web and email hosting company 
> -- actually 1 Linux server for some special java processing).  I ran a 
> Linux desktop for a while but it was just too much hassle and time 
> spent trying to get simple things to work.
>
> iBooks start around $1k and are a good value and they just work.  They 
> are unix based, but have mainstream app support, a GUI that just 
> works, and for the techno nerds :-) you also can run X, and all your 
> favorite open source apps.
>
> good luck!
> Chad
>
> ps: I don't work for Apple or anything.  Just that it seems you are 
> spending an awful amount of time trying to get simple things to work.  
> Time that could be better spent elsewhere I assume.
>
> On Nov 7, 2004, at 11:58 AM, Lloyd Hayes wrote:
>
>> Thanks for the reply. I liked what you said, and it pretty much sums 
>> up what I've seen all across the UNIX world. BSD and Linux seem to be 
>> geared towards permanent locations and for regular repeated types of 
>> projects. Mobility seems to a available, but on a very limited scale. 
>> However, there are people out there doing just this. I would really 
>> like read about their experiences with problems and solutions.
>>
>> As for using a Mac. I have always considered the Mac a superior 
>> machine, but their sales structure turns me off. They end up being 
>> too expensive. On my recommendation, my brother bought a Mac desktop. 
>> He like it so well that he bought a Mac laptop too. He's works as a 
>> Nuclear Analyst and a couple of years ago, he changed companies to 
>> work as head of department for a new company starting up. The people 
>> in the IT department are always dropping into his office to check his 
>> laptop. They check everyone's laptops which are used within the 
>> company. They are always wishing that the M$ operating laptops worked 
>> as well as his MAC.
>>
>> I've considered putting Darwin on my computers, but from what I have 
>> read, there are not enough PC type drivers for it. What originally 
>> drew me to FreeBSD was that the Mac OS-X was based on FreeBSD.
>>
>> But I have gotten side-tracked off of the subject.
>>
>> If I read your answer right, I can put any name in here like 
>> "traveler2.hayes.org", and as long as it's connecting to the Internet 
>> and it's not a server connected from the Internet, it should be OK. 
>> Right?
>>
>> Lloyd Hayes
>>
>> Email: lloyd545220-trucker at yahoo.com
>> URL: http://TalkingStaff.bravehost.com E-FAX Number: (208) 248-6590
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Matthew Seaman wrote:
>>
>>> On Sat, Nov 06, 2004 at 11:49:13PM -0700, Lloyd Hayes wrote:
>>>
>>> [ Hostname changes when going on-line from different locations ]
>>>
>>>>> don't worry about it.
>>>>>
>>>> With XFree86, it is an issue.
>>>> It appears that Xorg won't configure correctly without it. Although 
>>>> I won't swear that's the problem with Xorg.
>>>>
>>>
>>> One problem you will run into, with either flavour of X Windows, is to
>>> do with the authentication mechanism.  X is designed to be network
>>> transparent -- so I can run an X program somewhere else on the net and
>>> have it put its windows etc. on my local desktop.  See xauth(1) for a
>>> program you can use to manage access in that way.  The problem is that
>>> the records xauth(1) keeps in ~/.Xauthority are based on the machine's
>>> hostname -- and that includes connecting to the local desktop too, as
>>> a degenerate case of 'across the network'.  So if your hostname
>>> changes, suddenly you may well have to quit your current X session,
>>> log out and log in again to reestablish those credentials.
>>>
>>> There are other programs, like sendmail(8), ipfw(8), natd(8), which
>>> will tend to have an adverse reaction to the hostname and IP number
>>> changing out from beneath them unless very carefully configured.
>>>
>>> Now, usually this doesn't pose too much of a problem as typically
>>> dhclient(8) isn't configured to modify the hostname.  The trouble
>>> happens when the authentication system tries to *verify* the host
>>> name.  It does that by looking up the name in the DNS, which returns
>>> one or more IP numbers.  Then it looks up those IP numbers, and counts
>>> the name as verified if any of them return the original hostname.
>>> [Well, there's a bit more to it than that involving various other DNS
>>> record types, but that's the basic idea]
>>>
>>> You can see that there are going to be problems with this if you're
>>> moving between different connectivity providers:
>>>
>>>    * Either you choose your own hostname and stick with it -- except
>>>      that the IP number you get from the ISP won't resolve back to
>>>      that hostname.  In this case you could use a 'dynamic dns' type
>>>      service, as provided by eg. http://www.dyndns.org/ -- not
>>>      recommending that serive in particular, just using it as an
>>>      example.  However this is normally used by home users and
>>>      precise timings of updates etc. may make it unsuitable for you.
>>>      You'll have to experiment.
>>>
>>>      Note that the hostname doesn't actually *have* to correspond to
>>>      any of the IP numbers configured on any of the interfaces, but
>>>      that most software will assume that it does unless configured
>>>      otherwise.  And it can be quite tricky to configure some
>>>      packages to cope with that sort of setup.
>>>
>>>    * You accept the hostname that goes with the IP number dished out
>>>      by the ISP temporarily.  That means logging out and back in
>>>      again when you go on-line.
>>>
>>>> I've been using my backup computer as a test bed for the various 
>>>> operating systems.  M$ has never been real reliable. But my virus 
>>>> software seems to be blocking viruses almost daily which are aimed 
>>>> at one Microsoft product or another. It has become apparent to me 
>>>> that any computer that I have which is connected to the Internet 
>>>> needs to be using non-M$ products. I had hoped to make a painless 
>>>> transfer to one of the Linux or BSD products, much as I did about 
>>>> 11 years ago when I jumped from CBM and Apple computers to PCs. (13 
>>>> years of using CBM computers and only a couple of years of using 
>>>> Apples.)
>>>>
>>>
>>> Have you considered using a MacOS X machine?  It has all of the
>>> reliability and power of a Unix box, together with a user interface
>>> which has had tens of thousands of man-hours put into polishing away
>>> all of those sort of usability problems.  It's very different indeed
>>> from the old MacOS.
>>>
>>> In theory you can configure a FreeBSD portable to be almost as
>>> flexible configuration-wise as a MacOS box is.  But it isn't as easy,
>>> and it certainly isn't for complete beginners.  As you say, in so many
>>> words: FreeBSD demands that you learn.  Once you've got over the
>>> initial hump most people find it quite rewarding and a very pleasant
>>> OS to use.
>>>
>>>
>>>> So far, it has been anything but painless. The priorities of a UNIX 
>>>> system is far different then what I've experienced. And I have yet 
>>>> to get a UNIX type system developed enough to access the Internet. 
>>>> One challenge or another keeps cropping up.
>>>>
>>>> So, it seems that I'm hitting text books again, and asking 
>>>> questions during my spare time....
>>>>
>>>> The question that I keep asking myself is if I can get to a point 
>>>> with FreeBSD, or any UNIX type system, where I am comfortable with 
>>>> it and I can make it adapt to my changing environment. At this 
>>>> point, I feel that if I can learn enough about it, FreeBSD is my 
>>>> best answer. My reasoning is that while newer programs are always 
>>>> put into usage on any OS, you can usually still manually configure 
>>>> everything with FreeBSD.
>>>>
>>>
>>> Yes.  When people say that FreeBSD is a 'server OS', one of the things
>>> that they imply is that it will be configured with a permanent network
>>> connection, unchanging hostname and all the rest.  That's FreeBSD's
>>> natural environment and where it is easiest to deal with.
>>> What you want to do is -- I wouldn't say unnatural -- but certainly
>>> less usual.  Consequently there's less experience of people building
>>> that sort of configuration, less documentation, more bugs, more things
>>> that are perhaps a bit awkwardly conceived.  While books will cover
>>> much of what you need, chances are they're missing odd crucial little
>>> nuggets here and there.  Usually such hints can be found on the web --
>>> in blog pages or bits of HTML that people have put up documenting how
>>> they did something.  Read it with a judicial eye, as often it will
>>> make odd unwarranted assumptions about exactly what software you're
>>> using or exactly what you're trying to do.  It's the raw
>>> documentation, if you like, that the more polished works like the
>>> Handbook are distilled out of.
>>>
>>>
>>>> Since many of the processes running on FreeBSD require a 'named' 
>>>> computer, I need to know how to handle this. Otherwise, as it says 
>>>> in "The Complete FreeBSD" book, there will be processes which will 
>>>> not run, or else they will not run correctly on my computer. The 
>>>> answer to this problem does not seemed to be addressed while using 
>>>> 'dhclient' in any of the printed information that I could find.
>>>>
>>>
>>> Actually, there isn't "an" answer to this problem.  There's a whole
>>> series of answers dealing with separate bits of software that may or
>>> may not be running on your system.  That means you can use a divide
>>> and conquer strategy, but as we so often say around here "show us the
>>> details".  Apart from anything else, that should let us identify
>>> exactly which piece of software is causing that specific problematic
>>> effect.
>>>
>>>     Cheers,
>>>
>>>     Matthew
>>>
>>>
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