[linrad] Re: Fedora 3

[<leif@xxxxxxxxxx>]

> I am running Fedora and may help, but I need some more information.
Very good:-)
I am not a programmer and I am far too old to be able to follow
the rapid development because of slow memory access;-)

> > It is not easy under Fedora 3. Just stopping chron and anachron
> > will cause system crashes after a while.
>
> Stopping cron should never be done on a Linux system. Stopping anacron
> is OK if you know what you are doing.
Yes. I just mentioned it will cause a crasch because stopping cron
could seem to be a good solution......

> > I have spent a lot of
> > time trying to figure out how to make chron/anachron not
> > launch updatedb but I was unable to do it.
>
> What is the problem with cron? Anything else than starting updatedb?
Yes, starting some other heavy tasks like makewhatis but updatedb
seems to be the worst one.

> The anacron package is not necessary on a system running 24/7. On such a
> system you could remove the anacron package without problems.
Yes. That is what I thought, but with my limited skils I was unable
to do it. (By the way, what is "running a 24/7"?)

> If you
> have a system that you switch on/off, where you need anacron, you should
> be able to turn off anacron with the chkconfig-command, "chkconfig
> [--level <levels>] <name> <on|off|reset>", i.e. "chkconfig anacron
> --level 345 anacron off" should do it. You may then manually run anacron
> with "service anacron on" when needed.
Now, this is too complicated to be practical.
I look for strategies that can be used by newcomers who have never
used Linux before. The only things I accept are permanent changes
that will bring the system into a state where Linrad can be started
and run properly when the computer is cold booted.


> updatedb is part of the slocate package. So removing the slocate-package
> should solve your problem.
Here it is:-) The information I could not find. It works!

Let me explain:

1) The offender is updatedb through cron or anacron.
The way I found out was with the ps command.

2) The man page about cron and the man pages it refers to
give a myriad places where cron looks for things to do.

3) I just get frustrated and skip it because I am fed up
with Fedora 3 already for a number of other reasons.

> The slocate package provides the locate command, that you can use to
> find a file on your system. It uses a database, updated by updatedb, to
> make lookups speedy.
>
> If you remove the slocate package, you lose the ability to find files in
> a fast way, and have to use the slower find command.
>
> You could also remove the /etc/cron.daily/slocate.cron, or move it out
> of that directory, say to /root/bin/ and then manually run slocate.cron
> when needed.
Yes, my old good RedHat 6.1, Mandrake 8.0 and others have the updatedb
removed from the cron list - but I had forgotten how to do it.
Sorry, slow and unreliable RAM  access;-)

I am used to run updatedb manually now and then (every three months or so)
on my Linux systems.

> > The big problem
> > with Fedora (like Windows) is that control information is stored
> > at several places and
>
> Will not comment on the Windows thing... :-)
>
> Fedora follows the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard,
> http://www.pathname.com/fhs/. So control information etc., is where it
> should be.
>
> > that the system decides that it knows better
> > than me so it will occasionally overwrite my changes and restore
> > the "important" system functions (like automatic launching of
> > updatedb)
>
> I have used Redhat and Fedora sine Redhat 4.2 and never seen this,
> except when I tried the linuxconf-program. Do you know what it is that
> overwrites what? And/or, what was is that you change?
Yes. I have 10 different Linux distributions running.
I have them on movable hard disks so I can run them on different
computers to some extent. Most of them were set up long ago,
before I had a network installed here. They were all
localhost.localdomain by default and that was not practical
when I connected all the computers in a network.

It was relatively easy to reconfigure everything with a new
host name, fixed IP addresses and so on on all systems
except Fedora 3. For some reason the command I found in my
Linux books only changed temporarily - after a reboot the
system returned to localhost.localdomain and restored other
things as well. I do not remember how I fixed it, I think
I added an extra script in /etc/rc3.d to set the network
so I can use it.


> > Under oldfashioned distributions it is trivial to remove a
> > chrontab entry and get rid of the updatedb problem.
>
> This is possible with Fedora also, see above.
Yes. I know now. I have tried it and it is OK:-)

> If you have Fedora specific questions, do not hesitate to ask.
1) Is there a fix for the memlockall() bug?
A C-program that tries to lock memory to prevent swapping
causes a system crasch.

2) How can I tell the system that I want all hard disks
that I have not used in one hour to go to sleep?
On RedHat 9 I use APM. It was trivial to get going.
Presumably the HAL activity twice a second has something
to do with this. Do you think it is safe to remove
HAL from runmode 3?

73

Leif / SM5BSZ







#############################################################
This message is sent to you because you are subscribed to
  the mailing list <linrad@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>.
To unsubscribe, E-mail to: <linrad-off@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To switch to the DIGEST mode, E-mail to <linrad-digest@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To switch to the INDEX mode, E-mail to <linrad-index@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Send administrative queries to  <linrad-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>


LINRADDARNIL