AltME groups: search

If you work in a terminal emulator in an X window, you can just start 
graphical apps from the command line

Has anyone a link to a good GCC toolchain tutorial. Things like: 
How to make static-link-libs, etc.

I already googled but there isn't really a lot available...

Any XEN or network configuration gurus here? I have setup a XEN system 
but have some problems with the network configuration.

Peter, thanks. Is the shebang line absolutely necessary? Here is 
what I had in mind for the crontab line:

0 * * * * /usr/bin/rebview -s -script /home/lat/r/dar/backup.r


When I use a shebang line a permissions request dialog pops up even 
though I have secure set to allow.

Yes, I know. I forgot about that and put sudo in the script. I can 
take sudo out easy enough, but then the script won't be able to make 
directories. How can the script run as root without having to ask 
me for a password?

I think you need to set that particular cron job for the root user. 
I'm not sure you can switch user level inside your current user to 
root inside a cron job.

I'll have to think about it for awhile, but I don't remember giving 
root a different password from my own. Can I us sudo to change the 
password for root?

Is there a default password?

no. I think it's beyond my expertise now. :-) I have only tried this 
in debian where there is a root user available. some distributions 
are root-less.

Thanks anyway Henrik.  I've been painting myself into a corner alot 
lately.

I'm learning fast, but there is a lot to learn.  More than one person 
will ever know, I think.

I suppose I could start the script with sudo from the command line, 
have timers in the script, and just leave the script running all 
the time. Would that use up a lot of cpu power?

Louis; do yourself a favour.  Read up on chmod, chown and chgrp. 
 In particular chmod.  These aren't the easiest of topics at first 
(mainly due to the crap involved with the 1970's octal numbers and 
some poor choice of names).   But after the initial weirdness the 
concepts are really straight forward.  Read, Write, Execute across 
User (the owner), Group, Others (not in group) and All (world).


There is an overlay of weirdness with directories and Execute (create 
a file in the dir) and a special mode bit etc.  But again ... grunt 
through until your brain tells you that you get it.  It's important, 
imho.


Flailing around with sudo and su (and root powers in general) is 
not the safest of ways to run Linux.  Potentially lowers the security 
to the level of your average Windows box ... nearly none.  :)    
 It can seem like a pain sometimes, but it isn't, it's part and parcel 
of a secure os.  BG has tainted the world to think it is inconvenient. 
Much like a lock maker giving everyone the same key.  A stupid "convenience" 
that wouldn't fly when it came to your car or house or bank, but 
PC users have grown up with and expect for reasons I have never understood. 
 (This last part is simple ranting - sorry about that)

btiffin, thanks. I like Linux. I did a lot of experimenting when 
I first made the switch, and that helped speed up the learning process. 
There is so much to learn that I doubt that any one person could 
ever know it all, but I've already learned enough to be able to do 
more than I was able to do with windows after many years of use. 
My rant: I hate the Windows registry file!

As for my script, I decided not to use cron. Once I learned how cron 
works, I realized it was not suitable for use with this script. I 
just put a timer in the script, and everything is working great. 
 I was afraid that the timer would take a lot of cpu power, but it 
doesn't even take enough power to be noticable. This also eliminated 
the need to go to root.

Cool.  As Bill Marley (if there was a Bill Marley) might have sang; 
"No windows, no cry.  Everything's gonna be all right ".


Yes, sleep timers should use next to zero CPU.  And if you need a 
task to be running across boots and crashes, checkout monit.  monit 
is a process monitor (there are others) that I like using as it alleviates 
figuring out the details of the run-levels and init scripts.

Wow, I finished a configuration and setup journey the last couple 
of weeks. Linux is far from being straight-forward to configure... 
but which OS is at all.


Anyway, if someone wants to get some hints about xen, exim, dovecot, 
ssmtp, assp, lighttpd, iptables let me know. I'm now quite good in 
all this... steep learning curve.

Yep, I just spent at least 4 weeks learning how to compile and install 
a video driver in Kubuntu. I had to do a distro upgrade because the 
graphics card I bought was too new for the OS. I became a little 
more proficient in the console over the last four weeks. :)

Janeks, the necessity to type './' before a filename to launch a 
command in the current directory was added for security reasons. 
(You could be tricked into running a different command than expected.) 
I don't recommend changing your path to make it easier, you could 
be bitten one day.

I've been using that script for 6 years without a problem, so I suspect 
that this present problem has something to do with Linux.

Hi Anton! You have a good eye. I'll check that drive C:

I'll let you know what happens, but it will be a few hours. I'm taking 
my wife out to eat to celebrate our 41st wedding anniversary! She 
just let me know she is dressed and ready to go.

What console is he running?  Under Konsole the list of encodings 
is overwhelming.  (From the Settings menu).

If it's xterm, then ... I dunno, but regardless, if it is xterm or 
other, drop a note and we'll track down an appropriate place to tweak 
the default encoding used by his REBOL console (whatever terminal 
he uses) session.


It might be easier (some gui menu), but it could well look something 
like

XTerm*locale: true

XTerm*font:             -misc-fixed-medium-r-normal--20-200-75-75-c-100-iso10646-1

in an X config file


From the root text console for REBOL/Core, we'd have to look into 
that as well; been there, kinda done that, too many details, forget 
all details, but keep foggy clue where to start looking ...  :)

Petr: "not talking unicode here" - that's where you are wrong. If 
he's not using UTF-8, then he'll have a huge load of problems in 
general. if he's using utf-8... then all should be fine, as long 
as he does not try to display the text in View.

is it a known bug ?

Ask that person to provide a small code example showing the bug, 
and what platform / Rebol version they are using.

but it smells. as C5A1 is a regular czech "š"

1B1B5B smells like a color:)

Hi, I have Debian-4 running in a VMWare the only problem is, that 
I'm not able to get the network started. I can't get eth0 up and 
running.

just downloaded vmware ESXi, but dunno how to proceed with it. Need 
to study it a bit more :-)

So, the first strange thing is that I get a: "Bind socket to interface: 
No such device".

And, I get a bunch of "pcie_portdrv_probe ... has invalid IRQ.Check 
vendor BIOS". Whatever this means.

The strange thing is, I think I made a copy of the VM from an other 
one, where the network is working.

I might just make a new copy of the running VM ;-)

how copy a file from a samba server with a space in it ?

Need an adice from Linux gurus. My webserver might get kind of hacked. 
It is hidden behind 5 firewall nodes, and only ports forwarded (= 
no public IP address there) are 110, 80, 25, 21. What actually is 
happening is, that I found around 20K spam emails in mail queue :-(


I provide Squirrel Mail to few of my friends, but it is rather old 
version 1.4.3a. When I start sendmail service, I can see two processes 
started, sendmail, and sm-msp-queue, so I wonder if the second one 
is valid? It might be for sending mails from localhost?

After some time, many of processes are started:

root      5069  0.0  0.5  6836 2680 ?        S    22:30   0:00 sendmail: 
accepting connections

smmsp     5078  0.0  0.4  7144 2332 ?        S    22:30   0:00 sendmail: 
Queue [runner-:-00]:10:00 for /var/spool/clientmqueue

root      5194  0.0  0.6  7300 3412 ?        S    22:58   0:00 sendmail: 
./m91Kw05b005192 msa-mx6.hinet.net.: client greeting

root      5199  0.0  0.6  7584 3504 ?        S    22:58   0:00 sendmail: 
./m91L1x5b005199 mx01.uchicago.edu.: client greeting

root      5230  0.0  0.6  7292 3388 ?        S    22:59   0:00 sendmail: 
./m91KxO5b005213 relay2.peterlink.ru.: user open

root      5239  0.0  0.7  7444 3764 ?        S    23:00   0:00 sendmail: 
./m91Kxd5b005220 148.240.4.32.: user open

root      5261  0.1  0.6  7568 3300 ?        S    23:01   0:00 sendmail: 
server 123-204-0-27.dynamic.seed.net.tw [123.204.0.27] (may be forged) 
cmd read

root      5269  0.0  0.6  7568 3252 ?        S    23:01   0:00 sendmail: 
server [61.110.143.2] cmd read

root      5271  0.4  0.6  7568 3252 ?        S    23:02   0:00 sendmail: 
server c-98-235-97-52.hsd1.nj.comcast.net [98.235.97.52] cmd read

root      5272  0.0  0.6  7568 3240 ?        S    23:02   0:00 sendmail: 
server dynamic-98-140-229-24.dsl.cavtel.net [98.140.229.24] cmd read

root      5273  0.5  0.6  7292 3156 ?        S    23:02   0:00 sendmail: 
server [222.162.139.49] cmd read

root      5274  0.0  0.1  3336  796 pts/3    R    23:02   0:00 ps 
-aux

Any clues where should I look to remove the hack?

Your 5 FW don't help if port 25 (SMTP) is open. Properly configure 
Sendmail to not relay spams (lot of online documentation about that) 
or drop it and use Postfix instead (see http://www.postfix.org/spam.html). 
I'm not a Linux guru, but we ran with enough issues with sendmail 
a few years ago in my company to know how bad it is.

But I am scared a abit, as if Squirrel would be vulnerable, it sends 
mails from localhost, and then it would be really bad. Time to finally 
build new machine, install vmware ESXi, and some new distro upon 
that.

Take a look at ASSP. This one runs on port 25 and performs a lot 
of checks. And it drops the connection if traffic is identified as 
spam.

And, is there a list of required libX... ?

Just playing with Ubuntu JeOS.   How does one download stuff without 
a GUI ?  I tried wget and that isn't available.

so what does one use in a server environment to download stuff?

How does one launch a new shell from an existing ? bash shell

I'm talking about a dynamic lib I compiled myself that I use from 
Rebol.

I have switched to a static linking in which case it works. But I 
don't understand why the system can find dynamic libs in /usr/local/lib.

Those other libs are selfcompiled ones as well.

On Windows I start my Rebol scripts with such a line:


D:\rebol\sdk-2-7-5\tools\rebface.exe -s "D:\rebol\link\xpeers\users\privat\_incl.r" 
"%1"

This is the default action for .R files.

How can I mimic such a behaviour on Linux (only command line no GUI)? 
I tried a shebang line but doesn't work.

Ok, the shebang line has to have a Linux LF only otherwise the CR 
gets appended to the next argument.

And now there is the poblem. You have a script that runs on Windows 
and Linux. On Linux via shebang. This implies Linux return style 
even if you edit it on Windows.

How could I run a Rebol script from the command line (without using 
Rebol's own console). 

I've tried typing : "rebview.ewe myfile.r" (idem with rebcore) form 
a windows console, but the output disappear instantaneously.

I would guess you want a paragraph to be parsed until two newlines 
occur?

I suggest you take a look at the makedoc parser. it does exactly 
that. I'm not sure how to solve that problem.

Geomol: my fault, thanks a lot! I didn't notice I've used "title" 
for 2 different purpose. Changing the variable name solved the issue.

I've somewhat modified the TextMate bundle for REBOL for e TextEditor, 
and made a new theme for it : http://tinyurl.com/dxt89p. I someone 
is interested, let me now.

I played with the TextMate bundle at one point (when I had a mac 
running here), and I think Will Arp or Chris Ross-Gill have also 
done some work on it.

There is a bug in an older version of the textmate bundle, causing 
textmate to very quickly fill an error log with megabytes of errors.

Help! : how can I use parse to handle this case: a match will starts 
at  "//" only if the char before "//" is not ":" (like in "http:://www...") 
?

>> X: complement {:}
== "
>> length? X
== 1
>> X/1
== #"

This looks like a bug to me

I have a question for you rebol experts :)

Hi.  Just to thank to all of you who helped me starting with REBOL. 
My markup engine is getting better now. I even build a little page 
with it : http://kib2.free.fr/REBOL/index.html

(and your page needs a title)

Reichart: Have you seen a game called Yoomp for Atari 8bit ?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TNxICcU3bPo

Well, something like that... I'm messing with that tunnel effect 
... and it works :)

I did some special-effects demos a few years ago, maybe I can advise 
on techniques to improve it.

Well... it was supossed to be just an tunnel algorythm test and tunning... 
:)
My goal is to write Game like yoomp for C64 :)

Now when I think about it.. if I already have tunnel moving in rebol.... 
it would be quite easy to add a jumping ball to it.... :)
Will upload something usefull later in the day...

@Henrik: Im into demoscene :) Im one of those retrofreaks.... :) 
I made couple of never released games during 80s and 90s... As a 
matter of fact I never stopped coding for C64... Graphic routines, 
hardware projects, testing new effects.... Its a hobby for life....

@Steeve: I know your work :) I was impressed with galaga :) and I 
agree fully in using rebol as help for coding. I use it often to 
make table generators, and creating include files for c64 assembler.

BTW, Rebcode is  pretty good for making some pixelbased graphics. 
Cyphre made some interesting demos when it was first prototyped. 
Geomol made a voxel engine.

its rough code.... map for level should be made from tiles, and the 
moving should be twice smoother.... than it would be same as on atari....

And it uses atari resolution.... and I did scaling in software... 
each atari pixel is actually 4x4 pixels in image....
Is there a way to scale image using hardware in rebol?

yes Vlad, your code is clean, i see the inheritance of a good asm 
coder

Just remember, this was just made to find out if  calculations made 
on a napkin in a restaurant were correct :)

This script proved my math skills are still valid and now I need 
to implement them in 6510 asm... :)
Would be nice to see it in R3..... How is vid advancing in R3 ?

sure, you have to use gobs, wait a minute i rewrite your code....

probably get rid of FOR. it's a heavy mezzanine.

a FACE in R2 would almost be the equivalent, although faces are more 
complex and heavier.

I think the point of GOBs was both to be lightweight and fast and 
also to be hardware acceleratable (if that's a word :-))

That's a known bug, in CureCode already.

Btw, here are the reasons there won't be a compatible rebcode forr 
R3:

- R3 function parameter and local word references are 28% slower 
because of new function word model.

- R3 function calls are much faster because of typesets and the new 
function word model.

- There's a *lot* more natives, including all of the loop functions, 
iirc.

That first one would slow down rebcode even more than functions because 
even more of its overhead is word references. The last two mean that 
REBOL code will be a *lot* faster, so the relative speedup of rebcode 
is less.

Those reasons are why R2-style rebcode isn't worth the trouble to 
make in R3. What *would* be worth making would be a *different* rebcode 
that would be even faster :)

BrianH: could that work as a plug-in for e.g.? Or - do you think 
it is possible to have even several VMs that way? Simply a compiler? 
Maybe we could even find some small C compiler to be included with 
REBOL? (if that would make sense)

Plus you could use C as an intermediate language for a REBOL dialect 
if you like.

making some of those calculations more rebolish might help a tiny 
bit. ultimately SHOW will be the factor.

you could remove the show and see how much faster it gets by printing 
a value to the console.

Uploaded a version with repeat.... speed is still similar to previous 
versions....

see that, i do a scaling in R3:

screen: system/view/screen-gob
unless system/view/event-port [
	system/view/event-port: open [scheme: 'event]
]

pixel_size: 1x1
grid_size: 160x100 
img: make image! probe gob-size: (grid_size * pixel_size)

append screen ekran: make gob! compose [offset: 50x50 size: (gob-size 
* 4x4) draw: [scale 4 4 image img]]

do [
	boja: pick paleta 15
	change img boja grid_size
	for i 0 127 1 [
			for yy -50 49 1 [
				for xx -50 49 1 [

     rr: square-root ((xx + 0.5) * (xx + 0.5)) + ((yy + 0.5) * (yy + 0.5))
					if ((rr > 14) and (rr < 50)) [
						zz: 900 / rr
						pozicija: grid_size / 2 + as-pair xx yy
						dubina: zz - 18 / 46
						red: i + to-integer dubina * 63 + 1
						red: to integer! red // 63 / 2 + 1
						either xx = 0
							[ugao: arctangent 999999999999]
							[ugao: arctangent (yy / xx)]
						either xx >= 0
							[ugao: ugao + 360 // 360]
							[ugao: ugao + 180]
						ugao: to-integer ugao / 360 * 63
						ugao: ugao // 32
						ugao: ugao + 1
						p: level/:red/:ugao
						boja: pick paleta p
						change skip img pozicija boja 
					]
				]
			]
			show ekran
	]
]

yes... if Im going to make a game in rebol out of this, then the 
speed is a must :)

ufff.... demo from contest wont run..... Im on Ubuntu right now.... 
it cannot open sound.....

The layout produces a face hierarchy like this:

	window face
		IMAGE face
		BUTTON face


So that's two faces needing buffers refreshed whenever you do SHOW 
window.
It's faster to have just one face (the window face).

	window face

Actually, in my stargate demo (now that I look at it again more closely), 
I layout a window face with a single IMAGE face in it. I did this 
for some technical reason I can't remember, but I tried very hard 
not to make extra faces unnecessarily.

Anyway, I use a combination of techniques. I use DRAW and face/effect/DRAW 
dialect heavily, COPY image!, image datatype "bulk-set alpha", some 
face/EFFECT dialect, and finally SHOW face.

I just tried to separate math functions like square root and arctan 
with simpler constant values and speed seams to go up a bit, but 
not to much....

Ill try to make lookup tables for all visible coordinates and see 
what will happen....

changing CHANGE/DUP to POKE gives a slight speed up, but then you 
need to scale in a different way.

i made optimizations in R3, removed change/dup , parents, temp vars, 
etc...

I also replaced repeat or for structures by loops (to avoid bind/copy 
)
It changes nothing. It remains slow.
The reason is that the script does (10000 * i) iterations

in R3, by just doing iterations and a show (no computations) it takes 
4 seconds.

Then, by just adding the square-root calcul, it takes 8 seconds (2 
times slower).

i a case like that, using rebcode for math calculus in big loops 
will be really faster

Yes, I was just remembering my efforts to squeeze performance out 
of such per-pixel frame drawing and I think Rebol interpreter is 
not fast enough for such tasks. I would use the external DLL interface 
to pass your image to a C DLL function.

We need rebcode in R3.  I understand the fact that it can cause problems 
with other parts of code but if we specifically use it where it works 
it can add a tremendous boost to performance.

But talk of a new "different" rebcode...

Brian's answer was more like an excuse than a reason.

Ch is a good candidate, it allows to build c code dynamicly

do you have a little gain with this ?

	repeat i 256 [
		foreach pixel lookup [
			set [pozicija red ugao] pixel
			red: red + i - 1 // 63 / 2 + 1
			p: pick pick level red ugao
			if (p > 0) [
				boja: pick paleta p
				change/dup skip ekran/image pozicija boja pixel_size
			]
		]
		show ekran
	]

its a nice refinment of code :)

Hi. I've got a local variable "level" inside an object, defined has 
follow : "level: length? t".

If I try to print it, no problem. But  if I use "build-markup {<%level%>}", 
REBOL raises a "ERROR no-value in: level". Any idea ?

return is normally used from within a function. So you have a function 
within your object, that returns what you say?