Dumb Questions

Dumb Questions

[Paul Kraus]

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What does foo stand for. It is used everywhere. I understand its just a
placeholder for the file name or what ever is pertinent to the context
it is used but I would still like to know what it means.

Paul Kraus
Network Administrator
PEL Supply Company
216.267.5775 Voice
216-267-6176 Fax
www.pelsupply.com

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Re: Dumb Questions

[Ray Olszewski]

At 09:23 AM 9/25/02 -0400, Paul Kraus wrote:
>What does foo stand for. It is used everywhere. I understand its just a
>placeholder for the file name or what ever is pertinent to the context
>it is used but I would still like to know what it means.


These days it doesn't "stand for" anything. It's just one of those 
placeholder words, like "widget" or  "gismo", just as you note.

Its history, though, has two pieces that I can think of.

First, F00 is a hex number; in the real old (punch-card) days, I recall 
system operators talking about F00F errors, for example. The step from F00F 
to FOO is small.

Second, you will often see Foo used in conjunction with Bar. Put them 
together and  ... well, I trust you can figure that one out without my help.


--
-------------------------------------------"Never tell me the odds!"--------
Ray Olszewski					-- Han Solo
Palo Alto, California, USA			  ray@comarre.com
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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Re: Dumb Questions

[pa3gcu]

On Wednesday 25 September 2002 13:23, Paul Kraus wrote:
> What does foo stand for. It is used everywhere. I understand its just a
> placeholder for the file name or what ever is pertinent to the context
> it is used but I would still like to know what it means.

I did read somewhere one that it was NIX terminoligy back when Unix was very 
young, FOOBAR , it got turned into /foo/bar as an "example" nothing more 
AFAIK. 
foo@bar is also seen sometimes, cant quite remember where tho.



> Paul Kraus
> Network Administrator
> PEL Supply Company
> 216.267.5775 Voice
> 216-267-6176 Fax
> www.pelsupply.com


-- 
Regards Richard
pa3gcu@zeelandnet.nl
http://people.zeelandnet.nl/pa3gcu/

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Re: Dumb Questions

[Mr. James W. Laferriere]

	Hello All ,  Not to prolong this threads death ...

	FUBAR ,  Old Military (& others) Fouled Up Beyond All Recognition
		 A less polite  word was used in the original
	then too:

	foobar ,  To attempt to loose the 'Fouled' because of the less
		  polite  word was used in the original
	then too:

	foo ,  for short .

On Wed, 25 Sep 2002, pa3gcu wrote:

> On Wednesday 25 September 2002 13:23, Paul Kraus wrote:
> > What does foo stand for. It is used everywhere. I understand its just a
> > placeholder for the file name or what ever is pertinent to the context
> > it is used but I would still like to know what it means.
>
> I did read somewhere one that it was NIX terminoligy back when Unix was very
> young, FOOBAR , it got turned into /foo/bar as an "example" nothing more
> AFAIK.
> foo@bar is also seen sometimes, cant quite remember where tho.
>
>
>
> > Paul Kraus
> > Network Administrator
> > PEL Supply Company
> > 216.267.5775 Voice
> > 216-267-6176 Fax
> > www.pelsupply.com
>
>
> --
> Regards Richard
> pa3gcu@zeelandnet.nl
> http://people.zeelandnet.nl/pa3gcu/
>
> -
> To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-newbie" in
> the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
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> Please read the FAQ at http://www.linux-learn.org/faqs
>

       +------------------------------------------------------------------+
       | James   W.   Laferriere | System    Techniques | Give me VMS     |
       | Network        Engineer |     P.O. Box 854     |  Give me Linux  |
       | babydr@baby-dragons.com | Coudersport PA 16915 |   only  on  AXP |
       +------------------------------------------------------------------+

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Re: Dumb Questions

[Jim Reimer]

everything you ever wanted to know about foo but were afraid
to ask is at http://tuxedo.org/jargon/html/entry/foo.html

-jdr-

On Wednesday 25 September 2002 10:38 am, Mr. James W. Laferriere wrote:
> Hello All ,  Not to prolong this threads death ...
>
> 	FUBAR ,  Old Military (& others) Fouled Up Beyond All Recognition
> 		 A less polite  word was used in the original
> 	then too:
>
> 	foobar ,  To attempt to loose the 'Fouled' because of the less
> 		  polite  word was used in the original
> 	then too:
>
> 	foo ,  for short .
>
> On Wed, 25 Sep 2002, pa3gcu wrote:
> > On Wednesday 25 September 2002 13:23, Paul Kraus wrote:
> > > What does foo stand for. It is used everywhere. I understand its just a
> > > placeholder for the file name or what ever is pertinent to the context
> > > it is used but I would still like to know what it means.
> >
> > I did read somewhere one that it was NIX terminoligy back when Unix was
> > very young, FOOBAR , it got turned into /foo/bar as an "example" nothing
> > more AFAIK.
> > foo@bar is also seen sometimes, cant quite remember where tho.
> >
> > > Paul Kraus
> > > Network Administrator
> > > PEL Supply Company
> > > 216.267.5775 Voice
> > > 216-267-6176 Fax
> > > www.pelsupply.com
> >
> > --
> > Regards Richard
> > pa3gcu@zeelandnet.nl
> > http://people.zeelandnet.nl/pa3gcu/
> >
> > -
> > To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-newbie"
> > in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
> > More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
> > Please read the FAQ at http://www.linux-learn.org/faqs
>
>        +------------------------------------------------------------------+
>
>        | James   W.   Laferriere | System    Techniques | Give me VMS     |
>        | Network        Engineer |     P.O. Box 854     |  Give me Linux  |
>        | babydr@baby-dragons.com | Coudersport PA 16915 |   only  on  AXP |
>
>        +------------------------------------------------------------------+
>
> -
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X

[Daniel Provin]

Hi there

Is there any program that usualy change the XF86Config file?
cause everytime I change my XF86Config and start X it go back to the
original

thanks
Daniel

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Re: X

[Ray Olszewski]

At 01:24 PM 9/25/02 -0300, you wrote:
>Hi there
>
>Is there any program that usualy change the XF86Config file?
>cause everytime I change my XF86Config and start X it go back to the
>original


Depends a bit on the distro, but I can't think of any common app that would 
rewrite XF86Config *every* time you start X.

Perhaps you'd benefit from telling us the details?

1. What distro and version?

2. How do you start X? (startx, xdm, something else)?

3. What version of X? (At least on some distros, X 4.x.x uses a config file 
called XF86Config-4, not the older XF86Config used with X 3.x.x. Might you 
be editing the wrong file?)

4. What changes are you making (or trying to make)? Might you be making a 
change that does not work? And how are you making the changes -- editing 
XF86Config in vi, using xf86config, something else?

5. Exactly what do you mean by "it go back to the original"? Examples of 
what you *might* mean are:

         A. the changes in XF86Config do not show up in the way X starts.
         B. after starting X, you open XF86Config again, and the changes 
you made are lost.
         C. The same as B, plus the XF86Config file has an old timestamp, 
not a recent one.

In cases B and C, if you edit the XF86Config file, save it, close your 
editor, restart your editor, and open XF86Config again (without starting X 
in the meantime), do you see the changes you made?


--
-------------------------------------------"Never tell me the odds!"--------
Ray Olszewski					-- Han Solo
Palo Alto, California, USA			  ray@comarre.com
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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Re: X

[pa3gcu]

On Wednesday 25 September 2002 16:59, Ray Olszewski wrote:
> At 01:24 PM 9/25/02 -0300, you wrote:
> >Hi there
> >
> >Is there any program that usualy change the XF86Config file?
> >cause everytime I change my XF86Config and start X it go back to the
> >original
>
> Depends a bit on the distro, but I can't think of any common app that would
> rewrite XF86Config *every* time you start X.
>
> Perhaps you'd benefit from telling us the details?
>
> 1. What distro and version?
>
> 2. How do you start X? (startx, xdm, something else)?
>
> 3. What version of X? (At least on some distros, X 4.x.x uses a config file
> called XF86Config-4, not the older XF86Config used with X 3.x.x. Might you
> be editing the wrong file?)

If i may point out that XFre86-4.x.x "does" use XF86Config, it will use it as 
default "if" no XF86Config-4 is found.
I use XFree86-4.2.0 on one machine here and i "dont" have a -4 file.
It is documented and it was decided to make XFree86-4.x.x look for both files 
to make it backwards compatable.

Another handy hint is that XFree86-4.x.x now writes a complete log of every 
boot into /var/log called XFree86.0.log (if .0 is found then it will be .1) 
and so on.
You can see what config file is used in that log file + so much more than the 
old way of capturing its output at starttime.
(But i dont think i needed to tell Ray that) i just wanted to make a point of 
the "-4" thing.

The rest of the excelant stuff snipped.

-- 
Regards Richard
pa3gcu@zeelandnet.nl
http://people.zeelandnet.nl/pa3gcu/

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Re: Dumb Questions

[Chuck Gelm]

Hi, Paul:

 There are no dumb questions...
There are, however, dumb answers.
It is up to you to separate the grain from the chaff.
IMHO, 'foo' is a polite synonym for 'fu' which is
part of 'fubar'.  ergo, 'foo', as used commonly as a
placeholder, has no meaning.

HTH, Chuck


Paul Kraus wrote:
> 
> What does foo stand for. It is used everywhere. I understand its just a
> placeholder for the file name or what ever is pertinent to the context
> it is used but I would still like to know what it means.
> 
> Paul Kraus
> Network Administrator
> PEL Supply Company
> 216.267.5775 Voice
> 216-267-6176 Fax
> www.pelsupply.com
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Re: Dumb Questions

[Wladimir Foo]

> Hi, Paul:
>
>  There are no dumb questions...
> There are, however, dumb answers.
> It is up to you to separate the grain from the chaff.
> IMHO, 'foo' is a polite synonym for 'fu' which is
> part of 'fubar'.  ergo, 'foo', as used commonly as a
> placeholder, has no meaning.

And here follows the dumb anwer from me: Foo is also my last name ;)
Chuck's right - there are no dumb questions - If no one ever asked a lot of us 
would not have a clue what was going on etc.

> HTH, Chuck
>
> Paul Kraus wrote:
> > What does foo stand for. It is used everywhere. I understand its just a
> > placeholder for the file name or what ever is pertinent to the context
> > it is used but I would still like to know what it means.
> >
> > Paul Kraus

http://www.linuxvoodoo.com
perl -le '$_="75>42833<33.=3?,13406577073890:;90833<330690<3!!";tr[0-?][ 
YXOUIWLVETHDCNM];print'

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'nobody' is using my system !!!

[Chuck Gelm]

G'day, Y'all:

 I awoke at 04:40 AM today when the internal speaker of my
Win2k boxen started sounding a tone.  While I was up shutting
it down, I noticed the HD activity lamp on my linux firewall
was indicating activity.  I selected the console window where
I leave 'top' running.  I found that 'find' and 'sort' were
being run by 'nobody'.  I've installed no 'at' or 'cron' jobs.
It is a Slackware v8.0, kernel 2.2.19, custom compile system.

'who' showed my console logins only.

Why was 'find' and 'sort' running at 4:40 AM ?

Regards, Chuck
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Pop Up Banner Adds

[Frank Roberts - SOTL]

Another dumb question but this one is beginning to drive me nuts.

In KDE one can easily delete unwanted cookies on a dial up connected box with 
out network capabilities.

Is there some easy way to delete unwanted Pop Up Banner Adds which appear when 
you access a site. 

Clicking on the URL to the add shows that it originates from a different site 
than the one being visited.

Personally I know of no way of filtering out such trash without setting the 
box up on a network.

Thanks

Frank
 
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Re: 'nobody' is using my system !!!

[Ray Olszewski]

At 06:05 AM 9/26/02 -0400, Chuck Gelm wrote:
>G'day, Y'all:
>
>  I awoke at 04:40 AM today when the internal speaker of my
>Win2k boxen started sounding a tone.  While I was up shutting
>it down, I noticed the HD activity lamp on my linux firewall
>was indicating activity.  I selected the console window where
>I leave 'top' running.  I found that 'find' and 'sort' were
>being run by 'nobody'.  I've installed no 'at' or 'cron' jobs.
>It is a Slackware v8.0, kernel 2.2.19, custom compile system.
>
>'who' showed my console logins only.
>
>Why was 'find' and 'sort' running at 4:40 AM ?

One can only guess. My guess would be that even though *you* didn't install 
any cron jobs, the install itself did so.

The obvious candidate is an update of the locate database. See if 
"updatedb" is also running at this time. See if there is  a cron script 
that runs either find or updatedb or both (on my systems, it is 
/etc/cron.daily/find, but I've no idea how standard this location is).

If that is not it, I'd look through the scripts in the /etc/cron.* 
directories, or their analogs on our system, for a candidate.


--
-------------------------------------------"Never tell me the odds!"--------
Ray Olszewski					-- Han Solo
Palo Alto, California, USA			  ray@comarre.com
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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Re: 'nobody' is using my system !!!

[pa3gcu]

On Thursday 26 September 2002 10:05, Chuck Gelm wrote:
> G'day, Y'all:
>
>  I awoke at 04:40 AM today when the internal speaker of my
> Win2k boxen started sounding a tone.  While I was up shutting
> it down, I noticed the HD activity lamp on my linux firewall
> was indicating activity.  I selected the console window where
> I leave 'top' running.  I found that 'find' and 'sort' were
> being run by 'nobody'.  I've installed no 'at' or 'cron' jobs.
> It is a Slackware v8.0, kernel 2.2.19, custom compile system.
>
> 'who' showed my console logins only.
>
> Why was 'find' and 'sort' running at 4:40 AM ?

Get up at the same time tommorow morning and it will be doing the same thing.
Like Ray said, its a normal system update.

>
> Regards, Chuck

-- 
Regards Richard
pa3gcu@zeelandnet.nl
http://people.zeelandnet.nl/pa3gcu/

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Re: Pop Up Banner Adds

[Arthur Othieno]

I do not know if other browsers support this, but with Mozilla you can 
successfully block almost all unwanted pop-up banner ads. I'l quote this 
from the mozilla faq 
(http://www.mozilla.org/start/1.0/faq/browser.html#2.4):

"2.4. I've heard about 'popup blocking'. How do I do this?
Go to Edit | Preferences | Advanced | Scripts & Windows, and uncheck the 
powers you do not want to grant to web pages. Unchecking 'Open 
unrequested windows' blocks most unrequested popups."

Hope that helps

Arthur

Frank Roberts - SOTL wrote:

> Another dumb question but this one is beginning to drive me nuts.
> 
> In KDE one can easily delete unwanted cookies on a dial up connected box with 
> out network capabilities.
> 
> Is there some easy way to delete unwanted Pop Up Banner Adds which appear when 
> you access a site. 
> 
> Clicking on the URL to the add shows that it originates from a different site 
> than the one being visited.
> 
> Personally I know of no way of filtering out such trash without setting the 
> box up on a network.
> 
> Thanks
> 
> Frank
>  
> -
> To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-newbie" in
> the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
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> 
> 
> 


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Re: X

[Daniel Provin]

I already solved my problem. The thing was that I was writing on the
XF86Config instead of the XF86Config-4

thanks
Daniel Provin
Lixux User #191271
EEL LABMETRO UFSC

On Wed, 25 Sep 2002, Ray Olszewski wrote:

> At 01:24 PM 9/25/02 -0300, you wrote:
> >Hi there
> >
> >Is there any program that usualy change the XF86Config file?
> >cause everytime I change my XF86Config and start X it go back to the
> >original
>
>
> Depends a bit on the distro, but I can't think of any common app that would
> rewrite XF86Config *every* time you start X.
>
> Perhaps you'd benefit from telling us the details?
>
> 1. What distro and version?
>
> 2. How do you start X? (startx, xdm, something else)?
>
> 3. What version of X? (At least on some distros, X 4.x.x uses a config file
> called XF86Config-4, not the older XF86Config used with X 3.x.x. Might you
> be editing the wrong file?)
>
> 4. What changes are you making (or trying to make)? Might you be making a
> change that does not work? And how are you making the changes -- editing
> XF86Config in vi, using xf86config, something else?
>
> 5. Exactly what do you mean by "it go back to the original"? Examples of
> what you *might* mean are:
>
>          A. the changes in XF86Config do not show up in the way X starts.
>          B. after starting X, you open XF86Config again, and the changes
> you made are lost.
>          C. The same as B, plus the XF86Config file has an old timestamp,
> not a recent one.
>
> In cases B and C, if you edit the XF86Config file, save it, close your
> editor, restart your editor, and open XF86Config again (without starting X
> in the meantime), do you see the changes you made?
>
>
> --
> -------------------------------------------"Never tell me the odds!"--------
> Ray Olszewski					-- Han Solo
> Palo Alto, California, USA			  ray@comarre.com
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> -
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Re: 'nobody' is using my system !!!

[Chuck Gelm]

Howdy, Dragos LUNGU:

 Thanks.  You are right.  I did a 'cat'
and that was the only line!

 Geesh, I added 'updatedb' to rc.local thinking that I was
updating my database.  It would have happened at the next
04:40 anyway!  :-|

 I guess that I will remove that line from my rc.local from
all my linux boxes. 

Regards, Chuck

Dragos LUNGU wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> Chuck Gelm wrote:
> > G'day, Y'all:
> [snip]
> >
> > Why was 'find' and 'sort' running at 4:40 AM ?
> 
> My guess is : updatedb
> 
> i did a grep on /var/spool/* and this is what came out :
> 
> /var/spool/cron/crontabs/nobody:40 04 * * *       cd / ; updatedb 1>
> /dev/null 2> /dev/null
> 
> -> updatedb at 4.40 AM as nobody
> 
> slackware 8.0 here as well, and I'm sure I didn't write that cron job
> myself.
> 
> hope it helps,
> 
> Dragos.
> 
> >
> > Regards, Chuck
> 
> --
> 
> | Dragos LUNGU
> |
> | http://www.xts.ro
> | dragos@xts.ro
> | mobile (+40)745 379 734
> | office (+40)251 190 561
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