Ben Ocean wrote:
>
> Hi;
Hi! Warning, I'm about to sound snide, it's not my intent.
> So how the heck DOES one learn Linux?
"One" may do so in any number of ways. "I" did it by asking lots of
dumb questions on this list and doing lots of searches at
http://google.com/linux, but your mileage may vary.
> The books don't have the answers,
> redhat.com doesn't either. Care to help? Please?
Be nice to the books and redhat.com. Remember, Linux distributions are
essentially clearinghouses, they don't write most of the software they
package.
> I once installed a program called interchange. Someone I hired to secure my
> box advised we close its port, so he did. After a while calls upon calls to
> interchange got stored in logrotate.status to the point that it bloated to
> 15 MEGS! Crashed my box.
Hm. Guess arbitrarily closing the port was probably a bad idea, huh?
Is this Linux's/RedHat's fault?
> Well, someone from this list kindly helped me with
> that one.
Just out of curiosity, why do you bring it up again if the issue is
resolved? To support your implied claim that Linux is unlearnable? I
am confused.
> Then, I noticed there was a problem with /usr/bin/slocate. Now,
> when I say *problem*, I mean the damn thing was chewing up 80%+ of my CPU!
All the time? Or just at certain times? When it updates its database
it often uses lots of CPU, but that's because it is indexing your whole
filesystem. If it continues to run like that indefinitely, then
something is broken and there are numerous possibilities for what that
is. I haven't had this problem so without more information I'd just
have to guess at what caused it for you, but I can verify that slocate
does not display this problem at either of the sites I run.
> This is what got my attention the first time, when it core dumped and we
> had to access it via single user mode.
Huh? A core dump from slocate put your box out of commission? That
should not happen, there must be other factors involved here somewhere.
What was the error that kept the system from going multi-user? If it
was a corrupted filesystem (frequent cause), that's definitely not
slocate's fault.
> So I d'l'd a new rpm for slocate and
> updated it. Now I get this error when I try to slocate something:
> >>>
> fatal error: slocate: decode_db: 'pathlen == -1'! Corrupt Database!
> <<<
Since updating slocate, have you run updatedb(1L)? That might take care
of it. If not, then updatedb should produce some error output that
might be educational.
> I feel like I'm cutting off one head of the Hydra just to watch more pop
> up. Where, oh where, do I go from here?
Assuming (against my better judgment) that all your troubles come from
slocate, you could check with the maintainers of the slocate package.
>From the slocate(1) manpage, I read this URL:
http://www.linux-geek.org/slocate/
Haven't followed it myself but you might want to start there for docs
and tips not covered in the manpages, which I'm sure you've read...
right?
--
~~~Michael Jinks, IB // Technical Entity // Saecos Corporation~~~~
We write precisely
since such is our habit in
talking to machines; -- anonymous
_______________________________________________
Redhat-list mailing list
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
https://listman.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/redhat-list
