Errata

Running Linux

Errata for Running Linux

Submit your own errata for this product.

The errata list is a list of errors and their corrections that were found after the product was released.

The following errata were submitted by our customers and have not yet been approved or disproved by the author or editor. They solely represent the opinion of the customer.

Color Key: Serious technical mistake Minor technical mistake Language or formatting error Typo Question Note Update

Version Location Description Submitted by Date submitted
Printed Page viii
The index lists "The K Development Enviroment" as being

located on page 370, where one would actually find the "The K Desktop
Enviroment".

 Anonymous   
Printed Page 42
Last line in Usenet Newsgroups section

related topis like comp.windows.x
should be:

related topic like comp.windows.x

 Anonymous   
Printed Page 46
serious omission

I am very surprised (I first wrote "shocked") to see that a chapter about
installing Linux, in a book presented as a help to many relative newcomers,
does not include any advice that you write down system configuration
information prior to installing Linux. A newbie might quit for no other
reason than Linux did not detect his video card, or sound card.

When I installed RedHat 5.2 over Windows 95, I had forgotten to write down
my SoundBlaster IRQ information. RedHat 5.2 wasn't able to detect the
information. Thus, I had to reinstall Windows 95, get the information,
then go back and reinstall RedHat 5.2 manually entering the information.

This is not just an isolated example. Redhat 6.1 doesn't recognize my Riva
TNT (it thinks it is a Riva128). I can upgrade to TNT drivers, but I have
to *know* what my system is before I can even try to tell Linux to do this.

I wouldn't put detailed Windows information into Running Linux, such as
"click on start, click on start panel, click on..." blah, blah, blah. But
*something* about getting system information should be said.

If it was said, then wherever you said it needs to be moved to some other
place, or at least referenced to where it was in chapter 2. I quite
overlooked it.

 Anonymous   
Printed Page 102
The tcsh command (setenv VISUAL vi) probably shouldn't

have a "$" prompt before it. tcsh uses ">" by default, I think;
a lot of people use a csh-style "%" instead.

 Anonymous   
Printed Page 105
In the last line, the word "input" should be "output".

Anonymous   
Printed Page 114
This error is present in the example in the middle of the page.

It would clarify the chown example if distinct names for the owner
and the group were used. As it is now I don't know whether
chown owner.group file
or
chown group.owner file
is the correct syntax.

 Anonymous   
Printed Page 139
In the last paragraph

The line reads "this means the kernel itself is using 1500K." I do not
understand how the author arrived as this number. The closest calculation
i could make was the following:
552K kernel code
384K reserved
464K data
-----
1400K total kernel memory use

Is 1500K a typo? or miscalculation?
If not, how does the author arrive at that number?

 Anonymous   
Printed Page 169
1st complete paragraph

Last sentence of the first complete paragraph on p169 incorrectly refers to the type option of mount as -T. It should actually be
-t.

 Anonymous   
Printed Page 179
(1 and 2) Are you sure that is the error in the program?

If you try access the last number far from the first row, what you get
is the first number of row 2. It cannot fail the program. Remember in C
the first index is a pointer to the rows. (Page 127 line 30 of "C
Programming language" 2nd Edition (SPANISH: I do not know the exact page
number in the English version)

 Anonymous   
Printed Page 187
At the very bottom of page 187, there is this line

"v To print verbose information when packing or unpacking archives"

And then the option is repeated at the end of the same list with a more
elaborate description, towards the top of page 188:

"v To make tar show the files it is archiving or restoring--it is good
practice to use this so that you can see what actually happens (unless, of
course, you are writing shell scripts)"

The top list "v" option should probably be combined with the bottom.

 Anonymous   
Printed Page 188
In the fourth paragraph

The option v of tar is explained twice.

 Anonymous   
Printed Page 192
In the gunzip example in the middle of the page

Giving the option -9 to gunzip does not make sense. It is not used
and silently ignored.

 Anonymous   
Printed Page 192
In the middle of the page, the example command

gunzip -9c tarfile.tar.gz | tar xvf -

I've never needed to use 9 with gunzip. I think it's a no-op here.
The 9 is useful when *creating* the archive in the first place --
to tell gzip to "try harder".

 Anonymous   
Printed Page 194

At the top, it reads:

tar cf - . | (cd ../to-stuff; tar xvf -)

I'd recommend writing that as:

tar cf - . | (cd ../to-stuff && tar xvf -)

so that, if the "cd ../to-stuff" fails -- for instance, if the
user makes a mistake in the pathname -- the "tar xvf" will not
run (and try to overwrite the files in the "from-stuff" directory).

 Anonymous   
Printed Page 204
In the fifth paragraph

"(RPM package..."

should be:

"(RPM packages..."

In the sixth paragraph 6:

"choose whatever you like better:"

should be:

"choose whichever you like better"

since there are only two possible options.

 Anonymous   
Printed Page 207
In the first paragraph of the "Building a New Kernel" section,

the run-on sentence beginning with "This reduces the amount of memory used
by...." should be two sentences.

 Anonymous   
Printed Page 222
In last sentence of the third paragraph

"parametes"

should be:

"parameters"

 Anonymous   
Printed Page 222
In the second paragraph

"a number if"

should be:

"a number of"

 Anonymous   
Printed Page 226
In the first, it reads "These tools allow you to take backups more or

less 'by hand'". In the second paragraph, it reads "The simplest means of
taking a backup is to use tar to archive...".

Shouldn't these be "make" instead of "take"? I've never heard of "taking"
a backup.

 Anonymous   
Printed Page 230
In the last sentence before section "Incremental Backups"

There is an extra "are" in that sentence. It should read:
"Among those programs are the freely available taper and tob,
as well..."

 Anonymous   
Printed Page 230
The first example shows ! in a command line, and the

second paragraph after that explains why the is used. I don't
think I've ever used a shell that treats a single ! by itself as
a history reference or anything else... so a ! by itself shouldn't
need quoting. I just tried this on the zsh, tcsh, and bash on my
Red Hat 6.2 system, and it was true for all those shells.

Same thing on page 232, second example.

 Anonymous   
Printed Page 249
In the fourth paragraph

The #9 video card is either using the S3 chipset or the XF86_S3
server, but not the XF86_S3 chipset.

 Anonymous   
Printed Page 249
In the last but one paragraph, explanation of mx

The last sentence should read:

"...set a value slightly smaller than the expected maximum space
available on a disk." Note the "maximum".

 Anonymous   
Printed Page 254

In the second if statement it should read:

printf "$SENDEOF"

instead of:

printf ""

Otherwise it doesn't make sense to set SENDEOF to a
specific value.

 Anonymous   
Printed Page 258
In the fifth paragraph

The file's name is ".apsfilterrc". Note the "c" at the end.

 Anonymous   
Printed Page 280
2nd paragraph from bottom.

"--after pressing Ecs--"
should read
"--after pressing Esc--"

 Anonymous   
Printed Page 281
There is an unwanted period after the word "screen".

Anonymous   
Printed Page 293
In the last paragraph in "Searching and Replacing"

Entering "M-x string" will not replace a string. Probably the name
of a replace function should be entered here, though I don't know
which. The same thing with "M-x regexp". To replace all occurences
of a string, I use the replace function and enter "!" at the first
query.

 Anonymous   
Printed Page 301
In line 14 of LaTeX example

With LaTeX2e you should use "emph{text}" instead of "{em text}".
Also, in the last but one paragraph on page 302, you should use
" extbf{text}" instead of "{f text}" and " exttt{text}"
instead of "{ t text}".

 Anonymous   
Printed Page 304
Is the name of the program "eps" correct? Shouldn't it be "dvieps"?

I am not aware of either program, so you maybe right.

 Anonymous   
Printed Page 315
In the end of section "Formatting Texinfo"

Maybe it would be good to mention the script "texi2dvi" which
takes care of the necessary "tex" and "texindex" calls.

 Anonymous   
Printed Page 339
In the last but second paragraph

At least in SuSE, the text-based program is called "xf86config", not
"ConfigXF86".

 Anonymous   
Printed Page 351
The second paragraph should start "In the Device section..". No "s".

Anonymous   
Printed Page 364
The fourth paragraph should start "The pager, in the

bottom-right corner..."

 Anonymous   
Printed Page 371
In the third paragraph, last sentence: "In addition, almost all

KDE application are..."

should read:

"In addition, almost all KDE applications are..."

"Application" needs to be plural.

 Anonymous   
Printed Page 385
In the third paragraph

There is an extra "g:" in the line before the "pattern ...unmatched"line.

 Anonymous   
Printed Page 393
The first sentence in the fourht paragraph should end

"...when you started xman."

Not:

"xterm".

 Anonymous   
Printed Page 398
In the last but third line

"in bug"

should read:

"works around a bug in..."

 Anonymous   
Printed Page 418
In the second paragraph, ABI should be API.

Anonymous   
Printed Page 444
While trying to make a perl script run, I encountered some problems.

For some odd reason, the version I have of last padded its output with
spaces at the end of each line. This made the regexp
/^(S*)s*.*((.*):(.*))$/ fail, since the final $ sign didn't allow for
this padding. My solution was just to remove the $ sign, so that the regexp
looks like /^(S*)s*.*((.*):(.*))/ instead. This fixed the problem as far
as I can see.

 Anonymous   
Printed Page 494
The paragraph on the second-to-last line is almost a copy of the

preceding one.

 Anonymous   
Printed Page 513
2nd to last line

indent -troff importrtf.c | groff -mindent

Is this example correct? The indent man page speaks nothing of the "troff"
option. My version of indent (GNU indent 2.2.5) returns the following error:

indent: unknown option "-troff"

 Anonymous   
Printed Page 515
The second paragraph reads: "Linux NET-2 also supports..."

Is it right?, Why not NET-4?

 Anonymous   
Printed Page 535
The first paragraph talks about how Winmodems use the

host CPU to convert digital signals to analog signals. That description is
generally what we term a SoftModem. If we take a modem and divide it up into
Controller, DSP and Phone Interface we can then make the Winmodem definition a
little more clear. A "standard" modem would include the Controller, DSP and
Phone interface whereas a Winmodem would not include the Controller. For a
Winmodem, the Controller based functions are moved to the host CPU. For a
SoftModem, both the Controller and DSP functions have been offloaded to the
host
CPU. Using these definitions, a WinModem takes a very small portion of the
available CPU bandwidth and then only when you are online. A SoftModem would
require significant CPU bandwidth to handle the increased load of the Digital
Signal Processing.

 Anonymous   
Printed Page 588

The eighth paragraph currently reads:

"The ISP accepts your mail from then Internet"

It should read:

"The ISP accepts your mail from the Internet"

Anonymous   
Printed Page 597
5th paragraph

In this section, it says:
"If smail is configured correctly on your system, there is a line in the
/etc/services file that says:"
blah...blah...blah...
... below that is the error:
"There is also a line in the /etc/services file that says:
SMTP stream tcp nowait root /usr/sbin/tcpd /usr/sbin/rSMTP -bs"

This line is in the /etc/inetd.conf file and not the /etc/services file.

 Anonymous   
Printed Page 626
In paragraph 3, line 3, word 9

"manufacturer"

should be:

"manufacture"

since it's used as a verb in present tense.

 Anonymous   
Printed Page 708
Second Column

The index entry for Devices is wrong. It gives p262 instead of 179 (at
least 179 seems a better reference). I've had other problems with the index
but this is the most recent.

 Anonymous