Thomas L Holaday's questions

I want to verify that the user account filesender_1 is a member of the group valid_senders.

When I look at /etc/group, filesender_1 is not there:

valid_senders:x:12345:production_1

I read this as "production_1 is the only member of the group valid_senders, whose group id is 12345."

However:

When I look at /etc/passwd, the group id for valid_senders is listed for filesender_1 ...

filesender_1:x:1515:12345:filesender_1:/local/home/filesender_1:/bin/sh

... so I know valid_senders is the primary group for filesender_1.

Is this a surprising discrepancy, or is it normal for /etc/group to list only members where the group is secondary?

Consider a file with user-read-only permissions, for example ...

-r--------+ admin secrets.txt

How can such a file be put under revision control, so that its contents remain secret, even from the revision control administrator?

Is there a Solaris utility which reports the minimum free space on a file system over the preceding 168 hours (one week)? The concern with using a nightly df is that there might be intraday jobs which nearly exhaust disk space when they run, but clean up after themselves so there's no apparent problem when df runs.

On Solaris, iostat tells me that a device is 92% busy, but how do I find out what programs are making the requests?

When I want the fully qualified domain name on Linux, I can write ...

hostname --fqdn

To get the same thing on Solaris, is it necessary to write ...

cut -f 2-3 /etc/hosts | grep ^`hostname`\t | cut -f 2

... or is there something more brief?

How can someone who joins an existing Microsoft Communicator chat see the history of what has gone before?

For example:

Larry: [describes problem]
Moe: [enhances problem]
Curly: We should ask Shemp

[Shemp joins]
Shemp: What's going on in this thread?

Is there any way for Shemp to see what Larry and Moe have already typed?

I have tried copy-pasting the whole thing, but that invokes an error with no error message - possibly "too much text."

Update:

Is this functionality what Microsoft calls Group Chat, and requires a separate product?

The first noncomment line in a legacy crontab file begins with five asterisks:

* * * * * ([a_command]) >/dev/null 2>&1

The authors are gone, so I do not know their intent. What does all-wildcards mean to (Solaris 8) cron? The betting here is either run once, run continuously, or run never, which is unfortunately broad.

If you are wondering about the comment line preceding this, it is "Do not delete."

Note: This cron file is working. This question is not a duplicate of a question about broken cron files or cron files which require troubleshooting.

In the context of Windows Group Policy, what is an ADM Template?

Some users who connect to the server using Remote Desktop (mstsc) are locked to a particular program: when they login, the program starts; when they quit the program, they're logged out.

One of them has tired of the Lilac color scheme, and would prefer Maple. Is there an easier way to change his colorscheme than to unlock his account, have him login, right-click on the desktop, change, save, logout, re-lock his account?

He is running Windows XP, and the server is Windows 2003.

I have a fuzzy notion of what the term "ftp jailing" means, but when it comes to permissions and security, fuzzy is imprudent. What is it? How is it implemented? Is it mostly a capability of the ftp server, or does it emerge from how the underlying OS does permissions?

The target machine has XP (SP2) installed, and the goal is to install Ubuntu 9.04 as a dual-boot. Ten years ago, this would require preparing the disk with something like Partition Magic, but I think there has been progress. Am I likely to need anything besides the Ubuntu 9.04 Desktop CD?

The download page for Boot Camp 2.1 says to install it before applying SP3, but my XP installation CD is already SP3. This is a scratch install on a formatted NTFS partition. How am I supposed to install Boot Camp 2.1 first?

(I ask because the XP installation has been hanging at the 33 Minutes Left stage for two hours, and the Caps Lock light no longer toggles, the symptoms of It's Dead, Jim.)

Edit:

• I am using Windows XP Professional, OEM Software, with hologram, purchased for cash money from B&H this very morning.
• The computer has had all firmware updates applied.
• Installation stopped hanging after I unplugged the ethernet cable and every device except the keyboard and mouse.
• I created the (60 GB) partition with Boot Camp Assistant, which formatted it as FAT32, and then elected to convert it to NTFS during the installation.

The puzzle about how to install Boot Camp 2.1 before applying SP3 remains unsolved.

The strategic question is "How do I maximize free space on the System drive," and includes such things as disk compression, changing the TEMP environment variable, removing the hibernation file, minimizing the swap file, buying a larger drive, etc. This is the tactical question about what files can be removed safely, and whether to remove them with a file system command or by changing a retention-setting somewhere.

For example, C:/WINDOWS/Installer on of my machines is 1.5G, and the newest files in there are fifty days old. Total free space on that C: drive is 3G. Is the proper approach to burn them to optical disk just-in-case, then delete them from the command line, or is there some Registry setting that will let Win2k3 do something more sophisticated? Or is that 1.5G of precious, precious treasure?

Edit: The issue is particularly acute for virtual machines, where there will be system snapshots in multiple configurations. An 8G disk is (initially) amply sufficient to run Win2K3, Visual Studio, SQL Server, and the application being developed, but over time cruft from old patches consumes enough resources to prevent new patches from being applied.