DSL change suggestions

Forum: DSL Ideas and Suggestions
Topic: DSL change suggestions
started by: poppe

Posted by Guest on Jan. 25 2006,17:00

First off, let me begin by stating that I really like DSL. It's a great OS that runs really well on my Fujitsu laptop (Frugal installed).

However, I did wish to make some suggestions and an offer.

My suggestions are:

(1): Get rid of Beaver. As a web developer and as a Perl programmer I find Beaver' s use of /r carriage returns to be very annoying. Besides if us DSL users don't care for VI (Which I actually like VI and Gvim) there's always apps like Nedit which can be grabbed at the myDSL repository.

(2): DSL needs a simple way (either through a shell or a GUI app) to restart eth0. I had this problem on some machines at the college where I work in running the live CD on a DELL GX620 with the Ethernet.

(3): JWM is neat, and nice to have a choice, but I personally see it as a waste of space in the DSL core OS. Us folks who use DSL most likely enjoy Fluxbox and I think that JWM's space could be used for other applications.

(4): Integrate an HTTP server replacement for Monkey. Apache is a good choice, has better support than Monkey, and can be made to fit.

Overall DSL is superb! I just want to help, and to that end I am (studying) Linux system administration and am familiar with Perl. As such I would like to offer my service to help DSL improvements.

Posted by xlthlx on Jan. 26 2006,04:58

Hello,
I'd like to second that server suggestion. A Google search for Monkey Webserver turns up a good deal of security advisories.

The lightweight server, lighthttpd, while 100 times bigger than Monkey is as performant as apache in some benchmarks, but still pretty slim, weighing in under 800 kb. The Kepler Web development platform for Lua also has a bundled webserver Xavante, which I believe is only 2 or 3 times bigger than Monkey, but handles some newer technology like Fast-cgi, and has native support for server-side Lua scripting.

Please consider these options, if a replacement of Monkey Webserver is feasible.

Regards,
xlthlx

Posted by cbagger01 on Jan. 26 2006,06:36

1) I like NEdit better, but it is too big for the base iso. Beaver is a good compromise between size and functionality. You can still choose to not use it.

2)
ifdown eth0
ifup eth0

3) JWM is really small and the developers have taken pains to optimize it for DSL and also to optimize DSL scripts for JWM. So I doubt that it is going away soon. FYI, I like flux better. JWM also uses less resources than flux, believe it or not.

4) I would not use Monkey for a public webserver. But it is fine for Intranet use. I assume that the security issues are being addressed in the newer versions? It is very small and for the most part usable, so why change? If it was changed, it would probably be for another lightweight http server so you would still be in the same boat.

What would be nice is to get a tiny FTP server that supports user account/security configuration better than betaFTP. It is difficult to set up betaFTP as a public ftp server. I am sure that there must be a tiny alternative out there somewhere.

Posted by Grim on Jan. 26 2006,07:49

1.) Don't we still have nvi? I'll have to check

2.) cbagger is my hero

3.) I don't care which we standardise on, but I am of the opinion that we only need one for the base iso. If it were up to me it'd be Window Maker, but I realize it is much too huge (and yet I love it!)

4.) What's wrong with Monkey if you're running from a LiveCD? Seriously?

As for betaFTPd, why not drop it altogether. There's a SSH server in DSL--use that instead.

SSH is secure, effectively eliminates eavesdropping, connection hijacking, and provides a myriad of secure tunneling capabilities.

There are GUI SSH clients that behave exactly like traditional FTP clients and dropping a (imho) worthless FTP server would free up some space.

SSH is smarter, sexier, better and prolongs sexual intimacy--I vote we nuke beatFTPd!

Posted by glockbang on Jan. 26 2006,09:22

Quote (Grim @ Jan. 26 2006,02:49)

prolongs sexual intimacy

now i'm worried

Posted by Grim on Jan. 26 2006,10:57

Quote (Guest @ Jan. 26 2006,02:22)

now i'm worried

You should be

Posted by cbagger01 on Jan. 29 2006,04:02

Not all of my potential client machines have ssh pre-installed, so for some quick file transfers on an Intranet, a DSL FTP service does the job nicely.

If BetaFTP had better configuration options, it would be ideal for the job at hand. I am sure that a similar (very small) FTP service exists that is more configurable than BetaFTP. It's just a matter of finding such a program and giving it a test drive.

Posted by AwPhuch on Jan. 29 2006,05:58

1. cant you use pump -i eth0 to have it restart the eth device?

2. get < XAMPP > if you want a full bore apache server and since you are running frugal it will be even that much easier!

Good luck bud

Brian
AwPhuch

Posted by Guest on Feb. 01 2006,19:09

Hey thanks for the tips on eth0 and XAMPP. Also my offer still stands for the DSL developers, or any script needs (in perl for now)... Let me know

Posted by crusadingknight on Feb. 01 2006,20:07

Quote (cbagger01 @ Jan. 26 2006,01:36)

I assume that the security issues are being addressed in the newer versions?

Monkeyd was last updated 18 months ago. The latest release is from April of 2005, but their CVS logs don't show any src/ changes during that period. ie., Development is dead.

Still, < monkeyd-0.9.1 > is reported to fix all of the security problems, though those fixes don't exist in their CVS. (Disorganized development, anyone?).

Posted by crusadingknight on Feb. 06 2006,01:25

Looking at alternatives... < http://www.appwebserver.org/ > looks quite good, though slightly larger than monkeyhttpd. (But not much).

Posted by botbotdingzip on Feb. 18 2006,09:14

Quote (Grim @ Jan. 26 2006,02:49)

I'll take apache any day over these trimmed versions that have had their wings cut off. Apache can make use of the pear repository, PHP 5 and much much more. Frequent security advisories etc. Serious web designers can't use monkey for anything other than displaying a static homepage (boring).

I see the point of having it as a "proof of concept" web server I guess. Anyway, Xampps is more for that sort of deal.

Posted by crusadingknight on Feb. 18 2006,17:33

Quote (Guest @ Feb. 18 2006,04:14)

Serious web designers can't use monkey for anything other than displaying a static homepage (boring).

Don't serious web designers use PHP or CGI? Monkey supports both...

Posted by botbotdingzip on Feb. 20 2006,00:17

Quote (crusadingknight @ Feb. 18 2006,12:33)

Quote (Guest @ Feb. 18 2006,04:14)

Serious web designers can't use monkey for anything other than displaying a static homepage (boring).

Don't serious web designers use PHP or CGI? Monkey supports both...

Only if they want to build a front door to test intrusion detection

Posted by Guest on Mar. 11 2006,19:43

I'm going to add to my original thread.

I feel that redundancy in applications (coupled with DSL's size constraints) is stifling DSL growth, here's why...

(1): Monkey (while ok to run from a live CD) is easy to setup, run, and configure straight after iso-burn. However, (as I discovered) there are other HTTP servers available for DSL that are more secure. The point; persons like myself that do frugal installs don't have to worry about...

(A): A hacker starting monkey in order to open an extra backdoor into the
system.

(B): Having yet another application in the way of other applications that we
use.

Monkey is cool for those who run live and are familiar with it. I just think that Monkey belongs as a myDSL download instead... Then use Monkey's old space for other things.

(2): Beaver is cool for anyone who likes to use a GUI text editor, and deserves credit for being a lightweight application. However as with monkey, beaver simply gets in the way for those who don't use it, and may be better placed in myDSL (Which I already know can be said about any application that other users don't use, but read on... I have some suggestions).

(3): Filemanagers/Webrowser - EmelFM is great for a gui-manager, and Firefox is a really cool browser. However, Firefox cannot manage files, and EmelFM cannot browse the World Wide Web... My suggestion here is make these apps available via myDSL and replace the both with a browser such as Konquerer, which can do both... Which might even save some space (I haven't compared the difference).

(4): Filemanagers (command-line) - As put in another topic, Midnight Commander is around 800K in size. Now there's some talk about replcing it with deco (I think the name is). Now, I'm not sure how big deco is, but I have already announced that I have written a filemanager in perl that is not expected to go beyond 10K in size (It has most functions already, but needs some add-ins). This would save a lot of space as the filesize mentioned is the 'uncompressed' size.

Other suggestions - I have read quite a few posts requesting different versions of DSL, requesting different applications, etc (Some even offering pay for the remaster)... Now different people have different uses for DSL... So why not release different versions (IE: a developers version that has various libs, a gaming version for gamers, an enterprise version, etc). Just pick the most popular requests, or offer to remaster by request (for a modest donation of course). In either case it will increase DSL's popularity overall... Just some food for thought.

Posted by mikshaw on Mar. 11 2006,20:32

1) I agree here. Since DSL is supposedly a "general purpose", I truly don't understand why there are servers included in its base. How many people actually run servers on their desktop machines? I'm guessing only a small percentage of total users. Those that do would likely have no issues with adding apache and/or proftpd through myDSL. Just my opinion.

3) I really don't think that Konqueror would be smaller than Firefox and Emelfm combined, partitcularly when you consider all of the KDE base files that would be required to run it. It definitely would not be as fast, and would be a huge pain to use as a file manager on an old machine. Basically, anything Qt is probably not going to be appropriate for DSL. This one isn't just opinion...it's plain fact.

4) I'm looking forward to checking out your file manager, if you plan to share it. Personally I'm not a big fan of Perl, but any scripted application is fun to at least experiment with.

Posted by crusadingknight on Mar. 12 2006,03:19

Well, it isn't as if monkey is insecure (every security advisory ever issued on it has been fixed, and as quickly as with Apache), or even takes up that much space. If you really wanted to save on space, you could just replace wget with snarf, etc.

Posted by cbagger01 on Mar. 12 2006,08:06

1) Monkey is small and provides "neat" functionality from a 50MB livecd. It adds to the coolness factor of DSL, just like having a SQL database server does (Sqlite).

2) A low learning-curve GUI text editor is a must have for a "general purpose" livecd, in my opinion.

3) Konqueror requires the KDE/QT libs, so it will not save you space. In fact, it will take up more space. If you want Konquerr, get a KDE-based livecd

4) I could be wrong, but I don't think that DSL's MC is 800k in size, but much smaller. The biggest advantage for MC is the usability factor for the console junkies. MC is and always has been the dominant textmode file manager for linux. So other stuff like deco need to either use the same keystroke commands as MC or they need to offer some other major advantage. Being only 10k in size is definitely a major advantage, though. It's probably worth checking out.

As always, these are just my opinions. Take them for what they're worth.