External drives - compatible with Linux?

Charlie Gibbs wrote:
[color=blue]
> Well, my big Linux box just bit it again. Looks like I blew another
> motherboard, and this time it took the power supply with it. So I'm
> once again praying that my hard drives, with their 500GB of downloads,
> survived. Last time I was lucky - maybe I will be again. But I think
> it's time I did something better than trying to get this stuff burnt
> onto DVDs before the box blows up again.
>
> There are plenty of external USB hard drives out there that should
> do the trick. But are they compatible with Linux? All this talk
> of driver software, one-touch backup buttons, etc. makes these drives
> sound like something that you can't just plug into a Linux box and
> mount. Does anyone have any experience with these units? Do they
> work under Linux, or have they been designed to work under Windows only?
>
> Any suggestions as to brands, and user stories good or bad, are
> welcome. How about getting an internal drive and one of those
> external enclosures, which presumably have some sort of IDE-to-USB
> adapter in them - is this an option?
>
> Comments, please - I need the peace of mind that only a good backup
> can give.
>[/color]

I have three external USB drives, I use generic USB case and installed an
IDE drive into. No problems what so ever.

Now for the already comerical ones I don't know.

On 20 Aug 08 13:54:05 -0800, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
[color=blue]
> There are plenty of external USB hard drives out there that should
> do the trick. But are they compatible with Linux?[/color]

All you need is a USB to (mini-)IDE adapter (and a hard drive). If you
can find a notebook HD big enough, they're easier to deal with and you
can power the drive directly from a USB jack. There shouldn't be any
problem with Linux compatibility.

Bob T.

Charlie Gibbs wrote:[color=blue]
> ... Does anyone have any experience with these units? Do they
> work under Linux, or have they been designed to work under Windows only?[/color]

I've got a Western-Digital something-or-another USB brick on may machine
at work (I'm at home right now or I'd tell you more). /proc/scsi/scsi
shows it to be a Model: 2500JB External. No problems under Linux (CentOS4).


--
Steve Wampler -- [email]swampler@noao.edu[/email]
The gods that smiled on your birth are now laughing out loud.

Well, my big Linux box just bit it again. Looks like I blew another
motherboard, and this time it took the power supply with it. So I'm
once again praying that my hard drives, with their 500GB of downloads,
survived. Last time I was lucky - maybe I will be again. But I think
it's time I did something better than trying to get this stuff burnt
onto DVDs before the box blows up again.

There are plenty of external USB hard drives out there that should
do the trick. But are they compatible with Linux? All this talk
of driver software, one-touch backup buttons, etc. makes these drives
sound like something that you can't just plug into a Linux box and
mount. Does anyone have any experience with these units? Do they
work under Linux, or have they been designed to work under Windows only?

Any suggestions as to brands, and user stories good or bad, are
welcome. How about getting an internal drive and one of those
external enclosures, which presumably have some sort of IDE-to-USB
adapter in them - is this an option?

Comments, please - I need the peace of mind that only a good backup
can give.

--
/~\ [email]cgibbs@kltpzyxm.inva[/email]lid (Charlie Gibbs)
\ / I'm really at ac.dekanfrus if you read it the right way.
X Top-posted messages will probably be ignored. See RFC1855.
/ \ HTML will DEFINITELY be ignored. Join the ASCII ribbon campaign!

Charlie Gibbs <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> wrote:[color=blue]
> There are plenty of external USB hard drives out there that should
> do the trick. But are they compatible with Linux? All this talk
> of driver software, one-touch backup buttons, etc. makes these drives
> sound like something that you can't just plug into a Linux box[/color]

The following devices should be avoided because they are known to enter
powersave mode after a few minutes and will not wakeup:

Maxtor Onetouch 4
Seagate Freeagent

Regards,

Mark.

--
Mark Hobley,
393 Quinton Road West,
Quinton, BIRMINGHAM.
B32 1QE.

> There are plenty of external USB hard drives out there that should[color=blue]
> do the trick. But are they compatible with Linux? All this talk
> of driver software, one-touch backup buttons, etc. makes these drives
> sound like something that you can't just plug into a Linux box and
> mount. Does anyone have any experience with these units? Do they
> work under Linux, or have they been designed to work under Windows only?[/color]

Most external USB hard drives are standard USB Mass Storage devices.
The kernels included in almost any modern distribution will support these
immediately with no extra work. The backup buttons, however, will probably
not work without extra software.

I use and recommend rdiff-backup for backups using Linux. It provides
efficient reverse incremental backups, where the latest version is
directly accessible (without requiring special software).

[url]http://www.nongnu.org/rdiff-backup/[/url]

On 2008-08-20, Baho Utot <baho-utot@columnbus.rr.com> wrote:[color=blue]
> Charlie Gibbs wrote:
>[color=green]
>> Well, my big Linux box just bit it again. Looks like I blew another
>> motherboard, and this time it took the power supply with it. So I'm
>> once again praying that my hard drives, with their 500GB of downloads,
>> survived. Last time I was lucky - maybe I will be again. But I think
>> it's time I did something better than trying to get this stuff burnt
>> onto DVDs before the box blows up again.
>>
>> There are plenty of external USB hard drives out there that should
>> do the trick. But are they compatible with Linux? All this talk
>> of driver software, one-touch backup buttons, etc. makes these drives
>> sound like something that you can't just plug into a Linux box and
>> mount. Does anyone have any experience with these units? Do they
>> work under Linux, or have they been designed to work under Windows only?
>>
>> Any suggestions as to brands, and user stories good or bad, are
>> welcome. How about getting an internal drive and one of those
>> external enclosures, which presumably have some sort of IDE-to-USB
>> adapter in them - is this an option?
>>
>> Comments, please - I need the peace of mind that only a good backup
>> can give.
>>[/color]
>
> I have three external USB drives, I use generic USB case and installed an
> IDE drive into. No problems what so ever.
>
> Now for the already comerical ones I don't know.[/color]

Got a cheap 500G one from Lidl couple of days ago, and am fiddling with it
to get it to work with Linux. ( I wanted it to try the stonking great file
to compare md5 password hashes, but discover that it Has Been Done, so am
now playing with the drive). Some cron process wouold do the backup thing,
I suppose. Noisy bugger, Targa (which supply Lidl with cheap tat),. 135
euro.


--
Greymaus

On Wed, 20 Aug 2008 23:57:54 +0100, Mark Hobley wrote:
[color=blue]
> The following devices should be avoided because they are known to enter
> powersave mode after a few minutes and will not wakeup:
>
> Maxtor Onetouch 4
> Seagate Freeagent
>
> Regards,
>
> Mark.[/color]

I was able to change that behaviour on my Seagate Freeagent drives
permanently using sdparm. Before changing it, they would wake up, just not
in time. This caused Linux to think there were FS errors, and would
therefore remount it read-only.

On Wed, 20 Aug 2008 22:57:54 UTC in comp.os.linux.hardware,
[email]markhobley@hotpop.donottypethisbit.com[/email] (Mark Hobley) wrote:
[color=blue]
> Charlie Gibbs <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> wrote:[color=green]
> > There are plenty of external USB hard drives out there that should
> > do the trick. But are they compatible with Linux? All this talk
> > of driver software, one-touch backup buttons, etc. makes these drives
> > sound like something that you can't just plug into a Linux box[/color]
>
> The following devices should be avoided because they are known to enter
> powersave mode after a few minutes and will not wakeup:
>
> Maxtor Onetouch 4
> Seagate Freeagent[/color]

My Seagate Freeagent works OK though I did have to add this to /etc/rc.local

for f in /sys/class/scsi_disk/*; do echo 1 > $f/allow_restart; done

That allows the disk to spin back up again once it goes to sleep.

--
Trevor Hemsley, Brighton, UK
Trevor dot Hemsley at ntlworld dot com

Rikishi 42 <skunkworks@rikishi42.net> wrote:[color=blue]
> What do you do? Overclock? In 25 years, I never blew a motherboard, never
> mind a power supply.[/color]

I found that Maxtor hard drives can fail catastrophically taking the
motherboard, power supply and processor down with them. I have seen this
on at least three occasions. The drives get roasting hot. Disk errors start to
occur and eventually the computer goes bang. Repair involves replacement of
the hard drives, power supply, motherboard and processor.

Mark.

--
Mark Hobley,
393 Quinton Road West,
Quinton, BIRMINGHAM.
B32 1QE.

Em Quinta, 21 de Agosto de 2008 12:08, Mark Hobley escreveu:
[color=blue]
> Rikishi 42 <skunkworks@rikishi42.net> wrote:[color=green]
>> What do you do? Overclock? In 25 years, I never blew a motherboard, never
>> mind a power supply.[/color]
>
> I found that Maxtor hard drives can fail catastrophically taking the
> motherboard, power supply and processor down with them. I have seen this
> on at least three occasions. The drives get roasting hot. Disk errors
> start to occur and eventually the computer goes bang. Repair involves
> replacement of the hard drives, power supply, motherboard and processor.
>
> Mark.
>[/color]

And there is also a lot of poor quality boards out there...

for example, i have two nephews with identical computers, both have
P4M800 Pro-M7 boards and these boards have a problem, they overheat the
memorys DDR2: in hot days, the memory and north chip heats and it starts to
get memory erros (tested with memtest86)...
the solution is to manually down the FSB and DRAM frequencies from 266 to
200Mhz and put a fan pointed to the DIMMs... and in those really hot days,
keep the tower open.

pretty crap isn't it?

regards

Thanks, everyone, for your comments. I've been doing some googling
and read horror stories about various units' attempts to make
themselves Windows-only devices (e.g. Seagate FreeAgent). But
I went down to the local store and found a very nice enclosure
(Vantec NexStar CX), which is nothing more than a sleek aluminum
box containing a SATA-to-USB adapter board. I bought a 500GB SATA
drive and slid it in, and for $100 I have myself an external USB
drive with no Windows driver disks, no NTFS pre-formatting, no
one-touch button to worry about - in other words, everything's
at too low a level to know or care what OS I'm running.

Now I just have to wait until my box is back from the shop so I can
try out my new toy. More news as it happens...

--
/~\ [email]cgibbs@kltpzyxm.inva[/email]lid (Charlie Gibbs)
\ / I'm really at ac.dekanfrus if you read it the right way.
X Top-posted messages will probably be ignored. See RFC1855.
/ \ HTML will DEFINITELY be ignored. Join the ASCII ribbon campaign!

In article <slrngau2av.7p9.BobT@linus.cs.queensu.ca>, [email]BobT@cs.queensu.ca[/email]
(Bob Tennent) writes:
[color=blue]
> On 22 Aug 08 08:21:10 -0800, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
>[color=green]
>> But I went down to the local store and found a very nice enclosure
>> (Vantec NexStar CX), which is nothing more than a sleek aluminum box
>> containing a SATA-to-USB adapter board.[/color]
>
> Sorry to have to say this now but my one bad experience with USB-to-IDE
> was with a Vantec enclosure. YMMV.[/color]

Hopefully they're doing better with USB-to-SATA. I'll let you know.
I'm still waiting for my box to come back from the shop, but in the
meantime I plugged the unit into my wife's laptop, which is running
Windows XP. It saw the drive, although since the disk isn't yet
formatted it didn't assign it a drive letter.

--
/~\ [email]cgibbs@kltpzyxm.inva[/email]lid (Charlie Gibbs)
\ / I'm really at ac.dekanfrus if you read it the right way.
X Top-posted messages will probably be ignored. See RFC1855.
/ \ HTML will DEFINITELY be ignored. Join the ASCII ribbon campaign!

On 2008-08-22, greymaus <greymausg@mail.com> wrote:
[color=blue]
> I have one problem, turning on the already connected USB-HD gives
> different devices, sometimes /dev/sdb, sometimes /dev/sdc. I am working
> towards having it i lilo-startable, but how can one call it when the
> device name changes on reboot.[/color]

Use the device ID to identify it. Look in /dev/disk/by-id/ and use that
device in /etc/fstab to give it a consistent mount point:

/dev/disk/by-id/usb-WDC_WD16_00AABB-00PUA0-0:0-part1 /mnt/backup ext3 users,rw,owner 1 3

--

John (john@os2.dhs.org)
** Posted from [url]http://www.teranews.com[/url] **

In article <1014.191T1708T9255505@kltpzyxm.invalid>,
[email]cgibbs@kltpzyxm.inva[/email]lid (Charlie Gibbs) writes:
[color=blue]
> In article <slrngau2av.7p9.BobT@linus.cs.queensu.ca>,
> [email]BobT@cs.queensu.ca[/email] (Bob Tennent) writes:
>[color=green]
>> On 22 Aug 08 08:21:10 -0800, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
>>[color=darkred]
>>> But I went down to the local store and found a very nice enclosure
>>> (Vantec NexStar CX), which is nothing more than a sleek aluminum
>>> box containing a SATA-to-USB adapter board.[/color]
>>
>> Sorry to have to say this now but my one bad experience with
>> USB-to-IDE was with a Vantec enclosure. YMMV.[/color]
>
> Hopefully they're doing better with USB-to-SATA. I'll let you know.
> I'm still waiting for my box to come back from the shop, but in the
> meantime I plugged the unit into my wife's laptop, which is running
> Windows XP. It saw the drive, although since the disk isn't yet
> formatted it didn't assign it a drive letter.[/color]

More news. I tried plugging my backup unit into the KnoppMyth box
in the living room (and had to ssh in from a Windows box because
the shell's display isn't readable on my TV). I was able to
partition the drive, make an ext3 filesystem, and copy some
test files onto the drive. Works just fine.

So now I have a backup unit - but nothing to back up anymore.
I tried slipping the two SATA drives into the enclosure in turn.
They didn't spin up, they didn't respond - but they did smell.
So it looks as if when my power supply **** itself, it not only
took out the motherboard and the CPU, but the hard drives as well.
I've heard stories about finding identical drives and swapping the
circuit boards. Has anyone tried this? Did it work? If the motor
gets fried would even this not be enough?

A bit of googling suggests that the data recovery services that
do this sort of stuff tend to charge about $500 per drive. That's
an awful lot for a bunch of MP3s and AVIs (even though we're talking
an awful lot of MP3s and AVIs). Looks like I've learned a painful
lesson here, involving not only regular backups but also regular
vacuuming of computers - since I suspect that it's that dust-clogged
fan in the power supply that caused the murder/suicide. My 10-year-old
boxes aren't nearly as fussy...

--
/~\ [email]cgibbs@kltpzyxm.inva[/email]lid (Charlie Gibbs)
\ / I'm really at ac.dekanfrus if you read it the right way.
X Top-posted messages will probably be ignored. See RFC1855.
/ \ HTML will DEFINITELY be ignored. Join the ASCII ribbon campaign!

In article <2444.193T2186T14335559@kltpzyxm.invalid>,
Charlie Gibbs <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> wrote:[color=blue]
> In article <1014.191T1708T9255505@kltpzyxm.invalid>,
> [email]cgibbs@kltpzyxm.inva[/email]lid (Charlie Gibbs) writes:
>[color=green]
> > In article <slrngau2av.7p9.BobT@linus.cs.queensu.ca>,
> > [email]BobT@cs.queensu.ca[/email] (Bob Tennent) writes:
> >[color=darkred]
> >> On 22 Aug 08 08:21:10 -0800, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
> >>
> >>> But I went down to the local store and found a very nice enclosure
> >>> (Vantec NexStar CX), which is nothing more than a sleek aluminum
> >>> box containing a SATA-to-USB adapter board.
> >>
> >> Sorry to have to say this now but my one bad experience with
> >> USB-to-IDE was with a Vantec enclosure. YMMV.[/color]
> >
> > Hopefully they're doing better with USB-to-SATA. I'll let you know.
> > I'm still waiting for my box to come back from the shop, but in the
> > meantime I plugged the unit into my wife's laptop, which is running
> > Windows XP. It saw the drive, although since the disk isn't yet
> > formatted it didn't assign it a drive letter.[/color]
>
> More news. I tried plugging my backup unit into the KnoppMyth box
> in the living room (and had to ssh in from a Windows box because
> the shell's display isn't readable on my TV).[/color]

Change its typeface to something that _is_ readable. I had to jack up
PuTTY to something huge to make it legible.
[color=blue]
> I was able to
> partition the drive, make an ext3 filesystem, and copy some
> test files onto the drive. Works just fine.
>
> So now I have a backup unit - but nothing to back up anymore.
> I tried slipping the two SATA drives into the enclosure in turn.
> They didn't spin up, they didn't respond - but they did smell.
> So it looks as if when my power supply **** itself, it not only
> took out the motherboard and the CPU, but the hard drives as well.[/color]

Warranty exchange?

--
-eben [email]QebWenE01R@vTerYizUonI.nOet[/email]P royalty.mine.nu:81

Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity,
and I'm not sure about the former." -- Albert Einstein

Charlie Gibbs wrote:[color=blue]
> In article <1014.191T1708T9255505@kltpzyxm.invalid>,
> [email]cgibbs@kltpzyxm.inva[/email]lid (Charlie Gibbs) writes:
>[color=green]
>> In article <slrngau2av.7p9.BobT@linus.cs.queensu.ca>,
>> [email]BobT@cs.queensu.ca[/email] (Bob Tennent) writes:
>>[color=darkred]
>>> On 22 Aug 08 08:21:10 -0800, Charlie Gibbs wrote:[/color][/color][/color]
{snip}[color=blue]
> I tried slipping the two SATA drives into the enclosure in turn.
> They didn't spin up, they didn't respond - but they did smell.
> So it looks as if when my power supply **** itself, it not only
> took out the motherboard and the CPU, but the hard drives as well.
> I've heard stories about finding identical drives and swapping the
> circuit boards. Has anyone tried this? Did it work? If the motor
> gets fried would even this not be enough?[/color]

I've tried it with both IDE and SCSI drives, trying to salvage
some good drives from a pile of dead ones. I'd swap boards from
drives with obvious HDA problems (no spin or ping-of-death) to
ones that just didn't get detected (IDE) or didn't come ready
(SCSI). ISTR the success rate was about 50%, but I wasn't using
known-good boards nor was I trying to get data off (I'd reformat
the ones that worked).

It might be worth a try, but since the drives give off that
distinctive fried-electronics aroma *and* don't spin up I'd say
that they're dead.

--
-- Marten Kemp
(Fix name and ISP to reply)

In article <6umao5-jq9.ln1@royalty.mine.nu>, [email]ebenZEROONE@verizon.net[/email]
(Hactar) writes:
[color=blue]
> In article <2444.193T2186T14335559@kltpzyxm.invalid>,
> Charlie Gibbs <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> wrote:
>[color=green]
>> More news. I tried plugging my backup unit into the KnoppMyth box
>> in the living room (and had to ssh in from a Windows box because
>> the shell's display isn't readable on my TV).[/color]
>
> Change its typeface to something that _is_ readable. I had to jack up
> PuTTY to something huge to make it legible.[/color]

I did a bit of tinkering and managed to get xmms almost readable
on the TV, although the file requester remained tiny. As for xterm,
the incantations I've tried so far haven't worked. But the ssh
solution is a good enough workaround until I get my 46-inch LCD
and hook it up to the DVI port on the KnoppMyth box.
[color=blue][color=green]
>> I was able to partition the drive, make an ext3 filesystem, and
>> copy some test files onto the drive. Works just fine.
>>
>> So now I have a backup unit - but nothing to back up anymore.
>> I tried slipping the two SATA drives into the enclosure in turn.
>> They didn't spin up, they didn't respond - but they did smell.
>> So it looks as if when my power supply **** itself, it not only
>> took out the motherboard and the CPU, but the hard drives as well.[/color]
>
> Warranty exchange?[/color]

That's going to get me a new motherboard, I think. This is the
second motherboard swap in this box - the shop where I got the
last motherboard back in January (after the previous one blew up,
leaving the drives intact) was kind enough to send it off for a
replacement, even though it was the power supply in the original
box (that I didn't buy there) that melted everything down. As for
the drives, they're cheap enough to replace - except for the data,
which no warranty can recover.

--
/~\ [email]cgibbs@kltpzyxm.inva[/email]lid (Charlie Gibbs)
\ / I'm really at ac.dekanfrus if you read it the right way.
X Top-posted messages will probably be ignored. See RFC1855.
/ \ HTML will DEFINITELY be ignored. Join the ASCII ribbon campaign!

In article <2042.194T2442T6926255@kltpzyxm.invalid>,
Charlie Gibbs <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> wrote:[color=blue]
> In article <6umao5-jq9.ln1@royalty.mine.nu>, [email]ebenZEROONE@verizon.net[/email]
> (Hactar) writes:
>[color=green]
> > In article <2444.193T2186T14335559@kltpzyxm.invalid>,
> > Charlie Gibbs <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> wrote:
> >[color=darkred]
> >> More news. I tried plugging my backup unit into the KnoppMyth box
> >> in the living room (and had to ssh in from a Windows box because
> >> the shell's display isn't readable on my TV).[/color]
> >
> > Change its typeface to something that _is_ readable. I had to jack up
> > PuTTY to something huge to make it legible.[/color]
>
> I did a bit of tinkering and managed to get xmms almost readable
> on the TV, although the file requester remained tiny.[/color]

XMMS is way small, even at double size. The only sorta-cures I know for
that are dropping the X resolution or something like xmag.
[color=blue]
> As for xterm,
> the incantations I've tried so far haven't worked. But the ssh
> solution is a good enough workaround until I get my 46-inch LCD
> and hook it up to the DVI port on the KnoppMyth box.[/color]

Changing it in ~/.Xdefaults or ~/.Xresources would be semi-permanent, but
something like

xterm -fn '-sony-fixed-*-*-*-*-24-*-*-*-*-*-*-*'

should work this time only. BTW, what terminal emulator do you use?
[color=blue][color=green][color=darkred]
> >> I was able to partition the drive, make an ext3 filesystem, and
> >> copy some test files onto the drive. Works just fine.
> >>
> >> So now I have a backup unit - but nothing to back up anymore.
> >> I tried slipping the two SATA drives into the enclosure in turn.
> >> They didn't spin up, they didn't respond - but they did smell.
> >> So it looks as if when my power supply **** itself, it not only
> >> took out the motherboard and the CPU, but the hard drives as well.[/color]
> >
> > Warranty exchange?[/color]
>
> That's going to get me a new motherboard, I think. This is the
> second motherboard swap in this box - the shop where I got the
> last motherboard back in January (after the previous one blew up,
> leaving the drives intact) was kind enough to send it off for a
> replacement, even though it was the power supply in the original
> box (that I didn't buy there) that melted everything down. As for
> the drives, they're cheap enough to replace - except for the data,
> which no warranty can recover.[/color]

When I was young and foolish, I paid \$$BIGNUM to have a shop recover
my Mac's HD. Woulda been cheaper and easier had it been a Windows box.

--
-eben [email]QebWenE01R@vTerYizUonI.nOet[/email]P royalty.mine.nu:81

This message was created using recycled electrons.

[email]ebenZEROONE@verizon.net[/email] (Hactar) writes:
[color=blue]
> In article <2042.194T2442T6926255@kltpzyxm.invalid>,
> Charlie Gibbs <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> wrote:[color=green]
>> In article <6umao5-jq9.ln1@royalty.mine.nu>, [email]ebenZEROONE@verizon.net[/email]
>> (Hactar) writes:
>>[color=darkred]
>> > In article <2444.193T2186T14335559@kltpzyxm.invalid>,
>> > Charlie Gibbs <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> wrote:
>> >
>> >> More news. I tried plugging my backup unit into the KnoppMyth box
>> >> in the living room (and had to ssh in from a Windows box because
>> >> the shell's display isn't readable on my TV).
>> >
>> > Change its typeface to something that _is_ readable. I had to jack up
>> > PuTTY to something huge to make it legible.[/color]
>>
>> I did a bit of tinkering and managed to get xmms almost readable
>> on the TV, although the file requester remained tiny.[/color]
>
> XMMS is way small, even at double size. The only sorta-cures I know for
> that are dropping the X resolution or something like xmag.[/color]

I'd try changing that and the display area size in xorg.conf, before
looking for application-dependent fixes.
[color=blue][color=green]
>> As for xterm,
>> the incantations I've tried so far haven't worked. But the ssh
>> solution is a good enough workaround until I get my 46-inch LCD
>> and hook it up to the DVI port on the KnoppMyth box.[/color]
>
> Changing it in ~/.Xdefaults or ~/.Xresources would be semi-permanent, but
> something like
>
> xterm -fn '-sony-fixed-*-*-*-*-24-*-*-*-*-*-*-*'
>
> should work this time only. BTW, what terminal emulator do you use?[/color]

At least some xterm versions have three 'context-menus' - Ctrl+<mouse
right-button click> raises the font size selection menu. (This is just a
quick and dirty fix, another one working just for the opened xterm
window.)

--
Nuno J. Silva (aka njsg)
LEIC student at Instituto Superior Técnico
Lisbon, Portugal
Homepage: [url]http://njsg.no.sapo.pt/[/url]
Gopherspace: [url]gopher://sdf-eu.org/1/users/njsg[/url]

-=-=-
Warning: Objects in mirror appear smarter than they are.