Frequently Given Answers written by JdeBP

It saves time to write a Frequently Given Answer just once, and then just post a reference to it every time that a relevant question is asked, rather than soak up large amounts of bandwidth posting the same answer longhand time and again.

The common practice is to refer questioners directly to one or more specific answers, which will themsleves cross-reference the other answers that they relate to, if any. But there are people out there who are terminally inquisitive. To satisfy them, here is a list of all of the FGAs that you can find here, broken down by category.

Feel free to refer people to any of these answers yourself if you need to.

The answering of questions

• The term "FAQ" is missing the point entirely.

• Don't ask questions that have "yes" or "no" as the answer unless you really want such an answer.

• Now that you've been helped, help someone else.

• When reporting problems, always follow the standard litany of questions and answers.

• Put down the chocolate-covered banana and step away from the European currency systems.

• Sometimes, it's time to invoke Dukhat.

• The Five Unmistakable Marks.

Research

• Google result counts are a meaningless metric.

Softwares

Command interpreters

• What JP Software's command interpreters are.

• You've cracked 4DOS and are getting your just deserts.

• 4DOS is not an operating system.

• A command line interface is not a "DOS prompt".

• A command interpreter is not a console, either.

• All about console and terminal paradigms for TUIs

• All about command prompts.

• A shell is not a terminal.

• The gen on the CALL caret escaping bug in Microsoft's and IBM's CMDs.

• How to wrap commands in scripts in order to add default options and arguments to them.

• How to perform common tasks using JP Software's command interpreters.

• The joys of search wildcards in Win32 command interpreters.

Operating system bootstraps

• A description of the PC/AT boot process.

• A description of the boot process of DOS-Windows.

• A description of the boot process of Windows NT version 6.

• A description of the boot process on EFI systems.

• A description of the boot process on ARC systems.

• What a "boot volume" and a "system volume" are.

• How operating systems determine the location of the system volume when bootstrapped.

• How operating systems determine the location of the boot volume when bootstrapped.

• The different kinds of bootstrap programs.

• A description of the shutdown process of Windows NT version 6.

• The gen on emergency and rescue mode bootstrap.

Volumes and filesystem formats

• The meaning and use of the OEM Name field in volume boot blocks.

• All about BIOS parameter blocks.

• Disc and volume size limits, with a focus on OS/2.

• The gen on the 2TiB disc size limit.

• There is no such thing as a 2TB disc size limit.

• How to determine the type of the filesystem with which a disc volume has been formatted.

• How to determine the width of a FAT.

• One can convert MBR partition tables to EFI partition tables non-destructively.

Bugs

• An explanation of fix terminology.

• The gen on the CSRSS backspace bug in Windows NT 4/2000/XP.

• The gen on the bug in RAMFS.IFS that affects pure 32-bit OS/2 programs.

System softwares

• The gen on the operating system nut metaphor.

• The DOS Think way of keeping time is fundamentally broken.

• How time and timezones are supposed to work in 32-bit OS/2.

• How to deal with OS/2 applications that do not understand timezones.

• What "sessions" are on Windows NT.

• The various daemons on the Hurd and what services they provide.

• Textual User Interface window systems exist.

• the conceptual problems with microkernels

• Daniel J. Bernstein on TTYs in Unix

• Distrust ComboFix.

• The gen on the Debian systemd packaging hoo-hah.

• run scripts and service units side-by-side.

• The daemontools family of service and system management toolsets.

• A service that is continually up for 0 seconds is failing to start properly.

• The cause of multiple spurious supervise directories.

• Don't throw those paging files away.

• Don't abuse su for dropping privileges.

• Don't abuse nobody for running dæmons.

• The launchd on FreeBSD/NetBSD/OpenBSD train is never coming.

• The systemd house of horror

• Errata in systemd doco.

• various problems with System 5 rc

• /etc/inittab is a thing of the past.

• run-levels are things of the past.

• /etc/rc.local is a thing of the past.

• getty spawned from init is a thing of the past.

• getty flavours from the past

• The gen on problems with Unix dæmon readiness protocols

• Corrected termcap/terminfo records for the Interix terminal emulator

• The Desktop Bus Death Rattle

• Don't use logrotate or newsyslog in this century.

• The gen on slashpackage

• The gen on the Unix login database

• The gen on the Unix Service Access Facility

• The gen on Unix editors and pagers

• The gen on the mask in Unix 3-bit ACLs

File formats

• Don't use self-decrypting files.

• CTRL-Z was never actually an End-Of-File character in MS-DOS.

Character sets

• What Unicode CJKV character set rationalization is, and isn't.

• There is no such thing as a legacy character encoding.

Hardwares

• There is no such thing as a 1.44MB standard format floppy disc.

• There is no such thing as a 3.5 inch floppy disc.

• The gen on personal computer power buttons.

• The gen on disc partition alignment.

• ISO/IEC 9995-7 symbols for keyboard keytop engravings

• Truths about telephone numbers

• Truths about telephones

• The "Fn" key is local.

Programming

Programming standards

• The gen on the BSI C++ Committee.

• Because of a defect in the C Standard void main() is illegal in C++ but legal in C.

• Because of a defect in the C++ Standard it's not actually legal to use reinterpret_cast<> with pointers to void in C++.

• The thread safety problems of function scope static variables in many C++ implementations.

• Class function members cannot be thread functions.

• wprintf() is not portable.

• The gen on Metaware High C/C++'s iterator-driven for.

Win32 and Windows NT programming

• How one goes about capturing console I/O in Win32, at long last.

• On Windows, do not put your DLLs in the System32 directory.

• Writing WDM drivers for non-Plug-and-Play devices.

• Some of what is said about IRQLs is simply wrong.

POSIX and Unix programming

• The various deficiencies of threads in Linux.

• Some mistakes to avoid when designing Unix dæmon programs.

• The gen on the UNIX Client-Server Program Interface.

• Linux control groups are not jobs.

• TIOCSTI is a kernel problem.

MS/PC/DR-DOS programming

• The gen on the C and C++ language bindings to the DOS API.

General programming

• Some mistakes to avoid when designing DLLs.

• A list of books for operating system kernel and device driver developers.

• How one goes about redirecting standard I/O from within a program.

• Do not set shared file descriptors to non-blocking I/O mode.

• Arithmetic and logical shifts and rotates are done with functions in VHDL, not operators.

• How one detects x86 virtual machines.

• In the C and C++ languages, variables cannot be used as functions.

• The gen on function calling conventions.

• The gen on function naming conventions.

• The gen on function perilogues.

• How one goes about clearing the screen in a TUI program.

• An introduction to the redo package.

• Predefined macros in the C and C++ languages …

• … that tell you what the compiler is.

• … that tell you what language features are available.

• … that tell you what the target platform API is.

• … that tell you what the target processor is.

The Internet

• The IP addresses on which proxy servers should be configured to listen.

• The security problems to address with proxy server back ends.

• Providing your own NICNAME service.

• The gen on Tesco.NET.

The Internet DNS

The answering of DNS questions

• Do not obscure your DNS data when asking for help. It's pointless and silly.

• Always prove that your problem actually is a DNS problem.

DNS Concepts

• The various rôles performed by DNS servers.

• The notions of "primary" and "secondary" DNS content servers only apply to database replication.

• The bailiwick of content DNS servers.

• The taxonomy of DNS server responses.

• What DNS name qualification is.

• What DNS query resolution is.

• Whence one obtains proxy DNS service.

• SOA is a resource record type. Content DNS servers may be "masters".

• The semantics of the fields of an SOA resource record.

• The uselessness of "Round Robin" resource record set shuffling.

• The gen on Verisign's Internet coup.

• "double reverse" DNS lookup is not a security measure.

• Many application client softwares use SRV lookups, but some (to their shame and embarrassment) do not.

Providing DNS service

• Avoid RFC 2317's classless "in-addr.arpa." delegation. Modern well designed DNS server softwares simply don't need it.

• The DNS shaped holes that one cuts into firewalls.

• How to set up one's DNS servers to provide "split horizon" DNS service.

• How one goes about updating a resolving proxy DNS server's list of root content DNS servers.

• How to switch a domain from one set of content DNS servers to another.

• Your firewall is preventing you from using EDNS0. Fix it.

• How to provide proxy DNS service with an all-the-hats-at-once DNS server software.

• How to provide content DNS service with an all-the-hats-at-once DNS server software.

• Remember to populate your "internal" DNS database with data after setting up "split horizon" DNS service.

• Your fallback proxy DNS servers must provide the same view of the DNS namespace as your principal one.

• Employ split horizon DNS service if you are using non-public IP address ranges.

• The Superdomain owner Hall of Shame.

• Always use domain names that you own and don't abuse domain names that you do not own.

DNS softwares

• The "Big Picture" for Dan Bernstein's djbdns.

• A similar "Big Picture" for the ISC's BIND.

• ISC's BIND understands bailiwick. It doesn't make full use of it, however.

• The tools that are available for DNS diagnosis.

• nslookup displays a daft error message because it is badly designed. Don't use it.

• nslookup is a seriously flawed tool. Don't use it.

• Why the results from nslookup are different to the operation of ping.

• The various problems with djbdns.

• Some of what is said about djbdns is simply wrong.

• dnstracer doesn't diagnose what it is intended to diagnose because it uses an incorrect query resolution algorithm. Don't rely upon it.

• Microsoft Windows Domain Controllers dynamically register their own IP addresses as the domain name.

• The Secure Dynamic DNS update client authorisation schemes used by Microsoft and ISC are incompatible.

The World Wide Web

• The various rôles performed by HTTP servers.

• How to allow the omission of www from URLs for your website.

• How to enable the link bar support in your web browser.

• The DNS client options in squid.

• Automatic proxy HTTP server configuration in web browsers

• No, that dot in the domain name of the URL is not a mistake.

• The Proxy-Connection: header is a mistake in how some web browsers use HTTP.

• The WWW browser FTP hall of shame.

Computer-mediated communication

Mail and news concepts

• "mbox" is a family of several mutually incompatible mailbox formats.

• The anti-UBM measures for SMTP-based Internet mail are fundamentally flawed. Use IM2000 Internet mail.

• SPF is a bad idea that will harm the SMTP-based Internet mail architecture. Adopt it.

• The way that URLs are sent in mail/news messages

• Do not send Microsoft Word documents to me. I cannot read them and I will simply delete your mail unread.

• Use appropriate body part formats in your mail and news messages.

• Some of what is said about HTML messages is simply wrong.

• SMTP servers should not require, or ascribe meaning to, HELO/EHLO.

• The "percent hack" is not part of the Internet mail standards.

• Add the Followup-To: header to your message if you think that replies should go to another newsgroup.

• Read the References: header to find out what message is being replied to.

• Always read the back messages when joining a new discussion forum.

• The MAPS DUL is a bad idea.

• The MAPS relay test is wrong.

• Many open relay tests are wrong, in fact.

Mail and news softwares

• Some of what is said about qmail is simply wrong.

• Pretty much everything ORBS said about qmail was wrong.

• The various problems with qmail.

• JP Software's support forum is defective because the hosting software is Lyris ListManager.

• The various problems with Lyris ListManager.

• Your SMTP Relay server is promiscuous because you've misconfigured the smtp-auth extension to qmail.

• The gen on Dan Bernstein's qsecretary and mailing lists.

The FediVerse

• Third-parties mirroring into the FediVerse is not liked.

Television

• The first rule of television.

• The gen on NTL digital cable TV and teletext.

Memes

• Please do not perpetuate The "90#" Hoax.

Language

• The plural of virus is viruses.

• when Hell freezes over means right now.

• xe, xem, and xyr are sex-neutral pronouns and adjectives.

• legacy is not a pejorative. Do not use it as such.

• Variants of all right

• A list of English simple prepositions

• You are being ageist and sexist about grandmas.

Humanities

• The Qin-Han unification occurred in 221 BCE.

• The gen on Newtonmas.

• George Washington's birthday is (currently) on the 24th of February.

Law

• "All rights reserved." in a copyright declaration is nearly always just chaff.

• All about licence-free softwares.

Recreation

• Robert Pepper's Five Stages of Cerocers, preserved for posterity.

• Robert Pepper's Advice for Ceroc novices, preserved for posterity.

• My dance calendars.

Food, leisure, and entertainment

• Walking Like An Egyptian

• Holocubes in science fiction

• Wait a frakking centon!

• The gen on Hush! here comes the Dream man..

• Christmas sandwiches

© Copyright 2001–2004,2007,2010 Jonathan de Boyne Pollard. "Moral" rights asserted.
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