Alan’s World Famous Blog

How many IPv6 addresses are there?  Well - a good question.  There are a hell of alot of addresses within the IPv6 range!  Around 340 Undecilion, which is a very large number.  Around 340,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 as a number.   (Yes, that many 0’s!).  Current IPv4 - has around 4 billion addresses (around 4,295,000,000).  So - as you can see straight away - there are a lot of IPv6 addresses.

We can split the above addresses into smaller ranges - which makes it alot easier to manage and actually do things with them.  The same as IPv4, we have ranges.

IPv6 starts from /128, the same as IPv4 starts from /32.  The first few are not really useable - due to how can a single IP address talk to anything else if the subnet is too small (subnet… netmask etc).  So - usable addresses start from /126, the same as a /30 under IPv4.

Below is a quick chart… yes it is ugly!

/126 is 2 usable addresses (2 used by netmask/subnet)
/125 is 6 usable addresses (2 used by netmask/subnet)
/124 is 14 usable addresses (2 used by netmask/subnet)
/123 is 30 usable addresses (2 used by netmask/subnet)
/122 is 62 usable addresses (2 used by netmask/subnet)
/121 is 126 usable addresses (2 used by netmask/subnet)
/120 is 254 usable addresses (2 used by netmask/subnet)
/119 is 510 usable addresses (2 used by netmask/subnet)
/118 is 1022 usable addresses (2 used by netmask/subnet)
/117 is 2046 usable addresses (2 used by netmask/subnet)
/116 is 4094 usable addresses (2 used by netmask/subnet)
/115 is 8190 usable addresses (2 used by netmask/subnet)
/114 is 16382 usable addresses (2 used by netmask/subnet)
/113 is 32766 usable addresses (2 used by netmask/subnet)
/112 is 65534 usable addresses (2 used by netmask/subnet)
/111 is 131070 usable addresses (2 used by netmask/subnet)
/110 is 262142 usable addresses (2 used by netmask/subnet)
/109 is 524286 usable addresses (2 used by netmask/subnet)
/108 is 1.048574 million usable addresses (2 used by netmask/subnet)
/107 is 2.09715 million usable addresses (2 used by netmask/subnet)
/106 is 4.194302 million usable addresses (2 used by netmask/subnet)
/105 is 8.388606 million usable addresses (2 used by netmask/subnet)
/104 is 16.777214 million usable addresses (2 used by netmask/subnet)
/103 is 33.55443 million usable addresses (2 used by netmask/subnet)
/102 is 67.108862 million usable addresses (2 used by netmask/subnet)
/101 is 134.217726 million usable addresses (2 used by netmask/subnet)
/100 is 268.435454 million usable addresses (2 used by netmask/subnet)
/99 is 536.87091 million usable addresses (2 used by netmask/subnet)
/98 is 1.073741822 billion usable addresses (2 used by netmask/subnet)
/97 is 2.147483646 billion usable addresses (2 used by netmask/subnet)
/96 is 4.294967294 billion usable addresses (2 used by netmask/subnet)
/95 is 8.58993459 billion usable addresses (2 used by netmask/subnet)
/94 is 17.17986918 billion usable addresses (2 used by netmask/subnet)
/93 is 34.35973837 billion usable addresses (2 used by netmask/subnet)
/92 is 68.71947673 billion usable addresses (2 used by netmask/subnet)
/91 is 137.4389535 billion usable addresses (2 used by netmask/subnet)
/90 is 274.8779069 billion usable addresses (2 used by netmask/subnet)
/89 is 549.7558139 billion usable addresses (2 used by netmask/subnet)
/88 is 1.099511628 trillian usable addresses (2 used by netmask/subnet)
/87 is 2.199023256 trillian usable addresses (2 used by netmask/subnet)
/86 is 4.398046511 trillian usable addresses (2 used by netmask/subnet)
/85 is 8.796093022 trillian usable addresses (2 used by netmask/subnet)
/84 is 17.59218604 trillian usable addresses (2 used by netmask/subnet)
/83 is 35.18437209 trillian usable addresses (2 used by netmask/subnet)
/82 is 70.36874418 trillian usable addresses (2 used by netmask/subnet)
/81 is 140.7374884 trillian usable addresses (2 used by netmask/subnet)
/80 is 281.4749767 trillian usable addresses (2 used by netmask/subnet)
/79 is 562.9499534 trillian usable addresses (2 used by netmask/subnet)
/78 is 1.125899907 quadrillion usable addresses (2 used by netmask/subnet)
/77 is 2.251799814 quadrillion usable addresses (2 used by netmask/subnet)
/76 is 4.503599627 quadrillion usable addresses (2 used by netmask/subnet)
/75 is 9.007199255 quadrillion usable addresses (2 used by netmask/subnet)
/74 is 18.01439851 quadrillion usable addresses (2 used by netmask/subnet)
/73 is 36.02879702 quadrillion usable addresses (2 used by netmask/subnet)
/72 is 72.05759404 quadrillion usable addresses (2 used by netmask/subnet)
/71 is 144.1151881 quadrillion usable addresses (2 used by netmask/subnet)
/70 is 288.2303762 quadrillion usable addresses (2 used by netmask/subnet)
/69 is 576.4607523 quadrillion usable addresses (2 used by netmask/subnet)
/68 is 1.152921505 quintillion usable addresses (2 used by netmask/subnet)
/67 is 2.305843009 quintillion usable addresses (2 used by netmask/subnet)
/66 is 4.611686018 quintillion usable addresses (2 used by netmask/subnet)
/65 is 9.223372037 quintillion usable addresses (2 used by netmask/subnet)
/64 is 18.44674407 quintillion usable addresses (2 used by netmask/subnet)
/63 is 36.89348815 quintillion usable addresses (2 used by netmask/subnet)
/62 is 73.78697629 quintillion usable addresses (2 used by netmask/subnet)
/61 is 147.5739526 quintillion usable addresses (2 used by netmask/subnet)
/60 is 295.1479052 quintillion usable addresses (2 used by netmask/subnet)
/59 is 590.2958104 quintillion usable addresses (2 used by netmask/subnet)
/58 is 1.180591621 sextillion usable addresses (2 used by netmask/subnet)
/57 is 2.361183241 sextillion usable addresses (2 used by netmask/subnet)
/56 is 4.722366483 sextillion usable addresses (2 used by netmask/subnet)
/55 is 9.444732966 sextillion usable addresses (2 used by netmask/subnet)
/54 is 18.88946593 sextillion usable addresses (2 used by netmask/subnet)
/53 is 37.77893186 sextillion usable addresses (2 used by netmask/subnet)
/52 is 75.55786373 sextillion usable addresses (2 used by netmask/subnet)
/51 is 151.1157275 sextillion usable addresses (2 used by netmask/subnet)
/50 is 302.2314549 sextillion usable addresses (2 used by netmask/subnet)
/49 is 604.4629098 sextillion usable addresses (2 used by netmask/subnet)
/48 is 1.20892582 septillion usable addresses (2 used by netmask/subnet)
/47 is 2.417851639 septillion usable addresses (2 used by netmask/subnet)
/46 is 4.835703278 septillion usable addresses (2 used by netmask/subnet)
/45 is 9.671406557 septillion usable addresses (2 used by netmask/subnet)
/44 is 19.34281311 septillion usable addresses (2 used by netmask/subnet)
/43 is 38.68562623 septillion usable addresses (2 used by netmask/subnet)
/42 is 77.37125246 septillion usable addresses (2 used by netmask/subnet)
/41 is 154.7425049 septillion usable addresses (2 used by netmask/subnet)
/40 is 309.4850098 septillion usable addresses (2 used by netmask/subnet)
/39 is 618.9700196 septillion usable addresses (2 used by netmask/subnet)
/38 is 1.237940039 octillion usable addresses (2 used by netmask/subnet)
/37 is 2.475880079 octillion usable addresses (2 used by netmask/subnet)
/36 is 4.951760157 octillion usable addresses (2 used by netmask/subnet)
/35 is 9.903520314 octillion usable addresses (2 used by netmask/subnet)
/34 is 19.80704063 octillion usable addresses (2 used by netmask/subnet)
/33 is 39.61408126 octillion usable addresses (2 used by netmask/subnet)
/32 is 79.22816251 octillion usable addresses (2 used by netmask/subnet)
/31 is 158.456325 octillion usable addresses (2 used by netmask/subnet)
/30 is 316.9126501 octillion usable addresses (2 used by netmask/subnet)
/29 is 633.8253001 octillion usable addresses (2 used by netmask/subnet)
/28 is 1.2676506 nonillion usable addresses (2 used by netmask/subnet)
/27 is 2.5353012 nonillion usable addresses (2 used by netmask/subnet)
/26 is 5.070602401 nonillion usable addresses (2 used by netmask/subnet)
/25 is 10.1412048 nonillion usable addresses (2 used by netmask/subnet)
/24 is 20.2824096 nonillion usable addresses (2 used by netmask/subnet)
/23 is 40.56481921 nonillion usable addresses (2 used by netmask/subnet)
/22 is 81.12963841 nonillion usable addresses (2 used by netmask/subnet)
/21 is 162.2592768 nonillion usable addresses (2 used by netmask/subnet)
/20 is 324.5185537 nonillion usable addresses (2 used by netmask/subnet)
/19 is 649.0371073 nonillion usable addresses (2 used by netmask/subnet)
/18 is 1.298074215 decillion usable addresses (2 used by netmask/subnet)
/17 is 2.596148429 decillion usable addresses (2 used by netmask/subnet)
/16 is 5.192296859 decillion usable addresses (2 used by netmask/subnet)
/15 is 10.38459372 decillion usable addresses (2 used by netmask/subnet)
/14 is 20.76918743 decillion usable addresses (2 used by netmask/subnet)
/13 is 41.53837487 decillion usable addresses (2 used by netmask/subnet)
/12 is 83.07674974 decillion usable addresses (2 used by netmask/subnet)
/11 is 166.1534995 decillion usable addresses (2 used by netmask/subnet)
/10 is 332.3069989 decillion usable addresses (2 used by netmask/subnet)
/9 is 664.6139979 decillion usable addresses (2 used by netmask/subnet)
/8 is 1.329227996 undecillion usable addresses (2 used by netmask/subnet)
/7 is 2.658455992 undecillion usable addresses (2 used by netmask/subnet)
/6 is 5.316911983 undecillion usable addresses (2 used by netmask/subnet)
/5 is 10.63382397 undecillion usable addresses (2 used by netmask/subnet)
/4 is 21.26764793 undecillion usable addresses (2 used by netmask/subnet)
/3 is 42.53529587 undecillion usable addresses (2 used by netmask/subnet)
/2 is 85.07059173 undecillion usable addresses (2 used by netmask/subnet)
/1 is 170.1411835 undecillion usable addresses (2 used by netmask/subnet)
/0 is 340.2823669 undecillion usable addresses (2 used by netmask/subnet)

As you can see - there are a lot of addresses.  At the /96 mark - we will have matched a /0 under IPv4 (4 billion addresses).  There can be 4 billion /36’s.  So - will we see these addresses run out any time soon?  Doubt it.  I think we are at a point in time, where we should start to run devices/networks under dual-stack (both IPv4 and IPv6 at that the same time) so, we can access IPv4 and IPv6 stuff and be ready for when more goes live.  Still a long time away, but there is no harm in playing around now to get a better idea of how it all mixes together.

Well - Internode [1], one of our ISP’s at work have enabled IPv6 on their entire network over the last few years, and have now activated it for their end users [2] such as ourselfs.  So today, I am going to be playing with IPv6 and connect up a test website to demo it.

[1] http://www.internode.on.net
[2] http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies.cfm?t=1016287

Update1: OK - Our ADSL router, which is said to support IPv6 (It is a Billion BiPAC 7402R2) - does not yet! Doh - A litlte more info here. It seems there are no consomer ADSL products at the moment which support native IPv6 (unless you hack around with some Linksys devices with third party firmware). So, to get around this - I have installed Hexago’s IPv6 client (Gateway6 client). It was painless - installed, configured with a username/password/server address for Internode and clicked connect. Half a second later, we now have our first IPv6 address on our network! Sweet!

Update2: OK - Did some more playing and IIS5.1 (IIS under Windows XP) wont work with IPv6… another doh… so… going to hack around, and have either an Apache or Squid proxy in front of our normal production website so we can get an IPv6 address running to it from our Internode ADSL connection. Sure, it seems like the long way around to get to this solution of having our current live website under IPv6, but we have no choice because of our network setup (ie, security) between our networks. More soon!

Update3: OK - gave up on IIS5.1 under XP with IPv6. Tried a squid proxy/apache proxy back to our live site but that did not really work that well. Seems Squid/Apache has a little trouble under Windows with url rewriting (ie, converting the internal url to the external url which is IPv6′d.

Update4: OK - got it working. I have installed Hexago’s client onto Windows 2003 server (one of our DEV machines). Enabled IPv6 and then setup our website to use IPv6. The URL is http://ipv6.elcom.com.au. It will only work if you are connected to an IPv6 network as I only have AAAA records enabled.

Things to note from my play with IPv6

1) Windows XP w/ IIS 5.1 will not support IPv6
2) Apache under Windows (as a reverse/forward proxy) will work - but I had problems with rewriting URL’s as I was going to put the IPv6 version of our website as ipv6.elcom.com.au pointing to www.elcom.com.au
3) Squid will work (as a reverse/forward proxy) - but you need a perl module installed to rewrite the URL’s
4) You will need to install Hexago’s IPv6 client to get going. I found Gateway6 6.0-BETA4 to be the best one. I tried 5.1 under Windows XP SP2 worked well, but as soon as I upgraded to SP3 - it didnt want to operate. Even after reinstalling, so I used the BETA6 client and worked without issues.
5) Windows 2003 w/ IIS worked well. You cant put the IP address (the IPv6 version) into the GUI - so I had to enable the website to listen on all IP addresses, and use the host header as ipv6.elcom.com.au.
6) Using Microsoft DNS - you cant say ‘create IPv6 address’ or ‘create IPv4 address’. Just put the IP address in when you create an A record, and it will create it as an AAAA record for you.
7) Have a cup of coffee… you will need it!

Next step… Chat to APNIC, get a real IPv6 range (routed) - hope our firewall supports IPv6 and get some real address space working!
5)

Well it happened to me today - the ‘goto line’ feature of Notepad was missing! (See screenshot below). Well, it was there - but the shortcut key (control + g) failed to do anything, and the text in the Edit menu was greyed out.

So, I closed Notepad - opened it agian, and it was still missing.  So - now what had happened?  It seems Notepad will fail to do it’s ‘Go To’ function if the document has ‘Word Wrap’ on/enabled.  So - disable it from the Format menu, and then try the goto function again!  Easy

A bit of a strange one, but I can understand why that would happen as when Word Wrap is on, it will be harder to actually see that line 100 is line 100 and not line 95 because of a few wrapped lines above.�

Error message from IIS 7 under Windows 2008…

“The Management Service (WMSVC) is stopped.  The service must be started to remotely manage the Web server by using IIS Manager.”

Not very clear… there is no service called ‘The Management Service’ and ‘WMSVC’ is not really clear.

But have no fair……. easy to find / fix / start!

You can press the ‘Start’ or ‘Restart’ button stright below the above message under Actions

Or…

From the Command Prompt you can use …

net start wmsvc

And it will start (see picture below)

Or…

Under Server Manager > Configuration > Services you will have ‘Web Management Service’.  You might want to set it to automatic, and also ensure it is setup correctly under ‘Management Service’ in IIS 7 (ie, setup the allowed IP addresses to access the remote access function)

Have fun using the Internet Information Service (IIS) Manager from another computer!

PS: To adjust the settings, such as add IP addresses which can connect - you will need to stop the above service and start it again once done. Please note that this will drop all current remote connections to IIS!

I did a simple google search, to find a script which will allow me to rename a bunch of files within a folder, but did not find anything! So - I made my own. Please feel free to do whatever you want with the below - just hope it helps you in some way.

A simple script I have put together to find files within a folder, and then rename/move them to an .old file. Best to run it from the dos prompt, and makes also a good idea to test it prior to running, such as against a bunch of test/dummy files as I would hate.

Below is the code - plus some documentation. At the end of this post - is a RAR file you can download, just in case you cant copy/paste the below for some reason.

Known limits: It does not seem to like wildcards at the moment, but I am sure it will be a simple fix. If you are using a folder which contains a space, enclose it in ” ’s so the CD command will work correctly.

@echo off
REM ** Script created by Alan Lee @ Elcom (www.elcom.com.au)
REM ** A simple way to scan a file, for XXX file - and move/rename it (well, you could adjust the below to do whatever you want really)
REM **
REM ** Please feel free to copy/adjust/do whatever you want with the below - all I can hope for is it will make your job a little easier!
REM **
REM ** Good luck! And as always, test in a non-production setup first to ensure it does what you want it to do! I take no responsibility etc for this script!

set drive=d:
set folder_to_scan=d:\xxxxx\xxxxxx\xxxxxxx
set file_to_find=xxxxxxxxx.doc
REM ** Three things you need to adjust …
REM ** drive = the actual drive which contains the files you wish to move/replace (the script, as below, does a drive: to get
REM ** to the drive in the event you run this script from a different drive to begin with (ie, you might have a scripts folder on C: for example)
REM **
REM ** folder_to_scan = the actual folder the script will chdir into, and search
REM **
REM ** file_to_find = the actual file we wish to find / replace. by default, as per the script below - it will rename/move this to %file_to_find%.old

%drive%
cd %folder_to_scan%
REM ** Goto the drive, CD into the foler

dir %file_to_find% /b /s > tmp.txt
REM ** Do a dir and store the results into a tmp file (called tmp.txt)

notepad tmp.txt
pause
REM ** Uncomment the above two lines, to add a little more info to what the script does (ie, see the files it has found).
REM You can then control+c / close the script window if it looks evil / found the wrong info!!

for /D %%I in (”%file_to_find%”) do For /F “tokens=*” %%J in (tmp.txt) do move “%%J” “%%J”.old && echo %%J
REM ** Do the actual work, scan the tmp.txt file, pull out the information - and do the move/rename to .old

del tmp.txt
REM ** Delete the tmp file

You can download the files from the below link
http://www.alanjlee.com/downloads/FindAndReplaceFiles.rar
Oh, and a slightly changed version which actually copies a new file over the found file (ie, mass replace)
http://www.alanjlee.com/downloads/FineAndReplaceFilesWithNewFile.rar

This will be fun! A dual CPU Xeon system, 4GB of ram - a few large 500GB hard drives and a clean install of Windows 2008 to be our dedicated Streaming Media Services Server. Brad Marsh, and myself will get this going. Should be a good project.

But first - getting RAID drivers for a “Marvell Technology Group Ltd. MV88SX6041 4-port SATA II PCI-X Controller” (PCI VEN = 11AB, PCI DEV = 6041) on a SuperMicro 1U server.

Well - I did it… I have created an IP Accounting package for work!  Argh!! The eye’s!!

Well - it was not that hard.  I ended up using a package called pmacct.  It is a pretty light weight program - very easy to install and use.  I’ll give everyone a little bit of information on how I did it, but I dont want to release this version of this group of scripts yet as I want to make it tidy before I do it (ie, next release which I will be working on slowly as time goes on)

This is my config file for pmacctd

syslog:daemon
interface: eth1 (change to your ethernet card, which is in PROMISC mode)
daemonize: true
promisc: true
aggregate[outbound]: src_host
aggregate[inbound]: dst_host
aggregate[60soutbound]: src_host
aggregate[60sinbound]: dst_host

aggregate_filter[outbound]: src net public_address.0/24
aggregate_filter[inbound]: dst net public_address.0/24
aggregate_filter[60soutbound]: src net public_address.0/24
aggregate_filter[60sinbound]: dst net public_address.0/24

(change the above public_address to your external IP address range, ie 42.434.23.0)
plugins: memory[outbound], memory[inbound], memory[60soutbound], memory[60sinbound]
imt_path[inbound]: /tmp/in.pipe
imt_path[outbound]: /tmp/out.pipe
imt_path[60sinbound]: /tmp/60sin.pipe
imt_path[60soutbound]: /tmp/60sout.pipe

plugin_pipe_size:52400000
plugin_buffer_size:65536

imt_buckets: 65537
imt_mem_pools_size: 52400000

(the above numbers, 52400000 are the memory settings for this program.  My numbers are probably high, but my system is dedicated to IP Accounting so I dont really care TBH *smile*)

OK - you will notice I have two lots of ip and out’s.  There is a reason to my madness, which probably not right.  I have two lots of programs reading data from pmacct.  One does the data work on a day-to-day basis, chucked into an SQL database and then our accounts department (after we make a front-end for him) will be able to read the data, such as XX ip address did XX incoming and XX outgoing traffic today.  And the second - is a minute to minute check of the network, which I use a perl script to look over the CSV files generated and then create pretty little graphs (i will show one a little later) of the last 20 minutes of network traffic/activity.  To run the above program using the above config - I used the following

pmacctd -f /etc/pmacct.config (of course, you can call the config file whaterver you want… )

To extract data - I use something like the following

traffic_in=`pmacct -c dst_host -M $1 -p /tmp/in.pipe  | grep $1`
traffic_out=`pmacct -c src_host -M $1 -p /tmp/out.pipe  | grep $1`

if [[ $traffic_out = "" ]]
        then
                echo -n “out ” >> results.tmp
                echo $1 0 0 >> results.tmp
        else
                echo -n “out “>> results.tmp
                echo $traffic_out >> results.tmp
fi

if [[ $traffic_in = "" ]]
        then
                echo -n “in ” >> results.tmp
                echo $1 0 0 >> results.tmp
        else
                echo -n “in ” >> results.tmp
                echo $traffic_in >> results.tmp
fi

OK - so what does it do?  It is designed to be passed the IP address you wish to extract from the command line.  IE if you name the above script ‘run’, you would do something like ./run 22.5.2.3

It scans the in/out files, puts them into a results.tmp file.  I noticed that pmacct will give blank results if there was no traffic against XXX IP address.  The above script fixes that - if it finds a blank IP address, it will add 0’s to the CSV showing no data.  When it runs, it will create a file which should contain the following…

direction of the traffic (ie, in or out)
ip_address
packets
bytes

But the above is almost useless… So I have another script (which could be joined to the above when I get time) make them all pretty / join them up etc as below…

thedate=`date +%d-%m-%Y`
echo -n > results.csv
cat results.tmp | while read direction ip_address packets bytes

do
        if [ $direction = "out" ]; then
                echo -n $thedate, ‘”‘$ip_address’”‘, $packets, $bytes,” “  >> results.csv
        else
                echo $bytes >> results.csv
        fi
        done
rm results.tmp

It will scan the results.tmp file, and create a results.csv file… which will look somethine like… (add date etc)

18-06-2008, “xxxx.10″, 3224, 261980, 263037
18-06-2008, “xxxx.11″, 11, 1104, 11496
18-06-2008, “xxxx.12″, 0, 0, 10580
18-06-2008, “xxxx.13″, 0, 0, 9541

The only other thing you need to do is tell pmacct to reset its database on a regular basis (ie, daily) so that the values from the prior day are not put into the next days results.  I am sure there is a better way to do it, but I use the following

pmacct -c dst_host -M    xxxx.32    -p /tmp/in.pipe -r
pmacct -c dst_host -M    xxxx.33    -p /tmp/in.pipe -r
pmacct -c dst_host -M    xxxx.34    -p /tmp/in.pipe -r

Other things to think about:  pmacct, using my above memory settings - eats alot of memory.  CPU time - very little.  I have had it installed for almost a week now, and 37 minutes of CPU time on an Intel P4 2.4Ghz CPU w/ 1gb of memory. 

As always, feel free to us anything in this post.  I hope that the above helps in some way (maybe you will see an error in your own scripts, or feel I did something wrong or give you a brilliant idea on how to take over the world…!)

(Below - is an example of what the csv2png program can generate… with a few tweaks… I will post my scripts at a later date. This image is live, getting updated every ~1 minute with a real host on our network)

Well, I am trying to make an IP Accoutning server under Linux. I have searched for a few days (looked at ntop, NeTAMS, ipac, a bunch of windows applications to find something which just works - and I cant seem to find anything that wants to play nice. So - I decided to create my own. From today, I will be creating a system to monitor network traffic at work, and record the values to a database, so they can be extracted and used for billing. Hope to have something to show everyone in a few days!

I will be doing most of my work under Slackware 12.1.0.

Back to work! Keep smiling.

OK - Installing pine (pico) should be easy, but for some reason I could not find it / install it on Fedora Core 9. Basic searches in google, did not return much if anything useful. I tried the usual - yum install Pine (Pine is the package which contains Pico, the text editor), and the following happened,,,

[root@localhost ~]# yum install pine
Loaded plugins: refresh-packagekit
Setting up Install Process
Parsing package install arguments
No package pine available.
Nothing to do

“Nothing to do”. So, at this point - it looks like Yum for some reason did not support Pine? So, I tried to do a few google lookups to see if I could find out what was happening (ie, is there an RPM or something to install?). I found this website (scroll down to the last post, about Core 8), which said to do rpm -ivh http://rpm.livna.org/livna-release-8.rpm to add Pine to the Yum updater/installer. This seemed to do something - like the below…

[root@localhost ~]# yum install pine
Loaded plugins: refresh-packagekit
livna | 2.1 kB 00:00
primary.sqlite.bz2 | 171 kB 00:02
Setting up Install Process
Parsing package install arguments
No package pine available.
Nothing to do

Still the same error - “Nothing to do”. So, at this point - I thought I would visit the Pine’s website and see if there was an update or something and at the very top of the page - I saw my answer! “Pine is no longer under active development. Consider evaluating its successor, Alpine, which supports all of Pine’s functionality and more.”

So - I then tried to use Yum to install Alpine…

[root@localhost ~]# yum install alpine
Loaded plugins: refresh-packagekit
Setting up Install Process
Parsing package install arguments
Resolving Dependencies
–> Running transaction check
—> Package alpine.i386 0:1.10-4.fc9 set to be updated
–> Processing Dependency: aspell for package: alpine
–> Running transaction check
—> Package aspell.i386 12:0.60.5-6.fc9 set to be updated
–> Processing Dependency: aspell-en for package: aspell
–> Running transaction check
—> Package aspell-en.i386 50:6.0-9.fc9 set to be updated
–> Finished Dependency Resolution

Dependencies Resolved

=============================================================================
Package Arch Version Repository Size
=============================================================================
Installing:
alpine i386 1.10-4.fc9 fedora 3.7 M
Installing for dependencies:
aspell i386 12:0.60.5-6.fc9 updates 935 k
aspell-en i386 50:6.0-9.fc9 fedora 1.5 M

Transaction Summary
=============================================================================
Install 3 Package(s)
Update 0 Package(s)
Remove 0 Package(s)

Total download size: 6.1 M
Is this ok [y/N]: y
Downloading Packages:
(1/3): aspell-en-6.0-9.fc9.i386.rpm | 1.5 MB 00:02
(2/3): alpine-1.10-4.fc9.i386.rpm | 3.7 MB 00:02
(3/3): aspell-0.60.5-6.fc9.i386.rpm | 935 kB 00:00
Running rpm_check_debug
Running Transaction Test
Finished Transaction Test
Transaction Test Succeeded
Running Transaction
Installing: aspell ######################### [1/3]
Installing: alpine ######################### [2/3]
Installing: aspell-en ######################### [3/3]

Installed: alpine.i386 0:1.10-4.fc9
Dependency Installed: aspell.i386 12:0.60.5-6.fc9 aspell-en.i386 50:6.0-9.fc9
Complete!

After installing a few additional packages, I now have something called Alpine.

The command pico will still open the text editior, and it looks 100% the same so far. The command alpine will open the mail client. So, for everyone who loves pico, can still use the command pico - but download/install the Alpine package. Easy/Magic!  Pine is not missing in Fedora - it is just renamed.

So - just to recap in english - yum install alpine is all that is required to install Pico on Fedora Core 9!

Now - I can get back to installing Ntop