guide to problematical library use

Ok, so I can grant su access to a user/grp for the command /bin/mount and /bin/umount. I'd like to do this, but I don't want to give everyone access to everything in /etc/fstab.

Is there a way to set up a user to have access to mount & umount just for certain predefined mnt points?

What's special about Xandros?

http://www.xandros.com/products/desktop/

It looks like every other Linux desktop I've seen out there, but Xandros cost $99. So what's special about it?

The year is 2009 (almost 2010) and Linux still appears to have the "device already in use" problem it's had since day one.

Specifically with respect to audio devices.

If I launch my game (COH under Crossover) the audio works perfect.

If I launch Skype alone - the audio works perfect.

But if I launch Skype and start a conversation, and then launch my game, I get NO SOUND in my game.

And If I launch the game first and the Skype, I get no sound from Skype.

I've tried to open the System > Preferences > Sound and try different mixers but nothing seems to work...

any help?

Update: I think I found the problem:

"There is no sound in my application running in Crossover.

Ubuntu 8.04 uses the PulseAudio backend, which isn't entirely compatible with Wine yet, and sometimes doesn't like Crossover. If you switch the OS back to using ALSA you should have audio restored to your Crossover apps. " [source: Codeweavers support wiki ]

Update 2: How to switch back to ALSA

http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-820305.html

Update 3: Skype faq

I also found this helpful-> http://forum.skype.com/index.php?showtopic=10858

Update 4: Skype version 2.0
I found this old download link for Skype version 2.0 for Debian (should work for Ubuntu) which was the last version they released that used ALSA before switching to PulseAudio.

http://download.skype.com/linux/skype-debian_2.0.0.72-1_i386.deb

Hopefully that will fix my problem.

I'm just amazed at how good City of Heroes/Villains looks on Ubuntu (playing under Crossover for Linux):

http://pics.livejournal.com/jackal/pic/005dsa06

http://pics.livejournal.com/jackal/pic/005eqwzq

http://pics.livejournal.com/jackal/pic/005dt7hh

It's playing on a pentium 4 (single core) CPU box with an ATI card that's at least 4 years old, and still it looks and plays amazing!

Update: Hardware info

$ grep name /proc/cpuinfo 
model name      : Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 2.66GHz

$ lspci |grep VGA
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc R480 [Radeon X850XT]

I've removed httpd server and would like to forward port 80 and 443 to Tomcat via connectors.

The problem I have is that ports 80 and 443 are currently closed according to nmap:

Interesting ports on my.domain.org (1.1.1.1):
PORT   STATE  SERVICE
80/tcp closed http

/etc/sysconfig/iptables suggests otherwise:

[linux]# more /etc/sysconfig/iptables
:INPUT ACCEPT [0:0]
:FORWARD ACCEPT [0:0]
:OUTPUT ACCEPT [0:0]
:RH-Firewall-1-INPUT - [0:0]
-A INPUT -j RH-Firewall-1-INPUT
-A FORWARD -j RH-Firewall-1-INPUT
-A RH-Firewall-1-INPUT -i lo -j ACCEPT
-A RH-Firewall-1-INPUT -p icmp --icmp-type any -j ACCEPT
-A RH-Firewall-1-INPUT -p 50 -j ACCEPT
-A RH-Firewall-1-INPUT -p 51 -j ACCEPT
-A RH-Firewall-1-INPUT -p udp --dport 5353 -d 224.0.0.251 -j ACCEPT
-A RH-Firewall-1-INPUT -p udp -m udp --dport 631 -j ACCEPT
-A RH-Firewall-1-INPUT -p tcp -m tcp --dport 631 -j ACCEPT
-A RH-Firewall-1-INPUT -m state --state ESTABLISHED,RELATED -j ACCEPT
-A RH-Firewall-1-INPUT -m state --state NEW -m tcp -p tcp --dport 22 -j ACCEPT
-A RH-Firewall-1-INPUT -m state --state NEW -m tcp -p tcp --dport 443 -j ACCEPT
-A RH-Firewall-1-INPUT -m state --state NEW -m tcp -p tcp --dport 80 -j ACCEPT
-A RH-Firewall-1-INPUT -m state --state NEW -m tcp -p tcp --dport 8080 -j ACCEPT
-A RH-Firewall-1-INPUT -m state --state NEW -m tcp -p tcp --dport 8443 -j ACCEPT
-A RH-Firewall-1-INPUT -j REJECT --reject-with icmp-host-prohibited
COMMIT
[linux]# 

I've restarted the firewall, no dice.

If I install apache and start the service, port 80 and 443 are magically available again.

What's going on?

I'm setting up a standalone instance of Tomcat - after importing my SSL certificate into the keystore, and restarting Tomcat -- how do users access the secure pages? (I'm waiting on the cert to be sent from verisign.. so I can't test right now)

Will secure pages be accessed by entering httpS:// as with the web server? Or will they have to enter http://blah.com:8443 ?
If the latter, is it possible to redirect that traffic to a friendlier URL? (ie, https://blah.com)