On Sun, Aug 03, 2003 at 09:29:44PM +0200, Martin Husemann wrote:
> On Sun, Aug 03, 2003 at 02:14:14AM -0700, Bruce J.A. Nourish wrote:
> > * Kernel managed screen blanking
> > * VESA 2.0 framebuffer on i386
> > * Cute console screensavers :-)
> 
> No real comment on that - all seem completely useless to me, but as long as
> they are optional... (I'm not sure on the screen blanking part, I'm not
> running some userland stuff for it and it somehow just works for me, but
> that may be arch dependend)

On x86, screenblanking is not automatic, although some modern BIOSes
can tell modern monitors to switch off after a period of idleness. One
of the monitors I use, though, is rather old, and I have to turn it off
whenever I leave to prevent burn in.

The userland I'm refering to is screenblank(1), and if you search GNATS
for "screenblank," there is a PR that sums it up.

> > * FreeBSD's jail(2) feature
> 
> I think this is controversial. The idea itself is not bad, but it is just a
> very specific implementation of some more general concept. One could even
> argue that you could do something similar (or even more) with chroot and
> systrace (in current). 

Aha, I didn't know systrace had been ported. This is the kind of thing
I was trying to find out :-)

> I'm not sure I see real world uses where you realy
> would need jail(2), but that's probably just me.

Apparently, lots of sysadmin/webmaster types think it's rather nifty. 
You can give >20 clients the feel of a dedicated system using one machine. 

-- 
Bruce J.A. Nourish <bjan+JUNK@bjan.net>