From: [email protected] (Linus Benedict Torvalds)

Subject: Re: swapfile on scsi?
Keywords: does it work?
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Date: 25 Apr 92 18:27:34 GMT
References: <[email protected]>
Organization: University of Helsinki
Lines: 22

[ swapon problems ]

Ok, I thought I'd mentions this here, as I seem not to have done it in
the readme's. After doing a "mkswap", it's best to sync the filesystem:
swapping doesn't use the buffer cache, so before doing a swapon you
should make sure the swap-space signature and ID bitmaps are correctly
flushed out to the disk.

Note that the above shouldn't result in any filesystem problems even if
you don't sync: the block numbers are still gotten through the
filesystem routines. It's just the data blocks themselves that are
loaded with no regard for buffer cache coherency, as it makes little
sense to keep swap data in the buffer cache. This is normally no
problem, but for the fact that the first page (4 blocks) of the swapfile
contains the signature, and is loaded with the normal swap-routines.

The result is that if you see "swap space signature not found" or
similar errors, it might be a good idea to sync, wait a bit for it to
complete, and then try swapon again. Swapon should probably do an
implicit sync, but I didn't think of it when I wrote it.

Linus


[next article]
From: [email protected] (Charles Hedrick)

Subject: using gdb with tcsh
Message-ID:
Date: 25 Apr 92 19:01:27 GMT
Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.
Lines: 20

For reasons I haven't yet figured out, gdb doesn't work if your
shell is tcsh. It looks like if your shell is /bin/sh, gdb calls
the program directly, but if it's tcsh, the fork under gdb is

tcsh -c program

The latter doesn't work (probably because something odd happens with
signals). Here's a workaround:

1) install gdb as /usr/bin/gdb.bin

2) Use the following script as gdb:

#!/bin/sh
export SHELL=/bin/sh
exec /usr/bin/gdb.bin "$@"

The script simply sets your shell to /bin/sh and then calls the
binary, passing along the arguments. I've tried this with 0.96- and
gdb-4.5, but I assume it would work with the older versions as well.


[next article]
From: [email protected] (Joel M. Hoffman)

Subject: ``M-x shell'' command under emacs doesn't quite work.
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Date: 25 Apr 92 19:34:05 GMT
Sender: [email protected] (USENET News system)
Organization: University of Maryland, College Park
Lines: 20
Nntp-Posting-Host: next.wam.umd.edu

I can almost get ``M-x shell'' to work under GNU emacs, but I always get
the following error message:

/bin/bash: [257: 2] tcgetattr: EINVAL

I have only three questions: What is ``EINVAL,'' what is ``tcgetattr''
and what does the [257: 2] represent. And, I guess a forth question:
has any found a work-around.

I'm using the binaries from tsx-11, and the 0.95a kernel with ps added.
Is the problem in the kernel? in emacs? in Bash?

I also notice that after suspending emacs and resuming it with ``fg''
the tty is no longer in cbreak mode. I suppose this is a problem with
Bash?

Thanks in advance for any help.

-Joel
([email protected])


[next article]
From: [email protected] (Paul Brant)
Newsgroups: comp.os.linux,alt.os.linux

Subject: Upgrades to OS
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Date: 25 Apr 92 09:33:45 GMT
Sender: [email protected] (GNEWS Version 2.0 news poster.)
Organization: THEO - A comms persons sanctuary(Its Not much but its my own!)
Lines: 12

Hi,

Could someone please clarify the following situation for me.
The last major update was 0.95 with a,c,c+ and now c++ increments
following.
One would assume that the next major update would be 1.0. Will that
upgrade require 0.95 with all the increments or will it just require
the last major release.

Im running out of space!!

Paul


[next article]
From: [email protected] (Scott Beckstead)

Subject: Re: Linux-Activists Digest #102
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Date: 25 Apr 92 20:49:39 GMT
Sender: [email protected] (Mr Background)
Reply-To: [email protected] (Scott Beckstead)
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 4

Hi all,
t to puting in a dos partition and eating some of my limited disk space. I real
ly don't want (YECHHY MESSYDOS) to take up any of my hard disk
with other than linux.
Scott


[next article]
From: [email protected] ( )

Subject: Re: dos emulator
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Date: 25 Apr 92 21:08:46 GMT
References: <[email protected]> <1992Apr23.1729
[email protected]> <[email protected]>
Sender: [email protected] (The Daily Lose)
Organization: Michigan Technological University
Lines: 28
X-Posted-From: sol.ctr.columbia.edu

CMU has a VM version with code available on either ftp.cs.cmu.edu
or ernst.mach.cs.cmu.edu, buried deep, like /pub/src/src/mdos/src/*,
and it uses real DOS to handle the int 0x* (DOS side). It does require
an MK73 version of the Mach 3.0 ernel, but it can probably be ported
without as much trouble as rewriting it completely or without much
more than adding system calls to the Linux kernel.

It appears (from the docs - I haven't examined the code yet) that it
only emulates most of the BIOS code necessary and lets DOS do its
own thing (a DOS system disk is required for the process, from 3.1
to 5.0). Code also allows you to read any DOS compatible file names
direuctly form the UFS partition or DOS partition (like an NFS/UFS
type server.)

It does not run 32 bit software, presently - but it can run MS-Windows
3.0 in real mode. It mandates the use of its own mousie driver.


Sorry about the uncertainty of the machine and directory, but both machines
are down at the moment, so I can't double check.


Calvin
--
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Steve Stanzel | To secure peace is to prepare for war. |
| 242 W. Wadsworth Hall | Metallica - Don't tread on me |
| Houghton MI, 49931 | VeSrupchoHwI' ghaH RojrupchoHwI' |


[next article]
From: [email protected] (Tommy Thorn)
Newsgroups: comp.os.linux,alt.os.linux

Subject: Version numbering (was Re: pre-0.96)
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Date: 23 Apr 92 11:34:12 GMT
References: <1992Apr20.085143.230
[email protected]> <[email protected]>
Sender: [email protected] (Tommy Thorn)
Organization: DAIMI: Computer Science Department, Aarhus University, Denmark
Lines: 22

[email protected] (Linus Benedict Torvalds) writes:

> fixed in the final 0.96). Breakpoints should work etc..

Why do we/you use this stupid way of naming releases? It's just major
confusion that different versions of releases can have the same or
almost the same name. Why not do it simple: a version number uniqly
identifies a set of sources. Even the tiny patch to 0.95c should
be considered as a new version. If we hadn't been so eager to change
version names from 0.12 to 0.95, there would still be enough headroom
to 1.0.

It's ok to use subnumbering like 0.95c to denote alpha tests, but
subsubnumbering like 0.95c+ is too much. Whats this for a number 'pre 0.96',
what's wrong with 0.95d, and if patches to it are small and make a stable
system, go ahead call it 0.96.

/Tommy
--
/Tommy Thorn, another LPF member. Terminate software patents.
Join The League for Programming Freedom, mail [email protected].
Are *you* sure that *your* program isn't already covered by patents?


[next article]
From: [email protected] (A. V. Le Blanc)

Subject: Re: Linux Newbie - Advice needed... (Long, sorry)
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Date: 25 Apr 92 13:08:14 GMT
References: <[email protected]> <[email protected]> <1992
[email protected]>
Followup-To: [email protected]
Organization: Computing Centre, University of Manchester
Lines: 35

In article <[email protected]> [email protected].
edu (Oren Kastner) writes:
>
> Now, here is what misunderstanding is of... I thought of using the
>mcc-interim installation, as it seemed as though it would be painless. From
>what I remember reading about it, though, I would have to have it install
>itself on the whole HD, or something like that... My patitions:
>
>/dev/hda3 == 8megs swap-space
>/dev/hda4 == 30megs root, etc.
>
>Can I have mcc install the two disks *-US disks and the two compiler disks on
>/dev/hda4 painlessly? Or should I stick with what I have right now? That is,
>I'd like to do the "mcc thing" :), but if I can't have it install things
>correctly on /dev/hda4, I'll have to stick to what I have (I'm sick of restorin
g
>my DOS partitions :). Any help would be appreciated (before I go ahead and
>transfer about 5 megs of interim stuff (at 2400 baud, no less!)

No, the MCC 'interim' release does not install itself on the whole HD.
It uses whatever you tell it to use (by mounting it on the directory
/root or on subdirectories of this).

Moreover, the ftpable bits are not 5mb but less than 4. If you get the
US version, complete with all bits and pieces, there are 4 images
totalling (together) 3941729 bytes, not counting the README files.
If you have 2mb of RAM instead of 4 -- I don't know about 3mb --
you will not be able to boot with the ramdisk as root as described in
the instructions. Instead you can create a temporary 520k partition
using a standard boot image (not my boot-Ux.Z) and the xdisk.Z image,
which otherwise is unnecessary.

Bug fixing progresses, but I don't expect to be able to come out with
a complete new 'interim' version until after 0.96 is out.

-- Owen
[email protected]


[next article]
From: [email protected] (A. V. Le Blanc)

Subject: Re: Display of current directory in bash prompt
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Date: 25 Apr 92 17:16:54 GMT
References: <[email protected]>
Followup-To: [email protected]
Organization: Computing Centre, University of Manchester
Lines: 12

In article <[email protected]> [email protected] (n
.h.chandler) writes:
>Is it possible to display the PATH of the current directory
>in the bash prompt? If so, how is it done?

The simplest way is this:

export PS1='\w $ '

which you can edit to suit your taste.

-- Owen
[email protected]


[next article]
From: [email protected] (A. V. Le Blanc)

Subject: Re: mcc-interim and shadow /bin/login ignore .cshrc with tcsh
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Date: 25 Apr 92 18:44:34 GMT
References:
Followup-To: [email protected]
Organization: Computing Centre, University of Manchester
Lines: 19

In article [email protected] writes:
>Both the /bin/login with the mcc-interim 0.95c+ release and the one that
>come with the shadow-bin.tar.Z on tsx-11 ignore the ~/.cshrc file
>when logging in with tcsh. Any ideas why or a fix?

There is certainly a bug in the version of login which I supplied with
the mcc 'interim' release 0.95c+. The login.c is from poe-igl-1.2,
but the bug is from me, and arose when I altered the login to work
with gcc 2.1. I don't know anything about the shadow-bin login.
I do know that my fix solves a problem that bash has funny environmental
variables '"^%%^&%%^&', as it were, and that 'TERM' is not getting
set properly, both of which were kindly reported by people using
my version of login. I shall possibly fix the bug in the 0.95c+
release, and certainly in the 0.96 release, which I hope will appear
before long. I am trying to check whether my fix solves the tcsh
problem.

-- Owen
[email protected]


[next article]
From: [email protected] (Drew Eckhardt)

Subject: Re: Latin-1 again
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Date: 26 Apr 92 00:18:09 GMT
References: <[email protected]>
Sender: [email protected] (The Daily Planet)
Organization: University of Colorado at Boulder
Lines: 7
Nntp-Posting-Host: juliet.cs.colorado.edu

In article <[email protected]> [email protected] (Michael
K. Johnson) writes:
>True hercules monographics cards have downloadable charsets. herc
>calls this "RAMFONT"

Newer Hercules graphics cards support downloadable character fonts,
the older, original Hercules cards did not. Used to have one in
my genuine IBM-XT when my parents still payed for my hardware =8^)


[next article]
From: [email protected]

Subject: Re: Display of current directory in bash prompt
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Date: 26 Apr 92 00:15:47 GMT
References: <[email protected]>
Sender: [email protected] (The News Administrator)
Reply-To: [email protected]
Organization: Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology
Lines: 28
Nntp-Posting-Host: manager.nextwork.rose-hulman.edu

In article <[email protected]> [email protected]
(n.h.chandler) writes:
> Is it possible to display the PATH of the current directory
> in the bash prompt? If so, how is it done?
>
> Neville Chandler
> [email protected]


I use the following everywhere I use BASH...
------------
sw () { cd $1; PS1="`hostname`:`pwd` > "; }
alias cd=sw
------------

Just drop that puppy into your .bashrc or equivelent unless you want to

type it in everytime you run.

It could be optimized to use the bash command builtin, but I haven't
run into it being too slow yet.

--
Joseph T. Batt - deranged CS undergrad...
-----------------------------------------------------
\ [email protected] = &(Joseph T. Batt); \
\ \
\ Real programmers start counting with zero. \
------------------------------------------------------


[next article]
From: [email protected] (Drew Eckhardt)

Subject: Re: Linux: Multi-terminal support??
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Date: 26 Apr 92 00:36:44 GMT
References: <[email protected]>
Sender: [email protected] (The Daily Planet)
Organization: University of Colorado at Boulder
Lines: 39
Nntp-Posting-Host: juliet.cs.colorado.edu

In article [email protected] writes:
>[email protected] (Drew Eckhardt) writes:
>
>> Just put a getty on the serial port, and somewhere in your
>> RC do a stty sane > /dev/
>
>Shouldn't stty work on stdin? I wasn't aware that Linux's was
>different - is this the case, and if so why?? I certainly would
>explain a few things... 😉
>

Hmm. Different Unixes do different things, and I *think* that line
in my RC file is >, I could be wrong on this. When I posted that
I was well into an all nighter ressurecting a VAX 11/785
(It runs BSD 4.3 Reno, not VMS) - and had sendmail on the brain. I'm still
fuzzy on that.


>> Sharing interrupts is a hardware problem, not a software problem.
>> You can get around this with a hardware hack if you want. Simply cut the
>> interrupt lines coming off of the uarts, run them through a 7432 on a
>> piece of perfboard, and wire the output to the appropriate place.
>> (don't forget about +5 and ground!)
>>
>> Additionally, minor changes to the serial driver are required.
>
>Could you please let me know what these are (if there is anything other
>than the usual when dealing with multiple ports on the same interrupt).

The usual things when dealing with multiple ports on the same interrupts -
since the ISA interrupts are edge triggered, you either loop until
every UART has no interrupts pending (as usual), or create another
edge in software by temporarily disabling interrupts.

>I'm currently hacking on a sio driver for Linux just to support higher
>speed coms, hardware handshaking and 16550A's on my own machine.
>

Definately useful.


[next article]
From: [email protected] (Jim Winstead Jr.)
Newsgroups: comp.os.linux,alt.os.linux

Subject: Re: Version numbering (was Re: pre-0.96)
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Date: 26 Apr 92 01:18:35 GMT
References: <[email protected]> <1992Apr21.231510.5903@k
laava.Helsinki.FI> <[email protected]>
Sender: [email protected] (The News System)
Organization: Harvey Mudd College, WIBSTR
Lines: 28

In article <[email protected]> [email protected] (Tommy Thorn
) writes:
>[email protected] (Linus Benedict Torvalds) writes:
>
>> fixed in the final 0.96). Breakpoints should work etc..
>
>Why do we/you use this stupid way of naming releases?
>
>It's ok to use subnumbering like 0.95c to denote alpha tests, but
>subsubnumbering like 0.95c+ is too much. Whats this for a number 'pre 0.96',
>what's wrong with 0.95d, and if patches to it are small and make a stable
>system, go ahead call it 0.96.

I agree, but I don't think the problem has been the time it's taken to
go from 0.95 to 0.96, but rather the silly names like 0.95c+ and
0.95c++, which should have been 0.95d and 0.95e.

Related to this, Linus and I have agreed to basically split the
version numbering of the root and boot floppies. The major number
(0.95, 0.96, 1.00) will agree, but after that, kernel updates will
have letter prefixes (0.96a, 0.96b), and the root image will be
updated with a minor number (0.96.1, 0.96.2, etc). This will let
Linus and I keep slightly different schedules, and hopefully eliminate
some confusion. (Where's the 0.95c++ root image?)
--
Jim Winstead Jr. (CSci '95) | "Catch a fish!"
Harvey Mudd College | -Geddy Lee,
[email protected] | San Diego Sports Arena
Disclaimer: Mine, not theirs! | January 20, 1992


[next article]
From: [email protected] (Jim Winstead Jr.)
Newsgroups: comp.os.linux,alt.os.linux

Subject: Re: Upgrades to OS
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Date: 26 Apr 92 01:22:46 GMT
References: <[email protected]>
Sender: [email protected] (The News System)
Organization: Harvey Mudd College, WIBSTR
Lines: 20

In article <[email protected]> [email protected] (Paul Brant) writes:
>Could someone please clarify the following situation for me.
>
>One would assume that the next major update would be 1.0. Will that
>upgrade require 0.95 with all the increments or will it just require
>the last major release.

The next release will be 0.96, hopefully out sometime next week, but
you didn't hear me say that. 🙂

It will be a 'clean' release, like 0.95 (but with less bugs, I hope),
and will have boot and root images, and new kernel sources. A new
release of GCC 2.1 should follow shortly thereafter, as well as a new
interim version from the Manchester Computing CentRE (MCC).

--
Jim Winstead Jr. (CSci '95) | "Catch a fish!"
Harvey Mudd College | -Geddy Lee,
[email protected] | San Diego Sports Arena
Disclaimer: Mine, not theirs! | January 20, 1992


[next article]
From: [email protected] (Joel M. Hoffman)
Newsgroups: comp.os.linux,alt.os.linux

Subject: schedule for upgrades and the Summer [was Re: Upgrades to OS]
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Date: 26 Apr 92 02:10:00 GMT
Sender: [email protected] (USENET News system)
Organization: University of Maryland, College Park
Lines: 17
Nntp-Posting-Host: next.wam.umd.edu

In article <[email protected]> [email protected]
ont.edu (Jim Winstead Jr.) writes:
>The next release will be 0.96, hopefully out sometime next week, but
>you didn't hear me say that. 🙂
>
I suspect many people will no longer be around after mid-May or so.
So I was thinking: the best possibility would be if 1.0 were magically
available by then. I don't think that's reasonable. So perhaps
a ``final beta'' version could be released by then, with enough time to
spot any major gaffs, and then anyone who leaves in May will have a good
copy to use. Then 1.0 would be put together in the Fall.

I don't know how many people will be away for the Summer, but if it
turns out to be a lot, that would make sense, it seems to me.

Comments?

-Joel


[next article]
From: [email protected] (Jim Winstead Jr.)
Newsgroups: comp.os.linux,alt.os.linux

Subject: Re: schedule for upgrades and the Summer [was Re: Upgrades to OS]
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Date: 26 Apr 92 02:32:39 GMT
References: <[email protected]>
Sender: [email protected] (The News System)
Organization: Harvey Mudd College, WIBSTR
Lines: 38

In article <[email protected]> [email protected] (Joel M. Hoffman
) writes:
>In article <[email protected]> [email protected]
mont.edu (Jim Winstead Jr.) writes:
>>The next release will be 0.96, hopefully out sometime next week, but
>>you didn't hear me say that. 🙂
>>
>I suspect many people will no longer be around after mid-May or so.
>So I was thinking: the best possibility would be if 1.0 were magically
>available by then. I don't think that's reasonable. So perhaps
>a ``final beta'' version could be released by then, with enough time to
>spot any major gaffs, and then anyone who leaves in May will have a good
>copy to use. Then 1.0 would be put together in the Fall.

Linux 1.0 by summer? Nah.

It would be nice, but I wouldn't place any bets on it, myself. I
think a far more likely, and more desireably alternative would be to
let Linux stew over the summer, and release 1.0 at the beginning of
September, end of August. This will allow most of the current bugs to
hopefully be shaken out, and not force us to try and rush out a
release, which is a Bad Idea (tm).

(That is, of course, what you said. I read a bit more into what you
said the first time through, so now I'm covering up for myself so I
don't have to rewrite that last paragraph. 🙂

>I don't know how many people will be away for the Summer, but if it
>turns out to be a lot, that would make sense, it seems to me.

I'm included in those that will be 'away' for the summer, though I
intend on keeping tabs on comp.os.linux from a public access Unix site
in Minnesota (if it still exists...) and I will have access to my
school account via modem, so I'll essentially be in the game though I
might not have quite the same turnaround rate on mail and news....
--
Jim Winstead Jr. (CSci '95) | "Catch a fish!"
Harvey Mudd College | -Geddy Lee,
[email protected] | San Diego Sports Arena
Disclaimer: Mine, not theirs! | January 20, 1992


[next article]
From: [email protected] (0000-BIOMETRICS/DATA PROCESSING)

Subject: Re: HELP! SHOELACE IS STRANGLING ME!!!
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Date: 26 Apr 92 04:50:35 GMT
Sender: [email protected] (Mr Background)
Reply-To: [email protected]
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 22

|I read recently that there is an undocumented fdisk option in DOS
|fdisk /mbr
|which, as I understand it, rewrites the master boot record. I presume this
|command preserves the partition table, but I am not game to try it to find
|out. This would cure the main problem if it writes a fresh copy of the DOS
|MBR. Anyone know?
|
|Paul Nulsen
|[email protected]

Yes indeed, there is such a switch, but only for the DOS 5.0 fdisk. Now,
brace yourself for the tricky part. The program will try to determine
whether the MBR contains a valid partition table. If it does, then the
original PT will be kept intact. Otherwise, it will be replaced with a
brand new, empty one (Ouch!). Unfortunately, I can't remember the criteria
that it uses. (Any other virus-l readers out there?) I've tried it on my HD
without catastrophic results, but I don't have the foggiest notion of what
shoelace puts in the MBR. You will have a valid MBR afterwords, but that
might be ALL you have, so be prepared for the worst. (One word - BACKUP!)
You will NOT be prompted for verification.

-Hutch


[next article]
From: [email protected] (Rick Sladkey)

Subject: BOOTLIN problems solved (was: Bootlin --> help please!!!!!!)
Message-ID:
Date: 26 Apr 92 05:41:56 GMT
References: <[email protected]>
<[email protected]>
<[email protected]>
Sender: [email protected] (Rick Sladkey)
Organization: The World Public Access UNIX
Lines: 40
In-Reply-To: [email protected]'s message of Fri, 24 Apr 1992 22:34:12
GMT

>>>>> On Fri, 24 Apr 1992 22:34:12 GMT, [email protected]
>>>>> (Michael Hamilton) said:

Michael> Definitly hangs with me too. Pressing space or return doesn't do
Michael> anything. It actually worked once (see gibberish, but press space
Michael> anyway) but I've never been able to repeat it.

For all those who were teased by the possibility of BOOTLIN working,
here are some patches to get it working with Linux 0.95c+ (at least).

Using the hex editor of your choice make the following changes to
BOOTLIN.COM:

Decimal Old Hex New Hex
Offset Value Value
-------- ------- --------
211 ec f4
212 ff 3f
222 02 00
223 00 20

It would have been nice if the ASM source for BOOTLIN had been
included but luckily it was small enough that I could disassemble it
in about 15 minutes.

The new docs that reflect these changes are as follows:

*** bootlin.doc~ Sun Apr 26 00:35:34 1992
--- bootlin.doc Sun Apr 26 00:36:32 1992
***************
*** 68,71 ****
! 6) sets SS=DS=9000h, SP=FFECh and AX= found in the bootsector
! 7) jumps at 9000h:200h
--- 68,71 ----
! 6) sets SS=DS=9000h, SP=3FF4h and AX= found in the bootsector
! 7) jumps to 9020h:0000h

--
Rick Sladkey
[email protected]


[next article]
From: [email protected] (Brett McCoy)

Subject: Something besides UNIX?
Message-ID:
Date: 26 Apr 92 04:35:39 GMT
Reply-To: [email protected]
Organization: Kansas State University
Lines: 39
NNTP-Posting-Host: maverick.ksu.ksu.edu

I'm curious about what other people think about this idea.

Part of the real attraction of Linux is that it is free, available in
source, fast, runs on cheap hardware, and easy to port software to.
There is one way in which I think Linux could really use some
redirection, and that is in the implementation of the kernel. I'm not
suggesting that it be rewritten in a micro kernel approach. I'm
thinking of something more like Plan 9. I guess what I'd like to see
is something more than BSD or SysV, espcially since 386BSD, or
whatever it's being called now, is out and should fulfill the need for
BSD for people. I'd like to see something like Linux that tries to
improve on UNIX instead of just reimplementing it. A lot of the
really neat features of Plan 9, like process groups, user configurable
file system structure, all the world being a file, etc. could be
implemented without sacrificing UNIX compatibility to greatly.

The way I see it is that many of the standard features of UNIX are
hacks that were invented to get around a shortcoming in the kernel or
support libraries. If people are willing to put time and effort into
creating an operating system from scratch why not do things right in
the first place. Allow for user level mounting of filesystems and
services, make everything a file as much as possible, allow for
transparent distributed computing. Not all of this has to be
implemented from the start, but do things now with that in mind.

As Rob Pike loves to point out in the Plan-9 papers, Plan-9 is tiny
in source code size, smaller even than Linux I think. It runs on
a dozen different architechures and they claim that they can port it
to nearly anything in less than 24 hrs. A good share of the really
hard work, of memory management, device drivers, etc has already been
done for Linux. The nice Plan-9 semantics would be relatively easy
to build on top of it.

If I have the time this summer, and can steal my computer away from
my girlfriend for long enough periods of time I plan on trying to
do some of this. I'd just like to see some other people play with
it to see what becomes of it.

++Brett;


[next article]
From: [email protected] (Jim Burns)

Subject: Re: Suspending emacs and bringing it back
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Date: 26 Apr 92 08:22:14 GMT
References: <[email protected]>
Organization: Georgia Institute of Technology
Lines: 14

in article <[email protected]>, [email protected] (Rajat
Datta) says:

< I picked up emacs from tsx-11 and seem to be having a problem with
< bringing emacs back up to the foreground once I've suspended it with
< C-z. The console seems to come back in cooked mode. The screen is
< not updated with the emacs screen, and any control chars I type show
< up as C-.

Same thing w/elvis1.4
--
BURNS,JIM (returned student)
Georgia Institute of Technology, 30178 Georgia Tech Station,
Atlanta Georgia, 30332 | Internet: [email protected]
uucp: ...!{decvax,hplabs,ncar,purdue,rutgers}!gatech!prism!gt0178a


[next article]
From: [email protected] (Scott Beckstead)

Subject: Re: Linux-Activists Digest #105
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Date: 26 Apr 92 08:28:08 GMT
Sender: [email protected] (Mr Background)
Reply-To: [email protected] (Scott Beckstead)
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 9


Hi All,
Line eater got me I guess. What I said was Am I the only person trying
to run Linux ONLY on his 386. I have no use for DOS and I really don't want
to waste any of my precious 40 megabytes to a dos partition. I JUST WANT
to boot from the hard disk. I will attempt to write a loader to do this but
If someone has already then I will desist.
Thanks.
Scott


[next article]
From: [email protected] (I Reid)

Subject: Gdb 4.5 question (TIOCSPRGP)
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Date: 26 Apr 92 02:56:33 GMT
Distribution: comp
Organization: Edinburgh University
Lines: 43

I built a pre 0.96 kernel (tsx-11), untarred all the gdb4.5 stuff and
came up against the following problems:

1. No libg.a

I compiled up ptrace.c and wait.c (in the gdb4.5 lib directory), made
a libg.a with them and all seems well. Is this all that is supposed to
be in libg.a?

2. When I run gdb on a program it says

[ioctl TIOCSPGRP failed in terminal_inferior: Operation not permitted]

The kernel code for this ioctl (linux/kernel/chr_drv/tty_ioctl.c)

case TIOCSPGRP:
if ((current->tty < 0) ||
(current->tty != dev) ||
(tty->session != current->session))
return -ENOTTY;
pgrp=get_fs_long((unsigned long *) arg);
if (pgrp < 0)
return -EINVAL;
if (session_of_pgrp(pgrp) != current->session)
return -EPERM;
tty->pgrp = pgrp;
return 0;

seems to suggest session_of_pgrp(pgrp) not equalling current->session
as a cause of this message. Any ideas as to what might be wrong? So,
some questions...

1. Did I set up libg correctly?
2. Is anyone else experiencing this error message? (or is my set up so
wrong that I'm alone here)
3. If so, what's the fix? (or do I have to track it down (yuck!)).

It is a non fatal error as far as I can tell but it's annoying and
should be fixed.

ta in advance,

Iain


[next article]
From: [email protected] (Joel M. Hoffman)

Subject: Re: Suspending emacs and bringing it back
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Date: 26 Apr 92 14:02:06 GMT
References: <[email protected]> <[email protected]>
Sender: [email protected] (USENET News system)
Organization: University of Maryland, College Park
Lines: 18
Nntp-Posting-Host: next.wam.umd.edu

In article <[email protected]> [email protected] (Jim Burns) writes:
>in article <[email protected]>, [email protected] (Rajat
Datta) says:
>
>< I picked up emacs from tsx-11 and seem to be having a problem with
>< bringing emacs back up to the foreground once I've suspended it with
>< C-z. The console seems to come back in cooked mode. The screen is
>< not updated with the emacs screen, and any control chars I type show
>< up as C-.
>
>Same thing w/elvis1.4

Looks like a problem in Bash, then. Does anyone know which stty command
might be used to put the tty back in the right mode? Then a simply
work-around would be to define fg() as "stty {some mode here} ; fg ;"
No?

-Joel
([email protected])


[next article]
From: [email protected] (Mike Haertel)

Subject: Re: Something besides UNIX?
Summary: Plan 9 isn't so easy as it sounds.
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Date: 26 Apr 92 17:22:49 GMT
References:
Sender: [email protected]
Reply-To: [email protected]
Organization: Department of Mathematics, University of Oregon
Lines: 53
Originator: haertel@euclid

In article [email protected]
du writes:
>A lot of the
>really neat features of Plan 9, like process groups, user configurable
>file system structure, all the world being a file, etc. could be
>implemented without sacrificing UNIX compatibility to greatly.

It isn't quite so easy as that. The big thing in Plan 9 is the per
process group name space. This is in fundamental conflict with one
of the big things in Unix, setuid executables. Plan 9 does not have
the setuid feature. (It is left as an exercise to the reader to
figure out why these features conflict. 🙂

>The way I see it is that many of the standard features of UNIX are
>hacks that were invented to get around a shortcoming in the kernel or
>support libraries. If people are willing to put time and effort into
>creating an operating system from scratch why not do things right in
>the first place. Allow for user level mounting of filesystems and
>services, make everything a file as much as possible, allow for
>transparent distributed computing. Not all of this has to be
>implemented from the start, but do things now with that in mind.

The VFS code that is gradually coming into existence will allow one
to do all of these things. The only thing Plan 9 can do that the
VFS'd Linux kernel won't be able to do is the per-process namespace,
which is fundamentally incompatible with Unix.

At this point you'll need to think long and hard: Do you want just
another Unix clone, or would you rather have a much neater system,
and forget about compatibility?

>As Rob Pike loves to point out in the Plan-9 papers, Plan-9 is tiny
>in source code size, smaller even than Linux I think. It runs on
>a dozen different architechures and they claim that they can port it
>to nearly anything in less than 24 hrs. A good share of the really
>hard work, of memory management, device drivers, etc has already been
>done for Linux. The nice Plan-9 semantics would be relatively easy
>to build on top of it.

They were able to port it to the Gnot, which they designed, in less
than 24 hours. More realistically, while I was there Presotto ported it
to the AT&T Safari, a 386 notebook, in about a month.

Incidentally, Linux (at ~17,000 lines last time I checked) is
smaller than Plan 9 (~30,000 lines last time I checked). Most of
Plan 9 consists of device drivers and network protocols, just as
a lot of Linux is device drivers and the file system. The "kernel
proper" of Plan 9, omitting the optional device drivers, is probably
about 10,000 lines, but you get a system without a network and
without a local filesystem, which isn't much use. If you omit the
device drivers from Linux you get about 10,000 lines, and that system
isn't much use either.

(Keep in mind that Plan 9 has grown since the papers were written.)


[next article]
From: [email protected] (Paul H. Rubin)
Newsgroups: alt.os.linux,comp.os.linux

Subject: Re: roff or the likes?
Message-ID:
Date: 26 Apr 92 16:46:41 GMT
References: <[email protected]>
Organization: CSUA/UCB
Lines: 4
NNTP-Posting-Host: soda.berkeley.edu
In-reply-to: [email protected]'s message of 24 Apr 92 17:39:56 GMT

I use PCROFF on MSDOS. I believe you can ftp the sources from
oak.oakland.edu (mirror of simtel20). It is a simple clone of
the old Unix roff formatter. The version I have has some MSDOS-isms
hacked into it but they should be easy to undo.


[next article]
From: [email protected] (Rick Miller)

Subject: Re: Linux-Activists Digest #105
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Date: 26 Apr 92 20:12:59 GMT
References: <[email protected]>
Sender: [email protected] (USENET News System)
Organization: Jus' me.
Lines: 15

[email protected] (Scott Beckstead) writes:
>Hi All,
> Line eater got me I guess. What I said was Am I the only person trying
>to run Linux ONLY on his 386. I have no use for DOS and I really don't want
>to waste any of my precious 40 megabytes to a dos partition. I JUST WANT
>to boot from the hard disk. I will attempt to write a loader to do this but
>If someone has already then I will desist.
>Thanks.
>Scott

Shoelace (in the MCC interim release's "comp" image) has been working fine
for me... It'll do you great if you don't mind either:
a. waiting 5 seconds more, or
b. pressing "1"
to boot your machine. It installs very simply... just follow the README.


[next article]
From: [email protected] (Mike Sanders)

Subject: Address change
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Date: 26 Apr 92 19:10:54 GMT
Sender: [email protected] (Mr Background)
Reply-To: [email protected]
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 4

Please change my address from sgi.physics.lsa.umich.edu to
mail.physics.lsa.umich.edu

Michael Sanders


[next article]
From: [email protected] (tim)
Newsgroups: comp.os.linux,alt.os.linux

Subject: Script (wait, wait3, curses)
Keywords: wait, wait3, tty control
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Date: 26 Apr 92 19:22:22 GMT
Sender: [email protected] (tim)
Organization: University of Minnesota
Lines: 36

Hi,

I am trying to get script running and am having a few problems. I'm
using the script from the 4.3 bsd-reno release. the problems i'm
having are with wait, and terminal control. does linux have wait3? i
couldn't find it so assuming it didn't i converted the call to wait3
to wait. that seems to work fine except if i exit my shell (tcsh) with
^D instead of exit, the child (i think it's the child anyway) doesn't
die. this leaves a shell running unattached to a tty, and eventually
after running a few instances of script it'll just say
script started...
file is..
done...
not sure but i think it's because i ran out of ptys ? what do i have
to do to provide the equivilant function of wait3 with wait?

the tty problem:
there is a missing function called cfmakeraw. the call to it
looks like this:
struct termios rtt;
cfmakeraw(&rtt);
does anyone know of that function?is it a standard function ? if not
what do i need to do to provide its equivilant function? i'm not sure
yet, but it appears to initialize the struct before sending it to
tcsetattr(0, TCSAFLUSH, &rtt). what should rtt look like ?


also, i've put an su on tsx-11 that gets the shell from the password
file instead of using a default always, and has logging options. it's
in /pub/linux/sources/sbin/new-su.c.Z (i think) if anyone's
interested.


thanks,

tim


[next article]
From: [email protected] (Russell Nelson)

Subject: Shouldn't we be using zoo?
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Date: 26 Apr 92 02:43:47 GMT
Organization: Crynwr Software
Lines: 8

Shouldn't the standard linux archiver be zoo, not tar/compress? Zoo
always makes smaller files than tar/compress (e.g. system sources are
20% smaller).

-russ I'm proud to be a humble Quaker!
Crynwr Software Crynwr Software sells packet driver support.
11 Grant St. 315-268-1925 Voice
Potsdam, NY 13676 315-268-9201 FAX


[next article]
From: [email protected] (Jim Winstead Jr.)

Subject: Re: Shouldn't we be using zoo?
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Date: 26 Apr 92 22:00:40 GMT
References: <[email protected]>
Sender: [email protected] (The News System)
Organization: Harvey Mudd College, WIBSTR
Lines: 24

In article <[email protected]> [email protected] (Russell Nelson) writes:
>Shouldn't the standard linux archiver be zoo, not tar/compress? Zoo
>always makes smaller files than tar/compress (e.g. system sources are
>20% smaller).

Someone else brought this up to me shortly after 0.95a was released,
although he had mentioned the Info-ZIP zip and unzip programs as
alternatives.

Compress (which is the real problem, not tar...) is simply not up to
the current technology available in compression. Should we move to
something else for standard Linux distributions? Zoo is available in
portable C source. Zip is available in portable C source. Freeze,
something more in-line with compress, is available in portable C
source. Yabba, another program similar in usage to compress, is also
available in portable C source. (Most importantly, I've been able to
compile all of these under Linux successfully.)

Should we keep using .tar.Z files if there are better alternatives?
--
Jim Winstead Jr. (CSci '95) | "Catch a fish!"
Harvey Mudd College | -Geddy Lee,
[email protected] | San Diego Sports Arena
Disclaimer: Mine, not theirs! | January 20, 1992


[next article]
From: [email protected] (Erik Green)

Subject: Re: Shouldn't we be using zoo?
Message-ID:
Date: 26 Apr 92 22:25:09 GMT
Distribution: comp.os.linux
Organization: Long polymers in double-helix formation
Lines: 34
Nntp-Posting-Host: att2.cs.mankato.msus.edu


In a previous article, [email protected] (Russell Nelson) says:

>Shouldn't the standard linux archiver be zoo, not tar/compress? Zoo
>always makes smaller files than tar/compress (e.g. system sources are
>20% smaller).

Actually, Lharc would seem to be the better choice. It really crams things
down to a teeny size. I did do one test where a 51k file went to around
21k with compress, slightly more with zoo, and about 16k with Lharc.

On the down side, these archivers tend to grab a lot of memory. On my
machine (4 MB RAM, no swap - silly of me) I ran out of memory trying to
compress my kernel source directory. Admittedly, I did have .o files
and binarys in there, but Lharc died about halfway through. I didn't have
this problem with compress, but as I recall I did with zoo.

Anyway, I'll be getting the binaries for these(Lharc,zoo) posted to
tsx-11 as soon as I get the gcc 2.1 fseek() bugfix.

BTW: I think I sound a bit lazy about waiting for the GCC fix, but I don't
feel like reinventing the wheel. I also don't feel like loading a previous
version of gcc on my system given how tolerant 2.1 is of other versions. 🙂

Thx, Lns
-Longshot(Erik the Green)



--
Erik "Longshot" Green
longshot@(vax1 | att2.cs | krypton | theory.cs).mankato.msus.edu
This is a .signature virus scanner. Stop the .sig virus!
Disclaimer: I said the above. So sue me. I'm broke anyway.


[next article]
From: [email protected] (Darren Senn)
Newsgroups: comp.os.linux,alt.os.linux

Subject: Re: schedule for upgrades and the Summer [was Re: Upgrades to OS]
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Date: 26 Apr 92 22:23:22 GMT
References: <[email protected]> <[email protected]
laremont.edu>
Sender: [email protected]
Reply-To: [email protected]
Followup-To: comp.os.linux
Organization: Curiosity Confederacy
Lines: 18

In article <[email protected]>, [email protected]
mont.edu (Jim Winstead Jr.) writes:
> >I don't know how many people will be away for the Summer, but if it
> >turns out to be a lot, that would make sense, it seems to me.
>
> I'm included in those that will be 'away' for the summer, though I
> intend on keeping tabs on comp.os.linux from a public access Unix site
> in Minnesota (if it still exists...) and I will have access to my
> school account via modem, so I'll essentially be in the game though I
> might not have quite the same turnaround rate on mail and news....

I'll still be around in the summer. I may be new to the Linux game, but
I've been working on BSD for years, so hopefully before the summer I'll
be caught up enough to start making some helpful contributions.

--
Darren Senn Phone: (408) 479-1521
[email protected] Snail: 1785 Halterman #1
Wasurenaide -- doko e itte mo soko ni anata wa iru yo. Santa Cruz, Ca 95062


[next article]
From: [email protected] (Mark Stephens)

Subject: Re: put_page: page already exists
Message-ID:
Date: 27 Apr 92 14:59:13 GMT
References: <[email protected]>
Sender: [email protected]
Organization: Dept. of Scientific and Industrial Research, NZ.
Lines: 41
In-Reply-To: [email protected]'s message of 25 Apr 92 00:21:15 GMT

Hi.

>> I keep getting the message
>> put_page: page already exists
>>
>...
>> What does put_page: page already exists mean? Does any one else get
>> it?
>
>I get this message too, but with no adverse effects.
>
>>
>> I am now running 0.95c+, but I had this problem with 0.95a and 0.95c
>
>I am also running 0.95c+

I have had this too, while I was recompiling the kernel (0.95c+).
At first I thought it was emacs, because I was doing a "compile", but
I soon realised it was the kernel compile. Sometimes it would be
accompanied by a segmentation fault and the compilation would abort,
but would work if I ran it again.
The messages seemed to occur at the same places every time.

I have a 386 PC with 2x32M partitions, 8 Megs of memory and 18 Megs of
swap space.


BTW, many thanks to all those who've Linux together - it's a great
system!

---
Mark Stephens
DSIR Physical Sciences
Information Technology Group
Wellington, New Zealand
--
---
Mark Stephens
DSIR Physical Sciences
Information Technology Group
Wellington


[next article]
From: [email protected] (Joe Smith)

Subject: Re: Shouldn't we be using zoo?
Message-ID:
Date: 26 Apr 92 23:10:32 GMT
References:
Sender: [email protected]
Distribution: comp.os.linux
Organization: University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA
Lines: 26
Nntp-Posting-Host: mbio.med.upenn.edu
In-reply-to: [email protected]'s message of 26 Apr 92 22:25:09 G
MT



> Actually, Lharc would seem to be the better choice. It really crams things
> down to a teeny size.

It isn't always the compression factor that's most important.
Whatever you use has to be able to archive and extract all the
information in a Unix directory entry: the unpacked archive should be
a snapshot of the files and directories as archived. E.g., zoo has
bitten me a number of times by not handling links, empty directories,
refusing to create needed directories, wrong permissions...

As far as I know, tar is still the best at doing this.

Has anyone tried some of the other compression utilities on tar
output? I know zoo will work as a filter. On the other hand, I think
you lose some compression performance by working on a stream as
opposed to the individual files.


--
Joe Smith
University of Pennsylvania [email protected]
Dept. of Biochemistry and Biophysics (215) 898-8348
Philadelphia, PA 19104-6059


[next article]
From: [email protected] (Jim Winstead Jr.)

Subject: Re: Shouldn't we be using zoo?
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Date: 26 Apr 92 23:46:41 GMT
References: @mbio.med.upenn.edu>
Sender: [email protected] (The News System)
Organization: Harvey Mudd College, WIBSTR
Lines: 40

In article [email protected] (Joe Sm
ith) writes:
>> Actually, Lharc would seem to be the better choice. It really crams things
>> down to a teeny size.
>
>It isn't always the compression factor that's most important.
>Whatever you use has to be able to archive and extract all the
>information in a Unix directory entry: the unpacked archive should be
>a snapshot of the files and directories as archived. E.g., zoo has
>bitten me a number of times by not handling links, empty directories,
>refusing to create needed directories, wrong permissions...
>
>As far as I know, tar is still the best at doing this.

Good point - I know there is at least one archiver out there that
claims to be able handle anything you throw at it, but it is
shareware, and I could not get the source to compile under Linux.

>Has anyone tried some of the other compression utilities on tar
>output? I know zoo will work as a filter. On the other hand, I think
>you lose some compression performance by working on a stream as
>opposed to the individual files.

Actually, it should be the other way around. That way you can take
advantage of the similiarities within groups of files to compress them
even further, as opposed to compressing each file individually.

To start some comparisons rolling, here is what I got comparing freeze
and compress on a tar file of the mg source code and documentation:

213240 mg.tar.F
269655 mg.tar.Z

At least in this comparison, freeze wins by quite a significant
margin. This also agrees with the compression program comparisons
that are occasionally posted to comp.compression.
--
Jim Winstead Jr. (CSci '95) | "Catch a fish!"
Harvey Mudd College | -Geddy Lee,
[email protected] | San Diego Sports Arena
Disclaimer: Mine, not theirs! | January 20, 1992


[next article]
From: [email protected] (Rhys Weatherley)

Subject: Re: Shouldn't we be using zoo?
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Date: 26 Apr 92 23:32:27 GMT
References: <[email protected]> <[email protected]
u>
Sender: [email protected]
Reply-To: [email protected]
Lines: 27

In <[email protected]> [email protected] (
Jim Winstead Jr.) writes:

>In article <[email protected]> [email protected] (Russell Nelson) writes:
>>Shouldn't the standard linux archiver be zoo, not tar/compress? Zoo
>>always makes smaller files than tar/compress (e.g. system sources are
>>20% smaller).
>[...]
>Should we keep using .tar.Z files if there are better alternatives?

The question is really: Do we want to squash our disk space usage down to
almost nothing (zoo/zip/...) or do we want to be compatible with millions
of Unix systems around the world (tar/compress)?

Personally, I think we should stick to tar/compress as being the standard
interchange format, no matter how inefficient, and if individuals want to
squash the living heck out of their personal files, then they can use whatever
they want on their own machine.

Cheers,

Rhys.

+=====================+==================================+
|| Rhys Weatherley | The University of Queensland, ||
|| [email protected] | Australia. G'day!! ||
|| "I'm a FAQ nut - what's your problem?" ||
+=====================+==================================+


[next article]
From: [email protected] (Hongjiu Lu)

Subject: Re: Script (wait, wait3, curses)
Keywords: wait, wait3, tty control
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Date: 26 Apr 92 22:08:50 GMT
References: <[email protected]>
Sender: [email protected] (USENET News System)
Organization: Washington State University
Lines: 56

In article <[email protected]>, [email protected] (tim)
writes:
|> Hi,
|>
|> I am trying to get script running and am having a few problems. I'm
|> using the script from the 4.3 bsd-reno release. the problems i'm
|> having are with wait, and terminal control. does linux have wait3? i

wait3 will be in the next release. But the third parameter is unused. For
a quich hack, here it is.
------
#include
pid_t wait3(int *wait_stat, int options, int *reserved)
{
if (reserved) {
errno = EINVAL;
return -1;
}
return waitpid(0, wait_stat, options);
}
------
|> couldn't find it so assuming it didn't i converted the call to wait3
|> to wait. that seems to work fine except if i exit my shell (tcsh) with
|> ^D instead of exit, the child (i think it's the child anyway) doesn't
|> die. this leaves a shell running unattached to a tty, and eventually
|> after running a few instances of script it'll just say
|> script started...
|> file is..
|> done...
|> not sure but i think it's because i ran out of ptys ? what do i have
|> to do to provide the equivilant function of wait3 with wait?
|>
|> the tty problem:
|> there is a missing function called cfmakeraw. the call to it
|> looks like this:
|> struct termios rtt;
|> cfmakeraw(&rtt);

Never heard of it. I couldn't find in Ultrix 4.2.

|> does anyone know of that function?is it a standard function ? if not
|> what do i need to do to provide its equivilant function? i'm not sure
|> yet, but it appears to initialize the struct before sending it to
|> tcsetattr(0, TCSAFLUSH, &rtt). what should rtt look like ?
|>
|>
|> also, i've put an su on tsx-11 that gets the shell from the password
|> file instead of using a default always, and has logging options. it's
|> in /pub/linux/sources/sbin/new-su.c.Z (i think) if anyone's
|> interested.
|>
|>
|> thanks,
|>
|> tim

H.J.


[next article]
From: [email protected] (Hongjiu Lu)

Subject: Re: Shouldn't we be using zoo?
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Date: 26 Apr 92 22:11:45 GMT
References: <[email protected]>
Sender: [email protected] (USENET News System)
Organization: Washington State University
Lines: 14

In article <[email protected]>, [email protected] (Russell Nelson) writes:
|> Shouldn't the standard linux archiver be zoo, not tar/compress? Zoo
|> always makes smaller files than tar/compress (e.g. system sources are
|> 20% smaller).
|>
|> -russ I'm proud to be a humble Quaker!
|> Crynwr Software Crynwr Software sells packet driver support.
|> 11 Grant St. 315-268-1925 Voice
|> Potsdam, NY 13676 315-268-9201 FAX

I am not sure about that. At least, I saw for the same stuffs, gnutar cfz
is 10% smaller than the zoo file I got.

H.J.



[next article]
From: [email protected] (Joel M. Hoffman)

Subject: Dos emulator. [from comp.unix.msdos]
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Date: 26 Apr 92 23:53:40 GMT
Sender: [email protected] (USENET News system)
Organization: University of Maryland at College Park
Lines: 80
Nntp-Posting-Host: wam.umd.edu

I saw this in comp.unix.msdos. I believe it's about a general MSDOS
emulator (i.e., one that doesn't use VM86). Of course, this is not
nearly as efficient as VM86, but it might be interesting to those
thinking of writing a DOS emulator for Linux.

Read and enjoy.

-Joel
([email protected])

%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%

In article [email protected] (Jim
Hudgens) writes:
>
>I've been working on a DOS emulator for approximately 2 years now. It
>is a non-trivial task to get even XT speeds out of most machines.
>386's running Mach or Linux would be a very notable exception. The
>amount of detail which must be attended to is phenomenal. I'm in the
>process of a rewrite now, and will release it within (maybe) a few
>months.
>
>If you want to look at the original version, I have it on the machine
>"ftp.scri.fsu.edu" in ~ftp/pub/hudgens/gde-0.01.tar.Z. That version
>is dated Aug, 91. I've almost gotten the current version to compile
>again, and am hoping that some of the speedups I've added move it more
>toward the AT class machines rather than the XT class machines (when
>run on a sun SS1). Several people have donated suggestions and fixes
>(most notably, G.C. Hunt), and I am attempting to fix a number of
>really bad portions of the code, roll in the donated improvements, and
>add a number of things which I've though of.
>
>The original version had several characteristics which may make it
>less than useful:
>
> -- DOS was totally faked; it did not boot DOS but emulates DOS
> by trapping out of the 8088 emulation into a "native" version
> of DOS. This makes the OS overhead relatively low.
> This also means that there are undoubtedly lots of programs which
> will never run. Many system calls aren't implemented at all.
> DOS filesystems mapped directly to UNIX filesystems.
> -- The console I/O and character devices in general are very
> poorly done; no input is possible (yet). Primitive output
> exists. No support for memory mapped video IO yet.
> -- The BIOS is a joke.
> -- The fpu coprocessor instructions are not decoded correctly yet,
> and any fpu instruction causes the emulation to become
> mistracked. This causes lots of problems with Microsoft
> C compiler executables.
> -- several bugs in the 8088 emulation still persist.
>
>On the plus side, I have used it to assemble and link a executable,
>and then execute the resulting program (using tasm and tlink on the
>program "whereis.asm"). I've also gotten it to run pkzip and pkunzip
>successfully. It runs on many of the gnuish-dos executables as well.
>I've used it with the output from the MIX C compiler, TurboC compiler
>(it runs the TC compiled Dhrystone benchmark at a whopping 200+
>dhrystones per sec on an SS1 :). It fails on many executables due to
>the FPU problem (Clipper executables, etc.). One of the most
>important features of this program is that it is relatively portable,
>and has now run on SunOS 4.1/sparc, SGI, HP 7x0, IBM RS/6000,
>Ultrix/Vax and Ultrix/RISC. I've been meaning to try it on a 386
>machine running MACH, but haven't done this yet.
>
>The improvements which will be rolled into the next version are:
> -- decode all the FPU instructions (no execute, yet)
> -- add prototype support for all subroutines.
> -- speed up the instruction decoding via inlining
> -- make a configuration dynamic rather than compiled in.
> -- update the documentation, and include a man page.
>
>Send me mail if you want to be notified of any new releases...
>
>JHH
>
>--
>Jim Hudgens Supercomputer Computations Research Institute
>[email protected]
>

%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%


[next article]
From: [email protected] (Joe Smith)

Subject: My pre-0.96 won't run shared binaries
Message-ID:
Date: 26 Apr 92 21:15:22 GMT
References:
Sender: [email protected]
Distribution: comp
Organization: University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA
Lines: 19
Nntp-Posting-Host: mbio.med.upenn.edu
In-reply-to: [email protected]'s message of 24 Apr 92 18:52:56 GMT


Well, I'm straight now on the ps patches, but it seems I was wrong
about pre-0.96 running ok: even a clean kernel refuses to run
shared-lib binaries, even 'hello.c', for a non-root user. They all
die with an 'invalid operand... segmentation fault'.

The 0.95c+ kernel is ok, and there are no problems for root with the
pre-0.96 kernel.

Anyone else seen this?




--
Joe Smith
University of Pennsylvania [email protected]
Dept. of Biochemistry and Biophysics (215) 898-8348
Philadelphia, PA 19104-6059


[next article]
From: [email protected] (A. V. Le Blanc)

Subject: Fix for mcc-interim login.c
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Date: 26 Apr 92 14:32:30 GMT
Followup-To: [email protected]
Organization: Computing Centre, University of Manchester
Lines: 29

I have made some slight changes in the login.c which I used to
produce the /bin/login for the mcc 'interim' release of 0.95c+.
Among the bugs fixed by these changes are:

(1) TERM and other variables are set correctly to the values
specified by getty. Thanks to Thomas Ziegler, who noticed this.

(2) bash (sh) no longer creates garbled variables at login. (I noticed
this myself, but assumed -- falsely -- that it was just another
problem with bash.)

(3) tcsh now correctly runs both its .login and its .cshrc scripts
at login time. Thanks to Mitch from the University of Kent at
Canterbury for bringing this one to my attention.

The fault was not in the original poe-igl code, and therefore it was
one I or somebody else introduced by 'updating' it to work with gcc
2.1. If you wish to fix this, the corrected source is in the file
misc.tar.Z in /pub/linux/mcc-interim/0.95c+/sources, available by
anonymous ftp from ftp.mcc.ac.uk [130.88.200.7]. The current
version of this file is 138247 bytes in size, so that you can tell
it apart from the earlier version.

I shall probably not be updating the old interim version (for want of
time), but I hope to come out with a new one when 0.96 and the new
version of gcc are out. All depends on time.

-- Owen
[email protected]


[next article]
From: [email protected] (Adam Goldberg)

Subject: Re: Shouldn't we be using zoo?
Message-ID:
Date: 27 Apr 92 01:16:50 GMT
References: <[email protected]> <[email protected]
u>
Sender: [email protected] (USENET News System)
Organization: Iowa State University, Ames IA
Lines: 33
Originator: [email protected]

In <[email protected]> [email protected] (
Jim Winstead Jr.) writes:

>Compress (which is the real problem, not tar...) is simply not up to
>the current technology available in compression. Should we move to
>something else for standard Linux distributions? Zoo is available in

>Should we keep using .tar.Z files if there are better alternatives?

Yes.

Feel free to use Zoo/Zip/Yabba/JoesPacker or whatever on your own systems,
but distribution should follow the UNIX-standard .tar.Z format for the
simple reason that many of us get the Linux files to our PCs via
campus Unix machines. It is possible (or likely) that these campus
machines do not have Zip, Zoo or whatever installed, and it would therefore
be a huge pain to not be able to do file manipulations on the campus
machine before moving them to home PCs.

For example, I retrieve, uncompress & detar on the school computers
to read the README's, try to figure out what it is, why I would want
it...if its worth the disk space, etc. If it is, I take it home. If
it is not, then I delete it. But if I were unable to do this at
school, it is not very likely that I would retrieve nearly the
amount of ported software that I do.

--
Adam Goldberg ! Ask me how IOWA STATE UNIVERSITY is
[email protected] ! censoring my usenet access!!
..!uunet!iastate.edu!goldberg ! >>I don't need a BIG BROTHER!!<<
--
Adam Goldberg ! Ask me how IOWA STATE UNIVERSITY is
[email protected] ! censoring my usenet access!!
..!uunet!iastate.edu!goldberg ! >>I don't need a BIG BROTHER!!<<


[next article]
From: [email protected] (thomas dunbar)

Subject: GCC 2.1 install
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Date: 27 Apr 92 01:45:53 GMT
Sender: [email protected] (Mr Background)
Reply-To: [email protected]
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 8

i'm trying to upgrade to gcc 2.1 for the shared libs; having just floppies
(but 8M ram) i have to do non-standard installs and i seem to be missing
something with gcc 2.1: how do i get as & ld? i've tried
ln gcc as
and ln cc1 as
but apparently that's not how one does it.
a related question: i'm using the mcc-interim boot with shared lib on
the ram disk, what libs in the 2.1 dist. do i HAVE to have?


[next article]
From: [email protected] (Brett McCoy)

Subject: Re: Something besides UNIX?
Message-ID:
Date: 27 Apr 92 01:29:46 GMT
References:
<[email protected]>
Reply-To: [email protected]
Organization: Kansas State University
Lines: 66
NNTP-Posting-Host: maverick.ksu.ksu.edu
In-reply-to: [email protected]'s message of 26 Apr 92 17:22:49 GMT

In article <[email protected]> [email protected]
(Mike Haertel) writes:

>It isn't quite so easy as that. The big thing in Plan 9 is the per
>process group name space. This is in fundamental conflict with one
>of the big things in Unix, setuid executables. Plan 9 does not have
>the setuid feature. (It is left as an exercise to the reader to
>figure out why these features conflict. 🙂

You don't have to give up the entire notion of the per process group
name space, just a few pieces of it. You can still have the features
of the multiplexed device drivers like /dev/console, /dev/bitblit,
etc. The /dev/proc filesystem is possible as well as the ability to
mount multiple filesystems on top of each other instead of having a
PATH in your shell. Some of the flexablity that Plan-9 users have
with being able to mount things and set up their name space how they
want would probably have to be sacrificed, but I'm not sure what
pieces would have to go.

>The VFS code that is gradually coming into existence will allow one
>to do all of these things. The only thing Plan 9 can do that the
>VFS'd Linux kernel won't be able to do is the per-process namespace,
>which is fundamentally incompatible with Unix.

I'm not sure it is fundamentally incompatible, just not quite as
flexable. You probably would want to have pieces of the name space
that are set by the system and inflexible by the user. But the
majority of the name space should be able to be changed on a per
process group without any loss of compatiblity with standard UNIX.

>At this point you'll need to think long and hard: Do you want just
>another Unix clone, or would you rather have a much neater system,
>and forget about compatibility?

I don't want to forget compatibility, but I would like something more
than just another UNIX clone. There isn't any reason why a system
with Plan-9 style features can't still be POSIX compatible. If VMS
can be POSIX, anything can.

>They were able to port it to the Gnot, which they designed, in less
>than 24 hours. More realistically, while I was there Presotto ported it
>to the AT&T Safari, a 386 notebook, in about a month.

At the 1991 Winter USENIX Rob Pike stated that they ported Plan-9
to either an Amiga or a NeXT machine in 20 or so hours.

>Incidentally, Linux (at ~17,000 lines last time I checked) is
>smaller than Plan 9 (~30,000 lines last time I checked). Most of
>Plan 9 consists of device drivers and network protocols, just as
>a lot of Linux is device drivers and the file system. The "kernel
>proper" of Plan 9, omitting the optional device drivers, is probably
>about 10,000 lines, but you get a system without a network and
>without a local filesystem, which isn't much use. If you omit the
>device drivers from Linux you get about 10,000 lines, and that system
>isn't much use either.
>
>(Keep in mind that Plan 9 has grown since the papers were written.)

Yeah, I realize, and Linux is going to grow quite a bit before it
becomes mature. That just means that Linux is on the right track,
keeping things small from the start. Some of the features that
people are talking about adding to Linux, like Tubes, have some
very interesting possibilities. I'd like to see a better network
interface than sockets for one. A filesystem level interface would
be great if anyone can work out the kinks.

++Brett;


[next article]
From: [email protected] (Geoffrey Furnish)

Subject: Re: Shouldn't we be using zoo? (or ZIP) ?
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Date: 27 Apr 92 02:28:13 GMT
References: <[email protected]> <[email protected]
u>
Sender: [email protected]
Organization: The University of Texas at Austin, Austin TX
Lines: 38

In article <[email protected]> [email protected]
nt.edu (Jim Winstead Jr.) writes:
>In article <[email protected]> [email protected] (Russell Nelson) writes:
>>Shouldn't the standard linux archiver be zoo, not tar/compress? Zoo
>>always makes smaller files than tar/compress (e.g. system sources are
>>20% smaller).
>
>Someone else brought this up to me shortly after 0.95a was released,
>although he had mentioned the Info-ZIP zip and unzip programs as
>alternatives.

Well, I guess it depends on the files being archived.

I have a big package I tend to move around a lot (between different
computers) and so am actually in the habit of using all three of
these. My experience is that info-ZIP has the highes compression,
followed by .tar.Z, followed by zoo. In other words, zoo is the
worst, worse even that tar/compress.

Clearly the results are sensitive to the task at hand.

In any event, I would give strong encouragement to using info-ZIP. It
has easy support for recursive directory handling, unlike zoo.
Additionally it allows extraction of text files to the native file
system's text mode format whatever that is, whether unix, dos, etc.
Since I tend to move stuff to all sorts of different systems, this is
extremely useful to me.

I am interested that you got zip to work on linux. The zip available
at txs-11 most definitely does not work right. I posted something on
my problems with it earlier, but got no replies. If you have a
working zip, perhaps you should post it all over, because the one
which is distributed now is bogus.

Anyway, assuming a working zip, I vote for it on the basis of excllent
compression and excellent utility.

Geoff Furnish
[email protected]


[next article]
From: [email protected] (Greenup)

Subject: Curses! (is it broke?)
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Date: 27 Apr 92 03:06:40 GMT
Sender: [email protected] (USENET News System)
Organization: Montana State University
Lines: 28

hi everyone-
recently I have been playing with curses, (trying to port my software
engineering project from ULTRIX) and have come across a few fun things:
1. is there something wrong with stdlib.h or stddef.h? I keep
getting this obnoxious warning..."useless keyword or type name in empty
declaration"
2. is there a way to have precompiled headers, so this muck doesn't
keep doing this over & over again?
2. what is TIOCSETP, & why isn't it defined anywhere
3. " " ECHO " " " " " "
4. " " struct gttyb " " " " " "

I found these problems while trying to use the noecho() function, which is
supposed to inhibit echoing to the terminal screen. If I come up with
enough info, I'll try & fix it myself & post something intelligible. (for
once)

stdpraise: Great stuff guys! Keep it up! Thanks for any & all help,
past, present & future! Long live the Kernel! (& many be it's
diffs!)

john Greenup
[email protected]
386-25;30M linux;60M messydos;4M ram;mcc-0.95c+;gcc2.1;bash
--
john Greenup | snail mail:
Internet: [email protected] | 414 Langford Hall
Bitnet : not yet | Bozeman, MT 59771


[next article]
From: [email protected] (Michael Pereckas)

Subject: Re: Shouldn't we be using zoo?
Message-ID:
Date: 27 Apr 92 04:01:13 GMT
References: <[email protected]> <[email protected]
>
Sender: [email protected] (News)
Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana
Lines: 26

>In article <[email protected]>, [email protected] (Russell Nelson) writes
:
>|> Shouldn't the standard linux archiver be zoo, not tar/compress? Zoo
>|> always makes smaller files than tar/compress (e.g. system sources are
>|> 20% smaller).

(Did I get the attribution right?)

Zoo is probably the best alternative, since it seems to be the most
common on unix systems. Tar and compress are slow, somewhat hard to use
at times, and basically inconvienent. They also seem to be unreliable,
compared to programs like zoo, which tend to have CRCs all over the
place to warn (reliably and clearly) of trouble, in contrast to
compress, which sort of dies mysteriously.

The only argument for tar and compress I know of is that all unix
systems should have them, while zoo is less common. I think,
personally, that we should go with zoo.

I have concerns about the portable zip program. My experience with zip
is that it it *very* slow (although pkzip is fast), and unzip has not
worked well for me under Linux. It has garbled filenames on me. It
might be a version problem, with new version archives and an old unzip.
I haven't looked into it yet.


Michael Pereckas


[next article]
From: [email protected] ( )

Subject: pre-0.96 SCSI Boot disk dies after recognising Adaptec 1540B
Summary: Kernel loads, sets up TTYs (inc. SVGA), etc., but no login/sh
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Date: 27 Apr 92 04:29:50 GMT
Sender: [email protected] (The Daily Lose)
Followup-To: comp.os.linux
Distribution: comp
Organization: Michigan Technological University
Lines: 27
X-Posted-From: sol.ctr.columbia.edu

I have an Everex Step (386) using an Adaptec 1540B (an 1542 without
floppy support) that refuses to run a login after successfully
recognising the hard drive controller. I have tried the 0.95c+ SCSI
and pre-0.96 SCSI versions, and receive the same results with both
kernels from two different sources.


After booting, the kernel prints out the "Loading.....", asks me
for SVGA modes, etc. (I've tried them all), recognises the 1542B,
and stops. It does allow me to switch between virtual ttys, but
doesn't put anything on the screen of its own accord. It will
echo my typing to the correct vtty, which has included several
control characters and curses in several languages.

Needless to say, I can't check anything else out. I have never
been able to boot Linux on my own machine to use. 🙁 Does anyone
know why this is happening, or if there is a cure/fix that
someone can make (in binary form - I can't fix a system I
can't boot :).
Thanks.

Calvin
--
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Steve Stanzel | To secure peace is to prepare for war. |
| 242 W. Wadsworth Hall | Metallica - Don't tread on me |
| Houghton MI, 49931 | VeSrupchoHwI' ghaH RojrupchoHwI' |


[next article]
From: [email protected] (Richard Sharman)

Subject: (a) thanks, (b) a note on gcc2.1, (c) mount read-only?
Message-ID:
Date: 27 Apr 92 01:56:59 GMT
Sender: [email protected]
Organization: Mitel. Kanata (Ontario). Canada.
Lines: 23

As many others have done, I'd like to thank Linus for making available
his wonderful system, and to all of you who have helped port things,
provide assistance, and maintain the files. Thanks a lot!

I've only had Linux installed from a few days, coming from Minix, and
it certainly was easy. (The Guide and comp.os.linux helped out out a
lot.) One thing I got caught on that I'll pass on for anyone just
starting; I downloaded bootimage.95a from tsx-11, and took the plunge
by going straight to gcc 2.1. It turns out they're not compatible.
Compiling and linking hello world appears to work, but I ran it it
gave really strange messages. If linked with dynamic libraries:
Syntax error: Unterminated quoted string
and if linked with static:
Syntax error ")" unexpected.
The problem was fixed by downloading the 95c+ image. (I presume this
is the a.out problem mentioned somewhere, but the references to it I
saw didn't say how surprising the error message would be.)

Finally, a question. Under Minix I can mount a filesystem read-only,
e.g.
mount /dev/fd1 /mnt -r
which is very handy for mounting "precious" source disks. Linux
doesn't seem to do this, or is there some way I haven't discovered?


[next article]
From: [email protected] (Ajay Shah)

Subject: zoo vs. tar vs. zip (Re: Shouldn't we be using zoo?)
Message-ID:
Date: 27 Apr 92 04:44:57 GMT
References: <[email protected]> <[email protected]
>
Sender: [email protected] (Ajay Shah)
Organization: University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA
Lines: 31
NNTP-Posting-Host: almaak.usc.edu

[email protected] (Michael Pereckas) writes:

>>In article <[email protected]>, [email protected] (Russell Nelson) write
s:
>>|> Shouldn't the standard linux archiver be zoo, not tar/compress? Zoo
>>|> always makes smaller files than tar/compress (e.g. system sources are
>>|> 20% smaller).

>(Did I get the attribution right?)

>Zoo is probably the best alternative, since it seems to be the most
>common on unix systems. Tar and compress are slow, somewhat hard to use

I did some tests a short while ago (on a Sun).
I find:

speed compression safety
best tar.Z zoo zoo/zip
2nd zip zip
worst zoo tar.Z tar.Z

I have a slight bias towards zoo in this situation (Linux distribution)
because I consider zoo to be more debugged and widely used than zip.
It's likely to have most bugs removed by now.

The biggest weakness of zoo is speed. In this context, it hardly
matters.

-ans.
--

Ajay Shah, (213)749-8133, [email protected]


[next article]
From: [email protected] (Jim Burns)

Subject: Re: Shouldn't we be using zoo?
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Date: 27 Apr 92 04:37:29 GMT
References: <[email protected]>
Organization: Georgia Institute of Technology
Lines: 16

in article <[email protected]>, [email protected]
ont.edu (Jim Winstead Jr.) says:

> Compress (which is the real problem, not tar...) is simply not up to
> the current technology available in compression. Should we move to
> something else for standard Linux distributions? Zoo is available in

The nice feature about zip is you can add or replace files to an existing
archive. However, I've had problems using the std distrib. unzip on .zip
files retrieved from ftp (like cawf & bootlin.zip) that dos zip (PAK) had no
problem with. (The partition w/unzip on it on the school system is down
right now, but that version has always worked also.)
--
BURNS,JIM (returned student)
Georgia Institute of Technology, 30178 Georgia Tech Station,
Atlanta Georgia, 30332 | Internet: [email protected]
uucp: ...!{decvax,hplabs,ncar,purdue,rutgers}!gatech!prism!gt0178a


[next article]
From: [email protected] (M. Saggaf)

Subject: zmodem
Keywords: zmodem
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Date: 27 Apr 92 04:31:14 GMT
Sender: [email protected] (News system)
Organization: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Lines: 16
Nntp-Posting-Host: erl.mit.edu

Is anybodey else having a problem with zmodem? I've been trying to
make it work since I installed Linux at no avail. It would just give
meesages about getting timeout signals and that's all. I'm using the
zmodem executables included with xcomm. Somebody suggested issuing the
command stty 2400 > /dev/ttys1 < /dev/ttys1. I did that, but it did
not help. I also tried stty 2400 -a /dev/ttys1 (typing stty after
these commands still shows the speed to be 9600). xmodem runs fine
under xcomm. Please let me know what is going wrong.

P.S. The command I use for zmodem is rz > /dev/ttys1 < /dev/ttys1.
My modem is at comm1.

------------------------------
M. M. Saggaf
[email protected]
[email protected]


[next article]
From: [email protected] (Hongjiu Lu -- Graduate Student)

Subject: Re: Curses! (is it broke?)
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Date: 27 Apr 92 03:44:34 GMT
References: <[email protected]>
Sender: [email protected] (USENET News System)
Organization: Washington State University
Lines: 12

In article <[email protected]> [email protected] (Gree
nup) writes:
>hi everyone-
> recently I have been playing with curses, (trying to port my software
>engineering project from ULTRIX) and have come across a few fun things:

Which curses is you using? Guys, curses is in gcc 2.1 beta. Please use
that. not anything else.

BTW, when you use gcc 2.1, be careful with -ansi. That may break
stddef.h. I will take a look when I have time.

H.J.


[next article]
From: [email protected] (Ajay Shah)

Subject: Questions of a lurker deciding whether to jump in
Message-ID:
Date: 27 Apr 92 05:17:53 GMT
Sender: [email protected] (Ajay Shah)
Organization: University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA
Lines: 44
NNTP-Posting-Host: almaak.usc.edu

For the first time, I walked around tsx-11.mit.edu today.
Some questions:

1) I'm surprised the binaries are not ``stocked'' with the GNU goodies.
E.g. what is bawk? I have much devotion to gawk.
(Or is it the case that when we say `make' we really mean `gnu make'?)

2) How slick is the gcc for a pure-ansi development task? Does it work
correctly? Last time I looked glibc did not have a stdargs.h, for
example. What about debugger? Does one use (say) dbx in textmode?
(Unrelated question: has someone done a curses interface to dbx?).

What kind of Unix is Linux? Is it BSD or SysV?
Will it use all free RAM for disk buffering? Is the file system
as good as the Berkeley FFS (on speed)?

3) How well does Emacs work? How much space does the full installation
(incl. a zoo of elisp and info files) take?

4) I am a longtime Unix user (does the most-recent three years with Unix
out of 9 years with computers count?) but have never faced
`admin/installation' tasks. Is Linux going to burn me on this front?
I know the typical multiuser networked Unix takes quite some work for
admin. But this is just a home box; no networking and (?) Linux does
not have users.

5) Does Linux know/care about motherboards? Or will it work with just
about any 386? What about Eisa and Vga? What is the programming
interface to the graphics card? How fast is it (graphics, i.e.)?

6) Is there a TeX and a TeX previewer? How much space does TeX+fonts
take?

7) What is the programming interface to the serial port? Esp.: do the
serial comm programs work at 38400 baud (I have a 16450 UART and a
external 9600 baud modem)?

Thanks guys.. Linux is the best thing which happened to these
Intel processors. Time to go short on feelthy Microsoft!

-ans.
--

Ajay Shah, (213)749-8133, [email protected]


[next article]
From: [email protected] (Dennis Wong)

Subject: Kermit script
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Date: 27 Apr 92 00:14:43 GMT
Organization: Edmonton Remote Systems, Edmonton, AB, Canada
Lines: 7

Could anyone please show me how I can write simple script for
C-kermit ?
Thanks
Dennis

Dennis Wong [email protected]
Edmonton Remote Systems: Celebrating 10 years of service to Northern Alberta


[next article]
From: [email protected] (Michael K. Johnson)

Subject: zip/zoo/compress
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Date: 27 Apr 92 06:02:41 GMT
Sender: [email protected] (Mr Background)
Reply-To: [email protected] (Michael K. Johnson)
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 28

I think that the zip at tsx-11 was compiled back in the days of the
toupper/tolower bug last year. I will move it away from general
consumption next time I am at tsx unless Ted beats me to it. It should
not be hard for someone to recompile it if they want one around, and
if you get one working, go ahead and drop in in incoming at tsx-11
after you have tested it.

However, I suggest that we stick with tar.Z as the standard. tar was
built to handle unix files, and was written under unix, and the
problems with tar and compress that we have had _have not been tar and
compress problems_, but have rather been library/linux problems. The
same goes for other compression utils, I think.

freeze is being adopted somewhat in the unix scene, and would be good
to have around.

The different utils have different strengths in different situations,
but here are my suggestions:

for distribution, use tar.Z, or possible tar.F. One thing about
freeze is that it can, I think, do .Z files.

for your own personal use, use whatever fits the job best and whose
command set you prefer, etc, but please put it out on the net in tar.Z
or tar.F.

michaelkjohnson
[email protected]


[next article]
From: [email protected] (Hongjiu Lu -- Graduate Student)

Subject: Re: zoo vs. tar vs. zip (Re: Shouldn't we be using zoo?)
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Date: 27 Apr 92 06:24:17 GMT
References: <[email protected]> <[email protected]
>
Sender: [email protected] (USENET News System)
Organization: Washington State University
Lines: 28

In article [email protected] (Ajay Shah) wri
tes:
>[email protected] (Michael Pereckas) writes:
>
>>>In article <[email protected]>, [email protected] (Russell Nelson) writ
es:
>>>|> Shouldn't the standard linux archiver be zoo, not tar/compress? Zoo
>>>|> always makes smaller files than tar/compress (e.g. system sources are
>>>|> 20% smaller).
>
>>(Did I get the attribution right?)
>
>>Zoo is probably the best alternative, since it seems to be the most
>>common on unix systems. Tar and compress are slow, somewhat hard to use
>
>I did some tests a short while ago (on a Sun).
>I find:
>
> speed compression safety
>best tar.Z zoo zoo/zip
>2nd zip zip
>worst zoo tar.Z tar.Z
>

This is kind of misleading. Linux uses GNU tar which is better than the
standard tars. Please try this with anything else to make comparison

gnutar cfz foo.tar.Z ./foo

H.J.


[next article]
From: [email protected] (Jim Winstead Jr.)

Subject: Re: Shouldn't we be using zoo? (or ZIP) ?
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Date: 27 Apr 92 08:17:38 GMT
References: <[email protected]> <[email protected]
u> <[email protected]>
Sender: [email protected] (The News System)
Organization: Harvey Mudd College, Claremont, CA 91711
Lines: 17

In article <[email protected]> [email protected] (Geoffrey Furnish) wri
tes:
>[lots of quotes deleted - it's a long thread....]
>
>I am interested that you got zip to work on linux. The zip available
>at txs-11 most definitely does not work right. I posted something on
>my problems with it earlier, but got no replies. If you have a
>working zip, perhaps you should post it all over, because the one
>which is distributed now is bogus.

Unless someone beats me to the punch, I'll try and recompile zip and
unzip and send them up to tsx-11. I've got a couple of other things
I've been meanting to drop off, anyways....
--
Jim Winstead Jr. (CSci '95) | "Catch a fish!"
Harvey Mudd College | -Geddy Lee,
[email protected] | San Diego Sports Arena
Disclaimer: Mine, not theirs! | January 20, 1992


[next article]
From: [email protected] (Linus Benedict Torvalds)

Subject: Re: My pre-0.96 won't run shared binaries
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Date: 27 Apr 92 08:31:31 GMT
References: penn.edu>
Distribution: comp
Organization: University of Helsinki
Lines: 22

In article [email protected] (Joe Sm
ith) writes:
>
>Well, I'm straight now on the ps patches, but it seems I was wrong
>about pre-0.96 running ok: even a clean kernel refuses to run
>shared-lib binaries, even 'hello.c', for a non-root user. They all
>die with an 'invalid operand... segmentation fault'.

Ok, if it works for root, the problem is probably the permissions for
the shared library: check that /lib/libXXXX is both readable and
executable by the user (and if you have a symlink, check that the file
it points to is read/executable)

Earlier versions didn't check for read/exec permissions, which is an
obvious security problem: under 0.95c+ and earlier, you could
effectively do a "uselib(XXXX)", and be able to read the file XXXX
(except for the 1024 first bytes) by reading memory at 0x03c00000- in
your process space. 0.96 (even the pre-version) checks the header of
the file, and the permissions, to make sure you are trying to use a real
library file that you have access to, so that this kind of thing
wouldn't be possible.

Linus


[next article]
From: [email protected] (Harald Tveit Alvestrand)

Subject: Re: Latin-1 again
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Date: 27 Apr 92 08:47:34 GMT
References: <[email protected]> <1992Apr26.001809.5626@color
ado.edu>
Sender: [email protected] (NetNews Administrator)
Reply-To: [email protected]
Organization: SINTEF DELAB, Norway
Lines: 16

Try not to limit this to Latin-1 only.
For ex. X11 has multiple character sets defined.
Latin-1 is much better for interworking than IBM Codepages, but still
too limited to write, for instance, East European languages or Turkish.

(and don't even THINK about Greek.....)

Of course, I cannot promise to write this, but only remember to leave some
hooks out for changing things later...
(sort of "define native character set of this machine" stuff....)
Internationalization (I18n) IS a can of worms........
--
Harald Tveit Alvestrand
[email protected]
C=no;PRMD=uninett;O=sintef;OU=delab;S=alvestrand;G=harald
+47 7 59 70 94


[next article]
From: [email protected] (Gerry E. George (Lab Consultant))

Subject: Kermit & serial ports
Message-ID:
Date: 27 Apr 92 13:03:20 GMT
Sender: [email protected] (USENET News System)
Organization: Western Business School
Lines: 9
Nntp-Posting-Host: lab02.business.uwo.ca

I'm having problems with running Kermit. After setting everything up: line,
speed, etc, I get the following error.
** Warning, read access to lock directory denied. **
this is with a line setting of /dev/ttys1.

I checked the attributes of the files and directory. Nothing looks
strange. Don't know what else to do. Need help!

Gerry George


[next article]
From: [email protected] (Lou Williams)

Subject: PBMPlus Utilities are now available for Linux
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Date: 27 Apr 92 12:13:39 GMT
Sender: [email protected] (Mr Background)
Reply-To: [email protected] (Lou Williams)
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 38


I've just finished a (quick/dirty/rough around the edges) port of the PBMPlus
utilities for Linux and uploaded it to TSX-11. It should be availabe within
a day or two.

For those who haven't heard of it - the PBMPlus Utilities are a set of utilities
for dealing with bitmap images (of almost any type). Hence the name Portable
Bitmaps. The package was originally written by Jef Poskanzi and has been
growing ever since. It now includes the Tiff Image Library written by Sam
Leffler of Silicon Graphics.

These utilities are primarily for the manipulation of image files. They work
extremely well at conversions from one type of image to another. I've used
this particular one to convert several gif images to color postscript files
already because it's very easy to scale the picture and quantize the colors
all in one step. The PBMPlus utilities are designed to output to standard
out, so the commands may easily be chained.

This is a _rough_ port, sorry, but I didn't have time to be neat here. I think
I uploaded the non-shared binaries version also. It compiles and runs under
Linux 0.95c+, with gcc-2.1. There are two files available (or will be),

pbmplus.bin.tar.Z - binary only distribution
pbmplus.src.tar.Z - sources/man pages/other docs.

Documentation is minimal, but some does exist. Most of it is in the form of
man page entries. I haven't exhaustively tested these utilities so I can't
guarantee they all work, but the initial tests I did showed good results.
And how's this: On a 386/25 (no cache), with an RLL Drive, 8 Meg memory, and
no math coprocessor, the utilities _seem_ to be about 1.25 times faster than
they are on a MicroVAX II running Ultrix 3.1! Excellent Work Linus!

Enjoy these utilities! If you have any questions I have an account that I
will check mail about once a week, feel free to send them to me! I can be
reached at : [email protected].

-Lou Williams
[email protected]



[next article]
From: [email protected] (Drew Eckhardt)

Subject: Re: Questions of a lurker deciding whether to jump in
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Date: 27 Apr 92 12:50:10 GMT
References:
Sender: [email protected] (The Daily Planet)
Organization: University of Colorado at Boulder
Lines: 117
Nntp-Posting-Host: hazelrah.cs.colorado.edu

Forgive me if I'm incohernet - I ended up hacking all night on
a VAX and doing micro arch and other home work 8^(

(Hey, it runs Unix, not VMS so it's a real computer)

In article [email protected] (Ajay Shah) wri
tes:
>For the first time, I walked around tsx-11.mit.edu today.
>Some questions:
>
>1) I'm surprised the binaries are not ``stocked'' with the GNU goodies.
> E.g. what is bawk? I have much devotion to gawk.
> (Or is it the case that when we say `make' we really mean `gnu make'?)

The binaries are almost ALL gnu utilities. File utils, shell utils,
binutils, the C compiler, debugger, standard make, last I checked
awk, sed, tar, etc.


>2) How slick is the gcc for a pure-ansi development task? Does it work
> correctly? Last time I looked glibc did not have a stdargs.h, for
> example. What about debugger? Does one use (say) dbx in textmode?
> (Unrelated question: has someone done a curses interface to dbx?).
>

We don't have dbx, we do have gdb. And you use gdb in text mode.
And if you are extremely sick, there is also an EMACS interface to
gdb. Try it - you'll like it . GDB has more feeping creatures
than DBX....


> What kind of Unix is Linux? Is it BSD or SysV?

POSIX, leaning towards SYSV, but with BSD features like
the setre{g,u}id syscalls.

> Will it use all free RAM for disk buffering? Is the file system

No. The separation of buffercache / usermemory is
done by the "classical" method.

> as good as the Berkeley FFS (on speed)?

No. But VFS is implimented, and you can add something like FFS or
even beter LFS. Also, more important than the file system speed is
a defficiency in the buffercache / disk driver code. Basically,
if your disk is not track buffered, you will get no
performance at all.

Write calls are passed to the device driver in 1 block chunks - ie 1K.
If subsequent blocks are requested, you get to wait another revolution
until the next one comes along.


People are working on this.

>3) How well does Emacs work? How much space does the full installation
> (incl. a zoo of elisp and info files) take?
>

Fine, if you set the km option in the termcap. Full emacs is several
megs.

>4) I am a longtime Unix user (does the most-recent three years with Unix
> out of 9 years with computers count?) but have never faced
> `admin/installation' tasks. Is Linux going to burn me on this front?


Definately not. Life without sendmail is a breeze.... =8^)

> I know the typical multiuser networked Unix takes quite some work for
> admin. But this is just a home box; no networking and (?) Linux does
> not have users.
>

Linux has users, and you're likely to get yourself in trouble
if you don't have a separate "you" and root account.

>5) Does Linux know/care about motherboards? Or will it work with just
> about any 386? What about Eisa and Vga? What is the programming
> interface to the graphics card? How fast is it (graphics, i.e.)?
>

Linux doesn't do anything about specific vendors motherboards.
Basically, it definately won't run on microchannel, and some
flakey motherboards do not work.

You can mmap(2) the frame buffer into user space, and program
it like you would in real mode. X is being ported, and there has
been some talk (I don't know how serious) about getting MGR /
a textronic / other graphics terminal emulation in the
kernel.

>6) Is there a TeX and a TeX previewer? How much space does TeX+fonts
> take?
>

TeX yes, previewer no.

>7) What is the programming interface to the serial port? Esp.: do the
> serial comm programs work at 38400 baud (I have a 16450 UART and a
> external 9600 baud modem)?
>

/dev/ttys - you talk to it like any other character device,
and can do non-blocking IO if you fcntl it or use select(2).

Linux DOES NOT support hard flow control, and in my experience
drops characters at 19.2K (386-33). People are rectifing the hard
flow problem, and adding 16550 support.

>Thanks guys.. Linux is the best thing which happened to these
>Intel processors. Time to go short on feelthy Microsoft!
>

The company that brings you win3.1, a $50 bug fix to win 3.0.

Go figure.


[next article]
From: [email protected]

Subject: FAQ part1
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Date: 22 Apr 92 15:13:41 GMT
Sender: [email protected]
Reply-To: [email protected]
Followup-To: poster
Organization: Greco Prog. CNRS & LaBRI, Bordeaux France
Lines: 586

Archive-name: linux-faq/part1
Last-Modified: 92/04/22
Version: 1.6

*********************************************************
* *
* Answers to Frequently asked questions about Linux *
* *
*********************************************************

This post contains Part 1 of the Linux FAQ

===================================8<======>8===========================


Hi Linuxers!

The originall FAQ 1st version was posted in Dec. 19, by Robert Blum,

Most credits of this work to Linus, Robert and Ted, the rest was
either on the list posted by many (real) activists, not me ;-), either
in some other news groups, or else by direct posting to me (thanks
Humberto, Dan, Michael, Drew). I haven't systematically copyrighted
them, so thanks to every one who participated even indirectly to this
FAQ.

Many of the questions could be avoided, if people had read the FAQ of
the following newsgroups:
comp.lang.c, gnu.emacs.help, comp.unix.questions

[The last-change-date of this posting is always "two minutes ago". :-)]

This is the introduction to a list of frequently asked questions (FAQ
for short) about Linux with answers (Yeap!). This article contains a
listing of the sections, followed by the question/answer part.

This FAQ is supposed to reduce the noise level 😉 in the comp.os.linux
newsgroup, and spare the time of many activists. I will post it twice a
month, since there are more and more new incomers, and new features.

BTW This FAQ is available at the main Linux sites in the doc
directory, the addresses are given in section II. of this FAQ.

Please suggest any change, rephrasing, deletions, new questions,
answers ...
Please include "FAQ" in the subject of messages sent to me about FAQ.
Please use [email protected] whatever will be the From part
of this message.


Thanks in advance,
Marc

Future Plan:
- verification/location/organization for files available
via FTP (I've tried what a mess!!)
- reorganization of the FAQ. I don't know what will be the
next step of this, may be numbering and subsectionning.

================================8<=====8<==============================
CONTENTS
I. LINUX GENERAL INFORMATION (part1)
II. LINUX USEFUL ADDRESSES (part1)
III. INSTALLATION and SECURITY (part1)
IV. LINUX and DOS (part1)
V. SOME CLASSICAL PROBLEMS (part2)
VI. INSTALLATION HINTS (part2)
VII. FEATURES (part2)
VIII. MORE HINTS (part2)
IX. GCC MISC INFORMATION (part2)

I. LINUX GENERAL INFORMATION
=============================

QUESTION: What is linux?

ANSWER: Linux is a small unix for 386-AT computers, that has the added
advantage of being free. It is still in beta-testing, but is slowly
getting useful even for somewhat real developement. The current
version is 0.95c+, date: April 9th 1992. The previous version v0.95a
(March 17th) has been patched a bit.


Linux 0.95(c+) is a freely distributable UNIX clone. It implements a
subset of System V and POSIX functionality. LINUX has been written
from scratch, and therefore does not contain any AT&T or MINIX
code--not in the kernel, the compiler, the utilities, or the
libraries. For this reason it can be made available with the complete
source code via anonymous FTP. LINUX runs only on 386/486 AT-bus
machines; porting to non-Intel architectures is likely to be
difficult, as the kernel makes extensive use of 386 memory management
and task primitives.


QUESTION: What is the current state of Linux?

ANSWER: do "finger [email protected]", or read the
comp.os.linux newsgroup.


QUESTION: I've just heard about linux, what should I do to get it?

ANSWER: First read all this FAQ, and the INFO-SHEET monthly post, then
go to the nearest ftp site (see below), download the Images there are
two a rootimage and a bootimage (in general in the images directory),
for the present version, you need boot-image095c+ and root-image095a
(or letter after), then download the INSTALL and RELNOTES files. Find
the rawrite utility (for example at tsx-11 it's in
/pub/linux/INSTALL), then rawrite the images on HIGH density floppies
(5.25 or 3.5), finally boot on the root diskette and that's it. BTW
From another Unix system a "dd" works fine. On "my" sun I use the
following "uncompress -c root-image.Z > /dev/fd0", assuming I had a
formatted floppy in /dev/hd0

After playing a while, you should want to install linux on HD (there
are scripts on the v0.95c+ images for that purpose), see also section
III for INSTALLATION. Then you will need
a compiler (gcc) and utilities, all can be found at the different
places described in section II below.


QUESTION: Does it run on my computer?

ANSWER: Linux has been written on a clone-386, with IDE drives and a
VGA screen. It should work on most similar setups. The harddisk should
be AT-standard, and the system must be ISA. A high density floppy
drive -- either 5".25 or 3".5

IDE and MFM seem to work with no problem. It works, also, for some
ESDI drive (Joincom controller with Magtron drive after you have
commented out the "unexpected hd interrupt"-message from hd.c). There
exists a high-level SCSI driver, under which low-level drivers are
placed; a ST-01/ST-02 low driver has been completed see the FEATURES
and the USEFUL ADDRESSES sections.

Otherwise the requirements seem relatively small: a 386 (SX, DX or any
486). Any video card of the following: Hercules, CGA, EGA, (S)VGA.

It needs at least 2M to run, and 4M is definitely a plus. It can
happily use up to 16M (and more if you change some things).


QUESTION: Why the suggested 4Meg, for Linux?

ANSWER: Linux uses the first 640k for kernel text, kernel data and
buffercache. Your mother board may eat up 384K because of the chipset.
Moreover there is: init/login, a shell, update possibly other daemons.
Then, while compiling there is make and gcc (1.40 ~530k; 2.01 ~770k).
So you don't have enough real memory and have to page.


QUESTION: How would this operate in an OS/2 environment?

ANSWER: Linux will coexist with *any* other operating system(s) which
respects the "standard" PC partionning scheme - this includes Dos,
Os/2, Minix etc.


QUESTION: Will linux run on a PC or 286-AT? If not, why?

ANSWER: Linux uses the 386 chip protected mode functions extensively,
and is a true 32-bit operating system. Thus x86 chips, x<3, will
simply not run it.


QUESTION: Will Linux run on a 386 Laptop?

ANSWER: It works for some at least.


QUESTION: How big is the 'complete' Linux package?

ANSWER: Well, the boot and root image diskettes are about 750Ko
compressed. The kernel sources are about 200Ko compressed, and the
libc sources are another 170Ko compressed. The GNU C (1.40) compiler
is 670Ko, the GNU C (2.01) package which enclose C and C++ compiler is
about 3Mo; and the other miscellaneous unix utilities are probably a
bit over a megabyte.

Now add sources to whatever you want to port and compile yourself.
The sources to GNU emacs are about 3 megabytes, compressed. Groff (a
troff replacement) is just over 1 megabyte.

If you think this is big, remember that the OS/2 2.0 Limited
Availability release is 20 1.44 megabyte diskettes.


QUESTION: (Dan) How long has Linux been publicly available?

ANSWER (partial): Few months, v0.10 went out in Nov. 91, v0.11 in Dec.
and the current version 0.95c+ is available since April 9th. But even
it is pretty recent it is quite reliable. There are very few and small
bugs and in its current state it is mostly useful for people who are
willing to port code and write new code.
As Linux is very close to a reliable/stable system, Linus decides that
v0.13 will be known as v0.95


QUESTION: What's about the copyright of linux.

ANSWER: This is an except of the RELEASE Notes v.095a: Linux is

NOT public domain software, but is copyrighted by Linus Torvalds. The
copyright conditions are the same as those imposed by the GNU
copyleft: get a copy of the GNU copyleft at any major ftp-site (if it
carries linux, it probably carries a lot of GNU software anyway, and
they all contain the copyright).


QUESTION: Should I be a UNIX and/or a DOS wizard to install/use Linux?

ANSWER: Not at all, just follow the install rules, of course it will be
easier for you if you know things about Unix. Right now Linux is used
by more than 400 persons, very few of them enhance the kernel, some
adds/ports new soft, most of us are only (but USEFUL) beta testers.
Last but not least, various Linuxers work on manpages, newuser_help,
file-system organization. So join us and choose your "caste"


QUESTION: What are the differences, pros and cons compared to Minix ?

ANSWER (partial):
Cons:
- Linux is not as mature as Minix, there is less working software right now.
- Linux only works on 386 and 486 processors.
- Linux needs 2M of memory just to run, 4M to be useful.
- Linux is a more traditional unix kernel, it doesn't use message passing.

Pros:
- Linux is free, and freely distributable, BUT copyrighted.
- Linux has some advanced features such as:
- Memory paging with copy-on-write
- Demand loading of executables
- Page sharing of executables
- Multi-threaded file system
- job control and virtual memory, virtual consoles and pseudo-ttys.
- Linux is a more traditional unix kernel, it doesn't use message
passing.


QUESTION: Does Linux use TSS segments to provide multitasking?

ANSWER: Yes!


QUESTION: If my PC runs under Linux, is it possible to ftp, rlogin,
rsh etc.. to other Unix boxes?

ANSWER: Not yet, but kermit has been ported to Linux, and the ka9q too.


QUESTION: Does linux do paging? Can I have virtual memory on my small
machine?

ANSWER: Linux0.95(a) does do paging in a better way than Linux0.12.


QUESTION: Can I have tasks spanning the full 4GB of addressable 386
memory? No more 64kB limits like in coherent or standard minix?

ANSWER: Linux does limit the task-size, but at a much more reasonable
64MB (MEGA-byte, not kilos), so bigger programs are no problem.


QUESTION: Does the bigger program sizes mean I can run X?

ANSWER: X is not (yet) ported to linux, and I hope it will be some day,
people are working hard on it but it's big, and wants a lot from
the system.


II. LINUX USEFUL ADDRESSES
=========================

QUESTION: Where can I get linux?

ANSWER: Linux can be gotten by anonymous ftp from
1) Major Sites
EUROPE:
nic.funet.fi (128.214.6.100):
directory /pub/OS/Linux
Tupac-Amaru.Informatik.RWTH-Aachen.DE (137.226.112.31):
directory /pub/msdos/replace
US:
tsx-11.mit.edu (18.172.1.2):
directory /pub/linux

2) Mirroring sites (some of them)
AUSTRALIA:
kirk.bu.oz.au (131.244.1.1)
directory /pub/OS/Linux
EUROPE:
src.doc.ic.ac.uk (146.169.3.7):
directory /pub/os/Linux
ftp.mcc.ac.uk (130.88.200.7):
directory pub/linux
US:
ftp.eecs.umich.edu (141.212.99.7):
directory linux
banjo.concert.net (192.101.21.6):
directory pub/Linux/mirrors
JAPAN:
utsun.s.u-tokyo.ac.jp (133.11.11.11):
directory misc/linux

You might want to check out which of these is the most up-to-date.
Moreover banjo.concert.net is mirroring hpb, nic and tsx.

If you don't have ftp-capability, you are in trouble. See next Q/A. If
you have no uncompress utility, there are a lot even for DOS, have a
look on SIMTEL, or else use facilities provided by some sites to
uncompress for you. Don't do that if you can, because it's lengthy,
expensive and causes troubles to other users on ftp sites.


QUESTION: I do not have FTP access, what can I do to get linux?

ANSWER: Try to contact a friend on the net with those access, or try
mailserver/ftpmail server otherwise contact [email protected]. You
might try mailing "[email protected]" with "help" in the body of
the mail. If you choose ftpmail server (example: [email protected]),
with "help" in the body, the server will send back instructions and
command list. As an exemple to get the list of files available at tsx-11
in /pub/linux send:

mail [email protected]
subject: anything
reply
connect tsx-11.mit.edu
chdir /pub/linux
dir -R
quit

QUESTION: Is there a newsgroup or mailing-list about linux? Where can
I get my questions answered? How about bug-reports?

ANSWER: comp.os.linux is formed, and alt.os.linux is dying little by
little, for those who can't access to the news you can ask for digest to:
[email protected]. On the other hand, mail
sent to [email protected] are posted to
comp.os.linux

DO NOT mail "I want to [un]subscribe" to the newsgroup, use
the request-address. IF not your mail-box will be over-crowded by
activists.

Questions and bug-reports can be sent either to the newsgroup or to
"[email protected]", depending on which you find more
appropriate. Moreover there is a BUGLIST file available in the
different main site (at least you can find it at tsx-11, in
pub/linux/patches/BUGLIST).

People are working on the organization of Linux, this is done on
a separate mailing-list.

linux-standards: Discussion of distribution and directory standards
for the Linux operating system, including directory structure, file
location, and release disk format.

Requests to be added to this list must be sent to:
[email protected]

Others on the man pages and users guide.
contact [email protected]

For information/development of SCSI drivers.
contact [email protected]

And last but not least there is the original mailing-list, which is
now a multi-channel list.
contact [email protected]


QUESTION: Does there exist a place where the traffic of the newsgroup
is kept?

ANSWER: Yes, on nic and tsx-11 (see the ftp addresses above), and since
12th March, a Gopher server is up at beryl.daimi.aau.dk
(130.225.16.86). The archives go back to Nov. 18. 91


III. INSTALLATION and SECURITY
==============================


QUESTION: Does there exist *any* reliable information that can help me
to install Linux, 'cause I know very few things about Dos and/or Unix?

ANSWER: Yes, there is a lot of effort which has been done recently.
You should read the following files:
Beginner's Guide: Installation by I. Reid
(Dos) Beginner's guide by C. Boyer
Info-sheet by R. Blum
Install-0.xx by L. Torvalds (?)
Relnotes-0.xx by L. Torvalds (?)


QUESTION: Does there exists a simple way to get all (or nearly) the
Linux stuff?

ANSWER: You can grab an 'interim' version of Linux at ftp.mcc.ac.uk in
/pub/linux/mcc-interim/0.95c+/images (thanks to A. V. Le Blanc). The
README files are in /pub/linux/mcc-interim/0.95c+


QUESTION: What are the files provided in the interim distrib?

ANSWER: (16 April 92) The kernel supplied is the 0.95c+ one, there are
also 4 binaries floppy including C and C++ compilers.
boot-UK.Z (or boot-US.Z) this is the boot image disk
util-UK.Z (or util-US.Z) this is the root image disk
comp.image the Gnu C 2.1 compiler (and everything)
+shoelace for Linux
comp2.image the GNU C++ 2.1 compiler (and all)
+bash

QUESTION: Ok, I've got the interim distribution, what should I do now?

ANSWER: You should read the README file provided, and follow the
instructions. Roughtly, you have to uncompress boot-?? and util-??
then rawrite them on HD floppies. After that boot on the boot-?? disk
and follow the instructions (some are also on-line provided); remove
the floppy and put the util one.

QUESTION: I have copyed all the rootimage stuff on my HD, how can I
use the hard-disk as root?

ANSWER: There are two ways to answer this: a) You have download the
linux sources and a compiler, in that case recompile the kernel to
make a new boot-floppy according to your environment. If you have
dowloaded the sources of linux-095c+, you just have a look in the main
Makefile to set your national keyboard, your root drive and the flags
for the compiler version you use; if you have dow-loaded linux-095a
then you have to set your keyboard in kernel/chr_drv/keyboard.S (.S
not .s). "make disk " will compile the kernel and create a new boot
floppy, or else "make" and then "cp Image /dev/PS0".
b) You have nothing except the images and DOS, in that
case you should have read the INSTALLATION notices provided at your
ftp site, but well: you have to change the boot image at offset 508.
The word (in 386-order, i.e low-byte first) tells the system which
device to use as root: initially it's 0 which means that we want to
use a floppy of the same type as the boot-disk (this is the reason why
HIGH density floppy is required for the boot-image). In order to use
the HD as root, this value has to be changed to point to the correct
device. For that purpose you can download the program enclosed in
INSTALL-0.10 (provided some slight modification according to the new
minor/major numbers) use the program written by Henning Spruth wich
can be found in digest#149 vol1 (there are both the C code and the
uuencoded DOS executable) or else any sector editor.


QUESTION: How can I be sure I won't be writing over anything
important? I have to use DOS on my machine, and I don't want to
lose any files.

ANSWER: Back up everything. Just in case. Then, write some easily
recognizable pattern to the partition you have reserved for linux,
using some DOS tool. You can then use "cat /dev/hdX" under linux to
examine which of the partitions you used.


QUESTION: Linux mkfs doesn't accept the size I give the device,
although I double-checked with fdisk, and it's correct.

ANSWER: Be sure you give the size in BLOCKS, ie 1024 bytes, not
sectors. The mkfs doesn't work for very big partition (over than 64
Megs). Also, make doubly certain that you have the correct partition.

There are a few rules about this: /dev/hda (linux0.95a and latter)
corresponds to /dev/hd0 (under minix) and /dev/hdb (linux0.95a ..)
to /dev/hd5 (minix). DO NOT USE THEM, they are the whole raw
disk, not partitions. Also if a partition is on drive 1 under minix
(ie /dev/hd1-4), it is drive 1 under linux as well. Moreover, there
is no real consensus on whether partition #1 is the first partition on
the disk, or is the first entry in the partition table. Some parition
programs sort this information on the screen only, some will write the
sorted information back to the hard disk. Linux assumes that the
first entry is hda1, and so if some utility starts sorting/reordering
the table these things can change. Moreover, use very carefully extended
partition they are still in beta-test (this is in the installation notes).

REMARK Minix does some reordering.

A useful hack is to make each of your partitions a different size.
Then after any editting or possible change to the partition table you
can boot a floppy system and run fdisk (linux's, not DOS) to see if
the assignments still hold.


QUESTION: I have a one partitionned 40Mb disk. If I run mkfs, what
happens?

ANSWER: If you do that, you will have an empty 40Mb Linux file system.
You should, at least, make on your hard disk, one partition per
operating system you want to use.


QUESTION: I mounted the linux filesystem, and copied the files from
the root-disk to the harddisk. Now I cannot find them any more, and
somethimes linux dies with a "panic: trying to free unused inode".

ANSWER: You have probably forgot to sync before rebooting. Linux, like
all unices, use a "buffer cache" to speed up reads and writes to disk.
On a machine that has enough memory, this buffer-cache is 1.5MB, and
if you forget to sync before exiting, it may not be fully written out
to disk. Re-mkfs and re-install (or try to use the preliminary fsck,
but remember that although fsck tries to correct the faults it finds,
it may fail.)


IV. LINUX and DOS
=================

QUESTION: Is it possible to access to DOS world from Linux

ANSWER: Yes, there is the mtools package (with patches for devices.c)
The original sources of mtools can be found at any places not only at
nic, tupac and tsx-11, and the patches for Linux (with fix for big DOS
partitions are in the directory patches or ports). Moreover you should
download the file patch.Z to apply patches 🙂
It is possible to find the compiled mtools stuff at mcc (see above for
the address)
BTW An improved version of mtools is on nic.funet.fi in
/pub/OS/Linux/tools/mtools.n.tar.Z, where all tools are in a single
executable; the device configuration are set in /etc/mtools one per
line. In the package, you will find a readme file, the compiled
program, an example of /etc/mtools and diffs to mtools-2.0.5.tar.Z


QUESTION: the mtools package won't work. I get an ENOENT error message
for all devices.

ANSWER: mtools needs to be told which device to look for. If you have
the mtools.n.tar.Z package set correctly your /etc/mtools file; if you
use the older mtools stuff (see Q/A above) use 'ln' or 'mknod' to
create a special file called "/dev/dos?", where ? is A, B, C, X or Y.
A and B are for floppies (12 bits), C is for hard disk and X, Y for
any. This file should point to the device you want to read. About the
minor/major pair have a look in section INSTALLATION HINTS.


QUESTION: Whenever I use mtools to read a 720K in an 1.44MB drive, I
get a long sequence of reset-floppy-errors, why?

ANSWER: This is what happens if you use the /dev/PS0 device (b 2 28),
to read a 720k floppy you have to use another device, for example
/dev/ps0 (b 2 16).


QUESTION: What is as86.tar.Z ?

ANSWER: It's the port of Bruce Evans' minix assembler, you need it to
be able to recompile Linux at your convenience. In fact this is ONLY
used for boot/setup.S and boot/bootsect.S they create 80x86 REAL mode
code.
BTW as86 should not work on keyboard.S, instead, you must use gcc -E
and then (g)as.


QUESTION: Turbo (Microsoft) Assembler won't compile the Linux boot
code. In fact, some of the opcodes in these files look completely
unfamiliar. Why?

ANSWER: The Linux boot codes are written in Bruce Evans' minix
assembler, which has the same opcodes as the original minix assembler
ported to linux get as86.tar.Z Anyway there are a few differences
between these and normal DOS assemblers.


===================8<==========>8================





Keywords:


--

Raleur a temps plein, Voileux par tout temps, farouche Defenseur du terminal
ascii et Ennemi irreductible de l'accentuation encombrante, FAQ maintainer,
Bidouilleur systeme, Installateur de logiciels sur (Sun 3 et 4, RS6000,
Linux [3/4]86), Interpreteur abstrait, Co-organisateur de woRkshop :))

PS: L'ordre dans cette liste est independant du taux de reussite dans
chacune des activites citees :))


[next article]
From: [email protected]

Subject: Linux Frequently Asked Questions 2/2 [bi-weekly posted]
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Date: 22 Apr 92 15:15:43 GMT
Sender: [email protected]
Reply-To: [email protected]
Followup-To: poster
Organization: Greco Prog. CNRS & LaBRI, Bordeaux France
Lines: 1058

Archive-name: linux-faq/part2
Last-Modified: 92/04/22
Version: 1.6

*********************************************************
* *
* Answers to Frequently asked questions about Linux *
* *
*********************************************************

This post contains Part 2 of the Linux FAQ. It must be read *after* the
first part. It contains the following sections:

V. SOME CLASSICAL PROBLEMS (part2)
VI. INSTALLATION HINTS (part2)
VII. FEATURES (part2)
VIII. MORE HINTS (part2)
IX. GCC MISC INFORMATION (part2)

===================================8<====>8============================


V. SOME CLASSICAL PROBLEMS
==========================

QUESTION: While running du I get "Kernel panic: free_inode: bit
already cleared". Also, du produces a ENOENT error for all the files
in certain of my directories. What's going on?

ANSWER: These are both consistent with a bad file-system. That's
relatively easy to produce by not syncing before rebooting, as linux
usually has 1.5MB of buffer space held in memory (unless you have <=4M
RAM, in which case the buffers are only about 0.5MB). Also linux
doesn't do anything special about the bit-map blocks, and as they are
used often, those are the thing most likely to be in memory. If you
reboot, and they haven't been written to disk ...

Just do an fsck on the device, the -a flag might repair it otherwise,
the only thing to do is to reinstall the filesystem from the Images.

A sync is done only every 30 seconds normally (standard unix
practice), so do one by hand (some people think you should do 3 syncs
after each other, but that's superstition), or by logging out from the
startup-shell, which automatically syncs the system. Unmounting a
filesystem also syncs it (but of course you can never unmount root).

Another (sad) possibility is that you have bad blocks on your disk.
Not very probable, as they would have to be in the inode-tables, just
a couple of blocks in size. Again there aren't programs available to
read a disk for bad sectors and put them in some kind of
"bad-sector-file". On IDE drives this is no problem (bad sectors are
automatically mapped away).


QUESTION: How can I partition my hard-drive to use Linux?

ANSWER: There are (at least) two ways to answer this. The easy way is
probably to use a program which will do it for you, such as the MS-DOS
fdisk, Minix fdisk, Xenix/Unix fdisk, or programs such as edpart.exe
or part.exe. With the 0.95a distribution, there is pfdisk. To use it
have a look in the beginner's guide written by I. Reid, it's clear and
it had worked for me like a charm.

On the other hand, you can use a disk editor and modify the contents
of the partition table directly. This has been already done, and an
extensive explanatory note can be found in the mailing-list archives
(25th Jan. 92). You must also edit the bpb on the Dos partition you
are shrinking, otherwise Dos will step on Linux.

BTW It might be useful to set three (3) separated partitions for
Linux, one for the root, another one for the usr and a third one for
swap, as an illustration, my root partition is 10Meg, the usr is 22Meg
and the swap partition is 8Meg (twice the size of RAM on my box). As
an experience I have used MS-DOS fdisk to partition my two hd and got
no peculiar difficulties.
You can, as long as you stay within the 64MB per filesystem
limit, have swap, root, etc, ... all on there.


QUESTION: What must I do to mkfs a floppy?

ANSWER: blocks are of size 1K so 1.44 floppy is 1440 blocks. The
floppy has to be formatted before this will work.


QUESTION: When I run kermit under Linux, I get "Warning, Read access
to lock directory denied". What am I doing wrong?

ANSWER: Nothing, you just need to create /usr/spool/uucp (kermit 4.6?)
or /usr/spool/locks (this is for the kermit5A), which is where kermit
like to lock files.


QUESTION: du works just fine on directories, except on / and /dev,
moreover "ls -l" returns either big or negative number on /dev. Why?

ANSWER: This is a "feature" added in Linux 0.12; it was originally
present in Minix; more specifically, when you stat a device file
belong to a block device, it will return the maximum size of the block
device in the st_size member of the stat structure. If you don't like
it, it's very simple to patch it out. Look in the fs/inode.c, in the
subroutine read_inode().


QUESTION: When I try to (un)compress many files in one command, the
command partially fails?

ANSWER: This is a bug, many partial fixes are floating around but ..
You can solve it by a bash command "for i in whateverfiles;do
compress $i; done". Another possibility is to download the
compress-fixed.tar file (at tsx it's in modifications/OLD-0.12), or
the new tar and compress binaries (at tsx /pub/linux/binaries/usr.bin).


QUESTION: I can do this as root but not as non-root, is it a bug?

ANSWER: Except for the make utility, the problem is caused by an
incorrect permission flag. The most common problems are about /tmp
which should be 1777 and /dev/ttys? which might be 766. So as root do

chmod 1777 /tmp ; chmod 766 /dev/ttys?

QUESTION: When I use make as non root, it doesn't work, why?

ANSWER: ?????, the message is either (null) setuid ..., or (null)
setgid... I don't know how to fix it. May be this is fixed in the
gmake-3.62 version enclosed in gmake-3.62.tar.Z (at tsx in
pub/linux/binaries).
BTW This problem does not exist with the pmake (make for BSD 4.3 Reno
and BSD 4.4) package.


QUESTION: Sometimes, I get "mount can't open lock file"; what does this
means?

ANSWER: This can happened for two reasons:
A) You try to mount something as non-root. In that case you can either
retry as root, or set the setuid bit to mount.
B) You are root. mount wants to open /etc/mtab and /etc/mtab~ - the
first one for reading, the second as lock file. If there is already a
mtab~ remove it. This can happen if you used once gnuemacs on mtab.


QUESTION: When I try "mount /dev/hd?? /user", I get error 2.

ANSWER: Be sure, that your mount point /user does exist; if not perform
a "mkdir /user".

VI. INSTALLATION HINTS
======================
Special gcc information are located in section IX. A special section is
devoted to it since it's *the* compiler of Linux.


QUESTION: Where can I find the basic starting help?

ANSWER: You have to download the INSTALL notes, and more specially
the 0.11, 0.12 and the current one 0.95(a). A special help for
beginners is available on major Linux sites (tsx-11,
/pub/linux/docs/guide.1a written by Chuck Boyer).


QUESTION: I've got all the things on site ??? but I don't know what
goes where.

ANSWER: Read this carefully, it's a mess right know and I hope this
problem will be fixed when the ABC-release will be out. It heavily
rely on the compiler you use:
A) The following information are for those using gcc-1.40 or previous
release (1.37): include.tar.Z goes to /usr/include; system.tar.Z
contains the latest sources of the system files (mkswap, mkfs, fsck
and fdisk). In version 0.12 utilbin.tar.Z has been replaced by
fileutil.tar.Z and utils.tar.Z which contains a new tar to handle the
symbolic links, make, uemacs kermit and minor programs (sed,...).
Other utilities have been ported separately.
B) For those who use gcc-2.1 there are nearly everything in the
package that you can find at banjo in pub/Linux/GCC in the
2.1shared.tar.Z file. You could find more sources in system095a.tar.Z
file (at tsx in sources/system/system0.95a)


QUESTION: When I use the images, and I type "tar xvf ..." I got
"command not found". What did I wrong?

ANSWER: Nothing except that you have not used the install script on
the image, in the distribution of 0.95a and latter the tar file is
in compressed form (lack of place). You have first to copy tar.Z on
another disk/diskette and uncompress it, this command is available
on your diskettes (either uncompress or compress -d); this is one of
the feature provided by the install script.


QUESTION: It seems that $#@! ported on linux don't run correctly

ANSWER: Possible, but check first if the size of your file corresponds
to the one on the ftp sites, if it is then check the BUGLIST available
on the main linux sites. If the bug is not reported, do a complete
report of the error, try to correct it and send your result to
[email protected].


QUESTION: Does anyone port this to linux?, if not i'll compile it

ANSWER: First check on the sites, have a look to the info-sheet
monthly post and also available on sites. Have a look in the "old"
digest files and mail-archives of linux-activists, these are kept at
least at tsx-11 and nic possibly at tupac. Look also at the GNU(*)
utilities to see if someone has already written a freely distribuable
version. Ask then on the list/news.


(*) GNU stands for GNU's Not Unix, which (besides being a recursive
acronym) is a project started by the Free Software Foundation (the FSF)
to write a freely distributable version of Unix. The GNU kernel is
named HURD, and is based on Mach. It is currently being written, and is
not yet done. Many of the GNU utilities, however, are completed and are
much more functional than the original Unix utilities. Since they are
freely available, Linux is using them as well.


QUESTION: I've ported *** to Linux, what should i do to add it in the
standard distribution?

ANSWER: Read first the previous Q/A, then to make something available to
others you have to contact Alan Clegg ([email protected]) about
putting your code in the ABC-Release of Linux v0.95a. The ABC-Release
is a standardized set of Linux sources and binaries that will be
available in an easy installable format, and which will be maintained
in a standard way. Submissions should conform to the Linux File System
standard version 1.0 (this file is kept at banjo.concert.net in
/pub/Linux/docs).


QUESTION: I want to port *** to Linux, what are the flags?

ANSWER: Recall that Linux implements subset of SYSV and POSIX, so
-DUSG and -DPOSIX work in general. Moreover throw away most of the ld
flags such as -lg, since the libg.a is missing for some version of gcc
(see section IX. for more details).


QUESTION: Linux lacks on ****/ Linux has a bug in ***, what are the
rules to enhance/correct the kernel?

ANSWER: Before anything check if some one else is working on that
subject, contact those people, since end february a BUGLIST (thanks to
Michael Johnson) is kept on the major sites. Test your improvment (it
should work is NOT enough), then send the patches in cdiffs form to
Linus and/or the list, moreover the localization must be clear. This
does NOT mean that bug-reports and patches are not accepted. Moreover,
you should sent a brief note to Michael: [email protected]; contact
also [email protected] he organizes the ABC-Release.


QUESTION: What are the device minor/major numbers?

ANSWER:
Memory devices: Major = 1 (characted devices) minor
0 /dev/ram
1 /dev/mem
2 /dev/kmem - not implemented (easy, but I haven't done it)
3 /dev/null
4 /dev/port (implemented, but untested - don't play with it)

example: "mknod /dev/null c 1 3"


Floppy disks: Major = 2 (block devices)

minor = drive + 4*type, drive = 0,1,2,3 for A,B,C or D-diskette

type 1: 360kB floppy in 360kB drive (5.25")
2: 1.2M floppy in 1.2M drive (5.25")
3: 360kB floppy in 720kB/1.44Mb drive (3.5")
4: 720kB floppy in 720kB/1.44Mb drive (3.5")
5: 360kB floppy in 1.2M drive (5.25")
6: 720kB floppy in 1.2M drive (5.25")
7: 1.44M floppy in 1.44M drive (3.5")

Thus minor nr for a 1.44Mb floppy in B is: 1 + 4*7 = 29, and to read
an old 360kB floppy in a 1.2M A-drive you need to use minor= 0 + 4*5
= 20.

Example: "mknod /dev/PS0 b 2 28" (b for block: 2 for floppy, 28 for
1.44 in A)


Hard disks: Major = 3 (block devices) minor
0 /dev/hda - The whole hd0, including partition table sectors
etc.
1 /dev/hda1 - first partition on hd0
...
4 /dev/hda4 - fourth partition on hd0
5 /dev/hda5 - Extended partition
64 /dev/hdb - The whole hd1, again including partition table info
65 /dev/hdb1 - first partition on hd1
...
68 /dev/hdb4 - fourth partition on hd1
69 /dev/hdb5 - extended partition on hd1

NOTE! Be /very/ careful with /dev/hda and /dev/hdb - you seldom need
them, and if you write to them you can destroy the partition tables:
something you probably don't want. The only things that use /dev/hda
are things like "fdisk" etc.

NOTE 2!! The names for hd's are no longer the same as under minix,
there is a straightforward correspondance, but I think
minix orders the partitions in some way (so that the partition numbers
will be in the same order as the partitions are physically on the
disk). Linux doesn't order anything: it has the partitions in the
same order as in the partition table (ie /dev/hd?1 might be physically
after /dev/hd?2).

NOTE 3!! Extended partitions are recently detected, use them VERY
carefully, they should work, but backup everything before.

Tty's: Major = 4 (character devices) minor
0 /dev/tty0 - general console 1 -
63 - reserved for virtual console
64-127 - reserved for serial io
128- - reserved for pty's

And more particularly we have:
64 /dev/ttys1 - com1
65 /dev/ttys2 - com2
66 /dev/ttys3 - com3
67 /dev/ttys4 - com4

lp: Major=6 (character devices) minor since 095c+
0 /dev/lp0
1 /dev/lp1
2 /dev/lp2

Scsi: Major=8 (block devices)
Minors are assigned in increments of 16 to SCSI disks as they are
found, scanning from host 0, ID 0 to host n, ID `7, excluding the
host ID. For more information read the SCSI.note file available with
patches for SCSI (see the FEATURES section).

NOTE 4!! all the numbers given are in decimal form (the one you can
see if you perform ls -l on /dev).


QUESTION: How to start Linux from drive B?

ANSWER: There is a DOS utility called boot_b.exe (look at DOS ftp).
Another simple way is to open the box and invert the cables.


QUESTION: The program boot_b works fine /but/ once the first disk is
read the system go back to the first drive, any hints?

ANSWER: Yes, change the bootimage in just the same way that you change
it to boot on the hard drive, execept that the major/minor pair is
different. All these information are in the file INSTALL-0.10.
Remember that if you use a sun or other endian machine, you will need
to reverse the byte order when you run the filter program (also in the
same file).


VII. FEATURES
=============

QUESTION: I've read that linux has virtual consoles, what must I do to
get them?

ANSWER: Yes there are, you can access them with the left -key
together with -key. With the Linux 0.95a Images distribution, 4
consoles are available, getty runs on them.

BTW: the serial ports are now /dev/ttys1 and /dev/ttys2. tty0 is the
general console. tty128- are reserved to pty's


QUESTION: What kind of shell is /bin/sh ?

ANSWER: Until v0.95 it's the Bourne Again Shell, bash-1.11 and
compilation was straightforward (Linus dixit), just "make"
that's all or nearly. But as the shell comes bigger and bigger the
v0.95a /bin/sh is ash the BSD 4.3 sh.
BTW I think that next time, it will be rc which is much more better
than ash and tiny wrt bash. If you want to test it, it's (at least) at
nic in /pub/unix/shells and the file is rc-1.2.tar.Z . The compilation
is straightforward (just a few things to modify in Makefile and
mksignal).
Also a port of tcsh6.1 has been done recently (beginning of April)

QUESTION: I've been able to install Linux on my box, but Ctrl-Z nor
switching jobs from background to foreground seem to work, why?

ANSWER: These feature are not provided with the bin/sh (ash) of the
Images, you should download bash to get jobs possibilities.


QUESTION: Does there exist a man page for **** ?

ANSWER: Download man.tar.Z from your favorite linux ftp site, there is
most of the fileutils man page -- either **** or g****, example there
is nothing on ld, but there is for gld 🙂 --, check the whatis
database provided. The files in the cat1 dir are pre-formatted man
pages that the man program can use. Quite recently the man pages for
section 2 have been written (thanks Drew) and can be found, at least
at tsx-11 in /pub/linux/docs/man/man2.tar.Z

BTW there is no roff,troff nor nroff for Linux. Cawf 2.0 works just
fine for simple man pages, and a partial ms support too. Quite
recently the port of groff has been done (due to gcc2.x port), you can
found it (at least on tsx-11) in pub/linux/binaries/usr.bin/groff.

Moreover Michael Johnson is the coordinator for man pages under Linux,
he is looking for volunteers, so contact [email protected].


QUESTION: What are the editors available in linux?

ANSWER: Right now there are uemacs, elvis-1.4, some one (R. Blum)
is working on some other vi clone. The port of emacs 18.57 has been
done by John T Kohl, files can be found at the different sites
at nic it's in the directory xtra
at tsx-11 it's in the directory ports/emacs-18.57.
And recently the port of emacs-18.58 has been done by Bernd Wiegmann
which corrects some pty's problems (that one can be found in
binaries/emacs-18.58 at tsx-11). Also the port of mg (micro gnu) has
been done and can be found at least at athos.rutgers.edu (128.6.4.4)
in pub/linux, mg is the binary and mg.tar.Z is the sources file. You
can also find a PD ed, and elvis has an ex mode. Finnally there are
joe and vile-3.11.

QUESTION: Does there exist a printer package for Linux?

ANSWER: The lp patches which implement a parallel printer interface
and feature a greatly improved driver design, have been aplied in
linux0.95c+. The original patches can be found in lp095.tar.Z
Once you have successfully recompiled the kernel v0.95c+, you need
to create new devices in the /dev directory (see the major/minor
information). Printing, then, can be achieved by :
cat filename > /dev/lp1


QUESTION: Does there exist a ps for Linux?

ANSWER: Yes, a very simple one is implemented by default, just press
the scroll-lock key; ctrl-shift-scrollock gives a kind of memory
status. There is also a much more complete ps/memory package it's
ps095.tar.Z. I have tested it, it's GREAT and well documented.
In the kernel v0.95c+, you do not need to apply the patches, just
follow the rest of the information provided.


QUESTION: It's nice to have the df utility, but it would be nicer if
it would give statistics of the root file system. Would it be
difficult to do?

ANSWER: surely not, in your file /etc/rc, instead of the line
> etc/mtab
put the following
echo "/dev/hdX (root)" > /etc/mtab
where the X is the hard drive you use as root partition.


QUESTION: How do I make swapping work?

ANSWER: Quite simply, you need the swapon and the mkswap binaries.
Then you can choose between a swap partition or a swap file.
The mkswap is used to write the "swap signature", whilst the swapon
binary is to activate the swapping.

First of all you need a partition :), I assume it's the second of your
first disk namely /dev/hda2, and it's 10MB big
A) swap partition:
you have to indicate it's a swap area, this is done via mkswap
(instead of mkfs) which needs the name of the partition and the size
in blocks (a block is 1Ko big); the optional -c flag is for bad block
checking. So for our example you should perform:
mkswap [-c] /dev/hda2 10000
Then you need to indicate that you want linux to use the swap area,
this is done via swapon. In general it is set in the /etc/rc file,
just put the following entry:
/bin/swapon /dev/hda2
B) swap file:
The process is quite close; you need a partition, and a swap file.
Assume that I prefer a swap area of 4MB (I want to keep some place in
/dev/hda2). I need first to "dd" the file.
dd if=/dev/hda2 of=/swap_file bs=1024 count=4096
bs stands for block size, and count is the number of blocks
then I have to put the "swap signature" on that file:
mkswap /swap_file 4096
And finally add an entry in the rc file:
/bin/swapon /swap_file


QUESTION: When I boot I get one of the following messages:
"Unable to find swap signature" or "Bad swap-space bitmap"

ANSWER: You probably forgot to make your swap-device, use the mkswap
command.


QUESTION: How do I know if it is swapping?

ANSWER: You will notice it :)) First of all, Linux tells you at boot
time, "Adding swap: XXX pages of swap space", and if you start running
out of memory, you will notice that the disk will work overtime, and
things slow down. Generally a 2Meg RAM will make the system swap
constantly while running gcc, 4 Meg will swap occasionnaly when
optimizing big files (and having other things active, such as make).


QUESTION: How is it possible to remove a swap file?

ANSWER: Simply perform a rm on that file, and remove the swapon of
your /etc/rc file.


QUESTION: How is it possible to remove a swap device?

ANSWER: mkfs the device, and remove the swapon of your /etc/rc file.


QUESTION: Is there only the %$#@ keyboard ?

ANSWER: There are Dannish, Finnish, French, German, Uk and US
keyboards. Set it in the main Makefile of the kernel sources, then
compile the kernel again.


QUESTION: (special FINNISH/US) I booteed up with the new image and
everything work except that some keyboard keys produce wrong
characters. Does anyone know what is happening?

ANSWER: images of 0.95a are US product (and so are US-keyboard
oriented), BUT linux sources are FINNISH product, and so the default
keyboard is set to be FINNISH. The solution is in the previous Q/A.


QUESTION: Does there exist shared libs ?

ANSWER: They seem to work. The kernel features are in Linux 0.12
already. They work for gcc-2.1.


QUESTION: Does Linux permit/support bitmapped graphics on vga/svga
cards?

ANSWER: No, there is no interface for graphics operations on Linux
(yet). Some work has been done by Orest Zborowski (mmap/munmap, and
vga demonstration). The (un)mmap was patches for 0.12 kernel, but I've
been told that new versions (for 0.95a) will be out in a short while.
There are also IOpermissions bitmap hacks and a socket emulation
library.

QUESTION: Does Linux work for SCSI drives?

ANSWER: Not directly, you need the patches for SCSI which are
available on the main sites *and* at headrest.colorado.edu in
/pub/scsi
contact the linux-scsi list or directly [email protected]


QUESTION: What SCSI hosts are supported?

ANSWER: (4/10/92) Adaptec 1542, Seagate ST01/ST02 and Ultrastor 14F


QUESTION: Does these SCSI drives support extended partition?

ANSWER: Not yet.


QUESTION: Linux is supposed to work with ESDI drive. However I have
trouble with my Magtron MT-4115E (Joincom controler), any clue?

ANSWER: (Linus) Some harddisk don't like linux (even though they
should). Maybe not a bug but a deficiency.
(Mika) I had to remove the printk "unexpected hd interrupt" statement
in hd.c because I was getting so many of those messages. Be warned
that if there is any read error the system just hangs, even the
ctrl-alt-del won't work. You should be able to use your ESDI drives if
you could live with those nuisances.


QUESTION: There are a lot of patches available (fd patch, lp patch
login patch ...) can I be fairly confident the subsequent patches will
work?

ANSWER: This is not true yet for the current version; but it will be
so I kept it 🙂
No you can't, patching is a real beta tester art :)). People are not
working on the same patched release, so you have to check if the
patches you already applied works on the same kernel part, if not,
/great/, just apply them. If yes, check if there is an order, patch
creator knows that, and (should) try to warn patch user (in other
words: beta tester) otherwise you should edit the patch files (and
possibly make a brief note to others on this list/newsgroup or even a
cdiff) before applying them, another solution is to keep cool and wait
for the next version of Linux where, in general, the modifications
have been done but this behavior is /not/ Linux helpful.


QUESTION: I got the patches on some ftp sites, and applied them to the
kernel and tried to compile. It didn't !!. Are the patches buggy?

ANSWER: Before remake, just do a make clean in the directories
involved by the patches. This will force a rebuild of the .o and .a
files.
If you have a RCS running on your source tree, did you checked a
patched version of the files changed before /any/ CO either by you or
make

Finally, make sure the patches succeded. Normally, failed patches on a
file FILE will leave a FILE# file. Moreover you will get a "chunk
failed" message. It is possible to capture the output while patching,
with the following:

patch -p0 < patchfile | 2>&1 patch.result | more


VIII. MORE HINTS
================

This part is recent and try to keep track of the different information
that appeared in comp.os.linux and on the list since beginning of
March. I tried to update it for v0.95(c+), so there might be some
mistakes. Moreover take care to use the correct library and include
stuff, and the ad-hoc gcc you use !!!


QUESTION: How can I backup my Hd under Linux ?

ANSWER: I know at least two ways. One possibility is tar and mtools,
another possibility is the diskbackup/diskrestore of Diamano Bolla
(digest37 vol. #2) which saves big hd to floppies using the
stdin/stdout. These utilities have been uploaded to the major sites in
file disksplit.tar.Z.
An example usage (Roger Binns) is:

tar cvf - bin dev usr etc .. | compress | diskbackup

and to restore:

diskrestore | uncompress | tar xvf -

BTW: Don't use the previous version (digest44 vol.#1) with 0.95a

QUESTION: How to use setterm: for the novice?

ANSWER:The setterm utility provides access to most of Virtual Consoles
(VCs) functionality. You can set your screen up to blank at 10
minutes using:
setterm -blank 10

You can set colors, and clear the screen. For a full list of commands,
just type "setterm" with no arguments.

There are a few tricks with the screen dumper can really make VCs go a
long way. Here are a few of the common ones that I use:

setterm dump

Dumps the contents of the current VC to screen.dump (in the current dir).

setterm dump 4

Dumps the contents of VC 4 to screen.dump

setterm -file mydumpfile -dump 4

Dump the contents of VC 4 to the file mydumpfile

setterm -file /dev/tty0 -dump 4

Dumps the contents of VC 4 to the current VC.

setterm -file /dev/tty4 -dump

Dumps the contents of the current VC to VC 4.

setterm -file /dev/ttys1 -dump

Dumps the contents of the current VC to the serial port.
Handy if you are logged on and want to paste a screen full without
having to resort to doing a file transfer.

setterm -file mydumpfile -append 4

Appends to instead of overwriting the dump file. Useful if you
have several screens you wish to concatenate.


QUESTION: I've tried clear/reset which exist on most of unix but it
doesn't work, have I missed something?

ANSWER: setterm -clear or setterm -reset will solve your missing. For
clear, you can also write a small script (which use the cl: part of
/etc/termcap wrt your TERM), or use bash where ctrl-l will do it for
you.


QUESTION: I know there are VC, but where is the setterm stuff?

ANSWER: It's in the current distribution (i.e. on the images), the
source can be found in virtcons.tar.Z at nic.


QUESTION: While using emacs in 80x25 mode, the mode line is constantly
moving around, why?

ANSWER: This appear to be a bug in the scroll region handling of the
console. I have not tested the new termcap but with the one for 0.12 I
use the following function.

e(){TERM=vt100; /usr/bin/emacs}


QUESTION: How can I get Linux to boot directly from the harddisk?

ANSWER: Right now, this can be done via the shoelace stuff or the
bootany package, or by the bootlin package from [email protected].
Quite recently a monitor program has been posted for Minix, Michael is
working on the port to Linux.


QUESTION: Sometimes, when I want to remove a directory, I get an error
message, is it a (known) bug?

ANSWER: No, There is no bug at all, you probaly have another shell
on another VC whose working directory is either the one you try to
remove, either a subdirectory of it.


QUESTION: can anyone give me a sample /etc/inittab entry for login
from a pc attached to serial line /dev/ttys2?

ANSWER: "Humberto speaking :)"
First step up the modem to turn off echo and enable auto answer, I do
this in kermit by connecting to the modem and typing "ate0s0=1"
followed by enter (w/o quotes). Then setup inittab to spawn getty on
the modem
ttys2:console:/etc/getty -m 1200 ttys2

Then it should work. Some modems can be permanently set to disable
echo and set auto answer, see your manual.


QUESTION: I've seen the login but I missed the passwd binaries, where
can I find them?

ANSWER: You should find it in shadow-bin.tar.Z, at least at tsx in the
usr.bin directory.


QUESTION: I've been trying to get Linux to run on my [3/4]86 box. It
can't even boot. Any suggestions?

ANSWER: The most common error/problem is writing the bootimage to a
low density disk. It fits, but the bootstrap code will only recognize
high density disk. So try to format explicitely disk as high density:
- for 3.5", 'format a: /n:18 /t:80 '
- for 5.25", 'format a: /n:15 /t:80 '


QUESTION: Does there exist games, languages (other than C), and
anything which make the system more friendly?

ANSWER: Yes, among other things there are rogue and yahtzee; TeX;
Prolog.. but in general, if you want some extra tool port it to Linux
this is also a good beta-testing exercice.


QUESTION: Could someone explain how to use rawrite?

ANSWER: Well, rawrite is a DOS util, which write sequential sector of
a formatted disk/floppy. When a floppy has been rawritten, you can
(under Linux) untar it (use x, v, z and f flags). As an example:
a) under Dos use rawrite
rawrite
source: kermit.z
destination: a
b) boot under Linux, and perform a tar
tar zxvf /dev/PS0
tar zxvp < /dev/PS0

QUESTION: Does emacs handle the arrows-key

ANSWER: Yes it does, one simple way is to put some elisp code in your
.emacs, this is an except of mine:

(global-unset-key "\e[")
(setq esc-c-map(make-keymap))
(fset 'esc-c-prefix esc-c-map)
(define-key global-map "\e[" 'esc-c-prefix)
(define-key global-map "\e[B" 'next-line)
(define-key global-map "\e[A" 'previous-line)
(define-key global-map "\e[C" 'forward-char)
(define-key global-map "\e[D" 'backward-char)

The keycode was obtained by ^Q followed by the key


QUESTION: Whenever I use uemacs 3.1X on a symlink, the symlink does
not exist anymore, why?

ANSWER: (Tristram Mabbs) Since ue3.10, uemacs uses 'safe save' mode,
writing the file to a temporary and moving it OVER the original. In
the process, this deletes the original. To prevent this just add the
following in your emacs '.rc' file: set $ssave FALSE


QUESTION: Uemacs doesn't work anymore with 0.95a, whenever I want to
save a file; what can I do?

ANSWER: ^S and ^Q are used for flow control. One solution is ^X^W
followed by the filename, or M-X save-file. Another possibility,
if you have download the stty.tar.Z file, is to do stty -IXON
before you first use uemacs (this can be included in your .profile).
And the last is to recompile the Peter Orbaek init-1.2 package.


QUESTION: I have an SVGA, but Linux detect an EGAc/EGAm; is it normal?

ANSWER: (Jim Winstead) This is correct actually. You have an EGA+ card
(SVGA) with a Color/Mono monitor. The only four possibilties are EGAc,
EGAm, *MDA and *CGA (according to the code in
kernel/chr_drv/console.c).
The true test, if Linux detects your video card, is if you press
at the "Press to see SVGA- ..." boot-time message.
If you have a SVGA recognized card, it will ask you to choose a
screen size. If not detected, the default is 80x50 mode.
BTW if you have no SVGA, press the and you are in 80x25 mode.

QUESTION: How can I change the keyboard repeat rate?

ANSWER: (Michael K Johnson) In boot/setup.S there are the lines:
! set the keyboard repeat rate to max
mov ax,#0x0305
mov bx,0x0000
int 0x16

If you don't want to change the repeat rate at all, just comment out
these lines. If you want something in the middle, change the
mov bx,0x000
by mov bx,0x??yy
where ??yy is determined by (Ralf Brown's interrupt list)
bh= delay value (0x00 = 250ms to 0x03= 1000ms (one sec))
this is the delay before the repeat is performed
bl= repeat rate (0x00 =30/sec to 0x1f=2/sec; 0x0c=10/sec [default])


IX. GCC MISC INFORMATION
========================

I think this section is needed, 'cause a) gcc is the compiler under
Linux, and b) the gcc-2.x is in test, and many information change
constantly. In what follows information about gcc-1.37 and gcc-1.40
are stable, and was spread along the previous release of this FAQ.
To conclude this short introduction, the most recent release of
gcc-2.1 can be found at the banjo.net.concert in /pub/Linux/GCC, and
also at headrest.woz.colorado.edu under /pub/linux/?, and one of the
"specialists" is Hongjiu Lu ([email protected]).

QUESTION: I don't know how to install gcc stuff, is there special
places?

ANSWER: It depends on the release of gcc you are using. Right now
there are 3 packages : the original one gccbin.tar.Z contains all
the gcc-1.37 binaries distrib; the gcc-1.40 has been ported in dec. 91,
it's in newgcc.tar.Z and a few days ago the BETA (but stable) version
of gcc-2.1. Choose yours (I hope that the following will help you)

A) gccbin.tar.Z goes in /usr/local/lib except gcc which goes in
/usr/local/bin. Moreover each gcc-xxx of /usr/local/lib should be
linked with gxxx and xxx in /usr/local/bin.

B) newgcc.tar.Z goes in /usr, then uncompress and untar it. Files are
directed to /usr/lib, /usr/include and /usr/bin. You should link ar,
as, ld with gar, gas and gld, this will prevent some error while using
make (especially whilst re-compiling Linux kernel). Moreover, the
include files are not complete, you need first to install
include-0.12.tar.Z (at tsx, /pub/linux/sources/system). Finally cpp
and cc1 are in /usr/lib, and they should be in /usr/bin, a solution is
to link them at the right place.
BTW include-0.12.tar.Z contains include/linux/*.h which are not
uptodate, you should link the one provided in linux-0.95a sources by
the following:
cd /usr/include
mv linux linux_orig
ln -s /usr/src/linux/include/linux linux

C) gcc-2.1 is splitted in 2 main files 2.1lib.tar.Z and 2.1misc.tar.Z,
some utilities and shared libraries are also provided. To install them
do the following:

First of all, backup the old compiler. YOU MUST BE SURE THERE IS NO
OTHER C COMPILER INSTALLED ON YOUR SYSTEM. What is meant by compiler
is all the stuff: binaries, header files, libraries and crt0.o. I
assume that whateverplace contains the 2.1files you have downloaded.

cd /usr
tar xvovzf whateverplace/2.1misc.tar.Z

read the FAQ in /usr/install/gcc2. Then

cd /usr
tar xvovzf whateverplace/2.1lib.tar.Z


QUESTION: I seem to be unable to compile anything with gcc. Why?

ANSWER: If you have only 2 MB RAM, gcc will die silently without
compiling anything. You must have at least 4 MB to do compilations

BTW Since swapping is possible, I have heard that compilation works
with only 2Meg and a lot disk traffic 🙂 Isn't it great?


QUESTION: I'm using a program that uses signal handlers which are
installed using sigaction() with the SA_NOMASK, and they get a general
protection error right after the signal handler tries to return.
What's going wrong?

ANSWER: You are using a libc.a that has an out-of-date signal.o and
sig_restore.o file, and they don't know how to deal with SA_NOMASK.
(The one in gccbin.tar.Z is out-of-date). Get the new libc.a and put
it in /usr/lib or /usr/local/lib. Again check your compiler version


QUESTION: gcc complains about not finding crt0.o and the system
include files What am I doing wrong ?

ANSWER: The include files normal place is in /usr/include. lib*.a and
*.o should be in /usr/lib or /usr/local/lib


QUESTION: While compiling some GNU packages gcc chokes on regex.c with
an insn code, what can I do?

ANSWER: There is a little bug in the port of gcc-1.37, this will be
corrected on the port of v2.x (with g++). Right now throw away the -O
flag (to compile regex) and every thing will be alright.

BTW there are some minor bugs with this release of gcc because it was
compiled under linux-0.10, whith odd libraries. These problems should
have disappeared with the new gcc-1.40 package.


QUESTION: I tried to port a /new/ version of gnu stuff. But in the
linking phase, gcc complains about the missing libg.a. In fact it
depends on the gcc package you use.

ANSWER: Yes this is well known, throw away the flag -g that's all,
anyway libg.a is /only/ for debugging purpose.


QUESTION: How to compile programs which may be debugged with gdb?

ANSWER: There are, right know, 2 ways to handle this problem
1) As there is no libg.a, you should throw away the -g flag in link
phase, this means that the compilation must be done in two steps
example: instead of "gcc -g monprog.c -o monprog", use the following
"gcc -g -c monprog.c" and then "gcc -o monprog monprog.o"
Alas this method is not that good if you are using Makefile.
2) The other way is to create an empty libg.a as follows (Peter
Macdonald trick):
- create libfake.c containing libgfake() {}
- compile it with: gcc -c libfake.c
- create the libg.a with: ar r libg.a libfake.o

then gcc -g monprog.c -o monprog will produce a debuggable monprog


QUESTION: When compiling some code, cc1 complains about some insn
code, what's that?

ANSWER: An insn is an internal representation that gcc uses when
compiling. The main part of gcc is to take ordinary c (or c++) code,
and compile it, while ding optimizations in insn part, which is
soft/hard independant. Then another part which is hard/Os dependant
takes the insns and translate it in assembly language. The fix is only
to turn off the optimization flag (-O) or download the new gcc release
(1.4) which has been made available at tsx-11 (newgcc.tar.Z and the
ad-hoc libraries newlibc.tar.Z).


QUESTION: While compiling some stuff, I'm getting the following
error message:
Undefined symbol ___addsf3 referenced from text segment
as well as ___mulsf3 and __cmpsf2.
These symbols are not in the program or in it's header files.

ANSWER: These are math helper functions, and you can usually compile
these programs to use the kernel floating point routines by adding
'-m80387' to the compiler switches. If the program does any wierd
fp math (exp(), sin()) it'll die when you run it though.


QUESTION: What are the enhancement of the newgcc.tar.Z ?

ANSWER: There were some bugs in the old port that have been corrected,
moreover this package contains 387 support
there is libm.a (for those with 387)
libsoft.a (for those without, I for example)
libtermcap.a (from tput 1.10)

The -mstring-insns option is no longer needed nor supported 🙁 [As
an example to recompile (successfully) linux0.12 you have to throw away
this flag in all the Makefile]; conversly in linuxv0.95a, you have to
make the flags available if you compile with gcc-140

gcc-1.40 has some registers problem, you should had -fcombine-regs
flag while compiling (the linux kernel for example)

BTW Notice also that include files have changed (stdio.h which is no
more ansi compliant).
For my personal use, gcc-1.40 works just fine.


QUESTION What's about gcc2.x ?

ANSWER: It has been ported to linux, but remember that gcc2.x is a
BETA, it is (pretty) stable and works. The files are 2.1lib.tar.Z and
2.1misc.tar.Z Uncompress and untar 2.1misc, read the FAQ enclosed and
play with it. You can find these files at tsx-11 in
binaries/compilers/gcc-2.x. One of the most recent version is on
banjo.net.concert in pub/Linux/GCC. Also provided 2.1shared.tar.Z file
which contains most of the utilities in .a form (to transform them as
binaries just "gcc -s -ladhoc_library binfile.a -o binfile"
-ladhoc_library is either -lm or -ltermcap


QUESTION: What can gcc-2.x do for me, that gcc-1.40 cannot?

ANSWER: Shared libraries: small programs shrink by an average factor
of 2~3, larger program by 50K. It also compiles C++, and so replace
both gcc-1.xx and g++1.xx. And also:
- ANSI and BSD 4.4 compatible stdio
- iostream for g++

QUESTION: I can't run g++ due to the lack of "expr"; where can I find
it ?

ANSWER: Either in the 2.1linux-distrib, it's in the file 2.1shared.tar.Z
(banjo pub/Linux/GCC); either in the shellutils-1.6.tar.Z (or whatever
is the last release) on prep.ai.mit.edu


===================8<==========>8================
Keywords:


--

Raleur a temps plein, Voileux par tout temps, farouche Defenseur du terminal
ascii et Ennemi irreductible de l'accentuation encombrante, FAQ maintainer,
Bidouilleur systeme, Installateur de logiciels sur (Sun 3 et 4, RS6000,
Linux [3/4]86), Interpreteur abstrait, Co-organisateur de woRkshop :))

PS: L'ordre dans cette liste est independant du taux de reussite dans
chacune des activites citees :))


[next article]
From: [email protected] (Fabien Coutant)

Subject: Re: where is bootlin.zip?
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Date: 23 Apr 92 07:48:15 GMT
References: <[email protected]> <1992Apr21.031303.208
[email protected]> <[email protected]>
Sender: [email protected]
Reply-To: [email protected] (Fabien Coutant)
Lines: 15
Nntp-Posting-Host: uapu

---

> Can someone tell me where to find bootlin.zip? The one I got
> from the posted article unzipped with errors after uudecode.
> I can't find it in tsx-11.mit.edu.

I had reposted the article with a correct zip file inside.
Since I don't want everyone to ask me for bootlin again, I'm going
to upload it to tsx-11.mit.edu today.

---

Fabien COUTANT

eMail: [email protected]


[next article]
From: [email protected] (Marc CORSINI)

Subject: FAQ
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Date: 24 Apr 92 17:10:20 GMT
Sender: [email protected]
Followup-To: poster
Organization: Laboratoire Bordelais de Recherche en Informatique
Lines: 9


Hi,

Does the entire FAQ appeared to the net ?
(I had posted it in 2 parts on Tuesday afternoon)
It's also at nic, tsx and tupac (at least the incoming directory)

Marc
--


[next article]
From: [email protected] (Chris Justus)

Subject: Thanks & need more help with modem!!
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Date: 27 Apr 92 14:12:51 GMT
Sender: [email protected]
Organization: Communications Research Centre, Ottawa, Canada
Lines: 29
Nntp-Posting-Host: debra.dgbt.doc.ca


Thanks alot to everyone who helped me get Linux up and running (it
wasn't really all that hard... I'm just a little slow 🙂 ). Just as
an aside to any new users thinking of installing Linix - I definately
recommend the Interim version - I installed the the basic root/boot
disks first - and then tried finding and installing all the little
pieces - Then I reinstalled Linix with the interim version this time
to find LOTS of neat and useful stuff there.
Linix is great - thanks to everyone who made it possible.

And now for my next (probably stupid) question. I'm not to familiar
with Unix and Kermit and all that - so this is probably pretty
obvious..
I have both Kermit AND Pcomm12b - Neither of which I can get working
well... With Pcomm12b, I can get it to dial and everything - but all I
get is garbage when it connects. (I've got all the parity settings
set properly, I think 😉 )... So I don't know what's up with that...
Kermit on the otherhand - I can also get to dial, but then I don't
even know how to get Kermit into a 'terminal' mode. It dials, and
connects and everything, but THEN what?? I type connect - and I don't
get anything at all!
I'm probably missing something pretty obvious... nay help or
suggestions are greatly appreciated!!!


--
Chris Justus [email protected]

Co-Op Student at Communications Research Centre, Communications Canada, Ottawa


[next article]
From: [email protected] (Guido Kueppers)

Subject: Re: HELP! SHOELACE IS STRANGLING ME!!!
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Date: 24 Apr 92 11:41:33 GMT
Sender: [email protected]
Organization: RHRZ-Uni-Bonn
Lines: 19

> I suspect it isn't that simple. Installing the shoelace menu program
> in the boot partition overwrites the boot sector. You cannot replace
> it as it was unless you have saved a copy of it, or unless you do a
> low-level format of your hard disk! Norton's Disk Doctor, as I recall,
> can write a pretty standard boot sector to your hard disk and save
> having to boot from a floppy.
>
> -- Owen
> [email protected]

I don't think a low-level format is necessary. I "simply" repartitioned the
drive with DM (I believe DOS' fdisk works too) and the boot partition menu
went away. Pfdisk however leaves it intact, at least in my case. BTW, shoelace
works fine for me, but I had to run laceup on the root partition several times
in order to make it work. I suspect that the boot sector wasn't written back to
the disk at first.

Guido
[email protected]


[next article]
From: [email protected] (Dave Safford)

Subject: .95c+ SCSI Comments/Problems
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Date: 27 Apr 92 15:20:29 GMT
Sender: [email protected]
Reply-To: [email protected]
Organization: Texas A&M University
Lines: 18


I ran into a couple of fixable problems using the generic SCSI package.
First, the sources in scsi.95c+.tar seem to be missing a modified
include/linux/timer.h with a definition of SCSI_TIMER. I edited
timer.h to define it, and the kernel build worked fine.
The second problem is that the prebuilt generic kernel does not
work on my system. At boot time, the kernel is unable to mount the scsi
root with a "magic match failed". I was able to get a kernel working
by limiting the available memory to 10 MB (rather than 16 MB) in
init/main.c. This patch limits the size of the buffer pool, which
apparently makes the adaptec happy. Curious.
My system is a 486/33 OPTI chipset, AMI BIOS, Adaptec 1542b, 16MB RAM.
Has anyone else tried the generic scsi kernel with 16MB RAM and adaptec
1542B? (Is the problem with my hardware or the driver?)

thanks
dave safford
[email protected]


[next article]
From: [email protected] (Dave Safford)

Subject: MCC-interim release problem with login
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Date: 27 Apr 92 15:36:22 GMT
Sender: [email protected]
Reply-To: [email protected]
Organization: Texas A&M University
Lines: 18

I installed the MCC-interim .95c+ release, and
applied the listed bug fixes (/dev/tty ...), and ran
into numerous problems that were all fixed by replacing
/bin/login with a previous (.95a static) version.

The symptoms included a mangled bash environment, stty
reporting 0 rows and 0 columns, and vi defaulting to 25x80
(instead of the available 44x132). Replacing /bin/login
fixed all of these problems. Both the new and old bash
had the same problems with the new login, and worked fine
after login was replaced.

Did anyone else have these problems, or should I re-ftp
and try again?

thanks,
dave safford
[email protected]


[next article]
From: [email protected] (Will Clark)

Subject: Setting partition type.
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Date: 27 Apr 92 16:18:09 GMT
References: <[email protected]>
Sender: [email protected] (News Service)
Organization: Stanford University
Lines: 13


I partitioned my hard disk with fdisk under OS/2 rather than using any
of the tools for linux. My question is, can I use some tool somewhere
to set the partition type so OS/2 won't think it has two more logical
dirves? Can I do this without trashing an existing file system?

Thanks.

Will Clark
[email protected]
------------------------
SAIC does not share my opinions.
harlick@lindy is a friend's account, but you can send me email here, too.


[next article]
From: [email protected] (Douglas E. Quale)

Subject: Re: Reliability of stdio with gcc 2.1 ?
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Date: 27 Apr 92 16:21:34 GMT
References: <[email protected]>
Sender: [email protected] (The News)
Distribution: comp
Organization: Undergraduate Projects Lab, UW Madison
Lines: 21

In article <[email protected]> [email protected] (I Reid) writes:
>Just a quick posting to ask if anyone is having problem with any of the stdio
>stuff (specifically fwrite/fwrite) when using gcc 2.1. I ask this because I
>suspect this to be the cause of some ?? memory violations I have been having.
>
>Evidence for:
>
>1. Problems only occur when fread/fwrite
>2. Explicit calls to fflush after every write 'cure' the problem (and lose me
> the buffering I wanted 🙁
>3. No problems with non buffered routines (read/write).
>
>I'm not totally convinced that I have 2.1 set up exactly as it is supposed to

There are some problems with glibc's stdio in regards to buffering.
H.J. is aware of them, but they are *not* problems with the Linux
port, but rather bugs in GNU's code.

--
Doug Quale
[email protected]


[next article]
From: [email protected] (Dave Stow)

Subject: Re: FAQ answers, please!
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Date: 27 Apr 92 13:20:22 GMT
References: <[email protected]>
Organization: Department of Computing at Lancaster University, UK.
Lines: 8

Whoa, stop, cease, desist!!!!

I now have the FAQ list, ("several" times!)

A big thankyou to netland for being so fast and efficient!

Cheers
- Dave Stow


[next article]
From: [email protected] (Plug)

Subject: Re: Shouldn't we be using zoo?
Message-ID:
Date: 27 Apr 92 16:42:24 GMT
References: @mbio.med.upenn.edu> <[email protected]>
Sender: [email protected]
Organization: abUSENET, Coventry Polytechnic, Coventry, UK
Lines: 18
Nntp-Posting-Host: cc_sysh

Hmmm.. Maybe I'm being a touch out of line here, but what the hell...

Why stick to even zoo/zip. I have seen a version of arj for UNIX. I dunno
if anyone has seen this on MESSYDOS, but it is excellent, surpassing PKZIP
on both speed and compression. (However the new version of PKZIP is rumoured
to be faster... I digress) If the UNIX version of arj is any good (I only saw
it for a couple of minutes, so I am judging it solely on DOS performance),
surely we should adopt this as our compressor? (Even if the UNIX version isn't
quite as good, maybe we could bribe the author with something, so that he can
get the UNIX version as good as the DOS one).

Just a thought...

--
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Plug - [email protected] I am barking mad. I make no apology for this...
I just blame my family.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-


[next article]
From: [email protected] (Joe Smith)

Subject: Re: My pre-0.96 won't run shared binaries
Message-ID:
Date: 27 Apr 92 13:02:11 GMT
References: penn.edu>
<[email protected]>
Sender: [email protected]
Distribution: comp
Organization: University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA
Lines: 18
Nntp-Posting-Host: mbio.med.upenn.edu
In-reply-to: [email protected]'s message of 27 Apr 92 08:31:31 GMT


Yes, it was the permissions: I had read but not execute permissions.

> Ok, if it works for root, the problem is probably the permissions...

Well that was my first thought, but the error message led me astray 🙂
Any chance of getting a more informative message?

Thanks for the pointer.



--
Joe Smith
University of Pennsylvania [email protected]
Dept. of Biochemistry and Biophysics (215) 898-8348
Philadelphia, PA 19104-6059


[next article]
From: [email protected] (Russell Nelson)

Subject: Shouldn't we be using zoo?
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Date: 27 Apr 92 12:59:39 GMT
References:
Organization: Crynwr Software
Lines: 22

In article [email protected] writes:

> > Actually, Lharc would seem to be the better choice. It really crams thing
s
> > down to a teeny size.

ZOO 2.10 uses Lharc's compression algorithm when you specify the 'h' option.

> It isn't always the compression factor that's most important.
> Whatever you use has to be able to archive and extract all the
> information in a Unix directory entry: the unpacked archive should be
> a snapshot of the files and directories as archived. E.g., zoo has
> bitten me a number of times by not handling links, empty directories,
> refusing to create needed directories, wrong permissions...
>
> As far as I know, tar is still the best at doing this.

Hmmm... Yes, you have a good point.

-russ I'm proud to be a humble Quaker!
Crynwr Software Crynwr Software sells packet driver support.
11 Grant St. 315-268-1925 Voice
Potsdam, NY 13676 315-268-9201 FAX


[next article]
From: [email protected] (Russell Nelson)

Subject: Shouldn't we be using zoo? (or ZIP) ?
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Date: 27 Apr 92 13:07:22 GMT
References: <[email protected]>
Organization: Crynwr Software
Lines: 15

In article <[email protected]> [email protected] writes:

> I have a big package I tend to move around a lot (between different
> computers) and so am actually in the habit of using all three of
> these. My experience is that info-ZIP has the highes compression,
> followed by .tar.Z, followed by zoo. In other words, zoo is the
> worst, worse even that tar/compress.

You missed zoo 2.10's 'h' option. It makes files smaller than ZIP,
tar.Z, and zoo 2.01.

-russ I'm proud to be a humble Quaker!
Crynwr Software Crynwr Software sells packet driver support.
11 Grant St. 315-268-1925 Voice
Potsdam, NY 13676 315-268-9201 FAX


[next article]
From: [email protected] (Julien Maisonneuve)

Subject: Zip, zoo and compress
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Date: 27 Apr 92 16:55:55 GMT
Sender: [email protected]
Lines: 74

Is it an effect of my imagination that I see such a difference beetween the
three ? Against the other tests, I observe that zip behaves significantly
better than its contenders. Zoo is consistently the worst of the three.

I include the (long) listing that I produced with zip 1.0 and zoo 2.10. Figures
speak by themselves (but I may be missing something there 🙂 :
-rw-rw-r-- 1 julien 12136 Apr 6 18:22 2.1kernel.tar.Z
-rw-rw-r-- 1 julien 6145 Apr 27 18:38 2.1kernel.zip
-rw-rw-r-- 1 julien 12077 Apr 5 23:41 2.1kernel.zoo
-rw-rw-r-- 1 julien 1255779 Apr 6 18:38 2.1lib.tar.Z
-rw-rw-r-- 1 julien 974843 Apr 27 18:39 2.1lib.zip
-rw-rw-r-- 1 julien 1288761 Apr 6 01:06 2.1lib.zoo
-rw-rw-r-- 1 julien 896815 Apr 6 18:51 2.1misc.tar.Z
-rw-rw-r-- 1 julien 762733 Apr 27 18:40 2.1misc.zip
-rw-rw-r-- 1 julien 1051332 Apr 6 04:09 2.1misc.zoo
-rw-rw-r-- 1 julien 20651 Apr 6 18:51 2.1ps.tar.Z
-rw-rw-r-- 1 julien 17878 Apr 27 18:41 2.1ps.zip
-rw-rw-r-- 1 julien 23609 Apr 5 05:12 2.1ps.zoo
-rw-rw-r-- 1 julien 1245371 Apr 6 19:04 2.1shared-A.tar.Z
-rw-rw-r-- 1 julien 981654 Apr 27 18:42 2.1shared-A.zip
-rw-rw-r-- 1 julien 1251560 Apr 6 00:31 2.1shared-A.zoo
-rw-rw-r-- 1 julien 14419 Apr 17 10:32 acu.tar.Z
-rw-rw-r-- 1 julien 11049 Apr 27 18:42 acu.zip
-rw-rw-r-- 1 julien 14708 Apr 11 11:22 acu.zoo
-rw-rw-r-- 1 julien 168338 Apr 24 11:46 bash-1.12.tar.Z
-rw-rw-r-- 1 julien 2922 Apr 27 18:42 bash-1.12.zip
-rw-rw-r-- 1 julien 5123 Mar 1 04:44 bash-1.12.zoo
-rw-rw-r-- 1 julien 203713 Apr 8 14:08 binutils.tar.Z
-rw-rw-r-- 1 julien 175040 Apr 27 18:42 binutils.zip
-rw-rw-r-- 1 julien 226790 Apr 1 02:44 binutils.zoo
-rw-rw-r-- 1 julien 630415 Apr 24 11:53 gdb-4.5.tar.Z
-rw-rw-r-- 1 julien 500563 Apr 27 18:43 gdb-4.5.zip
-rw-rw-r-- 1 julien 672193 Apr 22 07:51 gdb-4.5.zoo
-rw-rw-r-- 1 julien 119831 Apr 24 11:54 gmake-3.62.tar.Z
-rw-rw-r-- 1 julien 86591 Apr 27 18:43 gmake-3.62.zip
-rw-rw-r-- 1 julien 117910 Mar 30 08:45 gmake-3.62.zoo
-rw-rw-r-- 1 julien 204573 Apr 24 11:55 kermit5A.tar.Z
-rw-rw-r-- 1 julien 154935 Apr 27 18:43 kermit5A.zip
-rw-rw-r-- 1 julien 206218 Apr 13 06:31 kermit5A.zoo
-rw-rw-r-- 1 julien 537624 Apr 8 14:12 libc-2.1.tar.Z
-rw-rw-r-- 1 julien 593092 Apr 27 18:45 libc-2.1.zip
-rw-rw-r-- 1 julien 736951 Apr 6 03:19 libc-2.1.zoo
-rw-rw-r-- 1 julien 229943 Apr 24 13:43 linux-0.95c+.tar.Z
-rw-rw-r-- 1 julien 198671 Apr 27 18:46 linux-0.95c+.zip
-rw-rw-r-- 1 julien 278521 Apr 9 14:47 linux-0.95c+.zoo
-rw-rw-r-- 1 julien 247199 Apr 24 13:45 pre-0.96.tar.Z
-rw-rw-r-- 1 julien 212024 Apr 27 18:47 pre-0.96.zip
-rw-rw-r-- 1 julien 298237 Apr 21 19:16 pre-0.96.zoo
-rw-rw-r-- 1 julien 46046 Apr 17 10:30 ps095c.tar.Z
-rw-rw-r-- 1 julien 41462 Apr 27 18:47 ps095c.zip
-rw-rw-r-- 1 julien 54125 Apr 13 07:14 ps095c.zoo
-rw-rw-r-- 1 julien 30302 Apr 17 10:23 system-0.95a.tar.Z
-rw-rw-r-- 1 julien 26268 Apr 27 18:47 system-0.95a.zip
-rw-rw-r-- 1 julien 35090 Apr 8 06:35 system-0.95a.zoo
-rw-rw-r-- 1 julien 253681 Apr 24 11:57 tcsh-6.01.tar.Z
-rw-rw-r-- 1 julien 193153 Apr 27 18:47 tcsh-6.01.zip
-rw-rw-r-- 1 julien 256727 Apr 13 17:08 tcsh-6.01.zoo
-rw-rw-r-- 1 julien 227481 Apr 17 10:26 tube.tar.Z
-rw-rw-r-- 1 julien 195568 Apr 27 18:48 tube.zip
-rw-rw-r-- 1 julien 272394 Feb 18 1980 tube.zoo
-rw-rw-r-- 1 julien 219879 Apr 24 12:00 uucp-1.03-bin.tar.Z
-rw-rw-r-- 1 julien 202280 Apr 27 18:48 uucp-1.03-bin.zip
-rw-rw-r-- 1 julien 257136 Apr 8 20:50 uucp-1.03-bin.zoo
-rw-rw-r-- 1 julien 173149 Apr 24 12:01 xcomm.tar.Z
-rw-rw-r-- 1 julien 136359 Apr 27 18:48 xcomm.zip
-rw-rw-r-- 1 julien 175668 Apr 2 17:59 xcomm.zoo
Any comment ? (I'm sure...)
--
_________ [email protected] [email protected]
/ _ _ _ ...!uunet!{seismo,mcsun}!inria!corto!julien
/ /) ' ) ) ) INRIA : 33 (1) 39 63 52 08
__/_ // o _ __ / / / _ o _ _ __ __ _ _ _
/ / (_(_(/_(_(<_/) ) / ' (_(_(_(_/_)_(_)_/) )_/) )_(<_(_(_( \_)-(<_
(_/


[next article]
From: [email protected] (Chris Flatters,208,7209,homephone)

Subject: Re: Thread
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Date: 21 Apr 92 20:22:07 GMT
References: <[email protected]>
Sender: [email protected]
Reply-To: [email protected]
Organization: NRAO
Lines: 33

In article [email protected], [email protected] (Philippe Backouche) w
rites:
>
> Could someone explain what threads are ? What is the difference between 'for
king'
> a new process and making a thread ?
>
> Do threads exist in Linux ???

A thread is a thread of control. A thread must have a program counter and a sta
ck
to keep track of local variables and return addresses. A process must keeps tra
ck
of much more data, including descriptors for open files, signal masks and the
UNIX enviroment. Most UNIX processes contain a single thread.

Because a thread requires less data than a process it is much faster to create
a new thread within a process than to create a new process. Threads within a
single process also share memory and (consequently) information which may
be desirable. It is not necessary to have kernel support to create threads:
you can do it manually using setjmp/longjmp or write a library to do it. If
you do this, however your program or library must deal with how to schedule
processor time between the threads in a process.

Some OSs do support light-weight processes (LWPs) however. A process may
contain several LWPs each of which has a thread of control but all of which
share a common memory space. An LWP requires less system resources than
a full process and may be used to implement different threads of control
within a single process. This allows the kernel to deal with the scheduling
problem. I would be surprised if linux supports LWPs but support could be
added. I don't know what the cost of this would be.

Of course you could also have several threads of control within an LWP. The
multithreading API in Sun OS 5.0 (aka Solaris 2.0) allows this.

Chris Flatters
[email protected]


[next article]
From: [email protected] (Giles D Malet)

Subject: Re: News 'n' Mail
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Date: 27 Apr 92 09:39:58 GMT
References: <[email protected]>
Reply-To: [email protected] (Giles D Malet)
Organization: You gotta be kidding !
Lines: 128

In article <[email protected]> you write:
>
>I've been able to get mail going and almost get news going with
>Taylor-UUCP, smail and elm, and c-news and rn.

Same here, with `deliver' thrown into the pot too. A few problems
with bugs / misfeatures in the libraries etc... more below.

>The hardest problems to find, though, lie with libc.a [...]
>The two I've found so far is strcasecmp() doesn't ignore case as it
>should, and fseek() returns the new position on a successful call,
>rather than zero.

Another one to add to your collection is rewind() doesn't. See below.

>Elm:
>When running as a regular user, I get the error 'problems restoring
>permissions of /usr/spool/mail/steve' when I quit.

I don't have this problem, so I think you boobed in the configure.
Somewhere it asks words to the effect "Will I be running as a set-uid
prog ?". The answer to this should be NO. I think you probably said YES,
but elm is not running setuid.
The problem is, on some system the mail dir is restricted to group `mail'
so elm has to be setuid to read it. However, being setuid mean any file
elm creates will suddenly belong to `root', thus it needs to know this,
and will fix the problem, ie when it dumps back any mail to /usr/spool....
Avoid this rubbish by making /usr/spool/mail world read/writeable with
chmod 777, and fix elm. Then /usr/spool/mail/steve will then be created as
read/writeable by only steve.

>Smail:
>When mail is sent to nonexistent local users, it gets bounced correctly, but
>two 'general protection: 0000' messages come up, [...]

BTW, again configurable, you can tell elm to check that a local user in
fact exists, and stop you from going further if not.

My smail (2.5 + some patches) amazed me by working perfectly. However, I
get these GP errors in cnews occasionally, and managed to find a way around.
I suspect there is a bug in the shared library stuff, but I have been
unable to nail it down. You might like to try my solution - change the
CC flags in the makefile to include `-static' in the meantime, and watch
for a new library...

>Taylor:
>(Using taylor-style everything: config, spool, logfile, etc)
>After a transfer, uuxqt starts up and works correctly, but since there are othe
r
>files in the /usr/spool/uucp directory (lockfiles, logfiles, etc) it complains
>about not being able to open each of them `filexxxy/X.' ... TWICE! This is
>probably a bug in Taylor's code, but if you know how to fix it...please
>enlighten me.

This is not a bug - just the way it works. It takes the rather silly view
that anything that is displayed by `ls /usr/spool/uucp' is the name of a
system you connect to, and that this is thus a sub-dir containing the details.
It thus tries to open filename/X. to see if there is any work there, which
of course fails. I avoided this by renaming my log file to
/usr/spool/uucp/.Log - which is `hidden'. Same for other files (.Debug etc).
The default names for these files are a bit daft, considering.
You can change the names of them in the configuration files, or what
I did was recompile with a better name hard coded.

The lock files should not exist at the time this check is done, so they
should not be a problem. If they do appear, something else is up.

BTW, Linux does not handle some stuff correctly or at all when it comes to
comms, so watch out. eg, a BREAK results in nothing, but perhaps more
importantly, a request to hangup the phone does not do anything.
The default config script for a Hayes modem gets round this by sending
\d+++\dAHT0 (or whatever), but that is no use to me and my non-Hayes modem.
Mine relys on DTR dropping, which will cause a hangup, or the other side
dropping the line. That solves my problem (Linux does not drop DTR), but
if I were to connect to another Linux site without a decent modem...

I have just discovered I am getting GP exceptions here too now, so I am
going to try and recompile with -static 🙁

>C-news:
>The dbz database routines seem to be screwing up in some way, which results
>in the active file being appended to, rather than overwritten, among other
>things. It also fails the regression tests supplied, so I'm relatively
>sure there's a problem here, but haven't found it yet. [...]

You're losing it ! and I don't blame you. Firstly, dbz is not concerned
with `active'. If you check carefully, you will discover that dbz will in
fact be screwing up your history files for you.
The regression tests fail _because_ the `active' file is corrapt [sic].

Firstly, the active file. The problem here is that rewind() does not
work. Soon I will get round to telling [email protected] (?) if I can
prove it in a small prog. To get round this, look in ...libbig/active.fast.c
at the function that rewrites the new active file at the end of a `relaynews'
run (grep for `sync' to get the function name).
Here I risked it all - just below the rewind(), I put :
fp = freopen("/usr/spool/news/active","w",fp);
This works great, but is *very* dangerous - think about it 🙂
Alternatively, fix rewind().

bdz - it fails because of the same problem with rewind(), or its cousin
fseek() - history.pag/dir just keep growing, and location of existing
articles (to weed out duplicates) fails. Firstly, you need to fix your
fseek() to return 0 instead of the new offset, or (what I did for the
moment), don't check return status in dbzmain.c (bad news !).
I still need to do something nasty to stop that appending business, but
sleep got in the way.

>Rn:
>Nothing major yet.

Mine insists on looking in /etc/termcap to get the size of my screen.
I use TERM=vt100 because it is more complete than con132x44, which I
should be using. Thus, it did not use the whole screen, 'till I snuck
in there and changed the #co and #li entries.
Better fix con132x44 one day...
Otherwise it works fine.

>So there you have it -- my answer to your question about a working mail (and
>news) is "yeah, sorta".

My mail is great, just got to stop my uucico from crashing.
Cnews, nearly there.
Now going to dig into the library source to fix a couple of thing, and
see what gives.

>Steve Robbins
--
Giles D Malet [email protected] Waterloo, Ont, Canada +1 519 725 5726


[next article]
From: [email protected] (Theodore Ts'o)

Subject: Re: Mail Woes
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Date: 27 Apr 92 17:40:40 GMT
Sender: [email protected] (Mr Background)
Reply-To: [email protected]
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 29


From: [email protected]
Reply-To: [email protected]

I see that another person is also having mysterious mail problems.
When I post to the list, I see it come out on alt.os.linux but
not the digest! This may be related to switching the newsgroups.
This problem started two weeks ago.
Anyone else caught in a black hole?

In the first place, you shouldn't be using alt.os.linux; you should be
using comp.os.linux; it has a much better distribution than the alt
groups, and it's where most people would expect to find it. Having
gotten no objections when I posted a message to alt.config, I plan to
send out a rmgroup for alt.os.linux very shortly.

In the second place, if you send mail to [email protected],
it will be posted to comp.os.linux, NOT alt.os.linux. It hasn't posted
to alt.os.linux since the switchover, which happened roughly two weeks
ago.

There had been some reports that where mail sent to Linux-Activists
never made it to the newsgroup, and thus never made it to the digest,
but I have not heard any complaints of articles which did make it to the
newsgroup but which didn't make it to the digest. If you have such an
example, please mail me ([email protected]) the complete article, including
all the headers, and I will try to track it down. Thanks!

- Ted


[next article]
From: [email protected] (Gary B. Skouson)

Subject: sgtty and TIOC-stuff?
Message-ID: <0'@byu.edu>
Date: 27 Apr 92 15:05:40 GMT
Sender: [email protected] (gary b skouson)
Organization: Brigham Young University, Provo UT USA
Lines: 19
Nntp-Posting-Host: bones.caedm.byu.edu
Originator: [email protected]



Hi,

I have been looking at MGR and I tried to make. It seems that
several things are missing. First there isn't a sgtty.h file to include.
Also there seems to be a lot of TIOC stuff that isn;t in any of the include file
s that I have. These include
TIOCFLUSH
TIOCGETP
TIOCSETP
TIOCGETC
TIOCSETC
Where do I get info on this? The termio.h seems to have some TIOC
stuff, but obviously from the errors, not enough. Any help would be appreciated
.

Thanks.

Gary Skouson
[email protected]


[next article]
From: [email protected] (Jay Maynard)

Subject: Re: Zip, zoo and compress
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Date: 27 Apr 92 18:02:00 GMT
References: <[email protected]>
Sender: [email protected]
Organization: UT Health Science Center Houston
Lines: 18
Nntp-Posting-Host: oac.hsc.uth.tmc.edu

In article <[email protected]> [email protected] (Julien Maisonneuve) writes:
>-rw-rw-r-- 1 julien 1255779 Apr 6 18:38 2.1lib.tar.Z
>-rw-rw-r-- 1 julien 974843 Apr 27 18:39 2.1lib.zip
>-rw-rw-r-- 1 julien 1288761 Apr 6 01:06 2.1lib.zoo
>-rw-rw-r-- 1 julien 1245371 Apr 6 19:04 2.1shared-A.tar.Z
>-rw-rw-r-- 1 julien 981654 Apr 27 18:42 2.1shared-A.zip
>-rw-rw-r-- 1 julien 1251560 Apr 6 00:31 2.1shared-A.zoo

I'll note that, in each of these cases, the .zip is the only file small enough
to fit on a high density 5-1/4" floppy...which is a Seriously Good Thing. Not
everyone has high density 3-1/2" drives, you know...


--
Jay Maynard, EMT-P, K5ZC, PP-ASEL | Never ascribe to malice that which can
[email protected] | adequately be explained by a .sig virus.
"You're the only extremist I've ever known who has a sense of
humor." -- Richard Nixon, to Pat Buchanan


[next article]
From: [email protected] (Jay Maynard)

Subject: Re: News 'n' Mail
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Date: 27 Apr 92 18:11:07 GMT
References: <[email protected]> <1992Apr27.093958.19702@shrd
lu.UUCP>
Sender: [email protected]
Organization: UT Health Science Center Houston
Lines: 16
Nntp-Posting-Host: oac.hsc.uth.tmc.edu

In article <[email protected]> [email protected] (Giles D Malet)
writes:
>Avoid this rubbish by making /usr/spool/mail world read/writeable with
>chmod 777, and fix elm. Then /usr/spool/mail/steve will then be created as
>read/writeable by only steve.

DON'T DO THIS.

Making /usr/spool/mail world writeable will allow someoen else to delete your
mail file. Even if its permissions are set to 700 and owned by you, that
doesn't stop an unlink(), since all it needs is permission to write in the
directory itself.
--
Jay Maynard, EMT-P, K5ZC, PP-ASEL | Never ascribe to malice that which can
[email protected] | adequately be explained by a .sig virus.
"You're the only extremist I've ever known who has a sense of
humor." -- Richard Nixon, to Pat Buchanan


[next article]
From: [email protected] (Geoffrey Furnish)

Subject: Re: Reliability of stdio with gcc 2.1 ?
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Date: 26 Apr 92 08:10:34 GMT
References: <[email protected]>
Sender: [email protected]
Distribution: comp
Organization: The University of Texas at Austin, Austin TX
Lines: 26

In article <[email protected]> [email protected] (I Reid) writes:
>Just a quick posting to ask if anyone is having problem with any of the stdio
>stuff (specifically fwrite/fwrite) when using gcc 2.1. I ask this because I
>suspect this to be the cause of some ?? memory violations I have been having.

>Evidence for:

>1. Problems only occur when fread/fwrite
>2. Explicit calls to fflush after every write 'cure' the problem (and lose me
> the buffering I wanted 🙁
>3. No problems with non buffered routines (read/write).

>I'm not totally convinced that I have 2.1 set up exactly as it is supposed to
>be but it all seems to work without any complaints.

>p.s. Runiing 0.95c+ on a 386-33 with 8Mb Ram.
>p.p.s. Any good debuggers out there? I know there is
> kernel support for one but
> the last time I tried one it dies horrible every time 🙁

Yes I am having the same problem, or at least some similar problems
with GCC 2.1.

Still awaiting the final version :-).

Geoff Furnish


End of newsgroup comp.os.linux.