Subject: Linux-Activists Digest #175
From: Digestifier <Linux-Activists-Request@senator-bedfellow.MIT.EDU>
To: Linux-Activists@senator-bedfellow.MIT.EDU
Reply-To: Linux-Activists@senator-bedfellow.MIT.EDU
Date:     Fri, 27 Aug 93 04:13:03 EDT

Linux-Activists Digest #175, Volume #6           Fri, 27 Aug 93 04:13:03 EDT

Contents:
  Summary  Virtual Memory prob. and X as root (Ron Henderson)
  WANTED: binary of gnuplot for Linux PC (Ron Henderson)
  Re: SCSI Performance (Yet Again) (Drew Eckhardt)
  Re: ncurses problems with SLS (Robert Broughton)
  Re: X & ATI GUP (Hina Patel)
  Re: SCSI Install not working (Drew Eckhardt)
  DTC 3280 Driver? (David Shoemaker)
  could someone please.. (crazy lion)
  DOS partition (Peter Lu)
  Re: /bin/pwd missing in SLS 1.02 (Superuser)
  Basic Linux info (Chris Marriott)
  Dosemu, IRQ5 & Faxes (Joel Jeffery)
  Re: /dev/tty (Whatis it for?) (Matthias Urlichs)
  Re: SCSI Performance (Yet Again) (Matthias Urlichs)
  Probelm with SLS 1.02 installation (Narinder Jain)
  X + TIGA supported? (SLS1.03) HELP! (Jari Yli-Koivisto)
  VLB IDE contr, VLB ET4000 and network on parrallel port (Michael Cederberg)

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: rhh2h@fulton.seas.Virginia.EDU (Ron Henderson)
Subject: Summary  Virtual Memory prob. and X as root
Date: Thu, 26 Aug 1993 23:54:08 GMT

Linux users,

I posted a problem with a "lack of virtual memory" error keeping me
from running idraw in X when I had 8M RAM and 16M Swap.  The
solution is in the /etc/fstab file.  Running top, or free showed that
my swap was not in use.  The proper fstab entry (see man fstab) solved
everything.  Something like "/dev/hda3  none    swap    defaults".

The X problem is that I can only run X as 'root', not any other user.
I have now set my X-server as root suid by 'chmod 4755 XF86_SVGA'.
I now get the X background, but my mouse buttons still don't function
at all (they are fine as root).  The next step is to apply the same
fix to xload, xterm, xinitrc, and twm.

Thanks to all who responded.

Ron Henderson
--
Ron Henderson                Internet:  rhh2h@Virginia.EDU
EE PhD student               BITNET  :  rhh2h@VIRGINIA
THN C237                     UUCPNet :  ...!uunet!virginia!rhh2h
University of Virginia       Voice   : " HEY Ron!! "

------------------------------

From: rhh2h@fulton.seas.Virginia.EDU (Ron Henderson)
Subject: WANTED: binary of gnuplot for Linux PC
Date: Fri, 27 Aug 1993 00:00:53 GMT

Dose anyone have a binary of gnuplot compiled under Linux on a PC?
I have trouble compiling most X-applications.

Ron Henderson
rhh2h@virginia.edu
--
Ron Henderson                Internet:  rhh2h@Virginia.EDU
EE PhD student               BITNET  :  rhh2h@VIRGINIA
THN C237                     UUCPNet :  ...!uunet!virginia!rhh2h
University of Virginia       Voice   : " HEY Ron!! "

------------------------------

From: drew@kinglear.cs.colorado.edu (Drew Eckhardt)
Subject: Re: SCSI Performance (Yet Again)
Date: Fri, 27 Aug 1993 00:20:40 GMT

In article <1993Aug25.181139.17869@swan.pyr> iiitac@swan.pyr (Alan Cox) writes:
>
>Before people go berserk with wild optimizations the Linux driver doesn't
>handle two optimizations it could (at least if it does then Linus has
>cleverly concealed it 8-))
>
>1.     Rotational optimization. Given that the rotational latency of a
>       good disk these days is no longer irrelevant compared with the
>       seek time this would be a good idea.

You could do some playing arround in the filesystem code, so that 
successive "cylinders" were skewed with respect to each other to 
accomodate the track-to-track seek time, however you need some sort
of hooks into the lowlevel drivers to find out the geometry of the
disk - with SCSI-II , you get the NOTCH pages for ZBR drives, for
anything SCSI-I CCS or later you get the RIGID DISK GEOMETRY and
FORMAT mode pages, in any case these things pages can lie.

So, this isn't entirely a SCSI problem, more a of a block device
driver to file system communication thing.

Rotational optomization at the SCSI driver level alone is for 
all practical purposes impossible.  You have no idea what the 
current position is of the disk, you can't be sure of the time it's
going to take to establish a nexus for the new command, and don't
know what sort of readahead the disk has done.

>2.     Request merging - Multiple requests can be merged into one
>       disk operation. This should enable better use to be made of the
>       DMA potentially.

This is allready done.  Multiple requests for contiguous sectors are 
merged as long as the old request is for fewer than 254 sectors.  
-- 
Boycott USL/Novell for their absurd anti-BSDI lawsuit. | 
Condemn Colorado for Amendment Two.                    | Drew Eckhardt
Use Linux, the fast, flexible, and free 386 unix       | drew@cs.Colorado.EDU 
Will administer Unix for food                          |

------------------------------

From: Robert_Broughton@mindlink.bc.ca (Robert Broughton)
Subject: Re: ncurses problems with SLS
Date: Fri, 27 Aug 1993 00:34:13 GMT

> Mark Warren writes:
>
> I tryed compiling pcomm using ncurses, and when I started it,
> the only thing it did was to print the message
>
>         couldn't open file.
>
> This highly informative message comes from ncurses, so in desperation
> I grabbed the ncurses sources from tsx-11, made & installed, then made
> the ncurses, *NONE* of which work at all.
>
> Are there known problems here, or am I doing something wildly wrong?
>

I would say there's a high likelihood that you don't have read permission for
whichever terminfo file you're (unconsciously) trying to use. Type:

        echo $TERM

The result will probably be "console". Type:

        find /usr/lib/terminfo -name console -print

then chmod a+r for anything that turns up.
--
*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*

Robert Broughton    Robert_Broughton@mindlink.bc.ca

"We calm and reassure. We embrace people with the message that we're
all in it together. That our leaders are infallible and that there is
nothing, absolutely nothing wrong." - Miles Drentell, _thirtysomething_

------------------------------

From: hinakp@pilot.njin.net (Hina Patel)
Crossposted-To: comp.os.linux.help
Subject: Re: X & ATI GUP
Date: 27 Aug 93 00:46:21 GMT

furnish@dino.ph.utexas.edu (Geoffrey Furnish) writes:

>In article <93238.093438KKEYTE@ESOC.BITNET> Karl Keyte, ESOC Darmstadt <KKEYTE@ESOC.BITNET> writes:

>   From: Karl Keyte, ESOC Darmstadt <KKEYTE@ESOC.BITNET>
>   Anyone got X running with the ATI Graphics Ultra Pro?

>   I tried the X using the Xconfig that comes with SLS 1.03.  No luck.  It
>   says it doesn't know the 'ati' chipset.

>   Please help.  Answer to KKEYTE@ESOC.BITNET

>I am having the same problem.  SLS 1.02 worked fine.  I think SLS
>forgot to build the ati driver into the server.  Can anyone confirm
>this and explain how to fix it/replace it/whatever ???

>   Thanks, Karl

>   ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>   Vitrociset S.p.A. (Space Division)            Tel   : +(49) 6151 902041
>   Eurepean Space Operations Centre              Fax   : +(49) 6151 904041
>   Darmstadt, Germany                            e-Mail: kkeyte@esoc.bitnet



Hi,
        This is my Xconfig file for ATI Ultra XLR. But it also works for
the ATI Ultra Pro. You can change the Modes to suit your monitor settings.
But don't change the Clock settings (they work for all types of ATI, newer).
Good luck!

                                        Hina
                                        hinakp@pilot.njin.net





# $XConsortium: Xconfig,v 1.2 91/08/26 14:34:55 gildea Exp $
#
# Copyright 1990,91 by Thomas Roell, Dinkelscherben, Germany.
#
# Permission to use, copy, modify, distribute, and sell this software and its
# documentation for any purpose is hereby granted without fee, provided that
# the above copyright notice appear in all copies and that both that
# copyright notice and this permission notice appear in supporting
# documentation, and that the name of Thomas Roell not be used in
# advertising or publicity pertaining to distribution of the software without
# specific, written prior permission.  Thomas Roell makes no representations
# about the suitability of this software for any purpose.  It is provided
# "as is" without express or implied warranty.
#
# THOMAS ROELL DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES WITH REGARD TO THIS SOFTWARE,
# INCLUDING ALL IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS, IN NO
# EVENT SHALL THOMAS ROELL BE LIABLE FOR ANY SPECIAL, INDIRECT OR
# CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES OR ANY DAMAGES WHATSOEVER RESULTING FROM LOSS OF USE,
# DATA OR PROFITS, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, NEGLIGENCE OR OTHER
# TORTIOUS ACTION, ARISING OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE USE OR
# PERFORMANCE OF THIS SOFTWARE.
#
# Author:  Thomas Roell, roell@informatik.tu-muenchen.de
# modified by obz for easier linux porting

#
# some nice paths, to avoid conflicts with other X-servers
#
#RGBPath                "/usr/lib/X11/rgb"
FontPath        "/usr/lib/X11/fonts/misc/,/usr/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi/"
#FontPath       "/usr/lib/X11/fonts/misc/"

Keyboard
  AutoRepeat 500 5
#  Xleds      1 2 3
  ServerNumLock
#  DontZap

Microsoft       "/dev/mouse"
#MouseSystems   "/dev/ttys2"
#MMSeries       "/dev/ttys2"
#Logitech       "/dev/ttys2"
#MouseMan       "/dev/ttys2"
#Busmouse       "/dev/mouse"
#  BaudRate     1200
#  SampleRate   150
Emulate3Buttons

#
# The graphics drivers
#
vga256
  Virtual       1024 768
  ViewPort      0 0
  Modes         "1024x768" 
  Clocks        18 22 25 28 36 44 50 56
                30 32 37 39 40 0  75 65
  #Staticgray
  #Grayscale
  #Staticcolor
  Pseudocolor
  #Truecolor
  #Directcolor
  #Chipset      "et4000"
  #Chipset      "et3000"
  #Chipset      "gvga"
  #Chipset      "pvga1"
  Chipset       "ati"
  Displaysize   260 184
  #Screenno     0
  #Vendor       "legend"
  Videoram      1024

ModeDB
# clock  horzontal timing      vertical timing
 "640x480"   25     640  672  768  800    480  490  492  525
             28     640  672  768  800    480  490  492  525

 "800x600"   36     800  816  952 1056    600  608  610  633
             36     800  832  966  966    600  600  609  631
             39     800  872  968 1104    600  600  606  624
             39     800  864  896 1008    600  600  606  624

 "920x690"   62     920  952 1088 1168    690  688  718  724

 "1024x768i" 44    1024 1064 1224 1264    768  777  785  817   Interlace
             45    1024 1064 1224 1264    768  777  785  817   Interlace
 "1024x768"  65    1024 1048 1184 1344  768  771  777  806
#             62    1024 1096 1272 1328    768  776  778  808
#             62    1024 1072 1176 1272    768  778  779  804
#             62    1024 1072 1200 1240    768  766  782  786

 "1152x900"  62    1152 1184 1288 1360    900  898  929  939   Interlace

------------------------------

From: drew@kinglear.cs.colorado.edu (Drew Eckhardt)
Subject: Re: SCSI Install not working
Date: Fri, 27 Aug 1993 00:29:57 GMT

In article <1993Aug25.204237.155822@ua1ix.ua.edu> brown@galab3.mh.ua.edu () writes:
>Can anyone help me to get Linux (from sunsite lastweek) to install on my
>386 that has a DTC3280A SCSI card?

>I know its ANSI compliant with X3.??? and has CCS so how do I install if
>it can't see my damn drive?

If your card can be put into WD1003 emulation mode as some DTCs
can, do that and treat your disk like an IDE drive.  Otherwise,
you buy a different SCSI board or get an IDE drive.

>Is there someone who has already written a device driver for the DTC?

No.  At one point, there was an effort to develop a driver for that 
board, but more recently, people have talked to DTC and been told that
DTC doesn't give programming information out to the general public.

>What am I doing wrong?

Nothing, you just have unsupported hardware.
-- 
Boycott USL/Novell for their absurd anti-BSDI lawsuit. | 
Condemn Colorado for Amendment Two.                    | Drew Eckhardt
Use Linux, the fast, flexible, and free 386 unix       | drew@cs.Colorado.EDU 
Will administer Unix for food                          |

------------------------------

From: i-bds@microsoft.com (David Shoemaker)
Subject: DTC 3280 Driver?
Date: 26 Aug 93 18:01:08 GMT

I want to use my DTC 3280 scsi card for linux.  Can anyone tell me where
to find drivers and what I would have to do?

Thanks
DFS
  Lost in my own Mind.


------------------------------

From: rlion@access.digex.net (crazy lion)
Crossposted-To: comp.os.linux.misc
Subject: could someone please..
Date: 26 Aug 1993 22:34:41 -0400


could someone please send me a copy of any terminal program that they
have compiled and running for linux or X. I can' get anything to let me
call out, so if anyone could help me out, i'd be greatful.


rl


------------------------------

From: swift@world.std.com (Peter Lu)
Subject: DOS partition
Date: Fri, 27 Aug 1993 04:34:09 GMT


Help!!!

        I inadvertently did a "dd of=/dev/hda if=..." and trashed the
partition table on my C disk.  Luckily, I knew its layout and just
manually recovered the partition set-up.  However, the first partition I
had on it, the primary DOS partition, doesn't quite work any more.  It
was a small 7 Meg partition so I recreated it using the DOS fdisk utility
and then did the "format c:" and "sys c:" sequence.  However, I no longer
can boot from this partition despite the fact that msdos.sys, io.sys, and
command.com are there.  My screen sort of blanks out and everything
hangs.

        Since I originally caused the problem from linux, using "dd",
perhaps this group would be the best in being able to help me out.  What
did I do with the write to /dev/hda such that the system booter cannot
get to the DOS boot files?  Everything else seems to be working just
fine, including accesses to other partitions (linux) on the disk.  Thanks
for any advice in advance.

                                                Peter Lu


------------------------------

From: root@fusion.cuc.ab.ca (Superuser)
Subject: Re: /bin/pwd missing in SLS 1.02
Date: Fri, 27 Aug 1993 03:42:53 GMT

Andrej.Bauer@ijs.si (Andrej Bauer) writes:
> Here is a quick partial solution.
> 
<source code deleted>
> 
> WARNING: 
> This program will fail if you do something like this:
> 
> mkdir foo
> cd foo
> rmdir ../foo
> /bin/pwd
> 

Will it?  0.99pl9 won't let me do this, even as root..  it complains when
I try to remove the directory with: "device or resource busy"..

Perhaps this is different if you're on an NFS-mounted drive, but I don't
use NFS on my machine, so I wouldn't know.

> Since I don't know what pwd is supposed to do in such cases,
> someone else might kindly tell us (I guess it should return
> a non-zero exit status).

You can never get such cases, so don't worry about it.. (sure there might
be at least one special case where it can happen, but why complicate the
program?)

> Andrej (Andrej.Bauer@IJS.si)
-- 
Christopher Lau- "Mr. Unix"    |     /       Fusion: Playing With Fire!
StarBright Research            |    / /      H + H -> He + 24 MeV
            --                 |   /_/_/_    "Bring back Trudeau!"
root,lauc@fusion.cuc.ab.ca     |____________ "This space for rent"

------------------------------

From: chris@chrism.demon.co.uk (Chris Marriott)
Subject: Basic Linux info
Reply-To: chris@chrism.demon.co.uk
Date: Thu, 26 Aug 1993 20:14:14 +0000

I apologize in advance for what must be a FAQ - perhaps, even, the most
FAQed of the FAQ :-)

I've just discovered this newsgroup, having heard about Linux on another
group accidentally.  I gather it's a public-domain Unix-like O/S for
IBM-compatible PCs - is that correct?  Can it run alongside DOS (ie on
a different partition, selectable at boot-time), or does it need a
dedicated machine?  Would, say, a 250MB drive be sufficient for it?

OK, assuming that I'm on the right track, would someone be so kind as to
tell me where the FAQs are stored, so I can find out about this wonderful-
sounding thing, please!

Thanks a lot, and I'm sorry if these are stupid questions.

Chris
-- 
==========================================================================
| Chris Marriott                           | chris@chrism.demon.co.uk    |
| Warrington, UK                           | 100113.1140@compuserve.com  |
| Save the whales.  Collect the whole set. | CompuServe: 100113,1140     |
==========================================================================
 

------------------------------

From: Joel.Jeffery@purplet.demon.co.uk (Joel Jeffery)
Subject: Dosemu, IRQ5 & Faxes
Date: Thu, 26 Aug 1993 17:27:00 +0000

Hi all.
 
 I am using Linux99pl12, and Dosemu0.49. (I think Linux is GREAT by 
the way - just get that little bit of crawling out of the way 
first...). 
 My problem is this: I have a fax card (not fax modem) called Frecom 
Fax96, by Fremont Communications (R.I.P.). The card takes up 2 io 
ports (0x388, 0x389) and uses IRQ5. Ive told DOSEMU about the ports 
in the /etc/dosemu/config file, but it refuses to acknowledge the 
existance of my faxcard.
 
Any ideas?
 
Thanks in advance.
 
atb
joel

------------------------------

From: urlichs@smurf.sub.org (Matthias Urlichs)
Crossposted-To: comp.os.linux.misc
Subject: Re: /dev/tty (Whatis it for?)
Date: 25 Aug 1993 17:30:17 +0200

In comp.os.linux, article <1993Aug24.054432.6665@unlv.edu>,
  ftlofaro@unlv.edu (Frank Lofaro) writes:
> In article <CC8H8M.23t@sugar.NeoSoft.COM> astorey@NeoSoft.com (Alan Storey) writes:
> >
> >open("/dev/tty", RDONLY, 666) = -512
> >-512 is the error code ERESTARTSYS.
> 
> This should NEVER happen! (unless I'm mistaken) I believe ERESTARTSYS
> should never be returned to user programs. Certainly -512 for failure
> instead of -1 is very strange. You might have actually stumbed upon a
> kernel bug. You siad you were using pl10, perhaps upgrading might help.
> 
Actually, the error code is reported by strace as the process enters the
signal handler, after which the system call is restarted -- the program
doesn't really see the error.

The C library replaces these error codes with -1 and stuffs the real error
code (resp. its absolute value) into errno. So to find out what the program
gets back, set a breakpoint on the line after the open with gdb and look
at errno and at whichever place the program stores the return code from
the open() in question.

-- 
Matthias Urlichs -- urlichs@smurf.sub.org -- Phone: NONE; use email or lose.
Schleiermacherstrasse 12 -- 90491 Nuernberg -- Germany || Linux+Mac Consulting

------------------------------

From: urlichs@smurf.sub.org (Matthias Urlichs)
Crossposted-To: comp.os.linux.misc
Subject: Re: SCSI Performance (Yet Again)
Date: 25 Aug 1993 17:37:51 +0200

In comp.os.linux, article <1993Aug23.161232.1118@kf8nh.wariat.org>,
  bsa@kf8nh.wariat.org (Brandon S. Allbery) writes:
> In article <1993Aug22.200138.15349@hip-hop.suvl.ca.us> root@hip-hop.suvl.ca.us (Remco Treffkorn) writes:
> 
> >There are some critical assumtions here:
> >     You should do an fsync after writing and include the time till
> >     fsync returns. If you don't then the read performance is too high
> >     and write performance too high. BUT between the two you will see
> >     a glimmer of reality.
> 
> Another critical assumption is that the cache is flushed all at once.  If it
> does it a block at a time to free up space for the next buffered write, (e.g.
> one physical write per buffered write), performance will suffer because of
> buffer management overhead as well as because of the physical write time.
> 
You should do a sync() _before_ starting your measurements, to make sure
that no writes of unrelated blocks are included.

-- 
Matthias Urlichs -- urlichs@smurf.sub.org -- Phone: NONE; use email or lose.
Schleiermacherstrasse 12 -- 90491 Nuernberg -- Germany || Linux+Mac Consulting

------------------------------

From: jainn@robadome.com (Narinder Jain)
Subject: Probelm with SLS 1.02 installation
Date: 26 Aug 1993 13:24:26 -0500
Reply-To: jainn@robadome.com

My system configuration is
        486SX
        Adaptec 1542.c
        Texel CD rom
        IBM SCSI drive 340 MEG
        
During  mke2fs, and doinstall I run into the following message
a.1542c interrupt received : but not mail
SCSI ID 0 timed out

I am trying to install SLS 1.02 from the CD ROM. Any help will be greatly appreciated.
NJ

------------------------------

From: aajayk@sjoki.uta.fi (Jari Yli-Koivisto)
Subject: X + TIGA supported? (SLS1.03) HELP!
Date: Fri, 27 Aug 1993 08:19:17 GMT


I have Texas Instruments TIGA CARD does anyone have working X with this card.
Manual claims that it has X-WINDOWS supported! Linux X ..NOT?!?

In this card I have integated VGA + TI coprocessor runnig 60MHZ
1Mb VRAM + 2Mb DRAM

When I tried my card to my friend's machine which works fine with his card (sigma legend) 
We noticed that X thinks that my TIGA card is ET4000 !!!?? (We made changes to
Xconfig #legend....)

So do ANYONE know something about this??

TIGA is like X8514/a many programs like AutoCad and Windows have TIGA interface 
Mail help to me please!

------------------------------

From: c878109@id.dth.dk (Michael Cederberg)
Subject: VLB IDE contr, VLB ET4000 and network on parrallel port
Date: Fri, 27 Aug 1993 08:53:00 GMT

Hi There!

So I have just received my new system (WOW!), and now I have a couble of
questions:

1.  The system is equipped with a 32-bit local bus IDE HD controller. Is
    the Linux IDE device driver optimized for 32-bit datatransfers?

2.  There is also a local bus 32-bit ET4000/W32 video controller. Does the
    Xfree package have a driver specifically for this chipset and/or is
    there support for 64K and 16M colors?

2a. This is not realy a Linux specific question, but I'll sneak it in 
    anyway. The monitor I'm using is an IBM 8515 (an XGA monitor), and
    the only modes it seems to respond to is 640x480 and 1024x768i. I
    have tried to change the parameters in Xconfig, but nothing works
    besides the two modes described above. Does anybody have specs on
    this monitor?

3.  Now I have an IBM PS/2 standing in the corner. Is there any way that
    will allow me to use it as a terminal on the parrallel port (all my
    serial ports are in use ...)?

Michael Cederberg 

------------------------------


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Linux may be obtained via one of these FTP sites:
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The current version of Linux is 0.99pl9 released on April 23, 1993

End of Linux-Activists Digest
******************************
