Subject: Linux-Development Digest #386
From: Digestifier <Linux-Development-Request@senator-bedfellow.MIT.EDU>
To: Linux-Development@senator-bedfellow.MIT.EDU
Reply-To: Linux-Development@senator-bedfellow.MIT.EDU
Date:     Wed, 19 Jan 94 02:13:10 EST

Linux-Development Digest #386, Volume #1         Wed, 19 Jan 94 02:13:10 EST

Contents:
  Re: [Q]: second IDE drive and possible BIOS problem... (Delman Lee)
  Good Job Slackware! (Jonathan Miner)
  Are we going to have DBX on linux? (Ken Yat-Wan Chan)
  Re: [ANSWER] PL14n and PL14o ext2 problems ("P.J. Wilkin")
  Socket limits for 3com cards? (Bruce Thompson)
  Re: Math functions don't seem to work (Andreas Klemm)
  Is there an _official_ directory structure for linux? (J. Mark Noworolski)
  Re: Subnetting on non byte boundaries (Alan Cox)
  Re: Socket limits for 3com cards? (Paul)
  Re: tty64 (sic) input overrun (Mike Battersby)
  Adaptec AHA-2842VL Support (jonathan ward)
  Re: [ANSWER] PL14n and PL14o ext2 problems (Stefan Dalibor)
  Configuring linux box as a router with a serial interface (Daniel O'Callaghan)
  Solved - Re: 0.99pl14p - dip 3.3.4 - SLIP network failure (John Ladwig)

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

From: delman@mipg.upenn.edu (Delman Lee)
Crossposted-To: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware,comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage,comp.os.linux.help,comp.os.linux.misc
Subject: Re: [Q]: second IDE drive and possible BIOS problem...
Date: 18 Jan 94 14:00:32

In article <1994Jan17.093158.809@mnemosyne.cs.du.edu> dminer@nyx10.cs.du.edu (Dan Miner) writes:

   I have heard of someone getting a large IDE drive and he claims
   that his BIOS didn't "support" the drive.  I believe it didn't have
   the right parameters (ie # heads, cylinders, etc.)  Is this really
   a problem?  Would buying a newer IDE controller help/solve the
   problem?  Also in relation to Linux, is it possible to tell
   Linux your HD geometry explicitly (not BIOS telling it) if BIOS
   didn't "support" the drive?

A way to specify the HD geometry of your IDE drive to Linux without
going through BIOS is to hard coded in linux/include/linux/config.h.
The following is the relevant comments in config.h.

Hope this helps, 
Delman.

/*
 * Normally, Linux can get the drive parameters from the BIOS at
 * startup, but if this for some unfathomable reason fails, you'd
 * be left stranded. For this case, you can define HD_TYPE, which
 * contains all necessary info on your harddisk.
 *
 * The HD_TYPE macro should look like this:
 *
 * #define HD_TYPE { head, sect, cyl, wpcom, lzone, ctl}
 *
 * In case of two harddisks, the info should be sepatated by
 * commas:
 *
 * #define HD_TYPE { h,s,c,wpcom,lz,ctl },{ h,s,c,wpcom,lz,ctl }
 */
/*
 This is an example, two drives, first is type 2, second is type 3:

#define HD_TYPE { 4,17,615,300,615,8 }, { 6,17,615,300,615,0 }

 NOTE: ctl is 0 for all drives with heads<=8, and ctl=8 for drives
 with more than 8 heads.

 If you want the BIOS to tell what kind of drive you have, just
 leave HD_TYPE undefined. This is the normal thing to do.
*/

--
______________________________________________________________________

  Delman Lee                                 Tel.: +1-215-662-6780
  Medical Image Processing Group,            Fax.: +1-215-898-9145
  University of Pennsylvania,
  4/F Blockley Hall, 418 Service Drive,                         
  Philadelphia, PA 19104-6021,
  U.S.A..                            Internet: delman@mipg.upenn.edu
______________________________________________________________________

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

From: miner@Rapnet.Sanders.Lockheed.Com (Jonathan Miner)
Subject: Good Job Slackware!
Date: Tue, 18 Jan 94 14:46:47 GMT

I deleted SLS 1.03 last night and installed Slackware 1.1.1
Looks good to me, I even get a color X server!  Great job to
everyone who made this possible!

Keep up the good work.
-- 
| Jonathan Miner                       | Run Linux, model the
| miner@rapnet.sanders.lockheed.com    | Boston & Maine in HO scale,
| 603-885-2438 <voice> 1480 <fax>      | And always ski downhill...
#include <std/disclaimer.h>

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

From: kchan@ee.ualberta.ca (Ken Yat-Wan Chan)
Subject: Are we going to have DBX on linux?
Date: Tue, 18 Jan 1994 17:56:36 GMT

I was trying to do a "trace" (a command offered in dbx) on gdb, but
I couldn't find anything in gdb that could display each statement as
it is being executed. 

As far as I know, gdb is supposed to be much better than dbx, how come
it does not have anything similar to trace as in dbx?

Is it possible to get a dbx package on LINUX? 
If there isn't one, is it possible to port dbx  to linux?


Desperate LINUX novice,
Ken


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

From: wilkinp@cyclops.demon.co.uk ("P.J. Wilkin")
Subject: Re: [ANSWER] PL14n and PL14o ext2 problems
Date: Tue, 18 Jan 1994 19:02:48 +0000

Andrew F Gunnesch (afgun@engin.umich.edu) wrote:

: Why on earth would you want to fsck a mounted partition?  After beating and
: beating on my system, I've never found a need to fsck any partition in use
: (only my system after a crash <G>)  I can really pound on a disk, umount it,
: and fsck shows things to be just fine.  As far as automatic checks at boot,
: just mount your root partition ro on boot, fsck it, then remount it rw.

There are several reasons
1)      I want to be silly
2)      it might actually happen (if yo fsck -A -av) by accident
3)      my original MCC linux did it in /etc/rc
4)      I am a new unix user
5)      One of the above

I am now (thanks to all the flames received from this silly posting of mine)
in the process of do as so many people have told me.

I currently boot into single user mode (rw at this stage) and shall make it 
read only later today.

Sorry everyone for the waste of bandwidth, but hey are we not supposed to
make pratts of ourselves so that others can learn ?

Red faced regards

-- 
- Peter Wilkin -+-----------------------------------+-------------------------
+ Kidbrooke     |"As sane as anyone else"           | All views and comments +
+ London. UK    |"sleeping with eyes open"          | are my own, so take    +
+               |"dead but not forgotten" ???       | lightly if needed      +

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

From: bruce@mdavcr.mda.ca (Bruce Thompson)
Subject: Socket limits for 3com cards?
Date: 18 Jan 94 19:25:30 GMT

Hi all, I've got a bit of a wierd one here. I'm currently working on a
project here that will be running on a 486 box running some form of
UNIX, I don't know which, using a 3com Ethernet card for networking.
Although this isn't specifically a Linux question, I know for a fact
that _someone_ in the Linux community has an answer because Linux
speaks Ethernet, no?

One of the guys at work seems to think that there's some _board_level_
limitation that precludes the use of more than 16 active INET sockets
at any particular time. My reaction when he said that was essentially
to shake my head and say "What?" (with some minor editting ;->).

Is it just me or does this sound ridiculous? To the best of my
knowledge, the only place where a limit on the number of active
sockets could come in would be in the kernel, but I don't _know_ this
to be the case, I merely suspect it to be the case. Does anyone have
actual verifiable knowledge?

Bob (my co-worker) went on to explain that he knew of a project that
had been forced to install _two_ ethernet cards, connected to the
_same_ network, in order to get the number of active connections that
they needed. This sounds highly suspect to me. Of course the project
was using SCO at the time, so what can you expect? P-)

I've talked to someone at 3com, but I'm not convinced that she really
understood what I was talking about. I think that she thought I meant
hosts connected to an Ethernet. She's sending me some literature, but
I kind of doubt that 3com's promo material will have the level of
detail I need.

        Any ideas?
        Bruce.
--
Bruce Thompson, B.Sc.           | "A great many people think they are
Software Engineer               |  thinking when they are merely
MacDonald Dettwiler,            |  rearranging their prejudices."
13800 Commerce Parkway,         |       -- William James
Richmond, BC                    |
(604) 278-3411                  | Usual disclaimers apply
NAPRA #473                      |

-- 
Bruce Thompson, B.Sc.           | "A great many people think they are
Software Engineer               |  thinking when they are merely
MacDonald Dettwiler,            |  rearranging their prejudices."
13800 Commerce Parkway,         |       -- William James
Richmond, BC                    |
(604) 278-3411                  | Usual disclaimers apply
NAPRA #473                      |

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

From: andreas@knobel.knirsch.de (Andreas Klemm)
Subject: Re: Math functions don't seem to work
Date: 16 Jan 1994 23:54:22 +0100

anton@MCS.COM (Andrezej Borowiec) writes:

>/usr/tmp/cca010491.o: Undefined symbol _sin referenced from text segment
>/usr/tmp/cca010491.o: Undefined symbol _cos referenced from text segment
>make: *** [testmath] Error 1
>This happens every time I try to compile .
>I have stock SLS distribution with pl12 and gcc2.4.5
>Any ideas?

Would be interesting to see, how you compile the source ;-)

I'd bet that you forgot to link the program with the math library....

gcc -O -o xxx xxx.c -lm
                    ^^^

        Andreas ///
-- 
Andreas Klemm                 /\/\____ Wiechers & Partner Datentechnik GmbH 
andreas@knobel.knirsch.de ___/\/\/     andreas@wupmon.wup.de (Unix Support)

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

From: jmn@crown.EECS.Berkeley.EDU (J. Mark Noworolski)
Subject: Is there an _official_ directory structure for linux?
Date: 18 Jan 1994 21:11:39 GMT

I recently installed slackware on my box and am somewhat disappointed with
how messy the directory structure is. I seem to be finding files all over
the place in weird places. In many cases the applications themselves dont
know where their include files are (eg. Latex has no clue without TEXINPUTS
being set, emacs can't find auc-tex file, xmahjongg is in some weird place, 
/usr/local/games has only some games, /usr/X11/bin has x games - this is 
probably ok). 

Where _should_ all these files be?
I recall reading somewhere that there is some sort of recommended standard
floating around somewhere.

thanks,
mark
PS. I want to know this because I am about to try porting latex to linux 
(the one distributed with slackware is apparently broken since it doesn't
include slitex and also needs a setenv TEXINPUTS command to work).

--
J. Mark Noworolski              jmn@eecs.berkeley.edu
If you mailed to me and I was supposed to answer then either:
1. My answer bounced, or 2. I lost your mail.
or 3. The subdomain name changes going on here hosed your mail.

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

From: iiitac@swan.pyr (Alan Cox)
Subject: Re: Subnetting on non byte boundaries
Date: Tue, 18 Jan 1994 19:54:19 GMT


For the brave you can either try pl14q with Linus new route command which
not only handles bitwise subnets but also allows you forcibly to route 
a network via a given interface or you can get involved in the NET2E
project. Or for a quieter life wait for Pl15 8-)

Alan
iiitac@pyr.swan.a.cuk


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

From: paul@myrddin.isl.cf.ac.uk (Paul)
Subject: Re: Socket limits for 3com cards?
Date: Tue, 18 Jan 1994 23:39:37 +0000

In article <4994@map.mdavcr.mda.ca> bruce@mdavcr.mda.ca (Bruce Thompson) writes:
>Hi all, I've got a bit of a wierd one here. I'm currently working on a
>project here that will be running on a 486 box running some form of
>UNIX, I don't know which, using a 3com Ethernet card for networking.
>Although this isn't specifically a Linux question, I know for a fact
>that _someone_ in the Linux community has an answer because Linux
>speaks Ethernet, no?
>
>One of the guys at work seems to think that there's some _board_level_
>limitation that precludes the use of more than 16 active INET sockets
>at any particular time. My reaction when he said that was essentially
>to shake my head and say "What?" (with some minor editting ;->).
>
>Is it just me or does this sound ridiculous? To the best of my

Yes, this is complete and utter you know what. All the ethernet card does is
send packets onto the physical wire and take packets off the wire. What you
put in those packets is entirely up to the software. For the internet these
packets contain data that conform to the tcp/ip protocol stack. Sockets are an
abstraction that allow programs to connect to virtual network connections
built on top of tcp/ip. This is a gross simplification of networking but
basically the socket abstraction has no relation to the underlying hardware.

They obviously know absolutely nothing about BSD style sockets. Incidentally,
sockets also have nothing to do with INET, you can run sockets across X25 or
any other protocol. They are a virtual connection between two processes and
how the real, physical connection is created depends on the implementation.

-- 
  Paul Richards, 
  Intelligent Systems Laboratory, ELSYM ,University of Wales, College Cardiff
  Internet: paul@isl.cf.ac.uk,  JANET(UK): RICHARDSDP@UK.AC.CARDIFF

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

From: mike@starbug.apana.org.au (Mike Battersby)
Subject: Re: tty64 (sic) input overrun
Date: 16 Jan 1994 14:08:22 +1100

hugo@artware.nl writes:
>Since i switched to linuxpl14m, i have a repeated warnig on
>the current vitual terminal:
>tty64: input overrun
>This happens during uucp sessions to my internet server.
>I did not have this before and it is no big problem, as i don't
>seem to loose any data, however a fiew questions:
>Does anyone of you have the same phenomena?
>Should i fiddle with the HIGH and LOW-watermarks in serial.c?
>Has it anything to do with the type of uarts i have?

No help here, but I've noticed the same phenomena, with pl14m,o,p and
pl14p with the tty__patch-pl14p patches.  Same sort of situation, 
occurs during uucp sessions.

regards

Mike


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

From: jmward@ucrengr.ucr.edu (jonathan ward)
Subject: Adaptec AHA-2842VL Support
Date: 19 Jan 1994 00:22:07 GMT

Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.development
Subject: Adaptec AHA-2842 SCSI support
Summary: 
Expires: 
Sender: jmward@cs.ucr.edu <Jonathan Ward>
Followup-To: 
Distribution: world
Organization: University of California, Riverside   (College of Engineering/Computer Science)
Keywords: Adaptec, SCSI, Drivers 
Cc: 

I recently purchased an Adaptec AHA-2842VL Bus Mastering VLBus SCSI Adaptor.

However, scanning through col.development and col.help, I have found no 
mention of kernel support of this card, or current status on driver 
development(if any).  

I am aware that the bus logic controller is supported, as are numerous other
Adaptec variants; however, this controller is quite new.

So... what is the current status on AHA-2842 support?  Will it be supported
in future versions of the kernel, or is there some driver emulation right
now that will work with it?  Or is anything being developed?

Any and all replies appreciated - Email responses preferred(I read 'em more).

Thanks,
                Jonathan Ward
                University of California, Riverside

--
"Life is far too serious to be taken seriously."

Email @:
        jmward@cs.ucr.edu
        drdrums@watserv.ucr.edu
        drdrums@dostoevsky.ucr.edu


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

From: dalibor@faui30.informatik.uni-erlangen.de (Stefan Dalibor)
Subject: Re: [ANSWER] PL14n and PL14o ext2 problems
Date: Tue, 18 Jan 1994 12:53:58 GMT


In article <pd.758482813@kubism.ku.dk>, pd@kubism.ku.dk (Peter Dalgaard SFE)
writes:

|> OK, then:
|> 
|> To get the kernel to mount r/o on boot:
|>      rdev -R /dev/fd0 1
|>      (for a boot floppy -- rdev -h to get syntax for other

That's what I'm doing, too (Slackware 1.1.1, pl14) - but as far as I know,
rdev just switches one byte in the kernel binary. Couldn't that be done in
the kernel source so that all new kernels I build will mount the root system
read-only by default?

|> or
|>      READ-ONLY
|>      in LILO's configuration file

Works too - but init (SYSV, 2.4) issues a warning:

unknown option (ro) passed to init

It seems that LILO passes `ro' as an option to the kernel, but instead of
`consuming' this option, the kernel forwards it to init.
And as I tend to get nervous when I see warnings from vital programs like
init, I removed `read-only' from my LILO config again.... although this
would be the best solution to the problem IMHO (following the principle of
the least possible changes to standard distributions - the LILO configura-
tion has to be changed anyway in most installations).

Bye,
Stefan

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

From: danny@austin.unimelb.edu.au (Daniel O'Callaghan)
Subject: Configuring linux box as a router with a serial interface
Date: 18 Jan 1994 20:15:24 -0600

Has anyone configured a linux box as a router?

Specifics of the situation:

I am getting a permanent net connection.  I'll start off on a dial-up
line with SLIP, but I will quickly need to progress to a proper connection.

I intend getting an ISDN connection for this line, so I'll need a router
which handles RIP etc. and which can be connected to a V.35 modem (ISDN modem).

A bought router does this through its serial interface, and can send all 
sorts of stuff down the serial line - IP, ODI, IPX, Appletalk.

Can I connect the V35 modem and sl0 on a linux box easily?
What would the ifconfig command be?

Can I use the same linux machine for dial-up SLIP on sl1 and sl2 with
no conflicts?

I have looked at PC-Route v2.2.4, which is good, but it handles SLIP
on the serial line, and I think routers talk something closer to ethernet
on their serial interfaces.  Please correct me if I am wrong.

All comments, suggestions and alternatives welcome.  Please email replies,
and I'll summarise.

Danny

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

From: jladwig@soils.umn.edu (John Ladwig)
Subject: Solved - Re: 0.99pl14p - dip 3.3.4 - SLIP network failure
Reply-To: jladwig@soils.umn.edu
Date: Tue, 18 Jan 1994 23:23:04 GMT

This one's pilot error - I had answered "no" to configure Ethernet
cards during make config (which worked in 14g, provided you made
certain twiddles in drivers/net/CONFIG), and skipped the SLIP
configuration options.  Apparently, drivers/net/CONFIG is not
consulted in the same way at 14p as it used to be in 14g.  Live and
learn ;-)

Answering "yes" during configuration and enabling SLIP, CSLIP, and
SLIP debugging has given me a kernel which works correctly for
dip-3.3.4

dip-3.3.7 still doesn't do the right thing, however, though there are
reports of local modifications which *will* make it work.  I have not
yet tried these modifications.

In <jladwig.758837168@saturn> jladwig@soils.umn.edu (John Ladwig) writes:

>I've got a very happy situation with CSLIP over a dip-3.3.4 using the
>0.99pl14g kernel.  When I tried to upgrade to 0.99pl14o (and then p),
>I find that I can't initialize the network correctly for the SLIP
>interface.

>I get a "dip: tty_set_disc(1): Invalid argument" diagnostic *after*
>getting the (correct) report of all the relevant network numbers to my
>dynamically-assigned SLIP session.  Syslog reports:

>    Jan 15 17:01:48 mmpt syslog: SETD(N_SLIP): Invalid argument

--
             UMN Department of Soil Science; St. Paul, MN
Internet: john.ladwig@soils.umn.edu             Fidonet: John Ladwig 1:282/341
     GS (1.01): d* -p+ c++ l++ e+ m+ s n++ h--- f g+ w+ t r- x*

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


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