Subject: Linux-Development Digest #389
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 12:13:10 EST

Linux-Development Digest #389, Volume #1         Wed, 19 Jan 94 12:13:10 EST

Contents:
  VLB or eisa or PCI ?? (Janne Soimasuo)
  bug or misfeature in libc 4.5.8 libio/iogetline.c (Jay Berkenbilt)
  Re: e2fsprogs-0.4a / fsck / pl-14p prob. (Joerg Fries)
  Re: Status of NIS (cale hollingsworth)
  Re: [ANSWER] PL14n and PL14o ext2 problems (Peter Brouwer)
  Re: [ANSWER] PL14n and PL14o ext2 problems (Stephen Tweedie)
  Re: [ANSWER] PL14n and PL14o ext2 problems (Stephen Tweedie)
  Re: Is it possible to run DOSEMU and X at the same time? (Fritz Ganter)
  Re: What is the status of IFS? (Dan Newcombe)
  Re: tty64 (sic) input overrun (Rene COUGNENC)
  Re: pl14p serial code broken ! (Rene COUGNENC)
  Writing mwm (Bryan Zarnett)
  Re: Writing mwm (Andrew Haisley)

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

From: jsoi@joensuu.fi (Janne Soimasuo)
Subject: VLB or eisa or PCI ??
Date: Wed, 19 Jan 1994 07:24:08 GMT

[ Article crossposted from comp.os.linux.admin ]
[ Author was Janne Soimasuo ]
[ Posted on Wed, 19 Jan 1994 06:55:57 GMT ]

Hello from cold Joensuu (-26 C  ~ -10 F) !!!

We are going to buy a server to manipulate satellite images (a file ~ 100 Mb)
so the use will require quite lot from the bus of hard drive.

I'd like to have some hints about different bus-models, is there any
difference in practice ?

The system is going to be something like
        - 468 dx2 66 
        - 32 Mb memory
        - 2 Gb HD
        - 1 or 2 Mb display controller
        - ethernet-connection

Does the linux run well with SCSI-VLB ? support ? what about if also
the display controller is in VLB ?

What about eisa bus ? any advantage in practice ? supported scsi-controllers or ethercards ?

Finally PCI and/or Pentium ? Is there any supported SCSI- and display 
controllers ? ethercards ?

Is there any supported SCSI-controllers with 4-8 Mb cache in general ?
opinion about integrated SCSI and display controllers ?

Is the integrated SCSI-2 of DECpc XL supported ?

So shall I buy:
        isa-motherboard with 2 VLB or
        eisa-vlb motherboard (for example DECpc MTE)
        PCI-vlb motherboard (for example DECpc XL)

Thanks in advance !!!!


Janne Soimasuo
Faculty of Forestry
University of Joensuu, Finland

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

From: ejb@ERA.COM (Jay Berkenbilt)
Subject: bug or misfeature in libc 4.5.8 libio/iogetline.c
Date: Tue, 18 Jan 1994 22:20:06 GMT


Hello.  I don't know whether this is the right place for this
bug report.  I am not on the GCC channel of linux activists
right now.  I'd appreciate a response so I know this report was
received by the right person.

Short version: 
fgets() mutates the string passed to it even when no characters
are read into the buffer. 

Detailed version:
Ordinarily, fgets() returns NULL when it detects an error or an
EOF.  The linux fgets() not only returns NULL but sets the first
character of the passed in string to '\0'.  It does this because
after the do loop and before return ptr - buf in iogetline.c,
there is a call to *ptr = 0 that happens whether or not any
information has been copied in buf.  Apparently the purpose of
this code is to assure that the string returned my fgets is
always null-terminated.

I don't know whether I've actually seen this specified anywhere,
but I don't think that fgets and gets should modify the string
when no characters have been read.  I would suggest that the
*ptr = 0 line be executed only if (ptr != buf).

I noticed this because I noticed that shar 3.49, which I had
just compiled on linux, was putting a blank line at the end of
each file it archived.  Upon inspection of the code, it turned
out that this was because shar was counting on fgets not
mutating "line" (the string passed to fgets) when EOF was
detected.  After the EOF, it then checked line[strlen(line) - 1]
to see whether the last line of the file ended with a newline to
determine whether it needed to append an extra newline to the
output or not.  It expected line to still contain the last line
read.  I'm not claiming that the shar code necessarily does this
check in the right way, but it still brings up the issue of
whether fgets() should mutate the string after an EOF.

By the way, I think Linux is terrific.  I've been using it since
0.96c (July, 1992) and have been keeping up to the latest public
releases of the kernel, compiler, and libraries as well as some
other things.  Since I do not have convenient access to a live
internet connection and since my place of work pays for connect
time, I don't subscribe to linux activists...

--
                                Jay Berkenbilt (ejb@ERA.COM)
                                Engineering Research Associates

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

From: fries@iti.informatik.th-darmstadt.de (Joerg Fries)
Crossposted-To: comp.os.linux.help
Subject: Re: e2fsprogs-0.4a / fsck / pl-14p prob.
Date: 19 Jan 1994 08:35:17 GMT

Gary Anderson (ganderson@clark.net) wrote:
> I just tried to switch from e2fsck-0.2b to the new fsck (0.4a) in the 
> e2fsprogs package.
> I had previously installed the bootutils, and the new 'shutdown'.  
> No problems with my file system ever showed up using fsck 0.2b.
> Now that I have installed pl-14p, fsck 0.2b still works fine, 
> reports no problems.

> But when I installed fsck 0.4a, i got several screens full of a 
> couple of errors:
> 'bad file name - contains '/' or null.....' etc.  (went by pretty fast,
>        couldn't catch it all), and
> 'inode xxxxx not used with links_count not null'

> Yes, my root (and only) file system is mounted read-only with lilo, 
> and is confirmed as read only by the kernel boot-up message.  
> Fortunately, I had told fsck 0.4a to only check (not fix) errors.
>
> .....
>
> Any hints/clues/help/fixes would be GREATLY appreciated !

> Gary
> ganderson @ clark.net

Have you changed only the checker (fsck)? When you didn't updated
the whole filesystem to 0.4 then you don't have to wonder about these
probs. But I think you made these changes ;-)

I've had the problem 'inode xxxxx not used with links_count not null'
for approximately 500 times when booting, and told the checker to
repair (read-only), but that doesn't help.

This problem ended with an update to p14 kernel. Now everything is correct.

Hope this helps

Joerg.

--

==============================================================================
Joerg Fries
Department of Computer Science
Technical University of Darmstadt, Germany

email: fries@iti.informatik.th-darmstadt.de
==============================================================================

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

From: CALE_HOLLINGSWORTH@billteds.com (cale hollingsworth)
Subject: Re: Status of NIS
Date: Tue, 18 Jan 1994 22:13:46 GMT

->
-> In article <CJ9Ktp.Fx4@lysator.liu.se> pen@lysator.liu.se (Peter Erik
-> writes:
-> >trockij@pt.Cyanamid.COM (Jim Trocki) writes:
-> >
-> >>  I read in the "Linux Network Administrators Guide" that someone w
-> >>working on NIS code.  Can anyone tell me the status of this project
-> >>Might we see it soon?
-> >
-> >Actually there are two different NIS "projects". One is included
-> >in the standard libc but only implements YP (NIS version 2). It
-> >requires that you find working ypbind and portmap daemons from
-> >somewhere that I don't know.
-> >
-> Does anybody know of the whereabouts of the `other' project?
-> And does it have a working YP/NIS?
-> And I guess I'll need to know where to find ypbind and portmap too!
->
-> Ross

test

===========================================================================
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(317) 883-4510 v32bis                                               4 Nodes
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------------------------------

From: pb@idca.tds.philips.nl (Peter Brouwer)
Subject: Re: [ANSWER] PL14n and PL14o ext2 problems
Date: 19 Jan 94 08:33:25 GMT
Reply-To: pb@idca.tds.philips.nl (Peter Brouwer)

In <2hh7ffINN67a@srvr1.engin.umich.edu> afgun@engin.umich.edu (Andrew F Gunnesch) writes:


>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.

What about a different approach ( like SYSV 3.2 ).
At init state S no processes are active so a fsck on the root disk is safe
under the following conditions:

Issue a sync command from fsck.
Perform disk checking and repair ( if requested ).
Fsck does a remount or a reboot if the root partition was changed.

This saves all kind of constructions in boot scripts in order to savely do
a check on the root file system.

I do not know if there are system calls in Linux to do a remount or a reboot
and preventing a sync during this process.


--
Regards, Peter Brouwer                 /\_/\
pb@idca.tds.philips.nl                 (0 0)
===================================oOO==(_)==OOo============================
# Digital Equipment Enterprise,        / WorkGroup Systems, Office Product Set
# DIGITAL : HLDEO1::BROUWER_P,829-4218 \ Dep Office Product Sets, P.O.Box 245,
# PHONE:[+31][0]55 43 ext 4218,fax 9133  7300AE Apeldoorn, The Netherlands.

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

From: sct@dcs.ed.ac.uk (Stephen Tweedie)
Subject: Re: [ANSWER] PL14n and PL14o ext2 problems
Date: Wed, 19 Jan 1994 11:39:24 GMT


Hi,

> In <2hh7ffINN67a@srvr1.engin.umich.edu> afgun@engin.umich.edu
> (Andrew F Gunnesch) writes:

> What about a different approach ( like SYSV 3.2 ).
> At init state S no processes are active so a fsck on the root disk is safe
> under the following conditions:

> Issue a sync command from fsck.
> Perform disk checking and repair ( if requested ).
> Fsck does a remount or a reboot if the root partition was changed.

> This saves all kind of constructions in boot scripts in order to savely do
> a check on the root file system.

PLEASE don't do this!!!!!!

The ext2fs filesystem and e2fsck interact quite strongly.  Mounting or
unmounting an ext2fs filesystem unsets or sets a flag in the partition
indicating that the filesystem is clean.  This is checked by e2fsck so
that it can skip the fsck on a cleanly unmounted partition but do a
full check on the partition after a crash.

If you fsck a mounted (rw) partition, things can get awfully confused.

If the filesystem has been remounted readonly, however, then the
kernel will set the "clean" flag and you can fsck quite safely.  Note,
however, that it is still unsafe to remount it r/w if fsck makes any
changes to the partition.

If you do want to safely fsck a partition manually before rebooting,
then remount the partition r/w first.  The safest way would be to drop
into singleuser mode ("init S" as root if you are running
SysVinit-2.4), then do a "umount -av".

The above also applies to minix filesystems as of recent pl14 ALPHA
kernels.

Cheers,
 Stephen.
---
Stephen Tweedie <sct@dcs.ed.ac.uk>   (JANET: sct@uk.ac.ed.dcs)
Department of Computer Science, Edinburgh University, Scotland.

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

From: sct@dcs.ed.ac.uk (Stephen Tweedie)
Subject: Re: [ANSWER] PL14n and PL14o ext2 problems
Date: Wed, 19 Jan 1994 11:47:12 GMT

Hi,

In article <NEAL.94Jan18130057@neal.ctd.comsat.com>,
neal@ctd.comsat.com (Neal Becker) writes:

> Thanks for all that answered this question.  I have a pretty workable
> system now using sysvinit (still some problems with switching
> runlevels).

Yup.  I use SysVinit-2.4, and it works perfectly; I'd certainly
recommend it highly.

> But isn't this /etc/fastboot pretty kludgy?  I though ext2 was
> supposed to support a mark for clean devices.  If this was true it
> should be possible to make e2fsck return a nice status code to say the
> device was clean!

Ext2fs does have such a facility, and it is normally completely
automatic.  I never use fastboot.  *Ever*.  E2fsck will automatically
detect a cleanly unmounted partition and will skip the fsck on it.
After any kind of a crash, you still get an automatic fsck on the next
boot.  As of ext2fs-0.4, you can also set fsck up to do a forced fsck
every so-many boots regardless of the clean status on the filesystem,
just to be sure.

Cheers,
 Stephen.
---
Stephen Tweedie <sct@dcs.ed.ac.uk>   (JANET: sct@uk.ac.ed.dcs)
Department of Computer Science, Edinburgh University, Scotland.

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

From: ganter@fvkmapc02.tu-graz.ac.at (Fritz Ganter)
Subject: Re: Is it possible to run DOSEMU and X at the same time?
Date: 15 Jan 1994 22:43:37 GMT

Joel M. Hoffman (joel@rac2.wam.umd.edu) wrote:

: I finally got X running, but I still have programs I use to run in
: DOSEMU in console mode.  Is that possible?  Will the two program
: cooperate?

Go back to a console with CTRL-ALT-Fx and start dosemu. It works and
you can switch back with ALT-F7 to the X screen. I have often running
the english-german dictionary in dosemu while reading the news.

Fritz

: Please advise.

: Thanks.

: -Joel
: (joel@wam.umd.edu)
: 
: -- 
: -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
: |_|~~ Germany, Europe. 1943.    "The diameter of the bomb was 30 centimeters,
: __|~| 16 Million DEAD.           and the diameter of its destruction, about 7
:                                 meters, and in it four killed and 11 wounded. 
:  cnc  Bosnia, Europe. 1993.     And around these, in a larger circle of  pain
:  cnc  HOW MANY MORE?          and time,  are scattered two  hospitals and one
:                           cemetery.   But the young woman who was  buried  in
:                     the place from where she came, at a distance of more than
:              than 100 kilometers, enlarges the circle considerably.   And the 
:       lonely man who is mourning her death in a distant  country incorporates
: into the circle the whole world.  And I won't speak of the cry of the orphans
: that reaches God's chair and from there makes the circle endless and godless."
: -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
:      Tell Clinton to stop the genocide:  president@whitehouse.gov

--

Fritz Ganter                    Graz University of Technology, Austria
Email:  ganter@fvkmapc02.tu-graz.ac.at, ganter@fvkmads02.tu-graz.ac.at
HAM-Radio:                OE6FAD@OE6XYG.AUT.EU, OE6FAD@OE6FAD.AMPR.ORG 
Phone:                +43 316 873-7222 (Office), +43 316 663243 (home)
   **********      Linux... try it, use it, love it.      ************

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

From: NEWCOMBE@AA.csc.Peachnet.EDU (Dan Newcombe)
Subject: Re: What is the status of IFS?
Date: 19 Jan 1994 07:06:46 -0600

[This is something I got in response to a question I asked on the above 
subject.  Lighten up people...]

> Hello friend.  You are getting this message for one of two reasons ...

Hello...  bad mistake though, espescially since I got this sooo early on a 
cold morning :)

>         1 - You have posted a message in a comp.os.linux newsgroup
>             which is related to Linux, but belongs in another
>             newsgroup (i.e. - comp.windows.x.i386unix, comp.lang.c,
>             comp.unix.*).

I doubt it, but read on.

>         2 - You have posted a message in a comp.os.linux newsgroup
>             which is completely unrelated to Linux.

Nope...

>            The newsgroup comp.os.linux.development is an unmoderated
>            newsgroup specifically for discussion of Linux kernel
>            development. The only application development questions that
>            should be discussed here are those that are intimately
>            associated with the kernel.

AS the above said, keep development to the Kernel discussions.  Well, last 
time I used it, IFS was a part of the kernel.  It is not an application.
In fact it even gets put in the /usr/src/linux subdir when you are making the 
kernel, and gets compiled into the kernel.

While I do agree that a lot of the traffic on c.o.l.d is a waste and has 
nothing to do with the topic, mine does.  I think before you go playing some 
sort of net-cop like this, you'd better brush up on the law.

I don't really mean this to be rude or a flame, but just a response to an 
unprovoked (and erroneous) response.

    -Dan
--
Daniel A. Newcombe                                  Clayton State College
Computing Services                                  Morrow, GA 30260
E-Mail Address: newcombe@aa.csc.peachnet.edu        (404)-961-3421
-=-=-=- I can handle MIME mail, so don't be afraid to send me some -=-=-=-
- The rain auditions at my window, it's symphony echoes in my womb
  My gaze scans the walls of this apartment to rectify the confines
  of my tomb.                  (Marillion, The Web)


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

From: rene@renux.frmug.fr.net (Rene COUGNENC)
Subject: Re: tty64 (sic) input overrun
Date: 19 Jan 1994 02:17:24 GMT
Reply-To: cougnenc@itesec.ensta.fr

Ce brave hugo@artware.nl ecrit:

> In article <AhCjGja00VR541XoIW@andrew.cmu.edu> "Brian E. Gallew" <geek+@CMU.EDU> writes:
> >Funny, I just started getting the same error, but I *didn't* upgrade
> >my kernel (I'm still running 99pl14i).  What I upgraded was GCC

> Thanks Brian, for responding to my original posting. You probably are right
> as i also upgraded to GCC 2.5.8 and libc 4.5.8, the same time i switched to
> linuxp14m (all this to be able to run Xfree86 2.0, as i do now :-).

No no no no no, read the patches you apply :-)

The "input overrun" kernel message appeared in the serial patches against
pl14, patches now integrated in the last Alpha releases.

Before that, the error was here but was counted as any other serial error;
now this is printed more precisely.

This kind of error appear when received characters are lost, this is at
an interrupt level so hardware flow control can do nothing for that.

Using a 16550A instead of an ordinary UART can help a lot.

--
 linux linux linux linux -[ cougnenc@renux.frmug.fr.net ]- linux linux linux 

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

From: rene@renux.frmug.fr.net (Rene COUGNENC)
Subject: Re: pl14p serial code broken !
Date: 19 Jan 1994 02:22:21 GMT
Reply-To: cougnenc@itesec.ensta.fr


Ok, the problem is fixed in patchlevel 'r', thank you !

(At least it seems fixed for me... :-) )

--
 linux linux linux linux -[ cougnenc@renux.frmug.fr.net ]- linux linux linux 

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

From: bzarnett@jupiter.scs.Ryerson.CA (Bryan Zarnett)
Subject: Writing mwm
Date: 19 Jan 1994 14:12:44 GMT

I was just wondering...I was going to try my hand at writing mwm for Linux,
either that or some openlook compatible widgets for the toolkit..which do
u think would be better received?  If I did the mwm, I would  probably do
the widget set for it too.

- bryan


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

From: andrew@Smallworld.co.uk (Andrew Haisley)
Subject: Re: Writing mwm
Date: 19 Jan 1994 15:43:29 GMT

In article <2hjf4s$e7n@hermes.acs.ryerson.ca>,
bzarnett@jupiter.scs.Ryerson.CA (Bryan Zarnett) writes:
> I was just wondering...I was going to try my hand at writing mwm for
> Linux,
> either that or some openlook compatible widgets for the toolkit..which
> do
> u think would be better received?  If I did the mwm, I would  probably
> do
> the widget set for it too.
> 
 
A motif compatible widget set would be extremely well received -
particularly
if it had an API compatible with the standard OSF one. This goes for
all
varieties of unix, not just linux.

Can you send me a copy when you've written it ? 

-- 
The opinions expressed here are not those of Smallworld Systems Ltd.
Andrew Haisley - andrew@smallworld.co.uk 
================ life is shorter than you think ====================

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


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