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:     Mon, 9 May 94 02:13:07 EDT
Subject:  Linux-Development Digest #704

Linux-Development Digest #704, Volume #1          Mon, 9 May 94 02:13:07 EDT

Contents:
  Re: What about writing a fs-encryption (Jonathan Rozes)
  Re: SLIP bitch (Rob Janssen)
  Re: Booting from CD-ROM, was: [Announcement] 386BSD Release 1.0 (Rob Janssen)
  Re: Linux 1.0.8 SLOWER than .99pl13 !! (Rob Janssen)
  Linux and an IP Connectio (Gord Saker)
  Motif lookalike (u.baumgart@hot.gun.de)
  Bit-Boundary Subnetting? (Yermo Manfred Lamers)
  Re: [Announcement] 386BSD Release 1.0 (Torbj|rn Lindgren)
  Re: Booting from CD-ROM, was: [Announcement] 386BSD Release 1.0 (Torbj|rn Lindgren)
  Re: Couldn't malloc 1936269459 bytes!! for ELM (Dirk Jaeckel)
  swapper weirdness error message, what does it mean? / Mach8 query (Christopher D. Gori)
  Re: Linux 1.1.12...compile problem, plus TCP notes (Matthew Dillon)
  Re: stty/gtty -- where are they? (Omar Loggiodice)
  Re: SUMMARY: good programmer's editor for X? (Omar Loggiodice)
  Re: XFree86(tm)-2.1: xdm sabotage possible (an93497@anon.penet.fi)

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

From: jrozes@allegro.cs.tufts.edu (Jonathan Rozes)
Subject: Re: What about writing a fs-encryption
Date: Sun, 8 May 1994 23:40:10 GMT

>>>>> "Frank" == Frank Lofaro <ftlofaro@unlv.edu> writes:

>>> In comp.os.linux.development, article <JROZES.94May1161256@allegro.cs.tufts.edu>,
>>> jrozes@allegro.cs.tufts.edu (Jonathan Rozes) writes:
>> 
>> Nope. Matt will only release the code to US or Canada residents. Just
>> as a side note, US export laws also forbid exportation of skeleton
>> code that has the correct hooks for encryption modules in place. For 
>> an example, check out the bones distribution of kerberos.
>> 

> As far as I know, the law DOES NOT prohibit exporting code with hooks in it. 
> The kerberos people probably are being paranoid. (worried about appearance of 
> impropriety, etc.) Heck an hook for compression or any translation could 
> also serve as a hook for encryption, if the law was this tight, very little 
> free and open code could be developed. Even Linux itself would be illegal, 
> since the VFS layer could probably be used as a hook on which to stick 
> an encryption layer.

> The U.S. is pathetic, I admit, but we are not THAT bad! (yet....)

You are partially incorrect. DES is a special exception in that it
cannot be exported under any circumstances. Typically, it is much
easier to get approval to export authentication products than it is
for encryption products. Kerberos, while an authentication product,
cannot be exported because it uses DES. This also includes exporting
code that has hooks for a different encryption engine. While it isn't
explicitly stated, I assume this is because of the existence of
alternative (read foreign-built) DES libraries.

As far as I know, the only two ciphers that can be exported currently
are RC2 and RC4, although they must have a keysize no larger than 40
bits. Hopefully, export restrictions will be eased in the future, but
with the way Clinton is pushing skipjack, clipper, capstone and other
police-state algorithms down america's throat, I wouldn't count on it.

jonathan

--
+++ Jonathan Rozes, jrozes@cs.tufts.edu, jrozes@emerald.tufts.edu
+++ http://www.cs.tufts.edu/~jrozes/
+++ Editing simplified: A one-character RE is a RE that matches whatever
    the one-character RE matches. <a href=/usr/share/man/cat1/ed.1></a>

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

From: rob@pe1chl.ampr.org (Rob Janssen)
Subject: Re: SLIP bitch
Date: Sun, 8 May 1994 19:18:38 GMT
Reply-To: pe1chl@rabo.nl

In <2qhcdi$m8a@Mercury.mcs.com> darus@MCS.COM (Jim Wygralak) writes:

>This is a bitch directed to linux software developers on behalf of the
>sysadmin at the site where I just got a dialup slip account.

>As I was getting the configuration info from him, I asked for the IP address
>of the host side of the link and he wanted to know why I needed to know.
>I explained that I was running linux, and that the slip software needed to
>know.

But is that really true?  Probably it works just as well when you put
in some dummy value which is not on one of the networks you can reach
via other interfaces (e.g. a local ethernet)
While communicating, the IP address of the other side of the link never
appears in packets, so I would be surprised if you really needed it.
Just try...

Rob
-- 
=========================================================================
| Rob Janssen                | AMPRnet:   rob@pe1chl.ampr.org           |
| e-mail: pe1chl@rabo.nl     | AX.25 BBS: PE1CHL@PI8UTR.#UTR.NLD.EU     |
=========================================================================

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

Crossposted-To: comp.os.minix,comp.os.mach,comp.os.386bsd.development,comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.misc
From: rob@pe1chl.ampr.org (Rob Janssen)
Subject: Re: Booting from CD-ROM, was: [Announcement] 386BSD Release 1.0
Date: Sun, 8 May 1994 19:21:22 GMT
Reply-To: pe1chl@rabo.nl

In <1994May7.211614.28288@ibr.cs.tu-bs.de> rh@ramz.ing.tu-bs.de (Ruediger Helsch) writes:

>It is possible to boot from a CD-ROM. I made a CD with a boot block so
>it could be bootet from a SCSI CD-ROM hanging on an AHA1542B. But
>I do not know how many other SCSI adapters or CD-ROM controllers do
>allow this, I think even with the AHA1542C it would not work, its BIOS
>does simply refuse to boot a CD-ROM.

But what did you do to avoid the system booting from a harddisk?
I can understand (as I explained in another posting) that it is possible
to boot from a CD-ROM, at least as long as the BIOS does not explicitly
disallow it.  The bootcode just reads block 0 and performs some checks
on validity as a bootblock.
What I don't understand is how you can boot a CD-ROM which is at unit #1
(for example) while unit #0 is a harddisk.

Rob
-- 
=========================================================================
| Rob Janssen                | AMPRnet:   rob@pe1chl.ampr.org           |
| e-mail: pe1chl@rabo.nl     | AX.25 BBS: PE1CHL@PI8UTR.#UTR.NLD.EU     |
=========================================================================

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

From: rob@pe1chl.ampr.org (Rob Janssen)
Subject: Re: Linux 1.0.8 SLOWER than .99pl13 !!
Date: Sun, 8 May 1994 19:23:26 GMT
Reply-To: pe1chl@rabo.nl

In <1994May7.212139.18526@sifon.cc.mcgill.ca> daveh@texlin.minmet.mcgill.ca (Dave Hinz) writes:

>Kai Petzke wrote:

>: >Hi :

>: >I was recently testing the floating performance of the Linux Slackware
>: >distribution using the clinpack.c source.  For my  486DX2-66  I had
>: >previously obtained around 3.1 Mflops DP under .99pl13 but now I get
>: >only 2.8 Mflops under 1.0.8 -- that's a 10% loss in performance!!!

>: It is very unlikely, that this is a kernel fault.  For the 486DX,
>: the kernel is not involved in doing floating point instructions.

>: Possible reasons for the drop in meassured performance could be:
>: a) You run a very short test (less than 1 second), so that the
>:    increased precess start up time matters.

>I believe that the linpack source runs several loops through the benchmark
>and initializes the timer only after process startup.

It could be because of the improved accuracy of the timer in Linux.  I
don't know when this was exactly introduced, but now the gettimeofday()
call has a very high resolution in the return value, and before it was
only 10ms.

Rob
-- 
=========================================================================
| Rob Janssen                | AMPRnet:   rob@pe1chl.ampr.org           |
| e-mail: pe1chl@rabo.nl     | AX.25 BBS: PE1CHL@PI8UTR.#UTR.NLD.EU     |
=========================================================================

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

Subject: Linux and an IP Connectio
From: gord.saker@dt-can.com (Gord Saker)
Date: Fri,  6 May 94 13:32:00 -0500

Hmm...

        I have this wonderful 56K dedicated IP link that I want to
attach to my Linux box.. all of the Net-2 docs, faqs.. etc seem to
indicate or rather point to the use of a Linux box as a slip server,
getting its IP feed from the Ethernet side of things. The Motorola UDS
that I have installed is setup for RS-232 synchronous delivery. I was
hoping to plug this into Linux without the use of a Hardware Router. Is
it possible, and if so would someone be kind enuff to transmit the
how-to to me via email at gsaker@datatech.org. If its not possible, I
can handle that.. I probably won't accept it.. but I can live with it
and will proceed to the next step of purchasing the necessary hardware
router... All responses and or flames greatly appreciated..

---
 þ QMPro 1.51 þ All rising to a great place is by a winding stair.

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

From: u.baumgart@hot.gun.de
Subject: Motif lookalike
Date: 06 May 1994 18:01:00 +0200

Hi!

A couple of months before there was a discussion in this area about the
possibility to write a widget set/library with motif functionality. Is
anybody out there who is further interested in this subject?
Any activities? Possibly i would like to support such a project.
I am in the luck to have access to both, a linux pc and a hp-ux
workstation with development kit (compiler motif 1.1 etc.).


Ciao, Udo.

Udo Baumgart
Z-Netz:     U.BAUMGART@HOT.ZER
Internet:   U.BAUMGART@hot.gun.de
CompuServe: 100317,3135

## CrossPoint v3.0 R ##

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

From: yml@wam.umd.edu (Yermo Manfred Lamers)
Subject: Bit-Boundary Subnetting?
Date: 6 May 1994 18:56:55 GMT

I am running Slackware 1.2.0 on a CLass C address network with
3 subnets. This version of Linux does not support subnetting on
anything less than byte boundaries.

Do any of the newer kernel version support bit-boundary subnetting?

thank you,

Yermo Lamers
yml@radixii.com

please send replies to yml@radixii.com


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

From: tl@cd.chalmers.se (Torbj|rn Lindgren)
Crossposted-To: comp.os.minix,comp.unix.bsd,comp.unix.pc-clone.32bit,comp.os.386bsd.development,comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.misc
Subject: Re: [Announcement] 386BSD Release 1.0
Date: 9 May 1994 01:34:14 GMT

In article <CpHLJE.J5w@calcite.rhyolite.com>,
Vernon Schryver <vjs@calcite.rhyolite.com> wrote:
>In article <2qht16$msc@news.u.washington.edu> tzs@u.washington.edu (Tim Smith) writes:
>directly from CDROM using Adaptec 1540's.
>
>That is between "impossible" and "impractical" on purely practical
>grounds.  Everyone agrees it would require you to make your CDROM drive
>be target 0, 

No, some adapters can boot from other scsi ID's. I think that the
Adaptec 1540C (and newer, ie CF) DOES have this capability. You should
be able to enter the SCSI-BIOS setup (Ctrl-A under the boot?) and
change the id to boot from.

I don't know if this BIOS does allow you to boot from CD-ROMs, but I
wouldn't be particularly surprised since the BIOS is really new...

>come up from the CDROM.  Since most CDROM drives are read-only, that
>would make it rather inconvenient to configure the drives (and so forth)
>you actually have in your system.

I assume that the CD-ROM is meant to be used for the first boot
(instead of a boot floppy), and for recovery purpose.

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

From: tl@cd.chalmers.se (Torbj|rn Lindgren)
Crossposted-To: comp.os.minix,comp.os.mach,comp.os.386bsd.development,comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.misc
Subject: Re: Booting from CD-ROM, was: [Announcement] 386BSD Release 1.0
Date: 9 May 1994 01:38:33 GMT

In article <1994May8.192122.5828@pe1chl.ampr.org>,
Rob Janssen <pe1chl@rabo.nl> wrote:
>What I don't understand is how you can boot a CD-ROM which is at unit #1
>(for example) while unit #0 is a harddisk.

I think that the Adaptec 1540C can boot from other SCSI-ID's (I'm not
sure thought). Since the BIOS determines the mapping between drive-
numbers and SCSI-ID's this would be possibel to do. Wheter the BIOS
does support loading the first block from a CD-ROM and running this I
don't know.


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

From: biafra@acab.in-berlin.de (Dirk Jaeckel)
Subject: Re: Couldn't malloc 1936269459 bytes!! for ELM
Date: Fri, 6 May 1994 06:00:35 GMT

ek@harlie.han.de (Joerg Eckert) writes:


>Zhuo Er Lin (umlin000@cc.umanitoba.ca) wrote:
>: OK, this hasn't shown up before.  ELM works flawlessly before until
>: I change to 1.18 Kernel.  When mail to a user, as long as I typed
>: in the To: field and enter, ELM shows this:
>: Couldn't malloc 1936269459 bytes!!

>: Emergency exit taken! All temp files intact!

>I have had the same Problem yesterday! Because i have to send an
>important Email i tried to use a other Email-Package: pine
>After i used it and sent back the Email i tried to test ELM once more.
>And now? Elm is running without Problem. I don't know the reason, but
>if somone other have it, please give it to us.

I had the same problem. The
solution was to rm the /usr/lib/aliases.pag or /usr/lib/aliases.dir
and NOT making an "mkaliases" after this. 

Well, I upgraded to Slack 1.2.0 and it seems that this one is fixed.

bye             biafra
-- 
biafra@cs.tu-berlin.de
biafra@acab.in-berlin.de

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

From: cgori@isengard.stanford.edu (Christopher D. Gori)
Subject: swapper weirdness error message, what does it mean? / Mach8 query
Date: 6 May 1994 05:36:14 GMT

I'm running 1.1.10, it's been rock solid for a good while now.  Quite a nice
job, I don't think I've had a "kernel panic - can't swap" in a week now.
<knock on wood> Running in 4 meg, I had lots of problems with that 
before, however, I have gotten into a new one here.  I get the message 
"swapper weirdness" ("swap weirdness"?), I think, plus a lot of stuff like 
this (see bottom) in syslog.  Is this my HD going bad or what?  Last time 
I took the system down with reboot and brought it up it said FS has 
errors and ran e2fsck - I had gotten a number of these bad inode errors, 
but nothing had died.  I looked at some of these EIP's in the nm 
zSystem but nothing exciting showed up.  I'm using ext2fs 0.5a, 
if that affects anything.

Completely unrelated, is there any development effort underway to add Mach8
support to SVGAlib?  I saw the Mach32 preliminary support, it looked like
the hooks are there to similar things for Mach8's.  Since I have one =), I
would like to have some accelerated video, and would do coding too if I
could get my hands on some ATI-type documentation for Mach8 (ATI Graphics
Ultra), but no such thing has turned up.  My email to the Mach32 author
bounced...

        Thanks,

        Chris Gori
        cgori@leland.stanford.edu
        cgori@isengard.stanford.edu

========
May 5 19:20:01 isengard kernel: <2>EXT2-fs error (device 3/65):
ext2_read_inode: bad inode number: 1672040
May 5 19:20:01 isengard kernel: <1>Unable to handle kernel NULL pointer
dereference at kernel address 00000004
May 5 19:20:01 isengard kernel: <1>current->tss.cr3 = 003bd000, $r3 =
003bd000
May  5 19:20:01 isengard kernel: <1>*pde = 00102027
May  5 19:20:01 isengard kernel: <1>*pte = 00000027
May  5 19:20:01 isengard kernel: <6>Oops: 0000
May  5 19:20:01 isengard kernel: <6>EIP:    0010:00000004
May  5 19:20:01 isengard kernel: <6>EFLAGS: 00010246
May 5 19:20:01 isengard kernel: <6>eax: 002cfee0 ebx: 00000083 ecx: 001ce000
edx: 00367000
May 5 19:20:01 isengard kernel: <6>esi: 0000b2fd edi: 00098ee0 ebp: 003a4f80
esp: 003a4f18
May  5 19:20:01 isengard kernel: <6>ds: 0018   es: 0018   fs: 002b   gs: 002b
ss: 0018
May 5 19:20:01 isengard kernel: <6>Process crond (pid: 6790, process nr: 17,
stackpage=003a4000)
May 5 19:20:01 isengard kernel: <6>Stack: 0014a459 00198368 0000b2fd
00000001 

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

From: dillon@apollo.west.oic.com (Matthew Dillon)
Subject: Re: Linux 1.1.12...compile problem, plus TCP notes
Date: 8 May 1994 16:34:29 -0700

In article <ologgioCpI0Kp.9sy@netcom.com> ologgio@netcom.com (Omar Loggiodice) writes:
:Hi,
:
:   I just posted a message a few secs ago about 1.1.12 not compiling because
:functions rarp_get_info and rarp_ioctl were not in the inet.o object file.
:..

    Another thing to watch out for is that inet/rarp.c and inet/rarp.h get
    properly placed in /usr/src/linux/net/inet ... when I ran the patches,
    it got put in /usr/src/linux/inet (note the missing 'net'!).


    Pretty trivial to fix.  Have fun with the tcp patches, there are only
    two tcp state-machine related problems left that I know about:

        (1) TIME_WAIT's timeout is not correct, and it can move to CLOSE
            too quickly.  Not serious, most people will not notice it.

        (2) socket's can still get 'stuck' .. i.e. remain in the netstat
            forever in CLOSEd state, long after all references to them 
            have ceased.  Again, not serious.

    Nobody has done the mods to allow SYN's while in TIME_WAIT as per
    RFC-1122 yet.  That, plus the TCP state machine problems caused
    of the '30 second rsh' delay bug.  1.1.12 fixes the majority of the
    TCP state machine problems, and this has had the effect of greatly 
    reducing the number of cases where the RFC-1122 enhancement would 
    be needed, so most of the '30 second' delay problems should now be 
    gone despite the fact that RFC-1122 has not been implemented yet.

                                                -Matt

-- 

    Matthew Dillon              dillon@apollo.west.oic.com
    1005 Apollo Way
    Incline Village, NV. 89451  ham: KC6LVW (no mail drop)
    USA                         Sandel-Avery Engineering (702)831-8000
    [always include a portion of the original email in any response!]


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

From: ologgio@netcom.com (Omar Loggiodice)
Subject: Re: stty/gtty -- where are they?
Date: Sun, 8 May 1994 22:49:37 GMT

Sean Puckett (nate@loreli.ftl.fl.us) wrote:
:*> I'm trying to port MicroEmacs to Linux, and it's calling stty and gtty to
:*> save and restore the terminal status.  I'm new to Linux, and am having a
:*> difficult time figuring out which libraries/include files to use to get them.

:*> It SEEMS like you have to do a syscall(SYS_stty) or something like that to
:*> get the routine, but I'm not very sure, not having done this before under
:*> Linux.

:*> Could someone help me out here?  TIA.

 The stty() call is actually

          ioctl(fd, TIOCSETP, buf)

     while the gtty() call is

          ioctl(fd, TIOCGETP, buf)
You're welcome..


:*> --
:*>                        ..:: nate@loreli.ftl.fl.us ::..
:*>              ..:: Sean Puckett - Albino Frog Software, Inc. ::..
:*>           ..:: The Right Reverend Aural Hardly, MSK, BoC, FCoC ::..
-- 
____________________________________________________________________
            /   __  __  __  - __  __ / - _  __    ologgio@netcom.com
  Omar R.  /__ /_/ /_/ /_/ / /_/ /_/ / /_  /-_    ologgio@conicit.ve
                  __/ __/                         
___C++/5_yrs____Virtual Reality/3_yrs____Vorl_____Linux(free)_______

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

From: ologgio@netcom.com (Omar Loggiodice)
Subject: Re: SUMMARY: good programmer's editor for X?
Date: Sun, 8 May 1994 22:57:29 GMT

Stuart Herbert (ac3slh@sunc.sheffield.ac.uk) wrote:
:*> Kris Nybakken (nybakken@world.std.com) wrote:

:*> : SUMMARY
:*> : -= good programmer's editor for X?
:*> : (28 Apr 94)

:*> : == Jed ==
:*> : can be found at sunsite.unc.edu in /pub/Linux/apps/editors

:*> Latest version of jed is normally amy.tch.harvard.edu, in /pub/jed.  I know
:*> the author plans to upload the latest version to the normal sites, but last
:*> time I looked, it was only v0.94 that was on sunsite.

:*> : END SUMMARY
   As far as I've seen jed is an extremely good editor. In two days after I
ftp'ed it I installed it at work (HP-UX ) and also at home ( Linux)...I feel
extremely happy with it, and the extension language ( slang ) is pretty good
too ( it was developed as a separate "product").

   It has nice functions such as color-syntax-highlighting, functions to
position the cursor on the line where your error is located, and the
extension langauge is extremely good and really easy to pick up if you know
c. I wrote a function to "go-back-one-error" in a few minutes two days after
i got the editor ( after reading this post here).
:*> --
:*> Stuart Herbert -- S.Herbert@shef.ac.uk
-- 
____________________________________________________________________
            /   __  __  __  - __  __ / - _  __    ologgio@netcom.com
  Omar R.  /__ /_/ /_/ /_/ / /_/ /_/ / /_  /-_    ologgio@conicit.ve
                  __/ __/                         
___C++/5_yrs____Virtual Reality/3_yrs____Vorl_____Linux(free)_______

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

From: an93497@anon.penet.fi
Reply-To: an93497@anon.penet.fi
Date: Fri,  6 May 1994 06:30:59 UTC
Subject: Re: XFree86(tm)-2.1: xdm sabotage possible



Michael Will (michaelw@desaster.student.uni-tuebingen.de) writes:
>I run Linux1.1.10 and XFree86(tm)-2.1 with xdm providing local login at the
>console. I noted this is vulnerable to sabotage by any user.
>
>The following is not quite a security-risk but it could be annoying though:
>[/tmp/.X11-unix] world writable 

 Yes, it actually is a security risk. If xdm is run without the
terminateServer option, any (ab)user could just rename the socket (say, to
X0.real) and create a new X0. He would run a spoof Xserver on the new X0 socket,
which forwards all data to and from X0.real, and also logs every keystroke.
Pretty effective, especially since the first client which will run will be 
xdm :-)
 If xdm is run with the terminateServer option, this attack becomes less easy
against xdm, but it can still be used against other clients (for instance
xterms used to telnet into other machines). And the spoofer can not only listen 
to keystrokes, but also insert his own...
 Btw, this works on other Unices too.

 Possible fixes: 
  1. chmod 755 /tmp/.X11-unix
  2. connect your clients to localhost:0 instead of :0 or unix:0

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