Subject: Linux-Misc Digest #572
From: Digestifier <Linux-Misc-Request@senator-bedfellow.MIT.EDU>
To: Linux-Misc@senator-bedfellow.MIT.EDU
Reply-To: Linux-Misc@senator-bedfellow.MIT.EDU
Date:     Wed, 19 Jan 94 16:13:29 EST

Linux-Misc Digest #572, Volume #1                Wed, 19 Jan 94 16:13:29 EST

Contents:
  Running Linux from CD-ROM? (Derek J. Middleton)
  WUARCHIVE LOST :) (Neil McRae)
  Re: dos2unix, unix2dos text conversion programs?? (Bill C. Riemers)
  Re: REPOST: Slackware 1.1.0 (now 1.1.1), mouse problems (Paul Marquess)
  Re: Global Alert For All: Jesus is Coming Soon (James Hammett)
  Re: new shadow-3.3.1 patches (John F. Haugh II)
  Re: lilo and msdos 6.2 (T. Daniel Crawford)
  Re: lilo and msdos 6.2 (Nick Ruprecht)
  ANOTHER filesystem crash! (Ian Chard)
  SpeedUp 4Mb -> 8Mb results (Jonny Farringdon)
  [Solution!!] Adaptec 1742 with Maxtor SCSI drives (Jeffrey Wiegley)
  Re: Comments On SLS Linux Spin-Off? (Jonathan Magid)
  Re: Linux as X-Terminal? No! (Byron A Jeff)
  Mylex DCE376 Drivers available? (Erich Ruprecht)

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

From: middleto@cps.msu.edu (Derek J. Middleton)
Subject: Running Linux from CD-ROM?
Date: 19 Jan 1994 15:37:33 GMT

Does anyone know if Linux can be run from a CD-ROM?  I realize it would be
slow but the person who wants to do this has lots of memory so eventually
everything would get cached.  Also, it's obvious you would have to do
some sort of minimal install on your harddrive to get it to boot (unless
LILO would be modified to read directly from the CD-ROM).

What versions of the kernel are available?  Reply by email if possible
as i will be posting a followup summary at a later date.  Thank you.

-Derek
--
Proud new upgrader:  286/12, 40MB -> 486DLC/40 (w/math co), 400MB

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

Crossposted-To: comp.sys.amiga.misc,demon.local,connect.chatter,connect.audit
From: neilm@ibmpcug.co.uk (Neil McRae)
Subject: WUARCHIVE LOST :)
Date: Wed, 19 Jan 1994 14:46:13 GMT


Hi netters,

Here is something that I thought served as a good reminder to make regular
verified backups :)

Wuarchive the largest ftp site in the world have just announced this
(ftp.wustl.edu)

The entire archives were destroyed the afternoon of Thursday, January 13th
due to a bug in the system crash dump routines.  There have been serious
problems restoring backups due to a failed tape drive -- we have gotten a
loaner drive, but there may not be any recent viable backups of the
archives.

Translation: everything was lost, the archive maintainers are scrambling
to find copies of all of the missing files -- it's probable that some
files were lost permanently.

Thanks for your patience,

The Management


======

Last I heard that the archive was 16GB's big and is the main mirror for
most sites! 

Regards,

Neil

-- 
neilm@ibmpcug.co.uk  <Messages ONLY:)  Neil J. McRae
n.mcrae@csu.napier.ac.uk <Anything :)  37 Kingsknowe Road North
===================================:)  EDINBURGH EH14 2DE United Kingdom
I Can't Dance I Can't Talk, The only thing about me is the way that I Walk!

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

From: bcr@bohr.physics.purdue.edu (Bill C. Riemers)
Crossposted-To: comp.os.linux.help
Subject: Re: dos2unix, unix2dos text conversion programs??
Date: 18 Jan 94 17:58:58 GMT

In article <SKNKWRKS.94Jan18015308@sonny-boy.cs.unlv.edu> sknkwrks@sonny-boy.cs.unlv.edu (Scott Alfter) writes:
>Try these simple C programs.  (Cut out the source code between the
>lines and compile...no makefile needed since a makefile for such
>simple programs would be pointless.)

Ah, another post by someone who doesn't know how to use sed or ed.  Always
get a good laugh  when people write complicated programs to replace simple
one line unix commands.  

In a pipe try:

  sed 's/$/\^M/'    --> converts to msdos

  sed 's/\^M$//'    --> converts to unix

For a file "foo" on disk try:
  (echo '1,$s/$/\^M/';echo w;echo q)|ed - foo  --> converts to msdos
  (echo '1,$s/\^M$//';echo w;echo q)|ed - foo  --> converts to unix

Unfortately some versions of ed are  painfully slow, but you can also
use awk, perl, ...

Obcourse these are alittle tedious to type, so make them aliases or
scripts.

In this case there is no reason to do this since "fromdos" and "todos"
are includeded in most distributions.

                           Bill

p.s. To type ^M used  either CTRL-V CTRL-M -or- CTRL-V CTRL-J depending
on your terminal type.

p.p.s. I'm still looking for a decent "ed" manual page.  The one I have
       is completely useless.
  


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

From: pmarquess@bfsec.bt.co.uk (Paul Marquess)
Subject: Re: REPOST: Slackware 1.1.0 (now 1.1.1), mouse problems
Reply-To: pmarquess@bfsec.bt.co.uk
Date: Wed, 19 Jan 1994 15:51:19 GMT

Joel L. Seber ... CH210 (JLS2013@tntech.edu) wrote:
: My original message was:

: |I have a Logitech bus mouse and have installed slackware 1.1.0.  When I
: |boot, the mouse is recognized, but when I try to run any application that
: |uses it, I am told the device is busy.  I am not running 'selection'.  I
: |have an ATI Mach 32 VESA video card, 66Mhz 486, 16MB RAM, Ultrastor 34F SCSI
: |controller, 1.3GB Connor HD, Toshiba 2x CD-ROM, Archive Viper 250MB tape
: |backup.
: |
: |BTW, I tried 'fuser /dev/mouse' and got nothing back.
: |
: |Can anyone help?
: |

: Since then, I downloaded the updated 'a' series disks with an updated kernal
: and installed them.  Linux still runs fine except for my mouse.  I did
: neglect to say above that I have my bus mouse's card set to IRQ 5.
: I also made sure the symbolic link to /dev/mouse from the logitech bus mouse 
: device (it's name escapes me at the moment) was correct.  I have tried
: bypassing /dev/mouse in Xconfig and entering the absolute device name in
: /dev; no go.  The mouse works in all apps fine under MS-DOS 6.2.

: As far as I can tell through software (QEMM's Manifest under DOS) and checks
: of every board (I removed each looking for jumpers/DIP switches and also
: checked the manuals for each board), I have no other devices using IRQ 5.
: One respondant suggested I do a custom kernal.  I will try that as time
: permits, but I thought I could save time if someone else had had this
: problem already.  BTW, I have also had at least one "me too" response, so I
: feel this is worth pursueing.

: ANY suggestions at this point are welcome!  I will summarize to the list
: when I get the problem solved.  If nothing else, I can buy a serial mouse,
: but I'd really rather use a bus mouse to free up both my serial ports.

I am having a similar problem with Slackware 1.1.1. 
I have a microsoft bus mouse which I think is recognised by Linux as a 
Logitech during booting (sorry my Linux machine is at home). When I try
starting up X-windows I get device busy for /dev/mouse. The same thing
happens if I try to run selection. 

Any suggestions would be most welcome.

Paul

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

From: James Hammett <jamesh@apple.com>
Subject: Re: Global Alert For All: Jesus is Coming Soon
Date: Wed, 19 Jan 1994 16:03:43 GMT

He's right, the end of the world is coming :-> :
        
In article <2hhl0l$94r@klaava.Helsinki.FI> Linus Torvalds,
torvalds@cc.helsinki.fi writes:
> This is a general announcement of the imminent code-freeze that will
> hopefully make linux 1.0 a reality.  The plan has been discussed a bit
> with various developers already, and is already late, but is still in
> effect otherwise. 

Linux 1.0.

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

From: jfh@rpp386 (John F. Haugh II)
Subject: Re: new shadow-3.3.1 patches
Reply-To: jfh@rpp386.cactus.org (John F. Haugh II)
Date: Wed, 19 Jan 1994 15:31:08 GMT

In article <2hhgdm$3mh@klaava.Helsinki.FI> Florian La Roche <rzsfl@rz.uni-sb.de> writes:
>There are several bugs fixed. I advise to change to these new patches.
>I also tried to conform to the new Linux filesystem layout.
>They should work ok for the old Linux C library 4.4.x and also for the
>new C library 4.5.x.
>(Note: This version doesn't use the shadow routines in the new C library,
>so any maybe existing bugs in the C library do not harm. If you want to
>use them, do not include the files shadow.c and gshadow.c, when building
>the library libshadow.a.)

I fetched a copy of the patches and noticed that you completely ignored
the way the Makefiles are laid out along with a large number of other
incompatible changes.  As soon as I can figure out what else you and your
buddies have done wrong, I'll get these patches into the real Shadow
distribution and off to the licensed Linux distributors.
-- 
John F. Haugh II  [ NRA-ILA ] [ Kill Barney ] !'s: ...!cs.utexas.edu!rpp386!jfh
Ma Bell: (512) 251-2151 [GOP][DoF #17][PADI][ENTJ]   @'s: jfh@rpp386.cactus.org
The P.C. Movement killed the 1st Amendment, the Brady Bill the 2nd, the WOsD
got the 4th and 5th, political activism the 9th and 10th.  Not much left, eh?

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

From: crawdad@smerdis.ccqc.uga.edu (T. Daniel Crawford)
Subject: Re: lilo and msdos 6.2
Date: 19 Jan 1994 16:52:59 GMT
Reply-To: crawdad@smerdis.ccqc.uga.edu

In article <CJrvwr.79G@cs.utwente.nl>, heida@cs.utwente.nl (Kees K.S. Heida) writes:
>B. Verspagen (Bart.Verspagen@MERIT.rulimburg.nl) wrote:
>: Hello, does anybody have experience with lilo and msdos 6.2? I tried 
>: installing dos 6.2 on my system which has linux and dos partitions on the C: 
>: drive. I have used the stepup program from microsoft. This writes to my 
>: bootsector on C:, so after the installation lilo was gone. Then I booted 
>: linux from a floppy, mounted my /dev/hda2 partition, and attempted to run 
>: lilo from it. 
>
>This is due to the fact that the floppydrive is the root device. Read the lilo documentation and set the root for lilo in the config file.
>Edit the config file (on the floppy) and add as a first line
>ROOT=/dev/hda
>then run lilo again and it should not give you any trouble.
>

Well, I upgraded DOS to 6.2 last week and ran into the exact same problem.  
My thanks go to the DOS folks for writing a setup program that doesn't
notify the user when it over-writes the boot sector.  For those who are
going to do a DOS upgrade, read the little paragraph on page 189 of the DOS
manual -- it tells you what to do -- NOT. :)

Anyway,  I did exactly what you describe here -- ROOT = /dev/hda, but to no
avail.  The system still tried to boot from the floppy, but then LILO was
killed and couldn't load.  I had to do some weird disk swapping (lucky I had
TWO boot/root disks!) and finally it worked.

I post this simply as a warning to those who upgrade their DOS partition.
MAKE SURE YOU DO IT BY HAND!

-Daniel

-- 
T. Daniel Crawford                      Center for Computational Quantum
crawdad@smerdis.ccqc.uga.edu                        Chemistry

_kludge_ - n, (klooj) an improvised, jury-rigged, poorly thought out solution
to a problem, usually intended only for temporary use.  (Possibly from Ger.
klug, "clever".) (The Dictionary of Computer Terms, Barron's, 1992.)

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

From: ruprecht@euklid.informatik.uni-dortmund.de (Nick Ruprecht)
Subject: Re: lilo and msdos 6.2
Date: 19 Jan 1994 17:17:50 GMT

>>B. Verspagen (Bart.Verspagen@MERIT.rulimburg.nl) wrote:
>>: Hello, does anybody have experience with lilo and msdos 6.2? I tried 
>>: installing dos 6.2 on my system which has linux and dos partitions on the C: 
>>: drive. I have used the stepup program from microsoft. This writes to my 
>>: bootsector on C:, so after the installation lilo was gone. Then I booted 
>>: linux from a floppy, mounted my /dev/hda2 partition, and attempted to run 
>>: lilo from it. 

When I installed LILO, it seemed to be the natural thing to me to
install it into the bootsector *of the Linux partition* and make that
the active partition. This way, if things go completely afoul, I can
always deactivate LILO and revert to bloody ol' DOS just by running
fdisk and changing the active partition back. Also, this way DOS will
never mess around with LILO.

This possibility is well documented in the LILO docs. I wonder why
people love to install LILO into the disk bootsector which only gets
them all sorts of problems.

Cheers -

Nick

-- 

Nick Ruprecht                   ruprecht@ls7.informatik.uni-dortmund.de
The Computer Graphics Group     phone:  +49-231-755 6134
Department of Computer Science  fax:    +49-231-755 6321
University of Dortmund          D-44221 Dortmund, Germany

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

From: chardi@cs.man.ac.uk (Ian Chard)
Subject: ANOTHER filesystem crash!
Date: 19 Jan 94 16:46:14 GMT

Hi,

I had yet another /usr filesystem crash last night - my third.
The first was an ext filesystem, but the two others have been ext2.
The problems seemed to start when I installed a new version of shutdown...
any ideas?

Also, the problem is exacerbated by a problem with syslogk (or is it syslogd) -
occasionally it goes runaway, writing crap into /usr/adm/kernel until /usr
fills up completely.  The last time it did this, it was _this_file_ that caused
the filesystem crash (deleting it had no effect, and an e2fsck spewed several
miles of crap at me).

Thanks if you can help me,

Ian.

-- 

[ Ian Chard, Systems Integration |  Pip pip pip pip pip piiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiip.  ]
[ Email:     chardi@cs.man.ac.uk |                                            ]
[ NTS: G7OMZ @ GB7NWP.#16.GBR.EU |                             -- BBC Radio 4 ]
[ AMPRnet:  g7omz@g7omz.ampr.org |                                            ]

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

From: ucjtrjf@ucl.ac.uk (Jonny Farringdon)
Subject: SpeedUp 4Mb -> 8Mb results
Date: Wed, 19 Jan 1994 17:22:56 GMT
Reply-To: ucjtrjf@ucl.ac.uk

Well, our machines came with 4MB, and 6 weeks later Acer sent us the extra
4Mb we'd ordered.  The speedup was amazing. ..

Linux (slackware Dec 93, 1.1.1?) AcerPower486SX-25

                4Mb             8Mb             time in seconds

xinit           50              17
gcc a2ps        43              24
xv 3            25              18
spider          20              3

xinit - xinit running a terminal, xsysinfo, xload, colouring the background,
showing a Linux banner, staring a shell.

gcc a2ps - compiling a2ps, for both 4 and 8 Mb the user time was 7.3 secs,
the system time 3.7 & 2.3 secs, but the elapsed time was allmost halved.

xv - starting up the xv graphics application in X.

spider - starting up the spider cards game in X.

So we were happy campers with Linux, but that extra 4 Meg amkes all the
difference.  J.
--
Dept of Psychology, UCL, London. UK. WC1E 6BT
Tel: (+44) 71 387 7050 x5418
     (+44) 71 380 7777 direct tone-dial 5418
Fax: (+44) 71 436 4276
j.farringdon@psychol.ucl.ac.uk
ucjtrjf@ucl.ac.uk



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

From: jwiegley@phakt.usc.edu (Jeffrey Wiegley)
Crossposted-To: comp.os.linux.help,comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware,comp.periphs.scsi
Subject: [Solution!!] Adaptec 1742 with Maxtor SCSI drives
Date: 19 Jan 1994 09:37:56 -0800



Well after an agonizing week of controller/drive problems and tech support
I have found the definite answer to my problem.  I am posting it because it
may become a more frequent problem in the future sinceit stems from only
the recent Maxtor drives.

If you just bought a maxtor MXT540SL or MXT1240 drive and you have problems
booting from it, say you keep getting the error DRIVE NOT READY ERROR under
dos then you may be suffering from what I was.

The problem is that the newer Maxtor drives have the most recent boot ROM
installed BUT they have an older firmware loaded on the drive.  This keeps
the drive from being able to boot in certain circumstances (such as with an
Adaptec 1742 in enhanced mode.)

the solution to this problem is to update the firmware on the drive.
you can get the firmware program from the Maxtor Bulletin board (303)
678-2020 it is in the files library and is called MXT_1-5.ZIP.  simply
download it and unzip on a disk somewhere.

then put your adaptec controller in standard mode (so it emulates a 1540
card). boot the machine up from any method.  Once the machine is up you
have to pull the power plug from the drive and remove the jumper from J6
pins 9 and 10, and plug the power back into the drive.  (You need to do
this because the drives will only accept firmware downloads with this
jumper missing)

then simply issue the command 'mxld21 540' from the floppy you created.
follow the questions and then type 'G' for go.  when it asks to spin-up the
dirve (if it does) say yes. (the jumper you removed is for motor start with
power) then the program should continue normally and exit.

now your drive will work perfectly with an Adaptec 1742 controller!
amazing.

- Jeff

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

From: jem@sunSITE.unc.edu (Jonathan Magid)
Subject: Re: Comments On SLS Linux Spin-Off?
Date: 19 Jan 1994 17:44:13 GMT

In article <cjsCJv7zo.M9K@netcom.com>,
Christopher Shaulis <cjs@netcom.com> wrote:
>
>But all this comes days before a code freeze on Linux 1.0.0.0. Are there 
>any plans to integrate this stuff into the stock Linux kernel? Will the 
>SLS spinn-off Linux be delt with by anyone other then SLS? Do we sorta 
>ignore all the SLS newbies who come here wanting to know witch modules to 
>load for loopback? These questions do arise.

Just because there is an upcoming code freeze, doesn't mean that all 
development will stop.  All sort of interesting and useful things will
not make it into 1.0: the new net stuff, cluster patches, the re-written
hd driver, and other stuff.  Its not the end of the world; there is always
1.0p15 to aim for. :)

As for fragmentation: it wasn't a problem when Peter wrote the first
shared library implementation (when was that?).  Features are tested out,
hacked upon, and eventually folded into the mainline release, if they are
Linus likes them.

If you don't want to answer questions about SLS, you don't have to.

cheers,
jem.


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

Crossposted-To: comp.windows.x.i386unix
From: byron@cc.gatech.edu (Byron A Jeff)
Subject: Re: Linux as X-Terminal? No!
Date: Wed, 19 Jan 1994 18:05:20 GMT

In article <14168@dirac.physics.purdue.edu>,
Bill C. Riemers <bcr@bohr.physics.purdue.edu> wrote:
>In article <11594@blue.cis.pitt.edu> filip@alpha.smi.med.pitt.edu (Filip Gieszczykiewicz) writes:
>>In Article <CJFDrw.CJp@world.std.com> thus spoke entropy@world.std.com (Lawrence Foard):

[Note: This is part of an ongoing discussion in the linux.misc newsgroup.
       Howevery I'm trying to gather some info about high performance
       mono X for linux. So I think that the c.w.x.386unix folks should see
       this. BAJ ]

>>      Greetings. All this is silly - if you have a PC running Linux,
>>      use it as an X terminal. If you don't have a PC but want an
>>      Xterminal, get a REAL one. They are cheap used. I include a very
>>      recent post to one of the 4sale groups:
>
>Only three main reasons I can think of, if you don't already own the PC.
>
>  2. Maybe you want Xterminal+alittle extra, such as a local printer, local
>     disk storage, local CD-ROM access, high quality sound support, or etc.
>     All of these are possable without actually setting up user accounts
>     under Linux.

OK. This is the niche that I'd like to exploit. Question: what advantage
would a low-mid end PC running Linux have over an Xterminal?

Pros
----
Expandable - see above
Can be standalone - an Xterminal must have another machine that runs the
clients. A linux box can act as a standalone workstation where the app and
the display are together.
Price - I don't think an Xterminal price can be beat but we can come close.
Flexibility - In a pinch the PC can run software other than Linux.

Cons
----
Setup - After the first Xterminal it's basically plug in the wall and 
        net and go. Minimal setup required. Linux takes a bit more work.
Cost - an true Xterminal has a comparably equiped PC beat hands down.
Performance - Can 100,000 Xstones be reached on a low-mid end PC running
        Linux.

Where I work (Clark Atlata University) we are kicking around the idea of
how to provide X interfaces to the University computer systems. Our 2
contenders are Xterminals and Linux PC's running X. What I'm trying to
figure out is the cost of a PC in the same ballpark as the Xterminal.
Here's the features list and appx cost:

Motherboard - Cyrix 486DLC40 /w math CPU and 256K cache - $185.00
Memory      - 8 meg DRAM based on $35/meg               - $280.00
Hard Disk   - 170 MB disk - this is not a file server   - $190.00
Ethernet    - NE2000 clone                              - $ 70.00
Misc        - case,PS,multi-IO,keyboard,mouse           - $130.00
Video       - This is where we need to talk               ???????
                                                          --------
                                                          $855.00 + video

The video is where I'm kinda stumped. I don't think color is necessary
however the only mono monitors I see are the $115 14" jobbers which are
probably not up to the job. Does anyone know of 16"-19" monochome/greyscale
monitors for this type of work? How much do they run?

As for the rest of the video, is there anyway to get high performance
X in monochrome. All the 100,000+ xstone machines I've seen are using
accelerators and color. Is there anyway this can be done for mono/greyscale?

Anyway it seems that with a $115 monitor and a cheap video card the cost
can be kept to under $1000. But the real question is how good and Xterminal
can a system like this be?

Let's post so that we can keep the discussion going,

Later, and thanks,

BAJ
---
Another random extraction from the mental bit stream of...
Byron A. Jeff - PhD student operating in parallel!
Georgia Tech, Atlanta GA 30332   Internet: byron@cc.gatech.edu

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

From: ruprecht@PROBLEM_WITH_INEWS_GATEWAY_FILE (Erich Ruprecht)
Subject: Mylex DCE376 Drivers available?
Date: 19 Jan 1994 18:04:11 GMT
Reply-To: ruprecht@cslab.tuwien.ac.at

I would really be glad if someone would tell me if there's a driver
for the Mylex DCE376 SCSI controller available!
If it is: where can I get it?

Thanx a lot,

    Erich Ruprecht

===============================================================================
|     Erich Ruprecht      |         Technische Universitaet Wien              |
|   Hagenmuellergasse 33  |                                                   |
|       1030 Wien         | <ruprecht@eimoni.tuwien.ac.at>                    |
|        Austria          | <ruprecht@tick.cslab.tuwien.ac.at> (NeXT-Mail)    |
===============================================================================

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


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