Subject: Linux-Development Digest #830
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, 15 Jun 94 00:13:07 EDT

Linux-Development Digest #830, Volume #1         Wed, 15 Jun 94 00:13:07 EDT

Contents:
  Re: Filesystem semantics protecting meta data ... and users data (Dan Swartzendruber)
  Why is Linux writing to Port 0x80? (news@vision.uccs.edu)
  Re: IDE PERF. PATCH SECURITY HOLE (Matthew Dillon)
  Re: Real time linux (Matthew Dillon)
  Re: pthreads anywhere ? (Herve Soulard)
  Minor FTP Archive announcement (Gregory G. "Wolfe" Woodbury)
  Prefresh bug in ncurses 1.8.5 (Bryan Wright)
  Re: Support for Intel Above B (Nick Danger)
  Re: Linux and symmetrical multiprocessing (Brandon S. Allbery)
  Re: Filesystem semantics protecting meta data ... and users data (John Hascall)
  Re: Mounting DOS in Linux (Karl Eichwalder)
  Re: Mounting DOS in Linux (Karl Eichwalder)
  Re: USERFS installation. Need help! (Yasuo Ohgaki)
  re: Linux CD (John Will)
  SCSI NCR drivers (John Will)
  Re: Support for Intel Above B (Andrew Whittle)
  Re: Pascal compiler for Linux? (Nathan Stratton)
  Linux on non-Intel or multi-Intel (Tom Legrady)
  loop-2 status? (Frank van Maarseveen)
  Re: Pascal compiler for Linux? (Eric Gustafson)

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

From: dswartz@pugsley.osf.org (Dan Swartzendruber)
Crossposted-To: comp.benchmarks,comp.sys.sun.admin,comp.security.unix
Subject: Re: Filesystem semantics protecting meta data ... and users data
Date: 14 Jun 1994 21:18:38 GMT

In article <DHOLLAND.94Jun14121255@husc7.harvard.edu> dholland@husc7.harvard.edu (David Holland) writes:
>
>dswartz@pugsley.osf.org's message of 14 Jun 1994 11:33:00 GMT said:
>
>Haven't you been following the thread? If you don't flush those zeros
>*to the disk* before using the block, a badly-timed system crash can
>cause the UNZEROED blcosk to appear in the new file - containing who
>knows what kind of private data.

True.  I was thinking of another scenario and confused the two.

-- 

#include <std_disclaimer.h>

Dan S.

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

From: news@vision.uccs.edu
Subject: Why is Linux writing to Port 0x80?
Date: 14 Jun 1994 11:54:08 -0600

Hi,
I have a POST-card (Power On Self Test) installed in my Linux-box;
it decodes and displays data written to port 80H, and during boot
all sorts of stuff is displayed.  Even after boot, some commands,
like 'ls' spew data to the port.

Currently, I'm running Linux 1.0.4; but this phenomena was present
in 0.99 pl 10, too.

Is this an undocumented feature for hardware debugging?  :-)

Louis-ljl-{lou@minuet.siue.edu}

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

From: dillon@apollo.west.oic.com (Matthew Dillon)
Subject: Re: IDE PERF. PATCH SECURITY HOLE
Date: 14 Jun 1994 09:59:53 -0700

In article <2tjjf2$fsq@smurf.noris.de> urlichs@smurf.noris.de (Matthias Urlichs) writes:
:In comp.os.linux.development, article <2tiaaf$e61@bmerha64.bnr.ca>,
:  mlord@bnr.ca (Mark Lord) writes:
:> In article <1994Jun12.203822.15133@unlv.edu> ftlofaro@unlv.edu writes:
:> 
:> >I have a Seagate 1239A (a total piece of crap), and a Samsung drive.
:> >The Samsung works fine with the IDE patch, but the Seagate trashes
:>..
:You misunderstood. If there's read-only access to _any_ partition, the user
:can turn on the performance stuff, which will of course affect other
:partitions on the same disk, presumably mounted R/W.
:
:It might be a good idea to limit access to the performance switches
:to /dev/hd[ab], and to return an error if somebody tries them with
:/dev/hd[ab][1-9].

    This isn't really a security hole... *NO* disk device should be
    world accessible for reading or writing.  chmod your disk devices 
    600 or setup a special access group and chmod them 660.  
    For example:

                                        -Matt

apollo:/home/dillon> ls -la /dev/sd*
brw-------   1 root     root       8,   0 Aug 29  1992 /dev/sda
brw-------   1 root     root       8,   1 Aug 29  1992 /dev/sda1
brw-------   1 root     root       8,   2 Aug 29  1992 /dev/sda2
brw-------   1 root     root       8,   3 Aug 29  1992 /dev/sda3
brw-------   1 root     root       8,   4 Aug 29  1992 /dev/sda4
brw-------   1 root     root       8,   5 Aug 29  1992 /dev/sda5
brw-------   1 root     root       8,   6 Aug 29  1992 /dev/sda6
brw-------   1 root     root       8,   7 Aug 29  1992 /dev/sda7
brw-------   1 root     root       8,   8 Aug 29  1992 /dev/sda8
brw-------   1 root     root       8,  16 Aug 29  1992 /dev/sdb
brw-------   1 root     root       8,  17 Aug 29  1992 /dev/sdb1
brw-------   1 root     root       8,  18 Mar 14 12:56 /dev/sdb2
brw-------   1 root     root       8,  19 Aug 29  1992 /dev/sdb3
brw-------   1 root     root       8,  20 Aug 29  1992 /dev/sdb4
brw-------   1 root     root       8,  21 Aug 29  1992 /dev/sdb5

-- 

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


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

From: dillon@apollo.west.oic.com (Matthew Dillon)
Subject: Re: Real time linux
Date: 14 Jun 1994 10:00:57 -0700

In article <1994Jun14.093541.4119@uk.ac.swan.pyr> iiitac@uk.ac.swan.pyr (Alan Cox) writes:
:In article <2tg8f3INNns0@srvr1.engin.umich.edu> plph@load.engin.umich.edu (Mark Montague) writes:
:>P.S.: if I could find a way to get the current time of day down to the
:>1/100 sec and could have the program be signaled (as with alarm()) with
:>the time specified to the 1/100 sec, this would be sufficient.  As I
:
:Use select() not signals. Much cleaner. Select is fairly accurate and 
:gettimeofday() is effectively microsecond accurate.

    If it's the only thing running under linux, I suppose you can do this,
    but it should be noted that linux is NOT a real time operating system.

                                        -Matt

-- 

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


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

From: soulard@alix.inria.fr (Herve Soulard)
Subject: Re: pthreads anywhere ?
Date: 14 Jun 1994 17:10:49 GMT
Reply-To: soulard@sor.inria.fr

From Christopher Provenzano  <proven@MIT.EDU>

        OK folks, the long awaited next release of threads is out. It's on 
        sipb.mit.edu in pub/pthreads.

It works with *BSD, Linux, SunOS, and some others.

                Herve Soulard.

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

From: ggw@dukcds.cds.duke.edu (Gregory G. "Wolfe" Woodbury)
Subject: Minor FTP Archive announcement
Date: Tue, 14 Jun 1994 16:36:22 -0500
Reply-To: ggw@dukcds.cds.duke.edu (Gregory G. Woodbury)

I have a small archive of Linux (and miscellaneous) stuff stashed on
my machine for anonymous FTP.

    site:   dukcds.cds.duke.edu  [152.3.1.219] (aka:dukcds.netcom.duke.edu)
    notes:  Linux stuff in /pub/linux
            Opus PM400 software in /pub/opus/pm400

Don't beat on it too much please.  :-)

-- 
Gregory G. Woodbury  @, but not speaking for Duke Univ.
System Admin  Demographic Studies  Box 90408 Durham NC 27708
ggw@cds.duke.edu   ggw@acpub.duke.edu   ggw@wolves.durham.nc.us
Myth is metaphor,and ritual is the enactment of Myth-J.Campbell

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

From: bryan@myhost.subdomain.domain (Bryan Wright)
Subject: Prefresh bug in ncurses 1.8.5
Date: Tue, 14 Jun 1994 17:39:56 GMT

Hi Folks,

        I think I've found a bug in the prefresh function in ncurses 1.8.5.
It seems to have been introduced sometime after version 1.8.1.  The symptoms
can be demonstrated with the following test program:

                #include <ncurses.h>

                WINDOW *testpad;

                main()
                {
                  int lines = 6;
                  int i;
                
                  initscr();
                  testpad = newpad ( lines, 80 );
                  for ( i=0; i<10; i++ )
                    waddch ( testpad, 'A' );
                  prefresh ( testpad, 0, 0, 5, 0, 5, 9 );
                  getch();
                  endwin();
                
                }

This program should produce a left-justified string of 10 'A's on line 5 of
the display, regardless of the value of 'lines' (as long as lines > 0, of
course).  However, if lines < 6, it displays nothing.

        The syntax of prefresh is:

       int prefresh(WINDOW *pad, int pminrow, int pmincol,
             int sminrow, int smincol, int smaxrow, int smaxcol);

Experimenting around with the values of sminrow, smaxrow and the 'lines'
argument to newpad, I've found that nothing is displayed if lines is 
less than sminrow+1.

Can anyone verify this, and is a fix in the works?


                                Thanks in advance,
                                Bryan
--
===============================================================================
Bryan Wright                |"If you take cranberries and stew them like 
Physics Department          | applesauce, they taste much more like prunes 
University of Virginia      | than rhubarb does."  --  Groucho 
Charlottesville, VA  22901  |                   
(804) 924-6814              |         bryan@sphinx.phys.virginia.edu
===============================================================================

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

From: nick@nick-pc.armstrong.edu (Nick Danger)
Subject: Re: Support for Intel Above B
Date: 12 Jun 1994 21:34:33 -0400

In article <2t8v36$48e@pc-shop.twi.tudelft.nl>,
Luc Suryo <luc@pc-shop.twi.tudelft.nl> wrote:
>John Will (john.will@dscmail.com) wrote:
>: ES>I recently got a intel above board ISA card and want to use this with my
>: ES>linux machine. When I install it, linux correctly recognizes the amount
>: ES>of memory available in the machine (12Mb), but crashes during mem_init....
>
>: If you ever find out, let me know. :-)  I tried a similar thing a long
>: time ago with an ISA extended memory board, and got the same results.
>: DOS ran fine with the card, but Unix crashed as soon as it attempted to
>: use the memory board's memory.  I'm just curious at this point... :-)
>
    When I started to use linux on my machine it was a CompuAdd 386sx16
    w/12 megs. 8 of that was on an Intel Above Board. Worked fine. No
    problems. I removed the board when I went to a 486 w/8megs on the MB
    and haven't tried it since but it worked through several kernel
    rebuilds with no problems.

    -Nick


-- 
Nicholas Brenckle                    |  Its all part of my master plan to
Armstrong State College              |             Rule the World.
Computer Information Services        |
brenckle@Armstrong.Edu               |

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

From: bsa@kf8nh.wariat.org (Brandon S. Allbery)
Subject: Re: Linux and symmetrical multiprocessing
Date: Tue, 14 Jun 1994 21:50:15 GMT

In article <2tkmju$a5d@bigblue.oit.unc.edu>, jem@bittyblue.oit.unc.edu (Jonathan Magid) says:
+---------------
| In article <1994Jun14.100234.5078@uk.ac.swan.pyr>,
| Alan Cox <iiitac@uk.ac.swan.pyr> wrote:
| >Get me a 3+ CPU SMP motherboard and the low level programming docs for the
| >SMP and I have an entire computer society who'll happily do the rest if they
| >get to keep the board.
| 
| Now if we can just figure out the organization which lurks behind the 
| nom-de-compute "Eric Youngdale".
+------------->8

(...I'm waiting for someone to claim to have found the organization using the
name "Linus Torvalds"... :-) :-) :-)

++Brandon
-- 
Brandon S. Allbery         kf8nh@kf8nh.ampr.org          bsa@kf8nh.wariat.org
The FUDs at Microsoft are shouting "Kill The Wabi!"

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

From: john@iastate.edu (John Hascall)
Crossposted-To: comp.benchmarks,comp.sys.sun.admin,comp.security.unix
Subject: Re: Filesystem semantics protecting meta data ... and users data
Date: 14 Jun 1994 18:32:41 GMT

David Holland <dholland@husc7.harvard.edu> wrote:
}dswartz@pugsley.osf.org's message of 14 Jun 1994 11:33:00 GMT said:
} > >>The 6th Edition alloc() function wouldn't return the block number
} > >>until the block had been zero'd.  That is how strong the guarantee is.
} > >To *disk*?
} > No, why does that matter?  When you alloc a block from the free list,
} > before using it for any file, you zero it.  

}Haven't you been following the thread? If you don't flush those zeros
}*to the disk* before using the block, a badly-timed system crash can
}cause the UNZEROED blcosk to appear in the new file - containing who
}knows what kind of private data.

   I suppose one could have a system where a disk had 2 free
   lists, 1 zerod, 1 not.  Blocks could only come from the
   zerod list, and the system could zero blocks in idle time
   (moving them from one list to the other).

John
-- 
John Hascall                   ``An ill-chosen word is the fool's messenger.''
Systems Software Engineer
Project Vincent
Iowa State University Computation Center  +  Ames, IA  50011  +  515/294-9551

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

Crossposted-To: comp.os.linux.admin
From: karl@pertron.central.de (Karl Eichwalder)
Subject: Re: Mounting DOS in Linux
Reply-To: keichwa@gwdg.de (Karl Eichwalder)
Date: Tue, 14 Jun 1994 09:44:52 GMT

[Followup-To: comp.os.linux.development]

>               try adding the following to your /etc/fstab file :-

>       /dev/hda1       /dos    msdos   defaults

Any clue, why other options like 

        conv=auto,uid=405,gid=50,umask=027

want work anymore since 0.99.1[45] ?

When I do

        # tar -cf - /mnt/dos/util/| gzip -9 > ~/test.tar.gz

``tar'' tells me something like

tar: file /mnt/dos/util/xtpro.x01 shrunk by 23748 bytes, padding with zeros.
tar: file /mnt/dos/util/xtpro.x02 shrunk by 3882 bytes, padding with zeros.
tar: file /mnt/dos/util/xtpro.x10 shrunk by 14638 bytes, padding with zeros.
tar: file /mnt/dos/util/xtpro.x20 shrunk by 14897 bytes, padding with zeros.

And indeed, in the tar file I only find some two or three files -- maybe
``conv=auto'' is the problem.

--
Karl

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

From: karl@pertron.central.de (Karl Eichwalder)
Subject: Re: Mounting DOS in Linux
Reply-To: keichwa@gwdg.de (Karl Eichwalder)
Date: Tue, 14 Jun 1994 09:49:03 GMT

Karl Eichwalder (karl@pertron.central.de) wrote:

Sorry, I have forgotten to mention I'm running 1.1.18.

> >     /dev/hda1       /dos    msdos   defaults

> Any clue, why other options like 

>         conv=auto,uid=405,gid=50,umask=027

> want work anymore since 0.99.1[45] ?

Please read: "... don't want to work anymore ..."

--
Karl

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

From: yasuo@via.term.none (Yasuo Ohgaki)
Subject: Re: USERFS installation. Need help!
Date: Sat, 11 Jun 1994 23:22:59 GMT

Brian Stoler (sto2@netaxs.com) wrote:
: Edit the Makefile .. uncomment the part that has something like "-lfl".. 
: should do it.

This dosen't help....
You don't have any problem compling userfs?
Or uncommenting the flag solve the problem?
Or I should get older version of userfs?
Thanks in advance. 

--
Yasuo Ohgaki
e-mail: yohgaki@diana.cair.du.edu


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

Subject: re: Linux CD
From: john.will@dscmail.com (John Will)
Date: Tue, 14 Jun 94 15:59:00 -0640

Ar>The ones we know very little about include:
Ar>
Ar>-Jana
    ^^^^
We know this isn't going to be shipped this century!  I got on the list
for their CD again several months ago, finally had to break down and
use the InfoMagic CD to install the new version of Slackware.  I have
no idea what happened to Jana, but it seems they fell off the end of
the earth again.  I think those guys might as well give up, they just
never get their act together!

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

Subject: SCSI NCR drivers
From: john.will@dscmail.com (John Will)
Date: Tue, 14 Jun 94 16:01:00 -0640

JS>I have a new Pentium system just waiting to get Linus on it...

I don't know how heavy Linus is, but I sure wouldn't want him on my
new Pentium! :-)

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

From: dking@suburbia.apana.org.au (Andrew Whittle)
Subject: Re: Support for Intel Above B
Date: 14 Jun 94 19:45:36 GMT

I have one of these babies, although it is the old type that takes DRAM 
instead of SIMM's.
 
Mine works perfectly.
 
All I did was (under DOS) run the SOFTSET.EXE program, selected the correct
settings for my machine, rebooted, fixed CMOS, rebooted, and I have Linux 
running perfectly with the extra memory ( and has been for about 1 year )
 
Andrew

--
 ==============================================================================
  Data King - dking@suburbia.apana.org.au  -  PGP Key available by FINGERing.
 
           "What you don't know can hurt you, only you won't know it." 

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

Crossposted-To: comp.os.linux.admin,comp.os.linux.help,comp.os.linux.misc
From: nstn@netcom.com (Nathan Stratton)
Subject: Re: Pascal compiler for Linux?
Date: Tue, 14 Jun 1994 17:24:57 GMT

In article <2tkeu8$9rt@hamilton.maths.tcd.ie> tim@maths.tcd.ie (Timothy Murphy) writes:
>vermeule@wi.leidenuniv.nl (Hans Vermeulen) writes:
>
>>I am looking for a Pascal compiler for Linux.
>>Is there one out there? I don't like to use a pascal-to-c translator and gcc.
>>So, anybody got a clue? After all, there is modula-2/3, eiffel, fortran, ....,
>>so why no pascal?
>
>There is a Pascal compiler, gpc, based on gcc.
>It shouldn't be difficult to compile under Linux.
>
>
>-- 
>Timothy Murphy  
>e-mail: tim@maths.tcd.ie
>tel: +353-1-2842366
>s-mail: School of Mathematics, Trinity College, Dublin 2, Ireland


Can you tell us where to get it?


-- 

  +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+
  | Nathan Stratton              Washington and Lee High School Junior      | 
  +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+
  | Internet:   nstn@netcom.com              Phone:   (703)534-9755         |
  |             stratton@cap.gwu.edu         Beeper:  (703)513-6117         |
  +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+

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

From: legrady@arraysystems.nstn.ca (Tom Legrady)
Subject: Linux on non-Intel or multi-Intel
Date: 14 Jun 1994 17:17:53 -0300

The FAQ refer to efforts to port Linux to 68000 based machines. Are 
there any efforts to port Linux to other platforms?

Will Linux run, or are there efforts to make it run, on a machine
with multiple processors (presumably Intel, since it doesn't run
on anything else, yet) ?


Thanks for the info

Tom Legrady

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

From: fvm@tasking.nl (Frank van Maarseveen)
Subject: loop-2 status?
Date: Tue, 14 Jun 1994 15:52:07 GMT

I've tried loop-2 (e.g. for mounting floppy images, NOT the network loopback
device) with Linux 1.1.19 and the loop patch required a small
fix in loop.c:

        current->filp[arg]

must be replaced by 

        current->files[0].fd[arg]

two times. However, this seems not enough. I get messages about "short inode
reads" when running e2fsck (0.5a) on /dev/loop0. In most cases the filesystem
will eventually deadlock: every 'df', 'sync', umount of the loop device
hangs. This last problem occurred in the 1.0 kernel as well but much
less frequently and only under special conditions.

Does anyone know the status of the loop device?

Thanks in advance,

______________________________________________________________________
Frank van Maarseveen            _____   _   _           fvm@tasking.nl
Tasking BV                       /_    / |_/ /
Plotterweg 31                   /  \/_/    _/    phone : +31 33 558584
Amersfoort, The Netherlands                        fax : +31 33 550033
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
When I hear of Schrodingers cat, I reach for my gun ---  S. W. Hawking

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

From: eleeb28@columbine.egr.uh.edu (Eric Gustafson)
Crossposted-To: comp.os.linux.admin,comp.os.linux.help,comp.os.linux.misc
Subject: Re: Pascal compiler for Linux?
Date: 14 Jun 1994 20:18:23 GMT

Nathan Stratton (nstn@netcom.com) wrote:
: In article <2tkeu8$9rt@hamilton.maths.tcd.ie> tim@maths.tcd.ie (Timothy Murphy) writes:
: >vermeule@wi.leidenuniv.nl (Hans Vermeulen) writes:
: >
: >>I am looking for a Pascal compiler for Linux.
: >>Is there one out there? I don't like to use a pascal-to-c translator and gcc.
: >>So, anybody got a clue? After all, there is modula-2/3, eiffel, fortran, ....,
: >>so why no pascal?
: >
: >There is a Pascal compiler, gpc, based on gcc.
: >It shouldn't be difficult to compile under Linux.
: >


: Can you tell us where to get it?

Source:
  kampi.hut.fi:/jtv/gnu-pascal

Binary: (for linux & gcc 2.5.8)
 sunsite.unc.edu:/pub/Linux/Incoming/gpc-2.5.8-bin.tar.gz

Note: binary was derived from the gpc-2.5.7-jan20.tar.gz source at
kampi.hut.fi and is _NOT_ a newer version, but rather works w/ gcc
2.5.8 instead of gcc 2.5.7

--
Eric Gustafson                                      eleeb28@tree.egr.uh.edu
Electrical Engineering                               egustafs@gem.valpo.edu
University of Houston                                 Phone: (713) 265-9430
** Warning ** Planet is 97% full please remove unneeded inhabitants !!

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


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******************************
