Subject: Linux-Development Digest #896
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:     Thu, 7 Jul 94 16:13:09 EDT

Linux-Development Digest #896, Volume #1          Thu, 7 Jul 94 16:13:09 EDT

Contents:
  Drivers for Adaptec AIC-7770 SCSI? (Chaisiri Wongkham)
  zombies and Linux (Johann Friedrich Heinrichmeyer)
  Re: Dedicated SCSI swap drive? (Hans-Christoph Rohland)
  VLB-IDE support? (Simo Varis)
  Re: TCP/IP networking for DOSEMU (Daniel T. Schwager)
  Re: TCP/IP networking for DOSEMU (Chris Butterworth)
  Re: NCR-Driver Bug with Fdisk (Thomas Esser)
  Re: lint for linux? (Mitchum DSouza)
  Re: read only root, anyone ? (Steve Kann)
  Re: Who is bas@uimec.nl? I have a message from FTAPE... (Wolfgang Zweimueller)
  Re: Linux Performance Enhance ? (S. Joel Katz)
  Re: e@mail of LinuX CDROM publisher wanted (Rob Wolf)
  Re: BSD 4.4 Lite (Mark Valentine)
  Re: Kernels >= 1.1.13 does not recognize my AST FourPort! (Rob Janssen)
  Re: insmod and the lot (where's the doc?) (Bjorn Ekwall)
  Re: Linux seems to perform terribly for large directories (Greg McGary)
  Re: Kernels >= 1.1.13 does not recognize my AST FourPort! (John Ruschmeyer)
  Re: Linux seems to perform terribly for large directories (David Kastrup)

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

From: chaisiri@kku1 (Chaisiri Wongkham)
Subject: Drivers for Adaptec AIC-7770 SCSI?
Date: 7 Jul 1994 11:49:01 GMT

Can anyone tell me that the development of drivers for Adaptec

AIC-7770 family is finish or not? Thanks

--
==========================================================================
Chaisiri Wongkham                Internet: chaisiri@kku1.kku.ac.th
Department of Biochemistry            FAX: 66 43 243064
Faculty of Medicine             Telephone:66 43 242343-6 Ext. 3840
Khon Kaen University
Khon Kaen 40002, THAILAND.
==========================================================================

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

From: jfh@ES-sun1.fernuni-hagen.de (Johann Friedrich Heinrichmeyer)
Crossposted-To: comp.lang.tcl
Subject: zombies and Linux
Date: 7 Jul 1994 12:34:59 GMT

today i tried to compile the addinput package in my wish. I had success
on the sun and my script now works as i want, but under Linux it hangs
(reading from a open "| xxx" call hangs, the process xxx gets a
zombie). I am afraid this is not an addinput question, as i see also
zombies when doing this under tclsh. 

Has anybody seen zombies from tclsh or wish under linux? 
I use tcl7.3 and tk3.6.1 

--
Fritz Heinrichmeyer                             FernUniversitaet Hagen
FAX:   +49 2371/5221                            LG Elektronische Schaltungen
EMAIL: fritz.heinrichmeyer@fernuni-hagen.de     Frauenstuhlweg 31
PHONE: +49 02371/566-243                        58644 Iserlohn (Germany)
WWW:  http://ES-sun2.fernuni-hagen.de



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

From: hrohlan@gwdg.de (Hans-Christoph Rohland)
Subject: Re: Dedicated SCSI swap drive?
Date: Thu, 7 Jul 1994 12:37:33 GMT

Naresh Sharma (nash@dutllu4.gmd.de) wrote:

: My understanding is that there is (or was) a bug in the basic scsi code in
: the kernel which used to hang the system if a scsi drive was used as swap.

: This was mentioned to me by Rick Faith our correspondence is catted below:

: faith> Be aware that there is a bug in the Linux kernel that will cause similar
: faith> problems if you are using swap space.   Are you using swap space?
: faith> Apparently, the FD driver is the only driver that consistently exercises
: faith> this bug, but the bug (IMHO) is probably in the high level SCSI code.
: faith> 

: The result of this was that I had to remove the swap from the scsi disk. Infact
: I bought 16mb or more mem and added it to the system. This correspondence
: occurred around 1.1.18 kernel.

I am using a 16MB swap on a Quantum 240 connected via Adaptec 1542 since
January and never had any problems with Kernels 0.99.15, 1.0.0 and 1.1.3...
Actually I never heard about such probs before. I would like to know if
there are more people experiencing failures of swap with scsi.

Christoph

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

From: svaris@cs.joensuu.fi (Simo Varis)
Subject: VLB-IDE support?
Date: Thu, 7 Jul 1994 13:59:35 GMT

I'm buying VLB-IDE controller, I have two candidates,
QVision 6500 and ATUL Card. I'd like to know if there
is support for one of those. If there isn't, could
you recommend any other controller which is supported?

Simo Varis  -  svaris@cs.joensuu.fi


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

From: danny@dragon.s.bawue.de (Daniel T. Schwager)
Subject: Re: TCP/IP networking for DOSEMU
Date: Thu, 7 Jul 1994 08:18:05 GMT

Johannes Stille (johannes@titan.westfalen.de) wrote:
: In article <2vbm4g$fml@solaria.cc.gatech.edu> byron@gemini.cc.gatech.edu (Byron A Jeff) writes:
: [...]
: > [...]
: >Tell me what you think.

: I think that there is hardly any need for a TCP/IP connection to DOSEMU.
: Usually you can get TCP/IP software for Linux that is both cheaper and
: better.
: If I'm wrong, please tell me so. If there is suffcient need, I'd
: probably write the drivers.

One Application you can only use with MS-DOS TCP/IP is SOSS (yes, Johannes
has designed a solution to connect MS-dos SOSS via slip to a linux-tty, 
but for the 'real world' the transferrate (1.5 - 2k/sec) is to slow). I still
have the problem connecting Novell-volumes to the linux-fs-tree.


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

:       Johannes

Danny
-- 
                        ,,,
                       (^ ^)               
+------------------oOO--(_)--OOo-----------------------+
|  ... Real programmers use cat >a.out ...     Danny   |

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

From: Chris@lunchbox.demon.co.uk (Chris Butterworth)
Subject: Re: TCP/IP networking for DOSEMU
Reply-To: Chris@lunchbox.demon.co.uk
Date: Wed, 6 Jul 1994 23:51:17 +0000

In article <1994Jul6.004325.9705@titan.westfalen.de>
           johannes@titan.westfalen.de "Johannes Stille" writes:

> I think that there is hardly any need for a TCP/IP connection to DOSEMU.
> Usually you can get TCP/IP software for Linux that is both cheaper and
> better.
> If I'm wrong, please tell me so. If there is suffcient need, I'd
> probably write the drivers.

  One application of this that comes to mind is to use DOSEMU and SOSS
  to gain access to doublespace/stacker DOS partitions via NFS.



-- 
        +-------------------------------------------------------------+
        | Chris Butterworth          Mail: Chris@lunchbox.demon.co.uk |
        |             "Everybody does it in the Zone"                 |
        | Hours: 9:30pm -> Midnight, telnet lunchbox.demon.co.uk 7777 |
        +-------------------------------------------------------------+

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

From: te@informatik.uni-hannover.de (Thomas Esser)
Subject: Re: NCR-Driver Bug with Fdisk
Date: Wed, 6 Jul 1994 14:59:37 GMT

E.C. Loyd (ecldco@ultb.isc.rit.edu) wrote:
: In article <1994Jun30.171838.360@wagner.muc.de> richard@wagner.muc.de (Richard Schmid) writes:

: Richard:  You're not reading.  :-)  You must specify the cylinders,
: sectors per track, and number of heads with fdisk using the x-pert
: command menu.  On my Seagate, I have 16 heads, 63 sectors per track,
: and 1023 cylinders.  After specifying this, fdisk works just fine.

Or you get release 3 of the driver ;-)

--
Thomas Esser                       email: te@informatik.uni-hannover.de
Universitaet Hannover, Institut fuer Informatik  (Systemadministration)

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

From: Mitchum DSouza <m.dsouza@mrc-apu.cam.ac.uk>
Subject: Re: lint for linux?
Date: 7 Jul 1994 13:04:30 -0400
Reply-To: m.dsouza@mrc-apu.cam.ac.uk

David Robinson:
| Is there a version of lint for linux?  I'm running slackware,
| and I didn't see it on any of the 'd' disks.
| 
| Any references appreciated!  Reply by email if possible.

Here is a reference. Read Question 41 of the GCC-FAQ on

        sunsite.unc.edu /pub/Linux/docs/faqs/GCC-FAQ 

Mitch

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

From: stevek@panix.com (Steve Kann)
Subject: Re: read only root, anyone ?
Date: 6 Jul 1994 20:07:16 -0400

La'szlo' Lada'nyi (ladanyi@cs.cornell.edu) wrote:

: I was thinking on that it would be really nice to mount the root directory
: and the /usr system as read-only filesystems. However, I was not able to do
: this, because some programs insist on writing to directories which are 
: trditionally in the root. (eg. (u)mount writes /etc/mtab(~) file, many codes
: write to /tmp, etc.) Is there a way around this I overlooked?
: If there isn't, then is it possible to change the tradition? :-)
: I know it might be too much to ask for, but I'd love to see that the heart 
: of the system is read-only ;-).

I set up a whole classroom (28 machines) as linux-based machines acting
mostly as X terminals, and in order to mak ethem heartier to uneducated
usewrs, I have them set up with completely read only systems, except for
the /tmp directory, which is re-formatted at boot time.  These are not
really user machines., although they have a "local" login, but they are
running rwith root (and everything but /tmp) as read only.

Basically, to get mount (which is the biggest problem) to work, you have
to always use mount -n.  

If you are doing what I am (making a lot of X terminals), then it makes
sense.  

Oh yeah, I also had to modify syslogd such that it opened a socket in
/tmp.  I left a symlink in it's original place, and that was enough top
fool the syslog clients..

Good luck!

- Steve

: Laci Ladanyi
: -- 
: ----------------------------------------------------------------------
: | Laci Ladanyi           | God made one mistake when he created man: |
: | ladanyi@cs.cornell.edu |     He wrote self-modifying code ...      |
: ----------------------------------------------------------------------

--
- Steve

stevek@cooper.edu
stevek@midnite.roslyn.ny.us



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

From: wzwei@cosy.sbg.ac.at (Wolfgang Zweimueller)
Subject: Re: Who is bas@uimec.nl? I have a message from FTAPE...
Date: Thu, 7 Jul 1994 17:09:12 GMT

Nikolaus R. Haus (nrh@philabs.philips.com) wrote:

: I installed Slackware 1.2 from ftape last night, and was told
: to send a message to bas@uimec.nl (or vimec? my handwriting 
: sucks). To the best of the knowledge of my system, both of
: these domains are unknown.

[...]

--

Well, I asked the Nameserver and he gave me the following answer:
vimec.nl        preference = 100, mail exchanger = sun4nl.nl.net
sun4nl.nl.net   inet address = 193.78.240.1

So it is a real E-Mail address!


 Wolfgang Zweimueller

+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| S-Mail: Muhrgasse 9, A-5020 SALZBURG, AUSTRIA , Voice: (+43)662-457583      |
| E-Mail: wzwei@cosy.sbg.ac.at                                                |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+

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

From: stimpson@panix.com (S. Joel Katz)
Subject: Re: Linux Performance Enhance ?
Date: 6 Jul 1994 20:16:33 -0400

In <1994Jul4.190905.882@i486.gondor.sub.org> root@i486.gondor.sub.org (Erik Blass (SysAdmin)) writes:


>Hi !

>I was just wondering if it wouldn't be nice if you can manually swap
>out a (sleeping) process. If - for example - a X user wants to swap
>the gettys if he doesn't use them, he could probably run "swap_out
><PID>" where PID is the pid of a getty. The same with lpd or even inetd ...
>with all processes you use "seldom".
>Would it be hard to realize the "swap_out" programm ?!
>Can someone (hello Linus and Kernel Hacker ;-) ) realize it ?


        This would probably not make any significant performance 
difference. If the programs are not in use, Linux will swap them out 
first anyway.

        SJK


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

Crossposted-To: comp.os.linux.misc,comp.os.linux.admin,comp.os.linux.help
From: trebor@dorsai.dorsai.org (Rob Wolf)
Subject: Re: e@mail of LinuX CDROM publisher wanted
Date: Thu, 7 Jul 1994 13:53:04 GMT


Morse Telecommunications is at: 
info@morse.net

He publishes the Linux Quarterly and The soon to be announced (if it
hasn't been already) Slackware Pro CDROM.  


For the announcement on Slackware pro, Keep reading c.o.l.a for the
full specifications.  


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

Crossposted-To: comp.os.mach
From: mark@linus.demon.co.uk (Mark Valentine)
Subject: Re: BSD 4.4 Lite
Date: Wed, 6 Jul 1994 22:55:29 +0000

In article <2vb3mb$ik8@wombat.cssc-syd.tansu.com.au>,
Chris Bitmead <chrisb@cssc-syd.tansu.com.au> wrote:
>4.4-lite is available in src.doc.ic.ac.uk in /packages/unix/4.4bsd-lite:
>
>ftp> dir
>drwxr-xr-x   3 root     other         512 Jun 15 10:04 .
>drwxr-xr-x  29 root     root         1024 Jun 15 08:46 ..
>-rw-r--r--   1 root     other    43387714 Jun 15 08:58 bsd-4.4-lite.tar.gz
>drwxr-xr-x   2 root     other        1536 Jun 15 10:04 split
>ftp>

Unfortunately, this copy seems to have been extracted from a CD-ROM
mounted with Rockridge Extensions disabled (or if the CD-ROM doesn't
use the extensions, there's no script in that archive to fix up
the filenames).  That makes it next to useless for most purposes.

Better to get it elsewhere (it's starting to pop up in a few places
now; I got mine from a local site with access restricted to the
UK).  The filenames are intact on my copy.

                Mark.

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

From: rob@pe1chl.ampr.org (Rob Janssen)
Subject: Re: Kernels >= 1.1.13 does not recognize my AST FourPort!
Reply-To: pe1chl@rabo.nl
Date: Wed, 6 Jul 1994 22:29:06 GMT

In <2ves5n$q6e@newsy.ifm.liu.se> tseng@lysator.liu.se (\rjan Derel|v) writes:

>Anyone have the same problem or even better the solution?

Get the "setserial" program and read its manual...

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

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

From: bj0rn@blox.se (Bjorn Ekwall)
Subject: Re: insmod and the lot (where's the doc?)
Date: 7 Jul 94 16:45:37 GMT

Kenneth Wong (ypwong@ie.cuhk.hk) wrote:
 > The subject says it all. insmod even doesn't come with man pages
 > (slackware 1.2). Any doc about writing mod?

 > Thanks in advance!
 > --
 > Kenneth Wong
 > ypwong@ie.cuhk.hk

There is some docs in "modutils-0.99.14" (?).
For kernels ver. 1.1.23 and above, there are manpages included
in "modules.tar.gz" located in the same directory where you
find the kernels...

Bjorn Ekwall == bj0rn@blox.se

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

From: gkm@magilla.cichlid.com (Greg McGary)
Subject: Re: Linux seems to perform terribly for large directories
Date: Thu, 7 Jul 1994 16:40:02 GMT

David Kastrup (dak@rama.informatik.rwth-aachen.de) wrote on 7 Jul 1994 07:14:37 GMT:
> ... The fastest qsorts sort
> only down to a certain partition size, then make a insertion sort on the
> rest.

I'm going off on a tangent, but this is a pet peeve...

This is an inaccurate statement.  Sedgewick was the one who invented
the quicksort-to-a-threshold-and-finish-with-insertion-sort strategy,
and he did his tests using integer keys and inline comparisons, for
which this method is indeed optimal.  However, qsort doesn't do
comparisons inline, it calls a user supplied function, which is much
more expensive.  The finish-with-insertion-sort strategy loses because
it does about 10% *more* comparisons on average than pure quicksort,
causing it to actually run *slower* when using expensive comparisons.
The speed difference is moderated by the fact that the
finish-with-insertion-sort method does about 30% fewer swaps and has a
tighter inner loop, so the overall speed difference is less than 10%.

One reason that the finish-with-insertion-sort method does more
comparisons is this: When you reach the insertion-sort phase, you have
an array that is composed of a sequence of key clusters.  The keys are
sorted INTER-cluster, but not yet sorted INTRA-cluster--you do not
need to compare the keys at cluster boundaries, because they are
already guaranteed to be sorted.  However, the insertion-sort knows
nothing about the cluster boundaries established in the quicksort
phase, and therefore does unnecessary comparisons across cluster
boundaries.

The GNU qsort actually uses a merge sort when there's enough
malloc'able heap available and uses the traditional
quicksort/insertion-sort as a fallback when there's not enough memory.
I haven't yet timed this, so I don't know how much faster it is...

--
Greg McGary          (804) 361-1665          gkm@cichlid.com
   (ask me for information about intentional communities)

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

From: jruschme@sed.csc.com (John Ruschmeyer)
Subject: Re: Kernels >= 1.1.13 does not recognize my AST FourPort!
Date: Wed, 6 Jul 1994 23:20:52 GMT

In article <2ves5n$q6e@newsy.ifm.liu.se>,
\rjan Derel|v <tseng@lysator.liu.se> wrote:
>Anyone have the same problem or even better the solution?

Yes.  On my system (1.1.18) the entry in /usr/src/linux/config.in to
support the FourPort was missing (as was the auto IRQ detection.

I added the following lines (as I remember them, check config.in and
the serial driver to be sure):

        bool "AST FourPort Support" CONFIG_AST_FOURPORT y
        bool "Auto IRQ detection" CONFIG_AUTO_IRQ_DETECT y


Then I ran "make config" an rebuilt the kernel.

Hope this helps.


<<<John>>>

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

From: dak@rama.informatik.rwth-aachen.de (David Kastrup)
Subject: Re: Linux seems to perform terribly for large directories
Date: 7 Jul 1994 07:14:37 GMT

rob@pe1chl.ampr.org (Rob Janssen) writes:

>In <Cs76BL.2F2@research.canon.oz.au> luke@research.canon.oz.au (Luke Kendall) writes:

>>I have strong suspicion that Linux has a problem with large
>>directories.  An early pointer to this, was that doing an `ls'
>>on a directory with (say) 5000 files, took several minutes
>>to begin producing output.  This is _far_ slower than on other
>>versions of Unix.

Is the thing accessing your hard drive all the time? If no, the directory
sorting might be at fault. Try doing this with --unsorted or so.
If that changes the speed significantly, it might be a hint that the
used sort (library or part of ls) is faulty. The fastest qsorts sort
only down to a certain partition size, then make a insertion sort on the
rest. If the qsort part is faulty, the sort will still be correct, but
inappropriately slow.
>Try it on a DOS system for a change :-)

Try it on a MacIntosh. Why try to imitate worst case behaviour? Mac
file system speed is really impressive.

>>So: what gives?  Have others noticed this problem?

>The directory is accessed only with linear seaches.  So, when it is
>large, it becomes exceedingly slow to access it.
Let's hope you are mistaken. If not, bug the ls developpers.
>Another factor is that removing files only frees their slots, but does
>not compact the directory.  So, after that it remains as slow as it was
>until you remove and re-create the directory.
-- 
 David Kastrup        dak@pool.informatik.rwth-aachen.de          
 Tel: +49-241-72419 Fax: +49-241-79502
 Goethestr. 20, D-52064 Aachen

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


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