Subject: Linux-Misc Digest #146
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:     Sat, 21 May 94 18:13:09 EDT

Linux-Misc Digest #146, Volume #2                Sat, 21 May 94 18:13:09 EDT

Contents:
  Re: Standard Linux GUI (Chris Bitmead)
  An answer from CDROM-o-month (Sean A. Long)
  Looking for Linux BBS Software (root)
  Re: Who are you & what do you do w/ Linux? (Robert Ashcroft)
  Kernel panic on install (Chris Russell)
  Re: Wangdat 4mm dat drives on Linux (Joe Portman)
  Newbie, Install - Aquisition Questions: What, Where, Will this Work? (Patrick J. Chicas)
  Re: software communists was Re: BRIEF/vi Compatible GUI Text Editor (Garrett D'Amore)
  Re: Making "nice" nicer. (Michael K. Johnson)
  Re: BBS-development Team wanted (Chelloveck)
  Re: BBS-development Team wanted (Chelloveck)
  Re: Hackers CD. (Was: Re: InfoMagic CD set - WOW!) (Rick)

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

From: chrisb@cssc-syd.tansu.com.au (Chris Bitmead)
Subject: Re: Standard Linux GUI
Date: 19 May 1994 10:37:00 +1000

>The problem here is, there is really only one choice any more:  Motif.  :-(
>We have to get some freely available Motif-clone widget set available for
>Linux, because that's what everyone else has standardized/is standardizing on.

I agree,  A cloned GPL Motif Widget set would be the best solution. 
But how much effort would this be?  Is there an enthusiastic bunch of
hackers in the Linux world that are willing to take up this challenge?

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

From: longsa94%cs02@cadetmail.usafa.af.mil (Sean A. Long)
Subject: An answer from CDROM-o-month
Date: Sat, 21 May 1994 21:14:27 GMT

Thanks for all who gave me the correct address to Jay at cdrom-o-month, and

GET A LIFE to all who posted and mailed bullsh** "funny" replies...

I have achieved 2-way communication with Jay, and we seem to be headed in 
the right direction (It's in the mail...), *sigh*

-=>Sean Long

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

Crossposted-To: alt.bbs,alt.bbs.unixbbs,comp.bbs.misc
From: root@jaxnet.jaxnet.com (root)
Subject: Looking for Linux BBS Software
Date: Thu, 19 May 1994 21:37:42 GMT

I am looking for some good bbs software that will run under Linux.  Some
of the key things that I am looking for are:

1)  Written and Supported inside the United States!
2)  Source code must be provided (I love to customize)
3)  Must be able to support subscription based service
4)  Must be able to optionally enforce daily time limits
5)  Must track users usage (number of minutes connected in a log or something)
6)  Must be able to run external programs and shell accounts
7)  Must be able to allow guest logins
8)  Each user must have their own login ID (no generic logins like 'bbs')

Some things that would be nice but are not mandatory.

1)  RIP graphics
2)  ANSI graphics

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

From: rna@leland.Stanford.EDU (Robert Ashcroft)
Subject: Re: Who are you & what do you do w/ Linux?
Date: 21 May 1994 21:25:23 GMT

In article <2rbincINNbf4@newsstand.cit.cornell.edu>,
Bogdan Urma <bau1@cornell.edu> wrote:
>    After reading through the comp.os.linux groups for the past couple
>of months, I keep running into the same names, and out of curiosity I 
>would like to know how you people got introduced to Linux and what you
>use Linux for. I think it would be kind of interesting to see what 
>people use Linux for. Also, who is this person lilo, who pops up everywhere?
>Reply here, not by e-mail, so that everyone could read about you!

I'm a thirty-year old finance PhD student at Stanford University.  A former
housemate, Ken Neighbors, turned me on to Linux.  Ken's a rocket scientist
(seriously) and a certified genius/good 'ol Southern boy.  I have a 486DX2/66
VLB at home, with 17 inch color monitor (ATI Graphic Ultra Pro) and
1 Gb harddrive, purpose bought for Linux.  I saw no reason to buy any sort
of PC prior to learning about Linux.

I've been convinced that X-windows and Unix were the way to go ever since
I got to play with it as a computer science graduate student at 
the Laboratory of Computer Science at MIT in 1986 (color workstations in
1986, one per office, what a place, yeah!).

I've been frustrated here at the Graduate School of Business at Stanford.
Until just this year the best they could do for people was VAX/VMS
through dumb terminals.  Quite a letdown after the MIT setup.  This past
year we finally got Sparcs, but we are in serious need of X-terminals,
as 100 PhD students have only a single console between them (though more
CPUs are available remotely).

The GSB computer services have been very supportive of my attempt to
introduce Linux into this environment.  I got a spare 386 up and running
Linux, X and networking with VGA_16 graphics.  Right now computer services
is casting about for a SVGA card for me.  I have a proposal in right now
to keep this machine up and running for the summer as a demo project to
see how tough Linux is in day to day operation.  I am hoping they can
spare a 486 for this, but any computer would be good.

I know there is some interest at the GSB to use Linux boxes as mail
servers.  Right now they have a Sparc IPX (or maybe a Sparc 2, I'm not
sure) handling all the MBA mail, of which there is tons.  All the benchmarks
I have been able to run show 486DX2/66 clearly superior to Sparc 2 and
IPX on integer problems, so I suspect that a 486 would do this job as
well if not better (I'd be interested to hear what people say about this).
Also, of course, we'd like to use old 386's as X-terminals.  No, it's
not the best we can do, but there are a lot of these things around at
the GSB.  Actually, it seems they might make pretty good computers in
their own right, for low intensity jobs.  There is also a lot of interest
in Mosaic at the GSB, and Linux boxes might be the way to go as WWW
servers too.

Oooh, I'm running at the mouth again, time to shut up.

RNA

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

From: crussell@netcom.com (Chris Russell)
Subject: Kernel panic on install
Date: Fri, 20 May 1994 04:01:03 GMT

Yesterday, I tried to install Linux (from the SLS distribution 1.05)
onto my new 486DX2-66 PCI PC, but got a kernel panic just after
scanning the SCSI chain.
> task[0] (swapper) killed: unable to recover
> kernel panic: trying to free up swapper memory space
> in swapper mode - not syncing

My PC has a GigaByte PCI motherboard (but no PCI cards yet), 16MB RAM,
Future Domain SCSI 16xx, Microp 1.7GB HD, Trident SVGA, SMC 16C Ultra
Ethernet, and 2S/1P.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

--
Chris Russell      |  Video Image Associates, CGI Effects department
Software Engineer  |  5333 McConnell Ave; Los Angeles, CA 90066
chris@acm.org      |  310/822-8872,  FAX 310/821-1012

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

From: jportman@eskimo.com (Joe Portman)
Subject: Re: Wangdat 4mm dat drives on Linux
Date: 20 May 94 16:34:01 GMT

In article <JOHNSONM.94May19212615@merengue.oit.unc.edu|,
Michael K. Johnson <johnsonm@merengue.oit.unc.edu| wrote:

|I'm thinking very seriously about getting a Wangdat 4mm dat drive for
|a Linux box.  I'm wondering if anyone out there is using one with
|Linux, and if so,
|1) Which controller are you using?  (this one comes with a FD-1680)
|2) Do you have the 2gig or the 4gig drive?
|3) What is your impression?

I have been using a WangDat 3100 series for several months.
It works with Adaptec 154x, and Adaptec 152x series controllers quite
well. 

|Also, anyone with impressions on the most recent FD-1680 boards?

I have not tried to use them yet. I have two left over from the vendor
where we purchased the tape drives. Maybe I will drop one in and see
if Linux recognizes it.

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

From: pjc@soldpc.cts.com (Patrick J. Chicas)
Subject: Newbie, Install - Aquisition Questions: What, Where, Will this Work?
Date: Sat, 21 May 1994 20:35:03 GMT

Aloha All..

I would like to install Linux and it's X-windows variant on the following 
system:

Generic 486-33dx ISA Bus Machine
8 Megabytes of RAM
1.44 Floppy Drive (a:) 1.2 Floppy Drive (b:)
Adaptec 1542 SCSI Controller
Fujitsu M2623FA Hard Drive
Paradise VGA (old 512k) VGA Card
Digiboard PC16e Multi-Asynch Port Card
Intel Etherexpress 10bas-T LAN Card
Microsoft Mouse, occupying IRQ-4

The system will serve a dual purpose as a general Internet server and
also a modem server connected via NFS to a SUN IPX.

Disk partitioning to share the system with MS-DOS is not necessary.

I's greatly appreciate responses that relate to each piece of hardware 
mentioned.  Also, directions to a good ftp site for the necessary files and 
documentation.  Please consider that I'll first transfer the files to my 
MS-DOS laptop via a Windows Socket FTP Client.

Mahalo




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

From: garrett@athena.sdsu.edu (Garrett D'Amore)
Subject: Re: software communists was Re: BRIEF/vi Compatible GUI Text Editor
Date: 20 May 1994 01:06:58 GMT

Matt Welsh (mdw@cs.cornell.edu) wrote:
: In article <2rcerk$8ig@finzi.ccinet.ab.ca> kevin@valis.ampr.ab.ca (Kevin B. Fluet) writes:
: >It makes Linux all the better if commercial apps are supported.  

: If your only motive is to run software that works for you, there
: are many commercial UNIX implementations for the PC. Some that aren't
: very expensive, I might add. But there is an ethic behind the development
: of free software which is that software should be free, so that people
: can share it and help each other to improve it. Once you allow a commerical
: software product to satisfy your basic computing needs, you've lost the
: ability to improve it or modify it to suit your needs.

: >If it does the job better than the free software
: >available, why wouldn't I pay a reasonable price for it?  

: Because doing so impedes the necessity for the development of free
: software. When you give in to commercial software, particularly
: operating systems, you aren't aiding the free software world for
: providing anything better. Free software only improves as long as
: its users demand and allow it to do so. 

This is not necessarily true.  I think that we must realize that individuals
generally have a certain set of tasks they expect to accomplish with their
computer.  If free software is available, then they are happy to use it, if
it meets their needs.  If, however, the free software doesn't do as good
a job as some commercial app, then the user is likely to use the commercial
app.

People create free software for a variety of reasons.  Some do it out of some
ideology that says that "software should be free".  The fact that these people
so willingly donate their work for the rest of us to use is good.  But some
people (such as myself) create free software for our personal edification, and
improve it at the behest of our own desires, as well as the desires of other
users.  I certainly don't feel that any user is "obligated" to use my software
if they can the same or better elsewhere.  I am happy when my work benefits
someone else, but I don't discourage others from selling software.  After all,
I work for a living...

Also if free software can't compete in a given area with commercial software,
then I'm likely to use a commercial product.  This is why I still have
MS-Windows with Word 6.0 and Quicken on my machine.  I would gladly dump them
if I could get Linux equivalents.  Also, at work I use an editor called SNiFF+,
which is a great C++ programmer's editor.  The freeware competitors just aren't
up to snuff.  (As a vi fan, I refuse to learn the obscure meta keys used by
emacs, and vi doesn't have some of the nifty features of SNiFF+.)

: If everyone shared your attitude, Linux wouldn't be here at all.
: Linus would have stared at his screen printing "AAA... BBB...",
: realized that SCO worked better, and resorted to that. Instead,
: some of us demand that free software improve, not only by helping
: to develop it, but also by _depending_ on it for everyday use. 

Not true, I think.  I expect that in the early stages almost no one used Linux
for "real" work, but rather as a sort of grand experiment.  Only in the last
year or so has Linux become stable enough that I would heartily recommend it
over a commercial competitor to someone who wasn't a hacker.

-- Garrett.

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

From: johnsonm@merengue.oit.unc.edu (Michael K. Johnson)
Subject: Re: Making "nice" nicer.
Date: 20 May 1994 01:17:34 GMT


In article <1994May19.130645.30397@excaliber.uucp> joel@wam.umd.edu (Joel M. Hoffman) writes:

   machine.  A "top -q" that only let top run would be nice.

Well, I don't know which top you run, but the top that comes with
procps has a -q flag which causes it to run without pause, and if you
are the superuser at the highest priority.  What more can it do?

michaelkjohnson

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

From: veck@pshrink.chi.il.us (Chelloveck)
Subject: Re: BBS-development Team wanted
Reply-To: veck@pshrink.chi.il.us
Date: Fri, 20 May 1994 02:06:28 GMT

ado@bigcomm.gun.de publicly declared:
>I have waited for a good bbs for 5 years now and I realized: There won't be
>a good bbs if we don't write one. So I am looking for people who are
>willing to help defining and writing one.
>
>I also think that a good bbs could be a real killer-application for linux,
>because a free os with free networking and a free bbs would beat every other
>OS easily.
>
>So, lets start with a few questions:
>
>Should we support Mail & News with internal (hard work) or external (easy,
>but lots of different User Interfaces) Programs.

We'll probably want an internal mail/news reader, though maybe we can
steal existing code (like Pico for the editor).  I say we'll want an
internal mail/news reader simply for uniformity of interface.  Joe Newuser
who's never touched Unix before is going to have a *very* rough time with
the standard mail/news readers out there.  I know.  I run a BBS using
Linux.  Besides, religious whining to the contrary, mail and news have a
heck of a lot more similarities than differences.  Being able to use the
same user interface for both is a heckuvalot friendler to the newbies. 

We'll also want to allow knowledgable users the opportunity to forego the 
builtin utility and use their favorite standard tools instead.  This 
feature can by disabled by the sysadmin on systems where access to the 
standard shell is undesirable.

>What programming language do we choose (C(++),Perl,tcl,foo,bar,etc) ?

Probably some combination of C and Perl.  Perl linked with the GNU 
'readline' library is killer for command parsing.

>Should every user have a unix-account or shall we use one "bbs" account or
>both ?

EVERY USER MUST HAVE THEIR OWN UNIX ACCOUNT!  Oh, sorry, I got religious 
for a minute.  Unix already has all sorts of multiuser mechanisms in 
place for distributing mail, keeping home directories separate, etc.  Why 
defeat all that just to have to write it yourself?  IMHO, the gain in 
security isn't enough to overcome the tremendous hassle.

>How do we realize that the sysop can watch/aid bbs-users screens ? How do
>we map different Terminal-Types then ?

Tough one.  Is it necessary for the sysop to be able to see every 
keystroke entered by the user?  Must the sysop's console reflect the 
user's screen?  Although traditional on many existing systems I don't 
think this is a necessary feature.  If desirable I think it can be faked 
using a program like 'screen' to spy on ttys.  (At least, I've heard that 
'screen' has the capability of copying stdio to another tty.)

>Should we "copy" the good features of bbs'es like Remote Access or should
>we start with a complete new approach ?

As the great Lobachevsky put it, "Plagiarize!"  Steal every idea you can. 
BBSs have evolved for over a decade and a half now; there's no need to
start from scratch.  Use that evolution to your advantage! 

>I think, if some of us work together and one writes the menu-stuff, the other
>the file up/download stuff and the third one a user-database we could have
>a working version quite soon. If we have something working, I think there
>will be more and more people writing good tools.

I hate to mention it, 'cause the code's a piece of crap, but my BBS is a 
homebrew program.  I simply call existing tools like Pine and TRN, and 
don't have much additional functionality.  It's mostly a (vaguely) 
friendlier shell.  If anyone likes I'll tar up the source tree and mail 
it to you.  Just drop me a line.  Beware -- The code's written in perl, 
and relies on the 'readline' library being linked into Perl.  You'll need 
to recompile your perl in order to run it.

-- 
========================================<Steven King, veck@pshrink.chi.il.us>==
"Gee, Brain, whaddaya wanna do tonight?"
"The same thing we do every night, Pinky.  Try to take over the world!"

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

From: veck@pshrink.chi.il.us (Chelloveck)
Subject: Re: BBS-development Team wanted
Reply-To: veck@pshrink.chi.il.us
Date: Fri, 20 May 1994 02:12:39 GMT

ado@bigcomm.gun.de publicly declared:
>like me many people think that there still is no good bbs-program for Linux.
>There is ix/mbox, a good program, but it has a geonet interface and I 
>personally don't like it. There is also Uniboard, but there is no source-
>code available and so I won't install it. There are other bbs'es, but none of
>them is as powerful and comfortable as the known dos and os/2 bbs'es
>(My personal opinion). 

The following notice was recently posted to a few newsgroups.  I don't
claim that this is better than any of the other BBS programs (personally,
I hated it when I last used it 5 years ago) but at least it's another
alternative to look at. 

>From: karl@MCS.COM (Karl Denninger)
>Newsgroups: chi.mail,alt.bbs.allsysop,alt.bbs.internet,alt.bbs
>Subject: AKCS BBS System now available for anonymous FTP
>Date: 15 May 1994 21:21:37 -0500
>Organization: MCSNet Ops, Chicago, IL
>Lines: 35
>Message-ID: <2r6lbh$rfp@Mercury.mcs.com>
>
>MCSNet has decided to release the AKCS BBS system in source form for
>anonymous FTP.
>
>You can pick it up from the anonymous ftp server "ftp.mcs.net" in the
>directory "~/AKCS".
>
>It is composed of a compressed tar file which expands into SCCS controlled
>directories and the appropriate build scripts and Makefiles.  A base
>set of configuration directories and control files is provided.  This is
>the same distribution that used to be sold only under commercial license.
>
>Note that the package is still copyrighted, but can be distributed as a
>tar file unchanged and used freely on systems for which there is no 
>exchange of money (ie: free bbs systems, etc).  The full copyright 
>statement is in the FTP area as well as in the archive itself.
>
>Commercial use still requires a license, which is available on
>reasonable terms.  Manuals are available from us for a reasonable
>cost, or hack your way through (its not very hard to set up).
>
>It is known to run on most SV derived Unix-flavor machines, as well as
>SunOS 4.1.x.  The code is somewhat crusty, in that much of it dates from
>1987 (particularly the parser which BADLY needs a re-write!) but it does
>work quite well.
>
>For more info see the FTP archive or send email to me at MCSNet.
>
>Enjoy!
>
>--
>Karl Denninger (karl@MCS.Net)| MCSNet - Full Internet Connectivity (shell,
>Modem: [+1 312 248-0900]     | PPP, SLIP, leased) in Chicagoland
>Voice/FAX: [+1 312 248-8649] | Email "info@mcs.com".  MCSNet is a CIX member.
>READ OUR NEWSLETTER TODAY!   | WWW: http://www.mcs.net, gopher: gopher.mcs.net

-- 
========================================<Steven King, veck@pshrink.chi.il.us>==
"What now, Brain?"
"We should flee in terror.  Yes.  That would be the wisest course."

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

From: pclink@qus102.qld.tne.oz.au (Rick)
Subject: Re: Hackers CD. (Was: Re: InfoMagic CD set - WOW!)
Date: Thu, 19 May 1994 23:52:57 GMT

mahmha@crl.com (Mark A. Horton) writes:

>Sounds like what you are looking for is the Prime-Time-Freeware 2 CD set
>of Unix Software... no Linux, but 2 CDs full of source in all the areas
>you mention.  You might want to give them a call.  I think their 
>telephone number is : +1.408.433.9662
>or email at : ptf@cfcl.com

Yup, I know about PTF.  I thought some people "out there" might like a
CD that contains a bootable kernel along with various hackery.  Lack of
response indicates otherwise.  Ah, well.  Maybe PTF will do something
similar in the future.

Rick.

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


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