Subject: Linux-Misc Digest #166
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:     Tue, 24 May 94 17:13:11 EDT

Linux-Misc Digest #166, Volume #2                Tue, 24 May 94 17:13:11 EDT

Contents:
  Porting to Linux (Clay Luther)
  Re: software communists was Re: BRIEF/vi Compatible GUI Text Editor (C. S. Hendrix)
  Re: Linux for the masses? (WordProcessing again) (C. S. Hendrix)
  Re: URGENT: Linux Security Fixes (Jeroen van Gennip)
  Re: NEC 3xi CDROM cant boot Linux1.0(Yggdrasil 1.1) (Richard D. Yentis)
  Re: blah - kmem ps utils break under 1.1.13 (lilo (SpRiNg 94 GpA 3.64))
  Re: Why questions... (Alan Cox)
  Re: Linux and Bernoulli? (Andrew Lih)
  Re: GETTING LINUX VIA 3.5" (Bruce       Scott          TK)
  to Brent n1161636@student.fit (Frank Derichsweiler)
  Re: Standard Linux GUI (Jens Krauss (Steinfath))
  Re: Fatal Linux Networking problem - help !! (Alan Cox)
  Re: A good NFS server ? (Alan Cox)

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

From: clay@cool.khis.com (Clay Luther)
Subject: Porting to Linux
Date: 24 May 1994 12:32:14 -0500

I've looked over the FAQ's and the HOWTO's, but I can't find anything 
resembling a "porter's guide" for linux.

I have a sunos-based program I would like to port, so I was looking for such
information.

Thanks.

-- 
Clay Luther                              clay@cool.khis.com
Unucks Software Engineer                 Kodak Health Imaging Systems

Brion Gysin's All-Purpose Nuclear Bedtime Story:  Some trillions of years ago, 
a sloppy, dirty giant flicked grease from his fingers.  One of those gobs of 
grease is our universe on its way to the floor.  Splat. - WSB

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

From: shendrix@escape.widomaker.com (C. S. Hendrix)
Subject: Re: software communists was Re: BRIEF/vi Compatible GUI Text Editor
Date: Tue, 24 May 1994 00:13:35 GMT

Matt Welsh (mdw@cs.cornell.edu) wrote:

: Perhaps I should qualify my statements: When I say "free software", 
: I mean free software as distributed under the GPL, and specifically
: software developed by the FSF.

Then you shouldn't say "free software" because that really means
software that is freely available, much of which is not GNU.

: For one thing, software companies love to misle us into these things
: called "upgrades". Upgrades are a wondeful ploy to make your software
: obsolete, so you can spend another $100 to get the new version.
: MS-Windows 2.0 suited the needs of many, many people, yet nearly everyone
: moved to 3.0 and then 3.1. Why? 

Because 2.0 did NOT serve the needs of many.  3.0 was a HUGE improvement
over 2.0.  Not that either is all that great underneath but you cannot
possibly be serious if you say that there was no legitimate reason for
3.0 and 3.1.  Both were major upgrades, not pidly little feature
gimmicks.

You are right about the upgrade ploy being used but don't assume that
ALL upgrades are such deceptions.  Many are very worthwhile and part
of the normal software development cycle.

Applications are another matter most of the time.  I long for a 
word processor that is under 10 megs of disk space...

: It serves a purpose as long as software is developed that can be shared.
: It's not so much an argument between "right" and "wrong", but that,
: technically, free software is better because many people have the ability
: to develop and contribute to it. 

Not if it fails to serve the needs of the users.  Also, what about
companies that write excellent software, provide support, their upgrades
actually make sense, and their pricing is fair?  How is free software
better for their users?  In general common users have more influence
over software in the commercial market than they do in the free software
arena.  Free software currently is more geared to programmers and most
new features are the ideas of programmers, not end users.  End users
have a hard time influencing the software.  This would change with
companies supporting free software but right now most of those companies
are selling support for products like compilers, networking, and similar
tools.  The "users" in those cases are far more capable than the kind of
user they would get if they supported a word processor, game, database,
etc.  Support for non-technical users is very difficult.

I'm not saying supported free software won't work, it's just in need
of some kind of jump-start to get it going.

Being less enlightened than some, end-users will look at what's
available and, not surprisingly, say "YUCK!"  Since a lot of programmer's
are perfectly happy to use vi and TeX for their word processor they
don't tend to write software that most users expect.  And users don't
know how to or often cannot make their wishes known to the free software
developers.  Also, a lot of developers treat user requests with a "screw
you if you can't use it" attitude.

So what we have is users that like UNIX and need the kind of power it
offers.  But the software they need often isn't there and they can't
seem to communicate with the programmers to get what they want.  I know
a lot of people using Linux that jumped off from DOS/Windows or the Mac
because they hated the inneficiency and (insert favorite
Windows/Macintosh slam(s) here).  So they get Linux, manage to install it,
and they are sold.  But they soon miss the software that the UNIX
community seems to feel isn't necessary.  Heck, so do I.  I'm a
programmer.  I use vi and TeX to do my word processing just like those I
mentioned above.  But I'd really like to have a nice word processor
simply because it would likely be faster for me and certainly more
convient.

: Unfortunately the current software market
: doesn't take that attitude, so the only people who have been able to 
: work within that structure are volunteers such as the Linux developers and
: GNU folks. 

Well, the current software is not likely to change if you keep
commercial developers away from an OS like Linux.  They'll just ignore
it and it will go away.  If you really want the concept of free software
to do well, meet the rest of the world half-way.  If you really do have
a better idea you will be giving it a far better chance of being
accepted than if you put up barriers between your ideas and theirs.
Many companies are willing to try but get rebuffed by too many people.
That's stupid.  You cannot expect them to accept your ideas outright,
with no chance to take it slow and experiment.

: mdw

If you really want free software to be the norm, you are going to have
to start supplying what users need.  Users outnumber the rest of us by a
huge margin and it does cost money to support software development,
maintenance, and documentation.  Companies that sell support for free
software are going to have to get something people will buy support for.

So what is wrong with some commercial companies offering their products
for an OS like Linux?  It may very well be the ticket to making free
software a more widely accepted idea.  Otherwise you just divide the
software world in half and that will hurt both sides.  It's not unlikely
that a product might be offered commercially first and if the company
has good success with it, they might change to selling support and
allowing user contributions and development.  Software companies have
legitimate fears and the hostility that meets them does nothing to
alleviate that fear.  Rather, it justifies it.o

And yes... many companies are just plain full of crap and are screwing
us all blind.  Let's just not treat them all like that.


-- 
csh
===========================================================================
shendrix@escape.widomaker.com (UUCP)     | Amd486/40 Linux system
shendrix@pcs.cnu.edu (Internet)          | Christopher Newport University

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

From: shendrix@escape.widomaker.com (C. S. Hendrix)
Subject: Re: Linux for the masses? (WordProcessing again)
Date: Tue, 24 May 1994 00:22:57 GMT

Dominic Fraser (dominic@pepper.cuug.ab.ca) wrote:

: I don't understand. Have none of you used the AndrewToolKit 'ez' 
: wordprocessor?. I have used it for 5 months now with great success, my 
: wife likes, it, I like it, my daughter uses it everyday. It produces 
: exactly what I expect in a decent wysiwig Wp package and outputs in 
: postscript, how much more could I ask?

Big problem with ez is that is it not WYSIWYG, thought it looks that
way.  An ez document is formatted differently for each device it is
currently being view on.  In the ez editor the look of the document,
page breaks, and so on change every time you resize a window.  When
you print, nothing is where it was in the ez window.  

A wordprocessor's screen should reflect what the document will look like
when PRINTED.  So if after this line the window shows a page break,
it should occur in that same place when printed.  That doesn't happen
with ez.  You cannot set margins or control exactly where text will
appear.

Of course, that may not be important to some but I often need to
have tight control over output and ez will not do that.

I would think that ez could be modified to handle things differently.

: For me, the discovery of ATK was the end of my mess-dos partition.

It is very good.  I just wish it would save in other formats and not
use troff to print and ghostview to preview (slow as hell).

-- 
csh
===========================================================================
shendrix@escape.widomaker.com (UUCP)     | Amd486/40 Linux system
shendrix@pcs.cnu.edu (Internet)          | Christopher Newport University

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

From: jeroen@gdsnl.gds.nl (Jeroen van Gennip)
Subject: Re: URGENT: Linux Security Fixes
Date: Tue, 24 May 1994 16:43:46 GMT

Douglas Warren (dwarren@libws4.ic.sunysb.edu) mumbled:

[etc, zapped]

: I believe that the original solution, compiling a new /bin/login was the
: correct one.  Rob is showing the Hacker mentality at it's best.  I think it's
: something to be applauded these days.  The original bug is still known, so
: why give system crackers a leg up by telling them how to crack a half-baked
: workaround?  Instead he advised ppl to upgrade which would totally remove the
: risk.  I doubt that he deserved the expletitives given.

I was making a reference to the intolarable in-crowd stupidity that was 
displayed here. If anything, Rob doesn't deserve to use *nux, because he 
hasn't paid for it, neither does he give a damn  about _Serious People 
Trying To Promote *nux_, or _Somebody Else's Business Being Totally Screwed 
Because Of This One Bug_. The least he could have done, is e-mail me his
comments, but he failed to do so. 

Since then, I've learned that many systems' login accept multiple arguments 
after a '-'. My setup doesn't.

!! Everybody: don't filter on -f in your subtitute login, some login exes allow
!! (for instance) login -pfroot ; in which case my original filter fails.

This is the answer to this ffing riddle, incidentally.

The "Hacker Mentality At Best", I will gladly do without. Also: the cream cake 
offer still stands. ;-)
Or would you rather run everything off a DOS machine ? ;-)
__
J.




















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

From: ryentis@seas.gwu.edu (Richard D. Yentis)
Subject: Re: NEC 3xi CDROM cant boot Linux1.0(Yggdrasil 1.1)
Date: 24 May 1994 13:15:50 -0400

In article <1994May20.144513.3299@eisner>,
Saul J. Rosenberg <rosenberg@eisner.decus.org> wrote:
>
>Problem:
>    Unable to boot Linux 1.0 from NEC 3Xi triple speed CDROM
> 
...
>Environment
>    Linux from Yggdrasil, Summer 1994, version 1.1, received 5/94
> 

I use the NEC 3xi (set to SCSI-2) with Yggdrasil and the Adaptec
1542CF and it works ok for me.  (Note that this is my only SCSI
device.)  My set up is not exactly the same as yours, but it is not
the NEC drive itself (it may be a combination of parts.)

Rich



-- 
Richard Yentis, Jr.                     ryentis@seas.gwu.edu
Apt. 114                                202-342-0952
510 21st St. North West
Washington DC 20006

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

From: lilo@slip-5-16 (lilo (SpRiNg 94 GpA 3.64))
Subject: Re: blah - kmem ps utils break under 1.1.13
Date: 24 May 1994 17:08:15 GMT

On Mon, 23 May 1994 18:22:30 GMT, Juha Laiho (jlaiho@ichaos.nullnet.fi) wrote:

> c9108932@sage.newcastle.edu.au (Simon Ferrett) said:
> >I dunno - maybe Im the only in the world who still uses and like the
> >kmem ps utilites or something...

> No, you certainly are not the only one; there's two of us :)
> And as you may (or not..) have noticed, there was a new release of
> kmem-ps for 1.1.12. I'd suppose there will be one for 1.1.13 as well.

The problem with 1.1.13 is the new tty patches....kmem-ps broke the same way
with the prior ALPHA-tty patches applied.

Oh, and there are three of us.  ;)


lilo

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

From: iiitac@uk.ac.swan.pyr (Alan Cox)
Subject: Re: Why questions...
Date: Tue, 24 May 1994 14:12:14 GMT

In article <1994May24.041738.22894@news.datasrv.co.il> edunet@zeus.datasrv.co.il (Edunetics) writes:
>1) every time in boot up when the kernel comes up there are two things it
>says that I don't know the meaning. The first is the Bogomips count after
>the  recalibration of the loop (what ever that means) and the second one
>is the sentence 'this cpu honors the WP bit even when in supervisor
>mode'. Can anyone shed a bit of light over these for me?
The Bogomips calculation is to determine timings for very short CPU bound
loops needed by some equally bogus PC device hardware.
The WP bit is write-protect, its basically saying you have a 486 and it
can do some things much faster because the 486 CPU is less broken than the
386.
>
>2) Why doesn't Linux support HD with a cylinder number > 1024? I have a
>1272 HD that Linux ver 99.pl10+ (MCC distribution) makes problems and ver
>1.0 (Slackware and MCC distribution won't install at all), Any solution
>for this?

Linux does - the trick is to make a partition fitting entirely under cylinder
1024 and boot off that. Linux can mount and use partitions about cyl 1024 but
not boot off them (yes fdisk moans - but its only warning).

Alan




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

From: lih@news.cs.columbia.edu (Andrew Lih)
Crossposted-To: comp.os.linux,comp.os.linux.development,comp.os.linux.help
Subject: Re: Linux and Bernoulli?
Date: 24 May 1994 15:15:33 -0400

In article <CqBI5F.8o1@metronet.com>, Rick Roberts <ricrob@metronet.com> wrote:
>
>The people I talked with at Iomega never heard of Linux.

Send them the last 4 issues of PC Week.


-fuz

-- 
`'''   Andrew "Fuz" Lih               Columbia University
c @@   lih@cs.columbia.edu            CRF Tech Staff
   \   
  -    <A HREF="http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~lih/">Fuz Page</A>

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

From: bds@slcbdsipp-garching.mpg.de (Bruce       Scott          TK  )
Subject: Re: GETTING LINUX VIA 3.5"
Date: 24 May 1994 16:03:54 GMT

In <9405222103.0TL4E00@paonline.com> robert.schanke@paonline.com writes:

|>        Ok, USENET and Internet mail are my only access to Internet at the
|>moment. I want to obtain the latest version of Linux, preferably the latest
|>Slackware or Soft Landing package (or any other package deal). I regretable do
|>not have a CD-ROM, I don't even have a tape drive, I just have two 3.5" drives
|>and two 2400 baud modems. I don't want to spend weeks downloading it, via FTP
|>by mail,  or racking up LD charges.. hehe (I'm poor enough as it is :)

|>        So, if anyone can e-mail me with the address and price list of the
|>latest Linux distribution packages, I would be overly delighted. I'm currently
|>stuck with .99 pl14. hehe..

Well, I have the same version as you and am happy with it...

but I guess my original distributor is more than likely up to date. You
can get Linux on 3.5" diskettes from Linux Systems Labs, 18300 Tara Drive,
Clinton Township, MN 48036, USA. The phone is +1-313-954-2829. They should
be on the net somewhere, but I do not have the address. I think the price
is 69.95 plus shipping, which should be around 10.95 for two-day priority,
but check first. They should have ads in places like Unix Review and
C Users Journal. Good luck!

-- 
Gruss,
Dr Bruce Scott                             The deadliest bullshit is
Max-Planck-Institut fuer Plasmaphysik       odorless and transparent
bds@ipp-garching.mpg.de                               -- W Gibson

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

From: i31ade@applsrv.rz.unibw-muenchen.de (Frank Derichsweiler)
Subject: to Brent n1161636@student.fit
Date: 24 May 1994 18:09:58 GMT

Hi Brent !

Thank you for your mail. But I cannot direcly access you. Please mail me again !

cu
Frank
i31ade@kommsrv.rz.unibw-muenchen.de

To all aother

I am so sorry ....


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

From: krauss@charlie.igd.fhg.de (Jens Krauss (Steinfath))
Subject: Re: Standard Linux GUI
Date: 24 May 1994 10:10:53 GMT
Reply-To: igd.fhg.de

In article <2rbl8d$nav@renux.frmug.fr.net>, rene@renux.frmug.fr.net (Rene COUGNENC) writes:
> What you think about is probably more a default window-manager with
> default settings for all the binary distributions. This is not a bad
> idea at all... or perhaps it is one, I don't know :-)
> 
> --
>  linux linux linux linux -[ cougnenc@renux.frmug.fr.net ]- linux linux linux 

No, I do not think of an guy for all, I think we need perhaps a default
window manager, and default libs for development, so that sowftware can
be developd for this gui, so that most programms get "one" look and feel!

At the moment my favourite X programs have different guis
OpenLook,
pure X (athena),
something else,
tcl/tk,
and so on

On gui would be nicer!!! Not only for the "Otto Normal" user, to the profis too!

Ciao Jens

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

From: iiitac@uk.ac.swan.pyr (Alan Cox)
Subject: Re: Fatal Linux Networking problem - help !!
Date: Tue, 24 May 1994 10:45:17 GMT

In article <james-230594172726@139.80.104.44> james@physics.otago.ac.nz (James Brundell) writes:
>This was the response from our University Computer Services Centre System
>Manager after our department successfully connected a linux box to our
>local network (and hence the world) !!
>Any comments or suggestions ?
>
>>He's welcome to connect it to the net IF:
>>        1. An appropriately authorised person holds the 'root' password. 
Sounds sensible - responsibility is important.
>>        2. He doesn't unless he's 1 , which he won't be unless he spends $900
>>                to learn sysadmin from me
This is suspicious. Do the university have a formal policy that allows admins
to forcibly charge $900 - I'd really urgently talk to some student 
representatives. I suspect (and hope) he is well outside university rules here
and heading into the realm of extortion
>>        3. it does not run mail - theres a hole in linux 
Utter crap - Tell him to substantiate the claim. More seriously however a Linux
box like a DOS box can be used to tap into an ethernet and play merry hell. That
is a reasonable excuse for all but the forcibly charging of money
>>        5. It is PROPERLY configured to be connected to the net. That means 
>>                John or I configure it and charge him for the provilege.
See the answer to number 2. Better yet find a decent university.

To an extent I sympathise with him. On a network with poor basic security and
sysadmins who don't understand everything they need to (or are just plain too
busy - which is often true) these issues are difficult. When it comes to 
university student areas machines are often using twisted pair, always filtered
from anything critical and easily logged. 

However I know of no university where pay me $900 or else doesn't leave you
in danger of needing to find a new job.

Alan






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

Crossposted-To: comp.os.386bsd.misc,comp.unix.unixware,comp.unix.solaris
From: iiitac@uk.ac.swan.pyr (Alan Cox)
Subject: Re: A good NFS server ?
Date: Tue, 24 May 1994 10:47:47 GMT

In article <hastyCq9M8o.JEz@netcom.com> hasty@netcom.com (Amancio Hasty Jr) writes:
>In article <Cq9Cp8.IEp@novell.co.uk> msohnius@novell.co.uk (Martin Sohnius) writes:
>>The problem I was addressing is that this stuff is being CROSSPOSTED
>>to comp.unix.unixware.  Now, UnixWare is most definitely NOT a 
>>free operating system, and therefore has about the best NFS support
>>imaginable. :-)  (I think it originates from Sun, through the old
>>AT&T + Sun agreement.)
>I don't mind to sound hard but isn't your statement a bit arrogant and
>ignorant. Corporate hype serves its purpose inside your company.

Well all I can say to him is open a UDP socket to a UnixWare NFS server,
issue dubious but vaguely valid NFS requests to it and wait for the crash -
same goes for SunOS and most other OS. Linux it just core dumps nfsd 8)

Alan



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


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