From: Digestifier To: Linux-Development@senator-bedfellow.mit.edu Reply-To: Linux-Development@senator-bedfellow.mit.edu Date: Thu, 23 Sep 93 04:13:11 EDT Subject: Linux-Development Digest #118 Linux-Development Digest #118, Volume #1 Thu, 23 Sep 93 04:13:11 EDT Contents: PCI support for Linux (Markus Kuhn) Re: emacs19 from MCC M-^? causes suspend? (Carl Witty) Re: GCC, is it a bug or isn't it? (David Wright) Re: To all device driver writers; boot-time messages. (David Wright) Re: How to write X11 programs (no Motif available?)? (Cary Sandvig) Net-2 Patches are GREAT (Billy L. Williams Jr.) Re: What do people think about /config? (James Kimble) 68k Cross-compiler on Linux (Matthew Donadio) What do people think about /config? (Russell Nelson) Freeware Linux BBS - READ! (Ken Geis) why not keep c.o.l ? (Laszlo Herczeg) Need ADVIVE!! (Brian Patrick Dunphy) Re: TERM is a registered trademark (Jeffrey Grills) Re: Anybody ever try crashme on Linux? (Savio Lam) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: unrza3@cd4680fs.rrze.uni-erlangen.de (Markus Kuhn) Subject: PCI support for Linux Date: Mon, 20 Sep 1993 12:11:33 +0200 Reply-To: mskuhn@cip.informatik.uni-erlangen.de The PCI bus seems to be the most promising bus system for Intel PCs. Now, the first boards, graphic cards and SCSI adapters are on the market. If you are interested in examining what modifications to Linux are necessary in order to get full performance on PCI bus boards, you'll need the specification: PCI Local Bus Specification Production Version Revision 2.0 April 30, 1993 It may be obtained from: PCI Special Interest Group M/S FG3-15A 5200 N.E. Elam Young Parkway Hillsboro, Oregon 97124-6497 (503)696-2000 Order from +1 800 433 5177; manual is $25 + $7 s/h. VISA/MC. Has anyone already tried to run the current Linux version on a PCI board, yet? Markus -- Markus Kuhn, Computer Science student «°o°» University of Erlangen, Germany Internet: mskuhn@cip.informatik.uni-erlangen.de | X.500 entry available ------------------------------ From: cwitty@ai.mit.edu (Carl Witty) Subject: Re: emacs19 from MCC M-^? causes suspend? Date: 22 Sep 93 17:02:44 In article eichin@tweedledumber.cyGNUs.com (Mark Eichin) writes: I've been using MCC-0.99.10+ (real easy to install, and great for laptops, as it is easier to notice you need something and get it than to notice that you *don't* need something and throw it away...) and it comes with a terminal-based emacs-19.15. I've discovered that if I hit Meta-DEL (attempting to delete the previous word) emacs19 will suspend, and then when I foreground it, the tty modes are wrong (it's in line mode, for example...) Using ^X^Z and fg'ing works fine. Anyone seen this, or know of a fix? It's a bug somewhere (funny how the numeric value of Meta-DEL is 0xff :-) The same thing happens with the binary distribution of emacs-19.19 when used in text mode ("emacs -nw"). Carl Witty cwitty@ai.mit.edu ------------------------------ From: dmw@prism1.prism1.com (David Wright) Subject: Re: GCC, is it a bug or isn't it? Date: 22 Sep 93 16:13:49 GMT =====BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE===== >>>>> "BSA" == Brandon S Allbery writes: BSA> Or the line is actually something like BSA> You shouldn't have defined NEVER_DEFINED BSA> and gcc tripped over the unmatched single quote, which ANSI compilers are BSA> apparently allowed (supposed?) to do. This caused me a good hour and a half of head scratching before I figured out that was what was happening in my code. I had lines like: #ifdef FOO #include #else WHOOPS! - I can't compile on this machine because you are missing xyz.h! #endif I always just assumed that it would strip out anything between the #ifdef'ed code if it was not going to be included, but noooooo they have to try and parse it anyway. Seems like a Bad Idea (TM) to me... Dave =====BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE===== Version: 2.3a iQCVAgUBLKB5q2++A+T9du0zAQFpsgQA1pGahyZbKCf2A3dWXKlU9KiNMyqIt/Rl IEOhg+0PUpjxn1m5R2PCcVS6c89B5BDF8K57WVXeNb4OWCPCLvoGbgX9udFFqPUH oRHTfa2ozuJkhqN5PNjyM0R+gw9BmR6OVCFXtUdNSjUAUZEs+N2Hfbob3fvNDPEA 5ODInrTN7eA= =+OE1 =====END PGP SIGNATURE===== -- ____________________________________________________________________________ | /\ / | Prism Computer Applications | David Wright | | -/--\-- | 14650 Detroit Ave, Suite LL40 | dmw@Prism1.COM | | /____\ | Lakewood, OH 44107 USA | 216-228-1400 | ------------------------------ From: dmw@prism1.prism1.com (David Wright) Subject: Re: To all device driver writers; boot-time messages. Date: 22 Sep 93 16:23:31 GMT =====BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE===== >>>>> "DJB" == Donald J Becker writes: DJB> any code. I think Linux device drivers should be as clear as possible while DJB> remaining concise. I'm talking about _loadable_ device drivers, where an DJB> object code module is distributed seperately from the kernel, and can be DJB> loaded into the kernel at the user-level after the kernel has booted. If DJB> Linux 1.00 has that as a standard feature we will likely see a considerable DJB> number of proprietary device drivers. You don't need loadable device drivers for this to happen. All you have to do is ship the *.o files for people to be able to create proprietary device drivers. This is how it is done under SCO Unix, which does not do dynamic device loading. This hasn't happened to Linux yet, so I wouldn't worry about dynamic loading making the situation any worse. Dave =====BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE===== Version: 2.3a iQCVAgUBLKB7PW++A+T9du0zAQH2cwP8DRsjmt4Zugml4Mluws8zFY6gF2uOEwNB G9igaEy36+tSv5xyOuRAgDM5kRa45bsTAzix6EJFLoJhIRpx5WGMpu3HIMt53LqR PMNoXxcqHYCkoqafLoNSmprkY88RC782umN8xCjcGVt46eRGnpWQN1YADZz1Lc0G FbFcWiiqPDQ= =Yjg4 =====END PGP SIGNATURE===== -- ____________________________________________________________________________ | /\ / | Prism Computer Applications | David Wright | | -/--\-- | 14650 Detroit Ave, Suite LL40 | dmw@Prism1.COM | | /____\ | Lakewood, OH 44107 USA | 216-228-1400 | ------------------------------ From: sandvig@geom.umn.edu (Cary Sandvig) Subject: Re: How to write X11 programs (no Motif available?)? Date: Wed, 22 Sep 1993 22:59:46 GMT To: In article <273on2$9er@nwfocus.wa.com> ten0772@halcyon.com (Timothy E. Neto) writes: |For a Price: |Motif is available from Metrolink. From the articles in |comp.os.linux... that I've read, it appears to be a good |package. my $.02. the Motif available under Linux (1.2, 1.2.2 comming out soon) is excelent, and the Motif toolkit is really well thought out. It was mentioned elsewhere in this thread that, yes, OpenWindows and OpenLook are free. Buy that same token, Sun announced some time ago that they were dropping them and going to Motif. -- ------------------------------ From: williams@vierzk.bates.scarolina.edu (Billy L. Williams Jr.) Crossposted-To: comp.os.linux.misc Subject: Net-2 Patches are GREAT Date: 22 Sep 1993 22:20:48 GMT Hello Fellow net-users, I would just like to remark that the net-2 patches found on sunsite under /pub/Linux/system/Network/net2-debugged-tcp.tar.z really work wonders for me. My system (pl 12, 13 alpha, and 13) really wasn't stable at all under any kind of net load, but the new patches really help my system stay up under normal usage. Take a look: [1] % uptime 6:14pm up 17:47, 2 users, load average: 0.01, 0.06, 0.02 and I've been hitting the net fairly hard trying to crash the machine (it didn't crash 17:47 ago either, just rebooted after applying patches). This would have been unthinkable without these patches--a simple repition of "tcpspray" commands would eventually bring it down (after approx. 100 or so such commands in a row). Oh, my hardware: 386-40, 20 meg ram (but with kernel 16 meg limit due to the ethernet card drivers), Boca AT1500 compatible card, nothing else special. Thank you, Swansea University, for making my net stable! By the way, can anybody direct me to the newest telnetd and rlogind? I realize that I should get them for pl 13, but I have been unable to find any kind of new sources for them.... Billy L. Williams, Jr. -- Billy L. Williams, Jr. e-mail: williams@vierzk.bates.scarolina.edu University of South Carolina Master of International Business Candidate Try Linux--it will be the last OS you ever install............Go Cocks! ..................finger me for pgp key and more info.................. ------------------------------ From: jkimble@unislc.slc.unisys.com (James Kimble) Subject: Re: What do people think about /config? Date: Wed, 22 Sep 1993 21:50:24 GMT From the swift and nimble fingers of Thomas Aaron Insel (tinsel@uiuc.edu): > > I do have to question the usefulness of using /config with the password > and group files, however. There are a large number of commands which > modify these directly (useradd, chsh, chfn, etc.). These programs should be using as many "standard" routines as possible, such as getpwent(), getpwnam(), and getpwuid(). Granted, I understand that POSIX et al doesn't define useful operations on the user database like setpw*(), but such functionality could easily be defined from following either the spirit of the existing interface convention(s) and/or something that borrows from, say, SVID where it is clearly defined. This has the obvious advantage of allowing subsequent changes to be as painless as possible by encapsulating all the changes to the interface library, eg: lib*.a. Many folks will recall all the "fun" that was had when installing the new SysV release that introduced the "shadow password files" -- lots of code stopped working because it was directly dependent on the contents of "the second field of the colon-delimited file /etc/passwd." The "x" or "!" or "*" or was less than 13 bytes and highly unlikely to match anything you could possibly use as a password... :-) Let's adopt one of the famed "dozens of standards" that exist and code to it. That way the addition of ACLs and auditing will go smoothly. :-) :-) Cheers, --Jim Kimble jkimble@unislc.slc.unisys.com Yet Another Unisys Contractor "I don't speak for Unisys..." "ALPO is 99 cents a can... That's almost SEVEN dog dollars!" ------------------------------ From: donadio@mxd120.rh.psu.edu (Matthew Donadio) Subject: 68k Cross-compiler on Linux Date: 22 Sep 1993 23:20:00 GMT Does anybody have a cross-compiler running under Linux to generate Motorola 68k code? I don't quite have the disk space right now for all the GCC source code and objects. On a related note, is there such a beast as a software Motorola 68k simulator, like Spim for MIPS R2000? I tried a few different archie searces without any luck. -- Beaker aka Matt Donadio | Life is short, --- __ o __~o __ o donadio@mxd120.rh.psu.edu | ride like ---- _`\<, _`\<, _`\<, mxd120@cac.psu.edu | the wind. --- ( )/( ) ( )/( ) ( )/( ) ------------------------------ From: nelson@crynwr.com (Russell Nelson) Subject: What do people think about /config? Date: Wed, 22 Sep 93 17:18:18 GMT In article kevin@frobozz.sccsi.com writes: In article jgrape@coos.dartmouth.edu (Johan A. Grape) writes: >I think that the /config idea spurs from unix sysadm >suddenly becoming a job for every PEECEE owner now >that linux is around. Yup. That's my assessment as well. Rather than have you guess, I'll come out and say it: I've administered Unix machines before, and I *still* have a hard time with it. I'll learn how to set up a program, get it going, then have to start learning all over again when I come back to it a few months later with a new version. If there's any single standard that needs to exist with respect to config files, it's the use of a comment character. Most things can use '#' at the beginning of a line to indicate a comment. I suggest that everything be modified to deal with that. Then you include sufficient documentation in comments to enable novice admins to get a handle on what they're doing when they look at the file. This, of course, is for system configuration files that don't have a specific application that uses them. Absolutely! People who come from the MS-LOSS world don't seem to realize that the reason Unix is more complex to administrate is that Unix is a more complex system! Furthermore, how can you effectively manage a system if you don't know how the pieces are supposed to work? Configuration files give you a clue about how things work. Knowing about them is an advantage. I do admit that there are some configuration files for which a front-end editor would be really useful. Sendmail.cf comes to mind. :-) IDA Sendmail is your friend here. But it's not *too* friendly if only because the documentation and the configuration file are split. The way I look at it is, *don't* create a man page for a configuration file. Instead, put the documentation into the comments in the file. That way, you've got the documentation right there when you need it. -russ What canst *thou* say? Crynwr Software Crynwr Software sells packet driver support. 11 Grant St. 315-268-1925 Voice | LPF member - ask me about Potsdam, NY 13676 315-268-9201 FAX | the harm software patents do. ------------------------------ From: bogart@ucsee.Berkeley.EDU (Ken Geis) Subject: Freeware Linux BBS - READ! Date: 23 Sep 1993 02:14:22 GMT I've seen a lot of conversation on the Linux and BBS newsgroups recently about running a freeware Linux BBS. The responses haven't been too appealing, especially from the 'freeware' standpoint. I've got an idea that's perfect for the Linux environment. Why can't we write one? I'm not up to it myself, but I'd be glad to contribute whatever knowledge and coding I could. Let's talk, Ken ------------------------------ From: las@whome.uucp (Laszlo Herczeg) Subject: why not keep c.o.l ? Date: Thu, 23 Sep 1993 02:29:11 GMT Now, with the new groups created, the traffic in comp.os.linux is quite manageable. So, why not keep the old comp.os.linux group around until at least version 1.0 of the kernel is released, for historical purposes? Just a thought. ------------------------------ From: Brian Patrick Dunphy Crossposted-To: comp.os.linux.help,comp.os.linux.misc,comp.windows.x.i386unix Subject: Need ADVIVE!! Date: Wed, 22 Sep 1993 23:54:19 -0400 I am currently running DOS with a Diamand Stealth w/ VRAM. I am planning/hoping to run Linux w/ X windows and I know my current card is not supported. So.. What video cards are supported that will give good performance in Windows as well as Linux w/ X. Local Bus is an option and I would like to keep prices in the low $200s. Any suggestions are welcome. Thanks -Brian ****************************************************************************** Brian Dunphy Carnegie Mellon University bd29@andrew.cmu.edu "Where one forgets (412) 862-2053 what it is like to sleep." ------------------------------ From: jefftep@cs.utexas.edu (Jeffrey Grills) Subject: Re: TERM is a registered trademark Date: 22 Sep 1993 23:57:50 -0500 In article <748663680snx@crynwr.com>, Russell Nelson wrote: >TERM is a registered trademark of Century Software. > >Maybe the free "term" package should be called termlink? > >-russ What canst *thou* say? >Crynwr Software Crynwr Software sells packet driver support. >11 Grant St. 315-268-1925 Voice | LPF member - ask me about >Potsdam, NY 13676 315-268-9201 FAX | the harm software patents do. gee, I personally don't see it being a problem. First off, they'd have to complain. Second, they'd have to take it up with Michael, and he's in Australia. Third, they'ed have to win. Words that are in the common domain are exempt from this kind of thing. term is just simply too generic for someone to trademark. It'd be like General Motors trademarking "auto" or something.... no way, no how will it stick. -- jeff grills jefftep@cs.utexas.edu ------------------------------ From: lam836@cs.cuhk.hk (Savio Lam) Subject: Re: Anybody ever try crashme on Linux? Date: Thu, 23 Sep 1993 05:45:04 GMT Reply-To: lam836@cs.cuhk.hk Mark Eichin (eichin@tweedledumber.cyGNUs.com) wrote: > sigh. what you've *all* (well, the 20 or so in the thread as I see it > here...) missed is that "crashme" is a particular program, that > probably didn't crash Linux because it hits bugs that are common on > OS'es for RISC-based machines... > It's been posted to the net a few times. It grabs a block of > memory, fills it with random garbage, masks (or handles?) all of the > signals, and jumps into the garbage. Older versions of DECMIPS Ultrix > would panic; I think SunOS 4 did too... But it crashes OS/2 and Intel version of NT also (I know that since I have friends that tried it on them). Would you consider those OS'es for RISC-based machines? Regards, Savio Lam. -- ############################################################################### # | _ # # ------------------------------- | _| |_ # # Lam Lai Yin, Savio | |_ _| # # | | | # # Internet: lam836@cs.cuhk.hk | / \ Can't live with DOS? # # Department of Computer Science | | DOS | # # Chinese University of Hong Kong | | | Try Linux... # # ------------------------------- | | | # # | ^^^^^^^^^^^^^ # ############################################################################### ------------------------------ ** FOR YOUR REFERENCE ** The service address, to which questions about the list itself and requests to be added to or deleted from it should be directed, is: Internet: Linux-Development-Request@NEWS-DIGESTS.MIT.EDU You can send mail to the entire list (and comp.os.linux.development) via: Internet: Linux-Development@NEWS-DIGESTS.MIT.EDU Linux may be obtained via one of these FTP sites: nic.funet.fi pub/OS/Linux tsx-11.mit.edu pub/linux sunsite.unc.edu pub/Linux End of Linux-Development Digest ******************************