From: Digestifier To: Linux-Misc@senator-bedfellow.mit.edu Reply-To: Linux-Misc@senator-bedfellow.mit.edu Date: Tue, 7 Sep 93 23:13:13 EDT Subject: Linux-Misc Digest #113 Linux-Misc Digest #113, Volume #1 Tue, 7 Sep 93 23:13:13 EDT Contents: POLL RESULTS, PART 7/7 (Matthew Dillon) Re: NT versus Linux (Peter Mutsaers) Re: Where's the PostScript stuff for groff? ( Tom Chapin) Re: NT versus Linux (Simon E Spero) Re: Man pages for tar? (Gold Silver Soup and Silk) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: dillon@moonshot.west.oic.com (Matthew Dillon) Crossposted-To: comp.os.linux.help,comp.os.linux.development,comp.os.linux.admin Subject: POLL RESULTS, PART 7/7 Date: 7 Sep 1993 18:52:59 -0700 =================== ETHERNET CONTROLLER ================== BRAND BUS $$$$ ? ? ? PROBS No ethernet adapter, although the SLS 103 install thought I had one, plus three different sound boards, which I don't have, not one. BRAND BUS $$$$ ? ISA ? BRAND BUS $$$$ BRAND BUS $$$$ BRAND BUS $$$$ BRAND BUS $$$$ ? ? ? PROBS Don't use one. COMMENT Don't use one. ? ? ? PROBS N/A COMMENT N/A BRAND BUS $$$$ / (maybe ne2000 in future?) ? ? 3C305 ISA ? 3C503 - not yet installed ISA $40 used 3c509 ISA ATS3000 ($300) PROBS You know, this little gem is not supported by linux yet, I'm still waiting and hoping...! 3Com ISA I borrowed it f PROBS No install problems! 3Com | Allied Telesis both ISA ? PROBS Kernel has no DMA autodetect for AT-1500BT. (It was expained in README that it doesn't work on clones but it's not a reason to leave it out! :( ) etherlink autodetect is bogus. 3com -503 ISA AUS$50 3COM 3C503 ISA $170 PROBS I had a problem with an IRQ confict between my bus mouse and the 3C503 card. The drive insisted upon using INT 5 for the 3C503 card, and I was unsuccessful at changing its mind. To fix it, I use a serial mouse when running Linux. COMMENT I have only run these tests on Pathworks running under MS-DOS and MS-Windows. The results, are along these lines: The 3C503 and 3C509 cards where so close it doesn't matter. The 3C509 card costs about $20 less and can use more IRQ's. No Linux driver exists for the 3C509, but it will soon, I'm sure. 3Com 3C503/16bit ISA ? PROBS I don't use autoconfig since it sometimes select an interrupt which i use for a seriel port I use irq 9 COMMENT FTP is about 450Kb/s between local hosts both maschines have 3c503's 3Com 3C505 ISA Used, almost fr PROBS No driver yet, I'm trying to learn the programming interface of the card.. next thing is to learn about Linux/NET-2 internals.. 3com 503 ISA $150US 3Com 579 EISA 59 PROBS No Linux device driver support. (Yet!) 3Com EtherLink II ISA giveaway PROBS Port mapping conflict with the SCSI controller, easily resolved. 3Com, WDxxx, Nat. Semicond. ISA 100 pounds PROBS Fine. 3com-503 ISA AUS$60 Cabletron ISA (8-bit, yec Don't know...be PROBS Linux does not support Cabletron cards very well. I still get net-related lockups. (Things have gotten better, though -- MCC can do in 15 minutes what it took me three months to do last year!) COMMENT I can't really compare. This is the only board I've used. (Outside of workstations.) CNet NE2000 ISA $135.00 PROBS Nope, no difficulties at all. We owe a lot to Donald Becker, the ethernet card guru :-)) COMMENT I have had FTP transfers (machine to machine local) hit up to 100k per second. This was with a net that had two linux machines and that's it, so very good RAW performance without other packet traffic. I think it is a very good NE2000 clone, but there are hundreds of good clones out there too. Commodore ISA $120 Compex E-Net ISA ~$70 PROBS Haven't configured NET stuff yet, but worked fine under several networks in DOS. COMMENT No testing done yet. BRAND BUS $$$$ DEC Etherworks 3 ISA company owned, PROBS still trying to get it to work Don't own one. ? ? El chepo ne2000 clone, isa 80 Generic ISA $75 PROBS SLS boot hangs with card plugged in. Had to get v.99 pl10 & NET-2 & reconfigure and recompile to get it to work. COMMENT seems to get about 130kbytes/sec on rcp copies. Generic 3com ISA now idea longshine (ne2000 clone) isa $100 PROBS no problems COMMENT ? N/A ? ? n/a ? ? NA ? ? NatSemi special 83905 (NE2000+ ISA (engineering sa NE-12C (NE2000 clone) ISA $90 PROBS This board can cause system lockups if a kernel device poll for some other device doesn't have a "light enough touch". This hasn't been a problem for me since PL10. The board seems to work fine, if the system boots. :-) NE2000 ? ? PROBS Care must be taken with IRQs for NE2000 and Adaptec 1502 SCSI controller NE2000 clone ISA ? PROBS Kernel auto-probes to the board hang the machine. NE2000 compatible (SVEC 4 Dime 16 bit 79 PROBS no problems... switches were initially set to use IRQ 7 NI5210 ISA 100 PROBS Had to patch kernel, NI5210 not standard supported card. still trying to get NET-2 config to work properly. No ethernet adapter ? ? NoName VLB US $ 60 PROBS None. Works with the same setup I needed for DOS. Noname NE2000 clone ISA 65$ Noname NE2000 clone ISA < $100 PROBS IRQ - everything seems to want to use IRQ5. NoName, NE2000 clone ISA ? PROBS Initial SLS 1.01 setup wouldn't boot with this card. Had to remove it and install enough floppies to recompile. By now, I've rebuilt just about everything so there are no more such problems. COMMENT It's been idle for a while (at home), waiting for my other PC (a portable) to get an ethercard, so no comments... BRAND BUS $$$$ None ? ? None ? ? none - - NONE ? ? none ? ? none - - None ? ? None ? ? COMMENT N/A none ? ? none ? ? none ? ? COMMENT N/A none n/a n/a none ? ? none ? ? none ? ? None at the moment ? ? none. ? ? None. ? ? None. ? ? COMMENT N/A None. ? ? BRAND BUS $$$$ NONE. ? ? PROBS Even though I don't use an ethernet card, I had to change the ethernet driver in the kernel since it was detecting a card where there was none (it found my sound card), and took over an IRQ used by my serial ports. novel ne2000 ISA (16bit) $150 COMMENT well, a 3com501 under MACH/i386 does about 150-200k/s and they plain old SUCK, completely brain dead (i own a few), the NE2000 is VERY competetive with many workstations for speed even on a clunky ISA bus box. i routinely see 500-700K/s on it. i noticed that upping the ISA bus to 16mhz sped up 3com501 speed (under mach, i didn't port it to linux yet!) but didn't have that much of an effect on the ne2k probably due to its larger buffer, and reasonable smarts. Novell NE1000 ? 100 DM ISA Novell NE2000 ISA $70 PROBS Not being used at present SII NE 2000 Compatible ISA 300 DM (1991) PROBS Problems with SLS Boot disks, won`t boot, because the autodetect routine in the kernel won`t work. I always have to build a new kernel without any Ethernetdriver other than NE2000. SMC ISA $120 PROBS None in linux. Had to reset the I/O and IRQ in dos... SMC ISA $200 PROBS Had to hack on it with wdconfig because factory default is that the EEPROM checksum is wrong. :-( COMMENT No DMA -- speed is reasonable, though most card's memory is just too small for the card to work right on a very busy net. The limit is my kernel speed here. SMC ISA $150 PROBS Had to switch irq to not conflict with com2 (irq3) COMMENT None SMC ISA $150 PROBS Had to switch irq to not conflict with com2 (irq3) COMMENT None SMC Elite 16 ISA 200 $ PROBS none ! SMC Elite 16 ISA 200 $ Can. PROBS No problems. SMC ELite 16 ISA ??? SMC Elite 16 ISA $100 SMC ELITE 16 ISA $ 150 PROBS auto-probing is still way off, even if tell the kernel at what adress the card is.. SMC Elite 16 ISA $100 PROBS My system crashed often when I first installed this card (under either DOS or Linux). I suspect a power supply problem as shuffling things around can make the problem worse/better. SMC Elite 16 ISA $130 PROBS couldn't get 16bit board to work, but 8bit works fine. Probably related to board/EISA/Linux configuration. COMMENT not large enough network (or enough traffic) to judge superiority of 16bit over 8bit cards (though for the money they're worth it). SMC Elite 16 ISA ? PROBS None. COMMENT No. SMC Elite 16 ISA $125Cdn. PROBS None, apart from finding out what kind of card Linux thought it was. SMC Elite 16 bit ISA DM 265.- PROBS none COMMENT We compread several boards without much difference; we SMC Elite 16+ ISA 16bit ? PROBS hard wired IRQ/DMA/RAM settings in newer kernel versions instead of auto detect code BRAND BUS $$$$ SMC WD 8013 ISA $140 PROBS no difficulties. Don't remember if I changed the IRQ and COMMENT I'm not doing enough networking yet to tell much about it. SMC WD8013 IDE $300 PROBS the kernel 99p12 doesn't recognice the settings, they are to configure in linux/net/inet/CONFIG SMC/Western Digital 8013E ISA ? PROBS I had to edit /linux/net/CONFIG. SuperLAN NE2000 clone ISA A$120 PROBS Just the cable problem mentioned above. COMMENT I have to say that this is NOT generally true. While NE2000 to NE2000 can be pushed to 400K/s or more, 3COM 8 bit cards have big problems exceeding 200K/s. The NE3000 (would that there were drivers for it for ANY UNIX yet) is blinding (rated 20mbit/s). WD 8003 WD 8003 ISA ISA $15 $15 PROBS The autoconfig in one kernel version was rubbish (forget which). Other than that no problems except I've run out of free IRQ's in the 486. And I had to decide what could share with what. WD compatible ISA ? PROBS None WD8003 ISA 120$ PROBS no problems (except for making sure kernel is config'd for whatever IRQ/IO address the card is set ;) WD8003E,NE2000,3C509 ISA NE2000: 30$ PROBS Nothing with the cards, bugs in SLS 1.03 for configuring IP. Haven't tried the 3C509 yet. COMMENT Haven't run anything that would be a good measure of speed yet. But I bought the NE2000 because it is a sixteenbit card, and should be faster than the WD8003. WD8013 ISA $90 PROBS none COMMENT none Western Digital ISA $85.00 PROBS Change default IRQ5 to IRQ10, I/O address from 0x240 to 0x280. COMMENT None Western Digital ISA $50 PROBS I don't know if it's hardware related (don't think so), but the other machine (running Windoze) hangs after receiving a single packet in ftp. telnet works fine, though. Western DIgital ISA $200 PROBS We use the cards in software setup mode -- the kernel could not find it. I patched the kernel to fix this. On another machine, we moved the jumper on the card. Both solutions worked well. Western Digital WD8003EP ISA I got it surplu PROBS Linux auto probe does not work correctly. Linux wdsetup does not work..had to use MESSYDOS wdsetup to set card parameters. COMMENT Its hard to comment on board speed with Linux net-2 code. Very slow under Linux currently. END OF PART 7 END OF POLL ------------------------------ Crossposted-To: comp.os.ms-windows.advocacy From: muts@compi.hobby.nl (Peter Mutsaers) Subject: Re: NT versus Linux Date: Tue, 7 Sep 1993 17:46:05 GMT >> On Mon, 6 Sep 1993 10:38:34 EDT, rich@mulvey.com (Rich Mulvey) >> said: RM> apply to the majority of people who use computers. They need a RM> single-tasking program loader, and that's what they get from RM> DOS. I think that we're arguing at cross-purposes here; I'm in RM> full agreement that DOS rots for any network, large-app, or RM> multi-process work. But working as a consultant/programmer for RM> small businesses ( And by small I mean > 10 people, which RM> constitutes by far the MAJORITY of businesses in the U.S. ) RM> there typically isn't a need. ( Better watch out - I may start RM> getting into my other peeve about how companies tend to use RM> computers as problem generators rather than problem solvers. ;-) You forget the horror that for DOS you always need to take care that you don't go over the 640K limit. For avarge users the handling with these memory managers is quite difficult. You won't mind because that may be what you earn your bread with; the horror that every program comes with drivers for all kinds of hardware because there is no kernel that makes a nice abstraction of available hardware devices. Conflicting resident programs, etc. etc. RM> What makes UNIX inappropriate? RM> 1) Rotten file-system integrity in harsh environments. Ever RM> try to run a computer in a factory that contains lots of high RM> startup load machines without an expensive UPS? It's not fun RM> to have the machine crash before syncing. And we're not RM> talking about a cheap, $250.00 in-line UPS - they can't cut RM> it. Not true. Many available filesystems are also much more sofisticated to the DOS filesystem in this respect, with double superblock and other redundant information such that power failure can never destroy the filesystem. You only loose some of the blocks that were written in the last seconds, but that is unavoidable in any system. RM> 2) Expertise needed to set it up and use it effectively. The RM> business that pays its receptionist $7.50/hr is not likely to RM> want to hire a $50.00/hour consultant to get lpd working RM> correctly. And they're not going to find out how to do it in You are clearly not familiar with modern Unices and the way it is distributed with system administration stuff that makes such tasks childishly simple. RM> any book that is easily accessible to a computer neophyte. RM> How many questions do you see flooding the .linux groups RM> daily that are posted by people who *like* computers and RM> solving problems? What chance does an overworked, harried As much as I like Linux, it is still beta and in its current form not intended nor suitable to be used by newbies who do not want to invest some time. You can choose, either pay money for an easy to install supported Unix, or use a free UNIX but pay money/spend time to do it yourself. > Which is all well and fine for programmers. Users don't care > about that - RM> nor should they, really. They want solutions to problems. We RM> need to provide them with solutions, no matter what it takes. RM> We have to put up with rotten goods so they don't have to. I disagree. The fact that 'we' work with better and more advanced tools (i.e. a better OS than DOS/windows) means we can do more in less time, and deliver a better product. Thus the price can be lower. I predict that the current situation will change drastically, and that in the future the Unix version of programs will be cheaper instead of more expensive, because it is easier to develop and maintain on Unix than on anything else. -- _______________________________________________________________ Peter Mutsaers, Bunnik (Ut), the Netherlands. ------------------------------ Crossposted-To: comp.os.linux.admin,comp.os.linux.help From: chapin@cbnewsc.cb.att.com ( Tom Chapin ) Subject: Re: Where's the PostScript stuff for groff? Date: Wed, 8 Sep 1993 02:18:19 GMT Rick Miller writes: >I've got all the nifty groff stuff that came with the SLS-1.03, but it >doesn't seem to include a directory needed by "groff" to produce PostScript >output. ... >I looked around with "find" and have deduced that I need a directory called >"/usr/lib/groff/font/ps" (which would contain the file DESC, among others). I just had the same problem with a much older version of SLS. I got version 1.06 of groff from sunsite and everything is fine now... -- tom chapin tjc@hrcce.att.com ------------------------------ From: ses@tipper.oit.unc.edu (Simon E Spero) Crossposted-To: comp.os.ms-windows.advocacy Subject: Re: NT versus Linux Date: 8 Sep 1993 02:24:56 GMT In article <930907.092305.2J8.rusnews.w165w@mulvey.com>, Rich Mulvey wrote: >kenney@stein1.u.washington.edu (Michael Kenney) writes: > >> In article <930906.103834.9V2.rusnews.w165w@mulvey.com>, >> Rich Mulvey wrote: >> Huh??? First of all, putting a computer - any computer - on the same >> circuit with large electric motors is just plain stupid. I can't imagine >> a factory actually doing this. > > Then you apparently have never worked in industry. :-) Have you ever seen what happens to a PDP-11 when someone rams a forklift into the junction box, and 3-phase gets fed into the 240V circuits? It's pretty impressive, unless it's doing your payroll for the month. > >> The file-system integrity problem is due to disk cacheing ... you'll have >> the same problems if you use a disk-cacheing package under DOS/Windows. >> At least with Unix you have a good chance of fixing your problems with fsck. This is ignoring the progress that has been made with modern Unices, such as ConvexOS, and AIX; these have highly recoverable file-systems, JFS under AIX being one of the few good parts of AIX. The recovery mechanisms used by Windows NT are modelled after these file-systems; each of these is much more likely to survive a really awkward power-failure than DOS/Windows 3.1 with Smart-drive. Even with non-journalled file systems, a power-failure will not leave the file system in a completely unrecoverable state. Recovery from here-on is the job of the DBMS or application- this remains regardless of whether journalling is being used at the file system level or not. Using a database without journalling for mission-critical applications is pretty stupid no matter what computer you're using. This argument is really pretty pointless (this entire thread is really pointless. I like Windows NT. I like Linux. I Love my powerbook, and they'll pry my SS10 from my cold dead hands. Each has its own good points.) Simon -- Hackers Local 42- National Union of Computer Operatives, Chapel Hill section ============================================================================== Tar Heel Information Services - Nothing but net! | WAIS/Z39.50 spoken here CLNP - The C is for Clue | DoD #612 | Tel: +1-919-962-9107 ------------------------------ From: jmadison@etsun.tech.iupui.edu (Gold Silver Soup and Silk) Subject: Re: Man pages for tar? Date: Wed, 8 Sep 1993 01:47:27 GMT In article muts@compi.hobby.nl (Peter Mutsaers) writes: >>> On 3 Sep 1993 12:07:00 GMT, zloebl@piis10.joanneum.ac.at (Klaus >>> ZLOEBL) said: > > KZ> the man pages for tar are messed up. in SLS 1.02 as in SLS > KZ> 1.03. how can i fix it, or where from do i get new ones? > >Messed up? Has there ever been a man page for gnu tar? I've never seen >one. The only documentation is 'tar --help'. yup & they're BAD. looks like a TeX file or something. >-- >_______________________________________________________________ >Peter Mutsaers, Bunnik (Ut), the Netherlands. -jonM -- jmadison@etsun.tech.iupui.edu <>< DJ AllStar of tha foolz(?)...comin' soon (we hope!) get Linux OS, it's dope! it's free! it's UNIX! ------------------------------ ** 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-Misc-Request@NEWS-DIGESTS.MIT.EDU You can send mail to the entire list (and comp.os.linux.misc) via: Internet: Linux-Misc@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-Misc Digest ******************************