From: Digestifier To: Linux-Misc@senator-bedfellow.mit.edu Reply-To: Linux-Misc@senator-bedfellow.mit.edu Date: Thu, 9 Sep 93 03:13:09 EDT Subject: Linux-Misc Digest #117 Linux-Misc Digest #117, Volume #1 Thu, 9 Sep 93 03:13:09 EDT Contents: *** Commercial app developer and Linux! *** (Dave Spott) Don't run term as root, tredir will not work! (Olaf Titz) bind() is broken (Olaf Titz) Re: NFS performance under OS/2, Unix-Intel and its competitors (Dan Ts'o) Re: Wordprocessor under X, Andrew? iv? (David Gabrius) Re: floppy: Unexpected interrupt. (Brandon S. Allbery) Commercial Support for Linux (Cygnus?) (Peter C Olsen) NT versus Linux (Russell Nelson) Re: NT versus Linux (Art Walker) Re: Where's the PostScript stuff for groff? (Daniel T. Schwager) Posting to col.ann (was Re: Low Cost SLS 1.03 on Diskette) (Paul Gortmaker) Re: NT versus Linux (Terje Eggestad) Re: NT versus Linux (Dan Ts'o) [Q] Building shared libraries (Neil Matthew) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: david.spott@Eng.Sun.COM (Dave Spott) Subject: *** Commercial app developer and Linux! *** Date: 9 Sep 1993 00:41:54 GMT Reply-To: david.spott@Eng.Sun.COM (Dave Spott) I have been contacted by a representative of the SimCity development team, Bob Adams. He indicated that they may be interested in a Linux port of SimCity, but he has a few questions regarding the size of the Linux user base, etc. Please watch for his upcoming post in this newsgroup. This is an excellent opportunity to validate Linux as a viable OS. I'm not saying that a port of one commercial game/simulation is the defining metric by which viable OS's are judged, but this could be the first step in getting other 3rd party vendors to notice Linux. ------------------------------ From: uknf@rzstud1.rz.uni-karlsruhe.de (Olaf Titz) Subject: Don't run term as root, tredir will not work! Date: 9 Sep 1993 01:11:34 GMT If you run term as root, tredir will break - it will bind the wrong ports and you won't be able to telnet on these. This is an error in Linux (0.99.12 but I suspect it is carried over from at least 0.99.9.) See my posting "bind() is broken" for an explanation. Olaf -- olaf titz o olaf@bigred.ka.sub.org praetorius@irc comp.sc.student _>\ _ s_titz@ira.uka.de LINUX - the choice karlsruhe germany (_)<(_) uknf@dkauni2.bitnet of a GNU generation what good is a photograph of you? everytime i look at it it makes me feel blue ------------------------------ From: uknf@rzstud1.rz.uni-karlsruhe.de (Olaf Titz) Subject: bind() is broken Date: 9 Sep 1993 01:18:05 GMT Just wondering why my tredir suddenly stopped working, I found out following really annoying kernel bug: if bind() on a given port # is called by root, it will assign an arbitrary port #, like when it is called with port 0. It won't bind the intended port but rather some other (making things worse, it will happily pick that from the privileged port numbers). This only happens when called as root. An ultra-quick look at the source seems to tell me that I'm right and some checks on the port numbers are commented out and/or marked as "buggy". Apparently the bug is carried over from at least the 0.99.9 version, i.e. from the Net-1 version... (But now we have netstat to see it...) Anyone working on that problem? Olaf -- olaf titz o olaf@bigred.ka.sub.org praetorius@irc comp.sc.student _>\ _ s_titz@ira.uka.de LINUX - the choice karlsruhe germany (_)<(_) uknf@dkauni2.bitnet of a GNU generation what good is a photograph of you? everytime i look at it it makes me feel blue ------------------------------ From: tso@cephalo.neusc.bcm.tmc.edu (Dan Ts'o) Crossposted-To: comp.os.os2.networking,comp.protocols.nfs,comp.unix.xenix.sco,comp.unix.solaris,comp.os.ms-windows.nt.misc Subject: Re: NFS performance under OS/2, Unix-Intel and its competitors Date: 9 Sep 1993 02:07:11 GMT In article <26679g$393@gazette.bcm.tmc.edu> tso@cephalo.neusc.bcm.tmc.edu (Dan Ts'o) writes: ) I would appreciate it if some kind souls would run the simple program )I have below on OS/2 running NFS, any of the UNIXes on Intel (Solaris, SCO, )Linux, Next, etc.), Windows NT if possible, etc. I would like to know the )relative performance of large NFS reads on OS's available for PC's. Strangely enough, I have now receive timings from a number of people from a variety of OS's, *except* the one I was most curious about: OS/2. Times have come in for: Solaris/Intel: 3.4 sec 486/33 Linux 6.0 sec 486/66 Interactive 3.2 sec So, if there is anyone who has NFS running on OS/2 and could get me a timing on NFS reads (especially large reads), I'd appreciate it. Thanks. Cheers, Dan Ts'o Div. Neuroscience 713-798-3331 Baylor College of Medicine 1 Baylor Plaza S603 dan@dna.neusc.bcm.tmc.edu Houston, TX 77030 tso@cephalo.neusc.bcm.tmc.edu ) Here are the numbers I have so far. The program is invoke as ) ) $ time nfsread BIG_NFS_FILE ) 40 seconds (time for 10 reads) ) ) where BIG_NFS_FILE is the pathname of a large (>12Mb) file that sits on )some NFS server. I realize that there will be some effective depending on the )NFS server itself. I used a MVAXIII running Ultrix 4.3, and an SS2. ) ) for a 1200000 byte read: ) Server: MVAX III Server: SS2 ) MVAXIII, Ultrix 4.3 7.0 sec 4 sec ) Sparcstation 2 3.2 sec 2.2 sec ) 486DX2/66, 3C509, DOS/Watcom 9.2 sec 4 sec ) )---- nfsread.c ) ) )#include )#include ) )#define NFSFILE "A_BIG_NFS_FILE" )#define NREAD 1200000 )#define COUNT 10 ) )char *malloc(); ) )main(c, v) )char **v; ){ ) char *p; ) char *file; ) int fd, i, count, f; ) int nread; ) long t, t1; ) ) if (c > 1) ) file = v[1]; ) else ) file = NFSFILE; )#ifdef DOS ) fd = open(file, O_RDONLY|O_BINARY); )#else ) fd = open(file, 0); )#endif ) ) if (fd < 0) { ) fprintf(stderr, "%s: Bad open\n", file); ) exit(1); ) } ) if (c > 2) ) nread = atoi(v[2]); ) else ) nread = NREAD; ) if (c > 3) ) count = atoi(v[2]); ) else ) count = COUNT; ) p = malloc(nread); ) if (p == NULL) { ) fprintf(stderr, "%d: Bad malloc\n", nread); ) exit(1); ) } ) time (&t); ) for (i = 0; i < count; i++) { ) f = read(fd, p, nread); ) if (f != nread) { ) fprintf(stderr, "%d: Bad read\n", f); ) exit(1); ) } ) printf("%d\r", i); ) fflush(stdout); ) } ) time (&t1); ) printf("%d seconds\n", (t1 - t)); ) close(fd); ) exit(0); )} ------------------------------ From: gabrius@gem.valpo.edu (David Gabrius) Subject: Re: Wordprocessor under X, Andrew? iv? Date: 9 Sep 1993 02:40:31 GMT Sorry to ask this here, but does anyone have a *useful* manual for doc? I've tried going through the man page, but no real help.... -- David Gabrius gabrius@gem.valpo.edu Pro Student, Computer Engineering perfessr@imsa.edu (IMSA '90) "And you can find/Your own way out/You can build/And I can will..." -U2 "You miss too much these days if you stop to think..." -U2 | PGP22 available ------------------------------ From: bsa@kf8nh.wariat.org (Brandon S. Allbery) Subject: Re: floppy: Unexpected interrupt. Date: Thu, 9 Sep 1993 01:50:38 GMT In article <1993Sep8.200856.8802@mnemosyne.cs.du.edu> zevans@nyx.cs.du.edu (Zack Evans) writes: >In article <26lcp5$kum@pdq.coe.montana.edu>, >Jaye Mathisen wrote: >>scheme is these days), built a kernel, but now, about every 30 seconds I >>get 'Floppy: unexpected interrupt' on which ever console I'm working on. >> >You didn't happen to have a write protected floppy in the drive did you? If you >did, and the drive was mounted r/w, everytime update tried to sync the disks >Linux would have complained about not being able to write to it. That's not an "unexpected interrupt", that's a "read-only file system" or similar. ++Brandon -- Brandon S. Allbery kf8nh@kf8nh.ampr.org bsa@kf8nh.wariat.org "MSDOS didn't get as bad as it is overnight -- it took over ten years of careful development." ---dmeggins@aix1.uottawa.ca ------------------------------ From: pcolsen@super.org (Peter C Olsen) Subject: Commercial Support for Linux (Cygnus?) Date: Thu, 9 Sep 1993 00:26:08 GMT I'm trying to convince my employer to switch to Linux as a PC operating system to replace MSW-3.1 in a networked-Sun environment. My job would be much easier if I could point to some organization that can provide "contract support" --- like Cygnus does for GCC. Can anyone give me some pointers? Peter -- Peter Olsen, n2ell, pcolsen@super.super.org ...!uunet!super!pcolsen P.O. Box 410, Simpsonville, MD 21150-0410; 410-997-8584 "Engineering is the art of applying a professional knowledge of mathematics and the physical sciences to improve the quality of life" ------------------------------ From: nelson@crynwr.com (Russell Nelson) Subject: NT versus Linux Date: Thu, 09 Sep 93 02:59:07 GMT In article <1993Sep7.215144.12160@kf8nh.wariat.org> bsa@kf8nh.wariat.org writes: In article <26imvf$qkh@vixen.cso.uiuc.edu> walk@mrcnext.cso.uiuc.edu (Todd Walk) writes: >bsa@kf8nh.wariat.org (Brandon S. Allbery) writes: > >>The IBM PC was shipped in '79 as well. But there *is* lead time involved in >>designing a computer; they'd have needed 68000s available in '78 at the latest >>in order to build (and more importantly, ship) a machine based on it. > >I thought that it was shipped in '81. Pretty sure I saw one live in '79. I could be misremembering, though. Shipped in '81. I started to work at HP then; HP ordered one immediately; I remember how *slow* the phospher on the mono screen was. -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. ------------------------------ Crossposted-To: comp.os.ms-windows.advocacy From: walker@beeble.omahug.org (Art Walker) Subject: Re: NT versus Linux Date: Wed, 8 Sep 1993 05:59:17 GMT mark@taylor.uucp (Mark A. Davis) writes: >rich@mulvey.com (Rich Mulvey) writes: [...] >> Well, that's your definition. My definition is that technical excellence >>means the lowliest, most computer-phobic person can do useful work without >>a BS/CS degree. Remember - programmers, system administrators, and >>technicians are facilitators. We exist to allow other people to do work >>faster and more efficiently. Often that means that we have to wallow >>in the mud with poor tools, but that's irrelevent as long as the USER gets >>what he needs. >Exactly. The vast, vast, vast, majority of computer end users have no >business selecting hardware or OS's or installing such stuff. And the >businesses who LOOSE soo much productivity by allowing them to do so >deserve what they get! Which is why I sometimes wonder if future computers (at least for the "majority of end users") are going to start to look more like Nintendo or Sega decks than IBM PCs. You know, a little console, a keyboard, a WordPerfect cartridge, a Lotus 1-2-3 cartridge... -- Art Walker, Somewhere In Iowa | walker@beeble.omahug.org This message made from 25% or more post-consumer recycled plastic. ------------------------------ Crossposted-To: comp.os.linux.admin,comp.os.linux.help From: danny@dragon.stgt.sub.org (Daniel T. Schwager) Subject: Re: Where's the PostScript stuff for groff? Date: Wed, 8 Sep 1993 18:37:31 GMT Rick Miller (rick@ee.uwm.edu) wrote: : 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. The error I get is: : gtroff: can't open `DESC' : gtroff: fatal error: sorry, I can't continue : 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). : So, where do I find this directory? (...and why wasn't it included in SLS?) Look out for the original sources distributed bye any GNU-mirror (or the the Gnu-site ai.prep.mit.edu ( or prep.ai.mit.edu, i forgot). This package includes all the necessary files ! Danny -- ,,, (^ ^) +------------------oOO--(_)--OOo-----------------------+ | ... Real programmers use cat >a.out ... Danny | ------------------------------ From: rcopg@minyos.xx.rmit.OZ.AU (Paul Gortmaker) Subject: Posting to col.ann (was Re: Low Cost SLS 1.03 on Diskette) Date: 9 Sep 1993 03:47:03 GMT mdw@sunSITE.unc.edu (Matt Welsh) writes: >I see that some distributors (such as JANA) don't announce on c.o.l.announce. >A sad thing, too, because I'm sure that a lot of folks are missing out on >these distributions because of it. ...yes, and there are a lot of patches that should/could be sent through col.ann as well. (eg. Zeyd M. Ben-Halim's recent minor patch to ncurses was obscured in the usual array of junk in col.*) Matt -- is there any reason why you can't bounce articles like the afore- mentioned through col.ann while you are reading col.* ?? I realize that you are not obligated to do so, and that it means more time that you will spend on Linux associated activities, but it might be something to consider. Perhaps just doing this for a short term would make people realize that col.ann was meant for more than "announcements". Alternatively, someone (anyone) else could just forwarard any such postings that they spot directly to linux-announce@tc.... but this would mean more shuffling through stuff for you. Comments?? Paul. -- Paul Gortmaker c/o Microelectronics and Materials Technology Centre. Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, GPO Box 2476V, Melbourne 3001, Victoria, Australia. Ph (61) 3 660 2601. FAX (61) 3 662 1921. e-mail: paul@cain.mmtc.rmit.oz.au rcopg@minyos.xx.rmit.oz.au >mdw >-- >Send submissions for comp.os.linux.announce to: linux-announce@tc.cornell.edu ------------------------------ From: t0e0078@tamsun.tamu.edu (Terje Eggestad) Crossposted-To: comp.os.ms-windows.advocacy Subject: Re: NT versus Linux Date: 9 Sep 1993 01:19:09 -0500 In article <26lk5f$5om@vixen.cso.uiuc.edu>, Todd Walk wrote: >muts@compi.hobby.nl (Peter Mutsaers) writes: > >>>> On 6 Sep 1993 16:42:29 GMT, walk@mrcnext.cso.uiuc.edu (Todd Walk) >>>> said: > >> TW> The 8088 was chosen over the 68000 for several reasons, > >>Wrong, the reason is that Motorola couldn't/wouldn't deliver enough >>68000's and didn't think much of IBM's PC project. By the way your >>8-bit argument doesn't hold because the first PC had a 8086, 16 bit; >>later a cheaper version was made with the 8088. And Motorola also had >>an 8-bit version of the 68000, the 68008, which was used in the >>Sinclair QL. >>-- >Whether Motorola could deliver enough 68Ks or not is immaterial, IBM >had other reasons for selecting the 8088 (the best reason for it over I heard that INTEL had a larger number of support chips for the 8088/86. If IBM had wanted to go with he 6800[08] they would have had to gone by using 6800 type perifial chips, thus async bus ( and we might have been in deeper do-do today). Supposedly Intel had a full set of periphial chips, tuned for 808x, while Motorola had only a few. Another reason might have been that Motorola seem to belive in well defined and spec'ed buses while Intel don't which is a cheaper solution. Motorola came out with the first VME spec in this time periode which might indicate that they had aimed for other markets with the 68K, thus higher end, higher performance. In hindsight it is of course clear that the 68K is a much cleaner and better design, somebody commented that the 68K could address 16Meg Vs 1 meg on the 808x. Not quite the 68K has a 32 bit address space, while only 20 of teh 32 address bits was carried externally. the 808x is limited to 1 meg both interally and externally. IBM made a marketing decision and not an architecure decision, they wanted to push the PC ASAP, and they could achieve a sooner lauch date by going with intel. Another thing is that they probably didn't expect the PC to last as long as it did, what had been the average life cycle on the previous micros? Apple II did last long. STrange, IBM made rash marketing decisions before that cost them, THey where in the progress of developing a new main frame (i don't remember which) and while in prototype production they decided they had to push it some half a year ahead of schedule. They asked the HW people if it could be done, they said "yes, if they got more money and people" they asked the OS people who said "No". Management said "you have to you can have any resource you want", but the reply was "No, debugging can't be speeded up by hireing more people." THe management sacked the whole OS dept. and hired a new one, the system was shiped ahead of schedule, but the OS never really worked properly. Another classic story is that Xerox had the while windowing and iconing system developed, and made teh policy decicion that they were in the paper business and not in the information business, and gave the whole thing to Steve Jobs, who then took it and made an apple. The moral seems to be, keep management out of teh architecture decisions, and long term planning. > > > Todd Walk > walk@mrcnext.cso.uiuc.edu > Terje _________ _________ _________ / \ / \ / \ | | | | | | Terje Eggestad | FORTRAN | | VMS | | MSDOS | t0e0078@tamsun.tamu.edu | | | | | | | RIP | | RIP | | RIP | "A dollar saved is a dollar | | | | | | wasted" ------------------------------ From: tso@cephalo.neusc.bcm.tmc.edu (Dan Ts'o) Crossposted-To: comp.os.ms-windows.advocacy Subject: Re: NT versus Linux Date: 9 Sep 1993 06:24:34 GMT In article kevin@frobozz.sccsi.com (Kevin Brown) writes: )Case 2 is, of course, Microsoft. They came out with DOS for the IBM PC. )Because people initially bought lots of IBM PC's, DOS became popular. Not )on its technical merits (DOS has none), but on the IBM name. Because of )this, people wrote programs for this broken "operating system", which caused )it to become more popular, etc... ) )Now look at where we are today. What's the most popular "operating system" )available today? DOS, of course. Guess what needs it to run? Windows. )We all know how badly broken and inferior DOS is. Yet, because it's so )popular (due to the stupidity of the public), there are a lot of things )that won't run under anything *but* DOS. ) )Even if Microsoft were to go bankrupt *now*, DOS will be with us for a long, )long time because it takes a long, long time to unwind the recursive )dependency cycle which is behind the popularity of DOS. ) ) )There are more examples, e.g. System Vr4, but I trust my point is clear: it )doesn't matter *how* well a company may be doing in the future, the problems )that they've left us with will cost us dearly, *exactly* as is happening )now. So, I might argue and even wager, given the current description of Chicago, that it may fail because it is too different from and incompatible with Win3.1/DOS. And the MS will find themselves scrambling to produce a Windows 3.2, an incremental successor to Win3.1. Look at all the resistance to Solaris vs SunOS. Netware 4.0. And Lotus still supporting 123 V2.X and 123 V3.0. Indeed that would probably be a more effective way to kill OS/2 than Chicago. Just slowly creep Win3.1 to 3.2 with small but important improvements (and of course difficult incompatibilities for WinOS2). Produce Excel and Word versions that only can run under Win3.2. If Chicago is too different from Win3.1, companies like Gateway will give the user a choice: 3.1 or Chicago, like they did with DOS 4 vs DOS 3.3. But make a Win3.2 and everybody will flock to it. ------------------------------ From: nm@mobicom.demon.co.uk (Neil Matthew) Subject: [Q] Building shared libraries Reply-To: nm@mobicom.demon.co.uk Date: Fri, 3 Sep 1993 12:40:58 +0000 Hi. Re: Linux 0.99pl11 SLS1.03 Shared Libraries I have noticed that a number of linux libraries are shared type, libc.so.4.4.1, et al. I have been trying to port a later revision of Tcl/Tk to that distributed with SLS 1.03 but I cannot build the library shared. It seems that the assembler /bin/as (gas 1.38) does not understand the output from cc -fPIC (gcc 2.4.5). So, Q1: How were the linux shared libraries built? Q2: Where can I pick up the required versions of as/ld to do it? Q3: What is the relationship between libxxx.so.nnn and libxxx.sa? I only know how to do SunOS 4.1 style and Solaris 2 style, I'd hoped the Sun method would work for linux, i.e. cc -fPIC *.c ld -assert pure-text -o libxxx.so.nnn *.o At present I can't get past the compile stage Any help gratefully received. -- Neil Matthew ------------------------------ ** 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 ******************************