From: Digestifier To: Linux-Misc@senator-bedfellow.mit.edu Reply-To: Linux-Misc@senator-bedfellow.mit.edu Date: Thu, 7 Oct 93 03:13:13 EDT Subject: Linux-Misc Digest #187 Linux-Misc Digest #187, Volume #1 Thu, 7 Oct 93 03:13:13 EDT Contents: Re: Random program crashes under heavy disk use (Raymond L. Toy) Re: Xfree vs. BIOS (Jerry Whelan) Re: Xfree vs. BIOS (Bill C. Riemers) Re: SCSI adapter for linux? (Mike Fleischer) Re: Window Managers (Brandon S. Allbery) Re: Xfree vs. BIOS (K J MacDonald) ChatMUD 1.0 (Mark Morley) Re: New Chat System Available (Riccardo Pizzi) Re: Linux Magazine... (Mark Line) Re: New dvi driver for epson-like printers (al-b@minster.york.ac.uk) Re: Linux Slowly Dying Off? (Robert Moser) Diamond Speedtar 24x supported? (David Scholten) Re: Xfree vs. BIOS ("Alex R.N. Wetmore") Re: Bogomip (Adam Clarke) Re: PPP for Linux? Well... almost as good (Michael O'Reilly) Re: Wanted: C-Cross-Referencer / Browser (Daniel T. Schwager) Re: Xfree vs. BIOS (Bartosz Blacha) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: toy@soho.crd.ge.com (Raymond L. Toy) Subject: Re: Random program crashes under heavy disk use Date: Wed, 6 Oct 1993 22:17:09 GMT In article <1993Oct6.135819.953@bee.beehive.mn.org> sar@bee.beehive.mn.org (Steven A. Reisman) writes: Greg Patten (greg@loose.apana.org.au) wrote: : toy@soho.crd.ge.com (Raymond L. Toy) writes: : >In article <13085@dirac.physics.purdue.edu> bcr@bohr.physics.purdue.edu (Bill C. Riemers) writes: : > In article toy@soho.crd.ge.com (Raymond L. Toy) writes: [some one else wrote this, not me] : I get random crashes quite regularly..:) . One definite is if I : run X. It seems that as soon as things start swapping I get into trouble. : Interestingly, often these crashes (seg faults) (elm and nn being the : classics) go away if I leave the system up and do something else for a while. I had many random seg faults when I tried to bring Linux up on my Northgate Elegance 386DX/40. I finally traced the problem to faulty SRAMs on the CPU board. But, then, shouldn't I also get random seg faults even when I'm not doing heavy disk activity? This doesn't happen. One other data point: It seems that the random crashes happen more often if I use a swap partition instead of a swap file. I'll have to try it out a bit more to be sure, though. Ray -- Ray -----> toy@soho.crd.ge.com Toy -----> GE CR&D, KW-C407, 0x6270 ------------------------------ From: guru@camelot.bradley.edu (Jerry Whelan) Crossposted-To: comp.os.linux.development,comp.os.linux.help Subject: Re: Xfree vs. BIOS Date: 6 Oct 1993 22:28:12 GMT -} > I want to give a humble (and maybe a little naive) comment on that. -} >If, as you say, all the needed video info can be gotten by BIOS calls, a few -} >lines of code could be added to the kernel before it goes into protected mode -} >to find out this info. Then, a little program can be written to install -} >XFree, which asks the kernel "What did you find out?", and then fill in the -} >information in that file that XFree uses when it starts (xcongif or something -} >like that, I think). Now, this may have already been done; so, I may -} >be talking too much... -} [sig deleted] -} -} Perhaps you miss the point. Although it might be easy enough for us -} to interrogate the BIOS in Linux, it will not be so easy to do that -} for the dozen or so other OS's that Xfree runs on. The Xfree folks -} are not interested in solutions that only work on one out of many of -} the operating systems that they support. What the first author is suggesting would actually have no portability impact on XFree86. He is asking for a utility that runs during boot that sucks out the video timing values from the bios. That information could easily be written to in an Xconfig format file. That file can then be used by an XFree86 server with absolutely no modifications to the server source. I agree that this sort of program would be a very good thing. I ask that anyone who writes such a routine make a version that runs under native dos as well as during the linux boot sequence. That way anyone who wants to automagically determine their video mode information, but doesn't necessarily have linux, can do it. After all, the program would only need to be run once unless a new card is installed. =============================================================================== Jerry Whelan guru@stasi.bradley.edu ------------------------------ From: bcr@bohr.physics.purdue.edu (Bill C. Riemers) Crossposted-To: comp.os.linux.development,comp.os.linux.help Subject: Re: Xfree vs. BIOS Date: 6 Oct 93 21:46:29 GMT In article <28v1ti$9ct@galaxy.ucr.edu> grif@ucrengr.ucr.edu (Michael Griffith) writes: >Perhaps you miss the point. Although it might be easy enough for us >to interrogate the BIOS in Linux, it will not be so easy to do that >for the dozen or so other OS's that Xfree runs on. The Xfree folks >are not interested in solutions that only work on one out of many of >the operating systems that they support. Obcourse this misses the point that you are free to patch your own driver into Xfree86. If you want to write your own BIOS driver for Linux, great. Test it out, if it improves performance, increases speed, or has some other advantage upload it to an ftp and all the Linux community will appreciate it. Bill ------------------------------ From: mike@oytix.north.de (Mike Fleischer) Subject: Re: SCSI adapter for linux? Date: 4 Oct 93 18:43:30 GMT Bill Mitchell (mitchell@mdd.comm.mot.com) wrote: > in comp.os.linux.misc, eric@tantalus.nrl.navy.mil (Eric Youngdale) said: > Nope. It's internal, at the end of the bus, and the only terminated device. > I've tried shuffling device order along the bus, always terminating only > the device at the end, but seen no difference. SCSI timeouts during tape > activity, guranteed SCSI timeouts within a few seconds with mixed SCSI > disk/tape activity, solid controller lockups requiring powerdown to correct > if I use a 1542C. I've the same error coming up on my system. Conf. is: Adaptec 1542B 3.2 ROM Normal Settings (No Parity, like every other device) Internal: Maxtor LXT-213 S ROM 4.18 id 1 Conner CP-30200 Rev. 4343 id 2 Tandberg TDC 3660 ROM Archive Viper Emulation 21247 Rev. B07: id 4 Seagate ST-296 Rev. ? id 0 Terminated External: Apple CD-300 (Sony 561) id 3 Terminated When I try to use the SCSI bus with tar cvf /dev/nst0 /pub/cdrom i will get the same error within a short time. If I am trying to backup my disks I will see this error sometimes (about 90%). If I am going to read the CD-ROM or tape, I will see this error too, but only if the system tries to access the disks. It seems it is not stable when more than one different devices (tape, cdrom or disk) are in use. I've seen this error since 0.99 pl 2 (in words: two!). Now I am running pl 13. The scsi-patches for pl 13 on nic.funet.fi are not useful to get rid of this "bug?". It does not help if I disconnect one of the devices. This happens with the CD-ROM *XOR* tape installed, no matter where I install it. Maybe it's got to do something with "slow" devices? If I am using a VERY LARGE buffer (tar cvbf 3000 /dev/nst0 .) I'll see this error very late, sometimes... So, is there someone out there fixing this bug??? Ciao, Mike -- Mike Fleischer, c/o R. Grau, Hans-Böckler-Str. 61, 28217 Bremen Voice: +(49) 421 39 45 72, Data: +(49) 421 39 65 76 2 (ZyXEL) E-Mail: mike@oytix.north.de Öffentlicher Mail- und Newsserver - Audio-Mails erwünscht... ------------------------------ From: bsa@kf8nh.wariat.org (Brandon S. Allbery) Subject: Re: Window Managers Date: Wed, 6 Oct 1993 22:27:42 GMT In article <28stai$olh@mtu.edu> sjkangas@major.cs.mtu.edu (STEVEN J. KANGAS) writes: >I still prefer ctwm's buttons. I don't know, maybe it's just me, but I like >the way ctwm works. The workspace is more like seperate rooms than on olvwm. >Or maybe I just like pushing buttons with my mouse :) Yes, it depends on what you like. I happen to prefer the "viewport on a HUGE root window" that olvwm (and, for that matter, tvtwm) uses. But You can make olvwm behave more like a "room" paradigm by changing a resource (olvwm.VirtualGrid). >Ctwm also seems to be a tad bit faster when running big applications like >OI, UIB. Maybe if I had put as much time into olvwm as I did in ctwm, I'd ctwm probably has much simpler decorations, if it's like the other members of the twm family. >a day when dos is gone altogether. That'll probably be the day when >WINE and DOSEMU are perfected. I don't think they'll *ever* be "perfected". Usable, yes, but remember that this is largely a hacker system: there'll *always* be one more neat feature to add :-) ++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 ------------------------------ Crossposted-To: comp.os.linux.development,comp.os.linux.help From: kenny@festival.ed.ac.uk (K J MacDonald) Subject: Re: Xfree vs. BIOS Date: Thu, 7 Oct 1993 00:15:00 GMT Michael Griffith (grif@ucrengr.ucr.edu) wrote: : In article <28uv1s$gos@cville-srv.wam.umd.edu>, : Barzilai Spinak wrote: : [citation deleted] : > I want to give a humble (and maybe a little naive) comment on that. : >If, as you say, all the needed video info can be gotten by BIOS calls, a few [more stuff deleted] : Perhaps you miss the point. Although it might be easy enough for us : to interrogate the BIOS in Linux, it will not be so easy to do that : for the dozen or so other OS's that Xfree runs on. The Xfree folks : are not interested in solutions that only work on one out of many of : the operating systems that they support. This scheme doesn't have to have anything to do with the X Free 86 code. All it needs to do is write a locally correct XConfig file. Whether I'd trust the information or not is a different matter. How would it get the monitor bandwidth for example. Is this a dead end ? Kenny. -- ============================================================================== Kenneth MacDonald E-mail: kenny@ed Dept. of Geology & Geophysics "Allow me to introduce myself, Major Dennis University of Edinburgh Bloodnok, International Christmas Pudding ------------------------------ Subject: ChatMUD 1.0 From: morley@suncad.camosun.bc.ca (Mark Morley) Date: 6 Oct 93 14:49:48 PDT Ok, ChatMUD 1.0 is available via FTP from suncad.camosun.bc.ca in the /pub/morley directory. The file is: chat.c.z This is a single C file that you must compile like this: cc -o chat -O chat.c Once compiled, run it like this: chat & Now people just have to telnet to your machine on port 7000 (you could have specified an alternate port on the command line: chat 1234 &) You do NOT need to be root to run this and have people use it. This is my first attempt at writing any kind of server code, so be gentle. :-) Have fun! Mark ------------------------------ From: pizzi@nervous.com (Riccardo Pizzi) Subject: Re: New Chat System Available Date: Wed, 6 Oct 1993 14:19:18 GMT In article <1993Oct4.212649.1544@camins.camosun.bc.ca> morley@suncad.camosun.bc.ca (Mark Morley) writes: >Check it out by telneting to buckyball.camosun.bc.ca on port 7000. It's >only a couple days old so I want to hear all bug reports! If you want the >code I'll make it available via FTP. It consists of a single .C file and >should compile under most Unix's Why don't you post it in alt.sources, for those like me who lacks FTP access? Ciao, Rick -- Riccardo Pizzi @ the Nervous XTC Public Access Unix System, Rimini, ITALY E-Mail -> pizzi@nervous.com <*> Bang-path -> uunet!nervous!pizzi Nervous XTC, the home of the UniBoard package * Data: +39-541-27135 HST/PEP/V32 ------------------------------ From: markline@henson.cc.wwu.edu (Mark Line) Subject: Re: Linux Magazine... Date: Thu, 7 Oct 1993 01:29:06 GMT derek@aivru.sheffield.ac.uk (Derek Jones) writes: >Heeeyyyy, I might bite here. Is anyone working on a magazine? I put together >If there's enough interest, I *might* be able to make a proper commercial >venture out of it and put it in a "glossy" format for folks to buy. (BTW, >the previous magazine I put together was sold at virtually no profit to >myself, - the idea was that the cover price would pay for the production, >mailing and sundry costs and hence be self financing. I'm thinking along >the same lines for a LINUX mag. [ though I wouldn't *discount* profit... 8-) ] ) >What does the community think? I think it's a great idea -- I'm a (pretty new) Linux user, and I happen to own a (pretty new) publishing house. Maybe we can work out some sort of division of labor. We can't really afford a lot of unremunerated overhead, but the mag probably doesn't have to be glossy and probably doesn't have to be expensive. Typesetting/DTP could be done by whomever, copy-editing likewise. It would be probably be useful to set up printing and shipping in three places: one for North America, one for Europe and one for East Asia, Australia & NZ. The financial model I like best would distribute the profit to whomever does the work -- authors, typesetters, copy-editors and fulfillers. Does somebody know if it's okay to continue this discussion in this newsgroup, or would direct e-mail be more in order? -- Mark -- Mark P. Line Phone: +1-206-733-6040 Open Pathways Fax: +1-206-733-6040 P.O. Box F Email: markline@henson.cc.wwu.edu ------------------------------ From: al-b@minster.york.ac.uk Crossposted-To: comp.text.tex Subject: Re: New dvi driver for epson-like printers Date: 6 Oct 1993 18:56:57 GMT In article <28tbcs$9tr@samba.oit.unc.edu> neal@ctd.comsat.com (Neal Becker) writes: >A new version of my eps dvi driver for epson-like printers is >available. This is eps03.tgz (gzip compressed tar file). This new >version is highly configurable, and should work with many kinds of >printers. > >eps03.tgz is available at sunsite.unc.edu, and at ftp.ctd.comsat.com. > >neal@ctd.comsat.com What about support for MakeTeXPK..? Has it been done? Is it possible? I have got eps02 running on Linux and it works extremely well with my EPSON LX-800 (well, that's all relative though... :-) but if a font doesn't exist it doesn't create it like e.g. xdvi does. My current workaround is to run eps first and log which fonts it can't find, create these fonts and then run it again in the printer spooler... Andrew. ------------------------------ From: araw@elm.circa.ufl.edu (Robert Moser) Crossposted-To: comp.os.linux.development,comp.os.linux.help Subject: Re: Linux Slowly Dying Off? Date: 7 Oct 1993 02:47:59 GMT Hear hear!!! I heartily agree! However, I will point out that slackware provides many of the things on your wish list. In addition, X isn't that hard to set up for most of the common platforms (using tamux setup). ARAW ------------------------------ Crossposted-To: comp.os.linux.help From: scholten@esseye.si.com (David Scholten) Subject: Diamond Speedtar 24x supported? Date: Wed, 6 Oct 1993 20:00:45 GMT I have seen some posts that say it is not supported, but then I saw something that only the viper was not supported. Can anybody tell me if it is supported? What about VESA emulation mode? Thanks, Dave Scholten ------------------------------ From: "Alex R.N. Wetmore" Crossposted-To: comp.os.linux.help,comp.os.linux.development Subject: Re: Xfree vs. BIOS Date: Wed, 6 Oct 1993 23:38:47 -0400 Excerpts from netnews.comp.os.linux.development: 6-Oct-93 Re: Xfree vs. BIOS by Jerry Whelan@camelot.bra > What the first author is suggesting would actually have no > portability impact on XFree86. He is asking for a utility that > runs during boot that sucks out the video timing values from the > bios. That information could easily be written to in an Xconfig > format file. That file can then be used by an XFree86 server with > absolutely no modifications to the server source. This is what OS/2 actually seems to do. Is has you run a command called "svga on" in a dos window, where it traps the writes to ports and keeps track of what it did to go in and out of all of the vesa modes. It then uses this information to set its svga modes itself. Of course I may be totally wrong (I just figured this out by playing with it), but it seems to be what it is doing. This would allow someone to write a driver that would read similar files and output the same commands to the same ports to change video modes. Might even be a way to pick up ideas on new cards. alex (netbsd user, but likes to read the linux.development anyway) ------------------------------ From: adamc@loose.apana.org.au (Adam Clarke) Subject: Re: Bogomip Date: Thu, 7 Oct 1993 02:07:59 GMT kenny@festival.ed.ac.uk (K J MacDonald) writes: >: >Mine says 4.25 or 4.27 bogomips. Is my system really so slow? >: Mine is 3.62....it is DEFINITELY NOT CPU_MHz/2. >Do I win the prize for the slowest Linux box ? 3.06 BogMips(tm) >AMD-386SX-25 OPTI M/B 16MBx70ns 0 Cache. > Go on, better that! > Kenny. Well, here I go.... 386SX-16 4MBx?? 0 cache (60 meg HD) and wail for it... a massive ... 2.43 BogoMips Well.. it works.. on the network etc Adam ------------------------------ From: oreillym@tartarus.uwa.edu.au (Michael O'Reilly) Subject: Re: PPP for Linux? Well... almost as good Date: 7 Oct 1993 04:18:02 GMT Frank Lofaro (ftlofaro@unlv.edu) wrote: : In article teffta@cs690-3.erie.ge.com writes: : > : >"SLIP is really only a framing convention for arranging IP packets on : >a link, and it provides few of PPP's advanced facilities.... SLIP does : >not support the Asynchronous Control Character Map feature or the : >escape option, and therefore can only be used over connections that are : >[ completely 8-bit clean ]...." : > : Who uses lines that aren't complete 8-bit clean anymore? The days of EVERYONE!!!! And they all mail me about it!!!!! : parity, etc are long gone (thankfully!), and almost every line is end-user This is utter rubbish. : reconfigurable for full 8-bit clean operation (I know from experience how to : easily do this on both cisco and annex servers.) Is that requirement really : a real problem for anyone anymore? Yes!! You wouln't belive the wierd characters that need to be escaped on some lines (I heard about one needing \r escaped [ It did its own mapping ]). This is partly because of old equip, partly because of incompetent setup, and mostly because 'Thats the way it's always been setup'. Write something that likes an 8bit clean line, and see how many people mail you complaining that it doesn't work.. :) Michael. ------------------------------ From: danny@dragon.stgt.sub.org (Daniel T. Schwager) Subject: Re: Wanted: C-Cross-Referencer / Browser Date: Tue, 5 Oct 1993 17:02:03 GMT Eckehard Stolz (stolz@Informatik.TU-Muenchen.DE) wrote: : Hi ! : I'm looking for a Cross-Referencing-tool for C-Source-Code. I would like : something, that tells me where a special function is defined, in which files it Try x-coral-1.7x (tsx or sun) Danny -- ,,, (^ ^) +------------------oOO--(_)--OOo-----------------------+ | ... Real programmers use cat >a.out ... Danny | ------------------------------ From: Bartosz Blacha Crossposted-To: comp.os.linux.help,comp.os.linux.development Subject: Re: Xfree vs. BIOS Date: Thu, 7 Oct 1993 02:06:53 -0400 "Alex R.N. Wetmore" writes: > This is what OS/2 actually seems to do. Is has you run a command called [...] Yeah, that's what some other programs do too, like ColorView by Millenium Technologies (shareware viewer for DOS.) It configures itself completely automatically every time I run it (it doesn't use a config file though), and finds all my resolution x color combinations all the way up to 1280 x 1024 x 8bit. Now I don't know how to do automatical configuration ike that, but I hope there are people out there who do :-) --Bartosz Blacha--bart+@CMU.EDU--I am, therefore I'll think. Electrical and Computer Engineering Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh PA (endorsement disclaimed) ------------------------------ ** 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 ******************************