From: Digestifier To: Linux-Misc@senator-bedfellow.mit.edu Reply-To: Linux-Misc@senator-bedfellow.mit.edu Date: Tue, 2 Nov 93 05:13:19 EST Subject: Linux-Misc Digest #262 Linux-Misc Digest #262, Volume #1 Tue, 2 Nov 93 05:13:19 EST Contents: How you might be able to increase your term speed... (Tim Cutts (Zoology)) Re: Gateway 2000 Pentium Linux ("Peter R. Humphrey") Ghostscript 2.6.1 & HP lj4 (Gordon Turner) Linux in antarctica (Andrew Tridgell) XFree86 2.0 VGA16, anyone runs it successfully? (Zhuo Er Lin) Need a printcap for hplaserjet2p (Ken Wilcox) Re: Summary: Questions in non-help groups (Byron A Jeff) Re: XFree86 2.0 for Linux. (Bill C. Riemers) Re: LSM entries and keeping them up-to-date (Jay Lawrence) Re: [HELP] IN2000 SCSI with IDE (Walter Hunt) Re: Gateway 2000 Pentium Linux (Cory West) Re: Gateway 2000 Pentium Linux (Cory West) Linux Distributions (Eric Masson) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: tjrc1@mbfs.bio.cam.ac.uk (Tim Cutts (Zoology)) Subject: How you might be able to increase your term speed... Date: Mon, 1 Nov 1993 23:55:36 GMT There may be some of you who have been having problems with term freezing at baud rates over about 9600. Well, I have a solution. I'm not a hacker, and I have no idea why this works, but it certainly does. DO NOT USE /dev/ttyS1 IF YOUR SERIAL LINE/MODEM IS ON COM2! All I did was invoke term with: term -s19200 < /dev/cua1 > /dev/cua1 & when I had been doing: term -s9600 < /dev/ttyS1 > /dev/ttyS1 & I now have term at almost twice the speed of before! It isn't quite twice as fast because my UART is an 8250, and begins to drop characters at 19200. My 16550 board is on the way though, and I can't wait to see this baby go then... Yahoo! Does anyone know why choice of device is so crucial to this? Is it something to do with interrupt handling? That would be my guess... Tim. -- =============================================================================== Tim Cutts: tjrc1@mbfs.bio.cam.ac.uk | Refs 7.1 the academic reference CRC Mammalian Cell DNA Repair Research Group | database for Windows 3.1 is now Please support the Cancer Research Campaign! | on ftp.cica.indiana.edu ------------------------------ From: prh@essence.demon.co.uk ("Peter R. Humphrey") Subject: Re: Gateway 2000 Pentium Linux Date: Tue, 2 Nov 1993 00:45:46 +0000 Matthew Dillon (dillon@moonshot.west.oic.com) wrote: :> For a 14" or 15" 800x600 is about the best you can do and still use the :> same perscription, and if you see 20-20 now you definitely do not want to :> loose it! Rubbish. I use 1024x768 daily on a 14" monitor. No problems. :> If your a kid, use the above argument to persuade your parents to help :> you out getting a better monitor :-) Subversive, too... And we'll say nothing about the spelling errors. -- Rgds Peter Humphrey | prh@essence.demon.co.uk | Voice 0932-343158 Woking, UK. | | Data 0932-353948 ------------------------------ From: gordont@DIALix.oz.au (Gordon Turner) Subject: Ghostscript 2.6.1 & HP lj4 Date: 1 Nov 1993 20:48:44 +0800 Hi all, Having recently installed Linux I note that the version of ghostscript is very current. Being 2.6.1, and including a driver for Laser Jet 4. This is not to be found in sources for gs2.6.1 that I have seen. Realising of course that this may not be the appropriate group, however as the Linux version seems to be fairly current thought that somebody could point me in the direction of the latest version and drivers etc etc. Please E-mail, and I can post a reply afterwards with the results. Thanks, Gordon -- =============================================================================== E-Mail: gordont@DIALix.oz.au Full Name: Gordon Turner Systems and Network Consultant ------------------------------ From: tridge@nimbus.anu.edu.au (Andrew Tridgell) Subject: Linux in antarctica Date: 02 Nov 1993 02:41:50 GMT Hi everyone. I thought a few people might be interested in an application that Linux has been used for by the Australian Surveying and Land Information Group (AUSLIG) here in Canberra. I was approached a month or so ago by Martin Hendy at AUSLIG to give him some information about Linux to see if it was suitable for a large project they have underway. After I showed him a couple of Linux systems and gave him a rundown he decided to go ahead and the end result is that there are now 3 Linux boxes in a cargo container on their way to Antarctica with 14 more on the way for other sites in and around Australia. The application is a data gathering one. The Linux boxes are attached via serial ports to a "TurboRogue" satelllite receiver system which monitors the 32 satellite Global Positioning System. Data is downloaded from the satellites and stored in a 4Mb flashcard in the back of the TurboRogue, and from there it is downloaded to the PCs. The PCs store the data and forward it to a base system in Canberra. The monitoring of the GPS system is essential for accurate surveying work. Some other countries (notably Canada) have setup similar networks for the same purpose. Some of the PCs are connected directly to AARNet via ethernet (yes - antarctica is networked!) while others have 14.4 Kbaud modems and download data via scheduled cron jobs using the "term" package. Even the machines on the net have modems, as we can't absolutely rely on the network link. The Hardware: ============= The antarctic PCs are Digital 48633dx MT PCs with 8Mb ram. They have 2 345Mb IDE hard disks, with only one electrically connected (the other is identically configured as a backup). They have 1 1.44Mb floppy drive and a spare floppy (not connected). They have WD8013 ethernet cards and a DataLink 14.4 Kb modem. The PCs for the other Australian sites will be Rack mounted "clone" PCs for various reasons. They will be identically configured. Each PC has 4 serial ports, each on its own interrupt. We achieved this by making some minor modifications to a cheap 2 port serial board we bought in Canberra. In future the PCs will probably have a BOCA or similar board. The other custom hardware is a "rebooting module" designed and built by Anthony Wesley here in Canberra. It's a small box that attaches to a serial port, a power lead and the reset line of the computer. Basically it expects a "healthy" signal from the computer every five minutes on the serial line, or else it "presses reset" by shorting the reset line for 30 secs. It hasn't been needed yet in any of our testing (Linux is robust, remember :-), but it's nice to know it's there. A process runs a script to check half a dozen things every minute and outputs the "healthy" signal if they all pass. The Software: ============= The systems are running 0.99pl12 with a few patches. I chose this because I have found it stable for my own use. We will only move to a new kernel after extensive testing. One of the features of having the PCs running Unix (they were considering DOS) is that we can completely replace the system remotely, either via modem or the net. Each hard disk has 4 partitions. A DOS partition (wth their old software on it just in case), 2 Linux root partitions (identically configured) and a data partition (the bulk of the disk). The linux root partitions are 20Mb and are only half full :-) Most of it is in fact taken up with things that are only included "just in case", like kernel sources, gcc, sources for the TurboRogue controlling software and even emacs 19.16 (to make life a little easier). I have designed the system to be very small. It is small enough in fact that the whole system can operate from a single 1.44Mb floppy, if I leave out the "optional extras". This is achieved by having the whole of the /usr tree in a compressed tar file which uncompresses onto a ramdisk on bootup, and having next to nothing outside of /usr/. The systems on the hard disk are already uncompressed. This means that in case of emergency we can tell the operators on site to insert one of the duplicate "Emergency root disks" and we can operate the complete system remotely just from the floppy (including disk fixing tools like fdisk and e2fsck). Cron is used to control the regular downloading of data from the TurboRogue and transmitting of the data to Canberra. Checksums are used to ensure the data is correctly transmitted, and it is re-transmitted if necessary. Anyway, that's probably enough about the system. If you want to know more then come along to the next meeting of the Canberra Linux Users Group, where Martin and I will give a talk about the system. The meeting is at 7pm in the Leonard Huxley Lecture Theatre at ANU on Thursday the 25th of November. Basically the aim of this post was to let all you Linux users know that Linux is being used in a demanding application for a govt department. Maybe it will encourage more people to try Linux for their applications? Cheers, Andrew -- =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Andrew Tridgell (Tridge on ICS) CSLab, Research School of Physical Sciences Andrew.Tridgell@anu.edu.au Australian National University (x3064) =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- -- =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Andrew Tridgell (Tridge on ICS) CSLab, Research School of Physical Sciences Andrew.Tridgell@anu.edu.au Australian National University (x3064) =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- ------------------------------ From: umlin000@ccu.umanitoba.ca (Zhuo Er Lin) Subject: XFree86 2.0 VGA16, anyone runs it successfully? Date: Tue, 2 Nov 1993 02:26:47 GMT I have a cirrus VGA card. When I tried VGA16, it starts up as Mono ! There is no color at all and is slower then the MONO server. I swithced back to MONO server and I found it is faster then the v1.3. -- ======================================================================== | Eric Lin Voice: (204) 783-2884 | | Computer Engineering FAX Modem: (204) 783-2884 | | University of Manitoba Internet: Umlin000@cc.Umanitoba.CA | ------------------------------ From: wilcox@kpw104.rh.psu.edu (Ken Wilcox) Subject: Need a printcap for hplaserjet2p Date: 2 Nov 1993 02:57:02 GMT We are trying to set up a network laser printer and need the printcap entry and or filter for the HPljIIp or something like it. Thanks in advance, -Ken Wilcox ------------------------------ From: byron@cc.gatech.edu (Byron A Jeff) Subject: Re: Summary: Questions in non-help groups Date: Tue, 2 Nov 1993 03:52:04 GMT In article <1993Oct30.183812.2242@ualr.edu>, G. Douglas Mauldin wrote: >Byron A Jeff (byron@cc.gatech.edu) wrote: >[...] >: In addition from my observations many of the groups are write only becuase >: the same questions come up over and over and over again. > > In the best of all possible worlds, we would all be at the same level > of expertise. In reality there are new people coming on board the > Linux learning curve every day. I'm glad that there are still a few > teachers and professors who are willing teach even though the students > ask the same old questions every semester. True enough (in fact I'm one of those professors). However whenever I enter a new newsgroup I read a bit as to what's going on so I can ask intelligent and meaningful questions. Just because we have good and caring professors doesn't mean that we can't be studious and concientious students also. > >: If posters just >: scanned the last week of messages, much of the time they would find an >: answer and would not have to post. > > That is true as long as there is someone out there who is willing to > post an answer instead of emailing it, or worse, ignoring it as you > would have them do. Most people do post answers. And I didn't say ignore it. I said to redirect the questions to col.help. If the questions were asked and answered there then there would be a single repository of the infor people ask for the most. > >: Also many questions/answers can be found >: in the FAQ's and HOWTO's. People don't read them much of the time. > > Maybe; maybe not. I think it is a mistake to assume that my asking > a question implies that I have not exerted a reasonable effort to > find an answer in the published literature. I can assume that when the question you ask has a clear, precise, and multiply answered answer in multiple places. For example there are still people asking about the "term time bomb" even though the answer and the patch was posted that same day and has been reposted every day since. > > To those who make these great pronouncements about the lofty ideal of > conserving bandwidth, I might point out that one informative post can > save a ton of email. (Yes, email uses net resources, too. So does > ftp'ing huge doc files.) One man's waste of bandwidth is another man's > gold nugget of information. The problem is that we don't get just one informative post. We get that same post over and over and over again because the querant doesn't take any time or effort to try to solve the problem themself. All I'm saying is that the c.o.l.* hierarchy is a great resource of information but is overtaxed by questions that have simple answers that are easily found. By blindly posting without even taking a glance for that gold nugget, it sinks further into the mine and becomes harder to find. BAJ --- Another random extraction from the mental bit stream of... Byron A. Jeff - PhD student operating in parallel! Georgia Tech, Atlanta GA 30332 Internet: byron@cc.gatech.edu ------------------------------ From: bcr@bohr.physics.purdue.edu (Bill C. Riemers) Subject: Re: XFree86 2.0 for Linux. Date: 2 Nov 93 01:36:34 GMT In article <13408@dirac.physics.purdue.edu> bcr@bohr.physics.purdue.edu (Bill C. Riemers) writes: In article <13407@dirac.physics.purdue.edu> bcr@bohr.physics.purdue.edu (Bill C. Riemers) writes: In article scooper@psi.rutgers.edu (Simon Cooper) writes: >bcr@bohr.physics.purdue.edu (Bill C. Riemers) writes: > > This is not a problem with the startx script. It is something to do with >either your .xinitrc or the one used as the default. You are correct, it is the default .xinitrc, not the startx that is at fault. To be more specific here is the problem: twm & xclock -geometry 50x50-1+1 & xterm -geometry 80x50+494+51 & xterm -geometry 80x20+494-0 & exec xterm -geometry 80x66+0+0 -name login So twm is started in the background. Consiquently, selecting exit leaves you without a window manager, and no way to focus your input to one of the windows. However, since the xterm is still running, xfree2.0 will continue running. Why not a more traditional: xclock -geometry 50x50-1+1 & xterm -geometry 80x50+494+51 & xterm -geometry 80x20+494-0 & xterm -geometry 80x66+0+0 -name login & exec twm Anyways as I pointed out, if the original behavior is really desirable, then the simple solution is to make the default twm menu not include an exit option. > You do not need to reboot to exit from X, you can use the >CTRL-ALT-BACKSPACE (backspace, NOT delete) sequence to kill the X server. If >you have other virtual consoles you can use CTRL-ALT-(F0..F8) to select >another. You can then log in and kill the X server. Thats what I thought to. But it didn't work. Once the window manager was exited, xfree refused to respond to any of these key sequences. It could be that when exiting twm focused my input on something useless like xclock, or it could be some other strange problem... I have no idea if this would happen every time, or only one out of a thousand attempts, but I'm not about to repeat the experiment without a mighty good reason. To be honest here was my reaction: startx My God is that display ugly. What happened to my startup file? Quick select exit. Oh no! That just seems to have killed the window manager. Try ^C, ACK no luch, try ^-ALT-F0, no luck. Try ^-ALT-F1,..., no luck. This is really serious try ^-ALT-BACKSPACE, no luck. Maybe I used the Hmmm, maybe wrong set of ^-ALT keys, try everything again with the other set... @#$!@#$ it looks like I have no choise but to remove the tape from my reset button... I'm glad I didn't clip the wire like I originally planned. Not that a cold boot would be any worse. Anyways I just restored my old xinitrc that was overwritten when installing xfree2.0 and I'm back in business. > If you really get stuck and you are using the SYSV init you can issue a >shutdown using CTRL-ALT-DEL - that should take the machine down cleanly. Possably, but I don't have CTRL-ALT-DEL enabled, for good reasons. Anyways I think this would have gone to bit-heaven with the rest of my keyboard input. Bill ------------------------------ From: jjlawren@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca (Jay Lawrence) Subject: Re: LSM entries and keeping them up-to-date Date: Tue, 2 Nov 1993 03:35:14 GMT In article , K J MacDonald wrote: >Andy Burnett (burnett@baldrick.cecer.army.mil) wrote: > >: Well, as of this morning I had no idea what the LSM was. Now that I know >: what it is, I'm not so sure that I want to know :-) I think it's a very >: good idea, but a lot of the LSM entries are now out of date. The reason >[stuff deleted] >: I guess what I'm actually trying to say is, if you have an lsm entry, >: please check it and make sure that it is up to date. You're bloody insane >: if you think I'm going to go through and check over 1100 entries to check >: for their correctness :-) > >Good idea, and perhaps Jeff Kopmanis would also like to be informed >whenever we (users) find an out of date entry. I know it could add a >lot of work to his plate, but it sure is better than expecting him to >check up on all the packages in the LSM. What do you think Jeff? Perhaps another direction of approach is to write something that will walk along the LSM entries you have in the web and periodically mail the owners, log the time they were contacted, if they were contacted, did they respond (to a mail filter, perhaps?), are they going to update, do they need to update, etc. It is abit more brute force, but perhaps a mail out every x months (0.5, mark@datasoft.com (Mark Buckaway) writes: |> Well, I have aquired two Always IN2000 SCSI cards. I run a 368/40 with an |> Conner IDE drive as the main drive. For the moment, I am doing testing with |> a Toshiba SCSI CDROM drive. I can use an Adaptec 1540b with no problems, |> but since this is a loaner, I have to give it back once I get an IN2000 |> card working with Linux. I will be adding a 700M SCSI drive in a week or |> so. |> [munch] |> When the kernel boots, it may detect the card. But, with the CDROM drive |> attached it usually times out and gives an "IN2000 abort" message with some |> numbers (and I know I should have written them down). It does this about 4 |> times and then the screen fills with error messages that scroll too fast to |> read. The only option at this point is to reboot. Occationally, |> disconnecting the CDROM allows the system to come up...not always (no pun |> intended :)). |> |> Anyone had any experience with this type of arrangement that could possibly |> shed some like on the subject? I guess the best way to describe my |> situation is: HEEEELLLLLLLLPPPPPPPPPPP! I had to steal an Adaptec 1522 from somebody in the office to load the Ygersafdalkfgjhqlrtedasgl;l;ll CD-ROM onto my system, since it wouldn't boot properly with the IN-2000 attached. Unfortunately, I loaded Linux onto a SCSI disk, and any real disk usage (dd if=/dev/sda1 of=/dev/null bs=8192 count=10) would crash the system with a data overrun in the Adaptec driver. So, I wound up putting DOS on the SCSI disk and Linux on the IDE disk. I also pulled the Adaptec 1522. So now I have the SCSI disks attached to the IN-2000, which works find for booting dos, mounting the dos partition as /d, etc. AS LONG AS THE CD-ROM IS TURNED OFF. If I turn the CD-ROM on, system crash while booting (in2000_abort) after whining about incorrect block size for the CD-ROM. So, I guess what I'm trying to tell you is, I have no problems running SCSI disks off a IN-2000, but I can't use a CD-ROM either. The 1522 will run the CD-ROM, but can't reliably run the disks. Yug. |> |> Mark |> |> -- |> ============================================================================== |> Mark Buckaway | root@datasoft.com | DataSoft Communications |> DataSoft Communications | uunorth!datasoft!root | 62 Rock Fernway |> System Administrator | Voice: +1 416 756 4497 | Willowdale, ON M2J 4N5 |> ============================================================================== |> "UNIX and OS/2 are operating systems. Windows is a shell, and |> DOS is an boot virus" |> ============================================================================== -- Walter Hunt walter@optimla.optimage.com OptImage Interactive Services Company, L.P. walter@optimla.aimla.com 11040 Santa Monica Blvd., Suite #300 netcom!optimla!walter Los Angeles, Ca. 90025 (310) 445-5718 ------------------------------ From: corywest@owlnet.rice.edu (Cory West) Subject: Re: Gateway 2000 Pentium Linux Date: Tue, 2 Nov 1993 02:59:52 GMT > Rubbish. I use 1024x768 daily on a 14" monitor. No problems. How much time do you spend with your computer? I'm a student and full time employed member of the computer industry, so I spend about 16 hours a day (on average) in front of a computer. I experience a lot of eye fatigue running 1024x768 on a 15" monitor and have added a diopter in each eye to my prescription in a year. Now that I really can't see I'm backing up to higher resolutions and trying to improve the ergonomics of my workspace, but the fact stands that I have experience a gradual but dramatic degradation of eyesight. If only I had been more prudent... Cory West ------------------------------ From: corywest@owlnet.rice.edu (Cory West) Subject: Re: Gateway 2000 Pentium Linux Date: Tue, 2 Nov 1993 03:00:14 GMT > Rubbish. I use 1024x768 daily on a 14" monitor. No problems. How much time do you spend with your computer? I'm a student and full time employed member of the computer industry, so I spend about 16 hours a day (on average) in front of a computer. I experience a lot of eye fatigue running 1024x768 on a 15" monitor and have added a diopter in each eye to my prescription in a year. Now that I really can't see I'm backing up to higher resolutions and trying to improve the ergonomics of my workspace, but the fact stands that I have experience a gradual but dramatic degradation of eyesight. If only I had been more prudent... Cory West ------------------------------ From: ericm@excalibur.EE.McGill.CA (Eric Masson) Subject: Linux Distributions Date: Tue, 2 Nov 1993 05:24:40 GMT Hello, I've been using Linux for a few months and I am truly impressed with its quality. Although satisfied, I am not fully pleased by the distribution that I am using: the latest SLS. I am currently studying the alternatives but I have some unanswered questions to which I hope some of you can assist me. My major complaint about SLS is that it is a bit sloppy in its organization of files, especially when it comes to the man pages. I keep an extensive set of notes of all the changes I make on my system. This permits me to reconstruct the system in a few hours if something disastrous occurs (fortunately this has happened only once so far). The notes also permit me to recreate all the upgrades and packages I've installed. Hence upgrades to a newer distribution are made easy. However I heavily rely upon the sysinstall script to remove,add and update packages on the SLS distribution I use. Do the other distributions of Linux offer a similar mechanism ? If so, which ones ? I would definitely prefer to get the distribution on CD ROM. Other than SLS and Yggdrasil LGX what are the other possibilities for a CD ROM distribution ? I must use X windows along with an OpenLook setup. For those distributions that do not include X is it difficult to perform the setup on my own ? I was impressed by the annoucement of the latest LGX distribution. However I am aware that it was a sales pitch and I wish to get some additional info. Is its file organization clean ? What is the status of the man pages compared to SLS ? Although the annoucement contained several version numbers I couldn't find the version of TeX that it provides. Since I am heavy user of AMS-LaTeX which I must install on top of the distribution I need to know what is the version of TeX and LaTeX supported by LGX. Although I like to have the most recent release of most software I also desire stability in what I use. The slackware distribution seems to be the distribution which reacts most quickly to version changes but I fear that this is done at the expense of stability. Are my fears justified ? (perhaps it is only its name that gives me the impression) Which distribution is likely to include Xfree 2.0 ahead of the others ? Thanks for an answer to any of the above questions, Eric -- Eric Masson (398 3937) ------------------------------ ** 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 ******************************