From: Digestifier To: Linux-Misc@senator-bedfellow.mit.edu Reply-To: Linux-Misc@senator-bedfellow.mit.edu Date: Tue, 7 Dec 93 16:13:27 EST Subject: Linux-Misc Digest #388 Linux-Misc Digest #388, Volume #1 Tue, 7 Dec 93 16:13:27 EST Contents: Re: Linux Consortium (Magnus Y Alvestad) Re: Linux Consortium (Magnus Y Alvestad) Re: [Announce] Callback for Linux (Kai Petzke) Re: Reminiscence... (Matthew Donadio) Re: A Linux Users Manual (Ian Soboroff) Re: Memory usage question for 0.99.pl14 (Brandon S. Allbery) Re: Are two swap partitions on two disks better (faster) than one? (Will Smith) Second IDE drive problems (NJ. Bruton) Re: A Linux Users Manual (Matt Welsh) Re: Yet another benchmark results.. (Ian Soboroff) Linux on a Token Ring (Christopher J Bienert) VLB & Linux (Albert King) Re: Networking Linux (Garrett D'Amore) Re: Bootable floppy-based system... (Gerhard Wesp) lpc: connect: Invalid Argument (Dietmar Lembke) Current rootdisk distribution? (David Holland) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: magnus@skarv.ii.uib.no (Magnus Y Alvestad) Subject: Re: Linux Consortium Date: 7 Dec 1993 11:46:49 GMT In article <2dtup7$jn@knobel.knirsch.de> andreas@knobel.knirsch.de (Andreas Klemm) writes: From what should people take the motivation to create packages for free, if there are people who recommend only such packages, that are nearly perfect in installation, documentation and everything, that they offer their free time for many people any further. You still don't get it. We would only recommend such packages for being sold with the implied suitability for the inexperienced. I'll give you all the details: Person D1, a developer, develops a program. It's not a perfect program, but it's useful. There's not any documentation, because D1 didn't have time to make any. However, he releases the program on the net, to the Linux Community. Some people flame him for not making any documentation, but D1 doesn't care much. Neither do I. Person D2, a distributor, starts selling D1's program on a CD-ROM. He advertises it in Unix Worlds with "It's the greatest thing since air, it will make you happy!". A buyer, B1, buys the package, and can't use it because there is no documentation. He doesn't have net access, so he can't ask the developer, D1. He's also pretty inexperienced, so he can't find out how to use the program by reading the source. He's just pissed off - and so am I - the CD is 'approved' or gets a good review in our paper - or whatever. Person D2 is another developer. He does document his software. (Everyone flames him anyway.) D2 releases his program on the net. D3, another distributor, sells D2's program on a CD-ROM - including the documentation. The CD-ROM is approved or gets a good review. Then, D3 uses the money he made on his previous CD-ROM to pay D1 to document his program. Now, D3 can distribute that program as well - with documentation - it's approved as well! Do you get it? Developers don't have a responsibility. They don't have to document. They don't get paid for their sweat. Distributors get money - real money - for the distributions they sell. They are responsible for the quality of their product. The worst case here is when the quality of a program decreases between the developer and the end user. The distributor doesn't include documentation or external software that the developer included. I want a group that can tell that developer that he won't be approved (or get good a review) unless he includes that documentation, that external program. Can you tell I'm in a bad mood today? -Magnus ------------------------------ From: magnus@skarv.ii.uib.no (Magnus Y Alvestad) Subject: Re: Linux Consortium Date: 7 Dec 1993 11:50:58 GMT In article <2e0b62$on9@snoopy.cis.ufl.edu> kem@prl.ufl.edu (Kelly Murray) writes: The best thing to do is put pressure on computer magazines to generate these reviews. Of course, they will only do it If magazines start reviewing Linux distributions the need for a Review group / consortium will disappear. I agree. -Magnus ------------------------------ From: wpp@lise.physik.tu-berlin.de (Kai Petzke) Crossposted-To: comp.os.linux.development Subject: Re: [Announce] Callback for Linux Date: 7 Dec 1993 11:58:57 GMT In <13199@obelix.icce.rug.nl> karel@icce.rug.nl (Karel Kubat) writes: >Heia: >This message is crossposted to c.o.l.misc and c.o.l.development, to reach a >wide audience.. There is an extra newsgroup to reach a wide audience: comp.os.linux.announce Use that, not all the others. -- Kai wpp@marie.physik.tu-berlin.de Advertisement by Microsoft in a well-known German magazine: If you don't like our programmes, than make your own ones. However, they expect you to use Microsoft products for this -:) ------------------------------ From: donadio@mxd120.rh.psu.edu (Matthew Donadio) Subject: Re: Reminiscence... Date: 7 Dec 1993 02:49:55 GMT Mohammad Al-Ansari (alansar@ccs.neu.edu) wrote: : In article , The Outlander wrote: : >Lars Wirzenius (wirzeniu@klaava.Helsinki.FI) wrote: : >: ...when Linux was mainly compared to Minix, and how ashamed we all felt : >: when Linux was inferior? : >aha.. I was never one for the comp.os.minix lists... I can remember when : >ast said that he would fail Linus for his O/S if he were in his class. Oh : >Well :) : (I'm assuming AST == Andrew ? Tanenbaum) : Why did he say this? Was this a serious thing or was it a joke? Please give : us Linux newbies some background :) If I remember right it was because Linus decided to use a monolithic kernel and Tanenbaum is a supporter of the micro-kernel architecture. -- Beaker aka Matt Donadio | Life is short, --- __ o __~o __ o donadio@mxd120.rh.psu.edu | ride like ---- _`\<, _`\<, _`\<, --- Penn State Cycling ---| the wind. --- ( )/( ) ( )/( ) ( )/( ) ------------------------------ From: ian@gl.umbc.edu (Ian Soboroff) Subject: Re: A Linux Users Manual Date: 6 Dec 1993 22:29:43 -0500 In article <1993Dec6.232917.3496@cs.cornell.edu>, Matt Welsh wrote: >Just about everything that you mentioned in this posting has been >covered (or is being covered) by the Linux Doc Project manuals, on >[...] >Started''. In addition, there is a Network Administration Guide, >Kernel Hacker's Guide, and System Administrator's Guide. A Linux >User's Guide is in the works. which of these manuals is in "alpha" stage, and which are "completed"? also, do you know what, if any, timetables there are on new releases of the manuals? i just ask 'cause most of the current linux FAQs and info and stuff pretty much tend to refer to the LDP as "well, it's out there, it's being worked on" and kind of leave it at that. i have printed out the getting started manual, and have found it to be wonderful! ian -- +-----------------+------------------------------------------------+ ! Ian Soboroff ! Caution! ! ! ian@gl.umbc.edu ! Joke Under Construction! ! +-----------------+------------------------------------------------+ ------------------------------ From: bsa@kf8nh.wariat.org (Brandon S. Allbery) Subject: Re: Memory usage question for 0.99.pl14 Date: Tue, 7 Dec 1993 03:19:02 GMT In article <1993Dec6.220008.7369@mercury.ncat.edu>, hkennedy@mercury.ncat.edu says: +--------------- | Interesting. I did not know about free. Well of course I just tried it. | Here is my numbers with pl14. The buffer number seems high. Can one reduce | the size of the buffers? | | > free | total used free shared buffers | Mem: 31744 12140 19604 2300 10292 | Swap: 0 0 0 +--------------- Not this stupid thread again. I know it's absolutely unusual to read FAQs, but you might *consider* doing so.... Linux, for all you folks who "know better than to read stupid FAQs" dynamically reallocates free memory to the buffer cache *and* *back* *again* as needed. If you have almost nothing running on your system, most of your memory will go into the buffer cache; when you start a program that needs memory, the cache will shrink to provide the memory. ++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 Do not taunt Happy Fun Coder. (seen on the Net...) ------------------------------ From: wos@dcs.warwick.ac.uk (Will Smith) Subject: Re: Are two swap partitions on two disks better (faster) than one? Date: Tue, 7 Dec 1993 12:55:19 GMT In ernestl@bnr.ca writes: >On some un*x systems if there are multiple swap partitions on different >disks, swap is allocated on all partitions at the same time (i.e. one >partition is not filled up before the OS starts swapping to the second >partition. > > ... > >If there are multiple partitions does linux >use the fastest one first and then the next best one or are they used in the >order that they're swapon'ed? > The linux kernel (as of pl11 or so) has a struct for 8 swap devices. Every time you enable swapping to a device it goes in the first free space. Swapping fills up the first device in the struct, then goes onto the second etc. If you make a swapfile on floppy disk and enable it first, initial swapping will go to floppy! I have written patches to the kernel to calculate delay for each swap device based on recent performance, and swap to the quickest device. I'll post the patches when I have adapted them to pl14, or maybe send them to Linus. -- William O. Smith -- Warwick Univ, UK wos@uk.ac.warwick.dcs ------------------------------ From: ccnjb@sun.cse.bris.ac.uk (NJ. Bruton) Subject: Second IDE drive problems Date: Tue, 7 Dec 1993 14:05:00 GMT I have recently become the 'proud' owner of a removable IDE drive which is a CAVIAR AC2340, this disk has been fitted and I now have linux installed on the whole drive (300M) with a 26M swap partition, the original internal IDE drive has a small (32M) dos C partition and I would like to set-up the rest of the original drive as a D partition (90M which is how it was configured prior to my installing linux). Since the new removable was installed I cannot run dos fdisk to create a new partition on the original drive nor can I boot the system with the removable removed and also the disk activity lights seem to mis-behave, this seems to me possibly something to do with incorrect jumpering, is anyone else using a similar setup who can give me some advise. Thanks Nick ------------------------------ Crossposted-To: comp.os.linux.development From: mdw@cs.cornell.edu (Matt Welsh) Subject: Re: A Linux Users Manual Date: Tue, 7 Dec 1993 05:34:19 GMT In article <2e0tb7INN37s@umbc8.umbc.edu> ian@gl.umbc.edu (Ian Soboroff) writes: >In article <1993Dec6.232917.3496@cs.cornell.edu>, >Matt Welsh wrote: >>Just about everything that you mentioned in this posting has been >>covered (or is being covered) by the Linux Doc Project manuals, on >>[...] >>Started''. In addition, there is a Network Administration Guide, >>Kernel Hacker's Guide, and System Administrator's Guide. A Linux >>User's Guide is in the works. > >which of these manuals is in "alpha" stage, and which are "completed"? >also, do you know what, if any, timetables there are on new releases >of the manuals? It's about time that I updated the old ``LDP Manifesto'' to get this information out. The I&GS is ``complete'', in that everything is there, but as with anything is going through a constant revision process. The SAG, NAG, and KHG are available in various stages of development. The User's Guide is the only one lagging behind (nudge nudge, wink wink) but I would hope to see something within a couple of months. Writing books is a very slow process, because it's such a large task. When writing the I&GS (around 150 pages now) I spent 25% of my time writing new material and 75% of the time rewriting old. In fact, the last couple of chapters are extremely terse because they didn't go through that extensive rewrite process (yet)--- I wrote them both in a weekend. I'm in the process of `rewriting' the I&GS, and the next release (real soon now) will include information on getting and installing "any" release of Linux---that is, it won't be SLS-specific. However, the more general you get, the less specific you get. Therefore, the next version of the book will rely on the various distributors having a set of complete instructions for installing just that release. I know that not all Linux distributions have this, for instance, SLS's "installation instructions" are limited to a set of cursory README files that expect the reader to know what's going on. What I may attempt to do is produce an "Installation HOWTO" for each major Linux distribution (at least, the ones available via FTP---CD-ROM and mail-order distribution usually come with fairly complete instructions) and provide that as a supplement for the I&GS. So, in order to install Slackware, you'd grab the I&GS and the "Slackware Installation Supplement" that provided Slackware-specific stuff and expected that you'd read it along with the I&GS. The problem is, I don't have the resources or time to download and install each of these Linux distributions to see first-hand what it's like. What I would like to do is gather a small group of volunteers---say, one or two for each distribution---to help me write these documents. The docs will be short and simple, more or less step-by-step instructions on how to install the software, with the background ideas being relegated to a document like the I&GS. If you've installed a release of Linux (recently, and other than SLS), and would like to help me write an "Installation HOWTO" for that particular release, please mail me. Essentially each document will be a modification of the current Installation-HOWTO for that release, and shouldn't be very hard to put together. Maintaining such a document is a different matter. I'm hoping that the individual distribution coordinators would be able to maintain these documents after they're written. mdw -- "Do you want to be Finnish? Sure, we all do!" ------------------------------ From: ian@gl.umbc.edu (Ian Soboroff) Subject: Re: Yet another benchmark results.. Date: 7 Dec 1993 10:31:42 -0500 In article <2e1jrn$k2d@info.epfl.ch>, Xavier Llobet EPFL - CRPP 1015 Lausanne CH wrote: >: Computer Time spent and while we're at it... ;-) SGI Iris Indigo (low end) 24 sec. Single user (but with many windows running... IRIX 4.5.1) SGI Iris Crimson with 60 users, load 6.3 53 sec. ian -- +-----------------+------------------------------------------------+ ! Ian Soboroff ! "Great data structures never die, ! ! ian@gl.umbc.edu ! they just go out of scope..." ! +-----------------+------------------------------------------------+ ------------------------------ From: cjbiener@iastate.edu (Christopher J Bienert) Subject: Linux on a Token Ring Date: Tue, 7 Dec 1993 15:06:03 GMT I would like to set up a Gateway2000 computer running Linux on a Token Ring. I'll be using a Madge Token Ring card. Is this possible and if it is, are there any special problems that I should be aware of before starting the project. Also, I've seen help files for using Linux on an Ethernet network, are there similar files available for Token Ring? (I've checked out the ftp sites, but I haven't found anything.) Thanks in advance. -Chris -- Christopher J Bienert cjbiener@iastate.edu ------------------------------ From: ak@dcs.ed.ac.uk (Albert King) Subject: VLB & Linux Date: Tue, 7 Dec 1993 13:22:22 GMT How compatible is The VEAS LOCAL BUS with Linux? Will Linux run on a VLB system etc? Thanks, Al. ------------------------------ From: garrett@netcom.com (Garrett D'Amore) Subject: Re: Networking Linux Date: Tue, 7 Dec 1993 18:39:37 GMT Terry Dawson (terryd@extro.ucc.su.OZ.AU) wrote: :> eremenko@mace.cc.purdue.edu (Paul Eremenko) writes: :> >Does anyone know whether Linux supports a :> >3Com Ethernet II or III network card? :> >Also, is it possible for it to directly :> >interface with Novell Netware? Thanks. :> Linux supports both the Etherlink II and III cards. :> Linux currently does not support Novel Netware, though there :> are a team of people, I understand, who are interested in :> developing same. You can interface Linux with Netware, but you must use the NFS services that Netware supports. I believe there is a hefty extra charge for the NFS services software, btw. Contact Novell to be certain. I know that I had a large Novell network with Linux workstations as some of the clients. (As well as MS-DOG, Macinsloth, and Ultrucks boxes. :^) There is a shareware (?) product out called "charon" and "pegasus" that allows Netware to act as a mail/print server, but it doesn't help Netware provide file services. I haven't actually used it, so I can't give you any more details than that. Sorry. ================================================================= Garrett D'Amore | garrett@netcom.com Network Programmer/Analyst | Available for hire !! ================================================================= Ask me about Linux, the free 32-bit Unix-like OS for PCs! Also, ask for my resume if you are an employer in San Diego seeking a qualified network programmer or administrator. ------------------------------ From: gwesp@cosy.sbg.ac.at (Gerhard Wesp) Subject: Re: Bootable floppy-based system... Date: Tue, 7 Dec 1993 17:45:20 GMT In article <1993Nov30.200509.19765@rosevax.rosemount.com>, Grant Edwards wrote: [...] >appropriate places on the floppy (init, getty, rc, fstab, fsck, >inittab, login, sh, mount, umount, cat, ls, mv, tar, elvis, rm, >more...). > >Got everything set up so I could boot this floppy and maybe do a few >useful things to fix up a broken hard disk system. I had about 20K of >space left on the floppy when I got done. > You definitely do *NOT* need any stuff on the boot disk that has to do with login, user account management and security things. After all, if you're booting from a floppy, you are at the console and can personally defend your computer against intruders. The stuff concerned is getty, login, /etc/passwd, /etc/group, /etc/shadow I guess you can save some 50 K by leaving these things out. -Gerhard ------------------------------ From: didi@olsen.ch (Dietmar Lembke) Subject: lpc: connect: Invalid Argument Date: Tue, 7 Dec 1993 10:59:08 GMT Hi that's the message I get when I try to start my printer. I've looked around in the FAQ's and did found some hints on it. But does where more related to older kernel's. What they told me is that this problem should have been fixed in pl10. Now I'm running pl14 but still have this problem. Is anybody willing to direct me to the right direction. Dietmar Lembke Olsen & Associates 8008 Zurich ------------------------------ Subject: Current rootdisk distribution? From: dholland@husc7.harvard.edu (David Holland) Date: 7 Dec 93 12:01:31 Having just gone through the hassle of installing SLS on my roommate's machine, I have concluded that I'd rather build my own system from scratch than use a full distribution. That way I can at least insure things are set up correctly. Is there a bootdisk/rootdisk distribution containing a recent (and preferably relatively stable) kernel? Where may it be found? The installation FAQs naturally don't cover this... -- - David A. Holland | Nobody ever went broke underestimating dholland@husc.harvard.edu | the intelligence of the American public. ------------------------------ ** 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 ******************************