Subject: Linux-Activists Digest #70
From: Digestifier <[email-masked]>
To: [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 14 Apr 92 22:15:15 EDT

Linux-Activists Digest #70, Volume #2            Tue, 14 Apr 92 22:15:15 EDT

Contents:
  Re: Problems compiling df and system utils under gcc 2.1 (Daniel A. Martin)
  Re: tar files on floppy. (Jim Winstead Jr.)
  can't compile selection/mouse driver (Jiansheng Zhao)
  Samsung Sync 4 modes - reply for  <david@maxwell> (Steven Kraft)
  Re: GCC2.1 (Wonderful !) (Karl R. Buck)
  bootlin.com (boot linux from HD) works well! (Jiansheng Zhao)
  Re: tar files on floppy. (A. V. Le Blanc)
  GNU Fortran (A. V. Le Blanc)
  Re: Needed: a guide to setting up swap space. (A. V. Le Blanc)
  Re: Patching Bootimage disks (A. V. Le Blanc)
  Dr DOS and fdisk 0.91 (A. V. Le Blanc)
  include/linux and include/asm (was Re: kernel building problems) (A. V. Le Blanc)
  compress and tar, fixed, at tsx-11 (Michael K. Johnson)
  Re: tar files on floppy. (David Engel)
  Where is system-0.95a.tar.Z?? (William A Jones)
  Where is system-0.95a.tar.Z?? (William A Jones)
  charset oriented GUI (Brian Chojnowski)
  jipped zip! ([email-masked])
  mtools binaries for linux request!
  rcs, what does it do? ([email-masked])

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: [email-masked] (Daniel A. Martin)
Subject: Re: Problems compiling df and system utils under gcc 2.1
Date: 14 Apr 92 23:33:06 GMT

Thanks Jim and David...those sure were some quick replies...
-- 
Danny Martin : [email-masked]

------------------------------

From: [email-masked] (Jim Winstead Jr.)
Subject: Re: tar files on floppy.
Date: 14 Apr 92 23:04:18 GMT

In article <[email-masked]> [email-masked] (LCDR Michael E. Dobson) writes:
>I am just about finished with linking everything in 2.1shared-A.tar.Z with
>shared libs and symlinking into /usr/bin.  A word of caution, DON'T use
>shared libs or symlinks on anything in /bin or /etc if / and /usr are on
>different partitions.  They won't work until /usr is mounted.  Keep a good
>bootimage floppy and root floppy handy just in case.

As long as /lib is on your root partition, and /lib/lib92.04.* is
actually present in that directory, and *not* a sym-link, you can use
shared binaries in /bin just fine.  /lib/lib92.04.* really shouldn't
be symlinked....

The idea of keeping a good boot disk and root disk is valid, though.
I've had to go back to mine on a few occasions.  (Usually the boot
disk, when I screw up a kernel compilation.)
-- 
Jim Winstead Jr. (CSci '95)    | "Catch a fish!"
Harvey Mudd College            |  -Geddy Lee,
[email-masked] |   San Diego Sports Arena
Disclaimer: Mine, not theirs!  |   January 20, 1992

------------------------------

From: [email-masked] (Jiansheng Zhao)
Subject: can't compile selection/mouse driver
Date: Tue, 14 Apr 1992 22:42:40 GMT

I almost got everything work with linux0.95c+.
However, I still have trouble to compile selection to use a mouse.
gcc2.1 compiled new kernel all right. When compiling selection-1.0
I got the following error message:
stuff.c In function 'begsel' 
stuff.c:73: 'TIOCLINUX' undeclared
stuff.c:86 ... ... ...
Maybe there is a simple fix for trained eyes, but I have been pulling
my hair ,:).

------------------------------

Subject: Samsung Sync 4 modes - reply for  <david@maxwell>
From: [email-masked]  (Steven Kraft)
Date: 14 Apr 92 18:20:15 -0600
Reply-To: [email-masked]

Sorry that I have to post this here in comp.os.linux, since it is not really  
relevant.  But I need to answer mail from a fellow Linux enthusiast who doesn't  
know how to get a proper address on his mail. :-)

   ----- Transcript of session follows -----
421 Host maxwell not found for mailer ether.
550 David Darknell <david@maxwell>... Host unknown

!Are you able to use your SyncMaster 4 at 1280x1024 without problems?
!
!David
        First let me say that the Samsung Syncmaster 4 is only advertised as a  
1024*768 monitor.
        I don't use 1280*1024 for anything right now, but the test program  
supplied with the Orchid Fahrenheit 1280/D uses that mode successfully on my  
Syncmaster 4.  It has flicker since it is 48Hz interlaced.  I have to fiddle  
with the size and position knobs some to center the image.  It is a bit coarse  
since the Syncmaster 4 is .31mm dot pitch. 
        If you are looking for advice on finding a GOOD monitor for something  
serious like CAD at 1280*1024 I would suggest that you look elsewhere or you  
may be disappointed. 

Steven Kraft [email-masked]
Micro/Minicomputer Consultant, Comp Sci major
Gustavus Adolphus College

------------------------------

From: [email-masked] (Karl R. Buck)
Subject: Re: GCC2.1 (Wonderful !)
Date: 14 Apr 1992 19:00:53 -0500

[email-masked] (Michael K. Johnson) writes:

>Please, don't consider 1.40 retired -- It is smaller -- Not all the
>features, and I am _very_ glad that 2.x is out, and I am sure that I
>will switch some day.  But right now I want something small, and I
>simply don't yet need 2.x's features.  I don't think that I am
>alone...

I'm not sure about this, but once you have completely recompiled
everything to use shared libs, you should have a savings in disk
space.

Does anyone have any figures on how much space is saved when using
shared libraries?
-- 
Karl Buck, [email-masked]     :)

------------------------------

From: [email-masked] (Jiansheng Zhao)
Subject: bootlin.com (boot linux from HD) works well!
Date: 14 Apr 92 23:48:19 GMT

Thanks to [email-masked], now I can boot linux from my
hard drive (dev/hdb2) directly. I used mutiple config.sys files and left
autoexec.bat empty when booting linux. There is only one line needed in
config.sys file:
SHELL=c:\bootlin.com c:\etc\boot95c (boot image file).

I used to have boot-image floppy handy when starting linux, not any more.

------------------------------

From: [email-masked] (A. V. Le Blanc)
Subject: Re: tar files on floppy.
Date: 14 Apr 92 08:03:55 GMT

In article <[email-masked]> [email-masked] (Lars Lindner) writes:
>
>When I have both boot and root images installed on HD and i want to
>install more SW downloaded as .tar.Z files, in what way vill i get
>them on a floppy to be able to install them on my Linux machine.

If you have both Linux and MS-DOS on the same machine, the simplest
course of action is to use mtools (i.e., mread, mcopy, or mtype) to
access them.

If you do not have both Linux and MS-DOS on the same machine, the
simplest course of action is to copy the files to a dos disk, then
use mtools to read the floppy.

>* Shall i use "rawrite" from DOS to put the files on floppy?

The 'rawrite' program is intended for use with disk images.  It CAN
write a tar file to a disk, and in fact this is how I originally
installed Linux on my machine, but it is probably simpler to use
copy and mtools.

>* I rememer reading something like "Do not rawrite compressed files.".
>  Why??

The problem is, I think, that compress is written to read from a
file or a stream, and that its I/O does not handle a raw read from a
disk correctly.  Anyway it didn't when I first installed Linux.

For larger files, it would be best to split them up, copy them over
on separate floppies, and concatenate them, that is, assuming that
you have no DOS partition on your Linux machine.  Unfortunately I
cannot point you to any standard utility running on DOS which would
do this painlessly.  I did this once with a GNUish DOS dd, which I
found in the anonymous ftp at, I believe, grape.ecs.clarkson.edu.

     -- Owen
     [email-masked]

------------------------------

From: [email-masked] (A. V. Le Blanc)
Subject: GNU Fortran
Date: 14 Apr 92 11:17:24 GMT

James Craig Burley, who is writing the GNU Fortran compiler,
announced in a recent post that he is getting a machine to
run Linux on.  I expect that those who like FORTRAN (yeugh!)
will find the Linux version should work fairly well if JCB
is doing the development on a Linux system.

     -- Owen
     [email-masked]

------------------------------

From: [email-masked] (A. V. Le Blanc)
Subject: Re: Needed: a guide to setting up swap space.
Date: 14 Apr 92 13:16:40 GMT

In article <[email-masked]> [email-masked] (Kevin Cummings) writes:
>In article <[email-masked]>, [email-masked] (Clifford A Adams) writes:
>>      * Is there any way to tell how much swap space you are using or
>> have left?
>
>Under SUNOS I do a "pstst -T".  I haven't seen a LINUX command yet to tell me
>how much is actually in use.

The 'free' command from the 2.1ps distribution does this.  If swapping
is not enabled, it displays only memory; otherwise it displays two lines,
one for memory and one for swap, each giving total, used, and free, and
memory also mentioning how much is shared.

Of course, you could always notice what swapon reports:

     Adding Swap: 1061 pages (4345856 bytes) swap-space

or something of the sort.

     -- Owen
     [email-masked]

------------------------------

From: [email-masked] (A. V. Le Blanc)
Subject: Re: Patching Bootimage disks
Date: 14 Apr 92 13:41:20 GMT

In article <[email-masked]> [email-masked] (Rainer Kirsch) writes:
>I got pmk32.zip from wuarchive.wustl.edu in order to patch my boot-disk to 
>tell about an alternative root device. (Wanting to change bytes no. 508 and 
>509).
>But: It did not work. I checked the behaviour of pmk with the new formatted 
>disk - all ok. It seems, that the data of the boot information is too 
>different from that of an ordinary MS/DOS disk. So a "General disk error" is 
>reported.
>Can anyone tell me an alternative mechanism for patching boot-disks?

The best tool I have seen is the rdev program, from Werner Almesberger
of ETH.  With no arguments it prints out the first line for /etc/mtab,
with one argument (a boot image) it prints the device configured as
the root device, and with two arguments (boot image, device), it sets
the device as the default root in the specified image.

Source is available by anonymous ftp from several sites, and I think
the program is on the latest root disks instead of rootdev.
It is on the utilities disk of my 'interim' version.

     -- Owen
     [email-masked]

------------------------------

From: [email-masked] (A. V. Le Blanc)
Subject: Dr DOS and fdisk 0.91
Date: 14 Apr 92 12:27:58 GMT

Someone reported recently that the Linux/Minix partitions
created by my fdisk 0.91 are recognised as DOS partitions
by Dr. DOS 6.0.  I suspect what is happening is that
Dr. DOS is ignoring the high bit of the type field.  If
this is so, it should certainly be reported to the Dr. DOS
suppliers, since it will cause problems for MINIX users
as well.  The 8-bit field contains 00000001 for a DOS partition
with a 12-bit FAT, and 10000001 for MINIX/Linux.  You can
always change to another number, e.g., 0x41, which I expect
even Dr. DOS will let alone.

A bug in the version of fdisk 0.91 makes it delete partition
5 incorrectly.  This bug is fixed in fdisk 0.92, which I shall
be distributing soon.

     -- Owen
     [email-masked]

------------------------------

From: [email-masked] (A. V. Le Blanc)
Subject: include/linux and include/asm (was Re: kernel building problems)
Date: 14 Apr 92 14:58:22 GMT

In article <[email-masked]> [email-masked] (Mika Pekka Liljeberg) writes:
>
>I compiled .95c first without and the with the HJ patch. There were no
>problems either way. Then I moved the kernel includes under /usr/include/linux
>with HJ's conv script. I hope this will become "official" practise, since
>it makes everything ever so much simpler. How about it, Linus? :)

The include files distributed with the kernel should not be part of
normal C programs, and are closely linked with the kernel.  For the
purpose of compiling fundamental utilities, they are often useful, and
for this reason I have usually put at least those in linux/include/linux
and those in linux/include/asm into /usr/include/linux and /usr/include/asm
respectively.

I hope this will NOT become the official practice, in that I do NOT want
to see these files 'distributed' with the compiler; this would cause too
many problems coordinating versions.  The include files used to compile
Linux MUST be able to be changed as Linux changes, and so are distinct
from the include files used by the C compiler.  In any case, the only
compilation about which I have heard that these include files caused a
difficulty was the compilation of tools/build, which is, of course, not
part of the kernel, but a tool used to put the kernel together.

     -- Owen
     [email-masked]

------------------------------

From: [email-masked] (Michael K. Johnson)
Subject: compress and tar, fixed, at tsx-11
Reply-To: [email-masked] (Michael K. Johnson)
Date: Wed, 15 Apr 1992 01:16:12 GMT

OK, for everyone having trouble with tar &/| compress, read this:

              --- Please Post as Binaries ---

These are compress and tar compiled using GCC 2.1 from fresh sources
from prep.ai.mit.edu. They use the static libraries and should run on
most versions of Linux.

These should definately fix the problems people have been having with
bad tars and compresses.

I have tested this tar + compress against tar + compress as done on a
RS/6000 box and have found no differences in the extracted files.

Just to make sure, using sum or cksum -o 1 gives
        37922   54  compress
        09607   329 tar

Enjoy!

        jim wiegand -- [email-masked] -- [email-masked]
        
These files have been installed as
tsx-11.mit.edu:/pub/linux/binaries/usr.bin/compress
tsx-11.mit.edu:/pub/linux/binaries/usr.bin/tar

they have not been compressed or tarred, for obvious chicken & egg
reasons.

enjoy.

BTW, also tcsh 6.01 has been put in the same directory.  Enjoy!

michaelkjohnson
[email-masked]

------------------------------

From: [email-masked] (David Engel)
Subject: Re: tar files on floppy.
Date: Wed, 15 Apr 1992 01:12:18 GMT

[email-masked] (A. V. Le Blanc) writes:
: For larger files, it would be best to split them up, copy them over
: on separate floppies, and concatenate them, that is, assuming that
: you have no DOS partition on your Linux machine.  Unfortunately I
: cannot point you to any standard utility running on DOS which would
: do this painlessly.  I did this once with a GNUish DOS dd, which I
: found in the anonymous ftp at, I believe, grape.ecs.clarkson.edu.

I have a version of tar (really pax) which can read and write standard,
multi-volume, Unix tar-files on floppy.  I think it's available on Simtel
(and mirrors) ... Yep, it is.  Look for pax2exe.zip in the filutl area.

David
-- 
David Engel                        Optical Data Systems, Inc.
[email-masked]                      1101 E. Arapaho Road
(214) 234-6400                     Richardson, TX  75081

------------------------------

Crossposted-To: alt.os.linux
From: [email-masked] (William A Jones)
Subject: Where is system-0.95a.tar.Z??
Date: Wed, 15 Apr 1992 01:29:09 GMT

Last week a notice of system-0.95a.tar.Z was posted and I retreived the
file.  Since then I have had a hard disk crash and am now trying to
rebuild my linux system but system-0.95a.tar.Z seems to have disappeared!
Maybe I'm overlooking something (this archive indexes are all about a week
old).  Please repost the location or if it has been removed, tell me where
I can get a copy (I really want the login and passwd routines -- they let
me set up a multiuser system easily).

Thanks,
Bill

======================================================================
[email-masked]
[email-masked]
[email-masked]
======================================================================

------------------------------

Crossposted-To: alt.os.linux
From: [email-masked] (William A Jones)
Subject: Where is system-0.95a.tar.Z??
Date: Wed, 15 Apr 1992 01:29:09 GMT

Last week a notice of system-0.95a.tar.Z was posted and I retreived the
file.  Since then I have had a hard disk crash and am now trying to
rebuild my linux system but system-0.95a.tar.Z seems to have disappeared!
Maybe I'm overlooking something (this archive indexes are all about a week
old).  Please repost the location or if it has been removed, tell me where
I can get a copy (I really want the login and passwd routines -- they let
me set up a multiuser system easily).

Thanks,
Bill

======================================================================
[email-masked]
[email-masked]
[email-masked]
======================================================================

------------------------------

From: chojnows@osiris (Brian Chojnowski)
Subject: charset oriented GUI
Date: Wed, 15 Apr 1992 01:06:36 GMT

        I have been writting some user interface routines, and have just
started to add a crude windowing sytem to the bunch. There are a few
multi-user games that I am writting that Linux would be ideal for, but I
need a little graphics power. Since this is for Pc's, I figgured if I could
devise a standard of somekind, and someone was able to provide me with
source for a telnet program, and some idea as to where in the kernel or
device drivers to look, I could implement a windowing environment that wrote
directly to the video card. Because of my limited experience with Unix,
given telnet source, I would have no problem modifying that, but I have no
idea how to start on the kernel/device end.

        -Brian

------------------------------

From: [email-masked]
Subject: jipped zip!
Reply-To: [email-masked]
Date: Wed, 15 Apr 1992 02:04:20 GMT

I just went to all the trouble to get zip10ex.bin.tar.Z, and I was surprised
to find that now I have to get the unzip-41.bin.tar.Z (2 day delay cause of 
ftpmail!)

I have a question about tex: does it work for plain old dot-matrix printers?

Also, is X public domain, or is it commercial?

Is it possible to write a dos-emulator under Linux(you know, kinda like
Soft-PC under Mac)?

I have seen a couple of references to mice(mouses?) lately in the digests,
is there a driver for a mouse for Linux? if so, where can I get it?

Also, is there ANY other ftpmail server other than decwrl?
(decwrl is nice, but sometimes I have to ask for a file 4-5 times before
the transfer is successful.)

well, nuff said for tonite.  :-)

jim gifford
[email-masked]
 ...!uunet!attmail.com!jgifford

------------------------------

From: [email-masked] ()
Subject: mtools binaries for linux request!
Date: Wed, 15 Apr 92 01:07:58 GMT

Where can I find 'mtools' binary for linux?
With Thanks,
- ishwar([email-masked])

------------------------------

From: [email-masked]
Subject: rcs, what does it do?
Reply-To: [email-masked]
Date: Wed, 15 Apr 1992 02:06:52 GMT

I have rcs, and I have no idea what it is for, can someone e-mail me and
explain it?  thanks,
jim gifford
[email-masked]
 ...!uunet!attmail.com!jgifford

------------------------------

** 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: [email-masked]

You can send mail to the entire list (and comp.os.linux) via:

    Internet: [email-masked]

Linux may be obtained via one of these FTP sites:
    nic.funet.fi				pub/OS/Linux
    tsx-11.mit.edu				pub/linux
    tupac-amaru.informatik.rwth-aachen.de	pub/msdos/replace

The current version of Linux is 0.95a released on March 17, 1992

End of Linux-Activists Digest
******************************