Subject: Linux-Activists Digest #73
From: Digestifier <[email-masked]>
To: [email-masked]
Date: Wed, 15 Apr 92 12:45:33 EDT

Linux-Activists Digest #73, Volume #2            Wed, 15 Apr 92 12:45:33 EDT

Contents:
  Re: can't compile selection/mouse driver (Andrew Haylett (GEC-Marconi Research Centre))
  Can someone point me to a Linux info summary? (Kayvan Sylvan)
  interupts in Linux ([email-masked])
  Re: User's Guide project (Einar Indridason)
  MGR and Mountain tapes. (anthony lewis)
  First small success in using Linux as transputer host (Michael Haardt)
  Re: Yet another X question (Joel M. Hoffman)
  Re: Linux Printer (david.a.cuka)
  bootimage-0.95c+.scsi corrupt at nic.funet.fi ?? (Johan Rudolf Sundstr|m)
  Re: tar files on floppy. (LCDR Michael E. Dobson)
  Too many duplicated messages (Dahai Li)
  Loadable Device drivers. (Rogier Wolff)
  Re: Yet another X question (Adam Thompson)
  ALLWAYS IN2000 SCSI Controller (Kent Williams)
  Re: tar files on floppy. (Johan W}hlin)
  Re: GCC2.1 (Wonderful !) (I Reid)

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

From: Andrew Haylett (GEC-Marconi Research Centre) <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: can't compile selection/mouse driver
Reply-To: [email-masked]
Date: Wed, 15 Apr 1992 07:54:34 GMT

[email-masked] (Jiansheng Zhao) writes:

| 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 ,:).

before you lose all your hair...the problem is presumably that TIOCLINUX is
defined in /usr/src/linux/include/termios.h, but not in the termios.h provided
with gcc2.1. I've been using gcc1.4, and just copying all the kernel include
files into /usr/include. A quick fix would be to copy the definition into
/usr/include/termios.h, or if you don't think it should be there, put
something like

    #ifndef TIOCLINUX
    #define TIOCLINUX       0x541C
    #endif

near the top of stuff.c.

----
Andrew Haylett       | Inet: [email-masked]   | Fax: +44 245 75244
GEC-Marconi Research | Tel: +44 245 73331 x.3283 | Telex: 995016 GECRES G

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

From: [email-masked] (Kayvan Sylvan)
Subject: Can someone point me to a Linux info summary?
Date: 15 Apr 92 07:51:39 GMT

Could someone please point me to an FAQ or some kind of summary on
what Linux is and what it runs on?

I've been hearing very good things about it and am looking at running
Linux or BSD386 in the near future.

My current configuration is a 386/33Mhz with a 387, ESDI, 670+MB disk,
8Meg of memory, ET4000 + color monitor. I'm interested in getting the
gcc2.1 compilers (gcc, g++, ObjectiveC) up and running as well as the
X11R5 release on my 386. Is Linux the way to go?

Is it stable enough to be used for heavy duty development work? What
about mail/news with high-speed modems and serial ports? Does anyone
have FAS working on Linux?

Please Email responses and I'll summarize if there's enough interest.

                        ---Kayvan
-- 
| Kayvan Sylvan, Sylvan Associates, [email-masked], (408) 978-1407  |
| Consulting, Training, Development, SysAdmin, {BSD,SVr3,SVr4} Unix Systems  |
| "Think Globally, Act Locally." "Dubito ergo sum - I doubt therefore I am." |
| Proud Dad of Katherine Yelena (2.5 years) and Robin Gregory (born 2/28/92) |

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

Subject: interupts in Linux
From: [email-masked]
Date: 15 Apr 92 19:40:56 +1300

        We have some large binary sound files which we read into RAM from
disk and then send to a ADC/DAC board to drive a speaker.
        Under DOS we disable most of the system interupts during this
process to prevent artifact on the replayed signal.
        What would be the effect of transiently disabling interupts in 
this way under Linux? (would it crash the system/do terribler irrepairable
harm ?)
p.s. we retain one or two of the interupts even under DOS but they do not
seem to do any harm to the replayed signal.
 
-- 
Stephen Pearce, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand.
ph 064-3-7470999 ext 8166 home 064-3-4763778

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

From: [email-masked] (Einar Indridason)
Subject: Re: User's Guide project
Date: 15 Apr 92 09:29:04 GMT

In <[email-masked]> [email-masked] (Ajay Shah) writes:

>[email-masked] (Joseph Knapka) writes:

>>1) Do you think there is a need for such a document?

>Yes, I think such a document would be rather valuable.

>Linux is great.. what more could a hacker ask for?
>But we could make the results of the same work accessible to
>a much larger class of users if we add "a little" effort
>on documentation and easy-to-use installation/administration.

And perhaps some co-ordination regarding patches.  Perhaps a few persons
would take each patch, and compare it to some "standard" source tree.

I have used Minix a bit, but haven't installed Linux (yet), but I'd
hate to see the "patch-mess", that minix has gotten into, hit Linux as
well.

--
[email-masked]

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

From: [email-masked] (anthony lewis)
Subject: MGR and Mountain tapes.
Date: 15 Apr 92 02:48:31 GMT

Hi all, I jut got access to the group, so please excuse repeates.. but,
Has anyone thought of porting MGR yet? Also how about 40mb mountain 
drives?

        Anyway, I just uant to add my 'attaboy' to Linus.....

                                        Ziggy.

--
anthony lewis
The Grafted Branch BBS
317-881-4369
internet: [email-masked]
uucp: ..!uunet!grafted.UUCP!ziggy
 = = Grafted Branch BBS (317) 889-6997 2 Gig on-line = =

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

From: [email-masked] (Michael Haardt)
Crossposted-To: comp.sys.transputer
Subject: First small success in using Linux as transputer host
Date: 11 Apr 92 23:09:15 GMT
Reply-To: [email-masked] (Michael Haardt)

I ported dmake 3.8 to get a decent make on Linux (it compiles without
much effort, as usual on Linux) and built my small transputer tools a
few minutes ago.

Well, I started the transputer memory test with the start server and:
wow! It worked, and *so* much faster than under MINIX.  This simple
server uses /dev/port, and it was painful slow under MINIX.  Once again
I am really impressed by the speed of Linux.

I am still working on my transputer assembler and linker and I am still
not sure if I will release it to public domain, but if there is
interest, I will make binaries for Linux available per ftp.  I can't
make available the server, because it is a based on the server in "Das
Transputerbuch", but I will write my own server next time.

I will be away for vacation with my gf during next month.  When I come
back, I will develop a concept for a device driver to use the link
interface at highest possible speed.  I guess that the PC bus will be
the bottleneck, because the link is able to work at 20 MBit/second, but
it is used via an 8 bit port.  Here are two ideas of mine:

-   /dev/tlink, a character device with blocking read and write to the
    link.  Perhaps non blocking read/write may be supported, I don't know
    if it is useful.  ioctl's will control reset, error and analyse.

-   /dev/tlink for the link, /dev/tlinkctl for controlling error, reset and
    analyse with kind of message passing via fs.  This makes ioctl obsolete
    and I like it a lot since I read the Plan 9 papers, but on the other
    side it is totally different from anything else in Linux :(

Any other suggestions?

I haven't looked at device drivers in Linux yet, how difficult it will
be and what has to be done to support blocking/non blocking operations.

The transputer should be fast enough to use polling without loosing
performance.  I think the overhead of interrupts would even slow down
the data transfer, but I have no practical experience in that.

I also thought about a lock to allow only one process to deal with
/dev/tlink in the way like Parsytec uses semaphores for OpenLink, but I
decided to let the server program deal with that.  People who open
devices in their programs should know what they do and no restrictions
should be put on them.

If you post follow-ups, please send me a copy per email during next
month.  I will post a summary.

Michael

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

From: [email-masked] (Joel M. Hoffman)
Subject: Re: Yet another X question
Date: 15 Apr 92 12:59:30 GMT

In article <[email-masked]> [email-masked] (Hongjiu Lu -- Graduate Student) writes:
>In article <mper.703312424@uipsuxb> [email-masked] (Michael Pereckas) writes:
>> [Is there a smaller, simpler, graphics support update planned?]
>>
>
>From my own experience, a real X11R4 can take as little as 10MB to run.
>on a 386. I only keep the minimum stufffs I need. Beside MIT stuffs,
>I added some other programs, like xgif and xdvi. I can put off X source
>from the net and compile it without much problem. I believe, for X11R5,
>20MB should be a safe bet.

I also would like to see simpler graphics support.  I really don't
want to clobber by system with X, and all I really need can be
provided much more simply.  First, I'd like to have downloadable
character sets, so I can use the Hebrew routines I've been using under
DOS.  Second, I'd like a .dvi previewer.  So far, I've seen nothing
that's even nearly as good as the .dvi drivers that come with emTeX.
Any chance of porting those??  (E. Mattes?  Please!)  Finally,
sometime down the road I'd like to see a full DOS emulator for Linux,
and that will require graphics support.  

It seems to me a ggod approach would be to emulate DOS's graphics
interface, and trap the reads and writes to the graphics card.  That
would make all of the above tasks much easier, and wouldn't demand so
much of the system.

Comments?

-Joel
([email-masked])

p.s.  Please don't write back telling me how terrible DOS is.  I have
many useful programs for DOS, and everything I sell is written for
DOS.  I can't give it up.

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

From: [email-masked] (david.a.cuka)
Subject: Re: Linux Printer
Date: 15 Apr 92 13:46:50 GMT

In article <[email-masked]> [email-masked] (Steve Ansell) writes:
>In article <[email-masked]> [email-masked] (david.a.cuka) writes:
>>
>>I got a "ENODEV", so I tried using minor device number 1, which did not
>>work either.  Is there some addtional setup that I am missing?  I
>>am running on v0.95a. The printer is a Panasonic KXP-1024 parallel
>               ^^^^^^
>
>Unless you applied the kernel patches yourself (you don't mention it above)
>you don't have the lp driver support in the kernel.  You need to get a copy
>of v0.95c+ which has the lp driver support in the kernel already.  Once you
>have that there shouldn't be much to it other than what you show above.
>
>
>-- 
>                                               -Steven T. Ansell
>                                               Unix Consultant
>                                               Computing Services U.C.D.       

Thanks to all who replied, I downloaded 0.95c+ and the printer now works.
Also, my extended partition is now recognized by linux and by mtools.

DAC

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

From: [email-masked] (Johan Rudolf Sundstr|m)
Subject: bootimage-0.95c+.scsi corrupt at nic.funet.fi ??
Date: 14 Apr 92 13:43:43 GMT
Reply-To: [email-masked] (Johan Rudolf Sundstr|m)

The bootimage-0.95c+.scsi at nic.funet.fi is corrupt. The offset 508 and
509 ( in the bootsector )is supposed to be 00 00 if you want to load Linux
from floppies. As I have an Adaptec drive this was the first chance for Linux 
to read my HD. Linux didn't found any root in the device 03 01(offset 509 and 
508 in my image originally). Well, it worked find when I corrected the mistake.
I guess the pearson who did send the image was tired and didn't remember to 
change these bits. 

                                        [email-masked]
--

   [email-masked]               Skit happens all the time 
   [email-masked]                   and then you marry one!
   [email-masked]

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

From: [email-masked] (LCDR Michael E. Dobson)
Subject: Re: tar files on floppy.
Date: 15 Apr 92 13:16:48 GMT

In article <[email-masked]> [email-masked] (David Engel) writes:
>[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.
>
>If you copy the shared lib to /lib instead of symlinking it (done by the 
>install script) you can use shared binaries in /bin and /etc.  You can also 
>safely remove /usr/shared the next time you upgrade libraries.  It's still 
>a good idea to have "emergency" boot and root floppies handy however.
>
Good news.  I had thought about this and will very likely do it.  With only
a 4 Meg root partition, I ran out of space attempting to install the shadow
passwd utilities.  Converting all binaries in the root partition to shared
libs will save lots of space.  Now I just need to go back and grab the src
for the shadow stuff to compile and link it for shared libs.  I assume I
should also cp the shared binaries into /usr/bin rather than using symlinks
to /usr/shared/bin.

Mike

-- 
LCDR Mike Dobson, Sys Admin for | Internet: [email-masked]
nmrdc1.nmrdc.nnmc.navy.mil      | UUCP:   ...uunet!mimsy!nmrdc1!rdc30
AT&T 3B2/600G Sys V R 3.2.3     | BITNET:   dobson@usuhsb or nrd0mxd@vmnmdsc
WIN/TCP for 3B2  R3.2           | MCI-Mail: 377-2719 or [email-masked]

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

From: [email-masked] (Dahai Li)
Subject: Too many duplicated messages
Reply-To: [email-masked] (Dahai Li)
Date: Wed, 15 Apr 1992 14:25:01 GMT

For the past week, there are many duplicated messages appearing in the
linux-digests. And I did notice some one complained about it. However, I
don's see any reponse, and they keep on coming.

Can we do something about it? Like screen out the duplicates when grouping
the digests.

(what is the reason for this duplications? People send copies to two Linux
news group: alt.os.linux, and comp.os.linux?)

Dahai

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

From: [email-masked] (Rogier Wolff)
Subject: Loadable Device drivers.
Date: 15 Apr 92 12:55:11 GMT

Hi everyone,

I will be doing a project involving the implementation of 
"loadable device drivers" in linux. This will facilitate developing
new device drivers: you should be able to:

gcc device.driver.c
unloaddevice <major>
loaddevice a.out b <major>

/etc/mount /dev/<myblockdev> /mnt

If anybody has suggestions, they are welcome. One thing though:
please don't tell me that you've done this already... I'd have to
go looking for another project.

                                        Roger
-- 
If the opposite of "pro" is "con", what is the opposite of "progress"? 
        (stolen from  [email-masked])
EMail:  [email-masked]   ** Tel  +31-15-783644 or +31-15-142371

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

From: [email-masked] (Adam Thompson)
Subject: Re: Yet another X question
Date: 15 Apr 92 14:58:06 GMT

In <[email-masked]> [email-masked] (Hongjiu Lu -- Graduate Student) writes:

>From my own experience, a real X11R4 can take as little as 10MB to run.
>on a 386. I only keep the minimum stufffs I need. Beside MIT stuffs,
>I added some other programs, like xgif and xdvi. I can put off X source
>from the net and compile it without much problem. I believe, for X11R5,
>20MB should be a safe bet.
>H.J.

Perhaps you're assuming he doesn't want to compile it :-)
 
According to the docs in the R5 distribution, the source tree untars to
roughly 150-200 Megs.  To compile, expect to need at least another 100Meg.
 
As far as compiled binaries go, using shared libraries, on a Sun i386,
the full MIT core plus about 50% again in added-on goodies takes somewhere
in the range of 60-70 Megs.  Of course, to simply run R5 'functional', then,
yes, expect to use ~20 megs.  Perhaps even a bit less if you only have one
WM on call...

-Adam Thompson
 [email-masked]
-- 
= Adam Thompson   ----   Computer Engineering  ----  University of Manitoba =
= [email-masked]    =  "When you have eliminated the improbable, =
= ...!uunet!decwrl!alberta!\   =    whatever is left, however impossible,   =
=    ccu.UManitoba.CA!umthom61 =    must be the answer."                    =

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

From: [email-masked] (Kent Williams)
Subject: ALLWAYS IN2000 SCSI Controller
Date: 15 Apr 92 15:11:11 GMT

To make it short, I've got one of these.  Does anyone who's trying to run
Linux have one of these?  I would try to bring linux up if I could
get my scsi controller to work.

Failing that, how big a disk would I need to get a development system
to boot??

--
Kent Williams         | "Do you see your cerebellum as a lightbulb or a cog? I
[email-masked] | saw mine as gristle so I fed it to the dog. But it 
Quote: Bevis Frond    | taste so bad, that she left it in the bowl ..."

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

From: [email-masked] (Johan W}hlin)
Subject: Re: tar files on floppy.
Date: 15 Apr 92 15:31:26 GMT

In article <[email-masked]> [email-masked] (LCDR Michael E. Dobson) writes:

unrelated stuff deleted ..

>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.

Just put the shared lib in /lib and the symlink in /usr/.. Ohh, and do keep
good images around 8).
/Johan

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

From: [email-masked] (I Reid)
Subject: Re: GCC2.1 (Wonderful !)
Date: 15 Apr 92 15:31:08 GMT

[email-masked] (Karl R. Buck) writes:

>[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.

Add to that the far superior compiler error messages that 2.1 gives etc etc. I
don't want to see 1.40 retired since itr is a first class compiler in its own
right but I would suggest using 2.1 as the default kernel compiler with options
(easily configured) to allow a kernel rebuild with 1.40.

Iain

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

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

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