Subject: Linux-Activists Digest #76
From: Digestifier <[email-masked]>
To: [email-masked]
Date: Thu, 16 Apr 92 06:15:09 EDT

Linux-Activists Digest #76, Volume #2            Thu, 16 Apr 92 06:15:09 EDT

Contents:
  Re: Too many duplicated messages (H. Peter Anvin N9ITP)
  How to set the path ? (Matthew Jackson)
  How to set the path ? (Matthew Jackson)
  Config 95c+ uploaded to tsx-11 (Michael K. Johnson)
  Re: When will "Linux 1.0" come to the world ? (david nugent)
  Re: Questions and suggestions (david nugent)
  Re: ESDI drives (Brian Chojnowski)
  Adaptec & Swap space (Brett J. Vickers)
  Re: Loadable Device drivers. (Peter Choma)
  Stuck on mkfs (Drew Stevens)
  Stuck on mkfs (Drew Stevens)
  More kernel rebuild problems (Bowen Goletz)
  Sockets, Tubes--> IPC status for Linux???? (cm445a17)
  Re: bootimage-0.95c+.scsi corrupt at nic.funet.fi ?? (Niels Skov Olsen)
  Summary: tar files on floppy. (Lars Lindner)
  Re: Taylor-uucp 1.03 beta - porting status (Joerg Pommnitz)
  Re: Taylor-uucp 1.03 beta - porting status (Joerg Pommnitz)
  Re: GNU Fortran (Craig Burley)
  Re: Partitioning Warning! (Rob Huehn)
  Re: User's Guide project (Drew Eckhardt)

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

From: [email-masked] (H. Peter Anvin N9ITP)
Subject: Re: Too many duplicated messages
Date: 15 Apr 92 21:35:04 GMT
Reply-To: [email-masked] (Peter Anvin)

In article <[email-masked]> of alt.os.linux,
  [email-masked] (Dahai Li) writes:
> 
> (what is the reason for this duplications? People send copies to two Linux
> news group: alt.os.linux, and comp.os.linux?)
> 

In my understanding, this group, alt.os.linux, is obsolete and only
comp.os.linux should be used.

        /hpa

-- 
INTERNET: [email-masked]   TALK:      [email-masked]
BITNET:   HPA@NUACC     HAM RADIO: N9ITP, SM4TKN
IRC:      Scalar        NeXTMAIL:  [email-masked]
"Kissing a smoker is like licking an ashtray."  -- Anon.

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

From: [email-masked] (Matthew Jackson)
Crossposted-To: alt.os.linux
Subject: How to set the path ?
Date: 15 Apr 92 10:42:26 +1000

First off, thanks to all the work done by everyone to get Linux up and running.
Also, thanks to the writers of the new users and installation pages. I managed
to get 0.95a up and running with only one minor problem (accidentally swapping
the order for the hard disk device numbers).

Now I have a few questions (of course). When I was running the install scripts,
I checked they were flagged as executable, and tried to run them. No go. I then
tried /INSTALL/install and it worked ! OK, I thought Linux doesn't look in the
current directory for a file before searching the path (ala DOS) (is this
meant to work this way ? I am used to DOS and VMS, only just got started with
Unix). OK (he thinks again), why don't I put the current directory in the path ?
I typed set and got a list of the environment variables and there was one called
PATH, so I tried set PATH=....:. and still no go. 

So can someone tell me how to change the path under Linux ?

Thanks in advance,

-- 
Matthew Jackson                       |
Computing Officer                     | Why didn't Noah swat those two
School of Banking and Finance         | mosquitoes ?
University of New South Wales         |
Australia                             |
[email-masked]       |

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

From: [email-masked] (Matthew Jackson)
Crossposted-To: alt.os.linux
Subject: How to set the path ?
Date: 15 Apr 92 10:42:26 +1000

First off, thanks to all the work done by everyone to get Linux up and running.
Also, thanks to the writers of the new users and installation pages. I managed
to get 0.95a up and running with only one minor problem (accidentally swapping
the order for the hard disk device numbers).

Now I have a few questions (of course). When I was running the install scripts,
I checked they were flagged as executable, and tried to run them. No go. I then
tried /INSTALL/install and it worked ! OK, I thought Linux doesn't look in the
current directory for a file before searching the path (ala DOS) (is this
meant to work this way ? I am used to DOS and VMS, only just got started with
Unix). OK (he thinks again), why don't I put the current directory in the path ?
I typed set and got a list of the environment variables and there was one called
PATH, so I tried set PATH=....:. and still no go. 

So can someone tell me how to change the path under Linux ?

Thanks in advance,

-- 
Matthew Jackson                       |
Computing Officer                     | Why didn't Noah swat those two
School of Banking and Finance         | mosquitoes ?
University of New South Wales         |
Australia                             |
[email-masked]       |

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

From: [email-masked] (Michael K. Johnson)
Subject: Config 95c+ uploaded to tsx-11
Reply-To: [email-masked] (Michael K. Johnson)
Date: Thu, 16 Apr 1992 02:48:34 GMT

From: [email-masked] (Ross Biro)

   I just uploaded configc+.tar.Z to tsx-11.mit.edu.  It should appear
   in a few hours, and it includes:

It has appeared.

tsx-11.mit.edu:/pub/linux/patches/configc+.tar.Z

michaelkjohnson
[email-masked]

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

From: [email-masked] (david nugent)
Subject: Re: When will "Linux 1.0" come to the world ?
Date: Thu, 16 Apr 92 01:53:32 +1000
Reply-To: [email-masked]

[email-masked] (Jim Winstead Jr.) writes:

 > In article <[email-masked]> [email-masked].
 > >Linux 0.95c is still in the period of development.
 >
 > I follow you here....
 >
 > >Everything is rather unstable.
 >
 > "Everything"?  "rather unstable"?  What are you basing these
 > judgements on?

If what was meant by "unstable" was "dynamic" and "moving", I agree.

I hope it remains that way. It's great working with an OS that mulitple
people are working on at all sorts of levels. It's an even greater
opportunity to learn.

 > My experience with Linux indicates it is more stable
 > than DOS+DESQview on my machine, and allows me to get even more done,
 > with the small exception of word processing.

But this is NOT FAIR! Anything remotely DOS-associated is definitely NOT
STABLE in that sense by definition. No memory protection == not relatively
stable.

I might mention that apart from during the boot process when I had the kernel
attempting to find it's root device in the wild blue yonder, I've _never_ had
a fatal kernel panic trap - not once in the last 5 weeks in which I've been
running it almost full time. I've been pushing it hard too. I've had gcc grind
the system (8 meg RAM + 8 meg swap) to a halt and cause some strange apparent
HD errors on the swap device (ie. out of vitual RAM), but after killing one of
the compiles and restarting when the other one stopped, it continued on...

Gee, if this is unstable, then what will "stable" be like? :-)

I previously ran Interactive UNIX for over 2 years. I remember seeing 3
panic traps in the first attempt to install it on exactly the same hardware!
I also installed it ans SCO's product on several machines as a part of my
work and I can honestly say that while the facilities offered by Linux don't
yet match the SCO/ISC product, that Linux certainly _feels_ and _acts_ more
stable in most ways.

 > (Which I hope to
 > overcome, once I figure out how the !@$*!@ to set up TeX.  I
 > appreciate the absolute lack of instructions included with the TeX
 > distributed for Linux.  Grr.)

I bet you'd love it in texinfo format, right? :-)

(Read: don't ask me - I use emacs, when I have to, under sufferance! :-))

..............................................................................
david nugent          Public Access Usenet        "Only Nixon can go to China"
[email-masked]     +61-3-792-3507                - ancient Vulcan proverb
3:632/400@fidonet, 58:4100/1@intlnet, 199:4242/5@rainbownet, 33:300/6@admin
PO Box 260, Endeavour Hills, Victoria, Australia, 3802.

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

From: [email-masked] (david nugent)
Subject: Re: Questions and suggestions
Date: Thu, 16 Apr 92 02:31:07 +1000
Reply-To: [email-masked]

[email-masked] (Adrian Wallaschek) writes:

 >   - is there anybody working on a serial driver for multiport cards as
 >     ast-compatible cards, etc. (There is a freeware-driver for commercial
 >     *nix-versions called FAS which does a quite good job!) ?

I intend to. I'm pushing a couple of other things presently which is helping
to get on familiar territory in hacking the kernel, but that's the aim.

IMHO, fas is a little bloated. It certainly is nice, but I'd prefer to start
with something a little simpler. It will, however, support 16550AFNs and
hardware flow control (I need both myself :-)). From looking at the current
kernel sources, it would appear that some further changes to the kernel would
be required to correctly support shared-IRQ between (logical) devices.

If anyone else is working or intends to work on a similar project, I'd like
to know. Either I can help, or they can help me (same difference) or maybe
I'm wasting my time if someone else has already got it under control...

david

..............................................................................
david nugent          Public Access Usenet        "Only Nixon can go to China"
[email-masked]     +61-3-792-3507                - ancient Vulcan proverb
3:632/400@fidonet, 58:4100/1@intlnet, 199:4242/5@rainbownet, 33:300/6@admin
PO Box 260, Endeavour Hills, Victoria, Australia, 3802.

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

From: chojnows@osiris (Brian Chojnowski)
Subject: Re: ESDI drives
Date: 16 Apr 92 03:29:03 GMT

        mkfs was able to format the partition that I had prepared, but
mount gave me an error 2. Does anyone know what this error pertains to?
I am using an ESDI drive. Other than that, I have followed the installation
guildlines. They were pretty simple, I prepared the 95a boot and root diskes
on 1.2M floppies, set a partition with fdisk, that fdisk on linux was able
to read, then did mkfs -c /dev/hda2 (was second partition). That worked
fine, but got error 2 for mount /dev/hda2 /user.

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

From: [email-masked] (Brett J. Vickers)
Subject: Adaptec & Swap space
Date: 16 Apr 92 04:28:31 GMT

I recently installed Linux 0.95c+, and I have been unable to set up
swap space using either a separate partition or a swap file.  I'm
using an Adaptec SCSI card and SCSI target 1 for my file system
and the swap partition.  mkswap seems to work ok, but when I run swapon,
I get the "Unable to find swap-space signature" error.

Someone else who was using an Adaptec SCSI card posted that they
were having similar problems, and this leads me to wonder if swap
space and the Adaptec driver don't go together very well.

Can anyone confirm my suspicions?

--
[email-masked] | "Wherever the real power in a Government lies, there
[email-masked] |  is the danger of oppression." - James Madison

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

From: [email-masked] (Peter Choma)
Subject: Re: Loadable Device drivers.
Date: 16 Apr 92 03:31:48 GMT

In article <[email-masked]> [email-masked] (Rogier Wolff) writes:
>
>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:
> ...
>                                       Roger

Beta? copies of Solaris 2.0 should be released sometime in June'92. 
Solaris 2.0 will use a new design for device drivers which differs from 
SunOS 4.1 It might be useful to use Solaris 2.0 as a model since Solaris 2.0 
will support device drivers which can be load/unloaded on the fly without 
rebooting the operating system.

The ability to load/unload device drivers while the system is running is
a very useful feature as it makes it much easier to test new device drivers
and it makes it much easier to have systems auto-configure themselves.

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

Crossposted-To: alt.os.linux
From: [email-masked] (Drew Stevens)
Subject: Stuck on mkfs
Date: Thu, 16 Apr 92 04:41:31 GMT

I'm having trouble installing linux on my second hard drive - fdisk
can see any partitions I make (ex. - /dev/hdb4) but there is no device
/dev/hdb4 and so mkfs fails.  I've tried many combinations of primary
and extended partitions (using edpart) and have made the partitions
active but to no avail.  Could someone who has successfully made a 
file system on a second hard drive let please indicate what steps are
necessary?  Thanks in advance.

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

Crossposted-To: alt.os.linux
From: [email-masked] (Drew Stevens)
Subject: Stuck on mkfs
Date: Thu, 16 Apr 92 04:41:31 GMT

I'm having trouble installing linux on my second hard drive - fdisk
can see any partitions I make (ex. - /dev/hdb4) but there is no device
/dev/hdb4 and so mkfs fails.  I've tried many combinations of primary
and extended partitions (using edpart) and have made the partitions
active but to no avail.  Could someone who has successfully made a 
file system on a second hard drive let please indicate what steps are
necessary?  Thanks in advance.

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

From: [email-masked] (Bowen Goletz)
Subject: More kernel rebuild problems
Date: 16 Apr 92 05:16:39 GMT

On a 1.95c+ kernel rebuild with gcc 2.1, with ld from 1.4 (?) and attempting
to link cpp to various binaries that came with gcc 2.1, I get the same
slew of errors:

touch include/linux/config.h
cpp -nostdinc -Iinclude -traditional boot/bootsect.S -o boot/bootsect.s
boot/bootsect.S:2:Junk character 62913608.
boot/bootsect.S:3:Junk character 62913608.
boot/bootsect.S:3:Rest of line ignored. 1st junk character valued 62913592 (!).
boot/bootsect.S:4:Junk character 62913608.
boot/bootsect.S:4:Rest of line ignored. 1st junk character valued 62913592 (!).
boot/bootsect.S:5:Junk character 62913608.
boot/bootsect.S:5:Rest of line ignored. 1st junk character valued 62913592 (!).
boot/bootsect.S:6:Junk character 62913608.
        [ lots of errors removed ]
make: *** [boot/bootsect.s] Error 1

WHAT is going on!?  

I have defined my keyboard and root device, I've used pmake and make, and have
expr.  However, when I rename expr, and have cpp linked to g++, I get a whole 
new slew of errors:

expr: not found
[: syntax error
touch include/linux/config.h
cpp -nostdinc -Iinclude -traditional boot/bootsect.S -o boot/bootsect.s
expr: not found
boot/bootsect.S:1: parse error before `!'
boot/bootsect.S:3: nondigits in number and not hexadecimal
boot/bootsect.S:3: nondigits in number and not hexadecimal
boot/bootsect.S:16: nondigits in number and not hexadecimal
boot/bootsect.S:19: character constant too long
boot/bootsect.S:68: character constant too long
boot/bootsect.S:361: character constant too long
boot/bootsect.S:368: character constant too long
boot/bootsect.S:399: character constant too long
make: *** [boot/bootsect.s] Error 1

HELP!

        -bg
-- 
________________________________________________________________________________
Bowen Goletz
Purdue University                  Midi 'n Music
[email-masked]         [email-masked]

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

From: [email-masked] (cm445a17)
Subject: Sockets, Tubes--> IPC status for Linux????
Date: Thu, 16 Apr 1992 05:40:46 GMT

What is the current status of the IPC library for Linux?  I have been
playing around with the socket libray emulation a little and I was
wondering if people are still working on it.  Also, I've seen in the ftp
sites the tubes library.  What is it exactly?  Does it work with the
latest version of Linux (0.95c+)?  Thanks,

Jaime Jofre

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

From: [email-masked] (Niels Skov Olsen)
Subject: Re: bootimage-0.95c+.scsi corrupt at nic.funet.fi ??
Date: 15 Apr 92 22:52:46 GMT

Johan,

SCSI devices now use major 8. See the scsi.faq at
headrest.woz.colorado.edu (probably other places 
too, I guess).

Niels

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

From: [email-masked] (Lars Lindner)
Subject: Summary: tar files on floppy.
Date: 15 Apr 92 11:15:54 GMT

Here's a summary of the answers a got to the question:

>>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 will i get
>>them on a floppy to be able to install them on my linux machine?

Iain>The best solution is to use mtools but you need to be able to solve your
Iain>problem before you install mtools so here goes....
Iain>
Iain>On many archive sites (Dos) you will find tar programs for dos (as well ans
Iain>uncompress programs). The 2 I use are the Toad Hall shareware tar util and
Iain>u16.exe as an uncompressor. The uncompressor is not strictly necessary but it
Iain>helps.
Iain>
Iain>Get your .tar.Z files to dos. If you need to you should split them under Unix
Iain>(uncompress and make new tars) but if needbe you can do it under dos. Then,
Iain>take your dos tar utility and create a tar file containing your .tar.Z file.
Iain>Rawrite this new tar to a floppy and boot up linux. Once in Linux type
Iain>
Iain>tar xvf /dev/PS0 (for drive A).
Iain>
Iain>This should get you the .tar.Z file into Linux and it's att straightfoward
Iain>from there. I's strongly recommend that you get and install mtools if you are
Iain>using dos as well on the same machine.
Iain>
Iain>Iain

According to both Juergen Henke and Mike Dobson
you can also "rawrite" your .tar.Z files directly to the floppy
and use one of the folflowing lines to untar the file.

          tar xvZf /dev/PS0
   or     tar xvpz </dev/PS0

Thanks to all who have taken time to answer my question.

Lars Lindner

[email-masked]

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

From: [email-masked] (Joerg Pommnitz)
Crossposted-To: alt.os.linux
Subject: Re: Taylor-uucp 1.03 beta - porting status
Date: 16 Apr 92 06:48:34 GMT

Well, could be you might help me.
In your article about Taylor-uucp you wrote that you were able to fix
the "Memory fault problem".
It's possible I have the same problem when running compress (and some other
programs).
If you found a solution not specific to uucp, please make it available.

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

From: [email-masked] (Joerg Pommnitz)
Crossposted-To: alt.os.linux
Subject: Re: Taylor-uucp 1.03 beta - porting status
Date: 16 Apr 92 06:48:34 GMT

Well, could be you might help me.
In your article about Taylor-uucp you wrote that you were able to fix
the "Memory fault problem".
It's possible I have the same problem when running compress (and some other
programs).
If you found a solution not specific to uucp, please make it available.

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

From: [email-masked] (Craig Burley)
Subject: Re: GNU Fortran
Date: 16 Apr 92 07:47:47 GMT

In article <[email-masked]> [email-masked] (A. V. Le Blanc) writes:

   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.

This is optimistic for two reasons:

    1.  I'm getting my own machine primarily to do my own playing with OS
        R&D, windows development, new-technology compiler development, and
        suchlike, starting with Linux as a base, and hoping to contribute
        to Linux itself.  I _want_ the machine to also be a great platform
        for me to do Fortran-compiler development, but that might be asking
        too much; it might just serve as a really huge terminal for that
        particular job.  Or, the FSF might be lending a separate machine
        (68k based) for my Fortran work.

    2.  I still have no idea whether _any_ port of my Fortran compiler will
        "work fairly well".  Naturally, I'm very hopeful, but this is out-and-
        out the largest and longest coding job I've ever done with essentially
        no ongoing input or testing by other people.

But I hope your optimistic prediction proves correct!  After all, if my
machine (which I'm planning on ordering so it arrives in early May) finds
itself running Linux, gcc 2.1, and other such things quickly, then I will
probably use it to do Fortran stuff right away, and who knows, maybe the
compiler _will_ be fairly decent as it goes to alpha!

Nobody should bet their careers on it, though.  :-)

--

James Craig Burley, Software Craftsperson    [email-masked]
Member of the League for Programming Freedom (LPF)

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

From: [email-masked] (Rob Huehn)
Date: Tue, 14 Apr 1992 13:25:01 GMT
Subject: Re: Partitioning Warning!

[email-masked] (Mika Pekka Liljeberg) writes: 
>In article <[email-masked]> [email-masked] (Rogier Wolff) wrote:
>> 
>> YEP happened to me too! DR DOS 6.0 recognizes MINIX and Linux partitions
>> as if they are DOS 2.0 partitions, and will friendly as ever write format
>> recover files to them, thereby destroying them.
>> 
>> This is clearly DR DOS's fault. I won't use it anymore. (too bad for the
>> extra 30M i'd get on my 30M partition, haven't bought/found Stacker yet...)
>> 
>> 
>>                                              Roger
>
>I don't use DRDOS myself, but I have a suggestion that might help.
>Clearly DRDOS does not recognize Minix and Linux paritions and
>blithely assumes (and this is surely a bug) that they are DOS 2.0
>partitions. The obvious fix would be to use a partition ID that
>DRDOS is sure to recognize as NON-DOS, say Xenix for instance.
>Linux doesn't care one way or another. If memory serves, Xenix uses
>ID $02. You can use Norton Utilities, or any of a number of partition
>table editors, to change the partition ID.
>
>               Mika

Haven't they fixed that yet?  I found the same problem in 5.0 too, as did
anyone else who used DR DOS and Minix.  When the DR DOS disk driver checks
partition types it masks the ID with 0x7f (looks like a bad patch to make
someone happy, but it's pretty stupid.)

If you feel like fixing the real source of the problem, you could remove
the mask from DR DOS.  But make sure you understand what you're doing
if you change it.  It works for me with 5.0.

--
Rob ([email-masked]) Computer Engineering, University of Waterloo
Huehn ([email-masked]) Panacom Automation Division, Hewlett Packard Co

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

From: [email-masked] (Drew Eckhardt)
Subject: Re: User's Guide project
Date: Thu, 16 Apr 1992 09:42:28 GMT

In article <[email-masked]> [email-masked] (Einar Indridason) writes:
>In <[email-masked]> [email-masked] (Ajay Shah) writes:
>
>>[email-masked] (Joseph Knapka) writes:
>
>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.

It's not that bad - "important" patches do make it back into the standard 
distribution (ie what's necessary for a real ps, faster floppy and 
lp drivers, the virtual consoles, VFS, minor patches in the boot 
sector and hard disk driver, etc) fairly quickly.  

Also, as Linux becomes more stable, kernel patches will become less 
necessary.

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

** 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
******************************