Subject: Linux-Activists Digest #85
From: Digestifier <[email-masked]>
To: [email-masked]
Date: Sun, 19 Apr 92 19:45:19 EDT

Linux-Activists Digest #85, Volume #2            Sun, 19 Apr 92 19:45:19 EDT

Contents:
  Some Questions Before Taking The Plunge. (Steve Frampton)
  Keyboard lockups SOLVED (i.e. worked around) (Niels Skov Olsen)
  Re: expr (GNU shellutils) (Niels Skov Olsen)
  rm badness (Joseph Knapka)
  850 gig extended*2 partition on 300 meg drive?  ;-) (Chris Waters)
  Re: mtools and messed characters on hard boot   help. (Werner Almesberger)
  Re: 850 gig extended*2 partition on 300 meg drive?  ;-) (Jim Winstead Jr.)
  re: IDE drive performance with linux (Guido Kueppers)
  Re: compress/tar problems on SCSI installation ([email-masked])
  Re: Linux SCSI support (Doug Evans)
  Re: expr (GNU shellutils), gcc 2,1 and libc.a (Hongjiu Lu -- Graduate Student)
  Re: Any comments on Quantum 240A ?? (Ted Manos)
  Re: Any comments on Quantum 240A ?? (Scott Silverstein MD)

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

From: [email-masked] (Steve Frampton)
Subject: Some Questions Before Taking The Plunge.
Date: 19 Apr 92 01:20:40 GMT

Hi everyone.

Recently I have seen the light and decided to come over to Unix from 
MS-DOS.  I have been playing around with 0.95a of Linux to get my feet 
wet and have been quite impressed.

Last night I switched hard drives around, now I have my 40 MB as MS-DOS 
drive C:, and my 80 MB hard drive has been reformatted and it's DOS 
partition removed (as far as MS-DOS is concerned it doesn't exist).

I have been following the messages on this newsgroup, I have read the 
beginners guide, the installation instructions, and the FAQ's, and am now 
ready to take the plunge.

I understand that I can use a hard disk partitioning tool that comes on 
the 'root' disk (the name escapes me at the moment), then I would use 
'mkfs' and then 'mount' the file system to get Linux installed on my 80 
MB hard drive (it's a Seagate ST1102A IDE drive).

Is the above basically correct?  Is there a guide somewhere that explains 
how to add users, etc.?  Has anybody met with success with regard to 
running Waffle under Linux?

One thing concerns me, however...once I install Linux on my 80 MB hard 
drive, MUST I continue to boot up Linux under floppy drive?  Most 
implementations of Unix that I have seen have, upon boot-up, displayed a 
'boot' prompt -- the user could type DOS to enter MS-DOS, or <Enter> (or 
just wait a few seconds) to go into Unix...is there anything like this 
available for Linux?  I really hate the idea of have to use a floppy all 
the time (and yet I still want to be able to jump into MS-DOS on those 
rare occasions).

I am impressed with Linux!  Good work!

Thanks in advance.

========================================================================
Steve Frampton ([email-masked]), Kingston, Ontario, CANADA
"It only took me 10 years of MS-DOS before I knew I should be using Unix
 ...am I quick or what?"

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

From: [email-masked] (Niels Skov Olsen)
Crossposted-To: alt.os.linux
Subject: Keyboard lockups SOLVED (i.e. worked around)
Date: 19 Apr 92 18:10:29 GMT

Ok, I isolated the problem to a line i kernel/chr_drv/keyboard.S.
In the routine that is supposed to set the LED's I uncomment the
second call to kb_wait. I sure as h*** don't what's going on,
but it seems to be some sort of quirk in some keyboards. This is
only a temporary work-around, and even though my CAPS LOCK, PAUSE,
SCROLL LOCK and NUM LOCK now don't cause lock up, the LED's are still
not working. The NUM LOCK LED is on and that's it.

Here is the chunk of code. The line I commented out is marked [NSO].

Excerpt of kernel/chr_drv/keyboard.S:

_set_leds:
        movb _kleds,%al
        cmpb old_leds,%al
        je 1f
        movb %al,old_leds
        call kb_wait
        movb $0xed,%al          /* set leds command */
        outb %al,$0x60
/*      call kb_wait */         /* [NSO]: This line teases me... */
        movb _kleds,%al
        outb %al,$0x60
1:      ret

I hope someone with keyboard hardware specific knowldege will look
into this.

Easter,

Niels

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

From: [email-masked] (Niels Skov Olsen)
Subject: Re: expr (GNU shellutils)
Date: 19 Apr 92 18:38:59 GMT

[email-masked] (Bill Bogstad) writes:

>In article <[email-masked]> [email-masked] (Niels Skov Olsen) writes:
>>expr is in the shellutils-1.6.tar.Z (or therabouts) on prep.ai.mit.edu.
>>In this package are some other nice utils too.
>>
>>I compiled it with GCC2.1 with only small adjustments to the makefiles
>>(I don't have echo) and a little finetuning in obvious places. I didn't
>>make notes as I went along, so I don't remember the exact steps. It 
>>should't be a problem though. Mail me if it is and I will try to 
>>reconstruct what I did.

>       Well, I'm trying to compile it with GCC 1.40 and have found the
>following problems so far.

>1. no echo - put the following in your /bin directory

>       #!/bin/sh

>       echo $*

>2. va_list redefined in stdio.h vs. stdarg.h - I modified stdio.h to
>       include stdarg.h rather then defining va_list itself.

>3. No bison - get the binaries out of binaries/compilers on tsx-11.mit.edu
>       (I haven't actually gotten this far yet...)

>If I get a chance tonight, I'll add more to the list above...

>                               Bill Bogstad
>                               [email-masked]

Ok, here's what I did (for GCC2.1) in cdiff form. This is perhaps overdoing 
it, but it leaves no room for (mis)interpretation :-)

Untar this file in your shellutils directory and apply the patch. Then
apply the little patch in lib/ (They are both called linux.cdiff).
Then run configure and then make.

Niels

Here goes:

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

From: [email-masked] (Joseph Knapka)
Subject: rm badness
Date: 19 Apr 92 18:41:23 GMT

OK, this has happened twice in rapid succession, and I think it might
indicate a problem...

I used rm +r early this morning to try to remove my groff source tree.
Didn't work -- rm hung and didn't touch any of the stuff I told it to
delete. I was root, I was the only login, and there were no background
jobs running. And I wan't in the dir I was trying to delete. And the
partition had fsck'd cleanly at the last reboot.I tried to kill the
process (kill, kill -9) to no avail.  Only a reboot would fix things.

So I fsck -a'd the partition after rebooting, and got two "zone marked
used, no file uses it" errors. OK. Tried to rm +r the directory again,
no problem. But then I tried to remove my old linux source tree, and
got the exact same behavior. Including the "zone marked used" error
from fsck. I'm not going to use rm +r anymore until I find out why
this happens.

Does anyone have a notion what might be going on here? Has anyone else
had similar problems? Is my filesystem FUBAR? If so, why won't fsck
tell me so?

Thanks for any advice,

Joseph

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

From: [email-masked] (Chris Waters)
Subject: 850 gig extended*2 partition on 300 meg drive?  ;-)
Date: 19 Apr 92 19:46:29 GMT

Truly inconsequential, but I thought y'all might find this amusing.  I
just tried the .95c+ bootimage out at tsx-11 (I had been using .95a),
and all of a sudden I get the following report from fdisk:

Disk 0:
 /dev/hda1:  32728 blocks active 16-bit DOS (<32M)
 /dev/hda2:  32760 blocks minix
 /dev/hda3:  32760 blocks minix
 /dev/hda4: 221760 blocks extended partition (don't use)
   /dev/hda5:  32728 blocks 16-bit DOS (<32M)
   /dev/hda6: 189000 blocks extended partition (don't use)
     /dev/hda9: 850999312 blocks active? (0a) unknown partition type 0x6C
     /dev/hda10: 272052916 blocks active? (73) unknown partition type 0x6E
     /dev/hda11: 269488144 blocks active? (72) unknown partition type 0x79
     /dev/hda12:  10668 blocks active? (53) unknown partition type 0x53

Boy, I think I'll start storing EVERYTHING on /dev/hda9!!  :-) :-) :-)

I guess that, as stated in the installation guide, the extended
partition access is not fully debugged yet.....

Um, if no one else is working on this, maybe I'll take a look at the
code as soon as I get a chance.  I've been trying to think of something
I can do to contribute to the project, maybe this is it?
-- 
Chris Waters    | the insane don't |   I figure the odds be fifty-fifty:
[email-masked]| need disclaimers | I just might have something to say. --FZ

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

From: [email-masked] (Werner Almesberger)
Subject: Re: mtools and messed characters on hard boot   help.
Date: Sun, 19 Apr 1992 20:17:14 GMT

In article <[email-masked]> chojnows@osiris (Brian Chojnowski) writes:
> 1) I grabbed the binaries for mtools from tsx-11.mit.edu, and when they are
> run, I always get the message 'Device not found -- please specify device' or
> something like that. What have I not done to get these to work?

It's probably  "Unknown device <name>, please specify all parameters".

This means that the device name is not of any of the forms /dev/at*, /dev/ps*,
/dev/PS* or /dev/hd*. Mtools tries to guess disk parameters for those device
names, but it doesn't know how to handle different names. (This is supposed to
change someday.) You have to specify all parameters in the /etc/mtools file,
e.g.

A /dev/foobar 12 80 2 15        # 5.25" HD 1200k
X /dev/barfoo 12 40 2 9         # 5.25" 360k
B /dev/xyzzy 12 80 2 18         # 3.5" HD 1440k
Y /dev/yzzyx 12 80 2 9          # 3.5" 720k
C /dev/whatever 12 0 0 0        # any hard disk (12 bit FAT)

- Werner
-- 
   _________________________________________________________________________
  / Werner Almesberger, ETH Zuerich, CH      [email-masked] /
 / IFW A44  Tel. +41 1 254 7213                 [email-masked] /
/_BITNET:_ALMESBER@CZHETH5A__HEPNET/CHADNET:_[20579::]57414::ALMESBERGER_/

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

From: [email-masked] (Jim Winstead Jr.)
Subject: Re: 850 gig extended*2 partition on 300 meg drive?  ;-)
Date: 19 Apr 92 20:59:26 GMT

In article <[email-masked]> [email-masked] (Chris Waters) writes:
>
>Truly inconsequential, but I thought y'all might find this amusing.  I
>just tried the .95c+ bootimage out at tsx-11 (I had been using .95a),
>and all of a sudden I get the following report from fdisk:
>
>[listing deleted]

The problem is not really with the Linux 0.95c+ kernel (or at least,
it shouldn't be!), but rather with the fdisk on the 0.95a root disk,
which is presumably the one you were using.  That fdisk cannot handle
extended partitions properly at all, but apparently the 0.95c+ kernel
now handles them correctly.

The fdisk on the 0.96 root disk will handle extended partitions
correctly....  pfdisk still can't create 'em, though.
-- 
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] (Guido Kueppers)
Subject: re: IDE drive performance with linux
Date: 19 Apr 92 20:07:41 GMT

Greetings,
thanks to all who have replied to my IDE drive problem. From the responses I
got so far I gather that the drive's poor performance is specific to my drive
and possibly due to inappropriate configuration (translation vs. native mode).
If there is any interest I will post my newly accquired wisdom on IDE drive
setup when the problem is solved (Or should I rather spare you the details?)

Guido

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

From: [email-masked]
Crossposted-To: alt.os.linux
Subject: Re: compress/tar problems on SCSI installation
Date: 19 Apr 92 20:27:03 GMT

By golly that should work.  Why didn't I think of it?

Actually I got around it by making a second root image disk and erasing
mkdir, rmdir, and cat from it to get enough space.  All is working now, and
yes I am happy.

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

From: [email-masked] (Doug Evans)
Subject: Re: Linux SCSI support
Date: Sun, 19 Apr 92 12:42:03 MDT

> Like I said, people are working on this, but if you have anything 
> to contribute, feel free to join the SCSI mailing list at 
> 
> [email-masked]

Ah hah! There are some mailing lists. Could someone tell me
what all of them are? Thanks.

Doug Evans                    |
..!{canada,uunet}!sspiff!dje  | Vancouver 11, Calgary 0
[email-masked]               | There is no joy in Cowtown.
[email-masked]      | But how 'bout those Canucks, eh?

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

From: [email-masked] (Hongjiu Lu -- Graduate Student)
Subject: Re: expr (GNU shellutils), gcc 2,1 and libc.a
Date: 19 Apr 92 19:58:43 GMT

In article <[email-masked]> [email-masked] (Niels Skov Olsen) writes:
>[email-masked] (Bill Bogstad) writes:
>
>>In article <[email-masked]> [email-masked] (Niels Skov Olsen) writes:
>>>expr is in the shellutils-1.6.tar.Z (or therabouts) on prep.ai.mit.edu.
>>>In this package are some other nice utils too.
>>>
>>>I compiled it with GCC2.1 with only small adjustments to the makefiles
>>>(I don't have echo) and a little finetuning in obvious places. I didn't

When you use gcc 2.1 to compile any program, be sure to check the
header files. LOTS of functions are in libc.a. You should use libc.a if
posssible. All the functons in libc.a are declared in the header files.
Look into unistd.h, stdlib.h, string.h, regex.h and time.h, etc.
Somebody is working on a complete list. I hope it will come out soon.
I think I can say almost all glibc.a and usual Unix C library functions
are in libc.a. If you find something very usful and not in libc.a,
please send me the source. I can take a look.

BTW, I tried to fix malloc(0) in stdlib.h. It will work with ANSI code.
Take a look at it. Be sure they work right. I strongly suggest to use
-Wall during compilation.

H.J.

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

Date: Sunday, 19 Apr 1992 11:59:25 CDT
From: Ted Manos <[email-masked]>
Crossposted-To: comp.os.os2.misc
Subject: Re: Any comments on Quantum 240A ??

In article <[email-masked]>,
[email-masked] (David A. Sinclair) says:
>
>Hello, world.
>
>I need to buy anew hard drive for my system so I can install Linux and
>OS/2 2.0.  I am considering the Quantum 240A, (240 meg IDE) and would
>like to hear from anyone who is either using this drive with either
>OS, or has tried and failed to do so.  Anyone have any comments about
>using this drive with OS/2 GA and / or Linux?  Anything to watch out
>for?
>
>Thanks for any info you can provide!!
>
While I can't address using the LPS240AT with either OS/2 or Linux
directly (I run OS/2 on a Fujitsi M2624FA (520MB/12MS SCSI)), I HAVE
used a number of 240ATs in systems I have built for clients and
FRIENDS.  It is probably THE NICEST, FASTEST IDE drive I have ever
come across (and I've used a lot of different drives!).  I can't
think of any reason offhand why you should have any problems using
it with OS/2.  I have no idea about Linux (I'm getting ready to get
386BSD 0.0 myself).  Hope this helps.

-Ted
=========================================================================
Ted Manos                            BITNET  : U21880@UICVM
Systems & Networking Consultant      Internet: [email-masked]
Alpha Omega Consulting Group, Ltd    UUCP net: ...!uunet!aocgl!tmanos
400 Springhill Drive                 Bell net: (708) 980-7919
Roselle, IL  60172-2573              FAX net : (708) 980-4458

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

From: [email-masked] (Scott Silverstein MD)
Crossposted-To: comp.os.os2.misc
Subject: Re: Any comments on Quantum 240A ??
Date: 19 Apr 92 23:29:22 GMT

In article <[email-masked]> [email-masked] (Ted Manos) writes:

> I'm getting ready to get 386BSD 0.0 myself

I have little enough faith in 1.0 releases, let alone 0.0 releases...

I'll wait for 2.11, at least.

-- SS

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

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Linux may be obtained via one of these FTP sites:
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The current version of Linux is 0.95a released on March 17, 1992

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