Subject: Linux-Activists Digest #99
From: Digestifier <[email-masked]>
To: [email-masked]
Date: Thu, 23 Apr 92 18:45:20 EDT

Linux-Activists Digest #99, Volume #2            Thu, 23 Apr 92 18:45:20 EDT

Contents:
  Is Shoelace permanent? [was HELP! SHOELACE IS STRANGLING ME!!!] (Joel M. Hoffman)
  Re: Is Shoelace permanent? [was HELP! SHOELACE IS STRANGLING ME!!!] (Nate Williams)
  Re: dos emulator (Lance Pickup)
  Re: HELP! SHOELACE IS STRANGLING ME!!! (LCDR Michael E. Dobson)
  Math Co-Processor library (Doug Mayfield)
  Re: compress doesn't work (Bennett E. Todd)
  Shells and Shared libraries
  Re: dos emulator (Theodore Ts'o)
  random()? ([email-masked])
  Re: all kinds of questions (autoparking) (PTed Garvin)
  new stuff at tsx-11 (Michael K. Johnson)
  Re: dos emulator  ([email-masked])
  Re: News under Linux (Hongjiu Lu -- Graduate Student)
  RE: cannot mount filesystem (gary a moyer)
  Re: linux (Michael Pereckas)

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

From: [email-masked] (Joel M. Hoffman)
Subject: Is Shoelace permanent? [was HELP! SHOELACE IS STRANGLING ME!!!]
Date: 23 Apr 92 17:12:32 GMT

In article <[email-masked]> [email-masked] (A. V. Le Blanc) writes:
>In article <[email-masked]> [email-masked] (Kevin Cummings) writes:
>>In article <[email-masked]>, [email-masked] (Greenup) writes:
>>> 
>>>     I recently used shoelace to try & make linux boot.  after no success,
>>> i want to go back.  HOW DO I GET RID OF THIS BOOT THING THAT KEEPS
>>> ASKING WHICH PARTITIAN TO BOOT?!?!?!?!?
>>
>>Just a wild guess, but boot from your ORIGINAL BOOT floppy using your
>>[etc.]
>
>I suspect it isn't that simple.  Installing the shoelace menu program
>in the boot partition overwrites the boot sector.  You cannot replace
>it as it was unless you have saved a copy of it, or unless you do a
>low-level format of your hard disk!  Norton's Disk Doctor, as I recall,
>can write a pretty standard boot sector to your hard disk and save
>having to boot from a floppy.

Does this mean that for IDE drives, shoelace is a permanent step???
If so, a notice to that effect would be welcome in the FAQ!

-Joel
([email-masked])

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

From: [email-masked] (Nate Williams)
Subject: Re: Is Shoelace permanent? [was HELP! SHOELACE IS STRANGLING ME!!!]
Date: 23 Apr 92 17:49:09 GMT

In article <[email-masked]> [email-masked] (Joel M. Hoffman) writes:
>In article <[email-masked]> [email-masked] (A. V. Le Blanc) writes:
>>>In article <[email-masked]>, [email-masked] (Greenup) writes:
>>>> 
>>>>    I recently used shoelace to try & make linux boot.  after no success,
>>>> i want to go back.  HOW DO I GET RID OF THIS BOOT THING THAT KEEPS
>>>> ASKING WHICH PARTITIAN TO BOOT?!?!?!?!?
>>
>>I suspect it isn't that simple.  Installing the shoelace menu program
>>in the boot partition overwrites the boot sector.  You cannot replace
>>it as it was unless you have saved a copy of it, or unless you do a
>>low-level format of your hard disk!  Norton's Disk Doctor, as I recall,
>>can write a pretty standard boot sector to your hard disk and save
>>having to boot from a floppy.
>
>Does this mean that for IDE drives, shoelace is a permanent step???
>If so, a notice to that effect would be welcome in the FAQ!
>
>-Joel
>([email-masked])

Nope,
        I talked to John, so now I will (hopefully) explain what should
happen when you install shoelace.

1) Try it out on floppies first!!!  
        Read the docs, it explains what is going on.

2) Try it out on floppies first!!!
        Read the docs, it explains what is going on. (Get my drift :-)

3) When you finally install shoelace onto your hardrive, install it in a
 partition.  DON'T install it in on the whole drive.  This means don't
install it on /dev/hda, but on /dev/hda[1234].  On an IDE drive you
can't low-level format to get rid of winiboot w/out re-writing a new one
on top of the old one.

4) If you want to install it on your WHOLE drive, copy the old version
of the master boot sector to a  floppy so you can go restore it if you need
to.
        Something like :
        $ dd if=/dev/hda of=/dev/floppy
        Do a <CTRL-C> after a few seconds and you will have it saved to
floppy.  Someone with a bit more knowledge than I can give you the block
count and block size to be exact.

5) When you want to use shoelace, use fdisk and set the partition that
contains the shoelace bootblok to active.  If you don't like, don't set that
partition to active.

6) Even if you don't install shoelace on the whole drive, it still might be a
good idea to save the old boot sector to a floppy, before you install
shoelace.

This posting probably was more confusing than helpful, so email me
if you have questions/need more information.

Nate

-- 
:-):-):-):-):-):-):-):_):-):-):-):-):-):-):-):-):-):-):-):-):-):-):-):-):-):-)
:-)Inet: [email-masked]  :-) Sys. Mgr. - GIS lab : Earth Sci.:-)
:-)Bnet: osynw@MTSUNIX (Painfully slow):-) The guy blamed for everything   :-)
:-):-):-):-):-):-):-):-):-):-):-):-):-):-):-):-):-):-):-):-):-):-):-):-):-):-)

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

From: [email-masked] (Lance Pickup)
Subject: Re: dos emulator
Date: 23 Apr 92 17:29:14 GMT
Reply-To: [email-masked]

In article <[email-masked]>, [email-masked] (Matthias Lautner) writes:
|> If someone is interested in helping me to implement the functions of the
|> dos int 0x21 it would be grate. I'm currently working with 0.95c.

This may sound like an outrageous amount of work, but in the long
run it may prove to be worth it:  I think commercially available
DOS emulators (well, I can really only speak for the ones available
in AIX because that's all I'm familiar with) use DOS itself to provide
INT 21h support.  Provided you supply all the BIOS and I/O support
(this is the really outrageous part!--big IF!), DOS itself should
be able to run providing INT 21h support.  I have seen this approach
recommended before.

The reason it would be well worth the time to develop is that you
are more assured that ALL DOS software will run, and it should be
easier to support follow-on versions of DOS as it becomes available.

However, the magnitude of the work might be overwhelming for one
person, so keep up the good work however you decide to go!  It
sounds real promising!
--
    ...Lance

=======================================================================
Lance Pickup                VNET/IBM Internet: lpickup@btv
IBM/Vendor Systems                   Internet: [email-masked]
Technology Products
Burlington, VT                          Phone: (802) 769-7104 (tie 446)
=======================================================================

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

From: [email-masked] (LCDR Michael E. Dobson)
Crossposted-To: comp.os.minix
Subject: Re: HELP! SHOELACE IS STRANGLING ME!!!
Date: 23 Apr 92 12:01:03 GMT

In article <[email-masked]> [email-masked] (Kevin Cummings) writes:
>In article <[email-masked]>, [email-masked] (Greenup) writes:
>> 
>>      I recently used shoelace to try & make linux boot.  after no success,
>> i want to go back.  HOW DO I GET RID OF THIS BOOT THING THAT KEEPS
>> ASKING WHICH PARTITIAN TO BOOT?!?!?!?!?
>
>Just a wild guess, but boot from your ORIGINAL BOOT floppy using your
>ORIGINAL ROOT floppy (you do still have those, don't you?).  And mount
>your current hard disk on /mnt.  Now you should be able to "cd /mnt/etc"
>and undo whatever you did with shoelace.
>
That won't work, the tools that come with shoelace have no way to remove
the shoelace bootstrap program that was written into the Master Boot Record
on the hard drive.  To get the standard DOS bootstrap back you have to use
something like Norton Utilities.  If you have completely backed up your
hard drive, you can also perform a low level format of the hard drive
followed by a high level format and reinstallation.  Maybe someone else
knows an easier way.

-- 
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] (Doug Mayfield)
Subject: Math Co-Processor library
Date: 23 Apr 92 18:54:28 GMT
Reply-To: [email-masked] (Doug Mayfield)

I was wondering if anyone knew if the libm.a that comes with 
GCC could be recreated for a system with a Co-Processor or 486.

If such a monster exists, could someone point me to it.  And 
maybe some test code with binary file sizes to check if it works
right.

---As a side note, how does Linux deal with sharing the co-processor
among various users. Or does it???

============================================================
Douglas B. Mayfield
[email-masked]
        (Computer Science Dept.)
        (University of California at Davis)

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

From: [email-masked] (Bennett E. Todd)
Subject: Re: compress doesn't work
Reply-To: [email-masked] (Bennett E. Todd)
Date: Thu, 23 Apr 1992 19:47:15 GMT

Folks who are having trouble, how are you reading and/or writing the
floppy? dd(1) really loves to drop out chunks of data, because it treats
each inbound chunk of data as a block; if it doesn't get as much on a
read as its blocksize, it calls it a short block. If the floppy is
correctly written then the sequence

        cat /dev/PS0 | compress -d | tar xvf -

should process correctly, and it will only blow up after you get past
all the good data in the archive (and extract it); then compress will
proceed to go nuts on the extra garbage past the end of the archive.
Harmless, though annoying.

Likewise, use cat(1) to write the floppy. If you need to split up a big
archive, use split(1). If you don't have enough disk to hold a copy of
the whole archive (split wants to write its pieces to xaa, xab, ...)
then you could try something like what I did in my wrflops script
(recently posted here in floptools.sh), where I used a separate little C
program (I called it catbytes) to bust up the input stream into
floppy-sized wads, and separate invocations of cat(1) to deposit them
onto the floppies.

-Bennett (curmudgeon)
[email-masked]

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

Date: Thursday, 23 Apr 1992 14:16:46 EDT
From: <[email-masked]>
Subject: Shells and Shared libraries

First question, does anyone know where I can get hold of any shells for
Linux other than bash and ash, particularlly csh?

Second, I have the source to the kernel and a bunch of utilities, plus GCC
2.1.  How do I tell it to activate shared libraries, or does it just do it?

--
Steven A. Bairstow                * "There ain't no rules around here!
InternNet : [email-masked]  *  We're trying to accomplish something!"
   or : [email-masked]  *      - Thomas Edison
WWIV-Net  : 216 @8450             *

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

From: [email-masked] (Theodore Ts'o)
Subject: Re: dos emulator
Reply-To: [email-masked]
Date: Thu, 23 Apr 1992 20:20:06 GMT

   From: [email-masked] (Drew Eckhardt)
   Date: 23 Apr 92 16:33:51 GMT

   1.  How many documented DOS calls are there?

   The answer is "many".  The DOS kernel is ~50K of machine code.   You 
   don't want to duplicate that.  Instead, you emulate what DOS runs on,
   and catch all of the programs that run there too, and run a *REAL*
   dos.

Actually, what I would do is emulate DOS by mapping the DOS filesystem
calls into Unix filesystem calls.  That should simply things quite a
bit.  Of course, you will still have to emulate the BIOS calls, since
many programs call direct to the BIOS.  But if you emulate the BIOS
calls and the DOS 2.11 calls, you'd be surprised how many DOS programs
will actually run correctly.  

One question about your (Matthias's) technique however; as I recall, the
386 virtual memory mode requires that the task use *virtual memory*
addresses from 0k to 640k, where the kernel is currently located.  You
can fix this by actually swapping the page maps in and out, but that's
much more significant than just changing the segment registers.  Are you
actually playing page map games to make this work?  And if so, how are
you doing this?

                                                        - Ted

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

From: [email-masked]
Subject: random()?
Reply-To: [email-masked]
Date: Thu, 23 Apr 1992 20:20:28 GMT

this question is for the c programmers out there.  I have a few basic and pascal
programs that I would like to re-write in C, but a lot of them use some type of
random number generator.  I once saw a reference to a random() function, and I 
am wondering if this (or some other random function)is included in gcc 2.1 .
If not, I have some C source to create a pseudo-random # based on a user inputed
seed.  I figure that if I use the date/time info for the seed, it should serve the
purpose.  However, I don't know the calls for time/date functions.  :(
(In case you can't tell, I am quite new to C, I am native to Pascal, but I have 
a book written to teach C to Pascal programmers called: _C_Programming_in_a_UNIX
_Environment_  I got it for a class I didn't take.  I also have: _C_Primer_Plus_
by the Waite Group)
Thanks for your help, please e-mail: [email-masked]

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

Crossposted-To: alt.os.linux
From: [email-masked] (PTed Garvin)
Subject: Re: all kinds of questions (autoparking)
Date: Thu, 23 Apr 1992 17:38:48 GMT

[email-masked] (Lance Pickup) writes:

>In article <[email-masked]>, [email-masked] (Rogier Wolff) writes:
>|> Yes. Right. I have a broken 40M disk, and when you power down, it still
>|> discharges a capacitor through the voice coil, which jams the head
>|> behind a latch. (wouldn't autoparking be hard for stepper motor controlled
>|> heads? at 24 ms average seek time, you'd need power for 0.1 seconds
>|> to step the motor back home, worst case)

>I could be wrong, but I thought that the way auto-parking worked was
>that the head was spring loaded such that whenever power was removed,
>it would just spring back into a safe location (i.e. you need power
>to un-park it).
>--
>    ...Lance

>-----------------------------------------------------------------------
>Lance Pickup                VNET/IBM Internet: lpickup@btv
>IBM/Vendor Systems                   Internet: [email-masked]
>Technology Products
>Burlington, VT                          Phone: (802) 769-7104 (tie 446)
>-----------------------------------------------------------------------

None of the heads are spring loaded.  It is possible that some 
manufacturers could use some kind of cap to discharge but I have never
seen one large enough to do that or even enough room inside a drive
to mount a cap that large  (I used to build hard drives).   
They have a nice big spindle motor to spin the media, which I believe
is being used as a generator when the power is shut off.  Not only
would that be able to generate power to park the heads but it would serve
as a brake to help it spin down faster.  Notice they usually spin down
pretty quick...  that isn't bearing friction :-)

     - Vincent

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

From: [email-masked] (Michael K. Johnson)
Subject: new stuff at tsx-11
Reply-To: [email-masked] (Michael K. Johnson)
Date: Thu, 23 Apr 1992 21:21:42 GMT

OK, there is new stuff at tsx-11.  Let's see if I can remember it all.

all this is at tsx-11.mit.edu

NEW FAQ!!!!!!!!!!!
/pub/linux/FAQ
/pub/linux/docs/FAQ
/pub/linux/docs/FAQ_04_21
        (all the same)

Apparently, no one knew where bootlin.zip is, and so Fabien uploaded
another copy -- it is
/pub/linux/INSTALL/bootlin.zip

GDB 4.5
/pub/linux/[binaries,source]/usr.bin/gdb-4.5.tar.Z
        (both are the same file, containing binary and diffs to the
         GNU source)

dvi2xx
/pub/linux/binaries/tex/dvi2xx.tar.Z

And finally, I removed the link from linux-0.95c++.tar.Z to
pre-0.96.tar.Z because it was confusing several people, I believe.
Sorry to anyone I confused.

I would like to apologize for being behind _again_ on the buglist and
slightly behind on the patch directory -- my professors are beginning
to demand that I actually _do_ something in their classes... ;-)

michaelkjohnson
[email-masked]

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

From: [email-masked]
Subject: Re: dos emulator 
Reply-To: [email-masked]
Date: Thu, 23 Apr 1992 21:35:28 GMT

========

       From: [email-masked] (Drew Eckhardt)
       Date: 23 Apr 92 16:33:51 GMT

    One question about Matthias's technique however; as I recall, the
    386 virtual memory mode requires that the task use *virtual memory*
    addresses from 0k to 640k, where the kernel is currently located.  You
    can fix this by actually swapping the page maps in and out, but that's
    much more significant than just changing the segment registers.  

That's correct - a 386 virtual mode task must start at 
virtual address 0, and if you allow the full address space of 
a 286 in real mode, up to 1M + ~64K.

    Are you
    actually playing page map games to make this work?  And if so, how are
    you doing this?

This is matthias's play toy - ask him.  
                                                        - Ted

========

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

From: [email-masked] (Hongjiu Lu -- Graduate Student)
Subject: Re: News under Linux
Date: 23 Apr 92 16:28:55 GMT

In article <[email-masked]> [email-masked] (Steve Robbins) writes:
>Howdy,
>
>
>I found out the extremely hard way that linux or gnu thinks that fseek() 
>should return the new offset if sucessful, rather than zero, like all
>other stdio's appear to.  Is this some new ANSI thing, or is libc screwed 
>up?
>

Not totally my fault. It has been fixed in the next release.

>Also strcasecmp() is the same as strcmp().  I got the gcc2.1 distribution

What is your input?

>from tsx-11 somewhere around April 4 -- is there a newer version that
>has corrected these things?
>
>Steve Z
>

H.J.

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

From: [email-masked] (gary a moyer)
Subject: RE: cannot mount filesystem
Date: 23 Apr 92 21:58:14 GMT

Thanks to all for the input on the inability to mount.

The fix is to remove the file mtab~ in /etc

      thx much.
         [email-masked]

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

From: [email-masked] (Michael Pereckas)
Subject: Re: linux
Date: Thu, 23 Apr 1992 21:55:12 GMT

[email-masked] (Matt Mosley) writes:
>3) Where can I get troff/groff/nroff for Linux? (or at least workable).

Look on tsx-11.mit.edu in pub/linux/binaries/groff, or some such
directory.  It installs easily and works great.  For typeset output,
you'll need a postscript printer, ghostscript (which ports fairly
easily), or a TeX dvi driver (and Computer Modern fonts).  I usually use
the dvi output, dvips (and metafont), and ghostscript to get output on
my Alps Allegro, which is Epson compatable.  I think the CM fonts are
better that the ghostscript fonts, at least at 360x180 dpi, and I use
TeX, so I have dvips and metafont set up.

There is also cawf, a little nroff-like program.

Michael Pereckas

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

** FOR YOUR REFERENCE **

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to be added to or deleted from it should be directed, is:

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

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