Subject: Linux-Activists Digest #252
From: Digestifier <[email-masked]>
To: [email-masked]
Date: Wed, 22 Sep 93 19:13:07 EDT

Linux-Activists Digest #252, Volume #6           Wed, 22 Sep 93 19:13:07 EDT

Contents:
  X and Slackware 1.0.3? (Shannon Hendrix)
  Re: How does Linux compare to SUN IPC? (William_F._Mitchell)
  Anyone Installed Metro-X Motif on SLS 1.03 -> Install sucks!! (Bradly William Wright)
  Distribution for $30/CDROM (Jethro Antoine)
  Re: running X appl. by modem ? (Scott D. Heavner)
  Re: How does Linux compare to SUN IPC? (Steve Norton)
  Re: Future Domain SCSI (George A Flett)
  SLS patch 6 to 12? (Bryan Zarnett - SPEC/F93)
  recompile kernel? ([email-masked])
  Smail in 99pl9 (Volker Grimm)
  Re: NE-2000 Ethernet cards (Wolfgang Utz)
  Re: X and Slackware 1.0.3? (Aron Bonar)
  [Rev.] startx won't start x.. (James F Hall)
  Re: Writing device drivers (Eberhard Moenkeberg)
  More SLS 1.03 problems. Kernel make breaks. (Skip Egdorf)
  Re: More SLS 1.03 problems. Kernel make breaks. (Skip Egdorf)

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

From: [email-masked] (Shannon Hendrix)
Subject: X and Slackware 1.0.3?
Date: 22 Sep 1993 14:45:26 -0400
Reply-To: [email-masked] (Shannon Hendrix)

           So far everyone with problems with XFree 1.3 has had
           a Tseng chip, either ET4000/ET3000 and pl12.

That is news to me.  I am running p12 with Xfree 1.3 on a Tseng Labs ET4000
and zero problems (except my monitor is $500 short of being ideal... :-).
I know several others with the same setup, no problems.  Only people I
know who had problems were with Trident, ATI, and some kind of Paradise
card.

           Is there anyone who has it working reliably with these
           video chips??

Moi!

csh / [email-masked] / Christopher Newport University

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

From: [email-masked] (William_F._Mitchell)
Subject: Re: How does Linux compare to SUN IPC?
Date: 22 Sep 93 18:37:12 GMT
Reply-To: [email-masked]

In article <[email-masked]>, [email-masked] (Dhaliwal Bikram Singh) writes:
|> It has seemed to me that my Linux system at home (X and GCC running in
|> a 15mb partition, on a 386-40, with room to spare) is faster than the
|> SUN IPC workstations I use at school.  I can only offer subjective 
|> speculation though, ie. time for a xterm to open, etc... 
|> 
|> I was wondering, if anyone has done benchmarks between the two for
|> various processors.  I am not saying that Linux is better, it still
|> has a ways to go before it can match the all around appeal of the SUN.
|> 

About 6 months ago I ran the LINPACK benchmark on my 486DX50 Linux box
at home and Sun IPC at work.  Don't hold me to these numbers, but as I
recall the 486 was about twice as fast as the Sun when f2c and cc were
used to compile it on the Sun, and the Sun was about twice as fast when
f77 was used to compile it on the Sun (there is no real f77 on Linux to
which to compare, of course).

Also, in the last week I found that compress/uncompress of a large file
took about 4 seconds on my Linux machine (after the first instance, which
obviously had to copy the file from disk to memory and took 18 seconds)
while it took 8 seconds on a Sparc 10 at work.  This may be due entirely
to the fact the the Linux machine is a one user machine, and the Sparc
has a lot more going on -- plus the file server is in the next building.
All these times are measure with wristwatch accuracy, by the way.

-- 
-- Bill

William F. Mitchell                            | [email-masked]
National Institute of Standards and Technology | [email-masked]

If anything looks like an opinion, NIST does not necessarily agree with it.
If anything looks like an official NIST or government statement, it's not.

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

From: [email-masked] (Bradly William Wright)
Subject: Anyone Installed Metro-X Motif on SLS 1.03 -> Install sucks!!
Date: Wed, 22 Sep 1993 19:11:34 GMT

Has anyone been able to get Metro-X Motif to work with
SLS 1.03?  Linux Systems Laboratory claims that it will work
with SLS 1.03.  When trying to run mwm, I
get an error message saying that the system can't exec:
libXm.so.1 improper format.  

Has anyone been able to make it work?

Brad Wright

==================================================
| Software Engineer (Massivus Nerdus)             |
| Premisys Communications (The Access Company)   |
| 1032 Elwell Court, Palo Alto California 94303  |
| [email-masked], [email-masked] |
==================================================

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

From: [email-masked] (Jethro Antoine)
Subject: Distribution for $30/CDROM
Date: Wed, 22 Sep 1993 20:05:54 GMT

        Someone was offering LINUX & BSD on a CDROM for $30.00 does anyone
have the info. If so please contact me.

By mail please.

THanks .. in advance

*****************************************
[email-masked]                   *
*"Scratch the earth                     *
* Dig the burial ground..."             *
*****************************************

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

From: [email-masked] (Scott D. Heavner)
Subject: Re: running X appl. by modem ?
Date: Wed, 22 Sep 1993 19:42:55 GMT
Reply-To: [email-masked]

Gerrit Nieuwenhuizen ([email-masked]) wrote:
> [email-masked] (Pablo Redard) writes:

> >Hi everyone,

> >I'm wondering if I can log into my account at the university 
> >from home (through modem) and run an X application?
> >I have linux and I'm running openwin.

> >thanks.

> I have tried it with a 2400 baud modem and term on my
> local linux box and a decstation host. It works but
> the speed is incredibly low. A xterm works barely and 
> pictures you should forget completely. 
> With a direct terminal line (9600 baud) at work this
> works reasonably well, no speed demon either.
> We should all wait until faster networks and telephone
> lines get available before trying this again.

        I'd like to say that I've been almost happy with it
at 38400 baud.  I suuceeded in running the Andrew Demo over a 
term line in less that the hour alloted for it, so it's not
that bad.  I've had to wait longer for X updates on a Sun3 and
a heavily loaded LAN.  Also, I've been able to run crossfire 
(an Ultima like game over a direct serial connection 9600 baud) and
it was playable.

                                Scott

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

From: [email-masked] (Steve Norton)
Subject: Re: How does Linux compare to SUN IPC?
Date: Wed, 22 Sep 1993 19:41:29 GMT

[email-masked] (Dhaliwal Bikram Singh) writes:

>It has seemed to me that my Linux system at home (X and GCC running in
>a 15mb partition, on a 386-40, with room to spare) is faster than the
>SUN IPC workstations I use at school.  I can only offer subjective 
>speculation though, ie. time for a xterm to open, etc... 

Well, here at the office, we've had 4 machines: One 386-40, 8 MB of
RAM, one 486-66, 16 MB of RAM, one Sparc-10 with 64 MB of RAM and
one Sparc-2 with 32 MB of RAM.

The 386-40 ($1000) will process Usenet news about 2x faster than the
Sparc-10 ($20,000).  Of course, this is entirely due to the super fast
Linux I/O.  Processing news is all disk access, and the IDE drives blow
away the sun SCSI-2 drives.  Unfortunately, the Sparc-10 is faster for just
about everything else.

The 486-66 ($3000) runs 10-25% faster than the Sparc-2 ($7000) for CPU
intensive activities (compiling, crunching numbers, Xlife, etc.)  For I/O
things (xli on Xwindows) it completely blows the Sparc-2 away.

Now, I'm kind of biased.  I personally believe Sparcs are junk, and that
a 40Mhz motherboard with a 386 is just as good as a 40Mhz Sparc motherboard.
--
Steve Norton    708-671-0111 (voice)  708-671-0237 (data,login guest)
InterAccess Co.         [email-masked]
Chicagoland's best public access Internet provider
.take a left off ANS CNSS28.T3 onto ENSS169.T1 and you're home.

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

From: George A Flett <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Future Domain SCSI
Date: Wed, 22 Sep 1993 16:10:45 -0400

I just wanted to post to say that I TOO have a Future Domain 1680, and
Linux cannot find it. It has bios version 3.2, and it has a Maxtor 1240S
hard drive attached.

                                        Alec
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
"There's only one way of life, and that's your own.." - The Levellers   
       "Assume no one can know themselves" - From a math proof (!)
                   -=The Infamous Laundry Man=-
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

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

From: [email-masked] (Bryan Zarnett - SPEC/F93)
Subject: SLS patch 6 to 12?
Date: 22 Sep 1993 20:32:08 GMT

SlS 1.03 just blew-up so Im putting back on 99.6...can I, with patience
just keeping patching and getting the new gcc and stuff to bring myself up to
SLS 1.02???
 
I have the first 4 a disks for 1.02 here...can I use the b,c,d,s,t,x disks
on tsx-11 with the 1.02 disks I have..will there be problems???

- Bryan 

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

From: [email-masked]
Subject: recompile kernel?
Date: 22 Sep 1993 16:55:31 -0400
Reply-To: [email-masked]

I'm having problems with a com port and I suspect that the autoprobing
for my 3c503 card may be resulting in an irq conflict. I get a
spurious interrupt message after reboot and I can't setserial or stty -a
cua1 or ttyS1. So I fixed the base address and irq for the 3c503 card
in the net/inet/CONFIG file to 0x250 and irq5.

My question is: Do I have to recompile the entire kernel to implement
this change?

I've been having problems with SLIP too and read in the NET-2-FAQ that
the problem could be caused by compression. So I deleted the compression
flag in the CONFIG file and recompiled...(it didn't fix the problem) but
again, do I have to recompile the kernel? Since it takes about
1 1/2 hours to do (on a 386/25), it takes a little longer to hack a
fix. :-0

Thanks!
Stu

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

From: [email-masked] (Volker Grimm)
Subject: Smail in 99pl9
Date: Tue, 14 Sep 1993 19:16:14 GMT

I am running Linux .99pl9 and installed all of the SLS-Distrib.
Since there are several persons working on my systems, lately we tried out 
sending mail via elm. It turns up, that mail can be sent from everywhere to
user root but no other user can receive mail. All the docs don't seem to talk
about probs on local systems but only about routing while messed up in a net-
work.

What do I have to do to make the other users known to the system ?

Thanks, Volker.

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

From: [email-masked] (Wolfgang Utz)
Subject: Re: NE-2000 Ethernet cards
Date: Wed, 15 Sep 1993 11:44:39 GMT

[email-masked] (Johannes Grosen) writes:

>In article <[email-masked]> [email-masked] (Paul Mora) writes:

>Beginning, I believe, with pl12 you are given an opportunity to configure
>you network card when you do a `make config' prior to building the kernel.
>The driver for the NE2000 is included with the kernel source.

I started to look around for Ethernet-Cards, too. And what I found out is the
following:
On the one hand there are NE2000-cards available and on the other hand they sell
what is called NE2000-compatible-cards. The first difference one sees is the price:
The later ones only cost about 100 Marks here in Germany, while the first cost up
to 600 Marks.
Now my question: Will those chaep cards really work with Linux? Has anyone any 
experiences?

Any help will be good help! thanx in advance...

 -- Wolfgang

---

=========================================================================
Wolfgang Utz, Computer Science Student       | (This section of the
University of Erlangen (Germany)             | document is intentionally
e-mail: [email-masked] | left blank)
=========================================================================

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

From: [email-masked] (Aron Bonar)
Subject: Re: X and Slackware 1.0.3?
Date: 22 Sep 1993 21:20:57 GMT

In article <[email-masked]>, [email-masked] (Fritz Ganter) writes:
|> Robert Cooper ([email-masked]) wrote:
|> 
|> :    So far everyone with problems with XFree 1.3 has had
|> :    a Tseng chip, either ET4000/ET3000 and pl12.
|> 
|> :    Is there anyone who has it working reliably with these
|> :    video chips??
|> 
|> :    Is there anyone else with other chips having trouble
|> :    or have it working reliably??
|> 
|> :    Post here so we can all see where the problem lies....
|> 
|> Ok, *I* have no problems:
|> ET4000AX, 1MB
|> 386DX 40MHz, 8MB RAM
|> Slackware 1.02

I also haven't encontered any problems:

486dx-50, 16 megs RAM
Orchid Prodesigner 2s (ET4000) w/ 1meg 
Slackware 1.02, X running at 1024x768x256 interlaced

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

Subject: [Rev.] startx won't start x..
From: [email-masked] (James F Hall)
Date: 22 Sep 93 16:03:48 -0600

==========================================================
I USED TO BE [email-masked] BUT MY NEW ADDRESS IS:
[email-masked]
==========================================================

I seem to have forgotten to mention the error messages that I got when
asking for help in getting XWindows to run (please note the address
has changed.)

What follows is the file I got when using the command:
    startx 2> startx.err

I am using the 1.03 of SLS release.  I followed what docs I could find
and wrote a .initrc file, which contains the lines shown in the man
page on startx.

I did try to answer my question on my own using the docs and faq's,
but I am getting lost.

FYI - Getting X to run is the next-to-last item on my "to-do" list
before I declare my system completely tailored to my needs.  Thanks
for the help for this newbie.  :-)

[email-masked]

==========================< startx.err >============================

Setting TCP SO_LINGER: Protocol not available
XFree86 Version 1.3 / X Window System
(protocol Version 11, revision 0, vendor release 5000)
Operating System: Linux 
Configured drivers:
  VGA256 (256 colour SVGA):
      et4000, et3000, pvga1, wd90c00, wd90c10, wd90c30, gvga, ati,
      tvga8800cs, tvga8900b, tvga8900c, tvga8900cl, tvga9000, clgd5420,
      clgd5422, clgd5424, clgd5426, ncr77c22, ncr77c22e, cpq_avga
(using VT number 7)

Xconfig: /usr/X386/lib/X11/Xconfig
Mouse: type: Microsoft, device: /dev/mouse, baudrate: 1200
FontPath set to "/usr/X386/lib/X11/fonts/misc/,/usr/X386/lib/X11/fonts/Type1/,/usr/X386/lib/X11/fonts/Speedo/,/usr/X386/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi/"
ATI BIOS Information Block:
   Signature code:                31 = VGA WONDER
   Chip version:                  1 =  ATI 18800
   BIOS version:                  1.0
   Byte at offset 0x42 =          0x01
   Byte at offset 0x44 =          0x4d

  This video adapter is a:        VGA WONDER V3
  Amount of RAM on video adapter: 256k
  WARNING: Driver may not work correctly with your board!

ATI driver requires at least 512k video RAM!
VGA256: 'ati' is an invalid chipset
 *** None of the configured devices was detected.***

Fatal server error:
no screens found
xinit:  No such file or directory (errno 2):  unexpected signal 13

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

Date: Wed, 22 Sep 93 01:41:50 +0100
From: [email-masked] (Eberhard Moenkeberg)
Subject: Re: Writing device drivers

Hello Hugo and all others,

on 21.09.93 Hugo Eide Gunnarsen wrote to All in USENET.COMP.OS.LINUX:

HE> I'm trying to write some device drivers for linux.
HE> The problem is that I can not find any documentation about this subject.
HE> If anybody know about, or have any doc., please tell me.

Get ftp.gwdg.de:/pub/linux2/doc/ldp/khg.ps  - it is a possibly somewhat
old alpha version of the "Linux Kernel Hacker's Guide", the difficultiest
(and so, most incomplete) part of the Linux Documentation Project.

Or, better: mail to Michael K. Johnson, the coordinator.

Further, have a look into some "delivered", related drivers. I have been
able to develop the SoundBlaster CDROM driver almost only by peeking into
other drivers (mcd.c, sr.c, cdu31a.c) and grepping through
/usr/include/linux...

HE> Especially stuff like register_chrdev etc, so that I can fill
HE> the proper structs,

Look into the "living" examples. :-)

HE>  and use the kernel functions (printf!=printf) and so on.

this is named printk.

What kind of driver shall it grow?

Greetings ... Eberhard

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

Crossposted-To: comp.os.linux.help.misc,comp.os.linux
From: [email-masked] (Skip Egdorf)
Subject: More SLS 1.03 problems. Kernel make breaks.
Date: Wed, 22 Sep 1993 21:54:28 GMT

I have just installed SLS 1.03 retrieved from tsx-11.mit.edu on the
afternoon of Sept 17.

I had the same "noise" problems others have noted (e.g. TeX install
complaining because some files are directories or some such...)
however, the real problem comes when I try to rebuild the kernel.

I have a 3com ethernet controller connected to a thickwire network. I
am used to the fact that the ec503 driver is built for the thinwire
conenctor, and needs the EL2_AUI symbol turned on. (That's ok, most
Linux users probably want the thin instead of the thick wire, and I
have no problem rebuilding kernels... until today, that is...)

make config -> with "y" to most questions...
make dep
make zImage

and when it gets to tty_io.c

tty_io.c: In function `int tty_select (struct msdos_inode_info::inode*, struct ifs_file_info::file*, int, struct select_table_struct*)':
tty_io.c:1420: Internal Compiler Error.
tty_io.c:1420: Please submit a full bug report to [email-masked]'.

This was a "clean" build of SLS onto new partitions, not an upgrade of
an earlier version.

This is the first SLS release where I haven't been able to do at least
a kernel rebuild. I have tried to just use gcc rather than the c++ mode, but
that causes many more problems. I have tried a few different 'make config'
runs trying small vs large kernels, (though tty_io.c shouldn't be affected
by much that can be done with make config) and am out of ideas.

I can still get stuff from the net via a Sun (though the Sun's floppy is SOOO
slow...) if needed.

Any suggestions??

                                        Skip Egdorf
                                        [email-masked]

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

Crossposted-To: comp.os.linux.help.misc,comp.os.linux
From: [email-masked] (Skip Egdorf)
Subject: Re: More SLS 1.03 problems. Kernel make breaks.
Date: Wed, 22 Sep 1993 22:10:45 GMT

In article <[email-masked]> [email-masked] (Skip Egdorf) writes:

   I have just installed SLS 1.03 retrieved from tsx-11.mit.edu on the
   afternoon of Sept 17.
   ...
   however, the real problem comes when I try to rebuild the kernel.

And I have just found another interesting wrinkle, doing another make zImage
doesn't change the problem, but REBOOTING does. It compiles tty_io.c
with no problem and proceeds for a few dozen more files until it
breaks again in the same way. I am now on my third reboot and the kernel
is getting compiled slowly...

What sort of memory does gcc have between runs that is cleared by a reboot???

This is a 486/33 with 16 MB.

                                        Skip Egdorf
                                        [email-masked]

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

** 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:

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Linux may be obtained via one of these FTP sites:
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The current version of Linux is 0.99pl9 released on April 23, 1993

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