Subject: Linux-Admin Digest #150
From: Digestifier <[email-masked]>
To: [email-masked]
Date: Thu, 6 Oct 94 10:13:43 EDT

Linux-Admin Digest #150, Volume #2                Thu, 6 Oct 94 10:13:43 EDT

Contents:
  SCSI vs IDE (Iain J. Bryson)
  Security hole - has noone noticed so far? (Martin Bartosch)
  Re: NT and Linux (maurice s. barnum)
  Re: Problem with 32 megs RAM ([email-masked])
  gcc not working (N B Venkateswarlu)
  Re: Linux as KingGod NFS Server to DOS Slaves (Bruno Van Wilder)
  Need some information about web release history (Sean T. Lamont)
  SAMBA question (John Leslie)
  Installing XFree 3.1... (FORSEILLES STEPHAN)
  Re: Mystery Chip...AMD (Brad Matthew Garcia)
  Re: AGETTY and Modems (Al Longyear)
  Re: PPP/SLIP vs Shell (Al Longyear)
  Re: <Q> Can Linux Mount a Mac Floppy (Christopher Wiles)
  [Q] 4M -> 8M RAM worth it? (Robert Casiano)
  Re: XFree86-3.1 - Whoopee! (Pekka J Taipale)
  Re: Security hole - has noone noticed so far? (Hendrik G. Seliger)
  Re: Security hole - has noone noticed so far? (Jim Jagielski)
  Re: Mystery Chip...AMD (Mikael Nordqvist)
  Calling all imake gurus (Christopher Gori)
  Re: Bug in Linux 'mv'? (Christopher Gori)

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

From: [email-masked] (Iain J. Bryson)
Subject: SCSI vs IDE
Date: 5 Oct 1994 00:29:35 GMT

Hi.  I am interested in hearing people advocating
which is better, IDE or SCSI.  One big advantage
for SCSI would be more disks and CD-ROMS not
taking up a slot... But it that worth the 
extra cost of a (good?) controller?  How about
speed?

Thanks very much.

--
[email-masked] (Iain Bryson)  "I have detailed files."
Concordia University, Montreal, Canada - Computer Engr.
"Now we're cooking with evil gas!" - Kids in the Hall.

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

From: [email-masked] (Martin Bartosch)
Crossposted-To: comp.mail.smail
Subject: Security hole - has noone noticed so far?
Date: 5 Oct 1994 08:11:25 GMT
Reply-To: [email-masked]

Hi,

while searching a flaw in my smail configuration files, I discovered
a flaw in _my_ smail setup. I cannot say whether the following is
true for every implementation and do not know if this has been
reported before. So be gentle with me.

Configuration: smail 3.1.28 which is included in Linux Slackware 2.0.0.
(tried both binary distribution and locally compiled stuff)

/usr/lib/sendmail is a symbolic link to /usr/bin/smail.

try

/usr/lib/sendmail -d -D/etc/nologin [email-masked]

as a normal user and have fun explaining it to your sysadmin. I was
awed when I found out...

                                        Martin.

--
Martin Bartosch       Institut fuer               [email-masked]
38102 Braunschweig    Datenverarbeitungsanlagen   [email-masked]
+49 531 332214        TU Braunschweig             

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

From: [email-masked] (maurice s. barnum)
Subject: Re: NT and Linux
Date: Wed, 5 Oct 1994 08:39:37 GMT

[email-masked] (Bruno Van Wilder) writes:

>You should consider using LILO, the Linux Loader.  Apart from loading Linux, it
>can also boot other systems, and I suppose NT won't be an exception.  Moreover,

    and you would be correct.

    :)

--
Maurice S. Barnum               ==    I speak for me, not my employer.
[email-masked]        ||    "There is no confusion like the
[email-masked]     ||    confusion of a simple mind."
[email-masked]           ==       -- F. Scott Fitzgerald

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

From: [email-masked]
Subject: Re: Problem with 32 megs RAM
Date: 05 Oct 1994 06:48:54 GMT
Reply-To: [email-masked] (Bill Hogan)

"CB" == Christian Buchner <[email-masked]> writes:
In article <[email-masked]> [email-masked] (Christian Buchner) writes:

  CB> Hi 
  CB> I have problems with my system 486DX2/66 VLB running Linux 1.1 and
  CB> XFree86 2.1 after upgrading from 16 up to 32 meg RAM. The system
  CB> runs minimum 4 times slower than before especially under X.
  CB> It looks like the videocard ATI-GUP has problems with displaying
  CB> windows. Can anybody help me with that problem? Is it a problem
  CB> of my ATI-GUP or is it a general problem of Linux.

  Another possibility is that you do not have enough external (SRAM)
cache installed: if (even) a 486DX2/66 plows into a non-cached address
range, the real-time cpu throughput can easily drop by an order of magnitude.

  (I have had to come down from 20MB to 16MB for just this reason.)

  Bill

--
Bill Hogan <[email-masked]>

  

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

From: [email-masked] (N B Venkateswarlu)
Subject: gcc not working
Date: Wed, 5 Oct 1994 08:58:53 +0100 (BST)

Hi,
    Recently I have installed slackware version. Everything went on well. But
gcc is not working. It is compiling the program but I am unable to execute. My
system specks are 386SLX 25Mhz. Any suggestions?.

   Thanks in advance.

    Venkat

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

From: [email-masked] (Bruno Van Wilder)
Subject: Re: Linux as KingGod NFS Server to DOS Slaves
Date: 5 Oct 1994 09:11:19 GMT

Jason Asbahr ([email-masked]) wrote:

: I'd like to use a Linux box as the central fileserver for a
: set of DOS boxes (and other unix-ish boxes, but that's no
: problem).  

: I've used Lantastic and the Lantastic TCP/IP extensions with
: disappointment in the past.  

: Can anyone recommend DOS-based NFS solutions that will allow
: command-line level remote file access as well as Windows remote
: access?  I don't need to netboot, I just need to share files.

I have been using Sun's PC-NFS for a while.  It worked, but performance
was near to dramatic.  (That could have been Linux too, although I'd wonder it)
Especially for windows I do not recommend this as Windows likes to transfer lots
of MBs...  Moreover, security is not easy as Windows likes to write to his 
ini files when he wants.  I patched the nfsd daemon to fake writes to
those 'forbidden files', and that worked nice.

Please let me know if you find a good solution !
Greetings,
Bruno

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

From: [email-masked] (Sean T. Lamont)
Crossposted-To: comp.infosystems.www.misc
Subject: Need some information about web release history
Date: 5 Oct 1994 02:50:41 -0700

Need some specific information about the following:

#1: Was the pre-mosaic work by CERN based on HTML 1, or some precursor
    that didn't include images, etc? It doesn't make too much sense that
    the HTML specifcation would include features that wouldn't be implemented
    for another year?

#2: Was the Html 2 (Forms, etc.) concurrent with the original NCSA Mosaic
    release, or was there a later release of mosaic which supported forms?

Thanks. Respond via email if your news software ignores the followup-to.

-- 
Sean T. Lamont, Abstract Software       | Ask me about the WSI-Fonts
NEXTSTEP development, TCP/IP consulting | Professional collections for NEXTSTEP
[email-masked]                 | http://www.abstractsoft.com

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

From: [email-masked] (John Leslie)
Subject: SAMBA question
Reply-To: [email-masked]
Date: Wed, 5 Oct 1994 09:50:46 +0000

Can someone point me at some info on SAMBA and, ideally, details of what files
I need to ftp? Also, does anyone have any good/bad things to say on the subject?
-- 
John Leslie

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

From: [email-masked] (FORSEILLES STEPHAN)
Subject: Installing XFree 3.1...
Date: 6 Oct 1994 01:04:24 GMT

        I've been triyng for some time to get XFree 3.1 working with
my Nr9 GXE/64 video card. The problem is that it doesn't seem to be any clock
rate that matches the rates of the card on the examples files. In fact
I think the problem comes from somewere else: XFree seems to be unable
to detect corectly the clocks of the card. Here's what it gives:

(--) S3: card type: 386/486 localbus
(--) S3: chipset:   864 rev. 0
(--) S3: chipset driver: mmio_928
(--) S3: videoram:  1024k
(--) S3: Detected an ATT 20C498 RAMDAC
(--) S3: Ramdac type: att20c498
(--) S3: Ramdac speed: 135
(--) S3: clocks:  25.21  28.32  28.32   0.00  25.16  28.31  28.38  28.35
(--) S3: clocks:  25.16  28.32  28.32  28.32  25.17  28.32  28.32  28.49

        Usually, the clock rates are much higher than those ones, at
least with the other (less fast than the GXE640) cards I tried. Btw, it
detects a ramdac speed of 135 and doesn't give any clock faster
than 29... Can some guru tell me if it's normal?

        Any help will be appreciated.

        Thanks.

Stephan.

++=============================================================++
||     Forseilles Stephan     ||    [email-masked]         ||
||     Av. FRISSEN 1/14       || ------------------------------||
||     1160 Bruxelles         ||    Fido: 2:291/705.3503       ||
||     BELGIUM                ||    Phone: +32 2 675-61-09     ||
||-------------------------------------------------------------||
|| Home Page at   http://rcibm.ulb.ac.be:8000/~sforseil        ||
||-------------------------------------------------------------||
||  Anarchy is not disorder. Anarchy is the absence of orders. ||
++=============================================================++

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

From: [email-masked] (Brad Matthew Garcia)
Crossposted-To: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.systems,comp.os.linux.misc
Subject: Re: Mystery Chip...AMD
Date: 6 Oct 1994 11:37:54 GMT

In article <[email-masked]>, [email-masked] (G. E. Terry) writes:
|> RYAN  Colin Patrick ([email-masked]) wrote:
|> : While responding to an add inteh local paper for a $99 486 upgrade it came
|> : to light that this upgrade was a quote "486/66 Mhz" which was a "faster chip and less expensive than the i486DX2-66". This propted my query on what the hell
|> : this chip was and the response was AMD. I was not aware of this chip. I was
|> : under the impression that all the 66's 75's 100's etc (non-Pentium) were 
|> : overclocked 33 Mhz chips. Does a 'real' 66 Mhz chip exist? If so (and I dont'
|> : think so" do traditional mother boards ( ie that could handle a DX2) support
|> : this chip. And Finally, if this is true is it compatble and reliable.
|> 
|> This is just an clock doubled 33. I would say it might have been an error
|> in the ad. I have one of these chips. The story I read was that Advanced
|> Micro Devices bought the masks for the 80286 from Intel a few years back.
|> They decide to try to test the copywrite & patent laws by cloning the
|> 386 & 486 chips. Well they were very successful and Intel sued. In the
|> following trial, Intel LOST. I hear it was due to the naming system that
|> they used. It made the chips generic in the eyes of the court. That is why
|> there is no 80586, and we have the Pentium. 
|> 
|> As far as reliability, the AMD 486DX2/66 is an exact duplicate of Intel's 
|> chip, or so I read in PC Magazine. And at an average of 100 to 150 dollars
|> less than Intel, I am a buyer!

I heard that AMD's version is more reliable than Intel's, and that many
people have overclocked it to 80 MHz with no problems.  There was even
a rumor going around that AMD would start to sell them as 486DX2-80's.
If you see an AMD 486DX2-80 system for sale, I guess the rumor is true.
-- 
Brad M. Garcia                   Carnegie Mellon University 
   ____/  ____/  ____/ Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
  __/    /      __/   "The only Engineering department in the world where
_____/ _____/ _____/   the secretaries have the most powerful computers."

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

From: [email-masked] (Al Longyear)
Subject: Re: AGETTY and Modems
Date: Wed, 5 Oct 1994 15:17:08 GMT

[email-masked] writes:

>I'm trying to allow login to my Linux 1.1.45 system through the
>modem, but when I start agetty for the modem port, it goes right into
>the login prompt.  Is there a way to make this work?  My previous
>experience under SCO Unix was simply to spawn a getty for the modem
>port during the init phase, and it took care of itself from there.

>You can reply here, or my email address: [email-masked]

Your modem is not presenting the true sense of the DCD line. You have
it configured to present it as always being true which is confusing
the getty process into thinking that someone has called the modem.

It is normally set by the AT option &C1. Some older modem have dip
switches.

(Another, less likely option, is that you have a cheap cable which does
not pass the DCD signal and simply wires it to the DTR.)

If you are planning on using the modem for both call in and call out,
then you should consider switching to a uugetty process for the modem.
Agetty works very well for dedicated terminals. It lacks the serial
line interlock that uugetty has. (The uugetty process is in the
mgetty+sendfax package. Another one is in the getty_ps package.)
-- 
Al Longyear           [email-masked]

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

From: [email-masked] (Al Longyear)
Subject: Re: PPP/SLIP vs Shell
Date: Wed, 5 Oct 1994 15:26:39 GMT

[email-masked] (Joe Beiter) writes:

>Does a ppp or slip connection take up less system resource than a person
>actually logging into that system with bash?

As a general rule, yes.

The PPP or SLIP user is not consuming processes for the bash plus tin/elm/
pine/gopher, etc. The PPP user is simply using the computer as a conduct
to the network system in general.

Of course, the SLIP/PPP user may consume more network resources than the
typical shell account user. Since the remote user may be running tin and
elm and ftp and gopher and mosaic all at the same time while the typical
shell user runs them one at a time, the network resources _MAY_ be larger
for a SLIP/PPP link.

This is one of the reasons that most commercial SLIP/PPP providers don't
run SLIP or PPP on their computer. They use a commercial terminal server
which is designed to do this operation with multiple connection points.

-- 
Al Longyear           [email-masked]

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

From: [email-masked] (Christopher Wiles)
Subject: Re: <Q> Can Linux Mount a Mac Floppy
Date: Wed, 5 Oct 1994 18:17:39 GMT

[email-masked] (Stefan Taferner) writes:

: There is a package on the net called hfs tools that allows access for
: mac HFS floppies, similar to mtools for dos disks.
: 
: The version I have is 0.3, but don't ask me where it is. 

sunsite.unc.edu:/pub/Linux/system/filesystems?  Something like that ...

.. and I just started using it.  Real nice.

-- Chris

[email-masked]   [email-masked]   [email-masked]
       "... but I want to use all eight comm ports SIMULTANEOUSLY!"
   PGP 2.6 public key available by finger for the clinically paranoid.

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

From: [email-masked] (Robert Casiano)
Subject: [Q] 4M -> 8M RAM worth it?
Date: 6 Oct 94 04:24:01 GMT

I`ve just installed linux at home. My pc is 486DX33 with 4M of RAM.
It looks good but x  runs very very slow.  Thus, it swaps a lot to
hard disk, and I fear that its life span is being shortened
considerably.  So I might buy more memory.  With my tight budget, I
could only afford another 4M.  Question is, is it worth it to buy the
4M now, or just wait for probably another year and get 16M?n  If I
buy the 4M now, wuold it improve things a lot, or not much
improvement?

Cheers :-)
Robert

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

From: [email-masked] (Pekka J Taipale)
Subject: Re: XFree86-3.1 - Whoopee!
Date: 06 Oct 1994 08:17:50 GMT

>>>Will fvwm and its modules work in Xfree3.11? 
>>
>>yes, if you recompile it.  (make sure you recompile libXpm-3.4c as  well.)
>>The reson being they bumped up the major version #'s on the X libraries

Well, for me it worked simply after copying the old X libraries to
/usr/X11R6/lib. No need to recompile at all.

For some people, having multiple libraries may of course be a problem,
or an unorthodox thing to do. But it seems to work. Don't know if it's
much use to go to XFree86 3.1 if you do it (for me there was: 2.1
didn't restore the text mode of my S3-805 card upon exit from X
properly, 3.1 fixes this).
--
[email-masked]

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

From: [email-masked] (Hendrik G. Seliger)
Crossposted-To: comp.mail.smail
Subject: Re: Security hole - has noone noticed so far?
Date: 5 Oct 1994 11:41:02 GMT
Reply-To: [email-masked]

Martin Bartosch ([email-masked]) wrote:
: Hi,

: while searching a flaw in my smail configuration files, I discovered
: a flaw in _my_ smail setup. I cannot say whether the following is
: true for every implementation and do not know if this has been
: reported before. So be gentle with me.

: Configuration: smail 3.1.28 which is included in Linux Slackware 2.0.0.
: (tried both binary distribution and locally compiled stuff)

: /usr/lib/sendmail is a symbolic link to /usr/bin/smail.

: try

: /usr/lib/sendmail -d -D/etc/nologin [email-masked]

: as a normal user and have fun explaining it to your sysadmin. I was
: awed when I found out...

This really looks like a problem to me. Smail is only able to deliver
mail if it's suid root. Having group mail and group writing permissions
in all relevant directories is not enough (just checked). Is it using
some other priviledged stuff? I'll have a look at the sources tonight;
in the worst case, I'll disable the '-D' option for my site.

        Hank

--
======================================================================
         Hendrik G. Seliger                  Universitaet Essen
     [email-masked]                Schuetzenbahn 70
      Tel.: +49-201-183-2898                45117 Essen, Germany
======================================================================
             "Handling interrupts is simple." (G. Pajari)
             "Interrupts are an unpleasant fact of life." (A. Tanenbaum)

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

From: [email-masked] (Jim Jagielski)
Crossposted-To: comp.mail.smail
Subject: Re: Security hole - has noone noticed so far?
Date: 5 Oct 94 11:20:10 GMT
Reply-To: [email-masked] (Jim Jagielski)

[email-masked] (Martin Bartosch) writes:

>Hi,

>while searching a flaw in my smail configuration files, I discovered
>a flaw in _my_ smail setup. I cannot say whether the following is
>true for every implementation and do not know if this has been
>reported before. So be gentle with me.

>Configuration: smail 3.1.28 which is included in Linux Slackware 2.0.0.
>(tried both binary distribution and locally compiled stuff)

>/usr/lib/sendmail is a symbolic link to /usr/bin/smail.

>try

>/usr/lib/sendmail -d -D/etc/nologin [email-masked]

>as a normal user and have fun explaining it to your sysadmin. I was
>awed when I found out...

I've never seen anything officially out (though it may be coming soon),
but one of the 1st things I did when installing smail was patch src/main.c
to use fopen_as_user instead of fopen when -D is used.
-- 
#include <std/disclaimer.h>
  |     Jim Jagielski      |  [email-masked]  |  V: 301 286-5964  |
  | NASA/GSFC, Code 734.4  |     Greenbelt, MD 20771     |  F: 301 286-1719  |
                <<  Hey! Your karma just ran over my dogma!  >>

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

From: [email-masked] (Mikael Nordqvist)
Crossposted-To: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.systems,comp.os.linux.misc
Subject: Re: Mystery Chip...AMD
Date: 6 Oct 1994 09:48:52 GMT

[ Followups are directoed toward comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.systems as this
  has nothing to do with Linux ]

>As far as reliability, the AMD 486DX2/66 is an exact duplicate of Intel's 
>chip, or so I read in PC Magazine. And at an average of 100 to 150 dollars
>less than Intel, I am a buyer!

If you are about to buy a new CPU, you might want to check out AMD's
recently released DX2/80. Goes for about the same price as an Intel DX2/66
here in Sweden.

/Mikael
-- 
Mikael Nordqvist, student    | [email-masked] | I'm not paraniod, it's just
Lund Institute of Technology | [email-masked]   | that everyone is out to get me

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

From: [email-masked] (Christopher Gori)
Subject: Calling all imake gurus
Date: 6 Oct 1994 05:15:56 GMT

Well, I have a fairly bizarre problem - my imake doesn't work, and thus
neither does my xmkmf, which I need to actually use some new packages.

I have checked permissions, I have gotten a new /usr/X11/lib/X11/config 
tree, both from Slackware and from other people, and also gotten a new
imake binary.  My original install was from Slackware 1.1.1, a rather
old one, and I didn't use X until Xfree86 2.1.1, which is what I installed.

Here's fairly typical results (same thing if run as root - therefore
should not be a permission problem):

isengard:~/dlds/not-installed/xdaliclock-2.02> xmkmf
mv Makefile Makefile.bak
imake -DUseInstalled -I/usr/X386/lib/X11/config -v
cpp -I. -Uunix -traditional -DUseInstalled -I/usr/X386/lib/X11/config
cc: No input files
imake: Exit code 1.  Stop.
isengard:~/dlds/not-installed/xdaliclock-2.02>

I believe that means that cpp is not getting the correct #include
"imake.tmpl" but I could be wrong.

Any assistance appreciated.

        Chris Gori
        [email-masked]
        [email-masked]
        http://isengard.stanford.edu/~cgori/index.html

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

From: [email-masked] (Christopher Gori)
Subject: Re: Bug in Linux 'mv'?
Date: 6 Oct 1994 05:20:32 GMT

([email-masked] (Craig Woodward)) wrote: 

>In article <[email-masked]>,
>>
>>TYpically UNIX mv does not work across volumes.  I'm suprised it doesnt 
>>error out on you.  The standard way to move things across volumes is to 
>>use tar to copy it, and then rm -r the original.
>
>       What about `cp -arp * /splat`?  Much simpler then tar.
>
>                                                       -Woody

NO NO NO

cp doesn't copy symlinks.  If you want a completely messed up file tree, go
for it, otherwise use tar from the source tree:

        tar cvpf - | (cd /target ; tar xvpf -)

Or a close equivalent.

        Chris Gori
        [email-masked]
        [email-masked]

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

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End of Linux-Admin Digest
******************************