Subject: Linux-Admin Digest #167
From: Digestifier <[email-masked]>
To: [email-masked]
Date: Sun, 9 Oct 94 15:14:12 EDT

Linux-Admin Digest #167, Volume #2                Sun, 9 Oct 94 15:14:12 EDT

Contents:
  Re: Linux and X (Michael B. Montvelishsky)
  Re: Pentiums (Alan  T Shutko)
  question about Xwin (nivek)
  Re: 16-user dial-up Linux? (Bart Kindt)
  Re: Security hole - has noone noticed so far? (Michael H Price II)
  Re: PPP faster then 38.4 (Andreas Haumer)
  HELP with CDROM problems (Sid Boyce)
  Re: finger tells me "never logged in" ? how to fix it? (Andrew Robinson)
  Re: Bug in Linux 'mv'? (Michael H Price II)
  Help! NCR 53c810 problems with bootdisk (Rolf Larsen)
  Please don't post security holess... (Isis Leslie)
  tftp on Linux (Greg Shaw)
  PC m/boards + ncr PCI (some tips + info) (Angelo Haritsis)
  Re: tar help (Jeff Kesselman)
  Re: Installing Manpages (Jeff Kesselman)
  Re: Mathematica, GAUSS (Eric Gustafson)

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

From: [email-masked] (Michael B. Montvelishsky)
Subject: Re: Linux and X
Date: Fri, 7 Oct 1994 07:06:44 GMT

Michael Hutera ([email-masked]) wrote:
: When I start up X the window is not centered. The whole screen shifts to the
: right. Is there a way to center it?

: Mike Hutera

1. Start X
2. Start some shell
3. Start vgaset
4. Adjust the screen (--help available)
5. Remember the ticks and edit Xconfig.

Michael Montvelishsky

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

From: [email-masked] (Alan  T Shutko)
Subject: Re: Pentiums
Date: 07 Oct 1994 07:18:01 GMT

>>>>> "Shaune" == Shaune Beattie <[email-masked]> writes:
In article <[email-masked]> [email-masked] (Shaune Beattie) writes:

Shaune> version of gcc would be made... as it is I would guess the

I heard a rumor that an official verion was in the works... but no specifics.

Shaune> 486-100 to be faster? Anyone confirm/deny this?  Tried the

Someone posted benchmarks a while back... P-60 was marginally faster
on ints than the DX4 (non P-optimized), but smeared it when it came to
floats.  Unfortunately, floats aren't used as often....
--

========================================================================
Alan Shutko - Home of the Mighty Morphin' Power Sig - [email-masked]
On the other hand, I have four fingers and a thumb.
GCS/S d? H s+:- g+ p?+ !au a-- w+(@) v+++(-) C++++ UL++++ P+>+++ L++ 3 E+++
  N++ K++ W--- M-- V-- -po+ Y+ t+ 5+++ j R G !tv D- B--- e+>++++ u h f r++ n- 
  y+(**) 

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

From: [email-masked] (nivek)
Subject: question about Xwin
Date: 4 Oct 1994 19:20:22 -0400

If I connect PPP to a remote site that runs Xwindows.. is it at all 
possible to run X remotely provided my PC has the video card to do it?
I connect to Suns what run OpenLook.. I doubt this is possible, but was 
just wondering if it was to all you Linux gurus.. please respond via E-mail
muchas gracias

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

From: [email-masked] (Bart Kindt)
Subject: Re: 16-user dial-up Linux?
Date: Sat, 8 Oct 1994 05:30:38 GMT

In article <[email-masked]> [email-masked] (Bill Stapleton) writes:
>Path: otago.ac.nz!canterbury.ac.nz!waikato!ames!lll-winken.llnl.gov!uwm.edu!magrathea.csd.uwm.edu!wls
>From: [email-masked] (Bill Stapleton)
>Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.admin
>Subject: 16-user dial-up Linux?
>Date: 5 Oct 1994 20:26:15 GMT
>Organization: Computing Services, U of Wisc-Milwaukee
>Lines: 13
>Distribution: world
>Message-ID: <[email-masked]>
>NNTP-Posting-Host: 129.89.70.45

>We're planning on setting up a Pentium-90 type machine (64 meg, PCI/SCSI 2 gig)
>with 16 modem lines for dial-up usage.  We haven't decided what hardware to
>connect the serial lines with though.  Are people actually using any of those
>neat new multiport "intelligent" serial boards, especially with modem control?

>Anybody doing multi-user dial-up willing to share hints/warnings/experience,
>or bleeding edge hardware horror tales??  :-)  Please E-mail and I'll post a
>summary.  Thanks...

>--
>Bill Stapleton
>     [email-masked]
>     uwmcsd4!wls

I am about to get a 16 port card myself for our Internet SLIP server. It 
looks like the only *inteligent* card available for Linux is the Cyclade card. 
 Info on this card via: cyclades.netcom.com

I have not tried it yet, but I have not been able to find any other inteligent 
card for which a Linux driver exists...

If you hear of anything else, let me know. This card is pretty expensive..

Greetings, Bart.

====================================================================================
Bart Kindt (ZL4FOX) System Operator, Efficient Software NZ LTD, Dunedin, New Zealand
====================================================================================

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

From: [email-masked] (Michael H Price II)
Subject: Re: Security hole - has noone noticed so far?
Date: 7 Oct 1994 12:16:01 -0500

Of course, dare I say it, everyone could just go ahead and use sendmail
instead of smail ;-)

Michael

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

From: [email-masked] (Andreas Haumer)
Subject: Re: PPP faster then 38.4
Date: 08 Oct 1994 20:47:42 GMT

Hi!

In article <[email-masked]> [email-masked] (Steven Kornreich) writes:

   Can you run PPP or slip faster than 38.4? I have a V.34 modem that I use  
   to communicate with my Internet provider that also has a v.34 modem on his  
   side.
   Thanks

Well, you can use the "setserial" command to change the baud rate of your
serial device up to 115kb. With this command you can tell the device-
driver to use a higher baud rate when your application requests 38.4kb
(but a "stty -a < /dev/ttyxx" will still show you a speed of 38400 baud)
See the "setserial" man-page for more details!
Of course, you should use a 16550A UART to get this high throughput!

I'm writing this using a SLIP-line with "dip" and a USRobotics V.FC modem
at a serial connection speed of 115kb on my linux side and it works, as you
can see    :-)

Hope, this helps...

andreas
--

======================+===============================+========================
andreas haumer        | phone: +43.1.6256583          |
buchengasse 67/8      | fax: +43.1.408355719          |
a-1100 vienna         | e-mail:                       | god is real - 
austria               | [email-masked]  | unless declared integer

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

Crossposted-To: comp.os.linux.help
From: [email-masked] (Sid Boyce)
Subject: HELP with CDROM problems
Reply-To: [email-masked] (Sid Boyce)
Date: Sat, 8 Oct 1994 12:00:42 GMT

     The following was received via Packet Radio TCP/IP mail and has been
posted on Chris' behalf.
     Any help greatfully received, thanks in advance.
Regards
Sid .... G3VBV ... Amdahl(UK) ....
      ==========================================================
From gb7bir.ampr.org!g7bgp Sat Oct  8 08:09:26 1994
Subject: Lazermate CD DRIVE
To: g3vbv%g3vbv.ampr.org
Date: Sat, 8 Oct 1994 08:06:46 +0100 (BST)
From: "Chris Lord" <[email-masked]>
Content-Length: 1124      
Status: RO

Hi Sid.

I wonder if you could help as leigh suggested you may be able to.I have just
fitted a Lazermate INT 562 CD rom in my machine or may be known as a
PANASONIC CR-562-B which it mentions in the CDROM-HOWTO and the Kenel info
but it always looks for a Sound Blaster card on bootup and cannot find one.
I am using the interface that came with the drive.I wonder if you know what
i have got to setup ?.Leigh said that if you do not know you may be able to
ask on the internet for me ?.

It does say in the CDROM-HOWTO that for the panasonic drive it might be
better to get the kernel to auto-probe on bootup but i am not sure how this
is done ?.I did see Darryl do it at his house the other weekend on my
machine when i saw you there if you remember me ?.DO you know.

Hope you can help me.

73's..Chris
-- 
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------+
|   Chris Lord (G7BGP)   |  G7BGP@GB7BIR.#29.GBR.EU | [email-masked] |
| SysOp of GB7BIR WM HUB |       0121-329-2195      |    LINUX  FOREVER!    |
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------+

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

From: [email-masked] (Andrew Robinson)
Subject: Re: finger tells me "never logged in" ? how to fix it?
Date: 04 Oct 1994 23:19:05 GMT

In article <[email-masked]> [email-masked] (Jacek A. Ponarski) writes:

>Hi all,
>I guess the subject says it all.  That shows even when I was logged in.  
>Thanks,

It looks like your /var/adm/lastlog (or /usr/adm/lastlog) file either does
not exist or is not readable.  That is where the last login information is
stored.  If it doesn't exist, you can simply create it.

--
Andrew Robinson
[email-masked]  (MIME and Andrew mail welcome)

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

From: [email-masked] (Michael H Price II)
Subject: Re: Bug in Linux 'mv'?
Date: 7 Oct 1994 12:18:10 -0500

[email-masked] (Scott Barker) writes:

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

>the '-a' option of copy tells it to copy symlinks. It implies '-d' which is
>"no-dereference". It works just fine for me.

Regardless of that, tar is still safer.

Michael

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

From: Rolf Larsen
Subject: Help! NCR 53c810 problems with bootdisk
Date: 9 Oct 1994 13:24:40 GMT

I use a Install bootdisk with an updated NCR boot image which works well.
When I installs Linux, I use custom disks ncr1 & ncr2. When these disks are installed I get
an error message wich tells me that there are maybe missing som files on the disks, but I chose to continue,
and everything seems to work well. (I know that the filesizes at the disk is a bit different than what
displays in ncrdisc1 & ncrdisc2, but i just asume that there's maybe an difference in the way that unix and dos counts bytes..)

Anyhow, in the setup I choose to not install scsi & ide files located in a1, but instead i select ncr later on.

When setup makes a bootup floppy, it seems to take to short time to make it, and it will not work when i try to boot on it either. 
If I include scsi or ide support from disk a1, then the bootdisk that setup makes will boot, but the system will not be able to connect
to my scsi drives.

My conclusion is that i either do something wrong, or that i am missing som files. Anyone that can give me som help here?

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Rolf Larsen     Digital Partner
[email-masked]   Internet Provider
PMD Data a.s    Tel: +47 371 51644
Postb. 181      Fax: +47 371 51900
4951 RISOR      Mob: 942 94005

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

From: [email-masked] (Isis Leslie)
Subject: Please don't post security holess...
Date: 9 Oct 1994 12:20:19 -0400

I'm rather unconfortable with the posting of all of these security holes.
For a while I was under the impression that this was a no-no, and that
while sure, posting a "fix" or "work around will tell those in the know 
just what the whole is, at least it makes it a little tougher.
 
I had the smail hole fixed for a while, but none the less imediately after
the post to the announce group I had about 15 incidents of people trying to
mail to /etc/passwd. (Remotely and they were too stupid to not make it
so I couldn't get their user id's...go figure)

While nothing happened to my machine, someday I won't be able to check my
system the same day the initital post is made.

peace-Isis

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

From: [email-masked] (Greg Shaw)
Subject: tftp on Linux
Date: Tue, 4 Oct 1994 23:30:43 GMT

        I was trying to get some xterminals up the other day, and was
having a heck of a time getting them to boot.  After messing with tftp for
a couple of hours, I grabbed the source from the net.  The gotcha:

        Different than other systems, tftp on Linux runs from the root
area, not /tftpboot.

        So, to get an xterm up and running, boot it from /tftpboot/filename
rather than just filename.

        If you find this solution obvious, please disregard.  I just wanted
to save others some time and effort in getting tftp devices to boot.

Greg.

Gregory Shaw                            Programmer, SysAdmin
fmSoft, Inc.                            Network Planner
[email-masked]                   And homebrewer...
-- 
Gregory Shaw                            Programmer, SysAdmin
fmSoft, Inc.                            Network Planner
[email-masked]                   And homebrewer...

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

From: [email-masked] (Angelo Haritsis)
Crossposted-To: comp.os.linux.help
Subject: PC m/boards + ncr PCI (some tips + info)
Date: 9 Oct 94 14:52:20 GMT

Hello all,

A while ago I asked the net about PCI motherboards that will work
well with linux and Drew's NCR PCI SCSI driver.

This is a very short summary of ideas I collected from various people
together with some personal views.

Before I start, I would like to point out that most of my questions
had answers in the comprehensive PCI-HOWTO, which you should read
when you decide to plunge into the PCI world. Get it from your favourite
tsx-11 mirror.

I will try to quote information here that is not found in the PCI-HOWTO.
IN fact a part of this posting will be sent to the PCI-HOWTO maintainers
so that it will eventually contain most of the info you will need.

486 PCI motherboard: SA486P AIO-II
==================================
The motherboard I eventually bought (in the UK) is one supporting
486 SX/DX/DX2/DX4 chips. It is called SA486P AIO-II. Features include:
Intel Saturn v2 chipset
Phoenix BIOS (flash eprom option)
NCR scsi BIOS v 3.04.00
256K 15ns cache (max 512) write back & write through
4 72-pin SIMM slots in 2 banks
3 PCI slots, 4 ISA
On-board NCR 53c810 scsi controller
On-board IDE / floppy / 2 x 16550A uarts / enhanced parallel

I bought it from a company (UK) called ICS (note I have no connections 
whatsoever with the company, just a happy customer). I use a 486/DX2-66 CPU.

Before I had a VLB 486 m/board with a buslogic BT-445S controller that
I was borrowing. I have 2 scsi devices: 1 barracuda 2.1GB ST12550N disk
and a Wangtek 5525ES tape drive.
I was expecting a lot of adventures by switching to the new motherboard,
esp after hearing all these non-success stories on the net. To my
surprise everything worked flawlessly on the 1st boot! (1.1.50). And it 
has been doing so for about a month now. I did not even have to repartition
the disk: apparently the disk geometry bios translation of the 2 
controllers is the same.
Linux has had no problems at all. SCSI is visibly much faster as well
(sorry, I have no actual performance measurements).
The only problems (related to Drew's linux ncr scsi driver - thanks for the
good work Drew!) are:
(1) lilo cannot boot from the scsi disk unless you manually edit /etc/disktab
    (a one-off simple procedure).
(2) disconnect/reconnect is disabled; ditto with synchronous negotiation.
    The former just causes scsi ops to "hold" during certain lengthy 
    tape operations (eg rewind). The latter just looses some extra spped.
    These will not be a problem in the near future. 
    I hear Drew is working to fix them.

I had a small problem with MS Windoze! On win startup I get this warning:
{
The Microsoft Windows 32-bit disk driver (WDCTRL) cannot be loaded. There
is unrecognizable disk software installed on this computer.

The address that MS-DOS uses to communicate with the hard disk has been
changed. Some software, such as disk-caching software, changes this address.

If you aren't running such software, you should run a virus-detection
program to make sure there is no virus on your computer.

To continue starting Windows without using the 32-bit
disk driver, press any key.
}
This is not really a problem. All works fine after this. And if I remove
the WDCTRL driver from the SYSTEM.INI I get no warning. But I am
wondering whether I am loosing in performance (it does not look
like it). I can state that this problem did *not* appear with the 
buslogic VLB 445S scsi controller.

All else is fine. I tried the serial ports with some dos/windows s/w
and worked ok. The IDE/floppy work ok as well. I have not tried the parallel
yet. The motherboard is quite fast and so far I am very pleased with the 
upgrade. I have not yet tried a PCI graphics board. I will later
on. I am using an old ISA S3 which is fine at the moment). 

GENERAL TIPS FOR: PCI MOTHERBOARDS + LINUX NCR PCI SCSI
=======================================================

This was compiled from various people's postings.

o DON'Ts:
  Do *NOT* go for combination VLB/PCI motherboards. They usually have
  a lot of problems. Get a plain PCI version (with ISA slots as well
  of course).
  A lot of bad things have been heard about OPTI chipset PCI motherboards.
  Someone hints: "Avoid the OPTi (82C596/82C597/82C822) chipset based
  motherboards like the TMC PCI54PV".

  Rumours say that Intel chipset PCI motherboards will have problems
  with more than one bus-mastering PCI board. I have not tried this one
  yet on mine and have nothing to suggest. I also heard that the
  Saturn II chipset is problematic, but this is the one I use
  and it is perfectly ok! Advice: Try to negotiate a 1-2 week money
  back agreement with your supplier, in case the motherboard 
  you get has problems with the use you plan for it.

o SIMM slots: go for 72-pin only SIMMs for speed:
  Some (all?) of the mainboards which take 30 pin SIMMs use a 32 bit
  main memory interface, and will be significantly slower than the
  Intel based boards which all use a 64 bit or permantly interleaved
  memory interface.  You might want to keep that in mind.  

o Praised PCI Pentium motherboard : P90 Intel motherboard with the Intel
  Premiere II chipset (aka Plato). Get the latest BIOS which has
  concatenated NCR scsi BIOS 3.04.00. Otherwise DOS won't see your 
  scsi disk(s) if you use a BIOS-less 53c810 based controller.
  NCR SCSI BIOS exists in the AMI BIOS of the plato after version 1.00.08 
  (or maybe verion 1.00.06). This BIOS is FLASH upgradeable so you should be
  able to get the upgrade on a floppy from your supplier. The current
  version is 1.00.10 and has all early problems fixed.

o The value in the interrupt line PCI configuration register is usually
  set manually (for compatability with legacy ISA boards) in the 
  extended CMOS setup screens on a per-slot or per-device basis.
  Older PCI mainboards also force you to set jumpers for each 
  PCI slot/device which select how PCI INTA and perhaps INTB, INTC,
  and INTD are mapped to an 8259 IRQ line, Obviously, if 
  these jumpers exist on your board, they must match the 
  settings in the extended CMOS setup.
  Also note that some boards (notably Viglens) have silkscreens
  and instruction manuals which disagree with the wiring, and some 
  experimentation may be in order.

o Info about the different NCR 8xx family scsi chips:
  All NCR 8XX Chips are dircet connect PCI bus mastering devices, that 
  have no preformance difference wether on motherboard or add in 
  option card.  All devices comply with PCI 2.0 Specification, and can 
  burst 32 bit data at the full 33 MHz (133Mbytes/Sec)
  
  53C810 = 8 bit Fast SCSI-2 (10 MB/Sec) Single ended only
           Requires Integrated Mother board BIOS 100 pin Quad Flat Pack (PQFP) 
           Worlds first PCI SCSI Chip, Volumes make it the most inexpensive.
           
  53C815 = 8 bit Fast SCSI-2 (10 MB/Sec) Single Ended only
           Support ROM BIOS interface, which makes it ideal for add-in 
           card Designs. 128 Pin QFP
           
  53C825 = 8 bit Fast SCSI-2, Single ended or Differential
           16 bit Fast SCSI-2 (20 MB/Sec), Single ended or Differetial 
           Also has support for external Rom, making it a good 
           candidate for add in cards. 160 pin QFP
           Not supported by linux yet. Must have devices with wide
           or differential scsi to use these features.

  There are 4 new devices planned for announcement late this year and into 
  early next year.  Footprint compitible with 810 and 825 with some new 
  features.
  
  All the Chips require a BIOS in DOS/Intel applications.  The 810 is 
  the only chip that needs it resident on the motherboard. Latest NCR 
  SCSI BIOS version: 3.04.00
  The bios supports disks >1GB for DOS.

o Performance of the 53c810:
  C't magazine's DOS benchmarks showed that it was significantly
  faster than the Buslogic BT-946, one user noted a 10-15% performance
  increase versus an Adaptec 2940, and with a very fast disk it may be 
  2.5X as fast as an Adaptec 1540.

Hope you find this helpful,
Angelo

-- 
#include <standard.disclaimer.h>
 Angelo Haritsis, Applied Systems Section
 s-mail: Dpt of Computing,Imperial College, 180 Queen's Gate, London SW7 2BZ, UK
 e-mail: [email-masked] - !!!NEW!!! tel:+44 71 594 8434 - fax:+44 71 581 8024

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

From: [email-masked] (Jeff Kesselman)
Subject: Re: tar help
Date: Tue, 4 Oct 1994 05:26:06 GMT

In article <[email-masked]>,
Viktor T. Toth <[email-masked]> wrote:
>In article <[email-masked]> [email-masked] () writes:
>
>>I'm having trouble with tar.  When I try to us it, all I get is:
>>
>>tar: can't open /dev/rmt0 : No such device or address
>>
>>Why does it say this?  I looked for /dev/rmt0 and it's there.
>>Thanks.
>
>Do you actually have a tape device on your system? Or are you trying to 
>(un)tar a disk file?

If you are trying to untar a .tar file, use the f option
(as in tar xvf <filename>).

>
>Just because the entry /dev/rmt0 exists, that doesn't mean that you actually 
>have a real device behind it.
>
>Viktor
>

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

From: [email-masked] (Jeff Kesselman)
Subject: Re: Installing Manpages
Date: Tue, 4 Oct 1994 05:29:00 GMT

In article <[email-masked]>,
Paul E Rubin <[email-masked]> wrote:
>
>  Hi. I've recently got a hold of some manpages for Xt functions to program
>X-windows. However, I'm having a hard time installing therm..
>I've edit MANPATH      a few times, but the change never takes place.
>say the manpages are in the directory ~john/manpages. I've edit MANPATH as
>setenv MANPATH /home/john/manpages ${MANPATH} in my .cshrc file. I've tryed
>loging out and rebooting the machine, but somehow the new path doesn't get 
>updated.
>
>anyone have any idea why??
>
>I have slackware 1.1.8
>
>thanks
>
>Paul
>
I don't know about Slackware, but my Yygdrasi luses a more complex system 
by which it maps directories in the path variable to create  a manpath 
based on what you can really access. If you have the same system, you 
shoudl be able to get all the info by typing
man manpath

Jeff Kesselman

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

From: egustafs@vlsia (Eric Gustafson)
Subject: Re: Mathematica, GAUSS
Date: 4 Oct 1994 23:33:44 GMT

Ted Harding ([email-masked]) wrote:
: In response to queries from colleagues, I am trying to find out if
: the mathematics packages MATHEMATICA and GAUSS are available for
: Linux, or in UNIX version which can be persuaded to work in Linux.

I talked to Wolfram Research about 6 months ago and at that time they
told me that they were considering porting Mathematica to linux but
had not made their minds up yet.  The person I talked to strongly
suggested that I send them email requesting Mathematica for Linux.  I
forget the first part of the address, but its [email-masked] for
those who want to voice their opinion.

--
Eric Gustafson                                      [email-masked]
Electrical & Computer Engineering                    [email-masked]
University of Colorado -- UCCS                        Phone: (719) 637-8022
** Warning ** Planet is 97% full please remove unneeded inhabitants !!

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

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