Subject: Linux-Admin Digest #191
From: Digestifier <[email-masked]>
To: [email-masked]
Date: Fri, 14 Oct 94 03:14:17 EDT

Linux-Admin Digest #191, Volume #2               Fri, 14 Oct 94 03:14:17 EDT

Contents:
  Re: Xterminals with Linux as X server (Larry Doolittle)
  Re: Extreme delays telnetting into linux box (UALR HAM RADIO CLUB)
  Second Ethernet card not Recognized (International Tech. Assoc)
  Second Ethernet card not Recognized (International Tech. Assoc)
  Re: fsck during boot: already mounted (Uwe Bonnes)
  Re: [Q] I/O error with sendmail (Tim Bass (Network Systems Engineer))
  Messed up my root password! (Jim Frendewey)
  printcap for hplj IIp  (Thomas Rose)
  Re: Mystery Chip...AMD (Marten Liebster)
  Re: XFree86-3.1 - Whoopee! (Billy the Kid)
  Re: Extreme delays telnetting into linux box (Mark 'Enry' Komarinski)
  Re: [Q] I/O error with sendmail (Tim Bass (Network Systems Engineer))
  Need Italian and Spanish Xmodmaps (Jesus Ramos)
  Re: EXT2 FS Recovery (Andrew R. Tefft)
  Re: SCSI vs IDE (Lars Knudsen)
  NFS not enabled in q2/idekern.cfg Slak 2.0.1 (Raghunath K. Rao)
  Re: /etc/utmp not writable by xterm's.  Why? (Christopher Etz)
  Re: Linux NOT logging people out on hangup (Bart Kindt)

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

From: [email-masked] (Larry Doolittle)
Subject: Re: Xterminals with Linux as X server
Reply-To: [email-masked]
Date: Thu, 13 Oct 1994 14:42:21 GMT

Klamer Schutte ([email-masked]) wrote:
: In <[email-masked]> [email-masked] (Ken Edwards) writes:

: :Ken Edwards ([email-masked]) wrote:
: :: Mark A. Davis ([email-masked]) wrote:

: :: How many Xterminals are you looking to hook to one Linux machine?

: High response times you get from a system is most of the time due to to paging
: and / or swapping. Adding a faster CPU will not help you very much. Adding
: memory will. A nice rull of thumb is to have 8 Meg of memory for every
: X display you manage, and an additional 4 Meg for the system software (and thus
: you need about 12Meg for a stand alone system). Users only having one xterm
: reading news will use less; power users will use more.

: This 8 Meg is the amount of menory which is swapped in at a certain moment.
: A window manager typically is used often, and stays swapped in. So running
: this on a xterminal rather then on the host is a good way to save available RAM.
: Besides that, it is one of the X client programs you have to wait for when
: it should be paged in. Thaat is the major advantage of running it local -
: switching to another window does not cost the time to swap in the 
: window manager anymore (but still perhaps the time to swap in another client!)

: (PS The above is based upon experiences with Sun Sparc 1 en 2 -- but will be
:     similar for Linux boxes.)

Hmm.  Does Sun's OS do a good job of sharing libraries and executables?
Linux should need only one copy of libc, libX11, LibXaw, libXt, xterm,
fvwm, etc in memory at once.  All each successive user needs is the
local data space.  I suspect 8M + 4M/user is a better estimate for
Linux, although I haven't tried it.  I am about to go from 8M to 16M,
and that should take me from 0 users to 2 users - sounds about right :-).

            - Larry Doolittle   [email-masked]

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

From: [email-masked] (UALR HAM RADIO CLUB)
Subject: Re: Extreme delays telnetting into linux box
Date: 12 Oct 94 15:24:36 CST

In article <[email-masked]>, [email-masked] (Chris Barker) writes:
> Subject: Extreme delays on ethernet login
> After swithching to Yggdrasil Fall 94 Kernel 1.1.47 I have experienced extreme
> delays when telnetting into my box from my PC over ethernet. Upto a minute of
> delay before I see the issue.net message and a login prompt.  This did not occur
> using the 1.1.0 kernel.  It also takes a long time to ping the box, although
> pinging my PC from the linux box is ok and telnetting out over my slip is fine.
> I am using gated 3.5 alpha, but this was happening even running routed. Every
> thing is fine once I get in, but it is so slooooow to login! Any ideas?

  I have been having the same problem with 1.0, 1.0.9, and 1.1.8 slackware 
  kernels from sunsite.  I am using NCSA Telnet on the dos side.

> 

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

From: [email-masked] (International Tech. Assoc)
Subject: Second Ethernet card not Recognized
Date: 13 Oct 1994 13:42:44 -0700

[ Article crossposted from comp.os.linux.help ]
[ Author was Kevin B. Murphy ]
[ Posted on 10 Oct 1994 19:16:38 -0400 ]

Could someone tell me how to get linux to recognize a second ethernet card?
There is several eth? device files in /dev and someone told me that Space.c
had something to do with it.  Thanks.

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

From: [email-masked] (International Tech. Assoc)
Subject: Second Ethernet card not Recognized
Date: 13 Oct 1994 13:42:55 -0700

[ Article crossposted from comp.os.linux.help ]
[ Author was International Tech. Assoc ]
[ Posted on 12 Oct 1994 20:50:30 -0700 ]

I have the same problem :) I already have a very well connection to the 
internet on my eth0 device. I want to install a second ethernet card and 
route my Novell Netware through the Linux box. I don't know why Linux 
does not recognize my second card.

Thanks

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

From: [email-masked] (Uwe Bonnes)
Subject: Re: fsck during boot: already mounted
Date: Wed, 12 Oct 1994 20:30:21 GMT

Harvey J. Stein ([email-masked]) wrote:
> In article <[email-masked]>
> slc@PROBLEM_WITH_INEWS_DOMAIN_FILE (Scott L. Crutchfield) writes:

>    I am running Yggdrasil P&P (summer 1994). It used to check the
>    filesystems every once in a while when during startup, even if they
>    were clean ("maximal mount-count reached"). Now it always complains
>    that the partitions are already mounted and it's aborting the checks.
>    I always shut down with "halt". I don't think I did anything to
>    /etc/rc or /etc/rc.local, but it's been a while so I can't be sure.

> If you recompiled the kernel, you need to run rdev to modify the boot
> image so that it mounts the root read-only.

You can you /etc/lilo.conf instead. E.g:
# LILO configuration file
# generated by 'liloconfig'
#
# Start LILO global section
boot = /dev/sda7
#compact        # faster, but won't work on all systems.
# delay = 5
vga = -2
ramdisk = 0     # paranoia setting
# End LILO global section
# Linux bootable partition config begins
image = /vmlinuz
  root = /dev/sda7
  label = linux
  read-only  
  ^^^^^^^^^
-- 
Uwe Bonnes  [email-masked]

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

From: [email-masked] (Tim Bass (Network Systems Engineer))
Subject: Re: [Q] I/O error with sendmail
Date: 13 Oct 1994 21:27:46 GMT

Just got back from a briefing all day and yesterday.  I'll
upload the mail.c binary tonight.

Hope thats okay.

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

From: [email-masked] (Jim Frendewey)
Subject: Messed up my root password!
Date: 10 Oct 1994 18:15:56 GMT

I changed my root password, being security conscious, but apparently changed it
to something I can't repeat. I have tried all the combinations of what I
thought I used but to no avail.

The way I have tried to get out of this mess is by bring up my system in 
single user mode, which works, and then changing the password. The problem is
the system indicates that it has mounted my files as rw but everything behaves
as if has been mounted read-only. If I cat mtab it shows (rw). I am new to
Unix and especially to 'Unix administration'. Any help would be greatly
appreciated.

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

From: [email-masked] (Thomas Rose)
Subject: printcap for hplj IIp 
Date: Tue, 11 Oct 1994 20:06:27 GMT

Hi !

Can somebody send me a printcap for a hp laserjet IIp with 1,5 MB Memory ?

              Tom

-- 
=====
Thomas Rose  Jakbo-Kneip-Strasse 92  40595 Duesseldorf   Germany
Telefon:     +49 5251 370231 | +49 211 707484
E-Mail :     [email-masked]

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

From: [email-masked] (Marten Liebster)
Crossposted-To: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.systems,comp.os.linux.misc
Subject: Re: Mystery Chip...AMD
Date: 13 Oct 1994 11:28:45 -0400

Brad Matthew Garcia ([email-masked]) wrote:

: In article <[email-masked]>, 
: [email-masked] (Daniel Zappala) writes:
: |> 
: |> In article <[email-masked]>, 
: |> [email-masked] (John Palaima) writes:
: |> > 
: |> > Hah.  Apparently you didn't hear that the Am486 DX/2 66 could be safely
: |> 
: |> But a DX2-80 can't be just a relabeled, overclocked DX2-66. 
: |> It's bus speed has to be 40 Mhz.
: |> 
: |> Daniel
: I think that you are confused, Dan, between a relabled 66 MHz *system* and
: a relabled 66 MHz *cpu*.  They simply put the 66 MHz chip on a 40 MHz
: motherboard (which is also accomplished by changing the speed of the
: motherboard) and...  TADA! - a 486DX2-80!
: -- 
But a poster earlier mentioned that he just bought an AMD 486dx/2 80 CHIP.  
I would have to agree with Daniel, that the chip would internally running at
80 Mhz and externally at 40 Mhz.  This chip would be perfect for my MB - running
at 40 Mhz with a TI 486DLC-40 chip on it.

So when is AMD comming out with a 486dx4-120? :-)  

Marten
-- 
========================================
Marten M. Liebster   Please no flames for spelling,
[email-masked]    I already know I can't spell!!

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

From: [email-masked] (Billy the Kid)
Subject: Re: XFree86-3.1 - Whoopee!
Date: 13 Oct 1994 14:35:36 -0700

XFree86-3.1 is neet alright, but is anyone having problems with the 
WD90C33 part of the SVGA server?  When I start a new application with 
color buttons, xpaint for example, parts of the buttons leave residue on 
the screen.  The "residue" "sticks" to the glass, so no matter which part 
of the virtual desktop I am on, it is still there.  The effect is 
cumulative and won't go away.  Is there a root window refresh? or maybe a 
function to redraw the whole screen?

Thanks,
Davin Petersen
[email-masked]
-- 
[email-masked]  Public Access User --- Not affiliated with TECHbooks
Public Access UNIX and Internet at (503) 220-1016 (2400-14400, N81)

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

From: [email-masked] (Mark 'Enry' Komarinski)
Subject: Re: Extreme delays telnetting into linux box
Date: 13 Oct 1994 15:22:33 GMT

Klaus Lichtenwalder ([email-masked]) wrote:
: [email-masked] (Chris Barker) writes:

: >[...]
: >delays when telnetting into my box from my PC over ethernet. Upto a minute of
: >delay before I see the issue.net message and a login prompt.  This did not occur
: >using the 1.1.0 kernel.  It also takes a long time to ping the box, although
: >pinging my PC from the linux box is ok and telnetting out over my slip is fine.
: >I am using gated 3.5 alpha, but this was happening even running routed. Every
: >thing is fine once I get in, but it is so slooooow to login! Any ideas?

: Yeah, have a look at /etc/resolv.conf. There might be a reference to an
: unknown name server. Looking up this name server gives a timeout, that's
: (perhaps) your delay. Also have a look at /etc/host.conf whether bind
: or nis is referenced. If there's no name server (and no nis for that 
: matter) you might as well delete these key words, leaving only hosts
: (for looking in /etc/hosts).

We have a similar login problem, especially when connecting to a MUSH
port.  The connection from a remote host can (sometimes) sit there forever.
If, however, from the machine I connect to that port (telnet localhost 7567)
the connection from remote becomes instantly connected.  We were at first
thinking this is a problem with our code, as regular telnet appears to
work okay(who knows where that lag comes from? :).  But these
problems  may be related.  Running 1.1.49 on a Slackware setup.

--
- Mark Komarinski - [email-masked]

Linux: Commercial software gone horribly wrong.

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

From: [email-masked] (Tim Bass (Network Systems Engineer))
Subject: Re: [Q] I/O error with sendmail
Date: 13 Oct 1994 21:47:15 GMT

Done.

ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/uploads/lmail.Z

Binary only... let me know if you need the src.

Tim Bass (Network Systems Engineer) ([email-masked]) wrote:
: Just got back from a briefing all day and yesterday.  I'll
: upload the mail.c binary tonight.

: Hope thats okay.

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

From: ramos@brixton (Jesus Ramos)
Subject: Need Italian and Spanish Xmodmaps
Date: 13 Oct 1994 15:26:53 GMT

If have any of these, or you know where I can find one, please le me know.
I went to sunsite, bit they don't have either.

Thanks in advance
Jesus Ramos
[email-masked]
[email-masked]

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

From: [email-masked] (Andrew R. Tefft)
Subject: Re: EXT2 FS Recovery
Reply-To: [email-masked]
Date: Mon, 10 Oct 1994 15:57:39 GMT

In article <[email-masked]>, [email-masked] (George W. Pogue) writes:
>
>I was moving a 200M drive over to a 1Gig drive and blasted the darn thing 
>with a mkswap instead of a mke2fs (fumble brain). Nonetheless, the 
>partition is still there, I've not done anything to it. 

If you typed 'mkswap' instead of 'mke2fs' then you haven't lost anything
that mke2fs would not have destroyed anyway. So just go ahead and do the
mke2fs again.

Now, if you did mkswap on the wrong partition or something, then you
would be in trouble, but no more trouble than if you had done mke2fs 
on the wrong partition.

-- 

Andy Tefft               - new, expanded .sig -     [email-masked]

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

From: [email-masked] (Lars Knudsen)
Subject: Re: SCSI vs IDE
Date: 13 Oct 1994 10:05:02 GMT

In article <[email-masked]> [email-masked] (Mark Lord) writes:
   In article <[email-masked]> [email-masked] writes:
   <
   <    No, even on systems with one drive SCSI is a better choice than IDE
   <unless you are running a single-tasking OS like DOS. It is definately
   <possible to get transfer speeds out of IDE that are close to SCSI (but not
   <Fast & Wide SCSI). But you are paying for the speed with CPU busy waiting.

   Nope.  Just plain false.  No measurable "busy waiting" is used for IDE drives
   under linux.  Read/Write operations are interrupt driven, not polled.
   Note that the effect of this is unnoticeable under most single-user situations,
   since writes are deferred by the buffer-cache, and reads usually imply that
   the user is sitting there waiting for the data anyhow.  With lots of processes
   running and performing I/O, the general (unproven) opinion is that SCSI really
   ought to perform better.  I agree.
   -- 
   [email-masked] Mark Lord       BNR Ottawa,Canada       613-763-7482

Results on my system 486dx2-66 with SIDE enhanced IDE VL-bus
controller and Buslogic 445s SCSI-2 result in similar transfer speeds
for the two (within 20%) but in the case of IDE the CPU is more than
95% busy and with SCSI it is less than 50%.

I don't know what the CPU is doing and I don't think it really
matters, whether its waiting, busy making commands to the disk or
transfering data - the net result is that the use of SCSI leaves much
more resources for other processes.

Cheers,

  Gandalf
--
+--------------------------------+---------------------------------+
| Lars F. Knudsen, M.Sc. E.E.    | E-mail: [email-masked]   |
| Laboratory of Image Analysis   | Phone +45 98 15 85 22, ext 4967 |
| Aalborg University,            | Home: +45 98 16 94 74           |
| Fr.Bajers Vej 7                | Telefax:  +45 98 15 40 08       |
| DK-9220 Aalborg East, Denmark. |                                 |
+--------------------------------+---------------------------------+

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

From: [email-masked] (Raghunath K. Rao)
Subject: NFS not enabled in q2/idekern.cfg Slak 2.0.1
Date: Mon, 10 Oct 94 18:55:39 GMT

Hi,

Dont know if anyone already noticed this. Ignore if so.

I was trying to install the 1.1.18 kernel from the q1/idekern.tgz
on Slackware 2.0.1 and found that NFS mounting was not possible.

Turns out that the idekern.cfg shows that the kernel was compiled
with NSF disabled! Here's the extract:

        if [ "$CONFIG_INET" = "y" ]; then
        bool 'NFS filesystem support' CONFIG_NFS_FS n
                                      ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

So I had to install scsikern.tgz instead which works fine, though
hogs a little more space. However, on one machine (Compaq 386/20),
the scsikern creates some funny errors, so I had to stick to the
standarad 1.0.9 issued. 

Could the person who maintains the distribution please fix this?

Thanks

Raghu
========================================================================
                                      _____         ___        _______
K. RAGHUNATH RAO                     /____/ \      /__/\      /______/\
email : [email-masked]         |  __ \ /|    / _ \ \    /  ___  \ |
sleepy   (res) : (312)791-9428      | |__) |/    / /_\ \ \   | / | \ | |
sleepier (off) : (312)567-8815      | __  /\    |  ___  | |  | | | | | |
                                    | | \ \ \   | / | \ | |  | | |_| | |
It is the intonation and not        | | |\ \ \  | | | | | |  | \/__/ |/
the intention that matters!!        |_|/  \_\/  |_|/  |_|/    \______/ 

========================================================================

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

From: [email-masked] (Christopher Etz)
Subject: Re: /etc/utmp not writable by xterm's.  Why?
Date: Thu, 13 Oct 1994 20:53:00 GMT

Harald Milz ([email-masked]) wrote:
: In comp.os.linux.admin, Lars Hofhansl ([email-masked]) wrote:

: > I noticed this behavior too, and I wondered how the good old
: > xterm managed writing to utmp. It's quite simple: xterm is setuid root.
: > So I set rxvt uid root, and it works.

: > So far I could not see any security holes... Is that true?!

: There is -- if your xterm allows for logging. See your respective menu
: (Control - right button). I saw different xterm versions for XFree86
: (I _really_ wonder why): one which doesn't do logging, and one which does.

Mine does allow logging, and it is setuid root.  But -- stupid as I am --
I don't see the security hole.  Turning on logging, writes to a file
called `XtermLog.XXXXX' (the 5 X's are really literally) in my home
directory.  And if I make `XtermLog.XXXXX' a symbolic link to a file
owned by root (/etc/motd for example ;-)), it doesn't write at all.
So what?

        Christopher
-- 
____________________________________________________________________________
Christopher Etz            Kopernikusstr. 28          D-65929 Frankfurt/Main
[email-masked]    Tel.: +49 69 318091        Telefax: +49 69 318091

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

Crossposted-To: comp.os.linux.development
From: [email-masked] (Bart Kindt)
Subject: Re: Linux NOT logging people out on hangup
Date: Fri, 14 Oct 1994 06:02:31 GMT

In article <[email-masked]> [email-masked] (Jaye Mathisen) writes:

>In article <[email-masked]>,
>Joe Beiter <[email-masked]> wrote:
>>
>>We have a network of 5 linux systems running .47 and .50 with three
>>being used as dialup systems (with digiboards).
>>
>>Since each has 8 modems on them we are finding this problem to be both
>>valid and *very* annoying. Our latest suspect is bash but we're pretty
>>baffled.

>I'm having the same problem with bash processes (and lynx) on a BSDI/386
>box as well.  I haven't a clue as to why they're not getting killed.

I am running a multi-line SLIP dialin server. For months we have had problems 
that sometimes the "sliplogin" program was not getting killed.  We finally 
found that the problem is in the Kernel " close() " function; this function 
does sometimes *not return*.  We have fixed the problem with a patch that 
re-kills the program after a 15 second timeout, when it is still 'alive'. The 
problem is definately in the kernel, but we have never found anybody who could 
do something about it.  Our dirty patch keeps our system online, but does not 
fix the root of the problem.  You problem could very well be the same.

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

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

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