Subject: Linux-Development Digest #136
From: Digestifier <[email-masked]>
To: [email-masked]
Date: Wed, 7 Sep 94 19:13:08 EDT

Linux-Development Digest #136, Volume #2          Wed, 7 Sep 94 19:13:08 EDT

Contents:
  Re: Unicode & Linux's future (was Re: Acid) (Darin Johnson)
  Non-ANSI constructs in the kernel (was Re: Unicode...) (Richard L. Goerwitz)
  Re: NET releases and non-8-bit aligned subnet masks (Pete Kruckenberg)
  Re: Future of linux -- the sequel (John Richardson)
  Linux, Laptops, Tallies (was Re: Status of Mac Linux & PPC Linux?) (Zack T. Smith)
  Re: Future of linux -- t (Joachim Schrod)
  Re: how to do shared C libraries (was Re: nvi 1.34, curses and the new Linux C library) (David Barr)
  Future of linux -- the sequel (Corey Brenner)
  Re: News Spool File System - new filesystem type?? (Ian McCloghrie)
  Re: XFconfig86 problems - HELP! (Carlos_Dominguez)
  Re: Linux on Fosa laptops? (Nicolas BOUGUES)
  Re: A thought to improve security (S. Joel Katz)
  Re: Load Balancing (Nicolas BOUGUES)
  Re: IDE Hard Drives w/ over 1024 cylinders (Jim Sun)
  SCSI driver for integrated AMD chip ? (Felix von Leitner)
  Re: Non-ANSI constructs in the kernel (was Re: Unicode...) (Richard L. Goerwitz)

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

From: [email-masked] (Darin Johnson)
Subject: Re: Unicode & Linux's future (was Re: Acid)
Date: 07 Sep 1994 03:28:56 GMT

> >is input methods:  Do the keyboard drivers work with the operating system
> >in such a way that one can, on the fly, change one's keymap?  Does it sup-
> Yes.

But it's overkill.  You don't need special support from the keyboard
drivers to support input methods.  All you need is for the input
consumer to map internally.  Most input methods work by running as
a separate process rather than being embedded into the OS.

> >Finally, do the display drivers
> >and GUIs support multiple wordwrap directions?

Again, this is best solved in the application, not the GUI (and
especially not the display driver).

Of course, this begs the issue of getting 'ls' to display with a
mixture of left-to-right and right-to-left scripts - but running
'ls' (or more likely, an 'nls') inside a multilingual window
solves this.  I think it's better to start there and make progress
than to ponder how to fit all that code into the console device...
--
Darin Johnson
[email-masked]
       Support your right to own gnus.

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

From: [email-masked] (Richard L. Goerwitz)
Subject: Non-ANSI constructs in the kernel (was Re: Unicode...)
Reply-To: [email-masked]
Date: Wed, 7 Sep 1994 14:50:38 GMT

In article <[email-masked]> [email-masked] (Andries Brouwer) writes:
>
>>In the case of the Linux kernel this isn't too drastic. First there is almost
>>no core operating system assumption about strings present. The single glaring
>>one is the '/' symbol and ascii NUL....
>
>That is why in the UTF-8 encoding of Unicode no ASCII symbol can occur
>as part of another symbol. This solves both the NUL and the / problems.

I keep hearing about how UTF-8 is just around the corner, and how the ker-
nel has removed all assumptions about characters and strings.  Yet a quick
perusal of the source brings to light a host of constructs in the source
that violate ANSI principles of internationalization.  For example, in
./include/linux/ctype.h we find the following macro:

#define tolower(c) (_ctmp=c,isupper(_ctmp)?_ctmp-('A'-'a'):_ctmp)
#define toupper(c) (_ctmp=c,islower(_ctmp)?_ctmp-('a'-'A'):_ctmp)

Let me quote for a moment from the internationalization FAQ.  Admit-
tedly this applies to ANSIfied user programs.  Perhaps the kernel can
always assume ISO 8859-1 encoding.  Still, I suspect that most pro-
grammers here in the U.S. are still doing things the "old" way:

****************************  quoted material ******************************

If you write a program which supports international use, you should
use the available standardized functions, as only these will be
influenced by the setlocale call. Thus, if you want to convert a
capital letter in c to a lower case letter in l, _don't_ write:

l = c - 'A' + 'a';

While this will work for characters in the US-ASCII character set, it
will not work with German, French, or Spanish characters. The
following, standard-conformant code will:

#include <ctype.h>

....

l = tolower(c);

Also note that the second code is FASTER (for most implementations),
as it replaces arithmetic by a simple table lookup!

Note that this ANSI standard is independent of the character set
encoding used!

************************  end quoted material **************************

Here's another tidbit of the same sort from the HPFS code:

    static inline int memcasecmp(const unsigned char *s1,
                                 const unsigned char *s2, unsigned n)
    {
        int t;
        if (n != 0)
                do {
                        unsigned c1 = *s1++;
                        unsigned c2 = *s2++;
                        if (c1 - 'a' < 26)
                                c1 -= 040;
                        if (c2 - 'a' < 26)
                                c2 -= 040;
                        if ((t = c1 - c2) != 0)
                                return t;
                } while (--n != 0);
        return 0;
    }
 
Again, I don't pretend to be a guru.  I see this sort of thing in much of
the source code I peruse, thoug.

>I hope to release a new kbd-0.** this month. It will contain a kernel
>patch with some Unicode support. (Just a start. The fonts are still
>missing, but loadkeys will be able to assign 16-bit values to the keys,
>and the keyboard driver will have a UTF-8 mode converting these 16-bit
>values into byte sequences.)

Bless you.

-- 

   -Richard L. Goerwitz              [email-masked]
   [email-masked]          rutgers!oddjob!ellis!goer

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

From: [email-masked] (Pete Kruckenberg)
Subject: Re: NET releases and non-8-bit aligned subnet masks
Date: 7 Sep 1994 05:23:16 GMT

I believe that this has been in for quite a while. I'm using 1.1.18
with a netmask of 255.255.252.0, so I'd suspect that probably 1.1.0
and later work, and maybe even 1.0.x. Try it out and see if it works
with what you've got.

Pete.

Larry Augustin ([email-masked]) wrote:
: A (hopefully) quick question.  Which versions of Net and the kernel
: support non 8-bit aligned networks/netmasks?  I couldn't find any
: mention of this in the FAQs.

: Thanks,

: Larry

--
  ------------------------------------------------------------------------
  Pete Kruckenberg                       School: [email-masked]
  University of Utah                       Work: [email-masked]
  Computer Engineering    For even more addresses, "finger [email-masked]"

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

From: [email-masked] (John Richardson)
Subject: Re: Future of linux -- the sequel
Date: 7 Sep 1994 15:19:22 GMT

In article <[email-masked]>,
Corey Brenner <[email-masked]> wrote:
>Well... here's the scoop... Indy will take a major performance hit when 
>SGI dumps IRIX and moves to NT.  Sad, but true.
>
>Corey Brenner
>

What?!?!  Is this really true?  If so, when is SGI planning to dump IRIX
and move to NT?

John Richardson
[email-masked]

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

Crossposted-To: comp.os.linux.help
From: [email-masked] (Zack T. Smith)
Subject: Linux, Laptops, Tallies (was Re: Status of Mac Linux & PPC Linux?)
Date: Wed, 7 Sep 1994 16:10:41 GMT

In article <[email-masked]> [email-masked] (Hamish Macdonald) writes:
>>>>>> On 06 Sep 1994 19:06:52 EST,
>>>>>> In message <[email-masked]>,
>>>>>> [email-masked] (Zack T. Smith) wrote:
>
>Zack> Can anyone tell me what the status of each of Mac Linux and
>Zack> PowerPC Linux is? Last time I checked the archives for Mac
>Zack> Linux, it seem that nothing new had been posted.
>
>I haven't heard any progress reports about the Linux/68k port to the
>Mac for a while.  I understand that getting information about the
>Macintosh hardware is difficult.

Well, not to worry in my case, I've decided to sell my new Powerbook 
520 and just get a PC laptop. I can always emulate a Mac using Executor,
which will certainly be necessary, as I'm a Mac developer.

Of course, the question is which laptop to get. I've posted asking
whether Linux runs on the Fosa DX4/100 or DX2/66, but I got no
affirmative responses last time I checked. All I know at this point
is that I did get Linux running recently on a Toshiba 1910, though it
was slow. And Linux seems to need 12 MB of RAM, which most laptops
don't allow (it's either 4, 8 or 16). I found that without 12, the 
beginning of any paging or swapping marks the start of really bad 
performance until a reboot. Though I was using UMSDOS, perhaps that
was a factor.

It sure would be nice to have a big list of machines to show people
tallies of whether Linux runs of machine X or not and comments.
Speed tests would be helpful too. That way people wouldn't have to 
post asking, and miss making a connection with someone who actually 
has an answer.

Cheers-
-- 
Zack T. Smith
Creator of MacShell, the C Shell for the Mac
Email me if you'd like a demo copy.

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

From: [email-masked] (Joachim Schrod)
Subject: Re: Future of linux -- t
Date: 7 Sep 1994 15:24:26 GMT

In article <[email-masked]>, [email-masked] (Lau) writes:
> [email-masked]
> On 09/05/94, Joachim wrote:                   
> 
> >Yeah, but he used $33 Ethernet cards (I assume NE2000s) and explained
> >that 4MB is enough to run Linux+X and compared these parts to
> >respective workstation equipment. IMHO that disqualified him.
>     
>     I missed some of what Donald wrote but you should take a second look at 
> who Donald Becker is before making the above statement.  Donald wrote most 
> of the ethernet code...and is more familiar w/ ethernet than you or I will 
> probably ever be!

For sure, but I didn't make a comment about his Ethernet programming
abilities. I made a statement that his description of a work
environment (i.e., an organizational context) is not appropriate.
That's a different area. -- And his followup already said that he
didn't want to imply that NE2000s match typical workstation ethernet
equipment. So we seem to agree on this point... :-)

        Joachim

--
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Joachim Schrod                  Email: [email-masked]
Computer Science Department
Technical University of Darmstadt, Germany

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

From: [email-masked] (David Barr)
Subject: Re: how to do shared C libraries (was Re: nvi 1.34, curses and the new Linux C library)
Date: 7 Sep 1994 10:55:20 -0400

In article <[email-masked]>,
Mitchum DSouza <[email-masked]> wrote:
>|> that you need simultaneous access to.  (Oh, like say X11R5 libX11.so and
>|> X11R6 libX11.so)  In fact a cache needlessly randomizes and obscures
>
>Why don't you just use LD_LIBRARY_PATH to point to the different library
>location.

LD_LIBRARY_PATH is a hack, and a painful one at that.

1) It increases load time
2) It applies for _all_ libraries, not just the one you're interested with.
3) It interacts badly with ld, such that when things are compiled with
   LD_LIBRARY_PATH set, the program then assumes that it will continue
   to be set.

--Dave

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

From: [email-masked] (Corey Brenner)
Subject: Future of linux -- the sequel
Date: Wed, 7 Sep 1994 14:01:38 GMT

Well... here's the scoop... Indy will take a major performance hit when 
SGI dumps IRIX and moves to NT.  Sad, but true.

Corey Brenner

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

From: [email-masked] (Ian McCloghrie)
Crossposted-To: news.software.b
Subject: Re: News Spool File System - new filesystem type??
Date: 7 Sep 1994 12:21:23 -0700

[email-masked] (Tom Limoncelli) writes:

>In <[email-masked]> [email-masked] (Michael Dillon) writes:

>>I wonder if message-id's could be worked in there somehow?

>Obviously, $NEWSSPOOL/id.index/message-id could refer to the actual
>article.  You wouldn't haven't to support opendir()/closedir(), just
>open().

The Right Way to implement this kind of filesystem would be a
user-space process, reading and writing the raw device -- essentially
just using /dev/hd<foo> as a database.  Putting it in the kernel gains
you nothing but more kernel bloat.

--
____
\bi/  Ian McCloghrie      | FLUG:  FurryMUCK Linux User's Group
 \/   email: [email-masked] | Card Carrying Member, UCSD Secret Islandia Club
GCS (!)d-(--) p c++ l++(+++) u+ e- m+ s+/+ n+(-) h- f+ !g w+ t+ r y*

The above represents my personal opinions and not necessarily those
of my employer, Qualcomm Inc.

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

Crossposted-To: comp.windows.x.i386unix,comp.os.linux.help
From: [email-masked] (Carlos_Dominguez)
Subject: Re: XFconfig86 problems - HELP!
Date: Wed, 7 Sep 1994 16:06:28 GMT

Walter Hunt ([email-masked]) wrote:

:       If this is the same XFConfig86 that I tried to run, I bet you are
: telling it to emulate a 3-button mouse. The one I had would place
: "Emulate3Buttons" before the mouse defs, causing a domino effect that would lead
: to an empty tmp file (like the complaint you saw) that was supposed to hold the
: modes available for the card.

I told it not to emulate the 3-button mouse, but I'll gladly hack that
file as per your suggestion tonight.

:       If you edit the Template file in the XFConfig directory
: (/usr/X11/lib/X11/XFConfig?) and move the Emulate3Buttons line down one, you
: should be a much happier camper.
  ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
hehehe.. my wife will get a kick out of that :)

-- 
  __  __   __ | .__.  __. ::::  Carlos Dominguez - Cyberdude & Gophermaster  
 |    __| |   | |  | |__  ::::  [email-masked]  
 |__ |__| |   | |__| .__| ::::  [email-masked]
 ____________________________   I'm Looking for employment in the NYC area.

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

From: [email-masked] (Nicolas BOUGUES)
Crossposted-To: comp.os.linux.help
Subject: Re: Linux on Fosa laptops?
Date: 3 Sep 1994 23:47:36 +0200

Zack T. Smith ([email-masked]) a ecrit:
: Hello,

[stuff deleted]

: PS: Is there any sort of centralized repository for compaitibility
: with various laptops? I recently install slackware Linux on a 
: Toshiba 1910 and I'd be glad to donate a summary of my experiences
: if such a repository/document exists.

It exists. It is the laptop-servey file. It is available on tsx-11 in the
packages/laptops directory. The maintainer of the list is Marc E. Fiuczynski
([email-masked]).

--
=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+
Nicolas BOUGUES
[email-masked]
Sysop of magix : ++ 33 (1) 45 21 02 52 (shell & uucp)

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

From: [email-masked] (S. Joel Katz)
Subject: Re: A thought to improve security
Date: 7 Sep 1994 13:03:47 -0400

In <[email-masked]> [email-masked] (J.A.vanderMost) writes:

>Just a thought :

>Some programs in a Unix system have to be SUID root to do the things they do.
>Like /bin/passwd /bin/login /usr/bin/lp /user/bin/at etc.. are all SUID root.

>But being root is MUCH to powerful for these programs, they don't need all
>the abilities of root, only a very small portion of it. And that's exactly
>my point, if we give such a program not more than it needs than a security-
>bug is not so harmful as it is now.

>If we give lpr just enough permissions to do his job, the user can NOT become
>root so easily.

>Now my suggestion :

>Let's modify the kernel a bit, and redefine the meaning of the UIDs below 256:
>UID 0 is root ( like it always was, many programs depend on this )
>UID >256 are normal users, without a special meaning.
>UID 1-255 are not what they used to be, they have a special meaning :

        Way back in pl14 I did something very much like this. I never 
released the patch because I thought it was a quick hack no one but me 
would be interested in.

        Personally, I like the idea. I would prefer it if the kernel 
asked a user-space daemon rather than hard coding the access rules, 
however. (I didn't do it this way because I am too lazy).

        Unfortunately, changing the user ids on an operating system is a 
damn pain. Maybe we could make the highest 256 user ID's special.

-- 

S. Joel Katz            Information on Objectivism, Linux, 8031s, and more
[email-masked]      is available at http://www.panix.com/stimpson/

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

From: [email-masked] (Nicolas BOUGUES)
Subject: Re: Load Balancing
Date: 5 Sep 1994 17:59:09 +0200

Tracy R. Reed ([email-masked]) a ecrit:
: I noticed that when I compiled 1.1.49, it asked if I wanted load 
: balancing. Could someone explain to me how this works and how well it 
: works? It sounds like a good way to get the equivelant if parallel 
: processing on common PC hardware. How does it divide up the tasks for 
: each machine to do? What is the max number of machines that load can be 
: distributed over? Also, is the load distributed by user, process, 
: subroutine, etc.  Although a good ethernet is pretty fast, it is not 
: nearly as fast as the system bus, so is it worth it?

Well, Linux's load balancing is not what you think. As you might have seen,
it is put in the middle of network configuration. Load balancing is a way to
route packets between different ways, depending on their load.

: --

: -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
: Mr. Tracy Reed         |Every artist is a cannibal.|Two Betazoids walk into
: San Diego State Univ.  |Every poet is a thief.     |  a bar.
: Aerospace Engineering  |All kill their inspiration |
: [email-masked] |And sing about their grief.|One says,
: [email-masked]      |-U2 IRC-Maelcum /me smiles |  "I'll have the same."
: -----------------------------------------------------------------------------

--
=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+
Nicolas BOUGUES
[email-masked]
Sysop of magix : ++ 33 (1) 45 21 02 52 (shell & uucp)

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

From: [email-masked] (Jim Sun)
Subject: Re: IDE Hard Drives w/ over 1024 cylinders
Date: 7 Sep 1994 22:00:23 GMT

>Ack!  This isn't needed any more.  Linux kernel versions after 1.1.40
>(or thereabouts) support EIDE drives directly.

Not every one installs odd-sub-revision-numbered kernel.

Jim

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

From: [email-masked] (Felix von Leitner)
Subject: SCSI driver for integrated AMD chip ?
Date: Wed, 7 Sep 1994 17:01:47 GMT

Hi Folks.

Is anybody working on a SCSI driver for the AMD SCSI chip ?

Or, is such a driver already in existance ?

Please answer quickly before I start disassembling the DOS driver ;)

Felix

-- 
(------------------------------------------------------------------)
Felix von Leitner, Gervinusstrasse 22, 10629 Berlin, +49-30-32700270
President of the Council of Ultimate Wisdom
and student at the Free University of Berlin ;)

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

From: [email-masked] (Richard L. Goerwitz)
Subject: Re: Non-ANSI constructs in the kernel (was Re: Unicode...)
Reply-To: [email-masked]
Date: Wed, 7 Sep 1994 21:26:43 GMT

[email-masked] (Yonik Seeley) writes:
>>
>>Also note that the second code is FASTER (for most implementations),
>>as it replaces arithmetic by a simple table lookup!
>
>I highly doubt that it is faster in any implementation.  The 'A'+'a' will be 
>performed at compile time, so you get one subtraction (or addition).
>A table lookup would involve an addition and a dereference.

Agreed.  This is simply what the FAQ says.  Of course the point is that
speed doesn't matter here.  Don't use 'a' to mean 97 if you plan on using
ANSI C in a portable, localizable fashion.  Use 'a' to mean the symbol
"a" (whatever its underlying representation might be in the character set
you're using).

And of course this is just one small issue.  There are many others to
consider, such as not writing code that assumes a certain date format.

And there's the whole issue of avoiding assumptions about character
width.

I think it will be a while before we all get used to thinking about pro-
gramming in a new light.  Perhaps it is an advantage to have a system
that lacks a lot of baggage from the 70s....

-- 

   -Richard L. Goerwitz              [email-masked]
   [email-masked]          rutgers!oddjob!ellis!goer

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

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End of Linux-Development Digest
******************************