Subject: Linux-Development Digest #227
From: Digestifier <[email-masked]>
To: [email-masked]
Date: Sun, 25 Sep 94 22:13:17 EDT

Linux-Development Digest #227, Volume #2         Sun, 25 Sep 94 22:13:17 EDT

Contents:
  Re: p5 code optimization for gcc (H. Peter Anvin)
  Re: Linux Floptical Disk Driver? (Phil Hughes)
  Re: elf benchmarks (getting closer) (John Richardson)
  Re: Linux on CD (Jeff Kesselman)
  Re: Special Sale On QNX! (Dan Pop)
  Re: elf benchmarks (getting closer) (Marc Fraioli)
  Re: NCR 53C406A SCSI (Mathias Koerber)
  Re: Special Sale On QNX! (Rob Janssen)
  Re: Don't use Linux?! (Darin Johnson)
  Re: [STATUS] Linus Floppy Driver Development (Mats 'MaDsen' Wikholm)
  Re: Special Sale On QNX! (Myles Williams)
  Re: more floppy problems with 1.1.51 (Andries Brouwer)
  Problem building intel gcc (Erann Gat)
  Re: 1.1.51 seg fault on shutdown in _floppy_release (David Flood)
  Re: elf benchmarks (getting closer) (Dan Connolly)
  Re: Digi Intelligent Boards? (Bob Salita)

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

From: [email-masked] (H. Peter Anvin)
Subject: Re: p5 code optimization for gcc
Reply-To: [email-masked] (H. Peter Anvin)
Date: Sun, 25 Sep 1994 19:03:24 GMT

Followup to:  <[email-masked]>
By author:    [email-masked] (ChiWei Che)
In newsgroup: comp.os.linux.development
>
> Hi all:
> A faithful Linux user here. Recently, I got a Pentium machine, of course the
> thing is dedicated to Linux. Yesterday, I am upgrading the gcc 2.5.6 to
> intel optimized version of gcc 2.5.8. I use that to recompile the kernel, 
> the system is running faster before (although I didn't run any benchmark, and
> I don't know any benchmark in Linux, but you definitely can feel it). To all
> who are using the P5 CPU, try to replace the old one with pentium code, it's
> better.
>

Are the 586 optimizations slated to be included with stock GCC 2.6?

        /hpa
-- 
INTERNET: [email-masked]             --- Allah'u'abha ---
IBM MAIL: I0050052 at IBMMAIL     HAM RADIO:   N9ITP or SM4TKN
FIDONET:  1:115/511 or 1:115/512  STORMNET:    181:294/1 or 181:294/101
"The Earth is but one country, and mankind its citizens." -- Baha'u'llah

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

From: [email-masked] (Phil Hughes)
Subject: Re: Linux Floptical Disk Driver?
Date: Sat, 24 Sep 1994 02:16:10 GMT

Oliver Borowiak ([email-masked]) wrote:
: a few days ago my 3.5" FDD died, so if have to buy a new one.
: My thought was why not a Floptical Disk Drive?

: As I know, the were produced by IOMEGA. These drives can read
: standard 3.5" 720k, 1.44M, 2.88M disks and the Floptical format 
: of about 21 MB.

...

The story of support of Flopticals is a regular one I tell to explain to
people why Linux is real.  Ages ago (close to two years) someone asked on
the net if they were supported.  Within a day someone else posted a note
that said that they required a special initialization sequence.  Then, a
day later someone else asked where they could get the initialization
sequence.  Then, a few days later there was a post explaining that the
driver was now patched to support them.  A sequence that overall took
about a week.  Expect a year or more from commercial vendors.

Now, to answer your question: flopticals are SCSI devices.  I have never
used one but there should be special initialization code in the SCSI
driver to talk to them.
--
Phil Hughes, Publisher, Linux Journal (206) 527-3385
usually [email-masked], sometimes [email-masked]

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

From: [email-masked] (John Richardson)
Subject: Re: elf benchmarks (getting closer)
Date: 25 Sep 1994 20:09:17 GMT

In article <[email-masked]>, H.J. Lu <[email-masked]> wrote:

> [times where elf beats a.out]

I wonder why?

>
>No, that is not a typo. ELF may be faster than a.out. But don't take
>the result as is. 1000000 iterations are too small. The "benchmark"
>varies a lot for both a.out and ELF. We need a better benchmark for
>the ELF/PIC library. Also an ELF login shell makes a big diference.

Wow!  I guess I'll compile bash with ELF libraries!  When I added
-fomit-frame-pointer to my compiles of the qsort test I couldn't
tell the difference between ELF and a.out qsort times.

Patrick Schaaf ([email-masked]) mailed me a more scientific benchmark
but I haven't looked at it yet.  I'll forward it to whomever would
like a look.

Surely there must be a publicly available benchmark of system library 
calls?  If not, I was thinking of writing a quick bench of the 
more popular calls (read, write, open, close, etc) just to see
how a.out and ELF compare there.

Awesome work H.J. & co!

--
John Richardson
[email-masked]

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

From: [email-masked] (Jeff Kesselman)
Subject: Re: Linux on CD
Date: Sun, 25 Sep 1994 19:14:20 GMT

In article <[email-masked]>,
 <[email-masked]> wrote:
>:In article [email-masked],  [email-masked] (Rob Janssen) writes:
>:=>In <[email-masked]> [email-masked] writes:
>:=>
>:=>>I was having a chat with someone over the net and we came to this..
>:=>>What if Linux came fully implemented (X & all the disk sets) on a CD and
>:=>>all you would have to do is boot off the CD rom and have the
>:=>>settings/option files (ie ~/.seyon inittab & the rc scrips) in your HD.
>:=>
>:=>>I mean, this would save a lot of diskspace ;)
>:=>
>:=>There are several CD-ROMs available that allow you to do this...
>:=>
>:
>:I can confirm this. I tried it with the TransAmeritech CD, release April 1994.
>:[DELETED]
>:I think it's more reasonable to have the often used stuff on your HD, and the
>:less used stuff you can run from CD-ROM.
>:
>:How do other people feel about running from CD-ROM? I do like the idea of
>:saving HD-space, but it becomes too slow for me to be usable.
>
>What I think (for what it's worth) would be useful would be
>the ability to merge the CD-ROM's directory with the HD's and
>the HD's files would take precedence.  That way if you want to
>make a change or just want the speed of the HD you could copy
>the file(s) to the HD in the same spot (directory and file name).
>Just a vague thought...
>
Thsi is how my Yygdrasil works.  The stuff that is still on cd-rom exists 
as a link to the cd-rom on the hard-drive.  When i install it, it copies 
over the link.

Jeff kesselman

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

From: [email-masked] (Dan Pop)
Subject: Re: Special Sale On QNX!
Date: Sun, 25 Sep 1994 22:26:23 GMT

In <[email-masked]> [email-masked] (Myles Williams) writes:

>       Florida Datamation has been a QNX distributor for 10 years! We are nice,
>       knowledgable and go the extra mile for the sale. And, we promise to BEAT
>       ANYONE'S PRICE! 
>
>That's quite a claim in this newsgroup!  I wonder how much they are
>going to pay me.
>
Don't wonder too much. Have a look at the headers of the original article:

Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.development,comp.os.linux.development
Path: CERN.ch!EU.net!howland.reston.ans.net!swrinde!sgiblab!pacbell.com!att-out!undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca!zmailer--not-for-mail
From: [email-masked] ()
Subject: Special Sale On QNX!
X-Mail-Message-Id: <[email-masked]>
Message-ID: <[email-masked]>
Originator: [email-masked]
Precedence: normal-delivery
Sender: [email-masked] (news spool owner)

Now, is this article coming from Florida or from Waterloo?

Or is Florida Datamation doing business from the host 
undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca? :-)

Dan
--
Dan Pop 
CERN, CN Division
Email: [email-masked]
Mail:  CERN - PPE, Bat. 31 R-004, CH-1211 Geneve 23, Switzerland

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

From: [email-masked] (Marc Fraioli)
Subject: Re: elf benchmarks (getting closer)
Date: 25 Sep 1994 21:09:12 GMT
Reply-To: [email-masked]

In article [email-masked],  [email-masked] (H.J. Lu) writes:
>No, that is not a typo. ELF may be faster than a.out. But don't take
>the result as is. 1000000 iterations are too small. The "benchmark"
>varies a lot for both a.out and ELF. We need a better benchmark for
>the ELF/PIC library. Also an ELF login shell makes a big diference.
>
If ELF is so much easier to develop with, and it requires significant
effort to craft a benchmark on which a.out is faster, why bother?  I
vote for ELF.

---
Marc Fraioli          | "They couldn't hit an elephant at this dist- " 
[email-masked]         |    - Last words of Union General John Sedgwick,
                      |    Battle of Spotsylvania Court House, U.S. Civil War

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

From: [email-masked] (Mathias Koerber)
Subject: Re: NCR 53C406A SCSI
Date: 24 Sep 1994 07:10:12 GMT
Reply-To: [email-masked]

In (<[email-masked]>) Drew Eckhardt ([email-masked]) wrote:
| In article <[email-masked]>,
| Pete Cascio <[email-masked]> wrote:
| >
| >I've got a Media Vision Pro 3D sound card with SCSI-2.  The SCSI-2 chip is an
| >NCR 53C406A.  It looks like it's probably something new, since it's not
| >mentioned in the SCSI-HOWTO.

| >Does anyone know about this chip?  

| Sure - the NCR53c406a is a more integrated version of the NCR53c90,
| very similar to what NCR did with the NCR53c400 which was based on the 
| NCR53c80.

So, will there ever be a driver for the 53C94? I have such a beast
(ICL ErgoPro D4/66dXG) smug on the motherboard, and can't use it :-(

cheers (or no cheers in this case)

| >Is it compatible (no changes required) with
| >another supported NCR SCSI chip driver?  

| An alpha NCR53c406a driver is available via anonymous FTP from 
| tsx-11.mit.edu:/pub/linux/ALPHA/scsi/ncr53c406-0.9.patch.gz.

| -- 
| Since our leaders won't respect The Constitution, the highest law of our 
| country, you can't expect them to obey lesser laws of any country. 
| Boycott the United States until this changes.

--
Mathias Koerber                                      Tel: +65 / 778 00 66 x 29
SW International Systems Pte Ltd                          Fax: +65 / 777 94 01
14 Science Park Drive #04-01 The Maxwell    e-mail: [email-masked]
S'pore 0511       <A HREF=http://www.swi.com.sg/public/personal/mk.html>MK</A>
When anyone asks me how I can best describe my experience in
nearly forty years at sea, I merely say, uneventful.  Of course
there have been winter gales, and storms and fog and the like.
But in all my experience, I have never been in any accident...
or any sort worth speaking about.  I have seen but one vessel
in distress in all my years at sea.  I never saw a wreck and
never have been wrecked nor was I ever in any predicament that
threatened to end in disaster of any sort.
        E. J. Smith, 1907
        Captain, RMS Titanic

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

From: [email-masked] (Rob Janssen)
Subject: Re: Special Sale On QNX!
Reply-To: [email-masked]
Date: Sun, 25 Sep 1994 22:29:00 GMT

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

>Why settle for slow and obselete Unix such as UnixWare, Sun Solaris,
>SCO, Linux or BSD when you can have POWER & RELIABILITY with QNX 4.21!  
>Stop playing games with these inferior o/s's and switch to QNX today.

Hey come on, a bit more humble announcements would be nice!
Especially from someone who posts the same article twice in the same
group.  Done under QNX, I suppose?

Rob
-- 
=========================================================================
| Rob Janssen                | AMPRnet:   [email-masked]           |
| e-mail: [email-masked]     | AX.25 BBS: PE1CHL@PI8UTR.#UTR.NLD.EU     |
=========================================================================

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

From: [email-masked] (Darin Johnson)
Subject: Re: Don't use Linux?!
Date: 24 Sep 1994 01:39:16 GMT

> >One could think
> >that companies are willing to consider Linux a reasonable and serious
> >platform, and that they would port and offer their products to the
> >Linux community. However, they are far away from doing so, actually. 

Wow, this is all very deja-vu, with my experience in the Amiga
community.  It was always "we have X million machines out there,
why won't they port such-and-such?" or something like that.

I think the bottom line is that for the really big wizzy msdos
programs, they won't get ported.  Look for alternatives though.
Number of units doesn't count when you're regarded as a fringe
group.  Hefty contributions can change their mind though, and
is part of the reason some of this stuff gets ported to major
unix players.

> While I agree and disagree in varying amounts with the rest of this message
> I would like to take agree with the above, in general, but object to the
> statement that NO commercial companies have or will port their products..

Here, I must agree.  Too often people want MS Word, but they're
unwilling to consider other word processors.

The number of Linux sites is *irrelevant* here!  When the Amiga
had fewer number of machines than Linux sites, there were many
commercial offerings.  When there were X million sold, people
were annoyed that big-name (but low quality) PC companies weren't
porting their stuff, but failed to note all the great companies
that were there for the Amiga.

The point is, work on your grassroots, loyal companies that have
stuff for Linux rather than complain that Word or Lotus or Autocad
or whatever the latest rage is hasn't yet been ported.

> What are we? Chopped Liver?

In many places, chopped liver is a delicacy.  It's an acquired
taste though.

However, the biggest trouble Linux has is distribution
channels.  With Amiga, it was simple - you walk into your
local Amiga store and see what was on the shelves.  Companies
had a distribution channel.  With Linux you don't have that.
You can't walk into most PC stores and get Linux stuff
(actually, I'm just guessing, since I've never been in one) ,
and there isn't a company making Linux with the budget to go
around and convince places to stock this stuff.  Linux
Journal is probably a good advertising place, but mail-order
is such a pain for most people, and impulse buys are small.
Perhaps a "Linux Developers Coop" that could produce a
brochure of products to give to software stores and such.
--
Darin Johnson
[email-masked]
    Ensign, activate the Wesley Crusher!

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

From: [email-masked] (Mats 'MaDsen' Wikholm)
Subject: Re: [STATUS] Linus Floppy Driver Development
Date: Sun, 25 Sep 1994 23:54:17 GMT

In article <[email-masked]> [email-masked] writes:
>Larry Doolittle ([email-masked]) wrote:
>[auto mounting a floppy as soon as it is inserted]
[snip]
> Unfortunately, this seems to be impossible to do on PC hardware.
>There are no separate disk change and disk presence indicators
[snip]
>a disk is inserted would need to seek endlessly until a disk is
>inserted. This would make a rather annoying noise, and would probably
>wear off the stepper motor as well.

 I'm no programmer (yet) so hang me if I'm  way off but wouldn't it be
possible to automagically mount the floppy only when it is accessed. I
mean that you don't have  to have it mounted before  you access it  so
when you try to access it the system checks if it is mounted and if it
isn't it  gets mounted. If there's   no disk in  it you  get a flaming
error.
-- 
 . . .  [email-masked] / win-nt from the people who invented edlin  .
 . . .  frantzgatan 3 E 25  / apples  have  meant  trouble  since  eden  . .
  . .  20380 abo  finland  / Linux, the way to get rid of boot viruses  . . . 
   .  @358.(9)21.377.363  / http://at8.abo.fi/~mwikholm/ (under work)  . . . .

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

From: [email-masked] (Myles Williams)
Subject: Re: Special Sale On QNX!
Date: 25 Sep 1994 17:18:41 -0400

        Florida Datamation has been a QNX distributor for 10 years! We are nice,
        knowledgable and go the extra mile for the sale. And, we promise to BEAT
        ANYONE'S PRICE! 

That's quite a claim in this newsgroup!  I wonder how much they are
going to pay me.

Myles Williams                "When you see me again, it won't be me."

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

From: [email-masked] (Andries Brouwer)
Subject: Re: more floppy problems with 1.1.51
Date: Sun, 25 Sep 1994 21:17:55 GMT

[email-masked] (Steve DuChene) writes:

>       I applied the patch suggested to floppy.c (changing 
>       if(filp->f_mode & 2) to if(filp && (filp->f_mode & 2)) and that

That was not the patch I suggested. It should be
        if (!filp || (filp->f_mode & 2))

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

From: [email-masked] (Erann Gat)
Subject: Problem building intel gcc
Date: Wed, 21 Sep 1994 16:37:55 -0800

While building the Intel gcc (the one with the P5 optimizations) I get
the following error during the compilation of libgcc2.a:

[Much stuff deleted]
_muldi3
/tmp/cca08836.s: Assembler messages:
/tmp/cca08836.s:6: Error: Unknown pseudo-op:  `.section'
make: *** [libgcc2.a] Error 1

I am using the gnu assembler, version 2.2.  Any idea how to get around
this error?

Thanks,
E.

-- 

Erann Gat
[email-masked]

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

From: [email-masked] (David Flood)
Subject: Re: 1.1.51 seg fault on shutdown in _floppy_release
Date: 25 Sep 1994 22:11:54 GMT

[email-masked] (Mark Evans) writes:

>What is happening is that floppy_release is being called with filp equal to 0
>If you apply the following patch umount will no longer blow up.

>--- floppy.c.old       Wed Sep 21 15:32:04 1994
>+++ floppy.c   Wed Sep 21 15:31:48 1994
>@@ -2713,7 +2713,7 @@
> {
>       int drive= DRIVE(inode->i_rdev);
> 
>-      if(filp->f_mode & 2)
>+      if(filp && (filp->f_mode & 2))
>               fsync_dev(inode->i_rdev);
>       if ( UDRS->fd_ref < 0)
>               UDRS->fd_ref=0;

I applied the above patch and now I get the following during shutdown but
NOT during user execution of umount:

Unmounting file systems.....
floppy: timeout
floppy I/O error
dev 0200, sector 2
Done.

This is a known good disk.  Just to make sure, I copied the data off,
re-fdisk'ed it, ran mk2efs on it with block checking, and then ran badblocks
on it with write (and got an empty list) and finally re-copied the data back
to it.  According to the boot messages, the FDC is a 8272A.  The controler
is a WD1007 floppy/esdi hard drive controler in a 386sx-16 so I don't think
that bus speed is too high.

Anybody got any other ideas?  For now I am going to stick with 1.1.50

-- 
=============================================================================
[email-masked]

The above opinions are mine alone and do not reflect anyone elses.
Besides, who wants my opinion anyway?
=============================================================================

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

From: [email-masked] (Dan Connolly)
Subject: Re: elf benchmarks (getting closer)
Date: 25 Sep 1994 22:18:47 GMT

In article <[email-masked]> [email-masked] (Marc Fraioli) writes:

   In article [email-masked],  [email-masked] (H.J. Lu) writes:
   >No, that is not a typo. ELF may be faster than a.out. But don't take
   >the result as is. 1000000 iterations are too small. The "benchmark"
   >varies a lot for both a.out and ELF. We need a better benchmark for
   >the ELF/PIC library. Also an ELF login shell makes a big diference.
   >
   If ELF is so much easier to develop with, and it requires significant
   effort to craft a benchmark on which a.out is faster, why bother?  I
   vote for ELF.

I think I understand the sentiment, and I agree -- ELF looks
inevitable. But keep in mind that there are others who are
not so easily convinced...

Anyway... I'm learning a lot from seeing some of the benchmarking data
-- and especially the interpretations. I encourage folks to do more
and better benchmarking.

libc is a fairly important bunch of code to optimize. Perhaps we'll
find some 1-liner optimization that will make the vast majority of
linux applications run 5% faster -- or an optimization that will make
one key application (like gcc) or one key subsystem (like TCP/IP) run
10% faster. Not likely, but worth the effort, if just for the
knowledge gained.

Dan
--
Daniel W. Connolly        "We believe in the interconnectedness of all things"
Software Engineer, Hal Software Systems, OLIAS project   (512) 834-9962 x5010
<[email-masked]>                   http://www.hal.com/%7Econnolly/index.html

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

From: [email-masked] (Bob Salita)
Subject: Re: Digi Intelligent Boards?
Date: 23 Sep 1994 14:16:55 -0500

Troy DeJongh ([email-masked]) wrote:
: [email-masked] (Ahmed Naas) writes:

: >[email-masked] wrote:
: >         ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
: >You need to change this :-)

: >: I visited the Digiboard display at Interop this week, and was told by one
: >: of the sales reps that Digiboard was getting pressure from SCO not to
: >: promote the creation of new drivers for Linux.  In particular, I was
: >: asking about thier new ISDN board they had on display.

: >That might be true, but what possible leverage does SCO have over Digi?

: >: --Bob

: >-- 
: >The above is a result of random neuron activity in the writer's brain.
: >Ahmed M. Naas                                   [email-masked]
: >----------------------------------------------------------------------

: Well, I'm responsible for the maintenance/development of our SCO serial 
: drivers and the development of the Linux driver for our PC/Xe product, 
: and I haven't heard anything like that yet.  Plans are to release a 
: Linux driver for our PC/Xe line of products this fall. 

: --
: Troy De Jongh   Digiboard   ([email-masked])

Troy, do you know of any plans for isdn drivers for digiboards stuff?

What do the progressive Digiboard marketing people think about Linux?

Bob

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

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