Subject: Linux-Development Digest #262
From: Digestifier <[email-masked]>
To: [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 4 Oct 94 02:13:06 EDT

Linux-Development Digest #262, Volume #2          Tue, 4 Oct 94 02:13:06 EDT

Contents:
  Differing console resolutions per virtual console? (Jon Thackray)
  Re: SMail security hole? (James A. Robinson)
  Linux killed my floppy drive! (Ahmed Naas)
  Re: umount problem! (Ron)
  Re: SCSI Printer? (mac) (Petter Gustad)
  Re: Pioneer SCSI Adapter TMC-850MER (George)
  Re: Telnet & ftp freeze! (Seppo Kallio)
  Re: [email-masked] (Steven Buytaert)
  [email-masked] (Zack T. Smith)
  Re: ext2fs vs. Berkeley FFS (Michael O'Reilly)
  Re: Shared Libs: working toward a permanent solution? (Michael James Porter)
  Re: Does Linux require an IRQ for SCSI (Bill Morrow)
  Re: What GUI to write for? (Michael Turner)
  Re: Telnet & ftp freeze! - AND UNFREEZE KLUDGE (Thomas E Zerucha)
  Qlogic Drivers (Bruce Murphy)

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

From: [email-masked] (Jon Thackray)
Subject: Differing console resolutions per virtual console?
Date: 1 Oct 1994 12:45:23 +0100

Someone said a few months back, that they were going to write a program
to allow different console resolutions per vc. Has this ever been
finished? I can't find any code in any of the Linux archive ftp sites.
I might try and work out how this could be written myself.

(This is since I've discovered that my S3 card will support 132x42 by
 altering the kernel, but 132x42 is too small for full-time use)

Thanks,
Jon.
-- 
// Jon Thackray. +44 (0)1494 721234     ><>
//   ``Crackin' toast, Gromit...'' 

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

From: [email-masked] (James A. Robinson)
Crossposted-To: comp.os.linux.help
Subject: Re: SMail security hole?
Date: 3 Oct 1994 17:13:00 -0400

In article <[email-masked]>,
>
>This is because you already have a file named /etc/passwd.
>Try it with a file that doesn't already exist (eg. /this.is.a.test).
>It really works :-(

Argh.  It does not work for me. :( I tried it with check_path (as seen
below) and without, and neither one lets me create a file.  In any
case the manual page for smail DOES say to use check_path.  I've
appended my transports file for those interested.  It was created with
Debian GNU/Linux smailconfig.  (note the follow-up)

Jim
===============================================================================

local:  driver=appendfile, from, local, return_path, unix_from_hack;
        append_as_user, check_user, file=/var/spool/mail/$user,
        group=mail, mode=0660, notify_comsat, suffix="\n"

smtp:   driver=tcpsmtp, max_addrs=100, -max_chars, inet;
        use_bind, defer_no_connect, -local_mx_okay, defnames

uux:    driver=pipe, uucp, from, max_addrs=5, max_chars=200;
        cmd="/usr/bin/uux - -r $host!rmail $(($user)$)",
        pipe_as_sender, log_output

pipe:   driver=pipe, from, local, return_path, unix_from_hack;
        cmd="/bin/sh -c $user", -ignore_status, -ignore_write_errors,
        log_output, parent_env, pipe_as_user, umask=0077

file:   driver=appendfile, from, local, return_path, unix_from_hack;
        check_path, append_as_user, file=$user, expand_user, mode=0660, 
        suffix="\n"

-- 
Jim Robinson                    Email:    [email-masked]
84 Alford Road                  Phone:    (413) 528-7371
Great Barrington, MA 01230      Fax:      (413) 528-7380

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

Crossposted-To: comp.os.linux.help
From: [email-masked] (Ahmed Naas)
Subject: Linux killed my floppy drive!
Date: Mon, 3 Oct 1994 09:18:42 GMT

I saw many posts about the Linux floppy drive problems in the past, but I
paid no attention because I almost never use floppies under Linux. Until
yesterday, that is. I put a floppy in the drive and proceeded to copy,
using mwrite, to it. I got plenty of the error message: "disk absent or
changed during operation." I booted into DOS and while the light flashed
during POST, I was surprised to see the machine boot from the hard disk
despite the fact that I forgot to remove the diskette from the drive! 
Under DOS, when I try to list the files on a diskette, the floppy light
blinks and the motor whirrs for a while before I get the infamous DOS
error message: "Abort, retry, fail?". I then recycled power and checked
the BIOS settings to no avail.

Linux 1.1.50 says my floppy drive controller is type 8272A. (The floppy
drive is hanging off an Adaptec 1542B controller).

So, did Linux kill my drive or is this one of those rare coincidences?

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

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

From: ron@chaos (Ron)
Subject: Re: umount problem!
Date: 3 Oct 1994 23:55:18 GMT

Mark D. Roth ([email-masked]) wrote:
: I just encountered a weird problem with umount.  I am using the umount
: that comes with the binary distrib of util-linux-1.10 under linux
: 1.1.51.  When I mount a floppy and move files to it (the filesystem
: was ext), and then umount it, is SOMETIMES seg-faults.  Here's the
: output from the syslog:
[stuff deleted]

I ran into the same thing.  In fact,  myself and another local have
problems with umount under 1.1.51. We both switched back to 1.1.50. On
the util-linux-1.10 stuff,  I installed that and had problems with 
login (easy fix though), umount and other misc problems with some of
the programs that I was running. Plus the install program must have
put a ; character in my  /etc/profile  file in the PATH line that messed
up my PATH environment setting (the ; should be a : character).  After
about 2 days I removed the entire  util-linux-1.10 package on 2 computers
here.  I'm running 1.1.50 now with mostly an older version of Slackware
(the one before 2.0) and it runs fine now.   I'd recommend just dumping
that umount program that came with util-linux-1.10 and using the original
one that you had before.

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

From: [email-masked] (Petter Gustad)
Subject: Re: SCSI Printer? (mac)
Date: 3 Oct 1994 10:07:00 GMT
Reply-To: [email-masked]

In article <[email-masked]>, [email-masked]
(James E. McNalley) writes:
|>      A while ago,  a friend of  mine who had a mac SE and some sort
|> of laser-writer that connected with a SCSI port.  When he upgraded
|> to a PC, he asked me if there was any way he could use the LW on the
|> PC, and I said no, since he had no SCSI card.  Now that *I* have a 
|> SCSI  card on my linux box (1542B), I was wondering if there is a
|> driver for scsi printers in the linux kernel, or if patches are
|> aviable?  Thanks!
|> 
|> --
|> James McNalley          | "I have never let my schooling interfere with my
|> Linux/Unix  Hacker      | education" -Mark Twain 
|> Portland, OR            |  "Live free or die" -New Hampshire motto 
|> [email-masked] -or- [email-masked]

I might be wrong, but I think you're talking about the Apple Personal
LaserWriter SC, which is a QuickDraw rather than PostScript printer.

Hence your biggest problem will not be to get the SCSI connection to
work, but to get your graphics/text data converted into QuickDraw
format before sending it to the printer. If you want to get docs
on the QuickDraw format you'll probably need to pay Apple lots of
$$$ and sign a NDA. Not very attractive to a Linux device driver
hacker...

-- 
====================================================================
Petter Gustad                             E-mail: [email-masked]
Hardware Design Engineer                  Tel.: +47 22 62 70 00
Dolphin Interconnect Solutions A.S.       Fax.: +47 22 62 71 80
Street address:                           Mailing address:
Olaf Helsets vei 6                        P.O. Box 52, Bogerud
Oslo, Norway                              N-0621 Oslo, Norway
====================================================================

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

From: [email-masked] (George)
Subject: Re: Pioneer SCSI Adapter TMC-850MER
Date: 2 Oct 1994 02:45:41 GMT

Andrew Anderson ([email-masked]) wrote:
: Can any developer tell me if the code in ~/linux/drivers/scsi/seagate.c
: will support this card?  The board has a TMC-950 chip on it, but the
: kernel cannot find it.  Does the TMC-950 referenced in the comments
: in the code refer to a *board* or the *chip*?  

: This model of the board does _not_ have a BIOS chip on it, does the 
: driver need one?  If this driver does not work, does anyone have a 
: (pre) alpha driver that I can try?

Please let me know if you get your board to work. I'm fighting with
a Future Domain 850 ( TMC 850) with a BIOS of "IBM F1 BIOS V1.1". I've
patched seagate.c for this and now my board and drive are reconized, but
I get timed out when the partition check takes place and it hangs. I'm
not using an IRQ ( nothing is jumped ) ,so I think. When I tried IRQ 5
It took out one of my IDE drives that linux was on and messed up my
powerup settings. I did so much to the linux partition, that I had to
reload the disk.

Good Luck !

[email-masked]

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

From: [email-masked] (Seppo Kallio)
Crossposted-To: comp.os.linux.help,comp.os.linux.misc,comp.os.linux.admin
Subject: Re: Telnet & ftp freeze!
Date: 3 Oct 1994 12:58:40 +0200

Seppo Kallio ([email-masked]) wrote:
: Usually it works nice, but sometimes the whole net software seems to
: do nothing with the new connections.  Login opens the window and
: connects, but no "login:" prompt.  Same problems with smtp
: connections, they jammmm similar way.  I think all telnet connections
: hang somehow or are extremely slow.

I have one more problem: looping in.telnetd.

Just now I had 3 of them. 

Someone did mention that Linux seens to slow down when these net errors 
happen. Have you cheked if it is extra looping in.telnetd ??? Every
extra in.telnetd in cpu loop is rising the load by one. 

Seppo Kallio

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

From: [email-masked] (Steven Buytaert)
Subject: Re: [email-masked]
Date: Mon, 3 Oct 1994 10:53:50 GMT

Zack T. Smith ([email-masked]) wrote:
: Can someone please tell me how to get taken _off_ the
: linux activists mailing list? I can neither disconnect myself
: from it, nor even _post_ to it. Consider:

: 1. Sending mail to [email-masked] does nothing.
: 2. Sending mail to [email-masked] doesn't work.
:    The X-admin line always gets an error...  
: 3. When I use the X-admin line to get taken off the list, it tells
:    me that I'm not even ON the list.

 I just left the PPP and SOUND channel due to time constraints
 the following way, which is described in the help file I saved
 when I subscribed:

 mail to [email-masked]'
 no subject given
 line in body  'X-Mn-Key: leave ppp'   for the PPP channel
 line in body 'X-Mn-Key: leave sound'  for the sound channel

 I received 2 mails saying that I left the desired channel.
 Important note: you have to have the exact same address (casing etc)
 as when you subscribed !

 Hope you find this usefull,

 Stef

--
Steven Buytaert 

WORK [email-masked]
HOME [email-masked]

        'Imagination is more important than knowledge.'
                        (A. Einstein)

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

From: [email-masked] (Zack T. Smith)
Subject: [email-masked]
Date: Mon, 3 Oct 1994 08:05:40 GMT

Can someone please tell me how to get taken _off_ the
linux activists mailing list? I can neither disconnect myself
from it, nor even _post_ to it. Consider:

1. Sending mail to [email-masked] does nothing.
2. Sending mail to [email-masked] doesn't work.
   The X-admin line always gets an error...  
3. When I use the X-admin line to get taken off the list, it tells
   me that I'm not even ON the list.

Thanks.

Zack Smith
[email-masked]

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

From: [email-masked] (Michael O'Reilly)
Subject: Re: ext2fs vs. Berkeley FFS
Date: 3 Oct 1994 17:22:31 +0800

Mike Haertel ([email-masked]) wrote:

: The Linux community may sneer at synchronous inode updates, but under
: BSD ffs I have never lost a file, which is more than I can say for
: ext2fs, which has cost me a whole partition at least once, simply
: due to its overoptimistic buffering.

You may not have lost a file, but it won't be because of the sync
inode updates. FFS (as far as I know) does it exactly the wrong way
around. It should sync data before inodes, instead of the reverse... 

Does FFS also do sync dir updates? That would give you the right
files, but they may have junk inside them. (Silently. fsck won't find
it!). 

: Has anyone ported BSD ffs to Linux?  I would strongly prefer to use
: it, simply for the slower but safer synchronous inode and directory
: updates.  Not to mention I would like to be able to share files with
: my BSD partition...

If the broken sync inodes make you feel safer, ext2 will give them to
you. Just supply the relevent mount option. 

Shareing tho is a good point.

: --
: Mike Haertel <[email-masked]>
-- 
Michael O'Reilly @ iiNet Technologies, Internet Service providers.
Voice (09) 307 1183, Fax (09) 307 8414. Email [email-masked]
GCS d? au- a- v* c++ UL++++ L+++ E po--(+) b+++ D++ h* r++ u+
         e+ m+ s+++/--- !n h-- f? g+ w t-- y+ 

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

From: [email-masked] (Michael James Porter)
Subject: Re: Shared Libs: working toward a permanent solution?
Date: 3 Oct 1994 13:14:09 -0400

In article <[email-masked]>,
David Holland <[email-masked]> wrote:
=>How about dynamically relocating the library when it's loaded - once.
=>Then the address it appears at can be determined at run time; that way
=>it cannot possibly conflict with any other libraries; the library
=>loading mechanism would pick addresses so that doesn't happen. Then
=>when other processes add it, it would appear at the same address in
=>every process.

This is a good idea, but it limits the loading of a shareable library
to program load time.  I would like to see dlls be loadable at any
time in the life of a process.

Mike

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

From: [email-masked] (Bill Morrow)
Subject: Re: Does Linux require an IRQ for SCSI
Date: Mon, 3 Oct 1994 17:15:55 GMT

John Shifflett ([email-masked]) wrote:
: [email-masked] (Jeff Kesselman) writes:

: >In article <[email-masked]>,
: >George <[email-masked]> wrote:
: >>Does linux require that SCSI devices use an IRQ.  The seagate
: >>SCSI driver finds my adapter and drive, but times out. The
: >>interrupt selector is disabled on my card!

:    The seagate driver *Absolutely Requires* an IRQ!!!!

: >>I can set the IRQ to 3|5, Chance the Wait state to 0, and modify
: >>the Memory range.

:    You typically select IRQ 5.

Can anyone tell me how to set the IRQ for a Seagate ST01 adapter?
I have a used one, without any documentation.

Thanks,
========================================================================
Bill Morrow    Clinical Neurosciences, University of Calgary
e-mail: [email-masked] voice: (403) 220-6275 fax: (403) 283-8770 
http://www.cns.ucalgary.ca/~morrow
HMRB 105, 3330 Hospital Drive NW Calgary, Alberta, CANADA T2N 4N1

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

From: [email-masked] (Michael Turner)
Crossposted-To: comp.windows.x.intrinsics,gnu.misc.discuss
Subject: Re: What GUI to write for?
Date: 4 Oct 1994 03:11:23 GMT

In article <[email-masked]>,
Steven Buytaert <[email-masked]> wrote:
>
>  Just thought I'd second that. I've taken a look at wxWindows and
>  subscribed to the mailing list. It seems a very active mailing
>  list. Julian Smart that started wxWindows seems to be very active
>  to upgrade it regularly. It has a very nice manual and a lot of
>  add ons. Currently, a GUI builder that generates the wxWin code
>  is in prototyping phase (call it alpha).
>
>  For someone that wants to start some GUI programming without
>  going through every Motif call or start learning MS Windows
>  programming, definitely a very nice alternative.
>
>  Stef

Properly speaking (as I understand it) Motif is not a GUI software
package per se, but a style prescription.  Anything that gets you
the look and feel of Motif IS Motif, in this view of things.

Is this view of things dead, in effect?

Is there no other Motif implementation than OSF?

This seems unfortunate.  Especially since I have pretty much
vomited up all the Motif API I ever learned.  Yech.

I've heard vaguely of hacks to Interviews to make it more-or-
less Motif-compliant.  Is this for real?

-Michael

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

From: [email-masked] (Thomas E Zerucha)
Crossposted-To: comp.os.linux.help,comp.os.linux.misc
Subject: Re: Telnet & ftp freeze! - AND UNFREEZE KLUDGE
Date: 2 Oct 1994 03:40:39 GMT

I think I have found a solution (I have typed hundreds of chars so far and it
is still working).

At the end is a patch file for (/usr/src/)linux/net/inet/sock.c that fixes
this one problem.

The *real* problem is in tcp.c where tcp_write uses sock_wmalloc to allocate
socket buffers, but uses kfree_skb (if anything) to deallocate (after an ACK).
The problem is that kfree_skb bypasses the counting mechanism for the number
of bytes, so a count of used bytes keeps going up.  THIS IS ONLY A THEORY,
but I can find no call to sock_wfree except for an error that aborts sending
a packet.  The problem seems to occur with ppp due to timing and the very
small packets (each containing 1 character, but eating 768 bytes), with a
large window size.

You can figure out how to feed the following to patch, or simply edit
sock.c in the wmalloc and wfree routines.  All I do is disable the size
tracking.

*** linhb/net/inet/sock.c       Fri Sep 16 22:09:54 1994
--- linux/net/inet/sock.c       Sat Oct  1 23:00:40 1994
***************
*** 315,321 ****
                if (sk->wmem_alloc + size < sk->sndbuf || force) 
                {
                        struct sk_buff * c = alloc_skb(size, priority);
!                       if (c) 
                        {
                                cli();
                                sk->wmem_alloc+= c->mem_len;
--- 315,321 ----
                if (sk->wmem_alloc + size < sk->sndbuf || force) 
                {
                        struct sk_buff * c = alloc_skb(size, priority);
!                       if ( 0 && c) 
                        {
                                cli();
                                sk->wmem_alloc+= c->mem_len;
***************
*** 387,393 ****
        kfree_skbmem(skb, size);
        if (sk) 
        {
!               sk->wmem_alloc -= size;
                /* In case it might be waiting for more memory. */
                if (!sk->dead)
                        sk->write_space(sk);
--- 387,393 ----
        kfree_skbmem(skb, size);
        if (sk) 
        {
!               sk->wmem_alloc -= 0 && size;
                /* In case it might be waiting for more memory. */
                if (!sk->dead)
                        sk->write_space(sk);

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

From: [email-masked] (Bruce Murphy)
Subject: Qlogic Drivers
Date: 3 Oct 1994 17:53:46 GMT

Does anyone out there have any information on the drivers for the Qlogic
VESA LB SCSI-2 adaptor card for Linux?

Could anyone with any information, or patches for existing drivers
contact me at
[email-masked]

Thanks in advance.

PS. The card almost works with a T128 driver, so any patches for that
would be appreciated.

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

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