Subject: Linux-Development Digest #264
From: Digestifier <[email-masked]>
To: [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 4 Oct 94 15:13:11 EDT

Linux-Development Digest #264, Volume #2          Tue, 4 Oct 94 15:13:11 EDT

Contents:
  What GNU Tutorials would you attend? (Richard Stallman)
  Re: Telnet & ftp freeze! (Michaela Merz)
  Re: Could TCP/IP be implemented over SCSI? ([email-masked])
  Re: Linux and streams (Alan Cox)
  Re: What GUI to write for? (Anselm Lingnau)
  Re: [email-masked] (Dominik Kubla)
  Re: people using SCSI-IN2000 driver, please read this (Stefan Markgraf)
  Re: Time Zone (Markus Kuhn)
  Re: IF YOU HAVE A MAGNETO-OPTICAL DRIVE...
  Re: What GUI to write for? (Gerald G. Washington)
  Re: What GUI to write for? (Richard Michael Todd)
  Re: CFS 1.1.2 Unix encrypting file system source code available (free) (Alan Cox)
  Re: Could TCP/IP be implemented over SCSI? (Alan Cox)
  Re: [STATUS] Linus Floppy Driver Development (Alan Cox)
  Re: Multiprocessing Pentium Systems (Alan Cox)

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

Date: Sun, 2 Oct 94 03:04:56 -0400
From: [email-masked] (Richard Stallman)
Crossposted-To: gnu.misc.discuss,comp.os.linux.help,comp.os.linux.misc,comp.os.mach,comp.os.misc
Reply-To: [email-masked]
Subject: What GNU Tutorials would you attend?

We are thinking of having a GNU technical seminar in Cambridge,
Massachusetts next April or May.  One day will be a series of talks,
mostly technical overviews; the following day we are thinking of
having tutorials.  Tentatively we plan to charge $300 for the day of
talks, and $180 for each half day tutorial (students 1/4 price).
(These prices may change; consider them order-of-magnitude estimates.)
The funds raised, beyond the cost of the seminar itself, will go to
support GNU development.

To plan the tutorials, we need to find out what tutorial topics people
are interested in.  Here are the topics we are thinking about.

* Emacs Lisp programming.
* Advanced Emacs editing.
* Hurd programming.
* Using GNU Make, Bison, and Flex.
* Writing documentation in Texinfo.
* The Linux kernel.
* Using Autoconf to write portable programs.
* Porting GCC.

If you think you would actually attend one or more of these tutorials,
please send mail to [email-masked] and tell us which
ones.  We'll use the response to figure out which tutorials to offer,
and how to schedule them.

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

From: [email-masked] (Michaela Merz)
Subject: Re: Telnet & ftp freeze!
Date: Tue, 4 Oct 1994 06:41:50 GMT

     Seppo Kallio wrote in article <[email-masked]> :
 
>My laste experiment: I did delete smtp from inetd.conf and started to
>run sendmail directly "standalone". I do not know if it helps. I have
>not had problems after that, but the week is in the begining. :-(
>
>: Additional information/trends noticed:
>: If the lockup occurs, allowing the telnet session with the locked
>: connection to sit while starting another is *always* successful. 
>
>This is interesting. I have not noticed that.  Must check it next time
>if I have same situation. 

Yes - doing a new telnet session (if another one is hanging) works.
We had the same problems if using a router between different networks (ip-nets).
Now we added the nets to the physical ethernet (running different ip-networks
on ONE ethernet) and it seems to be somehow better. BUT: If we put
heavy traffic into a telnet session (i.e. moving the pine scrollbar rapidly)
the session hangs again. 

We didn't had this problems with 1.0. It appears only from a 1.1.45 to 1.0 hosts.

mm.
 
---
The                                           
Free Software                                      (Phone) ++49-69-6312083
Association of Germany, FSAG                             We have a target!

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

From: [email-masked]
Subject: Re: Could TCP/IP be implemented over SCSI?
Date: Tue, 04 Oct 94 05:51:04 PDT

Alan Cox <[email-masked]> writes:
> 
> SCSI has very short cabling limits so even if you can pass data between
> hosts which I think you can it would be ungainly. Given that ethernet
> boards are getting stupidly cheap now I question its value except as a
> hacking exercise.
> 
One of the things brought up as an adjunct to the idea of TCP/IP over SCSI was 
the concept of shared files systems (only possible with SCSI since only SCSI 
can share devices between two machines). 

DEC did a shared file system setup using DECNET over ethernet for arbitration / 
cache control... Wouldn't it have been so much nicer to have all the control 
messages pass over the same high speed link that was handling the shared device 
access? I.E. shared file systems on two or more machines without any other 
connection except the SCSI cable between them!!

Shared file systems almost seems like the more useful of two reasons to pass 
messages over a SCSI bus, with TCP/IP over SCSI just being a happy side affect, 
except that TCP/IP support was asked for before shared file systems were even 
mentioned. A perfect example of how we sometimes get the cart before the horse!

If you are interested in joining the SCSINET project (which has, as one of its 
goals, a project to develop shared SCSI file systems) Send a one line message 
to:

MailServer:     <[email-masked]>
MessageTxt:     sub scsinet [full name]

John Barrett <[email-masked]>

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

From: [email-masked] (Alan Cox)
Subject: Re: Linux and streams
Date: Tue, 4 Oct 1994 12:46:10 GMT

In article <[email-masked]> [email-masked] (Vassili Leonov) writes:
>dlc ([email-masked]) wrote:
>: I am wanting to do some software testing in a Linux environment, but to do so I
>: have to port some streams drivers over.  Does Linux support streams?  If so,
>: where are they?  If Linux doesn't do streams, why not?
>In the stock version of the Linux there are no streams. Looks like 
>people don't think it's needed. For portability reasons it's definately
>needed though I believe. There is one version of the kernel which has
>streams support - but I don't know how well it goes with the current

Matthais Urlichs has some streams code going. The networking changes for
1.3.x I want to have streams from a user viewpoint (the kernel side of
normal SYS5 streams is too big a performance cost). Don't hold your breath
for it though.

Alan

-- 
  ..-----------,,----------------------------,,----------------------------,,
 // Alan Cox  //  [email-masked]   //  GW4PTS@GB7SWN.#45.GBR.EU  //
 ``----------'`----------------------------'`----------------------------''

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

From: Anselm Lingnau <[email-masked]>
Crossposted-To: comp.windows.x.intrinsics,gnu.misc.discuss
Subject: Re: What GUI to write for?
Date: 4 Oct 1994 16:49:59 +0100

In article <[email-masked]>,
Michael Turner <[email-masked]> wrote:

> 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?

Motif is a user interface specification, i.e., a prescription of how certain
things are supposed to look and behave on a computer screen.

The OSF sells an implementation of a widget set and window manager
(among other things) that allegedly lets you write programs that adhere
to the Motif specification. Unfortunately, that implementation is also
called Motif, which generates a lot of confusion.

There is nothing in the Motif specification that forces you to write
applications using the Motif implementation from the OSF, as long as
whatever stuff you produce sticks to the specification. This is not
especially straightforward, since the specification itself is something
of a moving target.

It turns out that many customers aren't really too fussy about what
you're using as long as the results work and look reasonably Motifish.
So a vaguely Motif-like appearance like the one obtainable using Tk, for
instance, is often quite sufficient. Speaking of Tk, note also that it
is supposed to converge more towards the Motif specification in the
future.

Anselm
-- 
Anselm Lingnau ......................... [email-masked]
People who deal with bits should expect to get bitten.          --- Jon Bentley

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

From: [email-masked] (Dominik Kubla)
Subject: Re: [email-masked]
Date: 04 Oct 1994 13:36:51 GMT

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

   In article <[email-masked]>
      [email-masked] (Steven Buytaert) writes:
   > 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:
   > 
   How do you get a list of the channels on the mailing list ?

send an empty mail to:

  [email-masked]

You will get a return mail explaining the use of MailNet.

   Is it different to the comp.os.linux.* groups ?

Yes, it is.

Dominik
--
===========================================================================
eMail: [email-masked]    sMail: Dominik Kubla, Lannerstrasse 53
                                            55270 Ober-Olm, F.R. of Germany
>>> Save the environment NOW! <<<           ******  European  Union  ******

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

From: [email-masked] (Stefan Markgraf)
Subject: Re: people using SCSI-IN2000 driver, please read this
Date: 04 Oct 1994 11:51:37 GMT

>>: Sometimes while swapping (to a swap-partition) the driver crashes. 
>>: No read/writes are possible and therefore every process begins to hang 
>>: when it needs access to the disk. The HD light burns constantly.

>>I have seen this, always with the "new" fast driver on tsx-11.  If

   I also see this with the new fast driver & 1.51. BUT, I really
   don't think it's related to *swapping*, per se. My experience
   suggests that this hang occurs (somewhat randomly) whenever you
   write _large_ amounts of data to disk. My system uses a swap file,
   so it seems unlikely that it's a swap file versus partition issue.
   I can recreate the hang by something as simple as untarring the
   linux source tree, or doing 'dd if=zImage of=/boot/zImage'. Not
   always, but often enough that I keep a boot floppy with 1.0.9 and
   the old driver handy (never have been convinced that the newer
   kernels don't play a part in the problem).  Also, there was a
   noticable increase in failures when I went from 8 megs to 16.
   This is high quality RAM, by the way, and hasn't shown ANY sign
   of giving trouble anywhere else. So, my theory is that with the
   filesystem buffers a lot bigger than they used to be, large
   amounts of stuff will be written to buffers before getting flushed
   every 5 seconds or whatever by update. During flush, then,
   something in the driver gets overloaded and ends up hanging.

I can remember there was a kernel-warning:
 ******bdflush not running*******
Can anybody explain this warning?

Okidoki,
        Stefan.
                         \\|//
                         (^ ^)
======================ooO=(_)=Ooo=======================================
sig: Stefan              {   }          [email-masked]
     Markgraf            {   }          Phone: +49 531 391 5231
                         {   }
=========================U===U==========================================
                        /| | |\
                       ooO   Ooo

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

From: [email-masked] (Markus Kuhn)
Crossposted-To: comp.os.linux.admin,comp.os.linux.help
Subject: Re: Time Zone
Date: Tue, 4 Oct 1994 12:05:43 GMT
Reply-To: [email-masked]

[email-masked] (H. Peter Anvin) writes:

>Followup to:  <[email-masked]>
>By author:    [email-masked] (Nikos Massios)
>In newsgroup: comp.os.linux.admin
>>
>> I think EET stands for Eastern European Time and it is GMT+02. Well
>> if my previous statement is right then Slackware 1.2.0 is wrong
>> because it thinks that EET is GMT+03. Anybody knows what EET is?
>> 
>EET is GMT+2 in the winter and GMT+3 in the summer.

And for more information about time zones, you might want to check
Olson's tables on ftp elsie.nci.nih.gov in pub/tz*.

Markus

---
Markus Kuhn, Computer Science student -- University of Erlangen,
Internet Mail: <[email-masked]> - Germany
WWW Home: <http://wwwcip.informatik.uni-erlangen.de/user/mskuhn>

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

From: [email-masked] ()
Crossposted-To: comp.os.linux.help
Subject: Re: IF YOU HAVE A MAGNETO-OPTICAL DRIVE...
Date: 4 Oct 1994 13:55:42 GMT

Several people mailed me help with their 5030E drives so I though I'd respond
here.

After consulting my documentation, I am afraid that I have a 5031E
rather than a 5030E. I am not sure how similar they are but I will describe
the settings anyway for you. It has a bank of 10 dip switches on back and
8 jumpers on the bottom. I have *'ed what I think that they should be. I
have not actually removed the unit from my computer to verify these though.

dip switch  function         on                     off
=========   ========         ==                     ===  
1           speed          *3600 rpm                1800 rpm
2           open mode      *depend on sw1           always 3600rpm       
3           MAC mode       don't become unit        *normal function
                           attention after bus
                           reset. use for macintosh    
4           spin up        don't spin up            *spin up on insertion
5           initialization *format unformatted disk don't
6           arbitration    *enabled                 not enabled
7           SCSI parity    *check enabled           not enabled
8,9,10      SCSI ID        000 -- 0
                           001 -- 1, etc.

jumper      function         on                     off
======      ========         ==                     ===
1           SFP mode       *checks with normal      weak laser power
                            read power      
2           speed          3600 rpm                 *depends on sw1
3           reserved       *
4           device type    *respond 0 to INQUIRY    respond 7
5           reserved       *
6           open mode      slow                     *depend on sw2
7           write mode     *3 pass (e,w,verify)     2 pass (erase, write)
8           format         *ISO format              Ricoh format

jumper 8 is the important one, the default is Ricoh format; we wish ISO for
ISO preformatted disks which all of them are.

Hope this helps.

Paul

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

From: [email-masked] (Gerald G. Washington)
Crossposted-To: comp.windows.x.intrinsics,gnu.misc.discuss
Subject: Re: What GUI to write for?
Date: 4 Oct 1994 17:34:27 GMT

Anselm Lingnau ([email-masked]) wrote:
: Motif is a user interface specification, i.e., a prescription of how certain
: things are supposed to look and behave on a computer screen.

I wonder--by writing other toolkits with Motif-like functionality, I hope
people are not violating some copyright.  I'm just curious because I did
write my own object-oriented toolkit with a Motif-like appearance.  I've
been using it for a while.  Tk also has this feature.  I remember that
Apple tried to sue when people copied some of the Mac's interface...

: It turns out that many customers aren't really too fussy about what
: you're using as long as the results work and look reasonably Motifish.
: So a vaguely Motif-like appearance like the one obtainable using Tk, for
: instance, is often quite sufficient. Speaking of Tk, note also that it
: is supposed to converge more towards the Motif specification in the
: future.

Yeah, so is my toolkit, when I have the time.  B^)  Maybe I'll release it
on the net soon.

-- Gerald

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

From: [email-masked] (Richard Michael Todd)
Crossposted-To: comp.windows.x.intrinsics,gnu.misc.discuss
Subject: Re: What GUI to write for?
Date: 4 Oct 1994 18:07:23 GMT

[email-masked] (Chris Toshok) writes:
>upon.  It shouldn't be too terribly hard to come up with a widget set that
>is complete and looks nice (Motifish), compiles on just about anything, and
                 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Make up your mind.  Do you want one that looks nice, or do you want one that
looks Motifish?  

We now return you to the flamefest already in progress.

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

Crossposted-To: sci.crypt,comp.security.misc,comp.security.unix,alt.security,comp.sys.sun.admin
From: [email-masked] (Alan Cox)
Subject: Re: CFS 1.1.2 Unix encrypting file system source code available (free)
Date: Mon, 3 Oct 1994 11:13:18 GMT

In article <[email-masked]> [email-masked] writes:
>Source code for version 1.1 of CFS, the Cryptographic File System, is
>now available upon request for research and experimental use in the US
>and Canada.
>
>CFS runs under SunOS and several other BSD-derived systems with NFS.
>It is implemented entirely at user level, as a local NFS server
>running on the client machine's "loopback" interface.  It consists of

Before anyone trusts CFS on any box with Sun derived RPC (Linux included)
ensure you have the fixed rpc.portmap that doesn't allow portmap redirected
RPC calls to spoof nfs loopback mounts into talking to any host on the
planet - otherwise your data is less secure. The fixed versions of portmap
for Linux are on sunsite.unc.edu.

Alan
-- 
  ..-----------,,----------------------------,,----------------------------,,
 // Alan Cox  //  [email-masked]   //  GW4PTS@GB7SWN.#45.GBR.EU  //
 ``----------'`----------------------------'`----------------------------''

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

From: [email-masked] (Alan Cox)
Subject: Re: Could TCP/IP be implemented over SCSI?
Date: Mon, 3 Oct 1994 11:03:45 GMT

In article <[email-masked]> [email-masked] (myers_lincoln) writes:
>       I am asking because I would like to know how viable it would be to add
>support to Linux for TCP/IP over SCSI, which might be practical for two or
>three machines which already have SCSI support.

SCSI has very short cabling limits so even if you can pass data between
hosts which I think you can it would be ungainly. Given that ethernet
boards are getting stupidly cheap now I question its value except as a
hacking exercise.

>       On the lighter side, imagine in addition to Ethernet and SCSInet,
>having SoundCardNet.  Sound Cards would record each other's audio output from
>across the room.  True short range wireless communication, though sleeping in
>the same building might be difficult.  ifconfig /dev/audio up.  Hannu, you
>ready for this? :)

Now that sounds much more fun. Personally if it was getting into building
DIY networking an I/R link might be more fun

Alan

-- 
  ..-----------,,----------------------------,,----------------------------,,
 // Alan Cox  //  [email-masked]   //  GW4PTS@GB7SWN.#45.GBR.EU  //
 ``----------'`----------------------------'`----------------------------''

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

From: [email-masked] (Alan Cox)
Subject: Re: [STATUS] Linus Floppy Driver Development
Date: Mon, 3 Oct 1994 11:16:58 GMT

In article <[email-masked]> [email-masked] (Steve Davies) writes:
>Acorn's Archimedes A300 series machines had a 3 1/2 drive with a
>disk change line.

The Arch hardware (like the later Amiga hardware) has a drive that doesn't
need to be seeked to get the response. The older Amiga used to seek every
few seconds making the distinctive clunk-clunk in the background until you
got so annoyed you stuffed a disk in it to shut it up.

Since when you do floppy I/O you can check the drive changes you can mount
on an operation occuring instead.

Alan

-- 
  ..-----------,,----------------------------,,----------------------------,,
 // Alan Cox  //  [email-masked]   //  GW4PTS@GB7SWN.#45.GBR.EU  //
 ``----------'`----------------------------'`----------------------------''

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

From: [email-masked] (Alan Cox)
Subject: Re: Multiprocessing Pentium Systems
Date: Mon, 3 Oct 1994 11:25:38 GMT

In article <[email-masked]> [email-masked] (Frank Lofaro) writes:
>Linux should start supporting SMP now.
>The commerical OS's have already, and they aren't anywhere near as 
>good as UNIX or Linux.
>We are supposed to be ahead of, not behind commercial operating systems.
>Linux is a hacker's OS, and it should be developed as hacker's would, 
>trying innovative approaches, not always trying to go with what is stable 
>and standardized. If people want that, and Linux they can use the 
>non-development kernels, but as for the rest of us, now is a good time 
>to start broadening Linux's base. It already has made a powerful impact 
>deep into the x86 world, so work in broadening its usefulneess is a good 
>idea.

Linux reflects the hardware people posess - thats one thing thats good about
it - you can run it on a 4Mb 386SX, you can use old MFM drives , you can
use 360K floppies. You can run X on a herc card. Until a bunch of Linux
hackers have a multicpu pentium board and relevant documentation nothing
will happen. So the people who want it can either

1) Buy a machine and do the job
2) Buy a machine and donate it to someone in exchange for doing the job.

Alan (Speaking and looking for donations of an SMP Pentium box to the
        Swansea University Computer Society) 8)

-- 
  ..-----------,,----------------------------,,----------------------------,,
 // Alan Cox  //  [email-masked]   //  GW4PTS@GB7SWN.#45.GBR.EU  //
 ``----------'`----------------------------'`----------------------------''

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

** FOR YOUR REFERENCE **

The service address, to which questions about the list itself and requests
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You can send mail to the entire list (and comp.os.linux.development) via:

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