Subject: Linux-Development Digest #268
From: Digestifier <[email-masked]>
To: [email-masked]
Date: Wed, 5 Oct 94 18:13:16 EDT

Linux-Development Digest #268, Volume #2          Wed, 5 Oct 94 18:13:16 EDT

Contents:
  Problems compiling with gnu CPP (taylor)
  Re: Does linux implement semaphores? (Brian Vinter)
  Re: Korn Shell '93 Now Available from AT&T (Peter Mutsaers)
  Re: ext2fs vs. Berkeley FFS (John Gotts)
  Re: Xircom PCMCIA ethernet support? (Russell Nelson)
  Re: SMail security hole? (Rob Janssen)
  Using Andrew to create and edit HTML docs (Elmer R. Masters)
  writing a file system (John West)
  Re: BSD/386 vs. Linux Performance (Erik Blass)
  Re: BSD/386 vs. Linux Performance (Erik Blass)
  Fortran on Linux?? (Barry Sohl)
  Re: Linux killed my floppy drive! (Haktan Bulut)
  What is ELF ?? (Haktan Bulut)
  Re: Linux killed my floppy drive! (Giuseppe Zanetti)
  MuPAD: where ?? (Angelo Haritsis)
  Re: ext2fs vs. Berkeley FFS (Louis-D. Dubeau)
  WANTED: Source to Telnet, FTP (Mike John Hartman)
  Re: Report on gcc with P5 optimizations (Shaune Beattie)
  Status of Linux and Distributions security (Daniel L. Marks)
  linux is great (Supat Faarungsang)
  NCR 810 problems. (NCR53c7xx_reset is NOP) (Jakob Sandgren)

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

From: [email-masked] (taylor)
Subject: Problems compiling with gnu CPP
Date: Wed, 5 Oct 1994 10:59:23 GMT

Has anyone had problems compiling files that include both stdio.h and
iostream.h using gcc 2.5.8? If I try it tells me that two functions
are being redefined:

        __underflow and __overflow

These are defined in both libio.h (included by stdio.h) and
streambuf.h (included by iostream.h). Both have a different parameters
so that would be ok in C++ as they would be overloaded BUT they
are defined as extern "C" ... so the compiler thinks they are the same
function. This is a problem as some of the software I have includes these
two files and hence they won't compile.

I also have problems compiling the files generated by uib (the ParcPlace
interface builder). This throws out the same errors (functions attempting
to be redefined illegally) but this time I can see no problem as they
are not extern "C" functions and have different parameters and so
should be overloaded perfectly legally.

Has anyone else had these problems?

Paul Taylor
University of Brighton

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

From: [email-masked] (Brian Vinter)
Subject: Re: Does linux implement semaphores?
Date: Wed, 5 Oct 1994 11:47:10 GMT

In article <19941005.095728.519836.NETNEWS@ESOC> [email-masked] writes:
>In article [email-masked], [email-masked] (Harald Milz) writes:
>>In comp.os.linux.development, Neal Patrick Howland ([email-masked]) wrote:
>>> I was wondering in the standard linux develpment packages implemented
>>> a semaphore synchronization call.  If not, how do you synchronize two
>>> processes to keep them from entering their critical sections at the same
>>> time?
>>
>>Using named pipes is an elegant method to achieve this.
>
>I always find semaphores useful for this!
>
>Yes, Linux DOES provide semaphores.
>
I would not recomend pipes for syncronization as you (at least I) runs out
of fd's pretty fast whereas semaphores usally support 64K or in that range.

Also there may be speed differences, I havn't tried it with Linux
(actually my Linux is down as my st01 controller looses info and corrupts
the fs, I'll bye a desent SCSI later - but if you have a posible solution
please let me know) but on my HP735 (well not my own but ...) I get
15K context switches using pipes and 26K using semaphores. If anybody would
do the test on a desent Linux box mail me and I'll send the source 
(_very_ small).

Brian
--
Vinter 8>}

 ________________________________________________________________
| Brian Vinter                      | Email [email-masked]     |
| Department of Computer Science    | Phone (+47) 77 64 52 52    |
| University of Tromsoe             | Disclaimer:                |
| N-9037 Tromsoe, NORWAY            | Real men do it in parallel!|
 ________________________________________________________________

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

From: [email-masked] (Peter Mutsaers)
Subject: Re: Korn Shell '93 Now Available from AT&T
Date: Wed, 5 Oct 1994 10:38:23 GMT

>> On 01 Oct 1994 21:23:54 GMT, [email-masked] (Darin
>> Johnson) said:

  >> How about coprocess communication (print/read -p ...), the
  >> "select" statement, builtin arithmetic, a command line editor
  >> which will drop you into vi/emacs, and parameter attributes
  >> (typeset -LZ ...), to name a few?

  DJ> This is enough to warrant $99?  You can pay someone that amount
  DJ> to add it to bash or zsh.

  DJ> Also - "fc" under both bash and zsh pops up an editor for me.

  DJ> I find bash and zsh much nicer for interactive use.

Indeed; and interactive use is the most important for a shell.  When
it comes to 'advanced' programming features: stick to the good old
bourne shell so that your scripts will run everywhere. If you really
need more advanced facilities then you'd better use a 'real'
programming language (such as perl or C etc.).
--
Peter Mutsaers                  |  AT Computing bv,  P.O. Box 1428,
[email-masked]                    |  6501 BK  Nijmegen, The Netherlands
tel. work: +31 (0)80 527248     |
tel. home: +31 (0)3405 71093    |  "... En..., doet ie het al?"

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

From: [email-masked] (John Gotts)
Subject: Re: ext2fs vs. Berkeley FFS
Date: 4 Oct 1994 19:27:56 GMT

I just thought I would mention that there is some information on ext2fs (in
postscript form, I believe) in the defrag-0.6.tar.gz package.

--
John Gotts ([email-masked])  73 de N8QDW   URL: http://www.umich.edu/~jgotts
GE -d+ H s+: g-- p? !au a-- w+ v C++++ UL++++ P+>++ L++ 3- E--- N+++ K- !W M--
 V-- -po+(---) Y+ t+ 5 j+ R- G? tv b+ D B- e+ u--- h f+ r n- y? <Linux rules!>

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

From: [email-masked] (Russell Nelson)
Subject: Re: Xircom PCMCIA ethernet support?
Date: 05 Oct 1994 14:10:48 GMT

In article <[email-masked]> [email-masked] (Daniel J Thumim) writes:

   Is there any chance of getting support for a Xircom CE10 PCMCIA
   ethernet adapter?  I heard of problems with the parallel port
   adapters, they don't give out the programming info.  Is this true
   of the PCMCIA adapter too?

Yes.

   Now that there are kernel loadable modules, and it is possible to
   develop drivers without releasing source, does that change things?

No.  Are you going to run a driver that some bozo wrote, that you
can't get source code for?  Do you plan to put yourself at the mercy
of one company for support?  Seems like a bad idea to me.

   If anyone has had direct contact with Xircom and can point me to a
   contact over there, that would also be helpful.

Why bother?  They've been unhelpful for years.  I've spoken to the
President of the company, and he has a specific philosophical problem
with free software.  That's his right, but it's our right to ignore
his company's products.

--
-russ <[email-masked]>    http://www.crynwr.com/crynwr/nelson.html
Crynwr Software   | Crynwr Software sells packet driver support | ask4 PGP key
11 Grant St.      | +1 315 268 1925 (9201 FAX)  | What is thee doing about it?
Potsdam, NY 13676 | LPF member - ask me about the harm software patents do.

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

Crossposted-To: comp.os.linux.help
From: [email-masked] (Rob Janssen)
Subject: Re: SMail security hole?
Reply-To: [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 4 Oct 1994 16:03:01 GMT

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

>I am using sendmail 8.6.9 and don't have this problem.  Another reason to
>switch over to sendmail I suppose.

Aiieee...  you won't believe how many problems similar to this have already
been found and solved in "sendmail"...

What makes you believe that the last one found was the last one that exists?
(certainly not the track record of this program...)

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

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

From: [email-masked] (Elmer R. Masters)
Crossposted-To: comp.os.linux.questions,comp.os.linux.help
Subject: Using Andrew to create and edit HTML docs
Date: Tue, 4 Oct 1994 05:21:12 UNDEFINED

Greetings.

I am attempting to use the Andrew wp package to create and edit HTML documents 
for my WWW server.  I am using the latest version of Andrew.  Whenever I 
attempt to create or edit a link of any type, the program crashes and goes 
away.  There is no indication of what may be going wrong.  Is anyone out there 
using this function of Andrew?  If so can you offer any advice?

Thanks in advance,

Elmer R. Masters
Online/Reference Librarian
Barclay Law Library
Syracuse University

[email-masked]

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

From: [email-masked] (John West)
Subject: writing a file system
Date: 4 Oct 1994 09:03:36 GMT

Anyone got any wise words?  I'd like to write a fs for Linux, partly for
the experience, and partly because I think a compressing fs would be a
Good Thing.  I've looked at the KHG, but it doesn't seem to say anything
about it.

I could always read the source for one of the standard ones, and figure it
out from there, but this doesn't seem a terribly reliable way of doing
things.

John West

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

From: [email-masked] (Erik Blass )
Subject: Re: BSD/386 vs. Linux Performance
Date: Thu, 29 Sep 1994 20:27:45 GMT

Hi !

Steven Pritchard ([email-masked]) wrote:
: [email-masked] (Michael Nelson) writes:

: >Anyone have any performance stats comparing BSD/386 (BSD/OS) with Linux?
: >Network, disk, and overall...

: Check out September's "Open Computing" p. 83.  The article sort-of 
: compares BSD/386 and Linux to each other and to commercial unices.

Aahh....I am from Germany and can't read this magazine...:-( would you
be so kind and post the results ? (Including the ones from the
commercial unixes)

Erik

-- 
Erik Blass|Internet [email-masked]
Theegartener Str.38|42651 Solingen|Voice:0212-201660
Ich habe Dinge gesehen, die ihr Menschen niemals glauben wuerdet. Gigantische
Schiffe die brannten an der Schulter des Orion. Und C-Beams - glitzernd in der

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

From: [email-masked] (Erik Blass )
Subject: Re: BSD/386 vs. Linux Performance
Date: Fri, 30 Sep 1994 21:30:48 GMT

Ed McCreary ([email-masked]) wrote:
: In article <[email-masked]> [email-masked] (Grant Edwards) writes:

:    Michael Nelson ([email-masked]) wrote:
:    : Anyone have any performance stats comparing BSD/386 (BSD/OS) with Linux?
:    : Network, disk, and overall...

:    DUCK!

: RABBIT!
Yes...very nice...but could someone POST the codes ?

Greetings,
        Erik

-- 
Erik Blass|Internet [email-masked]
Theegartener Str.38|42651 Solingen|Voice:0212-201660
Ich habe Dinge gesehen, die ihr Menschen niemals glauben wuerdet. Gigantische
Schiffe die brannten an der Schulter des Orion. Und C-Beams - glitzernd in der

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

From: [email-masked] (Barry Sohl)
Subject: Fortran on Linux??
Date: 3 Oct 1994 21:46:14 GMT

I just installed Slackware on a Intel machine and am looking for a 
Fortran compiler similar to F77 for Linux.  Does it exist?  I'm basically 
just doing small, school-related Fortran programs.  I've tried looking 
around sunsite.unc.edu but I don't see anything that looks like F77.  I'd 
greatly appreciate any suggestions emailed to [email-masked].

Thanks,
Barry Sohl

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

Crossposted-To: comp.os.linux.help
From: [email-masked] (Haktan Bulut)
Subject: Re: Linux killed my floppy drive!
Date: Wed, 5 Oct 1994 13:33:52 GMT

Hmm. Try cleaning your drive. You can get those disks specially for cleaning 
drives put some ethanol 99% on the cleaner disk. Put it into your drive and 
do some DIR commands, this should fix your drive. Actually I have experienced 
the same thing, and I fixed it with a cleaner-disk.

//////
[email-masked]

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

From: [email-masked] (Haktan Bulut)
Subject: What is ELF ??
Date: Wed, 5 Oct 1994 13:36:45 GMT

Hi. Could someone tell me what ELF is ?

Thanks in advance.

----
[email-masked]

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

From: [email-masked] (Giuseppe Zanetti)
Crossposted-To: comp.os.linux.help
Subject: Re: Linux killed my floppy drive!
Date: 5 Oct 1994 14:17:14 +0100

In article <[email-masked]>, Ahmed Naas <[email-masked]> wrote:
>So, did Linux kill my drive or is this one of those rare coincidences?

I think that this is one of those.

Giuseppe

-- 

                                 Giuseppe Zanetti

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

From: [email-masked] (Angelo Haritsis)
Crossposted-To: comp.os.linux.admin
Subject: MuPAD: where ??
Date: 5 Oct 94 13:39:48 GMT

Hello all,

I missed a posting about a maths package called MuPAD.
Could someone tell me where to ftp this from?
What about licensing ?

Please reply via personal email.

Thanks in advance,
Angelo
-- 
#include <standard.disclaimer.h>
 Angelo Haritsis, Applied Systems Section
 s-mail: Dpt of Computing,Imperial College, 180 Queen's Gate, London SW7 2BZ, UK
 e-mail: [email-masked] - !!!NEW!!! tel:+44 71 594 8434 - fax:+44 71 581 8024

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

From: [email-masked] (Louis-D. Dubeau)
Subject: Re: ext2fs vs. Berkeley FFS
Date: 05 Oct 1994 12:38:25 GMT

>>>>> "MH" == Mike Haertel <[email-masked]> writes:

    MH> Rob Janssen ([email-masked]) wrote:
    >> Well, the Linux community sneers at BSD for doing synchronous
    >> inode updates, which you won't find in ext2fs :-) Those can
    >> really kill performance when you are manipulating a lot of
    >> files, like in a news system.

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

I had the exactly oposite experience. Each time that I experienced a
crash while running an OS on a FFS partition, I lost files that
weren't even open!!!! Files that had not been open for ages! As for
ext2fs, I sometimes crashed Linux, my ext2fs server or I sometime
forgot to shutdown properly and never had any problems to recover my
data.

Only once did I have a major corruption problem with ext2fs but I
guess this was a bug in the actual implementation in the kernel.

        ldd

-- Louis-Dominique Dubeau == [email-masked] == [email-masked] --
-- Linux on Mach project: http://step.polymtl.ca/~ldd/

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

From: [email-masked] (Mike John Hartman)
Subject: WANTED: Source to Telnet, FTP
Date: 5 Oct 1994 18:31:52 GMT

  I've been searching all over Linux FTP sites for source code to the
Telnet and FTP programs with no luck.  From what I have read, Linux
does support these features but I cannot find any reference as to what
archive they are contained in, and I don't have the filespace to grab
1/2 meg archives unless I'm sure it has what I need.  Could somebody
point me to the exact file(s) and site?  Email would be appreciated;
thanks for any help you can give.
  
  (As an undergraduate project, our group is planning on adding public
key encryption (eliminating plaintext password broadcast) to these 
programs to make logins and transmissions more secure.)

  [email-masked]

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

From: [email-masked] (Shaune Beattie)
Subject: Re: Report on gcc with P5 optimizations
Date: 5 Oct 1994 18:36:52 GMT

Erann Gat ([email-masked]) wrote:
: FWIW, FYI, ETC:

: Several people asked me to report my experiences using gcc-2.5.8 with
: pentium optimizations.  I got the version from sunsite, which appears
: to be slightly different from the version from intel.  (For one thing,
: the intel version claims to be revision 2.4.0.)  It compiled without a
: hitch, and the kernel recompiled OK using -O2 but not -O4.  This is
: consistent with earlier reports.  Bootup dies during delay loop
: calibration.
: I tried recompiling just this part of the kernel (main.c) using -O2, but
: it died again a little later during the boot sequence.  I have not had
: time to do a detailed investigation as to the cause of the problem, but
: for now I think it is prudent to consider -O4 to be unsafe.

: Unlike earlier reports, I perceive no performance change using the new
: compiler.  However, much of what I am doing is memory-intensive, and so
: I would not expect to see much speedup.

: E.

You using the version patched up to version 2.5.8 but based on the old 
intel version?
I used that and it would compile stuff fine with -O2, would compile with 
-O3 but the compiled program would almost always crash (unless it was a 
simple 'hello world' sort of thing), and under -O4 gcc itself would crash 
with an internal error...
using povray compiled -mpentium&-O2 against -m486&-O2 i gained about 2%.. 
hardly noticeble except on long traces... -O3 would make a povray that 
crashes and -O4 would crash gcc while compiling :(

Shaune

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

From: [email-masked] (Daniel L. Marks)
Subject: Status of Linux and Distributions security
Date: 3 Oct 1994 04:38:20 GMT

How do the recent linux kernels (1.1.45+) and the various distributions
(Slackware, SLS, Debian) compare to commercial UNIX offerings such as
SCO, UnixWare, and BSDI for the number of security holes each is known
to have?  Is Linux secure enough so that "hostile" users can be given
accounts without worrying about compromised root access with distributions
like Slackware 2.0.1?  How does Linux compare to other UNIXes in its
handling of attempts by hostile users to make the system suffer (such
as disk capacity filling, runaway processes, or exploiting setuid
scripts, etc.)?

Linux's reptuation would seem to me to be partially based on its perceived
efficacy in preventing system break-ins and crashes.  Does Linux have
the kind of safety record that should earn it the kind of reputation
that the commerical UNIXes have?

Dan Marks
[email-masked]

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

From: [email-masked] (Supat Faarungsang)
Subject: linux is great
Date: 5 Oct 1994 15:35:15 GMT

Hi,

After I spend more than 1 year to make 1024x768 work.
I found that linux is the greatest unix system to be used.
All softwares under linux is advanced and most powerful.

Thanks to the development team,
supat
--
Supat Faarungsang
University of Illinois
Department of Animal Sciences
1207 West Gregory Drive

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

From: [email-masked] (Jakob Sandgren)
Subject: NCR 810 problems. (NCR53c7xx_reset is NOP)
Date: 5 Oct 1994 23:01:08 +0100

I have some problems with the ncr810 scsi kernel. I have installed linux on my scsi hard-disk but when I try to boot with my boot-disk everything works fine until init is started. This is the output i get:

Oct  6 00:26:18 init[1]: version 2.4 booting
/etc/rc.d/rc.S: Testing filesystem status: Read-only file system
scsi0 : reseting for second half of retries.
scsi0 : DANGER : NCR53c7xx_reset is NOP

---END OF OUTPUT---

After this message stops the system, I can switch to the other viritual tty (blank screen), but thats all.

My hardware:
ASUS SP3-486 motherboard with a DX2-66, 16MB, onboard ncr810 scsi chip, 3Com Etherlink III.

I have tried disabled internal/external cach, etc in the bios setup, but nothing seems to help.

Anyone who has a clue? (PLEASE!)

/Jakob

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

** FOR YOUR REFERENCE **

The service address, to which questions about the list itself and requests
to be added to or deleted from it should be directed, is:

    Internet: [email-masked]

You can send mail to the entire list (and comp.os.linux.development) via:

    Internet: [email-masked]

Linux may be obtained via one of these FTP sites:
    nic.funet.fi				pub/OS/Linux
    tsx-11.mit.edu				pub/linux
    sunsite.unc.edu				pub/Linux

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