Subject: Linux-Development Digest #278
From: Digestifier <[email-masked]>
To: [email-masked]
Date: Sat, 8 Oct 94 03:13:21 EDT

Linux-Development Digest #278, Volume #2          Sat, 8 Oct 94 03:13:21 EDT

Contents:
  Re: What GUI to write for? (Jorge A. Gautier)
  Large IDE Drive support (David Edelman)
  Re: [email-masked] (Stephen Parkinson)
  Re: writing a file system (Florian Schmidt)
  Re: writing a file system (Florian Schmidt)
  Re: Linux For Mac (Aaron 'Raz' Wrasman)
  Re: EXTREMELY ALPHA ARCnet drivers ready for testing (Avery Pennarun)
  Re: Improving SLIP latency under Linux (Michael Callahan)
  sliplogin-1.2 (Sven Goldt)
  Re: What is ELF ? (NightHawk)
  Re: ext2fs vs. Berkeley FFS (Mike Haertel)
  Re: Flame on the attitude of Linux towards GCC development (Matthew Donadio)
  Re: Linux Mud (Alexander Williams)
  Re: LINUX & VESA vs ISA (Jay Cox)
  Re: Korn Shell '93 Now Available from AT&T (Tom Czarnik)
  Re: Single host firewalling (Thomas D. Nadeau)
  Re: Text modes? (Matt Hudson)
  Re: 1.6Mb floppies under Linux? (Uwe Bonnes)
  Re: Odd floppy sector size? (Alain Knaff)

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

Crossposted-To: comp.windows.x.intrinsics,gnu.misc.discuss
From: [email-masked] (Jorge A. Gautier)
Subject: Re: What GUI to write for?
Date: Fri, 7 Oct 1994 01:47:43 GMT

In article <[email-masked]>,
Michael Turner <[email-masked]> wrote:
>I've heard vaguely of hacks to Interviews to make it more-or-
>less Motif-compliant.  Is this for real?

I wouldn't call InterViews 3.1 glyphs "hacks".  They give you a choice of
OpenLook, Motif, or "SGIMotif" appearance with a runtime flag.  It's not as
full-featured as it could be, but it's certainly sufficient for normal menu/
button stuff, and good looking too.  Plus you get the source so you can do
or modify whatever special widget you need.

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

From: edelman@beeblebrox (David Edelman)
Subject: Large IDE Drive support
Date: 7 Oct 1994 15:22:28 GMT

Is anyone working on being able to use > 1024 Cylinders on an IDE drive?

Needless to say the work-around of changing the drive geometry parameters is 
sub-optimal and I was hoping to hear that a fix is just around the corner.

If anyone has heard of anything, I will bw happy to summarize the responses 
to the net.

TIA

Dave Edelman

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

From: [email-masked] (Stephen Parkinson)
Subject: Re: [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 4 Oct 1994 04:41:34 +0000

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 ?

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

Stephen Parkinson

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

From: [email-masked] (Florian Schmidt)
Subject: Re: writing a file system
Date: Tue, 04 Oct 1994 22:03:32 +0000

John West ([email-masked]) wrote:
> 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.

> John West
and: there allready is a compressed fs out there. i don't know eactly where
to get it, but i know a person who uses it...

-- 

ja! ich bin ein HONK! na und? .....  irc: moses (c u on #germany)
GMU -d+ -p+ c++ l+ u--- e* m--- s++/+ !n f? g+ w+ t+ r y+

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

From: [email-masked] (Florian Schmidt)
Subject: Re: writing a file system
Date: Wed, 05 Oct 1994 10:41:13 +0000

root ([email-masked]) wrote:

> > John West
> and: there allready is a compressed fs out there. i don't know eactly where
> to get it, but i know a person who uses it...

hmm, follow up to my own article. but maybe it was a crypted filesystem that
person uses. do not  hit me, if i am wrong. i will ask again.

-- 

ja! ich bin ein HONK! na und? .....  irc: moses (c u on #germany)
GMU -d+ -p+ c++ l+ u--- e* m--- s++/+ !n f? g+ w+ t+ r y+

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

From: [email-masked] (Aaron 'Raz' Wrasman)
Subject: Re: Linux For Mac
Date: 06 Oct 1994 19:24:41 GMT

Actually could I get some info on Linux for the Mac also? My friend
has a Mac and was wondering the same thing, he doesn't keep up with
these groups though.

Raz
[email-masked]
--
  @             Internet:[email-masked], [email-masked] 
 (!=>---        Bitnet:Razron@utkvx, Kaspian@utkvx  Phone# 615-584-8240
 / ) Raz        Usnail:602B Longview Rd Knoxville,TN 37919       

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

From: [email-masked] (Avery Pennarun)
Subject: Re: EXTREMELY ALPHA ARCnet drivers ready for testing
Date: 6 Oct 1994 02:04:07 GMT

In article <[email-masked]>, Russell Nelson wrote:
: In article <[email-masked]> [email-masked] (Avery Pennarun) writes:

:    NOTE:  These drivers aren't compatible with ARCether for DOS, yet.  Close,
:          but not quite.  Anyone interested in tweaking, go ahead, but please
:          send me the patches so we can stay organized.

: And please, make your patches to the Linux driver, because ARCether
: already interoperates with Novell's ARCNET driver.

Of course... actually, the latest version is compatible with arcether.  It
was, of course, a bug in my driver that was the problem.

Thanks for the advice.

--
Avery Pennarun
  807-CITY - Technical Services / Information Provider Training Committee
  Internet: [email-masked] [OR] [email-masked]

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

From: [email-masked] (Michael Callahan)
Subject: Re: Improving SLIP latency under Linux
Date: Sat, 8 Oct 94 00:52:09 BST

In article <[email-masked]>,
Nick Kralevich <[email-masked]> wrote:
>My modem is a US Robotics Sportster 14.4 modem.  The modem has a 
>built in transmit data buffer of 3.25 Kbytes, and a receive data buffer
>of 2 Kbytes.  I believe it is this buffer which is killing my 
>interactive response during large transfers.

Yup.  I should have thought to mention this--it _has_ come up
before.

Of course, there's nothing the kernel can do to help your latency
if the modem is clutching 2 seconds' worth of transmit data.

Michael

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

From: [email-masked] (Sven Goldt)
Subject: sliplogin-1.2
Date: 8 Oct 1994 00:22:09 GMT

Hello,
i just uploaded the new sliplogin-1.2 to tsx-11.mit.edu in /incoming
and not on sunsite.unc.edu because sunsite again has socket problems.
New is a timeout for close() and dynamic IP assigning depending
on the slip device.

--
*****************************************************************************
*    # THE MOST IMPORTANT FINANCIAL QUESTION IS:  Where is the money ? #    *
*****************************************************************************

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

From: [email-masked] (NightHawk)
Subject: Re: What is ELF ?
Date: 3 Oct 1994 22:41:49 -0400

Whitney de Vries ([email-masked]) wrote:

: What is ELF ? What other systems use ELF ?
: Where can I find a description of it ?

tsx-11.mit.edu:pub/linux/packages/GCC/ELF.docs.tar.gz

NH

: -- Whitney

: PS. I know it is executable file format but little else.

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

From: [email-masked] (Mike Haertel)
Subject: Re: ext2fs vs. Berkeley FFS
Date: 03 Oct 1994 20:46:49 GMT

In article <[email-masked]> [email-masked] (Rob Janssen) writes:
>In <[email-masked]> [email-masked] (Mike Haertel) writes:
>
>>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.
>
>>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.
>
>It has been shown that the synchronous updating of metadata is the wrong
>thing to do.  You may have a system which shows no fsck errors after a
>crash, but has garbage in the newly created files anyway.
>I'd rather lose a new file alltogether than have it in the directory and
>have crap in it instead of the data I wrote.

I don't think you're thinking far enough ahead.  The purpose of
synchronous metadata updates is not to save the file you're writing
at the time of the crash (or whatever), but rather to ensure that
the file system itself doesn't creepingly get into an inconsistent
state behind your back.

I'd rather have garbage in a file than have a file whose blocks
are also in the free list and will soon be allocated to another
file as well.  Of course, fsck is supposed to fix these situations.
But if you're using a filesystem wherein the actual disk updates
are trailing way behind file system activity, and are not constrained
to be written in the order they were made, then a crash at a disk-intensive
time could leave fsck extremely confused.

This is why BSD ffs does its updates in what somebody called the "wrong"
order, but which strikes me as exactly the _right_ order.
--
Mike Haertel <[email-masked]>

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

From: [email-masked] (Matthew Donadio)
Crossposted-To: comp.os.linux.help,comp.os.linux.misc
Subject: Re: Flame on the attitude of Linux towards GCC development
Date: 7 Oct 1994 15:54:24 GMT

Xiaojun Zhu ([email-masked]) wrote:
: I want to start a flame here. Please feel free to flame me as well.

First off, I failed to grasp your point.  There are reasons why 2.6.0
hasn't been oficially released by the linux community, namely the fact
that it is buggy and fails to compile some code (like some versions of
the kernel).  Can you imagine what would happen if newbies tried
compiling things and get an errors like "Internal error: cannot find
spill register"?

--
Beaker aka Matt Donadio   | Life is short,     ---   __ o    __~o    __ o
[email-masked] |    ride like    ----    _`\<,   _`\<,   _`\<,
--- Penn State Cycling ---|      the wind.    ---  ( )/( ) ( )/( ) ( )/( )
====================================URL: http://mxd120.rh.psu.edu/~donadio

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

From: [email-masked] (Alexander Williams)
Subject: Re: Linux Mud
Date: Mon, 3 Oct 1994 16:31:19 GMT

In article <[email-masked]>,
Jeff Kesselman <[email-masked]> wrote:
>I've recompiled and run both LambdaMOO and ColdMUD successfulyl under linux.
>:)

Add to that list both MUSH and Interlude, and  the author of Interlude
just bought  a Linux machine   so  I expect  Interlude/CodaII will  be
natively developed on Linux.

-- 
[email-masked] (Alexander Williams)     | PGP 2.6 key avail
  Email is the right of the masses. So do it.   | DF 22 16 CE CA 7F
  Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be the Whole of the   | 98 47 13 EE 8E EC
  Law. Love is the Law, Love Under Will. -oOo-  | 9C 2D 9B 9B

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

From: [email-masked] (Jay Cox)
Subject: Re: LINUX & VESA vs ISA
Date: Fri, 7 Oct 1994 16:29:28 GMT

C. Joseph Bridwell ([email-masked]) wrote:
: I'd like to know whether people installing LINUX have had more, the same, 
: or less problems depending on whether the PC was VLB or ISA.

I have VLB Cirrus generic card and VLB IDE card.  I had no
trouble at all with either my Slackware instalaltion or
later upgrades.  It works fine.

Jay Cox
[email-masked]

"Who is General Failure and why is he reading my hard drive?"

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

From: [email-masked] (Tom Czarnik)
Subject: Re: Korn Shell '93 Now Available from AT&T
Date: 4 Oct 1994 04:34:08 GMT

In article <[email-masked]>, [email-masked] (Andrew J. Piziali) says:
>
>In article <[email-masked]>, James E. McNalley
><[email-masked]> asked:
>   
>    What does ksh do that BASH can't do?
>
>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?

The nice "ksh -r" which makes it restricted. I really need that now and have
scoured the bash (and every other free shell) manual, but nobody implements
it.

Korn has a lot of security features which I fell in love with on a corporate
Sparc. $149 is not bad, since I have paid more for commercial apps that have
done less.

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

From: [email-masked] (Thomas D. Nadeau)
Subject: Re: Single host firewalling
Date: 6 Oct 1994 15:07:06 -0500
Reply-To: [email-masked]

>wohler> While all the discussion here has been about expensive
>wohler> chokes, filters and bastion hosts, what work, if any, has
>wohler> been done to address the single host, no network, connection?

                Well, there has certainly been a lot of work done to secure
WAN links at varying levels of security, but this work can be
into two categories:  authentication/identification encryption.
Work was done in the first case primarily to protect remote office
routers from being swapped with network sniffers or other such things
that could emulate the router while ripping off their data.  The two
main methods of authentication/identification are PAP and CHAP, the
latter being the best method.  

                In the area of encryption, I dont believe that there is any
standard for doing this on PPP links, but many companies (mine
included) have employed proprietary scrambling mechanisms so that data
going accross WAN links is kept secure even if it suddenly becomes
non-private as a result of someone attaching a sniffer to the line. 

                PPP PAP and CHAP are freely available, and usually come with
most commercial and free implementations of PPP.  However, PPP
scrambling is different issue since it is almost exclusively employed
in a proprietary fasion. As far as I know, PPP scrambling has currently
been implemented only between routers, but I may be wrong.  If your
needs require secure WAN links, perhaps purchasing a low-cost remote
office router which provides dial-on demand connections for
non-permanent connections to The Internet.  However, that solution is
getting a bit pricy, and is probably out of the relm of most home
Internet connections.

                --tOm

-- 
/---------------------------------------------------------------------/
\                                                                     \
/  Thomas D. Nadeau                            ========      ======== /
\  Internetworking Software                      =======   =========  \
/  Xyplex, Inc.                                   =======  ======     /
\  295 Foster Street,                             ========  ==        \
/  Littleton, MA 01460                       -------=======  -------  /  
\                                                  ========  ==       \
/  Voice:  (508) 952-4837                         =======  ======     /
\  FAX:    (508) 952-4887                       =======   =========   \
/  email:  [email-masked]            ========    ==========  /
\                                                                     \
/---------------------------------------------------------------------/

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

From: [email-masked] (Matt Hudson)
Subject: Re: Text modes?
Date: 3 Oct 1994 15:06:46 -0600

In article <[email-masked]>,
Riku Saikkonen <[email-masked]> wrote:
>Hmm... I've been wondering about the text mode sync frequencies. Can
>they be changed like the XFree86 graphics modes? It just seems somewhat
>of a waste to use normal VGA frequencies (what's it, 60 Hz?) with a much
>better monitor...
>
>Also, would it be theoretically possible to use, say, a 12*30-sized font
>(80x25 on a 1024*768 resolution) in text mode? From what I know of
>display adapters, it seems that they only support 8-dot-wide (or in some
>cases (Hercules) 9) characters. Is this right?

For stock VGA/EGA, yes this is correct... 8 bits per character for text
modes and one bit padding which, for a (hardwired I believe) range of
linedrawing characters.

However, there are very few users of "stock" VGA/EGA anymore. I would
dare guess that the majority of linux users have some sort of SVGA card
and many SVGA chipsets support extended text mode functions most of
which I have never seen tapped. Some of the functions that stick out in
my mind are variable sized fonts, multiple fonts, and anti-aliased
fonts.

The problem lies in the fact that the features available for each
chipset vary in the extremes... I'm not sure what the VESA
specification covers in terms of this. This probably means that most
people will need a separate driver depending on which chipset they are
using in order to get any of these enhanced features and the available
features will differ between them... (how, for instance, should the
system or ncurses handle character colors when somebody is using a
multiple-colored font?)

I don't know if anybody is willing to do work on this or not... or if 
enough people are even interested. 

-- 
Matt Hudson                             .Sig still under construction
[email-masked]
[email-masked]

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

From: [email-masked] (Uwe Bonnes)
Subject: Re: 1.6Mb floppies under Linux?
Date: Fri, 7 Oct 1994 18:00:21 GMT

ron house ([email-masked]) wrote:
> For years I have used a DOS program called smax, which formats
> floppies to 1.6Mb on a 1.44Mb drive, (and similar increases on the
> other 3 drive types). The documentation with that prog. said that
> DOS disks had 10 sectors per track, but that DOS, for whatever
> reason, only used 9 of them, and so the prog. simply told the
> drive to use all 10. A little TSR was also involved. I have
> used hundreds of these disks with no problems. Now, Linux won't
> read them, because of the assumptions in the floppy devices under
> /dev. 

> My question: where are the 'sources' for the /dev floppy drives?
> Do they need recompilation of the kernel in order to add new
> drive types? It would be nice if Linux gave everyone 1.6Mb drives,
> the difference is very useful indeed.

Here the output of
>df /dosa
Filesystem         1024-blocks  Used Available Capacity Mounted on
/dev/fd0                1948    1563      385     80%   /dosa 
>mdir
 Volume in drive A has no label
 Serial number: 00000000
 Directory for A:/

XF86-3X1 GZ      1600071   10-03-94  11:14p
       1 File(s)     394752 bytes free       

Since 1.1.45(?) there is support for high capacity floppies. Look in
ftp.imag.fr:pub/Linux/ZLIBC for floppy support programs and the newest alpha
drivers.
-- 
Uwe Bonnes  [email-masked]

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

From: knaff@ngulu (Alain Knaff)
Subject: Re: Odd floppy sector size?
Date: 5 Oct 1994 16:16:43 GMT
Reply-To: [email-masked]

Dale Shuttleworth ([email-masked]) wrote:
: Hi,

: I've got a bit of a problem.  I'm trying to read floppies written
: with 256 byte sectors. 
 Reading 256 byte sectors is possible with 1.1.51 . The sector size
is encoded in bits 3 to 5 of floppy->rate:

Meaning of S:
0 0x00  ===>  512 byte sectors
1 0x08  ===> 1024 byte sectors
2 0x10  ===> 2048 byte sectors
3 0x18  ===> 4096 byte sectors
4 0x20  ===> 8192 byte sectors
5 0x28  ===>16384 byte sectors
6 0x30  ===>  128 byte sectors (doesn't work yet...)
7 0x38  ===>  256 byte sectors

The two last sizes are new in 1.1.51

: Looking at the floppy code for 1.1.45, there
: doesn't seem to be a coherent strategy for handling different sector
: sizes.  In some places it is assumed to be 512 bytes, in others it
: is replaced with a #define, which may be either 128 or 512 bytes.
 There are several different sizes involved in the floppy driver:

 * 512 bytes is the default sector size for floppy disks, and also the
smallest size that the buffer cache code (VFS) can handle (fraction of
a buffer).
 *1024 bytes is the default size of a buffer for the VFS. (i.e. two
fractions)
 * 128 bytes is the smallest sector size that the floppy disk controller 
supports. All sector sizes are powers of 2 and multiples of 128.
size = 128 << sizecode

 If you upgrade to 1.1.51, don't forget to apply the patch at
ftp.imag.fr:pub/Linux/ZLIBC/floppy/QDF/fdp1.1.51-0210.diff.gz
in order to avoid the well known floppy unmount problems.

[...]

 Hope this helps,

 Alain

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

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