Subject: Linux-Development Digest #316
From: Digestifier <[email-masked]>
To: [email-masked]
Date: Sun, 16 Oct 94 08:13:11 EDT

Linux-Development Digest #316, Volume #2         Sun, 16 Oct 94 08:13:11 EDT

Contents:
  Re: Linux killed my floppy drive! (Dave Platt)
  Re: GNUStep...Is It Real or Just a Hoax?!? (Derrik Walker II)
  DAT filesystem..? (M. K. Shenk)
  Chaning text mode after bootup (Reuben Sumner)
  Financial Stock Filter for Linux (Fabius Buras)
  Re: A badly missed feature in gcc (Jeff Kesselman)
  Re: A badly missed feature in gcc (Jeff Kesselman)
  Re: Whats the *true* scoop on AHA-2940 drivers?? (Christopher M. May)
  Using ld.so (John Gotts)
  Mailin' list ([email-masked])
  NFS over TERM? (Joel M. Hoffman)
  1.1.54 won't compile (Karsten Steffens)
  GNUStep...Is It Real or Just a Hoax?!? (Derrik Walker II)
  Kernel Patch 1.1.54: Make dep failed: File missing (Bart Kindt)

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

Crossposted-To: comp.os.linux.help
From: [email-masked] (Dave Platt)
Subject: Re: Linux killed my floppy drive!
Date: Thu, 13 Oct 1994 22:35:07 GMT

>The answer probably is: Yes, Linux killed your floppy drive.
>When you would have used another (much more popular) operating system
>for the PC, the system would have been rebooted several times a day, the
>floppy would have seeked each time it went to the BIOS selftest, and dirt
>would not have accumulated on the mechanism.
>
>Don't run stable operating systems!  They may kill your drive!

The KarlBridge software (which turns a DOS-type box into a pretty
reasonable filtering Ethernet bridge) actually contains some code which
"burps" the diskette drive for a second or so every hour or two, just to
[1] make sure that it's still working and [2] keep the "gets gunky and
freezes up if it isn't used for a few weeks" problem from occurring.

Stable operating systems don't kill drives - they just allow them to die
of boredom ;-}

--
Dave Platt    [email-masked]
      USNAIL: The 3DO Company, Systems Software group
              600 Galveston Drive
              Redwood City, CA  94063

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

From: [email-masked] (Derrik Walker II)
Subject: Re: GNUStep...Is It Real or Just a Hoax?!?
Date: Sat, 15 Oct 1994 17:49:17 GMT

Martin Michlmayr ([email-masked]) wrote:

: I would never get a SGI, better buy SUN.
MMmmm....

: : Some one else gave that to me, I sent it out yesterday but still have not 
: : got a reply.

:  The person, who maintains the list, is on a trip, he will return on
: friday the 22nd.

Cool.  At least I now know.

: :         http://pclab19.law.csuohio.edu:8099/html/dwalker/home.html

: The URL is wrong!

That's funny.  I just used lynx and got it.  Also according to the logs 
here, somebody from you location accessed it perfectly fine, With know 
errors.  Somebody from some place else was calling me ..../home.html 
home.htm.  That ofcourse will not work.

Fortunatly, I'll be movin that to a Linux box soon.  There is a lot more 
hard drive space there and I'm a LOT better at writing HTML, So I'll have 
pictures and sounds and other really coOl stuff.    

--

-Derrik
===============================================================================
 Derrik Walker II                                 Student of Computer Sciences
 Cleveland State University                  Automation Assistant, Law Library
 [email-masked]                       [email-masked]
===============================================================================
        http://pclab19.law.csuohio.edu:8099/html/dwalker/home.html

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

From: [email-masked] (M. K. Shenk)
Subject: DAT filesystem..?
Date: 16 Oct 1994 04:20:09 GMT

Any real reason one could not write a driver to use a DAT that will
seek like a disk?  i.e. be able to mount it, etc?  Perhaps set it up
WORM to avoid fragmentation, which would be deadly.. ;-)   This
would seem like a handy thing to be able to do.   Mine seems to seek
reasonably quickly, and the throughput is not bad--it'd be nice to be
able to mount one's backups to grab stuff with cp...  

I assume that doing it WORM would simplify things quite a lot...  no need to
worry about handling fragmentation, just tack new stuff onto the end..

If nobody has considered this, I might want to try it.  I was thinking
about just writing a frontend for dds2tar that sort of faked this, but
a real DAT filesystem sort of appeals to me.  The things are fast 
enough that one could reasonably use it for things like an FTP server--the
directory info could stay in RAM and users requesting a file on DAT would
enter a queue to wait for their file to be copied to disk, so we
could avoid trying to have multiple folks seeking around the tape (ouch!).

Perhaps this could be implemented with the userfs stuff? (which I
know nothing about..)

-Craig.

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

From: [email-masked] (Reuben Sumner)
Subject: Chaning text mode after bootup
Date: Sun, 16 Oct 1994 03:59:30 GMT

After seeing the nifty new patch to 1.1.54 I worked on being able to set
my text mode at run time and have enjoyed limited success (scripts and
C program follow).  I can now switch between 80x25, 80x28 and 80x50
freely.  However when it comes to 132x25 it just doesn't go.  After
booting in 132x25 and then trying to switch back to 80x25 my screen
goes on the fritz.  I am using an ATI VGA Wonder (V5) video card.  If
anyone can tell me how to switch to and from 132x25 and any other video
modes I would be most appreciative.

Ok so for anyone that would like to at least switch to and from 80x25
and 80x50 here is what I have.  Limitiations
    - security, ha what security.  This is bad
    - you have to boot up in every one of the video modes that you want
      to use and save the required registers and font
    - all vts go at the same time.  I don't think that this can be easily
      fixed as the console driver does not appear to do any restoration
      on vt switches, rather it hopes that there is a process that will
      do it for it.  The VC_RESIZE call also effects all vts

Here is the main C program, install it suid root (actually just needs to
be able to open all of the consoles read/write, read is probably enough)

#include <sys/ioctl.h>
#include <linux/vt.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <sys/types.h>
#include <fcntl.h>
#include <unistd.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <termios.h>

#define CONSOLE_PREFIX "/dev/tty"
#define CONSOLE_MAX 8
#define CONSOLE_NAME_LEN 40

int main (int argc, char *argv[], char *envp[])

{
   int fd, count; 
   char conname[CONSOLE_NAME_LEN];
   struct vt_sizes vts;
   struct winsize ws;

   if (argc != 3) {
      fputs("Wrong cols rows\n",stderr);
      exit(1);
   }
   fd = open(CONSOLE_PREFIX "0",O_RDWR);
   if (fd == -1) {
      perror("Couldn't open console (should be suid root, sorry)");
      exit(2);
   }
   vts.v_cols = atol(argv[1]);
   ws.ws_col = vts.v_cols;
   vts.v_rows = atol(argv[2]);
   ws.ws_row = vts.v_rows;
   vts.v_scrollsize = 0;  /* currently ignored */
   ws.ws_xpixel = ws.ws_ypixel = 0;
   ioctl(fd,VT_RESIZE,&vts);
   close(fd);

   for (count = 1; count <= CONSOLE_MAX; count++) {
      sprintf(conname,"%s%d",CONSOLE_PREFIX,count);
      fd = open(conname,O_RDWR);
      if (fd == -1) {
         perror("Couldn't open console (should be suid root, sorry)");
         exit(2);
      }
      ioctl(fd,TIOCSWINSZ,&ws);
      close(fd);
   }
   return 0;
}

Put this in a directory with the following shell scripts
#!/bin/bash
dname=${1}x${2}
restorefont -r $dname/font
restoretextmode -r $dname/mode
./vcresize $1 $2

and
#!/bin/bash
dname=${1}x${2}
rm -rf $dname
mkdir $dname
restorefont -w $dname/font
restoretextmode -w $dname/mode

This is using the restorefont and restoretextmode programs that come with
svgalib and in my slackware 2.0 seem to be setup as suid root.

Reuben

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

From: [email-masked] (Fabius Buras)
Subject: Financial Stock Filter for Linux
Date: 15 Oct 1994 23:15:56 -0500

I hope to release Turbo-Filter for Linux, Coherent,
SCO, and BSD in December, 1994.  Its compatable
with CompuTrac, Metastock, CSI, Ascii, and .PRO
formats.  Its a futures/stock filtering/ranking
package that allows you to define criteria's for
tracing, and executes the technical analysis 
studies you indicate on mass data.

Technical studies include:

        ATR, MACD, ROC, RSI, %k%D, %k%sD, Momemtum, Moving Averages,
        Commodity Channel Index, and many many more.

If you would like more info, please send me email at [email-masked]

=====================================================================

I'm not trying to soliciate directly, I just realize that theres not
much applications for Linux and I want everyone to realize that 
there are people who know Linux is just a good operating system as
some of the high-priced ones.  Certainly beats the hell out of 
MS-DOS!

======================================================================

-- 
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------+
|  Fabius Buras, Jr. | Internet Connect Services | Houston-Victoria, TX |
|  Home of the $9.95 SLIP/PPP Accounts | [email-masked] | 512-572-9987   |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------+

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

From: [email-masked] (Jeff Kesselman)
Subject: Re: A badly missed feature in gcc
Date: Sun, 16 Oct 1994 03:10:09 GMT

In article <[email-masked]>, Dan Pop <[email-masked]> wrote:
>In <wcreator.782071420@kaiwan009> [email-masked] (Steven M. Doyle) writes:
>
>>In Borland's Pascal compilers for (ack) dos, both the (*-*) and {-}
>>style comments are supported.  I don't find this horribly unusual.
>
>The two styles of Pascal comments are essentially one and the same.
>When Pascal was designed (about 25 years ago) many terminals (and card
>punches :-) didn't support curly braces, so (* was used instead of {
>and *) instead of }. The same problem had to be solved for [ and ]
>which were replaced by (. and .)
>
>Dan
>--
>Dan Pop 
>CERN, CN Division
>Email: [email-masked]
>Mail:  CERN - PPE, Bat. 31 R-004, CH-1211 Geneve 23, Switzerland

i had forgotten this until Dan mentioend it, but i now remember 
disticntly the first time i saw the (* for {... but its a NASTY kludge 
around limited keyboards that really aught to be abolished, and i don't 
think it was ever 'official' in the Wirthian sense....

Jeff Kesselman

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

From: [email-masked] (Jeff Kesselman)
Subject: Re: A badly missed feature in gcc
Date: Sun, 16 Oct 1994 03:14:17 GMT

In article <[email-masked]>,
Kevin Lentin <[email-masked]> wrote:
>Jeff Kesselman ([email-masked]) wrote:
>
>> Whats REALLY scary about thsi is you have just inroduced a dependancy on 
>> a carraige-return into a language that previously assigned no syntactic 
>> signifigance to a carriage-return beyond that of any other sperator.
>
>> (Before you cite macros, remember that these are handle dby the 
>> pre-processor, NOT the compiler proper.)
>
>So are comments. The only non-C things the compiler sees are the # nn file
>Directives so it knows where source comes from. So there is still no
>meaning to the carriage return added to the comment syntax as far as the
>compiler is concerned.

Il lcheck this monday in our Annotated Spec at work, and I coudl be quite 
wrong, but I THOUGHT macros are defined as compilre constructs, whereas 
comments are defined as C syntax.  I coudl be wrong abotu the 
destinction, but thats what i thought I remembered.

How a compiler actually implements them is not really an issue 9after 
all, a really WIERD compiler could compiel to Pascal code, but it would 
still be a compiler and coudl still be ANSI compatable...)

>
>That aside, I believe C++ comments are better. They're great for single
>line comments, make temporary removal of a line easy (I still use C
>comments for temporary removal of small blocks of code and #if for bigger
>ones). BUT I think C should remain C. You're just going to break something
>somewhere eventually. 
>

Can't disagree with you here.

Jeff kesselman

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

From: [email-masked] (Christopher M. May)
Subject: Re: Whats the *true* scoop on AHA-2940 drivers??
Date: 15 Oct 1994 05:58:46 GMT

Wigs ([email-masked]) wrote:

: I'm trying to figure out whether or not the Adaptec AHA-2940 PCI scsi
: controller is going to be supported under linux anytime soon...

: I asked about a week ago and I've read the back articles on this thread but
: there isn't a decent answer amongst them.  Some posts say Adaptec won't
: release the product info. one post points me to the Project-Map which
: doesn't mention *anything* about *any* adaptec projects (thanks to who ever
: that was, real helpful...)

: There have been lots of people like myself asking this question so could
: somebody who *knows* the answer please tell me if somebody is currently
: working on a device driver for the AHA-2940??  If somebody is working on it
: how is the progress going? if somebody isn't working on it, why not?

: Thanks for any info you can give me,

: - Jeff W.

As a subscriber to the 27/28/2942 mailing list, I can tell you that
the 2940 support is still preliminary and not ready for use at this time.

--

-Chris May, Computer Science, University of MA, Amherst
-       Technical Assistant, P.C. Maintenance Lab

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

From: [email-masked] (John Gotts)
Subject: Using ld.so
Date: 16 Oct 1994 05:30:14 GMT

How would one go about converting a package to create shared libraries, like
the ported versions of tcl/tk/tclX do?  I'd like to be able to decrease the
sizes of my binaries that depend on library files, as well as eliminate as many
.a files as possible.

--
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]
Subject: Mailin' list
Date: Sat, 15 Oct 1994 05:57:56 GMT

Please put me on the mailin' list for comp.os.linux.development.

\/\/alter

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

From: [email-masked] (Joel M. Hoffman)
Subject: NFS over TERM?
Date: Sat, 15 Oct 1994 17:57:34 GMT

I've asked this before, but I got no response.  I'll try one more time:

Is there any way to remote NFS mount a directory via term?

-Joel
([email-masked])

-- 
=============================================================================
|_|~~ Germany, Europe. 1944.    "The diameter of the bomb was 30 centimeters,
__|~| 16 Million DEAD.           and the diameter of its destruction, about 7
                                meters, and in it four killed and 11 wounded. 
 cnc  Bosnia, Europe. 1994.     And around these, in a larger circle of  pain
 cnc  HOW MANY MORE?          and time,  are scattered two  hospitals and one
                          cemetery.   But the young woman who was  buried  in
                    the place from where she came, at a distance of more than
             than 100 kilometers, enlarges the circle considerably.   And the 
      lonely man who is mourning her death in a distant  country incorporates
into the circle the whole world.  And I won't speak of the cry of the orphans
that reaches God's chair and from there makes the circle endless and godless."
=============================================================================
     Tell Clinton to stop the genocide:  [email-masked]

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

From: [email-masked] (Karsten Steffens)
Subject: 1.1.54 won't compile
Date: 15 Oct 1994 18:13:23 GMT

Hello,

        I'm running into problems with the compilation of 1.1.54. 
Compilation fails in /usr/src/linux/fs/binfmt_elf.c with the following
errors:

binfmt_elf.c:36: warning: function declaration isn't a prototype
binfmt_elf.c:825: redefinition of `padzero'
binfmt_elf.c:61: `padzero' previously defined here
binfmt_elf.c:841: redefinition of `create_elf_tables'
binfmt_elf.c:77: `create_elf_tables' previously defined here
binfmt_elf.c: In function `create_elf_tables':
binfmt_elf.c:857: structure has no member named `stk_vma'
binfmt_elf.c: At top level:
binfmt_elf.c:912: redefinition of `load_elf_interp'
binfmt_elf.c:159: `load_elf_interp' previously defined here
binfmt_elf.c:1000: redefinition of `load_aout_interp'
binfmt_elf.c:247: `load_aout_interp' previously defined here
binfmt_elf.c:1046: redefinition of `load_elf_binary'
binfmt_elf.c:295: `load_elf_binary' previously defined here
binfmt_elf.c: In function `load_elf_binary':
binfmt_elf.c:1291: structure has no member named `elf_executable'
binfmt_elf.c:1292: structure has no member named `executable'
{standard input}: Assembler messages:
binfmt_elf.c: At top level:
binfmt_elf.c:1339: redefinition of `load_elf_library'
binfmt_elf.c:655: `load_elf_library' previously defined here
{standard input}:1631: Fatal error:Symbol _padzero already defined.
binfmt_elf.c: In function `load_elf_library':
binfmt_elf.c:1427: output pipe has been closed
gcc: Internal compiler error: program cc1 got fatal signal 13
make[1]: *** [binfmt_elf.o] Error 1

I can compile all previous kernels up to 1.1.53. Applying the patch54.gz
leads to that fatal situtation. It happens also when I disable ELF during
the 'make config'. The compiler is 2.5.8. Is 1.1.54 supposed to work with
that compiler? BTW, no other patches applied. I did generate the source
tree from plain 1.1.0 by applying all 54 patches and nothing else.

Karsten

--
==================>      Dr.Karsten Steffens         <=====================
   [email-masked]          |      [email-masked]
Marl - close to Recklinghausen     |         Institut fuer Kernphysik
  North of the Ruhrgebiet          |   Westf.Wilhelms-Universitaet Muenster

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

From: Derrik Walker II <[email-masked]>
Subject: GNUStep...Is It Real or Just a Hoax?!?
Date: Thu, 13 Oct 1994 05:22:07 GMT

Well, Here's an interesing idea...

I Seem to remember reading somewhere that FSF was working on a NeXTStep
like environment (user and Development) that was Fully OOP - based  and 
Display PS. This is intended to be ran on Linux for Mach 3.0 (Assuming 
the Linux on Mach is also a real profect, of course).
 
So is this all a bunch of bull shit or is it real.  I love both Linux and NS,
and a combaniation of the two would be the greatest!

If there is such a project, who do I contact to get involved?

-Derrik
===============================================================================
 Derrik Walker II                                 Student of Computer Sciences
 Cleveland State University                  Automation Assistant, Law Library
 [email-masked]                            [email-masked]
===============================================================================
        http://pclab19.law.csuohio.edu:8099/html/dwalker/home.html

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

From: [email-masked] (Bart Kindt)
Subject: Kernel Patch 1.1.54: Make dep failed: File missing
Date: Sun, 16 Oct 1994 02:31:21 GMT

I just patched kernel 1.1.53 and 1.1.54, as far as I could follow it without 
errors. I started with the complete new download of 1.1.52 which works fine.

However, when I tried 'make dep', I got an error:

gcc: uni_to_437.c: No such file or directory
...
make[] *** [dep] Error 1

This Kernel patch contains a whole bunch of TCP and Serial bug fixes I really 
want: How do I get around this problem??

Thanks, Bart.

====================================================================================
Bart Kindt (ZL4FOX) System Operator, Efficient Software NZ LTD, Dunedin, New Zealand
====================================================================================

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

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