Subject: Linux-Misc Digest #867
From: Digestifier <[email-masked]>
To: [email-masked]
Date: Sun, 2 Oct 94 21:13:26 EDT

Linux-Misc Digest #867, Volume #2                 Sun, 2 Oct 94 21:13:26 EDT

Contents:
  Re: 56.6 Kb simulated with 2 28.8Kb modems. Is it possible? (Whay S. Lee)
  Re: Slackware 2.0 = no more fsck on boot up?? (Jason Sokolosky)
  Re: New Linux Distribution (Markus Haendel)
  Re: Telnet & ftp freeze! (System Administrator)
  Lynx under Linux (Mubashir Cheema)
  Re: P5-90 MHz beats SGI R4000-100MHz. (Rakesh Malik)
  Re: QNX, Linux, or 386BSD? (Zaphod Beeblebrox)
  Re: Yggdrasil Linux Plug and Play CD ver1.1 ? (Adam J. Richter)
  Re: Linux everywhere? (Marcus Bainbridge)
  Re: Hmmm (Pete Chown)
  Cardinal DSP 14.4 modem (Nicholas A. Barendt)
  Re: Special Sale On QNX! (Heinz Wolter)
  In Defense of SW Technologies !! (Tim Bass (Network Systems Engineer))
  How to upgrade gcc and Xconfig problem (Wadley James Capel)
  Linux <-> Hurd (was: How Old Is Linus?) (Axel Boldt)

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

From: [email-masked] (Whay S. Lee)
Subject: Re: 56.6 Kb simulated with 2 28.8Kb modems. Is it possible?
Date: 2 Oct 94 16:01:42

In article <[email-masked]> [email-masked]
(David Edwards) writes:

 >Hmmm... maybe the load balancing stuff could do this... (I have no idea
 >how much of the load-balancing stuff has been implemented, or how stable
 >it is...)... If you could set up routing tables at both ends for this, it
 >seems like it would probibly work. (Famous last words, I know... :) )

        I recall seeing a device that does just that in a catalog
called "Black Boxes" (which unfortunately I no longer receive).

        Basically, it's a pair of black boxes, one on each end
of the modems:

     box      modem                          modem  box
      ---     ---                             ---    ---
      | |-----| |-----------------------------| |----| |
      | |     ---                             ---    | |
      | |                transmission                | |
      | |     ---                             ---    | |
      | |-----| |-----------------------------| |----| |
      ---     ---                             ---    ---
             modem                           modem

        I think the black boxes deal with the multiplexing of the
signals, and appear as a single serial port to the host.
Perhaps someone who does recieve that Black Boxes catalog can
look it up.  (not cheap though, as I recall.. )

whay.

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

Crossposted-To: comp.os.linux.help
From: [email-masked] (Jason Sokolosky)
Subject: Re: Slackware 2.0 = no more fsck on boot up??
Date: Sun, 2 Oct 1994 17:20:53 GMT

Whay S. Lee ([email-masked]) wrote:

: hello there.

: I upgraded from Slackware 1.0(.2?) to Slackware 2.0.0 lately.
: Shortly after, I upgraded the kernal to 1.1.45.

: My problem is:

: In the old slackware release, if a file system is found to be
: corrupted or max-mount-count-reached, fsck is run'ed on it
: automatically at boot up.  But this doesn't seem to be the case
: anymore in this release.  What happens now is that the file systems
: are mounted anyway, withouth invoking fsck.  I can boot from floppy
: and run fsck manually, but it doesn't reset the flag that says
: max-mount-count-reached ...  What can I do to make it behave like
: it used to, ie. call fsck on boot up when needed ?

:       help please?  please cc: me byn email too. thanks.

: whay.

Linux still does that.  If you don't believe me then try taking down
the system non-gracefully (e.g. shutting it off).  When it reboots it
will check the disks.

--
Jason Sokolosky                       
[email-masked]             
[email-masked]            
                                      
-Long Live the INTERNET!!!!           

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

From: [email-masked] (Markus Haendel)
Subject: Re: New Linux Distribution
Date: Thu, 29 Sep 1994 09:23:22 GMT

Juana Moreno ([email-masked]) wrote:
: I have been thinking of putting up a new Linux distribution especially
: oriented to DOS-Win dummies. I have taken a nontraditional approach and

[...]

I've found _the_ solution:
Booting Linux and starting the Dos-Emu by default...

Bye,
        Markus 

--
No sig, no trick...

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

From: [email-masked] (System Administrator)
Crossposted-To: comp.os.linux.help,comp.os.linux.development,comp.os.linux.admin
Subject: Re: Telnet & ftp freeze!
Date: 2 Oct 1994 18:21:24 GMT

Trevor Lampre ([email-masked]) wrote:

[Text describing and lamenting problem my myself and others deleted.]

: Many have. I have posted twice myself about it and seen at least 5 other 
: posts not including this thread. I have never seen a response and my emails
: to other posters has never been answered. It's pissing me off that nobody
: seems to know the answer or have a fix. I've been patching my kernel up
: to 1.1.51 (I think it got worse at .51) as well as rebuilding my daemons.

: As the admin of a public access system it is of great concern to me, I've
: had sendmail die for about 2 days before I noticed as well as the other
: problems described. I spend more time now checking/killing/rebooting
: my network stuff than I do giving more value to my users. I might just
: switch to *BSD, at least the network code works.

Thank WHATEVER that others are seeing this problem!  And thanks to 
        Trevor Lampre ([email-masked])
        Michael Haardt ((michael)[email-masked])
        Thomas E Zerucha ([email-masked])
and     Steve Kneizys ([email-masked])
for confirming what we've been seeing!  I suggest we keep this thread 
open and fill it with additional information until the problem gets the 
attention it needs.  I'm not a programmer, much less a kernel hacker, so 
I can only voice frustration with the situation.

Some additional information gleened from observations:

First, the original problem as I originally mentioned it:  

We are running slip to our internet provider, and intermittantly
experience telnet lockups during logins.  The system either 1) refuses
connections 2) accepts the connection, but just sits 3) provides a login
prompt, takes input, and never gives the password prompt (ususally
creating a login zombie in the process). 

Additional information/trends noticed:

If the lockup occurs, allowing the telnet session with the locked
connection to sit while starting another is *always* successful.  It
*appears* that a particular ttyp# gets buggered somehow, and forcing the
system to seek another one will get you in.  I.E.  We've had *tons* of
complaints about ttyp1 and ttyp4 lately (although I've seen the problem
also on ttyp3 in the past). 

In the event 'refused connections' are the symptom to those telnetting in
over the SLIP connection, logging in by adding an x-term *on the console*
that grabs the offending ttyp port will suddenly allow SLIP telnet
accesses. 

I thought that once a user was successfully logged in, everything was
fine.  However, I have had complaints of 'gradual slowing' or 'gradual
slowing then locking' from a couple of users.  I intiially dismissed this
as 'net problems', but after hearing Michael Haardt's comment, I'm
beginning to think that's what's happening to us as well.  I also suspect
that other 'general' user complaints about our 'slowness' at times would
turn out to be the same thing as well. 

I have been experimenting with MTU sizes with ifconfig, but have no feel
for whether or not this has any effect.  I *have* noticed that MTU gets
reset to 1500 by *something* some random time after I've changed it (note
this is without system reboots). 

Here's a sample of what we have:

yiffy:~# ifconfig
lo        Link encap Local Loopback  
          inet addr 127.0.0.1  Bcast 127.255.255.255  Mask 255.255.255.0
          UP BROADCAST LOOPBACK RUNNING  MTU 2000  Metric 0
          RX packets 0 errors 0 dropped 0 overrun 0
          TX packets 39754 errors 7 dropped 0 overrun 0

sl0       Link encap AMPR AX.25  HWaddr 
          inet addr 198.30.162.1  P-t-P 199.18.108.11  Mask 255.255.255.0
          UP POINTOPOINT RUNNING  MTU 1500  Metric 0
          RX packets 1583360 errors 0 dropped 0 overrun 0
          TX packets 1995660 errors 0 dropped 16514 overrun 0

eth0      Link encap 10Mbps Ethernet  HWaddr 00:20:AF:16:4C:3E
          inet addr 198.30.162.1  Bcast 198.30.162.255  Mask 255.255.255.0
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING  MTU 1500  Metric 0
          RX packets 293959 errors 0 dropped 0 overrun 0
          TX packets 285447 errors 0 dropped 0 overrun 0

Note that a few moments prior to running this, I had set sl0 MTU to 2000, 
and confirmed that the value was accepted.  Now it is 1500 again without 
any action on my part.

One last observartion.  When we first started with kernel 0.99.15, telnet
sessions were locking up when large amounts of data was to be sent *out*. 
That is, if someone did a large directory listing or other function with
lots of output, their session would hang.  The send buffer information in
'netstat' showed several thousand characters waiting to be sent, and the
session would be effectively frozen.  This problem was acknoledged by
others at the time, but as in this case, no answers were provided.  The
problem went away when moving to the 1.0 kernel.  So *something* was done
bye *someone* for that one. 

I'm new to all this, and don't know all the avenues to pursue.  I'd 
appreciate any help in getting this problem hilighted and information 
flowing to the *someone* who understands how the net interfaces really 
work and who can really and *finally* *fix* it!  How do we proceed?

George Nemeyer       ([email-masked])
System Administrator
Tigerden.com

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

From: [email-masked] (Mubashir Cheema)
Crossposted-To: comp.infosystems.www.misc,comp.infosystems.www.providers,comp.os.linux.admin,comp.os.linux.help
Subject: Lynx under Linux
Date: 2 Oct 1994 18:28:09 GMT

I have noticed that when I run Lynx under Linux all available
options get highlighted instead of the ones I move my 
cursor to. 

We have setup a guest account which by default runs lynx when
a user telnets into our machine and logs in as guest. A new user
who has never used lynx before gets confused. We have received
mail from people who said they couldn't use it. 

The guest account automatically recognizes the terminal type of
user logging in. If for some reason it can't, it prompts the user
for that information. I do not suspect that the guest account is
not detecting the terminal type correctly, since I see the same 
behaviour when I run lynx on my machine under xterm, vt100 etc. on
this machine. 

If you have telnet access, open a telnet session to sparco.com and 
login as guest to see what I mean.       

Any help will be greatly appreciated.      

Mubashir Cheema            - new, expanded .sig -     [email-masked] 

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

From: [email-masked] (Rakesh Malik)
Subject: Re: P5-90 MHz beats SGI R4000-100MHz.
Date: 29 Sep 1994 18:16:54 GMT

H. Peter Anvin ([email-masked]) wrote:
: Followup to:  <[email-masked]>
: By author:    [email-masked] (Peter C. Norton)
: In newsgroup: comp.os.linux.misc
: > 
: > No, no, no (shaking head sadly).  First, I believe that the PCI bus is
: > only 32 bits wide.  Now go and do your math.  Second, have you any means of
: > benching your bus at optimum performance?  I think you're in for a hard
: > dose of reality...
: > 

: Your belief is incorrect.  The PCI bus has both 32 and 64 bit
: versions.

:       /hpa

: -- 
: INTERNET: [email-masked]             --- Allah'u'abha ---
: IBM MAIL: I0050052 at IBMMAIL     HAM RADIO:   N9ITP or SM4TKN
: FIDONET:  1:115/511 or 1:115/512  STORMNET:    181:294/1 or 181:294/101
: Laughter is the best medicine -- Quayle in '94.

        Does that mean that PCI-2 is available now?  PCI is only 32-bits, 
but the new spec is supposed to be for 64-bit wide and faster clock.  Is
this rumour true, then?

        -Rakesh

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

From: [email-masked] (Zaphod Beeblebrox)
Subject: Re: QNX, Linux, or 386BSD?
Date: 29 Sep 1994 11:44:39 -0700

In article <[email-masked]>, Lee Hounshell <[email-masked]> wrote:
>Dan Pop ([email-masked]) wrote:
>: In <[email-masked]> [email-masked] (Po-Han Lin) writes:
>
>: >If one has a pc compatible with a 486, which OS is the best unix
>: >operating system?  QNX, Linux, or 386BSD?  
>
>: You forgot to tell us what you mean by "the best unix operating system".
>: Or specify a method of comparing two OS's. So, your question is 
>: meaningless.
>
>I've been wondering the same thing.  I'm developing a distributed
>fuzzy neural network (using RPC, and TCPIP, and Internet) with a fancy
>X-windows interface.  It is intended to be portable and eventually run
>on a variety of platforms, including PC's... assuming they ever
>adopt a native multi-tasking OS.  Anyway, I need a good unix development
[snip]

Ok, here's the answer:

  REAL TIME is _main_ concern: QNX4, not LINUX
  TCP/IP, XR6, GCC, Lots of GNU stuff:  LINUX, not QNX4  

Here we are using both QNX4 and LINUX.  Linux does a much better,
easier, and a helluva lot cheaper job on TCP/IP, X, GCC, ... than QNX.
QNX, however, is _far_ better at fast context switching for real-time
apps.  If you don't have a real time app, forget about QNX.  QNX is not
UNIX.  Linux is much closer to UNIX.  BSD/386 I gave up on 3 years back.
It might be pretty nice, but I don't have recent experience.

I say do the right thing... SUN: real unix and real-time.
-- 
[email-masked]

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

From: [email-masked] (Adam J. Richter)
Subject: Re: Yggdrasil Linux Plug and Play CD ver1.1 ?
Date: 2 Oct 1994 18:46:58 GMT

In <[email-masked]> [email-masked] (Robert Willett) writes:
>In article <[email-masked]>
>           [email-masked] "Jeff Kesselman" writes:
>> > it can't seem to install packages from the
>> >control panel in X-Windows [...]
>I had problems with that, [...]

        Please read the errata sheet, which is FTPable from
yggdrasil.com:pub/fall94/errata.

-- 
Adam J. Richter                           Yggdrasil Computing, Incorporated
(408) 261-6630                            "Free Software For The Rest of Us."

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

From: [email-masked] (Marcus Bainbridge)
Subject: Re: Linux everywhere?
Date: Sun, 2 Oct 1994 15:54:49 +0000

David Barth ([email-masked]) wrote:

> 1. Find a pretty virus and infect all MessyWindoze boxes around.

DOS or Windows virus do you?

> 2. Erase and reformat hard disks ('Sorry, there's no way else...')

Ah!  OS/2...

[All 4 are on this machine, BTW]
-- 
Marcus Bainbridge | [email-masked]

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

Crossposted-To: alt.fan.linus-torvalds
From: [email-masked] (Pete Chown)
Subject: Re: Hmmm
Date: Sat, 1 Oct 1994 11:14:45 GMT

In article <[email-masked]> [email-masked] (Michael O'Reilly) writes:

> Not everyone. :) I read thru .10, and started running it at .11. Those
> were the days. None of these newfangled things like pageing, or
> networking, or login's etc.

Nostalgia time...  I bought an ET4000 because it was the only card
supported by X386.  Going back a bit further, I remember replacing my
copy of uemacs with the new port of GNU emacs, and installing the
login program someone had just uploaded...

In those days my Linux installation was in a 64M Minix partition, and
the uncompressed kernel was the same size as the compressed one is
now!

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

From: [email-masked] (Nicholas A. Barendt)
Subject: Cardinal DSP 14.4 modem
Date: 30 Sep 1994 14:35:24 GMT
Reply-To: [email-masked] (Nicholas A. Barendt)

        I'm new to Linux (just got X working last night!  installed with
very little fuss), so bear with me.
        Does anyone know of a Linux firmware manager for Cardinal's DSP14.4
modem?  It's quickly becoming obvious to me that this modem was a bad
purchase (as far as number of headaches go), but I'd like to get a little
bit more mileage out of it.

Any help (besides buy a new modem :-) would be greatly appreciated.

-Nick Barendt

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

Crossposted-To: comp.os.linux.misc
From: [email-masked] (Heinz Wolter)
Subject: Re: Special Sale On QNX!
Date: Thu, 29 Sep 1994 14:40:10 GMT

In article <[email-masked]> [email-masked] writes:
>[email-masked] wrote:
>: Why settle for slow and obselete Unix such as UnixWare, Sun Solaris,
>: SCO, Linux or BSD when you can have POWER & RELIABILITY with QNX 4.21!  
>: Stop playing games with these inferior o/s's and switch to QNX today.
>
>Anyone know if qnx4.21 supports virtual memory yet?
>
Let's see 1k$ for the OS, another for the dev kit, another for the qnx windows
, another for the bad networking....

Face QNX may be OK for an embedded real time system, but a nice comfy 
development environment it aint! I'd rather have Linux's minor bugs and
standards like X etc..

heinz

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

From: [email-masked] (Tim Bass (Network Systems Engineer))
Subject: In Defense of SW Technologies !!
Date: 1 Oct 1994 02:22:48 GMT

Everyone,

There are only a few people who can be more demanding than me
and to be honest, I'm a real pain sometimes about support and
love to complain.  I am not affiliated with Marvin Wu and SWT
in any way except as a repeat customer.  Marvin has helped me
with some questions that, looking back were pretty stupid, with
patience and care.  He has ALWAYS bent over backwards to help
me with hardware problems and has done more than any vendor
has done for me in YEARS.  Really.

It is impossible to make 100 percent of your customers happy 
100 percent of the time.  My customer service skills are at
the bottom of the pit.  I picked SWT out of about 10 'glossy'
ads in Computer Shopper and I'm sure that NONE of them, based
on my limited patience ( very low tolerance for pain ), would
come close to Marvin's sincere attempt to be honest in a very
dishonest world.

Please don't flood my mailbox with those questions.....
"what system did you get", just drop SWT an e-mail and
ask Marvin, he will try his best.  In todays world, that
goes a long way with me.  Marvin has an accent, so be patient on
the phone, it's worth it.  

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

From: [email-masked] (Wadley James Capel)
Subject: How to upgrade gcc and Xconfig problem
Date: Sun, 2 Oct 1994 06:09:46 GMT

I am a new linux user and I would to seek help in the following area.

I would like to upgrade my gcc in linux. The present version I get is something
like ver-2.4. What is the newest version of gcc? How to upgrade it??

Also, I have difficulty in starting startx (xwindow) in my linux. Once I run
startx or xinit, it prompt me a message stating that I need to add at least
one line for the graphics driver in the Xconfig. Do you know what should I add
in the Xconfig?? I am using Cirrus logic GD5428 with VL Bus.

--
Fai

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

From: [email-masked] (Axel Boldt)
Subject: Linux <-> Hurd (was: How Old Is Linus?)
Date: 30 Sep 1994 21:49:19 -0500

[email-masked] (Jiann-Ming Su) said:

Terence> sure it will happen if Linux if still around for a couple of more
Terence> years.  

Jiann-Ming> Why would Linux go away?

Hurd, maybe? Are they planning an 486 version at all?

--
 Axel Boldt  -  [email-masked]  -  http://emile.math.ucsb.edu:8080/~boldt/

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

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End of Linux-Misc Digest
******************************