Subject: Linux-Misc Digest #913
From: Digestifier <[email-masked]>
To: [email-masked]
Date: Mon, 10 Oct 94 15:13:36 EDT

Linux-Misc Digest #913, Volume #2                Mon, 10 Oct 94 15:13:36 EDT

Contents:
  Re: Yggdrasil Fall 1994: buyers be aware (Adam J. Richter)
  Copying from CDROM to floppy - why does HD go active? (Dan Swartzendruber)
  Re: How to let normal users run SVGALIB programs (SOLN) (Alan Cox)
  [WANTED] Moasic 2.4 for XF86-3.1 (Chris Lo)
  help computerize a library (Robert J. Chassell)
  Re: Word (Text) processors for Linux? (Jeff Kesselman)
  Re: Word (Text) processors for Linux? (Michael Rogero Brown (Sys Admin))
  Idle daemon (Van Dao Mai)
  Re: Beautifying Linux/Xfree (Oliver Mai)
  Good Video Card For Linux (Ron Blancarte)
  Re: Beers for Linus (was: Contrib. $s for Linux Dev) (Jeff Kesselman)
  Looking for xelm static-linked binary (Fabian Hoppe)
  Where to get Slackware 2.0.1? (Marten Liebster)
  Re: showaudio (Joseph W. Vigneau)

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

From: [email-masked] (Adam J. Richter)
Crossposted-To: comp.os.linux.help
Subject: Re: Yggdrasil Fall 1994: buyers be aware
Date: 8 Oct 1994 22:41:29 GMT

In article <[email-masked]>,
Myron Uecker <[email-masked]> wrote:
>    I haven't had any of the problems you mentioned, but I have yet to be
>able to boot Linux from my hard drive.  I think that part of the problem
>stems from the fact that the Fall 94 CD has a lot of the directories
>changed from previous releases and it is causing problems.  The Lilo docs
>uses a totally different directory structure than this CD does.

        The information that you have supplied is not sufficiently
detailed for us to be able to tell what you're talking about.  Please
report the bug to us with important details like complete pathnames, so
that we can investigate your trouble report and be able to fix it in
a future release.

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

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

From: [email-masked] (Dan Swartzendruber)
Subject: Copying from CDROM to floppy - why does HD go active?
Date: 10 Oct 1994 11:55:24 -0400

I noticed something strange when copying a boot disk image
from CDROM to floppy.  Basically, I did the following:

dd if=/cdrom/file-image of=/dev/fd0 obs=18k

It said:
2400 input records
66+1 output records

The CDROM activity light came on for a few seconds, then went off.
At this point the floppy light came on and it made the usual grinding
noises for a bit.  What got me curious was why the root IDE drive was
also busy during this interval?  Something to do with the buffer cache?
If not, what??

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

From: [email-masked] (Alan Cox)
Subject: Re: How to let normal users run SVGALIB programs (SOLN)
Date: Mon, 10 Oct 1994 09:59:12 GMT

In article <[email-masked]> [email-masked] (Nick Hilliard) writes:
>This is *NOT* a solution.  This is *DANGEROUS* and *STUPID*.
>Please a) read some books about system administration and security, and b)
>think twice about the logical outcome of this sort of 'advice' before
>posting to the net.

Actually its right for SVGAlib programs - but not for general answers. The
svgalib library has to start up setuid. The initial call you make in the
svgalib program grabs all the resources and throws out its setuid status.

Alan

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

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

From: [email-masked] (Chris Lo)
Subject: [WANTED] Moasic 2.4 for XF86-3.1
Date: Sun, 9 Oct 1994 09:20:13 GMT
Reply-To: [email-masked]

Dear Linuxers,

While trying to elminate the X11R5, (and without Motif here), I find
Moasic is compiled with X11R5. Can someone re-compile it with R6
please??

Thanks.

-- 
Chris Lo                    |          _/_/_/    _/_/   _/_/_/
[email-masked]        |       _/    _/   _/_/   _/   _/
[email-masked]               |     _/_/_/_/   _/_/   _/_/_/
#include <std/disclaimer.h> |   _/    _/   _/_/   _/  _/_/

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

From: bob@cocoa-puffs (Robert J. Chassell)
Subject: help computerize a library
Date: 10 Oct 1994 16:26:55 GMT

Here is a chance to introduce GNU/Linux and other free software to
small libraries. 

The public library in Lenox, Massachusetts, has received a grant from
the National Endowment for the Humanities to computerize.  The library
hopes to become a "Model Library of the Future" that other,
not-so-large, public libraries will emulate.

I have talked to the library's director, Dennis Lesieur.  He has
nothing against freely redistributable software; but he knows nothing
about it (nor much about computerization).

I am looking for advice to give, for volunteers to help remotely via
email, and, if possible, for a local volunteer to install and maintain
systems.

The library has a 486 PC and five 386 PCs, with 4 to 16 megabytes of
RAM each, and 80 to 500 megabytes of disk each.

The library wants to do three things:

 1. Very soon: network the PCs together, so staff can access
    information on a CD-ROM that is on one machine from the other
    machines.  A single CD-ROM contains all of books in print or what
    ever; the staff will leave the most frequently used CD in the CD-ROM
    drive.

    Suppose the library runs GNU/Linux on its machines, or other free
    operating system:

    - What boards should it buy and install for networking?

    - What needs to be done so that the staff can continue to search
      and read the various CD-ROM databases, even when using an
      operating system other than DOS?  

    - What needs to be done so that the staff can continue to use the
      word processors, database programs, and spread sheets to which
      they have become accustomed; or how can the staff shift to other
      software?  What freely redistributable software should they use?

 2. Next: automate acquisitions, circulation, and public catalogue.
    Lesieur, the library director, is looking at various proprietary
    systems offered to libraries, some of which are Unix based.

    - Does anyone know of free software that does the job?

 3. Finally, most dramatically: provide "access to the world of
    information", including "multi-media work stations provided with a
    broad spectrum of information and research data bases", access
    from the library to the Internet, and remote access to the library
    (and through it, the Internet) "by schools, businesses, ... and
    the homebound."  (I am quoting from a statement of goals; as I
    said, the library is pioneering; it hopes to be a model for other
    small libraries to emulate.)

    I have dreams of the library becoming a node on the net with its
    own WWW home page, with the right to provide library patrons with
    source code to programs they use, and a bank of modems so I can
    dial in and establish a SLIP connection.

    One suggestion is for the library to customize GNU Emacs as a
    consistent user interface to various data bases, various
    differently set up library catalogues, gophers, ftp, news groups,
    etc.  This would be somewhat like the GUD library, which provides
    an interface to various symbolic debuggers from withing Emacs.  It
    would be a sort of super W3 mode, with only a limited set of
    permitted commands (unless you turn off disabling) and
    understandable menus and metaphors.  The library interface would
    have to be designed for novices, easy enough to learn so very few
    would ask librarians for help, and fool proof.

    - Does anyone know of such an existing interface (Emacs or other
      free software)?

    - Or, does anyone know of a class on human factors that would like
      to design and test such an interface?

    - Or would you like to design such a library yourself?

    The library already has a connection to the CWMARS network of
    libraries in central and western Massachusetts, as a remote
    terminal.  Unfortunately, the connection is intended only for
    catalogue lookup.  Other uses get what little bandwidth and CPU
    remains, which is slow.  (I tried; at one time, I faced a one to
    two second delay per character typed.  The librarians find it hard
    to read email.)  CWMARS knows the network is slow, but improving
    it is a low priority.  The library might install some other link
    to the Internet, if it were not expensive.

    - Has anyone suggestions for *inexpensive* network connections
      near Lenox. MA?

    - Or a way to down load email from the existing CWMARS mainframe
      so librarians could use the library's machines as computers
      rather than as very slow terminals?

    After the library is on the net, the librarians would need help
    setting up a WWW home page.

And so on.  This is one small library, but it is a pioneer and may set
the expectations for the future.  Not to mention that if the software
is free, the library can give copies to other libraries.

I can give a little advice, but not much.  So I am looking for others
who can help.  I figure this is a chance not merely to help one
library, but to influence all libraries, since this is intended as a
model for others.

Oh yes, the library is actually a 501(c)3 tax exempt organization.  It
is not owned by the town, but is its own foundation, although the town
pays about a quarter of its budget.  Your donations to this library
are tax deductible, like gifts to the Free Software Foundation.  (And
if you give enough you can get your name on a wall: moderate donations
get you a named brick; larger ones a plaque near a bookshelf or
computer; yet bigger ones a name for a room or archival vault.)

Thanks

    Robert J. Chassell               [email-masked]
    25 Rattlesnake Mountain Road     [email-masked]
    Stockbridge, MA 01262-0693 USA   (413) 298-4725
--

    Robert J. Chassell               [email-masked]
    25 Rattlesnake Mountain Road     [email-masked]
    Stockbridge, MA 01262-0693 USA   (413) 298-4725

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

Crossposted-To: comp.unix.questions
From: [email-masked] (Jeff Kesselman)
Subject: Re: Word (Text) processors for Linux?
Date: Sat, 8 Oct 1994 06:06:28 GMT

In article <[email-masked]>,
Richard L. Goerwitz <[email-masked]> wrote:
>>Gamma Universe word processor for almost every language, incl. keyboard  
>>redefinition on the fly
>>
>>The point is: you can do that under Windows easily (NT even easier in Unicode)
>
>I'm not sure this is right, actually.  Even Gamma Universe, I believe,
>has a great deal of trouble mixing left-right and right-left languages.
>You have to enter in carriage returns and multiple-line text will not
>wrap right.  An imperfect system overlaid upon an even less perfect sys-
>tem.  No, I believe that Apple has done the best job of solving these
>problems.

I just finished designing a generic font system for our products, which 
are released all over the world.  There are ALL kinds of issues involved
in non-romance languages.  What abotu languages that are written 
column-major rather then row-major?  We ended up with ALOT of flag bits 
to cover all the cases and we haven't yet dealt with languages like 
Korean, where each glyph is a compound of sub-glyphs!

If ANYONE has a system that is actually all inclusive for 'every 
language  on the planet' PLEASE send me a reference!  I'ld really like to 
see it.

P.S. We do have 1 system in house thats all inclusive, but very painful.
Its called Adobe Photoshop..  ;)

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

Crossposted-To: comp.unix.questions
From: [email-masked] (Michael Rogero Brown (Sys Admin))
Subject: Re: Word (Text) processors for Linux?
Date: Fri, 7 Oct 1994 19:36:33 GMT

Miguel Alvarez Blanco ([email-masked]) wrote:
: Richard L. Goerwitz ([email-masked]) wrote:
: : [email-masked] (Sergei Naoumov) writes:

: : Another point:  TeX will give you low-level control over your document.
: : But frankly I don't give a damn.  Once the referees, copy editors, lay-
: : out goons, and editors get their hands on my MS it's not going to look
: : like what I gave them, anyway.  So who wants to twiddle kerning pairs?
: : Just bang the sucker out, I say, and don't be so anal-retentive.

:  Really? This must be in your own field, because some journals of the
: APS, like Physical Review, accept LaTeX documents by e-mail (in source!)
: and use LaTeX in producing the final document. So I want to twiddle not
: only kerning pairs, but everything in my documents, because I know that
: the way I see them is the way the final reader will see them. BTW, the
: e-mail process is far faster than the usual method of submission; even
: if the only advantage of LaTeX were this, I'll take it over that myriad
: of brain dead 'clicky' Windows word processors.

:  Another important thing: I'm by no means a typist, nor want to be one.
: Why on earth should I care of the intrincate problems of document
: typesetting when a program can do it for me?

:  I won't claim that LaTeX is a good multilingual processor, but my master
: thesis was written on it, in spanish, without troubles. Sure, Hebrew, Kanji
: and lots of other languages are not there, but at least it's a step forward.

Uhhh.  Actually they [Hebrew Kanji etc] are there, at least for TeX.  I was
suprised/impressed when I got O'Reilly's _Making TeX Work_ and discovered that
there are versions of TeX designed specifically for Hebrew (which even handles
right to left rather then left to right), Chinese, Japanese and other languages.

And in many of these countries there are TeX user groups working hard to bring
these programs out.

--
==========All Opinions Expressed are MINE, not IBM's==============
Michael Rogero Brown       (uK Development System Administrator)  
IBM (uK Development)         TEL/TIE   (407) 443-6400   
Boca Raton, FL               Internet:  [email-masked]

If you think I speak for IBM, then I've got some swamp land^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H
real estate to sell you.

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

From: [email-masked] (Van Dao Mai)
Subject: Idle daemon
Date: 10 Oct 1994 23:39:23 +1000

Idle daemon for linux? Can anyone give me the name of it please

Thanks
[email-masked]

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

From: [email-masked] (Oliver Mai)
Crossposted-To: comp.os.linux.development
Subject: Re: Beautifying Linux/Xfree
Date: 10 Oct 1994 10:47:08 GMT

...
Eric Jeschke wrote:

> If there was a default "standard" GUI available on most distributions
> it would be possible to write a introduction to Linux (a la Welch)
> from a GUI perspective.  Whether this is a good idea or not depends on
> your ideas about how to teach Unix.  IMHO, I think you can wean newbies
> off of the mainstream PC OSes more easily with a good GUI and then let
> them gradually cut their teeth with more and more command-line.

Agreed!

> It might be a good idea to make a
> GUI "mini-distribution" (package) that just contains a standardized
> GUI setup (GREAT + fvwm + customized *rc files + selected GUI apps).

I used to run GREAT for some time. But firstly one needs Motif
to run GREAT with acceptable performance, and secondly I think fvwm and
xfm together give at least the functionality of GREAT without requiring
as much resources. For example the GREAT filemanager might look better
than xfm, but xfm is more powerful. The xfm file and application managers
support drag and drop much better than GREAT. E.g. one can drag files
or directories directly into the application manager, then drop files onto
the icons of e.g. executables or directories in either the application
or file manager, and so on. Once one has a well preconfigured xfm and
fvwm one has a very powerful desktop, which IMO is superior to MS Windows',
because the xfm application manager is much more flexible than Windows'
program manager. Drawbacks are: 1) fvwm does not support drag and drop on
desktop icons (in contrast to Windows, but, IMO drag and drop in the
application manager is better in practice). 2) There can be only one
instance of the xfm application manager. 3) xfm is too slow (esp. changing
to directories with many files), but not compared to GREAT's filemanager
4) xfm can only do one operation a time, so if you copy a file in one
xfm filemanager window, the other xfm windows are blocked.

I would advocate a GUI package with well preconfigured xfm and fvwm.

Oliver Mai

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

From: [email-masked] (Ron Blancarte)
Subject: Good Video Card For Linux
Date: 10 Oct 1994 04:18:58 GMT

My Brother-in-Law is getting a PC to run Linux on one partition, and
Windows/Dos on the other one.  Now anyone can make Win/Dos Drivers, but we are
looking for a Video card that has really good Linux drivers.  Things to take
note when giving advice:  We are not looking for a 64 bit Video card, so
please don't recomend them, unless they are the best card hands down.

Please e-mail responces back to me.  I  don't frequent this group.

RonB

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

From: [email-masked] (Jeff Kesselman)
Subject: Re: Beers for Linus (was: Contrib. $s for Linux Dev)
Date: Wed, 5 Oct 1994 01:33:35 GMT

In article <[email-masked]>,
John C. Fisher <[email-masked]> wrote:
>J.J. Paijmans ([email-masked]) wrote:
>: In article <[email-masked]> [email-masked] (Mats 'MaDsen' Wikholm) writes:
>: >In article <[email-masked]> [email-masked] (J.J. Paijmans) writes:
>: >>Aside from all that: does anybody know what is involved in getting
>: >>bottles with beer to Finland? I understand that the customs over there
>: ...
>[snip...]
>
>What about "RAM for Linus"?  Beer probably isn't terribly good for him... :-)
>If everyone contributed US$1, we could probably get him quite a bit.
>
>I know!  What about "P5-100 for Linus"? :-)
>
>< John Fisher | [email-masked] >
>

What about a PowerPC for Linus?  Then we knwo we'ld have Linux ported to 
the PPC real soon!  :)

(I'll bet someone coudl even talk IBM into giving us a discount on it for 
thsi worthwhile pupose... I have a relative at IBM I coudl bounce the 
idea off of...)

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

From: [email-masked] (Fabian Hoppe)
Subject: Looking for xelm static-linked binary
Date: 4 Oct 1994 17:11:06 GMT
Reply-To: [email-masked]

Hi!

As explained in the subject, I'm looking for a static(-ly  ?-) linked binary of xelm , the
X-Frontend to elm because I've unfortunatly no motif-dev-kit. Is there any ftp-server 
or generous Motif-owner around?

BTW, how is the MIME-support of this Frontend?

Thanks in advance, Fabian

---
Fabian Hoppe                            Phone  : ++49 2332 12580
Elsternstr. 57                          Fax    : ++49 2332 83518
58285 Gevelsberg                        EMail  : [email-masked]
Germany                                 PGP-Key available on demand

        - Mathematicians are devices to convert coffee in theorems - 

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

From: [email-masked] (Marten Liebster)
Subject: Where to get Slackware 2.0.1?
Date: 10 Oct 1994 14:47:59 -0400

A few weeks ago, there was a post about Slackware 2.0.1.  It was
the release with all the kernels from 1.0.9 to 1.1.50 and XFree86
3.1 on it.  

If someone would e-mail/post the number, I would be very greatful!

Thanks!

Marten

-- 
========================================
Marten M. Liebster   Please no flames for spelling,
[email-masked]    I already know I can't spell!!

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

From: [email-masked] (Joseph W. Vigneau)
Subject: Re: showaudio
Date: 10 Oct 1994 18:34:36 GMT

In article <phil.781809254@access3>,
phil slurrup <[email-masked]> wrote:
>Has anybody got showaudio to run for Mosaic? I am having trouble 
>compiling it. Is there Linux specific source and if so where? 

I thought the showaudio that came with the distributions worked... If not,
you can write a simple shell script to do the same thing:

#!/bin/sh
cat $1 > /dev/audio

That's it!  This should work on any machine that can play .au files (Linux,
Suns, maybe Decs, etc.)  Back up your old showaudio, and replace it with
this.

>I also 
>realized I didn't know how the include directories for gcc can be expanded,
>without doing it from the command line, where is that setup and defined?

This question seems unclear...

>One other question, is there a way to cut and paste text between sessions 
>in linux, and if so where can I find info?

Under X, you can usually highlight things by dragging the mouse button 1
(Usually the left mouse button) over text, and using mouse button 2 (middle)
to paste. Under text-mode, the selection program that comes with most
distributions can cut and paste text within or between virtual consoles...
-- 
[email-masked], [email-masked]          WPI Computer Science     Linux!
    <a href="http://www.wpi.edu:8080/~joev"> Click Here! </a>

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

** 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.misc) 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-Misc Digest
******************************