Subject: Linux-Misc Digest #401
From: Digestifier <Linux-Misc-Request@senator-bedfellow.MIT.EDU>
To: Linux-Misc@senator-bedfellow.MIT.EDU
Reply-To: Linux-Misc@senator-bedfellow.MIT.EDU
Date:     Thu, 9 Dec 93 22:13:15 EST

Linux-Misc Digest #401, Volume #1                 Thu, 9 Dec 93 22:13:15 EST

Contents:
  Re: New Yggdrasil LGX boot floppy (Adam J. Richter)
  How to send mail to COMPUSERVE (Enrico Scotoni)
  Linux bootstrap made easy (Enrico Scotoni)
  Re: Possible bug 0.99pl13/XFree86 2.0 + CTWM 3.0 (ha)
  Re: Linux counter: Usage growth of Linux (Kai Harrekilde-Petersen)

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

From: adam@adam.yggdrasil.com (Adam J. Richter)
Subject: Re: New Yggdrasil LGX boot floppy
Date: Thu, 9 Dec 1993 22:12:04 GMT

In article <1993Dec9.154824.2630@gold.muc.de>,
Christian Seyb <cs@gold.muc.de> wrote:
>In <CHqM0s.Lqr@khijol.yggdrasil.com> adam@adam.yggdrasil.com (Adam J. Richter) writes:
>no, the disk is damaged. There is no /dev directory and there are
>perhaps more things missing. You see it if you mount the floppy.
>But you can still copy the new kernel to the old boot disk and run
>lilo on it.

        It's a boot floppy.  It's only supposed to have a kernel and
a couple of files used by lilo.

-- 
Adam J. Richter                             Yggdrasil Computing, Incorporated
409 Evelyn Ave., Apt. 312, Albany CA 94706  4880 Stevens Creek Blvd., Suite 205
(510) 528-3209                              (408) 261-6630, fax: (408) 261-6631
adam@yggdrsail.com                          info@yggdrasil.som

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

Date: Wed, 08 Dec 1993 07:42:00 MET
From: scoti@p46.keru.chg.imp.com (Enrico Scotoni)
Subject: How to send mail to COMPUSERVE

Alain,

There was no text in your mail but from the subject line I suppose you want to
know how to send email to somone on CompuServe. Well, every user on CS has an
account of the form:  xxxxxx,yyyy where the x's and y's are numbers. To send
email to such a person address it to:

xxxxxx.yyyy@compuserve.com

NOTE: you have to change the "," (comma) to a "." (dot) in the account-string.
(BTW: As far as I know, those CS-systems are PDP's and those numbers are in
fact what is known in unix as uid and gid).

If you ARE a CompuServe user you can get more info about the subject with HELP
EMAIL in CS.

Reply to: 100020,2462 == 100020.2462@compuserve.com
:-)

Enrico

---

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

Date: Wed, 08 Dec 1993 07:46:00 MET
From: scoti@p46.keru.chg.imp.com (Enrico Scotoni)
Subject: Linux bootstrap made easy

 > From: syndesis@chaos.mcs.mu.edu (John Foust / Syndesis Corp.)

 > (I know this belongs in linux.development, but they don't
 > have that here...)

 > After suffering through several failed installations due to
 > conflicts
 > between various devices and variations of Linux, and after
 > reading
 > hundreds of messages from fellow explorers in linux.help, I
 > thought
 > about a way to improve the bootstrapping process.

 > Different versions of Linux boot disks (e.g. Yggdrasil, Nascent,
 > Slackware, SLS, etc.) seem to detect different devices in
 > different
 > orders, depending on what was compiled into the boot image.

 > I had problems because the various "detect yourself" routines
 > poked
 > around in ways that disturbed other devices, or fooled itself
 > into
 > thinking that some device was present on my system when it
 > wasn't.

 > Sure, you can fix these things by rebuilding the system, but you
 >
 > can't do that unless you already have a second working Linux
 > system.
 > And LILO commands can work around some problems, but not
 > everything.
 > Chances are, someone *does* have MS-DOS installed on their
 > system, or
 > can run MS-DOS temporarily from floppy.

 > I propose an MS-DOS program called 'kick' that hot-patches the
 > 'vmlinux' image on a Linux boot floppy.  This crude but
 > effective
 > technique would alter the table of function pointers for the
 > code to
 > detect the presence of devices.  For the SCSI startup, I found
 > it in
 > /usr/src/linux/kernel/blk_drv/hosts.c, in the scsi_hosts[]
 > table.  I
 > imagine other types of devices have similar tables.

 > 'Kick' tells the user exactly which devices are linked into the
 > boot
 > image.  A very simple GUI would let you zero out the table
 > entries
 > for the devices that you know are not present in the system.

 > Like Microsoft's MSD or QEMM's Manifest, this program could
 > detect PC
 > devices using techniques that other people have already
 > documented or
 > supported for MS-DOS.  Although Linux doesn't use the same MS-
 > DOS
 > code for supporting these devices, at least they could be
 > detected
 > under DOS in a more robust fashion.

 > (The code in hosts.c already skips table entries with a null
 > 'detect'
 > function pointer.  All this technique needs is some kind of
 > easily
 > detected signature string placed immediately before the table,
 > so
 > 'kick' could scan the boot image for the table.)

 > For safety's safe, you could expand the table to include an
 > extra
 > copy of the detect function pointer to easily restore the boot
 > disk
 > to its original state, so you can begin a new experiment or
 > clone the
 > disk for someone else.

 > This program would also be a good way to determine the parentage
 > and
 > contents of a given boot image.  The table already has a
 > descriptive
 > string, but these strings could be improved to include the
 > version
 > and patch level of the driver in question.

Good idea. Tell us when you've finnished kick and upload to some ftp-server.

Enrico

---

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

From: aehall@netcom.com (ha)
Subject: Re: Possible bug 0.99pl13/XFree86 2.0 + CTWM 3.0
Date: Thu, 9 Dec 1993 20:48:26 GMT

In article <2e6eh8$3u5@fitz.TC.Cornell.EDU> elan@tasha.cheme.cornell.edu (Elan Feingold) writes:
>
[snip]
>
>I left my system on for three days, after second day I noticed that xterms
>were mysteriously dying.  I'd lock up with xlock, and anywhere from an hour to 
>ten hours later, when I unlocked, my xterm was dead (gone).  Locking followed 
>by immediate unlocking produced no problems, and the emacs windows also around
>didn't appear to die.
>
[snip]

Are you using /bin/bash as your xterm shells?  If so, check out the
TMOUT environment variable...

I'd quote the manpage, but I don't seem to have it at the moment...

TMOUT, as the name implies, logs you out automatically after a set
number of seconds.

e.g.:

TMOUT=3600
export TMOUT

will kick you off after 1 hour.

-A

-- 
========================================================================
  Anthony Hall                             "...the whole alphabet soup
   aehall@netcom.com                         of spookdom." -Marcinko
========================================================================

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

From: kaihp@id.dth.dk (Kai Harrekilde-Petersen)
Subject: Re: Linux counter: Usage growth of Linux
Date: Thu, 9 Dec 1993 16:35:31 GMT

In article <Dec.9.10.12.15.1993.10464@pilot.njin.net>,
dblack@pilot.njin.net (David Alan Black) writes:

   [ ... discussion deleted ... ]

   But it's an interesting question.  Not that this is a scientifically correct
   way to conduct a survey, but....  have people had the experience of giving
   Linux to non-internet-connected friends, and having them actually install
   and use it?  Just curious.

Yup, four actually!

Kai Harrekilde-Petersen

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


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