Subject: Linux-Misc Digest #456
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:     Mon, 20 Dec 93 23:13:10 EST

Linux-Misc Digest #456, Volume #1                Mon, 20 Dec 93 23:13:10 EST

Contents:
  Re: Yet another benchmark results.. (Manuel Eduardo Correia)
  Re: Linux in a hospital? (R.X. Getter)
  Re: BogoMips just leapt half a point (Lars Wirzenius)
  Re: Any interest in a DAT distribution? (Georges Tomazi)
  Re: BogoMips just leapt half a point (Kai Harrekilde-Petersen)
  Re: Running off LGX cd-rom with small disk (Christopher Shaulis)
  Do you want the korn shell? (Grant Edwards)
  Re: Windows emulation was Re: Microsoft Invented Inferior Personal C (Andrew Bulhak)
  Booting Linux Off Second HardDrive (Kendall Beaman)
  Re: Windows emulation was Re: Microsoft Invented Inferior Personal C (Philip Brown)
  Booting Linux Off Second HardDrive (Kendall Beaman)
  Re: APOLOGY (Rob Janssen)
  Re: BogoMips just leapt half a point (Rob Janssen)
  Mass PR Marketing Tool (Marty Chenard)
  Re: Windows emulation was Re: Microsoft Invented Inferior Personal C (Philip Brown)
  /bin/sh [ftp pointer request] (David Holland)
  Re: _Real_ hackers ... (Alan Braggins)

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

From: mcc@ciup1.ncc.up.pt (Manuel Eduardo Correia)
Crossposted-To: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware,comp.os.vms,comp.benchmarks
Subject: Re: Yet another benchmark results..
Date: 20 Dec 93 15:18:00

In article <2etb78INN1v8@abyss.West.Sun.COM> sherif@salaam.West.Sun.COM (K. M. Sherif ) writes:

>>   If you want to compare the response for a user in real life usage, then qualify
>>   the system with the number of users who were using it and the type of programs
>>   they were running at that time.

        I was the only user at the time !!! The machine is being used
as a file server, but since it was Saturday almost no one was using
the Network !!! The interesting thing is that the same code in a MIPS
machine with 12 users loged in ( some of them with heavy processes )
executed the program in less then 15 sec... There must be something
wrong with the SPARCcenter, no doubts about that....
        
>>         Also the fact that it is an 8 processor machine is irrelevant to this
>>   benchmark even if run on single user mode, since you are not using a
>>   parallelising compiler

        I don't think so !!! The fact that there are other processors
to run the system and other users processes should make the time it
takes to run the test more independent of the load of the machine, and
as a consequence faster in heavy loading conditions... 

Manuel Correia



--
===============================================================================
Manuel Eduardo C. D. Correia    (Phd. Student)
===============================================================================
Centro de Informatica da Universidade do Porto (CIUP),
Rua do Campo Alegre, 823, 4100 Porto, PORTUGAL
Tel: (351-02) 600 1672, Ext: 113, Fax: (351-02) 600 3654,
Internet: mcc@ciup1.ncc.up.pt 
===============================================================================


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

From: rxg3321@ultb.isc.rit.edu (R.X. Getter)
Subject: Re: Linux in a hospital?
Date: Mon, 20 Dec 1993 20:32:59 GMT

In article <CIC8Bw.G34@dcs.ed.ac.uk> s.telford@ed.ac.uk (Scott Telford) writes:
>In article <1993Dec18.232221.16910@taylor.wyvern.com>,
>mark@taylor.wyvern.com (Mark A. Davis) writes:
>
>> You see Linux running commercial applications?  You see strategic support
>> environments for Linux?  You see consistant and complete documentation on
>> Linux?  You see company liability on Linux? 
>          ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>
>You see *any* PC software vendor claiming liability for their
>software? I'd be very surprised if SCO's user licence says "If our
>Unix screws up your application big time feel free to sue us". Most
>licences I've seen (OK, Microsoft ones are the ones I'm thinking of)
>disclaim liabilty for absolutely anything the software might do.
>
>-- 
>Scott Telford, Edinburgh Parallel Computing Centre,        <s.telford@ed.ac.uk>
>University of Edinburgh, Mayfield Rd, Edinburgh, EH9 3JZ, UK. (+44 31 650 5978)
>-- "We do want to tour again, we will tour again" - Kate Bush, Munich, 1980. --

Linux is distributed expressly with no warranty. If someone decides
to use it as a base for mission critical software in a hospital, he is
taking complete responsibility for its behavior. If, as a result of a
failure, someone dies, the penalties could easily be criminal as well as
civil. In the case of mission critical software which is sold as mission
critical software, disclaiming liability is meaningless. Also, any product
has an implied warranty of useability for its intended purpose. (If a word
processor doesn't process words, you can get your money back no matter what
the license says.) For mission critical, useability also means that the
product won't fail, or at least won't cause irreparable harm. I would be
very afraid of using Linux for this type of application. I would start with
fault tolerant hardware, a fault tolerant OS, a fault tolerant database,
and a very extensive period of testing. Anything less could easily be criminal
negligence. I wouldn't touch Linux, and I wouldn't touch a conventional PC.

Rob Getter
rxg3321@ultb.isc.rit.edu

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

From: wirzeniu@klaava.Helsinki.FI (Lars Wirzenius)
Subject: Re: BogoMips just leapt half a point
Date: 21 Dec 1993 00:24:11 +0200

jjctc@lhdsy1.lahabra.chevron.com (James C. Tsiao) writes:
> The image of Linus smirking over the BogoMips thread over the last few
> months led me to this hypothesis:
>
[ secret information removed ]

Don't do that!

How do you think Linus is _ever_ going to keep his reputation as an
all round good guy if you go and tell everyone what he is really
like?

Don't answer here.  The three large men knocking on your door just
now are happy to listen to your explanation.  That's what they get
paid for.  The other thing they get paid for you don't have to
worry about, since it only takes a second or so of your time.

:-)

--
Lars.Wirzenius@helsinki.fi  (finger wirzeniu@klaava.helsinki.fi)
Humans are unreliable, computers are non-deterministically reliable.


PS.  I don't know what caused the differences in BogoMips, but I 
do know that they aren't particularly useful for comparing CPU
speeds.  Don't worry about minor differences.

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

From: tomazi@kralizec.zeta.org.au (Georges Tomazi)
Subject: Re: Any interest in a DAT distribution?
Date: 17 Dec 1993 11:51:02 +1100

In <STEVE.93Dec15145546@shasta.crc.ricoh.COM> steve@crc.ricoh.COM (Stephen R. Savitzky) writes:

>I have been considering putting together a Linux distribution on DAT
>tape.  A 60-meter tape holds about 1.3 Gb of uncompressed data -- this
>is enough for a complete source tree (including X), a complete Sunsite
>snapshot (including all the distributions), and a complete set of
>executables, configuration files, and other goodies -- the equivalent
>of 2 CD-ROMs.

[some stuff deleted]

        Hello,


There is tens of magnetic, electronic or optical medias. The problem is
there is very few people to use it. A DAT or an Exabyte tape are great, but
because Linux still a hobbyist OS and will be like this for a while I
believe (It doesn't mean it's not great), It's hard to distribute on this
media. Do you know how much cost an Exabyte !!?? Also, having 1.3 Gb is
very nice, but if you watch the Linux stats, most of the people use small
hard disks (100-300Mb) and share them with DOS. What's the point to have
a lot of things if you can't use these things ?

I guess the main goal for Linux should be to organise a real stable and
standard package with a worldwide distribution network. Actually It's really
messy and even if you have a good knowledge of Unix, you have to fight to
get a stable platform. This is also what's is killing slowly the Unix
world versus end-users oriented OS (NT,OS/2 ...).

Cheers,

Georges


-- 
   Georges A. Tomazi  / Internet: tomazi@kralizec.zeta.org.au  /    And
 Sydney * Australia  /           tomazi@sydney.dialix.oz.au   / God created
   +61 2 264 6892   /           tomazi@tctel.frmug.fr.net    /     Unix...

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

From: kaihp@id.dth.dk (Kai Harrekilde-Petersen)
Subject: Re: BogoMips just leapt half a point
Date: Mon, 20 Dec 1993 16:22:13 GMT

In article <CIC7CI.1o7@turnbull.wariat.org> turnbull@turnbull.wariat.org (John Turnbull) writes:

   In article <1993Dec20.112603.9913@mnemosyne.cs.du.edu> zevans@nyx10.cs.du.edu (Zack Evans) writes:
   >A quick puzzle for kernel hackers...
   >
   >I just upgraded the kernel from PL13<somethingZ to PL14f and suddenly I get
   >2.odd BogoMips rather than the 1.96 I have been getting previously.
   >
   >Why?

   I noticed the same thing, and looking at the code it seems that in pl14b
   Linus decided to align the code calculating the delay loop, which appears
   to cut about 1 cycle per loop from the time on my 386sx.  Not sure how it
   will affect other machines.

   John

My 486dlc/33 jumped from 10.96 to 13.21. As you said, this is due to the
code alignment (it affects the 386-series most).

Kai


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

From: cjs@netcom.com (Christopher Shaulis)
Subject: Re: Running off LGX cd-rom with small disk
Date: Mon, 20 Dec 1993 23:54:06 GMT

bonn@unislc.slc.unisys.com (John Bonn) writes:

>I have done a run-time installation and I would like the
>uninstalled software (the stufff on the cd) to be 
>usable.  The key is I would like it to be _transparent_
>to the user that some things are installed and other
>things are on the cd.  I was thinking of making links

I believe that symbolic links are the best you can do. Its not completely 
transparent, it'll show up un ls -l and to a lesser degree ls. But 
appearence aside, it'll be transparent access.

>Also, is there a cd-rom filesystem for Linux that caches 
>frequently used files on the hard disk?  Is it in the LGX
>distribution or where can I get information on it?

If your using a SCSI controler, get the cluster-0.5.tar.gz patch from 
tsx-11.mit.edu -- SERIOUS! speed increase on CD-ROMs.

Christopher
  ___     _  ___   ____  _  _ ___ _____  ___  ___  __  __     ___  ___  __  __ 
 / __|_  | |/ __| / __ \| \| | __|_   _|/ __|/ _ \|  \/  |   / __|/ _ \|  \/  |
| (__| |_| |\__ \/ / _` | .` | _|  | | | (__| (_) | |\/| | _| (__| (_) | |\/| |
 \___|\___/ |___/\ \__,_|_|\_|___| |_|  \___|\___/|_|  |_|(_)\___|\___/|_|  |_|
==================\____/=======================================================


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

From: grante@hydro.rosemount.com (Grant Edwards)
Subject: Do you want the korn shell?
Date: Tue, 21 Dec 1993 00:18:14 GMT

There have been a couple postings asking about getting the _real_ ATT
korn shell for Linux.  This might be possible (binary only) if there
is sufficient interest.

Please send me e-mail if you are interested.

I have already contacted the keepers of the various distributions to
ask if they would be interested in including a ksh binary in their
distributions.

--
Grant Edwards                                 |Yow!  If I had heart failure
Rosemount Inc.                                |right now, I couldn't be a
                                              |more fortunate man!!
grante@rosemount.com                          |

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

From: acb@yoyo.cc.monash.edu.au (Andrew Bulhak)
Crossposted-To: alt.folklore.computers,alt.religion.kibology,comp.os.ms-windows.advocacy,alt.fan.mike-dahmus
Subject: Re: Windows emulation was Re: Microsoft Invented Inferior Personal C
Date: 21 Dec 1993 01:06:04 GMT

Mike Dahmus (mike@schleppo.bocaraton.ibm.com) wrote:

: Regardless of whether it was the server or the app; if I hadn't been able to
: telnet in from another machine, it would have been Big Red Switch time. OS/2
: at least gives a fair chance at being able to resolve these problems from the
: console (with the watchdog timer). If that fails, I can also try to telnet in
: to the OS/2 box and kill the offending process. If that fails, well, at least
: OS/2 doesn't take as long to boot as the average unix box :+)

OS/2 takes many times longer than Linux to boot up; I should know, I've
used both.

Also, every now and then OS/2 2.0 (I'm not sure about 2.1) crashed and
trashed the HPFS file system; I had to boot from _two_ disks in
sequence, go through a bozotic luser-friendly installation program, exit
to the command line and run CHKDSK, which took ~5-10 minutes to right
the partition.

I do not need to tell you which operating system has earned my trust,
and which one went in the bit bucket.


--
Andrew Bulhak            |
acb@yoyo.cc.monash.edu.au| I'm the most notable kibologist in Australia
Monash Uni, Clayton,     |          (According to Ludwig Plutonium)
Victoria, Australia      |

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

From: beaman@andrews.edu (Kendall Beaman)
Crossposted-To: comp.os.linux.help
Subject: Booting Linux Off Second HardDrive
Date: 21 Dec 1993 02:16:55 GMT


-- 
==============================================================================
I don't mind what Congress does, as long as they don't do it in the
streets and frighten the horses.    -- Victor Hugo
                                                        beaman@andrews.edu

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

From: philb@cats.ucsc.edu (Philip Brown)
Crossposted-To: comp.os.ms-windows.advocacy
Subject: Re: Windows emulation was Re: Microsoft Invented Inferior Personal C
Date: 21 Dec 1993 02:44:19 GMT


In <1993Dec20.114035.15685@infodev.cam.ac.uk> tjrc1@mbfs.bio.cam.ac.uk (Tim Cutts (Zoology)) writes:
>This is the point you are all missing.  Windows and Unix/X are desgined for
>utterly different purposes.  Windows is designed to be easy to use, and
>primarily for single desktop computers with at most a couple of programs
>running at once for the average user.

X is not a GUI. X is not an interface. X is a protocol.

There exist "easy-to-use" shells on top of X and unix. They're just not
popular, because people who get an X system want power.


>And for those of you saying Unix/X never crashes, just the other day Linux
>locked up completely on me.  All I did was type in an emacs window, with
>nothing else running except an xterm and the window manager.  The software
>was:

>kernel 0.99.14

Gee, a unix that isn't even at release v1.0 crashes.
How surprising.

-- 
 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
Philip Brown, CIS major, UC Santa Cruz
Author of "kdrill", and "xmandel"
Soon to be graduating.          Hire me!         Hire me!
philb@cats.ucsc.edu philb@soda.berkeley.edu

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

From: beaman@andrews.edu (Kendall Beaman)
Crossposted-To: comp.os.linux.help
Subject: Booting Linux Off Second HardDrive
Date: 21 Dec 1993 02:41:07 GMT

    I don't know why my first post didn't take but here we go again:

    I'm about to do a followup article (by request) to my previous one about
how I could boot Linux off my second drive using the OS/2 manager.  I have
a question.  Does Linux Patch Level 12 support this.  At the end of the
installation it told me that it couldn't install for boot off second hard
drive and then asked if it could take over the first hard drives.  Of course
I told it no.  This might be the problem.  Someone suggested that OS/2 couldn't
read the Linux extended filesystem but I did have Linux running off my first
hard drive being booted from the OS/2 Boot Manager.  Any help on this would
be most appreciated.

PS.
    If indeed patch level 14f? will help then where can I find the current
SLS package.  I downloaded from tsx-11.mit.edu but that was patch level 12.
I would recompile the kernel but that's why I needed to put linux on my 
second drive.  I downloaded lilo.13.tar.gz and tried to compile but the 
/usr/include/linux?/config.h included the header autoconf.h which I found no 
where on my drive.  

E-Mail or Post Replies.  Thanks in advance. :)
-- 
==============================================================================
I don't mind what Congress does, as long as they don't do it in the
streets and frighten the horses.    -- Victor Hugo
                                                        beaman@andrews.edu

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

From: rob@pe1chl.ampr.org (Rob Janssen)
Subject: Re: APOLOGY
Date: Mon, 20 Dec 1993 16:26:35 GMT

In <1993Dec20.085714.12783@oracle.us.oracle.com> tphillip@cracker.NoSubdomain.NoDomain (Tony Phillips) writes:

>Hi,

>I wish to apologise to anyone who was upset bymy use of this group as a test; 
>I'm new to 'News' and wasn't aware of the .test groups.

>Thanks to those of you who mailed me directly, some useful hints on the 
>etiquette and a couple of flames. 

Now that you have found how to use news, the next step is to configure
your domain name :-)

Rob
-- 
=========================================================================
| Rob Janssen                | AMPRnet:   rob@pe1chl.ampr.org           |
| e-mail: pe1chl@rabo.nl     | AX.25 BBS: PE1CHL@PI8UTR.#UTR.NLD.EU     |
=========================================================================

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

From: rob@pe1chl.ampr.org (Rob Janssen)
Subject: Re: BogoMips just leapt half a point
Date: Mon, 20 Dec 1993 16:30:28 GMT

In <CIC1AF.47G.3@cs.cmu.edu> ddj+@cs.cmu.edu (Doug DeJulio) writes:

>In article <1993Dec20.112603.9913@mnemosyne.cs.du.edu>,
>Zack Evans <zevans@nyx10.cs.du.edu> wrote:
>>A quick puzzle for kernel hackers...
>>
>>I just upgraded the kernel from PL13<somethingZ to PL14f and suddenly I get
>>2.odd BogoMips rather than the 1.96 I have been getting previously.
>>
>>Why?
>>
>>(And when am I going to get round to upgrading the 386-16...)

>Yow!  What does this statistic mean?  I've got a 486DX2-66, and mine
>is somewhere upwards of 32 or 33 BogoMips.  Does that mean by some
>metric I'm getting 16x the performance of that 386-16?

Oh NO!!   not the BogoMips thread again!!

Rob
-- 
=========================================================================
| Rob Janssen                | AMPRnet:   rob@pe1chl.ampr.org           |
| e-mail: pe1chl@rabo.nl     | AX.25 BBS: PE1CHL@PI8UTR.#UTR.NLD.EU     |
=========================================================================

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

From: mchenard@mv.mv.com (Marty Chenard)
Subject: Mass PR Marketing Tool
Date: Tue, 21 Dec 1993 02:52:31 GMT

For free report on "How to Get Thousands of Dollars Worth of Free PR
Advertising", you can:

A) call our 24 hr. Fax-on-Demand center from the phone on your fax machine 
& request report #998. Ph# 1-603-526-8669. (Chenard, Cassidy & Cowan
Inc.), or 

B) download from a 24-hr. no-cost Dial-in Document Server by dialing 
1-802-649-2604 (vt100, 8-N-1), typing ccc at the "login" and downloading
report "pr5c"
or,

C) send Email to "ccc@telecomp.com" with just the words: 
                                                         get pr5c
on one line in your message.

-- 
Chenard, Cassidy & Cowan, Inc.        | mchenard@mv.MV.COM
Venture Capital/Joint Ventures        | Email to ccc@telecomp.com
 ...now PC/MAC software for           | with the words:  get aboutpr
 newspaper/magazine/TV/radio PR       | on one line.

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

From: philb@cats.ucsc.edu (Philip Brown)
Crossposted-To: alt.folklore.computers,alt.religion.kibology,comp.os.ms-windows.advocacy,alt.fan.mike-dahmus
Subject: Re: Windows emulation was Re: Microsoft Invented Inferior Personal C
Date: 21 Dec 1993 02:58:11 GMT


In <CICMKA.C4o@walter.bellcore.com> hacker@patagonia.bellcore.com (Jonathan Hacker 21420) writes:

>...and if you have, you know that Solaris randomly panics/reboots by
>itself.  No need to worry about ctrl-esc at all? :-) :-)
Hey! no fair.. it doesn't do that..
Any more.

:-)

Well, I don't know if you're referring to solaris x86. I'm using sparc
solaris 2.3. Just about all actualy kernel crashes I've had, have been
due to filesystems I was using that hand't been altered since my system
was 4.1.2

So: I salvaged what I could.. tarred the lot.. reformatted under 2.3, and
restored from the tar file.

no problems since then.


-- 
 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
Philip Brown, CIS major, UC Santa Cruz
Author of "kdrill", and "xmandel"
Soon to be graduating.          Hire me!         Hire me!
philb@cats.ucsc.edu philb@soda.berkeley.edu

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

Subject: /bin/sh [ftp pointer request]
From: dholland@husc7.harvard.edu (David Holland)
Date: 20 Dec 93 21:03:28


Can somebody point me to a place to get a real /bin/sh? Bash is all
very well, but the only reason to use the Bourne shell in the first
place is that it's small and fast. Bash is neither. 

Sources preferred.

I quake at the thought of trying to archie for 'sh'. <sigh...>

--
   - David A. Holland             | Nobody ever went broke underestimating
     dholland@husc.harvard.edu    | the intelligence of the American public.

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

From: armb@setanta.demon.co.uk (Alan Braggins)
Subject: Re: _Real_ hackers ...
Date: Mon, 20 Dec 1993 10:39:20 GMT

In article <2en92b$j4n@senator-bedfellow.MIT.EDU> jmartin@opus.starlab.csc.com (John A. Martin) writes:
>   A colleague, Dick Sites, once played "Happy Birthday" on a bank of tape
>   drives for his girlfriend from the console of an IBM 709.  We all had 
>   been very curious why he had signed up for computer time when we knew 
>   he had a date!

I used to work somewhere with an NC lathe that could play the British national
anthem. (The milling machine played something else, but I forget what).

--
Alan Braggins  armb@setanta.demon.co.uk  abraggins@cix.compulink.co.uk
"Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced"

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


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