Subject: Linux-Misc Digest #780
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:     Sun, 6 Mar 94 10:13:07 EST

Linux-Misc Digest #780, Volume #1                 Sun, 6 Mar 94 10:13:07 EST

Contents:
  Re: Smail security problems (HERE'S WHAT HAPPENED) (Thomas Mechtersheimer)
  Re: GOD SPEAKS ON LINUX! (Eternal Darkness)
  [Q] Linux and Windows 3.1 resource-sharing. (Gonzalo Diethelm)
  Re: DOOM for X (David Taylor)
  Linux on the Dell Dimension machines? (Ove Hansen)
  Re: Mail Order Linux Workstation Vendors (Dirk Steinberg)
  *** PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE POSTING *** (misc-2.07) (Ian Jackson)
  Re: RFD: comp.os.linux.* moderation by program (Alan Cox)
  Re: The Linux C library 4.5.21 is on tsx-11.mit.edu. (Matthew Dillon)
  Re: Linux Journal (Donald Likes)

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

From: thomasm@mechti.wupper.de (Thomas Mechtersheimer)
Crossposted-To: comp.os.linux.help
Subject: Re: Smail security problems (HERE'S WHAT HAPPENED)
Date: 5 Mar 1994 00:58:09 +0100
Reply-To: thomasm@mechti.wupper.de (Thomas Mechtersheimer)

jew@linux.anthro.arizona.edu writes:
>smail should not be SUID root, but SGID mail.

I guess that's a bad idea:
In this case, the directories under /usr/spool/smail should be writable
by group mail; so anyone using a sgid mail program like 'elm' can fake
mails, change the log files, or cause a lot of other problems :-(

   Thomas

-- 
Thomas Mechtersheimer  -  Zum Hasenkampsplatz 1  -  D-42553 Velbert  -  Germany
EMail: thomasm@mechti.wupper.de                                IRC-Nick: Mechti
There's only one girl that I will ever love      And that was so many years ago
And though I know I'll never get her out of my heart    She never loved me back

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

From: jake@acca.nmsu.edu (Eternal Darkness)
Crossposted-To: comp.os.linux,comp.os.linux.admin,comp.os.linux.development,comp.os.linux.help
Subject: Re: GOD SPEAKS ON LINUX!
Date: 6 Mar 1994 10:18:24 GMT

: >God@Up.There.Above.  Just one question, is God using a Unix platform?
: It must be MS-DOS. Or why can people become ill or why do we have wars ?

--
No, even worse... By the way God is calling Linux names, he/she must be using
something like VMS (Hehehehehehe).

Sincerely,

Jake Skinner Garcia,
Eternal Darkness(tm)

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

From: gonzo@malloco.ing.puc.cl (Gonzalo Diethelm)
Subject: [Q] Linux and Windows 3.1 resource-sharing.
Date: Sat, 5 Mar 1994 23:22:07 GMT


Hello all,

After some time of watching people talk wonders about Linux, I think
I'm getting ready to give it a try. But, I would like not to disrupt
too much my working enviroment. Currently, I have two PCs (386DX and
486SX), each with a NE2000 network card, a 200 MB IDE disk and
SuperVGA color monitors, running Windows 3.1 and connected via a
Lantastic peer-to-peer network. I have become used to working 
in Windows for all my non-development chores, such as writing
documents, balancing my checkbook and sending a FAX, but every
time I have to write code (usually using Borland C++), I start
wishing I had a decent, Unix-based development platform. So, what
I would like to try is installing Linux on the 486 and leaving the
386 as is. My questions are:

1. Will I be able to share any kind of resources through the
   NE2000 cards? Peer-to-peer networking would be great, but I guess
   I would settle for painless file transfering.

2. Will I be able to boot the Linux computer with DOS?

3. Is there any way I can develop C++ software on Linux to be run
   on WIndows 3.1 (8^)?

4. Is there any way I can run Windows 3.1 software on Linux? WABI?
   Black magic? Voodoo?

5. Any other relevant suggestions or comments you might think
   interesting, shove'em in.

If there is enough interest, I'll summarize. Thanks in advance.

Gonzalo



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

From: ddt@daisy.cc.utexas.edu (David Taylor)
Crossposted-To: comp.os.386bsd.apps
Subject: Re: DOOM for X
Date: 4 Mar 1994 19:12:19 -0600

In article <glen.762775342@paladine>,
Glen Harris <glen@paladine.ece.jcu.edu.au> wrote:
>  id has DOOM running as beta under Linux/X11 at the moment.  The last I
>heard (a week ago), was that the sound code needed ironing out to work
>with the /dev/* interfaces to the sound h/ware of various cards.
>
>  From what I've been told, we'll have to buy a whole new package.  I have
>_NOT_ been told, but I _hope_ that we'll get a discount if we already
>own the DOS version.....
>

Egads.  Perhaps I should intervene before this gets out of hand.

It's not a beta.  I've had it running under Linux for some time.  That
doesn't mean it's finished, ready for testing, which is what I think
beta means.

The sound code is not finished.  I've got some basic stuff working.  You
hear the sounds, they mix, etc, but there's no distance effects or stereo
yet.

And the window doesn't scale in size, yet, something I was hoping to do
for the more powerful machines.

I did indeed use X because I want it to be portable.  It looks as though
there will be other UNIX ports.  I also used it because I know it.  Harm
tried to sell me on svgalib, and it's neat (i've played with it and will
use it for Jaguar Doom simulation), but it's a portability issue, not a
statement of svgalib's quality or features.

Lastly, the game will *not* require you to buy a new version of Doom.
I've got it all running out of the DOS wadfile.  You will simply need a
new xdoom executable and sndserver executable.  If you want to play the
whole game, you can buy the registered copy of Doom, pull out the
wadfile, and plug in the new binaries.  Normally, we wouldn't make it a
sort of kluge like this, but we figure most Linux people are
way above average brightness-wise, a favorable statistic which is
conversely the only thing keeping Linux from becoming wildly popular.

A neat favor y'all could do for me when it's released is to send some
e-mail saying that you bought the DOS wadfile to play the Linux game.
I think UNIX games are going to be an important part of the future.
It'd be swell to get some statistics that agree.

        =-ddt->

(btw, just got my first linux journal.  haven't even cracked it,
 but i'm just totally pleased to have something in my lap w/ that
 title :)


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

From: ove@groovy.neu.sgi.com (Ove Hansen)
Subject: Linux on the Dell Dimension machines?
Date: 6 Mar 1994 20:23:21 GMT

I might splash out on a Dell Dimension 486 with ISA and VESA slots very
soon - before I do I'd like to know if anyone's run Linux on one of these,
the Hardware-HOWTO doesn't mention them...

-- 
Ove Hansen -       e-mail: ove@groovy.neu.sgi.com

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

From: steinber@schoenfix.ert.rwth-aachen.de (Dirk Steinberg)
Crossposted-To: comp.unix.pc-clone.32bit
Subject: Re: Mail Order Linux Workstation Vendors
Date: 06 Mar 1994 11:58:11 GMT

>>>>> "Edwin" == Edwin Tisdale <edwin@maui.cs.ucla.edu> writes:
In article <1994Mar04.203225.25070@cs.ucla.edu> edwin@maui.cs.ucla.edu (Edwin Tisdale) writes:

    Edwin> I have been keeping a list of "Mail Order Linux Workstation
    Edwin> Vendors" which I post from time to time in this and other
    Edwin> newsgroups.

    Edwin> A Linux workstation
    Edwin> with a 60 MHz Pentium (P5 not P24) CPU is just a little
    Edwin> faster than a Sun SuperSPARC Model 41.  In order to get a

Certainly not for floating point!

    Edwin> feel for the prices these vendors were charging, I asked
    Edwin> each vendor to give me a quote for the following
    Edwin> configuration:

    *   Intel 586DX-60 MHz Pentium CPU with heat sink and fan
    *   30 MHz PCI-586 mother board with 256 kB cache
    *   16 MB 70 ns system memory
    *   540 MB 12 ms IDE hard disk drive
                     ^^^
    *   1.4 MB 3.5"  floppy disk drive
    *   1.2 MB 5.25" floppy disk drive
    *   PCI 1280 x 1024 1 MB Super VGA graphics card
    *   15" 1024 x 768 0.28 mm dot pitch non-interlaced color monitor
    *   Mid-size tower case and power supply
    *   101 enhanced soft touch keyboard
    *   3 button serial high resolution mouse
    *   Linux operating system, X, C++, LaTeX, etc.
    *   two year warranty

This configuration is not well balanced. It's total nonsense to
operate the lastest-and-greatest (and expensive) Pentium PCI
workstation with a small IDE hard disk. Anyone buying such a
configuration should be shot to death, even more so since most PCI
mainboards already have an onboard SCSI controller. Drew Eckhard is
working an a NCR 53c810 PCI driver for Linux, which I hope will be
ready soon. A 1 GB SCSI-2 drive would fit the picture much better.
I recently bought such a beast (3.5") for ~ $700.

Same for the graphics card, if you really want to run X. First of all,
you cannot have 1280x1024 with 1 MB, at least not in 256 color, and
that's all XFree supports. Second, it should *really* be some
accelerated card, probably with the Mach 32 or S3 928 chipset. BTW:
The 928 is currently *not* supported with video clocks above 80 MHz,
wich you need for 1280x1024. The Mach 32 *is* in XFree 2.1. You should
go for 2 MB.

FYI: The ATI Ultra Pro PCI 2 MB VRAM (1280x1024 @ 74 Hz, 135 MHz), OEM
     version is about $450 in Germany.

If this sounds too expensive, then drop the Pentium and rather go for
a 486DX2/66 PCI, and keep the fast disk and graphics card. You *will*
certainly get more out of your Linux X workstation this way. Believe me.

If you really want the Pentium, then get a 66 MHz version with a 33
MHz board. Otherwise the PCI bus will also only operate at 30 MHz.

Just my 0.02,

        Dirk

=============================================================================
Dirk W. Steinberg - RWTH Aachen - Internet email: steinber@ert.rwth-aachen.de
Aachen University of Technology / IS2-Integrated Systems in Signal Processing
Rhein.Westf.Tech.Hochsch. Aachen / Integrierte Systeme der Signalverarbeitung
Templergraben 55 / D-52056 Aachen / phone:+49 241 807879 / fax:+49 241 807631
Home address: Kleikstr. 63, D-52134 Herzogenrath,Germany/phone: +49 2406 7225
--
=============================================================================
Dirk W. Steinberg - RWTH Aachen - Internet email: steinber@ert.rwth-aachen.de
Aachen University of Technology / IS2-Integrated Systems in Signal Processing
Rhein.Westf.Tech.Hochsch. Aachen / Integrierte Systeme der Signalverarbeitung
Templergraben 55 / D-52056 Aachen / phone:+49 241 807879 / fax:+49 241 807631
Home address: Kleikstr. 63, D-52134 Heax:+49 241 807631
Home address: Kleikstr. 63, D-52134 Herzogenrath,Germany/phone: +49 2406 7225

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

From: ijackson@nyx.cs.du.edu (Ian Jackson)
Subject: *** PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE POSTING *** (misc-2.07)
Date: Sun, 06 Mar 1994 11:03:00 GMT

Please do not post questions to comp.os.linux.misc - read on for details of
which groups you should read and post to.

Please do not crosspost anything between different groups of the comp.os.linux
hierarchy.  See Matt Welsh's introduction to the hierarchy, posted weekly.

If you have a question about Linux you should get and read the Linux Frequently
Asked Questions with Answers list from sunsite.unc.edu, in /pub/Linux/docs, or
from another Linux FTP site.  It is also posted periodically to c.o.l.announce.

In particular, read the question `You still haven't answered my question!'
The FAQ will refer you to the Linux HOWTOs (more detailed descriptions of
particular topics) found in the HOWTO directory in the same place.

Then you should consider posting to comp.os.linux.help - not
comp.os.linux.misc.

Note that X Windows related questions should go to comp.windows.x.i386unix, and
that non-Linux-specific Unix questions should go to comp.unix.questions.
Please read the FAQs for these groups before posting - look on rtfm.mit.edu in
/pub/usenet/news.answers/Intel-Unix-X-faq and .../unix-faq.

Only if you have a posting that is not more appropriate for one of the other
Linux groups - ie it is not a question, not about the future development of
Linux, not an announcement or bug report and not about system administration -
should you post to comp.os.linux.misc.


Comments on this posting are welcomed - please email me !
--
Ian Jackson  <ijackson@nyx.cs.du.edu>  (urgent email: iwj10@phx.cam.ac.uk)
2 Lexington Close, Cambridge, CB4 3LS, England;  phone: +44 223 64238

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

Crossposted-To: news.groups
From: iiitac@swan.pyr (Alan Cox)
Subject: Re: RFD: comp.os.linux.* moderation by program
Date: Fri, 4 Mar 1994 18:19:13 GMT

In article <1994Mar4.125248.9634@n5ial.mythical.com> jim@n5ial.mythical.com (Jim Graham) writes:
>In article <1994Mar3.194339.18049@brtph560.bnr.ca> denebeim@bnr.ca
>(Jay Denebeim P025) writes:
>
>>This looks like all the linux groups.  I have just one problem with
>>this.  If every group is moderated, how does someone with no E-Mail
>>access (such as myself at this site) post to these newsgroups?
>
>Simple....  Or at least, as simple as anything else this server is going to
>need to be able to do.  :-)

Of course the simple solution is to do it the UseNET way. If some people
want to play this read 2nd article only game then _DO IT IN YOUR NEWS
CLIENT AND LEAVE WELL ALONE_. 

>
>To begin with, we have a server that is going to
>
>   1) recognize any new poster to col.* (note:  new means they've never
>      posted before under any userid...  I mention this, because someone
>      might not be able to post from their normal site if it's down...that
>      may well be why they're asking for help!)
Assume its not down, broken, suffering a DNS error, buggy, hacked.... By
recognizing new posters you store a database of personal info (so I suggest
you check with your pet legal expert first). Also many people can't submit
articles to moderators...

>   2) recognize *VALID* posts by new users and *NOT* reject them,
>      particularly in the case where said user has a long path delay
>      (such as is the case with me---there's normally a one-day delay
>      on e-mail, most news, etc.)
HA! this I have to see. 

>   3) recognize invalid posts from any users (no matter how long they've
>      been around) and reject them
How do you know what is invalid. Many people are stuck with marginally
invalid headers (like mine). Nothing I can do about it..
>
>   4) recognize the more subtle flame-bait (which can be difficult even
>      for a human)
>
>
>#1 and #2 above deal with a very possible situation:  You're not new to
>col.*, but your machine has died for some reason.  Whatever the reason is,
>it isn't covered in the FAQ, etc., and you need to get help.  So you go
>to another site where you have access and post.  This site just happens to
>have a rather long UUCP delay, so you expect it to take a few days for
>even the first response.  Naturally, the first response is a note saying
>that your post has been rejected since the server thinks you're new (and
>telling you where to get the FAQ, HOWTOs, etc.).  So now you have a few
>more days to wait....  This obviously won't do, so #1 and #2 above are
>pretty much essential.
>
>Now, once all of the above has been done, it should be trivial to write
>a moderation program that can handle posts that can't be sent to it in
>the first place.
>
>Oh well, I've been holding up a UUCP feed so this can go out today (instead
>of tomorrow), so I'd better finish this and send it out.
>

Crackpot ideas of our time..


Alan


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

From: dillon@apollo.west.oic.com (Matthew Dillon)
Subject: Re: The Linux C library 4.5.21 is on tsx-11.mit.edu.
Date: 4 Mar 1994 13:16:21 -0800

In article <QUINLAN.94Mar3165551@spectrum.cs.bucknell.edu> quinlan@spectrum.cs.bucknell.edu writes:
:
:Matthew Dillon <dillon@apollo.west.oic.com> writes:
:
:> It seems silly to move something that a huge number of executables
:> in / require to what is most likely a different partition on many
:> systems.  So now you have to have two reliable partitions to do
:> anything instead of one?  That's silly!
:
:There shouldn't be anything in the root partition that requires
:libm.so.x.y.  If you refer to libc.so.x.y, it has not been removed
:from /lib.  Only libm has been moved.
:
:> My root partition is much, much safer then any other partition
:> because virtually no files are created, written to, or otherwise
:> modified on it.  I've been able to shift most of the volatile files
:> onto /var (with a partial mirror in the root to allow an emergency
:> boot without mounting /var), and what few remain are hardly ever
:> touched.  From my point of view, putting the shared libs on the root
:> partition is the SAFEST thing you can possibly do with them.
:
:You only need one demand paged shared library on the root partition.
:That is /lib/libc.so.x.y.  The safety of the root partition is not
:just a function of writing/creating/modifying, but also size.  The
:larger the root partition is, the greater the chance for a random
:error to occur on it.
:
:There are other reasons to reduce the size of the root partition, such
:as allowing for diskless systems which can then mount /usr via NFS.
:
:There are 1.5 megs of demand paged shared libraries (.so files) on my
:system, not including libm.so.x.y and libc.so.x.y.  Why would you want
:to increase the size of root by 1.5 megs for things which are not
:needed for anything on your root partition?  It is much more sensible
:to move them all to /usr/lib (and /usr/X386/lib).
:
:Dan
:
:--
:Daniel Quinlan  <quinlan@spectrum.cs.bucknell.edu>

    libc and libm have traditionally gone together, and just because
    most CURRENT boot-related binaries don't use libm is no reason
    to split them up.  libm or its equivalent is already necessary for
    booting on some machines (like the NeXT).

    If you are looking for a diskless workstation config all you need 
    to do is make a few boot-related binaries static and put ALL your 
    libraries under NFS!  That takes even less space.

    Splitting libc and libm is a mistake, and if it's going to be done
    I really, really, really would like a LIBPATH to be implemented and
    the absolute nature of ld.so's current library paths made relative.

    Sure I can put softlinks all over the place, but I'd rather have
    a clean setup.  LIBPATH would obviously default to /lib, /usr/lib,
    and /usr/local/lib.

    That is a request :-)  Then we can all go our merry way.

                                                -Matt

-- 

    Matthew Dillon              dillon@apollo.west.oic.com
    1005 Apollo Way
    Incline Village, NV. 89451  ham: KC6LVW (no mail drop)
    USA                         Sandel-Avery Engineering (702)831-8000
    [always include a portion of the original email in any response!]


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

From: likes@osuunx.ucc.okstate.edu (Donald Likes)
Subject: Re: Linux Journal
Date: Fri, 4 Mar 1994 20:05:52 GMT

In article <2l2ea8$k1l@crl2.crl.com> rjust@crl.com (Randy Just) writes:
>: There was a problem with e-mail last week.  Our MXer was down for a few
>: days.  The mail should have been returned or you should have been notified
>: that it was defered.  If that didn't happen I'm sorry but it is beyond our
>: control other than we have a change in so that a different site will
>: be MXing for us.  If you send e-mail to linux@fylz.com and don't receive a
>: response within a reasonable time, please call or FAX and let us know.
>: We are here and we think our mail works (as do hundreds of people who have
>: been getting mail to us).  If it doesn't, we want to know.
>
>I sent mail again on Monday.  No bounce, no reply and no indication of
>it being deferred either.
>

In their defense I must say that I sent them mail on mon feb 28, 1994
and they sent me a reply the next day... so I quess some of us are
lucky.

Craig.



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


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