Subject: Linux-Misc Digest #797
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:     Fri, 11 Mar 94 14:14:54 EST

Linux-Misc Digest #797, Volume #1                Fri, 11 Mar 94 14:14:54 EST

Contents:
  Re: SoftPC/Linux? (Frank Grieger)
  Re: DOOM for X (Glen Harris)
  Does zless exist? (Andreas Helke)
  Re: HELP: Serious problem... (Rene COUGNENC)
  Re: Release of mlist 1.1 (Marc van Kempen)
  Radius Dual Page Mono Monitor Support ... ? (Edward Baichtal)
  Re: BSD vs. Linux (David Holland)
  motif (Joe Bird)
  Re: Sparc vs. 486/Pentium [WAS:Re: Mail Order Linux Workstation Vendors] (J Rozes)
  Filenames on Sunsite (Steve Yelvington)
  Re: lost /lib/libc.so.4 (Steve Yelvington)
  Re: Does zless exist? (Helmut Geyer)
  Re: "Reverse-engineering" (Piers Cawley)
  Re: SoftPC/Linux? (Piers Cawley)
  Re: DOOM for X (Douglas Muir)
  Re: how do I uncompress .z files (Timothy Murphy)

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

From: fg@spcklr.mpifr-bonn.mpg.de (Frank Grieger)
Subject: Re: SoftPC/Linux?
Date: Fri, 11 Mar 1994 09:39:20 GMT

In <1994Mar10.162031.15340@taylor.wyvern.com> mark@taylor.wyvern.com (Mark A. Davis) writes:

>david@wubios.wustl.edu (David J Camp) writes:

>>In article <1994Mar9.214309.67781@yuma> jmiller@terra.colostate.edu (Jeff Miller) writes:

>>There is a product called "Locus Merge" that does this (PC emulation) quite 
>>well.  I

>Actually, VERY well.  I would think Merge would be easier to port to Linux
>than SoftPC....

Hi,

what's "Locus Merge" anyway. Commercial or GPL software. If it's GPL software
please tell a ftp site (if availble).

Greetings,
                Frank.
--
========================================================================
fg@specklec.mpifr-bonn.mpg.de               Frank Grieger, Bonn, Germany

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

Crossposted-To: comp.os.386bsd.apps
From: glen@paladine.ece.jcu.edu.au (Glen Harris)
Subject: Re: DOOM for X
Date: 11 Mar 94 01:38:42 GMT

In <2lm9ih$6s5@godot.cc.duq.edu> mcquill@next.duq.edu (Tod McQuillin) writes:
>Amancio, what effect, if any, do you think the shared memory extentions of X
>have on graphics performance?

  What it means is that a bitmap in memory is mapped directly over the
screen, so an access to the array is an access to the screen.  After the
mapping is set up, there's no calls to X for the graphics.  In effect,
it's exactly as if you were in dos, but there's no 64Kb segment switching
as the system does this transparently.  *I* don't know how page flipping 
is done, maybe there's a X call to do this, or a fast memcpy during the
refresh?  Inquiring minds.......


--
*******************************************************************
*  Glen Harris     *  3D and Virtual Reality Groupie              *
*  Don't mail here *  Mail to: glen@wench.ece.jcu.edu.au          *
*******************************************************************

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

From: andreas@orion.mgen.uni-heidelberg.de (Andreas Helke)
Subject: Does zless exist?
Date: Fri, 11 Mar 94 11:50:16 GMT

Charles W. Blumreich (cwblumre@major.cs.mtu.edu) wrote:
: Phillip Hardy (phillip@mserve.kiwi.gen.nz) wrote:
: :->i have been playing with my system and i realy like compressed
: :->Faq files now to read them all i have to do is.
: :->zcat LINUX-FAQ.gz | more
: :->and Vola i can read/search the faqs without takeing 
: :->up late-amounts of hdd space :)

: not to be critical, but what's wrong with zmore?

This is one of the less commonly known programs. I did not realize that
I have it until now. But I do not like more because of it's one way nature.
Therefore I have to use zcat * | less. I could probably write a shellsript
with the name zless which automates this process. 

Andreas
--

Andreas Helke

Institut fuer molekulare Genetik, Universitaet Heidelberg
Im Neuenheimer Feld 230 
69122 Heidelberg

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

From: rene@renux.frmug.fr.net (Rene COUGNENC)
Subject: Re: HELP: Serious problem...
Date: 11 Mar 1994 00:19:19 GMT
Reply-To: cougnenc@itesec.ensta.fr (Rene COUGNENC)

Ce brave Andrew Hutton ecrit:

> I have a serious problem with my system that I need to get cleared up 
> right away.   With any pl15 kernel my system gradually slows to the point 
> of unusability about 13-20 hours after a re-boot.  THis is a problem as 
> Please help me.  Any ideas would be great..  using pl15 without the 
> cluster patches.

This is a known problem.

Upgrade to at least pl15a, (better get the pre-1.0 kernel) this bug has
been fixed by Linus two days after the pl15 is out.

If you are already running a recent kernel ( > pl15a), this is another 
problem, and sorry I can't help...

(A memory leak in one of the programs you are running.. ?)
 
--
 linux linux linux linux -[ cougnenc@renux.frmug.fr.net ]- linux linux linux 

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

From: wmbfmk@rwc.urc.tue.nl (Marc van Kempen)
Subject: Re: Release of mlist 1.1
Date: 11 Mar 1994 12:42:43 +0100

wmbfmk@urc.tue.nl (Marc van Kempen) writes:

>Hi,

>I would like to announce the second release of my clone of 
>the Vernon Buerg 'list'-program for dos.

mlist is a fileviewer and directorybrowser. It can view several types of
files, including ps, gif, zip, tar, text. 


>I have uploaded it to:

>sunsite.unc.edu:pub/Linux/Incoming/mlist-1.1.tar.gz
>sunsite.unc.edu:pub/Linux/Incoming/mlist.lsm

It has been moved to sunsite.unc.edu:pub/Linux/utils/text

Grtx,

Marc van Kempen.
wmbfmk@urc.tue.nl

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

From: edwardb@netcom.com (Edward Baichtal)
Subject: Radius Dual Page Mono Monitor Support ... ?
Date: Wed, 9 Mar 1994 19:45:00 GMT

Is there support for the Radius Dual Page Mono Monitor in Linux?
-- 
Edward Baichtal                         "Reality is an obstacle
edwardb@netcom.com                       to hallucination."

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

Crossposted-To: comp.unix.bsd
Subject: Re: BSD vs. Linux
From: dholland@husc7.harvard.edu (David Holland)
Date: 10 Mar 94 20:54:15


iiitac@swan.pyr's message of Thu, 10 Mar 1994 12:06:46 GMT said:

 > Linux networking is more powerful but less stable in some areas.
 > Anyway you [*BSD] have a 15 year advantage.. and compatibility by
 > default.

Don't forget that a 15 year advantage also means 15 years of
accumulated cruft. NetBSD (and the other 386 BSDs) require more system
than Linux does. This is the primary reason I use Linux as opposed to
other non-DOS OSs.

--
   - David A. Holland          | "The right to be heard does not automatically
     dholland@husc.harvard.edu |  include the right to be taken seriously."

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

From: bird@drvax3.msfc.nasa.gov (Joe Bird)
Subject: motif
Date: Fri, 11 Mar 1994 14:48:05 GMT

I have finally got my pc running with linux and my developers are
interested in it but they need motif. I know that someone was selling
motif for linux earlier but I have lost the name. Could someone pass
along any info they have on getting motif for the linux os.

Thanks
Joe Bird        WB4ARV
MSFC            birdjm@drvax3.msfc.nasa.gov
Huntsville, AL  

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

Crossposted-To: comp.unix.pc-clone.32bit
From: jrozes@allegro.cs.tufts.edu (J Rozes)
Subject: Re: Sparc vs. 486/Pentium [WAS:Re: Mail Order Linux Workstation Vendors]
Date: Fri, 11 Mar 1994 15:52:26 GMT

>>>>> "JOHN" == JOHN FARMER <jfarmer@cs.utk.edu> writes:

> Ok, now what about us that are looking at machines for other than X workstation
> usage?  I'm setting up an Internet node where the load is mainly I/O bound
> and is of more "classic" characteristics.  That is, I'm not really interested
> in tweaking the fastest screen work out the box, I'm interested in responding
> to serial and net I/O.  I mean I've got people that are going, "I wnat ISDN
> to your system, now!"  They will be running the X apps (and Windoze apps, 
> and Macdonald apps....) and they can worry about tweaking the graphic
> performance!

> So tell me, it appears that a 486DX2/66 _in numbers_ will outgun a Sparc 1+
> or 2.  The Pentium will keep up with the Supersparcs (at least the mid range
> ones).  Again, according to the _numbers_ (Specmarks, etc).

> Now, I know that alot of the type of performance I'm interested in is related
> to the I/O & memory bus's.  Ok, that means EISA/VESA/PCI.  Any performance
> differences?  There certainly is pricewise!  But the CPU has an impact in the
> total system performance (I knew that class in computer architecture would 
> come in handy!).  What will the system _feel_like_ compared to the
> classic sparcs?

One thing you should know: Sun is not exactly know for it's I/O performance.
I use a SparcClassic with 16megs RAM and it feels much slower than a 486/66
with the same amount of memory in terms of system load. Despite the 16megs,
the Sparc swaps like mad, even when not running OpenWindows. For the price,
a 486/66 PCI machine will be your best bet, IMO. Don't forget that Solaris
exacts a much heavier price on the hardware than Linux. Maybe somebody
should get some numbers comparing Linux with Solaris x86? I'd be interested
to see how they compare in practice.

If you will be supporting lots of users remotely (e.g. dialups and such) you
would do best to get a terminal server added to your local network. To
support ~16 dial ups, look for something with it's own processor, about 8megs
RAM and a smart chipset that can do any DTE speed.

If you want multiple ISDN connections, good luck finding a multiport ISDN
server that won't cost you your house and your first born...

jonathan

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

From: steve@thelake.mn.org (Steve Yelvington)
Subject: Filenames on Sunsite
Date: Sat, 5 Mar 1994 20:58:00 GMT


I've noticed a lot of filenames on sunsite.unc.edu of this form:

             xpaint2.1.1-linux.tgz

The .tgz ending is fine for programs that are going to be stuffed into a DOS
file system, but this filename obviously isn't DOS-compatible, so why use
.tgz when you mean .tar.gz?

Gopher doesn't recognize .tgz as a binary file, so the only way to get this
is via ftp, which is much less convenient and places a higher load on the
server.
-- 
Steve Yelvington in Marine on St. Croix, Minnesota USA <steve@thelake.mn.org>
           ... or at the Star Tribune in Minneapolis <stevey@startribune.com>

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

From: steve@thelake.mn.org (Steve Yelvington)
Subject: Re: lost /lib/libc.so.4
Date: Mon, 7 Mar 1994 17:25:26 GMT

Dongjin Han (dj@lems25) wrote:


 > --
 > Hi Help me. I tried to symlink libc.so.4 to libc.4.5.19
 > then I deleted libc.so.4 accidentely NO command are accepted!
 > What shoud I do?

DO NOT, repeat, DO NOT, try to install your libraries manually. Use the
ldconfig program that comes with the ld.so package. It prevents this sort of
mistake. (I learned this the hard way.)

To fix this foulup, boot your system using a rescue disk or the SLS A1 disk
or something similar. Then mount your hard drive on a convenient mount point
(such as /mnt). Change to the hard drive's lib directory. Make the link,
then shutdown and reboot with the hard drive mounted as / (as normal).
Everything should work now.
-- 
Steve Yelvington in Marine on St. Croix, Minnesota USA <steve@thelake.mn.org>
           ... or at the Star Tribune in Minneapolis <stevey@startribune.com>

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

From: geyer@urania.iwr.uni-heidelberg.de (Helmut Geyer)
Subject: Re: Does zless exist?
Date: Fri, 11 Mar 94 12:42:37 GMT

Andreas Helke (andreas@orion.mgen.uni-heidelberg.de) wrote:
:>Charles W. Blumreich (cwblumre@major.cs.mtu.edu) wrote:
:>: Phillip Hardy (phillip@mserve.kiwi.gen.nz) wrote:
:>: :->i have been playing with my system and i realy like compressed
:>: :->Faq files now to read them all i have to do is.
:>: :->zcat LINUX-FAQ.gz | more
:>: :->and Vola i can read/search the faqs without takeing 
:>: :->up late-amounts of hdd space :)

:>: not to be critical, but what's wrong with zmore?

:>This is one of the less commonly known programs. I did not realize that
:>I have it until now. But I do not like more because of it's one way nature.
:>Therefore I have to use zcat * | less. I could probably write a shellsript
:>with the name zless which automates this process. 

zmore _is_ a shell script that does just zcat $* | more. Change more to
less and it will work.

        Helmut

--
==============================================================================
Helmut Geyer                                Helmut.Geyer@iwr.uni-heidelberg.de

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

From: pdcawley@iest.demon.co.uk (Piers Cawley)
Subject: Re: "Reverse-engineering"
Date: Fri, 11 Mar 1994 10:44:46 +0000

In article <1994Mar11.014220.20638@rpp386> jfh@rpp386 (John F. Haugh II) writes:
> As for your claim about various and sundry "subtle" forms of
> economics, I am a professional programmer.  I write operating
> systems for a living.  Expecting me to =stop= writing operating
> systems and start being a CD-ROM distribution company is quite
> unrealistic.  As for companies like Cygnus, their continued
> existence is only proof that people with creative imaginations
> haven't bothered to really screw them just yet.  Try figuring out
> how Cygnus is going to make money doing bug fixes when some customer
> decides to resell (or give away for free ...) those bug fixes.  Now
> how do you expect Cygnus to make its payroll?  More of these creative
> non-monetary economic principals you're thinking of?

Hold on John, any bugfixed version of GPL'd s/w that Cygnus creates
is, by definition, a derivative work and therefore under the GPL, and,
if it is a good bugfix, almost certainly be rolled into the next
release from the FSF. Cygnus's edge is that it can provide these bugfixes
before the FSF gets them out of the door. If some customer of theirs
then sees fit to pass said bugfix on to all and sundry it's no great
problem. It would have happened anyway.

I am not a Cygnus customer, I run Linux for pleasure, but if I were a
commercial site I would seriously consider using free s/w and getting
someone like Cygnus in on a support contract. The added value is not
just the bugfixes, it's the fact I can hand s/w configuration and the
like off to somebody else, whilst I get on with doing something that
is actually bringing money in. It's not having to keep my eyes on the
various gnu.announce.* groups to see when bugfixes are available. It's
not having to spend processor cycles recompiling stuff. 

Now if I go that route, I might as well go the proprietory route, and
if I were in a such a situation I may very well consider it. What I am
paying for when I buy support is not 'the bugfixes' as such, I don't
give a flying fuck whether they are originated somewhere on the 'net
or actually at my support supplier, I am paying for their time, and if
that time is spent watching the net for bugfixes rather than producing
their own it is still time that *I* don't have to spend.
-- 
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
|   Piers Cawley, 2 Widford Park Place, Chelmsford, ESSEX, CM2 8TB.  |
|      pdcawley@iest.demon.co.uk   pdcawley@cix.compulink.co.uk      |
| Once upon a time, and a very good time it was, there lived a . . . |
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+

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

From: pdcawley@iest.demon.co.uk (Piers Cawley)
Subject: Re: SoftPC/Linux?
Date: Fri, 11 Mar 1994 10:52:31 +0000

In article <1994Mar11.014807.20715@rpp386> jfh@rpp386 (John F. Haugh II) writes:

> 
> In article <1994Mar10.122328.14006@wubios.wustl.edu> david@wubios.wustl.edu (David J Camp) writes:
> >In article <1994Mar9.214309.67781@yuma> jmiller@terra.colostate.edu (Jeff Miller) writes:
> >>Seeing how SoftPC runs reasonably well on Suns and Macintoshes, how hard
> >>would it be for Insignia to make a PC emulator for the PC over Linux? I
> >>think a product like this would bring Linux the compatibility it needs,
> >>and the following it deserves.
> >>
> >>I could then format my drive and make one big Linux partition :)
> >
> >There is a product called "Locus Merge" that does this quite well.  I
> >am not certain if it has been ported to Linux.  -David-
> 
> It's actually called "DOS Merge" and most likely hasn't been ported
> anywhere near Linux.  LCC is a commercial venture and they don't make
> no money giving software away ...

Yes, so? They can compile it and sell it to interested parties,
where's the problem?
-- 
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
|   Piers Cawley, 2 Widford Park Place, Chelmsford, ESSEX, CM2 8TB.  |
|      pdcawley@iest.demon.co.uk   pdcawley@cix.compulink.co.uk      |
| Once upon a time, and a very good time it was, there lived a . . . |
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+

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

From: dmuir@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Douglas Muir)
Crossposted-To: comp.os.386bsd.apps
Subject: Re: DOOM for X
Date: 11 Mar 1994 18:41:52 GMT

In article <glen.763349922@paladine> glen@paladine.ece.jcu.edu.au (Glen Harris) writes:
>In <2lm9ih$6s5@godot.cc.duq.edu> mcquill@next.duq.edu (Tod McQuillin) writes:
>>Amancio, what effect, if any, do you think the shared memory extentions of X
>>have on graphics performance?
>
>  What it means is that a bitmap in memory is mapped directly over the
>screen, so an access to the array is an access to the screen.  After the
>mapping is set up, there's no calls to X for the graphics.  In effect,
>it's exactly as if you were in dos, but there's no 64Kb segment switching
>as the system does this transparently.  *I* don't know how page flipping 
>is done, maybe there's a X call to do this, or a fast memcpy during the
>refresh?  Inquiring minds.......
>

I haven't seen a more authoritative (i.e., from the XFree86[tm] team) response,
so I'll jump in with my understanding of the situation.

The XShm extensions do *not* directly map a bitmap in memory to the 
framebuffer memory on your video card.  As far as I know, that is just 
plain not possible (disregarding the 64k window to video memory on most cards,
memory can only be mapped in 1 page (4k) chunks, meaning it could only work
if you had a 4096 pixel wide bitmap at 8 bits of depth).  What the XShm 
extensions do is set up a region of shared memory between the X server and
the client program.

In a "normal" X program, when you draw an image (using XPutImage, or the
equivalent Pixmap function, which I don't recall offhand) the client library
sends the image data to the server via the underlying communication method
(usually a unix domain or inet socket), the server builds a copy of the 
bitmap in its own address space, and then bltblts the copy to the screen.
(The client library also takes care of the 256k limit on the size of a 
protocol request by breaking up the data into multiple packets if required).

In a "shared image" X program, after you've set up the shared memory segment
between the client and server, using XShmPutImage (I think that's it) simply
tells the server to bltblt the shared memory to the screen.

How much faster this will be really depends on how bad the communications 
overhead is in the "normal" case.  If the communications overhead is only 
5% of the total time needed to draw the image to the screen (i.e., you have
fast sockets but a slow blitter) then XShm won't get you that much.  If
you have slow sockets and a fast blitter, though, XShm can greatly enhance
performance.

-Doug Muir


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

From: tim@maths.tcd.ie (Timothy Murphy)
Subject: Re: how do I uncompress .z files
Date: 11 Mar 1994 13:25:09 -0000

>] i have been playing with my system and i realy like compressed
>] Faq files now to read them all i have to do is.
>] zcat LINUX-FAQ.gz | more
>] and Vola i can read/search the faqs without takeing 
>] up late-amounts of hdd space :)

Apologies if this has been mentioned --
I haven't been following this stream --
but can't you more simply just say

$ zmore LINUX-FAQ.gz ?


-- 
Timothy Murphy  
e-mail: tim@maths.tcd.ie
tel: +353-1-2842366
s-mail: School of Mathematics, Trinity College, Dublin 2, Ireland

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


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