Subject: Linux-Development Digest #969
From: Digestifier <Linux-Development-Request@senator-bedfellow.MIT.EDU>
To: Linux-Development@senator-bedfellow.MIT.EDU
Reply-To: Linux-Development@senator-bedfellow.MIT.EDU
Date:     Mon, 1 Aug 94 02:13:09 EDT

Linux-Development Digest #969, Volume #1          Mon, 1 Aug 94 02:13:09 EDT

Contents:
  SLIP, CSLIP, PPP and modems (Starcon SysAdmin)
  Re: APC UPS owners or potential buyers, trying to show user base (Rob Healey)
  Re: Linux backup of MSDOS? (Tom Oehser)
  Re: link() system call (Brandon S. Allbery)
  Re: APC UPS owners or potential buyers, trying to show user base (Brian Kramer)
  Linux versions? (Jered Floyd)
  Re: Xfree86: increase pallate? (Dirk Hohndel)
  Re: CD-ROM tray control (Eberhard Moenkeberg)
  Re: shared Libs and X11 don't work in Linu (Gerald Ehritz)
  Re: Wanted: The Application which can read *.DBF (Michael Dillon)
  Re: APC UPS owners or potential buyers, trying to show user base (Michael Dillon)
  Re: Q: Is the Adaptec VLB AHA SCSI controller supported now? (Drew Eckhardt)
  HUB-6 still supported?  Timing problems? (Brad Isley)
  No Free Inode on 1GB harddisk!! (Barry Yip kam-wa)
  Re: threads in kernel (James Crawford)

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

From: yuriev@astro.ocis.temple.edu (Starcon SysAdmin)
Subject: SLIP, CSLIP, PPP and modems
Date: 27 Jul 1994 22:37:45 GMT

Hi!

        Okay. Here is my point. I have tested kernels 1.1.33, 1.0.9 with
Zoom 14400, DataSystems 1440, Bocas, etc in SLIP mode. It appears that
when two hosts connected via SLIP, CSLIP, PPP, and ftp from each other
total output of connection  is still about 1.7K/second. But all these
modems can use bi-directional mode! All of these modems give approximately
3.4K/sec under BiModem, HSLink, Hydra, Jaguar/SpeedLink protocol. 
        If there's someone who is willing to try to implement full
bi-directional mode, I would like to hear from him/her. All code of my
Jaguar/SpeedLink could be used here. The only thing which is a bit foggy
to me is how to detect when to switch from single-direction mode to
bi-directional mode.

        Alex Yuriev
          



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

Crossposted-To: comp.unix.bsd
From: rhealey@sirius.aggregate.com (Rob Healey)
Subject: Re: APC UPS owners or potential buyers, trying to show user base
Date: Sun, 31 Jul 1994 15:41:09 GMT

In article <31ffcm$9l6@sndsu1.sinet.slb.com>,
 <michael@starbase.neosoft.com> wrote:
>
>In article <CtpoIA.JJH@newsserver.aggregate.com>, 
>>      The Smart-UPS's use some sort of dongle RS232 cable if I remember
>>      correctly, i.e. it's not a normal RS232 cable since it has extra
>>      components in it. Once you have one of those cables its some sort
>>      of 1 or 2 letter commands sort of thing to get info out of the
>>      UPS.
>
>Even if the pinouts are radically different from RS232 - making a new 
>cable is a trivial task -- you don't have to pay the vendor if you can
>roll your own.  
>
        The emphasis is on the word DONGLE above. I just spoke with an
        old friend and there is a circuit board that is housed in one
        end of the cable that has misc. micro electronic parts on it. This
        could be RS232<->???? converters or some sort of dongle thing. In
        other words, it's more than just pin x to pin y sort of thing
        for the Smart UPS from APC.

                -Rob

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

From: toehser@cais2.cais.com (Tom Oehser)
Subject: Re: Linux backup of MSDOS?
Date: 31 Jul 1994 16:45:38 GMT

 >: I am considering using "dd" to get a binary image of the disc, and then
 >: compressing it, then putting that on tape.  But this may have problems?
>that you restore to a partition of the same size, however, and that is 
>why "image" backups are not popular under DOS (plus, it would probably 

I am trying "dd if=/dev/hda | gzip --fast | dd of=/dev/nrmt0"
(Why compress?  420mb/hda + 120mb/hdb > 525mb/mt0.  Besides, why not?)  
to get a backup which INCLUDES the boot sectors and partition
tables.  This presumes that I use tar under linux and tar under
os/2 to backup the file systems and do incrementals- but would
keep me from having to re-partition and re-install everything.
If it gets trashed I can boot from the slackware install disk,
and reverse the above process, *then* use tar to catch up. -Tom
P.S. for the dos filesystems, I use the OS/2 'GTAK212B.ZIP' which
does preserve all the attributes.


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

From: bsa@kf8nh.wariat.org (Brandon S. Allbery)
Subject: Re: link() system call
Date: Sun, 31 Jul 1994 16:46:32 GMT

In article <31gblr$dbo@news.u.washington.edu>, tzs@u.washington.edu (Tim Smith) says:
+---------------
| I don't know what everyone is smoking, but I wish I had some!  Unix has
| allowed hard links to directories much later than V7.  System V Release 2
| allowed it.  System V Release 3 allowed it, I seem to recall.  Ultrix
+------------->8

Root was allowed to link and unlink directories; ordinary users could not.  I
tested this under System III, SVR1, SVR2, and SVR3.1.  SVR3.2 doesn't even
allow root to link/unlink directories.

The reason for this is simple:  that was how you did mkdir and rmdir before
the system calls were introduced in SVR3.2.

++Brandon
-- 
(__^_o Bookworm aka Brandon S. Allbery KF8NH [44.70.4.88] bsa@kf8nh.wariat.org
Linux development:  iBCS2, JNOS, MH

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

From: bjkramer@pluto.njcc.com (Brian Kramer)
Crossposted-To: comp.unix.bsd
Subject: Re: APC UPS owners or potential buyers, trying to show user base
Date: 31 Jul 1994 14:21:13 -0400

Does anyone have the wiring for a plain UPS?  I've got a non-smart one
and cannot follow the powerd man page for the wiring.  It says things like
connect the dtr to the dsr but neglects to say which side of the cable
each is on or if the dtr and dsr should be connected on the same side.

Anyone have a better worded set of instructions?
-- 
Brian Kramer - Owner/Systems Administrator - bjkramer@pluto.njcc.com
New Jersey Computer Connection - Public Access Unix Site - pluto.njcc.com
Voice: 609-896-2799 - Fax: 609-896-2994 - Dialups: 609-896-3191
Dialup or Telnet to pluto.njcc.com and log in as guest for more information.

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

From: jjfloyd@vela.acs.oakland.edu (Jered Floyd)
Subject: Linux versions?
Date: 31 Jul 1994 17:47:06 GMT


I have the Slackware Professional 2.0 CD distribution, which is version
1.1.18 of Linux, but I have seen posts asking about 1.1.34....what is
the latest version of linux? Is there any reason that I should upgrade?

What's th latest version of XFree86?


--
Jered Floyd - jjfloyd@vela.acs.oakland.edu
Geek Code 2.1 - GAT d? H- s-:- g- p? !au a-- w+ v+ C++++ UL++++ P+ L++
N+++ K+++ W++ M-- V-- -po+ Y++ tv+ 5+++ j++ R v++ b+++ D+++ B--- e* u**
h++ f? r? n- !y+ (Finger for PGP key, picture, humor anOUT OF SPACE

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

From: hohndel@aib.com (Dirk Hohndel)
Subject: Re: Xfree86: increase pallate?
Date: Thu, 28 Jul 1994 02:54:55 GMT

Christopher M. May (cmay@titan.ucs.umass.edu) wrote:

: : I always wonder where you guys get the information about what we're 
: : going to do, that you spread here as facts...
: : Funny.

: Hey I said "I heard".  And I would have said where if I remembered.
: I did kind of think it was bullshit, as I've heard from more reliable
: sources that the truecolor support is at least a year off, but I
: don't know how long you guys plan to take with 3.1, it could be a year
: for all I know.

We have no release schedule yet, but it will definitely be less then a year
(what a thought...) and I'm sure HiColor will be here in less than a
year, too. I can't say when any of the above will happen, but they will.
Relatively soon.

: What's the big deal, can't you guys just change the 'char' to a 
: 'double' in the frame buffer :)

Whow. 64bit color. That's gonna be tough. You'll need 6MB for 1024x768...


        Dirk

-- 
Dirk H. Hohndel <hohndel@aib.com>                 Phone: (703) 430-9247  
AIB Software Corporation                          Fax:   (703) 450-4560 
46030 Manekin Plaza, Suite 160, Dulles, VA 20166

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

From: emoenke@gwdu03.gwdg.de (Eberhard Moenkeberg)
Subject: Re: CD-ROM tray control
Date: Thu, 28 Jul 1994 20:03:23 GMT

Ken Pizzini (ken@chinook.halcyon.com) wrote:
: In article <4IXQB3YD@gwdu03.gwdg.de>,
: >I could implement a separate CDROMCLOSEDOOR, but that probably would not
: >help you. One can only take actions upon an "opened" device, and you will
: >not get access to the device without a disk in it.

: How about if it was opend O_NDELAY?

That would be running away before the error comes. ;-)

-- 
Eberhard Moenkeberg                                GGG   W   W  DDDD    GGG
                                                  G      W   W  D   D  G
E-Mail:   emoenke@gwdg.de                         G GGG  W   W  D   D  G GGG
Phone: +49 551 201551  Fax: +49 551 21119         G   G  W W W  D   D  G   G
Mail:                                              GGG   WW WW  DDDD    GGG
Ges. fuer wissenschaftliche Datenverarbeitung mbH
Am Fassberg
D-37077 Goettingen           GERMANY
Private Email: Eberhard_Moenkeberg@rollo.central.de (FIDO: 2:2437/210.27)


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

From: ehritz@vexpert.dbai.tuwien.ac.at (Gerald Ehritz)
Subject: Re: shared Libs and X11 don't work in Linu
Date: 28 Jul 1994 07:05:35 GMT
Reply-To: ehritz@vexpert.dbai.tuwien.ac.at

In article 28g@sun.cais.com, ericy@cais.cais.com (Eric Youngdale) writes:
In article <kaleb.775317458@kanga.x.org>, Kaleb KEITHLEY <kaleb@x.org> wrote:
>ehritz@vexpert.dbai.tuwien.ac.at (Gerald Ehritz) writes:
>
>>I run into some strange problems trying to compile X11R6pl3 
>>I use Slackware 2.0 distribution ...
>
>Linux support in X11R6 is incomplete. You will either have to fix it
>yourself, wait for XFree86-3.1, or switch to FreeBSD/NetBSD, or wait
>until Linux has real SVR4-style shared libraries.
>
>       The problem in this case has nothing to do with linux support.  
>He was using an old version of "make" which did not understand the "export"
               ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>directive.
>
>-Eric

I use GNU make version 3.71. So you think this is old?
In the manual of version 3.70 i saw the "export" directive, so i asume, that 3.71 understands it.

Gerald


-- 
"The woods are lovely, dark and deep.  But I have promises to keep,
And lines to code before I sleep, And lines to code before I sleep."



---
________________________________________________________
Gerald Ehritz           ehritz@vexpert.dbai.tuwien.ac.at
Institut f. Informationssysteme
Technische Universitaet Wien
________________________________________________________


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

From: mpdillon@coho.halcyon.com (Michael Dillon)
Subject: Re: Wanted: The Application which can read *.DBF
Date: 28 Jul 1994 06:34:15 GMT

>Regarding *.DBF files in Linux, I was told on 7/22/94 that a
>commercial development product is now available for Linux.
>The most interesting characteristic from my perspective is that
>it allows CA-Clipper CODE to be compiled/run under Linux.  To
>do that, it clearly has to have the capability of reading/writing
>to *.DBF files.
>
>I was told for a limited time, a single user copy is $200
>and unlimited user development system is $500.

There is a commercial dBase clone called dbMan V that recently sent
me an offer for $99 for a Coherent version. Maybe they have a Linu
version too? Or would do one if demand is there? Ask in comp.os.coherent.

Better yet is C code to access dBase files. Sequiter Software sells
CodeBase 5.0 with full C source code and programs written using
their library can access Clipper and dBase and Fopro files with
full multi-user record locking abilities and can even co-exist on
the same network as Clipper/Foxpro apps accessing the same files.

Seems to me there is some other kind of source code floating around the
net for dBase compatible databases. Maybe this question should be asked
in an MS-DOS or a database newsgroup since you would get better
leads there. Once you get source code, porting to Linu should be easy.

--
Michael Dillon                 Internet: mpdillon@halcyon.halcyon.com
C-4 Powerhouse                  Fidonet: 1:353/350
RR #2 Armstrong, BC  V0E 1B0      Voice: +1-604-546-8022
Canada                              BBS: +1-604-546-2705

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

From: mpdillon@coho.halcyon.com (Michael Dillon)
Crossposted-To: comp.unix.bsd
Subject: Re: APC UPS owners or potential buyers, trying to show user base
Date: 28 Jul 1994 06:44:53 GMT

In article <316bjc$hlh@thor.tjhsst.edu>,
Craig Metz <cmetz@thor.tjhsst.edu> wrote:
>       I had a talk today with Debbie Gray (sp?) of American Power Conversion
>regarding trying to get information on how to communicate with their Smart
>UPS products' onboard controllers in order to write a Linux driver. APC is
>one of the *many* manufacturers that plays the old NDA game, i.e., ``we
>consider that to be proprietary information that we have to protect''. H

Really now! Those boxes use an RS-232 interface, right? What do they tell 
the computer? If they only communicate one thing (power fail) then it
is probably something as simple as shorting the RD and SD lines. Get a
technician to check it out for you while you pull the plug.

If they are giving more info than that, then it probably can be 
reverse engineered with simple program to monitor the incoming 
serial port.

I remember a UPS that we set up about 7 years ago. I provided two terminals
on the box that it shorted together when the power failed. We hooked
them up to pins 2 and 3 on a serial port and made a little shell script
daemon that periodically checked for powerfail every five minutes. When 
it got two hits in a row, it shutdown the system.



>she seemed to at least not be a brick wall to the idea of trying to change
>this policy so that a freely redistributable in source form Linux driver could
>be done. She told me that she will be talking to her supervisor when he's
>back from Interop next week about this. 
>
>       In cases like this, money talks. If it can be shown that opening up
>to the Linux community (and the *BSD community, as well) would net them a
>significant number of sales, they would be far more likely to decide to open
>up than if it's just me. 
>
>       So, I ask, could people who (or whose employer):
>
>       * Own an APC Smart UPS used with a machine that is or will be a 
>               Linux or *BSD system
>
>       (or)
>
>       * Are planning to purchase a smart UPS for use with a Linux or
>               *BSD system 
>
>       Please get in touch with me, letting me know what size (sizes, or
>size range) UPS and how many units are involved. I will be using this 
>information to show that the Linux and *BSD markets are significant enough
>that it is worth their while to reconsider their policies. 
>
>       Also, if anyone has had experiences with other manufaturers of
>smart UPS units trying to get programming/driver information from them,
>please let me know. If APC doesn't change their line, I want to know who
>*does* do things in the open -- that'll be who gets my business.
>
>                                                               -Craig
>Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.development,comp.unix.bsd
>Subject: foo
>Summary: 
>Followup-To: 
>Distribution: 
>Organization: The Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology
>Keywords: 
>Cc: 
>


--
Michael Dillon                 Internet: mpdillon@halcyon.halcyon.com
C-4 Powerhouse                  Fidonet: 1:353/350
RR #2 Armstrong, BC  V0E 1B0      Voice: +1-604-546-8022
Canada                              BBS: +1-604-546-2705

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

From: drew@kinglear.cs.colorado.edu (Drew Eckhardt)
Subject: Re: Q: Is the Adaptec VLB AHA SCSI controller supported now?
Date: 29 Jul 1994 02:04:08 GMT

In article <eyal.775435495@fir>,
Eyal Lebedinsky <eyal@fir.canberra.edu.au> wrote:
>Hello Everyone,
>
>I am about to get a VLB SCSI controller and would like to know the
>status of the supported cards. This one (2842VL AHA) had some talk in
>the past but I did not see a clear answer.

1. Scott Ferris is still developing what will (presumably)
    become the Linux AIC-7770/7870 driver.  It's not 
    publically available yet, and unclear when it will become
    publically available.

2.  An interim driver for the 2742, built arround the same
    chip is available.  It doesn't do scatter/gather, but
    otherwise works for some definition of the word
    works.

3.  EISA boards are detected differently than non-EISA 
    boards, so that driver WILL NOT work unmodified
    with a 2842.

In summation - one driver is unavailable, and another should work
with minor changes.  If you lack the technical skills necessary,
time, or whatever to make the second work, you'll have to wait.
If you can't wait, you'll have to buy a different SCSI board
(probably $200 for ISA, $240 for VLB, $70 for PCI).  If you
can't buy a different SCSI board, you can't run Linux :-)







>
>--
>Regards
>       Eyal Lebedinsky         eyal@ise.canberra.edu.au


-- 
Drew Eckhardt drew@Colorado.EDU
1970 Landcruiser FJ40 w/350 Chevy power
1982 Yamaha XV920J Virago

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

From: brad@slammer.atl.ga.us (Brad Isley)
Subject: HUB-6 still supported?  Timing problems?
Date: Sun, 31 Jul 1994 22:57:49 GMT

I posted to comp.os.linux.help to no avail.  I had been using a HUB-6 until
I upgraded from 0.99.13.  Anything newer broke my HUB-6 card.  I'm at 1.0.9
now and it  *seems*  that the output to select the port isn't allowed enough
time to settle down before the actual i/o to the real port is performed.
Why do I think this?  Because running in non-turbo mode it works fine with
two ports running full bore 38400.  I can run one port with no problems in
hi-speed (486/33) mode, but within a few seconds of starting the 2nd comm
program, both hang up.

I haven't seen much discussion lately about HUB-6, and I'm not using it now.
Does anyone have anything to add to this?  I'd be willing to help debug this
if I can.  I suppose some NOP's or something in serial.c after the port select
might help, but I'm trying to keep my system running and was hoping someone
had already encountered this.

Thanks for any help.
-- 
brad@slammer.atl.ga.us   (Brad Isley)   +1 404 925-9663(H)  493-2484(W)
: "Liberty and justice for all will be implemented by Mrs. Clinton's plan."
:    - Julia Spencer      "NOT!"  -me

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

From: g609296@win.or.jp (Barry Yip kam-wa)
Subject: No Free Inode on 1GB harddisk!!
Date: 1 Aug 94 04:23:29 GMT

We have a 1GB scsi harddisk used for storing a full newsfeed. After
getting about one week of news, there is no more free inode space left
and I think the only solution is to get another bigger one harddisk even
we still have enough harddisk space. Is there any way to increase the
available inodes in this situation. Also, will it be better if the ext2
filesystem can have a bigger limit on the max. no. of inodes allocated.
Any suggestion and comments welcome.


Filesystem         1024-blocks  Used Available Capacity Mounted on
/dev/hda1              17936    4799    12241     28%   /
/dev/hda2              72960   24277    45035     35%   /home
/dev/hda3             106400   72276    28804     72%   /usr
/dev/sda             1030553  828638   150388     85%   /var

Filesystem            Inodes   IUsed   IFree  %IUsed Mounted on
/dev/hda1               4488     631    3857    14%  /
/dev/hda2              18288     353   17935     2%  /home
/dev/hda3              26624    5745   20879    22%  /usr
/dev/sda              258048  257800     248   100%  /var

--
Barry Yip
g609296@win.or.jp

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

From: jamesc@osaiphp1.osa.csi.itg.telecom.com.au (James Crawford)
Subject: Re: threads in kernel
Date: 1 Aug 1994 04:03:30 GMT

Rob Janssen (rob@pe1chl.ampr.org) wrote:
: In <316l9f$rpt@Times.Stanford.EDU> lm@stanford.edu (Larry McVoy) writes:

: >  Light weight threads in a single process are 
: >going to be fast but useless.  Useful threads context switch slowly.
: >Explanation: light weight user level threads don't have a kernel context,
: >i.e., if any thread blocks in a read() then they all block.  Useless.
: >Fast, but useless.

: I disagree with that.  It depends on your requirements.
: I have been able to use a (very simple) lightweight threads package quite
: successfully in many instances where a non-preemptive multithreading model
: made a program much simpeler to design and implement, and where the blocking
: in system calls was no problem at all.

We have been using the HP DCE Threads (aka pthreads) library where I work
for a few months now.  It provides light weight threads in a single 
process (no kernel modifications required !).  AND calling a routine that
would normally block the process, only blocks the thread.  So a read()
would only stop the thread that invoked it - all other threads would
continue to run.  Other features include a fork() that only forks the
thread that calls it (not all threads for the process).

Very impressive for a threads package that has no kernel support !

James Crawford.


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


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