Subject: Linux-Development Digest #997
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:     Sun, 7 Aug 94 06:13:05 EDT

Linux-Development Digest #997, Volume #1          Sun, 7 Aug 94 06:13:05 EDT

Contents:
  Re: Voice Mail cards. (Geoff Kuchera)
  Re: -= good programmer's editor for X? (N J Andrews)
  XFree86 and pentium PCI stuff (Jimmy H. Miklavcic)
  Re: wish: Removable IDE-support (Mark Buckaway)
  Re: Linux-1.1.38 broken for 2 Adaptor system (Pim Zandbergen)
  Re: Enhanced IDE?? (Clayton Haapala)
  general performance has dropped in the last month (Norm Walker)
  Re: Kernel change summary 1.1.19 -> 1.1.20 (Kent A Vander Velden)
  Re: SLIP, CSLIP, PPP and modems (Kent A Vander Velden)
  1.1.40 released. (Eric Youngdale)
  Re: Few simple questions... (Eric Youngdale)
  1.1.38 fixes uart detection (David Flood)
  1.1.38 broken from PCI/Pentium (James Norton)
  Re: Interesting idea for lilo developers (Michael Griffith)
  Re: Interesting idea for lilo developers (Gareth Newfield)
  lpd and inet socket problems (J. den Ouden)

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

From: geoff@jacobs.mn.org (Geoff Kuchera)
Subject: Re: Voice Mail cards.
Date: 6 Aug 1994 05:40:38 GMT


I'm currently trying to get some hardware documentation for a voice 
mail/fax/modem card called a tyin-2000, I purchased one of these cards 
about mid last year works great unfortunatly it's software is dos and 
windows based (Yuk)..

The card is manufactured by National Semiconductor who has a development kit 
available but it costs $500 and I'm sure that source would not be 
distributable.  I would be willing to spring for the development kit assuming
I wouldn't be put under a non-disclosure... (I need to do some more research
on this one...)

I'm trying to work around that by contacting the manufacturer and asking for 
the hardware book documentation only.  In hopes that they might be interested 
in selling a few hundered cards to eager Linux users...  The card runs about 
$200.00 retail.

So I guess I would like to know if there are a few interested device 
developers out there that would care to help in the build effort? 
Is it worth the time to do this..  Any interest in this sort of thing?

Let me know via e-mail   

Thanks,
        Geoff Kuchera
        geoff@abu.mn.org


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

From: N J Andrews <N.J.Andrews@durham.ac.uk>
Subject: Re: -= good programmer's editor for X?
Date: 3 Aug 1994 22:23:14 GMT

In article <31o45r$nf1@serveur.cribx1.u-bordeaux.fr>, liphy02@frbdx12.cribx1.u-bordeaux.fr (Gaybeul) writes:
|> Kris Nybakken (nybakken@world.std.com) wrote:
|> 
|> : Are there any good programmer's editors for X - not term-like ports?
|> 
|> : I'm diving into *nix development from the Mac and Windows world, and 
|> : haven't had to use a terminal-like editor since my Apple II days!  I'm 
|> : thinking of something like you'd find under Think C or Visual C (not 
|> : super-feature loaded, but a good tool).  I've tried the Emacs with the X 
|> : stuff (menus and the like), but I was kinda hoping for things like syntax 
|> : coloring, font-size-on-the-fly, etc.  Not to mention that I don't like the C 
|> : mode and am not into learning elisp to change it.  Not to mention I'm not 
|> : a believer in having everything AND the kitchen sink installed in my editor.
|> 
|> : Anything out there?
|> 
|> Emacs has a syntax coloring mode (highlit) and is font sensitive (see previous
|> messages). But there's also a version called Lucid Emacs, which should have been
|> called xemacs ;-) which handles these things more easily...
|> If you have free memory to use, try Lucid Emacs.
|> 

A couple of us round here us an editor called 'xcoral', it's not super feature
full, but it does do keyword colouring ( I'm going to work on the syntax bit if I
can find time ) and has pull-down menus and emacs style key presses. A big plus
for it that it is built around/on top of an almost ANSI C interpreter ( no more
trying to workout all those brackets in lisp! ).

This editor was programmed by a couple of French guys...oh, and BTW it comes with
a code 'browser' ( displays function names etc. in a little window with
'hyper-links' to the code section ). This browser thingy handles C++ classes as
well.

It's not perfect, but I prefer it over Emacs!

-- 
Nigel J. Andrews
Astronomical Instrumentation Group
Physics Department
University of Durham

BTW, thanks to Mike Johnson for the Kernel hackers guide, it was beginning to get
tiresome working out device drivers from the code ( I would probably never have
guess'd to start my character devices from within the mem device! ).

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

From: dewell@kira.cs.utah.edu (Jimmy H. Miklavcic)
Subject: XFree86 and pentium PCI stuff
Date: 3 Aug 1994 21:35:13 GMT

Is there any thought about X-windows on the pentium with all the PCI
stuff?  Or linux in general?

Any info is appreciated.

--
=======================================================================
Aaron Dewell                    CS department - University of Utah
dewell@cs.utah.edu              oper = twerp.
dewell@eng.utah.edu             same.
dewell@mail.physics.utah.edu    SAC President and resident weenie.
dewell@raj.physics.utah.edu     It works, really!
c-dac@math.utah.edu             Only exists obscurely.

"I have the perfect cure for a sore throat: cut it."
 -- Alfred Hitchcock

What's a beautiful girl in Poland? A tourist.
 -- Euro Empire VI, 7-21-94

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
 -- The Doctor

Mr.X gets serious with Reality and declares WAR.
 -- RiverWorld empire, 12-10-93

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

From: mark@datasoft.com (Mark Buckaway)
Subject: Re: wish: Removable IDE-support
Date: 5 Aug 1994 02:35:28 GMT
Reply-To: mark@datasoft.com

In article a8a@menja.ifi.uio.no, sverrehu@ifi.uio.no (Sverre H. Huseby) writes:
>
>I have an IDE-disk (SyQuest) with removable cartridges, but it doesn't
>seem that the kernel supports removable IDEs. Before mounting new
>cartridges, I have to run a little program that tells Linux to reread
>the partition table of my /dev/hdb (using ioctl()).
>
>I think it would be nice to be able to tell the kernel (or whoever is
>appropriate) that this IDE is actually removable. A new mountflag, perhaps...

Actually, the correct method of dealing with removible media (CDROM's, floppies, etc) is to umount the drive, remove the media and insert a new one, and remount the drive. This of course is assuming you are not attempting to remove the root filesystem (a no-no).

Mark

---
=======================================================================
Mark Buckaway          |  mark@datasoft.com        |  62 Rock Fernway |
System Admin.          |  uunorth!datasoft!root    |  Willowdale, ON  |
DataSoft Communications|  (416) 756-4497           |  M2J 4N5 CANADA  |
=======================================================================
  How many Microsoft programmers does it take to change a lightbulb?
  None. They defined darkness a standard.  - UNIXWorld, Dec. 1993
======================================================================= 
=======================================================================
Mark Buckaway          |  mark@datasoft.com        |  62 Rock Fernway |
System Admin.          |  uunorth!datasoft!root    |  Willowdale, ON  |
DataSoft Communications|  (416) 756-4497           |  M2J 4N5 CANADA  |
=======================================================================
  How many Microsoft programmers does it take to change a lightbulb?
  None. They defined darkness a standard.  - UNIXWorld, Dec. 1993
======================================================================= 



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

From: pim@cti-software.nl (Pim Zandbergen)
Subject: Re: Linux-1.1.38 broken for 2 Adaptor system
Date: Thu, 4 Aug 1994 22:59:42 GMT

molson@apollo.tricord.com (Mark Olson) writes:

>Gerlach van Beinum (gvb@hermes.bouw.tno.nl) wrote:
>:  I have a PC with 2 Adaptec 1542C's in it. One adaptor has a CD rom and 2
>:  disks on it, the other has a CDD521/10 CD Recorder on it. Normally the
>:  CD recorder has it's power off. Up to Linux-1.1.37 this gave no problems.

>:  Linux 1.1.38 Panics with the message 'scsi_devices corrupt(sd)'

>--rest deleted--

>I get the same error w/ one 1542, 3 disk drives & 1 CDROM.
>This could be my fault, but I also noticed a lot of compilation warnings
>this time around...

Happens to me too, with 1.1.37 and 1.1.38, with a BusLogic 445C,
a disk, a tape and a cdrom drive.

Unless there's a CD in the drive while booting!
-- 
E-mail : Pim Zandbergen <pim@cti-software.nl>
S-mail : Laan Copes van Cattenburch 70, 2585 GD The Hague, The Netherlands
Phone  : +31 70 3542302
Fax    : +31 70 3512837

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

Crossposted-To: comp.os.linux.admin
From: clay@haapi.mn.org (Clayton Haapala)
Subject: Re: Enhanced IDE??
Date: Wed, 3 Aug 1994 21:17:09 GMT

In article <31o7om$njp@bmerha64.bnr.ca>, Mark Lord <mlord@bnr.ca> wrote:
>In article <31o55b$rcr@uucp.intac.com> krg@intac.com writes:
>>Does anyone know for sure whether or not the new crop of Enhanced IDE 
>>hard disks work under Linux. By Enhanced IDE I mean the new drives that 
>>range from 540M - 1G+ . 
>
>No problem at all.  If the BIOS reports more than 16 heads,
>then you will have to use kernel 1.1.37 or higher, or do a
>bit of fiddling with boot parms and fdisk.

Just for an example, how would you handle this Seagate drive of mine?

The physical drive params are: 1057 cylinder, 16 heads, 63 sectors/track.
The BIOS, of course, would like to limit that to 1024 cyls.

Because it physically doesn't have more than 16 heads, I would like to see
it work like this:

        Set BIOS to 1024 cyls/16 heads/63 sectors

        When Linux boots (with kernel 1.1.37 or higher), the actual drive
        parms are queried and stored, and then used in programs such as
        linux fdisk.

An obvious caveat would be that I had better have my vmlinuz sitting in
an area below cylinder 1024, but I would be able to create and use Linux
partitions in the "extended" area.

What it appears I must do (on my Phoenix BIOS, at least) is:

        Set the user defined type to the physical characteristics
        When Linux boots, it appears to use a translated geometry of
        548 cylinders or some such with respect to programs such as
        fdisk.

What should I be doing?


-- 
Clay Haapala                    "Well, there was the process of sitting around
clay@haapi.mn.org                and wishing I had more computer stuff."
                                        -- Dilbert

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

From: nwalker@cln.etc.bc.ca (Norm Walker)
Subject: general performance has dropped in the last month
Date: Wed, 3 Aug 1994 23:39:02 GMT


I have been using linux on a 486DX33 and after upgrading the kernel
to any version above 1.1.13 .  The system suffers from serious 
performance problems ... some program are alot worse than others
with no other software running it takes over a minute to load and
run pine (lots of memory available). Checking system usage while
trying to load pine shows that pine is in a sleep state ...
how does one find out what a program is waiting for
and has anybody else had performance problems like I have?
-- 
Merritt Secondary School - Computer Support Teacher

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

From: graphix@iastate.edu (Kent A Vander Velden)
Subject: Re: Kernel change summary 1.1.19 -> 1.1.20
Date: 7 Aug 94 01:25:34 GMT

In <NELSON.94Aug6001606@crynwr.crynwr.com> nelson@crynwr.crynwr.com (Russell Nelson) writes:

>In article <31rbnj$608@Times.Stanford.EDU> lm@stanford.edu (Larry McVoy) writes:

>   Russell Nelson (nelson@crynwr.crynwr.com) wrote:

>   : Load balancing support marked as "experimental" instead of "very
>   :experimental"

>   I'm interested in the load balancing stuff.  Can someone point me
>   at the code?  Or any docs? Or a readme?  I grepped through the
>   kernel source in 1.1.35 and couldn't find anything.

>I don't think it's *that* kind of load balancing.  It seems to be
>related to the Ethernet device queues.

Could someone explain what "load balancing" actually is?

Thanks

-- 
Kent Vander Velden
graphix@iastate.edu


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

From: graphix@iastate.edu (Kent A Vander Velden)
Subject: Re: SLIP, CSLIP, PPP and modems
Date: 7 Aug 94 01:30:32 GMT

In <KUBLA.94Aug6225128@goofy.zdv.Uni-Mainz.DE> kubla@goofy.zdv.Uni-Mainz.DE (Dominik Kubla) writes:


>I have some questions regarding modems too:

>1. How do i create a SLIP router, that is a Linux-PC that handles incoming
>   SLIP connections only as ROUTER to the ethernet. We enabled proxy-arp
>   for the relevant IP numbers but the Linux machine was not routing ...
>   Am i missing something?

Have you recompiled the Linux kernel with support for packet forwarding ad
gatewaying?

>2. How to hangup the phone line on an incoming call without closing the
>   device? I need this for a callback solution to prevent mgetty from
>   claiming the line again and eventually allowing an incoming call on it.

I would be interested in hearing the solution to problem number 2 also.


-- 
Kent Vander Velden
graphix@iastate.edu


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

From: ericy@cais2.cais.com (Eric Youngdale)
Subject: 1.1.40 released.
Date: 7 Aug 1994 01:34:09 GMT

In article <yeul.776016964@marsh>, Loong Yeu <yeul@cs.curtin.edu.au> wrote:
>
>Kernel panic : scsi_devices corrupt (sd)
>In swapper task - not syncing

        This problem should have been corrected in 1.1.40.  The problem 
with out of mailboxes may also have been fixed along with a bunch of 
other assorted things.

        Some people have complained about problems with isofs because it
would modify the contents of the buffer cache (both filenames and file
contents), depending upon the mapping options selected.  Other people have
complained about problems with incorrect backlinks and so forth. I believe
that all of these problems are also now fixed in 1.1.40.  There were some 
fast and furious patches at the last minute and I am not 100% sure that 
isofs is completely stable, but if there are problems they should show up 
right away and a quick fix would get things back on track.

-Eric


-- 
"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."

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

From: ericy@cais2.cais.com (Eric Youngdale)
Subject: Re: Few simple questions...
Date: 7 Aug 1994 01:38:26 GMT

In article <1154@blox.se>, Bjorn Ekwall <bj0rn@blox.se> wrote:
>Simo Varis (svaris@cs.joensuu.fi) wrote:
>[...]
> > Well, it really doesn't matter what's in my
> > kernel, if it doesn't use memory, but this does,
> > I'm afraid. So how could I avoid this? I watched
> > what's going in, and for my surprise, also
> > 3c509, de600, de620, 3c501 and plip got compiled.
> > Why? Also at least bios32 was compiled, and it's
> > totally useless for me, VLB-user. Maybe it doesn't
> > take up any memory...
>
>These drivers are mentioned in "linux/drivers/net/MODULES", which
>means that they will be compiled as loadable modules unless you
>enabled them in "make config".

        This is true, but I am concerned about the time that kernel 
compilation is beginning to take.  I do not have any one of these boards, 
and I only compile in network support for slip, so any time spent 
preparing these modules is a waste of time.  I would like to see one of 
two things done.  One possibility would be to change the configuration 
options to a Yes/No/Module so that the user can select which modules will 
be built.  The second possibility would be something whereby the user
types:

        make MODULES=true zImage

to build the kernel and the modules.  Both suggestions could be 
implemented, actually.  The amount of time spent might be small now, but 
in the future as more and more things become modularized it will become 
more important.

-Eric

-- 
"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."

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

From: dcflood@u.washington.edu (David Flood)
Subject: 1.1.38 fixes uart detection
Date: 3 Aug 1994 18:34:17 GMT

I have a Digicom 14.4+fax installed in my system.  Before 38, the uart
was reported as a 8250, now it is correctly reported as a 16450 (which
it emulates).  This is a win in my book.

-- 
=============================================================================
dcflood@u.washington.edu

The above opinions are mine alone and do not reflect anyone elses.
Besides, who wants my opinion anyway?
=============================================================================

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

From: jamesnor@clark.net (James Norton)
Subject: 1.1.38 broken from PCI/Pentium
Date: 7 Aug 1994 02:29:28 GMT

I have an 60Mhz Pentium with an Intel motherboard.  I have not been able 
to get patches 38, 39, or 40 to boot.  I have tried compiling the kernel 
using gcc 2.5.8 and 2.6.0.  They both compile the kernel fine.  But when 
I try to boot the kernel, I get a message like "Booting the kernel now."  
Then nothing.  Does anyone have an idea how to fix the kernel?  I have 
not made any changes to the code on my own.  I am using 
linux-1.1.35.tar.gz as my original source files and applied patches 36  
through 40 without any rejects.

Jim Norton
jamesnor@clark.net

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

From: grif@tempest.ucr.edu (Michael Griffith)
Subject: Re: Interesting idea for lilo developers
Date: 4 Aug 1994 00:28:08 GMT

In article <kress.687.0009BA07@kentrox.com>,
Bill Kress <kress@kentrox.com> wrote:
>So, the night before I'm supposed to guess what system I'm 
>going to want to use when I come home from work the next day?
>From experience I'd be wrong at least 70% of the time...
>
>Floppies would work but who want's those things laying all
>over your desk?  Much easier to just flip a switch and start
>your system.
>
>Actually, the caps lock idea would be great if it worked on
>my home system, but just before going to the hard disk my
>system resets the 'Lock' keys.
>
>I do RTFM, about 200 pages of TFM since starting with Linux
>and I don't consider it polite to post without reading TFM
>first.  If lilo -R did the job, I would have used it.

Perhaps I am missing the point here, but what is wrong with having
LILO prompt the user.  It defaults to the first image, so if you
set a timeout it will boot unattended.  In general, I found the "hold down
shift/control/alt, or use caps lock" method tedious.  The following
lilo.conf seems to work nicely for me:

boot = /dev/hda
vga = normal    # force sane state
ramdisk = 0     # paranoia setting
prompt
restricted
password = lilopw
timeout = 500
message = /etc/lilo.msg

root = /dev/hda3
image = /vmlinux.new
label = linux-new
read-only

root = /dev/hda3
image = /vmlinux
label = linux
read-only

other = /dev/hda1
table = /dev/hda
label = dos


Three cheers to Werner Almesberger.  I think he did a fine job with 
LILO.
-- 
Michael A. Griffith (grif@cs.ucr.edu)
Department of Computer Science
University of California, Riverside


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

From: gareth@metl.chi.il.us (Gareth Newfield)
Subject: Re: Interesting idea for lilo developers
Date: 4 Aug 1994 00:42:03 GMT

I suspect that the reason so many persons thought that lilo -R is
a solution is because so many of us linuxers use linux as our
primary OS and leave the system on 24 Hours a day or at least most of
the day.
        Even if I did shut my machine off at night, or before going on vacation,
or moving my house, I would still probably to want to boot linux
first thing, for mail etc. This is true even if I woke up with a
sudden urge to run someother OS.

        I think the  easiest solution would be for you to just stick a diskette
in your drive that boots whichever alternate OS you want. Linux can of course
boot from the floppy and still use the rest of the system as though you had
booted from hard drive. MSDOS can be booted from floppy and then in the
config.sys you can set the path for command.com to be on the hard drive.

        If you do turn your machine off and when you turn it on you might want
some other OS, and you really want a hardware "switch". Well you could use
the TURBO switch if you have one or one of the switches on your modem if it
is external. You could also "de-spring" your mouse switches, or switch your
printer offline for MSDOS, online for linux, or any number of silly things.
Probably you will need to make your own patches to make lilo detect these,
as I doubt many others have much need for it.

Gareth



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

From: denouden@inter.NL.net (J. den Ouden)
Subject: lpd and inet socket problems
Date: Wed, 3 Aug 1994 18:52:11 GMT

I'm trying to get lpd from NetKit-B-0.04 working with kernel 1.1.37.

Normally lpd should function a a concurrent server. That is, the daemon
forks a child for an incoming request and resumes listening for new
requests. That way there can be multiple children working on multiple
request concurrently.

However, when I submit a file for remote printing and then try to get
a job list with lpq, lpq times out with 'connection to _host_ down'.
After the initial print request is finished (which can take quite long
because it has to be fed to GhostScript), lpq requests are honored again.

Only remote printing suffers from this, local printing works ok.

I have included the relevant part of lpd.c. As can be seen it is a
standard concurrent server daemon implementation. 

By tracing I've observed the following pattern: 
  select returns
  accept
  a child is forked
  select does not return until the child has terminated, although
    there are requests for the finet socket.

When I replace doit() by sleep(60) the second select doesn't block
and multiple childs are forked for multiple concurrent requests.

Thanks for any light you can shed on this.

Jan den Ouden

from lpd.c :
============================================================== 

        /*
         * Main loop: accept, do a request, continue.
         */
        for (;;) {
                int domain, nfds, s, readfds = defreadfds;

                nfds = select(20, &readfds, 0, 0, 0);
                if (nfds <= 0) {
                        if (nfds < 0 && errno != EINTR)
                                syslog(LOG_WARNING, "select: %m");
                        continue;
                }
                if (readfds & (1 << funix)) {
                        domain = AF_UNIX, fromlen = sizeof(fromunix);
                        s = accept(funix,
                            (struct sockaddr *)&fromunix, &fromlen);
                } else if (readfds & (1 << finet)) {
                        domain = AF_INET, fromlen = sizeof(frominet);
                        s = accept(finet,
                            (struct sockaddr *)&frominet, &fromlen);
                }
                if (s < 0) {
                        if (errno != EINTR)
                                syslog(LOG_WARNING, "accept: %m");
                        continue;
                }
                if (fork() == 0) {
                        setpgrp(0,getpid());
                        signal(SIGCHLD, SIG_IGN);
                        signal(SIGHUP, SIG_IGN);
                        signal(SIGINT, SIG_IGN);
                        signal(SIGQUIT, SIG_IGN);
                        signal(SIGTERM, SIG_IGN);
                        (void) close(funix);
                        (void) close(finet);
                        dup2(s, 1);
                        (void) close(s);
                        if (domain == AF_INET) {
                                from_remote = 1;
                                chkhost(&frominet);
                        } else
                                from_remote = 0;
                        doit();  
                
                        exit(0);
                }
                (void) close(s);
        }

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


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