Subject: Linux-Activists Digest #202 From: Digestifier To: Linux-Activists@senator-bedfellow.MIT.EDU Reply-To: Linux-Activists@senator-bedfellow.MIT.EDU Date: Sat, 4 Sep 93 19:13:05 EDT Linux-Activists Digest #202, Volume #6 Sat, 4 Sep 93 19:13:05 EDT Contents: Please Please Send Me Your DIP Scripts (john s roberts) SLIP error (Thomas J Bilan) Re: QIC-36 supported? (Piercarlo Antonio Grandi) Re: BSD UNIX (Markus Wild) Re: BSD UNIX (Michael L. VanLoon) Re: A Word Processor for Linux (Bill Heiser) Installing the New Linux (Bolski) Re: (was: Re: A Word Processor for Linux) (Bill Heiser) Re: Can't install SLS w/UltraStor 24F SCSI card (Seth "the Lesser") Diamond Speedstar 24 VLB (Thomas J Bilan) Re: NeXTStep & Linux (crazy lion) Problem with mke2fs.. (Brett Michaels) EDB (Lawrence Gray) Re: A Word Processor for Linux (Brandon S. Allbery) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: johnr@nx58.mik.uky.edu (john s roberts) Subject: Please Please Send Me Your DIP Scripts Date: Sat, 4 Sep 1993 16:31:11 GMT I really really want to automate the whole process of starting up slip. If anyone could please send me ANY scripts they are using with DIP I would appreciate it. Thanks so much, John -- -=+ John S. Roberts, Jr. 100 McVey Hall Work: 257-2275 +=- -=+ University of Kentucky Home: 272-1417 - FAX: 272-7105 +=- ------------------------------ From: bilan@cps.msu.edu (Thomas J Bilan) Subject: SLIP error Date: 4 Sep 1993 19:15:14 GMT I finally got SLIP working with DIP and now I'm running into a whole set or new problems. ***** Datagram fragmentation not yet supported ***** I looked in the man pages for ifconfig and it says to crank up the mtu parameter to around 4096. So I type: >ifconfig sl0 up mtu 4096 and then I do another ifconfig sl0. The mtu parameter has changed to 4096 but I still get the same error message. (now getting upset) I type: >ifconfig sl0 up mtu 32768 and I still get the same error message! (dooooh) Does anyone know if there has been a new distribution of DIP that accepts datagram frag? Or maybe I'm looking at the wrong parameters. Tom Bilan newbie but getting better -- /\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\ $ Department of Death by Engineering ^ Surgeon General's Warning: $ $ Michigan State University ^ Graduate School may cause brain $ $ bilan@cps.msu.edu ^ damage and sporadic loss of hair $ ------------------------------ From: pcg@decb.aber.ac.uk (Piercarlo Antonio Grandi) Subject: Re: QIC-36 supported? Reply-To: pcg@aber.ac.uk (Piercarlo Grandi) Date: Sat, 4 Sep 1993 19:37:00 GMT Various people write: : >: I have my eye on a tape drive (Wangtek 5150EN, I think) which has a : >: QIC-36 interface. Does the Linux kernel support QIC-36? If so, will the : >: tape drive work out of the box or does some work need to be done for : >: Linux to support QIC-36? : >NO, LINUX WILL *NEVER* SUPPORT QIC36 !!!!!! : >So, buy the Wangtek (good drive if you get it cheap !) and get either : >an external SCSI to QIC36 controller and use the setup with your : >SCSI controller or get a (hopefully supported) QIC02 controller that : >works with your drive. : This is inaccurate. On my system, (Gateway 486/33, ISA), the QIC-02 : driver works fine with a QIC-36 card and Wangtek 5150EN. No SCSI needed. : I don't understand the QIC interfaces well enough to explain why this is : an expected result :^), but I was told by "people who know" that the : combination should work. And it did. On Fri, 3 Sep 1993 01:24:14 GMT, Remco Treffkorn (root@hip-hop.suvl.ca.us) wrote: Oh boy, here we go again.. I hope I will get it right in a few words . Well, you didn't quite... :-) The driver talks to the SCSI controller. The SCSI controller talks to a card that speaks SCSI on one end and QIC36 on the other. Result: Your drive drives... The next possibility: The driver talks to a controller that looks like a QIC02 interface. QIC02 is a bit more intelligent then QIC36. It defines things like certain commands and a protocoll. This controller has a QIC36 connector that you connect your drive to. Voila, your dive drives! No. Let's be clear about this: QIC-02 and QIC-36 are standards for the IO (ISA/EISA/MCA are *system* buses; SCSI is an IO bus; IDE arguably is an IO bus specification that is almost identical to the ISA system bus specification) *bus* between the host controller in your PC and the device controller bolted on the tape drive. With QIC-36 the host controller is more sophisticated than the drive controller; with QIC-02 the latter is more sophisticated. Neither QIC-02 nor QIC-36 have *any* relationship whatsoever to the programmatic interface between the driver in Linux and the host controller, to the hw interface between the motherboard and the host controller, or (just to be complete) the format in which data are recorded on the tape. Now, what really matters to the Linux driver is the programmatic interface (which IO ports the host controller uses, which commands, and so on). There are several different programmatic interfaces, but *most* host controllers that communicate with tape drives over a QIC-02 or QIC-36 bus have either the Wangtek/Everex interface or the Archive interface, which are BTW rather similar to each other. The Linux QIC-02 (a misnomer) driver supports _both_, irrespective of whether the host controller actually drives a QIC-02 or QIC-36 bus. In particular most Wangtek/Everex host controllers have the same interface, whether they support QIC-02 or QIC-36. As you can see, your "QIC36" card is really something that is QIC02 on one end and QIC36 on the other. I think I never heard of a board that enables a QIC-36 tape drive to hang off a QIC-02 bus, or viceversa; there are at least two that allow a QIC-02 or QIC-36 tape drive to hang off a SCSI bus, but they are rather ancient. To end: the names of some Everex/Archive host controllers that have (nearly) the same programmatic interface: 811/831, 409/499. ------------------------------ Crossposted-To: comp.unix.bsd,comp.os.386bsd.misc From: mw@eunet.ch (Markus Wild) Subject: Re: BSD UNIX Date: Sat, 4 Sep 1993 19:44:24 GMT In article rhealey@gorp.ssesco.com (Rob Healey) writes: >In article michaelv@iastate.edu (Michael L. VanLoon) writes: >>In cgd@erewhon.CS.Berkeley.EDU (Chris G. Demetriou) writes: >> >>> amiga "production" >> >>>re: amiga: just because binaries aren't available on -lamp doesn't >>>mean it's not in production use... there are many places carrying >>>binaries for it in europe, but their names all escape me right now... >> >>Finally, a reason to buy an Amiga... :-) I'm almost tempted. >> > Hey now! B^). I'll pit the 3000's 0.9 I/O performance against any > 386 or 486 based system any day! > > I hear the screen/console code doesn't take full advantage of > the hardware yet tho. And there is the issue of shared, or > better yet dynamic, librarys. > > I run SVR4 on my Amiga tho so I'm not 100% up to date on 0.9's > status. Huh.. take care Rob.. The A3000 does indeed have nice I/O performance, but you won't exploit it with Amiga SVR4.. this one contains one of the most dreadful implementations of a scsi driver I've seen on the amiga... I did a quick iozone test on a 30M file (as was suggested in an unrelated thread here): bash# a.out 30 8192 IOZONE: Performance Test of Sequential File I/O -- V1.16 (10/28/92) By Bill Norcott Operating System: POSIX 1003.1-1988 Send comments to: norcott_bill@tandem.com IOZONE writes a 30 Megabyte sequential file consisting of 3840 records which are each 8192 bytes in length. It then reads the file. It prints the bytes-per-second rate at which the computer can read and write files. Writing the 30 Megabyte file, 'iozone.tmp'...53.816667 seconds Reading the file...29.700000 seconds IOZONE performance measurements: 584526 bytes/second for writing the file 1059167 bytes/second for reading the file This was on a totally "untuned" fs, I'll try and see if tunefs can change the values significantly, I doubt it though. If I could hack disksort() to not only sort blocks, but really merge them, that would make for a whole lot more improvement (I could more or less double performance when reading from the raw disk device just by doubling block sizes...) The screen/console code has been improved in the meantime, the console part that runs on the native chip set (I'm myself using the Retina console, which is based on the NCR 77C22E+ VGA chip) now uses the Copper for scrolling, which should give it similar performance as the Amiga SVR4 console, you don't really notice you're writing into a bitmapped framebuffer. As for dynamic libraries, there will be a NetBSD solution, not an Amiga solution. For those interested into more details about the Amiga port, subscribe to the netbsd-amiga mailing list, just write to netbsd-admin@cbmuucp.commodore.com (note that commodore just kindly allowed to run the list on one of their machines, they're not involved into NetBSD at all). -Markus BTW: binaries for NetBSD for the Amiga are available on ftp.eunet.ch, software/os/bsd/NetBSD/NetBSD-Amiga, however, the current ones are really old, if you can, either recompile yourself or wait a week or so, I'll upload a new set by then. -- CHUUG/EUnet Switzerland Markus Wild Zweierstrasse 35 Tel: +41 1 291 45 80 mw@eunet.ch CH-8004 Zuerich Fax: +41 1 291 46 42 S=mw;P=EUnet;A=EUnet;C=CH ------------------------------ Crossposted-To: comp.unix.bsd,comp.os.386bsd.misc From: michaelv@iastate.edu (Michael L. VanLoon) Subject: Re: BSD UNIX Date: Sat, 4 Sep 1993 19:49:56 GMT In rhealey@gorp.ssesco.com (Rob Healey) writes: >In article michaelv@iastate.edu (Michael L. VanLoon) writes: >>In cgd@erewhon.CS.Berkeley.EDU (Chris G. Demetriou) writes: >> >>> amiga "production" >> >>>re: amiga: just because binaries aren't available on -lamp doesn't >>>mean it's not in production use... there are many places carrying >>>binaries for it in europe, but their names all escape me right now... >> >>Finally, a reason to buy an Amiga... :-) I'm almost tempted. >> > Hey now! B^). I'll pit the 3000's 0.9 I/O performance against any > 386 or 486 based system any day! This is exactly why I made my comment. I've never been terribly fond of the Amiga OS, but I would take a 68k processor box over the Intel crap any day, if I could run the same software on each. I truly think it would be worth picking up a used Amiga just to turn into a unix (NetBSD) box. -- ============================================================================== Michael L. VanLoon Project Vincent Systems Staff michaelv@iastate.edu Iowa State University Computation Center ============================================================================== ------------------------------ From: heiser@bumetb.bu.edu (Bill Heiser) Subject: Re: A Word Processor for Linux Date: 4 Sep 1993 20:39:56 GMT Reply-To: heiser@bumetb.bu.edu (Bill Heiser) In article falk@unixg.ubc.ca (David Falk) writes: > >Yet,I have found that the only thing that keeps me tied to the DOS world >is the lack of a good word processor in the UNIX World. I would like to make Things like WORDPERFECT are available for UNIX, but not as far as I know for LINUX. And I'd be surprised if it *ever* is. It is hard to get around the fact that the "home type apps" available for PCs just aren't available for Unix of any flavor. For example, when was the last time you saw something equivalent to "QUICKEN", or "XTALK/WIN" for any Unix platform? As much as I prefer working in the UNIX environment, I too am forced to keep a DOS/win environment available. As it is now, I have to boot DOS or LINUX, depending on which things I need to do. Of course if LINUX can evenutally run WINDOWS apps, that will solve it for me :-) :-) At that point, WIN will go away :-) (but of course when you work in the industry, it is good to stay in touch with the "popular" things .... so it's still good to work with Win (and NT) enough to stay famliar with them, etc, ... .but that's a different issue. ------------------------------ From: iks@bsu-cs.bsu.edu (Bolski) Subject: Installing the New Linux Date: 4 Sep 93 20:39:08 GMT I'm having problems installing the newest version of Linux. First off, here is my set-up: 80386/SX 33 mhz 4 megs of memory 170 megs HD Drive a: is a 1.44 meg Trident SVGA 1Meg (8900C) If I load the A1 disk into the ramdisk, I can't use the "install" login. I'll login alright, but if I try to make a swap partition or the root partition, I run out of memory (some message like, "new couldn't allocate memory - out of memory") or something like that. Also, if I go ahead and do my OWN mke2fs'ing and fdisk'ing, I'm okay until I try to install the system using doinstall. When I insert the A2 disk, it starts reading it but then says it ran out of memory and skips onto the next file to install. But, it isn't installing the files. If I DON'T load the the floppy into the ramdisk, I can do the above, but when it comes time to insert the next disk (e.g. A2), I can't have it write protected and then garbage just flies all over my screen. I've ran the previous version of Linux without a hitch. If I DON'T have the disk write protected, Linux trashes it. Anyone have any ideas on this? I'd really like to get linux up and running, but it looks like I'm out of luck at this time. I can't install the previous version because I put the new version onto the old disks. ------------------------------ From: heiser@bumetb.bu.edu (Bill Heiser) Subject: Re: (was: Re: A Word Processor for Linux) Date: 4 Sep 1993 20:43:24 GMT Reply-To: heiser@bumetb.bu.edu (Bill Heiser) In article weasel@mecom.oulu.fi (Kari T. Salmela) writes: > > By the way, I have noticed that old UNIX farts are absolutely >most conservative persons I've ever met. Not even IBM :) mainframe [...] >It's kinda sad to see 25 year old people who are totally fixed to >their old customs, unable and unwilling to learn & use anything which >has been coded in the 80's or 90's.. 25-year old people are "old unix farts"???? ------------------------------ From: slb22@bonjour.cc.columbia.edu (Seth "the Lesser") Crossposted-To: comp.os.linux.help Subject: Re: Can't install SLS w/UltraStor 24F SCSI card Date: 4 Sep 1993 21:12:23 GMT Reply-To: slb22@columbia.edu Thanks to the many people who sent me helpful email. Essentially, the consensus was that my options were: 1.) Junk the UltraStor and get an Adaptec 1742. 2.) Get some friendly person with a working Linux installation to patch the kernel for me, then replace the zImage on the SLS A1 disk with the patched zImage and send me the disk image file. 3.) Sit on my duff and whine. I have opted for a version of #2, namely, to take everything off my hard drive and reformat it in IDE-emulation mode, then install Linux, patch the kernel myself, reformat the drive in SCSI mode, and reinstall Linux. I hope to have it up and running in a week or so.... :-) Seth L. Blumberg, M.S.E. \ `Mud wasps had built nests inside these nice slb22@columbia.edu \ little holes.' `Inside our hydrogen bomb?' `Well, CUSFS President-in-Exile \ as I say, inside these nice little holes.' > No one I know shares my opinions, least of all Columbia University. < ------------------------------ From: bilan@cps.msu.edu (Thomas J Bilan) Subject: Diamond Speedstar 24 VLB Date: 4 Sep 1993 21:24:02 GMT Does anyone have a sample Xconfig that will use the Speedstar 24 VLB? I really don't know what to change to get it running correctly. So far I haven't even been able to run in mono VGA but I'm sure it's my lack of knowledge not the computers fault. Thanks, Tom Bilan -- /\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\ $ Department of Death by Engineering ^ Surgeon General's Warning: $ $ Michigan State University ^ Graduate School may cause brain $ $ bilan@cps.msu.edu ^ damage and sporadic loss of hair $ ------------------------------ From: rlion@access.digex.net (crazy lion) Subject: Re: NeXTStep & Linux Date: 4 Sep 1993 11:46:59 -0400 martini@tournesol.hep.physik.uni-muenchen.de (Ullrich Martini) writes: >hi, >we here a lot about running ms-windows apps on linux boxes, but there are >much better user interfaces than windows, for example NeXT Step. this is >why i am wondering if there are any activities to build a next-linux >interface like wabi. >maybe it would be sufficient to have a source-code compatibility. is it true >that the objective-c compiler used by next is available and ported to linux? >(heard something like that) >bye, ullrich nextssetp is, in my opinion the best OS there is. but it's hardware requirements are just too great for intel. you'd have to have a fully loaded comupter to even get one program running. so i doubt that anyoe would spend all the time it owuld take to write it when few could benefit.. rl ------------------------------ From: brettm@access.digex.net (Brett Michaels) Subject: Problem with mke2fs.. Date: 4 Sep 1993 12:19:23 -0400 Newsgroups: comp.os.linux Subject: Problem with mke2fs.. Summary: Expires: Sender: Followup-To: Distribution: Organization: Express Access Online Communications, Greenbelt, MD USA Keywords: I have installed SLS 1.03 onmy 386 but ran into a problem when preparing the filesystem. When executing mke2fs I got: Could not find block to write inode table. I had to reduce my partitin size from 80 to 70MB to get it to work. Once I did this the mke2fs command worked fine and I was able to get the base system installed. However, I want to use Xwindows and this need more than the base system. Any ideas about what went wrong? ------------------------------ From: lag@casbah.acns.nwu.edu (Lawrence Gray) Subject: EDB Date: 4 Sep 93 22:44:56 GMT Hi, A friend showed me EDB (Emacs Database) and I need to know if I can get this running on my linux system? Does anyone have any success using EDB? Thanks, Larry Gray -- ============================================================================== Larry Gray Internet: lag@casbah.acns.nwu.edu can be found ONLY at this address: ============================================================================== ------------------------------ From: bsa@kf8nh.wariat.org (Brandon S. Allbery) Subject: Re: A Word Processor for Linux Date: Sat, 4 Sep 1993 22:12:38 GMT In article <26aues$i9v@news.bu.edu> heiser@bumetb.bu.edu (Bill Heiser) writes: >Things like WORDPERFECT are available for UNIX, but not as far as I know >for LINUX. And I'd be surprised if it *ever* is. It is hard to get I wouldn't. Especially with iBCS-2 support under development. >you saw something equivalent to "QUICKEN", or "XTALK/WIN" for any >Unix platform? I'm working on a replacement for Quicken. Slowly... ++Brandon -- Brandon S. Allbery kf8nh@kf8nh.ampr.org bsa@kf8nh.wariat.org "MSDOS didn't get as bad as it is overnight -- it took over ten years of careful development." ---dmeggins@aix1.uottawa.ca ------------------------------ ** FOR YOUR REFERENCE ** The service address, to which questions about the list itself and requests to be added to or deleted from it should be directed, is: Internet: Linux-Activists-Request@NEWS-DIGESTS.MIT.EDU You can send mail to the entire list (and comp.os.linux) via: Internet: Linux-Activists@NEWS-DIGESTS.MIT.EDU Linux may be obtained via one of these FTP sites: nic.funet.fi pub/OS/Linux tsx-11.mit.edu pub/linux tupac-amaru.informatik.rwth-aachen.de pub/msdos/replace The current version of Linux is 0.99pl9 released on April 23, 1993 End of Linux-Activists Digest ******************************