NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #26/NN_1992_26.iso/spool/comp/os/linux/16130

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Subject:  Linux-Activists Digest #495

Linux-Activists Digest #495, Volume #3            Fri, 6 Nov 92 19:30:32 EST

Contents:
  Designing X modes (Mike Jagdis)
  Re: Free UNIX for sale (Jae J Won)
  Re: IDE faster than SCSI-2 (Othman Ahmad)
  Re: 486SXs as Unix Iron? (Bohdan Tashchuk)
  WYSIWIG available !
  Phigs or Phigs+ included in linux (Theodor Myntidis)
  Re: IDE faster than Mips SCSI disk (Phillip Fayers)
  Re: 486SXs as Unix Iron? (Tim Pierce)
  (Xmono+Mouse+Kermit)  Problem (W. Woody Jin)
  Re: Free UNIX for sale (Ken Tompkins)
  X11 Won't Return to Text Mode (Ken Tompkins)
  How to mount HPFS drive? (Glenn Wasserman)
  SIMM Prices (Ed)
  Mounting HPFS drive (Glenn Wasserman)
  Re: What is aXe? (Jim Wight)
  Re: "broken pipe" on shutdown/reboot/halt??? (Kevin Routh)
  Help in downloading files from TSX-11!!! ("Ronald Ku")
  Re: What is aXe? (David Pincus)
  Re: [ANNOUNCE] poeigl-1.7 and admutil-1.4 available (Michael Haardt)
  Phigs or Phigs+ included in linux ?? (Theodor Myntidis)

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

From: [e-mail] (Mike Jagdis)
Subject: Designing X modes
Date: Wed, 4 Nov 1992 22:15:45 +0000

Ok, I suspect there's enough interest in this... In a second I'll upload an
archive called modegen.taz (compressed tar) to nic.funet.fi and
tsx-11.mit.edu (if I can find the incoming directories :-) ).

  It contains my tools for calculating the magic numbers for X display modes
- namely the sc spreadsheet program, a couple of spreadsheets and some light
reading. The documentation assumes you have some idea of what goes in the
Xconfig file but is otherwise fairly easy reading <G>.

  One spreadsheet is resolution-centric. That is, you specify the resolution
you are aiming at and the clock to use it tells you how good (or bad) a
refresh rate etc. you will get. This is most use if you have a multisync
(multiscan/flexscan...) monitor.

  The other spreadsheet is frequency-centric. You give it the
horizontal/vertical frequencies and clock to use and it gives you the
displayable resolution. For those with fixed frequency monitors.

  Naturally, you can also play with sync timings etc. to centre the display
and squeeze every last displayable pixel out of it. It's in the docs...

  And if you don't (yet) understand any of the above - follow the docs...

                                Mike

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

From: [e-mail] (Jae J Won)
Subject: Re: Free UNIX for sale
Date: Fri, 6 Nov 1992 02:34:11 GMT

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Linus Torvalds) writes:
|In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Bram) writes:
|>[e-mail] (Howlin' Bob) writes:
|>>
|>> --> 386BSD Version 0.1 & LINUX Version 0.96...............$100  <--
|>
|>Gee, Linus and other contributors,
|>I dont know about you, but I would be pissed off, if someone
|>started making money on the stuff I worked so hard at.
|
|Why be pissed off? It's really a compliment.  And believe me: getting
|money may be fun, but when you get T-shirts, virtual beer, book offers
                                              ^^^^^^^
Huh? Virtual beer? Wow.....:) I have not been drinking too much beer
but I will certainly be interested in drinking some virtual beer whatever
that is..:)

Jae

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

Crossposted-To: comp.unix.bsd
From: [e-mail] (Othman Ahmad)
Subject: Re: IDE faster than SCSI-2
Date: Fri, 6 Nov 1992 01:25:10 GMT

MAEDA Atusi ([e-mail]) wrote:
: The file size of one megabyte is too short to get meaningful result.
: You are just measuring the speed of copying to/from buffer cache.

You may be right there but remember that Julian's machine runs at 50Mhz,
whereas mine at 33Mhz.
        buffer cache from 386bsd cannot be as large as 1 Mbyte.
At least we are testing the efficiency of the use of buffer cache.
The latest version of iozone actually flushes the cache but I do not like this,
because that is not how we use unix file system. It does not measure realistic
situation.
        If you want a figure excluding the disk/buffer cache, take the read
figure.
        If it were really all from buffer cache, then the write figure should
be much higher, equivalent to memory bandwidth, i.e. 25Mbyte/second.
        Assuming 4 cycles of 50Mhz, 32 bit per cycle.
:
: You should give numbers at least twice as large as your RAM size.
:
Actually I did that, but the figures are not informative. Not relevant to our
usual use. It confused more than it explains.
        I advise people to ignore these "unrealistically high load".
However I'll do it anyway.

--
Othman bin Ahmad, School of EEE,
Nanyang Technological University, Singapore 2263.
Internet Email: [e-mail]
Bitnet Email: [e-mail]


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

From: [e-mail] (Bohdan Tashchuk)
Crossposted-To: comp.unix.pc-clone.32bit,comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware
Subject: Re: 486SXs as Unix Iron?
Date: 6 Nov 92 01:05:25 GMT

In <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (fred j mccall 575-3539) writes:

|The only way to keep
|companies from doing silly marketing cruft like this is if people let
|them eat all those chips.  There was NO reason to come out with the
|486SX other than to attempt predatory pricing on folks like AMD and
|Cyrix while keeping the price of the 486DX inflated.  There is no way
|I'm going to believe that the price difference between the 486SX and
|the 486DX can be explained by the cost of testing the math unit in the
|latter.

Of course it's marketing and not the cost of testing.

However, Intel is competing fairly. They are pricing their products at well
over the costs of production. AMD and Cyrix might not like it, but that's
what capitalism is all about.

The insulting thing is when Intel mouthpieces and apologists attempt the
Big Lie and tell us that testing the math unit is so expensive. People that
make statments like this aren't much better than the scum that work for the
tobacco companies. To this day they maintain there is no correlation between
smoking and lung cancer.

Even more despicable has been Intel's lack of ethics in other areas.
For example, in their dealings with AMD on second sourcing the 386.

Complain about Intel's marketing slime. Complain about Intel's lack of ethics.
But don't complain about "predatory pricing" in this case. There's nothing
predatory, illegal, or unethical about it.

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

Date: Wednesday, 4 Nov 1992 11:59:31 EST
From: <[e-mail]>
Subject: WYSIWIG available !

  Not to many realize this, but there is a WYSIWIG word processor available.
Get Roger Scott's patches for InterViews 3.0.1, get the 3.0.1 sources and use
the alpha gcc 2.3 (or 2.3 when it is out soon).  It works. If there is enough
interest, I can upload mine.
   This is an older version of InterViews. The newest one is IV3.1beta3.  It
also compiles, (almost out of the box), but there is a small bug in doc that
keeps it from working. (Any C++ experts out there?)
 Roger Scott's patches tsx-11:/pub/linux/packages/interviews/iv301diffs.tar.Z
 InterViews source, interviews.stanford.edu: /pub
                         Join the INTERVIEWS CHANNEL !..
                                              Regards, Michael.

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

From: [e-mail] (Theodor Myntidis)
Subject: Phigs or Phigs+ included in linux
Date: Fri, 6 Nov 1992 12:37:18 GMT


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

From: [e-mail] (Phillip Fayers)
Crossposted-To: comp.arch,comp.unix.bsd
Subject: Re: IDE faster than Mips SCSI disk
Date: 6 Nov 92 11:31:23 GMT

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Othman Ahmad) writes:
|These figures are not meant to be a thorough study. More of a provocation
|for more soul searching. The widespread belief that SCSI-2 is "defininely
|faster than IDE" is questionable, in fact under some circumstances, entirely
|false.
|       The results are not surprising for those who study the technical
|specs of these disks. IDE has more potential for high speed because of its
|lack of protocaol overhead. Its closeness to the disk also make it very
|reliable and efficient.
|       There are advanced disks which can do simultaneour multiple-head reads,
|but these techniques can also be used for IDE as well.
|       IDE is just a simple interface definition, just like SCSI-2, but IDE,
|is optimised for HARD DISKS, SCSI is not. SCSI is more general purpose.
|
|The mips machine under test runs on ultrix. Although it has up to 10Gbyte
|of hard-disk, it is not so heavily loaded. We only use it for email and
|news feed. Fragmentation can be severe because I cannot even have 32
|megabyte free space in /usr/tmp , only 30 Mbytes.
|
|Writing the 30 Megabyte file, 'iozone.tmp'...91.000000 seconds
|Reading the file...49.000000 seconds
|
|IOZONE performance measurements:
|       345684 bytes/second for writing the file
|       641985 bytes/second for reading the file
|****************************************************************************
|This PC machine runs on 386bsd. Using 1 megabyte test file it is faster than
|a similar 486/50Mhz EISA SCSI-2 hard-disk.
|
|486/33 Maxtor 7120 200Mbyte
|
|Writing the 32 Megabyte file, 'iozone.tmp'...91.283333 seconds
|Reading the file...67.116667 seconds
|
|IOZONE performance measurements:
|       367586 bytes/second for writing the file
|       499942 bytes/second for reading the file

I wouldn't put this difference down to SCSI versus IDE, I would put most
of it down to the poor IO performance of Ultrix. We recently had a DEC
announcement of Ultrix 4.3 where they claim to have improved file IO by
100-300%, a figure I'm inclined to believe. I ran the Byte UNIX
benchmarks on a DECsystem 8300 that we have here, its file IO
performance was comparable to that of a Sun SPARCstation IPC's internal
(slow) 207 MByte drive. File copy on both systems was approx 280 kBytes
per second. In comparison a SUN 4/360 we have here turned in 1440 kBytes
per second on file copy, this was using a 1.4 GByte SCSI disk on a slow
SCSI II interface (5 Mbytes per second max).
--

Phillip Fayers                      email: [e-mail]
Sun admin/support/programming       phone: [phone] x 5282 (UK)

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

Crossposted-To: comp.unix.pc-clone.32bit,comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware
From: [e-mail] (Tim Pierce)
Subject: Re: 486SXs as Unix Iron?
Date: Fri, 6 Nov 1992 07:07:05 GMT

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (fred j mccall 575-3539) writes:
|In <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Tim Pierce) writes:
|
|>I'm not complaining; it sounds like I'm getting all of the DX power I
|>need from a machine that costs several hundred dollars less.
|
|Well, you get all that machine until you find you need a math
|coprocessor and have no good way to add one cheaply.

Assuming that I will find I need one.

|You'd have been
|better off (as would we all) if they had simply dropped the price of
|the DX parts.

But they didn't.  C'est la vie.

|>What do
|>you think the price difference is the result of -- general silicon
|>shoddiness?
|
|Arbitrary marketing decision, with no justification in cost.

Except on general ethical grounds, I don't see any reason to complain.

--
____ Tim Pierce                /
\  / [e-mail] / I use antlers in all of my decorating.
 \/ (BITnet: TWPIERCE@AMHERST) /

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

From: [e-mail] (W. Woody Jin)
Subject: (Xmono+Mouse+Kermit)  Problem
Date: Fri, 6 Nov 1992 07:53:04 GMT

Hi,  a question from a linux newbie.
I installed Linux from SLS Package without problem
(even though 'free' does not report about my swap space).
Xmono is working just fine.

Strangely, as soon as I initiate 'kermit' command, the mouse stops working.
I setup my modem in com1 and Logitech mouse in com2.
To make sure, I initiated 'kermit -l /dev/ttys0'.  'Show command
clearly shows that the line is connected to /dev/ttys0, which is com1 port.
I don't understand why the logitech (connected to com2 port) just
stops working.

Does anyone have the similar experience ?

Thanks.

--
____   ____  ____ ____________________________________ (___) _________________
|  |   |  |  |  |  W. Woody Jin ([e-mail])       (o o)      Moo....
|  |   |  |__|  |  PhD Student. Research Asst.  o=======\ /  I'm  a Cow Lover.
|  |   |        |  Dept. of Computer Science   / |     ||O   My wife  was born
\  |---|  |--|  |  University of Houston      `  ||'---||    in Cow year. Mooo
 \____/|__|  |__| _______________________________^^    ^^_____________________



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

From: [e-mail] (Ken Tompkins)
Subject: Re: Free UNIX for sale
Date: 4 Nov 92 12:05:12 GMT

Interesting that at a recent computer show near
here -- Atlantic City -- a chap was selling the "lastest"
version on 1.2 5 1/4 disks -- 15 of them with the
promise of telephone support. Not sure what he charged
but it wasn't $100. That is all he was selling at the
booth.

ken tompkins
stockton state college
[e-mail]

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

From: [e-mail] (Ken Tompkins)
Subject: X11 Won't Return to Text Mode
Date: 4 Nov 92 12:12:16 GMT

Just to add my name to the list....I recently got
X11 working -- an Icelandic Saga in length -- and
when I exit from it the screen turns black and I
have to reboot.

Briefly my setup is:

386DX 40MhZ clone
75meg partition with 2m swap
Trident 8900c vga chipset
Most recent version of linux SLS (98.pl1)
(98.pl1)

It would be helpful if someone could solve this.

ken tompkins
stockton state college

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

From: [e-mail] (Glenn Wasserman)
Subject: How to mount HPFS drive?
Date: 5 Nov 92 06:49:00 GMT

If anyone hs figured out how to mount an HPFS drive, could they please
let me know? I'd really like linux to see my OS/2 partition.

Thanks!

-Glenn

--
************************************************************************
*    Glenn Wasserman  *   Rutgers University Computer Science          *
*    [e-mail]    *  [e-mail]            *
************************************************************************

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

From: ee89jje%ee.surrey.ac.uk (Ed)
Subject: SIMM Prices
Date: 6 Nov 92 12:03:24 GMT

Just out of interest - can anyone in the States tell me how much SIMMs
cost over there?

Cheers,
Ed
--
Julian Edwards, alias Ed.| email: [e-mail]
Dept. of Elec. Eng.      |
University Of Surrey     |  Witty comment will be available when I'm feeling
Guildford. ENGLAND.      |  more witty.

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

From: [e-mail] (Glenn Wasserman)
Subject: Mounting HPFS drive
Date: 6 Nov 92 04:38:47 GMT

I could swear I posted a message saying this before, but I can't seem to find
it, so maybe the post failed and I didn't notice. Oh well.

Has anyone figured out how to mount an HPFS partition yet? I'm still kind of
hanging here...

-Glenn

(Hope my .sig works!)

--
*       Glenn Wasserman - Rutgers University - Computer Science         *
*************************************************************************
*       [e-mail] *       [e-mail]       *
*************************************************************************

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

From: [e-mail] (Jim Wight)
Subject: Re: What is aXe?
Date: 5 Nov 92 17:57:14 GMT

[e-mail] (X X) writes:

|before I download aXe, I would like a description of what it actually is.
|Im hoping its a wyswig word processor program.

It is an X Editor.  Here is some information about it.
      -  - -

aXe is a simple to use text editor for X that represents a significant
improvement over xedit. Also built around the Athena Text Widget it
features, amongst other things,

   o multiple windows
   o multiple buffers
   o default menu interface
   o optional button interface, with choice and layout of buttons
     under user control
   o minibuffer for expert use and access to external filters
   o provision for defining a keyboard macro
   o geometry specification and resizing in terms of characters
   o file selection via a browser
   o knowledge of line numbers
   o parenthesis matching
   o ability to change font
   o easy entry of control codes
   o xterm-like keymap feature
   o easy runtime setting of selected preferences (resources)
   o server mode
   o both brief and comprehensive on-line help
   o collection of reusable widgets that embody the functionality of aXe

I have personally built and run the current version of aXe on the
following systems:

   Sun 3            SunOS 4.1.1     MIT X11R4
   Sun 4            SunOS 4.1.[12]  MIT X11R5
   Encore Multimax  UMAX 4.3        MIT X11R5
   DEC 5000/120     ULTRIX 4.2      MIT X11R5
   HP 9000/710      HP-UX 8.07      MIT X11R5

The previous version reportedly also ran on SGI IRIX 4.0.1, IBM RS6000
AIX 3.1.5/3.2 and Linux.

Although aXe runs under R4 in the case cited above I have failed to
get it to work on an Acorn R260 running RISC iX 1.21. Therefore, if
you are at R4 you very much take pot luck. If it doesn't work the only
alternative is to try the last release, 2.1.1, of version 2 which
should still be around. It doesn't have as many features and uses the
Widget Creation Library (Wcl). Not only that, it requires an old
version of Wcl, 1.06 or 1.05. Version 3 of aXe was nearing completion
when version 2 of Wcl came out so aXe 2 never got converted to make
use of it.

I have no experience of porting to System V, but I have incorporated a
number of '#ifdef SYSV'-isms that have been fed back to me.

aXe is available by anonymous ftp from export.lcs.mit.edu (18.24.0.12)
initially, and probably in due course from several other ftp sites.
Check your nearest using xarchie.

If you can't ftp, try sending email to [e-mail] with the
word "help" alone in your message body.  You will receive instructions
on how to ftp via email.

Jim
---
[e-mail]
Department of Computing Science, University of Newcastle,  Tel: [phone]
Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 7RU, United Kingdom.              Fax: [phone]

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

From: [e-mail] (Kevin Routh)
Subject: Re: "broken pipe" on shutdown/reboot/halt???
Date: Fri, 6 Nov 1992 12:50:20 GMT

[e-mail] (Charles F. Teague II) writes:
:
:   Now, when I try to shutdown linux, I get the normal shutdown output
: up to the point where it should say "Now you can turn off the power".
: Instead of that, I get "broken pipe", and the system is still active (ie,
: no reboot/halt/shutdown)  I thought I might have messed up these commands,

Yes, mine does the same thing.  What I do is log out all my pseudo terms
and then log into one as user "sync" once or twice.  I then give the
three finger salute (Ctrl-Alt-Del) and it reboots.  I assume this is
safe because it syncs the filesystems.  I think your /etc/passwd file
has a user named "sync" with no password which uses the sync command as
it's shell.  If not, it's easy to set it up.
--
Kevin C. Routh                     Internet:    [e-mail]
Ford Electronics                   IBMmail (PROFS):               USFMCTMF
ELD IC Engineering
17000 Rotunda Drive, B-121         Voice mail:              [phone]

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

From: [e-mail] ("Ronald Ku")
Subject: Help in downloading files from TSX-11!!!
Date: Fri, 6 Nov 1992 06:23:52 GMT

Dear netter,

        I am new to linux. Could someone out there give me some advices
on downloading files from TSX-11. I know TSX-11 is a great site for
linux and it can support recursive downloading of files.

        The problems I had was that how can I download a directory
together with subdirectories without creating them before downloading.
Another problems is that how can I download files pointed by the
symbolic link. (i.e. files in the
pub/linux/mirrors/mcc-interim/0.97p2/source_links directory).

        Thanks for your time to read this silly question.

        Any advices would be appreciated!!!


--
*  Ronald Ku                             *  UNIX will use next,       *
*  [e-mail]  OR     *  UNIX is YOUr next,        *
*  [e-mail]           *  So I use UNIX!            *
*  Charles Sturt University              *  And I survive for UNIX!!! *

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

Subject: Re: What is aXe?
From: David Pincus <[e-mail]>
Date: Thursday, 5 Nov 1992 21:48:48 EST

Hey there, I'd like to abandon MS-DOS / WIN3.1 for linux. I'm not of the
faint of heart but never have had any unix experience. My system is as follows

80386/33 w/fpu
8megs ram
an 80 and 20 meg HD's(MFM) linux will go on the 20 to start
tape backup (colorado jumbo internal)
Plain vanilla 640x480  vga

I have some questions:
 1) I can ftp to tsx-11 but what files do I need?  The directory listing
is truly overwhelming.
2) Is there windowing program out there compatible with linux?
3) What telecommunications software would I need to access my U.'s vm/cms
system?
4)at tsx-11 I see files in bold such as "README" how do I read them?
(I've tried "get README" but to no avail.
5) Is there software pd and or copyleft that is like word for windows,
wordperfect etc.?
6) Can I set up my system so that I have a choice as to which operating
system will boot? I don't think I'll be able to do away with DOS
completely as I do DOS support for several clients.

7) To reiterate #1) If someone could email or post a list of ALL the files
neccessary to start I'd love to devote a weekend/week to installing linux
and some word processing/telecom/mail software.

Thanx 10^6th  I hope to become a linux fanatic in the months to come, as
I think it's time to learn un*x finally *sigh*.

Later - Dave

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

From: [e-mail] (Michael Haardt)
Subject: Re: [ANNOUNCE] poeigl-1.7 and admutil-1.4 available
Reply-To: [e-mail] (Michael Haardt)
Date: Thu, 05 Nov 92 22:46:43 +0100

In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (Peter Orbaek) writes:
| Init now has support for a singleuser mode, and it doesn't ignore the termcap
| field in /etc/inittab for console tty's anymore. After version 0.98.3
| the TERM variable handed over from the kernel is not very interesting.

Your own init, I guess?  There are two versions (well, three to be
precise: yours, the older sysv-compatible init and the newer
sysv-compatible init).

| To those that do not already know, the poeigl package contains:
|
|         init, getty, login, hostname, mesg, users, who, write
|
| and admutils contains:
|
|         chsh, ctrlaltdel, init, last, newgrp, passwd, shutdown, reboot,
|         halt, fastboot, fasthalt, su, example /etc/rc

Unfortunately there is now a conflict between your package and the sysv
compatible package.  We should try to work something out.  I don't like
that I have to decide which utilities from which package are better each
time.

Why is there a su?  If I am right, the GNU shellutils also have one, and
it works fine.

Michael

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

From: [e-mail] (Theodor Myntidis)
Subject: Phigs or Phigs+ included in linux ??
Date: Fri, 6 Nov 1992 12:54:23 GMT

Hi folks !!
Does anybody know if phigs or phigs+ is included in linux ??

Thanks for your answers!!

Theo


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


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Linux may be obtained via one of these FTP sites:
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The current version of Linux is 0.97 released on August 1, 1992

End of Linux-Activists Digest
******************************