Re: Help! Messed up my MBR part 2
Gertjan Klein wrote: From what you've written, I gather that you inadvertedly told LILO to overwrite the boot sector (_not_ the MBR) of your DOS partition. DOS keeps some important bookkeeping information in it's boot sector, among which the size of the partition, the number of sectors in a cluster, etc. LILO has overwritten this information, so DOS can no longer boot from this partition. I know of no easy solution to this problem. There are no tools that I know of, that rebuild a DOS bootsector without also destroying all information on the partition. The first time you install LILO on a device (either the MBR or a partition's boot sector) it makes a backup copy of the original boot code. If you haven't done anything else irreversible, you should be able to uninstall LILO and get your DOS partition boot block back. Check for the file /boot/boot.0301 (major device 3, minor 1 is hda1). If it exists, you may be in luck. Read the LILO documentation for details. This does work, I've used it, although not in such a desparate situation. If uninstalling LILO doesn't work for you, you can try using dd to copy it back onto /dev/hda1. BEFORE YOU DO ANYTHING, USE dd TO BACK UP THE CURRENT CONTENTS OF /dev/hda1 SECTOR 0 FIRST JUST IN CASE YOU MAKE THINGS WORSE! LILO is a powerful tool, and like any powerful tool must be used with great care, as you can cause a lot of damage very quickly. -- Bill Roman ([EMAIL PROTECTED] / [EMAIL PROTECTED]) running linux -- TO UNSUBSCRIBE FROM THIS MAILING LIST: e-mail the word unsubscribe to [EMAIL PROTECTED] . Trouble? e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Disk partitioning - recommended sizes
One thing I'm surprised has gone unsaid in this discussion -- keep some extra space for testing new distributions. Even with my meager total of 330MB (yes, I'm adding another drive RSN) I have enough space to install a minimal system with the stuff that's really important to me, like uucp and smail, so I don't inconvenience myself by doing a major upgrade only to find out it doesn't work. With 4GB you should be able to leave enough space to install X and whatever else you use a lot. You can always keep the spare partition mounted as /tmp or something when you're not testing in it. -- Bill Roman ([EMAIL PROTECTED] / [EMAIL PROTECTED]) running linux -- TO UNSUBSCRIBE FROM THIS MAILING LIST: e-mail the word unsubscribe to [EMAIL PROTECTED] . Trouble? e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Problem using Ghostscript with Mosaic
I'm having a frustrating and probably trivial problem. I would like to print some Postscript which I generated with Save As... in Mosaic. It looks fine when I preview it with Ghostview, but the top and bottom of the page are clipped off when I use gs to render it for my printer. Printing starts about 1/4 from the top of the page, with more than that much of what should be there missing; it ends about 1-1/2 from the bottom. I've tried obvious things, like making sure Mosaic was set for US letter rather than A4 size paper and Ghostscript was rendering for letter size paper. Oh, the printer is a Star NX-2420, emulating an Epson 24 pin printer. I do know there's at least one bug in the emulation (I fixed this with a patch to the epson driver, which I'm pretty sure has nothing to do with the current problem). Maybe I should just buy a DeskJet? -- Bill Roman ([EMAIL PROTECTED] / [EMAIL PROTECTED]) running linux -- TO UNSUBSCRIBE FROM THIS MAILING LIST: e-mail the word unsubscribe to [EMAIL PROTECTED] . Trouble? e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: pdf files
Note that a recent posting in comp.risks asserts that Adobe's PDF reader for Linux will attempt to *execute* any file which can't be read as a PDF file and has its execute permissions set, quoting Adobe's documentation about this. Mind that MIME mail! -- Bill Roman ([EMAIL PROTECTED] / [EMAIL PROTECTED]) running linux -- TO UNSUBSCRIBE FROM THIS MAILING LIST: e-mail the word unsubscribe to [EMAIL PROTECTED] . Trouble? e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Swap overdraft
H C Lai wrote:
Thanks for all the replies so far. The impression I get is that
Linux does support the 'over-commitment' mode. Kernel 2.0.0 definitely
does not support this. I have a ~10 lines of small fortran test
programme which basically creates a HUGE array in a common block and
then tries to use a small part of it. It failed with segmentation
fault on elf. But succeeds by just putting in more swap !!
Hmm, don't know how Fortran handles this sort of thing. Below is a
very quick dirty C program I've used to test Linux's handling of at
least some cases of swap overcommitment. A long time ago (kernel 1.0,
I think) running enough copies of this to cause overcommitment locked
the system up to the point of requiring a hardware reset. I just tried
it on 2.0.25 and the program dies with a Bus error signal.
In case it's not obvious what's going on here, what the program does is
malloc() 2K and then proceed to dirty (write to) each page. Linux
will allow a program to allocate more virtual memory than exists -- all
that happens is that the process's address space is marked as usable and
mapped to a page of zeros, copy-on-write. This allows (for example)
allocating a very large array that the programmer knows will be used only
very sparsely.
When a page is dirtied, real memory must be allocated and mapped in; if
this is done enough, something needs to be swapped out. If all available
swap space is full, something needs to give. Apparently, in 2.0 a process
is chosen and killed when it attempts to commit virtual memory beyond
some threshold. (I'm just guessing here, I haven't tracked this down in
the kernel source.)
Here's my EMquick and dirty/EM C program. I have 24M RAM and 24M swap
space. Running under X, I typically have just under 40M total VM available
(counting buffers as free) so running one copy of this succeeds, after
much swap activity, and running two copies causes the aforementioned bus
error signal to kill at least one.
#include stdlib.h
#include stdio.h
#include unistd.h
#define NK 2
int main(int argc, char **argv)
{
char *p = malloc(NK * 1024L);
int i;
for (i = 0; i NK; i += 4) {
printf(\r%d, i);
p[i * 1024] = 1;
}
printf(\ndone\n);
sleep(10);
return 0;
}
--
Bill Roman ([EMAIL PROTECTED] / [EMAIL PROTECTED]) running linux
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Re: Gosh, I can't believe this!!! (was: who's guilty...)
Eloy A. Paris wrote: well, I have spent my whole Saturday chasing the answer and I think I am pretty close now. I think I found the cause: it's that damned Boca Research BOCALAN card VL. Today I tried EVERYTHING: [...] I ran for about 1 and a half years kernel 1.2.13 on this machine and with this PCnet32 card. This is why I suspect of kernel 2.0.x. Uhhmmm... the whole thing is strange. Why a network card problem is causing problems at reboot time? Why everything works so well if I turn the computer and work forever without reboot the computer with Cntrl-Alt-Del, reboot command, or shutdown -r ??? [...] The options are: w warm boot. c cold boot. b reboot by jumping to the BIOS reboot function. h hard reboot by toggling reset and/or crashing the CPU. I tried the w and it worked in all cases WITH the troubled card (BOCALAN-vl). The c never worked. Of course, with the Etherworks 3, I don't need to pass any reboot=x paremeter to the kernel. I'll offer this guess: the troublesome card does DMA, and is not being shut down before the kernel reboots. It writes to its previously programmed buffer address during the memory test, which of course causes the memory test to fail. Warm boot works because it does a very cursory memory test (if any), allowing only a short time window for the card to interfere; cold boot fails because of a more thorough test. Perhaps the change between kernels 1.2 and 2.0 was that the driver now takes advantage of the card's DMA capabilities? Or something isn't getting shut down properly when switching to runlevel 0? Or the driver doesn't finish or cancel outstanding operations when it's closed? -- Bill Roman ([EMAIL PROTECTED] / [EMAIL PROTECTED]) running linux -- TO UNSUBSCRIBE FROM THIS MAILING LIST: e-mail the word unsubscribe to [EMAIL PROTECTED] . Trouble? e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: making disk bootable
Daniel Stringfield wrote: On Fri, 22 Nov 1996, Ricardo Kleemann wrote: How do I go about inserting an mbr if my current setup isn't using LILO (and thus hasn't made the hd bootable)? the MBR is master boot record. this is the actual software that brings up the system. The MBR in this case is initialized when you install LILO. Its not something you install then add LILO. It *IS* LILO. A minor clarification: booting from hard disk is a two-stage process. First the system BIOS reads the MBR and begins executing it. The usual DOS MBR code reads the partition table (also contained in the MBR) and finds the primary partition which is flagged as bootable, reads the first sector of that partition (the partition's boot block) and begins executing it. This code is responsible for loading and starting the operating system in a system-dependent way. LILO's boot loader code can be installed either on the MBR or on a Linux partition's boot sector. In the former case, Daniel Stringfield is exactly correct -- LILO is completely sufficient. In the latter, the MBR must be initialized with the some code which can behave like the DOS MBR; the Linux partition must be flagged as bootable if LILO is to be loaded. -- Bill Roman ([EMAIL PROTECTED] / [EMAIL PROTECTED]) running linux -- TO UNSUBSCRIBE FROM THIS MAILING LIST: e-mail the word unsubscribe to [EMAIL PROTECTED] . Trouble? e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Big IDE drive on old bios
David Frey wrote: Paul Christenson writes: On Fri, 15 Nov 1996, Stephen Fuqua wrote: Will I be able to get lilo to boot off the 1gig drive when I make a root partition smaller than 1023 cylinders? [...] You only have to ensure that you turn off any translation (put in the true sector/head values) and that the boot partition lies 1023 cylinders. After booting linux doesn't need the BIOS anymore. Basically right, but large IDE disks don't have true values for sectors per track that the BIOS can use. There are generally different numbers of sectors on different tracks (there's more room on the outer tracks) and often too many sectors to address in the measly six bits allowed by the BIOS. All IDE drives translate internally from fairly arbitrary parameters to the physical location on the disk. The host system tells the drive how many heads and sectors it will use, and the drive's controller does the appropriate mapping. I know I've seen a FAQ, HOWTO or mini-HOWTO on this topic, but I can't seem to find it just now. -- Bill Roman ([EMAIL PROTECTED] / [EMAIL PROTECTED]) running linux -- This message was distributed manually by [EMAIL PROTECTED] after the list initially failed to distribute it.
Re: useradd?
Daniel Stringfield wrote: I believe the 'useradd' program was a strictly Slackware program. BUT... It no longer exists in Slackware even.. [...] It should not be a problem unless you are running shadow passwords, in which you definetely don't want to run it. I'd been running on several different releases, AFTER the Slackware.. (Linux FT, and Redhat) As I recall, the shadow package included a useradd utility (among others). -- Bill Roman ([EMAIL PROTECTED] / [EMAIL PROTECTED]) running linux -- TO UNSUBSCRIBE FROM THIS MAILING LIST: e-mail the word unsubscribe to [EMAIL PROTECTED] . Trouble? e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Can't getty on ttyS1
Kevin Traas wrote: I've tried enabling the port by adding the proper entry to inittab (working from memory at the moment) as follows: S1:234:respawn:/etc/getty ttyS1 DT9600 vt100 Note that executables have been banished from /etc by FSSTND for a long time. Try /sbin/getty, and you may get sufficient functionality without having to install mgetty. -- Bill Roman ([EMAIL PROTECTED] / [EMAIL PROTECTED]) running linux -- TO UNSUBSCRIBE FROM THIS MAILING LIST: e-mail the word unsubscribe to [EMAIL PROTECTED] . Trouble? e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Trouble with xdm
Marcelo Magallon wrote: But if I run xdm (from a root shell), it seems to start, but the login console never shows up. Any pointers, please? This happened to me too, because I didn't configure xdm when I installed it (because I didn't have the right info at hand to configure the X server, and didn't want to get locked out). You need to tell xdm what server to run. In /etc/X11/xdm/Xservers, add: :0 console-display local /usr/X11R6/bin/X :0 and the problem should be solved. -- Bill Roman ([EMAIL PROTECTED] / [EMAIL PROTECTED]) running linux
Re: how to exclude a directory from find?
Casper BodenCummins wrote: Lazaro Salem [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: The -print flag is not really needed as is executed by default. This isn't true of all systems. If you want portability, include the -print. I believe that POSIX.2 mandates -print as the default. Can someone who has the spec confirm this? -- Bill Roman ([EMAIL PROTECTED] / [EMAIL PROTECTED]) running linux
seeking WWW browser (smaller than Netscape)
I refuse to believe that it takes a 4.5 MB executable (no, it's not statically linked) to have a useful X web browser. I've tried Mosaic (2.7 beta), but it's rather dated (no frames, for one thing). I also tried arena (beta-3), but it seems, well, like there's substantial room for improvement in the stability department, but W3C is not planning on supporting it long term. What is everyone else using? Since this could generate a lot of traffic, perhaps it would be appropriate just to mail me directly, and I'll summarize to the list. -- Bill Roman ([EMAIL PROTECTED] / [EMAIL PROTECTED]) running linux
Re: Is smail MIME compliant
Gilbert Ramirez Jr. wrote: As Mike Wood said: DOES smail support MIME? Thank you for your time. To the transport agen (smail, sendmail), the contents of the e-mail message don't matter. It's the user agent (pine, elm, mail, xmail) that should decode the MIME part of your message. Just a guess here -- it may be that the user complaining about *NIX boxes not processing MIME mail correctly is sending eight-bit data. The original SMTP specification allowed only a seven-bit character set, but more recently an extended version called ESMTP has made it possible to negotiate for an eight-bit transfer. Unfortunately not all *NIX systems are running mail transfer agents which support ESMTP; one SMTP transfer agent along the way messes up eight-bit data unrecoverably. (Please -- don't let me restart the flame war on this topic from which I learned so much. It's all been said) What is the user complaining about MIME problems running as a mail user agent? I suspect that some M$DOS mailers may casually send eight-bit data in violation of the applicable Internet standards. -- Bill Roman ([EMAIL PROTECTED] / [EMAIL PROTECTED]) running linux
trouble patching kernel
I've been running the original 1.1 distribution for a while, and I'm finally getting around to patching the kernel up to the current level. This isn't going quite as smoothly as I expected. I fetched all the patches and tried to apply them and experienced: /usr/src # linux/scripts/patch-kernel linux linux/Patches Current kernel version is 2.0.0 Applying patch-2.0.1.gz... 1 out of 1 hunks failed--saving rejects to drivers/sound/Config.in.rej failed. Clean up yourself. What did I do wrong? -- Bill Roman ([EMAIL PROTECTED] / [EMAIL PROTECTED]) running linux
Re: (yet again) [Fwd: Virus Alert]
Rick Macdonald wrote: On Mon, 19 Aug 1996, Christopher R. Hertel wrote: : Not true. You can't get a virus from reading an email message. Actually, that depends upon your E'mail system. [...] ...but that's a hole in Microsoft mail. Obviously, this kind of thing could not be done via the standard Unix mail system (unless you had a MIME-aware mail reader that was willing to run Java code for you... Oooops!) Actually... I don't use emacs for email, but apparently its mail reader uses the emacs enable-local-variables feature. And, apparently, some mischief can be done by this mechanism. [...] Perhaps someone on the list is more familiar with this issue and emacs mail. See Linux Journal #24 (April 1996) for an interesting article on this and related topics. Nutshell synopsis: be *very* careful with your MIME mail setup! -- Bill Roman ([EMAIL PROTECTED] / [EMAIL PROTECTED]) running linux
can't ifconfig dummy
Why doesn't `ifconfig dummy songdog' work? It tells me: SIOCSIFADDR: No such device Am I the dummy here? -- Bill Roman ([EMAIL PROTECTED] / [EMAIL PROTECTED]) running linux
Re: stty vs setserial
By the way, having 7 data bits and 2 stop bits should be equivalent to having 8 data bits without parity generation and 1 stop bit. This is because the data bits are sent least significant bit first, and a stop bit is the same as a zero data bit. ... Steve Preston ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) I don't think this is correct -- stop bits are ones. -- Bill Roman ([EMAIL PROTECTED] / [EMAIL PROTECTED]) running linux
