Linux-Development-Sys Digest #268, Volume #6 Wed, 13 Jan 99 03:14:30 EST
Contents:
Re: disheartened gnome developer (Marco Anglesio)
Re: Init hangs on reboot (Aurel Balmosan)
Re: File descriptor as array index? (Roy Stogner)
Re: silly question (George MacDonald)
Re: things I'd pay to have developed for Linux... (Phil Howard)
Re: 2.2.0pre6 booting errors (Nathan Myers)
Re: K6-2 300 Problem (Nathan Myers)
Re: silly question (Troy Loveday)
LILO and 10 GB drives
Re: Linux should not support non-free modules (Rex Riley)
Re: Registry for Linux - Bad idea (Frank Sweetser)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: Marco Anglesio <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: disheartened gnome developer
Crossposted-To: comp.os.linux.advocacy,comp.os.linux.development.apps,comp.os.linux.x
Date: Tue, 12 Jan 1999 20:22:01 GMT
In comp.os.linux.development.system [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> 2) The judge can't just throw away a contract signed by the company.
> Otherwise, all commercial operations of a bankrupted company would
> be under perennial revision when that company goes under!
And they are when a company goes under. More to the point, assets are
frequently frozen (which means the Qt contract can't be fulfilled, the Qt
license being an asset), the company either sold as a whole by the
trustees in bankruptcy/receivers or broken up and liquidated, and
creditors paid off, usually at a discount. There's also an order of
precedence, with secured creditors (such as banks) paid before unsecured
creditors (such as shareholders).
I don't think that, even if TT applied for protection from creditors (the
US and Canada both allow for this, a step preliminary to and as an
alternative to bankruptcy), the court would allow TT to dispose of Qt for
nothing, and might even void the license under which Qt is distributed if
they tried to release it under the GPL while under protection from
creditors. Qt is worth something (Troll wouldn't have any business if it
wasn't), and so it would be one of the tangible assets of TT to be sold
following bankruptcy.
I think - not that my opinion is worth much - that Qt should be
distributed under the full GPL or a kindred license immediately. That
would mean that any development work done using Qt would have to be
non-commercial (assuming the GPL is valid) and GPL'ed itself; any
commercial firm wanting to use Qt would have to buy it under a different
license. Or perhaps I misinterpret, but I believe that that's the
exception that the LGPL allows and the GPL does not.
> Imagine you buy a house from a construction company, who has only
> built that one house and goes under. Do you expect the judge to
> come and say you don't own the house because it has to be used to
> pay creditors? I know the analogy is not exact, but I can not think
> of a simple one right now :-)
It's highly not exact: you (or your bank) acquires title to the house when
you buy it. The construction company has further liabilities, but they're
related to the product as delivered to you: was it in good order and
repair? Did it conform to regulations as required by law? Were all
liabilities and defects divulged as required by law?
marco
--
Marco Anglesio Like Captain Idiot
mpa at the-wire dot com in Astounding Science comics
http://www.the-wire.com/~mpa (The Manchurian Candidate)
------------------------------
From: Aurel Balmosan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Init hangs on reboot
Date: Tue, 12 Jan 1999 19:08:47 GMT
Bryan Hackney <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Init 6 or reboot : hangs after mess INIT: no more processes...
Well there must be a recursive loop in some script. It seems
that to many processes are forked (more then 256 or 512)
Because I don't have RH i can't check the scripts for possible
loops.
Bye,
Aurel.
--
================================================================
Aurel Balmosan | [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://gaia.owl.de/~aurel/ |
================================================================
------------------------------
From: Roy Stogner <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.os.linux.development.apps
Subject: Re: File descriptor as array index?
Date: Wed, 13 Jan 1999 00:47:07 -0600
On Tue, 12 Jan 1999, sherle wrote:
> To illustrate, instead of:
> ===
> fd = open (filename, mode);
> read (fd, ...);
> ===
> Use:
> ===
> fd = map(open (filename, mode));
> read (unmap(fd), ...);
> ===
> Where map() and unmap() could be macros or actual function calls
> depending on how smart you want them to be.
>
> e.g.,
> #define map(n) (Small_array[Num_fd] = n, Num_fd++)
> #define unmap(n) Small_array[n]
This wouldn't work for a long-running server, as you "lose" old
indices when the descriptors are closed. I suspect any method to
recover said indices would take longer than it's worth, too.
Thanks for the help (everybody) - I ended up finding a solution by
getting rid of the problem; all of the accesses to the file descriptor
set were acting over the whole set, so I'm keeping a (sorted) linked
list of structs including a file descriptor in each and just iterating
through.
---
Roy Stogner
------------------------------
From: George MacDonald <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: silly question
Date: Wed, 13 Jan 1999 06:50:38 GMT
mlw wrote:
>
> Tristan Wibberley wrote:
> >
> > mlw wrote:
> > >
> > >
> > > cd srcpath
> > > tar cvf /tmp/fubar.tmp
> > > cd /destpath
> > > tar xvf /tmp/fubar.tmp *.as
> > >
> > > an 'xcp' command would be usefull.
> >
> > put it into a file called xcp in your path, 'chmod +x xcp'. This is
> > called making a script, it will do it all with one command.
> >
> > btw tar has an option to specify the directory to extract to.
> >
> > --
> > Tristan Wibberley Linux is a registered trademark
> > of Linus Torvalds.
>
> I am not a NEWBE!!! Geez, I know how to write a script file. Geez!
>
> Why is it when one says "Gee it would be nice to have this...." you
> people go out of your way to explain, in the most condisending
> phrasiology, that one does not, in fact, want that nice program.
>
> I have been working on UNIX off and on for almost 15 years. I know what
> scripts are, I know how to pipe commands together, I know how to write
> device drivers.
>
> I just think a simple xcopy like program would be nice. Why am I treated
> as a heritic?
Several people have been kind enough to show you how to accomplish the task
you wish. The mechanisms described are the common way to achieve that
task on unix. You are obviously aware of this, in fact you know it.
So your question isn't really about how to do it, but more "why" is
it done that way, or as you say why not do it the way dos does it.
Many people have shown you how to write the script to accomplish the task.
In other words they have shown you that in the unix environment it is
very easy and natural to write a script to perform a common task.
I myself have written hundreds. Again you obviously know that. So
you question really revolves arround the question, can I make function x+y+z
be called function a. The answer is yes you can, you can write a program
that does that if you wish.
Obviously if this had been a burning desire of many people such a program
would have been written a long time ago. However I think many people
who use the shell also learn how to write scripts. It's one
of the values of Unix. Unix is designed as a collection of cooperating
tools that can be easily connected together. You obviously know
this as well.
So the real answer to your question is, that none of the basic tools
in unix operate in the manner as the tool from dos called xcopy.
This is neither supprising nor is it very interesting. Unix is
a fundamentally different operating system and things are typically
done differently on different systems. Expecting them to be the
same is naive. It's not very interesting because creating a
simple script to achieve what you desire to do can be done
very quickly and easily. So you can write a script called
'c' or 'cp_cpp' or 'copy_my_cpp_files_from_to' that does what you want.
So really you are just saying that one tool on dos can do what takes
two tools on unix. It's like saying an adjustable wrench can undo
more nuts than a socket set(Note: you need a socket and ratchet to
get off one nut). At the end of the day, it's not how few tools you can
get by with, but having the right toolset for the job.
So please feel free to write a xcopy, people who are used to dos
might find it useful. Most people who have used unix for a while,
will probably not get too exited. While you are at it you might
want to write a package of dos shell commands that run under linux.
Then anyone who really wants them could load them up. Put them in
a seperate directory /usr/local/bin/doscmds or something similar.
Please don't request that a xcopy become part of standard unix as it
simply replicates existing functionality.
Thanks for you question, and I appologies for being flipant earlier,
I thought you were looking for a bit of humour.
--
We stand on the shoulders of those giants who coded before.
Build a good layer, stand strong, and prepare for the next wave.
Guide those who come after you, give them your shoulder, lend them your code.
Code well and live! - [EMAIL PROTECTED] (7th Coding Battalion)
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Phil Howard)
Subject: Re: things I'd pay to have developed for Linux...
Crossposted-To:
comp.os.linux.misc,comp.os.linux.development.apps,comp.os.linux.hardware
Date: Wed, 13 Jan 1999 06:57:09 GMT
On 11 Jan 1999 07:27:34 -0600 Peter Samuelson ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote:
| - Disks are recognized not by SCSI ID's or whatever but by a VG
| signature. LV's contain a certain amount of metadata as well, so
| /etc/fstab is not really needed to figure out what partitions mean
| what.
A hack I've used is to create a symlink called "MOUNT" in the root
directory of each partition. My "smart mounter" goes through all the
partitions, first mounting read/only to take a peek at "MOUNT" and
then mounts the partition as specified. Thus if the partitions get
moved around due to SCSI ID to device name relationship shifting, it
won't affect what data shows up where.
While Linux's MD feature can merge multiple partitions into one filesystem,
it would be nice if a filesystem were smart enough to understand each of
the partitions it is using and know how to add it in, or even remove it.
Even an LVM for Linux is going to require changes in a filesystem so that
the filesystem knows there are more blocks available to allocate, and has
the allocation maps grow somewhere. Will there be more superblocks? I'd
tend to think so.
| Anyway as I said, an LVM is being developed for Linux. Current release
| is 0.4 and is available at ftp.msede.com:/pub/linux/lvm/ . It was
| released back at kernel version 2.1.103 or so; don't know how much has
| changed since then that would involve the kernel patch portion.
I'd be curious about how many layers of complexity it has. But I don't
have time to go investigate, since so many things are complex that time
is still precious (though I still end up wasting some on usenet).
--
-- *-----------------------------* Phil Howard KA9WGN * --
-- | Inturnet, Inc. | Director of Internet Services | --
-- | Business Internet Solutions | eng at intur.net | --
-- *-----------------------------* philh at intur.net * --
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Nathan Myers)
Subject: Re: 2.2.0pre6 booting errors
Date: 12 Jan 1999 13:17:14 -0800
Frank Hale <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>Nathan Myers wrote:
>>
>> Strange, I installed vanilla 5.2 on my brother's Libretto (P75/16M)
>> and then 2.2.0-pre6, and everything (except parport modules) worked.
>> With static parport everything worked. Is the only difference the
>> compiler? I built the kernel, modules, and pcmcia stuff with
>> Egcs-1.1.1.
>
>I downloaded the 2.1.132 and patched it to 2.2.0pre6 meaning I applied
>every patch from 1 - 6. Is this my problem? Also I tried to apply the
>Alan Cox 2.2.0pre6 patch on my 2.2.0pre6 system and it wouldn't go. How
>do you get that patch to work?
>
>Should I say screw the patches and download the full source?
It's something to try. AC patches are like any other; if that
won't go something may be wrong, but did you try vanilla 2.2.0-pre6?
--
Nathan Myers
[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.cantrip.org/
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Nathan Myers)
Subject: Re: K6-2 300 Problem
Date: 12 Jan 1999 13:29:08 -0800
Marcos Silva wrote:
>
> I installed Linux RedHat 5.2 in a computer and it's all ok with the
> installation, but when the system boot, it lock in "Loading
> Linux......".
>
> My computer configuration is k6-2 300Mhz, RAM 64Mb, HD 2Gb, CD 32x
> Creative, network card 3C509, video card SVirge 4Mb.
Another thing... in the configuration, did you choose the right CPU?
A K6 is no longer considered a "686".
--
Nathan Myers
[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.cantrip.org/
------------------------------
From: Troy Loveday <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: silly question
Date: 12 Jan 1999 19:21:20 GMT
mlw <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>This is not true. DOS, Windows and NT support pipes. And one can type:
>dir | sort | more
>in DOS, Windows and NT, UNIX does not have a lock on these features.
This is not strictly true. DOS/Windows (I can't speak for NT) borrowed
the pipe _syntax_, but, at least in recent versions of DOS (and I'd be
surprised if it is different in Windows), this syntactical masquerade
is implemented using temporary files.
I can remember doing things like:
dir | more
and seeing an extra file named something like 'tmp$$$$$.$$1' and
thinking "What in the wor... Oh yeah, no real pipes in DOS".
--
Troy Loveday e-mail: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
ASIC Product Development / DTM vox: (972) 480-1497
Texas Instruments, Inc. fax: (972) 480-2356
Dallas, Texas "Don't Tread On Me!"
------------------------------
From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.os.linux.hardware
Subject: LILO and 10 GB drives
Date: Wed, 13 Jan 1999 01:40:06 -0500
Hello, I just got a new 10 GB drive and I can't seem to get LILO to boot
from it. If someone knows something about LILO and large disk drives I
would really appreciate some help. Below is the relavent info from my
BIOS, fdisk, lilo and LILO.
My guess is that the linux IDE drivers either don't use BIOS calls or use
updated BIOS calls that return the correct values, hence fdisk and lilo
seem to work correctly. LILO probably uses outdated BIOS calls and
therefore doesn't work correctly.
If anyone can point me to a web site with a programmers reference for BIOS
calls (especially INT 13) that would be very helpful.
Thanks,
Jerome
========================================================================
BIOS:
My BIOS does not auto-detect the drive properly,
it gives something like CHS = 16384/16/63 -> 8GB (don't remember the exact
number of cylinders but it looked like 16K).
However, I was able to manually set it to the correct parameters
CHS=19540/16/63 -> 10GB.
========================================================================
fdisk:
Disk /dev/hda: 16 heads, 63 sectors, 19540 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 1008 * 512 bytes
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 * 1 131 65992+ 6 DOS 16-bit >=32M
/dev/hda2 * 132 262 66024 83 Linux native
/dev/hda3 263 19540 9716112 5 Extended
I have a bunch of logical partitions but those are irrelavent.
/dev/hda2 is my root partition and it is below cylinder 1023.
========================================================================
lilo.conf:
boot=/dev/hda
map=/boot/map
install=/boot/boot.b
prompt
timeout=50
linear
disk=/dev/hda
sectors=63
heads=16
cylinders=19540
partition=/dev/hda2
start=132048
image=/boot/vmlinuz-2.0.36-0.7
label=linux
root=/dev/hda2
read-only
other=/dev/hda1
label=dos
table=/dev/hda
I added the linear and the disk section to see if they would help, but
they didn't.
=====================================================================
lilo:
LILO version 20, Copyright 1992-1997 Werner Almesberger
Caching device /dev/hda (0x0300)
SNIP
Caching device /dev/sdb8 (0x0818)
Reading boot sector from /dev/hda
Merging with /boot/boot.b
Device 0x0302: BIOS drive 0x80, 16 heads, 19540 cylinders,
63 sectors. Partition offset: 132048 sectors.
Secondary loader: 8 sectors.
Device 0x0302: BIOS drive 0x80, 16 heads, 19540 cylinders,
63 sectors. Partition offset: 132048 sectors.
Boot image: /boot/vmlinuz-2.0.36-0.7
Device 0x0302: BIOS drive 0x80, 16 heads, 19540 cylinders,
63 sectors. Partition offset: 132048 sectors.
Setup length is 9 sectors.
Mapped AL=0x01 CX=0xcec5 DX=0x03c0, linear=249541
Mapped AL=0x01 CX=0xcec6 DX=0x03c0, linear=249542
Mapped AL=0x01 CX=0xc7a0 DX=0x03c0, linear=247712
Mapped AL=0x01 CX=0xc7a1 DX=0x03c0, linear=247713
SNIP
Mapped AL=0x01 CX=0xcb1d DX=0x03c0, linear=248605
Mapped 890 sectors.
Added linux *
<dev=0xc0,hd=3,cyl=206,sct=199>
"ro root=302"
Boot other: /dev/hda1, on /dev/hda, loader /boot/chain.b
Device 0x0301: BIOS drive 0x80, 16 heads, 19540 cylinders,
63 sectors. Partition offset: 63 sectors.
Device 0x0300: BIOS drive 0x80, 16 heads, 19540 cylinders,
63 sectors. Partition offset: 0 sectors.
Mapped AL=0x01 CX=0xced0 DX=0x03c0, linear=249552
SNIP
Mapped AL=0x01 CX=0xcef2 DX=0x03c0, linear=249586
Mapped AL=0x01 CX=0x003f DX=0x00c0, linear=63
Mapped 6 (4+1+1) sectors.
Added dos
<dev=0xc0,hd=3,cyl=206,sct=243>
/boot/boot.0300 exists - no backup copy made.
Map file size: 11264 bytes.
Writing boot sector.
lilo exits successfully, no errors or warnings.
=================================================================
LILO
When I try to boot all I get is the "LI" in the LILO prompt.
According to the lilo docs this means that the first stage boot loader
loaded the second stage and started it but the second stage didn't do
anything. The docs also said the likely cause is a geometry mismatch on
the drive.
=================================================================
------------------------------
From: Rex Riley <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Reply-To: rr6013.yahoo.com
Crossposted-To: comp.os.linux.misc,comp.os.linux.advocacy
Subject: Re: Linux should not support non-free modules
Date: Wed, 13 Jan 1999 07:13:38 GMT
MalkContent wrote:
> :
> : It's the power of a hardware giant like Intel behind UDI that provides
> : the chance that MS will run into problems when trying to ignore it.
> :
>
> [snip observations]
> Are any of us willing to give up our personal tinkered systems for what may
> one
> day become another windoze?
>
> Just a thought.
>
> Malkcontent.
It's refreshing to find a willing challenger to the MS grip on mindshare. You
have obviously chosen to educate your mind and decide for yourself what windoze
are right for you.
And if you further the day when Linux becomes another windoze, you'll have
participated in at least one more choice than existed.
Malkcontents, afterall, founded a new nation 200+ years ago...
-r
------------------------------
From: Frank Sweetser <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.os.linux.development.apps,comp.os.linux.setup
Subject: Re: Registry for Linux - Bad idea
Date: 13 Jan 1999 02:30:41 -0500
George MacDonald <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> Well I'm striving to come up with a paragraph or two that can define
> the solution. It needs to be clean, clear and easily communicated. It's
> important to be able to set a vision or framework in someone
> elses head so you can hang the details on it.
>
> Saying it's a distributed hierarchical persistent network
> based object storage system doesn't quite cut it.
how about this?
opStore is an advanced configuration library consisting of 4 parts.
1) a powerful, flexible internal data representation format capable of
represting a wide range of data types, including range checking and
priority tags.
2) a front end api suitable for embedding in applications. it includes
functions for reading individual and sets of values, writing individual
and sets of values, flushing out sets of values to permenant storage,
and verifying values are within the defined bounds.
3) a back end api for plugging in dynamically loadable modules capable of
translating the internal data represenatation to a particular format,
including multiple flat text files, RDBMS, and CORBA formats.
4) a core logic implemented behind the front end api for evaluating the
values obtained from a wide range of back end modules in a highly
flexible, user and administrator defined order of precedence, and
returning only the highest precedence value to the calling application.
how's that sound?
--
Frank Sweetser rasmusin at wpi.edu fsweetser at blee.net | PGP key available
paramount.ind.wpi.edu RedHat 5.2 kernel 2.2.0pre5ac1 i586 | at public servers
Woody: What's going on, Mr. Peterson?
Norm: Another layer for the winter, Wood.
-- Cheers, It's a Wonderful Wife
------------------------------
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