Linux-Development-Sys Digest #349, Volume #6 Sat, 30 Jan 99 08:13:52 EST
Contents:
New free widget library: Notif-0.1 (Joseph H Allen)
Re: BIOS passwords (Tony Hoyle)
Re: TAO: the ultimate OS (Phillip Stanley-Marbell)
Re: help!!! On reinstalling Red Hat (Carlos Vidal)
Re: Why I'm dumping Linux, going back to Windblows (Johan Kullstam)
Re: COM for Linux? (Peter Mutsaers)
Re: How to flush the file cache ? ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
Howto halt bootup after initrd failure? (Dick Repasky)
Re: PROPOSAL: comp.unix.year-2038 (WAS: 2038 and Linux) (Nix)
Re: Internal PCI modem (Nix)
Re: Secuity hole with perl (suidperl) and nosuid mounts on Linux (Nix)
Re: Linux For PDAs (Nix)
Re: SysV vs. BSD ps Re: - deprecated - why? (Nix)
Re: Can I run a DOS Device Driver in an emulator (Nix)
Re: BeOS and Linux (Nix)
Re: Modest next goal for Linux (Nix)
Re: help!!! On reinstalling Red Hat (Jens Kristian S�gaard)
Re: Why I'm dumping Linux, going back to Windblows ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Crossposted-To:
comp.windows.x,comp.os.linux.advocacy,comp.os.linux.development.apps,comp.os.linux.x
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Joseph H Allen)
Subject: New free widget library: Notif-0.1
Date: Sat, 30 Jan 1999 06:44:42 GMT
I have been working on a new freeware widget library for X/Linux. If you
are unsatisfied with Qt, Lesstif, Tk and GTK, try Notif!
ftp://virek.vwis.com/pub/jhallen/notif-0.1.tar.Z.
Notif is written in C, but uses C-preprocessor tricks to make C into an
object oriented language. It should in theory be easy to translate the
source almost mechanically into C++, but I'm more interested in a C widget
library for now.
Currently, it is under the Gnu copyleft, but if this is really a problem, I
might be willing to use something else (something like the Berkeley license,
perhaps).
I have used this widget library for the user interface of a database (a
shipping system, actually) and for an embedded Linux application using
a Dynapro touch-screen instead of a mouse/keyboard. Let me know if you want
code to interface to the Dynapro touch-panel.
Anyway, I'm curious if there is any interest in this project now that Gtk is
out there. Let me know what you think.
Notif features:
- Notif has documentation in the form of ascii .man files.
- 3d Motif-like border effects
- drawing is always (0,0) relative, even where there are borders
- any widget can contain other widgets. There is a powerful placement
manager for controlling the position of widgets.
- Notif has scalable icons with bezier curves.
- any widget can scroll- you do not have to use a special widget for
scrolling.
- notif understands multi-key sequence bindings
- Notif has: cascading menus, buttons, toggle button, radio buttons, index
tab selector thingy, scroll bars, balloon help, drag & drop, lists, and
text edit fields.
- I'm satisfied with the low level works on the widgets, but notif needs
more high-level widgets like a file selector, paned windows and option
buttons.
- Notif does not use messy variable length argument lists for parameter
settings. I think it's pretty easy to use.
Hello world for notif looks like this:
#include <stdio.h>
#include "../notif/notif.h"
int quit(stat,b) /* Quit callback function */
Button *b;
{
if(!stat)
exit(0);
return stat;
}
main()
{
Button *mainw;
izws(); /* Initialize notif */
mainw=mk(Button); /* Create a button */
sttext(mainw,"Hello, world!"); /* Create a text widget and add it
to the button */
stfn(mainw,fn1(quit,mainw)); /* Set the callback function */
add(root,mainw); /* Add to root window */
for(;;) ws(), serv(); /* Process events */
}
--
/* [EMAIL PROTECTED] (192.74.137.5) */ /* Joseph H. Allen */
int a[1817];main(z,p,q,r){for(p=80;q+p-80;p-=2*a[p])for(z=9;z--;)q=3&(r=time(0)
+r*57)/7,q=q?q-1?q-2?1-p%79?-1:0:p%79-77?1:0:p<1659?79:0:p>158?-79:0,q?!a[p+q*2
]?a[p+=a[p+=q]=q]=q:0:0;for(;q++-1817;)printf(q%79?"%c":"%c\n"," #"[!a[q-1]]);}
------------------------------
From: Tony Hoyle <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: BIOS passwords
Date: Fri, 29 Jan 1999 12:53:47 +0000
nexus wrote:
>
> how would one write a program in linux that would display BIOS passwords
> to the user......?.........for that matter, where is BIOS memory mapped
> in linux and how would you access it?
Display BIOS passwords? This is probably very hard (if it's even
possible) and certainly
not desirable (I can think of no legitimate use for this).
I beleive there's a device for reading/writing the bios RAM. However
it's easy to trash your machine
using it, so it's only for the very brave. The bios ROM is not mapped
AFAIK, as there is no actual
use for it.
Tony
====================================================================================
If Bill Gates had a dime for every time a Windows box crashed...
.... Oh, wait a minute, he already does.
====================================================================================
[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://falklands.magenta-logic.com
====================================================================================
------------------------------
From: Phillip Stanley-Marbell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To:
alt.os.linux,comp.os.linux.advocacy,comp.os.misc,comp.sys.misc,comp.unix.advocacy
Subject: Re: TAO: the ultimate OS
Date: Sat, 30 Jan 1999 03:20:46 -0500
"Vladimir Z. Nuri" wrote:
> an HTML version of this article can be found at:
>
> http://www8.pair.com/mnajtiv/tao.html
>
"Are you gonna bark all day little doggy, are are you gonna bite ?"
I respect people taking the effort to do stuff, but it was difficult to
follow what you were getting at. It also seems like you had the
concepts of operating system and application environments confused.
>From my understanding, many of the things you descibe are application
level elemnts, and not part of the OS proper. It would also be nice to
see some... errrr.... uhhhhmmm... code ?
- pip
http://xok.org/people/pip
------------------------------
From: Carlos Vidal <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: help!!! On reinstalling Red Hat
Date: Sat, 30 Jan 1999 09:13:22 +0000
Scott MacDonald wrote:
> Hi, I have a linux box someone gave me with red hat 5.1. He says he doesn't
> remember the password(yeah right,) so I need to reinstall(I have a red hat
> cd).
The easieast is probably to get the RedHat boot image and rescue diskette
from the net or from the RedHat CD (under 'images'), boot the system,
mount the root file system, edit /etc/passwd and erase the current
password.
--
Carlos Vidal
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
------------------------------
From: Johan Kullstam <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: alt.os.linux,comp.os.linux.development.apps,comp.os.linux.setup
Subject: Re: Why I'm dumping Linux, going back to Windblows
Date: 29 Jan 1999 09:04:04 -0500
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Leslie Mikesell) writes:
> In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
> Nix <$}xin{[email protected]> wrote:
> >Jan Andres <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> >
> >> I think this is the way Unix is meant to be used: You don't have
> >> multiple programs that partially do the same thing, as this would be
> >> like reinventing the wheel.
but reinventing the wheel *is* the unix way. it is also,
paradoxically, what makes unix popular since unix makes it easy to
invent wheels.
> >The exception that proves the rule: awk sed perl
i don't think this is an exeption. it is rather the rule. consider
compress, gzip, bzip2
cp tar cpio dd
how many text-editors are there?
how many ways to configure the color of your xterm exist?
it seems that all these little programs do 90% of what you want. to
get the other 10% someone writes an overlapping applet to cover a few
new cases. under closed-source unix where you can't even fix/improve
the utilities this increased the pressure for proliferation of little
hacks. now it's mostly that old bugaboo of backwards compatibility
which hinders altering/improving existing programs (consider the flap
about ps trying to merge bsd and sysv behaviors).
paradoxically, the easy extensibility of writing stuff as you go along
and need them is what has made unix strong. shell conventions like
redirection and piping has helped paste all sorts of things together
and allow a small quick hack to be useful.
> Historically those didn't all exist at the same time.
but they all exist now. and they will continue to exist for the
forseeable future.
> Awk does things sed doesn't, perl came later and does even more. Sed
> is nearly a straight superset of grep, though. If sed had been done
> first, operating as grep could have been a command line option.
--
johan kullstam
------------------------------
From: Peter Mutsaers <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.os.linux.misc
Subject: Re: COM for Linux?
Date: 30 Jan 1999 09:51:41 +0100
>> "AP" == Aaron Perrin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
AP> Does anyone know if a Component Object Model (COM) port is
AP> available for linux? If not, is any group or company planning
AP> or developing such a port?
COM can't be ported, since there is no spec. The only "spec" is the
way that Microsofts toolset works. One might try reverse engineering,
but that's a lot of work and chances are big that before you finish
the port is oblolete because Microsoft made changes to its
implementation and thus to the "standard".
AP> I'd like to work on some applications for linux that would
AP> utilize distributed COM components, and I want to know if this
AP> is possible.
Go with a decent standard for such things: Corba. It has a published
spec, has more features, and implementations of different vendors can
interoperate. Also it is easier to use (IMO) and can be used from more
languages.
--
Peter Mutsaers | Abcoude (Utrecht), | Trust me, I know
[EMAIL PROTECTED] | the Netherlands | what I'm doing.
===============+=====================+=================
Running FreeBSD-3.0 UNIX. See http://www.freebsd.org
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: How to flush the file cache ?
Date: Sat, 30 Jan 1999 09:10:29 GMT
On Fri, 29 Jan 1999 14:41:38 +0100, Renaud Lottiaux
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Is anybody know how to flush the file cache
> quickly and easily ?
see man sync
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Dick Repasky)
Subject: Howto halt bootup after initrd failure?
Date: 29 Jan 1999 15:51:03 GMT
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
I'm working on an initrd script, and I would like to be able to
halt the bootup process if things go badly in the script.
I assume that the kernel is insensitive to the return code
of /linuxrc. True?
If so, what's the best way to halt bootup. Right now my
inclination is to have /linuxrc set the the real root device
to /dev/null. Will that work? Will it cause problems?
Thanks,
Dick
--
Remove the underscore from my e-mail address to reply by mail.
------------------------------
From: Nix <$}xin{[email protected]>
Crossposted-To:
comp.os.linux.misc,comp.os.linux.advocacy,comp.software.year-2000,comp.unix.advocacy
Subject: Re: PROPOSAL: comp.unix.year-2038 (WAS: 2038 and Linux)
Date: 30 Jan 1999 09:06:11 +0000
Andreas Schwab <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> Andre Fachat <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
>
> |> In comp.os.linux.development.system Bloody Viking <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> |>
> |> > Yeah, before the time_t expiry, you tar up the ext2fs partitions, move the
> |> > tars, then format the ext2fs partitions into ext3fs, and untar right back.
> |>
> |> I'm no expert, but how does tar save the dates of a file?
>
> As an octal ascii string, like all other numbers in the header.
That is to say, `as a time_t'?
--
`I didn't want the bug *fixed*, I wanted to bitch pointlessly.' - Matthew
R. Williams on alt.religion.emacs
------------------------------
From: Nix <$}xin{[email protected]>
Crossposted-To: comp.os.linux.setup
Subject: Re: Internal PCI modem
Date: 30 Jan 1999 09:37:40 +0000
Robert Krawitz <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> What's worse, I've seen a catalog that promotes these as "working with
> the power of your processor" and "because it's designed for Windows,
> it will get the best performance" or some such nonsense. Promoting a
> bug as if it's a feature.
More to the point, er, when do you want `performance' from a modem in
any respect but `sticking the bits down the phone line fast'? Even a
fool would surely be able to work out that using the CPU for things
doesn't improve the rate-of-sticking-down-the-phone-line.
Or perhaps not, since these things sell :(
--
`I didn't want the bug *fixed*, I wanted to bitch pointlessly.' - Matthew
R. Williams on alt.religion.emacs
------------------------------
From: Nix <$}xin{[email protected]>
Crossposted-To: comp.os.linux.misc,comp.lang.perl.misc
Subject: Re: Secuity hole with perl (suidperl) and nosuid mounts on Linux
Date: 30 Jan 1999 05:11:18 +0000
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Peter Samuelson) writes:
> Linus most of the time
> seems more than reasonable and open in his development process -- for
> small changes he will literally take patches from anybody, and for
> large changes he discusses the issues on the mailing lists.
>From my observations Linus' Golden Rules appear to be
- Thou shalt not make Linux into a non-Unix (thus thou shalt obey POSIX
unless they perpetrate a spectacular brokenness)
- Thou shalt not implement a patch in an ugly or unmaintainable manner
- Thou shalt not get a scheme implemented which uglifies or overly
complicates the kernel internals
Everything else seems to be pure `technical merit'. (And when you think
about it most of these are `technical merit' too.)
My experience when the suid scripts issue came up last, some time back,
is that there was little consensus on it and what there was leant towards
`suid scripts are not a kernel thing, leave it up to the interpreter'.
Simply that there is no consensus on it should say something.
--
`I didn't want the bug *fixed*, I wanted to bitch pointlessly.' - Matthew
R. Williams on alt.religion.emacs
------------------------------
From: Nix <$}xin{[email protected]>
Subject: Re: Linux For PDAs
Date: 30 Jan 1999 05:27:56 +0000
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Christopher B. Browne) writes:
> iii) Vendors are probably under nondisclosure to Microsoft, so there's no
> assistance in getting a boot/load process going.
!?!?!!
You mean that vendors are willing to sign a nondisclosure agreement
which says `I will not tell anyone else how my own system boots'?
Normally nondisclosure agreementa say something about your not
discussing knowledge you have gained from the other party, not about
your not passing on your own knowledge to others (if you see what I
mean. Er. That wasn't exactly clear...)
--
`I didn't want the bug *fixed*, I wanted to bitch pointlessly.' - Matthew
R. Williams on alt.religion.emacs
------------------------------
From: Nix <$}xin{[email protected]>
Subject: Re: SysV vs. BSD ps Re: - deprecated - why?
Date: 30 Jan 1999 04:16:52 +0000
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Peter Samuelson) writes:
> Yea, verily. Back in my SysV days I had an alias for ps -u $USER.
> OTOH, if you're interested in someone *else*'s processes, the best BSD
> ps can do for you is let you grep for '^luser '.
And, of course, bsd ps doesn't have -o {foo}. -o is wonderful for
quick-hack shell scripts :)
--
`I didn't want the bug *fixed*, I wanted to bitch pointlessly.' - Matthew
R. Williams on alt.religion.emacs
------------------------------
From: Nix <$}xin{[email protected]>
Crossposted-To: comp.os.linux.development,comp.os.linux.hardware,comp.os.linux.misc
Subject: Re: Can I run a DOS Device Driver in an emulator
Date: 30 Jan 1999 09:12:56 +0000
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Andreas Mohr) writes:
> Either use DOSEMU with full I/O port access, or use Wine in a few months
> when DOS driver will be implemented there.
How much communication is there between the Wine people and the DOSEMU
people? I ask because they seem to be approaching exactly the same
problem from different directions (and, admittedly, with somewhat
different emphases and goals). Is there a significant amount of code
sharing?
--
`I didn't want the bug *fixed*, I wanted to bitch pointlessly.' - Matthew
R. Williams on alt.religion.emacs
------------------------------
From: Nix <$}xin{[email protected]>
Subject: Re: BeOS and Linux
Date: 30 Jan 1999 09:39:44 +0000
Arthur Chiu <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> BeOS supports state of the art hardware technology. Linux is a few
> steps behind.
Howso?
--
`I didn't want the bug *fixed*, I wanted to bitch pointlessly.' - Matthew
R. Williams on alt.religion.emacs
------------------------------
From: Nix <$}xin{[email protected]>
Crossposted-To: comp.os.linux.advocacy
Subject: Re: Modest next goal for Linux
Date: 30 Jan 1999 09:52:11 +0000
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Matthias Warkus) writes:
> Hold a mouse button down and see how Windows goes into a frenzy while you
> are holding it. What does it do, BTW - poll for the release event?
The UI code busy-waits for mouse events :(
Totally imbecilic programming.
--
`I didn't want the bug *fixed*, I wanted to bitch pointlessly.' - Matthew
R. Williams on alt.religion.emacs
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Jens Kristian S�gaard)
Subject: Re: help!!! On reinstalling Red Hat
Date: 30 Jan 1999 13:42:30 +0100
"Scott MacDonald" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> reinstall linux clean? I have the cd, but no boot floppy disk. When I try to
> boot to Win98 floppy disk, it doesn't even see it, and lilo does its thing.
When you see the lilo prompt just enter:
linux 1
( this assuming that you normally type linux to start ... linux )
That would give you a root-shell. Now use passwd to enter a new
password. Then use the command "reboot".
Now you should be able to login with your new password.
--
Jens Kristian S�gaard,
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Crossposted-To: alt.os.linux,comp.os.linux.development.apps,comp.os.linux.setup
Subject: Re: Why I'm dumping Linux, going back to Windblows
Date: 30 Jan 1999 03:42:54 -0800
In article <78u8rd$1nbn$[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, [EMAIL PROTECTED] says...
>
>>An example helps one UNDERSTAND. this is something you or les dont
>>seem to understand.
>
>Perhaps we would understand if you gave an example that is somehow
>better than your description???
>
"3.1.1 Creating a directory tree from number of files
When you being using cvs, you will probably already have
serveral projects that can be put under cvs control.
In these cases the easiest way is to use the import
command.
An example is probably the easiest way to explain
how to use it. if the files you want to install in
cvs reside in 'wdir', and you want to them to appear
in the repository as '$CVSROOT/yoyodyne/rdir', you can do
this:
$cd wdir
$cvs import -m "sources" yoyodyne/rdir yoyo start"
Here was see the author say "An example is probably
the easiest way to explain how.."
I did not say it.
An example HELP explain things, a simple concept that you can not
grasp for some reason.
The above btw is from "Version management with CVS"
by Per Cederqvist et al.
>
>The hard way is to try typing commands without first spending
>some time learning the shell metacharacters and the way
>the tools interact via pipelines, process grouping and
>the like. The best way to do that is to read the sh man
>page until you understand it, and after that you won't have
>any trouble reading the other man pages.
No one is saying that one should use something before they
understand it, the point is: examples help one in speeding
the understanding process.
It is really very simple concept, what about it you can
not understand??
>
>I wonder if your dentist starting working on teeth that way?
>
I hope that my dentist did not just learn from reading books about
how to pull a teeth out.
>
>>Sure. You are the only one who is smart and want to learn, and every
>>one else is dumb and do not want to learn.
>
>You really have this backwards. Most people can learn if they take
>the time. What we are trying to point out is that acting without
>understanding can be dangerous, and that is the way I see blindly
>following textbook examples.
What we are trying to point, is that examples help one understand.
And without examples, many will not understand well.
>The other problem regarding examples
>in man pages is that many/most of the programs are typically used in
>combinations:
> find /dir -name 'wild*' -print | xargs chmod g+w
> dump 0f - /source | (cd /dest ; restore xf -)
> rsh remotehost 'cd /dir ; tar -cf - . ' | dd obs=10k of=/dev/tape
>
>Which man page should contain the example and would you clutter all of
>them with the quoting, grouping, piping details that are really done
>by the shell?
>
Look at VMS help and you'll see what I mean.
This is not rocket science you know. few examples of a command
work for some cases is not that hard to do.
You are making something so simple as showing some examples
to a command sound so complicated and thinking of things too
theortically without using some common sense.
The examples do not have to be so perfect or optimal. For some,
they will help, for those like you who are smarter than the
rest of us and can learn without examples, they do not have
to look at them.
Kirk.
------------------------------
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End of Linux-Development-System Digest
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