Linux-Development-Sys Digest #387, Volume #6 Mon, 8 Feb 99 23:14:52 EST
Contents:
Re: Why I'm dumping Linux, going back to Windblows (Thomas Becker)
Re: Purely Technical (J.H.M. Dassen (Ray))
Consultant needed for RH installations... (Graham TerMarsch)
Re: Create Bootable RH 5.2 CD? (Jussi Torhonen)
GGI and 2.2.1 (David L. Bilbey)
Re: What's the best way to do process communication ? (Martin Cracauer)
Re: K6-400 "kernel paging request" errors (Christian Aasland)
Re: C/C++ docs? (David M. Cook)
BIOS passwords (nexus)
Re: Where to get 2.2 kernel (David T. Blake)
Re: Boot Problem on 8.4 gig drive (x86) (Vladymyr Iljyc Lenin)
Re: Why I'm dumping Linux, going back to Windblows (Peter Samuelson)
Re: Where to get 2.2 kernel ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
Re: K6-2 and Linux, Are there any Bug? ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
Shared library problems/curiosities (Mike Dowling)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: Thomas Becker <[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: Mon, 08 Feb 1999 18:32:28 +0100
John Hasler schrieb:
> > but IMHO it should be cenralized.
>
> That is just another way of saying that it should not exist.
I think You missunderstood me.
I am not for centralizing the developement.
But for me as a newbie a centralized documentation would be nice.
Bye Thomas
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (J.H.M. Dassen (Ray))
Subject: Re: Purely Technical
Date: 6 Feb 1999 19:20:58 GMT
Eugene K. <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>I have a modem hooked up to /dev/cua2.
The cua* devices have been in the process of being phased out for a long
time. You should switch to ttyS2 instead.
>Once I accidently turned off my computer without shutting down first, and
>since then I have not been able to access my modem. I am pretty sure this
>has something to do with lock files, because on some applications it says
>"Sorry, the modem is busy".
You probably have a /var/lock/LCK..cua2 lock file left over from that time;
just rm it.
HTH,
Ray
--
Tevens ben ik van mening dat Nederland overdekt dient te worden.
------------------------------
From: Graham TerMarsch <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: linux.redhat.development,comp.os.linux.development,comp.os.linux.help
Subject: Consultant needed for RH installations...
Date: Mon, 25 Jan 1999 22:30:56 GMT
East Coast Client Seeking RH 5.2 Installation Expert
One of my good clients is seeking a consultant to customize the
installation of a large number of RedHat 5.2 Systems in a heterogenous
computing environment. The client needs someone familiar with all
aspects of RH 5.2 installation, from customizing boot, supplemental and
rescue diskettes to probing for hardware to customizing the installation
steps. Location is not a factor and travel will likely not be
required. The opportunity may lead to on-going consulting work.
If you have these qualifications and are interested, please send me your
resume or curriculum vitae to me ([EMAIL PROTECTED]).
--
Graham TerMarsch
------------------------------
From: Jussi Torhonen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Create Bootable RH 5.2 CD?
Date: Mon, 8 Feb 1999 18:57:05 +0200
On Sat, 6 Feb 1999, Dan O'Reilly wrote:
> How does one go about creating a bootable LINUX RedHat 5.2 CD? I have
> an HP 7200 IDE CD burner on my PC.
http://www.iki.fi/jt/homebrew_redhat_cd.html
http://www.users.fast.net/~rodsmith/rhjol.html
Jussi
--
===================================================================
Jussi Torhonen # E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Tietosavo Oyj # Corporate website: http://www.tietosavo.fi
P.O.Box 1582 # Personal homepage: http://www.iki.fi/jt
FIN-70461 KUOPIO # Tel: +358-17-193231 GSM +358-50-5946209
FINLAND # Fax: +358-17-193355 73's de OH7DC
------------------------------
From: David L. Bilbey <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: GGI and 2.2.1
Date: 8 Feb 1999 17:37:43 GMT
Was I incorrect in thinking that GGI came built into 2.2.1? I just upgraded to 2.2.1
and I don't have the ggi/ include directory. Did I do something wrong during config
(selecting vga console) or do I just have to install GGI separately? Thanks.
Bilbey
--
"I'm not sure I want to get the nickname `The Love Machine,' because how
does that affect my nickname now, which is `The Lawn-Cutting Machine'?"
--Jack Handey
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Martin Cracauer)
Subject: Re: What's the best way to do process communication ?
Date: 8 Feb 1999 16:09:32 GMT
Markus Kohler <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
>I need a way to communicate between two or more processes on the
>same machine and exchange data as fast as possible.
>The data are arrays of double's with a size
>from 10^3 elements to 10^6 elements.
>Performance is VERY critical.
>What should I use, shared memory, FIFO's, message queues or somthing else ?
You're talking two different things here:
1) Making data accessable to "the other" process
2) Notifying them that new data is useable
With shared you do only the first and you will not build a reliable
application if you use a part of this file as a "now data is updated
completely and is useable" message, unless you're implementing your
own spinlocking mechanism.
Let us first attack the notification problem, there are generally two
ways:
- Explicit notification through the kernel using systems call. This
could be a pipe, semaphores etc.
- A test-and-set memory cell in the shared data segment and
implementing a spinlock on top of it.
The first solution has system call overhead, the second one polls and
burns userlevel CPU and on some systems and some kinds of shared
memory it force kernel work (to handle the dirty pages). Don't do this
on NFS drives :-)
The spinlock solution can only be faster when your processes mostly do
their own thing outside the shared memory and the time needed to get
data from the shared segment is short (so that spinlock locking
attempt collisions are rare).
>I know that shared memory is usually the fastest but since it cannot grow
>dynamically it seems to me that it is not really an option.
It also ignores the problem of synchronisation. Do not attempt to use
a weak (non-atomic) synchronisation scheme on shared memory. Even if
it works at first, you will loose sooner or later when your
application "tightens up", that means if the hardware gets faster, if
you improve concurrency and timing etc.
You didn't tell us enough about the nature of your
application. Questions affecting the answer:
1) How frequement are changes to the data and how much data is changed
on each such update. If you have many updates, but the amount of
changed data is small, it may be the best solution to use a pipe. You
send new data down the pipe, that will handle synchronisation and data
update with one mechanism. Onother advantage is that this can easily
be extended to work over a TCP connection instead of a pipe.
The drawback of course is that each process has its own copy of the
whole thing. One million floating pointer number's isn't that much if
you transfer the whole thing at once at program startup and then send
diffs. This can payoff only if your processes mostly work in different
areas of the data space so that the OS pages out the rest of the
stuff, you should probably enforce this at startup time. Load all
processes with data, then "rattle" memory a bit (compile a STL C++
program or such), so that pageout pauses are done once and for all.
2) Why do you need several processes?
- So you have more userlevel CPU on an SMP system?
- For concurrency on external events (network, user interface)? If so,
how do you wait for the events?
If the second applies, you might want to use a userlevel thread system
instead of several processes. This will push all the synchronisation
overhead from the kernel into your application, which is a big win,
but will break badly if you libraries are reentrendant.
If your (then pseudo-) processes come along identifiable point in
program flow quite often, you could use a non-interrupting threading
scheme. You reschulde on these checkpoints. Since you can be sure that
your program is not in a C library call, you can quite safely jongjump
to the next process, as long as you remember to treat C library
functions with static buffers or global state right.
Martin
--
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
Martin Cracauer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> http://www.bik-gmbh.de/~cracauer/
There is a business like showbusiness. http://www.microsoft.com/
Where you want to go. Today. http://www.freebsd.org/
------------------------------
From: Christian Aasland <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: linux.dev.kernel,comp.os.linux.hardware,comp.os.linux.misc
Subject: Re: K6-400 "kernel paging request" errors
Date: Tue, 09 Feb 1999 01:26:03 GMT
Another thought - my roomate had a problem with his machine locking up after a few
minutes of q2, figured out it was a heat problem. He solved the problem by taking
the cover off his case, then pointed a floor-fan (yup, one of those two-foot
diameter ones) right at the motherboard, voila! I'm not saying this is your
problem, but it would at least heat as the culprit if you still crashed.
Stefan Lucke wrote:
> [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> >
> > Suffering from an unstable system.
> > K6-400 (stepping 12), Motherboard FIC PA-2013 (VIA MP3),
> > 256 MB Ram (PC-100), (the board allows to downclock the RAM to 66 Mhz, what I
> > did),
> > AGP Matrox G200, 2 SCSI-Controller, EATA-DPT (only Disks)
> > and ncr53c825 (DDS-3, CDROM ).
> > RedHat 5.2 Kernel 2.0.36 and I tried as well all 2.2.0-preXX. the last
> > 2.2.0-pre7ac2.
> > The system keeps chrashing.
> >
> > I am trying to fix the system now since christmas. Getting frustrated....
> >
> > Any ideas, suggestions??
>
> Even though I�ve got a differnet mother-board (DFI .., AGP Matrox G200,
> AHA2940 - disks, dds1-dc, cdrom) Kernel paging errors occure sometimes
> upon loading of the bttv driver.
>
> Did you try other FSB clock rates?
> With my K6-2 400 it is impossible to compile the kernel with FSB 100MHz
> (no go at 400, 350, 300 - errors: sig 11 - sig 6). Kernel compile is
> ok at any FSB 95Mhz rate. (428, 380, 333). But now I�ve some trouble
> compiling the QT library (sig 11 :-(( at 95 MHz FSB). Perhaps its a good
> idea to replace the processor. Mine has production lable (below voltage
> infos) A 9849 EPFW.
>
> Stefan Lucke
--
Christian Aasland
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
ICQ#: 30268555
AIM:caasland
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (David M. Cook)
Subject: Re: C/C++ docs?
Date: Mon, 08 Feb 1999 04:20:52 GMT
On Sat, 6 Feb 1999 13:49:50 -0500, Scott Nelson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>I just installed Red Hat 5.2 and would like to do some development. Where
>can I get some docs on the Linux API? There is a small HTML document that
>is on my disk that lists some API functions but doesn't describe their
>prototypes, return codes, etc. Very incomplete.
Try the libc info pages. However, they are not the greatest for bedside
reading. You might want to pick up one of the books mentioned on my Linux
development page:
http://www.kernel-panic.com/devel/
Dave Cook
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (nexus)
Subject: BIOS passwords
Date: 29 Jan 1999 06:27:21 GMT
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?
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (David T. Blake)
Subject: Re: Where to get 2.2 kernel
Date: 08 Feb 1999 17:31:35 -0800
[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
>For rpm's, see ftp://rawhide.redhat.com (and check the README).
>
>In article <79n5t3$[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
> "Daryl Stultz" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>> Hey all, could someone please post a reliable source for the 2.2 source code
>> (source and headers). I've looked all over and can't seem to find it. I
>> would prefer rpms but I'll take what I can get.
>>
>> Thanks.
No, don't see the rawhide stuff.
Practically everyone I know has been upgrading by going
to www.linuxhq.com, then getting the rawhide packages,
and then failing to build a 2.2.* kernel.
Don't get the rawhide stuff. Upgrade rpms from
updates.redhat.com or ftp.redhat.com - updates
or standard rpms for Redhat 5.2
Check the linuxhq page, especially for modutils and
utils-linux stuff. Upgrade from anywhere but rawhide
and you will be fine. Unless you really like debugging
the kernel build with the developmental glibc stuff...
--
Dave Blake
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
------------------------------
From: Vladymyr Iljyc Lenin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Boot Problem on 8.4 gig drive (x86)
Date: Tue, 09 Feb 1999 01:33:38 +0100
i think that was at some newsgroup many days back
linux bootable partion must be instaled under first 2 gigs of disk
it's limitation of 32-bit kernel
then you may organize partitions in you disk like this(i think you have
SCO and Solaris on SCSI drives, as you wrote)
/dev/hda1 1GB with lilo in superblock and set as active (and at begin of
disk)
/dev/hda2 xGB of 2linux partition mounted under /usr or at some other
point
/dev/hda3 xMB of swap partition(kernels 2.0.x and 2.1.x is limited to
maximum 128MB one swap parition size and maximum 16 swap partitions,
2.2.x is limited to 2GB swap partition. RH5.1 have kernel 2.0.34 i
think, but i'm not sure. you may use rather instalation RH5.2, thtat
uses kernel kernel 2.0.36, but is more stable and less bugy)
--
= lenin =
proste lenin
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Peter Samuelson)
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 00:23:59 -0600
Reply-To: Peter Samuelson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
[<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>]
> > I don't see a lot of middle ground here. You either understand
> > what rm -rf . means or you shouldn't be typing it.
[<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>]
> You are really not thinking here.
Beg to differ. He really is thinking here. I agree with him, in fact:
if you do not understand `rm -rf .' you should not be using it.
> > End users that don't want to learn how to use power tools should
> > have someone else do it for them.
> I think you are just going off a steep tanget here.
I think Les is talking from the POV of the earlier suggestion that if
you want to learn `find' you should read the manpage on `sh'. Anyone
who knows how to use `find' knows why this is: you have to know about
shell metacharacters and how/why to escape them, or you'll have a
terrible time with `find'.
Not a tangent -- quite relevant, in my opinion. The original poster
(whose identity I have lost track of) was complaining about having a
lot of trouble figuring out how to use `find'. In my experience the
hardest thing to figure out about `find' is quoting those metachars.
Assuming that was the difficulty, a suggestion to read up on the shell
is more than appropriate. If you are not willing to read about shell
for use with `find', it will only bite you when you start having
trouble with metacharacters for `sed'. And `tr'. And `grep'....
> All what people are saying, is that one or two examples at end of a
> man page helps many people understand something more. This is not a
> new concept, VMS had this for more than 25 years now.
I learned Unix largely from manpages, with the occaional question for
the gurus thrown in here and there. For those who cannot do what I
did, and I know some people can, there are intro-to-Unix books. These
always have plenty of examples.
But there are many users who will not read man pages, examples or no
examples. These are the same people who own "Linux Unleashed" but have
never opened it either. Maybe you have never dealt with this type. I
have. They have no interest in learning something new, they want the
system to be intuitive enough that they don't have to learn anything.
No command line is going to ever be there. Ever.
> Maybe one day the Unix programmers will wake up before it is too late.
Now this sentence makes absolutely no sense. Too late for what?
After a low profile in the '80s, Unix has been getting more and more
popular for several years now. Linux in particular has been growing
its user base almost exponentially in the past few years. This despite
any alleged problems understanding manpages. All this has of course
pros and cons. The big con, of course, being that there are getting to
be a lot of stupid users out there, formerly babysat by Apple and
Microsoft, that we now have to contend with.
So if we manage to turn off the users who can't even parse a manpage,
and send them running back to the wonderful world of Windoze 2002, what
have we lost? I will not be crying. I will be more than a little
surprised, however, if the trend is even noticeable. There are no
indications so far of a mass revolt against Linux because people have
suddenly realized that some manpages aren't written with art history
majors in mind.
Did that sound snotty? (Yes.) Oh well. I really do not see why one
OS has to be for everyone. If you want to make it for everyone,
please. Be a hero. Patch and redistribute those pesky manpages with
all the examples people can ever want. Earn a place in Valhalla. (If
you aren't planning to contribute to this effort, maybe you can explain
why not, and maybe even withdraw your complaint.)
--
Peter Samuelson
<sampo.creighton.edu!psamuels>
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: Where to get 2.2 kernel
Date: Tue, 09 Feb 1999 00:09:51 GMT
For rpm's, see ftp://rawhide.redhat.com (and check the README).
In article <79n5t3$[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
"Daryl Stultz" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Hey all, could someone please post a reliable source for the 2.2 source code
> (source and headers). I've looked all over and can't seem to find it. I
> would prefer rpms but I'll take what I can get.
>
> Thanks.
>
>
============= Posted via Deja News, The Discussion Network ============
http://www.dejanews.com/ Search, Read, Discuss, or Start Your Own
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Crossposted-To: alt.os.linux.slackware,comp.os.linux.hardware,comp.os.linux.misc
Subject: Re: K6-2 and Linux, Are there any Bug?
Date: Tue, 09 Feb 1999 03:33:27 GMT
I have no problem using Slakware or any other linux or UNIX on my K6-233 with
a Houston M550 board that has a 430TX board with a 64 meg dimm. I used to
have alot of problems with my PC crashing in any OS even linux. Then i put my
bus speed at 75MHz instead of 66 and downclocked my CPU to 225 and it works
gtreat no problems since.
In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> In comp.os.linux.development.system Hilaire Fernandes
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> > When I install linux, the kernel load, it starts to make its uusal
> > check-in and after the PCI probe the system just reset.
> > I've almost 20 Pc where I can't install linux :(
>
> There are plenty of people who have had no problems with that
> combination, including me. On the other hand, there are people who
> have reported the same problems as you have. I'm not sure if there is
> a clear or common problem. What brand of motherboards are you using?
> Have you checked to see if it is AMD certified? Are you over-clocking
> the CPU? Have you tried taking some memory out of the machine, or
> doing 'mem=16M'? Have you tried a Pentium CPU? Can you boot on a
> boot floppy? What distribution are you installing, and have you tried
> difference kernels?
>
> robert
>
> --
> robert cope austin, texas [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> http://www.linuxwizard.net [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
============= Posted via Deja News, The Discussion Network ============
http://www.dejanews.com/ Search, Read, Discuss, or Start Your Own
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Mike Dowling)
Subject: Shared library problems/curiosities
Date: 8 Feb 1999 18:31:30 GMT
Problem:
Suddenly netscape stopped working :-). The reason was that it could not find
the X11 shared libraries.
$ ldd /usr/localnetscape/netscape
libXt.so.6 => not found
libSM.so.6 => not found
libICE.so.6 => not found
libXmu.so.6 => not found
libXpm.so.4 =>
/usr/X11R6/lib/libXpm.so.4 (0x4000a000)
libXext.so.6 => not found
libX11.so.6 => not found
libdl.so.1 => /lib/libdl.so.1 (0x40019000)
libc.so.5 => /lib/libc.so.5 (0x4001c000)
libg++.so.27 => /usr/lib/libg++.so.27
(0x400dc000)
libstdc++.so.27 =>
/usr/lib/libstdc++.so.27 (0x40110000)
libm.so.5 => /lib/libm.so.5 (0x4013f000)
(I hate jed; why the silly indentations with cut and paste? Still looking
for an appropriate editor for usenet and email.)
Anyway, the problem is NOT ldconfig.
$cat /etc/ld.so.conf
/usr/X11R6/lib
/usr/local/lib
Every other X11 binary finds the shared libraries, just not netscape. I
avoid this multi-megabyte bug monster as much as possible, so I cannot say
exactly when it ceased to work, but my guess is when I updated from
xfree-3.3.3 to xfree-3.3.3.1. Anyway, I now cannot induce it to work.
Any help/suggestions is/are much appreciated.
Curiosity:
I installed pgcc-1.1.1 about a week ago. It is the egcs compiler with
Pentioum optimisation patches. I compiled a few binaries and the kernel
with it, which worked well, but it produced segmentation faults with
procmeter3, and failed to compile TeX and glibc. (As a background as to why
I had to compile all these things again, it was the XFree upgrade. Most X11
binaries then only produced segmentation faults, including procmeter, xdvi
etc. The problem presumably lies with the XF86_SVGA support for the G200
chip as I had no problems with the XS3 server at home. The compilation of
glibc was connected with the new compiler.)
Anyway, I then re-installed my old compiler. I re-compiled and installed
everything with the old compiler again, and everything is hunky dory.
Reboot, whoops! None of the newly installed binaries works. They all try to
load some non-existent function from some shared library. The solution was
to re-complile the stuff all over again!
I am trying the work out what went wrong. My first explaination was that
some binaries were using the shared libraries from the C++ compiler, that I
had neglected to use ldconfig on re-installing my old compiler, whence the
problems after booting. That may be plausible for binaries like procmeter3
and groff which compile using C++, yet, for the life of me, I cannot think
why it should affect binaries like jed (the crappy editor I'm using for this
posting), or TeX, or dvips, etc. None of these require a shared library
that was pulled out from under its feet on re-installing another compiler.
(If this were the explaination, then woe betide anybody maintaing C++
software after a compiler update!)
Any help much appreciated,
Oh, editors. I used to use emacs all the time, but have since ditched it
for everything that does not require much intelligence. Emacs with auctex
is great, as is emacs for C programming with the gdb support. But emacs and
GNUS is a time consuming over kill. I don't like wasting resourses by
having monster programs running in the background, and emacs takes too long
to start.
For causual stuff like systems administration, vi is ideal. It is fast and
versatile, but it is not very well suited to email. Proof reading and
corrections is tedious with the continual entering edit mode, and exiting
with escape. I have thought of using "emacs -q" which loads rapidly, but it
would be nice to have a few things like fill-paragraph and ispell, which jed
has. But jed has the nasty habit of producing funny indentations. Ideally,
causing emacs to load with a minimal, alternative .emacs file would be
great, but it won't do that. Any suggestions?
Cheers,
Mike Dowling
--
My email address [EMAIL PROTECTED] above is a valid email address.
It is, in fact, a sendmail alias; the digit 'N' is incremented regularly.
Spammed aliases will be deleted. Currently, mike[5,7,8] have been deleted.
If email to mikeN bounces, try mikeN+1.
------------------------------
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End of Linux-Development-System Digest
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