Linux-Development-Sys Digest #781, Volume #6 Fri, 4 Jun 99 21:14:24 EDT
Contents:
Re: TAO: the ultimate OS (Stefaan A Eeckels)
Re: NT driver writer new to Linux kernel/drivers (Timothy J. Lee)
Re: TAO: the ultimate OS (Jimen Ching)
Re: Configuration Manager for Linux ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
Re: firewall transparent proxy using ipfwadm (Daniel Kiracofe)
Re: Configuration Manager for Linux (Peter Samuelson)
Re: TAO: the ultimate OS ("Selious")
Kernel module problem ... (Tomasz Kantecki)
Re: Redhat 6 & NFS (Art Werschulz)
Q: Linux equivalent technologies to Win32? ("George Craig")
Re: What are the differences between mySQL and mSQL? (Don Baccus)
Re: What are the differences between mySQL and mSQL? (Christopher Browne)
Re: 2.2.9 kernel too big? (Mohd H Misnan)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Stefaan A Eeckels)
Crossposted-To: alt.os.linux,comp.os.linux.advocacy,comp.os.misc,comp.unix.advocacy
Subject: Re: TAO: the ultimate OS
Date: 4 Jun 1999 10:17:55 GMT
In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Vladimir Z. Nuri) writes:
> systems cannot be implemented coherently without a coherent
> vision grounding them. does linux repesent a coherent vision? NO.
Insofar as Linux is UNIX, it presents a pretty coherent vision
(essentially, everyting is a file, small, cooperative programs
around a text pipeline, etc). It's a tribute to the coherence
of the UNIX vision that it is still relevant 30 years after it
was conceived.
> does it need to, to advance further? YES. does the linux
> community have a blind spot about this need? YES. does it
> have to be my vision? NO.
Why the obsession with Linux advancing further? It does what
it does quite nicely. Those who want to use it, use it. Those
who need new features, add them (or squeal).
Chris is right - the only way to kickstart a new, better OS
is to write code. If it's good, then the history of Linux
suggests that there will be lots of competent people who'll
adopt it, and turn it into a fully fledged system.
--
Stefaan
--
PGP key available from PGP key servers (http://www.pgp.net/pgpnet/)
___________________________________________________________________
Perfection is reached, not when there is no longer anything to add,
but when there is no longer anything to take away. -- Saint-Exupéry
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Timothy J. Lee)
Subject: Re: NT driver writer new to Linux kernel/drivers
Reply-To: see-signature-for-email-address---junk-not-welcome
Date: Fri, 4 Jun 1999 21:34:33 GMT
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Holden McGroin) writes:
|
|Hi all. I'm an experienced NT kernel developer. I'm looking to get
|back to my hacking roots and have some fun in the Linux world. Can
|someone point me at some good documentation (besides the source) on
|the linux kernel and development for it? You know, block diagrams,
|sample driver, API suite yad yada.
Rubini's Linux Device Drivers book should be helpful for writing
drivers for 2.0.* and early 2.1.* kernels. Publisher is O'Reilly.
--
========================================================================
Timothy J. Lee timlee@
Unsolicited bulk or commercial email is not welcome. netcom.com
No warranty of any kind is provided with this message.
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Jimen Ching)
Subject: Re: TAO: the ultimate OS
Crossposted-To: alt.os.linux,comp.os.linux.advocacy,comp.os.misc,comp.unix.advocacy
Date: Fri, 04 Jun 1999 22:29:29 GMT
Vladimir Z. Nuri ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote:
>but there is another way to do it. I've read the infamous
>"cathedral vs. bazaar" model.. a rambling document if I ever
>read one.. I was a bit shocked/annoyed with how meandering that thing
>is and the fame it has received.
Finally, someone said it. ;-) The fame that this document received is
an indication of the type of audience you need to expect. Any well trained
software engineer would see through that document after the first few
paragraphs. I recently attended a talk by ESR. I was amazed by how
willing people were in accepting the ideas in that paper. And these people
are not just students, they are graduate students and professors in a
university. They took everything ESR said to heart, without question.
And when I raised a question, the audiance was the first to defend the
ideas. This is not the type of environment I would expect from academia.
>a design document IS INDEED A START TO PROJECT X. and perhaps a far more
>sensible one than writing code.
Absolutely. Unfortunately, the audience you are speaking to will not
likely to understand this. Because they are mostly uneducated juveniles,
i.e. teenage, software developer wanabee. I'll admit there are a few
gifted teenagers who can write better software then some of the 40 year
olds I know. But these teenagers are rear. The average usenet'er have
no professional training in software development.
My suggestion to you is to grow thicker skin. There will always be immature
people who say "show me the code". A good software engineer will see the
flaw in this line of thinking and ignore it. Anyone who has tried writing
complex software know that a concept must be developed first, before the
code can be developed. You can't write something if you don't have the
ideas in your head. And if you don't write it down, you'll forget it.
Enough with this rambling. Do what I do and ignore these people. To show
you that there are people who are willing to discuss ideas, here are my
thoughts on your essay.
1. The first mistake you made was to umbrella the OS concept. An operating
system is more than just what the user sees. The idea that an OS should be
designed from the ground up to cater to the end-user is looking at only half
the picture. Everything you suggested _can_ be done with Linux, the kernel.
All OS's need a kernel. Most of the ideas you suggested are components or
modules of the OS that sit on top of the kernel. Take the Hurd for instance.
There is nothing to stop you from implementing _every_ feature you listed
as a Hurd server. That is the power of the Hurd design.
2. As someone else already pointed out, your essay may be ahead of its
time. I.e. the hardware/software tools and techniques may not be available
to implement every single feature of your OS. I.e. what language are you
going to use? Some languages already have the needed tools you need. While
others do not. If the wrong language is chosen, your project will fail
because of the complexity that results from the choice of language. An
example is the template library, STL. Stepanov initially used another
language to implement the STL before he switched to C++. In his paper,
he specifically said C++ allowed him to do the things he wanted to do with
the STL containers. The original language simply was not powerful enough.
Thinking about theory is fine, don't stop. But in that process, you must
also keep an eye on the existing technology. Unless it is part of the
design to implement needed tools, you don't want to over engineer.
3. The third problem I saw can be summed up with, "theory without data".
This is the same problem ESR had with all his papers. There are no data
to support any of the ideas and concepts being discussed. Examples are
not data. For instance, do you have proof that the object file system
design is superior to everything else? What are the alternatives? Did
you do a study of file system and concluded that an object design is
better? All I learned from your essay is that you believe that you can
apply the technique of objects to a file system design. Well, duh. You
can apply the technique of objects to anything. During the talk ESR gave,
I asked him if "_open source_ should be applied to embedded software?"
His answer was, "sure, why not." This is like saying:
Avg Joe: "Fool, can I put a bullet through your head to see what happens?"
Fool: "Sure, why not."
Just because something can be done, doesn't mean it _should_ be done.
Note, I am not suggesting you _can't_ do it. I'm only pointing out that,
without data, there is no reason to do it.
You have some good ideas. But the world is full of good ideas...
Good luck.
--jc
--
Jimen Ching (WH6BRR) [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: Configuration Manager for Linux
Date: 4 Jun 1999 13:38:18 GMT
Selious <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
:>I am sorry but i am not willing to spend my free time at home to a
:> project that is intended to make money.
: I'm sorry too.
: Anyway, will you quit linux when it starts making money ?? Companies will
: make money using linux !! And again, only commercial interesting things, for
: wich companies always pay, shall be sold. That's natural, I develop
: MFC/Windows appz during the day, to afford all this hobby stuff, and I think
: it's better if I could earn enough money with it, to focuss only on linux.
[mucho stuffo snip-snap]
I think he meant that he won't participate in a project that will make
money to only _you_. I wouldn't either... I could join a project where I'd
be sure that I'd get my fair share of the profit. I don't think you'd
develop MFC-stuff without pay, would you?
--
=====================+======================================================
Jan 'Chakie' Ekholm | CS at Åbo Akademi University, Turku, Finland
Linux Inside | I'm the blue screen of death, no-one hears you scream
------------------------------
From: Daniel Kiracofe <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.os.linux.networking,linux.redhat.development
Subject: Re: firewall transparent proxy using ipfwadm
Date: Fri, 04 Jun 1999 09:51:46 -0400
> The ipfwadm program has the ability to redirect incoming traffic to a
> socket on the firewall, even if the traffic is not for the firewall.
> Redirection works fine. How do you determine what the original destination
> was? Example; 3 machines - client (inside the firewall), firewall, and
> distant.host. Client attempts to access a web page on distant.host,
> firewall redirects the request to a socket on the firewall. How does the
> program accept()'ing on that firewall socket determine that the request is
> _to_ distant.host? I can get the client with a getpeername() call. But
> what about the destination? I'm using RedHat 5, kernel 2.0.36. Thanks.
The magic is getsockname(). Ordinarily, this call will give you the IP
of the firewall. With transparent proxying, it gives you the intended
destination address. You should be able to find a little program called
transproxy at ftp://ftp.nlc.net.au/pub/linux/www/. Look at the source
for an example of transparent proxying...
--
/* Daniel */
http://users.gurulink.com/drk
"Fear is only afraid of the absence of itself" - Mediocrates
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Peter Samuelson)
Subject: Re: Configuration Manager for Linux
Date: 4 Jun 1999 08:54:12 -0500
Reply-To: Peter Samuelson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> > I am sorry but i am not willing to spend my free time at home to a
> > project that is intended to make money.
[Selious <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>]
> I'm sorry too.
> Anyway, will you quit linux when it starts making money ?? Companies
> will make money using linux !! And again, only commercial interesting
> things, for wich companies always pay, shall be sold.
Didn't a few companies (obviously Red Hat Software springs to mind)
prove some time ago that if you know how to work it, there is money to
be made in free software? If your product is good enough, companies
can and will pay you to support it. Conventional wisdom used to say
that selling software was really about leasing your intellectual
property. Now it is becoming clear that that is not the only market.
> GPL is great, but not for 'professional' developers, for whom it's a
> living. I mean, would you oppose to people freelancing as
> Linux-experts ?? Why should a linux-admin get paid, and a
> linux-developer get nothing.
See above. I used to be really skeptical of rms's claims that
developers could still make a living writing free software, but in
recent years it has been proven. If you are good enough at what you do
(perhaps it's a high threshold) you *can* get paid to write free
software. SGI pays Jeremy Allison to work on Samba ... Corel pays
people to work on WINE ... SuSE pays people to work on XFree86 ... DEC
paid people to help develop Linux/Alpha ... it's not *just* Cygnus and
Red Hat anymore.
> When all companies use linux, BSD, etc., I think they should pay free
> software taxes, so people like us can have a living of it !!
[...]
> Are you from China or Cuba ???
Wait ... did the same person write both those clips I quote immediately
above? If you want to start calling people Communists, you might also
stop talking about "software taxes".
--
Peter Samuelson
<sampo.creighton.edu!psamuels>
------------------------------
From: "Selious" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: alt.os.linux,comp.os.linux.advocacy,comp.os.misc,comp.unix.advocacy
Subject: Re: TAO: the ultimate OS
Date: Fri, 4 Jun 1999 16:32:44 +0200
>you are free to ignore the post. in fact if you are not
>interested, why are you posting a reply at all? you seem
>to be wasting your time by your own insinuation. I truly sympathize
>with your plight. sometimes I find my time wasted quite frequently as
>well.
You now waist you're time as well...
I think we need to be isolated in a Russian Space Station or something to
get it done (again, make a time-table with tasks to be reached, and if you
fail, realise the impossibility of you're OS !!)
Or talk to Linus... after all this commercial linux success, he probably
already started making a even more difficult OS to get rid of them....
Soon we will be cursing RedHat for commercial attitude...
I mean, who says RedHat 10.0 has to be based on Linux... IBM and Novell have
plenty of licensed UNIX source code, and they would steal KDE and all (make
a binary distribution, etc.).
------------------------------
From: Tomasz Kantecki <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Kernel module problem ...
Date: Fri, 4 Jun 1999 16:53:04 +0200
Hi,
thanks for looking down here. The problem I have to cope with is not
really simple (at least it does not seem to be one).
I am writting a kernel module for LON Talk PC104/ISA adapter. I have
already written the driver in MSDOS environment. During the development I
kept on mind that the driver must be portable at source level. In fact,
everything seemed to be so easy (at the beginning). I read 'Linux Kernel
Module Programming Guide' by Ori Pomerantz, studied some source codes and
started to build Linux (i386) adaptation layer for my driver. After some
time I succeded with mounting my kernel module and it worked (still works)
but ......
- to serve Neuron chip on the card I hook an IRQ, all LON Talk messages
are transferred in IRQ handler routine. It works fine unless the messages
are transferred a little bit faster (about 200 per second) then driver
starts to loose messages and Neuron chip goes down for reset (it always
does so when it is not served in proper time). Moreover, it happens that
all my Linux crashes when executing programmes that use the driver (just
like that).
The question is: is it possible that it crashes because the kernel
suspends execution of my IRQ handler (somehow) to do some important work
and when the system is really loaded then it has no time to serve my IRQ
handler (and Neuron chip as well) in a proper time ??
It is quite likely that my description of the problem is not clear but
if you feel like you know something about developing kernel modules please
help me ...... I will apreciate all kinds of help.
Best regards
Tomek
e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
------------------------------
Subject: Re: Redhat 6 & NFS
From: Art Werschulz <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Fri, 04 Jun 1999 15:41:43 GMT
Hi.
Another solution (courtesy of H. J. Lu):
% diff /etc/rc.d/init.d/nfs /etc/rc.d/init.d/nfs.ORIG
32,33d31
< # No NFS V3.
< RPCMOUNTDOPTS="--no-nfs-version 3"
47c45
< daemon rpc.mountd $RPCMOUNTDOPTS
---
> daemon rpc.mountd
113d110
<
--
Art Werschulz (8-{)} "Metaphors be with you." -- bumper sticker
GCS/M (GAT): d? -p+ c++ l u+(-) e--- m* s n+ h f g+ w+ t++ r- y?
Net: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <a href="http://www.dsm.fordham.edu/~agw/">WWW</a>
Phone: Fordham U. (212) 636-6325, Columbia U. (212) 939-7061
------------------------------
From: "George Craig" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Q: Linux equivalent technologies to Win32?
Date: Fri, 4 Jun 1999 19:20:53 -0500
As an off and on user of Linux and a developer of Microsoft-based software,
I would like to plunge more time into development on Linux; yet, I lack the
knowledge of what is available today in terms of technologies and
application architectures.
Therefore, I have some questions regarding development on Linux --
particularly, what are the technologies currently used (or in place) that
are likened to those on the Win32 platform?
For example, what is the standard Linux SDK/technology for building
distributed applications? Is it CORBA?
Listed below are additional technologies that I have worked with and would
like to have compared to the equivalent *unix* incantation.
1. COM / ActiveX (is it CORBA?)
2. DCOM (is it RPC, RMI in Java?)
3. Transaction Monitoring of objects (Enterprise JavaBeans - ETS?)
4. Win32 API (Any Window Manager flavor API and Libs? i.e., Gnome)
Thanks for any and all of your help,
George Craig
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
[if you want to respond, please remove NOSPAM]
------------------------------
Crossposted-To:
comp.os.linux.development.apps,comp.os.linux.misc,comp.os.linux.setup,comp.lang.java.databases
Subject: Re: What are the differences between mySQL and mSQL?
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Don Baccus)
Date: 4 Jun 1999 17:27:02 PST
In article <7j6f36$bsh$[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
Chris J/#6 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>Try looking at the dictionary definition for 'free'. No payment is just
>one of the several definitions.
And "Open Source" appears in none of them...
--
- Don Baccus, Portland OR <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Nature photos, on-line guides, at http://donb.photo.net
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Christopher Browne)
Crossposted-To: comp.os.linux.development.apps,comp.os.linux.misc
Subject: Re: What are the differences between mySQL and mSQL?
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Sat, 05 Jun 1999 00:30:55 GMT
On 4 Jun 1999 12:59:19 PST, Don Baccus <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>>absolutely. actually, as it turns out, while all Free Software
>>(http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html) is Open Source
>>(www.opensource.org)
>
>The simple english word "free" has a meaning very different
>than the formalized "Free Software" as defined by RMS and
>his crony, and I suspect the OED will honor that distinction
>for many decades to come.
I wasn't aware that "free" was so devoid of meaning; perhaps your
dictionary is deficient. I count its use as verb, adverb, and
adjective, with on the order of 20 distinct definitions.
The "free of cost" sense that is true for some ways that one might use
Sybase's Linux release only expresses one meaning out of those 20-odd.
Are you sure the meaning is as simple as you are claiming? Or should
you perhaps consult the OED?
--
"Besides a mathematical inclination, an exceptionally good mastery of
one's native tongue is the most vital asset of a competent programmer."
-- Edsger W.Dijkstra
[EMAIL PROTECTED] <http://www.ntlug.org/~cbbrowne/lsf.html>
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Mohd H Misnan)
Crossposted-To: comp.os.linux.setup
Subject: Re: 2.2.9 kernel too big?
Date: 4 Jun 1999 14:35:58 GMT
On Fri, 4 Jun 1999 13:58:22 +1000, IanP wrote:
>
>LILO was complaining that my newly compiled 2.2.2 kernel was too big even
>with "make bzimage". After searching for some help I found "make bzlilo",
>problem fixed. I don't know if its the same problem but I hope it helps.
There is nothing wrong of putting some of the stuff into loadable modules and I
don't think it'll affect the performance of your newly built kernel. Putting to
much into the kernel itself will give the above mentioned problem.
--
|Mohd Hamid Misnan |[EMAIL PROTECTED] / [EMAIL PROTECTED] |i|
|iMac/233 RevB+MacOS 8.6 |http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/3319/ |M|
|Mitac 5033/AMD K6-2/300 |We want to take over the world, but we don't have |a|
|Linux 2.2.9 i586 |to do it tomorrow. It's OK by next week - Linus T.|c|
------------------------------
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