Linux-Development-Sys Digest #801, Volume #6 Wed, 9 Jun 99 03:15:17 EDT
Contents:
2.0.36 kernel bug (cyclic)
Re: Linux development tools - new : download freeware compiler with IDE and
GuiDesigner for Linux & Windows (Christopher B. Browne)
Re: great news - Ibm VisualAGe Java for Linux!! (Selious)
Re: Configuration Manager for Linux (Leslie Mikesell)
Re: the ultimate OS (Vladimir Z. Nuri)
Re: TAO: the ultimate OS (Vladimir Z. Nuri)
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From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (cyclic)
Subject: 2.0.36 kernel bug
Date: 8 Jun 1999 23:20:45 -0600
I found this message in my syslog.
Jun 8 22:46:24 linus kernel: TCP: **bug**: copy=0, sk->mss=0
I am afraid there are not more unusual entries surrounding it.
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Christopher B. Browne)
Crossposted-To: gnu.misc.discuss
Subject: Re: Linux development tools - new : download freeware compiler with IDE and
GuiDesigner for Linux & Windows
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Wed, 09 Jun 1999 04:59:15 GMT
On Tue, 8 Jun 1999 17:32:42 -0000, Max Reason <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
posted:
>Martin Maney wrote in message <7jk62i$1di$[EMAIL PROTECTED]>...
> Nonetheless, a useful overview is obviously a good idea.
I think the intent was to provide some constructive criticism...
> Well okay. Though I'm not sure how to translate "libre" to English,
> it seems XBasic will fall into the "libre" free category as soon as
> I figure out how to do that intelligently.
There are two main senses of "free" in English.
There is the sense of "free of charge," corresponding to the French
"gratuit," and the term "gratis" is definitely related, probably from
Latin.
The other sense is that of "free from constraints," which in French
is said as "libre" and which is a root word for the English word
"liberty."
There is much controversy as to what "free from constraints" truly means,
which goes along with the longstanding philosophical question of "What
*is* freedom, anyways?"
The GPL takes the stance that it sets some carefully planned constraints
to ensure that GPLed software can't be readily made proprietary.
Its main antagonists sit in the BSD "camp," and they claim that those
constraints represent a denial of freedom. "It's not *really* free
software unless you are allowed to create proprietary derivatives."
There are a few particular characters in the "licensing wars" that have
distinctive positions; there is a strong tendancy to put forth "strawman"
arguments that focus on the weaknesses of the "other guy's bad license."
> a Gnu Basic project just barely getting organized [seemingly] and
> I sent them an introductory inquiry to see if there's collaboration.
> Unfortunately their auto-mailer program seems to think I'm trying
> to subscribe to their mailings! As soon as I get through to them,
> maybe that'll lead to a method of "libre"-izing XBasic. If not, after
> I hear from some more seasoned Linux people like yourself I'll
> probably begin to grasp what "doing it right" means.
There are worse ways of doing this... Give it a couple of days;
people may well be on vacation, or in transit between academic
terms, or just haven't read their mail yet. You can get a flavor
for what's going on by watching what mail goes past you...
>>> Linus has not agreed to answer every question everyone wishes
>>> to ask - so in the sense you seem to mean, Linux is not supported.
>>
>> No, you've missed the point entirely. Linus doesn't HAVE to answer
>> every question: we can ask an even more oracular voice, the source code.
>> Actually, like asking the Greek Oracle, asking the source is not always the
>> easiest way to get the answer you need in every case. ;-)
>
> You mean some other poor sucker who already spend 100 hours
> pouring through source code and tearing his hair out to solve the
> same problem you now face --- and who is now kindly willing to tell
> you how to fix the problem in 2 minutes - before he goes off and
The fact that you have a big advantage is obviously nice; the fact
that there is the *possibility* of someone else poring through and
figuring it out means that you don't have to answer *all* of the
questions.
>>> to answer questions, but... Actually, I have not read about how
>>> the core Linux crew manages Linux, and for that reason I'm quite
>>> ignorant (meaning "no knowledge from experience") about how
>>> such management would be organized. That's why I'd prefer
>>> someone with that knowledge/experience do it right.
>>
>> The open source approach is more along the lines of making
>> the source available and seeing if anyone picks it up and does
>> something exciting to it. Speaking of "scary", huh? <grin> You
>> might want to look over the licenses - it sounds to me like you
>> would probably prefer something along the lines of Larry Wall's
>> "artistic license", which retains some control over what is allowed
>> to be called "Product X" while retaining the key virtues of open source.
>> www.opensource.org is probably a good starting point - there are
>> as many definitions of "free" as there are people wanting to call some
>> piece of software "free", though, so don't take OSI's word as gospel.
>> Still, on the whole they do a pretty good job of surveying at least most
>> of the field. www.fsf.org would be a good counterpoint to OSI's take
>> on the issues. <evil grin>
>
> I probably don't know all the scenarios I should worry about,
> but here are the ones that have come to mind. I don't really
> mind how many cool additions and features (and bug fixes)
> people add to XBasic. Of course I'd like to see intelligent
> and generally useful stuff, but hey, whatever. But I wouldn't
> want somebody to say "hey, I don't like the way this statement
> or standard library function works, so I'm gonna change it or
> eliminate it --- and break ALL pre-existing XBasic programs.
> Maybe this isn't as likely as it seems, since XBasic is written
> in XBasic so most such moves would break XBasic too,
> rendering the change self-defeating. Of course the demon
> could rewrite those spots in XBasic that depend on the
> "offensive" statement or function - which puts me back in
> the "I don't want this to happen" situation where everyone
> else who already has XBasic has to fix their programs to
> work around this person who hates the statement so much
> he's willing to stick it up everyone's DO loop.
I suggest you consider building a bit of a "test suite" of code that
should continue to work.
It's easy to say "no" to dumb changes if they have the effect of making
40 test cases break.
And we've already been through transitions from Perl 3 to Perl 5,
K&R C to ANSI C, and the likes, which means that you don't have
to suffer fools quietly.
The projects that tend to work have reasonably small "core teams"
of people that have *full* access to change the source code. The
team builds up on the basis of mutual trust. Others that have "cool
ideas" have to convince one of the "core team" to let their code in,
which is a deterrent to the more stupid of ideas.
> What I really would like to hear from people is - what SHOULD
> I worry about. I am so disconnected from community software
> efforts that I sense I'm probably gonna worry about issues that
> will never arise and get nuked by ones I never imagined.
Start a mailing list. Or watch the GNU Basic list. Put the
sources out on an FTP server somewhere. See who turns out to be
interested.
>> Nope. Huge IDEs aren't my kettle of fish. There are
>> plenty of folks who have been wishing for something
>> like this (sorry, I can't name any names, but this comes
>> up all the time in this and other news groups). The purist
>> approach would be to put the sources up with an appropriate
>> (ie, that you're comfortable with) "free" license and wait for
>> developments. For a large, "completed" project like this
>> there may be little visible action for a while - less obvious
>> rough spots to catch the eye, and a large body of code to
>> assimilate.
>
> Well, I hope some of these people contact me, express
> the particular interests they have, and tell me what would
> make them happy. That'll help. Probably it's time for me
> to make an actual announcement that Linux XBasic "pro"
> is now freeware and available for download - rather than
> just tacking it onto miscellaneous messages people post
> that seem related. Though I did not set-up to distinguish
> downloads of Linux XBasic vs Windows XBasic, the
> total number of downloads has shot up very substantially
> since I mentioned XBasic on these two Linux newsgroups.
Take a little time to read through some of the notable licenses,
such as:
a) GPL.
b) Artistic License (Perl site)
c) BSD License
d) XFree86 License (which is remarkably similar to the BSD License).
e) Look at <http://www.fsf.org>, particularly the philosophy pieces.
f) Python License <http://www.python.org>
g) Debian Free Software Guidelines (an attempt at "ecumenicism")
h) My opinions :-) <http://www.hex.net/~cbbrowne/lsffreesoftware.html>
plus links to various licenses.
Don't feel forced to agree with all of it; in those cases where you
*disagree,* this will help guide you away from things you *don't* want.
*Definitely* read through the GPL, and put some "skull sweat" into
understanding it. I saw it when it was first established some ten-odd
years ago, and love it or hate it, it is an *incredibly* cleverly
crafted document. I *think* I understand most of the implications,
but it took considerably more than a day or two for it to filter through.
The most entertaining bit is that it is potentially a *very* wise idea
for BigCompany to use it rather than BSDL if they release software
they consider important and potentially of competitive importance.
Releasing under the GPL means that if BigCompetitor uses and distributes
derivatives, BigCompetitor is *required* to release sources to their
changes under the GPL...
--
Those who do not understand Unix are condemned to reinvent it, poorly.
-- Henry Spencer <http://www.hex.net/~cbbrowne/lsf.html>
[EMAIL PROTECTED] - "What have you contributed to free software today?..."
------------------------------
From: Selious <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: great news - Ibm VisualAGe Java for Linux!!
Date: Wed, 09 Jun 1999 07:38:36 +0200
Hi,
I was searching to download a evalution/preview !! Has anyone found it
there already ??
I read something about some meeting where they would spread CD's with
the preview-version, but I couldn't find it for download...
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Leslie Mikesell)
Subject: Re: Configuration Manager for Linux
Date: 9 Jun 1999 00:54:54 -0500
In article <7jjpaq$[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
Jonathan Abbey <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>| So far most of these only deal with configuring one program's configuration
>| at a time, ignoring the overlapping relationships of machines, users,
>| groups, mailing lists, etc. Ganymede (http://www.arlut.utexas.edu/gash2/)
>| looks like something a bit smarter about that, but probably overkill
>| for small sites. Has anyone with a few hundred users or less tried
>| it?
>
>As the author of Ganymede, I really wish I could answer this question.
>It seems like only one person out of fifty who download Ganymede ever
>send reports about it to me, though, and then only when there are
>questions. It seems like things haven't yet reached the critical mass
>where lots of people start sending me code and ideas. ;-)
Thanks for responding. I suspect that most of them are overwhelmed
by the scope of the system and don't figure out how to make it fit
in. I've downloaded it myself by haven't had the time to tackle
the install.
>Ganymede can be very complex or it can be very simple, depending on
>how much you want to do with it. I'd say that Ganymede would be
>worthwhile for anyone with more than a couple dozen users and a dozen
>machines, scaling up to maybe five to ten thousand users and five to
>ten thousand machines. If your installation is too small to be using
>NIS, then you're probably too small to get a lot out of Ganymede.
It isn't really that hard to deal with a few hundred users with
the standard methods, especially if you already know them (and if
you don't a configuration manager would have to be bulletproof).
But, we have lots of machines, spread over several offices, dial
up access and there are still a lot of details to cover.
>Ganymede can be used to manage things on a single system, but it's
>really not the best for that.. the Ganymede server is at least a 20-30
>meg process running continually, which doesn't make sense unless you
>are big enough to be dedicating machines to managing your NIS/DNS,
>etc.
I've pushed things into a server-centric configuration where only
one machine needs to know everyone's login/password for an email
hub and enough of a home directory for a web page. That mostly
avoids the need for NIS and dialup access uses radius against the
server's password file. Most of the clients are Windows boxes,
with a smattering of Linux on the desktops but these just have a
single user and may smbmount directories from the server or use
NFS. There are quite a few other special-purpose unix boxes but
these only need a few logins and I don't want to make them depend
on anything else.
Most of the machines that are moved often use DHCP, so DNS is not
time consuming to manage. The main thing that is difficult to
coordinate even at this scale is adding new users to the server,
the smbpasswd file, LDAP, and to the appropriate internal mailing
lists. I'd really like to let the HR people add a new user to LDAP
(and assign the phone extension and the mail groups while they are
at it...), then have some magic that builds everything else from
there. Adding new mail groups and juggling users is somewhat
difficult because we have to enter the group name into LDAP so it
shows up in the address book, then separately create an email alias
mapped to an :include:/file where someone can update it. Perhaps
there is a better way, but we just converted from Groupwise and
haven't found (or written) a good tool yet.
The other thing I'd like an 'all encompassing' management system
to do is to make sure that all of the important filesystems are
added to the amanda backup scheme as new machines are added.
Les Mikesell
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
------------------------------
Crossposted-To: alt.os.linux,comp.os.linux.advocacy,comp.os.misc,comp.unix.advocacy
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Vladimir Z. Nuri)
Subject: Re: the ultimate OS
Date: Wed, 9 Jun 1999 06:43:24 GMT
HW.. very nice post. thanks for your comments.. I can
take your criticism because it's all reasonable.
Hayden Walles ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote:
: So if you are wont to flame the thread with arguments similar to "You
: don't tell me exactly what this is so I won't talk t you!" instead send
: queries. Suggest alternatives to the concepts used to solve the brief.
: Develop the brief to define the terms. Many posters have show that they
: have the expertise to do this, but they only demand answers of the author,
: who presumably wants _us_ to define these terms.
the document is partly a manifesto, an assertion that the goals
are worthwhile and feasible to accomplish. I will work with people
who want to collaborate to realize the goals. I will not hand down
proclamations or code like moses on the mountain.
Usenet has a good potential to be a place for public collaborative
development. sadly, I think its promise is
largely sabotaged not because of technical aspects
but because of "bugs in human psychology" that repeatedly show
up in the flame wars such as that which has arisen. I object
to the dogma that it is a waste of time to post without code. I
feel strongly that powerful collaborative cooperation is possible
"out here" on usenet and is not being realized. the document
is a feeble step in that direction. it is not the first such
step. I posted 5 mos ago with nary a peep. others have posted
as well.
the posts are also saying.. "who are you? why should we
care what you have to say"? to this all I can say is that I prefer
to let the document speak for itself and hook up with people
who are not focused on my credentials/resume but on my ideas.
(this of course is not to say I don't have credentials or a resume..
but I know if I begin to get into that, its a point of no return
in more endless flamewars) .. the essay outlines my background
in brief which I feel is sufficient.
regrettably most of the flames can be viewed simply as provocations by
others to "reveal who you are".. I am not really interested in laying
out my resume on the table to accomplish the goals at hand which I
have articulated. however I acknowledge that
such a demand is not unreasonable (if others
actually reasonably requested it, but the flames are quite tedious)..
--
~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^
"in theory, there's no difference [EMAIL PROTECTED]
between theory and practice, mad genius research lab
but in practice there is!" http://www8.pair.com/mnajtiv/
------------------------------
Crossposted-To: alt.os.linux,comp.os.linux.advocacy,comp.os.misc,comp.unix.advocacy
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Vladimir Z. Nuri)
Subject: Re: TAO: the ultimate OS
Date: Wed, 9 Jun 1999 06:49:59 GMT
Christopher Browne ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote:
: ... And people that haven't built even their *first* OS are difficult to
: take seriously when they claim they'll improve on what's already there.
..
: In contrast, taking someone seriously when they have no track record at
: implementing an OS, when they fairly clearly are unaware of recent OS
: research, and can't clearly define "Object Oriented," is extremely
: difficult.
i.e. "who are you??? what papers have you written"?? I am not
interested in a debate on the exact definition of "object oriented"..
the essay calls for it to be fleshed out. the debate on the
subject here proves the lack of consensus within this arena, which
I am not really interested in engaging in, except to choose one
model.
: It looks like
: he doesn't perceive a difference between "the kernel" and "the whole
: system."
that's roughly correct. intentionally so. imho there are a lot
of artificial distinctions (such as the above)
running around that are all about
to dissolve into a much more unified OS-- with or without my
own efforts or your own. its a trend I can smell out.
--
~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^
"in theory, there's no difference [EMAIL PROTECTED]
between theory and practice, mad genius research lab
but in practice there is!" http://www8.pair.com/mnajtiv/
------------------------------
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