Linux-Development-Sys Digest #839, Volume #6 Thu, 17 Jun 99 02:14:11 EDT
Contents:
Re: Can Linux Boot and Run without a BIOS? (H. Peter Anvin)
Open Source Business Startup. (Bonez)
Re: TAOs: Much to do about nothing? (The Ghost In The Machine)
install glibc-2.1.1 in slackware (y chen)
How to deal with bad_user_access_length (Eric Fowler)
Xircom Pocket ethernet combo adapter III ("peter sandretto")
Re: Open Source Business Startup. ("Frank V. Castellucci")
Re: What are the differences between mySQL and mSQL? (James Youngman)
-->
Re: Kernel Hang ( linux 2.2.x x<=10 ) ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
Re: TAO: the ultimate OS (Graffiti)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (H. Peter Anvin)
Subject: Re: Can Linux Boot and Run without a BIOS?
Date: 17 Jun 1999 01:37:32 GMT
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (H. Peter Anvin)
Followup to: <7k5cak$jaj$[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
By author: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
In newsgroup: comp.os.linux.development.system
>
> Can Linux boot from chaos and run, without a BIOS?
>
Boot, no. Run, yes. You need some kind of firmware to load it into
RAM for you, and if that firmware is nonstandard (e.g. a non-BIOS
firmware on i386) then you might need to make some modifications to
the setup code, i.e. the code that does the transition from the
environment it gets dumped in by the firmware or boot loader to the
environment the kernel can bootstrap itself from.
Such modifications should be fairly benign, unless your firmware/boot
loader is utterly weird.
-hpa
--
"The user's computer downloads the ActiveX code and simulates a 'Blue
Screen' crash, a generally benign event most users are familiar with
and that would not necessarily arouse suspicions."
-- Security exploit description on http://www.zks.net/p3/how.asp
------------------------------
From: Bonez <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To:
alt.business,alt.business.misc,netcom.uk.business.www,comp.os.linux.development.apps,gnu.utils
Subject: Open Source Business Startup.
Date: Thu, 17 Jun 1999 00:10:01 +0000
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Hi there,
I have a dillema that needs sorting out and advice on.
I am currently looking to start up a business whose primary purpose is
to create the foundation and basis for an open source project - much
like the Apache Web Server project - but in a different field of course.
Of course the problem comes from the fact of how to go about it. On the
one hand there is the idealogy of open source programming in the fact
that the source code is free and available, both for modification and
distrubution. On the other there is the fact that to be able for a
business to thrive it needs a source of finicial income. So the great
problem exists in how to create an open source project that a business
can be based on.
Personally as a software engineer the idealogy of open source software
projects is probably the best approach by which a program can be
created. In alot of ways the idea of open source software is very much
like the development of scientific theorems and ideas within the
scientfic community in that they are scuritised, examined and developed
further by other scientists. In the end this leads to accutate results
which can be further used. However for there something to be worked on
it must exist in the first place. So it leads back to the point of
having the time and resources to be able to create and development a
working program that can be built upon once it released.
This brings me again to that of useing a business as a base for creating
the project on. In other words the business must have the resources
available to it so that it can generate the foundations of the project.
As far as I can see there are several options open in order to achieve.
1. The idea is that the product is free but the company makes its money
from supplying support for the product. The snag with this argument is
that you have to have a product before you can support it. By provdiing
a consultancy basis supporting other product lines, such as Linux, while
the project is being developed - this could provide a means of bringing
in an income. However it diverts a significant amount of time away from
the developement of the project - slowing its development down.
2. The next idea would be to find outside investment in the project.
Unfortuately the problem comes from the fact that the investor doesn't
gain money back directly from the project - seeing as the product is
free. The risk would be based on the fact that enough intrest can be
created from the project that a larger enterprise could be created from
the basis of the project (e.g. support, consultancy, developement of
extensions and commericial implementation and so on). However the
investor would have understand that it would a long term thing and not a
short term investment. Also there is the additional fact that once the
project is released into the public domain it is no longer the sole
property of the team that developed it. I.e. the investor couldn't
suddenly come in and snatch up the project's profuct.
3. Development of the project in my spare time. At the moment I am
placing most of my free time and resources into creating the first
initial specifications and designs of this project - most of the time is
spent doing research into the large number of different fields which it
encompasses. And in the meantime I am working as a database programer
for a small company. If I continue this course the project would never
really get of the ground.
So heres where I need a the advice or ideas that you can offer on this
subject. What are the best ways to go about handling this sort of
problem? - quite a tricky one to work out - but at the moment this is
becoming more than a trend in the software industry.
Thanks for any response you can give on this
Bonez
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (The Ghost In The Machine)
Crossposted-To: alt.os.linux,comp.os.linux.advocacy,comp.os.misc,comp.unix.advocacy
Subject: Re: TAOs: Much to do about nothing?
Date: Thu, 17 Jun 1999 00:38:17 GMT
On 16 Jun 1999 10:56:15 GMT, Donal K. Fellows <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
>The Ghost In The Machine <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>> Brian McGroarty <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>>> /me stands the bed on end...
>>> Nor are rooms. ;)
>>
>> Yeah, but unless the bed has straps on it (or one is in a space
>> station with zero gravity), how is one going to get *into* the bed
>> and *sleep* in it?
>
>Nobody said anything about *using* the bed! You're changing the
>specification at runtime...
*LOL*
[.sigsnip]
----
[EMAIL PROTECTED] -- are you sure you didn't mean "sleeptime"? :-)
------------------------------
From: y chen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.os.linux.development.apps
Subject: install glibc-2.1.1 in slackware
Date: Wed, 16 Jun 1999 22:29:21 -0400
Hi, there,
I finally compile gcc-2.1.1 in my linux box.
I dare not make install because some problems:
(1) "make check" report erfl and ieee754 are not
implemented when checking math lib.
(2). ./configure fail to guess my host type, I do not
know why.
My linux originally is slackware 3.6 ( kernel
2.0.36) but I upgrade it to kernel-2.2.9.
and glibc-2.0.8 , latest egcs. There are quite
a lot old libc hanging aroud in /usr/lib.
Is this going to cause problem?
Any advices?
------------------------------
From: Eric Fowler <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: How to deal with bad_user_access_length
Date: Wed, 16 Jun 1999 20:50:38 -0700
I am getting this with the RedHat 5 release, gcc 2.7.2.3, kernel
UTS_RELEASE 2.0.31. When I pass memcpy_tofs(char *, char *, unsigned
long), the compiler flags my initialization of the file_operations
struct as having the wrong type. If I change the unsigned long to an
int, it compiles, but insmod whines about the bad_user_access_length. My
reading of Rubini's book tells me a little about this problem - enough
to know it has something to do with typing and size of parameters for
the kernel/user copy functions - but I'm at sea with this one.
--
Eric Fowler
sockeye [at] rmii [dot] com
Vivez sans temps mort!
(Live without dead time)
-Situationist International
=================================
------------------------------
From: "peter sandretto" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Xircom Pocket ethernet combo adapter III
Date: Wed, 16 Jun 1999 22:33:46 -0400
I am looking for a driver for a Xircom pocket ethernet combo adapter III,
the parallel version, that works with linux. Does anyone know where to get
one, or have one in the works? Please email me a response. -Peter
Sandretto
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 16 Jun 1999 23:26:58 -0400
From: "Frank V. Castellucci" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Crossposted-To: alt.business,alt.business.misc,comp.os.linux.development.apps,gnu.utils
Subject: Re: Open Source Business Startup.
Bonez,
You raise valid points. From experience:
1. I designed and developed alone a system in my spare time and tried
selling it. I eventually received investements, by the time I was done and
ready to do anything with the product, the target market dropped off the
face of the earth (OS/2).
2. I developed alone, from spec, a product that was funded. The owner took
so long marketing the technology, the big guys ate his lunch.
3. I attempted to share the work of a open source effort that, because of my
income earning priority, could not give it the time it needed. This was the
case with many of the developers that were contributing as well.
Therefore, my opinion(s) would be:
1. If you have a solid BUSINESS PLAN, try to sell that for investment. It
won't be the first time a SERVICE organization prospered!
2. If you have solid REQUIREMENTS for the application, then move on to
ANALYSIS, DESIGN, etc. That may be enough to spark interest for #1. I would
be glad to offer what time may be available for this effort.
So what it really comes down to is WHAT DOES YOU GUT TELL YOU TO DO?
Frank
Bonez wrote:
> Hi there,
>
> I have a dillema that needs sorting out and advice on.
>
> I am currently looking to start up a business whose primary purpose is
> to create the foundation and basis for an open source project - much
> like the Apache Web Server project - but in a different field of course.
> Of course the problem comes from the fact of how to go about it. On the
> one hand there is the idealogy of open source programming in the fact
> that the source code is free and available, both for modification and
> distrubution. On the other there is the fact that to be able for a
> business to thrive it needs a source of finicial income. So the great
> problem exists in how to create an open source project that a business
> can be based on.
>
> Personally as a software engineer the idealogy of open source software
> projects is probably the best approach by which a program can be
> created. In alot of ways the idea of open source software is very much
> like the development of scientific theorems and ideas within the
> scientfic community in that they are scuritised, examined and developed
> further by other scientists. In the end this leads to accutate results
> which can be further used. However for there something to be worked on
> it must exist in the first place. So it leads back to the point of
> having the time and resources to be able to create and development a
> working program that can be built upon once it released.
>
> This brings me again to that of useing a business as a base for creating
> the project on. In other words the business must have the resources
> available to it so that it can generate the foundations of the project.
> As far as I can see there are several options open in order to achieve.
>
> 1. The idea is that the product is free but the company makes its money
> from supplying support for the product. The snag with this argument is
> that you have to have a product before you can support it. By provdiing
> a consultancy basis supporting other product lines, such as Linux, while
> the project is being developed - this could provide a means of bringing
> in an income. However it diverts a significant amount of time away from
> the developement of the project - slowing its development down.
>
> 2. The next idea would be to find outside investment in the project.
> Unfortuately the problem comes from the fact that the investor doesn't
> gain money back directly from the project - seeing as the product is
> free. The risk would be based on the fact that enough intrest can be
> created from the project that a larger enterprise could be created from
> the basis of the project (e.g. support, consultancy, developement of
> extensions and commericial implementation and so on). However the
> investor would have understand that it would a long term thing and not a
> short term investment. Also there is the additional fact that once the
> project is released into the public domain it is no longer the sole
> property of the team that developed it. I.e. the investor couldn't
> suddenly come in and snatch up the project's profuct.
>
> 3. Development of the project in my spare time. At the moment I am
> placing most of my free time and resources into creating the first
> initial specifications and designs of this project - most of the time is
> spent doing research into the large number of different fields which it
> encompasses. And in the meantime I am working as a database programer
> for a small company. If I continue this course the project would never
> really get of the ground.
>
> So heres where I need a the advice or ideas that you can offer on this
> subject. What are the best ways to go about handling this sort of
> problem? - quite a tricky one to work out - but at the moment this is
> becoming more than a trend in the software industry.
>
> Thanks for any response you can give on this
>
> Bonez
------------------------------
From: James Youngman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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?
Date: 15 Jun 1999 18:16:22 +0100
o r c @ p e l l . p o r t l a n d . o r . u s (david parsons) writes:
> In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
> Don Baccus <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> >In article <ViA53.1666$[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
> >bryan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> >
> >>again, like I said, with multiple writers contending for common
> >>resources, yes you're right. for the "one writer, many readers" you
> >>do NOT need xactions.
> >
> >Not necessarily true. If you have several related tables
> >that need to be logically updated at once, the atomicity of
> >the transactional model is, well, useful if there's a crash
> >while records are being inserted or updated.
>
> Denormalize, denormalize, denormalize.
But that makes the transactional integrity problem worse, not better.
> Yeah, you might bloat your rdb by a factor of 10 to do this,
> but disk and core is getting cheap these days.
>
>
> ____
> david parsons \bi/ ... and slow down queries by a factor of 100,
> \/ but CPU is getting cheap, too.
IM(l)E query slowness is largely unrelated to CPU. Disk locality and
drive latency is probably more relevant.
--
ACTUALLY reachable as @free-lunch.demon.(whitehouse)co.uk:james+actually
------------------------------
From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: -->
Date: 17 Jun 1999 03:31:17 GMT
That solved it, thanks. The termios struct needed to be initialized to the
old value. (it rather makes sense doesn't it..)
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Crossposted-To: linux.dev.kernel
Subject: Re: Kernel Hang ( linux 2.2.x x<=10 )
Date: 17 Jun 1999 00:55:21 GMT
Charles-Edouard Ruault <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> file server for my company ( i'm trying to make them believe in Linux
> It's an AMD K6-2 400 on an epox motherboard, 128MB RAM , IBM IDE HDD ,
> AHA 2940 SCSCI card on which i've plugged a IOMEGA JAZ and an intel
> ehterexpress pro 100 NIC card.
Hello,
my humble advise is to try to compile the kernel several times (
about 20-30 ) and see if there are any random problems when compiling . If
there are, then it might be some hardware problem. Check memtest86 also,
its a nice memory test program that you can run from a disk or directly
from the lilo prompt.
------------------------------
From: Graffiti <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: alt.os.linux,comp.os.linux.advocacy,comp.os.misc,comp.unix.advocacy
Subject: Re: TAO: the ultimate OS
Date: 16 Jun 1999 22:36:36 -0700
In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
Vladimir Z. Nuri <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
[snip]
>when I envision an object system, I am really imagining, partly,
>a new kind of file system that has more attributes associated with
>each file than the existing small set, such as time stamps etc.
>or at least this is one way to imagine what I am talking about
>for ppl who are stuck attempting to understand
>the essay in terms of existing systems.
Umm..... so you're gonna implement the prcess scheduler with files?
And memory management? And fiddle w/ the PCI bus, move data from
a SCSI controller to the nic, etc all with a filesystem?
>the objects I envision are essentially files with additional
>structured information & intelligence.
>for example the file can have embedded links to
>other files. so a source file could have a link within it,
>i.e. a reference, to the object file.
i.e.: <A HREF="file://localhost/usr/src/vaporware/baz.o"> ?
>essentially the idea is that the OS understands all the links
>between different files. so when I pull off an application off
>the computer, the OS understand what files are associated
>with it because of all the built-in-references. the OS keeps
>these current and handles the other administrivia associated
>with it all.
i.e. stick rpm/dpkg/etc's stuff into the kernel?
Hell, even MacOS does this better. Just toss the folder an
application lives in into the trash and delete. Of course,
some apps like to modify System Folder:blah, but that's aside
the point.
>when I say "object" perhaps the way to understand it is
>"superfile". anything that is now a file can be turned into
>a Tao object. the dif is that the Tao system understands all
Btw, there already is an OS called Tao. I'd suggest you cahnge
the name of your vapourware to something else.
>hence concepts like "make" and "compilation" are built into
>the OS.. a dependency tree support is built into the OS and
>for more operations than merely compilation. for example,
>creating a graph from spreadsheet data is a kind of
>abstract compilation (quite similar to the way that object
>code is created from source code) that the system can understand.
Iow, what you wanna do is have the OS provide services that are
usually kept *out* of the OS for simplicity/stability/
debugging reasons.
Why? You can do all that you wanna do with user-land stuff.
Just write a new set of utilities/shells/etc and refuse to
let people use utilities and services that don't use your new
and buggy libraries.
>hence, Tao can be completely "object oriented" because all
>existing OSes are built out of files. QED <g>
I'd suggest you go to school and study OS theory, since this
statement proves beyond a shadow of a doubt (not that I had one)
that you don't know what you're talking about.
-- DN
------------------------------
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End of Linux-Development-System Digest
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