Re: installation boot fails with standard bootdisk on 486SX/33
On Aug 11, 7:25pm, Bruce Perens wrote: Subject: installation boot fails with standard bootdisk on 486SX/33 : From: Christopher R. Hertel [EMAIL PROTECTED] : On my system (brand-new AMD-486DX4-120), the error that I get tells : me that the failure is occurring as the kernel is being : decompressed. : : OK - if this is true that means: : : 1. Bad data on the floppy. Most common. Re-download and write : another. Have done. Several times from several sources using several floppies. I've also used several tools (including DOS format, Win95 format, Norton Utilities Format, Scandisk, chkdsk, and other Norton stuff) to verify that the floppies are in good condition before I write to them. I am using dd under Linux 1.2.8 to write the floppies. I am also using the same floppy drive to format write the disks, and to boot. I think I've covered this aspect. : 2. LFB setting in your BIOS wrong. See the installation document. : Rare. There is no LFB setting in my BIOS setup. I have read the installation documentation. : 3. Bad RAM or other hardware. Happens _rarely_, but has indeed : happened. : : try turning off the cache and see : if that fixes the problem. If it does, report it as a bug. : : It is best reported to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and copied to : us. : It's not really our job to fix the kernel - we just distribute it. I disabled the internal cache and--*poof*--the problem went away. I will send a report to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Based on my results, and the results of others (as posted to this mailing list) I believe that this is *not* a kernel problem because, as you pointed out when discussing the possibility of an APM problem, the kernel is not yet loaded when the decompression error occurs. The problem, it appears, is in the decompression code. *QUERY*: those of you who have had this problem and gotten around it by turning off the internal cache, did you turn the cache back on once you had installed the system on your hard disk? Did that work? I'd like to know whether the decompression code in the floppy is the same as that which gets loaded on the hard drive. If so, does the problem persist when the kernel is being decompressed from the hard drive or does it only appear when booting from floppy? Is the kernel decompressed directly from the floppy, or is it transferred to the RAM disk first? : Sigh. I wish you'd spend some time supporting new users booting their : systems for a while. We really do need the help. It might change your : opinions, too. It seems that you've overlooked a couple of points: 1) I *was* providing support for a new user attempting to boot his system. I explained, as you did, that APM probably wasn't the problem. I also suggested turning off the cache. In my own case, and in several others, this (unfortunately) worked. (I say unfortunately, because I believe that I should be able to use the internal cache, unless you're telling me that Linux is intended *not* to run with internal cache enabled.) 2) I spent a *year* trying to figure out the SIGVEC problem, which was reported by several Linux users via newsgroups and mailing lists. The problem appeared on a variety of motherboards using a variety of CPU types, controller types, and memory configurations. Those of us who experienced this problem tried to combine our resources to solve it, but we did not have the technical expertise, or the support, or the stable platform we needed in order to accomplish much. Think about it: how am I supposed to test a fix to the kernel if I can't compile a new kernel because the system crashes whenever I try? (The SIGVEC problem was random, but typically occurred when an attempt was made to compile anything large. No, it did *not* always appear at the same point in the compilation.) At first, I got a great deal of helpful advice regarding the SIGVEC problem. Unfortunately, all of the suggestions that I received failed to correct it. Eventually, people started telling me and the others that the problem was in our hardware. When I explained that other operating systems (including DOS, Taos, and older versions of Linux) worked fine, I was told that those systems did not exercise the hardware as much as Linux does. Great. : Now I'm being told that I can't install Debian with the 2.0.x : kernel because my hardware is incompatible? This just doesn't make : sense! : : Huh? What hardware? Who said it was incompatible? So I've finally saved enough money to buy a new motherboard. Linux 1.2.8 now runs well. I've never figured out why the old one caused random SIGVEC errors, which is a shame, because that problem is probably still biting others out there (several of whom may have given up in disgust). So, now that 1.2.x is stable, I've decided to upgrade to 2.0.x. Unfortunately, a new hardware bug has appeared: I can't decompress the 2.0.x
silly problem with less
When I run less on a 0 byte file, it displays its help screen (same as
if you less a normal file and press 'h').
Example:
[EMAIL PROTECTED] ~/worktouch foo
[EMAIL PROTECTED] ~/workless foo
SUMMARY OF LESS COMMANDS
Commands marked with * may be preceded by a number, N.
Notes in parentheses indicate the behavior if N is given.
h H Display this help.
q :q Q :Q ZZ Exit.
e ^E j ^N CR * Forward one line (or N lines).
...
I hesitate to report this as a bug, but it's really annoying me, as I
expect that if I look at a zero byte file, I'll just see
foo line 0/0 (END). I do a double-take every time I look at some empty
log file and get the less help screen. I've used less in slackware,
redhat, etc, and those versions of less all work as I expect. Does anyone
know how to get the behavior I want with debian's less (version 321-1)?
--
#!/usr/bin/perl -i=-/*/~%*~%/~~%/~~~-/*/_/=~~~-/~~! [EMAIL PROTECTED]
$o=35;$_=$^I-*!=_!/;s/~/!*/g;s~%~-/ / ~g;$_.='--- Joey Hess
';s/=/__/g;y|*!| \\|;for(split/-/){print' 'x$o--.$_\n}
How appropriate, you fight like a cow. - - Guybrush Threepwood
clnttcp_create: RPC: Program not registered
What's this message? Do you have an idea? It happens with 2.0.12 when I connect using UUCP, and I have the following messages logged too: uucico fdn daemon (1996-08-12 19:05:15.82 569) ERROR: Line disconnected uucico fdn - (1996-08-12 19:05:15.89 569) ERROR: write: I/O error uucico fdn - (1996-08-12 19:05:16.05 569) ERROR: write: I/O error uucico fdn - (1996-08-12 19:05:16.05 569) Call complete (63 seconds 22960 bytes 364 bps) uucico fdn - (1996-08-12 19:05:16.05 569) ERROR: Can't disable hardware flow control: I/O error uucico fdn - (1996-08-12 19:05:18.09 569) ERROR: write: I/O error Yves.
Installation fails on AMD CPU until you disable the cache
From: Christopher R. Hertel [EMAIL PROTECTED] I disabled the internal cache and--*poof*--the problem went away. I will send a report to [EMAIL PROTECTED] I have one other report matching this, and two anecdotes, all reproduced below. I suspect that BIOS floppy I/O is breaking when the cache is enabled, and you are thus feeding bad data to the disk uncompression code in the kernel. This could perhaps be a bug in syslinux, (the boot loader we are using) or a bug in the decompression code (which is in the kernel, but is sort of a 16-bit prelude to the actual kernel). You might try other ways of starting the kernel (LILO on a floppy rather than a hard disk, LOADLIN from DOS, etc.) to see if any of them fail with the cache enabled. That might tell you if it's the uncompression code or the loader that is at fault. About the only way to fix this is will be someone with the susceptible hardware to drive the process. Please forgive me for ignoring the ways in which you were being constructive. Thanks Bruce Steve Gaarder: I am installing Debian 1.1.1 on a generic clone with an AMD 486 on an Opti-based motherboard. If I have the internal cache enabled in setup, I get the error invalid compressed format after the uncompressing Linux message. If I disable the cache, it boots fine. It boots ok from the hard drive either way. Anyone know what is going on? From: Dan Bergman [EMAIL PROTECTED] I had problems like this a couple years back when I was installing OS/2 on a Dell Machine (486,66mhz).. The installation would fail if I didn't disabel both L1 and L2 caches.. But I ripped out the TsengLab GFX card (VLB) and all troubles went away.. Ripping out gfx card is often not a option but the Dell MB had a Cyrrus Logic Chip on it... mike cotherman: I had this problem when I used EDO RAM on a motherboard that did not support EDO...just a thought
xanim being uploaded to distribution
I currently do not have an account on master.debian.org, but I have sent Bruce Perens the files, and he has been kind enough to upload them for me, so they should be appearing on the mirrors soon. Shaya -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Date: 09 Aug 96 15:24 UT Format: 1.6 Distribution: unstable Urgency: Low Maintainer: Shaya Potter [EMAIL PROTECTED] Source: xanim Version: 2.70.6.3-1 Binary: xanim Architecture: i386 Description: xanim: Plays many Multimedia files Changes: 2.70.6.3-1 *Added Debian support files Files: cfa0270b64443032ea371aff79a7aed9 282122 non-free optional xanim_2.70.6.3-1_i386.deb 3e8f9b7220e3413e4fd99fa8078a4a71 429495 non-free - xanim-2.70.6.3-1.tar.gz 41b2ca2f7ac26a500170f84c231f2b95 3944 non-free - xanim-2.70.6.3-1.diff.gz -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: 2.6.2 iQCVAwUBMgtardnmB2S2D+tlAQFnFwP/fwSw5BjL0XFmX9sr/L58ybxdHz/TTbOt 2WeFh5BxwHZg/2cuL+DFRKIMNSZjpcPNwE6gBcXq5oAOG/mBVd1kUW3QGOstx6v6 oN2bncVvhiUi611/SPLppHYNSNlxd94bcVsSdCEo9RFkfTHaH8JjodDFeSFBSlNT /Lksn+GGkqw= =VpXi -END PGP SIGNATURE-
Re: IPX and loopback
Regarding why IPX gets loaded when configuring the loopback interface, Please figure out its protocol number and add alias net-pf-N off to /etc/conf.modules , where N is the protocol number. I'm not clear what the real fix should be. Thanks Bruce
UncorrectableError from two disk sectors
`dmesg' shows a lot of messages about two sectors on my disk. For
example
hda: read_intr: error=0x01 { AddrMarkNotFound }, LBAsect=1097170, sector=48787
hda: read_intr: status=0x59 { DriveReady SeekComplete DataRequest Error }
hda: read_intr: error=0x40 { UncorrectableError }, LBAsect=1097170,
sector=48787
end_request: I/O error, dev 03:05, sector 48787
hda: read_intr: status=0x59 { DriveReady SeekComplete DataRequest Error }
hda: read_intr: error=0x40 { UncorrectableError }, LBAsect=1097170,
sector=48787
end_request: I/O error, dev 03:05, sector 48787
hda: read_intr: status=0x59 { DriveReady SeekComplete DataRequest Error }
hda: read_intr: error=0x40 { UncorrectableError }, LBAsect=1044268,
sector=81
end_request: I/O error, dev 03:03, sector 81
Should this be a concern? What action would be recommended?
Re: diald
Does anyone know how to get diald to work? I'm almost there; I can get it to do it's thing, dial, connect to my ISP, start sending data, but after about 30 seconds, diald kills pppd, and reports that it has timed out waiting for ppp to connect. :/ Since I was in the middle of receiving an html document from the web, I'd say it's safe to assume that pppd was already connected. Anyone got any ideas how I can cure this VERY annoying problem? Thanks, Tim Adding 'connect-timeout' as an option to diald solved the problem at least for me: /usr/sbin/ppp-up #!/bin/sh /bin/setserial /dev/cua1 spd_hi /usr/sbin/diald /dev/cua1 -m ppp local 127.0.0.3 \ remote 127.0.0.2 \ defaultroute modem crtscts dynamic connect-timeout 180 \ connect '/usr/sbin/chat -f /etc/ppp/chat-ppp' \ fifo /var/adm/diald.ctl Adding the following entry at the end of /etc/diald.conf also helped me out making the line keep up contiguously: restrict * * * * * up -- Joonwoo Nam MAGNUMS(MAssachusetts Group for NUMerical analysis of Semiconductors) Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering, UMASS at Amherst e-mail:[EMAIL PROTECTED] / work:413-545-4762 / fax:413-545-4611 http://khushi.ecs.umass.edu/~nam
fvwm95 not finding files...
I have installed fvwm95, and keep running into the same errors, -lfvwm95-2 file or directory not found... X11/xdm.h file or directory not found... yes, I added . to my PATH, (why my base install did not add it, I do not know... I installed fvwm2 on my system and it works, and I have installed fvwm95 on a friends slackware system, his works great, I'm jealous.. Thanks for any help mike cotherman PS If I knew how to make .deb packages yet, I would try to make one for fvwm95..
Re: Formatting a 4GB Partition
This problem only exists on the boot floppies. That means if you can install on any small partition (where anything under 1024MB is small) you can then make the filesystem correctly once the system has been installed on your hard disk. I will try to get a new boot floppy set uploaded in the next few days. Bruce
Re: what files does dselect/dpkg use to discern choices?
On Tue, 6 Aug 1996, David C Winters wrote:
I've got approximately 50 machines I need to build. My best option
for the initial system build, unless I've missed something, would be
to run deselect on one machine, then take a deselect-generated file
containing my selections and exporting that file to all the other
machines, so I can just start up dselect and choose Install without
having to go through Select on each.
How can I accomplish this? Which file(s) do I need to export in order
to make this happen? And, is there a better way to achieve the same
results?
I need to do something similar.i asked Ian Jackson (dpkg's author) about
it but he seems quite disinterested in the idea.
Anyway, what you need to do is:
(WARNING: The following steps should work, but i haven't tested this
process yet.)
1. mirror the debian archive, and export it with nfs. NFS installation
from an up-to-date mirror is the easiest and quickest way of
installing debian.
2. install the base system on one of the machines as normal:
- by floppy (boot,root, base1, base2, base3)
or
- by creating a new boot floppy with NFS support. Switch to the
2nd virtual console and and mount a directory containing the
base_1.1.tgz file (which can be found under either rex or buzz in
disks-i386/current/).
The debian install disks will install from that file rather
than the 3 base disks if it finds it in either the mount point or
any first level subdirectory (if you mount it as /debian, then it
will look in /debian/base_1.1.tgz or /debian/*/base_1.1.tgz).
It's probably simplest just to NFS mount your mirror
as /debian, and make sure there is a symlink from
{rex,buzz}/disks-i386/current/base_1.1.tgz to /debian/base_1.1.tgz
3. configure the machine.
4. now reboot. dselect will stary up automatically. select install all
required packages.
5. take a copy of the file /var/lib/dpkg/status.
cp /var/lib/dpkg/status /tmp
6. now this is where it gets tricky.
for every package listed in the status file, there will be a Status:
line. You need to change every line which contains Status: install
. so that it reads Status: install ok not-installed.
the following sed script is a good starting point for doing this
automatically.
sed -e 's/^Status: install..*/Status: install ok not-installed/'
/tmp/stats /tmp/status.new
7. now try installing another machine using this file.
8. install the base system as in step 2 above. configure it as in step 3.
9. quit out of dselect.
10. copy the status.new file you created in step 6 to /var/lib/dpkg/status
on the new machine. It might be convenient to use the top directory
of your mirror as a temporary transfer drive. just NFS mount the
mirror as /debian and cp /debian/status.new /var/lib/dpkg/status.
keep a copy somewhere else, though. remember that mirror will
delete this file next time it runs because it doesn't exist on the
remote archive site. or configure mirror to not delete status.new.
11. run dselect. tell it where to find the packages with 0. [A]ccess. Then
1. [U]pdate packages information.
12. now run 3. [I]nstall. It should install all the files which were
selected on the other machine.
note, it's possible to do something like this with a debian cdrom rather
than NFS. the base_1.1.tgz file was created to make cd-rom installations
as well as NFS installations easier.
Reminds me, i should send some email to the archive maintainer (Guy
Maor, I think) asking him to include a symlink to base_1.1.tgz in rex/
or buzz/ so that the install disks can find it. And also some email to
Bruce Perens asking him to compile NFS into the kernel of the boot disk
- there's been some problems with symbol version mismatches for the NFS
module on the last few boot disks.
Craig
Re: UncorrectableError from two disk sectors
Douglas Bates [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: `dmesg' shows a lot of messages about two sectors on my disk. Oh, thank God! I'm not the only one! I thought my disk was dying!
Tex won't install
Hello All, I want to thank you for the hand I got with my last adventure with dpkg/dselect and it (the link to /bin/perl from /usr/bin/perl) cleared up a lot of the problems. However, the *entire* tex package won't install, telling me there are dependency problems and dselect (although it gives me loads of superfluos information) doesn't show the conflict between the packages so it can be corrected! I'm very tempted to just go and get the source and compile/install the package myself. I'd like to use the new system, but have more trouble with it than a kernel compilation :) The distribution is from the middle of July, an i-connect CD. The problem stated by dpgk/dselect has something to do with texbin installation postinst script not being able to find what its looking for, I get an errormessage, and the remaining packages (latex, etc) remain unconfigured If more information is required, it will be included in the next post.
Debian 1.1: fsck failure.
Hi, I have an IDE and SCSI-2 Drives. After a power failure. I cannot fsck one of my IDE partition when I type: fsck /dev/hda8 I get: -- Parallelizing fsck version 1.02 (16-Jan-96) e2fsck 1.02, 16-Jan-96 for EXT2 FS 0.5b, 95/08/09 fsck.ext2: Attempt to read block from filesystem resulted in short read while trying to open /dev/hda8 Could this be a zero-length partition? Is there any way to salvage this partition? Do I need to reformat this partition? -Oz NAME Oz Dror, Santa Monica, California EMAIL [EMAIL PROTECTED] Linux since 8/15/94 PHONE Fax (310) 396-5798 -BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK- Version: 2.6.2 mQBtAzA/tLQAAAEDAKUy/TEjQ/jiZ+9/WJb/+NHxqkvOxGZ3W/F2JCNm5v5ZTZz+ BVZC9GM/I+plQ8xz+7B+KhDSVax8gxNTAkJ+I7P/zAP2ZDMwVf4lq5ZFxMJC+7c7 ET+hNtmQUt8vCVR8hQAFEbQZT3ogRHJvciA8ZHJvckBuZXRjb20uY29tPg== =EU23 -END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-
floppy set
Is there a way with a 2 floppy set, to get a basic linux kernel booted up and to 'see' any of the compiled-in ether cards, and detecting any PCMCIA cards? I think this is too big to fit on the 2nd floppy... Tim -- (work) [EMAIL PROTECTED] / (home) [EMAIL PROTECTED] - http://www.buoy.com/~tps You mind if I smoke? Joan D'Arc ** Disclaimer: My views/comments/beliefs, as strange as they are, are my own.**
Suck doesn't download news
I have been trying to get suck working and haven't had any luck. Everything seems to work with no complaints and no error messages, but it always reports that there is nothing to download. I can use the testhost command to download the active file, and there is a suck.newrc file left in the /tmp directory that shows the highest available entry in each newsgroup from my sucknewsrc file, so it seems to be communicating OK. Has anybody else had anything similar to this happen? I am using the package version 2.6.3-1 from the stable release. Carl Johnson[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: dselect ftp went bye bye
Joel Zimba [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: This is becoming a FAQ - why is this happening? after running dselect and installing a bunch of stuff. I finished install. Now I can't find the ftp option when I go back into dselect. why? Not sure (it is included in the base set but seems to get uninstalled rather easily). how do I get it back. Go to your favourite debian ftp site and look for it in project/experimental. Download it and install it with dpkg -i dpkg-ftp-1.4.2.deb. how do I ftp with dpkg, is it possible? You can only do it with dselect. Andy.
File systems
Greetings, I'm brand new to Linux and was looking for recommendations for a choice of file systems Sincerely, -William Riggs
OS/2 HPFS File System - Is this a Bug?
I'm running OS/2 Warp with HPFS on several of my drives. I noticed that Linux 1.1 fdisk reveals two different file system identifiers for these HPFS partitions: /dev/sda5 id 7 OS/2 HPFS /dev/hda2 id 17 Unknown The Unknown partition type (id 17) was created by OS/2 Warp fdisk during the installation process. It is also a primary partition. The HPFS partition type (id 7) was created by OS/2 Warp after installation. Note that this is an extended partition. Has anybody else observed the two different identifers for HPFS filesystems? Is this a Bug? Linux produces some error messages when mounting the id 17 filesystem but it everything seems to work ok. I didn't observe any error messages when mounting the id 7 filesystem which also works fine. OS/2 Warp doesn't complain at all.
Re: what files does dselect/dpkg use to discern choices?
Craig Sanders [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: I need to do something similar.i asked Ian Jackson (dpkg's author) about it but he seems quite disinterested in the idea. Mmm, no I think he's just got plenty of other things to worry about at the moment. He seemed to give you the information you needed to try getting this to work - but of course if you want any support for this in dpkg you'll have to do it yourself. :-) 5. take a copy of the file /var/lib/dpkg/status. cp /var/lib/dpkg/status /tmp 6. now this is where it gets tricky. for every package listed in the status file, there will be a Status: line. You need to change every line which contains Status: install . so that it reads Status: install ok not-installed. the following sed script is a good starting point for doing this automatically. sed -e 's/^Status: install..*/Status: install ok not-installed/' /tmp/stats /tmp/status.new Mmm, why should they all be not-installed? Won't some of them be installed by the base system on the new machine? I don't know what will happen if you tell dpkg that something that's already installed now isn't - e.g. what will happen with all its files, etc.? Shouldn't be too hard to write a slightly more sophisticated script that just alters the relevant desired state (first) fields of the new status file. Anyway, if you give this a try, I'd be interested to know how it goes. I'd be interested in giving it a try myself sometime, but time, time... :-) Warwick Warwick Harveyemail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Department of Computer Sciencephone: +61-3-9287-9171 University of Melbourne fax: +61-3-9348-1184 Parkville, Victoria, AUSTRALIA 3052 web: http://www.cs.mu.OZ.AU/~warwick
Re: fvwm95 not finding files...
There's a preliminary packaging of fvwm95 in ftp.sedona.com:/pub/linux/debian. It works fine, but currently conflicts with the standard fvwm and fvwm2. Perhaps you'd be willing to download my copy as a starting point and take over maintenance of the package? You can find information on registering as a debian developer at http://sgk.phast.umass.edu/FAQ/debian-faq-14.html#ss14.1. Let me know if you have any questions, and I'll do my best to help you get started.
Re: latex
However, with longer documents which I used to be able to compile cleanly under Slackware things are not that rosy. Previewing dvi files, I get misaligned page numbers in table of contents, screwed up tables and documents look a mess. You have to run latex two, three and sometimes even four times with complicated long documents. Debian does not provide any other latex slackware. However, are you using the compatibility mode? Do your latex documents start with \documentstyle? Erick
Re: IPX and loopback
Hi, I'm not clear what the real fix should be. its kind of a bug in ifconfig an will be fixed in a future release of ifconfig by me. Greetings Bernd net-tools upstream maintainer
debian mirror in Australia
Are there any other mirrors of ftp.debian.org in Australia besides sunsite.anu.edu.au and ftp.debian.org.au? Both of these two seem to be a bit behind with their mirroring, but the link to the US is very very slow lately; looks like it's going to take hours to get the updated manual pages .. :-( thanks, Hamish (Debian user as of last Friday, and loving it..)
Re: A few stupid(?) questions...
BTW only unasked questions are stupid. 3. How would I specify to use -o (--colors) as a default option for color-ls? (I also wish to use color-ls when I use the 'ls' command. So, I would assume I would do an mv /bin/ls /usr/lib ln -sf /usr/bin/color-ls /usr/bin/ls ln -sf /usr/lib/ls /usr/bin/old-ls to replace ls with color-ls?) install fileutils 3.13-3 and look in /usr/doc/fileutils/color-ls.gz Erick
Re: Tex won't install
The distribution is from the middle of July, an i-connect CD. The problem stated by dpgk/dselect has something to do with texbin installation postinst script not being able to find what its looking for, I get an errormessage, and the remaining packages (latex, etc) remain unconfigured If more information is required, it will be included in the next post. This is a known bug, try the tex packages from unstable/binary-i386/tex.
Some initial problems
Hello, bored of the rubbish that slackware blows on my disk, I looked for an alternative - and found debian. Yesterday I tried to install the base-disks from buzz-fixed/binary-i386/disks (feivel.informatik.rwth-aachen.de). I ran into some problems which are not mentioned in the FAQs I found... The problems seem to have started when /root/.configure got the control: - I misspelled the password for the user acount I was asked for. Result: A broken useraccount and a request for another useraccount. This is not realy a problem to me but it's ugly and maybe very confusing to newcomers... - The $TERM Environment-Variable is set to con80x25 on my system which caused dselect to print an error-message and exit - no possibility to install additional packages... (Error-Message something like Error opening terminal: con80x25.) The second problem is still there - I can't get an editor, dselect or similar unless I setexport TERM=linux manually. And - worse - I can't find where TERM is set to the confusing value. What did I do wrong? Jens Peter.
Re: installation boot fails with standard bootdisk on 486SX/33
On Mon, 12 Aug 1996 14:20:06 -0500, Christopher R. Hertel wrote: most cases hardware will be blamed, even though the problem appears on a variety of memory/CPU/motherboard/add-on configurations, and the same configurations can run other OSs (*including* older versions of Linux) The external cache disable is also required on certain hardware configurations for installation of OS/2. I would assume the systems where this problem exists under LInux are the same ones affected by the same problem under OS/2. One thing to check, is to make sure you don't have a buggy AMI BIOS. Make sure your BIOS date is at least April, 1993. If not, contact AMI, and you can order an upgrade for about $20 USD.
Re: debian mirror in Australia
At 04:15 PM 8/13/96 +1000, you wrote: Are there any other mirrors of ftp.debian.org in Australia besides sunsite.anu.edu.au and ftp.debian.org.au? Both of these two seem to be a bit behind with their mirroring, but the link to the US is very very slow lately; looks like it's going to take hours to get the updated manual pages .. :-( ftp.tower.net.au (aka ftp.debian.org.au) isn't outdated, it's simply offline due to a scsi cdrom problem (we're working on this at the moment) - in fact mirror last run last night and there weren't many files to get from debian.org. It should be back up within a few days after we've isolated the problem further - in the mean time you may like to try getting them from ftp.it.com.au:/mirrors/linux/debian, however I don't know how up-to-date they are. Regards, ...Karl -- Karl Ferguson, Tower Networking Pty Ltd (ACN: 072 322 760)[EMAIL PROTECTED] t/a STAR Online Services [EMAIL PROTECTED] Tel: +61-9-455-3446 Fax: +61-9-455-2776 http://www.star.net.au/
Problems with aha1542.o ...
I posted earlier about this, but I have more info and it seems to be specific to this module and not lilo. I had to change my base_io from 330 to 234 to accomodate my MPU-401 interface on the Audiotrix Pro card. This works fine under DOS/WIN with a /P234 switch at load time for the driver. The analogous entry for the aha1542.o module is a lilo parameter aha1542=0x234. I've added this to the top of my lilo.conf file with 'append = aha1542=0x234' but I still get errors. I tried doing depmod -a (which showed some unresolveable symbols in sound.o :-() and modprobe but no luck. I did an strace -f on it and it seems that its unable to find its irq. I can't find any way to pass a parameter to the module to tell it what irq I'm on (10)! I took the advice from someone on the list and checked out /proc/... but there are no conflicts there (I suspected not). I plan on upgrading to kernel 2.0.12 in the next few days, but this module hasn't changed at all (I think the sound.o will be fixed though!). If this magically fixes anything, I'll let you guys know. In the mean time, anyone got any ideas? The load time error I get is this: Initialization of aha1542 failed scsi_mod: Device or resource busy which is pretty general. I can send the strace file to anyone willing to have a look. Thanks in advance! Richard G. Roberto [EMAIL PROTECTED] 201-739-2886 - whippany, nj -- *** Bear Stearns is not responsible for any recommendation, solicitation, offer or agreement or any information about any transaction, customer account or account activity contained in this communication. ***
Re: A few stupid(?) questions...
Hi Daniel -- You asked: 3. How would I specify to use -o (--colors) as a default option for color-ls? (I also wish to use color-ls when I use the 'ls' command. So, I would assume I would do an mv /bin/ls /usr/lib ln -sf /usr/bin/color-ls /usr/bin/ls ln -sf /usr/lib/ls /usr/bin/old-ls to replace ls with color-ls?) No, that's not the right thing to do. First of all, color-ls is no longer supported by Debian. Instead, color support is built directly into ls itself, by way of the fileutils package (to be found in section misc on the FTP archive). After you install fileutils, then look in /usr/doc/fileutils. You will see a file called color-ls.gz with more details. Briefly, you can simply execute ls --color to see your directory listing look like a peacock. Also, it is a *bad* idea to execute mv's and ln's on files that have been installed with dselect and/or dpkg. If you don't confuse the package management system, you'll confuse yourself when you try to upgrade or install new packages. It is fine to manipulate files in /usr/local however. Good luck, Susan Kleinmann
Re: Suck doesn't download news
In your email to me, Carl Johnson, you wrote: I have been trying to get suck working and haven't had any luck. Everything seems to work with no complaints and no error messages, but it always reports that there is nothing to download. I can use the testhost command to download the active file, and there is a suck.newrc file left in the /tmp directory that shows the highest available entry in each newsgroup from my sucknewsrc file, so it seems to be communicating OK. Has anybody else had anything similar to this happen? I am using the package version 2.6.3-1 from the stable release. I'm using suck.. it d/l news ok, I just can't post back. I bet you are using -1 as an initial number? Try 0. Tim -- (work) [EMAIL PROTECTED] / (home) [EMAIL PROTECTED] - http://www.buoy.com/~tps It takes more hot water to make cold water hot than cold water to make hot water cold. Jon Blummer ** Disclaimer: My views/comments/beliefs, as strange as they are, are my own.**
Complete Lockups
Hi, Has anyone else experienced complete lockups of the system? It has happened a few times to me, and it doesn't even let me telnet or rlogin to the machine. So far this has happened only under X and when using mailtool over remote connection. Other info: Using fvwm2 ne2000 card is loaded to 0x300 using a substitute nfs.o module (thanks to Lazaro :) many relative symlinks broke during install due to e.g. moving /usr onto another partition How do I go about finding out why this happens? Regards, jay
Re: Suck doesn't download news
On Aug 12, 8:24pm, Carl Johnson wrote: Subject: Suck doesn't download news I have been trying to get suck working and haven't had any luck. Everything seems to work with no complaints and no error messages, but it always reports that there is nothing to download. I can use the testhost command to download the active file, and there is a suck.newrc file left in the /tmp directory that shows the highest available entry in each newsgroup from my sucknewsrc file, so it seems to be communicating OK. Has anybody else had anything similar to this happen? I am using the package version 2.6.3-1 from the stable release. Carl Johnson [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- End of excerpt from Carl Johnson Yeah, I had this happen, when I was connecting to a news server w/o the newnews command (newnews group yymmdd hhmmss) Therefore it couldnt get a list of news to d/l. THis was NetManage NNS server for NT. I moved on to a regular innd and it worked fine. But honestly I prefer this modified Tiny News perl script. Check out the Tiny-News Howto -- == = Randall Shutt = = RaveNet Systems, Inc = ==
Re: OS/2 HPFS File System - Is this a Bug?
On Tue, 13 Aug 1996, Jim Worthington wrote: I'm running OS/2 Warp with HPFS on several of my drives. I noticed that Linux 1.1 fdisk reveals two different file system identifiers for these HPFS partitions: /dev/sda5 id 7 OS/2 HPFS /dev/hda2 id 17 Unknown This a little bit of a guess, (I have never used os/2 and linux on the same machine, and I never got os/2 to run right either) but I am think that /dev/hda2 might be your os/2 boot manager partition. Are you using it? If you are, and linux's fdisk says it only 1 or 2 MB large, then I would just remove it from your /etc/mtab and /etc/fstab files. Hope this helps (just a guess) Shaya -- Shaya Potter [EMAIL PROTECTED] The Unknown partition type (id 17) was created by OS/2 Warp fdisk during the installation process. It is also a primary partition. The HPFS partition type (id 7) was created by OS/2 Warp after installation. Note that this is an extended partition. Has anybody else observed the two different identifers for HPFS filesystems? Is this a Bug? Linux produces some error messages when mounting the id 17 filesystem but it everything seems to work ok. I didn't observe any error messages when mounting the id 7 filesystem which also works fine. OS/2 Warp doesn't complain at all.
Netscape Window size problem..
Hmm I have stumbled on a new problem... I used to have a 1280x1024 virtual screen but now I only use a screen the same size as my viewport(1024x768) so whenever I start Netscape3.0b6 Mail program it's window is too large.. Where is this window size info stored??.. I've looked allover but no go.. -- * Dan Bergman* * [EMAIL PROTECTED] * * http://www.geocities.com/TimesSquare/4052/ * * * * Lister: Love is what separates us from the animals.* * Rimmer: No, Lister - what separates us from animals is * *that we don't use our tongues to clean our genitals. * *RED DWARF *
Re: Formatting a 4GB Partition
There was some kind of a bug in 2.0.7, so 2.0.8 was released; similarly for 2.0.8-2.0.9 and 2.0.9-2.0.10. 2.0.8 is however, stable. This is the kernel which the current Debian installation uses. the message Can't resolve symbol llseek. This sounds like a programming error. The symbol should be lseek. No. llseek is a version of lseek using a 64bit argument (which is required when dealing with 4Gb partitions). # cd /usr/lib ; nm libc.a | grep llseek __llseek.o: T __llseek W llseek See llseek(2). Ray -- Cyberspace, a final frontier. These are the voyages of my messages, on a lightspeed mission to explore strange new systems and to boldly go where no data has gone before.
Re: A few stupid(?) questions...
On Mon, 12 Aug 1996 17:10:24 +0200, Dominik Kubla wrote: 1. The Bourne Again SHell seems to require a '.\' before the | I guess you mean ./, don't you? ---+ Oops. :( Check your PATH setting: is . part of the search path? Yes. Thanks...received replies from Sasha(?) et al on this one. .bashrc is only loaded by non-interactive shells. Put the following at the top of your .bash_profile: if [ -r $HOME/.bashrc ] then source $HOME/.bashrc fi And .bash_aliases is not an autoloaded file too, use the same construct as above. Ah...thanks. That explains a lot. :)
Re: Formatting a 4GB Partition
On Mon, 12 Aug 1996 12:48:47 +, Karsten Mueller wrote: I tried to install Debian 1.1 on a 4GB Partition using the kernel 2.07 There was some kind of a bug in 2.0.7, so 2.0.8 was released; similarly for 2.0.8-2.0.9 and 2.0.9-2.0.10. 2.0.8 is however, stable. This is the kernel which the current Debian installation uses. the message Can't resolve symbol llseek. This sounds like a programming error. The symbol should be lseek.
Re: UncorrectableError from two disk sectors
Douglas Bates [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: `dmesg' shows a lot of messages about two sectors on my disk. From: Michael Harnois [EMAIL PROTECTED] Oh, thank God! I'm not the only one! I thought my disk was dying! Maybe it is. Read the man page for e2fsck, and look for the -c flag. Read the man page on badblocks, too. That will help you retire those bad blocks, given that they are on our usual EXT2 filesystems. I see that mkswap (used to make swap partitions) has a -c option as well, but I'm not clear that it actually retires the block. If more bad blocks with different numbers pop up after that, think about a new disk. Thanks Bruce
Re: Some initial problems
From: Jens Peter Lindemann [EMAIL PROTECTED] The $TERM Environment-Variable is set to con80x25 on my system This is a symptom of an antique kernel. Are you running Debian 0.93? Debian 1.1.4 is on our FTP site ftp://ftp.debian.org/debian/stable . Did you change the kernel in some other way? Thanks Bruce
Netscape and XKeysymDB
I am getting lots of messages about the key symbols not being right. I remember from BSDI that you had to have the nls directory set up in a special place. Tried to hack this but still not getting the desired result (i.e. no more messages about missing keysyms). The docs say that a suitable XKeysymDB is included in the package, though I have my doubts. Is there some manual intervention needed here? Thanks!
how to boot single-user mode?
Last night I tried and tried to get my system to come up in single user mode (so I could do some major filesystem changes). I couldn't get it to come up single-user. I tried booting from the original install boot floppy, and to my surprise it booted up my kernel on the hard disk?!?!?! I couldn't find the solution in the docs anywhere. Can anyone tell me what I should be doing? For background, I need to change the size of some partitions, so I need to copy whole partitions to a temporary location while I re-do the partition table on the target disk. I hope to avoid having to re-install from tape or from scratch this way. Thanks!
Re: UncorrectableError from two disk sectors
On Mon, 12 Aug 1996, Douglas Bates wrote:
`dmesg' shows a lot of messages about two sectors on my disk. For
example
hda: read_intr: error=0x01 { AddrMarkNotFound }, LBAsect=1097170,
sector=48787
hda: read_intr: status=0x59 { DriveReady SeekComplete DataRequest Error }
...
Should this be a concern? What action would be recommended?
I also get this. It's lead to several system crashes. I would recommend
you back up. If possible, post that you are getting these messages along
with the output from dmesg to the linux-kernel mailing list
([EMAIL PROTECTED]) so as to give the developers as much
information as possible to figure out where the problem is.
I have a 1.5g Maxtor hard drive. My motherboard has the Intel Triton
chipset. Do we have anything in common here? I'm currently running
2.0.11 but have had this with other 2.0.x kernels as well.
Regards,
Gerry
Re: Re^3: How do I get GATEWAY2000 PS/2 mouse to work ?
My experience is that there are a couple of good hardware reasons for getting serial mice instead of PS/2 mice: -- we accidentally fried a BIOS chip by delivering a static charge through a PS/2 mouse. This has never happened with a serial mouse, and leads me to suspect that the PS/2 connector (or at least the connector we used to have on our R.I.P. Asus '486 motherboard) is less robust against static than an serial connector. This sounds like the only hardware reason to me. -- removing the PS/2 mouse frees up an IRQ. Perhaps for you. I cannot put ANYTHING on the irq used by my ps/2 mouse because my p60 does not let me disable it. -- one never knows if/when PS/2 mouse is going to be available in a downloaded kernel, whereas serial support is virtually always there. Oh give me a break. If you are not experienced enough to compile your own kernel for your own custom hardware you should never be giving advice to other linux users until you are. SHEESH. It is not that hard. Do a 'make config' once, cp .config to some safe place, then if you must remove your kernel source tree or upgrade or compile someone else's kernel, you can, and the copy the file back and say 'make oldconfig'. IT IS NOT THAT HARD PEOPLE! I personally have 14 different 'configurations' for different people in my 'safe place' away from the kernel tree. So I can compile for 14 different people if they ask me to. That said, I have a ps/2 port and am using a serial mouse. Why? Because before I had this pentium motherboard I did not have a ps/2 port and thus had a serial mouse. I am too cheap to go buy a ps/2 mouse, but when I borrowed one from a friend to verify the port worked (easily compiled as a module...no reboot) I experienced a much more responsive mouse than the three serial mice I have tried since. I for one intend to get a ps/2 mouse when I have the extra money. I have had some problems with some serial mice though, particularly those cheap ones which change their state when the power goes off. Hehehe, you mean the cheez-ball 3 button mice that when initialized must have the right button pressed or they go into 2 button mode? grin -- Todd Fries .. [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: dselect ftp went bye bye
This is becoming a FAQ - why is this happening? I presume that a lot of people are installing some cdrom version or the released version of Debian. The changes were in the unstable version. How many weeks to go for the next release? Erick
Re: Suck doesn't download news
In your email to me, Carl Johnson, you wrote: I have been trying to get suck working and haven't had any luck. Everything seems to work with no complaints and no error messages, but it always reports that there is nothing to download. I can use the testhost command to download the active file, and there is a suck.newrc file left in the /tmp directory that shows the highest available entry in each newsgroup from my sucknewsrc file, so it seems to be communicating OK. Has anybody else had anything similar to this happen? I am using the package version 2.6.3-1 from the stable release. I'm using suck.. it d/l news ok, I just can't post back. I bet you are using -1 as an initial number? Try 0. Tim I just tried it and it now works fine. So, why do they send the default setup with -1? Thanks for your reply. Carl Johnson[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: fvwm95 not finding files...
Klee Dienes wrote: There's a preliminary packaging of fvwm95 in ftp.sedona.com:/pub/linux/debian. It works fine, but currently conflicts with the standard fvwm and fvwm2. Perhaps you'd be willing to download my copy as a starting fvwm95 shares many files with fvwm2 (all of the modules). This should be reworked so that the files can be shared when both window managers are installed. Andy
Re: IPX and loopback
Hello Pablo, Why does kerneld load the IPX module while the localhost's loopback interface is being set up? (ifconfig lo 127.0.0.1) I see no need to it... stracing ifconfig shows that it makes an IPX call (and also an AX.25 and some other calls). This didn't happened with and old Slackware based installation, and, altough harmless (the module gets cleanly unloaded) annoys me a bit. Any ideas? This on is easy: ifconfig checks for the supported protocol families. That's what is triggering kerneld. ifconfig should be fixed to check just for availability of IP since it can not handle either IPX or AppleTalk. Dominik
Can't find boot/root disks for 1.1
Hi all, I follow the links from the Debian org homepage to: ftp://ftp.debian.org/debian/Debian-1.1/disks-i386/current here I try to download root.bin, boot1440.bin etc. and I get a error from my browser saying the links are bad and it can't find the files! Could someone point me the the base disks I need to get Debian 1.1 up and running? Thanks for the help! Brian
Re: File systems
I'm brand new to Linux and was looking for recommendations for a choice of file systems local filesystem? : ext2fs Erick
Re: File systems
On Mon, 12 Aug 1996 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Greetings, I'm brand new to Linux and was looking for recommendations for a choice of file systems You mean Do I go with xiafs or extfs or what else? Easy. Go with 'ext2fs'. The other Linux-specific ones arent' being used very much nowadays. Christian
SCSI and EIDE
On Fri, 9 Aug 1996, Wayne Schlitt wrote: On Thu, 8 Aug 1996, Douglas Bates wrote: the combination of the IDE controller in the Triton chipset with an EIDE drive is as fast as fast, wide SCSI. SCSI's advantage is that it can handle multiple outstanding requests at the same time, while EIDE has to wait for one to complete before it can start a second one. SCSI can handle multiple request to _different_ devices on the same SCSI bus, but I don't think you can have multiple requests to the same device. Yup, it can. One of the parameters exchanged on start is how many requests the device can queue. Typically queues range from 16 to 50. But don't ask me to back that up -- top of hte head number. This is one of the big differences between SCSI 1 and 2. That and the disconnect/reconnect feature. (Don't *ever* buy a scsi 1 tape drive. Everything stops when you rewind the tape.) with a a few meg of cache on the drive. (This allows the drive to start being clever and resort the queue'd I/O's for fastest return. E.g. If the head is on cylinder 7, and it gets a read request for cylinder 2000, and cylinder 500, it will do the 500 on the way to the one for 2000.) This is known as elevator seeking and should be done at the OS level. The order that data is written out is very important for data reliability, and for this reason, I don't think any hard disk change the order of the writes. There are several different algolrithms for doing this. Elevator seek is the simplest of them. Some put a higher priority on reads over writes. Some re-priortize the queue so that requests that have been outstanding for a while get bumped up the queue. I agree that you can do this in the OS, but I don't think that it *should* be done in the OS. 0. In general smarts should be at the point they are used. We had a VAX that was about as speedy as a 12 MHz 286 with 287 co-processor. However, that vax could handle 8 simultaneous 19 KB terminal lines. How? Smart serial cards. The CPU should do those tasks that are either too general for dedicated hardware, or that don't happen often enough to take up much time. 1. The OS shouldn't have to care about the layout of the disk. 2. I don't understand why the order matters for reliability -- unless you're talking about power failures. This is a low order failure mode -- which is why you do backups -- for those rare occasions when the disk does lose a file when the lights go out. The disk is smart enough to recognize that a new request to write out sector 12345 makes the previous request to write out sector 12345 invalid. 3. The kernel of any unixen caches metadata for most of the file system for long periods of time. This is the whole point of the sync daemon -- to flush this out to disk. The really big problem that IDE had that EIDE fixed was that IDE couldn't do DMA, so the OS had to move each byte from the disk drive. On the other hand, SCSI's command overhead can be significant, often adding up to 10ms to the simplest command. I would expect that if you only have one disk per EIDE controller, you will significantly outperform a single SCSI bus with two disks on it. -wayne Sherwood Botsford |Unsolicited email that advertises commercial Physics Dept |activities will consitute a request for U of Alberta |spellchecking of all words of less than three Edmonton, AB, |characters. I charge $US500 for this service. T6G 2J1 |There is no warranty of correctness of this service.
Complete Lockups
On Tue, 13 Aug 1996 13:54:49 +0100, Jeppe Sigbrandt [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: Has anyone else experienced complete lockups of the system? It has happened a few times to me, and it doesn't even let me telnet or rlogin to the machine. So far this has happened only under X and when using mailtool over remote connection. Other info: Using fvwm2 ne2000 card is loaded to 0x300 using a substitute nfs.o module (thanks to Lazaro :) many relative symlinks broke during install due to e.g. moving /usr onto another partition Yes, this has happened to me about three times in as many weeks. The only constant that I've noticed is that it was always when I was in X. I'm also using fvwm2. I've been attributing the problem to the fact that I'm using an alpha-test version of the X server, but maybe not. -Randy P.S. (apologies for the long anti-spam message, but until moneyworld stops filling my inbox with repeating trash, it appears to be necessary.) -- http://cogsci.ucsd.edu/~gobbel/ NOTICE: I DO NOT ACCEPT UNSOLICITED COMMERCIAL EMAIL MESSAGES OF ANY KIND. I CONSIDER SUCH MESSAGES PERSONAL HARRASSMENT AND A GROSS INVASION OF MY PRIVACY. By sending unsolicited commercial advertising/solicitations (or otherwise on or as part of a mailing list) to me via e-mail you will be indicating your consent to paying John R. (Randy) Gobbel $1,000.00 U.S.D./hour for a minimum of 1 hour for my time spent dealing with it. Payment due in 30 days upon receipt of an invoice (e-mail or regular mail) from me or my authorized representative.
