Re: user limits for 'security'?

2001-06-25 Thread LA Walsh
I suppose another question related to the first, is 'limit' checking part of the 'standard linux security' that embedded Linux users might find to be a waste of precious code-space? -l -- The above thoughts and| I know I don't know the opinions writings are my own. | of

user limits for 'security'?

2001-06-25 Thread LA Walsh
I've seen some people saying that user-limits are an essential part of a secure system to prevent local DoS attacks. Given that, should a system call like 'fork' return -EPERM if the user has reached their limit? My local manpage (SuSE 7.2 system) says this under fork: ERRORS EAGAIN

user limits for 'security'?

2001-06-25 Thread LA Walsh
I've seen some people saying that user-limits are an essential part of a secure system to prevent local DoS attacks. Given that, should a system call like 'fork' return -EPERM if the user has reached their limit? My local manpage (SuSE 7.2 system) says this under fork: ERRORS EAGAIN

Re: user limits for 'security'?

2001-06-25 Thread LA Walsh
I suppose another question related to the first, is 'limit' checking part of the 'standard linux security' that embedded Linux users might find to be a waste of precious code-space? -l -- The above thoughts and| I know I don't know the opinions writings are my own. | of

Re: Break 2.4 VM in five easy steps

2001-06-07 Thread LA Walsh
"Eric W. Biederman" wrote: > LA Walsh <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > > Now for whatever reason, since 2.4, I consistently use at least > > a few Mb of swap -- stands at 5Meg now. Weird -- but I notice things > > like nscd running 7 co

Re: Break 2.4 VM in five easy steps

2001-06-07 Thread LA Walsh
"Eric W. Biederman" wrote: > There are cetain scenario's where you can't avoid virtual mem = > min(RAM,swap). Which is what I was trying to say, (bad formula). What > happens is that pages get referenced evenly enough and quickly enough > that you simply cannot reuse the on disk pages.

Re: Break 2.4 VM in five easy steps

2001-06-07 Thread LA Walsh
Eric W. Biederman wrote: There are cetain scenario's where you can't avoid virtual mem = min(RAM,swap). Which is what I was trying to say, (bad formula). What happens is that pages get referenced evenly enough and quickly enough that you simply cannot reuse the on disk pages. Basically in

Re: Break 2.4 VM in five easy steps

2001-06-07 Thread LA Walsh
Eric W. Biederman wrote: LA Walsh [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Now for whatever reason, since 2.4, I consistently use at least a few Mb of swap -- stands at 5Meg now. Weird -- but I notice things like nscd running 7 copies that take 72M. Seems like overkill for a laptop. So

Re: Break 2.4 VM in five easy steps

2001-06-06 Thread LA Walsh
"Eric W. Biederman" wrote: > The hard rule will always be that to cover all pathological cases swap > must be greater than RAM. Because in the worse case all RAM will be > in thes swap cache. That this is more than just the worse case in 2.4 > is problematic. I.e. In the worst case: > Virtual

Re: Break 2.4 VM in five easy steps

2001-06-06 Thread LA Walsh
Eric W. Biederman wrote: The hard rule will always be that to cover all pathological cases swap must be greater than RAM. Because in the worse case all RAM will be in thes swap cache. That this is more than just the worse case in 2.4 is problematic. I.e. In the worst case: Virtual Memory

Re: ln -s broken on 2.4.5

2001-05-30 Thread LA Walsh
Marcus Meissner wrote: > $ ln -s fupp/bar bar > $ ls -la bar --- Is it peculiar to a specific architecture? What does strace show for args to the symlink cmd? -l -- The above thoughts and | They may have nothing to do with writings are my own. | the opinions of my

Re: ln -s broken on 2.4.5

2001-05-30 Thread LA Walsh
Marcus Meissner wrote: $ ln -s fupp/bar bar $ ls -la bar --- Is it peculiar to a specific architecture? What does strace show for args to the symlink cmd? -l -- The above thoughts and | They may have nothing to do with writings are my own. | the opinions of my

[i386 arch] MTR messages significant?]

2001-05-08 Thread LA Walsh
I've been seeing these for a while now (2.4.4 - <=2.4.2) also coincidental with a change to XFree86 X 4.0.3 from "MetroX" in the time frame. Am not sure exactly when they started but was wondering if they were significant. It seems some app is trying to delete or modify something. On console

[i386 arch] MTR messages significant?]

2001-05-08 Thread LA Walsh
I've been seeing these for a while now (2.4.4 - =2.4.2) also coincidental with a change to XFree86 X 4.0.3 from MetroX in the time frame. Am not sure exactly when they started but was wondering if they were significant. It seems some app is trying to delete or modify something. On console and

Re: 2.4.4 code breaks compile of VMWare network bridging

2001-05-02 Thread LA Walsh
"Mohammad A. Haque" wrote: > This was answered several hours ago. Check the list archives. --- Many thanks -- it was in my neverending backlog -l - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info

2.4.4 code breaks compile of VMWare network bridging

2001-05-02 Thread LA Walsh
In 2.4.4, the define, in include/linux/skbuff.h and corresponding structure in net/core/skbuff.c , "skb_datarefp" disappeared. I'm not reporting this as a 'bug' as kernel internal interfaces are subject to change, but more as an "FYI". I haven't had a chance to try to debug or figure

2.4.4 code breaks compile of VMWare network bridging

2001-05-02 Thread LA Walsh
In 2.4.4, the define, in include/linux/skbuff.h and corresponding structure in net/core/skbuff.c , skb_datarefp disappeared. I'm not reporting this as a 'bug' as kernel internal interfaces are subject to change, but more as an FYI. I haven't had a chance to try to debug or figure out

Re: 2.4.4 code breaks compile of VMWare network bridging

2001-05-02 Thread LA Walsh
Mohammad A. Haque wrote: This was answered several hours ago. Check the list archives. --- Many thanks -- it was in my neverending backlog -l - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line unsubscribe linux-kernel in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at

Re: 2.4 and 2GB swap partition limit

2001-04-27 Thread LA Walsh
Rik van Riel wrote: > On Fri, 27 Apr 2001, LA Walsh wrote: > > > An interesting option (though with less-than-stellar performance > > characteristics) would be a dynamically expanding swapfile. If you're > > going to be hit with swap penalties, it may be usefu

Re: 2.4 and 2GB swap partition limit

2001-04-27 Thread LA Walsh
Rogier Wolff wrote: > > > On Linux any swap adds to the memory pool, so 1xRAM would be > > > equivalent to 2xRAM with the old old OS's. > > > > no more true AFAIK > > I've always been trying to convice people that 2x RAM remains a good > rule-of-thumb. --- Ug. I like to view swap as "low

Re: [PATCH] SMP race in ext2 - metadata corruption.

2001-04-27 Thread LA Walsh
Andrzej Krzysztofowicz wrote: > I know a few people that often do: > > dd if=/dev/hda1 of=/dev/hdc1 > e2fsck /dev/hdc1 > > to make an "exact" copy of a currently working system. --- Presumably this isn't a problem is the source disks are either unmounted or mounted 'read-only' ? -- The

Re: [PATCH] SMP race in ext2 - metadata corruption.

2001-04-27 Thread LA Walsh
Andrzej Krzysztofowicz wrote: I know a few people that often do: dd if=/dev/hda1 of=/dev/hdc1 e2fsck /dev/hdc1 to make an exact copy of a currently working system. --- Presumably this isn't a problem is the source disks are either unmounted or mounted 'read-only' ? -- The above

Re: 2.4 and 2GB swap partition limit

2001-04-27 Thread LA Walsh
Rogier Wolff wrote: On Linux any swap adds to the memory pool, so 1xRAM would be equivalent to 2xRAM with the old old OS's. no more true AFAIK I've always been trying to convice people that 2x RAM remains a good rule-of-thumb. --- Ug. I like to view swap as low grade memory --

Re: 2.4 and 2GB swap partition limit

2001-04-27 Thread LA Walsh
Rik van Riel wrote: On Fri, 27 Apr 2001, LA Walsh wrote: An interesting option (though with less-than-stellar performance characteristics) would be a dynamically expanding swapfile. If you're going to be hit with swap penalties, it may be useful to not have to pre-reserve

Re: [QUESTION] 2.4.x nice level

2001-04-02 Thread LA Walsh
Quim K Holland wrote: > > > "BS" == BERECZ Szabolcs <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > BS> ... a setiathome running at nice level 19, and a bladeenc at > BS> nice level 0. setiathome uses 14 percent, and bladeenc uses > BS> 84 percent of the processor. I think, setiathome should use > BS> max

Re: [QUESTION] 2.4.x nice level

2001-04-02 Thread LA Walsh
Quim K Holland wrote: "BS" == BERECZ Szabolcs [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: BS ... a setiathome running at nice level 19, and a bladeenc at BS nice level 0. setiathome uses 14 percent, and bladeenc uses BS 84 percent of the processor. I think, setiathome should use BS max 2-3 percent. the

Re: unistd.h and 'extern's and 'syscall' "standard(?)"

2001-04-01 Thread LA Walsh
Andreas Schwab wrote: > Don't use kernel headers in user programs. Just use syscall(3). > > Andreas. --- I'm on a SuSE71 system and have all the manpages installed: law> man syscall No manual entry for syscall The problem is not so much for user programs as library writers that

unistd.h and 'extern's and 'syscall' "standard(?)"

2001-04-01 Thread LA Walsh
I have a question. Some architectures have "system calls" implemented as library calls (calls that are "system calls" on ia32) For example, the expectation on 'arm', seems to be that sys_sync is in a library. On alpha, sys_open appears to be in a library. Is this correct? Is

unistd.h and 'extern's and 'syscall' standard(?)

2001-04-01 Thread LA Walsh
I have a question. Some architectures have "system calls" implemented as library calls (calls that are "system calls" on ia32) For example, the expectation on 'arm', seems to be that sys_sync is in a library. On alpha, sys_open appears to be in a library. Is this correct? Is

Re: unistd.h and 'extern's and 'syscall' standard(?)

2001-04-01 Thread LA Walsh
Andreas Schwab wrote: Don't use kernel headers in user programs. Just use syscall(3). Andreas. --- I'm on a SuSE71 system and have all the manpages installed: law man syscall No manual entry for syscall The problem is not so much for user programs as library writers that

Re: 64-bit block sizes on 32-bit systems

2001-03-27 Thread LA Walsh
Jan Harkes wrote: > > On Tue, Mar 27, 2001 at 01:57:42PM -0600, Jesse Pollard wrote: > > > Using similar numbers as presented. If we are working our way through > > > every single block in a Pentabyte filesystem, and the blocksize is 512 > > > bytes. Then the 1us in extra CPU cycles because of

Re: 64-bit block sizes on 32-bit systems

2001-03-27 Thread LA Walsh
Ion Badulescu wrote: > Are you being deliberately insulting, "L", or are you one of those users > who bitch and scream for features they *need* at *any cost*, and who > have never even opened up the book for Computer Architecture 101? --- Sorry, I was borderline insulting. I'm getting

Re: 64-bit block sizes on 32-bit systems

2001-03-27 Thread LA Walsh
Ion Badulescu wrote: Are you being deliberately insulting, "L", or are you one of those users who bitch and scream for features they *need* at *any cost*, and who have never even opened up the book for Computer Architecture 101? --- Sorry, I was borderline insulting. I'm getting

Re: 64-bit block sizes on 32-bit systems

2001-03-27 Thread LA Walsh
Jan Harkes wrote: On Tue, Mar 27, 2001 at 01:57:42PM -0600, Jesse Pollard wrote: Using similar numbers as presented. If we are working our way through every single block in a Pentabyte filesystem, and the blocksize is 512 bytes. Then the 1us in extra CPU cycles because of 64-bit

Re: 64-bit block sizes on 32-bit systems

2001-03-26 Thread LA Walsh
Manfred Spraul wrote: > > >4k page size * 2GB = 8TB. > > Try it. > If your drive (array) is larger than 512byte*4G (4TB) linux will eat > your data. --- I have a block device that doesn't use 'sectors'. It only uses the logical block size (which is currently set for 1K). Seems I could

Re: 64-bit block sizes on 32-bit systems

2001-03-26 Thread LA Walsh
Matthew Wilcox wrote: > > On Mon, Mar 26, 2001 at 08:39:21AM -0800, LA Walsh wrote: > > I vaguely remember a discussion about this a few months back. > > If I remember, the reasoning was it would unnecessarily slow > > down smaller systems that would never have block

64-bit block sizes on 32-bit systems

2001-03-26 Thread LA Walsh
I vaguely remember a discussion about this a few months back. If I remember, the reasoning was it would unnecessarily slow down smaller systems that would never have block devices in the 4-28T range attached. However, isn't it possible there will continue to be a series of P-IV,V,VI,VII

64-bit block sizes on 32-bit systems

2001-03-26 Thread LA Walsh
I vaguely remember a discussion about this a few months back. If I remember, the reasoning was it would unnecessarily slow down smaller systems that would never have block devices in the 4-28T range attached. However, isn't it possible there will continue to be a series of P-IV,V,VI,VII

Re: 64-bit block sizes on 32-bit systems

2001-03-26 Thread LA Walsh
Matthew Wilcox wrote: On Mon, Mar 26, 2001 at 08:39:21AM -0800, LA Walsh wrote: I vaguely remember a discussion about this a few months back. If I remember, the reasoning was it would unnecessarily slow down smaller systems that would never have block devices in the 4-28T range

Re: 64-bit block sizes on 32-bit systems

2001-03-26 Thread LA Walsh
Manfred Spraul wrote: 4k page size * 2GB = 8TB. Try it. If your drive (array) is larger than 512byte*4G (4TB) linux will eat your data. --- I have a block device that doesn't use 'sectors'. It only uses the logical block size (which is currently set for 1K). Seems I could up

Re: NCR53c8xx driver and multiple controllers...(not new prob)

2001-03-25 Thread LA Walsh
Here is the 'alternate' output when the ncr53c8xx driver is compiled in: SCSI subsystem driver Revision: 1.00 scsi-ncr53c7,8xx : at PCI bus 0, device 8, function 0 scsi-ncr53c7,8xx : warning : revision of 35 is greater than 2. scsi-ncr53c7,8xx : NCR53c810 at memory 0xfa101000, io 0x2000, irq 58

Re: NCR53c8xx driver and multiple controllers...(not new prob)

2001-03-25 Thread LA Walsh
Here is the 'alternate' output when the ncr53c8xx driver is compiled in: SCSI subsystem driver Revision: 1.00 scsi-ncr53c7,8xx : at PCI bus 0, device 8, function 0 scsi-ncr53c7,8xx : warning : revision of 35 is greater than 2. scsi-ncr53c7,8xx : NCR53c810 at memory 0xfa101000, io 0x2000, irq 58

NCR53c8xx driver and multiple controllers...(not new prob)

2001-03-24 Thread LA Walsh
I have a machine with 3 of these controllers (a 4 CPU server). The 3 controllers are: ncr53c810a-0: rev=0x23, base=0xfa101000, io_port=0x2000, irq=58 ncr53c810a-0: ID 7, Fast-10, Parity Checking ncr53c896-1: rev=0x01, base=0xfe004000, io_port=0x3000, irq=57 ncr53c896-1: ID 7, Fast-40, Parity

NCR53c8xx driver and multiple controllers...(not new prob)

2001-03-24 Thread LA Walsh
I have a machine with 3 of these controllers (a 4 CPU server). The 3 controllers are: ncr53c810a-0: rev=0x23, base=0xfa101000, io_port=0x2000, irq=58 ncr53c810a-0: ID 7, Fast-10, Parity Checking ncr53c896-1: rev=0x01, base=0xfe004000, io_port=0x3000, irq=57 ncr53c896-1: ID 7, Fast-40, Parity

Re: Is swap == 2 * RAM a permanent thing?

2001-03-15 Thread LA Walsh
The not reclaiming swap space is flawed in more than once instance. Suppose my P1 and P2 have their swap reserved -- now both grow. P3 is idle but can't fit in swap. This is going to result in fragmentation no? How is this fragmentation less worse than just freeing swap. Ever since Ram sizes

Re: Is swap == 2 * RAM a permanent thing?

2001-03-15 Thread LA Walsh
The not reclaiming swap space is flawed in more than once instance. Suppose my P1 and P2 have their swap reserved -- now both grow. P3 is idle but can't fit in swap. This is going to result in fragmentation no? How is this fragmentation less worse than just freeing swap. Ever since Ram sizes

Re: (struct dentry *)->vfsmnt;

2001-03-09 Thread LA Walsh
Alexander Viro wrote: > No such thing. The same fs may be present in many places. Please, > describe the situation - where do you get that dentry from? > Cheers, > Al --- Al,

(struct dentry *)->vfsmnt;

2001-03-09 Thread LA Walsh
Could someone enlighten me as to the purpose of this field in the dentry struct? There is no elucidating comment in the header for this particular field and the name/type only indicate it is pointing to a list of vfsmounts. Can a dentry belong to more than one vfsmount? If I have a 'dentry'

(struct dentry *)-vfsmnt;

2001-03-09 Thread LA Walsh
Could someone enlighten me as to the purpose of this field in the dentry struct? There is no elucidating comment in the header for this particular field and the name/type only indicate it is pointing to a list of vfsmounts. Can a dentry belong to more than one vfsmount? If I have a 'dentry'

Re: (struct dentry *)-vfsmnt;

2001-03-09 Thread LA Walsh
Alexander Viro wrote: No such thing. The same fs may be present in many places. Please, describe the situation - where do you get that dentry from? Cheers, Al --- Al,

Re: Elevator algorithm parameters

2001-03-08 Thread LA Walsh
I hate when that happens... LA Walsh wrote: > If you ask for code from me, it'll be a while -- My read and write ...Q's are rather full right now with some higher priority I/O...:-) -l -- L A Walsh| Trust Technology, Core Linux, SGI [EMAIL PROTEC

Elevator algorithm parameters

2001-03-08 Thread LA Walsh
I have a few comments/questions on the elv. alg. as it is now. Some of them may be based on a flawed understanding, but please be patient anyway :-). 1) read-ahead is given the same 'latency' [max-wait priority] as 'read' I can see r-a as being less important than 'read' -- 'read' means

Re: Elevator algorithm parameters

2001-03-08 Thread LA Walsh
I hate when that happens... LA Walsh wrote: If you ask for code from me, it'll be a while -- My read and write ...Q's are rather full right now with some higher priority I/O...:-) -l -- L A Walsh| Trust Technology, Core Linux, SGI [EMAIL PROTECTED

Elevator algorithm parameters

2001-03-08 Thread LA Walsh
I have a few comments/questions on the elv. alg. as it is now. Some of them may be based on a flawed understanding, but please be patient anyway :-). 1) read-ahead is given the same 'latency' [max-wait priority] as 'read' I can see r-a as being less important than 'read' -- 'read' means

setfsuid

2001-03-07 Thread LA Walsh
Why doesn't setfsuid return -EPERM when it can't perform the operation? file: kernel/sys.c, 'sys_setfsuid' around line 779 depending on your source version. There is a check if capable(CAP_SETUID), that if it fails, doesn't return an error. This seems inconsistent. In fact the manpage I have

setfsuid

2001-03-07 Thread LA Walsh
Why doesn't setfsuid return -EPERM when it can't perform the operation? file: kernel/sys.c, 'sys_setfsuid' around line 779 depending on your source version. There is a check if capable(CAP_SETUID), that if it fails, doesn't return an error. This seems inconsistent. In fact the manpage I have

Re: Annoying CD-rom driver error messages

2001-03-06 Thread LA Walsh
Alan Cox wrote: > > > support to function efficiently -- perhaps that technology needs to be further >developed > > on Linux so app writers don't also have to be kernel experts and experts in all the > > various bus and device types out there? > > You mean someone should write a libcdrom that

Re: Annoying CD-rom driver error messages

2001-03-06 Thread LA Walsh
Alan Cox wrote: > > > Then it seems the less ideal question is what is the "approved and >recommended > > way for a program to "poll" such devices to check for 'changes' and 'media type' > > without the kernel generating spurious WARNINGS/ERRORS? > > The answer to that could probably

Re: Annoying CD-rom driver error messages

2001-03-06 Thread LA Walsh
God wrote: > > On Mon, 5 Mar 2001, Alan Cox wrote: > > > > > this isnt a kernel problem, its a _very_ stupid app > > > --- > > > Must be more than one stupid app... > > > > Could well be. You have something continually trying to open your cdrom and > > see if there is media in it > > Gnome

Re: Annoying CD-rom driver error messages

2001-03-06 Thread LA Walsh
God wrote: On Mon, 5 Mar 2001, Alan Cox wrote: this isnt a kernel problem, its a _very_ stupid app --- Must be more than one stupid app... Could well be. You have something continually trying to open your cdrom and see if there is media in it Gnome / KDE? does exactly

Re: Annoying CD-rom driver error messages

2001-03-06 Thread LA Walsh
Alan Cox wrote: Then it seems the less ideal question is what is the "approved and recommended way for a program to "poll" such devices to check for 'changes' and 'media type' without the kernel generating spurious WARNINGS/ERRORS? The answer to that could probably fill a book

Re: Annoying CD-rom driver error messages

2001-03-06 Thread LA Walsh
Alan Cox wrote: support to function efficiently -- perhaps that technology needs to be further developed on Linux so app writers don't also have to be kernel experts and experts in all the various bus and device types out there? You mean someone should write a libcdrom that handles

Re: Annoying CD-rom driver error messages

2001-03-05 Thread LA Walsh
Alan Cox wrote: > > > > this isnt a kernel problem, its a _very_ stupid app > > --- > > Must be more than one stupid app... > > Could well be. You have something continually trying to open your cdrom and > see if there is media in it --- Is there some feature they *should* be

Re: Annoying CD-rom driver error messages

2001-03-05 Thread LA Walsh
LA Walsh wrote: > > > this isnt a kernel problem, its a _very_ stupid app > --- > Must be more than one stupid app... > > xena:/var/log# rpm -q magicdev > package magicdev is not installed > xena:/var/log# locate magicdev > xena:/var/log# > xena

Re: Annoying CD-rom driver error messages

2001-03-05 Thread LA Walsh
> this isnt a kernel problem, its a _very_ stupid app --- Must be more than one stupid app... xena:/var/log# rpm -q magicdev package magicdev is not installed xena:/var/log# locate magicdev xena:/var/log# xena:/var/log# rpm -qa |grep -i magic ImageMagick-5.2.6-4 -- L A Walsh

Re: Annoying CD-rom driver error messages

2001-03-05 Thread LA Walsh
Slightly less annoying -- when no CD is in the drive, I'm getting: Mar 5 09:30:42 xena kernel: VFS: Disk change detected on device ide1(22,0) Mar 5 09:31:17 xena last message repeated 7 times Mar 5 09:32:18 xena last message repeated 12 times Mar 5 09:33:23 xena last message repeated 13

Annoying CD-rom driver error messages

2001-03-05 Thread LA Walsh
I have a music play program (freeamp) playing MP3's running. It has the feature in that it scans to see if a CD is in the drive and tries to look it up in CDDB. Well, I don't have a CD in the drive -- I have a DVD-ROM with UDF file system on it. Freeamp doesn't complain, but in my

Annoying CD-rom driver error messages

2001-03-05 Thread LA Walsh
I have a music play program (freeamp) playing MP3's running. It has the feature in that it scans to see if a CD is in the drive and tries to look it up in CDDB. Well, I don't have a CD in the drive -- I have a DVD-ROM with UDF file system on it. Freeamp doesn't complain, but in my

Re: Annoying CD-rom driver error messages

2001-03-05 Thread LA Walsh
Slightly less annoying -- when no CD is in the drive, I'm getting: Mar 5 09:30:42 xena kernel: VFS: Disk change detected on device ide1(22,0) Mar 5 09:31:17 xena last message repeated 7 times Mar 5 09:32:18 xena last message repeated 12 times Mar 5 09:33:23 xena last message repeated 13

Re: Annoying CD-rom driver error messages

2001-03-05 Thread LA Walsh
this isnt a kernel problem, its a _very_ stupid app --- Must be more than one stupid app... xena:/var/log# rpm -q magicdev package magicdev is not installed xena:/var/log# locate magicdev xena:/var/log# xena:/var/log# rpm -qa |grep -i magic ImageMagick-5.2.6-4 -- L A Walsh

Re: Annoying CD-rom driver error messages

2001-03-05 Thread LA Walsh
LA Walsh wrote: this isnt a kernel problem, its a _very_ stupid app --- Must be more than one stupid app... xena:/var/log# rpm -q magicdev package magicdev is not installed xena:/var/log# locate magicdev xena:/var/log# xena:/var/log# rpm -qa |grep -i magic ImageMagick-5.2.6

Re: Annoying CD-rom driver error messages

2001-03-05 Thread LA Walsh
Alan Cox wrote: this isnt a kernel problem, its a _very_ stupid app --- Must be more than one stupid app... Could well be. You have something continually trying to open your cdrom and see if there is media in it --- Is there some feature they *should* be using instead

odd memory corrupt problem

2001-02-22 Thread LA Walsh
I have a kernel driver that has a variable (surprise) 'audit_state'. It's statically initialized to 0 in the C code. The only way it can get set on is if the audit modules are loaded and one makes a system call to enable it. There is no 'driver' initialization performed. This code seemed to

interactive disk performance

2001-02-22 Thread LA Walsh
A problem that I seem to have noticed to some extent or another in the 2.4 series is that while the elevator algorithm may achieve best disk bandwidth utilization, it seems to be heavily at the expense of interactive use. I was running a disk intensive program over nfs, so the nfsd's were quite

interactive disk performance

2001-02-22 Thread LA Walsh
A problem that I seem to have noticed to some extent or another in the 2.4 series is that while the elevator algorithm may achieve best disk bandwidth utilization, it seems to be heavily at the expense of interactive use. I was running a disk intensive program over nfs, so the nfsd's were quite

odd memory corrupt problem

2001-02-22 Thread LA Walsh
I have a kernel driver that has a variable (surprise) 'audit_state'. It's statically initialized to 0 in the C code. The only way it can get set on is if the audit modules are loaded and one makes a system call to enable it. There is no 'driver' initialization performed. This code seemed to

Re: Linux stifles innovation...

2001-02-16 Thread LA Walsh
"David D.W. Downey" wrote: > > Seriously though folks, look at who's doing this! > > They've already tried once to sue 'Linux', were told they couldn't because > Linux is a non-entity (or at least one that they can not effectively sue > due to the classification Linux holds), ... ---

Re: Linux stifles innovation...

2001-02-16 Thread LA Walsh
"David D.W. Downey" wrote: Seriously though folks, look at who's doing this! They've already tried once to sue 'Linux', were told they couldn't because Linux is a non-entity (or at least one that they can not effectively sue due to the classification Linux holds), ... --- Not

To Linus: kdb in 2.4?

2001-02-13 Thread LA Walsh
I'm wondering about the possibility of re-examining the idea of a kernel debugger option distributed with 2.4. I'm thinking that it could be a great teaching tool to break and examine structures, variables, process states, as well as an aid to people who may not have a grasp of the entire

To Linus: kdb in 2.4?

2001-02-13 Thread LA Walsh
I'm wondering about the possibility of re-examining the idea of a kernel debugger option distributed with 2.4. I'm thinking that it could be a great teaching tool to break and examine structures, variables, process states, as well as an aid to people who may not have a grasp of the entire

Block driver design issue

2001-02-12 Thread LA Walsh
I have a block driver I inherited that I working on that has a problem and was wondering for cleaner solutions. The driver can accept written characters from either userspace programs or from the kernel. From userspace it uses sys_write. That in turn calls block_write. There's almost 100 lines

Block driver design issue

2001-02-12 Thread LA Walsh
I have a block driver I inherited that I working on that has a problem and was wondering for cleaner solutions. The driver can accept written characters from either userspace programs or from the kernel. From userspace it uses sys_write. That in turn calls block_write. There's almost 100 lines

question on comment in fs.h

2001-02-10 Thread LA Walsh
Excuse my ignorance, but in file include/linux/fs.h, 2.4.x source in the struct buffer_head, there is a member: unsigned short b_size; /* block size */ later there is a member: char * b_data; /* pointer to data block (512 byte) */ Is the "(512

question on comment in fs.h

2001-02-10 Thread LA Walsh
Excuse my ignorance, but in file include/linux/fs.h, 2.4.x source in the struct buffer_head, there is a member: unsigned short b_size; /* block size */ later there is a member: char * b_data; /* pointer to data block (512 byte) */ Is the "(512

2.4.x Shared memory question

2001-02-04 Thread LA Walsh
Another oddity -- I notice things taking alot more memory in 2.4. This coincides with 'top' consistently showing I have 0 shared memory. These two observations would have me wondering if I have somehow misconfigured my system to disallow sharing. Note that /proc/meminfo also shows 0 shared

2.4.2-test1 better on disk lock/freezups

2001-02-04 Thread LA Walsh
In trying to apply Jens's patch I upgraded to 2.4.2-pre1. The figures on it(242-p1) look better at this point: a vmstat dump, same data...notice this time it only took maybe 45 seconds to write out the data. I also got better interactive performance. So write speed is up to about 3.5Mb/s.

Re: System unresponsitive when copying HD/HD

2001-02-04 Thread LA Walsh
Alan Cox wrote: > But try 2.4.1 before worrying too much. That fixed a lot of the block > performance problems I was seeing (2.4.1 ruins the VM performance under paging > loads but the I/O speed is fixed ;)) --- Seems to have gotten a bit worse. Vmstat output after 'vmware' had

Re: System unresponsitive when copying HD/HD

2001-02-04 Thread LA Walsh
Alan Cox wrote: But try 2.4.1 before worrying too much. That fixed a lot of the block performance problems I was seeing (2.4.1 ruins the VM performance under paging loads but the I/O speed is fixed ;)) --- Seems to have gotten a bit worse. Vmstat output after 'vmware' had completed

2.4.2-test1 better on disk lock/freezups

2001-02-04 Thread LA Walsh
In trying to apply Jens's patch I upgraded to 2.4.2-pre1. The figures on it(242-p1) look better at this point: a vmstat dump, same data...notice this time it only took maybe 45 seconds to write out the data. I also got better interactive performance. So write speed is up to about 3.5Mb/s.

2.4.x Shared memory question

2001-02-04 Thread LA Walsh
Another oddity -- I notice things taking alot more memory in 2.4. This coincides with 'top' consistently showing I have 0 shared memory. These two observations would have me wondering if I have somehow misconfigured my system to disallow sharing. Note that /proc/meminfo also shows 0 shared

Re: System unresponsitive when copying HD/HD

2001-02-03 Thread LA Walsh
I've noticed less responsive disk response on 2.4.0 vs. 2.2.17. For example -- I run vmware and suspend it frequently when I'm not using it. One of them requires a 158Mb save file. Before, I could suspend that one, then start another which reads in a smaller 50M save file. The smaller one

Re: System unresponsitive when copying HD/HD

2001-02-03 Thread LA Walsh
I've noticed less responsive disk response on 2.4.0 vs. 2.2.17. For example -- I run vmware and suspend it frequently when I'm not using it. One of them requires a 158Mb save file. Before, I could suspend that one, then start another which reads in a smaller 50M save file. The smaller one

Re: Power usage Q and parallel make question (separate issues)

2001-02-01 Thread LA Walsh
Keith Owens wrote: > > On Wed, 31 Jan 2001 19:02:03 -0800, > LA Walsh <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > >This seems to serialize the delete, run the mod-installs in parallel, then run the > >depmod when they are done. > > It works, until somebody does this >

Re: Power usage Q and parallel make question (separate issues)

2001-02-01 Thread LA Walsh
Keith Owens wrote: On Wed, 31 Jan 2001 19:02:03 -0800, LA Walsh [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: This seems to serialize the delete, run the mod-installs in parallel, then run the depmod when they are done. It works, until somebody does this make -j 4 modules modules_install

Re: Power usage Q and parallel make question (separate issues)

2001-01-31 Thread LA Walsh
Keith Owens wrote: > > The only bit that could run in parallel is this one. > > .PHONY: $(patsubst %, _modinst_%, $(SUBDIRS)) > $(patsubst %, _modinst_%, $(SUBDIRS)) : > $(MAKE) -C $(patsubst _modinst_%, %, $@) modules_install > > The erase must be done first (serial), then make

Power usage Q and parallel make question (separate issues)

2001-01-31 Thread LA Walsh
I remember reading some time back that on a pentium the difference between a pentium in HLT vs. running was about 2-3 watts vs. 15-20 watts. Does anyone know the difference for today's CPU's? P-III/P-IV or other archs? How about the difference when calling the BIOS power-save feature? With

Re: seti@home and es1371

2001-01-31 Thread LA Walsh
Try "freeamp". It uses darn close to 0 CPU and may not be affected by setiathome. 2nd -- renice setiathome to '19' -- you only want it to use up 'background' cputime anyway Rainer Wiener wrote: > > Hi, > > I hope you can help me. I have a problem with my on board soundcard and >

Re: seti@home and es1371

2001-01-31 Thread LA Walsh
Try "freeamp". It uses darn close to 0 CPU and may not be affected by setiathome. 2nd -- renice setiathome to '19' -- you only want it to use up 'background' cputime anyway Rainer Wiener wrote: Hi, I hope you can help me. I have a problem with my on board soundcard and seti. I

Power usage Q and parallel make question (separate issues)

2001-01-31 Thread LA Walsh
I remember reading some time back that on a pentium the difference between a pentium in HLT vs. running was about 2-3 watts vs. 15-20 watts. Does anyone know the difference for today's CPU's? P-III/P-IV or other archs? How about the difference when calling the BIOS power-save feature? With

Re: Power usage Q and parallel make question (separate issues)

2001-01-31 Thread LA Walsh
Keith Owens wrote: The only bit that could run in parallel is this one. .PHONY: $(patsubst %, _modinst_%, $(SUBDIRS)) $(patsubst %, _modinst_%, $(SUBDIRS)) : $(MAKE) -C $(patsubst _modinst_%, %, $@) modules_install The erase must be done first (serial), then make modules_install

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