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From: Digestifier <Linux-Activists-Request@news-digests.mit.edu>
To: Linux-Activists@news-digests.mit.edu
Reply-To: Linux-Activists@news-digests.mit.edu
Date: Fri, 27 Mar 92 06:15:10 EST
Subject: Linux-Activists Digest #166
Linux-Activists Digest #166, Volume #1 Fri, 27 Mar 92 06:15:10 EST
Contents:
HELP! Trying to build gcc-2.1 on a VIRGIN system... (Ed Carp)
help with mkswap... (gary a moyer)
misc bugs... (Zeyd M. Ben-Halim)
Copy and paste for virtual consoles using mouse (Andrew Haylett (GEC-Marconi Research Centre))
Re: comp.os.linux (Linus Benedict Torvalds)
Copy and paste for virtual consoles using mouse (Andrew Haylett (GEC-Marconi Research Centre))
Need Help Picking Components for PC-Compat Linux/386BSD Box (Craig Burley)
Re: Free BSD release: future of Minix/Linux? (Sean Eric Fagan)
Re: Curses library (Michael Haardt)
Problems building new libraries (Michael Haardt)
ps patch for 0.95a kernel (Michael Haardt)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: erc@Apple.COM (Ed Carp)
Crossposted-To: gnu.misc.discuss
Subject: HELP! Trying to build gcc-2.1 on a VIRGIN system...
Date: 27 Mar 92 03:18:32 GMT
OK, this is what I'd like to do. I'd like to build gcc on a SPARC,
but run it on a 386 running linux 0.95a. I've built the stage 1
compiler (according to the INSTALL docs in the gcc-2.1 directory),
but am stumped when it tells me I don't have libgcc.a. How do I build
this?
It seems that the GNU stuff is relatively well documented per-product,
but it completely lacks a document for GNU virgins. Something like
"OK, I've ftp'd the GNU stuff from prep.ai.mit.edu - now what do I
do?"
If someone would like to email/call me and help me through this, I'd gladly
take notes, and write them up for a /pub/gnu/READ-ME.FIRST doc or something.
I guess I'm just totally confused. I know generally what I have to do to
make a cross-compiler, but I'm not sure of the exact steps that you need to
do with GNU.
I'd like to install the following:
1. gcc-2.1
2. glibc-1.02
3. gas-1.38
I assume that I need 2 built to build 1, right? When I'm done' I'd like to
have, sitting on my SPARC (ready for download), executables for (say) an
i386-sysv system, so that I could tar them off/download them and be able to
compile stuff.
Thanks for your time and assistance.
--
Ed Carp N7EKG/6 erc@khijol.UUCP erc@apple.com
Cupertino, CA 408/252-5947
-- Absolutely unabashed Gates McFadden groupie! --
------------------------------
From: moyerg@jove.cs.pdx.edu (gary a moyer)
Subject: help with mkswap...
Date: 27 Mar 92 07:08:17 GMT
I am running out of memory with 2megs and need to know how to
set up a swap file. Any suggestions?
Thanks. Gary Moyer
------------------------------
From: zmbenhal@isis.cs.du.edu (Zeyd M. Ben-Halim)
Subject: misc bugs...
Date: Fri, 27 Mar 92 07:39:51 GMT
Hi folks,
I've been giving linux a run. I AM impressed with the quality of of linux (good
work linus). However, I did come up with various problems here and there:
These happened will I was tryimg to compile alternative shells.
Ksh compiled without to many problems if you exclude job control.
On running though it was a bit flakey. when typing 'cd -' it output a random
character and linefeed before it works. This is quite cosmetic. Of a more
serious nature is that it can't handle & at the end of command line; it print
%6291404 29998 %%%-2d%c %5d %-20s % %s
-Oh} ${PATH:= blah, blah, blah
and then it dies! This used to work on minix by the way.
In trying to compile zsh, I had all sort of problems figuring out if linux
was SYSV or BSD or a mixture of both + POSIX that is not in either.
I found out that setpgrp is not an implemented system call (even the prototype
was wrong. -O caused unrecognized insn errors (anybody figure out why?)
Also no utmp.h
In other news today, the adduser package has a crypt.o which has no _crypt and
refers to ufc_* functions not in the library. I'm using the libc.a that came
with newgcc. Is newlibc a more uptodate one?
Any finally for today, some commands, say mv mostly, output a couple of
linefeeds and then a couple of prompts. is this a kernel or a shell problem?
Thanks for any hints, and keep up the good work,
Zeyd
------------------------------
From: Andrew Haylett (GEC-Marconi Research Centre) <ajh@gec-mrc.co.uk>
Subject: Copy and paste for virtual consoles using mouse
Reply-To: ajh@gec-mrc.co.uk
Date: Fri, 27 Mar 1992 09:05:29 GMT
[reposted as it didn't seem to make it into the newsgroup, or at least into
the digest.]
My mouse was getting fat from lack of exercise, so I have put together a
package that allows an area of text to be selected from any VC and
subsequently pasted to any VC. The package requires a Microsoft-compatible (I
think) *serial* mouse. I find it pretty useful; I've become dependent on
cut'n'paste under X, and missed it under Linux.
The package is in two parts; kernel patches (against standard 0.95a) to
tty_ioctl.c and console.c to implement the selection mechanism, and some
application code to implement the mouse driver and user interface.
I can't upload stuff to FTP sites, but will willingly post the package to
anybody who would like to try it out. selection.tar.Z.uue is about 10K.
If I get enough requests, I'll post it to this group instead, or someone could
upload it for me.
----
Andrew Haylett | Inet: ajh@gec-mrc.co.uk | Fax: +44 245 75244
GEC-Marconi Research | Tel: +44 245 73331 x.3283 | Telex: 995016 GECRES G
------------------------------
From: torvalds@klaava.Helsinki.FI (Linus Benedict Torvalds)
Subject: Re: comp.os.linux
Date: 27 Mar 92 07:50:24 GMT
In article <4031@sumax.seattleu.edu> boyer@sumax.seattleu.edu (Chuck Boyer) writes:
>>The file system that Linux uses is not compatible with that of any
>>other operating system.
>
>Is this certain? Someone suggested in an earlier post or two that
>Linux was 'exactly' compatible with Minix (what version of Minix
>I do not know, I was going to ask). If this is true....
The filesystem is still pretty similar to minix: the only addition is
the symbolic links. If you do not use symlinks, minix and linux
filesystems are totally interchangeable. There are some very minor
differences: minix always clears the inode->mode word when it deletes an
inode, and linux doesn't, so minix fsck will report some spurious error
messages for linux partitions, but that's no big deal (you can make the
linux fdisk report the same errors with the "-m" flag).
> > Device Major Minor Device Major Minor
> > ------ ----- ----- ------ ----- -----
> > /dev/hda1 3 1 /dev/hdb1 3 65
> > /dev/hda2 3 2 /dev/hdb2 3 66
>
>The copy of the rootimage0.95a that 'I' got from tsx-11.mit.edu
>had /dev/hdb1 as Minor 41, /dev/hdb2 as Minor 42, etc......
>What's up 'exactly'?!!!
Both are correct: it's decimal 65 and hex 41. Use decimal numbers for
most things (ls -l does), but when giving the whole device number as
one, it's usually easier to use hex. Thus /dev/hdb1 is (3,65) but also
0x0341 depending on what you want to do.
Linus
------------------------------
From: Andrew Haylett (GEC-Marconi Research Centre) <ajh@gec-mrc.co.uk>
Subject: Copy and paste for virtual consoles using mouse
Reply-To: ajh@gec-mrc.co.uk
Date: Fri, 27 Mar 1992 10:50:23 GMT
My mouse was getting fat from lack of exercise, so I have put together a
package that allows an area of text to be selected from any VC and
subsequently pasted to any VC. The package requires a Microsoft-compatible (I
think) *serial* mouse. I find it pretty useful; I've become dependent on
cut'n'paste under X, and missed it under Linux.
The package is in two parts; kernel patches (against standard 0.95a) to
tty_ioctl.c and console.c to implement the selection mechanism, and some
application code to implement the mouse driver and user interface.
I can't upload stuff to FTP sites, but will willingly post the package to
anybody who would like to try it out. selection.tar.Z.uue is about 10K.
If I get enough requests, I'll post it to this group instead, or someone could
upload it for me.
----
Andrew Haylett | Inet: ajh@gec-mrc.co.uk | Fax: +44 245 75244
GEC-Marconi Research | Tel: +44 245 73331 x.3283 | Telex: 995016 GECRES G
------------------------------
From: burley@geech.gnu.ai.mit.edu (Craig Burley)
Crossposted-To: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware
Subject: Need Help Picking Components for PC-Compat Linux/386BSD Box
Date: 27 Mar 92 09:56:00 GMT
I am thinking seriously about purchasing a PC-compatible system that is
large enough to handle the kind of UNIX and compiler development work I'm
doing.
Though I like to avoid cross-posting, I've done it here because I need the
special expertise of not only Linux aficionados, but "straight" PC users
(MS-DOS and/or MS-Windows) and PC-UNIX users as well, since what I'm doing
is trying to combine, probably for the first time in some cases, hardware
with new free software. Definitive answers probably will be hard to come by,
of course, but perhaps I can learn enough by getting input from the various
camps to determine whether I'm likely to get various parts of the system
working under Linux. (I'm also open to using other free UNIXes to which I
can contribute my volunteer-coding efforts, such as 386BSD, for example; or,
if someone wants to donate a proprietary UNIX for my immediate needs, that
would be fine, too. :-)
I'd like any input on whether/when Linux (or, generally, any arbitrary OS
running a 486 in 32-bit mode at 33MHz, etc) will be able to support various
parts of this system, especially the hard drive and the monitor.
Here's the machine configuration as it currently stands (not purchased yet):
Motherboard stuff:
Tower case w/8 drive bays and 250-watt power supply
Intel 32-bit 80486 CPU 33MHz
64KB cache RAM standard (expandable to 256KB)
Support for Weitek 4167-33 math co-processor (don't need the chip yet)
AMI BIOS
EISA-compatible standard system bus architecture
16MB RAM (70ns) expandable to 64MB
2 serial ports, 1 parallel port
8 EISA slots (apparently each supports 32-bit EISA, 16-bit ISA/AT, 8-bit)
Disks:
Adaptec AHA-1740 SCSI-2 controller
Maxtor PO-12S 1.2GB SCSI-2 hard drive
5.25" (1.2MB) internal floppy
3.5" (1.44MB) internal floppy
Monitor:
Sigma Designs L-View LVS-PC-1S01A (or thereabouts), 1664x1200 118dpi
4-gray-scale monitor & card
Other stuff:
101-key tactile keyboard (NMB RT-101+)
3-button Microsoft-compatible serial mouse
Cardinal 9650V42 9600 baud V.42 internal modem
Panasonic FX-BM89 FAX board (9600 baud)
Offhand, I think the total cost for this system will be around $7500. At the
moment that seems beyond my budget, but I figure I'll start with pretty much
my "ideal" system, find out what's technically wrong with it, work my way
"down" in cost (for example, a less-expensive and more-standard monitor, a
less-expensive HD, ISA instead of EISA, whatever). Then I'll find some way
to finance the system once I've decided on what it should be.
The monitor is one of the areas I'm very concerned about. The original
system I was looking at had an IBM 8507 20" monochrome VGA monitor plus
an SVGA adapter (Trident 8900 chipset), but the monitor seems kind of ugly
to me, and at 1024x768 (despite 64 shades) I don't think the resolution will
be quite up to snuff. The L-View is much more expensive and I might not be
able to afford it, but I might try and save money elsewhere because a solid
monitor is _most_ important to me -- I'd rather spend $2000 on a monitor
(w/high-res card) for a $200 computer than vice versa, if the computer is,
as with this one, going to be my main system. But, I don't know whether I'll
be able to get access to the lowest-level information on how to access the
device (i.e. lower than BIOS level), and without this information, obviously
I won't be able to write a driver for it. So I'm going to call Sigma Designs
and see what they have to offer -- at least this monitor subsystem, unlike
another (less expensive and quite decent) subsystem I looked at, is still being
made and supported and having drivers written for it for lots of software,
which is a good sign. I hope Sigma Designs recognizes the usefulness of making
it easy for free-software volunteers like myself to help them sell more
hardware!
(FYI, color might be nice, but I doubt I'll have any need for it for some time;
I'm _very_ happy with B&W, even 4 gray scales is a luxury I can forego. Also,
being a Mac SE/30 user, and having also used NeXTs (4 gray scales) and other
systems with decent monitors, as compared to an IBM RT I had on loan for a
while with an IBM monitor and other such interlaced or just cheapo monitors,
I'm pretty much spoiled. Even though my Mac has only a 9" screen and 72 dpi,
it's rock-solid. The NeXTs are excellent with the 4 gray scales as well,
though the tendency of their MegaPixels or whatever to go out of focus pretty
much sours me on those systems.)
I've seen other postings asking about support for Adaptec controllers, though
not sure if the 1740 was mentioned. Again, I expect to have to write a driver
for this thing, as well.
Similarly, for the mouse, modem, and FAX board, I expect I might have to
write drivers to use them under Linux. Probably not for the keyboard and/or
mouse, or perhaps the modem, but almost certainly for the FAX board, though
using it under DOS will probably be adequate for quite some time.
Now, I'm not particularly averse to writing drivers, though doing this kind
of stuff on Intel machines is new to me. (I've done OS internals work on
several machines, mostly Prime.) In fact, in some ways, I'm kind of looking
forward to it.
So I recognize that I might well spend two or more _months_ just using DOS and
assemblers just to try and get drivers working so I can even _run_ Linux,
not to mention getting my _real_ work done (Fortran compiler development,
at the moment).
I could buy a more stock system and/or spend less on hardware and buy SCO
UNIX or some such thing. But given that the free-software thing is happening
anyway, and I want to contribute to it (more than just by writing a Fortran
compiler -- rms asked me to do that when I came to him three years ago asking
if I could help write the GNU OS itself, and I even want to do my own OS
and related research), I figure I should go ahead and buy the _best_ hardware
I can for what I can afford, and solve the software problems via acquiring
and writing free software.
But, I'm worried that one or more of the components in my system will turn
out to be effectively impossible to get working under Linux, 386BSD, or
whatever, due to who-knows-what -- poor documentation, critical flaws in
the hardware (postings about 486's not working at 33MHz under Linux or in
32-bit mode worry me, for example), whatever -- and while I can't be
prescient about these things, I can at least ask you all!
One thing I'm aware of is that right now Linux doesn't support >64MB
partitions or >14-char filenames, though others might fix these things
("fix" being a very general term -- "provide enhancements for" is probably more
accurate, given Linux's evolution, as these aren't really bugs from what I
can tell), or I might fix them. (I've hacked OS filesystems before.)
If any of you have information on the workability of various aspects of this
configuration, by all means send me email (burley@gnu.ai.mit.edu) and let
me know. I'll probably summarize the info I get, and almost certainly post
info on my final decision as to what to do (which might include bailing out
for now and just buying a used NeXT to finish my Fortran work or upgrading
my Mac SE/30 to run UNIX for that purpose, and later looking into a PC-compat
for OS work -- but I hope that isn't necessary).
--
James Craig Burley, Software Craftsperson burley@gnu.ai.mit.edu
Member of the League for Programming Freedom (LPF)
------------------------------
From: sef@kithrup.COM (Sean Eric Fagan)
Crossposted-To: comp.unix.bsd
Subject: Re: Free BSD release: future of Minix/Linux?
Date: 27 Mar 92 10:11:05 GMT
In article <4518@umriscc.iic.umr.edu> chamil@mcs213i.cs.umr.edu (Charles M. Hamilton) writes:
>I personally plan on sticking with linux and NOT going to the
>free release of 386BSD. Why? Well, my machine now only
>has 4 megs of RAM, which seems to be fine for linux, but I
>suspect would crowd BSD.
Why would you think that? According to Jolitz a year or two ago, the then
386bsd could run in 640k of RAM (although it would "take gcc five minutes to
compile a null program"). I suspect it would be extremely happy in 4MBytes
(BSDinc says 4MBytes RAM is minimum, unless you want to use X, in which case
you should have 8, which makes sense).
>I also currently only have 80 megs of disk space
Ah. Now *that* is probably a limitation. I believe you'd want to dedicate
that 80MBytes to 386bsd, if you chose to run it, even though you get the
added advantage (supposedly; I'm not sure it works yet) of having NFS, which
Linux doesn't have (yet!).
--
Sean Eric Fagan | "One form to rule them all, one form to find them, one
sef@kithrup.COM | form to bring them all and in the darkness rewrite the
=================+ hell out of them" == sendmail ruleset 3 comment from DEC.
Any opinions expressed are my own, and generally unpopular with others.
------------------------------
From: michael@gandalf.informatik.rwth-aachen.de (Michael Haardt)
Subject: Re: Curses library
Reply-To: u31b3hs@messua.informatik.rwth-aachen.de (Michael Haardt)
Date: Thu, 26 Mar 92 21:05:39 +0100
From article <1992Mar24.114710.29479@mnemosyne.cs.du.edu>, by zmbenhal@isis.cs.du.edu (Zeyd M. Ben-Halim):
> How about using the original ncurses? A package ported to unix from a PC port
> of a unix package is not exactly the way to go. I'm sure ncurses is floating
> on the net somewhere; if not let me know and I'll upload my copy.
I would like to have a look at it, all versions I know are modified (read
hacked) in some ugly way. Hopefully the original version is the solution
to the problem of a curses library.
Michael
------------------------------
From: michael@gandalf.informatik.rwth-aachen.de (Michael Haardt)
Subject: Problems building new libraries
Reply-To: u31b3hs@messua.informatik.rwth-aachen.de (Michael Haardt)
Date: Thu, 26 Mar 92 22:33:32 +0100
After I got a basic system running, I started getting and compiling sources
for all these binaries I got. At the moment, I am compiling the GNU textutils,
shellutils and fileutils. I encountered a few minor problems:
- After running the configure script, I deleted -g from the Makefile
- I added -D_POSIX_SOURCE
- A few commands must be compiled without -O because the optimizer
dies with a strange error message
- for one or two commands you have to link them with additional object files
which are still missing in the library
That's all :) But my main problem was building a new library to overcome
the last problem. I know, I could just add the missing things to the lib
and run ranlib, but that's not the point.
At first, the Makefile has pretty weird variables set, for example for
-Iwhoknowswhatismeant. Second, it will build a Libc.a, Libm.a and
Libtermcap.a. I still wonder what is with libsoft.a and gnulib. Any
hints? Apart from that, I can't compile stdio, because I seem to have
only an estdio stdio.h. So, these are my questions: Which libraries am I
supposed to have? What are libm.a, libsoft.a and gnulib for? What flags
have to be used with a 387, what flags have to be used without a 387?
Where can I get the newest include files? What is the newest version of
the library? I am using GNU C 1.40.
Michael
------------------------------
From: michael@gandalf.informatik.rwth-aachen.de (Michael Haardt)
Subject: ps patch for 0.95a kernel
Reply-To: u31b3hs@messua.informatik.rwth-aachen.de (Michael Haardt)
Date: Fri, 27 Mar 92 01:28:26 +0100
After uncommenting the -fcombine-regs option I successfully recompiled
the kernel. Then I applied the ps patches for 0.95 and only got one
problem with swap.c. Just now it is late and I am awfully tired, and I
think I must have made something wrong because the kernel with patch
boots and after accessing the HD once, it instantly reboots. I think I
made a mistake with patching swap.c, so it would be nice if someone
could send me his working version or post the concerned part. If it
runs at my machine, I will create a new patch set for 0.95a and upload
it, if no one else wants to do it.
Thanks
Michael
------------------------------
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The current version of Linux is 0.95a released on March 17, 1992
End of Linux-Activists Digest
******************************